320. The Link Between Spirituality and Healing: Evidence from Research on Meditation - Karen Newell

 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the meditation conversation. The podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin. I know you're going to enjoy this insightful conversation with Karen Newell, where we explore the power of sound and harnessing the connection of body and mind through meditation. Karen is the co-founder of sacred acoustics. An innovator in the emerging field of brainwave, entrainment, audio meditation. She'll share some fascinating insights into her personal journey and how challenging experiences led her towards the path of meditation and sacred acoustics. Karen's unique perspective will unveil how aligning your soul emotions and mental state. It can bring a profound change in your life. Also get ready to deep dive into her incredible research [00:01:00] findings, her collaborations and the profound impact of sound in meditation. 

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Kara Goodwin: So welcome, Karen. I'm so excited that you're here today.

Karen Newell: Yes, Kara, I'm looking forward to this 

Kara Goodwin: So let's talk about your path and what led you to meditation and sacred acoustics. 

Karen Newell: I'm someone who, has always understood we were more than our physical bodies, that there was something else, 

at play, and I was really unsatisfied as a young person with, uh, the religious answers that I would get and the scientific 

scientific answers The kind of questions 

I 

had were like, why am I here? What is my purpose? And as I grew older and got [00:03:00] into, reading lots and lots of different things, I I found I was more 

interested 

in kind of 

Kara Goodwin: Less 

Karen Newell: mainstream 

types of sources, esoteric spiritual teachings and things like that are what interested me.

And I learned 

through reading 

all of that, how important meditation was. But when I would sit down to do it it was, just something I thought I was possible because when I would sit and focus on my breath, like all the traditional meditation will tell you, I had this expectation that I would reach that samati state rather quickly, feel that 

space within and that it would be like anything else that I tried, 

that I would follow the directions and it would unfold the way it was described.

But I learned, no, that's not what happens. when I first learned how to 

get quiet inside, it was quite challenging. I could not get my racing 

thoughts to slow down. I. Was a busy project manager, so I would just have lists going through my mind 

conversations or reliving 

past [00:04:00] conversations

Kara Goodwin: i, 

Karen Newell: I just couldn't do it.

So I, 

I really was telling

myself, 

oh, you're one of those people that just can't meditate. But I persisted because I was taking courses like Healing Touch for Animals, Reiki, different kinds of courses like that. And always we would do these meditations. So I was quite 

curious. I.

knew it was the foundation.

For really exploring beyond just reading about these things. And so it was a particular type of sound that really helped me to turn the corner. It was also, attention to the heart was another key, but sound was very 

critical and helping me learn how to relax the body but still maintain a kind of a conscious awareness

of what was going on in my mind.

And, the sound really helped. So it sounds like tuning forks, brass bowls, crystal bowls, things like that really 

helped. And then eventually binaural beats a [00:05:00] specific type of audio technology that is delivering.

The same kind of frequencies that those crystal bowls are delivering. The crystal bowls and brass bowls are also delivering a form of a binaural beat.

Kara Goodwin: So you said there was a particular type of sound that helped you break through that barrier with your meditation. Can you share what was that one particular thing that helped you to get through that

gateway? 

Karen Newell: Yeah, it was those monotonous sounds like you would hear from a gong like WWW and all of the harmonics, all of the other sounds that naturally occur. binaural beats, especially those particular types of recordings. At first it was Hemi sync, there were all kinds of producers of binaural beats, and I collected all of them and 

really experimented to see what would work best.

And at first they would just make me fall asleep. And, that's because they're delivering a specific brainwave [00:06:00] signal to the brain that is the border between awake and asleep. That's what meditation, really is, is profoundly relaxing the body, but keeping your mind alert and aware. And, those who have trouble with it, they really serve as excellent training wheels, I call them in meditation, sometimes people, classic meditation people,

We'll find themselves falling asleep you know, it's hard to maintain that border. So it takes practice and it takes finding different tools to help you. kind of a western thinker who doesn't feel natural those states, I'm not thinking and planning. And, and so it took some time to adjust and the more I practiced, the more breakthroughs I made. So one of the things that, that happened at happened at first is, is I would get emotional.

I would find myself crying and I would think, okay, this is getting in my way. How am I gonna meditate if I keep crying? But what I learned was [00:07:00] meditation really brings your attention to energies, thoughts, and emotions that already exist within you. And so it really was a process of learning to recognize that as learning to, when I did feel like crying, I learned to allow myself to cry so that I could release whatever those emotions were. And sometimes I would have a story to go with the emotions, it really, that was less important, an explanation of why I was crying than just allowing that expression to take place.

And that really helped me clear out. Some emotional, wounds, really, that I didn't even know I had because I had become so accustomed to, taking care of my emotions by learning to not express them. And so much to my surprise, I did have to face those emotions in order to really get underneath to the essence of who I am, who we all are behind those [00:08:00] emotions and thoughts.

And so learning how to manage those thoughts and emotions during meditation helped me go even deeper and start to find those answers to why am I here and what

Kara Goodwin: Well, I love what you've just said one thing that's fascinating from my perspective, the times that we're in right now, things are happening so fast and a lot of people are having different levels of awakening. I know in the last week I've met three different very dear souls who are like existential crises. Right now, different forms of it. and I was just meeting with somebody literally, I just walked in the door before you and I met, and she was talking about how she'd had this big event that happened years ago that she thought. She'd moved through really beautifully and she didn't really feel that she had big emotions around it and something opened up within her and she can't stop [00:09:00] being emotional about it, and she's like, I don't really know what's going on. I don't know why that is.

and it's A lot of it, I feel is energetic and it's to do with the energetic changes that are happening outside of them. Of course, the outside being a reflection of the inside. but I loved what you were talking about, how it's like the crying would just happen because you were wanting to go deeper. You are wanting to explore your inner realm So there were things in there that needed to clear out so that you could go deeper, so that you could access those deeper parts of you. And I also loved what you said about sometimes there was a story and sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes it was just like, I just need to cry and I am not attached to Why I wanna cry. What's going on with that? and I think it's important for people to hear stories like that because maybe you're a meditator, maybe you're not, maybe you know, they're, you're listening because you're interested in sound. You don't really care about meditation. The [00:10:00] person I was just that I just met with, not a meditator, but this is showing up for her anyway. And so we're all Going through a process, whether we are trying to or not, it's, the environment is really ripe for it right now. And so we may find that old wounds are opening and I just love what you say, just kindtrusting that. it's coming up to be released and to clear us out it served its purpose and, not to be too attached to what that story is or what that means or why is this happening, but let me just grieve over this.

Or, however, our body needs to, to release it so that it can work its way out. the emotions being energy and motion. That expression, that release. And we can feel that, feels good when we've had a good cry. We feel that release and that lightness and. love, from my perspective, when I see these reflections, instantaneously[00:11:00] you're just reflecting back exactly what I was just talking about with this other person, yours in the context of meditation.

But it's all about awakening and processing and opening ourselves up. it's fascinating. I know you mentioned that you had done healing, and you'd studied healing

Touch with animals. I've heard you talk about using the,the tuning forks to create the binaural beats.

maybe we just talk a little bit about bin neural beats and what is going on there. And then I was really curious to hear, you talk about having two tuning forks, one on each side of the head. 

Karen Newell: Yeah, well, binaural be, it's at the simplest are when you hear one frequency in one ear, a slightly different frequency in the other ear. And it's the difference between those two sounds that creates that wavering sound, that wah wah w regular sound. And the difference between the two frequencies are typically matched up to a brainwave state.

So brainwave states are measured with an [00:12:00] E, EG, and it's measuring the electric signal that's coming out of the brain. So zero to four hertz, that's when we're asleep. That's the delta range. Four to seven hertz is the theta range. That's a deep meditative state. Seven to 12 hertz is alpha. That's when we're focused.

We might be very in the zone, you know, reading or writing something creative, and then 12 to 30 hertz. That's the beta state. That's what we're in when we're walking, we're talking. That's the state when all those racing thoughts are getting in our way of those quieter brainwave states. And so very often, many of our sacred acoustics, binaural beat recordings, hover right around that four hertz, that's the border between awakened asleep, very commonly used by binaural beat, producers who wanna help support the hypnagogic state, that state I talked about, where the body is profoundly relaxed.

The mind is still alert and aware and, it's this type of sound that, [00:13:00] has helped me to quiet the mind and make some progress on the meditation. But tuning forks interestingly, are the device that Wilhelm dove. He's a German, from, I forget when, 17, 1800 something. And he first formally identified by neural beets using tuning forks. So he would hear one frequency in one ear, you bang it on your, on a little rubber mallet, here, and then a slightly different frequency in the other ear.

And so imagine my surprise during healing touch for animals when they provided us with these tuning forks and suggested that they would help to calm. Animals. We used them on, dogs and horses. But I remember being in a barn with all these horses and playing the tuning forks. And yes, it made the horses calmer, but it also made us calmer.

It made me feel so relaxed and kind of in an expanded, altered state just by hearing these two different frequencies on either side of the ear. And [00:14:00] so the recordings that we create are much more complex, but they follow the same type of principle. I love that they naturally occur in all of these beautiful instruments that are used very often for meditation.

And I didn't realize that until during our research process we started recording. Brass bowls, crystal bowls, and found, oh my gosh, there's binaural beats in these. it got to a point where, Kevin Coi, he's the audio engineer, but he was down in Peru and doing a ceremony and there were shamans there playing conch shells.

Those are big seashells that you blow into. And they create horn like sound. there was one shaman standing on one side of the group, a second shaman standing on the other, and Kevin was recording this, and later when he analyzed it, sure enough, there were binaural beats in there. these have been known for 

millennia, even dig reduce that are . they say that 40,000 years ago, digger dues were used for for healing, [00:15:00] and we even met some people in Australia who play binaural beats using the digger do. So it's a very common sound that we hear, but it's the binaural beats we mostly talk about are created digitally just so we can have all of that ability to manage and control what exactly is being delivered.

Kara Goodwin: it's interesting. Have you heard the kind of mystical equation, one plus one

equals three? 

Karen Newell: uh, yes, 

Kara Goodwin: this?

Well, isn't that interesting? so the, if there are listeners who aren't familiar with this, like we're used to one plus one equals two, but it's actually if you think of, for example with reproduction, you take a man, you take a woman and they combine and have a child, one plus one, and you get that extra one.

It's actually three. And what we're experiencing here in terms of humanity's evolution and this kind of quickening that's happening in the planet. we're coming out of duality. This [00:16:00] is part of it. we've been living, that's part of the third dimension is this, we've got two things in they're opposing and you can only have one or the other. part of this shift that humanity is undergoing, is evolving out of that. And it's like you can have both. You hold, both are true there. And there is this third thing that's that is the ultimate truth and it holds both of those things within it. So it does seem like part of evolution that people get. Less and less attached to is something this or is it this? And it's kind of both, they're both are in there. it's exactly what we're talking about from the sound perspective, where it's like you have one frequency and then you have a second frequency. You put those together, you have a new frequency, there's it makes a different

thing. 

Karen Newell: Yeah, and it's actually the lower brainstem that actually receives and interprets those signals. And so we hear WWW, even though it's wah and one [00:17:00] side and wah on the other, they don't just mix to make a different, so single tone, they create this wavering sound. So yeah, I love that analogy. And it's so appropriate the duality of the body, and the mind, the body, and the, the brain, is such that there's much, much more to our consciousness than the body and the brain and those of us who are used to identifying that way with our bodies. where this old, this is what we do. we have these jobs, have these, parenting responsibilities, whatever that may be.

There's another aspect of you that can be accessed by going within through some form of meditation. Andhonestly, it's really our birthright to understand ourselves as that essence. And some would call it a soul. 

to me that, that it's your essence, your unseen spirit, that aspect of you, that's non-physical. That's what we start to notice when we go into meditation. And that [00:18:00] can be called 

the inner observer is It's the soul, the soul's perspective. And when you can get to identify with that part of you, that's where you start to realize, well, I'm not my thoughts.

I'm not my emotions, I'm this other thing. I'm not my body, but I'm this other thing. And learning to define that other thing, that's what the ancient Greeks meant by know yourself. And that phrase comes up in all cultures from around the world. This idea to know yourself is to know that aspect of yourself that is not out on display for everyone to see, but is deep within each of us is a unique aspect of the whole.

When you're talking about moving from duality, that, hot, cold, black, white into more of a oneness. And that oneness is a consciousness that we're all a part of. We're all a part of this one consciousness. We're connected that way. there's plenty of evidence for telepathy and such, [00:19:00] but there's also work done by the HeartMath Institute that really shows that the electromagnetic field that each of our hearts is emanating, that's really happening, whether we realize it or not, is actually interacting with all the other heart fields around you.

And we are influenced. By other hearts who are around us. So I'd love to use that as an analogy for how we are all one, because our heartbeat, our heart rhythm is actually affecting the people around us. And rather being concerned about, oh no, what is that heart doing? To me, I feel it's a little more empowering to wonder what is my heart doing to others?

And so that's why clearing those stagnant, unnecessary, non-beneficial emotions is so helpful not only to yourself, but to those around you. And so as we're moving out of this duality, as you say, we're moving away from that idea that we're separate. From one another, and [00:20:00] that actually we're all connected.

And so I call that the ultimate golden rule. to clear your heart so that not only can you benefit, but you are helping all those around

around you. And I found this happen. You know, I would go to meditation retreats and they would say on the last day, don't make any big changes Right away. Because when you get home, you're in an altered state and you need to be careful. And I found myself making all kinds of huge life changes as soon as I would get home from retreats, just like they said not to.

But it seemed that, I had no choice because I had somehow modified my own energy that the outer world was like, this isn't gonna work anymore. So I left a marriage, I left a 25 year career, I decided to move to a different stateand so on. All in the setting of, getting home from a retreat and deciding I gotta do this now.

And for me, even though that advice is very useful, I found that if I didn't do it right now, I might just shift back into [00:21:00] my old patterns and then not be 

unsatisfied with

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, that's what I was just going to say when you were saying that is that I do appreciate that advice as well, but it comes into what level do you access, when you're at a retreat, for example, your vibration lifts, you experience yourself in a higher way. In a higher dimension. You could even say that you're accessing maybe higher brain centers or whatever resonates with.we could think of it as dimensions. Maybe you access like a fifth dimensional aspect of yourself or a higher brain center. Something opens up that's like, wow, this is how I wanna feel. While you're in that, you get clarity about what doesn't match that. And eventually, if you allow it, you'll renormalize, you'll go back to your previous Behaviors, your previous thought patterns,relatively [00:22:00] quickly you'll start to, get back into those patterns and those rhythms. And so it's like, well, who do you want to become? Because because when we're in that higher state, it seems so clear that it feels like, that's the new us. and I'll never forget this. I will always feel like this I, this is the new me. if we don't support that, and we just do go back to what we're used to doing and what we're used to thinking, and the conversations we're used to having. Then we're not giving ourselves the opportunity to express ourselves in that way because we're not supporting it.

 And it's funny because I just had a guest on last week, Jamie Butler, and she was talking about, that when she teaches people reiki and I know you're a Reiki practitioner two, she's like, it's very important for me to continue to check in with them because they're accessing these higher states. And because you're seeing life from that perspective, you don't realize that [00:23:00] it's unusual almost. Youyou can tell something's different, but you have to integrate it. And if you don't talk about it, if you don't write about it, if you don't acknowledge it, if you don't like, take the time to be like, this is what's happening.

And some people need to verbalize it, some people need to write it, but whatever it is, but to acknowledge it. So that it can integrate. So all of that to say, it is, it is wise advice, don't make huge changes. And if you do wanna support experiencing yourself and that frequency or accessing that brain center, however we think of it.

'cause it's all those things, We also have to do our part to support it. 

 So I love that you had the courage to do that and to answer the call, and it seems that it was a very important, thing for you to do, but I can imagine that was

very scary 

Karen Newell: It is scary. It's scary leaving a marriage, leaving a 25 year career, it's [00:24:00] like, oh my gosh, gonna do? And the the old me would make plans and, would write out my goals and then what do I need to do to achieve my goals? And, that wasn't working so well because I was waiting for something outside of myself to change.

And it was when I. Shifted into thinking about what can I change inside of me? Then I didn't have to make any plans. And yes, sometimes that can be scary 'cause you are like, oh my gosh, I don't know why I'm doing this. But I learned to follow my heart. And that can sound so colloquial, right? and yet I really did follow my heart because I, I discovered what it is that was existing inside of my heart, what my sort of base tuning frequency was. And it wasn't necessarily what I imagined myself to be. I, when I first got in there, it was. Lonely. It was, desperate. And I'm thinking, why would I wanna tap into this?

And sometimes I do talk to people who, you know, [00:25:00] it, it can be called a dark night of the soul, where you face that part of you that you're not really pleased with, that you'd rather just not be a part of you. But once you accept that part of you and you realize, no, this is the whole of me, and you learn to love that part of yourself anyway, that's when things start to shift.

And I learned that to set an intention for something, you kind alluded it to it yourself, is to imagine the feeling of what it would feel like to have that intention resolved. in relation to the the relationship, I didn't feel happy. So I started to imagine what would it feel like to just.

Feel love inside of myself and I generated it. I learned how to do that by generating those feelings of gratitude. And when you start to do that, they naturally just grow into this beautiful, warm, loving sense. And after I was able to generate that from, I no longer needed someone [00:26:00] outside to satisfy that.

However, once I started resonating, that, that left me open and vulnerable to someone who did resonate with that heart energy and all of it can can be quite scary. because it's it's unknown and you can't see it 

and you can't know it ahead of time, you can't know the result ahead of time. Because we're all unique.

We can hear each other's stories, we can be inspired by everyone's stories, that our story is unique and special to us. And so it's important not to get distracted by other people's stories because yours is gonna unfold in a way that no one else's ever has. And so that's what makes us also special. Our different challenges, our different responses to those challenges. how do we move through life? And

what can we do to change it? And many of us, nothing I can do. I'm just one person. And when I hear that, I'm reminded of the energy of the heart that I [00:27:00] just explained.

And if the heart is naturally radiating, whatever is inside of it, it's just naturally radiating to the world around you. Then there's huge amounts of benefit to generating those feelings of gratitude and love. Never underestimate the power of doing that. And I like to say it was during the pandemic, we started this little practice of, I called it 11:00 AM love.anywhere in your time zone, you could radiate love to the world. But the flip side of that. As if you were having a bad day, maybe you couldn't generate those feelings of gratitude was to open yourself to receiving that love, knowing that somewhere in the world, someone with was radiating that love out.

And so if more of us can become aware of this, suffering that we see from around the world radiating consciously, our love and gratitude to themmakes a difference.

And so this is one way I think 

our world start to change.

Kara Goodwin: [00:28:00] that's beautiful. And I wish that you could have been with me all day, because so many things that you've said are just echoes of other things that have come up in my day. But, editing my book right now and I just literally this morning was going through a part where I was saying, as you're going through an awakening process, Not everybody's gonna be doing that with you, or it's gonna be at a different pace. But you might be confusing people who are dear to you, or they may have judgments about it. And I was saying, you have to do what's right for you. And the tricky thing is you have to learn as you go. Like when you let go of your marriage, when you let go of your job, you could only trust that. I really feel that this no longer in alignment. It's complete. it's not aligned with where I wanna go, but you don't have the data yet. To know how it's gonna work out for you. now you can look back and be like, wow, that was really [00:29:00] important that I did that because I couldn't get to where I am now if I was still, in those things. but that's a huge act of faith and but sometimes it can be hard to think about it like that because we can get challenges from people who are like, it's not logical. You've been married for 25 years, Karen. And it's served you like you've, and you've been fine. So just keep being married, that kind of a thing, because that's logical. Maybe, I know a lot of people going through that right now where it's like this relationship. I cannot take one more day of it.

And it's confusing because I'm not being abused. He's not cheating on me. it's not like everything's perfect, but there's not a smoking gun, where it's like, oh my God, get out now. And so they're like, it would almost be easier if. I could say it's because he did this and I can't live with that. And I feel that more and more it's just this dissonance, like within somebody and they're, and they just can't take it anymore. and [00:30:00] it's almost harder because it's not logical. They can't use a rational minds to explain it. And then they've got, probably people in their outer world who are like, what in the world are you doing?

Have you lost your mind? But many things that you've said, I'm like, oh my God, I wanna put Karen in my pocket. Go back to the start of this day and be like, look, we're gonna talk about this later and look at

it here. 

you 

Karen Newell: Yeah, well, ,you know 

what, these, this is, this speaks to 

universal truths, and that's what I was interested in discovering, not reading one religion's version of it or one tradition's version, but the collective, what does the collective tell us? where's everyone getting it? Right? That's what I wanted to know. And that's where the golden rule, the fact that we have a soul, that there's a non-spiritual aspect of ourselves. How critical it is to understand that part of you, because. It's actually has a lot more influence on your unfolding reality than what we've been taught in, traditional 

science and [00:31:00] things like that. and and so the more you can find that out for yourself to not wait for some worldview to come along, that can explain everything neatly as discovering these universal truths for yourself. Like you said, you can't do everything just by hearing what someone else says. And, sometimes it takes hearing the same thing over and over and over until you're in that space where you hear it in a new way.

 I have a daughter, she's 35, and we've gone through our, ups and downs with with this idea that we create our own reality. And I remember she once told me, she said, I think it was right after high school, she said, mom, I don't really believe in that. I think that's not how the world works. And I said, well, that's okay. I can't force you to believe anything. I Share what I believe and how things have worked for me. And then fast forward about 10 years and she's like, mom finally figured out you were right it's not that that I was right. That wasn't the point. The point was she discovered a [00:32:00] universal truth 

and she's very much an empath, so she feels other people's feelings and has to, has had to learn where her feelings are and where other people's feelings are affecting her. I think that's a syndrome that that many of us have. we assume, when we feel a certain way, that it's our feeling that it might be the person sitting next to us and, somehow interacting with us in a different way. So that's again, why. Finding that pure essence of who you are helps settle all of that.

Once you can 

identify with that resonance of your energy, you very clearly know what is yours and what is someone else's. And it all just, life just begins to unfold in a different way. But it takes the practice and the commitment And the time. And like you said, your friend who who doesn't meditate but is being kind of pushed through the same type of energy, I would imagine if she did have some meditative tools, that it would make it a little easier 

 spiritual health, [00:33:00] I must say, is so important, and I wanna define what that is. Spiritual health is a feeling of connection to something greater than yourself, whether it's your sort of expanded self beyond the physical body, the thoughts and the emotions, or a community or even a higher power. You That's your connection to something greater than yourself, but also a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. Why are you here? What the sort of the big picture reason why you are here, why you do what you do, and then meaning you bring meaning to that purpose through your daily activities, you know how you bring that purpose into being.

And I used to think that my purpose was, something that could be written on a piece of paper, like a job description. But what I learned was my purpose, and I would say really all of our purposes, is to identify with that unique spiritual aspect of who we are. And so we talk about mental health, emotional health, [00:34:00] physical health, but when we can start to talk about spiritual health, that feeling of connection, meaning, and purpose, that's where we start to realize that those things affect all the other things.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. I love that. And I know that your work has overlapped with Dr.

 Eben Alexander and I'm, and so he wrote a beautiful book that talks about his near death experience and that was actually a book that I devoured before my awakening. So I consider my awakening kindlike 2016. Sort of time. And I read that book, probably in 20 12, 20 13 type of time. I was still drawn to stories like that. still curious at those little peaks behind the veil, but not really doing any kind of practice or anything like that at that point. but because you're so integrated with sound, I'm curious about where that overlap came 

from. 

Karen Newell: Ah, well in his [00:35:00] book that came out in October of 2012, just like you said, it was a wildly bestseller for a couple years. he writes about being in a coma due to a brain issue. Bacterial, I. Meningo encephalitis. And he had this amazing spiritual experience and what kind of drove him through that experience was different qualities of sound.

So he talks about the musical melody that he heard and the most primitive part of his experience, and then how that brought him up into the Gateway Valley. And then from there he heard these, chants that he says angels were chanting these hymns, beautiful harmonic hymns. And that propelled him into yet a deeper realm that he called the core.

And that's where he heard this om sound. He calls it the echo of all infinity and eternity. That's what you would hear. And he was so affected by that sound that when he returned to this world, [00:36:00] he didn't call that energy God. He called it Om because that's the sound that he heard. meditative traditions in the Hindu faith, are enamored by the fact that he heard om in the deepest part of his experience. But he learned after he came backhe wanted to return, he wanted to know that non-physical aspect of himself, the part of him.

That was aware when his body was not able to functionally construct a hallucination. His brain could not do that. So he was somewhere else and he discovered binaural beats as a way to quiet the mind and potentially return to those non-physical realms. And, so it was at a sound workshop where we met

And so I had been 

exploring for quite some time. He was a little new, newer at it, but I had already started creating sounds with, the audio engineer I mentioned earlier, Kevin Casi. He waswhen Evan, his book had not come [00:37:00] out yet when we met, but it was about three years after 

his coma.

And so when he, shortly after we met, found himself in New York. With an agent talking to publishers, that's where Kevin Koi lives. And so he went over to Evan's Hotel,at, with Evan's permission to listen to the sounds that we had created. He was very curious, and when he listened, we all three listened at once.

That's how Kevin and I would do it. We would listen from a distance. We were hardly ever in the same room, and then we would compare our meditative experiences. And so that's what we did with Evan. And he was blown away and he said, you need to make these recordings available to other people and you need to start making them. And I'm gonna be your biggest fan. And he actually is our biggest fan, . He still listens on a daily basis when he can for several hours a day to really get him into those states. He's very interested determining the mechanism. Between, [00:38:00] between the spiritual realm and the mental, physical realm. The mental is the in-between realm so he is very driven as a scientist to find out what is that mechanism, what is it about the spiritual realm that seems to affect things going on here in the physical world. And his miraculous healing was one of those things as a neurosurgeon, he knew when he reviewed his medical records that he should have died. survival meant he would be in a nursing home for the rest of his life. But even the doctors, who reviewed all of his records that weren't involved with his care, it actually got written up in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, a case study. They even said it was the aspects of his spiritual journey that contributed to his healing.

And so there are some 

scientists and physicians around the world who are very, very open to this happening, but there isn't anyone quite yet who, can explain how it actually happens. And I'm someone who [00:39:00] doesn't really care how it happens. I'm just noticing that it does happen. And by 

practicing bringing more spiritual awareness into my life, I find that things really do start to, be affected in ways that I never could have imagined in my former kind of project manager of thinking.

Kara Goodwin: Well, it's fascinating because, I haven't read, reread his book since, my experiences and my own, awakening as I mentioned. But I will, I'm very familiar with the hypnogogic state that you mentioned. You talked, when we first started talking, you talked about that kind of, that in-between state when, in between sleep and wakefulness. And that is a very fruitful time for me where I will start to see lights, I'll see patterns, I'll see geometries. That has been happening for a while now, but it's been relatively recently within the last few months that I have [00:40:00] realized I can hear something also. So I'm seeing with my mind's eye, my eyes might be open, they might be closed.

Usually I have a a sleep mask on. So even if my eyes, sometimes I'll open my eyes just to make sure I don't fall asleep because I, sometimes I do fall asleep and I can tell. When it's gonna happen, like sometimes I'll pull myself outta sleep or I'll hear like a bang or something that is not actually outside of me, but it's like something's waking me up, auditorily, but 

Nobody else would be able to hear it. But I'll be like, oh yeah, I wanna keep going. I was starting to fall asleep, so all the shapes and everything will start to get to look like form or a story will start playing out. And then I'm like, wait, I'm dreaming. Get up. Lift up. Lift up, energetically, but I've just started again, like within the last few months where I am like, oh, I can hear something as well, because of course the, we're talking about waves, energy waves, and we [00:41:00] can, our eyes, we experience those waves as, visual, we take it in as light and, but with our ears, we hear them, so we express and we experience them with our human technology in a different way. But it's one thing and we can see it, we can hear it. but it's really interesting because I know that I, even though it might sound like it's outside of me because just depending on where it is in the layers of my being, but I know that it's not an external sound. But if I wanna liketry to analyze it, like what am I hearing? Is it saying something? Is it a male voice, a female voice?

Is it more of a song? is it speaking? Is it singing? once I try to qualify it or quantify it or whatever, measure it somehow with my analytical mind, I can't hear it anymore. And then I'll notice that, and that makes me curious. I'm like, oh, I can't hear it when I move my attention [00:42:00] to that part of my brain. So now where could I hear it? Where was my attention within my brain? So let me find where that is and see if I can find it again. See if I can start hearing it again. And,sometimes it will sound like language and, but like choppy. And then I'm like, Am I hearing English? Am I hearing another language? Am I hearing something that's not even language, but it's so fast. But again, once I try to interpret it, I can't hear it anymore. and often like I am also seeing something subsequently, Can change what I'm seeing based on where my attention is within my brain and what that then produces for the visual, then that can also change what I hear if I am tuning into both at the same time. So it's really fascinating that was, I didn't remember that he had that auditory part of his experience. I do remember that he was completely brain dead and they can't [00:43:00] account for how he was receiving such a powerful stimulus in, listening and

visually 

Karen Newell: Yeah. Can't be explained. no. 

no. Materialists traditional, conventional physician can explain it. They just go, huh? That interesting. And the 

ones who know him, he has plenty of peers in the medical industry. They know him. they they know this. He didn't make it up, but they can't explain it. and they just, it makes 'em curious.

I attended a neurosurgical conference with him. Not so long ago. He is not currently a practicing, neurosurgeon, but once a neurosurgeon, always a neurosurgeon. And I can tell you, they were fascinated by what happened to him. the older ones who knew him, they trusted him and they, they know who he is as a person.

And so if he's amazed, they're amazed and it, it really can't be explained except to acknowledge that the spiritual world is real. And in our materialist [00:44:00] kind of society, that's the the sort of a prevailing, scientific worldview is that only the physical world is real. Everything else is a hallucination, an artifact not important.

And I'm thinking, wait. So love, that's not important. . How could that be? 

Scientists can't really say much about love. I know there's a few out there trying to quantify it in certain ways, but not to my satisfaction. To me, love is, is something that needs to be experienced in order to understand it sometimes it's the lack of love that helps us to understand it more, but there's no doubt in my mind that love is the most important thing in the universe.

And so if scientists can't even quantify it or discuss it, they just claim it's not real. It doesn't make any sense to me. And the reason I know this now for an absolute fact, first of all, near-death, experiencers, that's what they encounter very often is this amazing sense of love. That's [00:45:00] what so many people like to read about is this sort of.

Force that they encounter. the force, the source, God, whatever you wanna call it. I love how you're not stuck on any particular language. the Beatles songs talk about it. Love is all There. Is Love, love, love and so on and the work of Dr. Christopher Kerr, he is a hospice doctor in Buffalo, and he wrote a book with all of his research. He's the first researcher. Who didn't just make observations, but actually did a prospective study and interviewed those who were actually dying. And what they tell you is that, that they go into a natural hypnagogic state, a state between awake and asleep.

They have all kinds of end of life dreams and visions. So the dream is when someone appears to be asleep, the vision is when someone appears to be awake. But they describe it as this hyperreal hyp Nagoya. That's what they're in a sleep awake state. And to them, they're lived [00:46:00] events. And 89% of the people that he signed up for his study, 89% of them had at least one dream or vision.

99% of those people said they were real experiences. The same thing near-death. Experiencers tell us more. Real than real is a phrase they would use. And the theme,

the themes of those end of life, dream and visions are almost holy. About love, the loving connections that we've had, even people who haven't experienced love in their lives.

He had one woman who was a foster child in a terrible situation, never learned how to love, learned how to pretend to love. That was, she knew how to go through the motions, but she didn't understand it. Even she on her deathbed started to feel that love. So it seems to be a natural thing that our bodies, that our souls naturally go through as we're departing this world near death.

Experiencers, get a little hint of it. Come back and tell us about it. Those who are [00:47:00] actually dying, tell us the exact same thing. Even a life review that they talk about in near-death experiences. People start to have their life review while they're still alive and how they revisit old memories and how they process, maybe things that happened in the war, or so on and so forth.

Those things are happening. So for these people who are choosing not to meditate, you will be facing those inner, troubles or kind of rewards, good and bad. You will be facing those naturally at the time that you die. And so for me, near death and actual death experiences are more about informing us how do we live now?

Why wait until we die? To go? Oh, love. Love is all there is. Let's start bringing it into our lives here and now. And you can poo poo it like many people do. Oh yeah, we know that one. What else did you learn? It's like, wait, you haven't got the main lesson yet, , how can we move on [00:48:00] if you 

haven't gotten the main lesson? And Anyone who goes within yourself included, takes time to discover who they are and, what is it behind all of that, that inner observer, that unique aspect of each of us, anyone who takes takes time to do that is actually helping all of us, including myself, and so gratitude to all who are listening, who take the time to do this in whatever fashion that works for you. 

Kara Goodwin: Hmm. Beautifully said. Karen, how can people connect with you and find out more

about your work? 

Karen Newell: Well, sacred acoustics.com is the website where all of the recordings we talked a little bit about at Reside and there's a free download there that people can download A 20 minute m recording. Evan very much influenced, m recording so that it matched as close as we could to what he heard, which is he will tell you pretty much impossible to duplicate here on Earth. we've tried, but that's [00:49:00] where there's a contact form. There's some free videos there. You can use the contact form to reach out to me directly with any questions at all. And then Evan and I have another site called Inner Sanctum Center, and .There's a membership and people can find out more about it just by going to that site. there's a free series of interviews that he and I did together during the pandemic. over about two and a half years, those are still there. Those are completely free for anyone who would like to watch those. There's a set of recordings called the Whole Mind Bundle.

They were used in a pilot study by a psychiatrist in New York City who found a, if she prescribed these to her patients, those who listened, saw a 26% reduction in anxiety. After two weeks of listening. So

anxiety is rampant in our world right now. And at the beginning of the pandemic is when this study came out in 2020, I made those recordings drastically reduced in price and also a free option.

So there's no barrier for anyone [00:50:00] who you know has financial difficulties. Please go to our website, look for that whole mind bundle, and with my gratitude, download those recordings and start your listening routine. It takes time. You said you went through many stages. it doesn't happen all at once.

That's what I wanted to have happen. It doesn't work that way, but be patient and continue to practice. Stop and start if you need to. and you will find your way.

Kara Goodwin: Beautiful. thank you so much, Karen. This has been really beautiful. Thanks

for your time

today. 

Karen Newell: Well, thank you Kara. I always love talking about these topics. Thank you so much ​