INTO THE

MAGIC SHOP
A NEUROSURGEON’S QUEST TO
DISCOVER THE MYSTERIES OF
THE BRAIN AND THE SECRETS OF
THE HEART
By James R. Doty. MD
 SUMMARY
Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries
of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart is an autobiographical self-help
book published in 2016 by physician James R. Doty who is the director
of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research
and Education (CCARE). The lessons and techniques Doty utilize help
him overcome a troubled and impoverished childhood to achieve
professional success and—most importantly—personal happiness
beyond his wildest imaginings.

At the start of the book, Doty is a 12-year-old boy living in Lancaster,

California, a mid-sized city north of Los Angeles. Doty’s childhood is
one wracked with hardships: his family lives below the poverty line, his
father is an alcoholic, and his mother is suicidal, suffering from clinical
depression and the paralyzing effects of an earlier stroke. On a
sweltering summer day in 1968, Doty enters a strip mall magic shop
looking to buy a plastic thumb for a trick. There, he meets the mother of
the shop owner, an elderly woman named Ruth who promises Doty that
she will teach him a different kind of magic if he’s willing to come back
every day for the rest of the summer.

The first and most crucial step to Ruth’s instruction is for Doty to open
his heart. This unlocks the healing power of compassion, Doty writes,
allowing him to help ease his own suffering by better understanding the
suffering of others. He helps achieve this by focusing on ideas like
forgiveness and gratitude. For example, Doty tries to be thankful for the
albeit limited things his family has to offer while refusing to be
overcome by negative feelings toward his father. As Ruth puts it, “really
deep, lasting happiness is about connecting with people: being kind to
people and being of service to people.”

Through this dramatic adjustment to his attitude, Doty is able to succeed

at school despite an upbringing that’s far from ideal. He later goes on to
college and then graduate school, finding enormous success as a
physician and entrepreneur. Thanks to the enormous credit he gives to
the compassionate, empathetic teachings of Ruth, Doty, now a
neurosurgeon, embarks on a lifelong quest to understand the relationship
between the brain and the heart. As such, the book explores these
connections through anecdotal and scientific evidence, seeking to
identify an empirical, fact-based explanation for why we feel empathy
and how those feelings lead to a greater sense of well-being and
contentment.

As Doty puts it, “When our brains and our hearts are working in
collaboration—we are happier, we are healthier, and we automatically
express love, kindness, and care for one another. I knew this intuitively,
but I needed to validate it scientifically. This was the motivation to begin
researching compassion and altruism. I wanted to understand the
evolution of not only why we evolved such behavior but also how it
affects the brain and ultimately our health.”
The importance of the brain cannot be underestimated since this organ is
responsible for keeping the body’s functions in harmony. Nevertheless,
it wouldn’t accomplish much without a beating heart. 

Although both these organs are essential, research has shown that in fact,
the heart sends more information to the brain than vice versa. 

Most people can realize that their emotions dictate more of their thinking
that the other way around. But according to him, “Feelings are not right
or wrong, “they are just feelings.”
Although keeping an open heart can indeed make us vulnerable to the
negative parts of the world, the risk is worth taking. Living a life filled
with the joy relationships bring is far more rewarding than closing off
your heart to the world. Sometimes when we feel most alone, the world
can open up in mysterious ways.

But his journey isn’t complete yet. Doty encounters two hardships that
threaten to derail all of the progress he’s made. The first, while still a
medical resident, is a car crash that nearly results in his death. The
second is a series of poor decisions involving the medical device
business Doty runs—which, combined with the bad luck of the financial
crisis, costs him $70 million and nearly leaves him bankrupt. The key
lesson from Ruth that pulls him through these difficult times is also the
first lesson she taught him: open up your heart. His commitment to
empathy is put to the test when, on his last morning in his mansion after
selling it off along with his luxury cars, his lawyer calls to tell him that
he hasn’t yet finalized the paperwork for a charitable trust to which Doty
had committed millions of dollars. Doty has a decision to make: keep the
millions in order to maintain the level of comfort he’s accustomed to, or
honor his commitment to the charity. After meditating on the question
and, indeed, looking inside his heart, he gives up the millions to the
charity. Doty credits this decision, among others, as a key driver of his
success in later life, which sees him richer both financially and
personally.

Dr. James Doty has been meditating since he was 12 years old with the
intention of becoming rich, and even if he managed to get his net worth
to $75 million, he still didn’t feel satisfied. Eventually, he came to
realize his mistake: he didn’t involve his heart in the decision-making
process. 

The fact is that wisdom isn’t just created by the brain. True intelligence
and wisdom come not only from the mind but from the heart as well.

Now that Doty is grown up—and also a student of the brain as well as
the heart—he brings his knowledge of the human mind to bear on Ruth’s
lessons, developing rigorous mental training exercises to ensure that he’s
always giving himself positive affirmation and recontextualizing the
events of his life, no matter how tragic, so that they exist as part of a
greater journey toward empathy and calm mindfulness. These lessons
also help him through more common adult stresses that are nevertheless
very upsetting in their own ways, like divorce and loneliness.

Despite a life’s journey fraught with challenges, his final destination—at

the end of the book that is; one’s destination is always evolving through
life, Doty argues—is by any measure a good one. His Center for
Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford is so
prestigious that it counts none other than the Dalai Lama as a founding
donor. He has expanded the legacy of that accidental encounter with
Ruth decades ago, making a self-help book that appeals.
 VOCABULARIES
1. Grotesque- comically or repulsively ugly or distorted.
-The rods are carved in the form of a series of gargoyle faces
and grotesques.
2. Altruism- is the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness
of other human beings and/or animals, resulting in a quality of life both
material and spiritual.
-Some may choose to work with vulnerable elderly people
out of altruism.
3. Ballistic- to become very angry.
-Dad went ballistic when he saw the dent in his car.
4. Minutiae- the small, precise, or trivial details of something.
- Even though it is just a minutiae of time, we lost a big
chance of winning.
5. Dura- the tough outermost membrane enveloping the brain and spinal
cord.
-The scissors slowly slicing open the dura, you can see it
move in rhythm with every heartbeat.
 QUESTIONS
1. How old was the author when he met Ruth?
a. 10 c. 15
b. 12 d. 14
2. What is the first and most crucial step to do magic?
a. Open the heart c. Connect the brain and the heart
b. Open the mind d. Calm your body
3. When did the author met Ruth?
a. Summer of ’68 c. Winter of ‘69
b. Summer of ’70 d. Winter of ‘71
4. According to Ancient Egyptians, true intelligence resides from
what part of the body?
a. Brain c. Mind
b. Heart d. Blood
5. What was the author looking for in the magic shop?
a. Deck of cards c. Magician’s cape
b. Plastic thumb d. Magic coins
6. According to Doty, if these two organs work in collaboration, we
are happier and healthier.
a. Brain and the Spinal Cord c. Brain and the Heart
b. Heart and the Ears d. Heart and the Blood Vessels
7. How did Ruth die?
a. Breast cancer c. Dysentery
b. AIDS d. Leukemia
8. What made Doty worries the most during his college years?
a. His dad’s alcohol problems
b. His mom’s suicide attempt
c. His tuition fee
d. His failing grades
9. How did the author make the right decision?
a. He opened his mind
b. He opened his heart
c. He opened his subconscious
d. He balanced the results
10. According to Ruth, lasting happiness is about what?
a. Fighting with people
b. Connecting with your brain ad heart
c. Connecting with people
d. Giving thanks to nature