WEBVTT 01:36.240 --> 01:42.240 millennium psychosis ruled and non-linear time really began kicking in. 01:42.240 --> 01:46.240 The nature of reality was tenuous at this time. 01:46.240 --> 01:50.240 Millions interacting in a medium beyond time and space. 01:50.240 --> 01:54.240 Within a relatively short time, the net had expanded my mind, 01:54.240 --> 01:57.240 boosted my creativity and altered reality. 01:57.240 --> 02:02.680 It was about at this time that a new purpose came to me. 02:02.680 --> 02:07.680 What we're going to do is we're going to all wire ourselves together. 02:07.680 --> 02:19.730 Digital rebirth complete. 02:19.730 --> 02:20.730 A virtual world. 02:20.730 --> 02:23.730 A world where imagination is the only border. 02:23.730 --> 02:27.730 So I imagined asking timeless questions of the planet's intelligentsia. 02:27.730 --> 02:31.730 A selected group of scientists, philosophers and artists. 02:31.730 --> 02:38.730 I think we stand on the brink of the first true civilization. 02:38.730 --> 02:40.730 The universe is only 5,000 years old. 02:40.730 --> 02:42.730 Radical change. 02:42.730 --> 02:45.730 All they had to do was flash one picture on one time. 02:45.730 --> 02:49.730 And it's about 40 million years ago in this world we are living in. 02:49.730 --> 02:53.730 Around 20 we started to see the first apes. 02:53.730 --> 02:56.730 Then about 10 million years from now. 02:56.730 --> 02:58.730 Negative regard. 02:58.730 --> 02:59.730 Technology. 02:59.730 --> 03:02.730 All they had to do was flash one picture on one time. 03:15.420 --> 03:17.420 Galaxies like grains of sand. 03:17.420 --> 03:19.420 And so withered. 03:19.420 --> 03:24.420 I think the final frontier for science is in our mind. 03:24.420 --> 03:30.140 Parameters successfully passed. 03:30.140 --> 03:33.140 Neural reality network accessed. 03:33.140 --> 03:39.540 Are we evolving as a species or are we doomed to extinction? 03:39.540 --> 03:53.490 Accessing expert opinions at the 11th hour. 03:53.490 --> 03:58.490 Civilization as we know it is in grave danger. 03:58.490 --> 04:03.490 99% of all organisms that have ever lived on this planet. 04:03.490 --> 04:05.490 Have gone extinct. 04:05.490 --> 04:07.490 The dinosaurs were very cool. 04:07.490 --> 04:08.490 You know. 04:08.490 --> 04:10.490 But they had their day. 04:10.490 --> 04:15.490 The dinosaurs were wiped out almost simply as a result of an asteroid impact. 04:15.490 --> 04:17.490 If the asteroid hadn't hit. 04:17.490 --> 04:22.490 Maybe the dinosaurs would have evolved to be intelligent creatures standing on two legs. 04:22.490 --> 04:24.490 With eyes at the front. 04:24.490 --> 04:25.490 More or less like us. 04:25.490 --> 04:27.490 The big question is. 04:27.490 --> 04:29.490 Are we to remain a fleeting moment? 04:29.490 --> 04:32.490 Or are we to endure into the future? 04:32.490 --> 04:37.490 I think we're living in a time right now that is the darkest time in history. 04:37.490 --> 04:39.490 And also the whitest time in history. 04:39.490 --> 04:40.490 Well yes. 04:40.490 --> 04:42.490 We have an evolutionary future. 04:42.490 --> 04:46.490 It's just of uncertain duration. 04:46.490 --> 04:58.490 We are as a species enmeshed in forces that are much vaster than us. 04:58.490 --> 05:01.490 We think heading down a road is an absolute disaster. 05:01.490 --> 05:03.490 And self-destruction. 05:03.490 --> 05:07.490 Or we're evolving to something greater than ourselves. 05:07.490 --> 05:11.490 We have our self-destruction almost programmed into us. 05:11.490 --> 05:17.490 There is disturbance of viral habitats on a scale never before encountered. 05:17.490 --> 05:22.490 I mean that's why the Ebola is loose. 05:22.490 --> 05:24.490 And why the green monkey fever is loose. 05:24.490 --> 05:30.490 It's because there's this funny revenge of the rainforest going on. 05:30.490 --> 05:33.490 If we blew ourselves up in nuclear wars. 05:33.490 --> 05:40.490 If we caused catastrophic decline of human populations through chaos, anarchy, pandemics. 05:40.490 --> 05:43.490 You know all the terrible things that could happen. 05:43.490 --> 05:48.490 This could lead to a catastrophic drop in human numbers. 05:48.490 --> 05:51.490 And the end of civilization as we know it. 05:51.490 --> 05:54.490 Large global changes are well underway. 05:54.490 --> 05:59.490 There's very little doubt that humans have affected the composition of the atmosphere. 05:59.490 --> 06:01.490 And are continuing to do so. 06:01.490 --> 06:06.490 What we're pumping into our atmosphere here on Earth, we don't seem to be easily able to remove. 06:06.490 --> 06:10.490 They're putting stuff into the atmosphere that is almost there for good. 06:10.490 --> 06:14.490 And whether we can eventually survive this way, that I kind of doubt. 06:14.490 --> 06:19.490 The degradation of our biosphere is going apace. 06:19.490 --> 06:24.490 Actually it's not even apace because it's going faster and faster. 06:24.490 --> 06:28.490 There's an aspect of non-linearity which many people don't appreciate. 06:28.490 --> 06:34.490 Because they haven't grokked the essential non-linearity of nature. 06:34.490 --> 06:43.490 The laws of nature in which we're embedded are actually undergoing some kind of a convulsive rearrangement. 06:43.490 --> 06:45.490 It's not at all linear. 06:45.490 --> 06:53.490 So we have to expect that the crisis that is approaching us now will approach faster and faster. 06:53.490 --> 06:57.490 And therefore we can't even guess how much time we've got. 06:57.490 --> 07:02.490 In this race against time, we may very well not make it. 07:02.490 --> 07:09.490 In fact many people believe, knowledgeable people believe, that it's already too late. 07:09.490 --> 07:12.490 I guess I don't see humans as being that important. 07:12.490 --> 07:15.490 Frankly we're doing more harm than good. 07:15.490 --> 07:25.490 Should we not self-destruct, I think we should bear in mind that the age of science will be looked back on 07:25.490 --> 07:27.490 as a primitive Darwinism. 07:27.490 --> 07:30.490 This materialist age of man. 07:30.490 --> 07:42.490 A historical apocalypse created by overpopulation and resource abuse and untrammeled militarism and dominator politics. 07:42.490 --> 07:44.490 I think there's hope for the planet. 07:44.490 --> 07:48.490 The planet's a self-organizing system that can get on perfectly well without us. 07:48.490 --> 07:52.490 If we don't have an evolutionary future, something else does. 07:52.490 --> 07:55.490 Something will survive in our civilization. 07:55.490 --> 07:56.490 And it will remember. 07:56.490 --> 07:58.490 They will remember. 07:58.490 --> 08:01.490 And we'll learn from the accident. 08:01.490 --> 08:09.490 It's not going to be the end of rats as we know them or bacteria as we know them or blue-green algae or plankton in the sea. 08:09.490 --> 08:15.490 Life has survived enormous catastrophes in the past and it will in the future. 08:15.490 --> 08:18.490 The future of the planet is not in question in my opinion. 08:18.490 --> 08:25.490 The only thing that's in question is the future of humanity and particularly modern technological industrial civilization. 08:26.490 --> 08:31.490 But the jury really isn't out yet on whether we're coming or whether we're going. 08:31.490 --> 08:45.490 So whether it's entropy or evolution, chaos, World War III, Armageddon, spiritual revival, enlightened capitalism, environmental pollution, atomic fallout. 08:45.490 --> 08:47.490 I mean the future isn't what it used to be. 08:47.490 --> 08:49.490 It was going to be the Russians or us. 08:49.490 --> 08:51.490 And now, you know, it's like just us. 08:51.490 --> 08:52.490 Mankind. 08:52.490 --> 08:53.490 We... 08:53.490 --> 08:55.490 Nature is at our command. 08:55.490 --> 08:58.490 And we can do whatever we like. 08:58.490 --> 08:59.490 We can fly. 08:59.490 --> 09:04.490 We can make greenhouses that we could live in when the air gets too polluted. 09:04.490 --> 09:08.490 We could create our own little ecosystem under a bubble. 09:08.490 --> 09:12.490 Now we're responsible for, you know, everything that went wrong here. 09:12.490 --> 09:14.490 The American dream is a brainwash. 09:14.490 --> 09:19.490 Of course, we as we are are too stupid to survive. 09:19.490 --> 09:23.490 Humanity as it is today is doomed. 09:23.490 --> 09:24.490 That's for certain. 09:24.490 --> 09:29.490 It doesn't necessarily have to stay as it is today in the evolutionary leap. 09:29.490 --> 09:34.490 What precipitated major cultural bifurcations in the past? 09:34.490 --> 09:41.490 And how can we intentionally intervene in history so as to create a different future? 09:41.490 --> 09:46.490 The whole of the human genome and many other species' genomes somewhere in computers. 09:46.490 --> 09:53.490 As we sit here, machines of a very intelligent sort control enormously. 09:54.490 --> 10:00.490 These portions of the human, of global civilization. 10:00.490 --> 10:12.490 At this point in time, the recent computer evolution has given a huge boost to our collective intelligence. 10:12.490 --> 10:22.490 And that may lead in a short time, a matter of generations, to a completely different species that would have a future. 10:22.490 --> 10:24.490 At least have a longer future. 10:24.490 --> 10:29.490 Buying time for yet another evolutionary leap. 10:29.490 --> 10:32.490 Of course we're still evolving. Everything's still evolving. 10:32.490 --> 10:35.490 There's no question that humans are still evolving. 10:35.490 --> 10:38.490 Homo cyberneticus. 10:38.490 --> 10:50.490 Perhaps, you know, new laws or new domains of potential openness are occurring as the universe ages. 10:50.490 --> 10:52.490 And complexity previously disallowed. 10:52.490 --> 10:55.490 Is now possible. 10:55.490 --> 10:58.490 And we are that complexity. 10:58.490 --> 11:04.490 We are nature moving out of its genetic phase. 11:04.490 --> 11:09.490 A phase under the control of chemical genes, which are physical structures. 11:09.490 --> 11:12.490 Into an epigenetic phase. 11:12.490 --> 11:16.490 A phase of culture ruled by codes. 11:16.490 --> 11:20.490 Transformable, culturally confined codes. 11:20.490 --> 11:21.490 Mathematics. 11:21.490 --> 11:22.490 Religion. 11:22.490 --> 11:23.490 Philosophy. 11:23.490 --> 11:24.490 Art. 11:24.490 --> 11:25.490 Dance. 11:25.490 --> 11:26.490 Humor. 11:26.490 --> 11:32.490 The major things that are going to influence our future evolution are nanotechnology, which is atomic engineering. 11:32.490 --> 11:38.490 The ability to engineer things from the atomic level, which is the way that nature designs things. 11:38.490 --> 11:45.490 The first rule of nanotech is, thou shalt make no machine visible to the human eye. 11:45.490 --> 11:50.490 Much as I love Terence's comments and his work. 11:50.490 --> 12:00.490 Comments and speculations about the nanotech, cybertech utopia that awaits us all. 12:00.490 --> 12:02.490 It's a few decades from now. 12:02.490 --> 12:15.490 And if we're going to make it to that place, we need to get our act together and solve a number of major problems that face this planet and our species. 12:15.490 --> 12:18.490 Overpopulation being an obvious one. 12:18.490 --> 12:19.490 Ecological destruction. 12:19.490 --> 12:31.490 Wars, famines, imperialists, enslavement of the rest of the world for resources and all of these things. 12:31.490 --> 12:34.490 I mean, everybody knows there's something wrong with the world. 12:34.490 --> 12:47.490 And if you read left-wing politicians or deconstructionists or thoughtful historians, they will offer thoughtful critiques of our situation. 12:47.490 --> 12:48.490 But the question is, you know. 12:48.490 --> 12:50.490 The Tolstoyian question. 12:50.490 --> 12:52.490 What is to be done? 12:52.490 --> 13:01.490 The question is, how do we navigate ourselves past this next 20 to 40 years? 13:01.490 --> 13:10.490 And we'll either be a hyperspatial supertechnological gods, essentially. 13:10.490 --> 13:16.490 Or we'll be living in caves gnawing on bones. 13:16.490 --> 13:26.670 I don't think there's a question. 13:26.670 --> 13:35.670 I don't think that a consumerist lifestyle can extend to all the inhabitants of this planet and be sustained by the planet. 13:35.670 --> 13:36.670 It's obvious it can't. 13:36.670 --> 13:43.670 It's obvious within a few years, we'll begin to see oil prices going up. 13:43.670 --> 13:48.670 The whole economy, based on cheap energy and stuff, isn't going to go on the way it is. 13:48.670 --> 13:50.670 Business as usual isn't an option. 13:50.670 --> 13:55.670 The most unlikely scenario, in my opinion, 13:55.670 --> 14:00.670 is that we can sustain an illusion of business as usual. 14:00.670 --> 14:08.670 In other words, it's very hard for me to imagine 500 more years of Western history. 14:08.670 --> 14:15.670 Of idiot politics, daytime TV, soccer scores. 14:15.670 --> 14:23.670 I mean, obviously, the least likely thing is that anything like what we have 14:23.670 --> 14:26.670 is going to survive. 14:26.670 --> 14:28.670 The civilization that we've got going is going to crash. 14:28.670 --> 14:30.670 Every civilization has crashed. 14:30.670 --> 14:31.670 Sooner or later. 14:31.670 --> 14:32.670 Look at our cities. 14:32.670 --> 14:35.670 Man wasn't meant to live like that. 14:35.670 --> 14:38.670 Concrete jungles and smog and pollution and noise. 14:38.670 --> 14:40.670 Beam it down from outer space. 14:40.670 --> 14:43.670 Use solar-powered satellites. 14:43.670 --> 14:46.670 Eco-cities is my idea of the utopia. 14:46.670 --> 14:48.670 Or the new-topia. 14:48.670 --> 14:50.670 And that's a new good place. 14:50.670 --> 14:52.670 Governments can't think beyond the next quarter. 14:52.670 --> 14:55.670 Let alone the next decade or 50 years. 14:55.670 --> 15:00.670 If we were to place our power at the service of our imaginations 15:00.670 --> 15:03.670 rather than our primate politics, 15:03.670 --> 15:07.670 we would create a civilization worthy of the name. 15:07.670 --> 15:11.670 Things will change, but I'm afraid they'll change in response 15:11.670 --> 15:16.670 to disasters rather than through the anticipation of them. 15:16.670 --> 15:21.670 Evolution, at least a time rate of change, is faster and faster. 15:21.670 --> 15:27.670 So we have this not only runaway population density, 15:27.670 --> 15:31.670 but also runaway cultural transformation. 15:31.670 --> 15:37.670 When we reach this point where we are this globally connected entity 15:37.670 --> 15:42.670 and you can just, you know, instead of setting up your computer, 15:42.670 --> 15:48.670 you can just lay back and close your eyes and bring down the net. 15:48.670 --> 15:51.670 This is our evolutionary future. 15:51.670 --> 15:54.670 We see maybe in the next 15 minutes 15:54.670 --> 15:57.670 all the change that happened in the past century. 15:57.670 --> 16:02.670 We can't even say where our horizon is because things are changing so fast. 16:02.670 --> 16:05.670 Generations are coming faster and faster. 16:05.670 --> 16:07.670 So our evolution is a certainty. 16:07.670 --> 16:10.670 But in terms of Earth years, 16:10.670 --> 16:14.670 rotations of the Earth around the Sun or something, 16:14.670 --> 16:18.670 we don't know how many of those there will be 16:18.670 --> 16:21.670 before our evolutionary track comes to 16:21.670 --> 16:23.670 what we can call it. 16:23.670 --> 16:29.670 I think that humanity is in its wild adolescent phase 16:29.670 --> 16:35.670 where the unconscious self-destructiveness 16:35.670 --> 16:39.670 is surfacing at the same time 16:39.670 --> 16:43.670 that its power and strength have never been greater. 16:43.670 --> 16:49.670 And so the capacity and the power to annihilate yourself 16:49.670 --> 16:53.670 is growing at the same time as the possibility 16:53.670 --> 16:58.670 for our waking up collectively 16:58.670 --> 17:02.670 at a faster rate than ever before possible. 17:02.670 --> 17:07.670 Post-industrial, constipated, existential, 17:07.670 --> 17:12.670 prosthesis-divided creature that we are 17:12.670 --> 17:17.670 is going to crack its exoskeleton 17:17.670 --> 17:19.670 and the new primitive. 17:19.670 --> 17:22.670 It is going to walk out, you know, 17:22.670 --> 17:26.670 with black contact lenses implanted in the eyelids, 17:26.670 --> 17:30.670 menus hanging in space, 17:30.670 --> 17:35.670 able to access vast three-dimensional simulacrums 17:35.670 --> 17:38.670 of imaginary realities, 17:38.670 --> 17:43.670 but basically living a close-to-hunter-gatherer lifestyle 17:43.670 --> 17:47.670 in very small, localized human communities 17:47.670 --> 17:52.670 with very focused ecological and land-based concerns 17:52.670 --> 17:55.670 in the three-dimensional surround. 17:55.670 --> 18:01.670 And all artificiality will be virtual. 18:01.670 --> 18:05.670 Reality sequence complete. 18:05.670 --> 18:08.670 By the time I'd woken up, billions had evolved 18:08.670 --> 18:11.670 from citizens into netizens, 18:11.670 --> 18:15.670 fused by technology into a single consciousness. 18:15.670 --> 18:17.670 But what is consciousness? 18:17.670 --> 18:20.670 Neural reality accessed. 18:20.670 --> 18:41.570 What's popularly known as the evolution of consciousness, 18:41.570 --> 18:46.570 in other words, that the expansion of cognitive repertoire 18:46.570 --> 18:48.570 that occurs in human beings, 18:48.570 --> 18:53.570 which has always been a great puzzle to evolutionary theory, 18:53.570 --> 18:57.570 I believe occurred in the presence of a kind of catalyst 18:57.570 --> 18:59.570 for the human imagination. 19:01.570 --> 19:03.570 What is cognition? 19:04.570 --> 19:08.570 Well, cognition, I think, in its most basic sense, 19:08.570 --> 19:10.570 is knowledge or knowing. 19:10.570 --> 19:14.570 When you cognize something, you understand it. 19:14.570 --> 19:16.570 You rock it. 19:16.570 --> 19:21.570 There may be a metaprogram running of some kind here. 19:23.570 --> 19:26.570 We have what we can call a metaself 19:26.570 --> 19:30.570 that is capable of seeing the Darwinian self for what it is. 19:30.570 --> 19:32.570 In other words, this program 19:32.570 --> 19:42.570 that is controlling the organism, the individual, 19:42.570 --> 19:47.570 to respond rather organically to a certain stimuli. 19:49.570 --> 19:55.570 It's become important for us to expand human cognition, 19:55.570 --> 20:00.570 to expand human cognition in order to get us out of the mess we're in. 20:02.570 --> 20:05.570 We have latent in our brain 20:05.570 --> 20:09.570 a few teak or futuristic states of consciousness 20:09.570 --> 20:12.570 that are designed for our future. 20:13.570 --> 20:17.570 The brain may be processing consciousness 20:17.570 --> 20:20.570 in the same way that the lungs process air. 20:22.570 --> 20:27.570 Consciousness is the ocean of life. 20:27.570 --> 20:33.120 Consciousness is the breath of life. 20:33.120 --> 20:37.620 Consciousness is overrated. 20:40.470 --> 20:42.470 I sometimes think I'm too conscious. 20:42.470 --> 20:44.470 I'm going nuts. 20:44.470 --> 20:47.470 I mean, you know, what is consciousness? 20:47.470 --> 20:49.470 Does it mean just awareness? 20:49.470 --> 20:51.470 Like, I'm aware. 20:51.470 --> 20:53.470 I have eyes in the back of my head. 20:53.470 --> 20:54.470 I can walk downtown. 20:54.470 --> 20:55.470 I can see when there's something afoot. 20:55.470 --> 20:56.470 Don't go there. 20:56.470 --> 20:59.470 You know, God looks after me because I'm conscious. 20:59.470 --> 21:02.470 Is that, you know, the level? 21:04.470 --> 21:05.470 Consciousness is eternal. 21:05.470 --> 21:07.470 All it does is change form. 21:10.470 --> 21:14.470 I understand consciousness as subjectivity. 21:14.470 --> 21:16.470 This subjective self, 21:16.470 --> 21:18.470 we can call it the Darwinian self 21:18.470 --> 21:20.470 because it has been shaped by evolution. 21:20.470 --> 21:24.470 The Darwinian self is enslaved to this chain reaction. 21:24.470 --> 21:28.470 Stimuli, sensations, feelings, emotions, 21:28.470 --> 21:30.470 motivation, behavior, 21:30.470 --> 21:33.470 chain reaction, enslavement. 21:33.470 --> 21:38.470 We know a fair bit about how the Darwinian brain functions. 21:38.470 --> 21:40.470 Darwinian brain underlying the Darwinian brain. 21:40.470 --> 21:43.470 However, we know very little about how 21:43.470 --> 21:46.470 the non-Darwinian mind functions. 21:46.470 --> 21:48.470 Almost nothing. 21:50.470 --> 21:54.470 We already know from the meditative traditions 21:54.470 --> 21:56.470 and from the shamanic traditions 21:56.470 --> 21:59.470 and from religious mystical traditions 21:59.470 --> 22:02.470 that there's more to consciousness 22:02.470 --> 22:06.470 than modern psychology departments would have us believe. 22:06.470 --> 22:12.470 The origin of consciousness. 22:12.470 --> 22:15.470 You know, what happened here? 22:15.470 --> 22:18.470 I mean, this planet had been producing chipmunks 22:18.470 --> 22:21.470 and birds of paradise and ant colonies 22:21.470 --> 22:25.470 cheerfully for hundreds of millions of years 22:25.470 --> 22:30.470 without this left-wing swerve into tool-building, 22:30.470 --> 22:35.470 cognitive systems, energy release, and so forth and so on. 22:35.470 --> 22:37.470 What happened? 22:37.470 --> 22:41.470 Why did the natural order admit 22:41.470 --> 22:44.470 of a creature as bizarre 22:44.470 --> 22:48.470 and as at apparent cross-purposes 22:48.470 --> 22:50.470 as our dear selves? 22:50.470 --> 22:52.470 I mean, this is really the question of philosophy. 22:52.470 --> 22:56.470 What is our place in the natural order of things? 22:56.470 --> 22:59.470 You know, fallen angel? 22:59.470 --> 23:01.470 Risen demon? 23:01.470 --> 23:04.470 Prodigal scion of the elect? 23:04.470 --> 23:07.470 Or existential monster 23:07.470 --> 23:11.470 roving a landscape of conferred meaning? 23:11.470 --> 23:13.470 Who are we? 23:13.470 --> 23:14.470 This is the question. 23:14.470 --> 23:16.470 And so it becomes a question of 23:16.470 --> 23:18.470 why did consciousness emerge? 23:18.470 --> 23:51.170 There's a question that comes to everybody's mind is 23:51.170 --> 23:53.170 who am I? 23:53.170 --> 23:56.170 What is this consciousness that I have inside myself? 23:56.170 --> 23:57.170 How does... 23:57.170 --> 23:59.170 Where am I in the universe? 23:59.170 --> 24:02.170 How does the universe relate to myself? 24:02.170 --> 24:05.630 Who am I? 24:06.630 --> 24:08.630 Who am I? 24:08.630 --> 24:13.630 I am the temporary expression of a gene swarm 24:13.630 --> 24:16.630 that is much larger than myself. 24:16.630 --> 24:21.630 I am a member of an animal species 24:21.630 --> 24:25.630 protruding into the phenomenon of existence. 24:25.630 --> 24:31.680 Cognition is... 24:31.680 --> 24:33.680 I don't even know that we can define that 24:33.680 --> 24:35.680 in the archaeological record. 24:35.680 --> 24:38.680 It's hard to know how you would 24:38.680 --> 24:42.680 how you would measure cognition in objects. 24:42.680 --> 24:45.680 Like you said, art is relatively easy 24:45.680 --> 24:47.680 but then how do you define art? 24:47.680 --> 24:50.920 God is an artist. 24:50.920 --> 25:01.570 God's the ultimate artist. 25:01.570 --> 25:04.570 The implicit suggestion being that somehow 25:04.570 --> 25:06.570 matter gives rise to mind 25:06.570 --> 25:08.570 or mind emerges from matter. 25:08.570 --> 25:14.570 But this somehow has never been explained. 25:14.570 --> 25:16.570 It wasn't really consciousness that evolved out of matter 25:16.570 --> 25:18.570 but actually vice versa. 25:18.570 --> 25:20.570 That consciousness came first 25:20.570 --> 25:22.570 and matter evolved out of consciousness. 25:22.570 --> 25:25.100 Dualism. 25:25.100 --> 25:27.100 Mind and matter equally fundamental. 25:27.100 --> 25:30.610 We have the idea that 25:30.610 --> 25:33.610 that with evolution things became more complex. 25:33.610 --> 25:35.610 You developed a nervous system. 25:35.610 --> 25:37.610 The nervous system became a little more complex. 25:37.610 --> 25:38.610 It could do more things. 25:38.610 --> 25:40.610 Finally you got the brain 25:40.610 --> 25:42.610 and then the brain evolved. 25:42.610 --> 25:43.610 It became bigger and bigger. 25:43.610 --> 25:45.610 And finally we got the human brain 25:45.610 --> 25:47.610 the neocortex 25:47.610 --> 25:48.610 and we had consciousness. 25:48.610 --> 25:50.610 But that is to suppose that 25:50.610 --> 25:53.610 mind evolved out of matter. 25:53.610 --> 25:55.610 But what about the idea that 25:55.610 --> 25:57.610 maybe mind was present from the very beginning. 25:57.610 --> 25:58.610 There was proto-mind. 25:58.610 --> 26:00.610 Mind was there from the beginning 26:00.610 --> 26:01.610 from the big bang 26:01.610 --> 26:03.610 from the creation of the universe. 26:03.610 --> 26:05.610 And that mind in a way is guiding matter. 26:05.610 --> 26:08.610 It's helping matter in matter's evolution. 26:08.610 --> 26:14.460 Consciousness has got to be 26:14.460 --> 26:18.460 what the human journey through time is about. 26:18.460 --> 26:22.460 I mean if the future does not hold more consciousness 26:22.460 --> 26:28.460 then what kind of future could it possibly be? 26:28.460 --> 26:33.190 Neuroscience can measure what goes on in the brain. 26:33.190 --> 26:37.190 What brain states correspond to the mind states 26:37.190 --> 26:39.190 potentially within our power to 26:39.190 --> 26:43.190 induce 26:43.190 --> 26:49.080 whatever state we desire. 26:49.080 --> 26:52.080 What should our response be 26:52.080 --> 26:54.080 when they build machines that 26:54.080 --> 26:56.080 can read your mind? 26:56.080 --> 26:59.080 And that's about ten years ahead. 26:59.080 --> 27:01.080 If they think drugs are a threat 27:01.080 --> 27:03.080 what are they going to do 27:03.080 --> 27:05.080 when there are neural technologies 27:05.080 --> 27:07.080 that are not drugs 27:07.080 --> 27:10.080 but that can induce 27:10.080 --> 27:13.080 virtually any state of consciousness you want? 27:13.080 --> 27:18.620 Get control of your brain and your mind, you know. 27:18.620 --> 27:20.620 If consciousness has anything to do with anything 27:20.620 --> 27:22.620 it has to do with experience, surely. 27:22.620 --> 27:24.620 It's a state of consciousness of objective knowledge. 27:24.620 --> 27:26.620 The Buddhists would call it 27:26.620 --> 27:29.620 I believe it refers to the same 27:29.620 --> 27:32.620 kind of objectivity as Vajra 27:32.620 --> 27:43.290 in Tibetan Buddhism. 27:43.290 --> 27:45.290 The Vajra consciousness, 27:45.290 --> 27:50.290 you know, the kind of diamond-like 27:50.290 --> 27:53.290 interconnectedness of all beings 27:53.290 --> 27:55.290 and things in this 27:55.290 --> 28:01.290 empty, clear, brilliant, diamond-like 28:01.290 --> 28:04.290 pure, primordial, 28:04.290 --> 28:06.290 Buddha mind 28:06.290 --> 28:09.290 that is 28:09.290 --> 28:12.290 the real fabric 28:12.290 --> 28:14.290 of the multiverse, 28:14.290 --> 28:17.980 you know, the Buddhiverse. 28:17.980 --> 28:18.980 There are amazing insights 28:18.980 --> 28:20.980 that have come out of Tibetan Buddhism 28:20.980 --> 28:22.980 and other forms of Buddhism 28:22.980 --> 28:24.980 and out of Hinduism 28:24.980 --> 28:26.980 but also out of Shamanism 28:26.980 --> 28:28.980 and about magical techniques 28:28.980 --> 28:31.980 of conscious transformation 28:31.980 --> 28:33.980 in different parts of the world 28:33.980 --> 28:35.980 through the use of psychoactive substances. 28:35.980 --> 28:37.980 These are the types of substances 28:37.980 --> 28:39.980 that have been used 28:39.980 --> 28:41.980 in various cultures 28:41.980 --> 28:43.980 all of which have contributed 28:43.980 --> 28:45.980 to explorations of consciousness. 28:45.980 --> 28:46.980 Previously, these were confined 28:46.980 --> 28:48.980 to the cultures in which they happened. 28:48.980 --> 28:50.980 What's new today 28:50.980 --> 28:52.980 is that we can access them all 28:52.980 --> 28:54.980 and if we assume that different cultures 28:54.980 --> 28:56.980 have discovered parts of the puzzle 28:56.980 --> 28:58.980 and that they're complementary 28:58.980 --> 29:00.980 somehow being able to integrate these 29:00.980 --> 29:02.980 and learn from all these different traditions 29:02.980 --> 29:03.980 could take us further 29:03.980 --> 29:04.980 than people have been able to get 29:04.980 --> 29:10.980 But it is one of the great possibilities, one of the great promises, I think, of the present day. 29:10.980 --> 29:17.870 I think it's a responsibility of people who have reached higher states of consciousness 29:17.870 --> 29:21.870 to be able to then take what they've learned, integrate it into their life, 29:21.870 --> 29:26.870 and then through art, music, writing, science, medicine, politics, 29:26.870 --> 29:32.870 whatever avenue that you express yourself in, to then take what you've learned from that 29:32.870 --> 29:37.870 and then broadcast it out so that you can help change consciousness around the world. 29:37.870 --> 29:48.960 Let's use the electronic advantages we have to raise people's consciousness. 29:48.960 --> 29:54.070 Reality sequence complete. 29:54.070 --> 29:58.070 I've learned a lot. But am I really more than a carbon-based humanoid? 29:58.070 --> 30:03.070 Is God a myth or is something, someone, watching it all? 30:03.070 --> 30:06.070 What is God? 30:06.070 --> 30:43.700 Genesis, day one. 30:43.700 --> 30:44.700 Look into space. 30:44.700 --> 30:46.700 Worthy in the cloud. 30:46.700 --> 30:48.700 Enlightening in rain. 30:48.700 --> 30:50.700 In flowers. 30:50.700 --> 30:52.700 In trees. 30:52.700 --> 30:54.700 This is the spiritual path. 30:54.700 --> 31:00.700 God is the universe becoming slowly more conscious of itself and experiencing itself. 31:00.700 --> 31:07.700 Some people see God as a being that is separate from the universe, that created the universe. 31:07.700 --> 31:13.700 Some people see God as the universe itself becoming self-aware. 31:13.700 --> 31:19.700 Some people see God as a state of consciousness that we can all unify with. 31:19.700 --> 31:22.700 Was there a God that finds you in the universe? 31:22.700 --> 31:30.700 Were there an infinite number of universes, some of which didn't survive, most of which didn't survive, a few survived, and we're on one? 31:30.700 --> 31:36.700 Plato said, if God does not exist, human beings were created. 31:36.700 --> 31:41.700 I don't believe in a personal God as such, 31:41.700 --> 31:46.700 but I believe that in some way the universe is God. 31:46.700 --> 31:56.700 I think that what God really is is the universe in my, as I can see, process of becoming conscious and the process of waking up. 31:56.700 --> 32:04.700 I think you'd probably say that humans invented God somewhere between 20 and 70,000 years ago. 32:04.700 --> 32:09.700 Whoever God is, and it works in a mysterious way that I have to finally just say, 32:09.700 --> 32:17.700 hey, I can't figure who it, God, she is, but there's a benevolent thread in my paradigm. 32:17.700 --> 32:19.700 Belief. The ability to believe. 32:19.700 --> 32:22.700 God is the concept by which we measure our pain. 32:22.700 --> 32:24.700 God is everything. 32:24.700 --> 32:27.700 God is everything. 32:27.700 --> 32:34.700 It's the impossibility of putting God into words. 32:34.700 --> 32:38.700 It's beyond words. It's the source of words. 32:39.700 --> 32:43.700 The words can't contain it. It contains the words. 32:43.700 --> 32:45.700 You know, it's another whole level. 32:45.700 --> 32:47.700 The indescribable. 32:47.700 --> 32:51.700 Something other than our own consciousness. 32:51.700 --> 32:54.700 The repository of world intelligence. 32:54.700 --> 33:01.700 Something immortal or timeless in the intelligent sphere in which we live, 33:01.700 --> 33:07.700 which has a longer horizon than the planet Earth. 33:07.700 --> 33:13.700 I look at God as the self-organizing principle of the universe. 33:13.700 --> 33:16.700 There are many ways of viewing the concept of God. 33:16.700 --> 33:19.700 The idea that the universe is interconnected, 33:19.700 --> 33:22.700 the idea that we're all one in some sense, 33:22.700 --> 33:25.700 that every consciousness is interlinked, 33:25.700 --> 33:29.700 and that there are ways to access these states of consciousness and become unified. 33:29.700 --> 33:32.700 I think that's what people mean by the concept of God. 33:32.700 --> 33:34.700 Theosis. 33:34.700 --> 33:36.700 You know, the... 33:37.700 --> 33:43.700 magnetizing of a soul toward the ultimate source. 33:43.700 --> 33:44.700 Theosis. 33:44.700 --> 33:46.700 Coming closer to God. 33:46.700 --> 33:49.700 We are only as divine as we are selfless. 33:49.700 --> 33:52.700 Just being aware of spirit. 33:52.700 --> 33:55.700 That, for me, is spirituality. 33:55.700 --> 33:58.700 We've forgotten that we're this spiritual being. 33:58.700 --> 34:05.700 Religion usually is the handed-down exegesis of some original revelation. 34:05.700 --> 34:06.700 Uh... 34:06.700 --> 34:13.700 Almost always polluted and perverted and manipulated by a cultural agenda. 34:13.700 --> 34:14.700 Muhammad said, 34:14.700 --> 34:15.700 Trust in God, but tie your camel. 34:15.700 --> 34:18.700 I think the Christian conception of the afterlife 34:18.700 --> 34:22.700 is one of the biggest and most destructive illusions in our culture. 34:22.700 --> 34:26.700 There's only one God, and the only way you can communicate with Him is through us. 34:26.700 --> 34:28.700 You've got basically three options. 34:28.700 --> 34:31.700 Hell, Heaven, and some in-between state of purgatory. 34:31.700 --> 34:32.700 That's terrible. 34:32.700 --> 34:35.700 Simplification and a rigid, schematic theme. 34:35.700 --> 34:41.700 A theme superimposed in the infinite variety of afterlife experiences that we can all have. 34:41.700 --> 34:43.700 It's a propaganda thing it's designed to control. 34:43.700 --> 34:45.700 If you back off of religion, 34:45.700 --> 34:50.700 and you don't talk about the religious systems that are in place now, 34:50.700 --> 34:53.700 because if you start talking about religion, then you're talking about, you know, 34:53.700 --> 34:59.700 this whole entity, much like science is a whole sort of culturally constructed entity. 34:59.700 --> 35:04.700 But if you think about the thing that underpins religion, 35:04.700 --> 35:11.700 so frankly, the ability to believe in something that isn't rational, 35:11.700 --> 35:13.700 that you haven't thought through yourself. 35:13.700 --> 35:18.700 And we have an ability to believe in things that we haven't thought through ourselves 35:18.700 --> 35:20.700 or haven't seen and rationalized all the time. 35:20.700 --> 35:25.700 I mean, someone tells you that the Earth is round, and you believe it. 35:25.700 --> 35:28.700 You haven't necessarily seen it, but you believe it. 35:28.700 --> 35:34.700 So this ability to believe that underpins, in particular, I think, religion, 35:34.700 --> 35:38.700 that's the point that gives me hope, 35:38.700 --> 35:49.700 is that the theater of humanity and its drama 35:49.700 --> 36:04.390 is poised toward transformative self-realization from an internal mechanism. 36:04.390 --> 36:06.390 Some scientists, 36:06.390 --> 36:14.390 who are trying to account for religion in Darwinian terms, as an adaptation. 36:14.390 --> 36:18.390 Science, I think, is going to burst out of that narrow, limiting model. 36:18.390 --> 36:23.390 And when it does, when we realize that the mind is more extensive than the brain, 36:23.390 --> 36:29.390 that the brain is clearly related to the mind, but the two are not the same thing, 36:29.390 --> 36:34.390 when we see that our minds reach out beyond our brains all the time 36:34.390 --> 36:36.390 in every act of perception, 36:36.390 --> 36:39.390 through non-local awareness, 36:39.390 --> 36:43.390 there's increasing evidence that our minds are not confined to our brains, 36:43.390 --> 36:46.390 and they certainly don't feel as if they are. 36:46.390 --> 36:52.390 Then, I think, we get to a point where we can take spiritual experiences, 36:52.390 --> 36:54.390 religious experiences, much more seriously. 36:54.390 --> 37:15.300 May God mind hear my prayers and email me an answer I can understand. 37:15.300 --> 37:18.300 Meantime, back in the 21st century, 37:18.300 --> 37:20.300 can the fusion of science and spirituality 37:20.300 --> 37:23.300 accelerate the evolution of consciousness? 37:30.250 --> 38:07.170 How do things come into existence? 38:07.170 --> 38:09.170 And how do they maintain themselves? 38:09.170 --> 38:11.170 And how do they disappear? 38:11.170 --> 38:18.170 And what is the unfolding of the world as we experience it? 38:18.170 --> 38:21.170 When I look and see a scene around me, 38:21.170 --> 38:24.170 that scene is not the actual physical reality. 38:24.170 --> 38:28.170 It exists within the cyberspace of my brain. 38:28.170 --> 38:32.170 Neuro-cybernetic globalized tribe. 38:32.170 --> 38:37.170 There are no colors out there in the real physical world. 38:37.170 --> 38:40.170 There's only light, 38:40.170 --> 38:44.170 consisting of electromagnetic radiation of different frequencies. 38:44.170 --> 38:48.170 Our brains, our minds, take this light in, 38:48.170 --> 38:51.170 convert it into neural impulses, 38:51.170 --> 38:53.170 which then we build a model of, 38:53.170 --> 38:57.170 and we decode those different frequencies into different colors. 38:57.170 --> 38:59.170 We paint the colors in. 38:59.170 --> 39:00.170 We paint the green in. 39:00.170 --> 39:01.170 We paint the blue in. 39:01.170 --> 39:02.170 We paint the red in. 39:02.170 --> 39:03.170 It's not out there. 39:03.170 --> 39:05.170 The traveler is the journey. 39:05.170 --> 39:08.170 What you see is not what you see, but who you are. 39:08.170 --> 39:16.860 The most important moment shaping this moment 39:16.860 --> 39:20.860 is a galaxy of moments scattered through time, 39:20.860 --> 39:22.860 some of them millions of years ago, 39:22.860 --> 39:23.860 some of them seconds ago, 39:23.860 --> 39:25.860 some of them centuries ago. 39:25.860 --> 39:26.860 And together, 39:26.860 --> 39:28.860 they create the incredible, 39:28.860 --> 39:30.860 incredibly rich, 39:30.860 --> 39:33.860 affect-laden environment 39:33.860 --> 39:38.860 that we call being a thinking human being paying attention. 39:38.860 --> 39:42.860 Nobody is given the script, 39:42.860 --> 39:44.860 you know, the day, 39:44.860 --> 39:48.860 until every moment of now occurs. 39:48.860 --> 39:51.860 All time is in the present. 39:51.860 --> 39:54.860 The moment in which I speak is in the past. 39:54.860 --> 39:56.860 And the future does not exist 39:56.860 --> 39:58.860 except in our imagination. 39:58.860 --> 40:02.860 I saw time as a river. 40:02.860 --> 40:07.860 We can imagine all the way back to the Big Bang. 40:07.860 --> 40:15.140 You know, we can feel the echo from that 40:15.140 --> 40:20.140 in ourselves and in the sounds that we hear and things, 40:20.140 --> 40:25.140 just because without that, there wouldn't be this. 40:25.140 --> 40:30.140 The dominant ethos in biology and science 40:30.140 --> 40:34.140 and psychology is reductionist mechanistic. 40:34.140 --> 40:37.140 Scientific reductionism, 40:37.140 --> 40:41.140 we can think of as kind of downwards reductionism. 40:41.140 --> 40:44.140 Everything is reduced down to matter. 40:44.140 --> 40:48.140 Whereas religious monism is a form of upwards reductionism, 40:48.140 --> 40:53.140 where everything is reduced upwards to mind. 40:53.140 --> 40:56.140 Can spirituality and science be reconciled? 40:56.140 --> 40:58.140 I think philosophy is the bridge. 40:58.140 --> 41:00.140 It's not just science that creates cities. 41:00.140 --> 41:01.140 It's not just art. 41:01.140 --> 41:03.140 It's religion that creates cities. 41:03.140 --> 41:06.140 Religion and science are, 41:06.140 --> 41:09.140 they're kind of parallel constructs. 41:09.140 --> 41:12.140 It's the underpinning stuff. 41:12.140 --> 41:17.140 It's the belief versus rationality. 41:17.140 --> 41:19.140 You only have to pose questions like, 41:19.140 --> 41:21.140 what was there before there was the Big Bang, 41:21.140 --> 41:23.140 beginnings of the universe, and you're in trouble. 41:23.140 --> 41:25.140 The idea of the Big Bang, 41:25.140 --> 41:27.140 it's like a religious, 41:27.140 --> 41:29.140 it's like a test of religious faith. 41:29.140 --> 41:31.140 The great obstacle to spirituality 41:31.140 --> 41:33.140 is the lack of objectivity of seekers. 41:33.140 --> 41:36.140 Science came in and made a deal with religion. 41:36.140 --> 41:37.140 We're going to deal with matter. 41:37.140 --> 41:39.140 You can deal with spirit. 41:39.140 --> 41:43.140 This fiddling around with spirits is not scientific. 41:43.140 --> 41:46.140 The tragedy of modern physics is that at the moment, 41:46.140 --> 41:49.140 it lacks a place for soul in the world. 41:49.140 --> 41:51.140 The best I can do for science 41:51.140 --> 41:54.140 is just say to people, cut them some slack. 41:54.140 --> 41:58.140 The province of religion begins exactly where 41:58.140 --> 42:02.140 Darwinian adaptationist processes end. 42:02.140 --> 42:05.140 Science and spirituality are coming together 42:05.140 --> 42:07.140 now more than ever before. 42:07.140 --> 42:09.140 That's the birth that we have to do. 42:09.140 --> 42:11.140 Eventually, science and spirituality 42:11.140 --> 42:13.140 will merge seamlessly, 42:13.140 --> 42:16.140 as they sort of do in books like 42:16.140 --> 42:18.140 The Tao of Physics. 42:18.140 --> 42:20.140 Ultimately, spirituality will become 42:20.140 --> 42:22.140 a branch of science. 42:22.140 --> 42:25.140 We are so busy doing science, 42:25.140 --> 42:28.140 we've seldom paused to reflect upon 42:28.140 --> 42:32.140 science and just what is it that we're doing. 42:32.140 --> 42:35.140 A new dialogue between science and spirituality 42:35.140 --> 42:38.140 can be very constructive, very helpful for everybody. 42:38.140 --> 42:40.140 In fact, one of the most exciting things 42:40.140 --> 42:42.140 that could happen. 42:42.140 --> 42:45.140 But it can't happen for those scientists 42:45.140 --> 42:47.140 who remain locked into this very narrow view 42:47.140 --> 42:49.140 of the mind and the brain. 42:49.140 --> 42:52.140 Science at the moment has become obsessed 42:52.140 --> 42:54.140 with a will to power, a will to dominate. 42:54.140 --> 42:56.140 It's obsessed with progress. 42:56.140 --> 42:58.140 It's obsessed with control. 42:58.140 --> 43:00.140 And that is going to change. 43:00.140 --> 43:02.140 How do we create global justice? 43:02.140 --> 43:05.140 The ethics of what we're doing, 43:05.140 --> 43:08.140 we have to consciously move into the future 43:08.140 --> 43:12.140 because we've seen again and again 43:12.140 --> 43:16.140 the consequences of what you might call 43:16.140 --> 43:20.140 science unleashed or technology unleashed. 43:20.140 --> 43:22.140 In the world we live in generally, 43:22.140 --> 43:25.140 disunity at the moment is bigger than unity is. 43:25.140 --> 43:27.140 It doesn't really matter whether you're a Buddhist 43:27.140 --> 43:30.140 or a Christian or a Jew. 43:30.140 --> 43:33.140 The point is to recognize and respect 43:33.140 --> 43:37.140 one another's religious values and interests 43:37.140 --> 43:40.140 and to take responsibility for your own consciousness. 43:40.140 --> 43:42.140 You can talk about morality and love 43:42.140 --> 43:44.140 and various things in religion. 43:44.140 --> 43:46.140 It helps you answer those sorts of questions 43:46.140 --> 43:49.140 and you can answer questions about the material world 43:49.140 --> 43:51.140 and various other things using science 43:51.140 --> 43:53.140 and so they can work next to each other. 43:53.140 --> 43:56.140 As conscious beings we experience 43:56.140 --> 44:01.140 an apparent fundamental dualism, 44:01.140 --> 44:03.140 the dualism of mind and matter. 44:03.140 --> 44:04.140 This leads many people, 44:04.140 --> 44:07.140 many scientists and many non-scientists as well 44:07.140 --> 44:10.140 to develop an ideology 44:10.140 --> 44:13.140 that matter is more fundamental than mind. 44:13.140 --> 44:14.140 As a result, 44:14.140 --> 44:16.140 the dualism that we experience 44:16.140 --> 44:18.140 gets reduced to a monism, 44:18.140 --> 44:20.140 scientific materialism 44:20.140 --> 44:22.140 or scientific monism. 44:22.140 --> 44:24.140 It's one world in which I have two worldviews. 44:24.140 --> 44:25.140 It's one world. 44:25.140 --> 44:29.140 Science has to expand and it's limited. 44:29.140 --> 44:31.140 We're on borrowed time as it is. 44:31.140 --> 44:33.140 Is there like a common denominator 44:33.140 --> 44:35.140 between all paradigms, all cultures? 44:35.140 --> 44:38.140 Is there a unity in this whole thing or not? 44:38.140 --> 44:40.140 We do, each of us, 44:40.140 --> 44:42.140 create our own universe. 44:42.140 --> 44:46.140 We can support completely disjoint ideas 44:46.140 --> 44:48.140 in our minds at the same time 44:48.140 --> 44:51.140 and this is the kind of coexistence 44:51.140 --> 44:53.140 we have now between science and the spirit. 44:53.140 --> 44:55.140 But science could wholeheartedly 44:55.140 --> 44:58.140 and openly embrace the individual soul, 44:58.140 --> 45:00.140 the world soul 45:00.140 --> 45:05.140 and the higher realities of the spiritual life. 45:05.140 --> 45:08.140 It could become acceptable in science 45:08.140 --> 45:10.140 and maybe even transform science 45:10.140 --> 45:14.140 into a more integrative paradigm 45:14.140 --> 45:18.140 which would decrease the negative function of science 45:18.140 --> 45:20.140 which is to harm the environment 45:20.140 --> 45:23.140 out of ignorance or dogmatic belief. 45:23.140 --> 45:24.140 There is no hierarchy 45:24.140 --> 45:27.140 of elder knowledge 45:27.140 --> 45:33.140 in my social vision of things. 45:33.140 --> 45:35.140 There are only people learning 45:35.140 --> 45:40.140 and sharing in a very complex environment. 45:40.140 --> 45:42.140 The control of science is run 45:42.140 --> 45:44.140 a bit like the church before the reformation 45:44.140 --> 45:46.140 as a sort of college of cardinals 45:46.140 --> 45:48.140 that decides what can happen. 45:48.140 --> 45:50.140 The data is never in. 45:50.140 --> 45:52.140 We have such an intolerant narrow system 45:52.140 --> 45:53.140 at the moment that 45:53.140 --> 45:56.140 I think one way of opening it up 45:56.140 --> 45:58.140 is to bring the principle of democracy into science. 45:58.140 --> 46:00.140 It's never been there before. 46:00.140 --> 46:02.140 It's the one institution in modern life 46:02.140 --> 46:05.140 which has no democratic input. 46:05.140 --> 46:08.140 I just think this form of organization is outmoded. 46:08.140 --> 46:10.140 The data actually is in. 46:10.140 --> 46:13.140 It's a narrow dogmatic system 46:13.140 --> 46:15.140 that's now become closely allied 46:15.140 --> 46:17.140 to corporations and governments 46:17.140 --> 46:19.140 in a way that I think is beginning 46:19.140 --> 46:21.140 to do more harm than good. 46:21.140 --> 46:22.140 What is not patented, 46:22.140 --> 46:24.140 is prohibited. 46:24.140 --> 46:26.140 I still believe in science, 46:26.140 --> 46:28.140 but I think it has to be liberated 46:28.140 --> 46:31.140 from its present self-imposed limitations. 46:31.140 --> 46:36.140 Event systems tend to steer themselves 46:36.140 --> 46:37.140 into cul-de-sacs 46:37.140 --> 46:39.140 and then go into equilibrium 46:39.140 --> 46:42.140 and then they become irrelevant. 46:42.140 --> 46:43.140 It's a deeper reality 46:43.140 --> 46:45.140 than the nation-state system. 46:45.140 --> 46:47.140 It's a world without borders 46:47.140 --> 46:49.140 and a world with one ocean. 46:49.140 --> 46:51.140 Creating dreaming in the presence 46:51.140 --> 46:56.140 of technology is a place where, 46:56.140 --> 46:58.140 haunted by genies, 46:58.140 --> 47:01.140 you know, genies that will wrap you 47:01.140 --> 47:04.140 in the blanket of their mysterium 47:04.140 --> 47:06.140 and lead you forward. 47:06.140 --> 47:08.140 March forth, humanity, 47:08.140 --> 47:10.140 to greet a new dawn 47:10.140 --> 47:13.140 as you slid and swat and crawled 47:13.140 --> 47:15.140 and walked down the spiral chains 47:15.140 --> 47:17.140 of evolutionary metamorphosis 47:17.140 --> 47:19.140 to your final awakening. 47:19.140 --> 47:21.140 For this is the day 47:21.140 --> 47:23.140 when you will sleep no more. 47:23.140 --> 47:30.210 Reality sequence complete. 47:30.210 --> 47:34.860 I don't sleep much anyway, 47:34.860 --> 47:36.860 so I imagined encoding myself 47:36.860 --> 47:38.860 and living forever. 47:38.860 --> 47:39.860 But what happens 47:39.860 --> 47:41.860 when you pass over behind the veil? 47:41.860 --> 47:43.860 Is there new life after the old? 47:43.860 --> 47:45.860 What happens when you die? 47:45.860 --> 47:52.530 Do you fear death 47:52.530 --> 47:54.530 and what lies beyond? 47:54.530 --> 47:56.530 I don't think I fear birth 47:56.530 --> 47:58.530 and what lay before. 47:58.530 --> 48:00.530 And I don't think there's any difference. 48:00.530 --> 48:02.530 A glacier rattles 48:02.530 --> 48:04.530 in the cupboard. 48:04.530 --> 48:08.530 The desert sighs in the bed. 48:08.530 --> 48:11.530 And the crack in the teacup opens 48:11.530 --> 48:14.530 a door to the land of the dead. 48:14.530 --> 48:17.530 The Maya call this Shibalba, 48:17.530 --> 48:21.530 the road to the dimension of the dead. 48:21.530 --> 48:23.530 The undiscovered country 48:23.530 --> 48:26.530 from whose born no traveler returns 48:26.530 --> 48:28.530 puzzles the will. 48:28.530 --> 48:31.530 You just go off and continue your life 48:31.530 --> 48:33.530 on other levels. 48:33.530 --> 48:35.530 It's called the spirit levels 48:35.530 --> 48:36.530 or the astral plane. 48:36.530 --> 48:37.530 You go through different things. 48:37.530 --> 48:39.530 They're all mapped out. 48:39.530 --> 48:40.530 After you die, 48:40.530 --> 48:43.530 there's a period of 49 days approximately. 48:43.530 --> 48:48.530 There is an intentional direction 48:48.530 --> 48:53.530 that an evolving soul 48:53.530 --> 48:57.970 can at least go for. 48:57.970 --> 48:59.970 Ultimately, say, his holiness, 48:59.970 --> 49:00.970 the Dalai Lama, 49:00.970 --> 49:02.970 the Buddha of active consciousness, 49:02.970 --> 49:03.970 compassion, 49:03.970 --> 49:06.970 our most high and honored, 49:06.970 --> 49:08.970 exalted 14th. 49:08.970 --> 49:11.970 I hope it's over. 49:11.970 --> 49:14.970 I don't want to be some floating consciousness 49:14.970 --> 49:17.970 that is waiting for some ex-hairdresser 49:17.970 --> 49:20.970 who's become a medium. 49:20.970 --> 49:22.970 What happens to consciousness after death 49:22.970 --> 49:25.970 is what you believe happens to consciousness after death. 49:25.970 --> 49:27.970 There isn't a standard formula 49:27.970 --> 49:29.970 for what happens when we die. 49:29.970 --> 49:31.970 Probably a large determinant 49:31.970 --> 49:33.970 of what happens when we die 49:33.970 --> 49:36.970 depends on what we believe happens when we die. 49:36.970 --> 49:37.970 When we die, 49:37.970 --> 49:39.970 I think we're in the realm of the mind, 49:39.970 --> 49:43.970 which is then separated from the body. 49:43.970 --> 49:46.970 There is this persistent theme 49:46.970 --> 49:48.970 in all of these notions 49:48.970 --> 49:52.970 that death is made more easy, 49:52.970 --> 49:53.970 whatever that means, 49:53.970 --> 49:55.970 if you've learned the territory 49:55.970 --> 49:57.970 before you get there. 49:57.970 --> 49:58.970 And, you know, 49:58.970 --> 50:00.970 in the Mahayana Buddhist situation, 50:00.970 --> 50:02.970 it even becomes as extreme as saying 50:02.970 --> 50:05.970 life is essentially a preparation for death, 50:05.970 --> 50:07.970 a studying of the maps, 50:07.970 --> 50:09.970 a learning of the skills, 50:09.970 --> 50:12.970 a packing of your picnic basket, 50:12.970 --> 50:14.970 so that when you get out there 50:14.970 --> 50:16.970 and the demons are sniffing you 50:16.970 --> 50:18.970 up one side and down the other, 50:18.970 --> 50:21.970 you don't bungle your mantras. 50:21.970 --> 50:23.970 In vine-shrouded jungle, 50:23.970 --> 50:25.970 do not your mantras bungle, 50:25.970 --> 50:27.970 lest a god plant eat you 50:27.970 --> 50:29.970 and into void excrete you. 50:29.970 --> 50:31.970 It's voidness of the voidness, 50:31.970 --> 50:32.970 and beyond, beyond, beyond. 50:32.970 --> 50:34.970 Death is powerful. 50:34.970 --> 50:36.970 There's nothing sad about death. 50:36.970 --> 50:38.970 People can remember their previous lifetimes 50:38.970 --> 50:40.970 and the times between lifetimes. 50:40.970 --> 50:43.970 We can't know where we came from. 50:43.970 --> 50:46.970 We can't know where we're going to. 50:46.970 --> 50:48.970 And why should I bother wasting my time 50:48.970 --> 50:50.970 trying to figure it out? 50:50.970 --> 50:52.970 I'll know when I die where I'm going. 50:52.970 --> 50:54.970 Nobody owns anything 50:54.970 --> 50:57.970 because we die, and that's good. 50:57.970 --> 50:59.970 A race, if you will, 50:59.970 --> 51:02.970 to get there to figure out the meaning of life 51:02.970 --> 51:05.970 instead of figuring out 51:05.970 --> 51:07.970 who we are individually. 51:07.970 --> 51:09.970 Have I died to myself 51:09.970 --> 51:13.970 and come back again transformed? 51:13.970 --> 51:16.970 I hope that perhaps there was a flip side, 51:16.970 --> 51:18.970 like, wow, transcendence. 51:18.970 --> 51:22.970 It's like a bird flying out of a bag. 51:22.970 --> 51:24.970 I am full of doubt 51:24.970 --> 51:28.970 as to the survival of any kind of consciousness, 51:28.970 --> 51:30.970 individual human consciousness, 51:30.970 --> 51:33.970 through the veil of death. 51:33.970 --> 51:35.970 There's a kind of collective consciousness, 51:35.970 --> 51:37.970 and even though one may die, 51:37.970 --> 51:39.970 others will continue. 51:39.970 --> 51:41.970 I happen to be... 51:41.970 --> 51:44.970 to accept this notion of the reincarnation. 51:44.970 --> 51:46.970 A transfer of memory, 51:46.970 --> 51:48.970 even if we accept it's really happened, 51:48.970 --> 51:50.970 doesn't necessarily prove reincarnation. 51:50.970 --> 51:52.970 According to my morphic resonance theory, 51:52.970 --> 51:54.970 you could have memory transfer 51:54.970 --> 51:56.970 without necessarily the individual, 51:56.970 --> 51:59.970 the entire core of the individual being transferred. 51:59.970 --> 52:01.970 Some people can be reincarnated, 52:01.970 --> 52:03.970 but it's a minority pursuit. 52:03.970 --> 52:05.970 It's something that only happens to some people 52:05.970 --> 52:07.970 and most people aren't. 52:07.970 --> 52:09.970 That, I think, is the most reasonable interpretation 52:09.970 --> 52:10.970 of the evidence. 52:10.970 --> 52:12.970 When I die, could I... 52:12.970 --> 52:13.970 In fact, while I'm alive, 52:13.970 --> 52:15.970 could I not download my consciousness 52:15.970 --> 52:17.970 and then I could go ahead and die? 52:17.970 --> 52:22.470 One can only hope that after death comes rebirth. 52:22.470 --> 52:25.470 The Internet was part of my rebirth. 52:25.470 --> 52:27.470 So any more births are a bonus. 52:27.470 --> 52:29.470 See you next time around. 56:04.640 --> 56:24.340 Your intelligence is going to allow us 56:24.340 --> 56:26.340 to re-engineer our bodies. 56:26.340 --> 56:44.050 We know that this universe 56:44.050 --> 56:46.050 really is for real. 56:46.050 --> 57:07.860 It's as if the universe was incredibly fine-tuned. 57:07.860 --> 57:20.550 The seeds of our own self-destruction 57:20.550 --> 57:21.550 are in our DNA. 57:21.550 --> 57:44.300 I guess I don't see humans as being that important. 57:44.300 --> 58:04.700 The future does not exist 58:04.700 --> 58:06.700 except in our imagination. 58:06.700 --> 58:29.480 ...aspect of non-linearity 58:29.480 --> 58:31.480 which many people don't appreciate. 58:31.480 --> 58:53.670 The resonance occurs through what I call 58:53.670 --> 58:55.670 morphogenetic fields. 58:55.670 --> 59:17.020 Theosis. 59:17.020 --> 59:19.020 Coming closer to God. 59:19.020 --> 59:36.480 Who is in control? 59:36.480 --> 59:38.480 You or your Darwinian mind? 59:38.480 --> 01:00:00.260 You monkeys only think you're running things. 01:00:00.260 --> 01:00:06.670 Spirit fell deep, deep, deep, deep 01:00:06.670 --> 01:00:10.670 into matter, limitation and chaos 01:00:10.670 --> 01:00:14.670 and somehow is slowly making a return 01:00:14.670 --> 01:00:18.670 to its higher and to the source of itself. 01:00:18.670 --> 01:00:21.670 Which it has been so long severed from 01:00:21.670 --> 01:00:23.670 and longs to return to 01:00:23.670 --> 01:00:26.670 with such incredible urgency 01:00:26.670 --> 01:00:29.670 that it evolves life on planets 01:00:29.670 --> 01:00:31.670 and technologies inside cultures 01:00:31.670 --> 01:00:33.670 as mere stepping stones 01:00:33.670 --> 01:00:35.670 to its return to the contemplation 01:00:35.670 --> 01:00:37.670 of its self-image. 01:00:37.670 --> 01:00:39.670 Is this religion? 01:00:39.670 --> 01:00:41.670 Is this science fiction? 01:00:41.670 --> 01:00:43.670 Well, who knows? 01:00:43.670 --> 01:00:46.670 And where was it writ in adamantine 01:00:46.670 --> 01:00:47.670 that we should know? 01:00:47.670 --> 01:00:49.670 It's a mystery. 01:00:49.670 --> 01:00:53.670 We are caught inside a mystery 01:00:53.670 --> 01:00:55.670 veiled in an enigma 01:00:55.670 --> 01:00:57.670 locked inside a riddle.