How Scent Bypasses Your Conscious Mind: Incense Expert Demonstrates Live on Vance

John Launius [00:00:00] First of all, everyone is a liar. And there's only three ways that all human beings lie, lie by omission, lie by exaggeration, or an outright untruth.

Vance Crowe [00:00:13] Hey, this is Sean Newman, host of the SNP here in Canada, and you're listening to the One and Only Vance Pro podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We interviewed John Lanius. John is a fascinating character. He walked into the studio and he had this little tray that he wanted to plug in, and before long I saw him getting all these powders out to use. Sometime during our conversation, I didn't really know what to expect. John had mentioned when we were chatting before the podcast that he had some sort of expertise in incense, but I had no idea where this was leading. What you are about to see is us having an interview turn into a deep and genuine conversation. Largely not because of my skill, but because of the sense that John put into the room. I felt these things transform my emotion, my body language, and even the thoughts that I had. At one point, you will hear in this conversation when John tries to distinguish, are you so certain that incense aren't drugs? And after having had this experience, I'm not so sure because of how profoundly they changed my thoughts and behaviors throughout this conversation. My only regret is that you are not going to be able to smell the things that I smelled and have this visceral physical experience. But even still, I tried my hardest to be able to describe them to you so that you could imagine what it would be like. And you can go along on this sensory experience with us and have the amazing adventure that I just had.

Vance Crowe [00:01:50] You'll notice right now that I am sitting on a couch. That's because we just did a legacy interview earlier this morning with a couple that came all the way in from western Kansas. The couple had six children and lived on a farm, and they came in to record their family stories, their history, their values, and the wisdom that they've acquired along the way as they fought to be able to keep their farm through the eighties. And as they raise these children in a farmhouse on sending them to a small school, you know, when they stepped into the room, they felt like they didn't have stories to tell or anything worth recording. They were just doing it because a family member said, I really want you to do this. But they noticed as we had this conversation, that they did have stories, stories that mattered to them, stories that their children loved hearing them say, and even some stories that their children had never heard before. I'm excited to send this interview to them because I know not only will they have this interview to store and be able to pass down to kids and grandkids, maybe even great-grandchildren that might never meet them, but the experience of watching this video, this recording of their life at some holiday, will be something that will g bring joy to their entire family. I enjoy doing these Legacy Interviews, but even more than that, it is a deeply valuable thing that we're creating together. So, if you'd like me to sit down with your loved one, to record their family stories and wisdom, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to learn more.

Vance Crowe [00:03:26] All right, without further ado, let's go on this sensory in intoxicating experience with my man, John Lanius. John Lanius, welcome to the podcast. Thank

John Launius [00:03:37] You Vance. Appreciate that.

Vance Crowe [00:03:38] To start off, how would you describe the smell of a lemon?

John Launius [00:03:42] Well, that's, I I love how you said that actually. So to describe the smell of a lemon is that to actually experience the smell of a lemon, we have to be in the presence of it. If not, then we can only describe it. So if I said to you, Vance, imagine the smell of a pine tree. You can't. But what happened is that you have a mental image of a pine tree. Am I wrong?

Vance Crowe [00:04:06] I, I feel like for a split second, I have it, but then it's gone. Yeah. It's, it's like, it's like you imagine that you can grab that smell in your mind. Yeah, but it's, it's fleeting.

John Launius [00:04:15] Yeah. It's interesting that the, the sense of smell has been used for thousands of years to skip what you might say is our waking and cognitive brain. And it goes right to the unconscious. And so if we look at, for example, historical figures, una, who was an Indian saint, you know, he used fragrance thousands of years ago as a way to cause enlightenment, which sound, at first maybe sounds a little non-sequitur, but, you know, have you ever walked into a building and maybe the smell reminds you of third grade and you transport back 20 years in a heartbeat. Right? So when you begin to use fragrance as a way to start to untap or unlock parts of your brain, then you can truly use it as a path to peak performance. So on my LinkedIn, for example, there's an article called The Scent of Peak Performance. And in that article, I recount a little bit of time with Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, how we're talking about Steve Jobs's wedding, and it was incense laden. 'cause a lot of people forget that Steve Jobs spent time in India. And, you know, the, the, the, that particular culture has used incense and fragrance again for thousands of years for a myriad of reasons, whether it's religious or circling back to peak performance.

Vance Crowe [00:05:42] Why is it so difficult for us to be able to lay out the words that go with smells? I I spend a huge amount of time with my daughter in the morning to like, get her cooking, get her going. I pull out spices and I have her smell 'em, and I try and get her to guess what they are. She's two. So she, her, her HIIT ratio is pretty low, but it's not zero. Right. She can smell cinnamon and she can get it. And also I've observed that she, when she smells a new thing, right, it shocks her. Yeah. In fact, anytime I've ever given her a new smell, you see it hit her as like an actual, like physical thing. But when we go to describe those smells, which is the thing I'm trying to give her a language around. Yeah.

John Launius [00:06:23] It's

Vance Crowe [00:06:23] Nearly impossible. Like,

John Launius [00:06:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:06:25] I don't have words to describe how does cinnamon smell. Yeah.

John Launius [00:06:31] Well, so you did a couple things in your body language as well as in the words that you use. So let's break that down a little bit. You said, you know, how do you, you know, figure out like scent language, for example, right? And then you, you, you talked a little bit about how when your daughter experiences a new fragrance, she literally has this physical kind of uplifting, right? You could, so whenever you discover something that you've been struggling with, like if you've been, you know, butting up against a, a challenge or a problem, and then all of a sudden you have a breakthrough, there's that physical part of our body that, that, that lightens up. So, quite literally, you're enlightening. So when you're describing your daughter's experience with cinnamon and, and that enlightening experience, that's what I'm pointing to, or at least I was a moment ago, when you talk about using scent as a way for peak performance. So to answer your specific question, to put language with fragrance is very difficult because you, you'll say like, well, it smells like, or it smells like. And so what, again, what that points to is that you need to be in the presence of the fragrance itself to, to connect this to, to human connection. We've talked on the phone, right? We may have looked at each other's LinkedIn profiles or things like that, and we, we've got a certain sense of who we both are. But when we begin to metaphorically burn together or create a fragrance between the two of us, then the more authentic we are, the more that we get a good sense of, you know, what is Vance's fragrance?

John Launius [00:08:11] I'm connecting this to the Tale of Genji. The, the Tale of Genji was one of the first novels written in the world during the Heon period, about 7 98 to 1149, depending on who you ask. And in that book, there is a character by the name of Carole. And Carole was said to walk with a hundred pace incense, meaning that when he would walk into a village or a town, the frat, the wonderful amazing fragrance of Carole would follow behind him at a hundred paces. And so, if you can imagine, you know, let's say the 15th, 16th century, maybe even earlier than that, when, when personal hygiene wasn't as popular as it is today, to have someone come into a, a town that had this transformative, amazing fragrance, they might do exactly what your daughter did, which is to lighten up, have a physical actual reaction to that, and then, you know, really find a connection and, and be sworn by it.

Vance Crowe [00:09:10] I never even thought of it, but when I was living in Kenya, I lived with a homestay family. Yeah. And you take a bath there fairly regularly, Kenya's very clean, but you're talking about a bucket bath, you're immediately getting sweaty as soon as you're done. When I was there, I realized, I can tell who was in this room, by the way, that it smells Yeah. In a way that you can't in western culture, right? Yeah. Like if, if the only way that I could would be like through incense or perfume, right? You can smell, yeah.

John Launius [00:09:39] Your

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] Father's cologne, your wife's perfume, something like that. But the scent of the actual person wasn't there. Whereas when I was in Kenya, you could be like, oh, if that's the smell of children, right? Yeah. That's the smell of a man, right? Yeah. And I, and I know which man it is. 'cause there's only one other full grown adult there. It had never crossed my mind to actually put that together, even though that was an experience that was very vivid to me. Yeah.

John Launius [00:10:04] I really appreciate that you shared that, that that story. Because for thousands of years, we have chosen our mates by fragrance. We have chosen our tribes by fragrance. And in the last hundred years or so, billion dollar industries are being created to cover our natural scent, our natural fragrance. Now some, some people say, well, good, that's great. I mean, have you, have you been to, you know, like a have you been to like an amusement park on a Saturday when it's 110 out? Yeah, there's some stuff that I do want to cover in the sense of smell. But, you know, one of the things like that, that's just take attraction for a moment. You know, when you're looking at someone, you would say, okay, that person's attractive. The next thing you're gonna want to do is smell them. Now that sounds a little, you know, rude maybe, but, you know, but it's like, I want to know. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:10:59] But we're animals. Yeah. Like, it makes total sense. Exactly.

John Launius [00:11:02] We're we're animals. So I, I think, I think this is the perfect time to maybe share a little bit. So today, I, I've brought a warmer, not a burner, but a warmer. And so as we're talking Vance, we're gonna, I'm gonna actually warm a number of, of raw ingredients of incense. So let's take the word incense, and let's take the word drug for a minute. 'cause I wanna break this down. So the word incense comes from the Latin incensing meaning to burn through. So anything that is burned through that produces a pleasing fragrance and sometimes not. But for the most part, a pre a pleasing for fragrance can be considered incense. I have a, over the course of the, of the 40 years, I can't believe I'm saying that for 40 years of studying this, it's, you know, people have asked me, they've said, you know, is incense a drug? It absolutely is. Because the word drug comes from the Germanic word dru, meaning dried herbs. Right. So I'm gonna just, we will just do this, I'm gonna step away from the mic for a second. So the, so the the first one we're gonna warm is called Borneo camper dry balin ops Ika. Okay. I'm not gonna tell you what it does yet, but I just want you to notice, like, like notice your nasal passageways right now. Okay. Just, just notice how well or not well, that you're breathing. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:12:28] And just that small amount. Oh,

John Launius [00:12:30] I, I actually put maybe a little too much, but Yeah, just a tiny, tiny little bit. You know, one of the lessons in, in the incense culture is that, you know, all you need is a little, and when you think about the relationships that we have with people is that sometimes the best relationships are the ones where we just, just really, just very little bit of energy. We're just,

Vance Crowe [00:12:51] Wow. I can already,

John Launius [00:12:53] Yeah. So hop in over here and get a, get right over it and get a, get a little fragrance. Wow. So, so you say, wow. So what's, so what's happening with you physically?

Vance Crowe [00:13:07] I, I mean, just like my daughter with the cinnamon, I am, I, I was like, I can't smell anything. I can't smell anything. And then I take a WF and I'm like, immediately hit by, it smells like a dry smell, is the way that I would describe it. Right? Like, not like eucalyptus, but if I were gonna put it in the genre, it would be somewhere around there.

John Launius [00:13:29] So, so, Borneo canver, dry bop, oma Tika has been scientifically proven to kill 99.9% of bacteria on contact. So if you'll notice, and I'm gonna have you do it again here in a second, I want you to get a, a nice big whiff of that just Right. You know, and just, I'm gonna, and then we'll talk a little bit more about, so what do you notice is happening to your sinus cavity?

Vance Crowe [00:13:55] Very clear.

John Launius [00:13:56] It's very clear.

Vance Crowe [00:13:56] Right? Very clear.

John Launius [00:13:57] So it's

Vance Crowe [00:13:57] Actually, I think that's why I described it as eucalyptus or dry, like Yeah.

John Launius [00:14:00] Like

Vance Crowe [00:14:01] Immediately passing through my nose.

John Launius [00:14:03] Yeah. And you'll, and so you're actually breathing better now, correct?

Vance Crowe [00:14:06] A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.

John Launius [00:14:08] So very quickly, a hundred percent natural. We've dilated your sinuses. If I were to give you a, like an allergy medication, how long would it take for that to take, to take effect?

Vance Crowe [00:14:22] 45 minutes, whatever,

John Launius [00:14:23] 45 minutes. How long did this take?

Vance Crowe [00:14:25] Instantly.

John Launius [00:14:26] Instantly. Instantly. Right. So one of the things I think that's interesting, when you talk about teaching people about the word incense, there's so much baggage that, that Americans have with it, right? They're like, well, I've smelled incense, I've gone into head shops. It's really just, oh my gosh, I just, it bothers my nose. Right? I don't know why I just made that person have that voice, but gosh darn it, it's fun. There's so much synthetic fragrance in the world today that's actually causing more problems for us, not only from a physical standpoint, but from a mental standpoint. Do you notice anything about the clarity of your thinking now?

Vance Crowe [00:15:09] I mean, I'm way tuned in. I'm like, yeah, very much about what's going on right now.

John Launius [00:15:14] Yeah. So the Chinese call dried Baop Tika, they call it Brain of the Dragon. So I can show you probably 10 to 15 poems from the Tong Dynasty, where you have poets talking about how they're using one incense called Alice Wood, and they're using, you know, the, the, the Borneo camper as a way to hyperfocus their brain to work overnight. It's called, again, brain of the Dragon.

Vance Crowe [00:15:45] The, I mean, I, if, if you would've told me that we were gonna talk about this, and, and you'd have to explain like, no, it's not a drug. I was like, what? What is, this is crazy talk. No. Who thinks that? But as we're doing this, like, I feel a sense of euphoria Yeah. In the sense of, it's a very seldom that I have this much focus. The only other time that I have this much focus is either working on a project where I've been like way honed in on it, or watching my daughter. Right, right. Like, where I'm like, I don't really, there's nothing else in the world. I want more than Yeah. Observing what's going on here. Yeah.

John Launius [00:16:18] Alright, so now let's take it one step deeper. Okay. So I'm also a certified hypnotherapist. And so if, for example, we were going to have a stick of burning incense, so just everyone listening in advance, just imagine that you've got a stick of incense burning and you're watching the smoke on a black background just to start to imagine the smoke, you know, moving, doing what it's doing. Right. Very similar maybe to like how water, you know, might move, right? So there's two expressions that I use in the experience that I give called the incense journey. One is called me, which means mind like water. And the other is coal noko, which means mind like incense. So the mind that you are now operating in, where you're talking about, I'm hyper-focused, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm really tuned in, et cetera, to have the mind of KO is one where you are fragrant, you're authentically being your authentic self, and you are, there's nothing getting in your way. For example, if, you know, if I crashed your car five minutes before we started this interview, there's probably gonna be stuff between us that's gonna keep us from really connecting, because you haven't gotten the fact that I crashed your car a little while ago out of your head. Right? So when, when we look at, at every communication that we have, like, and, and I mean conversation, we're either A, trying to reduce our pain, or B, we're trying to expand our pleasure.

John Launius [00:17:52] So for example, if you needed to talk to somebody about the fact that I crashed your car, are you telling them the story to reduce your pain? Or are you telling them to, you know, expand your, your, your happiness?

Vance Crowe [00:18:06] I'm trying to reduce my pain. Exactly. I'm trying to get that resolved.

John Launius [00:18:08] Yeah, exactly. And so looking at things I, in these two very simple ways starts to have you understand where your pain is now, how, how does that relate to all of this? Well, again, as the sense of smell is our repressed sense and how, what Freud and others have said is that if you don't understand your subconscious mind, you don't understand how the subconscious mind is driving everything that you are doing. And from time to time, our waking mind, the mind that's, that's communicating right now, you and I are communicating with the waking mind, you know, is that, is that if, if the subconscious is not aligned with the conscious, this is where a lot of the problems in our life take place. So again, to talk about this whole journey,

Vance Crowe [00:18:55] I mean, to to that point, I think, you know, when I think about parts of my life that are the most troublesome Yeah.

John Launius [00:19:01] They're

Vance Crowe [00:19:01] The ones when I'm like, I just can't figure out why this is happening. Right. And like the reality is there's a shadow part of you. There's a part of you

John Launius [00:19:09] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:19:10] That is not good that you don't wanna look at. And it's not that you are actively choosing, I don't wanna look at what I am doing to contribute to this problem.

John Launius [00:19:20] It

Vance Crowe [00:19:20] Is that you're, it's scary to go look at what it is that you're doing to cause this problem. And it's much, much easier to imagine the problem is not the shadow in me. It is that person that, that obstacle, whatever it is, because it's much, much easier to look at the outward than the inward. Right.

John Launius [00:19:38] Well, what's really great about the, about what's, what's happening today in the 21st century that I would assert for the most part started during the seventies and eighties and somewhat of the nineties, when you talk about the human potential movement that took place in America, is that when I now say the word mindfulness, people are like, oh, yeah, yeah. It makes a lot of sense. If I would've said meditation and mindfulness, let's say 50 years ago, people would've looked at me like I had three eyes. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:20:08] Well, it seems irreligious in some way, right?

John Launius [00:20:11] Say more about that.

Vance Crowe [00:20:12] Well, like, you know, I grew up in a conservative Christian town. There were 14 churches, right? You know, 60% went to a church that like didn't allow televisions in the house. And, and so mindfulness would be one of those new age ways to sneak non-Christian beliefs into, into your thinking. Or at least that would've been the culture that I came from. Right. So when I hear you say mindfulness, now I know what you mean, but 18-year-old Vance would've been like, oh, this is, this is what they're trying to the sneak in. I don't know, it, it sounds like a, a throwaway line for me to like sneak in the devil. But, but it is like that, that is the perception. And I would imagine, I think my hometown was like, what the 1950s was a lot like. Yeah.

John Launius [00:20:58] I'm

Vance Crowe [00:20:58] Guessing that is probably why people would look at you with three eyes. Yeah.

John Launius [00:21:01] Well I'm, it's, it's interesting that you, that you use the word devil. So one of the talks that I give is called The Devil Out by Fire, smoke and Incense. And it's actually looking at a lot of the, the literature from not only Christianity, but, but many religions over the last 6,000 years that talk about how incense and incense smoke and fragrance, et cetera, expels, the, the evil expels, the devil expels demons, things like that. Now, for some people listening to this, it's like, it's not, you say, oh, is is John about to go woo woo, you know? And, and it's, it's not that at all. I mean, I think, you know, it's, I meet a lot of people that might fall into, you know, kind of the woowoo category. If you look at me or you're watching the video of this, you know, I'm in a tie.

Vance Crowe [00:21:53] Oh yeah. I almost told you you were a little square coming in here. Like you got your tie on and you're doing great. But I'm just saying, like, I would these to you and what you're talking about would not fit together in my mind.

John Launius [00:22:06] Yeah. Well, it's interesting, there's this expression that came up a number of years ago with my friends is that they, they call me a shaman in a suit. And, and so when you, like, when you look at the word shaman, you know, the, the, the word you know, comes it, it's Russian or it's, you know, that part of the world. But it's a, it basically means, you know, someone who's responsible for the connection between the physical realm and quote everything else, right? So your thoughts could be everything else because your thoughts manifest in the physical world, but they don't start in the physical world. You know, they're, they're, they're starting and ending in many ways. You know, obviously in the space between our ears now, that's the, that's the, the human brain. Right? Now we also know from, from the research that we have a heart brain, and we also know from the research that we have a gut brain. And so there's actually three brains within our body that are all either working in opposition to each other or in agreement with each other. You know, the

Vance Crowe [00:23:11] Gut one, I can see, right? I'm currently teaching my daughter how to be potty trained. And we're at the very first stages. And you have to, and it's really interesting because you forget that you yourself have the, oh, I have a feeling, right? And I need to recognize one, that, that feeling doesn't mean I should just squat down and go to the bathroom. Right? It means I, like, now I need to do something about this. Right?

John Launius [00:23:34] And

Vance Crowe [00:23:34] Then you have an elapsed amount of time between there, but a child doesn't know this. Right? So you have to make them aware that they are having this sensation. So when you say gut brainin, I am right there, right now trying to teach that to a child. But a heart, brain, I don't, I don't know what that is.

John Launius [00:23:51] So the Japanese word for heart or sincerity of heart is makoto. And so I believe that this is Harvard and the Mayo Clinic, over the past 10 to 15 years, there was this phenomenon that was showing up where when there was a heart transplant that would take place when the heart transplant was done successfully, and the, and the patient recovered, they would start to all of a sudden display habits or preferences that they didn't have before. Like a young person might pick up skateboarding for no particular reason, come to find out that donor was a skateboarder. And so there's, there's, I mean, I would just say go to the internet and look this up. But there's a, a ton of research that's beginning to emerge that what the Japanese and what, you know, Asian cultures were saying for years and years and years, is that there is the makoto, there is the, the heart brain as well as the physical brain and the gut brain. And so moving all those three together, you know, really creates some interesting dialogue.

Vance Crowe [00:24:59] Yeah. I mean, I can see where the, where the woowoo you are balancing things. 'cause as you described this, it's very hard for me not to be like, no, that that can't be right. But I have no reason not to, to be open to it. And I certainly believe that there are thoughts that are not driven by your logical brain, right? That, that, that there are in fact also raising a child, right? You, you see very clearly, the human beings are driven by the emotions. And those emotions are in a series of impulses like electricity, right? You watch a child being happy, happy, happy. They realize they want cheese. Now the, the everything about them is about cheese. And at first you're like, oh, that's what children do. And then you're like, no, no, no, that's in me right now. I feel the same thing. Right? I want cheese now that I'm thinking about it, but I figure out a way to tamp it down. And that's not your logical brain, but is that the heart, brain? You're

John Launius [00:25:56] Talking about it. I, so, so there's an aspect of that. And so when you were talking about a, again, your daughter, the subconscious brain or the subconscious part of our mind stops developing around the age 13. So quite honestly, when we are using our subconscious brain, you're accessing a 10-year-old. Whoa. Right. So what becomes, because, so there's this concept called imprints. Okay. So if you looked back over the course of your life, and I said, pick a defining moment from your childhood that from that moment following you were changed. Can you pick one?

Vance Crowe [00:26:38] Yeah. I mean, most of them are ones I wouldn't want, I wouldn't wanna say. Well, right, right. Well, they

John Launius [00:26:43] Might, but, but is there a safe one that, that, that you'd be willing to share?

Vance Crowe [00:26:47] Oh, certainly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

John Launius [00:26:49] What would that be?

Vance Crowe [00:26:50] I was at a boy scout camp.

John Launius [00:26:53] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:26:53] And I was working as a counselor in training. And so I was shooting 20 twos on the gun range. And I got really good, like really, really good to the degree that I could shoot the clothes pins off from 50 yards away with a 22. Like, I was really good. So I was doing it all the time. And I got caught. And the guy that was running the range, my experience with doing something wrong and getting caught was that you would get in trouble, you know?

John Launius [00:27:21] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:22] Anger. He played this up with the other kids and said he was gonna call my mother. And he walked out to the truck and he got his big bag phone, and he held it up. And I thought he called her, but I noticed right as he was getting started that the buttons were still lit up. So she wasn't talking. And he gives this big explanation and he hangs up the phone and the kids are all watching wide-eyed. And then he says, ah, your mother wanted me to give you this. And he gave me a, like a pretend kiss on the cheek. Right. And I realized in this moment that he was doing this big display for them. Yeah.

John Launius [00:27:56] Because

Vance Crowe [00:27:56] He needed them to not try and do what I was doing, but he was being eternally kind to me. I wasn't in trouble. He made a joke of it. He actually made me look like a god in the eyes of these other boy scouts.

John Launius [00:28:09] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:09] And it imprinted on me a level of compassion for other people

John Launius [00:28:13] That I

Vance Crowe [00:28:13] Didn't have before that day. And in fact, then from that day forward, would always look for chances when I'm really angry or I've found some way, like, what's the compassion moment I can do here? Yeah.

John Launius [00:28:25] Does

Vance Crowe [00:28:25] That fit?

John Launius [00:28:26] That fits? So that's a positive imprint. So that particular experience from your childhood has set up a particular way of being that you are now as an adult with as many people as you can be. Would, would that be correct?

Vance Crowe [00:28:42] A hundred percent. So

John Launius [00:28:43] Here's the other side of that. When you talked about our, your shadow self a little while ago, right? We have many, many imprints over the course of our lifetime that we have never done anything with in a, in a productive way. So if we're relating all of this specifically to hypnotherapy or incense journey or things like that, is that I can use different types of incense and fragrances to unlock parts of your subconscious mind. Because I've been working with this for 40 years. I, when I was nine years old, I started studying two things. World incense and martial arts. I hold numerous black belts and numerous styles. And you would, again, you would never know it because, you know, like, like if you go out on the internet, you know, there's all those jokes about like martial artists and you know, guys that walk into the room and they're all ready to fight. It's, it is, it's not that at all. It's, it's really, it's about understanding the, the unification between your mind, your body, and your spirit. And we will spend a lifetime if we have the opportunity to learn to integrate those. And oftentimes we don't know where to go. Like some, you know, like we're beginning to get a little bit away from the negative stigma of therapy. But if you find someone that you trust, and, you know, we make jokes oftentimes like, oh, well you're acting, you're, you're my friend, but you're acting like my therapist. Right? Well, we're all, all of us, every single one of us on the planet are looking to work out parts of ourselves that keep us from being our full, magnificent, amazing self.

John Launius [00:30:23] Now I'm talking like this to you on this podcast. 'cause I feel a safe space to do that. Am I gonna talk this way in every environment? No, I'm not, because, you know, the world isn't a safe place. We know this, but the spaces that we create with others can become the safe spaces. So it's not so much a focus on, you know, how do I change the world? No, you can't change the world, but you can change yourself and you can change the dynamic between your circle of friends. My circle of friends is not very large, even though I know a lot of people. But when it comes to like, sitting down and having a conversation like we're having right now, it's fairly rare. In addition to that, it's fairly rare for most people on the planet. And we would be much better off if we were able to create safe spaces for each other to then begin to work some of the things out that we have that's going on with us that, you know, before you're able to work that out, you might have to have an abreaction where you might have to cry, you might have to laugh, you might have to get angry before you get happy. Right. And giving ourselves permission to be able to do that is really all about everything that we're gonna talk about and have talked about. So

Vance Crowe [00:31:35] I, when I, when I hear you say this, so when we're not using this space for podcasts, we do these things called Legacy Interviews.

John Launius [00:31:41] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:31:42] And we interview people for, to tell their story of their lives, their childhood, their career they had, their marriage, parenting, and the legacy they wanna leave behind. And one of the things that has become very, very clear to me, I think I thought this before, but now I really know it, is that most people go, most of their lives never having had anyone listen to them

John Launius [00:32:03] And

Vance Crowe [00:32:04] They talk. It's not that there's, you know, maybe if they say, Hey, pass me the salt. Somebody acknowledges that they want you have that request, and it's easier for them to fulfill that request than to ignore you completely. But about the things that they're thinking about, about the perspectives that they have, about how something, you know, struck them, they never have that. And so when you do this for an hour and a half, people finish and they are either like, oh, this was the most contemplative meditation I've ever had in my life. Or they look like they've just jumped out of an airplane. Right? Like they, they, they just went skydiving and they just had an exhilarating experience. And it's all because when, when was the last time somebody took an hour and a half to talk with an old man that wants to reflect back on his life? Almost never. Yeah.

John Launius [00:32:54] So I'm gonna talk about the, at least two of the five levels of psychological trust. While I'm doing that, what I, what I, what I would like you to do Vance, is, is smell. And I'm gonna talk about the difference between smell and listening in, in, in the incense tradition. Just start to, and just like spend like 30 seconds with that fragrance. Just allow it to, to, you know, to work with you over the next 30 seconds or so. So when we're looking at the five levels of psychological trust, the first two are, do you get me? And are you for me? And so when we, when we talk about starting to develop psychological trust with another human being, the first two have to be met. Which is that, do you get me right? Do you get me? And are you for me? And once I know that is really true, then I can start to be my authentic self in a safe way. And

Vance Crowe [00:33:58] That is dead on. That is dead on. And it's so fundamental to human interaction that it is shocking that we don't, we aren't more conscious of those two things. Yeah.

John Launius [00:34:09] And when you think about, you know, people that may wear certain clothes or do certain things to keep, you know, you away from them. Like if I'm just, I'm taking a, like if we imagine the punk scene from the seventies, right? With the big, you know, collars with the, with the sharp points on it and you know, and all that. It's like in many ways people were dressing that way Yes. To be unique, but yet they're all in the same group looking the same. But it, it was also that, you know, don't approach me, don't I, you know, there's so much fear, you know, that with that, you know, there's a, there's an expression called, you know, that which you resists persists. So this goes back to the Misco and the Koko is that misco mine, like water is that, you know, water is content with the low places that people disdain, yet it nourishes all things coal ro if you have pure fragrance, like what you're smelling right now, which we're gonna talk about here in a moment, kno koro, is that if you're being your authentic self, what happens is that you, the person I'm I'm talking with begins to mirror me and you get authentic. And so when you meet somebody who's like, eh, well, you know, Vance, eh, you know, I run three companies and I, you know, I've got a couple million dollar, well, you're gonna already be on, be on edge. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not gonna trust the conversation that we can have because you're not clear if I get you or or if I'm for you for that matter.

John Launius [00:35:48] Alright, so let's talk about, so what's your experience? I'm, I'm not gonna tell you what it is yet, but what is your experience of the chipped wood that you're smelling?

Vance Crowe [00:35:58] Well, that's what I was going to say. It, it's clearly wood. Yep. But it's not like sawdust in the way that you get, you know, on a construction site. Yeah. Yeah. It's something much more akin to an old cedar closet. Mm. Or, or something. It, it smells like longevity. Like it, it smells like something that has, is alive because it smells, but, but is still been around for a while.

John Launius [00:36:25] Do you have any sense about what it is?

Vance Crowe [00:36:27] I I would've said like a balsa or a cedar or something like that.

John Launius [00:36:32] Okay. So yeah. So you're right, it is a wood, but what that is, and, and you're gonna know this word when I say it, and so that's the reason why I'm kind of drawing this out, right, sandalwood.

Vance Crowe [00:36:41] Oh, okay. Yes, yes. In fact, I get shampoo 'cause I like the smell of sandalwood. Yeah. But I didn't, that's funny. I didn't know that. Yeah.

John Launius [00:36:49] So that's sandalwood that you're holding right there is called Old mountain sandalwood. So I'm gonna put it on the warmer. So what do you notice about the quality of your mind by spending a few moments with that fragrance?

Vance Crowe [00:37:10] Well, I noticed that by, by coming back and continuing to smell it, that's the thing that grabs your attention for just a moment. It's not, it's not very long, but it's like, okay, whatever you're talking about, if I smell this now, that's the thing I'm thinking about. And I can flip back and I would say very calm, very settled. But, but whenever you take the, the whiff in it grabs your attention.

John Launius [00:37:35] Yeah. If I'm looking at your physiology from when you were working with the Borneo camper a moment ago, like there was this very much like you were sitting up, well, now you're more, you're, you're, you're more relaxed, you're laid back. Sandalwood in numerous religious cultures has been used as a contemplative or meditative incense to assist with calming and clearing and centering the mind. There's a Japanese word that has a number of meanings, but two meanings that are pertinent to this conversation. Shi kaku is the word shiku. It means dead angle, or it means eye of the hurricane. Okay. So a dead angle in martial arts is where you want to be because it protects you from being hit. The, the more metaphorical or philosophical expression, which is shiku eye of the hurricane, is that most people, and you've seen, you see this every day and you know, like no offense to big box stores, but if you go to a big box store and you watch people walking around, they live in chaos, you can just see it, it drips from their, from from their being. So if most people live in this, in the chaos and the outer edges of the hurricane, one of the things that we can assist our fellow, you know, humans with, is moving out of the chaos to the center calm of the hurricane.

John Launius [00:39:07] 'cause once you're in the center, calm, but there's a high, there's a lot more pressure, right. When, when you're in the center of the hurricane, but then you can begin to move the hurricane and create a new path for yourself. So one aspect of the study of incense, the study of fragrance, hypnosis, all of that is bringing people back to their center calm. That we were all born with, that we all have a, we, we have a memory of it. Like we remember being children and being at calm or at peace. Now, there are exceptions to that, depending on the kind of home that you were grown up in and things like that. But we've all been able to, to see that when we were children, there was a different level of calmness or clarity than where it is now when we're adulting. So, you know, when you, when you begin to look at a way, like, here's the thing, when it, when it comes. So hang on a second. Are you getting the Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:40:04] Yeah, yeah. In fact, like it was pronounced right? When you, when you first get it, you're like, wait, am I smelling it? And then you're like, yeah, I am. I really am.

John Launius [00:40:11] So do you see any smoke? No. No, not at all. So, well, so let's talk about, so soda, dki, and soko for a second. In the Japanese incense tradition, there's two types of incense burning soda, dki and soko. One is for devotional purposes, and the other is for just enjoyment. But the Japanese, who were essentially a culture that was the last to receive incense. And, and what I mean by that is that as Buddhism spread, Japan was one of the last countries to get Buddhism. And Buddhism is synonymous with incense. And it comes from a, a very old sutra talking about how in the Buddhist world, everything is fragrant like incense. Now for people that aren't Buddhist, you might say, well, how does that relate to Christianity? Well, there was one in the history of Christianity, there was the, the tradition of calling Jesus the panther. And why would they call him the panther? Well, the panther lies in weight and uses its sweet breath to actually attract people. Okay? So what's interesting about the fact that, that you're seeing no smoke here, is that the, the, the Japanese developed, and I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna, this is a, that that conversation alone's probably 45 minutes. Right? But there's a particular way of, of warming incense in Japan. And you're seeing this modified with an electric burner today where we can set the temperature at the perfect amount to get the fragrance without the other part of it, which would be the smoke or the burning.

John Launius [00:41:48] And, and the kind of the other parts of that, well, again, the metaphor or analogy, depending on how we're using this, is that if you and I are set to the right temperature as we begin to connect, then your natural fragrance will start to emanate, and my natural fragrance will be begin to emanate. And so by setting expectations, by, you know, finding things that we value that you know are shared between the two of us, we can really create an amazing experience between the two of us. And then this relates to some, you know, some of the words like, you know, like the smell of success or the smell of fear. And so we see fragrance being used in these ways to explain

Vance Crowe [00:42:33] Certain,

John Launius [00:42:34] Certain aspects. But I, I I I, I wanna make sure that I don't miss this point though. So earlier I was talking about how, we'll talk about the difference between smelling and listening. Okay? So in Japan and in other countries, the, the idea here, it's a smell. Incense is actually considered crude or rude. If you're listening to the incense, then you're listening for the value that it can have on your life. Sandalwood, the one we're with right now in the room, very meditative, very calming. So you'll notice that the conversation, like if you were to go back and listen to the first part of the conversation,

Vance Crowe [00:43:11] Yeah. I'm wired up, ready to go and,

John Launius [00:43:13] And listen where we are now, we are relaxed. So now someone can say, well, can't I just go out and buy essential oils? Of course you can because it's, it's not like this isn't unique or special to only me. It's really more about the process than it is about the practitioner. Right? So how I often language this is that the incense is the true teacher. It has nothing to do with me. Now I'm providing a particular context. I'm providing a particular way in which that you're receiving it. Just like, in the same way that if you are in therapy, it's not uncommon to have people go through eight or 10 therapists until they finally find someone that they resonate with. Right? That means that the frequencies are, are lined up. So speaking of frequencies for a moment, this sandalwood that you are experiencing, I think it's the University of Arizona. Don't quote me though. They did a ton of research in the nineties figuring out how does incense, like where, like, what is the vibrational aspect of it? Like if you, if we look at physics, we know that everything in our physical reality vibrates at a specific level. In order for it to exist, we raise or lower the vibration of this microphone. It ceases to exist. Same thing with us. So when you start getting into, and this is maybe more of the woowoo stuff that is based in science now, is that, you know, what is the frequency that you're looking to have in your life to be able to get you to begin to take consistent action in a very particular way to develop for yourself a new reality.

John Launius [00:44:51] When you thought about creating this podcast, there was a whole bunch of physical stuff you had to do. You had to go get microphones, cameras, you had to find staff, you had to figure out guests. You, you do all these things, right? And so there was this period of uncomfortability where now then after that point in time where you've created all that, then you've created the space to be able to have the kinds of conversations that you're having on this podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:45:15] Yeah. 100%.

John Launius [00:45:16] Yeah. So it, it, so the, the, the point is this, is that the sub, so going back to subconscious and conscious mind is that it takes a 91 days for a human being to actually upgrade their identity around whatever it is that they're doing. So if someone wants to learn guitar, and let's say that they're a, you know, that, that they're brilliant at it and they learn all the notes and everything very quickly, they're still gonna be 91 days where that individual feels uncomfortable. Where they feel like, you know, I'm not a guitarist yet, but then one day in tho in that span of those 91 days, they're like, I am a guitarist. And suddenly then the speaking changes, the reality changes, and everything around you changes.

Vance Crowe [00:45:59] What's your sense for why 91 days? Why not 120, why not 30? What's going on?

John Launius [00:46:07] I, you know, I, the, that's, that's the research for, for, for lack of a better term. And it's often referred to, again, as an identity upgrade, because the subconscious mind does not like change. So if we're just pulling from, if we're just pulling from, from hypnotherapy for a moment, if somebody wants to lose weight, we're not gonna tell them to, to lose the weight. We're gonna tell them to let the weight go, because the subconscious mind doesn't like to lose things. So if I say we're gonna let it go, then that is you making a conscious decision to, to let that go. So it's something that you can really do for yourself very, very quickly, which is that, you know, instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna quit drinking, or I'm gonna quit smoking, or I'm gonna whatever, no, just let it go. I'm gonna let go drinking, I'm gonna let go smoking, I'm gonna let go. That particular way of being that makes people angry when I talk to them,

Vance Crowe [00:47:04] It's profound in its simplicity. And I find it to be slippery. Just like when we were describing, when you said, you know, what does that smell like? You know, I can grab it for a second, and then it's go when you said, you know, what does pine smell like? Right? I can grab that idea for a moment, but then it vanishes. Yeah. And can I bring it to mind? No, I can bring the image to mind. Right.

John Launius [00:47:25] And

Vance Crowe [00:47:26] The very thing you're saying here about, you know, letting the weight go or letting the drinking go, it seems like an idea. Very easy to grasp for a moment.

John Launius [00:47:35] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:36] And then it slips away when you look at it too directly. Yeah. Almost like you were saying about the, the incense being something like, if you're smelling it, you're not Yeah. You're not doing it. Right. Right. You're, you're supposed to be just letting it absorb with you.

John Launius [00:47:48] Yeah. Well, in your, in your response right now, you just, you just answered it. So nothing that we do as humans will last, including our physical bodies. Right. At some point we're gonna depart from earth. So if we're talking about bringing in something new when we do it, it only lasts for a moment. So that's the importance of having consistent action related specifically to your intended outcome. So a you know, I just, so let's step away for a moment from incense or all of this, like, when I'm work, I work with a lot of executives and I work with a lot of, you know, really interesting people around really being as effective as they can be. And for some people they may not be scent oriented, but, you know, so where are they? Are they audio? I mean, are they, are, you know, are are they tactile, are they kinesthetic? Are they, you know, visual, audio, things like that. So when we're looking at the entire mechanism for me being, I, I was never an audio person until I worked in radio. And then once I worked in radio, I, I now enjoy audio books more than reading a physical

Vance Crowe [00:49:00] Book in my experience. Exactly. I, until somebody taught me, you know, how could this sound or what is going on there? Yeah. You don't appreciate it, but once you can hear it, then you can hear all of the stuff that's in there. Yeah. And you really appreciate the crystal clear quality or the, the volume being just right. You really care about it, but you can't care about it until you understand it.

John Launius [00:49:20] Yeah. And so when you talk about, so I, so there's this concept that people that work with me know, which is called being whole and complete. So imagine Vance that you were able to leave every single conversation that you ever have going forward, saying everything you need to say and hearing everything you need to hear, and you could leave every conversation. How do you think that that would transform your life?

Vance Crowe [00:49:47] I mean, it would make you feel much more stable, much more like you, you knew what you, you knew what you had to do and you were completing the, the, those things because you understood

John Launius [00:49:59] Yeah. You'd also be leaving baggage behind.

Vance Crowe [00:50:02] Yeah.

John Launius [00:50:02] So, so much in life, we are not given the ability to hear everything we need to hear and say everything we need to say. If you said something to me and gave me instructions, like let's say that we're in an airplane and, and, and we know we have to jump out of this aircraft, right? If my arrogance is getting in the way of hearing your instructions of how to pull a parachute, that could be problematic for me because I may not pull the parachute at the right time, and then I may end up hitting the ground and, you know, cease to exist. Right? So being whole and complete is one big aspect that involves the incense, the martial arts, the work I do, you know, as a, as a hypnotherapist, the work I do as an executive coach, the things that I do in a whole number of areas to have you, not me, you become the most effective and productive that you can be based on what you want. There are some people in the world who are content to get up, have their, you know, breakfast, watch some tv, and that's all they really want out of life. But the kind of people that I wanna associate with, and the people that I want to really learn from and grow with are people that are literally having the philosophy of you're either expanding or you're contracting in life. I learned this when I had my first business, you know, back in the nineties, which was that even if I didn't sell anything in the course of the day, I still had lights on. I still had payroll. So, you know, one could say that you're either always expanding or you're not, you know, or the, and or if you're just standing still, you're, you're, you're contracting.

John Launius [00:51:36] And so one of the things that I'm, I'm always asking people or having them look at is, where do you want to grow today? And how can I be a safe space to be able to do that? And again, for some people it sounds a little woo woo, and it's not at all.

Vance Crowe [00:51:52] I think it actually sounds very approachable, in fact, far more approachable than, you know, I, than typical therapy. Right. You know, like, to, to describe that, it often seems like people being mired in their past Mm.

John Launius [00:52:07] Such

Vance Crowe [00:52:07] That like, they believe, Hey, if I could just hack away at what went wrong, then somehow my future will be solved.

John Launius [00:52:14] And

Vance Crowe [00:52:14] This sounds much more like, just like incense very present, right? Yeah, it is. I I can only change something now. And, and much of that is about my perception of things. Yeah. I, I wanna go back to the thing you brought up about, you know, what, if you could have a conversa every time you had a conversation, you could say everything that you needed to say and you could hear everything that you needed to hear. How does one get closer to doing that?

John Launius [00:52:39] So it's a, it's a practice. So there was a, it says, I can't, I can't believe I'm referencing this, but there is a, there was a post on Instagram that talked about how if you want to know who rules you, it's the person that you can't question or, or criticize. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:52:56] Right? That's right.

John Launius [00:52:57] So when we're looking at being whole and complete is that, let's just use the instruction, you know, story again is that if I didn't hear you properly, or I'm have a question, I say Vance, look, I I have a question. What you told me to do is that you told me to put the parachute on, and then you told me that that yellow cord is what again is, okay, so that's the cord I'm gonna pull. Okay, got it. So on one level, sometimes we don't hear another person because we don't wanna occur stupid or we don't wanna occur less than, that's, that's, that's maybe the better way to say that. And so by beginning to practice saying everything you need to say and hearing everything you need to hear, it will transform every relationship that you have with your boss, your spouse, your friends, you name it. Because you're actually gonna take the time to get whole and complete regarding all of that. And how it relates to incense and how it relates to hypnotherapy is that we all wanna be whole and we oftentimes don't feel like that we are, you know, and, and these are things that we don't normally talk to others about because we forget that we're all having the same experience. It's really ridiculous.

Vance Crowe [00:54:14] Yeah. And it's, and and I'm struck that the, when I was growing up, my father, you know, I'm the middle child of seven and my father was very intentional about how he taught us to think about morals and values. And I got it in me that omission is the form of why. So it, it became a system where if my father figured out that you had told him something, but you didn't tell him everything, then big problems would happen. Pro probably be better just to straight up lie to him. Although that would not be good. And that has been a tremendous help to me. Yeah.

John Launius [00:54:56] And

Vance Crowe [00:54:56] In life and in a way that it took me a long time to realize that other people don't have that. Yeah. Right. Like, and my mentor, a guy named Pete, he's a hundred some years old, he was like that, but he figured out how to tell people everything that he needed to say without it ever having a barb,

John Launius [00:55:15] Without

Vance Crowe [00:55:16] It ever having some, some sense of him protecting himself by So, so I find that what you're saying to be really like, I'm like, yeah, well I do tell everybody I think, but

John Launius [00:55:30] I think

Vance Crowe [00:55:30] The way I deliver that message is oftentimes barbed. Whereas I think many many other people are saying, I don't say everything I think, and I just keep it inside.

John Launius [00:55:40] Yeah. Well, I appreciate that you mentioned lying, so you, like before we started, you talked about how you said you wanted to know a little bit about my government background. Okay. So I'll give you a little bit of context for that. I'm not gonna go too deep into it, but before nine 11, I had a company where we taught military, government, law enforcement, and other groups, different use of force policy up to deadly force in the martial arts or defensive tactics, which is the word that's used today for that. And when nine 11 happened, a couple of months afterwards, I received a phone call and this, this guy had a very thick Hispanic accent. He's like, are are you a patriot? And I'm like, yeah, I'm a patriot. What's, what's this about? He's like, he's like, do you want that job? And I'm like, doing what? Right. And, and he told, he told me enough, and I'm like, I said, but I said, well, I don't really have a sense of the, of the job. And, and he goes, well, can you be on a plane in three days to DC to train? And I said again, to do what? And he goes, well, really, we really can't tell you, but it pays this much. And I said, ah, I'll be on a plane in three days. And so one of the first things that I learned when I was being trained was that, first of all, everyone is a liar. And there's only three ways that all human beings lie, lie by omission, lie by exaggeration, or an outright untruth. So if you understand, and this is, this is applicable to everything in life, including sales.

John Launius [00:57:14] Are you exaggerating? Are you omitting or are you straight up telling me a lie? And so, given a lot of, a lot of my role is sales, business development, you know, as an executive, et cetera. When I'm talking to somebody, it's like, are you wasting? Just tell me yes or no. I don't, I don't, well, you know, maybe I'll get with you next week. You know the word things like words like maybe I'll try things like that. Those are all forms of lies, right? But lie by exaggeration, lie by omission, or an outright lie. And once you begin to start to listen to people in that way, it will change not only how you communicate with people, but how they communicate with you. So, not a joke. Whenever I hire anyone, the first conversation I have with them is like, hi. Okay, so we're gonna be working together. I just want you to know that every, every human being is a liar. And I want you to know that all of us will do this. We will lie by exaggeration. We will lie by omission, or we'll tell an outright untruth. My request is that you don't do that with me. And the reason why that I'm saying this to you is because I listen in that way. Right? How we listen is often the reality that gets created around us,

Vance Crowe [00:58:22] How we listen, is how the reality gets created around us

John Launius [00:58:26] Is oftentimes how reality gets created around us.

Vance Crowe [00:58:28] Wow. So

John Launius [00:58:29] If I'm listening for your greatness vans, what's gonna show up?

Vance Crowe [00:58:32] Yeah. My greatness,

John Launius [00:58:34] Right? If I listen for like my mistrust for you, what's gonna show up?

Vance Crowe [00:58:37] The things that I, you know, the flaws and the right,

John Launius [00:58:40] Because you're flawed. I'm flawed. We're all flawed. Yay. Right? So it's, it's a lot of this is giving ourselves permission to, again, to be our whole selves. And there's many ways to do that. You know, like, you know, if you happen to be Christian, fantastic. There's a path for that. If you're a Buddhist, fantastic. There's a path for that. If you're Hindu, if you are a Sikh, if you're, you know, all of that, there's all of these particular structures. What's interesting for me is that given that, again, starting at nine years old studying world incense traditions, that means that I have had to study every single religion and culture that relates to incense. And guess what? All of them have it.

Vance Crowe [00:59:23] Yeah. I mean, you put a new smell in here. Yeah.

John Launius [00:59:25] And

Vance Crowe [00:59:26] I, when I was readjusting my seat, I caught a, a whiff of it. Yeah. I was like, and I was like, oh, that smells like church, right? Catholic church.

John Launius [00:59:33] Alright, so, so I love that you said so, so I, then I take it that you're Catholic,

Vance Crowe [00:59:38] Well, grew up the Catholic. Yeah. Okay,

John Launius [00:59:39] Got it. Perfect. Alright. So this is, so this, I love this connect. So the in imprint Catholic imprinted.

Vance Crowe [00:59:45] Yeah.

John Launius [00:59:46] So the incense that's on right now is called Kafi. What is Kafi? Kafi is was the main incense of the Egyptian culture, burned three times a day. And what's inside of Kaifi, one of the many ingredients is frankincense. Frankincense obviously relates to frankincense and myrrh. If you're Catholic, you have been in the Catholic church when frankincense has been burned. And I, when I give lectures or public demonstrations, I can always tell you who the Catholics are

Vance Crowe [01:00:15] Because they're like, oh my God, it smell like, ah, ah,

John Launius [01:00:17] You know,

Vance Crowe [01:00:18] I mean, it does smells like, oh, this, this is gonna be a long mass. This is gonna be a long one.

John Launius [01:00:23] Well, what's interesting though is that, is that, so I, I have a er friend of mine who was trained in the Catholic church. The Referers obviously create, you know, the burners that the swinging sensors, right? And the quality of this, of the frankincense that the Catholic church burns for the most part is lower quality. Hoja is actually the best, or one of the best forms of frankincense. It's almost like a yellowish green in color. And it's a, it's like a, if you know, a visual image might be the size of, of a, of a dime or the, or like a nickel, right? If you look at most of the incense that's burned in the Catholic church, it's very small little pebbles, you know, like, like fish rocks, right? Like, you know, like in a fish, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:05] They just take a spoon and sprinkle it over the coal. Well,

John Launius [01:01:08] So Kafi was also considered to be a healing combination of fragrances that was burned throughout Greek and Roman times. You know, if we look at Caesar and some of the other rulers, you know, quite literally they would have tons and tons of frankincense be brought in. So let's talk a little bit about frankincense. From a, from a medicinal standpoint, when you burn frankincense, the smoke actually kills bacteria. The smoke actually helps your lungs. The Mayo Clinic is using frankincense to help with lung issues and lung cancer. So when we talk, I mean, like, what, you know, what, whatever word you want to use for the divine is that if, if earth is the garden of even, sorry, garden of Eden, metaphorically, then everything that's created by the by, by whatever words you want to call it, is something that we can use in our daily life to continue to heal us, refine us, bring us back to center, et cetera. So I'm, I'm watching your physiology, but I want you to say it. What do you notice about your mind right now?

Vance Crowe [01:02:23] Probably depth, right? Just, just, it seems not just calm, but more like, a little bit like I'm high actually,

John Launius [01:02:34] So con, so contemplative.

Vance Crowe [01:02:37] Yeah, that's, that's right. Yeah. And I would say that my experience of being high is, is not about giggling or couch lock. Right? It's very much like I'm gonna take this thought and take the time to explore it very deeply. Right? And that is exactly where, where, yeah.

John Launius [01:02:53] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:02:54] That's very good. Yes.

John Launius [01:02:55] So where you are now, so what you, what you're doing is that you're accessing your alpha brain state. So if we go back to the mental image earlier in, in our talk of the stick of incense burning in front of the black background, and we're watching the smoke, right? When you're watching the smoke or when you're having this experience of a pleasant fragrance, your alpha brain state is taking over. The alpha brain state is also the brain state that when you're focusing to put on a green, that's the alpha brain state, which is in many ways the reason why the people love golf Yes. For the game itself, but also the mental clarity that begins to emerge from that because of the way that the, the way the Hindus would explain it is ade single pointed concentration. So we're in this experience right now, you may have just gotten another whiff of, of, of the kaifi, right? And so it's putting us in this contemplative state of mind when we are in a contemplative state of mind, there really isn't there, there, there's no space for being stressed. There's no space or there's no, you know, we're not rushed, we're not worried about what's next. I love the,

Vance Crowe [01:04:05] Once I had children, I had to stop doing juujitsu, but I was doing juujitsu for quite a while. And the thing that I miss most about it was you would leave on Wednesday night and nothing could bother you.

John Launius [01:04:21] Nothing

Vance Crowe [01:04:21] Could be wrong. Yeah. You were in total focus, and it was because, you know, you and ju a juujitsu session by rolling with other people. Yeah. And the goal is to get them to submit you, and you're trying to submit them. Yeah. And so you, you aren't thinking about what, you know, what I'm having for dinner or what happened earlier today, or what's going on tomorrow. Because the present moment is a hundred percent. And I would say the experience that I'm having right now is the same one as I had driving home from Juujitsu, which was always the best 20, 25 minutes of my alone week, you know, and, and never had time like that. But that's what this is.

John Launius [01:04:59] Yeah. And so if we connect that to hypnotherapy for a moment, when you have a productive session, and I would say right now we're having a productive session because your mind has gotten to a place that you enjoy, that you feel centered with, et cetera, would you like to guess how long a hypnotic suggestion or a hypnotic state will last for most people?

Vance Crowe [01:05:23] Just a few minutes, I'm guessing.

John Launius [01:05:25] So, so, so if you're actually giving a suggestion and a, and what's referred to as a hypnotic prescription, and you, and you begin to practice that, it's about 72 hours. Oh. So if, so, when we get into a good state, so long as you are continuing to presence that on your own, you can hold that very powerfully for about 72 hours. Now, every time that you're hypnotized, you, you can go deeper and deeper. And so there, there's evidence that shows that it can last a lot longer. But again, you know, when you're, when you're taking people out of, and I, I'm gonna say mostly Americans because we have such a, a weird amalgamation of thoughts and ideas, you know, in the United States, which is great. But, you know, if I go back to the first part of the conversation regarding incense is that one of the first things I do when I give a public talk is I say, what do you wait? Like, how do you associate incense? And you get the jokes like the sixties and marijuana and whatever. And you know, when I was in college, I used to, I used to burn incense and cover the marijuana smell, which is funny because it, it didn't work. It, it doesn't work. It's, it, it just doesn't work. Right? The reason why that you think it does is a little thing called olfactory orientation, which is that once all of your receptors, you know, in, in your nose for, for, for, you know, to not use the scientific terms, is that once all those receptors are used up, you don't smell it anymore. You know, which is the reason why that when you walk, you know, like if you just cooked something after a while, you don't smell it anymore.

John Launius [01:07:01] You walk outside, come back in your house, you're like, oh my gosh, the house smells like ions and garlic. And because then you're, you've cleared that out. Again, that can be used as a metaphor or an analogy for what we do in life. If you're mired in, in constant stress or you're in an abusive narcissistic relationship, like I do a lot of work with people that are, you know, getting over the trauma of being in narcissistic relationships. You know, there, like now with the advent of social media, the statistics begin to show that at least 50% of the population now is exhibiting some form of narcissism. And if you haven't studied the damaging effects of narcissism, just go out on the internet for five minutes and you'll start to see that. And so we as human beings all have aspects of ourselves that can have that. But when you look at how much trauma that we encounter in the course of our life and how little healing we give ourselves, whether it's a massage, yoga, you know, meditate, things like that, it's, it's very small in relation to the rest of our experience in life.

Vance Crowe [01:08:15] When I think about people saying, we have trauma right now, you know, I'm not going to a coal mine to work. Yeah. I'm not threatened by war i famine is something that seems so distant as to almost not be possible. I'm, I'm certain that it is actually possible. So it's hard for me to wrap my mind around this idea that we are all experiencing trauma.

John Launius [01:08:41] I get it. I and I, and I, I hear you. And that may just be how you are orienting yourself. Like you're not all gonna allow yourself for that. But depending on where you fall from a political standpoint, you know, you might watch either CNN or Fox. And that's the, that's, let's just say that you're more of a Fox watcher than you are a CNN watcher. If you spend two hours watching Fox and then go over to CNN, you're gonna experience some trauma based based on the thinking and based on where that is. And so essentially, you know, when we're talking about trauma and pain, it's really where, you know, our boundaries and our values have been trampled upon for, for, for, for lack of a better term. And so some of these things are obviously necessary. Like stress is something that's necessary if you want to build your body, right? We all have muscle, but I need to create stress. IE you know, resistance for you to build that. But what trauma is existing in your life that if we removed that or you removed it, is the better way to say it, how could you be much more effective? I assert that if you look, and we all do this, if I removed this from my life, I would be much more effective if I removed this way of being, I would be much more effective. And so some of the things that we don't see as trauma maybe aren't 'cause how we hold it.

John Launius [01:10:13] Right. And, and again, not everybody is in, you know, relationships that are, are abusive. Not everyone has a bad boss, you know, but everybody has ha has experiences with others where you're like, you know what? I gotta work with you, but I don't really agree with your values. And that's where a lot of the strife begins to emerge. So I think, I think long story short, and, and, and just kind of putting a button on this is that when I'm, I, because I, I oftentimes don't feel that I have a lot of trauma because I've done a lot of this work over the years, right. But when I'm, when I, when I ask myself, okay, what part of my personality, if I remove that, can I be much more effective? And it could be watching less television, you know, because certain TV shows will cause a mental trauma for us based on what it is. Like I don't watch horror films 'cause I don't need that stress in my life. You know? I also don't like it when I'm watching a TV show and like a character, you know, is going through an uncomfortable, you know, part of like a relationship or something. Or they're being like rejected, you know, by a man or a woman de de depending on what the situation is. It makes me feel uncomfortable. Why would I wanna put myself through that? Now there's reasons for that, but I pick and choose. I curate my life. That's, I think, I think that's a better way to say this, is that if everyone started curating their life, then they would automatically start to find where they could be more effective in everything they're doing.

Vance Crowe [01:11:42] I, I completely agree with that about the concept of curation. Because when you start saying, these are the things I want to allow my, my mind to think more of. There's a guy named Eric, well, who I've had on the podcast a couple of times. He's, he's written a lot about dreams And he talks about how television is basically faking out our dreams to, to not be like the purest form. That instead what we're doing is right before we go to bed, we're watching some story that our brain is piecing together. 'cause it can't distinguish between our lives and this, this make believe life. And so it's really distorting our dreams. And I started to take this seriously about like, hey, well what am I putting in my mind in order that the eight hours, not all of which you're dreaming during, but part of it, you know, significant portion, what can I be putting into my mind so that my dreams are better, more fulfilling? This was a great decision, right? This, this was like, because once you start cutting a few things out, and to your point about like, you don't realize something's a problem until you realize it. Yeah.

John Launius [01:12:53] And

Vance Crowe [01:12:53] Like, so you do carry around a bunch of bullshit. You do carry around a bunch of things that don't help you. And whether or not you label it as trauma is not actually the important thing. The important thing is that you identify I'm carrying around this stuff.

John Launius [01:13:07] Yeah. Well, the reason why that it's important to label things is that the subconscious mind cannot do anything with anything unless it has a label. So by labeling something a trauma, then the subconscious mind knows what to do with it.

Vance Crowe [01:13:25] I can accept that. I mean, I think that, you know, we, we as humans, like you, you know, any kind of time you're in a discussion, you're in a debate, you're whatever, you must define your terms. If you're not, if you don't define your terms, then you can be talking about different things. And really, you know, I believe a significant portion of human experience may, maybe, maybe all of it is the experience of sharing something with another person. Have having the understanding like, I'm a primate that is living on this rock

John Launius [01:13:57] That

Vance Crowe [01:13:58] I shouldn't be able to see you. Right? Yeah. It just happens that somehow through the course of evolution, this little set of tissue is able to grab, you know, this tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Yeah.

John Launius [01:14:12] That

Vance Crowe [01:14:12] Is visible light. And we can see each other and we can communicate. And I'm experiencing all these things. And when I find another person, and your term was resonate, but when I can find another person that can go, Ooh, ooh, ooh. And they have the same like, Ooh, ooh, ah, ah, that I do. Yeah. This is like amazing. Like it's a huge part of the what it is to be human. Maybe the only thing because just like you said, everything goes away. Right? So the only thing you have is some sort of connection for fleeting moments of time. Yeah.

John Launius [01:14:45] At the beginning of what you just said, what struck me or what I, what I started thinking about was blind spots. Right? Part of the reason why that we chose, we choose the people that we choose to be our friends, is that they either magnify or they allow us to conceal the blind spots about ourselves. And, and that's one of the beauties of having a coach or having a therapist of any kind, is that that individual starts to have you look at the blind spots that you don't even know that you have. Now, if you don't want to go out and get a therapist, you don't have to. A lot of my therapist training came from my work with fragrance because by warming, burning, whatever words you want to use there, things are gonna get unlocked in my subconscious and conscious mind that allow me to look at that

Vance Crowe [01:15:44] This is 100% true. Like, I, I cannot believe how much the smells of this. I'm like, audience, hear me

John Launius [01:15:52] Now.

Vance Crowe [01:15:53] Go out and find a way to do this smelling thing. Because it is profound how much it's opened up in this conversation. I'm like, we can still talk about your book, but we were gonna talk a lot more about your book and your, like other, you know, special forces training. But just the very act that we've been doing, this smell has gotten us to focus way more on the inside being way more patient about time and about how quick the conversation moves. Yeah.

John Launius [01:16:19] Well, I wanna be very clear. You said special forces. I have never been,

Vance Crowe [01:16:22] I'm sorry. Yeah.

John Launius [01:16:23] I've never been special forces. I just wanna make sure that, that my SF friends know that I am, that I am not that. And I have great respect for the training that that, that those gentlemen and, and other military personnel have done and, and gone through. Well, I, you know, you mentioned the book and I, I just want to, so first of all, hang on. First of all, do you know, do you know what the fragrance is now that's on the warmer?

Vance Crowe [01:16:51] No, I, the only thing I can say is it's closer to perfume than the other things. Okay. Like, it smells more beautiful, I think is the word that comes to mind.

John Launius [01:16:58] I love I love that you said that. So that's pure frankincense.

Vance Crowe [01:17:03] Okay.

John Launius [01:17:04] Pure frankincense. And notice you said beauty.

Vance Crowe [01:17:07] Yeah.

John Launius [01:17:08] Those were your words.

Vance Crowe [01:17:09] Yeah.

John Launius [01:17:09] Right. So when incense, so when I give a talk, I, so I will oftentimes give a talk on the difference between Christian and Jewish incense. And why would I do that? I once had a participant in southern Missouri say to me, now listen man, I don't understand now how, what does Jesus have to do with the Jews? And I said, well, you, you realize that Jesus was a Jew, right? No, he was a Christian. I said, well, no, the naming of that happened a little bit down the road. The reason why that I point that out is because there's a lot of misconceptions around actually, which religions used incense. Incense was a part of Judaism until the fall of the second temple. Now it's written that when the third temple emerges, incense will return. There's a whole bunch, there's a whole bunch more to this. But when you talk about, so again, that's, let's go back to the incense stick burning in front of the black background. Imagine the smoke rising. Okay? The pyramid text in Egypt talk about how that frankincense and other resins are the sweat of the gods. Okay? Back when there was obviously pantheism and things like that. But when you are wanting to give devotion to whatever name you want to call the divine, when you're burning incense, what happens to your attention, to your awareness? It starts to move up. 'cause you're watching, you're watching the, the, the smoke rise, right?

John Launius [01:18:43] You're putting your, you're literally, you're putting your face to the heavens. And so I think one of the interesting aspects of beyond the smell of incense, beyond the, the use of incense in certain reli and all religions for that matter, is that there's this other aspect of ourselves, our higher self. There's a number of other words for it, but you know, we oftentimes are not given the opportunity or the structure to continually access our higher self. And again, this is what this is all about. So, to, to connect this to what you were saying just a few moments ago about my book. So the book that I wrote in 2020 is called The Life and Times of Missouri's, Charles Parsons Between Art and War. And this is explained in great detail in the preface, but when I arrived at to Wash U in 2006, after five years working with the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, post 9 11, 1 of the first things that I was tasked to do as the person responsible for security and training of the Sam Fox School design and visual arts at Washington University in St. Louis, was the collection itself. And so the director of the museum, Sabina Ekman, asked that we get out all of the 19th century art that had started Washus art collection. And once everything was laid out, there was a lot of art and artifacts from the 19th century, specifically owned by a gentleman by the name of Charles Parsons.

John Launius [01:20:21] Charles Parsons lived from 1824 to 1905. He was a banker financier, he was a Civil war colonel. He was best friends with General Sherman and General Grant. He was one of the early founders of the American Bankers Association. If you've ever seen the mummies at the St. Louis Art Museum, two of those mummies he purchased in person in Egypt in 1895. One of them is the finest mummy outside of Egypt. And it's happens to be in St. Louis. And it's, it's, it's, it's called he WebU. And she was a singer in the temple of, of, of a moon. And it's gilded, meaning that it's been layered in gold. And she's the only non royalty mummy that is gilded, which makes it extraordinary. So back to the, how this relates to incense is that as I was looking at the table of artifacts, I walked over and I saw what's called a cogo. And a cogo is a, is a container that holds chipped mixtures. And it to have it, you know, when you're talking about the incense culture of Japan, to have a cogo a little bit, you're, you're, you know, you're refined. You're having a, a, an object that's holding something of value. IE the incense. And it was labeled as a bowl make. That's not a bowl. Then there was a toka incense burner. How do I know it's a tokugawa incense burner. You could see the toka gall crest, and you could see the Buddha, and you could see 16 of its disciples around the bowl itself or around the incense burner. I'm making the joke because it was labeled as a bowl.

John Launius [01:21:54] It's not a bowl, it's a toka gall incense burner. And then there was a bowl from a, a porcelain painter by the name of Yaba Maison, again, labeled as unknown, not uncommon in the 19th century, many collections at, at art museums around the world are just labeled as, as either unknown or what it might look like. But I, I went to the director and I said, that's a cogo, that's a Tokugawa incense burner. That's an OK mono of a Cole Malto, which is a, which is a Japanese incense master. And she's like, yeah, but it says bowl and it says this. And it says, I said, yeah, but the AEs record is incorrect. And she said, write an essay. So by writing an essay, what, what happened was that I, I came face to face with Charles Parsons. He is, he is an extraordinary 19th century business leader who used business to improve education. He was an abolitionist. He was against slavery. He was doing all of these progressive things. Like this is like, when you talk about things being woke today, he was what was called a wide awake in the 19th century. There were, there was an actual paramilitary group, an early part of the, of the Republicans that actually ended slavery that said, we are wide awakes and we are progressives. And those were the, those were the people that got Lincoln elected. So this book is the amalgamation of 10 years of research. And the reason why it relates to today's conversation, I'll just, I'll have you thumb through this as we're chatting because it, it relates to everything we've been talking about, is that chapter nine in the book is called Fragrant Curios.

John Launius [01:23:32] And I'm on chapter seven, getting there. Oh, also, I just saw a picture of Harriet Hosmer. Harriet Hosmer is an extraordinary female sculptor who was one of the first to achieve international acclaim. And Charles Parsons and his wife supported Harriet Hosmer in the 19th century to have her art be all over the world. So as we're looking at this together, what do you see in that image? Like, like describe that image to your listeners.

Vance Crowe [01:24:00] Well, it's a, it's a bowl, but it, there, it's, it's deep. So it looks like the size of a man's hand. Mm. In as far as its depth and its width. It would be something that you would probably hold about a cup of liquid. Mm. And then the above, it is a hand putting chopsticks into the top of the cup. And there seems to be something floating at the top of it.

John Launius [01:24:24] Yeah. Got it. So this, so this cup bowl is called a mor cord. And mor cord means listening vessel. So when we go back to the conversation a little while ago, I said, how I said, we don't really smell incense. We listen to it in the incense ceremony, the co do ceremony, co meaning incense doe meaning the way, you know, as a martial artist, you, you know, that any of the dough arts, you know, are, is a path to refinement. So q do J do i, Chad, do Right? All of these dough arts are path of refinement. So the incense ceremony, using this cup called ole, allows us to begin to listen to the fragrance, allows us to begin to unlock things that are in our mind that allow us to talk about them. And quite literally to use the expression, talk things out. 'cause once we talk things out, what gets left is space to do whatever you want with it. And most people don't have space in their day-to-day lives.

Vance Crowe [01:25:25] Man, this is, this is fantastic.

John Launius [01:25:28] So this is one of the objects I was telling you about. So describe to the listeners what you see there.

Vance Crowe [01:25:33] So what you see are two Japanese figures. One on the left is an older man. He seems to be holding like a book. And then he also has his hand, looks like he's stirring something in a, in a similar cup. And then two his left, there's a little boy that is also holding a book. Only his book is open and he appears to be writing or, or sitting at the knee of, you know, a parent or some kind of master and trying to learn from him.

John Launius [01:26:03] Yeah. So what you're seeing here is that this is a molal. Does he look like a samurai, would you say?

Vance Crowe [01:26:11] Yeah, I mean, what, whatever a samurai would look like, I mean, I would've no way of knowing, but yes. Yeah.

John Launius [01:26:15] Well, so he's, so he's wearing samurai dress. He has, he has the top knot back there. Right. So what you're looking at is that you're looking at probably a depiction of the Chino School of Incense. So the Chino School of Incense was known as the fire school, and it was primarily practiced by the Samurai. And so you've got a, you've got a emi, a senior, there's other words we could say like sensei and Shiho and things like that. And then you have the acolyte, you have the, the Kohai, the junior student, the junior student is holding a book that, that translates as the work of Mencius, which is really all about, you know, Mencius was about really having humans be their most refined and enlightened self. And then this is, if you, if you look really close, do you see how it looks like there's, there's clouds on that book that, that the older gentleman is holding?

Vance Crowe [01:27:09] Yeah, that's

John Launius [01:27:09] Right. Yeah. So that's an incense sutra, or it would be a, it would be an, an incense classifying manual. And then if you'll look here, you can see this bull, right? What he's actually holding are chopsticks. So therefore, if we connect it back to this photo, you're looking at basically the same thing. So what's interesting about this object is that this was unlabeled as unknown and it's now been corrected, but you could see these objects online or in person at the Kemper Art Museum at Wash U right now. And these were some of the things that, that, that were, you know, connected or corrected, excuse me, when I got to the art museum back in 2006, which then was a lot of the impetus for the writing of the book. This is the incense burner that I was telling you about. You wanna describe what you see there?

Vance Crowe [01:28:01] Now this is a little bit different. It looks like a porcelain pot. And there is a man who looks Japanese. He has a dot on his forehead, but he also has a halo around him, much the same way that saints do in the Catholic paintings, things like that. And then around him are all of these other Japanese men in ornate clothes. They look like, some of them are bare chested with things around their biceps that appears that they're wearing like flowing robes. Some of them have a fan. It's interesting, one of those fans looks like, like a Christian Cross. Yeah. But the man is at the center. The man with the halo is at the center in dark robes, and everybody's looking at him, but he doesn't look particularly fit. He actually kind of has like, you know, rolls on his stomach and stuff. Yeah. It makes you kind of, yeah.

John Launius [01:28:47] So what you're looking at here is you're looking at a Tong Dynasty depiction of the Buddha with the 16 disciples of the Buddha. Now one can say, but wait a minute, I thought, I thought only Jesus had disciples. Right. So there's this connection in Buddhism and in Christianity where we see similar iconography over the, over the history. So you said you were, you were raised Catholic. The Catholic rosary is 108 beads. Right. The Buddhist rosary is 108 beads. Mateo Ricci, who was a missionary, I think in like the, maybe the 10th century when he got to Japan, he thought that the devil had beaten him there. Because when Mateo Ricci shows up, he's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We've got incense. Like in my religion, we've got bells like in my religion, we've got red robes. Like in my religion we have the, the rosary. They have a, a thing called a maah, same number of beads. The devil must have beaten me to Japan. And so it's a wonderful story about how, wait a minute, how do we have these connections? How do we have these similarities?

Vance Crowe [01:29:58] What is your sense for how we have this similarities?

John Launius [01:30:00] Well, you know, I mean this, that's probably another three hour conversation. But in short, I think a lot of that is the, is the library of Alexandria. I think that because we, we know that there were Buddhists and Christians and, and a number of different philosophies, you know, taking place at the library of, of Alexandria. A lot of people don't know or don't remember that when you landed in, in, in that port where, you know, where the library of of Alexandria exists, the officials would get on the boat that you showed up in and anything that was considered academic writing books, et cetera. They would take them off of the boat, they would copy them and then give back the copy to the boat and store the original in the library of Alexandria. And unfortunately it burned. So who knows what we lost from a human standpoint.

Vance Crowe [01:31:02] What is the lesson to be learned from the Library of Alexandria?

John Launius [01:31:05] Well, we need to back stuff up.

Vance Crowe [01:31:07] Is that it though? I mean, 'cause it seems like, it seems like that's the obvious thing, right? That we lost this treasure and that there were all the, but, but you know, you're bringing up something I'd never heard before, right? That these religions had crossed paths there. Or, you know, for anybody that doesn't know Li Library of Alexandria, how would you describe it? I,

John Launius [01:31:27] I mean, it was the original internet in, in so many ways. I mean, imagine that every culture, every known culture that's coming into the library of Alexandria is that if your job as an official there is to collect that data, collect that understanding, and leave it there. I mean that's, I mean this may explain the reason why, like, when you start to talk about people like Graham Hancock or Randall Carlson or different people like that, where, how do you explain these maps that map out Antarctica before it was frozen? How do you map out, I mean, how are there maps that have existed that map out parts of the world that we supposedly weren't at until somewhat relatively recently? Well, the idea is, is that we have probably forgot more as as a human race than, than than we remember. I mean, there's now an, I mean, and, and not to sound, you know, a little out there, but you know, there's now enough evidence to, to begin to really build a case for the fact that there may have been advanced civilizations prior to 12,600 years ago. If you look at the amount of peer reputed pa peer reviewed papers now that exist in talking about how we have all of this evidence of, you know, massive flooding, how do you explain the 200 cultures from around the world that have a flood myth who maybe have never even had in any interaction with the Bible talking about, you know, the, the, the deluge or, or, or the flood.

John Launius [01:32:59] I mean, I think there's a lot more to this, but, you know, to keep it focused on, on, on, on the conversation today, you know, where I speak from regarding incense and fragrance is that there's a 6,000 year history and tradition of incense that we know exists because the pyramid texts, like literally written in stone talk about incense. And its, and its benefits from an archeological standpoint though, is that it's a 35,000 year history. And it probably goes back a lot further because in the last five to 10 years, they've pushed back Homo sapien sapiens, which is the current incarnation that we are back to 300,000 years. It makes no sense to me that we've been around for 300 years, 300,000 years as we are right now. Nothing has changed. I mean, we're thinking the same or if we're physically the same, it makes no sense to me that we only have a 6,000 year history of culture. It makes no sense to me. And so, you know, back to the archeological evidence, just for a minute to, to, to complete that, is that the caves in southern France, like Chave for example, there's a cave that contains a, a great deal of bear skulls and there's one bear skull that's turned over and put up onto what looks like an altar. And there's incense that's been burned in it. And it's, that's it's 35,000 years old. So that means 35,000 years ago, whomever was living in those caves did some kind of a devotional act where they turned over a bear ol skull, grabbed whatever was fragrant, lit it on fire, and had the smoke rising in the cave and this and that.

Vance Crowe [01:34:47] You've talked a lot about, you know, the discoveries that incense helps two people have together helped you figure out with this book, you know, to find this great man that had been lost to history.

John Launius [01:34:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:35:00] You've studied it for 40 years. What else is there for you to learn about incense?

John Launius [01:35:05] It's just, it, it never ends. It never ends. Like if you came to my home office and I have a, I have a 19th century carpenter's chest and I that's there, there's a very particular reason for that symbolism. But if you were to open it up, there's probably 300 different types of incense that are in there. And again, you'll notice that today. Have you seen any smoke?

Vance Crowe [01:35:30] No. Has

John Launius [01:35:31] It been offensive to you in any way, shape or form?

Vance Crowe [01:35:33] No, it is only improved it. In fact, multiple times I've been like, how can I incorporate this into my life? How can I do that?

John Launius [01:35:38] Yeah. Well, and that, and, and that, that's what I'm getting to is that imagine if, if, if all of your friends were just people that were there to, to have you be your best self, your greatest self. And this is not to discount any of my friends, you know, but it is to say that my circle is very small because I am, I curate who is in my life and why they're in my life. You know, like if this was a shock jock radio conversation today, I probably would've passed, you know? But I know who you are and I know what you're committed to and I know the great work that you're doing. And so I'm like, I'd love to sit down with Vance and, and, and have a conversation.

Vance Crowe [01:36:21] Well, I mean, when you told me about incense, like we had had an amazing conversation. I don't remember exactly what had happened, I think yet we talked just before I had the, my second daughter. Mm. And I think I had told you like, Hey man, I'm thinking about the, the, i I have a, a flower outside of my house and I was talking with you about the, it's called a Korean spice viburnum. Mm.

John Launius [01:36:44] And

Vance Crowe [01:36:44] It's a fascinating flower because it has two smells. It has the perfume smell when you first get it. And then you get the spice smell, which is more like, so you have like a flower and then like cinnamon in some way. But those two smells don't do it justice. And I asked you about it and that began a conversation that my entire drive, everything I was doing, we just talked and talked and talked. And I thought, I don't do this very often where I just like randomly ask a person that I had just spoken to for a little while to come on the podcast. But this has been absolutely wonderful and I you are welcome to come back anytime, man.

John Launius [01:37:20] I love it. I I I appreciate that. I mean, it's, again, I love what you're doing vans, because you're authentic. You know, it's, and and, and that's the highest compliment that I can give somebody. You know, like if you tell someone, oh, you're an honest guy. Well, okay, we all can be honest. But when you're being authentic, your being the who you know is the best self that you can be for others, when you're being authentic, that's what makes the difference with people. It's not how much money you have. It's not the job you have, it's not the titles. I mean, we didn't even cover kind of what I do professionally, which is totally fine. I'm glad we didn't do that in, in, in many ways because then you get caught maybe in like, what does it mean to be a CEO or COO or any of those other titles? Is that what's the best way that we can make a difference for a positive difference for people? We're always making a difference, you know? And you know, when somebody cuts us off on the highway, they've made a difference with us. It may have not been positive, right. But, but how do we, how do we continual, continually make a positive difference for others? And we all have different ways to do that. But

Vance Crowe [01:38:29] Yeah, you, you make it this morning right before I came into my office, so we have a new producer here on the show. He's been great, but he's brand new. Yeah.

John Launius [01:38:36] And

Vance Crowe [01:38:37] I was coming up the elevator, I was talking with a listener of the podcast, his name's Nicholas Bartlett, and he said, what are you gonna do to make him feel included today?

John Launius [01:38:45] Hmm. And

Vance Crowe [01:38:45] I was just about to see him as I came off the elevator and I thought, thank God I have Nicholas in my world

John Launius [01:38:52] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:38:52] To tell me that because I wouldn't have thought of that on my own. Mm.

John Launius [01:38:56] And

Vance Crowe [01:38:56] So then the elevator opens up and I'm, Hey, I want him to feel included. And I think the point that you've been making this whole time about being present and curating your friends is one that you could take and be like, yeah, I'm gonna do that in the future. But really the core lesson is like, how are you gonna do it

John Launius [01:39:15] Now? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:39:15] Like how, how are you doing it as soon as you walk out the door, as soon as you turn off the podcast? Yeah. As soon as you engage someone. I think this is incredibly profound and again, so simple that when you go to grab it, if you look at it too closely, it disappears.

John Launius [01:39:31] So if you were so that, first of all, fantastic, I, I loved how you encapsulated that and I appreciate that share very much. 'cause I think that made a, a big difference for people. If you were attending any of my Monday or Tuesday morning meetings at any of the companies that I lead, one of the things that I remind staff just about every week is that if work, if, if we're spending our waking life at work, which is the majority of our time, life is too short not to work with people you love and trust. And it's weird to maybe use the word love in the workplace, but I don't think that it is because, you know, we, we make jokes or, or we're light about this and oh, I love that guy. Oh, I love Vance. Well, why do you love that person? Well, 'cause I resonate with them and, and you know, this person gets me and I'm, I and I I feel safe around them or you know, what have you. It's like oftentimes people are at work, people are working out other things and they're using work to do that, which is why there's oftentimes a lot of suffering at work. You know, also if you're, if if we, if we go back to the conversation of narcissism for a moment, it is not uncommon at very high levels of business to encounter narcissists. Because in, in many ways the, the positive aspects of narcissism is, is what creates that success. But then there's that other side of it to, to your point earlier about, about that shadow self. So it's like how do you balance the results that you need to generate with the connections that you need to have with the, with the content that needs to be created throughout the course of the day to be able to have a whole and complete successful existence.

John Launius [01:41:18] This is what this whole conversation's about, whether it's fragrance, whether it's hypnotherapy, whether it's, you know, different types of executive coaching that I do, things like that is, is that if we are fully living our life, when it comes time for us to go, then we will not resist it. Wow. Oftentimes, and, and I, so how do I know this? That's probably, probably when someone has that question. When I was 15 years old, my mother said to me, she said, so she was the head nurse of a nursing home. And she said, before you drive, you're gonna spend the summer working in a nursing home. And I didn't know what I was going to encounter at 15 years old, but the amount of people that I interacted with who were in the quite literally days or moments toward their transition when you sat and talked with them and listened to them, part of the reason why that they were still holding on was that they were still, they were attempting to get something resolved for them before they could go. When you, when you talk about death and dying, if you look at the work of, you know, Ross for example, oftentimes family members will wait until the people that they want to say goodbye to are there, are present. And the last piece I'll share with this was that in 20, in 2015, my father passed away.

John Launius [01:42:55] And when he was in the last few days of his life, he had lost his voice. I couldn't speak with him anymore. And like, one of my regrets is that I didn't, I mean, for a guy who worked in radio, who's worked in media and things like that, I don't have very many recordings of my dad's voice. So it was very upsetting. And, but the day before he died, I could tell that he was, you know, really afraid to die. And, and, and, and he was an atheist. And I don't know if this matters, but it, it's important to the story because I said to him, I said, are you afraid to die? And he nodded his head yes. And I said, alright. I said, may I play for you a short lecture by a gentleman by the name of Alan Watts, who was a philosopher who passed away in 1973? And he nodded his head yes. And the speech I played for him was called Going Over the Waterfall. And essentially in this particular short four and a half minute speech, Alan Watts talks about, he says, you know, when it's time to go over the waterfall, you just go over the waterfall just like anything else. And you can't stop it. You just go over the waterfall. And there's a lot more to this. But if you know Alan Watts's voice, that's my best Alan Watts.

Vance Crowe [01:44:15] It's good. Pretty good. I know it.

John Launius [01:44:19] And when, but when it was over, I said, did that make a a difference for you? And he nodded, and he was gone the next day. And so oftentimes, and I I don't normally talk about this, especially on something that's recorded or that may live forever on the internet. Right. But I think that one of, one of the, the, like the, I'll use the word karma. Like one of the karmas of my life is that, is that my grandfather taught me when I was very young, is to leave people better than when you find them. And that is one of my imprints, that's one of my seminal moments where when given the opportunity, like if you're a jerk to me, there's a great part of my personality that will come out called The jerk. But if you allow the space for me to make a positive difference with you, we're gonna make a positive difference with each other. 'cause we're gonna start to resonate in that way. And, and we're both gonna be left better than we started. And I think that ultimately is the greatest gift you can give anyone you ever meet

Vance Crowe [01:45:26] And may maybe really the only gift. Right. That's, that's so profound. The, this coming October, we're gonna run a series called Memento Mori. Mm.

John Launius [01:45:38] And

Vance Crowe [01:45:38] During that series, we're gonna talk to people that stretch from birth an O-B-G-Y-N all the way to a funeral director. Yeah.

John Launius [01:45:46] And

Vance Crowe [01:45:46] Talk about people that have seen it. And I hope you'll come back on after that's done and we can have a discussion about like, what, what we heard there. 'cause I feel like the thing that you are truly great at is self-reflection in a way that doesn't feel like you're holding a mirror up to me. It makes it, it makes it feel like you've created space.

John Launius [01:46:13] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [01:46:13] Where, where the full self, where the belt can be loosened and the shirt can be untucked. Yeah. And the, and I think that that may be, yeah. That it's, that is a very high compliment. And, and for me, like the ability to be your authentic self, I think the reason you see that in me is 'cause that's what you expected to see. And this has been a profound conversation. If people wanted to learn more about your work, your book, how, how would you recommend they go about it?

John Launius [01:46:42] So LinkedIn is probably the easiest, you know, and you can find me very easily there. The, I would say that if the book, if you want me to read to you for six hours and four minutes, you can get the audio book that's on Amazon.

Vance Crowe [01:46:55] Oh, all right.

John Launius [01:46:56] You, you can also, you know, get the physical book as well. And, you know, and I think I would love that, I would love to connect with, with anyone that this conversation resonated with because, you know, I, one of my favorite quotes is that there are no answers. There are only openings because every opening leads to something else. And the answer, you know, may be there for a moment. But if we're always looking for openings as opposed to answers, then we're gonna continually learn and we're gonna continue to expand who we are. And again, if you believe that we're only expanding or contracting, I would much rather be expanding than contracting.

Vance Crowe [01:47:38] And what is the first step people could use to get into incense? What, how could they take that first step?

John Launius [01:47:46] So what I would say is that probably aromatherapy is the easiest. I mean, if you want to go grab the oils, I mean, you'll know exactly what you're getting. There's a whole, I mean, there's so much information on aromatherapy, which is essentially what, what we were doing today. But what I like to call, what we're doing today is as original aromatherapy, because we're using the raw ingredients. We're not using the, the ex, the, the pressed oils or the absolutes of that. And though I know a lot about that, I, I prefer to deal in, in the raw ingredients. For me, there's something that's more real for me because again, I don't, I mean, there's very reputable sellers out there of essential oils, but I don't know how it's made if I go and, you know, pick up a pine needle, I know how it was made because I'm, I'm holding the product itself. And so, to answer your question a little more specifically, as I would say anything on aromatherapy, I would say that if you're interested in Japanese incense, you know, there are really great sites like Yama Matzo is, is another great company. And, you know, and if you get lost from there, just reach out. I'd be more than happy to, you know, direct links and things like that to help out.

Vance Crowe [01:49:00] John Lanius, thank you for coming on the podcast,

John Launius [01:49:04] Vance Crowe. Thank you very much.