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71. Illuminating The Path To The Mystery
48 Plays5 months ago
In this week’s episode, Joe and I discuss what it means to be human, discovering who you truly are through consciousness work, how our senses limit us from knowing reality, and much much more.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Themes
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pursuit of Infinity, a podcast where we venture into the complex terrains of human consciousness, immersing ourselves in the fascinating realm of psychedelics and beyond.
Exploration of Consciousness and Identity
00:00:11
Speaker
In this week's episode, Joe and I discuss what it means to be human, discovering who we truly are through consciousness work, how our senses limit us from knowing reality, and much, much more. But before we get to it, as always, you can visit our website, pursuitofinfinity.com, where you can not only listen to the podcast through our integrated media player, but find all of the places you can follow us as well. If you enjoy the podcast, please consider a sub, a five star rating, or even a review. These things play a crucial role in extending the reach of our discussions as widely as possible.
00:00:48
Speaker
If you're an avid listener and you want to show us some extra support, you can become a patron at patreon dot.com slash pursuit of infinity, and you'll get some great stuff in
Support and Engagement Invitation
00:00:57
Speaker
return. So head on over there for the details. Give us a follow on Instagram. We're at pursuit of infinity pod and keep up with news, episode drops, memes, and general musings. Also below, you'll find a final link to our YouTube channel, which is youtube dot.com slash at pursuit of infinity. All of our episodes are always posted there in video format, as well as an array of shorts that we put 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.
Neti-Neti and Self-Inquiry Techniques
00:01:43
Speaker
Have you ever heard of it the neti neti? So I've been using this technique. It's basically a form of meditation. It's self-inquiry though. So neti neti is translated to not this, not this, or not this nor that. So that's a process of meditation where instead of Like just questioning yourself, trying to figure out who am I, who am I. You go through the things in your direct experience and you question yourself, am I this? Is this essential to my being? And then, you know, not this, not this. So like you would go, for instance, am I my thoughts? And you would say,
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, my thoughts aren't essential to me because they're fleeting. They change at all times. I remain once they're gone. So, okay, not this. I'm not my thoughts. And, you know, and you go through the process of, you know, you could go to, you'll but have your eyes closed. You'll feel the sensations in your hands and you'll say, okay, well, am I the sensations in my hands? It's like, well, those also are fleeting and they're also just sensations. I am not a sensation and it is not permanent to my being. And the idea is that you go through all these different things in your mind and by process of elimination, you're left with what you actually are. So you go through whatever your perceptions, your sensations, your thoughts, and you'll find that you are none of those things. And what you remain with is simply your being. So.
00:03:22
Speaker
It's I found it a fun process because like just meditation sometimes it's This is an engaging form of meditation where you you activate your mind. you're you know You're not simply just putting your mind away. um So it's a good way to switch it up for me. And it's interesting because all the things throughout your day that you normally identify with yourself when you sit with them and you ask these questions from purely your direct experience, not any type of
00:03:56
Speaker
you know Any type of concepts or whatever, you just directly experience and ask these questions. And then you'll find that the things that you identify throughout the day with is not what you actually are. like you could say You could open your eyes and look at your hands and say, am I the sight of these hands? well your sight you're seeing is also always changing. You're not always looking at your hands. So that's a way where you're questioning your direct experience. So even though when your hands are behind your back, you think I have hands, well, you're having no experience of them other than then like ah perceptions and sensations, and you are not a perception or a sensation.
00:04:38
Speaker
So you could go through, you go through whatever, you know, is in your mind. And it's a, it's a fun form of meditation for me at least. And I've been using that lately. Interesting. Yeah. So it's like a stripping away of all the things that identify yourself as day to day that cloud your mind, cloud your judgment and sort of take you away from the essence of your true being. So how has it been working out for you? I mean, I think it's awesome. It works out well. I mean, it it puts you in a place where you're thinking to yourself like, okay, throughout the entire day, like I said, you're identifying yourself with these things and you're so attached to everything. But once you strip it away, you're like, okay, well, that's not what I am. You're stripping away stripping away. And then you are left with just being just open being willing for anything to come into it. Basically, just consciousness itself.
00:05:35
Speaker
What do you think is the utility of that? Like, I have a personal opinion of the utility of stripping away all that stuff, but I'd like to hear it from you. Like, what do you think it does for you to be able to strip away all the things that we generally identify ourselves with in the material world and sort of get in touch with that inner being? Well, I think for me, I'm just, I'm a curious person first off, and I think You know, we always want to look out there and know things like know about certain aspects of life or objects, whatever. And it, you know, has to cross your mind in order to know anything at all. You have to know that which knows that, you know what I mean? If you don't know the subjective aspect of what is knowing, you have to know what is knowing to truly know about a thing. So I think,
00:06:30
Speaker
With the neti-neti process specifically, it's like in order to know what you are, you have to first know what you're not. like That's the first step. So knowing what you're not isn't going to show you what you are, but it's going to it's like going to lead you there. And eventually, through the process, you can have a direct like a direct experience of what you actually are. And then when you you know what you are would be just being, being itself. the I am. So you are just pure being. I like, I mean, awareness is a good word, but I think being is a good word because you can really put yourself in the experience of simply being. Not being human, you know, not being in a room, just being is, and that's what everything is. I mean, I, there's a good quote I heard. It's, um, the amness of the self is the is-ness of things. So it's basically saying that
00:07:31
Speaker
Am and Is are the same thing. And basically that means everything is just being. It's just shining being at you, through you. It's just one being happening at all times. And I mean, and then you as far as like how it can help you. And it just, for me, it helps me live in the present a lot more.
Meditation's Role in Anxiety and Peace
00:07:51
Speaker
So I'm not like, it's just like, it's an anxiety killer. It just kills anxiety. It kills any of your problems. That's what I've been recognizing. and
00:08:03
Speaker
it's It allows me to just simply be. And like if if something worrisome comes up in my mind, I just sit where I am now. It's kind of like the Ram Dass, be here now. And then I'm like, well, everything is just perfect right now. you know You can experience pain, physical pain, and you're not going to be able to avoid that, but you don't have to identify with it. But as far as normal things throughout the day that bother people, as far as like you know, emotional stuff or anxieties or depression. I think this is like, it's it's a godsend because you've it you can push all that away and just simply be yourself and your true nature is peaceful and loving. So without the thoughts and concepts all coming into your head, you release all that and then you just feel peaceful.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like when you identify with all the things around you day to day, the things that cause anxiety, and you place your values into the things that emphasize your separateness, it's hard to be in the world, you know, but not of the world within that that framework. Yeah, absolutely. It's like and so life changing just to kind of fall into this kind of path and start seeking because for me, it's so interesting to
00:09:32
Speaker
You know, just think about the way that I used to see things, how how things were to me compared to now like going through this process and seeing things differently. Like from now to how I was when I was like an atheist materialist is, you know, it's night and day.
Debate on Consciousness and Matter
00:09:52
Speaker
I mean, and now to me materialism seems funky. Like just the concept of matter, it's, you know, Matter has never been experienced because if you think what matter is, it has to be something that exists outside of consciousness. So because they say consciousness is derived from matter.
00:10:12
Speaker
so Nobody has ever experienced matter. All matter that has ever been experienced has to be within consciousness. Nothing has ever been experienced outside of consciousness. So it's like to have that indoctrination and flip that in your mind and think that, you know, the thing that we only ever experienced is derived from something that was never experienced or could ever be experienced from something or from anyone. It's kind of mind blowing. So are you saying that
00:10:43
Speaker
the experience because like the way that you would experience something in the material world would be the experience of a sensation, the experience of seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, hearing. That's how we would experience materialism, essentially. So ah is what you're saying that those are all contents of consciousness. So the experience is actually deriving from consciousness rather than consciousness deriving from what's external. Right. It's just pure experiencing. and like Even if you think about, like pick one of your senses, like sight. When you're seeing just you know what you're seeing, your mind divides everything up into objects, your human mind. so like You to see you know a computer, a computer case, all this different stuff. But when you go directly to the experience of seeing, it's like, is seeing itself many things or one seamless whole?
00:11:45
Speaker
Before you divide it up with what you're looking at, it it when you the experience of seeing is a seamless whole. It is one, and like you can go into all the different your different senses. so what One thing I've been doing for a long time actually is thinking about like Every state you're experiencing is a single whole rather than like if you are hearing something plus seeing something, it's not two separate things. It is one full experience. The sensation in your hands mixed with the sight that you're seeing, it's it is one seamless whole. your The mind cuts it up like it's two separate things, but it's a experiencing all at one moment. You know what I mean?
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, why is it that we do
Perception of Experiences as Unified Wholes
00:12:31
Speaker
that? Why is it that we divide our senses up into parts as opposed to experience something as a whole? Is it because we don't have the innate ability within our cultural awareness to be able to experience something within a whole because it's just not not in our vernacular, not in our mode of thinking or our value systems? Yeah, I think that like something like that, if you had like a society, like a very advanced society that kind of raised people in that form of thought, I think it could happen. But I think it's kind of just human nature, the experience of being a human to do that. I mean, everything in this realm is apparently dualistic.
00:13:15
Speaker
But it's when you decide to do the investigation that you see that all separation is it's more of an illusion. So there's a reality to it. Illusions are real, but we're not seeing it properly. So it's you can through these types of investigations, you can break everything down and and kind of see what it actually is, which is, it's like unity. That's all there is to it. It's it's one. It's funny, also like all the Vedantic like teachers and stuff, because you know, with dualistic language, you can't describe the thing.
00:13:54
Speaker
What we're talking about can't be described accurately, so they decide to – they don't use like the word one. They decide to say not to because they would rather say what it's not than try to attempt to say what it is. Because even saying one is dualistic. It implies something else. you know But it's not one because there's nothing else. it's yeah That's why they say not two, which I was like, that's pretty that's that's pretty cool. It's like an indirect way of saying one without creating the separation that one ultimately will result in when you bring that into you know the duality. But something interesting I think about what you said was it's interesting that we have to work against our natural tendencies in order to discover what really is.
00:14:41
Speaker
I wonder why that is, ah you know, it almost makes me feel like there's a responsibility in biological entities that when they reach a certain level of consciousness or awareness that they have to work to break free of the physical boundaries in order to like discover the secret of the mystery or something like that. I don't know if that's just the adventurous part of me that says that, but it it does seem like that's sort of the way that it goes. Yeah, and it's interesting because like at any moment in time or like you know go back thousands of years, whatever there's always some small group of people that are doing this and there's even a smaller group who've got it down, but it doesn't pervade our society. I think it has to be amplified in such a way and like embedded into a culture. I think the closest was probably like India a couple thousand years ago or something.
00:15:40
Speaker
But um yeah i mean but why why we are like this, why we constantly divide things, I think part of it is kind of the beauty of the human experience. because as what what I'd say you truly are is infinite consciousness but as infinite consciousness you can't experience anything finite like material things like being a human you can't there the infinite cannot know the finite and the finite cannot know the infinite meaning you know if the infinite knew something finite it wouldn't be infinite anymore
00:16:19
Speaker
Because and in order to be infinite, anything finite would have to be included in the whole. So like we kind of localize into apparently localize into a human to experience the creativity and beauty of God basically. And then the beauty of it especially is then recognizing what you are and seeing that it was all an illusion in a sense where There never really was this. Like, personally, it's it's interesting because my DMT experience showed this to me in a way. And it's funny now that I'm like reading and practicing this stuff. It's like, it's exactly in line with that DMT experience. It's crazy.
Reality as Simulation and Dream
00:17:04
Speaker
But yeah, it's like, then you can see the beauty of what you really are and that, you know, what your experience is illusory. It's real, but the way that we
00:17:14
Speaker
we divide it up in our minds is the illusion. It's not real. It's not actually the way that the human mind thinks it is. Yeah. And it's interesting because I don't subscribe to simulation theory, but I think that it's a useful way to understand what we're talking about here. Because if you look at reality as a field of information, um And you look at it as we are inhibiting these biological spacesuits in order to acquire the senses to disseminate that information and interpret it in a way that allows us to live in the physical world. But it's almost as if it's like a computer.
00:18:04
Speaker
right When a computer is interpreting code, it's interpreting ah like, let's say CSS, for instance, because so there's HTML, which would be like the website structure. And then the CSS is the code that creates the design of the structure. So if you want something to be, if you want text to be blue instead of black, you, you code that into your CSS and it will create, um, sort of a coat of paint or, uh, an image that is designed in the way that you want it to be designed in. And that's sort of the way that I interpret the reality. It's almost as if we're, we're writing the code of CSS to create this, this coat of paint or this design on top of reality, but we're not trying. truly getting to the code portion of it, which is that information field that reality is built on. And I i look i mean, I don't subscribe to simulation theory, but I also like it because I think at the very least, it's a step in the right direction that
00:19:13
Speaker
says you know that this reality is immaterial, which I believe it is immaterial, and it is a unified whole. you know If you look at a video game, it's obvious that that's not a material world and it is one unified whole. um and But the problem with simulation theory, which is weird, is that it it kind of posits a physical reality outside this reality with some type of computer. So like there is a physical reality. We just never seen it. We never can see it. And it's just creating this simulation. So that's, I think it's.
00:19:53
Speaker
totally of the times for this theory to be arriving though. I mean, why wouldn't it? we This is how we're starting to see things through a technological lens. um But I personally like the God's dream analogy more or just comparing reality to a dream because I think I mean, a dream is something that we really experience and it's something that is totally real. And, you know, in the dream, as your dream self, you're so afraid. Like, if you're getting chased by a tiger, you're afraid. And you're afraid that you're going to die when it gets you. And then you wake up, maybe it gets you. You wake up and you forget about it. You're like, you don't more like mourn your dead character from your dream.
00:20:41
Speaker
So you're you're dead. You like you died. that you You will never see again. It doesn't exist anymore. That whole reality that was created by your mind is dead and gone. And you don't like mourn it at all. it's you know it It is what it is. We don't we don't really identify with that once ah once we're not experiencing it. And that idea translates directly to the video game simulation type thing. But with the simulation, I feel like we put a little more stock into that because it exists within a physical world. As you said, it's as if there's a physical world that exists to like outside of our own. And I think that's the only way that we can as a group sort of
00:21:32
Speaker
think about something that exists outside of this, because we have a really hard time thinking about what existence would look like if there was a reality that's outside of materialism that exists in, say, a different dimension. You know, we only understand dimension from, like, what I would consider a, like, we're our perspective, we're like the 4D perspective. And we are looking at the three-dimensional world. right And for us to take ourselves out of that, it's almost impossible for us to think of it unless we think of it as we take ourselves out of it in order to observe another, a different 3D world, because it's really hard for us to grasp something that we can't
Psychedelics and Higher Consciousness
00:22:20
Speaker
grasp. you know Yeah, we can't like our minds simply can't imagine like a higher dimensional object, which is what's incredible about psychedelics, you experience the impossible. But like you said, we're, you know, four dimensional beings, and we can manipulate three dimensions. So the fourth, I would say, this is what people say is time. And we can't manipulate that. But we can manipulate the dimensions that we perceive.
00:22:48
Speaker
And then the idea is, like another reason I like thinking about this stuff is because you know you get UFOs and aliens, like possibly higher dimensional beings. And say you know say we're fourth and these higher entities, whatever you want to call them, are just say five dimensional. which would mean they could manipulate the the next four, which would mean that they could manipulate time, which would explain some of the weirdness that happens with their movement. They would be able to avoid us like very easily because you know if they didn't want to be seen, they would just go at the proper time when there's no one around. but you know And then you go up and up in dimensions where we can't really conceive of what that even means in this state.
00:23:33
Speaker
But then, you know, you take a psychedelic and you're like, I know. And then it goes away when you come out. So do you think that consciousness itself is a dimension or do you think that all dimensions exist within consciousness? Right. I think that all experienced dimensions of the finite exist within within and as consciousness. So it's like the totality. So it's not like simply within is also made out of pure consciousness. But I think like the pure consciousness itself, the unity, the infinite recognized is ah dimensionless.
00:24:17
Speaker
So again, incapable for us to perceive, I think the only way to To feel that ah dimensionless is to be it. And I think you can use like the closest thing that we all experience to that pure consciousness, that unity, something that we all experience, is deep sleep. where when It's interesting, though, because Deep sleep when we wake up becomes colored, pure consciousness becomes colored with all this activity of itself. And instantly the the human mind, the finite mind comes into existence and you try to remember what it was like in deep sleep.
00:24:59
Speaker
And you can't there's the when pure consciousness is non-dual, so the subject and object collapse into one, the pure being. So as soon as the finite mind arises, you're trying to grab at something, but the something that existed was the collapse of subject-object. So we're existing in a subject-object. state of mind it's impossible to conceive the dimensionless whole but you know a few things about it that you like doing it it is peaceful it is it's just absolute it's pure peace is what it is there are no objects
00:25:37
Speaker
and But the thing is, we can't conceive of it. And interestingly enough, deep sleep is also timeless. We experience timelessness. That's why when the we awake, supposedly awake, when the when reality gets colored with this again, We can't really understand how much time we, like during the experience, it doesn't make sense. You know, the whole time aspect just doesn't, it's a timeless experience of just pure being, pure peace. So I think that's like something everyone can relate to that is the closest thing to pure consciousness without any, any coloring or activity, just pure being at rest.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah. And the reason that we can remember anything about our dreams or our sleep in general is because again, this is all their slices of the same pizza, right? Yeah. You can observe them as different pieces, but ultimately they're all connected and they all do relate to one another. So like to me, when you were saying that I was thinking then, well, why can we even, if we're, if we're in this subject object dichotomy when we're in. sleep compared to being awake. And I was thinking, why can we even remember our dreams? But again, this all just goes back to the connection of all things. Right. I'd like to think of it as like I said, um like it is a seamless whole. So when you think about deep sleep, what the way I'm trying to think about it is there isn't a separate you that falls asleep, dreams, then goes into the deep sleep state and then wakes up. So there's not a separate you that experiences three states.
00:27:17
Speaker
there is basic there is only the you as consciousness, the deep sleep state, that colors itself in different ways. So it's like, if you imagine that deep sleep, pure peace, pure being as your true nature, and it it its activity exists within itself and as itself. So it colors itself with the experience that we have right now in the moment. And so then it it gives you a different way of thinking of it as like a ah unique whole, just total being that's always happening in the now, just a single whole. Instead of thinking like there's three different states that one separate entity experiences, it's just the whole and its activity of itself in itself. And this is why
00:28:06
Speaker
fractals really have an impact on people that think of things as the way that you and I think of things like this, you know, because fractals are beautifully perfect designs where they're symmetrical in every single way. because they're based upon the circle which is the uniform like the unified ah shape of all things as the um the flower of life is created by circle upon circle upon circle upon circle and fractals are essentially representations of the flower of life really within different shapes within different flavors so you can flavor your fractal in any way but ultimately it is still a fractal which is
00:28:55
Speaker
a hole made of parts, which is another hole made of more parts. We always talk about whole lines on the show. And to me, like this is just a perfect description of the fractal nature of reality. Yeah, and if the the fractal nature of reality is mind-blowing and amazing. I'm tending to think of things like this, like synchronicities, fractals, this type of stuff like hints in our experience to show us our nature and bring us back. So it's like little hints that are sprinkled, little pieces of truth that you know pop into our heads. and
00:29:31
Speaker
like can bring us to the understanding that something is way bigger is going on. Like I'm sure you've seen, you know, we talk about fractals, there's fractals in a lot of plants, but in all sorts of things, there's fractals. But then like the craziest one is when you zoom out to like the best image we have of the universe and it looks like, uh, like the image of neurons and stuff. It's like, that is just awesome. It's amazing. Yeah, it brings up the question then, who is hinting us? Or what is giving us these hints? And if you take into consideration that we could just be little tiny microscopic pieces of a massive working hole that equals itself out to be neurons, which would be um the brain of something,
00:30:29
Speaker
Is it possible that when you do zoom out from the observable universe and you see those neural connections, is that just what we are? Are we just this, are we as humans, a tiny little piece of a cell that is the earth of a larger cell that is the galaxy? Because, you know, to me, I always look at. space as something that is functioning for a reason of some sort. We can observe that the earth revolves around the sun and we have this like beautiful structure um of gravity that creates this orbital nature of our solar system.
00:31:10
Speaker
But what is that? what Why is it happening? What is the function of planets? And I don't think that question is asked enough within the the research you know institutes of the world who are trying to figure out what reality is. And yeah, that's so true. And it's crazy. like We're very obsessed with the macro, like trying to zoom into things. And I guess it's easier. It's pretty hard to wrap your head around the... Did I say macro or micro? I mean, we were obsessed with the micro instead of the macro. And um so we zoom in the stuff and we see how... you know Now at Quantum Mechanics, we're kind of confused.
00:31:51
Speaker
but When you look out, in the like it's so mind-blowing seeing the way you know there's you know a solar system you know that we're in, a planet with other planets orbiting a star, and then there's billions and billions of those just in our galaxy, and then there's billions more billion more of those too. it's like It's the most fascinating thing of all time. and You know there's meaning to it like because meaning is inherent. you know There's meaning in everything. and You know just by what you experience in your experience that there's like there's perfect harmony at all times. so whatever The way I like to think about it is whatever they're doing is just harmonious. and you know what i i mean You zoom out, you zoom out. Who knows how far because you know as in the human like experience,
00:32:43
Speaker
We think of things always relative to us. like The planet is huge. The atom is tiny. But that's just like because of the scale of us that we reflect that onto things. i mean We are massive to an atom. so i mean Nothing is big or small. It just is. so I mean, I would imagine that what we call the physical universe is just simply infinite all the way in and all the way out. There's no end to experience, you know? Why are you going to like zoom in and just say ah experience stops happening? There's no way. It's just not how it works. The same goes when you zoom out. It's just going to, it keeps going.
00:33:25
Speaker
And also within that same vein, if you do zoom all the way out as far as possible, that too is as big as an atom or as small as an atom because the universe is probably the atom of some other higher order of complexity. Right. Yeah. It's probably. I mean, if you think of consciousness, it's not quite, I would say not quite a mind, but if you think along the realms of a mind, an infinite, all creative, all like just being itself.
00:34:03
Speaker
the create If it's infinite, that means its creativity is infinite, its complexity is infinite. And it just condenses itself, it constricts itself into what we consider to be a finite form to experience its creativity. And there if consciousness is truly infinite, there is no no limit I mean, as human beings, as perceived – we're the ones who put limits onto things. Consciousness doesn't. We limit ourselves as what we are. We say we're so we're little separate selves, just a body and a head. um But we're the ones that are putting limits on things. There's nothing in reality that says anything is truly limited. There's just what we can perceive. So we limit things.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird. And I don't know why I thought of this. But I think part of the limiting nature of things is based on our senses. And you said, you know, we think of ourselves as just a body and a head. And I, you know, we always feel like we are just this, some sort of operating system that exists right within the center of our own head. And I think that's because all of our senses except for one right originate from our head. ah We see out of our eyes, we hear out of our ears, we smell out of our nose, we taste out of our mouth. The only thing that we don't do that is centralized in the head is feel because our whole body can feel. But I think it's interesting that like our senses are completely centralized in our head. I think that's why we think that we exist within this head of a spacesuit. Absolutely. and
00:35:42
Speaker
what's What I like to think about with that is this is why I like dream analogy so much. It's like why it's so convincing and why we think that way. It's like when you're in a dream and you're your dream character and say there's a banana on the table, you start eating it, you taste the banana. not knowing that you are actually just a ah imagineated like an imaginative character from the mind of the sleeper. So yes, it seems convincing that this is where all your senses are coming from, but really, you are simply just a dreamed character. So everything is very convincing and it seems real and is real, but it is illusory. So like you're when you're dreaming, it's like, sure, taste happens in my mouth, but really,
00:36:30
Speaker
in that in the it's It's just illusory in nature. so But that's why I like the dream analogy. It's like everything that we experience here, we experience in a different life of something that we consider to be totally unreal. Yeah, that just exemplifies the illusory nature of what we're doing here. Because if we can experience the same things here in our physical world when we're unconscious, then what does that mean for the legitimacy of the reality of this? Exactly. And that's why I think it's so fun just to investigate it. I mean,
00:37:10
Speaker
It's truly mind-blowing even just to think about experience at all. and I think, honestly, with like psychedelics really opens that up because I find it for a lot of people are cynics and I understand that because like you just get into the flow of of existing as a human being and it all seems normal and the world is hard and things you know you have negative emotions. But then I think what happens is like when you take a psychedelic, it shows you what is possible and you have these just mystical experiences or just something absolutely wild. And then when you come back to your regular state, things
00:37:53
Speaker
look totally different. It shifts the way you see this. It's like, well, if that's possible, what else is possible? And then you start asking about this and it's like, well, this is pretty weird too. that wasn't That experience on whatever psychedelic was pretty strange. You come back here and then you start realizing how strange this is. And then you start looking at your dreams and just diving in into all these different states. Yeah, that truly is the power of psychedelics and all consciousness work, really, is changing perspectives. I think that's really what it comes down to, because when you do change your perspective, that's the only thing that allows you to mentally break free of the things that were shackling you down to what you think that you are, because ultimately, we don't know who we are.
00:38:40
Speaker
And that is the main question. I think that's the the question that leads you down the path of the mystery. ah Yeah, that's the ultimate question. And I think that's… some Another way to do self-inquiry, just you know meditate and just you could just sit with that question. and so and That's kind of like I said, the neti-neti process. It's one way. You say, who am I? so The idea is you remove all things that are not you, not essential to you, not essential to experience. Another good one to ask yourself is, what is awareness? What is it that knows?
00:39:15
Speaker
and I think that is, it's almost wrong to say, but it's impossible to speak, like the subject of experience. Like a good one we talk about is, you know, you are not the self, you are the witness of the self. But I think you know that's kind of like the Advaita Vedanta. It's kind of an inward-facing path where you look, who am I, who am I? And then like the Tantric path is more outside. It's an outward-facing path. So through the inward-facing path, you kind of... And this is where I'm more practicing.
00:39:50
Speaker
is understand that you are the witness. But then the outward-facing path, you collapse the duality and understand that you are the witness and the witness. So you are all. You are the unity of all. and it's It's harder to do that, I think. I think the inward-facing path is probably better to start with and you know still not easy to grasp, but it you can do it. With the outward-facing path, it's harder, I would say. But it is, you know when you look at, let's say you know let's say a guitar,
00:40:27
Speaker
The most primary and fundamental thing about it is the knowing of it. so it's not like you don't You have to say in order to know the guitar, you have to know first. It's going to sound a little bit like weird, but it's knowing shining back at you.
Meditation and Duality Dissolution
00:40:46
Speaker
As I said before, that ah it's is-ness, it's being, and that's all that is. and you You should be able to collapse that duality and then exist as just consciousness. Yeah. And what's really cool about each of the paths you can take, whether it be the outside or the inside, you're still coming to the same types of conclusions. So you're still going down the same path. I think of this, uh, this meditation that.
00:41:18
Speaker
I heard of and I've done it a few times. It's super interesting, especially if you live in an area that is super noisy. There's a bunch of stuff going on. I live right on like a main road. So it works really well for me, especially if I like open the door, like the deck, or if I open a window or something, you just sit and you You follow all of the things that are happening around you, as opposed to a lot of meditations people do where you're trying to empty your mind or empty yourself. This one is the opposite where you are trying to listen to the cars that whiz by. And I was doing this one time and.
00:42:01
Speaker
Like you notice things, sounds and vibrations that you wouldn't actually notice if you weren't paying as close attention to it. Like I can notice that when a car reaches a certain point.
00:42:16
Speaker
there's a building across the street that has a bunch of bars, as if it's almost like a fence, but it's a bunch of bars. And you can hear the echo of the sound of the car bouncing off of the bars. And it differs from when the sound of the car is bouncing off of the building where the bars aren't there. And you start to, you can like travel into different pieces of reality through the sound of things that are happening around you. And it's very, very interesting how you can do that. And you can notice things around you that you wouldn't have normally thought of. And again, as you were sort of saying, you know, you you can identify as all of those things, you know what I mean? And it it leads you to the same place. Yeah, yeah it's all it's.
00:43:03
Speaker
You are that experience. And I think with meditation, it's great too because but in doing it long enough and you close your eyes and sit there, you and when you calm the thought, a human being, you're thinking yourself ah you're thinking of yourself as a human being. That's just a thought. When you're sitting there with your eyes closed for long enough and the thoughts subside, there is no more human being. There's being, but the human is an afterthought. It doesn't exist while your eyes close, not thinking about, you know, any ideas or specific things. And when you said that meditation you ah you do, I do one that's kind of similar. So you could do it. You don't even really have to meditate to do it, but I have a dehumidifier in the room here. And so it runs and makes noise. And so when I i sit there with my eyes closed and listen to it,
00:43:58
Speaker
And it gets so, because it's constant, you know, so it just becomes ingrained. And you think about the scent like you're hearing. and Originally, you think that hearing takes place in my ears. So ears are hearing, and then you think that the object is, you know, 10 feet away. But then when the more you relax, you realize that where does hearing itself take place? you know All hearing that is ever heard. It's not the the supposed object 10 feet away. All hearing is happening within your being. And it is not just close to you. It is intimately you. It's closer than close. And you could do the same thing with seeing. it's like
00:44:41
Speaker
You see something and you say, that's an object. It's 10 feet away. But where does seeing take place? Take a step toward seeing. You can't do it. Seeing as as a whole is so intimately close that you can't it It is what you are. It's part of what you are, I should say. It's part of the whole. But seeing takes place so intimately close to you that you can't step toward it. You can only be it. And the said do you do that with all your senses. Another interesting one you do is like with your sense of touch. like Say, you know I have a table right in front of me. I grab the table.
00:45:19
Speaker
And you think, okay, and normally, dualistically, you would say, but now you're thinking only of your sensations. So it's like, close your eyes. Normally you'd say, okay, there's my hand and it's touching the table. But when you close your eyes and relax. and you focus only on the sensation, there's not a hand and a table. There's a single sensation. It is only ever one that's always happening. But we cut it up. When you think about the sensation, you're like, well, the hard thing is a table and my hand is my hand. But really, when you sit with that, it's just one unified sensation. And you could like do that with all your senses. you know
00:46:01
Speaker
just try to experience them purely without adding thought to them. Yeah, because what we normally do in everyday life is we try to describe the sensation. In order to describe the sensation, you have to bring it out of the oneness into the duality of table and hand. Right. Yeah, you gotta—and that's—I mean, that's our nature to do. I mean, that's part of the fun is, you know, if we were infinite all the time, which arguably you are, but the the illusion makes us have the the— the illusion of duality and stuff and division and separateness. But if you are just simply the infinite, then that's you can't experience the finite. You can't experience all this beautiful creativity and interesting things. So, you know, it makes sense that we're we're doing it for a reason, I guess you'd say, you know, it's not just an accident. I think it is just like the creativity of God.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, which is why if you look into the Buddhist cosmology of rebirth and reincarnation, what you see is that the human realm is revered even more so than the realm of the gods because the realm of the gods, it's boring to a degree. If you're only experiencing pure divinity, pure love and light, then it becomes a situation where you're only able to experience that one facet where yeah In the human realm, as an incarnated human, you're able to experience the gamut of experiences. You can experience love and hate and darkness and pain and beauty and all of these things. And just the opportunity to have that ability makes being a human awesome.
00:47:50
Speaker
And on top of it, like it's a ah double plus because like you said, you experience all that stuff as a human. But if you work at it as a human, you can also experience the infinite. So it's like we have since we are that we can experience ourselves as to that. But it we have to kind of come back here to live a life and not die. you know like kind of We got to have the human experience. But since we are the thing in itself, that's why we are able to have wild psychedelic experiences. That's why you can get to crazy states through meditation. And it's why you know our dreams, you can have profound consciousness expanding experiences in your dreams. Because we are that. We are the thing.
00:48:39
Speaker
I and my father are one. It's one thing. that's i like the ah so I don't know the exact quote, but the Sufis, like the Sufi mystics, they would say that all that exists is God's face. So you're always looking into God's face. It's all that exists is just God. And it can be shown to you in an infinite amount of creativity, creative ways. so Yeah, it's the beauty of it, man. You know, we can experience the depths of the bottom and the heights of all the way on the top. It's really interesting. And then I asked myself, like, why? Why are we able to to to do that as humans? And
00:49:24
Speaker
when you try to relate that back to like the evolutionary chain i look down on my dog here who's chilling next to me and i know he can't experience well i mean i think i assume i can't know but i assume that he's not experiencing the same type of Like dichotomy between height and depth that I am in terms of divinity of consciousness, right? But then the other thought is that well, maybe he is maybe because this being down here if you if you have a dog anybody has a dog out there, you know that
00:49:58
Speaker
They are the most beautifully cheerful and amazing animals that are in nature. So like, is that in itself experiencing a higher level? Is he always up in that high level? Maybe he can't feel the depths, but he can feel the heights. Like what is the diet like, what's the gamut of what other animals can feel? And is that dependent upon their quote unquote level of consciousness or their evolution?
00:50:28
Speaker
you know I like thinking of like when you see like i see my cat sitting there all peaceful, like just with his eyes closed, not sleeping, just sitting there. I'm like, he is in the unity right now. You think about it though, it's like being a human being might be, in a sense, it's a gift but could be considered a curse because like you said, we can experience these deep lows and the high highs. um But, you know, there's part of me that thinks like an animal like a dog or something that has less of a
00:51:00
Speaker
self-identity, like we identify with the body so much, they might be closer to pure experiencing. um So I don't know if that makes it a better experience, but I would assume that they can't, without the cognitive ability that like we have, I don't think they'd be able to experience such a low. But of course they can experience negative emotion and negative pain, but I think The reason why we are like supposedly farther from the thing is because of our self-identification, which is like we have that far more than any other being. Most animals, you put them in front of a mirror, they don't recognize them. You put us in front of the mirror, we're like, that's me. That's always me. I've always been this me. and like You start looking at yourself and judging yourself.
00:51:48
Speaker
so And you know, the beauty of all that, it's like, and I've been doing this more lately is like, when you're with your dog or with whatever, you more people, it's like, you can see the being in them. And there is only one being. Their being is your being. There's one being happening at all times, and that's you. And, you know, like another little hint, we were talking about hints in reality. It's like, it's a bit of a hint that there's, in your experience and in everyone's experience, there's only one I. Every person calls themselves I. There's only one I in your experience. There's only one in my experience. There is only one being. There's only one I.
00:52:34
Speaker
I like that. Your dog has that eye too, and it's the same one you have. We're just ah under the illusion of separation. but Like I said, you know look at seeing. It is a seamless whole. You're only seeing one seamless whole, but thought arises and you start cutting things up. and It's like a dream, so things work for you. you know you can when i pick If I pick up my laptop, it's only one sensation. You never experience an object like we say with matter like and in the materials paradigm, you think, let's go with an apple. You think the apple exists independent of yourself. That's how you look at it. You're like, okay, the apple's over there. It exists independently.
00:53:17
Speaker
but The independent apple is never experienced. and The only thing that's experienced is the seeing of the apple, the smelling of the apple, the tasting of the apple, the feeling of the apple. All that is experienced of it is directly intimate with yourself. It's not independent and separate. it The only thing that's experienced of it is pure intimacy and oneness with you. There's no separation there. you know It's the mind that says that, you know, the dualistic thinking of the human mind, cuts it all up. But then you realize that, no, the only experience of it is purely intimate with my being. other words Otherwise, it couldn't exist. You know, it has to exist within consciousness. Yeah. So would you say that? I guess there there's two ways to look at it. Like, would you say that you, you intimately know the Apple because you, or you can only know the Apple.
00:54:16
Speaker
to the degree to which you know yourself, or you don't actually know what the Apple is, you can only know what your senses take from the apple. The taste, the color, all the, you know what I mean? What you can feel. Well, the only thing to the apple are those things. There's no actual apple. There's only the seeing of it. So it's so intimately one with your experience. There's no apple that's independent. In order for it to exist, there has to be the seeing of it. At that point, the apple is only made of seeing.
00:54:51
Speaker
There has to be the smell of it. At that point, it's only made of smelling. You can touch it and say, oh, you know, but at that point, all there is is the touching of the apple. The same way I gave the experiment where you hold the table and realize it's one sensation. When you hold the apple, there's not the sensation. You can have your eyes closed. There's not the sensation of the apple and your hand. It is one sensation. So like kind of the second thing you were saying, the only thing to the apple is this is your perceptions of it. There's no apple outside those perceptions. So it's intimately...
00:55:27
Speaker
one with you because what we're experiencing these perceptions, it can't not be in the one field of consciousness because then it doesn't exist. Then it's just if it's not there, if you're not feeling it with any of your senses or perceptions, then it exists as it is as only the thought and the apple exists as a thought. So it has to exist within you, within, you know what I mean? There's only the sensing of it, or the feeling of it, whatever, perceptions and sensations.
00:56:00
Speaker
So if we go back to the code analogy, is there really a such thing or is it even possible for there to be a separate code for the Apple? And then what we define the Apple as is the CSS on top of the code that creates the image of it, that creates the red, that creates the taste, that creates the shape, all of that, all the things that we can perceive and sense. But is there a separate code? Is there something that's beneath it, that's beneath the CSS that's separate from us? I don't think so. I think it's all made of the same thing. So there could be, I would say like the CSS are and the code, combine them into one thing. That thing exists as pure consciousness. It is a single thing.
00:56:48
Speaker
And we as human beings, we see the the image and the text, you know, but that's the illusion. So the thing is all there is, but we see it through the human mind and our thoughts and everything. We divide it up and we think we're seeing a bunch of things, but there's only the single thing happening. So it's just as illusory as us clicking through a web a website, right? Because if you if you go in or if you go out, it's still an all one.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's like ah if you're on your computer and you look at the folders on your desktop and you think that they are independent of the screen. So you're clicking on them. You think that because this one opens this stuff and that one opens that stuff, that they are separate things in the in their own right when really it's only the screen showing itself, coloring itself. So the screen is like is reality and the folders are are quote-unquote separate objects when in reality they're all touching and they are all intimately part of the same exact thing.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah, and then you can go even farther and say, well, all the screen really is, is a pixelated display of code and a particular pattern of readable information, essentially. And then you can say, well, then what is the computer itself? And then you have the physical components of the computer itself that give off the electrical signals that allow you to see and type. But that still is just ah a piece of the one. And it's the same way that everything works as above, so below. And that's like what you're doing now. It reminds me of what it is as above, so below, but it also reminds me of.
00:58:37
Speaker
A technique you can do is like where you can see the one and everything, kind of like what you were saying. That's fractal in a sense too. It's like you can look at anything and see the reality in it. you know it's all like Even in the in the functions of things like with the computer, it is like a reflection of the one. You can see that in almost all things. A good example of, let's say, This is kind of separate, but you can connect all things to the one. Like for instance, when you say, when you think of a car and you say, what is a car? You think of, okay, the car is an object that drives on the street. So then you say.
00:59:23
Speaker
Well, you take away the spark plugs and it can't drive on the street anymore. It can't function. Is it no longer a car? it's Well, it's not. If it's not providing the function, it's not a full car. But then it goes even further than that because the car needs the road. If you take away the road, it's not a car anymore because it and can't drive on the road. The oxygen needs to be taken in to go through the exhaust to make it move. so like In order for anything to be, it has it's all its parts, it has to be one with everything in the environment in order for anything to function as such. So you can think of anything and try to connect how it how it is just reliant upon everything. And it's not what it is unless everything is existing with it at that moment.
01:00:11
Speaker
Yeah. An interesting way to think about how humans think about things and how humans define things is that obviously you take the spark plugs out of a car. And you ask somebody, like, what is that thing that's sitting right there? They're going to say a car. Right. Looks like a car. Yeah. Like they're they're still going to define the thing as a car. But there is a certain point in time where you take enough things away from that and they're no longer going to say that it's a car. Right. Take off the doors. You take away the frame. um You saw off the roof. You know, you you you take that thing into pieces.
01:00:53
Speaker
And eventually at a certain point, then humans will say, no, that's not a car. But at any point in time, you can make the argument that without one of those little things, just without one fiber. of the the floor mat or something you could make the argument it's oh it's not it's not the whole car anymore but we as humans like to um we we definitively define something based off of its utility mostly i was just gonna say exactly that because it's like i think as human beings we always
01:01:31
Speaker
When we see something, the first thing that pops into our head is the functionality of that thing. like We project function on everything, which I know I've told you this before. it's like You could do this with anything, but a cool meditation is just stare at your hand for a really long time until it stops being a hand. because then you're not it's just It's just the experience, pure experiencing, and you're no longer seeing the function. You could do that with like your table. You look at the table, and you think it's a table because You see the function in it. But you stare at it long enough and kind of remove the thought from it. It's just, like, just a thing. It's just experiencing. It's just seeing. Because if you look at it long enough, you won't even see it as wood. You'll just see it, you know?
01:02:16
Speaker
But and you could do the same thing with words. I'm sure anybody out there is listening has done this thing where like you say your name over and over again and it just loses all meaning completely. That's the same type of thing you could even do with a specific sound. yeah' Say you play a song or something like that. You play the first one second of that song and then you just keep repeating the first second, the first second, the first second. your mind will be trained to not hear that first second of the song as what as like a guitar or a person's voice, especially easy with someone's voice like, ah yeah, if someone's saying a word, then you'll never hear that word the same. If you listen to that song again, after repeating it, you're training your your brain to hear that in a different way. It's the same type of thing.
01:03:10
Speaker
And then like, exactly. You're not giving it function. You're just hearing the sound in itself. Exactly. Yeah. This just goes to show the finite nature of how we define things.
Human Potential and Environmental Harmony
01:03:24
Speaker
Like we're not looking at reality. We're not looking at things for what they are because you can, you can break down our definitions quite easily of, of anything really. And you know, all we have is our senses to see and experience the quote unquote outside world. And it's like the, um, the Bernardo Castro thing we've talked about. It's like a pilot is say they have steel over the cockpit, so they can't see outside the plane, but they have all these intricate dials, which allows them to navigate through the outside world perfectly well without ever actually looking at the true thing in itself.
01:04:06
Speaker
you're not so You can look at senses in the same way. i mean Since we are limited simply by the senses that we have, we can't say that we're looking at the whole thing in itself at any moment because you know we're not seeing what a bat's seeing, we're not seeing what an elephant's seeing. who's Who's seeing the real thing? Some animals have way better sight than us, so are they seeing something realer than we are? It's no, we're all looking at different dials. And you know we have our senses on those dials. We have our thoughts. And I think, personally, it's like underthought, I think it's even more intense because under the thought dial, there's time. It's still just a dial that doesn't necessarily have to exist, quote unquote, out there. And under the ah perception dial, you have space.
01:04:59
Speaker
So space doesn't have to exist out there, time or space, space-time itself. Those are just dials of human beings. Because if you think about it like we've talked about, time in actual experience is essentially a thought. I mean, it's always now, but we think about the past and we imagine the future. And, you know, with space, This is a harder one to think about, but I kind of like using the ah experience of seeing as what you're seeing as a unified whole. And where is seeing taking place? Closer than close. All of this is intimately close to your being. the Then your mind kind of, you know, rightly so, if you want to survive as a human being.
01:05:47
Speaker
projects space onto it. But it's all happening and right there. you know When you're looking at the moon, it is intimately close to your experience. The mind says it's this far away, but it is bam right there, seeing is it's always right there. And in order to survive as we have for thousands of years, we did have to say that our ability to perceive is more real than the bat's ability to perceive. What we're seeing is what is real.
01:06:19
Speaker
for thousands of years of evolution, we've needed to feel that way. And I think that that's the way that all animals must evolve is double down on your set of perceptions and your view of reality until you're able to break free of that where, and then that's when the next stage of evolution comes. And that's where, as Terence McKenna would say, you prepare to you know to become something that is not human anymore. You're you're traveling you know through the you know to to the stars. you know That's what happens when humans shed their biological form or something like that, maybe. And speaking of like what you were the lines you were just going along with, like evolution,
01:07:02
Speaker
Then based on that, you could say that you know plants and fungus are the truly most advanced because they've been around, they've evolved perfectly with the like as the unity of the planet have existed way longer than us and way they require way less maintenance. and you know Who knows? The experience of being the mushroom could be the pure experience of unity. Maybe they're seeing it more by not even seeing. Maybe the fact that they don't have the perception dial gets them even closer to what's outside the window. And same with you know plants.
01:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's two ways to think about that. One is if you have evolved as a biological entity on the planet and you you give more than you take, that is like the pinnacle of evolution. You know, that's when the plants come in, the fungus, they give more than they take. But there's also the argument that in order like like we, our ultimate potential, because it's so high and because our power potentially is so extravagant, we require more energy.
01:08:18
Speaker
you know, right you plug in and you plug something if you plug an air conditioner into your wall, that's going to take more power than if you just plug a little desk lamp into your wall, because the ability of that thing is so and it' so immense that it needs a higher degree of energy in order to live up to its full potential. So then there's the thought of Are we the Earth's ultimate mechanical entity? Because we require so much, we take so much, and we give back so little.
01:08:53
Speaker
And the interesting thing about that is too though, like you said, we do take in a lot and give back little, but our potential to give back more is so high. Whereas you see plants, mushrooms, all this stuff, it seems like they're in perfect harmony and they're giving what they take. And human beings, we seem to take more than we give. But we have the potential to give back way more. I mean, imagine if we had if as humanity we're a unified whole and we had a better understanding of reality itself. I mean, we would have advancements in technology because, you know,
01:09:30
Speaker
We don't need to use coal and all this weird ant stuff that you know hurts the planet and hurts the environment and hurts animals and plants. We don't have to behave this way. There's the Tesla form of electricity, which seemed to be way better for the environment. They say that there's that there's zero point energy that in every tiny spot of just being itself is an immense amount of energy. so They say that you know maybe it happened now. Maybe they they do this shit and in military bases deep underground where they have zero point energy. They definitely have some crazy types of energy systems. i mean Even in the public sphere, we have civilians creating cars that can run on water and then they die. Or Balbazar made a car that you know runs on like hydrogen and stuff. so
01:10:26
Speaker
There's countless forms of energy that we can create, but you know the way that that we are culturally, like our whole economic system and our weird hierarchies rely upon this one form of energy that happens to take way more than it gives. But it doesn't have to be that way. I think like the potential we have, you know it's it's it's vast. we can We can heal the planet and we can, you know, maybe one day put people on a different planet. Yeah.
01:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, and it just seems that unfortunately the the stages of us realizing our full potential involve us being fairly destructive for a long period of time. What makes that difficult and what makes that painful is that we have the knowledge and the foresight to understand what our predicament is. We do have that ability. so when we can But that's also the beauty of it too, because we know what we're doing is wrong. We know we have to do, but it just takes time to turn the ship around. It takes time to realize our full potential. And it's true, man. like you We know right from wrong. We know it in our core when we're doing something out of harmony.
01:11:42
Speaker
um And you know, like I was saying earlier, throughout all time, there has always been small groups of people who had this understanding of, you know, consciousness and reality and the relationship between yourself and the whole. And it was always kept hidden in some temple somewhere, like underground. or you know known It was in a secret book where only 100 people on the whole planet could maybe have access to it. Whereas now, I mean, the change might have already happened with the invention of the internet, where now this information is widely available to millions, billions of people.
01:12:24
Speaker
so As you know, with you and I, how much this information resonates and this practice and this form of life. I feel like it's a matter of time before it, you know, I don't want to, I don't think it's going to explode, but I think it's going to like a virus spread and you know it's It's contagious in the way that you know if you meet a guy like Ram Dass in your life and you see how he behaves, you're like, wow, this guy is pure peace and amazing. How do I be like him? It works, whatever he's doing. and Then when you you decide to take on the practice, you start feeling like, oh, this isn't just a faith-based system.
01:13:05
Speaker
this is getting to know myself through my very most intimate, direct experience. it's not You don't have to put faith into a book or memorize anything. It is all verifiable by yourself, and that's the beauty of it. It's not something that you got to put your faith into. All you have to do is, like a scientist,
01:13:28
Speaker
investigate yourself without the thoughts, investigate yourself purely honestly, and like you're a scientist you know looking under the microscope, but you just do that with yourself, which is the most fun anyway. Yeah, I think that's that's the path, man. That's the only way. And that's what all of the books and all of the the spiritual teachings are trying to gear us toward is The ultimate question, again, who am I? That's the question. yeah You have to go on the path of trying to discover who you are. And you might not ever know. I mean, I don't really truly think that we will ever get the answer, but we can experience plenty of things that allude us to the answer allud or
01:14:22
Speaker
at least as we said earlier, give us hints. Give us little hints of how we can discover a way to incorporate those experiences into our life to further develop our species, really. And you saying that reminds me of one of the things we talked about on a previous episode. And I agree with what you're what you're saying now. I don't think we can know as as the way we want to know, like we want to know. And I don't think we can know in that way. I think we can be it and experience it only as the non-dual state. I don't think.
01:15:04
Speaker
if I don't think you can know it because in order to know something, it has to be separate
Unity and Ego Death through Psychedelics
01:15:10
Speaker
from yourself. There has to be a knower and the known. And I think what you can experience is the collapse of that. But in that point, you're still not going to know it. You're going to you'll look for something that isn't there. I think that in itself is knowing it to a higher degree than you can if you separate yourself from it, which is why people like Ram Dass always talk about separateness, you know, trying to take yourself out of a frame of reference where you're separating yourself from reality.
01:15:41
Speaker
Because that's how we know most things. We separate ourselves from the thing we're trying to know. But I think as you did say in the episode that you're referring to, the most accurate way to know something is to be it. Or the most accurate way to know anything is to know yourself. Yeah. And that's, well, that's what I was going to say is I think The separateness is the illusion itself, the separation between you and I, not thinking that you're something and I'm something else, rather than one being. The unity of humanity, of Earth, of the universe,
01:16:19
Speaker
The separateness is all an illusion. I'm not saying there's no utility from separating your separate self out from things and investigating things in a certain way, but I think when it comes to knowing the nature of yourself or the nature of the whole, I think it's the same process. i think that In knowing yourself, separateness will dissolve. like when When the finite mind, when the human mind totally dissolves, all that would be left is the pure consciousness, which is, you know, most people would only relate to that, like I said, by the deep sleep state. But I would argue that on DMT or any high dose, that depending on, you know, you might not need a high dose, but depending on that, I think you can experience the unity.
01:17:08
Speaker
And you know what, I think that one of the beautiful parts about psychedelics as well is the experience It's a tough experience, the experience of the ego death. And when that happens, it's you realize, because the ego is gone, but you're still there. So then you realize, well, that's not what I am then because it's not here and I am here. you know You're still being, you're still having an experience. You're never not going to be experiencing something. And what did Ramdha say about death? What was his quote?
01:17:43
Speaker
um He said it's like taking off a tight shoe. Yeah, and that's the thing because the ego death even you know, it's not death like you know, but even the ego death it is like a ah Pretty rough process and then when it's completed it does feel like that. It's like, oh, what was I fighting for? You know yeah i What was I so scared of? There's a – exactly, and there's a – this reminds me of one of Rupert Spire's quotes where – I'm going to try to get it. It's not going to be verbatim, but like being a human, a consciousness constricting itself into the apparent finite mind, the apparent separate human.
01:18:26
Speaker
is like when you hold your fist and constrict it for long enough. You just hold it there for a while until it feels normal and then it feels like you have to take an active action to open it. You feel like you got to open it but really just releasing. you're It's a non-action that brings you to You know your actual state so it's like you could say the same because if you're trying to Find because I would say as a human we are the constricted fist And we think it's going to take an action to open our our minds and become the thing But when in reality, it's the opposite of an action It's just letting go and then you know, there's no that's why they call it like the pathless path or like it can't like try to get it you got to just
01:19:16
Speaker
let your mind kind of dissolve let let yourself that's why you know meditation is great and i think why dmt is incredible because it basically happens in 15 seconds sometimes sometimes it's just scary so yeah man it's the path let go be here now yeah Yeah, you can't be actively chasing anything. You just gotta go into yourself, man. You know? Just lay back and go inside.