Interview with Jon Restorick
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2024
- Raw footage of an interview with Jon Restorick for his upcoming podcast. It contains about 2.5 hours of material. The conversation starts slow, begins to warm up fast towards the middle, and then enters some surprising territory in the last third or so. We discuss things I've never publicly talked about before, such as my views on mind's 'prime directive.'
Bernardo, your metaphysical idealism blows me away, and is the only model of reality that I know that makes any sense. I've been a fan of your work for years, and though I'm still an amateur philosopher, it's my goal to meet you one day, when I'm more educated. Thanks for this upload
I am an amateur philosopher too, so was Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, etc. :)
I’ve listened to a dozen or more of Bernardo’s interviews in the last month. I’m a psychiatrist, and have been worshipping sciences for decades, and now I’m completely sold to Analytical Idealism, as Bernardo puts it. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m forced (in a very pleasant,way) to take a fresh look at pretty much everything in my life, from parenting to psychiatry to cooking to making love. And I feel very fortunate I’m a contemporary to one of the greatest thinkers.
Bernardo Kastrup is truly one of the most brilliant philosophers alive.
Thank you everyone for your kind words, it was a delight to speak with Bernardo. I am about to launch my podcast here on CZcams. If you are interested I will have this interview uploaded on my own channel by the end of the week, along with my interview with professor Donald Hoffman, also discussing consciousness.
17:20 - Wow. I've known about Bernardo, and the core of his thinking, for a few months now. I was immediately intrigued when I first ran across it. But only last night and today have I really watched a significant amount of material with him speaking personally with people. I am so impressed - he's so "clear-minded" in his thoughts and articulate and enthusiastic about his subject matter. It's just extremely refreshing to listen to him.
Bernardo you beautiful man, thank you for the teachings. You're bridging the divide between science and mysticism.
Great work Bernardo, thank you for these videos!
Thanks!
@@bernardokastrup I believe the future will look kindly upon you. I look forward to hearing more from you.
Very recent, long (2.5 hrs.) and completely delightful discussion. It gets progressively more interesting.
They refer to Don Hoffman and his perspective several different times, and conclude with some delightful remarks about Rupert Spira.
Near the end Bernardo gets wonderfully animated and lists all the questions that he now finds most interesting.
If you’d like to dive even further down the rabbit hole, this is well worth the time.
So good, I’m going to give it a second listen…
:)
Thank you Bernardo, would love to see more content like this from you. I enjoy your books, however, I believe this format - speaking one on one about your perspectives and allowing the dialogue to emerge unscripted - is really useful in "improving the context of the game" we are all playing. It certainly has been for me. I would love to see you have a conversation with David Fuller from Rebel Wisdom. I'm hoping that if enough people comment on it, that connection would happen. His channel just posted a video on finding coherence via collective intelligence, and you most certainly should be a part of that discussion! Cheers, and please keep up the great work.
Just for future reference Bernado ~ I mentioned the philosopher Paul Brunton in the chat and one of his books "The Wisdom of The Overself". I thought that the chapter headings alone would pull you in, as you have spoken them many times without knowing in all your CZcams videos. As much as anything, I don't want this beautiful writer who travelled extensively in the Orient to be forgotten. I understand you because of him. = ) And when you said Vedanta a couple of years ago, I realised why. He spent years among the Yogis of India. He is still relevant today and your appearance, speaking in up-to-date modern parlance bolsters the Mentalism/Idealism argument for me. Like you, he didn't like the limelight, but I wish for a world where you and Brunton are a bit more public than you are right now. All the best.
Got it, thanks
"Rupert Spira" - Thanks for the plug. I just added a bunch of his talks to "watch later".
Bravo! Layer upon layer upon layer peeled away revealing emptiness, do not be afraid...
That slow start you mention in the description was hardly noticeable as it only lasted about 7 minutes in 2.5 hours of conversation. I really appreciate the passion you speak with Bernardo. No matter how many times you have gone through your theoretical frameworks, you engage with the person you speak to, and it's obvious that you care about sharing these trains of thought. I never get tired of hearing you describe and teach challenging ideas, no matter how many times I've heard them.
Thank you, Scott!
@@bernardokastrup Whoa, thanks for the response. For someone who has been influenced and inspired by the ideas you share, it's pretty powerful to feel you make efforts to connect with your audience directly. I'm not entirely surprised though. Thanks again, and please keep sharing if you are able!
1:55 Subatomic particles ... are fictions that help explain the behavior of our measurement instruments. Love it. Thanks Bernardo and Jon.
Jon, you did a great job pulling Bernardo into the fringes of what he could articulate. It's always nice seeing folks willing to play around in that space. I'm also super impressed that you were able to keep up with him.
40:45 - I'm absolutely intrigued by the connections I see between these thoughts and various Eastern philosophies.
Hi Bernardo, thanks for your uploads /work; it’s much appreciated. I first came across it on New Thinking Allowed and have been deep in it since! As an aside, there was an excellent podcast by Lex Friedman a few weeks back with Max Tegmark and consciousness was touched upon. Anyway, thanks again.
* Lex Fridman
Thanks!
Love this. Thanks for sharing 🙏🏼
A superb interview. Thank you 🙏🏼
Jon is a really thoughtful individual. I'm looking forward to giving this a listen.
39:20 - Really great question in response to what Bernardo was just talking about.
Bernardo i soo much appreciate how you bring up social structure and psychological aspects.
I cant quote(plzforgive me)but i remember something Einstein said about the possibility of other great minds ,like his own, who were stuck working in cotton fields...
I feel like your a great mind. Humble but great. 🙏
I was loooking for this one, indeed your best piece of content in my view. Mark
this is good, so good. I'm down the rabbit hole again
2:17:11 - "It could be the questions you bring" - Dude... that's such a good insight. The word "intention" comes to mind. I took the advice to "ask the mushroom for wisdom" and had a distinctly unique trip that went down the path that I asked of it. It felt like I had a kind of conversation with a feminine mushroom spirit who imparted some advice.
Excellent discussion, thanks for posting. Lucid dreaming and OBE's are dream practices concerned with gaining this meta-cognitive awareness within dream states. When we succeed at waking up within the dream, the dream loses its haziness and becomes hyper real. Waking up in a dream is an exhilarating experience which can be cultivated through practice. It's like going from a grainy black and white image on a vintage tube TV to watching a 3D movie on IMAX. In a sense, through practices such as Lucid Dreaming, meditation, and mindfulness, we are learning to break through our own dissociated boundaries, gaining self-awareness and wholeness. Entheogens can be helpful too..
Bernardo seems quite litteratly like the reincarnation of (except the religious and pious devotion) - of Adi shankaracharya", bernardo a true sage backing up Theology and fundamental consciousness.
Bernardo. I’d like to see you talk with people like Sean Carroll or Dennett. I know what you’re saying is true and I’ve often wondered why some people have experienced this while others do not. Perhaps that would be a good discussion in itself.
Hey Bernado. I mentioned yesterday in the chat about a talk with Jordan Peterson. You said that he would have to want it too. To be honest, though I love JP's Toronto University lectures, he is rather a one way orator mainly. = ) John Verveake from the same department as JP at Toronto would be a great conversation though? But I think you are the man to unite not only JP and Sam Harris, but perhaps even Ben Shapiro and the whole IDW!
A Superb Interview. One of the Best I've seen so far so credit to you Jon for getting close to following him and exploring some of the fringes and the implications which are more interesting to me than just watching him crack the same nut over and over again. I think the Nut has been cracked and it was nice to see Bernardo is full flow rather than restricted to what is completely defendable to the Mainstream view.
I came to the same conclusions you expound via self inquiry and the insights of Advaita Vedanta. It is however, so nice to see it expounded from a Western perspective. I wonder if Bernardo has every read William Samuel who also speaks this way. William came to it through Taoism. It's a small group that gets this, but when you see it, nothing else makes as much sense.
15:30 - What's struggling to say here is "Do you think people cling to materialism because they worry that anything else would leave the door ajar for someone to smuggle God in?" Yes - I absolutely think that. The minute you start to think of consciousness as being inherently real, all by itself, then you've implied the possibility of God - God would just be a "bigger version" of the same thing that our individual minds are. Materialism provides fantastic fortifications against the idea of God, gods or whatever else along those lines you might dream up, and THAT is precisely why mainstream thinkers try to claim it (materialism) is "proven" in a way that it's simply not.
2:16:49 - "it's too big to bring back to sober reality / it won't fit through the hole". I've really struggled with this idea. People talk of a 3 day or 30 day or 90 day "after glow" where they retain a little bit of that magic that they captured. But it's still just a residual shadow of that potent experience. I remember having different potent experiences, but I only really remember it's essence when I go back into that space again under drug influence and reflect, "Oh yeah, I recognize this place.".
Great interview!
Just reading your new book Bernado. Never has anything made as much sense as your writing. Consistent with everything we experience, and like you say, it’s far from wishful thinking.
Thanks!
I don't acceptance of materialism is "going along with our experiences." I think it's utterly IGNORING our experiences. Our experiences specifically tell us that there's more to the universe than dead inanimate matter evolving per a set of equations. But we ignore that and just don't focus on the failure of materialism to provide a suitable explanation. We've somehow deluded ourselves - we just "assume it will eventually work out," in spite of its failure to do so for decades / centuries, and in spite of the fact that no amount of staring at the fundamental laws of physics reveals any prospect whatsoever for how something like consciousness could come out of them. Mainstream scientists just say over and over "we're right, trust us," and the rest of us... do just that. It's an act of faith, every bit as much so as any sort of religious devotion. We have turned materialism into a religion - that's the bottom line.
2:20:22 “Physics is modeling the behavior of the desktop.”
We are all one, connected in an infinite fractal. On that level, time does not exist. It all happens right now.
Bernardo often refers to the work of Don Hoffman for his scientific work that leads to idealism. I never herard him mentioning Tom Campbell though. I wonder if he recognizes the work of Tom as well.
I'm glad you mentioned Fine Tuning and said that it presents a problem for the idea that Universal Consciousness is purely instinctive because I think that teleological theories imply foresight, and I assume that's what you're saying.
On that note, what do you think of Thomas Nagel's support for Intelligent Design as regards biology? Do you think his Idealism is similar to yours? On one hand, it seems that it may be because Nagel doesn't seem to believe in a God or Universal Consciousness that has specific objectives. On the other hand, he suggests the existence of natural 'teleological laws'. Do you think this notion is compatible with Schopenhauer's idea of the Will?
There seem to be at least two issues to me - One being that I think the idea of Will necessarily implies foresight because to 'will' something seems to necessarily involve conceiving a future outcome that is to be preferred over another.
Another issue seems to come down to the question of what is identity anyway? - and that seems a very complex question indeed in relation to the concept of Universal Consciousness.
@Johnny Dupuis
?
Yes, teleological laws are not only compatible with, but were also explicitly embraced by Schopenhauer. According to him, the Will instinctively wants to know itself, and because of that instinctive purpose, human self-reflection evolved. I, by my side, also believe that even an instinctive universal consciousness can aim at a goal or purpose, so to speak, just in an instinctive -- as opposed to premeditated -- manner. Deliberate foresight is not necessary for purpose-guided action, as most of the animal world attests to. I must refresh my understanding of Nagel's argumentation, thanks for the heads-up.
@Johnny Dupuis
OK thanks - a sort of Logos idea then? I understand that certain words are thought to have power when used in ritual magic too, but I don't know a huge amount about it. I thought you might have been alluding to something along the lines of at least one of the above, but I couldn't be sure. It seemed just as conceivable that you were a skeptic who was deriding 'magical thinking'.
@@bernardokastrup
Yes, thanks. I know that Schopenhauer was influenced by Indian philosophy, and that the idea that The Self wants to know itself is a theme there as well.
I think I can see that if this is the case, then this basic drive might generate all kinds of complex relations that gave the false appearance of being ends in and of themselves (if that makes any sense).
31:18 - The more I think about it, the more I agree. It IS the "most plausible" interpretation of reality. Incredibly FASCINATING. I do have one question, though. How is it that the process for creating new dissociated alters (sex, pregnancy, birth...) is so precise and well-formulated? I mean, answer #1 is "that's just how it works," and I see no reason to reject that answer. But... can we do better than that? It's less than fully satisfying, to me at least.
Regarding reference to symbology of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, in addition to becoming meta cognizant of being naked (“their eyes were opened and saw that they were naked”), there had to be a negative moral judgment about their nakedness, hence their shame. What was the source of that moral judgment which is symbolically depicted as “eating” of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”. Any insights?
It was really cool to hear you use Donald Hoffman's desktop analogy. Your philosophies are almost identical as far as I understand. The one difference is that Hoffman believes reality is the creation of a network of consciousneses rather then a universal one.
Question: How could we explain the “delayed choice experiment” within the idealist worldview?
Option 1: That's how consciousness works. That's how dissociated consciousness (humans) and mind-at-large (universal consciousness) interact. When a dissociated conscious agent is aware of (observes) a segment of mind-at-large (a photon, or a rock) this segment takes definite properties. When unobserved, this segment still exists but, as mind-at-large cannot observe itself, this segment remains fuzzy, as a wave of potentialities. This fuzziness of a segment of mind-at-large comes from the fact that mind-at-large is not self-aware. This raises another question: could a non-self-aware animal collapse the wave function? Could all animals be living in a world of quantum superposition, not seeing the objects as having definite properties? It does not make sense. Therefore, mind-at-large cannot be considered merely as conscious but not self-aware the way many animals are. It must be an even more basic, primeval form of consciousness, one some weak that it does not collapse the wave function.
Option 2: We are living in a simulated world created within an idealist world. The computers simulating us are not made of matter but of consciousness which, as a resource, should be saved as much as possible. This would explain why there would still be a need to save computing power within an idealist universe.
Bernado, is this compatible with nonduality or advaita vedanta! Thank you!
Im not Bernardo, but ill share my opinion cuz ive contemplated this question too. Who doesn't like feedback right?...
Non duality uses the #1. Its basically saying that everything that exists or ever will exist can be reduced to a number. I think, what Bernardo is saying, is that #s only come after a perception. Infinity/π is not a #.
I think we should use #s, but not limit our realities to them as being true or false.
For example Advaita Vendanta defines itself as the "highest point" of awareness. It assumes to be 1 side of a set.
Consciousness works best when it stays open.
Idk though...im just like you.
1:34:54 The stuff about hallucinations - the difference with experiences on DMT or other psychedelics and everyday experience is that everyday experience is synchronised and objectively experienced by us all. The former isn't. This is the obvious difference and one that makes all the difference and significantly distinguishes the two. What we define as hallucinations doesn't apply to our shared everyday experience and reality, precisely for the fact that they are shared and verifiable. Unless you are redefining the term.
It's all a DREAM!
Row row row your boat gently down the stream be merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream
"Rowing boats, rowing boats, rowing boats, all along the "Streams of The Absolute," non-dually, non-dually, non-dually, non-dually, life is neither exclusively real nor exclusively unreal, as the dreamings of what apparently appears as absolutely everything and nothing that arises, for no reasons; meanings, and purposes, constantly arising as everything and nothing inseparable, ad infinitum." >
Bernardo needs to read Walter Russell's work. It would be really interesting to hear what he would have to say about Russell's work.
Hey Bernardo.
Really appreciate your work. How would you go about answering the split brain syndrome objection? Do you have any thoughts or resources I could look into related to that?
He has talked about that topic before... he often talks of individual consciousness being like a whirlpool in water ... the water a representation of the totality of consciousness or cosmic mind... in split brain patients he suggest it is a case of creating two separate whirlpools instead of one...
1:07:35 - Saying that plants CERTAINLY DO NOT have meta-consciousness doesn't set well with me. My intuition is that they may be able to communicate with humans on certain vibrational planes / frequencies / dimensions / channels. Something like that. I've experienced what felt like a telepathic imprint from a Zerg Hivemind and also recognized more individualized consciousness groupings between a section or species of plants when under the influence of DMT and also in some ways under LSD / Mushrooms but to a lesser extent.
yesterday I thought about getting a tattoo on my arm.. somthing that represents or is symbolic of how I see my life and existence.... I came up with the idea of a drawing of the artistry/picture cover for one of the first computer games... 'Adventure'.. I'm more sure of my tattoo choice after listening to this interview...
38:30 - I read a paper recently that proposes that the entire history of life has been a march toward faster entropy generation. Advances in life routinely bring accelerated production of entropy. In some ways this looks like a competition for resources. If you want to get metaphysical about it you can even regard the evolution of intelligence, and then the subsequent development of civilization and industrialization by that intelligence, as a continuation of this trend. As we advance up the Kardashev categorization of civilizations, we're just going further with this. So, could the drive toward dissociation and the drive toward faster entropy production be one and the same? Is it possible that even processes that we don't regard as "life," but which seem to be moves toward higher entropy production, be just the same type of phenomenon, in a different part of some spectrum? Paper linked here:
arxiv.org/pdf/0907.0042.pdf
2:11:15 - Man, Jon is really having a hard time getting whatever this is put into words, but it's clearly a meaningful thing for him.
Fundamental reality isn't as cut-throat as their status games would want it to be.
1:19:00 - That's exactly the thing that Alan Watts tells you you have to let go of - that separation of "yourself" from "everything."
Very good. We live in a VR here.😊
45:34 - What you say in the next few seconds reminds me of what Terence McKenna says about psychedelics and their ability to dissolve boundaries.
Whelp, you guys just started talking about exactly that a minute later.
I dont se how this approach is much different from believing in God, since he is also thought to be non physical and creator of the physical world. And as for the religious there is no further explanation to how a non physical entity can exist beyond some kind of mechanism or to what controls it or shapes it - how it works.
We need more scientists like BERNARDO, also like DONALD HOFFMAN, I always I ask myself who I'm, I don't follow any religions ,but this kind of videos i like to watch and listen, great job BERNARDO.
Splendid interview well done
Seems to be the longest 'dream' ;)
Well, you know how relative time can appear in a dream. It actually it all boils down to the amount of memories your hard drive can hold, cause this is what causes the illusion of time. No memories no time. You will just live in the eternal now. 😘
MIND BLOWN @ 31:00
what about the fact that time and space seem to be an illusion? looking at Q. mechanics.
Two sides of the same ‘coin’? The particle chasers already set foot on the other side but helpless like eternal new-borns.
34:00 - Sure, of course. It only makes sense that what we perceive when we look at the world reflects what's actually going on in the mental sphere. This is slightly like the sex/pregnancy/birth thing - I asked why the creation of new alters "looks like that"; asking why the forcing apart of two hemispheres of consciousness "looks like" a severed corpus colosum is a similar question.
2:13:10 - Actually what leads to the invocation of higher dimensionality is the math fact that string theory only works in a couple of dimension counts. It just fails for this or that mathematical reason in other situations.
Great conversation. But Bernardo, why refer to "neo-advaita"? Why not just "advaita"? Neo-advaita is a stunted version of traditional advaita vedanta. The Direct Path as taught by Rupert Spira is not neo-advaita and RS has often pointed out the problems associated with neo-advaita.
The propensity of mind at large for deception or illusion clearly corresponds to the idea of maya in advaita vedanta.
Meta-conscious - 1:13:40
When you attach a label to something
A name on it
"I am hungry"
Meta cognitively aware
Moment of self reflection
Ability to report on an experience
1:09:57 - What about lucid dreams? You seem to be meta-cognitively aware in those. And it seems to be very hard - I think the most I can claim is that I was aware I was in a dream for about two seconds, and then I woke up. But of course, that's a very uncertain report - I could have been remembering that "I was just dreaming" a split second before I opened my eyes.
Sounds like ahriman separating us from nature
That was meaty.
Materialism says Matter activates itself into conscious subjectivity ? I feel sorry for them.
While I concur with the assertion that manifest reality is a conditioned reality, a narrative reality, it seems that some realities are more pressing than others. Once we admit mind as the indivisible substance of what it is to "be", what then? Do we submit to the vying stories mind tells us, or sift through them for useful categories that speak louder than others?
It seems that a functioning Idealist cannot allow for, say, objective morality because good/bad, right/wrong, pain/pleasure are merely categories of illusion expressed by universal mind through localised mind. More stories from the mind library. To that extent Idealism is the ultimate relativist position. It's just mind doing its thing, sociopathy and philanthropy are qualitative equals, which is a materialist conclusion with mind replacing matter. However if mind has values, a hierarchy of responses are appropriate. Then our moral intuitions are not category errors, but real boundaries that we transgress at our peril. At that point mind must be not only universal, but purposeful. The illusion has a function.
1:37:20 - This deceiving implies intent. Intentional deception. What is your position of the intent of mind at large to deceive itself through alters/dissociated consciousness?
This is very reminiscent of the Vedanta philosophy and put very eloquently by Alan Watts in "The Book".
2:24:22 - "We are not looking at what is really important because we are distracted by bullshit."
How's that meme go about feeling personally attacked? But seriously, I need to stop spending ANY time on the internet and take a break so I can get other stuff done like write music and read books.
According to crazy materialists even brain is representation of the brain 😂😂
Idealism: mental,processes that interacts with other mental,processes
Therefore Self and autoconsciousness is a product of mental processes interactions so there is a substantial UNIVERSAL MIND sustainig those processes.
Materialism: material processes that interacts with other material,processes,Therefore self and autoconsciousness is a product of material processes interaction there is a Substantial material universe sustaining those processes.
Can you see Both views are the same just replace mind by matter and viceversa!
one will say a material mind is inside a material universe
other will say a mental mind is inside a mental universe
Still both seems clinched to the idea of a substantial self: a little mind in an infinite universal mind or a little material brain in an infinite material universe.
As a Buddhist let me share maybe a different approach to get rid of that symetry. I’ll try my best to share some Prajña Paramita (as what I can understand from the hearth sutra)
That you experience is you, colors, form etc (identity)
Mental Formations and Consciousness are not separate self entities
There is not a YOU beyond those forms, colors etc and viceversa (no separatedness)
Those colours forms does not exist by themselves, nor can cease to exist by themselves (no self entities)
You cannot be both at the same time without abstracting one from the other as both creates and extinguish each other, One does not exists without the other, (interdependent arising, karma)
So “you “ and “that” you experience both are an illusion , (unsubstantiality)
As both have no self entity nor substantiality and are interdependent, both are subject to arise change and decay (impermanence and suffering )
You and thse experiences are not different from Sunyata (so there is no annihilation ).
Sunyata is not just awareness, sunyata is not just not awareness
sunyata is not a mind, not big not little.
sunyata is not emptiness, sunyata is not substantial or fullness
Sunyata is unborn
English is his tirdh language, still very talkative.
Time for Bernardo to do a review of the new book by Donald Hoffman - The case against reality. Panpsychism seems like repackaged materialism to me but I have to read the book to better understand his argument first.
DMT
"Sufisticated" .. i like it