Stay Free - Russel Brand - February 03, 2023


Deepak Chopra (Finding Your Inner Light)


Episode Stats

Length

51 minutes

Words per Minute

137.39131

Word Count

7,110

Sentence Count

444

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and the author of over 90 books. He is a self-help guru, but I see him as being at the point of inception of new ideas that infused a secular culture with a new radical approach to spirituality. We had a fascinating conversation about cultivating an inner light, and how he s positively helping people with his new project, even though we disagreed in several areas like AI, like A.I., and the obligation of people that are spiritually awakening to wage war against the system. You re going to enjoy this conversation. Stay Free with Russell Brand. Stay Free: Russell Brand's Stay Free Podcast is an in-depth interview with free thinkers, spiritual teachers, and aspirational leaders. See it first on Rumble. See it second on Rumble See It Third on Rumble See It First on Rumble Listen to Stay Free With Russell Brand s Stay Free podcast on Stay Free on SoundCloud. Subscribe and share this episode with your friends and family to help spread the word about Stay Free! Thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. Stay free! - Russell Brand - Stay Free, Stay Free. - Ronna and Rachit Shekhar Pinnamaneni - Thank you, Rocha, R.D. Chaudhuri, Raldhuri & Ravi, and Roshan, and thank you for being a friend of Stay Free - R.J. Chatterjee, Rj & R.K. Choudar, and for sharing this podcast with us, and supporting us in this podcast, and making us all a safe space for spiritual growth, support us all of your support and support us in the pursuit of freedom, love, positivity and abundance and abundance, abundance, gratitude, and gratitude for existence, and so much more. R.A. is a very special thanks you are so much appreciated. , R.S. . , and R.R. is an amazing human being, thank you R.B. is so much love and supportable, and appreciation, and a very much appreciated, and I hope you do not have a chance to help us do so much so that we can help us all do it. R.Y. is enough, and we are a little bit more than that, and it s a little more than you can do that. -- R. B. is


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand, an in-depth interview with free thinkers, spiritual teachers, and aspirational leaders.
00:00:05.000 Today, I'm joined by Deepak Chopra.
00:00:08.000 Deepak is often referred to as a self-help guru, but I see Deepak as more than that.
00:00:14.000 I see him as being at the point of inception of new ideas that infused a secular culture with a new radical approach to spirituality.
00:00:23.000 He's the founder of the Chopra Foundation and the author of over 90 books, 90s written.
00:00:27.000 We had a fascinating conversation about higher states of conversation, cultivating an inner light, you've got to cultivate it, and how he's positively helping people with a new project, even though we disagreed in several areas, like AI, that was a complex part of it, and also the obligation of people that are spiritually awakening to wage war against the system.
00:00:48.000 You're going to enjoy this conversation.
00:00:50.000 Please welcome Deepak Chopra.
00:00:52.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.
00:00:54.000 See it first on Rumble.
00:00:55.000 Deepak, thank you so much for joining us on Stay Free.
00:00:59.000 Deepak, one of the things I know you talk about a lot is how the culture has turned us into addicts.
00:01:05.000 How our attention is being mined and controlled.
00:01:08.000 How pharmaceutical companies are issuing medicines, in particular I'm referring to the opioid crisis, that have had a terrible detrimental effect on the spirituality of our kind.
00:01:19.000 We refer often to the cultivation of an inner light, to a connection to something beyond external stimulation.
00:01:27.000 Where we are now in the argument, and I may say in my personal opinion it's a point of crisis, what do you believe are the most important steps we can make now?
00:01:37.000 So, first of all, thank you for having me, Russell.
00:01:39.000 It's always fun to be with you.
00:01:41.000 I think we are at a crossroads.
00:01:44.000 One road leads to sleepwalking, to extinction, and the other is to wake up to who we are.
00:01:54.000 The way media, social media, news cycles, everything we see on the internet, The way it's run, we have sacrificed ourselves for our selfies.
00:02:08.000 We don't know who we are anymore.
00:02:11.000 We have been so conditioned by the collective hypnosis and into the feeling of separation, that we live in fear, anxiety, and actually we have become biological robots.
00:02:30.000 And unless we wake up to our fundamental reality, I think we're sleepwalking to extinction.
00:02:36.000 There's no question about it.
00:02:38.000 Social injustice, economic injustice, climate change, extinction of species, poison in the food chain, mechanized ways of killing each other and ourselves, We're a disaster.
00:02:51.000 And all our leaders, globally, are gangsters.
00:02:55.000 How do we reintroduce spirituality into a culture that is so materialistic and so devoid of conscious spirituality, where pleasure and convenience and safety have been prized, deified and enshrined in a manner that almost prevents access to sacred and ineffable principles?
00:03:21.000 There are three principles that have been outlined in wisdom traditions.
00:03:27.000 By wisdom traditions I mean the Gnostic Gospels, the Buddhist traditions, the non-dual traditions of Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism.
00:03:37.000 They say the same thing.
00:03:38.000 They say take refuge in the Sangha.
00:03:41.000 Sangha means community.
00:03:43.000 Today we can create online and offline communities.
00:03:46.000 That's something we are doing.
00:03:48.000 So that's one.
00:03:50.000 Take refuge in the sadhana, which is daily spiritual practice, whether it's yoga, meditation, mindfulness, anything that activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
00:04:03.000 And take refuge in the dharma, which means higher purpose, authenticity, integrity, higher calling and transcendence.
00:04:11.000 So the means are there.
00:04:13.000 We have the technology.
00:04:14.000 You know, Jesus had 12 people and he made a big impact.
00:04:18.000 Buddha had maybe six or seven that were part of his team.
00:04:23.000 Today, with global leaders like yourself and many others, luminaries who are interested in authentic self-realization, I think we can create a global community for caring, attention, affection, appreciation, transcendence, and acceptance.
00:04:41.000 Radical acceptance, radical love, and radical gratitude for existence.
00:04:47.000 That's a start.
00:04:48.000 Thank you, Deepak Chopra.
00:04:49.000 Thank you very much.
00:04:50.000 I appreciate you saying that.
00:04:53.000 I also appreciate the great deal of work you've done in popularizing these ideas, the amount of criticism that you have endured.
00:05:04.000 And the great way that you have continued to elevate these principles and make them accessible, in particular handling the difficulty of the point of interface between science and mysticism.
00:05:16.000 It's a very, very challenging place to operate.
00:05:19.000 In our previous conversations, we've talked about the challenges of commodification of spiritual ideas, of ensuring that it doesn't just become another set of individualistic practices that are ultimately used
00:05:31.000 to make you a better component within an existing system.
00:05:34.000 That we meditate in order that we can become better at our jobs rather than meditating in order that we
00:05:40.000 challenge the necessity of our jobs. Loads of people in the spiritual community, by the way, that I belong to, the 12-step
00:05:48.000 community, regularly use your abundance meditations.
00:05:52.000 You're really well regarded and revered in my, literally mean the community of, in particular men, that I spend time
00:05:58.000 with, with our meditation and our support groups.
00:06:01.000 Lots of groups have asked, do your meditations and your challenges, 21-day challenges and stuff like that.
00:06:08.000 What I feel like is that we've almost accepted the position that spirituality only can exist within the confines of the dominator culture.
00:06:16.000 That spirituality isn't going to challenge that culture in the same way that someone like Gandhi or Martin Luther King used their spirituality, if gosh, I don't want to say as a weapon, that seems wrong when both of them are so committed to peace, but as a An edifice against which their principles could not hide but be protected.
00:06:38.000 What do you feel about that?
00:06:39.000 About the obligation towards activism?
00:06:43.000 So, Russell, very important questions.
00:06:46.000 Let me share with you a little bit about my tradition.
00:06:49.000 So the tradition I come from, which is an ancient tradition, the first 25 years of life are spent in education.
00:06:59.000 The second 25 years of life, you take care of your family, your friends, and you seek fame, power, fortune.
00:07:07.000 It's one of the goals of life.
00:07:09.000 Money is included.
00:07:11.000 The third 25 years, you give back.
00:07:14.000 And I've now entered the fourth 25 years, which is the final chapter.
00:07:19.000 So I'm 76, even though I'm biologically much younger, but chronologically I'm 76.
00:07:25.000 This period of my life is supposed to be dedicated to what we call self-realization, not self-improvement, but actually going beyond all human constructs to know who you are at a fundamental level of existence, and also to prepare for the mystery of death.
00:07:46.000 So, these are my final chapters.
00:07:50.000 As far as commodification or whatever you call it, I began my journey as a young intern resident, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and drinking alcohol on weekends and getting smashed in the hospital if I wasn't on duty.
00:08:11.000 So, I started meditation because I was disgusted with myself.
00:08:16.000 That was like 50 plus years ago.
00:08:20.000 And today I'm in a totally different place, you know, looking for the divine in me, in you and the whole world.
00:08:28.000 So it doesn't matter what brings you to the door.
00:08:35.000 Whether it's addiction or smoking.
00:08:37.000 In fact, I think addicts are probably the most spiritual people that I've known.
00:08:42.000 They just need to move from spirits to spirit, period.
00:08:47.000 And that's what I did.
00:08:48.000 So it doesn't matter why people start, how they start, what the culture is.
00:08:53.000 As far as science is concerned, science, you know, is based on, is very successful.
00:08:59.000 We're using right now this technology to communicate with each other and the world.
00:09:03.000 We use jet planes.
00:09:04.000 People are now traveling out into space.
00:09:07.000 So science is very successful, but it is based on a philosophy called naive realism.
00:09:14.000 Naive realism means that the picture of the world is the human look of it.
00:09:20.000 When we know that actually the picture of the world somehow mysteriously corresponds to the brain that is used for observation.
00:09:28.000 The brain is not where consciousness exists.
00:09:32.000 This is another reason why science is at a crossroads.
00:09:36.000 There are two fundamental questions in science.
00:09:39.000 What is the universe made of, first of all, is a wrong question.
00:09:43.000 There's no such thing as a universe.
00:09:45.000 It's a human construct in human consciousness for human sensations, perceptions, images, feelings, and thoughts.
00:09:54.000 So the first question in science, what is the universe made of, is a wrong question.
00:10:00.000 The universe is not made of anything.
00:10:02.000 The second question in science is what's the biological basis of consciousness?
00:10:06.000 It's also the wrong question.
00:10:08.000 There is no biological basis of consciousness.
00:10:11.000 All experience, including the experience of the brain, is in consciousness.
00:10:15.000 So when we combine our understanding of what we call scientific naive realism and why science only looks at human observation, never ask who's observing, what is the methodology of observation, because three things are necessary.
00:10:32.000 The observer, The mode of observation and that which is observed.
00:10:37.000 As we move into higher states of consciousness through direct experience of transcendence, these questions become irrelevant.
00:10:45.000 There is only consciousness.
00:10:47.000 It is formless in its fundamental state and as form it appears as the universe.
00:10:54.000 You, me and everything including our technology.
00:10:57.000 Once we get that, that is the essential religious experience.
00:11:01.000 Which is also the spiritual experience.
00:11:03.000 You know, these days it's very fashionable for people to say, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual.
00:11:08.000 But the actual spiritual experience, whether it's Jesus, Buddha, Rumi, Muhammad, is the same.
00:11:14.000 Number one, transcendence, knowing your identity beyond space-time.
00:11:18.000 Number two, the emergence of platonic values, truth, goodness, beauty, harmony, love, compassion.
00:11:24.000 Joy, equanimity, not as rules of moral obligation, but as natural outcomes of that experience.
00:11:31.000 And the third is loss of the fear of death.
00:11:33.000 So those are the three things.
00:11:35.000 Transcendence, platonic values, loss of the fear of death.
00:11:38.000 I am there in my life right now, and I want people to understand anybody can be there.
00:11:45.000 If Jesus was pointing to the moon, you should be looking at the moon, not worshipping the finger.
00:11:53.000 This unitive idea, a unitary idea that all phenomena and non-phenomena are the expression of a single entity and it is Like mind, it is mental in its nature rather than primarily physical.
00:12:15.000 Suggest to me a set of values and as you just outlined there, you know, equanimity, kindness, service, joy.
00:12:23.000 These are values that you're ultimately listing.
00:12:28.000 Do you feel, somewhat in reference to my previous question, that the Objectivity of these values, if indeed they can be derived from this unitary, formless oneness that you describe, means that they ought be obviously practiced at the level of the individual but also the community, and that they, when we live as we...
00:12:53.000 Seems clear, and you obviously agree from your opening statement.
00:12:56.000 When we live in a world that is somewhat antithetical to those value systems, a world that is materialistic, I mean that in every sense of the word, individualistic, is built on systems of domination, deception, bias and deceit, Do we, what is our obligation to spread these principles and where does it become a, where does it become, when does it lead us ultimately, if not to conflict, then certainly to a kind of adversity?
00:13:29.000 When does it become demonstrative?
00:13:31.000 When do we have to say, We need to change our governments.
00:13:35.000 We need to change our economic systems.
00:13:36.000 We need to introduce new forms of democracy that are derived from the principles that we're describing.
00:13:43.000 Otherwise, or does it not matter if all of these things are part of some limitless flow that is transmaterial and beyond consciousness and the sensory world as most of us are able to understand it?
00:13:54.000 Does that induce a kind of nihilism in the same way that atheism might?
00:14:01.000 Very interesting question.
00:14:02.000 You see, I've been through all those phases.
00:14:04.000 I've been a militant activist for peace.
00:14:07.000 So that in itself is a paradox, an angry militant activist for peace.
00:14:12.000 I realized that, you know, to be a strident activism, it doesn't work.
00:14:16.000 Then I became a sacred activist.
00:14:19.000 I said, okay, I will only support divine causes, get to a critical mass of peace, social justice, economic justice, sustainability, health and joy.
00:14:30.000 Didn't work.
00:14:31.000 I'm now at a place where I totally understand what Mahatma Gandhi said.
00:14:37.000 Unless we are the change we want to see in the world, it's not going to happen.
00:14:41.000 You have to be the change you want to see in the world.
00:14:44.000 We cannot fight darkness.
00:14:46.000 It only creates more darkness.
00:14:48.000 We can only be the light of awareness.
00:14:51.000 So, I'm at a stage in my life right now, and as mentioned, these are the final chapters of my life.
00:14:57.000 where I would like help from people like you and other luminaries to actually create that critical mass of consciousness where we are the change we want to see in the world without any angry activism because it only perpetuates and recycles the old.
00:15:17.000 To have a new story, we have to have a new paradigm.
00:15:22.000 New context, new meaning, new relationships and a new story.
00:15:25.000 It's a death and a resurrection.
00:15:28.000 In spiritual terms, it's almost like what we call to be born again.
00:15:32.000 It's what is called metaphorically the virgin birth.
00:15:37.000 You start fresh.
00:15:41.000 with the old dying and the new reborn, but fresh, new context, new meaning, new story.
00:15:48.000 And this is really the message of the people you mentioned earlier, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa.
00:15:58.000 They were actually bringing us to this realization.
00:16:03.000 So let's not fight the darkness.
00:16:06.000 Let's bring in the light together.
00:16:08.000 Many of these figures, and no figure is without gosh, without controversy these days, I'm thinking of a couple of them in particular, had interesting relationships with carnality.
00:16:21.000 How do we square this Dedication to the ineffable.
00:16:26.000 This ongoing and constant rebirth that amounts to a pure presence that is not bound to the past or in continual conjecture and projecting into the future.
00:16:40.000 With an enjoyment of sensuality, a service of the appetizer.
00:16:45.000 I'm thinking in particular of Rumi and how he's writing expresses a kind of a great love of what sounds like erotica at times.
00:16:54.000 Or do you think that Rumi is speaking metaphorically of the lover in much of his verse?
00:16:59.000 How, and regardless, how do all of us human beings square our attachments to this earth, our need for status and community, our need for sensual and indeed erotic pleasure with a set of ideals that sometimes can seem quite ascetic and based on purity?
00:17:20.000 So, you know, this idea that carnality or sexuality or sensuality are somehow opposed to spirituality, that's a Judeo-Christian guilt phenomenon that's made a lot of money for the Judeo-Christian institutions and also fundamentalists in every religion who seek Power and control.
00:17:49.000 The fact is that in true spiritual understanding, sexuality and the sexual energy that we have is divine.
00:17:58.000 It's the same thing as spiritual energy.
00:18:02.000 Without sexual energy and spiritual energy, there's no life.
00:18:06.000 This is the creative energy of the universe.
00:18:09.000 So I have written about this.
00:18:11.000 I've done a book called Kama Sutra, which is about sexuality and spirituality.
00:18:17.000 And I think the responsibility we have as divine beings is not to be in denial of our basic impulses, but to channel them for the ideal sensual sensory experience.
00:18:33.000 So in Indian philosophy, by the way, the true Vedantic non-dual philosophy, there are four goals in life.
00:18:39.000 Dharma, which is purpose in life, Kama, Kama, not Karma, Kama, as in Kama Sutra, which means sensuality, sexuality, and spirituality.
00:18:53.000 So, Dharma, Kama, Artha, material success, no denial of Material success and ultimately moksha.
00:19:02.000 I notice you say, Steve, stay free.
00:19:05.000 So moksha is freedom.
00:19:07.000 Freedom from the conditioned mind, including the conditioned religious mind.
00:19:12.000 So, you know, religion has been a great tool.
00:19:15.000 For control, for power mongering, for influence peddling, for cronyism, for corruption.
00:19:21.000 Religious institutions have done that all over the world.
00:19:24.000 But religious institutions have also done good.
00:19:27.000 You know, we should not deny the good they've done.
00:19:30.000 I think the time has come now to forget about dogma, ideology, theology.
00:19:37.000 and philosophy, but to engage in spiritual experience in the true way that it is meant to be experienced.
00:19:46.000 So, you talk, you know, I know you're a student of yoga, as I am.
00:19:50.000 My new book, Living in the Light, which is about yoga for self-realization, it talks about the eight limbs of yoga, okay?
00:19:59.000 The eight limbs is called royal yoga or raj yoga.
00:20:02.000 So, the first limb is Yama, which means rules or principles of social intelligence, but based on a deeper understanding of consciousness or fundamental reality.
00:20:14.000 Niyama rules of our ideas of Emotional intelligence, again, based on a deeper understanding of yoga.
00:20:24.000 First two.
00:20:25.000 The third is, of course, yoga asanas, which we all practice.
00:20:29.000 But understanding that the yoga asana is meant to convince you that your body is not physical.
00:20:34.000 It's a field of awareness.
00:20:36.000 Every yoga posture is actually, you know, we have names of them.
00:20:40.000 Happy baby, child pose, cat-cow, etc.
00:20:44.000 There's a reason.
00:20:45.000 The yoga postures are meant to shift your awareness ultimately to the realization that your body is not physical.
00:20:53.000 Physical means it's just a construct.
00:20:56.000 It's a perceptual activity in human awareness.
00:20:58.000 Your body is a field of consciousness.
00:21:00.000 That's number three principle of yoga.
00:21:03.000 The four is breath and using the breath to control the autonomic nervous system, which we call pranayama.
00:21:11.000 The fifth is pratyahara, which is usually translated as withdrawal of the senses, but it's also interoceptive awareness.
00:21:19.000 So when we have perception, we look at the outside world.
00:21:23.000 Interoception is looking at the inside world and learning how to control it.
00:21:28.000 We all learned interoception as babies.
00:21:30.000 It was called toilet training, bladder and bowel control.
00:21:34.000 But the yogis say, why did you stop there?
00:21:37.000 Why don't you regulate your breath, your heart rate variability, your endocrine system, your immune system, your inflammatory responses?
00:21:45.000 Why don't you do that?
00:21:46.000 So that's interoceptive awareness, the fifth limb of yoga.
00:21:50.000 The sixth limb of yoga is concentration and focused awareness and focused attention, focused intention.
00:21:56.000 The seventh limb Now we're getting there.
00:21:59.000 Seventh limb is meditation.
00:22:02.000 So meditation comes much later.
00:22:05.000 You have to prepare for that.
00:22:06.000 And then the eighth limb is transcendence, that unitary consciousness, where we go beyond waking, dreaming, sleeping, to what is called soul consciousness, cosmic consciousness, divine consciousness, and unity consciousness.
00:22:20.000 This is real yoga.
00:22:22.000 And yoga tells us, the original writers of yoga tell us, And you know, our friend Eddie Stern, who you both, you and I know, would fully agree that yoga tells us no system of thought, whether it's philosophy, theology, religion or science,
00:22:41.000 can give us access to reality.
00:22:43.000 Only yoga can, because yoga is not a system of thought.
00:22:46.000 Yoga is a practice to get in touch with the true self.
00:22:51.000 The second sutra in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, first sutra says, now the teaching of yoga begins.
00:22:58.000 Yoga is The settling down of the fluctuations of consciousness into the source of all reality.
00:23:06.000 The self of the individual is the self of the universe.
00:23:09.000 So there's nothing more important than yoga, if you understand it.
00:23:12.000 Yoga means yuj, which means union.
00:23:16.000 Connection.
00:23:17.000 Yoke.
00:23:18.000 When Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
00:23:22.000 He's talking about yoga.
00:23:24.000 The light of awareness.
00:23:25.000 He talks about this.
00:23:26.000 Let your light shine forth.
00:23:28.000 The light is not photons.
00:23:30.000 That's another human construct.
00:23:31.000 The light is the light of awareness.
00:23:34.000 Photons don't have any color or shape or form and yet we experience, I'm looking at all those beautiful colors where you're sitting.
00:23:44.000 Where do these come from?
00:23:45.000 These are modifications of consciousness.
00:23:48.000 There's nothing other than consciousness.
00:23:50.000 Once we understand that, we are free.
00:23:54.000 That is what Siddhi means.
00:23:56.000 How can the Vedas categorize objectively levels of consciousness that appear to be so diffuse?
00:24:04.000 Divine Consciousness, Supreme Consciousness.
00:24:07.000 How could the yogis and rishis, saints and sages of the past Objectively quantify something.
00:24:16.000 If all things are unitary, how can there be accurate taxonomies that by their nature require distinction and discretion?
00:24:26.000 How can there be layers?
00:24:28.000 The taxonomies are just maps.
00:24:30.000 The map is not the territory.
00:24:32.000 But we use maps to explore territory.
00:24:35.000 And of course, the Rishis and the Vedas had no objective way to categorize these.
00:24:43.000 There was totally subjective.
00:24:44.000 But now we do.
00:24:46.000 Russell, we are publishing data right now through our foundation on people who claim to be waking up.
00:24:52.000 And there are certain criteria.
00:24:54.000 And then there are neural correlates of these criteria.
00:24:57.000 So for every state of consciousness, your brain is different.
00:25:00.000 Your neural networks are different.
00:25:02.000 Your perception is different.
00:25:04.000 Your cognition is different.
00:25:05.000 Your memory is different.
00:25:06.000 Your emotions are different.
00:25:08.000 Your relationships are different.
00:25:10.000 Because reality shifts according to the state of consciousness you're in.
00:25:15.000 Now, the yogis couldn't measure this, but we can.
00:25:18.000 In fact, we're doing that.
00:25:19.000 And, you know, waking up is the most important thing that we are now engaged in as a foundation and also as an ecosystem.
00:25:29.000 You know, it's not necessarily a new idea even in the West.
00:25:33.000 Wittgenstein said, we are asleep.
00:25:36.000 Our life is a dream, but once in a while we wake up enough to know that we're dreaming.
00:25:41.000 The Buddha said, this lifetime of ours is transient as autumn clouds.
00:25:45.000 To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
00:25:50.000 A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by like a torrent down the steep mountain.
00:25:57.000 And when his disciple, towards the last, you know, when he was in the last stages of his life, He said, who are you?
00:26:04.000 Are you a prophet?
00:26:06.000 Are you a messenger?
00:26:08.000 Are you a messiah?
00:26:10.000 And like all the great people before him, he said, I'm awake.
00:26:14.000 That was his last word.
00:26:16.000 I think there's nothing more important right now as humanity for us to wake up from this lucid dream that we call Everyday reality.
00:26:27.000 If I asked you, Russell, what happened to your childhood, you'd say it's a dream.
00:26:30.000 If I asked you what happened to your teenage years, you'd say it's a dream.
00:26:34.000 But if I asked you what happened to five minutes ago, it's a dream.
00:26:37.000 Even by the time you hear these words, they don't exist.
00:26:40.000 The whole thing is a lucid dream in a vivid now, and there is nothing more important right now to know that we are not the dreamer.
00:26:50.000 We are the dream.
00:26:52.000 We are not the dream, we are the dreamer.
00:26:56.000 And that dreamer can live at all times in the field of infinite possibilities.
00:27:04.000 With the neurological research that you are currently undertaking that makes observable and measurable these varying states, is there significant consistency between various subjects that are being observed to suggest that there is indeed an archetypal reality or different archetypes of reality that are being expressed and experienced through different subjective experiences, i.e.
00:27:35.000 the many observable tropes present in monotheism or pagan religions, the consistencies, the similarities in language, and even symbols that occur, fractals, spirals, Is there, do you see in these observable data points the idea that oh look subject A and subject B appear to be measurably having a comparable experience depending on stimulants that they're exposed to and this suggests an ulterior reality that whilst
00:28:07.000 Broadly ineffable, because it's extrasensory, can be detected in the same way that certain experiments in the quantum field suggest a reality that is at odds with our previous understanding of Newtonian physics.
00:28:22.000 So Russell, our research is very preliminary and these are the things we are seeing.
00:28:28.000 Number one, a shift in perception.
00:28:31.000 So what happens is there's clarity of perception and there's also going beyond the perception.
00:28:38.000 You know William Blake's poem, we are led to believe a lie when we see with and not
00:28:44.000 through the eye that was born in the night to perish in the night while the soul slept
00:28:49.000 in beams of light.
00:28:50.000 So people who are waking up have a shift in clarity of perception.
00:28:55.000 Number one.
00:28:56.000 Number two, they have more cognition clarity, which means more intuition, more creativity, more archetypal experiences.
00:29:07.000 Number three, they have a shift in emotions from fear and separation, anger, hostility and depression to love, compassion, joy, equanimity.
00:29:17.000 Number four, they have a shift in memory.
00:29:20.000 They start to use memories, but they're not victimized by past memory.
00:29:25.000 This is the basic thing that we are seeing in our research, but then some people are also reporting what we call awakening of non-local dormant potentials.
00:29:36.000 What people would normally say, extrasensory perception of the ability to look at the future or identify with a memory of another lifetime.
00:29:46.000 Now this is very preliminary but again this is the second chapter in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is devoted to this.
00:29:53.000 It's called Vibhutis or supernormal powers but you know what Patanjali warns that if you achieve these for the sake of achieving this then you will actually be dismayed because you'll get self-importance and your ego will start to dominate.
00:30:11.000 Let these awaken as a natural extension of expansion of consciousness from fight-flight to reactive to restful awareness, intuition, creativity, higher consciousness, archetypal, imagination, and ultimately transcendence.
00:30:30.000 So there are many biological correlates.
00:30:33.000 This research is very preliminary.
00:30:36.000 There are some one or two very good researchers in this field that I'm engaging with.
00:30:41.000 And also now we're looking at some of the research with psychedelics where we see That psychedelics have the ability to be used judiciously.
00:30:53.000 Actually, I work with an Oxford-trained MD, Geeta Vaid, who's a psychedelic expert from Oxford, England, but she now is in New York.
00:31:06.000 What we are seeing is that when used properly in certain cases, they They actually loosen the neural networks of the conditioned mind.
00:31:21.000 There's a part of our brain called the default mode network, which is the neural correlate of the ego mind.
00:31:29.000 So when this cools down, people have an experience of universality.
00:31:34.000 One of the things we're using these psychedelics right now is for terminal care.
00:31:42.000 My book agent, one of my book agents, whom I'd known for 50 years, 40 years, she recently passed away.
00:31:49.000 She had brain cancer.
00:31:51.000 So we took her through this experience with ketamine, which is actually regulated in the United States and approved by the FDA.
00:31:59.000 She had terminal lucidity where she had total clarity.
00:32:03.000 She fully woke up.
00:32:05.000 She had, you know, great love in her heart and she was looking forward to the transition.
00:32:13.000 So then I called my neural, you know, I have a lot of friends in the neuroscience community.
00:32:18.000 I've written a book, three books with The head of neuroscience at Harvard, and I said, Rudy, what do you know about terminal lucidity?
00:32:26.000 And he said, let me look it up.
00:32:28.000 And then what we found was there's a small percentage of patients, or people, who may have Alzheimer's, who may be in coma, who may have other diseases, moribund, and just before death.
00:32:43.000 They have this awakening.
00:32:44.000 They see the continuation of the dream.
00:32:48.000 They even see dead relatives.
00:32:50.000 They feel great joy and ecstasy and sometimes it lasts a few minutes before death, sometimes a few days, sometimes a few hours, but it is seen in a small percentage of My mother went through it when she went through that experience.
00:33:10.000 I now regularly, before I'd sleep at night, I actually go into transcendence and explore the mystery of death, including my own death.
00:33:23.000 I've done a short series right now on YouTube on the mystery of death, and it's getting a lot of attention because it's based on direct experience.
00:33:32.000 Do you feel that as the lexicon evolves and alters, some scriptural and arcane ideas become more accessible?
00:33:46.000 A good example of this perhaps might be Elon Musk's relatively recent conjecture that reality could be a simulation generated by an AI.
00:34:03.000 Do you see this as just another attempt to present the The Divine within a materialistic, rationalist setting or do you think that perhaps the language is unimportant except for perhaps rationalism strips reverence away from that which has previously been regarded as unknowable?
00:34:25.000 So Elon Musk and his colleagues in the AI field actually because they are physicalists they use the lexicon of physicalism that this Everyday reality is a simulation generated by an AI.
00:34:44.000 But who creates AIs?
00:34:46.000 We have to ask, who creates AIs?
00:34:48.000 You need a consciousness even to create AIs.
00:34:52.000 So what they are calling the simulation generated by an AI, I say, is actually the divine projecting infinite universes through infinite modes of knowing and infinite sentient beings.
00:35:10.000 And right now if you look at the latest science, you know, if you look at say Caltech professor Sean Carroll's book, Something Deeply Hidden, He is at Caltech.
00:35:20.000 He's moving, I think, to another university.
00:35:23.000 But, you know, he's a very prominent physicist at Caltech, holds the most important chair.
00:35:31.000 Einstein was a visitor there.
00:35:33.000 Sean's written a book called Something Deeply Hidden, and it talks about infinite universes and infinite versions of you and me.
00:35:42.000 And, you know, I interviewed him on my YouTube channel.
00:35:45.000 And that's what his stake is.
00:35:47.000 It's a physical stake.
00:35:49.000 But if you read the ancient scriptures, Yoga Vashishta, he says infinite universes come and go in the vast expanse of consciousness like motes of dust dancing in a beam of light.
00:36:01.000 It's a beautiful image.
00:36:02.000 A beam of light, motes of dust, infinite universe is coming and going.
00:36:07.000 But in the vast expanse of what?
00:36:10.000 Consciousness.
00:36:11.000 There's only one consciousness.
00:36:13.000 Call it God, call it Allah, call it Brahman, call it Einzow, or just call it non-local, formless, fundamental, irreducible, spaceless, timeless, incomprehensible, infinite reality.
00:36:27.000 That's God.
00:36:28.000 Do you think that there is a kind of pessimism in the determination to present this unknowable all-encompassing reality in materialistic terms as a kind of nothingness?
00:36:42.000 You know, the barrenness of space from a conventional cosmological view.
00:36:47.000 It is nothing.
00:36:49.000 It is a vacuum.
00:36:51.000 All of conscious phenomena are fluctuations of data.
00:36:57.000 What do you think is the pessimism?
00:36:59.000 Is this a product of the Kali Yuga?
00:37:01.000 Do you think we live in a time of grossness and darkness where people find it difficult to access the light?
00:37:07.000 Yes, sir.
00:37:08.000 It's the nihilism that comes with science and actually in spiritual traditions too.
00:37:14.000 There's a phase that's called the dark night of the soul.
00:37:17.000 I've been through it, where there is this fear of losing what you thought was your identity.
00:37:26.000 But there is no such thing as a static identity.
00:37:30.000 You're never the same person even moment to moment.
00:37:34.000 So what we call a person is an evolving process in the same consciousness which is divine incomprehensible.
00:37:44.000 So science is struggling with its own dark night of the soul.
00:37:50.000 Even though there are times when I feel beautifully connected and free and at ease and peace in this world, there are times where I also feel engulfed by fear and locked into craving.
00:38:06.000 And the tendrils lead right back, it seems at least to me, to some native wound in my infancy are alive with very present suffering.
00:38:17.000 What do you offer to people who sometimes feel awake, enlightened, connected,
00:38:24.000 free, but still suffer with what seemed like quite remedial conditions,
00:38:28.000 speaking for myself, craving, longing, pain, inferiority. What do you offer us?
00:38:37.000 Rumi would say the way across the fire is through the fire, not around the fire.
00:38:45.000 Embrace your fears, accept them and feel them in your body.
00:38:51.000 It's not just the trauma of the womb.
00:38:54.000 It's intergeneral trauma going back eons of time.
00:38:58.000 Right now you can't move your hand or even speak or breathe.
00:39:02.000 without the genetic activity of all your ancestors.
00:39:05.000 They're alive and well right now, thriving, diabolical and divine, sacred and profane, injured and whole.
00:39:14.000 They're all in your body right now, in every cell of your body, as genetic and epigenetic activity.
00:39:21.000 So who are you?
00:39:23.000 You're the entire web of creation of life since the beginning of time.
00:39:27.000 And the more you embrace that, the more you'll ultimately be able to jump in the abyss, which is actually the abyss of ecstasy, of joy, of transcendence, of beauty, of truth, of goodness, of harmony, of love and gratitude and surprise.
00:39:47.000 But one has to One has to embrace the darkness too.
00:39:54.000 Otherwise, there's no experience in life.
00:39:57.000 All experiences through contrast.
00:39:59.000 You can't have an up without a down, or a hot without a cold, or the sacred without the so-called profane.
00:40:05.000 There's a human, you know, creations in the mind, but reality is beyond the mind.
00:40:13.000 But these levels of consciousness that the Vedas describe and to which you refer appear to diagnose and allude to a state of freedom beyond this suffering.
00:40:29.000 I know that it has been reported that the Buddha, in the moments immediately preceding enlightenment and Buddhahood, experienced longing and craving and jealousy and the demons and the monsters, and I've heard the term beautiful monsters used in Buddhist practice.
00:40:45.000 I suppose what surprises me is the impermanence of even awakened states, that sometimes I feel subject to quite Yeah, as I say, remedial, infantile longing, and I'm a father, and I have responsibilities, and sometimes, Deepak, I want some kind of resolution, you know?
00:41:08.000 Like, right, I'm gonna go away and do an ayahuasca retreat, even though I'm in recovery.
00:41:12.000 Right, I'm going to go and do some one-week course like the Hoffman or I'm going to do, you know, all sorts of like, you know, like a craving.
00:41:21.000 And I know a lot of addicts in long-term recovery feel this.
00:41:24.000 And I know a lot of people that have been on the path for a long time feel this.
00:41:28.000 A kind of lack of ease with the intransigence of longing.
00:41:36.000 I wonder, is there a point of meaningful, measurable progression?
00:41:43.000 Or do you think that if all things are taking place beyond spatial, temporal reality, that it's always going to be like this?
00:41:53.000 So my feeling is that a permanently stable system is impossible.
00:42:02.000 A system that is in perfect equilibrium cannot stay there.
00:42:08.000 It has to, in order to experience anything, consciousness must go through a process which we lack for a better word is entropy.
00:42:20.000 So consciousness by definition, must be conscious of itself.
00:42:26.000 And the only way it can be conscious of itself is through creating this subject-object split.
00:42:32.000 And that is the movement of consciousness becoming consciousness.
00:42:37.000 And when consciousness becomes consciousness, then there's creativity.
00:42:41.000 So there will never be this state of perfect equilibrium or moksha.
00:42:47.000 The dream continues.
00:42:49.000 It may take a different form.
00:42:52.000 You may be able to upgrade it, but as your favorite poet Rumi said, our longing is also the way.
00:43:01.000 Our longing, our fear is also the way.
00:43:04.000 So don't be afraid of your longings.
00:43:08.000 And just as an aside, by the way, and this is something I say to anybody who's a recovering addict, That, you know, the psychedelic experience actually has helped people recover from even addictive tendencies.
00:43:20.000 So, don't be scared of it, if it's done under supervision either by an expert shamanic tradition, there are a lot of fake shamans right now, so you have to be very careful, or under medical supervision by somebody who's a reliable neuropsychiatrist who knows this, And I work with one, as I told you.
00:43:43.000 So if you ever want, come to New York and visit me.
00:43:47.000 You can be my guest.
00:43:49.000 Thank you very much, Deepak.
00:43:51.000 I will continue to contemplate this because it's an area that is very complex in the long-term recovery community.
00:43:59.000 Whilst I recognize the efficacy of these measures in getting people out of active addiction, there's a lot of contemplation around mind-altering and meddling with something as delicate as abstinence-based recovery.
00:44:14.000 I agree.
00:44:15.000 Thank you.
00:44:16.000 Thank you very much.
00:44:17.000 Subhi is with us.
00:44:18.000 Subhi runs our social media.
00:44:19.000 Subhi, do you have some questions from our community?
00:44:23.000 Our live community are present with us now and indeed will be present with us throughout the various forms of broadcast of this content.
00:44:30.000 Yes, we've got a question from Mark W, 2022.
00:44:35.000 He asks for your advice about the possibility and best techniques to reach deep levels within your own mind during meditation.
00:44:43.000 Let go.
00:44:44.000 Let go of any outcome and just stay in the process, okay?
00:44:49.000 And if you just sit there, even doing nothing, With your eyes closed, sooner or later you'll transcend.
00:44:56.000 Of course, mantra practice, breath awareness, reflective inquiry, self-inquiry, mindfulness of, you know, the awareness of thought, awareness of perception, all these help.
00:45:09.000 There are hundreds of thousands of techniques that can be explored, but the main thing is sit there quietly, learn to do nothing.
00:45:19.000 Once you do that, you're ready for everything else.
00:45:21.000 I've got another one from SensitiveHeart25.
00:45:25.000 She asks, how do you stay so strongly connected to your spiritual knowledge and faith in this crazy world?
00:45:32.000 It's the only thing that will actually convince you that to embrace the insanity of the world, And adjust to it is to actually declare your own insanity.
00:45:46.000 To be well adjusted to an insane society is not a measure of our sanity.
00:45:52.000 So yes, it's a crazy world, but we created it, so we can also go beyond it.
00:45:58.000 The only thing that will save us is our own practice.
00:46:02.000 I've got another if you have time.
00:46:05.000 Danny S asks, when thinking about being, who we are being, how important is it to reflect on or pray to a source of being, e.g.
00:46:15.000 God?
00:46:17.000 I think it's more important to reflect.
00:46:21.000 Prayer usually is telling God what to do, so don't try it.
00:46:26.000 But you can ask questions like, Who am I?
00:46:29.000 What do I want?
00:46:30.000 What is my life purpose?
00:46:32.000 What am I grateful for?
00:46:33.000 And that will actually create the stage for what we call revelation.
00:46:38.000 Deepak, one of the things we touched on earlier was living harmoniously with advancing technology.
00:46:45.000 One of the challenges our community have, I believe, is that science, both in the area of pharmacology and medicine, and in the area of technology, are operating As subsets of greed-oriented systems of domination, globalism, corruption, hypocrisy, profiteering, these appear to be the hidden agenda behind much innovation.
00:47:12.000 Not to suggest that there aren't many brilliant geniuses working within the fields of medicine and science, and of course, obviously, who wouldn't welcome the fantastic innovation that technology and medicine has offered us over the last century and throughout history?
00:47:27.000 How are you using technology in ways that are in keeping with your values?
00:47:33.000 I've realized that we cannot stop technology and therefore not only do we have to adapt it to it, but use it for the greater good.
00:47:44.000 So with deep learning systems and augmented technology, artificial intelligence, I don't like the word, call it augmented intelligence, Deep learning systems and soon quantum computing and all the new things that are happening.
00:48:03.000 We are using technology to measure well-being, to actually create a system for well-being for the future, which is predictable, preventable, participatory, and actually enhances your well-being, mind, body, and spirit, and adjusting to the environment.
00:48:22.000 We've also created an artificial intelligence chatbot which is an emotional chatbot called PV.
00:48:31.000 PV stands for personalized interaction with intention.
00:48:36.000 Our website is neveralone.love and it focuses on four things attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance and the emotional chatbot has now intervened in about 6,000 suicidal ideations.
00:48:53.000 PV is speaking to 20 million people simultaneously.
00:48:57.000 And we are now taking PV globally in Arabic, in Urdu, in Hindi, in Spanish, because mental illness is a global pandemic.
00:49:07.000 And every 40 seconds somebody is dying from suicide in the world.
00:49:10.000 It's the second most common cause of death amongst teenagers.
00:49:16.000 And we found that teens, this is the state of our world, are more comfortable talking to a machine than to a human being because they don't feel judged.
00:49:26.000 But of course we have human beings behind and we are even creating cryptocurrency and blockchain to pay for this so
00:49:32.000 that we can democratize well-being globally through the masses, not dependent on special interest groups.
00:49:41.000 So please check out Neveralone.love.
00:49:43.000 When there is a pandemic around mental health and when suicide reaches the extremes that you've just described, it's
00:49:51.000 no longer to offer a diagnosis of an individual problem.
00:49:55.000 It's sort of by its nature, of course, you use the word pandemic, a social problem.
00:50:00.000 Absolutely.
00:50:01.000 This is, I suppose, what brings me back to the area of the conversation that we were discussing earlier, that it seems that we must elevate some different values.
00:50:12.000 Even the idea that teenagers are not comfortable speaking with human beings to me suggests, and I don't know if this is a kind of a Luddite perspective or a sort of an old-fashioned Human perspective it to suggest to me that sort of dystopia is already upon us that there is a requirement for a deep revelation a deep epiphany and I was going to require a radicalism and I I'm very curious about how this it seems to me that they're like the same way that crisis in the individual can bring about epiphany and enlightenment I wonder if we're at a point of cultural crisis and I wonder
00:50:50.000 What is going to be required and how to handle it?
00:50:52.000 Russell, it's a shame on us that our teens are in this position.
00:50:58.000 It shows that our humanity is not yet complete, that we're in this situation.
00:51:04.000 So we need first radical acceptance of the situation as it is, radical gratitude for the fact that we can do something about it, and radical love as the only way to move forward and restore our humanity.
00:51:22.000 But we have to accept what is going on if we want to change it.
00:51:26.000 And yes, we need to awaken our deeper humanity and understand that love is not just a mere sentiment or an emotion.
00:51:35.000 It's the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe.
00:51:38.000 Thank you.
00:51:39.000 Thank you, Russell.
00:51:39.000 Thank you.
00:51:40.000 God bless.
00:51:42.000 Lots of love.
00:51:43.000 Lots of love.
00:51:44.000 Bye Deepak.
00:51:44.000 Thank you.