Know Thyself - E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

In a time of seemingly growing division on the planet, what if the most unifying truth is one both sages and scientists agree on: that we’re inseparable on the most fundamental level?In today’s special compilation episode, we weave together the voices of some of the world’s most thoughtful explorers of consciousness: from neuroscientists and physicists to mystics and sages, to examine the illusion of the separate self, the mystery of awareness, and what becomes possible when we remember our true nature.Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books___________0:00 Intro2:26 Annaka Harris - Defining the Hard Problem of Consciousness18:04 Donald Hoffman - Seeing the Truth of Reality 30:05 Federico Faggin - Why Computers Will Never Be Conscious39:33 Sam Harris - The Illusion of the Separate Self47:36 Dr. Lisa Miller - Science of the Awakened Brain53:23 Dr Joe Dispenza - Phenomenon of Emergence & Collective Healing1:02:06 Rupert Spira - Love is the Basis of Our Existence 1:10:42 Deepak Chopra - Waking Up to Your True Nature1:21:17 Mooji - A Guide to Expanding Your Awareness1:42:29 Conclusion___________Watch the Full Episodes:Annaka Harris: https://youtu.be/Kabwgbq9Fhg?si=QVzirSwJ0w17uiHlDonald Hoffman: https://youtu.be/ffgzkHCGZGE?si=ymkJyaAAV4Ftb2hRFederico Faggin: https://youtu.be/d6NHRB5V1eE?si=FBVSfLghu464cncSSam Harris: https://youtu.be/gqA-ZRpl1jQ?si=MvZChSaW4_JZtNVODr. Lisa Miller: https://youtu.be/DUe0oaH7GtQ?si=0JB6W6V_5HEEKGWMDr Joe Dispenza: https://youtu.be/QQIwZ41Ro1w?si=PnPK9nnMn2RCEw1DRupert Spira: https://youtu.be/Smqgkab8HZI?si=kZml0JSJX77Cxy1dDeepak Chopra: https://youtu.be/ZhIQ5bzv-0w?si=53WtiTaIluYdB_h3Mooji: https://youtu.be/RIjTlEBwrHQ?si=8iZVNv5eU0wLzUwzhttps://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcasthttps://www.knowthyself.oneListen to the show:Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9lApple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

In a time of seemingly growing division on the planet, what if the most unifying truth is one both sages and scientists agree on, that we're inseparable on the most fundamental level. Consciousness is the capacity of one to know itself. The conventional sense of self that people are walking around with is an illusion. Virtually everyone feels like they are a thinker of thoughts, an experiencer of experience, looking out at a world that is not them. This paradigm leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside.

To know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity. Do you feel that there is any interconnection between consciousness being fundamental and love? Oh, that's an interesting question. I'll say a few things. One is... If you want to not be trapped in the trivial world of concepts, then spend time in meditation. It feels as though we have an investment in who we have been. How do you support people and letting go of that problem?

received investment in personhood. They have to have a taste of that which is beyond everything you have possessed so far. At a certain point, you want more knowledge. In a time where division and disconnections seem to dominate the planet, it's easy to believe that separation is the default state of human existence. That's just the way things are. But what if this sense of fragmentation between self and other, mind and body, science and spirit is the very illusion that's keeping us bound in a state of fear, confusion, and suffering. Across ancient wisdom traditions and leading edge of modern science, a profound truth is beginning to reemerge. That consciousness is not something we possess, but something that we are. That beneath the surface of our individual identities and the

roles we play in the world, we are expressions of one unified field, intimately connected, inseparable, and whole. And in today's special compilation episode, we weave together. We've the voices of some of the world's most thoughtful explorers of consciousness, from neuroscientists and physicists to mystics and sages, to examine the illusion of the separate self, the mystery of awareness, and what becomes possible when we remember our true nature. Let's dive in. I hope you enjoy. So people use the word consciousness in a variety of ways, but often people think of more complex thought, self-awareness, things that are more specific to human beings. But what I mean when I use the word and what I'm interested in and what I think is so mysterious and what's so

difficult for scientists to study is something much more fundamental. So consciousness in the most basic sense, which I usually like to just call felt experience. I think that's the best way of getting out what it is that I'm talking about. So if a bee, has some minimal level of consciousness. If a worm has some level a minimal level of consciousness and neuroscientists do not have a consensus on these things yet.

We think it's likely that they have some conscious experience because they have brains and central nervous systems. But if they do, it's a very minimal experience. You know, something like a worm or a slug might just feel pressure against their skin, maybe some internal kind of desire.

Like we have a feeling of hunger or something like that when they need to go towards food, maybe some minimal element of fear or even just an impulse to move away from something dangerous or something that wouldn't be good for their system. And so when I use the word consciousness in this context and talking about the mystery of consciousness, I'm talking about consciousness in its most basic form, simply the fact of felt experience. The fact that I'm not just processing light waves that are bouncing off all the objects in this room. I'm seeing yellow. I'm seeing green. I'm seeing shapes. I'm having an experience

from the inside in a way that we imagine computers don't. You know, computers and cameras can process light waves. And we don't imagine that they see green or that there's any kind of experience of color or anything like that, even though they're processing similar inputs from the environment. The question is, and the really mysterious thing is, why does some processing, why do some organisms in nature have an experience of being the organism, have the experience of being that collection of atoms that's doing that processing. So sentience is also a great term, although it's not used that often in our culture and most people equate it with life, so I don't use it that much, but the definition of sentience is really actually what I'm getting at here. Susceptibility to

sensation, consciousness in its most basic form. So I use experience, I use awareness, felt experience and sentience interchangeably. But that is what I mean by consciousness. There's something that it is to like to be that organism or life. Yes. So that phrasing comes from Thomas Nagel, the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who wrote a famous article,

at least within the world of philosophy, called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? And he basically, you know, discusses what I was just explaining, but in a more philosophical and detailed sense, in terms of what different types of organisms might experience in the world having vastly different sensory modalities, inputs, brains, that type of thing. And there's a great German word, um, welt to describe,

and that that kind of covers all of the types of conscious experiences a given organism has. So we have a human umwelt, and bats would experience a different umwelt, because they're experiencing sonar and navigating the world through a different sense than vision. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to explore the variance or degrees of sentience.

But, you know, we come to this philosophical understanding and trying to answer the seemingly impossible question of why any organization of matter would have an experience of itself, which is, you know, famously kind of noted as the hard problem. And so why is the hard problem especially hard as opposed to, easy problems. Yeah. And that phrase comes from David Chalmers, the philosopher. Although the hard problem, you know, as a problem has been expressed many, many times throughout history. He kind of coined this great term and now we have this shorthand. So the quote unquote easy problems of the brain

and neuroscience and consciousness are what we're really at the beginning stages of now in neuroscience, which is understanding and learning which brain states correlate with which types of conscious experiences. The hard problem is why there would be any felt experience of any processing, brain processing, or otherwise at all. And this is very intuitive for some people. For other people, it's not seeing how mysterious this actually is. But when you start to compare things that human beings do to things that other systems do, whether they're artificial intelligence systems or plant systems or insect systems, it's easy for us to see how other systems, or we intuit that other systems may not have a felt experience associated with processing. And it seems natural

that human beings and maybe mammals do. But when you look more closely at what that entails and what differences there are or that there really are a lack of to point to why some systems or some processing would not entail an experience from the inside, from the inside and others would. It's actually very hard to come up with a reason for it. It's also, in terms of the sciences, science studies everything from the outside. And this is true beyond science. This is true in our daily lives, just our understanding of the world of each other. we are only able to study, observe, try to understand, experience other things in the world from the outside, from their behavior, from their physical characteristics.

And so, you know, luckily human beings can communicate so well that we can get a pretty good sense of what we're each experiencing because we have this high level of communication and we're similar enough that we can talk about how we're feeling, but I can never have direct contact with your experience. I can't know your experience from the inside. And so this is a real challenge for the sciences and for just us as curious creatures, how to better understand something that you can only know firsthand in terms of the experience itself. The experience itself exists for itself and can't be really received or penetrated from any other place. Yeah.

So you would say then it's impossible to have conclusive evidence that an organism or life would have consciousness looking from the outside. Yes. So this is, there are two questions that I raise in my book and this is one of them. And I pose it that way because I think it gets at our deepest intuitions about what consciousness is. And it shows us how counterintuitive a lot of the answers to these two questions are.

And the first one is essentially how you phrased it. Can we find conclusive evidence from the outside of any system that consciousness is present in that system? And while we feel that the answer is yes, and I think we're correct in our assumptions about other human beings and mammals, the truth is it's actually impossible at this point in neuroscience and in our path as human beings

to actually be able to conclusively say because the only evidence we can get is through communication. As I said, I can't jump into another experience and have that experience myself. And this is actually very interesting. I've been thinking a lot lately as I've been working on my documentary series about how, how important communication is for our ability really to talk about any experience at all. And we can't communicate if we don't share the same experiences. And so there's this limit. You know, if I were talking to someone who were born blind and I was trying to explain

something about my experience of seeing, it's extremely limiting. I mean, I could give some analogies, but there would be no way for me to explain to someone who doesn't have vision what my world of sights is like. The more different an organism is from us, the less ability we have to communicate. And so it's easier for us to kind of assume we have evidence

from organisms that are similar to us. It gets much more difficult when there's an inability to communicate. And this is true with human beings as well. So in the case of someone who's experiencing locked in syndrome, which can happen from damage to the brain, either by stroke or an injury, that leaves the patient completely paralyzed, but their consciousness is still fully intact.

And so that's a situation that puts us closer to where we are in terms of looking at other organisms, other life forms, and not being able to know whether there's consciousness presence of someone in a locked in a state looks like they're completely unconscious. They're totally paralyzed. They can't move. Yet we now know, based on some interesting stories we can talk about if you want, that many of these patients are actually having a full conscious experience. They can see everything in the room.

They can hear everything in the room. They have thoughts. They have their as having as full of conscious experience as you and I are having right now with no ability to communicate. So then what is the second question that you posed? Yeah. So the second question is related and very similar. But it kind of gets at this.

intuition from a different angle. The second question is, is consciousness doing something? It's about the causality of consciousness. Is it driving our behavior in the way that we feel it is? Is it informing our behavior in the way that we feel it is? And so our intuitive answer to this is a resounding yes, also to the first question. Both of our, we feel very strongly that the answer is yes to both of these questions I pose. And what's interesting is to start to shake up your intuitions and realize that we don't have great evidence for answering yes to either. And the answer may be yes to one or both. But it's surprising to dig a little deeper and realize we actually just don't know.

So we feel very strongly that, you know, my experience of anger, my experience of fear, even my experience of thinking through my day and my planning, that I couldn't really do any of those things without the internal felt experience. I couldn't do those things without consciousness. If I said, you know, I woke up this morning and spent an hour prepping for this interview, but I was unconscious the whole time. It doesn't really make sense to us. So we have this intuition that consciousness is causal, that it's doing something.

But there are ways to kind of break through that intuition and get you to question whether that's the case. Do you feel that there's sort of any interconnection between consciousness being fundamental and love? Oh, that's an interesting question. I think of the scene in Interstellar where Matthew Conhey is like floating this fifth dimensional library space and the, there's like this metaphysical property of love that connects him to experience in the world. And it's just an interesting thought experiment. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of different ways I could answer that, but I've never been asked that specific question. It's a great question. I will, I'll say a few things.

One is that I think when we are able to drop these illusions of self and separation, for some reason, it seems to lend itself, well, not for some reason, for an understandable reason, it lends itself to feelings of compassion and love, I would put in that same category. And I think that is kind of this recognition of being a part of something bigger than yourself, but that is also you, that it is all one thing. And so I think the natural inclination to love your family, love your children, I think that starts extending further and further. I think that's just a natural outcome of being in that state of mind. But I also do wonder, and this is one thing that I asked a few of my guests for my documentary series about,

if consciousness is fundamental, is there kind of a set list, and maybe it's an infinite list of qualia of specific felt experiences? Because I do think, and this is an insight in meditation that many people have had before me, but that I've also experienced. I actually talked to Joseph Goldstein in my series about this. I love his teachings. Yes, yeah.

He's very. very clear in my conversation with Joseph in my meditation experiences having a sense that there are certain qualia, there are certain experiences that can't be broken down any further. And actually seeing a color is a good example of that. Often people have the experience also in meditation. This is another thing I've spoken to Joseph about, that when you're, when you get very concentrated and you're able to really be in each present moment. There's a realization that we're not actually seeing and feeling and hearing all in the same moment. There's this kind of weaving that happens through memory and through the brain that gives the illusion that all of those things happen at the same time.

But when you're really concentrated and you're really going moment to moment, you see that all these things kind of fluctuate. You hear the sound of the bird. you see your notebook, you, and you're not never really in one moment hearing the sound of the bird and seeing your notebook at the same time. There's this fluctuating, and so this question keeps coming up for me. Are there specific qualia that, you know, the universe is made of? And in some sense, they're universal. Obviously, you know, the human mind doesn't experience them all, but could we actually just, you know,

make a list of all the experiences that have ever happened and will ever happen in the history of the universe. And love seems to me to be one of those qualities that can't be broken down further. I mean, it can kind of blow up into a complex. You can have many thoughts about it and ideas and beliefs. And it can get very complicated, but I think at its core. And, you know, I'm not an expert and it'd be a good question for Joseph, actually. But where compassion. and love where those intersect. If they are, when they're in the purest form, are we actually talking about the same thing?

But that type of pure emotion, if consciousness is fundamental, I would expect that to be kind of one of the ones that isn't broken down. I've heard you talk to how, you know, as humans, we have three channels of color with red, green, and blue. The mantis shrimp has 10, 11 or more

channels of color? What is that experience? Exactly. No, I agree with all the points that you're making here. It's really critical, as you were talking about, the spiritual traditions do tell us that the word is just the word and the reality transcends

the word. The word is just a pointer. And so they often will recommend that you spend time letting go of the words. So that's meditation. So if you want to not be trapped in the trivial world of concepts,

which is trivial compared to reality, then spend time in meditation where you literally let your mind not dwell on the concepts. You just have no, you let go of any concept. And when you actually look at the, when you walk around in the world, look at trees, look at the ocean,

where you just literally say, my mind can be quiet for a while. Just no thoughts. I'm just going to be here in thoughtless, pure awareness. Then the world comes alive, and you begin to realize most of the time you've killed the world. It's deadened. You see the dead world of your concepts, and you don't see the living world that surrounds you. And I can put this, so that's what spiritual tradition.

I'll put this in scientific language. Bay's inference. We talk about our prior understandings, our prior probabilities. says, you know, in Bayesian priors. So you have this prior probability of, for example, you know, maybe belief in the standard model of particle physics and the particular laws and those properties. That's my prior.

Before that, maybe with Newton, we had, you know, Newton's theory of physics and so forth, that would be our prior. And once you have a prior, once you have the prior probability, any new data that you get will be interpreted in terms of your prior understanding. And there's this whole Bayesian inference kind of thing. And you get a posterior distribution,

which is so given that you have this prior belief and you get this new data coming in, then you compute what your posterior distribution will be. Walking around without concepts, letting go of thought, is saying, I need to let go of my prior. If I don't let go of my prior, I'm condemned to only see my posterior. in both funny senses that, right?

You can only see your posterior, both in the technical sense and in this more metaphorical sense. If you don't let go of your priors, you will only see your posterior. And so if you don't want to just be seeing your own posterior, you want to be open up to novelty, then you actually have to spend time.

I think as a scientist, it's critical for me, to actually spend time in, of course, thought and mathematics and hard-nosed, no substitute. Do your hard work. and then let go of it completely. Sit there in utter silence. That's where the true new creativity comes from. And then go back and try to translate it, if you can,

into the math and symbols that you have. And that way, you're not stuck with your priors. If you want creativity, you actually have to get outside your priors altogether. So I would suggest that, again, there's not some kind of schmistical, nasty, terrible, silly, stuff that's going on, you know, in spiritual traditions, that's anathema to science. I think there's a way to understand what the spiritual traditions are telling us that makes sense from a Bayesian inference point of view from the scientist.

If you don't let go of your priors, you're condemned to only see your posterior. So let go of your priors. What does that mean? Of course, do your homework. But then, at some point, step back and let go of all your concepts for a while and see what comes out. Yeah, it really seems like the parable of the blind men and the elephant where blind men come and, you know, touch the tail of the elephant, think it's a whip, another touches the leg thinks it's the tree trunk, another touches the trunk of the elephant and thinks it's, you know,

a snake, another touches the belly, thinks it's a wall, and they're all experiencing parts of something and not understanding the whole of what it is. And I just find it very interesting to explore the overlap and conciliance of what the cutting-edge science saying with the ancient wisdom traditions and philosophy and metaphysics. And if we can touch all the different parts of that metaphorical elephant to see and talk to each other about what our experiences of that thing, that it points us closer to the direction of the experience of what it actually is and what reality actually is. Yes. I think that the idea of the elephant being, looked at from different various perspectives is apt here and the science gives us

rigorous tools to do that palpating of different parts of the elephant with more precision than we might otherwise palpate it and when I say that there's infinite job security in science I mean that's really truly humbling it means that we with all the palpation we've done we have zero percent of the elephant underneath us zero percent and that's I honestly believe that I think that we've palpated 0% of it. What we know is one perspective out of an infinite number of perspectives. Not like there's five perspectives and we got one of them. No, there's an infinite number of different perspectives and whatever it is, but that's who you are. What you are transcends

any description, an infinite number of descriptions. And so it's truly, truly a remarkable will claim that spiritual traditions are making, and that you and I are just avatars. Andre and Don are avatars being used by an infinite consciousness that transcends an infinite number of different descriptions and would transcend an infinite study by science. It's talking to itself through two different avatars and looking at itself right now through a particular humble perspective,

only a four-dimensional space-time headset perspective on itself. And it's doing that, and who knows how many, there's an infinite number of these other things going all the time. But what's interesting about it as well from a social perspective is. Once I understand that Andre and Don are just really the same consciousness talking to itself through two different avatars, that's the real foundation for social interaction and social justice. Love your neighbor as yourself is true and right because your neighbor is yourself.

It's interesting. The infinite consciousness that we are has chosen to forget itself, to plunge itself into a perspective so thoroughly that it's lost in the perspective. And it actually views its other avatars as enemies in some cases and slowly wakes up. to, and so somehow it's really important when you look at yourself from a perspective, that you really look at yourself from that perspective, you take it really, really seriously, and you get lost in it, and then very, very painfully wake up.

And then you realize, oh, as interesting and complicated and wonderful as that perspective was, I infinitely transcend that. And that's how the infinite comes to know itself. It's beautiful. And it's why I love talking to you so much. too because you're able to navigate both terrains of the scientific understanding which is rigorous and the philosophical and inner experience side of things you know if consciousness really is this unifying field then us as individuals in parentheses having this individual experience are much like

waves of an ocean we're not actually separate but we have the experience in a certain amount of time in a certain amount of space that Andre and Don exist, just like a wave exists in an ocean for a certain amount of time and for a certain amount of space and it has its own experience that is unique

and unlike any other wave that has probably ever come before. And after that time and space it inhabited is over then it joins back the ocean, but the kicker is that it was never separate from the ocean. In the first place.

In the first place. That's right. But there is value in the ocean and having the wave in us as individuals that are connected to source or the one, kind of losing ourselves, discovering ourselves, waking up, because that somehow provides a unique, nuanced experience

and perspective of the one that otherwise wouldn't have been previously available. I completely agree. I think that's right. And the one thing that we're trying to do with mathematics that we're working on right now is to actually take that idea and make it mathematical. Again, the mathematics will always just be a baby step. But still, to take those ideas that what you're saying is, I think,

been part of the wisdom traditions for millennia, that kind of idea, to turn it into mathematically precise things. So what we're doing right now, for example, we have with the smart coving dynamics of conscious agents. And the way the wisdom ideas get cashed out is that the model, again, it's just a model, but here's what the model says. We can write down dynamics of this infinite conscious agent. That's so-called stationary dynamics.

There is no entropic arrow of time. So it's a dynamical system, but the entropy is not increasing. Well, if it is, then also centripe is increasing, is moving in the other direction, would you say? I'd have to look, for stationary dynamics, that's a technical thing. I'd have to ask about side. Okay.

I'll have to look. Sidebar. That's right. But the entropy is constant in the stationary dynamics. But it's a theorem that if I take this dynamics in which there's no entropic arrow of time, and I look at it from any perspective, by conditional probability, for example, then the dynamics that I'll see will be a projected dynamics. And that projected dynamics will have an arrow of time.

The entropy will be increasing. So, here we are with an entropic arrow of time. The model I'm working on is there's a consciousness has no entropic arrow of time. It's timeless and it's also spaceless. But when I look at it from this perspective, so we're talking about perspectives, but now we can deal with mathematical precision. We can say, when we take this perspective, then by the math, the mathematics tells us we're going to get an arrow of time.

So we will get a big bang. And by the way, there's no, it's all one. the consciousness is all one but when you get inside of the projection now all of a sudden there are these artificial boundaries so you get what we call predictive processing and mark out blankets and active inference and so forth all of the stuff which is sort of modern state of the art

neuroscience kinds of things that we're looking to and other computer science looking at ways of modeling thing all of that breaking into units with mark out blankets separating things and so forth active inference, predictive processing to maintain our boundaries. All of that is not an insight into the deep nature of reality.

All of that is an artifact of loss of information in the projection. Consciousness is the capacity of one, the totality of what exists, to know itself. So is the capacity to know by self-reflection. But the interesting thing, in the way I look at this,

is that when one wants to know itself, And in fact, we need to start with a postulate, because otherwise we run around this thing and we never get to it. So the postulate that I'm using is one is, one is the totality of what exists, what potentially can exist and what actually exists. And I make a clear distinction because you cannot get something

from nothing. You know, many, many theories of reality starts with nothing and you get something. I do not believe that that's correct. Yet to start with some potentiality, that becomes actuality. So when one, one is holistic, meaning is not made a separable part. Everything is interconnected within one.

I mean, this is, you know, goes back to the way to the Vedas, I mean, you know, but it was very clear to me that that lack of separation was fundamental in my first experience, the awakening experience. I was not separate, I was the observer and the observed. You know, how, you know, there is no separation between the two. But that's also what quantum physics is saying. There is no observer separate from what is observed. Quantum physics is very clear about that.

So one is holistic. One is dynamic. It's never the same instant after system. Instant is basically always changing. So far I have described quantum physics, what quantum physics says, not classical physics, quantum physics. And then I'm adding, one wants to know itself.

And it is in this one wants to know itself that there is the joining of physics and spirituality. It is the knowing itself. Okay. So if you believe that one needs to know itself, then one cannot be omniscient because otherwise it would know everything already. And there would be no evolution,

you know, we wouldn't be here, certainly. So one wants to know itself means that one will have to continue to know itself because we know within ourselves that the more you know, the more there is to know because the more connections between what we have known exist. And so there is an explosion of self-knowing that can occur. So, but one, you know, if you start with this point, then when one knows itself, he has to bring into existence what he knows. It comes from potential existence,

like the unconscious of one, into manifestation, which is existence. Like from a wave to a particle? From, a little bit like that. But not quite, not quite. We have to be careful not to read too much, because it's from a potentiality, which is neither a wave or a particle yet.

It is even before you can even imagine, what it is to actual, to an existence. But the existence that, so what happens is that knowing and existing are two aspects of the same thing. Knowing and existing are two faces of the same coin. Because, so when one knows itself, it brings into existence a part whole of itself. Because being holistic, it cannot know its own.

It cannot know itself only partially. He has to know itself completely. But he has to know itself with a particular point of view. That was very clear to me eight years ago. It has to know itself in a point of view like a perspective. But one has many perspective in which you can know itself. So now there can be many perspective in which one knows itself completely. And so it brings into existence

A part whole, which I call consciousness unit, is like the Monad of Leibniz. The Monarchs of Leibniz are very similar concepts. Leibniz is the only philosopher and scientist and mathematician that I know of. They actually understood the concept, this is what I'm talking about. I found it out later. But to me, that was clear that it had to be something like that,

based on my experiences. Because in my 20 years where I was exploring consciousness, I had hundreds of different extraordinary experience of consciousness. They revealed aspects of consciousness, they were certainly not, they were coherent with the awakening experiences that are described, but they illuminated

different parts of this spectrum of capacity that consciousness has. So if we start there, then, you know, then one wants to know itself, then the wanting to know itself is the will, this, the free will of the, of one, one decides which way to know itself is, that's free will. The essence of free will is the capacity of one to direct his own knowing, self-knowing,

which is also the capacity that we have. That's what free will is for us. And the capacity to know itself is consciousness. So now we have defined free will and consciousness. And the two must work together. You cannot have consciousness without free will. It would be like, you know something. but you cannot do anything about it.

You know, you know what you want, but you cannot act on that desire that you have. It would be foolish, it would be just a, the universe would be a, you know, would be a joke, you know, would not be serious, inconsistent. So starting this way, you can unite physics, spirituality. The world now has meaning and purpose, the world, the entire universe is meaning,

and purpose, the materialism as erase simply by saying, all, everything that exists must be measured. Otherwise, it doesn't exist. How is it possible? We already, quantum physics is telling you that a particle that is not looked at is not even in space and time. It is, you can only be describing a deeper reality

and only when you measure it, in other words, when a field interacts with another field, which is the field of an instrument, you have an event that manifesting space and time. And then you can say, you know, there is a particle here, for example. But quantum physics cannot tell you where you will find the particle.

It can only tell you the probability of all the possibilities in which you could potentially find a particle. So there you go again. Okay, quantum physics is not describing reality, is only describing what you can know about reality. Big difference and probabilities have to do with consciousness. A classical system, a computer, in a computer,

there are no probabilities. There are all certainties. This next state of the computer is determined by the previous state, period. So a computer can never be conscious because it doesn't have the characteristics of free will. Can you speak on how you were very much so trying to create consciousness through computer systems?

Yeah, well, when I was, you know, starting from reading the neuroscientist books, neuroscience, I said, well, if the brain is an information processing system like a computer, which is how it is described, then I should be able to create a computer that is conscious. Right, the idea, the classical model, that consciousness is an emergent process or phenomenon out of unconscious complexity.

so if we just put the right hardware together, then we should be able to create it. So, and I tried for a couple of years. There was no way, because there is no way, as I mentioned earlier, to convert electrical signals in a conscious experience. To quality. How do you do that?

True qualia. What is qualia? Qualia are no numbers. Electrical signals can be reduced to numbers. Qualia are not numbers. The love that you feel for a child, your child, is that love, something that you can put in one number or a series of numbers?

No way. It's richer. He has dimensions that you cannot probe. You know that there is more to know about that love. It goes deeper than you can even know. But the fact that you know that it goes deeper allows, motivates you to find out more about that love. You see, it is not, it goes beyond number.

See, the deepest feeling, the deepest longing that we have like the longing to know ourselves. goes way beyond anything that can be put into numbers, transcends the ideal number. Therefore, transcends measurability, which is the basis of science. There's a few things I believe that are, that I believe pretty firmly here.

One is that the conventional sense of self that people are walking around with is an illusion, which can be discovered to be such, right? So you can inspect it to the point where you no longer feel that way. in the same sense. And it's not to say that you would never use the word self again,

or that, you know, you find yourself to be the same as other people, or just you can't differentiate yourself from the world. I mean, there's, there are things that don't happen, but it's important to just say at the outset that there's, this is worth looking into because psychologically it's incredibly helpful, and I think ultimately ethically it's incredibly helpful to come to some understanding that what you take yourself to be subjectively moment to moment matters and can be the linchpin of really all of your unnecessary suffering.

So it's worth looking into. So the feeling of self that I think most people are walking around with by default is the sense that there's a subject interior to the body that is the thing that is the thing, thinker and doer and true agent of conscious life. So it's not that people feel identical to their bodies. They feel almost like passengers in their bodies. They feel like they have bodies. Now, I think there's a lot of rational people

who don't believe that to be true. If you tell a scientist that he doesn't feel identical to his body, he might object because he knows himself to be, conceptually identical to his body. He knows that if he doesn't believe in an immortal soul that can be separated from the body, well, then he believes that he's identical to his brain and the totality of what it's doing neurologically in his body.

But as a matter of experience, nevertheless, most people, whatever they believe, they feel that they're not quite identical to their whole body. They have hands. They can imagine being without hands. they and that that sense of dualism extends really to everything

they can notice about their physical bodies and I think you know most people would imagine that even if they're materialists what they are as conscious agents is a matter of what the brain is doing and if you could have a brain transplant

you would expect to go with the brain and not remain with the body right so if you my brain and put it in another body, I would expect to move over there. You know, at minimum, people feel like they are their brains, but they, experience doesn't give us any evidence of even having brains, right, much less that the brain is relevant to the nature of consciousness or the nature of what our minds are doing. So it's worth differentiating what people conceptually know about biology and, you, you, you, it's worth differentiating what people conceptually know about the biology and the mind's dependency on the

brain and what they feel subjectively and just phenomenologically how they move through life. And there I think virtually everyone feels like they are a thinker of thoughts, an experiencer of experience, a subject very likely in the head behind their eyes, looking out at a world that is not them that is separate from what they are as conscious agents. And in some sense, that world includes the body. And the body can malfunction. You've got a pain in your knee. And you feel as the subject not identical to that pain, but in relation to it.

And you're resisting it from a point outside the pain. You are receiving the pain as a kind of locus of consciousness. You can pay attention to it. You can try to be distracted from it. and then the pain can draw you back and yet you are up here somehow as a subject and when you use it if you do a practice like meditation

or something like mindfulness and you inspect that feeling of dualism where there's a sense of a subject that can pay attention to experience and then get distracted by thought and then come back and pay attention to experience that sense that there's a place from which you can focus

and then be, that's the meditator, that's, you know, you now trying to meditate, that dualism gets maintained even in our spiritual efforts to recognize something about the illusoryness of the self. I mean, there are many people who are practicing meditation even quite diligently and even going on retreats, you know, silent retreats for 10 days at a stretch or more, and yet still they feel like they are the observer. of experience now. They're the one being mindful or struggling to be mindful. They're the one who gets concentrated on the breath or on a mantra. It can be any practice, really. And yet there's still this

dualism of there's the consciousness feels like it's a kind of spotlight of attention that you can aim from a place in the head at experience. And ultimately, that's an illusion. Ultimately, if you pay close enough attention, you recognize that there's only experience as a matter of subjectivity. Right now, I'm not making any claims about how consciousness relates to the universe or that it was here before the Big Bang or that there's no physical world. We can leave all that aside for the moment. I'm happy to talk about that. But I'm just talking about what is available to experience if you're really paying attention, if you really notice what is happening moment to moment. And the crucial difference between dualism and not and ultimately suffering and

not is at bottom identification with the stream of thought that's arising in consciousness. So it's just a fact about us that we're thinking basically every moment of the day. We're having a conversation with ourselves. We're remembering the past. We're anticipating the future. were subtly or grossly failing to make actual contact with the present moment because everything is being conceptualized and rehearsed and reiterated and reacted to, judged, et cetera. And it's through this sort of scrim of thought that everything is perceived and even once initial efforts to meditate and break through to something non-conceptual,

gets bent and conformed to this pattern of thinking. Now you're thinking that you're being mindful. Now you're thinking, oh, now I need to pay closer attention to the breath and oh, why did I get distracted? But that sense of self that seems to persist, even as you notice thoughts arise and then you come back to the object of meditation and you notice thoughts,

there's still this undercurrent of thinking that's not being fully inspected and fully released. And so ultimately, there's a very long-winded way of answering your question, ultimately the sense of self that I think most people are experiencing moment to moment and that is really the string upon which all of their states of psychological suffering

are strung is identification with thought, with conceptual thought. When you guys were in these states, studies, you had four major understandings that you guys were able to pull through when they were guiding the science of the awakened brain. Yes. And I would love for you to walk through those because I think those findings are very important

and bridging our understanding of spiritual experience and the science of it. So we invited people to share a profound transcendent connection. and the people who participated in our study were from all different faith traditions and outside a faith tradition. So Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, spiritual but not religious. And no matter what tradition they may be from or what language they used, as they shared their experience of a direct transcendent connection, the same neurocorrelates ran through a fMRI study, which means that irrespective of how our innate spirituality is cultivated, however we call or name the transcendent,

however we access the transcendent, a walk in nature, a meditation prayer, when we are in connection with our higher power, there is one awakened brain, and we all have it. There are four dimensions to the awakened brain. The first and only the first is shared in common with mind. which is we stop the racket, we quiet the default mode. You know, what did I say? Is he going to remember I said that? Did the check clear?

You know, that sort of rumination comes when we quiet the default mode network. That is only one of the four dimensions. And it is shared with the very helpful practice of mindfulness, which is to simply bring presence and quiet and attention. The next three dimensions are you, unique to awakening. The next three dimensions have to do with spiritual connection. The first is that the bonding network comes up online, and we are aware we perceive that we are loved and held. It is the same bonding network that's engaged from where children and our parents or grandparents'

arms. Now, from a reductionist point of view, we would say, okay, the bonding network runs, you feel as if you were being loved and held. But from a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit, an antenna, it's possible to interpret the finding as saying the transcendent presence engages our bonding network. And we therefore perceive the transcendent is loving and holding us. And that's a view of the human as an open system. The next dimension is that we move from having a very narrow attention span, dorsal attention,

the bowling alley point of view. I got to get this job. I've got to write that letter. Is he or she are they going to ask me out again? Focus really on what's dogging me to moving to a much bigger, broader range of perception, the ventral attention network where the floodlights or the sunlight comes on. and suddenly something way over there, 140 degrees, pops. Again, a reductionist point of view would say that we can scan a larger field

and find something over there in the corner. But a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit would say something over there at 140 degrees pulls our attention. We're in dialogue. And because the ventral has allowed us to open up a wider scope we are prepared to receive engagement at 140 degrees situational awareness. So we now are able to perceive that we are actually loved and held. We are actually guided.

And finally, the parietal that puts in and out hard boundaries allows us to know that you're seated, very peacefully in your chair, and I'm in mine, and we each have our own zipped up by a body suits. We are distinct, but we are also one. We are part of the great oneness. We are part of the family of life. We are part of the field of consciousness. We are emanations of source. Whatever your language, the prattle lets us know that while we are a point, we are also part of the wave, that we are distinct in one.

So when we engage our awakened awareness, we know that we are loved and held guided and never alone. Loved, guided, part of the oneness. and one. That's not a belief. It is a seat of perception. It's a capacity in every one of us. Many people cultivate this because while we are all given

the wiring to awaken, this gift is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed, which means as adults, our practice of meditation, our prayer life, our service to other people. When we help

the guy across the way who needs some food. When we babysit for the family who looks like they're at Wits End, when we do something that is generous and shows love of neighbor, we awaken to the love written into life. When we help others along, we awaken to the guidance written into life. So just as transcendent practice is awakening, love of a neighbor and altruism are profoundly awakening of our birthright. It seems as though this intelligence that has a structure to consciousness is far vaster than anything in our analytical mind could conjure up.

Thank God. Yeah, seriously. So what do you make of the phenomena that is emergence as humanity starts to become more empowered and wake up to their true nature? What do you feel like is being birthed through us? Wow, I mean, this is game time. I mean, this is really game time. I mean, because everything around us that's challenging us in so many ways, it's so easy to fall into survival and to live in stress.

And when you're in survival and stress, the only thing that matters is you. So you see separation that is created amongst communities. And as a side effect of that, everybody looks different or is different than you and there's less trust. and there's no emergence. In fact, there's everything but that. There's a lot of competition and there's a lot of need. If you can get a group of people together and you can give them new information about themselves

and empower them to contemplate it, to repeat it, to understand it, to learn it, to wire it in their brain, have them choose to do something with it, give them the the conditions in the environment where they feel safe enough to try it out have them give them numerous opportunities to connect numerous opportunities to overcome themselves numerous opportunities continuously believe in themselves and apply sooner or later they're going to have the experience of what you're talking about right and the experience then as I said you embody

the truth of it emotionally right that's the game that's the payoff right the emotional experience It turns out that that emotion somehow, the experience and the behavior and the choice is signaling behavior-dependent genes, experience-dependent genes, and a whole host of other genes, changes the body to look like the person's literally in a different life. So, as I said, the collective then, when people behave in the same way and exposed to the same information, they evolve together. And when you see the flock of birds, the starlings, or the school of fish, there's no leader that everybody is following. That would be incidental. Everybody is leading. It's not a top-down phenomenon.

It's a bottom-up phenomenon, which means in order for us to create a new consciousness, your representation of the whole. And if you change enough people, you can change the world, right? So person by person, if you want greatness and you want love, in every single relationship that you should have in your life should be a reflection of that intention. And all of the sorrow, all the pain goes away. And a part of us must die then that is not love or anything that's not love in us must die. And that's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

So get people out of survival and the body's no longer tormented by the addiction. The side effect is called joy. and the side effect of that is called self-love. That's the absence of the addiction. Energy immediately moves into the heart, and then you see a transcendental thing occur amongst the collective. And we now know that people change people. So you get a collective group of people that's retreated from their lives

and not seeing the same people, going the same place, doing the same things, having the same experiences, filling their brain with knowledge and information, applying that information for seven days, and there's an emergent consciousness that's created that's reflected in every single study that we do and nobody's so special to be excluded. 84% of the people in the collective,

we draw their blood, their advanced meditators, we put them in the presence of any cancer cell. And there is a diminishing of energetic function in the cancer cell. 84% of the tribe has information in their blood that's a reflection of a greater level of, wholeness. Like, that is an emergent biology. And then get somebody on the stage. You saw one. I mean, she had a brutal past. I mean, you can't tell me any longer. Your past is too brutal for you to change.

This person was attempted murder when she was four years old. She was molested by her stepfather. She had everything happened to her. You could possibly imagine. Still tried to live her life, worked out for six hours trying to get the panic attacks to go away. 30 plus hours a week. She timed herself in full-on panic mode, night terrors, no pharmaceutical, no psychiatrist, no drug, no nothing, no diet, nothing was changing her. She stands on the stage and she is the example of truth. She has no suicidal tendencies any longer. She's a happy person. She's free. She doesn't have any panic attacks, all our health condition went away. She's talking and we're looking out in the audience. And I'm looking at 2,200 people in Cancun and everybody's leaning in. Everybody's looking at her

because she's speaking the truth. And there's somebody shining their light so someone else can shine. She broke through a certain level of consciousness or unconsciousness that said that this is the truth and invariably that person could overcome her past. So many people that were complaining about whatever it was. If they were truly on the path, they would be like, oh, my God, if she can change, I can change. And just like an infection spreads amongst the community and creates disease, all of a sudden you see wellness, you see health, you see generosity,

you see all these wonderful things emerge in the collective. And there's a footprint and consciousness for someone else to step in. And we've had five people at a week-long event step out of a wheelchair. Like, I didn't plan that. I was more surprised than anybody. Two blind people at one event. What about one blind person, two?

Five people with Raynard's syndrome. It just becomes infectious, right? So that's why I'm so intentional with our youth community. I want them to grow up. I want them to grow up at our events and see that healing is normal. I want that to be part of their belief. Like they've witnessed enough.

People heal from all cancers, all kinds of things. In bones, in organs. Like, I want them, I want that to be their belief. I want that to be normal for them. So there are footprints in consciousness. And in a time right now of extremes and severe polarity, it's so easy to default into survival and take for yourself. and this is the time where we have to create community.

That means then when everybody is in fear, that's the time to show courage. When everybody's in lack, that's the time to give. When everybody else is throwing stones and judging, that's the time to show compassion and consideration. And when everybody else is rushing and competing to get to the top, that's the point to stand still and draw the experience to you. And yes, in the beginning it will feel unnatural.

But if you keep doing what feels unnatural sooner or later, we become supernatural, and that's the game, right? And so then you see that in people when you walk into your life. I want this work not to be about you or anybody telling people you need to be more emotionally intelligent, need to open your heart. I don't want people to be philosophers. I want to say, look, I want to show you what happiness looks like. I want to show you what greatness looks like.

I want to show you what abundance really looks like. There are people in our work that become super abundant. Of course they're going to give. That's what abundant people do. They have more than they need, right? So there is an emergent consciousness that's taking place. And for the incredible number of crazy things, at least from what I'm witnessing in the world,

that's going on, there's some really wonderful things as well that speak to hope, you know, that people actually are greater than they think, more powerful than they know, more unlimited than they can ever dream. And all I offer people is my greatest under. of the truth and numerous opportunities to experience it, nothing more. All our experience revolves around ourselves. And the common name we give to ourselves is I,

and that is why everything we say about our experience contains the word, I am having a conversation with you, I'm seeing this room, I'm experiencing such and such. So our self stands at the very heart of our experience. Ourself is the most important element of our experience, and therefore there can be no more important question than to know the nature of ourself. Our whole life revolves around ourselves.

We live our life in service of ourself. So the most important thing to know in life is what is the nature of myself? If my entire life is lived on its behalf, if my entire life revolves around it, then should we not know the nature of ourselves before we know any other thing? Could there be a more important question than to know the nature of ourselves? And it is for this reason that the words know thyself were carved above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, because this understanding, the importance of self-knowledge stands at the very foundation of Western civilization. Of course, your podcast is named after that.

You undertake all these interviews in honor of that, of that quest to know oneself. So, yes, self-knowledge is, I would suggest that self-knowledge is the most important knowledge that anyone could ever attain. Anything we know about the universe is filtered through our knowledge of ourself. As William Blake said, as a person is, so they see, as we understand ourselves to be, so we understand the universe. So we can't really understand the nature of the universe before we understand the nature of ourselves. So self-knowledge is the most important, the highest knowledge and the greatest service to know the truth about oneself

must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity. If you could elaborate a little bit on why specifically it is the greatest service, what implications once one is self-realized that transforms radically all of their behaviors and the energy in which those behaviors are infused. And so why is it the greatest service one could render humanity? As you said, the illusion of separateness starts to fall away and you realize our inherent interconnectedness

and then your service starts to be really towards all of life around you as you see it as an extension of yourself. Yes. And so if you would like to share some more thoughts on that. Yes. So everything we know or could ever, know about the universe is filtered through our finite minds, filtered through the perception, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, and then thought then adds its own layer of

conceptual knowledge to the knowledge that our sense perceptions give us. So everything we know about the universe appears through our finite mind and appears in accordance with it. Our finite mind consists of thought and perception, perception, that is, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. And it's no coincidence that the universe appears to us in the form of sight, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells. There's a direct correlation between our perceiving faculties and the way we perceive reality, the universe. So it's not possible to know the nature of the universe. if we approach it through the finite mind. All we will ever know when we look at the universe through the finite mind

is a reflection of the limitations of our finite mind. If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange. You cannot see the nature of the snow. if you look at it, looking at it through orange tinted glasses. It's not possible to know the nature of reality

when we view it through the lens of the finite mind. And obviously, knowing the nature of reality is important. It's the quest of science, philosophy, the spiritual traditions. So we have to ask, is there any experience we have that is not mediated through the finite mind, only that experience would give us direct access to reality, any other knowledge, gives us mediated access to reality,

and therefore cannot be absolutely true. So if we want to know what's absolutely true, we have to go to an experience that is not subject to the limitations of the finite mind. So do we have any experience that is neither a thought, or a perception. And in order to,

we can't go outwards into the universe to find the answer to that question because everything we know appears in accordance with the limitations to the finite mind. So if you go inwards, what happens? If we travel as it were backwards, through the layers of experience,

thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, all of these are limited. So they can only give us a limited or relative, view of reality, but if we go all the way back behind, as it were, the content of thought and perception, we arrive at one experience, namely the awareness of being, or aware being, awareness itself. And this experience we have, the experience of being aware, or aware being, is

the only experience there is that is not. mediated through the finite mind and therefore it is the only access we have to reality and that is why the words know thyself were carved above the temple of apollo that the early greek philosophers have to know the nature of reality you have to know the nature of yourself it's the only way to know the nature of reality and this this is this truth is expressed in many different ways in the Sufi tradition, as you know, Malayani. Whosoever knows their self, knows their lord. That's religious language for whoever knows their self, as they truly are,

knows the ultimate reality of the universe. So that's why all the religious and spiritual traditions, one way or another, point to self-knowledge as the key to understanding. and the principle really which on civilization must be founded. If a civilization is going to evolve in a way that is consistent with truth, rather than evolve in a way that is consistent with the apparent evidence of sense perception, in other words, separation. Our world culture now is predicated on a paradigm of separation

because we have allowed our sense perceptions to dictate. their model of reality. Everything and everyone is separate. That's the foundation on which our world culture is based. And of course, we all know this paradigm. It leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. So this self-knowledge must be the foundation of a peaceful, harmonious, loving society. We're seeing a revolution in emerging scientific understandings of the

nature of consciousness, perhaps not as a development of unconscious complexity neuronal but rather as more fundamental aspect, which Eastern, obviously, Western. See, the neuronal activity or the neural correlates is also an experience in consciousness. You see, when you say there are neural correlates, you're looking at them on a CAT scan or whatever, technology, but that experience is happening in consciousness. So when people say science of consciousness, that's also misleading. There's no science of consciousness. Science is an activity in consciousness.

So science is a methodology in consciousness. So is philosophy. So is religion. So is any system of thought. And here is something that is really very important for spiritual seekers is that it doesn't matter what you're reading, the Upanishads or the Rigveda or, you know, Dipak Chopra.

Or whoever, that's not going to give you any realization. No system of thought is going to give you realization. No system, religion, philosophy, science, because there are systems of thought conceived in consciousness. So only direct experience can give you access, to reality, not religion, not philosophy, not science. It's really important what you're saying, because especially for spiritual seekers,

those that study through philosophy, science, religion. It's good in the beginning because you see that people have wondered about these things and they've come to conclusions, but their conclusions will not help you. And they might point the way, like a map. You know, so, yeah, and there are many maps. You know, if I want to go from New York to Boston,

I can take a train, I can take the road, I can take a steam ship, I can take a helicopter, I can take an airplane. But those are all maps. You have to experience the territory. Have there been times where you've identified overly with the conceptual knowledge rather as the lived experience of what you're teaching? There was a time and it was very frustrating because also what it does is, you know, spiritual tradition, they talk about the dark night of the soul.

So the dark night of the soul is basically everything that you thought about reality is untrue. But even worse than that, everything that you thought about who you are is also untrue. So that is a trigger to losing your habitual certainties. Number one. And those certainties were the anchor of your existence. I am a person. There's no such thing, okay? I have a body.

No such thing. I have a mind. No such thing. I live in a universe. No such thing. That can give you the hebi-jeebies, as they say. But if you stay with it, then once you jump off the abyss,

it's like crossing the event horizon. You know, in modern cosmology, we talk about event horizon. So if I, you know, give you a metaphor, if you throw a coin or any object across the event horizon, which is, say, 12 kilometers away from the black hole, you throw it, and you're watching this from the outside, then it takes eternity for that coin to travel the 12 kilometers from the event horizon to the black hole.

Eternity. But if you're watching it from the inside, it takes less than a microsecond. And if you are crossing over the event horizon, it's just normal. So then, you know, what is time then? In this side of the event horizon, eternity, in this side of the horizon, faster than,

you can say Jack Robinson, and for you who's crossing over, normal. And then who is the you that's crossing over? So when you start to conceptualize these things, you literally go through the dark night of the soul. You lose your identity because you thought you were like this entity, this skin encapsulated ego squeezed into the volume of a body

and the span of a lifetime. when you realize that is an experience in you rather than you are an experience in the body, the body is an experience in you. Rather than the fact that you are in the universe, the universe is in you, and that you is not a person. Okay, so that is in the beginning very scary.

But it's liberating. Once you take the jump, it's liberating. And it can't be described. That's why, you know, the yogic traditions, you seem to know yoga, there are, you know, the yamas and the niyamas. And the last niyama is called Ishwar pranidhana, which means surrender to the incomprehensible. Because you can't figure it out.

You cannot figure it out conceptually. Because anything you conceive is wrong. Anything you perceive is wrong. My perception tells me the earth is flat. Nobody believes that anymore. My perception tells me that this ground we're sitting on is stationary, spinning at dizzying speeds and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. My perception tells me you're a three-dimensional solid figure,

but you're proportionately as void as intergalactic space. If I could see you through God's eyes, I'd see a huge emptiness with a few scattered dots and spots, maybe some pixels. But even those pixels and those random dots and spots are made of empty. So, therefore, everything I perceive is a magical lie, is a total lie. And then my conceptions are based on my perceptions, which are human perceptions. What does the world look like to a dragonfly with 30,000 eyes?

Which can see 360 degrees all the time. What does it look like to a chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on two different axes? to a snake that navigates infrared, to a butterfly that knows ultraviolet, through a bird that navigates through electromagnetic radiation. So what's the real world look like? It's a silly question. There's no such thing.

There's no real world and there's no real look. It depends on who's looking and what they're using to do the looking, which means the brain, of conditioned mind and the eyes. So, you know, seeing is not happening in the eyes. There's no picture of me in the eyes. It's not happening in the brain.

It's happening in something that is beyond our comprehension. That is non-conceptual, non-perceivable. Ultimately, you surrender to it. Ishwar Pranahana, the fifth one. Surrender to the divine mystery. And, you know, Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of all time, lived at Princeton

just past a few years ago he said God is what mind becomes when it goes beyond the threshold of our comprehension if you can comprehend it, it's not God because as soon as you comprehend it you limit it

as soon as you define it you limit it and by definition it's the infinite ungrasperable that makes things graspable and what it makes things graspable are all magical lies. And, you know, they call it Maya.

Yeah, and it is a useful magical lie in the aspect where the illusion of separation enables the one consciousness to differentiate itself and experience itself. In innumerable ways. Through innumerable sentient beings, not just humans. Every sentient being is differentiated

from the one consciousness. It's just like your nose and your eyes and your teeth and your fingernails, and your genitalia, differentiated from oneself. Same thing. To bring this down to the individual who is starting to wake up to this realization and for their whole life,

since we were young, we've been put into these conceptual boxes of understanding the world, right? And even to our self, of strongly identifying with our form, with our thoughts, our emotions, and our body. What do you see is the most direct path to awakening to who you are beyond that,

to the illusion of separation and a separate self? Let go of every concept and every perception as a window to reality. Every concept, every perception, let go of that idea that you'll ever be able to know reality intellectually or through any methodology or through any religion or through any map. Let go of that idea, number one. Number two, embrace presence. See, when you embrace presence, I'm not talking about the present moment.

Presence is bringing awareness to whatever is. Now, because awareness is infinite, no form, right? Infinite, then the finite experience is actually dependent on the infinite. So the infinite is present in every finite experience. Once you realize that, then God is not difficult to find. God is impossible to avoid. There's nowhere that you, no experience that is possible without the infinite in the background.

No experience. Do you feel like that space within us is the same within everybody and is what people mean when they refer to God? Yes. in everyone, not only human beings also, in every living thing. I feel the joy and the beauty when you talk about this space because of how intimate you are with the space and how much it's impacted your life

and the presence that you carry in that realization then becomes the invitation for so many people to touch that space within themselves. And I'm excited to continue to talk about this space as we desire to touch more of that space it feels as though we have like an investment in who we have been an investment into personhood and identity

and it's tough to let that go because we've spent so much of our life being somebody who are not and you know it's hard to let that go so how do you support people and letting go of that perceived investment in personhood? They have to have a taste of that which is beyond everything

you have possessed so far They have to have it, you see It cannot just be merely promises They have to have to taste of it You see Sometimes I say At a certain point you want more knowledge But

I bring you fire And the fire you is deeper than knowledge You have to be set on fire It's a beautiful fire It takes you beyond everything because really you may start with a sense of touching you know sort of like a taste of the infinite but it will not be enough for you

at some point you want to be totally consumed in it and then the courage to let go you said very beautifully you described the state very beautifully because at some point the sense that I want this but not at the expense of all that I have gained. That's valuable. It just comes to mind when sharing, I say,

supposing a very evolved being appear to you and say, my dear Andre, I know you're longing in your heart. And I have come to answer that longing in you. whatever is your highest, your deepest, whatever you want, in the all of creation, in all of the universe, whatever you want,

I have the power to give it to you right now. But there's one thing. All this you can have, whatever you can have, in exchange for your consciousness. Anything, anything you want. How big a thing, how great a deal is that for you?

It's a bad deal. Yes, there's no deal. Because how can you enjoy or to taste or to know or to feel or to exist or to be even self-aware without consciousness? It is at the root of all things. You see, there's nothing can compare. Even to enjoy the mundane things of life,

you need consciousness. But there's a saying, we want to taste the honey. You don't want to be that. honey. But here you get to taste the honey and you are the honey.

I love it. I want to keep tasting this. I would keep tasting the honey. As well for the listeners, is there something that you can share to help us go a little bit deeper into the stuff to taste it more? Yes. Yes. I like that. I like that

we come to a point beyond just question and answers. I can introduce just a simple guidance for those who want to experience it, but without trickery. And that is what I share, if I were to say to you,

if someone were to come and ask me, I hear that you can help people to go beyond the superficial life and mind. and I wish to go beyond because my mind and life has become so complex. It's so uncontrollable. And I feel now I'm suffering it. Can you help me to go beyond all of this?

And I would say, yes, let's try and see if you are earnest, why not this very day you can do? And so I'd say, I can share with you a simple guidance that will happen with you for a few moments. And it will start like this. If I were to ask you, if you want to go beyond all of this, in a safe way, I would say,

for the duration of my sharing with you and guidance with you, would you be willing to leave everything, everything of past, just for the duration of our talk. Yes. Is it just for duration? After you can take the back. We'll do it with the rest of my life. Okay, let's see, let's see, let's see.

I only ask this, just for the time that we are sharing, to say that everything to do with past, like what brought you to this point, all of these things. We can just, if you agree, can we just not mention that? Don't hold it, don't cling to it. Just leave it over there. leave it to the side. And also, I'm going to just check in with you

to ask if you're on board with this or not, you can also indicate, because it's only fair. So everything to do with the past, what brought you to your present journey, all of this, your family life growing up, can we just leave that just for a few, for the short time we're speaking, leave that. So that's there.

and anything to do with the future, starting from now onwards, that we will not engage about the kind of world we want to see, want to see this happen in the world, we want this, just leave that for now. So of the past we leave, and about the future we leave. So only a present moment, the present moment. And the present moment, we also don't hold onto any thoughts about who we are in this moment.

and even what you want and how you, nothing, is it possible to do that? Yeah. Really? Okay, good. Better we are doing good. So to the past, we leave for a moment, we don't mention now, just for this five minutes or ten minutes, whatever. And about future, also you leave it. And about the present moment, whatever that may mean.

So we're not going to engage with anything to do with mind assessments for a moment, okay? So empty, empty, empty, empty. And it's not difficult. Your intention is at the heart of it. See, I won't engage with that, I won't bring up this. So if you leave about the past to side and about future to the side, and now we're sitting here under this beautiful tree, don't even bring any of these things, so we're empty.

You're still aware, isn't it? Yes. Okay. So leaving all these things aside. So empty, empty. If I could say, through some invisible hole in your body, took everything out, everything of the past, the memory of feeling, sensations, everything, everything, everything, all attachments, all projections, all ideation, just suspend them out for a moment.

There will remain something that cannot be taken, cannot be manipulated. It's just there, it's just whatever is here. It cannot be created or constructed. It's just what is. I call it the isness or what is. Here, no association with past or future or even present. Nothing phenomenal to the senses or to the mind. There's awareness here.

And so then I can ask you just a few simple questions. You can answer yes or no. enough to think, think about it. They should be very present with you when you're not engaged with past or future or any present desires, but you're here. This space, let's call it like that, the space that is here, does it have any shape? Is there any shape? No. No.

Whatever it is that is here, that remains, is there any force? Whatever it is that we are, that is here, can it be ever sick and there be beyond which it does not exist? Can there be any limit? Not that I can see. Very good. Is it a thought, does it have a beginning, a point of beginningness or this of ending? Is it anything like this? No.

In itself, can it fade? fade. Like, as this play of time goes, it disappears or becomes weak. Would that be true? Can it fade? No. Is it a state of hypnosis by some people and not by others? No, I don't think so. An image? No. So the question comes, was it born? No. Exists outside of it? Be possess.

apart from you, is it? It's not far. It's right here. It's right here. So I'll just summarize. I ask you if it is an object, you say it's not an object. I ask, has it got a size? I mean, is there some boundary beyond which it does not exist?

You say, no it is, there's no such thing. I ask you, can it become sick? You say no. Is it a state of hypnosis? You answered, no. I ask you, can it be, is there any judgment in it? You say, there's no judgment in it. Can it be owned?

You say, no, it cannot be owned. Can it be lost? Exists outside of it. You say, and I ask you, far is it from you? You say, it's here. You didn't seem to need some time to think about these things. There's something very immediate in your responses.

your responses. So I would only conclude that what you are aware of when we are speaking about is yourself. It's the truth of mental descriptions. It's not there. You have to research. There's something so clear in all of this. You're sharing your fundamental nature. As I promised, you can retain all the things you left aside. The ideas that we had before, you can and leave by the future desires and so on, you can have, enjoy. Can they replace or remove this? No, thank you. That's very beautiful.

So this is a simple exercise in very short. I don't even want to call it a meditation. We may call it a guided meditation. But the seeing is your own, confirm from your own self. And if we don't add any thought to that, don't push anything, how are you? Yes, if I were to say, nice to meet you, what would it mean? This, there's something inherently liberating about touching a place that feels imperishable. That feels like it's, can't die.

Yes. It feels like you choose in your seeing, you see. Yeah. I mean, it seems like. or it is for you. Maybe someone else cannot verify for you, but in your own seeing, something is here

that underlies the phenomenal universe, the realm of thought and feeling, of ideas and projections, and all of this, it is here, independent of them. But they cannot exist independent of it. It is the support, the root, or they may call it the very ground, of being. And in that arises a self-image, an identity, that dances in this also.

But it is perceived, everything is perceived in this, to appear, to disappear, to come, to go, to arise, to subside. But does this suffer from the effects arising in it?