Latest / Tracking Wisdom / Commentary on Rupert Spira’s Interview: Nonduality, Consciousness, and Free Will

Transcript

Commentary on Rupert Spira’s Interview: Nonduality, Consciousness, and Free Will · Tracking Wisdom

• 0:03
  You're listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast, exploring the universal truths that we see woven through culture, consciousness and the human experience.
• 0:22
  Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
• 0:27
  I'm Ryan.
• 0:27
  I'm Peter.
• 0:28
  And today we are talking about Interview with Rupert Spira.
• 0:33
  And this took place on under the Tree with Amir and Ariane, which is a YouTube channel.
• 0:40
  And the show will be linked in the description.
• 0:43
  We're going to respond and comment on Rupert's points that were discussed through the episode.
• 0:50
  And there's a number six or seven different themes that were discussed.
• 0:56
  And so we're going to pick up and share what we took away and how it aligns with our understanding of perennial wisdom and the topics that we've been discussing.
• 1:09
  Anything before we start that you want to say, I think it's going to.
• 1:12
  Be a little recursive.
• 1:14
  Ryan said before we started, made the comment to me that like a lot of this stuff we've already said before, but I mean, it is a little bit recursive because we've already heard him talk to Hoffman.
• 1:25
  It's kind of like they've already said everything in a way, but it's all about expressing and re.
• 1:32
  Expressing these things in different ways.
• 1:36
  So even for ourselves, we're clarifying our own understanding of what we're learning by repetition and reformulation.
• 1:47
  And so we.
• 1:48
  Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.
• 1:49
  And I think that this discussion surfaced a few metaphors and discussion details that I hadn't specifically heard, at least in the way he described it.
• 2:01
  Like when he was talking with Donald Hoffman, I think these ideas were discussed and described, but there's some nuances to the way he described some of the things here that I found quite interesting.
• 2:15
  And I personally find alignment and affinity with Rupert as a non dual teacher.
• 2:22
  He just aligns with me and I appreciate his teaching style.
• 2:25
  I appreciate the way he communicates these ideas.
• 2:29
  These are not easy ideas to talk about.
• 2:32
  And he's very patient and articulate and detailed in the way that he presents them.
• 2:38
  That's something I've always very much appreciated with him.
• 2:42
  My first experience to or exposure to him as a teacher was.
• 2:47
  What was that called?
• 2:48
  There's the three.
• 2:50
  Do you remember what that was called?
• 2:51
  It was like a summit.
• 2:52
  And there were teachers, Adyashanti, him, and I forget the other one.
• 2:57
  And I found of the three, I connected right with the way Rupert was discussing these things.
• 3:03
  More so since then I've been.
• 3:05
  I've had an affinity.
• 3:07
  And then of course, when we found his discussions with Donald Hoffman that only kind of reinforced the whole idea because they had a very complimentary, complimentary.
• 3:18
  And yes, that it was great having Donald Hoffman from the scientific lens and Rupert from the more metaphysical lens, but they were literally agreeing the entire time from both sides, which was.
• 3:37
  It was just very satisfying conversation to listen to.
• 3:42
  And I guess I want to digress for a moment into Meta.
• 3:46
  The.
• 3:46
  Just comment on what I said about what we're learning, because I said something about what we're learning.
• 3:51
  And I want to clarify that the objective here isn't to memorize, and it's not like, oh, I want to understand what he said and dissected.
• 4:04
  We're talking about experiential learning.
• 4:06
  And when we talk about our alignment with these teachers, it's that we recognize that they are speaking the truth that we know.
• 4:15
  Right.
• 4:15
  As opposed to we're trying to receive the truth from them.
• 4:19
  And so if you don't find yourself in that place, you're very welcome to continue to consume and listen and read and explore all this, but, you know, God forbid anyone sitting, taking notes on our podcast and trying to.
• 4:41
  Right.
• 4:41
  You know what I mean?
• 4:42
  I.
• 4:43
  I just wanted to name that, I guess partly because I'm working with Hasan in college who's actually studying, and it's like, oh, I don't want people to think we're trying to learn the stuff that people are saying that's
• 4:53
  not we're talking about.
• 4:54
  So if you're not a longtime listener and you're just coming in cold, I didn't want to leave that lying there.
• 4:59
  That's a great point.
• 5:00
  And of course, as we've said previously, and even Rupert in this conversation described none of these teachings, none of the descriptions are absolute truth.
• 5:11
  They are pointers, they're descriptions.
• 5:14
  They are attempted articulations of experience and of a fundamental nature that is by definition elusive to this material form, this individuated experience.
• 5:31
  Right.
• 5:31
  The discussion with language and mouths and.
• 5:36
  Air and sound and the limitations of intellection with.
• 5:42
  Not to say people are unintelligent, but the intellection isn't the way to understanding and experience.
• 5:49
  Right.
• 5:49
  And I think that gets.
• 5:51
  We'll get into that.
• 5:52
  Okay, cool.
• 5:52
  So this conversation happened with Ariana, I think.
• 5:59
  Is her name Aurora or.
• 6:00
  No, I'm sorry, Amira Arora.
• 6:03
  And.
• 6:03
  And the first topic that was brought up was the non dual nature of consciousness, the non dual understanding of reality.
• 6:13
  Shall we start there?
• 6:14
  Yeah, yeah.
• 6:15
  The idea that Rupert expresses is that reality has nothing to do with material existence, that it is just consciousness.
• 6:26
  The Only thing that is ultimately real is consciousness.
• 6:30
  That there is no universe of separate objects and things and there's no other world or higher realm of separate objects and things.
• 6:43
  There's just consciousness, which is a completely.
• 6:47
  Uniform unity, a wholeness in itself formless.
• 6:52
  Which we can't really.
• 6:54
  It's very hard to talk about because it's very much the opposite of our everyday experience of air quotes.
• 7:05
  Reality, the real world, what we know is the real world is not reality.
• 7:11
  And it's very different from what this ultimate reality is.
• 7:16
  It's almost, you could almost say it's direct opposites.
• 7:19
  Like the fundamental characteristic of this formless whole is awareness.
• 7:26
  Right.
• 7:27
  Basically, the thing that defines it from nothingness would be that it has full awareness.
• 7:35
  As we've discussed previously.
• 7:37
  And since not everybody has listened to everything, I think it's always worth rehashing that in ultimate awareness in the Singularity, there is awareness but no experience.
• 7:49
  The illusion of separateness that comes into experience is that without other, without separation, without object and subject, there's no experience of anything.
• 8:02
  Yes.
• 8:03
  I think I'm going to find myself constantly second guessing what I say because when I say that reality and material existence are opposites.
• 8:15
  I have a friend who's very wise and very awake.
• 8:18
  In our last conversation, we were discussing the ultimate reality.
• 8:21
  We were discussing reality in general and she cautioned me against focusing on ultimate reality.
• 8:28
  So she picked up a rock and said, this is real and this is a very valuable lesson.
• 8:33
  I knew what she meant, that creation is real.
• 8:37
  Creation is valuable.
• 8:39
  We shouldn't minimize it and say, oh, it's the opposite of reality.
• 8:44
  I, I think that comment coming from me was an effort to de.
• 8:50
  Emphasize our attachment to material existence.
• 8:54
  And I think I just want to make that clear.
• 8:56
  It's, it's.
• 8:57
  I don't want to denigrate material existence because I, I wear my seatbelt because I enjoy material existence, you know?
• 9:06
  Yeah.
• 9:06
  Well, in fairness, Rupert also had the same tug of war when he had this discussion with the host that he felt it important to bring the disclaimer that misunderstanding this characteristic is ripe for now.
• 9:23
  I'm misleading.
• 9:25
  Exactly.
• 9:26
  And it can indicate a nihilistic.
• 9:29
  Exactly.
• 9:30
  Perspective, but it's not.
• 9:32
  And that's what he was trying to be very clear of.
• 9:34
  And I think that's also what you were just cautioning against.
• 9:37
  That even in this discussion with Rupert, he made very specific reference to this subject.
• 9:47
  Object.
• 9:48
  Experience is real.
• 9:51
  It's not nothing.
• 9:53
  I guess what I was reacting to, the reason that I said it the way I Did was because of the commonly expressed idea that if you can't prove it, it's not real, or if it's not scientifically proven, it's
• 10:06
  not real, or if I can't see it and touch it, it's not real.
• 10:09
  If I can't measure it, it's not real.
• 10:11
  And that's a very grave mistake if your interest is in kind of having a complete understanding.
• 10:21
  And so I think I was just using an expression meant to undermine that perspective.
• 10:29
  And I think we're going to get into a lot of this in more detail.
• 10:32
  But yeah, definitely the discussions of emptiness and the non reality of material existence are dangerous.
• 10:43
  If you extrapolate them from a materialist point of view and say, oh, well, then that means xyz, because you're doing that by saying that means this.
• 10:56
  You're in a causal mode, which is not part of that ultimate reality that we're talking about.
• 11:03
  You're acting within the material existence context as if it wasn't real, which is dangerous.
• 11:10
  It's just as Hoffman says.
• 11:12
  You're saying, oh, the trash icon's not real.
• 11:15
  So I can dump all my work into the trash icon and permanently delete and we'll have no effect.
• 11:19
  It's like, no, it'll have a very deleterious effect.
• 11:23
  It's just that it's not a literal trash can.
• 11:25
  Right.
• 11:26
  And so the material world isn't literally real or absolutely real.
• 11:32
  It is real within its own context, and we are all real within this context.
• 11:36
  There's just more beyond that.
• 11:38
  And so when I think the implication is we don't have to insist that the end of our material existence is the end of everything.
• 11:49
  And that's.
• 11:50
  We have to balance those two.
• 11:51
  Right?
• 11:52
  Right.
• 11:52
  Okay.
• 11:53
  Yeah.
• 11:54
  So he discusses and describes how the fundamental nature of everything, the only true reality being this one whole, perfect, formless, aware essence.
• 12:08
  How does creation and manifestation and the separation that we experience, how does that happen?
• 12:16
  What is the process by which that is.
• 12:20
  And he describes that creation.
• 12:23
  He used creation and manifestation interchangeably.
• 12:26
  And he actually seem to favor manifestation, which is interesting to me only because I tend to favor creation over manifestation.
• 12:34
  And I don't think it really matters.
• 12:35
  I think he.
• 12:36
  This is me going out on a limb, I think, because he's trying to articulate that this is a apparent process.
• 12:44
  So I was.
• 12:45
  I was harking, as you're working this out, I'm harking back to Hoffman and Tom Campbell as well, who use a term that Spiro does not use, which is virtual reality or Simulation.
• 13:00
  Simulation, right, Simulation.
• 13:02
  Hoffman calls it an interface because he doesn't like the implications of some of the simulation talk.
• 13:10
  Right.
• 13:11
  Campbell talks about simulation because everything is just data.
• 13:17
  And if you have data and you can calculate things based on rules, then you can simulate anything.
• 13:23
  And.
• 13:23
  And that's what our reality is.
• 13:26
  And so that's what manifestation or creation is.
• 13:29
  It's just calculation of data within a set of rules.
• 13:33
  And I like that it can pull Campbell into this.
• 13:36
  And it's completely consistent with what Rupert.
• 13:39
  Is doing and Hoffman.
• 13:40
  And there's definitely strong alignment between both, I call it perspectives because it's a spiritual metaphysical versus, like a scientific approach, which when spirit.
• 13:55
  When Rupert talks about it.
• 13:56
  Right.
• 13:57
  Which those two perspectives have traditionally been in conflict or opposition to each other on defining and describing ultimate reality.
• 14:06
  Right.
• 14:06
  And part of the contributions Hoffman and Campbell make is they offer us a familiar technical language that gives a good framework for talking about what Rupert is saying in.
• 14:20
  In a much less technical language.
• 14:22
  He's expressing himself entirely in metaphor.
• 14:26
  And Hoffman and Campbell are saying we can put mathematical rigor around this and let that inform our language around it.
• 14:36
  And so their language is more of that scientific technical language, which I'm habitually more comfortable with.
• 14:43
  I'm now I'm completely comfortable with Rupert's language.
• 14:47
  Like, he talks and I'm just like, yes, absolutely.
• 14:50
  But I think what we're trying to do is bridge for the listener who's less familiar with this stuff.
• 14:57
  If this helps.
• 14:58
  I mean, hopefully it can help.
• 15:00
  One thing I found really interesting in the way he described the ultimate was if you imagined infinite space and you were to put a wall up, it wouldn't divide anything, that there'd be nothing for it to segregate, which
• 15:21
  I thought was an interesting way to illustrate this concept of the vastness and infinite nature of ultimate reality.
• 15:34
  So.
• 15:34
  So here's another thing I'll bring in from Campbell.
• 15:36
  Campbell uses the term physical material reality and non physical material reality.
• 15:43
  And so this, this distinction, Distinction, it's not a distinction that Rupert is making.
• 15:50
  It's an apparent distinction that people want to ask about is this distinction between material reality and consciousness.
• 16:00
  And so the question initiating was this was how does consciousness create material reality separate from itself?
• 16:09
  And the answer is it doesn't.
• 16:11
  It?
• 16:12
  Apparently he says it's an apparent process, and it's not.
• 16:17
  I'm kind of falling back to the simulation model.
• 16:21
  But again, we have to be really cautious with this analogy because it's easy to break the analogy and over interpret it.
• 16:28
  So, you know, when you have video game in a computer.
• 16:32
  The world of the video game isn't separate from the computer.
• 16:36
  The computer hasn't separated itself.
• 16:38
  Right.
• 16:39
  Now where I was finding myself getting caught was that in terms of a computer, I was going to say, oh, it's all just electrons.
• 16:47
  But in terms of a literal computer, electricity is separate from the physical hardware of the computer.
• 16:56
  And that's where in part, the analogy breaks down.
• 17:00
  Because we're not saying, oh, there's another hardware outside of.
• 17:04
  It's like no consciousness is the computer and it is self contained, right?
• 17:11
  It's not hardware and software and electricity, which when you think of a computer, you have to have those separate things.
• 17:18
  The nature of consciousness is, well, as Campbell says, is to compute, it's to handle data.
• 17:24
  And by doing that, it can create a reality as if it's a computer.
• 17:31
  So we have a virtual world created by a computer.
• 17:34
  It's not separate from computer, it's not exactly part of the computer.
• 17:39
  His point is that consciousness seems to divide itself into something separate, which is something that we've talked about before, the divine separating itself from itself so that it can have experience.
• 17:55
  Right?
• 17:55
  Except that it's not a literal separation.
• 17:58
  It'S not a real separation.
• 18:00
  That's where I'd like to go to Campbell again and saying, it's just creating a set of rules.
• 18:05
  It's just a set of rules.
• 18:07
  And within the set of rules you have experience, right?
• 18:12
  Because the rules define experience.
• 18:14
  And with no rules, no experience, since.
• 18:17
  We'Re on computers and this is going to be even more geeky than what you were saying, but it was what I was thinking when I heard this.
• 18:25
  And this is trying to analogize this everything and separateness in one concept that everybody struggles and gives different illustrations for.
• 18:36
  And for me, it was partitioning the memory in a hard drive where that is all still the hard drive.
• 18:44
  There's no actual walls, there's not a different hard drive.
• 18:48
  But that you can create virtual, simulated.
• 18:53
  Walls, you're assigning locations of memory too.
• 18:57
  And that was kind of the imagery that I was getting when I was listening to this.
• 19:03
  That reality doesn't actually break itself into pieces, but it creates these perspectives is often how I've seen it.
• 19:13
  These micro partitions that are virtual partitions.
• 19:17
  It's not really, in essence a partition there, but it's able to create rules, like you said, that allows for a unique experience, but it's a defined series of faculties and sensors and data collection that presents a unique picture
• 19:37
  of experience from that location.
• 19:41
  And as Rupert had Mentioned in that if you were to imagine ultimate reality looking at a tree, it would see every possible perspective at once, all laid on top of each other in a dark mess of.
• 19:58
  It would just be black or nothing discernible.
• 20:01
  But that when you can take just the one perspective, you actually get an image and experience of the object.
• 20:11
  And if you take multiple experiences, you get different images of those and different opportunities to experience the same object from different ways.
• 20:21
  Right.
• 20:22
  So in order to have the experience, you have to have perception.
• 20:27
  In order to have perception, you have to have perspective or a, I think, as Rupert calls a localized self.
• 20:37
  So this apparent subdivision of capital C, unitary consciousness is just a localization within a set of rules that allows the occurrence of perception.
• 20:50
  And then by that perception there's experience.
• 20:52
  Without doing that, consciousness doesn't have any way of having an experience or knowing anything except of any awareness.
• 21:02
  Awareness of anything except of I'm aware.
• 21:04
  Yep.
• 21:05
  So a significant part of this interview was Rupert discussing this concept from the metaphor of dream.
• 21:13
  So we've been talking about dreams and I felt like this was interesting that we all dream so it's.
• 21:19
  It's accessible that when you dream.
• 21:24
  And he used specifically the streets of London in your dream, the streets of London don't actually materialize physically.
• 21:33
  And in reality, it's all in your mind.
• 21:36
  It's a construct in your mind.
• 21:38
  And you go to the streets of London by localizing yourself in that space.
• 21:45
  And when you're there, it appears as if the awareness or the perception is located behind your eyes.
• 21:54
  It's as if you have a body in London and that body has eyes.
• 21:59
  And you're seeing things through those eyes.
• 22:01
  Eyes.
• 22:01
  And you're seeing London in your dream through the eyes of that body in the dream.
• 22:05
  Right.
• 22:06
  But then he goes on to say, of course, your awareness and you're not seeing through those eyes because that brain and those eyes don't exist.
• 22:15
  They're just creations of your own awareness, creating the dream that you're seeing.
• 22:22
  And that's the way we exist, is that we have awareness through our eyes and associated with our brains, but it doesn't actually exist, or at least it's not created by our brains.
• 22:35
  Our brains are part of the experience that the awareness has created.
• 22:41
  Well, and he was discussing waking up from the dream and recognizing that that wasn't real.
• 22:48
  Right.
• 22:48
  But while you're in it, except when you're having a lucid dream, it seems very real.
• 22:54
  And then made the jump to that's like what happens with ultimate consciousness, which goes to, I Mean, there is a thing, I'm not super familiar with the language around it of like the idea of the dreamer that were
• 23:09
  part of the dream or dream thing.
• 23:12
  I'm thinking about the philosopher dreaming.
• 23:14
  He's a butterfly.
• 23:15
  Yeah, that's not specifically what I was thinking.
• 23:18
  As far as I understand, there's like a philosophical, spiritual metaphor that we are a function of a dream of the dreamer.
• 23:28
  My God.
• 23:28
  Dream.
• 23:28
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:29
  And that's essentially what Rupert described.
• 23:33
  But he didn't specifically.
• 23:35
  You're right in that philosophy, but the way he described it was very specifically saying that like, when we dream and like how the dream itself is not a real material form, but exists to house a location of perception
• 23:56
  and experience.
• 23:58
  And like when we wake up, we realize that that was a dream.
• 24:03
  Air quotes A dream.
• 24:05
  That this experience, this material form, is like that.
• 24:11
  That what we perceive to be separate and material is an imaginary construct from the ultimate consciousness.
• 24:23
  Right.
• 24:24
  I mean, so the tricky thing is that the whole reason that we're talking is that we're trying to communicate with individuals who are listening to our podcast, and yet we're talking about an ultimate reality where none of us
• 24:42
  exist as individuals.
• 24:44
  So why are we doing that?
• 24:46
  Right.
• 24:47
  The reason is because the closer we get to understanding this ultimate reality, the less we suffer in our experience.
• 24:57
  And as is taught by many teachers.
• 25:00
  And so we've come into a lot of this experience and have been sharing it.
• 25:09
  And we know a lot of people haven't had this experience or struggle to understand the experience they are having.
• 25:16
  They are having this experience, but they don't have a good friend who says, hey, let's go do a podcast.
• 25:22
  So that's what we're talking about.
• 25:24
  Like, we love spending time together and we like being human, individual human beings.
• 25:29
  But we also recognize and are dedicating some effort to deepening that recognition of the non separateness that we have been.
• 25:42
  The pursuit of teachers over millennia.
• 25:45
  Right, right.
• 25:47
  Which is also a big part of what we try to communicate, recognize, identify our recognition of that These various teachers and various teachings are maps, models, pointers to an ultimate reality.
• 26:07
  And in and of themselves, none of them are right and none of them are wrong.
• 26:12
  It's only whether the teaching deepens your own experience of reality.
• 26:20
  And so one of the things that I found very exciting about listening to this interview was there was a lot of times where it was not a process of, oh, Rupert's telling me these things now.
• 26:34
  I let, let me hear what Rupert has to tell me about these things.
• 26:38
  It was a oh, my God.
• 26:40
  He's naming my experience.
• 26:44
  So I've.
• 26:44
  I've had some things recently which have been developing, and they just resonated with that.
• 26:54
  Okay, so that was a discussion of how does creation happen, right?
• 26:58
  What is the ultimate nature of reality and how creation, manifestation, the material form, the individuated perspectives, so come out of that.
• 27:08
  And so it's not a.
• 27:10
  It's not a physical creation of a thing.
• 27:12
  It's just kind of the definition of a set of rules.
• 27:15
  And that creates a reality.
• 27:17
  Right?
• 27:18
  And humanity has spent centuries trying to figure out a lot of the rules and has figured out a whole lot of the rules.
• 27:26
  And that's what physics and science is, is a description of a lot of rules that describe reality and improve our ability to operate within this reality.
• 27:38
  The bigger point being that that's not all the rules.
• 27:41
  And limiting science to material existence will never permit us to fully understand reality, the ultimate reality.
• 27:50
  Ultimate reality.
• 27:51
  When you were talking about the rules, there was a couple of different elements that came together for me, which was, number one, we were talking about with Campbell, his idea of the rule set, right?
• 28:03
  That this, this material existence is a rule set of the simulation interface, however you want to describe that.
• 28:12
  And Rupert was talking about how each individuated localization of consciousness is limited in its understanding to its perspective, to its location.
• 28:27
  And what came to me was, number one, okay, it's bound by the rules.
• 28:31
  But also something that you have brought up multiple times in relation to or describing material life is being subject to conditions, right, that we can't fully know or understand the big C consciousness.
• 28:49
  Because from this individuated location, we are subject to conditions.
• 28:55
  We have rule sets.
• 28:56
  We have experiences and limitations within cognition from this perspective.
• 29:02
  But ultimately, we are not.
• 29:05
  We.
• 29:05
  We are not I.
• 29:06
  There is only the one I perceiving through.
• 29:11
  So I think this is an interesting point that because we're incarnated in this brain, we're limited by the limitations of this brain.
• 29:20
  I think there's no question that our physical perceptions are limited by the rule set of the brain.
• 29:26
  I'm not completely sure that our experience of consciousness is limited.
• 29:31
  In fact, I don't think that our experience of consciousness is limited by the rule set of the brain.
• 29:38
  Or at least maybe this is a better way of putting it.
• 29:41
  It's not limited by the physical rules, right?
• 29:44
  So the material reality is what I mean by the physical rules.
• 29:49
  I mean understanding that.
• 29:50
  I'm not saying that material reality is.
• 29:53
  So I get stuck between saying it's real and it's not real.
• 29:57
  I mean, it's real.
• 29:58
  There is a rule set.
• 29:59
  The rule set exists full stop.
• 30:01
  The rule set does not exist, therefore it's real.
• 30:06
  I was just kind of struggling with this feeling of contradiction of talking about reality and non reality.
• 30:12
  And really what we're talking about when we say things are not real, we're talking about the assertion that there is nothing beyond this physical reality, right?
• 30:22
  We're not saying it's unreal.
• 30:24
  We're saying we can't be tied to the idea that this is the only reality.
• 30:30
  This is the only thing that can be real.
• 30:32
  It's the only thing that's useful to understand.
• 30:35
  It's the only thing that's possible to know.
• 30:38
  Those are false statements.
• 30:40
  Real is a hard term to write.
• 30:42
  So that's what I'm saying.
• 30:43
  I'm saying it's also a false statement that this travel mug is not real, that this physical existence is not real.
• 30:51
  This is a physical existence.
• 30:53
  It's real.
• 30:54
  It's just not ultimately real.
• 30:56
  It's real within the rule set.
• 30:58
  And I think this is really, really important is understanding the difference between localized perspective and the possibility of non localized perspective.
• 31:07
  And so I think what I was starting to say is that because we're operating within this rule set, our localized perspective is fixed and we can't perceive anything outside of our localized perspective.
• 31:20
  But I don't think that's true because I think that's a lot of what we have been experiencing is instances of connecting to awareness without relying on the rule set, right?
• 31:34
  Without relying on necessarily the physical brain.
• 31:38
  I don't know, we might still be in areas where we're going through the physical brain.
• 31:42
  We're just not going through the way that our scientific understanding of the rule set has been defined.
• 31:48
  Which is to say, and we always come back to space time.
• 31:52
  What we're saying is don't get locked into the idea of space time because everything that you can manipulate that's not even true any longer.
• 31:59
  We keep coming in that this too, everything that you can scientifically manipulate in space time.
• 32:04
  It's like, no, we have cell phones, we have quantum tunneling.
• 32:07
  Those things don't operate within space time.
• 32:09
  It's just, it's not widely known and discussed that they don't operate in space time.
• 32:13
  Right?
• 32:13
  What I'm saying is that our common perception is bounded by the rule set of space time in our brains.
• 32:22
  But we actually have as individuated consciousnesses as conscious agents.
• 32:28
  In Hoffman's terminology.
• 32:30
  As conscious agents, we have access to consciousness.
• 32:34
  And so we can potentially step around the rule set, just like Neo in the Matrix.
• 32:41
  So we're not doing this so that we can stop bullets.
• 32:44
  We're doing it so that we can have broader understanding and more unity and connectedness and less suffering that comes from being completely tied to the rule set and thinking that the rule set is all there is, that creates
• 33:00
  suffering.
• 33:00
  By learning to work our perspective out of that, reduce our suffering and create opportunities for us to share that with other people too, reduce their suffering.
• 33:12
  A direct question from the host was, is there incarnation or reincarnation?
• 33:17
  And pretty much the direct answer was, no, there's not.
• 33:20
  Right, well, is there reincarnation?
• 33:22
  He goes, no, there's not reincarnation because there is an incarnation in the first place.
• 33:26
  I was thinking from the analogy or metaphor of the dream state, is the dream real?
• 33:33
  Well, the dream is real.
• 33:35
  When you're dreaming as an experience, is the rock, the road, the building, the person, is that ultimately real in the absolute sense?
• 33:47
  We would have to say no, because we wake up and we realize that that was a figment of imagination, it was a figment of illusion.
• 33:57
  But that's not to say that there's no value in the dream.
• 34:01
  There is still a worthiness, there's still an experience.
• 34:04
  Which is where I keep going back to.
• 34:06
  Is that the point, the meaningful takeaway of this experience, this material form of which we're analogizing to a dream that may be imaginary in that sense, where the things that we interact with are not physically, literally real and
• 34:30
  true, but they are able to be perceived and experienced, we're always so fixated on is that I touch this and this thing.
• 34:38
  It's here.
• 34:39
  I can feel it, therefore it is.
• 34:42
  And I think the point that Rupert was trying to make is that, yes, we have sensory perception.
• 34:49
  We have perceiving faculties that can touch and smell and taste and see, given any pathology that negates any of those things, that none of that defines real, and it is only through that that we experience.
• 35:06
  And so the focus, the forward thinking focus, the productive focus, is to maintain the value of the experience over the absolute fundamental nature of the thing I'm touching.
• 35:23
  Right, right, right.
• 35:25
  So I just wanted to try that on for size as far as trying to touch on the nuance of real when we talk about real.
• 35:33
  Because when we think of real, we think absolute.
• 35:36
  The term, right, you know, insinuates absolute.
• 35:40
  The question was, is reincarnation a thing?
• 35:43
  And Rupert said he would disagree with reincarnation being real because he disagrees or doesn't believe that incarnation is real.
• 35:54
  So in order to have reincarnation, you would have to have had incarnation.
• 35:59
  And so what we've been discussing is, I think the issue is that there is nothing to incarnate into, right?
• 36:09
  Well, I think it's exactly what we've been describing as the rule set, right?
• 36:12
  There isn't a body, it's just a set of rules.
• 36:15
  There's no incarnation.
• 36:16
  But by extrapolation within the rule set, why couldn't we add the rule set that this entity that we've defined by this rule set dies within this rule set and then is reincarnated?
• 36:30
  I think that this actually points exactly to my anecdote story.
• 36:34
  I get Rupert's point.
• 36:36
  And in fact, I think I agree in a line with the idea that since there's.
• 36:43
  There is no actual separation, there is no individuation to incarnate something, reincarnation is sort of a misnomer of what would happen.
• 36:56
  A few months ago, I was asked if I believed in reincarnation.
• 37:00
  The question came unexpectedly and I froze.
• 37:04
  And that was the first thing that was noticeable to me or remarkable to me was how frozen I felt in that moment.
• 37:12
  On how to respond to the question.
• 37:14
  I even responded to her after some silence, that I don't know why I'm having a hard time answering this, and I think this is a big reason or part of the reason why I felt conflict in trying to
• 37:31
  answer the question was because the idea of reincarnation insinuates a separate soul, a separate entity that incarnates into a physical body.
• 37:47
  And my perception, my understanding of oneness, every individual location of perception is of the same awareness, is of the same being.
• 38:02
  So in that sense, there is reincarnation insofar as the one awareness continues to experience through new locations.
• 38:14
  But it isn't Ryan reincarnating in a new Joe Schmo body.
• 38:20
  It's that all lives are of the same awareness.
• 38:24
  Joe may have access to the Ryan data, right?
• 38:29
  It's not that the Ryan data is in a packet, and now that packet is in Joe and it's not somewhere else.
• 38:35
  It's that the Ryan data is part of the universal database, and Joe has access to the universal database.
• 38:42
  And.
• 38:42
  And because of his conditions, the part of the database that he sees is Ryan bits.
• 38:49
  And so he's like, oh, I'm expressing all this thing that Ryan and this I think I've touched on before, as far as past lives and whatnot.
• 38:55
  I had said a moment ago, well, why couldn't there just Be a rule set that says there is reincarnation.
• 39:00
  There could.
• 39:01
  Occam's Razor, I think would say, why that's not the like, okay, so now write out that whole rule set and have it not crash into other rules and blah blah, blah.
• 39:12
  Why not just allow that we have non physical access to the data set, which has been suggested by many.
• 39:21
  Well, the Akashic records, I guess, is really the ultimate, in a sense version of it.
• 39:27
  Yeah.
• 39:28
  So what I was going to say is that the idea of reincarnation and the idea of all kinds of traditions of this is my interpretation, angels and spirits, all these experiences are real.
• 39:43
  Are all these experiences.
• 39:45
  Experience of discreetly defined things like this is what an angel is, this is what a spirit is.
• 39:50
  This is what I would say.
• 39:51
  No, I would say they're all people's interpretations of their own access to, well called the central database.
• 39:59
  Right.
• 40:00
  You have access to data which does not fit within our rule set.
• 40:04
  And so it gets interpreted and we create our own rule sets that are not that great.
• 40:11
  Yeah.
• 40:12
  Like they're kind of plausible within our own understanding.
• 40:16
  Like, oh, it's an angel.
• 40:17
  There's this tradition of angels.
• 40:19
  And that's what I'm gonna adopt as my rule set for describing this experience.
• 40:24
  I'm skeptical of that.
• 40:25
  In fact, I would say I'm incredulous of that.
• 40:29
  Right.
• 40:29
  I think the experience exists, I think, and I think the, the elements of the experience are real.
• 40:36
  I just think the interpretation of the experience is based on a rule set that's not in operation.
• 40:41
  And so that's what reincarnation is.
• 40:43
  Right.
• 40:44
  Well, what about this and what about that?
• 40:45
  Yeah, those are all.
• 40:46
  Yeah, that's all real.
• 40:48
  And it's all the one.
• 40:50
  It's all the one.
• 40:51
  And it does not fit within physics.
• 40:53
  Right.
• 40:54
  Although messy.
• 40:56
  Again, because quantum physics.
• 41:00
  What is quantum physics doing?
• 41:01
  Is quantum physics penetrating the rule set completely and getting into like the database?
• 41:08
  Or is it just.
• 41:09
  I think it's another layer, another layer of the rule set which is more subtle.
• 41:14
  Getting into the.
• 41:15
  From the software, into the operating system, machine learning, you know, all of that.
• 41:20
  So there's going to be other rule sets that we will find that will continue and they are hierarchical, I guess.
• 41:28
  Yes.
• 41:29
  Like.
• 41:29
  Well, Newtonian physics kind of fits under a hierarchy of.
• 41:34
  Well, but hierarchy is an artifact of our current rule set, correct?
• 41:39
  Absolutely.
• 41:39
  So the hierarchy might not exist.
• 41:41
  True, true.
• 41:42
  But I think Rupert does point to this at some other point in the talk.
• 41:47
  I do like the idea of quantum physics as accessing another level as a rule set as long as we're not tied to one rule set as being.
• 41:58
  Well, it's absolutely.
• 41:59
  You can't break these rules.
• 42:00
  And we find evidence that breaks those rules as long as we allow ourselves not to.
• 42:04
  Which is what good science is.
• 42:06
  You follow the evidence, you don't follow the doctrine.
• 42:10
  Right, Right.
• 42:11
  Then there's a lot more potential for progress.
• 42:15
  Ah, free will.
• 42:16
  So the interviewer asked whether or not we have free will because I guess, like, we're not individual selves.
• 42:25
  Right.
• 42:26
  She didn't actually qualify the question, but.
• 42:28
  I think that's the implication.
• 42:29
  Right.
• 42:30
  Do we have free will?
• 42:31
  Or maybe it was just a generic question because people do ask.
• 42:35
  So she specifically qualified, does the embodied perspective have free will?
• 42:42
  Right.
• 42:42
  Obviously the ultimate is unbounded.
• 42:45
  Right.
• 42:46
  And she kind of qualified that.
• 42:48
  But then asked if there's free will within that individuated perspective, he kind of.
• 42:55
  Said it's an odd question, like, well, the reason that the individual doesn't have free will is because the individual isn't something that can have free will.
• 43:03
  It's like it doesn't exist in order to have free will.
• 43:06
  Right.
• 43:06
  So.
• 43:07
  So his analogy was King Lear is not King Lear.
• 43:12
  The Shakespearean character.
• 43:14
  King Lear has no free will.
• 43:16
  He's his character.
• 43:17
  Right.
• 43:17
  And you don't see him on the stage unless he's played by an actor.
• 43:23
  And then the actor has free will.
• 43:26
  The actor can do what he wants, but the actor can't know Cordelia.
• 43:30
  If the actor wants to know Cordelia, he says the actor's John Smith.
• 43:34
  John Smith has free will, but he's playing King Lear.
• 43:37
  King Lear doesn't have free will.
• 43:38
  And if the actor wants to know Cordelia or have a relationship with Cordelia, he has to play King Lear.
• 43:44
  Right.
• 43:45
  Because Cordelia is just a character in the script.
• 43:48
  He can't have a relationship with her or know her except as King Lear.
• 43:53
  So he's saying that consciousness is expressed as this entity.
• 43:59
  Consciousness is not bound by the entity, but the entity is bound by the play.
• 44:05
  He didn't say that.
• 44:06
  No, he didn't say that.
• 44:07
  He just said King Lear doesn't exist to have free will.
• 44:10
  Right.
• 44:11
  But his corollary in this discussion was that we all have an inherent love of freedom and sense of freedom and the rightness of freedom.
• 44:22
  And that is because that is our true nature coming through that we are not actually tied to.
• 44:27
  He didn't say.
• 44:28
  But the implication is because we are not actually tied to our character parts.
• 44:32
  Right.
• 44:33
  Which, you know, in the rule set terminology, we're using within the rule set, we are limited, but we don't exist only in the rule set.
• 44:43
  Right.
• 44:43
  So what I'm coming to terms with is understanding what we mean by free will.
• 44:49
  Exactly.
• 44:49
  That's what I was asking.
• 44:50
  What does that mean now?
• 44:52
  Does it mean unconditional, unruled freedom?
• 44:57
  I don't think that that's what I would be perceiving as having free will in this experience.
• 45:03
  But I think that may be what he was kind of alluding to.
• 45:07
  I have a Buddhist answer.
• 45:08
  Go ahead, let's hear it.
• 45:09
  Because I was thinking that within our conditioning, we don't have free will.
• 45:13
  Within our conditioning, we are governed by our conditioning.
• 45:17
  We do what we're conditioned to do.
• 45:19
  Now, that's not an absolute answer, because our job is to recondition our conditioning.
• 45:26
  Which is where I feel like there's will.
• 45:28
  Will to me equals choice.
• 45:31
  Right.
• 45:33
  So the Buddhist answer that I was thinking of was that we're not free from karma.
• 45:38
  Right?
• 45:38
  Right.
• 45:39
  And therefore we do not have free will because karma will drive us.
• 45:43
  But that's not an absolute answer because in Buddhist terms, because a Buddhist approach is to act without karma.
• 45:51
  Right.
• 45:52
  Which would translate in Buddhism into, you're not generating karma and therefore you're not creating a karmic load that's going to drive your next action, and then you're free.
• 46:03
  And that is definitely the way that my teachers have pointed that we're working towards greater freedom.
• 46:11
  Much of what we do is not free will because we allow ourselves to be governed by our conditioning.
• 46:17
  Sure, constantly.
• 46:19
  It doesn't mean it has to be that way.
• 46:22
  But if you allow it to be, then you do not have free will.
• 46:26
  Right.
• 46:27
  And if you are acting only in accordance with your conditioning, which is exceptionally common, it's quite extraordinary that people act outside of their conditioning.
• 46:37
  I think those are what we call saints.
• 46:39
  Those are the people who have, I think by definition, I would say a saint or a holy person or a fully awakened one, is free of conditioning, has free will.
• 46:47
  And then I would say everybody else has some free will when they choose to act outside of their conditioning.
• 46:54
  But that's a huge gradient with most of the people in the bell curve being, you know, almost no free will.
• 47:02
  Right.
• 47:03
  And making some choices.
• 47:04
  And, you know, you know, when you've made that good choice, that was not part of conditioning.
• 47:10
  It was, you listened to your true self in a positive way and you made a choice.
• 47:15
  Well, and isn't that the actor actually making that choice through free will?
• 47:19
  That would make sense to me, yes.
• 47:21
  That's the actor acting out of character.
• 47:24
  Except that, you know, our characters are not as.
• 47:27
  Am I on mic, really.
• 47:28
  Our characters are not as rigidly defined as a script where you can read out what's in character and what's out of character.
• 47:35
  It's just what's familiar and not familiar in terms of conditioning.
• 47:39
  I mean, you could think of that as like improv on a set where they're living within the character.
• 47:45
  They're living within the assumptions of how the character would react and be in that moment.
• 47:54
  But it's not scripted.
• 47:55
  Right.
• 47:56
  Can awareness know itself without the mind?
• 47:58
  I really enjoyed this.
• 48:01
  So the question was basically, is the mind?
• 48:04
  Is this separated perspective required in order for awareness to.
• 48:11
  To know itself?
• 48:12
  Because to me, to know eludes more towards experience.
• 48:15
  And so, again, we get into muddy conversation or terms.
• 48:19
  But Rupert's teaching is that that is essentially the nature of the true consciousness, and it's the one thing that it can do on its own, is it is aware of self.
• 48:34
  It can't experience itself.
• 48:38
  And I think this was a long part of the discussion.
• 48:41
  And I think that at some point in this, I wrote down.
• 48:43
  I am, yes, alluding, of course, to the scriptural Old Testament statement of God, to Moses as being characteristic of that consciousness by itself, saying, I am.
• 48:56
  So, yeah, it's not that consciousness localized itself in order to know itself.
• 49:04
  It did it in order to have experience.
• 49:07
  Or rather, I mean, I don't like the intentionality isn't necessarily there, that the individuation is necessary for experience but not for knowledge.
• 49:17
  He used another metaphor of the paper.
• 49:20
  So if you think it's a piece of paper, just a plain white piece of paper, there's nothing there.
• 49:25
  And then if you take a pencil and draw in a dot, you get the scoped circle.
• 49:31
  Did I say square?
• 49:32
  You said, okay, well, either way, you get that bounded area.
• 49:35
  Bounded area.
• 49:37
  And I think that goes to the nature of perception which leads into time, space.
• 49:44
  I think there's a crossover here of this idea of awareness.
• 49:48
  Well, I think actually, no, it probably just jumps immediately over to time and space, because I think that's where that comes from.
• 49:54
  So the next question is what our time and space.
• 49:57
  And of course, we've been saying for quite some time that space time is merely a condition of the rule set.
• 50:05
  Right.
• 50:05
  It's not the defining nature of being.
• 50:09
  And Rupert's way of saying it is that space time is an appearance that arises from the perception of the human mind.
• 50:19
  Right.
• 50:20
  Which I like very much.
• 50:21
  Yeah.
• 50:22
  Because it really breaks down Even the reality of space time at all.
• 50:27
  So the paper analogy was you have a big blank piece of paper, you make a little circle on it.
• 50:33
  Now, that circle has perception.
• 50:36
  And from its perspective, it's localized in space.
• 50:41
  But in reality, it's just the paper.
• 50:44
  Right.
• 50:44
  There is no locality.
• 50:46
  It's just paper.
• 50:48
  And so only because you've localized it by bounding it by a rule set by any kind of designation, now it has a locality.
• 50:57
  And because it has locality, space has now been defined.
• 51:01
  Right, Right.
• 51:01
  That's it.
• 51:02
  That's the only reason it's there.
• 51:03
  Because there's a localized perception saying this is here.
• 51:06
  Space is still illusory because you are always experiencing space from here.
• 51:14
  Yes.
• 51:15
  And the only way to experience there is no experience.
• 51:18
  It's all imagination.
• 51:21
  Because by the time I, when I get there, then I'm here.
• 51:24
  Well, but we are interacting and I'm here, and you are there for five.
• 51:29
  Feet away from me, not experiencing where I am.
• 51:33
  Okay, so I am interpreting that you're over there.
• 51:36
  We can perceive that there is something over there, but we can't experience being over there.
• 51:43
  We can't experience space, and we can't experience time because time is always now.
• 51:48
  Right, but I can experience or I can perceive that you are not co localized with me.
• 51:55
  Yes.
• 51:55
  Which is just a perception.
• 51:59
  So in incarnation, the incarnation questions.
• 52:02
  And he said, once you draw that little circle, now you have a bounded consciousness within the vast consciousness.
• 52:08
  And you defined a finite mind within the infinite mind.
• 52:13
  And that boundary is made of perception, searing hearing.
• 52:19
  Oh, my God.
• 52:19
  Okay, so this is now.
• 52:20
  I'm all right.
• 52:22
  So this was a direct experience.
• 52:24
  This is one of the things that really sparked me.
• 52:28
  So he said the boundary is made of perception, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.
• 52:33
  Okay.
• 52:34
  And that it is consciousness itself that arises in the form of perception.
• 52:38
  And in doing so, it seems to cast a boundary in itself and seems to localize itself.
• 52:44
  It then looks out from within that boundary through the perceiving membrane and sees itself the rest of the white paper, in a way consistent with the limitations of those perceiving faculties.
• 52:56
  Right.
• 52:56
  And this points to a couple of things.
• 52:58
  One is the elephant metaphor, the blind man, the elephant.
• 53:02
  And we only perceive a bit of the big picture, which is related, but not precisely.
• 53:10
  So justify that for a moment, when we glimpse ultimate reality, which is what I call having awakening experiences, we still interpret that experience through our conditioning.
• 53:22
  And because we are still bound by the rule set, or incarnated, if you want to call it that, although we can access the whole sheet of paper.
• 53:32
  We can't perceive it in its whole because we're limited by this boundary.
• 53:37
  And so to me, it appears as a rope, and to you it appears as the tree.
• 53:43
  Like, that's the way you would describe your experience of the ultimate.
• 53:47
  The way I would describe my experience of the ultimate.
• 53:49
  And yet I can still recognize, like, oh, yes, I recognize that you're looking at the same thing.
• 53:56
  You're in contact with the same thing that I am.
• 53:58
  I can recognize that even if I don't have the same experience.
• 54:04
  Right.
• 54:05
  So that's one.
• 54:05
  And.
• 54:06
  And that's something that comes to me from this group awareness exercise where people are describing their experience.
• 54:14
  And I can recognize sometimes.
• 54:17
  Sometimes it's perfectly aligned with, like, you are naming exactly what I'm experiencing, which is freaky and great.
• 54:22
  But sometimes it's like, huh.
• 54:25
  I don't experience it that way, but I can see that that is an aspect of it.
• 54:30
  Like, I can.
• 54:31
  I can recognize it.
• 54:32
  So that.
• 54:32
  That's one aspect of it.
• 54:34
  This boundary consciousness, boundary of perception is the one that really, because that's my more recent experience, is coming out of this deep meditation.
• 54:46
  Oh, yeah.
• 54:46
  I guess I should.
• 54:47
  I should describe it a little bit.
• 54:49
  So the technique is a combination of a series of questions by a teacher named Rastall, who's in the PoK community, and it's Rastal's deepening technique.
• 55:01
  He asks a sequence of questions to help you deepen into potentially progress in fundamental well being, awakening, whatever you want to call it.
• 55:11
  Remco is a guy who leads a Gae, blending Rostov's questions.
• 55:18
  And so that's the practice I've been doing for some time now.
• 55:21
  And he goes through a series of questions for a little over an hour.
• 55:26
  And so it's a series.
• 55:28
  There's a progression of practice.
• 55:30
  It's not just sitting there for an hour doing a single practice.
• 55:33
  There's these subtle progressions through this series of questions.
• 55:37
  And then at the end, most of the time you have your eyes closed.
• 55:41
  And at the end, the whole exercise is around Robin.
• 55:44
  The way the group awareness exercises.
• 55:46
  The last one is with eyes open, and you do another round.
• 55:49
  I think I've described.
• 55:50
  Have I described this here before?
• 55:52
  Oh, okay.
• 55:53
  What the gae.
• 55:54
  No, no, no.
• 55:55
  This, this.
• 55:56
  Oh, oh, okay.
• 55:58
  All right.
• 55:58
  So this is something that's been happening, I guess.
• 56:01
  When was the last time we were recording?
• 56:03
  Yeah, about a month ago.
• 56:05
  So four sessions ago, I think I had my first novel experience where I came out.
• 56:13
  I was, well, still in the meditation, but in the phase where you open your eyes.
• 56:17
  Just before I had opened my eyes, I had gone very deep.
• 56:21
  But now I was connecting with physical perceptions.
• 56:26
  I'm not sure why, because I don't think it's part of the progression.
• 56:29
  But I was there with my eyes closed, and I was experiencing sound and sight with closed eyes and tactile sensations.
• 56:39
  And I open my eyes and my visual perception is subtly different in that I'm seeing form and color without distinction or meaning.
• 56:49
  There's no labeling, there's no tree.
• 56:51
  There's no keyboard.
• 56:53
  There's just lights and colors.
• 56:54
  And it's like, wow, this is interesting.
• 56:57
  But this time I looked at my image on the zoom screen and I didn't recognize.
• 57:03
  Was just an image.
• 57:05
  Like I was not connecting with my own image.
• 57:09
  Now I'm some of these, because I've had three or four of these experiences.
• 57:13
  So I might be conflating some of them.
• 57:15
  But another one, I think it was a subsequent one where I was experiencing the physical sensations, tactical tactile sensations.
• 57:25
  And I opened my eyes and I had visual sensation of my body.
• 57:30
  But there was that detachment of.
• 57:34
  This is really interesting because I'm kind of seeking, like, I'm kind of sinking into it right now.
• 57:39
  It's a little freaky that I can see things in my visual field as just visual input.
• 57:47
  And the boundaries.
• 57:49
  Oh, these are separate experiences.
• 57:51
  Okay.
• 57:52
  So the thing that he describes is that your perceptions of the boundaries, and that's an experience that I had before, is that I'm not separate from the rest of existence, but there's a boundary of physical perception.
• 58:09
  So I can feel my skin and I can't feel beyond my skin.
• 58:13
  But that's not.
• 58:14
  No longer perceived as a boundary.
• 58:18
  So normally we're like, this is my body and that's outside my body.
• 58:22
  Right.
• 58:22
  Because it's outside of my sensory.
• 58:25
  My tactile sensory boundaries.
• 58:28
  But I had this realization that, oh, yeah, that's just a perceived boundary.
• 58:35
  Just like the outline of color is a perceived boundary between this object and the surround or the figure ground.
• 58:44
  But this was very real.
• 58:46
  This was very.
• 58:46
  Like, I was very aware that I could perceive the boundary of my skin because I could feel it, but that there wasn't an actual separation.
• 59:00
  It was just a perception of perception.
• 59:03
  Does that make sense?
• 59:04
  An artifaction.
• 59:06
  The separation was an artifact of the perception of touch.
• 59:10
  Right.
• 59:11
  But the really exceptional one was when I looked at my hand.
• 59:15
  So I looked around and I said, oh, there's a shape that I can recognize as a cup.
• 59:20
  And here's a shape I can recognize as my hand.
• 59:23
  Okay.
• 59:23
  So I had the visual recognition first because I was focused on the visual perception.
• 59:29
  Then I focused on the tactile perception.
• 59:32
  And I said, oh, there's sensation distinctly remember, I did not say the hand, my hand.
• 59:39
  I said, maybe.
• 59:39
  I did say a hand, but I didn't have the sense of self when I said my hand.
• 59:43
  It's just the label, my hand and the label, the cup, and that, oh, there's sensation associated with the hand, and there's not sensation associated with the cup.
• 59:57
  And there's a clear recognition of that without saying, this is me and that's not me.
• 1:00:02
  It was just, I see the hand and I see the cup.
• 1:00:05
  I can feel the hand.
• 1:00:06
  I can't feel the cup.
• 1:00:08
  And realizing that there's just sensation associated with the hand, as if if I tap the window, there would be sound associated with the window.
• 1:00:19
  It wouldn't make it more me.
• 1:00:21
  Right.
• 1:00:21
  And so that was a remarkable perception.
• 1:00:26
  To perceive perception as this really weird logic, but to perceive the perceived boundaries of perception as merely that, just a perception, no reality to it, no identification, no identification with it.
• 1:00:45
  And so I think the one that really got me, I remember holding up my hands and laughing.
• 1:00:50
  And I think the image, Seeing my image and not recognizing it was a separate one, which was.
• 1:00:57
  I had my eyes open from minute, and we're doing the round robin, and I started laughing.
• 1:01:01
  I'm like, oh, I'm staring at my image.
• 1:01:03
  I didn't recognize it.
• 1:01:04
  That's really weird that I didn't recognize.
• 1:01:07
  I didn't identify with that image.
• 1:01:10
  So this boundary, this definition of the self by the boundary of perception was exactly what I.
• 1:01:20
  I was like, that's exactly what happened.
• 1:01:23
  So that's what I want to share.
• 1:01:25
  Cool.
• 1:01:26
  Yeah.
• 1:01:26
  So he went through this exercise with the interviewer about time and space, right?
• 1:01:31
  That and that there is only now.
• 1:01:33
  There is no.
• 1:01:34
  There's only here and now, and there's only now.
• 1:01:36
  And there's no past and there's no future.
• 1:01:38
  There are only.
• 1:01:39
  Those are only imaginations, which it resonated.
• 1:01:43
  Specifically with me because I have articulated that in past discussions.
• 1:01:48
  What hit me more was the space one.
• 1:01:51
  So I have articulated time, now, and past and future being basically the way I phrased it, was living in memory, in a dream.
• 1:02:03
  Basically, the most frequent experience that I've observed is living in a memory in a dream and completely bypassing the actual real experience of now, which I tie to mindfulness.
• 1:02:22
  Right.
• 1:02:22
  That the activity of mindfulness is intended to encourage us to re engage with and reacquaint ourselves with the current experience of now, which is the only real experience, the only thing that's actually really happening here.
• 1:02:36
  And so often we are living in memory, in a dream, which is not only illusory, but it creates suffering unnecessarily because we are either reminiscing on something that we've lost or was traumatic in our past, or we're afraid
• 1:02:52
  of something that might happen in the future, or we're coveting something that's going to happen in the future.
• 1:02:58
  And so that was all very familiar to me.
• 1:03:01
  But this idea of space and that we only experience here, and that space is also illusory because we are perceiving as the bounded perceiver.
• 1:03:12
  Yes, I can perceive an area that is not here.
• 1:03:15
  I can observe it, but I can't experience it.
• 1:03:19
  And when I get there, it's here.
• 1:03:21
  And that to me was like, okay, wow, that was.
• 1:03:25
  That one made sense.
• 1:03:26
  I agree.
• 1:03:26
  And I'm, I'm connecting this.
• 1:03:28
  Okay, so, so the note here is space is how perception modulates consciousness and time is how thought modulates consciousness.
• 1:03:39
  And that resonates with some Buddhist teaching that I've been familiar with.
• 1:03:46
  It didn't have as much meaning as it does now.
• 1:03:48
  And the reason, I think, for your comment about being familiar with time and past and future is this cultural separation of thought from perception because we focus on teachings about thought more.
• 1:04:05
  And so we perceive thought as more the problem for us.
• 1:04:08
  And so we're taught or we've heard and people will know, oh, you know, the past is a dream and the future is whatever, and the present is a gift.
• 1:04:17
  Right.
• 1:04:17
  I mean, everyone knows that.
• 1:04:18
  And why is it significant?
• 1:04:19
  Because it's about thought, Right?
• 1:04:22
  Right.
• 1:04:23
  But as you say, space and perception is interesting.
• 1:04:28
  And the way I'm connecting to that in terms of Buddhism is that we tend to talk about the five senses, right?
• 1:04:37
  Sight, sound, taste, touch.
• 1:04:39
  Buddhism adds thought to that grouping.
• 1:04:43
  Okay, so it talks about the, the faculty of sight, of sound.
• 1:04:49
  Okay.
• 1:04:50
  Taste, touch, smell, and of thought.
• 1:04:54
  And likewise, I'm more familiar with the teachings of thought, but this space perception.
• 1:05:03
  So first of all, it relates to my interesting experience or my novel experience, but also now when I think about it, it's, oh, space is what separates my sense of touch from the object because I have to move,
• 1:05:17
  come into contact with in space to touch it.
• 1:05:21
  Right.
• 1:05:21
  Space is what separates my perception of sight from you because I can put an object in the space between us and it will observe my visual perception of you.
• 1:05:33
  Likewise with sound everything else and so it's really interesting to see that teaching and see how space relates to those five senses and time relates to thought and Rupert ties them together in the same way that Buddha's teaching
• 1:05:56
  and this is something that I think has only come to me now in this conversation.
• 1:06:01
  Like I think at the time I had some appreciation for this but now thinking about space and the senses is a fresh insight.
• 1:06:11
  Well this is an interesting conversation and I really enjoyed the interview.
• 1:06:16
  I recommend that you watch it.
• 1:06:19
  Rupert is a fascinating teacher so hope you enjoyed the episode.
• 1:06:24
  Leave us a comment if you have any thoughts or your own perception and contemplations on Rupert's teachings.
• 1:06:31
  Join us next time.
• 1:06:32
  Bye.
• 1:06:32
  Thanks Byte.
• 1:06:35
  Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast.
• 1:06:38
  Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
• 1:06:41
  Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content.
• 1:06:51
  It.