TRANSCRIPT

Amadon DellErba: How we doing tribe? Welcome to episode 34 of my podcast, Get Real or Die Trying. Today I am super-blessed to be sitting down, virtually, with Jeffrey Smith. I first met Jeffrey back in 2013 in Denver, Colorado at a March Against Monsanto educational protest where we were both speakers. Jeffrey Smith is a best-selling author. He wrote the book: “Genetic Roulette.” “Seeds of Deception.” There was a great documentary (that’s actually how I learned about Jeffrey Smith, originally) called Genetic Roulette about GMOs. He’s a leading scientist and authority on the subject of GMOs. He’s travelled the whole world. He’s given thousands of lectures and educated people on GMOs. He’s really responsible, I think, for the awakening and awareness of the dangers of GMO. More recently he has started a new talk series called the Magnificent New Normal which we’re gonna talk about today, which I’m excited to hear about. And he’s the founder and director of the Institute for Responsible Technology. So this guy’s got a lot going on and he’s had a life of activism and dedication to spreading the good word, so let’s sit down and learn from my man, Jeff.

“Nothing You Do Matters Unless What You Do Matters”
I’m Amadon DellErba and this is “Get Real or Die Trying”

Amadon DellErba: How we doing everybody? Welcome to “Get Real or Die Trying”, as you just heard, I am sitting here with Jeffrey Smith. I had the pleasure of first meeting Jeffrey Smith back in Denver, Colorado in 2013. We were both speakers at a March against Monsanto protest and educational event that was happening there. I was involved back then with trying to spread awareness with Monsanto in my own way.

And particularly about natural gardening, because I grew up on a natural farm and so forth. And I was aware of Jeffrey's work in the field of educating people about GMOs, because I had seen a documentary actually called Genetic Roulette. And then he wrote a book of the same title, which I read. And so I was really excited to meet him and he's been on my radar ever since. So it's really great to catch up years later. How are you doing Jeff?

Jeffrey Smith: Really good, Amadon. How are you?

Amadon DellErba: Good. Thank you for coming onto my podcast. I really appreciate it. I know you're a busy man and you've got a lot going on. So go ahead. What have you been up to? What's going on in the GMO world these days?

Jeffrey Smith: Well, it's interesting. I've been doing it for 25 years and it's not same old, same old at all. It's completely new. In fact, we pivoted, I've been focusing for 25 years being a leading spokesperson on the health dangers of GMOs and Roundup and spoke in 45 countries and all, but now we are pivoting. We're moving into a new area because of an existential threat from gene editing, a cheap and easy GMO technology, which is so accessible. You can genetic engineer with a do it yourself kit on Amazon for $169. You can create new organisms. Vast amounts just by getting a small, cheap laboratory. And for the price of dinner, you can create a new organism, especially in the microbe world.

Now, if you think about it, you know that when you introduce a new GMO into the environment from whatever species or kingdom, it could potentially and usually does, reproduce and corrupt the gene pool of that species… and you can't clean it up. You can't recall GMO salmon from the ocean if it ever escaped or the corn from the corn gene pool, which it has contaminated. They've released genetically engineered mosquitoes, which altered the gene pool in the country, in countries where that was released. 

Now, when you add to that, the fact that genetic engineering, including gene editing is an unpredictable science and the most common result is surprise side effects. Now you have a combination for disaster where you're putting accident prone technology into the gene pool forever. And you're giving the opportunity to thousands, hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions of people to introduce hundreds of thousands or millions of new species into the ecosystem. And so we're looking at the possibility of this generation, replacing nature. So that all future generations do not inherit the products of the billions of years of evolution, but instead inherit products of laboratories using a technology that's prone to side effects. 

Amadon DellErba: Pretty scary. 

Jeffrey Smith: Yeah. So we've shifted to a protectnaturenow.com platform.

And the first thing we're going to try and protect is the global microbiome, the microbes and viruses around the planet, which actually are mission critical for human health, animal health, plant health and ecosystem health. And because we know from the pandemic, you release a virus that goes around the world and wreaks havoc, microbes have that capacity and if you release a well-meaning microbe in one location, it can circle the globe and wreak havoc. And we have a film now coming out called “Don't Let the Gene Out of the Bottle.” The trailer is at protectnaturenow.com where we highlight a couple of bacteria that were nearly released that could have been cataclysmic.

Amadon DellErba: Wow. That’s fascinating. When you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about this kind of David and Goliath battle that we had with Monsanto and educating people, because back then the battle was just simply educating people, that people had no idea the food was being modified and that worked and people got educated and actually it worked better than I think some people thought it would... and they stopped buying the products, and the awareness really took over into the, to the point where Monsanto changed their name. They got bought by Bayer. They tried to hide things. I don't know exactly what's going on now they're just Bayer. But I think now, like you're saying the approach and the battle is different. It's not so much about education now, it's about this massive battle about keeping them from permanently destroying these natural biomes, like you're talking about, which is… it's pretty serious stuff. And to me, it's like, it's pretty amazing that people will think they can play God, because that's what they're doing. Like they think they can actually mess with billions of years of natural evolution. That's like...it's crazy. 

Jeffrey Smith: You're right. And what's happened in terms of the education aspect is that 48% of the global population believe that GMO foods are unsafe, 51% in United States. We have more people than we need in order to drive GMOs out of the food marketplace. That's happening. Now, as far as what is the tactic to try and stop the corruption of the global microbiome and ecosystem collapse. We need government regulations. We didn't need government regulations when we were training people to eat non-GMO because the governments could be pro-GMO, pro-Monsanto.

And if no, one's going to buy it, the farmers aren't going to grow it. And the demise of the industry follows. But our decisions in the supermarket is not going to stop the introduction of genetically modified microbes, or insects, or trees, or birds, et cetera. And so we need to lock it down on the level of legislation, regulation, international treaty… but we can't just stop there because I know personally from my own experience that laws and regulations change with new regimes. 

I was flown to Poland by the government years ago to give a press conference with their minister of environment praising the country's non-GMO stand, which was quite strong. A week later a new government was voted into place that was pro-GMO. I contacted ministers in Thailand, urging them not to allow outdoor release of GMOs in field trials. They did not allow it until 10 days later when a new government came over, came into play and took over and said, “yes.” So we realized that, although we need to move the hand of government, we need to embed this message into the collective. So we want it to be part of curriculum. We want it to be part of a scientific association policy, institutional review board policy. We want it to be well understood by thought leaders and want it to be on documentaries, TV shows. You see, we've come to the inevitable time in human history where we can easily redirect the streams of evolution for all time, causing permanent irreversible damage. And with this new technology comes a new responsibility for humanity. From now on we must steward all living beings and all future generations, because for the first time we have a possibility of creaming them.

And so this actually demands an expanded awareness and a reframing of our role. And something that needs to be established humanity-wide. We can't let a rogue nation or a rogue transnational continue to operate because companies like Bayer, they can have facilities full of robots, driven by artificial intelligence to create thousands of alternatives of genes, and this is not acceptable when we’re thinking about protecting nature for the long term. 

Amadon DellErba: So who are some of the players in this, right now, besides Bayer and are there certain countries who are more on the leading edge of trying to conduct this wrong research and science of trying to mess with the system? Who, besides America, are there particular hotspots around the globe that are issues?

Jeffrey Smith: Well, it used to be that because the process of creating a genetically modified crop was so capital-intensive, that it was limited to just a handful of companies in about six countries, but gene editing, which was introduced fairly recently is so cheap and easy that, for the price of dinner, a lab can buy something online and make a new organism. Now then to culture it before release takes more money, but essentially all of the biologic biology labs, all of the universities, all of the bio-oriented companies now in the world have access to and use gene editing technologies. And there is a myth being propagated by the same companies like Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/DuPont, which has been merged and Syngenta and ChemChina, which has been merged.

There's a myth that the new gene editing is safe, predictable, and natural. And this is being created in order to try and avoid the fate of GMOs that we helped create, rejection by consumers and regulatory requirements. 

(Oh, my phone’s ringing and that phone never rang. We’ll let it go.) 

So it turns out that they're trying to pretend to governments that GMOs are safe and they're convincing them. So there's major governments that actually have no requirements for release on gene editing. In the USDA… there was a company that gene-edited mushrooms as companies that gene editing did several other things. They sent a letter to the USDA saying, “you don't have to regulate us, do you?” And the USDA said, “Nope. Because you're gene edited. We don't have to touch it.” The FDA doesn't have to touch it because they don't have any regulatory requirements. The EPA doesn't have to touch it because they only look at a narrow number of GMOs. And so essentially no one in the US government has to pay any attention if it's gene edited with certain parameters.

And that means that it's a Wild West creating releases that can travel like COVID-19 virus, affect the world like that, and no one is saying “stop.” So that's why we're stepping up to create a new global movement. So, you know, when I talk about the dangers of GMOs, I ask audiences, what do you think is more dangerous for planetary survival, GMOs or climate change? Most people… GMOs, which was shocking to me when I first asked the question, even at climate change organizations, even at climate change conferences. GMOs are recognized by the majority as equal-to or greater, rather than equal-to or less.

Amadon DellErba: Interesting. 

Jeffrey Smith: And this means that, well, that's working to our advantage because people are aware of the possibility, but they're not really aware of the details.

Amadon DellErba: Yeah. So you're working with governmental legislation processes to actually prevent this from happening. Is that your avenue? You're going to have to get in and start protecting him by law from these scientists. That's quite a process. 

Jeffrey Smith: On all levels of government, international, national. We need to bring it up... and also educate people. So if people go to protectnaturenow.com, you can watch the trailer to the film, which talks about a particular microbe that could have theoretically ended terrestrial plant life. And it was two weeks away from being released. It's quite a story. There's another one that could have altered weather patterns.

So these are in the, in the 60 minute film, which we're going to release in April, we believe, but the trailer is out now.  And we're looking to get hundreds or thousands of organizations participating in the distribution of information because it affects all living beings, all future generations, health, nature, rights, ecosystems, future, children, et cetera.

Amadon DellErba: Well, thanks for your work there. I'm sure my audience will definitely be checking out “Protect Nature” and your website and your video there. I'm looking forward to watching that myself. Before I move on from that concept, is there any updates of what's going on with the privatization and patenting of seeds? I know for me, that was something that really got me fired up early on back when, when we first met in 2013 and learning about what these poor farmers went through when Monsanto's private seeds blew into their field and all of a sudden they're getting sued by Monsanto and losing everything. And that level of injustice just made my blood boil. That's why I wanted to educate as many people as possible. And like I said, growing up, farming myself and understanding, beyond just the beauty of farming to me there's a sacredness in a seed. The concept of what a seed represents is almost infinite possibility. Inside one tiny seed is generations. And, and it's not owned by anybody except for the person who harvests from the plant and plants it. And that level of privatization is almost like an assault on our God-given rights as human beings. 

And what's going on in the world with that? Is it… it's kind of died down, obviously, in the mainstream news, you don't really hear about it and the fight there, but I know it's still happening and I, to a degree, but I haven't been caught up on that lately.

Jeffrey Smith: Yeah. You're asking important points to catch people up. They... Originally, they wanted to create genetically engineered crops that produced sterile offspring. So you wouldn't be able to biologically plant a soybean that comes from a genetically engineered soybean plant. They created a technology to do it called Terminator, but international outrage stopped them from deploying it. Instead, what they do is they require farmers to sign contracts; that if you use, for example, Bayer/Monsanto's Roundup ready, soy seeds, soybean seeds. You sign a contract that you only use the Roundup from that company because Roundup the glyphosate, which is the chief poison, came off patent in 2000. So the whole purpose of GMOs was primarily to maintain world dominance on the sale of Roundup herbicide. Monsanto introduced six Roundup ready crops. They’re designed not to be killed when they’re sprayed with Roundup, but then the farmers sign away any rights to resave their seeds. Now some farmers have saved seeds that were illegal and they got pummeled by Monsanto. Of course, saving seeds is a millennia-old tradition of farmers. But a lot of farmers didn't save seeds, but got cross pollinated and wind-blown seeds fell out of their fields like Percy Schmeiser from Canada who grew canola. And he was sued by Monsanto successfully. It went to the Canadian Supreme court and they said it doesn't matter that you didn't intentionally plant Monsanto seeds. It's part of their intellectual property rights. And because you harvested the canola on your fields, as you did every year for 35 years and replanted it. That becomes illegal because wind had blown Monsanto's seeds onto your property. 

So he lost, and that's a tragedy, and Monsantos has sued maybe 300 different farm- farmers for millions upon millions of dollars. And they also, and the biotech industry in general, have a lot of control in governments. So they've been able to convince government legislatures and regulators, to pass laws and policies, which prevent farmers from saving their own seeds or using unregistered seeds. So they'll say, basically, if you want to use a seed for the sake of the, of good agriculture, they should be ones that have been approved by science, meaning in our catalogs. 

And so they want to eliminate the age-old practice of saving seeds, which provides literally millions of different varieties of food-stuffs, because different farmers have different high-quality seeds. And by eliminating them and forcing farmers to buy only what's in the catalog, they get to promote the GMO agenda, but they also risk the life on earth because it's in our diversity that we have security, especially at a time of unstabilized climate. And so you want to have a lot of diversity in the seeds and in the plants so that you can rely on those that will work well in particular climate and geography. 

Well, at the time we have been destroying our diversity by switching over to industrial farming. So hundreds of different varieties have come down to just a handful in so many different categories and the biotech industry wants to reduce it even further with support from the government. So it's still a hot issue and there's a big organization, a bunch of organizations trying to protect farmers and seeds.

Amadon DellErba: Yeah, small-scale, biodynamic, natural gardening and polyculture is like an act of resistance at this point. Growing as many varieties and saving seeds as possible is what needs to happen with millions of people, really all over the world... just to keep it going, because the industrialization of agriculture, as you mentioned, has gotten so out of hand, and the monocropping… 

And the interesting thing is scientists have convinced the world to feel and believe that it's the only way we can feed the masses. If we want to keep up with the massive population growth, we have to have this massive industrial farming, but it's really not the case actually. I'm not a scientist, I can't spout off the facts, but from the research that I've done and reading about it, the intensiveness of this industrial agriculture is a lot harder on the earth actually. And uses much more resources than many many small scale natural farms. And the interesting thing too, is the quality of food. When you have a GMO or just whatever, a mass produced tomato that was harvested green and shipped 2000 miles, and is eaten, and never had a chance to ripen naturally on the vine, the amount of nutrients that that tomato is going to have in it is actually far less than a organic tomato that ripened on the vine. So it's like one person could eat one slice of organic tomato and receive the same nutrients or have to eat three non-organic tomatoes to receive those same vitamins and nutrients. And so there's different ways to look at it, and how we consume, and the amount of food wasted in this country is unbelievable too. I mean, there's so many subjects around that. 50% of the food that the country grows is wasted, absolute absurdity. And of course the agribusiness of meat, and how we eat that and the amount of water it takes to raise one pound of beef and all of these things are related, I think, to consciousness. 

And that bridges nicely into, I think what you're working on now, which you can tell our audience about, which I was excited to see that you have this new series called “The Magnificent New Normal.” And you could tell us a little bit about that. I wanted to just touch on the title real quick, and you can say in your own words what it's about, but I was, I was diving into it recently and watching some of the talks on there and the people you have on your show. And I love how the title is a play on what we're dealing with right now in the pandemic and the global situation. And it is the new normal. And I was just having this conversation the other day with a friend saying people are very resistant to want to accept the new normal. They want life to go back to how it was, when it may not, and accepting the new normal is a consciousness shift. And then taking it further, besides just accepting it, being happy about it and seeing it as a magnificent thing and a catalyst for change and launching into a new way of thinking, and approaching, and doing things in life is really a beautiful thing. And so it looks like your show is kind of all about that from my interpretation. I haven't had time to watch all the videos and all the guests on your new show, but let's talk about that for a little bit. And you can tell everybody about that.

Jeffrey Smith: Sure. I have this amazing series. Just amazing.

We have Bruce Lipton, Eben Alexander, Jewel, Zach Bush, Lynne McTaggart, Jerome Flynn from Game of Thrones, David Perlmutter, Lynne Twist, Sue Morter, Tom O'Brien, Alberto Villoldo, BJ Fogg. It goes on. And why did I pull these people together? 

Early in the pandemic I asked a number of people, “What have you noticed it's new in you?” Perhaps I asked people, “What's the best thing you've noticed about the pandemic?” No matter how I worded the question, everyone was talking about how they were ready to make a change in their life because they either came to a place of stillness and quiet in the pandemic pause that they hadn't had before and said, “I’m not going to go back to the rat race that I had before,” or they learned how much they had cherished something that they gave up and they were not going to go back and take it for granted anymore.

Everyone was using the contrasting lifestyle and restrictions as a way to say, “I need to to do things differently.” 

Now as an activist working for 25 years, I've been aware that when someone says, “Okay, I'm ready to make a change.” That's a significant moment in the process of transformation. And it hearkens back to a lecture I heard with a spiritual person and a scientist. And the scientist was a chemist and he was describing to the spiritual leader the three phases of a phase transition in chemistry. And if you've seen it, the graph just moves along and horizontal, nothing happens. Then it shoots up to a higher level than it moves along and a parallel slope again. And the chemist was saying, you can be putting in high pH or low pH drops into the system for a long time and nothing happens. Then all of a sudden it starts to change. And when it stops, it levels off into a new normal. During the time of the phase transition when it is changing, that is when the quality of the drops makes a difference. The quality of the drops at the beginning make no difference in the beginning or the end, it's during the phase transition that the quality determines the success of the transformation. 

So as an activist, I see a three-phase thing in convincing a person or a country or an institution to make a change. You work really hard, giving one set of information about why GMOs and Roundup are dangerous. And they say, “Okay, okay. We will phase out GMOs and we'll switch to organic” whether it's an individual, an institution. And then they'll say “How?” When they say “how” a new quality of information has to come in, which makes it possible, practical, and easy for them to make that transformation. They establish new habits, and then you're not going to get another chance for quite some time. The process of giving that new information is so critical, and the timing, it's right from the time that someone said, “I want to make a change.” So the pandemic did the heavy lifting. It made individuals say, “I want to make a change.” 

Being a student of consciousness... I know you saw the interview with Bruce Lipton. He has some powerful science talking about how consciousness is a field. And Lynne McTaggart talks about the field of intention, experiments, how you can influence the field. And Bob Roth, who was an expert at Transcendental Meditation, talks about these collective transformations of society through group practice of meditation. I've been aware that consciousness is a shared phenomenon. It's not linear. It's not local. And I figured if all the people I'm talking to are having that thought, “we need to make a change,” then it's lively in collective consciousness. And that means that the organism of consciousness, the field, the system of consciousness is ready to make a change. And that what is needed at that time is the highest-quality input for new perspectives and choices that could allow us to step into the highest version of ourselves. 

And I think I figured what are the areas that people want to reorganize their lives? They want to understand about themselves. They want to reorganize about their own splintered parts, their own traumas, their relationships, their masculine and feminine, their relationships to nature, to money. They're going to want to learn how they make changes, how to turn new behaviors into habits? What can they do physiologically to switch brain functioning so that they can be most successful? So I pulled together with some help from others, the people that I considered to be the most important mentors at this time for this new information, with a concept that if we get enough people, critical mass, moving forward to cause a personal leap of consciousness, then that would be effectively moving society forward. And so this was to create a magnificent new normal. 

And the idea is if we simply, as you say, get our old lives back, it would be the worst opportunity loss in history, because we never have this time. 

Now in the context of the interviews… and if people, they can click the link that's associated with your show to get there, you'll immediately have the opportunity to listen to Lynne Twist. Lynne Twist has been working with indigenous communities and she brings out that the indigenous Elders actually prophesied this time as a necessary transformation. She gives the beautiful metaphors of the butterfly transforming into a caterpillar. And I think my favorite is when she says yes, like we all have morning sickness, but don't know we're pregnant. And if we realize we're pregnant, then the pain we're feeling gets reframed 

Amadon DellErba: ...in context…  

Jeffrey Smith: We're creating new... we’re birthing a new world. 

Amadon DellErba: Wow. Yeah, man. You just touched on a lot of great things there and really a lot of things that I feel personally aligned with in my life. You started talking about the talk you went to that merged spirituality and science. I really liked that because I'm actually a student at a university called The University of Ascension Science and the Physics of Rebellion.  And Ascension Science is really the fusion of spirituality and science. And I think the world has really done itself, a disservice for centuries by disassociating science and spirituality. And they've always thought there had to be this “separation of church and state” (so to speak) and not acknowledging our consciousness, not acknowledging our spiritual values, not acknowledging cause and effect, quantum physics, all of these things that play they're very important roles in our world today… Is kind of like, not really seeing the big picture of how things actually work. And I was excited to see that you're going into this zone, or like you said, you've probably been in the zone for a long, long time in your life. I just didn't know that… of exploring consciousness and this new talk series and the people you have on it, it was really cool to see. I also study the book, “Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton and a lot of great concepts there. And there's a lot of parallels of things that I've been studying in our university and from my spiritual teachers about cause and effect, and about consciousness, and manifestation. Like you said, if we don't catapult off of this, it's a huge disservice to humanity and people want to go back to Egypt in their minds to what's comfortable, to what's familiar. But this is a time to actually shift into a global awareness. 

I believe in a Creator, the Creator I believe in doesn't fit into the boxes and the ideas of what man has created in evolutionary religions in the dogmas of today. And my spiritual teachers, Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase (who happen to be my parents as well). They founded this university. They're both authors, they've written books. And my father has written some books called “The Cosmic Family Volumes.” And in these books, that really talks about similar concepts to “The Biology of Belief,” how our thoughts and our consciousness affects the reality around us. It really breaks down the science of particle reality, how our bodies are even connected to the universe. And these things may seem way out there for some people, but when you start living your life consciously, they don't seem way out there at all. It all makes perfect sense. And to me, it's about spiritual intelligence and there's a difference of course, between knowledge and wisdom. An ounce of wisdom is worth a thousand pounds of knowledge. 

Consciousness is when you really start tapping into wisdom and then you can apply the knowledge that you have. This is any human being. And so kind of scrolling through a lot of the individuals that you've had on your talk series, I see a common thread throughout, that people are really putting an emphasis on accountability for their decisions in their lives and utilizing their consciousness like a tool, because it is a tool. And all too often, people in America, especially, I feel they're not tapped into their consciousness because they're not taught to, they’re not raised to. And I know that you, you said something about meditating for years and being a student of consciousness.

And just taking that time to tap into consciousness. It's kind of a common practice in Eastern philosophy, in different cultures, but in America, we're tapped into the media, we're tapped into selfishness, we're tapped into the stars, into the Instagram, into the Facebook, into whatever we're tapping into. We’re not pulling in consciousness. And we're certainly not pulling in divine information from the Creator. Whether someone believes in the Creator or not. You know, the universe is certainly intelligent. And when people say, “Oh, the universe gave it to me.” Well, they're right. But the universe is created and the universe is highly orchestrated and highly intelligent because there's a personality Creator behind it. That's just my belief. But whether someone believes that or not, we both believe that the universe is intelligent, you know? 

Jeffrey Smith: Absolutely.

Amadon DellErba: ...Interesting. Interesting gaps that we can make here. And one thing you talked about too, you mentioned (just look at my notes here). Oh, you mentioned the indigenous and the woman, and the prophecies, and the times that we're in. And I totally agree with that, that we are in what I call and my teachers call the Purification Times. And not only has it been indigenous Elders for years who prophesied this, the Hopi have, different indigenous South American cultures have, it’s actually Nostradamus and in scripture, there's all these different prophecies throughout cultures in spiritual belief systems that talk about pretty much the time that we're in right now.

And everybody has a different interpretation of what that means and what that time is. And if it's just going to be a human caused global consciousness shift, or if it means something else is happening. My spiritual teacher, Gabriel of Urantia, he talks about the return of Jesus. Now that, Jesus, though is very, very different than the Jesus that most people understand. This is the cosmic vast Jesus. What some people would be more familiar with Christ Consciousness, but the cosmic Christ. I say cosmic, because He's much bigger than our understanding of the Bible Jesus. He's an ascended soul, master, He's a Creator Son of the Universal Father of God. One of the many, many Creators Sons, that's a big subject. At the end of the day, the great thing is it doesn't actually even matter that we may not believe the same thing because our bodies are innately, in our consciousness, tapping into the recognition that these times are happening. We may not know exactly what's going to happen, but we can agree upon, something is going to happen. And this is a beautiful opportunity for humanity to make that quantum shift in their consciousness. 

Jeffrey Smith: I agree with that; the quantum shift piece so much so, and you mentioned about the science and spirituality...

Amadon DellErba: Ascension Science. Yeah. 

Jeffrey Smith: Let me share with you some of the overlap in some of the speakers that I interview. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah. I'd love to hear more about that.

Jeffrey Smith: Well, you mentioned Bruce Lipton, so let's start there. Bruce is a friend of mine, a great man. And in the interview he talks about, you can take a person's cells off the body and put them in a petri dish and put them a hundred miles away and have a livestream video of the cells and of the person. And when the person goes into a rather extreme emotional state, the cells instantaneously react. And this demonstrates a field context between us and our cells, which he says is also like the trillion cells that we have in our bodies are also part of that field effect. And he talks about that in a very elegant way on the interview. 

Now, Lynne McTaggart talks about having a group of people intending with specific intention to make a change of purifying water or growing seeds in a certain way, or healing someone and has statistically significant results showing that the intention appeared to have a causation effect. 

Then you have Bob Roth talking about collective practice of meditation causing changes in societal values like crime rate, and accident rate, and hospital admissions, and talking about it on the quantum level. Now you have the physiological side where you have people like David Perlmutter, who talks about shifting to the prefrontal cortex from the amygdala. He wrote a book with Alberto Villoldo, at one point, and he talks about going from homosapien to homoluminous, and talks about the four areas of the brain and moving into that from a physiological standpoint. 

Then we have Eben Alexander who was a neuroscientist who had the most famous near-death experience on the planet; got the cover of Newsweek called “Proof of Heaven.” And he talks about, at a time when his brain was dead and was not allowed to, from a physiological theoretical standpoint, have a thought he was having the most glorious experience of his life in a field of unity and love with a whole society of beings and came back to report on it. But he also discovered that there was no way from a physiological framework that he could have even had a thought during the time that he was having these experiences. 

So we have Kristin Kirk, who is like a modern day mystic who's in a state of unity at all times and she talks about her experience. Then you have, Sue Morter, who had a unique unity experience. Jerome Flynn from “Game of Thrones,” he talks about his unity experience.

So you have the people with the experience, you have the people with the science, and then you have the people that overlap. Some of the scientists that are having the experience. So the fact that consciousness is a field is one of the recurring themes. The fact that you can influence the field with human consciousness is another. The fact that there's a movement from the more classical expression of physics like billiard ball newtonian, to quantum field in our expression of evolution of consciousness is another theme covered by many, many of the speakers. And then there's what happens when you leap forward in consciousness? So, Holly Woods talks about a very profound series of stages of consciousness and said she describes how from her observation, humanity actually jumped a stage since entering the pandemic and describes some of the changes that she was seeing in the data and the news, and that it's still happening. Others talk about balancing the masculine and feminine. Others talked about shifting the relationship with nature. So many different ways that the shift of consciousness and evolution manifests. 

Now, what happens is, there's so much information in these interviews, there’s 30 available at once and another 10 plus more for people that want to buy the whole package. There's so much information that when you purchase, when you sign up, which is free, when you sign up for the registration. There's a video from me that says, how do you get the most out of this? And we have seven ways to do that. And one is not to try to write everything down and absorb it all and run it like it's a quiz, because we're all starting from a different place. And my edge of evolution may be different than your edge of evolution and what you resonate with as your gem of wisdom, you'll feel in your own way. And I'll feel a different gem and a different to-do list and a different thing that calls to me. So I talk about how to listen to these, using a journal, to get an idea of what is the message for us? That's why you can listen to the same thing a week later, a year later, 10 years later and it's as if it's a completely different series. But we ran this originally as a 40 day and 40 night program with one life transforming interview per day in the fall as a beta test. People loved it. One person said, quote, “The most uplifting summit I've ever come across.” Another person said quote, “In my 73 years of life, this was by far the most magnificent series of talks I've ever been a part of.” Another person wrote, quote, “Among the most enjoyable, informative, and transformational presentations I've ever participated in.”

So those people say they were looking forward each day to the next interview. And I wanted it to be very, very easy. So people didn't have a fear of missing out. They didn't have to try and stuff everything into one day, but some people actually wanted more than one per day. They wanted a retreat style. They wanted to binge on consciousness. And so we put it as a week-long program that's happening right now. And you can go to that link to catch “A Magnificent New Normal,” and so I recommend if you wanted to do it for 20 days or 40 days or whatever, just it's a low cost program, just purchase it and set it up so that you create the speed of assimilation, of listening, of absorption and integration that works for you. And in addition to the people who master content there's people who master process like BJ Fogg from Stanford he wrote the book “Tiny Habits.” He explains how, if you want to learn, make something into a habit, what you need to do so that the new behavior quickly becomes a habit. How you use your emotions and use triggers and use certain anchors to make that a reality. So there's the content, the process, and then you get to decide how often you want to listen to these and how you want to process it. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah, it's, it's really it's quite an outstanding series of people and a lot of information there. I was, like I said, I scrolled through it and checked it out.

And I watched the Bruce Lipton ones and flipped through a few others and I signed up for it today too. So I'm going to definitely consume it all over, not a week, but I'll spread it out. I want to circle back to a few things you said I just wrote down here, you talked about the best versions of ourselves and that has a correlation to something I prescribe to, which is the concept of the lower and the higher self. A lot of the indigenous talk about the white wolf or the black wolf, which wolf are you going to feed? And every human being on this planet is faced with a dual nature, whether they believe it or not, their human i.e animal origin nature, and then their spiritual nature. And I think consciousness is what bridges those. Consciousness is when you start coming out of your animal origin nature, Into your spiritual nature; your higher self, the best version of yourself. It's an interesting delicate balance because I don't think that means you deny your human nature. And by human, I don't mean like, humanity. I mean, animal origin nature. It's because when we start having the realization of our spiritual minds and that we're spiritual beings in a human body, that these bodies are vessels for consciousness; for our souls. When we start having those realizations, a lot of other concepts fall into place and how we live our lives, how we make decisions, how we perceive situations and you know, there's a lot of, I think now on the planet right now, there's a lot of emphasis on self-help, which is great. Like all of a sudden people are realizing they can help themselves. They can digest information and knowledge, read a book, or listen to these podcasts and consume all this data and assimilate it to help themselves.

And that's great. It's great that people are taking responsibility and accountability to better themselves. And with that, I think the need and the recognition of teachers and mentors and great minds and I think you've collected a lot here, which is really cool to consume that data cause there's a lot of... the funny thing too is, now you got every 30 something year old on Instagram who has a million followers and all of a sudden he's a self-help coach. Not because he has wisdom or because he has knowledge or she, but because he has a lot of followers, which is funny too. I really liked the depth of what you presented. And I'm definitely going to share it with all the people on your show, because these are people who've done research, experienced, lived, and they're not just someone who's teaching someone about something because they have a lot of followers, because they got social media famous real quick because they posted some, viral video, which happens a lot actually. A lot of people are listening, especially from my generation, the millennials, I guess you would call it and of course, younger... are listening to all the wrong people. I in my life have always valued having spiritual elders to go to and I'm beginning to value it even more. Sometimes I resisted it because a spiritual elder usually tells you what you don't want to hear, or they'd tell you something that's hard to digest, hard to understand. It goes against the easy path. Human beings are innately, ease seekers. 

Consciousness and growth takes work. It takes tremendous work and it takes commitment and it takes study. And you were talking about the overlapping of science and spirituality. What intrigues me about that and that I've always appreciated is that scientists innately have to study. They innately have to commit to a process to analyze something, collect the data, come up with a summary, you know, and it's not an easy thing. There's time involved and there’s commitment involved. Spirituality is actually the same way. And so when you merge the two, I think you're merging a mental consciousness of discipline and intellect and applying it into the consciousness of spiritual evolution. And then you're merging these ideas of, “Wow, now I actually have to somehow apply spiritual values into my life.” And it's not this amorphous thing that we study, “Oh, what is love? What is compassion? What is consciousness? What is being enlightened?” You mentioned state of unity, how to get to that unity because as I mentioned earlier, we are dual nature human beings. We're always struggling with the duality. And you know, to me, enlightenment is when someone is no longer having to fight their lower self. And they're always in that constant state of their higher self. But I don't think there's as many people as we may believe on the planet who are in that state. That's like an ascended master level. I think there's spiritual teachers and elders who are in that state more than a lot of people, but every human being has to battle that and come into that state of unity. But when we start applying spiritual values into our lives, just as we would apply a scientific value into our lives, because we understand that it's a fact and that it works. And if you boil the water, 210 degrees, it's boiling. That's a fact. We live our life like that. We boil the water, we cook things with it and we just do it because it was discovered and it's just innate within us. We can actually do the same thing with spiritual values and practices that are proven. And that to me is like the field of discovering consciousness. That's the field of applying that, and it's the difficult thing to then apply consciousness in our daily lives because we can get intellectually and spiritually stimulated by reading, and seeing, and hearing, but then how do we go out in our day to day and apply consciousness?

And my spiritual teachers have always talked about distilling it down to just being a good person, but what does that mean? Well, for all of us you could be at a stoplight and someone comes up behind you and is honking on the horn and you want to flip them off and tell them to go F themselves. And in that moment, there's a synapse of, and a whole situation happens in the brain and the heart and the mind where you can then exercise self-mastery and consciousness to prevent you from flipping that person off. Now, that seems like a really simple and trite example, but I think that it's simple example, that's that is effective because in those milliseconds of deciding, if you're going to get out and flip that person off too, and respond with good or evil, it's those moments that you exercise consciousness because you placed value on consciousness. 

So what I'm getting at is that a human being has to place a value on something to use it. We place value on the nice car, we place value on money, we place value on the big house. We place value on all these external material, things that bring us temporal moments of supposed happiness. But when we start placing the value on the deeper consciousness and the deeper spiritual things, that's when the consciousness and the quantum shift can happen, that you're talking about.

And Bruce Lipton touches on this, in his “Biology of Belief.” And one of the things he said in your video with him is that he says people have power in community, and he was talking about the pandemic, and the separation, and social distancing, and all that… and how we lose our connection, and how devastating that is to human nature and spiritual nature. Myself, I live in community, and I was raised in a community with people from all over the world and an actual literal, intentional spiritual community. And so I know what that's like to be surrounded by many souls, and kindred spirits and be on the same collective consciousness, wavelength. It's a powerful thing.

And so I can relate to your excitement about a global consciousness quantum shift happening, and that it is possible because I can see what it can do with just a hundred minds, all united in their consciousness. And Bruce Lipton also talked about… these are just a couple of notes thrown around for our audience to hear when they check out your show. But he said that the tests were 80 to 90% of the people did not pass a test about loving themselves. And that stood out to me in a good way, like they feel poorly about themselves, and in this world right now, the media, the information that we consume and the rhetoric, from the people that... people we are wrongly paying attention to is that we're not good enough. Nothing's good enough. You're not good looking enough. You're not smart enough. You don't make enough money. You're not this, this. You’re never good enough. What that does, when you have a disempowered person there is no consciousness. And so we have millions of disempowered people, especially in this country because we're chasing this illusion of an American Dream. We're chasing this illusion of what success and happiness is when success and happiness is actually conquering the next moment with love, and compassion, and consciousness. And most importantly, being in the Creator’s will for whatever it is for you to do with your life. 

And so chasing happiness in the material world is something that I think your series will help people to realize. And if they start watching and learning about these things, that their happiness isn't coming from the next car, the next purse they buy, or the next, whatever. Their happiness is coming from a state of consciousness. And the state of consciousness is ultimately controlled by our own selves, how we perceive things, the situations we're in. And so, “Man's Search for Meaning” that book, Victor Frankl, he talks about that quite a bit. I mean, this man is in a concentration camp in the most dire circumstances, and the power of the mind and consciousness to shift his perspective and actually find joy even in times in that circumstance is just absolutely remarkable.

And it's a good reminder, I just read that book again, for all of us, because I think most Western people are spoiled and we don't really have a sense of reality that's actually accurate compared to most of the world.

Jeffrey Smith: So I ask every single person I interview five questions, first two upfront, and then the last three at the end. And the first question is “What's your vision for a post pandemic civilization?” And they get the image of where they think we can go from this, which locks us onto a target, which is so important in the transformation process is to know where you want to go and to pull the different visions from these different speakers. The second question is “What suggestions do you have to help people step into the highest version of themselves?” And the variety of responses is stunning. So you have Master Zhi who is a master level from Tai Chi, and Kung Fu, and Feng Shui, and Western medicine, and Chinese traditional medicine, and all that. And he has one answer. And then you have a 17 year old, who's a Black Lives activist leader who had an internal transformation where she's awakened and doesn't fear death anymore, her answer is completely different. You get to hear the different answers before we go deep into the meat of each interview, which is all about their particular story and their angle. Bruce Lipton, as you talked about, he went into those particular aspects. And then how do you make the change in consciousness so that it becomes spontaneous, natural, and part of your life, and not always having to struggle with that. And we have many different people talking about it. Because one question I ask everyone towards the end is give us practical exercises. So some people lead us through specific meditations where they give us very specific things we can do during the day in order to integrate the changes that they were talking about.

About five or six people talk about the importance of the physiological shift in order to assimilate those changes. I mentioned that earlier, the shifting from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic, there was four or five people: Eric Edmeades, Gabriel Cram, Alberto Villoldo, Austin & David Perlmutter, Tom O'Bryan. All of them talked about that shift as necessary in order to raise our levels of consciousness. And Alberto Villoldo talked about the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, the human brain, and then this higher level. And then there was specific recommendations as to what we can do to overcome the embedded restrictions; the embedded habits. So, Sue Morter has a particular technique for breathing and bringing energy up the spine that was to release particular old habits, through a mechanistic way. Katherine Woodward Thomas has a way of talking to and connecting with the sub psychic parts in us. Kristin Kirk has her own specific way of being with her own consciousness and feeling through to burst through another level. And these were, and Bob Roth, Transcendental Meditation, completely spontaneously changes consciousness over time without having to try and struggle. So there was some very practical techniques coming from different places. Master Zhi had a whole breathing technique with sounds and whatnot. 

So it's a buffet. It's a buffet that we get to figure out and feel into what is calling us, what works for us. We try it and if it does work it will cause a shift in the physiology, it will cause a shift in consciousness, it will help us to more spontaneously act from our higher levels and then there's things we can put our attention on from that level, Debra Poneman and the pure principles of success, Sarah McCrumb–a new relationship with money, Alison Armstrong, the male/female dynamic and how to shift that. So there's ways that we can take this higher state of consciousness and stage of consciousness and sort out new perspectives and choices so we end up in our magnificent new normal.

Amadon DellErba: Very cool. Yeah, it just sounds like you've got a landmine there of information and wisdom and experience from all different types of people like you said, all walks of life, which is very cool, but there's an overlapping between all of them, you know, that's unique. 

So, how did you come up with this idea, and were you kind of locked up in your house a year ago during the pandemic and you're like, what's going on here? 

Jeffrey Smith: Well, it, actually, it actually was asking these people, “what are you noticing from the pandemic?” and hearing everyone talk about the need to make a change. And because I'm already oriented towards a concept of collective consciousness, and I was looking at this as a potential for leaping forward. I have been aware of research on collective transformation through meditation. I've been aware of all these things being a meditator myself. And I think also there was an intuition and a knowing in me and in talking to Ilarion Merculieff, who's an elder in the Unangan Nation, he talks about this as a prophesied time as well. Anita Sanchez also from indigenous background. Alberto Villoldo. They talked about this time and if you catch Lynne Twist's interview, which is available to anyone that registers, no matter what, it's immediately available, along with the Bruce Lipton, she talks about a 500 year cycle, according to a tradition of indigenous wisdom that she's aware of, and that from about 1492 till about 1992 was 500 years, which was marked by dominance and darkness. And then now it's a 500 year cycle; balance and light. But in the first two or three decades, there needs to be a change because what happens is there's the eagle and the condor people.

The Eagle is the Western side where they have, by this time, achieved the highest level of advancement of the mind. But they are not connected to the heart and they need a connection to the heart and indigenous wisdom to survive. And then there's the Condor people who are deeply at the epitome of their connection to the heart and indigeneity, but are not as effective in the mind. The two need each other to survive. And that that's the coming together at this time of the masculine/feminine of the heart and the mind. But during the first 20 or 30 years of this 500 year cycle, earth steps up to humble the Eagle people so they understand the role of earth. So weather issues, pandemic, et cetera. She gives a whole narrative of what may be happening this time, according to indigenous wisdom. And it's fascinating. And we hear a slightly different thing from Ilarion Merculieff et cetera. But if this is in fact, a time of transformation, if it is, as Lynne talked about and Ilarion talked about, something that our souls prayed into existence so that our society would not be careening off a cliff, but actually changing, as Bruce Lipton and Lynne Twist talk about, if we actually entered a cocoon and the cocoon physiological transformation from caterpillar to butterfly requires, as Lynne Twist talks about, the imaginal cells waking up and causing gathering together, and causing the orchestration from one to the other and as Ilarion Merculieff said this.

Well, Lynne Twist said, if you're listening to this series, you are an imaginal cell and you have a job to do. And Ilarion Merculieff said, yes, I see that you are one that's supposed to be doing this and Master Zhi said, yeah, he told me, “I was in five months of silence, and they told me about your thing and I talked to God,” He said, “Oh yeah, we should...” He came out of silence to give the interview then went back into silence for another month. There was a sense that we may be onto something big and we were tracking something that's in the fabric of consciousness itself. So if we're right, then it wasn't necessarily me, independently away from everything coming up with this idea alone, it may have been a tugging of collective consciousness, and I happened to be in a good position to pull this off because I've been speaking and traveling the world for 25 years. I know many of these people. I understand the consciousness dynamic, and I had the time to invest, to put in the dozens and dozens and hundreds of hours of interviews and research to create this. And from what people have said when we ran the beta test in the fall, it worked. So I have to say, I can tell you what the mechanics were of how I thought about it. But I think it's probably deeper. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah, it always is. Yeah, that's the cool thing. Anything that's beautiful like that is a divinely led thing that goes quite deep, and we're vessels for that information. What's exciting for me is when scientists come into spirituality. And I've always, you know, often wondered what is that thing in the middle of that, that gap that makes it really hard for scientists to come into spirituality. And I think that scientists, it could be ego, it could be the linear idea of just that everything has an answer, you know, X equals Y and Z, and that there's a solution. And when you, when you start coming into spirituality, there's a lot more mystery and there's a lot more….

Jeffrey Smith: Yeah. The interview, the interview with Eben Alexander was perfect because he was a neuroscientist who was not spiritual, and he lands in this most spiritual landscape, which he describes in the interview. And he becomes now a babe in the woods in a completely new area, scared of what people are going to say if he speaks about his truth. It turns out he has, now, a partner who was more advanced in the spiritual world, and she has been helping him for seven, these last seven years, step in, stabilize, and magnify his experience. But he talks about, that one of the reasons why society is stuck is that science has tried to deny the connectedness of all things. And he was an example of how that worked. 

Amadon DellErba: Absolutely. That's a big one right there, and that we're not even, even there's the connectedness of all things on the planet, but even bigger than that, there's the connectedness to the universe and to the Creator. And there's, the indigenous have had those teachings for a long time. They realize that. And the cool thing about indigenous elders, from my experience is that, they have a very earthing, grounding science and spiritual concept of, and respect for mother earth, and the nature and the earth, and cause and effect, but at the same time, they actually do have a cosmic connection to the universe and it kind of sometimes get lost in the more popular teachings of a lot of Native American or different indigenous elders. But they're really cosmic, you know, in their understanding and the Hopi he had that in their prophecy too that was really quite cool. And realizing that the Hopis believe that they come from the stars, you know, from different planets and that we're here on this planet. 

And so I get excited about harvesting all of these different concepts and information from all these great minds and different walks of life and embracing the mystery. And again, the scientists, I think sometimes, throughout time, haven't gone into spirituality enough because they haven't, it's not a linear thing where you can just have the answer. Sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes there's a mystery and that's okay, you know. But if you're used to having an answer and you're used to talking about the answer and basing all of your decisions off an answer that doesn't exist, it could be an uncomfortable place to go. But I love the bridging that's happening through all the people on your show. It's very cool.  

Jeffrey Smith: I was talking to Ilarion Merculieff, not only as part of the interview, but also we did a Facebook Live recently about the Magnificent New Normal. And he talked about, he comes from a indigenous peoples that have the most densely populated coastline maybe in the world. And it was up in the Aleutian Islands chain in Alaska and they did not have any food storage technology. And so he said they survived and they survived for millennia and were not taken over by others. And he said it's because they were “in the moment.” They were present and being present, there was that wisdom and connection with nature. He talked about seeing an animal as a teacher, how the animal or bird, whatever, is in the moment and doesn't need to plan and whatnot, but it becomes part of the synchronistic unfoldment of life. So he talked about that as one of the teachings of the elders of his people, that to learn from nature, to be in the moment, and that the survival turned out to be organized from the knowing of the people. They didn't need to have food storage technologies. Interesting example. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah, that's really cool. I think there's a parallel in almost every spiritual religion and teaching that I have found about the concept of being in the moment. 

Jeffrey Smith: Yes. 

Amadon DellErba: Being in the now, being present and that continuous teaching might be presented slightly different by different people. But it's so true. And I think anxiety right now is at an all time high in the world and in this country. Nobody knows what's coming, what's going to happen and we're all anxious, then everybody's taking drugs for it, you know. And you can't be in the moment. You can't be at peace. 

When people are constantly in a state of fear and anxiety, which I think 2020 did a wonderful job of causing that to happen. Just because of the pandemic and all that went on in politics and the social environment that we found ourselves in, this kind of explosion of uncertainty took place. Not really… actually the whole world, you know, I was thinking, cause I live in this country so I can speak to this country, but it really happened all over the world. But I think when people had a choice then to go into stillness and peace and meditation and coming into that moment and that centeredness or go into more angst and anxiety and confusion. And I think there was a divide that happened and that divide that happened on a macro level of the country and politics and Black Lives Matter and White Lives Matter, and this and that, was kind of a... 

It was a macro version of what was happening in the micro of human beings and consciousness in this country and individuals having the inner battle of, “where do I turn to right now?” Because if you don't, if you don't turn to the Ceator, you don't turn to whatever your higher power is or your higher consciousness, if people don't believe in the Creator, you know, you have to turn to something. So some people turn to madness, they turn to violence, they turn to drugs, they turn to whatever. To me, personally, what's worked in my life is always turning to the Creator and to that Divine Consciousness that we can all, as human beings, tap into and find that peace in the moment, find that clarity, find that purpose and find that stillness, that unity.

A lot of people though, you know, they don't realize that they have access to that, to that consciousness. And the amazing thing is when, but also what happens is, I'm kind of going all over the place, but I was thinking about how, like, there's this whole new thing about being ‘woke.’ You know, “this guy's woke.” “This person's ‘woke’ now.” And what does that mean that they're ‘woke?’ Because all of a sudden they finally have a little bit of courage to make a little political statement from their platform to their millions of fans, or they have a little bit of consciousness about this or that subject, and you know, but are they really woke? I mean, have they really tapped into consciousness and spiritual values in their life? Because being educated and being slightly conscious is not being fully conscious, you know? 

I think the next step for a lot of humanity is the education of a lot of the concepts your speakers on your show are talking about, and a lot of spiritual people are talking about. But now it's, I think now people need to start really learning about spiritual values and how to practice them. Because I think humanity through greed, through selfishness, through materialism, these lower states of consciousness are the reasons why GMOs exist. The reasons why we can destroy our earth through very irresponsible techniques of farming and harvesting energy and living on the planet. They exist because we are selfish, greedy, and lazy and all these things. So if, collectively, those lower patterns, those lower selves that we all have can be overcome with the best versions of ourselves, our higher selves, our true nature, our divine nature coming into our God-given personalities, we can then, it kind of naturally erases those problems. I don't mean that in a naive way. You know, you and I get that because we practice consciousness. We practice being in the moment. But I think when millions of people start getting that, that like the problem goes away when there's, when you change your consciousness.

And that's something that Gabriel of Urantia, my teacher, has been teaching for 25, 30, (longer) 40 years, that consciousness dictates reality. And a lot of East Indian Hindu cultures talk about that a lot too. It's a teaching that's, you know, translated a lot of different ways. And I just love seeing how that teaching gets presented in a different way through different minds. The Biology of Belief is really all about that in different ways. And so that's the time we're in right now on this planet and that people have a choice to make of what direction they're going to go. And we're still in that choice. Just because we're not on lock down as much. And there's, we think we know more about this pandemic, we're still in the stage of where do we go next as a humanity? What decisions do we make? And the thing is, and it boils down to, people have to be willing to change. If they don't want to change themselves in their personal lives and what they're doing and how they're thinking, then nothing's going to change. So each individual has to be willing to change and change usually means giving up something. It means making sacrifices. It means reinventing yourself. And it means being willing to be uncomfortable because oftentimes when you, even when you're learning something like arithmetic as a kid, I remember, my brain hurt. I hated math and like my brain hurt and it was hard and it was just hard to learn. It's really the same thing with spiritual concepts. It's hard to learn them, and it's even harder to apply them because any of us can talk about being loving, and kind, and compassionate, and you know, ‘woke.’ Meanwhile, our actions may be something different, you know? 

So this podcast is about being… one of the taglines is “the pursuit to self-mastery.” And I think it's that because I'm trying to master my self and I fail miserably all the time at it, but at least I'm trying. And it is also called Get Real or Die Trying. And I call it that because we have to be real, real human beings, and realness is true spiritual nature because when we have facades and we’re fake and we're not being real, we're just fake people.

And so to get to reality though, and to get to be real, there's a lot of work, you know, or die trying. It's a journey, you know, it's not like an easy thing, you know? And so putting that play on that is, for me, and what I've always been taught is that being kind and being loving, these are simple concepts that we may just say. You don't have to have 26 letter words and all of this, you know, science behind it, but to get to the point of kindness and to get to the point of true lovingness, that's where you have to start bringing in spiritual concepts and study to be able to apply it in those moments. You have to start learning how the mind works, how the soul works, how you can use self-control, you know, to prevent you from doing something else to somebody else that's going to hurt them and cause problems because that's what our world, that's basically the basis of problems in our world, is that we're reckless in our actions as human beings. We’re reckless about the effects it has on nature. We’re reckless about the effects it has on other human beings. And we don't consciously act; we don't take responsibility enough for our actions. 

Jeffrey Smith: So there's a couple of things I want to respond to from what you said. You talked about that sometimes getting our work done makes us uncomfortable.

I immediately remembered the answer to the question that I asked to Clare Dubois, who's a magnificent environmental activist and deep feeler. And I said, “how can people step into the highest version of themselves?” And she said, “Get more uncomfortable. Go into the uncomfortable parts of your body. Go into the things that you've been trying to avoid feeling” Because in being, in trying to stay in the comfort zone, we lose our connectivity to nature. We lose our connectivity to the moment, we insulate ourselves, and it was just a magnificent answer. I highly recommend... listen to Clare Dubois, she, you know, she has so many goosebump moments. 

And then the other thing you mentioned, which I think that sort of like brings together the whole, the whole podcast in a nice bow at the end. And that is the connection between consciousness and the GMOs. You see with GMOs it's one of the more narrow reductionist ways of thinking that you could possibly imagine. You take this elegant, most highly compactified level of intelligence in biology, the DNA, which we haven't conquered, we don't understand it, it's so absolutely complex and full of intelligence. And we ignore almost everything that we know about it and pretend that it is easy and simple, and that we have mastered the keys to changing traits without hurting anything else. And yet, for the last 30 years, whenever we try and venture into genetic engineering, because we're doing it in reductionist thinking, we end up with holistic problems, things we never thought would go bad are going bad.

Similarly, the arrogance to think that we can go in and pretend that we know what's going on and make a change and release an organism and have it be dealt with by all future generations, cursing us for dropping. In other words, it's like an 1859 when they released 24 rabbits in Australia so that hunters from England could feel better, cause they could, you know, hunt rabbits. Well, there's no predators there, so by the 1920s, there was over 10 billion rabbits. Not a good idea. So now, yeah, that was from one invasive species, here we have well-meaning scientists wearing the blinders willing to replace all species or most species in an ecosystem.

So, the antidote to that, in addition to the general awareness, if we can leap forward and understand the intelligence of nature, honor humans' role in a more humble way, if we can see the unity of consciousness between us and others, and we can act accordingly, that makes our job at the Institute for Responsible Technology, trying to lock this down,

so much easier. It's in the can because now we're dealing with a humanity that gets it, where the consciousness has awoken to the place where they understand, humanity understands its role as part of this intelligence of nature and wouldn't dare go in and mess things up for all future generations. So it turns out that the Magnificent New Normal talks about a way of transforming consciousness to fulfill the goals of Protect Nature Now, and these are the two things that we've been talking about so far on this podcast.

Amadon DellErba: Yeah. Now you summarized it great. I think another word that comes to mind is protecting the sacred, because the evolution is sacred. The seed is sacred, the genetics is sacred. And to think that we can go and mess with it is kind of the same thing as going and mining an open pit mine in a beautiful, sacred area and blowing into the earth and just messing with it and destroying something that's sacred. And because we think we're getting something else better from it, you know?

And so we're ignoring, what's there for this illusion of something else. Well, it's not an illusion because it's real, it's there, but is it our right? Is it the right thing to do? And what are the side effects to take from it? You know? 

Jeffrey Smith: Yeah. I just looked up Matthew Fox was the guy that speaks a lot of the ancient, sacred knowledge from Christianity and from the mystics and weaves it all together in a narrative that's just simply stunning in terms of sacred and also male/female dynamics and a number of other things.

Amadon DellErba: That's very cool. It just sounds like you have just a litany of people on there that has just tremendous knowledge.

Jeffrey Smith: And the more you talk about it, the more I appreciate it, because it's like, you're bringing in some of these beautiful concepts I get to go, “Oh yeah that reminds me of… Oh yeah, Terry Patton said this... and Will Tuttle, whose whose PhD was in how to help people open their intuition.” It's like, “oh yeah,” that you know, that's another. So many different pieces have come out about this Magnificent New Normal, inspired by your own thoughts about consciousness, growth, the Creator, creation, and being in the present moment. 

Amadon DellErba: Beautiful, man. So in all of your travels over the years, and these people you've interviewed more recently, have you ever come across a book called The URANTIA Book?

Jeffrey Smith: I have known about that since the seventies. I haven't read it, but I know about it. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah you should check it out, because it's a pretty mind blowing  book. It's over 2000 pages. The first portion of the book is really about the history of this planet, which the book is referring to, this planet is Urantia, so it’s kind of called the “earth book.” It's about the history of this planet and it's amazing. And for, I think for a scientific spiritually, intellectually stimulated mind like yours, you would really appreciate it. It talks about evolution, but then it also talks about the universe and the Master Universe and how it's designed, inhabited, and starts talking about celestial beings and the beautiful orchestration from the hierarchy of Paradise down. And then the last part of the book is the Life and Teachings of Jesus. And that scares a lot of people because, unfortunately on this planet we've had some pretty bad examples and religion about what Jesus is or was to people, but the Cosmic Christ and Jesus Christ Michael of Nebadon, of this universe that we find ourselves in, is pretty cool. And He's a lot bigger than what we understand, so check out the book sometime.  It's not a book you have to start at the beginning and just read through. The beginning, the Foreword of the book, is the most intense, dense, intellectually hard to understand, out of the whole book. And so people will read the Foreword and then they stop, they’re like “I'm done with this.” It's a book that you can just flip through. And I think you'd appreciate it, especially the science aspect of the origins of this planet and the growth of how we've evolved, you know, because...

One thing that has always been a conflict is people who really believe in spirituality or religion, they think it's at odds with the concepts of evolution and that we've evolved, and a lot of the things that science presents as fact, and it's true, we have evolved, and The URANTIA Book talks about that evolution process. It ain’t the big bang theory or, you know, that we evolved 2000 years, or whatever people think, we're talking millions of years of evolution and perfect design of our organisms. So it’s really cool. 

But lastly, I just wanted to thank you for coming on the show, man, and touch on briefly on one last concept that you brought up that I liked, or maybe I think I read it in your bio and you were talking about that you've been meditating since 1975. And I think for me, the way I perceive that is that somewhere along your journey in life, you discovered that there was really tremendous value on individual spiritual growth, not just the attainment of knowledge, because my understanding of your work over the years has been a lot of intellectual knowledge, fact-finding, this is why GMOs are bad, in different things, in your Institute for Responsible Technology. But somewhere I think, and I'd like to know more about, was it more recent or has it, has it always been there in the background? But what happened in your life or when was it that you kind of had the aha moment that met with more spirituality coming into your scientific findings,  if you will?

Jeffrey Smith: Good question. No one has ever asked me that. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah. I was curious myself.

Jeffrey Smith: So I grew up, I was born with it. It was a knowing. There was no doubt whatsoever about the path that humans were on for personal development, self discovery, attainment, and I was involved with Transcendental Meditation pretty intensely and living in Fairfield, Iowa for many years which was the home of Maharishi International University.  And when I decided to take on a role as an activist, my book Seeds Of Deception became the world's best selling book on the subject, I was traveling around the planet many, many times. I made a conscious decision, knowing the nature of Monsanto, who was the, they were the company that was the primary evildoer.  They were, you know, if you want to go that way. They were very clearly bending the truth, lying, committing fraud. I mean, we've exposed that. I mean, it's not theoretical; it's right there in black and white. And they, one of the ways that they did it is,they attacked individuals any way they could and - that were speaking out against them - and I was writing chapters of books and articles about how they attacked this particular scientist or that particular scientist, captured this particular regulatory agency. And I knew it was just a matter of time before they'd start attacking me. And of course they did. When my prominence on the scene became large enough, they just put a lot of money in secretly funding so-called scientists to try and attack me. And I realized that I didn't need to tell them that I was a meditator, I didn't need to tell them anything about myself. I'll just focus on the facts, and I won't take a position on anything else because I want the bar to be as low as possible for people to step on the train, to eat non-GMO, to eat organic, to protect themselves and the planet.

I don't take a position publicly on politics. I don't take the position publicly on vaccines, on this thing, or that thing. I just keep my personal life out of it because whatever I do say, they are listening. They're listening to this conversation now. They're looking to see if there's anything that they can say to work against me.  So, they did private investigator analysis of me, to look in my life for any skeletons in the closet and found out that I meditate and dance. And so they tried to use those things against me. 

Amadon DellErba: God forbid.

Jeffrey Smith: So I chose to…  You're right, I gave the impression publicly that I'm focused on science and facts and whatnot. Background is that my practice of meditation was sustaining me energetically as I travelled 6 to 9 months a year for 13 years straight and gave me the energy and clarity to do the job. But I wasn't talking about that because anything you say can and will be held against you by Monsanto. So, it was always there in the background. 

Amadon DellErba: Well, that's very cool. And I figured that because as an activist myself, I know that there's always more in the background that’s sustaining one. You have to have something more, bigger than yourself, to go to, and a practice and a rejuvenation technique. Because anytime you're an activist, you put yourself on the front lines, you're going to take the fire. You're going to get misrepresented. My father has been an activist for his whole life and he started (talk about the merge of the word spiritual again) he started a concept and a movement called the Spiritualution. Which is the merge of the word spiritual and revolution, or spiritual and evolution, spiritual and solution, a Spiritualution...

Jeffrey Smith: And in Magnificent New Normal, Terry Patten and Matthew Fox and others talk about a spiritual activist. So, it's a very similar concept there.

Amadon DellErba: Yeah. And I think when I was, when I met you in Denver, I was actually traveling under the banner of the Spiritualution movement and marching in that march. And I had been traveling the whole country, actually with my comrades, teaching people and educating them about the Spiritualution movement and the need for the marriage of spirituality and activism, and spiritual activism and spiritual revolution ,and spiritual evolution of the mind, heart and soul. And it's really not a raising of arms; it's a raising of awareness. And this concept from Gabriel of Urantia he's taught on, but he got misrepresented very early on in his rise, so to speak, because he came against a lot of powerful people. He was an environmentalist and of course, Dateline NBC came in, did a whole, you know, smear campaign on him, and called him a cult leader, and it's pretty amazing how effective the enemy can be at discrediting somebody instantly. 

Jeffrey Smith: I've had the biotech industry try that a lot. In fact, in the recent round of trials where Bayer/Monsanto got essentially convicted by three juries, for causing the cancer of four people who used their Roundup and got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma… there's actually a document about me used, discovered by the attorneys, that was used in the trial and referred to in the closing arguments, how I was pointing out the scientific problems of Roundup and GMOs that were more dangerous for children and their response was, quote, “Whack-a-Mole.” That they were basically taking their hired guns to go after me once again. 

Amadon DellErba: Discredit you.

Jeffrey Smith: Yeah, which is what they do. 

Amadon DellErba: Yeah, it is. And so I'm glad that you talked about your meditation practice and that's what sustained you for years. Cause I think anyone who, like, is an activist, knows that it's gonna take more than a good night's sleep to get up the next day and do it again.  So I applaud you for your years of activism and staying true to the course and the David and the Goliath battle that you've been in. And now a lot of the new work you're doing and your Institute for Responsible Technology - I love the name alone. I think, you know, just educating people, but also when you, when the word responsibility comes in, I always associate that immediately with consciousness because it's not, you know, we're not... responsibility is an action. And it's an action that takes consciousness to do and to apply. And even just the concept of all of us irresponsibly being addicted to our devices, you know, we're not using that technology responsibility as human beings. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying everybody is, but I'm pretty sure that most people in the entire world are probably a little addicted to their device. It's instant information, you know, it's instant, this... it's all of a sudden, you got, you got the dopamine response in your brain because you got constant information all the time on your phone. So, we can be responsible in so many areas of our life and we can take that responsibility and encourage others and teach others.

And it, it transcends just one direction, you know. That's the cool thing about consciousness, it's like air; it just permeates everything. So once you start getting conscious in one area, you have to become conscious in another, and another, and another. And that's the really, the great thing about being an activist and spreading awareness and educating them. If your avenue, years ago, was about GMOs and the Seeds Of Deception and so forth, it's now been able to spread into all of these areas that you're educating people through these people on your new show. 

So I appreciate that, man. It's great work and I can't wait to tell people about it and to spread it out, and myself to continue watching it, cause I started, and see all the great people on your show. And I really thank you for taking the time to come on my show and hopefully I'll come on your podcast sometime because you have a podcast, right? 

Jeffrey Smith: I do...Live Healthy, Be Well 

Amadon DellErba: All right, well check that out, everybody - Live Healthy, Be Well. Check out his website, the Institute for responsible technology.org?

Jeffrey Smith: It's called responsibletechnology.org and the campaign protectnaturenow.com and on your page next to the podcast will be the link for a Magnificent New Normal, which is going on right now. There's also an encore weekend. So if you happen to catch the podcast a little late and it looks like it's over, still register because you'll get those Bruce Lipton and Lynne Twist videos, and then there may be an encore weekend that's right, right around the corner. 

Amadon DellErba: Very cool. Thanks a lot, Jeff. It’s been great having you on.  I hope to have you on again soon.  Have a good one.

Jeffrey Smith: Thanks, you too.

Amadon DellErba: Check out my website at http://getrealordietrying.com

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