Metamodern Spirituality Podcast conversation on Emergent Spirituality

Hi everyone. Today I'm joined by Tim Freak. Tim is a philosopher and author of many books, 35 or in counting, which have now been translated into multiple languages. Tim is a founder of the International Community of Univ Visuals, which we might talk a little bit about, and is also, has done some really cool YouTube series called What Is Life, where he's talked to many, many names of, you know, people that folks in the audience will be familiar with, including the likes of Greg Enriquez, John Veri, David Fuller, Forest Landry, Matt Seagal, Steve Macintosh, Ken Wilbur, Zack Stein, Alexander Bart, etc., sort of a who's who of the metamodern kind of discourse space for sure, as many, as well as other folks, of course. And it was sort of like, this is someone I've got to talk to. And then most recently, I got a copy of Tim's book, A Soul Story, which presents a notion of emergent spirituality. And so there's a lot of stuff that Tim and I have to get into, and I just, yeah, I could see us going in many, many directions, but I will try to direct the thread of this conversation more or less coherently to keep it on the rails because, yeah, there's so much richness here. But before we get to any of that, thank you, Tim, so much for coming on the podcast.

It's a real pleasure. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Yeah. Okay, so, yeah, I've been aware of you and your work for a little bit, sort of. I'll see videos here, there. People will post things you've made or, I don't know if you've made or the organization that you work with, but I saw this really cool YouTube video that got put out with some really nice production quality that seemed to be talking about the evolution of the universe leading towards a kind of emergent potential, this sort of thing. And it was sort of like, oh yeah, this is good stuff. So I kind of knew that at some point we'd probably talk. But then, as I said, I recently got this book of yours, which was published in 2017, Soul Story: Evolution and the Purpose of Life. And man, oh man, what a book. I don't even know how to, you know, put it. It's hard to summarize. I'll set you up for in a second to try to just talk a little bit about what you cover here. But those who will be familiar with my work around emergentism, I mean, this is in many ways another take on that same subject matter of this story of cosmic evolution leading to the development of emergent levels, deepening consciousness, and the evolution of God, and the different ways that that has been playing out through time, and the way that meaning and purpose fit into this cosmic story, all while tackling head-on the tensions that have existed between these sorts of ideas and modern science, and trying to integrate science and religion in meaningful ways. So that's in some ways what this book does, and would love to talk a little bit about that. So why don't we start there? Talk a little bit about this book and what you get into, what you're trying to cover with it. And then maybe we can talk a little bit after that about, maybe, you know, this came out in 2017, where your thoughts have gone since the publication of this book. But yeah, talk a little bit about this book Soul Story.

So Soul Story essentially came from one simple idea, like things that interest me often do, Brendan, which was, what if everything that has any form whatsoever is part of one process of emergence? And having spent my whole life exploring spirituality and spiritual experiences especially, as well as spiritual philosophy, what if the domain of existence that spirituality deals with, that I take very seriously, is not supernatural, but is actually an emergent level of the natural? Because there is no supernatural, but instead of naturalism covering the evolution of the universe up to biology and then this funny psyche soul thing, which is a byproduct, rather than that, of going, well, yeah, what if the evolution of the psyche or the soul is another level of reality, just like the spiritual traditions have always claimed, but rather than a pre-existent level of reality that we've fallen from, what if it's simply the most emergent level of this 14 billion year process? And is there a way we can understand things which are central to spirituality, like the survival of death and the existence of God, a greater being, let's say, a benevolent loving great mind, you know, the big mind? What if that's not something outside of the universe, but the most emergent level of the universe? So that's what I set out to do. So it was like, can I make sense of that? And it seemed a tall order when I started, but the more I worked on it and all these years since it, the more it's made sense to me, and the better the ideas seem to be. And so it's the attraction of that simplicity and then how it plays out. And that, of course, has the effect of uniting spirituality and science because it's all one process of emergence, and physics is looking at the foundational level, and spirituality is looking at the most emergent levels. And perhaps most importantly, or as importantly for me, it's a vision of hope. And my experiences of what I think of as deep awake states or spiritual experiences generally, especially of that greater being experience, is intense hope and like a redemption of all the suffering of existence, especially around death. And so it returns that, and it feels like what we've had for this last period in the intellectual mainstream, obviously not generally, but in the intellectual mainstream, we've lost that, and it's a big loss. But my intuition I'm following is that that will come back, and it'll come back because it's too big a loss. It'll come back because it deals with the nature of reality. It's not just an illusion. It's not just a side effect of biology. But that, and I suspect this is what you will relate to in it because it sounds like you're doing the same thing, which is, but it will come back. Spirituality will come back different. It will come back as a post-scientific spirituality, and that's what has to happen.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, yeah, I mean, so this podcast is called Metamodern Spirituality. Metamodernism, you know, gesturing towards something post-postmodern, so something that also takes seriously the insights of modernity as well as postmodernity, as well as the premodern and the traditional religious traditions that had meaningful spiritual insights, somehow trying to bring those things together and carry them forward into a more synthetic and inclusive and integrated perspective is kind of the orientation here. I tend to lean a lot into then trying to really grapple with what really folding in that modern scientific insight looks like in a big way. And so that, for me, the discovery of emergentism, sort of small e as a concept, right, and complexity science and this notion of complexification, cosmic evolution. You mentioned Ken Wilbur in the book, and you've interviewed him, but finding integral theory was also very influential in that regard. And through some of that work of Wilbur in the 90s and following the various kind of bibliographic trail that he left into all sorts of very important figures like ILO Priene and Eric Cheson, these sorts of people, there's a vision there, that sort of a story that demands to be told, a soul story. And your book does it incredibly well. And I was thinking when I was reading it that, I'm like, this is so lucid, it's so accessible, the language is so clear, that it makes a wonderful thing to be able to share with people to get across some of these ideas. Otherwise, you know, and I'm very guilty of this, can end up in the realm of jargon and complexity and what's a dissipative structure and far from equilibrium thermodynamics and stuff like t

to uh direct the thread of this conversation more or less coherently uh to keep it on the rails because yeah there's so much richness here but before we get to any of that thank you Tim so much for uh coming on the podcast all

it's a real pleasure I'm looking forward to the conversation yeah okay so um yeah I've been aware of you and your work for a little bit sort of I'll see videos here there people will post things you've made made or I don't know if

you've made or the organization that you work with but um I saw this really cool uh YouTube video that got put out with some really nice production quality that seemed to be talking about the evolution of the universe leading towards a kind

of emergent potential this sort of a thing and and it was sort of like oh yeah this is this is good stuff um so I kind of knew that at some point we'd probably talk uh but then as I said I

recently got this book of yours which was published in 2017 Soul story Evolution and the purpose of life and um man oh man what a book uh I I I don't even know how to you know put it it's

hard to summarize I I'll I'll set you up for uh in a second to try to just talk a little bit about what you cover here but those who will be familiar with my work around emergentism uh I mean this is in

in many ways another take on that same uh subject matter of this story of cosmic Evolution leading to the development of emergent levels uh deepening Consciousness uh and UL the uh evolution of God and uh the different ways that that has been

playing out through time and the way that meaning and purpose uh fit into this Cosmic story uh all while tackling head-on the uh let's say the tensions that have existed between these sorts of ideas and modern science um and trying

to integrate science and religion in meaningful ways so uh that's in some ways what this book does and uh would love to talk a little bit about that so why don't we start there uh um talk a little bit about this book and what you

get into what you're trying to cover with it um and then maybe we can talk a little bit after that about maybe you know this came out in 2017 where your thoughts have gone uh since the publication of this book but yeah talk a

little bit about this book Soul story so Soul story essentially came from one simple idea like things that interest me often do Brendan which was uh what if everything is that has any form whatsoever is part of one process of

emergence and having spent my whole life exploring spirituality and spiritual experiences especially as well as spiritual philosophy what if the domain of existence that spirituality deals with that I take very seriously uh is not Supernatural but which but is actually

an emergent level of the natural m because and what there is no Supernatural but it's an but instead of naturalism covering the evolution of the universe up to biology and then this funny psyche Soul Thing um which is a

byproduct rather than that of going well yeah what if the evolution of the psyche or the soul is another level of reality just like the spiritual Traditions have always claimed but rather than a pre-existent level of reality that we've

fallen from what if it's simply the most emergent level of this 14 billion year process and is there a way we can understand things which are Central to spirituality like um the survival of death and the existence of God a greater

being let's say a benevolent loving great mind you know the big mind what if that's not something outside of the universe but the most emergent level of the universe so that's what I set out to do so I it was like can I make sense of

that and it seemed a tall order when I started but the more I worked on it and all these years since it the more it's made sense to me and the better the ideas seem to be uh and so it's the

attraction of that Simplicity and then how it plays out and that of course has the effect of uniting spirituality and science because it's all one process of emergence and physics is looking at the foundational level and spirituality is

looking at the most emergent levels and perhaps most importantly or as importantly for me it's a vision of hope it's and and and my experiences of of what I think of as deep awake States or spiritual experiences generally especially of that

greater being experience is intense hope and like like a Redemption of all the suffering of existence a a especially around death and so it returns that and it feels like what we've had for this last period in the

intellectual mainstream obviously not generally but in the intellectual mainstream we've lost that and it's a big loss but my the intuition I'm following is that that will come back and it'll come back because it's too big a loss

it'll come back because it deals with the nature of reality it's not just an illusion it's not just a side effect of biology but that the and I suspect this is what you will relate to in it because

it sounds like you're doing the same thing which is but it will come back spirituality will come back different it will come back as a post scientific spirituality and that's what has to happen yeah no that's exactly right and

um yeah I mean so this podcast is called metamodern spirituality metamodernism you know uh gesturing towards something post postmodern so something that also takes seriously the insights of modernity as well as postmodernity um as well as the premodern and the

traditional religious Traditions that had meaningful spiritual uh insights somehow trying to bring those things together and carry them forward into a more synthetic and inclusive and integrated uh perspective is uh kind of the orientation here um I tend to lean a

yeah a lot into the um you know then trying to really grapple with what really folding in that modern scientific Insight looks like in a big way um and uh and so that for me the discovery of um emergentism sort of Small E as a

concept right and and complexity science and this notion of complexification cosmic Evolution um you mentioned Ken Wilbur in the book and you've interviewed him but uh finding integral theory was also very influential in that regard and through some of that work of

you know Wilbur in the 90s and following the various kind of bibliographic uh trail that he left into all sorts of very uh important figures like ILO priene and uh you know Eric cheson these sorts of people uh there's a vision

there that uh sort of uh a story that demands to be told a soul story and uh your book does it incredibly well um and I I was thinking when I was reading it that I'm like this is it's so looed it's

so accessible the language is so clear um that it it makes a wonderful thing to be able to to share with people to get across some of these ideas otherwise you know and I'm very guilty of this can end

up in the realm of jargon and complexity and what's a dissipative structure and far from equilibrium thermodynamics and stuff like that um and I actually the thought that occurred to me of referring maybe not to you but to the whoever the

author of this book is specifically is sort of a a Rob Bell of evolutionary spirituality there's something uh of that nature to this work um so yeah so so a couple of things now so so that's a great setup and hopefully you know if

people were on the fence at all after all this they can be like that really sounds like something I should check out um so we won't just rehash the entire book but I would love to dive into some

specific things and there's a couple angles there one is uh this came out in 2017 and I know that some of your thought has itself evolved since then in fact one of the impetuses for wanting to speak with you now as opposed to some

other time was that you recently put out a video in which you talked a little bit about your shifting conception of Consciousness and whether or not it is indeed primary uh and I thought o that would be a very interesting thing that I

wanted to talk to you about uh so I wanted I want to get to that um and maybe that's where we can start actually because maybe a couple other things will will stem from that so um I'll set that

up this way then yeah so in this book you know you do kind of take more of that integral uh you could call it a pans psychist approach of appreciating that subjectivity goes all the way down and it sounds like recently you have a

different view on that matter so speak to maybe your own evolution of thought around that that concept so I think I was I'd almost made the complete transition um in Soul story away from where I'd been which was in a much more

traditional idea everything exists in Consciousness I've been teaching that I've written I mean I've written all these books saying it you know I was like and and and traveled around the world teaching it and and suddenly it was I it looked like

it wasn't right and I had to negotiate that and it came from Soul story cuz in Soul story I have this relational philosophy which is really become stronger and stronger which is like everything is relationship and that goes

right the way down everything's one thing in relationship with itself as all these different systems and each system is Reading in its own unique way the universe and that reading of the universe is what will become what we think of is subjectivity

so you could say subjectivity goes all the way down but I don't think it makes any sense to call that anything like Consciousness and it's very misleading and the The View which I really started to question was the the common

especially Eastern mystical idea that there is a thing called Consciousness that everything exists within and the approach to it the theory that I started to develop that was working for me was I work primarily I think kind of

phenomenologically I look at my experience for a long long time until and what I see is I a system human system human being system sounds so mechanical but a human being still a system and taking in all this information and I know that I'm

taking in the vast majority of it unconsciously um because you know I wasn't aware of my left foot oh but I am now and why am I aware of it now and probably you are and anyone listening to

it and wasn't before is because I put my attention on it and so what became what seems obvious to me now is that what we call conscious is is a way of processing the information I'm taking in and indeed

the information with within the system itself so that what it looks to me like is that Consciousness has evolved as a kind of a highdefinition processing so everything is you know every every system right down to the simplest one

let alone a life system like the plants behind me in is in some way reacting or interacting with its environment once you get life suddenly the amount of information that's being taken in it becomes enormous with this with the development

of the senses and also with life some of that information really matters and most of it doesn't and the stuff that really matters as a matter of life and death or continuation or all the things that make Contin a biological species maintain

itself that matters the vast majority of its background and that what it looks like has de developed is that ability to read the environment has developed so you can focus and read in high definition the stuff that matters

including the stuff that matters in yourself and this is it this is what it's like when it does that now that's a very that's so so there you're going look so the the the experience the conscious experience that I'm having is

a very highly emergent level of the relationality which defines the whole universe all the way down that's quite different to the idea that there is a thing or a presence or a I don't even know what they called

Consciousness which is what I would have said and that the that somehow the ground is already conscious I don't know what of or how it's conscious of itself but what would that mean how is it conscious none of those things are answered and it's

fundamentally well there's two things I want to say really I want to say it's fundamentally what I now regard as a Mythic understanding and what I see I want to just divert into this and then hopefully it's relevant yeah take

your time is what I this isn't Soul story this is since Soul story but um what I see is there are two types of is appropriate to the foundational levels of reality mathematics for instance the best Language by

far and then it then it it deals with human experiences with the same language go it was really just particles and Mathematics and we can understand and it's like no at this level of emergence you need other things because it's

become about love and beauty and music and all this stuff and that language is not good enough and then what I see with Mythic think is it's the opposite way around so it takes language which is appropriate to the human level and and

applies it to the very very foundational level so Consciousness that's not going to come for a while that's anachronistic in nearly always what comes with it is intentionality you know there's Consciousness and it wants to know itself what's that where's where's

that intentionality come from or it it it wants to love itself or some Mythic quality to get this and that's the involution or the overflowing or the emanation and all of that stuff which I was very attracted to but now feel it

really doesn't work and I Think It's Perfectly Natural that human beings did that because human beings developed a language for the human level they didn't develop it to understand physics for a long time but now we have and now we

need to stop using that language for the lower levels and then the last thing which I can get into if you like to is I looked at my Arguments for why I believe that everything existed in Consciousness and

I was shocked to see that i' completely missed a complete fallacy which is now obvious to me again but for most of my life was not obvious and if you want me to go through that I I'll happily out yeah why we'll do them

both at the same time so yeah how would you describe what that fallacy is okay so here's this is something you'll hear repeated again and again in in people who were do similar things that I that I've done but I'll deal with myself so that's

easier to criticize me um this is the way I do it in one of my best books called Lucid living I love that book it's such a great book it's another real bang s short book and it kind of It kind of nails um I think this

perennialist way of seeing things and I think I nailed it so well I saw what was wrong with it um which is a real shame because it was such a lovely book um and the argument I use there is a very

common one a phenomenological one which is look let me do it really short everything you're experiencing is a sensation in Consciousness that's your actual experience your act your actual experience is everything exists in con just look everything is a that's the

argument and it's like you you get it and you can see it like that I can do it now and it's like oo but of course what seems obvious now is a the the answer is in the question because you're going

have you ever experienced anything which didn't wasn't a sensation in Consciousness or a thought in Consciousness but what you've what you've done in the question is you've gone fur there's a thing maybe you've just said there is is

what you're experiencing Sensations in Consciousness or am I experiencing my room and the computer and looking at you and that's not in Consciousness I'm in fact there is no that's a a um uh reification is making a thing out of a verb yeah

which is that I am conscious of you and of the room and what that left me with was look you can't argue from experience for anything because the way in which you ideate will in part create what you

experience so it's self validating if you think in that way you will you will experience it that way but if you think in a different way or you ideate in a different way you'll experience in a different way so that whole approach

just collapsed for me and left me free to to enter new territory yeah awesome all right so there's a lot here um I mean so just a couple things um just so so they don't get lost um but yeah you

mentioned the that uh bringing to attention um and the the information that matters versus all that other stuff that sort of background and I think that that Insight is very key it's very important um for uh actually really

appreciating what meaning is all about I just published a book called uh well it's on the evolution of meaning it's the first volume called a universal learning process but I'm really trying to Grapple with what do we mean by

meaning and if we're talking about the evolution of meaning and you covered this a little bit in your uh talk about um the evolution of these uh uh oh what do you call them there's certain kinds of stories that uh human beings that

that you know at the cultural level that we generate how do these evolve and how does the kind of meaning and purpose itself evolve um and uh I think that it becomes very important to be able to appreciate that uh there is this sort of

attentional filtration process and there's a fundamental Dynamic about uh filtering out that kind of Superfluous non-meaningful information and this honing of attention to meaningful information which is crucial for the whole Cosmic evolutionary process to then lead to Consciousness actually uh

as a kind of integration of that kind of information through various sensory inputs and whatnot to to appreciate this but so I just wanted to say that because it you know when I hear those S of things it resonates but everything

you're saying really resonates I mean I I would I'd be basically in total agreement with all that um and but maybe rather than dig into the specific arguments and we can come back to that I think one of the things out of the gate

I want to speak to is that some people hearing this might say uh what a lot of people say when something really important to them feels like it's kind of coming under critique or attack and there's a i i this is part of what

meaning-making structures and meaningful worldviews do is they try to immunize themselves against various forms of you know being blown up uh which is which is generally a good thing um but people might hear this and be like no no no I

don't like that and and there's you know and often because there's a sense that if it's not that then we're back in this reductionistic meaningless Cosmos exactly right BR so so talk a little bit about how you feel this new way of

looking at things is actually uh very helpful or freeing or or I don't know some of that aspect of this yeah I'm so pleased you did that um yeah one of the comments I get most of the time was oh

Tim's become a materialist I'm like no yep there's not just two options it's not just idealism or materialism which one right it's like there are other options and this one is going look it looks like the universe the the

present understanding we have through physics the universe is it's informational mathematics is the language we need to understand it you know when I talk about it being the one now I mean what we mean by the number one I don't mean a

surrogate it's really God but we're going to call it the one you know and or it's conscious it's the one but it's conscious and it's it's like no I mean what we mean by the number one the undifferentiated something

undifferentiated that can be differentiated in any way is differentiated in this way and it's evolving that information is evolving into these ever more complex systems where a system just means an organized whole and including you and me and in

doing that it's reached not just life which is amazing enough but it's reached the psyche or the soul I mean just for people that may not know this the you know the word soul is just is the is the comes from a

Germanic rout the same word in Greek is psyche these are the same thing and what they're talking about I like to um Define experientially that they're talking about the experience that you're having and I'm having right now and

everyone listening to this is having of a non-m material Level of reality that's that's the way we experience it full of images and if you go off into that in dreams the whole worlds are there and if you start

studying it through shamanic practices say or you know ioser or psychedelics or just meditation just you know there there is a universe out there and that's the claim that spiritual Traditions have made right from the beginning which is

oh that thing you're experiencing we have this modern idea that it's just a byproduct of the brain because it's clearly linked to the biology but the reason it's linked to the biology I think is that's how it's that's what it

has evolved from but it but every level is more than that's the whole point of emergentism it's more than it cannot be reduced to the Lesser so we're experiencing this domain and I my uh the the the thing I'm exploring is

and and that that is a a significant domain that the the psyche has evolved to survive the death of the body and that there's ways of understanding that which are not woowoo and that psyches have combined into like a super system into a

super psyche and that's what we experience traditionally by by as God yeah not something which is at the beginning but something which is FL the universe is flowering into like a say like you know perhaps the easiest way

for people to get it is you know you think you get a lot of computers together and you plug them all in together you get a supercomputer or or my body that's the other analogy for me which is it's happened as you know

throughout the whole of the evolutionary process but this is a big one whereby most of life was just single cells and then somehow trillions of them have become Tim and now they form a super system and that I think is happening on the next

level up and we tou into that and when we do it's utterly amazing yeah yeah I I totally agree that intuition strikes me is I don't know that that that's what sings In My Soul when I come to these

issues and you know um I've been I've spent a lot of my life exploring uh the various religions and the different ways of conceptualizing these things and um and then being able to find the language of emergence and complexity to be able

to articulate some of these Dynamics in a way that remains true in the most important ways to the kinds of things that we might be gesturing to when we use a word like God uh but also is able

to bring in some really crucial uh semantic or conceptual clarifications about how how that works and why uh has been you know very revolutionary in my thought for all this and I think that there's something very profound about

that that totally reorients one's perspective is rather than looking to God or the sacred or the Divine or Spirit as being the you know primary originary source and Genesis of all things that in some senses we return to

and there's a degree of Truth to that right but to conceptualize it uh you know rather as this emergent phenomena that successive levels of cosmic Evolution have been essentially accreting uh uh and and towards you could say um but it does raise new kinds

of uh you could almost call them theological questions for sure uh certainly kinds of of new met physical questions um but uh gosh you know so you did bring up the area in this book anyway that I would love to dive into

briefly um because and that's the the survival of death and and I feel like that's it's naturally kind of the the the place where this leads so I think that that's as good a tea up to this as

any um and so I'll just say from my experience of reading this book like the whole first half is like oh yeah this is so wonderfully a a clear lucid articulation of you know basically this emergentist spirituality um that you

know it's like yes yes yes yes yes then you get to the uh the how do you say imaginos imagos uh yeah um which is you try to make this point that uh what we are doing as sort of souls is operating

in a sense that kind of an immaterial sphere and you do this really interesting pivot that I want to I want to focus on because that's where I was sort of like hm I you know I want to I

want to get that's that's definitely the the moment you know that is that is because then also because also then the last third of the book I'm like oh yeah I love all this but it's it's like how

you so anyway so trying to trying to it's hard to summarize obviously but there's something like this and please you know feel free to fill in all the details correct this and also maybe add new stuff as you've been thinking about

it but like um you you suggest that emergent levels um I use matter life mind and culture from Enrique's model and when we get to this culture thing we are these psyches right and so what's happening in my mind with my thoughts

and my ideas and my imaginations and all this stuff is not really reducible obviously to my biological substrate uh it is dependent upon it arguably but this is kind of the thing I want to probe um yeah so then there's this other

thing out there and you kind of seem to make the case that okay then there's this there's that and what that allows us then is this sort of new substrate you could say in which the uh in which

the Divine in a sense sort of uh takes root um and so my question is sort of like how do you avoid though uh the the fact that if their things are emergent they do seem to even though they're not

reducible to they seem to rely on what exists before it right like I'm an animal but that's dependent upon me also being a living organism and like you can't take away my matter uh without also destroying my life you know exactly

that sort of thing right so it's not like just once we get life we can kind of detach life from matter and similarly I don't see how we can kind of detach py from biology so how is it that when we

die it's not all gone can you unpack that a little bit yes that's that's that that's the that's the biggie right there um so this is an area I've been doing a lot of work on since to try and clarify what I'm trying

to explore and to and to push it as hard as I can Brendan to see if it just collapses so and but to to explain this I have to bring in some other ideas I'm going to try and do it as briefly as I

can there there are ideas in so story so there's there's the idea that um the what has formed uh this is a process of forming but what has formed hasn't gone anywhere the past doesn't pass it accumulates so the information

accumulates and it's not passive it's actually the forming the the algorithms if you like so it can be imagined as like a an an expanding hard disk of which the it's like like like bm's implicit universe or implicate Universe

he calls it and then this which is being run by it so the reason I talk like this is because of my past the reason I move my hands is because of my past the reason I'm in this room and not your

room is because of my past the reason we're talking is because you set up this conversation and blah blah blah all of the past is present going right the way back so that the the universe has behind it what I started calling an

infoe which is go governing all of these um systems so then when you're meeting me you're not meeting this kind of like slice of now as if that was possible what you're meeting is a process because everything is one process and so Tim is

his past Tim is is a system in relationship with the universe that's what Tim is and well the universe as Tim in relationship to the universe if we're being really accurate and I'm made of my past and that governs what I am so

what I want to try and say is look that's identity and what the biological level does is he organizes um matter in certain ways so one of the things you know famously I don't know the exact thing people say

different things but you every cell in your body changes after 10 years every atom changes after 10 years so clearly I'm not th that matter M I'm the system which is organizing that and matter is passing through me all the time but

that's what the system does and when the system can't do that it will fail and then that will be the end of the system and that's what we call death but the system is also evolved onto this m this

transmaterial level which is imaginal so part of the system the bit we call the psyche is is dealing with uh imaginal information which is what we experience it to be now it's evolve from it and the two are

obviously linked but they're not reducible they're not the same so I think of the psyche as like as a sense so it seems to me that everything we experience we are sensing so there's the many senses the five but

there's more than that isn't there but the way in which we sense and they're all very different you know you can't you can't see music and you can't touch it but you can hear it and so for and then there's what I think of as the

Sai sense where which is the thing which which has also evolved which allows us to sense well I think we can sense quite a bit with it but let's just stick with the with the imaginal you know because

one of the things which intrigues me just as an aside we can come back to is if we're having spiritual experiences how how can you experience the Oneness you can't sense it how can you exp with the ordinary senses you how do you

experience God you can't sense it with your ordinary senses how do you know all these things how can you experience shamanic States psychedelic Visions all the rest of it so what I'm suggesting is look we've developed these senses which

we read this information and we've developed a s sense which we can read our own processing and the Soul domain generally so then what I'm saying in essence is you're a system which can do both those things part of the system

fails but the rest of the system can still do what it it's meant to do it can continue it' be like we're on Zoom right now but if suddenly uh the sound went and you'd go you wouldn't go that's

impossible that's impossible how can the sound go and yet I see you that that they come together they work together can't you see you go oh the sound bit has failed on the program but the visual is still working and you wouldn't go

well look you know sound developed first we had to telephones way before we had cameras how can that go for it's impossible you just go it's not impossible that part of the system failed and the other bit carried on and

so what I'm positing for the survival of the Soul which I think explains all of the evidence we have like the huge number of near-death experiences is that the experience of imagination continues because what you are is a what I a postivity system

that's what you are and it's organizing material things and it can't do that anymore so that will fail you won't be able to see you won't be able to touch you won't be able to do all that stuff

but this can still function so the system not some part of you not some other thing but you as a system including everything that's ever happened to you just carry on but now you're only experiencing this and because of the thing we talked about

earlier that wherever you put attention becomes Vivid it it becomes incredibly Vivid just like you know when you're awake your imagination for most of us is not particularly Vivid when you're asleep at night you can have a dream

it's so vivid you think it's more real than real and if you go into these if you expl explore spiritual experiences you'll know you know anyone who's done that will know that those are very vid so it's when you put attention on it so

that's what I that's what I'm basically going one system bit of it fails the other bit carries on okay so this is really interesting and a couple things to bring up here by the way I should have mentioned this at the beginning but

I think it's important for uh folks being familiar with you and your work is that um you you talk about having a you know an Awakening experience when you were 12 years old and so uh I just wanted to throw that in there because

you know you since then you've been very interested obviously in these phenomena and you've stud and you've written book books on these sorts of things but you're not this is there's a deep phenomenology phenomenological practice you could say here as well and so this

isn't just it's the most important thing the experience is the most important thing and lead people in the experience that's what I do you know that's what I travel the world doing so that's Central the philosophy is there to support all

of that right so um anyway I just wanted to have sort of a programming note because I think it's important um but okay so then this so without getting into the weeds but this is so fascinating and I think this this

presentation of these ideas actually struck me as as as rather novel like I hadn't encountered a particular uh framing of these things in this way but it's the sort of framing I think we need if we're going to yeah uh sort of uh

successfully integrate you know these true insights um and so uh but then it does the devil's in the details and how we how we make sense of it and so abely so one of the things that stood out to

me um and I'm not at first I thought well this could just be you know uh Superfluous but I'm thinking it might be more important so I'll voice it here is that you talk about matter life and soul

um I tend to as I say use uh the unified theory of knowledge complexification map when you've talked at Greg Enriquez and you're probably familiar with that to some degree with of matter life mind and culture um and I find Greg's

presentation of that very wonderful does a great job of explaining why these new emergent levels of complexity show up and the different information processing systems that sort of ground them so that's the framework I'm working in and I think maybe some of my confusion might

be coming because you know when I'm trying to match up your matter Life Soul with my matter life mind and culture it's the soul and and how these things may or may not ultimately relate that might be what needs to be um unpacked a

bit so in the UT talk frame you know you get matter to life and I think all that we'd agree with but then Greg talks about mind which is animals and the neuronal structure that you get with mobile animals that shows up you know

pre-cambrian explosion and all that so and it's just a new behavioral level of complexity but it's emerging and it's processing now neuronal information and then on top of that add culture which is where language shows up and now we've

got linguistic or symbolic information that's being processed and that accounts for uh you know the the human egoic psyche in that sense right so I think that all that mapping does a really good job to try to account for the

differences of these different emergent levels so then uh part of I think where my confusion then is is like okay well mind and and culture which is what human beings are experienced with their subjective phenomenal state which is my

nervous system and and on top of that and the in in the information that's processing and on top of that my uh linguistically mediated psyche that's processing symbolic information um so then but then using all of that I don't

know how we get a a kind of imaginal space that that then exists after the loss of the you know of the neuronal uh substrate if that makes sense right and so I'm wondering if there's something about your conception of Soul that's

doing some work there that would need to be filled into the picture sure I I I'll I'll start with that but is there any way maybe you could uh unpack from from that yeah yeah yeah so so that's that's

the issue for me with many of the models which are really good and interesting um is that what I'm interested in is how that you know you either you dismiss it and you just go well the soul doesn't

survive death that's why you know we just need to understand it's an emergent process and that's all spiritual mumbo jumbo my experience of working with people who are dying and being around death a lot personally um is has left me

with the profound what is it an intuition let's call it um and especially all the the huge amount of near-death experiences you know if that was on any other subject it would be very much taken seriously if that was an

illness you know we'd be focusing on so so what is that and my first uh intuition with things generally is well take it on face value first and if that doesn't work then find another explanation so it people come back back

and go yeah no you don't understand there's a whole domain and and I've been and had those type of experiences in different ways not not a and death experience and it's like yeah I know what you mean and when they talk about

the light it's like well I've experienced that and the love and so it's okay so maybe they're saying something and we experience again it's phenomenological I I am experiencing two types of experience fundamentally of the biological world and of the

imaginal and it's a bit like the imaginal I experience generally what's close up to me so I experience myself which is also what I experience with the senses but just as the senses have evolved to to really show me much more than just

myself so I think the SII sense has evolved to show me much more than just myself and that we're able to sense each other I think we're doing it right now I suspect we're doing it all the time and

I think you can start to be aware of the thing which is what I call the imaginal which really means just a real of imagination it's giving a name to what in Tibet is called the bardos or you

know the kogi in India in in Columbia is the Aluna or the the datat of the ancient Egyptians it's it's that and it's going what if that's evolved now the way it's evolved I would Su the way the psyche has evolved I I suspect is is

similar to what Greg is saying that um the the S people think of the senses I think in a very naive way often I think I did for years where it's just like well you just see things instead of

going yeah but all of that information reading of light has to be incredibly processed to be just to walk just not to fall over just to to know it's a flower and not anything else so there's this immense categorization that's happening

on a very primitive level slime molds do it the fact that a slime mold can remember and learn it means it's doing it and let alone before you get um neurons and and the whole structure that will become the brain so you're getting

a biological system which is categorizing everything and allowing you to process this on a biological level and then it looks like to me that that process whereby we've been able to focus on what matters means we can focus on

our own processing and then we make conscious the processing and it has the same advantage of making conscious the sensing which is it enables us to do what matters most better we can learn better we can imagine the future better

we can we can see how we're processing and change it we can read our positivity and change it and that's what's been evolving and once we develop symbolic language that gave us a vocabulary because most of what the way we do it

not everyone does it some people do it very visually but most people do it by imagining talking to themselves and that's what thinking is is what we're doing together now you're just doing it to yourself in your imagination so

that's creating this imaginal realm now for me therefore it's like and then the culture bit is like well there's lots of us so the collective interaction is going to give us culture yeah uh but the thing which has happened is that a new a

new level of information has opened up which is a marinal inquality and so all of the what we've been able to do then is make conscious some of the ways in which we process things previously on the lower level it's quite hard to do

and then once it's once we've got language it's exponential isn't it because you got ideas about ideas about ideas about ideas and the categorization means we can talk about philosophy and the origins of the universe well I guess

one way of asking the question would be it seems like all information requires a substrate it seems like uh when we when you I don't think so oh okay well well yeah so I'll throw this out then tell me

what you think or how you think differently about this I tend to think of information as being we're kind of using an abstraction which is like information is really pattern it's it's an abstraction recognizing that you know Gregory Bon talked about differences

that make a difference but differences have to be showing up relative to other stuff and then it's sort of like what are they so like you can see um you know in the in the Utah case right that like

uh that life is processing you could say genetic information so that's sort of the substrate and then my mind is doing this thing with u you know uh electricity through my nervous system and that and then with language you know

that's the information and so it seems like there needs to be some sort of conveyance some medium for the information for it to be real um and that's I think maybe where my hangup is so if it's like if we're positing this

imaginal realm what is it what is its medium but maybe I'm misframing the problem so how do you see it no I I think you're hitting it dead on I think you're absolutely hitting it dead on Brendan um but I what I want to suggest

is that what physics has shown us over the last few decades now is that information we think of information like in computers you take the information you put it in something but what I think physics has shown us is that it's not

matter which you put information in which is the primary concept that we need it's information that the universe is information and what I mean by information isn't just like in in um uh information Theory where it's like a

difference that makes a difference I just mean difference and that you know so Duality the one in relationship to itself is the primary bit of information so the one is also two and then from that is going to come all information

there's no substrate and we see that I mean phys we talking about phys I mean light there's no substrate a waveform is a mathematical entity there's no substrate it's a mathematical entity that's what happens as you go down deeper and deeper and

deeper you see oh the one which is the undifferentiated which is also in itself nothing is different differentiated as information and that is that and and every bit of information is relational time is relational space is relational um what will become subject

object is relational uh energy is relational causality is relational everything is so that that fundamental relationality which is the one is two the bit information will become everything and then that information is is is what the info is made of that's

what I'm speculating that we can't understand one of the big problems for science a huge problem so big that only now are a handful of physicists beginning to talk about it is if everything is being run run by

laws of nature I mean the whole idea of a law is crazy isn't like it's because we don't believe in lawgivers anymore we don't think there was a God who went let there be gravity so once you get rid of

the law it's not a law is it so it's a a regularity let's say where is it where's where's eal MC s if it's material Universe where where the is it and it's nowhere what I'm positing is look it's not like there's laws and then

everything else is a byproduct it's that the universe is learning and there was a fantastic paper brought out by Lee Molen and 12 other physicists while I was working on my current work a few years ago now couple years maybe called the

autodidactic Universe yes yes I've read it it's very good yeah yes that's the idea yeah that's the idea that I was trying to play with in s St the UN it's not it's not the intelligent design it's the evolution of intelligence it's not a

created Universe it's the evolution of creativity and where is all of that well it is what I mean by the infovine the past is accumulating and getting richer and richer and there that's where all the information is that's the differentiation it's not

stuck somehow in some sub which is exist some of it is of course it can be so here's a question then so uh let me see if I can put this idea into words um so okay rather than because my my

architectural thinking of this issue was matter life mind culture and then at culture we get you know symbolic language and then we're able to have the symbolic and the imaginal and and then so it would seem like if there is this

God the the the love light and all that that it somehow needs to be uh predicated upon the substrate of culture which is predicated and so that's why the whole death thing becomes this big issue because if you knock out the

biological substrate does then the whole thing come crashing down but it might seem like you're sort of positing almost a kind of orthogonal if that's the right way of putting it that like yes there is this complexity stack and there is

symbolic mediated culture but that's really just providing us an information processing system by means as you say to be able to become aware of all these Dynamics and use the language to talk about them but it's not like if if this

makes sense like it's not like that's then where the imaginal fully stems from it's like we're just able to use that new level of complex information processing to then in a sense look at everything that already exists and then

be like oh you know there that is and now we can talk about that using language um I don't know if that makes sense but that's one way I'm trying to frame this uh yeah so no I I think I

think Brenda let me let me come back on that and then you come back okay sounds good see to see whether we're we're because it's I I really would like us to to find a way at least of understanding

what what we're saying here because it seems really good so here was the problem for me um for me it was mainly through Ken Wilbur amazing thinker obviously hugely influential was I had to drop the idea that everything was that all emergence

was kind of honic uhhuh and go no don't think you know some things are things made of bigger things but evolution happens which is not honic I mean you know modernity evolved from the Middle Ages but it doesn't contain lots of Middle

Ages right right yes yeah I I evolve from fish but I'm not full of little fish right right right that's not the way things happen some things happen like that that's one of the things that can happen I call it Unida it's you know

a bigger hole is made I think it happened with my body I think it's happening with psyches and God but I don't think it's happening with everything most of but here is what's happening with everything which is not

IC emergence but temporal emergence because I'm going look the past hasn't gone anywhere so it's still predicated on biology it's just not the biology of the body now yeah yeah it's it couldn't emergence for mean means you couldn't

have this until he got that so you couldn't have psyche until he had the body yeah but you had the body now there's the psyche well if the psyche continues it's not somehow cut off or disappeared or it's a

continuation of the same thing which had the body and it was that which enabled this next level so more like modernity arriving from the Middle Ages it's more like and it just jumps to another level well and I I will say I think I totally

agree with that and that's also been a hang-up I've had with some of the the integral framings of things and and when you actually study developmental processes it's much more that than it is this you know it you know like

Transcendent include is a very important idea but that as you say doesn't mean that you know I include all of the previous evolutionary levels that that existed so but what you can do is take that phrase because I I do love that

phrase and um and and I'm I I'm very grateful to Ken for it um but if you take it temporally that's exactly what happens yeah like this moment has transcended in a sense and included the moment that came before it every moment

does yeah so the the the the every new forming contains within it all everything that's formed well so here's um I'm going to ask a couple I'm going to circumambulate around this thing that I'm trying to ask which I can't ask

directly but I'll ask a couple different questions it's sort of getting at what needs Clarity for me um does we'll try a few of these so you know if this one doesn't land we'll try another um good for you does the does

the does the love light let's say the the God you know in this in this imaginos um did that exist uh 500 million years ago or or did that come into being with the emergence of of human psyches no I I think it's it's a

it's it it is the next level from the psyche okay so yeah so that's helpful okay so then then and I want to come back it's it's a reformulation of that substrate thing it's sort of like where is it meaning obviously not

in just simple spatial you know extension but like um because you one of the fascinating things about this whole presentation is this connection to dreaming and how that you make a really interesting connection with with the dream state and where this is sort of

going on in a sense right and so um I just need I'm looking for that to land more intuitively for me because there's a lot of ideas there that sort of like oh that's very compelling but then it

does seem that right like when I dream it does seem to It's seems like the body is doing an important aspect for the dreaming to happen uh but again maybe that's some uh smuggled in uh objectivist reductionist metaphysics I

don't know um but yeah so then it seems like well then if I die then how can the dream go on where is that happening so that maybe be the second question yeah so so I think the answer is the same one

that I gave earlier but I'll try and say it better the which is which is is I suspect and this is not my work this is other people's work but I suspect that the psyche evolved to begin with as

dreaming and that that's where it starts and you can even go back as far as maybe arguably octopuses who seem to to dream and that's a long way back so that and that what seems to be happening is

better processing of memory and better processing of um danger and how to avoid it which is why we still get lots of dreams which are scary and and that's still continued now that is happening on a biological level and it's giving rise

to something which is no longer on a biological level just beginning and the two are linked obviously the psyche and the body are really linked you know you give me a sleeping pill I'm going going to go to sleep you give me a psychedelic

I'm going to top of my head will come off you know the two are linked that you know right now it's like this the question is are they intrinsically linked or when my one hand goes oh does this one this hand goes I'm fine you

know that is that's the question and what I'm exploring is that when we when we dream we are still alive you know you're you're in bed if someone comes in the door and shouts you'll wake up you know you're

taking in or unconsciously which is why you when the alarm clock goes off you wake up but but you're also your attention so is is in the dream state and it can be all sorts of Dreams can't it but some of them are

very Vivid and you know incredibly real same with medic a lot of spiritual practice a lot of the shamanic practices and all the all the esoteric practices that came from them and the meditative practices have been about cultivating

states where you can put your attention so directly in that imag realm the imaginos as I called it that it becomes incredibly Vivid now but you're still with the body now when the body is not functioning at all it looks like from

what people describe that it becomes incredibly Vivid and what I'm suggesting is that just like here everything that's been is still the same in the imaginal that that that that you there's a whole um soulscapes being created where we're

meeting and um that that that is so that the a lot of the spiritual practices is about learning to be able to perceive those and that looks like what we experience after death and what I'm really saying here is not that different

I mean the mechanism is very different but the the some of it's not that different to say Tibetan Buddhism with the idea of the bardos MH and and that that that imaginal experience can continue Yeah well yeah and I think that

this is I I get this profound intuition that there's something again that there's really something here if if we are going to meaningfully integrate these things I think that they demand you know some uh more some work needs to be done in this sort of

direction to make them uh conceptually coherent and to bring things together um and so I'm very I'm very I think that this is uh I feel like it's like like a growth Edge for me like I I feel like

this is there I've had these Hang-Ups that need I don't know some of resolution and I feel like this is a potential way that that could could uh could occur um but I'm really yeah I need to kind of digest that in a way and

it needs to sort of land um in a kind of deep intuitive way I feel like before I can before it's got to click uh and so I'm I'm trying to find ways of making that click and and and some of that's

going to be some kind of a paradigm shift I know because if I it has to do with um this whole way of things in a sense transcending their earlier substrates yeah my my yes and I really I I wrestled with everything that

you're wrestling with and have ended up where I am and I could of course be completely wrong and you know and what the reason I've wrestled with him for all these years and and invest the most extraordinary amount of energy in that

process day after day really Brendan as I'm you know um is because for the same for exactly the reason you just said it just feels like look this matters because if there if there's a way we haven't seen yet which allows us to go

it's not woo woo to think that the this the soul survives the death of the body it's actually completely reasonable and you can have a solid intellectual grasp of things um and that has that is hugely important you know people often is it it always

makes me laugh really because I one of the reactions I get is like well you know I'm not so worried about living forever like you and and and you know as if it doesn't matter the thing which really motivates me with it is that to

go back to the beginning of the conversation in that deep awake state that I first T tasted when I was 12 and I've been exploring ever since there is something so optimistic something so full of Hope something which redeems the

suffering so the question for me is how can that be true or is it just you know am I slightly bipolar and that's just a too much you know then off I go is it that doesn't feel like that to me but

hey I could be deluded that's definitely possible but it doesn't feel like that so if it's not how could that be and that matters it matters not not just for me who's had a great life but it matters

for the child who's lived till in intense pain every day and then died because if I can't turn around to that child and go it's still redeemable and the only way I can see that is redeemable is through the survival of

the Soul so if it is redeemable and my feeling is it is then there is a way we need to understand the survival of the soul and and the key to it is to change I think I don't know if this will help

but it's I think it's about identity it's going you are a process in time everything you've ever been is the foundation from the for the next experience the next moment of what you are you're not a physical thing you're

the system organizing matter on the biological level and on the psyche level you're a system which is so here you are everything you experience is the the bi is held together and then you experience the world through it with it as it

that's as it and you also are not s sensing the imaginal realm and that's another sense and just as if you put out my eyes I would continue to hear and if I put out my ears I would

continue to taste and if you put out my whole body I continue to sigh I can still s s sense the imaginal realm that is a able to continue and and actually become more and more intense just like

if you put out my eyes my ears would start to become really Vivid yeah yeah I mean the the the problem of suffering is a really interesting aspect to this because I I do totally agree I mean certainly agree

that earlier theological accounts do not do justice to that question and so for me which may only be kind of a HAL turn finding evolutionary spirituality was very crucial for that issue because it's sort of like yeah maybe things didn't

with an all powerful uh you know all loving God but maybe they're headed there and once you do that it doesn't redeem the suffering but it does allow some explanation for uh you know how that could occur in a way that

traditional theological lenses do don't um but that being said there might be even this other step that could be made of somehow somehow folding that back in in a way that is ultimately redeemable and I think it's those two things

Brendan sorry to interrupt you but I just want to capture that cuz you hit it for me it's like the two things which we've lost which are important if they are real is what you just said not a big

loving God at the beginning that that guy's a mad Monster look at the world but is it possible like you've said that's that's arising as an emergent level and that that is why the process we're in is so amazing MH and

that is a that gives a general sense to it and then there's the specific which is that child yeah in my example and that's where the Survivor of the soul I think those two together were the center of the best of traditional Western

spirituality yeah and they need to come back but they need to come back in a completely different form yeah well and again and and we can start to unfortunately move this to a close because this is this is fascinating

stuff um but I uh there we've already covered a lot of ground but I also want to be mindful of your time and whatnot um but just a few things it's like um yeah when I was reading the last section

of this book and you're describing the love light and the and and PE some people's near-death experiences of that and sort of the moving between of you know through this reincarnation process all this stuff um there's a way in which

all that deeply intuitively and also just from so much so much of my experience and things I've read and and across all of all the literature whether it's Yung or Dante or all these things there's like so many images there that

just um somehow that lands it like oh yeah there's something really to that and then you bring in you know psychedelic experiences there's so much there's there's a profound subjectiv sub suggesti about all of this plethora of uh information uh coming

from so many different angles that um in studying the religious Traditions like there's a there's something there and then when I see the prospect of them being able potentially to plug that into an emergentist framework that sees that

also then is profoundly consonant with my conception of the Sacred which is that that thing that calls us up to these higher emergent levels that's always sort of operating and then then when we feel that awe that wonder that

sort of Flow State it is a learning process and it is sort of leveling us up and all this stuff it all fits together but it was funny because when I was reading this book and I got to that

pivot point it was such a kind of microcosm of my own hangup around how to bring those two things together how do we bring in all the emergentism complexity science all that deep information Theory and thermodynamic stuff even all that and then sync that

up with this Rich you know religious uh spirit ual mystical tradition uh and that to me is like where some maybe the most important work needs to be done is is how of making that work I think some

of the great stuff about integral is that it has tried to do things like that but or you could even say meta Theory or maybe meta theor retical religious metaphysics or post metaphysics in some ways are all kind of hanging out in that

space and we need different approaches to these questions because um you know some things are going to add really important stuff to the mix but other things are going to miss and so we just need uh we need more of that variation

that we can uh then uh you know draw from but anyway so I was just kind of autobiographically naming that and also there's something there's a real their need uh to to make those connections deeper so um anyway that's just a a

brief reflection um yeah there's so many so many angles there so many directions we couldn't go in is there anything um just for the time being you would want to throw into this conversation at this point uh certainly before we we close

anything up uh I think there's three little tiny things just personal things one is um it's been a delight to talk with somebody who who I can resonate like this and who is clearly exploring the same terrain and

realizes what we need to find m and this is you know I I'm I'm doing my best to make my contribution as as you are and between us maybe something can emerge what I ended my TED talk with this idea

which I thought was uh a new understanding is coming and it's going to change everything and my feeling is look that's not controversial of course the new government it's like it always has the question is when and what is it

and I think those of us who are following this are looking for that new understanding which is on the same level of transformation I mean just can you imagine if suddenly those spiritual experiences which have been so important

to people but which have to be dismissed if we have if we if we if we leave behind Mythic thinking which we should apart from you know as story where it's wonderful but in terms of like really understanding the nature of the universe

if we leave that behind we need to replace it with something which can make sense of all of this so it's great to have that conversation um I also wanted to say cuz you brought it up and and my

wife always tells me to remember and I always forget that part of what I do is to take people to the experience I call individuality which is being an individual conscious of Oneness which experience of God is what you'd call it

in the old days and I'm doing that in in the UK in September one time this year so if anyone's um in intrigued to know what the experience is and that's the big thing it's like if you if you've had the experience

of that enormous love if you've just G whoa if you've if you if you've had that you can't miss it then all of these then it becomes like well that's real now how can that be real and how can we make

sense of that best and that's what that's what that's what I'm doing the best to to do yeah wow can you say just briefly a little bit more about that when is it and um I mean I'm you know uh

I'm always intrigued by the idea of like yeah we can do workshops or even meditation um uh uh Retreats and things like that where you can maybe create the conditions in which an experience like that could happen but like do you feel

like in your experience of leading these things like um there's a sense of yeah we've gotten pretty good about being able to help facilitate people have this experience pretty pretty readily like say more about that I'd say nearly

everyone wow I want to say everyone but that just sounds outrageous um and it's been like that for a while while um yeah there is a magic formula well there is uh what I have been exploring is how to enter a state

of communion whereby as an individual you commune with it's not Union because you're still there but you are the one in relationship with the one and how that fundamentally shifts your experience of what it is to be alive and

that when you come into that communion you come into God and 20 years ago I started doing something which now I mean I I didn't invent it for goodness sake and people are doing it more and more all the time

but I found a lovely way of doing it which is we lead up to an experience whereby you commune with each other so it's not me I haven't got magic wand or anything like that people do it to each other and

what happens is on when we gather together on a Saturday night we'll do a beautiful we'll create an enchanting environment because Beauty does wonders we'll have beautiful music because music is Magic and you will get to commune with one person and it will blow your

mind and then another one and it will blow your mind and by the time you've done that for let's say an hour you are in that state and you it's because it's a natural thing for us now it may not have been in the past maybe

you had got mountains I don't know probably but now you you connect it's and it's the S sensing it's you start you know it's like when I look at you now I can see well I'm looking at pixels

on the screen for one thing but what I'm seeing is your lovely face and your smile and your eyes and it's like beautiful and then what I'm connecting with I can't see it's imaginal I'm connecting with your psyche and I can

sense your psyche I'm doing it right now and if you and but because what you focus on becomes Vivid if I stop the talking and we just cense each other's psyche suddenly there's we're like that that's interesting and we start to

commune and that's when this uh emergent state which the the communion of souls the god it's almost like uh meditating on on the psyche if that makes sense right like that's exactly it Brendon you've just named it that's it you're

meditating on you know soul to soul you're connecting directly and what I love about it is that actually you're looking at you're doing it all the time you're listening you can do it with listening you can do it with touch you

can do it with eyes you're you're and that becomes a focus for actually sensing you're you're putting your attention on it on the other person the other psyche or soul and when you do that it becomes Vivid and as you learn

to do that it's a utterly beautiful thing well um yeah I will um I guess I'll put a link maybe to would that be on your website somewhere if people are interested September the 13th and it's in my hometown in glastenbury in the UK

and it'll be a small one because it really works well I like them to be I like to I like to it to be of a size where I can meet everyone be with everyone and we can relax you know all

of that that that craziness that you know people have seen me on the screen and then sudden it's just me and we can get we can be with each other in a very authentic way and not any of those

spiritual games yeah and then it just happens really and and and and hopefully that which can be a life transforming take people in their own soul Journey on their evolution well gosh if you ever wanted to do one of these in the states

let me know I run a retreat center here in Vermont and uh we do yeah Brendan I do want to do one I I've done many in the States but not since covid and I've got people in the states who are trying

to uh work out to bringing me to the states next year oh cool so um that would definitely be possible yeah we can connect on that that sounds like amazing sorts of things just the kind of thing we would uh be be wanting to do here so

anyway well gosh um so there's all that there's all your other works and then I would Al also just um again throw this one up on the screen and and encourage people to check this out and uh to stay

tuned to the stuff that you're you're doing now uh which is carrying this forward and developing these ideas into new uh domains and uh and to continue evolving and I also I think that there's something profoundly admirable about

that rather than just sort of sitting with you know oh I have a cool thing that people like and so I'll do more of that you're really um you know still exploring that uh that zone of proximal development yourself and trying to

expand into new territory and so uh I think that that's a very exciting and and wonderful thing so we look forward to what else comes uh from you but also would love to have more conversations with you in the future as well because I

feel like again we just you know just scratched the surface here so there's a lot of other directions we could go in with all this and I would love that too Brandon it's been an absolute Delight cool Tim freak thank you so much

godspeed appreciate it