Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Rupert Spira on Non-Dualism, Consciousness, God, and Death

Starting point is 00:00:00 Well that's why I'm enjoying this conversation so much and why I say I think you're very good at what you're doing because you're not entrenched in a materialist perspective. You're very well acquainted with it but nor are you entrenched in a non-dual perspective. You're open to both and that makes for a very open conversation. You've made me say things that I wasn't aware were inside me. So it's a beautiful conversation. Rupert Spira is one of the most highly requested guests on this channel, and he's a non-dualist teacher of the direct path, which is a method of spiritual self-inquiry. As often happens on this podcast, just when I think that a podcast,

Starting point is 00:00:46 a previous podcast cannot be topped, the guest surprises me and Rupert Spira is no different. The conversation between him and I, at least I hope he feels it from my end, I definitely felt it from his. It's so loving and so smooth while touching on a confection of topics such as the nature of reality, what part of our consciousness is shared, what does it even mean to share consciousness, and fourth, which is a project that I'm extremely passionate about, that is, where is science going? What will science of the future look like? This is something that I, at least right now, call a beach gnosis, that is a fusing of both the East and the West's conception of knowledge for those who are new to this channel You should know that it's dedicated to exploring theoretical physics and consciousness particularly around what are called theories of everything unlike most of my physics and

Starting point is 00:01:37 Mathematically oriented brethren. I don't have an aversion to what would be considered to be nonsense or woo. I I don't have an aversion to what would be considered to be nonsense or woo. I have the feeling that if innovation is to occur, it's going to come or at least be heavily informed by the fringe. And the more we do not listen to it, the more we handicap ourselves. Luckily, Rupert Spira is an open-minded, perceptive, sagacious individual who, through decades of internal investigation, found gold and he's willing to share it. Whether you believe all of his model or not, there's practical advice and you'll likely find yourself pausing every 10 minutes or so to let what was thought-provokingly said sink in. It's intriguing because there are many truths, many, many, many truths that i found in my later years behind the doors that i said i previously would have classified as the insensate ramblings of those who don't wear shoes and who have

Starting point is 00:02:34 strings of beads as doors i'm a bit ashamed of my former obstinate self-righteous atheistic self and so partly these investigations into consciousness from a non-mathematical perspective is partly my admission that my worldview is so incomplete and I'm not willing to shut the door, at least not with the same intensity and arrogance that I used to, though I wouldn't call myself an atheist or a theist. There are two sponsors of today's podcast. call myself an atheist or a theist. There are two sponsors of today's podcast. Algo is an end-to-end supply chain optimization software with software that helps business users optimize sales and operations, planning to avoid stockouts, reduce returns and inventory write-downs, while reducing inventory investment. It's a supply chain AI that drives smart ROI, headed by a bright individual

Starting point is 00:03:22 by the name of Amjad Hussain, who's been a huge supporter of the podcast from its early days. The second sponsor is Brilliant. Brilliant illuminates the soul of math, science, and engineering through bite-sized interactive learning experiences. Brilliant's courses explore the laws that shape our world, elevating math and science from something to be feared to a delightful experience of guided discovery. More on them later. If you'd like to hear more conversations like this, please do consider going to patreon.com slash KurtJaiMungle and contributing whatever you can.

Starting point is 00:03:54 You can also submit guest requests there and even questions. There's also a crypto address if you're more comfortable there and PayPal as well. The plan is to have more conversations like this, but with the same quality, the same level of depth. Soon, we'll be hosting Donald Hoffman and Yoshibok. That's one to look forward to. Next week, I'm speaking to Luis Alessandro, as well as Jeremy Corbell, not together, separately. Those will be in AMA. So feel free to submit your questions to them in

Starting point is 00:04:21 the link that I'm going to provide in the description. And in about a week and a half, I'm speaking to Chris Langan, who has the highest IQ recorded in America. He has a cognitive theoretic model of the universe, which is a vast theory of everything. And I've just been dipping my toes into that toe. And it's extremely, well, it's unlike the other theories of everything you've heard. Thank you so much and enjoy. Thank you. I'm aware of your podcast. I've dipped into some of your conversations. So I'm aware of your podcast, its subject matter, and of your style, which I've always found you're a very good interviewer,

Starting point is 00:05:03 probing and questioning, but not out to prove somebody wrong or to make up your own point or to be adversarial. So yes, I'm looking forward to our conversation. Great, thank you. Which podcasts or podcasts did you watch? Is there one that you particularly liked? I've watched, I've just dipped into several,

Starting point is 00:05:21 but the ones I've watched at length were, well, Bernardo Kastrup, who's a friend of mine. So and Donald Hoffman, who I don't know so well. I have met him once and I'm familiar with his work, not nearly as familiar. I'm very familiar with Bernardo. We see each other. But so those are the ones that I've dipped into a little bit more extensively than the others. But particularly when when you invited me onto your podcast, I wanted to just get a little sort of sense of what you do, where you're coming from.

Starting point is 00:05:57 So I explored a little bit. Great. OK. I should say perhaps, Kurt, I'm sure you already know this. I'm not a mathematician or a physicist. That's fine. Do you mind giving a brief overview as to your philosophy as well as how you arrived at non-dualism and what non-dualism is? Okay. So a very brief overview of my philosophy would be this, Felly, ymgymryd o'r ffurfio'r ffyrdd fyr iawn o fy ffilosophy yw y byddai'r un realiti unig sydd gan ei ddyniad yn ymwybyddiaeth neu'n ymwybyddiaeth neu'n ysbryd yn ymdriniaethau deithiol.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Ac mae o'r un, unig, unigol a' ac unigol o'r cyfan neu'r realiti, bod pawb a'i holl bethau yn derbyn ei bodd yn arbennig yn arbennig. Ac mae hynny yn ystod y llawr, y gwylfaoedd nondiwl. Sut ydw i wedi dod at hyn? How did I arrive at this? As a young child, my mother tells me, as a seven-year-old boy, I said to her once that I considered that everything was God's dream. So that was a very early intuition. God was my simple traditional religious way of describing reality as the dream or the activity of a single infinite aware being. So this was my early childhood intuition. I then, of course, forgot this intuition as I grew up. And it was reawakened again in my mid to late teens when I started exploring these matters again. And I came across the classical Advaita Vedanta tradition in India, which is the classical non-dual, or one of the classical

Starting point is 00:08:06 non-dual traditions in India. And I started studying this philosophy and practicing meditation in this tradition, really for the next 20 years or so. or so. And after this period, I later met the man Francis Lucille, with whom I spent the next 12 or 13 years deepening my exploration of my own true nature. And during this long period, it took 30, 35 years, the nature of reality just became clearer and clearer to me. So this early childish intuition, I had to forget it. And then I then had to find the way back to it through my own explorations and contemplation of the nature of my self. What's the difference between experience, awareness, and consciousness? I would say that experience was the activity of awareness or consciousness. First of all, I use the words consciousness

Starting point is 00:09:25 and awareness synonymously. Not everybody does, but I do. Experience would be the activity or the movement of consciousness. So the relationship between awareness, the relationship between experience and awareness would be the same relationship as the relationship between the waves and currents in an ocean and the ocean itself or to use another analogy the

Starting point is 00:09:56 same relationship between the contents of a movie and the screen so just just as the ocean, or more accurately, the water is the reality of the waves and the currents, the waves and the currents are as such the movement of water, the activity of water, just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen within the limits of the metaphor. So experience, and by experience in this context, I mean objective experience, would be the activity or the movement of consciousness. Can you explain what you mean when you say, in ignorance, I am something, in understanding, I am nothing, in love, I am everything? I am nothing. In love, I am everything. In ignorance, I am nothing. That is, ignorance in this context does not mean stupidity as it does in common parlance. It's a term that I borrowed

Starting point is 00:10:58 from the Vedantic tradition. It means in the state in which we ignore the ultimate reality, in the state in which we ignore the ultimate reality of ourself as infinite consciousness, that is when we believe and feel ourself to be a temporary finite person or self, an ego. In that state, I consider myself to be something, a part, a body in which a mind exists. I have a quick question about that. Are we consciously being ignorant of it? To me, ignorance implies that you know that there's something behind that door, but you don't open it. Whereas being unaware is that you have no idea you even passed a door. In this sense, ignorance would be a partial, incomplete knowledge of oneself. We all have knowledge of ourself or a sense of being myself, but most people's

Starting point is 00:12:02 sense of being myself is mixed with the content of their experience. So whilst everybody has a sense of their self, most people's sense of their self is limited or mixed with or identified with the content of experience. And this gives us a partial or inaccurate view of ourself. This is what is meant by ignorance. So under the influence of ignorance, in other words, when we ignore the reality of ourself, which I would suggest is infinite consciousness, we seem to be something temporary contemporary and finite, namely an individual body-mind. So this is what I mean. In ignorance, we seem to be something. Something in this context is a fragment, a person. I understand. The next is, in understanding, I am nothing. In understanding, I am nothing. If we then begin to explore what we essentially are and in order to

Starting point is 00:13:09 find what we essentially are we remove everything from us that is not essential the the essence of anything is that is the aspect of that thing that cannot be removed from it so if we remove from ourself everything that is not essential to us, namely our thoughts, our images, our memories, our activities, our relationships, our feelings, what we end up with is not itself a thing. It is none of the things that we normally believe and feel ourself to be. It is not a thought. It is not a feeling. It is not a thought. It is not a feeling. It's not a sensation. It's not a perception. It's not an activity. It's not a relationship. So from this point of view, we could say that what I essentially am is nothing objective

Starting point is 00:13:58 in that sense, in understanding I am nothing. I am not a thing. Yes, yes, no thing, literally. But we are awareness or we are a perspective or... We are only no thing from the point of view of the previous statement in which we believed we were something. So in reference to the previous belief, I am something, when we make this deep investigation into our essential nature, we realize, no, I am not something. I am not a thing. Okay. So to make an analogy, it's like someone who has clothes that say, these clothes are a part of me. That's the first step. That's an ignorance. I am something. Then the second person starts to take away and say, well, I'm still me even without my jacket. I'm still me without my socks. And they realize they're naked. Now I know you're taking nakedness slightly further, but for this analogy, then that person says, okay, in understanding,

Starting point is 00:14:52 I realize I am naked or I am nothing. And then we're about to get to that side. So now if you were to continue this analogy, you not only take off all your clothes, but you were to continue the exploration and to take off, so to speak, everything that, like your clothes, is not fundamental to you. Take off your thoughts, take off your feelings, take off your perceptions, take off your sensations. What you're left with is pure non-objective consciousness, pure aware being, which is itself not a thing. It is not a thought or a feeling or a sensation or a perception. So I state it in the negative. It is not a thought or a feeling or a sensation or a perception. So I stated in the negative, it is not a thing, only in reference to the previous thing that I believed myself to be.

Starting point is 00:15:31 And then having recognized what I essentially am is this non-objective consciousness, consciousness, if I then explore the relationship between what I am with what everything else is, I discover that what I essentially am is the same as what everything else essentially is. In other words, consciousness is not just the essential reality of myself as a person. It is the essential reality of the universe. And this recognition that what we essentially are and what the universe essentially is, is the same infinite and indivisible whole, is what we call love. In other words, love is the recognition that there are not two things, that there isn't really a separate subject and object, that we share our being.

Starting point is 00:16:32 That's the experience of love or beauty. So that's why the third phrase, in love I am everything. So then we realize that what I essentially am is the reality of everything in other words i am what not i as a person it is not i as a person am identified with the universe it is my essential nature as consciousness is the reality of the universe so this identity between the individual self and the universal being it is the experience of love. Okay, let's say you're speaking to Richard Dawkins, the stereotypical materialist, hard-headed scientist, which comprise some part of our audience, but mainly we have people who

Starting point is 00:17:18 are extremely open, and I'm grateful for that. But there are some people who say, anytime someone talks about consciousness as fundamental, they don't know what they're talking about. You have to define consciousness. That's not the definition. Oh, you've made the definition of consciousness so wide, it applies to everything. So yes, okay, in some way, consciousness is fundamental. What experience or experiment or exercise can you take them and even me through right now that perhaps takes a minute that can help open that door even if it's just a crack well let's let's start with the the exploration of the essential nature of ourself

Starting point is 00:18:04 with the exploration of the essential nature of ourself. So if you were now to go through the experiment that we described previously, remove from yourself in your imagination, do this thought experiment, remove from yourself your thoughts, because your thoughts are obviously not essential to you. They are continually appearing and disappearing a bit but you remain intact you don't feel that a little bit of yourself

Starting point is 00:18:31 disappears every time herself should be sitting should i be sitting should i be sitting for this should i be sitting sitting down or it doesn't matter no no just just stay exactly as you are all right okay sorry for interrupting no no that's all right. So remove your thoughts. It's not actually necessary to get rid of your thoughts. You can imagine removing your thoughts. They are not essential to you. Imagine removing your feelings. They are obviously not essential to you.

Starting point is 00:19:00 Imagine removing your memories. Imagine removing your bodily sensations the tingling of your face or your hands or your feet imagine you're in a sensory deprivation tank you have no no sights no sounds no tastes no textures no smells none of these are essential to you. So you are, to continue the undressing metaphor, you're taking off everything that is superfluous to you. Now what remains? I would call it something that feels or senses something that feels something that could we broaden it and say something that experiences or or even even um more accurate something that that knows and by

Starting point is 00:20:16 knows i don't mean conceptually something that something that it that just that that that knows or is aware or experiencing. Now, I'm not saying that I was able to get there in its pure form, but I could see myself in there. No, no, no, you're dead right. Your answer was perfect. That which remains is something that senses, but something that is aware,

Starting point is 00:20:42 but without anything to be aware of, something that experiences without there being anything to experience. We could call it pure experiencing without any objective content or pure knowing or pure consciousness. Now, can you go further back? Let's continue the undressing. In your actual experience, can you remove consciousness? Can you go further back in your experience than that which knows or is aware?

Starting point is 00:21:33 right right right so what you're getting at right now is an identification between you so me and awareness because as soon as i say where i'm not aware then i'm no longer there as you as soon as you say i am not aware I'm then going to ask you, what is the I who is not aware? What experience could you have of that one in the absence of awareness? I don't know. You couldn't have any experience of it because awareness is the prerequisite for experience. So to postulate something prior to awareness is purely conceptual. It is abstract. It cannot be verified in experience because awareness is the prerequisite for experience. So if we're wanting not to talk about abstract philosophy, but if we're wanting to make an experiential exploration of ourself, we have to admit that we can go all the way back to awareness. We can remove everything from ourself apart from the fact of being aware. And in that sense, if we stay close to the evidence of experience, awareness or consciousness is our essential irreducible self, if we can call it a self. Now, can I ask you, can we continue the experiment? Please. If I were to ask you now, describe the sensations of the soles of your feet.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Just pluck a couple of words. Just give us a... Tingling. Tingling. Perfect. Slight pain. Tingling, painful. Okay.

Starting point is 00:23:21 Slight. Now, if I were to... More warmth, but also I feel like my toes are cold. Perfect. If I were to ask you to describe your thoughts now, just very briefly. Fleeting. Okay, that's sufficient. Fleeting and rapid. Fleeting and rapid.

Starting point is 00:23:45 Fleeting and rapid. Perfect. Okay. Now, do the experiment we previously did. Remove everything from yourself that is not essential to yourself, and you remain just with the fact of being aware without being aware of anything. Tell us about that experience. Rupert, I'm trying to get there. No, no. I imagine that I'm not an experienced meditator.

Starting point is 00:24:23 No, no, no. On the contrary. I can see I'm getting to... Kurt, it's much better. Sorry to interrupt interrupt it's much better if you're not an experienced meditator and you don't have okay the correct answers you're you're okay great great great maybe i can serve as a vessel for some of the people who are similar so try again to to describe try to find words that best describe the pure fact of that which is aware. In other words, what you refer to as your essential irreducible self. Can you tell us about it? Yeah. And I can also find imagery, almost like artistic representations. I'll explain that after. But I want you to describe the actual experience like you told us your your toes are tingling they're cold your thoughts are fleeting and rapid

Starting point is 00:25:13 try to give us a words that accurately describe the nature of that which is aware without referring to anything that you are aware of it feels expansive it feels okay let me let me just let's just stay with that for a minute expansive so that that that is it's vast it's not tiny it's not small it's not contracted but it's not infinite it's larger than i am until i start to hear little bits of noises and then it brings me back try to tell us about the edge of it

Starting point is 00:26:07 the boundary you say it's expansive but it's not infinite so if you can if you can say from your experience that it's not infinite

Starting point is 00:26:15 you must you must perceive a boundary to it now remember that you're referring to the fact of being aware without referring to anything that you

Starting point is 00:26:26 are aware of so tell us what is your experience of a boundary to awareness It's difficult to describe because as I try to get to the edges, it's shaky, unsteady, and unresolved. The way that I can make an analogy, it's like if I'm in a forest. I'll just denude the forest of the trees, but you need the trees for this example, and I have a flashlight and I'm trying to find the edge, but the edge is beyond the darkness, beyond the purview of the flashlight. So I'm looking for the edge, but I can't see it, but I know that there's an edge to it, or at least I get a feeling that there's an edge to it. You have a feeling that there's an edge to it. You say, I know there is an edge to it you have a feeling that there's an edge to it you say i know there

Starting point is 00:27:27 is an edge to it but you can't actually find the edge so you don't know there is an edge to it you believe that there is an edge to it and your feelings arise in a in such a way that they support your belief. So your feeling that there is an edge comes not from your knowledge that there is an edge, but your belief that there is an edge. Now here we're not interested either in feelings or in beliefs. We're interested in truth. And we consider experience to be the test of truth. So go back to your experience of yourself, the experience of being aware or awareness itself, and realize that your knowledge that it has a boundary is not in fact knowledge, it's belief.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Knowledge that it has a boundary is not in fact knowledge, it's belief. It's substantiated by your feelings, but your feelings are substantiating a belief, not knowledge. So here we're only interested in knowledge. What knowledge do you have that there is a boundary to awareness, without reference to anything that you are aware of? awareness without reference to anything that you are aware of. So there's a distinction here between feelings and knowledge. Do you mind explicating that for me? Because to me, if I'm just this awareness, I don't know how to dissociate between the two in this form.

Starting point is 00:28:59 Feelings are something that you are aware of. So the question now is not whether feelings have a border or limit or an edge. The question is that which is aware of your feelings. I agree with you, the feelings are limited. For instance, they come and go. They are limited in time. But the question is, what about that which is aware of your feelings does that share their limits Just give me 10 more seconds. It's hard to say, Rupert. I'm trying.

Starting point is 00:29:54 I imagine trying is the opposite of what I should be doing. It's good. Trying is, no, no, but trying is exactly what you should be doing. When you say trying, what you'll really do is you're exploring your experience you're not just conceptualizing about when you're not thinking about you're in the lab you're not in the classroom we're in the in the classroom we get the theory consciousness is infinite but no that that's the that gives us we're open to the possibility but we want to test that possibility we want to come out of the classroom we want to go into the lab and test whether it's true so now yes what you call trying is is testing the validity of the theory

Starting point is 00:30:33 that consciousness may be unlimited well the way to test that is to see in our actual experience we're not speculating about consciousness being conscious or being aware is our experience. We don't need to speculate about it. We can test it because it is our experience. So we are now testing whether or not we have the actual experience of a limit to consciousness. Now, let me just go a little bit further, because I'd like to come back to this experiment, because it's really key. What is it in us that could explore the nature of awareness? These are questions you would like me to ponder or the audience? Well, yes, I'd like to explore with you. And of course, for your audience, they can do the experiment with us.

Starting point is 00:31:35 I'd like to just ascertain what it is in us that is able to explore the nature of awareness. Now, let me elaborate. Whatever it is that is able to explore the nature of awareness must know awareness. Yes? It must be aware of awareness. We couldn't explore something we are not aware of. Okay.

Starting point is 00:32:10 Now the question is, what is it that is aware of the fact that we are aware? Is awareness known by another kind of awareness? Or is it you-awareness that knows that you are aware? I would say that for me, it's tricky when I say me, when I i say i even but when i say me i would say that i'm aware of my my awareness exactly perfect there are not two awarenesses in you one that is the subject of your exploration and one that is the object well for me i didn't i don't know if I did it properly, but I was aware of an awareness, and in that awareness,

Starting point is 00:33:10 it was as if that outside awareness was the object, and I was the subject looking at my own awareness. If that was the case, the object's awareness that you were looking at would have been some kind of objective experience, and would as such have had a limit to it. But that's not the case. When we say, I am aware that I am aware, there isn't one I that is aware and another I that is aware that we are aware. It is I-awareness that is aware that I am aware.

Starting point is 00:33:53 In other words, awareness is self-aware. Okay. Okay. So now, when I ask you, do you have any experience of a limit to your awareness? What I'm really doing is asking you awareness. Do you have any actual experience of a limit in yourself, to yourself? I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. If I'm understanding the question correctly,

Starting point is 00:34:38 it's that I have some awareness. I'm from a perspective right now. I have experiences. But I'm trying to just look at at forget the experiences that are thoughts and sensations but look at what's experiencing those thoughts and sensations okay so that is something like a perspective which we're also calling awareness now can I be aware of my own perspective? Can I be aware of awareness? Well, if I were to ask you now, Kurt, are you aware? Not what are you aware of? Just a simple question. Are you aware?

Starting point is 00:35:15 What would you say? I'd say I'm partially aware and that I hope I'm aware because i want to be present for you yes but it is your experience i'm not trying to be no yeah i'm not trying to be but it surely it is obvious to you now that you are aware yes like here's where the reason why i'm hesitating is it's fairly simple it's that when i'm driving let's say let's say I'm driving down the highway, there obviously most of that, obviously most of that constitutes gaps in memory because we're moving along unconsciously. But then if I was to be tapped on the shoulder at any point and I look back at the previous five seconds, I can recall them, but not just recall them, but at least have a feeling that I was conscious during them. that I was conscious during them, although if you were to tap me two minutes later instead of five seconds, I wouldn't be able to recall that little five-second gap,

Starting point is 00:36:08 and I would have said that was a lapse in my consciousness. So what constitutes me consciously... Sorry to interrupt. It was a lapse in the content of your consciousness. You didn't have any experience of a lapse in being aware you were aware all the way through the experience but there was a gap in what you were aware of okay it's like when one movie ends and another movie begins there is a gap the gap is not the absence of the screen. It is the absence of the content. You would never say when a movie comes to an end, you don't say the screen has come to an end.

Starting point is 00:36:53 So what you're getting me to do is to identify with the screen or try to get close to the screen rather than what's being projected onto it. You've already said, Kurt, as a result of our initial experiment, when I remove everything from myself that is not essential all that remains is that which experiences or that which is aware and now I'm trying to push you a little bit further to discover the nature of that which is aware let me let me and by the way you're you're doing very well i know it doesn't feel like it but you're the reason you're having so much difficulty well let me say about that later but but sure it it may not feel like it to you but it's a very good sign that you're struggling with this so much when i asked you what is the tell us about the sensations of the soles of your feet we didn't discuss it for 15 minutes you just told me they're

Starting point is 00:37:50 cold and tingling when i asked you about the nature of your thoughts we didn't debate it for 15 minutes you just told me they're fleeting and rapid now when i ask you what is the nature of that which is aware we're still talking about it 20 minutes later and it's good that we are because it's not clear to you that the nature of your sensations in your thoughts is absolutely clear to you the nature of your awareness is not clear to you that's very good so that that's the actually that that's the beginning that that's the best sign at the beginning of this investigation. I want to just add another analogy here to help you, to possibly help you.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Did you? I certainly did as a young child. I lay awake in bed wondering how far space went on. As someone interested in physics and mathematics, I'm quite sure early on in your life you must have imagined how far space goes on and you go on and then you eventually you come to what you think is a limit of this of space and then you think but hang on what what's outside that that must be space also so and and you you experience this frustration that you cannot imagine something outside space. You had that thought as a boy? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:13 Now, imagine that instead of you exploring the nature of space as something objective, imagine now that space, physical space itself, were were conscious just for the sake of this thought experiment imagine the faculty of being aware to physical space and now imagine that physical space itself were to explore itself would it ever find a limit in itself i'm just talking about the ordinary classical conventional idea of space no as far as i can tell yeah exactly i could keep prefacing this with as far as i can tell because often so just to be clear often with when we're playing when we're using language often there are linguistic linguistic tricks that prevent us from seeing truths. So, for example, I can't give an example, but I'm sure you can think of examples.

Starting point is 00:40:20 Some examples from math would be the barber's paradox. Who cuts the barber's hair if the barber cuts all those who don't cut their own hair but everyone's shaved in the town and then that leads to an investigation and set theory to overcome that and so there's many there are many times when an answer seemed obviously it's so and so or obviously it's not so and so that years decades even hundreds of years later we found out well it's not so obvious the more we investigated there are subtleties so that's why i'm prefacing with, it seems like what you're saying is correct. And my feeling is like, my feeling is in accordance with what you're saying, but I don't have a, I don't have the certainty that you do. Perhaps that's because I lack.

Starting point is 00:40:57 Okay. Can we leave it like this? I don't mean leave it like this. Can we agree, at least thus far, that when you explore the experience of being aware, you don't find any limit there. You don't find an edge to the space of awareness if we can add a space-like quality to it just for the purposes of this conversation. Yes, yes. purposes of this conversation yes yes and what i would say is that if i try to be aware of not being aware sorry if i tried to get into a place of non-awareness which is the border of awareness if such a border existed i can't because in order to know it i would have to be aware of it exactly and thus by definition i'm locked within this realm of

Starting point is 00:41:45 awareness there may exist what's outside awareness i just don't know it at least i can't know it as far as i can tell you can't know it could can anybody know it if my body you means another awareness then i would say no could any kind a being, embodied or whatever other kinds of beings there may be in reality, could any being know that which exists prior to or in the absence of awareness? I would say that an aware being, if one is to be a being and synonymize that with being aware then it would be no as far as i can tell but like i said there are subtleties that decades later we find out okay if we did if we considered so-and-so at the edge case so as far as i can tell hold on you say as far as you can tell and maybe decades later, but imagine

Starting point is 00:42:45 decades later. In the absence of awareness, would it be possible to be aware of anything? Can anybody? I would say no by definition but no by definition yes right right in other words i'm couching this and i'm not trying to be difficult no no be difficult be difficult okay it's good that you're being difficult the reason is that let's imagine it's true that there's dead matter and that's materialism but let's also imagine that there exists consciousness. So let's imagine a dual existence. Then one may say, well, what's not matter and not consciousness at the same time? Well, there's nothing. Well, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:43:33 Maybe there's a third element that has nothing to do with matter or consciousness that can interact with them in some way. That's why I'm saying. Yes. From definition, from the definition. Yes. Yes. That's why I'm saying, from the definition, yes. Yes, but you're starting with the presumption that there may be something outside consciousness which exists alongside consciousness. Now, if we try to find that stuff that exists outside consciousness, in fact, we have been trying to find it for a couple of millennia now.

Starting point is 00:44:10 We don't find that stuff. It's an abstract category of experience which nobody has ever or could ever come in contact with. For those listening, I'll just recapitulate what you said shortly so that the people who may be tuned in later can understand. When you're saying that we can never know what's outside of, we can never know the dead matter, what you're referring to is that in order, even in the lab,

Starting point is 00:44:37 if let's say we're analyzing an electron at some point, so well, that's not conscious, but you only know of the electron through your own consciousness. Is it something like that? Is that what you're saying? That we can never get to this dead matter, unconscious material? Your question implies that there is something called dead matter, albeit that we cannot know. What I'm implying by this line of questioning is, why presume that there is something namely dead matter, that nobody has ever or could ever experience, and then try to build a model of the one thing we do experience,

Starting point is 00:45:35 namely conscious experience, that is apparently derived from the one thing we never experience which is dead matter that that is convoluted firstly i'm not saying i presume no no i i i realize i can't or the other i realize i understand you're you're playing devil's advocate and yeah let me let me give an answer to that so why presume what we can't know so that's an epistemological claim. But then you're taking this claim about epistemology that we only have access to a certain set of data points. And those data points are all conscious points. So why would we ever posit a non-conscious data point given all we've only seen is consciousness? And all we can see is consciousness. Or all we can experience is consciousness.

Starting point is 00:46:24 Okay, so I'll give you a reason why to pause it. This is not necessarily the reason why it is positive, but I'm just telling you. Here's one. We can imagine universes that don't interact with ours, such as in the potential M theory, there are brains. Well, in some flavors of string theory, there's things called D brains, and then they interact, and perhaps when they collide, they create big bangs. And there are other cyclical models of the universe that we can't, that say that universes existed before us and may after us, that we can't actually

Starting point is 00:46:53 touch or see. But the reason to play with them, and this is not a reason to assume that they're true, but I'm giving an argument to play with them. The reason to play with them is because what we find is through often convoluted arguments, what we'll see is actually what we thought of as an uninteracting piece is an intimation of that other universe. So for example, even though we can't see the quantum foam, some people talk about the quantum foam at the bottom of, at the Planck scale, even though we can't see that so why do we think it exists well there are a couple reasons one may be that in the early universe when the big bang happened and there was a huge inflation maybe an imprint of that moment's quantum foam is on the sky so at this place where we thought we could never get to even by principle we could never get

Starting point is 00:47:41 to we can theorize what would it be like if that were here? And then thousands of heads of brilliant people coming using this and playing with it come to conclusions that say, actually, if we look in this direction, we can see an imprint of so-and-so. Okay, so that's why I'm saying, I'm not saying I believe that there exists matter outside consciousness

Starting point is 00:48:02 or consciousness outside matter. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that. I'm just saying that there is a reason to toy with it. Yes. Kurt, I'm not, I just want to be clear, I'm not suggesting or I hope implying that all there is to reality is the contents, the sum total of each of our finite minds. I would suggest that our finite minds were a very small segment, a narrow cross-section, a localization of the infinite mind or the one reality, the one consciousness. Rupert, can I ask you a question about that? I have a source here. Unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:48:44 it's just a link and I can't click a link with a pen. Maybe this will jog your memory. When you were speaking of the infinite nature of consciousness and its oneness, you were saying that it can't be cleaved. There can't be two fundamental consciousnesses, because the divide between them would have to be finite. I don't know if this rings a bell, but I was wondering why is that the case? And I'll give you a mathematical example that you have the flat plane like this screen right here, but imagine it extended to infinity.

Starting point is 00:49:14 You can cleave the, what's called the R2 plane, because these are, this is real, this is real. You can cleave the R2 plane with an infinite line. So now you've separated it. So I don't see why a separation necessarily implies a finiteness to create the border. If consciousness was separate, if it had a limit to it, in some dimension, if it had a limit, it in some dimension

Starting point is 00:49:45 if it had a limit it would be finite and if you see me close my eyes please I'm trying to experience what you're saying and not just intellectually deal with it with the experiment that we did you didn't quite go so far as say yes

Starting point is 00:50:04 in my own experience of myself there is no limit to my awareness. But you certainly found it very difficult to find any limit. So you went so far as to say, I cannot find a limit to awareness. And if anyone, anyone who's listening or indeed anybody, did the same experiment that we did and understood it and participated, they would come to the same conclusion. Now, if nobody has ever or could ever find a limit to their awareness, their awareness. Why don't we start our model of reality in a way that is consistent with our experience, namely unlimited awareness? That is our primary, fundamental, irreducible experience. Now, if we want to build a model of reality why don't we start with that which is primary and fundamental in our experience it's the one given it's the ontological primitive

Starting point is 00:51:15 in our experience why don't and and i would suggest that we as finite minds or apparently individual selves are localizations of, or apparent localizations of, this unlimited awareness. By the way, I agree with you that if one is to take parsimony seriously, one shouldn't posit what exists outside consciousness because all that's within consciousness can explain in the same way this is bernardo castrop's argument at least as far as i've heard it yes so let's explore that further if we posit the possibility that if we stay stay close to the evidence of experience all we can be absolutely certain of is that there is consciousness and its contents or its activity, which we call experience. And it is our experience that consciousness is unlimited. Put these two facts of experience together. Can we build a model of reality that is based only on consciousness and its own activity? that is based only on consciousness and its own activity.

Starting point is 00:52:28 Now, take what happens in a dream. If our own individual mind, the finite mind, is a localization of infinite consciousness, then we would expect our finite mind to have at least some of the behavioral properties of infinite consciousness. In other words, that it would behave in a similar way. When we fall asleep at night, our own mind, which is an indivisible field, albeit a limited field of consciousness. Our own mind imagines the dreamed world within itself. But our own mind, the dreaming mind, doesn't perceive the dreamed world directly. In order to perceive the dreamed world, it has to simultaneously localize itself within its own dream as an apparently separate subject of experience, from whose perspective it views its own activity as a dreamed world because it is localized as one of the objects in that world. It is immersed

Starting point is 00:53:47 in the dreamed world. So from the point of view of the dreamed character, the dreamed world seems to exist outside of itself and to be made out of something other than itself, namely matter. But when we wake up in the morning, we realize we realize no the dreamed world wasn't divided into a multiplicity and diversity of objects made out of matter made out of known by a subject made out of mind the entire dreamed world including the separate subject of experience that I seemed to become, was all the activity of my own indivisible mind. The dreamed world was just what the activity of my own mind looked like from a localized perspective. Now, instead of going down from the waking state to the dream state, go up from the waking state to consciousness and consider that what we experience as the waking state is a kind of dream in the universal mind of consciousness. localized perspectives of infinite consciousness within infinite consciousness,

Starting point is 00:55:07 from whose perspective it perceives its own activity as the universe. And this would account for, going back to that early definition that you asked me about, this would account for the identity between ourself and the universe, the shared identity or the shared reality of the subject and object. Okay, what occurs to me when you say that is that it seems like, please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like one is conflating conscious activity within the brain and unconscious activity. So for example, let's say there's Rupert and there's a Kurt. Okay, so Kurt's going to sleep. Kurt then, you're saying Kurt generates the world of Mexico in the dream. And then Kurt also

Starting point is 00:55:59 generates a Kurt avatar, which has a perspective in order to experience Mexico. But I would say that there's this creative matrix or a mythopoetic element that's unconscious that generated Mexico. And then this Kurt, conscious Kurt, went to Avatar Kurt in Mexico. Not conscious Kurt created both Mexico and Avatar Kurt, but conscious Kurt became a perspective in avatar kurt and so that's what firstly i'll say that and i want to hear what you have to say about that so the avatar what i refer to as the dreamed character is a localization of what you call conscious kurt what i call the dreamer's mind so your own mind has overlooked the fact that it is in fact creating the dreamed world, Mexico in this case, that your own mind has localized itself

Starting point is 00:56:55 within its own creation, has forgotten that it is creating it, and then actually imagines that the world that it is perceiving, Mexico, gave rise to that which is perceiving it. That which is perceiving it does not exist anywhere in the dreamed world or in the time and space that seem to be real from the perspective of the avatar or dreamed character. I see. I see. So what I'm hearing is there's the use of the word mind and consciousness, which I'd like to delineate. And of course, you're welcome to say that they're both the same, but for this case, let me say. So there's the mind, which comprises the brain activity, let's say, in the materialist sense, I would say that then we

Starting point is 00:57:45 don't know how consciousness works, but let's imagine the materialists are correct in some way that it's a circuit that gets run and then you are conscious of some sensory information that gets fed to it. Let's just imagine it's like that, like a machine. Okay. I would say that this machine, the mind, some of the brain activity went toward creating Mexico, and some of the brain activity went toward creating the dream character, in your words. And then, curt consciousness here. Curt consciousness didn't create Mexico. I wish I could. That would be extremely fantastic if I could do so on a whim.

Starting point is 00:58:20 It wasn't my conscious mind. It was my brain activity, which comprises my unconscious mind that did so. And so if one is to take this analogy seriously and say, well, this is what's happening at the earth, sorry, at the universe at large, the universe is conscious, splitting itself up. But in this dream analogy, there's already a difference between conscious and unconscious mind. Okay, I see what you're getting at. I agree that what appears in Kurt's dream as Mexico is a manifestation of that region of his mind that he is not conscious of in the waking state. Let me give you another analogy. The risk of mixing our analogies too much.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Let's say that, Kurt, in the waking state, due to your early childhood experiences, I'm just imagining, I'm not insinuating anything, just imagine that as a result of early childhood experiences, where you were very traumatized, you grew up with a feeling of fear. And this feeling of fear was unbearable to you. And as as you grew up you found all kinds of strategies whereby you didn't have to fully feel it or face it you managed to distract yourself from it you didn't deal with the fear but you found strategies of activities, relationships, substances, and so on, that avoided having to deal with it. So that the fear, as it were, was buried in you in the deeper recesses of your mind that some 10, 20

Starting point is 01:00:16 years later were no longer available to you in the waking state. You were no longer even aware that you had this subliminal trauma stored in the deeper layers of your mind. Now you fall asleep and you dream that you're being chased by a tiger. So what lay in the deeper regions, the so-called unconscious, which is not really outside conscious, it is just outside the narrow compass of the waking state mind that the fear that lay in the deeper regions of your mind in the waking state the subliminal mental or emotional activity that lay in the deepest regions of your mind in the waking state manifest as your environment when you go one step down to the dream state. And so that subliminal fear in the waking state appears as a tiger in your dream from the

Starting point is 01:01:17 localized perspective of the avatar, the dreamed character. Now, could it be that what we, and this is what I'm suggesting, that what we experience as the waking state world is a manifestation of the activity of infinite consciousness, the mental activity, in religious language, we could call it the thoughts of God. And by that, I don't mean literally thoughts. I mean the mental activity, the activity. I'm using the word God as infinite consciousness. The activity of infinite consciousness that is not accessible to us, that is not experienced directly by infinite consciousness.

Starting point is 01:02:06 Infinite consciousness can only perceive its own activity when it views it through the localized perspective of each of our minds there's so much you said i'm going to get right back to that one i want to make sure that i say it about the infinite and not being able to experience itself unless it becomes finite i'm going to table that i'm saying it out loud so I remember. Yes, yes, the infinite doesn't experience its own activity directly. It has to do so through the agency of a finite mind, just as the dreamer doesn't experience the dreamed world directly. It can only do so through the avatar or dreamed character. I hope you're going to ask me, why can't the infinite directly perceive its own mental activity? Why can't the infinite perceive its own? Now, its mental activity is by definition finite. It's something that moves, changes, comes and goes. Now, I would suggest that the infinite

Starting point is 01:03:00 cannot know the finite directly. Because if the infinite were to know the finite directly, it would have to know a finite object from every possible point of view simultaneously. And it would not experience that as a single object. It would actually be utter darkness. For the same reason that when you look at the mic in front of you, you only perceive it as a mic because you're viewing it from one location. Imagine if you were to view your mic from two locations in your room and you were to superimpose those two images on top of each other. You'd begin to get a blurred image of the mic. Now imagine that you were to view the mic in your room for, let's say, 10 different locations in the room. The mic would begin to look like a cubist painting. Its integrity would begin to fall apart. Now, imagine that you were to view the mic from every possible location in space, including all the locations within the mic itself.

Starting point is 01:03:59 You were to superimpose all these images on top of each other. You would not see a mic. you were to superimpose all these images on top of each other, you would not see a mic. In order to see a mic, you have to see it from a localized perspective, from a single point of view. That enables you to see a single object. And it's for that reason that I would suggest the infinite cannot see its own activity directly.

Starting point is 01:04:21 If it wants to see its own activity in form, if it wants to realize its own activity, it must overlook the fact that it is infinite consciousness, just as the dreamer's mind overlooks the fact that it is the dreamer's mind. It must localize itself in its own creation, from whose localized perspective it is then able to perceive its own activity as the universe. That's what I would suggest we are seeing when we look at the universe. I would suggest that we are a segment of infinite consciousness from whose perspective it is looking at the rest of its own unlocalized activity. Okay, so I have a couple questions regarding this.

Starting point is 01:05:10 Okay, I have three, and I want to make sure that I can hold on to all of them. Number one, is the initial claim that we have this infinite field, like an ocean, let's imagine consciousness is like an ocean, that for consciousness for this ocean to experience itself it needs to take a segment of itself and then necessarily this segment

Starting point is 01:05:31 comes from a finite place and thus can't know the whole okay but just pause that consciousness doesn't need to localize itself within itself as a separate subject of experience in order to know itself as it essentially is, it only needs to do so if it wants to know its activity in form. Let me relate this to the activity of the dreamer and the dreamer's mind and the dream character. The dreamer's mind, the dreamer, doesn't need to have a dream and localize itself within its own dream if it wants to know itself. It can know itself perfectly well in the waking state and within the limits of the metaphor it does know itself no it doesn't fall asleep and have a dream in order to know itself it has a dream

Starting point is 01:06:33 falls asleep and has a dream in order to know that aspect of its own activity that it doesn't know in the waking state. You fall asleep in order for your fear to become manifest to you as the tiger. So in your dream, you become aware of your own activity, but you don't have a dream in order to know the nature of yourself. So this is very important. Awareness doesn't localize itself in the form of each of us in order to know itself. It knows itself by itself. In other words, awareness is self-aware. But in order to know the contents of its own activity, it must do so from the localized perspective of a finite mind. Okay, must. See, this is the difference.

Starting point is 01:07:25 This is where I'm having a bit of trouble because I can understand can. It can do so from the perspective of a limited creature. But the must, I don't see. And I'll give you an example. That was the example I gave you about looking at the mic

Starting point is 01:07:37 from an infinite number of viewpoints. If you saw a microphone from two different perspectives, you can somewhat understand. You may have to switch between the front and the back. You can somewhat understand it. And then if you put three and then it's getting tough. And then obviously if you put 10, it's almost impossible, let alone a multitude like infinity.

Starting point is 01:07:58 However, some people say that infinite consciousness is infinitely intelligent at the same time. say that infinite consciousness is infinitely intelligent at the same time. And I would say that the fact that I can't, when I look at a microphone on an image and superimpose another microphone from another perspective, that the fact that I can perceive that somewhat, but then can't perceive it if there's three or four different perspectives, is a function of my lack of intelligence. But if I was infinite in intelligence, I don't see a reason why showing up. Okay, but hidden in your question, Kurt, is the presumption that prior to or in the absence of a finite mind, there is still a mic there which consciousness may or may not be able to perceive. consciousness may or may not be able to perceive. I would suggest that is an assumption. I would suggest that the mic only appears as a mic when it is perceived from the perspective of a finite

Starting point is 01:08:54 mind. And in the absence of that perspective, the mic is not a mic. In fact, even when it is perceived, it is not a mic. It just appears to be. It's what the activity of consciousness looks like from a localized perspective. So there's no question of whether infinite consciousness can or cannot see a finite object prior to the mind. There are no finite objects. There are no things prior to the arising of there are no finite object there are no things prior to them to the arising of the finite mind and even from the perspective of the finite mind there are no real things there are the appearance of things what is it that is appearing as things you mean to say there are no real separate things like that the things exist in the sense that they're all... There are no things, period. Things are what the activity of infinite consciousness looks like from the localized perspective of each of our minds, just as what appear to be things in your

Starting point is 01:09:57 dream, the buildings, the fields, the tiger, what appear to be things made of matter in your dream are what the activity of your mind looks like from the perspective of the dreamed character or avatar. There are no real things in the dreamed world. I would suggest there are no real things in this world. Okay. Okay. So let's, the question, the second question I had was with regarding the dreams anyway when some people say that they're enlightened now first of all you can you or anyone can just dismiss that and say they think they're enlightened but they're not however some people seem to be genuine when they say so and exude a sense of what one would think

Starting point is 01:10:40 an enlightened person would look like such as maybe maybe yourself or Sadguru. And if one was to take this enlightenment equals awakening seriously, and this dream analogy seriously, then the reason why I think it's more accurate to say that it's like a dream, this world is like a dream, but not a dream in the sense that we know a dream. The reason why I'm putting that asterisk there is because in an actual dream, once you realize, oh, this is a dream, you wake up and then Mexico's gone. But when Sadhguru has an enlightened experience, it's not like he then vanishes and we just see his clothes fall on the ground and then all of us collapse. So in this analogy, Kurt, what would be the equivalent of enlightenment would not be waking up and as a result, the dream coming to an end. It would be

Starting point is 01:11:26 beginning to lucid dream in your dream. That would be the analogy. The dream carries on, but you no longer believe and feel that you are the localized subject of experience. You feel that you are the entire reality of the dreamed world. You're just perceiving it from a localized perspective. Now, in this lucid dream example, do people come back from enlightened experience, enlightened experiences where they feel like they have the truth that this is, this whole place is some illusion? Do they come back with, I don't mean to be crass, but powers? When I lucid dream, I have the powers of flight. I can stare someone down and make them crumble or create.

Starting point is 01:12:09 Obviously, I don't see that from Sadhguru, but are there some limitations they previously had that they can overcome that one would say would be impossible had not they realized that this was a dream, like Neo from The Matrix? There are undoubtedly, possible had not they realized that this was a dream, like Neo from The Matrix. There are undoubtedly, we must be open to the possibility that these kind of unusual powers exist. However, I don't think they have anything to do with enlightenment. So first of all, I would never say, I would never claim that I or anybody else was or was not enlightened. It's

Starting point is 01:12:46 not a phrase that I use. I would be very wary of anybody else who claimed to be. It's like saying I'm humble. It's like saying I'm humble. Exactly. So it's not, in fact, it's a word that I never use really because like so many of these words, it has become so misunderstood and misused but let me let me offer a a definition or there are many ways enlightenment could be defined but let me offer one very simple definition and that what is traditionally called enlightenment or awakening would simply be the recognition of the nature of our essential self. It's not an extraordinary recognition. It doesn't make you an extraordinary person. It doesn't give you supernatural powers. It doesn't make you a saint.

Starting point is 01:13:39 Although it does have an effect on your experience, because in recognizing the nature of your essential self or being, you recognize its qualities and its qualities then become your qualities. And the qualities, if we can call them qualities, its essential qualities are in relation to human experience, are peace and joy. So let me just say one more thing, Kurt. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. I'm sorry if I interrupt. No, no, no, please. I don't mind at all.

Starting point is 01:14:12 I'm always interrupting you. So in relation to a test for enlightenment, because your question started with, are these supernatural powers some kind of indication that enlightenment has taken place so-called enlightenment the recognition of the nature of one's being i would say no if we want a test we we should look for it more in in the extent to which we experience experience imperturbable peace and causeless joy in ourself. That would be a much more real test as to the extent to which this recognition of our true nature has taken place.

Starting point is 01:14:58 I've heard you mention that this imperturbable peace, causeless joy, happiness, prosperity, maybe not prosperity, but inner prosperity, comes from, as you mentioned, the recognition that we are all connected into this one consciousness. In fact, even to say the word connected implies that we're different and connected by nodes. No, that it's just one vellum

Starting point is 01:15:21 and maybe there are ripples on this cloth. I heard you say that before, and by you nodding, I assume that you recognize that you have said that before. But then at the same time, there are some materialists, atheists who say that they gained their peace and prosperity and calmness from a recognition of their finitude and disconnectedness, that I am going to die and this is all I have. And for whatever

Starting point is 01:15:45 reason, that brings them calm. They've surrendered to that, let's say. Susan Blackmore is someone who said that, and I believe Sam Harris has said that in some other way, shape, or form. What are we to conclude from that? Are they delusional? Are they simply saying that so that they can hold on to their materialist paradigm while still saying, look at the happiness that I have. So you as spiritual people are incorrect. Like, what do you think it is? Can it, is that possible? I would ask them the question, what is it that knows your finitude? You claim that you know your finitude and that you are at peace with it. So my question is, what is it that knows your finitude? Is it okay if I go through this experiment right now?

Starting point is 01:16:31 Please do. No, please do, because I would rather explore this experientially than in an abstract. Yes, yes. Yes. Okay. Please do. Whenever you're ready.

Starting point is 01:16:43 Go on. Tell me. You feel that your thoughts are finite, your sensations, please do. Whenever you're ready. Go on. Tell me, you feel that your thoughts are finite, your sensations, your body. You know your own finitude or your own limitations. What is it that knows that you are finite? again to say it with words is tricky but it's this i know you would call it awareness i would just call it this a being or a perspective and i'm only i'm trying not to steal your words and no no but it's much better that you you try to use words right don't use money it also feels like

Starting point is 01:17:23 it also feels like... It also feels like... There's a bit of a vibration to it, but the vibration seems to extend to the entire universe. But at the same time, like I mentioned, I have a flashlight. I can't see beyond it, but I have a feeling that it extends limitlessly. But I also can't see beyond the limit,

Starting point is 01:17:43 so I don't know for sure. And I have that feeling, and there's a bit of a undulating character to the now this undulating character this vibration this is something you that you are aware of the fact that you can describe it you didn't say it was hot or cold you said it's undulating it has some kind of objective form to it that enabled you to say it's undulating it's not sharp or cold so i would push you back a little further in your experience and ask you what is it that is aware of this background undulation that's such a tricky question rupert i'm trying to i'm trying to get there but what i essentially i mean i think what you're asking is i think what you're trying to get me to do is to get to this point of pure awareness and that's difficult i have gone to places like that before but it takes me 20 minutes 30 minutes to do so you don't have to go there it it's what you are you you don't okay sorry it takes me 20 or 30 minutes to recognize it then let's say that no but what it what it really takes you 20 or 30 minutes to do is to relinquish the objective content of your experience

Starting point is 01:19:12 to come back and back and back and back that's a that's a journey that you have to take each time you take it the journey gets a little shorter okay for the moment it takes 15 or 20 minutes as you trace your way back through the layers of thoughts feelings activities and relationships it, the journey gets a little shorter. Okay, for the moment, it takes 15 or 20 minutes. As you trace your way back through the layers of thoughts, feelings, activities, or relationships, you came very quickly to this subtle undulation or vibration, I think you called it, but you have to go one step further back. So do so right now or just you're telling me in the future? That's what you were doing in that silence. And then after 30, 20, 30 seconds of silence, you said, it's so hard to do this. Now, what you mean is it's so hard for me to say anything about that which knows my finitude.

Starting point is 01:19:59 Why? Because there is nothing finite there to say anything about. So, going back to your question about those who claim that it is because they know their finitude that they are at peace, I would suggest that in order to know one's finitude, one can only know something that one has taken one's distance from in order to just as the eyes cannot see themselves they can only see something at a distance from in order to say i know that i am finite that which knows that finitude cannot itself be finite so by saying i know my finitude and therefore I am at peace, these people are, without realizing it, taking their stand momentarily in their true nature.

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Starting point is 01:22:11 Plus 100 free blades when you head to h-e-n-s-o-n-s-h-a-v-i-n-g.com slash everything and use the code everything. Is it possible to be enlightened and misinterpreted? So to get some truth? Absolutely it is. Yes. It is possible to have recognized the essential nature of oneself and for one's mind in by mind in this case i mean the conceptualization of one's experience to take some time to catch up in in fact it's not only one's concepts that take time

Starting point is 01:23:00 to catch up with this recognition it's also one's feelings in the body. There's a story I sometimes tell, forgive me if you've heard it already, about an old Zen master on his deathbed. And he was asked by one of his students, how is it for you now, master? And he said, everything's fine, but my body's having a hard time keeping up. which he meant that that's in my interpretation of this story by which he meant that that his mind was clear and and at peace but the way he felt his body was had not yet caught up with his his experience. So there was some disparity between his understanding and his felt sense of his body. Now, that's very possible,

Starting point is 01:23:55 but it's also possible for one's ideas, one's beliefs, that one's beliefs not to be in line with one's new so-called enlightened experience. It takes time for the mind. In fact, so-called enlightenment, and as I say, I don't really like the term, this recognition of the nature of our being is not the end point. I would suggest it was a stage. And after this recognition of the nature of our being, there is then what is for most people quite a lengthy process where our beliefs and feelings and perceptions are re-orchestrated

Starting point is 01:24:43 in a way that is consistent with this new understanding and this takes time in fact it takes the rest of one's life it reminds me of the classic case of a psychedelic episode or a breakthrough induced by a psychedelic where one while one is in that state they have this feeling of extreme closeness to the truth that's drastically different than their previous conception then when they get out they carry from that 100 pieces of information maybe five because it's also difficult to hold on to any of those ideas but five are somewhat compatible and then over the course of the next few months they rearrange their lives to incorporate some of those five exactly exactly so that there is this this recognition of our true nature which can either be just a temporary glimpse of our true

Starting point is 01:25:35 nature or it can be a permanent experience but in either cases the old habits of thinking and feeling are not immediately erased or reorchestrated as a result of this new understanding. They take time. If there is a ship on the ocean, when the engine is turned off, the ship doesn't come to an immediate halt. There is a momentum behind it which will take it forward for some time depending on the weight and the speed. There is a momentum, the momentum of habit, to the way we think, feel, act, relate and perceive. And this momentum carries on after the recognition of our true nature, and is in most

Starting point is 01:26:27 cases gradually realigned with it. Can I go back to this question about the separation of one consciousness into two fundamentally different consciousnesses? Because you gave an argument as to why it can't be, but I don't think i restated it properly and i have it here so i could just have you listen to it it is all empty of all i see you're playing myself back to me yes oh heaviness there's no finite qualities and is thus said to be infinite not finite infinite empty not finite there is nothing in it which can divide it this is the part. If there were, for instance, two consciousnesses, there would have to be something about each of those two consciousnesses that divided or distinguished them from one another. And those distinguishing qualities would be finite limits.

Starting point is 01:27:30 Okay. That's what I wanted to get at. Okay. What I'm curious about is why do they have to be finite limits? Like I mentioned, you have the R2 plane. You can still cleave it by putting an infinite line in between. So I don't see why an infinite line or a finite line makes any difference personally, but I'm curious, why does it have to be? What would enable you to say that they were two consciousnesses? For instance, is the space in your room, the kitchen that you're in now, is it, from a conventional perspective perspective is it one space or two spaces it's one space it's one space now what about the the space of your kitchen and the space of

Starting point is 01:28:15 let's let me assume that your bedroom is next door sure sure yeah that's two separate spaces two separate spaces why there's a wall between them. If that wall was removed, would you still say it was two spaces? I understand what you're saying is that these lines are drawn arbitrarily, if that's what you're saying. Well, I'm saying that in our experience of consciousness, by which I mean consciousness's experience of itself, there is no limit. There is no line. Consciousness never has the experience of a limit within itself. It is like the aware space, in our analogy earlier on, that cannot find the edge of itself. So in consciousness's experience of itself, it is, I would suggest, ever-present and unlimited. ever present and unlimited. So there can be no sectioned off sections of consciousness.

Starting point is 01:29:10 We are. There can't be any real sectioned off parts of consciousness, but there can be the appearance of such a part. And you and I and everyone else is just such a sectioned off part, an appearance of a localized and apparently separate consciousness. That's why we feel I am a separate self. I'm a separate person or ego. That's what the ego is, the appearance and the corresponding feeling of being separate, and finite i would suggest that was an illusion that that separation is an illusion and is the cause of suffering on the inside and conflict on the outside let me think about this you said it's the cause of suffering.

Starting point is 01:30:05 So I recall you saying that there's this infinite consciousness and we're a finite piece of it that thinks we're separate from it. And we think we're causing psychological suffering, but that's actually caused by the infinite consciousness pulling us toward it. And not ourselves. I don't know if, firstly, tell me if what i said was correct first of all i would i would suggest we have to back up a little bit i would suggest that what we as human beings call the experience of happiness is the nature of consciousness we can come back to that if you want to explore that but let's take that as a possibility that that the nature of consciousness is what we call peace or happiness now

Starting point is 01:30:50 we apparently separate localized finite minds are a fragment or an apparent fragment of consciousness. We are a finite mind. And believing ourselves to be temporary and finite, we no longer feel ourselves as infinite consciousness and we no longer feel the nature of consciousness, which is happiness. So this apparent collapse of consciousness into a finite mind entails the overlooking of its innate peace and happiness and that is why the finite mind or the separate self feels that it is a fragment that it is incomplete that it needs to be completed and it seeks objective experience, that is, objects, substances, activities, relationships, in order to complete itself. It doesn't really want the object.

Starting point is 01:31:53 What it really wants is to be divested of its sense of separation and thus returned to its natural state of wholeness, which from a human perspective is conceptualized as happiness. Okay, let me ask a foolish question. Is there a reason, per se, that this infinite consciousness had to become finite? So is that a necessary... Yes, let's say that. Why is it becoming finite? I know you gave some examples with perspective, but let's anew. that infinite consciousness appears to itself in form through the agency of a finite mind, and it does so for this reason, and the reason is X, that reason would already be something manifest and could only be known from a localized perspective. So from consciousness's point of view, I don't think we can say there is a reason for creation. It is

Starting point is 01:33:06 simply its nature. It is its nature to move within itself. It is the nature of the ocean to generate ripples within itself. It doesn't do so for a reason. It is just its nature to do so. Sorry, there is only a reason, or there may only be a reason, from the localized perspective of a finite mind, which thinks in terms of time, space, and causality. But the time, space, and causality in terms of which it thinks do not pertain to consciousness. They are only true from its localized and ultimately illusory perspective. Okay, so you seem to have, you say that with eloquence and with purposiveness. And I lack that because I don't have anywhere near the same security. So what I'm wondering is if us as these finite beings are almost unable to discern

Starting point is 01:34:13 motivations if there are such a thing as for the infinite being or its qualities in general, aside from momentarily connecting with it and feeling peace, aside from that, then how can we say that time and causation and so on don't apply? Now, let me see if this is the reason, because if it was, it would be as if there was something outside consciousness. But in this theory, there exists nothing outside consciousness. Is that it? Yes. Okay. Okay. Now, as for the ripples, if I was to just have a pond and let's remove wind, because wind is outside an ocean, and let's remove the ground and so on, then this glob of water wouldn't actually, wouldn't oscillate. There wouldn't be ripples. So it's actually the interaction of something outside it that causes ripples this would be an ocean cut that spontaneously shuddered within itself and thereby generated ripples within itself not due to some external

Starting point is 01:35:15 cause obviously the ripples on the surface of a lake is caused by something above the lake namely the wind but but so this is a very imperfect analogy. But I would suggest that consciousness spontaneously shudders within itself, not for any reason. It is its nature to do so. And this shuddering within itself generates what we could visualize as ripples. And these ripples and these ripples then multiply and diversify and become its activity which later appear from a localized perspective as the universe but these these early ripples these first this first vibration the the very first shuddering, the very first vibration of infinite consciousness is what is referred to in Greek philosophy as the Logos. In the New Testament, it's referred to as the Word. The initial activity of infinite consciousness, which later manifests as the universe. It's the logos, the primary, the primal sound, the primary vibration, which later

Starting point is 01:36:38 multiplies and diversifies and appears from a localized perspective as the universe. and appears from a localized perspective as the universe. Is the logos the activity, so it's like a process, or is the logos the nature and the laws? It is its nature to move within itself. It's not just silent, static, motionless. It is its nature to move, to vibrate within itself. And what is referred to as the logos would be the first form of its activity, the initial activity,

Starting point is 01:37:10 the primary activity, which later will diversify and give rise to what we know as the universe. In Christianity, at least in some interpretations the logos is around us even still and we need to interact with absolutely the the logos that the the activity of of consciousness is actually what we are perceiving as the universe okay hold on repeat that one more time please the the logos that the activity of consciousness, is what we are perceiving as the universe. It's not that it is around us.

Starting point is 01:37:49 It is all that we ever experience. It just appears to us as a physical universe from the localized perspective of each of our finite minds. of our finite mind. So our finite minds are like a pair of glasses that we put on that renders the logos, renders the activity of infinite consciousness

Starting point is 01:38:12 as an apparently material universe. And time and space are part of the apparatus through which we perceive. They are not the nature of that which is perceived. It is our finite minds that project or confer time and space onto reality. They are not inherent in reality. They're not fundamental to it.

Starting point is 01:38:44 Sorry, sorry. No, i'm so sorry there's obviously there's a lag so please i hope you're not you don't think i'm being rude i don't mean to interrupt not at all okay and i'm enjoying this i'm on i'm i feel at such an ease rupert that i i've only felt with three people and that is bernardo castroprup, so your kin, and then Ian McGilchrist, and I think there was one other person. I'm very happy that you say that, Kurt. I also feel completely at ease. If I might say so, you're an extremely good interviewer. The role of an interviewer is not, you say to be adversary and conflict it is to

Starting point is 01:39:27 somehow draw out from the interviewer what he or she knows but without even knowing that they knew so it's a creative dynamic process and and um so it it's mutual and i'm very touched that you say that about this kinship um that was very evident in your conversation with with bernardo i haven't listened to your interview with in mcgillchrist which which i certainly will do because i haven't read all of his book but i've read some of it and i i i just every single page my my mind was was was was it was resonating with and i thought oh i would love to have a conversation with this guy sometime and i ian mcgilchrist's foreword alone or preface alone for the master and its emissary the second edition that preface is its own book that i had to i listened to it while i was walking listened, I had to keep pausing and pausing and making notes.

Starting point is 01:40:28 Okay. So getting back. Yes, I feel extremely calm with you. And I'm glad because usually what happens during these interviews is I'm looking up a person for two weeks straight, just watching all their videos, reading all their papers. And then when I see them, there's a bit of a surrealness to it because it was as if they were on, I, I, at least unconsciouslyly at least unconsciously put them on a pedestal and i'm not saying you're i don't put you on a pedestal i respect and adore you man but but i also feel

Starting point is 01:40:53 i feel i i feel i feel like i don't have to overly try i feel like i can be myself i'm very happy to hear that good and as for just a quick aside as for what you say that I'm As me as an interviewer what I'm trying to do is actually I'm actually just trying to understand what you're saying And I'm trying to visualize and try to see can I how do I see it from that perspective? Because most of the time what I see from people like Michael Shermer And I'm sure you from Sam Harris and others is that they have already an entrenched worldview and then they're trying to see how does it fit in and if it doesn't then it's incorrect so let me poke holes but but because I think that's why well that's why I'm enjoying this conversation

Starting point is 01:41:35 so much and why I say I think you're you're very good at what you're doing because you're not entrenched in a materialist perspective you're very well acquainted with it. But nor are you entrenched in a non-dual perspective. You're open to both. And so you're not entrenched anywhere. So you're not making any presumption about either perspective. And that makes for a very open conversation. Thank you. Thank you. i'm just trying to understand

Starting point is 01:42:06 it that's all i'm trying to do so anytime i if you feel like i'm attacking you no no i don't i feel entirely that you're trying to understand this in your own experience okay we'll get back to this so where do you disagree with donald hoffman and also where do you disagree with bernardo castra for example they don't take some concept too far, or they take some concept past its domain of applicability. I'm getting you to pick a fight with your friend. Yes, okay. I have to say, I find it hard to find anything I disagree with Bernardo about. Okay, how about Donald Hoffman? The little that you've seen of him?

Starting point is 01:42:53 Donald, I met him once. I liked him very much. We had a good but brief conversation at a conference. I haven't read his book, but I've watched a few interviews. So I've got a, I think, and I've heard him speak live on a number of occasions his book, but I've watched a few interviews. So I've got a, I think, and I've heard him speak live on a number of occasions. So I think I've got a reasonably good idea about his basic idea of conscious, that reality is,

Starting point is 01:43:17 I think he would say, a network of conscious agents or conscious experiences. And I want to be very cautious because donald's not here to to correct me if i if i misrepresent him so i want to go very cautiously because i have great admiration and and respect for him and his work if i'm right that that he has reduced reality to a network of conscious agents or conscious experiences i would suggest that there's one step further to go and that is to reduce this multiplicity

Starting point is 01:43:58 and diversity of conscious agents or experiences into a single consciousness and in fact this was the one question we had dinner together once he probably doesn't remember it was the one question i asked him when we had a conversation is is would he consider this a possibility and he said very much so he couldn't say for certain but it was something he was exploring because let's take Let's take the idea, and again, I may not be representing Donald properly here. Sure. Let's be clear that what I'm talking about now is my very limited understanding of his idea of conscious agents or conscious experiences. Let's take this idea of a multiplicity of conscious experiences each experience must be different so the experiences are different just the fact that there are numerous experiences each

Starting point is 01:44:54 one must be different however there is something that is common to all the experiences, namely consciousness, because they are all conscious experiences. So consciousness is the common factor in each conscious experience. This is actually true of our experience. If you think of every experience that you've had in your life, every experience was different, but consciousness was the common factor in all of them. So, if I understand Donald correctly, this multiplicity and diversity of conscious experiences, consciousness is the common factor in each of them. Now, how do we know that the consciousness that is the common factor in each of these consciousness experiences is a different consciousness?

Starting point is 01:45:54 To me, that's like suggesting that every time you watch a different movie, you see it on a different screen. No, all movies share the same screen. No, all movies share the same screen. I would suggest all experiences share the same consciousness, whether they are experiences that an individual mind has, or, if I understand Donald correctly, whether they are conscious experiences that exist beyond and outside of the finite mind, they still share the same consciousness.

Starting point is 01:46:34 And for this reason, I would be interested to have this conversation with Don, whether he is open to the possibility that there is a common factor that unifies all these conscious agents or experiences, and that that is their fundamental reality, namely consciousness. So I'm not sure that that's a disagreement with Donald, because I haven't understood his position well enough to see clearly how it differs from what I'm saying, but I think what I'm saying is reasonably accurate.

Starting point is 01:47:05 So that would be a difference. As I say with Bernardo, I feel this deep resonance with him. And what I love about Bernardo and that is very interesting about where we meet, both where we meet in person, Benardo, a'r hyn sy'n ddiddorol iawn am ein cyfarfod, gan gyd-fynd yn unig, ond pan fydd ein syniadau'n cyfarfod, yw bod Benardo a fi wedi dod i'r dealltwriaeth hon drwy wahanol sianelau.

Starting point is 01:47:40 Mae'n gwydnwyr yn bennaf, ac mae'n dod i'r peth trwy'r ffordd gwydnwyr yn fawr. and he comes at this through the rigorous scientific method and I didn't take that route I went this route through primarily through introspection through the investigation of my own experience so in me in my experience I explored my experience and my mind then had to catch up and Indies is still catching up and finding new ways to formulate my experience and my mind then had to catch up and Indies is still catching up and finding new ways to formulate my experience whereas in Bernardo's case and I hope it's this is a reasonable thing to say Bernardo if he ever listens to this will correct me if it's not in Bernardo's case his mind ran ahead of him he came to this understanding through rational inquiry and then his understanding

Starting point is 01:48:33 his felt experience not his understanding his felt experience had then to catch up with his understanding. So in my case, the felt experience came first, and my mind had to catch up with that experience. He came into it the other way around. He came to this conclusion rationally, and since then, his experience has been catching up with it. And so that makes it, it makes our interaction very interesting because we're talking about the same thing, but we come at it through two very different perspectives. One through introspection and the other through rational analysis

Starting point is 01:49:20 and empirical evidence. I don't mean to imply that Bernardo has not introspected. He very obviously has. But I think and I think he would. I hope I've characterized his process accurately. And if I haven't, then I apologize to Bernardo. What role does psychedelics play in spiritual understanding or getting to this connected state of infinite consciousness? Is it warned against? Is it false? Is it a great aid? Is it not to be believed? You can speak personally, I've had no personal experience of psychedelic drugs.

Starting point is 01:50:10 When I, as I said at the beginning of our conversation, in my mid-teens, age 16, I started becoming very interested in these matters. And I joined a school in London. It was a classical school of Advaita Vedanta, non-dual philosophy. And the one thing we were asked not to do, this was when I started to meditate, the one thing we were asked not to do was to take drugs. And I was an extremely passionate, keen, devoted student, and I just did what I was told. Partly, having said that, it was not really my character anyway, so I'm not sure I would have gone very far down that route. I probably would have gone a little bit further than I did, but I probably wouldn't have gone far down it. So I don't feel qualified to speak. I can't speak from experience. Can it be an aid? Well, it can certainly be an aid to making it absolutely clear how limited our finite minds are, how much more there is to our own individual mind than that narrow segment of it that it clear to us that there is very much more to

Starting point is 01:51:25 our finite mind than is available to us in the waking state. But psychedelic experience from descriptions I've heard and read and heard from friends expands our sense of the content of our own individual mind. So from that point of view, it's obviously, it's mind expanding. Can psychedelic experience tell us anything about the nature of consciousness? I would suggest not. In fact, I would go further and to suggest that no objective experience, however extraordinary it may be, tells us anything about the nature of consciousness. It tells us about its activity, but not its nature. If we want to know about the nature of consciousness, there's only really one way to do it, and that is to go to the experience of consciousness, to go to the experience of being aware.

Starting point is 01:52:28 Just as if I were to ask you now, tell me about the nature of the sensations at the soles of your feet, you would direct your attention to the soles of your feet. If I told you to tell me about your kitchen cooker, you'd direct your attention towards the kitchen cooker if you want to know about the nature of consciousness you have to give your attention to consciousness so to go via psychedelic experience is at best a very long way around why not go there directly because everybody has the experience of being aware. It is within

Starting point is 01:53:06 everybody, not just those of us that are philosophically minded or spiritually minded. It is within the possibilities of all 7.8 billion of us to go directly to the experience of being aware and recognize for ourselves its nature. Does something special happen when you're truly just aware of your own awareness? The reason I'm asking this is that if, imagine, this is an analogy, so imagine this is your awareness, and, sorry, this is your awareness. It can look at the kitchen, but it can also look at the garbage can, and it can look at the washroom and your shoes, or your feeling is your awareness. It can look at the kitchen, but it can also look at the garbage can, and it can look at the washroom and your shoes, or your feeling in your gut. Okay, then I say, be aware of your awareness. So I am now, I'm looking at my awareness here, like for whatever

Starting point is 01:53:57 reason in this foolish analogy, there are two awarenesses. I imagine that it would only grow stronger and stronger, because as you're aware of your awareness, you become aware that you're aware of your awareness, which then leads you to become aware that you're aware of the aware of the aware of the awareness and onward to infinity. No, it's not an infinite regress, Kurt, because awareness is aware of itself. Its nature is to be aware of itself for the same reason that the sun illuminates itself, but by nature. It doesn't have to do something special. It doesn't have to turn around and reflect its own light off the moon in order to illuminate itself. It illuminates itself by itself. Its nature is illumination.

Starting point is 01:54:47 by itself. Its nature is illumination. So awareness is the same. It is like the sun. It knows itself simply by being itself. In other words, awareness is simply self-aware by nature. It is only when awareness localizes or contracts or seems to localize and contract into a finite mind that it seems to overlook the nature of itself and there, as a result, has to take the journey back to itself and become aware of itself again as it is. Now, let me give you an analogy which you've probably come across but it's a very good analogy for this for this question it's it's um it's an analogy that i use a lot and it's the analogy of the actor an actor called john smith who plays the part of king lear are you familiar with this and you, well, let me just very briefly elaborate it.

Starting point is 01:55:45 Go on, do it for the audience. Let me do it for your audience. So in this analogy, John Smith represents consciousness. King Lear represents the finite mind. Now, John Smith, he lives alone at home in his apartment and he has a peaceful, happy life. He's content in his life. He goes to his theatre. He adopts the character of King Lear. He not only puts on King Lear's clothes, but he adopts King Lear's thoughts and feelings. So he seems to become King Lear without ever actually

Starting point is 01:56:28 ceasing to be John Smith, but his knowledge of himself as John Smith is eclipsed, or at least partially veiled, by his assuming the role of King Lear. Now, as soon as he seems to become King Lear, his innate peace and happiness are veiled and he suffers. He's squabbling with his three daughters. He has trouble in the Kingdom of England. He's at war with France. He's miserable. So at the end of the performance, King Lear goes backstage. His friend comes to meet him to congratulate him on his performance, but is surprised to find him miserable. He asks him why he's miserable. And King Lear says, I'm miserable on account of the war with the French, my relationship with my daughters. And his friend says, no, don't be silly.

Starting point is 01:57:25 You're not, you're not miserable for any of those reasons. You're miserable because you've forgotten who you truly are. Who are you? And then King Lear begins to describe who he is. He said, I'm the father of three daughters. I'm the king of England. I'm at war with the France. And his friend says, no, don't be silly. These these are not who you are these are just temporary roles that you play who who are you before you assumed any of these roles then King Lear starts describing his his thoughts his relationships his activities his memories and his feelings no his friend says but but but these are likewise are not essential to you they are added to you go Go deeper into yourself. Who are you really? And he's teaching King Lear self-inquiry. He's teaching him how to meditate. His friend is

Starting point is 01:58:13 encouraging him to discard everything that is non-essential to him. And at some point, there is this recognition, I am John Smith. At that moment, his suffering comes to an end. Now, it's not King Lear that has the recognition, I am John Smith. It is John Smith that has the recognition, I am John Smith. Now, to answer your question was, does something extraordinary happen when we recognize our true nature? Well, the recognition of our true nature is the most ordinary, intimate, familiar experience there is. It is not something extraordinary. On the contrary, it is the most intimate and familiar experience there is, albeit veiled most of the time by the content of experience. So what happens from King Lear's perspective, what happens on this recognition? He's relieved of his suffering.

Starting point is 01:59:22 That's the extraordinary thing that happens on so-called enlightenment we are relieved of suffering because our suffering arose in the first place as a result of the overlooking or forgetting of the nature of our essential self or being this essential self slash being you said that its nature is love and happiness and on the inside necessarily it's experienced as its nature is experienced on the inside as peace and happiness then it's to know it as love requires a further step. So the John Smith King Lear analogy doesn't work for this. We have to go back to the dream analogy. When John Smith recognizes himself as John Smith, his innate peace and happiness are restored. His suffering comes to an end. Revert now to the dream analogy. When we wake up in the morning,

Starting point is 02:00:26 we realize that the essential nature of the avatar, the dreamed character, and the essential nature of all the other people in the dream is the same. Now that recognition that we share our being, that we are the same self or being, that is from a human experience, that recognition of our shared being is felt as love. further than that when we wake up in the morning we recognize that we don't that the the being of the the avatar the dream character is not only shared with all the other people and animals in the dream it's also shared with all the other inanimate objects now the recognition that we share our being with other people and animals is felt from the perspective of a human being as love. The recognition that we share our being with inanimate objects is felt from the perspective of a human being as the experience of beauty. That's what the experiences of love and beauty are.

Starting point is 02:01:45 experiences of love and beauty are. They are the collapse of the subject-object relationship and the revelation of our shared identity. Would the squirrel, if it could, comprehend the connection that it has to other beings, would it necessarily feel it also as love, or is this just a human construct, or we don't know, or if a tree or some cloud experienced Or is this just a human construct or we don't know? Or if a tree or some cloud experienced oneness, recognized oneness, I mean, is it always guaranteed to be a feeling of love or peace? The way in which we experience reality, the reality that we experience is always the same reality. But what we call it depends upon the pathway we take towards it. If we take the pathway of thinking, if we access reality through the pathway of thinking, we refer to it as truth or understanding. If we take the pathway of feeling or devotion we refer to the same reality as love or happiness

Starting point is 02:03:10 and if we approach the same reality through the path of perception as does an artist we refer to that reality as beauty. In other words truth, love and beauty are three different names for the same reality depending on the path we take to that reality. Now, a different kind of mind may have different channels by which or through which it would approach the same reality, in which case it would describe that reality in terms that were consistent with that pathway. And we have to be open to the possibility that there may be other kinds of minds, and therefore there would be other ways to conceptualize this reality. But the actual experience itself would always be the same experience. And that is why when we experience love, we invariably

Starting point is 02:04:15 experience truth and happiness with it. When we experience beauty, we invariably experience understanding and love with it, because really they are the same experience. But it's just that the truth, love or beauty aspect predominates depending on which channel we have approached reality through. approached reality through. Are there ever any untruths in non-dualism? The reason I ask this is it sounds dualistic to say that there exists truth and falsity, but at the same time it sounds like what you're saying is there's some worldviews that are correct and others that aren't. Perspective of non-duality, there is not really truth and falsity. There is just truth, just reality and the veiling of reality. From the point of view of non-duality, there is not happiness and suffering. From a conventional point of view, happiness and suffering are two equal and opposite emotions that fluctuate one with the other. That's the

Starting point is 02:05:27 conventional point of view. From the non-dual perspective, there is not happiness and suffering. There is happiness and the veiling of happiness, but always only happiness. There is truth or the veiling of truth, which from the limited perspective of a human mind appears as falsity. But there's no real suffering. There's no real ignorance. There's no real evil. When you say real, for example, there's no real suffering. What do you mean?

Starting point is 02:06:02 That suffering doesn't have a stand alone existence suffering is the the veiling of happiness so it's experienced as suffering it feels like suffering but if we were to touch the stuff that suffering is made of if you go deep enough into the experience of suffering you don't find an essential suffering what you find is happiness suffering was just the veiling of that happiness okay i think that's a great time to give an exercise because i don't i can't comprehend that theoretically nor experientially so please perhaps you can help me with one of those routes how is it that if one was to investigate their suffering to the utmost degree they'd find happiness at the end of it and also when you say happiness is veiled well what from what i'm understanding there's only consciousness that exists and consciousness is nature is happiness

Starting point is 02:06:59 love joy truth beauty so is happiness veiling itself so that happiness plus happiness yes suffering yes which do you like john smith or the dream analogy best i i had an issue with john smith okay let's use the dream analogy okay when you fall asleep at night you you've you you've just had a lovely meal with a friend you're feeling peaceful and happy you go to sleep at night but you dream you're being chased by a tiger you have a nightmare you're terrified in your dream so the innate happiness of your mind

Starting point is 02:07:35 albeit in this case your finite mind was veiled by its own activity the nightmare was not imposed on you from outside you were happy when you fell asleep, but your own mind veiled its own state of happiness and assumed the form of a nightmare. Now, if you touch the stuff that nightmare was made of, it was made out of your own mind, your own inherently peaceful mind. So yes, consciousness, it veils itself with its own activity.

Starting point is 02:08:17 Just to thoroughly mix my metaphors, in a movie, a two-dimensional screen appears as a three-dimensional landscape. The three-dimensional landscape is an illusion, but it's an appearance of its reality, the two-dimensional screen. So it is, if we could call the movie the activity of the screen, that the screen veils its two-dimensional nature with its activity, which makes it appear to be a three-dimensional landscape. In other words, the screen veils itself with itself, with its own activity, which in reality is no real veiling. It's an illusion of veiling. That's why in the Vedantic tradition, they don't talk about ignorance.

Starting point is 02:09:07 They talk about the illusion of ignorance. And that's going back to our conversation about suffering being unreal. We could say it is the illusion of suffering. Now, I have to be very careful saying this, because I do not mean to disrespect or disregard the very real experience of suffering that people have. All I'm suggesting is that if one goes deeply into the experience that we feel as suffering, we find happiness or peace at its source. Practically speaking, how does one go deeply in it what one one brings the no normally when we suffer we are i'll give you an example sorry

Starting point is 02:09:59 i think it'll be much clearer it's a personal one i i find that when, see, I'm so torn, Rupert, between almost every single person that I interview and their theories and as to what's right, and I'm trying to make sense of this whole, but it doesn't feel, many people make analogies with jigsaw puzzles and they see how the pieces fit together. But for me, it's more like they're a golem offry. They're just jumbled in the air, twisting and turning, and I don't see how they fit. I get intimations every once in a while, but it's not like I can take a new piece and slot it in. However, I do have, like I mentioned, intimations or first reactions. When it comes to people saying that you are God, if you were to investigate it, you're a God that has forgotten

Starting point is 02:10:41 your God. If I'm honest, there's some terror associated with that for me. And I'm not sure where the source of this comes from. I think it may be that I'm afraid, one, that would make me arrogant, like, oh, I'm god, and you don't realize you're god. But two, that it would drastically change change me because I don't know what lies on that other side. Maybe I give up all my possessions and I love my wife. And I wonder how much is my love of my wife holding me back in that sense from a larger truth, because it should come God first and then your marriage. And you should, well, that's the story of Abraham is even above your kids, God is first. And I'm afraid of, I'm, I, I had an experience about a year and a half ago,

Starting point is 02:11:37 or two years ago, where I was convinced that what I was experiencing was true reality. And true reality was that I'm not even in control of my body. There's something else in control. In fact, I was on a computer typing and it said, haha, you thought you were in control. But I didn't type that. Something was talking to me through my fingers that terrified me. And then I was alone. I was pacing around in this condo. And I was thinking, what if that other part of me, like God, if I'm driven by, I must accept the truth no matter what it is, which is what I used to be driven by. Now I think that sometimes the truth is so harsh. To say you'll accept all truths is, you should be a bit more humble. There are plenty of truths you won't accept,

Starting point is 02:12:22 even if you should, because they're destabilizing and damaging, at least in the short run. I remember I was walking around here and thinking, I don't want to kill myself. Now, I'm not suicidal, but I meant I don't want this part of my brain to somehow convince me to kill myself. What do I do? And then I had to call an ambulance. I was so calm speaking to them. I remember speaking to a cop who had a gun and I said, I just want you to know I don't want to die. I actually don't want to die. I'm not suicidal. I'm not depressed.

Starting point is 02:12:51 But I have this feeling that what I'm living right now is this life over and this will keep continuing to play, which resonated with some of the Vedic texts. And that even if I die now, this was the time for me to die. I had to call my wife. She never had a more stressful day in her life than that because she can't, well, it's scary to hear that all of a sudden someone wants to kill themselves

Starting point is 02:13:16 when there was no sign of this before. And I didn't want to, but I'm saying, I didn't know if I would. So I had, and since then, I've been afraid of certain truths because I know how powerful they can be. And I don't want to become Abraham. I don't want to listen to God or whatever I think is God above all else if it tells me to do something that harms myself or harms my wife or gets me to renounce all that I love, which is my life right now, which means that I'm extremely attached to my life right now, which is maybe the source of the suffering, but I'm afraid what will happen? Yes. What will happen if I go on that other side?

Starting point is 02:13:53 So now that's the example. How does one like myself push through that suffering to find happiness on the other side? Okay. Can offer an interpretation of of what you've just suggested this this fear of of death fear of killing yourself you you're obviously very deeply interested in in these matters and have explored them in in own way, obviously, for a long period of time. And you've had many intuitions about truth or reality. And I would suggest that these intuitions or recognitions of the nature of reality in you have caused you to understand that something in you has to cease in order to totally accept and live the reality or the truth that you intuit. What is that something that must cease? Your sense of yourself as a temporary, finite, separate self. So there is an intuition that something in you must die, must come to an end, must cease, if you were to go more deeply into this exploration of truth or reality. However, I would suggest that this intuition

Starting point is 02:15:30 that something in you must not really die but dissolve if you were to go further into this exploration has been appropriated by your old materialistic conditioning and you have conflated the two and interpreted this intuition that something must dissolve in you as the belief and the fear that I am going to die physically. You're not going to die physically. However there is some truth in your intuition that something in you is going to dissolve. What is that? The sense of being temporary, finite, limited, separate.

Starting point is 02:16:16 It is that feeling, the feeling of being temporary, finite, limited and separate that veils your innate happiness on the inside and your experience of love on the outside, the belief and the accompanying feeling that you are temporary, finite, limited and separate. The further you go towards truth or reality, the more that belief and the associated feeling is going to dissolve. So it's true, if your identity is invested in your sense of yourself as a separate self, that feels from the point of view of a separate self like a kind of death, and people fear it. But all that's going to happen is that

Starting point is 02:17:06 you're going to be divested of the limits that you previously assumed were essential to yourself. And as a result of this dissolution of those limits, your innate peace on the inside, and the experience of love, the experience of your shared being on the outside, will be magnified in your experience. So you won't lose your love of your wife. On the contrary, it will get stronger. In fact, your feeling of your shared being with everyone will get stronger. But you will lose your attachments.

Starting point is 02:17:42 but you will lose your attachments. You're saying if I was to kill myself, I would lose them? No, no, no. If you were to go further into your love of truth or reality. I see, I see. Because the more deeply you go in... Go on, go on. Sorry, the core, I think a core fear is actually that I want to be driven by pursue love and truth always,

Starting point is 02:18:07 always, always, always, never lie, especially never lie. Love I can do, though I wouldn't be so arrogant to say that I'm a loving person. I try to be. Truth is tricky because I don't, like I'm saying, what if the truth is revealed to me that I should kill myself or my wife or i don't know what kind of truth it could be but but that's that's what worries me and i if i understand what you're saying it's kurt still listen to the truth it won't steer you wrong yes remember one of the inevitable consequences of the recognition of our essential nature or being is that we begin to feel that we share our being with everyone and one and everything and as a result of this it becomes intolerable to us to do anything that

Starting point is 02:19:09 hurts another being because we literally feel that that being is ourself if you look at all the all those people who perpetrate a cruelty or violence or injustice on another person they have to consider that other person separate from themselves in order to enable them to behave towards them in that way one doesn't behave in that way towards the people one loves. Okay, let me see if I can poke a hole, and then you can patch it right back up. I think that plenty of what motivates people is self-hate. And if you see the connection that you have with others, I don't see that as necessarily engendering love,

Starting point is 02:20:03 but you can just see that as a way of promulgating more hate and suffering. And the reason is that often when you hate and you harm, destroy others, you're doing that to yourself as well. And you can even consciously do that to yourself because you dislike yourself and you dislike the world. And so in some ways, you can see the, let's say, the self-hater, which I would say characterizes all of us to different degrees. And something that I see missing in plenty of the more spiritual talks that I hear is this recognition of the malice inside and cruelty and sadistic nature of people. There seems to be the claim that once we become aware that we're connected and that love is abound, that we would drop our egotistical and tormenting ways. But I don't necessarily see

Starting point is 02:20:57 that to be the case, especially given some of the writings of serial killers, as well as even introspection into myself. Sometimes what I do, sometimes I know if I'm being bitter, I'm not saying it happens often, I'm just being honest though. If I'm bitter, I'll often do what's wrong, knowing I'm doing what's wrong. And here's like a simple example. If I'm fighting with my wife, which we rarely fight, but squabble, let's say. I'm a girl and I try to retreat. Because why? Because I'm such a little wimp that I want her to come to me and say,

Starting point is 02:21:39 Kurt, no, I'm sorry, babe. But I need to be the one that says, sorry, I need to, first of all, not go away. But while I'm doing that, I know you shouldn't be doing this. Follow love. What would Christ do? And Christ would not do that. I'm not strong enough. I'm not strong enough.

Starting point is 02:21:54 So even there, I know I'm harming her, myself, but I still do it. And I'm not a serial killer. So you can just take that to the extreme with them. And I'm not a serial killer. So you can just take that to the extreme with them. Next time you're squabbling with your wife, before you engage in whatever the issue is or anything, just try feeling that you share your being with her that her being literally is your being yes your your your your bodies are separate your ideas are separate your feelings are separate or

Starting point is 02:22:37 at the level of appearances that there are there are two entities there but feel that underneath that appearance there is a shared reality your being feel that i know you understand that or you you intuit this but feel it and then allow that feeling to inform the conversation see where the argument goes even right now i feel love toward her as i just imagine that now can you imagine exactly even just doing this thought exercise is enough to generate in you this feeling of warmth and love towards your wife now imagine doing this with her as this some familiar argument begins and before the argument escalates and develops into a three-hour standoff

Starting point is 02:23:28 or a three-day standoff or a three-week standoff, whatever it is. Yeah, luckily it's not like that. Okay, but imagine that early on in the process, you just paused. You paused the train of thinking and talking. You paused and you did just, it takes a few moments. We did it for a few moments and you were

Starting point is 02:23:46 to not just understand intellectually but feel that this being is my being, it is myself to feel that and then to allow the subsequent conversation to be informed by that feeling

Starting point is 02:24:01 what would happen, what would be the dynamic of the conversation as a result of that? Okay, I'll give you two answers. One, that occurs to me as a somatic impression, like my bodily feeling is love. And then number two, I'm torn intellectually because if she's me and I'm being pleasant toward her and loving and so on is that a selfish act shouldn't I be unselfish shouldn't it be loving if I think of her as separate and still do unto her positively regardless of its connection to me so I'm torn there one like I feel the love, like you mentioned,

Starting point is 02:24:46 but two, is this right? And it reminds me of the classic difference between Satan and God, where Satan wants to be God. He wants none above him. He wants to be the master. And that's considered to be blaspheming, at least in...

Starting point is 02:25:01 And this all shows up, not just in Christianity, in different ways and forms and metaphors but then if i am god if i analyze myself enough i am god then it turns out satan was right he is god and so which one's correct which one's the which one's the sin am i god is it not i would suggest that the the separate self or the apparently separate self simply cannot act in loving ways because it is by definition separate. And love is by definition connection? And the extent to which it does seem to act in loving ways is the extent to which its actions are, whether it realizes it or not, informed by its intuition of the being that it shares with the other. Rupert I have a question about when you give speeches because something I've noticed that's striking to me is the pauses in your voice when you're on stage even when we're talking now but I'm pausing as well and there's a different character to it is there a reason for it so

Starting point is 02:26:18 are you thinking are you experiencing pure consciousness? Kurt, it's completely spontaneous. Sometimes, as you've noticed in our conversation, I can't even wait for you to finish your sentence. And I've intuited where you're going and I'm already, I just can't wait to get a response out. I'm the same way. I'm quite capable of that. But but on other occasions you ask me something and the answer doesn't readily come and I don't so I don't want to refer back to the past to find an answer because then my answer would be like would be like eating tinned food it wouldn't be it would fill you up but it wouldn't be nourishing so that's extremely interesting i want to pause and i want the answer to come out of the current experience i want it to come fresh as a as a as a unique response to you in this moment i want to

Starting point is 02:27:20 give time for that response to emerge now sometimes, sometimes that response, as I said, it's there even before you finished your sentence. But on other times, it doesn't come immediately. And then I pause, I wait. I'm not thinking out the answer. I'm waiting. Are you praying or are you simply silent and waiting for a bubble to appear? Yeah, exactly. If by praying you mean being silent and waiting for a bubble to appear? Yeah, exactly. If by praying you mean being silent and open, then I'm praying. And actually, I would suggest that was the deeper aspect of prayer,

Starting point is 02:27:56 being open and silent. So in a way, it's a kind of prayer, not a prayer directed towards someone or something, but just an openness. It's like a silent invitation that my understanding, such as it is, might tailor itself uniquely to your question. And it may need some time before that response emerges. And so I just wait in this attitude of of openness but it's spontaneous it's never calculated or it's just it's just spontaneous sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't how this cosmic i don't know if you have a name for it like mind at large as bernardo's

Starting point is 02:28:45 this infinite consciousness can it speak to us in the form of intimations maybe hints adumbrations feelings absolutely or even literally it is it is speaking to us all the time all the time it is speaking to us one of the most common ways it speaks to us is in our desire for happiness. Everybody who is not fully happy desires happiness. Most people are most of the time seeking happiness to a degree. Now, most people feel I, as a separate self, am seeking happiness. No, the separate self is an illusion. It doesn't do anything. It is the happiness of our nature that is pulling us back to itself.

Starting point is 02:29:43 It is happiness that is seeking us. We are not seeking it. So the desire for happiness would be one example of infinite consciousness constantly calling out to the finite mind, saying, come back to me. I am what you are looking for. Stop looking for me in objects, substances,

Starting point is 02:30:05 activities, relationships. I'm not there. Turn around, come back to me. So yes, as soon as we have contracted or seem to have contracted into a finite mind, almost everything in our experience is a message from the infinite telling us, come back to me. Our desire for a scientist feels it as their desire for truth. An artist feels it as their love of beauty. A suffering person feels it as their love of happiness. Yes, it's speaking to us all the time. Why is it that suffering exists?

Starting point is 02:30:50 I'm not talking about the problem of evil necessarily. I would suggest that suffering was, it's the fallout. It's the inevitable. Let's back up a little bit. We said earlier, I suggested earlier, that infinite consciousness cannot know manifestation directly. It can only do so through the agency of a finite mind.

Starting point is 02:31:18 So in order to rest in its own being, consciousness doesn't need to do anything. John Smith can just stay at home. But in order to manifest its potential within itself, it has to localize itself within its own activity and view itself from a localized perspective. Now, the price it pays for doing so is the overlooking of its true nature. So I would suggest that suffering is the price consciousness pays for creation. And that is why at the heart of all individuals, apparently

Starting point is 02:31:57 finite selves, there is this longing for happiness. That is the deepest part of an individual, this longing for happiness. What we're really longing for is not the object, the substance, the relationship. We are longing to be divested of everything that seems to make us limited and as such returned to our natural condition. This is extremely interesting

Starting point is 02:32:27 because it says that suffering is part and parcel of existence, existence as far as we know it in our finite conception of it. Okay, I need to think about that. As for, well, there's different kinds of suffering. There's the psychological torment in which I imagine you're referring to, but then there's also acute physical pain,

Starting point is 02:32:48 which I don't imagine you're referring to. And I would like an explanation as to why that exists. You're right, Kurt. I make a distinction between, a clear distinction between psychological or emotional suffering and physical pain. We all know, both from our own experience and from our observation of others, that it's possible to be happy in pain or discomfort. And vice versa. And vice versa. So there's a connection between the two, but it's... Right. And the connection is so strong.

Starting point is 02:33:22 I don't know if you know that if you have heartbreak, you can take Tylenol and it'll ease your heartbreak. Yes. Well, and this makes sense because there is a, well, what I'm saying now is a concession to the belief that there are two entities, a mind and the body. But that's because there is a close connection between the mind and the body. Now, at a deeper level, we can't even say there's a close connection between the mind and the body because they're not two things to be connected in the first place. They are just two different views of the same reality.

Starting point is 02:34:04 Okay, now getting back to where physical pain fits into this why is it there i understand the longing or the separation of the infinite from the finite is perceived as a pull toward happiness okay well it's physical just as I would suggest the experience of suffering is a call from the deepest aspect of ourself to

Starting point is 02:34:37 the superficial the more superficial aspect of ourself the sense of being a separate self it is a call that that we aspect of ourself, the sense of being a separate self. It is a call that we have mistaken ourself for a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, images, sensations. It is a call to ourself to come back to ourself. So the experience of suffering is like a signal, an intelligent signal from the depths of our mind telling us, you have overlooked your true nature, you have lost yourself in the content of

Starting point is 02:35:11 your experience, come back, turn round, come back. So although suffering is painful, it is an intelligent signal of the mind telling us we have overlooked ourselves, we have forgotten who we truly are. Now, pain would be the corresponding experience at the level of the body. Yes, it's unpleasant, but it's supposed to be unpleasant. It is an intelligent signal from the body saying something needs Now, imagine if the experience of pain was pleasant. We would enjoy hunger and thirst. We would never be motivated to take our hand out of the fire. The human species would have come to an end millennia ago.

Starting point is 02:36:02 No, pain is supposed to be painful. It's supposed to be because it's a signal, an intelligent signal from the body, letting us know that something needs doing for the purposes of preserving the body. Now, of course, that's crediting the body. That's looking at the body from the conventional perspective. It's crediting the body with an independent physical existence of its own. I would suggest that the body is just what the finite mind looks like from a localized perspective. So at a deeper level, the experience of pain is to do with maintaining the integrity of the finite mind. It's innate impulse to maintain its integrity as an apparently separate,

Starting point is 02:36:48 localized consciousness. I understand that up to a certain level. Let's say you stub your toe. I stubbed my toe the other day. It hurt like, man, that was one of the worst pains I've ever felt. Weeks after I couldn't go for walks, and I love walks. Okay, so that was painful, I've ever felt. Weeks after I couldn't go for walks and I love walks. Okay. So that was painful, but, and that was extremely painful, but then I can imagine that's just my toe. Imagine I hit three toes at once or on different and imagine someone torturing someone else, which that to me is as far as it goes. And you can torture someone like, like mad. You can harm them like crazy. someone like like mad you can harm them like crazy why is that bound why is the bound not at the stubby toe because that to me is enough to run away from virtually any signal like that is horrible move away from there okay i understand that with this amount of pain of the stub toe

Starting point is 02:37:39 let's call that an 8 out of 10 pain but why is there 11 out of 10 or 20 out of 10 pain. But why is there 11 out of 10 or 20 out of 10 pain, such as someone getting skinned alive, or the raping of your wife in front of you and your intestines being pulled out? And I know, but this has all been done, whatever you can imagine, Rupert, in your creative, darkly creative mind that has been done by people to other people or to other animals. So why does suffering have to get so large? Because to me, if it was purely an informative signal, it could do its job at that eight out of 10. Additionally, if you're on a computer and you're debugging code, there's no pain associated with it. It just says error. And then you're like, okay, I need to fix this up. So it could also be like, it could be some mixture.

Starting point is 02:38:20 I don't see why it has to be suffer unbounded suffering. Please take that in and let me know what you think about what I just said can I respond to the level of suffering rather than physical pain at least to begin with we could ask the same question why are there degrees of suffering why is it not enough? Let me give you an experience from my own personal life. So this happened, I must have been 21, 22.

Starting point is 02:38:56 So I was already very interested in these matters. I'd been meditating for several years and I was exploring the non-dual philosophy and the Advaita tradition. years and I was exploring the non-dual philosophy in the Advaita tradition but when I was 22 I was deeply in love with a girl I just presumed in my naivety and innocence that we would get married and live happily ever after that was certainly what I wanted to do and we had been together for about three years or so and she called me one night and in a two-minute conversation broke off the relationship hung up that was it that was the end of it and that that night after the initial kind of wave

Starting point is 02:39:41 of sorrow began to subside I became aware of how profoundly I had invested my happiness in the content of my experience in this case in a relationship and I for the first time I as I say I had been interested in these matters for some time but but this intensified my interest for the first time I asked myself in what can one reliably invest one's desire for happiness this was such a shock such a wake-up call now you would have thought that that would be enough for me because this was really intense and it was very clear to me that I had invested my happiness in something which is by definition temporary and fleeting. It became clear to me how mad it is to seek lasting happiness in something that is as fragile and fleeting as a relationship. Why didn't my desire for happiness in objective experience end abruptly with that experience why did it take another 20 years for that impulse to finally wind down when i had seen

Starting point is 02:40:56 it so clearly that night rupert it is madness to invest your ask how old you were when this happened i was 21 possibly 20 uh i was took you almost no i was 20 to get over that i was 20 it didn't take me 20 years to get over it didn't take me a while to get over it um but no it took me it took me another it took me another 15 years for the impulse to seek happiness in objective experience to wind down, to come to an end. In spite of that clear recognition, I was age 20, it was 20. In spite of the clear recognition at age 20 that it is to seek happiness in objective experience is to set oneself up for disappointment and failure. I saw that clearly for the first time in my life. And yet that moment of clear seeing was not enough to put the habit to an end. Okay, in other words, you intellectually understood it, but your body didn't follow?

Starting point is 02:42:02 No, it was more than intellectual. I understood it to the depths of my being but i needed further bouts of suffering i needed to invest my desire for happiness in objective experience again and again and again and again and to experience the repeated failure and disappointment of that investment for this impulse to gradually wind down. So I'm trying to answer your question as to why isn't a single... Okay, it was a fairly intense experience, but on the spectrum of possible experiences,

Starting point is 02:42:41 it gets a lot worse. So let's say it was five on on the spectrum sure i can think of far worse things my total was worse well that was a physical thing but i can think of far worse causes for psychological suffering that yeah your girlfriend ditching you and losing a child i mean you know what i experienced barely registers on the scale compared to what some people experience but but why wasn't that experience enough why was it necessary to not necessarily have more intense experience of suffering but in my case numerous such experiences before i finally got the message. So I'm just giving this as a model in relation to suffering and then transpose it to physical sensations. Of course, you can't really account for torture in this model.

Starting point is 02:44:02 Again, this is presuming a kind of conventional materialistic view of the body, but the intenser the pain, the greater the extent to which the integrity of the body is threatened. I don't even want to mention some of the extreme forms of violence and the intensity of pain is obviously unimaginable but also the integrity of the body is profoundly threatened in those moments the integrity of your body was not threatened by your stubbing your toe

Starting point is 02:44:43 and therefore the point pain I know it was bad but compared to some of those other yeah it it probably wasn't five or six it was probably one or nothing it was nothing yeah yeah yeah I know you have to get going and no I'm fine I could I could talk with you all night like this. Then is it okay if I ask you a couple other questions? I can even give you the overview. Sure. Because there's so much more.

Starting point is 02:45:18 I feel like I have to have a second conversation with you at some point, maybe a few months or a year. Of course. Because plenty of what you've given me is not just what I should think about, but what I should practice or what I should focus or not focus on. And that to me, if I want to do that properly, will take at least weeks and most likely months and years. But I can at least come to you after I've made some progress. I remember you saying that the reason scientists or the materialists think that there's an objective world is because there's, at least for us humans, there's some part of our consciousness that is shared, and we call that shared world the objective world. However, I don't think that's the main reason why scientists

Starting point is 02:45:59 or materialists think that there is an objective world. I think it's that coupled with that no two people or no three people share a realm, at least not consistently in a way that's communicable to a larger group. For example, you can't just take people into separate rooms and say, think of a number from one to 1000. And then they're all going to be the same consistently. So that is to say, let me restate that. Yes, in this model of consciousness, in your model of consciousness, we have overlapping consciousnesses, at least different realms, and then it's this realm that we call the objective world.

Starting point is 02:46:39 The existence of the objective world doesn't negate the rest of consciousness, which is what materialists do. But I recall you saying that the reason materialists think there's only the objective world is because of the overlap. But I'd say it's the overlap as well as the absence of another overlap between two people or three people or four people, for sure, four people. Unless you're all on psychedelics in a room and you can verify that somehow do you understand what i'm saying i'm not sure what you're referring to is the overlap do you mean the overlap between two people the overlap of their shared interior experience yes can i give you a and just to use another analogy a very simple take a piece of white paper the white paper is is for it has

Starting point is 02:47:27 nothing on it it represents formless consciousness consciousness prior to its activity now um imagine that that on this uh piece of white paper you could imagine it sorry imagine a white let's imagine a white screen that on on this white screen this white screen begins to to vibrate within itself a kind of a fuzzy irregular interference pattern kind of develops all over the the screen and at a certain point some of these lines are on the screen and coalesce and form circles. These circles would be the equivalent of localized minds within the field of infinite consciousness. Now, this circle circumscribes a certain activity of infinite consciousness,

Starting point is 02:48:17 which from the circle's point of view is experienced as inside itself. And that experience is no longer accessible to the other circles because there is a boundary around it. The other circles can't see through that boundary. So each circle has its own personal unique experience. However, as we look out from the inside of each circle to the area of the screen that has not been delineated by a circle everybody looks out at the same pattern and this accounts for our experience of the same of the shared world it's not the shared world that we experience, it's the shared consciousness that we experience. Now, circles that are configured in the same way, by which in the analogy I mean finite minds that are configured in the same way, will see the activity of consciousness as much the same world when you and i look at outside outside our circles

Starting point is 02:49:28 we see the world in pretty much the same way we see it in in terms of shapes and and and sights and sounds and tastes and textures and smells but imagine that on this screen circles develop that are configured in a different way from a human mind in other words imagine that other kinds of finite mind contract or coalesce within this infinite field of awareness and those minds are configured differently from a human mind that those minds will perceive the activity of consciousness in a way that is consistent with their own limitations so they may what appears to them as the world may be entirely different from what appears to us as the world. Their experience may be completely different. Maybe they don't have the faculties of thinking and perceiving.

Starting point is 02:50:34 They have the capacity of X-ing and Y-ing, in which case the world will not appear to them in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures, smells and concepts. It will appear to them in the form of X's and Y's. Now we have no idea as a human mind what that would look like. It would be completely different from our world. However, the reality of what they are experiencing is identical to the reality of what we are experiencing, namely infinite consciousness. It just appears to them as a different world because of the filter of their minds through which they perceive it. So they perceive the same reality in a completely different way. Okay, now I have a practical question.

Starting point is 02:51:26 I mean, sorry, a personal question. When one dies in your model, your worldview, I imagine that's like a ripple or that's like a momentary wave coming back to the infinite consciousness. I've always struggled with this because in some ways, the teachings of non-dualism is

Starting point is 02:51:45 trivial to a physicist in the sense that a physicist would already agree, yes, pretty much if a grand unified theory is going to be found, there's just one underlying field and all the particles are different excitations from different perspectives. When I say perspectives, there's a technical meaning of that. So in some ways it's trivial. And then I also imagine that the reason why the scientist materialist types dislike the more non-dualist philosophies is not, they say it's because, no, I don't think that at the fundamental reality

Starting point is 02:52:21 we're all one, because they do, with quantum field theory at least, if that's, you know, you can unify in quantum field theory. Okay, it's something else. It's like that they don't like the yogas, or the, sorry, the togas, or they don't like doing yoga, or they don't like the spiritual teaching that comes along with it. So they'll say they disagree with non-dualism, but they don't. They disagree with what they believe comes along with non-dualism. Can I just insert something here? Sure sure it's a good point you make i totally sympathize with them i'm in that world so i have to be very tolerant of some of the um how can i put this politely um i can't find the words.

Starting point is 02:53:05 Some of the nonsense. Some of the nonsense that goes along with it, that has got nothing to do with the essential understanding that is being spoken of. But somebody coming to this non-dual perspective from the outside, very often their first encounter with this perspective will be the nonsense that sometimes accompanies it. And that is enough to put any sane person off. And I totally sympathize with them. And to be fair, I see the same happening

Starting point is 02:53:44 from the more, I don't know what to call it but let's say spiritual new age side i'm not demeaning it i hope you understand i'm just trying to put a label to it i see the same vitriol or objurgation from them to the scientists materialist types where the scientists will say hey you all are too much in your body which has cognitive biases and you don't follow your rationality. You don't have what's falsifiable. But then the spiritual side will look at them and say, yeah, but you're egotistical and pigheaded. And quite frankly, you overvalue intelligence, and you think you're intelligent, but you're not because intelligence isn't just abstract

Starting point is 02:54:19 reasoning, but there's other forms of intel. So see each side probably you see this too has a distinct lack of sympathy for the other side now this is a gross oversimplification obviously i don't sense that from you but i wondered firstly do you see that i do see that uh it's certainly it's certainly not what i feel i i have a lot of friends who are scientists and and but but even the many scientists that I'm aware of that are not my friends. I have great respect for science and the scientific endeavor. a partial a very partial incomplete idea to basically there are two ways that we can explore reality we can either because a human being in the conventional self is obviously comes from the greater reality. Whether we have a materialistic perspective or a non-dual perspective,

Starting point is 02:55:27 whatever we are as apparently separate selves, we obviously emerge out of the greater whole, whether it's a physical universe or a mental universe, whatever we are emerges out of that. So for this reason, whatever we essentially are must be the same as what the universe essentially is for the same reason that the nature of the wave is the same as the nature of the ocean

Starting point is 02:55:52 so there are two possible two possibilities for exploring reality either we can go outwards and we can explore the world which is the path that the scientist and the artist takes or we go inwards into ourself which is the path that the the mystic takes now these two types of people seem to set off exploring reality in two different directions one goes outwards one goes inward it's like they start at the top of the circle they they diverge immediately but if they both travel far enough in their given direction they will inevitably come to the same conclusion they will meet at the bottom of the circle they've just exploring reality through two different avenues. So I think that a real scientist, and by this I don't mean in any way to demean a scientist who is not

Starting point is 02:56:56 interested in these matters. I don't mean to imply that. So when I say a real scientist, I mean perhaps the ultimate scientist must eventually become a mystic. And I would suggest that a mystic is a true scientist. It's the same endeavor, the endeavor of the highest endeavor in science is the same as the highest endeavor of the mystic. Namely what? Namely an investigation into the nature of reality. It's only when each party goes only halfway, at halfway, that there are two opposite parts of the circle. That's where the vitriol, the misunderstanding, not necessarily the vitriol, that's where the misunderstanding

Starting point is 02:57:39 comes from. When two parties are shouting at each other across this chasm they're as far away from each other as they possibly could be it's because both parties have not gone far enough and met in understanding i'm thinking now. Please give me 10 seconds to absorb what you said. I was speaking to Ian McGilchrist, and a question I didn't get to ask him, which is related to this,

Starting point is 02:58:22 is he was saying that the left brain is the one that likes to routinize and make specific and delineate, whereas the right brain is the one that's the opposite, that likes to see uniqueness, not sameness, that likes to take broader views, and so on. And I was wondering, hmm, so the right brain could see the whole picture, and then he was saying, and you need that, because if you just investigate with the left, you're only seeing a small piece. But then what I was wondering is,

Starting point is 02:58:50 I'm not a proponent of this. I know some people are, where they'll say that the universe is fractal-like in nature. It may be, but what I'm wondering is, if the universe is fractal-like in nature, then does that not mean, Ian McGilchrist, like I'm speaking to him right now, the question I wanted to ask,

Starting point is 02:59:07 that if one was to take the left brain to the extreme, it would ultimately become the right brain because by investigating one phenomenon completely and microscopically and even beyond, whether it's spatially, microscopically or temporally or whatever it may be, and beyond, you necessarily get an image of the whole.

Starting point is 02:59:24 So you get an adumbration of the universe as a whole from each little point. And in that way, you can see the left and the right as being halfway on this journey. But if they were to progress, they would ultimately join. I wanted to ask him what he thought of them. But what you said reminded me of that. Yes, well, it would be very, very interesting to ask him that question. What I'd like to speak with him about is throughout this conversation, we've been positing these two elements, infinite consciousness and the finite mind. and the finite mind. And the finite mind is a temporary localization of infinite consciousness,

Starting point is 03:00:15 within infinite consciousness. So we have these two perspectives, the perspective of infinite consciousness and the perspective of the finite mind. Would it be reasonable to suggest that the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the way they operate are a reflection at a microcosmic level of these two different perspectives? This apparent dichotomy, so the infinite is the right brain and then the finite separate is the left it's not a literal mapping of the two because as we suggested earlier that the infinite by itself cannot perceive the finite it can only perceive the finite through the agency of a finite mind so it wouldn't be a literal mapping but that it that but that there is a connection between the the perspective of infinite no infinite consciousness doesn't have a perspective it's the finite mind that is a

Starting point is 03:01:10 perspective it doesn't have a perspective even of itself uh yes but it's not it's not a point of view so it but but but but the the left and right hemispheres hemispheres would in some way reflect these two different aspects of make sense if the brain is the image in mind of a localization of infinite consciousness. When one dies, this is where I was going before, and then I went on a tangent. When I speak to people who are inclined to think that consciousness is one and we're all one and so on, they'll say, well, you don't die because you're consciousness. But then to me, what I'm wondering is what difference does that make? It would be like saying, hey, Kurt, you're actually that wall behind you. I know you don't feel it.

Starting point is 03:02:20 You don't sense it. But when you're gone, that wall is still there. Like the wall bears no resemblance to what i already identify with you are the wall if by you you mean infinite consciousness however you kurt are an apparent and temporary localization of infinite consciousness so going back to our analogy of the screen with all the lines all over it you you are a small circle on this screen with your own interior life which at least appears to be bounded by by the by the line that that circumscri your circle. So it's true that the screen is the essential nature of the circle. It's the essential nature of everything outside the circle. In that sense,

Starting point is 03:03:13 you are the world, you are the universe. But also that Kurt, that the person Kurt, is everything that takes place inside this circle. Now, I would suggest that death is not necessarily the complete and immediate disappearance of the circle. I would suggest it was the gradual expansion and as a result, a thinning out of the circle. So you draw the circle with a heavy line just as to represent the very real felt sense of separation but as the circle expands that line it gets thinner so the separation between the

Starting point is 03:04:01 contents inside the circle and the contents outside becomes less and less marked. And also that the content inside the circle becomes larger and larger. Now, if that process goes on indefinitely, the circle eventually disappears completely and one's identity with the whole is realized. However, we cannot be sure that the process of death entails the complete disappearance of the circle. I think it's fair to say that it involves the expansion of the circle, which when viewed at a physical level appears as the death of the body, but we cannot be certain that the circle itself has completely dissolved and that it may not just simply expand. And this would account for some continuing, not only of consciousness, there's no doubt that the screen continues,

Starting point is 03:05:03 but it also suggests that the continuation of some kind of limited entity albeit no longer appearing as a body so an expanded finite mind now just I just throw this in as a thought. Speculation. And I'm very, very cautious to go here because I don't want what I'm suggesting to be muddled up with... The nonsense that you speak about?

Starting point is 03:05:36 The nonsense New Age thinking. But when we look at some of the literature, some of the paintings of the early Christian tradition, for instance, we see paintings of beings, angels, cherubs, seraphims. Are these just the fanciful imaginations of painters in their studio? I would suggest not. I would suggest that these were attempts to represent, albeit within the limitations of our waking state minds, to represent some reality of the finite mind, the finite soul,

Starting point is 03:06:29 reality of the finite mind, the finite soul, that is larger than what we currently know ourselves to be, but is still bounded within the limits of some kind of finite mind. In other words, these could be depictions, albeit represented in a way that is consistent with the limitations of our own mind in the waking state of a region of the mind that continues a region of the finite mind. How do you think they came to that conclusion to represent it as an angel? Was it by dreaming and then they... Through introspection and intuition and they then had to represent those intuitions and recognitions in a form that was consistent with the language of the waking state. they had to represent those beings and so they represented it in a way that was the way they represent their own being in other words as a physical body

Starting point is 03:07:31 but they also gave them wings and halos to somehow depict in a simplistic way that these beings were somehow larger than the very finite physical bodies that we seem to be in the waking state. The nature of free will. So do you believe free will exists? Okay, I'm just going to list them

Starting point is 03:07:54 out. I also wanted to talk about, this is something I've been thinking about, which is science 2.0. The reason I say that is that science 300 years ago isn't the same science as it is now. It was developed over the course of a couple hundred years. And then to me, what I'm wondering is, hmm, do we think science is in its final form? Okay, what would science evolve to? Does it mean to take seriously meditation and introspection and use experiential data? Well, how would that work? What is the criteria that holds

Starting point is 03:08:25 one science is more science-y than another? And I gave it a name instead of Science 2.0. I call it Nauscience for Gnosis because they both mean knowledge, or which I can't pronounce, Abhijana Science, which is the Buddhist word for knowledge, Abhijana, I believe.

Starting point is 03:08:41 I could be mispronouncing it. Okay, so there's that. I like your idea can i respond to that last idea of science 2.0 when we investigate let's go go back to this um suggestion that I said scientists and artists explore reality by going outwards mystics explore reality by going inwards when we explore the external world the external reality the only means we have of doing so is through perception and then we conceptualize our perceptions so that was our only knowledge

Starting point is 03:09:25 our only experience of the universe is perception sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells so we start exploring these and we start thinking that the universe is made out of molecules then we realize it's made out of atoms then we realize it's made out of protons, neutrons and electrons

Starting point is 03:09:43 and we go down and down and down getting finer and finer and at some stage and i think this is where science is now at some stage there there is this recognition that the the finite mind filters everything that it knows or perceives through its own limitations. And the finite mind cannot perceive reality in the absence of those limitations. Thought and perception are the tools the finite mind has to know anything. And those tools are limited. The faculties of thought and perception impose their own limits on the reality they are exploring. Just as one who wears orange tinted glasses will always see orange snow, it's not possible to see white snow through orange tinted glasses.

Starting point is 03:10:51 For the same reason, it's not possible to know the nature of reality when we explore reality with the finite mind, which is what science currently does. Now, if that was all there was to it, then we would have to conclude that we can never know the nature of reality, have to conclude that we can never know the nature of reality because all we can know are the limitations of our own mind now that would be true but for one fact the fact that we as apparently separate selves or human beings emanate from reality what do you mean by that you mean that we're a part of reality and that we came from this or human beings emanate from reality. What do you mean by that? You mean that we're a part of reality and that we came from this underlying... The universe gives birth to our physical body.

Starting point is 03:11:32 I see. So we emerge out of the universe. Whatever the universe is made of, we as apparent individuals emerge out of it. So what we're saying is if we as individuals investigate the nature of the universe, our investigation is by definition limited by the faculties of thought and perception. Are we destined, therefore, only ever to know the universe through the limited faculties of thought and perception? In other words, can we never really know reality? Or do we have access

Starting point is 03:12:05 to any aspect of reality that is not mediated through thought and perception? Everything we know of the world, the reality of the world or the universe, we know through the faculties of thinking and perceiving. If that was all there was to our knowledge of reality, then our knowledge of reality would always be limited by the limitations of the faculties through which we explore it, namely thought and perception. So we must ask the question, is there any element of reality that we have direct, unmediated access to when i say unmediated i mean not mediated through thought and perception and the answer is yes there is one element of reality whose knowledge we have direct access of without the mediation of thought and perception and that is our knowledge of ourself

Starting point is 03:13:06 and therefore going back to your question about science 2.0 I think eventually a scientist must realise that in order to know the nature of reality they must know the nature of the mind through which that reality is perceived. In other words, their exploration of the nature of the world must eventually turn around and become the exploration of the nature of their own minds. And there is

Starting point is 03:13:42 one aspect of our knowledge of ourself that is not mediated through the faculties of thought and perception, and that is our awareness of being aware. Is that not a perception? No, no, it's no. I don't know why I'm asking. It's our knowledge of ourself. Our awareness of our own being is direct knowledge. It is not mediated through the faculties of thought and perception. It is the only experience there is that is not mediated through the finite mind. And therefore, it is as such that the exploration into the nature of consciousness is the very highest science it is the science i think it's what science will event that physics will not physics as it is currently known and even mathematics as it is currently known will not turn out to be the

Starting point is 03:14:42 highest sciences i think the highest science is an investigation into the nature of consciousness and i think sooner or later i think you'll hear physicists some are already saying this but i think more and more people will come to this recognition that the ultimate science, the science upon which all other sciences must rest, is the investigation into the nature of consciousness. Because that is the only, our knowledge of our own being, our awareness of being, is the only experience there is that is not subject to the limitations of the finite mind.

Starting point is 03:15:24 Let me put that in the analogy about John Smith and King Lear. I know you don't like it particularly, but everything John Smith knows about King Lear's world, his daughters, the Kingdom of England, the war with France, everything he knows about King Lear's world

Starting point is 03:15:42 is mediated through the character of King Lear. John Smith cannot remain at home in his apartment and have a relationship with Cordelia. Cordelia doesn't exist in his world. In order to have a relationship with Cordelia he must seem to become King Lear. It is through the agency or faculties of King Lear that John Smith is able to have a relationship with his daughters, the kingdom, etc. There is one element of his experience that is not mediated through the faculties of King Lear, and that is his knowledge of himself. In order to know Cordelia, the kingdom of England, and the war with France, he must seem to become King Lear. But in order to know himself, he knows himself directly.

Starting point is 03:16:31 His knowledge of himself as John Smith is not mediated through the character King Lear. Now, that is a very close analogy. Our knowledge of ourself as consciousness is not mediated through the faculties of the finite mind. Everything we know of the universe, objectively, is mediated through the finite mind and appears in conformity with the limitations of that mind. But our knowledge of ourself is a unique knowledge. It is absolute knowledge. It is the only knowledge there is that is not relative to the limitations

Starting point is 03:17:10 of the finite mind through which it is known. It's why it's referred to as the absolute in the religious traditions. And sooner or later, I think science will recognize this. And the study of the nature of consciousness. Now, when I say the study of the nature of consciousness, I don't mean that the finite mind can study consciousness. All the courses you see now advertised, consciousness studies, these courses have nothing to do with the studies of consciousness.

Starting point is 03:17:38 They're studies of brain activity. No, the study of the nature of consciousness is traditionally it's called prayer. Or in the East, it was called meditation. It is the experience of being aware of being aware. From the mind's point of view, it is silence. From the mind's point of view, silence is the highest science. It is through the silence of the finite mind that we have direct access to reality so sooner or later scientists will understand that what the mystics

Starting point is 03:18:14 were doing that in meditation and prayer was the ultimate science the ultimate investigation into the nature of reality. And for this reason, I think sooner or later, the most advanced scientists will become mystics, as indeed true mystics are scientists. also so you know whenever i'm pausing i tend to pause in my speech it's actually for a similar reason but more about i want to make sure that what i'm saying is a true statement i don't want to rehash what i've said before because then I feel like I'm being like a politician where I have a set amount of phrase, sorry, set phrases. I want to make sure that it feels right and that I'm actually saying what I'm intending to say. So if I pause, please forgive me also.

Starting point is 03:19:15 It's just that I'm thinking. I also do think that whatever science will become, which then one has to wonder, well, what is it? Why are you calling it science if it's no longer like science? So there's some other criteria. Maybe that criteria has to do with explaining the world. You mentioned investigating nature. So that's another one. I do imagine it would take the form of more subjective experience, but then how? How do we do that objectively in a way that we can falsify and so on? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Well, anyway, I like what you said

Starting point is 03:19:53 about that. If you're watching this channel because you're interested in theoretical physics, consciousness, and the ostensible connection between the two, what's required to follow some of these arguments is facility with mathematics as well as discernment of the underlying physical laws and you may think that this is beyond you, but that's false. Brilliant provides pellucid explanations of abstruse phenomenon such as quantum computing, general relativity, and even group theory. When you hear that the standard model is based on U1 cross SU2 cross SU3, that's group theory, for example. Now, this isn't just for neophytes either. For example, I have a degree in math and physics, and I still found some of the intuitions given in these lessons to vastly aid my penetration into these subjects. For example, electricity and

Starting point is 03:20:36 magnetism. Sign up today at brilliant.org slash toe, that is T-O-E, for free. You'll also get 20% off the annual premium subscription. Try four of the lessons at least. Don't stop before four. And I think you'll be greatly surprised at the ease at which you comprehend subjects you previously had trouble grokking. Links are in the description. Okay, and I also wanted to quickly apologize. I'm editing the previous video and I noticed I interrupted you quite a few times. That's partially a function of the delay. There's about a five second or three second delay. So I think you're finished and then I speak, but you're not. And then, so I'm sorry about that. I feel. Don't worry at all. I'm sure I interrupted you as well. Yeah, but that's okay. You're totally fine to drop. I prefer. Okay.

Starting point is 03:21:19 We'll get straight to this. Okay. This question comes from Hber galula rupert after all these years of self-realization do you still get overwhelmed with emotion sometimes do you still get attached to objects relationships or key people the answer is no i don't get overwhelmed by emotions am i attached to to people yes there is a sort of natural attachment i couldn't say that i was um not that i was um not that i was um equally unattached to my son as i am to a stranger that i pass in in the street or see on a news program there is a kind of but i consider this to be a just a normal functional attachment it just a natural attachment that that um exists between a parent say and and a child and it's appropriate that there is such an attachment if a mother were not more attached to her child than any other child

Starting point is 03:22:48 then she would be not would not be motivated to to look after it and take care of it so um yes i i am more attached for instance to to my son than i am to a stranger. But this does not mean that I love my son more than anyone else. And perhaps I should just be clear about what I mean by the word love in this context. Love, I would suggest, is not really a feeling that one person or individual has towards another. It is the felt recognition of our shared being. So I feel that I share my being with everyone, indeed with everything. But I express that in very different ways I express my felt sense of my shared being with my son in a very different way than I do with the postman or a stranger or somebody I might just once so again that there can be one can love everybody indeed we should love everybody

Starting point is 03:24:11 because we should recognize that we share our being with everyone but this does not mean that we don't have unique and special relationships with some people that we don't have with others nor does it mean that we necessarily like everybody. We're not called to like everybody, but we are called to love everybody. And this understanding doesn't imply that we like everyone, but it does imply that we love everyone. So again, just to be clear about what I mean there,

Starting point is 03:24:41 what we like in another person is that their character, their conditioning, the way they think, the way they feel, their body, their conditioning. What we love has nothing to do with the character of the person. The love is entirely the relationship between one being and another. In fact, the absence of relationship, the recognition that we share our being, it doesn't have anything to do with the individual characteristics of that person. That determines whether we like them or not. So again, I would say I love everybody equally, but that doesn't mean that I like everybody equally. equally. You mentioned that there was a functional difference between the love or the attachment that you have for your son or your wife compared to other types of attachments. And then you gave the example of a mother for her child. What's the difference between a functional attachment

Starting point is 03:25:37 and a dysfunctional attachment? Is it just evolution? This one is great for our species, or is it something else? A dysfunctional attachment would be the sense that one requires the other emotionally. In other words, that one's emotional well-being depends upon them. That would be a psychological attachment. Now, what I mean by a psychological attachment is an attachment that stems from the belief and feeling that we are a temporary, finite, separate self. That temporary, finite, separate self, I would suggest, is an illusion. However, if we don't realize it, that it is an illusion, if we feel if we believe and feel that we are a temporary finite self, then in order to

Starting point is 03:26:31 substantiate that belief and feeling, we will form attachments. That's one of the way the ego, or apparently separate self validates and substantiates itself, namely by, by forming attachments. And that would be a dysfunctional attachment, namely an attachment that enhances the sense of the ego, which is the dysfunctional element of the mind. Whereas a functional attachment would not be an attachment that comes from the sense of separation or the sense of being a separate self or ego. It is hardwired into the relationship, such as the relationship between a mother and a child, or indeed a father and a child. The next question comes from Inanna Wimsey. Rupert, is there any emotion that isn't valid?

Starting point is 03:27:19 So you're welcome to interpret valid any way you like, but please also let the audience know what you mean by the word valid. Okay. So let me explain the distinction that I make between what are commonly grouped together as emotions. sometimes we hear phrases such as positive and negative emotions positive emotions would be emotions such as joy peace love etc negative emotions would be anxiety fear jealousy and so on. So I think that this classification of these two groups of emotion into positive and negative is misleading. What this classification suggests is that they are comparable emotions, but opposite to one another. And I think this is a misunderstanding. opposite to one another and I think this is a misunderstanding what I refer to as emotions are in using this categorization would be negative emotions afflictive emotions jealousy anxiety a sense of being unloved or unlovable

Starting point is 03:28:43 these kinds of emotions whereas what are sometimes referred to as positive motions emotions peace joy love are not really at least the way i use the words not really emotions as such they are the very nature of our being so let me give you an a visual analogy to try and make this claim if we were to if you were to live in England at the moment and you were to look up at the sky you would see it's roughly half clouds and half blue sky. Now, one, the equivalent, in this analogy, the equivalent of dividing emotions into positive and negative would be the equivalent of dividing the sky into gray clouds and blue clouds.

Starting point is 03:29:43 And one might at first sight think that the sky does consist of grey clouds and blue clouds. After all, we look up, it's half grey, half blue. That's how it first appears. However, when we investigate more clearly, we realise it's not like that. The clouds are temporary appearances in the homogeneous unlimited expanse of blue sky so what we refer to sometimes as positive emotions peace love joy happiness these are the the blue sky of awareness the ever-present background of awareness that gets obscured by our afflictive emotions just as the blue sky is temporarily obscured by the gray clouds so that the clouds

Starting point is 03:30:36 and the sky they they are um on a different level so So likewise, I would say emotions into whether they are valid or not. It's more on who, the question to ask is on whose behalf does the emotion arise? I would suggest that all afflictive emotions, these are the gray clouds, all afflictive emotions arise on behalf of the apparently temporary, finite, separate self or ego that we seem to be. And all positive, so-called positive emotions arise in the absence of the sense of separation. of the sense of separation. In fact, when the sense of separation, the sense of being an ego or separate self collapses, the background of awareness, our true nature,

Starting point is 03:31:49 shines by itself, just as when the clouds disperse, the blue sky shines by itself. That shining of our true nature is experienced as a human being, as peace, love, and happiness. So all emotions are valid simply by virtue of the fact that they exist. The real question is, if we consider peace, love, and joy to be emotions

Starting point is 03:32:15 along with our afflictive emotions, the question is, on whose behalf do our emotions arise? All afflictive emotion arises on behalf of the apparently temporary, finite, separate self or ego that we seem to be. And all so-called positive emotions, peace, love, joy, happiness, are the shining of our true nature. Is the claim that all of what we traditionally classify as positive emotion is the blue sky?

Starting point is 03:32:43 The reason I'm asking is because there are a litany of positive emotions like excitement or the rush of competitiveness. I'm not sure, and competitiveness to me sounds like an ego predicated feeling, but yet it's a positive one if you win or if you're excited about the competition. So are there examples of what we traditionally would classify as positive affect that is a gray cloud? Yes, I think there's a gray area here. Take competition. Competition could arise from either of these two camps,

Starting point is 03:33:28 the sense of separation or from our true nature. Let me give you, let me try to give you an example. Take competition. One who feels competitive could want to win in order to enhance their fragile sense of identity and in that sense the competitiveness would arise on behalf of the the separate self or ego however one could all one's so-called or what would appear from the outside to be competitiveness could also arise from within one in response to one's desire for excellence. And in this case, one's desire the qualities that one intuited to be inherent in one's true nature so you you take to take a you take a take a tennis for instance a sport that i enjoy playing and watching the people and not just the people at the top of them

Starting point is 03:35:08 their game but at all levels of the game one can play competitively for for the joy of playing and for the joy of placing one's body in a circumstance where it is required to excel exceed its normal limits to somehow to to put one's body in a position where it has to express something that is beyond that is beyond the limits of the separate self on whose behalf it usually acts so one's competitive streak there would come from a deep impulse inside oneself to somehow transcend oneself in this case through one's chosen sport or activity. So it could be a gray area. Competitiveness could be an expression of the ego or the separate self. It could be a desire to bring the qualities that are inherent in our true nature into manifestation. manifestation. And here's one area that I'm egoically competitive with you. You have great skin. Your skin is wonderful, man. Well, it's summertime. I spend a fair amount of time

Starting point is 03:36:37 playing tennis, walking in nature and in the garden. So at this time of year, walking in nature and in the garden. So at this time of year, I've got a nice suntan. Not because I've been to Caribbean beach, it's just the lovely English weather and the time of year. The next question comes from Rebecca Briggs. What importance has personal ego and shadow work in the non-dual recognition tradition? So let's take shadow work. I'm sure you've heard that Jungian concept. What's the relationship between that and your theories or beliefs or non-dualism in general? in the in the non-dual in the history of non-duality there are two basic approaches although we find all sorts of variations of these approaches in the religious and spiritual

Starting point is 03:37:40 traditions and these two approaches could be characterized in this way that the direct path and the progressive path now the progressive path is is the traditional approach and it involves taking a the ego or the separate self as one finds it and putting it through a series of practices whereby it is progressively purified and refined of its egoic tendencies until it is considered sufficiently mature to be given the highest teachings or the highest practices whereby the mind subsides into the heart of awareness now these progressive practices could last anything from two years to 20 years and it's a gradual progressive path that the apparently separate self or ego undertakes as a prelude to receiving the the highest instruction now the direct path teachings take a completely different

Starting point is 03:38:54 approach the the idea behind the direct path approach and and this by the way is the approach i take in most cases not always but in most cases the idea behind the direct path approach is that everybody without exception is aware all 7.8 billion or so of us are aware in, awareness... Quick question about that. Okay, you mentioned people. Are animals also aware? Yes. Can we come... Sure. Can we come... I say yes hesitantly. I'll explain later why I'm hesitating. Let's park that question. We'll come... Got it. Let's park that question. We'll come back to it. So yes, everyone is considered to be aware simply by virtue of the fact that we are all aware of our experience. Therefore, awareness is present in everyone. In fact, everyone's essential nature is awareness, not just those relatively few of us

Starting point is 03:40:01 that are interested in these matters, but all 7.8 billion of us are aware. And therefore, all 7.8 billion of us have the potential capacity to go directly to the experience of being aware, irrespective of the content of their minds, their feelings or their bodies. And so in this approach, one's so-called maturity, spiritual maturity or preparedness have got nothing to do with it. One could have been considering these matters for 30 years. Somebody else could just come in off the street, never having thought about them before, and could be taken directly to their true nature by asking a question such as what is it that knows or is

Starting point is 03:40:53 aware of your experience and if the mind considers this question it turns its attention away from what it is aware of and it traces its way back to its essence or source, the fact of being aware. In this case, what we are aware of, however dysfunctional our minds or our bodies may be is irrelevant. We are still aware of that dysfunction. And as such, awareness shines equally brightly

Starting point is 03:41:21 in the darkest mind as it does in the most luminous or intelligent mind. So these are the two approaches. Read the question, please, again. Sure, no problem. She wanted to know what role does shadow work have Now, in the progressive path, the shadow work, the exploring of the deeper tendencies of the mind would happen in those first progressive practices during the years of our spiritual practice where we are gradually exploring refining maturing the mind before it is considered sufficiently mature to sink into its source so in this approach the the shadow work the exploration of the deeper regions of the mind would take place before this practice of self-inquiry or the recognition of our true nature. In the direct path, no shadow work is considered necessary because however dark or complex or dysfunctional one's mind may be, one is aware of it and all that is necessary is to go to the fact

Starting point is 03:42:45 of being aware. However, in this case, the direct approach, one may recognize one's true nature. However, having recognized one's true nature, one will find all the old patterns of thinking and feeling still in place. The recognition of our nature just doesn't just wipe the slate of our conditioning clean and one will have to deal with those issues the the the the deeper habits and tendencies and patterns of thinking and feeling sooner or later so in the direct approach the the so-called shadow work the so-called realignment of the habits of thinking and feeling with our enlightened understanding tends to take place after this recognition, whereas in the progressive path, it takes place before.

Starting point is 03:43:38 Now in practice, it takes place a little bit before and it continues to take place afterwards we also mentioned or you were talking about how humans can become aware and i asked if animals were naturally aware of their own awareness okay this is um well so the first question you asked me, I think, was were animals aware? Let me explain why I want to know, because that may help contextualize the question. I'm curious if this state of being aware of one's awareness or being aware of one's connectedness to all, that this is all one vellum, like I say, or you or you say sorry or non-dualism says sorry is that a natural tendency and if it is so natural why does it arise everywhere

Starting point is 03:44:33 pretty much globally that we're separate okay like how does that come about why why is the mind why is the infinite consciousness frustrating itself is it not frustrating itself with animals okay but but that that that's a that's another that's another question okay let's come to that in a minute okay let's um deal with the issue as to whether animals are aware and then the the second question whether animals are aware of being aware so if we start if we respond to this question are animals aware from the conventional point of view namely that we as human beings are aware then it is it is reasonable to say yes animals are aware we know that if we tread on our dog or cat's tail the cat the the dog or the cat screeches in pain and it's safe for us to conclude that they screech with pain because they feel the pain they are aware of it so we get for the same reason that we screech with pain

Starting point is 03:45:45 if somebody treads on our toe so we conclude from this that the animal is aware the reason we say the animal is aware is because we feel that we as a human being are aware now on the surface of it this is this all makes sense and then as we go we go from animals and dogs and cats are where chickens chickens and fishes are aware. And we go down and down and down and down until we get to a line where we think, okay, now past this line, nothing is aware. Possibly plants, trees, there's some discussion about that.

Starting point is 03:46:18 Stones are not aware. Pavements, cars, computers are not aware, et cetera. so there is this line human beings are aware dogs and cats chickens and fish and then suddenly some from there on the the object or entity is is not aware this is the conventional point of view and it's based on a presumption, an uninspected presumption that we all take so for granted that we don't really question it, namely that we as human beings are aware or that we have awareness. In other words, awareness is an attribute of us as a human being. this this definition has found its way into philosophy of mind circles it's been enshrined in philosophy of mind circles by an american philosopher i think thomas nagle i think in the 70s i believe who who defined defined who enshrined this understanding in a definition of

Starting point is 03:47:29 consciousness it is considered that is really used in many philosophy of mind circles as a sort of standard definition of consciousness and his definition I I'm not quoting verbatim but it but I'm paraphrasing it goes something like this An entity can be considered to be aware or to be conscious or to have conscious experiences or states if and only if there is something it is like to be that entity. If there is something it is like for that entity. is something it is like for that entity and the famous example if there is something it is like to be a bat then we can conclude that bats are conscious or have consciousness and if there is no experience that corresponds to the statement i am a table then we can conclude that tables are not conscious because no table has the experience of being itself so this is used as a standard definition of consciousness in philosophy of mind circles and it is based on an assumption which i would suggest is a mistake the assumption is i as a human being, know myself as a human being.

Starting point is 03:48:45 And that is my proof of being conscious because I have the experience of being myself as a human being. In other words, I, a human being, am aware of myself. That's the fundamental mistake. A human being is not conscious. A dog or a cat is not conscious. A dog or a cat is not conscious. A chicken or a fish is not conscious.

Starting point is 03:49:11 A bat is not conscious. Only consciousness is conscious. Only awareness is aware. Therefore, the only entity, if we can call it an entity, that has the experience of being itself is consciousness. There is only something it is like to be consciousness. Would you disagree with Descartes' I think, therefore I am, because a thought is fleeting and you would say you shouldn't take that as evidence that you are? I think Descartes gets a bad rap in non-dual circles because people tend to think that he meant literally, I have thoughts, therefore I am conscious. That is not what he meant. I think that what he meant is I have conscious experience, therefore I am conscious.

Starting point is 03:50:17 He didn't literally mean because I have thoughts, therefore I must be conscious. I think we can credit Descartes with more intelligence than that. He was obviously a highly intelligent man. And it's quite obvious that there is a gap between two thoughts. If there were no gap between two thoughts, they would not be two thoughts. They would be one thought. There are gaps between the words in any one thought if there were no gap each thought would consist of one word

Starting point is 03:50:51 in these gaps between thoughts we are not thinking but we are obviously still conscious so and and obviously descartes understood this. So I think we must credit, I think it's not fair to Descartes to suggest that he literally thought, but it is only because we have thoughts that we are conscious, because dogs and cats would not be conscious. They would not be able to feel pain

Starting point is 03:51:23 when you trod on their tail if if the the definition of consciousness was was an entity that has thoughts so going back to this what I consider to be a mistake that the the fundamental assumption is I as a human being that am conscious or have consciousness and this has given rise to so much misunderstanding about consciousness in the in the philosophy of mind circles it is only awareness is aware only consciousness is conscious and therefore only consciousness has the experience of being myself only consciousness has the knowledge of its own being and our each of us as human beings we have the experience of being but when i say we have the experience of

Starting point is 03:52:16 being it is not we as a human being it is not we a collection of thoughts images feelings sensations and perceptions that has the experience of being it is it is consciousness in us it's actually not in us but it is the conscious element of our experience that has the experience of being itself the mistake we make as human beings is add a quality to the pure experience of being aware of our being when we when we that the simple awareness of being is expressed by the in the phrase simply i am everybody has the experience i am that phrase refers to our essential irreducible self or being pure consciousness. It is only when we allow the I am to be qualified by experience that we become I am this or I am that.

Starting point is 03:53:17 And that is that that is the separate self or the ego, an apparent qualification of our essential irreducible self or being namely pure consciousness i want to thank you so much for speaking with me and again i apologize for any ineptitude on my part as a podcaster for interrupting you so often please there's no need for for for apology i enjoy i enjoyed our conversation a couple of days ago very much indeed and and the conversation flows very easily as i said then you you you have a you have a very nice way of asking very very pertinent um questions and the conversation flows very very easily so please no no no and feel free to interrupt me as well

Starting point is 03:54:07 so thank you thank you sir this one comes from DIY actually I have this one it sounds like non-dualism is what's echoed in the Vedic texts and what I'm wondering is why is it that the East

Starting point is 03:54:24 and which means that it's right in some way, it sounds like the East got it right earlier, in fact, at all, compared to the West, which is extremely dualistic, at least seemingly so with the Old Testament and the New Testament, and even Islamic texts. How do we account for this? How come one set of people were so much closer to the truth? I don't think one set of people were closer to the truth. Awareness is the nature of, the essential nature of everybody. The Christians, the Hindus, the Muslims, the atheists, the saints, the sinners, the aboriginals, everyone.

Starting point is 03:55:14 It's true that in India, this tradition of investigation, this science of the mind goes back at least 3 000 years in in fact longer but the same the same was true in the in the west if if you read um parmenides considered to be the the the founding father of western philosophy who predates socrates and plato and aristotle and then if fast forward um a few centuries you read plotinus uh uh meister eckhart jakob burma um william blake i mean all through um the history of Western thought, this understanding, I'm just mentioning a few, there are so many more, you find this understanding. But I think due to the advent of Christianity,

Starting point is 03:56:21 in the West, we were far less tolerant of this investigation into the nature of the mind, that the spiritual tradition was appropriated by the state and a lot of this kind of investigation was suppressed. So it was, it's not that people in the West didn't have this recognition. It was that this kind of investigation was not able to flourish as freely in the West as it was in the East and it went to therefore underground in the West. in the west but it but it's it's not it's not an understanding that that belongs to the east or comes from the east it's universal it's the perennial philosophy it's the philosophy that that is the that is true that because truth if there is something called the absolute truth, then it must be absolutely true for all people at all times, under all circumstances.

Starting point is 03:57:32 It can have nothing to do with East, West, beliefs, traditions, religions. Most of these traditions, although they originated from an insight into the nature of reality, they were later misunderstood and appropriated usually by the state. And the original understanding was then either distorted and perverted or simply lost. distorted and perverted or simply lost but this one you find this understanding really at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions and in fact the extent to which one understands one's true nature is a measure of the extent to which one can read the scriptures of the world and find in very different formulations the same understanding. I've gone back sometimes to the... I was brought up a Christian and I was in boarding school for years. We used to sing all the hymns and psalms. I know many

Starting point is 03:58:43 of them off by heart simply because we simply because we we sang them so often when i when i go back to them now i'm so i'm so touched by them this that the language of the psalms once you can uh once you can interpret them in a non-dual way even though they may be conceived in dualistic terms, this was just a poetic device. But if you really interpret them from a non-dual perspective, they are exquisitely beautiful. And you find this in all, if you reread, I won't say all, but a lot of the great religious and spiritual texts, they are all suffused with this understanding. And of course, express it in very different ways according to the time and the place in which they were formulated. Are you able to give an example of a non-dualist interpretation of something from Christianity? For example, Jesus' death or one of his miracles?

Starting point is 04:00:11 I could say something about the parable of the prodigal son. Please do. moralistic way about a young man just taking advantage of his father's inheritance and just leaving home and leading a completely self-indulgent decadent existence and becoming destitute and then going back home to but this is of course not the meaning of the parable at all I would suggest that the the father in this parable represents infinite consciousness and the Sun represents the localization of infinite consciousness namely each of our finite minds. So just as the sun proceeds from the father as an emanation of the father,

Starting point is 04:01:14 a smaller version of the father, so likewise each of our finite minds emanates from infinite consciousness, within infinite consciousness, as a microcosm of infinite consciousness within infinite consciousness as a microcosm of infinite consciousness and that the finite mind once it has contracted out of infinite consciousness into a separate self it it seems to become something temporary and finite and being temporary and finite it feels that it is incomplete that it lacks something and the entire life of the separate self or ego is characterized by its desire to complete itself or fulfill itself and to that end all separate selves go out into the world on a great journey in search of objects, substances, activities, relationships,

Starting point is 04:02:11 for the sole purpose of bringing to an end the sense of lack that it feels in its heart. that it feels in its heart. In fact, the separate self doesn't really want the object, the substance, the relationship, or so on. It only wants such an object in order that it will bring its sense of lack to an end and as such bring it to peace or happiness but the separate self doesn't realize this it believes that what it really seeks is the object the substance the activity the relationship and this is this is expressed in the parable as the prodigal son going out into the world having every kind of experience in search of fulfillment but nothing fulfills it. And eventually it gets to the end of the possibilities of exploring happiness in objective experience, symbolized in the parable by the eating of the pigs, the swine's food. It's desperate.

Starting point is 04:03:18 It's tried everything. Its search for happiness in objective experience has come to an end. thing, its search for happiness in objective experience has come to an end. There's nothing else in objective experience in which it can search for happiness. And as a result, there is this spontaneous turning around. This prodigal son turns around to face the father. This is the turning around of the mind,

Starting point is 04:03:45 the mind that is normally directed towards the objective content of experience turns round and faces its source the presence of awareness from which it originally emanate emanated and this is the this is the symbolized as the in the christian tradition it is prayer in in east it's called meditation where the mind turns its attention away from its objective content and begins to trace its way back to its source and that's really the essence of prayer or meditation the sinking of the mind into the heart or the source of awareness which is symbolized in this in this um parable by the return of the son to the father so that would be an example of a non-dual interpretation of a christian parable i think you should do some lectures much like jordan peterson has these

Starting point is 04:04:40 biblical lectures but yours taking a non-dualist perspective, that sounds extremely interesting and insightful as well. Okay, there's a couple notes I'm thinking of. I'll just say them. When it comes to prayer, you mentioned prayer. Prayer to the West is what meditation is to the East. However, the way that I understand prayer in the West is that one is thinking of God as an object in a sense, and I'm praying to God. It's not the union with one and God. It's not the same as I'm becoming God.

Starting point is 04:05:14 It's more like I'm going to allow God's will to shine through me. I still see a dichotomy. So I don't see prayer as being the same in the West. Sorry, I don't see the analogy as being exact between prayer in the West and meditation in the East. So please give me your non-dualist interpretation, just like you did for that parable. Okay. I hope I used the phrase, the essence of prayer, when I referred to prayer. Because you're right most of what

Starting point is 04:05:49 goes under the name of prayer in the west is not what is considered to be meditation in the east although there are also many types of meditation in the east of course but i would suggest that the essence of prayer or the highest form of prayer does equate to what is considered the highest form of meditation in the East, which is sometimes called self-inquiry or self-ab I'll use the analogy of the dream to because I hope it will help during the conversation we had a couple of days ago Kurt I mentioned the analogy of how the dreamers mind imagines the dreamed world within itself and simultaneously localizes itself as the separate subject of experience the

Starting point is 04:06:58 dreamed character from whose point of view it it sees its own mind the activity of its own mind as the dreamed world. Now, the separate subject of experience, the dream character, of course, doesn't know this. It doesn't know that both itself and the world, which it considers to be a real world, are the activity of a dreamer's mind, which doesn't appear anywhere in the time and space

Starting point is 04:07:24 that seem to be real from its point of view. So from the point of view of the dreamed character, the dream character considers itself to be a body inside which exists a mind. And it considers that the outside world is separate from itself and made out of something other than itself, namely matter. Now, the dream character, the apparently separate subject of which Ben looks at this world and, of course, marvels at it. And almost all dreamed characters, separate selves or finite minds,

Starting point is 04:08:03 look at the world and wonder where did it come from? The world obviously gave birth to me, to my body, but the world must have appeared. It must have arisen out of something. And just as the world out of which my body emerged is greater than and outside of my body. So that which gave birth to the world must be even greater than and outside of the world. So that the dream character imagines that there is something beyond the world, beyond the universe, in fact, that is even greater than the universe and has such extraordinary miraculous powers that it can give birth to the universe.

Starting point is 04:08:57 Now, the name it gives to that supernatural being is God. And God is, in this model model conceived as being at an infinite distance from the separate self and has to be approached through prayer, supplication, denial of self and now that's the it's a rather crude and an analogy but that's the basic model of dualistic prayer the individual self at an infinite distance from a created god and this distance what one can never one could never really be you be united with this God. There would always be a distance, a sense of otherness. Now, when we wake up in the morning, when the dreamer wakes up, they realize, of course, that the creator of the world

Starting point is 04:10:01 was not some supernatural being at an infinite distance from itself. Its own mind didn't create a world outside of itself. The dreamed world was the very activity of its own mind. In other words, what the dreamed character believed to be a creator god outside the dreamed world actually turned out to be the very activity of the dreamer's mind which was the essence of the dreamed character so from this point of view in order to have go back to the dream now in order for the dreamer to access God that is the reality of its universe it has to go deep within itself going out into the world won't get it won't bring it any knowledge of that which creates the dreamed world. If it wants to.

Starting point is 04:11:10 Find that which creates the dreamed world, namely the dreamers mind, it must go deep into its own into itself, it must investigate what is my essential self, what what is the nature of the knowing with which I know my experience. It's not my thoughts, not my feelings, not my sensations, not my perceptions. And in that way, the dreamed character is tracing its way back to its essential irreducible self, which is, of course, the dreamers mind. So it turns out that the God that the dreamed character previously conceived at an infinite distance from itself now turns out to be its very own being. In fact, there is no being, there is no separate self, either to know God or not to know God.

Starting point is 04:12:01 The separate self is a temporary and apparent limitation of God, that is, of the dreamer's mind. There's no question from this point of view of the separate self having a relationship with God. There is no separate self there, either to have a relationship or not to have a relationship with God. God or infinite being or infinite consciousness is the only reality there is. And the separate self is an apparent limitation of that reality.

Starting point is 04:12:33 So in that sense, to pray to God would mean to go deeply into one's own being. Well, that's self inquiry. That's the essence of meditation in the east so in that sense what the essence of meditation in the east and the essence of prayer are exactly the same activity you also mentioned that when we're this finite being we lack the infinite or apparently lack the infinite and it's we lack the infinite or apparently lack the infinite. And it's in this that we feel a pull,

Starting point is 04:13:15 we feel some suffering and we think we can make this feeling go away by acquiring material possessions. But what we actually need to do is realize our unity with all. Okay. What I'm wondering okay correct me just we just rephrase sure that well what we really need to do is trace our way back to our essential being whose nature is peace and happiness I'm curious if the lack that we feel as finite creatures or apparently finite creatures is what produces some of the suffering or if not all of the suffering. Yes, it creates all the suffering. And by suffering, I mean psychological or emotional suffering. I'm not speaking of physical pain. Yes, yes, it is because

Starting point is 04:14:05 psychological suffering is always I don't like what is happening. It's like suffering is resistance. I'm not talking about not liking physical pain. That's something different. Take the experience of jealousy. one can be in good physical health and feel jealous so when we say

Starting point is 04:14:36 let's put it like this if you've if you you told me the other day you stubbed your toe, you... Good memory. And you said, you probably didn't formulate it like this, but you said, I don't like this experience. Now, when you say that the I that you refer to in that case, or the thought, I don't like what is this experience, arises on behalf of your body. You're referring to the resistance of your body. It's an intelligent resistance in your body.

Starting point is 04:15:14 When you say, I am jealous, the I does not refer to your body. Your body is not jealous. And now the presence of awareness is not jealous awareness is like an open empty space it can't be it can't resist so what what is the eye on whose behalf is our resistance or jealousy arising it is on behalf of an eye which it is on behalf of an eye which if investigated is never found it arises on behalf of an illusory separate self or ego or i would suggest or the non-dual understanding suggests that all psychological or emotional suffering arises on behalf of a self which when investigated cannot be found as such.

Starting point is 04:16:09 In other words, it arises on behalf of an illusory separate self or ego. And that is why the remedy for suffering in the non-dual traditions is not to try to alleviate one's suffering through the acquisition of object substance activity it is to investigate the nature of oneself because if one investigates the nature of oneself and one discovers that one isn't a temporary finite separate self or ego, but is this open, empty, spacious presence of awareness, then the suffering on whose behalf, the suffering that rose on behalf of a separate self can no longer stand because its protagonist,

Starting point is 04:16:59 its basis has been removed simply through understanding, through clear seeing, not because we have done anything to the separate self there is no separate self to do anything to the separate self is an illusion you cannot get rid of an illusion because it's not really there in the first place you can only see through it so that is why this this emphasis is placed on on self-knowledge in in this tradition and indeed in the West to the words know thyself were carved above the entrance of the temple of Apollo in Delphi and as such this this that this suggestion to know oneself, this invitation to know oneself

Starting point is 04:17:49 stands at the very origin of Western civilization. It is not just an Eastern attitude. When you think of this essence that is us, this awareness, do you happen to visualize it at all? Like an orb or an ocean? I know the metaphor of the ocean is frequently used, but I'm curious if you have a visualization of it or you just have a feeling of it. I refer to it in visual terms when I'm trying to speak of it. Really, one cannot speak of it. One cannot describe it. It has no objective features.

Starting point is 04:18:28 So in order to, well, not in order to describe it, but in order to try to evoke it in someone else's experience, we borrow language from our conventional discourse we borrow language that is somehow evocative of its qualities so we say we use phrases such as the open empty space of awareness well awareness is not an open empty space it has no dimensions at all but we we cannot visualize or meaningfully speak of something with no dimensions unless it's going to be at a very abstract conceptual level. The purpose of the non-dual understanding is not to describe reality. It is not possible ever to describe reality accurately. The purpose of the non-dual teaching is to bring us in our experience to reality, to the experience of reality. So the non-dual teaching is a bit, Picasso expressed it beautifully when he said of art,

Starting point is 04:19:38 all art tells a lie, but it points to the truth. Well, the non-dual understanding is like that. Nothing that is said in the non-dual teaching is true. If we want to speak about the truth, we should remain silent. However, remaining silent is not very effective for the vast majority of people to bring suffering to an end. Therefore, the non-dual, the sages of the non-dual tradition made a concession and spoke about the non-dual understanding

Starting point is 04:20:13 and used analogies and metaphors and take drawn from everyday life, not to try to describe reality, but to try to evoke the recognition of reality in us and hence phrases like the uh the the the luminous quality of awareness would be borrowed that the sun is that which illuminates the sun is that which renders the earth visible. Awareness is that which renders experience knowable.

Starting point is 04:20:55 So awareness is sometimes likened to a light or a luminosity, only in the sense that it's a knowing light. It is that which enables us to know or experience. Have you heard of Wittgenstein before? Yes, yes. He had a concept of, there's a famous phrase of what you cannot speak of precisely, one must pass over in silence. And that reminds me of that. He also had the ladder, Wittgenstein's ladder, if you heard of that, which is at the end of his Tractatus, I believe he said. And all of what I told you was just to bring you up the ladder for you to kick it away because it's meaningless the whole point of this was to show you that words can't do this justice exactly exactly now some people having understood this decide never to speak about it decide never to speak about it because they don't want to

Starting point is 04:21:49 punish this understanding with words. And I respect that. It's not the approach I take. It's not the approach that many other take. I'm willing to make concessions to use words as carefully and accurately as I can, knowing that nothing I say is absolutely true, but hoping that they have at least some power to evoke in the listener the experience from which they come. Getting back to this lack, because there's a riddle, speaking of Jordan Peterson, he's the one where I heard this riddle from. The riddle is, what does an infinite being with infinite power, infinite knowledge, and so on, lack?

Starting point is 04:22:31 And then you think, well, it can't lack anything because it's infinite, but it turns out it lacks finitude. It lacks finiteness. So in the same way, what I'm wondering, in the same way that our apparently finite self lacks the infinite and experiences some suffering does the infinite lack the finite and the infinite experiences some suffering apart from a sort of as a sort of semantic game i don't know how one can meaningfully speak of the infinite lacking the finite the infinite has no knowledge of the finite by definition if the finite finite by definition if the finite if something finite existed in the infinite it would displace a part of the infinite and therefore the infinite would no longer be infinite it too would be finite so the infinite knows nothing of the finite and there is no question of the infinite

Starting point is 04:23:47 lacking the finite that's just a semantic game it it doesn't it doesn't relate to anything that is true there is no question of the infinite lacking the finite nor indeed is it really true to say that the finite lacks the infinite because all there is to the finite is the infinite all there is to the dreamed character is the dreamer's mind All there is to the dreamed character is the dreamer's mind. The dreamed character in this analogy is the finite. The dreamer's mind is the infinite. So we cannot say that the finite lacks the infinite because that would credit the finite with an existence of its own

Starting point is 04:24:41 in the absence of the infinite. It would be like saying the dreamed character existed in its own. In the absence of the infinite, it would be like saying the dreamed character existed in its own right, independent of the dreamer's mind, and therefore lacked the dreamer's mind. But this is not so. The dreamed character is simply an apparent limitation or localization of the dreamer's mind. In other words, all there is to the dreamed character is the dreamer's mind. Likewise, all there is to the apparent finite is the infinite.

Starting point is 04:25:15 In fact, there is nothing finite in existence. There are finite appearances. The finite only exists at the level of appearances. But what is the all appearances have a reality, they are an appearance of something. The movie you see on your screen, the movie you watch is an appearance of something it is an appearance of the screen and the screen shares none of the limited qualities of the movie it is colorless the movie is full of colors likewise the that the finite only exists at the level of appearances the reality of those appearances is the infinite and this is what this is what what is meant in the Bhagavad Gita where it where it says that which is never ceases to be and that which is

Starting point is 04:26:16 not never comes into existence by which it means the the the infinite never ceases to be the finite never even comes into existence the finite is only real from the illusory perspective of the finite the ego is only an ego from the illusory perspective of the ego how long does it usually take people from when you explain these ideas to them and let's say there's someone off the street not much of a meditative background but they're a contemplative person how long does it usually take before they feel the insight not just intellectually understand but feel the insights that you're conveying you know curd simply by virtue of the fact that all apparently separate selves or egos are as we've just said the infinite albeit a

Starting point is 04:27:29 localization of it for this reason everybody everybody not just those of us that are philosophically or spiritually minded but everybody has deep within them some intuition of what we are speaking of here now that intuition is is veiled in varying degrees depending on the opacity of their thoughts and feelings or some people's thoughts and feelings are so dense and opaque that there's only a glimmer of this knowledge or recognition filters through into their life. But even such people, such people that we would, for instance, consider to be truly evil, such people are capable of love.

Starting point is 04:28:22 You know, Hitler had a girlfriend. Presumably he loved her. He experienced love in spite of the fact that the density of his thoughts and feelings only enabled a glimmer of love to shine through and a light on just one or two people. But everybody has within them this knowledge or this understanding. So to answer your question, to respond to your question, how long does it take people? I can't answer that question because some people can explore these matters. People have come to my meetings and retreats that have been on this path for 40 years, 50 years.

Starting point is 04:29:16 And so their minds have been prepared. And very often because of the maturity and the subtlety of their mind, they very quickly, it's just that there was a little piece missing that just needed to be added. And yes, of course, that's it. However, I've also had, and it very often happens with very young people, I've had teenagers come. often happens with very young people I've had teenagers come in fact I had an 11 year old boy once who came to one of my retreats in them in California and he

Starting point is 04:29:57 asked me a question he's now in his late late. He asked me a question and stupidly and naively, I thought, okay, I must water down my answer and give a child's answer. So I gave a rather childish response to what I thought was a childish question. And then he proceeded to, he said, is this what you mean? And then he summarized the previous three days of the retreat extremely eloquently in about three or four minutes. And I realized that I had been wrong to presume that just because he was young and relatively unsophisticated in his ideas and had never been exposed or had not long been exposed to these ideas, I was wrong to think that he would somehow not be able to understand.

Starting point is 04:30:55 On the contrary, his mind was so fresh and clear and unencumbered, not only by his own conventional cultural conditioning, but also by the by the spiritual and religious conditioning that so many of us had to go through um that that of course in some ways helped but in other ways obscured the simplicity of this understanding that uh this enabled him to very simply understand in his own experience what was being said. So I can't really answer your question.

Starting point is 04:31:29 It varies. But I just say one other thing, Kurt. I think it's only recently. Certainly it took me many, many years. And when I look back and I wonder, why did it take me 30 years to recognize what is so clear and obvious for me now? Well, maybe it was because partly due to the opacity of my own mind. I'm quite sure it was. But it was also because these ideas in the way that I first received them. And I went to India, not physically, but intellectually, because these ideas were packaged in a way that

Starting point is 04:32:07 was not clear. The packaging, it was packaged in a form, it was Indian packaging that somehow obscured to me the real contents and a lot of the spiritual traditions. Much of the knowledge that we hear from those traditions is nothing to do with the essential understanding. It has everything to do with the culture in which the understanding arose and was expressed and is actually superfluous to the understanding itself. And I think it is only relatively recently that this understanding is being expressed, divested of all the religious and spiritual paraphernalia in which it has been enshrined, and I would say very often disguised until recently. So I think this understanding is much more available now than it was even 10 years ago, than it was even 10 years ago and available in a way that doesn't require anyone to subscribe to any to a person a guru a teacher a tradition a religion or it's just just that the raw essential

Starting point is 04:33:37 understanding is being It's being expressed in Just in everyday language without recourse to the Tibetan language or the Sanskrit or all of these much as I love those and respect those traditions I was brought up in the Vedantic tradition but the the association with the cultures in which those traditions arose tend to exoticize I'm not sure that's a proper word is it they exoticize the understanding and make it seem like something extraordinary and mystical and from a lot of people's perspective a little woo-woo to be honest it is the recognition that is being spoken of is nothing extraordinary. It is just the recognition of the

Starting point is 04:34:28 nature of one's own being. There's nothing, even the taste of tea is extraordinary compared to the recognition of the nature of our being. Sorry, that was rather a long answer to your question. Okay, the question comes from DIY Craft Q. Can Rupert Spira discuss the death transition that Rupert Sheldrake thinks is like moving into a dream state, but I think Spira believes our memories disappear into the greater consciousness, and then he puts in brackets, which pretty much sucks. What's the point of all of this individual real or not identity simply to blend and mush with a consciousness blob? He means that respectfully. Yes, yes, yes.

Starting point is 04:35:17 I don't know if you're aware of Rupert. Oh, yes, yes. I know Rupert. He's a friend of mine. Yes, yes, yes, I know Rupert. He's a friend of mine. Yes. Yes. Let's go back to the dream analogy. The dreamer imagines the dreamed world within its own mind, localizes itself within its own dream as an apparently separate subject of experience from whose perspective it views its own activity as the outside world.

Starting point is 04:35:52 So the outside world is what the activity of the dreamers mind looks like from a localized perspective within that world yeah the the body of the dreamed character is what the localization of infinite consciousness looks like from a second person point of view. So translate that to our experience in the waking state. Each of us are. Localizations of infinite consciousness and our bodies are what that localized consciousness looks like, how it appears from the outside just as the universe is how the unlocalized activity of consciousness appears from a second person point of view so bearing that in mind that the death or dissolution of the body would be the relaxation of the localization or contraction of the finite mind or separate self.

Starting point is 04:37:25 self the finite mind or separate self could be considered a localization or contraction of infinite consciousness which appears as each of our bodies then death would be the decontraction the relaxation the expansion of this segment of mind that is the separate self back out into the broader medium of mind which gave rise to it in the first place now there's nothing to suggest that this contraction of infinite consciousness into the form of the finite mind expands on death all the way back to infinite consciousness. There is nothing to suggest that it could not begin to disintegrate. And this would correspond with the death of the physical body, but the individual mind could remain

Starting point is 04:38:35 But the individual mind could remain in some form still within the universal field of consciousness without dispersing completely into it. And that is what I believe, although I've never heard it from him or discussed it with him. But I think that this would be what Rupert Sheldrake meant when he said that it's like entering into a dream state. Just as in our experience in a dream, our mind expands beyond its limitations in the waking state. In the dream state, our mind relaxes. And much of the content which was not available to our mind in the waking state is becomes available to our mind in the dream state simply because our mind has relaxed and expanded and what was previously what's called subconscious outside the compass of the waking state mind now appears inside it.

Starting point is 04:39:26 So this could this is Rupert Sheldrake's analogy of the dream state to death. As the finite mind expands on death, it begins to lose its limitations. It begins to experience regions of the universal mind that lay outside its experience while it was alive, but is now encompassed within it because it has expanded just as our mind expands in the dream state. And in the Tibetan tradition, this is called a Bardo. It is considered to be a realm. It's not really a realm. It's not an extraordinary realm that we go to. It is always, everything is always within the only realm the content of infinite consciousness and from the localized perspective of a separate self we we conceive of that as a realm that we go to after death we don't go anywhere after death we consciousness stay exactly where we are but but we cease contracting ourselves and we we expand but as I said, there's nothing to

Starting point is 04:40:47 suggest that that expansion goes all the way. It may remain. And there's nothing to suggest that it could not coalesce back, that it could not coalesce again and appear in this realm as a physical body interesting so i just leave that open as a possibility it would be an interpretation of reincarnation that was consistent with the understanding that reality is a single infinite and indivisible whole understanding that reality is a single, infinite and indivisible whole whose nature is consciousness. So it would be a more sophisticated interpretation of

Starting point is 04:41:36 of reincarnation. It's not really that we as individuals are born again and again and again. That's a rather it's a rather simple there's some truth in it but it's mixed with um it's mixed with a with a materialistic understanding it's it's a kind of it's a traditional idea it's also a new age idea and like a lot of new age ideas there's a kernel of truth in the idea but it has been appropriated by the ego and mixed with its conventional materialistic perspective and some hybrid idea, in this case, idea of reincarnation has resulted from it. Where can the audience find out more about you and what are you working on next, Rupert? Okay, so the easiest place to go is YouTube. I have an embarrassing number of YouTube clips.

Starting point is 04:42:34 So that would be one way to get a quick, easy, free sample, my YouTube channel, Rupert Sparrow. I have quite an extensive website. If you are interested in the more philosophical aspects of this conversation I would recommend one of my books called The Nature of Consciousness if you were interested in the more experiential aspect of this conversation I would go to my book called Being Aware of Being Aware which is a much smaller very experiential direct exploration of the nature of consciousness whereas the book The Nature of Consciousness is more philosophical and so those are the two books I would recommend. What am I working on now?

Starting point is 04:43:29 I've just finished writing a book now which I did during lockdown. It's called You Are the you seek which is an attempt to try to make this understanding available to people to the people that we referred to before not just the scientists who are put off by the nonsense in the new age

Starting point is 04:43:59 community but who don't want to subscribe to any religious or spiritual traditions or teachers or ideas or customs who just want the raw truth about how to find happiness And so it's an attempt to, first of all, explain how happiness I suggested the nature of consciousness is more philosophical it's about what we've been speaking and being aware of being aware is more

Starting point is 04:44:50 experiential so any of those sources take your pick and do you have a twitter or a facebook page or Ruth will send me all the marketing material I do have a twitter or a facebook page I have to confess, I literally can't remember when I last looked at either of them.

Starting point is 04:45:09 I don't really do Twitter or Facebook. Ruth and a small team of people deal with all of that and update it. And so, yes, Ruth will give you all the links to Facebook and Twitter. Thank you so much, Rupert. There are more questions, but you're probably itching to get going. And I appreciate that you've stayed for as long as you have. Not at all. And I really mean this.

Starting point is 04:45:39 It's been a pleasure speaking with you. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and you've made me say things that I wasn't aware were inside me. So it's a beautiful conversation and I'd be more than happy to, perhaps we should pause now. We've said an awful lot.

Starting point is 04:46:01 I'm sure you need to pause too and we could resume as and when if you would like to

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Rupert Spira on Non-Dualism, Consciousness, God, and Death

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