James Meade, after graduating from Guilderland High School, Hamilton College, and Northwestern University — with a Ph.D. in English — wrote several novels, all rejected by publishers. He thinks it’s important not to self-publish but to write for money, and built a career writing nonfiction books, over 30 of them, including five in the well-known Dummies series. His favorite book is “The Answer to Cancer: Is Never Giving It a Chance to Start,” which he wrote with Hari Sharma, M.D. The two have recently written, “Dynamic DNA: Activating Your Inner Energy for Better Health.” Meade and his wife, Nina, started practicing transcendental meditation 50 years ago when they lived in Illinois. They now live in California’s San Fernando Valley where they run the Encino Transcendental Meditation Center and travel the world, teaching the techniques that Meade says relieve stress and improve consciousness.

Transcript:

00:00 This is Melissa, Hale-Spencer, the editor of The Altamont Enterprise. And I have on the line for the podcast today from California, James Mead. And I just have to tell you, we met in kind of an odd way. It was the middle of a Wednesday night when Marcelo and I were up late putting together the paper, the wee hours of the morning. And I got this email from someone I didn't know about, a new book he had written called, what is it called? Dynamics, DNA, dynamic DNA, activating your inner energy for better health. And I shot back an email and unbelievably, it came back to me, wee hours and Jim was on the other side of the world and he was going to do a podcast when he came home, but he ended up going to yet another country. So I'm glad we finally caught up and I just love to start by asking you, um, how it is you came to your current profession with your wife of teaching transcendental meditation.

01:12 Uh Huh. Okay. Good story. It started 50 years ago and, uh, Lena and I were both students in Chicago. And, uh, she was at the University of Chicago because she followed me out there and that was at Northwestern and basically we were, I'm just trying things out as you do at that age. And uh, one of the things that we tried that was, was transcendental meditation. And then, uh, uh, two years later we found that we were on teacher training as a with transcendental meditation. And it was shortly after the Beatles era. Mike Love of the beach boys was, I've heard teacher training course and we've got to be with mercy. Personally. It was quite a well known international figure and um, we just loved the transcendental meditation and, and uh, became teachers and um, a lot of ins and outs. Nina also taught school. I also had a career as a writer and we, um, 2005, uh, decided to be full time teaching. T M came out to California, set up shop and uh, there's a lot of interests people out in California, especially very open to the ideas of learning TM and a lot of other things that seem a little bit the fridge everywhere else.

02:41 Yeah. Well, California is always been known for that. And I guess transcendental meditation, you were right in the era when it was first blossoming in this country, so you've just followed it to its current state. Um, just to back up a little, I don't know, our readers might have noticed two letters from you recently. One was a really kind of sweet tribute to the late Carol Romer, my girl next door and the other was it kind of capturing the many celebrities that you've met in your career? And I loved the line in that letter. Um, you were talking to someone checking your passport, who said there's always worked for writers and cleaning women. So if you could just tell us, I looked up and you have a huge long list of books. If you've been just kind of take a quick look over your careers and author and tell us, um, you know, some of the books that you've written because it's such a wide variety.

03:45 Yeah, I was living in Fairfield, I would interview there and it was a serious, where they basically gushed over writers. You know, they were surprised because although I'm a writer, my whole uniting theme was how do I get paid for this piece? And so it wasn't so much as how do I get paid? And Myself, um, early in my career I was submitted novels and I found myself getting rejection letters and I took a job writing computer documentation and, uh, I just had to learn computers on the fly. And then I began writing about computers and basically it became that I would write whatever somebody would pay me to write. And then you never getting published is quite a trick that a lot of the people doubt or self published, but that it was, which never appealed to me and still doesn't. And uh, so I found it to get published. The real secret wasn't to write something great and they would love it and they would publish it. The real secret was to find something that they already wanted done. They had a contract sitting there and then proposed to them than I write it. So my first book, uh, instead of being a Hemingway style novel was actually a, um, a book about computer graphics before PowerPoint, you know, just the very first computer graphics

05:37 series.

05:40 Yeah, no, and that was a, that was another fascinating situation where the, um, the computer industry, it's like they never took an English course, you know, so they were, they publish in documentation that nobody would ever read that was just understood you. And then when an engineer wanted to work on a new product, one thing he would not turn to was the documentation. So I was proposing to them, make it readable, maybe make it even funny. And um, so eventually when that actually reached the industry and some of the publishers as they begin to write computer books that were a little bit, they are very funny, really, the dummies books. Then uh, uh, that whole door opened up. It was a huge tidal wave. All of a sudden a dummies book, super popular. And that was about dummies book number eight.

06:44 Well, with all the books that you've written, do you have one that's a favorite of yours? One that stands out is something that you look back on and feel like that was, that was me at my best or that was the most useful thing that I wrote

07:00 probably right now if it's not this current one dynamic DNA, which I think it's time may come, but, uh, one called the answer to cancer and, uh,

07:11 I have the answer to cancer. Tell us about that.

07:15 Okay. So I'm Dr Hurry Sharma called me and he's the one who, uh, who was looking for a writer to write on that subject and he, um, and he had to actually indirectly from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and been told to get a book on cancer. And how are you showing me is a cancer expert at Ohio state? So he asked me if I would write the book and I said No. And, um, it was just a, I knew there was no money in it and they told you the money's my organizing principle. And, um, so I just was, was, uh, and also there's a certain style that, um, predictable that would go with that particular format. And, and I wasn't planning to write in that style. I like to, even if I'm, you know, same with the dummies books, even if I'm just writing some for me little book, I like to put personality into it and he'll Marian like that. So, um, I said no, he came back to me and I said, no two or three times. And finally, just the writing was on the wall. This book needed to be done. And um, it was very successful. You know, it. Uh, um,

08:29 so as someone who has survived cancer, I would love to know the answer is what, what was the heart of the book?

08:38 Okay. So, um, it's all kinds of, I have vedic, you know, so these techniques associated with India, ayurvedic techniques, basically proof for prevention, but it's, it's not just sort of your every day, you know, don't eat a hamburger or your every day even what be vegetarian like that. It's really a specific techniques. For instance, there's so many herbs that you could talk about, but the two physicians really that I worked with, they said Tumeric is so much more powerful. It truly is an antitumor device and you have to know how to use it. So you have to Saute it. You don't just sprinkle it on and you don't take it the way your doctor gives it to you. It Western doctor several capsules a day, you'd just use it in the right way. And um, and then it was like eight or 10 different things, specific things. Um, the iniquitous settled way are targeted on making your body resistant to cancer and making it strong. You know, one person who read the book said you could really go through and substitute heart disease for cancer and have the book be the same book and you could,

09:51 that's interesting. And I did look up Dr Sharm, he was the director of the division of cancer prevention and natural products research at the College of Medicine at Ohio State University. So you had the language expertise, but he had the scientific expertise is you wrote this text.

10:09 And then, um, he and I both have this transcendental meditation expertise because transcendental meditation is an anticancer technique and it involves taking the mind inside too though are deeper and deeper levels in the deepest level. And when we do that, it's very strengthening. There's some recent research showing that it actually can influence the d, the expression of DNA. So it's a very powerful inward experience and it strengthens our, um, our system in place, uh, free radicals and, and uh, is an anticancer technique. And that is an area where I am an expert

10:57 and that's something I'd like to ask you more about. I am not well informed in this field. The one time earlier about a year ago, I had been writing on a lecture by a woman named Sharon Morgan, who is a descendant of slaves. And she travels the country with Thomas de Wolfe who is a descendant of slave owners. And they referenced the BBC film that Ghost in your genes, which, um, I then looked up because it's the, it documents the work of British scientists who believe that your genes are shaped in part by your ancestors life experiences. And, um, I know it's a controversial field, but it certainly seemed interesting the research that they had documented. It was based in Sweden and um, they looked at, um, people who had the descendants of people who had suffered from a feminine. And so this, the, the two that had written the book and we're traveling locally and I talked to, were assuming that the same kinds of changes in DNA could have taken place because of slavery. And I just don't know enough about it. But if you could kind of fill us in having written a book on the subject, um, about the basics of how, how that would work. Um, that would be interesting.

12:24 I'm just trying to get you to explain the basis of epigenetics, which, how it is that some scientist now believe that your genes are not like just the crick and Watson model where you know it's passed on from generation to generation unchanged.

12:50 Well, the new discovery is, you know, that is true. The old model is that the actual DNA doesn't change, but what completely changes the whole ball grip game is one word, expression. The expression of the gene can change so that, um, maybe you're born with a predisposition towards a particular disease and uh, that doesn't mean you're going to get it because you can change the expression of that gene. So that really as far as it performs, um, you're healthy and you don't get that and involves things like diet and, and a healthy lifestyle and also specific recommendations for a real eliminating stress and like that. But the, uh, epigenetics means on top of, and basically the genes can express even perfectly. You can be born with a set of a genetic makeup like everybody is, it's both good and bad. And then just go in and work on the ones that are bad until as far as they're expressed as far as their behavior. You're good. Okay.

14:11 You had sent me a list of kind of topics at Memorial Sloan Kettering and mutated genes and they found that one of my jeans had mutated so that I can understand. But this idea that you had mentioned in this email had to do with outside of the body, like accidents. How, how would that, how would that be? Go ahead.

14:52 That's a great question Melissa. And it's very fascinating because we all observe these things. Um, you know, and, and um, my family has a history of anxiety. It has a history of heart disease and um, but also certain kinds of behaviors that, um, you know, my father was quite the lady's man and some of that is, doesn't have to necessarily to do with anything in your jeans, but he, um, was, um, was quite active in the romance front. And, um, so or you look at something like the Kennedy's who are in kind of noted for, they have tragedies strike, but there are different ones. Some of them seem physical and others, you know, a skiing accident or a plane crash, what's going on? So the broader thing is that DNA tracks not just the physical things that we readily identify, it actually tracks everything. It actually records every behavior and um, and, and uh, every thought everything is being recorded and that makes the DNA, the DNA is not what we ordinarily think of is some chemical in the body, but it is a chemical in the body, but it resides right at that junction point of pure consciousness.

16:29 The unbounded. It's super powerful. And so therefore it can track a whole lot more than just diseases. Uh, it attracts behaviors and then those behaviors can and do, be shared within a family and passed down within the family. And they can also be corrected within a family just because the family has a history of, um, these kinds of tragedies will with, with certain, um, right behavior meditation is one of them actually the healthy things that we think of, right? Diet and like that. You can be the one in that family that that doesn't happen.

17:20 It breaks the pattern. Well, you mentioned in your old family, your father being someone who was a woman.

17:30 Yeah. Let me just give you a quick, because this is recent, which is a, um, two, what about year ago? Oh, um, my sister Vicky did that 23 and me thing and um, and found another sister. And so this sister, um, we've now connected with, she's a half sister. She was born one month after my father died, so he was involved with that woman and there was also, um, this is sort of soap opera stuff, but when he died, um, there was another woman, different woman who, uh, was so in love with him that she was, she tried to jump into the casket with him. She had to be restrained. So these were, um, instances pretty hard to deny that they existed. Meanwhile, he was still married to my mom who had loved him very much.

18:27 Yeah. You know, that kind of behavior could be not DNA related, but just something that came from patterns you observe in the family, you know, that get repeated because they're part of your culture or no? Well

18:48 that would be a good way to look at it. And it's awesome the two. But the thing is the DNA records, everything. It records those psychological things. So it doesn't just record, um, the physical things. It records everything, psychological levels, um, emotion, everything. Well just, uh,

19:13 it would do good too. If you could comment on how a lot of this terminology and philosophy comes from eastern religions. Um, and how that fits in with the practices that you use. You know, like Harvard and you know, things that maybe people associate more with doing yoga then, then with the sorts of, um, just how, how you came to adopt those practices in your own work and how they're useful and fit in, I guess is the question.

19:51 Great. Yeah, no, it's nice to get your perspective on it cause I kind of forget that they've been such everyday things for me for a long time. But, um, they're, um, vedic the d I see, so they, they come from the vedic and Veda means knowledge or they're not. Um, certainly for me, they're not associated with any religion. You know, I'm from guilty. Lynn. I would join the Presbyterian church there. I have a Christian background. Yeah,

20:19 yeah. It was that the Hamilton Union Presbyterian church.

20:24 Is it the what

20:25 the Hamilton Union Presbyterian church you'd said Lord. Yeah.

20:31 Or maybe it was Mcconville. Maybe we call Presbyterian. So, yeah. And uh, you know, so to me there are more scientific terms and you know, they didn't mean to knowledge and it, uh, has led to do not with, just not initially with a physical experience as much as also the spiritual side, the abstract, and then it gets expressed in the physical and it gets tested in the physical. And much of what I've looked at has been tested with western science also. But, um, it's just a term for knowledge and it's not based on faith and it wouldn't work very well for me or in general if any of this was faith. So, you know, if you have faith that, you know, you become stronger if you believe you don't have cancer. No, it's not like that. It's, um, you know, if you mix them tumeric with your food, if you follow the regular routines of the day instead of working on night, um, you know, if you behave well that actually influences neuropeptides in your body. But these are recommendations, um, that, that are for good health and they actually are based in knowledge now really in a, um, what we usually think of as religious practices or praying for a good outcome. No,

22:15 that's a good delineation, but it's still interesting to me. Did they come from other cultures, other parts of the world? And there you are traveling in other parts of the world. How is it that you, where have you been recently and what has brought you, I know from you, you emailed at one part and said, well, I won't be home for the podcast now cause I'm going to Myanmar and Spool. Okay. But how do you make those travel connections and where is it you end up going and why?

22:47 Yeah. It's interesting because yesterday I was signing up, or like a few days ago, I was signing up with a physician and, uh, they asked me, um, well, have you been overseas recently? And so I said, I didn't realize it would sound so strange to them. I said, well, I was in China and then I was in Thailand and then I was in Myanmar and they went back to Thailand and it was in Japan and they were like, of what I wanted to be your friend.

23:18 And so how is it that you come to those places and what connections bring you there?

23:25 So, um, we also, it's the TM, transcendental meditation, tick a connection. Uh, Nina, my wife teaches at a university in Thailand that has a, uh, a basis in transcendental meditation. When we went to Myanmar, um, it was because there was a school there that was very interested in bringing the transcendental meditation too at school population. And, uh, so we went there to set that up. And um, you know, so that's the connection. I've actually lectured all over in Asia and a, but not just Asia. We spent three or four months in Jamaica, um, starting a school project school, a teaching TM in his school. We have many stories about the turnaround and a happens when these students, it was a very, very rough school in Jamaica. And even with just preliminary teaching of TM, it, they became much more attentive in class.

24:33 Well then it may be a good place to end this podcast to hear from you because there are times rapidly running out. Just if you could put in a nutshell, which may be hard, what exactly is transcendental meditation? I mean, I think a lot of us think out of it is people just repeating words quietly for a number of minutes every day. But if you could kind of give us the philosophy of it and how, for instance, in this Jamaican school it transformed people. Just how does it work? What is it?

25:03 Thank you. I'm glad you asked me that. So, um, I lecture on this every day, but I put up a chart and it says it's simple, natural, effortless mental procedure practice twice a day for 20 minutes. And the thing is when we practiced transcendental meditation, the mind goes from our surface everyday thinking level, the deeper levels. And I explained deeper levels are like, um, instead of being on the surface structural level of a piece of wood, you're on the molecular level and then there's a deeper level. The atomic and subatomic level, these are real, the energy is different. And when we take the awareness to those, there's more energy, more orderliness and more power. So what we do when we transcend in transcendental meditation, the mind goes from the surface and it actually effortlessly goes to these deeper levels and the deeper levels have, um, very much strengthening, influenced more orderliness, clearer thinking, and a actually better health. So that's what we gain, but it taking the mind within and it's so powerful that we really have to make sure that people only do it twice a day for 20 minutes.

26:23 Well, don't do it. If you did it more, what, what would the power,

26:28 well, it's a little hard to predict. You know, it's like Xanax is a popular anti depressant. You know what, if you take more, well, different things can happen. So the TM, it's gets the body's own pharmacy more powerfully. Sometimes people, uh, if they don't follow our training instructions and maybe one guy just said, well, so like I was spaced out a little bit, I forgot what I was doing when I was shaving. Yeah. That can happen. And one guy found himself being very emotional, thinking about his mother and his sister and we were like, I'm sure you love your mother and your sister, but if you just do 20 minutes, twice a day, you kind of have a more balanced thinking towards them.

27:15 And do you yourself do this to 20 minutes twice? Do I knew the transcendental meditation every day? It's part of what you do and yeah. Okay. Oh Wow. Yes, yes,

27:26 yes. Every day. Um, and uh, every day since I learned in 1970. So,

27:33 and this was when you were in college, you said? Was it?

27:37 Oh yeah, I was just finishing graduate school, finishing my phd and uh,

27:42 and that was in English at Northwestern. Are you ever going to go back and write that novel that you first started with or you've moved on and they're happy and where your life is?

27:53 Um, you know, there were about three novels in Beverly. When I write it up, it'll be different from that. But I think you're right. I should, uh, you should definitely write a novel. I loved writing, um, and in a very, what engaging style, and I love to put in stories, but a lot of times they get attracted to nine fiction topics so that people can know, like with this dynamic DNA. So I put in a lot of stories in there, but, um, uh, I like it that it's actually talking about something, um, that people know is real and that can be measured and tested scientific.

28:39 Well, great. I thank you for your time and your expertise and your letters to the editor. And with that we're over and out.