Enjoy! A few commenters on the Iain McGilchrist interview requested Bernardo Kastrup so we're releasing this Digital Campfire discussion. To access more member conversations, and to join calls (upcoming with Erik Davis, John McWhorter & Iain McGilchrist), check out upcoming events here: rebelwisdom.co.uk/campfire-events
Great coming line up, thanks Dave and company for everything you do. I’d say John McWhorter is a good, fair branching out across views too, as you guys have done plenty of. Keep up the good work.
IF YOURE MESSING WITH TAROT CARDS/PSYCHICS/MANIFESTING/ASMR/NEW AGE/MAGIC/WITCHCRAFT/SORCERY/ SEANCES/YOGA/OCCULT/CRYSTALS/LUCID DREAMING/OUIJA BOARDS/ANGEL #'s/ASTROLOGY/ASTRO PROJECTING YOU ARE MESSING WITH EVIL SPIRITS. YOU ARE OPENING THE DOOR FOR THEM TO COME IN AND THEY WILL GLADLY DESTROY YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. ITS ALL SATANIC... ITS NOT INNOCENT. YOU DONT MESS WITH EVIL SPIRITS/DEMONS, THEY ARE FAR MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU THINK! satan WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR IF IT MEANS he CAN DRAG YOUR SOUL TO HELL WITH him. he HATES YOU AND LAUGHS AT YOU FOR MESSING WITH THIS STUFF. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN GOD OR NOT YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE HIM ON JUDGEMENT DAY AND HE WILL GO THROUGH EVERY WORD YOU SAID/EVERY THOUGHT YOU HAD/EVERY SIN YOU DID. YOU WONT BE ABLE TO ARGUE WITH HIM EITHER, YOU WILL KNOW YOU ARE GUILTY AND MADE A BIG MISTAKE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO TURN TO JESUS. PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE BELOW AND IF YOU WANT TO MOCK AFTER GO FOR IT BUT I PLEAD WITH YOU TO READ IT. I WILL PRAY FOR YOU GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS! MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T, THE POPE DIDN'T EITHER, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR TH-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP IDOLIZING & WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE! JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU! Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33 “For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
Hi Curt. I know you’re a fan of a good deal of Idealism. A theme that occurs is the idea of “You are God.” I wonder if you would be interested in discussing that with someone from Theosophy, a Neo Jungian into Deep Interactivity, or maybe McGilChrist who seem to have more an idea of co-creation and the idea of having a unique *piece* of the infinite divinity, and ideas like the act of observation changing observer and observed, and the problem of inflation, or rejection of all constraint. One of the statements Henry Corbin brings up from Ibn Arabi is that in the experience of at-one-ment he called to say “I am God’s secret.” Rather than I am God.
Indeed. Plus he nails “emergence” problems-something that really bothers me for the exact reasons he states. First time I heard him do that. I haven’t read his most recent book yet but I already bought it. I would have but I am finishing up another book myself and all these people like Bernardo, McGilchrist, Vervaeke, Peterson, and many more people who you have already interviewed are standing at the towers keeping the barbarians of instrumental lever-pressing at bay. 😂 Thanks again Curt. ❤️🔥
@@Ac-ip5hd I love Ibn Arabi. So prescient and beautiful. Theosophy yes! I was a Theosophist for a long time starting when I was an undergraduate at the Theosophical society in Wheaton. Went to talks there, etc. So I understand… Great idea. love it. Take care my friend. ❤️🔥
@@spiralsun1 You too! Glad to hear other people discussing these ideas and thinkers. Probably a good decade of all these people hashing each other out and getting it to the public is needed, before they all re-catalyze with new arguments, and problems to solve.
25.32:i am really happy that such a brilliant western philosopher as Bernardo Kastrup mention the Indian sage Nisargadatta. I came to analytic idealism after having studied Nisargadatta's talks and yes i must confess that Bernardo's ontology fascinates me! Non dualism(advaita) view from a western scientific perspective so well articulated. What a gift!!
In the UK we have a media scientist ' Prof Brian Cox ' , who makes some wonderful documentaries. In some of his documentaries he has tapped a solid surface and said " I don't know how things feel solid , because atoms are mainly space ? ' . Apparently this has caused some hostility in the scientific community . I didn't realize that by default he was suggesting that the world is really experience .
Great to see BK on Rebel Wisdom, I was kind of wondering when he'd appear. I just want to recommend viewers to check out the excellent 2 part conversation between Bernardo and John Vervaeke on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything channel. It's long but it has some really amazing and personal contributions by both speakers.
Great to see BK on RW, always a pleasure to hear his clear thinking. It's interesting that, whilst he didn't approach idealism from a spiritual starting point, he arrived at it through seeking the most clear, parsimonious and internally cohesive account for the phenomena of experience, which is precisely the same starting point of the mystics behind the Vedas, from which developed advaita, or non-dualism. Erwin Schrodinger arrived there too, in his essay "The Oneness of Mind", in his book "What is Life?" Many paths lead to the One Truth, and neither are mutually exclusive: tat tvam asi.
Good Lord, this Man is brilliant. BK all the way! I am honored to be in the temporal presence of such a philosophical monster, tearing decades of missconceptions apart like they were lose paper walls. Surely, he will be remembered as one of the groundbreaking thinkers of the 21st century.💙
If we could press a button and be in another universe or on another planet and then go somewhere else after that why would we want to come back here? If we live whatever the dials tells us who's behind the dials? I want a safe peek at what is outside of the dials.
Finally, Bernardo Kastrup on Rebel Wisdom! He deserves so much more exposure than he gets, but I guess his philosophy might be a bit too complex to have a very wide appeal
How is Kastrup's philosophy complex? Please explain it to me. All I see is him doing this: Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has to transcendent meaning. After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning. ... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis) Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter. After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind. What the ** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
its not that it is 'complex'/ AS he suggests, it's because materialism is so engrained in our culture that even the word 'matter' carries the etymological meaning of 'being at the base or mother of'. So it's hard to see the ruthless simplicity of what he is saying. So people will continue to use abstractions WITHIN consciousness to try to explain consciousness. Which is like trying to explain water as a type of whirl-pool and insisting that water is a by-product of a whirlpool. Either that or they will not see the significance of this (such as the reply by Andreas) and it will produce a kind of. '...and?' shrug of incomprehension.
@@andreasmuller5223 all Bernardo is doing is trying to provide an ontological framework where your intellect can more readily accept moving into exploration of the nature of that disassociated alter/filter. (remember this is just a short-ish interview) He does sometimes kind of give the impression you are locked into your dashboard other than in lucid dreams/ psychedelic states/ near death/ 40 years of hard-core meditation.I don't think Bernardo intends to suggest this but it sometimes comes across. is the alter/filter more flexible and subtle than this? Could more precise control of to what degree the filter expands/contracts/orientates? In one way or another many spiritual practices approach this. I would say an interest in looking into this more directly is what should come out of this philosophy. IN his books he goes into more detail about sound basis for doing this.
The best interview with Kastrup i have watched. Great questions and great follow up answers. It makes a difference who is the interviewer and audience.
I am today elated to hear from Bernardo of Swami Nisargadutta Maharaj, I Am That, book. This book caught my attention when I first read it casually lying on the shelf of psychology section in the south campus library of Delhi University in late 1990s. Since then I read this book almost every time to seek solace and perspective.
The question is, reality in the head, assumes that the brain and mind are synonymous. As Bernardo tells us constantly, everything is in Consciousness and we are all Alters in Mind at Large.
I can see how perception is a dashboard but is BK suggesting that all other scientific models based on ‘physicalism’ are merely equivalent to perceptual constructs?
Sometimes what appears to be flaky woo woo is just a pamphlet pointing at a rabbit hole, aimed at those who seek to go deeper but may not know it yet. Layers of meaning.
We are other worldly and supernatural compared to people only just two or three hundred years ago. Wormholes, time travel, aliens all of it. Hell yeah.
Great interview, incisive and on-point throughout. Kastrup is really putting some very important ideas together and the interviewer is excellent. I particularly liked the call-out about Nisigardatta Maharaj, was given his books many years ago by a spiritual mentor and friend and found them highly insightful.
@@Dhorpatan what's the problem with saying that? (I could be more specific or precise but I don't think calling it his work is wrong work could be replaced with creation)
@@lukecockburn1140 It's just fawning and kissing his behind. I've been on here 14 years and no person has EVER referred to my videos as work, though they require a lot of work.🙄😒
@@Dhorpatan yeah probably am kissing up a bit that's kinda embarrassing & it's his books more than videos but if someone did appreciate your videos & called them your work I think that would apply & make sense I'll check out your channel
Brilliant, as usual. Unfortunately, interviewers/questioners are all so immersed in the paradigm of physicalism that almost all questions start from that vantage point (e.g., the brain really exists). Glad that RW hosted BK. He should be hosted by every podcaster who considers him/her-self seriously interested in the human condition (RU listening Jordan, Lex, Tom and, yes, even you Joe).
The way I think about the 'reality is a simulation' thing is by thinking of Reality as a model of itself, which becomes realized in the process of modelling. What the categorization of reality as simulated points to is a discrepancy between map (model) and territory (that which is modelled) that is baked into the territory itself, a la ontoligical parallax and the Metaphysics of Adjacency. Also, positing that there is in fact a world beyond the set of dials that is our interface begs the question of epistemology. How can one posit that there is in fact something past the set of dials if one can only know the set of dials? What dial tells one that the dials point to something beyond the dials? (I'm not saying that there isn't anything past the dials, just that that framing alone is insufficient)
BK is an example of what scientists mean when they describe someone as a "clear thinker." However different two people's starting points are, if they are both clear thinkers they will begin to converge at some point.
This discussion reminded me of T.S. Eliot (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') quote... 'human kind Cannot bear very much reality'. Our mental scope is finite, reality is infinite, we can only ever see snippets if we only rely on our grey matter to see.
Borges got inspired by this philosophy to write the best fictional short stories ever, in my opinion. So only for that reason this philosophy is worth a pedestal. I do however have a few questions/concerns. Does movement and change exist in the Universe beyond one of those “dials”? BK seems to fall often to the Anthropic principle when he reiterates that otherwise we will be consumed by entropy, we wouldn’t be here. So what? The thing itself cares about that? That to me seems like a logical fallacy. Then with evolution. Is it real or again it’s only in our heads? If it’s ontologically real what is driving it? Why is it necessary? Ancient amoebas clearly sustained reality why not stopping there? It seems that the arrow of evolution is anti-entropic, does that mean that eventually we, or some other species here on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe, will be so evolved that we will see through the “dials”?
Excellent. He absolutely nailed the ridiculousness of emergence. At best, it’s a method of interactive purposive ness across levels. A description of relationships. In that sense it’s useful to think about but yeah… everyone tries to extrapolate from discrete symbolic interactions or circumscribed symbolic symbol systems to the rest of reality (because it’s instrumentally useful-like math) but this is where Ian McGilchrist comes in and POW! Says f*ck that sh*t. And rightly so. Ian doesn’t actually swear though. He is a proper Scotsman from Skye. 🥰 LOVE to Bernardo. Humanity will advance to the next level and I commend you for your adroit assistance in this matter? I hesitate to use that word, 🤔😂 I love that the Internet allows us to see that we are in this together. Thanks 🙏🏻 ❤️🔥
We all have the same tools to help us go through life properly . Those tools are : Heart , conscience , intuition and common sense - ( in which you need a properly functional brain of course ). How we use those tools depends from us . We are responsible for our success or failure in life . I am talking here of course about - honest life ( not the dishonest way of life - in cost of others .) The bigest problem in this world is that most of you converts everything into money - this is wrong way . We live in material world - that is true but not everything here is for sale , and not everything can be bought . That we all should know and remember . Life is really very simple .
So we've come full circle back to Plato's theory of forms.... Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own. Saying that emergent qualities are ipso facto unexplainable from a physical standpoint because they aren't based on individual atoms, either because it's too complex, or qualititative aspects of conscious experience, doens't mean that they actually 'exist' on their own outside people's minds, or that there is a plane outside of it that the mental world 'exists' in. Focusing on qualia (or to put it another way, quanta of conscious experience) is not different than Plato's theories of forms from 2000 years ago. Love it how non-physicists always just drop in 'observer effect' or quantum...without justifying it... as backing up whatever they are saying. Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'. That's bollocks. It doesn't say that it is superficial or based on a deeper reality, it literally says that we don't know as it ISN"T based on hidden variables or a deeper reality. There is nothing new under the sun.
"Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own. " Correct. So under materialism, the world as it is in of itself doesn't have qualities. Qualities exist, but they exist in your head. This contradicts nothing he said. "Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'." Bell's theorem refutes local hidden variables, and Leggett's inequalities later refute non-local hidden variables. This means that a key prediction of QM, quantum contextuality, is true. Quantum contextuality entails that physical quantities have no standalone existence. Notice that he's talking about PHYSICAL QUANTITIES, not reality.
18:22 I love the metaphor of the graphical user interface vs the command line terminal. How the simplifications/representation enables countless non specialists to operate in the digital realm. These folks have no idea what the underlying capabilities of the system looks are but then again they don't need to in order to make use of the affordances that are relevant for them
Yes but the original filter/alter is still more accurate I think. Or the whirl-pool within an ocean. Ultimately we ARE the ocean even if a localised bit of it experiencing a kind of specific action of the ocean water. The water acting in the whirpool (individuated/disassociated alter) is made FROM water (consciousness at large). We have as humans the ability of self reflection - that is literally the ability the dissociation/separation gives us. And with this reflective ability we can observe how the water (consciousness at large) moves and behaves within us. This is basically what non-dualist spiritual practices aim to do.
If we agree that our "reality" is just the dashboard, what is Bernado's thoughts on what the TRUE nature of reality.. for example, where are memories stored.. what is time, etc. For example, if you believe any of the reincarnation, mediums, or ghost evidence.. then it seems your unique consciousness (ignoring the strange split-brain experiments) persists after you die. Do you as a point of awareness ever cease to be? Nisargadatta Maharaj says consciousness is relative to its content, partial and changeful.. awareness is all there is.. and that there is no ultimate intellect behind it all all! He suggests thru sadhana (meditation) is accelerated ripening for the masses, where one can come to the realization that "I am". I think it's similar to Sadhguru bedtime meditation mantra, "I Am Not The Body, I Am Not Even The Mind". I like the part how It's impossible to deduce qualities of experience from purely quantitative matter.. these are incommensurable domains, like wetness from hydrogen and oxygen. Would love to hear Sean Carrol discuss the Many Worlds hypothesis with Bernardo. Looking forward to watching Bernardo's 6-hour video course!
I still find Benardo difficult to pin down. For the title, isn't it both? Doesn't the lines of information go through us back into the external world and then through us again in a dampened oscillating pattern. Where it is interpreted to stop doesn't seem the relevant parameter, to how reality exists. For strong emergence, there is weak emergence we're yet to discover, and the extension of that belief into the undiscoverable. Where would we parse the limit to what strong emergence means? And yes. People can answer all-encompassing questions with seemingly knowledgeable non-answers through strong emergence explanations. But consciousness as the endpoint doesn't satisfy my curiosity either. In some ways, I think Bernardo might be right, but I cannot let such an undefined concept be fundamental. It exists so that we can call ourselves conscious and value it, but it is not of sufficient explanatory power for its vast variation we are yet to properly understand.
Ancient Roots: The ideas associated with idealism can be traced back to ancient philosophers such as Plato, who posited that the realm of forms (abstract ideals) is more real than the physical world. His theory of forms suggests that non-material ideas shape our understanding of reality. Modern Idealism: In the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophers like George Berkeley advanced idealism, arguing that reality is fundamentally mental and that material objects only exist as perceptions in the mind. Berkeley famously stated, "To be is to be perceived." German Idealism: Later, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel further developed idealist thought, emphasizing the role of consciousness and ideas in shaping our understanding of reality.
It has to be internalised, this is the crux of the problem. The hard problem of consciousness. You will be reaching ‘those who have ears to hear’, and those who do not will only be able to argue - because it exists outside of their lived experience. To them, it is supernatural rather than natural. What do you think the best way to reach the masses would be, so that the mass-man (the prisoner in Plato’s cave) can begin to internalise, given that the intellectual approach wouldn’t work? Should the prisoner really be dragged out of the cave? What do you think the implications of the destruction of culture would be? “Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.” - Shams Tabrizi And Bernardo, you say you have anxiety but consider: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” - Soren Kierkegaard You’ve opened up your doors of Perception - this comes with a certain feeling of dread(?) I think.
A good example at 13:10 of a brilliant and thoughtful person admitting that we don't know what is below the physical layer. I would add though that he refers to this mysterious layer as having standalone existence and that does not seem verifiable to me. And of course, there could be countless deeper layers physics does not yet have the tools to unearth.
Hm, I've researched him for a while and out of all the interviews, podcasts, I have came across on this topic, his hits home the most. I enjoy Joscha Bach's explanation, as well. But it seems like the closer we get, consciouness stretches itself out more and more.
I totally agree with BK’s comment about Nisargadatta Maharaj. He was the real deal. He has not written any books but there is whole lot that written by devotees based on recorded talks (he died in 1982). Unfortunately most books are heavily contaminated with devotion side of his philosophy because most authors are devotees. If you are looking for his key teaching then read the Pointers from NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ By Ramesh S. Balsekar (you can find the PDF online ). There was another person that I know of: that was Buddha. He understood the reality too but unfortunately he was about 2400 yrs ahead of his time. His message got heavily contaminated by the blind (and stupid) followers and now hardly much left. Even the gurus who claimed they realized his teaching based on insight meditation haven’t got it! If interested read the first two Suttas in the Sutta pitaka. That is all you need.
What Bernardo talks about around 21:50 is similar to an inkling I had when I was watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 and how the life cycle worked for The Founders.
BK has The Exegesis of Philip K Dick on his book shelf. We're on the same line of thinking but he's vastly more intelligent and articulate then I'll ever be. Glad to see people taking this more seriously. It's nice to have someone to point others too when I can't explain my own views well enough.
To the guy that asked the question at 56:30.... think of how we all agree that the colours I see.... correspond directly to colours which you yourself ALSO call blue..... HOWEVER theres no way to say that I see the same blue that you see...... just that we are sensing the same wavelength from the same object..... same for the objects other properties as both interviewer and interviewee an this case me and you are both immersed in it
What's real What's not Is reality just objective physicality Or is it really shared subjectivity If you see what I see And we agree It's real If you sense what I sense And we have consensus It's real Now imagine an earth without you and me Or any of our kind With a mind inclined to find Would the ground and all around cease to be Or would the only thing missing be What we call reality
So if I could distill this to a simple analogy, would I be right in saying that the world that ant sees is the "real world" to the ant but we see a completely different reality but like the ant it may be but a surface appearance to a limited creature that if viewed from a more expansive viewpoint may look as restricted as the ants viewpoint?
Donald Hoffman has postulated this for sometime now and is currently working on a scientific explanation. ‘Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science’. Wikipedia citation)
Hoffman seems to be saying that our senses don't perceive 'actual reality' but just an extremely filtered version of what is actually there. This is obviously true, but is anyone surprised? It would be hard to come up with a plausible alternative. I guess I just don't know what Hoffman is giving us beyond that rather obvious observation. Bernardo here goes way way deeper.
Regarding Bernardo's comment that reality "is not in your mind alone...", I had a "spiritual" experience where it seemed that the world was projected from the right side of all our hearts together in some kind of 4D way, like a hologram, and it seemed to be based on light (maybe photons or maybe some kind of spiritual light). I'm not concluding that it's true - I'm just describing the experience. Note that Ramana Maharshi said that the seat of the Self was on the right side of the heart, so there is a precedent for that location. Unfortunately, the experience didn't explain protons, electrons, etc.
I discovered Bernardo through his wonderful series of interviews with Jeffrey Mishlove on the remarkable New Thinking Allowed channel. Since then I’ve read his Brief Peeks Beyond and just finished his latest, Deconstructing Schopenhauer. There’s a lot to keep you busy if you choose to investigate his work.
As one idealist to another, let me have some fun by extending Karstup's thesis as to where the empirical world is. In his Why Materialism Is Baloney, Kastrup writes: "The is really what materialism entails. ... your skull is actually beyond the stars you see in the night sky. After all, the stars you see are all inside your head". The real, the radical question has not been asked. If the world of nature (experienced) is in one's head, where, pray tell, is the head? I mean that for materialism the empirical head is also a part of nature. So where is the head in which the world is supposed to be? The German neurologist, Gerhard Roth, in his Das Gehirn und seine Wirklichkeit has grasped this and concludes that the real head (= brain) is naught but a construct and refers to a "real" brain not observable, but describable and known only as the cause of the rationality of the conscious mind. But the mind itself is not real ("real" ontologically in German), just "wirklich" (also "real", i.e, phenomenal) , so Roth himself is a construct of a construct and that includes his head/brain. So, it would seem that for some Germans, the stars are not in the empirical head, which is just a head-construct of an unseen brain where everything is. Where the, heck, is the head? The matrix looms, Morpheus. As an ontological idealist, highly influenced by Josiah Royce (USA) and Robert Reininger (Austria), I pose a simple, but basic question to all concerned, one that I am sure that Kastrup will recognize. I see before my eyes a spot of green. Please see with me. Now, should I, a finite consciousness, cease awareness of that spot of green, I can imagine someone else (finite consciousness) is aware of it. But, if I and all finite centers of consciousness have no awareness of that spot of green, what does the green look like when not seen? That means that any responder must explain to me how something, some phenomenon, appears when is does not appear, viz., is beyond all- consciousness-and I mean all awareness including an infinite consciousness. Describe please anything your heart desires that is per se beyond consciousness qua being beyond consciousness. I await a response.I am curious for an answer. Prof. Leonard Wessell Bonn, Germany
Hi, professor. I don't think I can do justice to Bernardo's ideas but I'll give it a try He would say that nothing can truly be independent of consciousness. So, in that example, whatever the green dot is, it can only be so within the mind of a conscious being. If no finite consciousness is perceiving it, or if whatever lies behind that perception is not held within one, then it must be part of the mind of an infinite consciousness for it to be at all. It might not appear as a green dot within this infinite consciousness (or within a finite one that holds whatever lies behind the perception) though, it just so happens that finite ones perceive it as such for evolutionary reasons (in other words, they grasp it in whatever way the limitations of their minds allow), but it will be something nonetheless - a thought, idea, emotion, etc. And it will be held within consciousness. No consciousness = no dot. To be honest, however, even though I agree with the "no consciousness = no dot" paradigm, I don't find this explanation satisfactory. For example, If said infinite consciousness is really infinite, then it seems totally arbitrary for there to arise anything within it that appears localized and interacts with only portions of it. It's kinda like being precisely one leg in an infinite centipede (or inifinipede?). What are the odds of being just one of those legs at any one time if there are infinite alternatives and all are equally valid? What is one divided by infinity?
@@el66k94 You missed my point. I was not challenging Kastrup's thesis, rather augmenting it from another idealist point of view. 1. An. atheist such a Sam Harris (heck, a sleuth of neurologists) constructs a theory that the complete "outside" world is mediated (e.g., nerves) into the brain where a "picture" is formed for and projected into the field of consciousness. This means that your world as presented in consciousness is nothing else other than a product, indeed, a construct of the brain within the nerve system of your body (which, too, is a construct in your consciousness). But--and here is the radically that interest me--where is the brain? In the head (skull), could be an answer. Then, where is the head? Why the questions? The head, viz., the brain too is (located) in the "outside" world to our consciousness, which we humans investigate empirically. But the empirical "outside" world is not DIRECTLY given to the brain in the head, rather is mediated to said location from "outside" to "inside"--so the theory. All empirical evidence for a head, let alone for a brain in the head, appears in our consciousness (which too is nothing but a so-called product of the brain) as a representation of something outside our consciousness. That includes the brain. I conclude that the brain, that supposedly dictates the entirety of our consciousness, is, well, according to the theory, in the brain, in the head, both of which are posited as real parts of the objective world. So, my brain is in my brain, which is a tautology. The brain we see is naught but a "construct", so claims Gerhard Roth. Roth is consistent enough such that he holds that the "real" brain is not open to observation, but can only be inferred by what it does to the "empirical" brain which dictates the entirety of the contents of consciousness. In effect, neurologists become theologians of an unseen world, for which there is no direct evidence, just a pleasing theory. 2. I ask you the accept my Reiningerian challenge. Describe anything, say, a spot of green, as it is, presuming that it is fully "outside" any consciousness, even an infinite one. Describe the experienced as fully beyond experience, even that of an infinite mind. You will soon repeat the effective theology of Roth or Harris. If you can describe any empirical "something" 100% independent of consciousness, of references that pertain to consciousness, I must surrender my idealism. Thank you for the challenge. That is what makes the intellectual life worth while. Prof.. Wessell
@@deluxieeee I'll chime in, and will be happy to bring it to an email conversation because YT threads get really tiring to follow to after a certain length. To address the question, we have to decide whether we tackle it from an idealistic perspective or not. From an idealistic perspective, I think that we can't really ask what a green dot that is not present in any consciousness (finite or otherwise) is like, simply because such dot, quite literally, doesn't exist. Experiences are excitations of consciousness, if consciousness doesn't produce the experience, then there isn't anything to describe. The mere fact that we can speak of "a green dot outside consciousness" _does_ make it pop into existence _as an experience_ (we can imagine it) but then we are not addressing the question, obviously. From a non-idealistic perspective, the question can be asked but it's not interesting because we could posit that reality exists outside of consciousness, but then what can we say about stuff that never appears on any screen of perception? Probably nothing, or, at best, make some speculation about the side effects that a supposed out-of-reach green dot produces (which essentially is precisely what particle physics does). When it comes to the brain, I see it as follows: if there is only consciousness, and what consciousness does are experiences, then we are experiences. We can easily assess that there are all sorts of experiences, such as direct waking experience, dreams, memories, imagination, etc. All of them differ in degree, but not in kind. So we can postulate that consciousness can modulate the degree of experience and we can say that (human) mind itself is a particular configuration of consciousness (specifically, one that can introspect itself, metaconsciousness). Depending on the degree, when a consciousness looks at itself, sees itself as a body. It's not by chance that creatures that think and behave like humans, tend to look like humans too. The body (and I'm not making yet the distinction between body and brain) is what a specific configuration of consciousness looks like when observed by another consciousness. So the question is, where do we draw the line between body, skull, brain and nerves? I think it's just a pattern. _By virtue_ of our investigative practices (neuroscience etc) we have come to the conclusion that experience correlates with activity with the stuff that happens within the stuff that we call the skull, but really it is just *the body*. So the brain, skull and the rest of the body are in experience (cosmic consciousness) and they look as such to other dissociated consciousnesses. Not sure this is an actual answer to your question. I'm just joining this conversation with my input since this is the stuff I like to talk about.
@@deluxieeee Understood. My answer then is that there is no possible reasonable answer. Descriptions themselves are totally dependent on conscious experience. In order to describe, we use our concepts, mental images and conscious actions (talking, writing) to leverage the concepts and mental images of others through their perceptions (reading-hearing). Just as a blind man cannot grasp colors that he can't see, we can't describe what is fundamentally alien to us by design. Furthermore, I'd go as far as to say that the very concept of an inherent existence or substance other than conscious experience is totally untenable. What can something be to itself if it is not experienced by itself in any way at all? The idea of information existing totally independent of any actual (conscious) subject that knows it contradicts the very concept of information. That is, unless you take knowing to be an action so devoid of meaning that knowers can lack all experience of knowing and yet truly know something, and information to be something so inconsequential as to be able to truly exist and yet inform no one. And then I don't really know what the hell you're talking about, and neither do you (I mean, not you, you XD, you know)
@@namero999 I thank you for your contribution. I am elderly and my health is poor. At the moment, interesting and intellectually conversation is not possible for me. I am sorry!
Yes...totally brilliant the way he never invokes non dual spirituality...but IS there... and so importantly opens the door for other scientists...to also bow to Consciouness as the substratum. It will liberate them and their work to do wonderful things...based on that Oneness we could breathe a new unity into humanity.
Fun stuff! Made me think about human brain’s capabilities. We might have been encountering “unequipped to understand” every day. Simply our brain can’t comprehend those “worlds”. Maybe people with schizophrenia have channeling those worlds. Who know?
26:54 - The simulation. In the 60's we had simulated drivers ed. It was weird lol there was like a toy steering wheel/dashborad on the desk and our chair was meant to be the drivers seat. I couldnt figure it out and kept crashing into things. I dont think it really worked. I think the simulation had a mind of its own because I couldnt make it turn in the middle of the street as a test. O:) I can now see the transparency it lacked. "Reality is being measured by the dashboard" In my experience reality was limited by the mechanics behind/within the dashboard and it takes a third eye to see through it or to get to the transparency.
We were expelled from the garden following eating from the tree of knowledge in order to stop us eating from the tree of immortality which would mean equality with the gods. We would realise the essence and experience of universal consciousness.
Sincere question here: if reality is all in our heads how did the universe get here in all the time that was before humans arrived? What was everything madder out of before conscious beings were around?
Think about what Quantum physics tells us. Reality is held in a state of potentiality until observed. The same question applies to your bedroom when you're not there. It exists in a state of potential until a lifeforms perceives it. A timeless interaction of mental forms that 'becomes 'physical' when life turns up.
Wait a second ... Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has no transcendent meaning. After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning. ... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis) Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter. After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind. What the **** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
Dear Bernardo, I believe you are postulating the right question from the wrong second person perspective. Rather I suggest you should be postulating the question of past, present and future as equal to nothing and everything from the first person perspective. The answer to this question is then resolved harmoniously in as much as the first person persecutive is not subject to the thermal arrow, hence it remains out side of time and space. It is only the second person perspective that is subject to time and space, thus entropic. If I am right, this means the first person perspective is 'immortal' so to speak and can externalise time and space, all events are chronicled or witnessed by the the first person without being subject to entropy and the thermal arrow of time. The mental or conscious state of the first person perspective is per force external to time and space hence there is no past, present or future as the second person would express it. The question on the divisions of time is mute from the first person perspective! It would be better to consider the devisions of time as chronicled by the first person as pure experience, being, eternal being, having no beginning and no end.
Extend emergence into the future. What is the emergent property of loads of humans working together? What is the emergent property of an entire solar system?
Mystery and meaning was defined by the Mystics of the early centuries. It embraces the transpersonal and spiritual pathways This is not new information Its ancient It's well articulated People like Monastic Thomas Merton and Ken WILBUR also embrace these philosophies and spiritual pathways. Pope Francis talks about this too.
Reality is indivisible this is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Interdependent co-arising is what it’s called. The image is of a chain that you try and lift out a link of it and you cannot. What we normally experience is the array of objects so that is misleading. Almost every one of us is getting it wrong and clearly this is well adapted to the way life is. Raises the question why is life deceptive in essence?
@@moesypittounikos Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.
Bernardo Kastrup tends to localize materialism within a time frame of about 300 years, but while not specific and perhaps unforeseen I think that at least the cognitive root originates much further back within Christianity itself perhaps as far back as Augustine or even St. Paul the Apostle. At least the metaphysical groundwork was laid back then as we see the development of the western Christian concept of God. Perhaps the problem goes further back into the beginnings of monotheism in the Jewish history. For certain, along the way was the development of the concept of God as separate from the universe and humanity, the creator of said universe but then given the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. This, as the hermetics point out, is a form of cognitive dissonance, which I believe is embedded in Christianity. The attributes given, rationally imply singularity, because any individuation implies diminishment. Christians are describing what the hermetics call the ALL, which is indivisible by definition. Thus the universe cannot be created outside of the ALL but must be created within the ALL and the only way that can happen is if the ALL is mind.
Some Christians today believe that Platonism is not compatible with Christianity (they tend to be literalists) while other Christians think that Platonism is a foundational philosophy of Christianity (they tend to advocate Biblical allegory) I believe the later. But both lines of thinking coexisted for 2000 years. Philo of Alexandria (b 25 BC) already created a syncretic system linking Greek Platonism Pythagoreanism with Jewish thought, and Paul who had vision of Christ rather than meeting Jesus a physical man seemed to be more aligned with Philo‘s metaphysical understanding. Philo even claimed most of Greek philosophy was derived from Judaism. But all of this leads up to Christian Logos theology. Even if Paul was not a Platonist, the dominant philosophies of Christian writers for four hundred years after was Platonism, Pythagorean, and Stoic with a rejection of Epicurean Philosophy which emphasized truth through one‘s senses. Epicurus was not reintroduced until the Renaissance through Lucretius writing, which created a revival of empiricism. And these ideas became foundational for liberal philosophies like John Locke. I don’t know what philosophy was dominant in Judaism before that time but I think Isaiah or Moses point to a God that is separate from creation but reflected in it, thereby God is the creative principle of creation but not creation itself and could only be encountered indirectly: Exodus 20But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
I dont agree... first, idealism, since 19 century is dominating philosophy, art, social science, "physics" and entering all fields, it's the language turn and cultural turn... and can be summarized in the sense that nothing is the real thing but expresses itself in dependency of the modes or apparatus of relation...all scientist knows this and can not be a truly realist, everywhere this is accepted but difficult to fully integrate in many approaches that tend to materialism and reducionism...that is, separation... where you can integrate you are in the meta, meta... of the structures of relation and living the reflexive/creative process of consciousness in its evolution, the awakening, etc... but the contiguity or non separation between you and the world doesnt meen that your mind creates the world, its a relation so a transformation, an evolution...there must be something out there, lets call it X to know that frequencies, vibrations are allready methaphors, that the living water of organic beings reveives and transforms in light, expressing vision and all its consequencies, the sense exists allready in the "consciousness" or wisdom that is the living being and can express in this relation...etc. So the question is non dualistic, and this is the "problem" of Bernardo's approach...because if the essentialism of materialism (separation) is wrong, or doesnt exist beyond some aspects of relations that build us, the same is true of the essentialism of idealism...the solution is not a separation between materialism and idealism that only have meaning in dependency of each other, but the arrival to the nondualist mode of relation that permits to solve the separation, that understands the difficulties of both sides (matter/mind) and opens to expressing consciousness, and yes, in this case is participating in the creation at a profound level... for this understanding see my site: www.insightbiologico.com/o-insight
Have you guys read Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" or John C Lilley's "The Centre of the Cyclone", Herbert Marcuse, Loren Eiseley or June Singer? They were big in the now-much-disparaged Sixties.
When he has headache I'm sure he uses headache pills. But according to him the pills are an aspect of his mind. Then all his philosophy is sophistry, just a sematic trick.
...to justify all sorts of stuff. That says a lot! You still have to live here. But it opens up a lot of great opportunities to sell stuff that doesn't exist for money we can use.
So our brain is in fact in a vat - Plato was right ! OR we are talking about a simulated digital reality of which your consciousness has been downloaded into.
They are very compatible, until it comes to the position of a pure idealism, McgilChrist specifically argues against it in his works, and has argued against it on his Q&A’s specifically, and very respectfully with admiration of much of Kastrup’s work, disagreeing with him on it, and this is similar to Vervaeke’s stance on idealism which involved a long two part debate between Kastrup and Vervaeke on Theories of Everything TH-cam channel.
Enjoy! A few commenters on the Iain McGilchrist interview requested Bernardo Kastrup so we're releasing this Digital Campfire discussion. To access more member conversations, and to join calls (upcoming with Erik Davis, John McWhorter & Iain McGilchrist), check out upcoming events here: rebelwisdom.co.uk/campfire-events
Great coming line up, thanks Dave and company for everything you do. I’d say John McWhorter is a good, fair branching out across views too, as you guys have done plenty of. Keep up the good work.
Would love for you guys to interview Rupert Spira
IF YOURE MESSING WITH TAROT CARDS/PSYCHICS/MANIFESTING/ASMR/NEW AGE/MAGIC/WITCHCRAFT/SORCERY/ SEANCES/YOGA/OCCULT/CRYSTALS/LUCID DREAMING/OUIJA BOARDS/ANGEL #'s/ASTROLOGY/ASTRO PROJECTING YOU ARE MESSING WITH EVIL SPIRITS. YOU ARE OPENING THE DOOR FOR THEM TO COME IN AND THEY WILL GLADLY DESTROY YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES. ITS ALL SATANIC... ITS NOT INNOCENT. YOU DONT MESS WITH EVIL SPIRITS/DEMONS, THEY ARE FAR MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU THINK! satan WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR IF IT MEANS he CAN DRAG YOUR SOUL TO HELL WITH him. he HATES YOU AND LAUGHS AT YOU FOR MESSING WITH THIS STUFF. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN GOD OR NOT YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE HIM ON JUDGEMENT DAY AND HE WILL GO THROUGH EVERY WORD YOU SAID/EVERY THOUGHT YOU HAD/EVERY SIN YOU DID. YOU WONT BE ABLE TO ARGUE WITH HIM EITHER, YOU WILL KNOW YOU ARE GUILTY AND MADE A BIG MISTAKE. THE ONLY WAY OUT IS TO TURN TO JESUS. PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE BELOW AND IF YOU WANT TO MOCK AFTER GO FOR IT BUT I PLEAD WITH YOU TO READ IT. I WILL PRAY FOR YOU
GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS!
MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T, THE POPE DIDN'T EITHER, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR TH-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP IDOLIZING & WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE!
JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU!
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6
"But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33
“For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
Great to see BK gaining more notoriety.
Hi Curt. I know you’re a fan of a good deal of Idealism. A theme that occurs is the idea of “You are God.” I wonder if you would be interested in discussing that with someone from Theosophy, a Neo Jungian into Deep Interactivity, or maybe McGilChrist who seem to have more an idea of co-creation and the idea of having a unique *piece* of the infinite divinity, and ideas like the act of observation changing observer and observed, and the problem of inflation, or rejection of all constraint. One of the statements Henry Corbin brings up from Ibn Arabi is that in the experience of at-one-ment he called to say “I am God’s secret.” Rather than I am God.
And thanks for your channel.
Indeed. Plus he nails “emergence” problems-something that really bothers me for the exact reasons he states. First time I heard him do that. I haven’t read his most recent book yet but I already bought it. I would have but I am finishing up another book myself and all these people like Bernardo, McGilchrist, Vervaeke, Peterson, and many more people who you have already interviewed are standing at the towers keeping the barbarians of instrumental lever-pressing at bay. 😂 Thanks again Curt. ❤️🔥
@@Ac-ip5hd I love Ibn Arabi. So prescient and beautiful. Theosophy yes! I was a Theosophist for a long time starting when I was an undergraduate at the Theosophical society in Wheaton. Went to talks there, etc. So I understand… Great idea. love it. Take care my friend. ❤️🔥
@@spiralsun1 You too! Glad to hear other people discussing these ideas and thinkers. Probably a good decade of all these people hashing each other out and getting it to the public is needed, before they all re-catalyze with new arguments, and problems to solve.
I am in awe of his clarity of thought. What a beautiful mind!
Wow, Dr Kastrup is extremely brilliant, what he says makes a lot of sense!
My thoughts exactly Pablo. Time for a deeper dive. I'm starting with his JVK interview.
25.32:i am really happy that such a brilliant western philosopher as Bernardo Kastrup mention the Indian sage Nisargadatta.
I came to analytic idealism after having studied Nisargadatta's talks and yes i must confess
that Bernardo's ontology fascinates me!
Non dualism(advaita) view from a western scientific perspective so well articulated.
What a gift!!
I Am That is on the bookshelf behind B.K.
In the UK we have a media scientist ' Prof Brian Cox ' , who makes some wonderful documentaries. In some of his documentaries he has tapped a solid surface and said " I don't know how things feel solid , because atoms are mainly space ? ' . Apparently this has caused some hostility in the scientific community . I didn't realize that by default he was suggesting that the world is really experience .
Great to see BK on Rebel Wisdom, I was kind of wondering when he'd appear. I just want to recommend viewers to check out the excellent 2 part conversation between Bernardo and John Vervaeke on Curt Jaimungal's Theories of Everything channel. It's long but it has some really amazing and personal contributions by both speakers.
Thanks for this recommendation! Several episodes of that podcast look great.
Yep, I think that is well worth your time if you find this interesting.
Great to see BK on RW, always a pleasure to hear his clear thinking. It's interesting that, whilst he didn't approach idealism from a spiritual starting point, he arrived at it through seeking the most clear, parsimonious and internally cohesive account for the phenomena of experience, which is precisely the same starting point of the mystics behind the Vedas, from which developed advaita, or non-dualism. Erwin Schrodinger arrived there too, in his essay "The Oneness of Mind", in his book "What is Life?" Many paths lead to the One Truth, and neither are mutually exclusive: tat tvam asi.
Very, very eloquently and intelligently stated. Compliments, my friend.
@@girlplanetboy Thank you friend :)
Good Lord, this Man is brilliant. BK all the way! I am honored to be in the temporal presence of such a philosophical monster, tearing decades of missconceptions apart like they were lose paper walls. Surely, he will be remembered as one of the groundbreaking thinkers of the 21st century.💙
17:00 I like to say that in Idealism, the brain is a representation of mind, rather than a receiver of it (dualism), or creator of it (materialism)
If we could press a button and be in another universe or on another planet and then go somewhere else after that why would we want to come back here? If we live whatever the dials tells us who's behind the dials? I want a safe peek at what is outside of the dials.
Finally, Bernardo Kastrup on Rebel Wisdom! He deserves so much more exposure than he gets, but I guess his philosophy might be a bit too complex to have a very wide appeal
How is Kastrup's philosophy complex? Please explain it to me. All I see is him doing this:
Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has to transcendent meaning.
After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning.
... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis)
Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter.
After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind.
What the ** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
@@andreasmuller5223 It's just that in my experience this isn't the type of conversation most people are interested in having
its not that it is 'complex'/ AS he suggests, it's because materialism is so engrained in our culture that even the word 'matter' carries the etymological meaning of 'being at the base or mother of'. So it's hard to see the ruthless simplicity of what he is saying. So people will continue to use abstractions WITHIN consciousness to try to explain consciousness. Which is like trying to explain water as a type of whirl-pool and insisting that water is a by-product of a whirlpool. Either that or they will not see the significance of this (such as the reply by Andreas) and it will produce a kind of. '...and?' shrug of incomprehension.
@@andreasmuller5223 all Bernardo is doing is trying to provide an ontological framework where your intellect can more readily accept moving into exploration of the nature of that disassociated alter/filter. (remember this is just a short-ish interview) He does sometimes kind of give the impression you are locked into your dashboard other than in lucid dreams/ psychedelic states/ near death/ 40 years of hard-core meditation.I don't think Bernardo intends to suggest this but it sometimes comes across.
is the alter/filter more flexible and subtle than this? Could more precise control of to what degree the filter expands/contracts/orientates? In one way or another many spiritual practices approach this. I would say an interest in looking into this more directly is what should come out of this philosophy. IN his books he goes into more detail about sound basis for doing this.
The best interview with Kastrup i have watched. Great questions and great follow up answers. It makes a difference who is the interviewer and audience.
This is the best interview of BK I've heard. I see a new clarity and a refinement of his explanations. Well worth it.
Boy am I glad to you all are talking to kastrup! I heard of him first from Leo Guras book list. Great resource for an interesting life indeed
I am today elated to hear from Bernardo of Swami Nisargadutta Maharaj, I Am That, book. This book caught my attention when I first read it casually lying on the shelf of psychology section in the south campus library of Delhi University in late 1990s. Since then I read this book almost every time to seek solace and perspective.
The question is, reality in the head, assumes that the brain and mind are synonymous.
As Bernardo tells us constantly, everything is in Consciousness and we are all Alters in Mind at Large.
I can see how perception is a dashboard but is BK suggesting that all other scientific models based on ‘physicalism’ are merely equivalent to perceptual constructs?
Sometimes what appears to be flaky woo woo is just a pamphlet pointing at a rabbit hole, aimed at those who seek to go deeper but may not know it yet.
Layers of meaning.
a pamphlet for those who were unaware that rabbit holes exist? You just saved me 60 minutes.
We are other worldly and supernatural compared to people only just two or three hundred years ago. Wormholes, time travel, aliens all of it. Hell yeah.
Great interview, incisive and on-point throughout. Kastrup is really putting some very important ideas together and the interviewer is excellent. I particularly liked the call-out about Nisigardatta Maharaj, was given his books many years ago by a spiritual mentor and friend and found them highly insightful.
Really excited for this really enjoy bernardo & his work
His work.🙄
@@Dhorpatan what's the problem with saying that? (I could be more specific or precise but I don't think calling it his work is wrong work could be replaced with creation)
@@lukecockburn1140
It's just fawning and kissing his behind. I've been on here 14 years and no person has EVER referred to my videos as work, though they require a lot of work.🙄😒
@@Dhorpatan yeah probably am kissing up a bit that's kinda embarrassing & it's his books more than videos but if someone did appreciate your videos & called them your work I think that would apply & make sense
I'll check out your channel
@@lukecockburn1140 no it's perfectly normal to refer to someone's body of published books as their 'work'. Happens all the time.
Would really enjoy a convo between Matt (the Whitehead scholar) and Bernardo
Brilliant, as usual. Unfortunately, interviewers/questioners are all so immersed in the paradigm of physicalism that almost all questions start from that vantage point (e.g., the brain really exists). Glad that RW hosted BK. He should be hosted by every podcaster who considers him/her-self seriously interested in the human condition (RU listening Jordan, Lex, Tom and, yes, even you Joe).
who is TOm and Jordan?
@@rahulsangal5438 Tom Bilyeu and Jordan Peterson would by my guesses
"ur so immersed into physicalism guyse, plz do it in shape im used to"
The way I think about the 'reality is a simulation' thing is by thinking of Reality as a model of itself, which becomes realized in the process of modelling. What the categorization of reality as simulated points to is a discrepancy between map (model) and territory (that which is modelled) that is baked into the territory itself, a la ontoligical parallax and the Metaphysics of Adjacency.
Also, positing that there is in fact a world beyond the set of dials that is our interface begs the question of epistemology. How can one posit that there is in fact something past the set of dials if one can only know the set of dials? What dial tells one that the dials point to something beyond the dials?
(I'm not saying that there isn't anything past the dials, just that that framing alone is insufficient)
I must admit I’m a huge BK fan. So glad to hear him again here.
BK is an example of what scientists mean when they describe someone as a "clear thinker." However different two people's starting points are, if they are both clear thinkers they will begin to converge at some point.
This discussion reminded me of T.S. Eliot (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') quote... 'human kind
Cannot bear very much reality'. Our mental scope is finite, reality is infinite, we can only ever see snippets if we only rely on our grey matter to see.
I was relieved when I heard the word "ridiculous" being spoken often in this episode.
Borges got inspired by this philosophy to write the best fictional short stories ever, in my opinion. So only for that reason this philosophy is worth a pedestal.
I do however have a few questions/concerns. Does movement and change exist in the Universe beyond one of those “dials”? BK seems to fall often to the Anthropic principle when he reiterates that otherwise we will be consumed by entropy, we wouldn’t be here. So what? The thing itself cares about that? That to me seems like a logical fallacy.
Then with evolution. Is it real or again it’s only in our heads? If it’s ontologically real what is driving it? Why is it necessary? Ancient amoebas clearly sustained reality why not stopping there? It seems that the arrow of evolution is anti-entropic, does that mean that eventually we, or some other species here on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe, will be so evolved that we will see through the “dials”?
Excellent. He absolutely nailed the ridiculousness of emergence. At best, it’s a method of interactive purposive ness across levels. A description of relationships. In that sense it’s useful to think about but yeah… everyone tries to extrapolate from discrete symbolic interactions or circumscribed symbolic symbol systems to the rest of reality (because it’s instrumentally useful-like math) but this is where Ian McGilchrist comes in and POW! Says f*ck that sh*t. And rightly so. Ian doesn’t actually swear though. He is a proper Scotsman from Skye. 🥰 LOVE to Bernardo. Humanity will advance to the next level and I commend you for your adroit assistance in this matter? I hesitate to use that word, 🤔😂 I love that the Internet allows us to see that we are in this together. Thanks 🙏🏻 ❤️🔥
We all have the same tools to help us go through life properly .
Those tools are :
Heart , conscience , intuition and common sense - ( in which you need a properly functional brain of course ).
How we use those tools depends from us .
We are responsible for our success or failure in life .
I am talking here of course about - honest life ( not the dishonest way of life - in cost of others .)
The bigest problem in this world is that most of you converts everything into money - this is wrong way .
We live in material world - that is true but not everything here is for sale , and not everything can be bought .
That we all should know and remember .
Life is really very simple .
So we've come full circle back to Plato's theory of forms....
Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own.
Saying that emergent qualities are ipso facto unexplainable from a physical standpoint because they aren't based on individual atoms, either because it's too complex, or qualititative aspects of conscious experience, doens't mean that they actually 'exist' on their own outside people's minds, or that there is a plane outside of it that the mental world 'exists' in.
Focusing on qualia (or to put it another way, quanta of conscious experience) is not different than Plato's theories of forms from 2000 years ago.
Love it how non-physicists always just drop in 'observer effect' or quantum...without justifying it... as backing up whatever they are saying. Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'. That's bollocks. It doesn't say that it is superficial or based on a deeper reality, it literally says that we don't know as it ISN"T based on hidden variables or a deeper reality.
There is nothing new under the sun.
"Materialism doesn't argue that those qualities don't exist, but that they are emergent from the nature of individual atoms/molecules by combined effect. A simple example being that a water molecule isn't wet on its own.
"
Correct. So under materialism, the world as it is in of itself doesn't have qualities. Qualities exist, but they exist in your head. This contradicts nothing he said.
"Bells Theorem does not say that there is no 'standalone reality'."
Bell's theorem refutes local hidden variables, and Leggett's inequalities later refute non-local hidden variables. This means that a key prediction of QM, quantum contextuality, is true. Quantum contextuality entails that physical quantities have no standalone existence. Notice that he's talking about PHYSICAL QUANTITIES, not reality.
18:22 I love the metaphor of the graphical user interface vs the command line terminal. How the simplifications/representation enables countless non specialists to operate in the digital realm. These folks have no idea what the underlying capabilities of the system looks are but then again they don't need to in order to make use of the affordances that are relevant for them
Yes but the original filter/alter is still more accurate I think. Or the whirl-pool within an ocean. Ultimately we ARE the ocean even if a localised bit of it experiencing a kind of specific action of the ocean water. The water acting in the whirpool (individuated/disassociated alter) is made FROM water (consciousness at large). We have as humans the ability of self reflection - that is literally the ability the dissociation/separation gives us. And with this reflective ability we can observe how the water (consciousness at large) moves and behaves within us. This is basically what non-dualist spiritual practices aim to do.
If we agree that our "reality" is just the dashboard, what is Bernado's thoughts on what the TRUE nature of reality.. for example, where are memories stored.. what is time, etc. For example, if you believe any of the reincarnation, mediums, or ghost evidence.. then it seems your unique consciousness (ignoring the strange split-brain experiments) persists after you die. Do you as a point of awareness ever cease to be?
Nisargadatta Maharaj says consciousness is relative to its content, partial and changeful.. awareness is all there is.. and that there is no ultimate intellect behind it all all! He suggests thru sadhana (meditation) is accelerated ripening for the masses, where one can come to the realization that "I am". I think it's similar to Sadhguru bedtime meditation mantra, "I Am Not The Body, I Am Not Even The Mind".
I like the part how It's impossible to deduce qualities of experience from purely quantitative matter.. these are incommensurable domains, like wetness from hydrogen and oxygen.
Would love to hear Sean Carrol discuss the Many Worlds hypothesis with Bernardo. Looking forward to watching Bernardo's 6-hour video course!
I still find Benardo difficult to pin down. For the title, isn't it both? Doesn't the lines of information go through us back into the external world and then through us again in a dampened oscillating pattern. Where it is interpreted to stop doesn't seem the relevant parameter, to how reality exists.
For strong emergence, there is weak emergence we're yet to discover, and the extension of that belief into the undiscoverable. Where would we parse the limit to what strong emergence means? And yes. People can answer all-encompassing questions with seemingly knowledgeable non-answers through strong emergence explanations. But consciousness as the endpoint doesn't satisfy my curiosity either. In some ways, I think Bernardo might be right, but I cannot let such an undefined concept be fundamental. It exists so that we can call ourselves conscious and value it, but it is not of sufficient explanatory power for its vast variation we are yet to properly understand.
Ancient Roots: The ideas associated with idealism can be traced back to ancient philosophers such as Plato, who posited that the realm of forms (abstract ideals) is more real than the physical world. His theory of forms suggests that non-material ideas shape our understanding of reality.
Modern Idealism: In the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophers like George Berkeley advanced idealism, arguing that reality is fundamentally mental and that material objects only exist as perceptions in the mind. Berkeley famously stated, "To be is to be perceived."
German Idealism: Later, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel further developed idealist thought, emphasizing the role of consciousness and ideas in shaping our understanding of reality.
It has to be internalised, this is the crux of the problem. The hard problem of consciousness.
You will be reaching ‘those who have ears to hear’, and those who do not will only be able to argue - because it exists outside of their lived experience. To them, it is supernatural rather than natural.
What do you think the best way to reach the masses would be, so that the mass-man (the prisoner in Plato’s cave) can begin to internalise, given that the intellectual approach wouldn’t work? Should the prisoner really be dragged out of the cave?
What do you think the implications of the destruction of culture would be?
“Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.” - Shams Tabrizi
And Bernardo, you say you have anxiety but consider:
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” - Soren Kierkegaard
You’ve opened up your doors of Perception - this comes with a certain feeling of dread(?) I think.
A good example at 13:10 of a brilliant and thoughtful person admitting that we don't know what is below the physical layer. I would add though that he refers to this mysterious layer as having standalone existence and that does not seem verifiable to me. And of course, there could be countless deeper layers physics does not yet have the tools to unearth.
Hallelujah, FINALLY. Thank you for having Kastrup on. Now I can shut up here on the IDW!
Hm, I've researched him for a while and out of all the interviews, podcasts, I have came across on this topic, his hits home the most. I enjoy Joscha Bach's explanation, as well. But it seems like the closer we get, consciouness stretches itself out more and more.
Infinity surrounds us.
I totally agree with BK’s comment about Nisargadatta Maharaj. He was the real deal. He has not written any books but there is whole lot that written by devotees based on recorded talks (he died in 1982). Unfortunately most books are heavily contaminated with devotion side of his philosophy because most authors are devotees. If you are looking for his key teaching then read the Pointers from NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ By Ramesh S. Balsekar (you can find the PDF online ).
There was another person that I know of: that was Buddha. He understood the reality too but unfortunately he was about 2400 yrs ahead of his time. His message got heavily contaminated by the blind (and stupid) followers and now hardly much left. Even the gurus who claimed they realized his teaching based on insight meditation haven’t got it! If interested read the first two Suttas in the Sutta pitaka. That is all you need.
Mind-Blowing.
What Bernardo talks about around 21:50 is similar to an inkling I had when I was watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 and how the life cycle worked for The Founders.
BK has The Exegesis of Philip K Dick on his book shelf. We're on the same line of thinking but he's vastly more intelligent and articulate then I'll ever be. Glad to see people taking this more seriously. It's nice to have someone to point others too when I can't explain my own views well enough.
To the guy that asked the question at 56:30.... think of how we all agree that the colours I see.... correspond directly to colours which you yourself ALSO call blue..... HOWEVER theres no way to say that I see the same blue that you see...... just that we are sensing the same wavelength from the same object..... same for the objects other properties as both interviewer and interviewee an this case me and you are both immersed in it
What's real
What's not
Is reality just objective physicality
Or is it really shared subjectivity
If you see what I see
And we agree
It's real
If you sense what I sense
And we have consensus
It's real
Now imagine an earth without you and me
Or any of our kind
With a mind inclined to find
Would the ground and all around cease to be
Or would the only thing missing be
What we call reality
So if I could distill this to a simple analogy, would I be right in saying that the world that ant sees is the "real world" to the ant but we see a completely different reality but like the ant it may be but a surface appearance to a limited creature that if viewed from a more expansive viewpoint may look as restricted as the ants viewpoint?
"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes" - Carl Jung
thank you for this, great one.
Donald Hoffman has postulated this for sometime now and is currently working on a scientific explanation.
‘Donald David Hoffman (born December 29, 1955) is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science’. Wikipedia citation)
Hoffman seems to be saying that our senses don't perceive 'actual reality' but just an extremely filtered version of what is actually there. This is obviously true, but is anyone surprised? It would be hard to come up with a plausible alternative. I guess I just don't know what Hoffman is giving us beyond that rather obvious observation. Bernardo here goes way way deeper.
FINALLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYY the boss is here
Superb!
Regarding Bernardo's comment that reality "is not in your mind alone...", I had a "spiritual" experience where it seemed that the world was projected from the right side of all our hearts together in some kind of 4D way, like a hologram, and it seemed to be based on light (maybe photons or maybe some kind of spiritual light). I'm not concluding that it's true - I'm just describing the experience. Note that Ramana Maharshi said that the seat of the Self was on the right side of the heart, so there is a precedent for that location. Unfortunately, the experience didn't explain protons, electrons, etc.
Great video - very interesting stuff! Thanks! 🙂
I discovered Bernardo through his wonderful series of interviews with Jeffrey Mishlove on the remarkable New Thinking Allowed channel. Since then I’ve read his Brief Peeks Beyond and just finished his latest, Deconstructing Schopenhauer.
There’s a lot to keep you busy if you choose to investigate his work.
As one idealist to another, let me have some fun by extending Karstup's thesis as to where the empirical world is. In his Why Materialism Is Baloney, Kastrup writes: "The is really what materialism entails. ... your skull is actually beyond the stars you see in the night sky. After all, the stars you see are all inside your head". The real, the radical question has not been asked. If the world of nature (experienced) is in one's head, where, pray tell, is the head? I mean that for materialism the empirical head is also a part of nature. So where is the head in which the world is supposed to be? The German neurologist, Gerhard Roth, in his Das Gehirn und seine Wirklichkeit has grasped this and concludes that the real head (= brain) is naught but a construct and refers to a "real" brain not observable, but describable and known only as the cause of the rationality of the conscious mind. But the mind itself is not real ("real" ontologically in German), just "wirklich" (also "real", i.e, phenomenal) , so Roth himself is a construct of a construct and that includes his head/brain. So, it would seem that for some Germans, the stars are not in the empirical head, which is just a head-construct of an unseen brain where everything is. Where the, heck, is the head? The matrix looms, Morpheus.
As an ontological idealist, highly influenced by Josiah Royce (USA) and Robert Reininger (Austria), I pose a simple, but basic question to all concerned, one that I am sure that Kastrup will recognize. I see before my eyes a spot of green. Please see with me. Now, should I, a finite consciousness, cease awareness of that spot of green, I can imagine someone else (finite consciousness) is aware of it. But, if I and all finite centers of consciousness have no awareness of that spot of green, what does the green look like when not seen? That means that any responder must explain to me how something, some phenomenon, appears when is does not appear, viz., is beyond all- consciousness-and I mean all awareness including an infinite consciousness. Describe please anything your heart desires that is per se beyond consciousness qua being beyond consciousness. I await a response.I am curious for an answer.
Prof. Leonard Wessell
Bonn, Germany
Hi, professor. I don't think I can do justice to Bernardo's ideas but I'll give it a try
He would say that nothing can truly be independent of consciousness. So, in that example, whatever the green dot is, it can only be so within the mind of a conscious being. If no finite consciousness is perceiving it, or if whatever lies behind that perception is not held within one, then it must be part of the mind of an infinite consciousness for it to be at all. It might not appear as a green dot within this infinite consciousness (or within a finite one that holds whatever lies behind the perception) though, it just so happens that finite ones perceive it as such for evolutionary reasons (in other words, they grasp it in whatever way the limitations of their minds allow), but it will be something nonetheless - a thought, idea, emotion, etc. And it will be held within consciousness.
No consciousness = no dot.
To be honest, however, even though I agree with the "no consciousness = no dot" paradigm, I don't find this explanation satisfactory. For example, If said infinite consciousness is really infinite, then it seems totally arbitrary for there to arise anything within it that appears localized and interacts with only portions of it. It's kinda like being precisely one leg in an infinite centipede (or inifinipede?). What are the odds of being just one of those legs at any one time if there are infinite alternatives and all are equally valid? What is one divided by infinity?
@@el66k94 You missed my point. I was not challenging Kastrup's thesis, rather augmenting it from another idealist point of view.
1. An. atheist such a Sam Harris (heck, a sleuth of neurologists) constructs a theory that the complete "outside" world is mediated (e.g., nerves) into the brain where a "picture" is formed for and projected into the field of consciousness. This means that your world as presented in consciousness is nothing else other than a product, indeed, a construct of the brain within the nerve system of your body (which, too, is a construct in your consciousness). But--and here is the radically that interest me--where is the brain? In the head (skull), could be an answer. Then, where is the head? Why the questions? The head, viz., the brain too is (located) in the "outside" world to our consciousness, which we humans investigate empirically. But the empirical "outside" world is not DIRECTLY given to the brain in the head, rather is mediated to said location from "outside" to "inside"--so the theory. All empirical evidence for a head, let alone for a brain in the head, appears in our consciousness (which too is nothing but a so-called product of the brain) as a representation of something outside our consciousness. That includes the brain. I conclude that the brain, that supposedly dictates the entirety of our consciousness, is, well, according to the theory, in the brain, in the head, both of which are posited as real parts of the objective world. So, my brain is in my brain, which is a tautology. The brain we see is naught but a "construct", so claims Gerhard Roth. Roth is consistent enough such that he holds that the "real" brain is not open to observation, but can only be inferred by what it does to the "empirical" brain which dictates the entirety of the contents of consciousness. In effect, neurologists become theologians of an unseen world, for which there is no direct evidence, just a pleasing theory.
2. I ask you the accept my Reiningerian challenge. Describe anything, say, a spot of green, as it is, presuming that it is fully "outside" any consciousness, even an infinite one. Describe the experienced as fully beyond experience, even that of an infinite mind. You will soon repeat the effective theology of Roth or Harris. If you can describe any empirical "something" 100% independent of consciousness, of references that pertain to consciousness, I must surrender my idealism.
Thank you for the challenge. That is what makes the intellectual life worth while.
Prof.. Wessell
@@deluxieeee I'll chime in, and will be happy to bring it to an email conversation because YT threads get really tiring to follow to after a certain length.
To address the question, we have to decide whether we tackle it from an idealistic perspective or not.
From an idealistic perspective, I think that we can't really ask what a green dot that is not present in any consciousness (finite or otherwise) is like, simply because such dot, quite literally, doesn't exist. Experiences are excitations of consciousness, if consciousness doesn't produce the experience, then there isn't anything to describe. The mere fact that we can speak of "a green dot outside consciousness" _does_ make it pop into existence _as an experience_ (we can imagine it) but then we are not addressing the question, obviously.
From a non-idealistic perspective, the question can be asked but it's not interesting because we could posit that reality exists outside of consciousness, but then what can we say about stuff that never appears on any screen of perception? Probably nothing, or, at best, make some speculation about the side effects that a supposed out-of-reach green dot produces (which essentially is precisely what particle physics does).
When it comes to the brain, I see it as follows: if there is only consciousness, and what consciousness does are experiences, then we are experiences. We can easily assess that there are all sorts of experiences, such as direct waking experience, dreams, memories, imagination, etc. All of them differ in degree, but not in kind. So we can postulate that consciousness can modulate the degree of experience and we can say that (human) mind itself is a particular configuration of consciousness (specifically, one that can introspect itself, metaconsciousness). Depending on the degree, when a consciousness looks at itself, sees itself as a body. It's not by chance that creatures that think and behave like humans, tend to look like humans too. The body (and I'm not making yet the distinction between body and brain) is what a specific configuration of consciousness looks like when observed by another consciousness. So the question is, where do we draw the line between body, skull, brain and nerves? I think it's just a pattern. _By virtue_ of our investigative practices (neuroscience etc) we have come to the conclusion that experience correlates with activity with the stuff that happens within the stuff that we call the skull, but really it is just *the body*. So the brain, skull and the rest of the body are in experience (cosmic consciousness) and they look as such to other dissociated consciousnesses.
Not sure this is an actual answer to your question. I'm just joining this conversation with my input since this is the stuff I like to talk about.
@@deluxieeee Understood. My answer then is that there is no possible reasonable answer. Descriptions themselves are totally dependent on conscious experience. In order to describe, we use our concepts, mental images and conscious actions (talking, writing) to leverage the concepts and mental images of others through their perceptions (reading-hearing). Just as a blind man cannot grasp colors that he can't see, we can't describe what is fundamentally alien to us by design.
Furthermore, I'd go as far as to say that the very concept of an inherent existence or substance other than conscious experience is totally untenable. What can something be to itself if it is not experienced by itself in any way at all?
The idea of information existing totally independent of any actual (conscious) subject that knows it contradicts the very concept of information. That is, unless you take knowing to be an action so devoid of meaning that knowers can lack all experience of knowing and yet truly know something, and information to be something so inconsequential as to be able to truly exist and yet inform no one. And then I don't really know what the hell you're talking about, and neither do you (I mean, not you, you XD, you know)
@@namero999 I thank you for your contribution. I am elderly and my health is poor. At the moment, interesting and intellectually conversation is not possible for me. I am sorry!
Yes...totally brilliant the way he never invokes non dual spirituality...but IS there...
and so importantly opens the door for other scientists...to also bow to Consciouness as the substratum. It will liberate them and their work to do wonderful things...based on that Oneness we could breathe a new unity into humanity.
Fun stuff! Made me think about human brain’s capabilities. We might have been encountering “unequipped to understand” every day. Simply our brain can’t comprehend those “worlds”. Maybe people with schizophrenia have channeling those worlds. Who know?
26:54 - The simulation. In the 60's we had simulated drivers ed. It was weird lol there was like a toy steering wheel/dashborad on the desk and our chair was meant to be the drivers seat. I couldnt figure it out and kept crashing into things. I dont think it really worked. I think the simulation had a mind of its own because I couldnt make it turn in the middle of the street as a test. O:)
I can now see the transparency it lacked. "Reality is being measured by the dashboard" In my experience reality was limited by the mechanics behind/within the dashboard and it takes a third eye to see through it or to get to the transparency.
How to get him on a show.. 😄
can you do Donald Hoffman next?
19:20 Donald's having a coffee in the back room.
Can't wait to do the course!
Did they never mention Plato’s cave analogy?
Exactly. And my favourite WILLIAM BLAKE!
We were expelled from the garden following eating from the tree of knowledge in order to stop us eating from the tree of immortality which would mean equality with the gods. We would realise the essence and experience of universal consciousness.
Sincere question here: if reality is all in our heads how did the universe get here in all the time that was before humans arrived? What was everything madder out of before conscious beings were around?
Think about what Quantum physics tells us. Reality is held in a state of potentiality until observed. The same question applies to your bedroom when you're not there. It exists in a state of potential until a lifeforms perceives it. A timeless interaction of mental forms that 'becomes 'physical' when life turns up.
@@NOCOMPLYE thanks for the heads up. I'll check that out
@@rainbowcoloredsoapdispenser it's not bernardos position that reality is all in our heads.
Wait a second ...
Before Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but apparently it has no transcendent meaning.
After Kastrup: There is existence and consciousness. We don't understand it, but we wish for transcendent meaning.
... what does Kastrup' argumentation add apart from this warm, fuzzy feeling that there might be more to all of this suffering? (believe me, I want to believe in his thesis)
Before Kastrup: All is matter, mind springs from matter.
After Kastrup: All is mind, matter is an interpretation of mind.
What the **** are these highly intelligent people talking about?
If reality is all in our head, what’s our head in?
Reality is not in our head. He never says that. He is an idealist. All that exist is consciousness. (Our head is in consciousness)
@@sxsmith44 just trying to making a funny based on the title, fella
"Guy sold cigarettes on the street!"
Dear Bernardo,
I believe you are postulating the right question from the wrong second person perspective. Rather I suggest you should be postulating the question of past, present and future as equal to nothing and everything from the first person perspective. The answer to this question is then resolved harmoniously in as much as the first person persecutive is not subject to the thermal arrow, hence it remains out side of time and space. It is only the second person perspective that is subject to time and space, thus entropic.
If I am right, this means the first person perspective is 'immortal' so to speak and can externalise time and space, all events are chronicled or witnessed by the the first person without being subject to entropy and the thermal arrow of time. The mental or conscious state of the first person perspective is per force external to time and space hence there is no past, present or future as the second person would express it.
The question on the divisions of time is mute from the first person perspective! It would be better to consider the devisions of time as chronicled by the first person as pure experience, being, eternal being, having no beginning and no end.
So, what is his answer to the title question? Does Kastrup believe that "reality is all in your head"?
well , then your head is also in your head and maybe even the thing that creates your head inside your creates itself in itself
Depends on whos asking.
Extend emergence into the future. What is the emergent property of loads of humans working together?
What is the emergent property of an entire solar system?
Mystery and meaning was defined by the Mystics of the early centuries. It embraces the transpersonal and spiritual pathways
This is not new information
Its ancient
It's well articulated
People like Monastic Thomas Merton and Ken WILBUR also embrace these philosophies and spiritual pathways. Pope Francis talks about this too.
Kastrup is so articulate
Reality is indivisible this is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Interdependent co-arising is what it’s called. The image is of a chain that you try and lift out a link of it and you cannot. What we normally experience is the array of objects so that is misleading. Almost every one of us is getting it wrong and clearly this is well adapted to the way life is. Raises the question why is life deceptive in essence?
i'm with Madonna: "you know that we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl"
The title is fundamental misrepresention of Bernardo view. He's doesn't argue reality is all in your head.
i was waiting for you to break out with please go all the way
Yes you got the philosophical GOAT. 🥳🙌🏽
What the hell is cool about a damn goat? It's amazing the stupid things people do in large numbers.
47.50 "Hoooray to Matter" lol
“Sometimes a few birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheatre”
That sounds brilliantly poetic but I have no idea what it means.
@@moesypittounikos Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.
bernardo is the fucking BEST
Bernardo Kastrup tends to localize materialism within a time frame of about 300 years, but while not specific and perhaps unforeseen I think that at least the cognitive root originates much further back within Christianity itself perhaps as far back as Augustine or even St. Paul the Apostle. At least the metaphysical groundwork was laid back then as we see the development of the western Christian concept of God.
Perhaps the problem goes further back into the beginnings of monotheism in the Jewish history.
For certain, along the way was the development of the concept of God as separate from the universe and humanity, the creator of said universe but then given the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. This, as the hermetics point out, is a form of cognitive dissonance, which I believe is embedded in Christianity.
The attributes given, rationally imply singularity, because any individuation implies diminishment. Christians are describing what the hermetics call the ALL, which is indivisible by definition. Thus the universe cannot be created outside of the ALL but must be created within the ALL and the only way that can happen is if the ALL is mind.
Some Christians today believe that Platonism is not compatible with Christianity (they tend to be literalists) while other Christians think that Platonism is a foundational philosophy of Christianity (they tend to advocate Biblical allegory) I believe the later. But both lines of thinking coexisted for 2000 years.
Philo of Alexandria (b 25 BC) already created a syncretic system linking Greek Platonism Pythagoreanism with Jewish thought, and Paul who had vision of Christ rather than meeting Jesus a physical man seemed to be more aligned with Philo‘s metaphysical understanding. Philo even claimed most of Greek philosophy was derived from Judaism. But all of this leads up to Christian Logos theology.
Even if Paul was not a Platonist, the dominant philosophies of Christian writers for four hundred years after was Platonism, Pythagorean, and Stoic with a rejection of Epicurean Philosophy which emphasized truth through one‘s senses.
Epicurus was not reintroduced until the Renaissance through Lucretius writing, which created a revival of empiricism. And these ideas became foundational for liberal philosophies like John Locke.
I don’t know what philosophy was dominant in Judaism before that time but I think Isaiah or Moses point to a God that is separate from creation but reflected in it, thereby God is the creative principle of creation but not creation itself and could only be encountered indirectly: Exodus 20But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
I dont agree... first, idealism, since 19 century is dominating philosophy, art, social science, "physics" and entering all fields, it's the language turn and cultural turn... and can be summarized in the sense that nothing is the real thing but expresses itself in dependency of the modes or apparatus of relation...all scientist knows this and can not be a truly realist, everywhere this is accepted but difficult to fully integrate in many approaches that tend to materialism and reducionism...that is, separation... where you can integrate you are in the meta, meta... of the structures of relation and living the reflexive/creative process of consciousness in its evolution, the awakening, etc... but the contiguity or non separation between you and the world doesnt meen that your mind creates the world, its a relation so a transformation, an evolution...there must be something out there, lets call it X to know that frequencies, vibrations are allready methaphors, that the living water of organic beings reveives and transforms in light, expressing vision and all its consequencies, the sense exists allready in the "consciousness" or wisdom that is the living being and can express in this relation...etc. So the question is non dualistic, and this is the "problem" of Bernardo's approach...because if the essentialism of materialism (separation) is wrong, or doesnt exist beyond some aspects of relations that build us, the same is true of the essentialism of idealism...the solution is not a separation between materialism and idealism that only have meaning in dependency of each other, but the arrival to the nondualist mode of relation that permits to solve the separation, that understands the difficulties of both sides (matter/mind) and opens to expressing consciousness, and yes, in this case is participating in the creation at a profound level... for this understanding see my site: www.insightbiologico.com/o-insight
If reality is all in your head… then where *is* your head??
Misleading title - idealism is not solipsism!
Have you guys read Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" or John C Lilley's "The Centre of the Cyclone", Herbert Marcuse, Loren Eiseley or June Singer? They were big in the now-much-disparaged Sixties.
So the dashboard is yore senses.
He criticized panpsychism but his ideas are another form of panpsychism, just by another name.
Gold 🤠
When he has headache I'm sure he uses headache pills. But according to him the pills are an aspect of his mind. Then all his philosophy is sophistry, just a sematic trick.
Bernardo is asking us to search our own vehicles, and if we find contraband, to admit it. Well, no wonder we are pushing back.
...to justify all sorts of stuff. That says a lot! You still have to live here. But it opens up a lot of great opportunities to sell stuff that doesn't exist for money we can use.
So our brain is in fact in a vat - Plato was right ! OR we are talking about a simulated digital reality of which your consciousness has been downloaded into.
Love Kastrup, but at the end of the day I gotta lean much more towards Vervaeke and McgilChrist.
All saying simliar things with different language.
They are very compatible, until it comes to the position of a pure idealism, McgilChrist specifically argues against it in his works, and has argued against it on his Q&A’s specifically, and very respectfully with admiration of much of Kastrup’s work, disagreeing with him on it, and this is similar to Vervaeke’s stance on idealism which involved a long two part debate between Kastrup and Vervaeke on Theories of Everything TH-cam channel.
Fuck I did shrooms and now I'm here
What he says makes a lot of sense. Wow.
Very similar to what Donald Hoffman talks about.
Wikiwand Nisargadatta Maharaj
46:00
Matter truly doesnt matter