Transform Your Mind & Change Your Life Retreat - 7-Point Mind Training from Atisha (part 25)

0:23 We're not quite finished yet. We can't run away from this few phenomena as if they were dreams. Because the question is, is there anything that exists out there, all by itself, in and of itself, by its own nature? Is there something real? And it seems again that there must be. Otherwise, again, if you throw a rock at the wall, why does it bounce off? Report an error in the passage at 0:23 Highlight the passage at 0:23

0:50 Everything bounces, except for maybe neutrinos and so forth. They pass through, but there must be something really solid there. Whether or not you look at it, it's really there. Which means if it is, if it's really out there from its own side, it's an inherent existent. It's an inherent existent. So this assumption that there's a real world out there that exists prior to and independent of all of our measurements and everything we think about it is a very commonsensical assumption. Report an error in the passage at 0:50 Highlight the passage at 0:50

1:19 It really does make sense. And it was an assumption that was basically not questioned with the rise of this massive paradigm when it was modern science. Report an error in the passage at 1:19 Highlight the passage at 1:19

1:30 And Galileo, of course, was the first, I think, great full-fledged scientist, and he made it very clear what he was after. Because a Tibetan, hearing that there was some guy in Italy that's dropping a big ball, a little ball, after a tower, and wondering whether one of them hits before the other, a Tibetan hearing that might wonder, why are you doing that? Report an error in the passage at 1:30 Highlight the passage at 1:30

1:53 You could be meditating. And instead you're dropping big balls, and why do you care? Really? So if the big ball hits faster? Or at the same time, so what? And then the big question, does earth go around the sun, sun go around the earth? Tibetan might say, well, why do you really care? Or balls rolling down a ramp. Galilee was very interested in that. Balls rolling down a ramp, do they go at constant velocity or do they accelerate? Report an error in the passage at 1:53 Highlight the passage at 1:53

2:20 And he asked questions that he could get answers for because he had a good enough chronometer that he actually could discover something that again refuted 1,800 years of assumption. That they win at constant velocity. Well, they don't. They accelerate. Nobody ever asked that question and had the ability to answer it. So he was brilliant in both terrestrial physics and astronomy and thereby launched the scientific revolution. Report an error in the passage at 2:20 Highlight the passage at 2:20

2:45 But again, why would anybody care? Why would anybody care? And we have an answer. We don't have to wonder or speculate. This was a man, Galileo, who as a youth was trained in what was actually a very famous contemplative hermitage. Not very far from Florence. It's still there and it's still a contemplative hermitage. And he was trained there as a youth to be a contemplative. Report an error in the passage at 2:45 Highlight the passage at 2:45

3:09 And he loved it. He wanted to stay there. He wanted to be a contemplative. His dad wouldn't pay for it. Because somebody had to pay for him. And only his dad in death said, no, no, get a job. So he sent him off to the universe to become a doctor. He hated it. He was at the University of Pisa. Hated it. And so he tried out something else. Report an error in the passage at 3:09 Highlight the passage at 3:09

3:29 He tried out mathematics. That worked out well. But he was a very devout Christian, and so he was not allowed the possibility of seeking God within, which is what Christian contemplatives have been doing for a very long time, since Augustine, the Desert Fathers. That was an old tradition by the time Galileo came along in the 16th century. But his dad wouldn't pay for it, so he had to go out and get a job. Report an error in the passage at 3:29 Highlight the passage at 3:29

3:54 Well, he got a job as a mathematician at the University of Pisa, and then Pajo, and the story goes on. But then why was he interested in these kind of things? And he said, I'll give you the answer, he said he's still a very devout Christian who wants to know the mind of God, which is what Krishna in contemplatives had wanted to know for a very long time, and made a lot of discoveries. Report an error in the passage at 3:54 Highlight the passage at 3:54

4:15 It wasn't just, gee, I wish we could know, but actually they would probe in, and many claimed to have a direct face-to-face encounter, so to speak, with what St. Augustine called the changeless light, which he identified as God. So the answer is, Galileo said, I want to know... Since I can't know the mind of the creator directly, especially when he's looking outside as an mathematician and as a natural philosopher, which we now call scientist, I want to know the mind of the creator, the mind of God. Report an error in the passage at 4:15 Highlight the passage at 4:15

4:48 But my approach will be by way of inference, and that is I will come to know the mind of the creator by clearly understanding the creation that was designed and created by the creator. So the more I know about creation, then I can draw inferences about the mind, Report an error in the passage at 4:48 Highlight the passage at 4:48

5:06 So if you want to know about the nature of a clockmaker's mind, examine the clock. That was the metaphor. That was the metaphor. It was the age of clocks. And so what he was asking here is a question that's been asked for the first 300 years of modern science, and that is out there. Out there. He knew. Descartes knew. Others knew. Report an error in the passage at 5:06 Highlight the passage at 5:06

5:29 That when we look with our human eyeballs, with our human vision, we're seeing anthropocentric and anthropocentric vision of the world. Because we're seeing with human eyes and not those of a reptile or a bumblebee or a bat. And so they know this is not God's eye view. This is a human-centered view, anthropocentric view. Report an error in the passage at 5:29 Highlight the passage at 5:29

5:50 Seeing and then listening also, hearing. Well, it's an anthropocentric hearing of the universe. But what he wanted to know is when we're not looking and we're not listening and we're not touching, because that's also anthropocentric, human hand, human nerve cells and so forth, right? He didn't want to know that. Report an error in the passage at 5:50 Highlight the passage at 5:50

6:05 He wanted to transcend the limitations of an anthropocentric vision of reality. He wanted to approximate a theocentric vision of reality. What's reality to look like from God's perspective? Whether or not we're here. And after all, he is a devout Christian, assumes that's the only perspective there was for the first six days, if you don't count the animals, that God created. Report an error in the passage at 6:05 Highlight the passage at 6:05

6:30 And then after the first, no, actually the first five days, God created everything and then created human beings on the sixth day. So everything was a done deal before we came along. The animals, the suns, the planets, stars, everything was already there and God could see it as it was before we ever came along. Then he created Adam and Eve. Report an error in the passage at 6:30 Highlight the passage at 6:30

6:49 And then we have our anthropocentric perspective, but it's very limited, very local, and almost claustrophobic. So then how can we, how can man, and they were men, how can we approximate God's own vision? How can we at least inferentially, conceptually, how can we see what God sees? What's out there when he's looking and nobody else is looking? And that was the question. Report an error in the passage at 6:49 Highlight the passage at 6:49

7:12 And that drove Kepler, who was a theologian, Copernicus, a theologian, Galileo, a very devout Christian, Newton, a theologian, lots of theology he wrote, and many, many others. Mendel, who started genetics, was a monk. James Clerk Maxwell, the greatest scientist between Newton and Einstein. He was a very devout Christian. So they're pretty much all Christian through the mid-19th century. And so that was the vision. That's what drove science. Report an error in the passage at 7:12 Highlight the passage at 7:12

7:39 It was very, very theological. Very mystical, actually. What's not just to know creation, but know the mind of the Creator by way of creation, and that all assumes there's a real world out there, and it looks like something, and it's composed of something, and God knows, and we would like to know, then the perspective of man will gradually approximate the perspective of God, called apotheosis, where your perspective is ascending to, seeing reality, conceptually with reason, from God's own perspective. But of course Galileo recognized that he was speaking Italian. Report an error in the passage at 7:39 Highlight the passage at 7:39

8:12 And most Italians don't believe that Italian is actually the language of God. And nor is Latin or Sanskrit or Chinese or Hebrew. They recognize they're all human languages. But then God doesn't think in Italian. As much as they might like to think he does, he... no. And so what thoughts does God think that transcends the limitations of human language, anthropocentric language? And you know the answer. Report an error in the passage at 8:12 Highlight the passage at 8:12

8:41 Mathematics. That was the conclusion. God thinks in mathematics, God thinks and imposes mathematical laws on nature. And so what's really out there is the world of the physical world that God created, imposed his laws, that's why we call them laws, because it's all a theological vision of reality. God imposed his laws, he thinks in mathematics, therefore the laws are mathematical. And what's really out there is, to just put it in modern terminology, space, time, matter and energy. Report an error in the passage at 8:41 Highlight the passage at 8:41

9:11 And there's God. God is really out there. So that was the vision that worked for about 300 years. Until starting with Newton, no not Newton, Darwin, then science has become increasingly secularized. So hardly any scientist will nowadays say in public introduce God because that's a non-scientific element. So in the scientific vision there used to be until the mid-19th century in terms of the book of nature, so to speak. Report an error in the passage at 9:11 Highlight the passage at 9:11

9:38 The old ones had their two books, the book of scripture. A revelation in the Book of Nature. And the Book of Nature wound up having four Gospels. Space, time, matter and energy. And then God, who oversees all of that. And God is conscious, so that's where consciousness comes in. God, right? But then you take God out of the equation from the time of Darwin and then on into the 20th century, but completely gone from the equation. Report an error in the passage at 9:38 Highlight the passage at 9:38

10:03 Then you have only four. But then something's missing. And that is consciousness. And so... This whole notion of what's out there, what is it that accounts for the fact that fruit rots when nobody's looking, but more importantly, this consensuality of our experience. Whether you're a bumblebee, you still bump into the wall, and so on. What's out there when nobody's looking? And so now, this magnificent 300, 400 year evolution of physics, astronomy and so forth, then now we have these conceptual constructs of matter. Report an error in the passage at 10:03 Highlight the passage at 10:03

10:38 What is matter? And then we have a lot to say, particles. And what is the nature of energy? Well, it's particles and it's fields. In fact, matter is particle and fields. And so we have these conceptual constructs, these categories of matter, energy, space, time. And all of these are conceptual constructs. And we say, that's what's out there when nobody's looking. And that's what's out there when nobody's thinking. Report an error in the passage at 10:38 Highlight the passage at 10:38

11:02 But that's what's objectively out there. If there were a god, that's what he would see. There is no god, so that's what's there when nobody's looking. That's what's absolutely there. This turns out to be very, how do you say, vulnerable to critique. Report an error in the passage at 11:02 Highlight the passage at 11:02

11:17 And that is whatever construct, when you think of, we all know something about atoms, right? You know that the nucleus is like a grapefruit and the orbits of the electrons is like having a grapefruit in a football stadium. Right? You've heard that. Even the nucleus of an atom is almost entirely space. It's a little nugget of matter and then these fuzzy electrons floating around that are kind of neither here nor there. Report an error in the passage at 11:17 Highlight the passage at 11:17

11:40 Very ephemeral. But I invite you to think, whenever you think of atoms, just what comes to mind? We've all had some degree. Some of you may be physicists. Whether you're a physicist or you have only a very elementary notion of atoms, go ahead and think of an atom. And I'll tell you with total certainty there's nothing in reality corresponding to what came to mind. Report an error in the passage at 11:40 Highlight the passage at 11:40

12:00 Not even remotely. It's a nice cartoon that's very helpful when you're in grade school. And they show the little thing going around it. But there's nothing like that. It corresponds to nothing at all. Then think energy. Why don't you think of energy? Energy's really out there, right? Nuclear energy, thermodynamic energy, gravitational energy, energy. Report an error in the passage at 12:00 Highlight the passage at 12:00

12:21 What comes to mind when you think energy? Whatever's coming to mind, there's nothing out there like that. And so these constructs... We tend to think that that's what's really out there until we see what comes to mind when we think them. And then to any physicist, it's perfectly obvious. There's nothing like that out there at all. Report an error in the passage at 12:21 Highlight the passage at 12:21

12:40 So you have this word that you say refers to something objectively, but whatever's coming to mind has no reference in reality. So the point is simple. I don't want to belabor this point. We could spend a lot of time here. Here's a hypothesis, and that is the colors that I see are rising relative to my visual perception. My visual perception is rising relative to the colors I see. Report an error in the passage at 12:40 Highlight the passage at 12:40

13:00 Mutual interdependence, they're not two independent things coming together. I would say in exactly the same way. Do atoms exist? Sure. I listened to my teacher 30 years ago, 35 years ago. Yes, atoms exist. According to the middle wave view of Buddhism, the most sublime philosophy of Buddhism, do atoms exist? Report an error in the passage at 13:00 Highlight the passage at 13:00

13:21 Yes, they do. Describe an atom, define an atom. And then you can. Physicists can do so with great detail. And so they come up with a description. And is there something corresponding to that description that can be measured with instruments? The answer is yes. Is there anything corresponding, in terms of that definition, that description of atoms, do those atoms exist independently of the description of them, of the mind that conceives them? Report an error in the passage at 13:21 Highlight the passage at 13:21

13:49 Do they exist independently of the systems of measurement that detect them? The answer is no. Any more than colors exist out there just floating around waiting to be snagged. Atoms as we conceive of them do exist relative to our conception of them. Report an error in the passage at 13:49 Highlight the passage at 13:49

14:08 Photons do exist relative to our systems of measurement that detect them and then interpret it with our conceptual framework that makes sense of photons. So all these more, they're called theoretical entities in philosophy of science. Particles, fields, waves, spin, charge. And the list goes on and on and on. Nobody's ever seen them. Nobody's ever seen them. What you see, well, nobody's ever seen them. They are constructs. Report an error in the passage at 14:08 Highlight the passage at 14:08

14:34 And they are referring to realities. There are particles and fields and photons and waves and so forth. But they exist relative to the mind that conceives them. The mind didn't simply discover them any more than visual perception. It simply discovers colors as if they were out there. And then like the moons of Jupiter, oh, I discovered red. Report an error in the passage at 14:34 Highlight the passage at 14:34

14:54 No, in fact, it was utterly participatory. But that goes for everything else. Planets, moons, stars, galaxies, nebula, black holes, and so forth and so on. Do they exist? No. Relative to the mind that conceives them. But we tend to reify, we tend to conceive and then orphan. We tend to conceive of these categories and then stand back and say, not me, I just discovered it. Report an error in the passage at 14:54 Highlight the passage at 14:54

15:25 It's entirely relational. So something like a photon, they do exist, of course. They exist relative to the mind that conceives them. They exist relative to the measuring systems that detect them. But then if you ask, all right, that's a lot of fancy footwork. That's very cool. I'll be very esoteric philosophy. Report an error in the passage at 15:25 Highlight the passage at 15:25

15:44 But after all, there's something out there independent of measurement and independent of whatever you think about it. There's got to be. Otherwise, you know, why are we living in this one world? Report an error in the passage at 15:44 Highlight the passage at 15:44

15:54 And here's the point. That is asked very deeply, not just in Buddhism, but in cutting-edge, very mainstream physics. And that is, you're asking about the nature of reality out there prior to and independent of your measurement of it. That's what you're really asking. You're still asking the God's idea. What's there from God's perspective, or an absolute perspective? No perspective. What's really there? Report an error in the passage at 15:54 Highlight the passage at 15:54

16:17 We kind of get impatient and get on with it. There's got to be something really out there. And here's a point from Werner Heisenberg. And that is you're asking a question, what's out there prior to an independent of any measurement, prior to an independent of any conceptual framework? Report an error in the passage at 16:17 Highlight the passage at 16:17

16:34 And you're asking an unanswerable question. Because whenever you try to answer that question, you do so by making a measurement, and not God's measurement, but a measurement using a specific instrument that you've created. And then you make sense of the information coming in, in terms of a conceptual framework. Report an error in the passage at 16:34 Highlight the passage at 16:34

16:55 But you can never leap beyond that. And so you're asking an unanswerable question. You're asking something that is unknowable in principle. Because whenever you seek to know it, it's always relational. It's always this type of measurement system, or this type of measurement system, this conceptual framework, or that conceptual framework. Report an error in the passage at 16:55 Highlight the passage at 16:55

17:14 It's always relational. So it's not that you're just making it up, like hocus pocus, like that. But nor are you simply discovering it. But the systems of measurement are arising relative to what you're trying to measure. The Large Hadron Supercollider wasn't created out of whimsy. They really created that to be able to discover the Higgs boson and other elementary particles that you can only get with a very, very high energy accelerator. Report an error in the passage at 17:14 Highlight the passage at 17:14

17:39 So it was created with relevance to them, relative to them, and the Higgs boson does exist. It is now in the physical world relative to the system measurement by which it's measured, relative to the conceptual framework. That Mr. Higgs, Professor Higgs, conceived of and predicted the existence of that particle. It's saying it's relational all the way up and all the way down. From Higgs bosons up to galactic clusters in the universe at large, it's relational all the way up and all the way down. Report an error in the passage at 17:39 Highlight the passage at 17:39

18:08 If you're looking for the Higgs boson that exists independently out there in and of itself, you're going to come up with a great big not finding. It's empty of that type of objective existence. But then if we look for the conceptual mind, There's a conceptual mind that dreams up these magnificent, sophisticated, profound theories of general relativity and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 18:08 Highlight the passage at 18:08

18:33 Does this mind, the mind of Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, do they exist independently of what they're thinking about? No way. I've studied Einstein's life a lot, and it's always relational. He's knowing other people's theories, the experiments done, his theories, special relativity, general, always arising relationally, relationally. Report an error in the passage at 18:33 Highlight the passage at 18:33

18:54 So what Heisenberg said is, do not attribute existence to that which is unknowable in principle. And how the universe exists out there in and of itself prior to an independent measurement is unknowable in principle. Therefore, don't talk about it. Because there's nothing you can say. And if you say something, there's no way to test whether it's true or false, because it will always be a measurement and a conceptual framework. Report an error in the passage at 18:54 Highlight the passage at 18:54

19:20 That goes for the optic, it goes for the subject, both ways. Empty, empty. All the way empty. But not empty as a nihilism, as if there are no particles or no consciousness, no minds, no physical universe. There are, but they arise relationally, always relative to each other, all the way up and all the way down. So I could linger here a lot because I find it really fascinating and I find some very profound convergence with the Majamaka view, the middle wave view and Dzogchen. Report an error in the passage at 19:20 Highlight the passage at 19:20

19:51 And then finding what I am persuaded is really the cutting edge, the sharpest edge. Of 400 years of momentum from physics, which has culminated, in my view, that's an opinion of course, quantum cosmology, by people like John Wheeler and others. And here's what they say, because I won't say much more, but I'll just say this as, here's a way that we might be able to understand this theme, purely scientifically and in completely contemporary science. Report an error in the passage at 19:51 Highlight the passage at 19:51

20:18 And that is John Wheeler, who is right under the same stature as Richard Feynman, their same status. Premier theoretical physicist in the latter half of the 20th century. John Wheeler looked at this, knowing quantum mechanics inside and out, and knowing in quantum mechanics when you make a measurement, prior to the measurement, the system you're measuring doesn't already have particles here and there discreetly placed, which then you're picking up. Report an error in the passage at 20:18 Highlight the passage at 20:18

20:43 Rather, the system you're about to measure exists in a superposition state, which means it's simply a set of possibilities, potentialities. And then you make the measurement, and that measurement collapses the wave function, the probability function, and now you can see there's an electron here. But it's not that it was there already, but the electron arises relative to your measurement. Report an error in the passage at 20:43 Highlight the passage at 20:43

21:04 Now that's just widely accepted in quantum mechanics. Well, what John Wheeler did is he turned it on its head. He did the reversal. Rather than thinking of a quantum system as something isolated, protective from the classical world around, he just said maybe the classical world isn't a classical world. Report an error in the passage at 21:04 Highlight the passage at 21:04

21:20 Maybe the entire universe is a quantum system, such that prior to measurement, the entire universe exists in a superposition state. And you make a measurement, and the universe arises to meet you relative to your system, the measurement relative to your conceptual framework, in which you make sense of the information that you get from the measurement. Report an error in the passage at 21:20 Highlight the passage at 21:20

21:43 So he looked with this spirit of radical empiricism that I referred to Sunday night, and he said, what do we really know? What do we really know for sure? Do we really know there's an objective universe out there? No. And if there is one, we don't know anything about it. Because it's unknowable in principle. Report an error in the passage at 21:43 Highlight the passage at 21:43

22:00 What do we really know when we're making these measurements for the last 400 years? Is you make a measurement and you get information. That's what you get. You get information in the form of appearances. If it comes up with a visual display, you get information as some mathematical readout. But that's what you get information. Now information is not physical. Report an error in the passage at 22:00 Highlight the passage at 22:00

22:19 It has no physical attributes. It doesn't exist objectively, nor is it something just in your mind. Information, information about the color of your shawl. The information isn't there, and it's not just inside my mind or my head. The information is relative to consciousness and that about which I'm informed. So information is what we fundamentally know. Information is primary. Report an error in the passage at 22:19 Highlight the passage at 22:19

22:44 Information is not physical. And as we're making measurement after measurement and making sense of... The measurements we are taking, then out of the information flow, we conceive of these categories of matter and energy, space and time, and all of these other physical entities of charge, spin and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 22:44 Highlight the passage at 22:44

23:03 And what he's saying here is something really profound, I believe, and I think he's on target, and that is information is primary, because that's what we really know. And out of information, we construct the categories of matter, energy. And so forth and so on. They are derivative. Information is primary. And prior to making a measurement of any kind, prior to the measurement, it's just a superposition state. Report an error in the passage at 23:03 Highlight the passage at 23:03

23:31 It's a realm of possibility that crystallizes into an actuality by the act of making a measurement and making sense of it. So it's what you're attending to becomes your reality. And how you interpret it or conceive of it that makes it the reality you live in. But that means it's not already there, and it's not just something you dream up. Well, this gets very interesting if we look at Stephen Hawking, and he goes into this, and he raises it relative to time, just to show the impact of this. Report an error in the passage at 23:31 Highlight the passage at 23:31

24:02 Stephen Hawking now, nobody regards him as a flake, as far as I know. So Stephen Hawking takes this up, this very notion that prior to the active measurement, it's just a range of possibility, measured and now crystallizes into an actuality. Before looking at Chukila, before anybody looks at Chukila, she's not already there as someone that you get right or get wrong. She herself is in superposition state. Report an error in the passage at 24:02 Highlight the passage at 24:02

24:28 And then she looks at herself, and then she makes a measurement, and she rises relative to herself, or somebody else does, and then from that superposition state, then Chukila is rising relative to your observation and how you're making sense of that observation. The information and the sense you're making of that observation. Stephen Hawking then applies this to history. Report an error in the passage at 24:28 Highlight the passage at 24:28

24:48 And he says, look, we never go back into history and look what happened, because that's not possible. All of our measurements, whether you're talking about the Big Bang or anything else in history, your own childhood, anything, everything we know about history, and he's a cosmologist, so he's interested in the history of the universe, the short history thereof, he wrote, every measurement we make about the past is always made in the present. Report an error in the passage at 24:48 Highlight the passage at 24:48

25:16 We never slip into a time machine and measure the past from its perspective. It's always from our perspective, the present perspective. And moreover, we don't just measure the past from God's perspective. We bring up a specific device, a specific measurement system with a specific question within a conceptual framework. And then we pose a question about the past and we get evidence. Report an error in the passage at 25:16 Highlight the passage at 25:16

25:38 But the measurement, the information is always arising in the present. And now here's the real kicker. He says we're asking questions about the past, but before making a measurement, the past exists in a superposition state, because it's unmeasured. Report an error in the passage at 25:38 Highlight the passage at 25:38

25:57 You make the measurement, and then a past arises relative to your system of measurement and your conceptual framework, of course. And it may be true relative to the question you posed. But if you ask another question with another system of measurement, another past will arise. And then set up another question, another measurement system, and another path will arise relative to that question. So he says, and this is Stephen Hawking, and it's Paul Davies, and it's John Wheeler, saying that there is no absolute perspective on the past. Report an error in the passage at 25:57 Highlight the passage at 25:57

26:35 There's nothing that absolutely truly happened. Not the Big Bang, not the inflation, not the formation of galaxies. None of it absolutely happened from its own side. Independent of and prior to all the measurements, in fact there are multiple histories and there can be multiple realities arising relative to multiple perspectives and measurement systems and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 26:35 Highlight the passage at 26:35

26:59 And he summarizes this by saying you can choose your own past. By the questions you pose, the measurements you make, a past will arise relative to the questions. But it's not what really happened, because what really happened is unknowable in principle. Report an error in the passage at 26:59 Highlight the passage at 26:59

27:16 In which case you can't even say it exists or not exists. It's unknowable, which means we don't know anything about it. Unknowable entirely. So the past isn't already there. Report an error in the passage at 27:16 Highlight the passage at 27:16

27:28 It's arising relative to the present. What's happening in the present is not really there. It's arising relative to your measurement, your way of making sense of. So that's just straight quantum cosmology. And if you'd like to pursue this further, I have two books on it. Mind in the Balance and Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic. Report an error in the passage at 27:28 Highlight the passage at 27:28

27:45 That really impact this a lot. And I show all my sources. So I'm not a world-class physicist, not even remotely, but I cite world-class physicists. And then you can see, because these are two academic books, so it's a complete bibliography. Report an error in the passage at 27:45 Highlight the passage at 27:45

27:57 When I was reading this, I thought, they're saying that the whole universe is an information processing system in which the role of the observer is indispensable. If there's no observer, there's no motion, there's no movement, there's no time. That it takes the observer, Report an error in the passage at 27:57 Highlight the passage at 27:57

28:20 And once you've said now, relative to now, you can say past and present, and past and future. But if no observer is saying now, time vanishes, it's not in the equations. Time is not objective. There has to be an observer that says now. And then there was yesterday, and there's tomorrow. But if nobody's saying today, there is no yesterday and tomorrow. Report an error in the passage at 28:20 Highlight the passage at 28:20

28:39 There's no time. That's The universe is frozen without an observer. This sounds like science fiction or some goofy Californian would dream up. It's not. It's coming from some of the most profound physics on the planet. And so they're saying that there is no universe out there independently of itself prior to an independent of our observations. Report an error in the passage at 28:39 Highlight the passage at 28:39

29:02 But now I'm going to take this into Buddhism, and then we'll take a break. I think, yeah, fairly soon, no hurry. Buddhist perspective. Well, this is what you find in the writings of Nagarjuna, that atoms, space, time, matter, energy, they do all exist. Yes, they do exist. Do they exist when you're not looking at them? Report an error in the passage at 29:02 Highlight the passage at 29:02

29:21 Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Do they exist in and of themselves? No, they exist relative to the perception of them. They exist relative to the conceptual designation of them. Withdraw the conceptual designation, they're no longer there. They all exist, but relative to subject and object mutually interdependent. Report an error in the passage at 29:21 Highlight the passage at 29:21

29:41 And that goes for time also. Madhyamaka, Nagarjuna says time does not absolutely exist, is not objective. Space is not objective, not absolute. Nothing is, not even consciousness itself. So what comes out of this, I think, is an inevitable conclusion. And you can see I take this very, very seriously. Not just some kind of egghead metaphysical thinking, but to start viewing reality. Report an error in the passage at 29:41 Highlight the passage at 29:41

30:05 That's what this is all about. He's not saying going into esoteric philosophy and scintillate your intellect by thinking really esoteric thoughts. He's saying view phenomena as if they were dreams. Well, the dream doesn't exist there independently of the observation of it. So what comes out of this, I think, by implication is, Report an error in the passage at 30:05 Highlight the passage at 30:05

30:26 Here's one way of phrasing it, and that is there's a universe for every sentient being. Galileo assumed there was only one universe created by the one God, and therefore there's one right view. Report an error in the passage at 30:26 Highlight the passage at 30:26

30:40 And so there is a one super view, a grand unified view, there should be, because that would be God's view. And there's only one, because God, one God, created one universe, and therefore we can try to replicate God's vision of that one universe so that everything is monolithic. Quantum mechanics has just blown that apart. Because what does God see, wave or particle? When he looks at light, what does God see? Waves or particles? Report an error in the passage at 30:40 Highlight the passage at 30:40

31:05 And there's no such thing, by the way, as a wavicle. It doesn't mean anything. It's a nice word. It doesn't mean anything at all. There's no reference whatsoever in reality. And so, if we release that notion, not atheism, not banishing God, just saying that's a very naive, reified notion of God as the ultimate entity out there. Report an error in the passage at 31:05 Highlight the passage at 31:05

31:25 Who's responsible for everything. That's only one view. It's not the view of the deepest Christian mystics at all. But it's the view of clunky theologians. If we release that, and we come back to our own experience, then you look in all directions and there's something very obvious. Anyway, you can just turn your head. You see, there is somebody in the center of the universe. Me. Or you. Report an error in the passage at 31:25 Highlight the passage at 31:25

31:51 And the bumblebee. And the mosquito. And the bat. And... Every sentient being, any sentient being, look around you, any sentient being, and you're in the center of that universe. And you're making measurements all the time. Report an error in the passage at 31:51 Highlight the passage at 31:51

32:08 And the universe is arising relative to you, an anthropocentric universe arising relative to you as you're tending to it with your human mind, then you're getting a human universe. This is an anthropocentric world we're living in, because that's how we're seeing it, and that's how we're conceiving of it as well, with human frontal cortex, human eyes, human imagination, and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 32:08 Highlight the passage at 32:08

32:28 So we can say collectively and intersubjectively, we human beings are living in a shared space. And we'll describe this environment in a very similar way. For obvious reasons. And that is our visual cortices are very similar. Our eyes, our nose, our minds, frontal cortex, very similar, very similar. And so the way we experience the world, the way we conceive of the world, we can speak across from Hindi to Chinese to Portuguese and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 32:28 Highlight the passage at 32:28

32:56 And there's a lot of intersubjective. Validation and intersubjective corroboration. Number one, the biological basis here is very common. And then we find multiple perspectives, to be sure, but a lot of commonality. Because again, we're bringing similar measurement systems. Now a bee, a reptile or a bat, they have different measurement systems, so they'll be perceiving things differently. Report an error in the passage at 32:56 Highlight the passage at 32:56

33:22 But they're still intersubjective there because they too are animals. They're too carbon-based. They do have eyes. They do have tactile sensation and so forth. And so it's intersubjective all the way up and all the way down. And if you ask, yeah, but how does this correspond to reality as it is really out there independently? Whatever you say, there's no way of validating or repudiating it. Report an error in the passage at 33:22 Highlight the passage at 33:22

33:42 So it's a waste of time. That thus far in the whole history of science, every time an observation is validated, it's not by comparing it to reality as it exists out there independently. It never is. It's always validated intersubjectively. That Galileo looked through his telescope, and another person looked through a telescope, and another one, and they said, yes, you're right, Jupiter has moons. Report an error in the passage at 33:42 Highlight the passage at 33:42

34:04 Not because they stepped out of any measurement system and saw what was really there, but they used a reliable system of measurement, a telescope. And that's where everything has ever gone in science. They're never validating it by saying that, yes, it's true of what is absolutely out there. They're saying, yes, using our instruments of technology, we've intersubjectively validated. Report an error in the passage at 34:04 Highlight the passage at 34:04

34:26 That's the way it's always been, the way it always will be, because we never get to jump the fence and find how do our theories compare to what's absolutely out there in and of itself. If there is such a world that's utterly unknowable. When we go into Buddhism, where we have relativistic psychology, Report an error in the passage at 34:26 Highlight the passage at 34:26

34:45 And that is, we're still living in kind of like a pre-Darwinian era when it comes to the mind, in terms of modern science. You see, the lack of notion that the human mind can evolve, not just in terms of being more clever, developing more technology, but the type of evolution, transformation that can occur through meditation, which has been well known in old Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, is unknown. Report an error in the passage at 34:45 Highlight the passage at 34:45

35:11 Not even touching, not even asking the questions in modern psychology. How do you develop extrasensory perception? Show me the class that arrests that question. In any university, how do you develop that? Go to any class in Buddhism and tell you exactly how to do it. And in Hinduism and in Taoism and so forth. And so relativistic cognitive science, where we recognize it's not just human and then people who have neurosis, psychosis and really disabled. Report an error in the passage at 35:11 Highlight the passage at 35:11

35:37 It's human and now you go up from there. And then we see, when you bring in that bandwidth of the relativity of consciousness itself, that you can view reality from multiple dimensions. And then multiple dimensions arise to meet you. Desire realm meets desire realm mind. Form realm meets jhāna mind. Formless realm meets samapati mind. Report an error in the passage at 35:37 Highlight the passage at 35:37

35:57 And then is there anything beyond that? When you slip beyond the subject-object dichotomy, what does reality look like from the perspective of Rigpa? Report an error in the passage at 35:57 Highlight the passage at 35:57

36:09 Which is beyond the subject-object matrix, prior to, primordial, inconceivable, but still knowable. So here's a central premise that is very explicit around Mahāyāna Buddhism and more explicit in Vajrayana, very explicit in Dzogchen. And that is the reality that rises up to meet you is rising relative to your awareness. Report an error in the passage at 36:09 Highlight the passage at 36:09

36:33 And as you transform your awareness, the reality that you experience will shift. And it will shift dramatically. Report an error in the passage at 36:33 Highlight the passage at 36:33

36:43 Profoundly. That you're shifting, because the two are always entangled. You don't purify one, have the other one just remain stranded and remain as it is. So this profound integration of subject-object consciousness and the object of consciousness, the one who is informed and the world about which you are informed, as you transform the one who is informed, the universe of which you are informed transforms and you're evolving together, the world around you shifts. Report an error in the passage at 36:43 Highlight the passage at 36:43

37:11 As your awareness shifts, is purified, is heightened, empowered and becomes relativistic. But there's no independent mind, no independent objective universe. So in this way, this is very dreamlike. And I have seen, and I know many people have seen, evidence that, you know, the notion of there being a real chunky world out there proves to be wrong. Report an error in the passage at 37:11 Highlight the passage at 37:11

37:38 When you start doing relativistic cognitive science, we start developing samādhi and paranormal abilities. And they're listed in detail and exactly how to develop them. In Buddhism it's very explicit. You start finding when you develop the power of samādhi and of wisdom and insight into the emptiness of all phenomena, you start thinking back, what can you do in a lucid dream if you're very, very lucid? Report an error in the passage at 37:38 Highlight the passage at 37:38

38:03 You can start shifting reality, that's what you can do. Because you know you're not bumping up against something that is objectively real, independent, that it's all entangled. So in a very lucid dream... You start turning crocodiles into cocked spaniels and you start turning a forest into one tree and you basically find you can just transform anything you like. Report an error in the passage at 38:03 Highlight the passage at 38:03

38:23 It's completely malleable. There's nothing there objectively real, so nothing that is tough and gnarly. It's all fluid and you shift your perspective and your reality shifts perspective and you just see how utterly malleable the dream is. Just so like clay that you can shape as a potter. Now that's true in a dream. And then you go to the great stories. Like Milarepa, for example. Here is a person who had relativistic perspective on reality. Report an error in the passage at 38:23 Highlight the passage at 38:23

38:54 One of my favorite stories from Milarepa was he's out walking with his disciple, Rechumba, close disciple. It starts to rain and Rechumba's walking in front of his teacher. And it starts to rain and then Rechumba looks around and he can't find his teacher. Milarepa is right here and he's not there. And then he looks back. Report an error in the passage at 38:54 Highlight the passage at 38:54

39:13 And he finds his teacher, who is medium-sized Tibetan, I presume, he finds him having taken shelter inside a ram's horn. Report an error in the passage at 39:13 Highlight the passage at 39:13

39:23 Not a gargantuan ram, ordinary ram. He finds Milarepa inside the ram's horn. He took shelter. Now that a really good illusionist could do. If you have very deep samādhi but no profound insight, you might be able to do that. But Milarepa had profound insight. View reality as dreams. And so what really struck Rejomba. Report an error in the passage at 39:23 Highlight the passage at 39:23

39:45 As he attended, when he looked back and saw his teacher inside, taking shelter inside the ram's horn, the empty ram's horn, that what was really remarkable that he reported on was Melarepa hadn't gotten any smaller and the ram's horn hadn't gotten any bigger. Report an error in the passage at 39:45 Highlight the passage at 39:45

40:00 And that really shocked him. Report an error in the passage at 40:00 Highlight the passage at 40:00

40:05 That's one of many stories. I mean, there are just countless of people who developed these heightened modes, empowered relativistic modes, so that you shift your consciousness and you shift the reality you're experiencing. And not only so you can see it, but others may be able to witness it themselves. Walking on water, multiplying lobes, and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 40:05 Highlight the passage at 40:05

40:27 Think about what you can do in a very lucid dream, and then just take that over into the waking state. If you see this as being profoundly dreamlike, then those type of cities, those type of extraordinary abilities that you can manifest in a dream, you can manifest here. Report an error in the passage at 40:27 Highlight the passage at 40:27

40:44 That's relativistic cognitive science. And we're still flat earthers when it comes to the mind. Flat minders. This is what lies in the palm of the hand. It's right there, waiting for us to really discover the emptiness of all phenomena, which means the utter malleability of all phenomena. Report an error in the passage at 40:44 Highlight the passage at 40:44

41:07 And then we go deeper than that. And that's where we'll go right after the break. When we see the next aphorism, and we'll take our break now, but the next aphorism is where we go from here. Again, I just gave an overview. There's a lot of really good material. Report an error in the passage at 41:07 Highlight the passage at 41:07

41:21 And just in terms of things I've written, Mind of the Balance, Meditations of the Buddhist Skeptic goes into this in a lot more detail, drawing from Buddhism and quantum cosmology. Report an error in the passage at 41:21 Highlight the passage at 41:21

41:34 But the next aphorism, which I'm just sowing the seed right now, we have the previous one was the non-inherent nature of apprehended objects, right? And now we turn that to the subject. And the outline title is the non-inherent nature of the apprehending mind. And the aphorism is, examine the character of unborn awareness. So we see the relativity of the entire phenomenal world, but what about the relativity of our own awareness? Report an error in the passage at 41:34 Highlight the passage at 41:34

42:06 And what about a dimension of awareness that's beyond the whole subject-object dichotomy? Let's have 20 minutes break. We'll come back and explore that. Report an error in the passage at 42:06 Highlight the passage at 42:06