Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Thomas Campbell on Ego, Paranormal Psi, and a comprehensive Theory of Everything [Part 1 of 2]

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Video version (necessary to see equations): https://youtu.be/kko-hVA-8IUThomas Campbell is the author of My Big TOE trilogy (MBT) which represents the results and conclusions of his scientific exploration of the nature of existence. This overarching model of reality, mind, and consciousness explains the paranormal as well as the normal, places spirituality within a scientific context, solves a host of scientific paradoxes and provides direction for those wishing to personally experience an expanded awareness of All That Is. Thomas Campbell's WEBSITE: https://www.my-big-toe.com/00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:05 How did he come up with his Theory of Everything? 00:10:05 There's more to reality than what's operationally defined 00:12:27 Evidence involving remote viewing 00:20:59 Remote viewing vs Out of body experiences 00:24:45 Variables that affect Psi (paranormal) phenomenon 00:27:26 Writing the "My Big Theory of Everything" book (My Big TOE) 00:34:44 Brief overview of MBT (My Big TOE) 00:42:03 Overcoming the non-renormalizability of General Relativity (to merge with Quantum Field Theory) 00:46:08 Campbell's model is larger than just unifying the fundamental forces 00:47:59 Writing the book for the logical vs. intuitive types 00:52:05 Mathematics doesn't explain, but describe 00:52:57 But what about Platonism? 00:53:40 Eric Weinstein and Stephen Wolfram (briefly mentioned) 00:58:16 Explaining the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics 01:00:56 Donald Hoffman's views vs. Campbell's vs. The Matrix 01:03:33 The intellect vs. the intuitive part of you (which one to let go, if any, and how?) 01:10:30 Jung vs. Campbell 01:12:51 Curt's rant against "fear" / "ego" being the problem 01:20:18 Jordan Peterson vs. Campbell 01:27:04 Explications on fear 01:32:29 Is "your" consciousness separate from "you"? 01:34:26 Definitions of AUO and AUM (the foundational consciousness that preceded the universe) 01:38:16 Curt objects, mathematically, to the definition of entropy and other claims 01:46:05 We live in a "Virtual Reality" 01:52:29 What is "you"? What's identity? Are your body or mind? 01:56:35 Identity and death. What part of "you" survives after your body? 02:01:54 Relationship between consciousness and ego 02:05:34 Why follow our "intuition" when it's notoriously inaccurate? 02:09:50 Psychedelics are "real bad idea" for personal growth 02:20:06 Do psychedelics open the same doors as meditation? 02:24:20 The problem with our society is politeness (but how to raise children, if not to be polite?) 02:27:41 How can we have morality without an appeal to ego? 02:40:33 The place of science in the study of consciousness 02:42:12 Out of body experiences (specifics of Campbell's first journey) 02:45:27 Helping Curt with Transcendental Meditation 02:49:54 Non-dualism vs. Campbell (is truth subjective?) 02:58:09 Is the world determined? (asked by: G 007) 03:03:05 Why not start with "nothing" rather than consciousness? (asked by: Repair Masculinity) 03:07:01 How can you see aura's through photographs? Are they recorded in pixels? 03:08:50 Can we query NPMR and find out how to place second quantization / path integrals on rigorous foundations?

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Thomas Campbell is the author of My Big Toe, that is, My Big Theory of Everything, and is a former nuclear physicist. He's also one of the most requested guests of this channel, recalling that this channel is dedicated to explicating on theories of everything. Keep in mind that he calls it a big toe as opposed to a small toe because he makes the delineation that a big toe is opposed to a small toe because he makes the delineation that a big toe is supposed to be responsible for the fundamental laws of physics, an explanation as to what consciousness is or how consciousness arises, how should we interact with one another,

why are we here, what is God, is there a God, etc., as opposed to a small toe which he describes as being strictly about the fundamental laws of physics in mathematical form. Like the Donald Hoffman interview, this is likely the most technical interview that you'll see with Thomas Campbell, and that's because I think only asking simple questions that, let's say, a layman can understand, you necessarily give the wrong impression because you distort the truth in the simplification. If you'll allow me a two-minute aside, I'll explain,

or you can just click the timestamp and skip ahead straight to the interview. I have a mini rant about being taught that the wave function is a function when it's not. And I'm not talking about QFT or even quantum gravity. I'm talking about simple quantum mechanics. You're taught it's a function, but it's not. The wave function is technically a smooth section, which is completely different than a function. You'll get into trouble if you think of it as a function.

A smooth section on a complex line bundle with a base manifold. And that's not incorporating relativity., has nothing to do with relativity. And you need this in order to do quantum mechanics on simple curved surfaces like a sphere. Another example where the simplification or the imprecise idea being conveyed is simply wrong is that the wave function is a square integrable member of a Hilbert space. It's not. And you know this because if you just use the momentum operator on a box function, well, it's not, and you know this because if you just use the momentum operator on a box function, well, it's not defined right at the edges even though it's square integrable, and that's a simple function. These are examples where I was told the simplified truth or the

imprecise truth, but it fails in elementary cases and it leads to unnecessary headaches. Therefore, I keep the level of precision in these podcasts as high as I possibly can because you're extremely bright and motivated. No one is telling you to watch this. You're watching this of your own volition. You're open. You're astute. Streamlining and simplifying is done on many channels.

There's nothing wrong with that. You can go to Lex Friedman or Joe Rogan for that if you like. It's just that it's a saturated market and I'm wholly uninterested. The ramifications, at least for me, of simplifying is worse than intricacy. But mainly, there's also the aspect that the audience, that is you, seem to be more engaged, extremely engaged, when I'm engaged. That is, that I actually want to know the answers to the questions I'm asking. I'm not asking, well, what are your top three favorite books? What inspires you? I don't care about that. I want to know, what is the relationship between the paranormal psi and Jung's synchronicity?

Thomas, why do you define consciousness as that which has evolutionary potential? Why do you call life a Turing machine when it seems pretty clear that there's a physical trade-off between structure, function, complexity, and genomic length, which doesn't characterize a Turing machine's tape? Either way, you get the idea. You're here to listen to Thomas Campbell. Let's get started. Enjoy.

Tom, why don't you tell the audience what you're working on these days? Okay. Well, I suspect what you're referring to, working on these days, is the My Big Toe, since you are obviously interested in theories of everything. It's one of your subjects of interest. My Big Toe was called My, not because I'm so proud of it. It's because if it's not your experience, then it can't be your truth. So my big toe is basically based on my experience, my research, and my conclusions. And my big toe should just be perhaps a structure or platform for

each person to build their own big toe. It's not something to be believed. It's not something to be believed. Belief is a problem. Belief gets in the way. Where you have a belief, you put yourself behind a wall. You don't then let in other information that conflicts with that belief. So beliefs are always a problem to understanding the big picture. So I would not encourage anybody to believe my model, but to look at it and see if it applies to their life. So I'm a physicist. Let's just give you a little overview of my big toe. It's a model of everything. It's a big toe,

not just a toe. Mostly when you hear about toes, they're not really about everything. It's a big toe, not just a toe. Mostly when you hear about toes, they're not really about everything. They're a theory of physics. They're a theory of fundamental science within this universe, the science of our universe. That's what they are. And what they leave out is everything that is subjective. In other words, consciousness, attitudes, feelings, emotions, everything that's in the subjective world. And if you think about it, most of our world that is important to us does fall in this subjective side. The objective world of physicists, and I'm a physicist, but the objective world of physics is basically just a subset of the world that we live in and interact in. And it's, I would say, a minor subset. It's the stage, it's the props, it's all the stuff.

Important things in our life, like who should I marry? Should I take this job or that job? You know, that sort of thing. Big things that change our lives, change our thinking. What book should I read? All of these choices are not objective choices. They're all subjective choices. So most of our more meaningful experiences like love, justice, truth, all these things are subjective, or at least have large components of subjectiveness in them. So a theory of everything has to also be a theory of the subjective world as well as the objective world, otherwise you've just got a little Tao, which is just the theory of the objective world. So my Tao is a bit different, and mine started

with, or I should say mine starts with consciousness as a fundamental. And the reason that I came to that is that I was in graduate school in physics, working on my PhD in experimental nuclear physics. And I found out just quite by accident that I could debug my computer code. Now, back in those days, these are the old days in computer code. I'm talking about boxes of cards, you know, that sort of thing. And debugging was a huge problem. Not like today where you have debuggers and instant terminals and access to, you know, to the computers and so on. And those days, there was a big central computer, and it took up a whole building. And it was not as powerful as your telephone is today.

It was probably only 100th or 1000th as powerful as your cell phone is today. And the whole school, the whole university ran on that one computer. There were no desktops. So you got to stand in line in a queue. And if you got one or two jobs run a week, well, lucky you. So if that job ran and bombed because you had an error, well, you just lost a week for your research. You just lost a week for your research, you see. So debugging was something people spent a lot of time focused on so that they didn't have to wait forever to get their research done and their ideas worked out. So in any case, I found that in my mind, I could bring up a picture in a meditation state. I learned to meditate while I was in graduate school. And I learned because the advertisement said that you could get by with less sleep.

And in graduate school, that just was a real big plus for me. So that's why I learned how to meditate. And anyway, in this meditation state, I could bring up a picture of my output, my printout, scroll through all the lines in code, and the lines that had errors in them, had problems in them, would just show up red. That was an intention of mine. I wanted to be able to see them. And I just did this kind of on a wild hare, you know, kind of a lark. Well, I'm in a meditation state. Let's see what I can do. And I checked it out, and it was correct. Those lines of code were actually the ones that had problems. And in these days, a problem wasn't because necessarily you coded it incorrectly.

Maybe the key punch was just off a hair. If those little holes didn't line up exactly right with the reader, you'd get an error. So you may have done all the right things, but the machine was a little off. It punched holes. So that, as a physicist, that hit me like a ton of bricks. What was going on here? How could I do that? There was no physical process going on.

It was entirely a mental process. And how could my mental process find things like key punch errors? You know, that was just crazy. So I played with it. And I played with it. And I found that I got better with it with practice. And that I could decode my stuff very, I mean, you know, debug it very, very quickly. So as a physicist, what that told me was that my idea that reality is measurable. If it's not measurable, in other words, this is called a, what's the word for it? what's the word for it? It's like, if you can't interact with it, you know, if you're talking about something, you say, oh, this is real, but you can't interact with it. You can't see it, you can't smell it. Operationalism. Yeah, it's an operational definition of reality. Exactly. So I, as a physicist, that was my attitude toward reality. It's an operational reality.

So I realized that wasn't true, that there was more to reality than just what you could measure, what you could do operations on. It had another whole component to it that was more tied up to mental than to physical. It was subjective, not objective. So I just kind of had that as an idea, wow, I'd like to find out more about this, because as a physicist, my job was to model reality, to understand how reality works. And I realized there was this whole big piece of reality that was outside of what I had thought was possible. So I just walked around with that. And I didn't really know what to do about it or how to deal with it other than it was there. And it wasn't a matter of, did I just

imagine that? That was ridiculous. Of course, I didn't imagine. I can't imagine that, oh, this is one hundredth of a millimeter too far to the right. That's not something you can imagine. far to the right, that's not something you can imagine. So in any case, when I got out of graduate school, took a job, and as luck would have it, about probably four, five, six months into my first job as a physicist, I was a nuclear physicist, correct nuclear um not high energy nuclear but low energy nuclear we worked with a big vandagraph accelerator so you know 5 mev was about as far as we could go as far as energy went so anyway uh i was introduced to bob monroe i got to meet Bob Monroe. Now, Bob Monroe had written books called Journey Out of the Body at that time. And I read that book and my opinion of it was, well, if this is probably just trying to sell books, this guy's making up a story. It's an interesting

story, but he's just making it up and he's just trying to sell books. And you read this after your Transcendental Meditation sessions? No, I read this like three years after I had become, you know, about three years after I learned how to do meditation. It was a long time. I got a job and actually it was my boss tossed me this book by Bob Monroe and said, read this book. And I read it and said, really? You've got to be kidding. Journeys And I read it and said, really? You gotta be kidding. Journey's out of the body? Boss, really? But I read it and I told him, you know, he's either making it up to get money or it's indicative of another piece of reality that we just don't know

about. But how can we tell? Is he for real or is he not? Because at that point, I was open to reality being bigger than just the physical because of my experiences some three years ago, you know, in graduate school, being able to debug code. So I was open-minded to perhaps there's more and the more is in mental space, you know, in mind space, not in physical space. So we went out to see- just to get some acronyms out of the way. There's PMR, which is physical matter reality, right? And then there's NPMR, which is non physical matter reality. Right? Okay. Yeah. And basically, those that definition is that PMR is what we call our physical universe. It's what we call physical. Okay. And the NPMR is everything else, anything else. So when you dream, you're not, the reality in your dream is in NPMR. It's not part of the physical world. So it's just terminology that lets me differentiate the physical world from everything else.

else. So anyway, my boss found out where Bob Monroe lived. It wasn't that far from where we worked. And we made an appointment to go see him. And I did. And he was a very wealthy guy. He didn't need book sales. He was way past the money that book sales bring in. And he was, he had a personality like an engineer. He was bright, but very factual, very clear. He wasn't fuzzy-headed and kind of on the crazy side. And he told us that he had just built a lab to study consciousness because he wanted to bring science to this experience of his. So he wanted to study it and he was looking for some scientists that would help him study it. So I

shot my hand up in the air. You know, I've been a student like for 30 years. So yeah, so I put my hand up in the air right away. And about a month or so later, I was making trips every week out to the lab and starting. Actually, first, we had to build equipment in the lab. We built equipment with EEG. We built GSRs and other things. What are GSRs? That's a galvanic skin response. It basically measures skin resistivity, the resistance of your skin to a very small electrical DC current. And that changes based on mind state. If you relax or meditate, that resistance goes up. If you're very excited, it goes down, you know, like a neurophysiological measurement. Yeah.

It's something that tells you a little bit about something in mind. We didn't, you know, we were trying to measure whatever we could, and there's not a lot that measures things that are primarily mental. So EEG and GSR were two of the things that we could do and we could afford. So we built most of the equipment. We wired the lab. We kind of set things up, and then we got in the booths, and Bob would come up and teach us what he knew about observing and interacting with this larger reality, which is outside this physical universe. In other words, mind space. And of course, myself and an electrical engineer came with me, so we were both in this together. We both worked at the same place. And our idea was, well, if this turns out to be a lot of hocus pocus, you know, we're out of here. But if it turns out that we really learned something, then great be free. We wouldn't cost him anything and that he would teach us so we could experience it. Because if we just examined him, well, you know, you can, if you learn about something that you study, but you've never experienced, it's never quite real. We wanted to experience it so we could find it out for ourselves,

how real it was, made it more objective for us, even though it was still in a subjective space. So he did. We came out there a couple of days a week, and he tried to teach us to experience mental space, things in mental space. And what Dennis and I wanted to do is let's prove that this is real to ourselves, not just something we're imagining, not just something we're making up, but is it real? So we started doing things that were evidential, like remote viewing things are very evidential. We'd go in, get in our booths, and the booths we had were isolation booths. They all were acoustically isolated from each other. And one of them was a Faraday cage, which was electromagnetic. Oh, great. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. One was a Faraday cage. That's the one

I got in was a Faraday cage. And the one Dennis, it was actually three booths in a row. I got in number one, Dennis got in number three. So there was an empty one between us. So the acoustical isolation was even greater than it would be for two consecutive booths. So we got in these booths, and there's a microphone coming down from the ceiling just above our lips. And Bob would help us get into the mental state and gave us exercises and things to do. And we would tell him what we were experiencing. And that way he could be more effective in guiding us. But Bob was very careful about not leading the witness. You know, he wasn't saying, well, now you should see this. He would never say that because that's leading people to see something.

He would just say, do this and this and this. Now, what do you see? people to see something. He would just say, do this and this and this. Now, what do you see? And so we did this and we pried evidential things. Remote viewing is one of the obvious ones. And we did other things too. We did mental healing and we did collecting data, trying to get information from however we could get information. Mental healing of who? Of yourself or of someone else? Of other people, of other people that we knew about who had illnesses. We did that, but you have to do that hundreds of times to collect statistics on whether or not you're having an

effect. You don't know. Somebody could just get better and it may not have anything to do with what you did. But we would work on people sometimes that had chronic things. They'd been they'd had this chronic illness for, you know, three decades, 30 years. And they were outside of the medical system because the medical system had said there's nothing else we can do. And we would try to see if we could fix things like that. So that's more evidential than just, oh, somebody has a headache. Oh, my headache went away.

Well, it might've gone away anyway. You know, so you have to have, you have to look at these things carefully, but Dennis and I were both being very careful because we were both very skeptical. So Bob did teach us. Right. Just as an aside, you mentioned that NPMR isn't scientific,

but it sounds like what you're saying is PMR. That is our physical reality can interact with mind space mentioned that NPMR isn't scientific, but it sounds like what you're saying is PMR, that is our physical reality can interact with mind space, so NPMR, and then NPMR can interact with us. So you have transitivity, which means that you can have objective measures, no? Yes, you can have some. That's what I mean by evidential things. So these were the things, these interactions. So we could remote view. We could see what was going on at a particular place. We'd go get in our booths and Bob would go into another room and he'd write a, you know, like a five or six, seven digit number, you know, on the blackboard that he had in there. And our job would be to read it. And in a sense, we didn't do that in the sense of remote viewing. We did that from the sense

of going out of body, going into that room and looking at the blackboard. What's the difference between remote viewing and out of body? Almost nothing. The belief of the person that's doing it, that's the only difference. As far as the function, they're really not any different. It's just the way you believe that the mechanism works. These were back in the early days. What's the difference in belief between remote viewing and out of body? Well, if you believe that you're remote viewing, then basically you are, basically your vision. It's like you're tapping into a camera that's there. Okay. I understand. Your vision is remotely going someplace else. That's why remote viewing.

So you are viewing remotely. So it's like you can, your eyeballs are someplace else or you have a camera someplace else. That's why remote viewing. So you are viewing remotely. So it's like you can, your eyeballs are someplace else, or you have a camera someplace else. Versus some representation of your body or your soul. So, and neither one of those are true. Of course, you're not moving your, you're not moving your vision someplace and you're, you don't have some essence of your body going anywhere. All of those are just beliefs. None of that works that way, but these are things that people believed. And at that time, early on, I didn't understand the nature of reality well. That was my mission, to try to understand it. So we had these models, you know, out-of-body and remote viewing and things, but it turns out that all of that was

kind of based in belief anyway. That's not the structure of how it really works. So we would do these things that were evidential. And by the evidential things, you know, it was probably one in 10,000 or one in 100,000 that we were just lucky at guessing numbers written on boards or that we were just, you know, somehow lucky that people who'd been ill for 30 years got better. You know, these kinds of things. You know, somehow lucky that people who'd been ill for 30 years got better, you know, these kinds of things. You know, you do statistical significance studies, and the statistical significance has to tell you basically how far away are you from random occurrences. It's random, or how much distance is it away from random, and we were very distant from random. So, much distance is it away from random? And we were very distant from random. So we knew intellectually that we actually were doing something. We were able to interact with this reality through

mind space, through mental space. And that was a gee whiz. How does it work? Why does it work? What can you do with it? Why does it sometimes work and sometimes not work so well? You know, why is it not as repeatable as we'd like it to be? What does it have to do with mental state? If you're in different kinds of mental states, it works better in this one and not so well in that one. And what's the difference? So the whole point was for me to understand it and give some kind of fundamental model of what was going on, how it was going on, produce a theory that allowed me to predict results and methods and explain

things like why this worked and why that didn't work, so on to understand it. So I worked on that. I was the physicist, then that was my job. And that took me about 35 years before I thought I understood it well enough because I had to do a lot of research. You know, if you do remote viewing and you do it from this mental state and it doesn't work, then is that just circumstance? Or is there really something about that mental state? 35 years, meaning you were 35 years old or 35 years from the point that you started? 35 years from the point I started. It took me that long because science is tedious. You have to change variables and see what happens and then change the variable a little more and see what happens and then change a different variable and see what happens. So trying to have a scientific approach to this

took about 35 years of me doing experiments, doing trial and error studies, basically, to find out what were the variables that affected what and why did they do that. And if I just had two or three variables, then it would have been a year or two. But when you have the number of variables goes up, the number of complication, the number of possibilities goes up dramatically. So it took a long time to try to-

What would be some examples of these variables? Like you said, mental state. Well, mental state would be one. There's lots of various mental states you said mental state well mental state would be one there's lots of various mental states you can get into uh some are more effective than others but it would be let's say we're doing something like remote viewing okay if we're going to remote view and we're going to remote view targets then they're one is the is the mental space that you're in, the attitude, the feeling. These are all qualitative, subjective things.

So you have to do them. The mental state of where you're going or your mental state? No, my mental state, where I am. What's my mental state and how do I get there? And it finds out that mental state and attitude and beliefs, fears, all that stuff are part of the part of the equation. It then you have to look at the various variables. How do you approach it? What tools do you use?

Do you have the idea that you are like you say, there's a camera someplace? that you are, like you say, there's a camera someplace. Is that your metaphor for what's going on? Because we just have to make up metaphors for things because we don't really understand how they work. So you make up a metaphor. Okay, there's a camera over there, and I'm going to see what the camera sees. And now I can scan the camera. I get to move it around like it's on a ball joint. So we have so you, we have these metaphors and you can work through metaphors until the metaphor doesn't break, breaks, doesn't work anymore. Well, it's not really a camera because these things, you know, the camera wouldn't, wouldn't see, but I see those things. So it's just a matter of testing, trying to, if you do it enough, you start seeing patterns.

Testing, trying to, if you do it enough, you start seeing patterns. You start seeing things that work and things that don't. You start seeing similarities between approaches, between healing and remote viewing and other things. So I just, we stuck with the paranormal things because those are the evidential things. And without evidence, well, you're just out there, stuff happens, and you could be making all that up. You know, you could be dreaming it. You need the evidence to verify it. So those are the kinds of things, just working with it, looking for patterns, looking for structure, looking for things that seem to always work, and trying to figure out why they worked. and trying to figure out why they worked. So I sat down in the late 1990s, probably middle to late 1990s, and started to write this thing. And the reason I started writing it up

is because somebody asked me about it. Somebody said, hey, Tom, how does reality work? And I said, well, I think I could tell you that. And I found out that they had lots of holes in it. A lot of my thoughts were just fuzzy. You know, they weren't really very sharp. They were very fuzzy. So I thought, I need to put this down on paper because writing forces clarity. It's, you know, a fuzzy sentence is obvious. A fuzzy thought, we just kind of slide over it. And because we think we know what it means, we never

notice how fuzzy it is. So I wrote it down. And the writing process took about five years. And during that time, I learned a lot because I found a lot of the fuzzy places, a lot of the holes. And I started working on filling them up. You know, how, you know, more research was required, really, to fill up those holes, better ideas, better models, better metaphors. How many hours per day would you work approximately on the big talk? On that big talk, probably almost a day's worth, probably anywhere from four on a light day to maybe eight or nine on a heavy day. And you were still on the side doing experiments or you had abandoned that you took a break just to write out this? No, no, I was still doing experiments. I had,

I actually got my experimenting actually took on more life because now I was experimenting for very specific issues, not just understanding the big thing, but you know, what's okay. Here's a problem. There's a logical issue. You know, you get from a to B and I can't express that logically. It's like, Oh, a miracle happens. I'm in a, then I'm in B. Well, a miracle happens isn't satisfactory to science. I had to figure out what was the logic that took me between these, these steps. So in any case, I write the book and I learn a lot because I have to do a lot of research as I go and a lot of thinking and trying to find model.

And what I ended up doing was I had these facts of consciousness that I had come to think as of facts. My research said this is the way it is. One such fact would be that consciousness is fundamental, and the physical world is not. The physical world is a subset. Okay, and the reason I came to that conclusion is that I could, with my mind, modify things in the physical reality, but I could not do it the other way around. The physical reality did not fundamentally change anything in consciousness, but things in consciousness could fundamentally change things in a physical world. Therefore, the flow of causality flowed from consciousness to the physical, which meant consciousness was the superset, physical reality was a subset. So I understood that the consciousness was a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing,

and that the physical world was somehow a subset of that. But the exact somehow wasn't clear yet. So I kept working on that. So I had all of these facts of consciousness, things that I had done enough and experimented with enough that I knew were real things. And of course, I had a lot of facts of the physical because I'm a physicist and that's what we study, the facts of the physical world, how the physical world works. So I started looking for a model, one model, one elegant, not complicated understanding that would explain all the facts, both sides. And eventually, I came up with that. And that is what I call a big toe. And it's a big toe because

it not only unifies quantum mechanics and relativity like a little toe should, but it also explains experience, the subjective world. So, in other words, you should be able to take this model and take your subjective experiences and explain them. Why you end up with that experience. What does that experience mean? You know, its significance. How is it related to other experiences? So, it explains the subjective world as well as the objective world. Yes, I can take that theory of consciousness,

which is actually my book, My Big Toe Trilogy, was really more a theory of consciousness than anything else, though I knew it was the superset. And about two years after I published that in 2003, I got the aha moment where I could derive physics, I could derive relativity and quantum mechanics from those same ideas, I could explain them. And when I did that, you know, quantum mechanics stopped being weird science and just became logical science like any other science. It isn't weird. It not only turns out to be logical, but it turns out to be necessary. It couldn't be any other way.

The only way that's going to work is if you describe particles as probability distributions. That's how you see a particle, as a probability distribution. It has to be that way. There's no other way that it could work. And the relativity is fundamentally driven from the fact that the speed of light's a constant. The speed of light's a constant is kind of the mystery, the big mystery in relativity theory.

If you have that information, then relativity becomes kind of known. I mean, the rest of it's just math. But that's kind of the thing that isn't understood in relativity. And that came out to be just perfectly obvious, too. It couldn't be any other way. it in relativity. And that came out to be just perfectly obvious, too. It couldn't be any other way. So I started looking then at the various paradoxes in physics, things that just don't make sense. Like, oh, there's a lot of paradoxes in physics, tons of them. All the fundamental things in physics have no source, basically, as physics understands it now.

Like time. Where does time come from? Space. Where does space come from? Where does mass come from? Where does charge come from? Where does spin come from? All of the fundamentals of physics, if you ask a physicist, well, where's that come from?

They'll say, well, we don't know. It just is. So there isn't any good theory that explains where all these things come from. Where did that ball of plasma and Big Bang theory come from? Because our universe didn't exist yet. It had to predate our universe. Well, what do you mean something, the ball of plasma predated our universe? If everything that's real is defined as our universe, then that's a problem. That's a paradox. So there's lots of these paradoxes. There was the Zeno effect, which is how you can, if you have an atom that goes from state A to state B or a system. So if you keep measuring it and measuring it, it never gets out of A,

even though normally it would go from A to B, say, in a minute. You can measure it for all day. And if you keep measuring it close enough, then it'll never go to B. So those kinds of paradoxes all had a very straightforward solution. I even looked at chaos theory and could come up with a fundamental reason why chaos theory works the way it works why you have these areas of chaotic motion let's say in a in a liquid flow in a high velocity liquid flow and then those areas will kind of get calm and then the calmness will float around in different areas and other areas will erupt into higher velocity, more chaotic things.

So weather patterns and water flow and other chaotic kind of events. And that's not known. Why does it work that way? We know the math. OK, you have two differential equations. Well, produce that kind of a thing. But why does the world work that way?

Math doesn't cause reality. Math just models reality. You have to understand that math isn't the cause of things. It's just a way of modeling it. Anyway, it turned out that it did drive physics reasonably enough. And right now I have a set of quantum mechanics experiments that I am having done in Southern California. They call it Cal Poly, California Polytechnical Institute. I have a scientist there who is doing these for me.

It's taking a long time. It's slow, but it's one guy working part-time, so it just takes a long time. And these experiments will produce more evidence that reality is not material, but is information-based, which is what a lot of physicists say these days. Our reality is information-based, which is what a lot of physicists say these days, our reality is information-based. And it also shows that it provides evidence that consciousness is the computer. It's information-based, that means it can be calculated. It can be calculated, then you need a, you know, where is it calculated? What's calculating it? And the answer to that is consciousness is the computer. So now all of this sounds very abstract, but there is logic that ties it all together. So just, you know,

for your listeners who I assume you tend to be a science guy. So your listeners who are going to be very objective and science guys, probably, I'm trying to give them an overview. So it was from this perspective of consciousness that I ended up deriving physics. And it's a very simple, elegant model. It's only got two basic assumptions, and they're not remarkable at all. One of them is that consciousness exists. The other one is that evolution exists. Evolution being that if you have a system that's self-changing, and if it has some pressures or some, what can we say, things that it has to do, like in our physical world, that would be procreation and survival. Those are the things you need to do. Those are

the pressures that you have. So if you have a system with pressures in a certain way, it will change itself in order to, you know, procreate or survive in our physical case or to do whatever its particular environmental pressures are, internal and external environment. So it will tend to satisfy those things. So that's all. From that, I can pretty much deductively create this whole theory from beginning to end. There are no other grand assumptions, nothing weird, no place where, and then a miracle happens, and you've got, you know, something else going on. So that's the basic theory. It's logical. It's science in the same way that, say, evolution, you know, evolution theory about our planet.

You know, you give an evolutionist a cell, and he will explain to you how that cell evolved into all the things we have on the planet. You know, talking about life, you know, a biologist is talking about evolution of life, not the evolution of rocks, but the evolution of the living things on the planet. You give him a living cell and he will tell you how that cell was just a single cell thing. And then it got to be a multiple cell thing and he will go on and how it

diverged and how the environment, you know, allow these mutations and on and on and on. And he'll end up with our world based on the assumption that the living cells existed to begin with, because the biologist is a little hard pressed to say exactly where that cell came from. Although he's got a hand-waving argument that says, oh, well, you had the right proteins and the right amino acids just happened to come together in a little, maybe electrical shock from some lightning or something, and voila, you got a living cell. But that's a hand-waving conjecture argument. That's not really solid logical argument. So I do the same thing. I can start with where did consciousness come from?

And I have to start with, well, consciousness started at its simplest level. Its simplest level is basically an awareness, a simple awareness that is aware that it can be in two different states. It can be this way and it can be that way. That's a binary. That's all. That's it. That's the one cell that the biologists have. That's my consciousness cell, if you will. And from there, you can just see how you can follow the logic of evolution, and you can build up the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is an information system. Consciousness is, you know, awareness is awareness of what? You're aware of something, and the something you're aware of can be, you know, seen as information, is what you're aware of can be seen as information, is what you're aware of. What about us? That's what

we're aware of. We have five senses, and our reality is the data we collect from those five senses. It's information. So consciousness, that is an information system. Information systems, if let's start with information, well, we it will call an information system but let's say all of its bits are random if all of its bits are random there is no information that's the highest entropy condition that it can be in is all of its bits are random no information if it orders some of those bits and particularly if it gives that order some meaning, then you have information is created. So information systems evolve by lowering entropy.

That's just the nature of… Okay, we're going to get to the specifics, the technicalities soon. You don't know this, but most of the time when I interview someone, I spend about two weeks prepping. And for you, I spent maybe two months. So I have, I have here large legal paper, tiny fonts, maybe six, five and a half pages of questions. Okay. All right. Well, that's fine. So, okay. Okay. I, I'm assuming your listeners just don't really have any idea who I am and what I'm doing. Right, right, right. I'm trying to get a little background.

But okay, go ahead with your questions. Well, one is that you mentioned that you unify relativity and quantum mechanics. And I didn't see, well, I see what you're saying is that, okay, there can be a limit. So an information speed limit, meta C, we'll just call that C. And then quantum mechanics is quantum mechanics but but that's special relativity not general i'm curious about some of the if i can get into quantum field theory i don't know if yeah you can a little bit yeah okay so there's a couple problems in qft so general relativity is non-renormalizable and

i'm curious if there's a way in your theory to overcome that. Well, you know, the way I see general relativity is basically you start with special relativity, which is a very simple little algebra thing. of gravity at that point. And that was, you know, that the force of gravity is some constant g, you know, times mass one times mass two over the square of the distance, gmm over r squared. Okay, that was our model of gravity. Masses attract each other. But of course, there was no real good reason why masses should attract each other. But that'd just be one of those things that just is in science. So, that was that was gravity. And once we had the special relativity, distance and time kind of took on a different meaning, and the relationship between them started to, you know, obviously, there were connections between distance and time that kind of confuses this issue of the distance between them for gravity. So Einstein looked for a more general solution, which is general relativity.

And he came up with the solution that, you know, geometry of space-time. So we had space-time now, and space-time had geometry. It was a surface. It flowed. It had peaks and dips, and gravity were dips in the space-time. So you'd get something that got into space-time where there was a dip, and you'd slide down the dip to the lower energy state because things naturally move from the higher energy state to the lower energy state. So then we had a whole new idea of gravity. It was warps and changes in space-time. So where you have mass, you have space-time warping. So the old metaphor of the bowling ball and the trampoline kind of a thing is what you get.

So he took gravity and turned it into a geometric model, or he took our relativity, turned that into a geometric model. And then people have ever since been working out the logical consequences of that concept in the mathematics. So his theory was basically a theory of general relativity, it's really a theory of gravity in my mind. That's its basic thing. All right, now it had some problems. And the way I look at it from a bigger picture, both of those models, GMM over R-square and the spacetime model of

relativity, neither model is exactly right. Neither model is without its issues. Both models give you results within their own realm of doing things, with the faster, you know, very fast speeds of things, okay, relativistic speeds, and with very tiny things. Then the, you know, Einstein's model made more sense because it worked in a larger range of reality. But they're just different views, different ways of expressing the same thing, different models of modeling the same thing. So it's not that small, you know, from the, our regular kind of observational world, well, GMM over R square works pretty good. Matter of fact, we do a lot of good space exploration mainly based on things like that.

You know, it's a good model. So if you need to worry about the high velocities and small things then you need something else you need quantum mechanics and you need and you need relativity for the high speeds so you know both of them are going to have limitations i don't see that his model is you know i don't know i guess we could say it's more general it's a more general model but it has issues but my model is not you know i don't worry too much about the details of the way the you know of the logical details inside the theory i'm one of those persnickety equation people that you reference in the book and that book by the way it's a huge book

usually i can get through a book in well in a certain a quick amount of time but in this one like i told you i've been listening to it primarily for two months, maybe more. Yeah. Well, it's packed. It's packed with information. Yes. Went through all your slides too. And this was the only slide that I couldn't particularly comprehend. So at one point we're going to go through this. And I also wanted to know just as an aside, why don't you use latex? That it's,

it's aggravating to me to read equations no longer in the latex because i'm so spoiled by the beauty i was the typeset i was writing this book for everyday joe i wasn't writing it for scientists to me one of the one of the things that this book these books were supposed to do is provide an on-ramp for left brain exploration on-ramp yeah a way to get to an on-ramp to the bigger picture okay the bigger picture is kind of the nature of reality from the biggest picture now people with that live with logical process you know which is mostly scientists but not just scientists even you, carpenters and other people who think logically to do what they do. Those kind of left brain people don't have an on-ramp to the bigger picture. There's lots of on-ramps for right brain people who tend to get things intuitively,

but logical people can't go there. You know, they get there and they say, well, where's the proof? You know, where's the logic? It's not there. And if the logic doesn't go, then they can't go either. So I wanted to write a book that was for the everyday Joe, but something that would also provide an on-ramp for the guys that require logical process. So that was what I was trying to do, was a balance between all of those things. I wasn't writing it for physicists. I wasn't just writing it for technical people. I wanted everybody to be able to read it and get it. So that's the nature of those books.

But the material is dense. If you read it quickly, you'll miss most of it. That's probably what you found out. You've got to really read it because it is a logical flow, like math. You can't just skip through a math book. You can't speed read a math book. You got to read each thing because that thing kind of takes- Builds upon the last. Yeah, builds upon the last, builds upon the next, and is going someplace. And you have to take the whole trip, and you have to take it slow enough that you don't just intellectually get it, but you have to get it on a little deeper level. And you get out the other side and okay, you could discuss it intellectually, but you don't really get it at all.

You don't see the bigger picture. You've never made the journey, you know? So that's, it is a hard book to read. You know, I've got one guy who wrote to me. He said he's read the book. He read the book once and he read it in like two or three weeks and he realized he didn't understand it. So now he's reading it.

Which one? Because there are three. The first one he read all three in three weeks and he realized he didn't understand it so now he's reading which one because there's three the first one he read yeah all three in three weeks read all three of them in three weeks he's kind of a speed reader guy who reads things quickly and he got to the end of it and he says he didn't have any idea what it was all about so he went back and now at the end on i think this was like his third reading he says he reads 10 pages a day, no more. And that's his limit. He says more than 10 pages, I get confused. There's something efficacious about reading a book till the end and not getting the full grasp and then going back to it. It's like, at least you get the table of contents, you know where you're going. Yeah. And then you get the basic big ideas. You just

don't get the understanding. So yeah, there's, there's something to be said as long as you go back, as long as you go back. Yeah. Okay. So I need help with this on ramp because I'm somewhat of a fool and I've been, I can intellectually understand some of it, but, but I'm having a, I guess you would say I'm having a difficult time. Like I, like we were talking about, I'm thinking about equations as well so there's some problems when someone says they have a small toe forget about big right and i'm interested in big totally 100 that's what the channel is about how do you explain consciousness free will god

if there's any well also here's an interesting question what does an explanation mean is an explanation simply the mathematical equations is it as simple as you start with assumptions and then derive from there like what does an explanation mean well that's a difficult question too but either way i'm interested in the in a huge talk okay you just told that we okay to answer that one the mathematics does not explain it basically describes things don't again mathematics doesn't cause things to happen oh wow wow whoa all right tom let's play with this because that depends if you're a platonist some platonists would say that's the real world the real world is the idealized mathematical realm and somehow this world is caused from that now someone like penrose also he doesn't come right

out and say that but he alludes to it well i would be in the idealist camp but this world is computed it is a virtual reality it's a computed reality consciousness is the computer okay but it doesn't mean that analytical equations is how it's computed there's computer science too it's like you know, there's a difference between your, your guy doing, you know, you, you gave me two people that you wanted to talk about, you know, the one guy's doing geometry and the other guy's doing computer processing. You know, he's looking at links and networks, you know,

you're looking like you don't know what i'm talking about uh no what are you referring to i'm talking about wolfram oh yes yeah that's right that's right eric weinstein yeah weinstein and wolfram right so one guy's just looking at geometry and equations the math but the other guy's really looking at computer processing you know he's looking computation computational stuff it's different okay so Okay. So what math does, you know, if, if you understand how the reality is being computed, well then yes, you, you know, you have a direct, you know, a direct understanding of the algorithms,

but our reality is a couple of things here. One, math does not actually explain. Math predicts. Math describes. So let's just take a, I've got a charge here, say a positive charge. You can't see my hands. Positive charge here. And I'm going to measure the force that it'll have on a negative charge here. Okay. Now, because this is action at a distance, I'm going to say that there's a field, a magnetic field between them. And that field then is what interacts with this charge and pulls it down, right? It's a field thing. Well, there are no fields. Fields are imaginary. Fields don't exist. In a virtual reality, you don't need fields. All you need is the equation that computes the force. The force is real. The field is just mathematics that describes the experience, you see. It predicts. I can predict what this force

is because I can do the mathematics, but a prediction isn't a cause. I can predict when the bus is going to come to the bus station, but I don't cause the bus to come to the bus station. I just can predict it. So you have to not take the math as seriously as most of the physicists take the math. They're trying to describe something. If their mathematics is not exactly the same as the computations that are creating it, and there's a lot of math that's, you know, the analytical math that you think of as math, besides the computational math, is quite different. So it's combinations of these things. And now the way the reality actually works, though, this physical reality, we kind of need to say this.

Otherwise, you know, you're going to get wadded up with over the math. And that is that you have a rule set. This virtual reality was created not by programmers programming it, but it has evolved. It's an evolving thing. It started with initial conditions and a rule set. The initial conditions was that Big Bang description. It was that ball of plasma, high temperature, high pressure, whatever initial conditions. And then the run button was hit. And those initial conditions change according to the rule set. And those initial conditions change according to the rule set.

Now, rule set is what we think of as physics. So that rule set is primarily deterministic. So it has random things in it, but it's pretty much deterministic with some randomness added because some events are just random is a good description. So anyway, then the world that we're talking about is not calculated from that rule set. The world that we experience out here in the physical world is a probabilistic world because calculating everything from the ground up, starting with quarks and working your way up, is not... It's untenable. It's untenable. It doesn't work. I wouldn't say it's impossible.

Well, there's also, at least Wolfram would say, something called computational irreducibility, which means that even if we were to try to compute the actions of the next, say, 10 minutes, the amount of computational power that would be needed would be the size of the room or the size of the universe. And so you can't do it. And it may just keep skirting you. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense. So what happens is that the rule set creates the probability distributions. What's the rule set? You mean the physical law? Yeah. The physical law is the rule set. Remember, we start with initial conditions and a rule set. And we punch the run button. And the initial conditions change according to a rule set, we end up with this universe. So it's all just evolving. Initial conditions evolve under the rule set. And it evolves. And then we can just pick up with the physicist, you know, the whole thing evolves and the biologist and the whole thing evolves. So that's the virtual reality.

That's how it's computed. It's computed in consciousness. It's a simulation. It's not that somebody programs it. So if you understand that, now when we do something here, let's say we're just going to good examples. We fire a cannon, simple example, because cannons are a very simple machine. It's a tube with a ball in it and gunpowder behind it. You light the gunpowder and it increases the pressure and out goes the ball. Okay, that's simple. Now, if you tried to describe that in detail at even the molecular level, you couldn't do it. It'd be too hard.

Or it would take a lot of computer power. So what you do is you describe it with statistics, with probability. And you say, okay, here's a cannon made out of certain kinds of material, you know, constructed a certain way. The barrel isn't really exactly a cylinder. There's lumps and creases in it. And the ball isn't precisely a sphere. It's got things in it, too. And the powder doesn't burn particularly whatever.

So you have the cannonball. If you fire the cannon 10 times, that ball will not land in exactly the same place. It'll land in a bunch of different places. It'll produce a pattern. It's called the dispersion of the cannon. And you represent that with a probability distribution. Now, in a virtual reality, and you have a war going on with these cannons, somebody fires a cannon, and the rendering engine that renders a virtual

reality goes into that dispersion, that probability distribution, randomly picks out something that is probable. That's where it puts the, you know, possible, and that's where it puts the cannonball, you see. So you don't have, the system doesn't have to model the whole process in detail. It develops probability distributions based on the rule set, and then it can use these probability distributions to create the cannon in the real world. So now we fire a cannon, and the system just puts a ball at a particular place. Okay, so an analogy would be fairly simple. It would be like a video game. It has a probability distribution. Like think of it like that,

then just scale it up to your experience. Exactly. So that's the way it works. So from, from my viewpoint, what's going on here in our, in our physical world and PMR. Okay. That's at the probabilistic level. Here's what hits me. Here's what hits me right away. So there's the matrix, obviously like simulation hypothesis. And then there's also Donald Hoffman. If you've heard of his consciousness theories. Okay. So let's compare and contrast yours and the matrix. Well, let's say simulation in general. So simulated reality, and then Donald Hoffman. So where do you agree and disagree with

those two hypotheses hypotheses well uh my i also have a you know i would fit under a simulation hypothesis too my you know you could put my work into that category but mine is very different than it's not that we're being simulated by higher intelligent beings right see see what happens whatever reason yeah what happened these other these other guys doing their their virtual reality is somebody asked well you know who's what's the computer who are the programmers and they're stuck for an answer so they don't regress yeah they don't know you get an infinite regress which is illogical that doesn't make any sense there is no infinite regress, which is illogical. That doesn't make any sense. There is no infinite regress in physics. Infinity doesn't really exist as a physical thing. It's just a concept.

I don't, but okay. Okay. Okay. Let's just stay on this path for just a second. Okay. All right. All right. So they come up with something that's this way stretch, you know, hand-waving thing. It's our future selves or something that are doing this. Well, that's a pretty, that's a pretty huge leap. You know, that's one of those in a miracle occurred. So I don't go there with that kind of a big, big leap. So I have that, you know,

consciousness is the computer and I can logically explain why consciousness would want to make this virtual reality. That's part of the logical process that will be explained, and what the point of it is, and the purpose, and the whole thing comes out very logically. But then I have this reality that isn't computing all the details. It's basically computing probabilities, and it puts as much detail in it as it needs. So if we're taking a measurement and now I take my millimeter wave radar and I track that cannonball, now it has to simulate that too. It only does what it needs in order to save on computational power or for what reason? It just does. It only does as much detail as it needs to do for the measurements that are being taken.

So here we are. We are the avatars, our bodies. We're the avatars who we actually are ourselves. We're consciousness. We're an individuated unit of consciousness. Okay. We're not the avatar. The avatar is just the player.

Quick aside, quick aside. Come right back. We'll come right back. You said we're an individuated unit of consciousness. Now what about some of the proposals that we comprise multiple consciousnesses vying for power? So when you split the corpus callosum, you know that there's two and it seems like whenever we get mad, it's as if that personality, that consciousness comes out is whenever we get, let's say anxious, it's like that one wins. And it's as if they're their own consciousness they're their own little personalities

vying inside our head fighting now how do we make sense of that when we say that we're a unified individuated unit of consciousness you are an individuated unit of consciousness and you you have two ways of processing data. And there's two things, two sides to this that I need to give you. One, you have two ways of processing data. You can process data as consciousness. You are a consciousness. You process data intellectually, and you can process data intuitively.

Those are two different ways that your consciousness processes data. Those are two different ways that your consciousness processes data. Now, when you use your intellect to process data, the major tool you use is called logic. And logic is a very precise tool. But the problem with using your intellect is mostly you don't have enough information to make a deductive, you know, you could use deductive logic because you just don't have enough information. I agree. So on the intuitive side, so you've got this, you've got this precise tool called logic and an intellect, but it needs to be directed in what direction? It doesn't have a whole lot of information, ratty information over on the intuitive side.

information over on the intuitive side. Okay. Thank you so much. Oh, no problem. Yeah. No problem at all. I've been, I've been doing some transcendental meditation. We can talk about that. I was pretty much just following your advice. You said, try it out for three months. I think I'm a month and a half into it. We'll talk about that too. Okay. So let me work on this. So we have the intellect and we have its logic, but we have lousy information for the most part, very incomplete, let's just say incomplete, ready information. Over on the intuitive side, you have your awareness. It's your mind is the tool, Your awareness, okay, it's your mind is the tool, not the logic. It's your mind. It's your awareness.

And that awareness is not the precise tool of logic. It's kind of a ratty tool because that awareness has to do with your mind being in a productive state, not being full of thoughts. You know, it needs to focus. It needs to have low noise. It needs to not be intellectually trying to process things. The intellect will get in the way. It needs to let that intellect go. So it's over there, but it has all the data. It's got this huge database of basically everything. So its data is precise and a very deep amount of data, but the tool is ratty. So you have these two sides to a person, right? These two things. All right. Now, also the person has fear. Okay. Fear is the big problem. fear is what we're trying to evolve away from and i can also logically

say that you know we say consciousness is evolving it evolves to lower entropy states those lower entropy states are the same as evolving toward being caring being cooperative sharing those sorts of things and that is a logical process, too. I can explain that as well, you know, deductively. So, we just have to accept that for now until we get to that explanation. So, if you have this, the fear is the problem, and you're trying to evolve toward becoming love. Okay. So, if you have this fear, this fear creates self-centeredness because fear is all about you. And, you know, so it creates self-centeredness. It creates ego.

It creates beliefs. So you have this fear. Now, you're talking about you get angry and suddenly, well, if you didn't have the fear, you wouldn't get angry. If you got rid of that ego, you wouldn't get angry. You wouldn't have the fear, you wouldn't get angry. If you got rid of that ego, you wouldn't get angry. You wouldn't have those things. So basically, you've got part of your consciousness that is dysfunctional in that it is fear-based. And there's another part of you that is growing up that is caring and cooperative and wanting to see bigger pictures. And those two sometimes struggle and get in each other's way.

Are those two different consciousnesses? No, no, no. It's just the same. They're all part of the same one? It's a consciousness that is not very highly evolved. It's a consciousness that has fear. And it has a lot of fear. Fear manifests. Your anger is coming from that fear.

Let's say somebody insults you. Says, well, you don't know anything about that. You're the dumbest person I've ever met. They insult you somehow. And you get angry about that because it's somebody you respect or somebody you need to respect, like maybe your boss or someone else.

So you get that kind of an insult. Well, if you were completely confident, if you didn't have any fear, that insult would not trigger anything. It wouldn't trigger anything. You wouldn't have anger. You'd be aware that that other person is just misunderstanding. And instead of being angry, you'd have some compassion and see if you couldn't maybe fix that misunderstanding that they had rather than getting angry. So it's not that you have two different compassion and see if you couldn't maybe fix that misunderstanding that they had rather than getting angry. So it's not that you have two different minds and two different consciousness. You just have a consciousness that has fear.

It has beliefs and it has ego. The ego and the beliefs are both created by the fear. Ego is awareness in the service of fear. That's why you get these different things going on. If you wouldn't have that, matter of fact, this will maybe give you a cause to think differently too. If you got rid of your fear, you as consciousness got rid of your fear, which means you're highly evolved now. You're evolving to get rid of your fear. So you've gotten rid of your fear. At that point, you don't have a subconscious. You are entirely conscious of everything about you,

everything that happens. You don't have any hidden part. There's your sexuality, you know, all the other things that Freud would put into an id that's part of the subconscious and so on. You're aware of all of that. Nothing's hidden. And you don't have any buttons to push. You don't get angry. You don't get upset. You don't even get stressed.

Okay, so you live in a place of peace and a place of joy and caring. So that's kind of going to the extreme, but the subconscious mind of Freud is really a dysfunctional part of the consciousness. What about Carl Jung? Because Carl Jung might say that the unconscious comprises consciousness what about carl jung because carl jung might say that the unconscious comprises 99 of you and that it's impossible for you to ever be fully conscious you're always going to have a massive amount that's unconscious so i defer with freud in that and sorry jung in that respect too yeah no well they are having they're making a very accurate description of people in general. People in general have lots of fear. This virtual reality of ours is a schoolhouse. It's an entropy reduction trainer, if you will. And most people haven't evolved a whole lot. So there's lots and lots of fear. So Freud looks at

it and he says, oh, ego, that's a good thing. Everybody needs a healthy ego. So there's lots and lots of fear. So Freud looks at it and he says, oh, ego, that's a good thing. Everybody needs a healthy ego. And Carl Jung would say, yeah, you're never going to get to the point that you don't have the shadow part of yourself. It's always going to be a part of you. Well, it's not true. It doesn't have to always be a part of you, but it is a part of virtually everyone because everyone has fear. And there's very few people that ever get rid of all that fear. So to make an analogy, it would be like looking at the earth and saying all the elements that exist are the ones that are on the earth, but they don't realize that you can combine them and create some that are rare, that just are exceptional circumstances. that you can combine them and create some that are rare?

Yeah. That just are exceptional circumstances. Well, Freud and Jung both were experimentalists in the sense they looked at people and looked at themselves. And here's what I see. Here's what I see in myself. Here's what I see in other people. And they're making models based on people. Well, everybody, almost everybody is full of fear. There may be a few exceptions,

but these are extremely rare people. So if everybody's full of fear, then everybody's going to have a shadow. And if you can't get rid of yours, then you assume that nobody can get rid of theirs either. So it's that sort of a thing. But it's not necessary. That's the dysfunctional part of us. That's the part that is causing us trouble, makes us angry. It's not another mind. It's not like there's two minds struggling. It's just one consciousness trying to grow up, trying to evolve the quality of its consciousness. some people and they're usually more Buddhist oriented or more new age or spiritual oriented, and they dislike fear and say that we need to get rid of fear. And I understand that fear can be unadaptive. But at the same time, people who don't feel well, if you don't feel pain, let's say that's a neurological disorder. If you don't feel fear, fear is actually necessary for the consolidation of long-term

memory for declarative memory in particular. And there are a few patients who just have a disorder would be called a disorder because it's unadaptive where they don't feel fear. And then they can't remember much. They also have no bounds socially. They come up to your face and talk to your nose to nose because they just don't read the cues. They don't feel the slight social fear, the slight guilt, the slight shame. And those I see is also tempering mechanisms for us to interact. So when people say eliminate your fear, I wonder if they mean what I'm interpreting them to mean, because it can't be all fear and also can't be simply ego-based given that there's the startle reflex. And also can't be simply ego-based given that there's the startle reflex.

There's like, it's not under conscious control. There's fear, you know, getting rid of fear doesn't mean that you become stupid. So somebody might say, well, if you're not afraid, then jump off the cliff. Well, no, I won't jump off the cliff because that's stupid. You know, just because I don't have fear doesn't mean I want to die. You know, well, don't go out and walk in the woods where the grizzly bears are because, you know, you might run into one and that would be a problem. So you don't go out. Not fear keeps you safe. The fear doesn't keep you safe.

The fear will always make things worse. If you have to go out in those woods for some reason and you have fear, you're less likely to survive than if you don't. for some reason and you have fear, you're less likely to survive than if you don't. Okay, so you don't go out in that woods because you're intelligent, because you think, because you understand. So it's not that fear saves people from going out in the woods with grizzly bears. Intelligence does that, being aware. And if you have to go out in that woods because grandma who lives on the other side of the woods is having a problem and you need to go, then if you're fearful, you will attract bears. You will attract predators. You will do exactly the wrong thing. You'll run, which is a

prey symbol, and you'll just do all the wrong things. If you are intelligent and not afraid, well, then you have come with your pepper spray and your air horn, and you will have you just do all the wrong things if you are intelligent and not afraid well then you have come with your pepper spray and your air horn and you will know whether to stare in his eye or to look at the ground you'll know whether to run or to walk slowly so not being afraid is what saves you from the bears it's the fear is what will kill you we we we say that people you know are better off if they have fear of the bears because it keeps them out of the woods. Well, no. You see, we're assigning the wrong thing to the causality there. It's not the fear that's the thing that's helping. The fear is always a problem.

It's the intelligent decisions always a problem. It's the, it's the, uh, intelligent decisions, good choices, making good choices is what saves people. Fear always makes everything worse. So, you know, you were talking about the, you know, you have this, uh, this automatic response, let's say a response to fear. It's not the fear that creates that that's part of your instincts you've got instincts that are hardwired in your in your dna in your system and you get a

stimulus you'll give a response you know the fight flight you crush your leg and get a little rubber hammer and tap it at the right place your leg leg will shoot up. That's just because we have instincts. We have hard wiring. And that hard wiring will do whatever it does. It's like an if-then statement in a computer. If you trigger it, you'll get the result. So you do have those things, but they're not fear-based. Fear always creates a problem.

Fear always creates a problem. You know, we don't explain sexuality to our young people because we think if they're afraid of it, we scare them about it so that they'll be afraid to play with it until they're much older. So we think that fear will keep them safe. No, the fear is what gets them into trouble. Knowledge will keep them safe. Understanding will keep them safe, not fear. So fear is the problem. So what do you think of the statement, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom? Well, I think that's just wrong. It's not fear of God. You shouldn't be fearing God. You know, we just assume that there's such a thing as God just for the sake of the conversation. But fearing is the wrong thing. You need to understand God and what it means and what that is

and what the relationship that you have is and what's expected and what you should be doing. And if you understand all of that, then fear just gets in the way. Fear locks you up. Fear keeps you from being you. You know, if you fear something, let's take that example. So if you do things, let's say, because I fear God, I'm going to be nice and kind to people because God says you should be nice and kind to people. Okay, so when I see somebody that, you know, I can be nice to, then I'll go over and I'll be nice to them. Well, that is acting. You're acting nice. Because you have fear, you're acting nice.

Well, acting nice is civilizing, but it doesn't help you grow up any. You got to be nice. And there's a big difference between acting kind and being kind. A huge difference. So the fear perhaps will make you act kind, but those civilizing is not going to help you grow up. It's not who you are. You're just acting.

Because then some other time when it's not convenient to act kind, you won't be kind because you're really self-centered. And if it's all about you, you'll be unkind. But when anybody's looking, you'll act kind because you want to have a good reputation for being a nice guy. So you see, if you're not really kind, you haven't grown up any. So that's the thing. So the fear of God may make you act differently, but it's not about acting.

It's about being. And the fear will never make you be anything. The fear can only make you act, won't make you change who you are. It'll make you just be, I don't know what to say it, duplicitous. So it creates another problem. So now you have the problem that you're living your image, not who you are. And that'll cause all kinds of issues, you know, make you neurotic when you aren't in consonance with who you really are. You're living an image. So fear is, you know, give me another example of good fear. Razor blades are like diving boards.

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Just make sure to add them to the cart. 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. Well, as I was reading your book, I see plenty of similarities to Jordan Peterson, if you're familiar with him at all, such as an emphasis on individualism and the primacy of your experience. Also, Peterson does say that there's a book called Ordinary Men. You should read that book. And it's about how ordinary people can become monsters and shoot pregnant women at the back of their head, even though you're an ordinary person. He said,

you should read that because you should know what your shadow is in the Jungian term, because then you would become fearful of that. And then you would start to act right. Now that's one aspect that I see you differing from Peterson. Yeah, right. Again, acting right is civilizing, but being right is growing. It's becoming. It's growing up. It's becoming something else. When you just act, you're not actually changing who you are. You're not becoming a better person. Okay, I see that fear now. I'll act better.

Civilizing, but not really helpful because as soon as you get between a rock and a hard place, that acting, that image is going to come right off. It's not even skin deep. It's a suit you wear. It's a behavior that you do, but it's not really who you are. So all you're doing is acting nicer. So yeah, you look at this horrible thing and now you'll act better. Well, that's civilizing, but not really helpful. It doesn't take you anyplace.

You got to be better, not just act. So if we all had this great, you know, illusionary persona that we carry around with us, and we all act nice to each other and are polite and kind and so on, well, like I say, it's civilized, that's nice. But as soon as something horrible happens to where now that nice persona, you know, isn't functioning for you anymore, because now you're in a life and death situation. Well, you're going to shoot that pregnant woman, because that's the only thing that's going to save your life, because somebody else has told you to do that, and they're going to shoot you if you don't. So you have fear, fear of death, perhaps, and you degenerate to what you really are. So when the going gets tough,

people degenerate to what they really are, what's inside. That's why ordinary people can do horrendous things, because they are walking images. They're not really so much nice people as they act that way. So I'd say that that's the difference. Yes, I would disagree with that. The whole point isn't for us to act better. It's for us to become better. Yeah. Okay. See, let's not harp on this, but I'm trying to make sense of it myself. So please forgive me if it sounds like I'm just playing devil's advocate. You're helping me with that on ramp. So, okay. See, the way that I see it currently is that it's not just that you need fear. You also need pleasure. And both are twin mechanisms that push you forward in a propitious manner. So in a salutary place. So let's say you mentioned civilized. Okay. How about this?

People who lack guilt, who lack shame, there's a term for them and it's called psychopaths. And not all serial killers kill because of fear. In fact, they kill because it makes them feel, well, first of all, sometimes it's sexually gratifying, at least for them. And then sometimes it increases their sense of worth and increases their power. But I don't see it as they're killing because someone's going to kill them like the example that you mentioned. I don't see them killing out of fear. And I see plenty of harm that can be done in the absence of fear. And I see plenty of good that can be done in the presence of fear. That's why I'm having a difficult time with the claims that we need to eliminate fear totally. Okay. Now the person that you see who's a psychotic and killing or doing something horrible out of fear, not out of fear,

they are doing that out of fear. You're not seeing fear as a fundamental thing at the core of their being. You're seeing fear in the sense of what they're afraid of intellectually. You're only thinking about them as an intellect, not as a consciousness, and this consciousness has fear. Okay, the reason that person is doing that killing is because they have a fear. They have a fear of not being good enough.

They have a fear of, you know, the world is treating them badly. They have a lot of self-centeredness. It's all about them. The fear, let's say they were, you know, badly treated as a child, and that creates fear. They have social situations that create fear. They feel like they're the victim, and they don't have guilt

because they justify everything in their mind as being okay, and those aren't real people anyway, you know, so they do all those things. And yes, that's, that's a psychopath, but it's not because they don't have fears because they do have fear. Fear is at the core of all of those things. Matter of fact, I would say that if you take all of the psychiatric, you know, we have this book of psychiatric illnesses that are listed. And if you take that, you would find that if you eliminated all the ones that were basically biological based, you know, don't make enough serotonin or something like that, brain damage. If you take all the ones that are not physical based, I'd say that almost all of them, if not all of them, are fear based. Every one of those illnesses is a fear at the root. People are fearful. The reason people get angry is because they feel

that other, they fear that other people don't appreciate them. They feel that other people don't like them or other people are going to put them down, that they feel inside they're not worthy. They're not good enough. They have all this fear. So when somebody says something to them that's an insult, you know, they roar up because of that fear. Or you get the psychopath who kills because he had a traumatic childhood where his mother beat him every day or something. And he's got this issue with women. And he's got probably other problems as well, which may also be biological as well as psychological, but he takes that out. The women he's killing, they're not really women that he's killing.

He's killing a symbol. He's killing something that is a symbol that's causing his pain. That's what he's doing, but he's doing that because of fear, because he's got this. So I'm talking about fear, not just being afraid and wanting to run away. I'm talking about fear as a very fundamental, dysfunctional thing that's at the core of most everybody's consciousness. And it's the thing we need to get rid of. Okay. That's somewhat different than what I hear from most, I don't know what to call them, but let's say spiritual types or new age types or whatever it may be that say that we must in its entirety eliminate fear. Because the way that you've explicated fear is just simply what's

negative for you. And what I see as fear is as a specific neurological feeling that's separate from anxiety, because there are different neurological pathways for anxiety, for disgust, for rancor, for resentment than there is for fear. Like you can actually, well, I don't know of any studies that have done this, but I'm sure you can take out one and leave the others alone and experience one and leave the others alone as well. So that's why when you mentioned, well, this person has a bitterness about reality, I would call that bitterness or I would call that rancor i wouldn't call that fear but in this one the rancor come from it comes right okay right and i hear that i hear

that plenty i hear that plenty and i'm i'm having a difficult time understanding how that's true or how that can be shown to be true other than you take psychedelics and then the person has some breakthrough where they have limited fear. Now, all of a sudden, they're acting in a more adaptive manner. But let's put that aside. I guess. Okay. We can talk about that another time.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Think about fear as a fundamental creator of all those other things, you know, of all those other negative things that you're talking about. That if you didn't have fear, think of it this way. Think of a person who doesn't have fear. Think of a person who is love. Now, love is about other, not about self. There is actually one known patient who just couldn't experience fear. And I think the name's SM046. And she had a horrible, horrible life and was horrible to

people. But when they say couldn't experience fear, that doesn't mean that she didn't have fear. It just means that she didn't process it. She refused to process it. She refused to act on it. She refused to experience it. It didn't mean she doesn't have it. The reason that she can't process it is probably because she does have a lot of fear can't deal with it can't connect to it so she's pushed it all away and none of that none of that uh bothers her anymore she's just somewhat like repression yeah somewhat like repression yeah you get to the point you can repress all of that.

So people can do anything you like and you just sit there and ignore it because you don't really care to even be alive anyway. You just are like a robot. You've given up connecting and caring. And then you're a sociopath. Well, you give up connecting and caring because of fear. So yes, you can, that person would maybe have no guilt or have no fear, but that doesn't mean they don't express the fear. So when you do something scary, they don't jump or they don't say, Oh, get that spider off my arm or anything because they're past the point of caring about

any of that. And that's because they have fear. Fear and love are the opposite things. Okay, so love is about other. And other, you know, it's how can I help, not what can I get? What can I do? Yeah. It's all about giving, not taking. It's about, you know, other people.

And it's not that you no longer are aware of yourself of course you are you know it's just that you you what makes you happy what motivates you what gets you to do things what uh what makes you uh you know what makes you you smile is helping, being a part of other people's solutions. You care about others. Yeah, you still take a shower in the morning because you care about yourself. You want to wash the dirt off. But that's not your primary motivator in life, as opposed to your primary motivator being about you. So that's the thing. If you don't have fear, then you don't get angry. And the reason that you will probably also never have guilt is because you'll never do anything to ever feel guilty about, because you care about people.

You feel guilty when you do something rude to somebody else. Well, you do that because of fear. So it's just a matter of, you're seeing the results of having fear and naming those results as things in themselves rather than as creations of fear. So I'm reducing it to two fundamental aspects of being, and that's fear and love. And you can, everything else, all the rest of psychology can be explained in terms of just those things, of fear and love.

And you can see how the fear creates all these other conditions that you... Does the fear come from the intellect and love comes from the intuitive part of you? No, it's not like that at all. That fear is a part of you. It's also down at your core. It's part of your intuitive self. It's part of your consciousness.

Your consciousness is trying to evolve out of its fear. It's trying to grow up. That's the dysfunctional part that's the that's the random bits it's okay when you say my consciousness it's a bit of a strange phrase because it's like i'm not my consciousness it's almost as if it's a separate item like this cup so do you mean to say like that or is it just a useful way of it's just a useful way of phrasing because almost everybody thinks that they're their body. I see. If I talk about consciousness, it's this big something in the sky, but your consciousness basically is what you are. If you thought of your body as an avatar and

you were consciousness, then I could just say you. Well, you have this, you have that. But most people don't think that way. They think of me as the body. So I say your consciousness because of that. Okay. So sorry to go back. You were saying that fear is a deep part of one's consciousness and it needs to be there because it's trying to evolve. It doesn't need to be there. It just is there. It's there because the consciousness hasn't evolved yet. Consciousness comes in potential. It has potential to do things. It's an awareness. It makes choices. It has a potential to make good choices, a potential to make bad choices. So it is mostly potential. And until it has experience, that potential is just as potential. It has experience by making choices.

And if it makes choices that are toward caring and kindness and love, then, you know, it's evolving. If it makes choices that are self-centered and, you know, mean-spirited and that sort of thing, then it de-evolves. So consciousness has potential. Now you take consciousness as it existed originally in this consciousness system and think of that as like a big chat room. You have all these individual units of consciousness and what consciousness does is it communicates and makes choices. That's what consciousness does. So it's interactive.

Is that related to OS or is that completely different than OS? No, that's really before OS. That's prior to OS. Is there an acronym that you've said in the book about the consciousnesses interacting with one another? Because everything you're saying, remember, Tom, I've been listening to your voice for two months. Okay. So everything you're saying, tom i've been listening to your voice for two months okay so everything you're saying i'm trying to relate it back to what i've learned yeah uh if this would be this would be as we as we move from uh or we move from what auo to own it's in that transition. Okay, so AUO, just for the people listening, is, and then Aum is Ecclesiastes.

Okay. Just as a quick aside. Yeah, Aum is, I don't know, it's going to be hard for me to come up with these too. Unbounded. I don't know. I'd have to look them up. I wrote that book what, 20 years ago?

Absolute Unbounded Oneness was one of them. Yeah, Absolute Bounded Oneness. That's A-U-M? Oh, no, that's A-U-O, right? Absolute U Unbounded Oneness. Okay. And then what's A-U-M? Something Manifold A-U-M.

Don't worry, I can cut this out if we can. I don't remember. I don't remember. A long time. I don't use those terms anymore. Usually I use LCS for larger consciousness system, which is kind of the AUM that I ended up with. This becomes a larger consciousness system.

And I used that term for so long that I haven't used those acronyms for probably 15 years. And you know how acronyms are. If you don't use them for so long that I haven't used those acronyms for probably 15 years. And you know how acronyms are. If you don't use them for a long period of time, they disappear. But anyway, it was in the process that consciousness evolved from a monolithic thing, a consciousness, to multiple consciousnesses. And it did that because that was on its path to decreasing its entropy. There's more possibilities, okay? There's more structure. There's more things that you can be

if you're a set of individuated consciousnesses that can interact with free will. Now, the possibilities go up, whereas if you just have one monolithic consciousness, there's only so much you can do because you're limited by your beliefs, by your attitudes, by other things. So that's a, you know, cells did the same thing. You had single cell things and these single cell things were very limited. There's only so much that you can do with single cells. But if you get multiple cells working together, now you can make something more complex, more ordered, lower entropy. And then you can get, you know, organizations of cells like our body, you know, we have livers and hearts and organs and things where specialization of cells, differentiation of cells. more complex, more flexible, more capable of doing more things because of that additional order that you have. And it's not just random order, it's order that's meaningful, that works together, that cooperates with each other. So it's the same thing. Consciousness had to find that

same thing. It was one monolithic thing, and it decided that that was limiting. It couldn't lower its entropy very quickly that way. So it created subsets of itself. And those subsets then each had free will and they interact with each other. And now the potential of the whole system goes up. It's bigger. Entropy is lowered. You have a more complex ordering of things so now you have these individuals but all they are is like in a big chat room they communicate and they make choices okay they have potential well they're not growing very quickly either because why does entropy increase when there's more potential no entropy decreases i'm sorry did i say i'm sorry why does no what i misspoke why does entropy decrease and not increase when the entropy decreases. I'm sorry, did I say? I'm sorry. Why does, no, I misspoke. Why does entropy decrease and not increase when the system gets larger?

Entropy decreases because you have, there's more things you can do. One measure of entropy is disorder. Okay. That's one measure of entropy. So entropy is a measure of disorder. So entropy is a measure of disorder. Another measure of entropy is entropy is a measure of the ability of the system to do work, to do things. Those are both different but equivalent ways of looking at entropy. So if we look at it as just order, then you have more order if you have a more highly evolved structure. if you have a more highly evolved structure. And you have more ability to do things, more potential, more work that you can do if you have interactions of things rather than just one monolithic thing. These interactions can challenge each other, can build things,

whereas this one thing doesn't. It's the same thing with one single cell, multiple cell. I can probably show you where my confusion lies if I write it, and then you could just point it out. It might be simple, like, oh, you're mistaking an A for a B. Please. Because you're just like me in that you are primarily a physicist. Okay.

So if we look here, this is, sorry if there's a double speak because for whatever reason, my cell phone has to repeat. I don't hear it. I just hear single. Okay. Entropy is something like KB.

That's a Boltzmann constant. LON. And then this guy is total number of states. Okay, so obviously, I'm not saying anything you don't know. But obviously, this guy looks like, looks like this. So then as the total number of states goes up, entropy goes up. That's why I'm having a difficult time understanding why is it when more is occurring, entropy decreases. Okay, then let's look at it this way. We started with all the bits in this information system, random, right? We ordered the bits. Now we have some meaning. Now entropy

goes down because we ordered some bits. We now have less randomness. So we order the bits. We have a little more complexity. Instead of all the bits being random, we have ordered bits. And those ordered bits can mean things. They could be numbers or letters, or they could have some sort of meaning to them. They're symbols. They could be.

So when you order bits, you lower the entropy. High entropy is all the bits are random. So by making a system more complicated, more complex, more meaningful, more significant, it can do more things. You are, you're looking at entropy as it is defined for heat problems. You're looking at thermodynamics there. But they're equivalent definitions. Yeah. You have to think of entropy in a very fundamental way. Okay. Fundamentally, it's a measure of disorder.

Okay. So if you create order, entropy gets lowered. So think of it in fundamental terms. Don't get lost in that equation. That equation was written for a very specific purpose that had to do with with entropy probably and i don't know what a adiabatic transfer of heat between systems or something it uh as far so but but these two are equivalent and then and obviously there's another one that has to do with probability but but they but they're all equivalent, all the different definitions of entropy.

So when people say entropy measures disorder, I, it, well, it technically measures the amount of microstates. As you put heat into it, you get more disorder because everything is spinning around more randomly, right? You're randomizing the molecules in the jar right so you add heat and all the molecules start zipping around and then you take out heat and pretty soon you get you take out enough heat to get ice now your molecules aren't zipping around anymore you've got more order you've got when we're talking about nPR, I remember you said that if we have here is something like, this is physical matter reality, right? Physical matter reality is some subset of NPR. Let me know if this is too small.

Yeah, I can see it. It's pretty small, but I can see it. Look, it looks like N P M R. It looks like this. It's just, I'm trying to clarify please because I have some questions about NPR afterwards and how to interact with it. And do you see it as if it's in front of you, like me and you are talking and how does one go about doing that? All good questions. Great, great, great. Okay. So we have NPR and NPMR and then we also have PMR.

I'll just write that here. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And the claim is that PMR is a subset of NPM. Yeah. Can NPMR interact over here? Like they're causally influenced within NPMR. Something can causally influence another part of NPMR. of NPMR? Or only do you have to go to a higher NPMR, let's say, two, this is NPMR one, and only this guy can influence here? No, things can be influenced within that NPMR. Things can happen, decisions can be made, choices can be done that affect things. Yes. Okay. Because then like I'm overly Donnish. So doesn't that indicate that PMR is not a subset, but instead more like a target on a domain. So here is NPMR. And I'll tell you the reason why. And please forgive me if this is too foolishly technical for no reason. It's like, there's a function, let's call it F,

and the domain is NPMR, and then it goes to PMR. And the reason why I say these are separate is because PMR can't influence. You said that you have to go out, only NPMR can influence this guy. Correct? Can PMR influence without NPMR? No, PMR is a product. it's created by npmr yeah yeah right right

so then the reason why i was having a a bit of a tricky time understanding this is because if pmr was simply a subset right here it should be able to influence within itself just like npmr can influence within itself because it's a subset, unless there's something special about this subset. Well, PMR does influence within itself. You know what I mean? We make choices. You and I make choices. We decided to come here and have this talk, you know, and that may change things.

Now, did that choice occur in NPMR or in PMR? Oh, all your consciousness is in NPMR. Consciousness is not physical. Consciousness is non-physical. Information is in NPMR. Consciousness is not physical. Consciousness is non-physical. Information is non-physical. You are a non-physical consciousness. You're just playing an avatar in a virtual reality game. problem you're having is that these concepts are so different from the basic worldview and concepts that most people have, particularly technical people, particularly physics and science people,

that it just seems to be really hard to get your mind wrapped around them. And all the little problems that pop up will disappear just once you get that basic concept that we are consciousness. We are playing a character. Just like you would play an elf in World of Warcraft. You're playing a character. That character is your physical body. That's the avatar. Your consciousness.

Now, from that avatar's viewpoint, the player is non-physical. Yeah, I see. Just like a video game. And the computer is non-physical. It is a video game, right? It's a virtual reality, a video game. So you're the consciousness. You are non-physical relative to the viewpoint inside of the virtual reality, which is your body.

So your consciousness is a non-physical thing, but it's really who you are. That consciousness is the player. That consciousness is making all the choices for that avatar. If the consciousness doesn't give that avatar, doesn't make any choices, the avatar just sits there. I mean, think of your elf that you're playing. If you don't hit a key or move a mouse, you don't give it any instructions. It just sits there and wobbles, doesn't do anything. Well, so all the choices, all the memory, all the thoughts, all the processing goes on in consciousness, not in the brain. There really is no brain. The brain is not even rendered unless somebody opens a skull and has to look at it. It's just a virtual reality. are not in that virtual reality so you are an npmr you're non-physical to that that that physical matter reality is just a virtual reality just like world of warcraft it's a game it's an

entropy reduction trainer what happens when there's brain damage which seems to occur in physical matter reality and when exactly when there's brain damage, what happens is according, remember, this virtual reality evolved according to a rule set, right? It's an evolved thing. All right. So the way the stuff is in that virtual reality is because of the rule set. You know, the rule set says that we can't flap our arms and fly. So we can't do that. It's the physics, chemistry, biology. That's the rule set. All right. So now here you are and your avatar gets brain damage. Somebody hits him in the head with an iron pipe. Now the rule set says that that's going to change the constraints on what that system can do. Same with your elf. If your elf that you're playing in World of Warcraft falls off a high cliff and hits the rocks at the bottom, it's going to be damaged. It's going to lose hit points. It's going to have to, you know, go someplace and rest or eat or do something else. It damages it. And now the player has to play

with constraints. So you have brain damage. You're the the consciousness you now have to play an avatar that has straight constraints according to the rule set okay rule set tells you what the constraints are okay so let's say i'm going to disembody this and make some sort of visual metaphor okay so your consciousness is up here and somehow it's tapping into a video game that's down here and it's playing and it's just logged on just like right right great great now these two have a fight down here and one of them is represented by you maybe one is represented by someone else okay that somehow affects what this guy feels because the rule set says what happens down here affects how you feel am i correct so far

is just or is this off no yeah the all the feelings are in the consciousness okay exactly now what makes you what makes this consciousness you because the way that i'm understanding an identity which is such a slippery concept if you just if you examine it it's not a well-defined concept to begin with but let's imagine it is which is difficult but what defines you is something like you have a personality you have a certain viewpoint you have you have your choices and so on but if those can be affected by what's physical what's pmr right with the with brain damage or augmentations then that's affecting the you, which is up here, which I meant. Yeah.

It's just constraining you. So you have, let's say you have brain damage and now you can't remember and you slur your words and you drag your left foot. Okay. Now you're the consciousness. And I thought what's happened to your avatar, your avatar fell off a cliff and hit his head on a rock. So now you have to play a

character that slurs its words, can't remember, and whatever. You are limited by what the rule set says your avatar can do. So you have a computer, remember? The computer is computing this. Now you're getting a data stream from that computer. Yeah. And you're interpreting that data as what's going on in that virtual reality. So now the computer says that you can't get up and dance because you're dragging your left foot. You can't go give a speech because you're slurring your words. So if you say, well, I'd like to go give a speech now, you can't get that. well, I'd like to go give a speech now. You can't get that. The computer isn't going to draw that in that reality. Because the rule set says, no, can't do that. Just like if you're playing an elf, and you say, oh, my elf's in a tight situation. Elf, flap your arms and fly. And what'll happen?

Nothing. It won't do that. Because the rule set in World of Warcraft won't let your elf flap his arms and fly. So you might want to do something as consciousness. But so you have, you know, you have the constraints that you have to work with as consciousness. Now you're the consciousness, you're making the choices, and you have all the feelings. Part of consciousness is the feeling part. It's the emotional part. So you're the one that feels the emotions. You're the one that feels the pain. You're the one that's tongue feels too fat to get in your mouth. All

that's part of what you interpret the data to be. Remember, you are getting the data that is all the sense data that this avatar is getting. It's just when you do World of Warcraft, it's just basically visual and sound. When you do this of Warcraft, it's just basically visual and sound. When you do this virtual reality, it's visual sound and feeling, it's touch, it's smell, it's everything. Okay, I guess here's my confusion. And I think this metaphor somewhat rectifies it. In World of Warcraft, let's just choose that.

In World of Warcraft, you have an avatar and you have hit points and so on. You have a certain set of attributes. Okay, then what you're saying is it would be a mistake In World of Warcraft, you have an avatar and you have hit points and so on. You have a certain set of attributes. Okay. Then what you're saying is it would be a mistake to identify the you as the avatar rather than the player. Is that true? Absolutely. So then what's left of the individual once you've scrapped the inclinations and the set of emotions and the personality? What's left?

Why would that be me? Why should I identify with that? Like I'm just being devil's advocate. Well, let me see if I can answer your question this way. So you're a piece of consciousness and you're going to log on to this avatar and you're going to log on to that avatar when that avatar is very, very young, maybe even before it's born. So, you know, it

depends when there's enough data coming in for you to experience, that's when you'd probably log on. So you log on and because you don't come with any history, all of your intellectual part doesn't come with you. The only thing that comes with you is the quality you've earned, the amount of entropy, you know, that you've reduced up to this point. So I thing that comes with you is the quality you've earned, the amount of entropy, you know, that you've reduced up to this point. So I call that quality of consciousness. That comes with you. And now you're logged on, just as quality of consciousness is logged on to this avatar. And all of the sense data that you begin to get, maybe in utero, maybe being born, maybe right afterwards, all that sense data, you define that

as you, because that's the only intellectual information that you've gotten. In other words, that's it. You didn't come with any memory, like, okay, I'm really sitting in my computer, and it's time for lunch. I'm going to put this game on hold and go have a sandwich. It's not like that. You're 100% involved in that player. And everything that that avatar has done, you feel like you have done. Because the only data you're getting defining reality is the data the computer's sending you describing what that avatar is sensing. Now, you have the emotions, you have the feelings, the avatar is just some eye candy for you to look at so that you can see the interactions and see what's going on.

It's how you interpret the game map and the players. So you get that data. That's the data you have. That's how you interpret it. And you learn to interpret it as that infant. You know, you learn to tell the difference between a house and your mother. You just learn that through your experience. So here you are, this piece of consciousness, and you learn the difference between mom and an apple and dad and the car and all these things. As you grow up, you start building language and vocabulary and ideas and beliefs and things. So that's your world as consciousness. It's not like you have something else going on.

You're just this piece of consciousness that's wholly 100% logged on, and you didn't come with any intellectual part. Now, in my model, I call that a free will awareness unit. It's a subset of the individuated unit of consciousness. So the individuated unit of consciousness just takes a subset of itself and just its quality and logs on to this game to get the data for that character. Okay, so what you are really is an individuated unit of consciousness who has logged on a piece of itself. You put a partition down to that piece of itself and you log that on to this virtual reality game. You see, that's kind of, that's the way you should kind of look at the structure. So yes. Let me see if I can explain it back to you. So, you know, if I actually

understand it. Okay. I'm just imagining some orb. Okay. That's just the way my visual systems work. Okay. So I'm imagining an orb over a landscape and this landscape, the orb can shoot out one of its tendrils and then it's on, then that's the equivalent of logging on. Okay. And the orb represents consciousness. The orb represents me in some way, but this orb right now doesn't have feelings because it's not logged on. I don't know if that's actually true, but in my metaphor. Okay. So right now it has no sense data. It somehow puts out an arm, goes into this little baby, little baby boy who has certain

proclivities and then grows up and it's fed that to its consciousness, that orb. Okay. Then when this boy dies in the physical world, the body dies, let's say, is the claim that the orb persists, and also that the orb was there before the baby was born? Or is it that the orb was created with the baby somehow? Okay, it's all of the above. It's a little confusing, but let me try to lay it out for you. Yeah, just correct me where I'm somewhat insensate. So we start with a individuated unit of consciousness.

Okay. And that's really who you are. You're a piece of consciousness. You just, you know, think of it as this big consciousness system and it just takes a part of itself and petitions that off and calls it you. That's an I-U-O-C. It's just a piece of itself. So you can think of a, of an emulated, you knowulated piece of this larger system. So you're just a piece of the larger system. And all right. So now that's you. You're the consciousness. Now, he finds out that you can evolve more readily if you log on to this game, because this is an entropy reduction trainer. And what you're trying to do is reduce your entropy. So because of that, you take a piece of yourself.

Now you partition off just a piece of yourself that contains your quality of consciousness. And that piece of yourself now is the thing that's receiving the data stream and is logged onto the game and is working the game. Okay. So it has an avatar and it's experiencing. It's just a piece of myself though. Just a piece of yourself. What are the other pieces doing in this example?

The other piece is, is basically going to be the accumulation function of all of your experiences. Cause the whole point is to, is to evolve. And to do that is a is a is a iterative process all of my experiences from past lives or all of my lives all of your experience from all of the from all the avatars you've ever played all the choices that you've ever made all of that is kept and accumulated because it's all part of this growing up process if you understand your history it's easier to make sense of you know of what you're doing so it's it's all part of this growing up process. If you understand your history, it's easier to make sense of what you're doing. So it's this cumulative function.

So that's what your I-U-O-C is that function. So it takes a part of itself, not the memory of all those past lives or anything else. It takes just the quality, logs on, becomes you, the little baby boy. You go through life, and that little baby boy gets old and dies of old age. And now what happens? As soon as he dies of old age, he's no longer in the avatar anymore. Avatar's dead. So the avatar, you're not getting any more sense data from the avatar. Sense data stopped.

So that consciousness that was this free will awareness unit, the subset of the IEOC, it starts to take that partition down. It starts to reintegrate with the individuated unit of consciousness, life over. So yes, that individuated unit of consciousness is immortal. It lives on through many lifetimes. Just because your elf dies, the player doesn't drop over dead. You know, the player continues on. So now that, but instead of being a player where you just have all of you,

you know, you're there, you're in your room, you know, you have a refrigerator in the next door and you're playing and you can always put it on pause. We're not doing it that way. We're going to take a part of you that's going to log on and stay with that game period. From that point on, it's just logged onto that game and doesn't do anything else. And it starts not with any memory of what it started with,

but just with its quality. Okay. So we have, so it's just a piece of you. All right. Now that you die, that piece of you, now the partition's taken down because it's not logged on. No point logging onto a dead thing. So the partition's taking down, that free will awareness unit kind of re-becomes a part of the individuated unit of consciousness. And one more lifetime of experience is there for it to try to evolve from its experience. And then it begins the individual unit of consciousness, starts to negotiate for another lifetime, another chance to learn things.

And it repeats again. It partitions off a part of itself at its now new higher quality of consciousness because you were a good boy and you did a lot of good things. So now you leave the hole a little higher. It goes back with that little higher level quality of consciousness and starts the thing all over again. Starts to, you know, connects, logs on to a baby. So that's the way the process works. So you, the consciousness that's making choices is just a subset of you, your I-U-O-C. Okay. So you're the cumulative part. Yeah. Now, when people say one should abandon their ego, is that somewhat approximately like saying, don't mistaken the avatar as the orb or mistaken the

avatar as the individuated unit of consciousness or is that different no abandoning your ego is a little is a little different thing ego or first consciousness is awareness that makes choices simple definition of consciousness it's awareness that makes choices all right right, now, ego is awareness in the service of fear. Ego is about self. It's self-focused. And that's because of fear. So fear really creates ego. It's awareness in the service of fear. That's ego. Now, given that most everybody in our world has a lot of fear, then everybody in our world has a lot of fear then everybody in our world has a lot of ego so much so that when freud looked at everybody in the world he said

well everybody's got ego and they seem to be doing all right so it must be a good thing okay so it's not really a good thing it's a dysfunctional thing but it's what we're trying to outgrow and get rid of we don't want want to have any of our awareness in the service of fear. So ego is that. Ego is a representation of your fear. Ego is the thing that helps you whitewash over the fear. Wait, sorry. Ego is a representation of fear?

Ego is a product of fear. Let me put it that way. It represents the fear in the sense that what the ego does is it tries to make you feel better about the fear. It whitewashes the fear. The fear says, oh, you know, I feel terribly inadequate. And the ego says, oh, I'm not inadequate. That person's just a, you know, just a crud. That person's really stupid.

They just think I'm inadequate because they're so stupid. That's the ego that tries to whitewash over the fear. So you don't have to deal with that fear. You blame it on somebody else. Oh, I don't get angry. George makes me angry. Could you feel fear without an ego? And could you have an ego without fear? If you didn't have any fear, you wouldn't have an ego. Okay. And if you, can you have an ego without having fear? Sorry, I think those are equivalent.

No, yeah, you can. Let me restate it. Let me restate it. I'm wondering about the implication arrow. So does fear always imply an ego? Yes. Okay. Now, does ego always imply a fear?

Yes. Okay. So then I know you don't like when I do this, but to take it a bit mathematically, it's how you's how you yeah they're they're equivalent but it doesn't mean they're the same right right right equivalent is not mean isomorphic is not the same right yeah it's different so because you because ego is a product of fear then you're not going to have an ego if you don't have any fear and if you have an ego, well, then you must have fear because ego is a product of fear. So they're different, but they're not equivalent. They're not the same thing. One produces the other. So you can't have something produced that doesn't have the thing

that produced it. Wait. Well, okay. I mean, let's get to the NPMR experiences, because there are two extremely interesting parts of the book, not just two, obviously, but there are two that stood out to me that I desperately want to talk to you about. So one is your first experience where you went in and you had such a transcendence from transcendental meditation that you almost fell off your chair. Okay. I don't believe in that time you spoke to other beings, but at some point, I believe when you were younger, you spoke to some beings and then when you were older, you recalled it and then you were able to do it some more. Okay. Now, like that's super, super, super, super interesting because, well, the implications for that now everything i'm saying if ever it sounds like critiques please i desperately want to believe

in i know you don't like belief but i just really want to yeah i don't want you to believe i want you to experience it for yourself i understand it would be great if all of what you're saying was absolutely true and so if you see what i'm doing as almost poking and prodding, please, it's like, I want to believe in, so I need to. I don't need, I don't care about poking and prodding. Poke and prod all you like. Feel free to ask the hard questions. But it's coming from a good place.

I just want you to know that. Okay. I'm not trying to make you look foolish in the least. No, that's not the point. I don't mind hard questions. If you want to say, well, how do you know you're just not making all this up? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm not trying to make you look foolish in the least. No, that's not the point. I don't mind hard questions. If you want to say, well, how do you know you're just not making all this up? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's go, let's get to a little bit of fallibility. I don't mind.

When it comes to the two parts, there's an intellect and then there's an intuitive part of you. Now the intuitive part is notoriously fallible and airy. Yeah. For most people. That's not its its nature it's just that way in most people well we can say that it is somewhat in nature only because well as far as we know animals don't have much of an intellect and when we're in our more tribal states there was much more war and famine and brutality let's say obviously we've magnified that because of our intellect with nuclear weapons and so on. Well, let me make one statement about what you said that maybe will help clear things up. Your intuition can be just as accurate and just as reliable as your intellect. You just have to develop it. In our culture, we don't develop it. We

just develop our intellect, we spend, you know, 20 or 30 years going through school and graduate school. And, you know, we go to college, we do all this stuff to develop our intellect. We do nothing to develop our intuition. So our intuition is terribly undeveloped. If we didn't go to school and develop our intellect, that wouldn't be working very well either. We wouldn't have much of an intellect. So your intuition can be as accurate and as reliable as your intellect. It's just that we don't develop it. If we did develop it, we could use it as a very precise tool. And is one of the claims, the way that we develop it is through love? Because the way that I would understand that we develop it, at least through my research, as unspecific as this sounds,

is through truth and love. But love and truth are so tricky to define, but we have an intuitive notion of them. Like we know when we're lying. We know when we're deceiving. We know when we're manipulating. You develop that intuitive space. There's a couple of things that are required to develop it. And in the process of developing that intuitive space,

you often do evolve some and become a little more love. So they're connected. But it's not that love really develops the intuitive space, you often do evolve some and become a little more love. So they're connected, but it's not that love, you know, really develops the intuitive space. It's like a, a product of developing that it, it comes, it comes with it. Because you made an analogy between love and the lowering of the entropy. Sorry. Love is the lowered state of entropy. Whereas the process of lowering love is something different than love. Yeah. Okay. So this intuitive side, one, you have to reduce the noise level in your mind.

This intuitive state is a mental thing, right? So first you have to reduce the noise. That's what you learn when you meditate. You learn to reduce the noise so you don't have these thoughts buzzing through your mind all the time. What am I going to do next? What about this? I should read that other book. What's for dinner tonight? Do psychedelics also help with this or is that completely different? Psychedelics are basically a real bad idea. At least if you use them more than once, more than once or twice, they're a very bad idea. So I don't recommend psychedelics. They give you experience, but an experience, you can't grow up from an experience.

It's, it's what you, it's what you make of the experience. It's the process of having that experience of getting there and coming back and so on. It's the, it's the journey, not just the experience. So having the experience is maybe a, it may be a wow, and it may be something that you feel like it's a, you know, a life changing event, but it really doesn't change much. It's how you integrate that experience, the context in which you have the experience and being shot up, you know, like a rocket because you're taking a drug. Yeah, definitely big experience, but it's not really going to take you anywhere significant. 70% of people five years later, so almost permanent effect, a one standard deviation in feelings of openness and feelings of compassion as self-reported and reported by their family members. So that's why it seems like whether or not they're experiencing something real, quote unquote, it seems like it's as a whole good. So I'm not saying you're denigrating

experiences, but why are you putting them at a second tier? I'm putting it this way because it's the same thing about the difference between acting kind and being kind. So the experience is something that your intellect has. It's your experience. This is what you did. This is what you said. This is what you saw. Now, that experience can be amazing and can be life changing. But if it doesn't get from your intellect down into your being level down into your intuitive side, then you will just

it'll be a way you act, but it won't change who you are. That's the difference. Now, some people, you know, take drugs, and once they take a drug, and they kind of get that vision, and they see this bigger picture, then they start searching, they go to the internet, and what's going on? Has anybody else seen things like that? And then they become seekers. That's good. Okay, now that drug event was a good thing in their life, because it pushed them in the right direction. What's bad about drugs is if you take that experience and you don't make the effort and do the work to learn about it, to internalize it, to grow up from it, then you want another one because that one was kind of cool. Let's do it again and let's do it again. And let's do it again. And you become convinced in your own mind that you are much more spiritual than you were. And you think big thoughts and that you act better and so on. And you may actually act a little better. But the point is, are you growing up?

Are you changing yourself? Is the real, what's the word, authentic, different than you were before. And a little example of this, as far as science goes, is that when, his name escapes me now, he did research, pretty good research with DMT, Strassman or something like that, Strasburg, Strassman. Anyway, he did DMT research. So he got a bunch of people around. And over a year or so, he got these people, gave them psychology tests, you know, interviewed them, really got into their minds and who they were and what they were and attitudes. And then he'd give them some DMT. And in a very controlled situation, they had experiences.

They described these as life-changing experiences. They saw big pictures. They learned and so on. Well, after all that was done, and each of them had had probably a dozen or more trips, maybe twice that many, I don't know. But when the research was done, he waited for six months or a year or two, I don't remember, maybe as much as five. And he got all the people back together again and ran them through all those same psychological tests and who they were and what they thought and what their attitudes were, he couldn't find any difference. He said for all the times he heard this has changed my life, it didn't really seem to change anybody's life. So most of that is perception of the person who has seen those things and feels smarter, bigger, and better. And it reminds me of a bunch of drunks sitting

around a table, all of whom feel brilliant. And in one night of imbibing, they solve all the problems of the world in a perfect way. Go home and the next morning, can't really remember what those solutions were. I think it's more of, for most people, it changes them at the intellectual level, and it changes their perceptions, but it doesn't necessarily change them. Now, that's a generalization. I'm not saying that that is the way it is for everybody. I'm just saying that typically, people who take drugs tend to think that they are different fundamentally, when mostly they didn't grow up much from it at all. For them, it was like a roller coaster ride, a peak experience. But

if it doesn't change you, so that experience has to get from the intellect down into where you actually change who you are. Otherwise, there's no growth. Can experiences induce a change without you having to try just because you've experienced it for whatever reason, like let's say Neo coming out of the matrix, that I would imagine would fundamentally change him without trying, it just shocks him into change. And then he no longer wants to be in the matrix. Yeah, well, what it does is it reorients his understanding of what reality is

and understands an understanding of what's important and what's not. You know, it totally reorients his reality. So all the things he used to believe, well, now he realizes those things weren't so. There's some other different reality here. And if he really takes that in and says, oh, this is the way it is, and he sees it and he's convinced that, then yes, it's changed him. So an experience can change you at a deep level. And some people can have transcendental

awakenings and experiences, and it does change them at a very deep level. Most people, not so much, if it comes from drugs. It can't get any worse. And when they hit bottom, they begin to think of, well, what else can I do? What else is there? I'm done. I'm at the bottom. I have to stop trying to control my reality. I got to just accept it.

And once they start accepting and stop controlling, oh, suddenly they get better and better. And, you know, six months later, they're a whole new person. They've grown up. They've transcended this problem of needing to control everything. And now they can let things go. Okay, it's a growing experience. So you can have experiences and come out of them grown up more than when you went into them. But that's because there was the context, the context of the journey of getting there, of the dissension, of the pain, of the being there, of giving up. And then when you give up control, you start to come back up the other side. So within that context, they can change themselves.

But the context is, well, I swallowed a drug, and I had this experience, and then I woke up the next day. Where's the context? Where's the learning context? You see, so most people that do that have a harder time growing from it than if they actually have a meaningful journey to get there. Taking a drug is not a meaningful journey. It's just wham, there's the experience. Oh, now it's over. You feel bad. You feel sick. It depends on what kind of drug you take. And that's the end of it. Whereas if you spend time meditating, clearing your mind, getting focused, being able to shut the intellect down, being able to make connection to information that's intuitive. Well, now that's the thing that's going to take you years to do and a lot of effort and

work. And you're going to work on getting it more reliable and understanding it. And when you get there, you're a different person. But it's not just because of the experience you had. It's because of all the things you learned along the way. It's the context in which that experience happened. So without the context, and drugs doesn't have a context other than swallowing pills or drinking a liquid. And that just doesn't help most people grow up very much, but they feel more grown up because they had this fantastic experience. They saw the world as it really was. And okay, they've seen that, but now how is that going to change who they are? For the most, the time it doesn't't it doesn't mean it can't it just means i know

most people that doesn't as far as i know in the research for with maps which studies psychedelics somewhat assiduously the reports are that people's families report them as being and something like a 70 i'm not advocating for drugs so people who are listening please don't take this but something like 70 of the people have self reports that they're more spiritual and open, but you're like, well, forget about self reports. You can take the cannabis and say you're, you drive better because you're assessing yourself when you're on cannabis. Well, in a way the family reports.

Yeah. In a way they would be because they come back and because they've had this big experience, they have a larger picture. They have this larger picture. They see that. And intellectually, they've gained perspective. Is there a reality to this larger picture that's induced by the psychedelics? Or is it false and the true way to truly see, let's say, you have to go through years of meditation. Are they opening the same doors, in other words, or similar doors? No, it's not false.

It's real. They're going into the- NPMR? You would call it NPMR? Yeah. They're going into the same kind of mental space. It's just mind. It's mind space.

It's not a special place. It's mind space. When they take that drug, then they're taking an adventure in mind space. It's a mental thing. And that's the same thing that you get to when you meditate and do other things. It's just they're getting it without any useful context. I see. I see. And when they come back, they feel more spiritual. They feel more relaxed, maybe,

and more expansive. And they have these feelings for a while. And basically, family could say, yeah, they're calmer now. They're more sedate. They're not as raucous or they're not as bad behaved. And that's probably true for a while, but it tends to wear off. It tends to wear off over time. And again, if it just means that they're acting better, okay, maybe like the thing where you're afraid of God, so you act better. Maybe when they've seen this big picture and they see reality and they kind of see their place in it, they go, oh, I need to clean up my act. I need to

act better. But again, if it's acting, the family would be appreciated. Acting is, like I say, a civilizing family would say, oh, great, he's acting better. But did he really get anything useful out of it, other than he's acting better? Well, acting better is that much. Being better is that much. It's huge compared to the acting. We are not our image. We are something else. If one was simply acting better, would they feel more tranquil or would they feel the same? No, they would probably feel more tranquil. Even if they were simply acting better for the wrong reasons. Yeah, they would feel better because in their mind, they're saying,

gee, I was so tight and I'm tense and I make other people tense. I'm just going to relax. I'm just going to be still and I'll be quiet and I won't talk so much. I'll listen more. Well, that's the intellect telling them how it is they should be. So that's how they are. That's what they do. And something comes in to contrary to that, they push it away, they bury it someplace. So yes, they would act better, they'd feel better. But what happens is when you're acting, the real you comes out. You see, the real you is still in there. And when circumstances change to where, let's say, suddenly that person finds themselves in a situation that is very unpleasant, well, all that acting goes to hell in the handbasket. That real person comes roaring out of that situation. And oh, well, there's the same old person we used to know,

still in there, mean as ever you see and do they come out permanently or they just appear in that negative scenario no they probably they probably appear in that scenario and then they go back to acting it's just that you know that acting isn't deep so what's wrong with that is that if we zoom out to the NPR picture, you know, who you'd think were good. A riot takes place. A riot takes place. You know, somebody bombs something. And pretty soon you have nice people are running in and grabbing TVs and running off with them.

They're, you know, they're joining a mob and, you know, throwing rocks through windows. Perfectly nice people last week. You know, they would go out of their way to be helpful to someone. But right now, well, you see, that's not two different people. Yeah, that's not two different people. It's the same person. One person has an image. They're nice. But underneath of that, there's something a lot rarer. That's the problem with civilization. In our civilization, we're nice and polite. We've learned how to be polite. We've been taught as children, be polite. So we're all very polite. But underneath that, it's a very thin veneer of politeness. Underneath that is the real person. And when the going gets tough, that real person

comes out, that politeness goes away, and that's the real us. That's what happens when things go bad. In an extremely practical scenario, let's say you have a toddler, and you said, what we do is we reprimand them and say, hey, please act in this manner, and then they don't understand the reasons why. They just know I might get hit if I don't, or I'll get yelled at or scolded. Okay. What would be a more effective way of raising, let's say a three-year-old to six-year-old? You would have to treat them with respect. You'd have to see them as a little person deserving your respect and you have

to interact with them on their level where they are. So if they're doing something that is really annoying or rude or, you know, not, not good, you'd have to stop them. But rather than just holler and stop that, see, that's not that helpful. You'd have to get down on their level and, and interact with them. You're not going to give them a lecture because at three or four years old, you know, lectures don't work, you know, they're not going to do much, but you'd have to pick them

up. It's just as bad as scolding. Yeah. You'd have to pick them up. Yeah. You'd have to pick them up or stop what they were doing. Maybe if they were banging, you know, something on a window glass and you'd have to say, no, we don't do that because you could break the glass. So it's not a good thing to do. And you explain to them, not that you're angry. See, as soon as you're angry, stop that. Well, you know, they kind of put up a wall to that. So you have to be calm.

You have to really care about them. There's a little person in here that really doesn't know that they're being destructive. So we have to treat them kindly, but we have to tell them, no, you cannot do that. You might break something. And then we let them go. They do it again. We tell them that again. And then if I say after the fifth time, we decide, well, we're going to have to do something more than talk to them. So this time we make them, you know, go back in their crib for, you know, 15 minutes or some other kind of thing, or you just hold them, don't let them down until they, so it's difficult, but you have to do it with caring and with love. And at their level, you can't do it with the idea that they need to learn how to act like you act. You know,

they need to be adult. They need to be more adult. And we just holler at them and we use fear to control them. Don't do that or you'll get a spanking. Don't do that or you'll be in timeout. So we try to frighten them into doing what we want. Well, using fear to control them is not a good way to bring them up. You bring them up with love and one day they will realize, oh, my parents don't want me to do that.

I shouldn't do it because my parents are pretty smart. They know what's good because they trust you because they've always gotten support from you. It's a different sort of thing. So with real little children, it's hard because they only can understand so much. So you expect a lot of bad behavior is okay. You got to deal with that. Don't give them toys. It'll break glass. See, I'm running a simulation in my head and I see, oh, like a simulation in a simulation. And I find it hard to get to an answer as to why we should act right, quote unquote, without making a reference to one's ego, which is what we're saying we should get rid of or the fear we should get rid of. And the reason why is let's imagine there's a three-year-old, four-year-old child and you say,

don't break that glass. But don't hit that because the glass might break. Well, why should I care about the glass breaking? Because it might fall on the ground. Well, why should I care about that? Someone else has to pay for it and they also might get hurt. Well, why should I care about that? Eventually, I would imagine in your model, but this is just me imagining it would come down to don't do that because that's ultimately bad for you as well. Sure. They would learn, they would learn that it's part, you know, we're all here. But then to me, that's, that's an appeal to an ego. No, because the same don't do this because it's bad for you. No, what, what you would do is say that we're all here together and it is going to be bad for them, but that's not the key point. It's that we all live here together. We all share this space. We all have to look out for each other.

You know, that's the thing. If you break that glass, then you might step in it and cut your foot. Mom might step in and cut her foot. That cold air would come in and we would be uncomfortable. Bugs would come in and we wouldn't like that. So it's going to be a problem for everybody that lives here. And, you know, and it's going to be a problem for you too. So it's your problem, but it's everybody's problem.

Now you'd have to have a kid that was more like six or seven years old before they'd understand that. If it's a three-year-old basically, or a two-year-old, what you do is you take the thing that can break glass out of their hands because it's not an-year-old, basically, or a two-year-old, what you do is you take the thing that can break glass out of their hands. Because it's not an appropriate toy for them. If they've got a hammer, they're not old enough to have a hammer. Okay, so let's talk about a six-year-old or a five-year-old who incessantly asks why. What if they say, so why should I care about that it's bad for my family?

It seems like it's obvious, like I should care, but I'm being particularly persnickety six-year-old. No, you can. Yes, you would say, well, this is a problem for everyone. You leave your dirty clothes all over the room, then somebody has to pick them up. And it's just extra chores that we need to do. And if we're doing those chores, we can't be playing with you or doing something like that. know right and so to me that's why it comes down to the ego no no it affects it's not their ego it's their caring that you're trying to hit not their ego you're not trying to make them afraid and you're not

getting to their ego it's not that oh that's good for me but it's i'm a part of this thing it's good for all of us it's good for me and it's good for them they need to see themselves'm a part of this thing. It's good for all of us. It's good for me, and it's good for them. They need to see themselves as a part of a whole, not as just an individual. Now, children come into this world very self-centered. That's the nature of being a child. You are very small, you are very vulnerable, and you are you, and then there's everything else out there in that big world, that scary world. So children are very self-centered. And we could say that maturity is defined as how much of that self-centeredness you get rid of. So that's how you mature.

It's how you grow up, is by reducing that self-centeredness. Well, that's reducing that ego. reducing that self-centeredness. Well, that's reducing that ego. So that's, you know, you can have some people who are 60 years old and they're still terribly self-centered. You know, that's, they haven't grown up much. They're still acting like children. So children should be expected to be very self-centered. That's natural for children. And you don't punish them for being self-centered. It's just who they are. You have to show them that they're part of a bigger thing. They're part of a collective called a family, and they need to take that into consideration.

And if that family is working well together and the family is working, then their life is going to be happier. But if the family isn't working together, then their life isn't going to be so well. So it does affect them. But they see themselves as part of something bigger. It's not just about them. So if I care about the positive, that's not necessarily my ego. But if I care about the negative or fear, that's my ego. So for example, if I care about, I want to be happy, I would associate that with the ego still, because you care about yourself negative or fear. That's my ego. So for example, if I care about, I want to be happy. I would associate that with the ego still, because you care about yourself in some way. No, I want to be happy.

That's not ego. Now, ego is awareness in the service of fear. Remember, consciousness is awareness that makes choices. So awareness in the service of fear, that's ego. If it's not in the service of fear, that's ego. If it's not in the service of fear, that's not ego. Now awareness in the service of love, that's what Freud sort of roughly defined as super ego. It's about other. It's not just about self. So you can say, oh, I'd like to be better. I'd like to become love. And now that's awareness in the service of growing up. Okay. I like this because most of the problems with me that I find, and I'm pretty

sure many people have the same problem is that some of these terms, the way they're used, not you, but the way that they're used in general parlance is equivocal. And so when you use it, you mean something specific, but when other people use it, for example, they synonymize ego with self. And so that's why I'm having a bit, I was having a bit of trouble and I see this even in, well, hopefully, hopefully this podcast, if you ever see me getting into the meticulous intricacies, the reason is that I try to be as specific as possible first to disentangle what's embroiled in my head, but also because many other podcasts and many other interviewers or whatever it may be, when they talk, they talk at a certain layman

level. And I feel like plenty of the truth is discarded in the simplicity. And even in physics, like you know, this, at least for me, there's plenty that was difficult to understand because it was told to me incorrectly. So we're taught physics chronologically, Newton, Laplace, and so on and so on. But there's so much in physics, it's wonderful if you're actually taught it in its specificity. So for example, velocity is a more fundamental concept than speed, and speed is a more fundamental concept than distance, which is the opposite of what we're told. But if the viewer or whoever's listening understands a bit of differential geometry, you would know that velocity doesn't require a metric, speed requires a metric. So you need more structure to get speed. And then you need something called partition of unity to integrate over speed to get distance.

And that's interest is totally interesting, but it trips you up if you don't trips you up at the later years of physics. Something else is the wave function. The wave function is not a function. The wave function is technically a smooth section on a C-line bundle. And you'll get into, well, I got into plenty of trouble thinking that it's a function, because then how are you supposed to do quantum mechanics on a sphere? You have to have different open spaces that you do. You have to conceptualize it as a section. But anyway, so hopefully what I'm trying to-

You have to be aware that all these things are metaphors. There is no wave function. They just say wave function because they don't know what else to say. Physicists are mostly materialists, and they really don't like action at a distance because that's not materialistic. You know, they want a trail from here to there of everything. That's why they generate fields. Fields don't really exist.

You know, there are no fields. There's just information. Information doesn't require a field. So they will take a, they know that, okay, we've got this particle and we, there's some probability that it's going to manifest someplace. And they look at that probability distribution and they see how that works. And then they want to make some kind of connection, some kind of causal connection between the two. And up comes a idea of a wave packet and no, nothing's waving. It's a probability wave. So it's just that they're probably in this wave packet represents

probability. All that's just that they're probably in this wave packet represents probability. All that's just metaphor. It's stuff they're making up to allow them to create a model in which to describe what's going on. But particularly with quantum mechanics, when you try to get down into the details of what is this wave function, just exactly what is this wave function? What's waving here? What's the function? You'll find it all falls apart because there really isn't any such thing? It's just exactly what is this wave function? What's waving here? What's the function? You'll find it all falls apart because there really isn't any such thing. It's just a metaphor for the thing that allows you to get from A to B. What you're calling a metaphor, you mean a model. Yeah. Okay. Great. It's just a model. Something somebody makes up. You know, all the things are like that. An electron is a model.

It's a metaphor. You know, we measure, we say an electron is a little chunk of mass with a charge. Well, that's not an electron anymore. That used to be an electron before we understood better. Now we know that electron is a point with the attributes of mass and charge. See, there's a difference. So people who measure, let's say the original, what was it, Millikan oil drop experiment back in the 1800s where they use two plates,

an electric field, oil drops, they decide that there's a charge on it, and they decide what the charge is. That's E. It's the charge of the electron. Well, what they measured wasn't an electron. They measured an effect, right? They only measure effects. And then they make up a model. They make up a thing called an electron. Let's call it an electron because we believe in particles. So we'll make that an electron and it'll have this charge. And to be a thing, it has to have a little chunk of mass.

Well, that doesn't work. Quantum mechanics looks at electrons as a chunk of mass with charge. They can't get anything right. They look at it as a point with attributes of mass and charge. They can get the right answer. So we find out that there really is no electron. It's just a model in order to explain the result that they get. So we make all sorts of models. And then the problem with that is, in the beginning, people are aware that these are

just models, right? Things we make up in order to have some way of, you know, of saying how it, how it works. So we make this model. And then we begin to believe it, rather than realize that it's just a model. And pretty soon, it becomes dogma. And of course, electrons are little chunks of math with charge. Everybody knows that. And it becomes dogma. And then it becomes a blind spot, because it's a belief.

And now we can't understand things, because they don't act that way. And all that's just weird physics, weird quantum mechanics. So the problem is that we don't realize that much of the stuff that we think of as facts are not facts. They're models. They're theory. Somebody has reached up and brought right out of the clear blue sky a reason why this could be the causal link, you know, the causal thing that's happening, because we believe in physical causality, material causality, because we're materialists. We need a material cause for things, when actually all we really need is information.

So we don't have to have a field. We just have a calculation of what the force is at this point, and at that point, and some other point. Then, okay, a field can predict those measurements, but predicting them isn't causing them. They're caused by information. They're caused by being part of the rule set. That's the way this place works.

It's a different way of looking at things, but you'll see that when you get into the details of physics, often you'll run into things that are hard to understand and hard to explain, and that's because mostly they're models, and we're trying to make them into little physical things, and they're not. They're just models to try to draw a materialistic description of how does this get to that? How do we end up with this result? So we easily, you know, and then we can do math. We write down math and then we interpret the math as something physical. Well, most scientists, I would say, at least if you're a good scientist, you should be what's called an instrumentalist. That is, you don't

confuse your model for reality. You just say that this predicts and is falsifiable. And it seems like every time we do so-and-so, we get this result. And that's exactly what the equation says. It doesn't mean, well, obviously, as you know, there are plenty of concepts that have been overturned over and over. But it's not just to defend science in general. It's not just models, like someone makes it up. They do make it up, but it's not made up in the same way that a fairy is made up. No, no, no. It's made up as an explanation.

And usually the explanation is driven by materialism, and we need a material cause. Does that mean that there is no science of consciousness? Because if one is to presume consciousness is non-material, but we've heard this term, I'm sure you've heard this term, and I've interviewed other people who claim to be studying the science of consciousness. Are you saying that there cannot be a science of consciousness because science is just of the material world? No, there is a science of consciousness. What we're saying is that science should not be relegated or exclusive to objective world. There's a lot more to our reality than the objective world. And if you take, say, only the

objective world can be science, then that means that consciousness can't be science because it's subjective. It's consciousness in a mind. It's subjective, obviously. But I would say that, of course, you can have a science of consciousness, that science is applying logic to problems. It's making models that work, models that will explain things. And if you can make a model, and if it explains all of your personal facts that are in your experience, then that's a good model. And if it predicts other facts and gives you structure in which you can hang your experience, then that's a valid model. And it's scientific because it's based on logic. And it's understandable. It's repeatable. It's whatever.

So sure, there's a science of consciousness. Now, many physicists would deny that. They would say that physics, chemistry, and biology are the only sciences there are. And everything else is soft science, like psychology. Have you heard of Daniel Dennett? I mean, obviously, you've heard of Daniel Dennett. Have you read Daniel Dennett's book, Consciousness Explained? No, I have not read it. Okay.

I was going to ask your opinion on it. Let's change gears and go back to you having some experiences with NPMR or mind space individuals. I don't know what else to call them. Yeah, just the experience within the larger consciousness system. This physical reality just being one subset of that. Okay. Actually, let's go back to you debugging some code. Are you suggesting that you were able to see the code as if out of body?

Or are you suggesting that your memory was much better than you thought and you were able to see the code in your own brain sitting there in the chair because you're in a deeply hypnotic meditative state like which one are you suggesting occurred then it's a little bit it's like the second but more so yes i could see the code and it would it was scrolling by me just like i had a uh you know a printout you know you get printouts and it was almost like it was on the scroll and it was just going by and i was seeing the lines of code that they went by and one would go by and it'd be red. And I'd stop it and rewind and go up and look at that. And I just look at that line of code. And because I wrote all the code, I knew exactly what each line represented and where it was. And I'd say, really, that's

the problem? Okay. And that's a problem. Now I might not know what the problem was, but that line of code had a problem in it. So I'd go up there and I'd look at that line. And if I couldn't find the problem, I'd check, I'd repunch the card and seeing if the same thing repunched works. Because perhaps it was an error in printing. It was an error in the punching. So I'd realized that.

And when I went up and checked those lines, sure enough, they all, you know, it worked. It worked perfectly. All the ones that were red had errors in them. So it is obviously memory in the sense that I could see all those lines. I was very familiar with them. But it was more than just memory because I was getting it and it was scrolling. And if you'd ask me, tell me what line is above that one, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what line was above that one out of my memory. I couldn't have said that.

I didn't have the whole, you know, shoot, I had like 4,000 cards. I didn't have any of that memorized, but they were scrolling by in the right order and I could see them. So you could say, well, that was somewhere deep in your, you know, in your subconscious and you pulled that back up. But I find that kind of a wild, you know, conjecture. No, I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm actually trying to visualize it. So when you see it, are you seeing it with a, with a black background and it's just the cards or are you seeing it as if you're. No, pretty much a black background and it's just the cards or are you seeing it as if you're no pretty much a black background and just the just the lines going by and did you go in with the intention of wanting to debug or was that just the experience that came to it was a fatuous combination i was in i was meditating and i also was thinking about my code you know that is when you when you work on something

like debugging and and it takes you you know you're working on it over weeks and you have this thing and you're always constantly thinking what is the what is the problem here you know what isn't working and i had that i was in a meditation and i had that thought come up because that's what you also mentioned that transcendental is much better for people who have chaotic minds because they don't have to stop thinking in the same way that mindfulness wants you to. Yeah. They're thinking, but they're thinking nonsense, right? They're thinking stuff that's non-operable, you know, something you can't operate on, something that the intellect can't do anything with, you know, just a meaningless sound. So that's the thing. But you know, if your mantra was a ham sandwich, then that wouldn't that's the thing but you know if you're if your mantra was

a ham sandwich yes then that wouldn't work because you know how'd you know mine that wouldn't work because you might get hungry or you might think that's why it's not working for me okay okay so when i'm doing mine sometimes i put my fingers together sometimes i don't does that matter because i see people who traditionally interlock certain digits right does it matter not really does can it can it be a value yes it can there's a lot of things you know you're familiar with the placebo effect okay so if you think you're likely to get better, you will get better. If you think this is going to help you, it possibly can help you and make it work better just because it makes your attitude more positive toward it. Your intent

becomes a more positive intent toward the outcome, which actually then changes the outcome. Yes, it can be effective, but it isn't anything fundamental. And you can open this circuit or close that circuit, and it'll feel a little different. You're just feeling in your body, or you can be lying there, and you can touch your feet together or pull them apart, or put your hands on your legs, or put your hands up here, and you can feel a little different.

Oh, this feels different. The energy seems to flow differently. Well, that energy flowing differently is just metaphorical. Your differences are things that you're looking for a difference and you're finding one. You often find the things you're looking for, okay? Because you tend to manifest them. You create the stuff you're looking for. So if you're saying, well, I'm going to test this and see how this works. And you'll find a little difference there. You can turn it into a tool. Oh, whenever I put my fingers together like this, I'll be able to meditate real easily.

Now it becomes a tool and it's a thing you can use to help calm your mind. So yes, it works, but no, it's not fundamental. It's not about the body. The body is just an avatar. The body is a picture on a screen. You mentioned that doing it lying down is not as effective as sitting. And I'm wondering why is that the case? Oh, well, most of the time, I don't know that I said that, but I probably did. I would say it because for most people, lying down ends up falling asleep or losing consciousness, whereas sitting up is much harder to do that. So often people have a problem with they start to meditate and then they end up falling asleep. If you sit up, that's less likely to happen.

For you, who's an expert in this, can you get to a state where you visit Mindspace or NPMR with lying down and doing your mantra, or without even doing your mantra? I can get there in less than a tenth of a second while I'm doing anything. That's because you practice it for so long? Yeah, sure. Sure. It's just getting into these other spaces is just shifting your intent to another data stream. How long does it take you to go from, you know, the Sims to World of Warcraft? You can see how old my metaphors are, right? But how long does it take? Do you play video games? Have you played them before? No,

I don't play them. When video games were a thing and I was young enough to have the time to do it, you know, there were no computers. The world is a computer anyway. Yeah. So I by the time they came around, even the very crude ones, you know, I was, you know, in my 40s and 50s and I watched my children play them. So I have spent some time looking over their shoulder because I'm interested in how does this work? You know, what's the graphics like? You know, what are the rules? And it interests me. So I watched my kids playing them, but I've never really spent much time playing.

I've always had too many other things on my plate to do that were a higher priority. What's the relationship between your theory and non-dualism? relationship between your theory and non-dualism? Well, there is a relationship in that non-dualism basically ends up with the idea that we're all one, right? It's not dualistic and not us and them. We're all one thing. And mine basically says we're all pieces of consciousness. We're all pieces of the larger consciousness system. Now, you can think of a piece of consciousness, and it partitions off a little piece of memory and processing power and whatever. Now, there's an I-U-O-C, and it partitions off a piece of it. No, there's a free will awareness unit. But it's all just within this larger consciousness system. Non-duality basically comes to the we're

all one, and so do I. all we're all one thing which is consciousness we all have the same purpose which is to evolve it's uh yeah so in that sense we're the same but i think some of the non-dualists also go off onto other other side issues that i don't i just see that yeah as far as know, there are five different forms of non-dualism. So what you're saying is, I think monism, which is that we all belong to the same vellum, the same underlying material. And then there's another that has to do Advaita, I believe that says subject and object are the same. And then there's non-negation, which says up, down, left, right, good, evil. They're all the same. And I don't think that one is what you're saying, because you do say there needs to be a difference in order for

there to be information, because you can't have all zeros. You can't have all ones. There's no right. So there has to be some difference. So then it can't be that one. And then advaya might be something like the absolute and relative truths of Buddhism are one in the same. Now that one, you're not saying anything about Buddhism. So obviously that one doesn't count, the same. Now that one, you're not saying anything about Buddhism. So obviously that one doesn't count, but you did say something in the opening when we were speaking, which is that my big toe, you said it's my big toe because it's about my subjective understanding of the truth. And then that made me question is truth subjective or is truth objective in your model? truth objective in your model? Truth is something that's a good question.

I have a couple of things that I say a lot, and one of them is that you must always remain skeptical. You must be open-minded and skeptical, both at the same time. And the other thing I say, if it's not your experience, it's not your truth. So there are things that... Your truth, right. Not your truth. Yeah, meaning subjective. Everything, it turns out, is subjective. There really is no objective world. Everything is subjective.

Now, here's why that is. but the but the what we call the objective world is just that part of the subjective world that has very small um error bars it's it's defined it has very little uncertainty let me put it that way so everything is subjective you think that it's that this you know say a brick take a brick and a brick is an objective thing. All right. But it is only in a, only within the, within the idea that that brick exists with a, right, has a certain volume, certain length, width, height, but it doesn't really. If you try to measure that, you will find that there's always a plus or minus on it. There's always measurement error. Nobody really knows exactly what its volume is. Nobody knows exactly what its length, height, you know, and exactly what its weight is. All those

things fluctuate from second to second. So it's really all those physical attributes of that brick are really in motion. A brick is not really any of those things. What we call a brick is the average of those things. It's about this long, about this high, about this weight. So a brick is really subjective in as much as if you had 10 people measure it, you'd get 10 different answers because each one would get to a certain point in their measuring, couldn't measure it any more than that. Besides the brick is always in flux. Atoms are always leaving or molecules are always leaving and other things are always coming in. It's always in flux. So, but the error bars, you know, a brick plus or minus is very, very small. So the uncertainty in that brick is really, really small, but it's still subjective. We cannot make it precise. So in the world of everything being

subjective, those things that have very, very small uncertainty is what we call the objective world. Those things that have more uncertainty, like, you know, what is justice? What's truth? See, they have a lot of uncertainty. Well, then we call those subjective, because the mind is subjective. And we look at this outside world, and it has very little uncertainty about where it is, and how much it weighs, and where it's located, and what it can do, because that is a little small uncertainty about it. So everything is really subjective in that different people would get different answers. But if it has very small uncertainty, it approximates being objective. So it's approximately objective to a very good approximation. You see? So that's the way it is. So yes, you can have subjective science, subjective states, things that are reproducible,

explanations that are consistent and logical and accurate over in the stuff with high uncertainty too. But the uncertainty is a part of them. They are uncertain. So you have to say that over here in the subjective world, you got to deal with more uncertainty. It's not that everything is flim flam over there. It's that you have to realize that there's uncertainties about things. And a lot of that uncertainty comes from the fact that we have a very untrained, undeveloped, intuitive side. And we're lousy with our intuition because of that. Our minds are

jumping everywhere. We can't focus. We have all these beliefs, which change what it is we can, the data that we can accept. We get data that's not within our beliefs, and we just throw it away. We refuse it. We won't even look at it. Conscious system won't even register it. refuse it. We won't even look at it. Conscious system won't even register it. No, that was noise. Skip it, because it's not with our belief. So in that world, you can also be scientific, but you have to take probability into account, because there's lots of uncertainty. Whereas with the brick, you don't have to take probability into account. It's a brick. I don't care if it's a thousandth of a millimeter longer or fatter or lumpy or whatever. It doesn't make any difference. So that's the difference in the world. So

the science can apply everywhere. It can apply where there's very small uncertainties and where there's large uncertainties. Science is just basically logic that explains facts. That's what science is. So if I can give you logic that explains why you feel the way you feel and why you get angry, and it explains that with a model, and you look at it and you say, well, yeah, okay, I got that stuff, and I got that, and sure enough, that's the result. There's anger. And it tells you about what's inside your mind, then that's a good model. If you look at my model and it doesn't explain your experience, then it's not a good model, or you just don't understand it, you know, one or the other,

but in either case, it's not useful. So, you know So throw it out. So that's the idea. So all of reality is just one thing. And that's why you can have one overarching understanding that covers all of it. Thomas, it's been a pleasure. I know you got to go or your wife is going to kill you. Is it all right if I just ask you? there's a couple audience questions and you can just bang him out. Yeah. Okay. It's hard for me to bang anything out as you've, as you've discovered, but go ahead. Okay. Someone says so excited. This should be a fun interview. One thing I'd like to

ask Tom about is spiritual determinism. Classical determinism comes from a belief that matter is fundamental physicalism and so on and is held by mainstream science however recent quantum let me read this through because this is a bit wordy okay i'm gonna have to skip that one because it's gonna take me quite some time just to read it what's just can you assume can you just without all the explanations okay then let me just read it on my own and then i'll send it because quite a bit you can just define spiritual determinism i don't know what i don't know what spiritual determinism is. Okay.

Okay, whatever. Common belief in mainstream science is that it's physicalism. I think he means materialism. Physicalism is materialism with fundamental laws. Okay. However, recent quantum physics refute this dogmatic belief. On the other hand, spiritual non-duality teachers start with the opposite assumption that consciousness is fundamental, yet they seem to claim that life is predetermined. This claim is based on the

teachings of the highly respected masters such as Ramana, Maharshi, so on and so on, and many others. For example, Ramesh was known for his statement, life is like a scripted movie that's already been completed. It's in the can. Yeah, I disagree with all of that. That is not the case. Determinism is a dead idea. And I would say evolution is open-ended. Evolution is choice-making.

And the results either evolve and go forward or they don't work out and they disappear. So it's always open-ended and we are evolving toward lowering entropy and you never actually get to zero entropy. You're always working on it. And as soon as you stop working on lowering your entropy, your entropy starts to increase. So there's always something to do. So no, there is no determinism in this. And I think where that comes from, why these gurus say that is because in order, in our culture these days, and that's everywhere, that if you conflict directly with science, you're wrong. So these, they want to be accepted by mainstream science.

They want the cake. They want to be accepted by mainstream thought, mainstream attitudes, not just science. Science isn't going to go, you know, accept their religion, but just people, when they say this thing about determinism, they say, Oh yeah. Okay, Einstein, you know, and his relativity and his light cone and all that kind of stuff. You have time, you know, the future and the past, everything all exists at once and so on and yada, yada, yada. So that has been publicized so much because it's such a wowsy kind of thing that they have to meet that or they're wrong.

And okay, your religion or whatever you got conflicts with science. Science says it's not that way. So I think that's why these guys end up with that because they're trying to be right. They're trying to be on the right side of science, but it's just not that way. That math is just being interpreted wrong. It doesn't mean that. That's how they're interpreting it. Math is not the physical world. Math is trying to be a

description, but you have math and then you interpret it to be a model of the physical world. But these interpretations can be wrong. You know, they don't necessarily mean that it's just the interpretation people give to it that the past and the future and the present are all happening at the same time is just illogical doesn't make any sense and to say oh yeah but that's what the equations say no they're misinterpreting the equations technically The equations technically don't say that because even with classical mechanics, Nicholas Jessen, who's a professor of physics, he makes a great argument that you can't actually say that classical mechanics is deterministic because according to our evidence, we don't know past the error bar.

And so it could be a finite amount of digits. And then as soon as you have a finite amount of digits, you can have indeterminacy. And then in addition to that, science presupposes free will on the part of the practitioner. Otherwise, you have correlations and then all your scientific experiments are not. I agree with all of that. He's a huge proponent of free will. Although it's funny because he dislikes God and virtually all spirituality, as far as I could tell. But he's a huge proponent of free will.

And usually those don't go hand in hand. Usually's the opposite no usually it's the other way around and he also made a great argument that if real numbers were real real he said real numbers should be called imaginary numbers because they have infinite precision and if your real numbers were real we should have black holes all around us because each particle is carrying around an infinite amount of information and infinite and information has a relationship to energy yeah right that's true yeah he's just poking little logical holes in in you know this these beliefs that physicists have sure okay last question this one's fairly easy for you to answer he says you have stated that your model assumes two things consciousness and evolution however if objective science is to explain if the objective of science is to explain more with less, wouldn't the final simplest step be to explain everything with nothing, rather than to explain everything with consciousness?

So why would something as seemingly complex as consciousness be more fundamental than nothing as the true foundation? Okay, that's easy to answer. Nothing doesn't take you anyplace. It's like you can answer every question with God does it. Why is it raining today? Oh, God does it. You know, why did my car stop? God does it.

Everything. So there's just one answer for everything. God does it. All right. Well, what's wrong with that? does it. All right, well, what's wrong with that? It's not anything logically wrong with that in the sense that you could say that. There's an assumption. God exists, and God does everything, right? That's the assumption. But given that assumption, then that's logical. God does everything. But what's wrong with that little piece of logic is that it doesn't go anywhere.

It doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't explain anything. It doesn't give you any insight. It doesn't help you understand. You see, it's like the, you know, the null set. Okay, then I have a better theory. It's almost useless. I have a better theory. It's just a statement.

God did everything and you're not meant to understand. Now take that. Well, it's the same thing. Okay. So what does that help me? You're not meant to, you're not meant to be, I'm not meant to understand. So it's not useful. You see, it doesn't have any, it doesn't have any function. Yeah. It's not meant to be useful, but see people like things that like meaning they like to understand. They like to be able to predict. They like to be able to say, well, you know, if I do this and then that and that, this is going to happen. They'd like to be able to find reasons for things, explanations. What do we call it? Consequences. All of that kind of stuff is important to people to understand the reality.

consequences, all of that kind of stuff is important to people to understand the reality. Why do you feel the way you do? Why does this happen? Why does that happen? You know, why is the sky blue? All these things. You know, well, God made it blue. Well, that doesn't tell you anything. You know, if you understand about light scattering and the wavelength of the light and the particle sizes that are there, then you can, oh, that makes sense. Okay, that's, you know, why we have seasons, you know, why it gets from light to dark. You know, all these things help us understand our world better and help us make better choices, as here we are to make choices. And if we can't make any choices because we don't know anything, then everything's random and nothing has any purpose or any point. So the reason that that is not a good answer isn't that

it's necessarily illogical. God does it, and you're not supposed to know. Then that's an assumption, but it goes nowhere. It offers nothing. It just leaves you empty, whereas a solution that actually gives you a model, here's how reality works. Oh, you're miserable and unhappy? Well, here's where happiness comes from. Here's how it works. Here's how you end up with that. You say, oh, you know, the sky's blue? Well, here's why that sky's blue. It helps you create technology.

It helps you build things. You know, we have internets. We can do this kind of communication that we're doing because we've made models of things and the models work. So it helps give us more possibilities. More possibilities are on our way to better evolution. So that's why that simple answer is not a better answer is because it doesn't deliver anything significant. I got through only half of one page. So we'll have to save the rest for next time. But I do recall you saying that you were able to look at a photograph and see auras. So

you can see auras in person, at least at one point, or if your intention was correct. And then someone showed you a photograph, and you were able to see auras. Now, does that mean that the auras were captured with photons? And then can you see auras over you were able to see auras. Now, does that mean that the auras were captured with photons? And then can you see auras over zoom? Can you see auras over movies? Yeah, sure. They're not captured with the film or anything else. I could not have anything to do with that. All it has to do with is intent. It's all information. So that information is available in an intuitive space. So all I have to do is have the intent and I have to give it the output format. Well, I want the colors in the aura to represent this, that, or the other thing. I make up an output format and I can make up any output format I want. And then I query the

database and I get the information. And if I want the information in terms of a colored picture and I tell the system what colors I want to mean what, then that's how I get the information. And if I want the information in terms of a colored picture and I tell the system what colors I want to mean what, then that's how I get the information. So it's just that there, that's what I said. We have all this information out there on the intuitive side that is available to us. And the reason we have all that information out there is I can explain as it's necessary

for the rendering engine to render the virtual reality. It needs some databases to help it do that on the fly. So these databases become, that it needs to render, become our source of information. And you can just get that. So it's not that there was anything in the picture at all. It has nothing to do with that. It just has that my mind has an intention. The intention collects the data. I get the data, and my output format is around that person. I see some kind of colored thing. There is no aura. There's only information. Are you able to get information from the mind space world that is more rigorous? So for example, something I was going to ask you about quantum field theory was how, because it's a small-toe unification that I'm interested, the second

quantization in quantum field theory is not rigorously defined, same with the path integral. So I was wondering, can you query the database and find out how to rigorously define them, or does it not work like that? It probably wouldn't work like that. It might. If you really understood it well enough to see the big picture, what was going on, then it might work like that, because what you might learn is that neither one of them is right. The whole idea, the whole structure is wrong-minded. Right, right, right. But just like Newtonian gravity is a lowercase limit of general relativity, there may be some deeper theory that can produce it. And then from that, you can get

the rigorous foundation. Yeah. So the whole thing that you're asking about, though, what I'm saying might just be wrong. So you're asking the wrong question. It's like, you know, what kind of tutus do flying elephants wear? You know, and you try to get that from the database. Well, there are no flying elephants. You're asking something that doesn't really exist. So I would say that would probably be what you get sometimes. But let's say that's not the case. Let's say it does exist and it is fundamental.

Could you get information like that? Yes, you could get information like that yes you could get information like that you could get only as much though as that you can understand okay so you have to be real close to the understanding to make sense of the information you get this sounds just like you know in the matrix one of the lines that was the best was we can't see past the choices we don't understand exactly that line that line like it makes me makes me want to cry i cried at the original matrix i watched it like about a week ago maybe i was prepping for this interview unconsciously and i cried like four times during it and not when people died but there's some lines that are so profound yeah well look

at it what happens if you take a cell phone to some little tribe in the Amazon jungle that's never seen any technology? And you say, okay, here's a cell phone and here's the schematics and here's the write-up that explains everything in that cell phone. Well, what are they going to do with it?

Nothing. Maybe they burn the paper to start fires. What are they going to do with it? Nothing. Maybe they burn the paper to start the fires. What are they going to do with it? Well, that one might be an example because they gave some iPads to people who have never seen iPads before, didn't even give them instructions. And then they were turning it on

and installing apps within a week. Yeah. But I understand what you're saying. But that's learning. You say, yeah, they can learn. And that's just a trial and error and see what happens. But something like a cell phone is we're going to acquire you know uh integrated integrated processing units and lots of other

things you know which yeah which like imagine just the parts to it yeah it's not something you're going to do just by pushing buttons and seeing what happens you can't get there that way so unless they understood how to make a cell phone almost, and this would give them just the last piece they need, okay, then it would work. But if you're ignorant of the answer and you get the answer, you won't understand it. So it only works in the fact that you are just that far away from it. You've kind of got the general idea and you just need some inspiration to so it can put you one step ahead it can put you one or two steps ahead but it's not that's it it's not going to give you the whole thing and even if it did you wouldn't have the context to

make sense of it no you wouldn't make any sense of it so you know maybe we are being thrown away we just aren't understanding the science we've got we got lots of i mean look at this you know the the insights that suddenly come to people. You know, Einstein riding on his beam of light or whatever. And you'll see that a lot of people, both artists and scientists, get their inspiration from the nonphysical. Intuitively, oh, that's the solution. You know, it just comes to them, not when they're trying to get it, but when they forget about it and relax and think of something else, and then bang, they get it from the intuitive space. But it's only

got to be a half step beyond where they are. Otherwise, they'll get it and it won't make any sense. I didn't mean anything. There's a line from the New Testament, which also you can ponder for ages, makes me weepy. It says, Jesus said, the kingdom of God lies before you, but men do not see it. Yeah, sure. Jeez, man, that's powerful. Yeah, that is the way it is. I mean, it's all simple.

Once you get the idea of virtual reality and everything's information, it just reduces almost all the complexity, not only in science, but just in everyday life, reduces to really, really a few simple ideas that are very powerful and everything makes sense. It is all right in front of you. You just don't see it because you're not thinking in the right, you know, your perspective isn't right. Thank you so much, man. You've pushed me, you pushed my car, which is the engine hasn't been working. You pushed it on the on-ramp. I got to now start it and I got to start driving. I might go backward and I'm hopefully I can go forward.

Well, when you get reading the book and you have issues with it, think about the thing, think about the idea that it's a virtual reality that we're in a game. We are really consciousness and we're just playing this avatar. And that will sometimes give you the perspective that's necessary to see the bigger picture. Because as soon as you start with the physical and it has to fall into a materialistic belief system, then nothing will work. It'll all fall apart. We can do this again once you've had plenty of time to digest that

and maybe finish the books and maybe even for the second time, you know, and your questions, your questions are going to get smaller and smaller. They're going to get bigger and bigger for a while. And then as you understand it, they're going to get smaller and smaller. So we can-

And if the people who are listening, you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below if you want us if you desperately want me to talk to thomas again please let us know as well okay so long you