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Understanding Consciousness With Jay Nelson | The Christian Reeve Podcast #219 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
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podcast. Today's guest is the co-author
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of Consciousness in a nutshell. His name is Jay Nelson.
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Welcome to the show. How you doing?
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I'm doing great, thank you for having me.
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Christian, it's a pleasure. It's an honor.
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Always, let's just jump straight into this as we always do in
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your own words. How do you define consciousness?
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I get a one liner for Consciousness.
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Consciousness is a dance between perception and memory.
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That's my one liner on Consciousness and what I like
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about that is that it's short enough to fit on a t-shirt,
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right? But always thinking about
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marketing, I got the good. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like,
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you know, in so much in science, Like We crave those sorts of
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equations that can explain life and fit on a t-shirt, like, EMC
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or sorry equals mc squared like that.
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Beautiful and it explains so much.
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It's on a t-shirt, right? But like, you know, then you
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have some problems like, Consciousness or light, which
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can't really fit on a t-shirt because light is both a particle
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and a wave, you know, so it's like, Consciousness isn't just
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one thing and so, but I like this definition because it's, it
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gets you to think about, you know, the idea that perception
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is, is tied into Consciousness and that perception and
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existence are tied in together as well.
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So, You mentioned dreams in that.
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I'd like to expand on that a little bit because I've always
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kind of been fascinated by the concept.
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I'm sure many of us are in the context of consciousness.
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What do you make of Dreams? What do you think their purpose
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are? Are they real?
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Is there an element of reality and them?
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Are they just our mind kind of exploring, a lot of different
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things? Because I can tell you this
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before you answer, There have been experiences in my life
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where I have, for example, dreamt, the future.
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Mmm. And now people will think what
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you talking about Christian that's impossible.
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Well, allow me to elaborate, okay, when I say that, I've
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dreamt the future, what I mean is it's kind of like a feeling
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of deja vu, where I'll dream something that I can't make
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sense of because obviously it hasn't happened yet, so I'm
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like, what? I'll give you a good example.
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There was a dream that I had. And we're years prior where I
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was dreaming that I was in my future college class and I could
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vaguely makeup people. But that was it just a classroom
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computers. A few people fast forward to
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when it actually happens. It hit me.
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And at this point I'd had previous experiences like this.
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So I was kind of fully aware that.
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Okay, what I'm thinking what I'm feeling right now is kind of
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like reverse déjà vu. But there's something in there
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and that comes from a dream and of course bring it back to what
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I wanted to ask. You is well, that's based in
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reality that's based in something that hasn't happened
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yet but then did happen which kind of begs the question.
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Well, what exactly are dreams then what do you make a dreams?
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Well, I think their greatest theory about why we dream is the
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idea that the subconscious of the unconscious is trying to
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communicate with the conscious self through dreams and a way
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that the it's like there. It's the unconscious is trying
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to explain something or communicate something that the
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conscious self either hasn't realized, or is refusing to
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realize is willfully, ignorant of.
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And so we dream about things often after, you know, emotional
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events and that sort of thing like, After we learn something
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will dream more like will REM more but you know for me it's
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the like you asked question our dreams real well you know I mean
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you experience them, there's an element of realness to the
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experience of a dream and when we talk about Consciousness at
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the level of perception, you know the only difference between
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this Rich visual experience you're having right now and a
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dream is 5% retinal data coming in so all Impact that for a
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second. So like you know vision You
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don't see with your eyes you see with your brain more
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specifically. You see with what we call the
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internal model so your eyes are taking in information.
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Its each eye is capturing like a two-dimensional image.
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So they're like two dimensional cameras and so your eyes moving
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around. 180 times a second each one.
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So you got imagine you're taking about 180 two-dimensional
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snapshots every single minute, and you're sending it back into
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the brain, to the occipital lobe for, you know, to process and
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Stitch. All this information into a two
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and a half. FD sketch or three-dimensional,
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internal model that you then perceive, right?
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But this information coming in is just raw two-dimensional
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image. That is different from the
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right, the right eyes different than the left eye.
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This is called binocular vision. This is how we're able to, you
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know, perceive depth perception. You priority know this.
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But I guess what? All this gets too is that you
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know at the level of initial detection because vision is very
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hierarchical. There's five layers are believe
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and at V1 there are more top-down connections than there
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are A bottom-up connections coming from the retinas.
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So, the amount of connection, the amount of fibers that are
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connected from the retina is about five percent of your
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entire visual stream. So, if you're dreaming, you have
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this Rich visual experience like you had, you know, you're in
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that lecture hall and it felt very, very real.
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So that's what your brain can do on its own, right.
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It doesn't need any help from the sun's has, but if it has a
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little bit of retinal data coming in, then you have this
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experience, we're having right now, which is, I mean, it feels
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sometimes the same as dreaming, doesn't it?
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Oh yeah. Oh my gosh.
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I always say they spoke about a thousand million questions right
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now. Oh, so this is just how my mind
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works in the conversations like this, I just get buzzed and I'm
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like, oh my God, oh my God, there's so much to discuss right
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there. You said, does this feel real or
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made? Does it feel like a dream?
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Yes, often, weirdly over the last 10 years, or more I've had
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these distinct moments where, I don't know.
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It's like, at this point there's always like - conversations
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about it. This idea of being in The Matrix
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Right now we go crazy and go like, oh no, is the big listed
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so much time? Do you take chill?
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What I'm talking about is everyone, everyone's had a
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moment where you just kind of you're just like, in your
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everyday life and suddenly, you're like, this doesn't feel
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real but then your mind goes. Well, what Israel, what do I
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understand to be real? And you do things like, you
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pinch yourself and you feel it. But then you think about the
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cutting the fact that your brain is telling you to feel that But
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then, what is instructing the brain and then this is how my
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mind works. I end up like just asking myself
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50 and 100 questions and I drive myself crazy.
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But one thing I wanted to mention was that I'm sure you've
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been keeping up with like Ai and AI are lately and just the kind
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of how it's going, right? Have you seen some of the images
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that it's sort of generating right now, where it's at?
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This stage, I have seen some of them, not all of them, of
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course. But what I've seen is, is
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blowing my mind. Like it's, it's advancing way
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faster than we thought. I mean, they were talking about
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it years ago and it's just like I can't believe it's at the
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level it is right now. So yeah, truly terrifying.
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But the reason I bring it up is the many times when I look at
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these AI are Pictures images. Now debate depends.
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Who's prompting, it, what system is being used?
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Some are like, really, really Advanced.
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And as you say, they're really realistic, right?
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Some of them are less. So, and I feel their much like
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dreams because in dreams, especially when you dream about
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someone that, you know, or you recognize in never quite looks
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like that person. Hmm, for example, I had a dream,
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the other night. Know, I often don't remember my
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dreams. I used to dream a lot where I
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remembered a lot when I was younger, but these days not so
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much. I found that quite interesting.
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Sting. I wonder why my brain is a lot
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more active these days. I've educated myself more.
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I'm trying to expand my mind more.
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I don't take drugs or anything like that.
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My pathway is if you like a quite clear, you know, some open
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to it, but at the same time, I don't know that, that's how it
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works, you know, ignorant to that in that sense.
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But I have this dream the other night and it's very strange one.
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It's like a playground in a while mean a bill get, I'm in a
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building. Kind of like an old-fashioned
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School building with a bunch of random people, and the building
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sets on fire, and we have to quickly get out of this lobby
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area that we seem to be congregating in, and I'm in my
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dream. I realized like, you know,
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everyone's going to shout out, get out, get out, get out.
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And it's the classic, leave your stuff behind that.
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I'm like, I'm not even my stuff behind and I'm trying to grab
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all the stuff but it's just, it's really like realistically.
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Common question like, scale the building So I ran out and then I
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realized one of our friends is not there and I Traverse this
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building trying to find him and then I find him somewhere else
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building still on fire, I can smell the smoke in the dream.
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This was really interesting familiar kind of from a visual
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and non-visual perspective Century perspective.
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It was interesting to be able to smell within a dream that's new
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for me. I've never had that. the Drake,
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the dream is not the dream doesn't make any sense anyway,
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but what you said earlier about how it's the subconscious trying
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to communicate with the Consciousness.
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Hmm. But the Consciousness has to
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recognize what the dream is trying to tell us.
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I often kind of dismiss it as like, okay, this is anxiety,
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often if I haven't slept very well or back when I used to
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drink. For example years ago, I would
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notice I be dreaming a lot more but that was because my body was
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In balanced as a chemical reaction there.
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There's a rebound. Yeah, it's your body reacts, you
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know, you're not, you know, it's because it happens even when I
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when I when I don't sleep properly, now it happens.
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And I think it's kind of like your body readjusting but it
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seems to be a lot more active but it's been scientifically
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proven that we do always dream. Even if we don't remember our
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dreams we do always dream. So I guess our subconscious is
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always trying to tell us something.
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But whether or not we pick up on those is another story but that,
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that is the point. Yeah.
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Like, you know, even in our Waking Life, you know what, you
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know, like, we have to put it, we have to Kwan quantize this a
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little bit. So, you know, I like every
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single second. Your body is streaming in 11
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million bits of information like through all five years sense,
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organs but the conscious self can only you know, handle about
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200 B every single second. So you have this humongous
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bottleneck, right? Really crappy old computer with
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life. I desks so yes.
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No, that's right. Because you got 11 million bits
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getting funneled down to 200, you know.
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And these are just estimations and you'll find different
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estimations that people give. But we had to stick to one.
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And that's the estimation that we give.
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And it's, I mean, it's informative about what the, what
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the architecture of Consciousness looks like because
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the unconscious is driving to show, 99 are sorry, 95 to 99% of
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all your cognition is, Yes. So you know really Consciousness
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is like this tiny tip of the iceberg up here and the Sub
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Conscious and the unconscious are these are interchangeable
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terms. Really is feeding you a bunch of
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perceptions. I'm sorry.
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A bunch of Sensations that then graduate to the level of
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perception, but not all of them do, most of them.
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Don't write 99.9% of all sensory.
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Information coming in is just tossed out by the wayside.
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You don't remember what the, you know, cashiers eye color of her
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eyes. Whereas last, Night like you
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were there you attended but like it's, you know, it's gone now.
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So Sophie fussing and been about that though is the fact that
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like how your brain determines? What to remember, what not to
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remember? I feel like a lot of, a lot of
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it is automatic, as you said, like it, your brain instantly
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recognizes. Why we don't need to remember
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that. That's not going to be important
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for the narrative later. But then, What's interesting is,
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if you get pressed for that information, now let's say a
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crime. Committed was committed at that
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particular point in time and your mind is having to go back
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and acquire that information. It's hazy because, you know,
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your brain has been told not to remember that.
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But then when there are moments that you do want to remember,
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you, often will remember them vividly but not always, you
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know. I like I've realized about
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myself. I'm very lucky with this.
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Maria half touch with that, keep it right, but when I talk to
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other people, might hate you remember this?
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And I'd start by counting all the details and they're like,
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no, I'm like, but it wasn't that long ago and I remember all of
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this, but then the caveat to that is that my short term is
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chit, pardon my language, but awful real is it yellow?
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Truly Dreadful. I can tell you what happened 10
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years ago in extreme detail but I can tell you what I had for
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lunch yesterday. Who knows?
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That's so strange. But it just goes to, you know,
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it speaks to. And we talked about this in the
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book to. It's like the compartmentalize
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nature of Consciousness because there's this Brit named Clive
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wearing. Do you know about him?
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I don't. Okay.
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So this is a guy he worked for the BBC.
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He was a conductor, he used to, you know, conduct orchestras
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inside, like the most prestigious churches in England
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and then in 1985 he contracts herpes herpes Encephalitis.
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So normally the herpes virus Doesn't cross the blood-brain
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barrier and enter the brain but it did in this rare instance and
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caused massive brain swelling. So, you know, we have, you've
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probably heard of the hippocampus before we have a
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hippocampus on her left hemisphere and hippocampus on
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the right Hemisphere and both his hippocampi were basically
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destroyed through this swelling. So, what ended up happening was,
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if you've seen the movie Memento, he liked the movie
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Memento was slightly based on him and people like him because
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that is, you know, That, you know, in the movie Memento, the
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guy, couldn't he suffer some accident?
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And he could remember anything after that accident.
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So you remember says, his life entirely fine up until like 33.
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He gets hit in the head and then now he can't.
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Because his hippocampus was destroyed.
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He can no longer form new memories.
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So Clyde wearing his like that except he hasn't even worse form
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of memory. He can't recall, anything that's
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ever happened to him in his entire life because both his
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hippocampus hippocampi are destroyed, okay.
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So, not only is he like Memento that He can't remember anything
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like a can't form new memories since 1985, but all the memories
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that happen to him up until 1985.
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He can't recall them. But the weird thing is, in the
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last thing I'll say on this is that he still knows certain
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details. Like he knows, he's married, he
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just can't recall getting down on one knee.
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He knows he worked for the BBC and then I got really sick, but
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he can't recall that. You know what?
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It was like. So he can barely just recognize
15:27
his wife, but if you sit him down in front of an organ in
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front of the Inn, And one of the orchestra and sorry in front of
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one of the churches used to play, he can still improvise a
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beautiful piece of music, like nothing happened.
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That's Consciousness, that's memory right there with a rising
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on the topic, as well, as I feel like certain aspects of that
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might be muscle memory. So him being able to still
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compose, I'd wager that falls in that category that he's not
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consciously thinking about it, but his mind just remembers in
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some shape or form. Like okay, this is not even
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remotely the same thing but in my life are there was a point
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where I was not doing anything creative for a long time and I
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hadn't like touch a guitar in a long, long, long time.
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And I tried to start playing something off the maybe, maybe
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like three, four years of, not playing, but to recall something
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that I used to play all the time.
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Okay, at first couldn't remember anything.
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And then 10 minutes, 20 minutes, trying to remember, trying to
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remember, it begins to To come back and then it's like like I
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don't know like riding a bike kind of you know you never
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forget the yeah you kind of it's a bit wobbly.
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So okay. And then your body adjusts and
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then it's like you never stopped.
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Yeah. No wonder it's maybe it's the
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same principle where it's like. The Mind always remembers or
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maybe a better example would be Jim.
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I've been training for the last year, but I hadn't trained prior
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to that for a good two and a half years.
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And the only thing that changed was obviously what I was able to
17:03
lift. There was a significant deficit
17:05
there where I was like, okay I can't lift as heavy as I used to
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that changed over the coming months, but I wasn't able to do
17:13
it, but my mind did remember, like, how, what was the best
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form? How to do things?
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How to react to certain things, you know.
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So the body remembers and maybe it, maybe it comes from Mike.
17:27
Cabot, maybe Prince. This particular gentleman, being
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able to remember his wife or being able to remember being
17:34
married to. This person comes from like a
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sense of familiarity, like maybe it comes from, remembering the
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smell, or Somehow there's certain aspects that like kind
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of makes the person recognized without knowing, it's kind of
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like, kind of. Like, for example, this
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principle of being able to distinguish if someone is
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related to you, if you've never met them before, And being like,
18:01
naturally repulsed. Because it's like, there's
18:04
something and you know I'm saying that there's something in
18:06
there that prevents you from doing their, they kind of
18:08
explore this in a tongue-in-cheek way in Back to
18:12
the Future famously, where he is Mom tries to kiss him and then
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it's like, it's like kissing my brother but it's like there's a
18:18
delay to big thing. There is something there that
18:21
exists. It's the kind of like a fail
18:22
sale to prevent that from happening.
18:26
Yeah yeah yeah it's like genetics.
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It's like it doesn't want you to reproduce with Your family
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because obviously that would be kind of Suffolk later on, you
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know. But yeah, one thing I wanted to
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Dive Right into was the different states of
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Consciousness that you discuss. So, firstly, let's explore.
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What is an ordinary State of Consciousness.
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I'm intrigued by this, like what constitutes ordinary
18:55
Consciousness? Well actually, would it be okay
18:58
to pick up on a couple points? You just mentioned.
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Yes, please. I'll reconsider you can Circle
19:03
back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please do.
19:05
Because that's really important, too.
19:07
But, um, like what you were talking about, like when it
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comes to how Clive is still able to play the piano, how you were
19:12
able to still pick up the guitar, it took a little bit of
19:14
time to get this back, but you know, in the back of your brain
19:17
you have a little, a little brain, literally Latin
19:21
cerebellum, but you try some and but three, you know, we have 86
19:28
billion neurons in our head and three quarters of them exist in
19:31
the Sarah. Ellen, and that is where all
19:33
your procedural memory takes place.
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So, you know, I love to snowboard you love to, you know,
19:39
like play guitar and that sort of thing.
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So like, you know, dancing diving, anything that has to be
19:46
like a bunch of like riding a bicycle.
19:48
These are memories that are stored in procedural memory.
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So, they're stored in the cerebellum.
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And this is one of the last Brain regions to deteriorate in
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people who have neurodegenerative diseases like
19:57
Alzheimer's. So you'll notice, they never
20:00
really forget how to ride a bike because So it doesn't attack the
20:03
cerebellum. What are the tax first is the
20:05
hippocampus, which is your ability to bust apart details
20:10
and combine them in a new way to create a new scene.
20:13
So, because Clive and, you know, he's called the man with the
20:17
seven second memory by the way, because he has no functioning
20:21
hippocampi, he can't recall the details of his past life and
20:26
then, you know, bust them apart and then recombine them to
20:29
create a future. So, when you asked him to, you
20:31
know, be like Like what does the future look like to you people
20:34
and other people like him like I think.
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Hmm. They'll say the future looks
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like a big blankness because they can't picture it.
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They you know. So memory is really about it's
20:46
less about the past as much as it's about the future because
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memory is adaptive, evolutionarily evolutionarily
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adaptive in the sense that it's trying to help us Figure out the
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best ways of acting in the future.
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So that's why you remember, the past is so you can reconstruct
21:02
new environments and survive better on top of that as well.
21:06
Like, do you know, or do you have a theory for, perhaps, how
21:11
a person in, in a predicament such as that is able to just
21:14
remember basic things? Like, I don't know what's my
21:18
name, or how to walk or things like that.
21:20
Like I know we've obviously explored muscle memory and stuff
21:22
like that, but there's other bits of information that
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seemingly It would be somewhat impossible to retain.
21:29
And yet the person can I mean, sometimes you see it in movies,
21:31
they kind of tongue-in-cheek, girl, like huh, what's my name?
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What's this, what's that? But then they still understand
21:36
how to do certain things how to reverberate, maybe the fact that
21:39
they, again, I keep giving examples of things that like
21:44
would come from muscle memory. And example, I was going to give
21:46
was knowing where the home is, but then again your mind would
21:51
pick up on some sort of routine, I suppose there's an omen.
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Of that in there. But how do you reckon the Mind
21:59
sort of retains these particular details in the in a instance
22:05
where obviously can't create new memory or retain old memories?
22:11
It's the way we try to explain that in a book is like, you
22:13
know, if you ever seen someone like, you know, an employee you
22:17
haven't worked with them like three jobs and then you see them
22:19
in a foreign city and you're like, I know this person.
22:22
Now, how do I know this person? Yeah.
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You recognize them immediately. You know, that, you know, them.
22:27
You just can't think of it. And then it might take three
22:30
days to be like, Laura, that was Laura, you know, like what just
22:33
happened there. Okay, so let's let's like tease
22:36
this apart real quick. So there is a part of your brain
22:39
and we call this metacognition. Ocean which is thinking about
22:41
thinking which knows what the brain knows without having to
22:45
access the file directly so like, you know, I could be like
22:48
talking about like, one of my favorite movies, like The Matrix
22:51
and then we like delete it delete actress.
22:53
I remember her name right now, but I'll get back to you, right?
22:56
So it's like it's Carrie-Anne Moss but like for a second it's
22:59
like, you know, that I know the information but it might take a
23:01
second for, you know, the unconscious L to like like go in
23:06
the Dewey Decimal System, find the file card.
23:08
Here it is. Her name is Carrie Anne Moss.
23:10
Because the name is stored in a different place than just the
23:14
raw information. And so, in a way that your brain
23:17
has indexed, what it knows you're like, I know that, I know
23:20
it, I know that I didn't know it, I know that I've seen her
23:22
before, and so it's the same way where it's like, you know, I
23:25
know that you're my wife and some way, like, what I'm talking
23:28
about Clyde wearing, like, you know, he's got metadata but he
23:32
doesn't have any access to the actual file cards.
23:35
So that's what he's got, just like Impressions, which is a
23:38
different type of memory. Stored in a different area.
23:42
Apparently, because I mean that's just, you know, like one
23:45
of the ideas is like we don't understand memory very well
23:48
because we just like I mean, you lose certain parts of your brain
23:51
and you lose certain memories and yeah that's that.
23:55
But two examples of this actually that happened are going
23:57
to be in the last year or two and it's intriguing because the
24:02
first one was exactly what you just laid out there where it's
24:06
like the brain trying to like go back and understand that wall.
24:10
Why do I know this person from one-on-one?
24:13
Where exactly. Can I find this information?
24:16
And at the time, I was working a bar job and this guy came in,
24:20
and I looked at him and I was like, I know you, and I said
24:23
that to him. I was like, I know you, but I
24:25
don't know where I know you from.
24:27
And then I and then obviously try to start asking questions,
24:30
you like your name. Did you ever work here?
24:35
Oh, you did huh? Inter.
24:37
Oh you won't hit. Ah, ah.
24:40
Ah. And then it is like that.
24:42
Yeah. And then there was another
24:44
instance where my brain failed. Me completely in and I just felt
24:46
quite silly afterwards. So I was, I was in the city.
24:51
I live in Manchester in the UK and I'm walking down the street.
24:55
And this guy comes out of a TGI Fridays.
24:57
And I'm just looking at him and he's staring at me and I'm
25:01
staring at him. Why do I know you from?
25:04
Why do I know you? Like I fit but I thought I knew
25:06
him like I know him from my life, like, I've met him before,
25:10
but I don't know. And in the end I was like, I
25:12
don't know. And I just kept walking and he,
25:15
but he looked really uncomfortable later on.
25:18
I'm watching some YouTube videos of some of my favorite creators
25:21
and I see him on there and I'm like, okay, I know you from this
25:27
and then that would also explain why he felt awkward.
25:29
Because in his mind, as I do know, is that like a crazy fan
25:32
is going to like Strangle me or something good?
25:36
Yeah, they suggested like the way the brain does that and was
25:41
like, compartmentalizes it. But, that ability to recall is
25:46
interesting because sometimes it's really quick.
25:49
Like, the example, I gave the former example, but then other
25:52
times it's like, it just doesn't happen for you.
25:54
And you have to kind of just relent and give it up and be
25:56
like, it's not going to happen, but I reckon that's based on the
26:00
obscurity of the information. So in that first, Since that was
26:03
a guy that had spent a lot of time working with, and so the
26:07
brains more readily able to connect that make the dots.
26:10
But I do know we spent a long time on this person.
26:12
You should know this passive. But in the second person, I've
26:15
met be seen a handful of its I couldn't even tell you his name
26:18
right now, like, it's I just not, I know the face, the face
26:22
is, you know, something, I recognize and go back to one of
26:26
the things I said earlier being able to recall at the details of
26:29
an event that otherwise seem not noteworthy.
26:34
Like if it's a crime scene in that in instances like that I
26:37
find it's more likely. That you'll remember if the
26:40
person that they're asking about had a particularly distinctive
26:43
face. Like I remember walking down the
26:46
street recently and there was a guy just walk.
26:51
He's energy was are you know sometimes you look at people and
26:54
you just know there's just a problem there.
26:56
Like there's you just know to walk away and he was I was
27:00
sitting down and he was walking towards us.
27:02
And sorry state of how things are these days?
27:08
I thought maybe he might have a bomb or something, I wasn't
27:12
sure, but it's happened in Manchester, we had at one time
27:16
in 2017, unfortunately. And we have had it happen in the
27:19
UK, in more recent times, it's just, these considerations come
27:23
to your mind sometimes, sometimes, it's ridiculous and
27:25
unfounded. I think in this particular
27:27
instance, it was just a guy looking, really creepy on a
27:31
summer's day wearing my God. Long sleeve jacket and it just a
27:34
bit, but his energy was off and maybe he was just an unhappy
27:37
guy. Maybe that's just how he walked.
27:39
I don't know. But one thing that struck me was
27:41
that I immediately got up but it was like something from like the
27:46
Matrix, we're like, yeah. Like dealing with an NPC kind of
27:49
being like, I think in his mind was like, hon, why is this guy
27:52
go out black? I just suddenly got up as soon
27:54
as he's walking towards me and I was looking at him staring at
27:57
him and I walked away and I'm wearing like these Black
28:00
sunglasses which I've noticed me.
28:02
People feel uncomfortable because they can't see your
28:04
eyes. So there's like a right?
28:07
There's a disconnect there and that they want to see your eyes
28:09
because that's a way to be able to.
28:11
There's like an anonymity weirdly even though it's
28:13
covering one portion of your body and they can see the rest
28:17
of you. For some reason, you can't
28:19
really truly see a person, unless you see their eyes
28:23
weirdly enough, and that was the incidence of of that.
28:27
And then I was walking down the street.
28:28
I was getting away from him and then I just decided to kind of
28:31
be a bit like detective and walk.
28:32
Home a similar route to here. I was going that way, anyway,
28:35
and I was just kind of observing him because he stood out like
28:40
Like a bull in a china shop like he just stood out, like just
28:44
amongst all the Sea of people he stood out and I was just
28:46
observing this behavior and I was thinking like, if this was
28:50
like a crime investigation, I had to recall this information
28:55
Days Later I'd be able to give a perfect description of him.
28:58
I can give a description. Now, you had like blond hair
29:01
long as here he was probably about six foot. three long,
29:06
black jacket, black jeans boots and the kind of slouch But the
29:14
only reason my point with this is that the only reason might I
29:16
was able to really remember this is because he had such a
29:19
distinctive, look, the more distinct brain more than mine is
29:22
able to. Remember, if the person has
29:24
quite a unremarkable, look, shall we say, or just the kind
29:28
of this doesn't stand out in some way?
29:32
Your body just doesn't remember your mind doesn't remember, then
29:34
you're just less likely to be cool and I just find that
29:37
interesting that how the brain knows when to do that and how to
29:41
make those decisions. Because you can train it to some
29:45
extent. I've noticed with certain
29:48
elements, you can do things. Like, for example, I'm an actor,
29:52
I'm searing actor. So whenever I have to learn
29:55
lines, I do the whole look cover, a check thing and just
30:00
kind of keep rinsing repeating and then getting my mind
30:03
familiar with it. And then eventually I know it by
30:05
a, by after, like, remember using that method and then Q
30:09
myself, and then it's just a process.
30:11
You have to kind of keep repeating.
30:13
But that's only one theory of recall.
30:16
It's like there's many ways to do it to train, your brain to do
30:20
that. But I think my point with it is
30:22
that you have to exercise it to do that but the brain, does it
30:26
automatically as we've sort of outlined here?
30:29
I just find that kind of like, fascinating, any thoughts on
30:33
that before I continue? It was a lot there.
30:39
Sorry, no. Not at all, I wanted to say,
30:43
This thing about the memory man, I totally blanked ha ha see,
30:48
even that like, why does the but why does the Mind do that
30:51
happens to be a lot in the podcast?
30:53
And sometimes I'll be able to recall the question.
30:56
I'll start talking and then all the pieces will fill in and then
31:01
the question will come back to me, and other times it won't and
31:04
it's just gone. And yes, I try to move on
31:07
because there's a show to do, but why does that happen?
31:10
Is it stress, is it the Yeah, I think it's like too many browser
31:16
tabs open and it doesn't know which one to chase.
31:19
So just shuts down like you're going somewhere.
31:24
Yeah, I don't know where it went, but yeah, I was gonna say
31:26
like, you know, when it comes to dreaming and stuff.
31:29
One thing they they have discovered is that we tend to
31:33
dream. I think I said this earlier, we
31:34
tend to dream more after something that is like an
31:37
emotionally charged event and so emotionally charged events, tend
31:40
to get remembered more easily because You know, it behooves
31:45
one to remember like the time you were almost in physical or
31:48
emotional danger and it's important to also like I guess
31:52
qualify that like the brain hardly makes a distinction
31:55
between emotional pain and physical pain.
31:58
You know, in both instances, you have the same hormone cortisol
32:02
being released. So, you know, whether you're
32:04
being, I don't know, stressed out by some sort of physical
32:09
stressors, some actual physical bear, stressing you out, or you
32:12
have Post-traumatic stress disorder in which every little
32:16
thing is causing your salience network in your brain, you know,
32:18
your amygdala, your fear Center to, you know, become hyperactive
32:23
and so when that is hyperactive, then other networks in the brain
32:26
like the default mode Network, or your, your prefrontal cortex
32:30
can't be as active. So because these people are on
32:34
alert. You know, there's so scared
32:36
about what's happening. They can't stay present and
32:38
grounded in the in the here and now.
32:40
And so you know it affects Their life, it affects their body, you
32:44
know, it affects their brain, something they yeah, no, sorry I
32:49
interrupted, not all were using, let's say with that.
32:54
Specifically is it? Because the mind is sorry, the
32:59
situation has recreated a similar feeling of what the
33:04
person felt. In that particular moment is
33:08
almost like the brain remembering and because the
33:11
brain protected you during when it happened, but you went shock
33:16
or whatever. Then you're it's kind of like
33:18
inadvertently putting you into into shock again because it
33:22
thinks that it's recreating that specific instance.
33:25
When it's not, Yeah, so the brain has gotten hyper.
33:31
Yeah, hyperactive in one of the networks and, you know,
33:34
basically you have three big networks in your brain, the
33:38
default mode Network, you have the emotional salience Network
33:41
and then another Network people come to me.
33:43
As, though, the central executive Network, which is like
33:46
your prefrontal cortex. And so, if you ever have some
33:48
sort of Psychopathology odds are, there's some sort of
33:53
hyperactivity in one of your networks.
33:55
So emotional salience Network, Or activity that is going to
33:58
cause, like, PTSD if you have default mode Network
34:02
hyperactivity, so that's the neural substrates of the ego.
34:05
If that is hyperactive, you likely have anxiety or
34:08
depression. So that's interesting to know.
34:12
Now you want your central executive Network?
34:14
The prefrontal cortex, the thing that's the lets us stand back
34:17
from the immediacy of experience.
34:19
You just stand back in the world a little bit and to think about
34:22
our actions and to think about the consequences of our our word
34:25
Etc like That's something that develops over the course of our
34:30
lives and really comes online when we're about 25.
34:32
But the difference between like a 17 year old and a 25 year old
34:36
is that their brains are functionally different, their
34:39
17-year olds prefrontal cortex hasn't come online in the same
34:43
way that 25 year olds has and so a seventeen-year-old is
34:45
operating more out of their amygdala.
34:47
There are more emotionally reactive.
34:49
They're more likely to take risks in that sort of thing.
34:54
Yeah. So I think what all this speaks
34:56
to and the book Kind of, like, does try to get people to
34:59
understand? Is that the brain and the and
35:02
Consciousness, as its experience is this complex Orchestra in
35:05
which there are many networks and systems and teams of neurons
35:09
firing in concert. And if they aren't working
35:12
properly, then you get disorders.
35:15
So, you know, we talked about recognizing faces earlier, do
35:20
you, have you heard of the fusiform gyrus and
35:23
prosopagnosia, haven't There's an area in your brain.
35:28
That is basically your facial recognition software.
35:31
It's called the fusiform gyrus. And this, you know, the brain is
35:35
so modular in some in some senses.
35:37
It's so you know like highly adapted for specific purposes
35:41
that if you lose this fusiform gyrus you will have what's
35:44
called prosopagnosia or facial blindness.
35:46
So you cannot recognize people's faces anymore.
35:49
What you have to do is you know, like if I was talking to you and
35:53
I have Pro sipc nausea, then I'd have to I see by your voice.
35:58
Wow, maybe or maybe it's your hair because you have
36:00
distinctive hair. Okay.
36:02
Okay. Okay.
36:02
Let's say that you've known this person for a long time and
36:07
there's okay. Let's say it's menu and you have
36:10
this condition and I'm walking down the street and we're about
36:14
to meet up. If I don't recognize your face
36:17
then wouldn't I just walk past you I mean, that's the sad thing
36:22
about this. Like, and there's so many
36:23
different disorders of Consciousness that like lead.
36:25
You down this path of like, wow, it is so compartmentalised.
36:29
Like, but yeah, like there was this girl I worked with and she
36:34
had facial blindness and it made me upset because like I want to
36:38
be remembered and like she would never remember me.
36:42
And I'm a guide to be remembered.
36:43
Come on, damn it. I did.
36:46
At this point, I was I was down in La.
36:48
I was trying to be an actor. I was trying to do stand-up and
36:50
As well. And she was the girl who booked
36:52
stand-up comics and I'm like, I don't have facial blindness.
36:55
You told me this, like you gotta recognize our my voice like, and
36:58
that's how she got me. Like was eventually by my voice
37:01
but you know, we use. Totally, I mean tons of
37:03
different cues like the way you walk your gate you know like
37:06
your hair. Like there's just mannerisms
37:08
that I might do like the way I hold my hands.
37:11
That just be like, oh, that's, that's Jay.
37:13
I mean, that's how we're able to impersonate people, right?
37:16
You just break a few of their, I can't copy your face but I can
37:19
take a few of your things and And I mean, like, if you're
37:22
impersonating some so that makes sense.
37:24
May says, I will say just a side though, like yeah, her being a
37:27
Booker for like events and stuff like show.
37:30
It's really important to remember like the look of
37:34
people. And so, you know, to book them
37:36
again. Like if she never remembers them
37:37
by face, then it's that's going to create a lot of problems,
37:40
like it was so strange. But yeah.
37:44
Luckily she ended up never remembering me but like, yeah,
37:48
that's got to be such a weird. Moment to be like to know that
37:52
you're talking to your mom, but to like look at her face and be
37:54
like, this is a stranger space, you know, like it's so strange.
38:00
There was another situation where like this guy had this dog
38:04
but some he had some sort of weird situation in his brain
38:07
that then like whenever he saw his dog, he thought it was
38:11
somebody else's dog. Because the part of his brain,
38:13
that would like, light up with the emotion and connect that
38:16
this is my dog, like, wasn't happening.
38:18
And so he's like, this is an imposter Stir.
38:20
This isn't it's quote, this isn't Fifi, it was Phoebe, but
38:25
like he had a disorder of Consciousness, so it's just so
38:28
strange. And if you take a bunch of these
38:30
facts together, you start to understand that, you know, the
38:33
idea that we promote the book is layers of Consciousness and
38:36
they're stacked up and kind of like Photoshop and so, you know,
38:40
a Photoshop creation, something you might see on the front of a
38:42
book is a layered construction. And if you untick the layers in
38:46
Photoshop, you can see what each layer is contributing to this
38:49
piece of artwork. Let you know Consciousness as it
38:51
experienced at this moment in time.
38:54
Let's say we both haven't had caffeine no cigarettes.
38:57
We just woke up, we're in a completely non or I'm sorry when
39:01
I'm completely ordinary State of Consciousness, which I like to
39:03
call CS5 or Consciousness. 5.0, CS5 is just the abbreviation
39:08
instead of saying Baseline wakeful conscious State a
39:11
thousand times in the book, we just call it CS5.
39:13
So it's just like, how you distinguish that somebody is
39:16
unaltered versus altered and you can get altered just by your on
39:21
a hike and then you finally make it to the waterfall and you're
39:24
talking to your friend and then suddenly it's just like You
39:28
completely forgot what you were saying because what you're in
39:30
front of is so beautiful, you've lost your train of thought you
39:35
have. Now become one with the thing
39:36
you're looking at, which is just all, that's a state, that's a
39:39
non-ordinary state of consciousness, or an altered
39:42
state of consciousness, we call all.
39:44
And so we have tons of these things, you know, like you run
39:47
for 15 minutes and you're going to be in runner's high.
39:50
So an and amide the are endocannabinoid our
39:55
endocannabinoid system will dump out.
39:58
Inanimate after 15 minutes of running, you hug someone for
40:01
over 15 seconds and you're going to get oxytocin, you know, your
40:04
body's going to start releasing that hormone for pair bonding
40:09
and just love and that sort of thing.
40:11
So it's easily to get it's easy to get knocked out of cs50 but
40:17
that I was going to ask you just individually these questions but
40:21
since you've kind of already touched it, I guess my only
40:23
question would be more. So the key defining difference
40:28
between ordinary State of Consciousness has and
40:30
non-ordinary State of Consciousness is as you said to
40:34
do with, if your brain is altered or your experiences
40:37
altered, be it through drugs bit for activity, B, if you
40:40
something else that that's the key difference then, Yes.
40:46
And so the way we try to, where we attempt to explain, what
40:51
Consciousness is is by talking about Transformations and
40:54
Consciousness. So we all, you know, kind of
40:57
wake up in this Baseline, wakeful conscious State we call
40:59
CS5. And then, you know, we start to
41:02
alter it. Like I had coffee this morning,
41:05
I like the altered state of consciousness called
41:07
caffeinated, it's great. And then like, you know, later
41:11
on, I might take a puff of cannabis, that's another altered
41:13
state of consciousness, but You know, like I mean it just might
41:17
protect, you know, I know it's a ridiculous
41:37
example of someone running that's not a general State of
41:41
Consciousness that someone's going to experience every waking
41:44
moment. Then they'll only Parents that
41:46
if they push their body to the point where they start, you
41:48
know, the endorphins get released, they get that kick,
41:51
they start writing Etc, like that.
41:52
The feeling I had when I came back from gym after I showered.
41:56
And I said, I felt a sense of euphoria.
41:58
It doesn't last forever, but it lasts 10 minutes, let's say
42:02
yeah, it's like yeah, that's a non-ordinary state of
42:05
consciousness and another good one that's, you know, natural is
42:10
a flow state if you wanted to ask you about.
42:13
Yeah, I'm all right, I think. I think I understand what this
42:17
is. So, instead of asking you what a
42:19
flows days, I'll instead, ask is this an example, and then you
42:23
can either a bully Arabian, give your synopsis or you can just
42:26
say as is. So when I think of a flow State,
42:29
I think of like when I've been working in a job, particularly
42:35
in like customer service jobs. I did in the past where I get so
42:39
familiar with the process of what I'm doing that.
42:43
It's almost like I'm on autopilot and I'm not Thinking
42:45
about it. And the interesting thing is
42:48
that everything goes in a flow state in a kind of like it
42:53
connects easily. You feel like you don't even
42:55
have to put as much pressure in because or so effort in because
42:59
everything is kind of going a perfect State and it's just
43:02
working. However, one thing I did notice
43:05
when this would happen when I was working in bars and stuff is
43:08
that I was also very easily making mistakes in the Flow
43:12
State so I might feel that I'm Lee getting everything right but
43:16
then I suddenly get a few drinks, orders wrong.
43:18
And then I have to focus again and bring myself back into like
43:23
regular Consciousness. Am I right?
43:25
Or am I talking a load of us? Will you bartending?
43:30
Yes. Oh cool.
43:31
Yeah bro, I've been dropping the Flow State bar tending to and
43:35
yes, I would say you've had an if you've had an experience of a
43:38
flow State, now flow States can be in different levels of
43:42
intensity and usually someone This recently, it's like, you
43:47
know, you're in a flow State. When you're out of it, you don't
43:50
know it when you're in it because there is no
43:52
metacognition, there is no thinking about thinking, there
43:54
is no default mode Network, that's your ego self.
43:57
That ego self is been literally damped Tamp down.
44:01
So, like the default mode network is obviously a network
44:04
in your brain. That's the neural substrates the
44:06
ego, but During a flow State, this starts to get less blood
44:12
flow going to the default mode Network and less blood flow
44:15
going. Your prefrontal cortex.
44:16
So you're more like jazz or improv, everything is like, the
44:22
brain is lighting up in all sorts of different ways and
44:25
there's not a lot of executive control or executive attention.
44:29
So it's more, you know, you've learned how to make this Martini
44:33
a thousand times before. So you know you're just burning
44:36
the your instead of coding, you're executing the code.
44:40
That's all I can think about. I think I've experienced this
44:42
while playing music as well because yeah.
44:45
When I'm quote-unquote riffing or soloing or sometimes I'm just
44:51
playing, I'm often be playing something and I'm not even
44:54
really playing anymore. I'm just feeling the music and I
44:58
feel like especially if you're like a leak guitar players and
45:01
then I saw this. There's a video doing the rounds
45:03
of the moment of this really talented guitarist, just got a
45:06
big afro, a common very name but she's amazing.
45:10
And there's a villian video of her just kind of looking up at
45:12
the sky and smiling and just like riffing and riffing.
45:15
Everything. If in them just soloing and, you
45:18
know, she's just feeling it. She's maybe in the Flow State.
45:20
She's, you know, she probably know like how she knows roughly
45:24
where she's playing but like, she's not thinking about it, but
45:27
you stop thinking about it as you said, it's like the the mind
45:30
is not connected to it, unless there's a bomb know, I guess.
45:33
And it's like, oh, potentially, yeah, but I feel like that's a
45:38
good example that maybe. Exactly Consciousness without
45:43
self-consciousness and the guy who's pioneered the most
45:47
research on this area called me hide.
45:49
Csikszentmihalyi, he has this Ted Talk and, you know, he his,
45:52
his research suggests that people report.
45:55
Being most happy when they're in flow, when their default mode
45:59
Network, AKA their ego isn't judging them with, you know.
46:02
It, the inner critic isn't talking in their heads, that's
46:06
gone. And what else happens during a
46:08
flow State? You said time kind of goes like
46:10
this, like, Time dilation because time again is calculated
46:13
in the body and the Brain, it's calculated all over the
46:15
prefrontal cortex but when that starts to wink out of existence
46:19
then you start to get time dilation.
46:20
So for me writing like I might be sitting down you know and it
46:24
feels like 30 minutes then I look up and it's been three
46:27
hours or if I'm snowboarding, you know, I'm going downhill,
46:30
I'm going fast, you know, flow states are literally Peak states
46:33
of performance and then you know, like but I remember going
46:38
down the mountain and is on my birthday and like I hadn't
46:41
fallen in like a really long time and I catch my shadow and
46:44
I'm like, oh my God, I'm in a flow State.
46:46
The next thing I slam Head Over Heels, like four times.
46:50
It was like one of the worst wipeouts I had in like a couple
46:52
years but it was funny because I was totally fine.
46:55
And then I was like, oh, look how cool I look and then bam.
47:00
So it was like everything was fine until my conscious self got
47:03
involved. And I caught an edge or
47:05
something. And so it just goes to show you
47:07
like The Narrative self or the ego.
47:10
And I'm these are luxuries in the brain because we don't have
47:13
to have them. And when you have a flow State,
47:16
like it's important to note that your body is dumping out all
47:19
your feel-good neurotransmitters.
47:21
So, dopamine serotonin endorphins and and amide
47:24
noradrenaline and sometimes oxytocin that's what a flow
47:27
State gives you. And that's a completely normal,
47:30
altered state of consciousness that people can tap into if
47:33
they're sufficiently skilled in something like I don't know,
47:38
poetry or figure skating writing, or You know, like
47:41
whatever happens to be snowboarding.
47:43
So this this is probably a dumb question because I feel like it
47:47
you already answered it. But would sex be an example of a
47:50
flow state. There's, there's there's some
47:54
evidence that people, yeah, you know, like, and the there's this
47:59
book, called stealing Fire by Steven kotler and Jamie wheal.
48:02
That would make the same argument, where they're talking
48:05
about flow popping up in all these different areas and yet we
48:08
call it different things. So stand-up comedians, call it
48:10
when they're in the zone, you know like basketball players
48:13
call it being in the zone or in a zone of proximal development
48:18
you know stand-up comics call it being in the forever box because
48:21
like you know, Got that Mike and then they drop into a flow State
48:24
and then they Riff on something. They've never said before for 10
48:27
minutes straight that would be a flow state, right?
48:30
Or I mean with actors, you get lost in a scene, you forget
48:34
that, you know you forget what your real name is for a moment,
48:37
you're completely that character and all that matters is who
48:39
you're talking to in this emotional state that you're
48:41
sharing with the audience, you guys are merging into this hive
48:45
mind. And so there's a thing called
48:46
group flow. Oh, Victor turning would call
48:49
this communitas. And this happens sometimes
48:51
during Rallies, like political rallies, sadly a good example,
48:56
and a horrible example would be the Trump Administration and you
49:00
know how Trump was able to get people.
49:03
You know, there can be an evil side to flow, Adolf Hitler would
49:07
be another example of where, you know, you get people to whom
49:11
I've mind. And then there would be Stephen
49:14
collars line, you don't want them to make meaning for you.
49:17
So Trump and Hitler would like get people all riled up.
49:22
And then like, all right, let's go do this thing.
49:24
That's and then they're not really thinking properly.
49:26
So like flows days can be great, but they also can be bad too.
49:30
I think it's important to say that this is, this is important
49:33
point on this, because obviously, we've noticed that
49:38
people act wildly different when part of a group versus singular
49:43
and Society mocks those who are on their own, you go to a
49:49
restaurant or whatever and you see a person on their own.
49:52
Society is mocks that they're like, that's weird.
49:54
That's strange. Everyone should be in a group or
49:56
a couple or something. And maybe there is a degree of
49:59
Truth in that. Sometimes it's
50:01
context-dependent, there's nothing wrong with this, you
50:03
know, going for a drink by yourself, going for a meal, I do
50:06
all the time, it's nice. But sometimes it's better, but
50:10
at the same time in general, from a generalization
50:14
perspective, we regard this Behavior as abnormal and we
50:18
favored group interactions social, you know, Sociability
50:22
because we are social creatures. Now, bring it back to the point.
50:28
People do act differently, you take the same person and take
50:31
them away from a group. They will react differently
50:36
versus you throw them in a group sometimes.
50:37
And there's different roles within that group, as well as
50:40
the overly extroverted one who may even at the same way into
50:45
sorry on their own. But you know, if they're
50:47
particularly extroverted and then there's the other one who
50:51
only comes out in that kind of state when they're actually part
50:54
of that group and you got sort of The Quiet One who is that
50:58
kind of air for the ride but it's not really like Doing or
51:02
saying much, you might have someone as particularly vocal
51:06
just throw in like quick insults.
51:09
Few lines here. And there point is like everyone
51:12
acts differently in those groups.
51:14
And as you say, you lose your sense of self, you lose your
51:16
sense of identity. You're more likely to do things
51:19
that you wouldn't normally do. Because you're part of that
51:21
group and it's like, it's, I don't know if I feel like it's
51:24
infiltrated, you like, almost the ability to retain one's
51:28
sense of self. In a group situation is I feel
51:32
like you even have to have a particularly strong sense of
51:35
character and self, or you have to be constantly self aware of
51:41
what's going on around you, and not let it infiltrate you.
51:44
But that's, I don't know. That's easier said than done.
51:49
Particularly, if you're quite easily swayed, I suppose.
51:53
So when you see these rallies and you see people who have
51:57
invited that in, they allow it to happen.
52:00
And then, Mine's sort of temporarily goes on this
52:04
journey. You know, I've experienced it
52:06
myself a few times where I've allowed something in and I
52:09
started listening to it and maybe the thing starts
52:11
convincing me. But you then forget like, Hey
52:14
listen, you got a really back and make your own judgment on
52:16
this. You can't just let this person.
52:18
Still a ship for you, you know. So I feel like that sense of
52:21
self awareness is key, you have to train that maybe Right.
52:27
But yeah, I mean it can get lost and we you spoke that anonymity
52:30
earlier but like, you know, you get in a crowd and like, you
52:33
think you're maybe a little bit Anonymous and maybe you are, you
52:36
know, like maybe this is a black block and our key thing and like
52:39
you're all wearing the same thing.
52:40
So then you really do feel anonymous because you guys can,
52:43
you know, one person can jump out from a crowd and smash a
52:45
window and then disappear back into the crowd again.
52:48
So it's like you would do things you normally would never do but
52:51
you're in a crowd. So, it's okay, it isn't okay.
52:54
But like, I guess I guess we're Into the idea that the myth of
52:58
the individual, because we only know ourselves in relation to
53:01
other people. Like, like, I'm finding out who
53:04
I am and talking to you, but like, if we were the same
53:07
person, like literally the same person talking like, I don't
53:10
even know what we talked about because if we agree on
53:12
everything, right? If you're the same person, so it
53:16
like it's good that I guess, my point is like we find ourselves
53:20
in other people and and like, you know, in these group
53:22
settings, you can lose your individuality and Times, that's
53:26
amazing. Like I go to live concerts and
53:29
live music so I can have that experience of communitas, get
53:32
lost with the crowd, forget about myself, and my worries,
53:36
and my bullshit for a second and just like make an artist's
53:41
Union, like, with the artists on stage and understand their work,
53:44
like, it's like my favorite experience on this planet.
53:48
You don't need anything to have it except for loud music in a
53:50
crowd, but it's great. Do you mean it's like a
53:53
connection thing? It's like if there was, yeah.
53:58
Kind of like Wi-Fi, it's connecting everyone, but you
54:02
can't see it, but you can feel it.
54:05
But if you can feel Wi-Fi Nostalgia.
54:07
But some people say they can feel 5 gee, I don't know anyway.
54:11
But no, I know exactly what you mean.
54:14
I felt that too. And this is why I always kind of
54:18
keep my mind, open to all things because like if you just look at
54:22
it from the scientific perspective, often it discounts
54:24
these things or I'll explain them in a very like, basic.
54:26
Well. Oh, I know it's Early this, you
54:28
know so just ignore all that spiritual shit.
54:30
Don't worry about that. But I keep my mind open to it
54:33
all because you know we have these experiences that we can't
54:35
explain these things that we that we question that we can,
54:40
you know it's like the wind we know exists.
54:42
You can't see it, but we can feel it, you know?
54:45
And it's there are these things you can't explain.
54:48
There are these things these experiences that There.
54:52
There, there there are mine can't make heads or tails of
54:56
them but they are there. Speaking of experiences, you
54:58
mentioned this sort of briefly earlier, but I wanted to just
55:00
explore a little bit. What are Transcendent
55:04
experiences? Okay, so as we're going to play
55:09
a little word game. Hmm!
55:11
Tell me what these words have in common with each other.
55:14
I'm shit at this, okay? Alright, Heaven Nirvana, Satori
55:21
Moksha, Liberation, Awakening being awake, waking up, feeling,
55:29
one with the universe feeling, one with nature, the units of
55:32
experience, the contemplative experience the transcendent Or
55:36
mystical type experience. Ego death ego, dissolution,
55:40
near-death experiences. These are all playing in the
55:44
same soup, right? Just as I've been talking to
55:48
Josh these days so you know, like I'm making me feel bad that
55:56
no. No, I'm sorry.
56:01
No audio books coming out soon and I know that's like an easier
56:03
route for a lot of people, but I will wait, I will wait.
56:06
I'm getting back into reading because I normally read for
56:09
research purposes, but I've started like reading to educate
56:12
myself in acting. And also, like, I'm reading this
56:15
book at the moment, which I think is, brilliant free plug
56:19
for piss way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman.
56:22
It's pretty old book. I just recommended that book.
56:26
Yeah, oh my God, read it. Oh my God.
56:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know my dad gave me that
56:33
book and he said there's a few years ago and he said to me,
56:37
this is the right time for you to read this book so I think.
56:41
Hmm. How do you think?
56:42
I may ask If I can do six, I'm sorry.
56:46
Yes, I'm 30, Moran's, Morris a maze.
56:50
Like this is a good time for us to read this kind of book
56:52
because it's one thing I was telling a friend about it.
56:54
The other day is that I've tried a stopped and started trying to
56:58
read this book so many times and I think my mind was not ready to
57:02
receive the information but now very much able to receive the
57:07
information. I mean, like for example this
57:09
show that I do, I just sit and listen you know I'm just I'm
57:12
steering the ship but I'm not. Not one thing that's interesting
57:15
that's changed about this show is that I used to look at this
57:18
my notes. And like that was my Bible and I
57:20
was like staring at. Like I have to ask all these
57:23
questions. Oh yeah.
57:24
Now it's more like these are conversation starters, really or
57:29
prompts. But sometimes I don't even look
57:31
at this piece of paper, like it really depends.
57:34
It really depends on what's going on but this ability to Be
57:39
open to information, different ideas and such very much.
57:44
I feel is something that happens over time.
57:47
Like your mind, just opens to these things and suddenly you're
57:51
more prepared to receive that information and potentially who
57:55
knows, it can change your life. So if you're in a growth
57:58
mindset, but let's suppose you're not in a growth mindset
58:01
and like, you know, you reach 26 and you're like, I know
58:03
everything I need to know. Good people are like that we're
58:05
like It's just so sad. People always see me in a book.
58:09
They're like, what are you studying in school?
58:10
And like, I'm not in school, like, I've been out of school
58:13
for a while. Like, but like, they associate
58:15
like, well, if you're reading a book, you have to be in school.
58:17
Like, I'd love to learn like but dopamine hit every time you
58:22
learn a new fact. Like that's that's my crack,
58:24
bro. She's like trying to cram a new
58:28
fact in there. That's my deal.
58:29
No, no, you're onto something here.
58:34
Because I think, yeah, most people kind of probably assume
58:36
like, all you're preparing yourself for something.
58:39
You're, you know, or maybe you're researching something.
58:42
and it's like, if you think about it, you you always Army
58:45
even if you're just like reading for enjoyment, you know, it's
58:48
still Is it experience in of itself?
58:53
Reading you lose yourself in it. Like, I've noticed about myself
58:58
that if I'm really connected with the book and experiencing
59:02
it properly, I'm able to like visualize, you know, like this
59:06
particular book is like novelized for a and I'm
59:10
imagining these scenes in my head.
59:12
I can I can see them almost and it's amazing because a lot of
59:17
it. You hear these people say this a
59:19
lot, don't need that. The book is always better.
59:20
Other than the film and I feel like the reason why people say
59:23
that a lot of time, other than the fact that I know, it's not
59:26
how I thought it was the date, you know.
59:29
It's a particular interpretation.
59:30
Not everyone's going to like it but with a book as I think it's
59:33
an astute point, it's a good point.
59:35
Like with a book, it's up to your mind, you know, your mind
59:41
gets to be the dictator of that and there's a lot of freedom in
59:45
that like, yeah, the words will paint a picture for you but it
59:48
doesn't have to be exact Ali. What the book is telling you
59:52
like, for instance, you know, sometimes like it will describe
59:54
certain colors may be like, oh this the person's hat was red.
59:57
The building was brown, but I noticed that my mind does
1:00:00
something different. It doesn't always necessarily
1:00:02
take that information into account, it might, but it will
1:00:05
paint its own picture. Whoop and that's that's the
1:00:10
point about like, you know, the psychologist Carl Jung had this
1:00:12
idea that, you know, we're basically dreaming all the time
1:00:15
and this is where the eye. Yeah.
1:00:17
And so, but like you know, with the idea that like 5% of, you
1:00:22
know, this experience you're having is coming in for your
1:00:24
retinas and the rest is all internally generated imagery
1:00:28
given your expectations about the world if we take that fact,
1:00:31
like seriously. So your eyes are really there to
1:00:34
tether this internal model too. This Plane of existence so it
1:00:38
doesn't go off into Fantasyland. So your brain in this happening
1:00:42
when you're reading, right? You know, if you're reading a
1:00:44
good story, the author doesn't give you every single detail
1:00:47
possible. They give you a few really good
1:00:49
key details about what they're wearing, what the scenes like
1:00:52
what the emotional state is and then your brain runs with it.
1:00:56
If they're good, if they written in a way that's compelling, your
1:00:59
brain will take the information and just start to run with it.
1:01:02
And that's what Consciousness is at this moment in time, like,
1:01:06
you know, your eyes Scanning around the room and looking for
1:01:08
things. And then it's updating your
1:01:11
internal model about what you think is happening, right?
1:01:14
But it's always just running with information in the sense
1:01:17
that like, like a VR headset isn't rendering every single
1:01:22
thing. You know, in the, in the, in the
1:01:25
universe right in the VR Universe, it isn't render every
1:01:28
single thing. It only renders what you're
1:01:29
looking at and so that's sorry, that's kind of what your brain
1:01:33
is doing. Its, you know, taking like tiny
1:01:36
little squares. There's and then be like, okay
1:01:38
well that's that then I can replicate you know, that's a
1:01:41
black patch right there. I could replicate this over
1:01:43
here. This looks like soil and this
1:01:45
looks like you know, Mountain terrain.
1:01:46
I'm just going to copy paste so to speak and and that's how its
1:01:50
able to funnel. That 11 million bits of
1:01:53
information down to about 200 bit size story that our
1:01:55
conscious self can attend to. So yeah, I'd say that she said,
1:02:01
when I, when I go for a walk in the mountains, my body, my mind
1:02:05
says doing copy paste, like Woodford.
1:02:09
Yeah, and Oscar. And like this is the crazy part.
1:02:15
Okay, so if you take your thumb and whoever's listening can take
1:02:18
their arms, stick it out in front of them and just stare at
1:02:20
your thumb, right? So it's at arm's length and
1:02:22
you're staring at your thumb. So that thumbnail is
1:02:25
representative of 1% of your visual field.
1:02:28
And so you see well with 1% of your eye, the part of your
1:02:33
retina that can actually discern fine level detail color like
1:02:37
Super, super good color, contrast, all that stuff is 1%
1:02:41
of your retina. That's your phobia.
1:02:42
That's what you read with. So every time you're scanning,
1:02:45
you know, on a book like your you'll notice your eyes are
1:02:47
moving like every every like every second obviously.
1:02:51
And so it's capturing like what these little symbols are and
1:02:55
then you know, surely you've gotten that.
1:02:57
Have you gotten that email? We're like the first word.
1:03:00
I'm sorry. The first letter of the word is
1:03:03
spelled, right. But then the middle of the word
1:03:05
is like jumbled. And then the last Letter is
1:03:07
spelled right, but you can still read the word, okay?
1:03:11
There just goes to show you. Like, you're not really reading
1:03:13
when you're reading your, Your Brains.
1:03:16
It's like, predictive text in a way.
1:03:17
It's like, I think, I know what they're saying.
1:03:19
You don't actually read every single letter.
1:03:22
That's how typos exist, one thing.
1:03:25
You mention know, one thing you mentioned earlier about like
1:03:28
information. Yeah.
1:03:30
Like I always think about this A few years ago my ex-partners
1:03:36
father was talking to me about something.
1:03:40
I don't remember exactly what the topic was, but he was trying
1:03:44
to kind of like reassure me about something spent me, calm
1:03:46
down and he said, Look at this. This is information.
1:03:50
This is information. This is information.
1:03:52
He said, like everything around. You everything that you
1:03:54
interface with everything at all is or information and you like,
1:03:59
pick and choose what you take in, what you take out etcetera.
1:04:02
But it's all information when you start looking at things like
1:04:06
that. Particularly you have
1:04:08
conversations, like all is this, the Matrix is this real, is
1:04:12
this, that is, I mean I feel like it doesn't really matter if
1:04:16
it's real or not because one truth of it is that it's all
1:04:22
information in your mind is kind of doing its best to decipher
1:04:27
all of that. So whether it's deciphering code
1:04:30
on a piece of paper, too, Trying to make sense of life or trying
1:04:37
to read someone's body language. Like it's always analyzing
1:04:41
everything at all times and trying to make sense of it.
1:04:45
Trying to quantify said information, Which on another
1:04:52
many of many side notes is one of the reasons why I've spent a
1:04:55
lot of time lately, paying very close attention to what I choose
1:05:01
to say watch and listen to because obviously as we know
1:05:06
like - content can have a negative effect on us in much
1:05:09
the same way that eating some bad food will make you feel
1:05:12
shit. It's the same principle like
1:05:15
I've noticed that my mindset has been a lot better.
1:05:18
And a lot more positive since I've been listening to this
1:05:21
positive content, I've been focusing on more positive stuff,
1:05:24
I've been sitting down and reading positive stuff.
1:05:26
It's like, I'm giving my brain good stuff and in turn, it's
1:05:30
making me feel better and reacting in a more positive
1:05:32
manner. Through the choice to receive
1:05:37
good information. Yeah, I think that old adage, we
1:05:41
are what we eat, but we eat with all five of our senses and so,
1:05:45
you know, like it isn't just that.
1:05:46
Like if you eat donuts all the time, you're going to get fat
1:05:49
like it. What are you eating with your
1:05:51
eyes and your ears? Like if you're surrounding
1:05:53
yourself with toxic bullshit, like, I'm not surprised if you
1:05:57
start to have some, you know, like a brain that won't leave
1:06:00
you alone because it's like, what are you feeding me?
1:06:03
This is horrible and it's just going to act like a mirror, just
1:06:06
reflect back, what you're feeding it and So, yeah, I've
1:06:10
I've done the same where it's like, you gotta like, regiment
1:06:13
your diet of what you consume. I can't consume, I can't take in
1:06:18
all the world's pain and suffering in the mornings, you
1:06:20
know? I mean, I can't watch all the
1:06:21
news in the world and be like, oh, dude, it just depresses me.
1:06:25
Like the news is a perfect example of this.
1:06:28
Yeah. And this is me, just trying to
1:06:30
show them the news but like, let's be real.
1:06:31
Like, the news is not the news, okay.
1:06:35
If the news was the news, it would literally just be facts
1:06:38
and figures. And statistics written down and
1:06:42
someone's just saying them, you know, like this happened this
1:06:45
time, this place did it at a right, but the news is not that
1:06:49
the news is trying to sell you stories.
1:06:51
It's trying to paint narratives sometimes their religious murder
1:06:55
other times. They're false serving an agenda,
1:06:57
whatever that's another conversation for another day.
1:07:00
The point is, you do know, if you start to pay attention, you
1:07:04
will notice that it is heavily - I noticed.
1:07:09
This very young age. I remember I was I must have
1:07:13
been about 13, maybe younger. And I just sat down and decided
1:07:20
to just pay attention and just what, like I always used to
1:07:22
stick on the news here in the UK.
1:07:24
I grew up in London and what we would have is the national news
1:07:28
and the local news. So the national news it was
1:07:31
always the same thing. It would be like here's how
1:07:34
terrible the economy is. Here's the war that's going on
1:07:37
in this country right now. Here's what the politicians
1:07:41
said, you should be fearful of in this particular month.
1:07:44
And I noticed that it was The running pattern of that, it was
1:07:48
- thing off. The - he got the negative thing,
1:07:50
not one of those instances had something positive, like, oh
1:07:54
well said, Banker thinks things look positive in this given
1:07:58
moment or member of the opposition said.
1:08:01
Don't worry. We've got this plan in mind or,
1:08:03
you know, I'm saying like there was never that positivity, then
1:08:07
it dropped to local news. Same thing, it would just mean -
1:08:12
- - - and then, sometimes they would end all often they would
1:08:16
end the program with a good feeling good.
1:08:19
Feel story like, oh Sandra in the local community has raised
1:08:23
£500 for dogs trust. And here's a picture of her with
1:08:28
all the dog. She helped have a lovely day
1:08:32
from our search channel for good.
1:08:34
Even to you that added a see you tomorrow.
1:08:38
And that was the pattern every single day.
1:08:41
And I was like, wow a program that for the last say two hours,
1:08:45
95 percent of it is - and then this is 15 percent I suppose
1:08:50
intended to just kind of make you forget maybe that you felt
1:08:54
so bad about all the other stuff because you're like oh well as
1:08:57
long as there's this one, good thing going on in the world and
1:09:00
all that other stuff, you know, it's not so bad and it's like,
1:09:04
don't get me wrong. There's always a terrible things
1:09:06
going on in the world. But there's also a lot of
1:09:09
amazing wonderful good things going on in the world, it's but
1:09:13
the news I feel is designed to keep you in a Perpetual state of
1:09:17
fear and stress and anxiety. And I know that's like quite a
1:09:21
controversial thing to say that people would be local.
1:09:24
You so, conspiracy theorist. It's not a conspiracy theory.
1:09:28
Do is fact. Go watch the news and tell me
1:09:31
how many positive stories you find or positive angles.
1:09:35
It, there's not a lot there. It's Distressing like as just
1:09:39
the program, like, forget all political, leanings, forget,
1:09:43
everything you think and know about the news, just sit and
1:09:46
listen to it. And I guarantee, you'll feel -
1:09:49
afterwards you'll feel depressed, you'll feel
1:09:51
miserable. You'll feel sad like, and it's,
1:09:54
I'm not saying people should ignore the news, you know,
1:09:56
because at the end of the day, we do need to be informed about
1:09:59
things that are going on in whatever the world.
1:10:01
Our country stuff like that. But we also live in a time in an
1:10:05
age, where the information that were receiving In many instances
1:10:09
we can't always be sure. We can't be sure if this is
1:10:12
real. Is this fake?
1:10:14
Is this a? I generated?
1:10:16
That's a new concern. We have to think about now.
1:10:17
I know there's like different layers and elements to this that
1:10:20
we always have to take into consideration and it's not to
1:10:22
say that this is a new thing even you know like there's
1:10:26
always been Fabrications and news and media.
1:10:29
There's a people have always lied, you know, there will
1:10:32
always be these things but I feel if nothing else right now.
1:10:36
What people should really be doing is thinking I need two
1:10:38
more critically analyze things. I need to think is all of the
1:10:43
information I'm receiving right now.
1:10:45
Legitimate real. Maybe I should take into
1:10:47
account, all given aspects of an argument.
1:10:51
For example, for instance, I refuse to do like debate shows,
1:10:56
I don't want to do debate shows for before.
1:10:58
The simple reason that to do that professionally and
1:11:02
properly, you need to learn both sides of an argument fully.
1:11:06
You need to understand fully And both arguments so that you can
1:11:10
either host a debate and no both sides.
1:11:15
Or if you're going to oppose someone and debate against
1:11:19
someone, you need to know what they're going to say pretty
1:11:22
much. So you're prepared for that.
1:11:24
But in my point is you have to be fully prepared.
1:11:26
You can't just kind of go walk into it because it's just not
1:11:30
how it is. It's not appropriate.
1:11:31
You need to know need to be informed but I don't know that
1:11:35
many of us are doing that. I think a lot of the time, we
1:11:39
accept things, at face value. You'll notice certain people you
1:11:43
meet for our life. A lot of the time, they'll go
1:11:45
with the status quo, they'll go with, like, RK world.
1:11:47
The rules say, we have to do this or you know, I don't know.
1:11:51
This information says, we have to do this, but it's been quite
1:11:54
a few people I've met throughout the years and this is kind of
1:11:57
goes back to what you said earlier, about how we discover
1:12:01
things about ourselves through. People we meet.
1:12:04
I discovered that I don't be at my core.
1:12:07
I'm a bit of a won't do what I'm told, kind of not deliberately
1:12:12
rebellious but I do kind of take exception.
1:12:15
I'm like okay, if they're saying a b and c, well, let's try Zed
1:12:18
because I feel like there's and often if you are asked about
1:12:24
something that's not shown to you, you'd be surprised like
1:12:28
sometimes people would be like, yeah, you can do that if you
1:12:30
want, it's not something we. Dies but it's something you can
1:12:34
do. Because they don't expect
1:12:36
everyone to go for that option, that hidden option.
1:12:39
That thing that not many other people have, okay?
1:12:42
You know, I'm saying it's like a, it's a certain mindset.
1:12:46
It's there's people that except what's in front of them blindly,
1:12:50
there are people that question things but maybe we'll still go
1:12:53
along with things and then there are people that will question
1:12:56
everything. This maybe not always for the,
1:12:59
for the right reasons, maybe they're just been deliberately
1:13:01
difficult, but I think it's good to always question everything as
1:13:04
a concept because You know, you shouldn't just blindly accept
1:13:09
everything. You see in front of yourself,
1:13:12
you will be lied to, you are being lied to, but that doesn't
1:13:16
mean you're being lighter in all given instances.
1:13:19
It's just something to keep in mind.
1:13:20
Like when you receive new information question, it
1:13:23
question it completely question the source question, why you're
1:13:28
being given this information question?
1:13:29
Where it's from question, everything always question
1:13:32
things they tried to tell me at school, not to question things
1:13:35
and Now, I understand why. Oh, right?
1:13:39
Yeah, not always. There were certain teachers, you
1:13:41
know, I can go to teachers to be like, you need to critically
1:13:43
analyze things but that was more so we could deconstruct
1:13:46
Shakespeare not so that I could question Society at large, you
1:13:51
know? But I mean, that gets to the
1:13:53
whole point of like, you know, like there's flow States right?
1:13:55
Which is like the good form of automatic where you're basically
1:13:58
trusting their instincts and the body to burn this code out and
1:14:03
then there's this the automatic automatic A mattock which, you
1:14:06
know, we're just Mindless and sometimes we drive home like
1:14:10
when we're meeting to drive to work you know.
1:14:11
Like yeah. Aren't as I like you're on a
1:14:14
path and then you just you're trying to go to the store and
1:14:17
the end up driving to work. You know what the hell?
1:14:19
Well, you're on automatic. You weren't even thinking so
1:14:20
where was your Consciousness? Like your awareness wasn't
1:14:23
there, but your body was Manning the wheel, you know, like
1:14:26
there's another altered state of consciousness.
1:14:28
For you. Right there, trance State.
1:14:31
You've gotten into a little bit of a trance.
1:14:32
But like, I mean, I guess One of the pull it back to like was it
1:14:36
your grandfather said it was about information.
1:14:40
No it was exported as father who we were, just we having a
1:14:44
conversation I was living in Europe at the time and this is
1:14:49
the man that like read a lot and educated himself a lot and
1:14:52
interesting with him was that he had learned everything through
1:14:58
just teaching himself through books and stuff.
1:15:01
So like for instance, he did a lot of like landscaping and
1:15:04
create Being like housework and stuff like that.
1:15:07
Like, as in working on houses and building homes and stuff,
1:15:09
but he just taught himself in books.
1:15:12
Because obviously Society teaches you, you have to a lot
1:15:14
of time. I go, I have to go to university
1:15:16
and I have to learn this skill and trade and it's like no you
1:15:18
don't you that's one way you could do it.
1:15:22
Sure but you'll notice if you do go to university, you're paying
1:15:27
for access to information. Whereas you can get a lot of
1:15:31
access to information for free now in this day and age.
1:15:34
Yeah we're going on. Yeah you don't have a curriculum
1:15:38
unless you know your own curriculum but like people are
1:15:41
paying for it. Um, and they're also paying for
1:15:43
the networking. Like I mean, I've so much value
1:15:46
from my University, I'm just the network, but that's the biggest
1:15:51
value. It wasn't the education.
1:15:53
I received it was more the network.
1:15:55
I was I don't know. The relationships I made
1:15:57
basically. So it's exactly the same for me.
1:16:00
Like, I really yeah, I've spoken about University before, like,
1:16:03
on my show and on live streams and such I don't completely
1:16:07
discount it. I think that University teaches
1:16:10
you a lot As far as like how to for instance, read academic
1:16:17
journals and how to get information from that teaches
1:16:19
you a certain way of studying. As you said it might need
1:16:21
teaches you how to network and all these wonderful life skills.
1:16:25
Also it demonstrates to other people certain qualities and
1:16:29
aspects to you in the same way. That if I go to the gym and I
1:16:33
take care of myself that sends a certain message to people about
1:16:37
where my level of desk discipline, and Where my mindset
1:16:44
is I think going to University sends out the same message to,
1:16:49
but again, it's not completely necessary in the grand scheme of
1:16:54
like where you can take your life and what you can do like
1:16:57
there, it's never just a b and c, there's always other routes
1:17:01
to do things. And yeah, I was a couple of
1:17:03
years into University when I realized that the at the time it
1:17:07
was like you had to have a degree to do anything.
1:17:10
Now, it's just an option. Yeah, sorry guys said something
1:17:19
really wise. Which is like, if you, if you
1:17:21
ask what the universe is, I mean, I think one interpretation
1:17:24
you can make in. This is the interpretation of my
1:17:25
opinion, is that the universe is information.
1:17:27
Like, that's how you can describe it.
1:17:30
And what is consciousness? Consciousness is an information,
1:17:34
it's kind of an instinct will adjudication system, so you need
1:17:38
to adjudicate between conflicting, instinctual drives
1:17:42
this you know, body that we have has an Ence amount of
1:17:46
intelligence in it, you know, women can, this is so sad, but
1:17:50
like there's been situations where women get in a coma and
1:17:54
then something happens, right? And then they get pregnant and
1:18:00
then they can give birth completely while they're in a
1:18:04
coma. The they don't have to be
1:18:07
consciously there. The body can take care of
1:18:09
everything. Like that's just to speak to the
1:18:11
intelligence of the body and you know, how fucked up the fucked
1:18:15
up, things that happens sometimes when women are in
1:18:18
comas and guys are in comas like, you know, that's just how
1:18:20
it happens. But it I don't know.
1:18:23
I guess I was just pointing to the intelligence of the body and
1:18:25
what it, what it can do. But where was I going with that?
1:18:27
I don't know. Ha ha ha.
1:18:29
No, no, I get what you mean, it's like an instinctual.
1:18:32
There's oh yeah, your body reacts to certain things.
1:18:37
Right? And so you have you know a lot
1:18:39
of intelligence like we don't know how we grow our arm hair
1:18:42
generate immunological responses or breathe really like you know
1:18:47
like we can take conscious breaths but mostly breathing is
1:18:50
unconscious so the body is taken care of so much.
1:18:53
So what Consciousness is is really this mediation between a
1:18:56
bottom-up flow of sensory signals and a top-down executive
1:18:59
control of I think I know what things should happen.
1:19:02
So this is the appears this top-down like in Stinked
1:19:06
adjudication system, but it's all information and managing
1:19:10
information. And Consciousness is ultimately
1:19:12
about, you know, managing information, not overwhelming,
1:19:15
the operator with every single detail available, and that's why
1:19:18
it's that 11 million funnel down to 200 bits, instead of, you
1:19:21
know, you're aware of Everything at Once.
1:19:24
Attention is finite so limited. So you know, we have to our
1:19:27
brain runs on different types of attention but, you know, and
1:19:31
then it's also interesting to talk about how the brain pays
1:19:33
attention in different ways. Have you heard of Allah, About
1:19:36
the recent discoveries with the right Hemisphere and the left
1:19:39
hemisphere of the brain happen while this this gets to like
1:19:45
this explains so much. And so there's this Brit named
1:19:47
dr. Iain, mcgilchrist, who has
1:19:49
really done the best work like that laying out, like the
1:19:54
functional differences between the left hemisphere and the
1:19:56
right Hemisphere and just two parts.
1:19:57
The subject real quick. Back in the 70s there was a lot
1:20:01
of information released about the right hemisphere does like
1:20:04
you know, create Tivity and I don't know, like special magic
1:20:09
shit and like the left hemisphere is Matt like, that's
1:20:11
all been debunked. But so there's a more nuanced
1:20:15
discussion that's happening about what these two hemispheres
1:20:19
are up to. But the real interpretation of
1:20:21
takeaway is that you have a left brain inside your head and a
1:20:24
right brain inside your head. And that these brains are
1:20:26
independently conscious to some extent and so that they pay
1:20:29
attention to the world in different ways.
1:20:32
And so, you know, courtesy of the right hemisphere we have
1:20:35
this. Broad open sustained kind of
1:20:38
attention that's like into like a flood light of awareness you
1:20:41
know and then the left hemisphere is getting more
1:20:44
Spotlight of Consciousness so more like the spotlight or a
1:20:48
flashlight moving around grabbing information that it
1:20:51
needs. And so the way dr.
1:20:53
Iain mcgilchrist describes. This is like, you know, you'll
1:20:55
notice this lateralized brains asymmetrical brains in almost
1:21:00
every organism and so even down in birds and so his ideas like,
1:21:05
you know, a bird trying to make it in the world has to be has to
1:21:09
like Focus, very intently on the seed that it's trying to grab
1:21:13
out of this, you know, Pebble and grit and sand.
1:21:15
It has to focus very narrowly and intently on that seed, but
1:21:18
it needs to keep its right Hemisphere and its left eye,
1:21:21
open for any predators that might come around.
1:21:24
So it's paying attention to different ways.
1:21:27
And so that's the idea of why we have two different brains in our
1:21:30
head. And once you really start to
1:21:33
understand that idea, it opens up so many doors of Well, that's
1:21:37
why this happens, and that's why this happens and wanting one
1:21:39
example. Being like, how are we able to
1:21:42
wrestle with ourselves or like, like, what's the name of the
1:21:45
person in that movie? Like a can't.
1:21:47
Remember my favorite actors name.
1:21:49
It's like, you know, well, you have two sides of you.
1:21:52
We can reminisce with ourselves. That's a weird thing to think
1:21:55
about like, you know, sometimes I'll be in the shower and then
1:21:58
my brain presses play in a memory.
1:21:59
I didn't know, still existed, effectively entertaining itself
1:22:03
with itself, like who pressed play?
1:22:05
I don't know. No, but like it just goes to
1:22:08
show you like we have, you know, the left hemisphere and the
1:22:11
right hemisphere, they contribute to give us this
1:22:13
conscious experience we have but sometimes people have strokes
1:22:17
where they lose their left hemisphere or they lose the
1:22:19
right hemisphere. And by studying those sorts of
1:22:24
case, studies, you kind of understand more about how
1:22:28
Consciousness is this complex Orchestra being played and you
1:22:31
need both hemispheres and if you lose one, pray that it's the
1:22:34
left hemisphere and not the right hemisphere otherwise your
1:22:36
ability to navigate reality will be severely severely destroyed.
1:22:40
If you lose your left hemisphere you're likely lose language
1:22:43
which you know but yeah. Is interesting is quite a few
1:22:50
different things in that other caught my attention.
1:22:53
So in particular, this idea of like your mind, we playing
1:22:57
certain memories randomly sometimes.
1:23:00
I look at that and I'm like there's gotta be a reason for
1:23:02
this maybe it's You're being trying to be taught something
1:23:08
from, from the past. That's quite a basic take on
1:23:11
that, but other times, it's like I'll be having a genuinely good
1:23:15
time. Happy Days, everything and then
1:23:17
some terrible memory from many years ago.
1:23:20
Comes up. And I'm like, well, I've already
1:23:21
like dealt with this memory. I've already like reconciled
1:23:24
with this memory. This is in the past, the past
1:23:28
doesn't exist. It's just The past, you know?
1:23:31
I mean like it doesn't bear. It doesn't have any bearing on
1:23:34
my life right now. Like for example, if if there's
1:23:36
like a bad like there with me if there's like a bear, I'd like
1:23:40
memory like of something that happened and it was my fault,
1:23:43
you know. So what I tell my mind is well I
1:23:47
was a different person then. So this mistake that I made and
1:23:51
I've moved on from is because this is the person I was then
1:23:58
and like I was not able to be Mature, like how I am now and,
1:24:02
and approach I got now, I would approach this particular
1:24:05
situation very differently and I think bad kind, I'm able to look
1:24:08
at that and go. Oh, well, these ruled the
1:24:10
circumstances at this time, this is how my mind worked at this
1:24:12
time. This is the best that I could do
1:24:14
in this particular moment, hence, why this mistake exists.
1:24:18
So, when the Mind replays and starts doing that, and like, to
1:24:21
what end, what's the point, What we're trying to achieve here, I
1:24:26
don't know. That's great, man.
1:24:28
I mean that's do you meditate? No, I've tried.
1:24:31
I can't turn off my mind. Okay, what, you know, it's a,
1:24:36
it's a, it's a practice and like, no one ever just turns it
1:24:39
off but no, I know. But I know I've read like a
1:24:41
like, for instance, that book I mentioned earlier today talks
1:24:44
about like how true meditation works and like I know it's
1:24:47
supposed to be like your cat, you're tapping into like
1:24:51
everything around you and feeling As you're paying
1:24:53
attention to your breathing, your pay attention to how you
1:24:56
feel, you're within yourself, all this stuff.
1:24:59
But when I say I can't tell myself off, I mean like I the
1:25:04
thoughts distract me the you know like I'm working on trying
1:25:08
not to be a prisoner of my mind as far as letting might like
1:25:11
thoughts guide me. So an example of this recently
1:25:14
has been for me. Like, when I woke up this
1:25:19
morning, I felt bad. I felt depressed and so, I
1:25:23
looked at that and normally I'd be like, and I'd let that mood
1:25:27
ruin my day or whatever, dictate my day, run my day.
1:25:30
Basically, I am a prisoner on to my emotions.
1:25:33
But in this moment I was like, no, no, that's that's not how
1:25:37
that works. You know, I understand maybe
1:25:40
that I need to eat. Go out for a walk, maybe hit the
1:25:43
gym. So I did all these things and
1:25:46
wow, mind-blowing, I felt better right now.
1:25:52
Don't get me wrong. Some Times when those those
1:25:54
feelings come up, you've got a reconcile with that.
1:25:57
You need to address those, those feelings.
1:25:59
You need to talk to someone, you need to, I don't know.
1:26:03
Exercise, do something like, like what I said, like,
1:26:08
sometimes you just have to sit with their with your thoughts
1:26:10
and just think about things be out in nature and just, you
1:26:13
know, it will cut the answers will come to you.
1:26:17
But I find that my point with this is that you can control
1:26:20
that you don't need to be in a position where you're at.
1:26:23
Oceans just control you and how you feel and your thoughts
1:26:26
control. You like it, you can control
1:26:29
that but it takes a certain degree of like self-awareness on
1:26:33
your part and you have to really consciously think like this is
1:26:37
not something that controls me. I control this.
1:26:41
I am in control of this and bring it back to meditation.
1:26:47
That's an area. I still struggle with that
1:26:49
because while I can do that in my everyday life and Carry On
1:26:51
and move forward, I find it difficult.
1:26:53
Cult with meditation because that's an area where you're
1:26:56
sitting trying to somewhat disconnect from your thoughts
1:27:02
and just be there and sit with yourself and be there with
1:27:04
yourself and we'll comes comes. But I just can't turn off that
1:27:09
noise. It's like, you know, you shut
1:27:11
the window. You could still hear the
1:27:13
traffic, it's like that. Hmm.
1:27:16
I got you. Well, the ultimate goal of it
1:27:20
and I want to acknowledge and congratulate you because you're
1:27:22
doing something that's very in line with meditation.
1:27:26
What you said was like, you know, you've you basically
1:27:29
inserted this like question like what's the game here with these
1:27:33
thoughts? What are they trying to get me
1:27:34
to do? And so, I mean, that's, that's
1:27:36
an exact like meditation that you should think about is like,
1:27:40
you know, like you've noticed these thoughts keep coming up
1:27:42
about like, let's just say it's this ex-girlfriend.
1:27:44
So it's like, okay, I Having I'm noticing thoughts about this.
1:27:47
Ex-girlfriend, what is it trying to tell?
1:27:48
Me what's the game here? You know, and a lot of the
1:27:51
times, it's just distraction, the remembering self a part of
1:27:54
your brain is trying to be like, hey, think about this.
1:27:56
Think about this is trying to steal the spotlight of
1:27:58
Consciousness away from you. Now, the brain ultimately has to
1:28:02
essential modes in my opinion, thinking, and perception.
1:28:06
And when you talk about this left-hemisphere
1:28:07
right-hemisphere, divide, a lot, you understand that I'm going to
1:28:11
steal a line from dr. Jill bolte Taylor real quick.
1:28:13
She says, although many of us Us think of ourselves as thinking
1:28:17
creatures that feel biologically.
1:28:20
We are feeling creatures that think so stern.
1:28:23
Oh yeah, so we are, you know, like the brain has three
1:28:27
functional layers, you got your Reptilian Brain, the mammalian
1:28:30
brain and then you know what, we call the outer unrelated
1:28:34
cerebral cortex. That's the most human part of
1:28:36
our brain. But all your Sensations, pass
1:28:39
through your limbic system, so your mammalian Brain before they
1:28:42
get to, you know, percolate up to the Outer undeleted cerebral
1:28:46
cortex where we're able to do complex things like abstraction
1:28:50
in math and language, Etc. Like, you know, this wrinkled
1:28:54
surface on our brain. This exterior, this is what
1:28:58
really makes us human and but we're able to think, right?
1:29:02
But we're only able to think because we feel first.
1:29:05
So thought is a second order process.
1:29:08
And so what you're trying to do in meditation is you know, your
1:29:12
left hemisphere 95% of people I believe Leave houses your
1:29:17
language centers, right? So if you can shut off your
1:29:20
language centers, your left hemisphere for a minute or two,
1:29:23
20 minutes. That's what we're trying to do
1:29:24
here in meditation. Stop the left hemisphere from
1:29:27
incessantly, talking in your head, then you just get to
1:29:30
preceive just perceive which is an Act of Creation, right?
1:29:36
Because all perception is All, You Know, You're perceiving
1:29:40
Something. The stuff is getting binded
1:29:42
together in your brain. That's the neural binding,
1:29:44
right? And so I like tap it with this.
1:29:50
You've seen a Necker Cube or the rubin's vase before.
1:29:53
It's like a vase face it, or it's a Duck Rabbit.
1:29:56
It's duck. If you look at one way, it's a
1:29:57
rabbit. If you look at it one way, you
1:29:59
know, it's it's a, it's a, it's a three-dimensional Cube.
1:30:03
But it's drawn on a two-dimensional sheet of paper.
1:30:05
We call that a neck Cube. Now, if you look at this Cube,
1:30:08
or if you look at this Duck Rabbit, it's like your brain
1:30:10
will either see the duck or I'll see the rabbit.
1:30:12
You can't see both at the same time, it'll be like Duck Rabbit.
1:30:15
Duck Rabbit, it'll-it'll waver between the two and a waver
1:30:18
between which Is the front part of the cube, and which is the
1:30:21
back part of the cube, if you're looking at a Necker Cube, and so
1:30:25
what that gets to is, like, perception is an act of
1:30:28
creation. And so meditation, ultimately is
1:30:31
practicing perception or creation without the intrusion
1:30:35
of thought coming in and ruining things.
1:30:38
With, I want I need, I deserve, I mowed, I expect why didn't
1:30:43
this happen? And, you know, when is this
1:30:45
going to happen? Like these are thoughts that
1:30:47
like they have their own game and that's what you're doing.
1:30:49
Your What's your game here? But you can silence them
1:30:52
eventually, you learn how to do that and then you just practice
1:30:55
perceiving which is the Perfection of now it's and you
1:30:59
get to I don't know it's it just shows you who the complexity of
1:31:04
who you are. I think that's why I do.
1:31:06
Meditate could do it more but it helps you know like defrag your
1:31:11
brain a little bit close browser tabs gone.
1:31:14
So when you said that which fascinates me wait all of this
1:31:18
fascinates me but her Her this concept that we are feeling
1:31:21
creatures. First thinking creatures,
1:31:22
second, The more I've spent time.
1:31:27
Acquiescing to everything around me as far as like what I think
1:31:33
myself to be and what I actually am.
1:31:35
I it's interesting. Hmm.
1:31:38
So I'm a person, that's very much driven by my intuition by a
1:31:42
how certain things make me feel. However, I do understand that
1:31:48
emotions and feelings. Betray you mmm in much the same
1:31:51
way that your thoughts can portray you as well.
1:31:55
So what is the truth in all of that?
1:31:58
It's a mixture of both. It's a combination of both, it's
1:32:03
understanding who you really are.
1:32:07
I'm evaporating within that when you see people at their
1:32:10
happiest, it's not because they have loads of money.
1:32:14
It's not because they have I don't know whatever, 15 cars,
1:32:21
it's none of that. It's because they've been able
1:32:23
to fully understand who they are.
1:32:29
And engage with things like flow States, engage with things like
1:32:34
that. Like for example, one of the
1:32:35
main characters in this book, I keep mentioning this place is a
1:32:37
really good, but our goal is named sock or Socrates.
1:32:42
That's what the other character names them.
1:32:44
He's a guy that works in a gas station and he's like, he says
1:32:47
he's 96, the he's not, but he's, he's just a guy who kind of like
1:32:52
laughs at Ordinary People and pokes fun at them and stuff, but
1:32:58
not in like a mean-spirited way. Way more in a kind of like you,
1:33:01
all of you are missing the point and he's trying to, like, get
1:33:05
this main character to understand like what the real
1:33:07
purpose of life is and like, what it all really entails and
1:33:11
to kind of understand, for example, the importance of
1:33:14
spontaneity, and the fact that like, you know, you need to
1:33:17
learn to like laugh when it rains and not be like, oh this
1:33:21
is, this is ruin my day. Everything's terrible.
1:33:23
Did it. It's like you get to decide your
1:33:25
reality. No one gets to decide that for
1:33:29
you. You get Side that.
1:33:31
But it does take a leap on your, on your part to recognize that
1:33:38
and to receive the information around you and try to find that
1:33:43
the positive line in it, things or try to understand like okay,
1:33:47
this has happened. Maybe this thing isn't bad but
1:33:49
how do I the person take this information?
1:33:53
I'm sure you've heard the expression life is 80%.
1:33:58
What happens to us in? Like how we how we react to it?
1:34:02
Well, I just know maybe it's over around 80%.
1:34:05
Yeah, most days like life happens and we can choose how we
1:34:08
react to it basically. And it's like we can't control a
1:34:12
lot of the things that happen to us.
1:34:13
But we can control how we react to them that can also steer the
1:34:18
ship as far as like, leading us to more positive things because
1:34:20
people will pick up on that table at heart.
1:34:23
You. Okay.
1:34:23
You went through this but you're reacting in a positive way
1:34:25
that's interesting and and like maybe you know I'm saying like
1:34:29
it's Like that speaks to people especially in the in for example
1:34:34
if you're in a room full of people and you reverberate
1:34:38
positive energy people are more naturally drawn to you.
1:34:41
Whereas if you're negative and withdrawn and you feel terrible,
1:34:44
you desperately want people to come near you but they won't
1:34:46
because your demeanor and your energy as off your giving a very
1:34:52
You probably don't even realize the energy you're giving off and
1:34:55
you so desperately want this thing and that's why they say
1:34:57
like if you want something you often have to do the reverse of
1:35:00
it, which always use the with my head.
1:35:03
Like for example, I want to be loved, I want to be with
1:35:05
someone, right? But I won't get that through
1:35:08
being negative, to being miserable through feeling
1:35:11
entitled. I'll get it for.
1:35:12
You being positive through living my life and giving off
1:35:15
the right energy and it will come when I'm not expecting it.
1:35:18
Yeah, yeah. Do the opposite.
1:35:25
Yeah, I want to talk about your book.
1:35:27
Okay. Your again, we mentioned at the
1:35:30
top of the hour it's called Consciousness in a nutshell.
1:35:32
It's got this amazing graphic of like a guy in space.
1:35:35
It is it don't know. It's just it's from a visual
1:35:38
perspective, it just kind of stood out to me, but then I
1:35:40
started like Becoming fascinated with this idea of how you've
1:35:44
studied Consciousness Walkers behind the story behind your
1:35:48
book and how it came to be. Okay, so it's bent like most of
1:35:56
my life gearing, towards trying to be an astronaut and then I've
1:35:59
realized it's too much of a smartass.
1:36:01
And then I was like, okay, well, I'm good at acting and like,
1:36:05
writing and stand up. I'll just go for that.
1:36:07
So, I was like in regional theater from like, third grade
1:36:11
all the way up until let's call it, 25 years old.
1:36:14
It's a 25 years old 2013. That's when I have my first
1:36:17
near-death experience I was so in love with psychology, like I
1:36:21
I was fascinated by the human brain ever, since I took my
1:36:24
first psychology class in college and just been, you know,
1:36:27
just hooked by the subject, but it was always in pursuit of how
1:36:31
can I use this knowledge about the brain to create a more
1:36:34
convincing character on stage or you know in front of the camera.
1:36:37
Like I just wanted to observe human behavior and so that was
1:36:40
where my life was then. I had this near-death experience
1:36:43
that you know I liken it to if our theory is correct if
1:36:47
Consciousness at the level of experience as a layered
1:36:51
Orchestra of, you know, a bunch of teams of neurons and systems
1:36:55
of neurons acting in concert with one another.
1:36:58
It was like that near-death experience was like, I saw all
1:37:02
the layers of Consciousness getting unticked at random and
1:37:05
then when my brain rebooted so to speak it was like they got
1:37:08
ticked back on and it was chaotic and shuffled and it was
1:37:12
a crazy experience, right? But it showed me, it gave me the
1:37:16
curriculum. I needed to write this book.
1:37:19
It was like okay you saw And I saw primary visual processing
1:37:24
per second, like, you know, the I'd like what we're seeing right
1:37:27
now is filtered processed reality.
1:37:30
You're not seeing real reality? You're not seeing those two
1:37:33
dimensional images like one, two dimensional image that's coming
1:37:35
from your right eye and one from the left you're seeing them
1:37:38
stitch together after its you know already been.
1:37:41
Well it's already like processed.
1:37:43
It's edited together. I saw it before it was edited
1:37:47
and so there were moments of seeing this like seeing through
1:37:50
the fabric of reality. T.
1:37:51
Seeing what some people would call Ultimate Reality and I just
1:37:55
caught moments of it and that was enough to see the idea that
1:37:59
would be this book. And so the idea takes its form
1:38:02
in the sense that like if you want to explain what
1:38:05
Consciousness is, you have to talk about Transformations and
1:38:07
Consciousness. So the only true way to talk
1:38:10
about it. I believe is a multidisciplinary
1:38:12
explanation of the study of Consciousness and it's told
1:38:16
through the vehicle of a story we figured out kind of early on
1:38:19
that. Like, you know, this was a very
1:38:20
complex Subject really heavy, Hardy hard to access sometimes.
1:38:24
So there's like 10,000 facts. You need to somehow crammed into
1:38:27
one person's head in order for them to have this, aha moment.
1:38:31
This revelation of, oh, that's what Consciousness is.
1:38:34
I've been thinking about it, the entirely in an entirely wrong
1:38:37
way. So, in order to get people to
1:38:40
that Revelation, you have to somehow jam-packed 10,000 facts
1:38:44
into their head. And so the story is designed to
1:38:46
help get those facts in. But it goes everywhere.
1:38:49
I mean it's ultimately a A big story about Evolution because
1:38:54
well, let me ask you this. When someone says the force of
1:38:57
evolution, what does that mean to you?
1:39:04
Never to ability and say, okay cool, what else?
1:39:09
Mmm. Just progress, I suppose.
1:39:15
You know, I believe in this program.
1:39:17
Yeah, it's, it's like, it's happening.
1:39:22
It's never not happening. Great.
1:39:25
Okay. It's always happening.
1:39:27
Okay. These are great things.
1:39:29
Now is evolution, is it like went, like, what is it?
1:39:34
It's not a physical thing. Is it?
1:39:36
Or is it? I suppose it's conceptual but
1:39:42
it's also something you see. I mean, you don't see it
1:39:46
necessarily happening in real time.
1:39:47
You can see it happening in real time, in some instances, but a
1:39:51
lot of the time it's either really, really, really slow or
1:39:56
sometimes you can speed it up. Like the best example, I can
1:39:58
think of is, let's say I put a potted plant on my windowsill
1:40:04
and I start watering a if I film it over the course of six
1:40:09
months. It's and speed up that footage.
1:40:13
I can see a plant group really quickly, but if I watch it, if I
1:40:17
sit there and watch the plant grow, it will take a very, very,
1:40:22
very long time. However, that is something I can
1:40:26
observe, which is relatively fast now.
1:40:28
If we're talking about, like, The evolution of like you know,
1:40:33
human beings or animals that can take Millions, hundreds of
1:40:38
millions of years and that's where it begins to be a lot
1:40:41
longer. Yeah.
1:40:44
Okay so you brought up a good point.
1:40:46
All right. So evolution of plants we could
1:40:49
talk about that for a second. So there's this the wild cabbage
1:40:52
is called Brassica Al Erica, okay.
1:40:54
So in the last 10,000 years we've taken the wild cabbage and
1:40:58
through artificial selection. We have Farmers, not exactly
1:41:03
knowing what they were doing, but they were practicing
1:41:05
Evolution. They were practicing artificial
1:41:07
selection were selecting this wild cabbage for different
1:41:10
traits and now what do we have? We have kale, we have Kohlrabi,
1:41:14
we have broccoli, we have cauliflower, these are all the
1:41:17
same thing, it's all wild cabbage within 10,000 years,
1:41:21
we've taken one plant and we've morphed it into many.
1:41:24
Okay, brussels sprouts are on there, too.
1:41:26
I don't know why I said that and then, yeah.
1:41:31
Yeah, and then like you Americans like brussels sprouts.
1:41:33
I just saw this idea. Is that something that's big in
1:41:35
the States? Because I can tell you here it's
1:41:36
kind of a it's a joke. It's like 50 really do?
1:41:39
Yeah. It's like Marmite people.
1:41:40
Love them or hate them. Most people actually popular.
1:41:44
Yeah. Like people do bacon and
1:41:46
Brussels sprouts. It's like such a big.
1:41:47
Common combination interested. Okay.
1:41:51
Oh yeah. And so I'm a big food guy so I'm
1:41:53
just like okay yeah this is a man.
1:41:57
I'm yeah, I would class mice. Classify myself as a foodie.
1:42:01
But yeah, so we're talking about Evolution and so, like the
1:42:06
sorry, the brass couple Erica being transformed into all those
1:42:09
different things now, I guess, what we try to walk people
1:42:12
towards in the book, is redefining what the force of
1:42:15
evolution is because we can think about it in this abstract
1:42:18
way, like, okay, evolution is really it's, you know, Darwin
1:42:22
worked out the mechanism of evolution and like 1859.
1:42:26
And that's what I think. People think about a lot.
1:42:28
It's like, oh, there's selection pressure and there's Elect their
1:42:31
sexual selection and this is what evolution is.
1:42:34
But the one of the lines we open within the book is a quote from
1:42:38
Sir Julian Huxley, which goes like this Evolution has become
1:42:42
conscious of itself. Love that quote.
1:42:49
Now he didn't mean it in the way that I'm about to say it, but
1:42:53
we, if you read this book, you you get to the idea.
1:42:56
There's more Revelations than this, but it's not that
1:42:58
evolution is some abstract weird thing that started on this
1:43:01
planet. At least three and a half
1:43:02
billion years ago. We are Evolution incarnate like
1:43:07
we are Evolution. I'm talking to another point of
1:43:10
evolution if the the archetypal image of evolution is a tree.
1:43:14
So a tree kind of like a hand is spreading out its luck in five.
1:43:19
What's called these five branches, right?
1:43:20
Five different directions, many different directions.
1:43:22
It's spreading out. What does it mean to be alive?
1:43:25
And so over here, it expresses itself as a monkey.
1:43:28
Over here, it's Express itself. As a human over here, it's
1:43:31
expressing itself as a banana over here, it's expressing
1:43:33
itself as a cave swiftlets it, you know, like, but it's all
1:43:40
coming back to the same tree because everything is all
1:43:42
connected. So yeah, you said evolution is
1:43:47
something that's always happening.
1:43:49
Yeah. Now, that's great because, like
1:43:51
a lot of people think that evolution is something that
1:43:53
started here on this planet, but when you think about what
1:43:56
cosmology, like, the big bang cosmology says, it isn't a
1:43:59
description of how the universe began.
1:44:01
It's a description of how the universe evolved.
1:44:04
So the Big Bang is, you know, like are you really super super
1:44:09
familiar with this should be going to this or what do you
1:44:10
think he's going to it? Okay, cool.
1:44:14
So for anyone like who's curious about what the big bang was like
1:44:17
in 1929 Edwin Hubble's? Is this telescope up to the sky
1:44:20
sees? Not only that there's a bunch of
1:44:22
stars but that every point of light are these are galaxies and
1:44:26
they're moving away from one another back.
1:44:28
Then we used to think the universe was static and fixed,
1:44:30
but he's the one who discovered know these galaxies are moving
1:44:33
away from one another implying that the universe is getting
1:44:36
larger and larger, it's expanding rapidly, right?
1:44:39
It's even speeding up and its expansion.
1:44:41
So you rewind the tape back and everything.
1:44:44
Converges to one simple singular Point.
1:44:47
Thirteen point eight, two billion years ago.
1:44:49
They call that the singularity. So from complexity, we rewind
1:44:52
the tape, it all comes back to Unity, which is the singularity,
1:44:56
right? So, you know, and then they get
1:44:59
super, super descriptive about their their time stamps of,
1:45:02
like, when the force of gravity first reeled away from the
1:45:05
uniform, the grand unified Force etcetera, but like the point is,
1:45:08
is evolution started. Then it started the second, the
1:45:11
Big Bang banged and it's been evolving and getting more
1:45:15
complex, and more complex and more complex.
1:45:18
So, the way, how does the, Produce complexity will, of
1:45:21
course what it does is, you know, when the universe first
1:45:25
bangs right there was just hydrogen helium and Trace
1:45:28
Amounts of lithium. And then these over the course
1:45:31
of hundreds of millions of years, the hydrogen gets pulled
1:45:34
together by the force of gravity.
1:45:36
They get clumped together. So, so compacted that these
1:45:41
atoms of hydrogen start to, you know, bump into each other
1:45:45
creating friction and heat, they eventually hit 10 million
1:45:47
degrees Fahrenheit. Their Tan start to fuse, and
1:45:50
they create the second element in the periodic table, which is
1:45:52
helium. So hydrogen converts into
1:45:55
helium, right? So, and that's and it releases a
1:45:58
tremendous amount of energy. That's how our sun is powered.
1:46:01
It's a nuclear furnace. Its nuclear fusion is what's
1:46:04
happening inside of a star and that's how we get all of our
1:46:08
elements. Every element that exists
1:46:10
everywhere right now was once made inside of a star.
1:46:13
So, you know Stars, they convert hydrogen into helium, the
1:46:18
convert helium into more complex elements and then during
1:46:21
supernovas that's when they explode into really complex
1:46:24
elements like gold platinum and let I'm sorry, Silver Platinum,
1:46:27
and gold. And so this idea is just that
1:46:31
like, you know, you if you take this in its entirety, you see
1:46:36
that the universe is information, this information
1:46:39
has been steadily, getting complex more complex as time has
1:46:42
gone on. And through the process of
1:46:45
Stellar factories, you know, seller, I'm sorry, the process
1:46:49
of stars, we get more complexity, more chemically, a
1:46:53
more chemically diverse Universe through stars, and then
1:46:57
eventually on our planet, all these molecules and everything
1:47:02
linked up in such a way that an organic replicator is born.
1:47:06
I mean, but, but the idea is that, like, you are the universe
1:47:09
and the universe is you, you are Evolution and evolution is you.
1:47:14
The Quick Pitch. I remember my dad once said to
1:47:17
me, the Consciousness is we are experiencing consciousness.
1:47:27
That we are a combined Consciousness expressed in the
1:47:30
inventory individualized way. So we are all connected, but
1:47:36
we're experiencing life individualized context and he
1:47:40
said that he expanded on this move more.
1:47:42
Recently, with me said that, every time I see a person, I see
1:47:46
a part of myself as I would, you mean things like?
1:47:49
Well, if I see someone, I dislike, what I really see is a
1:47:53
reflection of myself. What?
1:47:57
But what he meant is that, like, we're all were all connected.
1:48:01
Even if we don't want to admit it, this is why it's so
1:48:04
important to be like nice to people and kind to every human
1:48:07
being. And Grant, everyone, everyone,
1:48:09
the exact same courtesy, it's hard.
1:48:12
He said than done, but that's why, because we're all
1:48:14
connected. We are all one and the same.
1:48:17
Your dad's hunting a brilliant man.
1:48:19
Did yes. Hey Ginger.
1:48:22
Huh. He's he's he's Ginger.
1:48:24
I always have relentlessly mock him for that but yet it's about
1:48:27
it. I never saw but you know I'm
1:48:30
sorry Dad, he said it on me, no, but This this Concepts you know,
1:48:37
that we are all connected. We are the one with the
1:48:40
universe. Like I agree wholeheartedly like
1:48:42
I don't know where I really sit on the idea of like God or a
1:48:47
Creator or any of that stuff. And basically just like I'm open
1:48:53
to all possibilities as feel that way, but when it comes to
1:48:58
science and understanding life and everything, we do reach a
1:49:04
point where it begins to become more spiritual for us
1:49:08
philosophical. For example, the question I was
1:49:11
originally going to ask you is, what do you think, caused the
1:49:13
Big Bang? Or was it a Creator?
1:49:16
Was it just an anomaly like to understand that we are.
1:49:22
Emanating from just a, as you put it, a singularity and point
1:49:26
in the universe where there was nothing, just this one point and
1:49:30
then suddenly there was everything.
1:49:32
But what caused that nothingness in everything?
1:49:34
How can nothingness be a thing? How can that exist?
1:49:37
What does that mean? This is why I love just asking
1:49:41
questions because you're not, you'll never get the answers,
1:49:43
but at the same time, S passionately, is it not to
1:49:48
answer, ask those questions. It is so you know, the Buddhist
1:49:54
concept of reality and they're very reluctant to give a
1:49:58
conceptualized version of reality because they don't think
1:50:00
that reality is something that can be pinned down because
1:50:03
reality is maybe it's a process not a thing, right?
1:50:06
Can't be pinned down. And so there's this Buddhist
1:50:10
philosopher named nagarjuna who had this idea called shunyata
1:50:13
which is the void as nothingness and so, You know, a lot of
1:50:16
people think about nothingness and they're like, oh well
1:50:19
nothing, this is nothing but it isn't.
1:50:21
So, you know, I guess the easiest way to describe the
1:50:24
nothingness is to eternal Forces and then there's like a line
1:50:28
down the middle like, you know, diagonal line, going down the
1:50:31
middle and that's nothingness. So you have like everything this
1:50:36
on one side and nothingness on the other.
1:50:37
And so nothingness is really like you could conceptualize it
1:50:41
in that form. But if you look at what it
1:50:44
really is the interaction between Thing, that's
1:50:46
nothingness is a thing too. And so it's what you would think
1:50:51
is nothingness. Actually produces a well of
1:50:53
creativity because between everythingness and nothingness,
1:50:57
there's this interaction, which is everything and that's life.
1:51:00
We live in the interaction between everythingness and
1:51:03
nothingness. So you could say, Consciousness
1:51:05
is what mediates between Chaos and Order Consciousness is what
1:51:09
mediates between perceiver and perceived.
1:51:13
But yeah. That's something to think about.
1:51:18
Yeah, it's true because it brings me questions as well.
1:51:24
Like, for example, what's the point?
1:51:29
Existence anything? Yeah.
1:51:31
Which I know this cliche, but bear with me.
1:51:34
What I mean is right now. We're sitting asking each other
1:51:38
questions theorizing about something.
1:51:40
We'll never truly understand, but we spend our lives
1:51:43
fascinated because that's the type of people, we are.
1:51:45
We're just fascinated. We're interested in these
1:51:47
things. We want to keep exploring this
1:51:49
because maybe it gives us a better understanding of
1:51:51
ourselves of the universe. Everything we're interacting
1:51:54
with it's just fascinating but there's also a lot of people
1:51:57
that don't care. Live their life and have a very
1:52:02
straightforward life and maybe we'll never ask these questions.
1:52:06
Now, again, that's fine. There's like I have zero
1:52:09
judgment on that and I'm not judgmental person.
1:52:12
But like I do, look at that fascinated because I might, huh,
1:52:16
is that? Because they've accepted a
1:52:18
certain way of life is that? Because they're not interested,
1:52:20
is that? Because they don't see the point
1:52:23
when someone gets to a point where they may be,
1:52:25
unfortunately, take their life sometimes, I've heard that
1:52:28
people take their lives because they truly just don't see the
1:52:31
point not because of a individualized perspective of
1:52:34
like, there's no point in my life, they mean in life in
1:52:37
general. And this, this kind of blows my
1:52:41
mind this idea that. Well, yeah, like, what is the
1:52:44
point of life? What is the point of continuing
1:52:46
to go continuing to try to, what end to what is the point?
1:52:55
Hmm. Well, I mean, if you're asking
1:52:58
what the meaning of life, is that a?
1:52:59
Dare I can give an answer for that.
1:53:03
Oh, yeah, yeah, here we go, guys.
1:53:06
The meaning of Life by Jay Nelson.
1:53:08
Let's go. All right, so that that question
1:53:12
says, what's the meaning of life and still look, like, the
1:53:14
operative word is meaning. So, let's take that apart.
1:53:17
In order for something to mean. Something, right there has to be
1:53:20
at least two things in existence, right?
1:53:22
Something has to mean something, to something else.
1:53:24
So you have to have At least two things.
1:53:26
So before you can make meaning, before meaning even exists,
1:53:30
there has to be some sort of relationship or interaction.
1:53:33
So relationship proceeds, meaning, you can't have meaning
1:53:38
without relationship. So when you're talking about,
1:53:40
what's the meaning of life, really?
1:53:42
There's like a nested Sub sub questions inside that.
1:53:46
And one of them is, you know, like what comes before meaning
1:53:50
and you know, experience comes before meeting, you need
1:53:54
experience before you I make meaning, but before you can have
1:53:57
experience, you need to have relationship like an organism
1:54:00
and its environment. That's the most fundamental
1:54:02
relationship I can think of, right.
1:54:04
And so what this gets to is that we're all born into some sort of
1:54:08
relationship with our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors,
1:54:13
the future. Like I just had a son 8 months
1:54:15
ago and got questions. Thank you.
1:54:18
And so but like it just it points out the fact that like
1:54:22
he's born into something that he can never get out of.
1:54:25
He's born into a relationship. Same as me.
1:54:28
Same as you were all born into some sort of relationship that
1:54:31
we can't get out of. And even if you don't care about
1:54:33
the future, you're still in relationship to the Future.
1:54:36
And all the decisions I make on this planet will have effects on
1:54:40
what this planet is going to look like for his generation and
1:54:42
his, and his son's generation. So like When you ask the
1:54:46
question, what's the meaning of life?
1:54:48
It seems to me that we're really here to figure out the best way
1:54:53
of operating in this world. The best way of managing
1:54:56
building growing destroying relationships, like because
1:54:59
inevitably, that's what's going to happen, we're going to
1:55:01
mistreat ourselves, we're going to mistreat someone else and
1:55:04
we're going to mistreat the planet.
1:55:05
Like these things are Givens, but with each interaction or
1:55:09
iterated game or day, we figure out better ways of acting in the
1:55:14
world and you and me right now. We're Sharing knowledge and
1:55:16
experience, we're trying to one-up you know, like not like
1:55:19
I'm trying to one-up you but like we're trying to both level
1:55:22
up and by sharing experiences, we figure out how to relate to
1:55:26
ourselves and the world and a better way.
1:55:29
It's true. Like I do this show because if
1:55:31
nothing else, I always learn something from my guests.
1:55:35
And I understand more about what it means to be alive from
1:55:39
various different angles and approaches and stuff.
1:55:43
I mean, this show has featured Business owners actors,
1:55:47
musicians, content, creators live streamers film.
1:55:53
Producers, you know, spiritual people?
1:55:58
Psychics. Well, doctors, professors is
1:56:02
literally had everyone and the one thread that connects them
1:56:07
all. Is that they're all.
1:56:13
Understanding life in a particular way approaching life
1:56:16
in a particular way. But they're still trying to
1:56:20
chase life and understand life in certain a certain specific
1:56:25
manner. I just find that amazing, you
1:56:29
know, they're me and you sitting in the opposite sides of the
1:56:32
world coming from completely different.
1:56:34
Backgrounds can understand each other and connect on certain
1:56:36
levels but also come at it from completely different angles and
1:56:40
they're in learn from each other.
1:56:42
From that experience, blows my mind every single time.
1:56:47
Also, thank you for that. Actually answering the meaning
1:56:50
of life question. I just expected like a quite a
1:56:53
like, you know, fun. Like okay, let's let's break
1:56:56
this down. Have a bit of fun with it
1:56:57
because you gave a pretty awesome answer.
1:57:00
Obviously these questions aren't questions that can never really
1:57:04
be answered, but I feel like it's still fun to try and and,
1:57:09
and that make our own understanding of what it what it
1:57:11
means. Like, my personal opinion is the
1:57:13
meaning of life is to make your own meaning.
1:57:17
To to find your own purpose, your own goals, we spoke earlier
1:57:22
about, you know, being in touch with your feelings, your your
1:57:27
your thoughts and like which order that comes in.
1:57:30
I feel like a lot of existence and being is is understanding
1:57:36
yourself first and foremost and what you're here to do, you
1:57:40
know, for so long. I I grew up thinking oh I need
1:57:43
to get a nine-to-five job and I need to do this.
1:57:46
This and I need to do that and did it at a bit.
1:57:48
And actually my life has been everything I've tried to avoid,
1:57:52
I'm a freelancer. I pursue acting I pursue content
1:57:56
creation. I'm constantly stressing about
1:57:58
trying to find work and it's also really exciting, but it's
1:58:03
also like, who am I going to be next?
1:58:05
What's going to happen next? Clearly, that is a sphere.
1:58:10
I'm supposed to be in and I feel more comfortable in in the
1:58:12
acting sphere. All my friends are very weird
1:58:15
and So am I and it's like it's that's how that's where I feel
1:58:20
most comfortable. And once you begin to accept
1:58:23
that, you begin to accept who you are life, does get better.
1:58:26
It doesn't necessarily always get easier things.
1:58:28
Get tricky, life is always a challenge and there's always
1:58:31
challenges but if you are true to yourself it's like an
1:58:36
epiphany hits you. I'm sure when you started
1:58:38
actually pursuing this book properly because you mentioned
1:58:42
in that that you were pursuing various different things, you
1:58:46
had this Profound experience and you will like this is a book.
1:58:49
This is something I need to write.
1:58:50
This is something I need to get out there.
1:58:51
This idea is something I need to put into the world and then I
1:58:56
imagine when you started pursuing that thing maybe I'm
1:59:00
just theorizing here but the doors started opening up a lot
1:59:06
more that you start working on it and suddenly things start
1:59:09
making a lot more sense than they did before.
1:59:12
You know, maybe not everything that runs smoothly all the time
1:59:16
but There are some constants. My life right now is all over
1:59:19
the place, but there are constants like this show is
1:59:23
always a constant feature in my life that continues to educate.
1:59:26
Me continues to feel like it's going somewhere.
1:59:30
I don't know where it's going. I'm just along for the ride but
1:59:34
it blows my mind. I can see the progress over
1:59:37
time. I remember when I first started,
1:59:39
I can barely hold a conversation and now I'm talking to amazing
1:59:45
people such as yourself about things that I am largely
1:59:48
ignorant of, but it come on, man.
1:59:50
It's amazing to be able to get to talk to such a varied variety
1:59:54
of people and learn from said, people and apply that to my
1:59:59
life. And hopefully my viewers and
2:00:00
listeners get that to and I mean just in general the pursuit of
2:00:05
knowledge and wisdom and understanding it's like there
2:00:11
was a quote, I read recently that said like There's two types
2:00:16
of fools. There's the ignorant fool, who
2:00:20
thinks they understand everything and there is the
2:00:24
aware full. I'm paraphrasing.
2:00:26
Who understands that he is a fool.
2:00:30
But still Pursuits the understanding of knowledge and
2:00:33
everything and that's where I feel.
2:00:35
I'm at like I understand that I will never know everything and
2:00:38
that it's amazing for me as well to be like in one scenario II
2:00:43
can offer advice, I offer wisdom, I can you know, provide
2:00:48
insight and then this conversation right now, I'm
2:00:51
ignorant. I know nothing about these
2:00:53
things. I have basic understandings, but
2:00:55
that's nothing. You're a person who studied this
2:00:57
research, this written a book about this.
2:00:59
Is able to offer like all these different insights.
2:01:01
And so I see it as a spectator and it's that's amazing to fit
2:01:05
to be able to do that and to take those different roles in
2:01:07
your life, you know, like for instance, you mentioned being a
2:01:10
father, that is a new experience for you and suddenly what I know
2:01:16
very little about being a father, I know what Society
2:01:18
tells me if I was should be, but I'm understanding this
2:01:21
relationship and making my own understanding of what it is to
2:01:24
be a father and what I will be as a father and so on and it's
2:01:27
like that's a whole other. Other journey and there's all
2:01:30
these little mini Journeys throughout life that we where we
2:01:34
discover things about ourselves and we apply knowledge that
2:01:38
we've learned over the years, but then we put our own
2:01:40
understanding over it as well. It's just incredible.
2:01:45
There really is. Yeah, I could talk to you all
2:01:48
day but I'm conscious of the time it's been over two hours so
2:01:53
I'm going to ask you a couple. Yeah, I know I know I'd love to
2:01:57
I definitely would love to have you back on the show again in
2:01:59
the a future, if you'd be willing because it's just been
2:02:01
an absolutely fascinating Journey, that's awesome.
2:02:05
You brilliant. I'm glad but I ask every guest
2:02:08
this and I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
2:02:11
What's the best advice you've ever received?
2:02:16
Yeah. Okay.
2:02:18
I worked with the Buddhist monk. Once I was struggling with like,
2:02:24
an eating disorder, binge eating stress-eating.
2:02:27
And anyway, you know, like, all these problems kept manifesting
2:02:31
in my life and Western doctors were not really able to help.
2:02:34
And anyway, this kind of like a Healer I worked with who
2:02:38
happened to be a Buddhist monk. At one point told me but quote,
2:02:42
I'll never forget. He said there are two paths in
2:02:44
this life. There's the Path of pain and
2:02:47
there's the path of suffering. You could choose any path you
2:02:51
want but your body is telling you something.
2:02:54
And what are you doing? You're not listening Jay, you're
2:02:56
not listening to what your body's telling you.
2:02:58
So you have extended pain ahead of you, we call that suffering
2:03:02
and that's the that's the path you've laid out for yourself.
2:03:05
Now, if you want to heal and figure out why you come home and
2:03:08
decide to eat three meals back-to-back, like I can't tell
2:03:11
you that information. You're going to figure that out
2:03:12
for yourself, but like, that's what we're trying to get to.
2:03:16
Like, why do you feel the need to have to do this and like, you
2:03:19
know, because you can listen and have an easier life.
2:03:23
What were you can suffer? And go the route.
2:03:25
You're going. It's an eternal situation and
2:03:29
I've never stopped thinking about that one.
2:03:33
There's something interesting in the answer that you gave back,
2:03:37
which I can relate to. As you begin to tell the story.
2:03:43
Is that you were reliving it for a second because it's obviously
2:03:46
a painful memory for yourself. I had something at the beginning
2:03:49
of this year, which is why I decided to quit drinking.
2:03:56
And that's it was a combination culmination of events leading up
2:04:00
to that point. And I'm happy that it happened,
2:04:04
but every time I'm asked to relive it and like, talk about
2:04:08
it, like there's a disconnection in a sense that I am six months
2:04:12
removed from this and I'm going to positive space, mentally,
2:04:15
physically, everything. But it's still like a pack, like
2:04:20
a sense of pain. They're always, no matter how
2:04:23
far it could be, like, six months, six years, 60 years.
2:04:28
There's always like a connection with that and sometimes I wonder
2:04:32
if that drink. No, no, so they are basically.
2:04:36
I'll quickly explain. So I quit drinking most it
2:04:40
mostly to be honest, just for health reasons.
2:04:42
I wasn't having as much fun with it, just be like I'd have one or
2:04:46
two and I'd feel Feel like dehydrated the next day and it's
2:04:49
a horse but yeah, this is not fun.
2:04:53
But actually what it was is sort of broke down and What happened
2:04:59
happened? I lost my job.
2:05:01
I it was, it was, it was bad. And it was a long time coming
2:05:06
because I wasn't taking care of myself.
2:05:08
Like, I was doing things like going to the gym working.
2:05:12
Also doing everything I'm pursuing in my life, but it was
2:05:15
too much. Obviously, when your body is out
2:05:17
of balance, you know, you mentioned having an eating
2:05:19
disorder. It's like your body is out of
2:05:20
balance and therefore everything in your life is out of balance.
2:05:24
You know, and you can't be you, the best version of you until
2:05:26
everything is in Balance. Again you know and a lot of that
2:05:30
comes down to choice and the choice is you decide to make.
2:05:33
So for me choosing to stop drinking was not because I was
2:05:37
an alcoholic or because I had a problem.
2:05:41
It was A decision. That was a long time coming but
2:05:46
it was also like this is profound for me because it's
2:05:49
something I can build off upon. I can build on top of this back.
2:05:54
Hey, of course, I miss it. I miss the social element of it,
2:05:56
but I've since been out and drank 0% alcohol and it's the
2:06:01
same thing, it doesn't, it feels the same.
2:06:04
I'm still doing the same activities, I just don't have
2:06:06
the alcohol. I don't have the initial feeling
2:06:08
that I used to have, but I don't particularly miss it either.
2:06:13
No, but when I have to recount that, that moment that moment of
2:06:17
pain that my what I call like a luck, a particular low point.
2:06:22
I'm like, okay, that happened that's in the past.
2:06:25
I've moved forward from that point, but yet the reliving of
2:06:29
it still is still a contingent feeling.
2:06:32
Well, I get anything in your life.
2:06:33
You think about bad time. That's happened in your life.
2:06:35
Like, it's I suppose it's your memory keeps a record of that
2:06:43
and it's always difficult to revisit.
2:06:45
But at the same time, I think it's important that it still
2:06:48
makes you feel that way, because it's like, well, that's where I
2:06:52
was. And this is where I am.
2:06:55
And you remember that journey. And you remember how you got
2:06:58
here? And you don't ever take it for
2:06:59
granted and that's quite powerful.
2:07:02
I feel in many ways. Yeah.
2:07:06
And it, it also kind of speaks to like the point of like, you
2:07:09
know, we feel a certain way about our lives and we think
2:07:12
about our lives in a different way and these two minds can be
2:07:16
on different pages. And this is the nub of
2:07:19
Psychopathology, you know, like people.
2:07:21
Like let's say they feel what they did, and I ran in the Iraq
2:07:24
War. Fucked up and then yeah it
2:07:26
happened. But then they are thinking mind
2:07:29
says well the commander said it was okay.
2:07:31
My job said, it's okay. I get paid by the government
2:07:33
Ides legal. Like I, yeah, I killed someone
2:07:36
but I had to it was did it for my country?
2:07:38
You can put all the thought lists.
2:07:40
You want on this side, you're feeling mind says you destroyed
2:07:43
another human life and that was not right with me.
2:07:46
So like, they're not on the same page and that's the benefit of
2:07:49
therapies. Connecting thoughts to feelings.
2:07:52
You know. And like you, like I'm out of
2:07:54
control and I'm I have some sort of addiction, it's like, why is
2:07:57
that? Why is that happening?
2:07:59
Well, you should be, I mean, it could be like, for example,
2:08:02
like, why was I eating three meals back-to-back, when I would
2:08:05
come home from work? Well, I hated my job and it was
2:08:08
like, I'm eating because it's something I can control.
2:08:10
I can't control that I have to work this shitty job, but I can
2:08:12
control that I'm going to eat all this food.
2:08:15
It's about control, and that's why isn't it?
2:08:19
I'll go on now. Go on, please.
2:08:21
I was going to say you know it's about control, right?
2:08:25
And then I think the grandest revelation of like a psychedelic
2:08:28
Journey or we were talking about earlier about Transcendence or
2:08:31
mystical type experiences is getting your identity like
2:08:34
understanding who you really are, your dad sounds like he
2:08:37
understands who he is in the sense that if he said to you and
2:08:41
I heard you said another pod earlier.
2:08:43
Yeah, it's such a great line, man.
2:08:45
I see myself in everyone now that is like a Buddhist
2:08:49
perspective but it's just a true perspective.
2:08:51
And why is it true? I mean, you may know this, but
2:08:54
like in the United Nations if you walk into the United Nations
2:08:58
building in New York City, there's a poster hanging on
2:09:00
permanent display which shows the same ethic of reciprocity,
2:09:05
the same, you know, do unto others as you would do unto
2:09:09
yourself. Like, yeah, the same, Golden
2:09:12
Rule rendered in all 13 of the major religions.
2:09:17
That's interesting that we all say the exact same line but in a
2:09:21
different way of treat everybody like it was yourself.
2:09:26
Now, what is that speak to you could argue that it speaks to
2:09:29
some sort of metaphysical reality that we truly are all
2:09:33
one and that is what a Transcendent or mystical type
2:09:36
experience is it's making that realization and so that it's not
2:09:41
just an intellectual thought of like wow that's an interesting
2:09:43
way to act in the world. No you feel it in every cell of
2:09:46
your body. That's why Josh.
2:09:48
And I would be like very like we're active proponents of
2:09:52
psychedelic plant medicine because they can give you
2:09:55
reliably. Give you this experience that
2:09:57
you might not normally get and unless you did spend 10 years
2:10:01
meditating or something like that and then you'd be lucky if
2:10:04
you got it. But yeah.
2:10:07
It's interesting about that quote as well.
2:10:09
Is that like Whenever I used to hear that I made it used to
2:10:15
think. As I imagine many of us do, oh,
2:10:18
that's that's to do with me, you know.
2:10:20
Like I need to treat people as I would want to be treated as in,
2:10:25
you know. Like, I'd love to be treated
2:10:27
nicely. So, you know, I should obviously
2:10:29
treat other people nicely. But then, as you mentioned there
2:10:33
it's so much more profound than that.
2:10:35
If you start to look at it from the grader.
2:10:39
Perspective of, We Are All One and suddenly, it's like, ah, I
2:10:45
can't hurt you. I'm hurting myself.
2:10:48
This is why, for instance, when when I talk about things like
2:10:54
forgiveness, I like I don't I don't carry resentment towards
2:10:57
people, I don't carry it with me because I know it destroys you
2:11:02
You know, ultimately I forgive people because everyone has
2:11:05
different reasons for things and we are different people in
2:11:07
different moments. People can hold grudges towards
2:11:10
you, you know. I know I'm sure I have people.
2:11:12
I know I have people that hold grudges against me for mistakes
2:11:15
I made in the past but it's like I'm not that person.
2:11:20
I am not I choose to be more than mistakes.
2:11:25
I choose to be a sum of all the experiences in my life.
2:11:28
Good and bad. And ultimately, I choose to be
2:11:31
the best I can be. And that's good enough.
2:11:37
That's always good enough. So long as I'm always trying to
2:11:39
be better and learn from mistakes and grow.
2:11:43
It's only bad when a person just who decides to sit and not do
2:11:46
anything about what they're dealing with, when, when you
2:11:53
stand you, and that's a big It takes a lot of, like, I know,
2:11:57
I'm kind of just saying I call you just choose to do it.
2:11:59
Like I understand it's harder than that.
2:12:01
Like I said, this to a friend of mine recently at the gym like I
2:12:05
go there. Not to look good.
2:12:08
Mmm, I go there because How it makes me feel.
2:12:14
I go there because it reminds me that while I might not have
2:12:19
everything in control in my life, this is one thing I can
2:12:22
control and it's so liberating feeling to be able to control
2:12:26
that, and it made me feel good and it teaches you.
2:12:30
So my God guys, go hit the gym workout, do whatever you need to
2:12:34
do. It will teach you so many life,
2:12:36
lessons, and reinforces so many positive.
2:12:39
Thoughts in your mind and like being able to be in that
2:12:43
positive mindset will in turn mean that you're able to make
2:12:47
better decisions in your life because of said, fact driven by
2:12:51
emotions. If you're just driven by
2:12:54
motivation and pushing yourself, like I'm sure you got the best
2:12:58
of yourself through making this book and what you're going to do
2:13:01
off the back of that in the future, you know, it's like you
2:13:03
realize, wow, I can do this. I've done this, imagine what
2:13:06
else I could do. Yep, and the journey just
2:13:09
continues. Yeah, you know, the Buddha ones,
2:13:14
like, in the world to an Ever burning fire, a constant
2:13:18
becoming, right? And so, you think about that,
2:13:22
and you think about what I was trying to gift?
2:13:24
Like the perspective of like we are Evolution.
2:13:27
So if being is forever, a becoming and you are becoming
2:13:32
like, you are being something, you are, you're on a path,
2:13:36
you're on a journey, you're on some sort of heroes adventure to
2:13:39
do something. You're clearly on some sort of
2:13:41
Adventure to do. Some people aren't on that path
2:13:43
right now. Right.
2:13:44
How do they feel? They don't feel like they've
2:13:46
connected to something larger. They feel like they've ice.
2:13:48
They're isolated, they feel alienated.
2:13:50
They feel cut off and well as cut them off the ego, the ego,
2:13:56
which is a part of your brain. It isn't you.
2:13:58
It's just a part of your brain is just a part of you that says,
2:14:00
no, I'm not that person. No, I'd never do that.
2:14:03
I'd never say that they deserve that.
2:14:06
I'm going to punish them subconsciously for that.
2:14:10
These are questions, you discover in some meditation
2:14:14
sessions, you watch your mind, a long enough, you like I have a
2:14:16
preoccupation with punishing people with making them know
2:14:19
that they fucked up and who, and who they messed.
2:14:22
I'm sorry, I keep swearing, I placed it.
2:14:25
But like, I mean yeah, I'm just being honest.
2:14:27
Like I'll notice like, you know somebody wrongs me and like you
2:14:30
know, like they know, I noticed their phone call and then it's
2:14:34
like then you notice that you didn't answer.
2:14:36
It's like huh, why am I being like, why am I judging Why am I
2:14:40
holding on to this pain? I should just answer this phone
2:14:43
call, but it's this meditation and awareness that allows you to
2:14:47
like look at your actions and look at your thoughts and
2:14:50
realize, okay? Something's going on here you
2:14:52
like you don't have to like identify with it but like
2:14:55
there's anger here, there's jealousy here.
2:14:56
There's there's not compassion. Why isn't there compassion?
2:14:59
Why can't I see myself in this person?
2:15:01
That's a good meditation to think about and something.
2:15:05
I think your dad would be like you know, like that's the
2:15:07
antithesis of judgment. Why can't I see myself?
2:15:10
Person. Because then you connect to them
2:15:12
and you can be compassionate and see, you're a reflection of me.
2:15:16
I'm a reflection of you and we're trying our best and I'm
2:15:19
not perfect. Holy shit.
2:15:22
None of us saw man. But you know, it's like I
2:15:23
remember when I went through all of that and I called my dad and
2:15:28
the first thing he said to me was don't be so hard on
2:15:30
yourself. Ah, yeah.
2:15:34
And that's the reality. Don't be so hard on yourself.
2:15:36
It's okay to make mistakes. Like I know that right now in
2:15:39
society. See it's very much like your
2:15:42
comment. Mistakes your beholding to what
2:15:44
happened like 20 years ago and it's like listen you can't be
2:15:50
born. Perfect Perfection does not
2:15:52
exist. Anyway, if you make mistakes, it
2:15:57
is your responsibility to learn and grow for those and to not
2:16:00
repeat them twice. If you repeat them, you have not
2:16:03
learnt from the mistake but you're allowed to fuck up.
2:16:07
You're allowed to make mistakes, but you have to be accountable
2:16:11
for them. You can't pretend that they
2:16:13
didn't happen. You can't blame other people.
2:16:17
Vita, the blame yourself either. You just make a note of this
2:16:21
like, okay, this happened. And this is how I reacted to
2:16:24
this, therefore, I choose not to react to this in the manner that
2:16:29
I did previously. And I choose to be better than
2:16:32
this. And I choose to move forward
2:16:33
from this in a positive way, and be better than I am that.
2:16:39
I know I can be, you have to, like, talk positively to
2:16:43
yourself and tell yourself these things.
2:16:45
And it's like, I think it's hard to do that.
2:16:47
I know it's hard to do that. I punish myself for a long time
2:16:51
about things I've done in the past and it's like, where does
2:16:54
that really get you an equally when someone is annoyed at you
2:16:58
and they get angry at you and they take a revenge on you that
2:17:02
I had it recently A friend of mine.
2:17:05
I won't give away the scenario, something happened major in
2:17:09
their life, and they would considering taking revenge on
2:17:12
someone and I said, this isn't you Hmm, and I could see like
2:17:17
the, you know, the cogs turning and their head and they were
2:17:20
like and I was convincing them, not to do this thing, but I was
2:17:24
exploring the reasons why not to do this and how they might get
2:17:29
some initial satisfaction. But ultimately when they look
2:17:34
back at the event, they would realize.
2:17:37
This was beneath them. Yeah.
2:17:39
And it wasn't the best reflection of them and this
2:17:42
other person's Behavior was Despicable and everything.
2:17:46
That's them. That's their Journey.
2:17:48
When people wrong us, it's very easy to to want to get some sort
2:17:54
of redemption to not Redemption us, the wrong way to get some
2:17:57
Vengeance that, you know, but that that won't give us
2:18:00
anything. And it's got nothing to do with,
2:18:02
like, turn the other cheek or whatever it's like, no, it just
2:18:06
won't give us anything. It won't make us feel any
2:18:08
better. If anything, it makes us feel
2:18:10
worse, it makes us for empty because we expected to feel
2:18:13
better and we don't because we've ever brought ourselves to
2:18:18
the level of that said person, or we've just punished the world
2:18:23
expecting Bliss and instead you know, we get what, we put out
2:18:28
into the world, he punished the world, you'll be punished back,
2:18:32
you put positivity into the world, you will get it back.
2:18:34
You might not get it straight away.
2:18:35
And I know it's frustrating and a little people listening to,
2:18:38
this will be like War. Where is it?
2:18:39
Where is it? Why is it not happening?
2:18:42
If you haven't got it yet, more work, needs to be done.
2:18:48
A few final questions for you. What's the biggest what's the
2:18:51
biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
2:19:00
I think it would just have to be the profundity of everything's
2:19:05
related. Everything's connected.
2:19:08
And so, you know, like I guess it went into the meaning of life
2:19:11
thing. Just the idea that you can't
2:19:13
have up without down, North without south top without my
2:19:17
said down, you can't have black without white self without other
2:19:21
organism without environment. And so, when you see things in
2:19:25
eastern philosophy and Eastern philosophical context that can't
2:19:29
exist. Without another like positive
2:19:31
and negative can't no electricity without positive and
2:19:33
negative. So really you know positive like
2:19:36
they sound like separate things but they're connected positivity
2:19:40
and negativity. So like when you realize that,
2:19:43
you know, Yen goes with Yang all this like then you realize like
2:19:47
you can't have 100 good days in a row just not gonna happen.
2:19:51
Like you have to have the rainy days to appreciate the sunny
2:19:56
days you have to have the sweet to appreciate the sour to
2:19:58
appreciate the sweet. So everything works in a
2:20:01
relationship and when you understand that, then you
2:20:03
realize what life really is. Like, you know, it's just, it's
2:20:06
a wheel, it turns and turns you don't really go anywhere.
2:20:09
And that's the lesson of Nirvana as let go you, because we have
2:20:13
experiences, we are Eternal. You know, we are, I think you
2:20:16
talked about this in a different Episode right?
2:20:20
You're talking about like that. We are energy and that energy
2:20:23
cannot be created nor destroyed. We are energetic beings.
2:20:27
But if, if what we truly are is energy, then that is what is
2:20:31
eternal. Are you going to have the same
2:20:32
memories that you have in your next Incarnation?
2:20:36
Well, probably not but you know like the point being is that
2:20:40
like energy is recycled and it just goes round and round.
2:20:45
And so you know like what do you want to become?
2:20:48
That's that's the real. Idea because like this is an
2:20:50
infinite playground, we're playing with finite organisms
2:20:54
right now, but ultimately, we are infinite and that's what you
2:20:58
can connect to. That's what you do, connect to,
2:21:00
when you're connect to something larger, it's that, which cannot
2:21:03
be named or pinned down or talked about adequately.
2:21:06
You can't, you can't hang a name on it, like God or Allah or
2:21:09
whatever because it's infinite, it can't be conceptualized or
2:21:14
put in a box because that would be to Define it which you can't
2:21:17
do. So we just called the infinite
2:21:18
thing. And just realizing that you're
2:21:20
that. So that going like, sorry this
2:21:23
is long, but it's the idea that everything is connected,
2:21:26
everything is related and that there is no difference between
2:21:30
me and the Universe. I am the universe in the
2:21:33
universe is me and you could extrapolate this even upwards,
2:21:36
which is like there is no difference between the life
2:21:39
force of the universe. Aka some people might call God
2:21:42
and myself. Like we are all expressions of
2:21:44
the universe expressing itself as that fly, is that tree as you
2:21:48
and me. Like, like like what your dad
2:21:51
said, you know like or actually I'm going to back up to another
2:21:55
quote he said life is Life is experiencing itself.
2:22:06
So do you know versus experiencing itself?
2:22:08
Subjectively that's Bill Hicks lines.
2:22:10
The universe is experiencing itself.
2:22:12
Subjectively that's his line. I love that line and that's what
2:22:16
we are. Bill Hicks men.
2:22:19
Well yeah lost treasure. That guy was.
2:22:22
Wow. How do you know?
2:22:24
Dude, I've gone back and watched or Hicks?
2:22:26
Come on. It's amazing.
2:22:27
Like you Kiddin they're cool because okay, just a quick side
2:22:30
note here like comedy. I've always preferred this more
2:22:35
storytelling version of Comedy, you know, you Dave, Chappelle's
2:22:39
your Bill Hicks, you know, it's that's always been more
2:22:42
entertaining because it's social commentary expressed in a
2:22:46
particular way. Laughter something that is your
2:22:50
phoric fills us. It's relatable, it's fun.
2:22:55
But ultimately it teaches you something.
2:22:56
Do you go back and you watch Bill Hicks, or you?
2:22:59
You look at Dave Chappelle, especially now, they're teaching
2:23:02
you stuff but they're not doing it in an annoying kind of
2:23:06
condescending way. They're just trying to have fun
2:23:09
with things and educate you at the same time and it's just
2:23:14
beautiful man. Thank you.
2:23:15
I mean, Bill Hicks is lessons these days.
2:23:18
Still ring ring true and he's been gone such a long time and
2:23:22
it's just Fascinating particularly love this show
2:23:30
where he was dressed as a cowboy.
2:23:31
I was that's some good shit. Yeah, yeah.
2:23:36
Life is a ride, it's just a game.
2:23:38
That's what he would say and I would agree with it.
2:23:40
That's, that's the lesson of Nirvana.
2:23:42
It's just a ride. You don't have to and and that's
2:23:44
why I like people like Josh and myself would promote the the I
2:23:50
guess the safe use of psychedelic plant medicines
2:23:53
because they can give you that experience.
2:23:54
And then once you get that experience identity, informs how
2:23:58
you pay attention to the world. And so if your identity is
2:24:01
messed up because, you know, you grew up and had some unfortunate
2:24:04
circumstances, and then, you know, like, we all have a
2:24:08
desktop experience a user interface, right?
2:24:11
Well, if you load up your desktop with Bunches of icons,
2:24:13
then it's going to slow down your computer.
2:24:15
And if you do things in a similar way, with your head, if
2:24:17
you don't let go, if you cold onto resentment and never
2:24:20
forgive your holding, all these icons on your user interface of
2:24:24
your brain. And that's not a great way to
2:24:26
live. The best way to live is to be
2:24:28
present with people. But yeah, there's we do things
2:24:33
to a close. Do you have any upcoming
2:24:35
projects? So, final thoughts that you'd
2:24:36
like to share? Yeah, so my wife and I are super
2:24:41
excited. Next in two weeks, less than two
2:24:45
weeks, we Premier our hardcover Edition, our first cover, our
2:24:48
first hardcover edition of our book.
2:24:51
So that's coming out in one week from today.
2:24:53
And then we also Premier our I'm sorry, an escape room themed
2:24:58
around the book. Wow, psychedelic science
2:25:00
convention, 20, Three. Yeah.
2:25:02
Congratulations man. That's huge.
2:25:04
Well done and get them. Yeah.
2:25:06
So my wife's been building it in our garage, for the last, like,
2:25:09
four months. And so we were just about to
2:25:12
debut it at this, the largest psychedelic glad gathering in
2:25:16
history. It's gonna be like, well, over
2:25:18
10,000 people at this event on, they're all like, you know,
2:25:22
psychedelic researchers or in the field practitioners and that
2:25:26
sort of thing. So, we're so stoked to do this
2:25:28
conference best of luck with that.
2:25:31
And also just best of luck for the future.
2:25:33
Thank you so much for being on the show.
2:25:35
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me and
2:25:38
sharing such wisdom and knowledge man.
2:25:40
Like this is good. What you're doing is good.
2:25:43
Thank you, sir. And to all the listeners off the
2:25:45
Christian way. Podcast is, always hope you
2:25:47
enjoyed the episode. Be safe.
2:25:49
Be well. And I'll see you in the next.