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[Music] welcome to understanding duality part two scientific and existential dualities so as promised I'm going to be giving you a list of 250 dualities here we covered half of them in part 1 and now the remaining half now here in part 2 let's continue right where we left off before we actually get to the list though let's clear up a couple of points that are important so when we use the word duality this is a little bit deceptive because it makes you think that we're talking about polarities that always come in pairs of two and not more right so when I say duality you think of like black versus white good versus evil cat versus dog this sort of stuff and then so when I'm teaching about this topic of duality then you're gonna go out into the world you're gonna look for these dualities and what's gonna happen is that you're not gonna always find a polar opposite for every situation or what you might find is you might find categories of three or four or more things and you're gonna wonder how that fits in and relates to duality so here's what you got to understand is that when we use the word duality we're really using it to contrast with non duality which means with oneness so you could have categories which are more than two parts it doesn't have to be just two it can be two or three or four or infinite number of categories in fact that's how exactly how it works there's an infinite number of these categories that that we create so for example take a look at this we've got theism atheism and agnosticism that's a three part distinction there that's still a duality okay under what I'm saying also we have straight gay or bisexual that's a three part distinction there and you could have more for example the color spectrum you can have colors like red blue green yellow purple orange you can even have infrared and ultraviolet these are all categories that we create within color but it doesn't just end there it's even more complicated than that see duality is multi-dimensional so like with this color spectrum example I want you to see that what we have here really is duality within duality cuz yes we can distinguish red from blue from green from yellow and so forth but that's all within the duality called color and now color is distinct from now we're kind of going up one level is distinct from smell sound feeling emotion and other things like that thoughts see that's separate so we're creating a multiple part duality there between these various kinds of sensations and then we're creating further adue a letís within each duality of sensations so we can create dualities within color within smell within sound and so forth like we can have loud sounds or we can have quiet sounds see or we can have sweet smells or we can have bitter nasty smells but those are just sensations of course what is sensation but another duality because sensation is contrasted against something else something that's the opposite of sensation maybe you want to contrast sensation against thoughts or concepts or something else so you see how this gets very tricky you create with your mind dualities within dualities within dualities within dualities it gets very complicated so bear that in mind and it can have many parts for example you might take cat and dog as a duality and you ask most people kind of simplistically what's the opposite of a cat and they'll say well a dog and what's the opposite of a dog well it's a cat ok that's easy a child knows that but then someone in the in the comments under the last episode asked Leah what's the opposite of a panda bear see and here you have to understand that really when we're creating the duality between cat dog it's not simply that we're defining the cat relative to the dog we're also defining the cat relative to a bunch of other stuff so for example really when we say cat as a duality what we're saying is cat versus non cat that's the the highest level of distinction that we're making and then you can find op it's like dog and so forth so for example with with panda bear what's the opposite of a panda bear well when we say panda bear what we're doing is we're specifying something that's what it means to create a distinction or a duality these words distinction duality category I'm using them interchangeably here so in a certain sense the opposite of a panda bear is a non panda bear and what is a non panda bear well it's a table it's a car it's a tree it's any of those things so a panda bear is distinct from a tree a car a table a human and so forth but if we if we want to get all the more specifically say well panda bear also isn't getting a very specific type of bear so we could say a panda bear is distinct from a brown bear a black bear a polar bear a cartoon bear and and so so forth you know whatever other kind of bears there are and then we can also say well of course bear is a specific type of distinction or duality which separates that particular kind of animal from other animals and of course you know you could have a whole hierarchy of different kinds of amyl animals mammals living things sentient things all of these are dualities you see so what's the opposite of toilet paper not toilet paper when we say toilet paper were specifically excluding everything that's not toilet paper which is literally the entire universe - toilet paper you see so we're kind of playing with these sets here but you might get the sense that even though I'm talking about these distinctions and dualities that what I'm talking about is concepts and then I'm talking about different ideas and beliefs you could have in your mind different ways of looking at the world but what I'm saying is much more profound than that we're not merely talking about concepts and ideas a concept and idea is itself a duality you gotta really contemplate this is very very tricky stuff because we're gonna be tempted to do is you're gonna be tempted to somehow weaken the notion of duality by grounding it in some sort of thing which itself is a duality as well so you're gonna say well Leo you might say these are just these are just ideas in the mind all this duality business just philosophy in the mind and then if we throw all that away we've got like the real hard stuff the science the facts the stuff you can't argue with but what I'm telling you is that that thing that you're saying you can't argue with the real hard facts the science the the reality the objective truth I'm telling you that that thing is also a duality so then where does that leave us it leaves us groundless it leaves us groundless and that seems like a mistake but that's not a mistake that's exactly how it is so watch out for that also I want you to notice that all qualifications are dualities what do I mean by qualifications I mean any quality whatsoever so take any object and we can now qualify it by using language or ideas to specify qualities of the object so we can say like well is this object big or small it's big okay so it's big what what other qualities that have well is it is it Harry or is it smooth okay it's hairy and is it sharp or is it jagged okay its jagged and is it is it loud or is it quiet okay it's quiet and does it have eyes or not okay so it is it's got eyes and does it make noise well we already said that okay so you know what else is it skinny or is it tall so we can just keep going with qualities so any object that you know for it to be an object it has to have specific qualities otherwise you say it doesn't exist but see you also hold existence and non-existence as qualities which is also quite dualistic see so my point is that I want you to start to become aware that this this notion of duality is much more ubiquitous than it first seems at first it seems like God do a letís they're just like these little categories that we create but then you start looking around the world more and more you realize wait a minute what isn't a duality and that's exactly right you're starting to see just how powerful this this notion is so all the ways that you think about reality are dualistic what would it even mean for you to have a thought about an object that has no qualities to it whatsoever you might say well that object doesn't exist then ah but that's a duality you create a duality between existence in non-existence so you can't even say that it doesn't exist because you're qualifying it by saying that see how tricky this is also I want you to notice that all of your questions about life pretty much are infested with dualistic assumptions so for example you might ask well leo so just be straight with me are other people real or not now just take that line of thought are other people real or not other is a duality people is a duality real is a duality not is a duality see how about a question like Leo does free will exist I'm confused tell it to me straight well free is the duality will his the duality exists is a duality Leo are we in a computer simulation tell it to me straight computer is a duality we is a duality simulation is a duality leo can computers become sentient tell it to me straight again computer is a duality sentient is a duality Leo is God real or not tell it to me straight God as you hold it is a duality you might one will who created God creation is a duality whether you say God exists or doesn't exist you're creating dualities now of course there's God with a capital G the actual God the absolute now that's something we talked about in part 1 remember that there is an absolute and so that thing it's something but you don't know what it is and it's not within the realm of duality it transcends duality Leo will science ever understand consciousness science is a duality consciousness the way you hold it is the duality now there is a consciousness with capital C that's an absolute that's God but when you talk about consciousness when ordinary people talk about consciousness there they're talking about a dualistic version of consciousness consciousness as contrasted with unconsciousness there's no such thing when you're at the absolute when you're at the absolute there's no such thing as unconsciousness there's only consciousness capital C but we'll get to that I'm getting ahead of myself Leo is it possible to eliminate evil possible as a duality contrasted with impossible eliminate that's like destruction that's the duality destruction versus creation evil that's of course a duality between good and evil Leo is Western culture superior to other cultures Western of course is the duality culture is a duality superior versus inferiors a duality is a duality Leo is masturbation good or bad should I stop masturbating masturbation is a duality good as a duality bad as a duality should is a duality Leo should I focus on my life purpose or on spirituality I'm confused again should as a duality focuses the duality life purposes of duality spirituality as a duality in the way that you hold it confusion is a duality you're either confused or you're not confused you see so most people they get cut up on the questions and the content of the questions and try to get an answer some sort of verbal logical answer without going kind of meta and just kind of looking at the questions that they're asking see philosophy and science is chock-full completely infested with dualistic notions and that's why science and philosophy struggles to answer some of the biggest metaphysical existential questions in life because they're not conscious of the thing that I'm trying to make you conscious of right now so don't be so focused on getting your questions answered rather be focused on the assumptions that are in your questioning and in your philosophy and in your science it's the kind of questions you ask that's really more important than the answers you get by the way it questions and answers what is that but another duality anyhow enough of this preamble let's get right into the list so we're getting into the portion of the scientific dualities the following list of dualities is critical for you to understand if you're going to be a decent scientist or intellectual of any kind if you do not understand this list you are basically negligent as an intellectual and you will commit dualistic blunders and you will not have an ultimate understanding of reality and in fact your understanding of reality will be very confused twisted and distorted and you're gonna delude yourself and anybody who Reiser follows your work that's how that's how significant this is so I pay attention here alright so the first example is the duality of solid liquid gas and plasma you know this from physics class right so in in science and physics they will tell you that well you know matter goes through various kinds of states it can be a solid a liquid a gas a plasma and so forth and then when you're told this you tend to take it as a dogma and you tend to say well yeah it's either a solid or it's a liquid or it's a gas or it's a plasma and it has to be one of those four and it can't be anything else but of course what you discover if you actually start to do serious science is you discover if you take a microscope and you kind of zoom into a liquid that liquid is not always pure liquid even if it's standing at room temperature take a glass of water standing at room temperature is it liquid well it seems liquid but when you zoom in on it what you see is that actually if you want to be technical and accurate there's always molecules bouncing around and some portion of the molecules let's say that the majority of them are liquid if it's at room temperature in its water on you know standard atmosphere pressure on earth that's gonna be true but then there's even in that situation there's always a portion of those molecules bouncing around which are going too fast and they're literally turning into gas and they're evaporating which is why if you leave your glass of water you know in a sort of a dry environment if you're not in some very humid place like Florida maybe if you're in a dry place like where I live in Las Vegas then you leave a glass of water out overnight half that glass is gonna evaporate overnight this is so dry how does that happen in science class they told you you've got to boil water for the water to turn into gas well that's not actually true because there's always some portion of that liquid that's always turning into gas see and so the reason I'm giving you this example is because it starts to [ __ ] with your mind and it starts to break part these rigid categories these simplistic black-and-white categories that you hold in your mind see and you're always going to find that this is the case anywhere in life that you believe there's a firm category and some firm boundary that cannot be broken if you explore that boundary deeply enough far enough eventually you'll discover that it breaks and that it bleeds into something else another example for you conductor versus insulator versus semi conductor versus super conductor this is really interesting because we've got conductors and insulators but then we've got semi conductors what's a semi conductor sometimes is conductors sometimes it's not what the hell is that about see so it so the semi conductor the existence of a semi conductor proves to you the the permeability of that boundary between a conductor and an insulator and then we have something even weirder which is superconductors we have materials for example that don't conduct electricity at all unless you freeze them to near absolute zero temperatures and then they become superconductors it's a very counterintuitive sort of result and it's kind of paradoxical and freaky see so the value to a scientist of the things that I'm talking about now is that what it does is it frees up your mind to think outside of various kinds of pigeon holes that the scientific establishment pushes upon you when you learn science in school and in university so for example a couple hundred years ago people knew about conductors and insulators but they didn't know about semiconductors and superconductors right so if you were a rigid scientist who was schooled in the theory that there's conductors and insulators and they're opposites and that there's nothing else then you're going to learn that and then you're never going to be able to discover a superconductor because you're gonna look at them the thing you're gonna say well it must be either a conductor or an insulator but it can't be both it can't be semiconductor or it can't be of something as an insulator can't become a conductor at certain temperatures that would violate these categories yes but who created the categories of we did of course humans did you see this is how scientists delude themselves they think they're doing good science but really their science is going through the filters of their categories and then those those categorical filters are what distorts the science and there's there's so much more that can be said about this but we have to move on how about the duality of land versus water do you think well clearly they're opposites but are they really go to the beach try to find the boundary between land and water when you're actually at the beach it's really hard to pinpoint you've got waves splashing around water soaking through the sand where does the water end and the sand begin see it's not so easy not so easy at all and if you really want to understand how land and how water work in all of their accuracy and complexity you can't approach it with this rigid boundary you need to be much more nuanced and you need to study how land and water work as forces pushing and pulling on each other land shapes the way that water flows it shapes the actual shape of the water is conforming to some kind of land even if you think about the entire ocean the entire ocean if we think of one ocean in the entire world all the oceans added together that's one ocean and it's being held in a sort of beaker which is the the earth sea so the shape of the water is determined by the land but also of course the land the shape of the land is determined by the water it goes both ways you know you look at the Grand Canyon for example which is pretty close where I live and you you see how the land was shaped by the water and often it doesn't take a lot of water to shape a massive chunk of land see geologists geologists understand this really well they appreciate this how about the distinction of the geosphere the hydrosphere the biosphere the atmosphere we can easily take these as separate things we can have a scientist who studies the geosphere another one who studies the hydrosphere another one who studies the biosphere another one who studies the atmosphere and these scientists could not talk to each other their entire life because you know they're just kind of siloed and they've got their blinders on just working on one of their fields but of course all of these spheres interpenetrate and work with each other and if you really want to understand the geosphere you better understand the hydrosphere the biosphere and the atmosphere because all those spheres shape the geosphere and you know conversely as well the biosphere is shaped by the geosphere the hydrosphere is shaped by the atmosphere and so it's a complicated nest and it's not so easy to tell where one ends and the other begins for example you know termites they'll build a big termite mound out of Earth so that now becomes part of the geosphere is what the termites built but it wouldn't be part of the geosphere unless these biological entities the termites built it and of course where did the termites come from well of course they're made out of molecules coming from the geosphere ultimately you know so there you go how about the distinction of planets asteroids and planetoids some years back Pluto was Declassified from being a planet to being a planetoid it didn't quite qualify as a planet what happened there some people were upset about it some people who were for it some people were against it is Pluto a planet is it an asteroid what's the difference we didn't asteroid in a planet anyways it's a planet just a giant asteroid or is it something more and what about plantoids what the hell is a planetoid something in between a planet and an asteroid you see it's not so clear not so clear at all how about the distinction or the category of life vs. non-life this issue of defining what is life is notoriously difficult for scientists when they're planning various missions to other planets like Mars the moon and elsewhere in our solar system and beyond scientists have been thinking about this how are we going to even determine whether the stuff that we find on some remote planet is actually gonna be life because there might be some weird stuff there but it might not have DNA you know we we define life on Earth usually as stuff that has DNA but what if this alien life doesn't have DNA it uses some other mechanism and we know we define human life on earth here as as kind of like carbon-based life-forms but what if we find life forms that are silicon based or some other material that we haven't considered before some other element and how will we really know and if you if you investigate the the research into how did life actually come about on the planet at all it's it's a very mysterious and tricky topic it's not simple at all scientists have virtually no idea how life came about from inorganic matter it's actually uh one of the greatest puzzles and mysteries of the universe that still needs to be answered how does something nonliving become living and what is that exact moment what does that boundary that's crossed that a nonliving thing becomes a living thing what was the very first living thing that ever came into existence in our universe was there even such a thing after all who's creating this category of living versus nonliving us humans see very very tricky it's not so easy to devise a test to determine whether something is alive or not how about the duality of inanimate versus animate that's another one that's very similar to the one we've just discussed how about the duality of plant versus animal at first blush it seems like well it's easy to tell a plant from an animal any child can do it can tell a cat from a tree but when you actually get into the nitty-gritty details you're going to encounter situations in the in the biosphere where you can't quite distinguish a plant from an animal corals for example various kinds of corals become an interesting example various kinds of fungi and mushrooms you know they kind of blur the lines between plants and animals certain corals they have properties of animals but also plants like they can they can do photosynthesis for example and they can get energy from from the Sun but at the same time most corals they actually eat fish and they eat various kinds of shrimpin and dead living matter they're interesting so see it would be very wrong ahead of us if we were trying to explore the universe to go to a new planet exploring that planet with a very simple distinction of plant versus animal in our mind or living versus nonliving in our mind we need to be much more open-minded otherwise we might discover something there that doesn't quite fit one of our existing categories that's one of the whole tricks of doing science is that precisely because science is about pushing the boundary of discovery and discovering new things in the universe we need to be very very open to new categories of things which which a lot of times honestly scientists are just closed-minded too because you know they get drilled in there in their skull this idea that well a subatomic particle must either be a proton or an electron or some other on but it can't be some some totally new thing or if there's a if there's a fundamental physical object then it must be either energy or must be matter but it can't be anything else well but what if we discover something out there in the universe that's not energy or matter but it's a third kind of thing are you gonna be open-minded to it are you gonna be rigid and dogmatic and say that no Leo it has to either be matter or it has to be energy and it can't be anything else you'd be surprised at how many very intelligent scientists who have won Nobel prizes and have many PhDs but still they they go wrong on this very simple point so it's it's simple but it's very tricky how about the duality of animal versus human we touched on this in part one how do you really determine the difference between an animal and a human and after all a human is an animal right many humans behave more like animals and many animals are actually more humane than humans so ironic huh and you know if we start to tinker with our genetic DNA which is already starting to happen you know they're already starting to clone feed embryos and babies and stuff and modify DNA using CRISPR and all this stuff you've probably heard about this in the news recently well at what point do we do so much modification to our DNA that our children are no longer going to be human what is going to be the first baby born from a human which will not be human anymore and what we call it and how will we make that determination and then of course you know with that come a lot of other questions like well does that does this superhuman baby does it deserve human rights or does it deserve more rights than regular humans and then what do we do we have two classes now of of humans we have the old humans and the new super humans you see how many problems this will create politically socially culturally there's gonna be all sorts of you know racist type issues that will come up again legal issues see very tricky how about the distinction between hardware and software go take a look at your computer where does the hardware end and the software begin can you separate them out have you noticed that all software is happening within a hardware medium so is there even such a thing as software when you go to the store and you pick up a Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office or something like that you get it on a CD that CD is hardware you may say well you know I I download I'm too sophisticated go to the store anymore i buy all my software online i just download it right but if where is it stored on a physical server and when it gets to your computer where is it stored it's stored on some sort of solid-state drive or some spinning disk where does your computer hardware end and your operating system begin see this is a really tricky issue it's not so clear how about the duality between digital and analog that one's really interesting too people tend to treat that one as though well you've either got digital or you've got analog and you can't have any combination in between but all digital stuff ultimately is in a sense analog like fruit you might have a digital CD music CD but if I scratch that CD with a key then it will skip around and stop working so see I used some analog thing like a key to make some scratches these are analog things on a digital device and I ruined it corrupted the data or I could take a digital hard drive like a solid-state drive I could you know hit it with a hammer that's gonna be an analogue action on a digital device and of course that digital mechanism is gonna be broken because of because ultimately it's it's analog in a certain sense that interesting how about matter versus energy I think we touched on that in part one I shouldn't talk too much about that hopefully you can see how a matter and energy are not so clearly separate as we once thought Einstein's whole brilliance was the equation e equals MC squared equating matter and energy to each other when a nuclear explosion goes off all that energy comes from a conversion of a tiny tiny tiny portion of the matter into a lot a lot a lot of energy C so it turns out that these these two things are not separate as we once thought of course now we take it completely for granted that this is obvious and easy and likely oh so what everybody knows this what a hundred years ago nobody knew it and the whole point is that when it's first being discovered there's so much closed mindedness and dogma and resistance that people are shocked by these discoveries and they reject them and they get very fundamentalist about it because what you got to realize is that the categories that you accept that you hold as normal are simply those that weren't doctrine eight into you from birth in whatever generation era you grew up in about the duality of matter versus antimatter it's really interesting could there be a third kind something in between how about electricity and magnetism as a duality a couple hundred years ago physicists thought that electricity magnetism were separate phenomenon and then of course electricity and magnetism were unified that took a genius like Maxwell with his equations to unify electricity and magnetism that was a huge discovery leading to all sorts of new technology and new possibilities seems obvious today but it wasn't obvious at all took a genius to realize that how about space and time as the duality most people still think think of space and time as a duality but the genius of Einstein and realized that it took a genius like Einstein to have the flexibility and open-mindedness necessary to realize that actually space and time are not separate things the way that Newton thought and others before him thought but that they're they're integrally connected there's a deep and profound relationship between the two and from that we got a whole new physics complete paradigm shift came from that it's the quintessential example of what a paradigm shift is and it takes a genius to realize that precisely because genius requires radical open-mindedness and a very fluid approach to these categories you have to be able to see new categories that's not easy to do how about the duality of quantum mechanics versus relativity a lot of physicists today they specialize either in quantum anacs or relativity of course some some can do both but they usually have a specialty and there's this classic problem with in physics right now is that general relativity Einstein's theories are really good at explaining how the universe works at the macro largest scale at the scale of universes and stars and planets and so forth really high-quality accurate theorems there and then quantum mechanics is extremely accurate at predicting behaviors at the micro tiny subatomic level and we use quantum mechanics to build amazing computers and so forth even though our computers not quantum mechanical yet we do use the principles of quantum mechanics to manufacture CPUs and smartphones and other stuff that you know you use every day but you don't even realize depends on quantum mechanical principles and theorems so so both of these theories are very well tested but scientists already know that there has to be some sort of unification reconciliation because general activity does not work at the micro scale of subatomic particles and quantum mechanics does not work at the you know explaining that the very large phenomenon of galaxies and planets and so forth so how are we gonna reconcile those two scientists still don't know it's really tricky it's gonna take a genius to come in there and redraw the lines and redo these dualities and categories so somehow merge them together but don't expect that to be something obvious and don't expect everybody in the scientific community to just automatically accept it once that person discovers it because they're going to be operating under the old paradigm under the old dualities and categories how about the duality of theory versus practice these two are integrally related a lot of times people will set it up as somehow opposites or conflicting with each other it happens within personal development it happens within spirituality but it also happens for example within science so you know within spirituality the way it happens that people sometimes criticize me and say Oh leo you're so theoretical you talk about all this theoretical stuff but really all that needs to be taught is just the practices that's very dangerous if you teach people just practices with no theory then they're not gonna have the proper framework and they're gonna misunderstand and miss apply the practices or the things that they discover through the practices will be misunderstood misinterpreted and improperly embodied on the other hand of course it's true that if all people get is spiritual theory and no practices then they will also be very deluded and become pathological because you have all these ideas it's just gonna be mental masturbation no practice and that's not going to work so you need to delicately balance Irian practice in fact I have a whole episode one of my most important episodes of all time is one that I think most people don't appreciate most you guys don't appreciate it but it's very practical and important it's my episode about balancing theory and practice go search for how about the duality related also to this is the duality between theory and reality some people to get a little bit of experience with spiritual work and then they become too they become too conscious Leo I'm too conscious I'm too old I'm too woke for theory reality is what I want [Laughter] you're too woke for theory that makes me laugh theory is extremely important separate them so easily in fact by separating theory from spirituality you in fact create the duality that you're supposed to transcend by being non-dual how can you be truly non-dual when you don't realize the intimate connection between theory and reality when you're not even appreciating the fact that theory is reality theory is a part of reality you can't separate the two and what is the exact relationship between theory and reality well that's a that's really tricky and really profound that's a not easy to answer so I can't answer it here for you but that's something you should contemplate if you're serious about your science or even about your spirituality if you're dismissing one or the other watch out you're making a mistake how about the duality of system versus environment or organism versus environment a lot of times in science the system and the environment are treated as separate things because science likes to simplify stuff create simple models and they can be useful but eventually they all break down because you can't have an object and its environment as two separate things because the object is always within the environment always responding to the environment always living and surviving within the environment and where does where does my environment begin and I end you see like I'm sitting here I'm talking to you and it might seem like I am separate from my environment but am I really no because that environment the air that I'm surrounded with it's entering my lungs right now how do you separate the air in the atmosphere here with the from the air that's in my lungs and in my blood and applying my brain with with the oxygen it means in order to to process all this information and to to speak to you right now and the speaking that's happening that's air waves you know oscillations in air that's happening that might my throat muscles and and all this the voice box is producing all this so there's there's a seamless interface between any organism in its environment and that's extremely important to understand and of course science does understand this a good scientist understands this but still oftentimes not deeply enough not deeply enough to really understand an organism for example you need to understand the environment it lives in Charles Darwin made some great discoveries and breakthroughs in understanding that but still not enough like you have to like really look at the entire earth very holistically because the way that for example geese migrate from north to south and so forth you know that depends on various jet streams and winds that are blowing you know through the Earth's atmosphere which of course depends on various temperature changes global warming solar flares and the position of the earth relative to the Sun all of this all this affects how geese navigate and of course the the gooses navigational system that it has in its brain is of course dependent on the earth on the Earth's magnetic poles what if we had a pole reversal which happens every couple hundred thousand years or so or every million years I don't know how often it happens but pole reversals do happen on this planet where North and South gets flipped scientists still don't really understand why that happens but you know that's gonna screw with the goose migration patterns might kill all the geese or maybe some new goose will evolve all right you got it you got to see how all this is interconnected and that's systems thinking is so when you become a really good systems thinking see my episode intro to systems thinking that's a very profound and powerful episode to where you start to learn how to look at the world in terms of systems not individual elements how every element is interacting with other elements in this complicated web and this is sort of a the beginning of holistic thinking very important structure to look at the world that way and most people can't do that because they're stuck in their very rigid dualities how about the duality of inorganic versus organic where is that boundary between the two how about the duality between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells eukaryotic cells have a nucleus with DNA prokaryotic cells don't so the prokaryotic cells came first and supposedly the theory is and we're not quite sure that the prokaryotic cells somehow evolved into the eukaryotic cells probably by absorbing other cell and that other cell that they absorbed was some kind of nucleus thing and it absorbed it or some some theory like this so literally the eukaryotic cell is kind of made up of multiple prokaryotic cells or at least that's how it might have come into being so you can't quite separate the two how about sentient versus non sentient as a duality this is really profound what is sentience most scientists don't appreciate the depth of this question what is sentience is sentience something that an object has like a computer can just become sentient but a rock cannot or a human can or maybe a dog can but a you know chair cannot can a tree or a plant be sentient are they already sentient are they non scenting are they somewhere in the middle semi-sentient what was the first sentient thing that ever came into being in the universe and what had to happen for it to stop being non sentient and become sentient or maybe the entire universe is sentient maybe sentience is a transcendent absolute that's something you have to discover for yourself how about the duality of nature versus nurture this is a very thorny issue a lot of debates have been waged over this you know is something nature or is it nurture being gay is that nature is that nurture is that how you were raised or is it in your genetics could it be both is it possible that the way you're raised affects your genetics and that affects whether you become gay or not for example when you are not yet born but in your mother's belly maybe something happens to your mother she gets more testosterone or more stress or more estrogen in her system for whatever reason which of course you know that usually comes from environmental reasons like maybe your mother is in a war zone or she's abused or whatever happens and then maybe that triggers something within you because you're now attached part of your mother speaking of which you know where do you end and your mother begin especially when you're inside her belly seem very tricky so at that point you're not even separate from your mother yet you are your mother literally so the environment affects your mother that of course affects how your brain wires and all this depending on testosterone estrogen and so forth these various kinds of hormones very science and studies have been done on this you can go research those and you discover that it matters it matters whether your mother is in a war zone or she stress or she's abused or she's taking drugs or whatever that that's you to the point where it might make the difference between you being gay or straight or bi or transsexual or whatever and I'm not saying that's the only cause I'm just saying it's a factor so where do you draw these lines between environment and genetics it's not so simple at all in fact this whole notion of a fixed rigid set of genetics that you just are born with and that you have to now live with for the rest of your life it has been completely debunked in the last 50 years of of biology it's complete horseshit there is no such thing as a rigid genetics your genes are constantly expressing themselves in various ways with a very complicated interrelationship between you the food you eat your environment and everything that's going on around you literally my words the words coming out of my mouth can enter your ears and change the way that your genetics is expressed this is called epigenetics it's the notion that genetics are affected by environment and vice-versa literally that's possible and in fact if you watch enough of my videos what's gonna happen is that your whole mind is gonna rewire from this theory from this philosophy your whole mind will rewire but what is that but it's gonna also shift your genetics literally your DNA will change from watching actualized Auri people don't appreciate any of this and then people become victims and say oh well Leo I'm just fat I have a DD I'm depressed I suck my life sucks because of my genetics it's all my genetics of course genetics are important I'm not denying genetics but it's very easy to be to start to use genetics as a sort of a victim mindset it's very convenient the ego loves some idea of some rigid genetics and you say well my genetics my genetics were bad so I'm bad at math my genetics are bad so I'm bad at meditation I'll never awaken I'll never become a Buddha because I got [ __ ] genetics see but this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that's a really dangerous and tricky duality genetics and environment it's not so simple at all how about the duality between first-person and third-person in science is one of the major paradigmatic sticking points of current materialist science is that they tend to split the world into first-person phenomena and third-person phenomena and they don't just do that but they also assigned value and priority to the third-person phenomena third-person results so for example a scientist is skeptical of first-person phenomena anecdotal results but the scientist is not conscious that all of his science is itself first-person phenomena point to one thing that has ever happened in your life that was not first-person direct experience if it's not direct experience it doesn't exist for you at all you might say well leo science you know Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity that's not a first-person thing that's based on scientific theory validated you know with double-blind placebo-controlled studies and experiments and evidence and computers and other scientists have confirmed it and verified in all of this yes and all of that is first-person happening within you and most scientists don't get this it falls on deaf ears if you don't understand this one distinction right here your entire foundation of doing science will be misguided and you will do bad science that's how important this stuff is speaking of science let's tackle some dualities regarding science I mean the actual discipline of science for example the duality between science and philosophy or science and metaphysics this is another sticking point for many scientifically minded people is they tend to think that science is distinct from philosophy and science is distinct from metaphysics science is good science is rigorous science is true and metaphysics and philosophy this is just mental masturbation it's just theories has nothing to do with science except of course this is a totally ignorant position completely ahistorical if you know your history of where science came from you know what science used to be called there was not science 500 years ago there was natural philosophy science evolved out of natural philosophy of course that's been forgotten conveniently by many scientists today of course in theory they know it but in practice they don't actually practice it they don't embody it because they treat metaphysics as some sort of separate and bad boogeyman field that is corrupting science if you engage in it where actually it's the opposite you see when you're doing science without having done metaphysics all that means is that you're doing science using very shoddy unconscious materialist metaphysics you're sneaking the metaphysics in there into your science into all of your experiments and all of your interpretations of your experiments it's completely infested with a terrible metaphysics but because you deny that metaphysics is important or relevant to what you're doing you don't even know this that's how ignorant you are you're so ignorant of metaphysics you don't even know that you have a metaphysics and then it's completely corrupting all of your science and all of your thinking that's how significant this duality is it's easy to discount philosophy yet if you look historically Hill philosophy is one of the most significant and impactful and practical fields especially within Western civilization but I mean even in eastern civilization to look at how philosophy has shaped Eastern civilization in China in Japan in India deeply philosophical cultures but of course in the West it also very philosophical the whole notion of Western civilization basically stemmed from Athens and from Greece and from Rome and look how philosophical they were the greatest philosophers were also the greatest scientists if you want to be a hack scientist don't study philosophy ever or metaphysics if you want to be a genius cutting-edge Einstein level scientist study philosophy and metaphysics it's not an accident that that our greatest scientists who made the biggest breakthroughs were deeply interested in metaphysical and philosophical topics whether it's Isaac Newton or Kurt gödel or Albert Einstein or Niels Bohr or Schrodinger David Bowie I mean I could just keep rattling haha on and on this list doesn't end science is actually just a subset of philosophy that's all it is it's a subset of metaphysics it's a subset of epistemology how about the duality between science and math in universities that sometimes they're treated as separate objects there's like the math department and the physical science department and they're separate but of course they're not separate because there wouldn't be modern science without math and of course what is math but the science of numbers that's all math is it's the science of numbers how about the duality between signs and these seem so separate and so different you have the artsy people and then you have the nerdy science people but no not at all some of our greatest scientists and artists were the other half so our greatest scientists were amazing artists like Leonardo da Vinci and some of our greatest artists were interested in science like for example I posted some some videos recently on my blog go check them out about James Cameron the director and what I love about him is he's got this amazing mind this he's a visionary but what's so amazing about him is that he's like half artist half scientist he can draw really well like he's a real proper artist he can just like sketch you a human face and body and it'll look real really good but at the same time he's super nerdy and he's into all the technology and all the science behind the filmmaking and so he's pushing the the 3d and all this stuff the computer animation and CGI and all this right so it's like this amazing blend of both and you see how powerful that is and how rare that is because a lot of times when you have a hacky scientist or a hacky artist they are only doing science are only doing art we're actually the really interesting parts in life or were you are merging various disciplines together like I would like to see in universities the science and art department start to bleed together not to be totally different and then look down upon each other that's not healthy it's fragmented you see you see how the human mind fragments the world to the point where literally we erect walls physical walls physical walls right now the president United States wants to erect a physical wall between Mexico and the United States it's it's absurd if you will do you know or look at the the Great Wall of China still there after what 2,000 years however old it is a thousand years a thousand a half years look at that it's insane you can see it outer space the human mind is so good at subdividing reality you you can see our walls from outer [ __ ] space or so it's claimed I don't know if that's true you see that's how absurd it is you know and then that creates suffering how many people died to create that wall they're still buried in the wall there's skeletons of the people who built that [ __ ] wall inside the Great Wall of China to this day they're buried in it there's bones how many families were split apart by that wall interesting and of course why was that wall needed well because there was a division created between the Chinese people and the Mongol people the invaders from the north so they needed that wall but the notion of a distinction between a Mongol and a Chinese person it's not as significant as as they might think how about the distinction or the duality between science and pseudoscience oh man don't get me started on this I could shoot a whole episode about this there's so much ignorance around this topic especially many people who are spiral dynamics stage Orange they fancy themselves atheists and scientifically minded the Sam Harris gang as we can call them those folks who love to be very rational and fact-based which of course they're not at all they have no idea what science is but they create this very simplistic duality between science and pseudoscience and anything that doesn't fit their existing scientific paradigm they just automatically label it pseudoscience and really what that is this is like a dirty word for saying that it's [ __ ] but they don't realize that this whole distinction is begging the question its viciously circular because the whole endeavor of science the purpose of science is that we don't know what is true or what is false and therefore we have to go and investigate and discover what is and what is false we have to sort the wheat from the chaff that means that science from the very beginning does not know a distinction between science and pseudoscience it doesn't know the distinction between true and false so what that means is that science is in the business of investigating a lot of [ __ ] to determine what of it is actually correct you see so the idea that something like all paranormal phenomena well that pseudoscience that's horseshit you should investigate that Oh Bigfoot does Bigfoot exists all best pseudoscience that's [ __ ] science a real scientist shouldn't study Bigfoot shouldn't study religion shouldn't study meditation shouldn't study psychedelics shouldn't study telepathic abilities shouldn't study aliens because that's all horseshit it's it's just utterly absurd a true scientist has to be so open-minded that he's willing to study anything no Theory can be too crazy or too stupid sounding for a scientist to not investigate it now of course you have to be careful I'm not saying that every pseudo scientific idea is correct in fact most of them are [ __ ] but the whole point is that you don't know now you might say olya but we know we already know we we proved that telepathic abilities don't exist and that paranormal phenomena is all [ __ ] we've proven it all no you haven't you're wrong you haven't proved a [ __ ] in fact paranormal phenomena are very real and there's a lot of signs to back it up the problem though is that you're not willing to accept that science because it doesn't fit your definition of science you see the word science is all about how you define it who gets to define what science is and what pseudoscience is is meditation science or is it pseudoscience is the psychedelic science or pseudoscience if I have a brain injury and I start to hallucinate flying monkeys and I start to study that you know the monkeys they fly around I study them am i doing science if I study what's happening in my dreams am i doing science if I go inside of a video game Super Mario World VR edition and I start to study how Mario moves and jumps and what his enemies are and what their favorite food is am i doing science the science of Mario World and that of course brings us to the duality between science and religion and science and spirituality these are held as separate things in university these are in totally different departments having nothing to do with each other this is a terrible terrible epistemic blunder of epic proportions that has kept us literally in the dark ages right now with regards to our science and our spirituality these two need to start communicating with each other what is religion or spirituality but the science of consciousness that's literally what it is Yoga is the science of consciousness but of course when you call it that many scientists traditional scientists and universities they object and say all olio yoga is so unscientific religion is so unscientific were the opposite of religion really dude you've got more in common with religion than you're willing to admit you're just as close-minded as a religious person only you do it in a university setting see that's your problem right there conventional science and universities today has no idea what consciousness is yet mankind has had complete understanding of consciousness for over 5,000 years how is such a travesty possible how is it possible that mankind knows what conscious is for five [ __ ] thousand years and yet our best universities today don't know what consciousness is nor are they even interested in learning from those traditions that are 5000 years old about what consciousness is that's how big of a problem this is how about the duality between science and business many scientists consider themselves as having nothing to do with business they're above business and above marketing yeah this is a very ignorant attitude because actually the university that you're in doing science in is a business and there are very heavy corporate interests and forces monetary and corporate forces which are shaping how human science is done right now such that for example if it doesn't allow for a business to earn a lot of money then they're not going to fund the research and therefore you're not going to do the science because you're a slave to the to the capitalist system so see science is corrupted by capitalism the science understand this the science admit this usually not at all because that would take science down a peg it doesn't want to admit science doesn't want to admit that science is very biased by financial pressures and influences such that the most important science that we could be doing right now we're not doing because there's no money for it because no corporation can market it to the masses and make a killing make billions of dollars or they can't patent it for example psychedelics are not being properly researched in universities businesses can't make a bunch of money on it because it's illegal that's just one example meditation is not seriously research I mean there definitely are universities that research meditation these days but still not nearly enough not nearly enough and that's because there's just not a lot of good money to be made from understanding meditation unless maybe you want to become a guru who like Osho and then you can make your 91 Rolls Royces or whatever he had that's that's pretty good money but still pennies compared to the billions that you can earn for example if some scientist does some some research that you know create some new pill that gives you a boner okay well that that's that's good science right there and that's what we consider good size they'll fund they'll fund that with billions of dollars you see how distorted science becomes and then those people who defend science they like to say that well leo science is just the truth man it's just facts it's not biased it's totally biased it's completely overrun with corporate interests what are you talking about there are so many things that could be researched by science that are not being researched because it is so biased and you don't even know about it and yet you hold it as the truth how about the duality between science and culture this is very important a lot of scientists because they want to be rigorous they tend to deny that science has anything to do with culture and that science is cultural in any way science is not culturally Oh science is factual and objective culture that's all human fluffy romantic stuff Airy fairy stuff whereas science is based on hard facts you can't argue with quantum mechanics quantum mechanics is not a cultural product of course it is of course it is science is completely cultural the only reason that science has any validity or authority rather not validity but let me say we've read that authority has any authority in your mind is because you were culturally indoctrinated into believing the value and power of science understand this it's completely cultural we could create a culture where science is not valued at all or we could create a technocracy where our entire government and everything that we do is ruled by scientists science is a culture within science itself there is culture and there's even subcultures within various disciplines of science for example physicists have their own subculture biologists have their own different and unique subculture and the humana you know social sciences they have their own unique culture subculture which often doesn't get along with the other sciences what you consider valid evidence what you even consider is within the domain of science or outside the domain of science that is cultural so for example most people would not consider yoga most Western people would not consider yoga to be within the domain of a science it's pseudoscience at best but that's because our Western culture has defined it that way in a thousand years yoga will be completely incorporated into science such that when we say science and yoga people are going to know all those are just the same thing just you know Yoga is a type of science in the same way that like biology is a type of science they're not opposed to each other that's a cultural phenomena and so one of the things that holds science back so much and the recent science is infested with a lot of delusion and misunderstanding is because it's a it's a slow giant cultural beast and it takes generations of scientists to die before new generations of scientists are open-minded enough to accept new paradigms and then that's how science progresses in spite of itself in spite of itself because it's so cultural science is about gathering a collective consensus which can only be done in a culture in a certain sense you can't even do science without a culture a single individual human you might almost say can't do science because what what is science without a consensus of various experts they have to agree with each other they have to have a common language which is culture they have to have a common set of values so that they don't kill each other to even do their science that's culture so many scientists are to know how about this now of course I'm not saying that science is purely cultural it's not just cultural I'm just saying that these this duality between science and culture it's not so clear-cut in black and white as you've been led to believe how about the duality between chemistry and biology where does one end and the other begin you can't draw a line between them molecular biology is right in the middle of both to be a good biologist got'em she had chemistry to be a good well I don't know if you need to understand biology be a good chemist but but certainly those two those two work and tan them with each other how about the duality between hard sides and soft science this is one that you find within universities usually there's like half the university as hard sciences like physics biology chemistry and so forth and then the other half a university you know separated by some kind of wall of course in a different building maybe there's a park in between something less less oppressive than a wall probably a park separating from the soft science is like the humanities any of the people the hard sciences they laugh at those and the soft Sciences and say oh look at those those softies over there they don't really do serious science we're the ones doing real science here within the physics but in a certain sense physics is the easiest science to do hard sciences in a certain sense are the easiest because there are so few variables there I mean there's still a lot of variables but relatively so few variables there compared to a social science that it's so much easier to create a model of fundamental particles within quantum mechanics than it is to create a model of for example human behavior humans are so complex so of course soft Sciences like psychology for example or history or sociology or anthropology this sort these are the softer Sciences they're so much more difficult to do well precisely because there's so many variables and it's so easy for your mind to deceive you and it's very difficult to run experiments clear-cut experiments because for example every human being is different so you can't just treat them all the same the way that a biologist might for example treat all rats the same in a maze and even there that you know it's not going to work if you treat all rats the same you still have to distinguish between different kinds of rats but a lot easier than dealing with humans and you know a lot of scientists for example the hard scientists they tend to look at humans as rats and they tend to treat them as rats and then the all sorts of things go wrong you know that hard scientists that physicists he comes home to his wife after a long day of work and then he treats her like a rat that's how he treats her cuz that's how he thinks of humans because you know he's just so he's so dead set on looking at the world in an analytical logical frame of mind which is good for hard science but terrible in your relationships speaking of which is there are signs of relationships well if there is that physicist sucks at it of course I'm stereotyping here there are physicists who are good at relationships but um just just these are stereotypes and I say them tongue-in-cheek a lot of times how about the duality between natural and unnatural or not natural and artificial this trips a lot of people up they get cut up on like well is that natural food or unnatural food well what is unnatural food well it's like well like you know Coca Cola is unnatural food but why is it unnatural because a human being made it are human beings not natural hmm where did you mean beings come from whether human beings not part of nature see so what does it really mean that something is natural artificial anything artificial is made by nature so it's natural human cities are not artificial they're natural we're just like a fungus that's growing on the earth that's what we are everything is natural when you understand that then you transcend natural and artificial - natural with a capital end so now I'm talking about the absolute again natural the capital n that's when you realize everything is natural including all human stuff a human Factory is totally natural its sprung up on the earth like a mushroom there it is pumping out cars the way that a mushroom pumps out spores how about the duality between evolution creation or evolution and design oh boy this is very tricky very tricky a lot of people get diluted here thinking that somehow these are opposites well you got evolution or you got creation design but they can't be both evolution is creation and creation is evolution all design is evolutionary I'll talk a lot more about this topic in the future about evolution so I'm just gonna gloss over it here but I want you to notice that every single design that a human being has ever made has been evolutionary has actually been a part of evolution actually came out of evolution like for example the iPhone you know your model one iPhone first generation um was one thing and then the second generation third 10th 10th generation that's all evolution happening evolution is not limited to biology by any stretch of the imagination it's it's everywhere everything is evolution you're living evolution and evolution is not separate from design now you might say oh you're just playing clever word games here you're just trying to to make it seem as though the universes decide when really it evolved so you're just playing word games no I'm not playing word games you're the one playing word games I'm actually showing you that what I'm talking about here goes way beyond words I'm actually talking about the physical substrate of HUF existence not words the the metaphysics of existence the actual stuff that you think is real what I'm telling you is that that's words that's dualities we're getting there we're not quite there yet there was gonna be the existential dualities we're not there yet we're building up to it next duality inside outside internal external if you look closely at any object you will not be able to draw a boundary between its inside that's outside impossible impossible you can't determine what's inside of a human and what's outside of a human where is that point where the inside of a human is the outside of a human is this is this the outside of a human or is that the inside of a human and where does it stop does it stop at my lip does it stop inside my mouth does that to go all the way in my in my guts you know a human being is actually like a doughnut if you think about it's like a long stretched out doughnut the hole going into your mouth goes all the way through your belly all that comes out your ass and that's like you like being a doughnut see so the inside and outside are two sides of one coin how about the duality of micro versus macro what's micro and what's macro these are totally relative he's a human being a micro or a macro object well relative to a galaxy I'm a micro object but relative to a quark or subatomic particle I'm a macro yeah I'm micro relative to a galaxy I'm macro relative to a subsonic particle how about the duality between Western and Eastern medicine that's huge huge you know how many thousands of people die in America simply because our culture our scientific institutions our educational institutions and our medical system has completely botched this duality between Western and Eastern medicine they reject Eastern medicines which could cure many serious deadly diseases in the West completely rejected because there's this idea that if it's coming from the east then it can't be real it's not it's not proven it's dangerous how about the duality between rational and irrational you think these are two separate things take the most rational person in the world and I'll show you someone who's more irrational than they are actually rational most rational people their rationality has been completely co-opted by their ego which is completely co-opted by their system in their needs so the people who proclaim that they're the most rational they are actually the most irrational and utterly driven by their egoic biases and emotional needs which is precisely why they're so triggered by irrationality see what a rational person has done is he's created a shadow out of the irrational because he doesn't know how to handle it or how to deal with it so he's actually fragmented himself he himself is disconnected from his body and his emotions he's living in like the left hemisphere of his mind his brain and and as his whole attitude towards the world is completely severed in this way so then he has to create this shadow and then any time he sees irrational activity out there in the world whether it's religion or it's women or femininity or children or whatever he gets upset by it because he can't control it and manipulate it the way that his ego wants and you call that rational that's the height of rationality how about the duality between rational and intuitive which are you are you rational are you intuitive can you be both how is rationality actually informed by intuition and how is intuition actually safeguarded and made more concrete through rationality it's very interesting that the best logicians are highly intuitive people the best mathematicians are highly intuitive isn't that interesting most of our genius mathematicians when they're solving some unsolvable mathematical logical proof the way they do it is intuitively they Intuit the answer long before they're able to formally prove it quite amazing good example that is kurt gödel he's very very rash on the one hand yet his rationality is completely grounded in intuition on the other hand how about the duality between skepticism and faith these are sometimes pitted against each other as opposites but are they really check out my episode true versus false skepticism where I rant against this I rant against false skepticism and I talk about how most skeptics these days they're not true skeptics at all they're hypocrites because they don't question their own skepticism and so they're skeptical about everything except for their skepticism therefore in effect they have faith in skepticism which is of course very ironic very hypocritical very misguided that's exactly right skepticism is a very counterintuitive thing because if you were truly skeptical you would also be sceptical of your skepticism and where would that leave you that would leave you groundless but most skeptics these days people who proclaim themselves as skeptics they're not actually groundless there are dogmatists but if you actually read the outlines of Piran ISM where skepticism came from from the from the ancient Greek hero and from sexist empirica one of his acolytes if you if you actually read the original Greek skeptic works the whole point of skepticism was to not be dogmatic and yet today people have turned scepticism into dogma its own into a dogma of its own which is a terribly tragic and highly diluted but good luck convincing one of these skeptics that he's wrong because he has such absolute faith in his skepticism I mean it's a joke it literally is a joke arguing against these rationalists like sam harris types these sceptics these atheists it's it's just like it's a farce is what it is it says it deserves to be like a comedy you can make a comedy movie out of it this is so stupid it's so myopic is so non-integral it lacks perspex so lacks perspective it's so far from truth but I'm getting on a rant here moving on how about the duality between fact and interpretation or empirical data versus interpretation sometimes this is framed as facts don't care about your feelings which is the most idiotic thing that a human being has ever said because all of your logic and all of your citing of facts is completely dictated by your feelings completely you think you can separate a fact from interpretation of the fact you haven't investigated this topic at all if you think that the whole can of worms that is epistemology is this problem of our inability to distinguish between what is a fact and what is an interpretation and what are our reasons versus our feelings in fact those people who adamantly state that facts are superior to feelings and that facts can be separated from interpretation in a sort of simplistic notion of science where's like well the data doesn't some hair says I think he says a the data the data cannot lie the math cannot lie that's that's about a stupid of saying that statistics cannot lie you cannot make this separation at all but what I was saying is that uh those people who adamantly insist that it's possible to separate facts from feelings and tracks from interpretation they themselves are doing that for a position of emotional attachment and feeling they're attached to that so it's not factual it's completely emotional which is why they're so adamant about it and they get so emotional about it they get angry and upset about it especially if you point this out to them they'll start to do all sorts of mental gymnastics and they'll start to call you all sorts of names and demonize you and so forth of course because it's all ego ego doesn't give a [ __ ] about facts or truth ego cares about its agenda and all of your feelings in your entire emotional system is your ego a kadena that's all it is feelings are just a way for your ego to get what it wants that's all it is facts don't matter at all you don't give a [ __ ] about facts in fact you don't even know what a fact is what is a fact you don't have a single fact all you have are interpretations even the concept of a fact is already an interpretation see this is the whole problem science science is under this simple-minded illusion that it can separate experimental data from the interpretation of that data when actually it can't do that it doesn't know how to do that how about the duality of dependent versus independent or contingent versus necessary it's not so easy to determine what is dependent and what is independent point to one thing in the universe that is independent everything is dependent upon everything else how about the philosophical duality of APIs a priori versus a posterior a posterior I or II this is sort of a nerdy duality that you've probably only heard if you've studied philosophy but this is a big one that they argue about over and over again centuries of philosophers arguing versus versus is this truth here is it a priori or is it a posterior area and what they mean by that is a priori means independent of experience prior to experience and then a posterior means dependent upon experience and of course you can't separate the two you can't separate the two or there's also another philosophical distinction between analytic and synthetic there's analytic truths and synthetic truths for example one plus one equals two is considered an analytical truth because you can just get that by by just kind of like looking at what it is looking at the definitions of the terms it's definitionally you might say true by definition that's analytic and then synthetic means that it has to be gathered from facts out in the world so if I study you know rabbits and I see that they have two ears that they all have two ears well that's a synthetic truth you can't make that distinction and again philosophers have argued about this distinction for hundreds of years as though you can make this distinction but you never really could willard Quine the philosopher has a really good essay talking about the two dogmas of empiricism and he talks about how you can't you can't you can't maintain the analytic synthetic distinction which is of course completely correct but that fact is still lost on most people doing philosophy how about the duality between relevant and irrelevant that's completely relative what is relevant and what is irrelevant completely depends on your ego and what your go know what you're doing how about the duality between quantitative and qualitative sometimes scientists and intellectual types will like to make this distinction it sounds very intellectual to say oh this thing is quantitative and it's a and then this thing is a qualitative difference of course there is no such distinction there is no such distinction the way reality works is that quantitative differences become qualitative differences like if you have two people in a room that's one situation if you have a thousand people in a room that's a totally different situation that's a qualitative difference not just a quantitative difference the quantity of people in the room made a qualitative difference to how that group of people will behave as heard and then if you get a billion people together in a room or in a city or something that's gonna produce yet another order of new emergent phenomenon going from a quantitative to a totally new qualitative you know difference for example you can't create a nation with two people but you can create a nation with a billion people and that's that's quantitative turning into qualitative and perhaps the best example of this is with with nuclear weapons if you get enough plutonium together by increasing quantity eventually it'll reach a critical mass and there will be a massive qualitative difference called a nuclear explosion quantity turns into quality in that nuclear explosion but if you have just a little bit less plutonium then enough to reach the critical mass it won't explode no matter what you do to it very interesting how about the duality between natural and supernatural this creates a lot of confusion amongst scientifically minded people because they didn't hold that supernatural is impossible and unreal but of course the goal posts on this moves all the time what is supernatural and what is natural something that is natural today used to be supernatural five hundred years ago something that will be natural tomorrow it's considered supernatural today based on how culture changes so what is considered natural or supernatural is not defined by actual facts at all it has something to do with science or physics or or objective truth it's completely relative so whatever our culture says is natural is natural and whatever a culture considers supernatural is supernatural so for example if you consider x-rays natural today do you realize that 200 years ago x-rays were considered hocus pocus supernatural stuff if you talked about it if you took an iPhone got into a time machine took an iPhone back to the to the ancient Roman days and show them your iPhone they would think you're a supernatural sorcerer see stuff that science will discover a hundred years from now if we talked about it today in a university it would be called supernatural pseudoscience malarkey and these are not just word games I actually mean that there are supernatural phenomena what you consider supernatural phenomena of course when you actually become fully conscious of these supernatural phenomena they just become totally natural to you so for example you can develop telepathic abilities by doing yoga and psychedelics and so forth and it'll be totally natural you'll be telepathic but it'll be totally natural to you but of course to everyone else it'll be very supernatural and they'll think you're either full of [ __ ] or that you're which and of course you know we burned the witches to say or it's very least we demonize and mocked them to the point where we can dismiss what they what they have to offer so the natural supernatural distinction can be transcended to the absolute which is supernatural supernatural capital S which means that everything is supernatural electricity is supernatural magnetism is supernatural light a supernatural super nature pure it is look the human body is supernatural you can become conscious that if you become conscious of the absolute that will open you up to new possibilities new abilities cities and so forth the next duality mind versus body mind versus brain oh boy this is huge huge can of worms Western philosophy and science has been dealing with the mind-body problem as it's known or over five hundred years at least since Descartes still has not been resolved officially but of course it's long been resolved by Yogi's and by mystics um for over five thousand years like I said the mind-body problem solved from five thousand years but people don't want to learn non duality say you got it the only way to resolve the mind-body problem is by becoming non-dual and understanding the things that I'm talking about here so what's more primary the mind or the body is the mind in the brain or is the brain in the mind ultimately what you have is transcendence of both a unification and the merging of the subject the subject and the object and you have the absolute of mind with capital M so what you become conscious of is that everything is mind that chair is mind that building is mind this is not just a word game you could actually become conscious of it thereby transcending this duality another common one that's related to this is physical is mental is the universe physical or is it mental it's psycho physical or mental with a capital M everything that you know that is quote-unquote physical is actually mental but you see mental can take the form of physical stuff which is something that you haven't really taken serious as a possibility before so that chair it looks physical it is physical but that's because the mentality of the entire universe is doing physics there it is in its physical form again you might think this is a word game but it's not a word game I'm telling you new things you can become conscious on all this stuff I'm talking about is new stuff don't think you understand this stuff or that you have reached the end of this so this is all new stuff for you that's how you should treat everything I say how about the duality between physical and non-physical well everything is non-physical non-physical the capital end how about material versus immaterial everything is ultimately immaterial a material is an absolute immaterial of the capital I how about the duality of same versus different I have a very long and deep episode about that called sameness versus difference go check that out if you want more about that but is sameness different from difference or a sameness the same if two things are different aren't they then the same because they're both different this one is such a mindfuck contemplate that one how about variable versus constant those are related how about input versus output have you noticed that every input is some output like the output of the words coming out of my mouth is actually the input of various kinds of things that I've studied and contemplated so the stuff that I study and contemplate the work that I do meditation so forth that's the input the output is the words but the output now though these words are now entering your ears which is now my words my output is turning into your input now this information is going into your mind and now this becomes the input into your mind which then becomes the next output so now when you go speak to a friend of yours or to a family member and you say Oh Leo told me this and let me teach you about non-duality now my output your input has now turned to your output and so and so and so it goes to infinity reality is an infinite chain of inputs and outputs all criss-crossing with each other in a infinitely tangled web how about form versus function as a duality sometimes people talk about these as though they're two different things but the function of a thing is determined by its form you can't really separate these two take a look at any animal the function of an animal body is its form literally it's embodying functions so for example maybe the function of a bird you might say is to fly and in order to do that it has to have a certain form it has to have a wing or it has to have a pointy nose in order to reduce wind resistance or it has to have light bones with air pockets in them so that it can fly so the form of the bird determines its function and of course the same with all human-made inventions and devices how about the duality between syntax and semantics sometimes these are separated so they're different but they're not they're closely related how about controller versus controlled this is a very thorny issue are you in control of your life or is society controlling you who's controlling who it might seem like society's controlling you because society teaches you culture and educates you and all this so it controls you but that on the other hand you can also then for example start your own school and start to teach your own ideas and now you become the controller you can actually become like president of the country and then change the country change the education system in the country which now you went from being controlled to now becoming a controller but the controlling you're doing is coming from the controlled person that you were the way you're controlling the country depends on how you were controlled by the country when you were educated and so it goes in an infinite chain without end so who is controlling who you think you're in control of your life but are you really speaking of which that leads us to do allottee of determinism versus freewill this is a duality you can transcend this duality to realize will with a capital W divine will absolute will God's will that's a it's a very tricky issue which I'll discuss separately in the future how about the duality between analysis and synthesis or analysis and holism a lot of what science does these days is has a bias towards analysis it breaks everything up into pieces without doing high quality synthesis or holistic big-picture thinking this creates a lot of problems but of course you can't just do big-picture thinking and synthesis without analysis you need to be able to do both and you need to be able to balance between these two holism and analysis together that would be holism with a capital h Seacole ism of the capital with a lowercase H that's holism which just tries to be holistic but never tries to do any analysis it rejects analysis but holism with a capital H transcends and includes both and that's what's really powerful that's what we need within science how about the duality of technology versus magic who is it that has that beautiful quote about how technology is indistinguishable from magic is it arthur c clarke or carl sagan I forget who but one of the two it's a really good quote but it goes way deeper than most people who say that quote actually realized because the point is that everything is magic all technology is actually magic that's what it is reality is itself is magic but you're missing the magic of it it's not game you have to actually become conscious that it's magic how about the duality of cause and effect this is sort of similar to input and output have you noticed that every effect is the cause of something else so for example I might light a firecracker and so the cause of the Firecracker exploding will be my lighter that I light it with let's say that's the cause of the explosion but then the explosion itself let's say that's the effect or the effect but then the explosion creates a sound or causes a sound I should say so the effect of the explosion is this new thing a sound so it's been caused the explosion causes sound so the effect now creates a new cause and that sound is itself now an effect of the explosion but that sound when it hits my ears it causes me to now react in some way maybe it's very loud and so I need to now close my ears or I feel some pain so the effect of the sound has caused pain and me and so the chain goes on and on and on to infinity forever science loves to break apart reality into causes and effects and usually it only looks at cause and effect in a very simple linear manner like a causes B causes C but in fact reality is like I said with those inputs and outputs just this vast infinite multi-dimensional nest or web of cause and effect which all are like ripples in a pond imagine a million ripples in a you know pebbles thrown it upon all the Rings intersect with each other and in this complicated pattern that's how cause-and-effect really works science has a lot of work to do before it fully understands the problems that creates for itself with this cause-and-effect uality it does not understand the depth of this problem how about the duality of consistent versus contradictory people often hold contradiction as though it's a mistake or it's awful or it's a it's a it's a sign of error or falsehood this is not at all the case people like to demonize contradiction that's not the case at all as we talked about in my episode about qoodles incompleteness theorem it's one of those remarkable discoveries within within mathematics and logic and all of human science and philosophy basically because what kurt moodle demonstrated is that any formal system that uses symbols that is complex enough in order to be able to speak about itself or to self-reflect it must necessarily be able to contradict itself so if the system is rich enough and it seeks to be consistent it will ultimately become contradictory in the same way that I can use language to reflect on itself and I can say something like I am a liar is it true or is it false that I'm a liar if I'm telling the truth that means I'm a liar and that means you can't trust what I said because it's false but if I'm not telling the truth and I say I'm a liar then you can't take what I said as being true and so there's also a contradiction so it contradicts in both directions because that's a property of self reflection and the reason that that happens is because reality is non dual you can't use symbols to accurately capture the totality of reality because symbols are a portion not the whole but that's a that's a lot for you to understand if that's the first time you're gonna be hearing it contemplate it we're gonna pass out Kurt Google geo de l next duality discovery versus invention was gravity invented or was it discovered was quantum mechanics invented or was it discovered materialists tend to hold that no leo these aren't inventions these are discoveries gravity is not an invention discovery it's not so simple though not so simple at all in a very important sense gravity was invented in a very important sense quantum mechanics is an invention not a discovery contemplate that there's a lot more that could be said about that how about the duality of heterogeneous versus homogeneous or linear versus nonlinear we'll talk about that one in the future or a problem versus solution this one's very interesting because a lot of times we get stuck on our problems and we tend to like think of problems and solutions as polar opposites without realizing that within the problem lies the solution and then every solution comes with new problems have you noticed this how you frame your problems determines what kind of solutions you'll get how about the duality of possible versus impossible are there certain things that are just impossible within reality or is everything possible well it turns out actually if you become conscious of the absolute that everything is possible because the reality is infinitely infinitely powerful it has no restrictions or limits on it whatsoever that's what infinity means unlimited unbounded so literally all possible these are possible for it so you might say that it's impossible for anything to be impossible therefore making everything possible this is possible with a capital P as an absolute that's something you can become conscious of how about the duality of the chicken and the egg problem that's a classic one which came first well of course the chicken is the egg you can't have a chicken without an egg and you can't have an egg without a chicken how about the duality of credentialed versus uncredentialed this is a big one and within science everyone in science is trying to become credentialed as credentialed as possible and they look down upon those people who are uncredentialed because there's some how unscientific but the irony of course is that those uncredentialed people can discover true things about reality which belong within the domain of science so this this demand for credentials really is very anti scientific if you think about it because credentials are a human cultural phenomenon whereas making discoveries about truth which is what science is purportedly supposed to be about you don't need a diploma to do that you don't need a PhD you don't need a Nobel Prize it doesn't matter how many papers you've written tomorrow you could discover the greatest truth about black holes or about quantum mechanics or about relativity anyone can do it now of course it's much much less likely I'm not saying that you should discount credentials they have some value I certainly wouldn't want to go to a doctor who didn't have a you know a medical diploma I want a credential doctor so that's a nice safety net but at the same time there are many credential doctors who are terrible doctors and there are many people in the world who have no credentials who could heal you of cancer or other terrible alum ailments that you have completely uncredentialed that could actually save your life understanding this one duality could save your whole life if you get cancer because most people in the West they get cancer and they only go for credential treatments oftentimes they don't work of course they could kill you too if you go to some uncredentialed quack who gives you some sort of terrible remedy that is gonna kill you it will kill you so I'm not saying that you should just you know go use quacks without any kind of mmm evaluation you got to think this stuff through a bit too be careful that's what science is the whole endeavor of science is that it's not safe it's risky you don't know what's true and what's false you gotta experiment and when you're experimenting there's risk you could do an experiment that's gonna waste a lot of years and not turn out any good result might even kill you you know scientists did experiments with x-rays and radiation and then they died from it that's science it's risky whereas today most people they take science so for granted they just expect science to like deliver truth to them on a silver platter with zero risk that's not science that's [ __ ] faith and Dogma that's what that is you want safety which is what religion is and you're making a shadow out of religion because you want safety but then you hate religious people for wanting safety from religious ideas but then you use scientific ideas in order to get yourself safety it's absurd absurd how about the duality of the newbie versus the expert versus the master oftentimes we like to pick on newbies as though they're bad or inferior somehow but every master started life as a newbie everyone no exceptions so if you want to encourage people to become masters and experts you need to be nice to them as newbies you need to encourage them as newbies how many newbies are scared off never become masters because they're so bullied as a newbie that they just quit because there's nobody there to to encourage them you know a really good teacher the whole point of a really good teacher is that he takes a newbie and he instills in the newbie a sense of possibility and vision and inspiration motivation and shows him techniques how to do stuff and makes him have hope and faith in himself makes him believe in himself give them a sense of confidence teaches all that such that the newbie can become an expert through a lot of effort and then from an expert become a master and so when you become an expert usually you're very arrogant towards newbies but once you become a master it goes full circle and actually you become very understanding and humble with newbies because you understand that really it's just one circle you know it goes round and round and round that's what life is about here going from newbie to master and it's not personal you can't judge people for having lack of experience we all start life with zero experience there's no point in judging someone for having little experience in physics or chemistry or medicine or spirituality or psychology or personal development or business or anything we all start zero so who are you judging you're only judging yourself you're being deluded and then we have the final scientific duality we still have gotten to the existential ones which is the map versus the territory how many times have you heard me say that the the map is not the territory that's a very profound truth yet at the same time if you separate the map from the territory and you hold it as two separate polar opposite things you've created duality and you're deluded so actually what I'm here to tell you is that the map is the territory leo which is true you said the map is not a territory now you're telling me the map is a territory well of course the map was always the territory because what is a map but a part of the territory all there is is territory let me explain so for example if I'm standing in New York City and I'm drawing a map of New York see if I'm gonna draw a really accurate map of New York City I also have to include an image on the map of myself standing there drawing the map and inside that map that I draw I will have to include another image of myself drawing another map why does this happen and of course it goes to infinity this shows you the infinite nature of reality it shows you why symbols cannot capture all of reality that's why this happens this is the same issue as we were running into with kernels incompleteness theorem and self reflection the sort of liar paradox that I just ran through a few minutes ago so it's the same problem that's because all there really is is territory you see so like if I'm drawing a map here this map it's not like existing in some other universe or some other dimension it's part of reality so if we want to capture all of reality we also have to include into it any Maps models thoughts ideas or images so thoughts and images are a part of reality which of course connects back with with that point I made about the mind-body problem there is no boundary between mind and body so the floss that you're having are just as real as your hands just as real as your head just as real as your brain of course you have to be conscious that your brain is actually thought is something you're thinking at least right now mm-hmm when you're actually looking at it that's a different story but you're thinking about looking at it aren't you that's a thought but a thought is real you just have to distinguish between a thought and a hand and a foot in a car in a tree and I mean there are different things but they're not separate from each other there's still one it's tricky go through it slowly and really contemplate each one of these you got understand each one of these do alleys and I'm talking about you could spend months contemplating each one I'm giving you a list of 250 of them you could spend the next 20 years contemplating everything I said here and you still won't understand everything that there is to understand here that's how deep this goes that's how wide it goes as well it goes deep and wide infinitely deep and infinitely what both at once all right I'm tired of talking and I've only gotten through half the material so intermission here don't go anywhere I'll be right back well I was going to cover the rest of the list here the existential dualities that I promised you but there's too much material I think to stuff into this episode so what I decided is that this will be part two this is the end of part two we're gonna sort of leave it as a cliffhanger and then next week there will be part three but I'm warning you it's very important that you stick around for part three because the whole point of this series was to build up towards the very end and now finally we've got to the point where now we can talk about the existential dualities that which is the foundation of all of existence to put it mildly so you're gonna want to stick around for that and then I'll have some concluding remarks to tie it all together and to show you the significance of this master list that I'm giving you what I want you to do for me though over the next week is I want you to start to put the things that I'm telling you into practice and to start to notice these dualities functioning in your everyday life and I want you to start to keep a list so maybe use the examples I gave you to start off your list but then come up with your own I want you to actually start keeping a list of duality that you're noticing at school at work in your family with your arts when you're watching television whatever it is start keeping a list because I want you to start to get a sense of the extent of this both the the depth the breadth and the depth of it all right this is the nature of all of existence right here that we're talking about from the little to the big from all the parts to all the holes so we're explaining it all but you have to actually contemplate these examples for yourself you have to kind of work through them almost like a logical proof or like a mathematical equation that you're solving that you've been given in math class because the danger here is that I'm giving you this massive list which has partially taken me over a year to compile thinking about it contemplating it and then it's taken me many years before that even to to study duality and non-duality to reconcile all these things in my mind through various examples and experiences for myself so the only way that you're gonna really get the value of this list and really be able to appreciate it and have it to change your life so that it's not just theory and philosophy is if you start to actually do the math problems so to speak here right take one of these examples think through it if one of these examples that I gave to you doesn't make sense or you disagree with it or you think I'm wrong or whatever good investigate that this is not about you believing my list as though I'm some sort of authority figure with a list for you to believe like some sort of Ten Commandments that's not what actualize that or it is I'm just giving you pointers and hints at stuff that you can explore for yourself and then see what the result of that is it's not helpful for you just to believe me and to say oh well yeah I trust you leo I think you're smart so I'll just I'll just believe your list that's not gonna help you in the same way that it's not gonna help you to just believe your math teacher giving you answers to math problems to learn mathematics you have to go through the work yes it takes work the point is that it's actually highly useful and practical but only when you're doing the work not as a philosophy it does no good for you to go around telling your friends and your family oh well I know about duality let me tell you about how the world is dualistic and yadda-yadda you just you just talk and talk and talk about all these that maybe you memorize all the examples and give you and then you just spit it out at them that doesn't help to improve your life that doesn't make you any happier the point is that you need to like see how it's working and see the limitations of that dualistic frame of mind that you are applying to all of the world in business and relationships at school it was in science and and everywhere else right that's where the results come from so spend the next week starting to do that and then I'll give you some more profound examples to wrap it all up and then you can do some more months and years of following up on the stuff that I give you in part 3 so make sure you stick around for that you