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Seeking the Essence of God: Perspectives from Different Faith Traditions · Tracking Wisdom

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  Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution.
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  They are for informational and entertainment purposes only.
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  Now join Ryan and Peter for another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
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  Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
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  My name is Ryan.
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  My name is Peter.
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  So I had an interesting sermon at our local church, and it resonated pretty specifically to me in a lot of the perennial wisdom that we've been talking about.
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  And this was from a couple of weeks ago.
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  So I pulled out a couple of recorded excerpts from that sermon, and Peter and I are going to listen to them and comment on.
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  On what we take away from them.
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  The three main themes that came across with this was, number one, the idea that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, and about the importance of exploring a variety of different perspectives.
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  The second point came in, this was actually on Trinity Sunday, and there was the pastor's presentation of the challenge of understanding the Trinity and monotheism.
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  And then the third was about still sort of tied to monotheism and worshiping of the one God, with an interesting perspective about authentic worship and an anecdote from the pastor that he had through an interfaith community and a
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  friend of his that was the imam of the local Muslim.
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  What do they call that?
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  Congregation.
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  Congregation, sure.
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  Sorry, guys.
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  And basically weaving in the perennial wisdom that we've been talking about into these.
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  Oh, and I.
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  And I promise from last episode, I had an interesting thought related to the authentic worship regarding God being all things from the perspective of this authentic worship, what it can mean to worship a variety of different, say, manifestations
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  of God within the material world.
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  Okay, so we'll listen to the first one.
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  And here we go.
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  I saw a cartoon I really liked that showed Jesus on top of a hill and disciples sitting on the ground at the bottom of the hill.
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  And Jesus is saying, now listen carefully.
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  I don't want four versions of this.
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  But having four versions helps us to get to the truth.
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  No one person here has the truth, but by coming together and engaging in dialogue, we can get closer to the truth.
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  So four versions is a good way to get closer to the truth.
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  Read all four.
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  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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  See where they differ, See where they're similar.
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  Try to get closer to the truth that way.
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  How can we read Scripture and know exactly what it means to us?
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  Because you turn to the person next to you and they'll get a different meaning from it.
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  So we need to talk with each other and listen and maybe hear Something that we didn't see the first time on our reading, but that's how we get closer to the truth.
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  This is a phrase that is used by progressive theologians often.
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  And as far as I can tell, it comes from a song written by a rapper musician named Michael Franti, who's a Christian.
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  And here's the phrase God is too big for just one religion.
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  So I actually pasted a couple of that was spread out throughout, but I found them related.
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  And what I heard in this specifically was kind of what we were talking about with the universalist perennialism perspective and the importance of a variety of teachings and hearing the message from in different ways and in different lenses,
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  because the truth is bigger than all of it.
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  And the importance in continuing dialogue across not just faiths, but with perspectives of all kinds.
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  It is the pursuit of getting closer to the truth.
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  Like, even after that, you don't arrive at the absolute truth.
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  We can't fully grasp and know the absolute truth.
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  But in engaging in that activity, we get closer.
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  And I think we've.
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  We've touched on something similar to that.
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  The language sounded familiar in a way that, I don't know.
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  In other discussions, I feel like we've talked with.
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  It's not about discovering the truth, but getting closer, like.
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  Like chipping away.
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  I think it also speaks to encouraging, not just being open to.
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  And actually he does speak a little bit more to this that I cut out.
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  But it's not just about tolerating other views.
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  Right.
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  But to truly open our hearts and minds to hearing and considering alternate views in a way that also ties to our previous episode, where it's conceivable somebody feels friction hearing the Ten Commandments presented in a way that we
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  did, you know, and it's okay if there's friction there, and it's okay if you disagree.
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  I think that it's important for all of us to be open to hearing the message in different ways.
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  I think it doesn't mean that we have to accept all the versions.
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  I mean, so.
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  So what I'm seeing here is we have four people who wrote four accounts, right?
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  And each of them heard what Jesus said from their own experience because they all had separate lives prior to that.
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  And so they're bringing different context and experience specifically to this talk.
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  And then they wrote their gospels and they're each going to express what they experience in their own way.
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  So you've got kind of a double filter in a way of how this could be heard.
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  And, you know, I guess to the point is none of it is the absolute truth.
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  It's.
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  It's a way of expressing what they experienced at the time and obviously further filtered for, you know, however long it took them to actually write it right after the actual event.
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  So.
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  And then, of course, you know, memory being what it is, it's overlaid with subsequent experiences.
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  I like what you said about the first bit, you know, Phil.
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  So I mean, just as we.
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  Anytime we have our discussion, we can hear the same thing and come away with find priority and importance and nuances that resonate quite the same way as the other person.
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  All right, let's go to the next one.
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  So the Trinity is challenging the idea that Christ is also God.
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  We are monotheistic and yet we have a trinity.
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  But to others, to Unitarians, to Muslims, maybe to some Jews, it might seem like three gods.
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  But my interpretation is that the Creator, the Christ and the Holy Spirit are aspects of one God.
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  It's not that for me, that at a point in time, God had a son.
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  Son wasn't there before, no Jesus.
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  Now all of a sudden you have Jesus showing up.
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  That's why the title of my sermon is Always There.
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  And the reading from Proverbs includes the verse, I was always there, always there from the beginning.
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  Because Christ is a concept.
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  Yes, Jesus was a man, but Jesus was the Christ.
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  And Christ has always been there, didn't just show up one day.
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  And the idea that then when the Son went to heaven, he left behind the Holy Spirit.
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  There was no Holy Spirit before.
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  I don't believe that either.
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  The Holy Spirit has always been there.
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  We sometimes discover things that were always there, and so we think that they're new.
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  This was interesting to me.
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  I liked that very last bit, which was just because we recognize or discover something doesn't mean it hasn't always been there.
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  I agree that when we talk about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit, that we are discussing aspects which, you know, I would like for you to ask your question again that you asked after or off mic.
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  But my understanding or my belief in the oneness of creation doesn't preclude aspects, I guess, you know, perspectives.
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  Just as I would say that from our existence, right, that we are still all one.
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  We are still one with the Creator.
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  We are unique perspectives or the waves in the ocean, you know, all those metaphors.
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  And yet we are one, you know, and just like a tree is a perspective and a human is a perspective and a rock is perspective, all that is still God.
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  So it's not conflicting for me personally to think of a God, God and Christness and a Holy Spirit ness.
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  But I also, in a way feel.
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  I guess I reject, again, kind of this personification of it.
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  You know what I mean?
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  And like, Jesus is presented through the Gospels and through his ministry as embodying the Christ ness, but the Christ ness is not Jesus.
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  Yeah.
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  And I mean, I, you know, largely agree with what you're saying.
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  And I find this, you know, I agree that this, the Trinity is challenging.
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  Not in that you can't talk about three, not that you can't talk about God in three separate ways.
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  Right.
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  Obviously that's possible.
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  I mean, that's not particularly challenging.
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  I think one thing for me is why are we locked in what.
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  You know, I mean, it's what.
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  It's one of our central theses, that there are experiences of the truth that people try to share and codify.
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  And then you get locked into this one version.
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  And so it's like, oh, no, it's only three.
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  It's not two.
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  It's not four.
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  It's not 20.
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  You know, it's like, why three?
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  Right?
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  And clearly it's an institution.
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  I mean, it's a historical reason.
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  It's not because there's something inherently in that.
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  You know, I'm thinking about Monty Python, the whole hand grenade.
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  Right.
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  You shall count to three, not four, not, you know, two.
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  So that I find a little.
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  Just intellectually challenged.
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  It's like Hawaii.
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  Right?
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  And I mean, clearly, if you look at it as a.
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  What do you call it, comparative religion scholar or something, you know, you'll find some historical reason, some causation for.
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  And this is when it got locked into three.
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  And that's.
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  And then that's what we have now.
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  But, you know, it just raises this intellectual question of, oh, okay, I can see why that he has.
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  That God has different aspects that we can talk about.
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  We can continue to.
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  As God's infinite, we can continue to talk.
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  So why three?
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  You know, so there's that.
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  There's that intellectual kind of dissonance for me.
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  And then the other challenge I find is Christ versus Jesus.
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  Right, right.
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  Because my understanding, it's absolutely essential that Jesus was human.
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  And maybe that's more of a process issue, right.
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  That Christ had to go the process of incarnating and being crucified and being resurrected.
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  And so Jesus was just part of the process.
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  Jesus is not.
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  Not the definition of Christ.
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  Right.
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  And so.
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  And this is where I'm a little.
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  This is where I'm, you know, theologically weak.
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  It's like, oh, well, what is Christ?
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  I mean, I know, Christ is savior, but you know, I don't have very deep understanding of what, what is Christ as a concept.
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  That all has been, you know, I can, I'm familiar with some of the scripture, like I'm the Word and the Word was with God, you know, all that.
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  I don't know what it means.
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  Right, right.
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  I know the words.
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  And so it's like, oh yeah, yeah, I know that Christ was in the beginning.
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  Yeah, I knew that, like, I knew that Christ didn't show up with Jesus.
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  But then it raises all these questions which I don't, I'm not really familiar with.
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  So I find that a little challenging.
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  But I mean, I think it's interesting that to have this recognition.
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  Oh yeah, okay.
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  Jesus is part of the process of Christ from the beginning through, you know, the Jewish people into the birth of, and the crucifixion and the resurrection and the, whatever we call it now.
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  Right.
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  I guess he is risen.
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  He is alive.
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  Christ is alive.
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  I keep, I, I seen this recently.
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  But anyway, so yeah, it's interesting.
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  And obviously, you know, of course, as a sermon, I mean, this is in the context of this faith.
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  Right.
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  It's not a discussion of, this is not really a theological discussion, which I'm kind of like, oh, I don't, I don't get it because I'm not part of this faith communities.
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  I don't have all the context maybe that, you know, other people are bringing to it or that the, the intended audience is bringing, is bringing to this sermon.
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  It seems that, and this is not to criticize, but just an observation that, and we don't have to get deep on institutional stuff.
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  I know we've, we've touched on it before and we rehash some of it, but we don't want to go off the rails with it.
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  Right.
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  It's not the point.
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  But it does seem that there was a point in time where the institution had a conflict to have to reconcile from the Ten Commandments that there shall be no other God to this essentially at the time self proclaimed,
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  he didn't proclaim so much.
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  But you know, the idea that of the divinity of Jesus happened after, you know, and having to reconcile, okay, so now how do we reconcile that?
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  And then Jesus brought up this idea of the Holy Spirit.
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  So it almost is like this game in a way of trying to say, well, you know, it is, there's only one God.
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  And our historical scriptures touched on these other things that make it confusing.
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  So this is how we fix that.
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  But I agree with you that ultimately it's not about three, it's about the vastness of, of God.
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  Right.
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  In each perspective.
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  I mean, so we know clearly before the time of Jesus there was a messianic prophecy.
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  Yes.
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  So but we don't know between the two of us what that is.
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  We don't know the specifics of the messianic prophecy.
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  So we don't know what that version of Christ is.
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  I mean, that is a version of.
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  Or not.
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  I mean, so that's the thing.
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  And this is what brought Jesus so much and post crucifixion conflict between the mainstream Jewish culture and I think probably what created, not division, but you know, a branch, so to speak.
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  I mean, essentially Christianity is kind of a branch off of Judaism.
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  Was the going interpretation based off of my own understanding of the historical scriptures, was the Messiah being the deliverer of the Jewish people from oppression.
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  And the imagery was of a strong, you know, almost militaristic type takeover.
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  And the ultimate presentation of Jesus as the Messiah conflicts with that.
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  And as far as I understand, Judaism is still kind of waiting for the Messiah.
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  Right.
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  So like there's still that bipolar version or vision of what the salvation looks like.
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  Now to me, maybe this is just because.
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  No, I don't think it is.
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  I was going to say maybe it's just because I have historical exposure to Christianity.
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  But to me, this highlights the ongoing misunderstanding or anthropomorphization of the divine, that liberation looks like this in materialist human culture.
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  So that must be what it means.
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  But when we're thinking about the divine and the divine being this embodiment of love and compassion, and it's not likely to look like that.
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  Well, I mean, so we're literally talking about prophecy, which is inherently problematic because it's bound to have levels of symbolism.
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  So, you know, you said a military, militaristic kind of character.
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  And I think the term is king.
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  Right?
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  A king.
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  Well, what does king mean?
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  Right.
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  Does it mean someone who wears a golden crown?
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  Obviously that was part of the crucifixion was the mockery of him being the king and given the crown of thorns.
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  But there's this inherently, I think inherently symbolic language of prophecy.
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  I mean, is that kind of the definition of prophecy?
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  It's like it's interpretive, it is not literal.
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  So first is understanding that there was messianic prophecy, that the church, I mean basically the church is founded on this Judaic prophecy.
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  And then of course the interpretation that this is it, this is the fulfillment of the prophecy versus the Jewish interpretation of like oh, no, that was just another teacher.
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  Right.
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  Great guy.
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  Not the Messiah.
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  And then.
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  And then subsequent.
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  I mean, I think there.
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  There have been a couple of rabbis at least, that have been identified as the Messiah as well.
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  You know, obviously fringe Judaism.
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  But there have been at least one rabbi, I think there's one live that, you know, his followers say, oh, he's the Messiah.
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  So there's always.
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  I mean, it's kind of a.
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  What's the word?
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  A matter of opinion or like, how many people have this opinion kind of thing.
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  And then how much power do those people end up having?
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  It's tricky to try to be very definitive about it.
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  Sure.
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  Right.
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  And then.
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  And then, of course, kind of by definition, it comes down to faith.
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  And then what is that?
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  Right.
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  What is faith?
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  And I think, you know, we've touched on this before of like, well, is faith, you know, I have to believe what I believe.
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  Or is faith a trust in.
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  You know, like, there can be a kind of faith that says, yes, Jesus was the Messiah and is alive and I'm saved, and I feel this and I trust it as being true because that's my experience of it
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  versus you have to believe this.
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  Right.
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  You know, and I have to believe this, otherwise I will go to hell.
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  Those are really, I think, qualitatively different expressions of faith.
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  So.
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  Yeah, something you said made me want to share this.
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  I don't.
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  I think it's relevant.
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  I guess we'll see where it goes.
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  When you were talking, you were talking about, you know, in the beginning was the Word and this whole.
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  That whole concept, the way I perceive or recognize Christ is more a state of being and recognition of the divine within.
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  So when Jesus says something like, I and the Father are one, I don't think is him actually saying only I and the Father are one.
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  Right.
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  That is him attempting to communicate this oneness of everything and everyone.
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  And, you know, he's saying there's nothing inherently special about him, that this exists within all of us.
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  And when I think of in the beginning and I think of Christ as the Word, I think of God being the consciousness and the awareness, Christ the child being the imagination, the creation through, thought through, you know, Word,
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  air quotes, Word, the thought.
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  And then that manifests into experience.
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  And the Holy Spirit is that inner wisdom, inner intuition that we have from the divine.
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  And these are all God, these are all within us.
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  It's not Jesus specifically.
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  It's not.
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  But that these are all the elements of the divine of which we have access to and participate with in this version of creation and dreaming and bringing to fruition the experiences, the multitude of experiences by which we learn
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  about ourselves and by which God would also learn.
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  And when we think God became man, God has always been man.
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  God is that awareness that's within us and has always been experiencing everything that we experience.
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  And this teacher, this.
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  I mean, it doesn't mean that he didn't create salvation and wasn't necessarily the Messiah, but that the teaching of the Messiah is that he didn't embody Jesus and that was God's experience of being human.
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  God experiences being human every single day.
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  Yes.
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  I mean, and that's.
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  So I think, you know, in.
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  In the awakening community as.
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  We can talk about these things as direct experience.
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  And so the.
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  The phrase that came to mind was kingdom come or heaven on earth that people on awakening journeys understand they've had glimpses of, right?
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  Oh, yeah, I'm not waiting for heaven.
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  I'm not looking for heaven.
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  I see how this is heaven.
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  And it's just I get distracted, right?
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  Which changes the whole story.
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  And likewise, I see how this is hell because I'm distracted, because I'm not turned towards God.
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  I'm turned away from God, meaning I'm focused on my ego self and my materialistic framework of reality.
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  And that is keeping me in hell.
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  That is like persistent repetitive suffering, which is hell.
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  There is no other, you know, and so this is heaven and this is hell right now.
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  It's not this.
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  And, and, and the, the eternity is.
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  I mean, we know that suffering is eternal.
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  Like, when we're suffering it, it.
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  We cannot see the end, right?
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  That is eternity.
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  And likewise, when we're in deep realization, we also see eternity.
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  And we don't say like, oh, this is gonna be over soon.
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  It's like, no, oh, this is it.
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  This is what is always here and has always been, and this is eternal.
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  And so what am I saying?
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  I'm saying that in this.
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  I'm calling a community with kind of like circles of conversation of people sharing experience.
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  We know these things.
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  These are common.
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  These are.
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  These are mutual experiences that we can share and talk about or even share in real time.
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  And that's different from.
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  I don't say it's a different.
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  The description of that in the way I'm talking about it is different from the scriptural or the conventional scriptural way of describing it.
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  I mean, we look at this kind of scripture and say, yeah, we.
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  That's exactly what we're talking about.
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  And yet when you say things like, you know, when you get how to Say it the kind of exclusionist attitude of, well, if you don't believe in Jesus, then you can't be saved and you're condemned to eternal damnation.
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  It's a misunderstanding.
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  Like, we understand that that is a misunderstanding of the truth.
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  Because, you know, I think as you said, Christ ness is a way of being an experiencing that we all have access to.
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  And he's not saying, you know, I'm the only one who had.
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  It's like, too bad for you guys, you know, you have to wait until you die and if you're good, then, you know, I'll let you join me.
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  As opposed to, I'm the way.
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  Like, this is the way to be here, this is the way to be.
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  And when you are like this, when you experience like this, then you sit with God.
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  It's weird because I'm having this really, I'm having this dual experience of on the one hand, I'm like choking up with kind of the intensity of the experience of just talking about it.
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  And then on the other hand, I'm also expressing in a very flippant way.
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  Right.
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  Which is, and kind of making fun of other interpretations of it.
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  It's hard to kind of point to the direct experience and want to caution against kind of the interpretation that misses the experience.
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  I guess that's what I'm, I'm pointing at, right?
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  I'm pointing at these interpretations, which is like, once you die, then you'll enter the kingdom in heaven if you followed all the rules.
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  And I, and I hear my tone, it's, I'm using a mocking tone.
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  And I kind of feel bad about that because, and that's a lot of people's understanding of this.
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  But I think my, my, my concern is that that really misses the immediacy of the kingdom of heaven and the immediacy of salvation and the immediacy of born again.
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  And, and, and, and that's the other thing is like, as often, as often said, of marriage.
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  Right?
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  Marriage.
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  What is marriage?
• 29:39
  What's a good marriage is something you do every day.
• 29:41
  It's.
• 29:43
  You recommit to every day.
• 29:45
  It's not like, oh, I got my ring, now I'm married, now I'm done, I got a wife now I don't have to worry about anything.
• 29:51
  It's like, no, every day you have to take care of things.
• 29:56
  And so likewise in salvation, every day and every moment, you have to constantly turn towards the divine because if you don't, you forget and you get distracted and then you go back into hell.
• 30:10
  Yeah.
• 30:10
  And and this is, I mean, I was talking earlier about, you know, my, my recent experience.
• 30:16
  I had a difficult week of being in a great circumstance and having a terrible time just because of my internal experience and my forgetting exactly what I'm talking about right now.
• 30:30
  And so talking about it right now is very, very moving because I know very well what hell is like.
• 30:37
  And I'm, and now I'm seeing again what heaven is like.
• 30:41
  So having this kind of direct experience makes it difficult to talk about spiritual kind of scriptural interpretations and literal, I don't know, literal interpretations or descriptions that are not experiential and that are not in the moment.
• 31:04
  Basically, it's all about, oh, this happened back then.
• 31:08
  Like Christ saved us back then.
• 31:09
  Right.
• 31:10
  Because he was crucified.
• 31:11
  Oh, yeah, he's alive now.
• 31:12
  But really we're very much focused on what happened 2,000 years ago.
• 31:17
  And our other focus is whenever it is in the future that we're going to die, that's the other important part, as opposed to the present moment.
• 31:27
  And we're talking about the same thing.
• 31:29
  That's, that's what's frustrating is that we're talking about the same thing.
• 31:33
  We all want to be happy.
• 31:34
  We all want to have less suffering.
• 31:36
  I mean, if you're, if you're reading scripture, it's because you want to.
• 31:42
  Okay, maybe you're afraid.
• 31:43
  Maybe you're afraid of what's gonna happen after you die.
• 31:45
  Sure.
• 31:46
  But even that, that's a current suffering.
• 31:48
  Your current suffering is you're worried about what's gonna happen after you die.
• 31:52
  Yeah.
• 31:53
  And I guess in a way, I would suggest that you're just kicking the can down the road.
• 31:58
  I say, oh, no, no, I'm fine now.
• 32:00
  I'm just worried about what's going to happen after I die.
• 32:03
  Anyway, just some thoughts.
• 32:10
  All right, on to the next one.
• 32:12
  When I attended the mosque, I became friends with the Imam.
• 32:15
  And in one of our discussions, he was asked whether Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians.
• 32:24
  And I loved his answer.
• 32:26
  He said, I don't know what other people worship, but I know that there is only one God sitting here, all subscribing to the same denomination.
• 32:35
  We don't know exactly what the person next to us is worshiping, but there must only be one God.
• 32:41
  So if the worship, even of people of other faiths is authentic, there must be some sense in which we're all striving to understand the ground of being, the fundamental force, the love behind all of this.
• 32:57
  Look at their actions.
• 32:59
  We may find that we have more in common with them than we think.
• 33:04
  So this is where I had.
• 33:07
  It got me thinking about, you know, regardless of what we worship specifically, it's all, it's all worshiping the one fundamental.
• 33:19
  And as long as that is authentic worship.
• 33:22
  Meaning, what does that mean?
• 33:27
  I have an intuition of what it is, but I don't have words for it.
• 33:31
  I.
• 33:31
  I would say love versus fear.
• 33:33
  Yeah.
• 33:33
  You know, if you're, if your worship is love as opposed to fear.
• 33:37
  Yes.
• 33:38
  It immediately made me think of CS Lewis thing from the Chronicles, Narnia and the Horse and His Boy, where he introduces this allegorical.
• 33:51
  Right.
• 33:52
  Obviously the whole thing's an allegory.
• 33:55
  He introduced.
• 33:56
  They introduced the Eastern religion.
• 33:58
  This is this allegorical.
• 34:00
  Air quotes.
• 34:01
  Muslim.
• 34:02
  I mean, other.
• 34:03
  It's other, but in the context of the story, it looks Muslim because he's writing for an Anglican audience.
• 34:13
  Right.
• 34:14
  And there's this prince who worships this Eastern religion and he meets Aslan, who represents the Christian religion, but really is just God.
• 34:28
  Like not the Christian God, but.
• 34:31
  And Aslan meets this prince.
• 34:33
  The prince is afraid and like, oh, you're the enemy because I worship this other God.
• 34:39
  And Aslan says, no, if you, if you, whenever you're telling the truth, you're worshiping me whenever you're.
• 34:46
  Yeah.
• 34:47
  And so I think that's what we're saying is that if you're, if your worship is love based, then you're worshiping.
• 34:56
  Everybody's worshiping the same God.
• 34:58
  Yeah.
• 35:00
  When he said fundamental force, that to me is the essence that we're talking about.
• 35:05
  The essence that all of this is pointing to is this fundamental force that is love.
• 35:12
  And that is what.
• 35:14
  What worship.
• 35:16
  And I mean, that's exactly what you just said.
• 35:18
  Yeah, well, I mean, I mean.
• 35:19
  And really I'm taking that from you because you, I think you introduced me to the dichotomy of love and fear.
• 35:26
  And I think.
• 35:27
  And is that from conversations with God?
• 35:29
  Yes.
• 35:31
  But what I find interesting is that, you know, we, we've talked a lot.
• 35:37
  Well, maybe today we only did it off mic, but in the past we've talked a lot about and kind of the, the dichotomy of materialism and spirituality and the fallacy of materialism and our current, you know, belief in
• 35:55
  the, the primacy of consciousness and, and the immaterial as opposed to the material.
• 36:03
  So consciousness in our ontology, a la Donald Hoffman, consciousness comes first.
• 36:10
  Right.
• 36:11
  Material existence and space time are creations of consciousness.
• 36:18
  They're rules.
• 36:19
  They're rules created for this incarnation, this version of Reality perceived by our consciousness as consciousness.
• 36:34
  And what I think is interesting is to see the physical corollaries of conscious experience in the material.
• 36:47
  Not to say.
• 36:48
  And this is where things get tricky because materialists want to say consciousness comes from the physical material world and look, here's, you know, this part of the brain, blah, blah, blah.
• 37:01
  But what I'm, what I am referring to is this, the dichotomy of love and fear and the correlates, physical correlates of say, sympathetic comparison, pathetic nervous system and all of those frameworks of physical well being.
• 37:21
  And that when we move into love experiences, when we are oriented towards love, we have all these physical systems activated.
• 37:33
  And what am I saying?
• 37:36
  Maybe, maybe I'm, maybe I'm kind of stating the obvious or just looking at the obvious from a different perspective.
• 37:45
  But to me it's interesting to find the physical correlates of the experiences without interpreting that, oh, fear is caused by the parasympathetic.
• 37:58
  Right, right.
• 37:59
  System.
• 38:00
  Right.
• 38:00
  Oh, hate is, Hate is a physiological thing and that's all it is.
• 38:05
  Right.
• 38:05
  You know, love is a physiological thing and that's all it is.
• 38:10
  There's no reality to love when in reality that's all, that's the basis of reality.
• 38:17
  And hate and fear are these confusions of experience that activate or are physically expressed in the parasympathetic sympathetic nerve, nervous system and other systems.
• 38:34
  I don't know where I'm going with that, but it just attracts, it just, it resonates with me for some reason and it, yeah, it just occurs to.
• 38:42
  Me a lot that the physiological manifestation is due to something more fundamental versus the physiological.
• 38:51
  Yes.
• 38:52
  Creates.
• 38:53
  Right.
• 38:54
  Yeah, right.
• 38:55
  That we've built.
• 38:56
  That our consciousness has built this interface to express the way we experience things.
• 39:03
  Yeah, I mean, well, of course, in the context of this ontology.
• 39:09
  Right.
• 39:09
  The whole purpose of this interface, the whole purpose of material existence is for our consciousnesses to experience things.
• 39:21
  Anyway.
• 39:23
  Yeah, this is interesting.
• 39:26
  I, I found this sermon when I heard it.
• 39:31
  These things just jumped out at me.
• 39:32
  So I'm glad we had a chance to kind of dig in and, and discuss them a little bit.
• 39:37
  What I realized I didn't say anything about is this is Reverend Bob Fellows.
• 39:44
  To credit his, his sermon there.
• 39:46
  This was at First Parish Church, East Derry, New Hampshire.
• 39:49
  Thank you for joining us for this conversation.
• 39:52
  Feel free to comment and share your views on what you might have taken away from these excerpts or if you disagree with what we had to say, I'm happy to hear that as well because we are open to
• 40:03
  different opinions and expressions of truth.
• 40:06
  So until next time.
• 40:08
  Talk to you later.
• 40:08
  Bye now.
• 40:09
  Bye.
• 40:14
  Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
• 40:17
  Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
• 40:20
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