E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)

In a time of seemingly growing division on the planet, what if the most unifying truth is one both sages and scientists agree on: that we’re inseparable on the most fundamental level? In today’s special compilation episode, we weave together the voices of some of the world’s most thoughtful explorers of consciousness: from neuroscientists and physicists to mystics and sages, to examine the illusion of the separate self, the mystery of awareness, and what becomes possible when we remember our true nature. Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyself.one/books ___________ 0:00 Intro 2:26 Annaka Harris - Defining the Hard Problem of Consciousness 18:04 Donald Hoffman - Seeing the Truth of Reality 30:05 Federico Faggin - Why Computers Will Never Be Conscious 39:33 Sam Harris - The Illusion of the Separate Self 47:36 Dr. Lisa Miller - Science of the Awakened Brain 53:23 Dr Joe Dispenza - Phenomenon of Emergence & Collective Healing 1:02:06 Rupert Spira - Love is the Basis of Our Existence 1:10:42 Deepak Chopra - Waking Up to Your True Nature 1:21:17 Mooji - A Guide to Expanding Your Awareness 1:42:29 Conclusion ___________ Watch the Full Episodes: Annaka Harris: https://youtu.be/Kabwgbq9Fhg?si=QVzirSwJ0w17uiHl Donald Hoffman: https://youtu.be/ffgzkHCGZGE?si=ymkJyaAAV4Ftb2hR Federico Faggin: https://youtu.be/d6NHRB5V1eE?si=FBVSfLghu464cncS Sam Harris: https://youtu.be/gqA-ZRpl1jQ?si=MvZChSaW4_JZtNVO Dr. Lisa Miller: https://youtu.be/DUe0oaH7GtQ?si=0JB6W6V_5HEEKGWM Dr Joe Dispenza: https://youtu.be/QQIwZ41Ro1w?si=PnPK9nnMn2RCEw1D Rupert Spira: https://youtu.be/Smqgkab8HZI?si=kZml0JSJX77Cxy1d Deepak Chopra: https://youtu.be/ZhIQ5bzv-0w?si=53WtiTaIluYdB_h3 Mooji: https://youtu.be/RIjTlEBwrHQ?si=8iZVNv5eU0wLzUwz https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyself.one Listen to the show: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00André Duqum?

  In a time of seemingly growing division on the planet, what if the most unifying truth is one both sages and scientists agree on, that we're inseparable on the most fundamental level?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Consciousness is the capacity of one to know itself.

• 0:16Speaker 02

  The conventional sense of self that people are walking around with is an illusion. Virtually everyone feels like they are a thinker of thoughts, experiencer of experience, looking out at a world that is not them.

• 0:28Speaker 03

  This paradigm leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. To know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity.

• 0:36André Duqum?

  Do you feel that there is any interconnection between consciousness being fundamental and love?

• 0:42Speaker 04

  Oh, that's an interesting question. I'll say a few things. One is...

• 0:46Speaker 05

  If you want to not be trapped in the trivial world of concepts, then spend time in meditation.

• 0:52André Duqum?

  It feels as though we have an investment in who we have been. How do you support people in letting go of that perceived investment in personhood?

• 0:59Speaker 06

  They have to have a taste of that which is beyond everything you have possessed so far. At a certain point, you want more knowledge, but I bring you fire. It takes you beyond everything.

• 1:16André Duqum?

  In a time where division and disconnection seem to dominate the planet, it's easy to believe that separation is the default state of human existence, that that's just the way things are. But what if this sense of fragmentation between self and other, mind and body, science and spirit, is the very illusion that's keeping us bound in a state of fear, confusion, and suffering? Across ancient wisdom traditions and the leading edge of modern science, a profound truth is beginning to reemerge: that consciousness is not something we possess, but something that we are, that beneath the surface of our individual identities and the roles we play in the world, we are expressions of one unified field,

• 1:59André Duqum?

  intimately connected, inseparable, and whole. And in today's special compilation episode, we weave together the voices of some of the world's most thoughtful explorers of consciousness, from neuroscientists and physicists to mystics and sages, to examine the illusion of the separate self, the mystery of awareness, and what becomes possible when we remember our true nature. Let's dive in. I hope you enjoy.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  So people use the word consciousness in a variety of ways, but often people think of more complex thought, self-awareness, things that are more specific to human beings. But what I mean when I use the word and what I'm interested in and what I think is so mysterious and what's so difficult for scientists to study is something much more fundamental. So consciousness in the most basic sense, which I usually like to just call felt experience. I think that's the best way of getting at what it is that I'm talking about. So if a bee has some minimal level of consciousness, if a worm has some level, a minimal level of consciousness,

• 3:08Speaker 04

  and neuroscientists do not have a consensus on these things yet. We think it's likely that they have some conscious experience because they have brains and central nervous systems. But if they do, it's a very minimal experience. You know, something like a worm or a slug might just feel pressure against their skin, maybe some internal kind of desire, like we have a feeling of hunger, something like that, when they need to go towards food, maybe some minimal element of fear or even just an impulse to move away from something dangerous or something that wouldn't be good for their system. And so when I use the word consciousness in this context and talking about the mystery of consciousness, I'm talking about consciousness in its most basic form,

• 3:52Speaker 04

  simply the fact of felt experience. The fact that I'm not just processing light waves that are bouncing off all the objects in this room. I'm seeing yellow, I'm seeing green, I'm seeing shapes. I'm having an experience from the inside in a way that we imagine computers don't. You know, computers and cameras can process light waves. And we don't imagine that they see green or that there's any kind of experience of color or anything like that, even though they're processing similar inputs from the environment. The question is, and the really mysterious thing is, why does some processing, why do some organisms in nature have an experience of being the organism, have the experience of being that collection of atoms that's doing that processing?

• 4:36Speaker 04

  So sentience is also a great term, although it's not used that often in our culture and most people equate it with life, so I don't use it that much. But the definition of sentience is really actually what I'm getting at here. Susceptibility to sensation, consciousness in its most basic form. So I use experience, I use awareness, felt experience and sentience interchangeably, but that is what I mean by consciousness.

• 5:03André Duqum?

  There's something that it is to like to be that organism or life.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Yes. So that phrasing comes from Thomas Nagel, the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who wrote a famous article, at least within the world of philosophy, called "What is it like to be a bat?" And he basically discusses what I was just explaining, but in a more philosophical and detailed sense, in terms of what different types of organisms might experience in the world, having vastly different sensory modalities, inputs, brains, that type of thing. And there's a great German word, umwelt, to describe, and that kind of covers all of the types of conscious experiences a given organism has. So we have

• 5:50Speaker 04

  a human umwelt, and bats would experience a different umwelt because they're experiencing sonar and navigating the world through a different sense than vision.

• 5:58André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:00André Duqum?

  I'm excited to explore the variance or degrees of sentience, but you know, we come to this philosophical understanding and trying to answer the seemingly impossible question of why any organization of matter would have an experience of itself.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:15André Duqum?

  Which is, you know, famously kind of noted as the hard problem. And so, why is the hard problem specially hard as opposed to easy problems?

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that phrase comes from David Chalmers, the philosopher, although the hard problem, you know, as a problem, has been expressed many, many times throughout history. He kind of coined this great term, and now we have this shorthand. So the quote unquote "easy problems" of the brain and neuroscience and consciousness are what we're really at the beginning stages of now in neuroscience, which is understanding and learning which brain states correlate with which types of conscious experiences.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  The hard problem is why there would be any felt experience of any processing, brain processing or otherwise at all. And this is very intuitive for some people, for other people it's not. Seeing how mysterious this actually is. But when you start to compare things that human beings do to things that other systems do, whether they're artificial intelligence systems, or plant systems, or insect systems, it's easy for us to see how other systems, or we intuit that other systems may not have a felt experience associated with processing. And it seems natural that human beings and maybe mammals do. But when you look more closely at

• 7:38Speaker 04

  what that entails and what differences there are, or that there really are a lack of, to point to why some systems or some processing would not entail an experience from the inside and others would. It's actually very hard to come up with a reason for it. It's also, in terms of the sciences, science studies everything from the outside. And this is true beyond science, this is true in our daily lives, just our understanding of the world, of each other. We are only able to study, observe,

• 8:20Speaker 04

  try to understand, experience other things in the world from the outside, from their behavior, from their physical characteristics. And so luckily, human beings can communicate so well that we can get a pretty good sense of what we're each experiencing, because we have this high level of communication and we're similar enough that we can talk about how we're feeling. But I can never have direct contact with your experience. I can't know your experience from the inside. And so this is a real challenge for the sciences and for just us as curious creatures, how to better understand something that you can only know firsthand in terms of the experience itself.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  The experience itself exists for itself and can't be really received or penetrated from any other place.

• 9:14André Duqum?

  Yeah, so you would say then it's... Impossible to have conclusive evidence that an organism or life would have consciousness looking from the outside?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Yes, so this is, there are two questions that I raise in my book, and this is one of them, and it's, I pose it that way because I think it gets at our deepest intuitions about what consciousness is, and it shows us how counterintuitive a lot of the answers to these two questions are, and the first one is essentially how you phrased it, can we find conclusive evidence from the outside of any system that consciousness is present in that system? And while we feel that the answer is yes, and I think we're very, we're correct in our assumptions about other human beings and mammals, the truth is, it's actually impossible

• 10:06Speaker 04

  at this point in neuroscience and in our path as human beings to actually be able to conclusively say, because the only evidence we can get is through communication. As I said, I can't jump into another experience and have that experience myself. And this is actually very interesting, I've been thinking a lot lately, as I've been working on my documentary series, about how important communication is for our ability really to talk about any experience at all, and we can't communicate if we don't share the same experiences, and so there's this limit, you know? If I were talking to someone who were born blind, and I was trying to explain something

• 10:51Speaker 04

  about my experience of seeing, it's extremely limiting. I mean, I could give some analogies, but there would be no way for me to explain to someone who doesn't have vision what my world of sights is like. The more different an organism is from us, the less ability we have to communicate, and so it's easier for us to kind of assume we have evidence from organisms that are similar to us. It gets much more difficult. When there's an inability to communicate, and this is true with human beings as well. So in the case of someone who's experiencing locked in syndrome, which can happen from damage to the brain, either by stroke or an injury,

• 11:36Speaker 04

  that leaves the patient completely paralyzed, but their consciousness is still fully intact. And so that's a situation that puts us closer to where we are in terms of looking at other organisms, other life forms, and not being able to know whether there's consciousness presence of someone in a locked in state looks like they're completely unconscious. They're totally paralyzed, they can't move. Yet we now know, based on some interesting stories we can talk about if you want, that many of these patients are actually having a full conscious experience. They can see everything in the room. They can hear everything in the room. They have thoughts. They're having as full a conscious experience as you and I are having right now, with no ability to communicate.

• 12:21André Duqum?

  So then what is the second question that you posed?

• 12:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the second question is related and very similar, but it kind of gets at this intuition from a different angle. The second question is, is consciousness doing something? It's about the causality of consciousness. Is it driving our behavior in the way that we feel it is? Is it informing our behavior in the way that we feel it is? And so our intuitive answer to this is a resounding yes, also to the first question. Both of our, we feel very strongly that the answer is yes to both of these questions I posed. And what's interesting is to start to shake up your intuitions and realize that we don't have great evidence for answering yes to either. And the answer may be yes to one or both. But it's surprising to dig a little deeper and realize we actually just don't know.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  So we feel very strongly that, you know, my experience of anger, my experience of fear, even my experience of thinking through my day and my planning, that I couldn't really do any of those things without the internal felt experience. I couldn't do those things without consciousness if I said. You know, I woke up this morning and spent an hour prepping for this interview, but I was unconscious the whole time. It doesn't really make sense to us. So we have this intuition that consciousness is causal, that it's doing something. But there are ways to kind of break through that intuition and get you to question whether that's the case.

• 13:46André Duqum?

  Do you feel that there is sort of any interconnection between consciousness being fundamental and love?

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Oh, that's an interesting question.

• 13:56André Duqum?

  I think of the scene in Interstellar where Matthew Conaughey is like floating in this fifth dimensional library space and the, there's like this metaphysical property of love that connects him to experience and the world. And it's just an interesting thought experiment.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of different ways I could answer that, but I've never been asked that specific question. It's a great question. I will, I'll say a few things. One is that I think when we are able to drop these illusions of self and separation, for some reason, it seems to lend itself, well, not for some reason, for an understandable reason, it lends itself to feelings of compassion and love, I would put in that same category. And I think that is kind of this recognition of being a part of something bigger than yourself, but that is also you, that it is all one thing.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  And so I think the natural inclination to love your family, love your children, I think that starts extending further and further. I think that's just a natural outcome of being in that state of mind. But I also do wonder, and this is one thing that I asked a few of my guests for my documentary series about. If consciousness is fundamental, is there kind of a set list, and maybe it's an infinite list, of qualia, of specific felt experiences? Because I do think, and this is an insight in meditation that many people have had before me,

• 15:42Speaker 04

  but that I've also experienced. I actually talked to Joseph Goldstein in my, in my series about this.

• 15:49André Duqum?

  I love his teachings.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, he's very, very clear. In, in my conversation with Joseph and in my meditation experiences, having a sense that there are certain qualia, there are certain experiences that can't be broken down any further. And actually, seeing a color is a good example of that. Often, people have the experience also in meditation, this is another thing I've spoken to Joseph about, that when you're, when you get very concentrated and you're able to really be in each present moment, there's a realization that we're not actually seeing and feeling and hearing all in the same moment. That there's this kind of weaving that happens through memory and through the brain

• 16:34Speaker 04

  that gives the illusion that all of those things happen at the same time. But when you're really concentrated and you're really going moment to moment, you see that all these things kind of fluctuate. You hear the sound of the bird, you see your notebook, you, and that you're not, never really in one moment hearing the sound of the bird and seeing your notebook at the same time. There's this fluctuating, and so this question keeps coming up for me. Are there specific qualia that, that, you know, the universe is made of? And in some sense, they're universal. Obviously, you know, the human mind doesn't experience them all, but could we actually just, you know, make a list of all the experiences that have ever happened and will ever happen in, in the history of the universe?

• 17:19Speaker 04

  And love seems to me to be one of those. Qualities that can't be broken down further. I mean, it can kind of blow up into a complex. You can have many thoughts about it and ideas and beliefs. And it can get very complicated, but I think at its core. And, you know, I'm not an expert and it'd be a good question for Joseph, actually. But where compassion and love, where those intersect? If they are, when they're in the purest form, are they? Are we actually talking about the same thing? But that type of, of pure emotion, if consciousness is fundamental, I would expect that to be kind of one, one of the ones that isn't broken down.

• 18:04André Duqum?

  I've heard you talk to how, you know, as humans, we have three channels of color, with red, green and blue. The mantis shrimp has 10, 11 or more channels of color. What is that experience like?

• 18:16Speaker 05

  Exactly. No, I agree with all the points that you're, you're making here. And it's, it's really critical. As you were talking about, the spiritual traditions do tell us that the word is just the word and the reality transcends the word. The word is just a pointer. And, and so they often will recommend that you spend time letting go of the words. So that's meditation. So if you want to not be trapped in the trivial world of concepts, which is trivial compared to reality, then spend time in meditation where you literally let your mind not dwell on the concepts. You just have no, you let go of any concept.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  And when you actually look at the, when you walk around in the world, look at trees, look at the ocean, where you just literally say, I'm, um, my mind can be quiet for a while. Just no, no thoughts. I'm just going to be here in thoughtless, pure awareness. Then the world comes alive and you begin to realize, most of the time,

• 19:23Speaker 05

  You've killed the world. It's deadened. You see the dead world of your concepts, and you don't see the living world that surrounds you. And I can put this... So that's what spiritual tradition... I'll put this in scientific language. Bayes' inference. We talk about our prior understandings, our prior probabilities, as in Bayesian priors. So we have this prior probability of... For example, maybe belief in the standard model of particle physics and the particular laws and those properties. That's my prior. Before that, maybe with Newton, we had Newton's theory of physics and so forth. That would be our prior. And once you have a prior, once you have the prior probability,

• 20:08Speaker 05

  any new data that you get will be interpreted in terms of your prior understanding. And there's this whole Bayesian inference kind of thing. And you get a posterior distribution, which is... So, given that you have this prior belief, and you get this new data coming in, then you compute what your posterior distribution will be. Walking around without concepts, letting go of thought, is saying, "I need to let go of my prior." If I don't let go of my prior, I'm condemned to only see my posterior. In both funny senses of that, right? You can only see your posterior, both in the technical sense and in this more metaphorical sense. If you don't let go of your priors, you will only see your posterior. And so if you don't want to just be seeing your own posterior,

• 20:53Speaker 05

  you want to be open up to novelty, then you actually have to spend time... I think as a scientist, it's critical for me to actually spend time in, of course, thought and mathematics and hard-nosed... No substitute. Do your hard work. And then, let go of it. Completely. Sit there in utter silence. That's where the true new creativity comes from. And then, go back and try to translate it, if you can, into the maths and symbols that you have. And that way, you're not stuck. With your priors. If you want creativity, you actually have to get outside your priors altogether. So I would suggest that, again, there's not some kind of schmistic, nasty, terrible,

• 21:38Speaker 05

  silly stuff that's going on in spiritual traditions that's anathema to science. I think there is a way to understand what the spiritual traditions are telling us that makes sense from a Bayesian inference point of view, from the scientist. If you don't let go of your priors, you're condemned to only see your posterior. So let go of your priors. What does that mean? Of course, do your homework, but then, at some point, step back and let go of all your concepts for a while and see what comes out.

• 22:05André Duqum?

  Yeah, it really seems like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, where blind men come and touch the tail of the elephant, think it's a whip. Another touches the leg, thinks it's a tree trunk. Another touches the trunk of the elephant and thinks it's a snake. Another touches the belly, thinks it's a wall. And they're all experiencing parts of something and not understanding the whole of what it is. And I just find it very interesting to explore the overlap and conciliance of what the cutting-edge science is saying with the ancient wisdom traditions and philosophy and metaphysics. And if we can touch all the different parts of that metaphorical elephant to see and

• 22:49André Duqum?

  talk to each other about what are our experiences of that thing, that it points us closer to the direction of the experience of what it actually is and what reality actually is.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  Yes. I think that the idea of the elephant being looked at from various perspectives is apt here. And the science gives us rigorous tools to do that palpating of different parts of the elephant with more precision than we might otherwise palpate it. And when I say that there's infinite job security in science, I mean, that's really, truly humbling. It means that with all the palpation we've done, we have 0% of the elephant underneath us, 0%. And I honestly believe that. I think that we've palpated 0% of it. What we know is...

• 23:37Speaker 05

  One perspective out of an infinite number of perspectives. Not like there's five perspectives and we got one of them. No, there's an infinite number of different perspectives. And whatever it is, but that's who you are. What you are transcends any description, in an infinite number of descriptions. And so it's truly, truly a remarkable claim that spiritual traditions are making. And that you and I are just avatars. Andre and Don are avatars being used by an infinite consciousness that transcends an infinite number of different descriptions and would transcend an infinite study by science.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  It's talking to itself through two different avatars and looking at itself right now through a particular humble perspective, only a four-dimensional spacetime headset perspective on itself. And it's doing that, and who knows how many... There's an infinite number of these other things going all the time. But what's interesting about it as well from a social perspective is, once I understand that Andre and Don are just really the same consciousness talking to itself through two different avatars, that's the real foundation for social interaction and social justice. Love your neighbor as yourself is true and right because your neighbor is yourself.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  It's interesting, the infinite consciousness that we are has chosen to forget itself, to plunge itself into a perspective so thoroughly that it's lost in the perspective. And it actually views its other avatars as enemies in some cases, and slowly wakes up. And so somehow it's really important when you look at yourself from a perspective, that you really look at yourself from that perspective. You take it really, really seriously. And you get lost in it, and then very, very painfully wake up. And then you realize, oh.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  As interesting and complicated and wonderful as that perspective was, I infinitely transcend that. And that's how the infinite comes to know itself.

• 25:56André Duqum?

  It's beautiful, and it's why I love talking to you so much too, because you're able to navigate both terrains of the scientific understanding, which is rigorous, and the philosophical and inner experience side of things. You know, if consciousness really is this unifying field, then us as individuals, in parentheses, having this individual experience are much like waves of an ocean. We're not actually separate, but we have the experience in a certain amount of time, in a certain amount of space, that Andre and Don exist, just like a wave exists in an ocean for a certain amount of time and for a certain amount of space. And it has its own experience that is unique

• 26:39André Duqum?

  and unlike any other wave that has probably ever come before. And after that time and space it inhabited is over, then it joins back the ocean. But the kicker is that it was never separate from the ocean.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  In the first place.

• 26:52André Duqum?

  In the first place.

• 26:53Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 26:54André Duqum?

  But there is value in the ocean having the wave in us as individuals that are connected to Source or the one, kind of losing ourselves, discovering ourselves, waking up, because that somehow provides a unique nuanced experience and perspective of the one that otherwise wouldn't have been previously available.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  I completely agree. I think that's right. And the one thing that we're trying to do with mathematics that we're working on right now is to actually take that idea and make it mathematical. Again, the mathematics will always just be a baby step. But still, to take those ideas that, what you're saying is, I think, been part of the wisdom traditions for millennia, that kind of idea, to turn it into mathematically precise things. So what we're doing right now, for example, we have the Smart Covey dynamics of conscious agents. And the way the wisdom ideas get cashed out is that the...

• 27:56Speaker 05

  The model, again, it's just a model, but here's what the model says. We can write down the dynamics of this infinite conscious agent. That's so-called stationary dynamics. There is no entropic arrow of time. So it's a dynamical system, but the entropy is not increasing.

• 28:15André Duqum?

  Well, if it is, then also centropy is increased, air is moving in the other direction, would you say?

• 28:23Speaker 05

  I'd have to look for stationary dynamics, that's a technical thing, I'd have to ask about... I'll have to look.

• 28:28André Duqum?

  Sidebar.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  That's right. But the entropy is constant in the stationary dynamics. But it's a theorem that if I take this dynamics in which there's no entropic arrow of time, and I look at it from any perspective, by conditional probability, for example, then the dynamics that I'll see will be a projected dynamics. And that projected dynamics will have an arrow of time, the entropy will be increasing. So, here we are with an entropic arrow of time. The model I'm working on is, there's a... Consciousness has no entropic arrow of time, it's timeless, and it's also spaceless. But, when I look at it from this perspective, so we've been talking about perspectives,

• 29:13Speaker 05

  but now we can deal with mathematical precision, we can say, when we take this perspective, then by the mathematics tells us we're going to get an arrow of time. So we will get a big bang. And, by the way, there's no... it's all one. The consciousness is all one, but when you get inside of the projection, now all of a sudden there are these artificial boundaries. So you get what we call predictive processing, and Markov blankets, and active inference, and so forth. All of this stuff, which is sort of modern, state-of-the-art neuroscience kinds of things that we're looking to, and other, in computer science, looking at ways of, you know, modeling thing. All of that breaking into units, with Markov blankets separating things, and so forth.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  Active inference, predictive processing to maintain our boundaries. All of that is not an insight into the deep nature of reality. All of that is an artifact of loss of information in the projection.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Consciousness is the capacity of one, the totality of what exists, to know itself.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  So is the capacity to know by self-reflection. But the interesting thing in the way I look at this is that when one wants to know itself, in fact, we need to start with a postulate, because otherwise we run around this thing and we never get to it. So the postulate that I'm using is one is the totality of what exists, what potentially can exist and what actually exists. And I make a clear distinction, because you cannot get something from nothing. You know, many theories of reality start with nothing and you get something.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I do not believe that that's correct. Yet to start with some potentiality, that becomes actuality. So when one is holistic, meaning is not made of separable part, everything is interconnected within one. I mean, this is, you know, goes back to the Vedas. I mean, you know. But it was very clear to me that that lack of separation was fundamental in my first experience, the awakening experience. I was not separate. I was the observer and the observer. You know, there is no separation between the two. But that's also what quantum physics is saying. There is no observer separate from what is observed. Quantum physics is very clear about that.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  So one is holistic. One is dynamic. It's never the same, instant after system. Instant is basically, is always changing. So far, I've described quantum physics, what quantum physics says, not classical physics, quantum physics. And then I'm adding, one wants to know itself. And it is in this "one wants to know itself" that there is the joining of physics and spirituality. It is the knowing itself. Okay, so if you believe that one needs to know itself, then one cannot be. Omnisient, because otherwise it would know everything already. And there would be no evolution, you know, we wouldn't be here certainly.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  So, one wants to know itself means that one will have to continue to know itself. Because we know within ourselves that the more you know, the more there is to know. Because the more connections between what we have known exist. And so there is an explosion of self-knowing that can occur. So, but one, you know, if you start with this point, then when one knows itself, he has to bring into existence what he knows. It comes from potential existence, like the unconscious of one, into manifestation, which is existence.

• 33:02André Duqum?

  Like from a wave to a particle?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  From, hmm, a little bit like that, but not quite, not quite. You know, we have to be careful not to read too much. Because, because it's from a, it's from a potentiality, which is neither a wave nor a particle yet. It is, it is even before you can even imagine what it is, to actual, to an existence. But the existence that, so, so what happens is that knowing and existing are two aspects of the same thing. Knowing and existing are two faces of the same coin. Because, so when one knows itself,

• 33:47Speaker 01

  it brings into existence a part-whole of itself. Because being holistic, it cannot know itself only partially. It has to know itself completely. But it has to know itself with this particular point of view. That was very clear to me eight years ago. It has to know itself in a point of view, like a perspective.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  But one has many perspectives in which you can know itself. So now there can be many perspectives in which one knows itself completely. And so it brings into existence a part-whore, which I call conscious as unit, is like the monad of Leibniz. The monads of Leibniz are very similar concepts. Leibniz is the only philosopher and scientist and mathematician that I know of that actually understood the concept. This is what I'm talking about. I found it out later. But, you know, to me, that was clear that it had to be something like that, based on my experiences. Because in my 20 years where I was exploring consciousness,

• 34:53Speaker 01

  I had hundreds of different extraordinary experiences of consciousness. The real aspects of consciousness, they were certainly not... They were coherent with the awakening experiences that I described, but, you know, they illuminated different parts of this spectrum of capacities that consciousness has. So if we start there, then, you know, then one wants to know itself. Then the wanting to know itself is the will, the free will of one. One decides which way to know itself. That's free will. The essence of free will is the capacity of one to direct his own knowing, self-knowing,

• 35:37Speaker 01

  which is also the capacity that we have. That's what free will is for us. And the capacity to know itself is consciousness. So now we have defined free will and consciousness. And the two must work together. You cannot have consciousness without free will. It would be like you know something, but you cannot do anything about it. You know, you know what you want, but you cannot act on that desire that you have. It would be foolish, it would be just... The universe would be a, you know, would be a joke. You know, would not be serious, inconsistent. So starting this way, you can unite physics, spirituality. The world now has meaning and purpose.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  The world, the entire universe has meaning and purpose. The materialism has erased, simply by saying, "All, everything that exists must be measured. Otherwise, it doesn't exist." How is it possible? Already quantum physics is telling you that a particle that is not looked at is not even in space and time. You can only be describing a deeper reality and only when you measure it. In other words, when a field interacts with another field, which is the field of an instrument, you have an event that manifests in space and time. And then you can say, you know, there is a particle here, for example.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  But quantum physics cannot tell you where you will find the particle. It can only tell you the probability of all the possibilities in which you could potentially find the particle. So, there you go again. Okay, quantum physics is not describing reality, it's only describing what you can know about reality. Big difference. And probabilities have to do with consciousness. A classical system, a computer, in a computer, there are no probabilities. They are all certainties. This next state of the computer is determined by the previous state. Period. So a computer can never be conscious because it doesn't have the characteristics of free will.

• 37:50André Duqum?

  Can you speak on how you were very much so trying to create consciousness through computer systems?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, when I was, you know, starting from reading the neuroscientist books, neuroscience, I said, "Well, if the brain is an information processing system like a computer, which is how it is described, then I should be able to create a computer that is conscious."

• 38:14André Duqum?

  Right. The idea, the classical model, that consciousness is an emergent process or phenomenon out of unconscious complicity. So if we just put the right hardware together, then we should be able to create it.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I tried for a couple of years. There was no way. Because there is no way, as I mentioned earlier, to convert electrical signals in a conscious experience. How do you do that? Through qualia. What is qualia? Qualia are not numbers. Electrical signals can be reduced to numbers. Qualia, not numbers. The love that you feel for a child, your child, is that love something that you can put in one number or a series of numbers? No way. It's richer, he has dimensions that you cannot probe. You know that there is more to know about that love. It goes deeper than you can even know. But the fact that you know that it goes deeper allows, motivates you to find out more about that love.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  You see, it is not, it goes beyond number. See, the deepest feeling, the deepest longing that we have, like the longing to know ourselves, goes way beyond anything that can be put into numbers. Transcends the ideal number. Does, therefore transcends measurability, which is the basis of science.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  There's a few things I believe that are, that I believe pretty firmly here. One is that the conventional sense of self that people are walking around with is an illusion, which can be discovered to be such, right? So you can, you can inspect it to the point where you no longer feel that way in the same sense. And it's not to say that you would never use the word self again, or that you know you find yourself to be the same as other people, or you just, you can't differentiate yourself from the world, or, I mean, there's, there are things that don't happen, but the, it's important to just say at the outset that there's, this is worth looking into because psychologically it's incredibly helpful,

• 40:19Speaker 02

  and I think ultimately ethically it's incredibly helpful to come to some understanding that what you take yourself to be, subjectively, moment to moment, matters and can be the linchpin of, really, all of your unnecessary suffering. Right, so you, it's worth looking into. So that the feeling of self that I think most people are walking around with by default is the sense that there's a subject interior to the body that is the thinker and doer and true agent of conscious life. So it's not that people feel... Identical to their bodies, they feel almost like passengers in their bodies.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  They feel like they have bodies. Now, you know, I think there's a lot of rational people who don't believe that to be true. If you tell, if you tell a scientist that he doesn't feel identical to his body,

• 41:17Speaker 02

  he might object because he knows himself to be, you know, conceptually identical to his body. He knows that there's, if he doesn't believe in an immortal soul that can be separated from the body, well, then he believes that he's identical to his brain and the totality of what it's doing neurologically in his body. But as a matter of experience, nevertheless, most people, whatever they believe, they feel that they're not quite identical to their whole body. They don't, they have hands, they can imagine being without hands. They, and that, that sense of dualism extends really to everything they can notice about their, their, their physical bodies.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, most people would imagine that,

• 42:07Speaker 02

  you know, even if they're materialists, the, what they are as conscious agents is a matter of what the brain is doing. And if you could, you know, have a brain transplant, you would expect to go with the brain and not remain with the body, right? So if you took my brain and put it in another body, I would expect to move over there. You know, at minimum, people feel like they are their brains, but they, experience doesn't give us any evidence of, of even having brains, right? Much less that the brain is, is, is relevant to, to the nature of consciousness or the nature of what our minds are doing. So you, it's, it's worth differentiating what people conceptually know

• 42:49Speaker 02

  about the biology and, and, you know, and the mind's dependency on the brain and what they feel subjectively and, and just phenomenologically how they, they move through life.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  And there, I think, virtually everyone feels like they are a thinker of thoughts, an experiencer of experience, a subject, very likely in the head, behind their eyes, looking out at a world that is not them, that is separate from what they are as conscious agents. And in some sense, that world includes the body. And the body can malfunction, you've got a pain in your knee, and you feel as the subject, not identical to that pain, but in relation to it. And you're resisting it from a point outside the pain. You are receiving the pain as a kind of locus of consciousness. You can pay attention to it, you can try to be distracted from it, and then the pain can draw you back.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  And yet, you are up here somehow as a subject. And if you do a practice like meditation, or something like mindfulness, and you inspect that feeling of dualism, where there's a sense of a subject that can pay attention to experience, and then get distracted by thought, and then come back and pay attention to experience. That sense that there's a place from which you can focus, and then be, that's the meditator, that's you now trying to meditate. That dualism gets maintained even in our spiritual efforts to recognize something about the illusoriness of the self. I mean, there are many people who are practicing meditation, even quite diligently,

• 44:33Speaker 02

  and even going on retreats, you know, silent retreats for 10 days at a stretch or more. And yet, still, they feel like they are the observer of experience now. They're the one being mindful, or struggling to be mindful. They're the one who gets concentrated on the breath, or on a mantra, or it can be any practice, really.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  And yet, there's still this dualism of there's the consciousness feels like it's a kind of spotlight of attention that you can aim from a place in the head at experience. And ultimately, that's an illusion. Ultimately, there if you pay close enough attention, you recognize that there's only experience as a matter of of of subjectivity, right? Now, I'm not making any claims about how consciousness relates to the universe, or you know, that it was here before the big bang, or that there's no physical world. We can leave all of that aside for the moment. I'm happy to happy to talk about that. But I'm just talking about what what is available to experience if you're really paying attention,

• 45:39Speaker 02

  if you really notice what is happening moment to moment. And the crucial difference between dualism and not, and ultimately, suffering and not, is at bottom, identification with the stream of thought that's arising in consciousness. So it's just a fact about us that we're thinking basically every moment of the day. We're having a conversation with ourselves. We're remembering the past. We're anticipating the future. We're subtly failing, subtly or grossly failing to make actual contact with the present moment because everything

• 46:17Speaker 02

  is being conceptualized and rehearsed and reiterated and reacted to, judged, etc. And it's through this sort of scrim of thought that everything is perceived. And even one's initial efforts to meditate and break through to something non-conceptual gets kind of bent and conformed to this pattern of thinking. Now, you're thinking that you're being mindful. Now, you're thinking, oh, now I need to pay closer attention to the breath. And oh, why did I get distracted? And but that sense of of self that seems to seems to persist

• 46:59Speaker 02

  even as you notice thoughts arise, and then you come back to the object of meditation, and you notice thoughts, that there's still this undercurrent of thinking that's not being fully inspected and fully released. And so ultimately, I mean, it was a very long-winded way of answering your question. Ultimately, the sense of self that I think most people are

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Experiencing moment to moment, and that is really the string upon which all of their states of psychological suffering is, are strung, is identification with thought, with conceptual thought.

• 47:35André Duqum?

  When you guys were in these studies, you had four major understandings that you guys were able to pull through when they were guiding the science of the awakened brain.

• 47:47Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 47:48André Duqum?

  And I would love for you to walk through those, because I think those findings are very important in bridging our understanding of spiritual experience and the science of it.

• 47:56Speaker 07

  So, we invited people to share a profound transcendent connection. And the people who participated in our study were from all different faith traditions and outside of faith tradition. So Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, spiritual but not religious. And no matter what tradition they may be from, or what language they used, as they shared their experience of a direct transcendent connection, the same neuro correlates ran through our FMRI study, which means that irrespective of how our innate spirituality

• 48:37Speaker 07

  is cultivated, however we call or name the transcendent, however we access the transcendent, a walk in nature, meditation, prayer, when we are in connection with our higher power, there is one awakened brain, and we all have it. There are four dimensions to the awakened brain. The first and only the first is shared in common with mindfulness, which is we stop the racket, we quiet the default mode. You know, what did I say? Is he going to remember I said that? Did the check clear? You know, that sort of rumination comes when we quiet the default mode network.

• 49:18Speaker 07

  That is only one of the four dimensions, and it is shared with the very helpful practice of mindfulness, which is to simply bring presence and quiet and attention. The next three dimensions are unique to

• 49:34Speaker 07

  Awakening. The next three dimensions have to do with spiritual connection. The first is that the bonding network comes up online and we are aware, we perceive, that we are loved and held. It is the same bonding network that's engaged when we're children in our parents' or grandparents' arms. Now, from a reductionist point of view, we would say, okay, the bonding network runs, you feel as if you were being loved and held. But from a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit, an antenna, it's possible to

• 50:10Speaker 07

  interpret the finding as saying, the transcendent presence engages our bonding network. And we therefore perceive the transcendent is loving and holding us. And that's a view of the human as an open system. The next dimension is that we move from having a very narrow attention span, dorsal attention, you know, the bowling alley point of view, I gotta get this job, I've gotta write that letter, is here, she, are they gonna ask me out again, you know, focused really on what's dogging me, to moving to a much bigger, broader range of perception,

• 50:53Speaker 07

  the ventral attention network, where the floodlights, where the sunlight comes on, and suddenly something way over there, 140 degrees, pops. Again, a reductionist point of view would say that we can scan a larger field and find something over there in the corner. But a 20th century view of the brain as a conduit would say, something over there at 140 degrees pulls our attention. We're in dialogue. And because the ventral has allowed us to open up a wider scope, we are prepared to receive. Thank you. Engagement at 140 degrees. Situational awareness. So, we now are able to perceive that we are actually loved and held.

• 51:38Speaker 07

  We are actually guided. And finally, the parietal, it puts in and out hard boundaries, allows us to know that you're seated very peacefully in your chair, and I'm in mine, and we each have our own zipped up bio body suits. We are distinct, but we are also one. We are part of the great oneness. We are part of the family of life. We're part of the field of consciousness. We are all emanations of Source. Whatever your language, the parietal lets us know that while we are a point, we are also part of the wave, that we are distinct and one. So, when we engage our awakened awareness, we know that we are loved and held, guided, and never alone.

• 52:21Speaker 07

  Loved, guided, part of the oneness and one. That's not a belief. It is a seat of perception. It's a capacity in every one of us. Many people cultivate this because while we are all given the wiring to awaken, this gift is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed. Which means as adults, our practice of meditation, our prayer life, our service to other people. When we help the guy across the way who needs some food, when we babysit for the family who looks like they're at wit's end, when we do something that is generous and shows love of neighbor,

• 53:05Speaker 07

  we awaken to the love written into life. When we help others along, we awaken to the guidance written into life. So, just as transcendent practice is awakening, love of neighbor and altruism are profoundly awakening of our birthright.

• 53:23André Duqum?

  It seems as though this intelligence that has a structure to consciousness is far vaster than anything in our analytical mind could conjure up.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Thank God.

• 53:32André Duqum?

  Yeah, seriously. So what do you make of the phenomena that is emergence as humanity starts to become more empowered and wake up to their true nature? What do you feel like is being birthed through us?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Wow, I mean, this is game time. I mean, this is really game time. And because everything around us that's challenging us in so many ways, it's so easy to fall into survival and to live in stress. And when you're in survival and stress, the only thing that matters is you. So you see separation that is created amongst communities. And as a side effect of that, everybody looks different or is different than you, and there's less trust, and there's no emergence. In fact, there's everything but that. There's a lot of competition, and there's a lot of need.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  If you can get a group of people together, and you can give them new information about themselves, and empower them to contemplate it, to repeat it, to understand it, to learn it, to wire it in their brain, have them choose to do something with it, give them the conditions and the environment where they feel safe enough to try it out, have them, give them numerous opportunities to connect, numerous opportunities to overcome themselves, numerous opportunities to continuously believe in themselves and apply. Sooner or later, they're going to have the experience of what you're talking about, right? And the experience then, as I said, you embody the truth of it emotionally, right?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  That's the game, that's the payoff, right? The emotional experience. Turns out that that emotion somehow, the experience and the behavior and the choice is signaling behavior-dependent genes, experience-dependent genes, and a whole host of other genes, changes the body to look like the person's literally in a different life. So as I said, the collective then, when people behave in the same way, and are exposed to the same information, they evolve together.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  And when you see the flock of birds, the starlings, or the school of fish, there's no leader that everybody is following. That would be incidental. Everybody is leading. It's not a top-down phenomenon, it's a bottom-up phenomenon. Which means, in order for us to create a new consciousness, you're a representation of the whole. And if you change enough people, you can change the world, right? So, person by person, if you want greatness, and you want love, then every single relationship that you should have in your life should be a reflection of that intention. And all of the sorrow, all the pain goes away. And a part of us must die, then, that is not love.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Or, anything that's not love in us must die. And that's the difference between knowing the path and walking the path. So, get people out of survival, and the body's no longer tormented by the addiction. The side effect is called joy. And the side effect of that is called self-love. That's the absence of the addiction. Energy immediately moves into the heart, and then you see a transcendental thing occur amongst the collective. And we now know that people change people. So you get a collective group of people that's retreated from their lives, and not seeing the same people, going to the same place, doing the same things, having the same experiences, filling their brain with knowledge and information, applying that information for seven days,

• 57:07Speaker 01

  and there's an emergent consciousness that's created, that's reflected in every single study that we do. And nobody's so special to be excluded.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Eighty-four percent of the people in the collective, we draw their blood, they're advanced meditators. We put them in the presence of any cancer cell. And there is a diminishing of energetic function in the cancer cell. Eighty-four percent of the tribe has information in their blood that's a reflection of a greater level of wholeness. Like, that is an emergent biology. And then get somebody on the stage.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  You saw one, I mean, she had a brutal past. I mean, you can't tell me any longer, your past is too brutal for you to change. This person was attempted murder when she was four years old. She was molested by her stepfather. She had everything happen to her you could possibly imagine. Still tried to live her life, worked out for six hours trying to get the panic attacks to go away. Thirty-plus hours a week. She timed herself in full-on panic mode, night terrors. No pharmaceutical, no psychiatrist, no drug, no nothing, no diet, nothing was changing her. She stands on the stage and she is the example of truth. There's no, she has no suicidal tendencies any longer.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  She's a happy person. She's free, she doesn't have any panic attacks. All her health condition went away. She's talking and we're looking out in the audience. And I'm looking at 2,200 people in Cancun and everybody's leaning in. Everybody's looking at her because she's speaking the truth. And there's somebody shining their light so someone else can shine. She broke through a certain level of consciousness or unconsciousness that said that this is the truth and invariably that person could overcome her past. So many people were, that were complaining about whatever it was. If they were truly on the path, they would be like, oh my God, if she can change, I can change.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And just like an infection spreads amongst the community and creates disease. All of a sudden you see wellness, you see health, you see generosity. You see all these wonderful things emerge in the collective. And there's a footprint in consciousness for someone else to step in. And we've had five people at a week-long event step out of a wheelchair. Like, I didn't plan that. I was more surprised than anybody. Two blind people at one event? What about one blind person, two? People, five people with Raynaud's syndrome. I'm like, it just, it just becomes infectious, right? So that's why I'm so, so...

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Intentional with our youth community, I want them to grow up. I want them to grow up at our events and see that healing is normal. I want that to be part of their belief, like they've witnessed enough. People heal from all cancers, all kinds of things, in bones, in organs. Like, I want them, I want that to be their belief. I want that to be normal for them. So, there are footprints in consciousness. And in a time right now of extremes and severe polarity, it's so easy to default into survival and take for yourself. And this is the time where we have to create community.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  That means then, when everybody is in fear, that's the time to show courage. When everybody's in lack, that's the time to give. When everybody else is throwing stones and judging, that's the time to show compassion and consideration. And when everybody else is rushing and competing to get to the top, that's the point to stand still and draw the experience to you. And yes, in the beginning, it will feel unnatural. But if you keep doing what feels unnatural, sooner or later, we become supernatural. And that's, that's the game, right? And, and so then, you see that in people when you walk into your life. I want this work not to be about you or anybody telling people you need to be more emotionally intelligent, need to open your heart, you know, I don't want people to be philosophers.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  I want them to say, "Look, I want to show you what happiness looks like. I want to show you what greatness looks like. I want to show you what abundance really looks like." Like, there are people in our work that become super abundant. Of course, they're gonna give. That's what abundant people do. They have more than they need, right? So, so there is an emergent consciousness that's taking place. And for the incredible number of crazy things, at least from what I'm witnessing in the world, that's going on, there's some really wonderful things as well that, that speak to hope, you know, that people actually are greater than they think, more powerful than they know, more unlimited than they can ever dream. And all I offer people is my greatest understanding of the truth and numerous opportunities to

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  experience it, nothing more.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  All our experience revolves around ourself. And the, the common name we give to ourself is "I," and that is why everything we say about our... Experience contains the word, "I am having a conversation with you. I'm seeing this room. I'm experiencing such and such." So ourself stands at the very heart of our experience. Ourself is the most important element of our experience and therefore there can be no more important question than to know the nature of ourself.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  Our whole life revolves around ourself. We live our life in service of ourself. So the most important thing to know in life is, what is the nature of myself? If my entire life is lived on its behalf, if my entire life revolves around it, then should we not know the nature of ourself before we know any other thing? Could there be a more important question than to know the nature of ourself? And it is for this reason that the words "know thyself"

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  were carved above the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Because this understanding, the importance of self-knowledge, stands at the very foundation of Western civilization. Of course, your podcast is named after that.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  You undertake all these interviews in honor of that quest to know oneself. So yes, self-knowledge is, I would suggest that self-knowledge is the most important knowledge that anyone could ever attain. And anything we know about the universe is filtered through our knowledge of ourself.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  As William Blake said, as a person is so they see, you know, as we understand ourself to be, so we understand the universe. So we can't really understand the nature of the universe before we understand the nature of ourself. So, yes, self-knowledge is the most important, the highest knowledge. And again, the greatest service to know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity.

• 1:04:47André Duqum?

  If you could elaborate a little bit on why specifically it is the greatest service, what implications once one is self-realized that transforms radically all their behaviors and the energy in which those behaviors are infused? And so, why is it the greatest service one could render humanity? As you said, the illusion of separateness starts to fall away and you realize our inherent interconnectedness and then your service starts to be really towards all of life around you as you see it as an extension of yourself.

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:18André Duqum?

  And so if you would like to share some more thoughts on that?

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  Yes. So, everything we know or could ever know about the universe is filtered through our finite minds, filtered through the perception, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. And then thought then adds its own layer of conceptual knowledge to the knowledge that our sense perceptions give us. So, everything we know about the universe appears through our finite mind and appears in accordance with it. Our finite mind consists of thought and perception, perception that is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

• 1:06:02Speaker 03

  And it's no coincidence that the universe appears to us in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. There's a direct correlation between our perceiving faculties and the way we perceive reality.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  The universe. So it's not possible to know the nature of the universe if we approach it through the finite mind. Or all we will ever know when we look at the universe through the finite mind is a reflection of the limitations of our finite mind. If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange. You cannot see the nature of the snow if you're looking at it through orange tinted glasses. It's not possible to know the nature of reality when we view it through the lens of the finite mind.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  And obviously, knowing the nature of reality is important. It's the quest of science, philosophy, the spiritual traditions. So

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  we have to ask, is there is there any experience we have that is not mediated through the finite mind? Only that experience would give us direct access to reality. Any other knowledge gives us mediated access to reality and therefore cannot be absolutely true. So if we want to know what's absolutely true, we have to go to an experience that is not subject to the limitations of the finite mind. So

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  do we have any experience that is neither a thought or a perception?

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  And in order to we can't go outwards into the universe to find the answer to that question because everything we know appears in accordance with the limitations of the finite mind. So if you go inwards, what happens? If we travel, as it were, backwards

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  through the layers of experience, thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, all of these are limited. So they can only give us a limited or relative view of reality. But if we go all the way back behind, as it were, the content of thought and perception, we arrive at one experience,

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  namely, the awareness of being or aware being, awareness itself. And this

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  This experience we have, the experience of being aware, or aware being, is the only experience there is that is not mediated through the finite mind. And therefore, it is the only access we have to reality. And that is why the words "know thyself" were carved above the temple of Apollo, that the early Greek philosophers realized, if you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It's the only way to know the nature of reality. And this truth is expressed in many different ways in the Sufi tradition, as you know. Malyani, "Whosoever knows their self, knows their lord."

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  That's religious language for whoever knows their self as they truly are, knows the ultimate reality of the universe. So that's why all the religious and spiritual traditions, one way or another, point to self-knowledge as the key to understanding. And the principle really which on civilization must be founded. If a civilization is going to evolve in a way that is consistent with truth, rather than evolve in a way that is consistent with the apparent evidence of sense perception, in other words, separation. Our world culture now is

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  predicated on a paradigm of separation because we have allowed our sense perceptions to dictate their model of reality. Everything and everyone is separate. That's the foundation on which our world culture is based. And of course, we all know this paradigm leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. So this self-knowledge must be the foundation of a peaceful, harmonious, loving society.

• 1:10:41André Duqum?

  We're seeing a revolution in emerging scientific understandings of the nature of consciousness, perhaps not as a development of unconscious complexity neuronally, but rather as more fundamental aspect which Eastern, obviously, West- See the neuronal activity or the neural coordination-

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Correlates is also an experience in consciousness. You see, when you say there are neural correlates, you're looking at them on a CAT scan or whatever technology. But that experience is happening in consciousness. So when people say science of consciousness, that's also misleading. There's no science of consciousness. Science is an activity in consciousness. So, science is a methodology in consciousness. And so is philosophy, so is religion, so is any system of thought. And here is something that is really very important for spiritual seekers, is that it doesn't matter what you're reading,

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  the upnishas or the rigveda or, you know,

• 1:11:48André Duqum?

  Deepak Chopra.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  Ramana Maharishi or Deepak Chopra or whoever, that's not going to give you any realization. No system of thought is going to give you realization. No system, religion, philosophy, science, because they're systems of thought conceived in consciousness. So, only direct experience can give you access to reality, not religion, not philosophy, not science.

• 1:12:15André Duqum?

  It's really important what you're saying, because especially for spiritual seekers, those that study through philosophy, science, religion.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  It's good in the beginning, because you see that people have wondered about these things and they've come to conclusions. But their conclusions will not help you. And they might point the way, like a map, you know. So, yeah, and there are many maps. You know, if I want to go from New York to Boston, I can take a train, I can take the road, I can take a steamship, I can take a helicopter, I can take an airplane. But those are all maps. You have to experience the territory.

• 1:12:53André Duqum?

  Have there been times where you've identified overly with the conceptual knowledge rather as the lived experience of what you're teaching?

• 1:12:59Speaker 05

  There was a time and it was very frustrating, because also...

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  What it does is, you know, in spiritual traditions, they talk about the dark night of the soul. So the dark night of the soul is basically everything that you thought about reality is untrue. But even worse than that, everything that you thought about who you are is also untrue. So that is a, is a trigger to losing your habitual certainties, number one. And those certainties were the anchor of your existence. I am a person. There's no such thing, okay? I have a body, no such thing.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  I have a mind, no such thing. I live in a universe, no such thing. That can give you the heebie-jeebies, as they say. But if you stay with it, then once you jump off the abyss, it's like crossing the event horizon. You know, in modern cosmology, we talk about event horizon. So if, if I, you know, give you a metaphor, if you throw a coin or a, or, or any object across the event horizon, which is, say, 12 kilometers away from the black hole. You throw it and you're watching this from the outside. Then it gets, it takes eternity for that coin

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  to travel the 12 kilometers from the event horizon to the black hole. Eternity. But if you're watching it from the inside, it takes less than a microsecond. And if you are crossing over the event horizon, it's just normal. So then, you know, what is time then? Um, in this side of the event horizon, eternity. In this side of the horizon faster than you can say Jack Robinson. And for you, who's crossing over, normal.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I mean, and then who is the you that's crossing over? So when you start to conceptualize these things, you literally

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  Go through the dark night of the soul. You lose your identity. Because you thought you were like this entity, this skin-encapsulated ego squeezed into the volume of a body and the span of a lifetime. When you realize that is an experience in you, rather than you are an experience in the body, the body is an experience in you. Rather than the fact that you are in the universe, the universe is in you, and that you is not a person. Okay, so that is, in the beginning, very scary.

• 1:15:58Speaker 05

  But it's liberating. Once you take the jump,

• 1:16:04Speaker 05

  it's liberating. And it can't be described. That's why, you know, the yogic traditions, you seem to know yoga. There is, you know, the yamas and the nayamas. And the last nyama is called Ishwar Pranidhana, which means surrender to the incomprehensible. Because you can't figure it out. You cannot figure it out conceptually. Because anything you conceive is wrong. Anything you perceive is wrong. My perception tells me the earth is flat. Nobody believes that anymore. My perception tells me that this ground we're sitting on is stationary, spinning at dizzy speeds and hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour.

• 1:16:46Speaker 05

  My perception tells me you're a three-dimensional, solid figure, but you're proportionally as void as intergalactic space. If I could see you through God's eyes, I'd see a huge emptiness with a few scattered dots and spots, maybe some pixels. But even those pixels and those random dots and spots are made of emptiness. So, therefore, everything I perceive is a magical lie, is a total lie. And then my conceptions are based on my perceptions, which are human perceptions. What does the world look like to a dragonfly with thirty thousand eyes?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Which can see 360 degrees all the time. What does it look like to a chameleon whose eyeballs swivel on two different axes? To a snake that navigates infrared? To a butterfly that knows ultraviolet? Through a bird that navigates through electromagnetic radiation? So what's the real world look like? It's a silly question. There's no such thing. There's no real world and there's no real look. It depends on who's looking and what they're using to do the looking, which means the brain, the conditioned mind, and the eyes. So, you know, seeing is not happening in the eyes. There's no picture of me in the eyes. It's not happening in the brain.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  It's happening in something that is beyond our comprehension, that is non-conceptual, non-perceivable. Ultimately, you surrender to it. Ishvar Pranidhan, the fifth one, surrender to the divine mystery. And, you know, Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of all time, lived at Princeton just passed a few years ago. He said, "God is what mind becomes when it goes beyond the threshold of our comprehension." If you can comprehend it, it's not God. Because as soon as you comprehend it, you're limited. As soon as you define it, you're limited. And by definition, it's the infinite ungraspable

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  that makes things graspable. And what it makes things graspable are all magical lies. And, you know, they call it Maya.

• 1:19:06André Duqum?

  Yeah, and it is a useful magical lie in the aspect where the illusion of separation enables the one consciousness to differentiate itself and experience itself.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  In innumerable ways, through innumerable sentient beings, not just humans. Every sentient being. Is a differentiated from the one consciousness, just like your nose and your eyes and your teeth and your fingernails and your genitalia differentiated from one cell. Same thing.

• 1:19:36André Duqum?

  What do you, to bring this down to the individual who is starting to wake up to this realization and for their whole life, as we've, since we were young, we've been put into these conceptual boxes of understanding the world, right? And even to ourself of strongly identifying with our form, with our thoughts, our emotions and our body. What do you see is the most direct path to awakening to who you are beyond that, to the illusion of separation and a separate self?

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Let go of every concept and every perception as a window to reality. Every concept, every perception, let go of that idea that you'll ever be able to know reality intellectually or through any methodology or through any religion or through any map. Let go of that idea, number one. Number two,

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  embrace presence. See, when you embrace presence, I'm not talking about the present moment. Presence is bringing awareness to whatever is. Now, because awareness is infinite, no form, right? Infinite, then the finite experience is actually dependent on the infinite. So the infinite is present in every finite experience. Once you realize that, then God is not difficult to find. God is impossible to avoid. There's no way that you, no experience that is possible without the infinite in the background. No experience.

• 1:21:17André Duqum?

  That space within us is the same within everybody and is what people mean when they refer to God.

• 1:21:23Speaker 06

  Yes, in everyone, not only human beings also, in every living thing.

• 1:21:30André Duqum?

  I feel the joy and the beauty when you talk about this space because of how intimate you are with the space and how much it's impacted your life. And the presence that you carry in that realization then becomes the invitation for so many people to touch that space within themselves. And I'm excited to continue to talk about this space. As we desire to touch more of that space, it feels as though we have like an investment in who we have been, an investment into personhood and identity. And it's tough to let that go because we've spent so much of our life being somebody who we're not. And, you know, it's hard to let that go. So how do you support people in letting go of that perceived investment?

• 1:22:14Speaker 06

  They have to have a taste

• 1:22:16André Duqum?

  Taste it.

• 1:22:17Speaker 06

  Of that which is beyond everything you have possessed so far. They have to have it, you see. It cannot just be merely promises. They have to have a taste of it. You see, sometimes I say, at a certain point, you want more knowledge. But I bring you fire.

• 1:22:40Speaker 06

  And the fire you is deeper than knowledge. You have to be set on fire. It's a beautiful fire. It takes you beyond everything. Because really, you may start with a sense of touching, you know, sort of like, like a taste of the infinite. But it will not be enough for you. At some point, you want to be totally consumed in it.

• 1:23:05Speaker 06

  And then the courage to let go. You said very beautifully, you described the state very beautifully, because at some point, the sense that I want this, but not, not at the expense of all that I have gained, you know? That's valuable.

• 1:23:29Speaker 06

  It just comes to mind when sharing, I say, supposing a very evolved being appear to you and say,

• 1:23:40Speaker 06

  My dear Andre, I know your longing in your heart.

• 1:23:46Speaker 06

  And I have come to answer that longing in you. Whatever is your highest, your deepest, whatever you want, in the all of creation, in all of the universe, whatever you want, I have the power to give it to you right now. And, but there's one thing. All this you can have, whatever you can have, you can have in exchange for your consciousness.

• 1:24:16Speaker 06

  Anything, anything you want. How, how, how big, how great a deal is that for you?

• 1:24:24André Duqum?

  It's a bad deal.

• 1:24:25Speaker 06

  Yes, no deal. Because how can you enjoy, or to taste, or to know, or to feel, or to exist, or to be even self-aware without consciousness? It is at the root of all things. You see, there's nothing can compare, even to enjoy the mundane things of life, you need consciousness.

• 1:24:47Speaker 06

  But

• 1:24:51Speaker 06

  there's a saying, "We want to taste the honey, you don't want to be the honey."

• 1:24:57Speaker 06

  But here, you get to taste the honey, and you are the honey.

• 1:25:05André Duqum?

  I love it. I want to keep tasting this. I want to keep tasting the honey.

• 1:25:10Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:25:11André Duqum?

  As well for the listeners, is there something that you can share to help us go a little bit deeper into the stuff to taste it more?

• 1:25:17Speaker 06

  Yes, I like that. I like that we come to a point beyond just question and answers. I can introduce just a simple guidance for those who

• 1:25:32Speaker 06

  who want to experience it, but without trickery.

• 1:25:40Speaker 06

  And that is what I share with you, if I were to say to you.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  If someone were to come and ask me,

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  "I hear that you can help people to go beyond superficial life and mind."

• 1:26:04Speaker 06

  "I wish to go beyond because my mind and life has become so complex, it's so uncontrollable, and I feel now I'm suffering it. Can you help me to go beyond all of this?" And I would say, "Yes, let's try and see. If you are earnest, why not? This very day you can do." And so I'd say,

• 1:26:32Speaker 06

  "I can share with you a simple guidance that will happen with you for a few moments." And it will start like this. If I were to ask you,

• 1:26:51Speaker 06

  "If you want to go beyond all of this in a safe way",

• 1:26:57Speaker 06

  I would say,

• 1:26:59Speaker 06

  "For the duration of my sharing with you and guidance with you,

• 1:27:05Speaker 06

  would you be willing to to leave everything of past just for the duration of our talk?"

• 1:27:15André Duqum?

  Yes.

• 1:27:15Speaker 06

  Is it just for duration? After, you can take the back.

• 1:27:18André Duqum?

  I'll do the rest of my life.

• 1:27:21Speaker 06

  Okay, let's see, let's see, let's see. I only ask this, just for the time that we are sharing, to say that everything to do with past, like what brought you to this point, all of these things, we can just, if you agree, can we just not mention that? Don't hold it, don't cling to it. Just leave it over there, leave it to the side, and...

• 1:27:44Speaker 06

  And also, you, you, you, I'm gonna just check in with you to ask if you're on board with this or not. You can also indicate, because it's only fair. So, everything to do with past, you know, what, what brought you to your present journey, all of this, your family life growing up. Can we just leave that just for a few, for the short time we're speaking? Leave that. So, that's there. And anything to do with the future, starting from now onwards. That we will not engage about, you know, the kind of world we want to see, want to see this happen in the world, we want this. Just leave that for now. So, of the past, we leave.

• 1:28:29Speaker 06

  And about the future, we leave. So, only present moment, the present moment. And the present moment, we also don't hold on to any, any thoughts about who we are in this moment. And even what you want and how you, nothing. Is it possible to do that?

• 1:28:47André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:48Speaker 06

  Really? Okay, good. Then we're doing good. So, to the past, we leave for a moment, we don't mention now, just for this five minutes or 10 minutes, whatever. And about future, also you leave it. And about the present moment, whatever that may mean. So, we're not going to engage with anything to do with mind assessments for a moment, okay? So, empty, empty, empty, empty. And it's not difficult. Your intention is at the heart of it. See, I won't engage with that, I won't bring up this. So, if you leave about the past to the side, and about future to the side. And now, we're sitting here under this beautiful tree, don't even bring any of these things. So, we're empty.

• 1:29:32Speaker 06

  You're still aware, isn't it?

• 1:29:35André Duqum?

  Yes.

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  Okay. So, leaving all these things aside. So, empty, empty. If I could, say, through some invisible hole in your body, took everything out, everything of the past, the memory of feelings, sensations, everything, everything, everything, all attachments, all projections, all ideation. Just suspend them out for a moment.

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  There will remain something that cannot be taken, cannot be manipulated. It's just there, it's just whatever is here.

• 1:30:16Speaker 06

  Cannot be created or constructed. It's just what is. I call it the is-ness, or what is.

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  Here.

• 1:30:27Speaker 06

  No association with past, or future, or even present.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  Nothing phenomenal to the senses or to the mind.

• 1:30:44Speaker 06

  But

• 1:30:47Speaker 06

  there's awareness here.

• 1:30:51Speaker 06

  And so then I can ask you just a few simple questions,

• 1:30:58Speaker 06

  which you can answer yes or no. Don't have to think, think about it. They should be very present with you when you're not engaged with past or future or any present desires. But you're here. This space, let's call it like that, the space that is here.

• 1:31:23Speaker 06

  Does it have any shape? Is there any shape?

• 1:31:28André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:31:29Speaker 06

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:31:38Speaker 06

  Any color?

• 1:31:43André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:31:43Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:31:52Speaker 06

  Whatever it is that is here, that remains,

• 1:31:57Speaker 06

  is there any force?

• 1:32:00André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:32:02Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:32:07Speaker 06

  Whatever it is that we are, that is here, can it be ever sick or depressed?

• 1:32:19André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:32:31Speaker 06

  How vast is it? Can there be a boundary beyond which it does not exist? Can there be any limit?

• 1:32:45André Duqum?

  Not that I can see.

• 1:32:47Speaker 06

  Very good. Very good.

• 1:32:55Speaker 06

  Is it a thought?

• 1:32:57André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:32:57Speaker 06

  No?

• 1:33:11Speaker 06

  Does it have a beginning? A point of beginning-ness? Or...

• 1:33:18Speaker 06

  A place of ending? Is it anything like this?

• 1:33:24André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:33:25Speaker 06

  No?

• 1:33:29Speaker 06

  In itself, can it fade? Like, as this play of time goes, it disappears or becomes weak? Would that be true? Can it fade?

• 1:33:43André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:33:44Speaker 06

  No? That is good.

• 1:33:51Speaker 06

  Is it a state of hypnosis?

• 1:33:57André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:34:01Speaker 06

  Very good.

• 1:34:07Speaker 06

  Are there any judgments in it?

• 1:34:10André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:34:11Speaker 06

  No?

• 1:34:15Speaker 06

  Can it be owned by some people and not by others?

• 1:34:22André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:34:31Speaker 06

  Was it born?

• 1:34:39André Duqum?

  I don't think so.

• 1:34:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:44Speaker 06

  I come back to the point, is it an image?

• 1:34:49André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:34:49Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:34:54Speaker 06

  Is it a form?

• 1:34:56André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:34:56Speaker 06

  Okay, so the question comes, was it born?

• 1:35:01André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:05Speaker 06

  Can it die?

• 1:35:08André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:08Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:15Speaker 06

  Is it a mood?

• 1:35:17André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:31Speaker 06

  Can the mind exist outside of it?

• 1:35:38André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:38Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:43Speaker 06

  Can it be lost?

• 1:35:45André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:49Speaker 06

  Can it be possessed?

• 1:35:51André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:35:52Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:35:57Speaker 06

  Then...

• 1:36:01Speaker 06

  How far apart from you is it?

• 1:36:07André Duqum?

  It's not far, it's right here.

• 1:36:10Speaker 06

  It's right here.

• 1:36:15Speaker 06

  It's good.

• 1:36:18Speaker 06

  So I'll just summarize, I ask you if it's...

• 1:36:24Speaker 06

  If it is an object, you say it's not an object. I ask, has it got a size? I mean, is there some boundary beyond which it does not exist? You say, no, there's no such thing. I ask you, can it become sick?

• 1:36:43Speaker 06

  You say, no.

• 1:36:48Speaker 06

  I ask you, is it a state of hypnosis? You answered, "No."

• 1:37:01Speaker 06

  I ask you, is there any judgment in it? You say, "There's no judgment in it." Can it be owned? You say, "No, it cannot be owned." Can it be lost?

• 1:37:14Speaker 06

  Cannot be lost.

• 1:37:22Speaker 06

  I ask,

• 1:37:26Speaker 06

  was it born? "No." Can it die? "No."

• 1:37:32Speaker 06

  Can the mind exist outside of it? You say, "No."

• 1:37:39Speaker 06

  Then I ask you,

• 1:37:43Speaker 06

  how far is it from you? You say, "No." You say, "It's here."

• 1:37:52Speaker 06

  You didn't seem to need some time to think about these things. There's something very immediate in your responses.

• 1:38:01Speaker 06

  So I would only conclude that what you are aware of and we are speaking about is yourself.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Here's the truth of ourself.

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  Can it be lost?

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  "No."

• 1:38:30Speaker 06

  Can it fade?

• 1:38:35Speaker 06

  "No."

• 1:38:38Speaker 06

  Can it be sick? It itself, can it be sick? "No." Can it die?

• 1:38:51Speaker 06

  "No."

• 1:38:53Speaker 06

  It does not fit into the range of mental descriptions. It's not there.

• 1:38:59Speaker 06

  And yet, you don't have to research. There's something so clear in all of this.

• 1:39:12Speaker 06

  Are you imagining this?

• 1:39:14André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:39:15Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:39:17Speaker 06

  So, my conclusion is, you're sharing your fundamental nature.

• 1:39:31Speaker 06

  Can it be forgotten?

• 1:39:33André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:39:34Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:39:40Speaker 06

  So, that's it. Now, as I promised, you can retain all the things you left aside. The ideas that we had before, you can leave. But the future desires and so on, you can have, enjoy.

• 1:40:03Speaker 06

  Can they replace or remove this?

• 1:40:09André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:40:10Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:40:17André Duqum?

  Thank you.

• 1:40:19André Duqum?

  It's very beautiful.

• 1:40:20Speaker 06

  Yes, so this is a simple exercise in a very short... I don't even want to call it a meditation. We can say, we may call it a guided meditation. But the seeing is your own confirm from your own self.

• 1:40:38Speaker 06

  And if we don't add any thought to that...

• 1:40:43Speaker 06

  Don't push anything.

• 1:40:47Speaker 06

  How are you?

• 1:40:51André Duqum?

  Freedom.

• 1:40:52Speaker 06

  Yes, if I were to say, "Nice to meet you," what would it mean?

• 1:41:03André Duqum?

  There's something inherently liberating about touching a place that feels imperishable, that feels like it can't die.

• 1:41:13Speaker 06

  Yes. It feels like?

• 1:41:19André Duqum?

  It is.

• 1:41:25Speaker 06

  You choose in your seeing, you see?

• 1:41:27André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Speaker 06

  I mean, it seems like, or it is for you. Maybe someone else cannot verify for you, but in your own seeing, something is here that underlies the phenomenal universe, the realm of thought and feeling, of ideas and projections and all of this. It is here, independent of them. But they cannot exist independent of it. It is the support, the root, or I may call it the very ground of being.

• 1:42:03Speaker 06

  And in that arises a self-image, an identity, that dances in this also. But it is perceived, everything is perceived in this. To appear, to disappear, to come, to go, to arise, to subside. But does this suffer from the effects arising in it?