YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → La vita è un GIOCO SPIRITUALE: chi CAPISCE il gioco vince SEMPRE | Jacobo Grinberg

La vita è un GIOCO SPIRITUALE: chi CAPISCE il gioco vince SEMPRE | Jacobo Grinberg — Transcript

by Archivio Alfa · 3,755 words · 681 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00First of all, perform a small experiment
0:02with me.
0:04Now close your left eye, and with your
0:06right eye fixate on the cross, do not
0:09look away.
0:11Now slowly move your face closer to the
0:13screen.
0:14At a certain point, the red dot
0:16disappears.
0:17It didn't leave the screen; your brain
0:21erased it.
0:22In every eye, there is a spot without
0:24light-sensitive cells.
0:26It is there that the optic nerve exits
0:28toward the brain.
0:29At that point, you are blind.
0:32You have had a hole in your vision since
0:34you were born and never noticed it
0:35because your brain fills it with what it
0:37thinks should be there.
0:39Now reflect.
0:41If your brain invents a piece of what
0:43you see without asking your permission,
0:45what else does it invent?
0:48The anger you felt this morning, the
0:51fear of the future, the certainty that
0:53someone has it in for you.
0:56A Mexican scientist dedicated his entire
0:58life to this question.
1:00His name was Jacobo Grinberg.
1:04He was a neurophysiologist at UNAM,
1:05Mexico's largest university, and he
1:07wrote more than 50 books.
1:10At the same time, he lived for years
1:12alongside shamans and healers from all
1:14over the country.
1:16His conclusion was radical.
1:19The world you live in is not simply out
1:21there, already finished.
1:24It is born, instant after instant, from
1:26the encounter between your brain and
1:29something much larger.
1:31If that is the case, life is a lot like
1:33a game.
1:36There is a chessboard you didn't choose
1:37, there are rules no one taught you, and
1:39there is a huge difference between those
1:41who play without knowing they are
1:43playing and those who have understood
1:44the rules.
1:47In this video, you will discover eight
1:49laws of this game.
1:51Each one stems from Grinberg's ideas, is
1:54put to the test by modern science, and
1:56leaves you with an exercise to use right
1:59away. An honest premise.
2:02We will carefully separate what science
2:04has already proven from what remains a
2:06hypothesis, and it is right there that
2:08the most interesting part lies.
2:10Grinberg called his big idea the
2:12syntergic theory.
2:15According to him, behind space and time
2:17exists a structure of energy, a kind of
2:20web he called the lattice.
2:23Brain activity creates a field that
2:25interacts with this web, and from this
2:27interaction, everything we perceive is
2:30born.
2:31The lattice is a hypothesis, and no one
2:33has ever managed to measure it.
2:36But the other half of the idea, that the
2:39brain constructs experience, is taken
2:41very seriously by science today.
2:44You just saw it with the blind spot test
2:46, and there are experiments that show
2:48even more surprising things.
2:51In 1998, psychologists Daniel Simons and
2:54Daniel Levin conducted an experiment on
2:57a university campus.
3:00A researcher would stop a passerby to
3:02ask for directions.
3:04Mid-conversation, two men would walk
3:07between them carrying a door.
3:10Behind the door, the researcher was
3:13swapped with another person—different
3:15clothes, a different voice, a different
3:18face—and about half of the passersby
3:20kept talking without noticing they were
3:22facing someone else.
3:25Think about it.
3:26You don't store the whole world in your
3:29mind; you store a summary, a sketch, and
3:32you fill in the rest with what you
3:34expect to see.
3:36And that's not all.
3:38The light your eyes capture is a tiny
3:40sliver of everything that exists.
3:44Radio waves, infrared, and ultraviolet
3:46rays are crossing your room right now,
3:48invisible.
3:51Bees see ultraviolet, and to them, many
3:53flowers have patterns we will never see
3:55.
3:57Even colors are constructed.
4:01In 1995, Edward Adelson, a professor at
4:04MIT, created a now-famous image: a
4:06chessboard with the shadow of a cylinder
4:09.
4:11One square looks dark, another, in the
4:13shadow, looks light.
4:17They are exactly the same shade of gray
4:18; even knowing this, you still see them
4:20as different.
4:22Your brain corrects for the shadow
4:25automatically, and you cannot turn this
4:27correction off.
4:29Another example, much older.
4:33In 1832, the Swiss crystallographer
4:35Louis Albert Necker published a simple
4:37drawing, a cube made only of lines.
4:42Look at it for a few seconds and it
4:43flips over.
4:45Now the front face seems to be at the
4:47bottom, now it's at the top.
4:49The lines don't change; the
4:51interpretation your brain chooses does.
4:54The same drawing, two realities, and the
4:57brain switches from one to the other
4:59without you asking it to.
5:01Here, then, is the first law of the game
5:03.
5:03You aren't playing in the world; you are
5:05playing on the map that your mind draws
5:07of the world.
5:09This is not a reason to despair, but to
5:11feel free.
5:13If the mind draws the map, a wrong map
5:16can be corrected.
5:18The exercise.
5:20Today, when something irritates you,
5:22take a sheet of paper and draw two
5:24columns.
5:25In the first, write only the fact, as a
5:28camera would see it.
5:30In the second, what your mind added to
5:33it.
5:33He did it to humiliate me. Nothing ever
5:36goes right for me.
5:38You will notice that the pain almost
5:40always lies in the second column.
5:43In 1999, Daniel Simons returned to the
5:45subject, this time with Christopher
5:48Chabris at Harvard.
5:51They showed volunteers a short video of
5:53two teams passing basketballs and asked
5:56them to count the passes of the team in
5:58white shirts. Halfway through the video
6:01, a person dressed as a gorilla walks in
6:04, stops in the middle, beats its chest,
6:06and walks off.
6:08About half of the volunteers didn't see
6:10the gorilla.
6:11They weren't distracted people; they
6:14were focused people.
6:17Attention works like a flashlight: what
6:19it illuminates exists for you, and the
6:21rest almost disappears.
6:23And where do we point our flashlight in
6:25everyday life?
6:28In 2010, researchers Matthew
6:30Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert of
6:33Harvard University created an app that
6:36asked people, at random times during the
6:39day, what they were doing, what they
6:42were thinking about, and how they were
6:44feeling.
6:47The study was published in the journal
6:49Science. The result?
6:53For almost 47%of the time, people were
6:55thinking about something other than what
6:58they were doing, and in those moments,
7:01on average, they felt less happy.
7:05The article's title sums it up.
7:07A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
7:11It is not a new discovery.
7:14In 1890, American psychologist William
7:17James, one of the fathers of psychology
7:19, wrote in The Principles of Psychology
7:22that our experience is made up of what
7:25we agree to pay attention to.
7:29More than 100 years later, laboratories
7:31are confirming what he had intuited.
7:34Greenberg trained his attention just as
7:36one trains a muscle.
7:38He meditated every day and spent long
7:41periods in silence.
7:44Those who tell his life story recall
7:46that on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of
7:48atonement and fasting, he would not go
7:51to the synagogue; he would climb the
7:53Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán and
7:55sit up there in silence for hours.
8:00Second law of the game: where your
8:02attention goes, your life goes.
8:05Those who do not choose where to place
8:07their attention let fear, advertising,
8:09and noise choose for them.
8:11The exercise.
8:14Three times a day—when you wash your
8:16hands, when you drink a glass of water,
8:18when you open a door—stop for a second
8:20and ask yourself: where is my attention
8:22right now?
8:24That's it. You are teaching your mind to
8:27come back home.
8:29But attention is only the beginning.
8:31The next law shows something even
8:33stranger.
8:35What you expect can change not only what
8:37you see, but also what happens to your
8:40body.
8:41For Greenberg, the brain is not a
8:43passive camera.
8:45It actively shapes experience.
8:47If it is true that what we believe and
8:50what we expect should change what we
8:52experience, then science has solid
8:54evidence for this.
8:57In 1968, psychologist Robert Rosenthal
9:00and school principal Lenore Jacobson
9:02published a study conducted in a
9:05California elementary school.
9:10The students took a test, and the
9:12teachers were told that certain children
9:14would intellectually blossom during that
9:17year.
9:18The detail is that those children had
9:21been chosen at random.
9:22At the end of the year, several of those
9:25children, especially the youngest ones,
9:27had improved more than the others.
9:31The teachers 'expectations had changed
9:33the way they treated the students, and
9:34this had changed the students.
9:38The phenomenon is known as the Pygmalion
9:40effect.
9:42Subsequent studies have debated how
9:44large this effect is, but the central
9:47idea—that expectations influence results
9:49—is still studied today.
9:53And then there is the placebo.
9:54Every doctor knows it.
9:57A pill without an active ingredient can
9:59alleviate real symptoms in some patients
10:02just because the person expects to feel
10:04better.
10:06In 2010, a Harvard team led by Ted
10:08Kaptchuk did something even stranger.
10:12They gave a placebo to patients with
10:15irritable bowel syndrome and told them
10:17the truth.
10:19This is a pill without any medicine.
10:22The bottle was labeled placebo.
10:26Yet the group that took the pills
10:27reported much greater relief than the
10:29group that took nothing.
10:32Caution, the placebo doesn't cure
10:34everything and does not replace medical
10:36treatment, but it proves that
10:37expectation is not just a thought, it
10:39acts on the body.
10:42There is also a sports story that
10:44everyone tells.
10:45For decades it was said that running a
10:48mile, about 1600 meters, in under 4
10:51minutes was perhaps impossible for the
10:53human body.
10:55On May 6, 1954, in Oxford, England,
10:59medical student Roger Bannister ran the
11:03mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.
11:0846 days later, the Australian John Landy
11:11also went under 4 minutes and was even
11:13faster.
11:15In the following years, other runners
11:17did the same. No one can prove it was
11:21solely due to belief.
11:23Athletes were already approaching that
11:26limit, but the story shows something
11:28very human.
11:30When someone proves it's possible, the
11:32door seems to open for others as well.
11:36Third law of the game.
11:38Your expectations are moves, not
11:40predictions.
11:41When you say I always fail, you aren't
11:44just describing the future, you are
11:47helping to build it. The exercise.
11:51Choose a situation tomorrow that worries
11:53you, like a difficult conversation or a
11:56task.
11:57Write in one sentence how it would go if
12:00it went reasonably well.
12:02Not perfectly, just reasonably.
12:05You aren't deluding yourself; you are
12:07giving your brain a better map.
12:11In 1994, Greenberg published a book with
12:14a provocative title.
12:16The self as an idea.
12:18The self as an idea.
12:20The proposal is that what we call the
12:22self is not a fixed thing.
12:25It is a construction of the mind, a
12:27process, an idea that the brain
12:29constantly assembles and defends.
12:32Think about it. Your body has replaced
12:35most of its cells since childhood.
12:38Your opinions have changed.
12:40Your tastes have changed.
12:42What remains the same? A story.
12:46A voice that says I am like this, I like
12:49this, I can't stand that.
12:52It is an ancient question.
12:54In 1739, the Scottish philosopher David
12:57Hume wrote in A Treatise of Human Nature
13:00that when he looked inside himself, he
13:03always stumbled upon some perception:
13:06heat, cold, love, hate, pain, pleasure.
13:10But he never found a self separate from
13:12those perceptions.
13:14And on the other side of the world,
13:16Buddhism has been teaching something
13:18similar for over 2,000 years.
13:21What we call "I" is a process that
13:23constantly changes, not a fixed thing.
13:27Greenberg combined these traditions with
13:29what he observed in the laboratory.
13:31Neuroscience has discovered something
13:34curious.
13:35There is a set of brain regions called
13:37the default mode network.
13:40It activates most when we are not
13:42focused on anything external.
13:44When we remember the past, imagine the
13:47future, and think about ourselves.
13:50It is the network of the wandering mind
13:52, the one from the study of the second
13:54law.
13:56In 2011, researcher Judson Brewer, then
13:59at Yale, used MRI to compare expert
14:02meditators with people who had never
14:05meditated.
14:08In meditators, this network was less
14:10active during meditation.
14:13They were able, so to speak, to turn
14:15down the volume of the voice that talks
14:17incessantly about "me."
14:19Many traditions use the same image.
14:23Thoughts are clouds, and you are the sky
14:25.
14:26When you realize you are thinking "I am
14:29a failure," the thought is still there,
14:31but you cease to be that thought; you
14:34become the one observing it.
14:36Fourth law of the game: you are not the
14:38character, you are the one playing with
14:40him.
14:41The character gets offended, compares
14:43himself, and defends himself.
14:45The player can watch him calmly and
14:48choose the next move.
14:50The exercise: 5 minutes a day, sitting
14:52in silence, observe the thoughts that
14:55arrive.
14:57Do not fight them.
14:59When one comes, give it a name—plan,
15:02memory, fear—and return to your breath.
15:06Greenberg would spend hours like this.
15:08It only takes 5 minutes to realize how
15:10much the character talks.
15:12And if observing the mind for a few
15:14minutes already changes something?
15:16What happens in the brain of someone who
15:18does it for years?
15:20Science went to measure it.
15:22The result is the fifth law, and it was
15:24the one Greenberg practiced the most.
15:27The name "Syntergic" combines two words
15:30: synthesis and energy.
15:33For Greenberg, a more integrated,
15:35unified, and coherent brain would have a
15:38broader relationship with reality.
15:41A fragmented brain, dominated by fear
15:44and agitation, would perceive a narrower
15:47world.
15:49He called this degree of integration "
15:51Syntergic" and believed meditation was
15:54the way to increase it.
15:57If meditation really changes the brain,
15:59it should show up in tests, and it does
16:01.
16:03In 2005, neuroscientist Sara Lazar of
16:06Harvard University and Massachusetts
16:09General Hospital compared the scans of
16:12expert meditators with those of
16:14non-meditators.
16:18In some regions linked to attention and
16:20body perception, the cortex of the
16:22meditators was thicker.
16:25In 2011, another study by the same group
16:28, led by Britta Hölzel, followed people
16:32who had never meditated and underwent an
16:368-week mindfulness program.
16:40After just 2 months, the exams showed
16:42changes in gray matter density in
16:45regions linked to memory, learning, and
16:48emotion regulation.
16:50And there is a study that strongly
16:52recalls Greenberg’s idea of coherence.
16:55In 2004, Richard Davidson’s team at the
16:58University of Wisconsin, along with
17:00researcher Antoine Lutz, recorded the
17:02EEGs of Buddhist monks with tens of
17:05thousands of hours of meditation.
17:09When they meditated on compassion, the
17:11brain showed very strong gamma waves,
17:14the fastest waves an EEG records, and
17:16highly synchronized across different
17:18regions.
17:20The researchers wrote that they had
17:22never seen such intensity in ordinary
17:24people.
17:25It’s not magic, but it is proof that a
17:28trained brain can function in a more
17:30integrated way.
17:33These are studies on small groups and
17:34science is still debating the scope of
17:36these results, but the direction is
17:38clear.
17:40What you practice every day changes the
17:43organ that constructs your world.
17:45Think of a lake.
17:47When the water is agitated it reflects
17:49nothing, only fragments.
17:52When the water calms down, it reflects
17:54the whole moon.
17:56Greenberg used to say, in other words,
17:57that the mind works like this.
18:00Fifth law of the game: before changing
18:02the world, calm the mirror.
18:05A decision made with an agitated mind is
18:07a move made in the dark.
18:10The exercise: before every important
18:13decision, breathe slowly for 2 minutes,
18:15counting to 4 while inhaling and to 6
18:18while exhaling.
18:20Then decide.
18:22Perhaps it will be the same decision,
18:24but you will know that it was you who
18:26decided, not your nervousness.
18:28Grimberg spent his life convinced that
18:30minds were not islands.
18:33To him, at a deep level, brains were
18:36connected.
18:37This part of his ideas remains a
18:39hypothesis and is highly debated.
18:43But there is a version of this idea that
18:45science already measures, and it is
18:46fascinating.
18:49In 2010 at Princeton University,
18:52neuroscientist Uri Hasson and his team
18:54recorded a person telling a long story
18:57while their brain was being scanned.
19:03Then other people listened to that
19:04recording, also while inside the scanner
19:06.
19:07The result: the brain activity of those
19:10listening began to follow that of the
19:12person speaking.
19:15And the more the person understood the
19:17story, the stronger this synchrony was.
19:19Sometimes the listener's brain even went
19:22as far as anticipating the speaker's.
19:25It is not telepathy.
19:28The connection passes through sound,
19:29through language, but it shows something
19:31beautiful.
19:34When we truly communicate, two brains
19:36begin to function at a similar rhythm.
19:40In 2009, researchers at the Max Planck
19:43Institute in Berlin, led by Ulman
19:45Lindenberger, recorded the electrical
19:48brain activity of pairs of guitarists
19:51playing the same melody.
19:54The two individuals' brain waves
19:56synchronized as they played together.
19:59And one of the most famous discoveries
20:01in this field is Italian.
20:04In the 90s at the University of Parma,
20:06Giacomo Rizzolatti's team discovered
20:09neurons in monkeys that fired both when
20:11the monkey grabbed an object and when it
20:14merely saw another perform the same
20:16gesture.
20:19They were called mirror neurons. How
20:21much this explains human empathy is
20:24still a subject of debate.
20:26But the discovery reinforced a simple
20:29idea.
20:30The brain is not built to live alone.
20:33It keeps feeling inside itself what it
20:36sees others doing.
20:38The sixth law of the game.
20:40Your state infects the chessboard of
20:42others, and theirs infects yours.
20:45Whoever enters a room angry changes the
20:48room.
20:49Even someone who enters calm.
20:51This is why choosing the people you live
20:53with and what you spread is no small
20:55detail.
20:56It is strategy, the exercise.
20:59In the next important conversation, do
21:02only one thing.
21:03Listen until the end without preparing
21:05your answer while the other person is
21:07speaking.
21:08You will immediately feel the difference
21:11, and the other person will feel it too
21:13.
21:13So far we have talked about workers.
21:16But Grinberg sought the same answers in
21:19a place where almost no scientist of his
21:21time had the courage to enter.
21:24And it is there that he learned the most
21:26difficult lesson of all.
21:28Grinberg did something that almost no
21:30scientist of his time would have done.
21:34He left the laboratory and went to learn
21:36from the shamans and healers of Mexico.
21:40Between 1987 and 1990, he published a
21:43series of books.
21:46Los chamanes de Mexico, The Shamans of
21:48Mexico, about what he experienced with
21:51them.
21:52He describes the medicine of the
21:54ancestors, the herbs, and the limpias,
21:56the purification rituals.
21:59He also describes the worldview of these
22:02healers for whom mind, body, and
22:04universe are not separate things.
22:07In one of the volumes, he talks about
22:09something the shamans called the voice
22:11of seeing.
22:13A consciousness that explains to the
22:15shaman what he is seeing and feeling.
22:18He also visited Maria Sabina, the
22:20Mazatec healer from Huautla de Jimenez,
22:23in Oaxaca.
22:26She had become world-famous after the
22:29American researcher Gordon Wasson
22:32recounted in Life magazine in 1957 the
22:35nocturnal ceremony he had attended at
22:38her home.
22:40Since then, thousands of strangers
22:42climbed the mountains in search of the
22:44mushrooms, and her community suffered
22:46for it.
22:47Grinberg arrived as a consciousness
22:50researcher.
22:52To him, the shamans were scientists of
22:55another tradition, people who had spent
22:57their lives exploring states of mind
22:59that laboratories barely knew.
23:02But here is the part that almost no one
23:04tells.
23:06Not everyone who knew him thought he
23:08kept his balance.
23:10World-renowned neuroscientist Karl
23:13Pribram visited his laboratory and said
23:16the work needed many confirmations in
23:19other labs.
23:22And Roy John, the researcher who had
23:24been his advisor in New York, gave a
23:26definition of him that says a lot.
23:30Grinberg engaged in a lot of wishful
23:33thinking, but he didn't have a dishonest
23:35bone in his body; he was sincere,
23:38courageous, and sometimes too quick to
23:40believe what he wanted to be true.
23:43The seventh law of the game.
23:45Keep an open mind, but not so open that
23:48your brain falls out.
23:51Listen to teachers, books, and videos—
23:53this one included—and put everything to
23:55the test in your own life.
23:57Whoever hands their discernment over to
23:59a guru, a group, or a promise has lost
24:02the game before it even begins.
24:04The exercise.
24:06The next time something spiritual
24:08enchants you, ask yourself three
24:10questions.
24:11Where does this information come from?
24:14Who stands to gain if I believe it?
24:16How can I verify this in my own life
24:19without hurting anyone?
24:21To understand the final law, we must go
24:23back to his youth.
24:25Grinberg lost his mother at age 12 to a
24:28brain disease.
24:30Shortly after, in 1963, he spent a year
24:34on a kibbutz in Israel.
24:37There he discovered Safed, the city in
24:40the mountains of Galilee linked to the
24:42Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition
24:44which teaches that the visible world is
24:47only the outer layer of a much deeper
24:49reality.
24:51At the kibbutz, according to reports, a
24:53scene occurred that he would recount for
24:56the rest of his life.
24:58During a Ouija board session, a spirit
25:01announced that his watch would stop at
25:046:00 PM.
25:05His first wife, Lisette Arditti, who was
25:08present, recounted decades later that
25:11the watch truly did stop.
25:14Coincidence, suggestion?
25:16Impossible to know.
25:18But the episode shows who he was from
25:20the very beginning. Instead of laughing
25:22it off, he wanted to understand.
25:24He followed this curiosity his whole
25:26life, without ever reaching a definitive
25:29answer.
25:31In December 1994, at 47, he disappeared
25:34, and even today, nobody knows what
25:37happened.
25:39The mystery he studied ended up
25:41enveloping his own life.
25:44In 2024, the publisher Penguin Random
25:46House republished his books, and a new
25:49generation began reading the questions
25:52he left behind.
25:54Let’s recap the eight laws of the game.
25:57One.
25:58You don't play in the world; you play on
26:00the map your mind draws of it.
26:03Two.
26:04Where your attention goes, your life
26:06follows. Three. Your expectations are
26:09moves, not predictions.
26:12Four. You are not the character; you are
26:14the one playing him.
26:16Five.
26:17Before changing the world, calm the
26:19mirror.
26:20Six. No one plays alone.
26:23Seven.
26:25An open mind, yes, but without handing
26:27over your discernment.
26:29And eight.
26:30The game doesn't have to have an end to
26:32be worth playing.
26:33You don't have to solve the mystery of
26:35life to live well within it.
26:38Grinberg didn't leave a manual for
26:40winning.
26:41left a question, the same one that 12-
26:43year-old boy asked himself when he lost
26:46his mother.
26:47What is the mind?
26:48And perhaps winning is exactly this: not
26:51controlling everything, but waking up
26:54inside the game, seeing the map as a map
26:57, choosing where to place your attention
27:00, taking care of what spreads, and
27:03remaining curious until the end.
27:06Whoever understands this is no longer
27:08played by the game; they start to play.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of La vita è un GIOCO SPIRITUALE: chi CAPISCE il gioco vince SEMPRE | Jacobo Grinberg by Archivio Alfa, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,755 words across 681 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to choose a caption track available on the video.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, caption language selection, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.