Latest / Tracking Wisdom / Exploring Tom Campbell's Theory of Everything
Transcript
- 0:03You're listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast, exploring the universal truths that we see woven through culture, consciousness and the human experience.
- 0:17Welcome back to the Conversation, everybody.
- 0:20We invite you to join as well as we share our discoveries and experiences along the way.
- 0:24I'm Ryan.
- 0:25I'm Peter.
- 0:26And today we're discussing Tom Campbell's Theory of Everything, which was inspired by Talk Tapes, which is a new series of the Telepathy Tapes, a podcast by Kai Dickens.
- 0:39And she interviewed Tom Campbell.
- 0:41So we're going to be commenting on his theory of Everything that we learned through that.
- 0:47And that episode is in the description.
- 0:50So we will learn more about Tom Campbell.
- 0:53Yeah, so Tom Campbell is a physicist who got 50 years of experience working in both physics and consciousness because he started apparently thinking about consciousness when he was a physics graduate student and was introduced to meditation.
- 1:12And then he started on this parallel track.
- 1:15But he's, he's a very hard science kind of guy who also has this other interest.
- 1:23He was a NASA physicist for a couple of years.
- 1:26He's worked in, I think, defense and intelligence and like all this kind of areas where you wouldn't think of as being paranormal kind of stuff.
- 1:36So I, I first heard about him, as Ryan said in interview with Kai Dickinson, telepathy tapes.
- 1:44But it really caught my eye because his toe toe theory of everything brought me back to Donald Hoffman.
- 1:55And I'll draw some parallels back there, but essentially the key elements of his theory are that consciousness is fundamental.
- 2:06In other words, he rejects the materialist approach for an idealist approach, and that quantum mechanics shows us that reality is information based.
- 2:23And so his theory is that we are in a simulation that space time.
- 2:31And I'm going to just lean on a lot of terminology that Hoffman uses.
- 2:36You.
- 2:36Even though Hoffman published the Case Against Reality in 2019, Campbell published his big book My Big Toe in 2003.
- 2:47So My Big toe actually came first.
- 2:49But it seems that Hoffman never came across it.
- 2:54But nonetheless, because I'm more familiar with Hoffman, I'm going to kind of frame it that way.
- 2:59And listeners who've heard us talk about Hoffman are also going to be more familiar.
- 3:05So consciousness is fundamental, not materialism, meaning not space time.
- 3:12That in fact the material reality is a kind of simulation in which our body is an avatar into which we incarnate and our player, actual player, is just our consciousness, not our body.
- 3:32Which of course directly parallels.
- 3:34Well, it's not just Hoffman's interface theory of perception, but also this bigger idea of reality as a simulation.
- 3:43Now what I like about what I liked about Tom right away is that he said consciousness is the computer because consciousness does, in fact, compute.
- 3:56And what I liked about that is that he immediately kind of removed this idea of, oh, yeah, we're just in a simulation, and we're in a game simulation that's being run on a big computer, and that computer is
- 4:12just a simulation that's being run on another computer.
- 4:14And this.
- 4:15This strained metaphor that I think really kind of kills the simulation approach because a lot of people are very literal about, oh, because we're in a simulation, that means that there is a computer, which means that there is
- 4:31a programmer, which means that.
- 4:33And it's like, no, it's just an analogy.
- 4:38It's not literally true.
- 4:41And so that was the first thing that I noticed about Campbell is he says consciousness computes our reality and generates this simulation.
- 4:55So the big overarching idea that he has is that our physical universe is a learning lab for our consciousness, and that the purpose of this lab is for our consciousness to grow and develop.
- 5:15And that development is, as he puts it, to minimize entropy, which means really to move towards love.
- 5:23And so we can get into a little bit more detail as we go.
- 5:28So the first premise is that consciousness is the source of everything, which, again, remains.
- 5:36Reflects what Hoffman wrote, that material existence arises out of consciousness, not the other way around.
- 5:44Now, we haven't gotten to detail with Campbell.
- 5:48I think Hoffman, as I've read him more explicitly, states like, this is mathematically consistent.
- 5:56You can mathematically model how spacetime could possibly arise out of.
- 6:04Out of consciousness.
- 6:06Not that I think he said, at least not in the case against reality.
- 6:11Not that he said that he had done it, but he said it's possible to do it.
- 6:16So another thing that Campbell says is that consciousness is a combination of awareness, of choice.
- 6:26And I thought that was an interesting echo of Hoffman's conscious agents.
- 6:33So Hoffman kind of postulates these kind of quanta of consciousness, like the minimum amount of consciousness is a conscious agent, and at minimum, it has the ability to perceive and decide.
- 6:50Actually, he.
- 6:51And then he adds, take, take action.
- 6:53And Campbell's idea directly aligns with this.
- 6:57The action is implicit.
- 6:59And I think we.
- 7:00We've talked about this a lot of times, that when we see an idea presented by a different thinker in a different way, but that it has the same content.
- 7:11Yeah, that we go, okay, there's something here.
- 7:13And so this really pulled me in.
- 7:17Campbell describes reality as a simulation, but as he puts it, it's a rule set, which I think.
- 7:24So the difference is Campbell is a physicist by training and profession and Hoffman is a perceptual psychologist by training.
- 7:37So their language is going to be slightly different.
- 7:41And I think Campbell's language may be a lot more familiar to a lot of people because I think he works more with the idea of programs as a physicist.
- 7:57And so he, you know, he's expressing it as a rule set rather than just vaguely as a simulation.
- 8:04He also raises the love fear dichotomy, which is an ongoing theme for us, and that entropy or chaos is lowered by moving towards love.
- 8:20You know that when you experience fear, the more fear there is, the more chaos there is.
- 8:25It's very intuitively obvious.
- 8:28Like, I feel like if I say that someone will immediately understand in their heart, kind of like, oh, yeah, of course, fear.
- 8:39Fear does create chaos.
- 8:42So, yeah, I'm just like really struck by his way of expressing these things.
- 8:51He talks a bit about free will and constraints on free will, which he describes as decision space.
- 9:00And we came across this as in Hoffman, where Hoffman talks about consciousness having an action menu, meaning a limited array of choices that can be made by the conscious agent that can perceive and decide.
- 9:18In order to decide, it has to choose off of a menu.
- 9:22And Campbell says the same thing.
- 9:24You know, there's a limited decision space that you operate in, even though reality is created by your consciousness.
- 9:35That doesn't imply that you therefore can do whatever you want and you have unlimited choice and potential in every moment.
- 9:45He's like, no, you're actually, because you're incarnated, you're operating within this decision space which has these, these constraints.
- 9:52Now, we're not as constrained as we think we are because we're not constrained by space, time necessarily, but we are constrained by our decision space, the decisions that are available to us, given our history, circumstance, etc.
- 10:12He was talking about you were constrained within the choices that you know of.
- 10:19That was him.
- 10:19That was.
- 10:20Yeah, that was a significant limitation.
- 10:22You have many more choices than you think you do, but.
- 10:26But you can only see so many choices.
- 10:28But even if you could see all of your choices, you're still limited.
- 10:32It's just you may have 20 choices instead of five.
- 10:36At least that's.
- 10:37That's what I took away from it.
- 10:39This brought me back very specifically to a conversation we had had previously.
- 10:46It was a while ago, not 100% sure it's actually published, but the conversation did occur, which was.
- 10:54I had brought to you the.
- 10:57This idea of infinite potentiality when we were talking about time and everything existing at once, right.
- 11:08And Everything exists in this infinite potential space.
- 11:14All, all events, all potential outcomes and pathways.
- 11:19And we move through that space, through our decisions, through our choices, as the.
- 11:28The experience of time comes by making a choice and following a conditional path away from that.
- 11:37But it doesn't mean that the other things are impossible or inaccessible, but you are brought further from maybe a certain reality, the more choices take you in a different direction.
- 11:54I think this leads to his probability.
- 11:56He was talking about probability and that part of the function of this decision space is probabilities of outcome based on your historical choices, like the things that have happened have cause and effect relation within this rule set.
- 12:16So you will be constrained to some degree on what outcomes you can choose or manage because you've taken this branching logical pathway through time and space to get where you are.
- 12:34Kai asked about the idea of intention, setting intention.
- 12:39People talk about and have experienced the seeming synchronicities that come along with setting a focus and an intention and having an outcome that arrives consistent with that intention.
- 12:51And he was saying that intention can rebalance or reweigh some of the probabilities of the.
- 12:59The probability role of the outcome.
- 13:02Right.
- 13:03Which.
- 13:03Exactly.
- 13:04So you're, you're still.
- 13:05It's still a stochastic process.
- 13:08In other words, you still don't know what the outcome is, but your intention influences the probability.
- 13:14Right.
- 13:15And so what you're pointing to is, you know what.
- 13:19What's popularized as manifestation, which is a term that we don't really like, but was popularized by, I guess, Oprah Winfrey and the book, like the Secret, I think.
- 13:31I don't really know where.
- 13:32I think that's.
- 13:33I mean, that's interesting.
- 13:35Definitely part of recent popular culture.
- 13:38So.
- 13:38So, yeah, I mean, you touched on a number of things that I guess, I guess I'll follow at least a little bit here.
- 13:45You know, this I.
- 13:46This idea of infinite potential and then the gradual limiting of the potential by choice.
- 13:54I like to point out that the literal root meaning of decision is decision has the same root as incision and excision.
- 14:05Right.
- 14:06It's a cutting, and it's a cutting of a choice cutting off D.
- 14:14And so, yes, as you make choice, you're limiting.
- 14:18You're kind of pruning your probability tree.
- 14:21Right, right.
- 14:21And now I'm thinking of the.
- 14:23The TV series Loki and the multiverse and everything like that.
- 14:27Lots of crazy popular culture touching on these things.
- 14:32But I think even that brief aside, you know, kind of tells me that there's.
- 14:40There's an increasing consciousness.
- 14:44What's it called?
- 14:45Not A public consciousness.
- 14:46But.
- 14:47But literally, because we're talking about pop culture, there's an increasing public consciousness of some of these concepts now because it's part of the new mythology.
- 14:58The references are vague and misleading, but nonetheless, it's there.
- 15:03It's there in the form of these modern myths or popular media, which just is interesting to me.
- 15:11So the other.
- 15:12The other thing that I think you're pointing to with this kind of infinite potential space is the idea of the cat, the Akashic records, which I'm not very familiar with, but I'm kind of coming into contact with, which
- 15:30is something that he references as well.
- 15:35But I'm gonna.
- 15:36I'm gonna put that off for a minute because I think some of these ideas are gonna come up.
- 15:42The.
- 15:42But the idea of the nature of choice versus the infinite potential and this kind of simultaneous reality that.
- 15:56That you're referencing, which is what happens when you don't have space time.
- 16:00Right.
- 16:01Space time is what helps.
- 16:03Space time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
- 16:06Without space time, you have the point reality before the Big Bang.
- 16:10And so all these ideas really tie together, and they're not crazy ideas.
- 16:17Right.
- 16:17Because generally we accept the Big Bang.
- 16:20If generally you accept the Big Bang, then generally you accept a point reality, because that's what the Big Bang was was the transition from a point reality to this bigger universe.
- 16:31And we just tend not to think about the implications.
- 16:34People don't like to think about what was big before the Big Bang?
- 16:37Right.
- 16:38Well, what was the Big Bang?
- 16:39Big Bang was the creation of time, space time.
- 16:42So what was before space time?
- 16:44Well, everything, everywhere, all at once.
- 16:48So one of the points that we have is.
- 16:50Is the way that this theory of everything, this big toe, overlaps with.
- 16:56With ancient traditions and perennial wisdom.
- 17:01The emphasis of working towards love or unity with God through love, identity of love with universal existence and deity being.
- 17:13In alignment with the flow of nature.
- 17:17That nature being sort of the fundamentals of the rule set which he related to physics being that.
- 17:26Exactly, yeah.
- 17:27Oh, so you wrote the question, is Campbell just modernizing on perennial wisdom with a physics framework?
- 17:33I think this is what we're always trying to do.
- 17:36Right.
- 17:38In general, we're trying to understand traditions and various different teachings in kind of a modern context that we can talk about.
- 17:52Right.
- 17:52Well, he even.
- 17:54I think it really drives back to his comment that there is one, one ultimate truth which is consistent with the perennial wisdom, consistent with what we've discussed in what we perceive and believe and has been discussed in people
- 18:12like Rupert Spira and others, you know, more spiritual or philosophical backgrounds, that truth is truth.
- 18:19Like there is just a.
- 18:21There is a fundamental essence to the ultimate reality.
- 18:26And it's expressed through thousands of different metaphors and religious teachings.
- 18:30And so this is another metaphor, another way of describing the perennial wisdom, the fundamental essence.
- 18:40And in terms of his position as scientist, we've seen this before.
- 18:48So currently, the cutting edge of all of science is quantum physics.
- 18:55As investigators get more involved in that, they tend to relate to ancient wisdoms.
- 19:05We've seen this in Hoffman, we've seen this in Ravelli, and now we see this in Campbell.
- 19:11In Campbell.
- 19:12Just a caveat is, of course, we've got selection bias in looking at.
- 19:18Yes.
- 19:19This.
- 19:19This kind of thing.
- 19:20I'm not saying that all quantum physics physicists feel this way, but I'm pretty sure that there's a trend of that.
- 19:32I mean, certainly I've looked at other pieces of media regarding quantum physics and interviews with people in.
- 19:43In the field, and this stuff comes up repeatedly.
- 19:51It's not just Campbell.
- 19:52It's not just revelli.
- 19:53It's.
- 19:54Yeah.
- 19:54I mean, it's not necessarily fringe.
- 19:56I mean.
- 19:56Well, here's the thing.
- 19:58Quantum physics is fringe.
- 20:01Right.
- 20:02Itself.
- 20:02I mean, we have this huge body of knowledge of conventional physics.
- 20:07That's the part that's not fringe.
- 20:09All of quantum physics is fringe because it all opposes Newtonian physics.
- 20:16Is that what makes it fringe, though?
- 20:18Well, I'm just saying it's a much smaller body of knowledge relative to the hundreds of years.
- 20:24Sure.
- 20:24Of investigation that it's working against, and it really is working against that which I.
- 20:33So it brings me.
- 20:34Now, this is something that I got from his book.
- 20:38So I did start to.
- 20:40To listen to Campbell's audiobook, My Big Toe, and one of the things that he points out is that quantum physics, as he puts it, ends materialism.
- 20:52Like, once we start doing quantum physics, it's like, yeah, materialism's out the window.
- 20:57It's just that we haven't accepted it yet.
- 20:59And because the establishment's instruction is essentially, shut up and calculate.
- 21:06Like, don't think about the implications of what you're doing.
- 21:10Just make another cell phone.
- 21:12Just make another invention that exploits the weirdness and impossibleness of quantum physics in the framework of classical physics.
- 21:24It undoes all the science.
- 21:27It doesn't undo it.
- 21:29I know, I know.
- 21:30It's just not fundamental.
- 21:34It undoes materialism.
- 21:35Yes, right.
- 21:36Yes.
- 21:37You can use material existence just like you can use a computer game.
- 21:43It will operate.
- 21:44It makes sense.
- 21:45It makes sense.
- 21:46It has a rule set.
- 21:47Exactly.
- 21:48But quantum physics points beyond that rule set.
- 21:53It points that, oh, we're just operating in a spacetime interface and there's all this stuff that doesn't operate in the space time rules.
- 22:02Right.
- 22:03And so, you know, the establishment says, yeah, don't look into the matrix.
- 22:08God, so much popular culture.
- 22:10Right.
- 22:10Don't look beyond that.
- 22:12Just do your job and create another physical manifestation of the utility of this information without getting in, into the spiritual implications.
- 22:25Right.
- 22:25You know, or the ontological implications of, of what we're, of what you're actually working with.
- 22:35So anyway, I mean, obviously very big ideas.
- 22:39It's Theory of Everything by definition.
- 22:45So you did this great outline of key experiments and evidence.
- 22:50And so I'm going to invite you to jump in on this.
- 22:54He went through and explained through the interview with, with Kai a number of experiments and different things that he has participated in that helped to I guess solidify his own position in the space, but also to help validate
- 23:15or give evidence to what he's talking about.
- 23:19And so the first thing he was talking about was this group of people that was involved in outof body experiments and he was going through explaining this remote viewing or out of body experience experiment where the participants were
- 23:37isolated in soundproof rooms, even with a soundproof room in between them to ensure that there was no way for them to hear each other.
- 23:46And they got into this theta state and they talked a little bit about binaural beats being a facilitator to bringing about that theta state.
- 23:59He also spoke about Hemisync, which I guess is a branded proprietary.
- 24:05Yes, version, basically binaural beats.
- 24:10But that helped them to get into the space where they could then experience this out of body.
- 24:17And, and the idea being that they would meet up essentially.
- 24:20So, so having multiple participants get into that out of body state and then meet up and basically describe their experiences as they're together in this out of body state.
- 24:35And the rooms were recorded so, so they're speaking but they can't hear each other outside of, you know, this out of body state.
- 24:46And as they recorded what they were saying and like, oh yeah, there's this thing over there that I see when the experiment concluded, they took those recordings and basically overlaid the tracks and they lined up perfectly.
- 25:03They made a coherent adventure, coherent mutual experience between all the, all the participants where one could say something like, oh, do you see that yellow thing over there?
- 25:16Yeah, you mean the, the pointy Thing with the round top.
- 25:18And, and, and they would say, yeah.
- 25:21And these were not conversations that they had audibly together in real time.
- 25:29But in one room one person was saying this.
- 25:32And in a completely sound, isolated and physically separated other room, the other person was replying.
- 25:40So what I learned from the beginning of the book was that Campbell's start with kind of exceptional experience came long before this.
- 25:55He was first introduced to meditation as a graduate student.
- 25:59Just kind of randomly saw an ad for TM and Transcendental Meditation and it offered, you know, you can do more with less sleep, you can get more mental clarity.
- 26:10And as a physics graduate student, he was like, well, this is great.
- 26:13So he went and did it and basically he found immediately that meditation gave him greater mental clarity.
- 26:23And he started to apply meditation to actually solving physics problems to the point where he no longer worked separately from meditation, that he just, he was working on a problem.
- 26:38And sometimes there would be people around and he would just enter this, what you might call a theta state or you know, this state that he's describing these other experiments, a deep meditative state.
- 26:50And then he would solve the problem in that state.
- 26:54And he said people would sometimes try to interact with him while he was doing this.
- 27:03And they said it was like interacting with just a body.
- 27:06Like he was completely non responsive until he came out.
- 27:10And they were just like, yeah, this, he's really weird.
- 27:12He has this very deep concentration that he does.
- 27:15So he had colleagues who were interested in the fact that he did this and kind of his effectiveness.
- 27:23And he encouraged them to try meditation.
- 27:26And he said none of them ever did.
- 27:28But the point is that he talks about this as a practical experience, not as like, oh, it was a weird thing.
- 27:37It's like, no, I became a more effective physicist.
- 27:40That's why it's interesting.
- 27:43And he said, you know, this is where non physical reality is affecting physical results.
- 27:50Like, this is my physical product, but how am I getting to this physical product?
- 27:54I'm getting to this by entering this altered state.
- 27:59And that's when kind of this whole approach started.
- 28:04But it's strictly pragmatic.
- 28:06And he, he remained like.
- 28:09I mean, he expresses it as a physicist developing a model, like, well, how could this affect this outcome?
- 28:20And that's kind of where he started thinking about this stuff.
- 28:25So yeah, in, in the interview he talks about a lot of paranormal stuff and, and tells the interviewer, yeah, anybody can do this stuff.
- 28:34They're not special abilities.
- 28:35It's just a matter of discipline and effort, which I find intriguing.
- 28:41And I find a Little maybe misleading, because, I mean, you can also say, oh, well, anybody can meditate and experience this extreme state of clarity where you could solve problems.
- 28:55Well, theoretically, yes.
- 28:57But that experience that he had, I read that, I was like, wow, this is no wonder this guy's the way he is, because this was his first experience of meditation.
- 29:07It's not typical, you know.
- 29:10Right.
- 29:11It's possible.
- 29:12Which is different from saying it's typical and kind of goes to, again, the recurring theme of the bell curve.
- 29:20Sure.
- 29:21Like, this guy is not in the middle curve.
- 29:24No.
- 29:24But I think his point, at least what I gathered from the interview part of it, was the term paranormal is a misnomer.
- 29:34He was trying to reframe it, that these are.
- 29:36This is normal reality.
- 29:38This is what things are.
- 29:40And it is possible, although not always likely.
- 29:45And I will say he does focus on reproducibility.
- 29:49Yeah.
- 29:49And so the methods that he's talking about are not inaccessible.
- 29:54It's just.
- 29:55What I'm saying is the amount of effort that it might take you to accomplish the outcomes that he's describing, your mileage may vary.
- 30:03Right.
- 30:04You know, that's.
- 30:05That's the point I'm making.
- 30:06I mean, I totally agree with him.
- 30:09I totally buy into his assertion that it's possible for anyone.
- 30:14That's.
- 30:15That's not why I'm disagreeing with.
- 30:17What I'm disagreeing with is the implication that someone could take a TM course and have their work problems all solved.
- 30:27It's like, that's very unlikely.
- 30:30Yeah.
- 30:31At least in the first go.
- 30:32But, I mean, he did say with effort and practice.
- 30:36Yeah.
- 30:37Yeah.
- 30:38So Kai's interest, because the.
- 30:40The way telepathy tape started was the discovery of paranormal abilities in autistic individuals.
- 30:48And that's how Kai developed her whole podcast, or now, I guess, a growing industry or something.
- 30:57Like, it's a big enterprise other than just her.
- 31:01Her podcast.
- 31:02That's why Tom is saying it's not just for special people who are.
- 31:08Are isolated by special circumstances.
- 31:10And so the.
- 31:11The story of the rest of Kai's investigations is very much like, oh, you know, these are very special people because they're.
- 31:19They're disadvantaged in a lot of physical ways that forces them into this special focus which gives them special abilities.
- 31:28And.
- 31:29And Tom's message is like, yeah, no, it's just part of focus.
- 31:33Like, as long as you can focus and put the effort in, it's not.
- 31:37It's not a magical, special thing.
- 31:39It's a normal thing.
- 31:40It's a normal function of consciousness.
- 31:43But again, Recurring theme.
- 31:46Our.
- 31:47Our culture devalues it.
- 31:48Right.
- 31:49Our values.
- 31:50Our culture tells us it's all false, not much less that you should spend any effort on it, but it's just wrong and even evil and all these kinds of things.
- 32:01So.
- 32:02Yeah, so one of the things that he specifically says which caught my eye, is that in the state of point consciousness, which he very, very easily got to in his first month of meditation, you can, for instance, establish
- 32:20telepathic connection with your teenagers so that you can talk.
- 32:23Because he says you can't talk to teenagers, but you can telepathically connect to them.
- 32:29And I'm like, oh, really?
- 32:31Tell me more.
- 32:32Obviously, I'm like my jaws dropping and I'm lapping it up.
- 32:35I'm very intrigued by that.
- 32:37And I would say I'm intrigued to the point of I'm actually interested in trying it, and I'm not exactly sure how to proceed, but it's something that I'm very interested in.
- 32:50In trying to empirically investigate.
- 32:53Yeah.
- 32:54And then, as you.
- 32:56As you already mentioned, he talks about intention and changing the.
- 33:00The probabilities of the decision space, which is like manifestation, synchronicity, all the things we've talked about as recurring themes.
- 33:14Oh, okay.
- 33:15Yes.
- 33:16He does point out that Western culture ignores the intuitive.
- 33:20And everything is netted consciousness is a phrase that he uses, meaning that all conscious agents are interconnected in broader terms.
- 33:34Well, I wish I knew what explicitly what he said, because this thing of everything is netted consciousness directly parallels Hoffman.
- 33:45Yes.
- 33:46Because Hoffman says that everything, every particle, every object, every particle is consciousness.
- 33:54Right.
- 33:55And we only see them as physical objects because we are perceiving other conscious agents in this physical interface.
- 34:03Right.
- 34:03Hoffman.
- 34:04I mean, Campbell pretty much says the same thing, as far as we can tell from the interview, and that it's all interconnected, which is something.
- 34:19Well, obviously from a lot of wisdom traditions, this idea of inter.
- 34:26Being interconnectedness, it's something that I've come across a lot.
- 34:33Indirect experience in group meditation, experiences of interconnectedness.
- 34:43He was describing it more specifically, at least in the interview.
- 34:49He was describing the metaphor being kind of like the Internet, where each individual perceptive Loki is connected like a network.
- 35:04That's where the netted consciousness comes.
- 35:06And we can choose to be more or less in tune or like I think he said, turn it on or turn it off, but it's not that it's ever disconnected.
- 35:18The Internet's always live.
- 35:20The.
- 35:20The interconscious network is always live.
- 35:24But you can choose through intention and practice to open A browser, and tap into that worldwide consciousness.
- 35:35That's in part, I think, what he was talking about with his practice, where he solves problems, right?
- 35:42There's access to that infinite potentiality, that ultimate database of information through this netted system.
- 35:53But, and I'm putting my own words in it, but this is kind of what I was gathering from it.
- 35:59Most people aren't connected.
- 36:01They're connected, but they're not using it.
- 36:04They're not tapping into that network.
- 36:07So again, this is a major recurring theme is the idea of connection and separation.
- 36:13And, you know, the, the idea of.
- 36:17Of human experience as being the problem of perceived separation.
- 36:24Right.
- 36:25So it's not that we need to log into the connection, it's that we have to stop being deceived, that we're not connected.
- 36:33Right.
- 36:34And that deception is at the same time.
- 36:39So it's not inherently a malicious deception.
- 36:43However, I think it is a maliciously exploited deception, persistently and consistently and repeatedly.
- 36:53And so I think goes back to what you introduced before as the infinite potential and the simultaneous nature of everything possible existing.
- 37:07And kind of what I touched upon as the point reality of pre Big Bang.
- 37:13It's something that's pointed to by Buddhism in one instance of Buddha supposedly knowing, having infinite knowledge.
- 37:26Because I mean, how.
- 37:29How would that be?
- 37:30Because he's not deceived by his separateness of self.
- 37:35And again, as we practice a lot, it's a recurring theme with a lot of people that I interact with of practice, resulting in an increasing sense of connectivity and a dissolution of the illusion of separateness.
- 38:00What else I wanted to point at with this, this idea of the Akashic record, this idea of your infinite simultaneous existing potential of everything.
- 38:14And I want to pull in some thoughts that I've had.
- 38:19I might have expressed them before, having to do with past lives and some of these other paranormal things and how they would work.
- 38:30And also a short story by Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian that everybody knows as that Matt Damon movie, but he wrote a short story called the Egg which really cracks it open.
- 38:49I think this is really potentially an example where art is hitting on this ultimate reality.
- 38:57This story spoke to me like, is so intuitively true to me.
- 39:03And this is something that's attributed to art, right?
- 39:07Art points to the truth or literature, right?
- 39:11It describes the truth.
- 39:12It's not reality, but what's true.
- 39:15And to me what that means is not reality.
- 39:17Means not in space time, not in our physical reality, but really, how can it be true but not in our physical reality?
- 39:28Because it's True in the ultimate reality.
- 39:32And what Andy describes in this story is someone who has died and basically meets his creator and has everything explained to him that all of existence is just to develop that individual's soul.
- 39:50Except that that individual isn't one individual out of billions of individuals.
- 39:55That individual is the only other individual that exists.
- 39:59That there's a creator and there's a separate consciousness that has to be developed.
- 40:05And so he, he, you know, he asked questions about his world and all the people that he knew and everything like that.
- 40:10And the answer is, yeah, they're all you.
- 40:14There is no one else.
- 40:15They're all you.
- 40:16You're just, they're all incarnations of you.
- 40:20Which to me, this idea of space time not being essential, but consciousness being essential explains this really weird phenomenon of past lives, which is very illogical because people connect to past lives and they're like, oh, I was so
- 40:40and so.
- 40:41And many people are the same person.
- 40:43You know, I was Julius Caesar.
- 40:45What?
- 40:45Oh, yeah, I was Julius.
- 40:46You know, it's, it's a, it's a thing like prominent figures are recurring or.
- 40:52Yeah.
- 40:53Recur in various accounts of past lives, which doesn't make any sense at all, of course, and kind of the logistics of souls and reincarnation.
- 41:04So you think about it a little bit and it's like, well, wait a second, how are there more soul?
- 41:09Like, you know, if, if there was a creation and there were so many souls now how are there more souls?
- 41:15And then anyway, there's just this whole logistic numerical problem.
- 41:21But if you see it as everyone being the potential of everyone else.
- 41:28And again, this is like there but for the grace of God go I.
- 41:32It's really there.
- 41:33But for the existence of space time separating me, we are all not the same, but we are all actually the identical entity.
- 41:45And you and I are actually just different, as Hoffman calls instantiations of the same thing.
- 41:55We're just separated in space time.
- 41:58But space time is an illusion.
- 42:00If we take away space time, we go back to the source, then we're one point reality.
- 42:05But we're separated in order to have our individual experiences so that our unity can learn from our separate experiences.
- 42:14And this is the story that you've gone over before about now, this is from conversations with God, right?
- 42:21That, that the purpose of incarnation or creation, same thing, right.
- 42:29Is to enable the divine to have an experience.
- 42:34Yes.
- 42:35And so the way I see this, how this all connects to reincarnation and past lives and whatnot, is that when we turn away from the illusion of separateness and we access this database, all of us have access to
- 42:54all past lives.
- 42:56And not only past lives, but current lives and future lives.
- 42:59Because essentially, I think what it's like is just reaching back to before the Big Bang.
- 43:05And you're not really reaching back.
- 43:07I mean, only in terms of space time are you reaching back in time.
- 43:11But in terms of ultimate reality, you're just accessing, you're not reaching back.
- 43:17Right, right.
- 43:19Because it's everything, everywhere, all at once.
- 43:22There's no space.
- 43:23So everywhere is just here.
- 43:26And every.
- 43:28All at once is just now.
- 43:30And so the problem that we have in interpreting these experiences is that because we're incarnated, we are constrained by the way we're able to experience it and interpret it.
- 43:43And so people interpret these things as.
- 43:46As past lives.
- 43:47Like, oh, I was this person.
- 43:48No, you're contacting this infinite data, but in order to report it and process it and report it and describe it, you're expressing it as, I was Julius Caesar, as opposed to I accessed the data that was specific to
- 44:06what we call the individual Julius Caesar.
- 44:11And that it's merely.
- 44:13It's merely the constraint of space time that makes it illogical.
- 44:18And it's merely the constraint of our individual incarnation while we're accessing this information that constrains us to say, I was this person as a past life, as opposed to, I was everybody.
- 44:32Right?
- 44:33And I am everybody.
- 44:34So that's my interpretation of past life experiences.
- 44:38But it also connects to the experience of mystics who.
- 44:43And others who recognize that they're everybody.
- 44:50So the time thing is interesting too, with the.
- 44:53The database, the infinite, infinite potentiality, the akashic records, however you want to describe it.
- 45:00He specifically said, like, so you have access.
- 45:05You can access this database, find out things about the past and even the present.
- 45:13You can see things that could be the future.
- 45:17But because the future hasn't happened, because the decision tree still is yet to fulfill itself into material form, those only become probabilities or are only probabilities.
- 45:29And I suppose that that goes to prophecy and some of the cultural, artistic phenomena that discuss changing the future.
- 45:43Right.
- 45:44This is what it looks like if you continue down this path.
- 45:48So it exists as a potential of reality, but it has not manifested into the array of choices and experiences throughout human history, which I think also I had discussed during that old discussion, is it's not just our individual.
- 46:10The array of our own individual choices, but the fulfillment of the entirety of human material decision making that has created this reality that we perceive, this material form that we Perceive in the present.
- 46:30State, there is a specific corollary that or interpretation that Campbell mentions that I want to point out, which is the role of existence as a learning laboratory and kind of the relationship of the creator or the divine and
- 46:54the creation or reality.
- 46:57Right.
- 46:58And that the creator created in order to learn, which means that there's learning to happen.
- 47:05And Campbell points at Old Testament, basically the evolution of the Judeo Christian deity, or I should say the Abrahamic deity, changing from a angry, vindictive parental type to a loving parental type.
- 47:28And I feel like we already mentioned this.
- 47:32We did mention this.
- 47:33Is it because of Campbell?
- 47:35You brought it up in reference when we were talking about the Ten Commandments.
- 47:39Right.
- 47:40But I don't know if I'd already heard about Campbell at that point.
- 47:42Yeah, I think you.
- 47:43Okay.
- 47:44Because Campbell explicitly says that.
- 47:46I think you cited Campbell.
- 47:47Yeah.
- 47:47Okay.
- 47:48All right.
- 47:49Well worth pointing back to because it is.
- 47:51It was a very interesting kind of very explicit theological observation to what he's saying, which is.
- 48:03Yeah, the.
- 48:04The idea of God being perfect always is part of the story of God as a part of.
- 48:11As opposed to the nature of God, which is love.
- 48:16And in the ultimate is all there is.
- 48:20But in the context of our existence and of creation, there's a learning path and there is a growth of the Creator, which is a weird.
- 48:35I think that growth is a better term for it, personally.
- 48:38And this is my own.
- 48:40Sure, I say this because there's a number of people who assert, you know, there is no learning, but I think there is experience and evolution.
- 48:56Basically, there's no learning because we already know everything.
- 48:59We just need to remember kind of thing.
- 49:02And in part, actually conversations with God touched on something similar.
- 49:06But the idea of growth and evolution, and this is how Campbell phrased it as well, like he.
- 49:14He did call it obviously the learning lab.
- 49:16But the purpose is for the growth and evolution of the consciousness through experience that moves.
- 49:30So the experience of both high entropy and low entropy and finding our way through those experiences, evolving to the lowest lower entropy choices, I guess.
- 49:47But it's more than that, right?
- 49:48It's being.
- 49:49It's the.
- 49:50It's discovery in a way, but it's discovery through experience.
- 49:54And this is the nuance that I gather from like conversations with God and things.
- 50:01It's not a knowing.
- 50:02Learning to me elicits this knowing.
- 50:06Yes, yes, yes.
- 50:07Thing versus experiencing versus experiencing it.
- 50:10You understand it through the experience and through the embodiment of it, which can't happen in the ultimate state because there is no relational aspect.
- 50:20The Only way to experience is to have that separateness, to have a relation through space and time of any unique concept.
- 50:35And you learn, you learn how, you learn about who we are.
- 50:42And the Source learns about itself, about the nature of itself through the experience.
- 50:49And it was interesting and you mentioned this last time during the Ten Commandments as well.
- 50:55But he.
- 50:57I think it's worth rephrasing or re.
- 51:00Speaking about it again is the Source is also learning or growing, evolving through our experience.
- 51:11It's not us specifically individually that is evolving, but through these experiences the Source, the oneness evolves.
- 51:23And that is the importance, I think, because we are all that one thing.
- 51:29What I think gets muddied both with Hoffman and with Campbell and with others.
- 51:36I really enjoy these models.
- 51:40Hoffman and I love that they're both bringing a scientific lens to it because so often it gets dismissed from an esoteric lens because our culture values and prioritizes this materialistic, physical, scientific form.
- 51:59So I love that these are being brought in that space.
- 52:04I don't think they actually don't address this, but I feel like it is a bit of a muddy spot where it's the conscious agents we're talking about the incarnation of the avatar and nettedness.
- 52:20But even nettedness alludes to separateness.
- 52:24Like, you know what I mean?
- 52:26And I don't think that ultimately I think they would all, all agree in the ultimate state there is only oneness.
- 52:35And yet there continues to be this essence of me versus you.
- 52:41Well, I think it's a way of pointing because we are communicating to entities that perceive themselves as separate.
- 52:52Right.
- 52:52And perceive themselves as absolutely separate.
- 52:56And so you need to point to nettedness.
- 53:00Right.
- 53:01First because I, I mean, yes, obviously in the literal sense, there's not nettedness, there's unity.
- 53:11Right.
- 53:12There's like there is no separation, there is no inter this and this.
- 53:16There are no nodes, there are no interstices.
- 53:18There's just total unity.
- 53:21It's the problem of the whole adventure of trying to investigate reality and express spiritual experience.
- 53:30Right?
- 53:31Yeah.
- 53:31I mean, I think you just, you just said it.
- 53:34We are delighted and intrigued and drawn to these models of scientists grappling with ultimate reality and kind of the alternative to materialism.
- 53:52And I like that.
- 53:54I don't know if he coined it, but it's the first time I've heard idealism opposing materialism and that I would say these models in general supporting a love centered, cooperative worldview that is very much counteracting the fear, selfish,
- 54:20scarcity, mindsets of manipulation, exploitation, everything you know, all that more destructive, conventional worldview.
- 54:34And of course this, this bridge between science and mysticism or science and religion as, as Hoffman pointed to also at the end, you know, that his hope is that a science of religion will be able to develop.
- 54:55And Campbell's clearly working the same direction.
- 55:02There's an obstacle there, and I know we touched on it earlier in the episode and we talked about a little off mic, but there's, there is a concerted or intentional effort to silence the science of religion.
- 55:19My comment was this is 20 years old.
- 55:24Quantum physics is not new anymore.
- 55:27It may not be as mainstream as it probably should be, because I think we're actually starting to move even beyond quantum physics and yet even still in mainstream culture, mainstream education, Newtonian physics is the model of choice.
- 55:45And we like to ignore the inconsistencies in quantum entanglement and different kinds of things like that that are oddities from the lens of Newtonian physics and the materialism paradigm.
- 56:03But it is an observable phenomena within the reality that we experience.
- 56:11So it isn't not materialism because quantum is part of the material form.
- 56:18Right, right.
- 56:19It's just a new or deeper, perhaps more detailed view of what's happening under the hood.
- 56:29And it doesn't discount the utility of Newtonian physics to manipulate the macro world.
- 56:37But we still have obstacles and friction in moving culturally, conceptually, beyond materialism being fundamental.
- 56:50And it's strange to me that we're in that kind of space and you know, maybe it is institutional and you know, we have that ongoing call back to this, this trap of institution suppressing growth.
- 57:12I, yeah, I, and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna point to something which is a little utre for me, I think, in that there's a recurring theme, a thing that as you investigate these spaces, keeps on coming up, is
- 57:30that there are issues of power.
- 57:32Yes.
- 57:34That are highly conflicted because I think the, the, oh, what are they called?
- 57:44The earthly powers.
- 57:46I gotta say, I gotta say the earthly powers are very interested in the potential of this kind of reality and at the same time are threatened by it.
- 57:58Yeah.
- 57:59And so they're encouraging research.
- 58:01Like they want to pursue research, but they want that research to be secret.
- 58:05Right.
- 58:06And then we get all these leaks of like.
- 58:08Yeah, they're, they're investigating this stuff.
- 58:11So I mean, I, I feel weird getting into this kind of conspiracy space.
- 58:15But it's recurring and I don't think it's, it's not all kind of tin hat talk.
- 58:21But going directly to your point of this weird suppression.
- 58:27And yet on the other hand, there's also an encouragement of it and a leveraging of it.
- 58:33To your point, with, you know, using it for quantum computing and for cell phones and things like that.
- 58:39We are using this knowledge.
- 58:43We just don't want the implications of that to be widely disseminated and contemplated, apparently.
- 58:49And I mean it's certainly easy enough to say that, yeah, it's a control thing or you know, a power thing.
- 58:57And I mean, but I mean that's, that's been.
- 59:00Again, that is probably one of the central themes of our conversation is the role of power and self interest and control in how we're trying to talk about this stuff.
- 59:16Like how are these ideas developed?
- 59:19Spread, suppressed, manipulated, perverted.
- 59:24I guess they're missing the, the main theme, which is the love and the low entropy and all of that.
- 59:29Right.
- 59:30They want, they want to leverage the benefit.
- 59:34Which was interesting too because Campbell mentioned.
- 59:36Yes.
- 59:37That it's very difficult to effectively.
- 59:40Yes.
- 59:41Use these things.
- 59:43If you want to.
- 59:44If you want to use remote viewing to look into the girls locker room, you won't be able to develop the ability to use remote viewing.
- 59:55And then he says it's possible.
- 59:57Yeah, it's possible, but it's extremely rare and difficult.
- 1:00:02And, and we're saying how rare and difficult in general.
- 1:00:05In general it is.
- 1:00:06But if you really want to pose, which goes back to what we were saying about the commandments and the precepts, Right.
- 1:00:14If you are oriented towards fear, it's not that you're condemned by sin, it's that you're creating a huge obstacle to moving in the direction that you're trying to move.
- 1:00:27But you're trying to move with a particular focus or motivation or constraint.
- 1:00:34You're putting a constraint on yourself by saying, I want to use this, I want to exploit this to gain more personal power, then okay, well, you can pursue that now.
- 1:00:46You've just hugely increased the amount of time and effort that you will need to invest in and getting.
- 1:00:55Developing this thing that you're pursuing.
- 1:00:59I mean, in a way it's like trying to pursue love through fear.
- 1:01:03Just like counter.
- 1:01:05Right.
- 1:01:06It's counterintuitive.
- 1:01:08It's not, it's oxymoronic really.
- 1:01:10Well, I wonder if it's possible to be deceived into thinking that that's working.
- 1:01:16Because in terms of relationships.
- 1:01:19Yeah, right.
- 1:01:20Where you can easily.
- 1:01:22I mean, it's.
- 1:01:23I think it's in popular fiction or it's even in true crime and real relationships.
- 1:01:28Right.
- 1:01:29That people do that.
- 1:01:31Yeah, right.
- 1:01:31It's like I have a relationship based on fear and I made her love me.
- 1:01:35It's a delusion.
- 1:01:36Yeah.
- 1:01:37It can be a mutually subscribed delusion though, right?
- 1:01:41Yeah, yeah.
- 1:01:43So.
- 1:01:43So I wonder if there are other phenomenon that are not like romantic love, but other things that are pursued using fear.
- 1:01:56And then you get something that you think is.
- 1:02:01I think that's.
- 1:02:01Yeah, I think that was a very distinct thread that was investigated during our Ten Commandments discussion, which is you made the point that there's a value proposition, a valid value proposition that conducting behavior counter to these guidelines, waypoints
- 1:02:28of the path can bring material resource.
- 1:02:35So there's in that sense some level of winning or gaining, but it's at the expense of inner peace and growth and pursuit towards the divine.
- 1:02:49Yeah.
- 1:02:50But I'm thinking more almost literally in terms of say, remote viewing.
- 1:02:56Like is it possible black magic, basically.
- 1:03:01Right.
- 1:03:03To use negatively, to use fear based methods to develop an ability that looks like remote viewing but in some way isn't true remote viewing.
- 1:03:19Just like this toxic relationship isn't true love.
- 1:03:24Right.
- 1:03:25But it looks like, like the participants agree.
- 1:03:29Right.
- 1:03:30That it's love.
- 1:03:30They think they're remote viewing, but they're not actually.
- 1:03:32But there's some kind of weird falsity to it.
- 1:03:36Yeah.
- 1:03:37You know, that maybe it has some utility.
- 1:03:40And so, I mean, this is kind of a definition, that is an operational definition of real that Campbell uses.
- 1:03:49If it influences physical events, then it's real.
- 1:03:53Right.
- 1:03:54That's.
- 1:03:54I mean, that was something that's in the beginning of his book.
- 1:03:56Something when he's talking about his own experience.
- 1:03:59And so, you know, is a CIA working with something that is influencing.
- 1:04:07Let's say you have a remote viewer and it's like, okay, you're getting information that in some ways very verifiable, in some sense is verifiable and is effective in affecting reality.
- 1:04:21Like I can apply this information and get results and yet somehow it's tainted.
- 1:04:29Like there's some.
- 1:04:31I know, I'm kind of intuiting.
- 1:04:35It pulls me into cultural tropes of demonic activity and deception and you know, kind of like what the monkey's paw?
- 1:04:46Like you get the wish, but you get the pri.
- 1:04:49You get the cost.
- 1:04:51Right.
- 1:04:51Whereas if it's a true benign love based thing, then there's no cost.
- 1:04:59Right.
- 1:05:01So referencing back to the telepathy tapes, which apparently is an extremely popular podcast, like just explode.
- 1:05:10Like went viral.
- 1:05:11Yeah.
- 1:05:12I guess I'd also like to visit.
- 1:05:15As for us, for us to investigate that, because this idea of the central database is something that actually comes up.
- 1:05:25It's very interesting because I remain skeptical about this whole thing.
- 1:05:30Right.
- 1:05:31But taken within its own context, there's a consistent story, I'm curious at really investigating this, as to what the criticisms and challenges are, because it's controversial.
- 1:05:44But that is a central thing of, yes, we are able to.
- 1:05:49So first of all, yes, we, we meet telepathically and yes, we do have access to infinite knowledge.
- 1:05:56And it's consistent with the idea of what, what Campbell's talking about, what, you know, what I've heard about the Akashic records with all this stuff.
- 1:06:07It's.
- 1:06:07Everybody's talking about the same thing.
- 1:06:09It's like, oh, I'm recognizing it.
- 1:06:11I'm just not recognizing from direct experience.
- 1:06:14Right.
- 1:06:15And that is why I am interested in pursuing these things.
- 1:06:20So in terms of whatever ability I might gain access to, it's so that the ability to connect with others by recognizing something from a direct experience that I know is very, very important to me, both kind of aesthetically,
- 1:06:42like, it's just very, very pleasant.
- 1:06:45But also in terms of my growth, because I know that I develop that.
- 1:06:50I have been developing that way.
- 1:06:53And so if I can increase the number of experiences by which I can interact with people and saying, yes, I know that experience, that's what's interesting to me.
- 1:07:06Because the people that I've contacted about these various things are generally uncomfortable with.
- 1:07:16Generally there's a.
- 1:07:17There's a quality of loneliness to having this experience.
- 1:07:22And then my fulfillment is in removing that.
- 1:07:28Sure.
- 1:07:29Loneliness by saying, yeah, I, I know that.
- 1:07:32And at the same time, it removes my loneliness in a way that I don't think playing golf is gonna.
- 1:07:44So next episode we're gonna touch on lucid dreaming, which is akin to this out of body experience.
- 1:07:54I would, I would subscribe to what Campbell says, which is that, yeah, they're all the same thing.
- 1:08:01Because in my, my interpretation, all this stuff is merely removing yourself from the constraints of spacetime.
- 1:08:11Thank you for listening.
- 1:08:12I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation.
- 1:08:15If you have your own experiences you'd like to share, we invite you to comment or email.
- 1:08:22You can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube, you can email us@inforackingwisdom.com and we would love to hear from you guys.
- 1:08:32Until next time.
- 1:08:33See you then.
- 1:08:34Thanks a lot.
- 1:08:37Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
- 1:08:39Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
- 1:08:42Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and.