We are Living in a Simulation with Donald Hoffman

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1:11 Start your journey today at Next Levelsoul dot TV. The views opinions and statements expressed by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or positions of Next Level Soul, its host, or any of the companies they represent. Now let's dive in to today's episode. I like to welcome to the show, Don Hoffman.

1:33 How you doing, Don?

1:34 Very good? How about you, Alex? Thanks for having me.

1:37 Thank you so much for coming on the show.

1:38 My friend. I'm excited to talk to you about simulation theory, which is one of my favorite subjects in the world, to talk about spirituality, consciousness, quantum physics, all of it kind of mixed in a nice little big soup. So I'm going to start off with a very easy question. What is consciousness?

1:58 One way to think about it is something that psychologists call ostensive definition. Okay, So when you're teaching a eighteen month old some words for they're just starting to learn words, what do you do So mom or Dad is sitting there with you know, Chris, eighteen month old Chris, and there's a cat on a mat and it's time for Chris to learn the word cat. And so how do you define the word cat to Chris? Well, what you do is you point at the cat and you say cat, and you then expect your baby Chris to look and get it. And it's a miracle. They do, they look and they get it. Now, it's a miracle because if you point at the cat on the mat, you could referring to the ear, the color of the fur, the texture of the fur, the left paw and the mat,

2:58 the nose and the left the pa What is it that you're referring to, right, And yet they get it. So you're counting on there's some coordination between the parent and the child so that you can just point and say cat and they get it the first time. And and so this is called ostensive definition. And for someone who's never tasted cinnamon, how am I going to define cinnamon to them? The way I'm going to define cinnamon is I'm going to give them a piece of cinnamon, say taste it, and they say, my point and say that's cinnamon, and hope they get it right if they So that's how we define everything. We essentially define almost everything by pointing. Now, in mathematics, of course, once you have a certain number of pointers in mathematics, and then you

3:45 can start to do formulas and so forth. But in general, we all the important stuff in life that we know about we got it by pointing and then learning by a sensive definition. So so what I'm going to do with consciousness is the same thing as the parent does with the cat. Right. I have to point at something and say do you get it? And if you get it, you get it, and if you don't, you don't. So that's how you define these kinds of concepts. So what I can say is pure consciousness. If you sit alone and it's dark, and it's absolutely quiet, and you let go of all thoughts and you're just aware, you're just sitting there and aware, but not aware of anything, just aware of being aware. That's my pointer to consciousness. And

4:38 you either get it or you don't, right, just like you get cinnamon or rabbit or you don't. That's the point.

4:45 Yeah, it's interesting now, because but anyone who's meditated understands that. If who's meditated deeply or just understand has done it at a certain level, gets that. I mean, I understand exactly what you're saying. But for someone who hasn't meditated, how can you further point to another aspect of consciousness that they might grab onto.

5:05 There's consciousness, and then there's the contents of consciousness. If you want to know consciousness, the contents are easy. If I say, you know the taste of mint, that's a conscious experience. The smell of garlic, that's a conscious experience. Everybody can get that. If you're asking what is consciousness, then I have to give you little instructions sort of like if you want to taste what coffee is like, well, you have to take these coffee beans, grind them up, put some hot water on them, put it in a cup and wait until it goes down. Then drink it and that'll be what we mean by the taste of coffee.

5:36 And so there are certain procedures you have to go through. So for those who've never meditated, I think most people have had some point in their life where they're silent. But we can do that. If you haven't ever done that, you can just go in a dark room, turn out the lights, avoid all distractions, all sounds, sit there and let your thoughts go. And when you get to a space where there are no thoughts, even for just a second or two, it doesn't have to be a long time.

6:06 Just you're sitting there and nothing's going through your head for just a second or two, and you're just aware of that. You're aware of the gap. You're aware of that gap, aware of the awareness gap. Then that's what I'm pointing to you by consciousness, that's the direct experience of it. Now as a scientist, I want to then go on and do mathematical models. Right, I'm just okay, that's the thing I'm modeling. It's just like if I say, like, for example, in physics, we have Euclidean models of space time, or we have Einstein's models of space time. Now those are mathematics, right. You know, there's Newton's Euclidean approach, there's Einstein's hyperbolics space time approach. But if you ask me

6:50 what is space time? What is space and time? What is space time? I would say, okay, just here's my pointer. Look around you. There you see walls and furnisure, and so for what's between you and the walls and the furniture, that emptiness is what we mean by space or space time in Einstein's So that's going to be my direct pointer to you to say that's what we mean. And then you say, but well, that's not euclidion. I mean that there's no numbers. There, there's no hyper I mean, it's just my experience. Absolutely, your experience of space is your experience of space. What we do as scientist then is say, let's attach numbers to that experience and then see what we can do the And then you might say, well,

7:30 but the experience is far deeper than the numbers. Absolutely, the experiences transcends the numbers. And yet what we find is when we start to assign numbers and structures to our experiences and start to do mathematics with them, we get we get someplace like Einstein, with his mathematics, predicted that there are black holes. I mean his mathematics predicted.

7:54 He didn't like the prediction, but his mathematics predicted it even though he didn't like his own prediction. And so we find that even though the mathematics can only in some sense be a baby step in the direction of the reality that we that I pointed to, right, space or space time, whatever that is, is profound. Our mathematics is difficult, but it's not It scratches the surface of the profoundity of space time. And the same thing with our mathematical models of consciousness. So consciousness is very, very deep and profound, and but as scientists we have to humbly put down and say, well, here's here's my little my next baby step in the science of of of consciousness.

8:38 Well, let me ask you this.

8:39 Then quantum entanglement kind of throws space time out the window to my understanding. Please and please correct me if I'm wrong with the concept of quantum entanglement. Where there is two you know, two atoms to neutrons too. I forgot what the actual two units were. But if one changes here a thousand miles away, the one is affected.

9:02 Can you explain that from a mathematical standpoint or is there even an explanation, because now we're getting into the spooky physics that Einstein spoke about.

9:12 So yes, if you have two photons, for example, they can get entangled, or just two particles, they can be entangled. Their states can be entangled. And what that means is that if you measure, say the spin of one particle and the other particle is you know, many many light years away, say that's entangled. You know it instantaneously what the spin of the other one was, even though it's could be millions of light years away, so if it were measured, that's what that is what it would be.

9:47 And so there's that kind of non local in the sense of Einstein's space time requires that no signal propagates through space time faster than the speed of light three hundred thousand kilometers per second roughly.

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10:11 And so this is an instantaneous connection, which Einstein didn't like, right, but it turns out that the entanglement is true. It really is true, and as you say, it does show that there are limitations to the structure of space time as being a fundamental structure. It suggests that as we probe into physics more deeply, we're going to be looking for things beyond space time. And there's another pointer in that direction, and that is that Einstein's own equations, together with those of quantum theory, so it's gravitational theory and quantum theory together entail that space time ceases to have any operational meaning at at about ten to the minus thirty three centimeters ten to the minus forty three seconds.

11:01 But it means that if you try to use space time any further, you get nonsense. It just no experimental wall, and you run into a wall. You run into a wall. So space time and as not ten to the minus thirty three trillion centimeters, it's just ten to the minus thirty three centimeters. So we run into that wall where spacetime ceases to have any operational meaning at just ten to the minus thirty three centimeters. So many physicists now are saying space time is doomed. Like David Gross, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum chromodynamics, Amar Kanie Mettius at the Institute for Event Study, and many others have been saying, I think to them, it's just obvious. These are again all high energy theoretical physicists.

11:47 Physics is a very very broad field. The physicists who are saying space time is doomed are the experts in this particular area of physics who are the gurus of space time. High energy theore there's sort of the gurus of space time, and they're the ones that say it's over. We're looking for a deeper structure, and they're by the way, they're finding some We can talk about that if you want.

12:08 They're finding instructure, So.

12:10 That that was my next question is because space time is fundamental or was fundamental to our experience of this universe. I mean, between here and the moon, there is space, and it takes time to travel through that space. That's just fundamental in this materialistic world that we're.

12:29 In right now.

12:31 But now with quantum physics, it seems that the physics community in general is starting to there's so much evidence. Before it was a little bit here and there, but now the evidence is piling up so high that they can't ignore it anymore, and they're just like, no, this is over. We need to start looking for other areas.

12:49 And from my understanding, they're starting to open themselves up to not to the word spirituality, but they're opening up to things that just didn't would never even been spoken about fifty years ago, twenty years ago even, And they're opening up to these ideas like consciousness. Having a conversation with the scientists about consciousness is fairly new, would you agree, Well.

13:14 Yes, when I was a graduate student, it wasn't a kosher for us to talk about I was interested in it, but I knew I shouldn't talk about it.

13:20 Don't ask it in class don't ask that question in class, that's.

13:22 Right now, that would show that you weren't a serious scientist or thinker. But yeah, many high energy theoretical physicists are now saying we need to look beyond space time. Now. Most of them are looking for mathematical structures beyond space time, and they may have spiritual ideas as well, but there is actual rigorous work by these physicists being done where they're saying, Okay, space time is not fundamental. We need deeper structures beyond space time that then project back down to space time and give us back the physics that we know inside space time as a special case of a deeper physics. And they're finding they're succeeding in finding these new structures, so it's really quite impressive what they're doing.

14:15 They found something called the amplitudhedron, which allows them to compute scattering amplitudes. But like when particles smash into each other at the large hadron colider and then go spraying out, they look for the probability amplitudes for all those things happening. And when you do it inside space time, the math is mess hundreds of pages, like two glu on smashing into each other. Four glu on spad spraying out or six glow on sprang out hundreds of pages of algebra for one event, hundreds of pages of algebra to compute the probability for one event. Do it outside of space time three or four terms you can compute by hand, and then you see new symmetries. So what they're discovering is if you let go of space time. I mean,

14:50 space time is very useful, right, we use it all the time. I mean that's very very useful. But it's got limits ten to the minus thirty three cent readers and it's over. And when you then say, well, are there new structures not curled up inside space time? Not like string three, where these things are curled up inside extra dimensions of space time. Utterly outside of space time.

15:14 We have to think outside of space time. And you might go, well, how in the world can you do that, And here's how you do it. Space time, I'll suggest, is just a VR headset. We're using it as a VR headset. And what science has been doing we thought we were st getting a theory of everything. We thought we were studying the final we're closing in on the theory of everything. What we've discovered is all this time we thought we were just going after the final reality.

15:43 We were just studying our headset. We got really good at figuring out our headset, so good that then we figured out, holy smoke, space time is just a headset. It's not the truth, it's not the final reality. And so now now that we have all these tools, the rigors of science, no dogmatism, give me mathematical theories, make hard predictions, we go test them, no nonsense. That's brand new, like since Galileo roughly that we've had those credible tools and using those tools, they're so powerful that they told us that we're wrong about space time. We thought it was the final reality, and our own science told us, you're wrong. It's only a headset. So now we are.

16:31 But now we have the tools, and so we can use those tools and step outside the headset. We can take the headset off, not literally because we're sort of saddled with this headset we need, but because we have mathematical tools and we can do experiments, we can, as scientists move outside the headset and start to find these new structures like the decorator permutations and the amplitohedron and other structures that they're finding. So and this is only in the last ten years, only in the last ten years that these new structures have been found outside where we really say, okay, we have to go outside space time.

17:04 Hints of it. There's something in two thousand and five. They're something called the BCFW recursion relations that ed Written and his collaborators discovered, which were the big, big clue about these new structures outside space time. But we really, in some sense the real big first step was in twenty thirteen twenty fourteen with the publication of the amplitudhedron by Neimar Khaniehmet and his collaborators. So that's less than ten years. So this is all brand new stuff. And most physicists who are not high energy theoretical physicists don't know about this. They just don't know because this is a special branch of physics that focuses on this. So most quantum theorists don't.

17:41 Know this, right, So that was my next question is that there is from my understanding, there's physicists and then there's quantum physicists, and many times neither of the two shall meet because they are once really locked into more materialism, which is you know, older dogma like this is just the way it is for the last four or five hundred years. And then when quantum physics showed up, they they were like, no, no, no, we can't, we can't go into that world because it's going to disprove all this stuff that we just know is real. And now it seems that there's even something higher than.

18:12 Quantum physics, is what you're talking about, all these.

18:14 Other things that they're discovering at this other branch of physics that is really working within quantum physics or at least aiming towards it, but it's it's at least moving it had quantum physics haven't even moved in eighty or ninety years.

18:30 Really, is that? Is that a fair statement?

18:33 Well, the of course, there's the foundations were laid long ago, and then we got to with Fineman and his and his you know contemporaries, we got quantum field theory. But now what what what Many of the high energy theoretical physicists are saying, like like Nemar Kneyhamed are saying that not only is space time doing, but quantum theory is don't.

18:55 It's not fundamental either. It's not deep enough. And and what what he's looking for, and what many of them are looking for now, is a deeper framework in which space, time and quantum theory emerged together, joined together. And here's the idea. Is this if you when you look at quantum theory. Well, this is one idea. Now, what I'm about to say is my idea. I'm not putting this on anybody else. Okay, so this is well. I would say that Robert Specken's who's a physicist, is saying something very similar. But again, I'm not going to tire in front of these guys, you know, So if anything I say is stupid, it's on me, not on these guys. Okay, what I'm saying, And but I think that many other physicists would would agree, like Chris Fuchs who's cubism interpretations,

19:42 is that all the weirdness of quantum theory, so the no cloning theorem, entanglement, superposition, and many of these properties are simply due to incomplete information.

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20:09 And that ties into this headset idea. If all is space time is just a headset. What a headset only gives you incomplete information about what you're interacting with, right, Like when you play virtual reality games. I'm playing Grand theft thought on virtuality? What is the reality that I'm interacting with? Well, it's some supercomputer. How much information does my head my headset give you about that supercomputer? Not much.

20:32 It's lost a ton of There's this whole complicated universe out there that I'm really interacting with, and I have no clue about that. If I'm a typical VR user, I have no clue about the gigabytes of software and the diodes and resistors and the voltages and magnetic fields that are all I have no idea about that. I'm just turning a steering wheel and hitting the gas pedal and that's all I see. So so quantum mechanics, all the weirdness of quantum mechanics is just the symptom of the fact that it's tied to space time and space time as a headset, and the headset loses information just that simple. So that's all the weird. So there's nothing really deep about the weirdness of econom mechanics except to say, well,

21:15 you thought that you saw the truth, and you don't you see a headset which is giving you a veneer like a veneer sure over this complicated reality beyond it, Well, it's up to.

21:29 But it's basically what's going on now.

21:31 So if you take your headset off the reality we live in, there is so much more information in this room then can be jammed into that little that little headset that I have on. And if I walk out my door, then nature and this and you look up and there's so much processing power that would be needed to render all of this, which then brings me to my next question. I would love to hear your theory on simulation theory that we are all in this quote unquote matrix simulation. What is your theory behind that?

22:05 So Nick Bostrom and others are quite famous for this kind of theory and the assumption I should spell it out just a little bit what version I'm talking about. They typically will say, you know that you and I and the world we see around us, we think it's the truth, but it really isn't. It's just there's some computer programmer, some pimply head kid with their laptop in another reality that has programmed this all up and we're just a simulation in their little laptop. But then you can recurse that back. But that pimply head programmer is not the final reality, because there's another pimpley head programmer yet, a deeper reality with their laptop that's programming them. So we can go this all the way back, and you

22:48 go all the way back, there's funny some laptop and some programmer at the fundamental reality. That's the start of this whole thing. So probably say the probability that worth the base, given that there could be thousands of these, probably that what are the ones at the base is zero, so we're probably in a simulation that's sort of the Now.

23:03 What they say then is that the base reality they assume is a physical kind of space time reality, so there's still a physical framework, and they're assuming that a properly programmed computer can generate conscious experiences or the illusion of conscious experiences. And to date, many of my colleagues who are studying consciousness believe that. But when you ask them, then there are many many theorists. So there's integrated information theory, there's global workspace theory, orchestrated collapse of quantum states of neurono microtubules. There's attentional schema theories. They are higher order theories, first order theory. There's there's tons and tons of theories, but and all of them, in one way or another

23:49 are saying, we can't if you give me certain functional properties, right kind of functional properties, there are certain kinds of physical systems, then I can give you conscious experience is out of that taste of chocolate, smell of garlic and so forth. Great. So that's that's what they claim that they can do. That we are scientific theories will start with some functional description of some system. And they're always thinking of some kind of physical system, maybe neurons or some circuits and an artificial intelligence system or something like that, and then we will give you conscious experiences emerging out of it, or the illusion of conscious experiences emerging out of it. So I I and these are my friends

24:29 and colleagues, and they're brilliant, and they've been I mean, they are, they are brilliant. But when I ask them and these are my friends, you know that's okays. You know, like Stuart Hamrov with orchary collapse of quantum states of normal micro tuba's or julo Tononi for I t great, so been at it for several decades. So what what conscious experience have you been able to show? I mean the functional structure for like the taste of chocolate, or meant, can you get what which? Which one? Which one? There are millions of colors, millions. I presume by now you have hundreds of thousands of conscious experiences that you've given me.

25:04 You've written down the functional thing that must be the taste of men, the functional thing that must be this shade of red. You must have hundreds of thousands of the So just give me one zero zero. Nobody has anything. So there are so the It's so bad that that Steven Pinker in his twenty eighteen book Enlightenment Now said, you know what we may have to do is just stipulate that, you know, there's this functional pattern he was talking about, I think the global workspace theory. We'll have to stipulate that this conscious experience it corresponds to this state of the global workspace. Well, latitude is you know, you're stipulating the conscious experiences, you're stipulating the physical stuff,

25:46 you're stipulating the functional stuff. It's all stipulation. There's no explanation going on here. So I say all that to say that the now to get back to your question, the simulation theory is assuming that the computer and functional properties of the computer can actually give us conscious experiences or the illusion of conscious experiences. And there's not a shred of evidence in terms of successful scientific theories that that's feasible. There's nothing on the table that says you should believe that.

26:22 Is there a world where in the future, maybe in your lifetime, maybe in mind, maybe in my kid's lifetime, where they'll be physicists and theorists that are going to be cross pollinated with spiritualists, because it's the only thing left to kind of go after. Because once you keep running into walls with these theories and math, math eventually also runs into walls because you haven't cracked it yet.

26:53 But when you.

26:54 Start getting into spirituality, which is what the ancients were talking about, and we can talk about the ancients in them in it about it seems that they are transcending reality. And there is proof of different types of transitions of realities. You know, there're psychedelics that take you into different realms, different realities. There's so many things that are unexplainable by physics, but yet there is something happening. So to find a physicist or theorist that can bridge between the two and finally open things up in a way that one or the other can't do by themselves. I think that's where we're all going.

27:35 Would you agree, yes, I think that the spiritual traditions have been saying that space time isn't fundamental for thousands.

27:42 Of years the beta tex, yeah, of course.

27:44 And the scientists are coming to that party late. We're late to that party. But the high energy theoretical physicists are saying, yes, space time is not fundamental, space time is doomed. So I think that humanity we've had the spiritual traditions the scientific and they've tended since Galileo and his imprisonment and so forth by Church, there's been a little bit of antipathy between the two and distrust and so forth. Well, I think both have a piece of the picture and both have a problem. So the piece of the picture that the scientists have is the scientific method we know now to do. Mathematical models have hard nosed standards. No bs, give me an experiment, give me the math, we go test it and so forth. So

28:29 that's that's that's important. They've assumed that space time is fundamental. They've been physicalists. That's been a useful hypothesis for a few centuries. But now it's over, and it's what most scientists don't know. It's over. It's high energy theoretical physicists who are spreading the word it's over and we need to go. So but now the spiritual traditions are there.

28:55 They're saying, hey, we've been out there beyond space time for thousands of years. Welcome to the party. You know, your light comers. But now what the spiritual traditions tell us, they say, it's very very important. None of our writings are the truth. They're pointers to the truth, and they're very very careful to say that the taw to Ching says, the taw that can be spoken of is not the true taw. And if you understand that, then it's fine.

29:20 It's to read the rest of the book. If you don't understand that, you'll think that you're seeing the truth. No, you're getting a pointer. Just like I started off with a sense of definition, and partly for this very reason, I pointed to consciousness in a certain way. I can't unless you don't If you don't know consciousness is yourself, I can't help you. If you've never tasted mint, I can't help you. I can give you a piece of mint and let you taste it and then say that is meant and I point to it. So that's in the sense that the spiritual traditions are pointing to the spiritual realm. If you don't experience it yourself, no word will get you there. But what the spiritual traditions are missing is mathematical precision in their pointers. They understand that

30:03 their words are pointers, but the mathematical pointers tell you their limits.

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30:20 Einstein's mathematics for space time tells you that that pointer or the space time pointer, falls apart at ten to the minus thirty three centimeters and ten to the minus forty three seconds. That is an antidote to dogmatism, and it tells you you need a new and deeper pointer. We haven't had that in the spiritual traditions, and what's been the result dogmatism fighting to the death people of one religion killing people of another religion because your pointer I don't agree with your pointer. I believe my pointer is the final truth. Well wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. Your leader told you right up front, it's just a pointer. The Tao that can be spoken is not the true tao. It's not worth killing people over pointers.

31:10 So that's where the spiritual traditions have failed. Their pointers are not rigorous, and so they lead to dogmatism. They invite dogmatism, not in the ad, not the leaders, but the followers who don't really understand that the pointers are pointers.

31:29 I mean, I mean, look, we could you know, we don't have to get into the wars that are going on right now, but there are specific dogmaic traditions that are creating the wars that we that are going on as we speak. You know, I think it was Yogananda, the Great Yogi, who said about Jesus. I've said this so many times, I'll say it. I guess one of my favorite quotes. He goes Jesus died on the cross in one day, but his teachings have been crucified for the last two thousand years. And and it's so true that if you go back to the origin of any of these spiritual leaders, they are they say these things, they're pointers. But then it's the apostles, the followers, they are the ones that start constructing this dogmatic, you know, system,

32:20 because they can't grasp at the level that they were at. They were at such a higher level of evolution or vibration or whatever you want to call it, that they just can't grab they can't grab on to these ideas. I mean, Jesus is a perfect example. But then so are many you know, from Buddha to Muhammad to so many different spiritual leaders from around the world. They all eventually go to dogma. And that's one thing I didn't understand when I was growing up.

32:47 I'm like, so, we do you mean this?

32:49 So I'm so, I'm the I'm right right, because I'm Catholic obviously, so I I mean, I'm a recovering Catholic by the way. So I was like, so, I'm like, but then even as a child, like, so the billion and a half Buddhists they're all going to Hell, or the Muslims are all going to Hell or tho zoe Aastrians are all going to Hell or God forbid. If how about there's some poorchemuck in the middle of the congo somewhere never.

33:15 Heard of Jesus.

33:17 Is he going to go to hell? Like it started to like just like your mathematics, like space time, it just starts to break apart. That doesn't make any sense, any logical sense. So then this other theory of everything that I've come now I haven't come up with, but that we're all one, that we're all part of a human consciousness, a quantum field, if you will. And there's a lot of people talking about the quantum field and how certain things are possible like entanglement theory possibly through the quantum field. That's space, that what's going on in that space, And I've seen models now I think it was Neil de grass Tyson was showing it in one of his interviews, that space around planets, it's like a

34:06 flat space and the planet pulls down and that's the gravity. So it's kind of like the ball going in like around. That's how the gravity. So space is not space. It's a feel that's being manipulated by gravity and other things.

34:21 It stutch it.

34:21 It makes your head hurt, Donald, Right, So I agree that what you said about the pointers of the religious groups that typically the originators of you know of Christianity or Buddhism and so forth, we're at a different level. They were not dogmatic. They understood that the talent it can be spoken of and is not the true talent.

34:43 But the rest of us typically don't get that. We get dogmatic about it. And what science brings to the table is a language language of mathematics, where the mathematics itself tells you this only goes to ten to the minus thirty three cent and then it stops, and then you have to look for something else. So don't get dogmatic about space time it tells you.

35:07 Now.

35:07 Of course, scientists are people. They are as inclined to be dogmatic as anybody else. Science as a social institution and the demand for mathematically precise theories is the antidote to dogmatism. So that's what I think science can offer to the spiritual traditions is a mathematically precise thing. Now, the notion of quantum fields turns out the high energy theoretical physicists who are going beyond space time are saying quantum field theory was, of course an important breakthrough, and very you know what, Fimen in his contemporaries gave us a great gift, and it's been useful for several decades for you know, eighty years or so. Well, yeah, I guess nineteen twenty, well that was new quantum feld filemen.

36:01 Probably in the forties, nineteen forties, forties, fifties worth the quantum field theory came out, so, you know, almost age seventy or eighty years. But it turns out that the quantum fields introduce unnecessary redundancy. And no one's ever seen a field a quantum field. We see particles. Fields are a construct to try to help us compute things like scattering opportunites. But Nemar Kani Med for example, is saying, basically, quantum fields are you know, sort of a clue. They're they're the fields. Probably they're getting in the way when you use these fields in space time. They make the mathematics unnecessarily complicated. Two glu ons in for six gluons out, hundreds of pages algebra, you don't need all that. That's

36:51 that's because we're using quantum fields. It's a bad computational apparatus. Time. It had its place, but we've we've gone beyond it. Now we can do that computation in three or four terms. And see symmetries that are true of the scattering data that you can't see in space time. So I mean quantum fields were a necessary step in our growing pains to try to get to a better theory. But I think frankly that the notion of fields will fall by the wayside, and a certainly as an ontologically interesting thing that fields just but the idea of things beyond space time and connections beyond space time that's going to stay.

37:30 So that's the sense in which I think you were using fields talking about some kind of connections. Absolutely, but quantum fields are a clue and the notion of connections beyond space time that can still hold. And that I agree with you when you said we're all deeply one.

37:49 I mean that's at the end of the day. That is the truth.

37:52 That is the one truth.

37:53 That's not a point that I agree, that's not a pointer. That is the truth. We are all one.

37:58 If you look at the planet from space, you could just see we're all in this together. We are all one. You know what's really interesting to me is I've been seeing what's going on with AI in translations, and I just saw when I started to see the power of what's coming up, and it's already here. But really we're probably about six months to a year of this conversation where translations will be so easy to do to video that it's going to open up this world in a way that we really don't understand yet. But then I just came back from Europe where I was using an app to communicate with my Uber driver and have full conversations with my Uber driver with a Google Translate. But then I was like, well, wait a minute, in my lifetime,

38:52 there will be a little machine that will put in my ear and that as soon as I speak, it will come out out in the language through the speaker of the person I'm hearing, and I would hear it will be instantaneous to the point where we are all becoming one this limitation of language and not culture. Culture of course is still you know, everyone has their culture, but this globalization that we've been eching towards, and you know, from where we were in the twenties of last of the nineteenth century to where we are in the twenties now, how much more globalized we are, that we are really dependent on each other, and the Internet really opened that all up for all of US. I do see that that's going to be a world where language is not

39:35 going to be an issue anymore and the miscommunications won't be as as prevalent as they are now. Would you agree, No.

39:44 No, I absolutely agree. I think that the technology is moving will probably have that within a few years, and it'll it will help bridge the gap. I think that will do something to help us understand each other better and not discriminate against each other. It's hard when you can understand somebody at all. It's much easier to sort of put them off and say they're unlike me and and and not treat them as an equal. But when you actually start to hear very human things coming back to you from them, then you realize, oh, no, that's another person of feelings just like me, and maybe different beliefs than me.

40:19 But we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And you know what, as you you know, and the thing I think this is only from someone who can travel a little bit outside of.

40:36 Their own home country.

40:38 I mean you could travel within the country, and there's very different people within our country, the US, without question, you know, from different area and different regions. But when you start to go around the world a bit and start going to different countries, you just start to realize, like they they just want happiness for their kids, They want to be safe, they just want they want to be happy in general. They want to live their lives in peace. I mean, we all have this in common, and it's getting I think that that those walls are starting to come down and more and more.

41:10 Again, the Internet.

41:11 Opened us up in a way that was a model I always I always said that. I always said this, and I'm sure I'm not the first to say it that the Internet is kind of the big, the rudimentary, kind of barbaric example of what the ancients called the Akashak records, where all information is all connected at all time. We're, you know, right now, we're starting to get close to being able to just say, hey, Siri, what is quantum physics?

41:41 Can you explain it to me as a three year old and just oh chat a jat chipet, can you explain it to me? We're starting to get to that place. Let me ask you this question, though, what is your what is your understanding of the Acastak records Akashak field if you will, because I had doctor Irwin Alaslow Noble Well nominee on who's written multiple books about the Akashak records, the Acacak field and how that is, what that connects us all. I'd love to hear if you have any points on that.

42:11 Right. So, as a scientist, what I want are mathematical models about as much as I can about the one connecting consciousness. And I've got a paper called Fusions of Consciousness. It came out in January, so people, it's free. So if you just google Fusions of Consciousness, you can get the paper for free and look at our mathematical model.

42:31 And but this gets back now to the start of our conversation, which is even the mathematics, precise mathematics and all the things that we can prove, and it's a lot is just a baby step. It's trivial. What I've done, what my team has done, what all of us who are doing mathematical models the consciousness have done, is trivial compared to the real thing, right, And and it's it's in principle, we can ever get a theory of everything in science. Science says the best pointer is that mankind has ever come up with. But it's obvious that a scientific theory says, grant me these assumptions. If you grant me these assumptions, then I can explain all this wonderful stuff.

43:17 But if you don't give me those assumptions, then I can't explain anything. And notice the theory doesn't explain its assumptions. It assumes the assumptions. It doesn't explain them, it assumes them, so it doesn't explain everything we say. But of course I can get a deeper theory that explains those assumptions.

43:31 Yes you can. And that deeper theory has its own assumptions that it doesn't explain. So there is no theory of everything, and there can never be. And in fact, science in a technical sense will only know probability zero of the truth. But it's very important what we're doing. We should continue to do it even though it's measured zero.

43:52 It's clear that we do get insights, and some theories are better than others. Einience theory is better than Newton's, and Newton's theory is better than almost anything that you and I could come up with. Right, that's fair enough. So it's clear that even though there's no scientific theory of everything, not all theories are created equal, some are better than others, and we should put our efforts in to get good scientific theories and to be completely humble and say, our best scientific theories are trivial compared to the reality, to the deep acatic field, if you will, the deep one consciousness. If you want to know that deep one consciousness intellectually, yes, our mathematical models might be

44:36 the best thing that you can come up with right now. If you want to know it more deeply, then my pointer is this, You are that consciousness, and so am I. And the way to understand know it is to let go of any conceptions of who I am. If you sit in silence and in darkness and the goal of all thoughts, and just ask yourself the question who am I?

45:01 And then let go of any thoughts, no answers, and just sit there. That's your answer. You are and being. But it's a nonconceptual knowledge. You know it directly, just like you know the taste of mint by tasting mint. You know the deep, profound truth of reality just by sitting in silence and tasting it, so to speak, by being it.

45:28 And that is why these masters who walk the earth all almost always especially coming from the East, spoke about meditation, spoke about medication. Prayer is another example of meditation in many ways, just being silent, being quiet within yourself is something that I've seen again and again and again even in my own studies and experiences.

45:54 Now, because you are the truth, you are the truth that transcends any statement of truth. That's what that's that's why that that's the case. And that's also the problem that we have is that we don't recognize everybody else as just the same truth as I am. I have my words, you have your words, and they're different, and so then we fight over the words. Where when you let go of the words and you realize I'm face to face with the reality that I am and you are the one reality.

46:22 But Donald, we need a middleman to be between us and the ultimate consciousness, don't Well, yeah, that's augmatic right right.

46:32 We neither Jesus or a priest or both between us. Whereas it's interesting in the Bible at one point, you know, the Pharisees, we're picking up stones to stone Jesus, and Jesus said, you know, why are you guys going to kill me with stones? And they said, well, because you claim to be the son of God. And Jesus said, well, in the Psalms it says I have said you are gods, and all of you are sons, are the most high.

47:00 Jesus said, if if he calls them gods to whom the word of God came, why are you trying to stone me for just saying I'm the son of God. But what Jesus is saying is to each one of them, you are God. That's what he's saying, you are God. He couldn't have been clearer, and and he quoted from from the book of Psalms. So but but of course you don't get that. You know, my father was a Protestant Christian minister for for many years, by the way, you know, he was Protestant, so we all believe Catholics weren't going to make it to heaven, right, so it was there was.

47:29 I mean, obviously all this, all the different sects of Christianity is ridiculous.

47:35 It is so of them, it was.

47:37 And it's that kind of ridiculousness though, that that when you actually look at jesus words and he's basically saying all of us are children of God. What doesn't mean to be a child. A child of a human is human. A child of God is God, and and and so when we say we're children of God, what Jesus, what we're saying is all of us are God. What we are is God looking at itself through an avatar. There's yeah, my avatar, there's your avatar, there's Jesus avatar, there's Buddhas.

48:11 These are all just avatars. It's the one infinite intelligence looking at itself through different avatars. So your little baby, your ten year old child, your wife, your husband, they're all the infinite intelligence looking at itself through an avatar.

48:31 I I with the conversation of simulation theory. There's also game theory that gets tossed on there sometimes too. I've had some game theorists on the show talking about simulation theory through a gamer's point of view. And I always use the example of Link and Zelda. You know, like when back in the day, and that's when I gained the late eighties, early nineties. So you know, you are Link, Link is your avatar, and you continuously go through the game, and then when you turn the corner you get killed.

49:04 Oh there was an orc there. But then the next time you go through, you know that there's going to be an orc there, so you're prepared for it. Well, that's just the evolution of the soul. That is the evolution of life you learn along the way. So and then even video games inherently proof reincarnation again and again because it's.

49:23 Multiple lives to come back and keep trying the thing again and again and again.

49:27 So but the question is, though, if that's the player, who is the one with the controller playing the game, because just like us when we're playing a video game, we really it's almost irrelevant what's happening in the game. Like our avatar can get ripped apart a thousand times by a boss of the level, and we're just like, oh, let's do it again. Yep, let's do it again. Oh let's figure it out. Oh let's do it again. But to that poor avatar, it really hurts.

50:00 It's like it's a.

50:01 Tortuous event, but for the player. So that would say then then when you look at that, like, well, what we're going through on this earth and this experience, there is an over soul. A player, the soul itself, the higher self, whatever words you want to call it, is not playing the game. But observing the game. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this kind of game theory idea.

50:27 We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.

50:37 Yes, I think that there is this infinite, timeless, one intelligence, one consciousness that is what you are, and that's what you actually tap into. When you go into silence and let go of all thoughts you are, you realize that that's what you really are. You really aren't just this this guy that we waste so much, has this color hair and lives and so and so those are just your avatar descriptions. And so there is the question why would the one timeless intelligence do this? Why? Why?

51:16 What?

51:17 What's the point of it? And why all these wars and fighting and and and religions where people are killing each other and dog wittism and the whole bit. What why? Why? Why does it do that? Why does it? And of course the answer is I don't know. But but here's one possibility is that in some sense, the one intelligence, the one ultimate consciousness is transcends any form. It's formless.

51:43 But how how do you know yourself? How? How how some sense does it know itself? Well? It knows itself by taking different perspectives on itself. So, and that's what an avatar is. It's it's a projection of itself. It's saying, well, let me look at myself from this point of view, and let me actually get so wrapped up in that point of view that I don't even know it's a point of view. I think it's the truth. So then I really absorb that point of view, and then let me wake up. Then I'll wake up and realize, No, I spent seventy years of my life thinking I was just this body, and then I woke up and I but so I realized, I'm not that as complicated as this world is. And you know, the universe's billions of year.

52:36 There's the moon, there's the sun. I mean, look at the planets and the flowers and incredible microbiology, all the sciences and all that stuff. And I completely transcend all of that. All of that is trivial compared to who I am. When you wake up, you realize all of that is complicated. I'm not that. I transcend that. So now I go, holy smoke, what am I I'm not?

53:00 I mean, So that's what consciousness is up to. Putting on an avatar, allowing itself to get lost completely identified with the avatar, really absorbing that point of view, and then recognizing it's only a point of view and waking up. So that's my best guess about what's going on here.

53:24 It's a very interesting point of view because, let me ask you, I've spoken to a lot of near death experiences, yes, probably over one hundred at this point in the game, also spiritual masters, yogis and so on, from all walks of life. This concept that I'm about to ask you about is a concept that was introduced to me on the show, and it's fascinated me, and I've asked all sorts of my guests, from near death experiences to channels to most to the spiritual masters I've had.

53:57 On the show.

53:58 Is that we've heard of the concept of reincarnation, that we have past lives, we have future lives, we have this current life, and that we die and we keep evolving and we keep coming back, and the concept of karm and all this kind of stuff. But the concept that was thrown to me, and I find it so fascinating, is that there is no past life, there is no future life, that all the lives are happening at the same time, because there is no time on the quote unquote other side this other realm that we're from, where this consciousness that you speak of lives, or is it lives like he has a house. But this concept of everything happening all at once, and that if I do something in this life, it quote unquote ripples back to

54:50 my time as a Roman soldier, and it also ripples forward to my time as the president of a small country in twenty fifty twenty five fifty, all at the same time. When I say ripples, it's because rippling within my own soul's evolution. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this theory.

55:13 Yes, we can actually make it sort of mathematically precise using the language in our paper Fusions of Consciousness. So and we actually talk about this your very point at the very end of that paper. And what we point out is that we have this mathematical model of the dynamics of consciousness outside of space time. And of course, the disclaimer, as always is, of course it's just a theory, is not the truth. It's just a baby step, but it's an interesting baby step in this mathematical model. There need be no arrow of time. So the era of time that we have is the erro of entropy. Entropy increases with time, right and always increases with time. Second, love therm dynamics. In our dynamics of conscious beyond space time,

56:00 the mark of dynamics can be what's called a homogeneous markup chain, and the row there is entropy, but it doesn't increase, so there is no entropic air of time.

56:08 But it's a theorem.

56:11 If you look at that dynamics that's timeless from any projection you project it anyway, so you're losing little information. The projected dynamics will be a dynamics, but it will have an aero of time as an artifact of the projection. This the theorem. So in other words, what you were talking about informally, we can actually write it down as a theorem that you can prove in three or four lines and show that the aarrow of time that we experience now is not an insight at all into the nature of the reality beyond our avatar. It's entirely an artifact, completely, an artifact of the projection, not an insight at all into the truth beyond it now from an evolutionary point of view. Right here, you know evolution, organisms competing for

57:01 limited resources, trying to mate and so forth. And these are limited resources. What's the most fundamental limited resource?

57:10 Time?

57:11 If I don't get food in time, I die. If I don't mate in time, I don't reproduce. If I don't get the next breath of air and time, I'm dead. My heart doesn't beat in time, I'm dead. So time is the fundamental limited resource. Now, evolution of nancial selection is an incredibly beautiful theory. I think it's I mean, I published papers on it. I've worked on evolutionary game theory.

57:32 It's incredible. Inside our spacetime headset, there is no better theory about biological systems in biological evolution than the theory of evolution of natural selection. But space time is just a headset, It's just a virtual reality. Is not the truth, and that includes the theory of evolution. Evolution is the best theory inside the headset. Nothing can beat it right now.

57:54 But all of evolution of natural selection is an artifact of the projection from outside. None of it is a deep insight into the nature of reality. So there's this timeless, infinite intelligence. The consciousness looking at itself from a projection, and when it sees itself from the projection, it looks like evolution of natural selection. It looks like all this competition fighting for resources looks like an hero of time, and all of that is not true of the deeper reality.

58:26 All of it is mathematically in an artifact of the projection.

58:31 So, if I may again quote Paramahansa Yogananda, he said so eloquently, since she were saying projection, He's like that we are all so focused on the screen and all of the violence and the action and the love and the drama of it all, like you were just saying. He goes, but the point is not to focus on the screen, is to look behind you and focus where the light is coming from the projector. That's right, eloquently in his.

59:02 Yoga yoga ways.

59:04 Such an eloquent explanation for a lot of what you were just saying. Would you agree?

59:10 I think that that's an excellent metaphor to get the idea across that you're not the video on the screen. You are the screen and the light that can show any possible video. My laptop, I'm looking at you on right now, I see a video on it, but the laptop itself could show countless different images, countless, not just the one I'm showing. And that's who you are. You are the infinite potential that could see anything.

59:35 I heard an explanation of this idea of everything happening all at once, which was so beautiful, and it was television, he goes. I think it was he or she said to me, Well, if you're looking at a television screen right now, you turn on your TV and you're watching the football game, Well, even if you just stay in the realm of the football game, you know that there's twenty six other games being played at the same time on but you can't see them, but they're happening. And also, but there's also episodes of Seinfeld reruns. There's also episodes of Friends. There's also episodes of All in the Family, There's the Sopranos. There's all these other shows going on and movies going on, all at the same times. But

1:00:17 your focus is on that game right now. But you have to understand that all this other stuff is happening at the exact same moment that you are watching this. So I was like, well, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Would you agree, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show.

1:00:44 That that's right. It makes sense if we're stuck with our little headset that has an erow of time. When we transcend that, then they just all exist, right, It's just that's right. The very notion of time and simultaneity then then away, and which is really quite quite interesting. So we you talked about incarnate reincarnation. So I've I've incarnated into this body, and coustouness is incarnated into your body.

1:01:13 But also it incarnates into religious doctrines. Because if I'm willing to kill you for my Protestantism where you're Catholic, Catholicism or whatever, I've identified myself with that doctrine. So we and then you know, every time I get involved in something else and give it, you know, sort of identify with it, I've reincarnated into that. So we're we're incarnating ourselves all the time into stuff when we we don't realize that we're the consciousness that transcends any thing that we see, anything that we believe we are.

1:01:47 You know what's really interesting when you said that something just popped into my head is that throughout history known history that we that we have records of, is that there is these these these dogmatic ideologies that have been throughout humanity, throughout just throughout time, where at a moment, I would have killed you if you didn't believe in Raw, I would have killed you, if you didn't believe in Zeus, I would have killed you, if you didn't believe in the and but those kind of go away and we evolved to something else. Even the dogma, even the ideologies are evolving.

1:02:27 So like Raw.

1:02:28 Not that I'm an expert on Raw, this on god or or I forgot the other Egyptian before Raw, there was the other Egyptian gods, Horace, and not so on.

1:02:38 I'm not an expert in any of them.

1:02:40 But it seems that with these newer meaning within the last two thousand years, they seem to be attached to more spirituality, that there was an actual person that was preaching these ideas, whether it Buddha, Jesus, you know, even the Yogananda and so on and so forth, that these ideas. It seems that even those things are evolving, and humanity is starting to let go of the things that that doesn't serve them anymore. Maybe one of the reasons why we are going through this uprising of war now and of hate, and it's been going on for the last ten to fifteen years. Really, it's been going on for a long time, but it really seems to have been bubbling up over the last decade more so than it was when I was growing up. It was just different

1:03:28 when I was growing up. And it's like maybe the final hopefully the final realization of humanity to just go that doesn't serve us anymore.

1:03:39 We don't want to do this anymore.

1:03:41 We need to evolve beyond this.

1:03:44 Would you agree, Yeah, I would say that. Well, there's a couple of parts to it. I would agree that our purpose is to wake up, and waking up involves realizing that the people I hate are in fact myself, and that you know, in Christianity, Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself. Well, that's because your neighbor is yourself, and true love is recognizing that fact that you don't really love until you really understand that the person in front of you is you, not like you, is you being a different avatar. When you really understand that that is you, your neighbor is yourself. That's the foundation of real love. Now, whether it seems to be getting worse now.

1:04:41 Stephen Pinker at Harvard has data suggesting that there are bumps in the road, but humanity's homicide rate has been declining. It was far higher per capita back in aboriginal times than it is. You've got clear data. So we are experiencing a terrible bump right now, and you know, but but there's been a decline. I think that my own experience is that there are a lot of people who are waking up, but it is still still a tiny, tiny fraction. But my hope is that we see right now still the scientific paradigm is a physicalist one, and in the popular mind and in most of most scientists mind, the space time physicalist framework of reality is still what is dominating most people when science so no spiritual tragism

1:05:49 is saying no, that's not right. Physicalism is fault. But they've not had the beef, right, they've not. I mean, what technology can they make. It's the scientists who gave us the laptops and the technology that you I are using no spiritual form, but in physical form, in the first form. But that's what's going to you know, really persuade people. Right, the scientists can give us all this technology, right of course, Well, scientists are the ones who then realize space time is doomed and actually start getting mathematical models of a reality beyond space time that starts to smell like consciousness. I think that will really be the stepping stone for a lot more people to wake up.

1:06:30 And when scientists then actually start going after that with mathematical precision, I think the wake up process will so then there'll be more they'll give more tools now to the spiritual traditions. They'll all of a sudden have these pointers that are much more clear. And also I think that some of the pointers that spiritual diditions have are are wrong, and we'll find them. We'll actually be able to find them and say that that's just a bad pointer.

1:06:57 These are that's a good pointer over here, and that's but we can actually evolve that pointer. So I see a back and forth between science and spirituality that will not in the next decade, not maybe not in the next maybe not in my lifetime, but but but I see it coming. Where scientists realize spacetime is doomed, there's a realm beyond space time, and as we study that, we begin to realize, oh, we're actually just discovering ourselves and we're just avatars here in space time.

1:07:23 Well let me I would argue with you though, that that the spiritual space, the spiritual traditions, especially the Eastern traditions that are older, much much older than the Western, that their technology that they gave us was more of inner technologies.

1:07:42 Sure, sure, the.

1:07:44 Meditation, yoga, talte, ching, these ideas, these philosophies are inner technologies where science has given us amazing outer technologies. But that's right, they both can't come be. You can't do one without the other in many ways. There in many ways. So there I wanted to clarify that, and I want I don't know if you would agree with me or not.

1:08:08 Well, absolutely, the Yeah, the meditation in particular is an incredibly important technology. So I was just using the technology in terms of what would persuade people. Right, I've got I've got my iPad because of the scientists and their physicalists. So maybe physicalism is better than this religious stuff is sort of the idea pointing too. But I agree that there's meditation is an important technology, But when the scientists who are giving you iPads and iPhones are also saying, our science seems to say that space time isn't fundamental and maybe consciousness is. Then people will go, well, shoot, the scientists are saying, so well, maybe I better check into this, Maybe I should try meditation.

1:08:44 You know.

1:08:45 And the point, yeah, I see your point, because I completely see your point. I think it's going to be two different kinds of wake up calls. I think the the person who is more physically inclined is going to wait for those cues, and the people who are more spiritual inclinent are going to wake up from the more spiritual cues. I think you're right, though, I think both thought.

1:09:09 I'm thinking it's one pill for both. I think it's gonna be multiple, multiple different areas. And by the way, in this and it's not even gonna be two. I mean a movie like The Matrix, I mean that movie Woke Up.

1:09:21 It brought simulation theory with Kung Fu, but brought simulation.

1:09:25 They brought simulation theory into the zeitgeist there, you know, And now Marvel is bringing the multiverse and parallel realities to billions of people around the world, where yes, those ideas have been around, even even in in general culture, but not the way it is now. I mean people are having conversations, deep conversations about multi the multiverse, and parallel realities and the Mendela effect and these kind of ideas because of these other these po culture or stories.

1:10:01 I mean, look, if it wasn't for HG. Wells, I don't know if we would have gotten to the moon. You know how he inspired so many scientists to go into science because before HG. Wells, there was not really a conversation about those kind of things. I might be wrong, but generally speaking, he's one of the more popular ones that really brought it out of people. Would you agree.

1:10:23 We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.

1:10:33 Well I think that many people were the young people were stimulated by these imaginative novels or movies that they saw and know I was stimulated. I was thirteen years old when the first restaurnauts landed on the moon. Pobo thirteen follow blended on the moon and it completely inspired me. It made me want to be, you know, a scientist, and so forth, and so novels, movies, you know, real accomplishments by by brave people going to the moon risking their lives. The yeah, they wake up with a generation and say, oh, yeah, I want to do that too, or even like when President Kennedy said, you know, we want to by the end of this decade to send a man to the moon and bring them home safely.

1:11:14 You know, absolutely, I mean that's a clarion call to a generation and makes you work real hard with nineteen sixties technology. Boy, those guys were brave.

1:11:24 No no, no, no, no, no, no.

1:11:26 I've been I've been to I've been to the Kennedy Space Center, I've been to the Houston Space Center. And when you look at the stuff, you're like, are you out of your mind?

1:11:33 Those guys had they they had.

1:11:36 They were with pencils, they were doing the math with pencils and pens on paper, and they're just like, hold on, I got to get this this algebra equation done.

1:11:44 Okay, yeah, I think we could get him back if we do this. Like that is truly insane.

1:11:51 They were incredibly brave and.

1:11:54 Or stupid or stupid either one.

1:11:57 Well then some of them died, yeah, exactly know.

1:12:00 Many many died, but the line of insanity and genius are are very close together.

1:12:07 That's right, and brave, but they someone had to be brave, godless to be John Glenn to do the first around the earth.

1:12:16 Yeah, exactly.

1:12:17 Well, let's talk about the poor dog that was sent or the monkey.

1:12:22 The monkey, it's fascinating. Let me ask you this question.

1:12:27 A lot of the things we're talking about have been to discuss in for example, the Vedic text or ancient text thousands and thousands of years, these theories, these ideas. Where do you think they got this information? I mean, because we just figured it out a little while ago in the West quote unquote, but these Eastern Vedic texts or older texts that are six seven thousand years old, we're talking about simulation theory, the idea of maya, the idea of the great illusion, the dream even well, I mean a little early, a little later like Plato and yeah, in the Cave, you Knowlry of the Cave, these ideas, but specifically even older that predates the West, with some of these Eastern traditions, where do you think this information

1:13:23 came from? Because they didn't have the materialistic basis that the West has now.

1:13:29 I would love to hear your thoughts.

1:13:31 That's a good question. I think that they didn't have the technology, like right, right now, I can talk about a virtual reality headset and and people say, oh yeah, and you sort of get it. Plato had to use the cave and say, well, I've got a fire and I've got objects, and you're seeing the shadows of these objects against the cave wall, and people say, okay, I can yeah, I can see. The shadow is not the real object. It's just a shadow of the object. And so maybe what I'm perceiving is just shadows of reality.

1:14:03 And I think that many people when they sit down and just when sometimes you do have illusions, right, visual illusions like if you stick a stick in water, look at the part above water and part in the water, it looks like the stick is broken, and as it bends right, and you go, well, okay, that's not right.

1:14:24 The stick isn't broken, and yet I'm seeing it broken. And when you do so, I guess a lot of people may have seen those kinds of things. And then then or like if you're in Holland and you see a windmill turning from a distance, sometimes when you're looking at it all, all of a sudden stop and turn the other direction. If you're fine enough and you go whoa, whoa, how did that happen? And then you realize, no, that's just that's just an illusion. So it doesn't take too sensitive a person to then go, well, wait a minute.

1:14:56 If I was wrong about the stick in the water, and I'm wrong about that wind meal, and can you find some other things that you're wrong.

1:15:03 You take a pencil, you take a stick in your stick, and it all becomes because bendy.

1:15:06 When you start doing it, it becomes bendy. That's right. And then you then you start doing things like you draw pictures like of a cube on a piece of paper, and it looks like it's three D, but you know that it was just a picture on a piece of paper. So then you go, okay, wait, wait a minute, I'm making up some of this stuff. Maybe I'm making up all of this stuff. Maybe, And then that's so I don't think it doesn't require too much genius to just go, whoa, I was I was wrong there, I was wrong there.

1:15:34 Maybe I'm wrong everywhere. So that's my one guess about the maya kind of thing.

1:15:40 In the idea though that imagine because you and I are talking about this in a very safe world in the sense that we can have these conversations publicly. But can you imagine being a Yogi eight thousand years ago and saying, you know, this whole thing not real? Can you imagine where that came from? My my, my interpretation of it is that they were at a spiritual level that was so much deeper than what we understand. That they went inwards and a lot of this information they might have tapped into what the truth was, and only someone who meditates understands that well.

1:16:22 And I agree with that. I think that that's also in addition to the I was talking about, you know, just an average guy, but these Yogis that that are actually going very very deep. That's where I think the fact that they are the one, and just like you and I are the one, that they are the infinite intelligence.

1:16:36 So they didn't have the technology that we have, but they had something even better. They have the infinite intelligence that that that that is you and me and that is also my my baby, four year old or whatever it might be. It's also infinite intelligence. It's just not yet expressed, right, So so yeah, I agree with you.

1:16:53 Now, if we are in a simulation, and this is all a giant, you know, giant video game that we're all playing. Do we eventually break out? Do we eventually escape? Do we eventually stop playing this game?

1:17:10 Yes, but there's infinitely many games to play, so yeah, we pop out of this one. But it's the one is so deep that there's a literally an infinity of different perspectives to be taken, literally infinity in some sense. If the one consciousness is up to understanding itself, you sort of self realization, who am I? Then I think that, Well, for example, there's a theorem that no system can ever fully understand itself. So if I have it, like a computer system, and I want that system to understand itself, well I could have that computer system like build a software model of itself and if it's interactions and so forth, it's parts. But now the system has changed because now it's got some software and it didn't have before. So

1:18:06 now I need to model that new software edition to me. But as soon as you do that, I've got the fact that I have this new software edition that I've got. So in other words, you can never catch up. You can never get a full model of yourself. And so maybe the one infinite consciousness is forever quote unquote taking different perspectives because in principle, there is no end to the exploration of itself. It can never know itself completely, and so once we take it, once we step out of this headset, there's infinitely many more to step out.

1:18:40 And one question for me then, is you know that I wonder about is does it allow itself to be completely reincarnated into the new headset and completely lose itself and have to wake up sometimes painfully right kicking and screaming, so to speak to its infinite nature and to realize, no, I'm not this project I'm not this avatar in this tiny little projection. My guess is yes.

1:19:05 You know.

1:19:05 It's interesting because even with what you just said, this spiritual explanation for it, from my point of view and my experience, is that when you become an ascended master, like a yog Nanda, a Jesus, a Buddha, you choose to either come back or you choose to help others awaken through other ways. But there are ascended masters who leave and they're like, I'm good now, I don't need to come back to Earth. I don't need I've learned the lessons. Yeah, I could be a thousand other things, but I've learned all the lessons I need to learn here.

1:19:34 I now want to go to the next video game. I want to go to the next game that PlayStation is putting out.

1:19:38 I've been in the Xbox.

1:19:39 I want now PlayStation. And then and you evolve to a higher level because it doesn't make sense for you vibrationally to be down here anymore. Because if you've heard these stories of the Yogis, even in the nineteen hundreds, when people got in front of the Maharashi, they just the energy that they felt there was something that they was intoxicating. Some couldn't stand too close because it was just too much and they would have to go back, like radiated thirty or fifty feet out or something like that.

1:20:10 Because it's fascinating, and I want to ask you one last question, because I mean, I could talk to you for another hour or two don with a question, but mentioned another question in regards to the concept of frequency. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. In the spiritual traditions, they talk about that the higher the frequency, the closer you are to source, So hate, anger, prejudice, these are all very low, low frequency, very slow. But love service, kindness, these are higher frequencies in nature according to spirituality. But we have proven that there is frequency and that we all in many ways, the whole planet sings at different frequencies at all times. Hums almost at a different frequency

1:21:11 at all at all times. And these and especially like I was just saying, with the maharashi, they were at a higher frequency that they couldn't even attract you know, a mugger. That's like like you don't see Yogi's getting mugged or you know, that's just not a thing you hear. You also never heard of the Yogi crusades where they were killing people for in the name of the source.

1:21:37 Like right, so what is your what's your perspective on frequency and spiritual frequency and also just mathematical physics frequencies and is there a way that those two connect?

1:21:51 Yes, And it ties in also with what you were saying about some yoga masters saying, God, I don't need to go with the stay at this level, go to to a higher level, don't have to come back here. So on that, I think the space time is a fairly cheap headset. It's only four dimensions, right, two, three dimensions of space, one dimension of time? Why not fifty dimensions?

1:22:12 One a five billion? Why not a trillion dimensions? Why not having thirty thousand different dimensions of color instead of just three dimensions of color and so forth?

1:22:21 You know.

1:22:23 So well, you know of the hue the hue space, for example, there's saturation and brightness and all those. But so inther word, we have certain dimensions of color, why not have a trillion other dimensions of color that we you know? Why not? So we I think we have one of the cheaper headsets that the one can use to look at itself, and it falls apart at ten of the minus thirty three centimeters, So we're not in we're in one of the low frequency the low frequency models, right.

1:22:50 But yes, in the mathematics that we're working on, there's Markovian dynamics of conscious agents, so that we talk about in the Fusions of Consciousness paper, and I talk about in my book The Case Against Reality. So I've talked about this in the very last chapter of my book The Case Against Reality. It's a Marcovian dynamics and it's all about frequencies. It's the but this is a mathematically precise theory about where these frequencies come from. And it turns out as you get more and more integrated systems, then the frequencies go up, so you get these larger and larger communication classes in the mark of communicating class gets more and more coherent and the as a result, we think what we call the momentum gets larger, and

1:23:39 therefore the special frequency gets smaller, so the frequencies get fineries, you get higher, higher frequencies in this thing. So so yes, we actually have a mathematical model that I wasn't trying to model this kind of yogic idea of higher frequencies and so forth. It just came out of our mathematics.

1:23:56 As you got more and more coherent, larger inter actions of conscious agents, the frequencies that correspond to it get higher. So yes, it's really it falls right out of the theory. But again I'm not putting our theory out of just the truth. It's a first baby step outside of space time towards understanding consciousness. Just the first first baby step.

1:24:19 And that's what this show is all about. It is just trying to figure everything out as much as we possibly can, and going through different avenues to us. Why I talk to so many different kinds of people from so many different walks of life, Because in this conversation you've opened up my eyes to a bunch of different things I hadn't thought about before, and hopefully I've thrown a couple at you that you've thought about differently as well, because there's not a lot of quantum physicists talking to near death experiences, but there's some value there and vice versa, so hopefully we could all I'm trying to bridge the gap, don I'm trying to I'm doing the best I can to bridge the gap.

1:24:58 Now, I'm going to ask you a few ques.

1:25:00 Just ask all my guests, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

1:25:06 I would say now that learning to let go of thought, being able to be in this moment without being lost in my thoughts, and just being present. That is what we're here for. That's what our purpose is is to wake up so you wake up when you can actually be washing the dishes and be present and not being grudging that you're washing the dishes, not being upset that you washing the dishes, would rather be doing nothing but literally in the moment, being present. And so that's a fulfilled, fulfilled and fulfilling life. If this moment, which is the only moment I can actually choose to do anything, I choose to not be lost in thought, but to actually be aware of my emotions, to be aware of the thoughts that are going on, not identified with the thoughts,

1:26:16 but being just aware of the thoughts, looking at them without reincarnating into them. And then that is living that way. And I'm not saying I do that all the time. I do it occasionally. But I think that if you ask what is a fulfilled life, I think that is a fulfilled life. It's not getting rich, because everything that you get you're going to take the headset off. It's everything that you accumulate you're going to lose guaranteed fame, riches, cars, houses, followers, you're going to lose every bit of it, and you'll lose it within a few decades, probably sooner. So none of that. It'll make you happy for a few minutes, and then all of a sudden you're onto the next thing.

1:27:10 That wasn't it? What is it when you become a billionaire, And that's not it. What is it that you need being present in this moment without thought and just then realizing who you are. You are the infinite intelligence, You're not the avatar. That's a fulfilled life.

1:27:31 If you can go back in time and talk to little Don, what advice would you give him?

1:27:36 Learn to be have internal silence. It's fine to go and pursue fun things, get an education, get a good job, as long as you realize you're going to walk away from all of it. So none of that is you don't identify with anything. It will always. So learn to go into complete inner silence and find out who you really are. The big question is who am I? If you know who you really are? And it's not my bank account, it's not my car, it's not my house, it's not my popularity, it's nothing. None of that is me.

1:28:17 None of that is me. My body isn't me. So I would say, find out the answer to this question, who am I? That's what I would told myself.

1:28:29 How do you define source or God?

1:28:31 Again, only by a sense of definition. So we go right back to the very start of our conversation where I would have to say, if I try to just use words and give definitions, it won't work. But if I point, if I give you pointing instructions, like giving you a glass of wine and saying you've never had wine. Here, have a glass, takes it, that's wine. All I can say about source is, if you want to know what source is, sit in silence, turn out the light distractions, let go of thoughts. And when you're aware of the silence and nothing else, you had your first little taste of source, but just the first little taste. Now go into it further, Spend more time there, more time there.

1:29:22 When you can start to spend hours there, then you're starting to really know a little bit more about the source. And yet you've only scratched the surface of the depths of who you are.

1:29:34 And what is the ultimate purpose of life?

1:29:36 Of our life here, I think is to wake up. I mean we're here to get lost, to not know who we are, to think that I need to compete with you, to be smarter than you, or more richer than you, or more popular than you, or faster than you, whatever it might be. And you see this, even the three or four year olds, right, they're already there. That's mine and mine's better than your, and so We're here to get lost, to identify with the avatar, and then to wake up and to walk away from that all and to realize we're going to take this headset off and nothing was lost.

1:30:15 We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, And now back to the show, and where can people find out more about you and the amazing work you're doing in the world.

1:30:28 I have a book called The Case Against Reality. The subtitle is Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, So it's more within the spacetime headset kind of framework where I'm talking about that. But then it's the last chapter I say, but now we've done all this stuff in evolution. Now it's time to let go of space time altogether. That includes letting go of evolution. So the book sort of goes through through that. So I would say that, and I've got a Twitter account, so at Donald D.

1:30:56 Hoffmann, fair enough, and do you have any party messages for audience?

1:31:00 Don Yeah, I.

1:31:01 Would just say this that there's been this tension between science and spirituality and it's not going to be necessary. That science is realizing that space time isn't fundamental, and it's bringing new tools to the table. The spiritual traditions have already said that. They've said that space time isn't fundamental.

1:31:21 There's a spiritual realm outside of space time that's more fundamental, but they haven't had the as good pointers. So when science and spirituality meet, science can provide new pointers, and spirituality can provide thousands of years of meditation and the insights, and together, I think humanity can move forward with a scientific spirituality that is going to not only help us personally, but the technologies will be outside of space time and will be indistinguishable from magic.

1:31:53 Don I appreciate you and everything you're doing in the world, my friend, Thank you so much for being on the show.

1:31:58 Thank you so much, appreciate it for the kind invitation.

1:32:03 Thank you for spending this sacred time with us today. If you feel called to explore this conversation further, you'll find the show notes for this episode at Next levelsoul dot com Forward slash three six three, and if your soul is craving an even deeper journey, step into Next Level Soul TV, our streaming sanctuary for spiritual films, documentaries, original shows, guided meditations, channeling sessions, audiobooks, and transformative teachings.

1:32:30 It's a space created to support your awakening, you're healing, and your return to the truth of who you really are. Begin your journey at Next levelsoul dot tv Until next time, Keep expanding, keep seeking, and keep walking your path towards the next level of your soul.