TrueLife - Brain Lateralization & How we see the World

Episode Date: December 3, 2022

Today we talk about the language of the brain, the way we see the world, concepts and critical thinking. What would our world look like if we thought primarily with the left hemisphere of our brain? Our Right? Are you in your Right mind?

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome back to the True Life podcast We have got an unbelievable treat for you today If you pay attention, you may even change the way in which you see the world today. We're here with Simon. Simon, I don't know a whole lot about your background. So would you be so kind as to please introduce yourself to the listening audience? Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. I will. So my name is Simon. I have a background in molecular microbiology and was in the tract of like biology, bachelor's, masters, and then doing a PhD and very, let's say, science focused. And during that process, I became more and more interested in more macro skill kind of things instead of the micro.

So I got very much into philosophy and sort of system science and these kind of things. And for the past couple of years, I've been reading a lot on these subjects. I'm also a nature coach. I'm interested in coaching, helping people specifically cope with, for instance, climate anxiety, these kind of things. And also, I'm a big follower and interest in the psychedelic field. So both as a sort of firsthand user, but also from a scientific background and from a coaching background. So I guess that's a broad description. That's a, you know, it just goes to show why we have so much in common.

I think that we have a lot of similar beliefs. And, you know, we're both avid readers. Psychedelics are such an incredible movement right now. And I really love the way when one uses psychedelics, you can fundamentally change the way you see the world, whether it's through concepts or colors or ideas. I think it just brings to the forefront a new link. with which you can discern what's happening around you. And so Simon and I are here today.

We got another friend Ranga that will be jumping in shortly for those who know Ranga. And we wanted to talk a little bit about there's a fascinating author named Ian McGilchrist. He wrote a book called The Master and His Emissary. He's also wrote a new book called The Matter with Things. And it talks about the way we perceive the world, sort of the left brain, right brain. And the left brain is sort of this analytic scalpel that is there for us to break things down and get knowledge from. But it also forces us to see the world in like a mechanistic way, almost like a, you know, like a machine and like we provide meaning and that's what it is.

And, you know, maybe it's sort of like the Jesus, God is a potter, like the ceramic model of the universe. And then we have this right part of the brain where we can see the concepts. We can see the irony and we can see some things like that. But I want to pass it off to. Simon here to maybe you can help set up a little bit more on that on that little platform that I built nice nice yeah I think that you already more or less set the stage what I really like is the Gilchrist uses this comparison often he says the right hemisphere presents so as a as in a verb so the right hemisphere deals with whatever is present in the moment

And the left hemisphere re-presents, so represents, but it's also re-present. So what the left hemisphere does is deal with cut pieces of information from the present and makes an image of that and analyzes the image. And it's also analysis, it's breaking up into smaller part. It includes the word lysis, so it's breaking up. And so the left hemisphere by definition deals with not what is present, but is represented. So it has to make images of things.

So concepts, language, literally like pictures. This is also the place where we build, well, large theories and different constructs and all these kind of things. And while the right atmosphere does, well, virtually all the other things, let's say. So is in tune with the body, is in tune with the outside. world and a lot of the problems that I think what Imegielkut writes about in his book. I got it here. Nice. He talks about the master and his emissary, talking about two emissaries.

And one is the master hemisphere, which is the right hemisphere, and the other is the emissary, the left hemisphere. And so this comparison he used, and he probably, people should look him up. He's very good at explaining these things, but I'll, I'll, attempt or make an attempt. He uses the allegory of a, so let's say there's a kingdom and the king rules the kingdom and he is a benevolent leader. He oversees everything. But as his kingdom is growing and growing, he cannot be everywhere at the same time.

So then he appoints a right hand, an emissary and he sends him off to really do the work in the field or on the location. But the king knows what's best for the entire kingdom, but the emissary knows for that specific spot where he is at, you all know in detail what is going on. And he says that in a

right relationship, the emissary knows that the king has, the master has this overview. But in the worst case, and then he goes into this, the emissary sort of supplants the master and thinks he knows everything. thing. But if you have then an emissary that only knows about the details in charge of the

entire kingdom, then things go awry. Yeah, that's really well put. I like that. And for those of us listening, think about the way the world is going right now. It kind of seems like we've gotten away from this master plan. You know, it kind of seems, and you could break that down to an individual level. If you think about the way you maybe rationalize things, you know, you look at how well, I'm just doing this now because of this thing. It's like sometimes you can see yourself as that emissary. And instead of following what's true, what's what the bigger plan is,

you get caught in the minutiae, you get caught in these little details like that. And so I think it's also something that you can see, you know, not only is it something that were taught in popular science and schools and a lot of the popular people on the internet, but it's, it just seems like this mechanism, this idea of mechanistic thinking is almost become like a plague, like the emissary has gotten so big that it is trying to put the king away in the tower for a long time. And, you know, I think with these wars and, you know, the short, the very short, like, attention

span and this idea of us being ones and zeros and how we're kind of moving into this world of non-emotional sort of mechanism like it just seems like cancer to me what what do you think simon yeah that's that's for sure it's also the last chapter of the master and the emissary he more or less started with what would the left hemisphere world look like and then he takes about 50 pages describing our world and and by now so this book came out in 2008 and McGilchrist has been quite vocal already in several of his interviews and now in his latest book, a matter of things, that we're living indeed in a world where the master has been supplanted by the emissary. And this is a big driver of this analytics-based world. And also this, like I just mentioned, and what he mentions in the book is the left hemisphere deals with representation.

So it deals with symbols, language. So never with the real thing. It deals with representation and abstraction of the thing. So it is also limited to thought. And thought cannot capture, never can capture the full truth, let's say, of the full reality. So we're living in a world, in a bureaucratic dream world, let's say. And the more and more we go into these, yeah,

data-driven, science-driven or data-science-driven realities, I think the more and more we lose that sense of reality or the sense of aliveness, because that's also the case. The left hemisphere deals with images, and images in this case are always dead. It's never the living thing. So the left hemisphere deals with dead things. And if we let that run our society,

we're creating a death society. Yeah. It's so, it rings true in so many ways to me. You know, and when I look at, I'm going to, I'm going to bring this into like the psychedelic realm a little bit.

You know, whenever I find myself on like a, a large dose of mushrooms or LSD or something like that, it's so amazing what happens if you just look up into the night sky. Or if you find yourself in your garden and you see like these trees breathing, you know, or, you know, I remember a while back, I was sitting out in my garden, and I just, I remember staring at like this, I have this vine. And I was just so mesmerized by this flower that had bloomed on there. And you started thinking like, wow, that flower

opens up at just the right angle to catch this maximum sunlight at like 4 p.m. Like, you start thinking to yourself, like, that's, that's not, that's by design. And you start thinking, well, I wonder what do I do things that are perfectly in balance with that. And like, it just, it's unbelievable how you can begin to think in a way that is holistic instead of mechanistic. You know, there doesn't need to be a formula that's like, okay, A squared plus B squared is C squared. And then we, you know, we take all this stuff over here and then we apply meaning to it.

And that's what it is. Like, that's a good way to explain it. But you're not, you're only explaining a fragment of it. And that gets back to this representation of it. So me using that mathematical. formula, me using a formula like that is me representing it in a way. But when I'm on a high dose of mushrooms, I'm taking in that information in such a different way. And it's, I can understand it versus being represented. You know, I'm wondering, do you, do you have like a,

do you find it similar on psychedelics or do you find yourself in situations like that? Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. No. I think also a, I do a sort of microdosing practice. or let's call it mini-dosing. And I find it incredibly helpful together with mindfulness, with meditation and these kind of things, to really see where, for me, the emissaries having control instead of the master, let's say. So I'm more mindful, or when I'm mindful, I think less. And when I think more, I'm less mindful. And that's already like a very simple way of tuning in, like, okay, where am I at the moment?

And with, with psychedelic experience, yes, these frames that we use to capture things or to look at things, these just drop. And then you start really seeing things, seeing with a capital, I would say. And it just talks to you differently. Like reality unfolds differently and you're seeing with more than just your eyes, I would say. And because you're dropping those frames, that's also part of my journey is because my background is in like certain reductionistic materialistic science and very mechanistic doing microbiology, genetics and all these things.

So you're constantly, it's difficult to find the wonder behind what you're actually studying is like you're studying live bacteria and I was studying horizontal gene transfer which is like mating between bacteria so they get each other little genetic packages and all these kind of things. Like it's even with a simple as simple, it's not simple at all, even with a simple of a flower can already induce so much wonder. Yeah. Let alone on a molecular scale, whatever, all this stuff is happening. And the analytical frame, so this emissary frame really has a power of making it,

normal or making it sort of now we're doing serious science and all the joy goes out of it. Yeah. That's super, that's really interesting to me. And I'm glad you brought it up. Because in some ways, I think what McGilchrist is illustrating is this idea of bringing philosophy back into science. And I'm glad that you brought up the world of wonder because how many kids or I know myself, how many children or even adults that go to college or.

I don't care if you're 60 right now. When you're learning something, how much of that wonder is just drained from the structure of learning, this beauty of it. It's just put into this dry area where we will go and learn how to do. It's just stripped out of there. But when you start realizing it on a bigger scale, and you start seeing the magic, the philosophy and the concepts of it,

and you can use the whole brain, it seems to me. I'm just using that loosely. Like it brings that magic back. You know, I'm wondering, like, how much of that, when I look at schooling today, especially in the United States, it saddens me to see so many people graduating with these huge debts and they go out into the world and they don't even, they're not even able to apply what they learn. And maybe it's because of this analytical thinking.

It's this, I don't know if that's the right definition, but am I making sense there? Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. and you'll really like the matter with things. I can't wait. Because Miguel Gildreys goes into these kind of things. So he has a chapter called institutional science and truth. And I was really enjoying reading that because I'm just finishing up on the PhD.

And I was really frustrated with a lot of like how academic life is structured and papers and stuff. And he really goes into it. It's great. For instance, I get a small quote about scientific articles. He's talking, to make it brief, he's talking about how scientific, academic articles have become more and more unreadable in the last 20 to 30 years. While if you would read a scientific article from the beginning of last century, if you're reasonably educated, you can read it. So without a specialistic background. And then he goes into how the situation is now. increasingly the heavily

acronymic jargon of research papers seems to me to present an almost impenetrable barrier to anyone other than the most highly specialized reader and even then if they are to get anything out of the exercise they must have a huge capacity to tolerate boredom that's so true yeah and it is

so especially so he also goes into like biology so the science of life. And that's literally what biology is, is the science of life. And I'm a trained molecular biologist. And the first thing that we do when we study life is kill it. So we kill life and then we analyze it. So we break it up in pieces.

So that already says more than enough for me. Like what is the emissary's world? What does it look like? This analytical view because it's lysis. So you have to break it up into parts. parts and what does this part do and anatomize it so it's just it's a shame that education under this paradigm is like this and I think there is a movement to to go more into a sort of holistic view or a different it really

needs a different world view in order for us to get there and I think what what McGilchrist is doing is contributing to how to get there to this different world. Yeah, I might even say pioneering the way, you know, because I think so many people read that book and were like, it all makes sense now. Like, I've only spoken to you and maybe a couple other people personally, but I read some stuff on different forums and stuff, and you can see some really good analysis of the book. And some of the analysis is like, oh, after I read this, everything began to make more sense to me.

After I read this, I begin to see things different. And, you know, I think that some of us have been on this mission where we've begun to see things different. But then when we read that, we're like, oh, that's what it is, you know. And I can kind of see it in the world of science and education and all around this. I think it permeates it. And I'll give you an example of what I mean, this idea of specialization. Like we've gotten so specialized in medicine and science, even in warehouse. is like people have specialist jobs.

And we've gotten so far away from each other. It's almost like we don't even speak the same language. Like you've got to go to a specialist for your foot. You have to go to a specialist if you want a certain little part made for a machine. And when you get that far specialized, it's almost as if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. You know, and it's just back to the master and the emissary.

You can see it everywhere once you begin looking at it. Yes, for sure, for sure. And that's a very good point. I also want to get, you mentioned that before. Oh, hey. Hello. Hello, Ranga. Hey.

Hey. I'm fantastic. Ranga, have you met Simon before? No, I'm not met him before. Simon, this is Ranga. Ranga, this is Simon. Nice to mention. Yeah, you have.

Raga, I'm going to fill you in just a little bit. We are going just, we're blowing up our minds right now. I'm so stoked you're here. Thank you for being here. We are going into the. this, we're going into the ideas of the way in which the left brain sees the world and the right brain sees the world. It's sort of like this dichotomy between specialization and seeing the world through psychedelics. You know how like when you, when you see psychedelics, if you

see the plant bloom and the flower comes out at like a 45 degree angle to catch the 12 o'clock sun, it's like this master plan thing. And we're talking about like, why is it that in science today, we don't allow the magic to be born. Simon brought up this point about how, how the first, if you're going to study life in a lab, the first thing you have to do is kill it. And so I just wanted to kind of give you the breakdown right there. And then Simon was just about to fill us in on this idea of specialization a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

And about how the Moss and Emissary is so, such a useful book in this case. Because the frame that he brings on what you can, incorporate for yourself is it works on the personal level so you you can use it as a means of studying the self let's say and it works on this larger scale in which you can see these bigger patterns of how the analytic worldview or how the left hemisphere sort of a major guideline but also corrupting most of our institutions and how yeah the way on society how it's shaped is making it more and more a sort of dead society but on a personal note i really I find it incredibly useful to start thinking, as a guide, to start thinking about my own thought, content, or the way on how I'm seeing things.

It's like, when is it clearly left hemispherical thinking and when it's more embodied right hemisphere? And to put a halt on it when it's clearly a lot of left hemisphere or battling. Yeah. I'm going to blow this up under the macro right now. So when we talk about left hemisphere and right hemisphere, isn't it weird that we have like different hemispheres of the earth? And we have different ideas about the East and Western religions. I want to ask you this as someone who has been between,

who has got to live firsthand in these different parts of the world and these different ideologies. Do you think that maybe the Eastern thought of spirituality is a more, more holistic look at spirituality versus the Western look at spirituality? Yes. You know me where I'll start to answer for this part. It's just that whatever notions we have of the East, it's true of an outdated tradition, right? I just returned from India. I was there for a month.

So whatever we talk about and we think about East, that is not currently. the case because they are approaching towards the Western mindset, right? Yeah. So relatively, I see that approaching the opposite side other than spirituality because I feel like whatever we call the Western mindset doesn't have to be the Western people or a particular country. It's just having had, you know, a good amount of resources and stuff and being able to go from a developing nation to a fully developed nation and what is left, what do you do? The question comes and most of the things people do is accumulate materialists, materials and this materialistic mindset is what I believe what people quote us west when I think about it.

So right now the eastern parts are approaching towards that, right? So whatever they add, they have lost, even the meditation practices that they add, it's lost. I go to temples. It's more of a forced ritual and a belief rather than the actual practice. But yes, if we go back to that particular time when these things originated, I'm sure the same things originated in this side also. The native people in the West would have had these traditions and rituals that add them, one with the divine, which has not passed down when it was, you know, their lands were taken away from them. Right? But on the eastern side, even though such occupations happened, it didn't, you know, completely get lost. They preserved these traditions. So that is the name for it. That's all. That's the difference I see. But coming back to your question, yes, there is a, there is, can you repeat your question one more time with respect to what you want from the eastern thing?

Yeah, I think I was driving to the point of, And I'll add on to what you said while I say the question again. You know, it seems to me that the Western idea of spirituality is much more mechanistic and materialistic. And at least in my mind, the Eastern ideas of spirituality seem to be something that celebrated the entirety of it, not just a mechanistic look at it. So more of a humanistic, more of a collective sort of a, where you don't come into this world. you come out of it. You know, you're all, it's a very complex idea of moving parts and you're part of this huge thing and you're all there together where in the world of the Western mindset, it seems like you're a rugged individual and you, like the ceramic model of the vertivus.

You're a potter. God made you and you must enforce your will and build the world around you. It's true. It's true. I have to disagree that these established concepts of how it is is not actually helping at the individual level, right? Because for me, even though I was born in India with these concepts that, you know, even though they don't truly believe it, they kind of tell you there is no individual self, you know, you're part of this one thing. There are stories like this that play to you, but you do not add this realization within you, right? And you do not have the practices that go along with it. So for me, when I came to the West, this whatever you called as forcing the idea towards rugged individualism,

that is what led me to that. Because the opportunity to be your own individual is the opportunity to also ask like what am I without assuming it. Of course, like most times we just assume that I am this or that. But if you're able to, you know, add the area where yeah, you are an individual and you get to do whatever you want. So you stay in a room, locked up in a room, you ask the question. So that was a gateway for me to realizing that.

So in that way, right, like I think the thing, what Simon is talking about also, it's kind of one is not better than the other or one is not, how do you say, it's all time-based. It's like the waves moving across the water, right? You know, you close your eyes and see that somewhere else. It's just, it's always changing. It's moving from here to that to here to there. Sometimes one is better than the other based on what time you're at, you know. And collectively, it might be a bad thing to be caught up in a society.

And being an individual might be a better thing. And sometimes being an individual might be, you know, stupid. You might get stoned and you might be hanged in the world. So it depends on the time you're born. Simon, what do you think about that? What would you add to that? Nice, no, I really like this point you bring up, Banga. And it also feels very, very true in that sense.

That the, specifically what you mentioned about, even though if you grow up in a culture that is sort of rich with a sort of collectivist tradition or not collectivist, that's the wrong words, but the more holistic tradition, it's not enough that the language is there. or the cultural background is there, it should be incorporated in daily life. So the rituals should be there.

And then if you explain like, okay, and then you go and you work in the West or you live in the West, we have all the rituals that enforce our worldview, which is how we structure our life, which is work, just the whole thing. So all the, yeah, the rituals and the, action that goes with it are there and it's more easy let's say well for it's more holistic or this more integral worldview let's say the that embodied experience yeah to do that you need quiet you need the time to reflect spend time in nature in community you need all these these way more by now more difficult to

doing things. So yeah, I found it interesting. And also to get back on the point that you mentioned in the end, it's indeed these are two extremes. And that's also what McGilker's goes in this book because it sounds like the left hemisphere is the bad hemisphere. Actually, it's about the balance between the two because they're both vital. Almost any animal has this, this of specialization is a lateralization of the two hemispheres. Good point. And it has a super important function because it's this narrow, this scalpel, as you put it, way of seeing things is also incredibly necessary to have because then we can discern things.

It's just that if that is the major way of seeing things, then it starts hampering with this being able to see the large picture. then create a society where we focus on being experts in things, but not generalists. We start to lose the big picture and who's then left to see the big picture anyway. So, yeah, those are just some things that's... That's awesome. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that this is what education is lacking. It seems to me that in schools, like we've already spoken about the left and the right and

eastern and western, it seems like people, when they go... go to learn something. They learn one way or the other way. They learn to be analytical or they learn to be conceptual. But I like what you said, Simon. In schools, we should be teaching exactly what you said. Hey, we think in our mind we have this way to analyze things. And then this other way to conceptualize or we can use both parts of our brain.

We can use the scalpel and we can use the magnifying glass over here. And what we should do, we should be teaching kids. yes, like ask a question like, what do you see here? And they could, they could point out, I see a dead cat. Okay, why is the cat dead? And then we could be teaching people how to use both hemispheres of their brain in, in conjunction with each other, instead of just analyzing it, instead of just being the artist. You know, we should be teaching people how to use both sides and integrate it. And it kind of seems like that's where we're moving to. But I don't see any schools teaching that particular idea of paying attention. I guess you could break it down.

to paying attention, right? Do you pay attention in this way? Do you pay attention in this way? Ranga, could you think of some ways we could integrate this type of thinking into like an exercise? Before, yeah, we can talk about that. When you mentioned school, it was funny.

I just saw a meme, right, of how education is kind of outdated in this aspect. And, you know, in schools, they ask you to write detailed essays for five pages. Yeah. Right? And in the real world, you convince me in seven seconds or you lose me. You do not think that you always think there is always time to write. It's not that.

So, yeah, we got to find a balance between that. Coming back to practice, I do not know practice. Because for me, anything that is given from outside is going to become an enforcement, right? So it's like this, I think the older people, like the older generation, the books that are transmitted, right, the knowledge in that, most of it points towards the fact that you cannot clearly tell them to go straight. So you got to guide them, you know, around the horizon. They can't look straight at the target. So you point them a little off the center and just hope they'll read there, you know. That's how I see it because the moment you tell them this is where they should go, there is an innate.

rebelliousness meets one of us, right? And I don't think we'll do it. So anything that talks about balance cannot come during the school days. I think having that extremities and letting them fight that out for themselves is something it's naturally going to happen. But as Simon was saying, you know, I agree that the Western side also has a set of rituals that going to work and, you know, consumption style and so on. But, you know, what one thing could be difference, what Simon said was like, that space to be self-reflective, right? I think that's the thing we can start, incorporate slowly everywhere. Have that space, right?

We're not revisiting the term boredom enough, right? I truly believe there is nothing boring in this world. So I think growing up kids should start adding that more, like having this to revisit that and see it for themselves there. there is nothing boring about it. Once they have it, I think that's the opposite of paying attention, boredom because you're distracted somewhere. So after that, you're going to pay attention to whatever that is. And then, you know, you can point to whatever and you can see that they'll be pointing attention.

And yeah. It is. Simon, what do you think? Nice. I like that a lot. I'm also thinking about, yeah, that's the, That's part of quiet contemplation. I think that's one of the biggest luxuries we can have in modern life.

We all have like an attention draining device, most of us have. It's like a parasite. And getting to the space where you're actually bored is becoming rare. Because watching YouTube or whatever social media feeds you have, that is a sort of patch on boredom so you're actually bored but you're getting filled while sitting just sitting in contemplation or sitting outside or it doesn't matter and allowing yourself to be bored that's the best inducer of actual creativity or of inside or of you might surprise yourself with interesting thoughts or you might notice a type of bird you've never seen before oh look how beautiful the grass is whatever so i really like

that point. Yeah. That is beautiful. And it brings me to this idea of consumption versus contemplation. You know, you talk about when you're bored and you're watching YouTube, you're consuming versus contemplating. And it seems that in a consumer capitalism and a consumer society, like there's such a poll. There is such a large amount of money that's in people that are vying for your attention. It's like the uninterrupted presence.

of the visual that's just constantly Ranga, Simon, come here, look at this, hey, look at this thing, look at that, look at this. You know, and there's no time. There's no time to be like, ah, what the hell is that bird doing? What is it eating? You know, or like, is that a caterpillar on that leaf?

Or what kind of plant is this, you know? Or what are these ants doing? You know, like, there's no more of that because there's billboards, and there's a half-naked, super hot chick on your phone right now, and she might be saying your name. You don't know. Is that you say my name? I'm not sure.

But, you know, it's just this incredible poll for your attention. And I think that this is leading us back into this short-term ideology that Ranga was talking about, like this seven-second clip of boom, boom, boom. So I'm wondering Ranga or Simon, what this idea of consumerism and consumption, is this something that is kind of making us less contemplative? What do you think, Ranga? 100% they think. Because my first time for questioning happened right after my university in Canada, right?

One of the great things that happened was I didn't have money to waste on. I graduated. Did you get, did it cut? Yeah, kind of cut right there. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So right after my master's, I didn't want to find a job in my field.

so I wanted to take time off and figure what I wanted to do. So because of that I was doing gig jobs that just paid me rent and food and I did not have the money to spend on other things. Because I for the first time realized I don't need much other than food and rent and add a dog and food for him, which was not at all a big deal. It was this chunk of money. But because I was living with roommates where, you know, in this, paying job there is this sense of whom am i missing out right but i couldn't push myself to get the

high paying job either so i was got in this frustrated point in life where i want to do that but i'm unable to do that but that's when i was able to ask like but why do i need to buy it right i have to go out of my way to do a lot of things to buy it but that that the contemplation happened without me realizing oh i'm giving this space in time to think about it i was i was suffering at that point right i was depressed with how my life was going but the actual question that was happening was wait if I don't need it should I why should I buy it right so yes it was exactly the opposite side of consumption I would say like once you stop consuming you actually wonder should I even be consuming it at the first place right there was another

thing on the terms of this like what I saw was we're so busy that with the idea that if we could do it, we're not asking the question if we should. Right. I just saw that quote last weekend. It made a lot of sense. Yeah, we were doing a bunch of stuff. But yeah, we are capable of that. But is it necessary?

We'll never know. Because once it's done, we'll see. Yeah. I think I get that. Yeah. And I like the point that the situation you more or less created for yourself that induce a lot of friction. this friction allowed you to actually start asking these questions.

So without that friction, it would have been more difficult to ask this question. So, well, that turned out well, I guess. As far as suffering is grace. Yes. Yeah, suffering is almost a clarity, too. There's a clarity that comes from suffering that you wouldn't have unless you went through those times. you know one thing like one thing that I wanted to ask you wrong is there's a lot of people that probably want to do what you did like you went you got your masters you had this whole world

in front of you and then you're like yeah I think I'm going to do this other thing for a little while I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of courage in there and I think that there's a lot of truth in there and I think that there's a lot of critical thinking that needed to be done for you to do that like what what kind of process was that like what Was there a shift in your thinking that got you to that spot? Was there like, was there one thing that made you go, okay, well, I'm thinking this is what's supposed to do, but I'm going to do this. Does that make sense? Kind of?

The answer starts with cannabis. So most people who asked me at that point, you know, when I was sad and I didn't want to do this, they said, cannabis is the reason. It's spoiling you. You should drop it. And I was guilty about consuming cannabis at the time when I was doing it. Because what cannabis did to me was through a state of mind, a happiness that wasn't tied to things, not to situations or outcomes and stuff. It is a borderline cyclical and I'm not being introduced to cyclics yet at this point.

But having known that there is a state of happiness that is not tied to things in life, it actually gave me a chance to question. So I was pretty content after having a joint, right? I was content. I was literally content and that wasn't anything I was trying to do. And that was the part. So why should I do it? I am going to live for my happiness. Right.

So what cannabis showed me was my happiness lied within me. But because before that, it was all about that, oh, these set of things that should happen on the outside for me to be happy. Right. And I realized, including my therapist at that point and other people at that point, who were asking me to wean off cannabis were just they had the same thing and they were afraid they stopped it stopped them from living their conceptual life right and now they have to take steps and cannabis is a the barrier in their path right but what if i don't want to go that side what if i just turn a little bit to

where you know these drugs are showing me right and it wasn't a bad and most times i've realized people who are very hard on drugs, they're mostly either not, they've not tried it, or it has taken them to a space where they are uncomfortable. And the moment we are uncomfortable, we tend to, you know, see it as a bad thing and, you know, come back to the space of comfort. But this is where, again, same as suffering, you know, a lot of uncomfortableness inside the head is a good thing. It's helping you. It's so true. Yeah. Simon, what do you, like, we talk a lot about suffering. Me and Ranga always get into this idea of suffering. And so too do a lot of people that have gone through a psychedelic adventure or, you know, I think anybody who is reading Ian McGilchrist has probably gone through some suffering themselves. So what's your take on suffering? And do you want to share any things that maybe have happened that have changed the way you thought about the world you live in or see?

Nice, good question. Yeah, I guess during the during when my PhD contract ended and then I really had to get into the writing of it. During that time, there was this nagging feeling in which I was getting more and more anxious about the state of the world and these kind of things. So instead of focusing my time on writing,

my own thesis, I spent a lot of time reading upon climate, climate systems, on biodiversity collapse, on societal collapse, these kind of thing. And that was sort of a way of rapidly deconstructing my worldview in a sense, like, okay, I had the idea of I was going in science, it was making sense, I'm going to do something useful, biology, blah, blah, and then I got this picture of like, oh no, the world is, it's doing something completely different. And it's also looking worse and worse. It's way worse than I thought.

And I'm by nature a pessimist, so it was worse and worse. So that kind of got me into this spiral in which I had to really let go of my worldview. I sort of grief, grief for my own worldview, but also on the same side really allow sort of ecological greeting to occur. I really feel deeply for that. And around that time, I just started reading a lot of different things, because when your worldview collapses, then you're also open to a lot of new ways of seeing things. Well, one of these authors is Ian McGilchrist that helps, matched with also practices. So doing psychedelics, daily meditations, going for long nature hikes.

was lucky in that point of time in my life. It was also during lockdowns and all these kind of things. But I was lucky that I had a lot of free time for myself. And so I could actually spend all this time doing these more holistic things and really, yeah, coming to a new way of being. And that also completely changes your priorities. So from that point, I also went to do like a coaching education. I got more serious into sort of psychedelics as therapy. but also as a means of supporting people in who are in the similar types of processes as in really feeling from the inside like now the world is different than I see it but not still knowing how to be in that world so being in the process of transition so yeah for sure and

suffering really helps because that gets you to that place and from that place you can start building so yes That's so awesome. It reminds me. It's so fascinating to me that a lot of the people I talk to have gone through something similar, which is this collapse of their worldview. And there's a couple of things that I have learned that come out of this. And one of them is it's necessary. In fact, it's mandatory. Like it must happen in order for you to be reborn as the person you are today. And as painful as it can be, probably the more painful, the collapse, the more you can learn. And when you're ready, you will. And so if I could give one note on this first part to anybody that finds themselves going through a tragedy right now, I would say congratulations.

I'm so stoked for you. So stoked this tragedy is happening to you. And I'm not saying to be callous. I'm trying to be caring because it's the best thing that's ever happened to you. And it's going to be glorious. The second part is what an incredible worldview grows out of that collapse is not only this new world anew, but your ability to see people that are, in that collapse and to help them.

You know, like you said, you've begun to go and help these other people through different sorts of, whether it's a psychedelic practice or a nature coach or getting out and helping. It's like, it's almost like once this collapse happens to you, now all of a sudden you're adorned with the badge of helpfulness where you can, or you have these new glasses that you can see through this lens of, that happened to me. And it just, it just expands on this idea of us growing together the same way my Cillium grows in the ground and looks for other people to connect to.

So too do we do that. And like just as above so below, it seems to me. And it just gets back to this idea of this destruction of specialization that I think is, is his own sort of worldview collapse. And it's so fascinating me to, like I'm talking to you guys and you've had similar experiences. You're in similar pathways. And even though I've never met either one of you face to face, I feel like we have so much in common. It's such an awesome time to get to talk to you guys. Do you see this happening more

and more to people? Like, is there more and more people beginning to have their own collapse so that the world can be reborn? Is this a bigger process that's happening all over the world? What do you think? I can be really brief about it and then I'll give the space to Ranga. Yeah, please. There are more and more reports about increases in general anxiety disorders. depression, burnout, these kind of things. And I think these are all incredibly healthy responses of a body responding to a toxic system. And recently, so there's been a report for in the Netherlands where about one fourth of the people that participate in this survey have some sort of psychiatric disorder linked to these kind of things.

So yes, I see more and more people that are going through this. And I see statistically there are more and more people that are gearing themselves up for a transition, meaning getting into depression and burnout. So, yes. What do you think, Ranga? So Simon, did you say that your transition happened during COVID? You were saying something about the lockdown, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just before.

So I was already, so in the late 2019, I had my sort of. that it really just fell and then sort of cut the the lockdowns and stuff didn't hurt me too bad because I was already in it cocooned it's yes that that thing george you know we need more of that lockdown because of because of covid especially like you know in canada they said that was a 30 to 50 percent increase in the cases that were reported you know with mental health problems and it's true we are we just the lesser the distractions the more we can be honest with ourselves the more these uh this way i see it is these emotions are the body's way of communicating with us right it doesn't want to be the truth all the time just it's it's communicating with us and

we need to be there to listen to it so most times we are we are lost as simon was saying we keep going through the feats and stuff. You know, we are inherently sad and we're just hoping it will go away with quite enough number of spikes, you know, 18 videos is the goal. Once I'm done 18, I think I'll be happy now. Right. And so they keep suppressing these things. And once the distraction is cut, and that quite happened in COVID, like most times, in the

beginning, so friends I knew they were like, oh man, I don't know when it's going to end. Right. And it didn't affect me because, as I said, I didn't have much. to spend and when they got closed I only add like ah you guys are in the same boat as you have the money but you can't spend it anywhere right online shopping went up but not physically going to places any kind of distractions right so they had to sit at their house and i'll finally have the chance to confront and it's also the thing that once we change our perception once our whatever view that you know our parents give collapses and we are you know turning towards a

a new direction. We meet like-minded people. So I don't know if it has increased. The number has increased or something objectively, but subjectively, yes, it is going to be, you know, we are heading towards a meditation center instead of sister club. So, of course, we're going to see more Buddhists than I don't know what. So it's kind of like that.

So subjectively, yes, I do feel like the people I meet, it's amazing. I have never thought about, you know, crossing paths with any of, you know, you do. I wouldn't have thought about it. Like, I'd be thinking I had to go to this office, you know, meet people based on concepts that I had. I would limit myself to people that I think I should meet, right? That's a prison. That's what I was having a discussion with my friend who said he wanted to be more socializing more. Is it the moment you set that out, right?

You're going to socialize more. You're not going to do that. You're going to let go of that idea that I need to go and find people. And it just serves you with, you know, people that you need in your life right now. It even happened in my flight trip, like, coming back. And, you know, the guy in my next seat, he was from Amsterdam. So he's at Psychedelics and he's been in meditation. He went to India and to travel for two months.

And it was cute. He picked up a couple of words in my mother tongue. And I was like, nice. And then we spent. I sleep during the flight usually. And we talk for six hours. And me and my older mindset wouldn't have imagined that to happen, right? And yeah, it's nice that way.

Yeah, very nice. That is amazing. It brings up this other idea that I, as you were speaking about mindset and, you know, worldview and changing, you know, I've found myself, I would say after COVID, maybe a little bit before, Like just understanding and man, like, I've learned that if you tell yourself a different story, then you can see the world differently.

And it sounds kind of like silly, but it's so profound to me. You know, I remember like just beginning to, I had this, I had this thing happen to me one time where like these cops, they came to my door. And I was at work and they came to my door. And my mother-in-law and my wife were home. And so I'm working, working. My phone starts ringing, like just off the hook. Like it rings and I hang up.

It rings, it hangs like 10 times. I'm like, oh, this must be an emergency. But I didn't recognize the number, so I didn't pick it up. And then after the 10th time, my wife called me and I picked it up. And she's like, George, is there something you want to tell me? And I'm like, I love you. I'm like, I can tell you this. That someone's blowing up my phone.

They've called me like 10 times in a row. She goes, yeah, a bunch of cops just came to the door. And they said that you have, you've done some things. things that are really bad and they need to talk to you. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? She goes, yeah, here's their card. And she read off the card and they were like from like the FBI. And I'm like, what the hell?

And so as I'm talking to my wife, the guy, the guy calls. Like I see that that other line that was calling me. I'm like, all right, these people are calling me. I'm just, I love you, gorgeous. I'm going to answer this phone. So I pick it up. I'm like, this is George. And he's like, George, this is a special agent Johnson.

It wasn't, it wasn't Johnson. But it was making that up. Special agent, so-and-so open the FBI, I need to see you immediately. And I'm, I drive a truck for a living. And so I'm like, well, I'm out on my route right now. He's like, how about I come to your work in the morning? And I'm like, that's a horrible idea. He should definitely not come to my work.

How about you meet me? I'm like, why do you meet me now? I'm over here at UH on campus. And he's like, okay, I'll be there in 20 minutes. And like, I'm automatically racking my brain. I'm like, dude, what have I done? Have I done something? I'm automatically guilty in my mind, right?

And these people were pounding on my door and they're blowing up my phone. And I'm like, oh, man, do these guys know I smoke weed? Damn it. I'm like, that's nothing. They don't care if I smoke weed. That's nothing. I'm like, well, I bought a lot of these Ted Kaczynski books.

I wonder if they think I'm like a serial killer or something. You know what I'm like, nah, they don't care about that. And I just couldn't rack my brain. Like, I've done some things, but nothing like, nothing worth the FBI coming to my door. But I'm still automatically guilty in my mind. And so I park my truck and they meet me in their car. and they jump out and they have this little folder with them. And they come out and they're like, Mr.

Monty, I'm like, yep. I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, we want you to take a look at these photos and tell us if you know this person. And so I'm looking through these photos. And it was some guy I'd never seen in my life. Some hillbilly with like a mullet and I'm like, and I'm thinking like, what the fuck is this?

And then I started thinking, did they just give me some fake photos to look at so they can look at me? Like, you know, I'm going through all these things in my mind of like what could be happening. So I'm looking through, looking through, and I peer up to look at them, and I look through, and I fold it back, and I'm like, I have no idea who any of these people are. And the guy's like, well, then, would you want to guess how this person has your identification card? And I'm like, what the fuck? And I just stared at him for a minute.

And I'm like, yeah, I got pickpocketed at the mall about three months ago. And then, like, I just saw all the air deflate on this guy. He went, you know what? I'm like, and if you don't believe me, you can go check out the security cameras because they have it on camera. And I tried to get my ID back from the mall, but the cops said they couldn't give it back to me. And I felt all vindicated. Like, yeah, I didn't do anything wrong. But here's where the, here's where the cerebral part kicked in.

I thought about that all day. Like, that was so crazy. I'm like, these guys thought that I was like some international criminal or something. They thought I was like this guy that was doing crazy things. And then the other part of my brain clicked like, I could be. I could have just lied to those guys. Maybe I did lie to those guys.

I started telling myself this other version of me. Like, I could be. Those guys are from the FBI, and they thought I was an international mastermind. I could be. I'm probably smarter than those guys. I just, I went down this crazy rabbit hole of what I could be.

And then I started thinking, I wonder what crimes I would do if I was an international mastermind. It would probably be some sort of crazy money laundering scheme or something, you know? And I just made up this incredible story about myself. Like what? I could have been.

And I believed it for a little bit. Like, I just let myself run with it. And I believed it. I'm like, I am. I have millions of dollars if I was that guy. And like, it sounds so crazy. But it fundamentally changed the way I saw myself. Because after that,

it's like I gained this ability to envision myself as something else. And I've been able to use that same visualization and that actual believing that I could be this. And I was like, you know what? I could be a podcast. I could be this. I'm so much more than a truck driver. But in a way, it was a collapse of my worldview.

It was a collapse of this identity that I had. And out of that became the birthing of an imagination where I could see myself in any way, shape, or form. So I think that there's something to be said about visualizing. And it's an amazing way. I forgot how I freaking got on this point. But I think it was a version of mechanistic thinking versus the ability to imagine, the ability to see yourself after you've collapsed your worldview, that you can be anything.

You can go out and help stuff right there. So I'm not sure exactly how I got on that tangent, but it was really fun to tell that story. You said stories are based on how we change stories, the stories we tell ourselves. It could be different. Yes, yes. Yeah, and I can also imagine the sort of paranoia

that sets in the moment that they call you. Yes. you mentioned is that you already picture yourself as guilty yes a lot of people um if you ever been on an airport i really hate the airport because i with with this uh what's called border security uh what is the name yeah well whatever the guys that check all the luggage and stuff yes you you immediately feel like okay i'm carrying something that is not allowed so you start sweating and shit. Yeah. Like you're doing actually something wrong. And that's indeed a way of the brain just telling you things. And you're convincing yourself that is the case. Okay. Now, is this,

is this, there seems to be this fear that we live under. Is this the society that we live in that relates back to the mechanistic thinking? Maybe this is what forces us to think so analytically is this idea that we're always guilty. Hey, you got the wrong size water bottle. Hey, you're not wearing the right thing over here. Like it seems like there's always this layer of security, even though it's invisible. It changes the way we think. It might have something to do with it because

before I read Master and the Emissary, I was reading a bit of like French French philosophy, like Baudhryar and like things about hyperreality. And hyper reality fits perfect on the master in his embassy. you. If someone is listening, I'm looking forward to see a both of the hour scholar read

Ian McGilchrist and see if someone can synthesize the two. Because what he talks about is if we start living in a world that's more and more shaped by the maps that we have in our heads, so this is also what McGilchrist is talking about. So the left hemisphere creates maps. And the territory is seen by the right hemisphere. Territory being physical reality. We create a map. What the left hemisphere does, if the territory doesn't fit with the map,

it changes the territory instead of changing the map. And so we're living one part of the Anthropocene, which isn't a nice term, but the world shaped by man is we are living in a world that is a representation or is physically the map that we have in our left hemisphere placed on realities. A city is a virtual space. But an airport is as virtual as you can be. Because here's a set of rules that you have to carry your rounds and all these different types of artificial things that you're not allowed to carry. So yes, it is a part of that part of our brain. So all these

different non-natural things that we have to construct concepts for languages and how they interrelate. We have to carry that around, which is completely virtual. So, yeah. That's fascinating. Ranga, what do you want to say about that? I see you smiling over there. What are you thinking? You said airport straight. I think I just add all that being done on me eight times, I think, different flights, right? And it's, it's, I understand why they do it, but it's also, it's very funnily crazy. Like, it's, like, they try too hard to, I'm sure like there would have been bad stuff happening that they need to instill this measures.

But I think I have had points where I've had a fear-based looking at life. And once I started changing that intern, to a place of, I don't know, maybe in that aspect, a place of apathy, like not, not carrying towards what these fear is telling me because 99% of the time that, you know, what my fear has responded to me was based on some conceptual game that was put in by someone else. It wasn't based on like, oh, there is fire. I shouldn't put my hand. I'm not talking about those kind of fear, right? It's more so with respect to concepts. Oh, you shouldn't be this way. you should do things this way, you shouldn't carry this.

And so I stopped having a fear-based response rather than I don't care until something bad happens. Like, you want to do anything, it's fine. Right. And I see that, you know, we kind of imagine things to be worse than how they are. And once I stopped imagining things on this front, I felt like, man, what a mental illness I got. I keep thinking about things that, you know, never happened, right? Like, there's so much that is happening and I keep imagining. And I think it was draining for me at the beginning.

And then now it's more like I couldn't go back to the old self of like picturing how could it be. Like whatever it would be, you know, let it be. Yeah, it takes a lot of mental energy. And I know I'm guilty of it all the time. And maybe this is the analytical part of the brain where, you know, you just start dissecting and dissecting and dissecting. What if this happened? And what if that happened? And if this happened,

then that would happen. And it's, it's easy to go down that chain of events. And, you know, it's almost like when you take a chicken and put its beak on the chalk line, it's stuck there.

So too do you get in a mode of thinking where you can get stuck if you, if you find yourself in that sort of rabbit hole. I've got to turn my computer back on. Excuse me for a second. There we go. Yeah.

So it's fascinating to think about the way you think. I love what you said about the map and the territory. It's especially as someone who is out on the road all day There's a lot of people that will come to me and say look You can go right here on this map and I'm like I can't And they're like the map says you can do this look right here on the map George Go right on this road and I'm like that road was closed two years ago

Oh you know and it just gives you the idea of we don't update our maps and the map is not the territory You know there's tons of stories about you know people that my dad told me a story He went on this motorcycle ride and they had this old map and they got to this place where, you know, a tree had fallen down over this thing and half the people got stuck because they could. They're like, well, I guess we have to turn around because they had this old map and they couldn't figure out how to go around it, you know? But maybe that's an idea of maybe your map, when your map is destroyed, that's an opportunity for you to explore the territory. Maybe more people need to have bad maps. Yes. You have to become aware that your map is false.

And in this sense, the word map you can use as worldview. I have a very nice quote from Gilchrist from this new book. And it's at the end of part one. And I think this summarizes more or less the importance of what you just explain. It's very short. He says, in the modern Western world, we are constantly crashing and puzzled as to why, constantly faced with paradoxical outcomes to our actions. what particle physicist and quantum theorist David Bowen called sustained incoherence.

We often find that we strive for something and achieve its precise opposite. Why is that? I suggest it is because our current dominant model of reality is mistaken. As a result, we badly need to rethink. That more or less summarizes perfectly what the book is about, but also what I innately sense, and that's why. at a certain point you need to... Let's say you're lost...

He also uses this analogy, which I really like... Let's say you're a ship captain and you have to navigate a coral reef or a difficult mangrove forest. And you have two ways, two potential ways of seeing things. One being a map and the other being your eyes your eyes sitting on the spot where you're at.

But that will not tell you where your final destinations. He says, if you only have access to one of those, which one would you use? It's a very easy conclusion. It's like, yeah, how do you have your eyes and navigate without crashing? But if you continue using the map in the situation where we're in,

also in the global street, we're going to be crashing, already crashed. level different boundaries because we are not using our eyes. We're in our faulty map. Yeah, that is well put. Especially when you have like five people using different maps. Like, you know, like we all have a different map.

Like, we're all trying to get to the same spot using, I don't know, maybe this is, maybe it's all necessary. Maybe this is the collapse and we need to be in order to do. That's what makes me hopeful. Like I, as much destruction is out there, I think that there can only be, I think that there can only be rebirth. And just like a regular birth is painful. And just like a regular birth, there's a real chance a child dies in childhood.

Right? So too is there a real chance that there is a huge tragedy that happened before. And I think people are right to be aware, our right to be skeptical, our right to be alarmed. This is a real reason. But it's also a chance to think that what McGilcrest's point began to awaken people to some areas you can focus on those ideas, you can at least begin to see with our eyes. And the big problem is, is five different maps. I would say I like the analogy that's also why both are.

Because he says that at a certain point, at a certain point you have such a high saturation of science and symbol in which is replacing the actual terrible. As we're going through sort of replacing this wild space we're turning into a manage of a man in a managed space. Well, I live in the Netherlands, the entirety of the Netherlands is mapped and managed. Also nature, let's say. You get to this space where, yeah, both of the air calls it hyperreal, that the physical real disappears because the physical reality or what was before that reality, that's, yeah, we supplanted with our, with our strange models of different different symbols and words that don't map to anything anymore. And so instead of five guys

with different maps, we have seven billion people with different maps. And we have internet, which also is exacerbating or accelerating the generation of new maps or the specialization of these maps. So you get, and also you have convergence. So it's not all bad. But for me, it was also, So like you mentioned, like, is there a positive note here? I think McGilchrist also uses this. If you push long enough to one direction, you end up becoming the complete opposite of the thing that you're attempting to do. And I kind of hope that, or if I have some hope on this sort of the hyperviewed state or the post-moding condition, is that if we go further and further into this accelerated map, and sort of all these different maps, then Faster and faster, people will figure out, like, okay, this is not working at all.

They'll crash. And then get to the position where they start opening their eyes and let's use the meme, like touch grass. Then you start making sense together again. And then we can actually start seeing the reality without one of these artificial maps. Yeah, that's really well put. I like that idea of pushing through. to the other side and getting past this idea of, you know, one side automatically, if you go far enough, if you go far enough out on the right, you end up on the left, right? It's almost like a magnet how

that, how it goes around and like a, I forgot what they call that, but yeah, it's fascinating to think about that as the world in which we live. I wonder, like, how much is virtual, would you consider virtual reality to be a map? As in, as in like, orculus, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, or even yeah absolutely yeah yeah for sure for sure i think it's probably like another deepening of this sort of left hemispherical way of creating maps the prison is even deeper to escape out of yeah yeah it's like plato's cave and so you oh i stand in the sunlight but it's it's you got you got the acute rift on it's the artificial sunlight shit it's another cave

That's what Mark Zuckerberg should have called meta, Plato's Cave. Plato's Cave 2.0. Isn't it interesting that they tried to bring out this world of virtual reality and it just failed? Like that's exactly what you just spoke about when you talked about how we're moving faster, faster into everybody having these maps and then everybody crashing. Like here's people that invested billions of dollars into this augmented reality just failed. Like that's a sign of like, hey, this doesn't work. you know, maybe we should be moving away from this. Why do you say it failed?

I'm sorry? Why do you say it failed? Well, I think that they had put, I think that on a recent interview, they had talked about moving away from the Metaverse. Not that Meta as Facebook failed, but their idea of the Metaverse, as if, you know, this idea of how crypto was supposed to go in

and you could sell these digital covers and you could have a digital store that sold widgets to characters in gaming universes. You know, I'm not, I don't know a whole lot about it, but I did read quite a bit about, like, you know, the world of people buying virtual property in virtual games, and you could sell virtual food to virtual people and sell them virtual weapons.

Like, on some ways, it's so imaginative and beautiful and fantastic. But in other ways, it's just, it's nothing. I don't know how long you can live in a world of nothing. So I think that that's what I was trying to say about it failed. Do you think that maybe it hasn't failed?

I think it's just a temporary setback but I think it will grow stronger and as you see it right like right now as we are going forward in the future I don't see the world as a very far place. It's like it's a very survival of the fittest kind of thing. Here it's not about physical strength, it's about more of a mental game and what you're born into and what you're born with and with money being,

you know, the currency instead of being loved. So because of that, it's a very unfair place to exist and going forward people have two options. They could either play the game or distract themselves, right? And playing the game is pretty much, I think, is going into the trap or, you know, abstain from action. but abstaining from action, I do not see happening anytime soon. It's going to take a lot of time, you know, a lot of suffering to get ourselves from abstaining into this, you know, superficial thing they have created so-called reality, right? So in that sense, people will first choose distraction over, you know, actual suffering. So any kind of distraction is going to be awesome.

It doesn't matter. You know, you're able to identify that as much as cool it could be to sell virtual things to virtual people and so on. For some people, it is the reality they live in. That's it. And there are different dimensions of reality and they would rather do that than live here and suffer. So I could get myself because the brain is amazing. It just wants to keep living. It has no other purpose than to live.

life is just running towards more life, multiplicity, and it doesn't have any, you know, objective goal or it doesn't work towards happiness, it doesn't work towards anything. It just needs to survive. So, oh yeah, if I get trapped myself in virtual reality, I could stay alive for 10 more years. Yeah, I'm going to choose that because in the real world, I might die because of sadness, you know, not actually, but whatever idea we have, the egoic self dies. So I would rather choose this path which is, you know, the illusionary happiness. But if we, I see it as a very positive thing because if we can get more people to see that way, right, this, this virtual reality is illusion. It could also translate to most of the real world suffering, right? It might,

that's why I see it. Like once we have a perception towards, you know, a lower dimension of reality where we are able to observe that, oh, it's an illusion. Why are you getting yourself caught into this, right? Maybe it might be a gateway to realizing, wait, am I caught in one of those, right? Maybe. It all works, you know, the unfolding of time. But that's my way of seeing karma. I've tried to, you know, one thing you asked me, being born in Eastern thing,

they have this concept of karma a lot. But again, with some of it's a lot. billion people and seven billion maps, seven billion different definitions was there for karma. And most of it is like, oh karma is like, you do good, good comes to you, you do bad, bad comes to you. And you know, it's the most fundamental mistake in understanding karma. But I cannot explain what karma is, but the natural unfolding of, you know, when you're able to open your eyes. Right. Like you can never ask someone to open their eyes.

If they're not ready for it, they're not ready for it. They finish that set of sequences where they're like, oh wait, I can't. can't repeat this loop one more time, right? And that path. So in that sense, I think we are, it can happen. People, we add people to one year back sell NFTs, right? It's just a greater fool theory. And it's just that I can find one more fool and get money out of them.

That's the only idea. It has no inherent value. I never saw a point in digital art. Like digital music, I see, um, I see, um, I see. I see the thing, but digital art, it never made sense to me. If you could copy something, right? Why would you own it? Like, how, what is the term of owning it?

There is no, it's crap. I do not simply see owning something. There is a, I don't know how that works, but these non-fageable tokens have this identity that makes it original. Original by who? Who is saying that? If I call it fake, does it become fake? This thing is based on a story that.

I just believe there is one more fool who believes it too deeply. For him, NFT is going to be the religion. Once he does that, I can sell it after him. So we are living in a world where that are happening. So we are, I have a quest too at home. I don't use it much, but I find it very immersive. I find it also helpful in so many things. Like I see it playing a role in mental health for sure.

Right? Like there are so many, there was one study. It wasn't much data set, but it said that VR could take people into the borderline psychedic mindset. And I definitely think if enough people come together and work towards such a product, it's completely deliverable. It was really immersive. When I was there, I used it to play table tennis and you didn't have to go anywhere else. And you know, 20 minutes to the game, I'm sweating. And I have the mic connected to that guy. It doesn't matter where he is.

and I saw the beautiful thing behind it. I didn't see it as a very evil thing, right? But I could also see going into what you said, like, you know, staying there, buying virtual stuff and selling it virtually, and the question comes, what's the point, right? Eventually, if it comes to our life, to ask what's the point, it'll be nice.

Yeah, it's fascinating when you say that. Like, I could see, sometimes when I think about virtual, reality from that point of view, it just brings about the absurdity of my life. Like, it's really, you know what I mean? Like, I can sit here and talk about, look, this guy's selling a fictional product to a fictional thing. But then I look at my life and I'm like, okay, I'm just driving this truck and delivering these products to people that don't really need them.

You know what I mean? It's kind of the way of seeing the world, it's kind of the way, no matter if you see your world in the virtual life or you see the virtual life in your world, like, it's a great way to see the absurdity of life. It's funny. The absurdity of modern life. Yes. Yes.

It's maps on maps, on maps. Yeah. So that's indeed also what I got from Ranga, what you were talking about and what you just said, is you can picture it as a good thing. Even if you picture the technology in a moralistic view as in it's evil, or there are ways of looking at this. then more of it will clearly make it more and more prominent in everyday life, which will offer the chance for more and more people to really crash with it, and then have like an opening, a potential moment of opening happen, where they can build up this other world view,

where they can connect with themselves in a different way or start seeing, sort of the revolutionary potential or whatever. So, yeah. It makes me want to like In some ways This may be dark But it kind of want to make Like when I look at it from that level

You can almost see the positive aspect Of like just wanting to force people into a crash I know that's the wrong way to do it But like you could see how people are like Yeah I'm helping out by crashing this thing You know Yeah I read a bit And I think this is like the corner of acceleration

nationalism, all this type of philosophy. I was reading somewhat into it and I kind of understand, but I kind of gave up on sort of top-down political, any means of doing things. So, yeah, it's fun to think about. It's fun to argument, find an argumentation about, but I'm not in a position to accelerate anything. So I might as well not pay any attention to these kind of things.

Yeah. Gentlemen, I have to tell you, this is really, really fun for me, and I really enjoy these conversations. And it's unfortunate that I have to go live the absurdity of becoming a truck driver at Christmas time right now. But I got to check out. And this is really fun, though. If it wasn't for conversations like this, I would feel empty in a lot of ways. So I want to say thank you to both of you for coming in and talking and helping me get through my day and allowing me. to express some ideas that I have and enlightening me with some of the ideas that you have.

And I think we'll be back again. And I really like this format of us, three people coming together and just amplifying each other's ideas and meeting new people. And it's really, really rewarding. And it's some of the best things I do in my life is getting to meet and talk to people. So before we go, Simon, what do you got coming up? Where can people find you? And what are you excited about?

what I've got coming up for my personal life is I'm trying to finish the finish my dissertation and that's once that's done then I'm moving forward to other things and I'm excited about what I'm excited about yeah a lot of things actually I'm excited about exploring more my my coaching coaching business also incorporating more with the psychedelic, microdosing and these kind of things. Luckily, I'm in the Netherlands, so it's legal. So these kind of things I'm doing. So it's nice.

And also in the future, I'm potentially going to see if I can find a way to incorporate like the McGilchrist type of work and match that with education. So to, let's say, bring life back into life sciences. That's the thing. So, yes. That is amazing. I think that's a beautiful maxim right there. And I hope what is your dissertation on, if you don't mind me asking?

Horizontal gene transfer in lactic acid bacteria, so in lactocococcus lactate. Very specialized, very specific. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to bring some life back into that particular field? Is that like? No. No, I think my time in the lab is over.

fascinating. Ranga, where can people find you? What are you got coming up and what are you excited about, my friend? I like, Judge. Even though I give simply no answer to that question. I like as fortive enough to ask that. Whatever we were talking about, life is absurdly pointless and I'm going to go back to becoming couch potato.

I'm there on LinkedIn. Nice. Simon, Ranga has a podcast and it would not surprise me the least if you end up on his podcast in the next few weeks here. So for me, what I got coming up, I

have a, let me see, Sunday, I am meeting with a few people and we are going to talk about spiritual reality versus virtual reality. And I want to thank both of you because I'm going to be able to incorporate a lot of what we talked about into that particular talk on this coming Sunday.

Sounds fun. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it, and it's going to be a good time. And I got some other great podcast coming up. I'm interviewing a gentleman that has written a rebuttal to Sam Harris' book about the argument against free will. Yeah, so it's going to be a really interesting topic. Yeah, that's what I. You can find me here on the True Life podcast. And that's what we got for today, ladies and gentlemen.

I hope you enjoyed Simon and Ranga and myself. We really enjoyed the conversation. reach out to everybody. And gentlemen, stay on the line from it. I'm going to hang up here, but I wanted to talk to you briefly afterwards. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the True Life podcast. Aloha.