In this episode of the podcast, I talk about a new meal delivery service called Blue Apron, and why you should give it a try. Plus, LegalZoom is a way to handle a lot of stuff that you would normally have to go to a law office for. You can handle it all online, and you can do it all on your own, without having to make an appointment or pay an expert. And if you feel like things are going horribly wrong, you can connect with a third party attorney who can help you deal with it. It s super easy to do, and like I said, they re not a law firm, but they provide you with super easy, third-party legal services that you can take care of all sorts of legal problems you re currently dealing with, like a will, a trust, a life insurance policy, a power of attorney, etc. We know so many people that have used it, it was originally used to start living the life they ve always dreamed of, and now they re doing it on their own, and it s way easier than ever before! We re also talking about how to get your first meal delivered to your door, and how you can get the rest you ve been dreaming of! I hope you like it, and I hope it makes you feel better about it, because it s going to make you feel a little bit better about living your best life, and more comfortable and less stressed than you ever have before you ever did before you knew you could do it! Thank you so much more than you did! - it s so easy, it s gonna get it done, and feel like you re going to live your best, you re gonna do it, right? I m not the best you re not going to get it, I can t wait to do it and you re just doing it, so let s do it right, so you can have it, let s get it! xoxo, Caitlyn, Caitie Caitie, Sarah, Sarah, Rachael, and Sarah, Sarah Rachel Rachie, and Christina Pazitsky , and Sarah . Katie, Sarah , Kristy, , Sarah, Kristy & Sarah ...and so on and so on and so much MORE! , we re talking about it all, and we re getting it all done!
00:00:12.000This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Blue Apron.
00:00:17.000Blue Apron is one of my newest and most favoritest...
00:00:23.000Sponsors, because what essentially is, is they send you all the ingredients for healthy meals, and you cook them yourself by their directions, with their recipes.
00:00:34.000All the portions are measured out perfectly, along with spices and detailed photographs that show you what to do in all the various parts of the recipe.
00:00:45.000It's really interesting, and it's kind of fun, too.
00:00:50.000If you get like a recipe book and then you have to go to the store, you have to buy the individual ingredients, you have to measure them and weigh them and all that stuff, that's a lot of extra work that Blue Apron sort of cuts out.
00:01:03.000And they also provide you with a wide variety.
00:01:07.000Of different meals to choose from, which makes it interesting.
00:01:10.000It becomes like a little bit of a project, which I think is fun.
00:01:13.000But really, really yummy foods like coconut curry, salmon steaks, Swedish meatballs with braised kale, stuffed cabbage rolls.
00:01:24.000I've eaten several meals from them so far.
00:01:27.000The amount of calories that you get from these meals also, it's pretty surprising.
00:03:12.000And everybody knows that anytime you have to deal with any office where you have to make an appointment and go there, that's a huge pain in the ass.
00:03:21.000You have to figure out how to get there during normal business hours.
00:03:24.000There's a lot of things that people take care of in law offices that you can take care of with LegalZoom.
00:03:32.000Self-help is the way to go with all these different...
00:03:36.000For the longest time, there's so many different parts of our society, of our civilized world, that you would have to go and talk to an expert, make an appointment, spend an exorbitant amount of money paying this expert to deal with shit.
00:03:53.000You could do with all sorts of legal things on your own, like a power of attorney, get a will, living trusts...
00:05:19.000Most of the time when people are getting divorced, there's a little gamesmanship going on.
00:05:25.000But if you're amicable, if you both look at each other and go, let's just fucking end this, you can go to LegalZoom.com and take care of it.
00:05:32.000Anyway, go there, use the code word ROGAN in the referral box at checkout, and save yourself some money.
00:07:51.000Also, because when I put on reading glasses, things just get sharper.
00:07:55.000I'm like, oh, that's what things really look like.
00:07:57.000You know, like, I could read everything without the glasses, but then when I put them on, I see, like, if you look at pages, you can see the actual detail, the texture, and the paper itself.
00:08:15.000Well, we started several years ago as a podcast doing this kind of thing, talking to people.
00:08:20.000And really in the beginning, it was just my sort of early 20s rebellion against the Buddhist tradition.
00:08:27.000And I wanted to talk to people that weren't part of the mainstream Buddhist world, but had something cool to say, I thought.
00:08:35.000So we just basically started by talking to some different rebels, a lot of Gen Xers who were kind of coming up as teachers and meditation experts or masters.
00:08:47.000And it sort of started there just as a kind of whim project with a couple friends.
00:08:52.000And then people responded, so we kept doing it.
00:08:55.000And we felt a sort of obligation to continue exploring Buddhism, technology, culture, the way it's globalizing.
00:09:02.000And we just sort of from there have just been on a sort of I love it.
00:09:18.000What is the main thing that people fight, not fight against, but rebel against with Buddhism?
00:09:27.000I think it's like most religions, you know, there's some aspect of just rebelling against people telling you what to do or the feeling that, you know, this system of beliefs is telling you how to live or what to do with your life.
00:09:39.000I think that's part of it is just kind of breaking apart dogmatic structures and sort of saying, hey, actually, we can make this our own and figure out how to do it ourselves because we're the ones that are interested in it.
00:09:51.000So we have to sort of take ownership of that.
00:09:54.000And so there's a bit of like, I guess, generational...
00:09:56.000Pushback, you know, and saying, actually, we don't want to meditate like the hippies did.
00:10:00.000You know, we don't want lotus flowers and incense.
00:10:02.000You know, we want like our computer screens and meditation apps.
00:10:06.000You know, we want to do it the way it makes sense to us.
00:10:14.000Are there like some recommended meditation apps that are better than traditional forms of meditation or an alternative, I should say, to traditional forms of meditation?
00:10:27.000I mean, as soon as you start really getting into it, though, then it's useful to, I think, still meet space has the upper hand over the app space.
00:10:38.000That was one that Emily and I contributed to.
00:10:40.000And it's a modern mindfulness on the go app.
00:10:43.000So it sort of teaches you how to meditate in different contexts, like if you're at the gym or if you're, you know, on the tube.
00:10:49.000You wrote one for working on the computer.
00:10:51.000Yeah, I've wrote a couple for working on the computer.
00:10:53.000So it's really just about trying to bridge what we're doing already in our lives with meditation practice and these ancient traditions that have come down.
00:11:02.000What is the app for working on the computer?
00:11:06.000The Buddha-Fi is the app and then the couple of meditations that I wrote, it's just simple things like bringing your attention to different kind of anchor points.
00:11:15.000For example, you know, we all usually have some sort of touch screen mobile device.
00:11:20.000And so, you know, you can use it to bring your attention back as you swipe it, you know, back and forth with your finger.
00:11:27.000So it's just something, you know, very simple to return to so that, you know, consciousness and the mind can start to just kind of settle so that you know you're more aware.
00:11:37.000And by being more aware, it makes a lot of difference.
00:11:40.000When you say more aware, you mean because a lot of people are kind of scattered?
00:12:11.000It's this thing where, you know, I read this piece that was talking about the origins of gossip and what gossip is all about and why so many people are into celebrities and celebrity gossip, the Kim Kardashian stuff and that kind of thing.
00:12:25.000And the big thing being that our culture doesn't have the same sort of communities that it once had.
00:12:31.000These tribal bonds that expanded from 50 to 150 people to cities of 30 million.
00:12:38.000They're very confusing for our biology, apparently.
00:12:42.000And so that's why people gravitate towards what seems to be really inane.
00:12:47.000Like this pull towards, oh my god, she left him and he went up with her, and oh goodness.
00:12:52.000You see those magazine covers, you just want to grab them.
00:12:55.000And people who have no part of your life at all, you shouldn't be caring about them even remotely, but for whatever reason, you're compelled to do it.
00:13:03.000Just a little bit of that with the Facebook thing, right?
00:13:06.000I mean, I read a great article that said, in some sense, Facebook brought that experience of living in a tribal village back as a technology, kind of a la Marshall McLuhan and his whole sort of theory about every technology brings something back from the past.
00:13:47.000We're making computers and we keep making better ones.
00:13:51.000We're essentially the evolutionary device that causes the things that we've created to accelerate far quicker and innovate far quicker than biology ever has a chance to.
00:14:04.000And in the process, we're also, seemingly at least, on the verge of creating some sort of an artificial biological life.
00:14:14.000Whether it's biological, I mean, I don't know what you call artificially created cells that interact with each other the same way human cells do, but we're pretty goddamn close.
00:14:26.000Whether it's 100 years or 200 years, pretty close to making artificial people.
00:14:47.000I saw Elon Musk on Twitter a couple days ago said, increasingly, looks like we're going to be the biological bootloaders for digital superintelligence.
00:15:12.000He's an intelligent guy, but his criticism of Kurzweil was basically a biological criticism that our understanding of the human mind is already...
00:15:22.000It's fairly limited in terms of like how the human mind processes various hormones and neurotransmitters and proteins and that there's no way we'll be able to recreate that because our ideas of the human mind,
00:15:39.000the biological mind, are still constantly evolving and changing and growing and that we're not really ready yet to duplicate the human mind.
00:15:46.000But my take on that was that we don't have to duplicate the biological functions of it to duplicate the actual functions of it.
00:15:53.000Because if they figured out a way to make something that not only mimics the memory banks or the memory access of the human mind, but is much better than that and does it in a completely different way, a non-biological way, and they can figure out a way to download intelligence or download consciousness or memories into that bank,
00:16:14.000Well, we're not going to really need this whole idea of cells and proteins.
00:16:19.000Those are the components of the biological machine.
00:16:23.000But if we can make a better version of that and do it like some sort of a synthetic version or some sort of an artificially created version, it doesn't seem to me that we're going to need to know everything about the human mind in order to recreate its processes, right?
00:17:50.000Yeah, and I think it's also interesting to see, just bringing a little bit of the feminine perspective, and it's like, I'm very conscious of like, you know, childbirth and some of these, you know, natural things that are on my mind a lot.
00:18:06.000And so thinking about merging with technology or creating some sort of artificial intelligence, it seems to me that a lot of these conversations start to navigate really quickly towards getting out of the body.
00:18:17.000And so I, you know, wonder if there is some sort of bridge between, you know, we're going to create something new and at the same time, like you were saying, like infusing that with wisdom and compassion and some of these biological processes.
00:18:31.000Are we ever really going to get out of that?
00:18:34.000It's just an underlying assumption a lot in these conversations that I think is interesting.
00:18:38.000Yeah, it's fascinating because the general idea of the human body and the needs of the body, whether they're the needs for food or the need for the human touch or the need to breed,
00:18:54.000all these different things will be completely unnecessary if we're no longer biological.
00:19:49.000I concentrate on this, and this I can get things done with.
00:19:52.000But if I... Live in the past and worry about all the mistakes that I've made and allow them to define them, allow them to define me rather, they can be very limiting and they can really ruin your perceptions in a sense or flavor your perceptions in a very unsatisfactory or very unwelcome way where your day can be burdened by the past.
00:20:49.000Well, it's the machine wants competition because the machine has gotten you to 2014, where a million years ago a monkey crawled out of a hole and figured out a way to draw an arrow that points towards where the food is, the other monkeys live.
00:21:03.000You could go like, oh, I see what you're doing.
00:21:05.000And then those ideas compiled and they piled on to other ideas and before you know it, a million years later we have a civilization, a complex civilization that has all these different influences that have led us to this point.
00:21:35.000And if we reproduce through test tubes or whatever the hell it's going to be, when we become 3D printers or whatever it's going to be, when we become biological...
00:22:00.000One thing I thought was interesting as I got into the transhumanist stuff, you know, a while back was that, you know, they use this term mind uploading, you know, to kind of predict, you know, we'd be able to upload our consciousness into the cloud and stuff like that.
00:22:12.000But I thought it was interesting that later, I realized they never then use the term body downloading.
00:22:17.000So why is it that you can upload your, you know, mind to the cloud, but you can't then download Yeah.
00:22:43.000And it's the same thing that drives the Buddhist meditators to seek for enlightenment.
00:22:48.000It's to realize this thing which is beyond, in some sense, the limitations of the human experience.
00:22:54.000And yet, the real mature expression or realization in the Buddhist tradition is to realize that and then to return back.
00:23:08.000I hope that the transhumanists and the folks that are building these seeds of digital superintelligence realize that even if we're able to upload our patterns into the cloud, if they're still beings who have a sense of themselves and have some sort of physical substrate,
00:23:28.000whether it's carbon or silicon, That they're still going to have to deal with certain issues of incarnation, of being in a form, a physical form of some sort, even if it's a very loose, digital, very fast flickering form.
00:23:43.000There's still something there and there's still some sort of reference point.
00:23:47.000And I think that's where the Buddhist tradition has something to say, even about superintelligence and what that experience would be like.
00:23:54.000Because as long as there's a form, and as long as there's an identity, right, like a reference point, a me, then there's going to be certain kinds of issues that we can't get rid of.
00:24:03.000Like, then I have to deal with you, and I have to deal with these other yous.
00:24:07.000And then there's things or objects outside of me, and some of them I want, and some of them I don't want, and some of them I'm just going to ignore.
00:24:15.000And so even if I were a super intelligent consciousness, which I can't imagine because my imagination is so limited, I still think there will be some amount of fundamental dissatisfaction that's built into the experience of being an individual who has a reference point.
00:24:33.000And I think that's in some sense what the Buddhist path is about seeing clearly, is that most of our existential suffering and despair comes from This fundamental experience of being a separate being who exists on this side of my body.
00:24:52.000I mean, if you really stop and think about true enlightenment and being completely in the moment, doesn't that exist in the animal kingdom exclusively?
00:25:01.000I mean, that's the only way they exist.
00:25:04.000And in a sense, that is the most biological of all creatures.
00:25:09.000And that's a creature that has no existential issues.
00:25:13.000They don't have any angst in terms of their future, their past.
00:25:18.000They live and exist completely in the moment.
00:25:21.000So isn't it just our awareness of the futility of this existence that's part of the problem?
00:25:27.000Because along the way, we're innovating, we're expanding, we're growing, we're doing all these different things, we're Going to biohacking conferences and whatever the hell you're doing.
00:25:39.000But at the end of the day, you live and you die.
00:26:11.000The existential angst of being conscious, of being able to recognize that this is kind of...
00:26:20.000At the end of the day, this is just a weird little trip you're on.
00:26:25.000You're on a birth-to-death trip and...
00:26:28.000If you become something that's not human, if you become something that's not burdened by biology, it's not burdened by sexual urges or any of the petty urges of modern human life that we all struggle with,
00:27:48.000What has created everything that we have?
00:27:51.000Everything that we have, every building that we've ever made, every work of art that we've ever created, is essentially this thing inside human beings that wants us to innovate and create.
00:28:03.000This thing that has allowed us to radically reshape our environment, that has allowed us to design cities and buildings Pieces and pieces of art and pieces of architecture and all these different things that we've created has all come from that same desire,
00:28:23.000But if the human body, if we transcend it with some sort of an artificial creation and we become far more enlightened and intelligent, the ultimate question will be why?
00:28:34.000Well, I would say the ultimate question for me would be, who are we?
00:28:42.000Because, you know, when I'm listening to you talk about this, I'm like, huh, there's a part of me that's like, no, like, let's not do that!
00:28:50.000And then there's this other part of me that's like, yeah, that desire to create and that desire to move forward and the evolutionary, like, impulse in us all is so strong.
00:28:58.000And that's what makes us so beautiful.
00:29:00.000And so when I really touch into the mystery of it all and the beauty and the wonder and what you're talking about with the art, to me, it's like not such a question of trying to get out of this anymore.
00:29:11.000It's more like a question of how can we use these technologies and the things that we are learning through science and the natural laws of things Because honestly, if we start to violate much more of our natural laws, our oceans are going to rebel and our Earth is going to become unstable,
00:29:29.000So we do have to balance the biological component with the evolutionary impulse.
00:29:35.000And one thing that comes to my mind is philosopher Ken Wilber talks about transcend and include a lot.
00:29:42.000So what if, you know, part of what we're doing is learning how to transcend some of our limitations as human beings and at the same time include some of those limitations?
00:29:58.000Yeah, I just wonder what would happen if we eliminated all of our biological urges, and would things just completely stop?
00:30:06.000Why would anybody create art if we don't want to impress other folks?
00:30:10.000Well, I think if we have a choice, maybe some individuals would choose to eliminate those things, and maybe some would choose not to, right?
00:31:03.000We have this consistent, constant need for improvement, and that is essentially designed into the evolutionary process itself.
00:31:13.000That's what led single-celled organisms to divide.
00:31:17.000Become multi-celled organisms to get out of the ocean, to seek land, to seek shelter, to seek improvements in altering its environment in order to protect itself from predators, which led us to the 21st century, to where we are today, having this conversation.
00:31:32.000That somehow, I don't know if you understand it, but I don't understand how my voice is being processed down into ones and zeros and pumped through the sky and people are getting it on their phone right now as they're driving in their car.
00:32:17.000Caterpillars that look like predators, they develop eyes on their backs so that they can look scary, so that less animals eat them, or at least they've gotten to that point where that design...
00:32:29.000I mean, I don't know how you can ever really truly completely explain some of these butterflies that have these elaborate images that have sort of emerged throughout, I mean, how many hundreds of thousands or millions of years of evolution, but it's incredibly fascinating that they've...
00:32:47.000We've developed this need to figure out how to trick animals so they can continue to breed.
00:33:48.000If you don't have a motivation, if you don't have an expiration date, if you don't have people's sexual choices to appeal to, if you don't have people's social choices to appeal to,
00:34:04.000if you don't want people to like you, if you don't have any desire biologically, what's the motivation?
00:34:11.000Well, I mean, obviously this is highly speculative in a way, but...
00:34:17.000Maybe I'd just throw in one piece and kind of bring it back down to the analog version of intelligence, which is these human bodies sitting here having this conversation, if that's okay with you.
00:34:33.000I'd say there's another piece that's really important in what you're saying.
00:34:37.000There is the drive to innovate and to transcend, but then I think there's also a very powerful force that moves in the other direction and I would call it compassion or care or love and it's that part of us that wants to include everything like Emily mentioned transcending and including you know we can become better and better and better but what good is it if everyone else is left behind you know what good is it if we're you know living living the high life and there
00:35:07.000are millions of people who are struggling to feed themselves At some level, when we get in touch with the reality of that, there's part of us, if our hearts are open, that really resonates with the pain of that and wants to include and wants to respond to that suffering and to that difficulty.
00:35:27.000And I think that's part of the reason life exists as well.
00:35:31.000It's not just to transcend, but it's also to care for and to respond to the needs of others because we realized it's not just about us.
00:35:39.000It's not just this experience that's important.
00:35:43.000There are all these others that are also having an experience and they're not unlike me.
00:35:48.000And that's why compassion can exist because I realized Your experience is not unlike my experience.
00:35:55.000There's a way in which we have this common hardware, wetware, this common sense of consciousness, I assume, this common hopes and fears, desires.
00:36:08.000And so in that sense, I think compassion is a really powerful force that also holds life together and keeps it from flinging apart into the ethers.
00:36:19.000But the cynical and objective amongst us would look at that and say, well, that's just a mechanism in order to keep society together to allow this consistent innovation.
00:36:27.000You need people to stay together in order to get people to work together in order to get the maximum amount of productivity out of the human mind and creativity.
00:36:40.000If they don't love each other, they're not going to build shit.
00:36:42.000They're going to go live like Ted Kaczynski and hide up in the woods in a little shack and try to stay away from each other as much as possible.
00:36:50.000Part of the reason why we do so well is because we have compassion.
00:36:54.000It could certainly be considered an evolutionary device to ensure innovation and constant growth.
00:37:02.000I mean, every society that has done well has been a society that cherished its members.
00:37:07.000If you don't give a fuck about your members, you get a North Korea-type situation.
00:37:12.000Where there's no innovation, the country's stagnant, everyone lives in fear, the lights are off at night, and that's a worst case scenario for a modern culture, and that is based almost entirely on those same ideas.
00:37:27.000The lack of compassion for your fellow beings Exhibited, like, if you looked at the one thing, or you asked people, what's the one thing that troubles you most about a brutal dictatorship like North Korea?
00:37:39.000Well, the poor people that live there.
00:37:41.000The poor people that are suffering that live there.
00:37:42.000Our compassion is a part of what makes us, it's a component, a critical component, which makes us successful.
00:37:50.000Yeah, and I think, you know, you can look at it from that perspective, but I think there's other ways to look at it, which is that compassion in and of itself is a good thing.
00:38:01.000You know, that there's something inherent in the experience of compassion, of the open heart that's responding to suffering, which is in itself good.
00:38:09.000And that, you know, when you experience and touch into that space, which completely dissolves cynicism in the moment of it, there is this feeling of this is right.
00:38:22.000Like, this is right to respond to the difficulty of other beings, because on some fundamental level, we aren't separate from each other.
00:38:29.000And in some fundamental way, the level of the universe itself.
00:38:33.000You know, everything arose out of this momentary Big Bang, right?
00:39:52.000I think you're speaking to our habitual patterns that get ingrained in us as we grow up.
00:39:58.000And with the Buddhist training that I've been through, it really does teach us how to start to deconstruct some of that training.
00:40:04.000I mean, compassion naturally arises in a moment's notice without there being this strong sense of contraction around our small sense of self.
00:40:14.000You know, when your child reaches for the stove, you're going to try to jerk it back because you don't want it to burn itself, right?
00:41:26.000The whole thing was resolved, and we had this elation, this light feeling of happiness, that we did something.
00:41:35.000Yeah, we were tired, and we'd just flown in, and we would rather just go to our hotel, but instead, we spent an hour or so, and we felt way better.
00:42:00.000Yeah, that's where the cynic would say that the whole reason for that is so that these humans can breed and make more humans who figure out a way to make a better electric car, who figure out a way to make a wormhole.
00:42:12.000It also reminds me of science and the mirror neurons, too, because we're learning that we're mirroring each other and what you're doing is affecting me and what I'm doing is affecting you.
00:42:21.000And it's rewiring our brains as we're talking.
00:42:24.000So in that sense, we really are so connected that we don't even realize how connected we are.
00:42:29.000So, in a sense, yeah, it is one of the most important things.
00:42:36.000And it's fascinating when you see people change the people that they hang around with, and they all of a sudden improve or regress.
00:42:45.000And that's a consistent pattern with human beings.
00:42:48.000You find a really good group of friends who are super healthy and like to do a lot of exciting, fun things, and they're compassionate to each other, and you start mimicking that behavior, or at least mirroring that behavior.
00:42:58.000Or when you're around people that are just complete messes.
00:43:01.000So we don't have to be ruled by our biological desires.
00:43:03.000So when you're saying, like, greed and hatred and competition and all that, then, I mean, maybe that is where we are at a certain point, and some of us are, and with evolutionary drive to continue to create and open and really deepen into what some of the Western traditions have been talking about,
00:43:20.000then, you know, it's possible to, like, I don't know, evolve ourselves as we're even talking here.
00:43:27.000Yeah, but my question remains, like, when you remove all these biological urges, what is the purpose of this thing?
00:43:35.000Because it doesn't seem to me that there would be any reason to go on if you removed everything biological.
00:43:42.000And that's just, yeah, that's just something.
00:43:50.000It's hard to know because we don't know what it would be like to be whatever that is.
00:43:55.000Our minds go and try to construct it all.
00:43:57.000So it's sort of like, we can only imagine what it would be like not to be like we are, but it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be something that has not yet emerged.
00:44:08.000So maybe we could have a follow-up interview when we've all attained super intelligence.
00:44:46.000And I really have a feeling that it's going to have nothing to do with the body and all to do with the mind.
00:44:53.000And I think that this idea of transcending the human body and I have a feeling they're gonna figure out some way that the human mind can access other states, dimensions, levels of consciousness that literally the human body will be irrelevant.
00:45:26.000Are you opening up the floodgates for human neurotransmitters and the body's ability to process them gets skewed and it presents you with all sorts of...
00:45:34.000You know, delusional beliefs and crazy visions because your visual cortex can't process all these chemicals correctly, so you have this wild, fantastic ride.
00:45:45.000It gives you this sense of euphoria and this elated sense of being.
00:46:02.000But then there's also the perspective of consciousness itself, you know, of the experiential aspect of it, which is, I think, also part of the challenge...
00:46:13.000Of our moment in time, I think, is starting to recognize that both of these perspectives are valid, that the perspective of consciousness of experience is also valid.
00:46:22.000So, from the perspective of consciousness, you know, Those altered states of experience reveal something valid.
00:46:31.000Now, whether or not we can, from that point of view, describe the biology of it, I think it's clear we can't.
00:46:37.000And so it's useful to have a description of, like, this is what's happening in the brain, these areas are deafferentiating, and then these areas are lighting up, and all that stuff.
00:46:49.000Because, you know, we're having thoughts about brains.
00:46:53.000And the only way brains exist is through our internal representations of brains and in terms of human consciousness.
00:47:00.000So I think, you know, that'd be the other perspective is like consciousness itself is also a valid perspective on this.
00:47:07.000And from that point of view, you know, those moments of altered experience of, like, compassion, like you described, when, you know, you realized you helped the person in Asheville and were there for him, or, you know, when your child's born, or when you, you know, take a hallucinogenic approach,
00:47:22.000Medicine with the intention of learning more about your, you know, your deepest nature or something about yourself or going on a meditation retreat and exploring your experience moment by moment.
00:47:33.000I think those things reveal very important truths that are at the level of consciousness itself that, you know, you can't convince a skeptic or a That they're true, but you can give them the instructions and say,
00:47:49.000hey, run this program and see what happens.
00:47:52.000And if you do it with a certain kind of intention, then it changes your life.
00:48:32.000And so there is a certain kind of in-your-face situation I think we're constantly coping with as human beings.
00:48:42.000And compassion can be a way to cope with that and love.
00:48:48.000There's a term that this Tibetan master used who came to America in the 70s named Chagyam Trungpa, and he said, there's compassion and then there's idiot compassion.
00:48:57.000And idiot compassion is when you are trying to respond to suffering because you can't handle it, because you can't actually deal with it.
00:49:04.000So you try to make it go away, or you try to, oh, poor you, poor you, that kind of compassion.
00:49:09.000So compassion can just as easily be a way to cope with the shocking reality that we don't know what's even going to happen next, let alone what's going to happen in 50 to 100 years from now.
00:49:27.000I always felt like compassion was just the way that we kept together, that we kept our love for each other and bonds, and that feeling other people's pain is a way to ensure that we minimize that as much as possible, that it's just sort of part of the biological process,
00:49:43.000especially the biological process of transcending the simple monkey mind and moving into some new state, the ability to understand each other, communicate, express information, and also To be able to conceptualize very bizarre ideas that human beings have kind of based their entire society on.
00:50:03.000We based our society on bizarre things like laws, regulations, money.
00:50:11.000The bandwidth, you know, there's weird concepts that we have had to factor in to our view of the world, the environment, our interaction with that environment, our effect on that environment, how much can we mitigate that?
00:50:27.000How much is just a necessary evil to maintain our wonderful existence with air conditioning and high-speed internet?
00:50:38.000And how much of those are connected to, again, the same thing, this constant need to stay together, help each other innovate, help each other move forward, press forward, and continue to grow?
00:50:51.000And is something like Buddhism or Transcendental Meditation or anything, are these just sort of like ways to get through this in a relatively sane way?
00:51:03.000Are these essentially man-created technologies, human-created technologies to mitigate the natural world?
00:51:13.000I mean, because humans sat under trees, you know, in India, 2500 years ago, thousands of years ago, and explored their own minds and did come up with various, you know, programs for how to work with experience.
00:51:27.000Isn't that fascinating that someone a long time ago was looking around at people hacking each other to death of swords and was like, you know, there's got to be a way around some of this shit.
00:53:00.000Bunch of starving people letting cows go because the cows make shit that mushrooms grow on.
00:53:05.000Yeah, I mean, I think it's crazy too that people figured out how to pay attention and use their body in a way to produce some of those effects endogenously, you know, to be able to experience that even without mushrooms, you know, to be able to get into those kind of states of consciousness and even to stabilize them,
00:53:22.000you know, as a kind of baseline of existence.
00:53:26.000Well, kundalini masters, people that are really good at kundalini, I have a friend who teaches it and he says that he can reach these complete psychedelic states where he's interacting with beings that may or may not be there that he can visually recognize in front of him.
00:53:40.000Like he can see it as if he's tripping.
00:53:43.000And I'm like, how are you getting there?
00:53:46.000It's just years and years and years of mindfulness in this very specific practice.
00:53:51.000Concentration, you know, is always tied to, in every contemplative tradition, these sort of psychedelic or psychic experiences.
00:53:59.000It's like the ability to focus and to be able to absorb consciousness in one thing seems to be the gateway into which, you know, all of those other weird experiences can arise.
00:54:10.000But you're told to not pay attention to those experiences, that that's like, you're missing the point if you're trying to seek out these hallucinations.
00:54:40.000I mean, sorcery, like in Tibet, you know?
00:54:42.000There's all these people out there casting weird stuff at each other.
00:54:47.000I've been to Tibet, so I don't know how much of it is you can just see weird stuff happening and how much of it is their mythology.
00:54:53.000But all the same, there's enough weird stories coming out of places of people that have been sitting in caves for millennia, exploring their own consciousness.
00:55:18.000We did a meditation a couple weekends ago and one of the guided meditations was to imagine a lotus flower in your heart that had a thousand petals and each petal was shooting off a beam of clear light that connected with another petal in another being's heart and that sort of spread out infinitely but it also went in Both directions,
00:55:38.000like in terms of the atomic and quantum level and the universes within atoms.
00:55:42.000And it went outward in all directions.
00:55:45.000And I'm like, okay, these dudes were, you know, because they mostly were dudes that were able to do this.
00:55:51.000These dudes were like exploring the furthest reaches of the inner, you know, cosmos.
00:55:58.000What do you mean by they were mostly dudes that were able to do this?
00:56:01.000Well, I mean, the cultures of Tibet and most of these places, you know, there were nuns and there were women doing the practices, but I don't think they had as much opportunity to do them because of the organization of their cultures.
00:56:13.000But there's not a biological limitation in achieving these experiences, right?
00:56:57.000This is such a confusing thing to me because I've been such an advocate on the sensory deprivation tank and I talk to so many people that are into meditation.
00:57:04.000I'm like, how do you not use the one tool that is essentially designed for the best meditation possible?
00:57:12.000Well, retreats, you know, we've both done a lot of months of intensive retreat, and it's kind of like sensory deprivation.
00:57:18.000I mean, you don't talk, you don't, you know, you eat what's in front of you, you're sitting in silence most of the time.
00:57:26.000Like, it really does limit the sensory input.
00:57:29.000And, you know, I've been in states of consciousness where all sensory input sort of disappears for a while, so I feel like I've had that experience of...
00:57:37.000How could you say that, though, if you haven't done it?
00:57:39.000If you haven't done the actual tank itself...
00:57:41.000Oh, I don't know how it compares exactly, but I know what it's like to experience a lack of sensory input.
00:58:48.000You need a new advertiser here, I think.
00:58:49.000Well, I sort of help my friend Crash, who owns the Float Lab in Venice, but I don't do it for financial compensation.
00:58:56.000I just do it because I want people to know about it.
00:58:59.000But I retweet people's tanks all the time that I have no affiliation with whatsoever just because I think it's a massively important tool.
00:59:08.000That is somehow or another slipped through the fingers of our consciousness.
00:59:13.000I don't get how people haven't grabbed ahold of that and ran with it.
00:59:17.000I read a study one time that says a lot of people once they have some sort of opening, we could call it mystical experience for lack of a better word right now, that a lot of people don't want to have them again after they've had it the first time.
00:59:30.000Something about the opening kind of freaks people out.
00:59:39.000So it seems like the expansion of consciousness is something that is naturally in us as well.
00:59:45.000And so thinking about the technology where we started this conversation a little bit, it's like there is this impulse to explore and to expand and upload into different states and realms of being.
00:59:58.000But that fear of expansion, that's just the ego.
01:00:04.000That's just your body trying to reclaim some sort of walls.
01:00:08.000Let's put boundaries on this sucker so we can clearly define it.
01:00:13.000When you have a psychedelic experience, one of the things that's the most talked about aspect of it is the boundary dissolving aspect of it.
01:00:24.000I remember one of the first times that I did a really potent psychedelic was, 5 MEO DMT and the overwhelming message from it was that there's no up and there's no down and that you're just a part of the the infinite and that feeling is very like saying it like this is it sounds like just a bunch of noise coming out of your mouth that sort of vaguely represents what this concept would be but Experiencing it in a psychedelic state was so
01:00:54.000overwhelmingly educational and so It was so boundary-defining, like whatever I had thought of as a boundary in the past was now like, oh, that was just this and this is just that.
01:01:08.000And what you really are is one thing that is holding all these other things that are all a part of this huge thing.
01:01:38.000Yeah, no, Shinzen Young, one of our favorite teachers, he says, emptiness is not a thing, it's a pure doing, which is sort of another way of saying, I think, what you're pointing to, that everything is just happening as it is, and there's no, in a sense, there's no thing.
01:02:34.000And that these ideas, whether it's meditation or yoga or psychedelics or these ideas of mindfulness, are in a lot of ways an attempt to escape this monkey realm, to escape this biological realm that we find ourselves in,
01:02:50.000to try to, if not escape it, rather to manage it.
01:03:11.000I'm just putting shingles on this thing and it's going to hopefully be something.
01:03:16.000I think we each have to answer that question to what.
01:03:22.000It's a very personal thing in that way, I think.
01:03:24.000I mean, I think it's personal in one way, but it's also collective in another way because we, you know, we influence each other and we get attracted to things that are connected with what's important to us.
01:03:36.000But, you know, to me, to what, you know, I think what's beautiful is, you know, to move toward deeper sense of wisdom, to move toward being able to live in harmony with that realization of interconnectivity, of deep, of the kind of profound interconnectivity that you're describing,
01:03:53.000you know, that Literally, at some level, there isn't a separation between us.
01:04:03.000Do I sort of say, oh, what's the fucking point and just give up?
01:04:07.000Or do I take that experience and begin to dismantle habits and ideas and beliefs that are opposed to that experience and actually begin to live more in harmony to You know, in the kind of language of contemplative training,
01:04:23.000to embody that realization, to make it your own, you know, and to make your life an expression of that, you know, expression of that interconnectivity and compassion.
01:05:16.000I love all the fun things you could do as a person.
01:05:19.000But what I'm trying to get to when we're talking transhumanism and this escaping the boundaries of biology is There's a guy that we talked about on this podcast before that got bitten by a shark.
01:05:50.000Hey, I know you got your arm and leg bit off by Shark, but lucky for you, this is 2014 and we have some incredible innovation that we've created that's gonna allow you to have this leg that moves very much like a regular leg and you're gonna have a hand that can do a lot of things that a regular hand can do.
01:06:09.000So that's better than not having that arm and leg.
01:06:14.000Five years from now we'll have a better arm and a better leg and you're gonna enjoy this.
01:06:18.000Well, as time goes on, the other parts of his body start failing.
01:06:24.000Like, you know what, man, there's a problem because you have this artificial right leg, your left knee is gone, so we're going to replace your left leg too with this artificial leg.
01:06:31.000So this way you'll have two artificial legs, but they're going to work great.
01:06:36.000Okay, listen, man, your heart is going.
01:06:38.000But, good news, we have an artificial heart, and we're going to take this artificial...
01:06:42.000And a hundred years from now, this guy is just a brain in this carbon...
01:06:48.000Fiber body and he's looking at his eyes.
01:06:52.000He's looking through these artificially created eyes and they say, listen, everything works great except the cells of your brain are reproducing irregularly and you're going to develop Parkinson's.
01:07:03.000But we have figured out a way to download your consciousness into an artificial brain.
01:07:09.000So we'll just download your consciousness into this art and what's left of you?
01:08:03.000How much of that pattern is based on biological need?
01:08:06.000How much of that pattern is based on this cultural conditioning and just the patterns of behavior that you've adopted along the way in your life and the environment in which you grew up in?
01:08:19.000How much of that goes away when you have a brain that's made out of fibers that are constructed out of silicon or whatever?
01:08:28.000I guess it depends on how it's constructed.
01:08:30.000This reminds me of, I don't know if you've had the experience, and some of my teachers talk about this as an example a lot, is looking in the mirror now, and you kind of get surprised that you've aged, but there's something in you that you don't feel has aged.
01:08:47.000Just like, you know, you just, there's part of you that hasn't aged, and then at the same time, if you look in the mirror, you can tell that you've aged.
01:09:17.000So when we're talking about, like, if we do upload or what is it that is still there, like, I wonder if some of that will still be there, that feeling of nothing's changed.
01:09:28.000And then there is this change that happens and we age.
01:09:32.000Well, if we'd stop aging, I mean, if it completely ends, or if it's a temporary aging, we just got to go and get repainted.
01:09:41.000You know, I mean, if your car gets a patina from, you know, rocks and chips on the road and stuff, all you have to do is bring it to the body shop.
01:10:32.000And what I find bizarre is, like, I find it bizarre now, is, I mean, a lot of the fear of death seems to be connected to a fear of the unknown, of what would happen after death.
01:10:50.000And not knowing that is part of, I think, of the terror, the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen.
01:10:57.000And what I find interesting is, you know, and we were just talking to one of our Zen teachers who teaches here in Santa Monica, she pointed out, you know, in every moment we actually don't know what's coming next.
01:11:08.000You know, that not knowing, it's something we're constantly having to deal with, the terror of not knowing.
01:11:14.000Or, you know, as her Zen teacher called it, the don't know mind.
01:11:20.000I find it interesting to kind of reflect on what it's like to rest in the not knowing, to rest in that sense of not knowing what's going to come next.
01:11:31.000Because in that moment, every next moment is both a death of this moment and the rebirth of something new.
01:11:37.000There's something new coming online and there's something...
01:11:41.000And in that sense, I think if we become comfortable and familiar with that process of moment by moment birth and death, then, you know, whatever happens, whether my consciousness gets uploaded to the cloud or I die, there's some sense, there's some part of me which is fundamentally okay with that death process,
01:13:23.000There's so many different aspects to what is life, what defines this existence for the person who experiences it themselves, and does that transition to something else at the moment of death?
01:13:35.000And is that why the brain produces all these endogenous psychedelic chemicals that give you, when you take them, give you this elated sense of being, give you this This sense of relieving of anxiety and this sense of connection to everything and everyone that exists.
01:14:09.000And would we be trapping whatever consciousness we have now In this artificial creation, if you can download consciousness into some artificial creation, is that a hellish existence for that consciousness?
01:14:22.000Because it's no longer able to transition to the next phase of being?
01:14:25.000And would you be able to transition to that next phase of being as a biological entity?
01:14:30.000And then realize, like, oh my god, what did I do with my consciousness?
01:14:34.000I left it back there in that fucking robot.
01:14:36.000And who would be conscious of that if there was no consciousness?
01:15:31.000Everything that we are, as far as the way our society is structured, as far as our senses of fairness and love and compassion...
01:15:40.000They're all based on biological urges and needs.
01:15:43.000The need for community is a strong urge to keep us all together so we stay alive longer.
01:15:48.000All of these things are a part of being a biological entity.
01:15:53.000And when we no longer are, why would we engineer all those biological urges and thoughts and concepts into this carbon fiber creation?
01:16:05.000I've heard the argument, and I think this is interesting too, though, that the need for community goes back to the very earliest moments of the universe.
01:16:14.000That, in some sense, when atoms emerged, they emerged in collectives.
01:16:20.000They didn't just emerge as a single atom.
01:16:24.000When a single thing emerges, it emerges also with a collective.
01:16:28.000In that sense, the sense of community is hardwired maybe into the universe itself.
01:16:34.000But isn't also the sense of competition then?
01:16:37.000Because all biological life is this wild race of things eating things.
01:16:55.000Biological footprint as small as possible and do as little harm as possible, but every step you take is killing life.
01:17:03.000Every time you close your mouth, you're killing bacteria.
01:17:07.000I mean, when you wash yourself, you're killing living things.
01:17:12.000There's a lot of weirdness to this whole life that is tied to survival, tied to birth, death, and the prolonging of the species, or the improvement of the species as it tries to prolong.
01:17:28.000I mean, it's a paradox, too, in a way.
01:17:32.000But isn't that part of what's cool about being alive, is that it's not going to last?
01:17:36.000I mean, that's one of the big issues with the transhumanist movement, this idea of transcending the biological limitations and living forever.
01:19:24.000I really don't appreciate the fact that I can't have...
01:19:38.000Well, that's fascinating you bringing that up because that does open up a different realm of possibilities.
01:19:49.000We can transcend the limitations of biology and that includes experiencing multiple things simultaneously or the ability to experience multiple lives like if we figure out a way to combine our consciousness or whatever we call our consciousness once we transcend biological life and combine our minds so that we do experience the lives of multiple people if not the entire human race that's on the same track Experience it all simultaneously and
01:20:19.000that this is beyond the realm of biological understanding.
01:20:23.000Maybe that's where we evolve from this thing and become something that's far more complex and complicated.
01:20:31.000Unless one aspect of that decides it doesn't want to be merged into the whole, and then you get warring factions.
01:20:53.000What if there's a Mac version and a Windows version, and they're non-compatible, and everyone's trying to figure out which one is going to be the Betamax, and which one...
01:21:01.000Betamax was better, but VHS survived, and you've got to pick the right team.
01:21:16.000This is reminding me of the fluidity of perspectives as I've trained and practiced.
01:21:21.000It's like the mind has the capacity to take on multiple perspectives and how important that actually is in the world today to be able to take different points of view and take multiple perspectives.
01:21:34.000And not have the right way or the way.
01:21:59.000Like, if you went back in time a few hundred years ago and tried to explain to them the internet, they'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
01:22:07.000If you went back before the printing press and tried to explain the internet and trying to access Google on your phone with voice commands or Siri, you know?
01:22:17.000Yeah, try to explain that to people that lived before printed type.
01:22:21.000They'd be like, what are you even yapping about?
01:22:23.000They would never be able to wrap their head around it, much like we will never be able to wrap our head around the possibilities once we transcend the biological limitations.
01:22:33.000The hive mind, to me, seems to be the most likely.
01:24:21.000The thing I'm most excited about is creating contemplative training environments in the Rift.
01:24:28.000What would it be like to completely, like you said, immerse yourself in a visual field with nothing outside of it and be able to...
01:24:36.000In some sense, experience some of the same states that psychedelics bring on, but directly through a technological interface.
01:24:45.000One of my friends called it technodelics, the sense that the technology could produce some of those states as well.
01:24:52.000Well, that's what McKenna's belief was about DMT, is that he believed that if you could create a world that mimics exactly the psychedelic experience of dimethyltryptamine, that he believed that in that state,
01:25:08.000those same beings that you interface with when you take the psychedelic drugs would show up.
01:25:14.000He had this, like, field of dreams type scenario.
01:25:28.000Yeah, that one day the state will, I mean, the virtual reality will achieve the type of possibilities to achieve something like that.
01:25:38.000Yeah, and then the question becomes, and I think McKenna said this, what worlds do we build?
01:25:44.000What virtual realities do we build and what values do we build into them and program into them?
01:25:50.000Because I don't think that issue is going to go away.
01:25:52.000We still have to ask those questions and decide what we're building.
01:25:57.000Well, again, that's the real mindfuck.
01:25:59.000It's not even essentially that we're going to have a different biological body, but we might have a different reality that is indistinguishable from this reality that we can pick up and put on a scale.
01:26:11.000The concept of virtual existence, of some sort of existence in a simulation, as it were.
01:26:22.000Because simulation implies that it's not real.
01:26:24.000But if it has all the consequences and all the feeling and textures and all the interactions and interfaces that the regular life does as far as tactile, as far as heat, sensitivity, all the different aspects of our life, we could recreate those exactly.
01:26:45.000If it is an experience and you're taking in every single aspect of that experience exactly the same way you would take in this life, what is it?
01:26:56.000And if that's the case, how do we know we're not already in it?
01:27:00.000How do we know that this isn't an indistinguishable artificial reality that we have created and we're just tapped into this sucker?
01:28:59.000I would agree in the sense that it's quite possible that if it is possible to one day achieve the sort of Technological ability to create something that's indistinguishable from this reality.
01:29:12.000If it is possible, and I assume that it's going to be possible, if you hear about things like this new Oculus Rift and compare it to the quill that used to have to dip into ink to write things down, that was the only way to distribute information.
01:29:24.000Yeah, it's possible that one day we're going to achieve that.
01:29:27.000But the other thing that you have to take into consideration is it's almost universally accepted that at least if this world is real, and if this life that we are living is not a simulation, it's universally accepted that this is the pinnacle of human innovation.
01:30:15.000I don't understand why anybody would reach a contrary conclusion if all the evidence, whether it's cultural, like watching old television shows and comparing them to the sophistication of today's, whether it's musical, comparing old Beethoven music and old music from the 50s,
01:30:35.000like Buddy Holly type shit, and comparing it to what people are doing today, whether it's Technological, which is super easy and clear to grasp and understand.
01:30:46.000There's no doubt whatsoever that we're at the apex.
01:30:49.000As far as what we can observe, we have more ability, we're more competent, we're more able to alter our environment, communicate, etc.
01:31:29.000We've got this story about, you know, the universe started this many billion years ago with the Big Bang, and then it sort of coalesced into whatever it coalesced into, and eventually, you know, life emerged a billion years ago and evolved to be what it is now.
01:31:43.000And we're at this sort of linear progression of evolution unfolding.
01:31:49.000But that story is only like 200 years old.
01:31:52.000So why would we assume that that story is accurate?
01:31:56.000Or that that way of looking at it is accurate?
01:31:58.000I mean, it seems more likely that in 100 years we'll have a completely different conception of what the universe is.
01:32:03.000And I wonder if part of that conception, part of what we'll break down...
01:32:08.000And I'll tie this back into the contemplative tradition because it's something that breaks down in contemplative practice, is the sense that time exists in the way we think it exists.
01:32:22.000Time, you know, in the Zen tradition with Dogen, is holochronic.
01:32:27.000Like the holographic universe, you know, all these things are contained within themselves.
01:32:31.000In this sort of, a lot of these Buddhist descriptions of consciousness, you know, all times exist simultaneously and can be accessed simultaneously.
01:32:40.000You know, it can be accessed here or there.
01:32:43.000And so in that sense, you know, the...
01:32:45.000As the traditional texts say, the Buddhas of past, present, and future all exist right now, including ourselves.
01:32:52.000And I don't know, that would be a very different way of experiencing time.
01:32:56.000I experience it, you know, maybe on occasions experience it that way, but for the most part, that is not the way I tend to think this is a linear thing that's got to start and it'll have an end.
01:33:06.000Well, the number one mindfuck of all time is infinity.
01:33:09.000And being that not only is infinity...
01:33:13.000I think, especially when your children...
01:33:16.000Kids will say something like, I win times infinity.
01:33:23.000The big mindfuck of infinity is that not only is...
01:33:28.000The concept of infinity impossible to grasp, but the parameters of that concept are so strange that if infinity is real and if the universe is infinite, the way it's been described to me is that everything that has ever happened on this earth in the exact order has happened On other Earths an infinite number of times,
01:33:55.000So right now the 1950s are going on an infinite number of times in the exact same order the 1950s went on in America.
01:34:03.000The 1950s on Earth, the 1950s are going on an infinite number of times in the universe, as are the 1960s, as are 1961, December 21st, as are December 22nd.
01:34:15.000All those days are happening We're good to go.
01:34:35.000Those things are all happening simultaneously throughout the universe.
01:34:39.000So everything is happening all at once.
01:34:43.000So if infinity is correct, like what their concept of time being constant and happening all at once, it is.
01:34:53.000It's just the container that holds it in is infinite.
01:34:58.000It is a physical manifestation of this concept.
01:35:02.000And, okay, a question to riff off that that I'd ask is, and is consciousness something that's happening to this biological being in this one variation of the universe?
01:35:13.000Or is consciousness something that moves through this infinite potentiality and experiences it?
01:35:21.000If you wake up and you're in this other you somewhere else in the multiverse.
01:35:27.000Your decisions and choices allow you to travel from one potential to the next, but wherever you left off, maybe you were a smoker or a drinker in the past, or you had some sort of bad habits, and you escaped those bad habits,
01:36:47.000I hate it when I accuse myself, rightly so, of hippie bullshit.
01:36:51.000But if infinity is correct, and not only do they believe that the universe is infinite, but they believe there are an infinite number of universes, which is the ultimate, ultimate mindfuck, the fractal nature of reality itself being that...
01:37:03.000Every single galaxy, which contains hundreds of billions of stars, has a supermassive black hole in the center of it, which is exactly one half of one percent of the mass of the entire galaxy.
01:37:14.000And if you pass through that, you will enter into another universe of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with a black hole in the center that has a portal to another universe.
01:37:25.000And then the whole thing just keeps going on.
01:37:27.000So they're all, the whole, every universe is infinite and inside every universe is an infinite number of universes.
01:38:58.000Those are the ones that are really close.
01:39:00.000And if you stood on one of those stars and looked out into the distance, you would see stars that were equally far away, that seemed equally ridiculous to try to reach.
01:39:09.000And if you got to those, there's no end.
01:39:11.000You're going to keep going and going and going.
01:39:12.000So all the evidence of infinity, at least of the concept of great distance being outside of the realm of understanding, it's right in front of us every night.
01:39:27.000At the same time, I think there's a way of experiencing infinity that isn't about distance.
01:40:58.000And isn't that consciousness like a very limited consciousness?
01:41:02.000And as consciousness expands, what's the ongoing theme?
01:41:08.000When we're talking about meditation and meditative practices, enlightenment, achieving these psychedelic states through consciousness adjustment or consciousness manipulation, there's levels and layers to the whole thing.
01:41:24.000Yeah, there are levels and layers and there is this unified field of consciousness which no matter what is arising in it and how simple or complex it is, it's just what it is.
01:41:39.000That's why it's really strange to me that the concept of simple biology As opposed to complex biological life that understands itself.
01:41:49.000The simple biology of individual cells or then multi-celled organisms and then the concept of a being that's aware of itself and can communicate over vast distances like human beings.
01:42:02.000Extrapolate that a thousand years plus whatever it is from now.
01:42:08.000Do we have the ability to do the same thing with consciousness throughout the entire universe itself?
01:42:15.000Like, is our ability to communicate over vast distances and to communicate with each other, is this just a beginning stage and this never-ending process?
01:42:26.000Of dissolving boundaries, where the actual boundaries of space itself no longer exist.
01:42:32.000And we can interface with intelligent life that has figured out the same sort of shit everywhere else in the world.
01:46:00.000And the conversation that he has with Neil deGrasse Tyson, where he says they found self-correcting computer code in the heart of string theory.
01:47:15.000I've been, for the last 15 years, trying to answer the kinds of questions that my colleagues have been raising.
01:47:22.000And what I've come to understand is that there are these incredible pictures That contain all the information of a set of equations that are related to string theory.
01:47:30.000And it's even more bizarre than that because when you then try to understand these pictures you find out that buried in them are computer codes just like the type that you find in a browser when you go surf the web.
01:47:42.000And so I'm left with the puzzle of trying to figure out whether I live in the matrix or not.
01:47:49.000Wait, you're blowing my mind at this moment.
01:47:52.000Are you saying your attempt to understand the fundamental operations of nature leads you to a set of equations that are indistinguishable from the equations that drive search engines and browsers on our computers?
01:48:42.000It's a special kind of computer code that was invented by a scientist named Claude Shannon in the 1940s.
01:48:48.000That's what we find very, very deeply inside the equations that occur in string theory and in general in systems that we say are supersymmetric.
01:49:22.000Some of those codes are showing on the screen behind you right now.
01:49:26.000They don't look like codes, but these pictures, which we call adinkras, are graphical representations of sets of equations that are based on codes so this is in fact to answer your question more directly I have in my life come to a very strange place because I never expected that the movie The Matrix might be an accurate representation of the place in which I live Jim,
01:49:50.000may I give you an argument that we don't live in the matrix?
01:49:59.000There's a property that the real world right down here has, that no mathematical equation has, that no solution of an equation has, that no abstract object has.
01:50:10.000Here in the real world it is always some moment, which is one of a series of passing moments.
01:50:16.000In a mathematical equation, it doesn't have a flow of time in it.
01:50:59.000No, no, but let me finish, please, since we started with my discussion.
01:51:03.000The point is that I... You know, it's fun to talk about some deep metaphysical...
01:51:10.000essence that sits behind physics but for some of us it's about trying to find the most accurate way to describe where we live and so my statement is that in the description of our universe that is a supersymmetrical universe which we were going to test in the LHC if you believe that description I can show you the presence of these codes that's my statement I'm fucked.
01:51:44.000You listen to what these guys have just described and talked about.
01:51:49.000I disagree with the one guy saying that because we live in this moment and there's like this linear pattern to things that it can't be a mathematical equation.
01:52:18.000It's like you're traveling through this thing.
01:52:21.000Just because you're experiencing the now and it's progressive and you know the past and you're looking forward to the future and you're moving and you're in this moment, that doesn't mean it's not a mathematic representation.
01:52:33.000Well, what comes to mind is that a lot of times in our formulas or our mathematic equations, and I'm not a mathematician, the mind tendency is to lock down on the variables, but then it locks it down.
01:52:54.000Meaning that there's a tendency of mine to go into concepts as if they were solid and as if they were fixed.
01:53:04.000And any kind of time that we do that, we lock down the possibilities.
01:53:07.000So if we can relax into whatever it's representing, then that representation can continue to be fluid.
01:53:14.000And so therefore there's a lot of space and a lot of room to continue, and the present moment is not just one thing.
01:53:20.000I just don't understand the argument that if I guess he's trying to say, in a sense, that because we experience individual moments, we have this moment,
01:53:35.000we're in this moment, and that it's progressive, that this wouldn't be the case if it was a mathematical equation.
01:53:43.000Maybe I'm just too dumb, but it seems to me that that leaves out the possibilities of yes, you could do that.
01:53:49.000Yes, it could be a mathematical equation that you're experiencing, or it could be that this idea of this computer code that they're finding is just simply a lot like so many other codes that we found in things that indicate that nature has some sort of a pattern to it,
01:54:09.000Like, you know, the idea that these codes that exist in nature, they don't exist because this is artificial, but they exist because nature essentially runs on mathematics.
01:55:15.000I make this argument so often to try to undercut the notion that using technology to develop your ability to contemplate the universe and consciousness, that that somehow is unnatural.
01:57:39.000I mean, is the word most important the problem or the definition of most important the problem?
01:57:46.000Because what is most important to you is not most important to others.
01:57:49.000It's a very personal idea of what's most important.
01:57:52.000What's most important to starving people right now is getting them food and water.
01:57:56.000What's most important to the president is figuring out what to do about Israel and Gaza.
01:58:02.000What's most important is a very personal thing.
01:58:06.000Yeah, and yet there seem to be patterns, you know, like people have certain values and share those values with others, and there's a collective code that seems to be running as well.
01:58:18.000Yeah, and again, it boils back to what is that collective code?
01:59:48.000So we show up on some planet someday and And there's these super complex artificial beings that were created by biological beings, and then they just stopped, and they all just sat around waiting for the next stage of existence, and it never came.
02:00:02.000In Buddhist cosmology, actually, it's described that way.
02:00:30.000And so, at some point, they come out of it and then they die and then they get reborn into some other realm.
02:00:36.000Well, if you stop and think about the birth and death of stars and planets, if these artificial beings live on planets, They have a lifetime, a lifespan, whether they like it or not.
02:00:56.000Whether it's 500 billion years or whatever the hell your star's got in its tank, when that sucker's out, it's going to supernova, and that's a wrap, son.
02:01:05.000There's no more artificial intelligence on that rock that's spinning around in space.
02:01:10.000And the question is, does the artificial intelligence that exists recognize that and feel the need to protect itself from this finite existence by building a spaceship and traveling, physically traveling from dimension to dimension?
02:01:26.000Or traveling within the dimension of consciousness and looking for a resolution there.
02:01:31.000But does it have consciousness once it becomes artificial?
02:01:35.000Is consciousness purely something that the universe has created and we can't recreate?
02:02:17.000I use it in a simple way, like just basic awareness.
02:02:19.000Like just kind of the awareness of like being in this room, of sight, of sound, of sensation.
02:02:25.000So animals and even insects have consciousness in that sense.
02:02:28.000And Alfred White Northhead, you know, he sort of presumed that even atoms have a most fundamental sense of consciousness that he called prehension.
02:02:38.000That's kind of like a pantheistic perspective, but I think everything is imbued at the most fundamental level with consciousness.
02:02:46.000But that's probably because I've spent my whole life exploring consciousness.
02:02:53.000When you say everything, do you mean like physical objects as well, like a desk?
02:04:04.000Yeah, so at a sense, like, you know, I've had experiences, too, where the concentration becomes so strong that things just start to break down and everything seems to be dissolving and reconstructing and dissolving and reconstructing.
02:04:18.000Right, but isn't this just the perceptions of your own mind?
02:04:21.000Isn't this just that your mind has this ability to perceive its surroundings and its environment?
02:04:27.000And in meditation, you're altering the parameters.
02:04:32.000You're changing the physical state, the flow of the neurotransmitters, and all these different things are changing how you view the environment itself.
02:04:42.000But you're not really changing the environment at all.
02:04:47.000Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on how you look at it.
02:04:50.000Because, no, I mean, I'm not changing it, and then, yes, I am changing it by doing those particular practices.
02:04:56.000You're changing it in that you're changing your perceptions, that your perceptions change the way you interface with it.
02:05:06.000Yeah, like, the paradox of, you know, can we describe this from the outside objectively, and, like, that's the most true perspective, or do we describe it as the subjective conscious experience of it?
02:05:35.000I think there's something completely disenchanted about seeing everything as physical objects and this as a kind of hallucination to make us feel better so we can continue to propagate.
02:05:45.000I think there's something fundamentally wrong about that on the level of being a conscious being.
02:05:51.000And yet, I also see the tendency for people to conflate their own experiences with the external universe as being highly problematic, too.
02:07:15.000At some point we're going to realize that story was the best story we could come up with to describe the evolution of the physical universe or the development of it or whatever.
02:07:24.000But at some point, we're going to discover something that just blows our minds again.
02:07:28.000And then we're going to have to come up with a new story that can make sense of that.
02:07:31.000And we're going to get solidified about that.
02:07:33.000We're going to think, oh, that's actually the way it really is.
02:07:36.000And so I think there's something about certainty and really thinking we have it worked out that becomes problematic at some level.
02:07:46.000That's kind of the beauty of existence, right?
02:07:48.000Is that there's a lot of mystery to this thing.
02:08:00.000But that is real to be up in the mind and the brain and then forget that there is the feelings and the tenderness and the vulnerability in a positive way.
02:08:12.000Because there's actually a lot of power in the vulnerability.
02:08:14.000So there's some sort of balance that I think comes into play from some of the Eastern traditions and then some of the Western traditions because I feel that balance too in the room as we're talking between, you know, opening more into the mystical part of things and then also,
02:08:31.000you know, needing the concepts, needing the rational mind, needing the science.
02:08:35.000And where is that balance in our modern world?
02:08:39.000Well, yeah, that's the real question, right?
02:08:42.000Where's the balance in the modern world?
02:08:44.000Because the modern world is essentially without balance.
02:08:46.000That's the number one criticism of it, is that we're raping the earth and torturing our planet, robbing it of its resources and polluting the oceans and all that jazz.
02:09:22.000And the concept of consciousness in this way is more empowering or at least gives you a better feeling about the life that you're living and may enhance that experience,
02:09:37.000may make that experience a more pleasurable ride.
02:09:41.000And it may impact others around you because of mirror neurons and everything else.
02:10:55.000And in that sense, what people are doing with Buddhism or TM or spending a lot of time in isolation tanks, it's sort of a workaround for biology.
02:11:06.000Sort of a framework for developing your consciousness as you manage your biology.
02:12:37.000Like, I was there with a buddy, well, Duncan and another buddy of mine, we were walking on the street and going to this restaurant, and then we went to this bar.
02:12:44.000I was like, where else is there a place like this?
02:12:47.000It's like this small town of really like-minded folks, very open-minded.
02:14:11.000Your daily life and troubles, they are balanced in perspective by the images that you're seeing of the most spectacular versions of art that nature's created.
02:15:53.000We're seeing all these people moving around inside of their windows.
02:15:56.000Some of them, I'm sure, with binoculars and telescopes and shit, peering out at all the different stories that are playing out in the various little cubicles and boxes around them.
02:16:39.000So, the Buddhist geeks thing, one of the things that I thought that was interesting that you said, that I find too, is that you start doing it and people start getting connected to it and then you feel like you're kind of stuck in it.
02:16:49.000Like, in that, like, boy, I have a responsibility now.
02:17:25.000Usually it's with a person or group that we're exploring a particular topic.
02:17:30.000We've explored a lot around the interface of technology and Buddhist practice, various intersection points of how Buddhism is sort of interfacing with psychology and science and technology and various aspects of culture.
02:17:44.000So we'll usually kind of go into one of those intersection points and explore it with someone who's really been working at that interface and so who is, you know, in some ways the most informed in terms of their ignorance about what's going on at that interface and just kind of explore it and see what happens.
02:18:03.000Can you give me an example of like one of the recent episodes where you did that?
02:18:47.000What have they found in their research?
02:18:51.000Because David's been working a lot with folks like Shinzen Young, who has been meditating for 40 years and who has a really kind of Complex system of meditation and mindfulness practice, and it's something that he designed to be able to be scientifically studied.
02:19:08.000So they've been sort of putting advanced meditators in various fMRI machines and sort of seeing what happens when they do various kinds of tasks, seeing what happens when they have these kind of peak moments, you know, what actually is occurring in the nervous system, seeing if they can come up with a model to describe that neuroscientifically.
02:19:38.000And when we got in there for one of these meditation studies afterwards, I was like, are they taking into account the fact that the fMRI machine itself is like a completely altered state experience?
02:20:09.000Yeah, I talked to a neuroscientist and they were explaining that there's some issues with fMRIs where they're trying to use them for crime investigation.
02:20:19.000And they're being used by people who don't understand the limitations of the technology.
02:20:23.000So someone was accused of a crime in India, accused of murder, and convicted by an fMRI result because the fMRI showed functional knowledge of the crime scene.
02:20:38.000And she was very concerned about this because her perceptions of it were you could, by reviewing the case itself and by reviewing the information, you could give someone functional knowledge of a crime scene without them actually having been there while the crime scene was going on.
02:20:58.000So if you could read that there's functional knowledge of a crime scene, it doesn't mean that the person has actually been there while the crime was being played out.
02:21:07.000I mean, there's people that have functional knowledge of all sorts of places, like Mount Rushmore.
02:21:13.000If you play that in some folks' head that have deeply studied history and been paying a lot of attention, you might be able to show some sort of a functional knowledge of the area itself.
02:21:23.000Especially if they have a vested interest in studying this, like they're being accused of a murder, you would think there would be a lot of intensity and emotional connection to that.
02:21:34.000But these concepts, like all these different things, when it comes to technology and the understanding of the human brain, they're evolving right now in front of us so rapidly.
02:21:45.000I mean, just recently in the contemplative neuroscience field, they discovered that when you're, you know, not doing anything that is like your baseline state, that you are in fact doing something.
02:21:56.000And they just sort of, that was one of the big insights that came out of a contemplative neuroscience was that the default mode network of the brain is actually the selfing network.
02:22:04.000It's the network that is constantly constructing the sense of identity and referencing oneself, even when you're not doing anything.
02:22:11.000So that was, you know, the assumption prior to that was just like, when you're not doing anything, nothing's happening.
02:22:16.000But no, actually, a lot of stuff's happening.
02:22:19.000It's like your self-program is running, basically.
02:22:54.000I can't separate now out the experience of talking to all these people and exploring some of the topics that we explore from my experience now of How I understand the world.
02:23:08.000I'm sure you can, you know, kind of relate to that.
02:23:10.000Yeah, that's why I wanted to ask you because it becomes like a part of your life is not just about having these conversations but about broadcasting these conversations and exploring them not just through your own curiosity but through Trying to either illuminate or figure out a way to express these ideas across where you think they're going to be accepted or understood the best.
02:23:37.000Understood is probably the best way to describe it.
02:23:40.000The way it's going to interface with the most amount of people.
02:23:43.000I mean, sometimes I think, you know, it's one of the most grandiose things to do is to start a podcast or to start, you know, to be a media, you know, person.
02:23:51.000And I sometimes wonder about myself as a result.
02:23:56.000He started the podcast seven years ago, so I've kind of been on the periphery of it and just watching it from the outside perspective, too.
02:24:02.000It's fairly interesting to see how his podcast and the stuff that he talks about and his own development, I don't know if you can relate to it, has really come across in each episode.
02:24:12.000And now we have an archive of seven years of development of his own understanding and then how everything just kind of converges.
02:24:22.000Now we're really exploring the convergence.
02:24:24.000Well, the beautiful thing about a podcast is that you don't have someone telling you what the subject of today is going to be.
02:24:30.000You don't have someone telling you, this is what you should be interested in.
02:24:34.000You find these unique individual visions because of podcasts.
02:24:38.000And some of them are ridiculously stupid and some of them are awesome.
02:24:41.000And what's ridiculously stupid to me is awesome to someone else.
02:24:45.000And that's kind of the beauty of podcasting.
02:24:48.000And it goes along with what we're talking about, I think, when it comes to Technology and social media is like the the interfacing with ideas the ability to exchange information It's all sort of radically changing right in front of us and you know podcasting is just a part of that absolutely How do you feel like you're going to take this thing into the future?
02:25:28.000No, I think for us, we're doing Buddhist Geeks as a media project, but we're also meditation teachers, and we work a lot with other folks, and we've trained with various Buddhist teachers.
02:25:40.000So for us, we're wanting to make a space both for these conversations, but also for people to practice together in virtual space so that's a lot of our focus lately is on how to reinvent the Buddhist practice tradition for the 21st century and a big part of that that we're working on now is is doing retreats online you know periods of intensive immersive practice that happen in the context of your life and also you know we're building what we're calling the Buddhist Geeks Dojo which is
02:26:11.000going to be kind of we're describing it as an early version of the matrix for training your mind The Buddhist Geeks Dojo.
02:26:21.000It'll be at least a place for people to meditate together, to talk about what's happening in their practice, which basically is their life, and to find a community of folks who are kind of on a similar journey of cultivating certain kinds of states of mind and certain understandings.
02:27:36.000Science is coming in, really influencing it.
02:27:39.000The mindfulness movement is very much influencing it.
02:27:43.000You could call mindfulness a form of secular Buddhism.
02:27:45.000I mean, certainly the guy that's had the most impact on the mindfulness movement, Jon Kabat-Zinn, spent a number of decades studying Buddhism in India and Asia.
02:27:57.000So, I mean, those things are very big shifts in terms of how it's being practiced and the context that it's being held in and Well, that's funny that you said the secular, because most people would consider Buddhism to be some sort of a,
02:28:12.000or maybe one of the only secular religions.
02:28:16.000And it's true in some cases, and in other cases, it's like a lot of other religions.
02:28:41.000I mean, there are lots of forms that are very rigid in terms of how they're taught and what to believe when you do them.
02:28:48.000I mean, I think that's hard to escape in a certain way because when people find something that is really powerful and works, they get really fixated on it.
02:29:15.000Being integrated in your life, you know how it is.
02:29:18.000And I think that's true of most religions that are doing well.
02:29:20.000It's like they've moved away from the transcendent and toward the imminent.
02:29:24.000They're reconceiving divinity as something that exists in your life as it is.
02:29:28.000It's not something that's beyond your life in some way, that something's wrong with your life or your body, that this is a sinful, terrible vessel.
02:29:46.000What are the confining aspects of calling it Buddhism, though?
02:29:50.000What are the pitfalls of that, besides hippies?
02:29:55.000You're definitely going to get some problematic hippies.
02:31:07.000I think that there's a tendency to project—I mean, you brought in the word divinity, so I'll use that—to project our divinity onto the teachers or onto some sort of system.
02:31:17.000And it can be disempowering for a lot of people.
02:31:20.000People can get trapped in beliefs that have been carried forward for years and centuries that isn't forwarding anymore.
02:31:29.000And so that sense, like, by choosing to go under Buddhism, we're also choosing to, you know, work on how we can evolve how we think about it.
02:31:40.000And one thing that I really like is the practices themselves, the mind training aspect of it.
02:31:47.000That's what's been really beneficial to me.
02:31:49.000And that's one of the reasons why I've chosen to continue because of its impact.
02:32:16.000I can get stuck on the smaller sense of self-meaning.
02:32:20.000I have these thoughts of unworthiness or self-contraction or Hatred or any of those, you know, biological kind of urges.
02:32:29.000And at the same time, they're so transient and they're so not who I am.
02:32:33.000And I see that very, very clearly that it kind of diminishes in just a second on the good days.
02:32:40.000Sometimes it's more intense and I've learned to really work with that and learn how to see clearly what's happening so that I have the freedom to Really choose how to live my life in a much more full way.
02:32:56.000So it really is like a workaround for a lot of the biological pitfalls.
02:33:01.000I think it's a way of working with the situation as it is and making the most of it.
02:33:06.000If someone came along with another name, though, like Buddhist, like the word Buddhist, if someone came along with another name for a similar practice, do you think that it would be accepted?
02:33:18.000I think the Buddhist tradition, especially in the West, has been modified, like mindfulness-based stress reduction.
02:33:25.000I mean, some of these different techniques are taken from the ancient techniques.
02:33:30.000There's something about grooves and consciousness and patterns like we were talking about earlier.
02:33:35.000So by going under Buddhism, we're kind of riding in those grooves, and they're not all bad.
02:33:42.000Yeah, no, there's something, I don't know, my own experience, and it's a little embarrassing in a secular context to talk about this, because...
02:33:50.000It's weird to say, you know, for whatever reason, I just fell in love with the forms and the ritual and just the feel of it, the aesthetic of Buddhism.
02:34:01.000For some reason, I just immediately felt a sense of being at home when I went to the first meditation retreat.
02:34:08.000I was there practicing and I was like, oh wow.
02:34:11.000And I felt this deep sense of connection with that particular form.
02:34:15.000And for whatever reason, it just works for me.
02:34:18.000It's unlocked a lot very rapidly that I don't know that would have been otherwise possible if I was trying to do some sort of practice that I didn't really connect with that much.
02:34:29.000Something about just the love of the form and the aesthetic itself that I can't really explain except that I've always liked Asian stuff.
02:34:35.000And the inclining of the mind towards awakenings or awakening, you know, that framework in itself, it's an interesting inclination.
02:34:46.000So, you know, just like we had the Holy Grail, we mentioned that earlier, the inclination towards some kind of inquiry into, okay, and the question presented itself earlier, like, who are we?
02:35:19.000And I think the best teachers, you know, we're learning as we become hopefully a little better as teachers is that the best teachers use that situation to help people kind of gain a confidence in their own experience and to be able to No freedom for themselves,
02:35:37.000you know, through their own practices of paying attention and being with things.
02:35:41.000And in that sense, the best teachers are the ones that make themselves irrelevant.
02:36:27.000Well, I think a lot of them had done a lot of drugs, and so part of the movement is actually about being able to be okay without the drugs.
02:36:35.000And I think that's part of the reason a lot of people are attracted to that movement.
02:37:37.000It's a quality of kind of a little bit of sludginess of the mind and of an increase in self-referencing talk for me, of more subtle fear and anxiety and self-preoccupation.
02:38:00.000In the sense that I described, like, you know, after I've smoked marijuana, like, during it's, you know, it's an insightful opening experience, but after there's a sense of kind of being groggy and sludgy and, like, everything is, like, less clear and less open than before.
02:38:16.000And so there's a quality of kind of, like, contraction that comes after the expansion.
02:39:43.000Because the problem with so many substances is you get into a pattern of really trying to cope with the difficulty of experience and then getting addicted to that state as a way of dealing with And I think that's where the problem comes in from a kind of mind training and contemplative perspective.
02:39:59.000Yeah, that's a good way to describe it because that is what sort of happens, right?
02:40:34.000You can't have a pilled up Buddhist teacher.
02:40:36.000Is there any Buddhist teachers that are all fucked up on Adderall?
02:40:39.000Oh, there are as many Buddhist teachers doing as many weird things as there are any other humans, I'm pretty sure.
02:40:47.000But wouldn't you hope that at least overall there would be more improvement in their overall character or ability to cope with this existence?
02:41:41.000I mean, I'm exaggerating a little, but not that much.
02:41:44.000I mean, there are people who have had profound, profound realizations of the interconnection of all things, and they are profoundly dysfunctional on other levels.
02:41:52.000And I've met many of those folks and have been those folks at times.
02:42:17.000Sort of like a psychedelic experience can make someone go crazy permanently or temporarily.
02:42:23.000Yeah, I think I've gone through periods...
02:42:25.000I'd say it's been less the Buddhist meditation as much as it's been healing just parts of my past, being a human and having been through difficult times.
02:42:38.000I think more of it's probably been psychological...
02:42:41.000And one of the common things that happens in a spiritual context is that people use their spiritual practice to bypass those human psychological issues.
02:42:52.000So for me, I think part of what happened is I bypassed for a long time and went really deep in a particular way and then had to come back around and deal with my human experience on a level that I hadn't wanted to before.
02:43:07.000So it's almost like you have these sort of confining aspects of your personality that because of your perceptions those confining aspects are probably good and then Buddhism comes along and blows down those boundaries and you're like, I'm not ready for this yet!
02:43:23.000And then you freak out for a little bit and then you come back around.
02:43:26.000Yeah, and then the integration part, I think, is kind of what you're talking about, too, is going deep in the contemplative space, and then if we're inclining our minds towards, you know, seeing the reality of, like, what's really happening here, like, how are we constructing this reality?
02:43:40.000And that starts to, you know, peel back, you know, there are moments where it's like so much, there's a lot of freedom, and then at the same time, it's like, oh, crap, like, I gotta figure out how to integrate this in my life.
02:43:51.000And maybe that, those insights of the vastness and the spaciousness and that, you know, we're not just our bodies and we're not just our limited views of who we are.
02:44:02.000You know, those insights have to be integrated into the way that we live our life.
02:44:41.000And then, you know, if you have kids, you've got to raise the kids.
02:44:44.000And And how do you do that without killing each other?
02:44:49.000One of our teachers, Jack Kornfield, says often you have to remember your Buddha nature and your zip code both.
02:44:58.000And the zip code part, I think, can be hard if you've been focusing mostly on recognizing your so-called Buddha nature is the way that your mind inherently is.
02:45:07.000Yeah, that's similarly discussed in the psychedelic community.
02:45:10.000What's the point in having these experiences if you can't bring back the revelations and enhance your actual here and now life?
02:45:20.000And then when it is integrated, I definitely want to flesh this out just a little bit more so people can get the sense of that, yes, there are difficulties.
02:45:29.000And there are beautiful, vast, spacious moments.
02:45:32.000And then at the same time, and even if you don't have any beautiful, vast, spacious moments, even this moment in itself as you're sitting here can be beautiful.
02:45:40.000We've all touched into that, you know?
02:45:42.000So it's like, there's a sense that when, it's a wearing out, that's how I would describe it.
02:45:47.000It's a wearing out process of a smaller sense of who we are.
02:45:53.000And That integration process is not always easy, and yet, as it happens overall and over the long run, we are very, very, very beautiful people.
02:46:08.000There's that capacity to be extremely powerful, extremely beautiful, and connected, really connected with each other.
02:46:14.000And that's what inspires me to talk about all of this.
02:46:19.000So, in a sense, you guys are kind of Buddhist evangelists.
02:46:23.000That's part of what you're doing in the podcast.
02:46:26.000You're sort of explaining or expressing how this has enhanced your life.
02:46:36.000I mean, we're not evangelists in the sort of missionary sense.
02:46:40.000I think we're evangelists in the sense that we think there's value here for some people, for some of the time, that are inclined toward this or find it attractive.
02:46:50.000And if they do, like we have, it's useful to be able to connect with other folks who've done it and who...
02:47:00.000One of our mentors said the role of a teacher is to be just a little less afraid than the student.
02:47:08.000It doesn't mean they have it completely figured out.
02:47:10.000It just means they have a little bit less fear of what's happening.
02:47:13.000So I think it's useful to connect with people like that if you find you're attracted to something like that.
02:47:19.000If you're into psychedelics, we've explored psychedelics.
02:47:22.000It's useful to go work with people who know a bit about it and who can Not freak out if you have a bad trip or if you start losing your mind.
02:47:32.000That can extend their stability to you so that you can actually go through that process and learn from it.
02:47:40.000And in the end, have an empowering experience of it.
02:47:44.000Or at least an empowering interpretation of what happened.
02:47:48.000Instead of just feeling like, oh my god, my reality sucks and I'm just going to be depressed and kind of crawl into a hole.
02:47:55.000So I think in the same way, for us, we just want to create a space where people can practice together like they've been doing for thousands of years, sitting and exploring their minds in a collective.
02:48:08.000Well, I think you two are the calmest people I've ever had in the podcast.
02:48:12.000This has been like the calmest podcast ever.
02:48:16.000And I think in that sense, you guys are excellent representations of the Buddhist lifestyle, right?
02:48:22.000Because that's what it's all about, right?