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A. H. Almaas on God, Awakening, Consciousness, and Analytically Pursuing Spirituality
April 13, 2022
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The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze.
Culture, they analyze finance, economics, business, international affairs across every region. I'm particularly liking their new insider feature. It was just launched this month. It gives you, it gives me, a front row access to The Economist's internal editorial debates.
Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount.
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This channel is about theories of everything in the mathematically rigorous theoretical physics sense, but as well as understanding the role consciousness has within physics, perhaps even without physics. In order to have a meticulous and comprehensive understanding of toes, then one should understand or at least attempt to understand the more experiential eastern approaches
rather than purely the western analytical one. Admittingly, the latter is the approach that I'm most comfortable with, which is why I'm in an extremely lucky and blessed position, since this initial foray into the eastern area of spirituality is with A. H. Almas. Almas is an eminent and lauded spiritual advisor who writes about and teaches an approach to spiritual development informed by depth psychology and therapy called the diamond approach. In fact, almas is the Arabic word for diamond.
Given that Almas holds a PhD in physics, this episode serves as a copasetic introduction both to the regular viewers of this channel as well as to myself to the ideas of what at least is demotically called the East. Click on the timestamp in the description if you'd like to skip this intro. My name is Kurt Jaimungal. I'm a Torontonian filmmaker.
with a background in mathematical physics dedicated to the explication of the variegated terrain of theories of everything, from a theoretical physics perspective, but as well as analyzing consciousness and seeing its potential connection to fundamental reality, whatever that is. Essentially, this channel is dedicated to exploring the underived nature of reality, the constitutional laws that govern it, provided those laws exist at all and are even knowable to us.
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So Almas, why don't you give an overview to the audience of your diamond approach for those who are unfamiliar with it and perhaps if you like you can compare and contrast it to Advaita Vedanta, but you may have to give an example of what that is as well. Well, I teach a particular approach to actualizing the total human potential.
And really what we find out if we explore the potential that most of it is not conscious is not the physical and emotional. That's just the surface. So a big part of it is the spiritual sphere and matter of spirits. So the teaching is mostly about how to open up or to access the spiritual dimension.
of our reality for existence. And in my approach, I use Western methodology, like I use Western psychology, for instance, I integrate that as part of the methodology of how to open up. I use inquiry, which is somewhat similar to Socratic inquiry as a particular method. That for me is more important than sitting meditation, although we employ sitting meditation too, of different kinds.
The idea is to find out, what the hell are we? What's going on? What am I? What is the world or universe? What is the nature of the universe? That's how I started actually, why I started in science. I want to know what is the truth of reality. So I went very far, as you know, in studying physics and math, until at some point I realized I wasn't getting it.
For me, I wasn't getting where I wanted to go. I didn't know consciously where I wanted to go. But as I got deeper into physics and also conversing with scientists, I realized that the approach is good, wonderful and very useful. I'm interested in it. I love it. All of that. I was good at it.
It was from here up, you know, didn't include the heart, didn't include the other capacities we have. So the approach uses, as I said, uses inquiry, but uses the scientific method in some kind of way, which means it has to be verified, not by experiment as done in physics,
but by experience, by one's own direct experience, not what I hear, not what I learn from teaching, what I can verify and repeatedly, and then can verify in other people, and other people too, at the beginning where my friends, my students, was the teaching was developing. So, and, but it is, what developed is a certain perspective,
about the spiritual dimension. That the spiritual dimension is not just one thing. It's not like you experience consciousness and you know what consciousness is and that's it. You see, Advaita Vedanta, for instance, is a teaching about realization of pure consciousness. To recognize that one's true self
is pure consciousness that has no limits, no size, no shape, and that it is also the nature of everything. And that is part of the teaching I give, but my teaching is a little bit more nuanced, I would say, because that has more detail and some people think of it as more complex.
but because the spiritual dimension for me is not just one dimension like consciousness for me is one dimension emptiness another dimension which buddhism emphasizes love is another dimension you see and creative dynamism what makes things happen
You see, they don't differentiate those that much. I mean, they include them in consciousness, but sort of implicitly so. I differentiate them into different dimensions, and then those dimensions can also express themselves in human experience, individual experience, as particular spiritual qualities. Spiritual qualities like the quality of clarity, the quality of compassion.
quality of sincerity, quality of will, steadfastness. And there are many of those qualities. I know at least 40 or 50 of those. I don't think I know all of them. They're similar to what's called the Platonic ideas. You see, in some sense, they are the Platonic ideas behind what we know, like when we say love. Many of you being experience love.
But what is the Platonic idea of love? What is the true spiritual counterpart to what human being called love and turns out to be a very particular way of experiencing consciousness? So my approach is basically is how to learn about the spiritual qualities which make us be able to connect to the spiritual sphere, which in my work, the emphasis is in presence and ontological presence.
the presence of consciousness, not just conscious, as function of consciousness and the presence, the beingness of it. And then connecting to the more of the non-dual, which is similar to Advaita Vedanta. And then the non-dual has more nuances. And then connecting the non-dual with the ordinary life. How is it
How do we live? If I'm infinite conscious, how do I live a human life? What lives and how do I live? And that, of course, a big part of spiritual realization of most teachings. And so I teach that too. I work with that. But then I leave the door open.
For the spiritual universe to reveal other possibility because there are other possibilities of knowing reality, for instance, which really go into it. It takes us back similar to some of the physics, quantum theory, you know, how so perspective. Well, let me give this example. If you have
Buddha's master and Veda master sitting in the same room. The Buddha says nature reality is emptiness and that's what the experience, what the person experiences. Emptiness is the spacious emptiness is what I experience. It is the fundamental ground that Veda without the person said that no, the fundamental
Nature of reality is pure consciousness, it's conscious of itself, and it's characterized by being, while the Buddhists are characterized by non-being. Now, they're both right in my perspective, but each one of them says this is the ultimate. So how can they be both the ultimate? And in my exploration, I found out that they're both correct.
However, if what is really there is the ultimate fundamental truth, how can people experience it so differently? And so through my own spiritual investigation, tradition and my experience, is that how we experience what is the truth depends on the experiencer.
on the person. Different people can experience it differently. There are different ways reality manifests. So the experiencer is what makes reality appear in a certain way. That brings us to quantum theory. You see, the experiencer is needed for the quantum wave to collapse to manifest in a certain way. Before that, we don't know what it is.
So the observer, that's what quantum theory said. Here, you know, is the experiencer, similar to that, but the experiencer is experiencing inward reality instead of experimenting, observing something external. So I look at the spiritual realization as I have what's called the quantum theory of spirituality.
which is that the spiritual truth is indeterminate until we experience it. And how we experience it, it depends on our worldview, our view of reality, depends on our expectation, depends on our readiness and openness.
So that for me explains many traditions, why there are so many traditions, you know, different kind of teachings. Can you give me an example of this inquiry process, this Socratic process? And then also, why do you say that in your approach, it holds more of a preeminent role than meditation? Okay, I mean, I understand meditation. That's how I started myself learning different kind of meditation.
Buddhist and Indian and Sufi meditations. But the way my own experience opened up is by knowing my experience in the moment and being interested to understand it. What is it? What is its meaning? What's it about? Where does it come from? So that becomes an inquiry into
present experience. Meditation is not focused on experience. Meditation is focused on concentration. Like in Tibetan, you visualize something and in Veda Vedanta, you say it's not this, not this. And I say, no, it's not that. I want to know this. Why is it here? What makes it be here? What's it about? So I can start with any experience, like the experience of being irritated or the experience of being
hopeful of something or experience of inner joyfulness or experience of sadness. And by getting into it, by feeling it fully, as fully as possible, which requires the development of many capacities, actually, because experiencing something fully is not as simple as most people can't experience things fully. Most people experience things somewhat mentally, somewhat emotionally.
fully mean your your body is sensitized completely open your heart is open your mind capacities are open and developed and all that so but you know there are degrees of capacity degrees of how capable we are in engaging this inquiry depending how open we are how developed we are but it could begin in the simplest way by saying well today i'm feeling somewhat um
discouraged. Finding out why am I discouraged? I'm discouraged that this pandemic is never over. It seems it goes from one thing to another. Okay, I'm feeling discouraged because of the pandemic. Is that really all? Just the pandemic? No, not just that. That is part of it. But then I realized I'm discouraged because I feel I still
don't feel completely fulfilled. You know, I mean, it's true, there's a pandemic, I can see some of my friends and family, but there is something inside me that is not complete. And then I inquire into what is this feeling of not being complete, not being fulfilled.
Now this talking back and forth to oneself, this reminds me of the relationship a patient may have to a therapist, except one is having it with oneself. And I know that you've said that you take plenty of inspiration from the depth psychologist. So is this what you're referring to? Well, you see, it's similar, hasn't it? Similarity to psychology. But you see, a psychologist wants to heal the patient.
Here, I'm not trying to heal something. I'm trying to understand it. I'm interested in knowing what it is. I'm not interested in getting rid of the problem. And are you trying to understand it without an emotion attached to it? Or are you trying to understand it so that you are happier or so that like, what is the emotion with the understanding? Are you supposed to look at it as if it's words on a paper? So that is more clinically, or are you supposed to identify with it? Neither of those.
is complete engagement in it. You see, that's the thing about why it brings my perspective of science, is that in the science, you have to be detached from the experiment. You can't be, you know, part of it. The observer has to be, the more detached, the more engaged, the more the experiment is pure, you see.
In the inquiry in oneself, it includes the subject, the observer. So I'm inquiring in both the experiencer and the experienced. You see, they're both there in the field of experience because and so to really because inquiring into oneself and inquiring into the subject basically. And so as part of it is psychological.
Part of it comes from the Socratic method. If you remember, Socrates will bring his students and ask them, what is courage? And he says, I don't know. Let's find out what is courage. Why are they exploring courage? Not because they want to be courageous. They want to first find out what it is. Do I know it or don't I know it? If I know it, what's it like? So that's the Socratic part.
So it is not aim oriented. Because the impetus in this teaching is not, or let's say the drive for enlightenment, is not a matter of being free from suffering or from problem, but it is love for the truth. Love to know the truth as completely, as fully as possible.
Earlier, when you were referencing that the Buddhist may emphasize emptiness and then someone else may emphasize pure consciousness and someone else may emphasize love and so on and so on. Are these all unified in some manner? They're unified in this and they're all coming from the same place, but not unified. You see, some Advaita Vedantara, they think they're unified because they're all consciousness. They're all consciousness and they're all, you know,
You see, my understanding of it is that the actual truth is indeterminate, just like quantum theory, until you experience it. It's not set. People want the certainty or the security
of feeling the truth of what I am is here and I just need to discover it. That is how many spiritual teachings say it is here. You just need to open up, waken up to it. And what I discovered through my exploration is that the truth is here, but not manifest. It's not just matter of discovering it. I need to be ready and interested and open and then it will appear.
Why would it come from? It doesn't come from anywhere. It just comes. It just appears.
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So what is that? What do you say? Where does it come from? I say it's unknown and unknowable. Now, is that unknown? Sorry, is that unknown unknowable? Yeah.
okay now is that unknown unknowable what most religions are trying to conceptualize when they use the word god or is that different or is that does that predate god yes and the monotheistic tradition think god is unknown unknowable that's how christianity joseph and islam take that god you cannot know god as god that's what they say the mystic like the sophists they say you could unify with god you can be one
with God and you know the God's being. But that doesn't mean you know everything about God. So God and as God from perspective, God is not known. I don't think of the truth myself as a God. I mean, maybe some people think of it as a God, because God gets us into the Creator, this and that. And for me, things are more interesting and subtle than that. That I am something
Unknown, unknowable. I know I am. I know what I am. But I don't know, I cannot say what it is. But I can say a lot about myself that expresses that, like awareness and consciousness and love and spaciousness and emptiness and all that. What is the ego ideal? Yeah, so that's from the book, the Newgrounds book, the ego ideal.
But that's normal psychology, Freudian psychology, that each ego has an ego ideal, has an ideal, which means it is constructed around some kind of ideas of how you want to be, what kind of person you want to be, what kind of life you want to have. So your ideal is to be sort of a successful person or your ideal to be really more of a helper,
an ideal of being authentic or original. These are ideas that each ego has that goes back all the way back to Freud, you see. But I use it as when I work with the Enneagram knowledge and I see the different types as each is a manifestation of a particular ego ideal.
What's the difference between awakening and realizing or realization? You see, many teachers won't make a distinction. For me, I do make a distinction, and some do, but I'm not the only one who does, is that awakening, first of all, there are different kinds of awakening. You know, if you read Gurdjieff, for instance, his first awakening, he says, the terror of the moment to realize I am asleep.
I don't know who I am. Most people aren't awakened that way yet to know. I don't know who the hell I am. What am I? What's the meaning of my life? Why am I here? That's the first awakening for a good Jeff. The second awakening is to know, uh, to what you are to erupt into consciousness that you know, I'm pure spirit that is aware and conscious of itself.
Now for me realization means that has become your true self. It has become a constant, constantly integrated. It's not just you know it, you woke up to it, you know, you experienced it. What about wisdom? So you're curious about many things.
I think of it more in a Western way, wisdom. You know, if you're a Buddhist, wisdom means knowing what emptiness is. For them, they call that wisdom. If you really know from experience, what is the emptiness of self? What is the emptiness of everything? They call that wisdom. For me, wisdom is more practical, which is
As I know myself, as I know my true self, or my spiritual nature, or my, I call it true nature, usually. And, and I, not know it, have integrated it. And then how I live it, how I live my life, is living from that place. And living from that place, being able to live in that place, in response,
to the world situation I find myself in. So that my response to the situation I'm in comes informed and expressing what I have learned, what I am now. And that becomes a spontaneous and natural and very appropriate
way of dealing with the situation. That appropriate and full way of dealing with the situation is wisdom. Knowing how to deal with life situation from the spiritual perspective, including spiritual perspective without denying the material perspective for me is to be wise. That's, as you know, that's how western philosophy, western religions,
Let me see if I'm understanding this. So the second awakening, because you refer to number one and number two, the second awakening is more about the perception of a particular insight than realization is the persistence of that insight.
And then wisdom is the conformance between one's action and that insight, or am I off? That's a good way of saying it. Good. Yes. But the only addition I will say is not just insight is being that discovery. Like I discovered that my nature is a pure presence, which is a sense of being, sense of existence that does not exist in my body.
It's pure existence. I am. You see, I am, but the I am is a palpable sense of consciousness, conscious of its own being.
It's because consciousness is not a function. Consciousness is a reality. Consciousness is something that is. And when consciousness knows itself, awakes to itself as, oh, that is what I am. I am this kind of luminous, aware presence, aware of myself and can be aware of other things. That will be the realization.
See, the way that I'm wondering about this is akin to a tree with branches that all come from the same root. And then when one says that consciousness realizes itself, well, let's imagine that you're an example of that. I don't imagine that I'm an example of that. So just because you have found that out, even though at least in this model, we're all part of the same root, it seems localized to you. It doesn't seem to spread outside of your teachings and helping people. So the way that I'm visualizing it,
is like a branch and then there's a loop on that branch and that is what is occurring when you say consciousness realizes itself rather than when consciousness realizes itself another way of thinking of that is all these branches just intertwined at once but i and probably some of the people who are listening just because you or some of the other people have had insights or have had these realizations of consciousness realizing itself
It doesn't mean they have. For example, I don't think I've had it. So how does that comport? Is it that it is a separate branch? Because I'm trying to understand this with the other teaching that we're all the same in some manner. And so how is it that if you have an insight and I don't have that insight automatically? Most people don't have that insight and don't have the capacity for that insight. It's not easy to have that kind of insight.
It has to do with some kind of maturation of one's consciousness, one's being, one's subjectivity, and development of one's heart, so that the heart has developed to the point where there is a natural desire to know what I am. That becomes a force that opens up things.
and most people are are more busy with survival and their jobs and families and all they don't have the opportunity to or enhance even the interest to devote to this kind of exploration so it is a very specialized thing in some sense that's why all around the world people who realize they're not that many the few you know and
Because, but it is a potential for all of us, because we all have the spiritual nature as our nature. We have the same, all of us have the same nature. And that's one thing, when inside we learn, when I discovered, I remember, you know, years ago, when I first discovered the experience presence, Oh, I am, I am, I know what I am. And I then felt,
connected to all human beings. I felt I am as this conscious presence, I'm connected with all human beings, because all human beings have that same presence, the same inherent truth to them. So that showed me its potential for everybody. Everybody can experience it at some point, you know, if they dedicate themselves to it or
They happen to be somewhat open or mature who have had the right influence in their life. There are many factors. You're right that just because I say this is my experience, that doesn't mean I'm assuming others experience things that way. So everyone does have the capacity or not everyone does? Everybody has the potential.
But not the capacity? Not necessarily the capacity, no. What's the difference between those two? Potential is what you are. Capacity is capacity of perception, capacity of subtle perception, different kind of perception, different kind of consciousness than we know.
Most human beings are aware of consciousness, and I see and hear and have emotions and sensation, all of that. But all of those, you know, perceptual organs have their spiritual counterpart, what I call subtle counterpart. There is inner seeing, there's inner sensing, there's inner feeling, that is not those.
Those are the outer expression of it. So one can, some of us have some of those subtle things, but we're not aware of them, so we don't employ them. But some, it requires development, and that is what I see the role meditation has. Meditation helps in developing some of those capacities.
Should everyone have these realizations? Like if you had a magic wand and you can wave it, do you think it's for everyone or do you think it's for certain people at a certain time or perhaps not for a particular person at any time?
The reason behind this question is that I'm sure you've seen this in some spiritual teachers. They think that everyone should be enlightened, awakened, and they may even use words like you've used with development, though I don't think you meant it in this way, but as if the enlightened is higher than someone else, which then implies a looking down at people who aren't enlightened. Hear that sound?
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If you use that code, you'll get two years worth of blades for free. Just make sure to add them to the cart. Plus 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G dot com slash everything and use the code everything. Well, I mean, spiritual teaching. Oh, they have a teaching to help people to access a realm of reality that they're usually not
accessing. So obviously they think there's a value in that, in having that openness, that capacity for subtle access. But I wouldn't say that any teaching will say everybody should. It's not matter of should, it's more like it's possible for everybody. Everybody has the possibility. When it will happen for somebody,
It's something magical, something sort of like a destiny of sorts. So I think it would be great if more people are like that, you know, because that will sort of move the human race in terms of becoming more human, because really, that's another point that's important, which is the more we are in touch with our spiritual dimension, the more human we are.
You see, people don't know that. Most people know, think, I am human, I am human because I have a body, human body, I have a human emotion, I can think or I'm rational. That makes me human. For the Sufis, for instance, they say, no, no, that's not human yet. To be truly human, you have to have true heart, which means a heart that can converse with the divine. That makes me human. Human, you see,
for the Sufis is the bridge between the divine and the physical world. And if you're not that bridge yet, you're sort of on the way to being human, but you're not totally human yet. So many people and it is not looked at as
gradation or or one is better than other is more like the natural process like evolution you know evolution happens in different ways and different areas and different different ways so we all human being can evolve you know we evolved physically and mentally we can evolve spiritually too and it is
It's hard to tell where it's going to happen. Like when my students, you know, come to me, I don't know which one of them is really going to go deeper than that. Sometimes surprised for some people after a while, they seem to be, they can't go deeper and suddenly something happens and they're, you know, they surprised me how wonderful they seem to know themselves, you know, how they start to experience themselves in a way that's more liberating.
So I wish it for a human being because it has less suffering in it. It has more the enjoyment of discovering reality. I mean, you know, you're a scientist. Scientists explore through science. You're not exploring so I could develop something to sell or give them a grant and I have
The pure science is like you want to discover because you enjoy the discovery, the exploration. So when one is awakened, the discovery becomes the way we live our life. We're having discoveries all the time and discover about what I am, what is life, what is how a thing can be done in a way that makes it more real, more total. And it's wonderful way to live.
You see, it brings in more dimensions to existence, to life. So definitely I wish it for people, but I'm not saying everybody should. I mean, it's up to the people themselves, what happens inside them. I don't for, because of that in my school, I don't go out, try to get students. I don't, I don't try to convert anybody. It's ridiculous for me to do that. It's more like I just hear and I make
something a point in showing that I'm here and that's what I do and who's interested will will come you see and they can learn what I can teach so and so although I wish it for human being to be more themselves
But do I say that everybody should? Well, some people are just, that's not what's happening in their life. They're busy getting married or having kids or something like that. Who am I to say? No, no, you should come in, focus and meditate first, you know.
This is more valuable this approach of
Being enlightened or realizing or awakening and so on and of course in being wise is more valuable but on the other hand we should not or we don't want to talk about should and I from my cursory examination of the more eastern practices it's as if they have a should-ophobia they're afraid of saying should they don't want to talk about should but they can talk about value and I don't to me those two are tied so can you help disentangle them?
I think most paths, most spiritual paths, they do have a should. They don't say it as a should, but they say they advise people, yes, that would be a good thing for you to do. But usually, a really wise teacher will see when they meet people, who is it? It is their time to learn that, who isn't?
because it has to do with timing, it has to do with circumstances. So although it is valuable, but the first thing has to come first. People have to establish a life. That's the Hindu model, as you know. First you become a householder, you're married, and then you go and find the teacher. That's how they've done it, you see. And not all of them, of course, go and find the teachers.
Yes, this I've heard you mention, and I happen to like it. You mentioned in one of your talks that most spiritual teachers, for lack of a better word, emphasize awakening. And then you said, well, what are you talking about? Most people should feel compassion and love and security. And to me, this is an important point. It's one that I mentioned on, not me, but it's one that came up on a previous episode with Carl Friston. And you seem to be one of the teachers that I see emphasize this, or at least bring it up, though you don't call it this, but this notion of path dependence in physics,
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Which is that it's not about this destination. The destination also depends on where you are and then how you're going to get to it and the condition of the world. So to make a blanket statement and say one should be enlightened and so on. I see this. Perhaps you do too. Maybe you don't, but I see this in different comment sections of different videos and online.
With people saying you're already lost if you are in the scientific mindset You've already lost or you will never realize X until you follow some path that I'm telling you and When I read that it's not as if it's directed to me I'm seeing it on other sites, but when I read that I see that as a spiritual form of it's like spiritual superciliousness or arrogance where they and it also puts undue pressure on people and
Perhaps one should accept the position other people are in. I think I agree with you, but I think some of those stories are taken out of context, meaning saying you're lost and you're not getting it.
It is a methodology. It is when a teacher talking to a student, to have an impact on them in a certain way, sometimes you have to say that, but not for everybody. You see, it's not, I wouldn't say that about somebody who's not my students, none of my business. I don't know. But if one of my students is sort of says, come to me and says, I want to learn this,
But then they don't do it, they do something else, or they go off on some kind of tangent. I'll tell them, you see, you know, you're lost, you don't know what you're doing. You're wasting good life, you see, and that will make an impact that will make them then recommit to what they said they wanted.
I see. And the way that you're describing it is a much more compassionate, loving, amiable approach than some of what I see. And you're not this. I'm just saying that this is some of what I see with people adamantly claiming it, exclamation points, as if they're fearfully commenting about how one should never feel fear. And there's a bit of derision in it, too. There's a bit of, yeah, oh, look at you, you little one. You have no idea. And I'm the one that understands this. And if you only could see it from my point of view,
There's a bit of condescension in that. I don't think the Buddha would have talked like that. I agree with you, there are people who talk like that. To be spiritually realized, you're naturally compassionate and loving, and compassion includes attunement, appropriateness. Can you expound on that attunement? Attunement means
I relate to a human being depending on who and where they are, what they are, what they're into, what their interests, what their orientation. I'm not, you know, I'm attuned to it and I speak to that. I don't just lay on my value system on them. And that is, if somebody doesn't express themselves that way, I will question their realization.
Great. This is something that I've wondered too, because it's difficult for me as someone who's being introduced to this in many ways to discern who is enlightened from who is not and what that word means. And one of the rules of thumb or the litmus tests that I use, I encourage people to send me their theories of everything. That's the name of the channel.
And one of the reasons is I don't know what is true, so let me see even what is ordinarily considered to be fringe or woo, quote unquote woo. Perhaps it's not, because today's science was 100 years ago's woo and so on. Though I see sometimes people, they're not as humble and tentative as I believe that they should be when they're presenting their toe, for example, their spiritual theory of everything. You see, yeah, the way I understand spiritualization and spiritualization, if somebody has realized their
expression in the world should come through what's called the virtues, you know, the any ground, which is like humility, serenity, courage, you know, love, things like that. If somebody doesn't express themselves that way, what are they expressing, you know,
So then is that okay when I am trying to make a quick assessment because there are probably 1000 theories of everything and it's difficult when each person is putting up their hand saying I have the toe, you have no idea, I have the toe, you don't understand, I can't even be wrong is one of the ways that I could perform a cursory yes or no.
It's a different stage. We haven't gotten to all the stages yet. There is realization. After realization, there is what I call actualization.
Actualization is what ends up being in wisdom. Actualization means you live what you realized. You don't just experience it. That is another stage of development. It doesn't automatically happen through awakening and realization. Earlier when we were talking about wisdom, I would have equated wisdom and that definition of actualization. So are those two different in your mind? Yeah, I agree with you. They are similar thing. Yes.
So that's interesting, because to me, I've seen wise people who wouldn't claim to have any of these insights. So that means that one can be wise without being realized, and one can be realized without being wise. And at least for me as this creature who's still perhaps asleep.
I tend to prefer the wise. I tend to prefer the wise. Just because the wise, they're more loving. I heed their message. You seem extremely wise and I don't know, am I wrong to prefer that or should I have no preference with regard to this? It's just, it's so difficult for me to tell which messages are correct. The Dalai Lama to me exudes compassion and serenity. Yes. And he's humble too. Right. He's saying, I'm still practicing. I'm still learning. Yes. He's not commenting with,
Yeah. With a moderate use of capitalization. You know, I'm done. He doesn't do that, you know. That's the real wisdom. That's why I like Roger Penrose. You like? You know, I like it because his relationship to his theories is like that. Like he talked about his theory of consciousness, as you know. He has his theory of consciousness. He has developed microtubules and all that.
But then he says, well, will you say that is really the truth? He'll say, well, no, I think we are very far away from knowing what consciousness is. So he sees it as his contribution toward going that way. He doesn't see that. While many other people who have fear of consciousness, they think that's it. I remember meeting one time with several scientists
and neuroscientists who each one has their theory of consciousness, one of the major theories of consciousness and had, you know, we had some kind of a conference, whatever, but at some point we met privately and we were trying to say, how are we going to communicate those theories of consciousness and make them more acceptable to hear that sound?
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I remember discussing it with them and one of my ideas, each one has their theory and very different, you know, and they're all good.
And I said, well, you know, to really the scientific community, because there's a consensus kind of science that where we have and you, you, you can't just give a big theory with all kind of assumption and all kind of unknown thing and expect the scientific community to adopt it easily. I said, why not just give a little thing at a time, you know,
Everybody wanted their theory to be it.
So part of it is hubris, part of it I think is sort of arrogance, but part of it is human nature, partly is like, I want to be right. Each one of them is convinced that they're right. That's why I say I like Roger Penrose. He's not convinced he's right. He knows he's an approximation.
Many of the others don't believe that but they think they got it.
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I want to tell you about an experience I had.
So some people say, and maybe I won't include this in the in the final, so I'll try and be quick. But some people say, don't be so be open minded, but also open minded that your head falls out. I don't like that phrase, because to me, I like being because to me, the phrase so open minded that your head falls out means that they've already placed a limit. And if I'm investigating this whole field, and I don't know what's true, I can't already say no to this, I have to investigate it and give it its due. So I tend to take
I think I tend to take on these theories of everything a bit too seriously. And I would have never said that before. I would have said, let's say here's an example. When I was interviewing someone named Thomas Campbell, who has my big toe, he in his book, which firstly, it's a, it's like three Bibles, his one book. So I was like, okay, let me read all of that. Let me give it its due. It's called toe. It's called my big toe. And then second, he said, you need to meditate for at least three months in order to fully get this. So I'm like, okay, before I interview him, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to try this.
And I do this with almost each guest. However, about three or so weeks ago, I had an experience that was probably the most terrifying experience of my entire life. And I've had some terrifying experiences before. And it wasn't on psychedelic, though it could be induced by something like that, which we can talk about afterward.
It was an experience I was in bed with my wife and my and I thought I just had this really could I be all that is like solipsism and that and I but and I've always entertained solipsism or I would have said I entertained it but I analytically entertained it and that was the first time I experientially entertained it and it was the most terrifying thought I'm still recovering from it like even talking with you I'm some of what you say
triggers me some of what anyone in the spiritual teachings say trigger me right now because I'm hypersensitive from that moment. It's almost like PTSD. It's so it's too recent. And it was so terrifying that it was so absolutely terrifying to call it a panic attack would be like I would have prayed for five panic attacks rather than that. I see. That's how you call it terrifying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I remember. So this is the part that I may take out. So whoever ever is editing this, yeah,
I'm extremely open to God and I would have never said that before because I'm atheistic until about two years ago or three years ago.
However, that was the only time in like I was on I felt like I was on the brink of insanity that there if I had realized that I would be in the mental hospital thinking that I have the truth but everyone else putting me it was so to look at my wife and think is this a creation in my head how ungrateful am I how selfish am I that I would think that how embarrassed am I but at the same time that could be real oh my gosh looking at her and thinking that she's looking at me
From her point of view, behind her eyes, like, I love my husband, but then for her to even think, is my husband, my husband doesn't think I'm real? What the heck? Anyway, then, then a commanding voice came to me, a commanding commanding commanding voice. And I don't want to talk about this. This is why I may want to take this out. But and it was more certain than any single thing in my entire life. And it was this commanding voice that said, Kurt,
I don't even remember what it said, but part of it was, Kurt, you've developed your thought so much. You don't think of yourself as someone who's analytical. You're extremely analytical. Look at what this has led you to. Feel more. Ground yourself in this world and that the belief in this world, the belief in the reality of this world is the same as belief in me. It's the same. You don't see how it's the same right now, and that's fine, but it is the same. So by you even feeling this solipsistic
experience. It's it's almost like a slap in the face to me. That was the only thing that kept me grounded was this deep, profound belief. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about that experience. I know whoever's editing this is gonna have such a huge time, hard time. But but can you let me know what you think and how you would how you approach this? You know, I remember having similar experience to yours. One time I remember some years ago, I got up
Woke up from sleep, woke up, my wife was leaving and told her, you know, you're a figment of my imagination. Because that's how I was experiencing. But that is one way of experiencing thing, which we could call a syllabistic. But, you know, in the morning, I was still experiencing that I am everything. How I at the same time, my wife is real.
She has her own experience. So, and you talk about God, and I mean, I use the language of God sometimes, divine or God, and sometimes called spiritual nature, true nature, which is all the ground of spirituality. But it is, I think you were into something, and you call it syllipsism. But I mean, that's what
all Advaita Vedanta is about. That person realizes, I am consciousness and the consciousness is everything, so I am everything. Everything is appearing in my mind, but it's not the individual mind, it's the big mind, the boundless, the infinite consciousness.
Everything is in that. And so if you take it as our individual mind, that can bring in the question of solipsism. How can one like myself, who was extremely terrified of that individualistic mind, not come to that conclusion? Like, what can I do to feel ease? Because even you talking about this right now, I feel almost like I'm about to have a panic attack in some way.
or a hang of anxiety. But at the same time, I don't want you to see this so tricky because I feel like by saying that you're feeling you felt the terror. I mean, I felt terror many times and the terror is the transition from one dimension to another. There is always a terror because you don't know what's going to happen. Your whole world is going to disappear. You don't know what's going to take its place. And for me, for the spiritual path, for special practice and inquiry, especially,
Is to welcome the terror and understand that let it be as one natural response to what's happening. Integrated what helped me.
Which was the only thing that helped me was I was looking up. I think that what I had was, or at least what I started to suffer from afterward was, obsessive thoughts. That this was what I would just, I would look around and I'd be derealized. I wouldn't feel like this was all real at all. And then I looked up, what does cognitive behavioral therapy have to say about this? And there was something called acceptance therapy, where you accept the thought rather than trying to avoid and run from it.
However, acceptance is not the same as allowing it to be true. It's different. And I don't know how to articulate the difference, but it's it's almost like saying, okay, I accept that I may think this and I just accept but I don't entertain. No, I think you are trying to put into words something that is not mental. When you say acceptance,
I use the word acceptance, but really acceptance as a quality of pure consciousness is not saying yes to something. It is allowing it to be, without rejection and without acceptance. So it's a non-rejection. So acceptance
Acceptance doesn't mean I take it on as true and that's it. No, acceptance doesn't mean let it be as it is. Let's find out what it is and let it show itself. I don't accept and I don't reject what I experience. Yeah, go ahead. Can you tell me about that story about the man who had a stash of water and
He felt like the main water source was vitiated and so he didn't want to drink from it. Can you tell that story and the moral behind it? Yeah, yeah. When the waters were changed, that's what it's called. That's a Sufi story, I think. I don't know its origin. But that what I remember is that
man who was living in some kind of a village or something and and and i don't remember the part where he realized that the water is going to be changed when they get changed people drink from it they'll forget who they are
So he collected some of the water for himself, you see, before it changed. And then people were thinking, well, they all became sort of forgot who they are. He was still awake. But then you said that the point was that it was too much for him.
Well, and then there is the quality. Yeah. How is he going to live by himself? He knows reality and everybody else or think reality is something else. So he chose to drink from the main source afterward? Yeah, that's the story. He couldn't handle it and he went and drank the new water.
See I think this is part of what is also can be dangerous about some spiritual teachings is that there's the social pressure that seems unacknowledged because we use terms like they couldn't handle it and then we culturally have a norm that no you should be able to handle so-and-so so if you can't handle it there's something wrong with you I constantly say this that I'm not a truth seeker I'm a truth seeker of how much I can handle and I'm a coward
because I'm afraid of what could be true. But at the same time, I used to feel extremely bad about that. I used to until about three weeks ago when I say, you know what, Kurt? That's how you are. That's it. That's fine. Just accept it. I don't think that I'm one of those people that's meant to have that realization. Well, I don't know about that. You see, I myself see that many people will be afraid to see certain truth.
Most people will be afraid of seeing, it will be terrifying for them. But I don't think that doesn't make me think I don't want to talk to them. I don't relate with them as equals. I have friends. I mean, many of my friends are, you know, people don't know me, don't understand, don't know who I am. They don't see me as me the way I know myself. It's fine with me.
And I don't have a judgment of them. Everybody has sort of, let's say, a line of evolution for them. That is sort of part of their destiny, part of their, you know, what's happening in their soul. And people are different that way.
So, I mean, you come back to this, whether there is a judgment, whether there is a hierarchy and, you know, right. So stuff like that. And it's true. I mean, spiritual teaching, sometimes they do have hierarchy of different stages, for instance, in the path. But that that is in the path itself. You are in the path on the spiritual school. There are stages and some teaching have stages, something you don't. But that
I think that I was far too egotistical before in my adoption of theories of everything by thinking that I could find the truth and I can have these realizations if there are in fact realizations like I would investigate it. But now I think that my contribution
is to help others with their journey one step rather than taking them all the way and taking myself all the way i think i've been humbled by this experience so humbled in the humiliating sense in the hurtful sense but in the salutary sense too that i think my role is to not have realizations at least right now and to perhaps if it's anything positive maybe i can help other people with the
putting one foot forward you already had some you just told me about something experience you had and it just brought fear and the fear is not metabolized if if you metabolize the fear then you might be able to have that experience and have more understanding of how it fits the rest of your life
Because of time constraints, we're now jumping directly from audience question to audience question. John Muniz asks, many spiritual teachers and traditions have disparaged the role of intellectual development and book learning on the path of awakening. However, this person's a fan of yours and says, as you, Almas, you tried to combine the quest for spiritual awakening with the quest for mental understanding, I look up to you, since you've managed to integrate those two domains.
Can you speak about the positive contribution intellectual growth can make toward deepening one's relationship with reality, especially one's initial awakening? Most spiritual teaching actually, they begin with some kind of intellectual understanding, which is learning what is the view, what is the perspective of the teaching. And it is good to have that.
But you don't want to stop with that. You want to have the experience, not just the intellectual understanding. But you see, the question of the role of the intellect is a very big question. Because it's not whether you begin with intellectual understanding, which many teaching subscribe to. It's some teaching, they think the mind is a problem at some point that you need to drop the mind.
Because what you want is a direct immediate experience that is not constrained by the concept of the mind. And I think that is true. However, the mind can develop too. The mind is not just one level, you see, is not the intellect.
I remember reading the Greek philosophy. Some of the Greek philosophers, like Neoplatonists, they had 11 levels for intellect. 11. No, I didn't know that. Proclus, I think. What are some of these levels?
Well, like the usual mind that we usual intellect we have that we use for reasoning or whatever. And there is another intellect that can have capacity for synthesis, you know, and then another capacity of synthesis that does not depend on analysis. And then then an intellect that is illuminated by light.
and then there is an intellect that where true intelligence the prototype of intelligence the platonic form of intelligence pure intelligence of spirit flows in the mind and so that that kind of intelligence usually people say a person is brilliant right when they say when they're smart
Why do they say that? Why do they say bears is brilliant? Why do they use the word brilliant? Do you ever think about it? No. Why do they say brilliant? Because pure intelligence, when you see it with a subtle sense, it looks like pure brilliance. Like, you know, the brilliance of light, it is brilliance without a color, just pure brilliance. And so a presence like of a palpable substance
of brilliance and this brilliance when you when I experience it feel like pure intelligence can flow through the mind but also can flow through the body so we can be physically intelligent and brilliant could be emotional so there's another that's another level of intellect where where it is open where the true intelligence of spirit can come through the
understanding the capacity for understanding and I think that's why Penrose when he talks about you know about consciousness and what it is that is not computational whatever he uses he goes to and he said understanding cannot be is not a computational thing
But he doesn't have, he knows that, but he doesn't exactly know what he knows, the way I see it. In the sense, he knows it is not computation, it is not analytic. That understanding is something that happens within us that brings out a new experience and new insights, but we don't know what did it, how it worked.
Because he is, I think, he has that kind of brilliance flowing in him. He might not see it, but it is flowing in him. And so he said he's a materialist, he's not mystical, whatever. I think he is sort of mystic with that sort of wanting, with wanting to admit that there is that part of him, something in him, because
When you say that he understands but without knowing he understands, do you mean that when he's using in that argument that our mind is not computational because we understand an argument that has some Gordelian argument that he uses the word understanding but he doesn't understand what the word understanding means?
Is that what you mean? Or is something different? No, he doesn't know. I'm not saying he knows what understanding means. He just doesn't know why it is not computational. He doesn't have, I mean, I don't know what to say. He sort of has an intuition, I think, that understands. He put three words, I remember, consciousness, understanding and intelligence. He says those three are related.
And all of them are outside of the computational. I was watching one of your talks and you were referring to I am that I am, which is a statement from what God was saying when asked for his name. And then you related that to strength and knowing strength or strength somehow to strength. Do you mind expounding? Well, I am the sense of say I am, which is known by many spiritual teachings.
is to know one's the presence of one's spirit or one's pure consciousness and that which means the ontological dimension of consciousness its ontology not its functionality you see because most people know consciousness as a functional thing i'm aware of this i see that but what is consciousness
itself, most people don't even think of that. When you know what conscious is, that is its ontology, and that feels as some kind of presence. But that then, that is I Am. However, the I Am can appear with different qualities, can appear as pure, not just a pure presence of just simply I Am, but I Am strength.
Meaning the presence can manifest one of its possibilities, which is pure strength or pure joy. One of the insights that I had during my episode, if we can call it that, and this is being told to me, is that if what I'm experiencing isn't loving, isn't somehow life-affirming, then see that as a sign that it's deception. So move toward what's loving and ground myself in other people and talk to them and so on.
What do you make of that? Do you see that as having an element of truth? Yeah, I think, yeah, I will say it's the truth and love tied. And if so, how very much connected because truth is the essence of the heart and expresses itself as love. That's my experience of it. You see, truth is the essence of the heart and it expresses itself as love. So the expression of truth is love. Yeah.
So if somebody is not loving, meaning they're not completely open in their heart. And the truth of who they are is not coming through. You had a phrase about that the mouth tastes what's material. So I am butchering it, but the mouth tastes what's material and the heart tastes what's spiritual. Right. Well, that's some teachings like the Sufi think of a spiritual insight, a spiritual knowledge as taste.
But it is the taste of the heart and the heart is the organ of spiritual taste. So the knowing of spiritual matters, they think of it as the heart knowing and and they call it taste and taste, you know, the Arabic word though, which means like when you sample something, you want to taste it, you know,
Taste sometimes means the capacitive taste, but sometimes taste this, right? So when you have a spiritual experience, you're tasting something. So the heart tastes that way. So to get to know the truth, the reality, the spiritual reality. So it's sometimes called taste, sometimes called touch too, inner touch.
At some point, I want to speak to Ken Wilbur, perhaps in a few months when I'm strong enough to. And I know that Ken Wilbur and you have agreements and disagreements, and I'm unsure of his model. But can you tell me where you both agree and disagree? Like compare and contrast. It's been very hard for me to say that because I haven't been following his latest things. You know, I was following him for some time. But it's not an agreement or disagreement.
I remember one time there was some disagreement some years ago when I was putting out in some of my books that as young children, we were in touch with our spiritual nature. And he disagreed with that. He thought, no, children are like monsters. They're not in touch with the spiritual nature.
And I said, yes, they can be monsters, but also they can be beautiful and wonderful and joyful and innocent and all of that. And these are spiritual qualities. That was, you know, this agreement we had at that time. And I don't know at the present time, I mean, he is more of a philosopher, of a systematizer, of, you know,
of ways of experience and knowing and life and all of that. He is much more that way than I am. I'm not engaged in things the same way he is. I think Ken will agree with me that self-reflection is a stage of development of humanity and there are other stages like immediate knowing.
It sounds to me from what you said earlier about the human, actually, I don't know if this is from a talk, I believe this is from a talk about humans infinite potential, and that we are at a privileged place as humans because of our ability to self reflect. And who else would know God if there were no humans? Let's assume that there are no other highly intelligent living creatures and so on.
But that statement seems to agree with what Ken said. The reason is that if we go back to childhood, we have less self-reflective capabilities. Some people may say, much like you had the disagreement, that children can be closer to God in some ways. But then if we take that further, the less reflective cognitive capabilities that we have, the more we're like the worms and the beetles and so on. So the fact that we would say, or the fact that you said in the
human infinite potential conference or talk that we're at a privileged place seems to me to indicate that actually, yes, we're somehow somewhere higher on the spiritual development scale than children. So that's why I was saying that it sounds to me like you actually agree with Ken, from what I understood of your lessons in that other lecture. Am I understanding that incorrectly? But you're putting two things together that I don't do.
which is talking about self-reflective capacity, which is true, it's a development that human being had, and we don't have it as little babies, we don't have self-reflection. However, when you are in a realized place, the most realized condition is not self-reflective, does not reflect on itself, because when it reflects itself, there's nothing there. It can only look forward,
But the point I want to say is that when I say children in touch with spirituality, I don't mean they're self-reflective. I mean their being. When they're happy, they are really happy. You see, the happiness is pure. And sometimes they're happy for no reason. They're just gurgling. And for me, that is a spiritual quality. They might not know it. They might not know they're happy. They're not self-reflection.
Self-reflection is actually a good human quality. It's necessary human quality. At the same time, it is the beginning of ego. Without self-reflection, we won't have ego. Self-reflection is important for spiritual practices in general, even for inquiry. The way I do it, we do need to have self-reflection.
One capacity that consciousness has, but consciousness also can know itself without self-reflection, can know itself by being, that's the English word, gnosis, comes from, you know, on oasis, the way the Greeks say it, is that I know myself by being myself, I'm not reflecting. It's like I'm in an expanse, a medium of consciousness,
And this medium aware of itself at all points of itself. And it is this medium is speaking to you. So it doesn't need to reflect on itself. It sees through itself. It's the whole medium is not just within my body is outside of my body too. So that's not self-reflection. That is known by being.
which is the true spiritual capacity that people need to develop to have realization. And that is actually what the Sufis are trying to refer to by talk about taste. Because taste is more intimate than seeing. Taste something, it's inside, or touch. You have to touch, meaning you're really immediate, you're more
So, immediacy is a very important part of all spiritual experiences. There's no immediacy of experience, which is beyond self-reflection.
It is not a spiritual experience yet. With TD Early Pay, you get your paycheck up to two business days early, which means you can grab last second movie tickets in 5D Premium Ultra with popcorn. Extra large popcorn.
TD Early Pay. Get your paycheck automatically deposited up to two business days early for free. That's how TD makes payday unexpectedly human. Then this question comes from Key Concrete 007. At 55, I've become reflective and decided to take DMT, not for recreational purposes, but to open my mind to fear and amazement.
I've been an atheist all my life. At one point during my ayahuasca experience, I raised my hand skyward and said, God forgive me. I'm no longer an atheist. My question, what are your thoughts on the controlled use of DMT or psychedelics in general? Good question. I know these days many people are involved in using some of the substances
to access spiritual realities. And in fact, there are, you know, some native teaching in different places where they use that. And I tried those when I was in college, LSD and things like that, and I had spiritual experiences and openings.
What I remember from my experience, I did it several times, you know, in the 60s, early 70s. But then after, when I started having spiritual experiences on my own without them, I did not go back to the using those substances. And I was wondering about the other day, why didn't I, it's not like somebody told me, don't do it. It just dropped out of my mind.
And now I'm not that interested, but I do hear about it from students, from other people that experiment with these. And some of them have good experience, especially for somebody who finds it difficult to access the spiritual dimension. I see it helping them. They do it once or twice.
open them up in a way that they weren't being able to be open. And that way they saw something about themselves in reality they couldn't see before. And that is really helpful for their development and evolution. So I think that way, I've seen it being useful that way.
I wouldn't recommend that somebody use it as their way of spiritual practice, unless they are part of some indigenous tribe and they have their own way of dealing with it. I find many of the people who we were talking about earlier, who with a megaphone shout their toe out to other people in such a manner that doesn't have people welcoming their toe, they tend to have in common that their insights were precipitated by their private use of psychedelics.
So do you see that psychedelics to inform one's philosophy or ontology, et cetera, as removed from a community is somehow a net negative in some manner or not as pure? Well, it's not that, you know, it's more like comparing my experiences from the sixties and seventies on psychedelics from my later experiences, which happens more spontaneously. There is a difference in quality.
It's not the same. The psychedelic gives it, changes things in some way. That is not how reality is exactly. When they experience, you know, one's raw consciousness. And it has the possibility of opening up, but it also opens up to other things that are not true. You know, because it also can magnify our imagination.
And that's why people have bad trips, you know, because it could magnify anything. So the way I think about it is that some traditions, like the Ayahuasca tradition in South America, for instance, they have developed a way of working with it, that they use it for, you know, as part of their
But I also seen some Americans who went there and did that and they came back and their spiritual access naturally was got more narrow.
Hmm, interesting. See that goes back to what I was referring to earlier about path dependence. So some people would say, no, this lesson works and it works ubiquitously. It also depends on where you are. One of the ways that I like to conceptualize this, I'm curious if you I'm curious what your thoughts are, is that I see some Westerners taking on Eastern approaches and vice versa.
Somewhat uncritically, and I wonder if that's always a net benefit, because to me it's akin to force installing Mac software on your PC. You're going to get errors if it's not compatible with how you grew up, with what your view is right now. Do you see it similarly? I think there is a point there, Kurt, in the sense that the Eastern approach, they have their own worldview.
which is different from our Western world worldview. For instance, both the Indian spirituality and Buddhist spirituality developed on being free from samsara, right? What they call samsara, which is the ordinary world. And basically, because they believe in reincarnation, is that the idea is to not reincarnate again.
You want to be enlightened so that you'll be free from this world and not come back again. And in the West, we don't subscribe to that kind of thing, you know, incarnation coming back or whatever. You know, for me, I don't know if that's true or not. So I don't look at spirituality that way. I look at spirituality that is to make life as complete, as deep as possible.
and that means something else for later. Some people adopt the Eastern view with all their philosophical or metaphysical perspective of reincarnation and leaving the world, which has in it a way of saying that this world is
is no good. It's just you're here. You see, I myself, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I don't know. I mean, I have some experiences of incarnation, whatever. I don't know if they're true or not. They're real or not. And so I don't subscribe to that. So it's true. If somebody who's wasn't who takes on that, like they're putting a hat on their brain that
is just a hat on them. It's not really naturally arisen inside within them. But however, if somebody takes the spiritual tradition and take the practices and learn to connect to the truth of who they are, and then that is independent of the worldview, because you're just what you are at this moment. What you are at this moment
Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming on to the program and answering these questions and spending some time with me. It's been fun, enjoyable talking together.
The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to patreon.com slash C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L. That is Kurt Jaimungal. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you.
▶ View Full JSON Data (Word-Level Timestamps)
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"text": " rather than purely the western analytical one. Admittingly, the latter is the approach that I'm most comfortable with, which is why I'm in an extremely lucky and blessed position, since this initial foray into the eastern area of spirituality is with A. H. Almas. Almas is an eminent and lauded spiritual advisor who writes about and teaches an approach to spiritual development informed by depth psychology and therapy called the diamond approach. In fact, almas is the Arabic word for diamond."
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"text": " Given that Almas holds a PhD in physics, this episode serves as a copasetic introduction both to the regular viewers of this channel as well as to myself to the ideas of what at least is demotically called the East. Click on the timestamp in the description if you'd like to skip this intro. My name is Kurt Jaimungal. I'm a Torontonian filmmaker."
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"text": " So Almas, why don't you give an overview to the audience of your diamond approach for those who are unfamiliar with it and perhaps if you like you can compare and contrast it to Advaita Vedanta, but you may have to give an example of what that is as well. Well, I teach a particular approach to actualizing the total human potential."
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"text": " And really what we find out if we explore the potential that most of it is not conscious is not the physical and emotional. That's just the surface. So a big part of it is the spiritual sphere and matter of spirits. So the teaching is mostly about how to open up or to access the spiritual dimension."
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"text": " of our reality for existence. And in my approach, I use Western methodology, like I use Western psychology, for instance, I integrate that as part of the methodology of how to open up. I use inquiry, which is somewhat similar to Socratic inquiry as a particular method. That for me is more important than sitting meditation, although we employ sitting meditation too, of different kinds."
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"text": " The idea is to find out, what the hell are we? What's going on? What am I? What is the world or universe? What is the nature of the universe? That's how I started actually, why I started in science. I want to know what is the truth of reality. So I went very far, as you know, in studying physics and math, until at some point I realized I wasn't getting it."
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"text": " For me, I wasn't getting where I wanted to go. I didn't know consciously where I wanted to go. But as I got deeper into physics and also conversing with scientists, I realized that the approach is good, wonderful and very useful. I'm interested in it. I love it. All of that. I was good at it."
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"text": " It was from here up, you know, didn't include the heart, didn't include the other capacities we have. So the approach uses, as I said, uses inquiry, but uses the scientific method in some kind of way, which means it has to be verified, not by experiment as done in physics,"
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"text": " but by experience, by one's own direct experience, not what I hear, not what I learn from teaching, what I can verify and repeatedly, and then can verify in other people, and other people too, at the beginning where my friends, my students, was the teaching was developing. So, and, but it is, what developed is a certain perspective,"
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"text": " about the spiritual dimension. That the spiritual dimension is not just one thing. It's not like you experience consciousness and you know what consciousness is and that's it. You see, Advaita Vedanta, for instance, is a teaching about realization of pure consciousness. To recognize that one's true self"
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"text": " is pure consciousness that has no limits, no size, no shape, and that it is also the nature of everything. And that is part of the teaching I give, but my teaching is a little bit more nuanced, I would say, because that has more detail and some people think of it as more complex."
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"text": " but because the spiritual dimension for me is not just one dimension like consciousness for me is one dimension emptiness another dimension which buddhism emphasizes love is another dimension you see and creative dynamism what makes things happen"
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"text": " You see, they don't differentiate those that much. I mean, they include them in consciousness, but sort of implicitly so. I differentiate them into different dimensions, and then those dimensions can also express themselves in human experience, individual experience, as particular spiritual qualities. Spiritual qualities like the quality of clarity, the quality of compassion."
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"text": " quality of sincerity, quality of will, steadfastness. And there are many of those qualities. I know at least 40 or 50 of those. I don't think I know all of them. They're similar to what's called the Platonic ideas. You see, in some sense, they are the Platonic ideas behind what we know, like when we say love. Many of you being experience love."
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"text": " But what is the Platonic idea of love? What is the true spiritual counterpart to what human being called love and turns out to be a very particular way of experiencing consciousness? So my approach is basically is how to learn about the spiritual qualities which make us be able to connect to the spiritual sphere, which in my work, the emphasis is in presence and ontological presence."
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"text": " the presence of consciousness, not just conscious, as function of consciousness and the presence, the beingness of it. And then connecting to the more of the non-dual, which is similar to Advaita Vedanta. And then the non-dual has more nuances. And then connecting the non-dual with the ordinary life. How is it"
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"text": " How do we live? If I'm infinite conscious, how do I live a human life? What lives and how do I live? And that, of course, a big part of spiritual realization of most teachings. And so I teach that too. I work with that. But then I leave the door open."
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"text": " For the spiritual universe to reveal other possibility because there are other possibilities of knowing reality, for instance, which really go into it. It takes us back similar to some of the physics, quantum theory, you know, how so perspective. Well, let me give this example. If you have"
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"text": " Buddha's master and Veda master sitting in the same room. The Buddha says nature reality is emptiness and that's what the experience, what the person experiences. Emptiness is the spacious emptiness is what I experience. It is the fundamental ground that Veda without the person said that no, the fundamental"
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"text": " Nature of reality is pure consciousness, it's conscious of itself, and it's characterized by being, while the Buddhists are characterized by non-being. Now, they're both right in my perspective, but each one of them says this is the ultimate. So how can they be both the ultimate? And in my exploration, I found out that they're both correct."
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"text": " However, if what is really there is the ultimate fundamental truth, how can people experience it so differently? And so through my own spiritual investigation, tradition and my experience, is that how we experience what is the truth depends on the experiencer."
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"text": " on the person. Different people can experience it differently. There are different ways reality manifests. So the experiencer is what makes reality appear in a certain way. That brings us to quantum theory. You see, the experiencer is needed for the quantum wave to collapse to manifest in a certain way. Before that, we don't know what it is."
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"text": " So the observer, that's what quantum theory said. Here, you know, is the experiencer, similar to that, but the experiencer is experiencing inward reality instead of experimenting, observing something external. So I look at the spiritual realization as I have what's called the quantum theory of spirituality."
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"text": " which is that the spiritual truth is indeterminate until we experience it. And how we experience it, it depends on our worldview, our view of reality, depends on our expectation, depends on our readiness and openness."
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"text": " So that for me explains many traditions, why there are so many traditions, you know, different kind of teachings. Can you give me an example of this inquiry process, this Socratic process? And then also, why do you say that in your approach, it holds more of a preeminent role than meditation? Okay, I mean, I understand meditation. That's how I started myself learning different kind of meditation."
},
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"text": " Buddhist and Indian and Sufi meditations. But the way my own experience opened up is by knowing my experience in the moment and being interested to understand it. What is it? What is its meaning? What's it about? Where does it come from? So that becomes an inquiry into"
},
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"text": " present experience. Meditation is not focused on experience. Meditation is focused on concentration. Like in Tibetan, you visualize something and in Veda Vedanta, you say it's not this, not this. And I say, no, it's not that. I want to know this. Why is it here? What makes it be here? What's it about? So I can start with any experience, like the experience of being irritated or the experience of being"
},
{
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"start_time": 1052.227,
"text": " hopeful of something or experience of inner joyfulness or experience of sadness. And by getting into it, by feeling it fully, as fully as possible, which requires the development of many capacities, actually, because experiencing something fully is not as simple as most people can't experience things fully. Most people experience things somewhat mentally, somewhat emotionally."
},
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"text": " fully mean your your body is sensitized completely open your heart is open your mind capacities are open and developed and all that so but you know there are degrees of capacity degrees of how capable we are in engaging this inquiry depending how open we are how developed we are but it could begin in the simplest way by saying well today i'm feeling somewhat um"
},
{
"end_time": 1141.015,
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"start_time": 1112.125,
"text": " discouraged. Finding out why am I discouraged? I'm discouraged that this pandemic is never over. It seems it goes from one thing to another. Okay, I'm feeling discouraged because of the pandemic. Is that really all? Just the pandemic? No, not just that. That is part of it. But then I realized I'm discouraged because I feel I still"
},
{
"end_time": 1161.049,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1142.432,
"text": " don't feel completely fulfilled. You know, I mean, it's true, there's a pandemic, I can see some of my friends and family, but there is something inside me that is not complete. And then I inquire into what is this feeling of not being complete, not being fulfilled."
},
{
"end_time": 1187.295,
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"start_time": 1161.817,
"text": " Now this talking back and forth to oneself, this reminds me of the relationship a patient may have to a therapist, except one is having it with oneself. And I know that you've said that you take plenty of inspiration from the depth psychologist. So is this what you're referring to? Well, you see, it's similar, hasn't it? Similarity to psychology. But you see, a psychologist wants to heal the patient."
},
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"start_time": 1188.234,
"text": " Here, I'm not trying to heal something. I'm trying to understand it. I'm interested in knowing what it is. I'm not interested in getting rid of the problem. And are you trying to understand it without an emotion attached to it? Or are you trying to understand it so that you are happier or so that like, what is the emotion with the understanding? Are you supposed to look at it as if it's words on a paper? So that is more clinically, or are you supposed to identify with it? Neither of those."
},
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"end_time": 1245.299,
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"start_time": 1218.285,
"text": " is complete engagement in it. You see, that's the thing about why it brings my perspective of science, is that in the science, you have to be detached from the experiment. You can't be, you know, part of it. The observer has to be, the more detached, the more engaged, the more the experiment is pure, you see."
},
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"end_time": 1275.964,
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"text": " In the inquiry in oneself, it includes the subject, the observer. So I'm inquiring in both the experiencer and the experienced. You see, they're both there in the field of experience because and so to really because inquiring into oneself and inquiring into the subject basically. And so as part of it is psychological."
},
{
"end_time": 1306.22,
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"start_time": 1276.51,
"text": " Part of it comes from the Socratic method. If you remember, Socrates will bring his students and ask them, what is courage? And he says, I don't know. Let's find out what is courage. Why are they exploring courage? Not because they want to be courageous. They want to first find out what it is. Do I know it or don't I know it? If I know it, what's it like? So that's the Socratic part."
},
{
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"start_time": 1306.869,
"text": " So it is not aim oriented. Because the impetus in this teaching is not, or let's say the drive for enlightenment, is not a matter of being free from suffering or from problem, but it is love for the truth. Love to know the truth as completely, as fully as possible."
},
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"text": " Earlier, when you were referencing that the Buddhist may emphasize emptiness and then someone else may emphasize pure consciousness and someone else may emphasize love and so on and so on. Are these all unified in some manner? They're unified in this and they're all coming from the same place, but not unified. You see, some Advaita Vedantara, they think they're unified because they're all consciousness. They're all consciousness and they're all, you know,"
},
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"end_time": 1393.951,
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"text": " You see, my understanding of it is that the actual truth is indeterminate, just like quantum theory, until you experience it. It's not set. People want the certainty or the security"
},
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"end_time": 1424.241,
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"text": " of feeling the truth of what I am is here and I just need to discover it. That is how many spiritual teachings say it is here. You just need to open up, waken up to it. And what I discovered through my exploration is that the truth is here, but not manifest. It's not just matter of discovering it. I need to be ready and interested and open and then it will appear."
},
{
"end_time": 1438.575,
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"start_time": 1424.821,
"text": " Why would it come from? It doesn't come from anywhere. It just comes. It just appears."
},
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"text": " Jokes aside Verizon has the most ways to save on phones and plans where everyone in the family can choose their own plan and save. So bring in your bill to your local Miami Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal."
},
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"end_time": 1479.462,
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"text": " So what is that? What do you say? Where does it come from? I say it's unknown and unknowable. Now, is that unknown? Sorry, is that unknown unknowable? Yeah."
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"text": " okay now is that unknown unknowable what most religions are trying to conceptualize when they use the word god or is that different or is that does that predate god yes and the monotheistic tradition think god is unknown unknowable that's how christianity joseph and islam take that god you cannot know god as god that's what they say the mystic like the sophists they say you could unify with god you can be one"
},
{
"end_time": 1538.968,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1509.309,
"text": " with God and you know the God's being. But that doesn't mean you know everything about God. So God and as God from perspective, God is not known. I don't think of the truth myself as a God. I mean, maybe some people think of it as a God, because God gets us into the Creator, this and that. And for me, things are more interesting and subtle than that. That I am something"
},
{
"end_time": 1569.394,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1539.667,
"text": " Unknown, unknowable. I know I am. I know what I am. But I don't know, I cannot say what it is. But I can say a lot about myself that expresses that, like awareness and consciousness and love and spaciousness and emptiness and all that. What is the ego ideal? Yeah, so that's from the book, the Newgrounds book, the ego ideal."
},
{
"end_time": 1598.302,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1570.162,
"text": " But that's normal psychology, Freudian psychology, that each ego has an ego ideal, has an ideal, which means it is constructed around some kind of ideas of how you want to be, what kind of person you want to be, what kind of life you want to have. So your ideal is to be sort of a successful person or your ideal to be really more of a helper,"
},
{
"end_time": 1628.302,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1598.933,
"text": " an ideal of being authentic or original. These are ideas that each ego has that goes back all the way back to Freud, you see. But I use it as when I work with the Enneagram knowledge and I see the different types as each is a manifestation of a particular ego ideal."
},
{
"end_time": 1658.251,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1629.087,
"text": " What's the difference between awakening and realizing or realization? You see, many teachers won't make a distinction. For me, I do make a distinction, and some do, but I'm not the only one who does, is that awakening, first of all, there are different kinds of awakening. You know, if you read Gurdjieff, for instance, his first awakening, he says, the terror of the moment to realize I am asleep."
},
{
"end_time": 1688.558,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1659.65,
"text": " I don't know who I am. Most people aren't awakened that way yet to know. I don't know who the hell I am. What am I? What's the meaning of my life? Why am I here? That's the first awakening for a good Jeff. The second awakening is to know, uh, to what you are to erupt into consciousness that you know, I'm pure spirit that is aware and conscious of itself."
},
{
"end_time": 1719.241,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1689.599,
"text": " Now for me realization means that has become your true self. It has become a constant, constantly integrated. It's not just you know it, you woke up to it, you know, you experienced it. What about wisdom? So you're curious about many things."
},
{
"end_time": 1749.974,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1720.435,
"text": " I think of it more in a Western way, wisdom. You know, if you're a Buddhist, wisdom means knowing what emptiness is. For them, they call that wisdom. If you really know from experience, what is the emptiness of self? What is the emptiness of everything? They call that wisdom. For me, wisdom is more practical, which is"
},
{
"end_time": 1780.23,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1750.93,
"text": " As I know myself, as I know my true self, or my spiritual nature, or my, I call it true nature, usually. And, and I, not know it, have integrated it. And then how I live it, how I live my life, is living from that place. And living from that place, being able to live in that place, in response,"
},
{
"end_time": 1803.456,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1780.606,
"text": " to the world situation I find myself in. So that my response to the situation I'm in comes informed and expressing what I have learned, what I am now. And that becomes a spontaneous and natural and very appropriate"
},
{
"end_time": 1829.531,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1804.104,
"text": " way of dealing with the situation. That appropriate and full way of dealing with the situation is wisdom. Knowing how to deal with life situation from the spiritual perspective, including spiritual perspective without denying the material perspective for me is to be wise. That's, as you know, that's how western philosophy, western religions,"
},
{
"end_time": 1855.759,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1829.753,
"text": " Let me see if I'm understanding this. So the second awakening, because you refer to number one and number two, the second awakening is more about the perception of a particular insight than realization is the persistence of that insight."
},
{
"end_time": 1885.469,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1856.374,
"text": " And then wisdom is the conformance between one's action and that insight, or am I off? That's a good way of saying it. Good. Yes. But the only addition I will say is not just insight is being that discovery. Like I discovered that my nature is a pure presence, which is a sense of being, sense of existence that does not exist in my body."
},
{
"end_time": 1912.159,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1885.811,
"text": " It's pure existence. I am. You see, I am, but the I am is a palpable sense of consciousness, conscious of its own being."
},
{
"end_time": 1938.336,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1912.517,
"text": " It's because consciousness is not a function. Consciousness is a reality. Consciousness is something that is. And when consciousness knows itself, awakes to itself as, oh, that is what I am. I am this kind of luminous, aware presence, aware of myself and can be aware of other things. That will be the realization."
},
{
"end_time": 1968.183,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1941.22,
"text": " See, the way that I'm wondering about this is akin to a tree with branches that all come from the same root. And then when one says that consciousness realizes itself, well, let's imagine that you're an example of that. I don't imagine that I'm an example of that. So just because you have found that out, even though at least in this model, we're all part of the same root, it seems localized to you. It doesn't seem to spread outside of your teachings and helping people. So the way that I'm visualizing it,"
},
{
"end_time": 1989.377,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1968.473,
"text": " is like a branch and then there's a loop on that branch and that is what is occurring when you say consciousness realizes itself rather than when consciousness realizes itself another way of thinking of that is all these branches just intertwined at once but i and probably some of the people who are listening just because you or some of the other people have had insights or have had these realizations of consciousness realizing itself"
},
{
"end_time": 2015.93,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1989.684,
"text": " It doesn't mean they have. For example, I don't think I've had it. So how does that comport? Is it that it is a separate branch? Because I'm trying to understand this with the other teaching that we're all the same in some manner. And so how is it that if you have an insight and I don't have that insight automatically? Most people don't have that insight and don't have the capacity for that insight. It's not easy to have that kind of insight."
},
{
"end_time": 2042.927,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 2016.561,
"text": " It has to do with some kind of maturation of one's consciousness, one's being, one's subjectivity, and development of one's heart, so that the heart has developed to the point where there is a natural desire to know what I am. That becomes a force that opens up things."
},
{
"end_time": 2071.323,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2043.387,
"text": " and most people are are more busy with survival and their jobs and families and all they don't have the opportunity to or enhance even the interest to devote to this kind of exploration so it is a very specialized thing in some sense that's why all around the world people who realize they're not that many the few you know and"
},
{
"end_time": 2099.377,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2073.114,
"text": " Because, but it is a potential for all of us, because we all have the spiritual nature as our nature. We have the same, all of us have the same nature. And that's one thing, when inside we learn, when I discovered, I remember, you know, years ago, when I first discovered the experience presence, Oh, I am, I am, I know what I am. And I then felt,"
},
{
"end_time": 2130.998,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2101.681,
"text": " connected to all human beings. I felt I am as this conscious presence, I'm connected with all human beings, because all human beings have that same presence, the same inherent truth to them. So that showed me its potential for everybody. Everybody can experience it at some point, you know, if they dedicate themselves to it or"
},
{
"end_time": 2159.053,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2131.237,
"text": " They happen to be somewhat open or mature who have had the right influence in their life. There are many factors. You're right that just because I say this is my experience, that doesn't mean I'm assuming others experience things that way. So everyone does have the capacity or not everyone does? Everybody has the potential."
},
{
"end_time": 2183.797,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2160.145,
"text": " But not the capacity? Not necessarily the capacity, no. What's the difference between those two? Potential is what you are. Capacity is capacity of perception, capacity of subtle perception, different kind of perception, different kind of consciousness than we know."
},
{
"end_time": 2212.159,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2184.735,
"text": " Most human beings are aware of consciousness, and I see and hear and have emotions and sensation, all of that. But all of those, you know, perceptual organs have their spiritual counterpart, what I call subtle counterpart. There is inner seeing, there's inner sensing, there's inner feeling, that is not those."
},
{
"end_time": 2232.841,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2212.722,
"text": " Those are the outer expression of it. So one can, some of us have some of those subtle things, but we're not aware of them, so we don't employ them. But some, it requires development, and that is what I see the role meditation has. Meditation helps in developing some of those capacities."
},
{
"end_time": 2246.084,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2233.353,
"text": " Should everyone have these realizations? Like if you had a magic wand and you can wave it, do you think it's for everyone or do you think it's for certain people at a certain time or perhaps not for a particular person at any time?"
},
{
"end_time": 2270.64,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2246.766,
"text": " The reason behind this question is that I'm sure you've seen this in some spiritual teachers. They think that everyone should be enlightened, awakened, and they may even use words like you've used with development, though I don't think you meant it in this way, but as if the enlightened is higher than someone else, which then implies a looking down at people who aren't enlightened. Hear that sound?"
},
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"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
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"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
},
{
"end_time": 2349.548,
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"start_time": 2323.831,
"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklyn. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash theories, all lowercase."
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"text": " Razor blades are like diving boards. The longer the board, the more the wobble, the more the wobble, the more nicks, cuts, scrapes. A bad shave isn't a blade problem, it's an extension problem. Henson is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover."
},
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"end_time": 2406.937,
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"text": " Now they're bringing that precision engineering to your shaving experience. By using aerospace-grade CNC machines, Henson makes razors that extend less than the thickness of a human hair. The razor also has built-in channels that evacuates hair and cream, which make clogging virtually impossible. Henson Shaving wants to produce the best razors, not the best razor business, so that means no plastics, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades, and no planned obsolescence."
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"end_time": 2423.285,
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"text": " It's also extremely affordable. The Henson razor works with the standard dual edge blades that give you that old school shave with the benefits of this new school tech. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that'll last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash everything."
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{
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"text": " If you use that code, you'll get two years worth of blades for free. Just make sure to add them to the cart. Plus 100 free blades when you head to H E N S O N S H A V I N G dot com slash everything and use the code everything. Well, I mean, spiritual teaching. Oh, they have a teaching to help people to access a realm of reality that they're usually not"
},
{
"end_time": 2483.677,
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"start_time": 2453.729,
"text": " accessing. So obviously they think there's a value in that, in having that openness, that capacity for subtle access. But I wouldn't say that any teaching will say everybody should. It's not matter of should, it's more like it's possible for everybody. Everybody has the possibility. When it will happen for somebody,"
},
{
"end_time": 2511.715,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2484.258,
"text": " It's something magical, something sort of like a destiny of sorts. So I think it would be great if more people are like that, you know, because that will sort of move the human race in terms of becoming more human, because really, that's another point that's important, which is the more we are in touch with our spiritual dimension, the more human we are."
},
{
"end_time": 2541.954,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2512.978,
"text": " You see, people don't know that. Most people know, think, I am human, I am human because I have a body, human body, I have a human emotion, I can think or I'm rational. That makes me human. For the Sufis, for instance, they say, no, no, that's not human yet. To be truly human, you have to have true heart, which means a heart that can converse with the divine. That makes me human. Human, you see,"
},
{
"end_time": 2566.561,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2542.568,
"text": " for the Sufis is the bridge between the divine and the physical world. And if you're not that bridge yet, you're sort of on the way to being human, but you're not totally human yet. So many people and it is not looked at as"
},
{
"end_time": 2594.616,
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"start_time": 2568.097,
"text": " gradation or or one is better than other is more like the natural process like evolution you know evolution happens in different ways and different areas and different different ways so we all human being can evolve you know we evolved physically and mentally we can evolve spiritually too and it is"
},
{
"end_time": 2623.234,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2595.094,
"text": " It's hard to tell where it's going to happen. Like when my students, you know, come to me, I don't know which one of them is really going to go deeper than that. Sometimes surprised for some people after a while, they seem to be, they can't go deeper and suddenly something happens and they're, you know, they surprised me how wonderful they seem to know themselves, you know, how they start to experience themselves in a way that's more liberating."
},
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"end_time": 2650.094,
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"start_time": 2623.916,
"text": " So I wish it for a human being because it has less suffering in it. It has more the enjoyment of discovering reality. I mean, you know, you're a scientist. Scientists explore through science. You're not exploring so I could develop something to sell or give them a grant and I have"
},
{
"end_time": 2680.35,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2650.794,
"text": " The pure science is like you want to discover because you enjoy the discovery, the exploration. So when one is awakened, the discovery becomes the way we live our life. We're having discoveries all the time and discover about what I am, what is life, what is how a thing can be done in a way that makes it more real, more total. And it's wonderful way to live."
},
{
"end_time": 2710.469,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2681.51,
"text": " You see, it brings in more dimensions to existence, to life. So definitely I wish it for people, but I'm not saying everybody should. I mean, it's up to the people themselves, what happens inside them. I don't for, because of that in my school, I don't go out, try to get students. I don't, I don't try to convert anybody. It's ridiculous for me to do that. It's more like I just hear and I make"
},
{
"end_time": 2733.814,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2710.794,
"text": " something a point in showing that I'm here and that's what I do and who's interested will will come you see and they can learn what I can teach so and so although I wish it for human being to be more themselves"
},
{
"end_time": 2761.288,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2734.462,
"text": " But do I say that everybody should? Well, some people are just, that's not what's happening in their life. They're busy getting married or having kids or something like that. Who am I to say? No, no, you should come in, focus and meditate first, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 2770.742,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2763.217,
"text": " This is more valuable this approach of"
},
{
"end_time": 2793.729,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2771.135,
"text": " Being enlightened or realizing or awakening and so on and of course in being wise is more valuable but on the other hand we should not or we don't want to talk about should and I from my cursory examination of the more eastern practices it's as if they have a should-ophobia they're afraid of saying should they don't want to talk about should but they can talk about value and I don't to me those two are tied so can you help disentangle them?"
},
{
"end_time": 2821.698,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2795.725,
"text": " I think most paths, most spiritual paths, they do have a should. They don't say it as a should, but they say they advise people, yes, that would be a good thing for you to do. But usually, a really wise teacher will see when they meet people, who is it? It is their time to learn that, who isn't?"
},
{
"end_time": 2852.039,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2823.285,
"text": " because it has to do with timing, it has to do with circumstances. So although it is valuable, but the first thing has to come first. People have to establish a life. That's the Hindu model, as you know. First you become a householder, you're married, and then you go and find the teacher. That's how they've done it, you see. And not all of them, of course, go and find the teachers."
},
{
"end_time": 2883.319,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2854.275,
"text": " Yes, this I've heard you mention, and I happen to like it. You mentioned in one of your talks that most spiritual teachers, for lack of a better word, emphasize awakening. And then you said, well, what are you talking about? Most people should feel compassion and love and security. And to me, this is an important point. It's one that I mentioned on, not me, but it's one that came up on a previous episode with Carl Friston. And you seem to be one of the teachers that I see emphasize this, or at least bring it up, though you don't call it this, but this notion of path dependence in physics,"
},
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"text": " Hear that sound? That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the Internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
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"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
},
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"index": 109,
"start_time": 2937.858,
"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklyn. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com"
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"text": " Which is that it's not about this destination. The destination also depends on where you are and then how you're going to get to it and the condition of the world. So to make a blanket statement and say one should be enlightened and so on. I see this. Perhaps you do too. Maybe you don't, but I see this in different comment sections of different videos and online."
},
{
"end_time": 3016.288,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2990.247,
"text": " With people saying you're already lost if you are in the scientific mindset You've already lost or you will never realize X until you follow some path that I'm telling you and When I read that it's not as if it's directed to me I'm seeing it on other sites, but when I read that I see that as a spiritual form of it's like spiritual superciliousness or arrogance where they and it also puts undue pressure on people and"
},
{
"end_time": 3040.418,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 3017.329,
"text": " Perhaps one should accept the position other people are in. I think I agree with you, but I think some of those stories are taken out of context, meaning saying you're lost and you're not getting it."
},
{
"end_time": 3068.268,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3040.981,
"text": " It is a methodology. It is when a teacher talking to a student, to have an impact on them in a certain way, sometimes you have to say that, but not for everybody. You see, it's not, I wouldn't say that about somebody who's not my students, none of my business. I don't know. But if one of my students is sort of says, come to me and says, I want to learn this,"
},
{
"end_time": 3087.585,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3068.643,
"text": " But then they don't do it, they do something else, or they go off on some kind of tangent. I'll tell them, you see, you know, you're lost, you don't know what you're doing. You're wasting good life, you see, and that will make an impact that will make them then recommit to what they said they wanted."
},
{
"end_time": 3115.299,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3088.968,
"text": " I see. And the way that you're describing it is a much more compassionate, loving, amiable approach than some of what I see. And you're not this. I'm just saying that this is some of what I see with people adamantly claiming it, exclamation points, as if they're fearfully commenting about how one should never feel fear. And there's a bit of derision in it, too. There's a bit of, yeah, oh, look at you, you little one. You have no idea. And I'm the one that understands this. And if you only could see it from my point of view,"
},
{
"end_time": 3143.609,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3115.896,
"text": " There's a bit of condescension in that. I don't think the Buddha would have talked like that. I agree with you, there are people who talk like that. To be spiritually realized, you're naturally compassionate and loving, and compassion includes attunement, appropriateness. Can you expound on that attunement? Attunement means"
},
{
"end_time": 3169.599,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3144.787,
"text": " I relate to a human being depending on who and where they are, what they are, what they're into, what their interests, what their orientation. I'm not, you know, I'm attuned to it and I speak to that. I don't just lay on my value system on them. And that is, if somebody doesn't express themselves that way, I will question their realization."
},
{
"end_time": 3188.336,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3171.323,
"text": " Great. This is something that I've wondered too, because it's difficult for me as someone who's being introduced to this in many ways to discern who is enlightened from who is not and what that word means. And one of the rules of thumb or the litmus tests that I use, I encourage people to send me their theories of everything. That's the name of the channel."
},
{
"end_time": 3218.012,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3188.336,
"text": " And one of the reasons is I don't know what is true, so let me see even what is ordinarily considered to be fringe or woo, quote unquote woo. Perhaps it's not, because today's science was 100 years ago's woo and so on. Though I see sometimes people, they're not as humble and tentative as I believe that they should be when they're presenting their toe, for example, their spiritual theory of everything. You see, yeah, the way I understand spiritualization and spiritualization, if somebody has realized their"
},
{
"end_time": 3241.34,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3218.251,
"text": " expression in the world should come through what's called the virtues, you know, the any ground, which is like humility, serenity, courage, you know, love, things like that. If somebody doesn't express themselves that way, what are they expressing, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 3259.94,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3241.834,
"text": " So then is that okay when I am trying to make a quick assessment because there are probably 1000 theories of everything and it's difficult when each person is putting up their hand saying I have the toe, you have no idea, I have the toe, you don't understand, I can't even be wrong is one of the ways that I could perform a cursory yes or no."
},
{
"end_time": 3285.469,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3259.94,
"text": " It's a different stage. We haven't gotten to all the stages yet. There is realization. After realization, there is what I call actualization."
},
{
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"index": 123,
"start_time": 3286.8,
"text": " Actualization is what ends up being in wisdom. Actualization means you live what you realized. You don't just experience it. That is another stage of development. It doesn't automatically happen through awakening and realization. Earlier when we were talking about wisdom, I would have equated wisdom and that definition of actualization. So are those two different in your mind? Yeah, I agree with you. They are similar thing. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 3330.145,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3315.759,
"text": " So that's interesting, because to me, I've seen wise people who wouldn't claim to have any of these insights. So that means that one can be wise without being realized, and one can be realized without being wise. And at least for me as this creature who's still perhaps asleep."
},
{
"end_time": 3358.114,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3330.725,
"text": " I tend to prefer the wise. I tend to prefer the wise. Just because the wise, they're more loving. I heed their message. You seem extremely wise and I don't know, am I wrong to prefer that or should I have no preference with regard to this? It's just, it's so difficult for me to tell which messages are correct. The Dalai Lama to me exudes compassion and serenity. Yes. And he's humble too. Right. He's saying, I'm still practicing. I'm still learning. Yes. He's not commenting with,"
},
{
"end_time": 3386.647,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3358.49,
"text": " Yeah. With a moderate use of capitalization. You know, I'm done. He doesn't do that, you know. That's the real wisdom. That's why I like Roger Penrose. You like? You know, I like it because his relationship to his theories is like that. Like he talked about his theory of consciousness, as you know. He has his theory of consciousness. He has developed microtubules and all that."
},
{
"end_time": 3414.77,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3386.954,
"text": " But then he says, well, will you say that is really the truth? He'll say, well, no, I think we are very far away from knowing what consciousness is. So he sees it as his contribution toward going that way. He doesn't see that. While many other people who have fear of consciousness, they think that's it. I remember meeting one time with several scientists"
},
{
"end_time": 3440.572,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3415.52,
"text": " and neuroscientists who each one has their theory of consciousness, one of the major theories of consciousness and had, you know, we had some kind of a conference, whatever, but at some point we met privately and we were trying to say, how are we going to communicate those theories of consciousness and make them more acceptable to hear that sound?"
},
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"start_time": 3441.459,
"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
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"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
},
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"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklyn. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com"
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{
"end_time": 3544.701,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3517.039,
"text": " I remember discussing it with them and one of my ideas, each one has their theory and very different, you know, and they're all good."
},
{
"end_time": 3569.65,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3545.282,
"text": " And I said, well, you know, to really the scientific community, because there's a consensus kind of science that where we have and you, you, you can't just give a big theory with all kind of assumption and all kind of unknown thing and expect the scientific community to adopt it easily. I said, why not just give a little thing at a time, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 3588.933,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3570.094,
"text": " Everybody wanted their theory to be it."
},
{
"end_time": 3609.753,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3589.565,
"text": " So part of it is hubris, part of it I think is sort of arrogance, but part of it is human nature, partly is like, I want to be right. Each one of them is convinced that they're right. That's why I say I like Roger Penrose. He's not convinced he's right. He knows he's an approximation."
},
{
"end_time": 3622.466,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3612.875,
"text": " Many of the others don't believe that but they think they got it."
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"text": " football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be ranked. Right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5. The app is simple to use. Pick two or more players. Pick more or less on their stat projections. Anything from touchdowns to threes and if you're right, you can win big. Mix and match players from"
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"end_time": 3681.374,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3655.196,
"text": " I want to tell you about an experience I had."
},
{
"end_time": 3711.408,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3682.125,
"text": " So some people say, and maybe I won't include this in the in the final, so I'll try and be quick. But some people say, don't be so be open minded, but also open minded that your head falls out. I don't like that phrase, because to me, I like being because to me, the phrase so open minded that your head falls out means that they've already placed a limit. And if I'm investigating this whole field, and I don't know what's true, I can't already say no to this, I have to investigate it and give it its due. So I tend to take"
},
{
"end_time": 3741.783,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3711.852,
"text": " I think I tend to take on these theories of everything a bit too seriously. And I would have never said that before. I would have said, let's say here's an example. When I was interviewing someone named Thomas Campbell, who has my big toe, he in his book, which firstly, it's a, it's like three Bibles, his one book. So I was like, okay, let me read all of that. Let me give it its due. It's called toe. It's called my big toe. And then second, he said, you need to meditate for at least three months in order to fully get this. So I'm like, okay, before I interview him, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to try this."
},
{
"end_time": 3766.476,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3742.312,
"text": " And I do this with almost each guest. However, about three or so weeks ago, I had an experience that was probably the most terrifying experience of my entire life. And I've had some terrifying experiences before. And it wasn't on psychedelic, though it could be induced by something like that, which we can talk about afterward."
},
{
"end_time": 3791.852,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3766.783,
"text": " It was an experience I was in bed with my wife and my and I thought I just had this really could I be all that is like solipsism and that and I but and I've always entertained solipsism or I would have said I entertained it but I analytically entertained it and that was the first time I experientially entertained it and it was the most terrifying thought I'm still recovering from it like even talking with you I'm some of what you say"
},
{
"end_time": 3821.988,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3792.295,
"text": " triggers me some of what anyone in the spiritual teachings say trigger me right now because I'm hypersensitive from that moment. It's almost like PTSD. It's so it's too recent. And it was so terrifying that it was so absolutely terrifying to call it a panic attack would be like I would have prayed for five panic attacks rather than that. I see. That's how you call it terrifying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I remember. So this is the part that I may take out. So whoever ever is editing this, yeah,"
},
{
"end_time": 3833.558,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3822.415,
"text": " I'm extremely open to God and I would have never said that before because I'm atheistic until about two years ago or three years ago."
},
{
"end_time": 3856.442,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3834.872,
"text": " However, that was the only time in like I was on I felt like I was on the brink of insanity that there if I had realized that I would be in the mental hospital thinking that I have the truth but everyone else putting me it was so to look at my wife and think is this a creation in my head how ungrateful am I how selfish am I that I would think that how embarrassed am I but at the same time that could be real oh my gosh looking at her and thinking that she's looking at me"
},
{
"end_time": 3881.783,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3856.749,
"text": " From her point of view, behind her eyes, like, I love my husband, but then for her to even think, is my husband, my husband doesn't think I'm real? What the heck? Anyway, then, then a commanding voice came to me, a commanding commanding commanding voice. And I don't want to talk about this. This is why I may want to take this out. But and it was more certain than any single thing in my entire life. And it was this commanding voice that said, Kurt,"
},
{
"end_time": 3909.974,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3882.056,
"text": " I don't even remember what it said, but part of it was, Kurt, you've developed your thought so much. You don't think of yourself as someone who's analytical. You're extremely analytical. Look at what this has led you to. Feel more. Ground yourself in this world and that the belief in this world, the belief in the reality of this world is the same as belief in me. It's the same. You don't see how it's the same right now, and that's fine, but it is the same. So by you even feeling this solipsistic"
},
{
"end_time": 3936.869,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3910.623,
"text": " experience. It's it's almost like a slap in the face to me. That was the only thing that kept me grounded was this deep, profound belief. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about that experience. I know whoever's editing this is gonna have such a huge time, hard time. But but can you let me know what you think and how you would how you approach this? You know, I remember having similar experience to yours. One time I remember some years ago, I got up"
},
{
"end_time": 3966.732,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3937.5,
"text": " Woke up from sleep, woke up, my wife was leaving and told her, you know, you're a figment of my imagination. Because that's how I was experiencing. But that is one way of experiencing thing, which we could call a syllabistic. But, you know, in the morning, I was still experiencing that I am everything. How I at the same time, my wife is real."
},
{
"end_time": 3996.203,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3967.807,
"text": " She has her own experience. So, and you talk about God, and I mean, I use the language of God sometimes, divine or God, and sometimes called spiritual nature, true nature, which is all the ground of spirituality. But it is, I think you were into something, and you call it syllipsism. But I mean, that's what"
},
{
"end_time": 4020.879,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3996.92,
"text": " all Advaita Vedanta is about. That person realizes, I am consciousness and the consciousness is everything, so I am everything. Everything is appearing in my mind, but it's not the individual mind, it's the big mind, the boundless, the infinite consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 4045.538,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4021.766,
"text": " Everything is in that. And so if you take it as our individual mind, that can bring in the question of solipsism. How can one like myself, who was extremely terrified of that individualistic mind, not come to that conclusion? Like, what can I do to feel ease? Because even you talking about this right now, I feel almost like I'm about to have a panic attack in some way."
},
{
"end_time": 4074.206,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4045.93,
"text": " or a hang of anxiety. But at the same time, I don't want you to see this so tricky because I feel like by saying that you're feeling you felt the terror. I mean, I felt terror many times and the terror is the transition from one dimension to another. There is always a terror because you don't know what's going to happen. Your whole world is going to disappear. You don't know what's going to take its place. And for me, for the spiritual path, for special practice and inquiry, especially,"
},
{
"end_time": 4085.094,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4074.701,
"text": " Is to welcome the terror and understand that let it be as one natural response to what's happening. Integrated what helped me."
},
{
"end_time": 4109.65,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4086.015,
"text": " Which was the only thing that helped me was I was looking up. I think that what I had was, or at least what I started to suffer from afterward was, obsessive thoughts. That this was what I would just, I would look around and I'd be derealized. I wouldn't feel like this was all real at all. And then I looked up, what does cognitive behavioral therapy have to say about this? And there was something called acceptance therapy, where you accept the thought rather than trying to avoid and run from it."
},
{
"end_time": 4136.032,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4109.957,
"text": " However, acceptance is not the same as allowing it to be true. It's different. And I don't know how to articulate the difference, but it's it's almost like saying, okay, I accept that I may think this and I just accept but I don't entertain. No, I think you are trying to put into words something that is not mental. When you say acceptance,"
},
{
"end_time": 4160.794,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4136.408,
"text": " I use the word acceptance, but really acceptance as a quality of pure consciousness is not saying yes to something. It is allowing it to be, without rejection and without acceptance. So it's a non-rejection. So acceptance"
},
{
"end_time": 4189.428,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4160.981,
"text": " Acceptance doesn't mean I take it on as true and that's it. No, acceptance doesn't mean let it be as it is. Let's find out what it is and let it show itself. I don't accept and I don't reject what I experience. Yeah, go ahead. Can you tell me about that story about the man who had a stash of water and"
},
{
"end_time": 4217.381,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4189.735,
"text": " He felt like the main water source was vitiated and so he didn't want to drink from it. Can you tell that story and the moral behind it? Yeah, yeah. When the waters were changed, that's what it's called. That's a Sufi story, I think. I don't know its origin. But that what I remember is that"
},
{
"end_time": 4246.152,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4218.848,
"text": " man who was living in some kind of a village or something and and and i don't remember the part where he realized that the water is going to be changed when they get changed people drink from it they'll forget who they are"
},
{
"end_time": 4267.039,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4246.988,
"text": " So he collected some of the water for himself, you see, before it changed. And then people were thinking, well, they all became sort of forgot who they are. He was still awake. But then you said that the point was that it was too much for him."
},
{
"end_time": 4290.043,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4268.763,
"text": " Well, and then there is the quality. Yeah. How is he going to live by himself? He knows reality and everybody else or think reality is something else. So he chose to drink from the main source afterward? Yeah, that's the story. He couldn't handle it and he went and drank the new water."
},
{
"end_time": 4316.698,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4292.142,
"text": " See I think this is part of what is also can be dangerous about some spiritual teachings is that there's the social pressure that seems unacknowledged because we use terms like they couldn't handle it and then we culturally have a norm that no you should be able to handle so-and-so so if you can't handle it there's something wrong with you I constantly say this that I'm not a truth seeker I'm a truth seeker of how much I can handle and I'm a coward"
},
{
"end_time": 4343.012,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4317.483,
"text": " because I'm afraid of what could be true. But at the same time, I used to feel extremely bad about that. I used to until about three weeks ago when I say, you know what, Kurt? That's how you are. That's it. That's fine. Just accept it. I don't think that I'm one of those people that's meant to have that realization. Well, I don't know about that. You see, I myself see that many people will be afraid to see certain truth."
},
{
"end_time": 4369.514,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4344.104,
"text": " Most people will be afraid of seeing, it will be terrifying for them. But I don't think that doesn't make me think I don't want to talk to them. I don't relate with them as equals. I have friends. I mean, many of my friends are, you know, people don't know me, don't understand, don't know who I am. They don't see me as me the way I know myself. It's fine with me."
},
{
"end_time": 4397.073,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4373.814,
"text": " And I don't have a judgment of them. Everybody has sort of, let's say, a line of evolution for them. That is sort of part of their destiny, part of their, you know, what's happening in their soul. And people are different that way."
},
{
"end_time": 4427.056,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4398.166,
"text": " So, I mean, you come back to this, whether there is a judgment, whether there is a hierarchy and, you know, right. So stuff like that. And it's true. I mean, spiritual teaching, sometimes they do have hierarchy of different stages, for instance, in the path. But that that is in the path itself. You are in the path on the spiritual school. There are stages and some teaching have stages, something you don't. But that"
},
{
"end_time": 4451.886,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4427.398,
"text": " I think that I was far too egotistical before in my adoption of theories of everything by thinking that I could find the truth and I can have these realizations if there are in fact realizations like I would investigate it. But now I think that my contribution"
},
{
"end_time": 4477.619,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4452.09,
"text": " is to help others with their journey one step rather than taking them all the way and taking myself all the way i think i've been humbled by this experience so humbled in the humiliating sense in the hurtful sense but in the salutary sense too that i think my role is to not have realizations at least right now and to perhaps if it's anything positive maybe i can help other people with the"
},
{
"end_time": 4501.34,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4478.131,
"text": " putting one foot forward you already had some you just told me about something experience you had and it just brought fear and the fear is not metabolized if if you metabolize the fear then you might be able to have that experience and have more understanding of how it fits the rest of your life"
},
{
"end_time": 4526.834,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4502.927,
"text": " Because of time constraints, we're now jumping directly from audience question to audience question. John Muniz asks, many spiritual teachers and traditions have disparaged the role of intellectual development and book learning on the path of awakening. However, this person's a fan of yours and says, as you, Almas, you tried to combine the quest for spiritual awakening with the quest for mental understanding, I look up to you, since you've managed to integrate those two domains."
},
{
"end_time": 4553.78,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4527.295,
"text": " Can you speak about the positive contribution intellectual growth can make toward deepening one's relationship with reality, especially one's initial awakening? Most spiritual teaching actually, they begin with some kind of intellectual understanding, which is learning what is the view, what is the perspective of the teaching. And it is good to have that."
},
{
"end_time": 4583.592,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4554.326,
"text": " But you don't want to stop with that. You want to have the experience, not just the intellectual understanding. But you see, the question of the role of the intellect is a very big question. Because it's not whether you begin with intellectual understanding, which many teaching subscribe to. It's some teaching, they think the mind is a problem at some point that you need to drop the mind."
},
{
"end_time": 4607.688,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4584.411,
"text": " Because what you want is a direct immediate experience that is not constrained by the concept of the mind. And I think that is true. However, the mind can develop too. The mind is not just one level, you see, is not the intellect."
},
{
"end_time": 4628.763,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4608.234,
"text": " I remember reading the Greek philosophy. Some of the Greek philosophers, like Neoplatonists, they had 11 levels for intellect. 11. No, I didn't know that. Proclus, I think. What are some of these levels?"
},
{
"end_time": 4656.374,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4629.667,
"text": " Well, like the usual mind that we usual intellect we have that we use for reasoning or whatever. And there is another intellect that can have capacity for synthesis, you know, and then another capacity of synthesis that does not depend on analysis. And then then an intellect that is illuminated by light."
},
{
"end_time": 4687.432,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4659.821,
"text": " and then there is an intellect that where true intelligence the prototype of intelligence the platonic form of intelligence pure intelligence of spirit flows in the mind and so that that kind of intelligence usually people say a person is brilliant right when they say when they're smart"
},
{
"end_time": 4717.944,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4688.37,
"text": " Why do they say that? Why do they say bears is brilliant? Why do they use the word brilliant? Do you ever think about it? No. Why do they say brilliant? Because pure intelligence, when you see it with a subtle sense, it looks like pure brilliance. Like, you know, the brilliance of light, it is brilliance without a color, just pure brilliance. And so a presence like of a palpable substance"
},
{
"end_time": 4746.698,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4718.456,
"text": " of brilliance and this brilliance when you when I experience it feel like pure intelligence can flow through the mind but also can flow through the body so we can be physically intelligent and brilliant could be emotional so there's another that's another level of intellect where where it is open where the true intelligence of spirit can come through the"
},
{
"end_time": 4771.015,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4747.705,
"text": " understanding the capacity for understanding and I think that's why Penrose when he talks about you know about consciousness and what it is that is not computational whatever he uses he goes to and he said understanding cannot be is not a computational thing"
},
{
"end_time": 4796.254,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4771.544,
"text": " But he doesn't have, he knows that, but he doesn't exactly know what he knows, the way I see it. In the sense, he knows it is not computation, it is not analytic. That understanding is something that happens within us that brings out a new experience and new insights, but we don't know what did it, how it worked."
},
{
"end_time": 4824.138,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4797.142,
"text": " Because he is, I think, he has that kind of brilliance flowing in him. He might not see it, but it is flowing in him. And so he said he's a materialist, he's not mystical, whatever. I think he is sort of mystic with that sort of wanting, with wanting to admit that there is that part of him, something in him, because"
},
{
"end_time": 4854.889,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4825.179,
"text": " When you say that he understands but without knowing he understands, do you mean that when he's using in that argument that our mind is not computational because we understand an argument that has some Gordelian argument that he uses the word understanding but he doesn't understand what the word understanding means?"
},
{
"end_time": 4882.824,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4855.282,
"text": " Is that what you mean? Or is something different? No, he doesn't know. I'm not saying he knows what understanding means. He just doesn't know why it is not computational. He doesn't have, I mean, I don't know what to say. He sort of has an intuition, I think, that understands. He put three words, I remember, consciousness, understanding and intelligence. He says those three are related."
},
{
"end_time": 4911.425,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4883.251,
"text": " And all of them are outside of the computational. I was watching one of your talks and you were referring to I am that I am, which is a statement from what God was saying when asked for his name. And then you related that to strength and knowing strength or strength somehow to strength. Do you mind expounding? Well, I am the sense of say I am, which is known by many spiritual teachings."
},
{
"end_time": 4941.323,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4912.227,
"text": " is to know one's the presence of one's spirit or one's pure consciousness and that which means the ontological dimension of consciousness its ontology not its functionality you see because most people know consciousness as a functional thing i'm aware of this i see that but what is consciousness"
},
{
"end_time": 4969.104,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4941.783,
"text": " itself, most people don't even think of that. When you know what conscious is, that is its ontology, and that feels as some kind of presence. But that then, that is I Am. However, the I Am can appear with different qualities, can appear as pure, not just a pure presence of just simply I Am, but I Am strength."
},
{
"end_time": 4998.285,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4969.514,
"text": " Meaning the presence can manifest one of its possibilities, which is pure strength or pure joy. One of the insights that I had during my episode, if we can call it that, and this is being told to me, is that if what I'm experiencing isn't loving, isn't somehow life-affirming, then see that as a sign that it's deception. So move toward what's loving and ground myself in other people and talk to them and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 5026.937,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4998.609,
"text": " What do you make of that? Do you see that as having an element of truth? Yeah, I think, yeah, I will say it's the truth and love tied. And if so, how very much connected because truth is the essence of the heart and expresses itself as love. That's my experience of it. You see, truth is the essence of the heart and it expresses itself as love. So the expression of truth is love. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 5056.732,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5027.705,
"text": " So if somebody is not loving, meaning they're not completely open in their heart. And the truth of who they are is not coming through. You had a phrase about that the mouth tastes what's material. So I am butchering it, but the mouth tastes what's material and the heart tastes what's spiritual. Right. Well, that's some teachings like the Sufi think of a spiritual insight, a spiritual knowledge as taste."
},
{
"end_time": 5085.623,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5057.585,
"text": " But it is the taste of the heart and the heart is the organ of spiritual taste. So the knowing of spiritual matters, they think of it as the heart knowing and and they call it taste and taste, you know, the Arabic word though, which means like when you sample something, you want to taste it, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 5112.039,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5085.828,
"text": " Taste sometimes means the capacitive taste, but sometimes taste this, right? So when you have a spiritual experience, you're tasting something. So the heart tastes that way. So to get to know the truth, the reality, the spiritual reality. So it's sometimes called taste, sometimes called touch too, inner touch."
},
{
"end_time": 5143.063,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5113.097,
"text": " At some point, I want to speak to Ken Wilbur, perhaps in a few months when I'm strong enough to. And I know that Ken Wilbur and you have agreements and disagreements, and I'm unsure of his model. But can you tell me where you both agree and disagree? Like compare and contrast. It's been very hard for me to say that because I haven't been following his latest things. You know, I was following him for some time. But it's not an agreement or disagreement."
},
{
"end_time": 5168.473,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5143.814,
"text": " I remember one time there was some disagreement some years ago when I was putting out in some of my books that as young children, we were in touch with our spiritual nature. And he disagreed with that. He thought, no, children are like monsters. They're not in touch with the spiritual nature."
},
{
"end_time": 5194.735,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5168.848,
"text": " And I said, yes, they can be monsters, but also they can be beautiful and wonderful and joyful and innocent and all of that. And these are spiritual qualities. That was, you know, this agreement we had at that time. And I don't know at the present time, I mean, he is more of a philosopher, of a systematizer, of, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 5216.834,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5195.623,
"text": " of ways of experience and knowing and life and all of that. He is much more that way than I am. I'm not engaged in things the same way he is. I think Ken will agree with me that self-reflection is a stage of development of humanity and there are other stages like immediate knowing."
},
{
"end_time": 5237.022,
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"start_time": 5217.432,
"text": " It sounds to me from what you said earlier about the human, actually, I don't know if this is from a talk, I believe this is from a talk about humans infinite potential, and that we are at a privileged place as humans because of our ability to self reflect. And who else would know God if there were no humans? Let's assume that there are no other highly intelligent living creatures and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 5262.073,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5237.022,
"text": " But that statement seems to agree with what Ken said. The reason is that if we go back to childhood, we have less self-reflective capabilities. Some people may say, much like you had the disagreement, that children can be closer to God in some ways. But then if we take that further, the less reflective cognitive capabilities that we have, the more we're like the worms and the beetles and so on. So the fact that we would say, or the fact that you said in the"
},
{
"end_time": 5289.957,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5262.602,
"text": " human infinite potential conference or talk that we're at a privileged place seems to me to indicate that actually, yes, we're somehow somewhere higher on the spiritual development scale than children. So that's why I was saying that it sounds to me like you actually agree with Ken, from what I understood of your lessons in that other lecture. Am I understanding that incorrectly? But you're putting two things together that I don't do."
},
{
"end_time": 5319.053,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5290.606,
"text": " which is talking about self-reflective capacity, which is true, it's a development that human being had, and we don't have it as little babies, we don't have self-reflection. However, when you are in a realized place, the most realized condition is not self-reflective, does not reflect on itself, because when it reflects itself, there's nothing there. It can only look forward,"
},
{
"end_time": 5348.183,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5319.633,
"text": " But the point I want to say is that when I say children in touch with spirituality, I don't mean they're self-reflective. I mean their being. When they're happy, they are really happy. You see, the happiness is pure. And sometimes they're happy for no reason. They're just gurgling. And for me, that is a spiritual quality. They might not know it. They might not know they're happy. They're not self-reflection."
},
{
"end_time": 5375.998,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5349.053,
"text": " Self-reflection is actually a good human quality. It's necessary human quality. At the same time, it is the beginning of ego. Without self-reflection, we won't have ego. Self-reflection is important for spiritual practices in general, even for inquiry. The way I do it, we do need to have self-reflection."
},
{
"end_time": 5403.677,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5376.374,
"text": " One capacity that consciousness has, but consciousness also can know itself without self-reflection, can know itself by being, that's the English word, gnosis, comes from, you know, on oasis, the way the Greeks say it, is that I know myself by being myself, I'm not reflecting. It's like I'm in an expanse, a medium of consciousness,"
},
{
"end_time": 5427.568,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5405.299,
"text": " And this medium aware of itself at all points of itself. And it is this medium is speaking to you. So it doesn't need to reflect on itself. It sees through itself. It's the whole medium is not just within my body is outside of my body too. So that's not self-reflection. That is known by being."
},
{
"end_time": 5457.602,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5428.968,
"text": " which is the true spiritual capacity that people need to develop to have realization. And that is actually what the Sufis are trying to refer to by talk about taste. Because taste is more intimate than seeing. Taste something, it's inside, or touch. You have to touch, meaning you're really immediate, you're more"
},
{
"end_time": 5479.991,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5458.063,
"text": " So, immediacy is a very important part of all spiritual experiences. There's no immediacy of experience, which is beyond self-reflection."
},
{
"end_time": 5498.148,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5480.316,
"text": " It is not a spiritual experience yet. With TD Early Pay, you get your paycheck up to two business days early, which means you can grab last second movie tickets in 5D Premium Ultra with popcorn. Extra large popcorn."
},
{
"end_time": 5527.927,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5501.766,
"text": " TD Early Pay. Get your paycheck automatically deposited up to two business days early for free. That's how TD makes payday unexpectedly human. Then this question comes from Key Concrete 007. At 55, I've become reflective and decided to take DMT, not for recreational purposes, but to open my mind to fear and amazement."
},
{
"end_time": 5556.391,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5528.524,
"text": " I've been an atheist all my life. At one point during my ayahuasca experience, I raised my hand skyward and said, God forgive me. I'm no longer an atheist. My question, what are your thoughts on the controlled use of DMT or psychedelics in general? Good question. I know these days many people are involved in using some of the substances"
},
{
"end_time": 5582.654,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5556.869,
"text": " to access spiritual realities. And in fact, there are, you know, some native teaching in different places where they use that. And I tried those when I was in college, LSD and things like that, and I had spiritual experiences and openings."
},
{
"end_time": 5612.654,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5583.166,
"text": " What I remember from my experience, I did it several times, you know, in the 60s, early 70s. But then after, when I started having spiritual experiences on my own without them, I did not go back to the using those substances. And I was wondering about the other day, why didn't I, it's not like somebody told me, don't do it. It just dropped out of my mind."
},
{
"end_time": 5640.742,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5613.148,
"text": " And now I'm not that interested, but I do hear about it from students, from other people that experiment with these. And some of them have good experience, especially for somebody who finds it difficult to access the spiritual dimension. I see it helping them. They do it once or twice."
},
{
"end_time": 5661.869,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5641.271,
"text": " open them up in a way that they weren't being able to be open. And that way they saw something about themselves in reality they couldn't see before. And that is really helpful for their development and evolution. So I think that way, I've seen it being useful that way."
},
{
"end_time": 5691.357,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5662.363,
"text": " I wouldn't recommend that somebody use it as their way of spiritual practice, unless they are part of some indigenous tribe and they have their own way of dealing with it. I find many of the people who we were talking about earlier, who with a megaphone shout their toe out to other people in such a manner that doesn't have people welcoming their toe, they tend to have in common that their insights were precipitated by their private use of psychedelics."
},
{
"end_time": 5721.169,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5691.698,
"text": " So do you see that psychedelics to inform one's philosophy or ontology, et cetera, as removed from a community is somehow a net negative in some manner or not as pure? Well, it's not that, you know, it's more like comparing my experiences from the sixties and seventies on psychedelics from my later experiences, which happens more spontaneously. There is a difference in quality."
},
{
"end_time": 5751.015,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5721.561,
"text": " It's not the same. The psychedelic gives it, changes things in some way. That is not how reality is exactly. When they experience, you know, one's raw consciousness. And it has the possibility of opening up, but it also opens up to other things that are not true. You know, because it also can magnify our imagination."
},
{
"end_time": 5781.357,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5751.698,
"text": " And that's why people have bad trips, you know, because it could magnify anything. So the way I think about it is that some traditions, like the Ayahuasca tradition in South America, for instance, they have developed a way of working with it, that they use it for, you know, as part of their"
},
{
"end_time": 5795.657,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5781.749,
"text": " But I also seen some Americans who went there and did that and they came back and their spiritual access naturally was got more narrow."
},
{
"end_time": 5816.544,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 5796.323,
"text": " Hmm, interesting. See that goes back to what I was referring to earlier about path dependence. So some people would say, no, this lesson works and it works ubiquitously. It also depends on where you are. One of the ways that I like to conceptualize this, I'm curious if you I'm curious what your thoughts are, is that I see some Westerners taking on Eastern approaches and vice versa."
},
{
"end_time": 5844.36,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 5817.159,
"text": " Somewhat uncritically, and I wonder if that's always a net benefit, because to me it's akin to force installing Mac software on your PC. You're going to get errors if it's not compatible with how you grew up, with what your view is right now. Do you see it similarly? I think there is a point there, Kurt, in the sense that the Eastern approach, they have their own worldview."
},
{
"end_time": 5871.681,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5844.684,
"text": " which is different from our Western world worldview. For instance, both the Indian spirituality and Buddhist spirituality developed on being free from samsara, right? What they call samsara, which is the ordinary world. And basically, because they believe in reincarnation, is that the idea is to not reincarnate again."
},
{
"end_time": 5902.398,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5872.773,
"text": " You want to be enlightened so that you'll be free from this world and not come back again. And in the West, we don't subscribe to that kind of thing, you know, incarnation coming back or whatever. You know, for me, I don't know if that's true or not. So I don't look at spirituality that way. I look at spirituality that is to make life as complete, as deep as possible."
},
{
"end_time": 5933.131,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5903.319,
"text": " and that means something else for later. Some people adopt the Eastern view with all their philosophical or metaphysical perspective of reincarnation and leaving the world, which has in it a way of saying that this world is"
},
{
"end_time": 5961.442,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5933.865,
"text": " is no good. It's just you're here. You see, I myself, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I don't know. I mean, I have some experiences of incarnation, whatever. I don't know if they're true or not. They're real or not. And so I don't subscribe to that. So it's true. If somebody who's wasn't who takes on that, like they're putting a hat on their brain that"
},
{
"end_time": 5991.732,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5962.005,
"text": " is just a hat on them. It's not really naturally arisen inside within them. But however, if somebody takes the spiritual tradition and take the practices and learn to connect to the truth of who they are, and then that is independent of the worldview, because you're just what you are at this moment. What you are at this moment"
},
{
"end_time": 6019.189,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 5992.022,
"text": " Thank you, sir. Thank you for coming on to the program and answering these questions and spending some time with me. It's been fun, enjoyable talking together."
},
{
"end_time": 6041.476,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 6022.295,
"text": " The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to patreon.com slash C-U-R-T-J-A-I-M-U-N-G-A-L. That is Kurt Jaimungal. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you."
}
]
}No transcript available.