Mu

This is an exploration between Shinzen Young and Bernardo Kastrup on mysticism, science, and liberation. Shinzen Young is a mindfulness teacher, the author of the Science of Enlightenment, and is the co-director of the SEMA lab at the University of Arizona. Bernardo Kastrup is an analytic philosopher, computer engineer, metaphysical idealist, and executive director of the Essentia Foundation. Essentia Foundation: https://www.essentiafoundation.org/ [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbkF3NW5hNFR5YjNvUHotQlktYUlQcVZZdWRKZ3xBQ3Jtc0trR2hOOEFfemNXeUlNTjhLeGR2OGJpVkhsM1I4UkdfemFsMDMtWnQ5dENZVXJjM2ItbGZ6OG0xbnFQbmgyc3hCbTlnQzNxX0xuSVZtZjRjSEJEQ1U2cXJqOHRFMzVWTzJ6c0FzYldRYjBFa3luYVhpWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.essentiafoundation.org%2F&v=syb-oSaDZZE] Shinzen Young: https://www.shinzen.org/ [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbG9RQnN0eWNnZmVIXzI4b1ZMeG1SVExsQVF1QXxBQ3Jtc0tscXc5VTZrcllyeHViR3V5WktoSzIzamJoTjBsclNfa2w5azR1cl9nUFNsMVRKUVlhZmQ5SExJVXozak5uXzhZdk1hYWZpSDdYZDdWdEpodl8zVHlPeW50Q3VZS2NNejJqOTB4Z3o3MnJ2ZE41bjlQcw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shinzen.org%2F&v=syb-oSaDZZE] Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast [https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast]  Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry [https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry] Video episode: https://youtu.be/syb-oSaDZZE?si=ShNPJXXmuEBHGVDC [https://youtu.be/syb-oSaDZZE?si=ShNPJXXmuEBHGVDC] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry [https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry] Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 2:46 Can philosophy, science, and mysticism align?  7:39 What does liberation consist of?  11:38 Bernardo’s path to insight  17:43 The paradox of cultivated improvement vs. nothing to improve  31:16 Blocking ourselves from life’s teaching  36:01 Did Spinoza have mystical experience?  48:58 The truth is not vulnerable  51:29 Training people in the spirit of science  1:06:59 Reflecting on Bernardo’s insight

Jordan Myska Allen is CEO and founder of The Relateful Company, an organization focused on building inner peace and interconnection through truth and love. At the heart of their approach is Relatefulness, a practice emphasizing present-moment relating, construct awareness, and non-duality. Jordan is also a practicing life coach, the author of A Beautiful Apocalypse, and a long-time practitioner of A Course in Miracles. The Relateful Company: https://www.relateful.com/ Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/9ENdAlvkOQ0 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 3:24 Switching between the ultimate and the relative 5:48 Everything is either love or a call for love 7:52 ACIM doesn’t comment on the world of form  9:21 Fundamental existential guilt  11:58 Leaning into what we flinch from  14:31 What it means to flinch from God 20:12 Transcending but including all that is 25:20 The opening quote of ACIM 26:36 What does it mean that “the world is an illusion?”  33:15 What’s so good about choosing fear over love?  36:43 The choice between love and fear, and coming to surrender 42:40 What is forgiveness?  54:27 Clarifying perfect forgiveness  1:00:32 The Diamond Sutra  1:05:24 The gateless gate  1:12:45 Key takeaways  1:19:17 Final thoughts

Federico Faggin is an engineer and physicist who invented the world's first commercial micro processor, the Intel 4004. He is also the founder of the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation which is dedicated to the scientific study of consciousness. Faggin Foundation: http://www.fagginfoundation.org [https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbUJ3TEtOMTFqSWRKOVpuQ3dfVzJSSEFmdHotUXxBQ3Jtc0tuM2o3VlFWRW5JRW0zVDdySTk0WHRucmR0NVNDc1pjdVJrTmFGNjRxeTkyY0gzT0NicUE1dTRRQ3JtQ3NBWndwWi1TeGdHVDE1UEdycWsxNjg1dllpeEFxcHNKSGZ0YXg5bERQR0pVdHJDV1duaHc2OA&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fagginfoundation.org%2F&v=ANLQbKQo-bw] Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast [https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast] Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry [https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry] Video episode: https://youtu.be/7HgXwbIMRsc [https://youtu.be/7HgXwbIMRsc] Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry [https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry] Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:54 Federico’s awakening experience 12:36 Consciousness, free will, and identity  18:09 Truth and freedom from suffering 21:55 “The one” that seeks to know itself 26:22 How “the one” becomes the many 28:55 “The one” and classic/quantum physics 41:51 Fundamental entities with free will, identity, and consciousness  44:15 Consciousness needs classical memory to store experience 46:06 Was the Big Bang a free will choice 56:06 The reality of the irreducible  1:00:39 Semantic space  1:04:41 Methods of inquiring into symbolic and semantic space 1:11:17 Will everything eventually converge?  1:14:58 Taking semantic reality seriously  1:21:13 Near death experiences  1:23:33 Taking experience seriously  1:29:28 Quantum information as a representation of inner experience 1:33:03 What do we do given this understanding?  1:35:37 We are not machines 1:42:15 Negating the reality of the soul 1:46:08 Meaninglessness and dynamic truth  1:51:29 Goodbyes

Bruce Tift is a licensed Psychotherapist and the author of Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation. He is a long-time practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism and was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Bruce's website: https://www.brucetift.com/  Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/cESdYTKz0dM Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps:  0:00 Intro 3:09 What is freedom?  4:39 What is conscious participation in open awareness? 6:47 Is this the fruitional view?  9:09 The western therapeutic perspective of healing core wounds 11:18 How do the fruitonal view and the developmental view relate?  14:31 Commiting to experience sense of problem without trying to resolve it 19:12 The path of Vajrayana Buddhism 29:42 Belief is a substitute for groundlessness  34:21 I give myself permission to never experience what I most want in life 38:13 What is non-divided reality? 43:29 Freedom is not synonymous with positive feelings 47:47 Neurosis is always a substitute for experiential intensity  51:35 Falling through the air with no parachute 52:25 Challenging our identification with hope 55:17 Bruce’s gradual shift towards freedom 58:00 Being profoundly limited 1:03:03 Asking if what you most want is available right now 1:04:44 One taste  1:05:54 Impermanence and dependent origination 1:10:27 Enlightenment  1:13:24 Trying to experience no-self can be motivated by fundamental aggression to experience 1:15:04 Maintaining a center through problem maintaining 1:18:53 The function of neurosis 1:26:00 What’s fundamentally disturbing about our experience?  1:33:05 How does groundlessness fit into freedom and nirvana?  1:34:33 Do we know anything?  1:39:05 What does it mean to be “Already Free?”  1:43:24 Neurosis is a clever way to pretend to ourselves we’re addressing our life while guaranteeing nothing happens  1:47:08 What’s always available? 1:48:08 Final words from Bruce 1:50:30 Outro

Andres Gomez Emilsson is the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute where he works to build a science of consciousness to improve the lives of sentient beings. His work at QRI ranges from psychedelic theory, to neurotechnology development, and mapping the computational properties of consciousness.  Qualia Research Institute: https://qri.org/ Andres' Twitter: https://twitter.com/algekalipso Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry Video episode: https://youtu.be/xJzBjBo24g8 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 2:13Are current AI systems conscious?  4:10 Marr's levels of analysis  9:16 Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment  20:53 The binding problem  35:25 Computers do not leverage the EM field to do computationally useful things  46:46 Equanimity and the sense of self  53:36  Binding is frame invariant and provides computational benefits  56:41 Avoiding strong emergence  58:37 Sidestepping the hard problem of consciousness 59:03 Avoiding epiphenomenalism 1:01:07 Being compatible with modern scientific world picture  1:04:56 Experiments for testing to see if electromagnetic fields of human brain form unified global topology  1:07:14 Merging your consciousness field topology with someone else’s  1:14:07 Summary of if current AI models are conscious  1:16:55 Doing and undoing the topological twist of consciousness  1:24:56 What it’s like to be the field before topological segmentation  1:27:43 Why is there something rather than nothing? 1:32:04 Does valence add up to zero?  1:35:42 The symmetry theory of valence  1:39:20 Does the static field of consciousness have an experience?  1:41:07 Grounding ethics in open individualism and valence realism  1:44:57 Clarifying ethical thought experiments with a science of consciousness  1:47:33 Why does valence exist? 1:48:45 What does it mean for the field to tear?  1:50:51 Infinite universes through the fracturing of nothing  1:53:20 Would replacing humans with happy AIs solve the alignment problem?  1:55:28 If AIs don’t leverage field topology for computation, does that null the alignment problem?  1:58:30 Non-linear wave computing  2:01:08 How does the enteric nervous system fit into sentience?  2:03:49 Why is the electromagnetic field especially relevant to consciousness  2:05:25 Cosmological qualia  2:07:40 Hedonium shockwaves and Andres’ shirt  2:08:32 The perfume “Hedonium Shockwave” by Andres Gomez Emilsson  2:15:47 Using Hedonium Shockwave to explore consciousness  2:17:46 The future of art given the rise of AI models  2:22:42 Final thoughts from Andres 2:23:53Where to find and follow Andres