Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Humanity’s Next Evolutionary Jump is Happening Now

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

This is Episode 2 of Theories of Everything's "Rethinking the Foundations of the Academy: How to improve scientific inquiry?" series featuring Raphaël Liogier. Raphaël Liogier of the Institute for Advanced Studies is a distinguished sociologist and philosopher, specializing in the study of beliefs, secularization, and the relationship between spirituality and modernity. SPONSOR: As a listener of TOE, you can now enjoy full digital access to The Economist. Get a 20% off discount by visiting: https://www.economist.com/toe LINKS: - Raphaël Liogier's Book Khaos - https://amzn.to/4bWc7pQ - Raphaël Liogier's Website - https://www.raphaelliogier.com - Rethinking the Foundations (YouTube Playlist) - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlOYgTu7P4nfjYkv3mkikyBa - First episode with Raphaël: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6PTsA8T1m8 - Curt on Julian Dorey’s podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1mKNGo9JLQ - Gregory Chaitin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMPnrNL3zsE - Iain McGilchrist on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-SgOwc6Pe4 - The Master and His Emissary (book): https://amzn.to/3TkDofc - The Matter With Things (book): https://amzn.to/3z9JxDY - John Vervaeke on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVj1KYGyesI Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Become a YouTube Member Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) Join TOEmail at https://www.curtjaimungal.org Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:24 - Raphael’s Background 06:10 - Meditation 15:35 - Materialism 28:57 - Future of Humanity 36:30 - Beauty and Love 43:39 - Transcendence 46:58 - Main Challenge of Our Time 50:18 - Transcendence (continued) 53:33 - Modernity 01:03:58 - Schopenhauer and the Jesuits 01:11:51 - Mystics and Alchemy 01:21:34 - Reaching ‘God’ 01:26:18 - Zeno’s Paradox 01:35:03 - Outro / Support TOE Support TOE: - Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Crypto: https://tinyurl.com/cryptoTOE - PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/paypalTOE - TOE Merch: https://tinyurl.com/TOEmerch Follow TOE: - NEW Get my 'Top 10 TOEs' PDF + Weekly Personal Updates: https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoriesofeverythingpod - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theoriesofeverything_ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join #science #philosophy #consciousness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash theories all lowercase go to Shopify.com slash theories to upgrade your selling today that's Shopify.com slash theories we come to you from the mountain of entertainment to tell you what's streaming on Paramount Plus blockbusters like a quiet place day one Originals including Yellowstone let the world know we're here And hits like Dexter you're decent and good. I'm not Paramount Plus your eyeballs equals entertainment

stream Paramount Plus from 6.99 a month. It's not about rationalism, but the fact that you are rational without being dogmatically rational allows you to adopt and enter into different modes of beings. The main challenge of our time is to be able to go beyond the traditions and to not fall into nihilism suffocating in materialism.

Professor, what is it that you study? I would like you to tell us about your academic journey as well. I started my academic journey by studying law because my parents wanted me to study law. They were obsessed by that, but I was obsessed with philosophy and science and all these kinds of things, and they didn't want to. So I started doing law.

But in the same time, I did philosophy. In the same time, not telling them actually, but I followed the track in philosophy too. And so I have a master at Ex-Marseille University in philosophy and a master in law. And I did a PhD in sociology. And in France, what we call an HGR, an habilitation à diriger des recherches, certification to run research to become like a supervisor for PhD. It's not only when you have a PhD in France that you can do that. You have some kind of another dissertation. I did that too.

And in the same time while I was doing my dissertation, I went to Edinburgh University and I did a Master of Science by Research in the philosophy of science. And I worked on Alfred North Whitehead, the famous mathematician and also a great philosopher. I also spent a semester in UCB, University of California at Berkeley, where I did, but it was just for fun, but I mean, I did it because it tells something about my interest in neurophysiology. And I did neurophysiology when I was there. What else?

Yeah, it's about all, yeah, there was also a certificate that I did while I was doing philosophy and law in philosophy of law and moral philosophy that I did out of fun a bit. And I did my dissertation. My dissertation was about the Westernization of Buddhism. Please, I would love to hear about that. I would love to hear about what is the difference between the Western conception of Buddhism and what Buddhism is actually like. A complete discussion, like hours of discussion,

like to give you the difference, but mostly, I will say that to relate to our discussion, but first, what I discovered on a certain... It's like people that goes to the East to study Buddhism, like they want to find the most authentic Buddhism, and so they go there, like they go to Asia thinking they will find something that is more authentic. It's not true because actually it has been modified in Asia first to fit into what wanted

the West, the people from the West. Because one of the main features of Buddhism, it's the only Asian religion that at some time in history was in all the Asian countries, no exception. But except that, for instance, in India, it hasn't been in India for centuries because Hinduism, there was Hinduism. But it was invented, if I can say, in India, Buddhism. So it has been in the Tang dynasty in China, and after it was a bit less, it was more Taoist, but still, it's a religion that existed. So you can look at every single Asian country.

At one point in history, Buddhism was there and they had a kind of original Buddhism or something. So when the Westerners came to Asia, they went everywhere, like the Europeans, they were coming there with their weapons, with their economic power and all that, with their desire to colonize, etc. The people that went there, they saw that there was something that they admired. It was Buddhism, because Buddhism was already known to scholars that studied Buddhism in the 18th and even in the 19th centuries, and they loved it.

Some of the nihilistic philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, they said Buddhism is great because it's the religion of nihilism, like the religion that says that there is nothing, but it is wrong. It doesn't say that, but he saw it this way, and he said that's the reason why it is the highest religion. And the Jesuits, like the Catholic, you know, would say like, that went there, they had the same view, but this time negatively, they say, oh my God, that's the religion of nothingness. That's the religion that nothingness.

So that's awful. That's evil. That's the worst religion. So it's partly in the middle of that, that we started to invent a new Buddhism, but that was invented in Asia itself. But now, what is Buddhism in the positive way? I think Buddhism is, and it doesn't mean, I mean, it's because Buddhism is like all the religions, there is the moral part, there is the political part, I mean, they are like everybody. But what we have made of it, I mean, in a positive way, and in Asia and in Europe and

in the US, it is in a way, I think, the positive thing is the methodology to be able to have access to what I call raw transcendence. That is the real promise of modernity and true, like what we call meditation. Because what is true meditation? True meditation, it is not what some people do today, for instance in self-improvement, culture and all that. So they make meditation as something like if you had to feel your mind, like even when you say you feel your mind with energy, like to be more efficient if you practice meditation,

for instance. But in fact, it's distortion. It is not that. Real meditation, and I think the real, I would say, training of the mind is not to try to fill your mind up with energy or anything, it's to let it open. So to accept the void, that's the difference between void and emptiness. With emptiness, we have the feeling that something is missing, so you need to put something in it. And even if you pretend you practice meditation, you have many people that try to put something in it, like being more efficient, or what is the effect, or I'm so good in meditation, or I'm so relaxed, or that, or that, or that.

But what is meditation about? It's just to face the void and to understand that it is the very freedom, the very liberty that you're working on your own liberty. You are working on this thing that you don't try to feel at all. And by doing that, you are becoming more human and you are cultivating your mind and the freedom of your own mind by doing that. Not trying to reach something specific, but just leave it open so when there is a thought that is coming, you don't try to grab it. Because if you try to grab it, it becomes some kind of a dogma.

It becomes some kind of an image that you are attached to, and you become even conditioned by the image. It's like if this image was taking you out of yourself. And because we are in a society of entertainment entertainment and everything is made in what I call the industrialism to take your mind out of itself in order to consume, in order to do that, you are attached with so many things. Practicing meditation in the way that you try to not get that edge to the image you project, you know, that makes you out of yourself, that creates a space in which you can breathe,

you can be free, and you can be like really modern without being, you know, conditioned all the time. So in Zen Buddhism, there's a story of if you're filling your cup, if you want to learn, someone's pouring water into a cup and then they're saying, well, look, it's overflowing. Why? Because you need to empty your cup first. Exactly that. And then some people will say the point is the empty cup, but then it sounds implicit in that parable that you're then supposed to empty it in order to fill it. That's what it sounds like.

So you're saying no. Don't feel it. Don't feel it. Because when you are connected with the void, you don't have anything to feel. There is something that is opening that frees you from all expectation and that prevents you from falling. Because it's like, how can I describe this kind of experience? It's why I call it raw transcendence.

Every human being feels that. And it's what I said in the talk we had at the beginning, when I say the main feeling is the feeling of weakness, that there is something that is not complete. And so human beings, it's the mystical tradition, the spiritual tradition, there is science when you try to go beyond yourself, but with meditation, it's a little bit the same work,

but inside instead of outside, where you don't take side. So, in fact, in a way you also exercise your critical mind when you are doing real meditation. As I said, you don't become dogmatic. You don't let yourself being grabbed by one image. You can see it's called equanimity. You see that everything that is around at the end is just images, images, images. That can be useful to do something, but just images.

So in a way, they are equal in their stages of being images. When you feel that, it actually frees you from anxiety. In my work, I distinguish anguish and anxiety. We are in a society that is dying, that is today dying out of its anxiety everywhere. Because anguish is different. The French psychoanalyst and a bit philosopher Jacques Lacan said something very important. He said, Anguish is the only feeling that doesn't lie. And I agree with him because it is the anguish of the void.

We know that things are not complete. We discovered that out of our feeling of weakness, but we discovered it. It's actually true. So it's very hard to accept it, to accept our own freedom, our own openness. It's like we have the vertigo in front of a cliff. And so we always have the tendency to refuge ourselves with objects or with a theory or with a dogma that is finite, that will solve everything, that will solve everything, that will be security. And so the secret of freedom and of meditation, it's not to avoid anguish.

It's not, I mean, you're not going to overcome anguish. You can't overcome anguish. The anguish of the void is structural, but it's not destructive. The anguish of the void could be transformed into an energy. That's what I call transcendence is an energy to go beyond so you have like someone that is on a string over the cliff he feels the vertigo but he faces it so there is something that a heroic posture or the saint posture for that matter that allows you to walk your way on the string that is on the void that

you accept. And it creates some kind of an enjoyment, some mystique they call like the enjoyment of God or everything, et cetera, but it's not attached to a specific religion, in fact. And it's what does Buddhism. It connects us to the heart of what is spirituality, so to make the anguish of the void being something positive, a positive feeling. But if you refuse it, you repress it, it will come back, because the repress always comes back, but it will come back not being really, you're not going to be really aware, but you will suffer in different ways.

You will feel that the world is empty, you will not be facing the void that is open, but you will face some kind of an emptiness that you want to feel. It will become capitalism, for instance. In capitalism, we are like obsessed with that. We think we are going to feel, to feel, to feel, but at the end, it's still empty, because that wasn't what we were trying to solve our anxiety. Anxiety is the thing that comes to you and you feel that you're suffering. You don't know why, but in fact it's because you don't face the anguish of the void.

So it comes like the anxiety of emptiness, the anxiety of empty moment, the anxiety that you haven't filled these moments so you go to your iPhone, if something is happening that you have missed, you feel that you have missed something and you're going to the cinema or somebody is doing something else somewhere or you want to become richer, etc., etc.,

etc., etc. It is this anxiety and that provoke also that makes our world accelerating all the time and not making the time to see the beauty of the void that is in nature itself. I was interviewed on a podcast called the Julian Dore podcast and on it I said something akin to in our culture, we believe that we're unhappy because we're mistreated, but rather we're morose because we've accepted a worldview that's rendered this world lifeless. And that if we could see the animated splendor in almost everything, then maybe we wouldn't be so tormented. So in other words, we believe we're despondent

because we're deprived, but rather we're lost because we're blind to wonder. So I wanna know what you think of that. I think it's wonderful. And I even think that there is something pathological in the way we want, we don't want to see the wonder. And in fact, during the first part of this session, we were talking about materialism. I don't know if you remember we were talking about materialism. I don't know if you remember, we were talking about materialism. In fact, I renamed materialism. In my work, I decided to call it inertialism.

Like when you say that something is inert, that means it is dead. More exactly, that means it is passive. And when you say, because I say when we use materialism, I said I don't have any problem with materialism because materialism means mater, that means etymologically, the mother, so the mattress, the thing that gives birth that can go beyond itself. And the beauty of it is to be able to go beyond itself. So it's pure transcendence. It's raw transcendence in a way. But when people talk about materialism, in fact, they are talking about inertialism.

So they think that the world, our universe, is made of bits of dead things. Static that can be grasped. Exactly. Things that are passive. And it's even what is pure determinism. Because when you say, when you are having a deterministic view, that is totally, in my way, totally absurd, even on a logical point of view and it is the main is still the main

The main view that everything is determined to totally determine when you say that that means that if you take any object every bit of Of things, you know, I don't now use the word matter of things You will when you say it's totally determined, that means that everything that happens, even in the, in the component of the thing itself is determined from the outside, right? Means it's something that is outside that has pushed it.

Yes. Right from the beginning. It's what it means, right? Exactly. So in a way, you will say, okay, so you take any object, these objects is entirely determined from the outside, but that means that any object that is outside this very object is also determined from the outside. So where is the dynamic that allows those things

to actually being related to each other in a dynamic way, in an active way? So I think there is something inside, but not inside, thinking about inside, like we could say like inner, inside the object, what we call object, what we call things, that has its own determination. Otherwise, he couldn't even move. He couldn't even go to some places. Because when we think the world has passive bits or dead bits of matter, dead bits of object that give the appearance of an organism when they become more complex, for instance,

like macromolecules that become more complex, we don't say anything about how it becomes more complex and it becomes something else with it own law that we call biological law. We don't say anything when we talk, for instance, also about the complexity of the neural networks. And we say after a certain layer, a certain level of complexity, it becomes a thought. We don't say anything about this transition. We don't say anything. How is that even possible that there is a property in the bits of things themselves

to complexify themselves to the point that they become something else with different laws? We don't know why. We pretend we know, but we don't know why at all. And at least if we stay on a pure deterministic view, like it's entirely determined, it's like if we were saying that every bit of matter was determined outside of itself.

So it's like if every bit of matter was actually outside of itself. And if you say that the entire universe is like the maximum bit of matter, and you say if it is entirely determined from outside, it means the entire universe is outside of itself, which is totally absurd and doesn't have any meaning. Therefore, there is something else that the pure deterministic view, not even using quantum mechanics in itself, in a pure logical way. So this dynamic...

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If you're serious about upgrading your business, get the same checkout we use with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash theories. All lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash theories to upgrade your selling today. That's Shopify.com slash theories. It's actually what makes the world being something else than dead. And that makes the beauty of it. But it is that that we refuse today.

We refuse that even if quantum mechanics and other fields of science could allow us now to interpret the world in a more positive way on that aspect. Like actually it's not dead bit of matter, it's something else. We refuse it because in fact it's in our mind that we are negative. It's what I call negativity. Even it's what I call in other of my world, a triple negativity that prevent us from actually changing our world, even politically, even socially, even culturally, because we're stuck into this negativity.

How does it prevent us? Because you know, when you have a negative way of the world, is that you have lost, if you have followed what I said in the first part, and I know you did, there is the desire to survive, the desire to live, comfort, and the desire to be. The desire to be is when you feel that there is something missing and you need to complete it and to go beyond. This desire to be, it's also the desire to be is when you feel that there is something missing and you need to complete it and to go beyond.

This desire to be, it's also the desire to become. It's what makes you want, for instance, when you want to meet someone and you are human, you immediately imagine that love is something that you will be able to tell about yourself, like it will become something that will make a world of you, you know? And so this desire to be will be the only thing almost that will count in your life, that will be the positivity that will allow you to wait under the rain, you know? Because it's the lover that you're waiting, etc., etc. So it's that, that is positivity.

Science works the same way. The scientist, when he's, he wants to discover something, he's never tired. He's in his research center and he's like a lover. I mean, the object of his research, I mean, it's true that he fell in love with it because it becomes the desire to be, is assimilating at its full positivity. And so nowadays, science become something more and more with what I call zombie science that lost track of this positivity. Like, for instance, when we are talking

about science and technology, we are talking about avoiding certain things. Like there is a danger, that there is a danger, that there is a problem. The specific field where negativity is now, you know, encapsuled, it's ecology. It's ecology. Because we all know intellectually, we all know that we need to change the world. We need to change our habits, right?

We need to change everything. But we are unable to create the positive desire to change everything. Like we don't create like the lover, like the earth, like being the lover. We try to do that, but it doesn't work. Why? Because, and you see that in collapsology, because our description of the phenomena,

because we lost the connection to raw transcendence, go beyond. So we are describing the phenomena negatively, like in collapsology. The temperature is getting higher and higher. The water is getting also higher. It's becoming drier and drier, and more heat, and climate change, et cetera. Everything is negative. Since the 80s, we describe everything negatively. Doesn't mean that it is not true, but the fact of the matter is it's negative.

And so the answer is what? The solution since the 50s, it say, we need to ungrow. We need to be smaller, to not be great, to try to not, I mean, to be shy, to try to not do what we did before. But again, negative solution. We need to prevent ourselves from doing things. And the third negativity, which is the worst one, that is the moral negativity, is that who is guilty of that?

Who is guilty of that? Who is guilty of this situation? Is that human beings? Is that people from the North, the white, the black, the Asians because the Chinese did too much, or the Americans for that matter? In a way we could say, yeah, it's everybody, it's us, it's you, it's me, it's the past generation, but who cares? That doesn't matter.

When you are doing that, you become more and more technical. You have an ethic that is becoming more and more technical, that doesn't see the beauty of the world. So that doesn't love the world, but just want to save yourself. And when you just want to save yourself, in fact, you're less efficient in a human way, because human beings, they are more efficient when they want to go beyond and they are challenged like to go to the moon. It's a desire. It's a positive desire. And so we are unable to do that because even science, even technology becomes a matter

to avoid. It's what I call negativity. We always matter to avoid. It's what I call negativity. We always want to avoid. In the 70s, they lived in the way we try to live now in some communities, only in some communities that went out of the cities and decided to live in a countryside, like in nature. They invented sustainable development. They invented it because they lived out of it,

but they didn't invent it, sustainable development, and they didn't impose things on themselves just to impose them because they had to impose them and it's required. But because they projected in front of them a lovable way of living, like even they talk about free love and all those things. They practice yoga and Buddhism for that matter.

Are you talking about the new age currently? Yeah, exactly. Because you can't ask people to ungrow, to become smaller. While in fact, the obsession, I mean, the main point with human being, the desire to be greater, it's the desire to become more. And now you say, oh, you have to be less. Yes.

No. Exactly. And so if you tell people you have to be less, and it's necessary on one aspect, like capitalistic aspect, economical aspect, we have to show you, to offer you a way to be more on another aspect. It's what they did in this community, but we have lost track of that. So if you don't tell people, we don't show people how to become more, but in another way, they will never be able to accomplish sustainable development and to do these kind

of things because it will be out of a pressure, of a negative pressure. We are all big children, big kids. And if you are explaining to a kid that he doesn't have to do that because it's just for survival, he will not do it. But if you tell a kid that he's going to be the hero of ecology, he's going to be like a hero, he's going to be something, someone great because he will do that, he will be able to sacrifice to do something out of the idea even of the game, to win the game, to practice something, to be connected to what I call raw transcendence.

But if we believe that the world is made of deadbeat of matters, what's the point of saving even us if we are just an agglomeration of deadbeat of matters? That's the point. So the person who's listening who is an environmentalist or is an anti-capitalist or pro-capitalist or whatever it may be, they may say, look, we shouldn't be growing because if we were to develop AI and just continually develop it in an unconfined fashion, then it could kill us or our obsession with growth could kill us with respect to climate change or whatever it may be.

So they would say, look, Raphael, you're talking about growth. What is this growth that you're talking about? How do we distinguish this positive growth from this negative growth? And what does it have to do with beauty? Because you keep bringing up the word beauty. I keep talking about beauty, but I will tell you. First, I'm not against the development of artificial intelligence. Even on the contrary, I think I'm for the development

of artificial intelligence. And I don't think the dangers of artificial intelligence are the one we think are dangers. I think there is the epistemological danger, but not the other danger like replacing the machine. I think that's great that this machine will do what we don't have to do. It will relieve us.

It will make us more free to actually do what we want to do, to be more creative, to create new games, what I said, new constraints, new problems to actually enjoy our life beyond the simple materialistic view. So I will say the difference between negative growth and positive growth, I will say there is no negative growth because what we call growth in capitalism is not growth, it's self-destruction. Because when you grow, it's that you build something, but now we're not building something, we're destroying something. We are even destroying ourselves on a massive scale.

So the real question will be, I think, why don't we see it? Why isn't it desirable to change the path? It's because we became dogmatic and we are not critical. When you are critical, actually, it's because you are a spiritual person. The real meaning of being critical is when you are spiritual. I know it's unusual to say that. Because critical means you don't accept things as they present themselves. So you always think that you can go beyond, that there is something else, that what you

think is a limitation is not what it's supposed to be. So you accept the position of others, you accept other perspectives. And so step by step, you're not attached dogmatically to a specific kind of wealth, but you want to grow. You want to grow in a real way, to grow in a real way, to grow with others, to make things growing on an organic point of view. But when you're dogmatic, being supposed to be scientist or religious, is you're scared about transcendence. Religion doesn't express transcendence. In fact, transcendence is just the mystics that expressed it because they were in the

openness of transcendence, in the freedom. And so when you're dogmatic, that means that you're scared about transcendence and you close it when you're religious on something that will be the unique interpretation of the Quran or the Bible or anything. You make it a dogma because it's reassuring. And by doing that, you become more and more violent and destructive. When you're dogmatic in a scientific technological world, which we are becoming now, even if it is like a

zombie dogma with artificial intelligence, because it doesn't even have a theological closure. What you're doing is you refuse to accept. You think that everything is deadbeat of matters. You think it is that. You want security. You're obsessed by security, so you're obsessed by other. Everything that goes beyond the other, you want to grasp yourself to, to feel better,

to feel that you are there. You refute yourself. Everything that goes beyond that, you actually reject it and you call it chaos. But chaos with C-H-A-R-S. You say disorder. And when you are in this situation, you are ready to accept anything if you are given security, some kind of an impression of security.

You are able to accept to be controlled politically, socially, everything. You will even pretend that you want to come back to an ancient world. It's what I call identitarism, the ancient identity. So you feel protected. You refuse everything that is around. You know, sir, it is just we are just in a world that is becoming more and more dogmatic because he's scared, because he's anxious about the void, anxious about this openness.

We have to come back. We have to come back to this original feeling of openness that makes human beings what they are. And if they do that, technology will not be the poison. It will be actually the solution. It will be positive technology. It will be a technology that opens ourselves. But nowadays, it's like if technology was supposed to be the truth.

That's what I call the digital paradigm. It's great what we are doing with artificial intelligence data, even with heterogeneous data. It is great as long as we don't confuse it with the truth of our being, with the truth of what is reality. If we work to not confuse it, that means that our technology will be ipso facto, will be immediately positive. You know, there is this word in Greek that is pharmacone. The word pharmacone, that means in the same time, that means that has two meanings. That means poison, and that means also medicine. It depends on the use, the intensity.

I will say it depends if it is used with a negative mind or with a positive mind, with an open mind, with openness. And now we have to work not on saying technology is bad. We are very often in front of this kind of fake debate, like for or against technology, that's not the point. We can't be against technology. I'm not against technology. I'm not against the use of technology.

I think we have to be positive. I think we don't have to be like collapsologist, like always projecting catastrophe. Of course the catastrophe could happen. But when you feel that it is fate, like dogmatically that you are in jail, that you are jailed with that, actually you don't do anything. We need to think that there is always an openness so we can think the impossible. It is always this way that we found solutions. That's the reason why I'm talking about love and I'm talking about beauty.

Maybe you can end with that. Love is the fact that even when things look impossible, like if it were a finite, determined world, love allows you, gives you the energy to find a solution that will not appear if you weren't in love. So we will find something that is heroic, a solution that doesn't appear to be a solution at the time T1 that is not programmed, but it's progress because it opens the supposed-to-be determination. And so what is beauty? Beauty is the immediate feeling that there is something greater, bigger than what it appears.

It is this immediate feeling, like this native, original feeling that we repress immediately after, like just the second after we feel it. And if we are able to carry on feeling it, it is this very energy of what beauty gives to us that allows us to be really active in this world. It is the feeling that, no, the world is not made of that bit of matters. There is something else. And it's what is raw transcendence about. It doesn't need any representation.

You can have a beautiful representation in religion, even in scientific way, but the art itself, when it produces beauty, it is beyond all that. It's just the feeling itself in its pure original way that creates some kind of a certainty in an uncertain world. That's also the reason why I always say that aesthetics precedes ethics. But nowadays, we just talk about ethics, and ethics is just justification. People feel bad.

They know they have to do something, but they discuss about the fact that they have to do these things, but they don't feel it. They don't taste it like the taste in the tip of their tongue. Because we're talking about Zen Buddhism, they said in Zen Buddhism that nirvana is

before everything, it's a taste. And when you have tasted it, you want to taste it more. So you don't need any pressure. And I'm afraid that we haven't tasted the great savor of ecology, of nature right now, we are just talking about it in an ethical justification way. So we can't change if we don't do that. We are not aware of the beauty itself, the feeling itself, the taste of it. So why have we not tasted it?

And also you mentioned that beauty when you feel it, you try to repress it a moment or so afterward. That doesn't sound intuitive. It sounds like you would want to experience what's beautiful more and more. Yeah. So it's unclear that when someone goes to a museum and they see a beautiful painting that they then walk out. They then go to another room and look at that painting for longer. It's a very good remark here. It's very, very good. Very good one. I think it hasn't always been like that.

I think in a world with tradition, when we are in a traditional world, we've distinct with symbolic correlations that are everywhere. We accept beauty, we accept this feeling, we don't repress it, but in the same time, it is right away, how can I say, refined in different representations, traditional representations, that makes us feel safe.

And so we are safe with it. We don't have the freedom we have today, but in the same time, we feel safe. And we feel kind of, because this transcendence is more digestible if I can say, and it works, and so we don't escape from it. The only people at that time, the elite that has direct access are the people that we call mystics. And because they are so free, because they are mystics, and it's not easy for, I mean, to be a mystic, you need to accept everything around, to be in a... you're very

active but you can't be controlled. So there were the principle, the main enemies of religion, of the religious hierarchy and the priest and all that. In our world, there was this promise, it's what I call the promise of modernity in my book Chaos, a promise that is unique in the history of humanity. It is the promise of raw transcendence without refinement. And it has a word, liberty. Liberty is what? Is the fact that there is something bigger

than any determination, so any definition, that we are not going to refine into a specific representation of God or that or that or that. But it's pure transcendence. It's like an energy, when I say raw transcendence, it's like the pure energy itself. But this pure energy is too strong to stand

specifically on the collective way. What do you mean on a collective? It's the fact that people become free on a collective scale, and they will even determine who will govern them out of their subjectivity, their personal transcendence, something that is their pure subjectivity. There's not object. There is the mystery of the fact that you vote and you decide.

There is something like is, there's something mystical, I will say, about democracy. Not religious, but mystical in the way I'm putting it, you know? But in the same time, these raw transcendence, without the refinement that goes with it, has produced, at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, a direct anguish of the void that couldn't be accepted because the vertigo was too high. People were scared about their own freedom because they were used to this traditional way that has some security, where everything was refined, where beauty was enshrined into the tradition, into different things that were transmitted.

But at that moment with these raw transcendent things, there was some kind of a reverse way. It's what I call the betrayal of modernity. Modernity is about raw transcendence. Modernity means different modes of being, different even representations. Because let me see if I got this correct, That there's a direct confrontation with raw transcendence. Raw transcendence is different than ordinary transcendence because transcendence is associated with specific instantiations of religion and you're trying to move beyond that and go toward what the mystics are referring to.

I'm talking about refined transcendence. You know like petrol or oil, that you have the raw thing, but you can't do anything with it because it's too strong. But when you refine it, you can use it to control people, to do things with it. Like you put it in your car, it becomes something efficient. I see.

Okay, and so the raw transcendence is too overwhelming. And that gives us a desire to fill the void with tangible constructs. Because it's too hard to stand it like if you have a light that is blinding you and it gives pain, you don't accept it. Even if you know, even if you deep inside, it's the beauty, the thing, et cetera, it just provokes some kind of tremendous, oh, actually. And when you don't accept this, oh, you want to protect yourself, but you can't come back to the ancient world. You can't believe in Christmas the way you like in the ancient world, traditional world.

So it is at that time that we invent in a new way to feel secure. But because we didn't have any more of the security of the traditional world, this new way to feel secure is actually pure materialism, what I call inertialism. So it's kind of a new theology, but completely circular. Because in the ancient theology,

at least in the traditional theology, you had the openness, you have the control of the tradition, of course, but you had the openness of God, which means that even the king, he will oppress you, he could oppress you, he was some kind of a dictator and all that. But at the end of the day, he felt that there was the eye of God looking at him, so there was something above him. But when you have, you don't believe even in that, you think everything is determined and material? You know, the one that is supposed to have the key of the determinism that is in a situation where is, is can do everything without any limit.

That's the reason why we have the monstrosity of the Nazi. Because there wasn't transcendence left. They could do everything. Because it was circular. There wasn't anybody else outside to refer to. There wasn't something beyond. So the real challenge is to try to go beyond the traditions without falling into what I call industrialism, like pure nihilism.

This challenge, it is actually the real challenge of our time. It is the only way to be able to do something positive with this world. Now that we know we are facing like, I will say, I mean, an ecosystemic catastrophe. Can you repeat again what is the main challenge of our time? I think the main challenge of our time is to be able to go beyond the traditions, the traditional world that is enshrined into specific dogma that makes us secure, but still had God and all these kinds of things that go beyond, and to not fall into nihilism, industrialism, to not fall into a world that will be suffocating in its own materialism. Like if it were a single room, the universe would be in a single room, like a finite room

where you get bored, or that you destroy, or you don't have anything to say, you don't have any plan actually. But the world is not a single room, like with closed doors. It's full of windows, windows on beauty that is actually the very immediate proof of transcendence. And we can be, and at that moment, we can really believe in freedom, in liberty, or in subjectivity, because it's on that that our system, even our democratic system, is founded. But if you pretend that you believe in liberty or in subjectivity, in free will and all that,

because it's a necessity to live in democracy. But at the same time, you say you are poor, you are materialist, which is in my vocabulary inertialist, you are becoming schizophrenic. It's what I call schizohumanism. So we are pretending that we believe in things like liberty and all that, that we are unable to believe in, that we can't believe in. So we need to restore the trust in the real value in which our society is based. But really, well now, we are just pretending.

So that's the reason why even politicians are despised by the population. Because everybody knows that they are pretending, like following principles that nobody believes in, et cetera, et cetera. So it goes with faith. If democracy is just the procedures, like technical democracy and all that, like we vote the most important number and all that, and it lost its subjectivity, that supposed belief, a real trust, like a transcendent trust, it becomes almost nothing.

And it's why it's becoming nothing nowadays. That's a real problem. It's weird to talk about that in a science podcast, but it comes, everything is related. It comes from our view, our scientific view of the universe, thinking that being a scientist is being a positivist, being a materialist, an inertialist. That's actually the other way around. The very origin of science is the opposite of that. The very origin of the critical mind of modernity is actually the

capacity of going out of dogmas, even of the materialist dogma, to always be able to criticize and to leave it open. We are unable to do that today, deeply. So what is the difference between meaning and raw transcendence? Does raw transcendence give rise to meaning? Is meaning the place where raw transcendence comes from? When we talk, yeah, in a way it's that because meaning is the fact that we see that things are incomplete, but we live it this way, but we need to give meaning to that. We need to give to say what is, what direction we go.

And because we are free, we go to the direction that looks like the most enjoyable, following kind of a sense of beauty. But in the way, we have knowledge, we accumulate knowledge. Let's talk about, for instance, what I call symbolic correlationism, correlations. It's about beauty. What is a symbol? A symbol is not an analogy, is not a metaphor, is something different. It's interesting when you're precise with the word

that you actually use. A symbol, etymologically, it means that there is a piece of matter, a piece of object that is broken and that is missing. So there is a void. But a symbol is like the part that is missing, so that is not there. You can see it's, I mean, the direction of where it is, what it could look like, you can, because it has the shape, what is here, has the shape of where it is, what it could look like, because it has the shape,

what is here, has the shape of what is missing. Like in a puzzle, there is the shape of what is missing on the part that is here. So what is here shows the direction of what is missing. And so meaning is actually the interpretation of this direction of what is missing, according to the shape that is actually here. And so our scientific world is like if we were always finding the missing piece, but there is no definite picture

because the world is not finite. That's the difference between a simple puzzle. So symbol is actually the very, I mean, the best way to express transcendence, even in mathematics. We don't have time to talk about like contour and what means infinity in mathematics and all that. But the symbol in mathematics is actually that. It's a pure intuition.

When I was having this debate with my very good friend Gregory Chaitin, I said, you're becoming more a theologian than a mathematician. And it's what he said himself. And he said, really? I said that? I said yes, because we have filmed it when we were discussing it and after he recognized it because real science is not opposed even to theological expression it's supposed to dogma which is different so it's supposed to closure.

Real science wants to take risk, the risk of critics. But the capacity you have to be a critical mind, it is directly related to the energy of transcendence. So now I want to know, there's this word modernity, which has been used. There's the word truth, and then there's the word knowledge. So let's tackle modernity. What is the definition word knowledge. So, let's tackle modernity. What is the definition of that? Yes, let's tackle modernity. That's interesting because... Ah, summer, with your fave Starbucks drinks.

The perfect time for sunbathing in piles of leaves on the beach. Carving jack-o-lanterns from watermelons. Playing beach volleyball with a scarecrow. Or lounging by the pool with your pumpkin spice latte. Is it crazy to think you can combine the best of fall with the best of summer? I said that modernity is some kind of a huge bet on raw transcendence, like first time in history, on the collective level. But when you say the word, do you mean the state of affairs in the world as it stands in 2024?

Yes. What is meant by that word modernity? Modernity? And I will come to, maybe I will come to that. I think you will grasp, I think, what I'm, while I'm saying what I'm saying now. Sure. I think we always need to have representations. But when I say it's the promise of raw transcendence, like if I was saying transcendence without

representation, like liberty without any possible representation. It is not that, because you can't expect a human being to live without representations. So to live without what I would call refined transcendence, you need that, because you need examples, you need also analogies, not only symbols and things like that. You need that. So how does that work? And it's actually the meaning of modernity. It just means that you don't live anymore in one set of representations that are transmitted in the entire society.

But you have different, as philosophers would put it, ontologies that can cohabit, that can live altogether in the same social space. So that means you will have people that are Christian, people that are Buddhist, people that are that and that, and more than that, you'll have people and step by step more and more people when the process of modernity will grow and it's not finished. People think it's finished. It's not finished. That's the reason why I don't agree with postmodernity, because I think we are not modern yet.

We didn't succeed in being modern, actually. So that means that more and more people will even go from one to the other. They will even discover a certain meaning, a certain representation that fits more into what they feel in one religion that is not their original religion but in the other. So it means multiple modality, modernity, multiple modes of being in the same society. It is what is modernity about. It's not about rationalism. But the fact that you are rational without being dogmatically rationalist, allows you to adopt and enter into different modes of beings.

Because at the end of the day, you need to have a general agreement on something. And the general agreement on this something, it is that unique truth that the world is incomplete, there is this void that is pure transcendence and this pure transcendence that can't be grasped by your representation, you still have the imprint of this raw transcendence in all the cultural production of human beings, of human civilization. So you can find it in different civilizations. That's from that aspect of modernity that you have this passion, this fascination, even now for different civilizations and even original civilizations, like even, you know, the Indiana Jones paradigm, we could

call it, like looking for another civilization, you will find a treasure and something there and there. That's not stupid. It's the fact that every civilization, every culture, every religion, of course, those religions can't encapsulate transcendence, but at the heart of what they are, they carry the trace of their way to express it. So in order to come back to raw transcendence, to live it, you can find a trace in every tradition to be even more yourself. That's typically modern.

That's something that will not be understood outside of modernity. Now it looks evident. It looks like obvious to say that. But what is happening even in a New Age culture when it is not industrialized itself like in self-development, improvement and all that, that becomes, you know, again inside something that is here to feel when it is not that. When there is this original desire in modernity to go from one tradition to the other, to discover some kind of a hidden origin that you can't grasp, that will help you to be even more yourself if you go to different things.

Because you hybridate yourself to different traditions. It's the desire to go beyond your own prejudice, even your own tradition, to find even the meaning of your own tradition in another tradition. Because you'll see, oh, there is a common point. So maybe that's what is really universal. It's what I call concrete universality. Universality is not an abstract image like the Westerners, the Europeans, they thought

that universality is just an abstract image that we impose to others, which is in fact your image. No. Concrete universality is the very process, the very energy of transcendence that push you to go beyond your own prejudice, what you are, you're not ethnic prejudice, religious prejudice, to grow together. It is actually the meaning of concrete. Concrete means to grow together, in concreto, etymologically.

So that's the reason why I use concrete universality. We need concrete universality today. Does concreteness stand in contrast to abstractness? Exactly. Because abstract is when you put the thing outside. It's like a picture and it becomes something solid, something that is fixed, doesn't move. It is there. So it is the picture, like the first universality, the universality of the European, like the colonial universality,

that was actually the picture of a white guy, heterosexual, European and bourgeois and all that, like the universal man. It's actually the picture of what we were like Europeans when we were going there, trying to say, yes, it's universal. But we don't have to abandon, to give up universality because we made this mistake. That is actually the 19th century mistake we made because we were industrialists. It was a capitalistic way to use others like if they were objects. Again, it's related to science, to the way we see things, but we need to create the possibility

of this concrete universality that was actually the promise, the original promise of the 18th century that was just betrayed right away. We need to do that. And if we do that, it means that there is no preconceived image. It's the becoming. We are becoming something altogether by leaving some things aside and growing with the others, what the other like in us and what we like in the other. And step by step, it becomes a real modern society. But we were unable to do that because, again, we prevented ourselves from

believing really now on principle, meaning in raw transcendence, in liberty. You know, the Declaration of Human Rights, the French Declaration of Human Rights, people just emphasize the content and the content is great. I mean, it's the belief in subjectivity, that there is something more than only the right you have because you were born these or that or there. But there is at the top, under the eye or the watch, under the watch of the supreme being. And people tend to avoid that. No, it is not the supreme being, like a certain God or something else. It's the fact that there is more than our objective person. There is being. So there is something beyond. It sees the being. Being outside the world, beauty, and being inside our subjectivity. So that's an act of faith.

That's the original act of faith of modernity. If you don't have that, you can't have real democracy. That's the reason why we don't have real democracy, actually. So how do you know that this raw transcendence you speak of isn't the same as what some people call God? You keep making a distinction. No, but it doesn't matter what some people call God. You keep making a distinction. It doesn't matter if some people call it God,

because in fact, what I'm trying to say is we are not in a time where we have to expel or we have to fight against religion, what some rationalists do. We are in a time where we have to enter into the positive meaning of all religions. And if it is God, and a God that is not dogmatic, that is the best way to express openness, which is what it is in the mystical inside, esoteric part of all religion. That's not a problem at all. Can you tell me how Schopenhauer and the Jesuits were incorrect?

Cause you touched on that briefly. You said that Schopenhauer thought there was nihilism in Buddhism and lauded Buddhism because of that. And then the Jesuits saw that, but then decried it. They followed that. They followed Schopenhauer, but this time in a negative way. Because they followed Schopenhauer to say it's awful. While Schopenhauer, he said, oh, that's great.

Because he's actually nihilistic. So how is Schopenhauer incorrect? Because he was incorrect because he stopped with the Buddha saying that everything is suffering and we are suffering because we desire. So therefore, third truth, we have to suppress desire and to find a way to suppress desire, to suppress suffering. And so he interpreted that almost like we need to commit suicide.

And there was even a disciple of Shapanhauer that said, so the solution is collective suicide, because there is nothing to expect from this life. But it is not real Buddhism at all. A very interesting concept in Buddhism is the concept of shunyata. Shunya, that means onion, like an onion, you know, the vegetable, like the onion. And you say shunyata in Sanskrit when you add the ta, that means the concept, the concept of the onion. In fact, the translation is void, the void, means the void. And it's the Buddha said, like, the world is the void. And so some people, they interpret it so there is nothing.

They interpret it in my, you know, description, in my philosophy, they interpret it in terms of it's empty. It's empty, right? But the Buddha didn't say, didn't mean that. And he explained it extensively in a sermon, in a speech, in a talk, where he said, look, to show that everything is void, he said, look, I will show you that everything is impermanent, is not permanent. Yes. Say for instance, if we talk about the body, you can see that the body is sick, the

body is dying. I mean, obviously it's not permanent. Okay. So let's find something a little bit inside. Let's unskin the onion. You know, like, so that's the reason why's unskin the onion. You know, like, so that's the reason why it's called the onion. It's a process. I see, okay.

So you see you just, and you see what is, I say, oh, if there's not the body, it's like what feels the body directly, like sensations. It feels sensations. And say, look, what are those sensations? Sensations they are, yeah, they're attached to the body. So when the body died, basically sensations disappear too. So let's go a little bit further.

Again, the onion, the skin, you unskin the onion. Inside it, it's called the aggregates. You go inside the aggregates of what makes us what we are. And we go inside and say, oh, inside there is like, when there is what we call, we call like the notions we make. But how do we make notions? It's like, it's the agglomeration of sensations that makes us have an opinion. And so the notions also disappeared and so after there is the more

Than that and he ends up saying What we called conscience? Like the soul or something like that. What is it? Oh the soul is that these The agglomeration of the notions of ourselves, about that, and it becomes, again, say, oh, so basically when the body disappears, everything disappears, and it is said the Buddha just unskinned the onion, and at the end he said, oh, there is nothing in it.

There is the void. But in fact, he didn't say that there is nothing because all the schemes, they were representations. Because the Buddha also said it is the first sentence of the main text of Buddhism, that is the Dhammapada, the stanz, I mean the words of the Buddha, so that's the main text, the basic text, all the schools refer to it. The first sentence is, in everything, I mean everything is mind. So what he meant when he said that you unskin, you unskin, you unskin, you unskin, is that at the end you don't see anything because it can't be represented.

It is the mind itself, and the mind itself is real. It's not nothing. So what the Buddha said, he didn't say that it's nothing. It said on the contrary, that there is the mind, that everything is the mind. But he also said, we didn't understand what is the mind, but he also said we didn't understand what is the mind. The mind is also the way we deal with the object. The mind is maybe the object themselves, but in a certain way, in a certain perspective. So he's not nihilistic at all. So the Buddhists tend to make an equivalence between what's changing and what's unreal

or illusory and what is invariant and what's real. I don't see why that has to be the case. I tell you, no, no, they actually distinguish. It's interesting what you said because they distinguish what they call paramarta truth. That is the truth, but that you can't grasp. You know? Yes.

So you can't say it every time you try to say it, you limit it and so you represent it. And it has the limitation of the necessity of representing it. But you need this truth is called sammuti. Sammuti is the relative truth, like the truth that you need to communicate, to say things to, et cetera.

And you have paramarta that can't be expressed, but you can induce it. You can induce it like the way I was telling you with the puzzle, like the symbolic way. You say, okay, there is something missing. You can feel that there is something missing. For instance, the interpretation of the suffering in Buddhism, it's not only suffering like you have pain and all that, it's the fact that you have the feeling that there is something that is missing. So when you have the feeling that there is something that is missing, if you don't get attached, and if you don't project with something specific that is limited, you will earn openness and you will earn freedom from your own suffering. If you don't project with something specific that is limited, you will earn openness and you

will earn freedom from your own suffering. If you don't do that, you will get attached to the image of what you want to put there because it's missing, because you feel it's missing, and you will increase your suffering. It's what the Buddhist said. You increase it, increase it, increase it, increase it. That's the reason why you need to get detached. Not because if you get detached, you don't care about anything. Because on the contrary, if you get detached, you have enough room for love.

Because when you get detached, you get detached for your own. The way you see yourself and you see yourself suffering, it adds to suffering, etc. etc. You interpret all the time yourself. If you leave your mind open, it doesn't mean that you don't think. It means that you are more free because you're not attached to your own fantasy in which you are going to, in which you are taken out of yourself. So do you classify yourself as a mystic? I mean if it is not interpreted the way it could be interpreted like an occultist, I will say yes, I'm a mystic because I have a critical mind and because I trust science

and because I trust progress. In that way, yes, I'm a mystic. But you know, the first scientists, even Copernic, they were a monk, not even a priest like any priest, a monk. So in a way, a mystical tendency. That's why they were able to criticize the dogma of the current science. We have to remember that. We have to remember that Newton, like three quarter of his work, if not more, is about alchemy, is about even astrology.

It's about all these kinds of things. And it's why it was possible for him to criticize everything, even the dogma. Earlier we talked about astrology and that was in the lecture, and for people who are watching that lecture is on screen right now, link is in the description, you should watch that because it goes over Raphael's Weltanschaung, or his worldview, quite clearly, in a compendious one hour format.

But we didn't get to touch on alchemy. So can you please talk about, you've done a dissertation, or you've done your studies in the history of science, so please talk about alchemy. Alchemy is two things, well it's many things, but I mean if I try to, it's the ancestor of modern Kimi and naively. of modern Kimi and in Iblee. And it is true that there is something that is happening like from astrology to astronomy. So it's going from the symbolic correlation to theory, when it becomes like astrology become astronomy

and when archimie become Kimi, it becomes like astrology becomes astronomy and when alchemy becomes chemie, it becomes like theories with specific, and I'm not going to come back to what I explained, the difference between symbolic correlations and theory. Yes, for that you can watch the lecture again that's on screen and link in the description. Exactly. So there is a change. And in the same time, alchemy is as a spiritual dimension, like the access to raw transcendence through certain process and rituals, with the trust that the thing we see in front of us, like the elements of nature, iron and all those different elements, they have a meaning that goes beyond what we see at first.

And so this meaning, because nothing, because everything is related to everything, this meaning that is, these things that are outside, they are connected to something that is inside us. So there is the equivalent of a certain element like fire or, I don't know, inside us. And so that means that by transforming the world outside of us in the laboratory, in the same time we are transforming ourselves and we are reaching something that goes beyond the words that could be used to describe it. That's the reason why the history of alchemy is also the history of enigmatic words, expressions, formulas. Not because they are actually hiding a secret, even if they say so, but because it can't

be said this way. It induces the people that are supposed to be alchemists to make some kind of an experience that the adept, they call the adept, that the one that experience it can feel. The only way is to experience it. So when you use words, you use words to induce it, but not to explain what it is. Because if it is explained, you will almost necessary miss the point.

And so in order to not miss the point paradoxically, it needs to be more allegorical so you don't have a fixed idea, a dogmatic idea of what you will actually experience. You would leave it open. Sorry to interrupt. Did the alchemists say that or are you inferring that from looking back at history? Were they explicit about their reasons for not being explicit? No, they are not very explicit about anything for that matter. So it's my interpretation of their way to not be explicit.

So it's my interpretation. It's in my, as you say, weltenschung, that I see his way. That's the reason why you have still people today that pretend to be alchemist, because they are doing like spiritual alchemy. Some of them could be crazy people, or completely new edge, even dogmatic new edge, thinking there is a mystery, a secret,

it's what I call occultism. That's the reason why I say I'm a mystic, but not an occultist. But you have people that could practice it in a mystical way, and I mean, in a way they're right. They could do it. They don't even need to use an alambic or materials. They could use it in trying to understand what are those differences, different polarities

in the material world, in what we think is the material world. But the main point with alchemy, and what I like with alchemy, if not entering into detail, it is the alchemists, they are not inertialists. They consider that matter as its own dynamic, we could say, at its spirit, its own mind. It is not a question, I mean, we have a different mind. I don't use mind in the mind like the brain, intelligence or something like that. I use it more in the alchemist way. Also, I could use it in Alfred North Whitehead way, like in his process philosophy. Because Whitehead is not a stupid believer of everything. He's not superstitious.

Whitehead is a great philosopher, he's a mathematician, he was interested in physics, he knew very well physics, very well mathematics. He was one of the fathers of the theory of ensembles and all those things. So he was a panpsychic. So he thought that if you psyche, that means mind, spirit or soul or everything. And pan means everywhere. Like pan, when you say pan-African, because we're in Africa, means everywhere in Africa, like all Africa. So in all the world in different parts. When he said that, it didn't mean that every bit of matter were aware. People were very easily despising his philosophy, some of them, not everybody, because now there is a comeback to the philosophy of Y2N.

When they were saying like, it it's crazy what does that mean that the matter as mind etc. but that's not mind or soul or something psyche in the way that it is aware of itself it builds a presentation it has a culture and it works and no it is the it is a way in my view to say In fact, it is a way to say if I put it in my vocabulary That is not an inertialist that it's not coherent to be an inertialist that Matter is a real matter It's not beat of dead things. It's a real matter in the sense that it gives birth to something continually. Matter as a mother?

Yes, exactly. Like a matrix. I see. Matter is like a matrix. It goes beyond itself. So it has some kind of an energy that can't be reduced to something that will be dead and that will have the appearance that will get the appearance of life organic just when it actually is combined with other things if Something is happening when you combine matter Which is true like a live organism. It has to have first something inside or in it or inherent to it that actually allows that to happen.

That's what means Pansichism, I think, in white heads. I think alchemists, they had already these intuitions, especially the neo-Platonist alchemists in the school of Alexandria, what we call Hermetism, because it's referred to Hermes Trismegista. So they had this intuition, and of course to express it, to represent it, they will use materials and things outside, and they became the ancestor of chemists. But what I'm referring to when I talking to our spiritual icon is just the basic fundamental intuition

that the real, that reality as something that is more than that bit of things that are actually, it's hard to say alive, but that have their, I prefer to say their inherent dynamic. Yes. Have you heard of Ian McGilchrist? No, actually, I'm sorry about that. He has the book Master and His Emissary about the two hemispheres of the brain.

And then a recent book called The Matter with Things. You would love his work. I'm sure I will. Maybe I'll set up a conversation between you both. I love the title already. I love the title.. I love the title Yes, we could have a very interesting conversation. Yes. How about John Verveke? Have you heard of John Verveke? I know these are more English speaking people and for those who are just tuning in people don't know but Raphael's a rock star in

France. No, I'm not really a rock star. We're introducing him to the English world But the fact of the matter is that I feel bad about it, saying that. I've been very, you know, too much closed in my own world, and I intend to change that now. That's part of the fact that I accepted to have this interview. Before I didn't even look for that, to do it. I mean, not even, and now I'm just looking for it because I want to express that. Great, great. I think that's the moment. Okay, so there's, I believe he's a Christian named DC Schindler. And DC Schindler said there are two errors we make when it

comes to God. So one is you, you reduce God with your words, you take something that's infinite and you make it finite. Actually, Dostoevsky said that was the danger of the rationalists. He had this great line. Dostoevsky said, rationalists strive not for the attainment of heaven from earth, but for the abasement of heaven to earth. Yeah, of course. So D.C. Schindler said, what you're doing is you're bringing God down to your level when you try to make it finite.

And then he said, there's the other danger of being too into the mysteries and apophatic and not trying to say anything about God and making it too abstract because God no longer speaks to you. So he says, how do we bridge those two? He said it's with beauty. That beauty is what elevates, it's not what brings God down to your level, it's what brings you upward. Exactly. Exactly, it's what I said, even in meditation, that's a question of taste, again, what I'm saying. Meditation is not what people think. Meditation is not about focusing. Focusing is just a training that allows you to really contemplate, to really be into meditation.

But most people, they confuse the fact that you are able to focus. And it's good because to focus is just to get rid a little bit of all the perturbations that are around. It's like when you do stretching or push-ups, for instance, it's just to prepare you to really do some kind of a sport, but it's not the sport itself, it's not the enjoyment itself. And it's the same with meditation. You think it's not the focus. The focus is a way to put yourself in the situation, to be able to be open to the experience

of beauty. That is something that does not need explanation. And that is actually the real experience of what I call raw transcendence. Yes. What's the difference between grasping knowledge and grasping the truth? I think you can't grasp the truth because the main thing about the truth, it is that if you try to grasp it, you give him a finite shape. It's like with this thing with God, you give him a finite shape and it loses its truth.

And now, talking about knowledge, it depends on what we say about knowledge. Knowledge is the idea that even if we can grasp the truth, we can go beyond the limitation we feel. And we get closer and by becoming closer. We have an experience that gives meaning to our life That's what is knowledge even for me even in science because science is looking for that when it's lost Track of that it lost the very meaning of science and it becomes pure technology like eating itself and being able to destroy us, to annihilate us, because it doesn't have any reason to be out of the efficiency itself.

And again, don't misunderstand me, I am for efficiency. I'm not against it. So therefore I am for technology. I'm not against it. So I'm therefore I am for technology. I am for technological program I am for artificial what is called artificial intelligence Yes Now I want to get to what you're working on where people can find out more about you and what you're excited about But I have one final question about Zeno's paradox Which was alluded to in the lecture, because you were talking

about infinity and processes, and you alluded to Whitehead at the time, but didn't say his name until now. So can you please talk about how does infinity, Zeno had many paradoxes, so I assume this one's the tortoise paradox or the runner's paradox, and Whitehead, how did they intertwine? There will be many things to say about it, but in fact, I said something during our interview, the first part of the session, when I said that the only way to get close to the truth, the only way to get close to the truth is to face the paradox in science. What are the paradoxes? The paradox is when you push even the logic to its extreme, and you see that it doesn't

work if you push it to the extreme. So therefore, there is something else than logic, even to justify the existence of logic. Because if you push at the extreme, it doesn't work. And it's also what Kant called antinomy. So Zener, he did that. It is the same work. So he got some kind of an intuition of what is true using that, using paradox. So when you use a paradox, for instance, when you say, let's say,

you divide the arrow, there is three meters for the arrow to reach the tree, and you divide, three meters for the arrow to reach the tree. And you divide, you said at a certain moment, the arrow will do half of the way, will be halfway. And at another moment, it will be half, the other half, the other half. Said it will be always half. So basically the arrow can't reach the tree, but the arrow reached the tree.

So it's a way to say, so there is something else than the division. What is it? We don't really know. What is motion? We don't really know. Motion is the proof that transcendence exists in a way. Because I give you another paradox.

It's a paradox that I like. That's a very personal paradox. I'm writing a book on paradoxes, by the way, because I give you another paradox. It's a paradox that I like. That's a very personal paradox. I'm writing a book on paradoxes, by the way, so I may include this. Oh, that's very interesting. When we talk about cause and effect, right? When you think purely deterministically, and a scientist, at least when he is in the process of discovering a law of nature, he is into this deterministic way of thinking. He wants to see an event as being the effect of a cause or a set of causes, right? It's what is science about.

The difference between an open science is like you don't think it is the entire truth and the positivist thinks it is the entire truth. But it doesn't matter for that example because it means that when you say that, when you say that the cause, when you pronounce even the and I say everything about the effect, everything about the effect, by knowing the cause or the set of causes. Nothing is left. It's pure deterministic way. But if you do that, you are contradictory because you are saying that the cause produced

the effect. So you are saying that the cause changed the cause into an effect. So you are saying that there is something in the effect that is not already in the cause, because the motion itself is not in the cause. So in fact, when you are saying that the cause produced the effect, you don't see that you are saying something that is impossible, even in terms of cause and effect. You reach the limit of cause and effect. So in order for an effect to be really the effect of certain cause, there has to have

something left that is specific to the effect that is not in the cause. Otherwise, they'll be confused. They'll be the same. There will be no cause and no effect. So that's also another logical proof of the fact that the world contains in every bit of it, it's undynamic. Let's do a podcast just on cause and effect at another point. Yeah, because it's just, it was very short, but we can, we need to interpret and go a

little bit beyond that. To flesh it out some more. Yes, yes. Okay. What's the primary focus of your current research and what aspects of it are you currently particularly passionate about? My current work is to really finish, I mean, it's actually written the four volumes of chaos, the four volumes of chaos that was about the betrayed premise of modernity, in fact, the roadmap of the three other volumes.

The second volume is called Success. So how do you fabric, how do you make values, principle, qualities in a world that does not believe in values anymore? So you, as I said, you pretend to, and how does it work? And so it becomes, we reach a certain point where you can't pretend anymore. You feel so much anxiety that it's like if you are in an entertainment park, you want to get out of the park, you've fed up of it.

And so you want to find refuge in past identity in what I call retro-Utopia. And that's the third volume, identity. That's Trump. I want to be American again. I want to be French. I want to find refuge in religion and everything. And the fourth volume is how can we get out of that? It's transitions.

And I talked a little bit in your podcast when I was talking about the tree negativity and how to go beyond and beauty, blah, blah, blah, and all these kinds of things. So those four volumes, I've written them. The first volumes is published, but the three volumes I'm trying to add little things in certain point because my editor, my publisher, say it wasn't possible to publish in one unique book. Yes.

So I publish it in different sets. And my aim is to really being able to publish those four volumes in the best condition, to do what I'm doing with you, to express what is in it step by step, so people will understand, will receive them step by step too. When you're writing, are you dictating it? Or are you typing it? I'm typing.

What's your workflow like? I love to write on the computer because when I used to write with my hand, just because it's with only one hand, you start to have pain in your back and it's disbalanced because it's just only on one side. But I learned a long time ago with a secretary that knew how to type with all her fingers, to type in rhythm. So I don't look, I even type with my little, little finger. And so I feel some kind of music, like if I were a musician when I'm typing, I don't even look at the screen, I just... and I can type, I mean, faster than I talk. I like the rhythm of my

body moving and, you know, expressing things through my fingers, actually. Wonderful. Professor, thank you so much for spending almost four hours with me in total. My God. I'm grateful that I met you at the Institute for Advanced Studies just by chance. Thank you very much. It really was a chance to meet you. I'm really happy that I had the opportunity to express myself in your podcast because I love the way you actually put things.

You have a lot of respect and at the same time you have a lot of curiosity. I mean, I like that. That's two great qualities. Thank you. They really love you, Betty. You know, it's Friday, and they are supposed to have been like in weekend already for a long time,

but all the teams stayed. I mean, how many are they? We are like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven here. So really, they liked it. Wonderful. Also, thank you to our partner, The Economist. Firstly, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening.

There's now a website, curtjymongle.org, and that has a mailing list. The reason being that large platforms like YouTube, like Patreon, they can disable you for whatever reason, whenever they like. That's just part of the terms of service. Now a direct mailing list ensures that I have an untrammeled communication with you. Plus, soon I'll be releasing a one-page PDF of my top 10 toes. It's not as Quentin Tarantino as it sounds like. Secondly, if you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now is the time to do so. Why?

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also just joining on YouTube again keep in mind it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on toe full-time you also get early access to ad-free episodes whether it's audio or video it's audio in the case of patreon video in the case of YouTube for instance this episode that you're listening to right now was released a few days earlier. Every dollar helps far more than you think. Either way, your viewership is generosity enough. Thank you so much. I was telling Shima that there is a very enigmatic sentence by Aristotle that can be applied

here. It's very enigmatic, but it was at the Aggregation of Philosophy in France, and the students, they didn't know what to answer. It was like a catastrophe, but it's an interesting sentence. It is, the fox that is running is at rest as long as its color doesn't change. Comment this sentence." Wow. There was like, my God, how could I comment that?

It is the idea that when you are doing what you're made to do, it's like if you are running, if you forbid a fox to run, he will actually get more tired that you forbid him to run, because he needs to run. It's his way to rest in his essence, in what he is. It's almost like if you were getting rid of what he is, like his own skin, the color of his skin. It's the idea that when you are doing something that will tire some people, for you it's not tiring because you are like resting inside your own being. So it's what I wanted to mean. But anyway. Yeah, that's great.