Rob Cole, MD (he/him) has practiced medicine in Walnut Creek for nearly four decades. He founded a thriving obstetrics and gynecology practice at John Muir Hospital in 1986, where he cared for thousands of families while raising his own in the community.
At age 49, Dr. Cole was diagnosed with Stage II melanoma. Although initial treatment seemed successful, his cancer returned and required radical surgery, ending his surgical and obstetric career. His return to medicine came through hospice and palliative care, where he worked for 13 years while still living with advanced stage IV disease. This period coincided with his final course of experimental therapy, which was ultimately successful. Working as a hospice physician while confronting his own mortality became a profound education in how to face stress, suffering, and the search for meaning and purpose.
These experiences transformed Dr. Cole’s understanding of medicine and of life. Influenced by Alfred Adler’s belief that true health arises from belonging and contribution, and by Viktor Frankl’s conviction that humans are sustained by meaning even in suffering, he came to see that while medical outcomes may lie beyond our control, significance and purpose remain within our reach. Facing illness became not only a medical journey but a search for connection and meaning — the very qualities that restore health to the human spirit.
Today, through Transcendent Medicine, Dr. Cole brings together lifestyle medicine, narrative exploration, and ketamine-assisted support to help patients and families face life transitions with clarity, resilience, and meaning. His work is guided by the conviction that the best preparation for death is not denial, but a life fully and intentionally lived — connected to others and anchored in purpose.
Molly Baskette, M.Div. (she/her) is a Bay Area-based spiritual professional and self-described “transformation junkie.” Co-Senior Minister of the justice-loving First Church Berkeley UCC, she is the author of 6 books about spiritual growth, parenting, grief and post-traumatic thriving. She writes and lives with an expansive faith, a cheeky sense of humor, and a longing for more enchantment in everyday life.
Molly is a graduate of Dartmouth College & Yale Divinity School; she completed her psychedelic-specific training through California Institute for Integral Studies (Certificate in Psychedelic Studies & Research ‘24) and Polaris Insight Center (San Francisco). Her faith and practice has been profoundly shaped over 30 years as a working pastor by the many people she has walked with through all the hardest parts of being human: addiction, mental health crises, incarceration, complex grief, terminal illness and more.
Another foundational education was her own cancer journey: diagnosed with an aggressive cancer at age 39 while raising young children and pastoring an exciting but demanding church community. Illness and disability changed her self-perception in radical ways, and forced a profound reckoning with her faith and optimism.
Molly is also getting a lifelong PhD. in what spiritual teacher Richard Rohr calls “Love School” – the choice to move through life reaching for greater tenderness, compassion and connection to the Divine as well as to other humans (including & especially the ones who drive us bonkers :).
Molly is thrilled to be a part of the Transcendent Medicine team, accompanying individuals, couples, families & groups as they find their own way through stuckness and suffering to greater breathing room and joy in living.
Our Experience
What makes Transcendent Medicine distinct is not only what we offer, but who we are synergistically. We are an experienced physician shaped by both obstetrics and palliative care and a progressive Christian pastor and author who is also a cancer survivor and mother. When circumstances brought us together, we found kinship despite differences in temperament, identity and life experience.
What unites us is an orientation toward meaning and narrative. Diagnoses matter, but they are not the whole picture. Each person who comes to us carries a life story that is larger than any label, and within that story healing, growth, and possibility emerge. By bringing together our different perspectives and experiences, we offer patients a truly unique space for reflection, transformation, and care.
Our Philosophy
At Transcendent Medicine, we begin with the recognition that life is singular and fleeting. We do not control its unfolding; illness, loss, and uncertainty are woven into the human story as much as joy and love. What we can shape, however, is the way we meet this life — with attention, with openness, and with a willingness to search for meaning.
We believe that health is not simply the absence of disease, but the presence of connection and purpose. Each person carries within them a unique story, and at times the course of life calls for stepping outside of ordinary routines to reflect on that story — to ask whether the path we are walking aligns with our deeper intentions, and to imagine new possibilities for the future.
Our work is to create a space where this reflection can occur: a pause from the momentum of everyday life, supported by medicine, conversation, and practices that open the mind to wider horizons. Here, patients can explore meaning in the face of uncertainty, connection in the midst of struggle, and the possibility of living more fully and intentionally.
This philosophy guides every aspect of Transcendent Medicine. It is not a set of prescriptions, but an invitation: to step into one’s own story, to find coherence between intention and action, and to live a life that feels whole.
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