Latest / Tracking Wisdom / Beyond Materialism: Science and The Mystery of Existence
Transcript
- 0:00Foreign.
- 0:05Views, interpretations and opinions expressed are not advice nor official positions presented on behalf of any organization or institution.
- 0:13They are for informational and entertainment purposes only.
- 0:16Now join Ryan and Peter for another episode of the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
- 0:23So last session we had discussed talking about a short booklet on.
- 0:29Boy, I can't pronounce that, but Dr.
- 0:31Grant Grenville, Darna something.
- 0:34Dharma Wardena.
- 0:36Yeah, very good.
- 0:37That's right.
- 0:38And this is a Buddhist physician who was making the case for the scientific acceptability or appropriateness of theories around the idea of rebirth.
- 0:50And you've previously mentioned that you're skeptical of rebirth.
- 0:54A generous statement.
- 0:56And I think I do believe in the idea of rebirth.
- 1:00And this paper was interesting as far as laying the three is using scientific method, historically accepted method.
- 1:08So.
- 1:08So let me digress for a moment because I was actually just asked, I think on Friday what I thought happens after death.
- 1:17And so I said, well, I, you know, I kind of subscribe to the Buddhist view that if you are well prepared, then you just kind of rejoin the universal, universal unity.
- 1:29But if you're less well prepared, then you.
- 1:32You go to rebirth.
- 1:33That.
- 1:34That's a whole.
- 1:35And so because there are Buddhists who say, teachers who say rebirth doesn't mean reincarnation.
- 1:41Okay.
- 1:42And there are some teachers who say that Buddhist dharma doesn't actually exclude the soul, which.
- 1:48And I just saw this for the first time, I was like, what?
- 1:51Because as far as I know, the teachings do exclude, like, explicitly exclude this kind of.
- 1:57That's something I want to look into because someone is saying, oh, no, the.
- 2:00The scriptures.
- 2:00I don't say that.
- 2:02Which is curious.
- 2:02But as yourself.
- 2:03Right.
- 2:04So just to say that even within Buddhist circles, what rebirth is, is by no means clear.
- 2:11And I think that we tend to think of it as Westerners as the belief in reincarnation, which is, I think, more foreign probably to Western thought or belief than, you know, these other aspects, kind of psychological aspects of
- 2:27rebirth.
- 2:28That's.
- 2:28Just wanted to make that.
- 2:30Those comments.
- 2:31So by that extension, it would seem to me that the suggestion is that you continue your existence on this plane until you are prepared and ready, in which case that would be your.
- 2:43Your transition would be death.
- 2:45I mean, your death is your transition and your only transition when you're ready.
- 2:49In terms of the question I was asked, it was specifically about death.
- 2:54So I still haven't read enough about that to have a clear idea.
- 2:59Yeah, well, I guess in some way that's what this book touches on.
- 3:03But there's the question of the logicality, like how do you make sense of reincarnation?
- 3:09So, I mean, the question population growth makes reincarnation mood, maybe logically, like, how can you go from having a million people.
- 3:18One.
- 3:18Yeah.
- 3:19How can you go from having a million people to having 7 billion people?
- 3:23Right.
- 3:23Based on reincarnation.
- 3:24Yeah.
- 3:25I mean, previous.
- 3:26And of course, we're not speaking in absolute fact, factual terms.
- 3:30We're just kind of spewing off the cuff what our historical viewpoints have been.
- 3:36But we've talked about, you know, the idea of the central consciousness or whatever we want to call that, that separated itself into smaller pieces, essentially of the same thing, and that that becomes the individual that is also still
- 3:55part of the whole.
- 3:56And I guess from that viewpoint, if we were to follow that thought process, one question would be, did that separation happen all at once in like a Big Bang kind of thing?
- 4:07In which case everything is as it is?
- 4:10Or is there energy changing state?
- 4:14We have more people, but we have less other resources, maybe energy and our existence and the oneness.
- 4:22Well, I mean, the Gaia Kant concept or the oneness with everything, not just with our species, but take that quantum idea down to its smallest parts, which I guess would be infinite technically.
- 4:34But, you know, the.
- 4:35The smaller parts, everything basically boils down to those quarks and.
- 4:41And other minuscule particles.
- 4:43If all of that is still the consciousness, then we could be transitioning energy from different materials and stuff to create more people.
- 4:52Just throwing that.
- 4:53Trying to.
- 4:54Trying to rationalize it as best I can in a way that would be.
- 4:58I don't know.
- 4:59No, I mean, I guess that does make sense if you view it as, you know, absolute conservation.
- 5:05Like you said that from the beginning there is this amount of existence and that.
- 5:11I'm gonna say potential souls, or you could even say souls.
- 5:15Although that sounds conceptually kind of strange, like, you know, a Googleplex of souls that are.
- 5:20That are generated and we just haven't gotten that number yet.
- 5:23Yeah.
- 5:24Yeah.
- 5:24Then maybe that makes sense.
- 5:27I'm kind of pausing on the rationality of reincarnation, but there's no reason it has to be a rational process.
- 5:34Because I'm just thinking, if you have trillions and trillions of souls, why do you then need to reincarnate someone?
- 5:40But that's a silly question because it's not a question of need.
- 5:44It's like it either happens or it doesn't.
- 5:46Right.
- 5:46But we are a creature that rationally made sense to me in the context.
- 5:52And this is what I was going to say earlier was one specific point on this reading Was the, the difference between classic science versus modern science or whatever the reference was.
- 6:05And you, you said previously, actually last session, I think you said that, you know, you are more of that classical scientific mind and you were less knowledgeable about some of the, the newer thing which you know, they were
- 6:17saying new science, modern science, post Einstein, which obviously there's been a number of years since Einstein, but the idea from quantum physicists or you know, the, the new emerging is what I should, I think is the more appropriate
- 6:33term because I don't think it's necessarily this widespread documented and readily documented in journals.
- 6:39And although I think there is scientific studies that are documented in journals that support this, the quantum mechanics and theories when start to investigate some of that, that's what opens my mind more to the possibility of some of
- 6:53these other things where you know, historically we've been so focused on reality being the material world and, and what we can touch and see and measure.
- 7:03So my understanding is that quantum mechanics is actually applied science now.
- 7:07It's.
- 7:08I agree.
- 7:08I mean, yes, and they're building.
- 7:10Yes.
- 7:10Quantum computers.
- 7:11Yes.
- 7:12But the, the level to which that knowledge and information is being portrayed in schools and other things.
- 7:19I don't, I don, I assume, I believe it's still kind of an emerging area of science.
- 7:24But from what I've learned through investigating that is that there seems to be through that method of science a lot of indication of intentional design and going through the statistical analysis of what the likelihood is of this not
- 7:40being intentional design.
- 7:41And you know, I don't remember the numbers, but it's something very, very remote that this world, the whole universe in existence and the symbiosis that is created is statistically exceedingly unlikely.
- 7:57That that was not by some sort of design.
- 7:59And I think even we had mentioned, I had talked to you on a previous recording session.
- 8:04I think I had heard Neil Degrasse Tyson talking about this and saying similar things and maybe it wasn't specific to that, but basically indicating that there's evidence that it's not by accident and yet still fervent pushing the theology
- 8:19of it.
- 8:20Like I'm so, yeah, it's not God, because you just like put up a flag.
- 8:25I'm like, whoa, let me ask you about that.
- 8:28So, so intelligent design is different from anti evolutionary.
- 8:34What.
- 8:34What is that?
- 8:35So that's intelligent design, right?
- 8:36The anti evolutionary creationist approach.
- 8:39Isn't that called Intelligent Design?
- 8:41I think they're used interchangeably, but I don't think they necessarily mean the same thing.
- 8:45Creationism would be specific, like Genesis story, like 4,000 years old.
- 8:50Okay.
- 8:51You know.
- 8:51Okay.
- 8:52And no evolution, where intelligent design, I think, bridges that gap, where we can acknowledge that at some point in the past, all of this started with some intelligence of some sort, some purpose and meaning.
- 9:07But that.
- 9:08That started.
- 9:09That was the catalyst.
- 9:11And then the rest of it was just the physics and laws and.
- 9:15And stuff of this existence that drove.
- 9:18So you can still have evolution.
- 9:19Okay.
- 9:21Design.
- 9:22Oh, okay.
- 9:23Yes.
- 9:23I'm not familiar with that because I'm thinking about the bombardier beetle story, which is.
- 9:27Oh, it's not possible to evolve a bombardier beetle because it would blow itself up.
- 9:31So that's a proof of a bombardier beetle was created intentionally.
- 9:36Right.
- 9:37Okay.
- 9:37That's not what I was.
- 9:39Yeah, that's okay.
- 9:40So just to clarify that, because you said that I was like, whoa.
- 9:43But yeah, just the factors that went into.
- 9:47And the tight margins to which all of the existence of.
- 9:52In the universe, not just the people, the tight margins that everything has to operate within in order for this to be feasible, essentially without basically blowing everything up.
- 10:02And there's.
- 10:03There's no existence.
- 10:05And so the likelihood that all of these different criteria and factors can all fit within these very tight margins statistically alludes to the fact that it's essential, actually gotta be intelligent design, meaning that there was some purpose or
- 10:20some action by an intelligent being that started it.
- 10:24Which makes me think about.
- 10:26So we, we had mentioned the double slit experiment.
- 10:29And, you know, I'm thinking about Heisenberg uncertainty, which.
- 10:32About which I know very little, but that there's this whole idea of observation.
- 10:38And so if things can only be the way they are by observation, then there has to be an observer.
- 10:44Right.
- 10:44So that in my mind aligns with the idea of intelligent design.
- 10:50The idea of this modern science pointing us towards some entity, some other thing capable of observation, even if it's the universe.
- 11:00Even if we want to say it's the universe observing itself.
- 11:03But there's still some.
- 11:05I think when we say observation, it's very hard to use that word without some idea of personification.
- 11:13And so that's interesting.
- 11:15Yeah.
- 11:16This short book is the Scientific Acceptability of Rebirth.
- 11:20And I think, you know, maybe if you are more familiar, maybe the book's of less interest if you're familiar with.
- 11:28More familiar with the history of science.
- 11:30To me, one of the most interesting things about it was the premise of why science excludes or doesn't exclude the possibility of reincarnation.
- 11:39And I'm gonna.
- 11:40I'm gonna say reincarnation instead of rebirth because I think that's explicitly what he's talking about.
- 11:45And so, and that's the split, the history of science that he, that he talks about is the difference between classical science and modern science, which basically we're talking about quantum physics.
- 11:58And so apparently in, in the early days of classical science, there was an explicit decision to apply science only to observable phenomena.
- 12:11That's right, yeah.
- 12:12And I can't remember what the two, what the two divisions are called, or I feel like I should have done more homework in this.
- 12:18Was it Descartes that he said Descartes.
- 12:20Was one of them and Newton.
- 12:22And there's a third one.
- 12:23Clearly there was, there was an explicit decision that science would only apply to observable phenomena, which makes it obvious from the outset of why science would not be able to explain any of the physicals.
- 12:38Yeah, yeah.
- 12:39And so it was basically a decision of Western philosophers whose position held sway in Western civilization and didn't change for a long time and basically still hasn't changed in terms of what, as you said, the modern science isn't
- 12:57widely promulgated.
- 12:58And so when people think of science, people think of classical science, which excludes the non physical.
- 13:05Right.
- 13:05But there's no, not to say that.
- 13:07There's no reason that that should be.
- 13:08But the fact is modern science no longer does that.
- 13:11And as we've said before, the Dalai Lama loves science and loves scientists, and scientists like talking to the Dalai Lama and they have a lot of exchange because of the willingness of modern scientists not to say, no, we
- 13:29can't talk to you.
- 13:30Right.
- 13:32That's all, that's all it comes down to is just people who are willing to investigate or people who are qualified to investigate who are willing to say, oh, yeah, we'll investigate that, we'll talk about that.
- 13:46As opposed to saying, no, Descartes says we can't talk about that.
- 13:50And so that's, to me, the really big eye opener of this, of this book.
- 13:55And really, as far as reincarnation, like the status of reincarnation, I don't care.
- 14:02It's just important, I think, for, for us, us as Westerners, for just the general public to know that it's not irrational to talk about supernatural things, which is, it sounds weird to say.
- 14:17I mean, it's so ingrained in me as a scientist that, yeah, it's, it's really jarring.
- 14:23Jarring, exactly.
- 14:25To say that, yeah.
- 14:26So intellectually it makes me uncomfortable, but subjectively or intuitively it's like, oh, this is this, it's liberating.
- 14:34It's like, oh, this is so kind of obviously true in a way.
- 14:37So the initial, obviously hundreds of years ago, you know, the initial inclination to limit the use of the tool made sense.
- 14:47There was a lot to be learned.
- 14:49Right.
- 14:49And that tool was very effective in helping us to understand the physical world that we live in.
- 14:55And even in this paper it mentions, you know, at some point in the distant past, but you know, that they thought they had already learned everything essentially.
- 15:03You know, they had already resorted to white wipe the hands of it.
- 15:06And it's all mechanics, all mechanics.
- 15:08And we might tweak here and there, but this is it.
- 15:11And then I think part of it ended up being that you've resorted to that.
- 15:16You still have inquiry, there's still questions that people have that science has been unable to really touch.
- 15:23Classical science was unable to touch.
- 15:25And then we had some more moder physicists and scientists that were willing to kind of go there.
- 15:31And interestingly enough, you know, many, I mean, I guess I can't really think of any that have become law.
- 15:37Einstein's theories are still called theories.
- 15:40They're still.
- 15:41Because they're challenged in trying to apply the classical methodology to verify it, other than mathematically, I guess.
- 15:50Right.
- 15:50It seems where many of the more recent discoveries have taken place is through math.
- 15:57And at least, if nothing else, finding in math the likelihood that was the, the God particle, which ended up being, I think they call those quarks too, or whatever it was the, the idea that there was this smaller
- 16:11subatomic particle than we were aware of.
- 16:14The math demonstrated this should exist.
- 16:16So then it sent people on the path to try and find it.
- 16:19So I, what, I think this calls back our central thesis about institutions, that it made sense at the beginning of science to try to develop a manageable body of knowledge.
- 16:35And the tools of early science were so, say, crude, I'll use the word crude, that there was really a limit to how much they could work with.
- 16:45And so in some way it makes sense to say, okay, there's the, what they call the res extensa, the external matter world and the res cogitans, the mental world.
- 16:58And we're going to split that because we really don't have any tools to look at the latter.
- 17:03And so it was kind of a working approach, a practical approach.
- 17:06But then once you've generated the body of knowledge, now you have an institution comprised of individuals who are interested, who now have self interest, either as individuals or as an institution.
- 17:18And so then it starts self limiting, which is not the original purpose of the institutions, like what we said, religion, you know, the purpose wasn't to exclude, the purpose was to include and be total and universal.
- 17:33But it ends up being exclusive.
- 17:35And likewise science, it seems from what I've learned here, limited itself for practical reasons and then developed more tools that were capable of continuing to ask these expanding questions, but then self limited again because of self interest as
- 17:54opposed to practicality.
- 17:56And so even now it seems there may be self limiting in the idea of new science that willing to push the boundaries, but they're working against this inertia of the institution, which is both practical and a hindrance.
- 18:15So I mean one of the values of the scientific approach is that you don't just jump at every little piece of evidence and say see, that proves it's this way.
- 18:25No, and that's, this proves it's that way that you, you wait for preponderance or you, you need to accumulate to some tipping point where then the theory becomes a law where you just say, well, we now have a
- 18:37preponderance of evidence that lets us call it a law.
- 18:39Which doesn't mean that that law can't be overturned because you're going to continue to accumulate evidence and you may end up accumulating contrary evidence.
- 18:49Do you know of an example of that?
- 18:50It's something we should look up.
- 18:51Not thinking of it off the top of my head.
- 18:54So anyway, sorry, I just digressed to this idea of institutional.
- 18:58No, I think that was a good digression.
- 19:00And I think it's interesting to me that it would seem, and maybe this is me projecting, but it would seem that the institution has a vested interest in, and I don't know why, but in not proving God, so
- 19:15to speak, you know, as a, just a flat statement.
- 19:17I think there's nuance to that and maybe it's because there's been this vocal community that references science as proof that God or you know, that the religious nuts are nuts and rational people follow the science and the science
- 19:34is clear, this is how it is.
- 19:37And if science starts moving in a direction that it's actually coming closer to what?
- 19:42Well, I guess in reference to this paper that there was two ways of learning.
- 19:47One was Buddha who intuited the truth of reality versus science, which is a, per the author, a slower process that is iterative and takes time.
- 20:00And so I guess kind of saying at this point in our scientific pursuits we're still kind of naive to some of these higher things that in the future, like we're on the path and we can get there eventually,
- 20:13but it's going to be much slower than the way Buddha obtained the enlightenment and the full knowledge of an understanding, the science versus religion.
- 20:22So I would not make the suggestion that the vast majority of religious people are enlightened and have this knowledge.
- 20:29They speak of working on faith and they just kind of believe this.
- 20:33And that in itself is probably irrational, but that ardent scientists, classical scientists, are struggling to kind of move that there could be these other reality, could, could be different than the way we understand it and people could know
- 20:49it or intuit it even without being able to, to prove it.
- 20:53And then as those two avenues start to come together, it could be scary for certainly for classical scientists who are starting to see, well, this is actually starting to point and maybe they reject it, but they can see
- 21:07that their opponent might be able to utilize this and point and be like, see, this is, see, intelligent design is statistically likely.
- 21:15And then try and suppress some of that information so that it can stay on the straight and narrow with the institution.
- 21:22Right.
- 21:23And, and what it comes down to is personal belief, even on the part of scientists.
- 21:29Right.
- 21:30Because the personal belief is the unwillingness to follow the evidence.
- 21:35So if you're a scientist and you say, well, I know that God can't exist, then, well, you're, you can't mechanically disprove the existence of Go.
- 21:46Right.
- 21:47Don't think that anybody has successfully published a scientific result, you know, that there couldn't.
- 21:57Right.
- 21:58So whether you're a professional scientist or an atheist or anyone else who is anti God in a philosophical way, it's, it's a personal belief.
- 22:10Right.
- 22:11It's not, I think it's presented as a logical position and it can be.
- 22:15You can make logical arguments about that.
- 22:18But that's not proof.
- 22:19Right.
- 22:19You know, unless your version of philosophy is, well, if I can logically prove something, then it's true, which is silly because we know that there are logical proofs of things that aren't true.
- 22:30So that's one of the limitations of logic.
- 22:32Logic's.
- 22:33We love logic, you and I, we're big fans of logic, but we accept that, you know, it's a tool.
- 22:40There are limitations to it.
- 22:41So where was I going with that?
- 22:43Oh, personal belief.
- 22:45What you were saying was making me think about us and them and the impetus to defend a position, defend personal belief.
- 22:56And this is another, I think, central thesis of our conversation is the problem with that and how good people do bad things and good institutions become tools of evil.
- 23:07Yeah.
- 23:08When this desire for security and to protect a position overrides the nature of that position itself.
- 23:17Any religious zealot who says, well, we have to kill these other people, I think has crossed that line because again, essential thesis is there's no.
- 23:25There's no religion that in its essence says the purpose of this is to tell you who to kill.
- 23:31Right.
- 23:31And the purpose in its essence is to tell you how to live productively with other people.
- 23:38And so one of our core interests, you know, it's interesting, this idea of, yeah, good people doing bad things or why.
- 23:50I mean, I don't know, maybe it's the nature of evil.
- 23:52Maybe that's the big question, right?
- 23:54Is how do people believe that what they're doing is right when it's very destructive?
- 23:59Okay, So I think where we digressed was talking about how.
- 24:05How scientists or even the institution of science can promulgate this limiting historic division, which seems to no longer apply practically, right.
- 24:16That there's no longer a clear division of race extants and race cogitans.
- 24:22But that's a very stark, explicit division that underlines all of our thought without us knowing it.
- 24:30Because most people don't know those terms.
- 24:32They don't know the history of it.
- 24:34I certainly didn't.
- 24:35And that's why I found this interesting.
- 24:37Yeah.
- 24:37So he then goes on to explain how science has moved beyond these classical mechanistic idea of existence.
- 24:49That.
- 24:50And that most people do know.
- 24:52Most people do know that, you know, Newtonian mechanics doesn't explain the way the world works.
- 24:59Right.
- 25:00That it was really, really good at explaining the solar system, you know, as opposed to the view of the Dark ages that, well, the Earth is the center of everything because God created man and we're on Earth.
- 25:11That this then new discipline of science and Newtonian laws could explain, oh, here's how the solar system works and things orbit and gravity works and oh, now I lost my train of thought that.
- 25:25That modern science wanting to move beyond that and not be limited by this arbitrary division of materiality and spirituality.
- 25:35And following, as you said, following the evidence, following the math that's pointing to these unseen, unknowable things, you know, apparently unknowable things, but then saying, well, the math says it should be knowable, so we have to find a
- 25:50way to make it knowable.
- 25:51And through the extraordinary diligence and brilliance of scientists, they started actually discovering and demonstrating these subatomic particles and all this weird quantum physics stuff, which is interesting.
- 26:07To me because it then becomes part of our physical understanding, like it is still part of our physical world.
- 26:13Historically, we were unable to Measure it and to see it.
- 26:17But now to your point, we're.
- 26:18We're able to manipulate and create new ways of being able to detect and measure and see air quotes, see some of these.
- 26:28What previously would have been thought of as supernatural.
- 26:31But is it supernatural?
- 26:33It's just part of the fabric of our existence.
- 26:36We just have historically been unable to review it and study it.
- 26:41So one thing that's interesting to me is that we can become aware of a fact and accept it as a fact and be completely unable to incorporate that fact to our actual framework of thought, our actual schema, actual
- 26:57schema of the universe.
- 26:58So it doesn't change the way you see things at all.
- 27:01It's just like, oh yeah, that's a fact.
- 27:02And then we continue to believe things that are completely contrary to that.
- 27:06And that's where I think we are now culturally.
- 27:09A lot of people do know little tidbits of quantum mechanics as a fact because media is so prevalent and media news publish findings so early, relatively.
- 27:22So we have all these facts in our culture which are accepted parts of our culture, but they have no impact on the way the general public thinks about what they know.
- 27:32And that's the whole sociology of thought or that how do we change our minds?
- 27:38You know, how do we.
- 27:38How do we learn things?
- 27:40So I think kind of an underlying idea is that if people understood this stuff better, they'd be better able to abandon really destructive ideas.
- 27:51Yeah, well, and the language about it, I think, think has an impact too.
- 27:55You know, if we talk about things and we're going to talk about supernatural things now, people who are not interested in that is going to shut off.
- 28:04But I think what we're really trying to talk about, at least me, is metaphysical.
- 28:08Right.
- 28:09It's not necessarily talking about supernatural.
- 28:11I'm saying this is natural.
- 28:12This is the way of the world.
- 28:14And it's just that metaphysical area that we still are very naive and ignorant on as, as a people to what that entails, what impacts it has on the natural laws as we understand them.
- 28:29Because we don't know why.
- 28:30I don't want to assert what we do and don't know because I don't know.
- 28:33But the fact is, I think many things we know to be true, but we don't know why.
- 28:40Right.
- 28:40This is the way the natural world works.
- 28:44But why?
- 28:46And some of that metaphysical.
- 28:49Studying the metaphysical stuff and as we delve further into smaller particles and how all of this interacts with each other will hopefully shed some light on some of that.
- 29:01And then we'll Be able to say why it is this way.
- 29:04So, I mean, is gravity an example of that?
- 29:07Maybe?
- 29:07Or, I mean, so I don't even know.
- 29:09So gravity.
- 29:10But I think some of that is.
- 29:12I think there's been effort to try and indicate why gravity works.
- 29:17Although some of that, to me, I think is more modern when we're talking about space time as a mesh.
- 29:22And one experiment or a science teacher that was trying to demonstrate gravity using, I think, a parachute or something, it was like the whole class holding this thing out as a big circle of cloth, maybe a spandexy kind
- 29:34of thing.
- 29:35And he would take.
- 29:35He took like a really big ball and like put it in the center and everything.
- 29:40So the reposin model.
- 29:42Yeah, something like that.
- 29:43And then, you know, you start spinning smaller balls around it and they're gonna go around as long as there's inertia.
- 29:49But once it doesn't, everything would fall into, you know.
- 29:54And I guess that's an example of an effort to try and visually produce why in a way that we might be able to understand the mental concept of how this could possibly work.
- 30:05Right.
- 30:05And I don't know how accepted, widely accepted, the fabric of space time is as a model, but that's a thesis that I can follow.
- 30:13Well, that.
- 30:14Well, that's what I was saying is that, I mean.
- 30:16So the rubber sheet model has been around for a long time, certainly since popular culture started talking about black holes.
- 30:24Everybody knows the kind of funnel graphic of this black hole bending a rubber sheet.
- 30:29But that's as far as I know about gravity.
- 30:32My understanding was that it's not explained, it's just a model.
- 30:37But there is no essential knowledge of what gravity actually is and how it works, unlike, say, electricity, which is well understood.
- 30:47Okay, so where were we?
- 30:48Coming back to the text.
- 30:51So we're talking about the nature of knowledge.
- 30:53And I was saying that, you know, even referring to it as studying metaphysics as opposed to.
- 31:00Right.
- 31:01Supernaturalism or something like that, where it sounds more airy, fairy and foofy.
- 31:06Somebody who is of a scientific persuasion might be more inclined to open.
- 31:11Open their ears and listen to somebody who's studying metaphysics as opposed to God and spirituality.
- 31:18So this is.
- 31:19This is another obstacle to discussion is that these distinctions are so culturally tied to value propositions and especially morality and rationality.
- 31:33So if you value morality, I think, think the inclination is to be oriented towards, oh, it's supernatural, therefore it's evil, it's anti God.
- 31:45Because the Bible says all these things about supernatural things.
- 31:49Basically, it depends on your Religious orientation.
- 31:53And if you're more rationally based and less morally based, then supernatural has negative connotations.
- 32:00Superstition, you know, the idea of superstition as being a value proposition and a label to stick on.
- 32:07Yes, A label to stick on.
- 32:08It say, well, that's superstition as opposed to.
- 32:11Well, that's something that we don't understand in the context of science.
- 32:15Right.
- 32:16You know, or that's ungodly because it's something that we don't understand in the context or doesn't fit into the positive context of, you know, our scriptural beliefs or whatever.
- 32:28So there are a lot of obstacles culturally that we have to overcome in order to have meaningful conversations or willingness not to have a conversation, but a willingness to have a conversation.
- 32:41Right.
- 32:41That's what starts talking about.
- 32:43Right, right.
- 32:45Okay.
- 32:45So then the book talks about.
- 32:47So the book introduces this history of science and this, this division, historic division of the physical and non physical or metaphysical, as you say, realms.
- 32:58And then, you know, points out that the Buddha wasn't limited by those distinctions because he wasn't a scientist and he was able to intuit the complete nature of the world.
- 33:09That's the tradition.
- 33:10That's the teaching is that the Buddha was all knowing and perfectly understood existence.
- 33:16Which is a pretty cool idea.
- 33:18Yeah.
- 33:19Actually have some believe it to talk about to that.
- 33:23But let's finish this part.
- 33:24And then there's a point I wanted to introduce about the word Buddha also that we'll come back to.
- 33:31And then I think pretty much, I mean, it's a short book I think he introduced is that.
- 33:35And then he says, he talks a bit about quantum physics, that it's very, very separate from classical science and shows things that are completely contradictory to classical science.
- 33:48And it's not that they're unscientific.
- 33:50Right.
- 33:50It's not that there's not scientific proof for them.
- 33:52It's just that they can't be explained.
- 33:54Pursuit of science that contradicts earlier science.
- 33:57Oh, so I guess there's a.
- 33:59An example of.
- 34:00Because I had to ask, oh, what's the example of scientific law being overturned?
- 34:04And it'd be Newtonian physics.
- 34:06Physics.
- 34:07Right.
- 34:07Newtonian laws have been.
- 34:09Have they been overturned?
- 34:10Yeah, in.
- 34:11In the sense that they don't apply to subatomic particles because the law was.
- 34:17There is no particle that doesn't behave.
- 34:19That's the law.
- 34:19Yeah.
- 34:19There's no, you can't.
- 34:23There's no exemption.
- 34:24You know, I think when we say scientific law, that's what we mean.
- 34:27Yeah.
- 34:28Although we don't say, oh, Newtonian physics doesn't work.
- 34:31We just say it's not, not, it's no longer exclusive, it's no longer absolute.
- 34:36That it applies to everything that we experience in our normal of things that we can manipulate without millions of dollars of high energy physics equipment.
- 34:47Everything that we can just kind of naturally manipulate, it applies.
- 34:51But this other stuff that we know only because we're aware of, only because of the mathematics, that's why we're aware of it.
- 35:00We know it's because we followed the mathematics to generate these millions of dollars of equipment to do really weird stuff, which we would have no reason to do except for the math, which is a very weird.
- 35:12I mean, talking about this stuff is really weird.
- 35:15And it kind of makes you realize that the nature of rationality is strange.
- 35:21Like it's not irrational, but from a certain perspective it is irrational.
- 35:25If you don't have them hire mathematics, it's completely irrational.
- 35:28Right.
- 35:28Which is certainly a thing that you hear in popular culture.
- 35:32Like why are scientists wasting their time with this?
- 35:35You know, people are studying X, you know, and it's really goofy.
- 35:39Yeah, it's goofy if you don't know the math.
- 35:42Yeah, well, it's, it's interesting too that going back a little bit to the institution, and maybe it was around the time that they all kind of thought they knew everything, but at some point it seems the institution sort
- 35:57of abandoned its original goal.
- 36:00Yeah.
- 36:00And quest like the.
- 36:01Where the tool that started as a tool was transformed culturally into a religion or an ideal.
- 36:10And so therefore we start to apply it so rigidly that we forget that it's a tool and a wrench isn't good for every bolt, you know, so.
- 36:20So you're saying science started as a tool with the premise that humans can understand things, that, that there's a lot to understand in the universe that we don't understand, but we can understand it.
- 36:32And science is a really good tool to get that understanding.
- 36:36And we applied it and applied it until we ran out of stuff for which it was applicable.
- 36:42And then we said, well, that's all there is to know because that's the only tool we have.
- 36:45Therefore there is no other knowledge.
- 36:47You know, nothing exists except a nail because we have a hammer.
- 36:51Right.
- 36:51And we've hammered all the nails and therefore nothing else exists.
- 36:54Which.
- 36:55Yeah, when you.
- 36:56It's a weird position to take, but we fall into that.
- 37:00Humans fall into these very weird positions.
- 37:04And so obviously a bunch of brilliant, brave people overcame that and made a bunch of other discoveries.
- 37:11So he introduces the weirdness of quantum physics and says basically the universe does not have to perform logical.
- 37:20Which is why we're looking at the double slit experiment, right?
- 37:22Because that's an example of just irrational behavior of the universe.
- 37:28So we'll come back to double slit because that's a whole thing.
- 37:31But basically his thesis is that therefore we have access to understanding reincarnation.
- 37:38Because once you understand that the universe does not have to behave rationally and in fact does not behave rationally, then you can be open to studying these irrational things.
- 37:51And then that's where he kind of falls.
- 37:54Because I think he says he has evidence that he doesn't have.
- 37:57I think is where it ends up.
- 37:59He has a, he cites a bunch of air quotes evidence and then says therefore we've proved reincarnation.
- 38:06I don't.
- 38:07What I gathered from the paper wasn't that he was trying to prove reincarnation.
- 38:11And I agree there was no reality.
- 38:14It's acceptable.
- 38:15It's a scientifically acceptable, acceptable theory or thesis to take.
- 38:20And I think that was where he was really trying to break down, was just like, don't shut it down.
- 38:25Right.
- 38:25You know?
- 38:26Right.
- 38:26No, I agree though, it didn't.
- 38:28All he seemed to lay out was historically these thes were acceptable to the scientific community based on this three step process.
- 38:37And I can present evidence that this theory meets that criteria to be accepted.
- 38:43So can you scroll down to where he does some evidence?
- 38:47There was one, the one explicit piece of evidence that he gives I looked into and was kind of disappointed.
- 38:55So generically he says, well, there's a lot of past life research and there's a lot of, you know, studies and basically a preponderance of anecdotal evidence for past lives and without being very specific.
- 39:11But then he specifically named a person who is recognized as a reincarnated Buddhist monk.
- 39:19Yeah, I remember that.
- 39:20Oh.
- 39:21So basically there's this disadvantaged kid in Brooklyn who grew up to be someone who started teaching some philosophy and set up a center and eventually had a guest speaker, a Tibetan monk, come into her center.
- 39:39So she was just teaching basically her own philosophy.
- 39:42And one day she had a guest speaker of a Tibetan monk or she went to Tibet or something.
- 39:49Basically this person said, oh well, what you're teaching is Buddhism and you have come up with this whole philosophy of Buddhism spontaneously.
- 39:57And then she was recognized as the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk and ended up taking on the regalia.
- 40:04And so if you look her up, you'll see her in, in full regalia, just like The Dalai Lama in a formal setting.
- 40:12And so this.
- 40:12This writer spends a few pages on her as ev.
- 40:17Evidence of reincarnation.
- 40:20And then when I look her up, there's just, you know, we keep on coming back to the unfortunate fact that there are a lot of religious.
- 40:29I'll say events, not religious event in terms of a ceremony, but a religious event in terms of someone gets recognized as a reincarnation of someone else, or someone gets a sainthood or whatever that end up being fraudulent.
- 40:41You know, they end up being false in some way.
- 40:44And so other people have written about.
- 40:46Now, just because there's a controversy doesn't mean that the first person's wrong.
- 40:51So I shouldn't say that this.
- 40:52This person is invalid because she's controversial.
- 40:55But it makes what I did, what I did read, you know, I did see an article about her in a Buddhist journal saying how really the thing.
- 41:06The positions that she takes can't be Buddhist, and that sure, there.
- 41:11There's a whole structure that aligns with the Buddhist structure of thought, but that if she were budd, she couldn't take the positions that she takes.
- 41:20Right.
- 41:21And yet she does appear in regalia, so she's willing to exploit.
- 41:26And then the other question is the ability of Tibetan monks to recognize people as reincarnations and whether that's.
- 41:34It's not an infallible process and not in a theological sense, but in a human sense, that there are frauds and there are people who take bribes and blah, blah, blah.
- 41:44So that.
- 41:45That was kind of disappointing.
- 41:47Now, on the other hand, as we keep on saying, there are people, institutions introduced in, interested in preserving their own standing so it can serve people to criticize other people.
- 41:59So you got to take everything with a grain of salt.
- 42:03But I was disappointed when I looked into this.
- 42:06I mean, primarily because this guy spent a couple of pages saying, here's, you know, holding her up.
- 42:11It's like, this is a perfect example of a reincarnated person.
- 42:16It's like, okay, I'd rather look at the Dalai Lama because I think he's a lot less disappointing.
- 42:21Which also led me to.
- 42:23What's his name?
- 42:24Steven Seagal.
- 42:25Oh, yeah, you said that.
- 42:26So Steven Seagal has been recognized as a tulka by some monk.
- 42:31He's been recognized as a reincarnation of an important Tibetan figure, but has not gone through the training the way I think this woman has.
- 42:42The one in the book has since been formally recognized.
- 42:46Steven Seagal was informally recognized.
- 42:47Recognized.
- 42:48But then when you look into it, apparently there is.
- 42:52And again, you don't know which side to believe.
- 42:54But the story is he basically bribed it.
- 42:57Like he gave his huge donation to this guy's monastery.
- 43:01Now so the thing that I had told you before is that Steven Seagal is a big gun guy and works with gun manufacturer.
- 43:09And I'm not sure that there's any branch school or you know, bonafide Buddhist teaching that would be able to include that.
- 43:18So it's, it's weird because.
- 43:19Because I think, I think he is a practicing.
- 43:22At least in some way.
- 43:24Who knows if it's.
- 43:25I mean, I suppose it's just.
- 43:27What would you call it?
- 43:27Virtual virtue signaling.
- 43:29Yeah.
- 43:30But anyway.
- 43:31Yeah, just a bunch of disappointing stuff.
- 43:34Yeah.
- 43:34But if you're looking for, you know, kind of absolutes.
- 43:37It's funny because when you were giving the background on what you had found about this person, if I were to take the perspective that she was legitimate, sounds a lot like Jesus.
- 43:49Not Jesus, but the route that Jesus took, who was recognized in his culture by some to be something that others refuted.
- 44:00Went in and taught in the temples, but taught his understanding of, of Torah.
- 44:07And yeah, I mean it just.
- 44:09When the institution has a handhold, it almost takes like that outside person to be like, this is actually the real.
- 44:16And I don't know what this person teaches.
- 44:18So I, I don't, you know, I'm not suggesting that it is or isn't, but I'm just saying conceptually I could see how, you know, going against the grain isn't necessarily a bad thing or fraudulent thing.
- 44:29Right.
- 44:29Yeah, so.
- 44:31But that's all beside the point.
- 44:33I think, you know, we, we agree that the central thesis is interesting and valid.
- 44:39That you know, science no longer excludes the metaphysical.
- 44:45And not only does science no longer exclude it, but science has very thoroughly demonstra.
- 44:51The ability of the universe to be irrational.
- 44:54Yeah.
- 44:54To defy logic.
- 44:55And it doesn't mean that the universe is completely alive.
- 44:58It doesn't mean that we live in chaos.
- 45:00No, it just means that.
- 45:02Well, I think our.
- 45:02Well that's.
- 45:03Our understanding is limited.
- 45:05Yeah.
- 45:05Right.
- 45:05Our logic is only based on what we know.
- 45:08And if we learn new things to be true, then our logic can be expanded.
- 45:12Right?
- 45:12Yeah, I guess so.
- 45:14When I read this, I came to it having reviewed a fair number of near death experience testimonies and even some past life stuff to where I'm familiar with anecdotes that reportedly have been verified.
- 45:30I didn't verify them, but you know, the kids who report these very specific and detailed experiences that they could never have Known else, you know, otherwise because they're like 4, 5, 6 years old that have been historically verified
- 45:48as accurate that as being sort of the reincarnate but also the experiences from near death experiencers, testimonies and many of them who report leaving their body but being in the room and repeating to surgeons and stuff what they
- 46:07were talking about when that person was dead, you know, on the table.
- 46:10Right, right.
- 46:11Or even out of the room.
- 46:12Or even out of the room there was somebody who, their testimony was that there was a shoe on the ledge of the hospital, like way up outside this window and they saw it when they were leaving their body
- 46:23and going up into space or whatever they were doing and they told the people and that was legitimately there.
- 46:30Right.
- 46:31So anecdotally there's, there is a number of experiences.
- 46:35Obviously this isn't the norm, but there has been some experiences that indicate hate.
- 46:41Anecdotally but somewhat verified.
- 46:43You know, if, if you're talking to hospital staff and physicians, they're generally science based people and if they find that it happened, you know, and are willing enough to admit that they found that happened and open minded enough
- 46:57to say hey, that was weird, I can't explain it.
- 47:00Yeah, I'm, I'm.
- 47:03When you make the generalization about healthcare professionals being.
- 47:07Sure.
- 47:07Having, having intimate personal knowledge of a number of health care professionals, I'm perfectly aware of their capacity for irrationality.
- 47:17Oh sure.
- 47:18And I don't mean just incidental, I mean like central beliefs kind of thing.
- 47:23Well, they're human.
- 47:24People are interesting.
- 47:25They're still human.
- 47:26And the savant type thing or the prodigy.
- 47:29I'm not sure I would necessarily make the extension that they are that, that is talent from past lives.
- 47:37But you know.
- 47:38Well, it's interesting that it's.
- 47:41Okay, so, so the idea is, the point that he's, is that say a, you know, three or four year old can play multiple masterpiece sonatas and, and things that they have no opportunity to learn and yet they can
- 47:56just play them.
- 47:57And the other example is multiple languages.
- 48:01So I mean we know that humans learn language by.
- 48:05Environmentally, they learn language environmentally, what they hear, they, they learn.
- 48:09And yet there are individuals who are able to fluently speak languages to which they've never been exposed.
- 48:16So these are not proofs, but they are, they are evidence that is dissonant with classical science and are consistent with the idea of reincarnation.
- 48:30So I mean, I think those, Yeah, I, I think altogether there is a bunch of evidence.
- 48:38There are, what's the word?
- 48:40There are facts, there are Facts that are evidence in the sense of being facts that are very consistent with the idea of reincarnation as opposed to the idea of finite life and death.
- 48:56You die, you stop existing and there is no continuity of yourself in any way beyond your decomposition.
- 49:04So it's very interesting and thought provoking.
- 49:07I.
- 49:07It's funny because subjectively I'm very, very skeptical.
- 49:11You know, any like you have, you have expressed interest in past life or, or near death things and I find myself a little, I find myself very resistant.
- 49:23You know, when you say that I'm like.
- 49:24Oh yeah, right.
- 49:25I'm like eye rolling.
- 49:27Even though my mother has a nearby.
- 49:29Your dad's story.
- 49:30I mean she bled out essentially from you know, a pregnancy and.
- 49:37Yeah.
- 49:37And says, you know, I'm.
- 49:40I don't know if I'll have to edit this out.
- 49:42That's okay.
- 49:43But yeah, she's, she's what I just like super skeptical about because she has, she has like also irrational beliefs.
- 49:51It doesn't mean that she's not.
- 49:52Right.
- 49:53You can be irrational about one thing and completely correct about another.
- 49:56You.
- 49:56Which she is.
- 49:57But it's just.
- 49:59Yeah.
- 49:59There's so probably part of, probably part of my resistance.
- 50:03Yeah.
- 50:03But so subjectively.
- 50:05Subjectively I have that and viscerally I'm resistant but rationally and objectively I'm like really interested in it.
- 50:13Yeah.
- 50:13Which is weird it.
- 50:15Because usually it's the other way around.
- 50:16Right.
- 50:16Yeah.
- 50:17Yes.
- 50:17So anyway.
- 50:19But it makes sense at the same time and to your point, you know, you kind of grounded in classical science.
- 50:26Right.
- 50:27So.
- 50:27Right.
- 50:28You know, know it's, it, it has been made taboo, you know, in.
- 50:32Over time.
- 50:33So I can see how that would be.
- 50:35The thing that I found interesting about near death experience testimonies is the apparent consistency.
- 50:42There's a number of things that seem very consistent and I've gone through probably 20 or 30 testimonials at least.
- 50:50I mean it's, it's a lot but not extensive and they're not all the same.
- 50:55You know, it's not like to me.
- 50:57The consistency is the least compact, compelling aspect of it.
- 51:01I think it's the, the occult knowledge which is the most.
- 51:05Like you said, the shoe on the ledge.
- 51:07That to me is the most.
- 51:08Sure.
- 51:08Compelling.
- 51:09Oh yeah, I agree.
- 51:10The consistency to my way of thought, as you say, grounded in classical science, you know, it makes me lean towards.
- 51:18More towards brain chemistry.
- 51:19Sure.
- 51:19It's like, well that's biology.
- 51:21It's going to be consistent.
- 51:21Consistent, you know.
- 51:22Yeah.
- 51:23Or more consistent than not.
- 51:24Yeah.
- 51:25On the other hand, you know, like you said, it's not the rule near death experience, right?
- 51:30Mostly.
- 51:31Well, I don't know.
- 51:31I mean I, I guess most people who are resuscitated don't report the experience, right?
- 51:38I think probably not.
- 51:39Although there is a number of healthcare professionals.
- 51:43Well, one in, you know, what you sent me, but that seems to be ER physicians and nurses in particular who see these.
- 51:53They're familia all the time, it's not surprising to them.
- 51:56So it's, it's regular enough.
- 51:59I don't know how regular.
- 52:01And I would agree with your point about consistency possibly being correlated to brain chemistry and biological mechanisms.
- 52:10The thing that I find interesting in the consistency, and I would say that the thing that first drew me was more like you said, you know, that kind of verifiable knowledge of something that could have not been known.
- 52:24What I find interesting about the consistency is that one thing that is consistent is many of these people are atheists and, or did not grow up or that their, their experience was not necessarily consistent with what their understanding
- 52:40of what happens after death is.
- 52:43Many of them were like, I thought that, you know, nothing happened, it was just lights out kind of thing.
- 52:47So to me it's like, yes, there could be a biological process that helps with the consistency.
- 52:53And you would think that if there was something in brain that was biological, that the person's cultural and, and environmental experiences growing up would impact what that looked like.
- 53:08And you know, I think some of it, people, the language or the titles people use are sometimes related to what they understand.
- 53:18So like somebody might call them angels where other people call them light beings or some people seem to see people where others just know.
- 53:28Oh, but that's one of the consistencies is like we communicated but there was no talking, it was through emotion essentially you just felt what the other person was feeling and, and you just had that understanding and then the
- 53:43unconditional love that frequently people break down, you know, or get emotional even talking about even decades after their experience like that.
- 53:52It was so moving, that feeling.
- 53:54They all, all report not wanting to come back and sometimes being quite disappointed, being forced back in.
- 54:02There's a lot in that lifting out of the body and kind of floating up.
- 54:07Some have reported being in a darkness and being terrified.
- 54:11There's very few that seem to be that way.
- 54:14And I haven't been able to figure out, you know, what that's about, why so many seem to experience this one thing.
- 54:19In a handful of people, people experience this really terrifying and dark transition before they get to that to the to the light.
- 54:30So and again, I think it's in for me, it's in context that none of this is in isolation.
- 54:37It's taking what I've read that resonates with me in things like conversations with God or my my general worldview of what happens after after in context with what I've heard through near death experiences in context with what I've
- 54:53heard from people who have trained and done astral projection and what I've psychedelics and stuff.
- 55:01All the experiences seem to have a nuance of consistency.
- 55:05It's not they're not absolute consistent.
- 55:08And maybe it's me just looking for confirmation bias and trying to find what I want to see.
- 55:13I'm totally open to that, but I'm okay with that too, because it comforts me.
- 55:22Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast.
- 55:26Join us next time as we continue the discussion.
- 55:28Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and content.