Enjoy! A few commenters on the Iain McGilchrist interview requested Bernardo Kastrup so we're releasing this Digital Campfire discussion. To access more member conversations, and to join calls (upcoming with Erik Davis, John McWhorter & Iain McGilchrist), check out upcoming events here: rebelwisdom.co.uk/campfire-events
Great coming line up, thanks Dave and company for everything you do. I’d say John McWhorter is a good, fair branching out across views too, as you guys have done plenty of. Keep up the good work.
IF YOURE MESSING WITH TAROT CARDS/PSYCHICS/MANIFESTING/ASMR/NEW AGE/MAGIC/WITCHCRAFT/SORCERY/ SEANCES/YOGA/OCCULT/CRYSTALS/LUCID DREAMING/OUIJA BOARDS/ANGEL #'s/ASTROLOGY/ASTRO PROJECTING YOU ARE MESSING WITH EVIL SPIRITS. YOU ARE OPENING THE DOOR FOR THEM TO COME IN AND THEY WILL GLADLY DESTROY YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. ITS ALL SATANIC... ITS NOT INNOCENT. YOU DONT MESS WITH EVIL SPIRITS/DEMONS, THEY ARE FAR MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU THINK! satan WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR IF IT MEANS he CAN DRAG YOUR SOUL TO HELL WITH him. he HATES YOU AND LAUGHS AT YOU FOR MESSING WITH THIS STUFF. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN GOD OR NOT YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE HIM ON JUDGEMENT DAY AND HE WILL GO THROUGH EVERY WORD YOU SAID/EVERY THOUGHT YOU HAD/EVERY SIN YOU DID. YOU WONT BE ABLE TO ARGUE WITH HIM EITHER, YOU WILL KNOW YOU ARE GUILTY AND MADE A BIG MISTAKE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO TURN TO JESUS. PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE BELOW AND IF YOU WANT TO MOCK AFTER GO FOR IT BUT I PLEAD WITH YOU TO READ IT. I WILL PRAY FOR YOU GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS! MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T, THE POPE DIDN'T EITHER, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR UA-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP IDOLIZING & WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE! JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU! Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33 “For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
Hi Curt. I know you’re a fan of a good deal of Idealism. A theme that occurs is the idea of “You are God.” I wonder if you would be interested in discussing that with someone from Theosophy, a Neo Jungian into Deep Interactivity, or maybe McGilChrist who seem to have more an idea of co-creation and the idea of having a unique *piece* of the infinite divinity, and ideas like the act of observation changing observer and observed, and the problem of inflation, or rejection of all constraint. One of the statements Henry Corbin brings up from Ibn Arabi is that in the experience of at-one-ment he called to say “I am God’s secret.” Rather than I am God.
Indeed. Plus he nails “emergence” problems-something that really bothers me for the exact reasons he states. First time I heard him do that. I haven’t read his most recent book yet but I already bought it. I would have but I am finishing up another book myself and all these people like Bernardo, McGilchrist, Vervaeke, Peterson, and many more people who you have already interviewed are standing at the towers keeping the barbarians of instrumental lever-pressing at bay. 😂 Thanks again Curt. ❤️🔥
@@Ac-ip5hd I love Ibn Arabi. So prescient and beautiful. Theosophy yes! I was a Theosophist for a long time starting when I was an undergraduate at the Theosophical society in Wheaton. Went to talks there, etc. So I understand… Great idea. love it. Take care my friend. ❤️🔥
@@spiralsun1 You too! Glad to hear other people discussing these ideas and thinkers. Probably a good decade of all these people hashing each other out and getting it to the public is needed, before they all re-catalyze with new arguments, and problems to solve.
25.32:i am really happy that such a brilliant western philosopher as Bernardo Kastrup mention the Indian sage Nisargadatta. I came to analytic idealism after having studied Nisargadatta's talks and yes i must confess that Bernardo's ontology fascinates me! Non dualism(advaita) view from a western scientific perspective so well articulated. What a gift!!
Great to see BK on Rebel Wisdom, I was kind of wondering when he'd appear. I just want to recommend viewers to check out the excellent 2 part conversation between Bernardo and John Vervaeke on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything channel. It's long but it has some really amazing and personal contributions by both speakers.
Finally, Bernardo Kastrup on Rebel Wisdom! He deserves so much more exposure than he gets, but I guess his philosophy might be a bit too complex to have a very wide appeal
How is Kastrup's philosophy complex? Please explain it to me. All I see is him doing this: Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has to transcendent meaning. After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning. ... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis) Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter. After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind. What the ** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
its not that it is 'complex'/ AS he suggests, it's because materialism is so engrained in our culture that even the word 'matter' carries the etymological meaning of 'being at the base or mother of'. So it's hard to see the ruthless simplicity of what he is saying. So people will continue to use abstractions WITHIN consciousness to try to explain consciousness. Which is like trying to explain water as a type of whirl-pool and insisting that water is a by-product of a whirlpool. Either that or they will not see the significance of this (such as the reply by Andreas) and it will produce a kind of. '...and?' shrug of incomprehension.
@@andreasmuller5223 all Bernardo is doing is trying to provide an ontological framework where your intellect can more readily accept moving into exploration of the nature of that disassociated alter/filter. (remember this is just a short-ish interview) He does sometimes kind of give the impression you are locked into your dashboard other than in lucid dreams/ psychedelic states/ near death/ 40 years of hard-core meditation.I don't think Bernardo intends to suggest this but it sometimes comes across. is the alter/filter more flexible and subtle than this? Could more precise control of to what degree the filter expands/contracts/orientates? In one way or another many spiritual practices approach this. I would say an interest in looking into this more directly is what should come out of this philosophy. IN his books he goes into more detail about sound basis for doing this.
Good Lord, this Man is brilliant. BK all the way! I am honored to be in the temporal presence of such a philosophical monster, tearing decades of missconceptions apart like they were lose paper walls. Surely, he will be remembered as one of the groundbreaking thinkers of the 21st century.💙
I am today elated to hear from Bernardo of Swami Nisargadutta Maharaj, I Am That, book. This book caught my attention when I first read it casually lying on the shelf of psychology section in the south campus library of Delhi University in late 1990s. Since then I read this book almost every time to seek solace and perspective.
Great interview, incisive and on-point throughout. Kastrup is really putting some very important ideas together and the interviewer is excellent. I particularly liked the call-out about Nisigardatta Maharaj, was given his books many years ago by a spiritual mentor and friend and found them highly insightful.
@@Dhorpatan what's the problem with saying that? (I could be more specific or precise but I don't think calling it his work is wrong work could be replaced with creation)
@@lukecockburn1140 It's just fawning and kissing his behind. I've been on here 14 years and no person has EVER referred to my videos as work, though they require a lot of work.🙄😒
@@Dhorpatan yeah probably am kissing up a bit that's kinda embarrassing & it's his books more than videos but if someone did appreciate your videos & called them your work I think that would apply & make sense I'll check out your channel
The question is, reality in the head, assumes that the brain and mind are synonymous. As Bernardo tells us constantly, everything is in Consciousness and we are all Alters in Mind at Large.
I can see how perception is a dashboard but is BK suggesting that all other scientific models based on ‘physicalism’ are merely equivalent to perceptual constructs?
This discussion reminded me of T.S. Eliot (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') quote... 'human kind Cannot bear very much reality'. Our mental scope is finite, reality is infinite, we can only ever see snippets if we only rely on our grey matter to see.
Borges got inspired by this philosophy to write the best fictional short stories ever, in my opinion. So only for that reason this philosophy is worth a pedestal. I do however have a few questions/concerns. Does movement and change exist in the Universe beyond one of those “dials”? BK seems to fall often to the Anthropic principle when he reiterates that otherwise we will be consumed by entropy, we wouldn’t be here. So what? The thing itself cares about that? That to me seems like a logical fallacy. Then with evolution. Is it real or again it’s only in our heads? If it’s ontologically real what is driving it? Why is it necessary? Ancient amoebas clearly sustained reality why not stopping there? It seems that the arrow of evolution is anti-entropic, does that mean that eventually we, or some other species here on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe, will be so evolved that we will see through the “dials”?
BK is an example of what scientists mean when they describe someone as a "clear thinker." However different two people's starting points are, if they are both clear thinkers they will begin to converge at some point.
If we agree that our "reality" is just the dashboard, what is Bernado's thoughts on what the TRUE nature of reality.. for example, where are memories stored.. what is time, etc. For example, if you believe any of the reincarnation, mediums, or ghost evidence.. then it seems your unique consciousness (ignoring the strange split-brain experiments) persists after you die. Do you as a point of awareness ever cease to be? Nisargadatta Maharaj says consciousness is relative to its content, partial and changeful.. awareness is all there is.. and that there is no ultimate intellect behind it all all! He suggests thru sadhana (meditation) is accelerated ripening for the masses, where one can come to the realization that "I am". I think it's similar to Sadhguru bedtime meditation mantra, "I Am Not The Body, I Am Not Even The Mind". I like the part how It's impossible to deduce qualities of experience from purely quantitative matter.. these are incommensurable domains, like wetness from hydrogen and oxygen. Would love to hear Sean Carrol discuss the Many Worlds hypothesis with Bernardo. Looking forward to watching Bernardo's 6-hour video course!
So if I could distill this to a simple analogy, would I be right in saying that the world that ant sees is the "real world" to the ant but we see a completely different reality but like the ant it may be but a surface appearance to a limited creature that if viewed from a more expansive viewpoint may look as restricted as the ants viewpoint?
Fun stuff! Made me think about human brain’s capabilities. We might have been encountering “unequipped to understand” every day. Simply our brain can’t comprehend those “worlds”. Maybe people with schizophrenia have channeling those worlds. Who know?
Regarding Bernardo's comment that reality "is not in your mind alone...", I had a "spiritual" experience where it seemed that the world was projected from the right side of all our hearts together in some kind of 4D way, like a hologram, and it seemed to be based on light (maybe photons or maybe some kind of spiritual light). I'm not concluding that it's true - I'm just describing the experience. Note that Ramana Maharshi said that the seat of the Self was on the right side of the heart, so there is a precedent for that location. Unfortunately, the experience didn't explain protons, electrons, etc.
Sincere question here: if reality is all in our heads how did the universe get here in all the time that was before humans arrived? What was everything madder out of before conscious beings were around?
Think about what Quantum physics tells us. Reality is held in a state of potentiality until observed. The same question applies to your bedroom when you're not there. It exists in a state of potential until a lifeforms perceives it. A timeless interaction of mental forms that 'becomes 'physical' when life turns up.
I dont agree... first, idealism, since 19 century is dominating philosophy, art, social science, "physics" and entering all fields, it's the language turn and cultural turn... and can be summarized in the sense that nothing is the real thing but expresses itself in dependency of the modes or apparatus of relation...all scientist knows this and can not be a truly realist, everywhere this is accepted but difficult to fully integrate in many approaches that tend to materialism and reducionism...that is, separation... where you can integrate you are in the meta, meta... of the structures of relation and living the reflexive/creative process of consciousness in its evolution, the awakening, etc... but the contiguity or non separation between you and the world doesnt meen that your mind creates the world, its a relation so a transformation, an evolution...there must be something out there, lets call it X to know that frequencies, vibrations are allready methaphors, that the living water of organic beings reveives and transforms in light, expressing vision and all its consequencies, the sense exists allready in the "consciousness" or wisdom that is the living being and can express in this relation...etc. So the question is non dualistic, and this is the "problem" of Bernardo's approach...because if the essentialism of materialism (separation) is wrong, or doesnt exist beyond some aspects of relations that build us, the same is true of the essentialism of idealism...the solution is not a separation between materialism and idealism that only have meaning in dependency of each other, but the arrival to the nondualist mode of relation that permits to solve the separation, that understands the difficulties of both sides (matter/mind) and opens to expressing consciousness, and yes, in this case is participating in the creation at a profound level... for this understanding see my site: www.insightbiologico.com/o-insight
Mystery and meaning was defined by the Mystics of the early centuries. It embraces the transpersonal and spiritual pathways This is not new information Its ancient It's well articulated People like Monastic Thomas Merton and Ken WILBUR also embrace these philosophies and spiritual pathways. Pope Francis talks about this too.
28:55 ca..... "religion of singularitarism".... "upload your mind"....this is not such absurd and idiot idea, because, if Pandemie is happening, then there would be some gene-material transfered to another art of life, ... and with this comes also the conciousness of this creature to the next "host" of life. Seams to be obscur? But, think about: how does evolution works? Is there only some one-way street down to an genom or is there genomes that can be recombined in all directions (more or less gen-spectrum)? But: if such gentransfering is happening, then there are some creatures, that cannot compete/stand the new gen-information and function, and they die. The "upload" does happend not to "silicon", rather to other life-forms. Even between humans (and animals) this happends, that not as much all the same, as populated. Not good to longing for that, because someone have to die for it.
Hm, his dismissal of simulation theory seems like a misstep, if we are in a simulation which is sufficiently convincing then we have to accept that we may not be able to know we're in one.
About emergence, I took a step outside my house and Im still near my house, I havent gotten anywhere, 2 steps, 100, but then 10000 steps and I arrived to work. What magic happened there? I have one atom and I cant see it, 2, 3, 100 still nothing. But you get a million of them together and suddenly there is a brick here! What kind of magic is that?
A brick is just the name we give to a certain pattern of arrangement of particles. There is no new fundamentally new property at the level of a brick. Bricks aren’t strongly emergent.
@@LLlap The properties of the brick are reducible to the properties of the particles that make it up. If you want to claim the same for consciousness, you need to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Except of course thought experiments like the knowledge argument flatly show that this is impossible. The qualities of experience can’t be quantified and plugged into equations.
@@Sam-hh3ry an atom is not the same as a brick in any way. There is not a single property of a brick that is preserved in the atom. Since you have more than two neurons, how can you claim that 2 neurons don't have any consciousness?
@@LLlap I didn’t claim they have the same properties, I said that the properties of the brick are reducible to the behavior of the atoms that make it up. Do you disagree? Do you think that new physics is required to explain the emergence of bricks? I can not say that two neurons have or don’t have consciousness. That’s my whole point. We can’t make empirically verifiable statements about the qualities of experience, which is why we can’t reduce consciousness to brain function the same way we can reduce a brick to an arrangement of particles.
I don't know that I'm on board with all this. I think that the world is probably material at root, and he seemed in his own head enough that everything he was saying about physicalism seemed like a complete straw man position. Like, for all that materialism is considered axiomatic, I don't see how anyone could possibly disprove idealism either.
Both idealism and materialism are philosophical, rather, metaphysical, theories. It is not a scientific theory. As such, Popper's falsifiability argument doesn't apply. The value of a metaphysical theory is assessed by its internal consistency, explanatory power, parsimony, etc... In that regards, materialism is a strictly lesser theory than idealism, since it can't explain consciousness without an appeal to magic.
@@namero999 Okay, but does idealism actually explain anything? I don't know that he ever defined what consciousness is. Like, there's an objective world that we only sense indirectly, any materialist would agree. And the stuff that makes up the world behaves the same in either framework. Idealism just says that the stuff is conscious? What does that actually change? It seems like all that could possibly be different is our understanding of our personal experience. But it doesn't seem like it tells us anything new there either. We still don't know how "consciousness particals" form human minds any more than we know how neurons do. We don't really know what makes them different from each other or from other minds. It just extends the set of "things with minds" to include everything beyond "things with a central nervous system". That doesn't explain anything either. So how is idealism actually better?
@@yakurbe7039 When you ask "does explain anything?", have you questioned when you will be actually satisfied with the answer? In other words, do you think it's plausible to think "ok, there is nothing else to explain, I don't need to ask `why is that the case?` any longer" ? Depending on your answer to this question, you are faced with 2 possibilities. Either you will forever ask "why is that so, what is the cause for this?" or you will accept what is called an ontological primitive. Something that does not require a causal explanation. It simply is. Now, if you choose option 1, that is when you will effectively explain nothing. You will keep on seeking, never reaching the bottom of anything, and anything you will have construed will be floating on fried air. Or, you choose option 2, you choose a fixed, plausible and argumented for ontological primitive, and you try to explain the rest of the world on top of that. It might happen that as you do so, you will face problems that can't logically be explained by/with the primitive you chose. That is the case with materialism, that chose the quantum field and elemental particles (which are essentially quantities) as its primitives and hit the hard problem of consciousness. Make no mistake, we don't explain the quantum field either. Ask physicists. The quantum field simply exists. Full stop. Idealism does the same move, it chooses a single (reductionist) ontological primitive, experience. Experience becomes the one given fact of nature. Then it tries to explain the rest from there, and Kastrup's flavor of idealism uses the dissociative mechanism, markov blankets, and other arguments to bring its point home. In doing so, we can salvage everything that science does and has done, because science simply is the description of the behavior or nature, while also accepting as granted the one basic fact of existence that is our experience, which has, maybe not by chance, escaped a consistent explanation and causal intuition for 7000 years.
@@namero999 why experience, as opposed to matter tho? Or any other random concept? I feel like I'm missing the big insight afforded by the primitive. Kastrup obviously feels that there is something of significant value to be gotten from the framing, but I don't think I'm seeing it.
@@yakurbe7039 precisely! Why matter, as opposed to consciousness though? You see? It's the same epistemic move. You pick a primitive that makes sense and you develop a theory out of it. Like I mentioned, choosing matter incurs in the hard problem, and can't explain the most direct, basic and in-your-face fact of existence: experience. So, without changing any rule of the game, by making the same move of choosing one primitive, this time consciousness, Kastrup argues that we can explain the rest (the same "rest" that materialism does) without needing to explain consciousness. Of course, you need a solid and rigorous argument in order to claim that nature is experiential rather than physical. I'm not making an advertising for Kastrup here, but he developed the argument extensively in the book "the idea of the world". What I want to say, is that it's perfectly fine to state that ground reality is matter, or consciousness, or a bowl of spaghetti, or phlogiston, or whatever, as long as the claim comes accompanied by a consistent and coherent argument of how (how, not why) it is the case. That is the tricky part. So, to answer your question, the value of idealism is to remove the need to give a causal explanation of consciousness by picking it as the ontological primitive, while still managing to explain the rest (the physical world) and how it arises. Therefore, it has less explanatory gaps than materialism has (which has the huge hole of consciousness) and is therefore superior. This has many implications when it comes to meaning, life, death, relationships, and so forth, but these are side effects of any relevant philosophical body of work.
OMG it's embarassing. Bernard Kastrup is almost as bad as Rupert Sheldon. Look, your nerves and neurons do one thing: measure variations with pulses. Your nervous system runs a competition (economy, war) for internal consistency and external correspondence over time between those millions of pulses. This is why despite what (rather sophomoric) philosophers have argued, the camera obscura, and our ability to estimate spatial relations from it, demonstrates there is no difference between perception and reality. There is however a difference between VALUE AND PREFERENCE. that mental 'feeling' is just what nerves and neurons can produce to get attention by differentiation from other neurons. That's all. In other words, all intelligent life forms, capable of intertemporal recursion would converge over time DESPITE differences in embodiment. Kastrup also has 'it wrong': science is just the migration of testimony and evidence in court from the law to the physical and behavioral sciences - TO PREVENT LYING by philosophers (sophists) and theologians (liars). Science produces testimony that is commensurable despite our differences in knowledge, value, and priority. Because the only value of sensation, perception, valuation, attention, and permutation is ACTION in the real world. In legal and scientific terms, the technique Kastrup relies upon is the same one that makes possible the Abrahamic religions: critique to undermine all existential evidence by sewing fear uncertainty and doubt, with the false promise of some other means of priority - value and preference - that is open to deception by suggestion. There are there primary methods of lying by the pretense of knowledge one does not have and cannot testify to: The physical: Magic to pseudoscience, the verbal: sophistry to idealism (philosophy), and imaginary: occult to supernaturalism (theology). Whenever someone uses the techniques of false promise, pilpul (sophistry), and critique (undermining) with one or more of the methods of the pretense of knowledge: pseudoscience, Sophistry(idealism), or theology, you know the person is lying because one must lie in order to claim he states the truth when his claims are untestifiable and he by definition CANNOT claim it is true.
@@Sam-hh3ry Let's play a great game. Try to find someone who can articulate that difference between science and philosophy better than I can. ;). And I understand that the hard problem of consciousness isn't hard. We were just ignorant, and the science hasn't been distilled down by the neuroscientists and the computer scientists sufficiently to reach the non technical disciplines ... like literary philosophy. ;)
@@TheNaturalLawInstitute lol ‘the science hasn’t been distilled down.’ The science doesn’t exist. The hard problem is unsolved and unsolvable, as thought experiments like the knowledge argument have plainly spelled out decades ago. There is no working scientific theory for how to reduce consciousness to brain function.
@@Sam-hh3ry How do you know that? I know. I teach it. Others do. So, you're projecting confidence from a position of ignorance. Selling pseudoscience and sophistry is terribly appealing especially to those holding desperately onto the last frail wisps of the supernatural. Consciousness is solved. Sorry. Turns out it was relatively simple. Philosophy has always been a temporary bridge between science and theology.
Keep in mind that philosophers are word spinners, so this man like many others have find something, Idealism, to use his limited knowledge to spine words to make money and make himself popular, he is seining in same prison of ignorance, accumulation of knowledge will not bring awareness or peace to humanity, be simple and be light to yourself.
Great to see BK on RW, always a pleasure to hear his clear thinking. It's interesting that, whilst he didn't approach idealism from a spiritual starting point, he arrived at it through seeking the most clear, parsimonious and internally cohesive account for the phenomena of experience, which is precisely the same starting point of the mystics behind the Vedas, from which developed advaita, or non-dualism. Erwin Schrodinger arrived there too, in his essay "The Oneness of Mind", in his book "What is Life?" Many paths lead to the One Truth, and neither are mutually exclusive: tat tvam asi.
In the UK we have a media scientist ' Prof Brian Cox ' , who makes some wonderful documentaries. In some of his documentaries he has tapped a solid surface and said " I don't know how things feel solid , because atoms are mainly space ? ' . Apparently this has caused some hostility in the scientific community . I didn't realize that by default he was suggesting that the world is really experience .
Brilliant, as usual. Unfortunately, interviewers/questioners are all so immersed in the paradigm of physicalism that almost all questions start from that vantage point (e.g., the brain really exists). Glad that RW hosted BK. He should be hosted by every podcaster who considers him/her-self seriously interested in the human condition (RU listening Jordan, Lex, Tom and, yes, even you Joe).
Sometimes what appears to be flaky woo woo is just a pamphlet pointing at a rabbit hole, aimed at those who seek to go deeper but may not know it yet. Layers of meaning.
The way I think about the 'reality is a simulation' thing is by thinking of Reality as a model of itself, which becomes realized in the process of modelling. What the categorization of reality as simulated points to is a discrepancy between map (model) and territory (that which is modelled) that is baked into the territory itself, a la ontoligical parallax and the Metaphysics of Adjacency. Also, positing that there is in fact a world beyond the set of dials that is our interface begs the question of epistemology. How can one posit that there is in fact something past the set of dials if one can only know the set of dials? What dial tells one that the dials point to something beyond the dials? (I'm not saying that there isn't anything past the dials, just that that framing alone is insufficient)
What's real What's not Is reality just objective physicality Or is it really shared subjectivity If you see what I see And we agree It's real If you sense what I sense And we have consensus It's real Now imagine an earth without you and me Or any of our kind With a mind inclined to find Would the ground and all around cease to be Or would the only thing missing be What we call reality
Excellent. He absolutely nailed the ridiculousness of emergence. At best, it’s a method of interactive purposive ness across levels. A description of relationships. In that sense it’s useful to think about but yeah… everyone tries to extrapolate from discrete symbolic interactions or circumscribed symbolic symbol systems to the rest of reality (because it’s instrumentally useful-like math) but this is where Ian McGilchrist comes in and POW! Says f*ck that sh*t. And rightly so. Ian doesn’t actually swear though. He is a proper Scotsman from Skye. 🥰 LOVE to Bernardo. Humanity will advance to the next level and I commend you for your adroit assistance in this matter? I hesitate to use that word, 🤔😂 I love that the Internet allows us to see that we are in this together. Thanks 🙏🏻 ❤️🔥
When he has headache I'm sure he uses headache pills. But according to him the pills are an aspect of his mind. Then all his philosophy is sophistry, just a sematic trick.
The best interview with Kastrup i have watched. Great questions and great follow up answers. It makes a difference who is the interviewer and audience.
Dear Bernardo, I believe you are postulating the right question from the wrong second person perspective. Rather I suggest you should be postulating the question of past, present and future as equal to nothing and everything from the first person perspective. The answer to this question is then resolved harmoniously in as much as the first person persecutive is not subject to the thermal arrow, hence it remains out side of time and space. It is only the second person perspective that is subject to time and space, thus entropic. If I am right, this means the first person perspective is 'immortal' so to speak and can externalise time and space, all events are chronicled or witnessed by the the first person without being subject to entropy and the thermal arrow of time. The mental or conscious state of the first person perspective is per force external to time and space hence there is no past, present or future as the second person would express it. The question on the divisions of time is mute from the first person perspective! It would be better to consider the devisions of time as chronicled by the first person as pure experience, being, eternal being, having no beginning and no end.
So our brain is in fact in a vat - Plato was right ! OR we are talking about a simulated digital reality of which your consciousness has been downloaded into.
18:22 I love the metaphor of the graphical user interface vs the command line terminal. How the simplifications/representation enables countless non specialists to operate in the digital realm. These folks have no idea what the underlying capabilities of the system looks are but then again they don't need to in order to make use of the affordances that are relevant for them
Yes but the original filter/alter is still more accurate I think. Or the whirl-pool within an ocean. Ultimately we ARE the ocean even if a localised bit of it experiencing a kind of specific action of the ocean water. The water acting in the whirpool (individuated/disassociated alter) is made FROM water (consciousness at large). We have as humans the ability of self reflection - that is literally the ability the dissociation/separation gives us. And with this reflective ability we can observe how the water (consciousness at large) moves and behaves within us. This is basically what non-dualist spiritual practices aim to do.
So we've come full circle back to Plato's theory of forms.... Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own. Saying that emergent qualities are ipso facto unexplainable from a physical standpoint because they aren't based on individual atoms, either because it's too complex, or qualititative aspects of conscious experience, doens't mean that they actually 'exist' on their own outside people's minds, or that there is a plane outside of it that the mental world 'exists' in. Focusing on qualia (or to put it another way, quanta of conscious experience) is not different than Plato's theories of forms from 2000 years ago. Love it how non-physicists always just drop in 'observer effect' or quantum...without justifying it... as backing up whatever they are saying. Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'. That's bollocks. It doesn't say that it is superficial or based on a deeper reality, it literally says that we don't know as it ISN"T based on hidden variables or a deeper reality. There is nothing new under the sun.
"Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own. " Correct. So under materialism, the world as it is in of itself doesn't have qualities. Qualities exist, but they exist in your head. This contradicts nothing he said. "Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'." Bell's theorem refutes local hidden variables, and Leggett's inequalities later refute non-local hidden variables. This means that a key prediction of QM, quantum contextuality, is true. Quantum contextuality entails that physical quantities have no standalone existence. Notice that he's talking about PHYSICAL QUANTITIES, not reality.
To the guy that asked the question at 56:30.... think of how we all agree that the colours I see.... correspond directly to colours which you yourself ALSO call blue..... HOWEVER theres no way to say that I see the same blue that you see...... just that we are sensing the same wavelength from the same object..... same for the objects other properties as both interviewer and interviewee an this case me and you are both immersed in it
I totally agree with BK’s comment about Nisargadatta Maharaj. He was the real deal. He has not written any books but there is whole lot that written by devotees based on recorded talks (he died in 1982). Unfortunately most books are heavily contaminated with devotion side of his philosophy because most authors are devotees. If you are looking for his key teaching then read the Pointers from NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ By Ramesh S. Balsekar (you can find the PDF online ). There was another person that I know of: that was Buddha. He understood the reality too but unfortunately he was about 2400 yrs ahead of his time. His message got heavily contaminated by the blind (and stupid) followers and now hardly much left. Even the gurus who claimed they realized his teaching based on insight meditation haven’t got it! If interested read the first two Suttas in the Sutta pitaka. That is all you need.
I still find Benardo difficult to pin down. For the title, isn't it both? Doesn't the lines of information go through us back into the external world and then through us again in a dampened oscillating pattern. Where it is interpreted to stop doesn't seem the relevant parameter, to how reality exists. For strong emergence, there is weak emergence we're yet to discover, and the extension of that belief into the undiscoverable. Where would we parse the limit to what strong emergence means? And yes. People can answer all-encompassing questions with seemingly knowledgeable non-answers through strong emergence explanations. But consciousness as the endpoint doesn't satisfy my curiosity either. In some ways, I think Bernardo might be right, but I cannot let such an undefined concept be fundamental. It exists so that we can call ourselves conscious and value it, but it is not of sufficient explanatory power for its vast variation we are yet to properly understand.
Wait a second ... Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has no transcendent meaning. After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning. ... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis) Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter. After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind. What the **** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
That jaguar looking at you...salivating like mad, wanting to lick the marrow from one's Self Organising Biology, sure hopes you won't move. The Urubus are also hungry...and await. Piranhas may get some leftovers after all...
We all have the same tools to help us go through life properly . Those tools are : Heart , conscience , intuition and common sense - ( in which you need a properly functional brain of course ). How we use those tools depends from us . We are responsible for our success or failure in life . I am talking here of course about - honest life ( not the dishonest way of life - in cost of others .) The bigest problem in this world is that most of you converts everything into money - this is wrong way . We live in material world - that is true but not everything here is for sale , and not everything can be bought . That we all should know and remember . Life is really very simple .
26:54 - The simulation. In the 60's we had simulated drivers ed. It was weird lol there was like a toy steering wheel/dashborad on the desk and our chair was meant to be the drivers seat. I couldnt figure it out and kept crashing into things. I dont think it really worked. I think the simulation had a mind of its own because I couldnt make it turn in the middle of the street as a test. O:) I can now see the transparency it lacked. "Reality is being measured by the dashboard" In my experience reality was limited by the mechanics behind/within the dashboard and it takes a third eye to see through it or to get to the transparency.
BK has The Exegesis of Philip K Dick on his book shelf. We're on the same line of thinking but he's vastly more intelligent and articulate then I'll ever be. Glad to see people taking this more seriously. It's nice to have someone to point others too when I can't explain my own views well enough.
Reality is indivisible this is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Interdependent co-arising is what it’s called. The image is of a chain that you try and lift out a link of it and you cannot. What we normally experience is the array of objects so that is misleading. Almost every one of us is getting it wrong and clearly this is well adapted to the way life is. Raises the question why is life deceptive in essence?
We were expelled from the garden following eating from the tree of knowledge in order to stop us eating from the tree of immortality which would mean equality with the gods. We would realise the essence and experience of universal consciousness.
Extend emergence into the future. What is the emergent property of loads of humans working together? What is the emergent property of an entire solar system?
A good example at 13:10 of a brilliant and thoughtful person admitting that we don't know what is below the physical layer. I would add though that he refers to this mysterious layer as having standalone existence and that does not seem verifiable to me. And of course, there could be countless deeper layers physics does not yet have the tools to unearth.
What Bernardo talks about around 21:50 is similar to an inkling I had when I was watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 and how the life cycle worked for The Founders.
...to justify all sorts of stuff. That says a lot! You still have to live here. But it opens up a lot of great opportunities to sell stuff that doesn't exist for money we can use.
Bernardo Kastrup tends to localize materialism within a time frame of about 300 years, but while not specific and perhaps unforeseen I think that at least the cognitive root originates much further back within Christianity itself perhaps as far back as Augustine or even St. Paul the Apostle. At least the metaphysical groundwork was laid back then as we see the development of the western Christian concept of God. Perhaps the problem goes further back into the beginnings of monotheism in the Jewish history. For certain, along the way was the development of the concept of God as separate from the universe and humanity, the creator of said universe but then given the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. This, as the hermetics point out, is a form of cognitive dissonance, which I believe is embedded in Christianity. The attributes given, rationally imply singularity, because any individuation implies diminishment. Christians are describing what the hermetics call the ALL, which is indivisible by definition. Thus the universe cannot be created outside of the ALL but must be created within the ALL and the only way that can happen is if the ALL is mind.
Some Christians today believe that Platonism is not compatible with Christianity (they tend to be literalists) while other Christians think that Platonism is a foundational philosophy of Christianity (they tend to advocate Biblical allegory) I believe the later. But both lines of thinking coexisted for 2000 years. Philo of Alexandria (b 25 BC) already created a syncretic system linking Greek Platonism Pythagoreanism with Jewish thought, and Paul who had vision of Christ rather than meeting Jesus a physical man seemed to be more aligned with Philo‘s metaphysical understanding. Philo even claimed most of Greek philosophy was derived from Judaism. But all of this leads up to Christian Logos theology. Even if Paul was not a Platonist, the dominant philosophies of Christian writers for four hundred years after was Platonism, Pythagorean, and Stoic with a rejection of Epicurean Philosophy which emphasized truth through one‘s senses. Epicurus was not reintroduced until the Renaissance through Lucretius writing, which created a revival of empiricism. And these ideas became foundational for liberal philosophies like John Locke. I don’t know what philosophy was dominant in Judaism before that time but I think Isaiah or Moses point to a God that is separate from creation but reflected in it, thereby God is the creative principle of creation but not creation itself and could only be encountered indirectly: Exodus 20But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
Enjoy! A few commenters on the Iain McGilchrist interview requested Bernardo Kastrup so we're releasing this Digital Campfire discussion. To access more member conversations, and to join calls (upcoming with Erik Davis, John McWhorter & Iain McGilchrist), check out upcoming events here: rebelwisdom.co.uk/campfire-events
Great coming line up, thanks Dave and company for everything you do. I’d say John McWhorter is a good, fair branching out across views too, as you guys have done plenty of. Keep up the good work.
Would love for you guys to interview Rupert Spira
IF YOURE MESSING WITH TAROT CARDS/PSYCHICS/MANIFESTING/ASMR/NEW AGE/MAGIC/WITCHCRAFT/SORCERY/ SEANCES/YOGA/OCCULT/CRYSTALS/LUCID DREAMING/OUIJA BOARDS/ANGEL #'s/ASTROLOGY/ASTRO PROJECTING YOU ARE MESSING WITH EVIL SPIRITS. YOU ARE OPENING THE DOOR FOR THEM TO COME IN AND THEY WILL GLADLY DESTROY YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. ITS ALL SATANIC... ITS NOT INNOCENT. YOU DONT MESS WITH EVIL SPIRITS/DEMONS, THEY ARE FAR MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU THINK! satan WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR IF IT MEANS he CAN DRAG YOUR SOUL TO HELL WITH him. he HATES YOU AND LAUGHS AT YOU FOR MESSING WITH THIS STUFF. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN GOD OR NOT YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE HIM ON JUDGEMENT DAY AND HE WILL GO THROUGH EVERY WORD YOU SAID/EVERY THOUGHT YOU HAD/EVERY SIN YOU DID. YOU WONT BE ABLE TO ARGUE WITH HIM EITHER, YOU WILL KNOW YOU ARE GUILTY AND MADE A BIG MISTAKE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO TURN TO JESUS. PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE BELOW AND IF YOU WANT TO MOCK AFTER GO FOR IT BUT I PLEAD WITH YOU TO READ IT. I WILL PRAY FOR YOU
GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS!
MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T, THE POPE DIDN'T EITHER, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR UA-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP IDOLIZING & WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE!
JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU!
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6
"But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33
“For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
Great to see BK gaining more notoriety.
Hi Curt. I know you’re a fan of a good deal of Idealism. A theme that occurs is the idea of “You are God.” I wonder if you would be interested in discussing that with someone from Theosophy, a Neo Jungian into Deep Interactivity, or maybe McGilChrist who seem to have more an idea of co-creation and the idea of having a unique *piece* of the infinite divinity, and ideas like the act of observation changing observer and observed, and the problem of inflation, or rejection of all constraint. One of the statements Henry Corbin brings up from Ibn Arabi is that in the experience of at-one-ment he called to say “I am God’s secret.” Rather than I am God.
And thanks for your channel.
Indeed. Plus he nails “emergence” problems-something that really bothers me for the exact reasons he states. First time I heard him do that. I haven’t read his most recent book yet but I already bought it. I would have but I am finishing up another book myself and all these people like Bernardo, McGilchrist, Vervaeke, Peterson, and many more people who you have already interviewed are standing at the towers keeping the barbarians of instrumental lever-pressing at bay. 😂 Thanks again Curt. ❤️🔥
@@Ac-ip5hd I love Ibn Arabi. So prescient and beautiful. Theosophy yes! I was a Theosophist for a long time starting when I was an undergraduate at the Theosophical society in Wheaton. Went to talks there, etc. So I understand… Great idea. love it. Take care my friend. ❤️🔥
@@spiralsun1 You too! Glad to hear other people discussing these ideas and thinkers. Probably a good decade of all these people hashing each other out and getting it to the public is needed, before they all re-catalyze with new arguments, and problems to solve.
25.32:i am really happy that such a brilliant western philosopher as Bernardo Kastrup mention the Indian sage Nisargadatta.
I came to analytic idealism after having studied Nisargadatta's talks and yes i must confess
that Bernardo's ontology fascinates me!
Non dualism(advaita) view from a western scientific perspective so well articulated.
What a gift!!
I Am That is on the bookshelf behind B.K.
Wow, Dr Kastrup is extremely brilliant, what he says makes a lot of sense!
My thoughts exactly Pablo. Time for a deeper dive. I'm starting with his JVK interview.
Great to see BK on Rebel Wisdom, I was kind of wondering when he'd appear. I just want to recommend viewers to check out the excellent 2 part conversation between Bernardo and John Vervaeke on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything channel. It's long but it has some really amazing and personal contributions by both speakers.
Thanks for this recommendation! Several episodes of that podcast look great.
Yep, I think that is well worth your time if you find this interesting.
Finally, Bernardo Kastrup on Rebel Wisdom! He deserves so much more exposure than he gets, but I guess his philosophy might be a bit too complex to have a very wide appeal
How is Kastrup's philosophy complex? Please explain it to me. All I see is him doing this:
Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has to transcendent meaning.
After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning.
... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis)
Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter.
After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind.
What the ** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
@@andreasmuller5223 It's just that in my experience this isn't the type of conversation most people are interested in having
its not that it is 'complex'/ AS he suggests, it's because materialism is so engrained in our culture that even the word 'matter' carries the etymological meaning of 'being at the base or mother of'. So it's hard to see the ruthless simplicity of what he is saying. So people will continue to use abstractions WITHIN consciousness to try to explain consciousness. Which is like trying to explain water as a type of whirl-pool and insisting that water is a by-product of a whirlpool. Either that or they will not see the significance of this (such as the reply by Andreas) and it will produce a kind of. '...and?' shrug of incomprehension.
@@andreasmuller5223 all Bernardo is doing is trying to provide an ontological framework where your intellect can more readily accept moving into exploration of the nature of that disassociated alter/filter. (remember this is just a short-ish interview) He does sometimes kind of give the impression you are locked into your dashboard other than in lucid dreams/ psychedelic states/ near death/ 40 years of hard-core meditation.I don't think Bernardo intends to suggest this but it sometimes comes across.
is the alter/filter more flexible and subtle than this? Could more precise control of to what degree the filter expands/contracts/orientates? In one way or another many spiritual practices approach this. I would say an interest in looking into this more directly is what should come out of this philosophy. IN his books he goes into more detail about sound basis for doing this.
Good Lord, this Man is brilliant. BK all the way! I am honored to be in the temporal presence of such a philosophical monster, tearing decades of missconceptions apart like they were lose paper walls. Surely, he will be remembered as one of the groundbreaking thinkers of the 21st century.💙
I am today elated to hear from Bernardo of Swami Nisargadutta Maharaj, I Am That, book. This book caught my attention when I first read it casually lying on the shelf of psychology section in the south campus library of Delhi University in late 1990s. Since then I read this book almost every time to seek solace and perspective.
Great interview, incisive and on-point throughout. Kastrup is really putting some very important ideas together and the interviewer is excellent. I particularly liked the call-out about Nisigardatta Maharaj, was given his books many years ago by a spiritual mentor and friend and found them highly insightful.
Really excited for this really enjoy bernardo & his work
His work.🙄
@@Dhorpatan what's the problem with saying that? (I could be more specific or precise but I don't think calling it his work is wrong work could be replaced with creation)
@@lukecockburn1140
It's just fawning and kissing his behind. I've been on here 14 years and no person has EVER referred to my videos as work, though they require a lot of work.🙄😒
@@Dhorpatan yeah probably am kissing up a bit that's kinda embarrassing & it's his books more than videos but if someone did appreciate your videos & called them your work I think that would apply & make sense
I'll check out your channel
@@lukecockburn1140 no it's perfectly normal to refer to someone's body of published books as their 'work'. Happens all the time.
The question is, reality in the head, assumes that the brain and mind are synonymous.
As Bernardo tells us constantly, everything is in Consciousness and we are all Alters in Mind at Large.
I can see how perception is a dashboard but is BK suggesting that all other scientific models based on ‘physicalism’ are merely equivalent to perceptual constructs?
This discussion reminded me of T.S. Eliot (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') quote... 'human kind
Cannot bear very much reality'. Our mental scope is finite, reality is infinite, we can only ever see snippets if we only rely on our grey matter to see.
Borges got inspired by this philosophy to write the best fictional short stories ever, in my opinion. So only for that reason this philosophy is worth a pedestal.
I do however have a few questions/concerns. Does movement and change exist in the Universe beyond one of those “dials”? BK seems to fall often to the Anthropic principle when he reiterates that otherwise we will be consumed by entropy, we wouldn’t be here. So what? The thing itself cares about that? That to me seems like a logical fallacy.
Then with evolution. Is it real or again it’s only in our heads? If it’s ontologically real what is driving it? Why is it necessary? Ancient amoebas clearly sustained reality why not stopping there? It seems that the arrow of evolution is anti-entropic, does that mean that eventually we, or some other species here on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe, will be so evolved that we will see through the “dials”?
BK is an example of what scientists mean when they describe someone as a "clear thinker." However different two people's starting points are, if they are both clear thinkers they will begin to converge at some point.
If we agree that our "reality" is just the dashboard, what is Bernado's thoughts on what the TRUE nature of reality.. for example, where are memories stored.. what is time, etc. For example, if you believe any of the reincarnation, mediums, or ghost evidence.. then it seems your unique consciousness (ignoring the strange split-brain experiments) persists after you die. Do you as a point of awareness ever cease to be?
Nisargadatta Maharaj says consciousness is relative to its content, partial and changeful.. awareness is all there is.. and that there is no ultimate intellect behind it all all! He suggests thru sadhana (meditation) is accelerated ripening for the masses, where one can come to the realization that "I am". I think it's similar to Sadhguru bedtime meditation mantra, "I Am Not The Body, I Am Not Even The Mind".
I like the part how It's impossible to deduce qualities of experience from purely quantitative matter.. these are incommensurable domains, like wetness from hydrogen and oxygen.
Would love to hear Sean Carrol discuss the Many Worlds hypothesis with Bernardo. Looking forward to watching Bernardo's 6-hour video course!
Hallelujah, FINALLY. Thank you for having Kastrup on. Now I can shut up here on the IDW!
Superb!
So if I could distill this to a simple analogy, would I be right in saying that the world that ant sees is the "real world" to the ant but we see a completely different reality but like the ant it may be but a surface appearance to a limited creature that if viewed from a more expansive viewpoint may look as restricted as the ants viewpoint?
Fun stuff! Made me think about human brain’s capabilities. We might have been encountering “unequipped to understand” every day. Simply our brain can’t comprehend those “worlds”. Maybe people with schizophrenia have channeling those worlds. Who know?
Regarding Bernardo's comment that reality "is not in your mind alone...", I had a "spiritual" experience where it seemed that the world was projected from the right side of all our hearts together in some kind of 4D way, like a hologram, and it seemed to be based on light (maybe photons or maybe some kind of spiritual light). I'm not concluding that it's true - I'm just describing the experience. Note that Ramana Maharshi said that the seat of the Self was on the right side of the heart, so there is a precedent for that location. Unfortunately, the experience didn't explain protons, electrons, etc.
"Guy sold cigarettes on the street!"
Sincere question here: if reality is all in our heads how did the universe get here in all the time that was before humans arrived? What was everything madder out of before conscious beings were around?
Think about what Quantum physics tells us. Reality is held in a state of potentiality until observed. The same question applies to your bedroom when you're not there. It exists in a state of potential until a lifeforms perceives it. A timeless interaction of mental forms that 'becomes 'physical' when life turns up.
@@NOCOMPLYE thanks for the heads up. I'll check that out
@@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser it's not bernardos position that reality is all in our heads.
i was waiting for you to break out with please go all the way
Did they never mention Plato’s cave analogy?
Exactly. And my favourite WILLIAM BLAKE!
Gold 🤠
If reality is all in our head, what’s our head in?
Reality is not in our head. He never says that. He is an idealist. All that exist is consciousness. (Our head is in consciousness)
@@sxsmith44 just trying to making a funny based on the title, fella
I dont agree... first, idealism, since 19 century is dominating philosophy, art, social science, "physics" and entering all fields, it's the language turn and cultural turn... and can be summarized in the sense that nothing is the real thing but expresses itself in dependency of the modes or apparatus of relation...all scientist knows this and can not be a truly realist, everywhere this is accepted but difficult to fully integrate in many approaches that tend to materialism and reducionism...that is, separation... where you can integrate you are in the meta, meta... of the structures of relation and living the reflexive/creative process of consciousness in its evolution, the awakening, etc... but the contiguity or non separation between you and the world doesnt meen that your mind creates the world, its a relation so a transformation, an evolution...there must be something out there, lets call it X to know that frequencies, vibrations are allready methaphors, that the living water of organic beings reveives and transforms in light, expressing vision and all its consequencies, the sense exists allready in the "consciousness" or wisdom that is the living being and can express in this relation...etc. So the question is non dualistic, and this is the "problem" of Bernardo's approach...because if the essentialism of materialism (separation) is wrong, or doesnt exist beyond some aspects of relations that build us, the same is true of the essentialism of idealism...the solution is not a separation between materialism and idealism that only have meaning in dependency of each other, but the arrival to the nondualist mode of relation that permits to solve the separation, that understands the difficulties of both sides (matter/mind) and opens to expressing consciousness, and yes, in this case is participating in the creation at a profound level... for this understanding see my site: www.insightbiologico.com/o-insight
So, what is his answer to the title question? Does Kastrup believe that "reality is all in your head"?
Misleading title - idealism is not solipsism!
Mystery and meaning was defined by the Mystics of the early centuries. It embraces the transpersonal and spiritual pathways
This is not new information
Its ancient
It's well articulated
People like Monastic Thomas Merton and Ken WILBUR also embrace these philosophies and spiritual pathways. Pope Francis talks about this too.
Is it just me or is this a very cringe title that misrepresents even be a very simplified summary of Kastrup
Yes you got the philosophical GOAT. 🥳🙌🏽
What the hell is cool about a damn goat? It's amazing the stupid things people do in large numbers.
bernardo is the fucking BEST
i'm with Madonna: "you know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl"
He criticized panpsychism but his ideas are another form of panpsychism, just by another name.
Yes.
Very similar to what Donald Hoffman talks about.
28:55 ca..... "religion of singularitarism".... "upload your mind"....this is not such absurd and idiot idea, because, if Pandemie is happening, then there would be some gene-material transfered to another art of life, ... and with this comes also the conciousness of this creature to the next "host" of life. Seams to be obscur? But, think about: how does evolution works? Is there only some one-way street down to an genom or is there genomes that can be recombined in all directions (more or less gen-spectrum)?
But: if such gentransfering is happening, then there are some creatures, that cannot compete/stand the new gen-information and function, and they die.
The "upload" does happend not to "silicon", rather to other life-forms. Even between humans (and animals) this happends, that not as much all the same, as populated.
Not good to longing for that, because someone have to die for it.
Quantum physics is easily invalidated
My solipsism poping in 👋
Hm, his dismissal of simulation theory seems like a misstep, if we are in a simulation which is sufficiently convincing then we have to accept that we may not be able to know we're in one.
This guy needs to read Thomas Aquinas.
About emergence, I took a step outside my house and Im still near my house, I havent gotten anywhere, 2 steps, 100, but then 10000 steps and I arrived to work. What magic happened there?
I have one atom and I cant see it, 2, 3, 100 still nothing. But you get a million of them together and suddenly there is a brick here! What kind of magic is that?
A brick is just the name we give to a certain pattern of arrangement of particles. There is no new fundamentally new property at the level of a brick. Bricks aren’t strongly emergent.
@@Sam-hh3ry so whats the difference with neurons? There was nothing, an atom, abd suddenly there's a brick.
@@LLlap The properties of the brick are reducible to the properties of the particles that make it up. If you want to claim the same for consciousness, you need to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Except of course thought experiments like the knowledge argument flatly show that this is impossible. The qualities of experience can’t be quantified and plugged into equations.
@@Sam-hh3ry an atom is not the same as a brick in any way. There is not a single property of a brick that is preserved in the atom.
Since you have more than two neurons, how can you claim that 2 neurons don't have any consciousness?
@@LLlap I didn’t claim they have the same properties, I said that the properties of the brick are reducible to the behavior of the atoms that make it up. Do you disagree? Do you think that new physics is required to explain the emergence of bricks?
I can not say that two neurons have or don’t have consciousness. That’s my whole point. We can’t make empirically verifiable statements about the qualities of experience, which is why we can’t reduce consciousness to brain function the same way we can reduce a brick to an arrangement of particles.
Acolytes of a modern hermeticism. Stumbling around in the darkness away from the light of truth.
I don't know that I'm on board with all this.
I think that the world is probably material at root, and he seemed in his own head enough that everything he was saying about physicalism seemed like a complete straw man position. Like, for all that materialism is considered axiomatic, I don't see how anyone could possibly disprove idealism either.
Both idealism and materialism are philosophical, rather, metaphysical, theories. It is not a scientific theory. As such, Popper's falsifiability argument doesn't apply. The value of a metaphysical theory is assessed by its internal consistency, explanatory power, parsimony, etc... In that regards, materialism is a strictly lesser theory than idealism, since it can't explain consciousness without an appeal to magic.
@@namero999 Okay, but does idealism actually explain anything? I don't know that he ever defined what consciousness is. Like, there's an objective world that we only sense indirectly, any materialist would agree. And the stuff that makes up the world behaves the same in either framework. Idealism just says that the stuff is conscious?
What does that actually change? It seems like all that could possibly be different is our understanding of our personal experience. But it doesn't seem like it tells us anything new there either.
We still don't know how "consciousness particals" form human minds any more than we know how neurons do. We don't really know what makes them different from each other or from other minds. It just extends the set of "things with minds" to include everything beyond "things with a central nervous system". That doesn't explain anything either. So how is idealism actually better?
@@yakurbe7039 When you ask "does explain anything?", have you questioned when you will be actually satisfied with the answer? In other words, do you think it's plausible to think "ok, there is nothing else to explain, I don't need to ask `why is that the case?` any longer" ?
Depending on your answer to this question, you are faced with 2 possibilities. Either you will forever ask "why is that so, what is the cause for this?" or you will accept what is called an ontological primitive. Something that does not require a causal explanation. It simply is. Now, if you choose option 1, that is when you will effectively explain nothing. You will keep on seeking, never reaching the bottom of anything, and anything you will have construed will be floating on fried air. Or, you choose option 2, you choose a fixed, plausible and argumented for ontological primitive, and you try to explain the rest of the world on top of that.
It might happen that as you do so, you will face problems that can't logically be explained by/with the primitive you chose. That is the case with materialism, that chose the quantum field and elemental particles (which are essentially quantities) as its primitives and hit the hard problem of consciousness. Make no mistake, we don't explain the quantum field either. Ask physicists. The quantum field simply exists. Full stop.
Idealism does the same move, it chooses a single (reductionist) ontological primitive, experience. Experience becomes the one given fact of nature. Then it tries to explain the rest from there, and Kastrup's flavor of idealism uses the dissociative mechanism, markov blankets, and other arguments to bring its point home. In doing so, we can salvage everything that science does and has done, because science simply is the description of the behavior or nature, while also accepting as granted the one basic fact of existence that is our experience, which has, maybe not by chance, escaped a consistent explanation and causal intuition for 7000 years.
@@namero999 why experience, as opposed to matter tho? Or any other random concept? I feel like I'm missing the big insight afforded by the primitive. Kastrup obviously feels that there is something of significant value to be gotten from the framing, but I don't think I'm seeing it.
@@yakurbe7039 precisely! Why matter, as opposed to consciousness though? You see? It's the same epistemic move. You pick a primitive that makes sense and you develop a theory out of it. Like I mentioned, choosing matter incurs in the hard problem, and can't explain the most direct, basic and in-your-face fact of existence: experience. So, without changing any rule of the game, by making the same move of choosing one primitive, this time consciousness, Kastrup argues that we can explain the rest (the same "rest" that materialism does) without needing to explain consciousness.
Of course, you need a solid and rigorous argument in order to claim that nature is experiential rather than physical. I'm not making an advertising for Kastrup here, but he developed the argument extensively in the book "the idea of the world". What I want to say, is that it's perfectly fine to state that ground reality is matter, or consciousness, or a bowl of spaghetti, or phlogiston, or whatever, as long as the claim comes accompanied by a consistent and coherent argument of how (how, not why) it is the case. That is the tricky part.
So, to answer your question, the value of idealism is to remove the need to give a causal explanation of consciousness by picking it as the ontological primitive, while still managing to explain the rest (the physical world) and how it arises. Therefore, it has less explanatory gaps than materialism has (which has the huge hole of consciousness) and is therefore superior. This has many implications when it comes to meaning, life, death, relationships, and so forth, but these are side effects of any relevant philosophical body of work.
OMG it's embarassing. Bernard Kastrup is almost as bad as Rupert Sheldon. Look, your nerves and neurons do one thing: measure variations with pulses. Your nervous system runs a competition (economy, war) for internal consistency and external correspondence over time between those millions of pulses. This is why despite what (rather sophomoric) philosophers have argued, the camera obscura, and our ability to estimate spatial relations from it, demonstrates there is no difference between perception and reality. There is however a difference between VALUE AND PREFERENCE. that mental 'feeling' is just what nerves and neurons can produce to get attention by differentiation from other neurons. That's all.
In other words, all intelligent life forms, capable of intertemporal recursion would converge over time DESPITE differences in embodiment. Kastrup also has 'it wrong': science is just the migration of testimony and evidence in court from the law to the physical and behavioral sciences - TO PREVENT LYING by philosophers (sophists) and theologians (liars).
Science produces testimony that is commensurable despite our differences in knowledge, value, and priority. Because the only value of sensation, perception, valuation, attention, and permutation is ACTION in the real world. In legal and scientific terms, the technique Kastrup relies upon is the same one that makes possible the Abrahamic religions: critique to undermine all existential evidence by sewing fear uncertainty and doubt, with the false promise of some other means of priority - value and preference - that is open to deception by suggestion.
There are there primary methods of lying by the pretense of knowledge one does not have and cannot testify to: The physical: Magic to pseudoscience, the verbal: sophistry to idealism (philosophy), and imaginary: occult to supernaturalism (theology).
Whenever someone uses the techniques of false promise, pilpul (sophistry), and critique (undermining) with one or more of the methods of the pretense of knowledge: pseudoscience, Sophistry(idealism), or theology, you know the person is lying because one must lie in order to claim he states the truth when his claims are untestifiable and he by definition CANNOT claim it is true.
You seem to not understand the hard problem of consciousness or the difference between science and philosophy.
@@Sam-hh3ry Let's play a great game. Try to find someone who can articulate that difference between science and philosophy better than I can. ;). And I understand that the hard problem of consciousness isn't hard. We were just ignorant, and the science hasn't been distilled down by the neuroscientists and the computer scientists sufficiently to reach the non technical disciplines ... like literary philosophy. ;)
@@TheNaturalLawInstitute lol ‘the science hasn’t been distilled down.’ The science doesn’t exist. The hard problem is unsolved and unsolvable, as thought experiments like the knowledge argument have plainly spelled out decades ago. There is no working scientific theory for how to reduce consciousness to brain function.
@@Sam-hh3ry How do you know that? I know. I teach it. Others do. So, you're projecting confidence from a position of ignorance. Selling pseudoscience and sophistry is terribly appealing especially to those holding desperately onto the last frail wisps of the supernatural. Consciousness is solved. Sorry. Turns out it was relatively simple. Philosophy has always been a temporary bridge between science and theology.
@@TheNaturalLawInstitute uh cool. Feel free to make an argument if you have one.
Keep in mind that philosophers are word spinners, so this man like many others have find something, Idealism, to use his limited knowledge to spine words to make money and make himself popular, he is seining in same prison of ignorance, accumulation of knowledge will not bring awareness or peace to humanity, be simple and be light to yourself.
I am in awe of his clarity of thought. What a beautiful mind!
Great to see BK on RW, always a pleasure to hear his clear thinking. It's interesting that, whilst he didn't approach idealism from a spiritual starting point, he arrived at it through seeking the most clear, parsimonious and internally cohesive account for the phenomena of experience, which is precisely the same starting point of the mystics behind the Vedas, from which developed advaita, or non-dualism. Erwin Schrodinger arrived there too, in his essay "The Oneness of Mind", in his book "What is Life?" Many paths lead to the One Truth, and neither are mutually exclusive: tat tvam asi.
Very, very eloquently and intelligently stated. Compliments, my friend.
@@girlplanetboy Thank you friend :)
In the UK we have a media scientist ' Prof Brian Cox ' , who makes some wonderful documentaries. In some of his documentaries he has tapped a solid surface and said " I don't know how things feel solid , because atoms are mainly space ? ' . Apparently this has caused some hostility in the scientific community . I didn't realize that by default he was suggesting that the world is really experience .
Brilliant, as usual. Unfortunately, interviewers/questioners are all so immersed in the paradigm of physicalism that almost all questions start from that vantage point (e.g., the brain really exists). Glad that RW hosted BK. He should be hosted by every podcaster who considers him/her-self seriously interested in the human condition (RU listening Jordan, Lex, Tom and, yes, even you Joe).
who is TOm and Jordan?
@@rahulsangal5438 Tom Bilyeu and Jordan Peterson would by my guesses
"ur so immersed into physicalism guyse, plz do it in shape im used to"
17:00 I like to say that in Idealism, the brain is a representation of mind, rather than a receiver of it (dualism), or creator of it (materialism)
Would really enjoy a convo between Matt (the Whitehead scholar) and Bernardo
Sometimes what appears to be flaky woo woo is just a pamphlet pointing at a rabbit hole, aimed at those who seek to go deeper but may not know it yet.
Layers of meaning.
a pamphlet for those who were unaware that rabbit holes exist? You just saved me 60 minutes.
Boy am I glad to you all are talking to kastrup! I heard of him first from Leo Guras book list. Great resource for an interesting life indeed
can you do Donald Hoffman next?
The way I think about the 'reality is a simulation' thing is by thinking of Reality as a model of itself, which becomes realized in the process of modelling. What the categorization of reality as simulated points to is a discrepancy between map (model) and territory (that which is modelled) that is baked into the territory itself, a la ontoligical parallax and the Metaphysics of Adjacency.
Also, positing that there is in fact a world beyond the set of dials that is our interface begs the question of epistemology. How can one posit that there is in fact something past the set of dials if one can only know the set of dials? What dial tells one that the dials point to something beyond the dials?
(I'm not saying that there isn't anything past the dials, just that that framing alone is insufficient)
FINALLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYY the boss is here
This is the best interview of BK I've heard. I see a new clarity and a refinement of his explanations. Well worth it.
The title is fundamental misrepresention of Bernardo view. He's doesn't argue reality is all in your head.
What's real
What's not
Is reality just objective physicality
Or is it really shared subjectivity
If you see what I see
And we agree
It's real
If you sense what I sense
And we have consensus
It's real
Now imagine an earth without you and me
Or any of our kind
With a mind inclined to find
Would the ground and all around cease to be
Or would the only thing missing be
What we call reality
Excellent. He absolutely nailed the ridiculousness of emergence. At best, it’s a method of interactive purposive ness across levels. A description of relationships. In that sense it’s useful to think about but yeah… everyone tries to extrapolate from discrete symbolic interactions or circumscribed symbolic symbol systems to the rest of reality (because it’s instrumentally useful-like math) but this is where Ian McGilchrist comes in and POW! Says f*ck that sh*t. And rightly so. Ian doesn’t actually swear though. He is a proper Scotsman from Skye. 🥰 LOVE to Bernardo. Humanity will advance to the next level and I commend you for your adroit assistance in this matter? I hesitate to use that word, 🤔😂 I love that the Internet allows us to see that we are in this together. Thanks 🙏🏻 ❤️🔥
When he has headache I'm sure he uses headache pills. But according to him the pills are an aspect of his mind. Then all his philosophy is sophistry, just a sematic trick.
The best interview with Kastrup i have watched. Great questions and great follow up answers. It makes a difference who is the interviewer and audience.
Mind-Blowing.
Dear Bernardo,
I believe you are postulating the right question from the wrong second person perspective. Rather I suggest you should be postulating the question of past, present and future as equal to nothing and everything from the first person perspective. The answer to this question is then resolved harmoniously in as much as the first person persecutive is not subject to the thermal arrow, hence it remains out side of time and space. It is only the second person perspective that is subject to time and space, thus entropic.
If I am right, this means the first person perspective is 'immortal' so to speak and can externalise time and space, all events are chronicled or witnessed by the the first person without being subject to entropy and the thermal arrow of time. The mental or conscious state of the first person perspective is per force external to time and space hence there is no past, present or future as the second person would express it.
The question on the divisions of time is mute from the first person perspective! It would be better to consider the devisions of time as chronicled by the first person as pure experience, being, eternal being, having no beginning and no end.
I must admit I’m a huge BK fan. So glad to hear him again here.
So our brain is in fact in a vat - Plato was right ! OR we are talking about a simulated digital reality of which your consciousness has been downloaded into.
well , then your head is also in your head and maybe even the thing that creates your head inside your creates itself in itself
18:22 I love the metaphor of the graphical user interface vs the command line terminal. How the simplifications/representation enables countless non specialists to operate in the digital realm. These folks have no idea what the underlying capabilities of the system looks are but then again they don't need to in order to make use of the affordances that are relevant for them
Yes but the original filter/alter is still more accurate I think. Or the whirl-pool within an ocean. Ultimately we ARE the ocean even if a localised bit of it experiencing a kind of specific action of the ocean water. The water acting in the whirpool (individuated/disassociated alter) is made FROM water (consciousness at large). We have as humans the ability of self reflection - that is literally the ability the dissociation/separation gives us. And with this reflective ability we can observe how the water (consciousness at large) moves and behaves within us. This is basically what non-dualist spiritual practices aim to do.
How to get him on a show.. 😄
thank you for this, great one.
19:20 Donald's having a coffee in the back room.
Fuck I did shrooms and now I'm here
So the dashboard is yore senses.
47.50 "Hoooray to Matter" lol
Semaphore Alert!
I never laughed so hard!!! Nuclear powered stupidity 😂😂😂
If reality is all in your head… then where *is* your head??
So we've come full circle back to Plato's theory of forms....
Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own.
Saying that emergent qualities are ipso facto unexplainable from a physical standpoint because they aren't based on individual atoms, either because it's too complex, or qualititative aspects of conscious experience, doens't mean that they actually 'exist' on their own outside people's minds, or that there is a plane outside of it that the mental world 'exists' in.
Focusing on qualia (or to put it another way, quanta of conscious experience) is not different than Plato's theories of forms from 2000 years ago.
Love it how non-physicists always just drop in 'observer effect' or quantum...without justifying it... as backing up whatever they are saying. Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'. That's bollocks. It doesn't say that it is superficial or based on a deeper reality, it literally says that we don't know as it ISN"T based on hidden variables or a deeper reality.
There is nothing new under the sun.
"Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own.
"
Correct. So under materialism, the world as it is in of itself doesn't have qualities. Qualities exist, but they exist in your head. This contradicts nothing he said.
"Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'."
Bell's theorem refutes local hidden variables, and Leggett's inequalities later refute non-local hidden variables. This means that a key prediction of QM, quantum contextuality, is true. Quantum contextuality entails that physical quantities have no standalone existence. Notice that he's talking about PHYSICAL QUANTITIES, not reality.
To the guy that asked the question at 56:30.... think of how we all agree that the colours I see.... correspond directly to colours which you yourself ALSO call blue..... HOWEVER theres no way to say that I see the same blue that you see...... just that we are sensing the same wavelength from the same object..... same for the objects other properties as both interviewer and interviewee an this case me and you are both immersed in it
I totally agree with BK’s comment about Nisargadatta Maharaj. He was the real deal. He has not written any books but there is whole lot that written by devotees based on recorded talks (he died in 1982). Unfortunately most books are heavily contaminated with devotion side of his philosophy because most authors are devotees. If you are looking for his key teaching then read the Pointers from NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ By Ramesh S. Balsekar (you can find the PDF online ).
There was another person that I know of: that was Buddha. He understood the reality too but unfortunately he was about 2400 yrs ahead of his time. His message got heavily contaminated by the blind (and stupid) followers and now hardly much left. Even the gurus who claimed they realized his teaching based on insight meditation haven’t got it! If interested read the first two Suttas in the Sutta pitaka. That is all you need.
I still find Benardo difficult to pin down. For the title, isn't it both? Doesn't the lines of information go through us back into the external world and then through us again in a dampened oscillating pattern. Where it is interpreted to stop doesn't seem the relevant parameter, to how reality exists.
For strong emergence, there is weak emergence we're yet to discover, and the extension of that belief into the undiscoverable. Where would we parse the limit to what strong emergence means? And yes. People can answer all-encompassing questions with seemingly knowledgeable non-answers through strong emergence explanations. But consciousness as the endpoint doesn't satisfy my curiosity either. In some ways, I think Bernardo might be right, but I cannot let such an undefined concept be fundamental. It exists so that we can call ourselves conscious and value it, but it is not of sufficient explanatory power for its vast variation we are yet to properly understand.
Wait a second ...
Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has no transcendent meaning.
After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning.
... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis)
Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter.
After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind.
What the **** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
That jaguar looking at you...salivating like mad, wanting to lick the marrow from one's Self Organising Biology, sure hopes you won't move.
The Urubus are also hungry...and await.
Piranhas may get some leftovers after all...
We all have the same tools to help us go through life properly .
Those tools are :
Heart , conscience , intuition and common sense - ( in which you need a properly functional brain of course ).
How we use those tools depends from us .
We are responsible for our success or failure in life .
I am talking here of course about - honest life ( not the dishonest way of life - in cost of others .)
The bigest problem in this world is that most of you converts everything into money - this is wrong way .
We live in material world - that is true but not everything here is for sale , and not everything can be bought .
That we all should know and remember .
Life is really very simple .
26:54 - The simulation. In the 60's we had simulated drivers ed. It was weird lol there was like a toy steering wheel/dashborad on the desk and our chair was meant to be the drivers seat. I couldnt figure it out and kept crashing into things. I dont think it really worked. I think the simulation had a mind of its own because I couldnt make it turn in the middle of the street as a test. O:)
I can now see the transparency it lacked. "Reality is being measured by the dashboard" In my experience reality was limited by the mechanics behind/within the dashboard and it takes a third eye to see through it or to get to the transparency.
BK has The Exegesis of Philip K Dick on his book shelf. We're on the same line of thinking but he's vastly more intelligent and articulate then I'll ever be. Glad to see people taking this more seriously. It's nice to have someone to point others too when I can't explain my own views well enough.
Reality is indivisible this is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Interdependent co-arising is what it’s called. The image is of a chain that you try and lift out a link of it and you cannot. What we normally experience is the array of objects so that is misleading. Almost every one of us is getting it wrong and clearly this is well adapted to the way life is. Raises the question why is life deceptive in essence?
We were expelled from the garden following eating from the tree of knowledge in order to stop us eating from the tree of immortality which would mean equality with the gods. We would realise the essence and experience of universal consciousness.
Extend emergence into the future. What is the emergent property of loads of humans working together?
What is the emergent property of an entire solar system?
A good example at 13:10 of a brilliant and thoughtful person admitting that we don't know what is below the physical layer. I would add though that he refers to this mysterious layer as having standalone existence and that does not seem verifiable to me. And of course, there could be countless deeper layers physics does not yet have the tools to unearth.
What Bernardo talks about around 21:50 is similar to an inkling I had when I was watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 and how the life cycle worked for The Founders.
Bernardo is asking us to search our own vehicles, and if we find contraband, to admit it. Well, no wonder we are pushing back.
...to justify all sorts of stuff. That says a lot! You still have to live here. But it opens up a lot of great opportunities to sell stuff that doesn't exist for money we can use.
The DMT testing shows on your face
"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes" - Carl Jung
Bernardo Kastrup tends to localize materialism within a time frame of about 300 years, but while not specific and perhaps unforeseen I think that at least the cognitive root originates much further back within Christianity itself perhaps as far back as Augustine or even St. Paul the Apostle. At least the metaphysical groundwork was laid back then as we see the development of the western Christian concept of God.
Perhaps the problem goes further back into the beginnings of monotheism in the Jewish history.
For certain, along the way was the development of the concept of God as separate from the universe and humanity, the creator of said universe but then given the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. This, as the hermetics point out, is a form of cognitive dissonance, which I believe is embedded in Christianity.
The attributes given, rationally imply singularity, because any individuation implies diminishment. Christians are describing what the hermetics call the ALL, which is indivisible by definition. Thus the universe cannot be created outside of the ALL but must be created within the ALL and the only way that can happen is if the ALL is mind.
Some Christians today believe that Platonism is not compatible with Christianity (they tend to be literalists) while other Christians think that Platonism is a foundational philosophy of Christianity (they tend to advocate Biblical allegory) I believe the later. But both lines of thinking coexisted for 2000 years.
Philo of Alexandria (b 25 BC) already created a syncretic system linking Greek Platonism Pythagoreanism with Jewish thought, and Paul who had vision of Christ rather than meeting Jesus a physical man seemed to be more aligned with Philo‘s metaphysical understanding. Philo even claimed most of Greek philosophy was derived from Judaism. But all of this leads up to Christian Logos theology.
Even if Paul was not a Platonist, the dominant philosophies of Christian writers for four hundred years after was Platonism, Pythagorean, and Stoic with a rejection of Epicurean Philosophy which emphasized truth through one‘s senses.
Epicurus was not reintroduced until the Renaissance through Lucretius writing, which created a revival of empiricism. And these ideas became foundational for liberal philosophies like John Locke.
I don’t know what philosophy was dominant in Judaism before that time but I think Isaiah or Moses point to a God that is separate from creation but reflected in it, thereby God is the creative principle of creation but not creation itself and could only be encountered indirectly: Exodus 20But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
I was relieved when I heard the word "ridiculous" being spoken often in this episode.
Great video - very interesting stuff! Thanks! 🙂