1 00:00:04,500 --> 00:00:09,859 field of parapsychology with a PhD from Cambridge in biochemistry. This channel 2 00:00:09,859 --> 00:00:13,460 is dedicated to conversations around theories of everything, consciousness, 3 00:00:13,460 --> 00:00:17,760 free will, God, and topics that are cognate to that. It's also about putting a 4 00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:21,780 spotlight on those who I don't think get as much credit as they should and you 5 00:00:21,780 --> 00:00:27,820 can see my John Moffitt interview as an example of that. Now Rupert has plenty of 6 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:37,659 significant shame. It's unfair that Rupert has been mischaracterized and 7 00:00:37,659 --> 00:00:42,960 that even I have had false views about him because of what I read online that I 8 00:00:42,960 --> 00:00:46,960 thought was legitimate but wasn't. We get to this specific issue toward the latter 9 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:50,979 half of the conversation. However, unfortunately my video, nor Peter 10 00:00:50,979 --> 00:00:56,520 Gleanos, who's my colleague, neither his video, recorded. Either way, this is an 11 00:01:02,399 --> 00:01:05,340 physicists, don't listen to you? What's going on? Why aren't these ideas taken 12 00:01:05,340 --> 00:01:15,260 seriously, your ideas? Well, I'm primarily a biologist, so I mean I did the 13 00:01:15,260 --> 00:01:21,500 question be better directed to biologists and physicists. Well, the fact is 14 00:01:21,500 --> 00:01:25,680 that what I'm putting forward are views which are considered by some to be 15 00:01:32,939 --> 00:01:38,659 dogmas of mechanistic materialism. Now, that is inevitably controversial because 16 00:01:38,659 --> 00:01:43,379 that is still the dominant orthodoxical paradigm and there are a lot of people 17 00:01:43,379 --> 00:01:49,260 who have a heavy investment in it, particularly militant atheists. This is 18 00:01:49,260 --> 00:01:55,140 their worldview, their belief system and I'm trying to show the way to a broader 19 00:02:00,159 --> 00:02:04,640 point of my relatively recent book, Science Set Free, which has just come out 20 00:02:04,640 --> 00:02:12,000 in a new edition in Britain called The Science Delusion in Britain. So it's not 21 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:15,360 true that everyone has a problem with it. I have a lot of friends within the 22 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:19,280 scientific world. It's just that most of them keep their heads beneath the 23 00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:24,280 parapet because anyone who advocates uncontroversial views in science is 24 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:34,139 among, in the scientific world, there are lots of people who have much more open-minded 25 00:02:34,139 --> 00:02:40,099 views than you'd gather from listening to science popularizers. There is a sense 26 00:02:40,099 --> 00:02:46,500 that this paradigm of this mechanism, the universe as a mechanism, this 27 00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:58,919 maybe an expiration date, something along the lines of Thomas Kuhn's scientific 28 00:02:58,919 --> 00:03:06,080 revolutions, and that we are maybe seeing an era that might come to an end. I'm 29 00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:10,819 curious what you think will cause that era to come to an end. And if we could, 30 00:03:16,460 --> 00:03:22,900 the universe as a machine is historically grounded? What was the view 31 00:03:22,900 --> 00:03:29,099 that peoples had before this sort of mechanism to the universe, this mechanistic 32 00:03:29,099 --> 00:03:33,340 view of the universe? Well, I mean, the history of science, the subject I've 33 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:44,219 Europe, science grew up in Europe, so we're looking primarily at European 34 00:03:44,219 --> 00:03:48,139 history if we're looking at modern science. And of course, it grew up in the 35 00:03:48,139 --> 00:03:52,699 Islamic world and in India and in China in different ways, but science, as we now 36 00:03:52,699 --> 00:03:59,659 know, it grew out of its European roots, primarily. And in medieval Europe, the 37 00:04:05,139 --> 00:04:10,300 organisms were truly alive, the Earth was a living being, Mother Earth, the stars 38 00:04:10,300 --> 00:04:14,979 and the planets were intelligences, there was living beings with souls and 39 00:04:14,979 --> 00:04:21,620 intelligence, the whole cosmos had a soul. And animals and plants had souls, even 40 00:04:21,620 --> 00:04:29,180 magnets had souls, that we lived in an animated world. And the reason we call 41 00:04:33,740 --> 00:04:39,420 with souls. So what the mechanistic revolution in the 17th century did was 42 00:04:39,420 --> 00:04:44,300 to say no, this is completely wrong, this is just superstitious stuff, the world 43 00:04:44,300 --> 00:04:49,579 isn't made up of living beings, it's made up of inanimate matter that works in a 44 00:04:49,579 --> 00:04:54,019 machine-like way. And the stars and planets are not alive in any way, they're 45 00:04:54,019 --> 00:04:58,300 just inanimate and animals and plants are just machines and so are we. That was 46 00:05:03,620 --> 00:05:07,819 it. But this was built in from the beginning, the idea that nature's dead, 47 00:05:07,819 --> 00:05:15,019 inanimate and mechanical. So you mentioned this idea of the superstitious, in the 48 00:05:15,019 --> 00:05:20,139 Western European context there's this divide between the supernatural and 49 00:05:20,139 --> 00:05:24,939 the natural. And this divide sort of comes along with the evolution of 50 00:05:30,620 --> 00:05:36,660 supernatural as understood by members of the Ojibwe, a native group in North 51 00:05:36,660 --> 00:05:42,819 America, and he writes that the appellation of supernatural persons if 52 00:05:42,819 --> 00:05:49,139 applied to characters in the midst of northern Ojibwe people is completely 53 00:05:49,139 --> 00:05:54,100 misleading. If no other reason than the fact that the concept of the supernatural 54 00:06:01,500 --> 00:06:06,220 Because an understanding of the supernatural is predicated on an 55 00:06:06,220 --> 00:06:11,300 understanding of the natural, the very ancient Hellenic concept, more 56 00:06:11,300 --> 00:06:15,500 primitive societies, if you would primitive in quotes, lack this natural 57 00:06:15,500 --> 00:06:21,740 supernatural divide. Considering that our science grew out of this divide between 58 00:06:26,779 --> 00:06:32,180 forests and things, and then there's the supernatural, demons, angels, 59 00:06:32,180 --> 00:06:37,819 consciousness. Do you feel that this is a sort of false divide and that the time 60 00:06:37,819 --> 00:06:43,540 will come where this natural and supernatural will collapse, the material 61 00:06:43,540 --> 00:06:48,139 in the conscious? Oh absolutely, I think it's a false divide and I think we're 62 00:06:53,540 --> 00:06:59,139 and before that in the Middle Ages in Europe the form of theology that was 63 00:06:59,139 --> 00:07:05,139 dominant, for example in Saint Thomas Aquinas, didn't have the supernatural as 64 00:07:05,139 --> 00:07:08,980 a separate category. God was in nature, the whole of nature was animated by the 65 00:07:08,980 --> 00:07:15,220 divine, and the whole of nature was motivated to move towards the divine. 66 00:07:22,540 --> 00:07:26,980 the mechanistic theory of Descartes created that division quite explicitly. 67 00:07:26,980 --> 00:07:32,379 I mean that's why it's called Cartesian dualism, and what Descartes said is the 68 00:07:32,379 --> 00:07:37,220 whole of nature is a mechanical machine like inanimate, but there's also 69 00:07:37,220 --> 00:07:43,180 consciousness, and consciousness consists of has three categories, God, angels, and 70 00:07:49,420 --> 00:07:54,100 conscious things in the natural world, mysteriously interacting with brains he 71 00:07:54,100 --> 00:07:59,740 thought in the pineal gland, and all of the rest, God, angels, and demons and 72 00:07:59,740 --> 00:08:04,819 spirits are supernatural, they're outside or beyond nature, so that created this 73 00:08:04,819 --> 00:08:09,939 dualistic split which has underlaying Western thought since the 17th century, 74 00:08:17,699 --> 00:08:22,699 two sides by idealist philosophers on the one hand who said no we don't want two 75 00:08:22,699 --> 00:08:27,939 things, consciousness and matter, we just want one thing, consciousness, and matter 76 00:08:27,939 --> 00:08:32,860 sort of done down mind, that's the idealist philosophy, and but the other 77 00:08:32,860 --> 00:08:38,419 side became predominant materialists who said there aren't two things, matter and 78 00:08:42,659 --> 00:08:47,980 doctrine that matters, the only reality, therefore God and angels and spirits 79 00:08:47,980 --> 00:08:52,820 and demons simply don't exist, as whole supernatural realm is pure, mumbo jumbo 80 00:08:52,820 --> 00:08:59,899 imagination and superstition, and the only thing left of that realm in this pure 81 00:08:59,899 --> 00:09:04,220 of nature was the human mind, then the human mind has to become simply an 82 00:09:09,059 --> 00:09:15,019 head, and so materialism creates, it has a view of the universe as being 83 00:09:15,019 --> 00:09:20,740 completely non-conscious and mechanical, and the very existence of human 84 00:09:20,740 --> 00:09:24,500 consciousness is a terrible embarrassment for materialism, we ought not to be 85 00:09:24,500 --> 00:09:28,620 conscious, and in fact materialist philosophers have spent at the later 86 00:09:28,620 --> 00:09:32,500 part of the 20th century and they're still trying to do it now, trying to prove 87 00:09:37,220 --> 00:09:41,500 do anything, we don't really have free will, it's just a kind of active 88 00:09:41,500 --> 00:09:46,779 phenomenon or another way of talking about the physical activity of the brain, so I 89 00:09:46,779 --> 00:09:51,019 think that this world view, which is what we've all been brought up with and 90 00:09:51,019 --> 00:09:54,940 which we've exported to the rest of the world, the same world view is taught in 91 00:09:54,940 --> 00:10:01,460 schools in China, India, South America, Africa, everywhere nowadays, because of 92 00:10:07,179 --> 00:10:11,019 emerging out of it, and that's the whole point of my book Science Set Free, I take 93 00:10:11,019 --> 00:10:18,139 the ten dogmas of contemporary science and show how actually science itself is 94 00:10:18,139 --> 00:10:23,779 growing out of them, showing us the way out of them, and for example the dogma 95 00:10:23,779 --> 00:10:29,820 that our minds are nothing but our brains, the activity of our brains, that's 96 00:10:34,740 --> 00:10:41,740 world, partly through the implausibility of the materialist world view, partly 97 00:10:41,740 --> 00:10:46,340 through the intractability of the hard problem, and what it's led to is the 98 00:10:46,340 --> 00:10:51,419 emergence of a new kind of panpsychism, the idea that there's a difference of 99 00:10:51,419 --> 00:10:56,019 degree between our consciousness and the rest of nature, not of kind, that even 100 00:11:00,379 --> 00:11:04,340 consciousness can emerge in brains not from totally non-conscious matter, but 101 00:11:04,340 --> 00:11:08,740 from less conscious matter, and that's surprisingly popular at the moment within 102 00:11:08,740 --> 00:11:14,899 the academic world. Do you have any opinion on Daniel Dennett's explaining 103 00:11:14,899 --> 00:11:20,340 consciousness book? Yes, I mean obviously what he's trying to do is explain 104 00:11:20,340 --> 00:11:24,299 consciousness away, his book's called Consciousness Explained, but as many 105 00:11:29,139 --> 00:11:38,740 a true believing hard-core materialist, who he makes it clear that his total 106 00:11:38,740 --> 00:11:42,740 opposition is to Cartesian dualism, which I just mentioned, the 107 00:11:42,740 --> 00:11:46,580 idea there's a supernatural realm out there, but he thinks the only 108 00:11:46,580 --> 00:11:52,700 alternative to that is hard-core materialism, and I think he's wrong, I 109 00:11:59,659 --> 00:12:05,740 to enormous lengths to try and explain consciousness away, that he wants to get 110 00:12:05,740 --> 00:12:12,620 rid of any kind of magic, or the problem is of course that you know it's very 111 00:12:12,620 --> 00:12:17,539 hard to be a consistent materialist, if you believe that you're a machine 112 00:12:24,259 --> 00:12:28,299 materialism is just something that your mind makes you believe, or your brain 113 00:12:28,299 --> 00:12:33,419 makes you believe. Materialists like to think they're an exception to their 114 00:12:33,419 --> 00:12:37,940 own philosophy, that they adopt their own views on the basis of reason, science 115 00:12:37,940 --> 00:12:41,740 and evidence, but actually their own philosophy says that they have no choice 116 00:12:47,899 --> 00:12:52,779 a meme complex has captured their brain and forces them to believe in it, and 117 00:12:52,779 --> 00:12:57,940 they're not aware that they're being compelled to believe in it, 118 00:12:57,940 --> 00:13:02,500 because their consciousness is a kind of illusion. Anyway, I think the problem 119 00:13:02,500 --> 00:13:07,179 with Dennett and other materialist philosophers is that basically they're 120 00:13:15,340 --> 00:13:20,500 First of all, we'd have to define reason for the audience. Of course I'm not 121 00:13:20,500 --> 00:13:24,340 opposed to reason, I spent my whole career as a research scientist, publishing 122 00:13:24,340 --> 00:13:28,940 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and doing experiments, and writing books, 123 00:13:28,940 --> 00:13:36,740 which I hope are rational. I think what reason is is simply a function of the 124 00:13:42,559 --> 00:13:45,899 probability, and so forth. 125 00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:46,680 things in terms of probability and so forth. I don't think it's some mysterious propert... 126 00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:56,440 a capital R that makes us semi-divine and separate from the rest of nature. And, you 127 00:13:56,440 --> 00:14:02,440 militant materialists go around saying they believe in science and reason. I mean, 128 00:14:10,920 --> 00:14:19,879 is their worldview. And I find the best way of testing how serious they are about reas... 129 00:14:19,879 --> 00:14:27,400 science is to bring up the subject of telepathy, for example. There's a lot of 130 00:14:33,160 --> 00:14:37,160 doesn't fit their worldview, so they think it ought not to happen, therefore all the 131 00:14:37,160 --> 00:14:43,800 must be flawed. But if you try and have a debate with a materialist about telepathy, 132 00:14:43,800 --> 00:14:52,040 angry because they can't look at the evidence scientifically or reasonably, even though 133 00:14:52,040 --> 00:14:57,000 claim to believe in reason and science, which if you have any materialist friends, this ... 134 00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:08,600 in discussing it. Most of them are certainly not very reasonable or scientific, even 135 00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:14,360 they claim to believe in reason with a capital R. So I see reason with a capital ... 136 00:15:14,360 --> 00:15:21,240 for a materialist worldview rather than a genuine devotion to the principles of 137 00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:39,560 a telepathy between organisms, between life? And to expound on this idea of panpsychism, 138 00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:46,600 there's a certain sense that our conscious has an unconscious. But I think if we go 139 00:15:46,600 --> 00:15:50,040 is it fair to say that our unconscious has an unconscious and that this 140 00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:05,720 we go further, we go down this iceberg, is there a point where my unconscious is 141 00:16:05,720 --> 00:16:13,080 overlaps with yours and that we are actually not really individuals, but emergent being... 142 00:16:13,080 --> 00:16:20,759 sort of bedrock, as the Hindus would say that we are both dreams in this larger dream of 143 00:16:24,120 --> 00:16:32,759 Well, I think that's ultimately the case, yes. And I think that the idea that our own 144 00:16:32,759 --> 00:16:37,160 personal unconscious is part of a larger unconscious is, I mean, after all, quite 145 00:16:37,160 --> 00:16:41,560 well-known idea. I mean, this is the basis of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious. 146 00:16:41,560 --> 00:16:50,440 And Jung, the psychologist CG Jung, had this idea that we all draw upon this collective 147 00:16:57,400 --> 00:17:04,600 the archetypal patterns we experience in our lives and so forth. And this is very simil... 148 00:17:04,600 --> 00:17:11,880 ideas about morphic resonance. I mean, my main hypothesis about memory is that it wo... 149 00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:18,680 kind of resonance from the past, morphic resonance, I call it, which means that eac... 150 00:17:25,559 --> 00:17:32,039 are unconscious. I mean, nature, but the general theory that I'm putting forward is 151 00:17:32,039 --> 00:17:36,600 so-called laws of nature are more like habits. The whole of the universe has a ki... 152 00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:44,840 And the habits of nature underlie all the regularities within the physical and chemi... 153 00:17:52,680 --> 00:18:00,840 in us as well. Therefore, the role of consciousness is always taking place again... 154 00:18:00,840 --> 00:18:08,360 of habits and unconscious habits and collective memory. That's the view that I 155 00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:20,759 arrangements like matter has been arranged in a certain conglomeration. I think that's Lee 156 00:18:20,759 --> 00:18:26,519 Smolin's principle of precedence, which reminds me of the morphic resonance theory 157 00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:30,360 physics form. Is there room for free will? Do you personally believe in free will? 158 00:18:30,360 --> 00:18:36,440 Of course, I think everybody does. I mean, there are people who pretend they don't or 159 00:18:41,640 --> 00:18:47,000 believes that they're an automaton with no free choice. And our entire legal and 160 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:52,120 system is based on belief in free will. If your brain makes you do it and you have no 161 00:18:52,120 --> 00:18:58,039 then that would be a perfect defense in any law court for being convicted of any crime. 162 00:18:58,039 --> 00:19:05,079 So I think everyone believes in it. And I think rightly so. And of course, we don't 163 00:19:10,120 --> 00:19:16,680 our habits, our frameworks of thought like paradigms. We're influenced by all these 164 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:23,480 But there's a certain measure of choice we have, all of us. I mean, we all chose to b... 165 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:28,840 together right now. I don't believe I was programmed by my genes or by anything else... 166 00:19:35,559 --> 00:19:42,840 either. So I personally, I see it as a non-issue and a kind of artificial debate 167 00:19:42,840 --> 00:19:48,680 very interested in. So how do you respond to the reductionist attitude of causation? Just 168 00:19:48,680 --> 00:19:53,000 why did you make the decision you made because your neurons did so and so? And yo... 169 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:57,960 asking why, why, why, because, because, because until you get to some wall that yo... 170 00:20:01,960 --> 00:20:08,279 What's your response to that line of argumentation? Well, I think even 171 00:20:08,279 --> 00:20:14,360 chance plays a large role in what happens in nature. I mean, the neo-Dalwinian theory o... 172 00:20:14,360 --> 00:20:21,079 which is their preferred theory of evolution, puts all the creativity ultimately in chance 173 00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:31,559 sorry, just to quickly interject. I'm not talking about lab classes demon where it's 174 00:20:31,559 --> 00:20:37,160 fixed. But, but even if we allow for quantum fluctuations, they, the materialist might 175 00:20:37,160 --> 00:20:42,039 say that the randomness is not dependent on you either. So whether you're determined o... 176 00:20:42,039 --> 00:20:47,000 random on top of determinism, it's still not within your control. So what's, what would 177 00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:57,720 Do they, what's the reason for them believing them? So I've turned the tables 178 00:20:57,720 --> 00:21:01,480 in this argument and say, what's the reason if you're a materialist for you believing in 179 00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:07,720 materialism? What's caused you to believe in that? And they, they, they'd say, well, yo... 180 00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:13,320 they'd have to say trans events in the brain conditioning, et cetera. They'd probably say, 181 00:21:20,039 --> 00:21:24,759 science. And then you say, well, okay, well, can you explain those in terms of 182 00:21:24,759 --> 00:21:32,120 Because they imply free choice. They imply choosing a worldview on the basis of 183 00:21:32,120 --> 00:21:37,320 And that's why I was saying earlier, I think the materialist position is self-refuting. 184 00:21:44,039 --> 00:21:50,120 basis of evidence and reason. And so if they're going to say everybody else's choi... 185 00:21:50,120 --> 00:21:56,680 totally conditioned by nerve impulses, neurotransmitters and random events in the 186 00:21:56,680 --> 00:22:03,000 you're in the end, or at least quite quickly, I think one will find that they're making an 187 00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:19,320 are going through monster land. And by and they're being led by a monster tour guide. 188 00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:26,759 tour guide and Calvin Hobbes run across a monster who's repeating the number nine, 189 00:22:32,519 --> 00:22:37,320 He says, the monster tour guide says, oh, he's just repeating nine in a very 190 00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:44,519 sequential order. So they keep walking and they come across another monster. And the 191 00:22:44,519 --> 00:22:48,200 repeating nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, same number over and ove... 192 00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:56,119 again, just like the monster four hand, they're identical. And he says, okay, is t... 193 00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:09,559 totally undeterministically, they all happen to be nine. There's a great sense that we 194 00:23:09,559 --> 00:23:14,840 tell whether or not an ordered sequence was truly chaotic or truly ordered. And whethe... 195 00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:21,720 phenomena of nature that we see in the conscious mind is ordered or some, you kno... 196 00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:33,240 consciousness? Furthermore, you mentioned how you don't believe consciousness is purely 197 00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:38,680 and therefore explained away. But at the same time, too, you recognize that the divide 198 00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:43,960 sort of supernatural substance, something closer to sort of radical freedom that 199 00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:49,320 this sort of free agent, isn't necessarily real, because it still recognizes that 200 00:23:55,640 --> 00:24:04,680 all material? And is it ordered or is it random? Or can we never tell? Well, I thin... 201 00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:10,920 it's a choice of worldview, isn't it? And I think that the worldviews we have depend o... 202 00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:17,480 as well as on reason. Most people who have a religious worldview, I mean, the great 203 00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:31,720 of which our consciousness is a small part, not on the basis of reason, logic, 204 00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:36,519 or mathematics, but on the basis of mystical experiences where they feel themselves to be 205 00:24:36,519 --> 00:24:42,920 part of a vastly greater consciousness. And this is what the great Indian rishis were 206 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:54,119 enlightenment. And it's what the great Christian mystics have experienced and wha... 207 00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:59,960 mystics experience. It's in all traditions and shamanic traditions too. People don't 208 00:24:59,960 --> 00:25:07,400 go to classrooms and learn about spirits. They have experiences of experiencing form... 209 00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:20,280 experience through mystical experience, meditation and other spiritual practices c... 210 00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:27,880 make it more likely that we'll have these kinds of experiences. These tell us if we 211 00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:32,920 and pay attention to our own experience, if we have these experiences, there's a great... 212 00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:46,039 worldview of all the world's religions, and almost everyone who's got a kind of spirit... 213 00:25:46,039 --> 00:25:52,599 takes the view that consciousness is underlies the universe. And our own 214 00:25:52,599 --> 00:25:58,759 that kind of fractal version of that ultimate consciousness. Then anyone who takes that 215 00:26:04,360 --> 00:26:09,160 Materialism, after all, isn't based on experience. It's a purely intellectual theory 216 00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:15,320 that denies other forms of consciousness. As its first step, its first move is to say, 217 00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:20,519 by definition, there are no forms of consciousness outside the universe or with... 218 00:26:20,519 --> 00:26:25,880 Everything is made of unconscious matter. And insofar as we are conscious, then it's just a 219 00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:39,720 And people who are deeply embedded in it are resistant to any evidence that would take 220 00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:45,160 beyond it. However, when you look at the actual life history of people who used to ... 221 00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:52,920 who aren't anymore, including me, then what you find is that what's persuaded people that 222 00:26:59,079 --> 00:27:03,320 Mystical experiences, for example, in near death experiences, 223 00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:11,400 often for many modern people through psychedelic illuminations, and through oth... 224 00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:17,000 which convince them that their mind is more than just the activity of their brain. The 225 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:22,200 would then counter by saying, well, that's just an illusion. But then you have the 226 00:27:18,519 --> 00:27:23,480 well, that's just an illusion. But then you have the situation, what do you trust most... 227 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:29,880 trust an intellectual theory with the originating basically in its present form ... 228 00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:35,800 as an attempt to get rid of dualism, religion, and so forth as part of an 229 00:27:44,759 --> 00:27:53,000 scientific to accept experience because the very word empirical on which science is ba... 230 00:27:53,000 --> 00:28:00,759 to base it on experience. And the Greek word empirical means experience. And in French, 231 00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:11,640 is irrelevant to understanding consciousness, it is consciousness. 232 00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:18,120 What the heck are psychedelics doing beside a neurochemical reaction? How are they doing 233 00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:23,000 they do? And something else I've been interested in, that's part one, something 234 00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:28,759 interested in is the difference between LSD as a psychedelic, and then there's DMT. It... 235 00:28:34,759 --> 00:28:41,000 DMT? And is there any, on top, is there any reality to the entities that people see? S... 236 00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:46,040 what are psychedelics doing besides the reaction in your brain? And then furthermore, 237 00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:53,160 what separates LSD from DMT? Well, I think, I think, you know, what the answer you gave 238 00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:04,040 their interfering with neurotransmitter receptor sites in the brain and so forth, 239 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:13,080 and leading to distorted brain activity. And on fMRI scans of people on LSD or on other 240 00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:18,360 you can actually see differences in brain activity, different areas connect up 241 00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:29,480 they produce are just illusions, like everything else produced by the brain. 242 00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:34,200 a different set of illusions. And there are, there are materialists who take psychedelics, 243 00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:43,160 who would explain their any experience in those terms. However, the experiences 244 00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:47,640 don't seem like just something happening in the brain. People feel they're getting a 245 00:29:55,560 --> 00:30:01,880 means psyche revealing, mind revealers, that's what they are. And Aldous Huxley 246 00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:07,960 need to give this idea that what they're doing is revealing something about the nat... 247 00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:14,440 One thing they do is shut down the default mode network, the chattering mind that goe... 248 00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:27,800 They shut down the default mode network. So does meditation and, you know, when people 249 00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:33,560 meditative states, that also shuts down the default mode network. And when you shut do... 250 00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:41,240 that's going on inside the mind, then some people would argue, I would argue that the 251 00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:53,800 around us and of which we're part, but we're not normally aware because they're shut ou... 252 00:30:53,800 --> 00:31:00,519 this chatter. Just like you can see people in beautiful landscapes who just are completely 253 00:31:00,519 --> 00:31:04,519 unaware of the landscape because they're busy doing Facebook on their smartphone or 254 00:31:10,039 --> 00:31:16,280 some would argue that psychedelics shut out this distraction which other methods can d... 255 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:26,200 like near-death experiences through trauma and meditation and so forth, other spiritu... 256 00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:33,000 And to seeing things that are there all the time but which we don't normally see or 257 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:44,280 But, you know, again, you're going to come back to what people's worldviews are, the way 258 00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:50,200 they interact. What about you on your worldview? How do you see it? Well, I see ... 259 00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:55,880 wider forms of consciousness to which we can gain access. And I think that the, 260 00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:15,320 experiences, I think what they do is open up the realm of the imagination. We have this 261 00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:22,600 imaginal realm anyway. Every night when we dream, we're creating scenes that aren't t... 262 00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:36,760 dreaming. But we enter it from the waking state in a much more vivid and enhanced st... 263 00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:46,120 certain kinds of psychedelics. Now, I think DMT produces something for some people mor... 264 00:32:52,120 --> 00:33:00,600 or greater realm of consciousness, which is sort of beyond the realms that LSD would 265 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:07,880 you into, which are more like enhanced versions of the dream state, and more into... 266 00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:15,880 state of unitive consciousness. So anyway, these are different psychedelics work 267 00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:27,480 and reading about these things and partly through my own experience, I think they're 268 00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:33,400 to these wider realms of experience. And I think that actually one of the things that... 269 00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:39,720 the cultural shift that we're all talking about at the moment is psychedelics. And i... 270 00:33:46,039 --> 00:33:51,800 It was a New York Times bestseller for months. You may well have seen it. Michael 271 00:33:51,800 --> 00:34:00,280 is a scientific journalist, and his other books on things like food, "The Omnivore's 272 00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:08,760 his book on plants, "The Bottom You Have Desire". It did a book on the new science ... 273 00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:21,640 in curing people who've got various mental illnesses. These have therapeutic uses, these 274 00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:27,720 psychedelics. And as part of the book, he says that he started the book as a 275 00:34:27,720 --> 00:34:35,480 atheist. But he took psychedelics, he felt as an investigative journalist, he should 276 00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:45,800 he thinks consciousness is much more widely distributed in nature, it's not just in human 277 00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:51,880 brains, it's in trees, in plants, in animals, in the earth, in the natural world. And I 278 00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:58,200 people who've taken psychedelics undergo that kind of conversion experience, where they 279 00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:04,200 not all just about arts and about human brains. And that then leads to a wider 280 00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:17,960 their minds, as he did, through experience, rather than through argument. He then beco... 281 00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:23,480 interested in panpsychist philosophy as a result of his own experience. And his book... 282 00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:30,200 is called "How to Change Your Mind". There is a sense when you were talking about 283 00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:46,360 for reasons we know not of, tend to be ahead of in some very serious sense, the sciences. 284 00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:51,480 So for example, we would wash our hands before we understood germ theory, we would 285 00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:57,159 take the bark off of the aspirin tree to cure our headaches before we understood its 286 00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:14,680 we do that. Do you believe that for this reason, the mystic practitioner will alway... 287 00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:21,480 sense, ahead of the scientists, ahead of the rationalists? Yes, I think when it comes to 288 00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:26,519 understanding consciousness, the people who understand it best are the ones who've 289 00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:39,240 they're basically studying the nature of their own minds from within. They're going... 290 00:36:39,240 --> 00:36:44,600 more about it than someone who's done psychology 101 at a university and as an 291 00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:50,680 even though the graduate is going to emerge with a degree that says they've got a degr... 292 00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:56,119 The Tibetan monk may have no degree, is going to have a vastly deeper understanding, may 293 00:37:02,119 --> 00:37:08,680 of measuring nerve impulses and that kind of thing. But in terms of the study of 294 00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:15,000 then they've gone far further. I mean, what modern science, mechanistic science, is 295 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:20,280 making machines. It's about its metaphor as machinery. It's really good at machines. 296 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:34,039 monk could possibly come up with a smartphone or an internet system. You need engineering 297 00:37:34,039 --> 00:37:39,960 science and technology for that. But when we come to consciousness, then I think they'r... 298 00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:46,840 of anything that's come out of any science lab that I've seen in terms of understandi... 299 00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:58,600 response to this is. This is from Richard Wiseman. Someone said he is not convinced.... 300 00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:05,000 as in Richard Wiseman. Have we told people what the dog experiment is? No. Why don't 301 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:11,400 Well, we should explain this too because no one will know what we're talking about 302 00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:25,720 if you have a field theory of minds and a field theory of social groups, which I do, 303 00:38:25,720 --> 00:38:31,079 then I would actually predict telepathy as a form of communication between bonded members 304 00:38:31,079 --> 00:38:38,360 of social groups. When I thought about this first, I realized it would apply to animals. 305 00:38:46,199 --> 00:38:53,000 through a field that relates the individual members of the group. And they'd remain 306 00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:58,440 field even at a distance, which would mean a change in one could affect the others. 307 00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:03,640 analogous to quantum non-locality where particles have been part of the same syste... 308 00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:19,640 photon, the other one immediately adopts the opposite polarity. Quantum non-locality or 309 00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:25,240 entanglement. So something like that I predicted would be getting on with animals... 310 00:39:25,240 --> 00:39:31,720 well, no one's looked at telepathy in animals. In the human realm, it gets 311 00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:44,360 forth. Treat it scientifically. If it exists, it should have evolved. If animals exist, ... 312 00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:50,280 be there in animals. Then I asked people who have animals, dogs, cats, parrots, horses ... 313 00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:55,400 animals, if they'd ever experienced their animals picking up their thoughts or 314 00:40:02,119 --> 00:40:07,320 have noticed it. And one of the most common phenomena and one of the most testable is 315 00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:13,960 dogs that know when they're in a succumbing home. About 50% of dogs go and wait at the 316 00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:18,920 window while the person they're most bonded to is on the way home from work or from 317 00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:23,960 whatever. Members of the household know when they're coming because the dog goes and wa... 318 00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:37,880 So the skeptics said to me, "Oh, that can't be true. It's impossible. It's just 319 00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:42,680 don't on their pets and they imagine it's just a coincidence. They forget all the ti... 320 00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:48,600 and so forth. They hadn't done any experiments, but they confidently dismisse... 321 00:40:54,760 --> 00:41:01,800 We filmed the place the whole time Leona was at so we could see objectively when the do... 322 00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:02,600 the door or window. 323 00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:59,400 We filmed the place the whole time the owner was out, 324 00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,279 so we could see objectively when the dog went to the door 325 00:41:02,279 --> 00:41:04,719 or window. 326 00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:07,159 The owner went at least five miles away. 327 00:41:07,159 --> 00:41:09,119 Dogs, even the most sensitive dogs, 328 00:41:09,119 --> 00:41:13,039 can't smell things more than about half a mile away. 329 00:41:13,039 --> 00:41:17,000 And then the wind has to be in the right direction. 330 00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:18,880 They didn't know when they were coming home. 331 00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,960 I told them by mobile phone at a randomly chosen time. 332 00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:26,759 And they didn't travel in a familiar vehicle. 333 00:41:26,759 --> 00:41:30,719 They took public transport or traveled on borrowed bicycles 334 00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:33,559 or in different taxis each time. 335 00:41:33,559 --> 00:41:35,599 So there were no familiar sounds, no routine. 336 00:41:35,599 --> 00:41:37,519 The people at home didn't know when they were coming. 337 00:41:37,519 --> 00:41:40,159 They didn't know in advance when they were coming home. 338 00:41:40,159 --> 00:41:42,119 And in these experiments over and over again, 339 00:41:42,119 --> 00:41:46,440 in hundreds of trials, the dog went and waited at the door 340 00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:49,679 for 10, 15 minutes before the person came home. 341 00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,719 or mostly the few exceptions were when 342 00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:58,360 there was a bitch on heat in the next apartment. 343 00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:01,319 So it proved the dog could be distracted. 344 00:42:01,319 --> 00:42:04,759 But most of the time, highly significant statistically. 345 00:42:04,759 --> 00:42:07,679 I then appeared on a TV program in Britain 346 00:42:07,679 --> 00:42:09,199 that described this research. 347 00:42:09,199 --> 00:42:11,400 And they showed one of these experiments. 348 00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:15,480 Richard Wiseman is a hardcore materialist, atheist, 349 00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:18,480 skeptic type who is a member of the Committee 350 00:42:23,199 --> 00:42:25,920 So he criticized it saying, oh, it's just routine. 351 00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:27,679 And they hear the car sounds. 352 00:42:27,679 --> 00:42:30,199 And I'd already explained, that's the first thing 353 00:42:30,199 --> 00:42:30,719 we thought of. 354 00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:33,199 We spent a year doing hundreds of experiments 355 00:42:33,199 --> 00:42:34,319 showing it's not. 356 00:42:34,319 --> 00:42:37,360 Still on TV, he said, oh, it's obviously just routine. 357 00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:39,759 So I invited him to do experiments with the dog 358 00:42:39,759 --> 00:42:41,000 himself. 359 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:42,199 He did. 360 00:42:42,199 --> 00:42:45,360 With his own car, his own randomizing system, 361 00:42:45,360 --> 00:42:48,039 I lent him one of my cameras. 362 00:42:50,599 --> 00:42:51,519 I'd done it. 363 00:42:51,519 --> 00:42:53,960 In every one of them, the dog was waiting 364 00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:54,960 when she came home. 365 00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:56,360 The owner came home. 366 00:42:56,360 --> 00:42:58,920 It was at the window 78% of the time 367 00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:01,159 when she was on the way home of that period. 368 00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:03,639 78% was at the window. 369 00:43:03,639 --> 00:43:06,679 When she wasn't coming home, it was at the window an average 370 00:43:06,679 --> 00:43:07,960 of 4% of the time. 371 00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,279 It occasionally went to look at passing cats, 372 00:43:10,279 --> 00:43:12,960 as it did in my experiments. 373 00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:15,199 And to my astonishment, Wiseman then 374 00:43:15,199 --> 00:43:17,119 appeared on television and in the media 375 00:43:21,039 --> 00:43:25,799 And the dog had gone to the window before she came home. 376 00:43:25,799 --> 00:43:28,039 And therefore, it had failed the test. 377 00:43:28,039 --> 00:43:30,559 When I pointed out to him that actually, 378 00:43:30,559 --> 00:43:32,920 after his supposed failing of the test, 379 00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,920 when it had gone to the window for some other reason, 380 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:39,559 not waiting, just going for a brief visit, 381 00:43:39,559 --> 00:43:41,759 that you look at the rest of his own data 382 00:43:41,759 --> 00:43:43,400 and they showed this massive effect, 383 00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:45,119 statistically significant. 384 00:43:45,119 --> 00:43:46,799 He said, oh, you can't look at that data. 385 00:43:51,119 --> 00:43:53,759 after the dogs already failed the test. 386 00:43:53,759 --> 00:43:57,440 And now, everyone who's looked at Richard Wiseman's analysis 387 00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:00,279 of the data and who's looked at his data, 388 00:44:00,279 --> 00:44:02,440 there's now been discussed in several books. 389 00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:04,400 There's a book called "Randy's Prize" 390 00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,400 about materialists and skeptics. 391 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,679 There's a book called "Heretics" by somebody 392 00:44:10,679 --> 00:44:13,519 who interviewed Wiseman and went into this whole story. 393 00:44:17,359 --> 00:44:21,199 of evidence and distortion of what went on. 394 00:44:21,199 --> 00:44:23,679 So, I mean, reading what he said, 395 00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:27,039 and I'll tell you in this context what it's about. 396 00:44:27,039 --> 00:44:29,079 - Sure, I'll paraphrase for brevity. 397 00:44:29,079 --> 00:44:31,079 He essentially said that it's not surprising 398 00:44:31,079 --> 00:44:32,920 that the dog would be on the porch before it comes home 399 00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:37,400 because the longer the owner is away, 400 00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:40,400 the more likely the dog is to wait on the porch. 401 00:44:43,119 --> 00:44:44,719 anticipating the arrival of the owner 402 00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:49,639 instead of knowing through psychic abilities. 403 00:44:49,639 --> 00:44:51,639 And then he goes on further to criticize 404 00:44:51,639 --> 00:44:53,799 that your work hasn't been peer-reviewed, 405 00:44:53,799 --> 00:44:56,759 in peer-reviewed journals, but only in books. 406 00:44:56,759 --> 00:44:59,279 And that this means that your methodology 407 00:44:59,279 --> 00:45:00,319 has not been fully described, 408 00:45:00,319 --> 00:45:01,960 making it difficult to properly assess 409 00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:03,840 the validity of the methodology. 410 00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,440 - Well, you see, unfortunately, 411 00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,559 this is a perfect example of lying and deception. 412 00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,079 the psychology of deception. 413 00:45:15,079 --> 00:45:17,679 He's a magician, he's a skilled deceiver. 414 00:45:17,679 --> 00:45:20,239 And let me explain why that's deceptive. 415 00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:23,519 First of all, the dog doesn't go to the window 416 00:45:23,519 --> 00:45:24,960 more and more as time goes on. 417 00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:26,359 We did control experiments 418 00:45:26,359 --> 00:45:28,359 where the owner didn't come home at all 419 00:45:28,359 --> 00:45:31,359 during the whole experimental period of more than four hours. 420 00:45:31,359 --> 00:45:34,359 And it doesn't go, it's just more or less a flat lie. 421 00:45:34,359 --> 00:45:36,039 He's knows that, he's seen the graphs, 422 00:45:36,039 --> 00:45:37,319 I've shown him the data. 423 00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,400 is published in peer-reviewed journals. 424 00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:45,119 And it's all on my website. 425 00:45:45,119 --> 00:45:47,840 You can actually see PDFs of the papers 426 00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:49,239 in peer-reviewed journals. 427 00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:53,519 Website, sheldrake.org, research section, 428 00:45:53,519 --> 00:45:57,679 unexplained animal pairs, telepathy with dogs, 429 00:45:57,679 --> 00:46:00,000 all the data, quantitative data there. 430 00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,599 There was a film done 431 00:46:03,599 --> 00:46:05,840 through an Austrian television company, 432 00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:07,840 which you can also see on my website, 433 00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,359 where they showed this phenomenon very clearly. 434 00:46:12,359 --> 00:46:17,199 So it is in peer-reviewed journals. 435 00:46:17,199 --> 00:46:19,960 It has been subjected to scientific scrutiny. 436 00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:21,960 It has been done in the correct way. 437 00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:26,239 I have taken into account the dog 438 00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:28,319 going to the window more and more. 439 00:46:28,319 --> 00:46:30,400 Wiseman's own data show this. 440 00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:33,319 And yet, you see, like you reading the kind, 441 00:46:33,319 --> 00:46:34,480 if you read Wikipedia, 442 00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:37,199 which has been captured by skeptics, 443 00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:40,960 psychic research, alternative medicine, 444 00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:44,480 they are all full of this kind of misinformation. 445 00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,920 So, I mean, you're an open-minded chap. 446 00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:48,279 You want to find out about this. 447 00:46:48,279 --> 00:46:49,679 You go and look it up online, 448 00:46:49,679 --> 00:46:51,639 and that's what you find. 449 00:46:51,639 --> 00:46:54,279 The reality is completely different. 450 00:46:54,279 --> 00:46:57,799 And what we're seeing is, particularly with Wikipedia, 451 00:46:57,799 --> 00:47:00,440 is the defense of a materialist paradigm 452 00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:05,079 by the systematic and deliberate distortion of evidence, 453 00:47:07,159 --> 00:47:09,960 putting in snide incorrect results, 454 00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:11,639 like sneering remarks like that. 455 00:47:11,639 --> 00:47:14,159 It's not in peer-reviewed journals any in books. 456 00:47:14,159 --> 00:47:15,799 Absolutely untrue. 457 00:47:15,799 --> 00:47:17,480 And he knows it's untrue. 458 00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:19,599 I mean, he's seen my peer-reviewed papers. 459 00:47:19,599 --> 00:47:22,840 I mean, in private, when I talked to Richard Wiseman, 460 00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:24,440 he's a perfectly reasonable person. 461 00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:25,799 And he's quite funny. 462 00:47:25,799 --> 00:47:30,440 But as soon as he gets onto his sort of podium 463 00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:32,559 as the media skeptic, 464 00:47:36,119 --> 00:47:37,559 and get away with it. 465 00:47:37,559 --> 00:47:39,799 Well, he doesn't get away with it actually. 466 00:47:39,799 --> 00:47:42,920 Look at a website called Skeptical About Skeptics, 467 00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:45,679 and you'll find a dossier on his deceptions 468 00:47:45,679 --> 00:47:47,639 in this and other areas. 469 00:47:47,639 --> 00:47:52,639 And there's also a video online which shows 470 00:47:52,639 --> 00:47:57,079 how he distorted the evidence about the dog experiment. 471 00:47:57,079 --> 00:47:58,799 There's clips from TV shows 472 00:47:58,799 --> 00:48:01,880 where he claims the dog just goes to the door 473 00:48:03,799 --> 00:48:06,279 It's showing the same footage twice in one case 474 00:48:06,279 --> 00:48:10,799 to create the illusion that this has all been exposed 475 00:48:10,799 --> 00:48:12,159 over and over again. 476 00:48:12,159 --> 00:48:16,000 But you won't get to realize the expose 477 00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,480 and if you look at things like Wikipedia, 478 00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:20,000 which as I say, 479 00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,159 being captured by groups of skeptical activists 480 00:48:23,159 --> 00:48:25,599 called Gorilla Skeptics on Wikipedia 481 00:48:25,599 --> 00:48:28,279 and other activist groups. 482 00:48:28,279 --> 00:48:29,440 I mean, I'm not making this up. 483 00:48:33,159 --> 00:48:34,319 I'm not paranoid. 484 00:48:34,319 --> 00:48:38,799 But when I exposed the Gorilla Skeptics on Wikipedia 485 00:48:38,799 --> 00:48:41,159 in the blog, three days later, 486 00:48:41,159 --> 00:48:43,440 they just took down my own biography page 487 00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:44,799 and they've controlled it ever since. 488 00:48:44,799 --> 00:48:46,799 They stripped me of a PhD. 489 00:48:46,799 --> 00:48:48,840 They said I was a pseudo scientist. 490 00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,359 They removed all my academic qualifications. 491 00:48:51,359 --> 00:48:54,840 They stated I had no papers in peer-reviewed journals. 492 00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:58,119 A few people fought back and managed to get 493 00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:06,960 But they're still in control of this biography page. 494 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,759 And so when people, students and others 495 00:49:09,759 --> 00:49:12,239 who are trying to get a sense of what's going on, 496 00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,159 but kind of area you two are exploring, 497 00:49:15,159 --> 00:49:17,759 consciousness, worldviews, paradigms, 498 00:49:17,759 --> 00:49:20,639 the view you get through the regular 499 00:49:20,639 --> 00:49:23,719 orthodox scientific educational system 500 00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:26,000 and through media like Wikipedia 501 00:49:29,079 --> 00:49:30,559 And I mean, that's just what happens 502 00:49:30,559 --> 00:49:31,599 when you have a paradigm. 503 00:49:31,599 --> 00:49:33,319 A paradigm is a worldview. 504 00:49:33,319 --> 00:49:35,559 People who believe in it think it's true. 505 00:49:35,559 --> 00:49:37,440 Anything that doesn't fit in with it 506 00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:41,840 is marginalized, treated as heresy, excluded. 507 00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:44,159 And that's what's happening. 508 00:49:44,159 --> 00:49:46,039 And that's just the way things are. 509 00:49:46,039 --> 00:49:48,759 It's what happened to the theory of continental drift. 510 00:49:48,759 --> 00:49:51,519 It's what happens to all sorts of theories in science. 511 00:49:51,519 --> 00:49:53,199 Some of them are false. 512 00:49:58,199 --> 00:50:03,000 is something in my view holds back 513 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:04,619 true scientific inquiry. 514 00:50:04,619 --> 00:50:10,759 - There is a sense after talking about all this dogs waiting 515 00:50:10,759 --> 00:50:12,759 for their owners to come home. 516 00:50:12,759 --> 00:50:16,239 I'm reminded of Argos, the Odysseus' dog 517 00:50:16,239 --> 00:50:19,319 who waited for him after 20 years or so the myth goes 518 00:50:19,319 --> 00:50:23,000 and then finally passed after seeing his master. 519 00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:29,800 so very briefly, what do you believe is the role of myth 520 00:50:29,800 --> 00:50:34,800 in exposing these truths or highlighting these truths? 521 00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:37,099 Is there any validity to that? 522 00:50:37,099 --> 00:50:40,480 - Well, myths are stories that make sense 523 00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:41,599 of the world for us. 524 00:50:41,599 --> 00:50:45,359 And they try and explain the way things are 525 00:50:45,359 --> 00:50:48,800 in terms of stories about what happened in the past. 526 00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:52,039 And I think they're absolutely essential for, 527 00:50:55,279 --> 00:50:57,759 And there'll be people who'll tell you, 528 00:50:57,759 --> 00:51:00,519 well, science is different, science is the truth. 529 00:51:00,519 --> 00:51:02,719 But actually, the Big Bang Theory 530 00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:04,599 is our modern creation myth. 531 00:51:04,599 --> 00:51:09,000 You know, there's lots of archaic creation myths 532 00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:12,960 that say the world grew from the hatching of a cosmic egg. 533 00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:16,359 And the cosmic egg gave rise to the organism of the cosmos 534 00:51:16,359 --> 00:51:20,639 that grew from this hatching of the cosmic egg. 535 00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:28,880 of the cosmic egg, the golden egg from which the cosmos comes. 536 00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:31,840 Well, the Big Bang Theory is a modern scientific version 537 00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:33,880 of that cosmogonic myth. 538 00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:37,599 And nobody was around at the time of the Big Bang to see it. 539 00:51:37,599 --> 00:51:39,599 It's not as if it was carefully observed 540 00:51:39,599 --> 00:51:41,679 and written up in full color photos 541 00:51:41,679 --> 00:51:44,840 to scientific American by on-the-spot observers. 542 00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:49,460 The whole thing is a theoretical projection 543 00:51:51,500 --> 00:51:53,940 Basically, the universe is expanding. 544 00:51:53,940 --> 00:51:57,039 So if you scroll it back, you get to a point ultimately 545 00:51:57,039 --> 00:51:59,840 where it all collapses into the Big Bang, 546 00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:01,679 the original point. 547 00:52:01,679 --> 00:52:05,199 That worldview assumes that the laws of nature 548 00:52:05,199 --> 00:52:06,840 have always been exactly the same. 549 00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:08,380 I don't think they are. 550 00:52:08,380 --> 00:52:10,719 But anyway, I'm perfectly happy to go along 551 00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:12,759 with the Big Bang as a creation myth, 552 00:52:12,759 --> 00:52:15,000 but I don't think it's just a literal truth. 553 00:52:19,519 --> 00:52:22,619 And there's a lot in science 554 00:52:22,619 --> 00:52:25,179 which has this storytelling aspect. 555 00:52:25,179 --> 00:52:28,099 I mean, the selfish gene story tells us 556 00:52:28,099 --> 00:52:30,699 that DNA controls life. 557 00:52:30,699 --> 00:52:34,019 And everything depends on this selfish gene 558 00:52:34,019 --> 00:52:36,219 which is ruthless and competitive. 559 00:52:36,219 --> 00:52:39,059 And when you read Richard Dawkins on the subject, 560 00:52:39,059 --> 00:52:41,380 he's making up myths about DNA. 561 00:52:41,380 --> 00:52:44,500 It's not scientific language to say DNA is selfish 562 00:52:48,199 --> 00:52:50,519 that genes have built to live in and stuff. 563 00:52:50,519 --> 00:52:53,099 This is all storytelling. 564 00:52:53,099 --> 00:52:57,119 It happens in that case, it's very bad storytelling 565 00:52:57,119 --> 00:53:00,119 because genes have been greatly overrated. 566 00:53:00,119 --> 00:53:03,920 And we now know through the study of epigenetic inheritance 567 00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:08,759 that a lot of inheritance is not based simply on genes. 568 00:53:08,759 --> 00:53:11,019 There are other factors involved. 569 00:53:11,019 --> 00:53:14,039 So I would say we have to have stories. 570 00:53:16,300 --> 00:53:20,899 But it's not as if on one hand you've got ancient myths 571 00:53:20,899 --> 00:53:22,500 which are sort of superstitions. 572 00:53:22,500 --> 00:53:26,019 And on the other hand, you've got science which is true. 573 00:53:26,019 --> 00:53:28,059 That's an incredibly naive view. 574 00:53:28,059 --> 00:53:31,380 And most scientists who believe science is true 575 00:53:31,380 --> 00:53:33,019 are incredibly naive. 576 00:53:33,019 --> 00:53:36,300 They think they have a superior belief system 577 00:53:36,300 --> 00:53:37,139 to everybody else. 578 00:53:37,139 --> 00:53:39,099 In fact, they don't even recognize 579 00:53:39,099 --> 00:53:40,579 they have a belief system. 580 00:53:40,579 --> 00:53:42,099 They think they know the truth. 581 00:53:43,779 --> 00:53:46,159 - Right, there's something called Lobs theorem 582 00:53:46,159 --> 00:53:48,639 which says that if you believe in your own consistency, 583 00:53:48,639 --> 00:53:50,679 you automatically become inconsistent 584 00:53:50,679 --> 00:53:53,559 which is related to Girdle's incompleteness theorem. 585 00:53:53,559 --> 00:53:54,399 So-- 586 00:53:54,399 --> 00:53:55,599 - And also what I was saying earlier 587 00:53:55,599 --> 00:53:58,719 about the belief system of materialists 588 00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:00,679 because their in-belief system 589 00:54:00,679 --> 00:54:03,159 actually makes their in-belief in materialism 590 00:54:03,159 --> 00:54:04,340 highly problematic. 591 00:54:04,340 --> 00:54:07,719 - There is something to be said about scientists 592 00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:10,920 having their own, in a sense, dogmatism 593 00:54:13,059 --> 00:54:13,899 to be supernatural. 594 00:54:13,899 --> 00:54:15,279 So if you say, is there a creator? 595 00:54:15,279 --> 00:54:17,940 No, no, is there someone pretty much watching us? 596 00:54:17,940 --> 00:54:19,039 No, are we in the mind of God? 597 00:54:19,039 --> 00:54:22,099 No, is there, is it possible we're in a simulation? 598 00:54:22,099 --> 00:54:26,159 Yes, well, we were created by that simulation 599 00:54:26,159 --> 00:54:28,159 and in a sense that simulation is watching. 600 00:54:28,159 --> 00:54:31,639 Well, what's the difference between, 601 00:54:31,639 --> 00:54:32,880 they're willing to believe one 602 00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,159 because it's more palatable to the scientists. 603 00:54:36,159 --> 00:54:39,300 - And furthermore, how do you decipher between evidence 604 00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:40,600 And furthermore, how do you decipher between evidence that is credible and evidence that 605 00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:43,720 is not credible? What is your epistemology in all of this? 606 00:54:43,720 --> 00:54:51,400 Okay, well, first, the world view thing. You see, I mean, I personally find the simulation 607 00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:56,600 theory pretty implausible because it implies the universe is a gigantic computer with s... 608 00:54:56,600 --> 00:55:01,000 of program that's simulating things. I think that's such an anthropocentric metaphor. 609 00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:08,360 The whole mechanistic theory is anthropocentric. Only humans make machines... 610 00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:13,720 industrial civilizations are so obsessed with machinery that they can assume that the whole 611 00:55:13,720 --> 00:55:18,760 of the universe is nothing but machinery. It's unbelievably provincial, even though 612 00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:28,680 of it supremely objective. And so this world view of the simulation, it's plausible to 613 00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:39,160 and they're in favor of that. But basically, it's saying the same thing as one of the 614 00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:46,440 Hindu myths, the idea that Vishnu lies down, the God Vishnu lies down to sleep, and he ... 615 00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:51,960 and that dream is this universe, and we're within Vishnu's dream. And then eventually, 616 00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:57,560 Vishnu wakes up, this universe disappears, and he lies down and dreams another universe. 617 00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:11,400 the Vedas, it is written that that thing breathless breathed by its own nature, and 618 00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:16,840 that the gods came after this world's creation, that they themselves have not be... 619 00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:23,240 this world's creation. Would you say that this ties? Well, what I'd say is that the 620 00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:38,360 traditions, are that there's a kind of consciousness underlying all things from 621 00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:46,200 And we connect with that through meditation, through altered states of consciousness, 622 00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:51,560 through mystical experiences, we can have a direct connection with that realm. 623 00:56:53,800 --> 00:57:00,840 And that our models of reality, if you then say, well, the sun is a god, or the moon's... 624 00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:06,519 or something like that, these are human ways of modeling this reality, explaining it in 625 00:57:06,519 --> 00:57:12,680 stories and myths. And in that sense, the gods, in a polytheistic system where you h... 626 00:57:12,680 --> 00:57:18,200 weather and gods of wind and gods of sea and gods of sky and gods or goddesses of earth 627 00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:32,760 the idea is that underlying all these is a realm of consciousness, which you can call... 628 00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:40,600 like, or you can call it ultimate emptiness or nirvana or whatever or bliss or joy, or... 629 00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:46,360 the best way of thinking of it in the Hindu tradition is through this threefold division, 630 00:57:54,039 --> 00:58:01,880 Yes. Well, Campbell speaks about a whole range of different myths. And what satchit 631 00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:10,280 a way of having a model of this ultimate consciousness without saying, gods are 632 00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:14,760 of this sort of man with a white beard who makes machinery. That's obviously a naive 633 00:58:20,200 --> 00:58:23,800 incredibly naive views. Most of them don't have such naive views. 634 00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:32,920 To add on to your point, in Orthodox iconography, normally the father, i.e. 635 00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:39,160 by a blue light, right? There's this understanding that you would never depict ... 636 00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:50,600 as an anthropomorphization of God. Yes. So I couldn't agree more, but please continue. 637 00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:55,400 Of course, in Judaism, there's a prohibition on making any images of God or the divine 638 00:58:55,400 --> 00:59:02,520 God's beyond all images and in Islam as well. And so I think that the, if we actually take 639 00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:08,520 seriously what serious theologians and mystics within the world's religious 640 00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:23,240 No, the God atheists, I'm a Christian. I'm rooted in the mystical traditions of 641 00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:30,360 in my own thinking and worldview. But when I meet atheists and they tell me what they 642 00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:35,240 think I think, there's no relation at all. They've got some kind of something they heard 643 00:59:39,720 --> 00:59:44,840 It's like sort of dismissing science on the basis of a misunderstanding of something you 644 00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:52,360 heard in primary school. It's just, it's not even, so it doesn't even start as a seriou... 645 00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:59,079 When you look, sorry, very quickly, when you look at the new atheist movement 646 01:00:05,160 --> 01:00:11,720 misleading or the misunderstanding is based on this natural versus supernatural divide, 647 01:00:11,720 --> 01:00:18,680 i.e., we're in the material world where there's toast and micro-risal fungi and 648 01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:24,440 there's this supernatural place with God and demons and angels and werewolves and vampires 649 01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:36,680 true reality? Yeah, I think it's partly based on that disastrous division of the natural 650 01:00:36,680 --> 01:00:43,720 supernatural. It's partly based on that. It's partly based on historical arguments, you 651 01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:49,240 religions have caused war and conflict like the Inquisition and that sort of thing. Bu... 652 01:00:55,640 --> 01:01:00,520 their official policy and believed in science and reasons, Soviet, Russia, Maoist, China, 653 01:01:00,520 --> 01:01:06,920 Pol Potts, Cambodia, were responsible for sort of death on an industrial scale, 654 01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:14,120 the Inquisition. Or professed for the Inquisition from the heart, they omit that 655 01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:30,680 to refute and which are spoken with the further of kind of evangelical preachers. ... 656 01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:35,640 take that kind of atheism seriously. There is a kind that I can take seriously. There ar... 657 01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:43,079 atheists who say that God is beyond, that ultimate reality is beyond all human 658 01:01:49,160 --> 01:01:54,520 has to be beyond our conceptions. Therefore, any of our ideas we may form of God or 659 01:01:54,520 --> 01:02:01,800 ultimately misleading and the truth goes far beyond them. That's a kind of mystical 660 01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:08,120 which actually is very similar to mystical theology. In the Orthodox tradition, 661 01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:22,440 not saying what God is. It says we can't say what God is. We can only say what God is not 662 01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:31,320 because God is so far beyond our conception that we can't form a clear image. There is a 663 01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:37,800 certain kind of atheist which is very close to apathatic theology. John Gray, the English 664 01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:48,200 Atheism which makes it much easier to understand where the different kinds of 665 01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:57,480 from. The most superficial and trivial kind is the kind of Richard Dawkins new atheist 666 01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:02,920 But there are more serious atheist arguments and his book is a wonderful introduction t... 667 01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:15,079 ancient roots, right? Like the protagonist said, "As for the gods, I cannot say either 668 01:03:15,079 --> 01:03:19,960 that they are or that they are not or how they are constituted in shape. There is so 669 01:03:19,960 --> 01:03:25,000 prevents knowledge of this kind and clarity of the subject and the shortness of human 670 01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:31,800 So that would be a kind of mystical type of atheist that there's limits of our own minds. 671 01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:47,640 And as I say, in Buddhism, the Buddhist refuse to talk about cosmology and stuff. ... 672 01:03:47,640 --> 01:03:52,920 ultimate reality is beyond all our conceptions and therefore the only thing t... 673 01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:57,480 and experience it directly rather than just talk about it. That won't get you anywhere. 674 01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:09,640 It's atheistic in the sense that goes beyond the limitations of human thought. 675 01:04:09,640 --> 01:04:15,160 One of the most interesting aspects that I find about Jordan Peterson is that he's ma... 676 01:04:15,160 --> 01:04:21,720 sapid, and an intelligible to people who are formerly or even current atheists. 677 01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:29,880 and what are you not like? I'm curious to know your thoughts. 678 01:04:29,880 --> 01:04:36,520 I think Peterson has done a great job in bringing up questions, serious, important 679 01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:41,880 and making them things that a lot of people see as questions and want to talk about an... 680 01:04:41,880 --> 01:04:48,520 And he's also done a great job in reaching out to people who identify as atheists and 681 01:04:58,520 --> 01:05:04,200 intellectual discussions, part of popular culture rather than just being confined to 682 01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:08,520 university seminar rooms because he makes the questions real and relevant. 683 01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:16,120 I think when it comes to his views on God, and it's, I find it rather hard to know wh... 684 01:05:20,840 --> 01:05:27,560 But I'd like to know whether he goes to church, whether he prays and that sort of 685 01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:34,920 I go to church, I pray, I'm a practicing Anglican, so I don't try to pretend I'm not. 686 01:05:34,920 --> 01:05:42,280 And he may want to not to say that maybe he doesn't go to church, doesn't pray, 687 01:05:42,280 --> 01:05:45,400 maybe he doesn't have any personal religious faith or practice. 688 01:05:52,039 --> 01:05:56,680 with the right archetypes. It's awfully hard. I mean, I know there are people who've 689 01:05:56,680 --> 01:06:03,320 hundreds of hours of Jordan Peterson. I've only watched much less than that. So it ma... 690 01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:07,000 clarifies this somewhere, but the ones I've seen, I found a bit frustrating. 691 01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:13,800 Well, what's next for you? And where can our audience find out more about you? 692 01:06:21,960 --> 01:06:29,000 channel, where there are many videos and dialogues and discussions. So there's plen... 693 01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:36,840 there. My book, Science Set Free, summarizes my views about the need to go beyond 694 01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:41,880 science into a wider, more inclusive and holistic paradigm. 695 01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:56,280 with spiritual practices. One is called Science and Spiritual Practices, deals wit... 696 01:06:56,280 --> 01:07:02,680 spiritual practices, including meditation, gratitude, connecting with nature and 697 01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:09,480 And the most recent book, Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work, is about seven more 698 01:07:17,320 --> 01:07:24,360 and the celebration of holy days and festivals. All of these are practices whic... 699 01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:31,000 within or outside the framework of any particular religion. And now all of them a... 700 01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:46,120 helpful relationship, rather than some kind of antagonistic slanging match. And that's 701 01:07:46,120 --> 01:07:52,360 more constructive and helpful. Anyway, that's the theme of my most recent books. And as ... 702 01:08:04,360 --> 01:08:11,560 it as a wonderful blessing because I'm writing scientific papers now. I've got ab... 703 01:08:11,560 --> 01:08:19,480 eight papers based on data from my experiments and other ideas which I've wan... 704 01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:24,600 write up for years and have never had the time, and now I have. So talking of 705 01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:31,399 I'm now in full peer-reviewed journal mode. I'm writing finished one last week, I'm 706 01:08:31,399 --> 01:08:39,640 right now. So that's what I'm up to at the moment. Rupert, your pleasure to talk to, 707 01:08:45,960 --> 01:08:50,039 and your inquiry. It's really important.