The Joe Rogan Experience - #334 - Dr. Amit Goswami

Episode Date: March 8, 2013

Amit Goswami, Ph. D. is a retired professor from the theoretical physics department of the University of Oregon in Eugene. He has authored numerous books on the ideas and concepts surrounding quantum physics, including "Quantum Mechanics", "God is Not Dead", and "The Self-Aware Universe".

The Joe Rogan Experience. I read a lot of your work and it is some very, very fascinating and for a person as dumb as I am, confusing stuff. The idea of quantum mechanics and just when someone uses the word quantum, do you find that a lot of folks, their eyes glaze over? Well, not anymore because one of the most complex concepts of quantum physics is quantum leap. It's a discontinuous transition. And that gives an idea of how foreign it is to a mind which thinks in the Newtonian fashion. You know, motion is continuous and quantum leap is discontinuous. But it's used everywhere today. Everybody knows.

Right. You know, if anything unusual happens, people say I took a quantum leap is discontinuous. But it's used everywhere today. Everybody knows, you know, if anything unusual happens, people say I took a quantum leap. So that has a... What do they mean by that? I think they just mean like a big jump. I think they just mean a big jump. If they knew that it's a discontinuous jump, they probably would hesitate. What does that exactly mean by a discontinuous jump?

Well, I have to go back a little. So think of electrons going around the atomic nucleus in an atom. Okay. When electrons jump from one of these orbits to another orbit, it does not go through the intervening space. However much surprising to your rational mind that is just suspend your disbelief. Imagine that the electron is here and then the electron is there in the other orbit. Nothing in between in space and time. Nothing in between. So they just some sort of another they teleport themselves or are teleported. Teleport, that's it. I

mean you know science fiction language captures it a little bit. But where do they go in between? We have to say that they go to the domain of possibility. That's what quantum physics brings, that reality, which it seems to be just this one space-time reality

that we call nature. That is not true. There is another reality which must be called supernature, transcendent reality. Just like the spiritual traditions are saying, just like the psychologists are saying in the turn of the century, 19th century, Freud discovered the concept of unconscious. Unconscious, conscious, two levels of reality. The spiritual traditions are transcendent, imminent. Again, two levels of reality.

The spiritual traditions are transcendent, imminent. Again, two levels of reality. Quantum physics in the 20th century, in the year 1925-26, discovered the same thing. Three times the charm. This time we better observe the idea and learn to live with it. There are two levels of our reality. Quantum physics says one level is level of possibility,

where everything is possibility. Nothing concrete, no thing, no thingness. And then this level of reality where we of course live, where we find things manifest, where things look like they're particles, objects, concrete, solid, liquid, gases, all these are concrete objects. We have become used to them as concrete objects. But they begin as possibilities in a transcendent. So to break it down for the layperson, essentially the lowest form or the smallest form of the universe that we can measure when we get to subatomic particles, when we can look at subatomic particles, they defy the laws of physics. They exist in the same space at the same time in two different places.

They can be both moving and still, and they can teleport themselves. But you made it a little more complex than it actually is. It's less complex than that? It's less complex than that. Wow. Because we have to realize these objects can be shown to be at two places at the same time, but only in possibility. No, but that should simplify.

I have to think about it. I can't. I'm trying. I just broke my brain. Of course. Of course, because the word possibility is not familiar to you. This is why we did a couple of hours to dance around these ideas because they're a little bit strange. What is possibility?

But we know what possibility is. Right. Possibilities are things that glimpse at us, but nothing that we can put our finger to it. Right. It is this. Like it may become fact, but right now we can put our finger to it, that it is this. Like it may become fact, but right now it's just an idea. Right now it's just an idea. So it begins with, our reality begins with these possibilities.

Possibility of an electron being anywhere in the room. Our knowledge is limited. We only know that it's possible to find the electron here, there, at the ceiling, maybe right here where I am, but we don't know where it actually will be if I try to see it, try to measure it, try to observe it. And that's the second domain. Second domain is domain of manifestation.

When an observer tries to measure where the electron is, the observer will find it at a definite place as a particle. That's the manifest reality. So something that is a wave of possibility, having the capacity of being everywhere, with our measurement, becomes a concrete object that we can say, well, it's a thing, there it is, at a definite place.

So only by measuring it, it becomes a concrete object? Only by observing it, measuring it, only by... That's a very hard thing to understand. It is a very hard thing to understand. But isn't... If you're measuring it, and that's when it becomes a concrete object, isn't it just assuming it wasn't a concrete object before you measured it and that it's always a concrete object? That's the thing.

But you hadn't measured it before? That's the thing. Today we have a new era of physics in which we can propose something which we cannot actually see. But the consequence – don't listen to this joke. I am, please. But the consequences of it can be seen. So our theories are so good that what we visualize as theory, the consequences of it is predicted so very well that we got to believe this theory.

There's no choice because the consequences are predicted like one part in 100 million to that kind of accuracy. So this is the kind of theory that just boggles your mind. We've never had the capacity of predicting something this accurately. So when the picture says that, well, they start as possibility and then they become actuality, we have no option but to accept it. Although I agree with you. It sounds strange.

I mean anytime you're talking about super nature, most people would say you're in UU land. But you're not in UU land. You're in quantum reality. Well, quantum reality is UU land. It's just also real. It is also real. The thing that people need to – I mean I've had a really hard time digesting any of this stuff.

But the thing that people need to look at first I think is the idea of superposition, the idea that – what you were saying, the idea that they have measured things both moving and still at the same time and they have shown that things can leap from one place to another. So our real reality as far as science, as far as like accepted pretty much universally, right? There's no debate in the scientific community about the movement of subatomic particles, right? Movement of subatomic particles involving discontinuity. There is no debate. So that becomes tables. That becomes Dr. Goswami. That becomes the laptop. That is a real trippy thing to try to wrap your head around. Real trippy thing. That when you go, the smaller you go, the more it becomes magic. It becomes something that doesn't exist in our rational world.

It's even more intriguing than that. Let me claim the full claim of quantum physics. It's not only saying that the smaller you go, but the plot thickens when you realize that the reality at the macro scale is made of the small things. So of course the effect is visible, much more easily measured in this, for the small things. But when the small things make big things, as you said, microphones and you and me, our body that is, they're all quantum objects. So we also, when nobody's observing us,

including ourselves, like when we sleep, deep sleep, nobody is observing me. Where am I? I am only a possibility. The only reason I can find myself in the same bed every night when I wake up, the only reason for that is that because I'm a macro object, my wave of possibility, although it expands a little, just as all waves must expand. You have seen water wave expanding, you know, if you throw a pebble in a pond of water, the water waves will expand, right? Same thing happens with waves of possibility. We do tend to expand as soon as you go to sleep as a wave of possibility. But the waves are so sluggish for macro objects.

For me to move substantial distance that somebody can discern it, it will take the age of the universe. So we don't discern it. It moves like 10 to the minus 16 centimeter. But today with laser beams, we can actually measure such small distances that these macro objects, even macro objects, move while Newtonian physics will say, no, no, they're at rest.

Whereas our common sense will say, no, no, they're not moving. But with laser beam, we can actually measure that between your looking and my looking, just a quick second, objects actually moves, which appear to be stationary to the normal eye. So we live in a very, very, very wonderfully creative world.

Why creative? Because this movement also suggests something fantastic, that there are new possibilities, and if we could capture those new possibilities and make them manifest, that's the explanation of creativity. So what you're saying is that objects like this desk are not in fact still, but are slightly moving all the time. They are slightly moving all the time.

And what is the number that they're moving? How far? Well, it's very small. The center of mass of this table, for example, is pretty massive, probably moving about 10 to the minus 18 centimeters in a discernible time, like a minute or two. So it just sort of moves back and forth and back. So the whole, we really do live in like a hologram. Well, hologram is not always a good metaphor, but it is for this case because, you know, the objects can appear in more than one place in that sense. Hologram, the information appears everywhere on the hologram.

So these objects carry information which is in more than one place. Potentially, it is more than one place. This is why we say that we have discovered a new world of potential from which our ordinary reality is created. So ordinary reality is not as fixed as we thought it was. If you allow the objects to go more and more in the quantum domain, in the realm of expansion into new possibility where it has not expanded before. Not so much with tables and chairs, mind you, but with our thoughts, with our feelings.

Then we can really get into creativity. So how would you do that? How do you go into the quantum domain with your creativity? Well, that's when then I have to talk to you about the creative process. If you look at the creative process, creativity researchers have found that there are four stages. The first stage, everybody knows, preparation. That just I read up, I talk with you, I get some knowledge from picking your brain, I listen to a teacher, I listen to audios, videos, internet of course, and get some knowledge about the subject. And then creativity researchers find a very strange thing happens.

The most creative people, they are not just doing preparation. They also sit quietly and do nothing. They really sit quietly and do nothing. They really sit quietly and do nothing. They call it the period of incubation, like a bird sits on an egg doing nothing. So imagine, it was a tremendous surprise. Nobody understood why do we need to sit down? You know, creativity, after all, is action. Why do we need to sit down quietly? Why do we need to do nothing? And then quantum physics came along and we realized that in between our thinking, these objects, thoughts, they are possibilities of meaning. They're waves. So like all waves, I was talking

about the water wave before, if you throw a pebble in a pond, the water will expand as expanding crest lines. So same thing happens with the thoughts. They expand in meaning, become waves of multiple meaning, possibilities of multiple meaning, multiple meaning, expanding, expanding, expanding. The more they expand, the more meaning this packet of possibility will contain. And so you have a better idea, better possibility, better probability of capturing a new meaning. Because if you have a bigger possibility pool to choose

from, obviously your chance of being creative is greater. This is the idea that has explained how creativity comes to us. Then when the actual answer appears, the new meaning that we are seeking, when it appears in the pool and when I see the gestalt of all the new meanings that will give answer to my problem, then I pick it, then I choose it. Still in the unconscious.

That's where my causal power of creativity lies. Still in the unconscious. But now it becomes conscious with the huamo. This is the quantum leap. It is continuous change from possibility into actuality. So I actually captured the new thought, Joe. I actually captured the new thought and that's so surprising because it's new. Creativity researchers call it aha insight.

You have heard of aha. So the idea is that the imagination is a quantum realm. Imagination takes us to the realm of possibility. If we can do it from conscious into the unconscious. Conscious imagination is still a stepping stone to the domain of possibility. But if we imagine consciously, that is like stalking the unconscious that eventually gets into the unconscious. And this is where things have this capacity of propagating, expanding, wave-like, becoming bigger and bigger pools of possibility for consciousness to choose

from. And when we choose, a new possibility might arise or a whole combination of new possibilities might arise or a whole combination of new possibilities might arise, which will contain the answer to my question. That's a very interesting way to break down creativity that I've never heard before. Absolutely. This is, although it is not that old, I first wrote a paper on it in 1988. But you know how communication is today. It's very complex because there is too much of it. But it is a fantastic theory that explains all the aspects of creativity theory, creativity experiments, creativity data.

The other theories are just inadequate to explain the creative process. As I said, it's very mysterious. I call it the do-be-do-be-do process because you need to do, but you also need to be doing nothing. To create. To create. Yeah, the creation process

has always been fascinating to me. And I've been saying this for a while that I think we don't understand. We have the idea of the imagination of what's in the mind as being just oh pretend make believe daydreaming like that those those things come to mind when we think of imagination but everything physical that exists was created in the imagination like the imagination is a machine for creating

cities the imagination created nuclear power the imagination created satellites I mean these are all because of the imagination without the human imagination there would be nothing well yes and now but quantum physics is taking us a little bit further imagination is a good starting point as I said but imagination is still

in our conscious thought so we have to understand that when we have conscious thoughts of imagination, then we are proposing the unconscious to look at new stuff, process new stuff. This is what we are doing. What imagination takes us is from ordinary reality, mundane reality, that are familiar stuff. Imagination is an in-between, half-step beyond that. It's imagination. It's not going to confirm to the mundane stuff necessarily, right? We can imagine very arbitrary stuff. So what it does, it starts a beginning of a thought process where thoughts can become more and more and more and more weird

and more and more and more new, but it's no longer possible to process them in the conscious because in the conscious, we just cannot do it. We don't have the capacity. We are still limited by what we know. The known imposes too much constraint on what we can imagine in the domain of the unknown. But as soon as it gets into the unconscious, unconscious stuff, more we imagine, the imaginary stuff will interact with other imaginary stuff. The thoughts will mix,

and this mixing waves together will produce patterns of what you call patterns of interference of waves. You were mentioning superposition, waves superpose and creating many, many more new possibilities than before. And one of these possibilities may very well be brand new that never has been manifested before. So it's always a mystery. How do we go from the known into the unknown? The way we go is this taking advantage of what we call quantum thinking. Thinking where we take advantage of the quantum domain, the domain of possibility. Where possibility interacting with possibility creates up completely new stuff that has never manifested before.

I've heard you say that you believe that consciousness is non-local. Right. What do you mean by that? Well, if discontinuity, see you are already familiar with discontinuity. Now you want to know even the most, most unfamiliar, most intriguing. You know, this is like voodoo. This is really like voodoo. This is really like voodoo. We're now getting into real

cracks up. The most surprising thing in quantum physics, that surprised even Einstein. Einstein in his whole life could not believe this concept of non-locality, which he himself discovered with two other physicists, Nathan Rosen. How did they discover it? How did they discover it? It's theory.

You know, Einstein was a theoretician. He never, well, I shouldn't say never. He probably did experiments in his young days when he was a graduate student. I did too. But theorists don't do any experiment. What they do is this creative exploration of the mind. By that, they find new ideas. New ideas, and then

they predict stuff. So Einstein's idea was, this is 1935, mind you. Einstein's idea was that if quantum objects, two quantum objects interact, they become correlated. And this is a new word that he used in that

paper, he and his collaborators, Rosen and Podolsky. These people really sound with their theory, their mathematics, that if two objects once become correlated, then even when they are not interacting, even if they move away from each other, even then they can communicate. Not in the usual way, not interacting with signals. That's the usual, you and I are interacting right now, but we are interacting through a complexity of sound waves

and electrical waves through these microphones. That's all through signals. But these objects communicate without signals. So their communication uses a medium that can only be outside of space and time. Because in space and time, Einstein himself gave us a theory of relativity which says that nothing can interact without exchanging signals going through space and time. But these objects, quantum objects, once correlated, they have the capacity of signal-less communication. This is what is called non-local.

Signals are local, going through space, taking... And how do they measure that these particles are communicating? So the key is in that they measure the communication and they show that there is no signal because the communication took place faster than the speed of light. In all local signals going through space and time must travel either at the speed of light or less than the speed of light. So if something can be shown to travel faster than the speed of light,

it has to be non-local. And this is what physicists now discovered in the laboratory. Alan Aspay in 1982 finally verified. Einstein was dead a long time ago, 1955. So he never knew that his theory will one day not only prove to be right, but really revolutionize the whole world of physics by bringing in concepts of consciousness. So what did they measure? Like when you're measuring information that transfers between two particles, what are they measuring exactly? Well, the experiment is a little bit complex probably for a show like this, but I can give

you the gist of it. Too late for that. Gist of it. No, it's intriguing. Yes, no, definitely. It's very intriguing. Also easy to understand because there is no signal,

it's easy to understand. How to detect it is a little more difficult because you have to talk about photons and photons come with a characteristic called polarization and you get more and more technical and I'm sure your listeners will... They'll get a little dry.

Yeah, they will run away. But we don't have to go that far. Let's put it this way. If we radiate an atom, certain atoms with a laser beam, then they emit sometimes a pair of photons, one going this way, one going that way. So what these experimenters did, one experimenter was measuring

this photon over here, the other one was measuring the photon over there in the laboratory, still separated by a laboratory distance, let's say several meters. But the way the communication went, they could flip, this is where things get a little complicated. They could flip the polarization axis of one of the photons, and the other photons' polarization axis seemed to have flipped instantly. They could show this by the technology that we have now. So it was faster than the speed of light, and that shows that there's non-local communication.

That shows there is non-local communication between these two photons. In case you're wondering what photons are, they're quanta of light, discrete bundles of light. Now, how does that correlate to non-local consciousness? How they correlate to non-local consciousness is the strangest thing that physics is bringing. The reason consciousness enters physics was clear even to Heisenberg. That was back in the 1920s. When Heisenberg discovered his theory,

he himself said that, okay, what is happening when we measure a quantum object? Before measurement, we knew the object only vaguely. Possibly the object is here somewhere. That's all we knew. We could only talk about possibility and probability. But after we measure, it's a change in our knowledge about the object.

We know what the object is exactly. We have measured it. So from vague knowledge to concrete knowledge, this is what a measurement is about. Now notice the word knowledge was used. What is knowledge? Now if you look at the word consciousness, it comes from two Latin words. Come, which is con, with, and the rest of the word comes from the Latin word scire,

S-C-I-R-E, scire, which means to know. So consciousness is the entity with which we know. So in this way, what is happening when we measure? A change in consciousness. So Heisenberg himself was thinking about that measurement process must involve consciousness. How to prove it? John von Neumann took the crucial step.

He showed that to change an object, a material object, from possibility to actuality, that concreteness, you could not do this with a material interaction. No material interactions can ever change a possibility wave into a particle of actuality. Now think about it. If material interactions cannot do it, what is needed is some non-material interaction. Does that mean those molecules are conscious in some sort of way? Well, that means that consciousness,

they're within consciousness, they must be. Otherwise, there will be duality. So they're not, we don't say that molecules are conscious, but we say molecules have to be within consciousness. Because if consciousness is the ground of being, and molecules, atoms, solid objects, macro objects, everything is within consciousness as waves of possibility, then we can think of this force that changes possibility into actuality as a conscious choice because what is a possibility wave but a packet of multifaceted potential.

Lots of stuff can happen, right, multifacets, and consciousness uses the particular facet that becomes concretized, that becomes actualized. So in this way, we have found not only the force that consciousness implies that changes possibility into actuality, but we know the nature of that force. It consists of choice, consciousness chooses. And so why is nonlocality coming in?

So how does consciousness choose in an experiment like a space? Here is a possibility of photon. Here is another possibility of photon. Consciousness must be choosing them simultaneously because otherwise there would be no non-local communication. So the local communication proves that there's some form of consciousness going on. Non-local communication proves that there's some form of consciousness going on, but... Non-local communication proves that there is some form of matrix that is involved with the communication, that is faster than the... that permits faster than the speed of light communication,

and therefore must be outside of space and time. So there's a connection that we can't measure. There is a connection that we can theorize about, and that connection has to be consciousness because it involves a change of our knowledge. Do we think of consciousness the same way universally? Because what you're saying is an instantaneous distribution of information, whereas I think what a lot of people think of as consciousness is being sentient.

I think what a lot of people think of as consciousness is being sentient. Yeah, that too. But this is the original consciousness. This is the base. This is the base. So this is the stuff. This is why we're connected to spiritual tradition so much. You must have heard that the new science is connecting science and spirituality.

Once it gets down to the voodoo, they almost have to. When you get down to those quantum particles, you go, okay, what else you got? What else you got? We got God over here, man. Exactly right. Want to sit down? Exactly right. So, you know, like in Buddhism, there is this koan, you know, the surprising lines that you hear and that sort of jolts you. What is your phase before you were born?

You see the possibility, actuality, that parallel? What is your face? What is the face of an electron before it is born? Or what is the sound of one hand clapping? Right. One hand clapping, right? Very Ponian sentences. What do they mean?

Well, they mean quantum physics. What's the sound of one hand clapping? Possibility. The sound of one hand clapping is no sound. No sound. Possibility. Only possibility of sound. Something is there because if it hits something, there will be sound, right? If it hits the other hand...

So if it makes contact with something else in the realm. Right. I still don't understand how that relates to human consciousness being non-local instead of contained inside the brain. So I'm coming to that. Okay. So then this is the consciousness as the ground of being.

When it chooses, we get actuality. So when you force one, the polarity of one to change, the other one chooses to stay with it. Stay with it. And that's a concrete measurement. Concrete. Measurement, right? So possibility became measured concrete. We are saying that the medium that chooses is the medium called consciousness.

That was in the unconscious state at that time. But now when the measurement actually has taken place, there has to be two observers with brains in those locations because consciousness just does not measure arbitrarily. Right, but the idea of it changing, it has to be conscious to change? It can't be just a reaction? There is consciousness and there is these observers. What I'm saying is not only we need the concept of non-local consciousness,

connecting the objects, connecting the observers, but we also need to get the concept that at the same time there is non-local consciousness, non-material consciousness choosing. At the same time, there must also be the observer because without the observer, we never see anything. Have you ever, can you ever imagine finding something without an observer, without a sentient being? So you have to measure the effect of the observer? So we are all, the observer is also involved, yes.

So just by the presence of the observer changes the experiment? Presence of the observer not only changes the experiment, presence of the observer is only changes the experiment, the presence of the observer is essential for the experiment itself. Not only non-local consciousness is essential, but so is the observer's brain. And you have to factor that in when considering the possibility of non-local consciousness? You have to factor that in when considering the possibility of actualizing the possibility. Without individual consciousness looking, no actualization ever takes place. So non-local consciousness is a quiescent, it's an unconscious existence. Things are processed, but nothing concrete happens in non-local consciousness. Only when the observer is there,

then this concretization that we are calling, physicists use the word collapse, the waves collapse into the particle. But does this imply that before you existed, nothing else did as well? I mean, what does this imply? So it implies something very strange to absorb initially. What it implies is that before you looked, you yourself did not exist. Before you looked, you didn't exist. I understand that.

Before you looked, you didn't exist. Can we assume that all this other shit was already here? That's it. So with the looking, process of looking, the process of collapse, process of changing possibility into actuality not only creates the object, it creates the very subject that you experience. To you personally, but to all the other people that you live in the neighborhood with, these buildings were real before you got there? No. No? No. They are, well, they're real as possibility, but they're not real as actuality. In your world or in the world period?

Or is your world the whole world? Well, somebody's world got to be present in order to get actuality. Right. I cannot say that only me can create actuality. Then you would be in trouble. You're essentially saying that if you've never seen something, it doesn't exist. No, I'm not saying that me personally. There won't exist until you get there.

I'm not saying me personally. Okay. But a sentient object. Someone. Someone has to observe before possibility becomes actuality. Well, someone has to make it. If there's a building, someone has to screw it together. So we are sort of the quantum connection. Right. We are

the quantum connection to consciousness. Consciousness, non-local of the quantum connection. Right. We are the quantum connection to consciousness. Consciousness, non-local consciousness always exists. Right. Right? But that does not change possibility into actuality. Only in the presence of a concrete observer, possibility changes to actuality. Put two and two together.

So what happens? In the presence of an observer, non-local consciousness collapses, gives a circularity. Without observer, there is no collapse of the possibility into actuality. But then look at it from the other angle. Without collapse, where is the observer? There is no concrete brain. Brain is just a possibility. This circularity is the key to understanding why quantum measurement can take place in the brain. This circularity, this circular kind of

logic, this circular logic is what manifests reality from possibility. All these devices like the human brain or a human living or a living cell, living cell of an amoeba even, simplest of creatures. All these very mysterious entities that we have theorized about but could not explain their basic characteristic like life, sentience, now we can understand how they occur. They occur through quantum measurement involving the circular logic. Doug Hofstadter, who is an artificial intelligence researcher,

wrote a marvelous book in 1980 called Goyal Esharbhag. In this book, he talked about these circular logical systems as tangled hierarchies. So as surprising as it sounds to you, Joe, and I'll just throw at you, brain has a tangled hierarchy within it. This is its specialty. And because it has that, it is capable of experiencing consciousness as being the subject. It captures the subject of consciousness. Consciousness identifies with the brain. And when brain is involved in a measurement process, we who are carrying that brain will say,

I am looking at the electron. Just as you with your brain looking at me, you say, I'm looking at Amit. I say, I'm looking at Joe. Where does that I-ness come from? Before the measurement, we are just consciousness, non-local consciousness and possibilities within it. I understand that. But I also understand that although I've never been to downtown Detroit,

it's real. Dudes have been there. They've taken pictures. In fact, people built it and they wrote books about it. So I don't have to go there to experience it as an observer to know that it exists. No, you don't. But someone did. Someone has to. Someone had to. If everybody in Detroit all of a sudden just falls asleep, including all sentient creatures, then there would be no concrete Detroit. That does not mean that when Detroit comes to life again, comes to our consciousness again

as objects, it will become a different Detroit. No, changes don't occur that fast. Remember, the waves of possibility are very sluggish for macroscopic objects. So Detroit roughly will appear at the same place, the same colors, the same houses, the same houses, the same streets and all that. Except that mistake occurs in thinking that is always there. It's not there. I still am not understanding how the human consciousness could be measured or proven to be non-local when the brain, what we believe is the center of all this activity

that we equate to consciousness. This is a very perceptive question. If it's affected, if it's shut off, if it's damaged, we know that it affects consciousness profoundly. So what is the basis for believing that this consciousness is non-local? How do you prove it? This is still theory is what you're saying. Well, no, I'm just asking.

Let's analyze what we are really saying. So I, as a brain, make a representation of that consciousness that we are calling non-local. So you build a picture of what it is. Same for everybody. It's like think of it as the, you know, you have seen our archipelago, right? The islands stand out over the ocean,

but underneath all the islands are connected. So think of us as connected by this overarching non-local consciousness. But then we are also individual brains, right? We are making, each of us are making a representation of the consciousness that we call our subjecthood. I am a subject to you, the object, but I am an object to you, the subject.

So we both have that reciprocity. How do we know that we are non-locally connected? So a neurophysiologist at the University of Mexico experimentally verified this. How do we know? Mexico experimentally verified this. How do we know? Well, let's meditate together, he said, with the idea that we will be communicating without signals, directly without signals. So we meditate for 20 minutes, then we are sent over to what is called Faraday cages. Faraday cages are cages, chambers, which are electromagnetically impervious.

No electromagnetic wave can go through the walls of this Faraday cage. So you and I are sitting in individual Faraday cages. What that means is that we cannot communicate with any kind of electromagnetic signals. So you can't send a message, text message. You cannot send a message. You cannot send an electromagnetic message. Nothing can get in. Nothing can get in. Nothing can get in.

But we are still meditating with the idea that somehow we'll communicate directly without signals. And now both of our brains are connected to individual EEG machines, electroencephalogram, measure brain waves. And one of the subjects is shown a series of light flashes. That, of course, will produce electrical activity in the occipital area of the brain, and the brainwave apparatus, the EEG, will pick it up, measure it. It appears in terms of in a graph, which is called evoked potential, when you extract the signal out of all the brain waves, eliminating the noise. So far, no surprise.

The other subject is not shown. This is what the surprise is. So please listen carefully. The other subject is not shown a series of light flashes. No light flashes at all. The other subject is connected to the first subject only via this intention, meditation. We will have direct communication. So how do we know direct communication has occurred?

The brainwaves from this subject, not exposed to light waves, just brainwaves of this subject, who is vegetating basically, are picked up from the electroencephalogram machine connected to that brain and then analyzed in exactly the same way, eliminate the noise, extract the signal. The two signals extracted, one from a subject who has seen light flashes, one from a subject which has not seen light flashes, the two extracted potentials, one is the evoked potential, the other one is called transferred potential,

they overlap almost exactly, like 70% overlap is often seen, 80% overlap is often seen. It's amazing. They not only have the same strength but also the same phase. So explain to the layman, they're experiencing light flashes? Only one is experiencing. Only one. One is experiencing light flashes.

The other one is... No light flashes. But the other one has a reaction in his mind that's similar... A reaction in his brain anyway. To the light flashes. Reaction in his brain anyway which shows that the effect of the light flashes, electrical activity, somehow without signals has been transferred from one brain to the other. Why was it then assumed that consciousness is non-local? So therefore we say

that the two brains are non-locally connected? Non-locally connected. Non-locally connected. So that connection matrix is what we call consciousness. Isn't it possible though that the mind is where consciousness is stored, but yet it communicates non-locally with other minds and other consciousness that are also stored in people's brains? And that the consciousness is in the brain, and that the non-locality is just the

connection. It's not? You are making not quite conceivable scenes for this. That's not conceivable? That's not conceivable. I'll tell you why. Suppose you imagine consciousness to be contained in a brain.

Imagine consciousness contained in this brain and in this brain. But what are you saying? You are saying that mind is the... You're just inventing another word to convey the notion that there is a non-local matrix. You want to call it mind, I want to call it consciousness. That's the only difference. Okay? Because, look, there is brain here, there is brain here.

No need to say that brain involves something else. What brain involves, brain contains, those are words we can give but not necessary. Here is a brain, here is a brain. Somehow they are communicating, right? Without any signals. Because signal could not pass through the Faraday cages. Right, I understand. So without any signal, this brain and this brain are communicating.

Communicating by, like what? Communicating with a transfer of actual electrical potential that is measurable by physical experiment. So nothing like mental telepathy. Physical transfer of something. Physical transfer of energy without any... Physical transfer of a reaction to something. Well, not energy. Physical transfer of information, let's put that. Not energy. No energy actually goes from one brain to the other. But the brains change in such a way, there is obviously synchrony in the way this brain changed, but this brain changed because light flashes fall on that brain. This brain changing not because of light flashes, but because this brain is associated with this meditative awareness.

If that's the case, then wouldn't it do you justice to get as far away from a city as possible? Because aren't you constantly communicating with all the minds in your city? if if they're all in a good headspace that's great but if not aren't you experiencing the the crazy light flashes of a million neighbors the possibilities are there oh the saving but how far away can you get then well you feel that in the top of the mountain right positive to have that minute much brain action around you. Yeah, especially if they're smart and nice. But one does not need to be so much scared.

I mean, it's true that some of that may very well be true. In the emotional domain, I actually believe that it is somewhat true. But actually – I believe it's true. I believe you could feel it. Look, at the football stadium, we see this, right? I mean, one guy becomes angry and how that anger spreads. Right.

Does it spread only locally? Most of the people have not even seen the anger where it took place, where it began. So there could very well be a non-local component in that kind of thing. Yeah, a hive mind that you experience in concerts as well. You know, when you watch a concert and everyone has their hand up in the air with a lighter and they're all singing along to Journey, right? They're locked in there, man. It affects us in a very positive way. And so, but how does that not happen in a sit in a regular way because we would go crazy. The reason is the saving grace is the need for correlation.

Unless you and I have some sort of intention that connects us, we will not be privileged to communicate through this non-local consciousness. I see what you're saying. So unless we have some sort of context to put it into in our own lives, it doesn't affect us as information. Quantum physics even gives it more exactly. It uses the word correlation. We need to be correlated like that in the experiment that I just described,

which, by the way, was performed first by a neurophysiologist named Jacobo Greenberg at the University of Mexico. But that kind of thing, you know, his experiment depended crucially on this conscious meditative intention. But people can get correlated simpler than that. Like in a football stadium, people are getting correlated just by the simply the identification with the team. That can correlate people. On the internet, we

never see people, but we are correlated because we are some cause that brings us together. So there are many ways to get correlated. And then if people, once they become correlated, certain things, I believe that it's easier to transfer emotions than actual thoughts. In the thought realm, we don't correlate very well because thoughts are rational and rationality takes us away from this non-local consciousness. But when we are emotional, then this non-local consciousness can correlate us and the effects can travel much better. This is why one person's bad mood can get another person into bad mood.

Or one person's happiness can be communicated to another person's happiness. Happiness is most certainly infectious. That's one of the reasons why comedy clubs work. Laughter becomes infectious when everyone around you is laughing clubs work. Laughter, you know, laughter becomes infectious when everyone around you is laughing as well. Yes, they have a laughing meditation

today, it's taking off like wildfire in some places. Laughing meditation? Laughing meditation. I went to India recently, Bangalore, and they have parks, you know, where people gather together every morning like at 6, 6.30, and

they will have this laughing meditation. It's a wonderful thing to watch. And you watch for a while, you yourself will start laughing. That's funny. Do you just tickle each other? No, no, without tickling. This is the thing. Well, part of it, of course, is local communication, no denying it.

So jokes and then just the wave of laughter? Why don't you just start laughing? You just start laughing. And you're supposed to laugh. no denying it, but I... So jokes and then just the wave of laughter? Why don't they just start laughing? You just start laughing and you're supposed to laugh. So everybody just... But you know, you could not maintain that kind of saying for very long. If anything, the mouth muscles will get tired and so forth.

But here, because of that non-local correlation which comes into play after a while, you can see more than what you would expect just imitating other people to laugh. Wow, that's fascinating. So these people, how many of them meet? Oh, like 50 people. 50 people, they just get together and just laugh. For how long do they do it for? I want to see this. I want to see this back.

For about 15, 20 minutes. 20 minutes just howling. Well, I have seen it. It is kind of very, very amusing. Wow. If you forgive me, I still don't understand how that makes consciousness non-local. I understand that there's communication.

I understand that there's some sort of a shared... Laughing meditation, this kind of thing... But even the experiments you were talking about. This kind of thing, something unusual happens, is not very difficult to show. Dean Radden, who is a parapsychologist working at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dean Radden does the following experiment.

He takes what is called random number generators. These things are devices in which radioactive decays are taking place. Decays are completely random. As you know, radioactivity is a quantum process, completely random. Radioactive, say that again? Radioactivity is a quantum process,

completely random. Random decays are taking place. These random decays are processed by computer to generate random arrays of zeros and ones. So they are called random number generators. Right, I've heard of this. So you have random arrays supposedly. And there will be some deviation from randomness

which can be calculated. The rules of statistics gives you that. But Radin had the tremendous insight of taking these machines to meditative places. I don't know if he has actually done this with laughing meditators, but he could. And what I'm saying is that in the presence of meditative people, these random number generators start behaving non-randomly. Non-randomly quite way beyond what the predicted deviation should be. So were they concentrating

on specific numbers to be generated? Yeah, zeros and ones. Zeros and ones. And you should have... A uniform number, essentially. Yeah, random array should have equal zeros and equal ones. Did they concentrate on one group on zero, one group on one? No, no, they didn't do anything. They're just meditating. Just meditating changed it. Just meditating.

And how did it affect it? The random number generator, the numbers they generate, they're not so random anymore. Right. There is more zeros than ones. But wouldn't that in fact – I mean the whole idea of quantum leaping and quantum teleportation, meaning that distance really isn't an issue, right? Yeah, distance is not an issue. So why is it that with these people meditating in the room with all this jazz that it affects it? Whereas I would assume anytime you run a random number generator, there's someone meditating somewhere in the world, probably massive groups of them. How could the effect of just a couple individuals

vary that much from the great hive? Very, very intelligent question. But remember, I also told about another factor. People have to be correlated. Right. So that local correlation is important. Now, if you correlate and then look for these effects, send people away and they still remain correlated because they are meditating, then that should work.

If you set up a group of meditators, but not in Los Angeles, but in Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York, but they all are correlated in some ways by telephone or by internet or some intention given by a common source. Once they are correlated and they start meditating, distance should not matter. Okay, so essentially what you are saying is their energy focused on this one thing can now be measured.

Whereas if their energy is not focused on it, it doesn't have an effect on it and the focusing on the thing has an effect. The focusing is the intention. If we translate the word focusing to intention, then I would agree with you. Focusing is too general to convey the complete notion. I understand. But it's something like a focusing.

Because intention is also a focusing. That, to me, if it's truly measurable, definitely shows there's some effect that the mind has on its… Yeah, except that the word mind we use is slightly different, the consciousness. Consciousness, okay. The consciousness is having an effect, but I still, I don't know how that keeps you from, I mean, I don't know how that makes consciousness being non-local a proven thing. How did you communicate? Our picture is very simple like this.

You and I had a transferred potential. Electrical activity was transferred from my brain to your brain without an electrical connection. The connection is non-local, no question, right? You're not having any difficulty with that. That's just fact. How do we interpret it? To interpret it, how could this happen? How could this happen is because you, although you have not been exposed to these light flashes now,

but you have in your brain memory of seeing light flashes. You have seen light flashes many times in your life. And it's because we're correlated. No, no, because you have seen them before. Okay, I see what you're saying. You have memory. So out of these memories, which are all unconscious processes, by the way, whenever you are vegetating, your unconscious brain, unconscious, unconscious picks up this brain stuff and becomes they become the

subjects of the objects of the unconscious for processing. So unconscious always has these memories to process. That's an interesting point then what happens if you do an experiment where one person experiences something that they have no background in, have never seen before, most people don't know, nor does the other person in the other room who's going to receive the signal, how does he process something that he's never experienced before? In that case, transfer potential would be very difficult. So it's based on memory?

Well, based on the brain memory existing. Understanding what it's seeing. And then consciousness is choosing from that. So how did... What a shitty way To communicate No not at all Because What a marvelous way

To communicate You have to have Memory of it though Yeah You have to have Memory of it But most things Most things that we think about

We have Or most things we are exposed We have memories of it I mean How many new things Completed new things Do you get exposed In a day

I would say zero You should party With this dude On a weekend you get exposed in a day? I would say zero. You should party with this dude on a weekend. You get exposed to new shit, son. But really, zero, because there will be at least something common. I understand that there's communication. What I do not understand is the defining of consciousness.

Give the name. How is this memory being actualized in your brain? Ask that question. There's some sort of a signal, a transfer of information, but not even a good one. No, wait a minute. Because it only relies on someone.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Remember, being quantum physics, you're thinking classically again. Okay, I'm sorry. Newtonian. I'm sorry. No, being quantum physics. I'm all Newtonian.

Unfortunately. No, but that is the problem. We are all Newtonian when we are not using subtle language. So you have to sort of get used to it. I understand. Your brain is possibility. So this unconscious is just giving you possibility. So unless this entity called consciousness is choosing possibility,

you would not have the actual transfer potential. So how can you have a transfer potential from evoke potential being transferred by a non-local matrix that we are calling consciousness? Because it has to be consciousness which chooses out of the possibilities of your brain generated by previous memory because you are meditating with your partner, and the partner has seen these light flashes, consciousness, by virtue of that correlation, is choosing from your unconscious, which has the memory, but nothing more than that,

has the possibility, but nothing more than that, no actuality. But consciousness is choosing the actuality because you are meditating to receive that. Sir, I'm going to have to disagree with you. This is why. I understand what you're saying. I completely do.

But I don't think it necessarily means that consciousness is non-local. Make an alternative model. It doesn't have to be an alternative model. Just the idea of communication and only through information being passed forth. What you're measuring is so, like, imprecise. No, no, no. You're saying 70%, right?

No, no, no. Nothing imprecise. Okay, there's some sort of a signal being transferred between one person and another. 70% is no. Nothing imprecise. Okay. There's some sort of a signal being transferred between one person and another, right? 70% is huge. I'll tell you. Okay. When you don't meditate, when you don't meditate, the potential of the other person who is vegetating is practically zero, nothing.

So there's no transfer whatsoever if no one's meditating. Okay. If you don't meditate, they never found any transfer potential. is practically zero, nothing. So there's no transfer whatsoever if no one's meditating. If you don't meditate, they never found any transfer potential. Right. But whenever you meditate, all of a sudden there is this electric potential which is like 70%, 80%, 60% of the direct evil potential. There is something here. So there's something being transferred. Something being transferred without any signal.

I totally appreciate that. So the matrix between the two people, I'm just giving it a name, that matrix we call consciousness. Because what is happening in the two people? Consciousness is the vehicle to know with. So what is happening is that something is being transferred which has no basis for the transfer. Transfer takes energy. That is our usual experience. Here is transfer taking place without any energy transfer, without any signal transfer.

I totally understand that. Why? Because the possibility of that is already there in the other brain, and consciousness is choosing the possibility and making it actual. How is that any different than distributing information? How is it any different than one person has an experience and relays that experience through information to the

other person completely... With local signals. Yeah, through something. Through some sort of connection. Yeah, local signals. But not like sound signals or being able to communicate. I mean, in the meditative state, exchanging information. If it is not local signals, then it is consciousness only. Now you're getting it.

You're just objecting to language. But does the person who is sitting in the other room, who's receiving these signals, do they have a memory of this? Is there a cognitive impact? The person who is sitting in the other room, who is receiving these signals, do they have a memory of this? Is there a cognitive impact? There is the definite signal that I am detecting for this brain. Is the person aware of it who detects it besides the scientist? No, there is no cognition.

No cognition. There is no cognition in the other person because the brain is so complex. Unless you focus on something, we have not yet been able to isolate a cognitive change in the person. See, that's where I'm having a hard time making the leap between what I understand to be a clear sense of some sort of a communication. But how does that mean that all consciousness is non-local? How does that not mean some new form of communication that is evolving inside the human body?

Now you are using another language. I'm sorry, I mean… No, no, no. It's a new form. Exactly right. Am I Newtonian? Did I go Newtonian on you? No, no. If you don't go Newtonian, it is a new form of communication through consciousness. Through consciousness. That's all I'm saying. But it's rudimentary right now. Look, I'm just giving it a name.

You agree that there is something non-local, right? You're telling me. I don't understand any of this. I agree that in your story, in your... I don't want to say story. I mean in your experiment that you explained to me. Slow down. You already agreed many times

actually during this broadcast that there is without signals a transfer of information or transfer of electric potential. Completely based on your story. Completely based on the experimental data. Yes. I don't mean story. That's a bad word for it. I mean your information that you're presenting. The experimental data.

Two dozen experiments in two dozen laboratories in different parts of the world. What we call this matrix of transfer of signals is where our difference is. What I'm saying is that if you look at the rest of

our theory, because it takes consciousness to pull up anything. To choose information. So we call this matrix consciousness. Okay. And in fact, the person who's receiving it on the other end, even though consciousness is non-local, the other person isn't even conscious they're receiving it, if you want to look at it that way, or cognizant. No, that would not help very much for the experiment.

Remember, people already have data, extensive data of telepathy. Really? Yeah. What's the most convincing data of telepathy that you've experienced? I'll tell you. I have myself experienced. Or that you know of. No, myself.

Again, it's subjective, so people, of course, would object. But these experiments called distant viewing experiments have been done now. Remote viewing? Remote viewing. It's now done so accurately, analyzed by computers. You are looking at a town square at a statue. Your correlated person, correlated by the intention of the experimenter, is sitting in a closet in the laboratory.

He's just drawing a picture of the statue that you're looking at. Nobody knows what you're looking at. A computer has chosen where you will go to look at the statue. A computer, unbeknownst to everyone connected with the experiment, is analyzing the picture that your correlated friend, psychic, is drawing of what you're looking at. And then the computer is bringing the two together, the picture of the statue that you're actually looking at

and the picture that the person has drawn. Computer does the matching and computer says, hey, there is 90% match between these two. This could not be just a happenstance. This got to be a transfer of information, got to be an example of telepathic communication. What studies specifically have shown remote viewing to be that accurate? Is there anything that you could, just for the folks listening? Yeah, this is Russell Targ and Harold Putff started this kind of experiment in 1970s.

Yeah, Russell Targ is actually coming on the podcast. He's going to be on in April. Yeah, good. Yeah, he was one of the pioneers. So they started this in 1970s, 73, 74, if I remember it right. And he and Harald Puthoff, his partner, they did a lot of this in SRI, Stanford Research Institute. And what the new thing is that the analysis is done much by very objectively. It's no longer subject.

But even then, material is object to it because It's no longer subject. But even then material is object to it because it's still the mind. But in the experiment that I gave you, transfer potential experiment of Halko Greenberg, nobody can object because it is not, mind is not involved. Actually if cognition got involved, people immediately start saying, oh, it's subjective. But here, the transfer actually is in the objective domain. A materially measurable electric potential here, a materially measurable electric potential there. In between, no local connection. And therefore, the proof actually in this experiment,

the transfer potential experiment, is the most accurate proof of non-locality than you ever saw. So that means that there's a connection that we don't know about that has always existed between human beings constantly. And the only thing that's missing is the intention and the focus on the two together. Right. Now you stated it, complete accuracy. I'm sorry. Is this something that you think as we have evolved from lower primates to human beings,

is this something that is beginning to show its potential in the human species? Is it something that might improve and expand? Is it something that might improve and expand? If you believe other experimental data that people have been collecting since the early 50s or 60s, like what is the name of that fellow, Baxter. I forget his first name. Clyde Baxter. I can look it up for you.

Clyde Baxter. Baxter. Baxter is the last name. That I know. He did some experiment with communication with plants. Communication with plants? Mm-hmm. So that was one of the earliest experiments.

And there are others. So it's not just humans. Plants have that ability. Probably even amoeba has that ability ability but at a very rudimentary his name is Cleve C-L-E-V-E Baxter Cleve Baxter what the hell kind of name is that

but great experiment he was discredited much but now we understand that now there could really be something in his experiments that is, that is absolutely fascinating. That there's a perception between animals and he did it using a polygraph machine. Yeah, he used a polygraph machine. But Rupert Sheldrake is one of the latest entries in this. He is showing

that dogs communicate telepathically with their masters. Yeah, I heard about this, and I've also heard some other things that Rupert Sheldrick has said recently, something about the speed of light varying, which a lot of people are coming down on him for, that it's bad science, and that it's pseudoscience at best.

I haven't seen that. Yeah, I haven't seen that either, but the people in my message board were going bananas about him, because he's a very controversial character in the first place. Because if what he says is true, like as the amazing Randy is always offered, I think it's a million dollars for anybody can prove any sort of psychic connection. Why isn't anybody taking that guy up on this? Because he don't pay.

He doesn't pay. He doesn't pay. That son of a bitch. Because he always finds, like, you know, you can always object, no, this is 70% transfer. I want 100% transfer. Is that what he does? I don't know what he does, but he will not pay anybody.

Look, in this kind of situation, you can always raise some objection to everything. Has there ever been a study that you've seen on these dogs knowing that their masters are coming on them? I've heard it's true. I've seen the movie. What movie is that? Rupert made a movie of this. And I saw the movie. It's remarkable. I know him. I'm a good friend of his actually. So my wife and I went

to his house and he showed us a movie of the dog and also the parrot. The parrots, he has shown, also can communicate telepathically with their masters. Wow. It's amazing.

The dog movie, I remember very clearly. The dog is waiting in the house, and his regular sitting place is the sofa. That's where as soon as the master leaves, he jumps on the sofa and rests there. You know, dogs have that habit. They love human warmth, warming up the sofa at the particular place

where the master sat, and they will stay there. So he's there, and five o'clock comes, right? Master is now getting up from her desk. And the dog jumps and comes to the window.

This time and time again, he has photographed the dog and photographs the master, so dogs are becoming aware as soon as the master is ready to come home. And that awareness is shown by the dog jumping down at that exact time as master gets up from her desk, his desk, to come home. It's amazing. He's done it multiple times, though?

Multiple times of it, and always using cameras in both places in synchrony, and always exactly at that time, the dog will react. That's crazy. And if the master does not get up from the desk, the dog will not get up from his sofa either. So it's quite amazing, these responses. So what I suspect… Why doesn't he just collect that million?

No. I would feel like that's, you know, if you got that… His concept is called morphic resonance. Is that the… No, this is got that, his concept is called morphic resonance. Is that the… No, this is just telepathy. He would not bring morphic resonance for this one. Morphic resonance are metrics for transforming people's learning. That's a slightly different thing.

You learn something, it's stored in the morphic fields, morphogenetic fields. And then I might be able to get these morphogenetic fields, and then if I might be able to get these morphogenetic fields to communicate. Yeah, the concept I thought was kind of related because he deals in an interconnectivity sort of a way too with this. He believes that if animals have animals like of a species have a certain sort of a database almost. And then if rats in St. Paul learn how to get through a maze, the same rats in Florida will be able to get through it quicker. Yeah, but this kind of thing has to be taken with a grain of salt.

That does? Yeah. Out of all the crazy shit we've talked about, that has to be taken with a grain of salt? Yeah, because the transfer is occurring to these fields, the morphogenetic fields. It may not transfer in exactly that form. What I'm saying is that originally what happened was people started this kind of thinking because an experiment seemed to have done. This is a real experiment. A

real experiment was that in an island, some monkeys learned, a monkey mother, that's how it started. A monkey mother learned to wash her sweet potato before eating. And she found that the taste improves much, so she immediately taught it to her offspring. So the baby monkeys are also learning that. And then entire island of monkeys learn to wash their sweet potatoes before eating. Okay. Somehow, this was the data,

anthropological data. I looked at the paper in the original journal, it's fine. But when somehow somebody reported on this data in a book, that somebody invented an extension which never happened, which is that monkeys in a nearby island without any connection picked up the same learning. So it's a lie. It was based on...

Well, it was an exaggeration. That never was verified. Motherfuckers. Researchers that exaggerate, that's a dangerous thing. That's a dangerous habit. Writers exaggerate. This is not a researcher exaggerating. Writers exaggerate.

Comedians exaggerate too, but it's funny. Comedians exaggerate. Politicians exaggerate. Unfortunately, communicators exaggerate too, but it's funny. Comedians exaggerate. Politicians exaggerate. Unfortunately, communicators exaggerate. Communicators exaggerate because we are used to attract attention. Yes. Anything for the sake of attention. So maybe they just wanted to get funding for their research.

Well, not that way. No researcher exaggerated. It's only the communicators. Okay. They think that the book will sell more if I say something very strange. I understand. They think that the book will sell more if I say something very strange. I understand. I would assume that something like animals washing their food,

if human beings, I mean the word evolution is a very touchy subject amongst people when it comes to natural selection and the advancement of the species, but it's commonly acknowledged scientifically that we were once primitive organisms. That's all that was on the planet if that is the case the the intelligent animals like chimpanzees or monkeys or whatever they would i would assume that much like people slowly all over the world figured out how to make tools with rocks that monkeys would slowly figure out new things cats and cat litter yeah they'd venom themselves no i'm just saying that cats are born

just knowing how to use a cat litter box. It's in their... No, yeah, exactly. Right, but they never get smart enough to use the phone. Thank you for pointing that out. That's exactly... It seems interesting

because you were right and you were right. You were right because it is true that lots of things don't get transferred so easily. And it is also true that there are this case of instinct. There was some transference of that kind of thing that universally everybody has picked up since then. What's your feeling on epigenetics?

The idea that epigenetics are related to this morphogenetic fields. So it is now very clear. Would you explain that to people? Yeah, sure. Belief was, ever since Darwin, and after some verifications of Darwin that came about, the belief has been that genes are the only way that any hereditary characteristics learning can be transferred to subsequent generations. That has been the belief. Now though, there are phenomena which show that no something else may very well be involved. One of the striking phenomenon

is this phenomenon of morphogenesis or cell differentiation. We all begin as, you and I, both began as single-celled embryos, right? And then that single cell divides itself, divides itself, making replica of itself. But it is still true that our toe cells and our brain cells behave very differently. Why? Because the proteins are very different, proteins that are made in those cells. How are proteins made? Proteins are made because of instructions written in the gene called the genetic code. But the genes of all of our cells are the same.

So the explanation is that some genes are activated in the toe, make to toe proteins, and other genes are activated in the brain, making the brain proteins. And other genes are activated in the brain, making the brain proteins. This is why brain cells differ very much in their activity than the toe cells. Okay, so far? Yes. All right. So then how does the cell differentiation take place?

So people say there must be programs. Genes of the toe cell is programmed differently than the genes of the brain cells. Okay. Toe cells and brain cells. Toe cells and brain cells. They have different programs running the genes. But where are these programs, right? So initially the belief he was the program must also be in the genes. Now people are seeing that no, the programs for cell differentiation are not in the genes. They are in the epigenetics, outside of the genes. So, Shellbreak originally was suggesting something very similar with his idea of morphogenetic field. And so if

you assume that morphogenetic fields are the blueprints of biological form and they are non-local, then there is no difficulty in explaining why the toe cells behave very differently in brain cells. How does the cell know what to do when it is in a different part of the body? If it's in the toe, then those genes have to be activated which can make protein which can perform in the toe way. If it's in the brain, similarly, those genes will be activated which can make protein which makes it behave the brain way.

But how are they doing it in all in synchrony? Because of this non-local morphogenetic field that is involved. So in a way epigenetics is the first step of verification of Sheldrake's idea. The next step is taken by biologists like Bruce Lipton who are saying that well quantum processes are involved in biology. And so if quantum processes are involved then our consciousness-based quantum measurement theory is telling us that consciousness must be involved. So in this way, we now can understand the whole gamut of ideas that leads to these things. And finally, to connect up what you were just saying, these instincts, so certain learning from the past do get passed on. So the belief is

Even learning from the past do get passed on. So the belief is that specific, some specific type of learning which involves emotions. My guess is that if the learnings involve emotional, has an emotional aspect, then probably the morphogenetic fields are easier to transfer. Then there's certain innate sort of fears as well. Yeah, involving fears and similar emotions, egotism and sexuality. Even racism they've shown. Racism, this kind of thing.

But if it is purely cerebral, mental, then it is probably harder to transfer through morphogenetic field. But morphogenetic field transfer is a very, very good idea. And you have to find some explanation of the instincts. They did get transferred. Instincts are universal. So we have a very peculiar situation. Instincts could not possibly be explained by genetics.

Many people have written about this. It's very difficult to understand on the basis of genes. So if you bring morphogenetic field to understand instinct, then you get the idea that yes, we can today become a nice person, have brain circuits of love, and then a few generations later, via the transference by this morphogenetic field, everybody will begin to have circuits of love in their brain. Well, you bring up a really interesting point because the chemical composition of the mind,

all the different serotonin and dopamine and the neurotransmitters and all the different things that are going on inside the mind, alter those in one way or another, positive or negative, and you get profound effects on how the person behaves and thinks and interfaces with their reality. How do you feel personally about all the different pills that people are on and all the different pills that alter consciousness? It seems a very strange time when we are doing so much experimentation

on a daily basis, altering the way a person's mind is interfacing with its reality. And we see profound effects. A lot of people don't know, 90% of school shooters either were on antidepressants, had been on them,

and were on withdrawal. 90% is a big number. I mean, it doesn't prove that that's what caused it because a lot of times these people are depressed. And guess what? People who are depressed get on antidepressants. It doesn't mean that it caused them to be psychotic or to have psychotic breaks, but there's something to be studied for sure and considered.

It's very dangerous to put the natural brain under drugs of any kind, especially those drugs which are psychoactive, because you don't even know. The studies are so scanty. You don't even know what the effects are and how the effects will be, especially the long-term effects. know what the effects are and how the effects will be, especially the long-term effects. And what we do know is that depression is now the third biggest epidemic disease. Well,

it's almost epidemic. But besides heart disease and cancer, depression is the third most common chronic disease, seems like. Why is it? Because depression depends so much on these brain chemicals. And of course, so much also on how we process our stuff, emotions, thinking. So something is basically going wrong in the new theory, where we talk in terms of chakras, because those are the places where they are very much involved with our emotions. The emotion that is involved in the highest place in our body, the neocortex, emotions that are involved with it specifically are what we call satisfaction. So if the neocortex is played with, certainly it will affect our level of satisfaction. By the same token, people might be using antidepressants to get a pseudo level of satisfaction.

You know what happens when you take Prozac. You get sort of, you get temporarily, you get to look at the world as okay. You get that feeling of okay, you're satisfied. So people are using things like that to give them a feeling of satisfaction because it's not there in the absence of taking this drug, Prozac. So in this way, but we don't know the consequence of taking Prozac in a good brain, long-term consequences of it. I am terribly, terribly upset about the drug culture because

we are getting into stuff, the very device that we need that is intimately connected with our consciousness. With our brain there is no manifest consciousness. We have to recognize that. To play with that vehicle which gives us the basic way of cognition, basic way of experiencing everything that we know. Conversely, though, I have met people that have some sort of an imbalance. They have some sort of a chemical balance in the mind, and I've personally seen people take medication, and it's benefited them greatly. It's improved them.

seen people take medication and it's benefited them greatly and it's improved there but there's that but then there's also people that just they're not living a fulfilling life they don't have good friendships relationships job opportunities they're not pursuing the career they really wanted to pass a good reason to be depressed and a lot of times what that depression is is in fact the world around you and how your body is perceiving it and the negative energy that you're getting and feeling about it is supposed to motivate you to change yeah it's supposed to motivate you to move away from it the negative feelings that you have after any personal altercation with someone those are supposed to be like that's to let you know, hey, whatever you just did, don't fucking do that anymore.

However you interacted with a person that created this terrible wave of bad feelings. It's not satisfying you. It's not satisfying you. And you can't just take a pill to change that. But the way to – there are two kinds of situations involved here. The brain, the device itself may have wrong neurochemicals and therefore we get dissatisfaction, we get depression, or it can be

that the psychological effect of stuff that's producing the depression. If it is the latter, psychological stuff that's producing dissatisfaction, then actually in a way it's easier because we can use psychological method. In fact, we should. I am not in favor of using brain chemicals like Prozac to reestablish the balance if the cause is psychological.

If the cause is coming from genetics or family history or clear brain dysfunction, brain imbalance, or clear brain dysfunction, brain imbalance, then it should be treated with brain chemicals, with medicine. But if it is psychologically caused, it's better to try to improve the satisfaction level of the person. And we can, we can, by bringing emotions in the higher chakras, starting with the heart chakra, where love resides,

then expression, which resides in the throat chakra, and then focusing, which resides in the third eye, or in between the two brows, brow chakra, and then, of course, the crown chakra, the neocortex, which is the seat of satisfaction. So we can improve satisfaction by concentrating not so much on the lower emotions, which is the lower chakras. There the emotions that you get are all those fear and sexuality and pride.

Sexuality is low? Oh, yeah. I thought it was way up there. It's in a sense because it's I thought it was way up there. It's in a sense because it's a doorway to something way up there, doorway to love. So sex is actually a very special one because if used in moderation, sex is actually a very good one because it's the doorway to love. It's one doorway to love. I've always thought that.

I always got pissed off at monks that don't have sex. We're missing out. Look, I mean, sex is an easy one. This is why we call, you know f-ing make love, right? Fudging. You can do it the f-way or you can do it making love. The point is the way we use it. So sex is kind of good and bad both. All of this is actually good and bad both.

Fear is also good sometimes because it takes us away from danger. Egotism even is good sometimes because it gives us assurance, self-assurance. So used in moderation, the negative emotions are okay. It's when they go out of control then there are problems.

Positive emotions are good all the time. Little or more you know, love is not going to kill you. Love is only going to elevate you. So you can never have too much love. So in this way, if we learn to concentrate more on these positive emotions, we could actually heal all psychologically caused cases of depression.

Psychologically caused cases of depression. Psychologically caused cases of depression, that's where you have to differentiate, correct? You have to differentiate between people who are depressed because they are in a bad state in life and people who are depressed because the mind is not working correctly. The brain is not working correctly. The real issue is the over-diagnosis then or at least the over-prescription, over-prescribing. What psychiatrists tend to do, because it's easy to treat the brain chemical with a chemical, psychologists try to get away with just using drugs because the effect will be quicker. I think if we use an integration of both approaches, why they do quicker because it's,

have you ever lived with a mentally ill person? Many of them. It's very difficult. Yes. It's very difficult. So parents of course want immediate cure. So best strategy probably is to use antidepressants immediately, because that will give a temporary healing. But of course, the psychological reasons will be present, so it will come back, it will

continue. And then you start the psychological treatment that I'm suggesting, which already people are suggesting I shouldn't take the original credit for it, nothing like that. But dealing with noble emotions, higher emotions, positive emotions, that healing will take time. Prozac can give us time. Prozac can buy us time. So we can use a combination of both conventional and the new medicine, mind-body medicine suggestion.

What I suggested is called mind-body medicine suggestion. What I suggested is called mind-body medicine because you are trying to heal the brain imbalance with the effect of the mind, with the help of the mind. This seems to be a real issue with modern humans too in that the life that we live does not really satisfy all of our natural reward systems that we have in place, the hunter-gatherer systems and sitting in a cubicle and all of it. Even monogamy is a struggle for a lot of people for that very reason

is that we have a lot of genetics that are set up from a different time and they're still in our system. And we have not taught very well. We have not been taught how to manage it correctly. We are not being taught how to manage it correctly. We are not being taught how to manage it correctly. That's a very important point. Isn't that one of the most important things you could teach a child is how to manage their thoughts? Yeah, but, you know, educational reform is so needed, so needed.

For another thing, you know, how do you bring this stuff to a child? You have to use creativity. Obviously, these conditionings are there. The body is conditioned in a certain way since the days of hunter-gatherers. Those conditionings are still present. Mind has moved on to rational mind. Look at the predicament of us learning today

because some of our conditioning of the body remains the same as the hunter-gatherer. Nothing has changed. But the mind has moved on to purely dealing with mind. Mind does not even deal with the body very much. Well, not only that, the environment has changed radically. So the environment that your physical body is interfacing with has changed radically and those natural reward systems are not being fed. Not being fed. So we live in a world where we really need

a new educational system which will bring these aspects up and use creativity quite extensively. Because these things require creative learning. What has to happen is that the context of our thinking, which is thinking without the emotions, this has evolved so much, you know, it becomes very cerebral thinkers, only involving the neocortex. Instead, we can start involving some of what we left behind, some of the emotions that are into it, some of the emotions that we have not dealt with. And we have to reunite, reintegrate how we think about emotions, reintegrate that into our

present life system which is more thinking rationally, which is thinking about thinking itself, not so much thinking emotionally. Is that very frustrating to you as a professor for over 32 years I believe, right? Is it frustrating to you?

It was until I discovered new ways of teaching. I started putting things in an emotional way. Because you can reframe, you know. I mean, you don't have to... When you teach new physics, for example, quantum physics versus classical physics, classical physics is all cerebral. But quantum physics, because it has that aspect of choice,

I choose, therefore something can happen. Already an emotional component can get in. Because whenever you say, I choose, you will find that your third chakra, navel chakra, the sort of body ego, is immediately alert. The navel is where your ego is at? Body ego, not the mind ego, but the body ego. So that's why people weird out when you poke their belly button?

Like, hey man, get off my ego. Yeah, there is a bit of that. When you feel quite assured of yourself, you find that navel chakra is fine, quite at ease. So you can take a little nice navel massage and be cool with it but when you are not feeling so assured butterflies in the stomach

very common experience that's interesting that's the connection where does that whole chakra thing come from there was no explanation for a long time then in the new science we have an. Then in the new science, we have an explanation. Because in the new science, we introduce these morphogenetic fields as part of reality.

What are morphogenetic fields? They are the blueprints of biological organs, right? We went through the cell differentiation. So neocortex has a blueprint. The toes have a different blueprint. So these blueprints is the morphogenetic field. So in quantum physics we said that morphogenetic fields and these organs are then non-locally correlated

through consciousness. Consciousness operates on one hand the blueprints, on the other hand the organs. Chakras are those places where the organs are present, the important organs of the body. Look at all the chakras. Every chakra is the site of a very important organ. Is there a sexual chakra?

Yeah. What's that one called? That one is called sex chakra. It's just called sex chakra? It's called sex chakra. Do they work on that one in yoga too? Is that why those girls are wearing those tight pants? Is that what that's all about?

Of course. Yoga, of course, has a Sanskrit name of it. I don't remember. Sanskrit name of it, right. Do they work on that one in yoga too? Is that why those girls are wearing those tight pants? Is that what that's all about? Of course. But yoga, of course, has a Sanskrit name of it. I don't know. Sanskrit name of it, right. It's very complex. But there is a scientific sort of a correlation between the chakras. There is a correlation between the sex organs and the corresponding morphogenetic field. Do you practice yoga yourself?

Yeah, of course. Do you every day? It's a good thing. Not every day because of my travel schedule, but most days that I can, yes. And yoga's been around for thousands of years, and some people will just dismiss it as simply stretching. But if you've never actually done it, and I try to tell people, just go to one of those Bikram's yoga classes.

Just take one class or whatever's in your neighborhood. Just take one class and then talk. Because until you do, you really don't know what that feeling is like. That feeling after yoga is, you're high, okay? You're high a little bit. You love people. You want to call people and apologize.

You want to hug people. I'm telling you, Brian, you need that shit in your life, son. You are high, definitely. Yeah, you're high. What happens is that the, especially with pranayama, breathing exercises,

the energy gets into the crown chakra, satisfaction. Right? Or in the higher chakras, very definitely. So crown chakra is connected with, you know, if crown chakra is satisfied, you get these endorphin molecules. That's the byproduct of yoga, of the crown chakra.

So endorphin molecules are wonderful, that's the high, that's the high actually. So it's very simple explanation why we get this high and why it should not be trivialized. There are many other ways to get high, but this is one of the best ways because at the same time, you're getting an exercise of the muscles and the joints.

Yes, and you're stretching, and exercise of the muscles and the joints yes and you're stretching and in stretching like a lot of people don't think you think of stretching is for athletic performance but stretching is also for a tension release it's an amazing tension and and because that tension release now will in the future save you from very debilitating disease like arthritis. Yes, absolutely. So it's a preventive medicine in a way. And flexibility lost is very difficult to regain. Very difficult. But it's not that hard to maintain once you've attained it.

Once you have attained it. And the key is never to complete a discontinuity. Even if you can do once a week, it's better than not doing it at all. You know what the problem with yoga is though? Fake yoga people. Do you know what I'm talking about? You do.

People that are just claiming to be spiritual and showing up at yoga classes, but they're really annoying. Do you know those people? You do, right? But the point is of course that there will always be fake people. There's always going to be bumper stickers. Always going to be bumper stickers. So you cannot avoid it. The important thing is not to throw away the real thing because of the fake. It's very true.

And in reality, it's a small percentage of the yoga people that are fake. It's a tiny percentage. Tiny percentage. And if you think about the general scammers in the population, there's always going to be issues with men and male ego and posturing. And there's always going to be similar issues with women and women dealing with other women. But I've seen the fake yoga man and I've seen the fake yoga woman. I'll take the fake yoga woman every day.

The fake yoga man is trying to get laid. The fake yoga woman is just trying to be, pretend to be a little more spiritual and non-materialistic than she truly is. But the fake yoga man is just trying to get laid. He's annoying. Again, maybe one out of a hundred, but that's enough. Well, you know, these things, however, I think that some people will get into the New Age movement with the idea of finding relationship, which in a way, of course, is finding – I love how you just put that because that's not what they're doing. They're trying to get some pussy. There's a big difference between find a relationship and just trying to get laid.

Sometimes it tends to be just finding a one-night stand, which is, of course, your language is quite accurate. Well, I think they're trying to appear desirable. And one of the ways to appear desirable to women is to be spiritual. To be spiritual. Which is supposed to be spiritual. Yes. Yeah, that's a tricky one. That is all true.

And I'm sure that as quantum physics makes more inroads, there will be these quantum fakers. Quantum fakers. And I'm not trying to focus entirely on the negative, but I'm trying to address what I know people in the general public, the issues that they have with folks that claim to be spiritual. It's like you'll run into a fake yoga person. You're like, oh, my God. it's like you'll run into a fake yoga person and you're like oh my god the typically unique guy with his beads and his

hemp sandals and you just want to punch him right? you know what I'm talking about? you have to be patient looking at the other side I'll tell you a story this is a typical Hinduism teaching story so a thief

comes to the master, spiritual master. And at the end of the night, spiritual master, of course, says, Yeah, stay with me, no problem. So the thief is stealing this stuff, the whole thing. So the master opens the eyes and says, Do you remember? Did you remember to take everything? Because, you know, I really don't need

that stuff over there either, so you can take that too. So the thief is caught, but he's very surprised. The master is not throwing him in jail or calling the police or anything like that. So he has become a little curious. So he lays things down. Why are you not angry?

Because I'm stealing your stuff? Right. He must have said, oh well, most of this stuff, look, I don't really need it. I still have attachments so I keep them. So if you are taking them, it's okay. So he becomes a little more curious. And he says, well, since you don't mind me stealing it anytime, why should I have to steal it at the end of the night? Let me stay with you for a few days, just watching your methods and what you do. Then I'll take them away at the end of the week. Master says, yeah, fine, just stay with me. So he stays for a few days.

And as he looks at the master and tries to do some of the stuff, he starts changing. By faking, initially he thought he'll just fake the master because then he'll pick up the faking and then his stealing capacity will increase manifold because he will impress people by being a spiritual man. Right. He will have more access to more houses

and he will be able to steal more. That was the original idea. This is why you wanted to watch the Master. But then as he did the things, meditate and sit and talk to people, after even a few days he started changing. So it can begin with the fake and end up with something else. And of course Master knew it all the time, so at the end of the seven days Master says, OK, now you take this stuff and leave.

Why are you prolonging your stay? And the fellow falls on the feet. That's an Indian idiom of saying surrender, says that. No, I want to learn what makes a you. I'm not interested in stealing the small stuff anymore. I want to steal the stuff that you are made of. So the way we can make even use of this fake is amazing, by being patient with the people who are faking

and just allowing them in the process, because although the initial intention is superficial, but as you do them, consumption itself, consuming this very wonderful stuff, very wonderful behavior, will begin to give the idea, oh, maybe I can become a producer. These energies that I fake by imitating, if I actualize them, then they will actually

produce changes in me that are profound. And we should open the gate for that other than closing it by saying, oh, you are just a fake. Instead, you know, be, you are just a fake. Instead, you know, be a little more tolerant about them. Give them some slack. I encourage people using the quantum language, although they have no idea what they are talking about. But then, you know, you explain it one time and they will become a little curious and initially their curiosity will be, oh, I can pick up a little more and impress people a little more. But they become a little more

curious, a little more curious. One day they will ask, well, can I actually start doing this stuff and really be creative? Wow. Didn't Feynman once say, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. Isn't that what Feynman said? Well, one of them. There are many, many sayings. Yes. This could come from Niels Bohr, who said that if you thought you understood quantum physics, then probably you didn't understand it at all. So, you know, there are many, many, many sayings about quantum physics.

Feynman said something like, nobody understands quantum physics once upon a time. He did say something like that. So why do people say something like that? Because quantum physics at some level becomes so incredibly mysterious that in the affairs of matter, consciousness can be involved. This is just such an inherent mystery. Many people are very hard put to accept this kind of thing. So they would rather have nobody understand quantum mechanics than accept that consciousness

is needed to understand quantum mechanics. So these are the barriers of new thinking coming into the field of science. But you know what? Because experimentally we are verifying the idea of non-local consciousness. We are verifying the idea that there really is a non-local connection between people. Or the way we cognize knowledge, namely consciousness, is actually non-local, that verification will go a long way in changing the paradigm, changing the worldview. How did yoga get discovered? How did they figure out that these poses and stretches could open up your mind and change your consciousness? What is the history behind that? Well, the original, if you read Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, he just introduced Sathya Yoga

as a way of finding a comfortable place to meditate. Originally the idea was just to sit comfortably and in order to sit comfortably in meditation for a long period of time, stretching helps. And then they discovered one very wonderful thing. As people meditated, the main job of meditation, they found, is to create gap between thoughts. You slow down your mental process. So once they discovered that the idea of slowing down the mental process helps enormously our creativity, our spirituality. Once they found that out, then they realized the next wonderful thing is that isn't yoga also a way of slowing down the body? Isn't pranayama a way of slowing down the breaths and therefore all the organs?

Isn't pranayama a way of slowing down the breath and therefore all the organs? So the interest grew that yoga itself, hatha yoga itself, is not just stretching or just working on the joints. It's also a way to slow down the body and therefore the mind. It's indirectly slowing down the mind, because if the body is slow, mind will also be slow. By focusing on the poses and your breath and your intent. And doing it all slowly, not so much like Bikram yoga, because that's a fast yoga,

but in the original way that yoga was done, that's quite slow. The slow yoga is actually even better than the fast yoga. Not that the fast yoga loses everything of yoga. Fast yoga is also good. But slow yoga is even better because it slows down the body, slows down the mind, slows down the vital energies,

slows down our emotions. It gives you a lot of breath between your fast, fast, fast, go, go, go mind. And especially important for developing creativity because creativity is enormously dependent on that unconscious processing doing nothing, do and be. So if we do yoga regularly,

we really don't even need meditation regularly. We can just do yoga and get the benefit on the mind from yoga alone. That goes a long way for our creativity. There's a lot of ancient texts that connect yoga with cannabis use, yoga with hashish use and even eating cannabis. I'm not familiar with this one. You're not familiar with it? Oh, look at you, you sly devil with that smile on your face. Someone's got a reputation to maintain. No, I don't really.

Not from that point of view. Do you have any experience at all in psychedelic alkaloids? I do a little. I certainly have tried. I mean, you know, it's in this state. It's not against the law. Oh, you mean marijuana, yes. You have taken marijuana. I was going to ask you about. No, no, it's not against the law. Oh, you mean marijuana, yes. You have taken marijuana. Very mild one.

I was going to ask you about... No, no, it's not so mild. Oh, yeah. One time, I got what is called sansamillia or something. Sansamillia? Oh, look at you, old school devil. Exactly. So a friend of mine comes from Washington with this

very important stuff. Oh, those dudes in Washington don't play games. Exactly. Seattle's in the house. So we take this stuff with him and we put it in cookies, right? Oh, yeah. And it doesn't take effect for, you know, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Nothing is happening. So we said, well, let's go to dinner.

This is a classic story. Nothing is happening. So we said, well, let's go to dinner. This is a classic story. It is indeed. So we go to dinner, and all of a sudden, I'm just eating my first course. I'm looking at the lights of the city from a window, and it starts exploding. Wonderful. So my wife was the third person on the table. it starts exploding. It's wonderful. So my wife was the third person on the table. She also

starts feeling something and she has to go to the bathroom. So she goes and the way back from the bathroom she passes out. So I have to go and claim that okay, this is my woman so my

i will take her you gotta go claim her i had to and those kids in aisle five she didn't eat anything so probably she got weak and therefore passed out don't pay any attention to her i'll take care of it and this friend oh people from Washington, you have to watch them. This friend doesn't know me, doesn't know her, just walks away completely innocently. Doesn't know any of us. It just left you guys there?

Just left us guys there. Wow, what an asshole that guy is. Eventually he caught up and apologized. Oh, eventually. Did he know that you guys had taken pot cookies? What was it, a cookie or a brownie? He was taking with us. Oh, so he was probably high.

He thought you were all going to go to jail. He was also high, but he didn't want to get caught up in that difficult situation. In the future, and for folks who have never heard me say this before, even though I've said it a million times, when you eat cannabis, it has a completely different psychoactive effect. You're telling me. Yeah. It's when cannabis is processed by the liver, it produces something called 11-hydroxymetabolite,

which is approximately four to five times more psychoactive than THC. So that's why it has that insane effect. It's not just insane. It's an alien effect that you don't get when you smoke pot. Eating it is a very, very different experience experience and you could easily overdo it. And it looks like maybe your wife just got so hot she's like I'm just gonna pretend to be blacked out and it's way less stressful than walking around. Well she did say that she was faking it a little bit. She was! But the point is that she did have to lie down. I mean, the stuff had an enormous effect.

Mine, too. I mean, I was clearly under it. And then driving under it, you know, this is why I don't really like the idea of legalizing marijuana in a sense because driving with marijuana or marijuana, at least the oral kind, is very, very difficult. Really? That driving experience was the most difficult half hour in my entire life.

I've never had that. It's impossible to gauge time, how time is going. The slow time gets fast. This is for the physicists, right? Did it change your ideas of the quantum world? Pot brownies? Well, I did connect it to quantum world. The possibilities are impossible. This was before the discoveries of quantum physics that I went through. Oh, really? This is pre-quantum physics? This is my pre-quantum era. This is like early 80s.

So in the early 80s you were a standard nuclear theorist, right? I was struggling. I already came out of it, but I had not found, I had not discovered the new possibilities of quantum physics yet. Yeah, before you discovered all this stuff, you weren't really a happy guy, were you? No, I was a very unhappy guy. In fact, you know, my change came only after I realized it. One day I was at a conference on nuclear physics giving a paper, erudite paper of course, nothing to do with everyday life, and I give this paper

at gusto. Nobody appreciates it at least so I thought. And I think that the other guys, although they are talking about equally esoteric nonsense, but they are much more appreciated by the audience and at the party especially by the women, the fair sex. Oh, women like that better. You got jealous. I'm jealous.

I'm just jealous, jealous, jealous and inadequate. And that way the whole party, the whole evening at one o'clock I get disgusted with myself because all my thumbs are gone. You know these… Tums? Digestive pills. Right, pills. Heartburn pills.

You eat a lot of thumbs? Well, in those days, yes. Back then. You weren't, you were upset. I'm upset. So I go outside. This is at, on the Monterey Bay, the place. The hotel is called Asilomar.

And I have this ocean breeze hit my face and a thought. Why do I live this way, this unhappy way? So I literally, avowedly was the practitioner of happy physics since then. Of course, I didn't find it immediately, the way to be happy doing physics, but eventually I found it. This consciousness physics is happy physics. Happiest use of physics that I've ever hoped.

So what was this change, though? You're sitting out there, the water hits your face, you're thinking, and what... I think it's an intuitive thought to change one's life life this is the kind of thing that happens all of a sudden and you are not the same anymore but you know you weren't like descartes was visited by an angel in his dreams you know you know i'm saying like your change is like i just went outside and like fuck this you know i mean on mushrooms yeah no nothing no, nothing. It was the moment that the drug... It's a moment of intuition, a moment of knowing yourself because I was ready to look at myself.

You were ready to look at yourself because before you weren't. Before I wasn't. Before it didn't matter to me that the physics that I do has nothing to say about the life that I live. And all of a sudden I wanted to really live a meaningful life. I wanted to do something that has meaning, not just, you know, ways to get ahead in my profession. So I wanted to integrate. I wanted to integrate my professional life with my daily life.

How to love my wife, how to love children, how to get along with friends better. You know, live life, not just do physics formulas and publish papers and get promotions in the department. Wow. So it was just one moment, you just had enough, and that's when you went into the woo-woo world of quantum mechanics? Well, not immediately. Not immediately.

Slowly. Slowly, and a lot of struggle, a lot of experimentation, a lot of steps in between. It took a lot of time, too. This was, a lot of steps in between. It took a lot of time too. This was 1973. My discovery came in 1985. So 12 years of quite a risky and adventurous path, but rewards came. Now, there's another thing that you said that I read that I found completely fascinating is that you don't believe in free will.

Well, I do and I don't. You do and you don't. I do in the sense that, yes, creativity has a component of free will. It starts with the free will of the ego. Ego has one free will, which is a very crucial element of creativity, which is that at some point ego realizes that it really does not know, and therefore starts saying no to all conditioning, no to conditioned meanings, no to conditioned habits, no to conditioned patterns, no to conditioned behavior. And that's when we make room.

That's when we have an open mind. We make room for learning new stuff. And that's when creativity can come to us. Before then, we start really thinking that we know it all with our reservoir of knowledge because I have a lot of expertise, therefore I know. But expertise don't bring us knowledge. Expertise just brings us a very special fraction of knowledge

that is useful to solve certain problems with given context. Because the context is known, therefore the expertise always says, well, somewhere in my expertise there is an answer. And you develop a habit of finding that answer fairly quickly. And people admire that, of course. You go ahead in your society because you are a very efficient problem solver. But the thing that happens with open mind is that you realize that there is real life problems are not given within context. The contexts are not given to you. You have to discover not only the new meaning but also the new context of it. And this is what makes real life problems very difficult. This is why it's,

you know, we are touching about this earlier. We don't learn that stuff, you know, this hunter-gatherer sitting in me, how to integrate that with the abstract thinker of today, this is not given in any book. This is not given within given context. So how do you get into this kind of thing? You have to use creativity. You have to become

open first. That, okay, with this rational mind, which has only learned about abstract thinking, you are not going to integrate my emotions of the hunter-gatherer days with the one that is today with all the suppressed emotions. We are not going to integrate. We have to open up, we have to recognize our ignorance completely and invite creativity in our life. So that idea, that idea was the most important idea probably that eventually, you know, changed me as a person.

Wow. So the idea that, so in saying, I'm sorry, this is a hard way to wrap your head around it, but in saying that you have free will and you don't have free will at the same time. So this is the free will. This is the free will. But in other things, what is our free will? We have choices. What flavor of ice cream would you like? Well, left or right, good or bad, cruel or kind.

But all on the basis of what you know already. Well, basis of what you know and what you've learned and what we admire is someone who's learned. Exactly. And someone who evolves. Exactly. So on the basis of the known, all the answers are conditioned

among the conditioned spectrum of knowledge. And that's really not, you know, it's a sort of freedom, but it's nothing to crow about. It's freedom. I mean, nobody would give up that freedom if a tyrant comes and says that,

no, you don't have the choice to choose the flavor of ice cream even. You have to take only one flavor. Of course, all of us would object, and immediately we know we don't want that. We become rebellious. But it's at a different order of magnitude than what is needed to discover really new stuff. That freedom, that freedom which takes us to the really new. And there the ego's free will is not very helpful.

We have to open up to what in spiritual tradition is called God's will. Is that God separate from us? No. It's also our will in some sense but coming from a higher consciousness. That's the difference, coming from that non-local consciousness. So real freedom of choice is beyond ego's free will to that free will that enables me to choose a creative answer. Creativity. Whoa. Okay. So real free will only exists sort of in the base animalistic world. And at the higher levels of consciousness, free will doesn't exist because you're connected to the collective consciousness. No, No. Still a little bit inaccurate.

There is some accuracy in it. It does not exist necessarily also in the non-rational, in the emotional non-rational experiences of the pre-rational either. Okay. It comes from the intuition, the next level. Right. So it really is the higher function, It comes from the intuition, the next level. So it really is a higher function except you're right in one sense. If we go outside of the rational, rational is our biggest enemy in the sense of free will in the higher sense.

Rational is a bigger enemy of intuition than our emotions. Rationality is? Rationality is? Rationality. So the idea that you can rationalize any evil or abusive behavior for the head of a corporation because it makes money for your... Right. That rationalization is our biggest enemy, even bigger than emotions in the sense if you include emotions to include positive emotions.

Positive emotions are very helpful to intuition. So how would you describe it? That rational thinking is the biggest enemy of what? Well, rational thinking can also be a friend. I don't want to sound overly against. But rational emotions can be. Because you can rationalize away everything. You mean rationalization more than you mean rational thinking. Right, right. Rational thinking is good. But we don't do it only with that. We can justify, like today's scientific materialists. They justify everything.

All of their, even the worldview itself, right? They rationalize away. No, there could not be spirituality. No, there could not be God. Because everything has to be made of matter. What else can it be? That's their argument. Basic argument just boils made of matter. What else can it be? That's their argument. Basic argument just boils down to this.

What else can it be? There is only this matter space, time, matter, motion, world. There's nothing else. If you start with an assumption like that, that's what closes you completely. That's not freedom anymore. You lose freedom because you are not able to suspend your belief system. If you suspend your belief system, many other experiences immediately find meaning. But this kind of rationality precludes emotions, precludes intuition.

There's a problem with the definition, the word rational. Like you're being irrational. You're not being – have some rational thinking, and then rationalizing, which is a negative, you know, rationalizing, it's a very strange. But it's the same idea, taking it too far. When you say rationalize, what we are really saying is that you are using rational thinking to where it does not belong. That's rationalizing. We rationalize a way where intuition belongs. We rationalize a way where emotions belong. So instead, the new science, what the new science does, it admits it's a science of

experience, not just sensory experience that materialists agree with. The new science says that our emotions, our thinking, and our intuition, all three are valid ways of knowing, in addition to sensing. So we have four valid ways of knowing, physical, vital, mental, and supramental, the intuition. And when we employ all four ways of knowing, we go beyond the rational being. In the rational being, we go only the physical way of knowing and the mental, rational, logical way of knowing.

Michael Shermer has a great point, a great quote rather, that the only thing smart people are better at is rationalizing their dumb ideas. Rationalizing their dumb ideas, which is – that's a very funny thing when it comes to certain focuses, certain things that people do rationalize. Whether it's environmental disasters or doing things in other countries that are unethical or immoral. The ability to rationalize and especially the ability to rationalize on a large scale like as a corporation is a key problem with this civilization, isn't it? Key problem. Key problem. And how to get out of it? I have a whole method of getting out of it. How do we do it?

I call it spiritual economics. The same idea like the earlier story that I told you, the thief and the wise person. you, the thief and the wise person. If we use that idea, if we feed people the spiritual stuff as consumer good, suppose you could go out in the market and buy happiness in the company of a sage whose very being makes you happy. I've met such people. Who? Where are they at? Can I meet them? What about me? Do I make you happy? You can meet them, but it's a little bit difficult because they don't appear in everyday marketplace. Not yet.

Oh, they're like Stephen Greer's people. Not yet, but we could manufacture these people. I think we now have the key. We know about creativity so much today that if people are investing, much today that if people are investing, I think we really can inspire a lot of very capable people in a lifestyle which will generate happy people. Well, let me tell you something what we're doing because this is not something we ever set out to do. When Brian and I started this podcast three years ago, it was just

on a laptop in my office and we were just trying to have some fun. We were just doing it just to be silly. We had done previous things like that, webcasts where we had done them in hotel rooms and when we were on the road doing stand-up. people have told us that what they've gotten in this podcast, in this communication, is they've gotten an ability to interact or at least hear people interact that are like no one they know. So they're changing the way they think about life. They're seeing that there's other ways to look at things. And in fact, a lot of your reality is shaped by the way you choose to view the world and that you can morph that and change that. And this podcast – and again, we're not taking credit for it because I didn't know it was going to happen – has had an amazingly profound effect on people.

Whereas I've talked to literally hundreds of people that say the podcast changed their life and that once they started listening, they started eating healthy, started exercising. They feel better. They think about things better better they try not to be a shitty person they try to be positive and they understand and feel the effect of this positive thinking yeah i i agree with you and and again i we're not taking credit for this this is something that just happened on its own it just is a a side effect of allowing people into your life and into your way of thinking. That openness. Yes.

That openness. That openness that says that, well, okay, we have this habit. Yes. And let's open it up even though it's only for a couple of hours. Yes. Which reminds me that I should really make a call to my wife because I told her 530. Yeah. Well, we're going to wrap this thing up anyway. It's 530. I don't want to wear you out. Listen, this is a beautiful wrap this thing up anyway. It's 5.30. I don't want to wear you out. Listen, this is a beautiful conversation, fascinating.

You're a very really, really interesting and intelligent guy, and it's hard to follow a lot of what you say. I think a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast three or four times. I think you did good. Thank you. How these things are actually depends a lot on the language you use. And it is a fact that we have a habit of using languages like mind and consciousness in a synonymous way. Yes. But science cannot be done that way. What happens then is we don't understand each other anymore. So here you are, not so much conversant with the new science vocabulary,

and here I am without teaching you any vocabulary, just get right into the discussion, and we had a dissonance of words for a while. I don't even think it was a dissonance, quite honestly. I think I was just trying to really play the part of the person that is listening to this for the first time. I'm aware of these concepts. I'm aware of your work and I really do appreciate you coming on the podcast to talk about it. But it's – even for someone

like me who has read at least a half a dozen books on this stuff, it's hard to wrap your head around this. It is hard. It is hard. And it is also simple. I often say that quantum physics is simpler than Newtonian physics. Because Newtonian physics, you get very quickly the idea that, you know, science can solve everything. And in quantum physics, because the choice is brought into four from the beginning, immediately start relating that, hey, I know about choice. I know about, you know, this stuff is, science is giving us this stuff. Immediately mind mellows a little and the science

become more humanistic. The last thing I wanted to ask you about, I can't let you go without this. Are you familiar with Dr. James Gates? No. He's a theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of Maryland with another guy named John. He's the John S. Toll professor of physics at the University of Maryland. He found self-correcting computer code in the equations of string theory. I don't know if you've heard about this. I don't know if you've heard about this. It was a really interesting, again, really hard to follow conversation that he had with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who we've had on the show. And I talked to Neil about it. And even he was trying to wrap his head around what this meant. They found doubly even self-dual linear binary code error correcting block code, which was first invented by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, has been discovered embedded within the equations of super strength theory.

You're laughing at this. It's almost like you knew. I'm laughing because here we are talking mainly about quantum physics and consciousness and here you go into such a sophisticated discussion of something that is remotely connected with quantum physics of course, you know, string theory. But, you know, yeah, it could very well be, but I'll tell you something.

The reason I lost interest in such details is very simple. String theory is a good example of what the idea that people propose when they say the word pseudoscience. Pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is that where theory and experiment are both not feasible aspects.

It's just theory. This is a good example of just theory because string theory can never be verified in our experience. We just cannot do it. It's talking about too high an energy that we cannot simulate in the quiet, in the laboratory, nor in the high energy cosmology. So in other words, it's really very, very, very, very, very, very far out. So, you know, here we are at once, this rational culture that we call scientific materialism

doesn't hesitate to talk about string theory, which is highly abstract mathematical theory. Not that it's not interesting. As a mind game, certainly it's interesting. And then they object things like telepathy, which is very much human, where the objection, of course, is that it may not be quite apropos science because there may not be any good theory, there may not be any good data. So it's a very strange thing. We do, because it has mathematics in it, we call science which cannot ever be verified

quite doable science. How can it be science if it's not verified, but yet it's mathematic? If it's mathematic... That's what I'm saying. You agree with me. But see, this is what puzzles me, that the culture is so obtuse

that they will never collect... There are many concepts like that, you know, which, because of their mathematical nature, they're accepted part of science because they're mathematical, because mathematics is so vital, it is felt. So you're not interested in this because there's literally no way to know

whether it's correct or whether it's just daydreaming. Right. What a crazy way to make a living, these guys are. I'm vaguely interested because of one thing. There is something very good about sin theory because it does enable us to connect gravity to quantum physics. That problem is not to be underestimated. But I don't want the solution to come in the form of a theory that can never be verified. Right.

So people should recognize that science has two prongs. In fact, in my judgment, three. Theory, verification, experiment, and then technology. There's never going to be any technological application of something like string theory. Never? Never. of something like string theory. Never?

Never. It's just too abstract, taking place in places that are so remote from the human experience that technological breakthroughs on the face of it is, at least for high energy physics, you could always give a technological justification in the form of weapons technology.

Not particularly good, but weapons technology at least is a feasible offshoot of high energy physics. But this kind of stuff, it's just a bit too far for my taste. We should concentrate instead of problems which can immediately be addressed, problems that has impact on who we are, what we are, what we are doing here, give us answers to real life questions like how to run our life, how to run our society, how to run our economy. And we have the science at hand. That's what the new science is trying to do. Instead, we have too much emphasis on things that have not much to do with us, the human condition. Super strength theory.

Like super strength theory. Yeah, I've never been able to understand that. And I'm glad that you couldn't understand it either or that it it can't be understood, or that at least it can't be verified. It doesn't need to be understood because it can't be verified. That's my simple proposition. Who needs to understand things, clutter up your brain for things which has no consequence in my life and cannot even be verified and can never be built, never give rise to any technology that I can relate to. Well, there's so much crazy shit to concentrate on that is actually real.

Right on. Thank you, sir. It's been an honor to talk to you. I really, truly appreciate it. What could people, what books do you have out that you recommend that people could pick up to learn more about some of your work? Well, the basic quantum physics stuff is best done in a book called The Self-Writer Universe.

God is Not Dead is another one. God is Not Dead is another one. And how quantum activism concepts civilization has some of the consequences of this theory to society. Do you have a Twitter page? Yeah, of course. You do? Yes, yes, yes.

Okay, let me find it. I didn't find it. I'm going to go Swami. yeah of course you do okay let me find it yes um i didn't find it um i'm gonna go swami let's see if i can find you on twitter here so i could send people to it um yes um nope that's not you this is some crazy dude who's trying to play here is love but innocent here is knowledge but creative Here is life but that's not you right That's whack Who is that guy It is me

Is that you We'll find you Do you know what your twitter name is You don't know what it is No Did someone else do it for you That's ridiculous There's a lot of you on there Unfortunately there's a lot of Amit Goswamis You don't know what it is? No. Did someone else do it for you? Yeah. Hmm. That's ridiculous.

There's a lot of you on there, unfortunately. There's a lot of Amit Goswamis. There shouldn't be a whole lot. I mean, after all, how many? There's a bunch of different ones on Twitter, believe it or not. Yeah. You probably got a lot of fakers. There's dudes who are... No.

Yeah. You say no, but I'm telling you, there's a lot of fakers out there. Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. You said earlier in the podcast that now because of lasers and stuff like that, you can measure particles a lot more accurately, and that's how you found that particles actually are moving. Is the laser itself, is that an accurate tool? Has that been proven to be 100%? Because what if it was just the laser saying that,

but then down 20 years from now you find out, oh, it was just the laser. No, no, no. It's a measurement of distance. So for a macro object, like we were talking about tables and chairs at that time, in between your looking and my looking, they move so very little. It's very hard to observe with just ordinary way that we measure, like triangulating and all that. But with a laser beam,

because lasers travel in very, very close to straight lines, the diffraction effect is virtually gone. It's very good straight lines. So triangulation becomes very accurate because you really can go a long distance. Even that small of a... Even that small measurement, you can triangulate and therefore measure it.

I found you on Twitter. Your Twitter handle is Quantum Activist. Good. Quantum Activist on Twitter. So ladies and gentlemen, please follow him on Twitter. I'm going to write that right now. Follow.

Okay. And thank you very much. Really appreciate it. You're very welcome. It's been a true pleasure to talk to you. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it. And if you ever want to come back, if you have anything that you want to promote, please come back on.

We would love to have you. We'd love to talk to you some more. It's a real pleasure. I would love to be back. Thank you. We'd love to talk to you some more. It's a real pleasure. I would love to be back. Thank you. If you go to audible.com forward slash Joe, you will get one free audio book and 30 days off of Audible, the premier audio resource as far as like audio books and podcasts and comedy albums. It's a beautiful company, and they have been supporting this podcast for a while, so we appreciate them very much. Audible.com forward slash Joe. Go there, get yourself a free audio book.

Is any of your books available on audio book? I don't think that it's audio, but they're all available as e-books on the Kindle. Oh, they are? But nobody's done an audio version of it? I don't think anybody has done an audio version of it. In fact, if you can inspire some of these people to do it, I would love it. I'm sure they would love to.

It's on Amazon. Let's see if there's an audio version of it. We can get Ari Shapiro to do it. Yeah, mumble, mumble, mumble. Sorry, that's an inside joke. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it. Dr. Amit Goswami.

Amit? Amit. Am I saying it right? Absolutely. How do you pronounce it? Amit. Amit. Amit Goswami. Amit. Amit. Am I saying it right? Absolutely. How do you pronounce it? Amit. Amit. Amit Goswami, the quantum activist, just quantum activist on Twitter.

Thanks also to Amit.com. That's O-N-N-I-T. Go there. Use the code name Rogan. Save yourself 10% off any and all supplements. Thank you to Desquad.TV. We got a big show,.tv we got a big show or he's got a big show

coming up this Thursday that's next week in it's already past Thursday it's Friday next Thursday

in San Diego at the American Comedy Company a fantastic little club in San Diego it's Yoshi Obayashi Billy Bonnell Jason Tebow

Tony Hinchcliffe and Brian Redband. It's a hell of a show, San Diego. Go on down. And then tonight at the Ice House in Pasadena, 10 p.m. show, Brian Redband, Tony Hinchcliffe, Matty Kirsch. Who else? You caught me off guard.

Sam Tripoli, Josh Fadum, Tony Hinchcliffe, Johnny Pemperton. And me. Subscribe to the Death Squad on iTunes where you can listen to excellent podcasts like Kevin Pereira's – where's he going? He had to make a phone call. Oh, up there. There ain't nothing out there, man. Kevin Pereira's Pointless. We have Triple X Squad, Muff Said, live shows. There ain't nothing out there, man. Kevin Pereira was pointless. What is...

Triple X Squad, Muff said, live shows. The Ice House Tonight. Ian Edwards, right? Ian Edwards, Preposterous Sessions. By the way, he was on Conan Wednesday, so go to Conan's website and check his set out Wednesday. Beautiful. He had a really good set.

All right, folks. We got a hell of a week coming next week. This podcast keeps rolling, you dirty folks. We got a hell of a week coming next week. This podcast keeps rolling, you dirty bitches. We stop for no man. We stop for no quantum theory. We got Monday. We got Boss Rootin' in the fucking house.

Tuesday, Scott Sigler, who is a horror author. And then we're working on someone Wednesday. Hopefully, I'm going to be able to get Justin Wren. He's the white guy that's been working to save the pygmies in Africa. I don't know if you see the video of the first time they ever saw a white guy. He's a former MMA fighter who's now living in the Congo trying to help pygmies. I heard that was fake. Oh, no, it's not fake at all.

Those photos, I heard those were fake photos. Oh, no, this isn't a photo. It was really recent. I think you're thinking of something different. It wasn't a photo. It was a video, and it was staged, apparently. This is not. This is modern iPhone footage of him in the Congo meeting these pygmies,

the little boys, the little kids that had never seen a white guy before. All right, you fucks. We love the shit out of you. Keep it together, bitches, and we'll see you on Monday. you