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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about how to develop a deep interest in existential truth which is something that few people are interested in and the way we can do that is I'm going to share with you what I came up with as the 64 most profound and fascinating questions that a human being can ever ask I want to make you more interested in truth in questions of existential matters metaphysical matters epistemic matters and very few people are generally interested in this stuff but you know what I found in my life is that I accidentally stumbled into these questions when I was pretty young and I was interested in these questions basically since I was a kid and a teenager and that that has made a practical difference actually a very big difference in the maturity of my psychology so it might seem like these questions are just metaphysical and philosophical but actually what I want to show you is that these questions are central to how happy you are in life how much meaning you derive from life and actually how you develop yourself and how you grow and the deepest levels of personal development are intimately tied in with thinking about some of these questions and the only reason that I think that most people have not been exposed to these questions is simply because our culture is really bad at this it kind of discourages it and most people have never even really just been introduced to this stuff because these questions are inherently very very fascinating but the problem is that people have even introduced these questions and also the way they go about investigating these questions is totally wrong so I'm going to talk about all these interesting questions here hopefully trigger this curiosity in you and then finally I'll talk a little bit about how to tie this in with your life so there are four categories of these existential questions I'm going to cover first is the metaphysical then the epistemic then questions about the self and questions about consciousness there's some overlap between these different categories so I took some liberties about how to structure these questions where to put them so first let's talk about the metaphysical the metaphysical basically means the like the structure and physics of reality why is it the way it is and what really is reality the first question in this category is how come existence exists at all vision rule wondered about that it's very puzzling this thing called existence you can actually become aware right now that you exist and that existence exists and there's degrees of this awareness and it's very puzzling when you're aware that you exist which normally or not is very puzzling like what is existence what is it it's such a mysterious thing it's so slippery so hard to get a handle on and yet here it is it's like the most essential thing that we have it grounds everything else also related question is what is existence what does it mean for something to exist might seem kind of obvious at first but then again when you start to think about it pretty deeply it's not obvious at all what existence is and how his existence related to non-existence how do objects-- pass from non-existence into existence and from existence into non-existence both of which seem to happen all the time also why is reality structured as it is our reality has a very definite structure in order to it but why is it ordered this way and not some other way and are there other possible ways that reality can be ordered other than our own you might say well it's ordered this way and structured this way because of the laws of physics okay but that doesn't really explain anything because why are the laws of physics structured the way they are and could the laws of physics be different are they just arbitrary or do they have to be the way that they are are there may be other universes where the laws of physics are totally different and then why would that be the case and then why is our universe the way it is and not some under way another question is which comes first consciousness or matter so sine typically we tend to think of the world as being made of matter and energy physical hard stuff rocks trees rivers people cars this sort of stuff but then again from a first-person perspective consciousness is the primary thing we've got our awareness our consciousness that in fact we could say actually that that's the most truest thing we have is consciousness and yet how does this consciousness come about and what is its relationship to matter is consciousness something that comes out of matter like a higher-order emergent property science seems to hold it that way but if you start to think about this then the other possibility opens up to you which is that maybe matter is something that we think up or that occurs conceptually within consciousness so which is it is matter within consciousness or does conscious arise out of matter very interesting question another question is what is matter energy space and time these four things are like the most primary qualities or quantities or variables within a lot of physics equations and yet if you study physics uh there's no real answer to what matter energy time or space are the things are defined sort of as question marks and we can certainly manipulate them in equations but when it comes to really like getting a handle on what matter is or energy or even time in space uh that's very very tricky so in a sense the most fundamental building blocks of our reality are unknown how weird is that another question is what is outside the universe have you ever thought about this like is our in our universe infinite or is it finite and if the universe is finite then there must be what that a boundary it's like a sphere that extends out in all directions but then there's a boundary and then what's outside that boundary is it what a vacuum is it less than a vacuum is it nothingness seems kind of odd what would happen if you try to go through that boundary interesting and if the universe is infinite well that presents some tricky scenarios as well because how could it be infinite and how can we even understand what it means for the universe to be infinite and if the universe does have a boundary is there something maybe outside that boundary like other universes another related question is what existed before the Big Bang so scientifically we accept the Big Bang model at the origin of the universe but so that says you know the universe came out a little singularity but where did that singularity come from saying that the universe originated from the Big Bang really doesn't answer anything as to the origins of existence or the universe because you've boiled it down to some unknown variable which is really no different than saying that God created the universe or that the universe sits on the back of a turtle or an elephant or something like that where did the singularity of the Big Bang come from did it come from other universes did it come from something like a a meta universe from a it's very interesting another question is how does the material interact with the immaterial so like I was saying we have consciousness we have matter we recognize material stuff and immaterial stuff immaterial stuff is not mystical as you might think it's actually very ordinary stuff so immaterial stuff includes thoughts feelings emotions sights sounds in many ways it's all the stuff that your entire practical everyday life is composed of it's immaterial stuff people forget that and yet it seems like there's a relationship an intimate relationship between the material and the immaterial but yet scientifically we haven't really been able to define it at all not even theoretically do we understand how the material could interact with the immaterial seems like I could have immaterial thoughts these immaterial thoughts then shape my actions which are material physical actions okay how does that happen and vice versa seems like I could take some medication or I can let drink some alcohol get drunk and that will affect my mood and my thoughts so here's something physical and material and chemical like alcohol can affect something immaterial like my emotions and my thoughts how does that happen it's very odd we don't even have a theoretical basis for that scientifically another question is what governs what's possible and what's impossible in the universe so we say that some things are possible and some things are impossible and then when we push a little bit further we could say well the things that are impossible are those things that are physically impossible which is governed by laws of gravity Einstein's theory of general relativity quantum mechanical laws and theories and such such considerations but then what determined that for example the speed of light we might say it's not possible to fly from one corner of the universe to another corner of the universe to quickly because that violates the ultimate speed limit speed of light but then what sets that limit it's very interesting we might also say well certain things in universe for example are logically impossible they're irrational or just like logically and consistent like you can't have a square circle but what set that limit if you think of an infinite field of possibilities but then you see our universe our universe is sort of a limitation on that infinite field so if our humor our universe is a limited set of possibilities what sets those limits and those boundaries why is it that you can't have a square circle and you can't just say because it's logically impossible because then why is it logically impossible why is it that it's not possible to have logically impossible things it's interesting another question is what governs emergent properties so we recognize that most the universe is a set of emergent properties so if you think that the universe made of atoms well atoms combine together for example to create a water molecules and then you can combine those water molecules into a glass of water which contains trillions of water molecules and then you have the properties of water and now water has interesting properties like liquidity or solidity or gaseous Ness the pending on what temperature it's at but then what actually determines that those emergent properties of solidity liquidity and gaseous nasaw the places that they do and that they are the way that they are and of course that's just one example we have emergent properties arising in every system at every level chemically biologically socially if you think that consciousness is an emergent property then you have that to explain like why does consciousness arise at the level of the month of the brain let's say your neurons but it doesn't arise the level of atoms or molecules what is determining that and setting those sorts of boundaries and rules it's very interesting and how is it that an emergent property can arise out of seemingly nowhere at all an emergent property is by definition something other than the parts that compose it liquidity and solidity and gaseous nough sarn OTT inherently the properties of h2o molecules neither is consciousness in any way conceivable as a byproduct of just some neurons that you combine together like even theoretically it doesn't make sense so how can that be another question is what makes a thing of thing this is really interesting people take things for granted people take objects for granted but what actually determines what is an object so you might think that I'm standing here before you and I am one single object one single human being but is that true or am i multiple objects because I have hundreds of bones in my body various organs and such so what am I am I one or am i hundreds but then each one of those hundreds also contains thousands and millions of cells maybe trillions of cells blood cells and neurons and so forth so what am I am i wonder' my millions or trillions and then each one of those cells contains millions and billions more of atoms and molecules and such so what exactly determines the boundaries of a thing are those boundaries defined physically are they objective boundaries or does that actually depend on our mind and are these boundaries and objects actually generate and created by the human mind which if that's the case that opens up some very radical possibilities because basically that means that there are no more objects that objects are mental creations does reality have a bottom most scale so if your student science you clearly see that there's many different scales at which we can look at reality we can see the bottom scales like atoms which are supposed to be indivisible but actually we figure out a way to divide them so atoms quarks below that and maybe strings below that maybe strings are the bottom most scale at this point as far as we've discovered and then you can go up the scale very high so you've got molecules made out of atoms then you've got cells minute molecules and proteins and such and then you can go up from that create organs to create organisms from organisms those can combine to create social structures and there's that kind of level then you can even go higher like you could have countries you could have entire ecosystems you can have the entire planet Earth you can have a solar system you could have a galaxy you can have clusters of galaxies and ultimately at the very top you have the universe but is there a bottom most scale for that matter reserve top most scale so does it actually end at strings or Corpse or is that just as low as we can see so far given our limited abilities can there be lower levels and why would there ever be a limit why would there ever be a bottom level could it be that the levels go infinitely down and also infinitely up and if that's true then that opens up some very radical possibilities also does the evolution of the universe have a purpose so it seems pretty clear that the universe is evolving because it started out from just a collection of super hot gases and molecules which have congealed into stars and planets and complex organic molecules and life forms and then that's all been evolving and life has become more complex human civilization has evolved and that has become more complex over the years and then seems like consciousness is evolving and developing and becoming more complex technology is evolving social systems are evolving all of it seems to be developing more complexity and becoming more creative and more Intel so if that trend continues where is that going and is that just an accidental product of evolution or is there a plan to it a design to it is there an ultimate goal to it what might it lead to does it lead to ultimately a fully self-aware universe or does it lead to something else that we can't even imagine that's interesting to consider does external reality exist at all that's something we shouldn't take for granted so scientifically you posit that of course there is an external objective reality and yet if we want to be very strict about it we can see that all we've really got of external reality is we've only got our prayut first-person experiences of it so there is a possibility then that there actually isn't an external reality on all that it there is as far as universe goes is just a collection of private first-person experiences all sort of interacting with each other but nothing else external and objective beyond that what could God be it's great question to consider ah that's a good question consider whether you're Navia store religious so if you're an atheist is still interesting to think about well what would the concept of God even entail is it even logically consistent what does it mean and if you're religious and you do believe in God then you got to really wonder what do you believe in is God some sort of man sitting up in the clouds is God part of the universe or is God separate from the universe and if he's part of the universe how did he create the universe and if he's separate from the universe still how did he create the universe what dimension does he inhabit is he outside of all dimensions and if he is then well that's kind of difficult to understand and if he isn't then how do you account for his existence and also the dimension in which he's existing did he create that dimension too so you have all these interesting problems that come up when you start thinking about God or basically in any way the origin of the universe doesn't have to be God you could also be thinking about the big bang you run into exactly the same problems another question is what are thoughts we all acknowledge that we have thoughts and yet they're very difficult to define what are they is a thought what is it a chemical thing is it a physical thing that doesn't seem quite right it's hard to even pinpoint what thoughts are just in terms of first-person experiences because the thought is not a sight it's not a color it doesn't have size it doesn't have a shape it doesn't smell it doesn't have a sound really so thoughts are these almost ghost-like sensations that we experience and it's hard to pinpoint what those are very interesting and lastly for the metaphysical category is how did life start the very beginning very beginning yes we kind of understand evolution but where did it all come from because it's interesting they've done a lot of lab experiments where they've tried to start new life just by taking some basic complex organic molecules and kind of zapping them with electricity and applying some heat and fire to them to see if life will spontaneously arise and that has not been successfully accomplished so where did life come from it's very interesting is it just a random phenomenon was it a fluke luck thing or what next we have the epistemic category and the epistemic category is some ways my favorite epistemic has to do with epistemology and epistemology is the study of knowledge and basically the most fundamental question we can ask there is how do we know what we know if we're going to claim something is true or something is valid or that it is this way how do we know that here are some of my favorite questions from this category how can I know anything for certain what do I know for certain of all the stuff I know there's various degrees of certainty I have for it is there anything there that I'm a hundred percent certain amount and if there is how can I be one percent certain about it also what makes justifications valid so one thing you'll quickly discover if you start to study pista mala ji a bit is that everything is grounded in justifications so the reason we think that something is true like for example we might say well the universe exists we can be certain that that's true okay but then why do you believe that how can we be certain what's going to happen you're going to come up with justifications it's true because of X Y Z that's what makes it valid those are justifications but then how do you know that those justifications are themselves valid and that the criteria you're using to judge those justifications that that criteria is valid because you are using only one set of criteria out of potentially hundreds or thousands of different kinds of criteria that you can use to evaluate validity how do you know that your criteria is the correct criteria for that you would need more criteria and more criteria and so on forever so how can you be sure also it's very useful to think about why do billions of people believe in God a lot of religious people and also atheistic people dismiss this question way too easily they don't really explore what this question is asking atheists often just say oh well yeah because people are deluded and they'll believe anything they're ignorant they're stupid and so of course they get brainwashed and they'll believe anything but that's a little bit too quick and too fast of a dismissal because it's a good question because people don't just believe in anything people specifically believe in God or various kinds of gods and there are certain commonalities between features that god or gods have between all the different religions that's very interesting it's not like people just believe that or lives a five legged goat in the center of the earth that would be a pretty random belief but people don't believe that and there could be millions of other things that people believe that generally are not believed by billions of people in Mass collectively so we have to account for that somehow we also have to account for the popularity of religion we also have to account for how so many people can be wrong and this question you have to answer even if you're religious you can't say oh well I'm religious so I'm excused from that question because even if you're religious you still basically believe that only your religion is a correct one and all the other ones are basically wrong which means essentially that you still believe that billions of people on the planet believe in something that's completely false and delusional so how can that be the case and how do you know that you're not one of them what makes you different what makes your religion better more true and whatever reason you have for thinking your religion is more true how do you know that you're not just deceiving yourself because a lot of people in fact everybody who believes in religion or God believes that they're right and they have very valid reasons they'll spend hours telling you all the valid reasons they have for why their beliefs are true just like you and they're all very certain so the feeling of certainty is not enough to know in fact the feeling of certainty has gotten a lot of people into a lot of trouble historically just because you're certain to something doesn't mean it's true also why do people disagree about good and bad right and wrong what's ethical and unethical what's moral and immoral what's evil this question is super interesting because if you examine a little bit you'll notice that actually even within your own family there's a lot of disagreement between you and your parents about questions of good and bad even there in that small little group already does there's disagreement not to mention that there's disagreement between families between churches between different religions between different groups of people between political parties between parts the country between different countries around the world between different cultures around the world nobody almost no two people agree on what is good and what is bad and yet at the same time people generally believe that what they think as good and bad are objectively wrong or objectively right so is good and bad actually an objective truth or is that a construct of the human mind and if you claim that it is an objective truth and how come people disagree so much about it because after all people do not disagree about an objective truth such as that the Sun exists or that the grass is green or that gravity will kill you if you jump off a 20-story building at first into the concrete people don't disagree about those things and yet almost everybody disagrees about good and bad why is that how is that explained also how come intelligent people delude themselves so you have to explain not only that there are ignorant people in the world but that even intelligent and very well educated and studied people with PhDs and so forth still manage to delude themselves because after all one of the reasons you explain how people can believe in God and other such nonsense is by saying that well yeah they're deluded but then you also have to account for the fact that there are intelligent people who are very diluted but then you have to wonder well I'm intelligent and I went to school and I went to university and maybe I even got a PhD or a master's degree and I'd read a lot of books and stuff and yet I can see that there are people like that out in world who are deluded so it seems like intelligence and formal education is not enough to guarantee that you yourself are not deluded interesting so then how can you be sure that you're not deluded a very fundamental question of epistemology and why it's so useful is because it forces you to ask the question of what if I'm wrong what if I'm wrong about everything I believe about the world what if my beliefs are not really justified or that my justifications are just rationalizations or arbitrary constructs that serve my ego that's something that you should really ask yourself very deeply also you should ask yourself what if I'm being self biased so not only could I just be wrong or mistaken or deluded but that I could actually be constructing a model of the world an understanding of the world specifically that conforms to my own egoic needs I believe it because it serves me to believe it you see because of course if something serves me I'm very prone to wanting to believe it because it serves me so why wouldn't I believe something that serves me and yet there could be a difference between something that serves me and what the ultimate truth is so how do I know that I haven't just been following my own biases in my own survival needs my own agenda and that my bottles of reality haven't been distorted by those biases it's very tricky because after all I'm very protective of my own agenda and when it comes to my survival I'll do anything to survive I will care more about surviving than I will care about truth so then how can I trust myself that my models of reality are true also you should ask yourself how do I know that I haven't been indoctrinated I love this question because everybody has to acknowledge that there's a doctrine ation and in fact one of the ways that we explain people who believe silly things is by saying well they've just been indoctrinated they grew up as kids and they were brainwashed okay but what about you were you also not indoctrinated when you grew up no only oh I haven't been doctrine ated well how do you know that because after all those people who have been indoctrinated they don't know that they've been indoctrinated that's what indoctrination entails is a failure to be able to acknowledge that the beliefs you hold are not really yours but that they've just been injected into your mind through coercion so what if you have been indoctrinated how then can you be sure that what you know is true another question is good that I like is what is science is science the best way of arriving at knowledge and if it is what makes it the best why is it valid also a great question is what are the limits of science so if we're going to use science to understand the world does science have limits is there stuff that this that science cannot understand due to the fact that science has certain rules and limits or consigns understand everything consigns explain everything or maybe there are other paradigms that could be used same thing for mathematics what is mathematics we seem to hold mathematics is pretty certain and valid but what makes mathematics valid that's a much deeper question than most people give it credit for also what are the limits of mathematics is mathematics something that's explaining the universal nature of reality or is mathematics something that's a construct of the human mind and a projection that the human mind makes onto reality same thing about rationality what is rationality and why does rationality work how do we know that rationality can be trusted and relied upon and that it's valid what are the limits of rationality or is rationality limitless and that it can explain everything or is rationality a feature of the human mind and maybe it's a projection upon reality what is more reliable the senses are five senses rationality or intuition which one of those three should be we should we use to develop our knowledge which one of those is most trustworthy also what are the biases and blind spots of humanity as a whole this question I love because it's rarely considered historically we know the dangers of cultural blindness and thousands of years ago if you had a culture living on some remote island in the middle of nowhere it had a culture and it thought that that culture is universal that that's all that there could ever be that their God and their language and all that stuff that it that was it that's the way it is but then of course as culture started crossing the oceans and stuff and started interacting with each other we realized quickly that cultures are rather arbitrary and that different cultures can be very very different and that there's no one ultimate right culture well same thing might go for species as a species humanity might have certain biases one might be the rationality bias or maybe the mathematics bias or the science bias and maybe we could imagine that there there are species on other planets somewhere that they might have different ways of understanding the world which could be equally accurate and valid or just very very different but still arriving at the same sorts of truths or maybe higher truths so how do we evaluate our own blind spots as humanity generally this is something that is very rarely considered human knowledge is often considered as the ultimate and the only and the universal way of arriving truth and even in our planet we know that there are animals and different creatures who have a very different understanding of reality so a great question to ask yourself is how do animals understand reality how does an ant see the world has a dolphin how does an elephant how does a bacteria now generally we say that they see the world in a much lesser way than we do but then that opens up the possibility for their being higher animals maybe not on this planet but on some other planet maybe there are animals or creatures or intelligent alien life-forms elsewhere in the galaxy who have then a higher understanding than humans do it's not hard to imagine a creature with larger brain of a human after all so then how can we be certain about our knowledge and what we think is true why is human understanding taken as the ultimate truth which of the experts is right so if you notice there's a lot of experts out in the world religious experts political experts scientific experts linguistic experts and so forth how do we know which expert we can trust and if we think we're the expert how can we be sure that we're the expert hmm interesting question so it's like how do we know that somebody really has the ultimate intellectual authority especially if we're trying to evaluate some other expert and we ourselves are not the expert how can we know that they really are the expert model of reality is most accurate there's a lot of different models of reality scientific models religious models and so forth but how do we know that a particular model that we hold as being the most accurate is actually the most accurate it's very interesting what is truth that's a very fundamental question that we need to ask when we study epistemology what is truth itself is it an idea is it a model is it a concept is it actual reality is it something beyond reality is truth a third-person objective phenomena or through the first-person subjective experience and also what is understanding so there seems to be a difference between truth and understanding if I understand how something works like I might understand how a car engine works maybe I don't know the truth of it but I might say I have an understanding of it but then where does understanding come from how can we trust and rely upon understanding how do we distinguish between correct understanding and incorrect understanding all they're interesting questions what is the ultimate truth so generally we make a distinction between small or minor truths and ultimate truths a minor truth might be something like that I'm wearing a black shirt or that I'm six feet and two inches tall or that I am a mammal these might be minor truths okay fine little basic facts nice to know that those are true but what's the ultimate truth like the ultimate truth of reality in the universe like the ultimate ultimate ultimate truth what's that and what form would that even take is it possible for us to know that truth or is that just something that's completely outside the realm of possibility for our limited human minds and how would we know what's the best way to acquire knowledge is it through what is it through listening to experts through reading a bunch of books through doing science experiments through doing philosophical investigation maybe through meditation maybe through religious practices maybe by traveling the world and exploring different cultures what's the best way is reality ultimately understandable can humans understand everything there is to understand about reality or not simply because we're limited by our psychology and our biology and so forth so that wraps up the category of epistemic questions now let's talk about questions about the self this has to do with you as a self as an individual so that thing as an individual first of all how can I be sure that I exist at all now that might be self-evident but maybe not so self-evident because when you start looking for the self it can be difficult to pinpoint what is the self exactly what am i it's a very fundamental question here if I claim that I do exist then what exactly am I am i a biological thing well maybe but remember we said that we're not sure what defines objects so how do I know that I'm a biological thing what's the validity behind that also great question is how come or how did I come rather into being so if you think back in time an interesting puzzle develops because you recognize that you were born biologically but then actually you the you that you think you are didn't come online for several years after that there was no you until you were like age three or four and then there developed a sense of you a sense of ego before that it didn't exist so are you the body or are you the sense of ego and if you are the sense of ego then what is that also what justifies my identity with my body in my mind if I think that I'm the body in the mind why do I think that how come I'm justified in saying that because after all I do say that the body is mine and the mind is mine so then who is it that is owning these things curious and if I am the body what is everything else this is very odd to think about this because experientially we don't actually see any boundaries between the body and the world the body actually experientially is just composed of colors and shapes and so is the rest of the world so where does my body stop and the rest of the world begin is it at the boundary of my skin and then like I have fingernails I can clip off my fingernails and then are those fingernails no longer me once I clip them off what determines that seems rather arbitrary if I have hair and I cut the hair once the hair falls to the ground is it no longer me and yet when it was attached to me it was me or is the mind constructing these boundaries because after all there's really no difference between looking at the colors on my hand and the colors of the wall behind my hand there's really no difference and yet we seem to attribute a lot of importance and meaning to that interesting even under the scientific model the scientific model says that everything that right now I'm experiencing that you're experiencing is a construction of neurons in the brain and that none of it is actually real and objective because all you have are colors and sensations and thoughts and emotions and feelings and all of these are just a kind of a virtual projection of the brain the brain is creating all this stuff and by definition none of that stuff is reality that's consciousness so I'm conscious of my body but this is not really my body this is just what I'm conscious of my body as science says is something else outside of that something behind the scenes that I can't even access so what the hell is that thing and why do then identify with the colors of my body in the shape of my body when clearly all this is just a virtual construction of consciousness interesting what is in control of my thoughts I have thoughts and at first it seems like I control them but when I look a little bit closer I can see that actually I don't control my thoughts I don't know what the next thought will be that comes out of my mouth neither do you if you look very closely that's why we can have obsessive thinking and we can't stop our thinking and also if your creative person you recognize that some of your most original insightful thoughts you can't honestly take credit for them because they come to you as though coming from amuse or coming out of the blue so what is controlling my thoughts interesting what is my role in reality so I am alive I exist supposedly Here I am and what's my role here do I have a role do I get to construct whatever role I want or is there a specific role I have to play within society or within the community or just to please myself is my role just to be maximally happy is that my role in life just hedonism or is there something more do I have responsibilities and obligations or don't I that's interesting consider and also if you just believe that it's all open to possibility that my role is basically self constructed well even then the question arises how should I live my life to have the best life to maximize my happiness how should I live what should i do or what things shouldn't I do all very good and useful questions and lastly let's talk about the category of consciousness firstly what the hell is consciousness this is a very puzzling thing consciousness is supposed to matter how come I'm conscious and what does it even mean for me to be conscious how come science hasn't explained consciousness in over 2,000 years of science and all the experience we've done and all the theorizing we've done and even all the philosophy we've done there is not even a sound theoretical philosophical explanation of what consciousness could even be and how it could connect to our physical understanding of the universe science does not explain consciousness one bit neither has really religion and why is that why is it taking us so long to understand consciousness what's going on there how is perception possible how is it possible that one physical object can perceive another physical object it's very odd also what unifies our senses so we have sight sound touch smell we have emotions we have thoughts and all of those seem to occur almost in separate dimensions for example sites are in another dimension from sounds those dimensions don't seem to interpenetrate really and yet at the same time all these dimensions are unified for us into one seamless conscious experience but it's not like they're all physically located in the same place how does that work also what if there are higher levels of consciousness so we think we have a level of consciousness that's higher than that of an ant but what if there are other creatures or aliens out there who have levels of consciousness that are thousands of times higher than what human beings have and what would that mean for our understanding of the world and epistemic questions what about non-ordinary states of consciousness what do those mean what are their metaphysical implications so if you start to study non-ordinary states of consciousness you can start to study psychedelic states of consciousness religious states of consciousness meditative states of consciousness and you discover that there's quite a lot of different states of consciousness it's not just the way we normally think of like deep sleep dreaming and ordinary wakefulness there's levels of consciousness that we know beyond that and you can experience them but what do they mean are they more true are they just hallucinations are they just fantasies are they just thoughts in the brain interesting to ponder especially if you've had a strong non ordinary state of consciousness also how our consciousness is separated so supposedly I have my consciousness here you have your consciousness there and there's no ability for me to enter your consciousness nor you to enter mine and also if I die my consciousness disappears but yours will stay intact and if you die yours will disappear but mine will stay intact so where are these consciousness is located such that they are completely independent and separated as it seems to be it's very weird it's like we live in separate dimensions and yet we also interact with each other very odd what's the mechanism there also can artificial consciousness be created for example can a computer become conscious or is consciousness a property of biological organic life can consciousness be split or joined that's interesting to ponder is it possible to take my consciousness and somehow split it in two so that then there are two consciousnesses or is it possible to take to consciousness like mine and yours and merge them together so that then there's one and what would that even look like what would that mean that could have some very profound implications for example consider what would happen if we joined every single human consciousness on earth together seven billion all multiplied together that would be pretty extraordinary it might have some huge consequences also might have some huge ramifications for epistemic questions because now we went from a level of consciousness of unit one to a unit of seven billion we increased it by seven billion that's quite remarkable could inanimate matter be conscious is consciousness something that arises from higher level order creatures and such or is consciousness actually sort of like a field that permeates the entire universe and maybe we have to think of consciousness not as an emergent higher order property but actually as the most fundamental variable of the universe in the same way that we think about matter energy time and space but if that's the case if consciousness is something that's very very elemental how do we account for that in our physics because right now our physics does not include that at all there's no variables in physics equations for consciousness and lastly what are the laws governing qualia quality of being the sensations and colors and sounds all the first person's subjective experiences that we experience so those supposedly have certain laws and orders to them it's not just random there's very concrete laws and yet how do these laws arise and what are these laws supposedly under the scientific model it's as though we can take one neuron another neuron combining together and we get the color red or we get another neuron and this neuron combine them together somehow and we get the sensation of sadness but what determines that this mechanical combination of neurons and the chemical firings between them generate something that color red or the feeling of sadness that's very weird because these things are in totally different categories there must be laws governing this stuff like physical laws and yet we have no idea even theoretically what these laws might be so these are the sixty-four questions now this is not a comprehensive list you can certainly come up with more questions depending on your proclivities and what your interests are about life but the reason I wanted to bombard you with all these questions is because I just want to expose you to them and have you see that Wow these are very profound deep highly interesting questions that are worth studying in fact what I recommend you do with this is that you actually devote your life to answering five maybe ten of these top questions for you so go through this list find your five top ten something like that and then devote your whole life to that to answering them to thinking about them you might think like well this is just philosophy why should I waste my time doing this stuff when I can just go do something more practical like earn more money or just have more sex and go have fun with my friends why should I do that instead here's why what I found is that the quality of people's lives and also the psychological maturity and the degree of self actualization that they experience in life is actually directly proportional to the quality of the questions they think about and people I have found that do not ponder existential questions and are not interested in them they today have very shallow petty lives because then what kind of questions are they thinking about they're thinking about stuff like how can I have some more sex how can I eat some better food how can I go party how can I get some better dry how can I just you know raise my kids and these questions tend to be pretty low-level questions they don't tend to produce a remarkable life on the other hand people who are interested in existential questions these people go on to explore themselves their own psyches their relationships their understanding of the world they tend to have to really push their boundaries because what happens when you explore it essential questions is it's not just an armchair philosophical matter actually it requires a deep search within yourself deep questioning deep doubting various beliefs and ideologies that you've been told since you were a kid questioning all this stuff and as you question that stuff you grow it's not philosophy you actually grow actually it is philosophy but it's a different understanding of philosophy than most people have in modern cultures if you look at the ancient Greeks the wisest ancient Greeks were philosophers and you can see that they were not just merely intellectuals these were people who actually worked on mastering themselves it was a psychological affair philosophy and psychology were very deeply linked in ways that they no longer are in modern society which is a shame because there is a connection now it's possible to get lost in philosophy and go off the deep end and just do a bunch of mental masturbation so that's not what I'm encouraging to do I'm encouraging you to actually take a real deep interest in these questions and then very self honestly investigate them not because you're desperate for an answer not because you want to go read it in a book or you want somebody else to tell you or you're going to go join a cult or a religion or even some a university group or program that's going to tell you all the answers these questions you have to go looking for the answers yourself which is why I didn't give you the answers to these questions because it's sort of like doing push-ups I can do push-ups and they'll improve me you can do push-ups and they'll improve you but if you want me to do your push-ups for you then what good is that going to do you if I do your push-ups for you they improve me not you which is why I didn't give you the answers because I want you just to get fascinated by the questions enough fascinated enough that you go out there and you start to search and in that search your life transforms some of these questions are the most life transforming uh answers that you will ever find some of the stuff will completely revolutionize how you see the world how you feel about the world one thing I noticed in people who are not interested in existential questions is that they get depressed very easily they have motivation problems they succumb to all sorts of psychological delusions they buy into theories and ideologies and stuff very gullibly because they haven't questioned metaphysics epistemology the self or consciousness see so actually it's a very practical thing also is very rewarding personally I think that answering some of these questions on this list is the most rewarding thing you can do with your life because after all you have been gifted to be born as the most advanced the most conscious life form that we know about up to this point in the universe and as that life form you have the ability to introspect into reflection to contemplate about existence in ways that no other creature can and what's very sad to me is that most human beings do not use this super power it is a super power that you have been granted whether you wanted it or not and most people throw the super power away and never use it instead use their mind on very silly petty little things in life and then they wonder how come they get depressed so easily and how come their life is not fulfilling well of course because you've Qiu you've chosen to use this superpower of yours for something extremely petty and that will show in your life and that will be reflected in how mature and develop you are and that will limit you from going to the deepest levels of self-actualization that are possible now some people might say well leo these questions that you've raised you know these are very metaphysical philosophical questions which cannot be answered human beings have been trying to answer some of these questions for thousands Gear's there's no agreement so they can't be answered it's just a waste of time and what I will tell you definitively is that many of the questions on this list can be answered in fact they have been answered but they can't be answered in an intellectual way they can't be answered in an academic way if you think you can just write a book about it or go read a book about it with all the answers then you misunderstand the depth of these questions to answer these questions truly you have to dig into yourself in some instances you have to deconstruct yourself before the answers will be revealed to you and that's the most valuable thing that can happen to you in this journey I want you to undertake that journey I want you to be passionate about that so when I talk about existential topics in the future you're like oh yeah I'm interested in that and that's right up my alley rather than doing what most people do which is to say oh no that leo that's not practical enough for me tell me something very petty like how to have more sex and I can tell you that it's very easy for me to shoot videos about advice on very petty low level topics but where's the interest in that where's the fun in that how is that really going to grow you all that's going to do is just feed your ego so take these questions seriously go out there and really dedicate yourself to this make this a lifelong project of researching reading being very open minded contemplating these things yourself maybe meditating on them taking up certain practices right going to various teachers retreat programs workshops and so forth to really investigate this stuff it would be a deep mistake to just kind of sit back and speculate about and say oh yeah i sat there I speculated for a few hours and I came up with some answers and now I know that's not going to grow you in fact that's just going to delude you so the choice is yours what you do with these questions all right that's it I'm signing off go ahead click the like button for me post your comments down below I do read them share the steps with friend and lastly come sign up to my newsletter right here actualized or eats free newsletter it'll keep you up to date with everything that I'm releasing on a weekly basis and in the future I will talk more about existential matters because actually the thing I'm most interested in now in my life is these existential matters not because I like to sit around and just philosophize but actually because I'm very practical and what I've discovered is that my life grows the most when I explore the deepest existential questions of who I am what my consciousness is what reality is and how do I know what I know and even though I'm not just going to give you all the answers first of all I don't know all the answers second of all these answers cannot just be communicated through words because they're much deeper than that they have to be directly experienced what I will give you the future is I'll give you hints I'll give you techniques I'll give you strategies I'll present important distinctions and concepts and I'll provide you with powerful resources that will help you on your quest to answering some of the deepest questions in life so I hope you're excited by that and you stick around and stay tuned and I'll see you soon with more you