Word count:15863
[Music] what is consciousness now of course i've talked a lot about the theory of consciousness and what it is and explained it to you many times in the past but that's not what we're going to do here today today i want to instead of giving you more theory and more stories and explanation i want to actually guide you through some examples and point you directly to consciousness so this will be a hands-on exercise and while we're doing these various exercises here you will hopefully be able to grasp a little bit of it start to feel it for yourself and also i will reveal some pretty amazing properties of consciousness as we go so let's get into that so let's begin by just becoming aware or conscious that you are conscious right now so can you notice that difference between when you started this recording of course you were conscious when you started it before i even started talking but when i told you that you're conscious right now what i did is i triggered you to self-reflect in a sense and to become conscious of the fact that you're conscious and just by telling you that that already put you a little bit more in touch with consciousness because usually you're taking consciousness for granted because your consciousness is focused on other things like the things that i'm telling you some idea or some physical object out in the world but right now just become conscious of the fact that you're conscious and wonder what is that what is that consciousness what is that it should feel mysterious it should feel nebulous it should feel amorphous it should feel like you can't exactly say what consciousness is but it's obvious to you that you're conscious right obviously so the mistake that people make here when the question of what is consciousness comes up is that they start to look elsewhere for consciousness they start to look to science they start to look to religion they look to theory they start to speculate in their mind about what consciousness might be they have images in their mind of consciousness being generated by neurons or by atoms or by whatever some way to explain consciousness away and that all of that takes you away from consciousness that's a trap that you want to make sure you avoid and even when you bring to mind non-dual teachings and maybe even things that i've said in the past about consciousness that too is a trap that's the tricky nature of consciousness is that as soon as you start to encapsulate consciousness in some sort of scheme or model or system or framework you're already starting to lose it so don't look to science to tell you what consciousness is because you're conscious the only one who can tell you what consciousness is is yourself science cannot be conscious for you i cannot be conscious for you only you can be conscious for you that's the amazing thing about consciousness but also what you should notice here is that there's no need to speculate about what consciousness is going off into theories you don't need to speculate about consciousness because you're conscious all you need to do is be conscious focus your attention on the consciousness the speculation actually takes you away from that you need to develop a sort of a comfortableness with the mystery of consciousness it's a mysterious thing rather than trying to cover over the mystery and skip over it and come up with some sort of speculation to explain it away just bask in the unknowingness of what consciousness is be comfortable with that just sit there and be comfortable with that and the longer you can do that the better that is the essence of meditation and ultimately the only way you're going to understand what consciousness is is by doing this for very long steady periods of time and the longer you do it the more profound this empty experience will become until eventually you might have some breakthroughs all right so it's not just that you are conscious it's more than that you are consciousness and consciousness is the only thing that exists notice that notice that there's nothing outside of consciousness you have never experienced anything in your life outside of consciousness everything you've ever experienced was consciousness anything you think or claim isn't consciousness is consciousness just notice that try to invalidate what i'm saying don't just believe me see don't believe me oh yeah leo said that consciousness is all there is and that's it and then you believe that no no no that's a mistake you need to validate whether what i'm saying is true you can sit there for five hours and go through examples go into the past and think about stuff that has happened to you in your life and try to come up with with an example of something that wasn't consciousness and what you'll notice of course is that you can't find such an example and anything you think of which you might think of oh i found one leo i found one look a little bit deeper and you'll realize oh wait a minute of course that was also consciousness so this is something that you should practice for the rest of your life this practice see nothing can exist unless it is held in your consciousness this is the key mistake that people make they think that stuff like atoms or objects or people can exist outside of consciousness that math or science or religion or space or time or history or even the universe can exist outside of consciousness it can't everything is held and conceived within consciousness even the hard stuff even the physical stuff even the quote-unquote objective stuff the infi the entire universe is just an infinite field of consciousness that's all it is and you are this field for example think of a refrigerator think of your refrigerator it seems that a refrigerator exists but this refrigerator is actually being held within your consciousness it seems like the refrigerator conventionally speaking is made of parts plastic and metal molecules atoms energy no the refrigerator is made out of consciousness universal consciousness the field of universal consciousness is imagining a refrigerator that's literally what's happening right now as we're talking about this refrigerator now you might say okay leo yeah i mean that i might be able to see how that's true when i'm just thinking about my refrigerator but what about the actual refrigerator like if i go to my kitchen and i put my hand on the refrigerator door to pull it open it's made of steel or whatever that what about that are you i mean that's not consciousness of course it is what is that refrigerator actually made out of it's made out of the perceptions and feelings which you call a refrigerator colors sounds smells feelings when you put your hand on the refrigerator might feel cold the steel might feel cold it has a certain color it makes a certain hum noise it has a certain smell coming out of it when you open the door what is all this this is figments of consciousness coming together in a very sophisticated highly intelligent highly ordered way to create the appearance of a refrigerator you might say well what about the actual refrigerator underneath the appearances what what actual refrigerator underneath the appearances where have you ever experienced anything underneath appearances why do you assume there is anything underneath appearances why would such an inefficient mechanism be necessary for the universe why would the universe have two layers of reality why would it have the appearance layer and then the whatever is underneath layer that you imagine why does it need the second layer why can't it just be one layer i mean why would it waste its energy creating these different layers for what purpose now you say ah leo but where would these appearances come from if they weren't coming from something sourcing them from behind the scenes from underneath you see we need that second layer to explain the first layer but what explains the existence of the second layer if the first layer requires a second layer why are you stopping at the second layer why isn't there a third layer and then of course you need a fourth layer using your logic to explain the second and you need uh i mean you need a third to explain the second you need a fourth to explain the third and so on and so on to infinity and so you see the absurdity of this whole notion you're not solving anything you think that you're solving some sort of metaphysical problem of explaining away appearances by postulating hidden layers beneath the first layer but actually all you're doing is you're just fooling yourself you're losing yourself inside your own mind and all of those layers that you imagine are precisely that imagination there are no other layers all of those layers if you take a close look are just imaginary it's all one layer so within the layer of appearances there are additional pseudo layers that you imagine that you think are underneath the first layer but really they're just couched within the first layer there is no refrigerator outside of consciousness the actual physical refrigerator in your kitchen is actually held within your consciousness that's what it means for a thing to exist see you thought your whole life you've been told by others who didn't know any better that to exist means for there to be something on a deeper layer on a secondary layer beneath the layer of appearances and it's only if something exists at that second layer then it exists otherwise if it only exists at the first layer then it doesn't exist it's sort of an illusion but when you realize there is no deeper layer there's only one layer to reality uh the layer of appearances that that literally is what existence is to appear is to exist is to be conscious and that's it it's actually very simple you're making it too complicated so i'm asking you to change your paradigm of how you think reality works you have always thought that reality is this thing that has existed long before you and will continue to exist long after you die and that you are inside of this reality and that you are one of these objects this reality is filled with a bunch of physical objects and that you are one of these physical objects and then you have appearances you have perceptions of various kinds of physical objects which are somehow coming to you so one object is somehow perceiving another object none of this is actually happening this is all an illusion it's a story that you've invented to try to explain away consciousness there is only consciousness consciousness is a very personal thing you're personally conscious the universe the nature of the universe is such that the universe is self-aware see you when you buy into science and materialism you tend to believe that the universe isn't inherently self-aware you as a biological creature are one thing that happened to evolve within the universe that became self-aware but the universe wasn't self-aware until living beings showed up that's not true the universe was always self-aware the universe is consciousness it was always consciousness and it will always be consciousness the only reason you are self-aware is not through some good fortune and luck to have been born as a living being the reason you're aware is because the only thing that exists is self-awareness the entire universe is self-aware therefore you by necessity are self-aware nothing can exist which is not aware to some degree now granted there are many degrees of awareness some things are not very self-aware others are more self-aware most humans in fact aren't that self-aware [Music] but but hey that's the nature of awareness is that awareness comes in degrees there are degrees of awareness but awareness is not some secondary feature of the universe awareness is the bedrock of the universe this is very different from what you've been taught in school by science and by mainstream culture which doesn't think that awareness is primary it it thinks that it's secondary well it's just a different paradigm you have to learn to think from this new paradigm that i'm trying to show you here how can you validate that what i'm saying is true rather than just believing it well sit here and actually experience life have you ever experienced unawareness you might say yes leo i have when i'm asleep deep asleep i'm experiencing unawareness but actually you're aware of that right now see it's a very tricky tricky mechanism here it's not so simple something very tricky is going on here notice that the universe is a tricky beast it's not straightforward it's a trickster it's playing with you you're inside of a giant mind that's what the universe is so when we're talking about a physical object like a refrigerator just like try it's so it's so sicky try to actually become conscious of the fact that a refrigerator is being held within consciousness that's what a refrigerator is that's what it's always been you've just misunderstood it as something material here's the trick is that materiality itself is something that consciousness is holding or imagining you see so when you say no leo that refrigerator it's not imaginary it's it's tangible it's real it's solid yeah that is what consciousness is holding when you do that that's how consciousness creates the illusion of materiality it literally fools itself into thinking that a refrigerator is material and then that becomes what's true for you you're constructing that illusion on the fly so consciousness can hold something as immaterial or it can hold something as material for example you could you know consciousness right now so just try to experience this hold a unicorn in your consciousness right now imagine a unicorn okay now what is that obviously consciousness is holding that form now it's sort of a loosey-goosey form because it's just a thought it's just an idea in your mind it's a little faded image in your mind of a unicorn it's not very tangible it's not very concrete it's not as lifelike as an actual horse in the real world so you hold it as less real as inferior and so forth but now imagine if you held that unicorn so strongly in consciousness that it literally became real that's what the horse is now of course the mistake people here make is they say oh leo but but then how can i make a unicorn into a real horse how do i actually materialize this unicorn well i'm not saying that you have that capacity you see maybe that's a capacity that you haven't developed maybe that's a capacity that you would need some sort of new technology to actually be able to to actualize that that that capacity but regardless of that that refrigerator or that horse that you consider is real it's being held by your consciousness whether you want to admit it or not i mean where else is it occurring but in your consciousness see the nature of the universe is such that the universe can conceive of a rock an atom a tree a dog a computer salt a nuclear explosion a cartoon pain pleasure cancer a heart attack golf chess a female a toilet the english language the sun time space energy science religion a conspiracy theory a cheeseburger torture proof mathematics a refrigerator and anything else there are no limits to what consciousness can hold and all of these things i'm not just saying that the universe can think about these things the universe can hold these things in a more strong way than just thinking about them of course we acknowledge that the human mind can hold these different things and think about them but we're going one step deeper here beyond the human mind what we're talking about is the universal field of consciousness which is more powerful than the individual human mind the individual human mind is a subset sort of like a little bubble within the larger field of universal consciousness that larger field can literally imagine for example a nuclear explosion and that nuclear explosion is what is manifested and what kills many many people it's not just fake or a fantasy it'll actually kill people we're talking about a mental universe with different degrees and layers of mentality to it at first blush this seems kind of crazy and wacky it seems like wait a minute leo why would the universe be this way that's so weird it seems unreal it seems magical it seems airy fairy and kind of new-agey to conceive the universe in this way it seems like it violates occam's razor because you know rockham's razor says the simplest explanation of the universe is probably the right one so just go with the simplest so isn't it the simplest to imagine a universe in which a nuclear explosion isn't some imaginary thing it's some real thing it's physical it's tangible no actually that violates outcomes razor the mental universe that i'm presenting to the universe as an infinite mind this is actually the simplest construction of the universe it's the most elegant solution to the problem of reality because in the scientific materialistic model you need to have multiple layers you need to have the layer of appearances then you need to have layers underneath and then those layers themselves need further layers to justify them and then them and then them they have an infinite regress problem you have to deal with all these problems you have to deal with the problem of how uh matter and molecules and brains can generate consciousness all of these in solvable problems these problems are not just insolvable in practice they're insolvable even in theory even the best scientists and philosophers for the last 2000 years have been trying to come up with even just theoretical solutions to these problems like the mind body problem and they have not been able to formulate one that should maybe tell you that you're thinking about the universe in a very uh wrong way think about how much more elegant it is when the universe is nothing but pure consciousness once you make this paradigm shift it's actually so much simpler everything makes so much more sense you walk outside you you hear birds chirping and you realize oh yeah of course that's just consciousness chirping at itself a car drives by you and you look at the car and you see of course yeah the car is just consciousness of course just conscious why wouldn't the universe be an unlimited infinite mind what's preventing it from being that way you say well but but but leo how could it be that way it's impossible but how could it be physical why do you assume that physical matter existing in some vacuum is somehow more plausible it's not any more plausible if you can even generate one atom from nothing not to mention the entire big bang as science says if you can generate even one atom from nothing can you see that that is as impossible and as outrageous and as magical as generating a universe that is purely infinite mind can you see that it doesn't matter to the universe which way that it is because the universe has no limits what would limit it who is there outside the universe to tell the universe what it can and can't do that's the magic of being the universe when you are the entire universe and when i say universe here i'm not saying it in the scientific sense i'm saying it in the more existential more metaphysical sense of universe with a capital u which includes any multiverses that might be outside of our little universe that we conceive of as the scientific universe so i'm when i say universe i'm including any possible multiverses or any other kind of things that are outside of our universe to infinity every possible layer all at once so when you get all of that as a single thing when you realize that we might also call that reality you realize that this thing is singular it must be singular because we've included every other thing outside of it inside of it so it's singular and if it's singular there can't be anything outside of it to limit it or to prevent it from being however it wants so it's going to be however it wants to be now this seems kind of crazy and outlandish and it seems impossible because we're so used to being limited by physical laws and rules we tend to think of like well but the universe just is the way it is the universe can't choose the way it's going to be that's impossible it has to be the way that it is like it has to be made out of physical stuff why do you assume that why can't the universe choose the way it's going to be open your mind to such a possibility we usually don't think of the universe as a mind and because of this we tend to artificially lower our expectations of what the universe is capable of we don't think of the universe for example as being able to make choices we think of choices being something that higher order biological beings like humans can do within the universe but the universe itself can't make a choice that's crazy that's some sort of spiritualism leo you're anthropomorphizing the universe this is the sort of the ant anthropomorphic fallacy that many religious people make is they tend to think of you know inanimate objects as having human qualities no you got it backwards human qualities are aspects of the larger universe where did the human qualities come from they came from the universe what i want you to just become conscious of right now is that you sitting there right now being conscious of the things that i'm saying you sitting there hearing my words seeing colors around you in the room that you're sitting in making sense of the things that i'm saying these ideas that are flashing through your mind various images and feelings and so forth that's the universe you are the universe you are not a human inside the universe doing human stuff that the universe is not capable of doing you are the universe imagining being a human and constructing humanness by holding that and all of its constituent components and elements in a cohesive manner such that you could be human what we call human you could just as easily imagine yourself being a kangaroo and you would become a kangaroo or an alien and you would become an alien or a robot and you would become a robot or a coffee table and you would become a coffee table or a basketball and you would become a basketball or a video game and you would become a video game what it means to be human is that the universe is limiting all of the things that it could possibly imagine itself being to that stuff that you experience as what we conventionally call being human pain and love and fear and sadness and frustration and difficulty and you know pleasure and and all the stuff that's associated with being human see if you didn't experience any of that you could become a coffee table for example if you were a coffee table just try to maybe imagine what it's like to be a coffee table if you were the universe being a coffee table then you wouldn't have these conventional human emotions you wouldn't have pain and pleasure you wouldn't get angry or sad you wouldn't have dreams and goals you wouldn't love other things you wouldn't think you wouldn't do philosophy you wouldn't watch youtube videos you would just sit there and be a coffee table it's a much simpler simpler existence a lot less problems you wouldn't fear death you wouldn't even think about how you were born or where you came from you would just be a coffee table just a dumb coffee table so i want you to expand your possibility space and give the universe some more credit see you've been you've been very arrogant your whole life us humans we're very arrogant creatures we like to think of ourselves as the center of the universe as somehow superior to the universe as like the most advanced things in the universe this is a deep delusion because we take credit for those aspects of the universe that are actually generating us as humans we take credit for consciousness we take ownership of awareness we take ownership of perception and colors and feelings and emotions and we say this is all our stuff and when we think and we do rationality and logic and intelligence when we do mathematics and science we say that's us we're doing it the universe isn't doing science humans invented science humans are doing science humans are smart the universe is stupid humans can make choices the universe can't humans can have feelings the universe can't humans can have consciousness the universe can't how [ __ ] arrogant is that recognize who owns you the universe owns you you don't own the universe the universe created you that means the universe is smarter than you this is the core delusion of science and materialism and logic and rationality and atheism is that people who subscribe to this worldview fundamentally do not want to admit that the universe could be more intelligent than them they've misappropriated their ego has misappropriated and usurped the intelligence of the universe and confused it in its arrogance for human intelligence all human intelligence is a tiny figment fragment of universal intelligence anything a human can do the universe can do better because a human is a part of the universe how do you know that what i'm telling you is true you don't believe me this is not a philosophy this is not an ideology this is not something you speculate about like oh yeah maybe the universe is intelligent no no no what i want you to do is actually to recognize that you are the universe when you connect the dots and you realize wait a minute he's right i am the universe this is the universe if i can feel pain that means the universe is literally feeling pain right now if i can get angry that means the universe is getting angry any quality that i have the universe has if i'm horny the universe is horny see this is not how materialism tells us to think about reality materialism creates a separation between the universe and us humans it puts us human into this little bubble of sensations and feelings and emotions and and colors and sounds and so forth locks us in this little bubble and says that little bubble that's all [ __ ] and then there's objective reality over here the universe and all of the intelligent conscious stuff is happening in this bubble let's forget about that we don't know how to deal with that stuff and let's just worry about the objective hard stuff the the matter of the universe the energy in the matter the scientific stuff and that stuff it has no intelligence it has no feeling it has no capacity for consciousness it's just completely dumb substance this is madness this is literally insanity this world view you are denying the universe it's intelligence it's feeling it's sentience it's very spirit you are literally robbing the universe of its spirit thinking that you're being objective and of course the irony is that it's the universe that is doing that it's not you who's creating this materialist delusion the universe is the universe is imagining itself being a materialist a rationalist an atheist a reductionist a scientist the universe is imagining that it is not imagining the universe is imagining that it's not intelligent the universe is imagining that it's not conscious while holding that unconsciousness within its consciousness it's a trick and the reason it's a trick is because that's the nature of consciousness it's it's mental and because it's mental it can be tricky it can play tricks on itself it's very squirrely consciousness in the universe has this squirrely uh aspect or property to it it doesn't have to be it can be straightforward like a coffee table is straightforward but us as humans were very very squirrely we get lost in our own fantasies and uh because we have you know we have these big minds that's that's one of the that's one of the trade-offs with having a big mind is that there's a lot of rope there to hang yourself with a table coffee table can't dilute itself into thinking that it's something other than what it is a human can so i want you to expand and take all the limits that you've ascribed to the universe i want to take take every single limit off the universe so when you entered this episode you might have believed tacitly at least that for example the universe cannot design a video game now i want you to change that now i want you to realize the universe can design a video game in fact every video game you've ever played or enjoyed was designed by the universe now you told yourself that it was designed by some human actually the universe designed the video game by first designing the human who's going to then design the video game you see how it works you've also believed your entire life until this episode perhaps that the universe could not feel depressed angry scared lonely horny tired confused insecure excited embarrassed pain suffering pleasure ecstasy you thought these were all fluffy human emotions now you're taking all the limits off the universe and you're realizing oh of course the universe can experience all these it's experiencing them through me what does it feel like when the universe is angry it feels like what it's like when you're angry what does it feel like to for the universe to be horny you know what it's like to be horny the universe can cry what does it feel like to cry the universe can have an orgasm see you thought before this episode you thought humans have orgasms animals have orgasms perhaps but not the universe now you realize the universe has an orgasm when you have an orgasm before this episode you came in here thinking that the universe can't be logical the universe can't do mathematics now you might have thought that the universe is run by mathematics that's its own problem it's actually not but uh that's a projection of your own mind but anyways uh no what i'm saying here is that the universe itself can be logical the universe can do logic better than any human because the universe is simultaneously doing the logic of every human that has ever lived and all logics that exist in higher minds alien minds and so on that we haven't even discovered yet the universe can do all of that see the whole model of science is backwards science thinks that like evolution is building more and more advanced biological creatures who are able to do more and more complex stuff within the universe that ordinary matter and the ordinary universe before we evolved couldn't do actually it's completely the opposite it's that the infinite universe that existed could do absolutely anything it had no limits whatsoever it could be logical it could feel emotions it could design video games it can engineer cars it can build rocket ships it can fly to the moon it can do whatever it wants and then it artificially limits itself in order to be a human living on the savannah in africa somewhere the universe can engineer a car better than any human can the universe can believe in conspiracy theories the universe can go and gamble in las vegas and lose all its money the universe can go dancing and have a ball at the nightclub and get drunk the universe can sit there and appreciate music in fact if you really want to be able to appreciate music truly to appreciate and to hear music for the first time in your life that will happen the day that you realize that you are the universe appreciating the music that the universe is creating so when you're listening to music the music that is playing is the universe creating that music and you listening to it and appreciating it and seeing the beauty in it vibing with it so to speak that's the universe appreciating its own creation the universe can write poetry see you thought that no only humans can write poetry no the universe can write poetry the universe can be a nazi the universe can send people it doesn't like to concentration camps and gas chambers universe can do that the universe can do science on itself the universe can think about itself the universe can even watch a youtube video about self-actualization talking about and explaining what the universe is and of course the universe can love this is perhaps the greatest mistake of science and rationalism is consigning love into the category of airy fairy human emotions of no significance or import in the existential from the existential perspective you couldn't be more wrong see what happens when you flip your paradigm from the materialist paradigm to the consciousness paradigm that i'm talking about now the paradigm in which you realize that the universe is a mind not a physical object or some clockwork machine but a mind in this paradigm one of the key differences is that a mind is capable of love unlike a clockwork machine so when we talk about love and you're looking at love and thinking about love from the clockwork paradigm it makes no sense love makes no sense and you are forever doomed to be disconnected from love in your clockwork paradigm and basically from the clockwork paradigm you treat all of life like a clockwork and you behave like a robot without any soul spirit or heart and that's no way to live that's not a satisfying way to live living this mechanical robotic existence that you do because really what you've always wanted from the from your life and from the universe is love soul spirit heart the problem is that the paradigm that you were indoctrinated with by your culture when you were raised that you got deceived by and didn't know how to find your way out of that this this this paradigm has robbed you of your capacity to love and to experience soul and spirit and that fundamentally is why you have all the emotional problems that you do this is why you're angry this is why you're frustrated this is why you're lonely this is why you're depressed this is why you're suicidal this is why you're desperate and horny for sex this is why your any other negative emotion because you're lacking the love so one of the most important things you can do is switch your paradigms such that now love even though you don't really know how to master love yet at least now there's a possibility see now when you realize the universe is a mind love becomes not just a secondary emotion of biological creatures love is more fundamental now at least that possibility exists you still haven't actualized it you still don't really understand what i'm talking about when i'm talking about love but at least there's a little bit more open mindedness within you and that creates space which in the future through practices of various kinds that i talk about you will be able to actualize and you will be able to to fully realize that love is not just something the mind is capable of love is actually the very substance of mind and soul purpose but that's a topic beyond the scope of this lesson now here's an exercise we have some more exercises to do to really get you to understand what i'm talking about i really want to blow your mind open blow all of the limitations that you've placed upon consciousness blow them all away i really want you to start to see the universe as an infinite thing as an infinite mind so do this exercise with me i want you to imagine the english language imagine every piece of the english language as you personally know it as this human every word every meaning every implicit connotation every bit of grammar every possible sentence you've ever spoken or will ever speak in your life imagine this just in your mind's eye but this is not truly the fullness of what english is this is just your limited comprehension comprehension of english no matter how good you are with english your your knowledge of english is still very very minuscule now let's expand upon that i want you to add to what you've just imagined imagine also the entire domain of english all the stuff you're missing imagine every possible word in the english language all the dictionaries that have ever existed imagine every possible sentence that could be written in english whether short or small imagine every book that could be written every research paper every conversation that could be had every possible communication in the english language every possible multiple meaning that any word could have all the english words that existed in the past that we no longer use and all that will exist in the future forever in perpetuity to infinity every possibility of english that could ever possibly occur imagine that all at once turn this into an abstraction sort of in your mind's eye picture all of these words sentences meanings just coming together and just fusing into one lump of this nebulous abstract singularity it's just like a dot you're going to imagine like this white glowing sphere you're you're putting every single word and meaning into it and you're just packing this thing full and full and full in full until literally it it takes up your entire field of vision and it's just this glowing white dot what you're imagining here is the entire possibility space of english now what i want you to realize is that the universe is capable of knowing all of that that's not just some theoretical possibility space that entire thing the universe has that mastered it knows everything within that singularity of english all of it it knows it's conscious of all of it it doesn't need to learn it it already knows it it's already known it's known it forever it's known it since the beginning of time before there was time the universe knew english perfectly all of it in all of its permutations everything the universe has a complete understanding of english better than any human and that every individual human across time that exists and has some understanding of english like shakespeare for example was pretty good with english they say see the universe the only reason shakespeare knew english as well as he did is because the universe gave him a piece of its infinite knowing of english to shakespeare a little tiny piece less than one percent and then it gave a little tiny piece to somebody else and then to somebody else and to somebody else and to all the great writers in the universe that or in human history let's say that have existed it's given a little bit of english to each one of them but every little piece of english it gives it's just an infinitesimally small piece of its infinite understanding of english it's giving to all of these people and then to you it has given whatever understanding of english you have to be able to understand what i'm saying now it's giving a little piece of english to you that's what's really going on of course this is very different than how we conventionally think of the universe pretty cool huh but notice that is just the domain of english we've only talked about english we have a lot more to talk about here so hang in there uh if you need to pause this recording to actually go through this visualization visualization exercise do it and i want you to actually kind of try to become as conscious as you can that the universe is capable of doing this of course i'm not saying that you as a human can now know all of english i'm not saying that you're limited because like i said the universe only gave you a tiny portion and it's not gonna give you the whole thing just because your ego wants it but anyways try to do that exercise it's helpful to actually do the exercises when i tell you to do them it's very important that you don't just turn this into ideas this is more than ideas i want you to feel it and to become conscious of it as as much as you can you know it's difficult this is difficult work now you might wonder but leo how is it possible this is crazy it's impossible for the universe to know all of english but under your materialist scientific paradigm how is it possible for the universe to know any english at all i mean obviously if you're a scientist and you're a materialist and you're an atheist you still have to admit that the universe knows some english because you know some english just by the very fact that you're understanding what i'm saying demonstrates that consciousness is able to know english so obviously english is knowable by reality you feel it you experience it don't deny the obvious so if you can understand english that already demonstrates that at least a little bit of english can be understood and now the only thing you have to realize to understand what i'm saying is simply realize that if the universe has been running for let's say 14 billion years and it's going to continue to run from many billions more imagine all of the different english speakers that have lived and will live in the future across thousands of years you know shakespeare and many others and you and all the people you know um and everyone in the future who will live and know english i mean obviously reality you admit that reality is doing that right where else is that occurring but within reality so obviously all those people know english so if that's possible why is it so hard for you to understand and just to make that one final leap to realize that it's no harder for the universe to know the meaning of a single word like cat or dog than it is for the universe to do that infinite pure ball of of white understanding of english everything possible within english you think you would think sort of conventionally speaking you think that well it's easy for the universe to know what a cat is and what a dog is but it's really difficult for the universe to know what everything is within english no neither one is easier than the other they're equally difficult they're equally impossible the confusion that you've come up with in your mind that the the chief delusion you think that oh well it's easy to like have a single atom exist or it's easy for it to have the word like a cat exists and to be able for the brain to be able to understand it that's easy but it's hard for you know the universe to understand everything no it's just as difficult to create one atom as it is to create an infinite number of atoms it's just as difficult to understand the word cat as it is to understand every single english word that could ever possibly exist these things are not difficult for the universe because the universe is infinite and it has no limitations placed upon it all of its limitations are self-imposed that's perhaps the chief delusion of science is that it actually thinks that the limitations of the universe are somehow imposed upon it from the outside and are not consciously chosen by it this is a delusion every limitation of the universe has been consciously chosen by the universe for its own purposes and what those purposes are well that's something you have to discover why are the why are these limitations why did the universe choose these specific limitations it's a good question there is an answer to that but beyond the scope of this conversation so now what i want you to do is because you you obviously you've imagined the all of english as a as one domain but then you might get the next kind of logical step in this contemplation you might realize well but that's just english so if the universe can know all of english could it also know all of chinese of course could it also know all of german of course could it also know all of spanish of course would it be hard for the universe to know all of russian is russian harder than english well we think so conventionally speaking russian is considered a difficult language could it know scandinavian that's also considered a pretty difficult language or i don't know what is it called norwegian um uh icelandic that's considered a pretty difficult language some of those scandinavian languages are kind of squirrely and tricky so um is that too hard is is is the universe gonna give up because oh icelandic it's a man i could know all of english but icelandic i can't know all of icelandic that's too much for me is that is that what you think the universe is is limited by it no of course not the universe can know every language and in fact it does so now expand this white singularity to not just be about english but incorporate into it every possible language that could ever possibly exist not just for humans but for all species aliens whoever you might imagine exists out there and could know language every possible language all of it imagine an entity that knows all of that imagine a mind that knows all of that good sounds pretty cool that's a very powerful [ __ ] mind very powerful mind to do that right you can barely handle two languages or three maybe five maybe ten languages if you can if you could know ten languages even half decently so you're fluent with them you're you're a genius amongst humans but you're an idiot compared to what the universal mind can do and this knowledge understand it's perfect right this is not fallible knowledge where it sort of knows something no it's perfect knowledge perfect this is profound stuff i'm telling this should be blowing your [ __ ] mind right now this possibility of just the universe knowing all possible languages perfectly and also imperfectly too so you think that oh well there's the perfect knowing of it but then what about the imperfect knowing of it well of course the universe can know it imperfectly as well in all of its imperfections that's included in this white singularity of perfect knowing see because once you know everything perfectly how easy is it then to [ __ ] your own self and limit yourself to some sort of partial distorted limited understanding easy it's easy see if i have an infinite amount of money how easy is it for me to pretend as though i'm poor really [ __ ] easy all i have to do is create a bank account put a couple thousand dollars into it and then you know keep the other infinite dollars that i have in a separate bank account and just kind of like deny myself access to that you know change the password on that account so i can't access that infinite money but it's there maybe somewhere like the bank has my name written on that account so you know it's there but i could i can i can forget i can kind of trick myself to forget all that and then i think that i have just one account with with a couple thousand dollars but where did that thousand dollars come from from the infinite money that i have you see likewise when you whatever limitations you might feel like you have with english or some other language if you think that you you know you struggle with english that's because you're pretending you're this infinite mind that has a perfect understanding of all languages and you're pretending that you don't understand some word sounds a bit outrageous like leo but i don't know icelandic how could i be pretending you're telling me i'm pretending that i don't know icelandic and that i really do know it yeah but uh good luck uh stopping pretending that see when you're pretending that you're doing something in my formulation of how things work that doesn't mean you can just easily stop it doesn't mean that your ego knows how to stop in the same way that when you lock yourself out of your bank account with infinite money and you truly forget your password and you forget that this account even exists and you can't access it at all then to you effectively you're poor until maybe you you find the password or the key that unlocks that infinite account and then maybe things will change for you but hey finding that key might take you a lifetime maybe you won't ever find it i don't guarantee that you'll find the key that unlocks every language for you but maybe you will i don't know up to you so that's just all languages now in this contemplation you might say well leo so that's just languages but wait a minute if the universe can do that what else can the universe do and now of course you start to get where we're really going consciousness is infinite imagination infinite imagination has infinite domains what do i mean by a domain so a domain is something like all of english that's one domain all possible languages that's another domain mathematics that's another domain and so on so let's explore some of these domains for example the domain of movies i want you to imagine every movie that has ever been made in reality in the universe and every movie that will ever be made imagine that as just a possibility space but let's expand that not just every movie that has been made but every movie that could be made see that's different that's a larger domain you can see so we're talking about nested domains here all the movies that actually exist is a circle about this big all the movies that could possibly exist is a circle that's so big that it would need a thousand screens to fill that circle now imagine some one specific movie like star wars let's say the original episode what for a new hope star wars right uh uh although you kids you probably aren't even familiar with it how many of you have even watched star wars leave a comment down below um the original one uh anyways so that original one how many different ways could george lucas have filmed or written that star wars imagine the entire possibility so so a new hope that's one specific instantiation of the entire possibility space of what that movie could have been right like luke could have been named john and han could have been named larry and princess leia could have been named princess peach or whatever you see and uh jabba the hutt could have been a hairy wolf man rather than a slug and the storm troopers could have been wearing black armor instead of white armor and the lightsaber of darth vader could have been purple instead of red and the lightsaber of luke what was it was it blue yeah instead of blue it could have been like yellow so imagine all the i mean we're talking about trillions of possibilities here you see i mean we're talking niggly little details of how this movie could have been different all the dialogue could have been different all the camera angles could have been different all the sets could have been different all the characters could have been different the story could have been completely different the name could have been completely different and have to be called star wars um it could have been five minutes long it could have been 60 minutes long it could have been two hours long it could have been three hours long could have been five hours long it could have been a 20 hour movie it could have been a tv show it could have been a cartoon it could have been shot in 3d it could have been uh like a pixar film could have been anything really of course the further we get away from its original instantiation the less star wars it gets the less original it is so to speak um but still you know however george lucas created at the beginning you wouldn't have known any different so now imagine the entire possibility space of what star wars could have been as this kind of giant white singularity it's good now imagine epis the next episode you know empire strikes back imagine all the possibilities of that that's another singularity see they're two separate domains then you have return of the jedi it's a third one third domain now merge them all together now merge together all the possibilities of how all of star wars including all the video games all the action figures all the toys all the advertisements all the cartoons all the tv shows all the novels all the books the entire extended universe everything how it could have been and how it could ever possibly be in the future imagine every possible alternative formulation of star wars that will ever exist imagine everything star wars in one giant white singularity okay now we've got star wars now let's move on to another movie jurassic park let's do that with the entire jurassic park universe okay we've got that now of course you see where we're going we can keep doing this with every possible movie now imagine every single film and every single cinematic universe that could ever be filmed ever in the universe there's trillions of possibilities here right a lot lump them all together lump the entire cinematic genre of human art let's say let's call it art let's let's lump all that together into one giant white singularity okay we've got that let's throw that aside for a minute now imagine music imagine every possible formulation of music that could ever possibly exist that was ever invented or ever will be invented by humans so imagine that as one white singularity now merge that with movies as well so we've got movies and songs together so these are two separate domains now we merge them together set that aside notice that each of these domains is infinite are you seeing that they're all infinite there's no end to them you can keep making new movies forever you can keep making new songs forever it's inexhaustible now let's imagine video games every possible video game that could ever be made imagine that now lump that in with the previous stuff now imagine every invention that every a human could ever invent the telephone the radio the transistor the laser beam the toaster the wheel the all the inventions lump them all together into one not just the ones that were invented but the ones that will be invented as well lump that all together and then merge that into everything we've imagined so far now how about software the domain of software every piece of software that could have ever been made excel word photoshop after effects i don't know what kind of software do you use these days um yeah lump them all together all possible versions of software as well so we're talking about every operating system ever written for every machine that has ever existed and ever will exist lump that all together merge it with the stuff we've had so far now imagine every vehicle that could be invented helicopters airplanes cars motorcycles go peds mopeds tanks suvs you know electric cars [Music] submarines all of them lump them together also notice that we can see we can kind of zoom out we can also zoom in so for example we can take a we can take a category or a subdomain such as flying vehicles right so a subset of all possible vehicles is the sub-domain of flying vehicles okay how many if we if there you can hopefully see that there's an infinite number of different vehicles we can make right okay that's pretty obvious how many flying vehicles can we make also infinite but it's a smaller infinity it's a subset of infinity so it's infinity of an infinity infinity comes in orders so we can make an infinite number of airplanes and helicopters and other types of flying vehicles rockets and so forth but we can so within vehicles we have flying vehicles within flying vehicles we can zoom in further and do a sub-domain of helicopters how many different kinds of helicopters can we have infinite but a smaller infinity than all flying vehicles now of the helicopters we can zoom in further we could say how many helicopters that are gas powered rather than electric or some other propulsion that's a smaller subset how many gas powered helicopters can we have infinite but smaller than the subset of helicopters now we can zoom in further and say how many helicopters can we have that are gas powered that have the capacity to uh carry 10 or more passengers how many of those can we invent infinite and how many helicopters can we invent that are like that and have the color you know have a a white paint paint scheme on it infinite and you can see that we can keep doing this forever we can subdivide consciousness or imagination forever to infinity we can get more and more and more and more detailed until we get to the point where we're like just changing individual atoms within helicopters and even that becomes infinite pretty cool huh so when we're talking about all possible vehicles i want you to realize that a white gas powered helicopter that can have capacity for 10 passengers that's one little tiny speck within that entire possibility space and we can zoom in further and further within just that subdomain forever so we've got that now imagine every possible chess game that could ever be played as one white singularity also imagine every possible board game not just chess but go and all the possible board games monopoly and so forth that have ever existed or will ever be invented imagine all that as a singularity now imagine sports all the possible sports that could ever be invented and played imagine every possible for example football match that could ever be played and watched and every possible way in which a single football game can unfold every possible goal that could be made every possible penalty every possible violation of the rules every possible upset every possible victory in defeat condition all of it imagined as one singularity see that imagine every possible food that any living being ever could possibly eat including humans animals anything anything that counts as food imagine that imagine every possible joke that has ever been told and could ever be told in the universe imagine all that as one singularity imagine every possible file name that you could give to a file on a computer those are infinite because they can be infinitely long there's no limitation here on the length of these file names per se imagine every living being that could ever possibly live including humans animals aliens and anything like that imagine all that as one singularity uh imagine all possible diseases cancers and other diseases not just of humans but of course of every living being that could ever possibly live so you know cats have their own unique diseases that humans don't have dogs have their own you know elephants have their own hippopotami have their own and snakes have their own diseases and so on aliens will have new diseases that we don't even understand can't even imagine imagine all those diseases imagine every city that could ever be built on any planet in the entire universe and all the possibilities of how you can rearrange that city you know you can have a skyscraper that's a thousand feet tall or a thousand one foot tall it could have this kind of decor that kind of decor this kind of color glass steel whatever and all the skyscrapers could be arranged in different ways all the different city possibilities as we're imagining this we're lumping it all together into one ever greater singularity of pure white potential imagine every subfield of science biology chemistry micro biology molecular biology you know evolutionary biology physics quantum physics cosmology astrophysics blah blah blah blah blah imagine all the possible fields of science imagine all the works of art all the possible paintings sculptures works of architecture works of poetry works of literature all of it add it lump it all together into this white hot singularity imagine every orgasm that every human has ever had i don't just mean an orgasm i mean every possible orgasm you know orgasms can be different you've had some strong ones you've had weak ones you've had long ones you've had short ones you know men and women experience different kinds of orgasms even you know a man can experience different kinds of orgasms you can experience sort of a traditional orgasm you can experience an anal orgasm a woman can experience clitoral orgasms vaginal orgasms whatever many different kinds of orgasms lump every orgasm that every human has ever had together into one singularity and then also on top of that add every orgasm that every animal and every living being every alien that will ever possibly have in the future we'll have all of that together lump together every possible emotion that can be felt by any living being in the entire universe as one singularity imagine every possible set of physical laws that could create a universe that's alternative to our our own imagine all of that as a singularity imagine every thought and idea that you could ever have ever whether you're a human or an animal or something beyond human an alien or some sort of ai a robot whatever if those ever have ideas and thoughts lump all the thoughts and ideas together into one singularity and finally imagine every possible self that could be held within consciousness what do i mean by a self i don't necessarily mean a human i mean a self i mean you are a self your entire life is what i'm pointing at that's the self the self in this case is so there's you i mean you are familiar intimately with your own self but then there's like the self of your mom or your brother or your dad or some friend of yours that's a separate self you think for example yourself is not the same as your mom's self or your dad's self or myself leo's self you think of yourself as a separate self for me in a certain sense you're right as far as lower case selves go lowercase ls selves go so imagine every possible self that the universe could ever hold within consciousness and merge them all into one single possibility space of every possible self and now of course you understand where this is going imagine the entire possibility space of all possible possibility spaces including everything that's impossible all at once imagine everything that's it that's consciousness that's the universe that's reality that's god that's love everything that is infinity absolute infinity this infinity contains an infinite number of subdomains of itself which are also all infinite but lesser infinities than absolute infinity it contains infinite movies infinite video games infinite orgasms infinite emotions infinite beings infinite thoughts infinite scientific laws physical laws infinite universes infinite thoughts and ideas infinite vehicles and cars infinite helicopters infinite jokes independent sports infinite chess games infinite file names infinite diseases infinite cities infinite planets infinite stars infinite novels infinite poems infinite songs infinite languages infinite everything everything that is infinite mind that's what you are your infinite mind and that explains everything there's nothing left to explain but let's do a little more narrow exercise here because there's something very profound about the following exercise that will be helpful for you let's focus on this idea of selves infinite selves i want you to try to grasp and actually become conscious of and feel try to feel that yourself is being held within consciousness again what do i mean by yourself what i'm talking about is that sort of first person sense of what it's like to be you a self all of your memories your personal story your history where you came from where you were born how you grew up your schooling all of your beliefs and theories whether you're scientific or religious or spiritual or new age all of that all of your emotions all of your habits and quirks every thought you've ever had uh every desire you've ever had all the fears you have all the aversions that you have and all the attractions that attract you yourself you which is different than your mom or your dad or me right because i have my own set of those things and your mom has her own set and your dad has his own set and your siblings have theirs and so on so what i want you to understand is that self all of that that's like a conglomeration of various feelings emotions and thoughts lumped together into sort of a cohesive bubble almost we might say it is that's being held right now try to feel this you're you're being held by consciousness consciousness is imagining that right now as i'm speaking it's doing this it's doing it very consistently such that it feels completely physical and real but it's also it's not it's not completely rigid it's also it's it's it's fluid yourself is fluid it's changing it's morphing you know one hour you feel good the next hour you feel depressed one hour you feel horny the next hour you feel hungry whatever you know it's it's kind of it's it's morphing very gently but it's still maintaining overall it's it's structure and it changes throughout your whole life as you get older as you grow as you mature as you learn as you uh actualize yourself and so on so this self that you are identified with completely that you think you are that was born and that's going to die i want you to imagine stopping doing that and swapping to being your your mother for example imagine what herself is like and imagine that these are two separate bubbles and you can jump from this bubble to this bubble now when you jump to this bubble realize that you lose everything in this other bubble you lose all your memories you lose your sense of identity you lose your name you lose everything such that when you become your mother you're your mother you don't even have an idea about how you were the old you you or your mother now that's the new you that's the new self and now imagine switching from being that mother self to being the leo self you're the guy who's creating all these videos and talking all and talking about all this uh mystical mystical stuff imagine being me having all of my memories and my name and my um you know my bank account and all of the stuff that i have imagine that but when you're me you no longer have any memory or idea of having been you or having been your mother and now switch to some other person switch to donald trump imagine being donald trump and being the donald trump self and now what i want you to become conscious of is that all of these different bubbles of selves these are just something that consciousness is imagining very vividly at any moment it can jump between these effortlessly it doesn't care it can imagine all these cells simultaneously imagine every possible human self that could ever exist hitler napoleon caesar jesus buddha trump etc etc etc imagine every possible permutation of every possible self all the memories that hitler could have had all the experiences that jesus could have had but didn't all the ideas that buddha could have had but didn't all the stuff that donald trump could have done in his life but didn't maybe in some you know alternative life donald trump could have been uh you know uh a spiritual teacher an awakened buddha maybe he could have had a youtube channel maybe he could have been like a cartola or something or sad guru but hey that that that didn't pan out for him for whatever circumstances but imagine that all the things he could have been all the different selves that he could have been all the different cells that you could have been but you know you made certain choices that sent you down certain roads and not others so see the problem is that you are attached to your particular current self and everything all the other cells that i'm talking about to you is just a fantasy they're just ideas it's not tangible it's not as tangible as your current self that's right because what we're talking about is preserving your life here you see can you see that your life is on the line this is not just a cute activity when we're talking about jumping between cells this is not just like a fun activity it's like oh yeah that sounds fun i'll just turn into my mom i'll just turn into leo i'll just turn into donald trump no if i snap my fingers or if there is better to put it this way better to put it this way if there was a red button that you could push right now you push this button and you will become donald trump but understand that when you become donald trump it's not going to be like oh yeah i become donald trump for a day and then i return back or i become donald trump and i keep all of my ideas all of my philosophy all my spiritual development i keep all that no if you push this button you truly become donald trump precisely you don't keep your old memories none of your old ideas none of your self-actualization work remains you're gonna be this egotistical arrogant [ __ ] uh who's ignorant as a doorknob if you push that button will you push that button and what will happen once you push that button see i mean this is gonna be the most terrifying decision you've ever had to make in your life you are gonna you are not gonna push that button even you might say well that's because donald trump is this awful human being okay well even if we select the human being you admire the most who do you admire eckhart tolle or something um or the buddha let's say you could push the button and you can become the buddha would you do it no because you're terrified of losing yourself pushing that button is the very definition of death that's what you call annihilation there won't even be a a remnant of a memory of who you used to be if you push that button hey i mean if you're crazy you might push that button but 99 of people will not push that button so now you can appreciate the distinction between self with a lowercase s and self with an uppercase s so when i use this distinction sometimes in some of my recordings what do i mean by that self with a lowercase s is a specific instantiation of a self like donald trump or me or you or your mom right different memories different life stories different experiences different people that's the lowercase self the uppercase self is when we take all the lowercase selves and we literally fuse them into one infinite singularity of potential selves that's the uppercase self every possible self the infinite self this uppercase s self is otherwise known as god every possible self got it now the only problem is that you still for you this is still all just ideas it's just philosophy it's just fantasy none of this feels real to you it seems like some dude just gave you some crazy ideas they sound interesting and philosophical and cute but hey you know leo this is not real right none of this could actually happen in real life it's impossible or maybe you're wrong who knows find out for yourself you might wonder leo is there an end to this infinity of course not even though we've imagined this infinity of all the possible stuff as this one single sort of blob or this singularity it might seem like this one singular thing which has a definite boundary around it like a sphere but of course infinity can't have a boundary it can't be a sphere it it's so infinite that it fills up the entire space and it's infinite in all directions and in all domains and subdomains infinitely subdividing itself consciousness is capable of infinite subdivision nesting within itself ever more and ever more and evermore subdividing itself forever and this process is endless sort of like a geometrical line you know a geometrical line it just it just goes in both directions forever and ever and ever it doesn't end that's how reality is except it's not a line nor is it a plane nor is it a cube nor is it a sphere but it's infinite in all directions in all domains in all dimensions in all qualities in every possible way it's all possible possibilities including of course the paradox of everything impossible as well everything including of course nothing you might say leo if if i'm imagining everything this is the opposite of nothing and therefore it's still not everything because then everything is here and then nothing is somehow outside of this right but you still haven't gone all the way when i mean everything i'm talking about everything with an uppercase e i mean everything which of course means nothing too because if you exclude nothing from everything then it wasn't really everything was it it was everything except nothing so here is finally where you realize and fully understand what it means to say that reality is nothing what the zen people teach you what the buddhists teach you reality is nothing because it's everything [Music] or god it's god people say oh leo but the buddhists don't believe in god people just don't understand buddhism even many buddhists don't understand buddhism nothingness is god so there you are i encourage you to keep trying these experiments keep contemplating this stuff i know that right now for you it's just at the level of imagination sort of just conceptual imagination it's just fantasy but hey you might be surprised where this leads you remember that to really get somewhere in life first you have to be able to envision it and conceive of it and yeah it's a fantasy at first but then you work on it and then you might be surprised at how much of it you can actually actualize or start to grasp in various kinds of ways for yourself now the last point i want to make here is that sometimes there's this confusion within spiritual teachings about states of consciousness people sometimes say that awakening is not a state of consciousness enlightenment is not a state of consciousness that there are states of consciousness and there's something else called enlightenment no there's only states of consciousness consciousness takes different states that's what consciousness does that's what consciousness is it's a substance that has no substance which can take any state it can take the state of a refrigerator of a car of a cat of a human of a dog of an alien of anything okay some of these states of consciousness are very very intelligent and conscious and mystical others are not others are as dumb literally as a doorknob or a coffee table of course in the absolute sense no state of consciousness is better than any other state it's not better to be a human than it is to be a dog or than it is to be a coffee table it's just different they're different they have different pros and cons different capacities in a sense it's great to be a human because you can experience an orgasm a coffee table can't experience an orgasm but on the other hand you can experience a lot of suffering as a human that the coffee table is safe from so maybe it's not so bad to be a coffee table you lose some things but you also gain some things that's the nature of all form every state has its pros and cons to it there is nothing but states of consciousness there's an infinite number of course of different states of consciousness there are thousands and even millions of different awakened states of consciousness there is not a singular awake or enlightened state of consciousness there are millions of them there are different degrees of them this is one of the biggest misconceptions that i see and self-deceptions that i see within spiritual circles and spiritual teachings is that they frame awakening or enlightenment as a singular state that is achieved or even they get tricky and they say oh it's not even a state some some traditions call it turia for example it's supposed to be the stateless state the fourth state you know they have uh sleeping dreaming waking and then they have toria the fourth state the non-state state but that's still a state if you have a state where consciousness is completely empty of form that's still a state that's the state of emptiness you can be in a state of total emptiness you can be in a state of the state you're in right now you can be in some psychedelic state there are millions of different psychedelic states you can be in a meditative state there are millions of meditative states they're all different they all have their own pros and cons and benefits and and uh and negatives and you can explore all these different states and you can also realize the nature of all the states without necessarily having to explore the policy i haven't explored all states but i have become conscious of the the nature of consciousness and how it takes on these different states and your life consists of these different states but for our purposes there are certain states that are more resourceful for doing this work that we do than other states for example if you're drunk you're in a certain state but that's not a very good state for self-actualization work it might be a great state though when you're in a nightclub and you want to dance or you want to hit on some girls and you're feeling shy and anxious having a couple of drinks of whiskey or whatever might be perfect for that situation on the other hand you can also take it too far you know drink too many whiskeys and then you're going to have a terrible state and then you're going to regret it the next day and that's going to be a problem so you have to be careful with these states which kind of states are you putting yourself in you know when you're watching television for five hours that puts you in a certain state when you're watching one of my videos that that changes your state of consciousness just you know a little bit when you take five amio dmt that changes your consciousness like a [ __ ] and then how much dmt you take changes your state even further you can take a little dim tea a medium dose a giant dose a whiteout dose you can take a dose of dnp so so so great you'll become so conscious that you'll literally become that infinite pure white singularity of everything possible you'll think you're dead you might even die conventionally speaking but really you'll just become infinite you'll become that singularity so uh in a certain sense it doesn't matter what state you're in but in another sense it matters very much from a practical perspective it matters very much what state you're in because the state you're in determines what you're able to do in life for example if your brain the so-called imaginary brain of course the brain is imagining but if your brain is filled with toxins heavy metals and other chemicals and your body because you're eating terrible food is filled with toxins as well this is going to actually shift down the state of your consciousness such that you're not going to be able to think straight you won't be able to concentrate or focus you'll have add symptoms you'll be autistic or whatever and you're not going to be able to do this work you're not going to be able to sit and just meditate because your mind is going to be all over the place you might even have suicidal thoughts you might even have homicidal thoughts you might be in a state of insanity that does exist states of madness those exist so be very careful what you put into your body and how you program your mind because that does affect your state the kinds of videos you choose to watch on youtube affects your state the kind of websites you visit affects your state the kind of porn you watch affects your state the kind of chemicals you put into your body affect your state don't let a spiritual teacher that tell you that state is not important state is crucial your baseline state in a sense dictates everything in your life what you're doing is stemming from your state if you're having difficulty awakening it's because your state is wrong you're stuck in a lower state many spiritual teachers won't tell you this they like to pretend as they're like oh state is irrelevant you can just ignore state no you can't ignore state state is super relevant which is why psychedelics are so powerful and important because they can show you these higher states that otherwise would be very difficult to achieve and what a lot of many meditation teachers don't take into account is that today especially now in the last couple of decades uh in a sense awakening is harder than ever because of the state that society is inducing in people all the social media all the junk food all the video games all the porn all the virtual reality all of the cell phones and smartphones all of the conspiracy theories that are going around these days all of this is changing people's states and it's putting people in a very rigid state such that they can't even sit in focus for five minutes because their minds are so scatterbrained with 80 d symptoms and autism and all this sorts of junk and so when some zen master tells you oh i just sit there and meditate and you'll awaken no you won't because of the state you're in your your your mind and your brain is filled with such bad ideas world views theories and also toxic chemicals uh that some of you have zero chance of awakening even if you sit there for 30 years now of course don't uh don't freak out don't let they'll let that be a limiting belief i'm just i'm just telling you be careful what you put into your mind what you put into your body you need to actually if you really want to awaken deeply and reach some of these higher realms of consciousness you need to really start to clean up your diet clean up your information intake various detox protocols that i will share with you in the future this will all be super important um and yeah i'm just putting that out there because it's easy to get tricked into thinking that state is irrelevant it's not irrelevant state is very relevant and awakening is a state the reason that you have difficulty awakening or really you can't even awaken from hearing some teacher talking to you and you've probably heard eckhart tolle or rupert spira or sod guru or whoever is your favorite you know non-dual teacher you've heard them droning on and on and on about consciousness and awakening and enlightenment and no self and god and love and all this but to you it's just words falling on deaf ears no matter how much you try nothing changes for you you don't awaken why is that because you're in the wrong state and they're not telling you that that's the truth but that's also good because that means you can change your state you can put yourself into more resourceful states that will help you get closer to awakening and of course there are many different versions and degrees of awakened nests depending on how awake your state really is that's another way in which spiritual teachers deceive you is usually they take their own awakened state as the limit of what awakened states can be but that's rarely the case there are an infinite number of different awakened states far beyond what all of your teachers and masters have told you about so just keep that in mind that will open your mind to to to to keep growing and growing and growing forever and uh it's very worthwhile to explore these different states don't let teachers fool you into thinking that oh exploring states this is just a waste of time no it isn't you learn a lot from exploring different states now of course there is a trap in chasing pleasurable states i'm not telling you to fall into that trap of course you want to avoid that shooting up heroin will put you in an amazing pleasurable state for a few hours but it has terrible consequences and you're not going to be able to maintain that state and it's not going to be a very resourceful state it's sort of a lazy state of pure pleasure which feels nice but then it goes away so that doesn't work um likewise even with psychedelics you know you can take fibromyalgia and put you in an amazing state um better than heroin but uh with less side effects negative side effects but still you're gonna you're gonna drop down from that state and then and then what what do you do then so but just because that happened does that mean that the 5-meo dmt state is now a bad state and you shouldn't pursue that state no that it's a super important state for most people to experience that state it'll completely transform your life but on the other hand don't fall into the delusion of thinking you can just like grasp onto that state and hold it like a baby blanket you won't be able to so there is value in having peak experiences of different kinds of states it teaches you about the possibilities of consciousness it's very important uh sometimes even just being in a terrible state will teach you a lot about consciousness now of course that doesn't mean you want to live from that state for the rest of your life but it can be very illuminating and this is why having a terrible trip can be actually a very powerful growing experience because you have a terrible trip of course you don't want to be locked into that state forever but that states shows you some stuff shows you how serious consciousness is how brutal it can be how sometimes how impersonal it can be how unloving it can be sometimes in these horrible trips it feels like you're losing your mind but at the same time you get more appreciation of the diversity of states that humans and other beings can experience that makes you more compassionate towards what others are going through and then you realize that all of the stupid stuff that people do in society and in the world all the nasty things they say to you and all the devil read that they do it's actually coming from the limited state that they're stuck in and then you get an even deeper sense of compassion for them because you know that they're locked in that state and no matter what you say it's not going to probably change their state very much so the ultimate thing you can do in your life is to change your state but of course there's right ways and wrong ways to go about it and there's always traps in this in this process so be careful you can certainly get lost in the pursuit of endless states without upgrading your baseline state so one of the most important things you can do is not just to pursue the peak experiences but then you pursue those those show you different possibilities and then what you do is you come back to your baseline state when you're sober and calm and you can raise that and then for that there are certain techniques like yoga meditation contemplation self-inquiry etc etc that we've talked about but also the peak states those do add to the increase of your baseline state so there's a sort of a complex relationship there it's not simply that you hit a peak come back down and then you're back to where you were no you could you that just hitting a peak could forever increase your baseline state or it couldn't it just depends there's so many variables here so i'm uh i'm trying to show you the big picture of how all this works all right that's it the practice that i want to leave you here today with for the next week i want you to notice how everything physical is actually being held by consciousness like a refrigerator a coffee table and so on try to notice how that's being held within consciousness that's not a physical object it's just being held in consciousness as a physical object try to notice that distinction all right that's it i'm done here please click that like button for me and come check out actualize.org that's my website you will find additional resources on there that are not available on youtube you will find my book list a live purpose course you will find my blog where i'm posting exclusive content sometimes videos sometimes articles sometimes links sometimes memes sometimes funny stuff don't miss that sometimes profound stuff some of the most profound stuff i post is on my blog don't miss that i put a lot of effort into it check out the forum where you can talk about this stuff with like-minded people and the last thing i'll say is just a little bit about psychedelics to get the full effect of this episode i recommend that at some point you experiment with psychedelics in a responsible manner however you want to do it and you use this episode as sort of a guide you can use this in your psychedelic trips and experiences you can you can really fully appreciate some of these exercises that i took you through and you can start to notice in a tangible way the infinite potential of all these different subdomains and how conscious works and how a refrigerator is actually something that you're holding in your consciousness you can start to make these distinctions this is going to be very crucial for your growth to the highest levels of understanding of reality and then just make sure that you don't get trapped in the chasing of those amazing states that psychedelics can put you in because that is definitely a danger and you do have to be careful and responsible about how you use psychedelics