Bookwild - Quantum Theology: Where Science Meets the Soul

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

This week, I talk with Keith Giles, Mary Terhune, Zac Cannon and Nish Dubashia about their collective work in Quantum Theology: Volume One. Listen to hear about: How science and spirituality may not be opposites, but different ways of exploring the same underlying reality How ideas from quantum physics—like interconnectedness and entanglement—echo concepts found in mysticism and religious traditions Why many contributors believe the sense of separation between people, cultures, and religions is an illusion, and what recognizing our interconnectedness could mean for humanity. How mystical experiences challenge the limits of language—why some spiritual insights can’t fully be explained, only experienced How awakening to shared consciousness could transform ethics, compassion, and how we treat one another   Quantum Theology, Volume One Summary Quantum Theology: Volume One brings together an extraordinary and diverse group of scientists, mathematicians, theologians, mystics, authors, and cultural commentators to explore one of the most provocative conversations of our time: What happens when Quantum Physics and Theology begin to overlap? Edited and curated by author Keith Giles, this book explores the intersection between science and faith. Featuring contributions by: Brandy Anderson, Zac Cannon, Brother Jason (Jay) Clark, Michelle Collins, Stuart Delony, Nish Dubashia, Eric Scot English, Jeremy L. Evans, Ellen Haroutunian, DMin., Dr. Steve McVey, Mark Merizan, Jenny Lorraine Nielsen, William Sarill, Mary Terhune, R.N., Mo Thomas, and John van de Laar.   Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

So today I am with some of the contributors to quantum theology, which is a collection of a lot of thoughts about quantum theology, basically. And I am here with three of the contributors. Can you guys just introduce yourself briefly for people so they can kind of know who's who and who they're listening to? All right. Well, I'll jump in. My name is Keith Giles. I'm the co-owner of choir publishing who published this volume. And I also edited the project as well as wrote the forward to it.

And I'm the one that kind of put it out there, invited people to contribute. And, you know, very excited about all the different contributors who sent in their chapters. And yeah, so that's what I did. After you, Mary. And I'm Mary through Hugh. I'm a registered nurse by training. and I got into the healing field of massage therapy, sports medicine, and then homeopathy. Keith also published my other book, Out of the Blue, which was my experience of a spontaneous spiritual awakening with Jesus.

And then I went on to have other experiences of this quantum field and the photonic packets of light that I saw. and while I was working at MIT. And so, and it just evolved from there. So, and into consciousness-based medicine. And where we're headed with our divinity, awakening within humanity, behind the egoic understandings. I'm that canon, and I'm a pastor and a spiritual director and a storyteller of many kinds. and in many ways I've just enjoyed learning from all the other really interesting people in this process.

So I'm really excited to be a part of this conversation today and continue to learn as I share a little bit about where I'm coming from from this perspective. Yeah. Yeah, it's all fascinating to me. So I'm excited to hear from you guys as well. So the gist of this collection especially is kind of is connecting quantum physics and consciousness and spirituality. So what was the moment that kind of convinced one or all of you that you were like, I think all of these are interconnected and we should talk about it. Well, I'll tell you where it came in for me. I had just finished writing this seven-part book series, kind of deconstructing my own personal, you know, conservative evangelical Christianity.

And as I was coming out of that process, I was kind of like sort of like, well, now what? You know, I know what I don't believe? But what happens now? You know, what happens next? And through that process, I really became convinced that it's, that theology is really sort of, you know, study of God, that's what the word means, you know. And I realized that so much of, in my experience

with theology, didn't make any sense, right? Like, if, if you begin with the idea that God is a being beyond all human comprehension, then it doesn't make any sense for the next thing you say to be, now let me tell you all about him, which is what theology is trying to do. It's trying to explain God, right? So I thought, like, you know, I think, I think for me personally, it's really, the answer is more about mystery. It's leaning into the mystery of the, of the, of the divine. And so the more I did that, that led me to start studying mystics of other faiths, people like Rumi and even Buddha and Black Elk, who was a Native American Shama and some others. And then I also started looking into quantum physics. And that's really where it broke open for me,

was starting to notice the overlap between some of the exact same things that mystic. have been saying for really thousands of years and quantum physics now is validating some of those same ideas. That ultimately, it comes down to consciousness. And so, yeah, that's where it kind of started for me. Yeah.

Well, I'll share my experience was I had a spontaneous spiritual awakening during a life crisis back in 1984 when I lost all my retirement funds and I was thrown into a crisis and I was in such a state of mind that I could no longer think anymore. And my mind stopped. And I cried out saying, please help me.

You know, I am in such a horrible state. And in that moment when my mind stopped, divinity entered the field in my living room and began to speak to me. And I realized that this light was Jesus, not Jesus of any confined to any religion, but Jesus as a spiritual. master of light. And then he awakened the kundalini energy in me. And so all my chakras started spinning inside me. And it released all this bliss, this incredible bliss and unfettered love inside me. And he spoke to me seven different topics of forgiveness, judgment, the Bible, weight,

issues, emotions, disease, aging, and the ego. And as he was doing this, he awakened this energy within me. And, you know, I wasn't anyone, I had left the Catholic Church long ago because of the dogma. But I recognized that he was separate from all of that. He had nothing to do with religion. He didn't come here to teach us religion. He came here to remind us that we are that light within. And when he finished teaching me and I was left in this blissful state, I went out to the backyard.

to get some fresh air, completely transformed to what was going on with me and within humanity. And I saw these photonic packets of light surrounding everything, the grass, the trees, and my experience of this photonic packets of light was that this was the light that created everything, and it was divine in nature. Little did I understand, though, that those photonic packets of light are the same light within me. It took me time to make that connection and the love and the omniscience in that light that created everything, had me burst into tears all over again. And out loud I said, oh, my God, this is heaven on earth, but we've made it into a hell from our egoic existence of separation and fear.

And after all of that, of course, I was working in research administration at the Israel Hospital in Boston. and all I wanted to do is to sit in this incredible bliss of love that I saw everywhere and I wondered why I was never told about this light within me. Of course, Jesus did say the kingdom is within,

but very few make that interconnection as a living reality of truth that we are the walking quantum field of divine nature. And then two years later, because I asked for a living teacher to meet a living teacher who really understood it embodied this, I did meet her.

And she changed my life forever through another initiation so that when I fully ignited again, that kundalini energy, this time it passed by the egoic state and went into the state of Brahman, or the quantum field that is everything and everywhere. And we literally are the walking quantum field of divine energy. And at that time, when that happened to me, I was at a meditation retreat. And as this all was happening inside me, I looked up and over this building, Jesus was rising in a cloud. And I thought, oh, my God, these visions are real.

And I thought, oh, am I ascending too? And I realized, yes, it's an inner ascension that you make to your divinity once it gets ignited within you. And the words that I heard were here is your divinity, the divinity that awaits all mankind. And it took me a long time to integrate all of this. I ended up getting a job at MIT in the Space Center, working with the top 200 space plasma physicists in the world, and who studied the quantum field. And of course, at that time, I wasn't really making the connection that Brahmin and Quantum Field and Divinities. and all of this is all one thing.

It's all one thing. And, of course, the field of medicine greatly interested me. Of course, I was involved in a habit involved in all my life. And then I came upon homeopathic medicine, which I found was the consciousness-based medicine of homeopathy, which can cure and prevent disease. And it was once part of our U.S. medical system. I didn't know that.

And I went back to school to study that with a doctor. And so I do classes on homeopathic medicine for people. But mainly the first thing, of course, is to know that you are the walking quantum field, divine nature, and to move beyond the egoic structure. And when that state opened in me completely back in 1988, the top of my head opened up. And I connected with that photonic packets of divine light as a living field of water of light. because it comes in particles and in a flow, and I opened up to this universal consciousness that we truly are. I couldn't hold it, though.

I couldn't hold it, and I ended up slipping back down. It wasn't my time yet to hold it back into the egoic structure, which relies on the mind and thoughts built in fear and separation. And from here up, there's no fear. There's just divine consciousness. So when you open like that, the masters are called the fountain heads. That's what they call these spiritual masters,

the fountain heads, because this is what they're talking about. And it's within us, and it lives in us as us in this world. And this is the process that humanity is going through now in many different levels through different understandings, but the experience of oneness of consciousness is the same. It isn't different.

So that was my, that's what happened to me, and it all happened very spontaneously. that is quite a journey that is so many cool moments that you've had oh there's nish and then i got to experience death while at mitie sitting on the metta on a bench at the electrical engineering a lot happened to me at md yes so it's all in my book the keith a keith wisely published he saw me on and wisely published it. So thank you, Keith.

I know you're so. Thank you. For believing. For believing. Yeah. Thank you. Because I'm kind of, you know, we're kind of the outliers of humanity. But people are listening now as they have their own awakenings.

Yes. Yeah. I'm definitely, we want to read that one. So we did just get joined by Nish. So just since we're in a podcast forum, I had every, you don't kind of introduce who they are so people know who they're listening to. So can you kind of introduce yourself briefly? Yes, certainly.

Apologies for being late. Oh, you're good. Managed to get the time change from London to Eastern Time. Oh, yes. My apologies. Yes, so I'm Nishabashya. So I'm a writer and a speaker. I live in London.

I'm trained as a mathematician, worked for many years in IT. and then had a kind of spiritual awakening of a kind and decided I needed to devote my life to writing and speaking. So most of the work that I write about now is to do with human development, integral theory, seeing how different philosophies fit together, Christian philosophy, Christian theology, and just trying to see if there's some kind of core teaching behind all of these that we're would be useful to humanity at the current time and useful to me as well. Yeah, I think if we realize

some of our similarities, especially within religions, we would probably be better off and treat each other a little bit better. So, yes, indeed. I feel that. Um, Zach, did you want to talk anything about what kind of brought you to thinking about these topics? I wanted to bounce off of something that Mary said first while I was listening is how much light comes up in this book and how much people continue to reference light in a variety of different ways. And I don't know, I just, that verse from John's kind of prologue about the light was coming into the world, but the world didn't recognize it, this idea of awakening to what is happening, which kind of brings me back to what several, as I said, of being on this,

kind of journey of exploration, whether that was kind of a post deconstruction of a certain particular type of faith or this, you know, investigating the mystery of what in the world is happening among us. And so for me, my kind of introduction to this isn't from a scientific point of view or a math point of view. It's all through story. And so I was doing some work with spiritual direction and having some conversations about unitive theology and contemplative psychology. And so my entry point into the language of quantum theology was actually through these ideas of non-dualism and mystery. And then the last chapter of this book, just to give a shout out to some of our other contributors, is this really wonderful kind of exploration of how this language, these ideas give

language to this underpinning that we all seem to be experiencing, which is this awakening to this lack of separation at a profound level. And if we were to really embrace that lack of separation, how that would then impact how we think morally, ethically, relationally, and even about ourselves as we integrate our own selves and the different parts of ourselves that we might not like or we might highlight certain things. You know, we all started this conversation by a list of you know, this is who I am, and I think that's really funny. But at the same time, we can't avoid that, just like Mary was talking about. We continue to kind of drop back into those stories that we tell ourselves.

But if we're able to see past them long enough to at least hear your story and hear your story, then maybe we can start to see some of that separation as an illusion and as, you know, lesser stories that they don't have as much impact and important as they did before. that's kind of what I'm coming into the space with and what I brought pastoral as I began to kind of sit with what my chapter was going to be and then unpacked it from there. Me when I use Riverside as well. Oh, good. Yeah, you can't change it while you're recording. So I realized it and I was like, okay, I need to wait. But I think I know what it is. Okay. Awesome. So something I thought was interesting and actually kind of all of you have

touched on this a little bit is that there's definitely spirituality to all of this and there's also science to it and I think a lot of people are used to like thinking those have to be separate. So do you kind of want to talk about that, like they don't have to be separate? They actually can kind of communicate with each other even. Yeah. Nish, I think you could probably speak to that. Yeah, certainly I'll try my best. I mean, my training was in. maths and physics originally, so I came to this through science. And then I discovered, I actually read a book called The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Kappa, which suggests that there are similarities between some of the findings of modern physics

and some of the Eastern traditions, and then later on the Christian traditions. My view is that human beings have the ability to find and discover reality in many different ways. in the modern world we've tended to emphasize the scientific way, the sort of third person objective way. And in some extreme cases, we believe or people believe that's the only valid way of getting knowledge. And religion, spirituality is often than just written off as superstitious or blind faith or whatever. But I think if we can broaden our epistemology, that's how we find different ways of finding knowledge, then that's just one of several ways in which we can explore reality. And I think spirituality gives us another way of doing that.

Maybe more than a third-person objective view, more of a first-person interior view, can we go within and find deeper truths about reality in the depths of ourselves. That's certainly one of the ways in which spirituality enables us to do that. and I think the inner and the outer reflect each other. So I don't think science and spirituality are talking about exactly the same thing. I think they mirror each other very well. And that's why we find this deep similarity in parallel in the languaging that they often use. It makes a lot of sense.

Well, I'd like to speak to that. You know, when I experienced this total self-realization when I was allowed my energy was allowed to go to this higher realm inside us in this and this chakra up here where the quantum field or Brahman the ultimate reality exists and we have it in ourselves which shocked me when I experienced it and you know when I saw those phaetonic packets of light from that state surrounding everything and I understood you know when I worked at MIT that this quantum field is the same quantum field that lives in us as us. There is no separation between science. It's just a separation of understanding. And once you experience this quantum field, this divine

light that the master spoke about like Jesus and others in the Hindu tradition, you know, these seers and and all the books talk about it. And you can write thousands of books about it. When you have the experience though, that is absolute clarity and for sure because up here lives only, only this blissful love of eternity that we are. And down here exists the way we think that we're a body. And it's all fear-based down here. And down here, it's fear-based with other, and you separate and hates involved, which destroys everything. And because it's so powerful. But up here, there's only this love, there's no fear. And you live in a state of being and knowing,

rather than thinking from a very small field of egoic existence, which keeps you separated and in fear. And once you have fear, you try to control everything out of that fear. But once you make this leap here, then it's no longer about fear. Then it's about, you know, that you are eternal being. and you can live in this world and create a world based on this experience. And when I discovered homeopathy, this consciousness-based system of medicine,

that's what it works with. It works with on a consciousness-based level, and it's vibrational medicine. And once you can understand that and understand that the quantum field and physics, there is no separation. It's just the separation of understanding. it. So once I saw it and experienced it myself, which as you say, Niche, you have to have that experience in you. You're right when you say that it's an inner experience. This is absolutely the truth. And once you experience it, you can't go back. There is no going back. Now they're sort

of like, uh-oh, you know, and now I have to live in this egoic structure where people have no idea what the heck I'm talking about. And it does leave you in a sort of a spiritual loneliness because you're talking about it. It was like people, what are you in the world are you talking about? So niece, you're right when you say that it is, we are endowed with this. You're absolutely correct. And we and this is the connection that people are beginning to make them, beginning to make strides in this in humanity. And it is ours. And it's about reclaiming it and remembering and then experience and be the living truth of this. So. Yeah. Can I say something about that too? Because to me on that question, this perceived separation between science and sort of mysticism or religion or theology.

So something I came across in some of my research and stuff was like prior to the quantum physics, which we now have, you know, scientists were working largely from a materialistic point. of view, Newtonian physics is very materialistic. It essentially says the only things that are real, like reality itself, is based on things we can, like particles and things we can see and measure, right? And the initial pushback from philosophers and theologians and mystics to that assertion that the scientists were making was, okay, then if that's true, then how do you explain human consciousness, right? Or a theologian might say, how would you explain the human soul. And scientists had no answer for that from a Newtonian, you know, materialistic framework. But now with the advancements that are being made in quantum physics, as science itself is beginning to shift

away from Newtonian physics and into more of the quantum physics, this is to me the shift. This is what's happening. This is why now these things are bleeding into one another. And I always go back to this quote. I came across, there's a very prestigious scientific journal called Nature. And Sir James Gene, who is one of the, who is a very prominent quantum physicist, wrote an article in this journal about how this shift is happening with quantum physics. And he ended that article by saying, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is as close to an exact quote as I can get. He essentially ended that article by saying, we can no longer speak of the universe as a great machine, meaning materialism. He said, we must now talk of the universe as a great thought or consciousness. And so that to me is

the radical shift. Go back to that question, right, the pushback from philosophers and theologians to the Newtonian model and challenging scientists to say, how then in a material universe do you explain the rise of consciousness and they can't. Suddenly now what Sir James Jean and other quantum physicists are saying is, oh wait, that was the wrong question all along. The question shouldn't be how does consciousness arise from a materialist universe? It's the other way around. How does material arise from consciousness? That consciousness seems to be the bedrock of reality and of the universe. And that

to me is the massive shift. And it's actually been really fun in researching some of the stuff. I've listened to a lot of lectures, TED talks, interviews from these quantum physicists. And it's funny to me how often, as they begin to sort of explain these kinds of things, almost inevitably, they will stop themselves about halfway and say, now I know I sound like a theologian right now. Or, oh, I know I sound like I'm a mystic right now. Like, it makes them nervous because they're picking up on it. Like, now I know this, you know, so that like, okay, look, I don't want to go there, but they can't help it. Like, the quantum physics is validating these kinds of ideas.

And to me, that's the exciting part of that. I mean, like I agree with Nish, they're not saying the exact same things, but there is a lot of overlap. Like you were saying, there are a lot of echoes there. And that, to me, is the exciting thing to me about this book, this quantum theology book, that's why I wanted to publish it and to get all these different voices from actual quantum physicists and mathematicians and, you know, people with degrees all the way down to just mystics

and practitioners and other authors and spiritual advisors and guides, you know, but to get all these different perspectives on this topic because it has applications for so many different areas. Well, in the field of medicine, this is why the homeopathic medicine was pushed out of the United States because it is consciousness-based medicine. It works with the quantum field. And it started to become very popular in the United States. And Rockefeller didn't like that because he had, he had the material-based system of medicine, which is synthetic petrochemical drugs, which act on a material level, which suppress symptoms versus homeopathic medicine that works on the quantum field to release

whatever the stuck energy is in mind thought, which creates disease. And this is in the field, just in the field of medicine alone, the changes that are possible and can happen. And I know as a homeopath for 25 years, I've seen it work, and I use it myself. But that's one field that will be transformed incredibly. And there's others, of course. Yeah, so unfortunate that if it's less profitable, it kind of does not exist well in a very careful. capitalist society basically. I loved niche. I loved the like being able to think of it in terms of like third person versus

first person. I feel like that's like a really practical way that I think a lot of people could kind of understand it. And then I feel like Mary and Keith, your answers kind of explained what that what that can actually mean as well. I do think it's interesting too how it like the lack of believing in some of this like quantum connectedness is also what creates so much separation in multiple ways but I think it also keeps like humans separate from each other too and then that I think feeds into the ego part so what was what was what was it like kind of like learning about that part or like what kind of led you to the like how separation kind of keeps us from this too.

Well, we, we, I'll just say, go ahead, see. Go ahead, Zach. I was just going to say that we, we instinctively make meaning. And so our, from the very beginning of history, we've, we've applied meaning and stories to ourselves. And indigenous and Eastern cultures obviously have different stories than, than some Western cultures. And that's, that's a very broad statement. It's not ubiquitous. But this idea that for so long, our, our meaning became tribal and insular and it served purposes. But now as we've evolved and as the need for new stories continues to expand, that's why we're so much of this, this relearning after unlearning is to find these similar

stories of connection to say, all right, well, my banner is not any different than your banner. And so maybe I can put this down and we can learn a way to be together differently. Nish used the word exploration, and that really stood out to me, this idea of like, how much more evolved and aware would we be if we were exploring one another and we were curious about one another as opposed to interested in wall building and maintaining the systems that keep us safe, or at least that we've been told that keep us safe, but we're also just seeing the violent, both the violent reaction of those systems in real time,

but also from within those systems. I'll use the word violent because it feels that way sometimes, the violent deconstruction of those powers and principalities to use Bible language in real time as well. And those things are happening hand in hand. And that's kind of where this work kind of meets in that space of like helping to walk people through to the other side of that reality, regardless of the words that we might choose to do that work. For me, the very limited nature of feeling separate came to me through spiritual practice. I took up various practices when I was a student.

And one of the traditions in which I did some training is a North Indian tradition called Kashmir Shaivism. And in this tradition, we're actually taught that separation or the sense of being separate as human beings from the rest of reality. is not inherently true. It's something we're doing in each moment ourselves. And through meditation, yoga, other practices, you learn to recognize how you're doing it. So you actually become aware moment to moment that you're actually doing what in that tradition

they call the self-contraction. And they use an analogy that reality is like an open hand, but we're always making it into a fist and creating this sense of self. And if we can see through that or relax, that in some way, then the wholeness of everything becomes obvious as the prior reality, on which we're imposing separation ourselves. So for me, that was what convinced me more than just reading about physics. I actually was able to see how I'm doing it in each moment.

Yes, I came to Kashmir of Shavism too, Nish. I came to Kasmeer Shavism too, which opened me. and the experiences, I was given the experiences first, and then I came to understand all of that, and it just opened the whole world to me. It's beautiful, actually. Yeah, just to tack on to that, like, if you want to see the fruit of separation, just watch the news, scroll through your Instagram, and look at the incredible damage and destruction, the suffering created from the mindset that we are separated by.

nations, by politics, by gender, you know, by religion. That's, that's, we're living it right now and we're living it at a, you know, at a level. I, I thought I would never experience in my lifetime. But in some ways, and in fact, Mary, I want to thank you because you're one of the people that helped me to see this. When we first published Mary's book, she and I were having a conversation. And throughout the conversation, Mary kept saying, kept referring to this awakening that we're experiencing now. And this great awakening that we're experiencing about our oneness and our connection. She kept speaking of it as if it had already happened.

And I finally stopped her and I said, Mary, I mean, you keep talking about it. Like, I mean, I see the need for it. I mean, wow, wouldn't it be great if that would happen. But, I mean, as I look around, I don't see the evidence of this great awakening and oneness and connection. And she said, no, all of the suffering you're watching right now, and this was like a year ago. So it's even worse now, right? All of the suffering you're seeing right now is evidence of, it's sort of like the collective, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mary, but it's like the way I understood it. It's like the collective human consciousness is beginning to awaken and realize that this system that we are living in right now is unsustainable.

It cannot, we as humanity, cannot continue to live. at this level of belief in the lie of separation, because the fruit of it is killing us. And so we are now, what that creates is a vacuum where we then begin spiritually, psychologically, to begin saying there must be another way. There must be something else. And that's what this, I keep saying that to me,

this awareness of our oneness and our connection, our shared divinity and our shared humanity, I call it the answer to everything. because if we as a human species can finally awaken and really get this, this is how you love your neighbor as yourself. This is how you love your enemy. This is how this is the end of poverty. This is the end of genocide.

This is the end of prejudice, you know, racism. Because when you see the other, when you look at the other person, you don't see the other. You see yourself reflected and you see God reflected in them, right? If you believe that you can drop a bomb on a school of young girls in Iran, and that doesn't do incredible damage to yourself and to every other human on this planet, then you haven't gotten it yet. But the hope is that we're starting to get it. I believe that I now have faith in that awakening because of that,

because I think that is right. I think Mary's right. We're living now through the sort of the birth pangs of, that awakening and it's very painful and it's very scary but um but i do think it's inevitable i think virtually i mean my awakening happened during a very painful crisis and this is what people are going through usually it takes a painful crisis to crack open that identity with the egoic structure you know like them called cracking open the coconut to release the the sweetness inside and it's it usually it happens through suffering that you can't sustain the suffering anymore

which happened to me. My mind could not possibly sustain my suffering. And it stopped. When the mind stopped, that space between thoughts opened. And that's where consciousness lives. It lives in the space between thoughts. So we're no longer going to be being run by thoughts that built out of fear and separation, but a sense of beingness that has the tremendous power of transformation in our consciousness. So usually it does happen through tremendous crisis. And I've went through it myself so I can understand how difficult it is for people now.

And the fear comes from having to release all of this way of being. But I can tell you, once you release it, you will open to the non-fear, to the fear of beingness, which is beyond fear. And it's within us. And that's what shocked me. My God, it's within humanity. I can't believe this. that we're carrying this holy grail in us,

and we don't see it. We don't see it, and it's everywhere, but we don't see it. Yeah. But now, as you say, Keith, we are waking up to this, through this shared crisis that we're all sharing, and it doesn't matter if it's on the other side of the world. It's happening. It's happening to all of us now,

because we all share in this experience of what's going on. We're not protected from it. We have to share it as humanity. and to awaken it and to hold and sustain what we know is true that we are one and that that it is possible to create a world that's different yeah someone what you were saying was reminding me i had seen years ago someone else's interpretation of like when jesus says i am the light and the way and the truth um and and i was i heard someone's this was years ago i hadn't thought about it in a while, but he was talking about, some people interpret that as Jesus is the only

one who has light. He's the only one who's the way. He's the only one who knows the way. Or was he trying to teach us like that we could say it about ourselves as well? So does that play into all of this as well? Yeah, for me, it totally does. Like for me, in fact, pretty much the John 14, the Gospel of John chapter, well, the whole book really, but is very much about that. but I think it's in John 14, where, again, how we've been taught it to understand those verses, versus how I think there's a better way to understand those verses. There's a verse where Jesus says to his disciples, in that day, meaning not now, but one day, you're going to get this, and here it is.

Here's what you're going to get. In other words, you personally are going to have this aha moment. Here it is. Yes. I am in the Father, and you are in me. I am in you. That's so Jesus is basically saying, I had this revelation. I had this awareness.

This blew my mind. And you, you haven't gotten it yet. But you're going to get it one day. You're going to say to yourself, you're going to look in the mirror and say to yourself, I'm in the father. And you're going to turn to the other person and say, and you're in me and I'm in you. And this is now suddenly, it's certainly like, oh, this is why whatever I've done to the least I've done it to myself or I've done it to Christ right because there is this connection

and I yes I totally agree with that and I think it is it's a shift it's a subtle but very powerful and necessary shift in realizing and by the way this pattern is all through I'm working on a book right now on this topic so that pattern is all through the gospels and and even through the writings of Paul believe it or not where Paul often uses this pattern of saying something that's true of Christ and then he says and it's also true of you right so he'll say things like because christ has been raised from the dead you have been raised from the dead because christ is seated at the right hand of the father you are seated at the right hand of the father right um and so he says this kind of stuff all the time in other words what's true of christ is true of you right and so i think that's

one of the missing things um again it's so funny to me is it's embedded right there it's in the pictures that Christians have. They just haven't sort of learning, have new eyes to sort of read it and understand it from that direction. You know, Keith, some people say that Jesus actually said the I am is the way. Yes. They left out the word is. Yeah, the great I am.

I am that I am. I am that. And all these books, whether it's the Bible or the Upanishads or the Bhagavagata or any of those spiritual books. can point to the, they can point to the way, but you can't get the experience of it through these books. Because you can use words and use them however you want. You have to go beyond it.

And once you have the experience, the books can't possibly touch what it's like to experience Brahmin. I mean, I had the experience myself. I could only hold it for 30 minutes. I didn't have the mind that could just, you know, release all it and hold it. But once you have that experience, it's far beyond anything that any, whether it's Jesus or any of the Hindu spiritual masters who came before him, he wasn't the only one who held this knowledge and information and imparted it.

But, you know, the Catholic religion kind of took him over and used him. He didn't come here to tell you about a religion. He came here to tell you about the light, as you say, within you. And so you can write millions of words about the experience, but once you have the experience, It's way beyond what books can point to. Yes, that's a great point. It's unbelievable. And when it happened to me, I could not believe that it was within humans.

And yet it is. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the truth. Yeah, it's a great point about the, the words or the description of something versus the actual experience of the thing. I was reading a theology book a long time ago, and the one thing I remember remember was he used this analogy about it. He goes, imagine if you went to a, you know, a tribe,

an unconnected tribe of people in Papua New Guinea, right? They've never contacted any, any, you know, modern people. And you learn their language and you're sitting around the campfire and you're talking to them. And maybe you just make a comment like, man, I really miss having a good cup of coffee. And they say, what's coffee? You know, human language, you could do your best to try to sort of explain to them kind of what coffee tastes like, but you will completely fail until you hand them a cup of coffee and they drink it. And now you don't need an explanation, right? So if words are incapable of accurately describing what coffee is, it's completely, completely falls short of explaining anything like a profound divine connection, right?

They say that the mystical experience is ineffable. And most traditions say that. And I think also in addition to what Keith is saying, it's also partly because of the way our language is structured. So one of the things that happen in mystical experiences, you realize a oneness between you and the rest of the world, between subjects and object. But our language is always predicated on that distinction.

So it's very difficult to get across something that presents that distinction in that structure. One of the things some thinkers, David Bone talks about this, is we need to also evolve our language structures. Yeah. So we can also find ways to better speak about something that transcends these kind of journalism.

That's right. Yeah, and it's just like developing a language of light. The language of light. That's exactly right, Nish. You're absolutely correct. Yeah. So we're developing this language of light. Mm-hmm.

And it sounds like quantum entanglement is a part of what kind of communicates that language of light. I'm not sure if that was any of your guys' chapters, but can you, can any of you talk about the quantum entanglement part? My understanding of, I mean, my understanding of quantum entanglement very, very, is very basic, but essentially, if you take an example, if you have two particles and they are, even if they're traveling away from each other at the speed of light, which means it's impossible for one to send a signal to the other, because you'd have to go faster than speed of light to communicate and we can't. There's still a connection between the two. Something that happens to one affects the other,

and it can't be at the manifest level, because there's no way they can communicate. They're entangled in a way that we can't explain with, certainly with Newtonian physics. So there has to be, or there's likely to be, a deeper order, a deeper order where these things that we think are separated are one, our whole. And that shows up as entanglement in the manifest world. And even in the Christian tradition, I think this is pointed to in a way that probably isn't recognized very much, in the way we describe God as a Trinity. It's a multiplicity in unity.

You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and they're separate, but they're also one. There's a deeper essence or wholeness that unites them. And when we talk about the body of Christ, we're all members of the body of Christ. Well, we're separate, but we're also one in the body of Christ. So this unity and diversity, I think, is kind of pointed to by quantum entanglement, and it's there in some of these traditions. Because consciousness is beyond space and time. It lives beyond space.

And so do we live beyond space and time? Because we are the living consciousness. We are beyond space and time. That's how I know when something is bothering my daughter and I call her up and say, what's wrong? And she got, how did you know? Because we have that ability, this is innate within us. This is part of consciousness. I mean, this is consciousness itself beyond space and time.

But we are also beyond space and time. We're not the body. We only have one. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to come back to ego a lot. Or kind of like dismantling the ego part of you that makes you think you're just the body essentially. So can you kind of talk about like how ego even has to be deconstructed to experience these things?

Yeah. Well, I did get that. I did get that teaching directly about that. The ego is just a case of misidentification because you just, it's a thought structure. Ego is all built on thought structure. It's an illusion. You think you're a body, you think you're a person,

you think you're separate, you think you're a job, you think you're a gender, and that's egoic structure. And once you go, and the egoic structure lives from here down in this separative fear-based, and anything connected with that is all fear-based material existence.

but once you can enter this territory within you, it's beyond that false identification. It's just an illusion. It's just an illusion based on thought and mind. Once you go beyond thought, now you're into the realm of being and your true divine nature that exists everywhere and everywhere. It's everywhere. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the experience, at least for me, I'll just speak for myself, but for me to really to have sort of that mystic experience sort of dissolves the ego I mean it's sort of like that is what it is to me

like when I'm in deep in meditation and you're experiencing what Nish referred to as this this oneness this connection this absolute connection of you know you and

this divine consciousness are the same there is no separation and then and then the same that there's no separation between therefore you and everything else And when you experience that incredible oneness, like that ego is gone.

It just, it dissolves it. And so, I mean, at one level, it's like we can't, again, we've talked about this a lot here in this episode. But, you know, these are things we come in and out of these things, right? It's very difficult and maybe even impossible to like live your entire life completely, you know, separated from your ego. I think in some ways your ego is helpful. It protects you and all that. But it's good to remember that it isn't reality. That is not you, right?

It is a projection. It's something that your mind creates so that you can, you know, get up and go to work and live your life. But the more you recognize that, that is not reality. That is not you. You can begin to treat it as and be aware of it as something that is sort of an illusion or an imagination or projection. and then remember it's more about it's more about awakening to it and then remembering it and then i think it's kind of being a conscious observer yes like pulling back being able to do that and this idea there's an excellent book called the untethered soul that talks about that um that was very

helpful well this this permission of like i disagree with go ahead barry i was going to say i disagree with you on one level that we're not meant to live in ego the ego state that this is what we're transcending now. Yeah, yeah. You know, you don't have to live in that state. That's, this is a state of fear. This is a state of complete. Yeah.

Lack of fear and that you can live in the world and create. This is why we're going through this case. Yes. Let's let it go. You know, it's, because the ego structure says, oh, you can't live without me. Oh, yeah, you got to have this separation. Are you going to die?

No, that's a separation that's killing you. Right. Right. Yeah, no, as we can see. That's what I was thinking about the freedom is that I know that I'm, to an extent, I'm choosing to play a role. Like, I'm choosing to embrace Zach as all these labels I might add to myself. Those are not the sum of me, but today I'll choose that. I'll play that game.

But then that changes the rules with which I play the game because I can pursue the things that bring me joy and creativity in life. but I'm not going to do that at the expense of another person. And so I'm not, and so I can acknowledge, yes, I put all these things on. I wear them like clothes. I present myself a certain way. But I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to play by the same rules to which someone might think that that is all that there is and make that their entire personality or goal.

And so, again, I agree with both of you more or less. But I think there's a when I understand at least, well, yep, today I was. I was playing the Zach roll real hard and Zach got in the way, you know, at least I can acknowledge that. Yeah. But it's sort of like, well, you know, Jesus made the leap. Why couldn't wait? That's the whole point. Yeah.

You know, so he made the leap, not only him, but other Hindu, you know, spiritual teachers have made this leap too. I mean, this is why they come to the earth to say, hey, remember who you are. you have a body yeah you have to take care of it yes you have a name but you just have these things as you say Zach as clothing but it's not your identity you don't identify with it you just have to have those identities so that we can live in the world and you know live in the world to make to make things happen around us but we know for we don't have to live in that state of identity once you make this leap then you can live as the as the seers and the saints and all Well, the mystics say you can live that way because many of them have come to this earth and live that way. So this is the great, unbelievable leap. I mean, this is an astonishing thing to me when this happened to me. Oh, my God, we can actually have that state. And certainly, yeah, would I like that state back now while I'm in this physical being on this?

But yeah, but I don't forget it, you know. It's a matter of remembering, as you say, Keith, remembering, constantly remembering. and choosing to be present to it and remember it because the other just drags you into this, you know, separative thing as you say, Zach, you take on this role of Mary or Zach or whatever. And it's like, oh, my God, you know, hold it. Stop the presses. I am that, you know, and coming from that state. So I can, you know, we're in a transition. This is a big transition. This is no easy leap. Yeah. This leap from here to here is gigantic. It's gigantic.

It's evolutionary. It's astonishing. It's outrageous. It's radical. But yet, it's normal. Yeah. That is our normal state. And when it happened to me,

I thought it was the last person to know because it seemed so normal, which was kind of funny. Nish, did you have something? It's radical. Oh, yes, please. I wanted just to build on what both all three of you were saying, is that it's useful.

I find it useful to distinguish, or try to distinguish between distinctions in the world that are actually necessary and useful. And when we take those distinctions and differences too far, and then they become dualisms and separation that cause problems. So, I mean, I refer to this as multiplicity and fragmentation or parts and fragments. So for practical purposes, there are. parts. If I'm driving a car and there's a car in front of me, it's different to me for practical purposes. I'm not going to just crash into it because there's wholeness. I mean, that's not going to

be, that's not going to, you know, hold up in court when I'm in the rest of the Christmas. But if we take those separations too far and lose touch with the wholeness that's underlying those parts, then one way to frame it is that those parts, which are valid, become fragments. And it's the fragments that cause a problem, not parts that are still connected to the whole. I mean, a really good example of this I find is with the division of the world into different nationalities or races. At a certain level, that has a certain use if I'm traveling to a different country or so on. But there is an underlying wholeness, which is that at a deeper level, we're not different. We're all, you know, there's a common humanity. If we,

see races as different but lose sight of that underlying wholeness, then races that are parts become races that are fragments, and that becomes a serious problem. We have a similar example with religions as well. So I think that's a useful way. As long as we don't lose touch with the underlying wholeness, we can navigate and live in this world of parts. Yeah.

But we're always grounded in the homes. That's beautifully said, yes. Yeah. I'm going to use that. Definitely. It's like an easier way for some people to grasp it. It was also reminding me, I don't know if any of you guys watched Pluribus on Apple TV. Yeah.

I feel like we've gotten to the point there. What that show did so well that I thought was it felt like there's the critique of like forced community or forced unity and individualism. And how sometimes you need to still be an individual. Sometimes you need to be a part of the group. But you also don't want to force. someone into the group and lose parts of themselves. Yeah. So kind of with, which I think was maybe the diamond model in the book that like

talks about how like we can have diversity and be individuals. Can you kind of talk about that too? Yeah, Nish. That was Nish's chapter. Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. So my understanding of the term non-dualism, which is often seen as the kind of highest realization in this. in the traditions is that the holes and the parts can coexist together. There's no real conflict

between the two. And so as seeming indivisions, we can be individuals and also the whole at the same time. We can be different and also the same at the same time. And that's the most difficult thing, I think, to hold and navigate. But that's the highest realization, I think. We can, obviously, we can just get lost in the parts, and that's what most of the world is. But I think we can also get lost in wholeness. But parts also have a role to play

if we're going to survive, at least while we're embodied in the world. So the challenge really is, can I be, you know, to use metaphorical language, can I be God or the divine, and this separate individual niche at the same time, because I'm both of those. I'm different and I'm also the same as everybody else. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. I think it's a bit of a paradox. Yeah. And it's so funny, like a few years ago, I was personally wrestling with thinking of trying to under, again, the irony, trying to understand the nature of God.

And I was wrestling between, pantheism, which is the view that God is all things, and the other view, which is pan in theism, someone like Richard Rohr is a big proponent of this view, that God is in everything, but God is not summarized by everything, right? And so I was leaning, I kind of went back and forth on those, and where I landed, and this is just what made sense for me, and I think it's similar to what you were saying, this, the answer to the question is is it pantheism or is it panentheism? I think the answer is yes.

It is both. And I know that makes no sense. How could it be both? But what I realized was, like I think it is a paradox. I think in some way it is somehow true. I can't understand what way it's true. But back when I was an evangelical Christian, I believed in and taught this concept called the Trinity,

which I also could not explain. And I would basically come down and just come and say to people, when I try it and fail to explain the Trinity, I would just say, it's a paradox, right? And that's kind of how I feel about this same question. Like, how can I be an individual and at the same time be one with this divine consciousness? How can that be? Well, we just are. I don't think there is a way. Maybe at some point we'll get the software upgrade and it'll all click and we'll go,

oh, of course. Right. But at this, I love it. We're in the midst of the software upgrade. Yes, there you go. This is what we're in the midst of. And I can tell you, when you experience it, it is unbelievable because, and it's no longer

a paradox. Yeah. Because this, this, you know, this creative force that we are just likes to create. Yeah. And we create this and we create that. And we, you know, it just create different things. And it's all creation. Yeah.

But the. true remembrance of our true nature is one of this universal divine field of being this. And it's hard to, I can't explain what it was like to live in that for 30 minutes. But I can tell you that it's something that you can't really grasp with the mind thoughts. to try to explain because the mind wants to understand. The mind is trying to explain, understand, how in the world can I live in this world with a name as being an so-called individual?

But once you have that experience, the paradox is solved. And you just see unity and everything. You see unity and diversity. It's all unity and diversity, because that's the state you're coming from. And it's quite natural. That is our natural state. it's quite natural to us. We just forgot.

That's all. So it's a whole other, a whole other way of being. And you can't explain it with the mind. Yeah, the mind like you're saying. The mind wants to understand how can this possibly be. But it is. All I can say is it is. And when it happens, this is, this is, this is where we're going.

I mean, this is what's happening to us. And why I was given that, I guess, to maybe explain some of it from my point of view, what happened to me. Because I'm just like everybody else. And I knew nothing. I wasn't constrained by other ways of thinking. I was just very open. Yeah. But this is, it is a paradox until you have the experience, and then it's no longer a paradox.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. It's kind of humorous. Yeah. wants to graph it like my that was my experience I was processing some of this it's like I want to be able to draw it on a napkin I want to be able to run a spreadsheet that's what my mind wants to do and at some point you just have to say that's not how that works yeah well I surrender it's like you know it's sort of like when they say you can't serve two masters yeah it's either the master

of the mind thoughts ego or this master that you truly are you can't serve yeah the one this doesn't go here. This doesn't go here. Yeah. Yeah. So because it's because this is our natural state. This is who we are. And it seems like a paradox. But when you experience it, it's no longer a paradox. And it's quite blissful and quite amazing. And humorous at some point if you can go to that point. Right. But, you know, it's not it's a difficult transition and I appreciate how difficult it is. Yeah. It's reminding me a little bit when I was, I did a lot of therapy in my 20s and I was and still am someone who defaults to being like an intellectualizer. And so so many times my therapist for anyone who's just listening and can't see me would point at her head. And she would be like, I know you know this. And then she would point at her heart and she would be like, but I don't think you know this. And I was like, what is the difference?

I already know it. I know all the facts up here. And she would be like, you're going to feel different when like your soul accepts it, your heart accepts it or whatever. And some of it's reminding me now, of course, of my therapy where I was like, well, I know all the right words in the right order. But it's like it's not the same thing as like actually starting to believe different things about yourself. Yeah. So I feel like that must be similar. That's a great therapist, Kate.

Keep that therapist. She was fantastic. Yes. She was wonderful. because yeah there's and that's kind of getting into there's a lot of somatic stuff that I needed to kind of sink into but I like I like staying in my head sometimes which isn't always helpful um with kind of with this quantum theology how does it reinterpret for you things like um like even like evil and like spiritual evolution like how does it make you feel about or how has it

change your thoughts on those kinds of things i think that might require a whole other book well okay that volume two and volume two of theology we're going to dive directly into that question because i i think that is the that to me anyway is sort of the was the next logical question came up. Yeah. So you have the initial blissful, oh my gosh, I'm one with the divine. Oh my gosh, I'm one with all humanity. This is beautiful and amazing. And you know, you have this period of of that aha, wow kind of experience. But then you think about it. And then you kind of, we alluded to like, you know, you see the things happening in the news. And you wonder, like, wait a minute, that means I'm one with those people doing those horrible things. And what do I do with that? So I think,

I think that question, and the question of evil, the question of suffering in the world, has always been sort of the most difficult question, I think, for religion and, you know, spirituality to grapple with. But I, but I, we are, so we are going to tackle that in the next, the next book. I think there is an answer to it. I don't know that I've come across anything personally. I mean, I'd like to hear from Zach and Mary and Nish. this and their perspective of it.

And there's things that I've come across that are better than others when it comes to ways of understanding that question. The one at the moment that helps me the most is there's an analogy again, Richard Roar talks about in one of his books. I think it's the universal Christ. He tells the story of a woman who had a mystical experience on the subway and she, she suddenly could see Christ in everyone, right? She could see this Christ and everyone she looked at.

And it lasted for like a couple of days where everyone she saw the sidewalk, anyone she ran into, she could see the Christ in them. But then she said, for some people, when she saw Christ in them, she says it was Christ was in them, but only as Christ was in his tomb awaiting resurrection. So in other words, Christ was in everyone. But not everyone had that Christ awakened in them, had not come alive in them yet. And that means that's why they were working, they were working through and acting and believing from a place of that Christ in them not having been resurrected yet. And that was very helpful for me.

Yeah. For me, you know, evil is just, evil is just forgetting. your true divine nature. That's all it is. And when you act out of that, if, you know, egoic structure, you can do anything because it's fear-based.

This is all fear-based living. And so everything is separate and fear, which leads to hate of other, which then you think you can destroy it. So it's not that you're like those people. It's just that you're like in consciousness, and conscious, like in the sense that consciousness,

It's just as you say, it's awakened in you or not. You can know this truth of consciousness being available to everybody, but not everybody uses it, so they act from this level, which we call evil. Because it's forgetfulness of one's true nature. And you can do all kinds of horrific things as we say, and that's why it's so important to awaken. this is why it's so important until we awaken we'll continue to do that and it could be and we have to be mindfully in ourselves that you don't slam the door and the next person who's coming through in the supermarket because that's right that's evil you know in little bits right right or things like that so we all have to be very conscious of what state

we're working from, which is difficult now because it's not easy to be mind-ful or mindless, perhaps, in our actions. And it's not easy. It's not easy to do it, but we are in a transitional state for this. So for me, evil, if you spelled evil backwards, you know, live, live or evil, live or evil. To live is to live, truly live. Right.

In Buddhism, there's a useful way I think they tackle this. They say that what they call the two truths doctrine. So there's an absolute truth and there's also a relative truth. And we have to kind of hold both of those together. The absolute truth, yes, we're all, that there's only wholeness, we're all God or there's only light. That's the absolute truth. But we've also incommated in the relative world of things and events, that at least at that relative level are relatively separate.

In that relative world, good and evil most certainly exist, and we have to be mindful of that. We have to enforce laws. We have to defend the weak and so on. We have to do that. At the same time, there is only the whole, that both are true together at the same time. And one possible way of working towards reconciling these.

First of all, the excellent example Keith gave that you see Christ, in everybody, but in some he hasn't resurrected yet. There's another way that is in the Bhagwit Gita, which is a Hindu scripture. And the hero of the Bhagwit Gita, he's in battle, and he's gone to battle with his cousins who are evil people, and he has no choice but to go into battle with them, to uphold the good. And he has a great crisis of conscience at the last moment, that how can I go and potentially kill these people and Krishna who's the God who's with him in this scripture he talks about this paradox and he says you know there is only God I'm paraphrasing it there is only God but you also have to

do your duty in this world your what in Hinduism you call your Dharma in the world you also have to act righteously in the world and then he kind of summarizes it in a slightly witty way he says so think of God, but then take your bow and arrow and kill your enemy. So we have to somehow do both of those. We have to be real about what we have to do to survive and deal with the reality of evil in the world. At the same time, we hold the truth that there is only God. Somehow we reconcile that somehow.

Maybe the Christian Doctrine of Incarnation is a way to reconcile that. The absolute is constantly trying to incarnate in each of us. In each of the relative parts, God is trying to incarnate through each of us. And he did that much more in Jesus than he did in me, for example. But that process is going on all the time in each of us. And that's probably where the absolute and the relative meet in terms of that metaphor. I've read the Bhagavagata twice. And for me, the essence of Arjuna,

the soul, the separate soul, and Krishna, or divine nature within the soul, is an internal battle. Yes. Internal battle, you're going to kill this ego? Are you going to do your Dharma and let it go, or what are you going to do? So for me, it's not so much an external truth that happened with the Bhagavigata, but rather an internal battle on the battlefield. This is the battlefield. This is the true battlefield.

It all happens in here. Are you going to take up your Dharma and realize that you are divine, that you're this Krishna, this energy of divinity, or are you going to live here? What are you going to do, Arjuna? Because we're all Arjuna on the battlefield. This is the battlefield.

And to decide that you don't want to live that way is it's not so much deciding but it's it's the transformation of consciousness happening in humanity now that it's

this is the battlefield right here and where are you going to serve reclaim yourself and it's a battle to reclaim yourself

because you have to deal with this this is why I couldn't hold I could only hold it for 30 minutes because I had to go back down and battle this in here my own issues that we call karma you know my own issues I had to deal with in myself and how I could I once having that experience could I live in this world and treat people the way they should be treated yeah the work that I do the way I hold a door open for somebody or don't And it's the little things, because it's the little things.

If you can't be trusted in the little things, how in the world can you be trusted in the big things? So it is a true battlefield here that the Bhagavagita is really talking about. And of course, then it talks about self-realization in the end. But it's not an easy task to go from here to here. This is the task that humanity has been given. And it's a huge battlefield. and we're all in this battlefield together. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. So it's not an easy, it's very difficult. But yet it's simple. It's like, it is that paradox. But once you had that experience, you know what the books are trying to talk about. But it's far greater, far greater than anything.

that's in us than any book could ever explain, including the Bhagavagata or the Bible or the Apondashads or the, you know, the Vedas, any of them. They only point to it. Look, but try to cross this ocean. Try to cross that, you know, not an easy task because divine permission has to be given here to cross. Nothing goes here that ever is involved in here. It's not possible. You can't take this here. It's two different worlds. And this is the transitions we're making in these worlds on this earth. You imagine what humanity is involved in now.

We've got to give ourselves a pat on the back. This is not easy. We're warriors inside of ourselves. It's not an easy task. It's not. I do think people are probably very intimidated when they hear the words quantum theology. next to each other. So kind of my last question would be other than reading this book,

do you guys have any, are there any practical things people can do? I know yours was kind of spontaneous, Mary, but is there anything they can kind of do in their daily life to start maybe like understanding this more or connecting to it more? Well, meditation is there might not be. But Keith, go ahead and Zach, you know, you're a Yeah, Zach, go ahead. I mean, I was probably going to say something very similar to most of you, which is just engaging in contemplative practices that help us to drop from ego space into better awareness so that we can recognize like, oh, that wasn't, that was a thought or an emotion or a feeling, but that wasn't the core of what that reaction wasn't who I am. And I think the more we can practice those things for ourselves, even if only for a few minutes a day, then we can begin to extend that to other people. And so when they react or respond to us, we recognize like, that's not them.

And this isn't necessarily even about me, probably. This is just what this relational stew provided in this moment. And so maybe my ego doesn't have to take as big a hit. I don't have to respond as reactively. and I'm really not great at any of that, but it's a practice. That's why it's called a practice. So I think in anything, in any tradition and any words that people find they can attach to, I think that's what I would offer and say, hey, just find the thing that works and try it.

Yeah. Or even just volunteer, volunteer and do something. soup kitchen, you know, anything, food pantry, anything, any kind of volunteering that connects you and it just, something about that volunteering ignites something within you. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it's just having an openness and a desire to want to experience some of these things. I think it is very experiential. So yes, books can help, you know, kind of plant some seeds, give you some.

ideas, but ultimately, you need to put the book down, and whether that's meditation or gratitude or service. And this is the thing about it, too, it's going to be different for everybody. That's why it's difficult to give some advice. Yeah. Because it's going to, it really is. I mean, some people, it's walking in nature, some people it's reading poetry. I mean, you, again, it doesn't, there's a way to know for each individual person. Everyone kind of needs to, I think it's the seeking that is important and then just trusting that you'll find the door, the door that's open that's waiting for you. Yeah.

That's the wisest thing, Keith, I hear people say. I mean, that's it, what you said right there. My door looks like being a dad to a 12 and a 15-year-old, so that's my biggest spiritual practice right now. And where I see most of my failures as well. though. Well, if you want to see how evolved

you are, you know, be with your family for a while. And they'll help you along. They'll help you. One of my teachers said to me if you want to know how enlightened you are, go and spend the weekend with your parents. Yes.

That's exactly right. I don't want to take my bet. But I think it's also, it doesn't even have to be anything explicitly spiritual. It's anything that enables you to open up to a world that's much bigger than you are. I mean, you can have that with great music. Yes. Yeah. The experience of falling in love. And these kind of experiences are mystical in the rest of them. They open you up to something much bigger than who you really are. And at the very least, you'll get a glimpse of that wholeness. And the difficult to go deeper than there are formal practice.

You can do meditation, prayer, and so on. But it often begins with something spontaneous of walking in nature, any of these kinds of things. Yeah, that's reminding me when I finally learned about collective effervescence. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, you're right. Nature, how can I forget, nature? Yeah. The flowers, being with the flowers, giving flowers to somebody.

I mean, yeah, Mother Nature. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, Kate. No, you're totally fine. I grew up. I'm a pastor's kid. So I was in church a lot. And then I deconstructed kind of like completely.

But I remember when I learned that collective effervescence, which is the idea of like when you're with for anyone who doesn't know, any of the listeners of really large group of people or even not super large, but when you're with a group of people and it tends to happen with music, that's kind of what made me think of it when Nish was mentioning it. I have it happen in like the movie theater even. for like really powerful movies. And I was like, oh, I can feel this outside of church.

Like it wasn't just that it was church music that was making me feel this way. So I do love that Nish pointed out like it is, sometimes it's music, stories of any kind, like books, TV shows, movies, all of that can make you feel so, so connected to everyone. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, I think that is really powerful. Well, I'm very, very, intrigued to hear about volume two now as well. But thank you guys for being here to talk about volume one of quantum theology. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us, Kate.