Dr.Bernie Siegel Show Segment

Dr. Bernie Siegel-Author

Press Conference AARP 1996 Denver Convention

Answering some questions from a curios producer:

Q: Dr. Siegel, when you were giving your talk today you told about a story of a young man "falling up". Would you mind repeating it for us?

A: Which story the, about..... by Shel Silverstein?

A: About the young man who just fell up. Yeah.

It's a wonderful story entitled "The Young Man On The Flying Trapeze".

I think it was maybe the first story of his that made him a popular writer, got him started.

But it's about a young man who's in a big city. He's run out of money. He only has one penny to his name. And he's dying in a hotel room. And he just has this tune go through his mind, thinking of it as a trapeze to God and to eternity.

And then it goes on to him reading the penny and the words on it.

And then lying down on his bed.

And one of the things that also impressed me was when he says, he becomes all things at once, the fish, the rodent, reptile, man.

There are many poems, you don't have time here today. Carl Sandburg wrote a poem called "Wilderness" about all the animals that are in us. And he finishes with,

"I have a man child heart and a woman child heart."

It came,"

which is an important phrase for me,

"from God knows where and it's going to God knows where.

For I am the keeper of the zoo.

I say yes and no.

I sing and kill and work.

I'm the power of the world I came from the wilderness."

And I relate that to people also to be in charge of their own zoos. You know, that yes and no.

And then he says, "The young man lies down on the bed and the Earth circles away and he becomes dreamless, un-alive, and perfect."

And those words are very profound for me in the sense of, as I said, my father-in-laws' statement of just falling up and until then it seemed like a funny line because he had a wonderful sense of humor at 97.

But when I read that I thought, "That's what my father-in-law was telling me.

See, how my father-in-law died, I didn't have time again in there, he's 97, he finally got tired of his body.

I also wanted him to live to be 100 and get him on television, and one night he said, "I don't want my vitamins. I don't want to eat dinner."

I mean he said, "I'm tired."

And we said, "OK" and we left his room and he died that night.

He didn't spend any time dying either so we realized when we said, "It's OK."

I mean, and I think he wanted his wife and daughter, you know, to not argue with him over it. I mean that we could accept that, yeah he just, he went. He didn't spend any time dying. And that's the part that, you know, impresses me that when that can go on in a family, somebody just says, "OK, goodbye," and they leave and his death was like that.

Q: What do you think about Dr. Kervorkian?

A: Well, you know, my sense as I said, that part of it is the problem of medical education. That Kervorkian and I, we all could use a course in "Why are you a doctor" and why does he go into Pathology? Why is he happy with the nickname, "Dr. Death"? See on my license plate says, "MD LOVE". I wouldn't put "MD DEATH" on my license plate and that he has problems with his mortality. And he's struggling with them using other people.

I mean, now it's becoming like a show.

But I think again that's his, his difficulties because I'm not against it as a political issue you know.

But any good doctor or nurse, I mean, the paper today was saying 1 in 5 nurses have helped somebody die. I'd helped people die. But I didn't help them commit suicide. Yeah.

Q: How do we manage aging? How do we let people know that it's OK to grow older?

A: How do you manage aging?

I think that in the sense of seeing, number one, that your body doesn't limit your capacity to love and the people with afflictions teach us that.

You know, they don't have limbs, they don't see, look at Helen Keller. You see, you'd say, "What if I can't see and hear if I get older?" Well, she lived her whole life not seeing and hearing. Did she have a problem?

So I think that kind of thing that we have to look at what do we do, what are we here for, so that physical disability is not a reason for dying.

The other is that aging alone isn't a problem. OK.

That you can be physically active and we're seeing that too. That's part of why we have more elderly people. That we are healthier, living longer, so some of it is not living self destructive behavior.

Yeah I can have old sick people and I can have old healthy people. Matter of fact, we were talking about that. What States do you think have more people over 85?

Q: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana...

A: Yeah. The Midwest. Most people don't know that. They say, "Oh, Florida." No, you see, the independent people who know how to survive, what life is about, see, lousy weather, you'd better have food in your refrigerator, you know, and you've got to be able to get out and do something physical if you need it. They're the ones, yeah, who are long term survivors and that could be taught.

But again, I think teaching it isn't enough.

People have to have a sense of meaning. What am I here for, why bother to live.

I mean, we're busy killing ourselves and that's one point I make that I could put a list up, there's one physician's group that has this list of, and it says at the top, you know, "Millions of people leave this suicide note." and it has to do with fat and, you know, meat, and tobacco, and caffeine, and on and on, alcohol.

And I wrote, most of these organizations don't write back but I said that everybody knows this. So what do you do, create guilt? Why don't you put a note up that says "You're a beautiful, wonderful person, child of God, we love you. Take good care of yourself thing".

Because nobody would let their dog walk in the house smoking.

A hundred years ago a physician wrote something, "Who's wiser, man or beast?" in the journal Medical Association.

Horse sense.

See, we don't say human sense and that's something I try to get across to people.

It's your life, where are you going, how do you want to live?

But if we're not living it, that's when, what's the point of being healthy? Who cares?

Q: How to deal with grief?

A: How to deal with grief?

I would say number one, express it. And I can't tell them how long. I don't know what day it becomes unhealthy. You know, whether it takes six months or 18 months to get over something but I think that's something that they have to keep looking at that is it healthy grief in the sense of a loss and tears and crying.

So on Fathers Day I cry for my father even if he died a year ago, or on his birthday but I don't go on for ten years.

And I'd say another is maybe the question of rage or that when you're angry that something has been taken from you and see that's when we get into the unhealthy grief. You know, why isn't life better? Why did my loved one die?

And there's a lot of guilt in that too.

Or if a suicide happens, you know, what could I have done to prevent it and that, the question for me always is, what can I do with the pain rather than go on endlessly grieving.

I talk to everybody who dies. That's my way, see, to say, "OK, what do you want me to do?"

And they usually give you good advice.

Q: When you talk to God, with whom are you speaking?

A: I thought it was God, I don't know.

I'd say the creative intelligence of the universe. Cause I think of it more as an astronomer quantum because this is, you know, I love to play with the word God but that, you know, God isn't an entity if you know what I mean; but that there's a consciousness and information that's available to all of us.

See when you have a unique thought, that's why I love, well I'll tell you my story. I was going to write a book called, "Conversations With God" because what you find is if you talk to people who have lots of troubles, they will say I'm writing a letter, I'm sitting at my desk, I'm wondering what to do with my life and a voice comes so I start writing it down. I mean, I hear this story lots of times from people and you say, "Well, what voice, who's talking?" and most of them will say, "Well, you know, it's God."

And so one day I said I'm going to write a book called "Conversations With God"

And a young lady came up and said, "My father finished it. He wrote it already."

And it's a wonderful little book by Neil Walsh and in it he tells of his trouble, he's a therapist, and one of his ways of resolving trouble is to write a letter. Say, like if he's mad at the, the illumination company, he'll write to the CEO saying it's terrible how you've been treated you know, and then he throws it away but he feels better.

But he said, "I had so many troubles at this time, who am I going to write to?" God.

And he writes this long letter to God and when he's done, a voice said, "Do you really want an answer?"

And he said, "I sure as hell do."

And the voice said, "You mean sure as heaven."

And went on to talk to him.

Now, if you go back in the Cabala, those instructions are given see. It says, "Sit down." and then it goes into, because of the Jewish faith, atolace, yamulka, white suit, quietly take a pen in hand, paper, and start writing and it will be made known to you. And at that point you will have to decide whether you want to be dead or live because you will know.

See, it's like a near death

And that point hopefully you will say, "With what I now know I want to go back and you know, share this and do something."

And that's the part, you see, so I went back and I said to God, "Somebody's used my title."

God said, "I never decided that, that was you. Our book will be called, 'From God Knows Where'."

Now that's what I love about this. You can say, "Who are you talking to?"

It's this other, got a great sense of humor and everything else you know and it's when you're in this moment, that's the only way I can describe it. It's like this consciousness. You have great thoughts.

I think an inventor does the same thing. It's like, where did that come from and why do we always answer?

"God knows" or "from God knows".

And, you know, so that's my sense, it's coming out of this creative intelligence because you can't explain the universe, you know, and that's what's wonderful about it.

And that's why you get into trouble with doctors see, or engineers. We're more into, we know the facts, we know what happens. And when I say the quantum physicist and the astronomer are far more spiritual cause they don't have all the answers. They can't explain everything and just being aware of that is, is, to me, the exciting part.

So and I think we're all capable of having this kind of conversation and it's a wonderful thing.

See I've done it, dictating, and you heard me talk about the beginning and the end in there. I mean, you're sitting in front of a dictating machine, cause I hate this, I mean it's hard for me to write cause I think too fast. I've very visual. As an artist, I, you know, if I can just talk out like what I'm seeing, and so I'm talking along in a tape recording. Now the voice changes when God takes over.

See, suddenly the voice is calmer, slower, deeper and goes on. It's like this trance state but that's when I get a kick when I'm finished, you know writing, and I write, "The End".

And the voice says, "No, no. It's not the end."

I mean, I didn't make that up, you know what I mean. That's not my thought. I'm getting into an argument. This is a book, it's the end.

"No, it's the beginning."

And that's the part I love. That, the enlightenment that seems to come. I think that when you can be, you know, relaxed enough to be open, it almost is sort of trance. Or that you love what you're doing, that those things happen more often.

OK.

Q. Thank you!