- Understanding fundamental biases: Leo Gura from Actualized.org discusses biases - preferences for one thing over another - as being at the heart of metaphysics and epistemology. Biases explain all human behavior, self-deception, consciousness, and epistemic error, playing a crucial existential role. Individuals often remain unaware of or in denial about their biases, rarely questioning the reasons behind them. These biases extend from minor preferences such as a preferred temperature to more substantial biases affecting life choices. Bias originates from survival instincts and the attachment to finite things, leading to a skewed perception of reality.
- The relativity of biases: Despite their profound impact, biases are relative in nature. They depend on the individual's consciousness and personal preferences, with external circumstances or objects including materialistic belongings having no inherent bias or preference. Using examples like the indifference of a rock being placed in water, lava, or outer space, Gura emphasizes the human tendency to project personal biases onto the world. He challenges the audience to question why certain things matter to them and why they have specific biases.
- Bias, survival, and attachment: Gura elucidates that survival instincts fuel biases. The attachment to finite things, including personal identity and material possessions, necessitates biases. For instance, the desire for specific items like a sports car to persist is a result of emotional and financial investment in them, thus creating a bias toward their preservation. These attachments and biases deeply influence emotions, behaviors, goals and can even form a part of ones self-image.
- The persistence of biases: An important point Gura makes is about the persistence of biases. Despite intellectually understanding the arbitrary nature of biases and their lack of ultimate significance, humans continue to uphold their biases at a practical level, highlighting the profound influence of bias on everyday life.
- The role of survival: Gura suggests that survival is a primary reason why things matter to individuals. The attachment to finite forms, which aids survival, subsequently necessitates bias. Addressing simple examples such as a preference for certain temperatures alongside complex issues like self-image and material possessions, he highlights the pervasiveness of bias in human life.
- Biases and attachment: Leo Gura educates listeners about biases and attachments, explaining that our preference for certain things over others arises from a need for survival. For instance, owning a sports car could signal status, attracting potential mates, and preserving one's lineage. This desire, however, introduces several biases, such as favoring car washes and fearing adverse weather or bad neighborhoods. These biases, ingrained in our psyche, skew our perception of reality.
- The influence of biases: Gura emphasizes the widespread influence of biases on our lives, from our moral systems and spiritual beliefs to our political views. He implores listeners to reflect on their biases, acknowledging that humans, because of their survival instincts, are innately biased.
- Questioning biases: To illustrate entrenched biases, Gura asks listeners why they would feel disgust at the idea of a sexual attraction to their mother's genitalia or a goat. He argues that such reactions expose internal biases. He challenges the assumption that because we are human, we are inherently biased in particular ways, positing instead that these biases stem from survival mechanisms.
- The existential approach: According to Gura, to understand the ultimate nature of the universe, we must embrace an existential approach, questioning everything, even the uncomfortable or taboo topics. Moreover, we must acknowledge and explore our biases without assuming they are necessary or inherent.
- The relativity of biases: Gura encapsulates the relativity of biases by pointing out that the importance placed on human intercourse over interspecies sex or procreation over other activities is arbitrary and not universally binding. He argues that regardless of our understanding of these biases, we continue to act based on them, highlighting the power of biases over logic and rational understanding.
- The limits of rationality: Gura critiques the contemporary belief in rationality, pointing out that understanding a bias intellectually does not mean we can easily change our behaviors, which are deeply tied to our survival mechanisms. Our biases continue to affect our actions, regardless of rational comprehension of them.
- Biases are illogical and arbitrary: Leo argues that humans have irrational biases and that they are often resistant to questioning them. He challenges the notion that feelings of repulsion towards certain actions or abhorrence for suffering and death are universally held, logical views.
- Challenging cultural taboos to address personal biases: Leo suggests that deeply ingrained taboos, such as having sex with children, might bring out strong emotional reactions, illustrating our personal biases. He argues that these strong emotions prevent us from addressing our personal biases and limit our understanding of reality.
- Exploring biases stemming from parenting: Leo discusses the biases associated with parenting and suggests that there is no objective reason why a parent's child is more important than other children. He connects these biases to inequality and urges parents to critically introspect their biases.
- Biases limit our perception of reality: Perception of relationships, like gravity's indifference, is employed as an analogy to explain how biases distort our understanding of reality. He argues that by being biased, like in favoring one's child excessively, we lose an even-handed, truthful view of reality.
- Desire for equality and inherent biases contradict: Leo points out the contradiction between parents wanting the best for their kids (inequality) and their desire for an equal treatment of their kids by society. He suggests that the personal biases and attachments tied to their kids distort their perception of reality and create a conflict with their desire for societal equality.
- Bias and Cherry-Picking Justifications: Leo posits that individuals often demonstrate inconsistent viewpoints on inequality, favoring it when it serves them and opposing it when it does not. He suggests that this demonstrates a cherry-picking behavior, where people develop reasons to justify their own biased behaviors, observing this practice needs to be deeply questioned and deconstructed.
- Hardships of Truth-Seeking: The process of seeking truth is depicted as strenuous, due to how closely it is related to individuals' emotions, ego, and survival instincts. This is emphasized via the analogy of the academic world, where privileging tenure allows scientists to separate themselves from any existential repercussions of their work. However, Leo contends that this seclusion inhibits the discovery of truth because it is disconnected from survival conditions and argues that real truth-seeking would involve addressing biases in deeply personal and survival-related issues.
- Biases Affecting Child Education Decision: Leo provides the example of choosing a school for one's child as an instance where biases significantly impinge upon decision-making. He contends that an unbiased, equality-focused perspective might favor placing a child in a regular public school, rather than an elite private institution irrespective of the availability of funds. He suggests this is where the tension between individuals' biases and the desire for fair, equal opportunities converge.
- Survival and Biases: Leo reveals how survival instincts impact the perpetuation of biases. Particularly in cases like improving a child's survival chances, individuals often choose survival over seeking truth. He argues that this fundamental behavior underpins societal problems such as inequality, racism, sexism, and unfair treatment.
- Effects of Unfair Biases: He observes that selfishness manifests itself as an aspiration for favorable inequality and an aversion to unfavorable inequality. This paradigm applies to entities at both personal and societal levels, including individuals, institutions, and corporations. Leo suggests such a biased mindset contributes to societal dissatisfaction with perceived unfairness.
- Corporate and Government Biases: Leo scrutinizes the biases within government and corporate organizations. Entities such as large corporations employ the same principle of self-serving inequality that individuals exhibit in their personal lives. The hypocrisy lies in individuals' outrage at this perceived unfairness, despite their replication of the same behavior in their personal lives.
- Questioning Fundamental Assumptions: Leo concludes by challenging fundamental assumptions, such as why order is considered superior to chaos or why peace is favored over disorder. Introspective questioning of these inherent biases is advocated within the pursuit of truth.
- Understanding Bias from a Perspective of Ultimate Reality: Leo tackles the concept of bias from a universal reality perspective arguing that our biases are not as obvious or grounded as we may think. He challenges common assumptions about wealth, freedom, and happiness suggesting that these are not inherently better than poverty, slavery, or suffering. He asserts that these are our biases, deeply ingrained due to survival adaptation.
- Effect of Biases on Everyday Life: Biases overwhelmingly shape our perceptions, knowledge, emotions, relationships, and self-view, ultimately affecting our mental health, happiness, and capacity for love. Leo argues that our inability to honestly perceive reality due to biases can lead to self-deception and unhappiness. He encourages challenging all preconceived notions and biases, even our preference for truth over falsehood.
- Impact of Bias on Parenting: Leo elaborates on how parental biases can have lasting effects on children, arguing that parents who make decisions based on their own biases and selfishness unknowingly distort reality for their offspring. This distorted perception of reality then contributes to negative self-image, depression, and a skewed understanding of love, which children are likely to pass onto future generations.
- Existential Arbitrariness of Biases: Leo maintains a stance that all biases, even the bias against suffering, are ultimately arbitrary from an existential and universal viewpoint. He proposes that the ultimate form of consciousness, or the "Godhead," is completely unbiased, and that attachments, biases, and asymmetry manifest as it starts differentiating itself into physical forms.
- Effects of Disregarding Biases: Leo argues that disregarding personal biases and aligning with a more objective, universal perspective could lead to a deeper understanding of reality, a love that is all-encompassing, and less personal suffering. However, he warns about the challenges of navigating a predominantly biased world while attempting to maintain an unbiased mindset.
- Discussion on Biases in Science: In this section, Leo criticizes science for its own biases, particularly in favor of construction and materialism. He argues that these biases limit scientists' perspective of reality, suggesting that scientists who neglect their objectivity in pursuit of these biases will never discover the full truth.
- Towards a Broader Universal Perspective: He stresses the importance of developing an unbiased mind for a more encompassing view of reality. He criticizes the narrowness of scientific subfields, arguing that a broader, more encompassing perspective is required to understand reality. The example of consciousness, which encompasses all paradigms, is given as a counterpoint to these narrow perspectives.
- Conclusion and Personal Invitation to his website: Leo concludes his discussion by emphasizing dangerous implications of bias on self-perception and happiness. He urges listeners to recognize their own biases and deceptions, challenging them to improve their understanding of themselves and the world. Lastly, Leo invites viewers to access more resources and tune into his upcoming episodes on the subject matter of biases.
- Concept of Bias at the Physical and Psychological Level: Leo explains that the development of form within consciousness itself is a type of bias. This implies the transition from formlessness to form, following the Big Bang event. He suggests that when forms started caring about maintaining their existence, biases began. These biases which initially arise at the physical level later percolate into the psychological level observable in animal minds, and even evident in plants. He enforces the idea that every finite object exists as a bias within consciousness.
- Institutional and Social Biases: Leo expands the idea to collective entities, mentioning that institutions, organizations, sports teams, and even nations, exhibit biases in their intent to succeed or maintain their own interests. He challenges the idea of divine intervention in such entities' victories, suggesting that, if God were to influence all equally, it would be synonymous with Him influencing no one.
- Completely Unbiased Mind and Dropping Biases: Leo proposes the concept of a completely unbiased mind. He suggests that such a mind would correlate to God, assuming that all biases are existentially arbitrary and subjective. He posits that by dropping all biases, one can become god. However, he warns that biases such as the insistence for a rationalistic or materialistic proof are hurdles in attaining this realization.
- Biases and Their Self-Defense Mechanisms: Leo describes biases as parasitic entities residing in our minds, feeding off our energy and defending themselves. He illustrates how rational and scientific biases justify themselves by engendering fear of what would happen if they were abandoned.
- God as Love and the Metaphysical Love: Leo equates God with love, defining love as the metaphysical realization that all differences in reality are imaginary. Thus, achieving a level of consciousness that embraces the no difference principle allows one to love all entities and phenomena equally. This, according to Leo, is the path towards infinite love.
- Relative and Arbitrary Differences: Leo argues that the preference for one thing over another, like a favorite food over the least favorite food, is purely relative and arbitrary. He suggests that once this is realized and accepted, one can exhibit an equal level of love towards all things, thereby achieving infinite love.
- Concept of "Infinite Love": Leo explains the concept of "infinite love" by using the example of a buffet with 100 different foods. He likens picky eaters to those who love only a small percent of experiences. To become more loving, or open to different experiences, one must let go of biases and be less picky. As one learns to love different foods, their experiences become richer.
- Resistance to New Experiences: Leo discusses how fear and biases prevent people from fully experiencing and embracing new things. He argues that to reach maximum love and understanding, one must surrender biases and prejudices, and accept all experiences.
- The Mind of God: In the mind of God, there are no biases or preferences, as all differences are imaginary. Leo suggests a similar approach to thoughts and experiences - being open and neutral, not attached or prejudiced. He uses the example of one's mind being able to think freely, of any thought including those that might seem unpleasant or unwanted.
- Expanding Love: Expanding one's capacity to love more is linked with lessening biases and attachments; if one is too attached to specific things, it threatens their ability to love impartially. By letting go of the attachment, one can love more fully and experience different aspects of life more richly.
- The role of Fear: Fear and close-mindedness serve as barriers to infinite love. People resist new experiences out of fear, obstructing their path to infinite love. It's the fear of the unknown, and what might happen if they fully embrace new experiences, or even the fear of having to admit they were wrong in their past assumptions and biases.
- Maximum Love: Maximum, or infinite love, in Leo's buffet analogy, means surrendering all biases and opening oneself to love every single experience at the buffet. This however requires overcoming the resistance and fear associated with trying new things or experiences one previously had biases against.
- Applying the concept to God: The relationship between God and infinite love is discussed. God, being an infinite mind, embraces and accepts all experiences without bias because all physical differences are imagined by God, hence they have no objective reality. Thus, in the mind of God, one part of reality cannot be better or more important than any other part. Leo encourages this mindset to achieve the widest scope of love possible.
- Bias and Attachment in Thoughts: Leo explains that thoughts and the ability to have various thoughts, from imagining a kangaroo to a dog's dung, is similar to how God's mind can imagine any physical form. There is no intrinsic reason to find one thought superior or inferior to another; such a bias is a projection of personal preferences and emotions. If one removes these biases and looks at thoughts neutrally, they can enjoy different thoughts without attachment or prejudice.
- Attachment leads to Bias: Leo underscores a direct link between bias and attachment, explaining that each form we become attached tobe it a pet dog, a child, or our bodiescreates a specific bias in us. Even when we lose the object of our attachment (e.g., the pet passes away), the bias remains and can affect how we interact with similar entities (e.g., another pet or the neighbor's dog).
- Spirituality and Letting go of attachments: Leo discusses how spirituality often emphasizes letting go of attachments, positing that this is because every attachment generates a bias, limiting our perception and ability to see everything as equally good. Removing attachments expands our capacity for love and reduces suffering.
- Attachments and Biases limit Infinite Love: Highlighting the idea of infinite love, Gura explains that our capacity for infinite love, where we love everything equally with perfect symmetry, is restricted when we sustain attachments and biases towards specific things or people. Any threat or harm to these attachments generates hatred and asymmetry in love, demonstrating limitations in our perspective and attachment.
- Consequences of Finite Love: Leo elucidates that finite love triggers defense mechanisms and the desire to freeze reality into static states, such as the wish for eternal existence of a loved one. This results in anger towards elements that threaten or disrupt these states. However, if we remove attachment, we can consider every aspect of existence, be it disease or death, as part of the universe's beauty and majesty.
- Misunderstanding of Love due to Attachments: Leo argues that attachments and biases often lead to a distorted understanding of love. People often misinterpret selfish actions and unequal favoritism, including defending specific attachments, as acts of love. Such behaviors, while cloaked in the notion of love, are representations of finite, limited, selfish love rather than infinite love. From this limited perspective, one remains disconnected to infinite love, prone to swapping the infinity of love for finite amour.
- Power and Perfection of Infinite Love: Leo suggests that the highest power in the universe is the ability to love everything equally. Using this approach eliminates hatred or ill-judgment from one's mindset. This allows for a perspective of absolute perfection because equal love erases biases towards any element. Even in situations of loss or disease, infinite, equal love allows the individual to remain in a content and harmonious state.
- Bias restricts Perfection: Leo emphasizes that the presence of bias continuously prevents us from perceiving reality as perfect. As long as we sustain our biases and act from personal attachment, some aspects of reality will always be considered less than perfect.
- Relativity of Perfection in Existence: Leo Gura discusses perceived imperfections of existence, arguing that they are results of humankind's biased and finite perspective. He states that true perfection is the embodiment of all existing and possible experiences, including ones perceived as horrific from a human standpoint. This idea fundamentally challenges conventional notions of perfection, which are often defined in terms of biased attachments and preferences.
- Understanding Impermanence: Gura connects the concept of attachment with Buddhist teachings on impermanence - the belief that all forms are fluid and ever-changing. Attachments, he argues, are attempts to freeze reality, opposing its inherent impermanence and creating suffering. This perspective challenges the human tendency to seek stability and permanence in reality. He further explains that so-called 'renouncers' are individuals who surrender these attachments to experience and access infinite love.
- Concept of Love: According to Leo, Love is defined as the realization that all difference is illusory. This metaphysical love is a self-embrace that includes and transcends all experiences, both positive and negative. This definition deviates from contemporary ideologies of love, reframing it as a state of consciousness rather than a mere emotion.
- Bias in Science: Leo discusses the biases within the field of science. He points out that what is considered a credible practice, like being rigorous and factual, is in fact a form of bias. Leo calls for observers of science to be wary about these biases and to understand that they condition what is considered valid or invalid within the scientific paradigm.
- Relativity and Bias in Science: Leo Gura raises questions about the biases that exist within scientific methodology and their impact on our understanding of reality. He uses the example of scientific emphasis on factual, rigorous, and logical modes of thinking over non-scientific, non-factual, and fantastical modes of living. He argues that a person choosing to live life embracing the mystical, fantastical, and artistic aspects of their consciousness is equally valid and fulfilling. Leo challenges the idea that the scientific mode of living is inherently superior or more truth-aligned, emphasizing that consciousness includes both factual and abstract, logical and magical thinking, and materialistic and fantastical perspectives, among others. He also warns about the methodological biases in science that lead to an inability to make sense of consciousness, paranormal phenomena, mystical experiences, etc. According to him, these biases can disconnect practitioners from significant aspects of reality and from enhanced understanding and love. The biases in this scientific lens can lead to a conservative, overly rigorous approach that excludes unproven phenomena, thereby limiting its potential to understand all aspects of reality. He additionally highlights biases against marketing, poetic language, and hype within scientific communities that prevent groundbreaking scientific discoveries from being properly communicated and understood by non-scientific communities.
- Biases in Science - Lack of Understanding of Objective Realities: Many people do not understand that our perception of reality, such as the concept of objective distances, is actually bias. Scientists also share this bias as it projects itself into their methods of operations.
- Biases in Proof and Truth in Science: The scientific method is centered around the concept of proof. However, as per the Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, there are truths that cannot be proved. Hence, a method that only relies upon proof by nature will never hold the complete truth.
- Scientific Bias Toward Left-brain Logic and Analysis: Science tends to be analytical and heavily focused on reductionism, expecting everything to be broken down into basic elements like equations or formulas. This approach overlooks the holistic, right-brained perspective which often results in a distorted perception of reality.
- Bias in Language and Quantification in Science: There is an assumption in science that all reality can be quantified and that if something can't be quantified, it isn't real. Also, the use of language in science imposes its own set of limits, again restricting our understanding of the full, infinite reality.
- Science's Bias Against Contradiction and Paradox: There is a commonly held belief in scientific circles that reality should be non-contradictory and non-paradoxical. This limits the understanding of reality as infinity which must inherently be paradoxical and self-contradictory when put into dualistic language.
- Bias Against First-Person Experience, Consciousness, and Mystical Methods: Many scientific fields inherently resist first-person experiences, consciousness, mystical methods, emotions, psychology, philosophy, and religion. This limits their holistic understanding of the natural world and the human experience within it.
- Bureaucratic and Social Bias in Scientific Work: The academic, institutional, and collaborative nature of scientific work also contributes to bias. There is a collective ego that develops, which can affect the integrity of the scientific process.
- Scientific Bias Toward Pragmatism and Materialism: Science tends to focus on the pragmatic, utilitarian, and survival aspects of understanding reality. This focus on developing technologies and material manipulation of reality often fails to care about the metaphysical truth or consciousness.
- Seriousness as a Bias in Science: Most scientists tend to be very serious, which is itself a bias. A more playful and open-minded attitude can allow for different ways of interfacing with reality and understanding it.
- Limitations Imposed by All Biases: All the biases and limitations highlighted above prevent science from developing the most accurate understanding of the complete reality. To bridge this gap, there must be a shift in the science community's understanding and approach to these biases.
- Biases in Science and Consciousness: Leo critiques the notion of science as objective and unbiased, noting that who often makes these assertions are scientists themselves. He accentuates that the very pursuit of science is a bias itself and due to this bias, science can never fully comprehend the truth or entire reality. He contrasts this with the mystic's understanding, which incorporates all aspects of reality within the larger system of consciousness. Leo underlines that even the questions we ask of science are biased, and therefore impact the type of answers we get. He warns to be aware of your specific passions as having a narrow passion, such as a love for numbers or particles, can hinder your understanding of reality. According to Leo, ultimate understanding requires a universal passion. He argues that one cannot escape consciousness due to its omnipresence, challenging the common bias that sober reality is the only 'real' reality. He suggests that the difference between sober and psychedelic states are illusory, both being constructs of consciousness. In conclusion, Leo urges the necessity of unbiased examination and universal passion to make sense of reality.
- Understanding "Bias towards Truth": Leo Gura emphasizes that there is no bias towards either psychedelic or sober states, rather the focus should be on truth. The difference between the two states is subjective, based on individual perception, and not an inherent difference.
- Preference-Based Biases: Leo introduces other biases based on personal preference, such as thinking over feeling or opting for vision over sound. These are simply different ways of interfacing with reality and are not superior or inferior to each other.
- Impact of Ignoring Biases: Neglecting to recognize and address our biases leads to selfish behavior that creates collateral damage to others, without us realizing it. Yet, when others are biased against us, it becomes unacceptable and leads to complaints about unfair treatment.
- Bias and Love: At its core, bias is the deviation of absolute love towards something finite. To attain the highest love or the ultimate theory of everything, biases need to be shed. One should tackle biases similar to the even-handed nature of God.
- Survival and Bias: Survival inherently involves bias and attachment as one needs to be at least attached to basic needs like food, water, and shelter. The goal is not to completely abandon these biases and attachments but to become more conscious of them and work towards improvement.
- Biases of Ancestors: Leo explains that modern humans are descendants of very selfish ancestors, who survived because of their selfishness and biases. This explains why it is challenging for many to achieve god realization or pure love.
- Practicality and Biases: While reducing biases, it is crucial not to develop a bias against the biases of others. Even after becoming unbiased, it is unrealistic to expect others to be the same. This understanding is essential to avoid frustration and disappointment.
- Purging Biases for Future Insights: Continuously working towards ridding perception and worldview of biases will lead to clearer perception, less suffering, and higher understanding. The last bias that could remain is against biases itself, which could lead to dissatisfaction if others continue to be biased. The key is to remain conscious of one's biases, be willing to question them, and expect improvement, not perfection.
- Additional Resources on Bias: Leo recommends visiting his website, Actualized.org, for a list and reviews of over 200 books on metaphysics, existential, and spiritual topics. His reviews provide additional evidence and sources regarding bias. He also mentions his life purpose course designed to set one's life on a meaningful trajectory.
- Future Discussions on Bias: Leo concludes by mentioning that the topic of bias is vast and will be extensively covered in future episodes. There will be an episode focusing on identifying and surrendering biases, serving as a practical guide beyond the foundational knowledge presented in this episode.