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

“I am working blind, so I open my heart to a possibility beyond reason, beyond skill, and I begin to do what I was taught decades ago, not in residency, not in medical school, but in the back room of a small magic shop in the California desert.”

Although the majority of Into the Magic Shop takes the form of a memoir, Doty chooses to begin not with his boyhood, but with a much later experience: operating on a child with a brain tumor. His reasons for doing so become clear in this passage, when Doty describes how, faced with an emergency that defies his medical skill, he turns to a meditative technique; because he can’t see the vein he’s trying to clamp, he visualizes it instead. The fact that Doty succeeds in saving the boy’s life illustrates not only the power of meditation, but also its mysteriousness. Visualization can achieve results that appear to defy “reason,” and throughout the rest of the work, Doty will stress that scientific explanation only goes so far in accounting for the mind’s ability to change the world and itself.

“‘I’m Jim,’ I said. Until that moment I was called Bob. My middle name is Robert. I can’t remember why I was called Bob. But for whatever reason, when she asked I replied, ‘Jim.’ And this was the name I would go by for the rest of my life.”

Although he likely doesn’t know it at the time, Doty’s decision to introduce himself as “Jim” is emblematic of the way in which meeting Ruth will change his life. It is not simply that Doty will become a new person as a result of the encounter, but rather that Ruth’s lessons will allow him to decide for himself who he wants to be, rather than letting those around him define his identity and worth.