Rev Left Radio - On Mysticism II: Enlightenment, Non-Duality, & Perennialism

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Alyson and Breht return to do a follow up conversation to their well-received previous episode regarding this topic, "On Mysticism: Ego, Suffering, & Love". In this episode, they dive even deeper, discussing what enlightenment really is, the universal accessibility of Non-Dual awareness, the arguments for and against Perennialism, the mystical branches of Abrahamic religions, Buddhism and Taoism, meditation, awareness, fascist mysticism, and much more.  Support Rev Left HERE Check out all Red Menace Eps HERE Follow us on IG HERE   Outro Song: Lonely Heart by Neva Dinova

Hello, everybody, welcome back to Red Menace. All right, on today's episode, it's going to be another sort of free-flowing, fun conversation that Alice and I like to have, and that based on our last episode on this topic, many of you seem to at least be interested in. in our last episode was not our last episode chronologically but on this topic was on mysticism where we talked about love ego spiritual practices etc and i and this episode can really be seen as kind of a continuation of that one we got a lot of good feedback on that episode it sparked a lot of people's curiosity and interest i know for some people used to our political theory you know main line of what we do here this this sort of stuff isn't particularly interesting

and that's totally fine. I know this is going to be hit or miss to some people, but there's enough interest in our audience for this stuff that I figured another episode could be fun. And Allison and I just genuinely enjoy talking about this stuff. So we're going to get into it. And, you know, this is not very structured of a conversation, but, you know, I don't think it really needs to be because Allison and I will just, you know, get ourselves thinking and going. And once we're up and running, we're pretty good at keeping the conversation flowing. So, yeah, Allison, do you have any opening thoughts, anything that you want to talk about before we get into? I think the first question, which is a big question, which is what is enlightenment? Which could be fun to go back and

forth on. Yeah, I can't be even bigger question than that to start with, honestly. And I think it'll be interesting to kind of get into, because obviously you and I come from kind of different spiritual traditions on this, but I think we share similar answers to that question in a way that should be interesting into. So yeah, I mean, for me, I'm just excited to talk about this up front. I'll preface this. I always preface the conversations we have about religion, spirituality, ritual practice, and all of these things with like, I'm not here to try to be preachy, right? Like, if this doesn't interest you at all, you can just skip this episode, right? There's no obligation here. I don't think I have something that, like, I need to, like, give you or force onto you, but this is something

I'm, like, pretty passionate about and that Brett and I are pretty passionate about. I think both of us feel like there's things here that have improved our life. So, at least for my end, I offer it in that kind of spirit, not in any way to be kind of like she proselytizey about it. Definitely. And I think a core aspect of this entire conversation is a loosening of our identification with certain beliefs. So the idea that Allison or I would be preaching anything in particular or trying to ask people to believe anything, so it's sort of anathema to the general spirit of the conversation and of these practices in general. So let's go ahead and just get into what is enlightenment. And I'll give a go.

at it and we can have a back and forth. Now, of course, this is an abrupt start to the conversation, but this is kind of crucial, right? Because when you're talking about mysticism, Christian mysticism, Kabbalah within Judaism, Sufism, within Islam, obviously, you know, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, they're all ostensibly aimed towards something, some form of realization, some form of what is often called awakening in certain religious traditions. It's called experiencing, oneness with God. We can even talk about philosophically the ideas that Spinoza advanced, which is God as nature, nature as God, a singular substance, right?

All of these things are sort of pointing towards something, and that something is often, I think, perhaps purposefully obscure. There's a lot of mysticism in the mystical sort of obscurantism way of thinking about mysticism where these ideas are purposely left opaque and that can lead to a lot of confusion. You know, there's certain people that have this idea that enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition sort of is like some hyper rare thing that only a very select few spiritual elites could ever accomplish or some people think that it gives you something like a super power or superhuman perspective on things. And a lot of those things can be confusing and sort of

of wrong and misleading in harmful ways. So my first stab at what actually is Enlightenment is definitely going to be thought through the Buddhist tradition, but because we are perennialists, which we'll get to in a second, I think it does apply more broadly. So I would make an argument, again, not holding anything rigidly, but I would make an argument something along the lines that both Jesus and the Buddha experience the same thing. and they put it in different words they use their historical and cultural linguistic structures and referential systems to try to make sense of it to put what is very hard to put into words

into words but that's that's an argument that a lot of people will recoil from will not like it all that there's fundamentally a different thing that jesus was after than what the buddha was after but i believe that you know what roomy was writing poetry about what st teresa of avila was writing about in her book what St. Francis was talking about are all pointing towards the same thing. Same with Lao Zhu of the Taoist tradition

and same with the Buddha. And I think ultimately what is being referenced here with the terms enlightenment or awakening or oneness with God is a state of visceral and perceptual non-duality. And by that I mean that there

is not a disorienting collapse of subject and object, but an experience of the of the world such that there is no hard distinction between in here and out there and what this would involve is the complete dissolution at first on the path when you're getting awakening experiences right this is partial there's an opening and then a closing but final enlightenment would be something like a permanent state by which the separate sense of a self has completely dissolved the self structure that we all take ourselves to be has completely dissolved and what is left is a feeling of complete oneness with everything that you are no longer

brett experiencing life or having life happen to him but you become life itself and there is no more referential inward refer to and to have an inner world with right like one of the things that people who reach these high states of spiritual attainment talk about is it's the end of your inner world it's the end of your relationship that you have with yourself which is the end of that constant inner dialogue that you have with yourself at all the time not that the dialogue itself completely goes away right this is enlightenment is not a state in which no more thoughts arise it is a state in which your fundamental identification has shifted from the small sense of a separate self, the ego personality. That identification has been completely severed,

and your ultimate identification is with the awareness that stands behind all thoughts, all feelings, all forms of ego and personality, which are themselves products of thinking. And so you enter what is called a non-dual state or non-duality in which that whole self-structure is gone. And so thoughts arise, feelings arise, experiences arise, they have nothing to cling to, they have nothing to stick to. And that can be very hard to conceptualize and in some ways it's beyond conceptualization because conceptualization is thinking. Conceptualization is a product of compulsive thought and it is precisely this compulsive thinking that acts as a sort of veil between us and our true nature, our enlightened awareness, peer awareness, whatever words you want to use.

And so in this state, people will talk about completely and utterly experiencing the lack of free will. That, you know, in order to have free will, there needs to be a self in control that dictates choices and makes choices. And once that self-structure is completely dissolved, there is just a visceral and obvious feeling at the deep. level that there is no free will there's nobody in control here that I am an expression of life itself and what this what what the upshot of this is is that it resolves all forms of psychological and emotional suffering because all forms of psychological and emotional suffering which is not to say all forms of pain pain is still a part you know aging sickness and death that's unavoidable but the psychological and emotional suffering that we all go through I'm somebody that suffers from

OCD, for example. And what is OCD? It is intrusive thoughts. It is the need for control. It's the unacceptability of uncertainty, right? And that creates an enormous amount of suffering within myself. I'm obviously not enlightened, right? But I can see that the psychological and emotional suffering that I do endure is a product of my identification as a small, separate self that is trying to navigate a life that is happening to me trying to constantly defend myself physically but also psychologically and reputational and from inner and outer fears or threats and that is clearly a way to live that increases suffering and importantly in buddhist terms is this underlying feeling of dissatisfaction this always present feeling

of never having quite arrived, of never quite being complete, of always seeking the next thing, the next experience, the next desire to fulfill, always with this vague notion that somewhere in the future, I'll finally be happy. Somewhere in the future, I'll finally be fully content and okay with life. And as long as you're identified with the ego personality, that day never comes. and so the hope of this enlightenment process is the hope of the transcendence of psychological and emotional suffering that is ultimately unnecessary so that would be kind of an opening salvo of what I would define enlightenment as of course people can disagree this is not a very well defined term and in Buddhism they talk about the self-structure dissolving to the point that there is

nobody left to be enlightened so the idea that you are going to obtain enlightenment that that you will be eventually an enlightened ego personality is a falsehood that you should definitely disabuse yourself from because the very you that would be able to have anything is the thing that goes away and what's left is enlightenment what's left is your identification as awareness itself so i'll kick that over to you allison let me get your your thoughts on that yeah so i don't disagree with anything in that definition of enlightenment i think you know we've talked about this before. I think a big difference between your and I's approach to

questions of mysticism and question of spirituality is that you approach them very much through a Buddhist lens, and I tend to approach very much through a more like Abrahamic lens in a lot of ways. And, you know, we'll get to this when we talk about perennialism, but I think that that is more of a formal

difference than anything else, actually. I think that in reality, we have very overlapping beliefs and maybe you're getting at the same thing. I will say generally within, at least the Christian and also the Islamic tradition, in Jewish mysticism as well, the missing piece to understanding enlightenment that doesn't quite crop up within your definition of it is the concept of God, right? Because God is very present in all three of those systems. And at least in both Islam and Judaism, there's a very intense focus on the absolute on unity of God. And when you start to really reflect on what that concept means, I actually think that's where non-duality starts to creep into it in very interesting ways, right? If we want to look at that in a philosophical and actually like weirdly non-mistical context, there's, as you pointed out, Spinoza,

right? And Spinoza really understands God as the fundamental substance of reality of which we are all an expression, right? And that I think finds a home really in a lot of ways within the more Jewish and Islamic approaches to things. Within Christianity, it's a little more complicated because the fundamental oneness of God isn't upheld, right? You have the Trinity, which makes it, you know, a little more complicated, but there still is this notion of like a unity of God and in the mystical Christian traditions, a unity of God is like an all enveloping oneness of reality. You'd find this like very interestingly in some of the Eastern Christian traditions where notions of theosis pop up, where sort of the goal of the sort of ecstatic worship techniques is often to experience oneself becoming. God is actually the framing. And Athanasius, I believe it was Athanasius. I may be wrong about this quote, but I believe it was Athanasius who famously said, God became man so that man can become God, right? And so within the Christian tradition, you also have this idea of this transformation. And when God is understood as substance or as a fundamental oneness that

underlies everything, and one becomes one with God, one is escaping in a sense duality, right? One is escaping the dualism, and what, you know, the more Hindu and Buddhist traditions might understand is the illusion of differentiation and seeing the fundamental unity of God and experiencing unity with God firsthand, wherein one is not distinct from God. One, and, you know, some people talk about it is an extension of God, right? And there are particularities of this system within both Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Within Judaism, you have the Kabbalistic systems at which there are actually quite a few, but, like, Lurian. Kabala is maybe the more popular one, wherein actually human souls are often conceptualized as parts of God that have broken off and fallen to earth, right? And actually, union has to be reachieved through bringing them back in and rejoining with God. Christianity, again,

there's the idea of becoming God in the form of theosis, which gets talked about as an experience of union, or as us becoming like the aroma emanating from God rather than a separate thing from God is an analogy you will hear drawn a lot. And in Islamic kind of mystic traditions in Sufism, you have, and we've talked about this before, these fascinating exclamations from Sufi masters during moments of ecstatic worship where they will proclaim, I am God, right? And that is not this kind of heretical or sacrilegious claim to have replaced God. It is a claim of the subjective self falling away in a fundamental experience of unity and oneness with God. So, for me, when I think about enlightenment, the notion of God is actually, you know, a big

part of it and very important. I think that is a God that probably doesn't match most people's definition of God, right? Like Spinoza's God is maybe no God at all. Maybe it's just nature. You know, these are all kind of up in the air. But a fundamental oneness, a monism that questions dualisms, that questions any ontology built around duality is very important for me. and I would call that oneness God, and I think these traditions would call that God as well. But it is the same thing, right, that union with God ultimately is about the falling away of the ego, the falling away of the self, that oftentimes, even within like Christian mysticism, there's a discussion of an obliteration that occurs, right, during the moment of union.

You have almost this kind of violent language in terms of what is done to the ego during the moment of union. And so I think that they are getting at the same thing. The only other kind of point of divergence that I'd point out between these two traditions is that I think in Buddhism there's a larger focus on enlightenment as like a permanent state that can be achieved. And you see that less, I think, within the Abrahamic traditions, where there's more these glimpses of enlightenment or these moments of union. But whether or not permanent union can be achieved or can exist seems a little bit more ambiguous. In some traditions, perhaps after death, that's what is experienced as fundamental union. But within this life, it's sort of catching small glimpses more than anything, these moments. Many of the Sufi masters and the kind of traditional tales about them die the moment that they experience the union, actually, at the moment of the exclamation. So, you know, it's a little questionable, I think, within the Abrahamic approach, whether something like a Buddha figure who maintains a state of enlightenment could. exist. That's another point of differentiation. But despite all of those differences, I think there's like a very similar experience being described within all of these traditions. And we'll talk about

the controversy behind that claim, but that is personally kind of my position on it. Yeah, that's really fascinating. So a couple points for sure is one, there's this, this Buddhist practitioner, teacher. His name is Shinzen-Young. He's incredibly well-renowned. He's engaged in like a lot of the scientific studies around Buddhist meditation and, you know, brain imaging of meditators that are very advanced. And he has a deep interest in Christian mysticism in particular. And he talks about, and this is somebody who by all, by any definition of enlightenment, he would certainly, you know, meet that standard.

And, you know, you can find him on YouTube and everything. But he talks about St. Teresa of Avala and her book, The Interior Castle, where he really talks about the mapping on of the Buddhist path. to enlightenment and sort of tying it together with the steps that she talks about in her book The Interior Castle, which is this progressive spiritual path that she goes on. And so he ties those two together and kind of talks about how they are ultimately, they're talking about the exact same thing. Now, of course, the words you're going to use to describe it are going to come from your cultural references. So in, you know, Abrahamic religious traditions, yeah, the notion of God is

going to be ever present. And there's an interesting dichotomy in Hinduism and Buddhism where they're getting at the same thing, but they talk about it in opposite language. So in Buddhism, there's the concept of anata or no self. And that is, you know, the way I talk is often in Buddhist tradition. So I'm talking about the disillusion of the self structure as such. And, you know, there's this idea that there's an emptiness. In Buddhism, we talk about emptiness. We talk about no self, etc. And in Hinduism, they kind of talk about the big self or self with a capital S where you realize that you are you are everything so whether you whether you say I am nothing I there is no self or whether you say I am everything I am God you're getting at the exact same thing you're just using

opposite language which again is trans that duality itself is transcended in this experience so we have to think about that as well so that's just in the Eastern tradition so yeah in the in the Abrahamic religious traditions, they will talk about oneness with God. Like literally, your ego is dissolved and has to get out of the way so that you can commune with God. And, you know, the Spinoza's, and that interesting duality of no self, or I'm nothing or I am everything,

is interestingly reflected in Spinoza because he says, you know, God is nature, nature is God, and he was, of course, charged by his community as being an atheist. You're like, you know, if God is everywhere, then God is nowhere. And so you're an atheist. You know, they hated Spinoza for that. But Spinoza was onto something. He was breaking, he was transcending the duality of God is some external thing that, you know, creates and oversees the development of everything.

And so he says, no, we, nature is God, which means that humanity, our own consciousness is a reflection, is an aspect of God, which, you know, is really interesting. And so then what is the phenomenology of being in an enlightened state? well one aspect of it is this abiding peace contentment and love because when you see your when there is no separate sense of self you see yourself as everything love is a natural result of that and so in these abrahamic traditions that when they reach this state they they talk about god's love overwhelming them that they that they are one with god is sort of simultaneously saying that they are love itself and and that is a sort of spiritual experience which we talked about on our last episode that you can have through certain practices of that feeling of egoless selfless

love where love begins to pour through you in such a way that there's no room for a separate commentator a separate sense of self and it's this radical unity with everything and everyone around you that you feel again it's not intellectual it's not a conceptual idea it is a visceral, experiential, and perceptual reality. People that have reached enlightenment talk about feeling their whole being as like a sense organ that is just wide open to life. Literally that the life force, now that there's no congestion of the self trying to control and manipulate events and relate every event back to itself, that is completely dispersed

such that life can flow without any blockages through you. And so, yeah, there is no free will. You feel yourself as a force of nature, and if you're coming from an Abrahamic tradition, you feel yourself as oneness with God, that there is no longer any separation between you and the other. And this feeling of actually reaching permanent enlightenment is also very interesting. In the Buddhist tradition, there is this notion for sure that eventually through these practices there's a radical shift, a turning around, a turning upside down, where for a long time your ego is at the forefront, your ego personality, that engages in all the practices. It thinks of itself as a Buddhist or a Christian or whatever, and it's pursuing something, it's seeking something, a spiritual seeker.

Eventually, when non-duality hits, it might flip over for a moment. This is called, I believe, in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. It would be a Ken show experience, an awakening that is a temporary thing where you sort of get a peek at non-duality, but then the ego reasserts itself and that oscillation can actually happen multiple times throughout this path and for many people that oscillation will just kind of continue throughout life and there is no like ultimate buda hood that you that you reach i mean it's possible but to make that a permanent state of affairs is probably a pretty challenging thing but it is like

his natural process that emerges where there is ultimately there at least can be an ultimate flip and so your primary identification is no longer with the ego it is with the pure awareness that that is behind all conceptualization all thinking all feeling all experience and all personality and that that can become a more or less permanent state that the way people talk about in the buddhist tradition is like it never ends it can get deeper and deeper and deeper there's no there's no sense of like i find i'm fully enlightened there's it's like this you get the enlightenment of feeling or experience, maybe you can stabilize that and make that your dominant experience. And then there is a lifelong effort of embodying that and bringing that into everyday

ordinary life. And so the ego, the personality is still there as a useful tool, but it is no longer the master. And that I think is the main cause of so much psychological suffering is that we have been roped into compulsive thinking. We have been roped into identification with the ego personality which is a socially conditioned thing right your your conception of yourself as a separate person is literally just a product of all your conditioning throughout your life and so we can see that that is inherently limited and it inherently will cause suffering and so to be able to transcend that it's where you're no longer the where the ego is no longer the master but becomes the servant something you can do to navigate daily life but you but when you sit down at the end of the

day, you don't need to keep talking to yourself. You don't need to have an inner life where you're constantly having a relationship with yourself as it experiences life around it, right? Because that's sort of a, that separation gives rise to this feeling of dissatisfaction, of never fully being content, of never fully being present because you're always sort of psychologically stepping back from life to comment on it, to interpret it, to analyze it. And that's stepping back from life is the identification with the ego personality and is a cause of so much suffering because that's the incompleteness that we that we always feel what are your last thing i'll say on this sorry and i'll bounce it over to you you're good is this idea of of dying before you die so

we're talking about enlightenment we're talking about non-duality let's just keep open the possibility that there is a permanent state you can reach where the the self-structure is i say dissolved but what I really mean is just sort of transcended. So it's included but transcended. What that process feels like can often be very challenging and it can often give rise to existential fear because as you begin to dismantle identification with the ego personality, the ego personality perceives that as death as an existential threat because it is. The ego is literally dying in the sense of being the person in charge. And so what that feels like can often give rise to, as people go deep in this process, can give rise to existential terror that just comes seemingly out of nowhere,

gives rise to what people call the dark night of the soul. And what other people talk about is I'm watching, I'm attending the funeral of myself. All my dreams, my desires, my visions for the future everything I thought I was is dying and that is a can be a startling and even disturbing process there is love and equanimity and peace and unshakable contentment on the other side of that but that process of dying before you die which you hear in philosophy you hear in spirituality this need to die before you die so you can truly live there is in quite literally a death of the separate sense of a self That is very much akin and can be literally the same thing as attending your own funeral in a sense.

And that can be incredibly shocking and disturbing to you. So whether you're talking about any mystical tradition or any spiritual tradition, there is this element that of like terror or fear or complete disorientation of groundlessness that can be quite disturbing and is like a sort of phase that you must go through, which is not comfortable. not is not at all in line with the new age lollipop and rainbow idea of, you know, spirituality as being this holy, wonderful, easy road of just getting more and more peaceful and content, right? Yet you have to be willing to face everything, including unconscious, repressed traumas and emotions that we all, without even knowing we do, we suppress and repress that within ourselves.

And through this process, all of that comes up and must be faced in order for you to sort of elevate to the next level. So, Alison, what are your, what are your thoughts on all of that? Yeah. So you actually hit on what I was going to talk about in terms of the phenomenology of it, which is the discomfort, right, and that side of the tradition. And again, I think with the, like, the Abrahamic traditions, this gets emphasized a lot. And I think this, like, precedes kind of the mystical developments in those traditions later on, right? Like, if we just think about, like, the narrative aspects of the Torah, for example, God is terrifying in those, right? the fear of God is constantly invoked. And again, what fear means in this context is more complicated than what we understand fear to mean. But there is kind of an obliteration that God's presence carries with it. Even outside of Union, when Moses, you know, the Torah famously asks to be able to see God, he's told that it would destroy him, right? And he's allowed to feel as God passes by while he's hidden in the crevice of a rock, right? And you actually have God appearing on top, you know, in the most beautiful moment of the time.

Torah, really. When the Torah is given to the people of Israel, God is like a cloud of darkness on top of a mountain, right? There is very much this tradition that I think goes back to those early texts of unobliterating God, a mysterious God, and I think that gets traced out later on within the mystical traditions that develop from there. You talk about in Christianity, you know, the Dark Night of the Soul, right? St. John of the Cross puts forward this idea and actually a shocking number of Christian mystics who purport to have experienced. unity with God, talk about the dark night of the soul. And the other kind of parallel that I would point to you is, maybe I shouldn't be reading these, but I read some of Isaac Luria's kind of

rituals that he wrote down. So these would be like rituals within Lurionic Kabala. And interestingly, in one of them, like he says like the moment of unity is experienced as a profound, overwhelming terror where one collapses and feels impending death. Right. Like this is, there, there's a horror to it, in a sense. And there is this kind of confusion, this disillusion, the loss of the self. The only thing that I'll add that I think is fascinating from kind of the Christian mystic tradition regarding the dark night of the soul is that it's weirdly not just the loss of the self. It's the loss of God as well, right? Like, that's kind of what I've always found fascinating about the dark night of the soul's concept and of the stories that you hear from

Christian mystics, is that in that final step, because of the dark night is really the final moment before one finally reaches that point of true unity. And in that moment, it's not just that the stealth dissolves, but it's that God disappears, right? People consistently express that they no longer feel God's presence. They no longer feel God's love. They no longer feel the reassurance of God in their life. And so God kind of goes away during the dark night of the soul as well. And I think that has to be the case, right? Like if we are going to truly reach the point of non-duality, God can no longer be this external force, right? This external thing that we can rely on for comfort or for all of these things.

In fact, the loss of God during the Dark Night of the Soul becomes this like very necessary moment for the union to exist because it's the loss of God as external to us in a sense. And so I do always just find that very interesting. And I think that ties in again with this issue of Spinoza, right? where Spinoza, who I read as saying, you know, everything is God or God is everything is also kind of an atheist at the same time, right? That position, it dissolves the distinction between pantheism and atheism. They become kind of dintable with each other if one takes that to its logical conclusion. And so God understood in any traditional sense, God as something

that we can wrap our heads around, something that we can hold in our mind has to be obliterated along with the ego simultaneously if we're ever going to achieve that union. And so often the discomfort that you get described within the Christian mystic tradition is also this profound crisis of faith that happens at this moment, where suddenly God, as you've believed in God, your whole life withers up and disappears as well. And so that is kind of the only other subjective phenomenal aspect that I will add there. And I think it's interesting, again, that it's not just a death of the self. It's the death of that external deity as well. Yeah, fascinating stuff.

And a lot of people on this, you know, on this journey or having crossed some of these Arubacons will talk about their interests, perhaps falling away, that there's a period of time after this happens where they feel sort of like all the purpose and meaning of their life has been taken away from them. Anything that you were doing that was trying to fulfill the ego personalities need to be okay. anything that you took is like, I'm really interested in this and this and this. Let's say, like, for example, let's say you are somebody that's really into working out. And where that

ultimately comes from, no matter what you tell yourself, where that need to work out all the time and get jacked comes from is like perhaps a deep-seated insecurity. A deep-seated ego need to be validated. And this is a route that you are participating in to get that ego validation, to meet your standards of worthiness, et cetera. And let's say you go through the spiritual process something that could very well happen is because that interest that you had which could be very longstanding you could be into this since you were a teenager right and this could be a core part of your identity all interest in that falls away because it was ultimately rooted in something false which is the ego's need to validate itself and to seek validation from the world through

becoming something through being something and so people will often find things that they had become interested in and did, which was ego and even relationships that they had, which were fundamentally rooted in the ego's needs and cravings and desires, will fall away. And this can be very disorienting to people going through this because that's part of the loss of that identity. And I think another upshot of this ultimately is, you know, in psychoanalysis, they talk about lack, right? They talk about a fundamental lack. Ernest Becker. and his denial of death talks about this this deep repressed fear of our own mortality that drives us to to create culture and do something and be something as a way of sort of repressing and keeping at arm's length the existential terror of death Nietzsche talks about going beyond good and evil right and consumer capitalism is premised on this idea that you never have enough you're never quite full right let me sell you this makeup let me sell you this pickup truck

Let me sell you these clothes, let you pursue status and fame and wealth, all ego games to try to validate yourself in some way. And so if we take seriously the idea that this, you know, enlightenment, awakening, oneness with God, transcendence of the ego is possible, then perhaps this is the ultimate solution to the psychoanalytic lack, to that feeling of never being complete. can you imagine a world in which everybody had reached this state where buying things and consuming things and needing the newest iPhone and needing to present yourself, all of that falls away. What happens to consumer capitalism?

This is a radical and revolutionary inner transformation. And perhaps, and we can maybe get into this, perhaps it represents a jump, an evolution of human consciousness. Perhaps this is something that intelligent species have to go through on their way to fully maturing as a species, which is this transcendence of the ego as the primary identification. Because if you think about the ego, you think about just the automatic identification with it as such, we can see so many of the tragedies and sufferings and irrationalities of our world coming ultimately from this core psychological. identification of this ego that is always fragile, that is always under threat, that is always trying to shore up its position, that is always trying to obtain and get enough to make itself

feel safe, feel valid, feel finally okay. And we can see how when you take that and you take 8 billion people who are identified in that way, you create a civilization, that civilization is going to on some level reflect and even perhaps amplify that core psychological I don't know if you want to call it an error or just an immaturity

because we all go through phases and like being a child you have to go through that phase to become an adolescent which you have to go through to become an adult and so perhaps evolutionarily there's something to be said that these states of consciousness are perhaps something that at first appear

to a few people and then gain more and more momentum and over centuries, perhaps millennia, that becomes maybe the new norm? I don't know. What are your thoughts on this state of consciousness as perhaps a next step, a next stage in human ethical and consciousness maturation and evolution? Yeah, so this is where I think we get at the other divergence point between kind of the Abrahamic tradition and the Buddhist and Hindu traditions because in the Abrahamic tradition, interesting or traditions, I should say, interestingly, like access to this is very much not universal, right? I think that is kind of one of the interesting distinctions. Traditionally, like Kabbalistic teaching, you had to reach a certain age to even be

able to learn it. And you had to have like a very specific kind of background in Yeshiva education in order to learn it as well. So like really access to this kind of knowledge would have been tied to people who were literate, people who had had the opportunity to study Torah and Talmud in a formal context. Within Christianity, the mystical experience has by and large been monastics. So again, people who likely had this very specific experience there. And within Islam as well, I mean, asceticism is so thoroughly tied to aspects of Sufism and to Christian mysticism that your average person wouldn't really experience it. And I'll go a level further and say that I think within these traditions generally, that's, like, not seen as a problem, actually, that those people

will never experience it. It's kind of understood as a path that one can go down, and a dangerous path that can end in insanity, it can end in madness, it can destroy you completely, but a path one can go down, but not one that everyone is meant to go down. Actually, like, you know, we will talk about Julius Avala a little bit later, potentially, but this is like one of Avala's defining things that he sees in mysticism that I think it's very true within the Abrahamic traditions is like an initiation aspect to it that is required, right? It is not readily available. It requires this kind of discipline and study and all of these other things. And so I am somewhat skeptical because coming more influenced by those traditions that it is a universal development

in consciousness that is available to humankind. Within those traditions, again, like that's one of the differences is that it's not really treated that way for your average Catholic, they're never going to experience the dark night of the soul. They are going to think of God through these traditional lenses that would fall away if they were to pursue that path. And that's kind of fine, right? It's sort of how that gets treated in a lot of ways. The other reason that I am somewhat skeptical of that perspective is that I think that perspective actually unfortunately is very easily commodified and commoditized by capitalism. And I think, you know, the New Age movement is a complicated thing. There are thinkers who are associated with the New Age

movement who I think are interesting. Rom Doss, like obviously would be an example. But at the same time, I think like if you look at the new age movement, which really did proclaim this new age of Aquarius, right, where human enlightenment and a new form and new level of cognition was going to come in became kind of like a capitalist consumerist movement par excellence in a sense. They were able to package new age retreats, having these personal teachings and teachers who could guide you buying crystals, buying these other products. So I do worry that actually trying to remove it from that initiatory context or that context wherein it is something tied to like asceticism to a certain degree actually does allow the concept of enlightenment to be

packaged and sold in ways that are a little bit concerning and that I think kind of betrayed the very idea of it. So I think I tend to actually fall on the side more of this not being a next level in human consciousness because there was a movement in the last century that declared that based on some of these teachings. And I think it went quite badly, actually. So that is sort of how I approach it, I think. Yeah, one thing that could be said about that is like, even if everything that you said is true, and I think it is, it could just be the case that humanity as a whole is not ripe or ready for that quite yet. And perhaps there is a sort of, gravitational pull that gets stronger and stronger over time. Maybe we're not quite there yet.

So, of course, if that is the case, then of course there will be these first steps. It will be at first sort of segregated to a small elite who have the time in the leisure to be able to even pursue these things. There's certain esoteric barriers to entry that are certainly present in all of these traditions. And even within Buddhism, of course, historically, there is certainly a sort of monastic life that if you took this stuff very seriously, you would have to enter that monastic life. And there's a place for householders to achieve certain levels. But you couldn't, in some traditions, perhaps,

you couldn't fully realize enlightenment without that full-on commitment. There's ancient Greek mystery schools that are still sort of shrouded, shrouded in mystery. But a lot of people kind of think that maybe there was, I even interviewed a guy who did really interesting research on the use of psychedelics in early Christianity in these Greek mystery schools, and perhaps were introducing these. teachings to them but that was of course also incredibly elite gate kept safeguarded and then you add on top

of that the fact that this stuff is dangerous in a sense like it's not for everybody and what happens now unfortunately due to the internet is these teachings become widely available there is a there's a school of teaching that you can go online and look up called non-duality in particular which is this direct path we're not doing meditation we're not doing spiritual practices there's no progressive element here you either get it or you don't and they try to do these self-inquiries to just radically and immediately understand these things and it really can fuck some people up that are not prepared let's say somebody has deep childhood traumas that they have not addressed through therapy and then they get let's say they go on a a two-week goenka

retreat within Buddhism which is a highly intensive 14 whatever hours a day of noting every sensation that arises and what happens is a lot of times these people will have sort of psychotic breaks they will have disassociative episodes de-realization episodes that are very concerning that are that are deeply disturbing to them there's a researcher called willoughby britain who um who started this place called cheetah house and it is specifically for people who are harmed doing meditative practices And the two ways that people are harmed the most often is jumping into intensive multi-day or multi-week retreats without having any sufficient preliminary exercises or understandings to really pad out what's going to happen and have that experience be sort of informed by a broader spiritual

context that you've been on. And the other thing that happens is these meditation apps. So, you know, somebody will get one of these apps. They'll have like a surface level understanding that, oh, if I practice this, I'll be happier and less stressed and I'll have less anxiety well I have a lot of free time why not just do this for five hours a day you know and then all of a sudden they find themselves in very very deep waters that they had no clue or even a part of this path and people genuinely get hurt it's like a similar thing of like hey I've never worked out in my life I'm 40 years old I'm going to go in and I'm

going to do 10 sets of 200 pound back squats right out you're going to hurt yourself or hey I've never drink alcohol or smoked weed. I'm going to take 10 grams of mushrooms and see what happens. You're going to hurt yourself. And the exact same thing takes place here. But I do have this more radical egalitarian view of this stuff. I think it is in theory, in principle, open to anyone. I think I think anybody who commits themselves to these practices can have these results. and can see for themselves the truth of these claims or the reality of these experiences. And so for me, I don't know, maybe it is my background bias and want to believe in a radical egalitarian approach to this that makes me want to hold on to that position that

it's not practically available for everyone, just given the time and the effort and the knowledge needed, but it is in principle open to anyone and often through massive amounts of suffering throughout one's life they are pushed in this direction and so that shows to me that where there is massive amounts of suffering there is a wish to get out of that suffering and there's a natural sort of push towards these sorts of practices to eliminate the root cause of that endless suffering and not even the the more acute and obvious forms of suffering but just this realization that I've had in my life that no matter what I get no matter what experiences I have, no matter how much money, how many desires I fulfill, no matter how much

goes right for me in this life, that I will never fully feel satisfied. And that to me is like a radical realization that that gets me out on some level of this endless game of trying to obtain, do more, be more, accomplish more with the false and often unconscious hope that eventually I will reach the state called happiness, that eventually I'll get everything in such a way, everything will just be in my life in such a perfect way that I'll finally be, quote, unquote, happy and realizing that that is never going to happen, and I will be 70 or 80 or 90 years old, just as dissatisfied as I was when I was 30, you know, that makes me want this radical route of addressing the suffering at the root for me personally.

But I do hold out this egalitarian view, and I could 100% be wrong on that. totally and to be clear I definitely don't hold the position that it's not available to everybody right I think theoretically it is anyone could make the decision to do it anyone could have access to it pursuing the right path it's more that I think that that is an impediment to it ever being a next stage of consciousness for the species as a whole perhaps yeah yeah and that could very well be true I don't I don't have a hard and fast belief on that I just I like the possibility And certainly it has to be true that a species develops with regards to their awareness of things. So, you know, I think even though they were biologically and, you know, you know, or not Neanderthals, but the earliest humans were biologically indistinguishable from modern humans, it certainly has to be true that there has been an evolution or a growth in our consciousness, in our awareness of what is, you know, that there has to be some sort of internal development of an intelligent species over time. It seems impossible to me that human beings could exist for another billion years and still be ego creatures, right? And that impossibility leads me to the possible conclusion that there was a collective civilizational growing up, an inner evolutionary process that at first, of course, is super obscure. hard to obtain, big barriers of entry, but eventually over time becomes much more natural.

And in fact, some people have spontaneous awakenings. I'm sure in your mystical traditions that you're more familiar with as well, sometimes this stuff comes out of the blue that is not the product of deep spiritual practices or an interest in spirituality whatsoever. But certain things can like massive amounts of suffering or just certain conditions can take hold where people have these spontaneous awakens at cart toll um is a spiritual sort of teacher and a very famous one at that um and and he his record of his awakening was exactly that at the age of 29 being suicidally depressed um and and you know laying in his bedroom fighting with himself in his own mind and um a radical self-inquiry sort of naturally occurred, where he was like saying, I'll never be okay with

myself. And this idea occurred to him, like, what does it mean to be okay with myself? Like, there's only one me. How could there be a relationship I have to myself? And this very quick and short and natural self-inquiry process blew open the illusion and gave him a spontaneous awakening. And throughout the Buddhist tradition, there's many examples of this happening as well, where it is it is truly spontaneous that is not the majority of cases it is seen as a very rare thing that happens but that seems to me that there's a natural process here that is willing to happen that that sometimes emerges naturally and spontaneously and given enough time perhaps that will become more and more prevalent and thus that could be seen in the evolutionary way that

I was I was framing it but again I'm radically agnostic on that totally so let's talk about perennialism. Can you go ahead and like kind of tell us just basically what perennialism is, me and you are sort of very sympathetic to this idea of perennialism? And maybe you could offer some some critiques of it as well. Yeah. So I guess broadly to present the idea of perennialism, you know, so Brett and I, I think both hold the position that across different mystical traditions, there is like a core truth that transcends the particularities of those traditions, right? And as we're saying, we're not the first to notice that. People actually started noticing that as soon as systematic study of religion really started to happen in a comparative context. And within kind of the scholarship around this, and weirdly, this is a field where the divide between scholars and practitioners is very thin and often there is overlap. But within kind of the scholarly comparative religion approaches to mysticism, there are sort of broadly two views there. functionalism and perennialism. And basically these views represent a disagreement among scholars about whether or not what appears to be a shared truth that transcends the particularities of these systems is in fact a shared truth or whether or not it appears to be that way. But once you actually look into this particularity of how it manifests in a system, you see that it is actually different. There's only a functional similarity to them. So perennialism,

is the perspective that holds that there is a universalism that underlies the particularism, that transcends time, place, all of these other things, and that these traditions are all getting at that. So obviously, you know, from the discussion here, you can tell that Brett and I are at least somewhat on the perennialist side of that debate, because we do think that there is something shared between these traditions beyond their particular forms and their particularities. within the debate about this, it gets a little bit complicated because I think there are some fairly good critiques of perennialism. So, for example, one of kind of just like the most basic critiques of perennialism is that perennialists aren't doing a very deep study of the traditions

that they're talking about. Usually perennialists will specialize in one particular tradition and then look at, you know, surface level knowledge of another tradition, see similarities and say, hey, that's the same thing, right? And it is easy to do that. It is easy to fall into that. And, you know, you do need to push back against that. For example, Christianity has its own mystical tradition within it. It has its own emphasis on, again, like unity with God within that mystical tradition. But the, you know, kind of the critics of perennialists will point out that, like, a notion of unity with God can mean a lot of different things, right? Christianity has this interesting thing that actually the other two Abrahamic religions don't have as much, which was a huge impact of Platonism on it. A lot of the early Christians were Neoplatonists, especially Augustine, who, you know, writes, confessions, city of God, these really important early Christian works, is just infused with Platonism, honestly, to the point where a lot of these scholars, and I kind of agree with this, will point out that like Augustine is making God and Plato's the good identical with each other, right? And Platonism actually had a lot less of an impact on Judaism and Islam. Aristotelianism had a large impact on those religions and later, had a very large impact on Christianity as well, with works of Aristotle were rediscovered and translated and impacted all three of them. But Platonism has this unique position within

Christianity. And so if you were to read Augustine's confessions, you would find someone saying things that sound very similar to what Buddhists say. Augustine is actually kind of like obsessed with escaping desire, right? Like his personal story is about being plagued with sexual desire and a, you know, his attempt to overcome it. And within In, you know, kind of his whole perspective, there is a lot of language that sounds very similar, and, you know, eventually Christianity will reach this idea of non-duality and union within its mystical traditions. But what the critics of perennialists will point out is that Augustine's a dualist, like in the highest degree, actually. If you pay attention to what he's saying, for Augustine, there are two worlds. There's the spiritual world and there's the material world, and that is a fundamental dualistic distinction that underlies all of reality.

and arguably this comes from the fact that Augustine was a Manichaean before he converted to Christianity, and that there's not really a lot of non-dualism in Augustine, even though it can sound like that a lot of the times. And so Christianity, even when it ends up having very similar-sounding things to the other traditions, in its particularities, can kind of diverge. So that's one of the critiques of perennialism. I can't go through all of their critiques of all of the differences, right? But that is broadly one of them, is that when you get into the details, actually, It is a little bit oversimplifying to say that these are all the same things.

And then here's where it gets really tricky. The other critique of perennialism is basically that it's fascist and that the perennialist scholars who promote perennialism are not coming as objective scholars, but are coming as practitioners of a very specific spiritual practice. So, again, this is where it gets a little more complicated. It almost sounds conspiratorial. but a lot of the biggest perennialists of the 20th century were devoted to reactionary movements in Europe, were devoted to, you know, very right-wing politics, to esotericism in a right-wing tenor, and a lot of the scholars, even up to today, who promote perennialism, have some interesting ties to actual mystical religious orders that exist in reality. That might make us question

whether or not they are writing scholarship from an objective position. So that is kind of the other critique. The example that our listeners who have listened to our past episodes might be familiar with is Julius Avola. Avola is actually an incredibly important figure in perennialism. If you'll remember back to our interaction with Avola, Avala believes in, you know, what I'll call tradition with a capital T, right? Tradition, not as like a set of traditional practices, but as this transcendent fundamental thing, which goes beyond time, which goes beyond particularity, and which we have to reconnect with. And this is why Avala says in the society of traditionalism, one has to be initiated into an order that can tell you the secrets and the history of tradition,

like initiation very important for him. And so for Avala, actually, his perennialism, his idea that there's this capital T tradition, which kind of actually is a non-dullistic tradition, is a drive for his fascism. Avola ends up actually worshipping violence, right? Because through violence, we overcome our fear of death, we overcome ourselves, and we're able to perceive that truth that is existed within tradition. And again, you know, a lot of the perennialist thinkers do end up along this kind of fascist-e trajectory. So that is the other critique of perennialism. I think it's a fair critique. You just can't deny when you look at the important scholars in the 20th century who promoted the school of thought that a huge chunk of them were fascists. I think there's

a question of whether or not perennialism has to end in fascism. I certainly don't think it does. I But, you know, I think it's always important when Brett and I talk about our perspectives to problematize them too, right? And these are kind of the two problems that the functionalist school poses for those who are invested in perennialism. It can sound very nice for us to talk about like, oh, yeah, there's this truth that exists under all of these systems that's available to all of us that we can get to in these various ways. But sometimes that also gets you Italian fascism if you're not careful. So it's important to be critical about these things. Absolutely. Yeah, they're very interesting critiques and the critiques of like specializing in one tradition and then sort of applying that to other traditions you don't have a deep knowledge in. I think it's certainly something that can happen and I've probably fallen into that trap in the past as well. I like the fact that you and I sort of have different focused traditions that work sort of more rooted in than the other and we're kind of having these two traditions be in dialogue with each other. I think that might speak to some strengths of perennialism. There is a way in which, um, You know, you could look at, well, I'll get into that in a bit. One thing I do want to say is about Evela and these reactions, there's no question. There's this deep reactionary current in these traditions. But I struggle deeply to reconcile my experiences, my understanding of these traditions with that sort of person and an outlook in the sense that it seems to me that it's at least very possible that these figures still, ultimately and deeply remained on the intellectual, conceptual, and ideological level.

That these ideas of spirituality and mysticism were brought in, were very interested in. They, you know, perhaps studied esotericism, et cetera, but that they didn't practice these things in a way that actually produced the sort of states of experience that you and I are talking about. The experiences that Rumi had, that St. Francis had, that Jesus had, that Buddha had. because in all of those instances, it feels like this egoic interest in domination, in being special, in being part of a secret elite order, those things completely are obliterated. They completely fall away. When you see yourself in the other fully and completely, when the ego dissolves, there is no

conceptualization. There's certainly no hierarchy. There's no sense that I'm above that person. because there is no separation there, right? How could you be above something that you are also? And so there is a sense in which I feel that it's probably the case that these people had deep intellectual interests in these traditions, that they integrated them into their broader ideologies,

but that they themselves did not pursue these things experientially to get to those experiences that we're talking about that probably Jesus had and the Buddha had, and that people that are credibly enlightened have, which they all talk about love being a defining feature. They all talk about, you know, this oneness with all that is, such that there is no higher or lower, better or worse. It's the transcending of all those dualities.

And so it still seems to me that Evela and these reactionary fascist thinkers are still completely and utterly stuck on the level of ego and of duality, even as they bring in ideas from these traditions. that seek to undermine those things. And so, yeah, that's the resistance I have to that, to that fascist element. What do you think of that? Yeah. So I, I'll problematize that somewhat by saying, like, the three biggest names besides

Evola within kind of the traditionalist school of perennialism were all absolutely practitioners. So Guanone and Shouon and I forget the other one, Hussein Nasser, I believe, is the other. We're all initiated into Sufi orders. they actually like really walked the walk in terms of not just treating this intellectually as something to be studied, but seeking initiation into esoteric orders in order to practice and do this. As far as we know, I don't believe Avolo was ever initiated into anything, but the three other big thinkers within that school definitely were.

And again, that's kind of the functionalist critique of them partially, is actually like, can we trust them as scholars when they're more practice? practitioners, in a sense. So, you know, I do, I feel you on like an individual level of personally, like, the things that I have learned from this study and from the practice that I've incorporated into my life would not lend themselves to fascism. But these aren't removed scholars. These were people who were experienced, active, initiated mystics at the same time. And I don't know how to explain that, honestly. But I'll give them credit for that. They actually really, really practice. as well. Okay. This gets very fascinating because there's also there's also this deep tradition within Buddhism of of like you know sometimes it's in the more wholesome men like these mad monks who who behaved in these socially transgressive ways but in a deeper and more disturbing realm there's plenty of examples throughout Buddhism of of people that are credibly enlightened very deep practitioners still being ethically stunted in

deep ways. We can think about the Zen kamikaze pilots, you know, of World War II, fighting for the axis of evil, ethno-nationalist ethical systems, which these fascists also often have, these ethno-nationalist sort of ethical structures and ways of seeing the world. There's deep patriarchy within all of these traditions and within human civilization, but certainly within Buddhism, there was a deep and entrenched patriarchal order of things. And even in the modern world, there are people that have genuinely deep practice that are credibly enlightened figures that would come over to the West after the 1960s to teach, become gurus, and behave in despicable ways. Think about Osho. You know, that they would manipulate, they would use their power to have sex with their, you know, female students.

They would, like, Osho amassed Rolls Royces. You know, he had a whole collection of Rolls Royces that he bought off the money from. his teachings. And so in the Buddhist tradition or in all these spiritual traditions, we have to wrestle with this idea. How do people who for almost certainly had deep achievements and attainments within the realm of these spiritual practices also behave so ethically monstrous? Right. And there is one way of addressing this. And this comes from the philosopher Ken Wilbur, who has a very interesting idea, very much in line with not only perennialism, but with the idea

that this could possibly be an evolutionary state of consciousness that humans will eventually continue to fill in and become more and more open to more and more people. He has this tri-fold system, which, you know, because you're wrestling with this idea, okay, waking up, reaching enlightenment is clearly not enough in and of itself to prevent atrocious behavior. So he says there's two other elements. Waking up is certainly important. You have to transcend the ego in that way.

spiritual practices, but he also has growing up and cleaning up. And in the same way that there is stages of evolution of human consciousness, there are stages of evolution of human ethical development. And he would talk about many times in the past, think about a thousand years ago in China or Korea or the Indian subcontinent, where you have these masters becoming genuinely enlightened, but still being at the ethical development of ethno-nationalism, patriarchal, you know, ethical development so that they have an advanced consciousness but their ethical system is still restraining and limiting that expression and we see that time and time again so his whole thing is yes waking up is crucial but insufficient in and of itself we also need to grow up which is expand our

ethical sphere of concern to broader and broader people and there these are all different tracks of development so somebody could grow up ethically mature like they could you know encompass all human beings and they can even encompass all animals we see that people that become vegans and whatnot they they have an ethical order that not only includes love for all human beings but also spreading that out to more sentient beings including animals where harm to those sentient beings is unacceptable but they have zero um waking up right they're not engaged in any spiritual practices at all they're not reaching enlightenment or doing anything like that but they have very perhaps advanced ethical systems and we see right we see ethical development happening

more and more. We see modern human beings much less ethno-nationalist in their ethical orientation, which a thousand years ago was just taken for granted. Ninety-nine point-nine percent of people had that ethical system, regardless of what culture they were in, that their culture is superior to other cultures or that their people are superior to other people. And that led to a whole bunch of tragedies. So we know that we grow up ethically. And so perhaps we can do that in conjunction with these spiritual practices that help us wake up to the illusion of identification with the ego personality. And then he also has this element of cleaning up, which is, you know, you can think about shadow work, getting therapy to address underlying traumas, underlying

mental illnesses that can also act as a cap and a limitation on one's ethical and consciousness development. So for example, if you have people like Shinzen-Yung, for example, you know, definitely has achieved enlightenment. in the Buddhist tradition, almost certainly without a doubt, he found that he had to go to therapy for some issues that were unresolved, because waking up in and of itself is not a panacea. It doesn't completely solve childhood trauma. It doesn't completely solve certain mental disorders or certain behavioral problems. In his case, it was rather benign. It was this compulsive procrastination that would really get in the way of him and his life, and he had to go seek

therapy for it. Adyashanti had to seek therapy for trauma. And Adyashanti is somebody that within the Zen Buddhist tradition is very much seen as somebody who has awakened and is an enlightened being, still had to go to therapy to deal with trauma that existed within his body from this profound pain situation that he had to deal with for 15 years of his life. So this tripartite system of waking up, but also growing up and also cleaning up, is offered as a as an inoculation against the sort of unbalanced development that can lead to people genuinely having spiritual breakthroughs, but still having atrocious and deeply immature and underdeveloped ethical and even psychological systems. Yeah, no, I think all that makes sense. And, you know, for me, often what I come back to is that, yeah, I agree with the idea of enlightenment or some, you know, a glimpse of enlightenment, perhaps, being insufficient.

And what I've always found important and what I come back to is the idea that, you know, it actually kind of is a jumping off point to then be able to engage with the world around you differently. If it doesn't do that, I question some of its usefulness beyond like a kind of therapeutic self-help, right? So I think you and I both like appreciate the figure of St. Francis as someone who does this, right? For St. Francis, whatever mystical experiences he have or has pulled him towards people around him, pulled him towards. Pulled him towards. towards service, pulled him towards care for the others. You know, Jay Michelson, who's a rabbi who's writing on non-dualism, I find very useful, talks about the idea of going beyond the idea of going beyond. So beyond beyond, right? He has this very weird read of the Heart Sutra that he does, where like the final step in the movement of the heart sutra, he says, is to go beyond going to the other shore, which is obviously idiosyncratic in his own way.

But what he is getting at with that is this idea that once one has seen, seen through duality. Once one has seen fundamental unity, once one has had that moment of enlightenment, one has to come back, right? There's a return back into the world in which one is still embodied and still exists. And that return allows one to then act ethically on the basis of that experience, to see the unity that they share with everyone else, to feel the generosity and the care that can be inspired by that, and then be able to act on it. So I definitely think, you know, you're correct. It's not enough to have a moment of enlightenment or even a state of enlightenment. That is insufficient in and of itself. But I do, you know, I always just like want to be a fair to the critics of this position to say, like, it does get tricky when you start to believe in a kind of transcendental truth, right? Like, there are ways that that gets reactionary very, very quickly. And I don't think it necessarily has to. But we do need to be attuned to that. We need to be aware of it. And we need to, I think, make sure that it doesn't get in the way of our political commitments. And I think that's very important. You know, one of the things I thought about during

this discussion where you were like, yeah, I think, you know, we could be a civilization someday where people are able to pursue this kind of enlightenment is, yeah, if that civilization were to exist, it would have to be a civilization where people no longer struggle to eat, right? No longer struggle to get by on a very fundamental level. And so if we ever want that to exist, I think for me it's very important to say that that can't necessarily like precede our politics. In fact, I think our politics are kind of the prior condition for that to exist to a certain degree. And so, you know, what for Evela and for all of those thinkers in the traditionalist

school, they don't want a universal enlightenment, right? They very much are on the elitist side of things where just a small few, you know, Evela calls them aristocrats of the soul, get access to this. But for those of us who do believe that there should be something broader that anyone could theoretically do this, well, the conditions for that would have to exist. And I would say those conditions would mean ending exploitation, ending systems of human desperation in the first place. And so for these things to have value, you know, they can't get in the way of that politics.

And in fact, I'd say that politics is kind of the prior condition for that enlightenment to exist at scale, perhaps. Yes. Yeah, I would, I would agree with you 100%, but I would kind of see it as more synergistic. That as we go about changing the outside material world, that it also kind of behooves us, maybe not to go full on and get enlightened, but to begin to, to, to, to, to, you know, to, transcend in whatever ways we can, which we can all do, transcend in various ways without going all the way, the ego, trying to become aware of how the ego operates, how it limits certain things,

like the ability to organize other people, like the ability to relate to other people, like the ability to put others ahead of yourself. So I see like these things would complement one another, but I think ultimately when push comes to shove, you are correct that to make this opened up to enough people, there would have to be the material conditions in which people can pursue this stuff, which does take time and dedication and commitment. And, you know, most people just fighting for their lives to survive paycheck to paycheck don't have that time. So I do completely agree. I also think that staying locked in the ego, never questioning it, never pursuing any practice that tries to situate it as not the master, I think can act as a limit on our ability

to change the world. If you get a bunch of people who are completely and utterly identified with their ego and you tell them, hey, make a classless, stateless, moneyless society. I think it's going to be able, it's going to put a psychological and emotional cap on what those people are ultimately able to do. So I do see the simultaneous pursuit of the radical revolutionary transformation of the inner and the outer as kind of being synergistic, but ultimately totally agreeing with your idea that the material conditions have to be such that, you know, to allow for more people to pursue this, which I totally ultimately agree with. But that's where the image of the Bodhisattva comes in.

And I think is such a powerful archetype, you know, and in my talk about Buddhism and Marxism, I talk about the archetype of the Bodhisattva revolutionary, who is committed to the Bodhisattva vows of service to others, right? The Bodhisattva is somebody who refuses to fully obtain enlightenment or to release themselves from the cycle of samsar in order to go back in and be of service to other suffering sentient beings. and that self-sacrificing service to others that is a part of the bodhisattva is also a part of the real revolutionary who puts aside their own personal desires and comforts in order to radically transform the world in service of others and often complete in utter strangers and the bodhisattva also brings in this element of loving compassion of service of devotion of kindness that sets the stage for an awakening that is balanced, that is embodied, and is fundamentally focused on love and service.

That is crucial because you can, as we've been talking about for the last 20 or so minutes, have these sort of spiritual awakenings in such a way that are not commensurate with a true life of service, which are not at all related to love and compassion for other beings, and which can actually be co-opted by the ego to make it a sort of enlightened ego. that is kind of dangerous because it has those radical dimensions, right? The ego has not fully been transcended, but there has been genuine spiritual insight into the nature of reality, and that insight is then co-opted by an underdeveloped

an ethically repulsive ego that then puts that insight to its own service, right? And that's always a problem. So the Bodhisattva figure and the Bodhisattva path, I think, can do a lot for those interested in, developing in this way while also maintaining that radical open love and compassion and service, which for me

is just part and parcel of this entire damn thing, you know. Right. Yeah, no, and I'm in complete agreement that it has to be part and parcel. We've talked about this before. The Vodisadva is the concept in Buddhism that I find the most profound, right? Like, the Vodysava literally comes back.

So in the sense that J. Michelson is talking about of a coming back after you go to the other shore, you know, I think there is something very beautiful and powerful there that gets at service, right? And I think, you know, you get that in the Christian tradition very clearly, right? Like, service is a big theme, even in the non-mystical iterations of it. That becomes this very important idea. So there is something very powerful to draw on there.

And I do think, you know, to your point about ego, like, yes, not having transcended the most base impulses of the ego. I'm not even talking about enlightenment, but not having transcended even the most like basic problems of it. is an issue for trying to change the world, right? Like, I don't know anyone who organizes, who hasn't been in a room full of people whose ego's gotten the way of a group achieving something, right? Like, that is a very universal experience. So, you know, I don't want to suggest that there's not something there. I think for me, the tension that I always try to hold is to put materialism first and then to put spirituality second. And maybe that is me maintaining a whole other dualism. That is non-tenable to a certain degree, but that is sort of why I approach things from the direction

that I do, I think. Totally. Totally. And I respect and in agreement with that. We're over an hour I know we wanted to keep this kind of tight. Is there anything you wanted to talk about? Do we want to get into some core practices as a way to wrap up? Or do you just have some last words that you would like to say before we wrap up? Yeah, I'll just give a few last words, I think. I mean, ultimately, you know, what would I say? So a couple things. As I said at the beginning, I don't want to be preachy here. I'm not trying to tell you like, hey, you need to do the practices that I do. In fact, if we were to have time to get into that conversation, I would explicitly tell you not to do them and to go find something else. But yeah, you know, I just think that there is something here.

My life has been enriched by trying to pursue these things. I really do feel that. I would not consider myself even one one hundredth of a percent enlightened, right? But I have had some experiences in my life that have allowed me to, I believe, see past Zoom. what I see is sort of a false duality and to get to have brief glimpses of something else. And I feel like I'm better for that. I feel like I am stronger for that. I was telling Brett in prep for this. The funny thing is that like as I've cultivated more spiritual practice, I feel like what I know is so much smaller, honestly. The more that I actually attempt to practice these things, the less that I feel like I know, the less that I think I can talk about

any of this from confidence. So please don't see me as someone coming in here saying I have the answers. But I will say pursuing these things has improved my life. It has made me feel more connected to the world around me. It has made me feel more connected to others in a way that I think is valuable. Even if all of this turned out to be total bullshit, that would be valuable anyway, right? So from my perspective, there is something to be gained there. And yeah, so, you know, I always just want to be not preachy about it. But that is how I am approaching things, how I come at things from someone who really does feel like I have benefited from this pursuit. Yeah, we've done a lot of yapping, but at the end of the day, when the yapping ceases is when

this whole thing actually begins. But I totally agree with you. The experiences that I've had in this world are the peak experiences of my life. And even if they were only momentary ephemeral glimpses at what could be, they radically left their mark on me. And they've helped me mature. They've helped me situate my ego in such a way that I'm not a slave to it. Not always. I'm not perfect i often get sucked back in um i often become small but i i have those experiences i i really credit um the opening of my heart as a late teenager early 20 something in a radical way to these practices and every single experience that i would call spiritual or mystical that i've ever had have orbited around or completely been engulfed by love and for me that has been like

the like the proof that's in the pudding of this stuff that these these mystical experiences of oneness and love where myself and my ego were not a part of the equation although they were incredibly brief were life changing and even though i've closed back up afterwards um they've left their mark and i the door remains slightly more open than it was before i had those experiences and as i continue to to practice these things i do see them cash out in the forms of my life and my relationship with other people and my ability to be content and my ability to be robust and resilient and to not get sucked into the ego game as much as I used to

and hopefully as I continue down this path I'll get sucked into it even less and it's radically reoriented my life away from personal goals and towards how can I be of more service to other people and I truly credit these practices with with that radical shift in perspective that has given me so it's not going to hit everybody for some people this stuff is going to sound incredibly alluring and if you're one of the people that these sorts of sometimes opaque and hard to follow conversations if it stirs something within you i would say at least give it a shot at least check it out um and yeah pick a tradition i think it is important

to to particularize yourself into a given tradition to give you a framework and some guide rails as you go through this. You know, perennialism is like an intellectual position, but, you know, I'm in the Buddhist tradition, and that's the stuff that I follow because it's grounding, and there's a cultural framework that I can operate in, and Allison has the Jewish cultural framework to operate in, and that is incredibly helpful. So whether it's Sufism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, or anything else, having a tradition, and kind of committing to it, opening your heart, and really

diving into that tradition, I think, is an important. part of the path and not to keep it so open that you know you're just trying to pulling cafeteria style from everything and trying to make that work um so yeah if it's interesting you continue following it if it's not turn this episode off and go about your day but um i'm willing to bet that at least for some people these conversations are at least interesting and if that's true then we've done our job definitely all right my friends next time we'll talk about politics so who knows what the next topic is going to be we're definitely get into the German Revolution. Eventually, we promise. But yeah, as for now, be well, love and

solidarity. We'll talk to you soon. It's a broken heart, I can feel it with it be, so I know it's no good. I know everyone is free to do as they should I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart

I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart I don't want a lonely heart Left an ugly scar It turns crimson in the spring On the beach where I swim How can I go outside when the birds will see my face the shame downward eyes

no one's on their own cannot be alone you've got your love in your heart And if the world comes apart How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love?

How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love?

How are you going to hide your love? How are you going to hide your love?