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162 - The Dr. God Show with Rabbi Rami Shapiro · The Dr. Joe Show

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How can we make the
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The Dr.
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Joe Show explores how you can make positive personal change
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Join us now for the Dr. Joe Show.
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With Mark.
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Styles of Styles Law and your host, Dr.
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Josh. Brand.
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Warrior Mages,
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Healer, Rangers, Paladins Sumners.
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Welcome to the Dr. Jo Show.
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And you get more and more creative every week.
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That was terrific. Thank you. Thank you.
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Thank you. Thank you.
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So where are you right now, Tom? What are you doing?
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So right now I am calling from Kingston, Massachusetts.
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I have been very recently cast as older
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Patrick Dennis in two repertory theaters production of Archie Mae.
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I did not expect this to happen.
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It was a very quick decision to reach out to me.
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And I auditioned and they said, Hey, welcome aboard.
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And I said, Hey. Okay.
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And so it's great.
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I'm already looking forward to it.
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I did not know much about the play
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or really anything about the play going in, but yeah, this is going to be fun.
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It is.
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And and when are the performances so we can all put it in our book?
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Yeah.
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Our opening day is May 13th and we go that weekends
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and then the next weekends ending on the 20 seconds.
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Hey, get us some tickets.
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We're going to be there and wait.
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So, yeah, so there's a whole world of theater
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and there's so much spirituality that goes into theater, being able to
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unlock your
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hidden soul and person to to bring it into the stage.
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But I wonder whether you could introduce
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our guest for tonight, Tom.
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Oh, it's like it's my calling, Dr. Joe.
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He is an award winning author of over
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36 books on religion and spirituality.
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He received rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew
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Union College Jewish Institute of Religion and holds a Ph.D.
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in religion from Union Graduate School.
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A rabbinic chaplain with the U.S.
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Air Force for three years, a congregational rabbi for 20
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and a professor of religious studies for ten.
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He currently co-directs the One River Foundation.
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Shalom to the Dr.
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Joe Show. Rabbi Rami Shapiro.
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Thank you very much.
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Congratulations on the plaque.
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Oh, thank you.
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They don't give you a lot of time to learn your lines, do they?
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Not really.
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But, you know, I like a challenge.
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Okay. Well, you have it.
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Rabbi, welcome. Welcome.
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Dr. Joshua I'm so, so delighted that you're here for us to chat tonight.
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Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Joe, for having me.
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I am delighted.
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So I just want to start right off if when my with the first quote
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from your website, which is I think perhaps religions are like languages.
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No language is true or false.
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All languages are of human origin.
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Each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it.
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Tell me more about that word.
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Where did this idea come from?
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That just came out of my book,
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which was just rich.
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But or wise idea.
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No, I just came up with that.
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It seems to me that it's true.
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And, you know, I do my best to be as succinct as possible
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when I'm writing these things.
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But. But I think religion is invented.
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I think, you know, spirituality
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is the process of moving from the egoic self to the
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the larger self, lower as lowercase as self to the uppercase as self.
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But religion is an institution and organization and has it reflects
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all the biases of a culture or the people, the biases of the people
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who create the religion and then feeds those biases into the culture itself.
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You always have to be careful with religion because it claims to be
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the exact opposite of what it is when it claims to be God's word.
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It's just the word most likely
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of some old men who are, you know,
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speaking like the Wizard of Oz through a megaphone, you know?
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So the job of spirituality, I
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would think, is to pull the curtain back like toto in The Wizard of Oz,
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to pull the curtain back on the great and terrible wizard and discover these
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these men just with enhanced voice technology
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to give them the sense that they are all powerful and almighty.
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And yet there's such an appeal to to people
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to have a religion with spirituality aside for right now,
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if there is that appeal, one religion after the other.
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Where does that come from, do you think?
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Well, I think you can look at it from a couple of different ways.
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And one is the guest, the need to belong.
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I mean, religion is certainly a powerful way to belong.
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The other, I would say there's 31 is belonging.
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The other is it gives you the answers
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to what's going to say questions that everybody has.
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But in a sense, religion each religion
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answers questions that it invents for itself.
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You know, like, you know, is Jesus really the son of God?
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Well, Buddhists don't have that question only Christians have that question. So.
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So a religion will invent the questions to which it has, you know, the answers.
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So but people are looking for answers.
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No one likes to live in the question.
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They like to live with something concrete, something certain.
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And then the third thing is
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lots of us,
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lots of humans like to follow
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the strong man.
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And I mean man literally And either that man is clergy.
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And I know we have women clergy, but the system itself,
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I think, is patriarchal.
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Even if women are now in some cases, allowed to
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to participate, they don't participate necessarily as women.
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They participate as
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females playing, you know,
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in a male male role in molding women.
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You would say.
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That's. Yeah.
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Despite. Right. Right.
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But a lot of people just like having the big father God, big
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you know, with his big daddy
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clergy, you know,
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to tell them what to do because I don't have to worry.
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God will take care of me.
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My priest, my rabbi, my imam,
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my swami has the answers so I can relax.
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Yeah, I remember that.
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I can't remember who
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came up with the phrase, but there was one trust in all of a tie up your camel.
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Yeah, right. That's a classic
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I would say a classic humanistic
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I iconoclastic Muslim saying.
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But but it's right. Right.
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I mean, trust in Allah, but don't don't be an idiot.
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You know, it doesn't I mean, I may
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I live in Tennessee, and we just got new license plates for our automobiles.
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And you had a choice.
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Do you want one that says in God we trust or do you want one
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that doesn't say in God we trust is just doesn't say anything?
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And I opted for the in God We Trust one.
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I don't know why it was just
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the God I believe in is not the God.
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I don't believe in God.
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The God I experience is not the God that my neighbors talk about.
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And so when they see on my book, my license plate
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and God we trust, they're assuming it's Jesus or some other big daddy. God,
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I trust God.
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God to me is reality.
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I trust that there's reality.
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I also trust that reality is wild.
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You know, the opening line in Genesis tells you that creation,
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that reality, even before creation is what the Bible calls
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Toho of of Oahu, wild, chaotic, unformed, untamable.
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And then when God in the story, because I think these are stories,
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not histories, but in this story, when God creates
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the universe, God never gets rid of the chaos
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you know, there are other creation stories where chaos is a dragon
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and the hero kills the dragon and out of the carcass makes an ordered universe.
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In Genesis, God just lays a linguistic veneer.
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You know, God says, let there be light and there's light.
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It's all done with language and it's all a veneer over the top.
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Of a value over that.
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The preexisting, always existing chaos
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and that chaos is constantly breaking through.
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So religion gives us a cover.
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It's like, okay, it it broke through.
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But really, it's all right because you believe the right way.
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You know, whatever it is, it's all a defense against reality.
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So many things to to go with that.
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I'm going to come back to the chaos because I think that
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that has a very limbic component to it is because we are these
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these animals who have this primitive part
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and now this more prefrontal cortical thinking about the future part.
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But you said you don't believe in God.
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You experience God.
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Yeah.
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That's not I need to know more about that.
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Let me damn about that. So I'll tell you.
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Why don't you I try not to use the word belief.
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Obviously, I fall into it once in a while.
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My belief to me is simply
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an affirmation of something you cannot prove.
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And so, I mean, I have a sister.
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She lives in Massachusetts.
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Not too far from where you are.
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And I don't I never say, well, I believe I have a sister.
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I know I have a sister.
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I can call her up. I can talk to her.
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So I would say,
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you know, I experience having a sister
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when someone says,
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you know, the Jews are the chosen people.
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There's no way to prove that.
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That's just someone's affirmation.
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And you either believe it or you don't, but you can't prove or disprove it.
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So it's it doesn't hold a lot of weight
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in my mind, the notion of belief.
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So my my experience
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of God depends, of course, on my definition of God.
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And my definition of God comes from
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my reading of the Hebrew Bible, usually through mystical texts
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but in when God reveals the nature
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of divinity to Moses, in the story of the burning bush,
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the first word that God reveals to Moses is the Hebrew word here,
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which most English Bibles translate as I
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am, which is not exactly right.
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I am is static here is a verb.
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It's not a noun, or even a pronoun is a verb.
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It's the first person singular form of the verb
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to be or to happen. So
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it's it's, you know, it's like there's no English for it.
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So it's like eyeing that what's revealed in
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that story is God is the eyeing of the universe.
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Everything is, you know, I'm manifesting of, of God.
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The second name that God gives in and Exodus
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is the unpronounceable y VH, your type of hey,
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which is the same verb Bible's translated as Lord,
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but that's a masculine hierarchical noun
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the you'd have of why HGH is a verb and it's another form
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third person singular form of the same verb to to be to happen.
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So the way I understand God in the way I experience God
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or the reason I use the word experience is when I'm looking out at the world
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or I'm looking at it myself, whatever I'm seeing
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is this why I choose the happening of God?
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The Seer is the air here.
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I don't know if that makes sense, but the Seer cannot be seen.
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The observer cannot be observed, just like your eye can't see itself
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and your nose can't smell itself and your ears can't hear themselves.
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You can't
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see or cannot be seen
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because it's always the eternal subject.
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It's never an object.
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So my experience
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is through meditation and things like that is that everything I see is
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the divine happening and the one who sees it, the AI behind
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Ramy is also, you know, it's God looking at God.
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So for me, that's an experience, not a belief
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affair.
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We would we were talking a bit about maybe some of the evolution
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also of religion and
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the idea that that as human
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beings evolved and our brains moved from the limbic system,
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this primitive, impulsive rational part of our brain
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into the prefrontal cortex,
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being able to solve problems,
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execute a plan and anticipate what will happen next,
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that the unforeseen consequence of anticipating what will happen next is
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we understand our mortality and I just was asking Rabbi Opare,
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how, how might that concept of human concept
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of mortality influence
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the evolution of, of God,
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a godlike figure of, of a religion.
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I don't know.
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I mean it certainly influences religion, whether it influences
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theological constructs, I'm not, I'm not sure.
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But I mean one of the big things that religion offers
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people is a way out of dying, way out of death.
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Every religion promises you eternal life
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either in another dimension or another,
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you know, like in heaven or in hell or reincarnation back on this planet
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All of that is simply a way
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to keep that the egoic mind that's, you know, fantasizing,
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projecting its own mortality in the future from having to take it too seriously.
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Sure, I will die, but I will transition to another dimension as I'm still going.
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Right. It's still me whatever me is, right?
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I mean, I
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I'm always fascinated with people who
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and you haven't said anything, but I'm going to bring it up
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only because I think it's apropos to just sort of set some limits.
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I mean, Tom
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recently lost you know, lost.
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His mom recently died.
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This is Larry.
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Married.
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She is Maria so Larry's mother recently died.
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So what I'm going to say, Larry, just take it
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with a grain of salt if it doesn't fit your own understanding. But
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you know,
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religions who say, okay, so you die and you go to, let's say heaven
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and then you will be with like my mom is 93.
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She's going to die sooner rather than later.
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She thinks she's going to be with my dad,
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which is very comforting to her.
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But the question is,
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if she can be with my dad
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as he was at 89 on all kinds of tubes,
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is she going to be with him in the prime of life?
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Does he grow after death?
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Is he in heaven?
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And there's like some evolution of his consciousness.
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Will he know her?
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Will she reckoning I mean, are these what we want is what we've got.
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We just want it outside a mortal frame.
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And that's a great gift.
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Of religion.
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But I would say it's completely false.
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I think I think what happens, I think you have to know who you are
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and who I think you know, I think I am who I experience myself to be
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is this I think that we were talking about.
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So the analogy of the ocean in the way of the universe or or God,
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if you like, is this infinite ocean with, you know,
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near infinite numbers of waves.
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And I'm one of them.
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All of us are one of them.
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When I die, what happens to me is what happens to a wave.
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It just gets subsumed back into the ocean.
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But it doesn't keep waving.
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It doesn't wave in another dimension.
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It's just back to the ocean.
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And the ocean continues to wave, but it never makes the same waves twice.
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So I'm not into reincarnation either.
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I'm into recycling.
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So the wave that was Romy gets, you know, brought back into the ocean
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and then the divine waves continues to wave.
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But religion says, you know, it looks like you die, but you don't.
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Yeah, it looks like you die because you do.
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It's an end of that egoic self.
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And thank God,
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if you don't mind that phrase, I guess living forever would be a horror.
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That you could you just go back
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and go it because some of our listeners may not know what egoic means.
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So what I have in mind is, is the self that I call my,
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you know, the self I think I am when I look in a mirror right
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Romy, the Romy that has a resume and the Romy that you know, is
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it has his name on the cover of all these books and all of that,
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that psychological narrative
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that I call myself that's going to die.
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And that's that's a healthy thing that it dies, right, doesn't it?
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It's a necessary thing.
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It's just the way the universe functions.
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But religion offers you an off ramp, so it doesn't happen.
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Now, if you belong to the wrong religion,
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then there are story would be, oh, you're going to go to hell.
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I mean, I, I live in a very red state with a very,
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I would call a toxic masculine Christianity
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where Jesus is more like John Wayne than, you know, a great Hebrew prophet.
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And many, many of my Christian neighbors believe
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not only that, I, as a Jew am going to hell,
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but those Presbyterians are going to hell and those Catholics are going to hell.
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And those Muslims and those Orthodox Christians are going to help
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anyone who isn't a member of their club is going to hell
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because one of the perks of joining their club is to get into heaven.
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And if you buy that story and you have to decide which club is right,
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of course you can't know until you die, but if you buy that story, join in.
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That specific club is a is a boon to you because now, okay,
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I belong to the Immortals Club, and I don't have to worry about death
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and or the death of people I love as long as they're part of my club.
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Yes. I mean, religion is a weird thing, but
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but understandable from a psychological perspective. I'm
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yeah, I was just going to say that
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there's so much focus on death, but, you know, I,
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I like most people, I've spent a lot of time in the shower
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and on the toilet, and your mind just goes to these things.
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And I thought, well, when we fall asleep
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and we don't dream, we wake up on the other side.
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Like, instantaneously.
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And when we die, if the consciousness is just
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pure brain and neurons
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and the manifestation of physical conditions,
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if we believe that the universe is effectively infinite
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or that the cycle of the universe is infinite,
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who's to say that those conditions won't repeat themselves?
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Yeah, right.
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I mean, you know, infinite number of monkeys, infinite number of time, they'll,
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you know, come up with Hamlet
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Sure.
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I mean, that's how you get Darwin's evolutionary theory in the first place.
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There's so many, you know, billions and billions of years
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that eventually blind nature will stumble on something that replicates
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and you end up with, you know, with humans eventually.
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So that's possible but nobody cares about that.
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They care about themselves, you know?
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You know, if I belong to religion and they say, well, you know,
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given the infinite universe, always, your molecules will eventually become
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something else.
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You go, Well, who the hell cares about that?
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I want to stay in me.
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And and just move to another dimension.
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Nobody wants to.
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I mean, even when that people say, well, my soul goes to heaven,
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but the soul is just a projection of the the ego, the self, the personality,
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that's that's the fun of going to heaven.
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You get to go there as you and have all these wonderful things, whatever
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they promise you.
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And that's the fun of believing in hell,
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because no one believes in hell and says, Well, I'm going to hell.
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Everyone who believes and now says I'm going to heaven, you're going to hell.
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And the fun of believing in hell is knowing that you
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as you personality that I don't like.
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You're going to suffer in hell for all eternity.
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That's that's the I mean, it it you know, it's like the reptilian brain.
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I don't know.
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You know what?
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You're dying in the brain.
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We're talking about the aspect
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of the brain we're talking about, but it's just primitive
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and but but it's operative.
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And so people buy into it.
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Yeah. It's not everybody.
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It's like it's like schadenfreude on steroids.
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Yeah, right. Right.
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I wanted to ask you, Rabbi, how did you get started with this journey?
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Yeah, so it's a fairly
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simple story, I guess.
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I mean, I was born into an Orthodox Jewish home.
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I didn't want any of this stuff.
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You know, growing up the Judaism, I was taught
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even at a younger age, like by the time I was into high school,
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I knew I couldn't grow into this Judaism.
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I was growing out of it.
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And in my junior year of high school, two of my teachers
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went to India for a year.
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They were in some kind of grant, and they came back
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and they created a class called Asian Civilization.
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And it was a study of Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism.
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I love these guys as teachers.
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I took the class and it just transformed my way
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of looking at the world and I for some reason, of the three,
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I gravitated toward
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Buddhism and towards Zen Buddhism in particular.
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And I started reading avidly
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about not only the theory of Zen, but the practice,
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you know, how to do this, and meditation, zazen,
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you can't get it from a book, but that's all I had.
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And the summer between my junior and senior year,
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I was in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, spending some time with a friend.
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He worked at the post office.
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So he was gone during the day.
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And I had a lot of free time, and I was practicing my meditation,
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and I'm sitting on the shore of one of the lakes,
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I guess, and doing what I read in the book that you're supposed to do.
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And I don't know what happened because I wasn't there when it happened.
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But I can reconstruct something of that.
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At some point, Rami was gone.
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There was no sense of self.
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There was no sense of the environment.
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There was just it was just gone.
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I don't know how long it lasted, but when I came back,
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I felt
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I guess I felt this this amazing love
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for and love from the entire universe.
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I mean, that's how that's how I experienced it.
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And to me, that validated what I was reading in Zen
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that that made that to me said, yeah, it's all one thing
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and if I can just get myself out of the way,
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in this case, through Zen practice, my ego will drop away
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and the greater reality will simply be manifest.
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So that was my first experience with that.
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I've had multiple experiences with that state
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not always with a complete
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elimination of self.
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So few years ago, because I studied in Buddhism
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and I studied in Hinduism and I actually became
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part of the Ramakrishna Order of Advocate of Vedanta
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and I have a teacher, I have a Swami friend
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who was my original teacher.
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And then I have this fella in his eighties who is not an official teacher,
24:45
but he was a student of the
24:50
20th century guru
24:51
who really captured my imagination, Ramana Maharshi.
24:55
So I started working with this guy and I was at his house.
24:59
He doesn't have a school
25:00
you just when you're in his neighborhood, you can call him up and see this friend.
25:03
You can drop by and have tea and talk.
25:05
So I was at his house.
25:06
We're having a conversation about I don't know what
25:09
and he asked me what I thought was a stupid question
25:12
and he asked me, What's your spiritual practice?
25:15
But he knew my spiritual practice because he had taught me to do this.
25:19
What Ramana called self inquiry, where you simply,
25:24
you know, you're having an experience and you ask yourself, so who
25:27
who is on the radio at the moment?
25:29
Who's talking, who's listening, who is looking at Dr.
25:32
Jo, who's, you know, all this stuff? And you realize that
25:35
the you who is having this experience
25:39
there's a bigger you that is observing you,
25:43
having this experience, and it goes back ad infinitum.
25:46
But eventually you come to this place where you realize there's
25:49
just this area, this AI that's having all of this experience.
25:53
So I said, Well, you know what I do?
25:55
I ask the question, you know, who am I?
25:58
And he said, Are you just like that?
26:01
It's just it's like a non sequitur.
26:02
It makes no sense.
26:04
But it something snapped in my brain.
26:08
And Rami was gone, but not the same way when I was six,
26:13
when I was a junior in high school,
26:18
See if I can explain it.
26:19
I had no concept of who I was,
26:23
but the world around me didn't disappear
26:27
So I knew that
26:30
that there was my teacher persona sitting on the couch, but I had no
26:37
right.
26:37
It's not like I didn't know who he was, but I had no concept of who he was.
26:41
I saw a couch, but I didn't go couch.
26:44
I don't know how to explain it.
26:45
I was aware of everything and yet was free from
26:50
the labeling.
26:51
Labeling.
26:52
Yeah, but I guess and and it lasted for a while.
26:57
I didn't.
26:57
I didn't know it was happening because I couldn't even label the experience.
27:01
But when it was over and I came back,
27:04
I again had this incredible sense of
27:07
in Hebrew, it's called knowing the God loves spacious mind is just,
27:13
you know, wide open sense of awareness.
27:17
And I asked him, I said, you know, what did you do?
27:20
And he said, let's go to lunch.
27:22
And he wouldn't talk about it.
27:24
And that was it.
27:25
So I've had a number of different kinds of
27:29
I don't like the word mystical, but a number of different kinds
27:32
of experiences like this.
27:33
That confirmed to me because of the story I tell myself about them, that
27:39
this notion that we are all the happening with single dynamic
27:44
process is is true.
27:46
So if that's I mean, that's just my given that's my,
27:51
my foundational notion.
27:54
And I've had it since
27:56
I was a teenager and I can't get rid of it and I don't try to get rid of it.
28:00
I just sort of accept it as well. That's what I think.
28:03
And that seems
28:04
to coincide with my experience
28:07
so when I went into Judaism
28:11
as a form of study in graduate school and then rabbinical school
28:16
the Judaism I was interested in was only that kind of Judaism
28:20
that brought me to that kind of awareness, if that makes sense.
28:25
I was drawn to the mystical, I was drawn to the Hasidic, but I wanted
28:29
I read I interpreted all of Judaism as a
28:36
that's not really true.
28:37
But let's put it this way.
28:38
I interpret as much of Judaism
28:40
as I could as a methodology for having this kind of awakening
28:44
and those parts of Judaism I couldn't reconcile.
28:46
I just forgot about them. I dropped them.
28:48
So the Judaism that I practice is one that's devoted to this kind of awakening
28:53
and then the behaviors that that flow from it.
28:59
What was
29:00
it that influenced you way back then in high school?
29:03
Because you were there was.
29:05
Yeah, I me what caused me to read those things
29:07
or what caused me to take the class? I don't know. No, no, no.
29:10
You liked the teachers, but
29:13
what was the distinction?
29:14
What separated what you were God.
29:16
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. God.
29:18
The God I was being taught in Sunday and at Sunday school in Hebrew school
29:24
was this old man in the sky
29:26
who had 613 things I was supposed to do, you know, give or take and,
29:31
you know, cared about my diet and cared about my clothing and cared
29:34
about who I married and you know, all this kind of stuff and had no interest.
29:40
This is the way I was taught.
29:41
It's not really true from the mystical Kabbalistic point of view,
29:45
but who had absolute earthly no interest in me as a person and me as,
29:52
you know, someone with larger consciousness kind of thing.
29:55
So what attracted me was the notion,
29:59
the Buddhist notion, that ultimately there's no separate self.
30:03
I just knew that was true.
30:06
And that without this sense of separate
30:09
self, compassion is what arises
30:14
for all beings and I thought, well, that's
30:18
that attracts me.
30:19
Now you can find exactly the same teachings in Judaism.
30:23
It's just not in my synagogue.
30:27
It's interesting that
30:29
the word compassion is powerful is the I am approaching.
30:34
It's so interesting that I am which is I am this is me.
30:37
I matter.
30:40
It is saying that we're always doing the best
30:42
we can, that nothing is broken
30:45
because we spend so much time in our lives
30:48
worrying that we should be doing better.
30:51
And the AM is saying, you know, just let's look again
30:54
at why we do what we do based on the influence of these four domains.
30:58
And you take the words, look at can you reverse them again?
31:01
Look again to repeat something look like aspect later.
31:05
Let's respect why people do what they do without that judgment.
31:10
And it's the respect that leads to value, which is what everybody wants
31:16
everybody wants to feel valued by somebody else.
31:19
We've spent millennium increasing our value
31:22
by decreasing somebody else's then are astonished.
31:25
They do the same thing and respond.
31:27
So we have wars and group mentality over the I am is saying it
31:31
any and every moment you can remind someone of their value
31:35
and whenever you remind someone of their value,
31:37
you increase your own value and that leads to trust.
31:41
So is there a distinction between compassion
31:46
and respect?
31:47
What do you think?
31:49
Well, I'm sure we could find one.
31:50
I think in practical terms, probably not.
31:52
But before we go into that, let's just go back for a second and
31:56
and talk about the notion that nothing is
32:00
is broken and that people are doing the best they can at any given moment.
32:04
I think if you get nothing else out of and I don't know the I am method, but
32:11
that idea that everyone is doing
32:14
the best, you know, he or she they can
32:18
is crucial.
32:21
It doesn't mean that I mean,
32:23
you take someone like this guy in New York who just shot up the subway
32:28
is you going to say he's doing the best he can?
32:31
My understanding is, yeah, given his situation,
32:34
psychological, physiological, sociological,
32:38
all the conditioning that makes him who he is at that moment.
32:43
Leaves him with absolutely no option other than to shoot up the subway.
32:48
Now, does that mean you don't put him in jail for the rest of his life?
32:50
No, of course not.
32:51
He's still responsible That's right.
32:53
Exactly right.
32:55
And that's exactly the I'm saying.
32:57
I'm I'm I'm so delighted that
33:01
that that resonates it means a lot.
33:04
But if if people would and this is your work, so you know better than I do.
33:08
But if people would accept
33:11
not as an excuse
33:12
but to realize that they are always doing the best they can
33:17
and then they realize that the best they can.
33:19
Sucks. I mean, there is judgment there. That's right.
33:21
Yeah. Yeah.
33:23
Then the question is, will what?
33:25
To me, the question is, what is the conditioning
33:29
that I am experiencing?
33:32
That leads me to do X, Y,
33:34
or Z rather than change the behavior, which I probably can't do.
33:37
I have to first change the conditioning or free myself from the condition.
33:42
Is it's absolutely.
33:44
So the I am isn't saying you have to like your and
33:47
you don't have to condone it.
33:48
It's not a free ride because you're going to
33:50
be held responsible because everything you do is a natural consequence.
33:53
It doesn't even mean you're going to win and be successful.
33:56
And for some people, success is when you love going to work and love going home.
34:02
For some people, success is having food in the refrigerator.
34:05
For some people, success is having a home to have a refrigerator.
34:10
For some people, success is just waking up, being able to get through the day.
34:13
But instead of charging yourself in others has lessened and broken.
34:18
Let's look again at why we do what we do
34:20
based on the influence of these four domains.
34:23
You are talking about a fifth component of spirituality.
34:29
Can you say more.
34:30
So here's you know, I'm just ripping off the
34:33
I am approach, which is admittedly new to me, but
34:37
the the fifth dimension
34:40
besides being a music group,
34:43
is this dimension
34:44
of the the eye consciousness
34:48
that is bigger than the egoic eye consciousness.
34:51
So the EQIA that I mentioned earlier, the eternal subject
34:55
that is looking through the world, experiencing the world
34:59
through through us, through all our beings,
35:04
and I think what spiritual practice
35:07
provides is a way to I don't know if the words glimpse or I don't know what
35:12
the word is, but to experience to some extent
35:15
this transpersonal I am.
35:21
So that's what I was thinking in terms of the fifth dimension.
35:24
I just wonder whether, you know, as we talk about it, whether that is I am
35:30
whether that is it, that all these four dimensions
35:34
when they're when they are experienced,
35:38
what they result in is you being connected
35:43
yeah.
35:44
Well, I don't I don't have a problem with that either.
35:46
But I'm still pushing for I
35:50
a dimension that is, you know, with the Hindus call
35:53
such shit Ananda pure consciousness, pure being,
35:57
pure bliss that isn't in any way.
36:02
Dr. Joe or Rabbi Rami or anyone in particular.
36:06
And that and that.
36:07
There's only one of them.
36:09
This is such that an undercurrent
36:12
is I am in the sense I'm talking about it.
36:15
There's only one I in the universe who manifests
36:18
as infinite numbers of of you know, I and
36:24
but on a
36:26
I don't know if the word is practical, but let's say on a practical scale, what,
36:29
what you're talking about in the I am nothing is,
36:34
I think,
36:35
crucial to healing in this physical,
36:39
emotional family, social dimension
36:43
because you know what you said
36:46
when you can recognize this is you know
36:50
these references may not mean anything to your audience.
36:53
But if there are age you know there was a
36:58
oh it's not Monty Python it's oh I think it's
37:01
the name is what when I'm ahead
37:02
but the album is called We're All Bozos on this on this bus and I someone's
37:07
gonna have to look it up now and tell me who the who the the comedy team was.
37:12
Larry, could you do that, please? We're all bozos on this bus.
37:15
We would look that up and the idea is we are all bozos on this bus.
37:21
You know, some of us think, you know, we're driving the bus.
37:24
Some of us think we're, you know, we should we're important travelers.
37:29
No, we're not important, but we're really all the same.
37:31
Everyone is just conditioned in different ways.
37:33
But no one is free of their conditioning, though.
37:36
I think spirituality holds out promise of actually
37:40
transcending your conditioning, but then you can't be you at that point.
37:43
You're just this is I am
37:46
the advantage
37:47
of the spiritual experience, putting it into the I am context
37:51
is that it allows me to observe the entire thing and not be attached to it.
37:56
And that could be a liberating experience.
37:59
So when I know
38:02
I mean, I could I can
38:03
I won't give specifics, but I can think back on my childhood
38:06
and notice the biases that my father in particular instilled in me.
38:12
And therefore, there
38:15
his prejudices that were passed on to me as absolute truths.
38:20
I now see them as prejudices
38:22
because I can stand back from them and say, well, that makes no sense.
38:26
I think there's a dimension of consciousness
38:28
that stands back from all of it and can say, Wait, I'm bigger than that.
38:33
But as I'm moving in that direction, just knowing that
38:36
we're all bozos on this bus, like you said, nothing's broken.
38:40
You can say We're all broken.
38:42
Either way, it works for me.
38:44
But it just it's a it's a liberating notion
38:48
because now I don't have to fix anything.
38:51
Right.
38:52
And I think that's
38:53
you know, you can tell me what you think, but I don't think it's
38:55
about fixing ourselves.
38:56
It's about understanding where we're trapped, stepping out of the trap,
39:02
and then the fixing happens if fixing is the right word at that point
39:05
all by itself.
39:07
Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think
39:10
as we
39:11
if we continue to see ourselves as broken.
39:14
Um, fireside theater. Yes.
39:17
Fireside chat. Thank you, Larry.
39:19
Thank you
39:21
so the I it was really interesting.
39:25
I was talking with some folks
39:27
from another religion about this, and they completely rejected it
39:32
because they said we have to be broken in order to be redeemed.
39:37
We have to be broken or else
39:41
there's no savior who's and that's I mean, that's maybe another another discussion.
39:47
Well, I think it's worth taking a quick look at that.
39:50
Great, great.
39:51
Because in a sense, they're they're right.
39:55
But not maybe the way they think they're right.
39:58
So I cling to my conditioning as if it were as it wasn't conditioning.
40:05
I mean, it's just me.
40:06
And that has to be shattered.
40:08
That has to be this sounds like a Christian person
40:10
that has to be crucified what what I what I love about Christianity
40:15
is the Jesus story of crucifixion and resurrection
40:19
in the original gospel of Mark in the original gospel, which is Mark.
40:24
Mark, even though it's pick up a Bible, it's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
40:28
Mark is the first gospel to be written in that gospel.
40:31
Jesus says only one thing while he's hanging on the cross, and he says, Ailey,
40:36
Ailey Lama, Sabbah, Tony, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
40:41
And my way of reading it?
40:43
It's like Jesus had this.
40:45
He had still was clinging to one conditioned notion
40:49
that God was going to save him
40:51
and then he goes, If you've forsaken me, and then he dies, that,
40:56
you know, he was liberated
40:58
through crucifixion from the last thing to which he was clinging.
41:02
And then he regrets resurrected.
41:04
We're all clinging to our conditioning.
41:08
If we can be freed from that
41:10
and that's usually a it depends, I guess.
41:13
But but often a harrowing experience of shattering, of crucifixion.
41:17
Resurrection is what happens.
41:19
We are liberated from that that conditioning.
41:22
I want to ask you this question because you're a psychiatrist
41:27
I've been to psychiatrist.
41:28
I've had you I don't
41:31
you know, you know, prescriptions from psychiatrist to to help a problem
41:35
I was having because I there was a chemical imbalance going on.
41:38
And I took medicine for a while and it righted things and it was fine.
41:42
The conditioning under which I was operating
41:45
was caused by a chemical imbalance.
41:48
It wasn't my fault.
41:50
It wasn't something moral.
41:52
It wasn't had nothing to do with me.
41:55
Other than I claim this body or this brain.
41:59
And the brain was having a problem.
42:01
And all I had to do and not minimizing, you know, psychiatry and anything.
42:06
But in my case, all I had to do was take a daily dose of
42:10
whatever it was I remember and do it for X number of months.
42:14
And I didn't even notice the change, but my wife did.
42:18
Yeah.
42:18
Because I'm still clinging to whatever I'm tweaking to.
42:21
But but my wife did.
42:23
I found something very similar in 12 step program.
42:26
I'm in Overeaters Anonymous.
42:29
I didn't think I had a problem. I just ate
42:33
my candy. It
42:35
but when I went to meetings
42:37
and I listen to people tell their story about, you know, a broken
42:41
kind of eating, and my response was, What are you talking about?
42:44
That's what I do, that there's nothing wrong with you,
42:46
there's nothing wrong with me.
42:47
And then I realized, no, no, no, this is not healthy.
42:50
Never mind normal.
42:51
Maybe there is no normal, but it's not healthy.
42:54
Then I saw where I was being conditioned by food and just seeing it.
43:00
There is much more to recovery than this, but just seeing it started
43:04
the process of being freed from it because I could say, oh,
43:07
there's x, x makes me do Y if I can.
43:10
Just knowing X triggers y allowed me
43:13
not to do Y even though I didn't necessarily get rid of X.
43:16
Then you work on, you know, getting rid of the cause. So
43:20
I know that part of the I am method
43:22
is making this small changes, and I think that's really crucial.
43:26
You can't I don't know if you remember Buckminster Fuller.
43:30
No, Bucky Fuller.
43:31
So he talks about
43:35
trim stabbing.
43:37
So Bucky Fuller was in, I think, a merchant marine
43:40
or but way back before we had hydraulic
43:44
mechanisms on these ships.
43:45
And to move a ship,
43:47
you had to you couldn't just turn the rudder and change the course of the ship.
43:50
You have these
43:51
little baby rudders on the big rudder and they were called trim tabs.
43:55
And you could turn those this is true of early aircraft as well,
43:58
but you could turn the baby rudder and eventually that would shift the pressure
44:02
and then the you could turn the big rudder and change the course of the ship.
44:06
And he said
44:08
his idea was to be a trim tab
44:10
to make these small changes and and change the direction of human evolution.
44:15
So we think we can do the same for ourselves.
44:18
So that's what I'm going to ask you.
44:19
Now, the I am does say the answer interconnected
44:22
small changes can have a big effect on it to change everything.
44:26
Look, small change.
44:27
Can you recommend to our listeners, given what we're talking about tonight?
44:31
Well, I think the change would depends on the individual.
44:33
So I hesitate to say, oh, do X, this is a change,
44:37
but I would recommend
44:41
we'll call it a spiritual practice
44:43
that I think allows you to to observe
44:47
the conditioning on the four dimensions before
44:51
the domains that we're talking about and then make further change.
44:55
I think that the Z with a capital, THC,
44:59
the practice for our time is what the Hindus call mantra.
45:03
Every religion has a mantra practice where you take a sacred word or phrase
45:08
doesn't matter what it is, but it has to resonate with you
45:10
and you repeat it over and over again throughout the day.
45:14
And now I've been doing mantra work for decades.
45:17
What it does is it interrupts the conditioned
45:23
pattern of your self-talk.
45:27
So I don't know how much time we have but I can give it.
45:30
We have a 32nd.
45:31
We're going to talk about this all prayer. But you control.
45:34
No, when you influence everyone, you get to choose.
45:36
Rabbi, 30 seconds or less.
45:38
What kind of influence do you want to be on people in Judaism?
45:42
It's called being a blessing to all the families of the earth,
45:45
human and otherwise. From Genesis 12 three.
45:48
That's what I want to be.
45:49
I want to be a blessing by treating people with dignity and respect
45:53
and helping them see the four dimensions and throwing themselves from the rabbi.
45:58
You are is absolutely a blessing
46:01
to just to have you here tonight.
46:03
Thank you so much. Dr. Joe. Thank you.
46:06
See you next week.
46:07
Thanks, Larry.
46:08
Go, go, go, go, go, go.