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53. Consciousness In A Nutshell with Jay and Lindy Nelson
75 Plays1 year ago
Here with us this week are returning guests Jay and Lindy Nelson. Jay and Lindy have delved deep into the realm of psychedelic exploration, amateur neuroscience research, and the exploration of Consciousness. They also authored the captivating book Consciousness In A Nutshell: A Psychonautical Odyssey, which can be found anywhere you buy books! Throughout their journey, Jay and Lindy have dedicated themselves to unraveling the mysteries of the mind and pushing the boundaries of human understanding. In this conversation we delve into their unique insights, experiences, and the transformational power of defining and expanding our consciousness. Links to everywhere you can find them can be found below.
https://www.consciousnessinanutshell.com/ https://www.instagram.com/jayunderscorenelson/ https://www.instagram.com/goforlindy/ https://www.instagram.com/consciousnessinanutshell/ https://www.instagram.com/catalyst.productions/
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Music By Nathan Willis RIP
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome fellow seekers to Pursuit of Infinity, a podcast where we try to uncover the mysteries that lie beyond the limits of our understanding. Here to help us on our voyage this week are returning guests, Jay and Lindy Nelson. Jay and Lindy have delved deep into the realm of psychedelic exploration, amateur neuroscience research, and the exploration of consciousness.
00:00:24
Speaker
They've also authored the captivating book, Consciousness in a Nutshell, A Psychonautical Odyssey, which can be found anywhere you buy books. Throughout their journey, Jay and Lindy have dedicated themselves to unraveling the mysteries of the mind and pushing the boundaries of human understanding.
Supporting the Podcast
00:00:41
Speaker
In this conversation, we delve deep into their insights, experiences, and the transformative power of defining and expanding our consciousness. Links to everywhere you can find them will be in the show notes.
00:00:54
Speaker
But before we get to it, for all things Pursuit of Infinity, visit our website, pursuitofinfinity.com, where you can find all the links and the many places you can follow us. If you want to support the show, the easiest way to do that is to give us a follow or a sub, as well as a five star rating and maybe even a review. These things have a huge impact on those pesky algorithms and also help us to expand our reach. You can also show us some support by heading over to our Patreon at patreon.com slash pursuitofinfinity,
00:01:24
Speaker
And if you didn't know, we have a YouTube channel. All of our episodes are always posted there in video format, as well as an array of shorts that we have been putting together on a regular basis. Now, with all of that out of the way, thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
00:01:55
Speaker
Hey everyone.
Personal Updates and Book Launch
00:01:56
Speaker
Welcome to Pursuit of Infinity. I'm your host, Josh. And if you were listening, you will have heard a short introduction to our two guests today. But if you're not, I'm here with Jay Nelson and Lindy Nelson. Thank you guys so much for joining me. Thank you for having us back. Happy to be here again. Yeah.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's the return. And since last time you guys have been on, there have been a lot of things going on in your life. Your book got released consciousness in a nutshell, which is amazing. And you had a child. So how's this been for you guys?
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, baby man is almost eight months old now. So we are constantly sleep deprived, but fulfilled. That's the best way to put it. He's just he's becoming more awake every day. And just watching his brain come online is he's been a trip for sure.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's been, uh, fatherhood's been an interesting experience because, you know, your entire life, the two rules in your head are survive, reproduce in that order. Right. And then now it's protect, survive, reproduce. So yourself gets, I don't know, demoted in a way. And so it's, it's weird because it's more about like the, his memories now, now, like in my life, I'm more worried about his memories than my own experience in some ways.
00:03:13
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of work to be done on myself. But anyway. And then the book was ready for print about a month after he was born, like almost exactly a month. So we've been raising human baby and idea baby at the same time.
Book Structure and Reception
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. Which it's been interesting to see them intertwined and where they're both going to go.
00:03:36
Speaker
Definitely, definitely. And speaking of consciousness, is there anything in your book that you would have maybe changed or added now after sort of like having the experience of seeing a young consciousness grow?
00:03:54
Speaker
Not really, honestly. You know, I could eat those words in a year or two, but we're definitely watching him develop and we're watching him, you know, watching his consciousness come online and everything. However, what was said in the book, I still stand by. We just recently went through everything and everything still looks good with me. Had to fix a couple of typos, but.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, he just finished, well, not finished, but finished the main portion of the audio for the audiobook. Yeah. So that required a...
00:04:25
Speaker
verbally speaking every word in the book multiple times for multiple takes. And when it comes out of your mouth, it's like a certain level of truth. I want to say like the brain is like engaging with the material in a different way and really evaluating it on its truth merit. Because if I'm saying it, then it's like, is this true? And and so there was a couple words that would change. But all in all, like, we're still pretty happy with what was written.
00:04:52
Speaker
And although it's in a nutshell, it's still not everything. We have so much supplemental material. It's already gonna be the next book or a series of lectures. The book is everything we could fit to tell the complete story and not cheapen it, but still not be volumes and volumes of text.
00:05:14
Speaker
Could you, Josh, I'm curious if you think it could have been split and two, because in some ways, like it was kind of like two books combined. But I just feel like the first book would have left you with an unsatisfactory ending. And the second book would have been too short to have been a book. So it's like, all right, well, this is just a longer book, in my opinion. What do you think about that?
00:05:34
Speaker
So the way I would evaluate that is like if at any point during reading the book, I would have thought to myself like it's kind of dragging on or something or then I would have said yes, but what surprised me most about your book is that I did not want to put this thing down. I read.
00:05:51
Speaker
It's like a 400-page book and I read it in like two weeks. That's the fastest I've ever read a book of that length, like by far, like by a long shot. So I would say it's perfect, personally. I've really adored it and I'm so glad you read the audiobook. Lindy, did you do any of the reading either or was it just you, Jay?
00:06:12
Speaker
Oh, it's just me on this one. But yeah, it should be a slightly different experience because, you know, the book is written to be read, obviously. And then this audio book is slightly once it's a different, different medium. So the message changes slightly. So it'll be a different experience. But I think it should be good and open up the book for a lot new, a lot of more people, because, you know, I mean, so many people can listen while they're commuting, but they, you know, to read this thing, it's so it's like the most intimate relationship.
00:06:42
Speaker
a reader and, you know, and the author speaking into their heads like, you know, like we shared something for like what, 10 or something hours, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. I was involved in other ways. I built the sound studio and was involved in one other way that might ruin something. So you'll have to just listen. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. OK, cool. To just listen or read whichever one you guys use. Exactly. Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
So yeah, man, did it, how did, you know, at this point, I guess I'm mostly okay to talk about whatever when it comes to the book. Like, you know, we can almost go wherever. So were you surprised? Were you let down? Were you, yeah, what was your take when you finally like hit that last page?
00:07:28
Speaker
I was surprised, not let down at all by any of the book. Cause like I said, it just, it progressed in such a way where I wanted to keep reading because some books like that you see can be pretty heady. Can be pretty scientific and difficult to follow and sort of just like put a lot of stress on your brain while you're reading it. But your book.
00:07:48
Speaker
It both like taught in a scientific way and also engaged me in a way where I did not want to stop reading, like I said. So thank you guys so much for that. Your book to me is like I was blown away by by how much I liked it. So thank you. Thanks, man. And my one liner has been the brain book that doesn't make your brain hurt. Yeah.
00:08:09
Speaker
And we had several, several people have been like, this is the textbook I wish I had in college. Yeah. Yeah. Because like there's a lot of. Oh, sorry. It's so I'm sorry. I was going to say it's so it was so creative in every single way. Like you guys took a lot of the regular things that everyone does with the book and you just like flipped it on its head and like.
00:08:32
Speaker
When I flipped around the back of the book, like when you look at the quotes and stuff, like they coincide with concepts in the book. They're not just like quotes from the New York Times or something like that. So I really appreciate it. Just all those little intricacies that you guys put into it. I could tell you put like your heart and soul into it, man. Thanks, man. Big time.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, I've been in talking about it for over a year now. Like I've been figuring out new ways of explaining this concept. And so, you know, the book is what 380 pages at the moment, but, um, yeah, so we were talking about online, we were talking about like one thing we wanted to talk about was the evolution of consciousness and the consciousness of evolution.
Psychedelics, Consciousness, and Evolution
00:09:12
Speaker
And, um, should we start there? Yeah, let's get into it. Yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
Okay. Well, as you know, you, you know, our position on what evolution is. Um, and so, but I'm curious if like, when, when someone says the force of evolution to you, what, what does that mean?
00:09:31
Speaker
To me, what drives evolution, it has to be the evolution of consciousness. And everything else just sort of follows in support of that thing, whether it be physical attributes or predatory attributes or anything of that nature. I just feel like consciousness is the fundamental driving force of it. Right. And then even from before you reading this, you had already intuited that consciousness was fundamental. Right.
00:09:56
Speaker
So I think the biggest hold up for anybody is that they're clinging on to an idea that consciousness isn't fundamental, that consciousness emerged out of complex systems like brains, but really consciousness is less about intelligence and more about awareness and levels of awareness. So just to state our position, consciousness is what there is.
00:10:19
Speaker
Everything has consciousness, and some people might label this panpsychism, but that would be a shade of what we're talking about. What we kind of give in the book is a much more comprehensive view. Professor Anil Seth talks about how panpsychism just doesn't explain anything, but I think you'll find that we were able to use some of the concepts that are found in panpsychism and then use those to explain what is life, what is consciousness, what is evolution.
00:10:47
Speaker
Um, would you agree? I, yeah, I think that you guys did a fantastic job of doing that. Um, because as you said, I did kind of go into reading the book with the idea already that fundamentally consciousness is like the foundation of the universe. Um, and your book just like helped to solidify that for me.
00:11:10
Speaker
Thanks, man. Yeah, I think it's like some of those like, for example, if you say this is why we don't say panpsychism in the beginning or the introduction or something like that, because if you say what it is, like the label, then people, you know, like, like me, for example, when someone told me about meditation, I'd already formed a bad belief about what it was and how I didn't like it. And I didn't like the people who did it. I didn't like their elitist attitude. I didn't, I didn't like the way that the words came out of my mouth. I didn't like the way it felt.
00:11:37
Speaker
Like, so I had this horrible idea about meditation. Yeah, exactly. A preconceived taboo, you know, and so, but if you, if you explain what meditation is without using the word, sometimes we'll be like, yeah, that sounds good. Like, or they'll be like, well, of course, you know, our attention is, is at the center of everything. Why wouldn't I want to strengthen the muscle that is attention, you know? But if you say meditation, people are like, eh, now try it once in work.
00:12:03
Speaker
You know, waste the time. So exactly these ideas. Some of the architecture of the book is unpacking them in a way that it's a reverse definition, if you will. So we define it backwards.
00:12:16
Speaker
So that it becomes more acceptable. Reverse engineer. It's my favorite way to do things. Yeah. Cause I think like people need to, you know, I worried about this when writing the introduction to this book, because it was like, how much can you say without giving it all away? You know, cause I want it to be an idea that people have for themselves. Consciousness is fundamental. If someone just tells you that you're like, well, what the hell do you know?
00:12:38
Speaker
But I think if you present the ideas in a certain order, which there is a certain order to this book and it had to be that way, then the ideas become your own so that by towards the end of the book, you're like, oh, I get it. Like, oh, I see why psychedelic medicines or psychedelic plant medicines are being studied right now. I see how that could take your complex consciousness and make it even more complex in some ways and then make it even more simple in some ways and show you things you don't want to see.
00:13:07
Speaker
So, I mean, for any great teacher, one of the most important concepts is to guide the learner or the reader to coming to their own conclusions, to learning the thing for themselves, not just saying, this is how it is. Follow my words. Follow my dogma. You know, so I completely agree. And I love that you guys did take that stance and you bring up psychedelics. So do you.
00:13:30
Speaker
subscribe to Terrence McKenna's theory that psilocybin mushrooms helped to evolve the consciousness of the human being? I do actually. I think we've been co-evolving with psychedelics since the beginning of time. And they yeah, they have helped be the catalyst to further our evolution, to catalyze further evolution of cognitive, emotional and
00:13:57
Speaker
maybe even physical. I'll have to think about that one, but yeah. We also like to say, or you like to say that if this book had a predecessor and a sequel, one of those books was
00:14:12
Speaker
Stealing fire would be the predecessor. I'm sorry, not the predecessor, but the prologue, the unofficial prologue. And then the immortality key would be the unofficial epilogue because I know you've read the immortality key. What it's saying is, yeah, we've been co-evolving with psychedelics and psychedelics might have seeded the, you know, the world's largest religion, right? Yeah. Christianity is the world's largest religion, 2 billion people. So, um, that's interesting. And I think that's an idea that people are going to take a decade or two to accept.
00:14:40
Speaker
Sadly, would you say? Yeah, I would say so too. So it's interesting you brought these two things together and I was gonna ask about this. What about the evolution of consciousness leads to the concept of God or leads to the concept of mysticism? Is it psychedelics? Did that give us religion?
00:15:02
Speaker
Maybe the inability to describe the experience gave us religion. That's how we ended up with so many different splinters of religion because it can be so different and so personal and for anyone who goes through the experience, that is truth. There's no arguing with what you felt is truth and you might not be able to describe it to someone else in a way that they feel that truth, but you know it's true, which can lead to a lot of splintering of the same idea.
00:15:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And, you know, it isn't that like one person had this experience and then that fractured into every single religion that is around us today or anything like that. It's that, you know, we are biologically, you know, these experiences are biologically normal. We're wired to have these experiences is a direct quote from Dr. Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University doing all their psilocybin studies, you know, and
00:15:57
Speaker
I think like, you know, they happen spontaneously. You can set up the preconditions where they happen in, uh, in real life. Like, you know, you can meditate, you can do sensory deprivation tanks and flow state and all that jazz. Uh, so you can access these states, but like, uh, you know, like, you know, they're difficult to access without a psychedelic catalyst sometimes. Um,
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah. There was another point I wanted to make. Oh, yeah. Carl Jung, the psychologist, had a great line, which was, religions are a defense against religious experiences.
00:16:30
Speaker
Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. Trying to give reason to that. Yeah. It has no definition. So, you know, we want to talk about God or the universe or trans, the transcendent energy that is infinity.
Philosophical Debates on Consciousness
00:16:42
Speaker
We want to talk about these things, but it's hard to talk about them. And especially if you're going to talk about something like infinity, you're trying to classify it or label it or attach words to something that, you know, every word you could ever try to pin on infinity just would fall down. It would crumble.
00:16:57
Speaker
So it's not something you can talk about adequately. And so religions become the thing to talk about this experience that everyone should be able to have and everyone can have, you know, I cannot believe that we're living in a country that in some states that, you know, you, you're not allowed to take these plant medicines. You're not allowed to experience why they call them in theogens. You know, you know what the word in theogen means. Yeah. Yeah. For the audience real quick.
00:17:24
Speaker
Entheogens coined by Karl Ruck, who wrote The Road to Eleusis, but they mean to reveal the God within. That's what they may mean. And so that's what we're trying to get people to is this idea that the Hindus had figured it out over 8,000 years ago. I'm sorry, 8,000 BCE, I believe. 10,000.
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, so a long time we've been trying to. And so, you know, I think what the book does is is take these different ideas that pop up in different cultures and they look separate on the surface. But if you look down underneath, then you can see how these ideas have dissipated throughout the cultures and they've evolved and they changed. And I mean,
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah. So we're still dealing with this idea of time right now, but last thing I'll say is like, when I was a kid, we had a bunch of dinosaurs. I don't know if you guys remember, but there were more dinosaurs then than there are now. And the reason is, is we were digging up these, you know, uh, adolescent dinosaurs and being like, Oh, look at this new species. But it was really just an adolescent, you know, uh,
00:18:35
Speaker
velociraptor or something like that, but they would think it's a new species. So there were way more terms, more species of dinosaur, and then we paired them down because like, oh, this is actually just this one, this one, this one. So the same idea is true of what's happening right now. We have a lot of ideas like time, consciousness, energy, dark matter, antimatter, all these different terms, but I believe we're going to shrink these terms down in the next 20 years.
00:19:05
Speaker
And do you think we're going to shrink these terms down again to something that foundationally starts with consciousness itself? I believe that is the biggest holdup is that, um, the scientific community is kind of holding on to a dying idea, which is consciousness emerged. Um, and so once they finally accept that it's fundamental, then it just will re.
00:19:30
Speaker
I want to say refrag, not defrag, but it'll just like in the same way that Tetris, it'll just, um, everything will flatten itself out. Seek to the lowest level. Disseminate.
00:19:43
Speaker
Um, more like it'll get compressed. Okay. Yeah. And start a new in that like something out of the, it'll be flattened and then we'll have to build something else on top of it. You know, something that's, uh, that's motivated or inspired by, you know, consciousness really. Cause like you said, it does seem like the scientific materialist paradigm that we've all sort of grown with, uh, has been that physicalism is the main function of the universe. But it seems that.
00:20:11
Speaker
There was a concerted effort to wipe these things out, especially the mysteries of Eleusis, as you alluded to. So what do you see that we're missing here? Like, what's the first step? Do you really think that the first step is adopting consciousness as being fundamental and that everything can sort of bloom from there?
00:20:31
Speaker
I think so. I believe also we talk about this towards the end of the book, which is like fundamental assumptions or intellectual starting points. And so when did life on earth begin? That's a question people ask all the time.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yet that question has so many fundamental assumptions jammed into it. When did life on earth begin? So you're asking a that life you're fundamentally, you're assuming that life began and it began here. You know, those are two assumptions built into a question that seems like you're trying to get to the bottom of everything. But if you're really trying to get to the bottom of everything, that's not the question to ask. So, you know, you need to ask what the universe is and the universe is ultimately information, you know, and information can be ordered where information can be disordered.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so are we going to talk about everything? What do you mean everything? I mean, just reveal everything. I thought you said no holds barred. All right. It's out there. Okay.
00:21:30
Speaker
So yeah, you know, information, information can be ordered and disordered. And so consciousness is ultimately what mediates between chaos and order. It's consciousness is ultimately about managing information, managing data streams, and not overwhelming the operator. You know, we can describe it in many different ways, but
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's enough. Consciousness is all about managing those dials of perception to be able to intake just enough about your environment to as organisms a survive and pass on consciousness and that data.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, and so the question, what is life, almost doesn't even make sense because that's assuming that there is something, a difference between life and death. And if you zoom out into these non dual states, which I think you've experienced, you've had a non dual state before.
00:22:21
Speaker
Death doesn't track there. You know, we are immortal. That's what Nirvana is. It's realizing the deathlessness of Nirvana. You tap into this moment of oceanic boundlessness because your ego boundaries that is, that is generated by networks in your brain, like the default mode network, when those get offlined, your ego boundaries dissolve.
00:22:41
Speaker
And so when you have no more boundaries, you feel boundless. And so if you're boundless and you tap into the only it, it feels like there's only one substance in the universe and you're that, then we are the same thing. And that's where, that's what everybody needs to get to that point. You know, I mean, you know, I'm sure you've read the Emmy, Emmy Q 30, the mystical experience questionnaire. Oh yeah. Yep.
00:23:06
Speaker
So there's 30 questions that researchers today have been asking, you know, with these psilocybin or LSD studies, you know, just with psychedelic studies in general, they're always giving their patients mystical experience questionnaires and see how they scored, you know, but the questions they're asking, so they already know what it is. If you read between the lines and anybody's listening, read between the lines and you'll notice you'll see infinity, eternity,
00:23:29
Speaker
timelessness, selflessness, these are words you'll see pop up multiple times. So we know that there's some sort of undescribable timeless dimension that people keep tapping into. And once we merge that knowledge with what our science is telling us, then we're gonna have a new theory of everything.
00:23:49
Speaker
It almost begins to question if it is truly indescribable or if it's unacceptable, because if we are using all of the same terms, then we're at least reading the same book, if not on the same page.
00:24:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so, you know, and that was the idea of like listing out how many different ways you could describe this Nirvana, Satori, Moksha, transcendence, waking up, awakening, awakening. I thought you were already awake, you know, you have these experiences when you're awake. So how are you waking up, you're waking up to a more fundamental reality, you're waking up to the ultimate ground of being, which is all is one, but
00:24:29
Speaker
in the game that we're playing right now, in the non-dual spot, which is unity, all is one. But then our brain gets less connected as we're coming off these psychedelics and we forget. We give into the game of consciousness, which is attention versus distraction. So can you hold on to this idea that we're all the same thing in your normal everyday life? Because that's the ultimate test right there. And that's what these psychedelics are showing you.
00:24:58
Speaker
You forgot again. You forgot again. It's all the same. Why are you you got lost in the game? Why are you being selfish? I'm so guilty of this. It's dude. It's I've been battling with depression really not so greatly for the last two months. I'm detached from what I know. And it's it's sad. So I empathize with anybody who's like, I wish I could feel that because me too sometimes, you know, I feel disconnected as anyone. And then other days it's like, I know I'm so connected. I'm the only thing that there is which doesn't
00:25:28
Speaker
Privilege me, it's just, it flattens everyone to the same thing. That's why I like the idea of the Atma.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah. There's a divine essence in all of us, which is Atman. And that is our essential background layer of being. That is, that is your fundamental identity. And that's what we need to start with. Our identity is like the biggest problem. That's the reason this book was written, you know, to tackle the topic of identity, but it's such a complex topic. You have to,
Vision, Perception, and Reality
00:25:56
Speaker
well, it takes 380 pages to get someone maybe to understand the idea that we're all God and drag, as they would say.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, Rhonda Rhonda. Yes. Is that what he said? Yeah, Rhonda. I believe said I didn't know who said it. Great. Thank you. Oh, cool. It's it's tough because what you experience under the psychedelics are this feeling of ultimate individual is like individuality, but also being part of the everything all at the same time.
00:26:25
Speaker
And when you come back to this plane of reality, it's really difficult to integrate that into like a dualistic sense, because in order to speak, you have to be dualistic. You have to break the unity down into a dualism in order to understand it on this plane of existence. And I think that's where our disconnect is. Maybe you're right, Lindy, maybe we just.
00:26:45
Speaker
Can't like, maybe we just won't understand it because we're trying so hard to use English and to use these set paradigms that were not built to understand this realm. They were built to understand physicalism. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be inscription on the inside of my wedding ring is it's an energy thing. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but basically that's love that that's my yeah. Can't put it into words. Can feel it perfectly. Yeah.
00:27:13
Speaker
Yeah. Energy is a cool word for it. There's many words for it, but even that, even the word energy, it doesn't quite nail it down because there are a lot of connotations, especially in like this new age culture that come with the word energy too and healing and all of this stuff.
00:27:28
Speaker
And, and, but I mean, ultimately that's all that there is. There is energy and energy. I mean, you know, if you take it back to just the big bang, like that was, I hate when they say universe from nothing, because that's everything. It was just a smaller version of it, you know? And so it, yes, it's expanded and it's gotten more of this, this energy has.
00:27:49
Speaker
unpacked through the field of time and gone through many different phase transitions. So now it is, it is matter. And, you know, we have tables and chairs and desks and hard things, but matter is just energy that slowed to a particular vibration. So it's all interactions. So that's what, you know, energy is ultimately, it's always interacting with itself. And as we revealed towards the end, you know, like,
00:28:14
Speaker
Why do you, why do you pop up in? Why does infinity get conceptualized as a snake eating itself? Because that's what life is doing. You know, life is processing. As I was saying earlier, didn't quite get this point out was we are processors of information and the universe ultimately is information, but the universe is processing and we are the processors. We are part of the process. We are processing. That's what we're here to do to take latent information and to turn it into body.
00:28:46
Speaker
So it is, is the problem that the mechanism that we use to process the information field is basically kind of dumbed down in a sense to only our senses. Cause it just so happens to seem like the entire world is built around the five senses that we have. There's no way. Well, I think, I mean, I'm.
00:29:09
Speaker
You you read into a little bit of Donald Hoffman, haven't you? Yes. OK, then I think I heard you talk about on a podcast before then. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, what he talks about is how, you know, our evolution by natural selection doesn't evolve.
00:29:25
Speaker
creatures that are capable of perceiving reality. You know, it's it's it gives us adaptive perceptions. So it's, you know, we don't know what reality is. And so I believe that, you know, when you take these psychedelics, you do tap into moments of seeing from your primary visual cortex, you tap into moments of seeing the one you tap into, like seeing what actual vision looks like before it gets processed. I'll never forget what that looked like in 2013.
00:29:53
Speaker
Two, I mean, have you ever experienced this? Like maybe on LSD, for example, where things start to become more flat, like people become, they look flat. I'm not sure I've actually experienced this. I haven't really delved into LSD all that much for me. It's mostly psilocybin and DMT, but please, please tell me about it.
00:30:11
Speaker
I describe it a little as like, for anyone with stage experience, it's like scenic drops on a stage. Like if you're looking into a really deep opera stage, for example, and there's like 12 layers you can see off on the side, it's kind of what it looks like. Yeah, and they come down from the top of the scene, but it's flat. Like you can kind of see
00:30:33
Speaker
It's like paper cutouts almost standing up in your field of vision. Right, almost like a diorama. Yeah, that works. But if you have experienced this, and I'm sure somebody listening has, because people report seeing primary visual processing before, I have. And I don't know where I was going with that, but oh yeah, flat. Flat.
00:30:57
Speaker
OK, well, I mean, you know, you're seeing like your do you want to explain vision or should I explain vision for people? Please do. OK, so you have two two dimensional images coming in from your right from one coming from your right eye, one coming from your left eye. They both have to travel back through your optic nerve and then cross over. So the right visual field goes above left hemisphere. The left eye goes to the right hemisphere. So and it's an upside down.
00:31:26
Speaker
They're coming upside down. So you've never, you don't see with your eyes, you see with your brain, you see with your internal model. So these eyes are, you know, receiving photons, the carrier particle, the carrier particle of light. So they're receiving these light particles, you know, they're exciting certain cells, then these cells fire. So.
00:31:45
Speaker
your vision it's all converted to electrical signals at the eye and then it goes into the brain and then your brain processes that and so half almost half your entire brain is indirectly or directly tied up with vision and and and by the way you only see well with one percent of your retina
00:32:06
Speaker
So if you take your arm, put it out in front of you, then it as far out as you can and look at your thumbnail. Your thumbnail is representative of 1% of your visual field and that's the part of your eye you read with. It's called your phobia. And so you have one in your left eye, one in your right eye. So this is where the part of your retina where cone concentration is at its highest.
00:32:25
Speaker
So your ability to discern what little letters look like on a page is courtesy of the fovea. So you read with your fovea. That's why you're always, you know, your eyes keep moving because even though your visual field can capture, you know, your entire book, it's only 1% of your visual field that you're actually reading with. And so half your visual cortex is devoted to processing information it receives from the fovea.
00:32:50
Speaker
So what's actually coming in is two two-dimensional upside down blurry images with a tiny bit of focus in the middle. And then your brain flips that stitches them together, synthesizes a three-dimensional experience and fills in the rest of your visual field with memory, essentially. So are you, so are you saying that it takes like 50% of the brain's power to process 1% of the visionary field?
00:33:21
Speaker
It's a little more nuanced than that because it's basically half the visual cortex is devoted to processing foveal data. So that's how important the phobia is to our experience. So it's a lot of processing power essentially, right?
00:33:34
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Because it's turning those flat upside down images and do something that looks three dimensional. Yeah. So, you know, and so for anyone listening, depth, perception, motion, objects, position, like these are all internal processes happening inside your mind. So your, your brain is creating perception is creation.
00:33:56
Speaker
You know, in a very literal sense, Donald Hoffman, I love this line of his, he was like, you know, what does a Necker cube, you know, Necker cube is that, um, three dimensional cube that you would draw on a two dimensional sheet of paper. So we've seen it in third grade classrooms a million times. That's the Necker cube, but it's drawn ambiguously so that if you look at it, it'll waiver between the two states that are possible every few seconds. Right. But if you're not looking at it, what does it look like?
00:34:22
Speaker
You know, I mean, like the question is unanswerable because, you know, which basically what he said is like, which side is front facing when you're not looking at it? You can't answer that question because perception is an act of creation. You are creating this experience of a three dimensional cube, even though it's on a two dimensional sheet of paper.
00:34:40
Speaker
So yeah, that's perfect. That's, I think that really is the perfect representation of if you extrapolate that idea to all of reality, like you're just looking at a small slice of it. You're not able to see the whole thing. So defining it as what you see or feel with your senses may not be accurate.
00:34:56
Speaker
right and so i mean if you if there's a part of your brain that um is putting in edges to things you know is defining objects is defining borders and boundaries and is giving things roundness and you know uh fullness and all that jazz like and shadows and shading and white balancing like these are all layers of consciousness that are
00:35:18
Speaker
you know, functioning properly in a normal, in a normal human, right? But if you have lesions or stroke, then layers of these con layers of these conscious processing abilities can get offline. And then you have interesting case studies to think about be like, well, this is how strange consciousness is. Because if you lose this part of your brain, you can no longer recognize faces, you know, the fusiform gyrus, you lose that part of your brain, you'll never see another face again, you'll see faces, but you won't know that your mom, you'll have to recognize her based on her voice.
00:35:48
Speaker
That's insanity. I met someone like this. It hurt because she never remembered me. I was there. She told me she had facial blindness and I was like, but she will remember my voice, right? And she did do the voice, but it was so weird. Was that a situation where like her other senses of identification were heightened? Interesting. She did say that she would recognize by voice, but
00:36:18
Speaker
And that is a really interesting question. Yeah. That's, that's what they have to do is rely on other ways, you know, of figuring out who this person is. Yeah. Because even that concept of like your senses gaining or losing power, like just sort of makes it even more obvious that they're just creating what's in front of us. They're not necessarily describing what's in front of us.
00:36:41
Speaker
And if your brain has limited processing power, if it's devoting less processing to the facial recognition, it's devoting more processing in theory to your other senses. Right. Yeah. So she'd probably be really great at recognizing people on the phone, but just not so good in person. Yeah. Yeah. So do you guys think it's possible for a physical model of consciousness to be described and discovered?
00:37:06
Speaker
physical model of consciousness. What do you mean? Give me a little more like something that would adhere to our current scientific paradigm. Because when they talk about the hard problem of consciousness, I feel like that, that phrase is coming from a physicalist paradigm, which makes it hard. That's the the entire problem of it is that you're looking at it from a paradigm that doesn't quite fit it, at least from what I can tell. So do you think there is a possibility that with just
00:37:35
Speaker
enough innovation, enough scientific prowess, we're able to come across some sort of a model that describes consciousness from that perspective.
00:37:46
Speaker
I think it is possible. I think we have a lot of holdups. Rene Descartes and David Chalmers would be two holdups that are kind of messing us up, because David Chalmers introduced the hard problem of consciousness. And then Rene Descartes was the philosophy of dualism, which has just owned everybody's perspectives, apparently. And it doesn't explain as much as monism, the idea that everything is one thing.
00:38:14
Speaker
Um, that explains everything, but dualism just, you know, you're trying to figure out where does the mind and the body, like, you know, they're fundamentally different things. Why do you say that? Why is the body not the mind? I mean, you know, I think the problem with a lot of consciousness studies is that they're carried out by neuroscientists. And as you know, I'm just a freelancer. I'm just, um, an independent researcher. I like, I just an author passionate. Yeah. Just a passionate individual.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, an amateur. But with some interesting ideas on this subject, I've lost where I was going to go, but. I mean, some of the best discoveries were made by passionate amateurs. Stamets is an amateur. Come on. Yeah. True. So yeah, you're asking if there can be a model of the world. Well, this is the line I'm working with right now. If you're looking for a t-shirt definition, consciousness is a dance between perception and memory. That's my one. Thank you.
00:39:13
Speaker
And so what I like about it is it says what consciousness is, and consciousness intrinsically is tied up with perception. I can't imagine existence without perception, and I can't imagine perception without existence. As we talked about in the last podcast, these two things go together, kind of like flowers and pollinators, up and down, north and south, positive and negative. You can't have one without the other. So they arise mutually, as Lao Tzu would say.
00:39:42
Speaker
And somehow in that understanding that we seem to accept that you can't have one without the other, but it created instead of understanding that they are the same thing, the one and the other became, oh, opposites, dualism. We must, the split became the obsession instead of the fact that you cannot have one without the other, hence they must be the same thing. Yeah. And the mind body problem, like my answer to that, the quick answer is, you know,
00:40:11
Speaker
Your body is your parents, your mind is your own. We inherited this body from our ancestors. It has an unimaginable complexity and everything that it's doing, all these life-sustaining processes, like hormone regulation, immunological responses, growing your hair, repairing your muscles after you work out, all this stuff that you have no conscious access or awareness of, really. Your body is doing that for you. So it's got all this lovely intelligence
00:40:39
Speaker
And we are something that grew out of that. So the idea is that consciousness at the level of experience is like a virtual machine. So if you identify yourself as being the ego or the narrative self, as I like to call it,
Consciousness, Evolution, and Morality
00:40:53
Speaker
then that is a virtual machine that has grown out of it's like a flower that's grown out of the soil of unconsciousness. So the body is kind of like unconsciousness in this kind of like loose metaphor and the mind is more consciousness. So
00:41:09
Speaker
Consciousness can only come out of unconsciousness in the same way that sound can only come out of silence. You have to have these things, these relationships. And so that's the fundamental teaching of the mushroom to me or LSD is relationships. They're the most important thing. Does that track with you? Have you experienced that?
00:41:30
Speaker
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm with you. And what this brings to my mind, like the imagery that you were using of like birthing from the soil. It reminds me of like this guy in hypothesis. I've been thinking about this for a while recently, like that the mind of the earth, that's where like the motivation for us comes. Maybe that's where we, we get our consciousness. You know, the, the body comes from our parents and our, our mind comes from the mind of the earth.
00:41:56
Speaker
Hmm. Well, you know, in it, maybe this is Daniel Dennett said this, but like, I don't think he believes it in the way that I believe it, but he said the planet grew a nervous system and that is us. And, and you know, I would, I would agree with that. Um, I think he means it in a different way because he's completely atheist. He hasn't, he's separated himself from nature, but you know, Alan Watts is a great line, which is man is nature becoming conscious of itself.
00:42:24
Speaker
we are, you know, if you separate nature and man, then you have problems because that and that's dualism, you're trying to, you know, figure out like, where did this amazing conscious thing come out of this, you know, animal behavior, this clockwork robot animal instinctual behavior, but
00:42:43
Speaker
But that's the problem right there. Thinking of the earth as just a clockwork physical thing. That's the animal world. Oh, yeah, that's the animal world. This is this is the conscious world where we're living in right now. But again, as Alan Watts says, you know, we came from the earth, you know, we were birthed from it. We're part of it. Exactly. Yeah. And we recycle back into it. So any theory of consciousness, any model of consciousness that doesn't, you know, they have to start from that.
00:43:12
Speaker
I want to have to say assumption or that knowledge. It really is knowledge from that truth that we are nothing other than a more complex version of nature, quote unquote, you know, so I mean, and this is where we talk about the consciousness of evolution. So what I was asking earlier was like, you know, what is the force of evolution? And so to me, like.
00:43:35
Speaker
You know, Julian, uh, Sir Julian Huxley said evolution has become conscious of itself. Man is nature becoming conscious of itself. So evolution is nature. Nature's man equals these. There's like an equal sign between all these things. That's what we are. We are evolution incarnate. So I believe the entire universe is a dance between evolution and entropy.
00:44:00
Speaker
that's it you know if you talk about the uh the singularity i think if you zoomed into the singularity it would look like the dao it would look like the yin yang there would be two opposing forces like dark and light like chaos in order like entropy and evolution two fundamental opposing forces
00:44:17
Speaker
Locked in a never ending death dance until the end of time. There is no end of time. It's infinity. So this is what it does, though. Infinity infinitizes. That's not a word, but it processes. It is always growing in the same way that pi never stops. So and pi is an irrational number that keeps going and going. That's infinity. And what is pi describing? A circle. What is consciousness? A circle. I mean, oh, man, an infinitely expanding circle.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, and so that's that's again coming back to the snake eating itself, you know, and and not only does life have to consume itself in order to keep going, but that's how the energy renews itself, you know, without death, life could not be.
00:45:00
Speaker
And without all the parasites and viruses and evolutionary dead ends and, you know, mutations that just didn't work out, like without all those happening in the exact way that they happened, we couldn't be having this conversation that we're having right now. And I think people need to understand that to get that model of consciousness you're talking about.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's the infinite game. It's it's the game that's played in order to continue to play it as opposed to the game that's played to see it to the end because the game in my view, it's not worth playing a game unless you can continuously play it. I love this thing. I bring it up all the time on this podcast. So sorry for anybody who gets sick of hearing it. But it's this thing that Jordan Peterson talks about where
00:45:44
Speaker
The two there, there's like two mice that are playing with each other. You know, they're kind of consolidated in their cages and they're doing a, you know, research on, on their play. And there's a large mouse and a small mouse. So the large mouse lets the small mouse win like 30, 40% of the time to continue the game. Because if the large mouse would never let the small mouse win, the small mouse would get discouraged, not want to play the game anymore. So the whole point of playing the game is so that you can perpetually continue to play it.
00:46:14
Speaker
Mm hmm. I agree. Yeah. And I love that because that's, you know, a great argument for how morality isn't something we get from a book. It's something that evolved. You know, these mice have, you know, innate. They can't consciously articulate their rule system that, oh, I have to let him win one out of three times, otherwise he won't play with me anymore. And the games will be over. They haven't figured that out. It's they're unconsciously acting out this is embodied wisdom. So morality is something that is embodied.
00:46:45
Speaker
That's incredible. And we need to get to that point where people see that, that you're a good person because of evolution.
00:46:58
Speaker
It was evolutionary. Exactly. You're a good person because of everybody else around you. And you're also a good person because of the bad people around you too, because they give context to you. They're a part of the relationship. So me and my brother always talk about Hitler as the most extreme example of this.
00:47:17
Speaker
You know, you need all of the, like, it's like a Ram Dass thing, you know, it's, it's all perfect. You know, we can look at things and we can say, this seems bad. This seems wrong. But it was funny. I was talking to my fiance this morning and I asked her, um, if there was a such thing as an imperfect event, what would it even look like? Like, could you answer that question? We've never seen one. Nope.
00:47:45
Speaker
I mean, I think the only limitation that the universe has is that is incapable of producing imperfection.
00:47:51
Speaker
Like on a, you know, we experience imperfection all the time because we have a certain perspective. So there is a certain point at which we can't see. So we're, our, our perspective is limited, right? And our attention is fundamentally constrained. So we can't see the full picture, but if you could see the full picture, which is the whole nirvana experience anyway, it's this Zen completely zoom out and Zen out moment where you.
00:48:16
Speaker
You zoom out of everything and you see the grand game that's being played, which is the DAO, which is, you know, the yin yang. It's that is what energy does. So that is a fundamental pattern of the universe. And, you know, that's our fundamental claim in the book is we've had enough experiences of.
00:48:32
Speaker
you know, testing the limits of human testing the limits of human perception, where you take enough of a psychedelic or something like that. And it off lines every memory you've ever had, like your ability to categorize your ability to list to label all that goes out the window. And you see raw information for a minute, you see what the universe is, is actually up to. It's a perfect game. But we the game of consciousness is to not see it. So we in the story as imperfect to create drama.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, to exactly to create drama to get the game to go. Somebody has to choose sides. Someone has to be black. Someone has to be white. Someone has to be, you know, like an oppressor. Someone has to be oppressed. Like there has to be something. There has to be some kind of conflict. And so, you know, I mean, but then if you look at the 12 major religions that are out there, what's the one rule that I mean, there's one thing that they all say. And I know you notice now. What is that?
00:49:32
Speaker
Okay. The golden rule. The golden rule, man. The ethic of reciprocity, like treating everyone as if they were yourself. You've got a poster on the wall here that's the same thing in the 13. Yeah. So yeah, in 13 major religions, it's the same essential lesson due into others as you would have due into you rendered in, you know, 13 different texts. Understand that the other is you.
00:49:57
Speaker
Yeah, but your brain is gonna say it isn't because that's part of evolution, you know, and I think the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins would help explain why that is because that whole book is written to explain why we have altruistic behavior, even though it's
00:50:15
Speaker
the title is a little misleading. It's if your genes in your own body didn't look out for themselves, you wouldn't be here. So it is through that they're looking out for themselves. You know, they're looking out that there are shared copies of itself in my son, for example, my life doesn't matter as much as his life. So by looking after his genes, I'm in fact looking after my own. So
00:50:37
Speaker
But we need like with without an ego without like a way of managing the external environment like in a perceived sense of self. Like I don't even know how we would operate in this world. We need something like that. Yeah, which brings to mind like the concept of memory as well like we need memory to move through the world to survive. But so what is in your view like the connection between the evolution of consciousness and memory?
00:51:08
Speaker
It's interesting because people wish they remembered everything, but forgetting is adaptive. Most of consciousness is forgetting. I think you said that recently. I think so.
00:51:23
Speaker
If you were actively processing everything for the first time every time you saw it, like if every time you saw a strawberry, that was the first time you saw a strawberry, you wouldn't be able to do anything except look at that strawberry.
00:51:41
Speaker
All of your processing power would be devoted to the color, the way the light's hitting it, the shine, the sweetness coming off of it. That's all you could perceive. And if that was your whole life, you couldn't process in it. So in order to process in this world, we developed memory to hold some of that data in the background so that we're not spinning it up fresh every time.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the book talks a little bit about this, but you know, it's, it's thinking and just being alive is it cost energy, you know, like it's 500 calories just to like, keep your brain, your brain's lights on essentially. Like that's not even just moving around. You need 500 calories just for your brain not to like die. So you need that. Um, so like your brain, you know, you need energy. I don't know what I was going with this. I'm sorry.
00:52:28
Speaker
We need energy. It costs energy to just keep your brain. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, like, you got to think about, like, from Mother Nature's perspective, it's like, you know, the body wants to operate as close to the border of the present as possible. This would be, I think I'm quoting David Eagleman right now.
00:52:46
Speaker
But, you know, it has to account for the way things the right, you know, the vision has to account for the way things smear out in time. Like, you know, if I was had a sparkler in my hand and waved it around in a circle, you wouldn't you would perceive a circle like, you know, you would perceive the smearing of this event, you know, so we don't perceive like if this is one example of how motion is painted on the flip books we used to play with as kids. You know, you
00:53:15
Speaker
I'm sorry, you twist them between your thumb and forefinger really fast and like the individual pictures start to become motion. So, like vision isn't just you're seeing raw reality because it would just be picture, picture, picture, picture, always, but we are perceiving the betweenness of it in some sense. So we're amalgamating all the images that we're seeing and then creating emotion. So,
00:53:42
Speaker
Vision is complex. It takes about 500 milliseconds for your conscious reality to synthesize. So if we wanted to perceive what reality actually is, it would probably take more time than that. I mean, obviously. And we've tapped into moments where we believe we've seen real, raw reality. And so in those moments, it's like,
00:54:06
Speaker
what's happening? Well, we've taken a psychedelic, which is in some ways a performance enhancer and in some ways has, you know, turned up the
00:54:14
Speaker
your, sorry, the sensitivity on your cortical cells. And so everything's firing way faster than normal. And so you're able to process the moment almost getting to real time so that there isn't any delay. And when you catch up with the speed that the universe is coming at you, like when you're able to process all your sensory, your sensory systems at the same speed that they're coming in,
00:54:37
Speaker
That's when time seems to stand still for me because I've lost my connection with my body. I've lost my feeling that I am embodied. And then I've just become raw perception, which is creation, which is what we are. And you tap into that creation thing, that becoming thing, which is evolution. And you realize, oh yeah, I'm that. So why am I having fear in my normal everyday life? Why can't I just hold on to that perspective, which is I'm the thing that does not age.
AI and Consciousness Potential
00:55:05
Speaker
can't die and is, you know, forever just on a journey of becoming what the next thing, what is it for you? Amazing, amazing. So let's say with this podcast, with your book, we've just convinced everyone that this is fundamental there. They're on our side. They totally agree with us now. What does that say about the potential of conscious AI to you? Oh,
00:55:38
Speaker
I don't think it'll ever be conscious. It would have to have memory. It would have to have true memory of the human race. We would have to somehow be able to download all of our memories into it because it can have data. It can have all of the data of every event that has ever happened, but without understanding the emotion that went into those events and the, I don't know, the person, personal ethics behind everyone involved in every event. It couldn't recreate it the same way.
00:56:08
Speaker
I don't believe AI will ever be conscious in the sense that you are, um, conscious. I believe that since there is only one consciousness and we're all getting a slice of it, that, you know, things like rocks and chairs and AI, it's only able to be conscious through us. You know, like we are the vehicle for being conscious in the same way that we are the vehicle for viruses to get passed on. Um, they have to use hosts, living, breathing hosts in order to disseminate.
00:56:38
Speaker
That's why I think about it. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of with you. I don't believe that I can ever become conscious. I don't think that's the right I mean, that's like an emergent type of philosophy of consciousness anyway. And I don't think it's possible to just like inject a machine with consciousness. And to me, that's where my actual fear of AI does come.
00:57:02
Speaker
If it became conscious and we had an artificial intelligence that was inhabited consciousness, that's where my all my fear goes away because when I've experienced higher levels of consciousness, they have been foundationally grounded with love.
00:57:20
Speaker
completely. So to me, I trust consciousness. What I don't trust is chat GPT. And all of these like, just data mining, you know, facades that walk around, you know, saying their AI that to me, it's not general artificial intelligence. It's just data mining, clever facts. Exactly. Yeah. And that's not conscious. And to me, that's where the danger comes because it still allows humans to be in control of it.
00:57:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. It's definitely worried me. And I've been thinking about it more just about like jobs and that sort of thing. Like, you know, I mean, just even five or 10 years ago, people were like, everybody needs to get a coding degree. And now that everybody's saying, no, all coders are out of work. So it's a little bit scary, but, um, I don't believe it'll ever be fully conscious. So we should. Yeah. Yeah.
00:58:19
Speaker
Well, it looks like we are approaching about an hour here, guys. And God, I really, really appreciate your time. This has, again, been like one of my favorite episodes. I love talking with you guys. Is there anything else that you want to cover? Because we still do have a little bit of time here. OK, yeah, I have something for you guys.
00:58:41
Speaker
OK, so in thinking about this would probably go in the next book, which I believe is tentatively called Lessons from Infinity. But it's going to be explaining a little bit more about how our internal experience of consciousness is constructed. And so, you know, we all have experiences, right? But it is our interpretations about our experiences that ultimately end up changing our outlook on the world, our belief system, how we relate to other people.
00:59:10
Speaker
So, um, the mnemonic is E I B B. And so this is just showing how conscious this is constructed in a very simple way. So you have experiences. That's E interpretations.
00:59:25
Speaker
behavior patterns, beliefs. So this is how they work. So you have experiences, then you make interpretations about those experiences, you know, this thing was really bad, it happened to me, and I can never forgive it. So then you have a behavior pattern that then manifests. And then you confabulate a belief on top of it, because our actions contain more information than we than we know, you know, there is more wisdom in what we do, like our just our own actions, then we're
00:59:51
Speaker
Then we like, we don't consciously understand why we always do this. And I guess a good example is if a dog eats something that shouldn't, it will sometimes eat grass. So then it will throw it up. Have you heard of this? It's not like it knows to do that. It's just, it's just something that it will do. Um, so somehow that's connected. Inherent memory, not.
01:00:16
Speaker
We're okay. We're what's the track? Oh, yeah. It sounds like morphogenesis or something like Rupert, Rupert Sheldrake idea of like the morphogenetic field where there's like these, these shared conscious experiences or actions almost like.
01:00:32
Speaker
When you look at bees or spiders, like the way that they form their webs, the way that they create their hives, it's not like they're studying how to create a hive and then at a certain age, like they get through high school and now they know how to create a hive. It's something that's just integral within their actions.
01:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually also Richard Dawkins extended phenotype idea. So we have a genotype which gives us, you know, that's our DNA and stuff. And then they give phenotypic expressions like blue eyes, blonde hair. And then extended phenotype is the idea that, you know, genes not only reach inside the body, but they can lever themselves outside the body and
01:01:13
Speaker
control the environment. So beavers, you know, their dams are built by Darwinian natural selection, like they went through a process of evolution, just like the eye has gone through a process of evolution or anything else. So a bird's nest is an organ in this sense. And that would be going to Richard Dawkins and Conrad Lorenz's idea. But yeah, so these
01:01:36
Speaker
are these behavior patterns, which are kind of like instincts in some way. I'm using it in a different term, but instincts and behavior patterns sometimes are similar.
01:01:47
Speaker
So yeah. So if we have this EIBB thing, so you have these behavior patterns that will manifest and then you'll look at your actions and then be like, well, I must not like this person or I must not want to talk to them. Or, you know, like I've been avoiding this person's phone. Like I must be mad at them. I must. So we're always inferring about our own behavior patterns. Um, but it can, you know, go the other way too. So you can have a belief that then changes your behavior pattern.
01:02:14
Speaker
Suppose I go to a motivational speaker and I hear him got this really good like way of acting in the world. Well, then I can then, you know, kind of steal their belief and then modify my own behavior pattern. But it works better if it goes the other way. If you have the behavior pattern first.
01:02:32
Speaker
it's it's exactly actually sorry bottom up instead of top down because top down you're trying to use your conscious mind to control behavior but behavior is ultimately emotionally mediated so if the emotion isn't there if you're not emotionally driven to lose weight you can think you want to lose weight but you're not going to lose weight like you need your whole entire psyche needs to be on board with going to the gym or whatever
01:02:58
Speaker
so so is this like top down is sort of like epigenetics and then bottom up is sort of genetics in that way interesting um i almost wouldn't want to use that term because i don't understand epigenetics enough um but i just would say that consciousness is ultimately about
01:03:18
Speaker
the mediation between a bottom-up flow of sensory signals and instincts and then a top-down executive control. So this is that bottom-up flow that is your parents, this is your ancestors, your instincts and all that. And then you have this top-down executive control, which gives you the field of time, which allows you to choose between these conflicting instinctual drives and different wants that the organs have.
01:03:44
Speaker
that the brain is an organ, it's not privileged over all the other organs. And the sex organs want things, the stomach organs want things, you know, like, the heart may want things, it may want to be closer to another beating heart and just be next to it, you know, like, so we have different organs in our bodies wanting different things. And how do we manage all this? Well, you have this thing up here, this consciousness, and I say that because
01:04:10
Speaker
We almost need another word for it. That helps. That helps helps with all of that. So. Yeah, it's so hard to like wrap your mind around it when you do think of what is coming from your mind or your brain, mitigated consciousness, because again, I don't think that's where it's coming from, but it kind of is at the same time. Another one of these like paradoxes that makes it really hard to wrap your mind around.
01:04:37
Speaker
It is. And so that's another thing holding up the model, which is everybody believes the body is a producer of consciousness when, if consciousness is fundamental, which is what we would claim, then it isn't the producer. I don't even want to say it's a receiver. It's part of the consciousness field. But you're right. I mean, it is also-
01:04:57
Speaker
There is also brain editing and networks of neurons that if offline are going to change your experience of reality. So it is creation in that sense. So yeah, it's complicated, but I think we can get there as a species.
01:05:14
Speaker
I think so too. And I know for some reason it reminds me of Ram Dass having his stroke where like his entire conscious reality was changed. Yet he, as he claims, was able to go inside and sort of have a more boundless conscious experience. So it even begs the question, like, are our senses standing in the way of us experiencing like a full true version of what consciousness can be?
Brain Function and Consciousness
01:05:44
Speaker
I would say that consciousness comes in two flavors, embodied and disembodied. So we know what embodied consciousness feels like. Our body organizes all our perceptions for us. But if you take enough of a psychedelic, then you're basically offline your connection to your body for a second. And it feels timeless. You feel that selflessness because your sense of self is no longer able to be generated. Your sense of time is no longer able to be generated.
01:06:13
Speaker
Um, yeah. So should we answer? Yes. Yeah. And so with the next, like, I mean, what I'm really excited about is in the next 20 years, like if this is on the fringes and this wasn't in the book as much, but it's, cause it's on the frontiers of our knowledge right now. Why do we have a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere?
01:06:37
Speaker
I mean, like, you know, I didn't want to talk about it a lot in the book because it's just too not solid, but like, I mean, the greatest theory comes from Dr. Ian McGillcrest and it's that, you know, you have to pay attention to the world in two different ways. So you have two different brains in your head, which are capable of doing that.
01:06:55
Speaker
The right brain, the right hemisphere, is basically giving you the broad, sustained, vigilant attention that you need to always look out for predators while the left hemisphere, the left brain in your head, is always focused on the details. You know, without the left hemisphere consciousness, you wouldn't have the perception of time that you have now.
01:07:13
Speaker
the right hemisphere consciousness exists in almost in a timeless state in some ways. And if you read Dr. Joe Bolt Taylor's new book called Whole Brain Living, that's where we're going towards. It's this idea that we need to be on board with both our hemispheres, our entire psyche with what it wants and needs in order to live properly in this world. And so, you know,
01:07:36
Speaker
It's a complex topic, but once we start to understand that your left hemisphere in your mind, which is producing your speech, has an emotional mind too. So you have an amygdala in your left hemisphere. And then in your right hemisphere, not only do you have a thinking mind, but you also have an emotional mind.
01:07:55
Speaker
And like, you know, Dr. Gilbert Taylor says, we are feeling creatures that think. So until we are, as a society are on board with the idea that we are feeling creatures that think that we have two brains in our head that are always perceiving the world in fundamentally different ways and they don't agree. And that we're stuck in the middle of that. Like until we synthesize all that into a theory, there's going to be a lot of problems. But you need that dichotomy otherwise neither of them exist.
01:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, which is the beauty of it. And to cap it off, like, so Dr. Amy Gilchrist describes it like this for a bird to survive, it needs to be able to pick out a seed against the background of pebbles, sand or grit, you know, so it needs to be able to pay very focused attention on that seed, but at the same time, use its other hemisphere and its other eye to look out to the wider world for predators. So part of the brain is always existing in this almost timeless dimension, like looking out for predators, while the
01:08:52
Speaker
Other part of the brain is engaged in this thing called consciousness where it believes itself to be individual and cut off from the whole You need both to exist Yeah, and I'm trying to think like what would life look like if we did have like a synchronization of the hemispheres You know Josh I'm experiencing
01:09:19
Speaker
synesthesia, I've been experiencing synesthesia since probably about 28, 2019, um, 2020, uh, it is probably the result of, um, doing combo and, um, a lot of micro dosing. But my point is if you take psychedelics, right? It, it increases the entire brain's functional connectivity. So the two hemispheres will become more connected while the molecules in your system. But when it wears off, you know, are those connections lost?
01:09:50
Speaker
So most of the corpus callosum, which, you know, is the network of neurons that connects the two hemispheres are inhibitory fibers so they can inhibit the other hemisphere. So it'd be like, no, I got this one. I got this one. Now, if it didn't do that, you couldn't have this experience that you're having. You need to be able to, you know, like everybody can't be trying to do the same role at once.
01:10:11
Speaker
You know, like, so it's weird. It's like when there's a fly ball in the baseball field, if you have two people going for it, neither one's going to catch it. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we call it, we need more connection, but too much connection is going to produce some weird symptoms. Like I experienced some weird.
01:10:33
Speaker
symptoms sometimes because I believe the two hemispheres in my brain are maybe more connected and not inhibiting as much. And this is the result of taking, you know, you know, I, I micro does a fair bit in 2020. And so I think that it has
01:10:48
Speaker
Maybe more than aesthetic. And so I'm experiencing more of what my right hemisphere has to offer. And I wish I didn't sometimes because, you know, in order to focus on the moment, you need to ignore most of everything. And so now my ability to attend is like a little bit higher, but like.
01:11:05
Speaker
It's too much. Sometimes it's too much information. You've had sensory overload. I feel that sometimes. And sometimes that's what synthetic people report is. It's just, it's a lot. Um, so too much connection would probably be a bad thing, but I think we need to move towards whole brain living, which is Dr. Gill's idea. So would you say that this synesthetic experience that you're having, is it sort of contributing a little bit to the depression you mentioned earlier?
01:11:34
Speaker
My yes, it is contributing. And it's also the thing that let me know what depression was, because it was it was through, you know, it was like, I'll just explain it like this. If I was laying in my bed thinking about I want to go get some cereal right now, I'd have an experience of touch on my face and it was like a not a positive experience. It would be like someone just scratched my nose.
01:11:56
Speaker
I was, you know, the brain is always predicting what's about to happen. So I'm having a thought, I would like to go have something that's not really good for me. My body, my right hemisphere consciousness, I would say, is saying, that's not going to work out so good for you. What you're actually doing is, is, is hurting yourself. And you don't want to do this. So don't do this. So here's that sensation, a preview of what you're doing. And it was through noticing things like that, that I'm like, well, how far can this go?
01:12:26
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, you intuitive on the last podcast, I asked you what's the opposite of a flow state. And you were like. Depression. Yeah, man. Yeah. And so so that's I'm battling with it because anyway, it's a lot. Yeah, it sounds like it. And this is like some of the dangers of psychedelics that people don't really talk too much about or maybe not dangers, but just things to be aware of. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
01:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, that you, you know, can you can, you can take too much and, um, it will, it can change your perception of reality. Like, so, you know, I, I guess the idea behind the book is like, I've done a lot of psychonautical explorations and so have and so she, so that you guys don't have to do that. You can, if you want to, but you don't have to go to the depths of trying to understand this experience because I mean, it's all we did for years.
01:13:24
Speaker
They are powerful tools that are powerful teachers, but you need to respect them. Right. Yeah. They have a self-correcting mechanism built in, but, um, man, can you still get slapped? Oh yeah. Okay. As Dennis said, if you're experimenting with these things for a long enough period of time at a sufficient enough dose, you're bound to scare the pants off yourself. And I've always loved that quote.
01:13:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And so like you were wondering like earlier in the podcast about like, what, like if everybody just was on board with consciousness being fundamental, like, like what's getting in our way of this model. And part of it is your own conscious self does not want to acknowledge the reality of the situation because it's too simple.
01:14:16
Speaker
Like the layers of consciousness idea is that, you know, right now consciousness is very complex and a layered experience, like a complex layered Photoshop creation, right? But if you do take one of these psychedelics or if you meditate and are great at it, then you can offline a lot of these layers and come back to this fundamental layer, which is,
01:14:40
Speaker
you are the immortal thing. And if you were the immortal thing, you would want to believe you were not the
Relationships, Parenthood, and Consciousness
01:14:46
Speaker
immortal thing. If you were the unbounded, the thing you would want the most is to have a limit, something to overcome, something to do with infinity. Like, what would you do in a timeless dimension? Where you are all powerful and can do anything, you would create conflict. Exactly. Give yourself something to do.
01:15:07
Speaker
So Jordan Peterson had this, um, line that he pulled from some Hebrew texts, but it's great. It's like, you know, what does it being that's omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent lack limits finitude, you know, we like being able to die as a blessing because it gives us the experience of being alive, like without.
01:15:34
Speaker
And then this is why it comes back to that fundamental relationship idea. What mushrooms or LSD will teach you is that relationships are the most important thing because it isn't cause and effect, it's cause dash effect. They come into, they mutually arise.
01:15:54
Speaker
People talk about the meaning of life, but you couldn't have meaning without relationship first. Relationship precedes experience. You can't have meaning without experience, right? You have to have experiences before you can make meaning. Well, you can't have experiences until you have a relationship.
01:16:09
Speaker
I'm only here because my parents had a relationship. And that's the true for everybody else too. Like we're all in relationship to our past selves and our future selves. The planet, what it will be in 50, 60 years, like my son's generation, like what planet are they going to inherit? I'm in a relationship to my, the future, the future in a way that means something. And so I have to, like my actions on this planet
01:16:36
Speaker
affect him. So I'm in relationship to him. And I'm in relationship to all of our ancestors. And we're caught in the middle. And that's consciousness. Yes, I love it. And the meaning of life has has definitely seemed to change for both of you. And really? Oh, well, yeah, I mean, having having your child, I think, would definitely alter what you would think the meaning of life is, right?
01:17:00
Speaker
Actually, I got to say it has, you know, it has because now I'm just, I feel like I'm just a memory for him. Living to be a memory for him? Living to be a memory for him. Like, you know, if consciousness is ultimately what mediates between perceiver and perceived, I am no longer the perceiver. I'm no longer the organism, the evolution that's struggling. I am now the environment for our kids.
01:17:24
Speaker
You know, she was literally the environment for him growing up for nine months. And then on the exterior, you know, once he finally comes out, again, eating from this one, you know, this one thing, like he was, I'm sorry, she was his entire world. He must be right there. You must be within eyes shot. You are the environment.
01:17:46
Speaker
And one day his brain will generate a network of neurons called the default mode network, which will say like, I'm here, I'm over here. And like, you know, and we'll cut himself off from us. But at this moment in time, who's to say what he's experiencing? Like his vision, his visual cortex isn't refined enough to understand object permanence very well.
01:18:06
Speaker
You know, we can still play peekaboo with him. Like, so what is his experience of consciousness? It's going to get more and more complex, but at the moment it's very, very simple and we get tired of the simplicity. So we add on layers of bullshit so we can suffer. Oh yeah. And I forget. That's accurate. That is, that is accurate. Life is more inherent in life is suffering because of the duality really, at least that's what I like to look at it.
01:18:35
Speaker
Yeah, man. Yeah. When you experience your non dual states, like can you even explain how it feels? No, the only thing that I can it's just love with the capital L, you know, that to me is what the only word that you can use to describe it, because it's the only word that we don't have a true definition for. It just kind of feels right. It feels like that.
01:19:06
Speaker
Everything is perfect. Everything is accepted. Everything is exactly as it should be. Yeah. I mean, in some ways you're experiencing the opposites at the same time, or at least for me in my experience, like, you know, it felt like I was swallowing a cube. Like it's, it's both infinite bliss and also infinite loneliness because you're the only thing that there is. But then, you know, like, I mean, here we're interacting with parts of ourself. So it's still okay.
01:19:35
Speaker
Yeah, again, like I said earlier, it's, it's, it's feeling yourself as an individual on the deepest level, but also at the same time, feeling yourself as everyone else and everything in the whole universe. And that's, it's a, it's a heavy paradox to hold for sure.
01:19:53
Speaker
It is. Yeah. And that's that final realization, which is Atman, your essential self is Brahman, which is the ultimate ground of being. So you are one with everything that is.
Promoting the Book and Upcoming Events
01:20:05
Speaker
And I want to experience that moment again, man. I feel so disconnected from it. It doesn't sound like it, but I do. We can work on that. Do you guys see yourself delving into psychedelics anytime soon? Has it been a little while for you?
01:20:21
Speaker
Not too long. You know, we're exhibiting at Psychedelic Science 2023 in June here in Denver. So we're so excited for that. Like we're just so stressed out because we're, you know, she has been designing this escape room themed around the book for the event. And so it's, it's awesome, but like it's been all of our time in focus. So yeah, I believe maybe after that conference, it would, it would be nice to tap into that moment of selflessness right now because doing all this book promotion is so
01:20:49
Speaker
You got to tap into this very ego strong mind. Very talky about yourself, which is neither of us really love to do and like dominating the conversation of this podcast. I didn't want to like, you know, I'm trying to explain something complex. So I feel like I've grabbed the mic more often than I should, but it's a fucking complex subject.
01:21:10
Speaker
Well, that's why I have you guys on, you know, to, to express what you have to express, you know, and to share your art with the world. Um, and you guys are giving me so much to chew on. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You guys always do. Um, and everybody out there, please, please go buy their book consciousness in a nutshell. Uh, is there anywhere else people can find you guys? Obviously psychedelic science 2023.
01:21:36
Speaker
Well, you can find any online retailer on our website consciousnessin a nutshell.com. There's also a lot of supplementary material in there, some chapter readings, some just extra stuff that couldn't make it into the book. And we'll also be probably announcing more as we go. There's a potential other conference here in Denver in the fall.
01:22:00
Speaker
So yes, you can find us on all of our, also on all of our Instagram handles and social handles are also consciousness in a nutshell.com all one word. Oh, sorry. At consciousness in a nutshell. There we go. Like you said, baby. Yeah. Consciousness in a nutshell, all one word you'll find us. Yeah. So I appreciate you guys coming on so much. Thank you again. Thanks Josh. Thank you so much. Yeah, man.
01:23:34
Speaker
you