Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

Into the Magic Shop is both a guide to meditative practices and an illustration of the ways those practices can transform a person’s life. The promise of change is in fact what initially intrigues Doty about Ruth’s offer; as a child surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and mental illness, Doty sees Ruth’s promise to help him “make anything [he] want[s] actually appear” as perhaps his only hope of avoiding the kind of life his parents lead (23).

Of course, Doty initially struggles to see the connection between meditation and manifesting his desires. As Ruth says, techniques like total body relaxation aim first and foremost to change a person’s inner reality, not to alter the world around them: “There are a lot of things in life we can’t control. [...] But you can control your body and you can control your mind” (48). What Doty realizes is that meditation changes the practitioner in ways that enhance their ability to impact external reality. Doty’s self-affirming mantras offer an example of this dynamic in action. By practicing self-affirmation, Doty bolsters his sense of himself as a unique and worthy individual, which in turn helps him disentangle his own future from his family’s: “I [...] had clarity that […] [my family’s] actions were not mine. [...] I had absolute faith in what Ruth had taught me, and absolute trust that my future was rushing to meet me” (144-145). On an even more practical level, relaxation and mindfulness prove invaluable to Doty’s pursuit of a career in medicine—a field that requires calm under pressure and the ability to focus for extended periods of time.

Doty thus credits much of meditation’s efficacy to neuroplasticity; much of meditation’s real-world impact flows from the way it rewires the practitioner’s brain. This is true even of Ruth’s final technique—the one she promises will allow Doty to make his dreams come true as if by magic. Practiced regularly, visualizing a particular outcome changes the brain in a way that makes the practitioner more likely to actually pursue that outcome: “[The brain] will always choose what is familiar over what is unfamiliar. By visualizing my own future success, I was making this success familiar to my brain” (135). In other words, if Doty had not become so used to thinking of himself as a doctor, he might not have pushed hard to become one at critical junctures. Neuroplasticity is arguably a factor even in outcomes that would seem largely out of Doty’s control. The self-confidence Doty has made into a habit not only enables him to advocate for himself, but likely influences the way the premed committee sees him on a subconscious level; self-assurance (in moderation) is a trait others tend to respond positively to.  

All that said, both Ruth and Doty suggest that scientific, cause-and-effect explanations fail to fully capture the transformative power of meditation. Doty’s first experience of visualization at work is a good example; the goal Doty is working towards—avoiding eviction—is entirely out of Doty’s hands, and yet reality plays out just as he’s imagined and hoped. It is this sort of outcome that leads Doty, a self-described atheist, to argue that meditation taps into and relies on an “energy” beyond normal human experience:

The energy of the universe is within us. […] All that power of creation. All that power of expansion. All that beautiful, simple, synchronized power. Energy can flow from one place to another. And it can flow from one person to another (150).

This energy, the book implies, is part of what gives meditation its ability to change lives.