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[Music] you what is God this is an advanced explanation and FAQ this is going to be a two-part miniseries in part one we're gonna cover the fundamentals we're gonna give you a full explanation of God and in part 2 we're gonna address commonly asked questions and objections so this here will be a complete explanation of God based on my own direct experiences not dogmas that I believe or a particular ideology that I like and that I defend but stuff that I have become directly conscious of myself needless to say nothing that I say here should be taken on faith or blindly believed by you you should use your critical thinking and you should follow it up and try to verify the things that I talk about in your own direct experiences the things I'll be talking about can be verified by you that's my claim at least and it's your job to actually do it and I'm inviting you to do it the whole point of this conversation is so that you can see the potential of doing it and then get inspired and motivated to actually do it of course you're going to have a lot of objections to the things that I say here and lots of questions all of these objections will be addressed I'll try to address as many as I can as we go here in part one but there's just too many of them to address them all which is why we're gonna have a part two specifically focusing on those so if you really want a comprehensive understanding with all of your doubts allayed then make sure you stick around for part two now this question of God what is God you have to appreciate the depth of this question this is a very advanced topic and it's a quite challenging communication that we're about to have here how do I communicate something to you that is beyond words your mind doesn't want to hear what I have to say on this topic your mind wants to misinterpret what I have to say on this topic this is probably the most controversial and confusing topic that the human mind can tackle of all time of all the topics you think calculus is challenging you think quantum mechanics is challenging no understanding what God is that's the real challenge because it's full of so much trickery and deception this topic is fraught with dogma self deception and closed mindedness it's deeply counterintuitive and paradoxical and it threatens your entire way of life so the mind Faiz finds ways to misunderstand what God is very easily and we're gonna have to address some of those before we can really tell you what God is I can tell you right now but first we have to lay a little bit of introduction because it's it's pointless to tell you when you're not going to understand when you're gonna fall into various ways of misinterpreting what's being said you have to appreciate this question of what is God what we're really asking about here is we're asking about the source and origin of all of existence all of creation we're trying to go beyond the Big Bang beyond where science can typically go and so you should expect that's not gonna happen easily you're not just gonna be able to go on google and type in what is God and then get a five-minute video that explains to you what it is I mean you can find that but you're not gonna really understand which is why we're spending quite a bit of time introducing this and setting it up properly I want you to appreciate that people who delivered these teachings as little as a couple hundred years ago were burned at the stake and even today in the 21st century in certain parts of the world if I was to go and deliver this teaching seriously I would be stoned to death or beheaded or kicked out of the country see so uh this is serious stuff we're talking about we're talking about life-and-death issues here this isn't just some entertainment or some philosophy now of course mankind has been teaching about God for thousands of years since the beginning of time but also for all of that time many of these teachers have been murdered killed suppressed persecuted especially when they're teaching it in a way that doesn't fit with the orthodoxy of their culture and especially in the way that I'll be teaching it here because I'm not beholden to any orthodoxies or try to satisfy any cultural norms so just keep all that in mind of course the elephant in the room the first question we have to answer before we even get to what God is is does God even exist what are we saying that exists when we talk about God the answer is yes God does exist this is not a personal opinion of mine this is not a dogma that I hold this is something that you can verify for yourself it's a fact but of course the question is what does that really mean to say that God exists certainly I'm not meaning that there is a bearded man in the clouds sitting down looking upon you and judging you and throwing you into hell that's not what we mean that's a metaphor so what do we really mean when we say God exists you see a lot of people they get so heated about God and they have a very strong opinion about yes God exists or no God doesn't exist that they don't really even bother to question what are they saying yes or no to what is this thing you're affirming or denying so while God does exist God is not what you think it is is what I'm saying and I'll tell you what it is in a minute here but we got to build up a little bit more there are three types of worldviews or people that we need to contend with here in this explanation firstly is the fundamentalist theists the religious people the evangelicals the Christians the Catholics the the Jews the Muslims and even certain fundamentalist Buddhists and so forth these people we're calling them the theists who of course still deeply believe in God and they live a godly life or so they think then we have the second type of person which is sort of the opposite we have the atheists the materialists the rationalist and the scientifically minded people the pragmatically minded people these are the people that don't believe in God because they trust their eyes and their senses and halia where's God there's no God so why are you talking about it those types of people these are the people who believe that God is a is a creation of mankind created by mankind to brainwash others and the third type of person is the agnostic which is an interesting case because you would think well maybe the agnostics have it right because they're somewhere in the middle well the agnostic believes that oftentimes what they believe is that it's not possible to know who are we to really know we have to be humble and we have to just kind of stay out of it and we have to be open to both possibilities maybe the theists are right maybe the atheists are right who really knows well all three of these worldviews are confused deeply deeply confused and misunderstand what God is they're confused and mistaken in their own unique ways but each of them also has a little kernel of truth a tiny kernel of truth that is being missed amongst all the confusion and error and so what we really want to do is we want to separate those two apart sort the wheat from the chaff we want to save that kernel of truth collect all the kernels of truth from all three of these and then discard all the confusion and the delusion now if you know about my history I was an atheist for the majority of my life so I'm not coming at you from some religious tradition I wasn't a fundamentalist Christian or evangelical or anything like this I was an atheist for a good 25 years of my life and then just as little as three or four years ago I had my first direct consciousness of God and then of course my views quickly changed and I became very aware of all the traps and limitations of atheism and also I've done a lot of study into theism into agnosticism so I'm very familiar now now having experienced God I'm very familiar with with with all the confusion that goes on here so I can help you to clarify this now to understand the problem especially if you're a theistic Lea minded you have to understand the pre trans fallacy and this is a concept popularized by Ken Wilber the pre trans fallacy helps us to make sense of this whole sticky wicket and the way that it basically works is we have three categories of worldview and these are stages of cognitive development that the human psyche evolves through individually and collectively it's the pre rationale the rationale and the trans rationale now the pre rational these are your classic stereotypical fundamentalist religious zealot types these are your jerry falwell x' of the world who have a strong faith bible-thumping christians and fundamentalist muslims and even Buddhists and so forth a good chunk of the world is pre rational they're not interested in scientifically validating God they just believe that God is what they believe it is and it's not even a doubt in their mind about that and they try to live an upstanding moral life and they follow the scriptures their Bible and so forth that's the pre rational and they're prone to superstitious and various kinds of mythical thinking these people could buy into our mageddon and various kinds of stories that they take literally like Noah's Ark and so forth of course many people in the developed world are too evolved for that they've move on to the next level which is the rational stage at the rational stage you shed some of those superstitions and dogmas and you start to question you start to doubt you become more skeptical you start to become more empirical you start to appreciate the value of science and thinking through things rationally for yourself proof consensus building in this source of stuff that is done by the modern scientific community and so you buy into that and so really science becomes your sort of new religion so the fallacy comes in in that the people who are at the rational stage they think of themselves as being so far above and more evolved in the pre rational stage that they ignore that there is a trans rational third stage of development what is the trans rational well it's a little difficult to describe because it's beyond language and beyond the mind the trans rational is not a rejection of rationality it's a going beyond rationality and realizing the limits of rationality and really when you start to get into vision logic something called vision logic you get into the trans rational realm and then the trans rational realms have a huge amount of stuff in them that I have talked about in past episodes and will continue to in the future but anyways so the pre trans fallacy is what the scientifically minded or atheistic Allah minded person does is they think that there is no such thing as a trans rational they confuse the trans rational with the pre rational and so this communication that I'm having right now with you many people will be tempted to say well Leo you're talking about God and you seem so confident and cocky and arrogant about knowing God and you talk about spirituality and other kinds of mystical things that means that you're just like one of those fundamentalist Christian type of people so that's the pre trans fallacy this communication is a trans rational communication and you need to be able to see that it's very important because most of you listening to we are gonna be in the rational stage so from the rational stage there are some things that you're right about there are many problems with the pre rational stage there are many ways in which it's deluded full of dogma and untruths when pre rational people start to literally interpret the Bible or various holy books and laws and scriptures they can really go wrong but while religion is chock full of delusion you're right about that and I have many criticisms of religion trust me I've been a critic of religion for a long time for most of my life I'm very much allergic to Dogma into ideology and to conformist cult thinking so while all of that is true about religion you're still missing one very important thing there's one thing that religion is right about fundamentally and that is that God is an actual phenomenon not a figment or a creation of the human mind that's what you're missing so be open to that possibility the key insight I have for you in this episode is that God is an experience not a belief or a theory God is an actual experience that I've had many other people have had and that you can have and that's even important for you theists to understand because the problem with you theists is that you believe in God so much that you confuse your idea and and I and your image of God for God itself and that actually becomes your greatest obstacle to actually understanding what God is all of the preconceived ideas that were taught to you and brainwashed into you through Sunday school or wherever you got your beliefs and God from so don't think that you're out of the woods yet if you're a theist superficially it seems like I'm agreeing with you the theists because supposedly I agree that God exists but actually in a certain sense the things that I'm communicating are closer to what the rationalist and the atheist holds then your pre rational theistic ideas of God is some bearded man in the clouds now of course the very first objection we gotta answer here is that Leo what are you talking about personal experience you're saying that you experience God and now you think you know what God is how arrogant of you after all we know that personal experience man that's not reliable people hallucinate all sorts of things they're people who have all sorts of psychotic visions and things like that and they misinterpret them and they think sometimes people even think that their God so I mean so Lia how can you trust your personal experience what does this really show this isn't proof I need solid concrete proof I want a double-blind placebo-controlled study that shows me that there's a God if there is such a thing because you know Leo extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence so where's your evidence so far all I'm hearing you say is just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and and talking and philosophy but no real proof so prove to me provide to me the tangible evidence and then maybe I'll agree with you about the existence of God such the rationalist and the atheist Thanks and the rationalist actually believes that this is this is a valid way to think about this problem here's the reality of the matter when you say this objection you really demonstrate that you don't know and you haven't really thought carefully about what experiences or what proof is or even how science works or how knowledge works because in this objection you're just assuming that proof is a given and that proof is just an easy thing it's like you just go and find proof you find proof for God in the way that you might find proof for some murder like you find a knife with blood on it use some DNA testing and then BOOM you go you've proved it and in the same way we can prove God but that's not how it works because when we're talking about God we're talking about the most fundamental thing ever we're talking about the origin of existence itself so as you can clearly see proof requires that first you have existence science and rationality depend on certain fundamental things that need to be in place before they work see so where you're not realizing is that proof it's actually a second-order phenomenon we have to build up to proof proof is not something we just take for granted after all what qualifies as proof whose standards for proof are we going to use to prove existence exactly your standards my standards are community standards our culture's standards you're taking all of this completely for granted consider that truth or being is prior to proof because proof itself requires being in order to get itself off the ground so here's a little analogy for you it's as though we have lego building blocks and we're gonna use these to build a castle so the lego building block itself if we have one block right here this let's think of it as truth or as being these are like the atomic particles that make up everything in our LEGO building universe proof is a second-order phenomenon in the sense that out of these bricks we can build a castle the castle is made out of the little bricks so it's really an emergent second order right you can't have a castle without bricks but you can have bricks without a castle you see that you see how the castle depends on the bricks to exist first well that's how proof works so in a sense when you're telling me that you need proof for God the critical mistake you're making it says though in this Lego universe by way of analogy it says though you're asking me to formulate a brick in the shape of a castle you see you've put the cart before the horse you've misunderstood what depends on what because you're taking the castle as the primary and the brick as the secondary it's sort of like you're asking me to prove the existence of bricks to you because all you've ever experienced are castles you see the problem there you've got it backwards doesn't it work like that if you're familiar with Kirk qoodles incompleteness theorem then you should also be familiar with the notion that proof cannot be systematized or symbolized all right yeah the truth cannot be systematized or symbolized and that proof is always a weaker notion than truth if you want to understand that in a much deeper way go check out my episode on doodles incompleteness theorem it's a very important discovery within epistemology and it wasn't just girdle but uh alfred tarski was also instrumental in demonstrating that proof will always be less than truth the domain of truth is everything and the domain of proof is a sub-domain of truth because proof itself is part of truth but not the entirety of it another way to explain this to you is proof to me that you exist how would you do that you see the problem with you rationalist types is that you ignore your own direct experiences and the necessity of your own existence and the fact that you aren't intimately in the world you're not standing outside of it as some observer outside the universe looking in you're intimately in the universe so it's actually not possible to prove that you exist because existence is more fundamental than proof the only reason you think you exist is because you feel that you exist and that happens through personal experience or for example try to prove that colors exist to a blind person think about that think about it for a minute and what you'll realize is that it's not possible because for proof to happen a lot of stuff has to be in place for proof to happen we already have to assume existence we already have to assume a common base of experiences between individuals and we have to assume that our experiences aren't similar enough that we can work with each other we can build a consensus we can have standards around what qualifies as proof and what doesn't these standards can be different based on which community or culture you're a part of which time in history we're talking about and so forth right so proof is a very complex notion that requires a lot of stuff to build it up it's mad at various building blocks which themselves cannot be proven so appreciate that it's not as simple as you think there's certain things in life that can't be proven and yet they are true consider that possibility because many scientists and rationalists and atheists they just assume that everything that's true automatically must be provable and that's false that's been demonstrated to be false by curt girdle and alfred tarski go check that out if you don't believe me study their work think it through moving on though the main reason why God doesn't make sense to you is because you're failing to account for different states of consciousness yeah this is it right here it's the answer because what all of you rationalists basically don't consider is that there could be different states of consciousness and that rationality and science and proof are only operative within certain states of consciousness and not others so what do I mean by different states of consciousness well right now you're in what we might call the conventional physical state of consciousness the conventional normal waking state other states of consciousness that you might have experienced as being drunk it's a very different state of consciousness certain things are open to you in that state and other things are closed every state comes with its own limitations and possibilities for example when you're very drunk you're not going to be able to do logic and science and rationality but there's other states like dreaming again which come with their own possibilities and limitations there shouldn't things you can do in your dreams that you can't do in the quote/unquote real world and vice versa and then there are rarified superhuman high levels of consciousness which very few humans have ever accessed beyond what we consider the highest level you know normally you just consider that this normal waking consciousness like the highest level of consciousness well that's just not true that's what you're failing to account for and so to understand God what you need to understand is that it's not possible to understand God from your current state of consciousness you need to raise your state of consciousness significantly a lot by ten or a hundred or a thousand fold and then you have a chance of understanding and you see that's why this communication is so challenging is because I'm trying to communicate something to you from a high level of consciousness that I gathered down to your current level of a consciousness right now and so by definition it's not going to work it's like I'm trying to explain colors to a blind person can't work the only way you can understand colors is to directly experience colors what you need to appreciate is that science is a figment of consciousness you can only do science and rationality because you're in a particular state of consciousness for example an ant cannot do science or rationality and ants the state of consciousness is significantly more limited than that of a human and this is a great example because think of how limited the ants universe is compared to what we know as humans the ant spends its whole life mostly living underground within a small area and even when it ventures outside it's still basically living its whole life on let's say like one square acre of land the ant doesn't know about galaxies Jupiter the moon the ant doesn't know about humans in many cases unless he had stepped on and even then he doesn't understand why or what's really going on the ant doesn't know about all the different creatures and races that exist around the world the ant knows nothing about language about math about science about history the philosophy about art about entertainment about pornography like what does the ant know none of this stuff the ants universe is so limited so now imagine that the current state of consciousness that you're in right now that you've been in your whole life and that all of your friends and family in your entire community has been in has been like that ant and that what you know is the conventional universe is just like that ants reality very limited and that I'm talking about states of consciousness that are a thousand times greater just like you know imagine the difference between you and an ant you might think that an ant probably has a thousand times less consciousness than you well now imagine someone who's a human but has a hunt times more consciousness than a standard human that's a person who can understand God and unless you become that person you ain't gonna understand God another reason you fail to understand God is because you fail to take into account states of cognitive development which I've already explained to you in the pre trance fallacy those three stages of pre rational rational post rational that was me describing stages of cognitive development I've also talked in the past about spiral dynamics that also talks about different stages of cognitive development so what this means is that see ordinarily we just assume that all people are the same same stage same level of consciousness which is just not true the human psyche evolves and grows as does human culture and the culture that you're in right now and the stage of development you're in right now is not the highest stage not even close so you need to be able to anticipate that stuff that you that you can't understand at one stage of consciousness you will at the next stage and so you need to be open to new stages rather than denying them like most people do I mean that's the mistake people make people don't like to acknowledge their stages because of course that means that they have to admit that they're not at the highest stage and they have a lot of growing to do and of course they don't want to admit that because especially these rationalist types they can get very arrogant intellectually arrogant thinking that they're so far above and superior to religious superstitious people that they've figured it all out well I got news for you you haven't you're in for a rude awakening another reason why you can't make sense of God is because you assume that reality is the material physical system which is just wrong fundamentally your conception of reality is wrong reality is not a physical system rather reality is a giant and mind which can imagine and think up all sorts of different sub realities within it one of which is what we call physical reality this universe as you know it so see if you assume that the universe is just a physical box with objects in it just kind of like bouncing around like billiard balls and everything's just random and it's just according to the laws of physics and all this if you assume that that's is what's true that's what is objective then your universe is very limited because it's constrained by all that and you think that that's how it has to be and that's that's that's all that there is and then of course you assume that consciousness comes from the brain from neurons and it's just an algorithm it's just calculations happening in there you have this very materialistic explanation for the universe which is wrong when you assume that then you're very stuck you don't open yourself up to those trans rational states of consciousness that are possible or even if you experience them you bring the back and you interpret them within your materialist paradigm and from the Retiro spera dime God makes no sense it's impossible it's crazy it's ridiculous it's outrageous it seems childish to even talk about God from within your paradigm and that's exactly right the mistake you're making is that you're clinging to your paradigm and you're refusing to actually question your paradigm now the material's paradigm you tell yourself is scientifically validated and proven that's not true at all the paradigm I'm talking about has never been scientifically proven science has never demonstrated the existence of a external material objective world never and it never will and no such thing exists and of course science has never demonstrated the existence of other human beings nor will it ever hm-hm you see these things are metaphysical dogmas of science don't you think that science can't have dogmas science can definitely have dogmas and it does has many metaphysical and epistemic dogmas which construct the paradigm these are just assumptions that are never proven there's assumes that that's how it has to be so that's what needs to be questioned if you really want to understand God have you noticed that God is a very controversial and emotional topic for most people most people have a very strong opinion about it one way or another whether you believe or don't believe even when you don't believe you still believe you just believe in the opposite or you believe it's not possible to know it's very difficult to escape the the trap of believing firmly in in this stuff and the reason it's so controversial is because it's it's this question of God's it's the very core of your web of belief and your web of belief is sort of like your operating system which governs your whole life and it's fundamental to how you understand reality how you perceive and how you interact with all aspects of reality from human beings to objects affects your morality affects what you think is right and wrong affects how you love how you hate affects what kind of things you pursue in your life what you devote your time and energy to so it has enormous practical consequences the mistake that people make is they think that god has no practical consequences this is just a purely a philosophical topic that's not the case in fact it's just the opposite it's precisely because the ramifications of realizing what God is are so widespread and so practical it'll change your entire orientation to life which is precisely why you're so threatened by it and you get so emotional by it because the emotions the dogma is there as a smokescreen to get you from not to not deeply investigate this matter for yourself because if you ever did you would discover how wrong your old worldviews were and then that would be that would be frightening to discover that that would be a rude awakening now I want you to be honest about what your true attitude is about God a lot of times people aren't honest about this theists or atheists be honest about do you think God is a positive thing or a negative thing or maybe you believe that there is no such thing as God it's just all a waste of time or maybe you believe yeah Leo there is a God and it looks like this this is what I imagine God to be that's what I was told it is in the Quran or in the Bible be very honest about your truly held attitude about God it's that attitude whatever it is positive or negative or maybe you just have an attitude that it's not possible to know that attitude is the chief obstacle to you understanding what God is so are you willing to surrender that attitude or are you gonna cling to it and try to defend at all costs now see atheists get very tricky here they say well Leo I don't have an attitude god is not even a thing so what ad is who I have no attitude it's just nothing yeah that's your attitude see that's your attitude are you willing to give that up and if you say no leo I'm not gonna give that up because it's not even an attitude and you know I'm not gonna open myself up to various kinds of brainwashing why should i well that's your attitude and that's precisely why you'll never understand God another question I want you to ask is have you actually ever experienced God for yourself yes or no and that's very different from believing in God have you actually experienced God or for you atheists have you actually experienced that there is no God watch out watch out not to confuse your beliefs for experience because many atheists will say well yeah Leo I've never experienced God therefore by definition I've experienced it there is no God no no you haven't just because you haven't experienced God yet doesn't mean that there is no God see watch out and for you theists who have all sorts of firm convictions in your belief in God it's very easy for you to confuse your beliefs with an actual experience be careful about tricking yourself here and the last question I want you to ask yourself is are you directly conscious of God right this second because many people have had mystical experiences and trip reports and so forth that they've encountered in the past but all of that is the past and now it's just a memory so are you conscious of God right now and if you're not conscious of God right now then well you're disconnected from God you don't really know what it is all you've got our memories and pleasant stories interpretations you see your interpretations the way your mind thinks about God even if you've experienced it is still very different from actual consciousness of God now let's take a look at the biggest misconceptions about God perhaps the biggest one is that God is a belief which I already told you it's not another common one is that God is a superstitious religious notion wishful thinking and the way that atheists think that really all that God is is it's a it's a sort of defense mechanism that naive people adopt in order to avoid facing death it's the denial of death people wish for an afterlife and they wish for more meaning in their life than there really is they wish for some overarching meaning to life something beyond just randomness and chaos and and really what God amounts to is just sort of a defense mechanism against the nihilism of a reality the the brute cold hard reality that's there that has no meaning and it's just a bunch of random chaos this is also a misconception now of course it's true that many people in the world who are the pre rational stage of development in fact do use religion and God as a sort of crutch to face some tough philosophical realities to deny death to deny meaninglessness and certain truths within nihilism that's correct certain people do do that but that's not the origin of the notion of God that's a that's precisely the pre trans fallacy that I'm talking about so another common misconception is that God is a bearded man in the sky I've read many books by by great scientists quantum physicists cosmologists and astrophysicists where they argue against God but the God they're arguing against is the bearded man in the sky conception of God which of course is not really what God is it's so silly how a scientist could actually even argue against this conception of God is ridiculous that's not what God is God is also not a man not a he not a creature not a being and not even a thing so already you should start to understand the difficulty of understanding God if God is none of these things because what what do you know the only thing you know are things beings creatures and God is something else so that's what makes it so tricky another common misconception is that God is incompatible with science evolution technology or advanced society and whenever God has explained to an atheist in the back of the atheists mind there's always sort of a a suspicion because in his mind he's like well but if I accept God if we carry on this conversation further then that's going to mean that we're somehow now denying science or evolution or technology and I know that those things are true and so God must therefore be false but that's a false dichotomy in fact both can be true and that's what the trans rational domain is all about you get to keep science and evolution and technology but you also go beyond them another common misconception is that God has rules that you must follow that God looks down upon you and judges you and punishes evildoers and sinners and that your role in life is not to be a sinner this is false God doesn't punish anyone God doesn't judge anyone God doesn't care what you do or don't do and has no rules that you must follow you are given total freedom in fact that's the that's the the ultimate nature of God and that's why God is so difficult for many mere mortals to understand is because God gives you total freedom to do anything you want if you want to be a murderer God is fine with you being a murderer if you want to be a rapist God is fine with you being a rapist that's very difficult for people to accept because pre rational people like to use God to justify their cultural norms so you have two separate cultural norms and morality from God it's really problematic when you conflate those two another common misconception is that God is exclusive to one religion either the Christian God is right or the Muslim God is right or the Hindu God is right the Jewish God is right but they can't all be right or it's the notion that my religion has the one right God and all the other ones are wrong this is a false notion no religion has a monopoly on God and all of these religions are talking about the same one God there's not as much diversity within religion as people would think most atheistic people and scientifically minded people they actually use this as an argument against the validity of God is they say well but below you know if God was if God really existed then surely every religion would agree upon what God is well they basically do and now you'll say but Leah but what about like the Hindus they have many gods they don't have one God so what are you talking about I mean yeah maybe the Christian God and the Jewish God maybe they're the same God and maybe even the Muslim God is the same God which of course it is all eyes is the same as the Christian God but what about the Buddhists the Buddhist don't even have a God Leo and the Hindus they have many different avatars and they have a Vishnu and a Ganesha and a and Lakshmi and a Christian and Shiva and the blah blah blah all right so so which one is the right one and what about the Greeks and the Romans they had all kinds of different gods so how can you say that they're all one well they are fundamentally if you know how to interpret religious texts which is a tricky science learning how to interpret religious texts it's not easy see if you interpret them literally then of course you've got a million different gods by different names and they have different qualities and so you're so confused and it seems like it's all contradiction and everyone's just making [ __ ] up well that's not really the case if you properly read the scriptures and you know how to interpret them and more importantly when you have a direct experience of God for yourself you realize that there's only one God and that all these religions are fundamentally talking about one God and for example in Hinduism even though they have many different avatars fundamentally they have one God which is Shiva or Brahman and the rest they're just different facets different aspects of God which are symbolized and talked about metaphorically through different minor deities and incarnations and avatars and so forth and this has been the case not just to Hinduism but really everywhere even within Christianity and within Islam there are always polytheistic strands and various aspects and in Christianity talk about the holy trinity and they talk about the holy spirit which are separate from Jesus which is from God so all this I mean you can subdivide God into a million different ways which is what every religion does every culture does but fundamentally they're all talking about the same stuff and the last misconception and this is a biggie is that God is other than you this is so counterintuitive for people to get what do you mean Leo God is other than me how can God be me that sounds stupid but on the other hand how could God be other than you we're going to get back to this is a very big point but for now I'll just tell you that if you think that God is something separate from you like God is some rarefied metaphysical object that hangs out outside the universe somewhere hidden behind the scenes in some dark corner some darker recess of the universe you've got it wrong God is you but of course that means you're gonna have to change how you conceive of yourself and also how you conceive of God to bring those two things together and you have to make sense of that and right now in your current state of consciousness it makes no sense because you don't have a sense of being God it's likely oh if I'm God then how come I can't just like create stuff out of thin air how come I can't just think of a billion dollars and have it materialize here in a stack of gold bars how come I can't make that wall disappear in front of me and you're right you can't do those things because you're in this limited human form but even though all that's the case you are still God you see God is all about limitation so we'll get back to that so let's now directly address the question of what is God and the way I want to approach this is the way that they might in a introductory philosophy class in a university like if you took philosophy 101 then they would introduce you to all sorts of philosophical concepts and of course one of them would have been God and in Western intellectual tradition in Western philosophy God is defined a sort of classical standard way which I want to present to you right here and then let's take a look at these different facets of God that are described let's take a look at how many of them are correct which ones are correct which ones are false that's going to be interesting to do so here's how it's classically defined God is the supreme being the first cause God is the source of all creation and by creation we mean creation with a capital C we mean the entire universe and all the versus everything anything that is real God is also said to be infinite boundless the all the one the absolute God is also omniscient or all-knowing all intelligent God is also omnipotent having unlimited power and the ability to create anything that it wants God is omnipresent which means that it's present everywhere there's nowhere in the universe that God is not which of course is interesting because that uh that ties in with that point about God being you see if God is omnipresent he would have to be inside of you as well sometimes I say God is a he but you have to understand that God is not he if I say that that's just you know in the in the parlance of sort of colloquial speaking but God is not a hear more properly as to call it an it also God is said to be benevolent or all loving and good with a capital G God is said to be incorporeal eternal and immortal and perfect and complete so that's basically the classic Western definition now the question is how much of those are correct and the answer is all of them this is precisely the correct definition of God the problem is accepting it and understanding how this can possibly be so the reason that I'm saying that all of these are correct is because over the last three years through my consciousness work I have directly validated in my direct experience all of these facets so I'm not just telling you because I've read this stuff someplace but I have validated for myself that God is the supreme being the first cause the source of creation infinite boundless the all the one the absolute that God is omniscient and all knowing and intelligent to the infinite degree omnipotent with unlimited power omnipresent I've verified that well I verified that God is benevolent and all loving and good with a capital G I've verified that God is incorporeal eternal immortal perfect and complete but how can that be how is it possible to verify such things you might wonder well we'll get to that so hello now let's go a little bit deeper into into this definition and explain more of these sorts of facets of God so God is a radical state of consciousness but also at the same time God is all states of consciousness so don't think that you need to be in a particular state of consciousness in order to experience God or that God exists only in one state of consciousness God exists everywhere including this state of consciousness you're in right now the only problem is is that this present state of conscious hero right now you're not conscious that this state of consciousness is a facet of God imagine if your consciousness expanded and exploded by a thousandfold that's what God is God is also the absence of self or you now this seems to contradict what I said earlier because earlier I just said you are God so Leo how is it possible that God is the absence of me but also me well that's exactly right that's the paradox both of the case the way we explain this is God is the absence of you as your limited egoic identity that thing you identify with that you tell yourself was born that has a life story that personal hue the biological youth the you that you think is a creature that you is a false conceptual self so God is the absence of that if you get rid of that thing you will experience yourself as God but then what remains of you well nothing really you experience yourself as pure emptiness when we strip all qualities away from you all that remains is just a state of pure empty consciousness or awareness and that's what God is so this is you with a capital y you have to distinguish that from the conventional you that we don't really talk about the biological you the biographical you that's the false you that thing has to die in fact that is the greatest obstacle to you realizing God you are the obstacle you see and that's why this topic is so tricky because how do you get rid of you you want to see God and yet the thing that's in the way of you seeing God is yourself God is also synonymous with reality existence and truth so in a sense the atheist and the rationalist and the scientist they do subscribe to God but they call their god reality they call their God nature or existence but of course they object when I say this because a rational saying but Leo I mean sure yeah I believe in reality and in nature but that's not what God is now see Leo here you're you're redefining thing see Leo you're playing a word game here because if God refers to reality then why do we even need the word God why bring in religious connotations and spiritual stuff when we can just say realities just like this machine it's got no godlike qualities it's just a machine so stop calling it God mm-hmm but you see that's not what I mean the word God does refer to reality existence and nature but the problem is is that you as a rationalist as an atheist as a scientist are not conscious of what reality or nature or existence actually are if you were really conscious you would realize that they are God now why do we call it God because that's the most appropriate word when you become conscious of what reality is it's conscious and it's divine and these are inherently baked into reality and this is the thing that the atheist the rationals and the scientist doesn't understand because the atheists the rationals and the scientists treats reality like I said before as a mechanical system and God is not a mechanical system reality is not a mechanical system it's a giant mind that is what you're missing as an atheist so really you have as an atheist created a sort of false God for yourself that you believe in and take completely on blind faith and which that is what what that is is that that's mechanical reality an external objective reality that human beings can study with science that thing doesn't exist you invented that and that is your God and that is the thing that you cling to just like the religious fundamentalist cling to their notions of God is the bearded man in the clouds God is consciousness pure consciousness the thing in you right now which is conscious of anything conscious of existence that's God the problem is that for the rationalist for the materialist for the atheist they think of consciousness in a very weak way they think of consciousness as something that the brain does as consciousness being something that exists within a physical mechanical universe that's not what consciousness is there is only consciousness there is no physical mechanical universe all of that is content within consciousness consciousness is disembodied consciousness is not a computer simulation running somewhere consciousness is not happening in a brain all of those things your computer simulations and brains and BIGBANG's and universes and signs and rationality all of that is content within consciousness now you might say but how does the consciousness occur well exactly see you you don't understand yet you haven't awoken yet if you were awake and you were conscious of what consciousness is you would realize that consciousness is singular and has no opposite and that it is pure magic pure irreducible magic and that's the thing that you're avoiding as a scientist from acknowledging and that's why you deny this see because there's no rational explanation for it and you're looking for a rational explanation you're looking to demystify reality and as it turns out that is impossible that's a false assumption that you can demystify reality God is also being what is being being is the only thing that there is being is everything everything is being everything in this room my face my hands my the town's coming out of my mouth all of this is being well then you would say but leo so if all that's being then all this must be God but I don't see a God here where's the God what kind of word games are you playing the reason you don't see the God even though it's right here this is God hello wake up this is God right here your entire life has always been God the problem is is that you're not interfacing directly with being you are interpreting being all the time and so your interpretations and projections onto being create a sort of smokescreen that doesn't allow you to directly be being and therefore you're constantly disconnected from it and therefore you're not realizing what it actually is you're not realizing the significance of it and so what needs to happen is that you need to remove all of your interpretations all of your beliefs and everything that you know such that imagine if you can remove all of your interpretations of reality completely you wouldn't know what anything is you wouldn't even know that I'm a human being you wouldn't know that I'm leo you wouldn't know whether I'm good or bad you wouldn't know whether I'm tasty or not tasty you wouldn't know whether you should mate with me or not made with me you wouldn't know anything you wouldn't even know that I'm an object you wouldn't know what I am you wouldn't know what any objects are you wouldn't even know what you are you would be in a complete state of not knowing but what she would have is pure being stripped of all knowledge and all interpretations all meanings all values everything so at the same time you wouldn't know anything is but you would have being and in that very moment you would have God you would realize God as a pure being so the biggest obstacle to you realizing God is all of the interpretations that you're making constantly that you're not aware that you're making see we just kind of like look at around the world we think well the world is made up of like trees and cars and lights and walls and people and animals and bla bla bla bla bla no it's not your mind is creating all of those projections and interpretations so what's actually there is only pure being but you are making sense of it such that it helps you in your survival see so you're recognizing stuff that's not really there you're sort of projecting it and that needs to stop and that's why it's so difficult to realize God is because we're making these projections and interpretations constantly and so under the radar of our awareness that we don't even know we're doing it and so for therefore most people there's no possibility of stopping it and stopping it is pretty difficult because it's tied in with your survival Drive and so it's life threatening to do so God is also now the present moment of now now is the only thing that is real not the past not the future now right here this very moment this is God but what is now it's a good question have you ever wondered take a look I mean it's happening right now it's happening all the time there's nothing but now but what exactly is it see it's kind of mysterious you don't know how to put your finger on it and that's the whole problem with God is that you can't put your finger on it in the way that you can when we're talking about a star or the earth or a human being or an animal or a rat in a laboratory God in fact is the one thing that can't be pointed to because the thing that's pointing to God is itself God if God is everything which it is then you see the problem this creates this this means that it can't be pointed to because if I say well this finger here is God so I'm pointing to it and you will look at and say okay well maybe maybe Leo's pointing at God here but what is he pointing with the words he's using the finger other finger he's using to point to it and your own mind the ideas your own mind is using to think about this finger is God all of those are also God so how do we point to those now I have to use this finger to point to this finger because this is also God so see fingers pointing at fingers it goes around in a circle so you're gonna be going round in a circle if you're gonna try to use your mind to grasp God and you're always gonna be missing it because it's like right here all the time it's prior to interpretation prior to language prior to the mind see so this is why it's so difficult to get because the process of getting it is itself getting in the way of having it see you know why you can't know that you're God because you are God are means you are being God being is prior to knowing so the mistake is that you're trying to know God without realizing that knowledge is already one step too far you need to be God not know-it-all so what God is as non-duality no boundaries or oneness non-duality means that there's really no distinction between things no boundaries so the boundaries that we classically use to think and understand the world with like male versus female good versus bad big versus small existing versus non existing conscious versus unconscious one versus two here versus there all of these are dualities categories that we've created and so god is the elimination of all these categories or the unification of all categories to realize that actually even those those distinctions in a sense they do exist at the same time they are all unified and one the entire universe or all of reality is one thing and you can become conscious of that and to become conscious of the oneness of reality is to become conscious of God and of course when we're talking about oneness don't exclude yourself from that oneness you as an object within reality are part of the whole oneness you see so this is why God can't be separate from you because if God was over there and I was over here and I'm looking at God over there that means that I am NOT God because I'm separate from God but if I'm separate from God how did I get created you see because God's creation isn't something that God does sitting outside the creation God is his own creation God is the very thing he's creating or it is creating to say it more accurately so right now what's happening is that ostensibly I'm sitting here I'm a human being I'm sitting here before you in front of a camera speaking to you through some computer system that you're looking at through some LCD screen some pixels and you're listening to me and interpreting the things I'm saying and I'm using English and it seems like that's what's going on here that's not what's really going on here what's going on here is that God is happening this whole process is God oneness one this is happening the entire universe is like one movement happening in concert together like one show or one movie you know like in a movie you can you can think of a movie as being made at a separate stuff like there's lamps and cars and trees and sidewalks and buildings and people in a movie but also you can realize that the whole movie is just one thing like one digital file if it's on your computer or one DVD disc if you've got it like that see and you can look at it both as both both are true simultaneously so yes in a certain sense I am just a human being sitting here talking to you but in another higher sense all of this is God happening God is also a strange loop now strange loop is a bit of a technical term to really understand what that means go watch my episode called reality is a strange loop where we go into that with some cool visual examples check that out but what a strange loop is is it basically means that God created itself this is a very tricky notion - it's a glimpse God created itself you might wonder Leo how is it possible for God to create itself that's impossible it's impossible from your current state of consciousness because you're trying to rationally think it through and rationally linearly using conventional logic it's not possible for a thing to create itself but God is not limited to that see when you realize that God is infinite power infinite intelligence it actually has the power to create itself which is quite stunning and mind-blowing it's a very elegant solution to the question of where did existence come from and where did God come from you know for a longest time the reason that I never bought into God when I was younger when I was an atheist I always thought like well what's the point of believing God because it God is just another object and so God doesn't really explain anything because if you say that the universe came from God like if the Big Bang came from God then where God come from you need another God to create that guy and so on for infinity Kappa what you don't realize is that God itself is infinity and because it is infinity it accounts for everything absolutely everything every possibility and so therefore it did create itself another way to say it is that God exists for eternity it both created itself but also simultaneously it has always existed and never needed creation this is a far-fetched stuff you're not going to understand it logically if that's what you're trying to do it's not going to make sense you need to directly experience it for example I directly experienced one day how I created my entire body as God how I designed every hair and every molecule on my arm so imagine a state of consciousness where you can be conscious of that that's a that's a pretty mind-blowing thing God is also absolute infinity as I said absolute infinity that means Wow infinity huh how do you explain infinity somebody actual infinity actual infinity that's what this moment is right now this moment is one out of an entire infinite of moments I remember one day I became conscious that consciousness is absolutely infinite and then it goes on forever and ever and ever and it contains every possibility for ever and ever and ever such that it's so total that there's nothing not inside of it that's a mindfuck God is also everything and nothing so this is what's so paradoxical about God so my hand is God my face is God every word coming out of my mouth is God your body is God any thoughts you have or God any objections you have to anything I'm saying that's also God but at the same time God is still not any of that how can both be true at the same time well they just are you need to become conscious that this is the case because God is consciousness and consciousness is not a thing it's not located anywhere and a thing that's not located anywhere is actually it turns out exactly the same as everything to be nothing is to be everything and to be everything is to be nothing that's the reconciliation of the ultimate duality see conventionally we think of there's everything and there's nothing in there polar opposites no they're not they're actually identical and they overlap and they sit right on top of each other in the same way that if you have an object floating out in the vacuum of empty space you might think well the object occupies the vacuum and so in that place where the object is let's say you have a hammer floating out in outer space you say in that place where there's a hammer there isn't a vacuum actually no the vacuum is there the nature of a vacuum is that it's always there the vacuum of P space is right here right now my body is inside the vacuum of P space of course there's also air and other things here but the vacuum doesn't go away the vacuum is always present stop thinking of a vacuum as being only when it's empty of objects the vacuum is empty even when there's objects in it you just don't normally think of it that way because you think dualistic ly and God is also the answer to all questions now what does this mean well this means it's the answer to all metaphysical and epistemic questions so all the big philosophical questions that you think can't be resolved like why are we here what are humans doing and doing here why do we exist where it all come from why is there something rather than nothing all of that can be answered by becoming conscious of God fully and these answers are extremely satisfying and complete such that you have no more questions left but you're not gonna get answers to things like what did your neighbor had for lunch or an answer to some scientific because these are all relative questions and God is the answer to the existential metaphysical absolute questions not the relative stuff you're not gonna know how much how many liters of gas there are in your fuel tank in your car so nor nor do you really need to know that stuff that's all my new show right the problem is that people get caught up on the my new show and they think well Leo but but it you know what good is knowing God if if knowing God doesn't help me to figure out how to solve some scientific problem that I have well your scientific problem doesn't concern God what we're talking about if we're talking about the origin of all of existence so forget about your little stupid scientific problems or any other kind of personal problems that you have you can work on those later if you even think of them as problems anymore after if you realize what existence is now of course people wonder believe this stuff you're talking about it all sounds so outlandish how can any of this be how can God have created himself how can God be everything and nothing and all the other stuff you said and the answer to it is that it just is you see there's a funny thing about truth truth just is people think truth can be proven no it can't truth just is truth can't be proven people think truth can be explained or justified you can give reasons for why things are no you can't truth just is and it's your job to realize that and to stop looking for justifications endless justifications and reasons and explanations see this is what the mind is always doing this is the classic mistake of the scientific mind it doesn't realize it at some point when we're investigating reality we're gonna get to rock bottom we're gonna get to the most ultimate fundamental thing and when we get there we have to accept it as it is as a given as a as a self-evident element that can't be reduced any further and that's where we're hitting here so when you realize God you realize that it's the most fundamental element of existence you can't get underneath consciousness because there is nothing there in fact that's what consciousness is is the realization that there's nothing there and there never was anything there to begin with it just is but if you're still asking but Leo how could it be this way and it's impossible that's because you still haven't actually become conscious that it just is you still don't understand what is this is and of course isn't it's just anonymous with God and with existence and you might say well Leo all this sounds way too good to be true that's right and that's one of the reasons why people have a hard time actually grasping it or pursuing it because it makes you sound crazy to pursue this stuff it makes you sound crazy to believe this stuff you can't really believe it you have to directly become conscious of it you might wonder what does God look like or feel like and there's a some some good things we can say about this God feels like awakening from a dream that's a very good description of it which is why we call it awakening or enlightenment I remember when I had my one of my deepest awakenings it was so shocking and startling that I just sat there with my mouth a gate in my room just like stunned like this and all I was just like kind of like babbling to myself and I was just babbling one word awakening awakening awakening I'm awake I don't like I'm awake like I'm awake for the first time in my life I'm awake it's just like waking up from a dream so imagine that everything that's happening right now including me sitting here talking to you you sitting there trying to figure this stuff out for yourself all this is just a dream and that when you discover God you can realize that all your entire biographical life from the moment you were born up till right now has all just been a figment of one's imagination within consciousness this very moment that's happening right now is God imagining this moment because what God is as God is a universal mind that means that that physical wall behind you the floor you're sitting on the entire earth all the physical stuff that you thought was there the whole time that was objective and real that grounded your reality all of that is just a figment of your imagination and now that does not mean that you have the power to think the floor out of existence you have to understand it when I talk about the figment of the imagination of God we're talking about a much more robust concept than what we traditionally think of as imagination conventionally we think of imaginations just like oh yeah we're just thinking stuff up in the human mind in a human brain images and thoughts of course that is imagination but but you're also ignoring that imagination is a much broader thing which actually encompasses all of reality this very moment is being imagined it's not a physical thing that exists anywhere it's being imagined by God and what does God nothing so this very moment is nothing it's not that God has a brain God doesn't look like a human with a skull and a brain inside of it that has consciousness in it according to the materialist paradigm that's not how it works the way it works is that this very moment is an imagination within the mind of God but this very moment is also identical with the mind of God so a another way you can think of it is that that wall that floor my face the voice coming out this is think of this ad this is the brain of God this is the machinery of God the physical machinery of God so to speak putting it into the materials frame is identical with a consciousness or the mind the brain and the mind are actually one thing and how does God's brain or mind look like precisely this very moment look this is God right here this is God's mind this is God's brain can you see it what else does God feel like it feels like dying it feels like the end of life as you know it and this is why God is so so difficult for most people to to pursue and to finally grasp is because who wants to die do you want to face your death as an atheist you think you've faced your death no you haven't you don't know what death is see you spend your whole life avoiding death and the funny thing is is that collectively as a culture what we have labeled death is actually God we've literally named the realization of God death and we hold it as the worst most terrifying thing possible and we try to avoid it at all costs so our entire society and culture is built around the avoidance of death we've demonized death and we view death as the worst possible thing that could happen when actually all that happens when you die is you become God you realize God you wake up you get this the only thing that's gonna die is your idea of physical reality and your idea of you as a biological self nothing real is gonna die so in a sense there's no such thing as death death is a concept that you've imagined God cannot die because God is infinite so God has no place to go where's God gonna go if he dies he ain't got nowhere to go cuz he's already nowhere and nothing see so when you realize that it will feel like death to you because you've been identified with being this biological creature your whole life and you've you've thought the physical reality was real your whole life so when that's taken away from you it it it is like that and you will be terrified by it God also feels like a total surrender imagine if from this day on you completely surrendered all control of your life all of it so you know that all that struggle you do everyday all the manipulation you do all the scheming all the hard work all the effort that you put into life to trying to make things turn out the way you want imagine if you just said [ __ ] it I'm surrendering everything I'm not gonna try anymore at all I'm just gonna all leave it up to God I'm gonna leave it up to the universe whatever the universe wants to do I'll just do that that would be taking your ego out of life which is precisely the realization of God and then imagine living your whole life under this constant state of total surrender where you don't feel like you have separate control over the universe anymore that's what God feels like God also feels like the disillusion of all boundaries because you you you enter this state once you're fully awake you enter this state of non-dual awareness where all the duelists two categories of life versus death man versus woman good versus bad all of them melt away all of them merge into one and that's what allows you to feel the oneness with the entire universe God also feels like a mindfuck or an epiphany it is the biggest mind [ __ ] ever you haven't experienced a mind [ __ ] until you've glimpsed God or awoken you know the word epiphany colloquially we just use that word as like someone who has an insight an epiphany and insight but really that's a word from the Christian tradition from the Christian lexicon and what it means originally what it meant was the realization of God it's an epiphany that's literally what it is it also feels like the words Wow and oh my god oMG chances are when you realize God for the first time the words out of your mouth will be wow wow wow oh my god oh my god oh my god it feels simultaneously awesome and terrifying it's awesome because it's so big and infinite and so beautiful and it's terrifying because it eclipses and threatens your little ego and your personal identity and your biological biographical self it also feels like exiting the matrix you know the movie The Matrix where neo discovers that the matrix is just a computer simulation and then he breaks free of it and then he looks out onto the quote-unquote real world outside the matrix and he's blown away by how grim and horrific it is out there and all this and so there's the stark difference between what's inside the matrix what's outside the matrix so finally he's breaking broken free that's what it feels like except when you really wake up and you leave the matrix that we've called reality the matrix within which we do science when you leave that what's outside the matrix nothing see that's where the movie the matrix really faltered is that in the movie they exit the matrix but the place they exit to is fundamentally like no different really than the place they left inside the matrix outside the matrix I mean yeah the content is different there's robots outside the matrix and it's kind of dark and grim and dirty but but like the laws of physics are the same logic and rationality and it's basically the same universe inside and outside but when you realize the matrix that is real life and physical science and existence you also realize there's nothing outside of it which is even more freaky than discovering that this is a computer simulation it's more radical than that and it simultaneously leaves you in the matrix but transforms the matrix in a profound way and also it feels like you can't tell the people in the matrix that you've exited the matrix because they won't understand you so neo goes back in the matrix and he does stuff but most the people are the matrix they don't know he has broken out of the matrix and so if he tells them about the outside world outside the matrix they'll think he's insane which is probably what you think of me right now you think I'm insane the things I'm saying here are completely insane they're completely impossible right because you're stuck in the matrix and you won't know you're stuck in the matrix until the day that you break free of the matrix and when that happens you'll be saying oh my [ __ ] god how is this possible how could I have missed this it's so obvious and at the same time it's so seductive and deceptive God also feels like a metaphysical orgasm hopefully you've had regular orgasms sexual ones but a metaphysical orgasm is a thousand times more powerful and life transforming than a physical orgasm you don't even know what an orgasm is until you've had a metaphysical orgasm it also feels like a cosmic holographic fractal I remember one day I became conscious of this very distinctly this was a very discrete specific insight that I had I was sitting on the floor and I was looking at my hands and I realized that the entire universe is a cosmic holographic fractal now that sounds like a bit of a word salad there what am I really saying some new-age terms but no what I'm saying is that the cosmos which is everything and everything you think about space the galaxies and all that there's no separation between the galaxies and me sitting here right now and my hands and in fact you can I can keep zooming in with consciousness I was actually able to zoom into my hands and realize that I can zoom into them forever you think like well if you zoom into this hand with a microscope eventually you'll hit rock bottom and there'll be like atoms or quarks or something or strings and then you'll get to the bottom but no it just keeps going forever this hand is infinite my head is infinite the galaxy isn't that it just keeps forever you can keep zooming out forever you keep zooming in forever and in this sense it's a fractal and it's holographic in the sense that every point of consciousness contains within it the rest of the universe like a hologram and I remember there was a specific moment where I became conscious of the holographic nature of consciousness which was stunning and mind-blowing it also feels like the entire universe is being aware through your eyes I remember this as well I became distinctly aware how the entire universe is not some separate thing from me I am NOT in the universe like an object in the universe the way a materialist conceives of it I am the universe and what the universe is is this conscious thing that's sitting here right now and talking the universe is that thing right there that's listening to me you are the universe can you become conscious of this the universe is aware through your eyes the hands that you can move these are the universe's hands the universe is using you like a puppet try to notice that God also feels like universal mind like idealism and salep cistern philosophy you might be familiar with these concepts of idealism and solace is Emile ISM is the opposite of realism or materialism idealism tells us that there's no such thing as physical objects or external reality there's only mind-stuff and that everything is mind stuff and solid system tells us that there's no such thing as other sentient entities there's only you and that's exactly right as God you are all alone oneness necessarily implies aloneness God doesn't have friends there also aren't multiple gods that's another this is another common question that I had when I was younger when I didn't believe in God I wondered like well but why would there be only one God why wouldn't there be two or three isn't it kind arbitrate only believe in one is that kind of silly there could be a million guys but no what what I didn't realize and what you might not realize is that the reason that has to be one is precisely because it's infinite absolute infinity there can only be one absolute infinity because absolute infinity already includes everything you see its totality so well there are other kind of gods you might be imagining include those in the idea of infinity it's all of that plus more imagine everything you could possibly imagine that exists and add even more to it until you become so full that you can't be any more full and at that point you've reached absolute infinity and at that point you realize the oneness of everything and at that point you realize that there is only one God there could be lesser gods but they really wouldn't be God per se there can only be one ultimate God the absolute lesser gods wouldn't really be absolute they would be something else you know there could be space aliens out there who knows what's out there there could be a lot of different stuff out there but all of it is ultimately one and you can become conscious that but also at the same time what I'm talking about the realization of God is not limited to salep system is that it still doesn't go far enough it's still not as radical as what I'm talking about what I'm talking about it's non duality and the difference is that salep system is still mostly conceptual and theoretical it's not actual you're not actually conscious of solid sysm and also the province ops ISM that it still assumes that there's a biographical biological self which exists which of course gets eliminated through non-duality God also feels like emptiness and nothingness but it's not the kind of nothingness or emptiness you're thinking of it's different it's almost the opposite this emptiness feels light and radiant and full it's a pregnant emptiness or a plenum as the Greeks knew it a plenum it's a full emptiness pure potential ready to burst with infinite possibility that's fundamentally what consciousness and God our God is also well it also feels like infinite intelligence infinite power and creativity infinite understanding and that's why God is called omniscient I remember one of my biggest epiphanies and mind Fox was when I became distinctly conscious of the infinite intelligent aspect of God go check out my episode what is intelligence so I talked about that and I literally became conscious of pure intelligence disembodied intelligence intelligence to the infinite degree it's so intelligent that it figured out how to create itself and it's creating this very moment that's here right now the intelligence that I'm using right now to speak to you and the intelligence that you're using right now to understand what I'm saying all of this is just little tiny slivers of universal infinite intelligence and this intelligence is baked into the design of the entire universe so contrary to what the materialists believe there's nothing random about the universe it's not chaotic and accidental it is deliberately designed using disembodied infinite intelligence and you can become directly conscious of that this is not something you believe this is something you verify it's incredible when I experienced it I could hardly believe it God also feels like infinite beauty you know sort of how like when you go out in nature and you you experience a beautiful sunset or some mountain range or you look up at the stars and it's so beautiful and wonderful and you feel little bit of that spiritual connection to reality well imagine that times infinity and you get infinite beauty when you realize the beauty of your own creation that all of creation is this beautiful work of art that God is constantly performing and I'm sitting here right now talking to you through this camera and this is God performing its work of art and this is just one out of an infinite number of works of art that God is producing all the time even all the stuff you think is ugly it's actually still beautiful from the right state of consciousness not from your current egoic state of conscious cuz he you're so judgmental you're too judgmental to see the beauty of everything when you have a when you remove that ego then you can see it God also feels like profound peace it feels like time stops it feels like eternity because it is eternal the present moment is eternal this is what's happening right now it seems like it's happening within time and space but actually this is an eternal moment at the right state of consciousness not for you in your dualistic state of consciousness you need a much higher state of consciousness to see the eternal Ness of this moment which is why God can't be killed or destroyed because God is nothing so there's nothing within it to kill or destroy and therefore it exists forever this moment that's happening right now can you become conscious that it's existed forever within the singularity that is God probably not but you can try and ultimately you can succeed and realizing that God also is immortality see once you realize that you exist as an idea as a conceptual destruction that there is no such thing as a biological creature or a brain that is responsible for creating this right here then you realize that you're immortal ask God see if you're identified with your body and your biography that will of course die and in that sense you're scared of death but when you identify yourself with all of existence that can't die it's immortal now you might say all Blio but what about the Big Bang you know the Big Bang what if the Big Bang turns into a Big Crunch wouldn't that be the death of the universe I'm talking about a different universe than what you're talking about scientists when they say universe they're talking about a very specific thing our little universe and there could be multiverses outside of it and so forth to infinity and in fact there are it doesn't stop at our University keeps going forever when I'm talking about universe I'm talking about universe with capital u which means everything all the multiverse is every possible thing that thing the universe with the capital u that thing can't die it's immortal it's infinite God also feels like the greatest gift like it's too good to be true it feels like the greatest joy a joy beyond your wildest dreams infinite joy it feels like actual paradise heaven or nirvana you don't even know what joy is until you've fully realized God God also feels like you so if you go inside of yourself right now you go past your biological body past your emotions past your thoughts past your feelings pass any stories you have or beliefs you have about yourself past your personal identity pass your self-image if you go past all that what you'll feel inside of you is pure i am-ness pure consciousness that's what you've been from the moment you were born is really you were pure consciousness filled with various kinds of content biological biographical historical psychological social all sorts of content so if you go past all that content you'll feel the pure i am-ness of this very moment that thing is God it also feels like infinite love I remember moments where I became fully conscious of the infinite love of God you don't even know what God what love is until you've experienced infinite love God also feels divine radiant magical miraculous and alive so the reason we call it God and spirituality is because spirit has an inherent divine radiant magical quality to it because it's spontaneous being or spontaneous self creation it's miraculous it's literally a miracle the entire universe this very moment right here is a miracle you've just become so jaded to it because you're so preoccupied with just living life pragmatically that you ignore the miracle that is life the magic that is here the divinity that's here you don't see the divinity because you're like a fish and water and it feels alive in the sense that life is not a limited category that only applies to organic life forms or biological creatures the entire universe is alive it's sentient it's conscient or it's it's it's sentient and its conscious so when you realize that that that radically reinterprets how you related to the universe because before that you had a materialistic paradigm under the materialistic paradigm you viewed most of the universe except for creatures you viewed most of it as dead dead matter but after the Epiphany of God you realize that it's not dead at all it's alive everything's alive molecules are alive the earth is alive it's a much broader more expanded notion of what life is God also feels like not knowing God feels like irreducible mystery you might think that you're gonna know God but really you're not gonna know God you're gonna not know God because like I told you you can't know God you can be God but to be God means you can't know it precisely because knowing is a second order emergent or phenomenon of being knowing is always indirect knowing is what separates you from God not knowing is as close to God as you can get and see this is the whole problem with the scientific paradigm is that science is always trying to explain and reduce away the mystery of existence and the way it does is by substituting some other object so it's taking content within existence and explaining it by by by pointing to some other content so you know how did the earth get here well because of some space dust from some star but how did this space dust get there well because of some other star that exploded and how did that get there well some other star exploded but how did it ultimately get here well because there was a big bang but how did that get here well we don't know see so science is playing this game of explaining one thing in terment another thing until ultimately you take it to the big bang and then you just say oh we'll forget about it we can't really know and then let's just go about living ordinary life see this is the whole game the whole point of this tail-chasing exercise that it never ends it's infinite but you're not realizing that it's infinite and therefore you're not realizing that that science ultimately doesn't explain a goddamn thing see all you're doing is you're explaining one corner of creation in terms of another corner that's what science is doing it's drawing connections but it's not seeing the totality all at once which is what differentiates science from spirituality god also feels like the greatest moment of your life for sure the greatest moment of your life nothing else comes close and it feels totally life transforming it feels like after this epiphany nothing in your life will ever be the same again alright now let's talk about why God is so confusing this is an important point to address because otherwise people don't take this topic seriously enough they underestimate just how self deceptive this topic is so let's go through the list firstly like we said because God is a level of consciousness and most people don't appreciate that there are different levels of consciousness and they never accessed the higher rarefied levels of consciousness and therefore they try to understand something which is beyond them it's like they're blind people trying to understand what color looks like the solution there is to actually look at colors cure your blindness rather than trying to intellectually understand what colors are while you're still blind another reason is because God is formless God can't be pointed to and that's a very confusing notion for people because people are used to form form is everything you've ever experienced about reality so how do you get the mind to become aware of the formless when the mind can only deal with the formed that's very challenging how do you get scientists to admit of the formless when all they do is study form how do you run a lab experiment on the formless see this is why people deny God is because they don't know how to turn it into a form and it's precisely because God is all form that you can't see it see if God was one particular it would be easy to point to and say there it is but not when God is formless and therefore all form God is also confusing because it's beyond the mind there's just an inherent assumption that's made by people that if something exists and is true and if it's important and significant then hey my mind can just think about it understand it believe in it and there we go problem solved but that doesn't work with God because God is a different type of question different type of issue the types of issues that were used to using our mind for are actually inside of the universe we never asked our mind to go outside and beyond the universe but we have to when we're asking the question of where do the entire universe come from that's a different type of question see the difference between existential questions and scientific questions are that scientific questions are about the content of one state of consciousness whereas existential questions are about consciousness itself beyond the content the context science can't grapple with context so for example inside of a matrix like in the movie there are people doing science supposedly in that movie The Matrix and how many scientists are in that movie I mean in the fiction of that universe well there's millions billions of them right but all the science they're doing I mean it's good it's good science relative to the context of the matrix that they're in but if you exit and leave the context of the matrix then what is their science amount to nothing it's just a fiction in the same way that you can imagine that you're a scientist inside one of your dreams when you're sleeping but then you wake up and you realize that all that was nonsense so the problem that science has is it can't see that the science is being done inside of a dream and so it it attempts to use science to understand dreams without realizing that science is part of the dream that's never gonna work another reason why God is so confusing is because it's so big staggering and incredible that it's hard to take it seriously it sounds too good to be true its consequences are epic another reason is because God is a total mindfuck and most people don't like to get mind [ __ ] personally I have a hard time relating to this because I love getting mind [ __ ] and that's probably why I'm sitting here today talking about this stuff but uh but for most people ordinary people you know your grandma she doesn't wanna get mind [ __ ] she wants her life to be simple clear-cut black and white just mundane stuff simple truths cuz it's scary getting mind [ __ ] is scary it's uncomfortable also God is confusing because it's a deep paradox and it's a strange loop and people find it very difficult to deal with strange loops Western intellectual tradition has has spent a lot of time demonizing paradox and being threatened by paradox because paradox threatens the conceptual castles that we build within philosophy or even within science paradox threatens that paradox and strange loops threaten the illusion of simple cause-and-effect linear explanations of how existence works God is also confusing because it requires radical open mindedness and most people are closed-minded they're not willing to to open their mind to radical ideas for example are you willing to open your mind to the possibility that death can't happen are you willing to open your mind to the possibility that if you shoot yourself in the head that it won't be a bad thing but it'll be a good thing see most people don't want to go there are you willing to open yourself up to the possibility that your parents and your friends are just creations of your imagination and that they don't really exist see that's too much for most people God is confusing because people aren't willing to do existential investigation and because they already assume that they know for religious people their biggest obstacle to God is their ideas about God they think they know everything about God so when I tell them what God is they think they know better Leah who are you to tell me what God is let me tell you what God is but have you done the existential investigation how many thousands of hours have you spent doing the work or for those atheists you know they do the opposite they have a mere problem where they try to convince me Leah let me tell you how God doesn't exist but have you done the work do you even know the foundations of science and knowledge do you even know how that works do you know how proof works have you investigated these things have you investigated a scientific method have you questioned it have you questioned materialism have you questioned whether an external physical objective reality exists probably not because if you did and you would be agreeing with me here you wouldn't be challenging me because people are egotistical and arrogant God is confusing because God conflicts with ego with control and with survival see most people are preoccupied with their own survival they aren't interested in lofty existential questions they just want to know how to earn money and have sex and create a cushy little for themselves and God goes against all of that God requires surrendering your ego surrendering control taking energy and time away from chasing money and chasing sex and chasing material luxuries and chasing power it's the opposite of survival survival makes you callous about truth because truth can inhibit your survival God is confusing because it requires facing your own death and who wants to face his or her own death do you not just as an idea but actually facing it and seeing what lays on the other side God is confusing because being cannot be symbolized like I said earlier God cannot be depicted spoken or written cannot be put into words or communicated what I'm doing here it might seem like i communicating God no I'm not I'm giving you various pointers but I'm not really showing you God with my words nor can you draw a diagram of God or a schematic or a picture nor can you put it into some equations and what scientists and intellectuals don't understand is that you're never gonna be able to put God into equations because all equations aren't necessarily finite and limited whereas God is infinite you can't put infinity into an equation because your equation is itself part of infinity you can't put the larger into the smaller the way you're trying to do this needs to be recognized but most people doing scientific work don't understand this they failed to distinguish between symbols and being God is confusing because very few people have the direct experiences that I'm talking about and because it requires thousands of hours of meditation or contemplation or various forms of inquiry and investigation to have these direct experiences they don't come easily and most people are not willing to put in this amount of time because they can't foresee how it's gonna be worth it and also because they don't take us seriously enough to actually do the research that needs to be done you need to already be radically open-minded to see the possibility that this might lead you somewhere to then go and follow up on that for thousands of hours and do very difficult emotionally laborious work to ultimately break through to some Epiphany God is confusing because our culture society and media is very materialistic and really it's still stuck in the dark ages people take for granted how much more evolution we have to do culturally societally we just tend to assume we have technology and gadgets and internet and smartphones that because of this we're an advanced species and because of this we understand how the universe works this is an illusion we are barbarians and apes still very much still stuck in the dark ages but that won't be recognized for hundreds of years yet to come so if you were born a thousand years in the future then all of this would be very easy you'd be taught all this stuff in preschool or in first grade and you would just pursue it you do the practices you'd be taught how to meditate this would all be just standard practice you wouldn't even question it and you'd probably be fully conscious of God by the time you're 10 years old if our education system was structured properly but it isn't because of our culture our society and our media our politics and God is confusing because metaphysics and epistemology aren't taken seriously they aren't taught in school elementary school through high school you're not taught about metaphysics epistemology at all and in university our only taught about it if you take specific philosophy courses which a few people take most people don't take and even when they take them they don't take them seriously it's just like a fun class you take which there's no practical impact on your life even scientists I'm shocked at how poor of a grasp of metaphysics and epistemology most scientists have including astrophysicists and quantum physicists just it's pathetic this is a deep cultural problem a problem with our education system if we structured our education system properly metaphysics and epistemology would be the foundation of all education but see it seems too impractical seems too abstract but again hey I mean you took 12 years of math and that was complex and abstract and you don't even use math in your everyday life almost unless you have a some very technical field you basically never use math beyond just a basic arithmetic God is confusing because success of science creates a false illusion of existential understanding we have been lulled into a false sense of complacency due to the last hundred years of the success of science and technology and we think that just because we can build a rocket ship or a supercomputer or the internet that because of this that now we have existential understanding no we just figured out how to create technology these are two very different things and we need to make sure that we don't get seduced by our technological advancements we are much more technologically advanced than we are cognitively developed or consciously developed or socially developed or politically developed and this is creating a lot of problems a lot of existential problems are actually now being caused by these um technological imbalances God is also confusing because the foundations of science are misunderstood and I've already touched that on that before God is confusing because it doesn't seem possible it doesn't seem possible that there could be a God or should be a God it doesn't seem practical Leo what am I going to get out of this your ego asks but that's exactly the problem is looking at reality in such a way that you're only looking at it from your little personal ego at the point of view if you look at it that way you're never gonna be able to access God God doesn't care about you in the sense that you think in the sense that you care about yourself in preserving your petty little existence God has way bigger plants for the universe that are unfolding and hey you know what maybe they won't involve you God is also confusing because reality is subjective and relative and the mind has a difficult time dealing with relativity pre rational people don't understand relativity and even many rationalists don't really understand relativity you have to be a spoiler Nemec sage green to start to understand relativity and even then the full scope of it hasn't hit you yet you haven't realized yet that the very substance of existence is relative atoms and molecules are relative to your own mind you constructed them they don't exist for other creatures but for you and the subjective of nature of reality is denied by science and by most people we're trying to access objective reality without realizing that objective reality is just a concept within your subjective conscious experience there is nothing objective about the universe it's pure subjectivity pure relativity God is confusing because the mind is self deceptive go check out my three-part miniseries on self-deception which covers all that God is confusing because skepticism is misused go check out my episode called true versus false skepticism where I talk about how skepticism can be misused many skeptics these days PI you know skepticism is popular especially amongst atheists but they misuse it because what they they make a mockery of skepticism because they will say well Leo prove it to me other way if you don't prove it to me then it doesn't exist it can't possibly be real it's the sort of attitude that the truth must be delivered to you with overwhelming proof and evidence and only then will you accept it this totally takes responsibility away from you from actually doing the hard work of discovering the truth I'm not trying to prove anything to you here in this episode I am presenting you with possibilities of things that you can verify for yourself so you need to get off your lazy ass and verify the things that I'm talking about that is true skepticism a true skeptic puts his own skepticism to the test and also questions his own assumptions skepticism itself must be questioned how do you know the skepticism is the right way to get to the truth could it be that skepticism itself is just a self-deception could it be that your own crippling skepticism is keeping you from actually doing the work that is necessary in order to experience higher states of consciousness which are beyond skepticism God is confusing because it reveals everything to be an illusion and who wants that do you want everything to be revealed as an illusion society culture government language religion science rationality logic your own humanity your own personal biography your own birth your parents your your friends everything will be revealed to be an illusion can you deal with that most people can't most people are in denial about that this possibility God is also confusing because it threatens power hierarchies our entire economic governmental political and social system religion business is all built upon power hierarchies that try to maintain status quo this is what the ego does this is how survival happens and it's all built on illusions false justifications trying to ground its power in some sort of fixed position within reality which of course doesn't exist so mankind especially those at the top of the power hierarchies try to justify their power through some sort of appeal to God or the truth or to justice or fairness or goodness or whatever and whenever they're doing that they're always lying that's always the ego at work because in truth there's no reason that there should be this power hierarchy many of these power hierarchies are false but of course the ego doesn't want to give up its power the tyrant is not gonna step off the throne willingly gotta be forced out so of course the tyrant is always playing games of illusions trickery deception and isn't interested in the truth and also God is confusing because once you know God no one will understand you and you will not be able to communicate it to anyone other than those people who have already also experienced God in which case it's pointless to communicate with them because they already know so it's a catch-22 how are you gonna convince people in the matrix that their inner matrix when they're in the matrix they won't know until they break out of the matrix appreciate that appreciate all of these challenges appreciate how tricky this is it's really a work of art the trickery of God is a work of art now let's move on to the next section which is I want to share with you the various names of God various words that point to the same thing it can be a big insight to realize that all religions are fundamentally talking about the same thing so here's a list that I've compiled that I really like God enlightenment awakening oneness the one the all Godhead nothingness truth non duality the absolute ego death infinity absolute infinity self transcendence self-realization consciousness awareness presence now with a capital N being the capital B existence reality is Miss suchness liberation moksha no self true self with a capital S the self with a capital S universe with a capital S universal mind mind with a capital M spirit with a capital S the Great Spirit or walk on Tanaka as the Native Americans know it revelation illumination theosis kenosis ecstasy rebirth cessation holy spirit gnosis agape Atman Brahman the void emptiness Nirvana Yoga Union Buddha mind no mind kensho Satori stream entry fruition the groundless ground the gateless gate the Ox from zen Praja jana Sunita Turia rigpa Bodhi mu Shiva Krishna Samadhi ein Soph satchitananda Allah tau heed fauna al fauna the greater jihad Yahweh Jehovah ohm I am Tott vom a/c Hashem Deus Zeus Toyota Lord Supreme Being creator the all-seeing eye and as big as that list is there's a lot more that I could add to it if you really want to go and Hana on a mission to find all the names of God that'll take you a long time sorting through lots of history books and religious texts now those of you who are a little bit more advanced you might want to split hairs here with me and nitpick and you might say well Leo what are you talking about Samadhi is not the same thing as kensho is not the same thing as Toria is not the same thing as Nirvana is not the same thing as the Holy Spirit look yes we can make very fine-grained distinctions and when you become a dancer you will do that all of these words are fundamentally pointing to the same thing but of course like we said before there's many facets and aspects to God so some of these words points to one particular facet versus another other words point to the whole thing and and so forth so just you know you want to make sure that you don't let your pedantry and your splitting of hairs to interfere with your broader understanding of what we're really talking about and for newbies this list is a great starting point you can research these names go google them find them on Wikipedia read about them draw the interconnections that you need to use them to do the research to verify the things that I say so now how do you experience God what are the techniques well there are a variety of different ways one is metaphysical questioning questioning the very fabric of reality and existence and what knowledge is in a lot of depth another one is deconstruction deconstructing your entire life and belief system questioning everything to death until nothing remains and what that is is God another is self-inquiry which i've talked a lot about you can find my latest episode on how to do self inquiry if you search for how to do self inquiry you'll see that you can also go to the forum and I have a practical guide for how to do self inquiry pinned at the very top of the meditation and enlightenment sub forum another technique is meditation of course and there's many different kinds of meditation that you can use many of them are effective but in general it's gonna take more than just regular meditation it's gonna take meditation plus deconstruction of some kind a lot of people will do meditation for years but they will never actually experience God because they're doing meditation is sort of not an industrial grade level you're just meditating for 20 or 30 or even 60 minutes a day is really not going to be sufficient you need something more than that another way is through concentration and visualization there are many visualization yogic techniques and concentration techniques in fact see my episode called concentration versus meditation where I compare and contrast those two concentrations a little bit more difficult and a little bit more powerful and really if you want to become conscious of God the most direct way is to build crazy high levels of focus and concentration which you do through concentration practices another way is through yoga there are many different kinds of yogic systems one that I highly recommend is Kriya yoga but it's a little bit involved and detailed and technical and it will probably take training with a master or to really learn it or if you go to my forum into the spirituality subcategory the sub sub forum there you will find a mega thread about how to learn Korean yoga I highly recommend Kriya yoga as a as an Avenue towards God it can be very powerful it can be more powerful than meditation concentration or self inquiry especially if you have a lot of monkey mind the way that I used to do another way is psychedelics I highly recommend psychedelics of course five Meo DMT is the best psychedelic for meeting God but also mushrooms LSD and n DMT and others can be just as effective in certain cases all depends on how you use them psychedelics are a remarkable tool in this regard because with all these other techniques usually you're talking about thousands of hours of practice before you start to experience God and for many skeptical people well that's a you know that's a tall order to feel they're not gonna do it not gonna be motivated enough but psychedelics they're so wonderful precisely because they can open the gateway to God just within 30 minutes within 60 minutes within a few hours and while it won't last you won't be able to stabilize in that consciousness you will have your first glimpses and that will be sufficient to then get you to start to do the serious practices another way to experience God is through deep suffering and deprivation and this is a time-honored technique people have been using fasting and isolating themselves out in the desert without water and food for 4 weeks you know people have been doing this for thousands of years this is a time-honored way to to reach God very quickly the problem is that involves a lot of suffering why do you want to incur that much suffering I mean most people will just not be able to do it meditation concentration in and of itself has got plenty of suffering and already to just put yourself through a deliberate process of deep suffering and deprivation probably it's beyond most people although it can work as well another technique is meditation retreats and solo retreats so even though meditation you might say meditation retreats meditation was a difference well even though I already talked about meditation the retreat is really we're seeing God happens so if you've been meditating for years and you haven't experienced God you might be wondering like Leo how do I do it well it's because you haven't been meditating for long enough really what you need is you need to retreat or you for ten or thirty days straight 24/7 even as you're going to sleep you're you're basically in a meditative zone and so you're meditating for literally hundreds of hours straight back to back and that increases your chances of discovering God by a thousandfold so I highly recommend that and also there's dark room retreats where if you lock yourself in a dark room pitch-black room with no sunlight whatsoever for an entire week that will help to stimulate various neurotransmitters in the in the brain to then help you to attain those rarefied high states of consciousness is sort of like a natural psychedelic so those are the ways there's probably I mean not probably but I know there's many other ways but I'm just talking about the most direct that I have some experience with what are the ways not to experience God so this is also important so that you don't go fooling yourself thinking that the practice that you're using will actually get you there so you're not going to experience God through the mind through beliefs through thinking concept ideas opinions imagination knowledge or language throw all all that out the window God is beyond all that prior to all that you're not going to experience God through rational inquiry or feed your ring God out or figuring existence out you're never gonna be able to figure it out or through traditional Western philosophy you're also not going to do it through scientific modeling theorizing more equations if you think you're gonna find God through mathematics you're wrong you won't because mathematics are always finite and God is infinite you won't experience God through proof or double-blind clinical studies doesn't work that way you need a direct experience which means that you're intimately involved it's gonna have to be subjective don't go looking for an objective experience of God your experience of God will be subjective and in that moment objectivity the notion of objective experience will be expunged out of your mind you're not gonna experience God through cynical skepticism debate or discussion academic study studying scriptures or sacred texts now about this point I need to make a little caveat it actually is possible to have epiphanies and mystical insights by studying scriptures and sacred texts but only as an adjunct to your other work sometimes you read a powerful scripture or spiritual text and the author if the author is speaking from truth and from non-duality can say something that will trigger something in you to have some kind of aha some epiphany and those can be very powerful and legitimate and I recommend that you do study some scriptures and some spiritual texts as you're doing this work but definitely don't make it your sole technique because that's not going to fly because it's too much language too much concept you're not going to find God by going to church or through traditional prayer for the most part now certain prayer again a caveat certain prayer is quite meditative and so at that point prayer basically turns into meditation or concentration and in in that case that can be legitimate and you can actually experience God that way but this is not traditional prayer where you pray for God to help you with your egotistical goals and plans that's not the kind of prayer we're talking about here we're talking about real meditative prayer you're not going to find God generally speaking through ritual or ceremony although certain ceremonies can be quite powerful and you're certainly not going to find God through books audios videos lectures and podcasts although all those can be very helpful as supplemental material on your journey they're not enough to actually get you the consciousness states that you need and certainly not through online commentary and online forums where you're going to waste a lot of your time debating discussing but not actually doing the work so watch out for all those all these can easily become distractions and traps from doing the other stuff that I said that really does work so the reason people do this stuff that doesn't work is precisely because the ego mind doesn't want to do the stuff that works precisely because it's afraid of death and it's too threatening to do techniques that are actually very powerful so a lot of times people will waste decades doing weak piddly techniques and that's really by the design of the ego you need to open your mind to the possibility of Samadhi Samadhi means direct consciousness or being this is how you're gonna access God through Samadhi not through knowledge not through belief not through concepts not through language not through the mind and not through thoughts not through theory not rationality Samadhi is not knowledge Samadhi is not even ordinary experience because ordinary experience presupposes a subject object duality between the experiencer and the experienced thing Samadhi is a collapsing of those it's a non dual form of perception or knowledge you might say knowledge traditional knowledge also doesn't work because traditional knowledge also assumes a separation between the knower and the thing that is being known Samadhi collapses those two together Samadhi is not even perception because perception as you understand it conventionally is actually also presuming a subject object duality between the perceiver and the thing being perceived that needs to be collapsed as well the problem also with perception is that perception is grounded in a certain metaphysics that you have the materialist metaphysics so you're thinking of perception as a process of you a biological entity with the brain and neurons looking at an object light bouncing off of stuff going in your eye going in your brain and this produces a perception this is not going to work because that is indirect so you need to go beyond perception and this is the problem is most people don't realize that there's something beyond experience beyond perception beyond knowledge Samadhi is also not hallucination Samadhi is not fantasy and Samadhi is not scientific experiment or data it's something new most people 99% of people have never experienced Samadhi and they don't even know that it's a possibility so if you want to experience God you need to open yourself up to the possibility of Samadhi and more than that you need to go and actually experience Samadhi for yourself for yourself it's a hell of a thing good stuff blow your socks off that's what we call a mystical experience is this a samadhi of some kind now I recommend if you're new to this and you just want to get a quick test to verify the things that I'm talking about and you want to get fast glimpse of God so you don't waste thousands of your hours doing various kinds of arcane practices I recommend psychedelics plus a little bit of existential inquiry start to get a journal and deconstruct your own beliefs your own ideas and then find some good psychedelics and that will be your doorway into spirituality but then you're gonna have to go beyond that because psychedelics can prove to be a trap if they are your only technique but why I love Sai kit O so much is it's the only tool that lets you access these very advanced truths very quickly without having to spend years studying and reading books and doing all the sorts of stuff that most people simply won't do in this regard psychedelics are amazing psychedelics in a sense are the most scientific way of accessing God because he'll we can take a person and administer 30 milligrams of 5 Meo DMT and a vast majority of these people are gonna have direct experiences of God this has been proven through scientific clinical studies that have already been done you know go do the research there's an enormous amount of scientific research if you're looking for it about the the mystical experience is possible under psychedelics now of course none of this will really mean anything to you unless you go through the experience yourself it doesn't matter what psychedelic experience I've had or others have had you have to get into it yourself you have to get intimately involved that's the only way you're gonna discover God so that's the end in conclusion what I'll tell you is that if you truly understood the things that I said here then you will do two things number one you will immediately begin to do research into the things that I've said googling around going to Wikipedia reading books and so forth to validate the things that I said because I don't want you to just to rely on me and take this as a new dogma of yours that's not gonna fly it's not going to help you you need to really become convinced that this is a possibility for you and that it's worthwhile to do and then secondly of course if you really understood what I said is that you're gonna have to dedicate some serious time and energy into these practices to actually get you there how seriously you do your practices is a direct reflection of how well you understood the significance of the things that I said what I said here was extremely significant if true now from your point of view I could be diluted I could be lying I could be hallucinating I could be a religious fanatic I can be a cult leader or whatever and that's right from your point of view you don't know that's why you got to do the research and start doing the practices and then come back to me and we'll talk about it stay tuned for part two of this miniseries where we will address a lot of fa Q's and more objections also check out my other episodes check out my two-part miniseries called understanding absolute infinity if you want an even deeper explanation into the actual existential mechanics of the Godhead how it really works with great analogies and examples I really like that that miniseries one of my favorite I put a lot of my heart into it and also check out my episode called what is spirituality that's also really good introduction also check out what is perception and what is consciousness so that's it I'm down here please remember to click that like button for me and come check out actualize that org right there at the at the website you will find my blog you will find the forum you will find the book list you'll find a life purpose course the book list is going to be very valuable for you on this journey so when I talk about doing research what you have to understand about actualize I don't work that it's it's grounded in an enormous amount of research that I do over the last 10 years I've read hundreds of books hundreds of audiobooks courses retreats like so much so much research from lots of different perspectives because nobody takes the possibility of self-deception and delusion and fantasy more seriously than I do I'm always concerned about am i deceiving myself am I really understanding these spiritual ideas properly that's why I literally cross reference hundreds of sources from the best Yogi's and spiritual masters and teachers from all the different religions and all the different traditions from Buddhism to Hinduism to yoga to Tantra to Judaism to Islam like I'm ferocious and cross-referencing all this stuff because I know how dangerous it is and how tricky it is how easy it is for me to fool myself that's what actualize that orgas grounded in and you need to drink a bit from that cup as well which means you can't just be following me and just be believing me and assuming that everything I do is correct you need to do some amount of reading now you don't probably need to read as much as I've read you don't need to cross cross reference as much as I have cross reference it's a full-time job honestly I mean I spent sometimes weeks and days just sitting around on the couch contemplating stuff I've read in books validating against my own experience trying to make sense of this stuff that's my work so you probably don't need to go that hardcore into it but you need some degree of that otherwise you're gonna delude yourself and to fall into various kinds of traps it's not just enough to know the things that I talk about you also have to learn about the various other traps that exist in this work and there's so many different ways that you can trick yourself that you can get caught up in some kind of pathology some kind of half-baked mystical experience or vision that you have which isn't really complete your ego misinterprets it right your mind can misinterpret these experiences very easily so don't think that just because you had one mystical experience that this now makes you infallible and that now you understand everything just the opposite it's very easy to become a Zen devil unless you are you're really careful and a lot of the material that I release is designed to make you a very careful student of these topics so that you're not sloppy you're not a black-and-white thinker so you don't get caught up in some cult or some ideology or some theory of yours and you you go off the deep end somewhere and get yourself into trouble and get other people into trouble so start doing the research if you understand the significance of what is being communicated here you're going to start doing the research and start doing the practices and I'll see you in the future you