1 00:00:06,919 --> 00:00:16,039 in January 2022, when I'm recording this message for you. The second date is nine 2 00:00:16,039 --> 00:00:23,899 in January 2013. And in January 2013, I was invited to give a TEDx talk, and at the same 3 00:00:23,899 --> 00:00:29,800 event was the controversial biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who also gave a talk. Rupert and 4 00:00:38,320 --> 00:00:46,119 the orthodox narrative about consciousness. And that brings you to the third date, which 5 00:00:46,119 --> 00:00:51,399 is the date that the dialogue between Rupert and myself that you're going to be seeing 6 00:00:51,399 --> 00:00:57,679 shortly was recorded. And that dialogue was recorded in November 2021, and it was 7 00:01:04,420 --> 00:01:11,239 conference series to anybody who gets a chance to tune into their future events. W... 8 00:01:11,239 --> 00:01:18,480 done with this recording is that we've added quite a number of images, particularly images 9 00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:24,560 from the great visionary artist Pablo Amaringo, who kindly gave me permission to 10 00:01:30,599 --> 00:01:37,760 under the title Visionary with new material added. So let's go straight to the dialogue 11 00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:41,400 between myself and Rupert Sheldrake. And I'd like to say at the beginning that I have 12 00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:46,700 huge admiration for Rupert Sheldrake. He's a serious scientist who has brought the tools 13 00:01:46,700 --> 00:01:52,519 of scientific investigation to the mystery of consciousness, perhaps the greatest mystery 14 00:01:53,519 --> 00:02:03,120 It's a very warm welcome, everybody, to Beyond the Brain 16 in 2021 online. Both o... 15 00:02:03,120 --> 00:02:10,560 speakers are very well known to you all. They have the privilege of both being banned, both 16 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:16,199 their TED Talks being banned. And they're going to be talking about the nature of 17 00:02:22,319 --> 00:02:29,520 the Brain. So Graham, I'm going to hand right over to you for your opening statement. 18 00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:37,000 Okay. Well, first of all, I want to say I'm not a scientist. I am a journalist. So I find 19 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:55,400 am an author and a journalist. I write books about ancient civilizations. And I can 20 00:02:55,400 --> 00:03:01,360 say that I had, apart from one incident, I had very little interest in consciousness 21 00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:06,120 until I encountered the ancient Egyptian books of the dead. Perhaps I should say wh... 22 00:03:12,620 --> 00:03:20,840 was a massive electric shock, a near-fatal electric shock. And I distinctly remember, 23 00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:27,039 I was very aware of it at the time, that I left my body and I found myself up around 24 00:03:27,039 --> 00:03:35,560 the light in the kitchen where I was, looking down at my body. And I thought, hmm, how 25 00:03:40,560 --> 00:03:50,599 back into my body and I got up and I was kind of okay. But that memory of being outside 26 00:03:50,599 --> 00:03:59,400 my body and looking down on my body, I think planted in my mind the notion that whatever 27 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:13,879 that isn't me. That doesn't define me. And that happened at an early age in my teens. 28 00:04:13,879 --> 00:04:21,240 And subsequently, I put it out of my mind for many years until I encountered the ancient 29 00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:27,920 Egyptian funerary texts. And I encountered those in the course of my main focus of my 30 00:04:33,120 --> 00:04:39,759 provide us with clues to the nature of that lost civilization and, indeed, to its 31 00:04:39,759 --> 00:04:45,120 And this required me to read the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts and the derivative 32 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:52,839 thereof, which include the ancient Egyptian coffin texts, the book of what is in the duat 33 00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:07,639 the soul makes after death, where the soul is confronted in complete transparency and 34 00:05:07,639 --> 00:05:12,639 openness with the nature of his or her life and how it was and how it was lived and is 35 00:05:12,639 --> 00:05:21,920 required to account for it. And initially, my reaction was, why does this matter? And 36 00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:33,600 put their best minds at work for 3000 years to try to understand the mystery of death, 37 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:40,600 and perhaps we should listen to what they are saying. As part of this process, this 38 00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:46,519 inquiry into the ancient texts, by the way, the Hermetic texts are also stunningly 39 00:05:46,519 --> 00:05:51,079 and really reach deep into the nature of reality and the nature of consciousness. A... 40 00:05:56,600 --> 00:06:04,879 I then, researching another book, found it necessary to take psychedelics. I was, the 41 00:06:04,879 --> 00:06:11,319 book purported or began life as explaining cave art. And I came across a very powerful 42 00:06:11,319 --> 00:06:15,399 theory by Professor David Lewis Williams at the University of what is around in South 43 00:06:15,399 --> 00:06:21,060 Africa, that cave art and the universal features of cave art all around the world 44 00:06:26,160 --> 00:06:31,920 what they saw in their visions. So I'm a kind of boots on the ground researcher, and I 45 00:06:31,920 --> 00:06:42,519 to go have those visions. I've had one LSD trip in 1975, but it wasn't until the second 46 00:06:42,519 --> 00:06:49,639 half of the 1990s that I began this research with psychedelics, particularly with 47 00:06:57,180 --> 00:07:03,699 experiences of a seamlessly convincing parallel realm filled with intelligent 48 00:07:03,699 --> 00:07:10,220 seemed to want to communicate with me in certain ways and who seemed to convey mora... 49 00:07:10,220 --> 00:07:14,180 and asked me to examine the nature of my life and the impact that I had on other people. 50 00:07:19,759 --> 00:07:25,779 my body, that I am not my brain, but that somehow the body and the brain provide an 51 00:07:25,779 --> 00:07:32,519 interface to other levels of reality. In short, reality is much more complex than i... 52 00:07:32,519 --> 00:07:37,680 appears to be. It goes deeper and deeper into layer upon layer, and I'm not sure if we'll 53 00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:40,959 ever get to the bottom of it. Over to you, Robert. 54 00:07:50,300 --> 00:07:55,860 with that, but first of all, I'll just give a kind of general pitch about my own interests 55 00:07:55,860 --> 00:08:04,740 in the mind beyond the brain. There's three senses in which I think our minds are beyond 56 00:08:13,420 --> 00:08:19,600 brain. And here I'm talking about just ordinary everyday consciousness, not alter... 57 00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:26,040 of consciousness, not out of the body experiences, not electric shocks, not anci... 58 00:08:36,059 --> 00:08:43,360 they do so through fields, fields of the mind, mental fields. We're used to the ide... 59 00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:49,039 extending beyond material objects from magnets, where there's a magnetic field in 60 00:08:49,039 --> 00:08:54,279 the magnet, from the earth, where there's gravitational field in and around the earth, 61 00:09:00,399 --> 00:09:06,519 visibly, there's rooms full of mobile phone transmissions and TV and radio transmissions 62 00:09:06,519 --> 00:09:13,440 everywhere is. And I think our minds extend to and particularly through vision. When we 63 00:09:13,440 --> 00:09:19,120 look at something, I'm looking out of the window to tree, for example. I think my image 64 00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:30,440 two dimensional three dimensional full color virtual reality display onto the world around 65 00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:37,759 me. And so is every animal with image forming eyes, that our minds extend outwards in every 66 00:09:37,759 --> 00:09:47,799 act of perception. And that's the word attention, means to stretch towards and to 67 00:09:53,899 --> 00:10:00,360 stretch into things through intention, which means to stretch into. And I think phenomena 68 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:07,720 like telepathy exhibit that ability. If I think about somebody who I want to get in 69 00:10:07,720 --> 00:10:14,120 with, I intend to get in touch with them. I go to my telephone, look up their number, 70 00:10:18,600 --> 00:10:23,519 I ring them, they say, it's funny, I was just thinking about you. And this I think 71 00:10:23,519 --> 00:10:30,440 the very common experience of telephone telepathy. And the extension of the mind 72 00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:36,320 I think underlies the well known phenomenon of the sense of being stared at people 73 00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:40,519 when they're being looked at from behind, they turn around someone's looking at them. 74 00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:54,639 revealed testably in phenomena like the sense of being stared at and telepathy. Secondly, 75 00:10:54,639 --> 00:11:01,559 I think minds extend beyond brains in time. We all know that they do. This is not 76 00:11:01,559 --> 00:11:07,720 through memory and also through thinking about the future. Much of our consciousnes... 77 00:11:15,639 --> 00:11:22,639 We also have memories of the past. And I think our memories are not stored inside o... 78 00:11:22,639 --> 00:11:27,960 which is the conventional materialist view, but rather that we resonate with ourselves 79 00:11:27,960 --> 00:11:35,279 in the past by morphic resonance. And there's a transfer of memories across space and time 80 00:11:40,679 --> 00:11:46,919 other people, and that I think is the basis of collective memory, what Jung called the 81 00:11:46,919 --> 00:11:53,519 collective unconscious, individual memory and collective memory differ in degree, but 82 00:11:53,519 --> 00:12:01,200 not in kind, both depend on resonance from the past on the basis of similarity. So our 83 00:12:09,639 --> 00:12:16,519 is that I think they enable us to contact spiritual realms beyond the normal physical 84 00:12:16,519 --> 00:12:27,080 realm. And that this happens most spectacularly in mystical experiences when 85 00:12:32,759 --> 00:12:41,279 through psychedelics, people feel themselves in contact with a greater or certainly 86 00:12:41,279 --> 00:12:47,440 kind of consciousness. In mystical experiences, people often feel themselves ... 87 00:12:47,440 --> 00:12:54,879 of a consciousness greater than their own. And part of a vastly larger consciousness or 88 00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:08,960 a direct experience of contact with a much greater realm of consciousness. The Buddha 89 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:14,960 didn't become enlightened through doing a PhD, but by meditating under trees for many 90 00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:23,080 years. Jesus didn't become aware of his deep affinity and connection with God, who he 91 00:13:30,759 --> 00:13:35,480 of insight at the moment of his baptism when he was held underwater by John the Baptist 92 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:42,519 in the River Jordan and came up again through a rite of passage, which I think was a kind 93 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:48,280 was a kind of near-death experience induced by drowning. I think John the Baptist was 94 00:13:48,280 --> 00:13:56,840 out a mass scale rites of passage through inducing near-death experiences through 95 00:14:04,120 --> 00:14:11,080 of deep insight and spiritual awareness happened then, was followed by his going o... 96 00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:19,879 days fast in the wilderness. So I think that this greater consciousness that we become 97 00:14:19,879 --> 00:14:27,320 through mystical experiences also is a way the mind can also be extended to many othe... 98 00:14:34,520 --> 00:14:40,840 we can encounter many other kinds of consciousness not just the all-embracing 99 00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:50,360 ultimate reality which we can call God or the ultimate reality or the all or whatever na... 100 00:14:59,160 --> 00:15:06,920 are called angels and there are countless angels supposedly in this tradition there ... 101 00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:15,480 or devils or spirit entities of questionable nature the Hindus have devils countless 102 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:33,800 ultimate source of consciousness are also very heavily populated by many other kinds... 103 00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:41,800 beings to whom we can be open both in waking life when people feel the presence of thes... 104 00:15:50,840 --> 00:15:56,120 summary of the time suggesting our minds are extended beyond our brains in normal wakin... 105 00:15:56,120 --> 00:16:03,000 through space as it were a horizontal connection that connects us to the 106 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:10,680 and to other people through telepathic connections these psychic phenomena like 107 00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:22,680 as well and the sense of being stared at they're part of the extended nature of our 108 00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:30,920 extension in time through memory and collective memory and through visions of t... 109 00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:37,640 extension to other forms of consciousness that are not in the normal physical world 110 00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:56,519 his own experiences and also the texts of the Tibetan book of the dead the Egyptian book of 111 00:16:56,519 --> 00:17:05,000 the dead and so on so Graham I probably a good starting point would be to look at th... 112 00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:24,200 encounter other entities in my in psychedelic experiences I haven't met the machine elves 113 00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:40,920 other kinds of beings including angels and indeed with Matthew Fox I wrote a book cal... 114 00:17:40,920 --> 00:17:53,559 of Angels about the possible nature of angelic beings so you talked about many 115 00:17:57,400 --> 00:18:06,039 yeah so I started I started drinking ayahuasca as a research project 116 00:18:06,039 --> 00:18:15,559 in order to be able to come from a place of genuine experience in writing a particular 117 00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:31,880 I would call it I would call it work and I guess I've had somewhere north of 70 118 00:18:31,880 --> 00:18:42,120 journeys with ayahuasca many of them do not involve entities many of them involve deep 119 00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:59,559 changing changing shape and then sometimes entities come through now I know that 120 00:18:59,559 --> 00:19:05,480 materialist science would like to convince us that those entities are simply 121 00:19:14,120 --> 00:19:18,120 as indeed mainstream science defines our consciousness also and that there's no 122 00:19:18,120 --> 00:19:25,079 reality to them but but my experience in in a visionary state is that there is a reality to 123 00:19:25,079 --> 00:19:32,599 them that there is some some reality beyond this reality and and I find it hard to 124 00:19:39,079 --> 00:19:45,800 fairies I find it hard to convince myself that they're not in some way real in in fa... 125 00:19:45,800 --> 00:19:51,480 they seem more real than real and I suppose this is where the where the fundamental 126 00:19:51,480 --> 00:19:58,920 with mainstream science materialist science comes is is when we have these visionary 127 00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:11,160 or I mean psychedelics are not the only way to get into deeply altered states of 128 00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:15,800 Rupert mentioned you know sitting under a tree and meditating for weeks on end will 129 00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:21,640 do the trick so will so will hunger so will austerities of of various kinds there's lo... 130 00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:26,680 ways to get into altered states of consciousness but the question is once we ... 131 00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:37,400 once we get into that deeply altered state and encounter entities are they entirely 132 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:45,240 our imagination or are they real in some sense and if I if I look at the sort of 133 00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:54,200 notion we I think everybody understands we have we have certain I can only call the 134 00:21:01,400 --> 00:21:09,000 throws a book at me I probably would be able to dodge that book or to bat it aside with... 135 00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:15,000 before it hit me actually underlying that dodging or batting the book aside is is a 136 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:20,360 series of calculations which involve the object the strength of the throw or the 137 00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:30,599 work to work all of this out and I can understand that in evolutionary terms beca... 138 00:21:30,599 --> 00:21:36,279 have the ability to dodge objects being thrown at you then you might be less likel... 139 00:21:36,279 --> 00:21:41,400 genes to future generations than somebody who did have that ability but what I don't 140 00:21:41,400 --> 00:21:47,240 is why the brain would invest in seamlessly convincing parallel worlds filled with 141 00:21:54,519 --> 00:22:00,599 beings all around the world it seems to me that there's something else going on here ... 142 00:22:00,599 --> 00:22:06,519 question is what are these parallel realms that we encounter and what are the entitie... 143 00:22:06,519 --> 00:22:12,119 them and how can we inquire into this further I know at the moment there's some very 144 00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:28,519 are subjecting themselves to extended DMT journeys normally DMT smoked is a 10 to 12 145 00:22:28,519 --> 00:22:34,519 trip to the other side of reality but these volunteers are effectively getting DMT on a 146 00:22:34,519 --> 00:22:40,039 drip and are being kept in that deeply altered state for hours or certainly an ho... 147 00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:51,720 their for their courage but perhaps this is some way to engage in a deep investigation... 148 00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:58,680 it is these parallel realms and entities are as a scientist group but do you do you thi... 149 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:05,400 a scientific way to to approach this and to and to establish actually what we're deali... 150 00:23:11,800 --> 00:23:18,039 didn't know about the DMT experiments at Imperial College it's interesting that tha... 151 00:23:18,039 --> 00:23:27,000 of life imitating art in Bernardo Kastrup's book beyond allegory I think it's called h... 152 00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:47,640 infused into their bloodstream to extend the DMT experience to extend to explore 153 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:55,079 more than can be done on these very short-lived DMT trips so it sounds as if t... 154 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:10,039 I think myself that the starting point for thinking about these phenomena is dreams 155 00:24:10,039 --> 00:24:16,360 because dreams are altered states of consciousness which all of us have every 156 00:24:16,360 --> 00:24:23,400 forget most of them and dreams begin according to rapid eye movement detection 157 00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:36,280 you watch a dog sleeping and it's the looks of his trying to run in its dream chase a 158 00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:44,200 something obviously dogs will have dog dreams and and cats will have cat dreams and we h... 159 00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:50,599 dreams and in our human dreams there are other entities I mean in most of my dreams... 160 00:24:58,599 --> 00:25:10,119 and I encounter people in my dreams and beings and animals that aren't really ther... 161 00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:16,119 in the sense of normal everyday world at the normal everyday world so actually I think 162 00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:29,240 can we have shared dreams well many people who've lived together in close quarters or 163 00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:36,039 part in dream groups where they share their dreams on a regular basis and become quite 164 00:25:36,039 --> 00:25:42,759 each other find that they can have shared dreams they can meet each other in their 165 00:25:48,599 --> 00:25:55,800 experiences were indeed overlapping so there's a kind of shared reality within 166 00:25:55,800 --> 00:26:03,400 as I know there just for one one one question why does the why does the materialist 167 00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:19,640 but they do they admit the reality of dreams of course they find it impossible to deny 168 00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:27,480 shared shared dreams that's that oh well shared dreams they well they just don't lo... 169 00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:33,480 evidence because shared dreams would imply something telepathic and for materialist 170 00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:48,119 big taboo for mainstream materialist science well because of their belief system their 171 00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:55,079 is that the materialist belief system is that matters the only reality that matters 172 00:26:55,079 --> 00:27:01,800 the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter our brains are made up of unconscio... 173 00:27:09,240 --> 00:27:15,400 of human consciousness is called the hard problem for materialists the mind is suppo... 174 00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:23,400 but the activity of the brain as materialists say minds are what brains do therefore the 175 00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:38,400 Therefore, the mind according to materialism is either an aspect of brain physical brai... 176 00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:56,400 In any case, although these are different schools of materialist philosophy of mind, 177 00:27:56,400 --> 00:27:59,400 The mind is nothing but the activity of the brain. 178 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:31,400 The minds couldn't possibly have an influence on other minds at a distance in some 179 00:28:48,400 --> 00:29:00,400 patrol Wikipedia to make sure that biographers of people like you and me are 180 00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:11,400 This is one of the kinds of episode that so intrigued the founders of the Society for 181 00:30:30,400 --> 00:30:36,400 existence in the realm of dreams or the imagination or altered states of 182 00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:56,400 Ganesh appears in temples in countless statues in India as paintings of Ganesh 183 00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:39,400 Yes, lots of Indians have dreams of Ganesh, and they share their experiences with othe... 184 00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:18,400 So that's the approach I've been taking towards these questions. What do you think... 185 00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:35,400 I'd like to come back to this issue of, of the mainstream materialist science and 186 00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:52,400 We really just don't understand what is, what is going, what is going on here. 187 00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:34,400 And then secondly, I find that we live in a society where actually the state claims to 188 00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:15,400 In my view, free and sovereign, sovereign adult should have complete free and sovere... 189 00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:30,400 I think there's a useful model concerning the brain and consciousness and I've mentioned 190 00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:52,400 When I look at pictures and images on my TV set, I would be, I would be quite wrong to 191 00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:14,400 Where then are they stored. 192 00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:41,400 I have a rather ambiguous attitudes that I'm because I should quite like the fact that 193 00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:45,400 And so, you know, the ability of the state to suppress these things is somewhat limited. 194 00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:50,400 Yes, in the sense of oppression. Yeah. Yeah. 195 00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:54,400 Anyway, it has come in here. 196 00:38:54,400 --> 00:39:07,400 Rupert and Graham just just come in here because it's an interesting point in the c... 197 00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:26,400 Absolutely correct point. We are from childhood school to think and function in 198 00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:34,400 It's highly secular. It's, it's anti spiritual anti religious. 199 00:40:47,400 --> 00:41:03,400 And there, and it is still the established church so there's a peculiar ambiguity abo... 200 00:41:07,599 --> 00:41:20,599 And for anyone who's practitioner of Christianity or any other traditional 201 00:41:34,599 --> 00:41:45,599 I went to one at Westminster Abbey, it was absolutely beautiful, marvellous music and... 202 00:43:28,599 --> 00:43:40,599 What is, what is death and actually what is, what is life what are we, what are we doin... 203 00:43:54,599 --> 00:43:57,599 Well I have given thought to it yes. 204 00:43:57,599 --> 00:44:09,599 Well my own view is is is in a sense quite simple. I think when we die we go on dream... 205 00:44:36,599 --> 00:44:51,599 But they're also influenced by factors beyond ourselves because most of us have dreams t... 206 00:45:25,599 --> 00:45:40,599 Well there are many people in our own society who do to who they cultivate this awarenes... 207 00:45:50,599 --> 00:46:04,599 They think they go into a bardo kind of intermediate realm, and the ability to kno... 208 00:47:06,599 --> 00:47:27,599 And the, the, the, the other thing about purgatory is that there's a continued 209 00:47:36,599 --> 00:47:56,599 There's an ancestor shrine as there is in Japanese households where people recognize 210 00:48:28,599 --> 00:48:32,599 So I think this is part of our own cultural heritage as well. 211 00:50:58,599 --> 00:51:11,599 He he'll help us and work with us. And of course, in the Roman Catholic and some 212 00:51:44,599 --> 00:51:53,599 And so the people are praying I pray the Hail Mary every day they're praying for the hel... 213 00:52:07,599 --> 00:52:15,599 That's the Christian take on it and other religions have their own guardians and 214 00:52:26,599 --> 00:52:43,599 Just to come back to this okay our consciousness is our consciousness is not ... 215 00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:27,599 What, what is the purpose of this whole exercise we human beings sitting here on 216 00:54:16,599 --> 00:54:33,599 It's a there's a kind of gratuitous complexity and richness there goes far bey... 217 00:54:38,599 --> 00:54:42,599 So I think sheer creativity the exploration. 218 00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:47,720 the exploration of the possible, all the possible realms of creativity, which in th... 219 00:54:47,720 --> 00:54:53,880 is expressed through the arts and through literature and through music and through 220 00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:09,880 sheer many forms that creativity takes and languages and metaphors and poetry is 221 00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:17,240 in the whole universe through the sheer proliferation of galaxies, stars and that 222 00:55:25,720 --> 00:55:34,840 possibilities or potentialities as possible. That seems to be part of it and that is al... 223 00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:42,039 in our dream lives and in psychedelic experiences and probably in our afterlife 224 00:55:51,720 --> 00:55:57,880 I think one of the most important parts of consciousness is it's about possibility. It's 225 00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:05,240 what contains possibilities and the traditional view of divine consciousness i... 226 00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:20,840 imagination. God's mind contains all possibilities, all conceivable forms, whic... 227 00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:27,720 number, so that seems to be part of reality. There doesn't seem to be, we're not 228 00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:43,240 part of the reason we're here. Do you believe reincarnation is possible? You should do if 229 00:56:43,240 --> 00:56:49,320 consciousness is separate from the brain. I'm not a dualist exactly in the sense that I 230 00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:54,200 see the body, the traditional dualist view of consciousness totally separate from the brain 231 00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:06,760 that all our bodies and all the sleeping people in the world and while we're awake 232 00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:12,440 you know, people are sleeping in Australia and New Zealand, there's constant millions... 233 00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:17,320 at any given time who are asleep and who are dreaming, who are maintaining a kind of 234 00:57:17,320 --> 00:57:23,720 human dream world, which contains this collective human imagination, which contai... 235 00:57:30,840 --> 00:57:37,240 those who are currently dreaming. From this point of view, if all human beings became 236 00:57:37,240 --> 00:57:42,600 human dream world might stop, but that hasn't happened, so it's just a different way of 237 00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:48,360 about it from, you know, a soul leaving a body, going through a body and re-entering 238 00:57:58,519 --> 00:58:06,200 believe in it or feel I need to believe in it. I think the evidence that of children ... 239 00:58:06,200 --> 00:58:13,480 previous lives, as in Stevenson studies, is very convincing that some children who, 240 00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:25,080 they say what they did, they give lots of facts that can be checked up on, and it of... 241 00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:31,240 to be true. What this shows to me is that they're tapping into memories of a previou... 242 00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:36,680 Does it prove that they are that person? Well, then that's a whole question, almost... 243 00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:41,720 question, that the Hindus and the Buddhists have different answers to and have had for 244 00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:55,960 work, and can you explain exactly what you mean by that? Well, yes, I think that the 245 00:58:55,960 --> 00:59:02,920 resonance thing is a transfer of memory based on the basis of similarity, and I think we 246 00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:09,240 the memories of lots of people in the past through collective memory, but if we colle... 247 00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:22,440 diluted, they less diluted than usual in this collective memory. Then you could have the 248 00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:30,120 transfer of individual memories. The Buddhists would say that rebirth involves ... 249 00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:35,079 but it doesn't involve a transfer of the core personality, because there's no such thing 250 00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:45,800 so the difference between Hindus and Buddhists is both agree about the transfer... 251 00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:50,039 but Hindus have a straightforward reincarnation theory and Buddhists don't, 252 00:59:50,039 --> 00:59:58,680 even though they both agree about reincarnation or rebirth. It's interesting... 253 01:00:05,079 --> 01:00:10,760 beings, these newborn beings come into the world, they already have personalities rig... 254 01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:16,600 beginning. They have personalities, their life experiences will shape and develop th... 255 01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:23,560 but they come in already with a personality, and that's one of the reasons I'm really 256 01:00:23,560 --> 01:00:28,360 attracted to the idea of reincarnation. It makes a lot of sense to me, the universe 257 01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:43,320 what I'm coming to is a personal philosophy, I think of physical life as a theater of 258 01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:49,079 that we're in some way that I don't understand, I don't go for God, I don't 259 01:00:49,079 --> 01:00:56,280 creator God, but in some ways we're here to learn lessons, to learn and to grow and to 260 01:01:02,600 --> 01:01:12,280 I think that the question of individual identity is a rather ambiguous one, 261 01:01:12,280 --> 01:01:17,800 because you know we live in a highly individualist society that emphasizes 262 01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:23,880 and individual development. In traditional societies there's much less emphasis on 263 01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:39,560 but it's also interesting that if you look at the traditional beliefs about life after 264 01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:45,800 they're really about letting go of our individuality, you know the absorption int... 265 01:01:56,039 --> 01:02:02,600 or in Hinduism when people are limited, liberated, become a free spirit, 266 01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:13,160 liberated from the bonds of habit and karma and memory. That liberation involves letti... 267 01:02:19,079 --> 01:02:25,240 and characteristics, and in the Christian tradition too the idea is that through 268 01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:32,600 through the ongoing development, we lose our many of the features that make us ourselves, 269 01:02:32,600 --> 01:02:39,480 and as Saint Paul said, this is an aim even in this life, when he said not I but Chris... 270 01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:52,760 of our personality and our actions than our own idiosyncratic selves, although those a... 271 01:02:52,760 --> 01:03:01,480 So there's a sense in which most religions involve going beyond our individuality, 272 01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:06,039 and many people who take psychedelics, particularly powerful ones like DMT, 273 01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:23,320 become less and less important as they become part of this altered state of consciousness, 274 01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:32,680 which is transpersonal in many ways. I realise that we're coming to the end of th... 275 01:03:42,280 --> 01:03:48,920 symbolically portrayed that the soul enters into the Hall of Mart, goddess Mart is the 276 01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:57,000 harmony and cosmic justice. It is ushered in is confronted by a set of scales, on the 277 01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:01,160 is weighed in object that symbolises the heart or the soul of the individual, 278 01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:13,800 and cosmic justice, and you don't want your heart to be heavy in the scales against the 279 01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:19,640 feather. Sitting around the room are the 42 negative assessors who will ask you questions 280 01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:23,640 about the life you've lived, and those questions actually do include the 10 281 01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:28,520 have you killed, have you stolen, etc, etc, they're all there. You need to be able to 282 01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:38,680 but then there's something beyond that, and the bigger question that lies beyond it is 283 01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:48,200 given the precious gift of life. What did you do with it? Did you use it well, or did you 284 01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:52,039 squander it? And to come back to the political point, it seems to me we live in... 285 01:04:59,960 --> 01:05:05,079 what the long-term costs of that will be, but I do think that death is a moment of 286 01:05:05,079 --> 01:05:13,480 when we must come to terms with the lives we've lived, and that hopefully we emerge 287 01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:19,880 a more grown and slightly more perfected person than we entered it. That seems to m... 288 01:05:27,079 --> 01:05:33,560 and I think that the, actually I myself think the Christian view was strongly influenced... 289 01:05:33,560 --> 01:05:44,920 Egyptian view. I mean, in Egypt, this afterlife, particularly the aspect of 290 01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:58,200 for the few. I mean, the average Egyptian slave who built the pyramids and stuff was 291 01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:04,920 I have to correct you there. The pyramids were not built by slaves. That's a myth. 292 01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:10,760 slaves in the Old Kingdom, and I've climbed the Great Pyramid five times. It's a work ... 293 01:06:15,160 --> 01:06:20,760 were doing. They were not slaves, but I understand your point that the Egyptian 294 01:06:20,760 --> 01:06:25,480 on the elite and didn't pay much attention to the masses. Yeah, you're right about that. 295 01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:28,440 So whether or not they were slaves, they were slaves later, certainly. 296 01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,079 At least they were. In the ramicide period, yes. 297 01:06:31,079 --> 01:06:39,079 Yes. Anyway, the point is for most people, this afterlife that was this technology of 298 01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:53,000 Christianity is that it was kind of democratized this unit. Jesus was believed... 299 01:06:53,000 --> 01:06:59,480 into heaven and sort of opened the way for others to follow. So it made it instead of 300 01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:05,960 instead of needing pyramids, tombs, etc. It was made much simpler and much more widely 301 01:07:13,880 --> 01:07:20,520 points of early Christianity that it offered away into a journey after death that 302 01:07:20,520 --> 01:07:26,520 accessible only to a small elite. Is that just better marketing on the part of the 303 01:07:26,520 --> 01:07:32,200 or is there a fundamental truth there? Well, I think it's both. I think it was obviously 304 01:07:39,240 --> 01:07:45,079 very attractive. You know, the Jewish vision of Sheol, you go down into a kind of shadowy 305 01:07:45,079 --> 01:07:51,000 underworld or the Greek Hades, you know, the these are shadowy underworlds are much less 306 01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:57,240 attractive than ascensions journeys upwards after death rather than journeys downwards. 307 01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:13,560 would take place in various different dream realms. And there are many countless realm... 308 01:08:13,560 --> 01:08:19,400 dreams. There are nightmares. And some people have nightmares on a recurrent basis. And 309 01:08:17,319 --> 01:08:23,239 a recurrent basis and personally I think that the question descriptions of hell are really 310 01:08:23,239 --> 01:08:30,359 descriptions of nightmares of being trapped and and and I've understand those as 311 01:08:30,359 --> 01:08:37,000 I have a controversial question here but Christianity itself created nightmare worlds, 312 01:08:44,279 --> 01:08:53,159 stake of Giordano Bruno for example. I'm wondering what moral strength Christianity 313 01:08:53,159 --> 01:08:58,520 about anything when it's principal officials at certain periods of time behaved in this 314 01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:06,039 utterly cruel and obnoxious and vicious and evil friendly evil way. Well I agree that 315 01:09:11,800 --> 01:09:17,880 government who behaved in an evil way, torture and execution were normal. Does th... 316 01:09:17,880 --> 01:09:24,680 want to be British? And there were atheists who behaved in a terrible way, Stalin, Mao 317 01:09:24,680 --> 01:09:31,239 Pol Pot. I mean they make the Inquisition look like a vicar's tea party. So you're 318 01:09:36,840 --> 01:09:41,880 Yes well I don't think religion should be allowed to cut itself that slack. If a 319 01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:47,640 implicated in centuries of cruelty and wickedness it has to take some responsibil... 320 01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:55,079 can't just pass it off to human nature. I think it's time actually religions took 321 01:09:55,079 --> 01:09:59,159 for their behavior towards others as well as preaching about how we should live in the 322 01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:15,239 and of use. I'm intending in the long term to start a podcast in which I will have 323 01:10:15,239 --> 01:10:21,960 many interesting people from many lines of work all around the world but the central 324 01:10:21,960 --> 01:10:28,119 as was the theme in our discussion just now will be challenging the mainstream narrative. 325 01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:47,159 and my project is to challenge those controlling narratives.