Cambridge Physicist Explains Consciousness | Peter Russell

Transcript

We never know the world out there. We never know it. I mean, I say, you know, I'm looking at a tree out my window. I'm having the experience of a tree outside my window. I see a green leaf.

What is green? There's no There's a photon coming, a photon is just a concept, by the way. There's a photon coming from the leaf to my eye which triggers electrical impulses which the brain translates as green and the activity of greenness appears in my consciousness. There's no green out there. We look at the leaf I go down in a micro in there atoms most of which are empty space. What are atoms? They're just like um waves in something we don't know.

Um, there's actually the more we look at it, the more science finds there's actually nothing there. There's no thing there. [Music] Peter Russell, welcome to Beyond Meaning. This is a privilege uh and an honor and also a joy to speak with you. I was brought to your work uh through uh what you've said about consciousness, the way you've uh brought nondual teachings of ancient times >> uh in contact with modern science.

>> And you've had also a very interesting life. Uh you've studied in the halls of Cambridge. you studied mathematics uh physics and psychology there uh you've studied under Stephven Hawking uh and also you've studied in India uh under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi so and then you've come back you've integrated what you've studied you've done pioneering research on meditation studies on meditation uh and you've written a lot about consciousness uh uh our global consciousness our global evolution of mind and a lot of other really interesting things that I would love to get into. But for those who are not familiar with your work and your journey, uh would you introduce the path your life has taken and the kind of work that you do and your main interests? >> Great. Yeah.

Yeah. And also just thank you very much for having me on. I'm just really looking forward to this conversation. We're going to have a good time. Yes.

Um well you mentioned Cambridge. I mean as a at school I was fascinated by science and mathematics but particularly mathematics and so I you know I got a place at Cambridge which was a great honor to study mathematics. is probably the best place in England to study mathematics. And as you said, I was with Stephen Hawking for a while. And then I sort of I got to a point where I realized however much maths or theoretical physics I do, there was a question of why am I here conscious a conscious being doing the math? It's like this is a strange thing.

I mean we we know how we think how the universe started from you know elementary matter hydrogen and how and which evolved into other chemical elements evolved into life. How come the way I put it? How come hydrogen has evolved into a being that can now do the mathematics of hydrogen? It's like what's happened here? Basically why am I conscious? There's nothing in science that explains why I am conscious. In fact, science would be much happier if I weren't conscious in a strange way because consciousness is a huge problem for science. And yet, paradoxically, most of science takes place in the mind. The thinking, the theorizing, the drawing conclusions.

I mean, the experiments take place out in the world, but most of it takes place in the mind. And that struck me as like really weird. And so, as you mentioned, I moved on. I thought I might study philosophy instead, but philosophy at Cambridge, as I put it, was really the study of dead philosophers. It wasn't doing philosophy.

I wanted to like get my teeth into philosophy. So instead, I thought I'd do psych experimental psychology as an understanding of the brain. And I learned a lot, but they weren't interested in consciousness. Hardly came up at all. And I realized the way to study consciousness is not putting electrodes on the brain.

The way to study consciousness is in inwardly consciousness is a subjective experience. So it needs a subjective experience experimentation exploration. And the people who done that are the you know the great saints, yogis, adepts, people who you know gone and retreat whatever the people who actually turned within in meditation or some other practice to look at their own mind. And so that led me into meditation and as you said I got involved in TM initially and went out to India and studied with the Maharishi and that was really the turning point because from then on I realized that the exploration of consciousness from a firsthand perspective was what I was really interested in. And so my life since then has been in that direction exploring consciousness.

what is consciousness, how we can become more aware, the impact of awakening on society, those sorts of things. >> I one of the parts of your journey that's really fascinating to me is your time with Maharishi. um because in my life but also I think this also applies to many other seekers who many of us are reading spiritual texts uh maybe listening to talks practicing some sort of practice um and then we have this ideal that is presented in the text in certain figures let's say we can have the Buddha or some saint or or or whatever but it is never or at least very rarely a living example of somebody who embodies these virtues and attitude >> but Maharishi is known to be the real deal essentially a living embodiment >> and so what was it spending time with him and what did you learn during that time >> it was probably the most important time of my life um so much of what I have to share these days you know 50 years on is comes from that time. Um, first of all, I would say what I I would agree he is he was he's dead now, a living sage. And for me, what struck me, he was talking from firthand experience.

He was describing enlightenment, higher states of consciousness, whatever you want to call them, from his own experience. And you know, I'd read other teachers and actually studied with some other teachers and for most of them it was like it was secondhand. They they done lots of studies, read all the right books, listened to other teachers and what they were saying, nothing wrong with what they were saying. It was all, you know, to my mind on track most of it. But I could tell it wasn't coming directly from their experience.

And that's what impressed me about the Marishi. He was talking from how it was. So he was like talking about enlightenment trying to describe to us what it was like. So that was that was profound. Um what I learned I mean I did a lot of meditation and that was really important but more than that I think two things I learned there.

One was that there was something to spirituality after all. I mean as I said I started off as a mathematician scientist. I'd rejected religion when I was a teenager and I just thought religion was just a weird lot of outdated mythic mythological ideas from thousands of years ago that had no relevance to contemporary life and so I completely rejected religion and I think one of the things I realized in India was hang on there's something there is something to religion not to the surface side that we have today but realizing all religions All the great religions came from the same basic spiritual awakening. And from then on my life has been really understanding what is the nature of that awakening. What is the nature of that awakening? Um and that lies behind all the traditions.

So I suddenly became open to seeing what what is the underlying truth of all the great spiritual traditions. And a lot of my work has been trying to um really distill that distill that in ways that are understandable by contemporary people in you know now in 21st century language not the language of a thousand years ago or 3,000 years ago. So that was that was really a turning point and connected to that seeing that most of the problems we face in the world whether it's our personal problems, societal problems, environmental problems, so many of them come down to human thinking, maybe human greed, human ignorance, human love of power, whatever. But human consciousness is part of it. You know, if we're talking about, you know, the ecology, the environment, okay, there's a lot we need to do in terms of how can we repair the environment, stop the damage, etc.

But the the bigger question is what is it in our consciousness that allows us to let these problems happen in the first place? And nobody's attending to that. They're attending to the problem but not attending to this underlying cause, this underlying aspect which is the human mind. I think in brief you call it the human ego. And so I saw that what was really important for the world today was how do we raise human consciousness or more another way put it how do we help people step out of the sort of egocentric self-centered greedy mode of consciousness that's behind so many of our problems. >> Yeah.

And I really want to explore uh this with you because um you communicate ancient wisdom in a way unlike anything I've heard in other places really. Um but before we explore that, I just want to again return to that uh period of your life with Maharishi. Y >> um because I just it doesn't happen every day I speak with somebody who's had that experience. Um other than the teachings and explanations and the philosophy that he delivered, uh is there any anecdote or experience with him that you remembered that in some way demonstrated his embodiment of what he has attained? >> Let me think. It's funny the experience that comes to mind is not actually directly answering your question but it's something that stuck with me um in the middle of the course that the time with him I was there for 3 months we were doing more or less 24-hour meditations he wanted us to really taste deep meditation and so we'd be you know meditating for two or three hours and maybe doing a bit of yoga going back into meditation and at one stage.

We were doing it 24 hours and I remember in the meditation hall about 2:00 in the morning one morning he came sort of he came wandering by looking in the windows to see how we were doing and I thought what an interesting thing. It's like something about his caring for what was happening, his caring, his overseeing. He was like we I really felt I was held in his embrace almost spiritually and any questions we asked he would go deep deep deep deep into explanation and understanding that I mean that's not a direct thing of his embodiment but just strikes me as something that I noticed was was was the care he had for our students And it is what has come to be known transcendental meditation that you were practicing there. Correct. >> Yes.

Yes. >> Could you talk a bit about transcendental meditation the the principle of it and the practice? >> Yeah. And just as a bit of background the transcendental meditation was what the Beatles started doing in 1967 and that's what got me interested. So when people talk about TM they talk about the Beatles meditating. That was what the Beatles started doing.

So yes, I got interested in meditation, transcendental meditation. I found a book of the marishes called the the science of being and art of living and I read it and he was saying the opposite to everything else I'd heard about meditation. I'd already begun exploring meditation a bit. I looked at Buddhist Tibetan meditation and also some Terraadan meditation techniques and read a bit of Buddhism and also you know read a bit from some other Indian teachers and all of them were saying in one way or another you need to control the mind you need to put effort into meditation meditation is difficult you need to work at it it's hard it takes control and he was saying something completely different he was saying first of all control gets in the way because what we're looking for is how to allow the mind to become quiet. If you put effort into it the very act of putting effort or control is keeping the mind tense.

The mind's not relaxing. So he said any effort is actually stopping you or preventing you really dropping into that inner state of stillness. And he was saying that the mind will if we begin to let the mind relax, it will naturally it will naturally quieten down on its own. And I thought this is so different from what everybody else was saying. I had to try it.

That's what led me to try it. Um TM as many people know TM know. It involves the use of mantras which are very common in Indian teachings which are basically just sounds. Some of them have meaning for people some not. But it's used in a very very different way.

Usually mantras are used in India it's called mantra yappa which is like the repetition of a mantra. You repeat the mantra you focus on the mantra or maybe it has meaning. He used mantras in a very different way. Again, not focusing on them. The idea was just to let it be there as a sound right in the back of your mind very quietly.

You weren't saying it to yourself. It was more like you were hearing it very quietly in the mind and you would just let your attention be with it but not try to focus on it or keep it there as just as he called it a vehicle for the attention. By which you mean somewhere to put your attention because our attention is normally off on some thought, some experience, some feeling. You know, probably 100% of the time for us, most of us, our attention is either on what we're looking at, what we're hearing, what we're thinking, what we're feeling. And his idea is we need to turn the attention inward, 180 degrees inward.

And so we just place the attention on this very faint sound of the mantra and without any meaning in TM. And the mind would then naturally just begin to quieten down and the mantra would get fainter until in the end it had gone and you were sitting in in silence mental silence which he called the transcendental state. One had transcended which means to go beyond. One had transcended conscious thought or any thought. One was just sitting there in a state of quiet.

Okay. So this is very interesting to me. Uh I don't want to get too technical for viewers that perhaps won't appreciate it but recently my relationship with um insight meditation vipasa meditation was shaken by my encounter with Krishna morti jid krishna morti you know the punk guru the anti guru >> who is very much uh a proponent of what we would call open awareness meditation but he would be very much against even that label. Yeah. >> Um which is simply awareness of what is within awareness.

And he's strongly outspoken against using any meditation object since uh in his view this narrows down the mind rather than you know in a sense hypnotizes the mind. >> Right. Um but it does sound to me like what you've just described is a sort of mixture of concentrate u more or less somewhat concentrated practice leading to a sort of open awareness where there is no need for for that active concentration. >> Yes. I actually remember listening to Krishna Mertie going to some of his meetings way back in the 1970s >> and didn't understand him at all.

didn't get what he now I realize ah he was saying I wasn't ready for him I would say it's very close to that and you say concentration it really doesn't involve any concentration in terms of trying to hold the mind while it's not trying to hold the mind to the mantra it's it is just that open awareness to but instead of being open awareness to your experience which I totally understand is a very good practice ice it's still when you do that it's easy for the mind to get distracted you know like now in my open awareness I can hear somebody using something in their garden some equipment it's very difficult just to have that open awareness of that without the mind going what's he doing is this affecting the recording you know my mind will get into things >> um so that's why you know just that very faint it's like it's hearing the mantra rather than saying it. That's the big difference. It's so it's like open awareness, but instead of opening awareness to your experience here in the world, it's just open awareness basically towards the stillness. Towards the stillness and of course you can't concentrate on the stillness because as soon as you do, the mind gets active again. So yeah, I would say very very close.

Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. And after you engaged engaged with this practice and and and had your period of intensive meditation, why what within this experience um made you feel that this is so important for our modern civilization, for modern science and for the future of religion as well, >> right? Yes. Well, I think basically what I was saying is the two things, you know, one, realizing that so many of the problems in the world come down to the fact we're caught in a very limited self-centered mode of consciousness and how important it was to help people free themselves from that.

So my work really since then I came back I started teaching meditation. I opened a meditation center in Cambridge. I went on on to do PhD research in meditation. That led me to write my first book on meditation, the TM technique, because even then I realized a lot of people were misunderstanding what TM was. And so I wrote the book in order to try and make things clear.

So it really started me off on that that whole path of exploring meditation but also exploring this thing I mentioned about what is the underlying essence of spirituality because you know people well this teacher says this this teacher says that that religion says this you know which one is right it's like on one level none of them are right because they're missing the real the deeper truth and on another level they're all correct because I think they all come from that same fundamental realization of if we connect with our own inner being, our own essence, with that old stillness that then basically changes our life, changes how we how we think, how we work, how we interact with people. It comes it comes from that um greater inner freedom and not being caught up in the ego. >> Yeah. And what is really curious for me is that what you've just described being in touch with this inner stillness and and and quiet um does not sound like something you would expect from a you know physics and mathematics graduate from Cambridge to be talking about and yet you did end up relating this very directly to the state of modern science and culture. So could you say a bit more about the uh well the scientific work that you've done informed by this experiences uh of medit through meditation.

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The more I sort of looked at consciousness, the more I saw that the current scientific approaches to consciousness and they're more sort of then you know well first of all the sticking electrodes on the brain which I said doesn't tell us anything about consciousness but they treat consciousness as something which comes out of the brain. The brain creates consciousness. And that worried me for a long time. I felt there was something wrong with this. Although there was a lot of evidence for that.

You know, if you damage some part of the brain, the experience changes. Um, an anesthetic, you know, will stop consciousness almost totally. So, it seems the brain is intimately involved in our experience. But then I realized there was a fundamental assumption here or a confusion that they assume that the brain therefore creates consciousness. I would say the brain determines what appears in consciousness.

The brain if you like fills the consciousness with experience but it doesn't necessar consciousness. If you say it creates consciousness, you get into a whole load of problems like how does something as immaterial as just squishy nerve cells ever give rise to inner experience? And I saw part of the problem is actually in the word because in English the word consciousness is a noun. And in English when you add nes to the end of a word you're basically taking an adjective and turning it into a noun in order to talk about it. So you know you say soft is an adjective, softness is a noun we use to talk about being soft. And it's the same with consciousness.

Consciousness as a thing doesn't exist. It's a way of saying it's a state of being conscious. We are all we are all conscious. It's a state of being conscious and seeing that that is always there and then beginning to trace that back. You know, I see other you know I love dogs.

To me a dog is a conscious being. I mean, you know, I say to people if they say dogs aren't conscious, I say, well, why would you give it an anesthetic if you want to operate on it if it's not conscious? I mean, clearly, where do you go? I would say, you know, fishes are conscious. I mean, where do you draw the line? As soon as you draw the line, you have to say, how come below the line, I take a silly example. You say, you know, a spider's conscious, but a fly isn't. But what is the difference between a fly and a spider? What is it the spider has that means it suddenly becomes conscious? The point is you cannot draw a line anywhere.

And so you have to take the view that the actual subjectivity subjective experience being conscious is universal to all life. Now that was strange when I first started putting this idea out. I mean some philosophers talk about it. I mean it's in philosophy it's called pans psychism or pans psychism is one version of it which means pans psyche everything has mind now in the last 10 years or so more and more scientists who are exploring consciousness are coming round to the idea that the brain doesn't actually create consciousness that we are it is already there it's every everything has a subject side we have a very you know But we have a much more complex consciousness than a fly because we have other senses. We have whatever's going on.

But a fly still has that somewhat inner experience. Is probably seeing what it's buzzing around and things. So that was the shift for me in consciousness is seeing that it is a universal phenomenon throughout the universe. It is something absolutely fundamental. And that is what so many of the spiritual traditions, the mystical traditions are saying is that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe.

So that began to bring the two together for me seeing that seeing that's what spirituality was really talking about. Well, one of the things it was really talking about. >> Okay. And to be clear, what you mean by consciousness being fundamental is not that just any life form due to some processes what would would have consciousness but that consciousness is uh pre-existing we can compare it to space or time whether there is a living organism or not and then living organisms become uh means to producing certain forms of conscious experiences. >> Right.

Yes. Yes, that conscious being conscious as I say the word consciousness is difficult because it immediately puts us into thinking about something being conscious is a fundamental quality of the universe and as it's there in everything but as creatures as they get more complex I'm going to say a bacterium doesn't have a nervous system but we can't say it doesn't have some faint faint faint glimmer of consciousness maybe you know a millionth or billionth of ours but as life has got more complex comp as nervous systems got more complex. So what appears in consciousness has gotten more and more complex. So what has evolved is not experience itself. What has evolved is what we are what we are experiencing what we are conscious of.

>> This is fascinating. And to me what makes it even more fascinating in your um case is that you've have a you've had a life where you've studied under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi you've listened to Ju Krishna Morti and now you have uh experienced the AI revolution. In fact you have an AI chatbot uh containing all your your written material and talks. Um so in light of this totally new event in the history of humanity um do you have any thoughts on AI and consciousness if consciousness is fundamental do would you say only organic life is that it occurs only through organic life or would you say that chat GPT or your AI chatbot in fact somehow channels consciousness as well? Um simple answer no but with a big provisiso. Um first of all I don't think AI is alive.

It's a very very good um simulation of human intelligence. I would actually say for all practical purposes it is intelligent. We call it artificial intelligence. type of a simulated intelligence. But you know the what the ma what the cheuring cheuring the mathematician who thought about computers years ago said you know if you put you know a human being behind a screen and a computer behind the screen could you tell the difference and I think these days you know if you get something written by a person something written by chat GPT it gets quite difficult to know which is the computer which is the human being.

So for all practical purposes I would say yes they're intelligent but it isn't a living system. It is a crystalline system basically is full of you know little tiny silicon chips which are basically not even a carbon based life form of any sort is it's a silicon system u with other chemicals. its level of its level of integration on that level is I would say much simpler than even a bacterium. So even if it did have some sort of silicon-like consciousness, I think it would be extremely extremely small. And of course there's no way we can there's no way we can test for consciousness.

That's the interesting thing in I can't test for your consciousness. You could be a robot. A very good robot here. AI. >> I promise I'm not, but of course I would anyway.

>> It always says that. I mean, yes. >> So there's no real test except I often say, you know, a test of consciousness would be would a could a be telepathic? Could it actually I think most of us know we've had some sort of telepathic experiences with connections with people close people something happens we know we know what's going on at a distance other times in other spaces if a if a computer started doing that telepathy seems to involve consciousness if a computer started knowing without any information you know what was happening somewhere else or whatever then I'd get interested. But for now, I don't it's not cons. It's not conscious.

I don't think it has I don't think it has a subjective experience. Its level of consciousness is way way way down the scale. Way down. Not to say that's say I can't say it has nothing at all, but it's as we know consciousness as having a subjective experience. There's no reason to think it does.

>> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> Okay. That was really interesting what you said again something I would never expect to hear from you that the fact that we wouldn't expect AI to have any telepathic uh phenomenon going on would indicate it's not highly conscious at least. So it is very interesting when somebody mentions telepathy or telepathic it is usually away from from serious scientists because you don't want to get stoned for for saying things like that.

Um, but I mean we've all had experiences when uh where somehow we seem to have some glimpse of information that we shouldn't normally have. Uh, Jung spoke a lot about synchronicity about dreams relating information in different ways. Um, and so when you say that telepathy is is somehow connected to the fundamental nature of consciousness, do you mean and we can get a bit yung here that on some level our different streams of consciousness are interconnected so that information could flow unhindered by space and time but within somehow that medium of consciousness? Yes, I'm cautious about saying how it happened. I mean, I'm cautious. You know, Jung put forward a very nice model in terms of the collective conscious and the collective unconscious.

Um, it may be like that whether the streams interact. To be honest, I don't know what's going on and I don't think anybody else really knows what's going on in this realm. But I know as you said most people know I've had experiences which are beyond any rational explanation and show there's there's something else going on in the world beyond the physical world what science knows. I'm you know I'm pretty sure of that. I may be you know totally deluded but I'm pretty sure of that in my own experience how it happens.

You know people say oh it could be this or it could be that. I'm always careful about getting into explaining what is going on >> because I think the likelihood is whatever whatever theory we come up with is probably wrong. >> Yeah. >> And speaking of theories, I want to backtrack a bit. Now we've covered the ground of uh that consciousness might as well be a fundamental characteristic of reality.

>> Yeah. If we go with this, what changes in our scientific outlook and in and in our culture uh would this result in? Why would this be important? Um one it leads to respect for all beings that it stops us thinking that human beings are special. I mean we're different. We have certain qualities that other creatures don't have. But it stops us thinking like we are we are special.

We are different from the rest of the life. We are part of the we see ourselves as part of the web of life. This interconnected web and we're interconnected physically in various ways and we seem to be interconnected psychically in various ways. So it it takes us off this pedestal that you know human beings are the cream of evolution or not. We're just beings who have, you know, can do science and explore things and think clearly.

But we're also realizes, you know, we're cutting ourselves off from a lot of experiences. I mean, I mentioned dogs. When my dog, I don't have a dog now, but when I was with a dog, I knew what it it seemed to know things that I wasn't aware of it. you know, it had more of an intuitive sense just I won't go into details, but >> I realized, you know, it has experiences, has knowledge that I don't have because our minds are so cluttered up with thoughts and ideas and feelings and all that stuff. Our minds are so cluttered.

It's when our minds are quieter and we come back to resting in that quieter state that I think the intuitive things happen more. So, so that's that's one thing. Um, it also it you see it does saying that consciousness is fundamental doesn't actually change any of science. All that science has discovered about the physical world still holds true. All of mathematics, theoretical physics, biology, whatever it is, that's all true.

It doesn't actually change anything. It just in a way completely inverts things. So because in the end I mean another part of this is realizing that everything we know is in consciousness. All my ideas, my experiences, all of science is all happening in consciousness. So again it makes consciousness fundamental in that way because all all I ever know is what what is appearing in my consciousness what what my brain is creating in consciousness.

Well, one thing that has been a big event or leap for me was uh this whole business of non-duality >> because for a long time the major discovery in my let's say meditation journey was that all of these things that I experienced that I am suddenly I realized that these are experiences within consciousness and and so in a sense I am the witness of these things in a sense they are here whether they're internal or external. They're all within the witness. >> Yeah. >> Um and then it became a big mystery to me what all of these non-duality people were talking about because I can see the witness and what is being witnessed. So how do you get from the point of being the witness being that consciousness to the point of well there being no no uh no clear separation between what is being experienced and the experiencer.

Um before I invite you to answer, I I I will give you my field notes and how far I've gotten. Okay. >> And for for me, the big revelation came actually uh through uh applying Krishna Mort's >> uh approach to open of open awareness. The big revolution came when I noticed that this witness, this you know selfless self that is observing of experience is itself a mental construct. >> So it it exists within the flow of experience as a thing that the mind constructs in order to order things.

And if you go beyond that construct, in fact you don't go beyond it because once you know it simply dissolves there is no longer a you to go beyond it. There is simply experience the flow of experience. Uh so this is my uh current uh progress report. Uh what have been your observations on this? >> I would say I'm in very similar place very similar understanding. Yes.

I Yeah. Um well first of all non-duality it's it's often misunderstood. People say oh it means we are all one you know we have to go beyond male female you know different species whatever it I mean that's one inter but that's a very superficial interpretation of non-duality and it's not what non-duality means in spiritual circles like in zogchan in Buddhism or advita in Indian traditions I mean advita literally translated means not to but it doesn't mean to say everything is the same everything is one I go back to one of the very first um writings or wasn't even a writing but teaching on non-duality in the upupananishads um where this father is the teacher is teaching his son but anyway what what he says is you see this pot made of clay you know now all pots are different they're actually different pots they're not the same pot many different pots they have many different shapes and sizes so There's a whole duality of pots. So there is two. There is duality.

But it's not just duality. That's the advita not to. It's not just duality. There's also all the pots are made of clay. Every pot is made of clay.

And that is common to them. And then he makes the point that the clay doesn't change its nature by becoming a pot. The clay is clay. It can take many different forms, but it hasn't changed its nature by becoming this pot or that pot. And so the teaching is basically what you're saying is all our experiences.

Everything we experience is in consciousness. It is a conscious experience. What is common to them all is being conscious. But the being conscious doesn't change by becoming this thought or this picture of a tree or whatever. The being conscious doesn't change.

That is always the same. And that's what we touch when we go into that deep state of stillness. There is just that sense of being here of just as you put it. I don't even like the word witness because that implies there is some body, something experiencing. There is just pure experiencing without an object of experience.

And so when we come to that state of stillness, we are again words don't work but we are we are in the knowing of our own knowingness of the pure beingness of consciousness. So that that's what non non-duality is saying is that yes all this is different and underneath it is all an experience in consciousness and the consciousness is always the same and so it also means that my consciousness is the same as yours. It doesn't mean that my experience is the same as yours. You've had a very different life. You know, we have totally different experiences.

But what I how it is for me when I go beyond all my thoughts, my sense of who I am, go beyond all that to just that pure sense of being. That must be what it's like for you because there's no form to that consciousness. There's nothing to distinguish it for me and it's always the same for me when I touch into that. It must be the same for you and must be the same for all other people. So when I know that deeper sense of being, that stillness, I am knowing you as well.

I'm knowing what it's like for you in that deeper state. I'm knowing what is I'm knowing every other human being in a way on that deeper deeper level. And so that in a way is people talk about universal consciousness. For me that is a universal experience. That state of stillness is a universal experience where we are all we all experience the same.

>> There are so many interesting directions uh where we can take this. Um but first perhaps uh concerning this passage from due punish that you mentioned. I think the the the conclusion of it is that the father tells the son you know you are that that is atman the the essence >> and you are that >> and this we may say is the concluding remark of the the ultimate statement and conclusion of the panchads. Um and then comes the Buddha who goes through a very similar process of observation, analysis, philosophy and so on. But the this where he ends up is the anatman anata doctrine of no self.

And as far as I understand it, this experience which you described, one way to interpret it is that you get in touch with the universal fundamental fact reality being of consciousness which is the same for me for you for all our listeners and viewers at the moment. And this is the true self. This is one interpretation and the other would be the Buddhist interpretation which is that this is an uh impersonal phenomenon which arises for me for you for our listeners and viewers due to causes and conditions and then recedes again due to the sessation of these causes and conditions. And so obviously this is a millennia uh old argument so I won't ask you to solve it in in one. >> Oh no I I mean I've been through this many times debates.

I don't think I don't think there's a conflict here. Um what I was saying I wouldn't use the term universal self. I very much would um agree with the Buddha that there is no individual self. The individual self is a construct in the mind that we construct from our experience from many different things. It's an arising you know and it goes away.

So there is no there is no self there is no self that is experiencing. Um so in that state of stillness it is not oh this is a universal self. It is just it is an experience which is the same for all of us because we are touching into that ground of being. But I for me it's not it's not a self and there is just experiencing which is filled with many many different things as we go along. So, so I I don't see this conflict because I don't see I see that it's in agreement with Buddha's idea of no self anata.

That's how I see it. I very much Yeah, very much agree with Buddha on that. Agree with Buddha. Buddha. >> That's good.

>> I think Buddha I think Buddha was right. >> Yeah. >> Um Okay. >> Does that make sense? >> Yes. Well, it does make sense.

Um, I do think that there is a lot of value in what in the Buddha's and in the Buddhist traditions insistence on not >> becoming attached to any sense of self, not the small self and not a cosmic self even, >> right? And and I can also see how easy it is to slip into that sort of attachment to a self-concept even in very you know subtle refined >> states of of of consciousness. >> Yeah it is easy and it's so much part of our life experience. Um, you know, I I know one one teacher who says we mustn't use the word I because I doesn't exist. Yeah, okay. I get that.

But am I going to go through life, you know, not it's like, you know, I use I in an everyday sense where I know what to mean. I am hungry. I'm not going to start saying to people there is this experience of being hungry that is happening right now. like no I am hungry is a very straightforward simple way of expressing something and I know when I say that if I actually stop and analyze it no there is not actually an I that is hungry that you know so I think we it's quite okay to use the word self in an everyday sense quite okay for me and yet knowing that deep down it doesn't fundamentally exist >> this was a big revelation to me when I encountered the Buddhist teaching of uh two different kinds of truths. You have ultimate truth of the no self um and then you have the conventional truth of I am hungry >> and my name is Simon.

>> Yeah. >> Um again and again you return to this expression that words are not the the appropriate means of communicating this. And for me a major revolution came when I I was sitting in a guided medi meditation led by adashanti and at one at one point he said now pay attention to consciousness but don't try to understand it. And when he said that I was initially scandalized like I've spent so much time sitting here. What do you mean don't try to understand it? That's why I'm here.

But then uh he continued he said don't try to understand it. This is not something you're supposed to understand. Uh and then this stuck with me and at well gradually I came to see that the progress for me consisted not of uh getting a more and more uh clear intellectual understanding of life and view of life but rather learning to approach life through a different mode of experiencing altogether which was not intellectual but was much more well direct. a way of experiencing. And to me, this I discovered is probably not a shortcut, probably the only path to slipping beneath the thinking mind and connecting with that quiet of of of the now of the eternal now what is called and so yeah for me this is like switching between different modes of experiencing life.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you know I think that's also an essence of non-dualism. I mean I love Ant Shanti what he's saying and even then we get we can easily get caught up.

I mean he says you the way I heard him say was be aware of being aware >> but like then we get caught up. It's like oh I am here being aware that I'm aware. It starts getting through another mind trip. is >> it's very very subtle and yet there is a way of just I love also Rbert Spara I don't know you know Rbert Spara >> you know he says you know he says are you aware I actually have problems with the question the way he phrases it but >> because there's a subtle duality there are you aware but what he's pointing to is everybody answers yes except some weird philosophers everybody answers yes it's the one thing we know for sure is we are aware. I can doubt every experience.

You know I could be in the matrix right now. I can doubt all my experiences. I cannot doubt be being aware. And that to me is is a is a way into it take which doesn't get us into the thinking about it being aware of awareness. It's just recognizing it's absolutely clear.

I have no doubt of be have no doubt the way I would put it not that I am aware because that that dualistic thing going I have no doubt there is the way I put it I have no doubt there is experiencing happening there is consciousnessing happening >> and that lead takes me back or another question actually this one came from Rbert Spara which I really like Um, are you not that which is experiencing this moment right now? >> I like the question. It's got that sort of negative, you know, it's almost a Socratic thing to it. Like, are you not that which is experiencing this moment right now? Like when I take that question, it's like I just drop back. Well, of course I am. I am that which is experiencing this moment right now.

It just helps just helps me drop back into that particularly when I'm caught up in some concern or anxiety or planning or something just to say okay am I not that which is experiencing all of this. Yeah. >> Mhm. >> Just Yeah. >> Yeah.

I think here you mentioned the you know duality inherent in the previous question but I think this one that you mentioned which I immediately felt it when you presented it again I can see very easily how me before having that breakthrough into non-duality would hear it and how I hear it today. So previously are you not that which is experiencing this moment again immediately u conjures up the witness sense oh you know I'm that consciousness which is a thingless thing and it is experience everything but >> the way I hear it now it's is much closer to what you're saying about consciousness not being a thing but a fundamental quality that is soaked into experience not in any way separate from it. >> And within this stream of experiences, a sense of self is somehow constructed. >> Yeah. Yeah.

And the question doesn't take us, you know, back to the pure beingness. It just takes us right out of where we are, what we're caught up in, and takes us back to even though it's, you know, oh yes, I am that experiencing this, there's still that level of duality and things, but it takes us from here right back to, you know, much much closer to to what we're talking about here, much closer to it. >> In your book, uh, from science to God, you pointed consciousness as as the bridge that can unite science and religion. Um so that was very interesting to me. Um would you would you care to talk about how how this can lead us into some sort of union between science and religion? >> Yes.

Um first of all I think they are talking about two very different realms science and religion. And a lot of the confusion comes because people think they're talking about the same realm. So they think you know religion is talking about the physical world and whatever what it says and science but science is talking about the physical world. Science wants to understand the physical world and that that's its job is to try to understand how the physical world works. Spirituality is I wouldn't even say understanding but it's getting to the essence of the inner world of subjective experience.

So science is discovering the nature of objective experience the object spirituality is discovering the nature of subjectivity the nature of being conscious. So they are two two very different realms. That's that's the first thing and but they are both looking for both looking for the fundamental nature and in that one could begin to see their their two explorations in different directions towards something fundamental. So and once you know science lets go of the idea that it can explain consciousness. Once it lets go of that and allows spirituality to be the way to explore consciousness then that I see is is part of the bridge.

Consciousness becomes the bridge that science says now we can science okay now we can begin to understand what the spiritual traditions are talking about they're talking about exploring consciousness so and so it's like now there's a not exactly a meeting let's say it's a bridge it allows science to begin to respect and understand spirituality rather than saying oh it's a lot of weird mumbo jumbo which doesn't agree with physics No, it doesn't agree with physics. Although some people try to make it agree with quantum theory and things, but I think that's a dubious step. >> Mhm. >> So, it basically it allows science and then ordinary everyday people to begin to respect the spiritual traditions and what they're doing. the way you speak about science and religion as fundamentally different uh let's say dimensions of of human exploration and expression um makes me think of another question that now completely mystifies me and I would love to hear your perspective >> and this is that yeah well and it is that let's say if if we start with with consciousness pure consciousness which let's This is the samadi state of deep meditation.

If we do have this fundamental reality of consciousness which is outside of time and which is free empty of objects. Then by what laws of necessity do we get time and the objective world at all? Do you have any conjecture at least on why there would be the necessity of anything other than pure the pure subjectivity of consciousness. Okay, this gets into deep stuff on how I see the world. Um, where to start? Pure consciousness is empty. Um but it is still there.

There is fullness to it when you're sitting there. There is there is a fullness to it. It isn't full of things but it has that quality of completeness and fullness. Now we talk about objects in consciousness. Technically it's activity in consciousness.

And I think this is this is it's subtle but it's important. So this is why the analogy of the wave in an ocean is often used. You know a wave is just you know it's just the ocean taking a certain form. It isn't actually. It's it's a certain energy.

The the ocean is active in a certain way and we see that activity as a form of a wave but it's just activity of the ocean that's happening. And so this field of pure whether we're going to call it consciousness is for most of the time 100% for most of us being activated by the brain. The brain is doing this doing that it's having perceptions it's creating thoughts and that activity so the consciousness is being activated by the brain and that activity is what we call the forms we experience. So if I'm you know I'm seeing a tree I see it as a form in my mind but it's just it's just an activity of consciousness consciousness is currently taking on this particular appearance this particular activity. So although in essence the consciousness is formless we most of the time we know it by the activity you know coming back to the upupanishads the the clay and the pots you know the clay is like nothing is happening with the clay it is still in that sense as it said it's always the same nothing nothing actually happens to the clay But the way it appears is very different according to the pot that it's in.

Now in terms of the objective world, as I say, science is trying to understand what what the world out there. We never know the world out there. We never know it. I mean, I say, you know, I'm looking at a tree out my window. I'm having the experience of a tree outside my window.

I see a green leaf. What is green? There's no There's a photon coming and photon is just a concept, by the way. There's a photon coming from the leaf to my eye which triggers electrical impulses which the brain translates as green and the activity of greenness appears in my consciousness. There's no green out there. We look at the leaf.

I go down in a micro in there atoms, most of which are empty space. What are atoms? They're just like um waves in something we don't know. Um there's actually the more we look at it, the more science finds there's actually nothing there. There's no thing there. I mean more one area of science is just saying there is information there is a field of information there and some of that information we call an electron with the certain mass things we call mass things we call charge another you another bit of the field has a certain other quality so there's there's information there now what is that information in what what contains information.

I would go so far as to say if you take what various spiritual traditions are saying saying that the whole essence of the universe is conscious. It it is a conscious thing. Then the information is about this vast field of consciousness which has is different from point to point. One point of the leaf is different from another. An atom is different from another.

But it is a field of consciousness. There's the more science looks at it there's nothing physical there. There's no physical thing there. So let's assume then there is just consciousness. Then there is this field of consciousness out there being perceived by this consciousness here and that field the formless field out there is given form through this particular being's experiencing of it.

It's hard thing to explain but that's just you know you you ask me where I am that's that's how I see things. maybe difficult it's difficult to explain but yeah >> this is fascinating to me um and also uh I don't know if I'm right that this is the direction in which it it takes us but everything that you've explained leave that we can both look at and we can both confirm that it is green and then we can agree that green is an interpretation of photons and then we can agree that photons are a concept and we can talk about information fields but all of this information which we exchange by speaking uses words and concepts and then so not only what we experience but also the our communication about what we experience makes use of concepts of constructs of the mind. >> Yeah. >> And this also includes all technical tools that scientists use to study the objective world. Um so if we follow this line of reasoning um perhaps it seems that it culminates in the conclusion that science is not the study of the objective world at all but an exercise of studying what is essentially always made up of concepts.

We have very similar concepts because part of very of the same species very similar culture and so on. Um and so would this reduce science essentially to uh a different mode of perhaps uh unconscious spirituality, a different mode of examining the interior. If we conclude that there is no exterior ultimately, there is no object other than what the mind perceives, what consciousness perceives. I take your point about you know science is basically exploring concepts or models our current understanding is models of what is out there and all our models are based upon our experience. You know we say an atom or an electron is a particle or a wave but particles and waves are both in themselves the way our minds interpret what is going on.

So we are taking an experience and projecting that onto the world. I think this is where a lot of the problems come. Is it a wave? Is it a particle? It's probably neither. But because we experience waves and we experience particles, we think that is what is out there. But so I'm saying similar thing but slightly differently.

It's more than concepts for me. It's it's the models we have of the world. It's how we how we see the world. We are then projecting that back onto the world. And I think it's probably nothing like that.

is nothing. It's probably true to say what whatever is out there is nothing like what we experience. Nothing like it. So, in a way, science has to just say, "Oh, give up. I'm never going to understand I'm never going to understand the essential nature of reality.

Never. I can understand how it works. I can understand how, you know, what we call atoms get together into what we call molecules. >> You can probably tell I've gotten excited. Uh would it then be too much to say based on what we've been talking about that we have no reason then to claim a world outside, a world beyond our perceptions and models, something beyond what is is being experienced.

I mean on what grounds would we maintain that there is something beyond these experiences which obviously there are laws but and patterns of how we experience reality and so on but should we really even say that there is anything out there beyond what we perceive >> I think I think so my view is yes as I say it's nothing like what we perceive And we may ultimately not be able to say much about it but there is consistency in my experience. I mean I come back tomorrow that tree is still there. That whatever whatever is giving rise to this experience whatever it is whatever is sending out so-called photons to my eye is still there. So for me, I assume there is there is a world quote out there, but it's nothing like my experience and I may never be able to fully know its essence except if its essence is what we call consciousness or subjectivity. We don't even have the right words for it.

Then I I know its essence because I know that in myself. So in when I come down to you know in meditation in silence I am knowing the essence I've said the essence of all you know all all all people of all beings I am also then knowing the knowing the essence of what is there but I don't but that essence is then just as the mind is an activity what we experience is an activity of that essence so what what is out there is an activity of that essence And that information is is about differences. I mean information is this little point is different from this little point in some way or another. And that and then that that is all that is all interacting. And you could say what science is measuring is how whatever is out there interacts with itself.

But it has nothing to say about what the essence actually is. Mhm. >> Is that making sense? >> I know it's going to make sense to the listeners. >> Well, I'm I'm I'm trying to make a mental construct of it, which again might just be an >> It's all we can do. It's all we can do.

>> Yes. which is I suppose the funny thing of this last uh few minutes of our discussion because we have been using stacking different models and concepts on top of one another in order to show how the world at least the world we experience is made up of concepts and this reminded me again of Krishna Mort's instructions who says that quietness of the mind comes upon final no realization that thought cannot uh cannot work with anything other than thought. That thought is locked in its own cycle of only changing forms but only different forms of thought. And again, this takes me to that switching just to a different mode of experiencing the world because it does seem that at some point intellectually we do hit rock bottom in terms of we do hit a limit where the mind just cannot operate with anything. >> It it bites it its own tail.

And so meditation I suppose with all the different meanings that people give it is a form of thinking beneath even again words are very misleading here but it does open a different >> dimension of mind. Yeah, >> I think we're coming back to where we started, you know, we started with TM, you know, it's transcending thought. You're, you know, the mind is still there. The first stage is transcending thought, letting go of thought, letting being beyond the thinking process and noticing how it is to be without thought. And it's like, oh, actually, this is much nicer.

with thought. There's worries, there's concerns, there's excitements, there's this and that. When you're without thought, it's like, wow, this is nice. That to me is often the experience like to realize how much tension and stress I create with thinking. So that's the first step is is to go beyond thought.

So I would say Krishna Merti, I yeah, I would agree with that. So, and that's why you know most meditation techniques are about doing that in one way or another. But I think you know what we're saying at the beginning. I don't believe you do that by trying to control thought or trying to stop thought. You need to find ways to allow the thoughts to settle down.

>> You introduced transcendental meditation and its basic principles, but you are a meditation teacher yourself. In fact, your next book is on how to meditate without even trying, which is a really >> it sounds really really nice. So, could you lay out the main principles I suppose or the approach you take in meditation and in the way you teach meditation? >> Yes. I mean, it's sort of come from you know years of TM teaching TM but also mindfulness vapa practices and other things. It's the essence is about allowing the mind to relax.

Allowing the mind to relax and letting go of any focusing of the attention. Allowing the mind to relax is in essence allowing the attention itself to relax. So to start off with just being present to your experience as one might do in vipasa mindfulness practices just being present to this moment right now and then in that allowing the attention to come back from the experience itself and just letting it relax, letting the attention soften. And as you do that, you begin to sink back into yourself. I think mindfulness, as it's usually taught, stays at the level of being aware of your current experience.

What I'm interested in more, what I try to get, well, get people to do, but what I encourage is letting the attention step back from that and noticing any ways in which some little uh mental tension can creep in. And when it does, not trying to get rid of it, noticing it. And as you notice it, that begins to soften and begins to dissolve. So it's all about progressive levels of relaxing the mind and and then as you as the mind quietens down beginning what you know we were talking about before just noticing there's this here I am there's this there's this experience and then And then just being with that if being with that sitting in that quiet state it's not about trying to reach or trying to reach is wrong not about we've got to get into this pure state of consciousness that happens but it's more I'm interested in how how can we really allow the mind to relax to become more still if you like I'm not worried about you know being completely still or having experiences of no self. It's more just by doing that, by letting the mind become still.

It is so refreshing. So refreshing and takes out so much of the tension that we build up. As I just said, you know, it's like when you're without thought, it's like, oh, isn't this lovely? Isn't it? I just realize how my thinking is keeping me so caught up in my head. It's like no just to be just to let go of thinking and enjoying how it is not to be thinking is where I want to lead people and then that that naturally goes into deeper levels. So in a sense it is uh allowing letting the mind itself do the heavy lifting not trying to yourself quiet or discipline or concentrate.

>> Right. Yeah. Yes. And also as part of it is um I mean I see the whole thing as letting go. For me it's about letting go but I reframe letting go as letting in and letting be.

Many people have said it's about letting be which is part of it but it's also you got to allow in the experience. So if in meditation you're caught up in some emotion as we often do, you suddenly, you know, you you suddenly remember how upset you were about what somebody did yesterday. Instead of just trying to get rid of it and stop the thought, you can't do that. It's there. I encourage in meditation to actually notice, okay, you're feeling upset.

Feelings always have a feeling in the body. So notice what's happening in the body. Notice where there's any tension. Notice any impulse in the body. Let that come into your awareness.

That is part of the present moment. It is not part of the present moment you want to get rid of, but open your attention to it. Allow it to be there. The feelings, whatever it is, allow them in. And what you find is when you stop resisting them and allow them in, they begin to dissolve.

So it's about that's part of the practice is when you notice something that you think is getting in the way of meditation, open to it, open to the experience and time and again you'll find as you do that it no longer bothers you. I often say an emotion is call for it's it's a call for attention and what we tend to do is take our attention away because we don't want you know an unpleasant experience. No, do the opposite. Give it your attention. Give it what it wants and then it'll stop bothering you.

So things like that I include in the practice. >> Yeah, this is actually uh sounds really important practically for me because I found from personal experiences that some of the periods in my life where I would most use a good meditation are some of the periods when I I I meditate the least. Sometimes in in in experiences of extreme uh negative emotion, it is very difficult for me to meditate. The the the whole thing there's a barrier to it. >> So what is what sort of guidance would you give to for for how we can approach meditation during extreme negative emotions? >> Yeah.

Yeah. Open to them. Open to the negative emotion. I mean there's two aspects to an emotion. There's the story you are telling yourself.

You know that person did something stupid. They shouldn't have done that or whatever it was there and that's the thought the mental story you know we can step out of that story sometimes by forgiveness things like that mental exercises but the emotion starts it it comes out of the body. An emotion is the body ultimately is preparing to act in some way to hit somebody to run away or something that is the residue in the body. So go to the body always go to the body notice and this becomes part of the meditation. You're not trying to meditate.

You're not trying to steal the mind but part of the practice is opening up to your present experience in the body. So you know whereas you might sit down you know an easy meditation you open up ah there's the sound of the wind there's the sound of the birds there's my sound of there's a feeling of the breath normal everyday experience now you've got a different present experience you're all wound up and tight and want to hit the person that is your experience in the present moment be mindful of that so open to that what's it feel like when I want to hit this person what's going on in the body so make that include That is this is where your present moment. This is what is happening in your present moment and allow it in. Open to it. Feel it.

It's contrary to what we tend to do because we think oh that's just going to make matters worse. But my experience is by opening to it accepting this is my present moment rather than trying think oh I can't meditate because I'm so angry and wound up. No, you can meditate, but now the the actual object of your meditation, if you like, is where your awareness goes. It's different. It's an uncomfortable experience rather than the sweet singing of the bird.

>> This interaction between, let's say, mindfulness practice and actual psychological work. Um, reminds me of a question I received from a member of our audience. consciousness being already complete uh now presently already outside of time and ourselves already having access to it no less than the great sages of the world. How do you see this working together with the whole idea of self-improvement? You know, one consists of sinking beneath the self, the other of building a a good self, a nice self, a productive self. So, how do you see the two working together or not? >> Oh, yes.

So, we come to the end. >> Um, so, and this is a common question that comes up, you know, if we are if we are just pure consciousness and perfect as it is, how come, you know, we're such a mess? How come? It's because we get caught up in, let's just say, a general sense of the term ego. Ego is selfcentered thinking in one way or another. It's about how do I survive, what's safe, how do I look, whatever. But it's about thinking about me, how I am in the world, that my interaction with the world.

And so much of our culture reinforces that. almost everything in the media keeps us coming back to me. How do I look? What's going on? What do I think? What's important? How how am I going to make more money? Whatever it is, so that underlying level gets overshadowed. We don't notice it. You know, people talk about, you know, we are love.

Yes, I believe that our true nature is love. But the ego doesn't know love. The ego is self-interested. It doesn't know love. So we are caught in ways of thinking that completely shroud our true nature and we interact with the world in a whole different sense of values of what's important.

And so our inner being doesn't doesn't get a chance to really shine through into the world until this is why meditation is important. we begin to reduce that level of egoic thinking and as we do we can begin to get in touch with these deeper qualities but for most of us we are so caught up in these personal thoughts worries whatever it is what am I doing what's somebody think of me all the and one thought sets off another thought and then we hear something or we watch a movie something else we spend most of our time disconnected from that it's there not even disconnected it's there, but we don't notice it. It that's why I like the term it's shadowed. It's shadowed by what is shaded by what is going on. I mean, an analogy I often like is because I live in San Francisco.

I live outside San Francisco. You know, as people know, San Francisco is often foggy in the summer because of the ocean and things. You drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and you come into sunshine. It's like you're living in the city. You just think, "This is it.

It's fog. I can't see very far. And yet you go over the bridge and the sun the sunshine was there all the time. You just didn't see it because of the fog. So it's like our minds are fogged up the whole time.

It's like we're living in San Francisco under the fog as opposed to north of the city in the sunshine. So it's that all that our whole culture our whole culture wants to keep our minds fogged up with what it thinks is important. >> Yes. and it seems to be working harder and harder at it. >> Yes.

Yes. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um Peter uh you've uh given me a lot of your time and so I would end only with one more question which is again from a member of the audience and it is a simple and direct question but uh nonetheless very important I think which is that well your experience through life and also your work as well has taken you through a lot you've seen a lot you've done a lot and you've thought about a lot. Um, considering all of this journey, if you take an ego's eye view of life as you've seen it, what sticks out as being truly important? What would you advise um a viewer, a listener currently to really consider? What aspects of life have uh have you seen as being truly important over time that we should pay attention to? >> Um yes I think it's one word kindness kindness.

I mean I think it was Huxley said he'd sum up his whole life by saying you know be kind. And it's important I mean it's almost the golden rule of so many spiritual traditions. Treat others as you would like to be treated. And so much of the time, you know, we're we're seeing we're not being kind. Let's go back being kind.

We can be kind in terms of, you know, helping somebody in the street or whatever it is. We can be but it's being kind to their consciousness. And um I think what one of the a Buddhist teachers summed it up as you know one way of thinking of right speech if you cannot say something in such a way that the other person feels loved and valued and appreciated it's better to retain noble silence until you've worked out how to say it. And so kindness for me is always always having in mind how can I how can I love the being of this person? We all have that same inner being. How can I love the being of this person even though they're caught up in some weird thought or whatever.

How can how can I love them is like how can I have them feel loved in any communication. That to me is the essence of kindness. How can I have them feel loved and supported? Even if I've got something very difficult I need to say to them, how can I say that in such a way that they feel loved and appreciated. If everybody was kind to everybody else, the world would be a totally different place. Thank you very much, Peter, for your time and your patience in digging into some really well fascinating territory, but very difficult to to to talk about.

I think it was Terrence McKenna who once said that there is a dimension of life, of experience, of reality beyond words, but it's terribly difficult to talk about it. >> So, thank you for talking about it with me. I >> think that sums the whole thing up. Yes. >> Yeah.

Um, so where can our viewers and listeners learn more about you, read your work, watch your work, and in general follow your work? >> The easiest place is my website. It's full of things, which is just peter russell.com with two hours on Russell, not the French way. So Peter Russell with two hours on Russell. And there's videos. There's pages about different 400 different pages of stuff I've done, videos, essays.

Some of my books are there. And as you mentioned, my bot, Peterbot, is I've loaded everything I've said or written over my lifetime into a bot. And so you can ask it questions and I'm amazed at how good it is. It comes up with better answers than I do sometimes. >> Yeah.

>> Wow. >> And that that's on the website, but just go to the website and there everything's there. So, pet peter Russell.com. >> Thank you. I will put links in the description of this video to your website so that people can have a look at your work and thank you again.

It's been a pleasure and an honor to speak with you. I recommend people to read your book from science to God. It is the one that I read in preparation for this talk. Of course you have many other books as well but this one was beautifully written and fascinating to me. >> Um so thank you again.

Uh it was a pleasure Peter. >> Thank you. I really really enjoyed it. I mean like nearly nearly two hours but like >> long one but really enjoyed it. Time time went quickly although it was all in now.

>> Yes. Yes. Yeah. [Music] Keep on. [Music]