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Hey, this is Leo for actualised.org. And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about true versus false skepticism. I'm going to teach you about the original ancient School of skepticism called Peronism. And how very different it was from modern versions of skepticism. I have a big gripe with modern skepticism, because modern skepticism is really 180 degree perversion of what true skepticism was supposed to be. And to understand this, we need to go into some of the history. But modern skepticism the problem with it is that it masquerades as skepticism, when really what it is, is dogmatism. Which is exactly the thing that skepticism originally was supposed to be against dogmatism. So in this episode, we're going to talk about true versus false skepticism, we're gonna really go in depth here and compare and contrast them. And you're gonna get a really good sense of what Peronism was. Peronism was the name for the original school of subject skepticism, which originated back in ancient Greece. Now, true skepticism. What's interesting about it, or Peronism, is that of all the philosophy that I've studied, and I've studied quite a bit of Western philosophy, I majored in it in university, I find Peronism to be the most accurate epistemic ly speaking. And one of the most important influences in my life, which has allowed me to move forward in to advanced self actualization work, it simply would not be possible for me, had I not embraced puritanism very early on in my teenage years. And so I hope to convince you of this and to show you just how practical of a philosophy this is, because there's some very important epistemic insights here, that many modern scientists and rationally minded people, atheists, intellectuals, academics simply do not understand. It's kind of sad to me, that many intelligent people today haven't learned the lessons from 1000s of years ago, which the ancient Greeks have discovered. So let's go into some of the historical context here. Why is it called Peronism and not skepticism? Well, it's named after the guy who founded it. His name was Piero of Ellis. He was an ancient Greek. And he was born in three 360 BCE, so almost two and a half, 1000 years ago, around the time of the Buddha. Now, Piero didn't just sit in Greece and come up with this skeptical philosophy. What he did is actually he traveled with Alexander the Great as part of his entourage, all the way into India, because Alexander the Great kept conquering more and more land towards the east, from Greece. And eventually he ran up into India. And they're Piro traveled with him, and they bumped into the gymnasts, sofas. What are the gymnast? Sofas that's a very odd name. In Greek gym means naked. And sofa just means thinker or philosopher. So who are they referring to? When they're talking about the gymnasts, sofas? The Naked philosophers of India? Can you guess? That's right, the yogi's. So they ran to these curious people called the yogi's. And from them Piro, because he was a philosopher, he learned some interesting insights about the nature of reality. And what these Yogi's basically convinced him of is that nothing is certain. And that all the stuff that the Greeks thought that they knew, for certain, really wasn't as certain as they thought. So Piero took this to heart. And he brought back these lessons to Greece. And then he lived out the rest of his life in Greece, basically as a wreck loose, just embodying his skeptical philosophy and teaching a little bit. He didn't write anything of significance. There are no surviving works of Piero, because back in those days, most philosophers, they just lived their philosophy. And maybe they taught a little bit face to face if they had some students and a school that they developed. So how do we know about Peronism? Well, it was only For centuries later that a guy by the name of Sextus empiricus, wrote a book called the outlines of puritanism. And this book is available today. It's a very readable book. And I'm gonna talk a lot more about this as we keep going here, because most of this episode is about this book and some of the important insights that are found here. So these are basically the lessons, the Sextus empiricus, learned from the peroneus, or ancient skeptical school. And we're going to cover a lot of these in depth. But what did Piro teach in a nutshell, he taught that the chief aim of life is eudaimonia. eudaimonia, is a Greek term, which basically means happiness or living the good life. But what's important to understand about this term, is that when the Greek philosophers talked about eudaimonia, they did not talk about pleasure. So when we think of happiness today, we usually think, oh, that just means pleasure. That means success. That means getting all the stuff that I want. That's not what the Greeks meant by living the good life. To them. The Good Life was the philosophical life, the reflective life, the life of truth, finding the truth, embodying the truth, living your life, according to certain principles of what you believe and think is good, the ultimate good, good with a capital G. That's what's meant by eudaimonia. So for Piero, all of philosophy was about eudaimonia. Not only for Piro, but for many philosophers of that era. That was the case. That's actually why Greek philosophy is so great, because modern philosophy has lost its way because it has given up on this notion of eudaimonia. And it has become an analytical academic pursuit, which is not what philosophy was in the old days. So that was the aim. But then what was the skepticism about? Well, like he learned from the yogi's, basically, what is philosophy about philosophy is about trying to discover what is true. That's what we care about what is real, what is true? How do we sort out the truth from the untruth? The reality from the appearances. And what skepticism says is that nothing can be known for certain. Why not, because we have only two ways of accessing reality, we have the senses, and we have our reasoning. And both of these are deceptive, and potentially very faulty. The senses deceive us very easily, and they can be faulty. And also reason is very deceptive. And it can also be faulty. So because these are the only two ways we can get to know reality, and both of them seem such uncertain vehicles for understanding and knowing reality, we have to be honest and admit that we can't really know reality, for sure. Piro taught that neither sense perceptions, nor our views, theories or beliefs tell us the ultimate truth. Moreover, he taught that all reasoning and proof is either circular, or involves an infinite regress, and is ultimately groundless. So the essence of the peroneus skeptical argument was that we can know anything for sure. Because to claim something for sure, we need to provide some sort of proof. Because without proof, we could claim the opposite of whatever was originally claimed. So how do we know what's true? Well, we claim something and then we back it up with justifications and proof and evidence. But if we just think about this little bit, it becomes untenable, because whatever evidence you provide, we'll need yet more evidence to prove itself. And then we'll need more evidence to prove that evidence and more evidence to prove that evidence and more evidence to prove that that evidence. So every proof either goes around in the circle proving itself ultimately, or it involves an infinite regress, that ultimately ends in groundlessness. Because you can't ground anything, because it's just proof upon proof upon proof upon proof, and it has to end somewhere. And what most dogmatists do, and dogmas. This is a technical term that the ancient skeptics used against all the other philosophers who they were opposed to. And what they meant by dogmatists are people who hold beliefs or who really believe that something is a particular way. So they have a doctrine, they say something like, well, reality is this way, and mathematics is this way. And you know, one plus one is indisputably true, and God exists or God does not exist, and so on and so forth, like Atoms make up the universe, and atoms are indivisible, right? So there are all these sorts of different metaphysical and epistemic theories about how reality worked. And what the skeptics wanted to say is that we can't be sure about that stuff. Because whatever proof these people are providing, is ultimately groundless. Because against every statement, its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification. That's what we get when we realize the groundlessness of all justification. Therefore, the Peronist reasoned, we must refuse to take any positions. Because we don't have grounds for taking any positions. And this means that we will be without any views, and we will refuse to take sides. And in fact, we will recognize that this entire philosophical game is a game. It's a matter of people taking sides taking positions without any real grounding. And they're tricking themselves because they're not admitting to themselves, that they don't really know. And that whatever their reasoning or the senses tell them could be wrong. But yet they're not honest about that with themselves. That's why we call these people dogmatists. We ourselves distinguish ourselves from the dogmatist as skeptics, in that we say that we will totally suspend judgment about non evident matters. We will withhold assent from all doctrines regarding the truth of things in their own nature. We will allow appearances because they appear as appearances and appearances or just appearances. But anything beyond appearances, we will doubt because it can't be ultimately proven. And in fact, we are so opposed to the dogmatists that even such a statements like nothing can be known or nothing is true. We oppose that statement as well. And now, this is a very nuanced point, which is very important to understand. The skeptic is not set in his own skepticism, he is not dogmatic about his own skepticism. And he does not claim that nothing can be known because even that cannot be known to make that sort of claim would be dogmatic. So really, the essence of what the skeptic is against is dogmatism. To get you a better sense of this, I want to read you some powerful quotes from outlines of puritanism by sexist empiricus. The language here can be a little bit old fashioned and arcane. So listen carefully. And stick with me because this is good stuff. This is stuff that's really worth paying attention to. He says quote, skepticism is an ability or mental attitude, which opposes judgments in any way whatsoever, with the result that owing to the equivalence of the objects and the reason stuffs opposed, we are brought firstly to a state of mental suspense, and next to a state of unperturbed madness and quietude. Suspense is a state of mental rest, owing to which we neither deny nor affirm anything. quietude is an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul. The main basic principle of the skeptic system is that of opposing to every proposition and opposite proposition. For we believe that as a consequence of this, we end by ceasing to dogma ties, and quote. So see, skeptics are really interested in this idea of unperturbed madness of mind. This is something I'm going to keep talking about as we keep going here because it ends up being a larger and larger point. We're not just skeptical to be a stick in the mud. We're skeptical because ultimately we're after Eudaimonia happiness. And we recognize that happiness is peace of mind. And how do we attain peace of mind by ceasing to take positions on things of which we can never be certain? And we see the dogmatists out there taking all sorts of silly positions, deluding themselves, and then getting fooled. fired up about it. Going crazy and having these ideological wars back and forth. And we just recognize that that whole thing is a game. And we don't want to play that game. Let me keep reading some more, because this is really good stuff. He goes on to say, quote, when we say that the skeptic refrains from dogma tising, we say that he does not ascend to any one of the non evident objects of scientific inquiry, the peroneus philosopher assent to nothing, that is non evident. Our doubt does not concern the appearance of things, but the account of the appearance. For example, honey appears to us to be sweet, and this we grant, but whether it is also sweet in its essence, is for us a matter of doubt. Since this is not an appearance, but a judgment and quote, you see, so it's not appearances that we deny. We perfectly allow appearances, everything we see in our sensory field. We accept that it's an appearance. But we're not going to go any deeper the way that most dogmatists do. And we're not going to make any sort of existential claims, saying that well, because it appears so and so that it actually is that way. If someone comes to us and says, Well, it appears that there's no God, we will say, yeah, it might appear that way. But we don't know if that's really true. Or if someone comes and says, it appears that God exists, we will say the opposite. We will say, Well, yeah, maybe it appears that God exists, but in fact, maybe he doesn't. And we will do that with every single statement, where there is a judgment or sort of a jumping to conclusions. And that's the whole problem here that the peroneus are recognizing with other philosophical systems, and all sorts of ideologies and beliefs that people hold, is that we recognize that these are judgments and conclusions, which are really unwarranted. We are going beyond what is given to us by reality. What is given to us by reality is appearance, and nothing more. And we want to be very honest about that. We don't want to kid ourselves, like we know more than we really do. Let me read you some more. He says quote, even in the act of enunciating the skeptic formula, the skeptic still does not dog monetize. For whereas the dog Monetizer posits the things about which he is said to be dog enticing as actually existent. The skeptic does not pause it in any absolute sense. In regard to all skeptic expressions, we must grasp the fact that we make no positive assertion respecting their absolute truth, since we say that they may possibly be computed by themselves, seeing that they themselves are included in the things to which their doubt applies, just as laxative drugs do not merely eliminate the humors from the body, but also expelled themselves along with the humors and quote, so this is a very important point. Because when a skeptic gets into an argument with a dogmatic person, the dogmatic person will want to accuse the skeptic of being just like them. And the dogmatic person will say, Ah, but you're a skeptic and see, you're dogmatic about your skepticism. So that's something we have in common. This is where the dogmatic person is unable to really see the skeptic position. The skeptic position is so skeptical and open, that it doesn't even give itself the special privilege of being the one true philosophy. See that the the deadly mistake that almost every ideological, religious, scientific and philosophical system ever, in the history of humanity makes is that it gives itself special privilege. And it likes to say that I am the only right philosophy, I am the only right paradigm. The skeptic wants to avoid this trap. So how does he avoided? Can he avoid it by saying that well, skepticism is the only right paradigm? No, he can't. Because if he did that, if he said that, he would just be committing the same mistake in a different flavor. So instead, he's very careful. And he has to say that even in being skeptical, he holds his skepticism very loosely. And he's not claiming it as the absolute truth. Which is why as skeptics, we don't say that nothing can ever be known. We leave some room. We just say that we have to be skeptical. And even there we leave some room. That's a very important nuanced point to understand, which is something that differentiate true skepticism. From false skepticism, which I'll get back to in a minute, let me read you some more. Here. This next quotation goes to the heart of why Peronism is a very practical philosophy. And it's not just mental masturbation. It has some real world consequences that are important for your happiness level in life. Remember that Peronism is about attaining eudaimonia. So here's why. He says, quote, The Man Who opined that anything is by nature, good or bad, is forever being disquieted. When he is without the things which he deems good, he believes himself to be tormented by the things naturally bad, and he pursues after the things which are as he thinks, good. That makes sense. Which then when he obtains those good things, he keeps falling into still more perturbation, agitation of the mind. In other words, because of his irrational and a moderate elation, and in his dread of the change of fortune, he uses every endeavor to avoid losing the things which he deems to be good. On the other hand, the man who determines nothing, as to what is naturally good or bad, that means the skeptic that person neither shuns nor pursues anything eagerly, and as a consequence, is unperturbed. And quote. So you see, this is why puritanism is such an important position. And it's so different from dogmatism, and all other philosophies, and all other ideologies. Because all other ideologies, make definitive claims about what is good, and what is really bad. And when you are certain about what you think, is really good and really bad, then you end up chasing the good stuff, and trying to avoid the bad stuff. Naturally, right. And this game, becomes your downfall. Because this is the game you can't win. You might think that if you acquire all the good stuff you think is good, then that will be it, and you'll be happy. But see the peroneus this is where they were very astute. They had an astute understanding of human psychology, and of how true happiness works. They understood that acquiring good stuff doesn't lead you to happiness. Why not? Because even once you acquire everything you want, then you will still be agitated in your mind perturbed. That's their language perturbation. You're going to be perturbed. Why? Because now you need to defend your good stuff. The fortune that you've acquired, the fancy house, the car, the money in your bank account, you're beautiful children, your trophy wife or your trophy husband. All of this, once you've acquired it, now you need to worry constantly about maintaining it, defending it. And then how are you going to feel if your trophy husband or wife gets stolen by some other girlfriend or boyfriend? Or if they die? Or if they get sick? Or if your kids fail in school? How are you going to feel you're going to be perturbed. And you're never going to attain eudaimonia. So the skeptic in recognizing this whole game this whole dynamic, he says, I'm not going to play that game. Instead, what I'll do is I'll make a very counterintuitive move, and I will not take positions on what is truly good and truly bad. I will actually admit that I don't know. And as a consequence, I'm not going to pursue and chase. I'm not going to have cravings after stuff. And that will leave me with a quiet unperturbed mind. And from there, I will attain Eudaimonia that's the logic. You see how wise and counterintuitive This is is very tricky stuff. You have to be very clever philosopher to to navigate past all these sneaky egoic drives that are part of our psyche, which get us into suffering. In this sense, the pureness were very much of like mind with the Buddhists and the Indian Yogi's and with non duality, and with spirituality, because this is the essence of spirituality is recognizing this cycle of chasing of materialism. and seeing through it, because you start to recognize that it's never ever gonna work. This is a game that is rigged against you. And that even when you think you win the game, you will actually lose the game. And now lastly, let me quote to you one more. So segment and hear this gets to the heart of the reason why skepticism is opposed to all positions and all ideologies. So this concerns the matter of the ultimate truth. He says, quote, does anything true really exist? It is impossible to decide the controversy, because the man who says that something true exists, will not be believed without proof, on account of the controversy, of course, and if he wishes to offer proof, he will be disbelieved if he acknowledges that his proof is false, of course. So, he has to declare that his proof is true. But if he declares his proof is true, he becomes involved in circular reasoning, and will be required to show proof of the proof. And then more proof of the proof, and more proof of the proof, and so on ad infinitum. But it is impossible to prove an infinite series. And so it is impossible also, to know that something true exists. And quote, so you see, this is the essence of their argument. It's the infinite regress and the circular reasoning argument. And I actually encourage you to sit down at some point in your life, this is very important. Take any ideology. And by ideology, I include religion, science, any paradigms that I've spoken about in the past any belief system, anything that you believe is true, take that thing. And then ask yourself, What's the proof. And then keep going. What's the proof of the proof and the proof of the proof, and the proof of the proof and the proof of the proof and get to the very bottom trying to get to the very bottom and see what happens? What I'm claiming is that one of two things will happen either you will notice that it goes around in a circle. Or it just stops somewhere. At some point, you're gonna get to a position where you just have to accept something on faith. And that's what the pyramid is recognized, is that all other ideologies, all the dogmatists, all the other philosophers, what they do is they accept something on faith without any justification. And the peronists don't want to do that. They recognize that that is a source of deception. And they want to stay as far away from that as possible. Therefore, they refuse to take any positions. Now, there's an additional wrinkle here, your you might say, but Leo, it sounds like the period is here are talking about there not being an absolute truth. And yet, in your other episodes, you talk about the Absolute Truth. So how to reconcile that it doesn't sound like what you're talking about, or teaching is in line with Peronism. who's right and who's wrong. This notion of the Absolute Truth is a tricky topic. This gets us into how enlightenment connects up with Peronism. That's something I'll cover at the very end of this episode. But what I want to point out to you, and this is a very important point is that like I said before, the skeptic truly in his essence, does not make any firm commitments to anything. Therefore, he is even open to there being an absolute truth. Here in this quotation that I read to you, they're giving you a a reasoning argument for why we shouldn't expect an absolute truth to be possible. But the skeptic also has to admit that he is using reasoning, you know, he's using reasoning here. He's forming an argument and that argument could end up being wrong. And if it will be wrong or disproven in the future, he's open to that possibility. So see, he doesn't want to be dogmatic and say that absolute truth is not possible and never attainable, because that would be a dogmatic statement. If we knew that for sure, then we would know that as a truth. But the skeptic says that we don't know anything for sure. Including the fact that we don't know anything for sure. What ends up happening is that Peronism take into ultimate conclusion will actually produce a very funny result, it leads to non duality. So it goes full circle, it might seem right now that puritanism leads to this ultimate relativism. But actually, what happens is that relativism, when it goes full circle actually becomes absolutism. And what you end up hitting upon is the ultimate truth, by refusing to take all ideological positions. Now, this is something that I don't think the pianists fully grasped. Because to fully grasp this, you have to actually experience the absolute. So what the pureness I think, left out in their reasoning, is they left out a third possibility, you know, how they talked about there being the senses and reasoning, those are our two ways of understanding reality, they left out a third possibility, which is direct consciousness. This is something that is real. And generally, I think the parents didn't understand what consciousness really was. And so that was an element that was lacking in their philosophy, which is why when I talk about paganism, I don't teach it to you as the only piece of information you need to know to self actualize. And to get to the truth in life. I teach it as just one perspective out of many other perspectives that I talked about. So keep that in mind. There is a very interesting connection, though, between the absolute truth and what the pyramids, peronists talked about as quietude of mind. What's really interesting is that it turns out that total quietude of mind this is not just an ordinary notion of like, Oh, my mind is sort of silent and quiet. And it feels nice. This is a much more profound thing. It actually is the absolute truth at the deepest level. But now whether you reach that, that will take some real work. That's the question. I don't think that even some of the best pureness actually reached it. But that's something to talk about in the future. So what I want to do now is I want to contrast this true form of skepticism as outlined by Sextus empiricus. With false skepticism, which is the modern version of skepticism that we see today. What do we see as skepticism today? It's not pure anism. It's a sort of debunking mentality. And usually what we see it as as a weaponized ideology against religion, spirituality, mysticism, and New Age concepts. So usually, when you see a skeptic these days, a self proclaimed skeptic, this guy is embedded with science, rationality, logic, and naive realism. And he's militant against religion, spirituality, and various new age concepts. And he wants to quote unquote, debunk them, because he's a hyper rationalist. And he lives in his left side of the brain. And so what he's doing there is he's taking a very clear position. But he's still calling himself a skeptic. The problem with this is that this sort of skepticism, this bastardized skepticism is a is a problem because it's blind to itself. The whole heart and soul of the original caronian position was that it was conscious of its own limitations. And that produces sort of modesty and humility, and a sort of open mindedness. Whereas modern skeptics are blind to themselves, they're unconscious, they don't question themselves. It's a skepticism that's pointed outward. Whereas period ism was a skepticism that was also pointed inward. That was his most important feature. Modern skepticism or false skepticism gives a special privilege to his whole position. So really, in that sense, it's dogma. It's not pure anism. It's absolutist in its defense of certain paradigms and assumptions like science, rationality, logic, and naive realism. And it doesn't question these things. And this makes it closed minded. If you want to have a good litmus test to see if someone is a true skeptic, just take a look at how they behave. Are they open minded in their manner? Or are they closed minded? Is their mind calm and unperturbed? Or is it agitated? Is it militant? Is it fighting? Is it debating is it arguing? Modern skeptics are very dogmatic, very closed minded and very militant. against religious people and against religious ideology. Now, mind you, that does not mean that I'm saying that all religious ideologies are correct. And that they're better than science. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just pointing out the limitations of false skepticism and the problems with it. There's a deeper game here being played than just between religion versus science that is a trap. We're talking about something much deeper here. We're talking about how the mind uses concepts and ideas, to entrench itself and to become a tool of the ego. If you're following and embodying true skepticism, then your mind sees its own limitations. And it's actually a tool for dismantling the ego. When you're embodying false skepticism, this is a tool for becoming more egotistical, more entrenched in your paradigms. And this is the greatest danger of false skepticism is that it leads to paradigm lock. And what I'm saying is that modern scientists, atheists, secular people, academics, logicians, mathematicians, rationalists, these are very paradigm locked people. They tell themselves that they're different from the religious people, and that they're not paradigm locked, because they tell themselves that science and rationality and so forth these are not beliefs and these are not paradigms. But a true skeptic would question the hell out of many of the assumptions that science rationality and naive realism make, he would not take those things for granted, because he would be conscious that those things are positions. So now what does true skepticism look like? True skepticism recognizes very importantly, the limits of the mind of rationality and of science. It questions all of these, and it doesn't take them for granted. It doesn't give them a special privileged position. True skepticism questions, every single assumption that is made by the mind in any sort of reasoning about the world. True skepticism is actually non dogmatic. Unlike false skepticism, it's conscious of itself. It's conscious of its ability to deceive itself. And therefore it questions itself. And for a true skeptic. His one of his favorite targets to question is in his own self and his own philosophy, it's one of the few philosophies that is self reflective, it really cares about not committing the same mistakes that it sees other philosophies committing. It is. It is brutally self honest with itself. It does not give itself any special privileges. See, the problem with false skepticism is that the false skeptic doesn't apply his own skepticism in on itself. It never occurs to him to to wonder like, hey, maybe my application of skepticism is actually backfiring, and is actually leading to delusion. Maybe I'm stuck on skepticism. Maybe I've made an identity out of skepticism. And we see this a lot with these people who you see these days on TV or in the media. These are people who have a whole identity about being the debunkers I'm going to debunk God and I'm going to debunk this and debunk that and debunk the yogi's and debunk the the New Age hippies and debunk everybody. And then that becomes a new identity for you. That becomes your ideology is debunking stuff. And of course, to debunk stuff, you need to make all sorts of philosophical positions. And then you need to play the whole game of justifying having proofs and evidence and arguments and then so you become an argue or an a debater. A master debater, that's what you become. A true skeptic is not a debater. He's not interested in debate. He's interested in the end of debate. He's interested in having an open mind because his ultimate goal is happiness. You see, the false skeptics ultimate goal is ego gratification. He creates a whole identity about arguing over other people and out arguing them. And that becomes his goal. But he doesn't realize how much he suffers for it. And how much delusion he's saying when he does that. The true skeptic is interested in open mindedness. very radical open mindedness. And there are flavors of humanism that come with true skepticism. It's a compassionate, loving philosophy. Because how can you hate or criticize other people, when you don't have any strong opinions about anything, you don't take any strong positions on anything, to hate somebody, to be violent to somebody, to be racist against somebody. To hold yourself as above somebody, or some class of people, you need to have a strong position. You see, true skepticism aims at tranquility of the mind. And that's the ultimate metric by which you judge the quality of a skeptic. How tranquil is his mind? You'll see that these debunkers they don't have tranquil minds at all. They're very easy to tell. True skepticism actually leads to spirituality. Not because it posits a belief in God. But actually the opposite. See true people people get this wrong, right? This is a very counterintuitive point. People think that all spirituality means a belief in God, no, not at all, just the opposite. spirituality means complete open mindedness, and freedom from all ideologies. And that gets you the peace of mind. Which ends up being God. God is just ultimate peace of mind, you see, but you can't know that while until your mind is still your mind has to agitate it to see that and to understand that. And that's not something you believe you don't believe in tranquility of mind. You either have it or you don't. And how do you have it? By stopping to take ideological positions, stop doing that stop being dogmatic. So true spirituality is actually the opposite of dogmatism? To be effective at spirituality, you need to be very effective at inquiry. And that's what true skepticism leads to is it leads to the ultimate ability to inquire because you are so open minded, that you can keep inquiring and inquiry inquiry for the rest of your life. Without taking views or positions or having preferences. And in this sense, true, open mindedness really starts coming. True skepticism really starts to look like Buddhism, Advaita, Vedanta, and other non duality teachings. Now, what are the practical ramifications of Peronism? Firstly, it's radical open mindedness, which I keep harping about over and over again. And you might wonder, why do I harp about rapid, radical open mindedness so much, is because when I was young, when I was still a teenager, I learned about Puritanism, I sort of learned about it and invented it on my own at the same time, it was an interesting process. And that made me so open minded, that because of that, I was able to discover personal development, self actualization, and then ultimately, non dual inquiry, and ultimately, the highest levels of consciousness that are so mind blowing, and so amazing that if you even had a glimpse of this, even for a few seconds, your entire life would change. And that all was facilitated by Puritanism. This right here, by really taking this to heart by really understanding the problem with dogmatism. See, so that's why I harp on that so much. That's a very practical matter. Most people cannot grow, cannot self actualize, and cannot do any kind of spiritual purification work, because their minds are too closed. So don't think of Peronism is just some sort of philosophy in the abstract. No, no, no, no, this is very practical stuff. This will completely transform the way you feel about your life. We're not just talking about profound metaphysical questions here. We're also talking about very practical matters, your everyday life. Because guess what, when it comes to your relationships, to your finances, to your emotions, to your business, to your career, to your life purpose, In all these situations, you hold very many beliefs. You don't have to be a scientist or a mathematician or a rationalist. To be paradigm locked, you are paradigm locked. And that's why you're stuck in a lot of these areas in your life and you can't move forward. And you don't know how to outgrow them. Because you're stuck in this sort of paradigm. Peronism is the lever that you use to prop yourself out to free your mind Another practical ramification of Pierre anism is that it produces a state of perpetual inquiry. All the other ideologies, they try to lock your mind down, so that you believe in that ideology and that ideology alone. And then you don't go explore all the other possibilities. Pure anism is one of the few philosophies that bucked that trend. Another ramification of paganism is that it leads to pragmatism. Once you realize that philosophy and idealogue an ideological thinking, doesn't get you anywhere, then you pause and you stop. And what happens, you get thrown back into your experience and into your senses. And then you go about living your everyday life in a non ideological manner. And this is very practical. And yet this pragmatism is different from the way that most people are pragmatic in their lives. A lot of people are very pragmatic in their lives, but in the wrong sense in the materialistic sense, in the sense that they go and they just chase whatever they think is going to be pleasurable to them. In the moment, they chase drugs, women, men, money, success, fame, a house, all this sort of stuff. But that's not the peroneus pragmatism, Peroni and pragmatism is that you realize, like, hey, ideology is not going to get me to eudaimonia. But I'm still after eudaimonia. How do I get through diammonium just through becoming one with my experiences and my sensations. And in this sense, Peronism then leads to mindfulness. And mindfulness then strengthens the tranquility of your mind, and ultimately leads you to the absolute ultimate truth, which is utter tranquility. The absolute is pure tranquility, pure emptiness, consciousness, the true self. So all this comes together in a very beautiful way. But most people don't pursue mindfulness or a real exploration of their experiences or their sensory field. Because they're stuck in ideology and theorizing about stuff. You don't actually bother to sit down and take a look at what's really going on here. Within the appearances, because you're too busy conceptualizing the appearances. Another practical ramification of Peronism is that it creates a sort of active vigilance against the minds trickery. It recognizes that the mind is very tricky, and that we always need to be on guard, we always need to be questioning everything. And that becomes important for not getting stuck. Which leads the next ramification appear aneurysm is that is one of the few mechanisms that exist out there to prevent paradigm lock. I've talked about paradigm lock and other episodes pretty deep topic of check out my episode on paradigms, understanding how they work. But virtually all other philosophies or ideologies get you stuck in a paradigm of some sort, which is blind to itself. And that's a that's a huge, huge obstacle to your growth and to your ability to be happy in life. Another ramification of Peronism is a sort of what we might call Peroni and modesty, that results when you actually embody Puritanism, and not just talk about it, but embody it, you become humble and modest. It's not that you eliminate every single belief in every single position ever, and you have no preferences whatsoever. That's a difficult state to reach to that sort of an ideal, that's the pinnacle. But the next best thing to letting go of all your beliefs and all your ideals and all your preferences, is at the very least, to be humble about them, and to acknowledge that they're just your own preferences, and that they're not the absolute truth. And what this leads to, is a sort of ideological humility, where you can speak and listen to all sorts of other ideologies that exist all sorts of other beliefs in a non judgmental manner and you're tolerant rather than being offended the way that most people are, why are most people offended by other conflicting ideologies, because to maintain their ideological position they need to avoid all other ideological positions. See, their mind is forever pitted against all other minds, only the peroneus, who has no position to enjoy the luxury of freedom in the intellectual domain, it's a really beautiful thing. I wish I could describe it in a better way. But I feel very free. Intellectually, I can study anything without getting upset by it is such a such an amazing freedom to have intellectual freedom. I wish you could experience it. That's because I've been adopting Peronism for several decades now, since my late teenage years. And another very important thing that this leads to is holism. I've talked about holism in the past, and how one of the most important elements that I'm trying to teach you with actualised.org is to take a multi perspectival approach to your learning. Don't go with any one school or any one philosophy, be holistic, try to understand all the perspectives and see them as perspectives. This is such a rich and rewarding thing. And I find it so rare. Even among non dual people, I find it very rare, most non dual people, they just pick one school and they they stick with it. And if they're lucky, they pick the right school and it works. And if they're unlucky, they pick the wrong school or a cult or something. And then it turns out horrible. To avoid those mistakes, be holistic, but you can't be holistic, unless you're really a peroneus. Because there's going to be certain ideologies that will rub you the wrong way, you're not gonna be able to study or understand them. So one of the practical ramifications of Peronism is that you become a super efficient, deep learner, your learning abilities get multiplied by orders of magnitude, you are able to assemble really big pictures, you're able to understand reality at levels that almost nobody else can. It's incredible. That's why I love it so much. And lastly, the practical ramification of puritanism is what the Greeks called ataraxia. That's their term. And what that meant meant was a lucid state of robust equanimity. So it's that quietness of mind. That's a very beautiful and profound thing. You want to experience that? Do you want to live the rest of your life in monkey mind? Or this deep, profound existential tranquility? You want the tranquility? So that's very practical. Do you see how you, when you get that you have it every single day? You can't lose it. It's amazing. That's what you want. That's ultimately what this whole journey is about. So let's conclude here and some stuff some stuff up. Why am I telling you about all this? Philosophy, and this epistemology and specifically about these ancient philosophical systems like period ism? Well, firstly, because I want you to see the power of proper use of reasoning. Reasoning is chiefly useful in realizing its own limitations. When you when reasoning is used improperly. It hides all of its own limitations, and it tries to crown itself as the king just like every other ideology and that's ultimately what we're trying to avoid is we're trying to avoid being like every other dogmatist because guess what, being a dogmatist, you can never be happy. Have you realized this yet? You cannot attain Eudaimonia as a dogmatist. That's the problem. And it doesn't matter what the content of your dogma is. Because you're an atheist, dogmatist does not make you any happier than if you're a religious fundamentalist dogmatist. This is where the atheists and scientists really misunderstand. They get so hung up on their desire to not be religious. They want to react so much against religion, that they go to the opposite end of the spectrum, and they don't see that they themselves are committing the very same mistake that they hate about religious people. What do the scientific people hate about the religious people? Well, they'll tell you that we've seen so much violence and closed mindedness and evil come from dogmatic religious people that we Want to avoid that in the future at all costs? Because it's silly and ridiculous, and downright unethical. But then what did they do? They commit the exact same mistake because they misunderstand the problem. The problem is not in the content. The problem is not that you believe in God, that's not what creates the problem. The problem is that you are dogmatic about your position. The problem is that your paradigm locked. So the scientist will say and criticize the religious person, because the religious person they'll say, is completely closed down to evidence. They're not willing to read to listen to reason. They're just faith based. And that's silly. In modern society, we need to be reasonable and open to evidence. And yet the scientist himself is not really open to evidence, he doesn't take that standard upon himself, he has a double standard. Because he doesn't question the very many assumptions, the existential assumptions that science makes, that rationality makes. Another reason I'm telling you about this is because I don't want you to get diluted by modern skepticism. So I want you to have a contrast to understand how moderate skepticism is a distortion of true skepticism. Another reason I'm telling you about this is so that you see the power of not knowing and the power of not holding positions. This is such a counterintuitive thing. Our culture tells us that the more we know the better. And actually, it's the opposite. The people who think they know the most are the greatest fools. And the wisest people are the ones who understand the limits of their knowledge. And they are therefore very humble about that. And the last reason that I tell you about this is because I want you to see that dogma is a very deep paradigm. It's a whole orientation, and that it cuts through and across any particular content of one's beliefs. It's not Islam, that's the problem. It's not born again, Christians that are the problem. It's dogma, that's the problem. And we have experienced a lot of horrors, millions upon millions of people have died over the last several 1000 years. And many people have been victimized and tortured in very brutal ways, by religion, but really not by religion, but by dogma. And what we need to do is we need to learn the lessons very deeply about that. And what I see is that modern skeptics are not learning those lessons. Because they're failing to see that the problem is not the content of the beliefs, but the dogma itself, and that they themselves are now committing a second generation of sin. So the first generation of sin was religion. The second generation of sin is science and skepticism and rationalism. Because it's reacting against the dogma of religion, but it's not seeing that it itself is committing the very same structural problems. But just now in a different flavor. The flavors are different, the flavor is now scientific. But the evil is all the same. It's all there. And for those of you who say, well, Leo, surely you can't compare Islam and religion, and fundamentalism and how silly all that is to science, science is so much more evolved and enlightened than fundamentalist religion. Let me tell you this. Yes, science is more evolved, but not as much as you think. Not nearly as much as you think. And when you say that, you know, religious people, they're they're very dangerous ones. No, you know what the greatest danger these days is? Right now, in the 21st century. The greatest danger to mankind is not religion. It's science, and technology, and materialism run amok. Do you see that that's what's happening. Modern Western society is eating itself alive. It's an anon an unsustainable track, which is fueled by science, technology and materialism. And I don't have any problem per se with technology, or science. I love science. I study a lot of science. I was a, I was really into chemistry and physics, and biology. In University. I study these things for years. I'm very passionate about science. But I'm also cognizant of the limitations there. The blind spots the income Consciousness, what's going to destroy the world, if the world is destroyed in the next several 100 years, it won't be radical Islam. It won't be the Christians. It will be very rational, secular, scientific, technologically oriented business people, they will destroy the entire fucking earth, and all human species and perhaps all of life on this planet, if the trend keeps going. So, you know, you gotta, you gotta watch out, because when you think of the dangers over there, the danger might be right here lurking right inside of you. That's why I harp on radical open mindedness so much. Be very careful about that. Law. Let me conclude by pointing out some dangers here, about understanding this philosophy. It's extremely easy to turn skepticism into a dogma. So when you go off, after this episode ends, and you decide to maybe embody some skepticism or some puritanism in your life. Be very careful not to turn skepticism into a dogma. That's very easy to do. What will happen is they'll start running around and try to question everything, and using your skepticism on every single problem out there without turning inward, and applying that skepticism to your own skepticism. See, do not make that mistake that will turn you into a modern skeptic, a false skeptic. And everything I said here will be useless to you. Because you're just going to take on skepticism as a new ideology, you're gonna make an identity out of it. You're not going to become truly open minded, you're going to get paradigm locked, thinking, all the while that you're really a good skeptic, when you're actually not. And then you'll get stuck. And you'll get stuck forever. So that's danger number one. Danger number two, is to use now the skepticism as a justification to promote inaction laziness, or nihilism, or cruel behavior. There is nothing within paganism that suggests that you need to be lazy. ignore your responsibilities in life, to sit on your couch, doing nothing, not going to work not having a life purpose. Holding the world as depressing, and nihilistic, and everything is meaningless and pointless. To be indecisive, and to be a dick to other people. There's nothing about Peronism that suggests that that's a misinterpretation. That's what happens when your ego latches on to this, and then uses it to justify all of its lazy behaviors. See, because again, ultimately, the point here is that you attain Eudaimonia can you attain Eudaimonia by being lazy, indecisive, nihilistic depressed, and unable to handle your basic life responsibilities, like not going to work, not paying your bills, not paying your taxes, not watching your weight, eating terrible food. If you're going to do all that, will you get eudaimonia? Will you get tranquility of the mind? No, you won't. Your mind will be very agitated. So be careful about that. Yes, skepticism is supposed to help you break this materialism cycle of you chasing after titillation and pleasure and various external rewards. But what it should really do if you use it properly, should turn you inward. So that you become active internally, you start to practice mindfulness, start to investigate your senses start to meditate, start to inquire deeper, because you recognize the depth of your not knowing. See, with true skepticism, you stop waging ideological wars out there, and you sort of now engage in internal ideological war with yourself. You start to break down and question all of your beliefs, all of your dogmas, all of your personal preferences, all of your attachments. Whenever you have an emotion comes up that disturbs you, that should be a clue for you to say, oh, that's an attachment. That means I must have some sort of ideological position there. Because if I had no ideological position, why would I be attached to this? The only reason I'm disturbed, my mind is disturbed, my mind is not tranquil, is disturbed, because I believe that this thing is important or it's true, and I'm trying to chase it. Or the opposite. I believe that this thing is dangerous and evil, and I've tried to avoid it. And that means I'm taking your position. And that means I need to do more work to embody true skepticism. See, so you have a lot of work to do. I'm not saying that you be lazy. Don't go to work. Don't do any personal development, just sit on your ass, not knowing anything. That's not what this is about. Now, you might wonder, how is purism related to enlightenment? Like I said before, I don't think the pureness really understood enlightenment. Because enlightenment is a very, it's a very deep place to get to. Enlightenment is the absolute truth. But this is not something you can get argued, or evidence for. Enlightenment is the Absolute Truth. The connection with Peronism is that period ism puts you in the best position possible, ideologically to go and to pursue non duality, to do the practices. And then to discover the Absolute Truth, the absolute truth you will discover is actually an evident thing. You remember how in the course I read to you, the skeptic said that we deny everything, but the non evidence. Sorry, we deny everything, but what is evidence appearances, it turns out that the absolute which is infinity, infinity turns out to be evident. But it requires raising of consciousness. If you become very conscious, you will realize that all of this right here is absolute infinity. This absolute infinity is Consciousness is awareness, it is tranquility, it is the ultimate peace of mind, it is everything that the pianist was after the entire time, it is eudaimonia. It is the ultimate end of this path. It is full liberation from all attachments. And it's what you ultimately want. So the connection here is perfect. Now, as far as whether they really realized this 2000 years ago, I don't know probably not. But like I said, I take a very holistic perspective. So by no means am I up here saying that Spiritism is the ultimate one true religion that you need to now go and practice. No, not at all. It's just a perspective, take it as perspective. It has limitations and so forth. Right? Not everything they say is, is is applicable to your life. It is a pretty old philosophy, some stuff within it is a little bit outdated. Now, you might also say, well, Leo, is it really the case that you're accepting this philosophy? Because it sounds like this just leads to relativism, and false equivalency, you're saying that everything is the same, the peroneus says that, whether it's radical, fundamental Islam, terrorism, or science or Christianity is all the same. This is an extremely important point. So listen closely. There is a much deeper game here that needs to be played. When you are getting caught up in this nitpicking of like, oh, well, but Islam is worse than Christian Christianity. And you know, Christianity is little better than this. And this is this and that and science is better than all those. And when you get into that game, you're stuck in that game. And you don't see the much deeper thing that we're after here. We're after tranquility of mind. Stop small frying the small fish. Go for the big fish land the fucking whale, the whale is tranquility of mind is the absolute. In the meantime, this might sound like you're going to be living in a sort of wishy washy world of moral relativism. It only seems that way. Because it's very counterintuitive. And the ego is going to try to trick you. You need to see past that and you need to see that the bigger picture. The most important thing here is for you to stop holding positions. Just stop holding positions, let it go. The whole point of the ego is to grab onto a position even the letting go have positions, the ego will try to latch on to that even enlightenment, the ego will try to latch on to that. And to turn that into a position. Everything the ego touches it tries to turn into a position, because that's what the ego is. It's an identity structure. It needs a position to be to exist. Don't fall into that trap. Don't get distracted. Focus on landing the whale to land the whale. I recommend you go out there and read this book. The outlines appear anism study it and then embody it. There's a lot of interesting arguments here. more nuanced arguments which I wasn't able to present, because they're sort of detailed, which Sextus empiricus provides to you as ammunition against the dogmatists. Now, I don't recommend that you go out there as for arguments with the dogmatists because that just makes you a dogmatist is the so don't fall into that trap. But do read some of these arguments because it'll help to shift something in your mind. Right, you really need to understand how deep this problem of dogmatism goes. dogmatism is there, because it's connected to the very deep structures of your psyche, because your psyche needs to create identity. And it will do that, by any means possible, unless you take extraordinary measures to prevent it. Unless you work on developing your awareness and your consciousness, so that it stops doing that so that you can see through the game. That's what this work is about. All right, that's it, I'm signing off, please click like button for me. And come check out actualize that org right here, this is my website, I have some cool resources there for you have my book list. Outlines of Peronism is one of the books, one of the amazing books on my book list, I have hundreds of other books there. And I'll be adding more and updating that list in the future. So sign up for it and keep getting the free updates. Every time I update the list. That's free to all the other people who have purchased it in the past my life purpose courses there, my blog is there, I'm releasing some interesting blog posts. So go check those out. The forum is there, go have some discussions on our forum. And lastly, just stay with actualised.org you can do that by signing up to the newsletter, or subscribing just staying tuned. Because there's a lot more important frameworks that I need to share with you. There's a lot of other epistemic traps, and just personal development traps that you will fall into. If you don't learn more, you need to learn the basics of how self actualization works, which is what actualize that org is about. And the best way to hold actualized.org material is not as an ideology. But in light of what we talked about here with puritanism. Think of it as a laxative, to cure you of your constipation. This is the perfect metaphor for how to hold all of my teachings. You don't worship the laxative Do you? You take the laxative to practically solve a specific problem that you have which is your constipation. You take the laxative, it goes into your system, it blows all the shit out of you. It frees up frees you up it untangles your mind, and then the laxative exits your system along with all this shit. That's the process here. This material, you don't need to worship it me you don't need to worship it. You don't take anything on faith here. This is all practical stuff. You apply it, you field test it, you see the results, stuff that works for you, you keep doubling down on stuff that doesn't work for you, you reject me throw it away, and you just keep pushing forward. Keep pushing forward, keep growing every single week, keep watching more content. Because you need to undergo a process of at least a couple of years of massive self education. Because a lot of the stuff you think is right to do in your life is wrong. And you're not going to learn that because you weren't taught properly in school. And your culture is not teaching you properly actualize that org is teaching you stuff that is difficult, quite frankly, this is very difficult stuff to market. So you're very lucky that you have stumbled upon this content however you did. Because you're not going to see this stuff on TV or on your Facebook feed. Or your friends are talking about it. Now they're not they're not talking about this. Your family is not talking about this. Your coworkers aren't talking about this. This is quite a unique time to be alive. That we have this internet tech Knology that you stumbled upon this content. This is life saving life transforming content, but you do need to work it. You need to see the record, you need to recognize the value of what you see here. And I'm not saying like, Oh, it's valuable, because it's me. It's Leo's stuff. That's why it's valuable. No, this stuff I'm talking about. It's not my stuff. These are just the rules of the human psyche, which humanity, certain elements of humanity have known about for 1000s of years, like the Iranians, they understood this stuff. The gymnasts, sofas, they understood this stuff. But most elements of society don't understand this stuff. So it's valuable because it actually works, because it actually tells you something accurate about your psyche, because it makes you more aware. That's why it's valuable. It's valuable because it's completely transformed the quality of my life. And I feel like I'm only getting started on this journey. You won't believe how profound and incredible this journey is, once you really sink your teeth into it. It's tricky at first. It's hard at first, you stumble and fall and you quit. But you need to just keep coming back and have faith that this thing will work out in the end. You do need to have that much faith and then just follow the process. So keep doing that. Stick with me. And I'll see you soon with more.