UC Santa Barbara

[MUSIC] So what we'll do just a few ground rules is that we're going to introduce everybody as we always do. And then if you have questions as many of you want to sure do, please raise your hand and I will moderate the discussion. So I'm Jonathan Schuller. I'm a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences here at UCSB with a long time interest in consciousness and various different aspects. Much of my research has involved studying mind wandering and creativity and also mindfulness, but I have a long standing interest in contemplative practices and Buddhism in particular. And this group has been going on now for Jack how many years? >> Can you hear me okay? >> Yeah. >> About 13, 12, 13 years. >> Yeah. >> 12 or 13 years with a primary focus on sort of originally instead of looking at the relationship between Buddhism and science. And then more recently we increasingly are renamed ourselves and focusing specifically on consciousness and non-dualini. Let's see, okay, Andrew. >> Welcome, Robert really looking forward to your presentation. I'm a 30 year student of principally Tibetan Buddhism, but also non-dual shiva tantra. With a really deep interest in the exploration of mind and reality through meditation, sleep and dream. >> Steven. >> Yeah, and Steven Harrison, record I've been in two of your retreats. I've been saying Jose, long long ago. >> I thought you looked familiar. >> Yeah. >> I'm an intense meditator and I'm retired psychiatrist and I do just do my spiritual life. That's all I do anymore. So you've been inspiring to me. >> Andrew. >> Hi, this is my first time at one of these meetings. I was brought in by Nikki Johnson who was sort of, I'm expecting to see you here, but I'm here. >> I'm here, I'm here. >> Oh, you're here, hi. I'm an organic chemist by training. I have a PhD in organic chemistry. I've done about 12 years in the pharmaceutical industry, studying neurogeneralative diseases. And during that time, I got very deeply involved in studies of consciousness and Taoism and Chinese medicine. And I'm principally interested in integration of Western science into the understandings of Eastern medical models, specifically by a consciousness and embodiment. James. >> Hi, I'm James Elliott. I'm a researcher at UCSB with Jonathan Schuhler and I also teach up at Cal Poly. And I'm really interested in developing ways to use artificial intelligence to identify different brain states during meditation and using these shifts in brain states as a way of kind of mapping the phenomenological space of meditation and spiritual experiences. So a lot of EEG and other sorts of physiological signals. >> We can't hear your muted. >> Sorry, did you say my name, Jonathan? >> Yes. >> Oh, awesome, sorry about that. I am a second year grad student with- >> Oh, actually, I said a vidia. >> Oh my God, sorry. >> Go ahead. >> Okay, I'm unmuted now, thank you. Here is a guest. This is my second time with the group. I assisted in bringing Swami Sarva Priyananda through being friends with longtime friends with James Elliott and Jack Loomis. I am a fine artist professionally and have also been a nun of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society for over 12 years. And then after that entered regular ordinary daily life and became very seriously interested in Tibetan Buddhism and have been leading and facilitating Tarling Santa Barbara for the past 12 years. And so I'm deeply interested in the relationships of art, of evative adhanta and the non-dualistic understanding in Tibetan Buddhism. So I'm looking forward to today. Thank you. >> Barry. >> During power in information technology have been attending the cons meetings for several years now through another friendship with James Elliott and ML long time practitioner. Jack. >> Hi, Rupert. I'm a retired professor of psychological brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara. My research areas were vision, touch, hearing, spatial cognition, virtuality and phenomenology of perception. I've been a long time Buddhist practitioner and in maybe the last six or seven years I've been following your teachings and it's really the light to be here in person with you. So I'm so glad you came. Randy. >> I mind Randy. Sunday I've been a Buddhist practitioner for a while and what I'm discovering is that I'm really fascinated in how quantum mechanics seems to be maybe some sort of physical or physiological experience that consciousness is related to that in some way. And I got this mostly from reading Roger Pinro's, the British physicist mathematician. And just the linkage between quantum world and the consciousness is like you said, very fascinating and I'm really interested to see what you have to say about consciousness. >> Alvin. >> Yes, hello. Delightful to be here. My name is Alan Macy. I'm the research and development director at biomedical engineering company called Biopax Systems. I'm also affiliated with Jonathan Schuhler's Medal lab at UCSB. >> Alan Weiss. >> Oh. >> Hi everybody. >> Okay. >> Yeah, my name is Alan obviously. Same as Alan Macy. I'm a senior teacher in SIDLA in Los Angeles. I was trained in spirit rock and I'm also the director now of Mindfully USC. But I'm very interested in this topic because I've been practicing the Johnist for the last seven years that I've gone on retreat. And just very much interested in emptiness and the hardest, those the most difficult things that the Buddha talked about. But I'm really looking forward to it. >> Robert. >> Yeah, I'm the physics person and since I've been a child, I've been interested in the nature of the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of reality. And I'm one of the original members of this group. And Jack Luma's turn me on to your, wait, did we? Who's a grouper? >> Very good. He's here. You're here. >> Very good. >> Everything just rearranged. Sorry. >> Oh, there you are. Sorry. Anyway, turn me on to your cosmology and I was particularly fascinated by this chapter called Consciousness's Dream where you make this metaphor of dreams. I have to say that in all of my life of looking at these questions, that chapter probably was probably the only really meaningful insight for me. So I'm really honored to meet you. I also sent your assistant a list of two dozen questions. Did you have a chance to see those? >> Yeah, Ruth sent me a list of questions, yes. >> Yes. Yeah, I mean, the thing is that your insight is brilliant, but as a physics person, it also raises just an enormous number of questions. I hope we can get to at least one or two of the two dozen. Speaking of physics, Bernard. >> Thank you, yes. I'm Bernard Carr. I'm a cosmologist from Queen Mary University of London, but I'm also very much interested in psychical research and Buddhism. And I guess my overall aim is to extend physics to accommodate consciousness and mental and spiritual phenomena. And I feel one needs a paradigm which actually goes beyond just quantum theory. It has to be deeper than that. That's why I'm particularly interested to hear what Robert has to say tonight. >> Thank you. Joseph. >> Hi, I was muted, sorry. I'm Joseph Parent. I was introduced to the group by Randy Sunday. We've been fellow practitioners in Tibetan Buddhist tradition for Randy. I think it's 50 years now. I have a PhD in psychology and teach. I am a coach for sports and for business using the insights of mindfulness and awareness for this purpose. But I also have been involved in the Tibetan tradition of debate for sharpening something called progeny or penetrating insight. And so I find the working with this group very interesting for slicing and dicing you might say in that way. And I met Robert also at Andrew Hollagic, who's here as well dream yoga program. So a number of different connections is great to be here. >> Nikki. Hi, I'm Nikki Johnson. I spent the first half of my life as a marketer, but in 2007 I had this profound spiritual awakening punctuated by a ton of synchronicities. And so started reading a ton of philosophy and psychology and comparative religious studies and spirituality and science trying to figure out what is going on with my life right now. And yeah, in the course of that, just learn there's so much more to the structure of reality and the inner workings of the human brain and how we inner tie those two things actually are. So currently my primary interest is a search for the neural correlates of transpersonal psychology. So what are the specific changes that take place in the brain, spinal cord and body to trigger the subjective experience of enlightenment or self-realization. So it's really cool. For a while I participated in a study group in New York, centered around your work. So Rupert, thank you so much for joining us. Laura. Hi, I'm Laura, rescue and I'm a not retired psychiatrist at this point and been studying and practicing basically mostly Tibetan Buddhism for the last 10 to 15 years. And my my interest is in how to decrease suffering in my patients and myself and others that I interact with. And so that's I sort of have a more practical desire to learn how to how to awaken myself and how to help others with that. Thank you. Luis. Hello, everyone. My name is Luis and I'm currently a PhD candidate in experimental psychology and I'm interested in mindfulness meditation and mindfulness straight and the relationship to certain cognitive processes, such as attention or mind wandering. But beyond that, I'm also interested in general on contemplative research and also in contemplative practice or experience. And that's why I'm happy to be here and look forward to your talk, Rupert. Carmen. Hi, everyone. My name is Carmen Callita. I'm also a PhD candidate in Spain. I'm a philosopher doing a PhD on psychology. Right now at the University of California, Santa Barbara with Professor Anteves, I studied in a house on reduced experiences affect temporal stroke and I am so so happy to be here with all of you. Anishia. Hi, everyone. I'm sorry about that earlier, Jonathan. So I'm Anishia. I'm a second year grad student with Jonathan and I am primarily working on the think allowed protocol and studying how we can study the spontaneous stream of thoughts using think allowed protocol and whether it differs from the silent mind wandering procedure. So yeah, very happy to be here. Josh. Hi, everyone. I'm Josh. I'm a research affiliate in the medallab at UC Santa Barbara with Jonathan and soon to be first year graduate student working with Jonathan. So happy to be here. Ben. Hi, I'm Ben Beard. I am a research professor at University of Texas Austin. And let's see. I was graduate student with Jonathan at a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCSB and then went on to University of Wisconsin Madison where I worked with Julio Tanoone on consciousness and sleep. I've had a long standing interest in lucid dreaming that's been a major focus of my work for the past seven years. But it's broadly I'm interested in consciousness, nature of reality, how consciousness fits into the structure of reality. So many of the broad questions of interest here and also particularly in self awareness, but many, many topics kind of around the nature of consciousness. John. Hi, I'm John. I am a poopy plantake batter. So, so this is that. And unfortunately Teflon to any profound shattering religious experience. But I do live down the street from your teacher, I believe, where he was living. John Klein and Santa Barbara. And I think I'm about 100 yards away from her. So I'd appreciate both. I believe this secretary is still living there. If you would be able to communicate with me and give me a drill so I just stop by and visit them. Thanks. Elena. Hi, I'm Juliana Rooneva, AME historian of science and professor in history department here at UCSB. But I'm recently in this group. What brought me here is my interest in history and philosophy of science, especially history of the roads not taken in the past sciences and philosophy. And also my lifelong practice of yoga and experiences with meditation. So I'm looking forward to the token to the discussion. Thank you. Bianca. Bianca, you're muted. Hi, everybody. My name is Bianca Savado. I work with Nancy Collins and I'm very interested in your topic and I think Robert for sending your chapter. I'm very, very enjoyable and reminded me of why I care about science and the questions that are really important to me. I started my work. My dissertation was on the neural basis of long term romantic love and I think it aligns well with your chapter because it touches on how something that's infinite can be combined. And since then I've gone on to study other topics on the neural basis of attachment and sensory processing sensitivity, a trait where individuals have a heightened sense of awareness of the environment and others. And I've also done some research on the neural correlates of different meditative or mind body practices like can you lean yoga or other various practices and now I'm getting into more applied things like looking at cognitive training for individuals. Did I miss anybody? I'm going to go. Hi, I'm Amanda Gregory. Jonathan's fiance. My background is an opera singer. I just sound design where I work with theories of consciousness such as vibrational resonance which in my experience of a possible when I had a Bunga experience where I felt a part of my body vibrating. And I was really intrigued by the aspect of being a vibrational being that's interconnected with the environment of the vibrational universe. And then interested in the relationships of the environment and also the nest of observer window theory that Jonathan's been working on to kind of show the relationship between different levels of consciousness. And basically just interested in evolutionary biology and the evolution of human perception and designing sound experiences that can explore perception, visual perception and extended suits of consciousness. And I'm very grateful to be here. Is there anyone else? We missed. I don't think so. Okay. So I invited Jack Lumus to introduce Rupert and then Rupert you can take it away. You're welcome to begin with a short presentation if you'd like. But we're all familiar with your stuff so we're all happy to jump into questions, whatever you prefer. Jack, do you want to go ahead and do the introduction? Sure. It's a really great pleasure to introduce Rupert today. And I have a short bio that I'm going to read. From an early age, Rupert has been deeply interested in that nature of reality. At the age of 17, he learned to meditate and began studying and practicing the teachings of the classical invite to Medanta tradition. During this time, he immersed himself in a variety of non-dual teachings and telling Medis teacher Francis Lucille in 1997. Francis introduced Rupert to the direct path teachings of Hathmanada, Krishna and Minha and to John Klein and the Tentic tradition of Tajmire Shivism. Rupert lives in the UK. Earlier on, he made his living as a career, a ceramic artist and received a claim for his work. Now he devotes his time as a teacher of non-duality and halls regular meetings and retreats in the US and Europe. In this meeting, he explores the perennial non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as the invite of Adanta, Kajmire, Shivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, Sufism and Zen. It is a contemporary, experiential approach involving the silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation. And it requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is needed is an interest in the essential nature of the experience and the longing for a lot of peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve. So thank you for coming here, Rupert. Thank you, Jonathan and all of you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with such a wonderful group of people exploring these matters. Did I understand you correctly, Jonathan, that you've all read one chapter from the book, The Nature of Consciousness. Consciousness is dream. I think different people have read different pieces, so I don't think you necessarily assume everyone's read the exact same thing, but everyone is broadly familiar with your, have familiarized themselves with your thinking through one of a number of different sorts. Okay. I think if that's the case, unless you would like me just to broadly go over the consciousness only model in relation to consciousness is dream. I'd be happy to go over that if you would like my view of the nature of reality. If you're all familiar with that, I'm happy to start straight away with questions. Rupert, I might just say that one of the things that we sent up for our reading was a transcript of your meditation on the knowing field of awareness, which I think lays out you'd be very well, but of course I don't know if people probably looked at different things and read different things. I'm going to make an example. Let's just do just like five, if you could just do like a five minute sort of recap of your what you feel are sort of the key points. I think that would be helpful. Yes. Okay. So the model that I use is the model of a dream. It's a regular dream that we have at night. And this is a, to my mind, the best model there is to give us a model of the nature of reality. When we fall asleep at night, our own individual mind imagines a dreamed world within itself, of course we don't realise that we are dreaming. And it simultaneously localises itself as an apparently separate subject of experience within its own dream. From whose perspective it views its own activity as an outside world, the dreamed world. So a single individual mind, which is an indivisible field of consciousness, albeit a limited one imagines the world within itself forgets or overlooks the fact that it is doing so. And in order to perceive that world, it has to localise itself in that world as a point of view from whose perspective its own activity appears as an outside world. So we have these two different perspectives, the perspective of the dreamer from whose point of view, that the entire dream world, including the, of course, the separate viewer of that world in the dream, are all a manifestation of its own indivisible mind. And then we have the point of view of the dreamed character, the character that we seem to become in our own dream, for whom reality is divided into two aspects, mind on the inside, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and matter on the outside, objects and people. So I would suggest that this gives us an accurate analogy of the nature of reality. All that we need to do is transpose this model, so to speak, one level up and consider reality, the dream, although I don't really like to use the word dream, I sometimes do poetically, but I tend to use the word the activity of consciousness. I would suggest that the reality is a single, infinite, indivisible consciousness. And its activity appears as the universe. So like the individual mind, when it's having a dream, it imagines the dreamed world within itself and simultaneously localizes itself as an apparently separate subject of experience, so infinite consciousness imagines the universe within itself and simultaneously localizes itself not as a single point of view as does our mind during a dream, but as numerous points of view within its own imagination. And we are, each of us is one such point of view. So we are seemingly separate subjects of experience that look out on what appears to be from our limited perspective, a physical world. When we look inside, we experience mind, thoughts and feelings. When we look outside, we see what seems to be a physical world. But in reality, I would suggest that this was exactly the same as happens in a night dream, in reality from the point of view of infinite consciousness. The entire universe, including all the perspectives from which that universe is perceived, is its own activity, made only of itself. And as there is nothing, there is nothing to reality apart from consciousness. There is nothing in consciousness which could divide it up into separate parts. In just the same way that none of the people or the objects that appear in our dream really divides our mind into separate parts. It's all the activity of a single mind. So I would suggest that reality is the activity of a single, indivisible consciousness. And it only appears to be a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves from each of our localized points of view. In other words, in the ultimate analysis, there are no things. There are no individual selves or beings. There's one infinite reality which only appears as a multiplicity and diversity of things when it is refracted through the perceiving apparatus of a localized subject. So I think with perhaps with that as a brief model that I will keep referring to, we could start the conversation. Thank you. I should say, sorry, John, perhaps one thing and I hope this is not going to be a disappointment to, I'm not a scientist. So there are lots of you that are scientists. So I will be very cautious about making scientific statements because I'm not qualified to do so. So with that as a bit of a disclaimer, let's start our conversation. Thank you. It's a lovely metaphor and very helpful. Let me get the ball rolling with sort of a two-part question. The first is that the one pretty straightforward discrepancy between the dream metaphor and the sort of the standard way that we think about reality is that in the dream, there's only one perspective. So there may be other characters in my dream, but the assumption is that there are sort of figments of a certain sort. There's nothing it's like to be the other individuals in the dream as I personally experience it, or at least that's the premise that I hold. So really the first question is how do you reconcile that fundamental sort of difference between the experience of a single dream versus this more universal dream? And then let me just do the second part because you may want to fit that in. And then the second part is what in this universe is privileged to have that sort of gods or that non dual perspective. Is it just us? Is it animals? Is it do you think that plants just go all the way down to cells? What gets to have this kind of perspective? Yes. Okay. Jonathan, in response to your first question, I would suggest it's just the limits of the metaphor. The metaphor, I don't mean to imply it's an exact mapping of the dream analogy onto consciousness. There is a, the metaphor had a limit in its explanatory power. And this is one of the limits when we have a dream at night. Our own mind localizes itself as a single point of view, whereas consciousness limits itself as numerous points of view. So there's no correlate between those two. It's just a limit of the metaphor. As regards what is it that has this privilege in the universe? What is it that has this non dual experience? This is an important point to make early on in our conversation that only consciousness is conscious. Only consciousness has experience. And consciousness is not a quality I would suggest, is not a quality that a human being has and that dogs and cats have and that plants may have and that rocks don't have. I would suggest that in other consciousness is not a property of certain people or objects. Only consciousness is conscious. It's not a human being that is conscious. It's not a human being that has a non dual experience. Only consciousness is conscious and only consciousness has experience. So in answer to your question, what is it that has the non dual experience? Consciousness. What is it that seems not to have the non dual experience? In other words, what is it that seems to experience in a dualistic way, in a subject object, mind, matter way? The apparently separate subject of experience that each of us seems to be. So when we have the so-called non dual recognition, it is not we as a person who have that experience. It is we consciousness that is having that experience. So could a dog have a non dual experience or maybe it's existing in a non dual experience? A dog doesn't have experience. A dog is experienced. A human being doesn't have experience. A human being is a bundle of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions that are experienced. Human beings don't have experience. They are experienced. It is not we now human beings that are having this experience. It is we consciousness that is having this experience through the faculties of a human mind. But it is the infinite consciousness that is having our current experience. Why does the world appear limited to us? Because we see it through our limited faculties of perception. Just the final thing, and then I'll turn it over to other people. So before, let's just, in this speculation, but imagine before life evolved on Earth, was consciousness happening in that realm? Yes, yes. All there was to the universe prior to the existence of life was consciousness's activity. But consciousness had not yet localized itself within itself as an apparently separate subject of experience. So there was no perception of that universe. So I'm not suggesting. This is very important. Not suggesting that all there is to the universe is the content of each of our finite minds. No. I'm suggesting that the universe exists independent of and prior to our finite mind. And as the activity of consciousness, it only appears as the universe that we know when it is perceived through a finite mind. Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Robert. Thank you. I wear another hat, which is I'm an activist on social environmental issues. And so one of the questions, of course, is how much does this world matter? Another thing is does having this awareness give us any superpowers to change things or to understand like the laws of physics or something. And then another thing is that you talk about having a perspective. We have sense organs and it seems like the perspective we have is tied to those particular sense organs. My dream characters don't have functioning sense organs. The perspective of the dream characters is my perspective with my sensory abilities. I mean, does any of the machinery of the universe, its atoms, whatever, do they do anything or are they all just appearances? Sorry. Okay. Throwing a bunch of you at once, but I hope you can. Okay. Don't give me too many questions at once, Robert. I'm going to start with your first question. Sure. Does, based on your work as an activist, does the world matter? Does it matter what's going on in the environment? Does it matter what's going on in Ukraine? If ultimately everything is simply an appearance of an ever-present consciousness, which is never itself affected by any of the forms that it temporarily assumes. Yes, I would say it does matter. And this is why I'm reluctant to, I don't very often use the word dream, because we normally think of our dreams as, we normally think of the world that we dream of as unreal. The Caribbean beach that we dreamt of last night was just a figment of our imagination. It was unreal. Now, I'm not suggesting that the world is unreal. The world I would suggest is very real. The question is, what is its reality? What is it about the world, about the universe that makes it undeniably real? I've never met anyone who could honestly claim that they felt that the world was unreal. So the world may be an illusion, but an illusion is not something that is not real. An illusion is something that is real, but is not what it appears to be. The landscape we see in a movie is obviously an illusion. There's no real landscape there. Nevertheless, the illusionary landscape does have a reality to it, namely the TV screen, relatively speaking, the screen is the reality of the movie. So I would suggest that the universe is absolutely real. I would suggest its reality is pure consciousness, not something called matter. And because the world is real, yes, we feel that it matters what we do in the world, because it's real. It's not a dream, it's not insubstantial, it's true, it's not made of matter, but it is absolutely real. And therefore, what we do in the world does matter. Okay, so thank you. Do we have any ability when we have this realization? Does it give us any superpowers? So we have this realization, we become lucid in a lucid dream. It doesn't give us superpowers. It gives us two things. One in relation to our inner life and one in relation to our external life, our activities and relationships. In relation to our internal life, it gives us peace and happiness. And in relation to our external life, it gives harmony. The cessation or the diminishing of conflict, why? Because we recognize that beneath the appearance of multiplicity and diversity, we are all the same reality, the same being. What appears to be other is only other from the localized perspective of a separate subject of experience. But in reality, the otherness is simply the way things appear to us. The way things really are is that everything is the appearance of a single infinite and indivisible reality. And if you look at all the conflicts that take place, the conflicts that take place in our life between individuals, between families, between communities, between nations, all these conflicts are based, can be traced back to a simple and single principle, namely that the other, the one with whom we are in conflict, conflict is other than ourself. So what is taking place in Ukraine now? Be happening. If all the people involved felt that everyone was their own being. No, there's no way it would be taking place. It's taking place precisely because we feel that separation is real. So this understanding, it doesn't give us superpowers. It gives us peace on the inside and harmony or love on the outside. Okay. I'll repeat my third question. Actually Robert, let me. Let me. Let me speak. Wait, wait, wait. I had the third question was already, I put out there, which was, does any of the mechanism of the universe matter? Like do our brains do anything or is it all just appearances? The atoms do many things. They do something, but I would suggest that ultimately our brains are not made of atoms. Our brains are made out of the stuff that the universe is made out of, which is consciousness. They only appear to be made out of atoms when viewed from the localized perspective of a separate subject of experience. So I would say that our brains were the localization of the activity of consciousness. And yes, that localization does do something, but it's not atoms that are doing it. It's the activity of consciousness. The whole universe I would suggest is the activity of consciousness. The universe is what the activity of consciousness looks like from a localized perspective. Okay, I'm going to call it there and we can circle back to you for another round there, Robert, if you'd like. Bernard. Rupert, thank you so much. I resonate with so many of your ideas, but there are two points which I'd like to make and get your reaction to. The first is, I completely agree with the idea that the universe is the diversity of all the different points of view. And that in some sense, that is what reality is. It's reconciling all the different points of view. But I still think there's a fundamental problem, which at least you didn't address in what you said this evening. And that is, you may have this sort of one mind which fragments into these individual minds. But the question that intrigues me is, why am I me and your Rupert? What is the basis of our separate identities and others? How does this fragmentation of identity occur? And I can't see how, what you said, answers that question. And it's curly, some do with the nature of time and the passage of time and things like that. But I'll be very interested if you have any other comment about that. And the second question is this. I like the idea that everything is a dream in the dream of the universal mind or whatever. But one thing I've noticed and become rather interested in recently is that it doesn't just seem to be a dream. It almost seems to be a hierarchy of dreams, by which I mean the following. I mean, I often have the experience I'm dreaming and I have a lot of lucid dreams. And then I wake up and I'm in an environment and I remember the details of the environment and where I am and the people were there and things like that. So I think I've woken up. But then I wake up again and I realize that actually I haven't fully woken up. It was a dream within a dream. And it's like that movie inception, you know, where you have dreams and dreams. And there's this idea almost a sort of hierarchy of identities and things like that. So that's my second question. How do you fit in hierarchy of dreams into your picture? Yes. Okay. Why are you and I different? Because by definition when consciousness localizes itself within itself as a separate subject of experience, it dissociates itself from the broad medium of consciousness. And that dissociation has a boundary around it. So the universal consciousness gives right to a finite mind. And that finite mind is bounded. It is a bounded field of infinite consciousness. That's our internal life. And it does this. I would suggest it can do it inumerable times. Unlike our own mind in a dream which only localizes itself as a single mind, a single point of view within its own dream. Consciousness has the facility to do this inumerable times. And so from each of our points of view, we are bounded by our point of view. For instance, I don't know what you're thinking. Because I can only see the universe from the inside this bounded field of mind that defines me as an apparently separate self. I agree we're bounded and that your boundedness is different from my boundedness. But the question is, why am I associated with one particular boundedness? And you're associated with what is the 'you'? What is the 'I'? Which is associated with one boundedness? Well, the 'I', the subjective experience of 'I' is consciousness's knowledge of itself. Everyone has a subjective experience of being myself. That our primary experience is the experience of being myself or the awareness of being. That is our first experience, the awareness of being. Now, I would suggest that that experience is not an experience that an individual mind has. Its consciousness is knowledge of itself. It is only when the awareness of being becomes mixed with the content of experience, that it seems to become limited. And that is why, in all the great spiritual traditions, the awareness of being is the portal through which the apparently finite mind passes out of its finite nature. And in a way, we pass out of time into eternity when we go through that portal at the back of the mind, so to speak. So our subjective experience of 'I' is not really limited. It's only limited because we imagine that it is because we associate it with thoughts feeling sensations and perceptions. It's this amalgam of the awareness of being plus objective experience that makes for the illusion of a separate individual identity. Somehow, I can understand the unlimited state better than the limited state even though I've never experienced that. But the limited state, the analogy I give sometimes, let's use another analogy. Take the analogy of physical space. There's one physical space in the universe. Now, imagine that there are many different buildings on the earth. But the space in each of those buildings is the same universal space. Now, imagine that we were to add the quality of awareness or consciousness to physical space. So imagine that the physical space of the universe was an aware or a conscious physical space. Now imagine we would prior to the arising of any planets or galaxies or stars in the universe. Imagine there was just this aware physical space. And we were to ask that space, tell us about yourself. And the aware physical space would, so to speak, sample itself, look at itself. And it would say, in my experience of myself, I am unlimited. There's nothing limited in me. The first thing you would say is, I am. The next thing it would say is, I'm unlimited and ever present. Now, fast forward several billion years, you've got numerous buildings on the earth. Now imagine that the space in your room in London now. Imagine you were to ask this, it's still an aware space. Imagine you were to ask the aware space. What is your experience of yourself? Space would look around the room and it would say, I'm limited, I'm small, I'm dark. And then you say to the space, no, you're not looking at yourself. You're looking at the four walls of the room. Take a sample of yourself. And the space would cease looking at the walls. It would look at itself and its experience of itself would be identical to its experience of itself before there were any, and it's all started. Now it's the same. If we, we, consciousness, look at our self. We don't look at the content of our experience. That's the four walls of our room. If we just go to the subjective experience of being, the consciousness of being, there's no limits there. It's ever present and unlimited. That is consciousness is knowledge of itself. And that recognition is the recognition that is referred to as enlightenment. The recognition of our essential, irreducible self before it is qualified or conditioned by experience. Yes, I can understand that point, not through experience, but from, you know, from intellectually. So thank you for that. I had a second question, but I'm afraid I might be taking too much time. So the time, the question about hierarchical dreams, Jonathan, you could decide whether I should, yeah, let's do the hierarchical dreams one. Inception. The hierarchical dream, as you say in the film Inception, you can have a dream at night and then you can fall asleep in your night dream and dream of a dream within a dream. So if we extrapolate in the other direction, I would suggest that this is, well, I've already suggested that we are like a dream of consciousness. So if we go back in the other direction, we go up one level to consciousness is dream, but I don't think we can go further than that because we can't go further up than unlimited consciousness. So I think you can only go, in theory at least, it's possible to go on indefinitely having dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams. But I think we can only go one level up. Once you go to the level of unlimited consciousness, you can't go further up because if you could go further up, unlimited consciousness would be limited. So you have to see. I mean, that's what I'm really asking. I'm really asking how many steps are there between our limited consciousness as human beings and the universal consciousness which is one step. One step. How many steps do you have to date from the space in your room to the space of the universe? In fact, it's not even a step because to suggest that it's a step is to suggest that our finite minds are finite and that they have to take a step to become infinite. Know that the essence of each of our finite minds is already infinite consciousness, seemingly located limited by the content of our experience. Just as the space in your room is already the space of the universe, seemingly limited by the four walls of your room. Okay, but I don't see it in principle why there shouldn't be a hierarchy of levels of consciousness rather than just one step. Well, because it's verifiable in our own experience, we can go in our own experience to the experience of unlimited consciousness. We can now have the experience that the essence of our mind is unlimited. We can take that step. That unlimited consciousness couldn't be a dream within another consciousness because if it was, it would have to be limited, but that's not our experience. I would suggest that. Well, Rupert, thank you very much. I'm taking too much time, but I'm very intrigued by you. Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much. Thank you. Andrew. Thank you, Jonathan. Rupert, really wonderful, rich stuff. And as a Tibetan Buddhist, it's amazing how many resonances there are between what you're sharing it in the teachings of Mahambudra and Zogshan. But with one, this is more a comment than a question. One may be semantic difference, but I think maybe not. The difference between the monism that you seem to profess with which Buddhism would challenge is not a monism, it's a non-ism. It's not a universe, it's a no-iverse. But if that's as some interest to you, maybe you can say something about that. But my interest is in exploring with you, if you want to go on this potentially prickly area, the psychological things that might be happening underneath this all. In other words, why is there so much resistance to this view? Sometimes almost intellectually violent resistance to non-duality, prerend, idealism. And to me, when I look at this, I'm curious how this lands with you, it seems on one level that if we define ego as an arrested form of development and ego as an exclusive identification with form, then what happens by immediate implication is that when we reify the sense of self-inhered or conversely, we reify seemingly objectivity something out there by immediate implication. I would argue this is the unconscious imperative. We're reifying the very sense of self-inhered. So by a process of what seems to me, you could call kind of a psychological echolocation, that by asserting something out there, we're unwittingly unconsciously reifying the sense of something in here. And so I'm wondering how this lands with you, that to me, it seems like on one level, the near lust for so-called objectivity could actually be driven by unconscious psychological processes. In other words, what happens when you can't press against something? There's no place for personal identity in what you're referring to. There's no place for ego here. Ego cannot attend its own funeral. And so I'm really interested because what you're professing is so resonant with my own experience, but there's so much resistance to this view. Why do you think that is? I think it's because, as you say, that the ego or the apparently separate self, we could define it as the identification of our essential nature, pure consciousness, with the content of experience or with form. So the ego or the separate self is an amalgam of the true and only consciousness plus the limits of experience. And the mixture of these two makes for a limited conscious entity. That's the ego. The analogy that I sometimes use is the actor John Smith who plays the part of King Lear. But King Lear is not really a person in his own right. He's King Lear plus a limit. He's John Smith mixed with King Lear's thoughts and feelings. And this amalgam of John Smith plus the thoughts and feelings makes for this imaginary character, King Lear. Now, from King Lear's point of view, although ultimately he's an illusion, he doesn't really exist as a separate character. The only person in King Lear is John Smith. John Smith represents infinite consciousness. King Lear represents the finite mind. The ego. The only from King Lear's point of view, if he were to explore the nature of his own mind, he would tracing his way back through the layers of his experience as one does in meditation, carding thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, memories and so on, going back and back, deeper and deeper into himself. At some point there would be the recognition, I am John Smith. In other words, King Lear would cease to exist. The moment the recognition, I am John Smith takes place. Now, King Lear experiences that, imagines that as his own death, he, King Lear thinks, if I take this pathway any further, I'm going to die. No, he's not going to die because he doesn't really exist as King Lear in the first place. All that's going to happen is he's going to lose an imaginary limitation and what he's always long for, all his life, what he's called peace, happiness, love, is going to be revealed as the essence of his own mind, but he doesn't know that, so he's terrified of the experience. Ironically, it's the only experience he really wants. Now, let me just, if you don't mind me mixing my metaphors, it's the traditional, another analogy to give a kind of more visceral sense of this, is the, is the moth and the flame, all the moth wants. When it sees the flame at a distance, all the moth wants is the flame. And so it goes towards the flame. And that's fine until it's three inches away from the flame. Then it has this recognition. If I get what I want, I will die. And then it goes back again. But when it goes back again, it's miserable because it wants the, so it approaches the flame again. And it does this dance, loving the flame, afraid of the flame, loving the flame, afraid of the flame. Until at some stage, either through intuition or through the encouragement of a friend, he realizes to experience the flame, you have to lose your, you have to become the flame. So that, that's why I think there's so much resistance. Everybody is, is seek ultimately everyone seeking is seeking the loss of the sense of separation. But from the point of view of the individual that we seem to be, that is felt like death. We long for it and we fear it in equal measure. Yeah. This is brilliant, Robert. Let me just say something here in Seekless Life's With You as well. I've reflected on this a lot and it seems to me, this has just monumental implications for our relationship to death because to me, it seems that, that our fear of death is actually an inauthentic secondary fear. The real fear is that we're dead right now. And so what we do is we deny, we repress and project as far away as we possibly can. What could be farther away than death? So we take this deep, inarticulate intuition that we don't exist, we can't deal with it. So we throw it all the way to the end of life as far away as we possibly could totally unfair to death. And therefore fear was actually an inauthentic fear. The real fears were already dead. And so as I playfully say along these lines, stop rescheduling your appointment with reality, die now. Die now so that you remove all your fear at the end of life. The second the Christensen say, if you die before you die then when you die, you can't die. So this is fundamentally the fear of death is behind all this, right? Yes, yes, the fear of death is really that the fear that we will cease to exist. No, we won't cease to exist. We'll just lose ultimately an imaginary limitation. So what we will do is we lose in the dose. It's an illusion, yes, because in reality infinite consciousness is a single indivisible whole. And there's nothing in consciousness other than consciousness with which it could limit itself. It's like when I look at your bookshelves behind you, there are 300 books there. When I run my finger across my screen, there are no real divisions. Why? Because it's all one screen. There's nothing on my screen out of which a division could be made. The division is in the appearance. So how do you work with this? I mean, do you simply just act, we ask to the resistance and let it go? I mean, when you're level with these accusations, how can you actually work with what Daphne John talked about as the solid types? Those who just don't want to even go here. And the people that come to my meetings and my meetings are now, they're attended, at least my online meetings are attended by a lot of people. And they're all people who do want to go there. They're all people that yes, there may still be some resistance. But I'm not, the people that are really resistance are still out on the street seeking happiness in objective experience. So objective experience has not yet failed them sufficiently often to make them question that they're looking in the wrong place for what they really want. I'm dealing with a relatively small or as yet small segment of the population who have either intuited or realized that what they truly long for can only be found by exploring the nature of their own mind. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Robert. Really appreciate it. Thank you Andrew. Thank you for your questions. Okay. We may get a little bit of resistance in our next question, ask her here. Tam, if you could just briefly introduce yourself because you missed the introduction period and then ask your question. Yeah. Aloha from Hawaii, everybody. Great to meet you. Great to have you here. Hi, Tam. I'm here at Dialog here. I'm a scholar in Jonathan's lab at UCSB and have been for some time now. I developed a theory of consciousness called the general resonance theory of consciousness. I've got a background of philosophy and kind of transition into a working approach to a neuroscientifically grounded theory of consciousness, but based on a broad understanding of philosophy in various traditions. So a couple of questions for you. The first question is this notion of a ground of pure consciousness that is unimpacted by the world that emanates from it. Seems to definitely be quite different than our understanding of the world around us and ourselves where every causal reaction is a two-way street. Everything that impacts something is impacted by the interaction. It's always a two-way interaction. So why in this case would there be no impact upon pure consciousness from the universe that emanates from it? Okay, okay. So you are now aware of your experience, yes? Thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions. Can you describe to us or can you try to find words that would best describe the awareness with which you are aware of your experience? So don't tell us about what you are aware of, thoughts, images, feelings to sound in my voice and so on. How would you describe the awareness with which you are currently aware of your experience? It's obviously present and it's obviously aware. Ever changing? No, the contents, what you are aware of is ever changing. But do you not feel, for instance, that whatever it is that is aware of your experience now is the same awareness that was aware of your experience when you were having breakfast this morning? I view that as a kind of reification, I believe that the experience itself is an experience in itself. And that to posit a witness as something that exists beyond that that's always there isn't itself an influence, face and eye experience. But it is your experience that you are having your current experience and it was the same you that experienced breakfast this morning. There's a similarity to that aspect. In other words, there's a continuity to your identity. You don't feel I'm a different person now than I was this morning. Your thoughts are different, but there is a continuous element to your identity. There is a continuity, but a continuity in change. It's a process of change that has a continuity to it. Let me at least suggest this. I would suggest that the awareness with which you are aware of your current experience is the same awareness with which you were aware of your experience two minutes ago, two days ago, two years ago, and when you were a two year old boy. Now if you were now to turn your attention away from the content of your experience, if you were to so to speak, turn around and you were to take a snapshot, not of the content of your experience, but of the awareness with which you are aware of that content and you were to have done the same thing as a two year old boy. The content of your experience would be completely different, but the awareness with which you are aware of these two experiences would be identical. And that is the experiential proof that awareness is not modified by its content. Now, you cannot of course go back to being a two year old boy, but you could investigate the nature of your mind now and recognize the consciousness with which you are aware of your experience and you could do the same thing this evening and then you could compare these two samples of yourself. I would suggest you would find them identical. Irrespective of what takes place in your experience between these two samples. In other words, the experience of being aware is always the same experience. The awareness of being is always the same experience. It never undergoes any change. So I understand your experiential response, but I guess I'm asking more about the logical and physical difference and why there would be a difference between this particular relationship when everything around us does not follow that relationship. I'm not sure that I've understood your question, Tom. So I'll clarify where they metaphor from some traditions in terms of the mirror that one stares at reflects back a changing world and a changing self, but the mirror itself is conceived in this thought experiment as being unchanging. But the mirror itself and the real world is in fact always changing. It's always degrading slowly with each second. So in the same manner with that mirror appearing to not change, it would seem that this unaligned pure consciousness is also changing. Not in a way of degradation, but of just changing because it is emanating this universe around us and not going to have possible change in response to that universe. Because the analogy is a poor analogy or all analogies, when I say poor analogy, it's not an accurate analogy because the mirror is something that you are observing. It's something that has objective features and I would agree with you. Anything that has an objective, any objective content is by definition changing. But the experience of being aware or the awareness of being whilst an undeniable fact of experience, it's the only element of experience that has no objective content at all. And therefore there's nothing in it to change. Maybe something that objective can change. The experience of simply being, it has no objective features. There's nothing in it that could change. If we were to, if someone was to take a sample of the experience of being now and we were to have it compared it with a sample of the awareness of being 5,000 years ago, the two experiences would be identical. There's nothing in being, I'm using the word being and consciousness synonymously here. There's nothing, it changes only possible in the objective content of experience. So the mirror analogy, it's a poor analogy because the mirror, as you say, is itself something objective. So of course the mirror is degrading. So in that sense it's not a good analogy for consciousness because consciousness is not something objective that is degrading. Consciousness is the subjective element of experience. Okay, well thank you for that and just one followed question and I'll let it was chime in here. In terms of describing our experience as self as an illusion, you would acknowledge today that it is still real, but is illusory. Would it be more helpful perhaps to describe this reality as different levels of realness rather than using terms like illusion because that can certainly be confusing for a lot of people it seems. Well, I quite agree to him, I'm careful when I speak about, I'm very careful about using the word illusion because most people consider an illusion something that is unreal and as I explained earlier when I speak of illusion I mean I refer to something that is real but is not what it appears to be. The Caribbean beach that you dreamt of last night, it was real as the activity of your own mind but it was unreal or illusory as a beach made out of sand and water. So I agree we have to be careful to use the term illusion because of most people's association of illusion with something that is not real. I think the universe is absolutely real but I think its reality is consciousness. Great, thanks so much. Thank you, Tim. Ricky. I consider myself a pantheist or a neutral monist and I also identify with non duality principles and I was just curious about your thoughts on distinctions if there are any between these terms or whether you see them as almost synonymous in just different ways of expressing the same thought through different modalities. Mainly in the fact that I consider everything to be part of one ultimate substance if you will. You can call it consciousness, you can call it energy, you can call it information. You know so I was curious about your thoughts on that. And then second, go ahead. Can I just respond to the question? When you said that everything is part of one consciousness. Is there something that is within one medium ultimately? Yes, it's okay to say that as a concession to the belief that there are things, there are individual discrete things. If we make that concession then we can say yes, they all exist as part of one reality but I'm going a little bit further and saying that in the ultimate analysis there are no discrete independently existing things. There is simply one indivisible reality. So this is perfect. Yeah, this is perfect. Into the next question. Okay. I think it's very exciting to me to return to your ideas. You know, I was part of that study group in New York earlier on in my awakening journey. And I think it's really cool to kind of look at your ideas now in the context of a lot of the stuff that I've been reading in terms of these different theories. So sort of general resonance theory, Tam and Jonathan's theory combined with the description of the primary process state and the secondary process state is defined in the free energy principle and a tropic brain hypothesis where the primary process state is basically exactly what you're talking about where everything exists and others have called it the zero point field, others have called it, you know, David Bohn called it the implicate order has many names but basically this realm in which everything exists as frequency. And then you have the secondary process state, the reproduction of some of that that we create in our own mind and project that as external experience and we selectively filter aspects of the primary process state into our own experience. It doesn't and I think it's helpful to think of these things pluristically. It's not as though only the primary process state exists or only the secondary process state exists. They both exist. They're both there. I am always connected to the primary. I'm drawing aspects of that into my secondary, my world. And yet both of these aspect, they're both real, right? So I don't know, that's just my question. Are you asking a question or giving a lecture here? No, I'm curious to hear. Let me respond, Nikki. You haven't asked a question but let me just respond with what comes to mind which may I may be rephrasing what you're saying. It may resonate with you in some way. Describing my consciousness only model or consciousness is dream. Would be this. And possibly this is something that you're intuiting. Was that we could say that what we perceive as the universe is an interaction between infinite consciousness and a localization of itself, namely the finite mind. It is infinite consciousness that localizes it or seems to localize itself as a finite mind. And it is the interaction between the two that creates, it doesn't create it because the reality of the universe pre-exists this interaction. The interaction between infinite consciousness and the finite mind creates the appearance of the universe. It's what Wordsworth said beautifully when he, when he said we half create and half perceive the world. We half perceive it in the sense that the reality of the world is there prior to it's being perceived. But we create its appearance by the faculties through which we look at it. So the universe that we know is part infinite consciousness. Let's put it like this. The universe owes its reality to infinite consciousness. It owes its appearance to the finite mind. Yes. Okay. Cool. Yeah. We're on the same page. Okay. I didn't introduce you. This is Zen. It's a 16 year old lover. I love Zen. I love Zen. Let's see. John, you're up. There's nothing on the phone with you. Robert, thank you so much. I just wanted to ask you one with regard to what you were discussing just now with Andrew. I mean, and also it seems you're presenting a very coherent metaphysical system. So my first question is, you know, how has that got any possibility of connecting with the group of scientists here in the room? It seems like there's no opportunity within your logically coherent system to connect that in with present day science. And second of all, with your discussion with Andrew, you know, why is there any problem with death? I mean, the thought death, it's just another thought in our mind. Let me just respond to the first question. Let me just respond to the first question, because the second question is unrelated. You know, the fact that we're having this conversation at all, the fact that there are how many of you, six, twenty, twenty, thirty of you, and most of you scientists, that fact John shows how much interest that there is from the scientific community. And you are most of your old professors or PhD students. You're not lightweight scientists, but the fact that you want to have a conversation like this shows the openness in the scientific community to these ideas. That I totally agree, but wishing doesn't make it so. So I'm asking you, what is the point where you're purely metaphysical system, even though it's logically coherent? And I mean, that's another question. What does logical coherence in your kind of presentation, what validity does that have? That would have no more validity than a non-logical presentation. But what is the point where this? I don't think it's the fact that I'm saying that what I'm saying is logical. That's not it's power if indeed it have any power at all. It's the fact that it's true, or I would suggest that it's true. It is from that that it derives its power. So what's the scientifically verifiable truth that is the bridge here between science and your system? I think science sooner or later will have to recognize scientists. Well, sooner or later, have to recognize that everything we know of the universe, we know through our finite minds, that is through the faculties of thinking and perceiving. And our knowledge of the universe appears in accordance with the limitations of the medium through which we perceive. And therefore, if we want to know anything true about the universe, we have to first know the nature of the mind through which it is perceived. And therefore, sooner or later, a scientist has to recognize that in order to know the nature of the universe, I first have to know the nature of my own mind. That's true, but then what is the point? You know, your idea of mind as pure conscious knowing awareness. Is the point that science has access to verifiable pure conscious knowing awareness? Because all science is the activity of mind. It is thought and perception. Therefore sooner or later, a scientist must recognize that in order to know anything that is true of the universe, I must first know what is true about the mind through which that universe is perceived. So eventually, a scientist must investigate the nature of consciousness. And it is because it's for this reason that there is so much interest in consciousness in the scientific community now, because it's recognised that until we understand the nature of consciousness, we cannot know anything for certain about the universe. But I don't see any contact point or possibility of contact point, because from one perspective, there is nothing but contact. From the other perspective, it's totally a part, if we're seeing things objectively. You take your current experience now. Are you currently knowing anything other than the knowing of your experience? There's knowing and there's the experience that's appearing in the knowing. Yes, but is there anything to that experience other than the knowing of it? On a relative level, of course. No, just in your experience now. Are you currently experiencing anything other than the knowing of your experience? Yes, I'm experiencing the objects of the senses. But is there anything to that experience of the objects of the senses other than your knowing of it? No. Okay, now, so you acknowledge that all there is to your current experience is the knowing of it. Can you agree that all there is to any experience you have ever had in the past is the knowing of it? Certainly. And all the experience you have could ever have in the future would be the knowing of it. Certainly. And if that is true of you, would you agree that it must be true of everyone? Yes. What you're saying, I think, is that what I'm suggesting is that all that is ever known, indeed all that could ever be known is the knowing of experience. In other words, knowing is all that is ever known. Exactly. So knowing is synonymous with consciousness. But if it is our experience that knowing or consciousness is the only substance that anybody has or could ever know, if we want to build a model of reality, why don't we start with the one thing that we are sure of and build a model of reality based on that rather than to imagine something that is outside of knowing, called matter, which you acknowledge has never been experienced because all we know of this stuff is the knowing of it. What validity is there to the belief that there is something outside knowing out of which the universe is made and, incidentally, from which knowing is derived its madness? Exactly. But, you know, what are people going to be doing with their lab instruments? No. So I'm not suggesting that I'm denying the validity of science. I'm simply upgrading science and suggesting that what are considered the laws of physics are really the laws of mind. What we now consider to be the laws of physics, they're not really laws that govern the way stuff called matter behaves. They're laws that govern the way mind unfolds in consciousness. So the laws. Why those laws? Why those particular laws? Robert, that I don't know. That I can't say. I don't have enough, my own individual mind has not, and I'm not sure that it's possible for an individual mind to do this, to go outside its own limitations far enough into the universal field to know the origin of those laws. I don't know. But let me interrupt the conversation here. Speak briefly to John's question as a scientist and then bring that back to a question to refer from my perspective as a scientist. There are at least two ways in which this discussion bears on scientific inquiry. One is that it provides one sort of ontological stance in terms of thinking about how to situate the scientific process within the larger understanding of ontology. And I think scientists don't spend enough time thinking about their ontological stance and how it relates. So really looking at the foundation in which our observations are being placed is very important and may inform the questions that we ask in the way that we. the answers that we accept. The second thing is it also raises the question about the non-dual experience itself. What is the scientific. How can the scientific method elucidate people's experience of this perspective shift and can that be useful both in informing the different kinds of perspectives that individuals have and potentially if it's found that as Rupert is speculated that it can lead to well-being and perhaps greater peace in the world to cultivating it. So with that, let me just bring the question back to you and ask maybe a little more of a personal question, Rupert, which is what was the process? How did you get into this space of perspective that you currently find yourself? This inquiry was initiated in my late teens and it was through an experience of suffering. That it was actually a relationship that came to an end, my first relationship and I was so profoundly shocked that I had invested my happiness in a person and in a phone call the relationship came to an end and it just. I was struck by the fact that I had allowed my happiness because happiness was what I wanted more than anything else in life. I would suggest that happiness is what everyone wants more than anything else. I had allowed my happiness to be dependent upon something, a person in this case, that can change or disappear in a phone call and I was so shocked by this experience that this question just precipitated itself in my mind. What in my experience can be a reliable source of happiness? In what can I invest? Is there something reliable in my life? I could rely on as a source of happiness and that I was already interested in these matters. I had been meditating for a few years in exploring but it was this experience that really injected intensity into my investigation and initiated this deep investigation into the nature of my mind. I just went, kept going back and back and back in my experience, discarding everything that was temporary, my thoughts, my feelings, my history, my memory, everything. Just kept going back until I kept arriving in my experience at something that was stable and unchanging and imperturbable and in which there was no sense of lack and eventually this became my stable experience. In other words, the piece that I previously sought through activities, relationships, objects and everything, I recognized it as the nature of my own mind. And then that was in relation to my internal experience but then there was the recognition that followed that. The nature of my own mind was unlimited and therefore I began to be open to this possibility that my mind exceeded the limits of myself as a person, just as the space in your room exceeds the limits of the four walls of your room. So this was the second aspect of the understanding which came later, that the reality that I essentially am is the same reality that everyone and everything essentially is. Now these were the two recognitions, one in relation to my internal experience and one in relation to my external experience and the more I lived these two possibilities, my experience just confirmed to me over and over and over again that this perspective was true. Thank you, that's very, very helpful. Randy. Randy, I think you may be on mute. You're on mute. Okay, is that okay? Is there a particular meditation technique that you encourage people to follow in order to understand the view that you're presenting or is it more just sort of acquiescing or understanding the view and contemplating it? Is there a meditation technique? Well, I wouldn't say it was a technique but there is a meditation that I could describe in many different ways. But the meditation, it's sometimes referred to as self-inquiry, which simply means an inquiry into the nature of our essential self or in Buddhist terms, Buddhist don't like the word self so we could say an investigation into the nature of our mind. And so the essential nature of anything is the aspect of that thing that cannot be removed from it. So the image of my face is not essential to your screen because when my face disappears your screen remains. So if we do that with our experience, if we remove from our experience and this involves tracing our way back through the layers of our experience, so we don't give our attention to anything objective because anything objective in our experience, a thought, a sensation, a perception appears and disappears. No, there is no objective experience that remains consistently present in our experience. All experiences superfluous to us. So if we travel back through the layers of our experience, letting go of everything that is superfluous to us, and we keep on going back to we can't get any further, what remains, what remains when everything that can be removed from us is removed from us. Only that qualifies as I or the self or the essence of the mind if you don't like the word self or I. So that's really the meditation is tracing our way back through the layers of experience. Now another way you could access the same meditation would be for instance to ask yourself the question, what is it that is aware of my experience? And that question should take your mind away from what you are aware of back towards that which is aware. In other words, instead of tracing our attention forwards to its content, we trace our attention backwards or inwards to its source. It would be another way of describing the same investigation. It would be accurate to say that it's a way to direct your attention to resting in what's unconditional. I mean, it's. Yes, but we can't give our attention to that because our attention comes from that. It's the same reason that we can, if you have a torch, a flashlight, you can shine the flashlight on everything apart from the bulb from which the beam of light comes. So we can direct our attention towards everything in our experience, a thought, a sound, a sensation, a feeling. The only thing we cannot direct our attention towards is the source of attention, namely awareness. That's why this, that's why meditation involves a relaxation of the attention, not a focusing, or that there are some meditations that require the focusing of attention. But if we're focusing our attention, we are shining our attention away from its source towards the object. In the ultimate meditation, we do the opposite. We trace attention back in the opposite direction to the source from which it proceeds. How do you instruct people to work with the tendency to be to engage in distraction or become distracted? How do you cultivate the non-distraction of returning or staying with that particular perspective? Rather than, rather than, you see, I wouldn't discipline a mind. I wouldn't even call distraction distraction because it's to give it a pejorative term. Let's say you find yourself sitting and you're involved with thinking. As soon as you notice that you're involved with thinking, you could ask yourself the question, but what is it that is aware of that thought? That single question will take your attention away from the thought back to its source. Attention is a two-way street. We can follow it towards its object, or we can trace it back in the opposite direction towards its source. Whatever we can't encounter in the field of experience, we just ask ourselves, but what is it that is aware of that? That's why this is sometimes called a direct path. In one step, we go from the content of experience. Whatever that content may be, however wonderful or awful it may be. In one step, we go from there to the essence of the mind, pure consciousness. Then we stay there. We rest not in that because there's no entity present to rest at King Lear, doesn't abide in John Smith. It's John Smith that abides in himself. The first step is we trace our attention backwards or inwards towards its source, pure awareness, and then awareness rests in itself. At some point, that resting ceases. You don't have to use the term distraction. You do want to return to that. That's right. Through force of habit, we awareness, remember the only entity there is. Of course, it's not an entity, but all there really is is awareness. At some point, awareness loses itself in the content of experience. Awareness traces its way back to itself and rests in itself. At some stage, through force of habit, awareness is drawn out towards again away from itself towards the content of experience. Soon as we notice, awareness comes back to itself. Each time we awareness, he throws. He throws. He's returned to source. To be stable in the experience of resting as awareness. In other words, objective experience progressively loses its capacity to take us away from our essential self being. There's a bit of an exhaustion process there. It's putting a really bull in a big field at some point. Very occasionally, in the literature, I'm sure many of you are familiar with it in many of you Tibetan Buddhists, but very occasionally, this return to the fact of being aware in the background of experience is so powerful and so complete that one never leaves. But for the vast majority of us mortals, we get a glimpse or a taste of our true nature before it is immediately eclipsed again by the content of experience. Then we have to work our way back. Then again, we get pulled out through force of habit. For most of us, there is a period of back and forth, but in time, there is more and more stability of this resting as awareness. And it becomes a new default, which doesn't mean to say that experience never has the capacity to take us away. We must always be open to the possibility that there is that possibility that experience takes us away. But it happens less and less often. And when it does happen, it lasts for less and less time. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Randy. I have a question. Can you hear me? Yeah. I had had about 10 teachers when I came to your retreat. Your retreat was the talking retreat. And there was a woman that kept having lunch with me. She was an art professor. And she had 11 o'clock and I took the elevator up to my room and she followed me. She said, "I want you to listen to this young student." And this has to do with teaching the guru, the teacher, the subject I'm asking. And so she started playing with this tape. And I felt like I had been scared by an arrow. He was young enough to be my son. And I knew that was my teacher. And the tape was failing. And I was absolutely spellbound for about half an hour. I sat down by the elevator. I was just captured. The next day she called him. And I knew that's my teacher. And he's a young guy and he was vibrantly awake. And so I would have been probably too shy to call on my own. And then I continued with your retreat. He wasn't there. And then I called after and I began communicating with him. And about a year later, I had a profound awakening experience that never went away. And so he played an inextricable role in my awakening. It wasn't a formal relationship. He was a young guy. And sometimes I would talk for hours for three times a week. And I know you and that there was a crescendo point after that, at which this awakening occurred that was absolutely profound and never went away. And I remember you had a relationship with Francesce Rusille, who I've also been in retreat with. And I know it was very profound for you. And I remember a story where you reached that tipping point also. There seems to be in at least non-dual circles of certain point at which the thought based awareness becomes an awareness based awareness where there's a discrete change. And if you're fortunate, it doesn't go away. And could you speak to that with Frances Rusille and your experience, did you have such a tipping point where there was a discrete point at which a sumptoy of permanent transformation occurred? In my experience, occasionally, this recognition takes place dramatically and irreversibly. For most of us, it is a series of glimpses that, a series of recognitions that build on another, as I said in the previous conversation. Well, there is a tipping point, as you say, where one's default position becomes more and more, we become more and more stable in this recognition. This recognition is not something we just get brief glimpses of and then go back to life as normal. It starts as brief glimpses and then they become more and more stable until it becomes our default experience. In my experience, certainly this last 12 or 13 years since I've been speaking with people, just by far the most common. And it's often nearly very rarely accompanied by any exotic signs in the mind and the body. There's the story which you may have heard me tell once, the well-known Zen teacher Shinryo Suzuki who was giving a talk and someone asked him a question, "Why don't you have a speak of your enlightenment experience?" And before he had time to answer, he's wised to it up at the back of the hall and said, "Because he never had one." So this recognition, it's sometimes, it's so powerful that the previous structure of the Set-Pretz Self is shattered by this experience and you remain disorientated and spend the next two years of your life sitting on a park bench in London. That very occasionally happens. It's equally possible that this recognition could happen as quietly as, "Oh yes, of course, I didn't notice that before." And you carry on with life as usual. And gradually this understanding infiltrates your thoughts and your feelings and your subsequent activities and relationships. So it can happen very quietly without any dramatic side effects. And in a way, I think that's the safest way, because you can never lay claim to any marvellous experience. You never say, "I am enlightened." You never, it's just a quiet confidence that comes from the depths of your being and it permeates you from the inside with peace and in time it harmonises your relationships on the outside. And you never claim to be anything special or to know anything special. That's the safest way. There seems to be, when that experience occurred to me, I definitely knew something was different. It wasn't terribly dramatic, but I knew I, and something has shifted and I knew. Yes, okay. But that's fine, Stephen, but it's not like that for everybody. Sometimes there can be this recognition and it can take time for the mind to catch up. Three months later, the mind realizes, "Oh, that's funny. I used to get upset all the time. My intimate partner used to press my buttons. I used to be anxious, but I haven't been upset for three months." What happened? It's like a headache. You see, enlightenment is a misnomer. It's not something that happens to us. It's something that leaves us. Enlightenment is like a headache disappearing. It just leaves us in our natural state of ease. Nothing new, when our headache disappears, nothing new happens to us. We're just relieved of an old, uncomfortable feeling. In other words, the self, the essence of the mind is already luminous. It is not enlightened. It just ceases to be undarkened or mixed with the content of experience. That is occasionally accompanied by a dramatic experience. Oh my God, this incredible thing happened to me yesterday. But equally, it can be very quiet and just gradually make itself known in your life. What did Francis Lucille do for you? He was your teacher that you resonated with. I sat, many, many retreats every year for a number of years, suggesting pathways whereby I could, that helped me to investigate the nature of my mind, numerous different pathways like I suggested earlier. What is it that is aware of your experience? He gave me the tools by which I could explore for myself the nature of my own mind. I had already been on a path for 20 years and I had an intuitive understanding that what was being said was true, but I could never make the understanding my own. It was a deep intuition, so he gave me tools to explore this and make this understanding myself. Then when I had doubts or objections, I was able to raise them and keep on having conversations until my doubts and objections were put to rest. Was there a special resonance as occurred with me in my teacher? Yes, there was a deep connection which was our shared love of truth. And truth, this understanding, it has many ways of sharing itself and you referred to my retreats which are not silent. One of the reasons I don't do silent retreats is because I like to foster friendship and community. The Buddha said there are three vehicles, the Buddha, the Sangha and the Dharma, the teacher, the teaching and the community of friends that gather around the teaching. I place a lot of store by friendship. It's one of the ways that understanding communicates itself. So, that's why we don't do silent retreats. Well, thank you. That's how I make my life. Nice to see you again, Steven. I'm glad to have been a link in your chain. A critical link is at the door. Thanks so much for sharing everything today. I think that I might simply be rephrasing similar questions that have come up previously. But today I've heard you talk about the non-dual experience and the experience of the self or awareness and consciousness. And you've also discussed your theoretical view of how this relates to reality, I guess, for lack of a better words. My question is, do you feel as though these two elements necessarily are tied together? Or is it possible to differentiate between the experience of non-duality and the, let's say, broader philosophical or theoretical context? Yes, I think there's a profound connection between them. Yes, I think the metaphysical, the ontology behind this understanding and the experience itself, and its applications in the world are consistent with one another. So then you would suggest that they are kind of tied together. That it would be difficult to have the experience independent of the theoretical aspects as well. Yes. Yes. And I think the theoretical aspect must come from experience. Experience must be the test of reality. So that's why the philosophy that behind this, and this has always been the case in the traditional philosophy, it is derived from experience. It's not derived from speculation. It's derived from, true philosophy must be derived from experience. It must be verifiable in experience. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you, James. Robert, I wonder if you could, we're just about out of time here, but I'm wondering if there are any sort of techniques. So we've already talked about the technique for the meditation of looking for awareness. But if someone's having a rough day, if the understanding of this perspective is sort of drifted away from them, and they're finding themselves really caught up in the fear of the moment or whatever the world thinks are that happening, are there, is there a sort of a recourse to a perspective, some kind of aphorism or something that you can sort of draw on or a quick technique that one can do during the day to sort of pull oneself back into this perspective? I think simply to notice that whatever the content of our experience, that which is aware of it is at once one with the content of experience and at the same time independent of it, free of it, not implicated by it in the same way that a screen is one with the image, but it is not affected by the image. So consciousness is not an aloof witness that views experience from a distance. It is utterly, intimately one with experience. In fact, I would suggest all there is to experience is the activity of consciousness. So consciousness is imminent within experience, but at the same time it transcends experience. It is free of its content. That is what I was trying to point to in an experiential way with the conversation with Tam, just to notice that whatever it is that is aware of our experience is not implicated by experience. I think we can be feeling anxious, but the awareness with which our anxiety is known is not itself anxious. Anxiety is a feeling that appears within this openness of awareness. We may be afraid, we may be ashamed, we may feel any emotion appears in the field of awareness and is known by it. So it is just one step. It is like taking one step back from the content of experience to that with which it is known. And just that step, it places us in awareness, so to speak. Thank you. That is super helpful and it is a nice, relatively straightforward, prospective shift that I think we can all draw on. Thank you.