Diving Into Pure Consciousness And Finding Your True Self With Dr. Tony Nader

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am just feeling incredibly blessed as I sit here in this moment for too many reasons to count, which is fortunate, but most important of which is that I'm sitting here in this moment, alive, breathing, awake, conscious. My mind is still fertile, and, and this is the essence of life. And I'm feeling just very blessed in this moment. And also quite Fortunate to have someone else who feels— I feel we are simpatico. We've never met before, but we've been introduced through a mutual friend. And I'm just so excited for the conversation that will unfold in a very— just a fresh way, organic way. And I know all of you will enjoy it as well. So I'm as excited and in as much anticipation perhaps as you are even in this moment. My guest today is Dr. Tony Nader. He is a physician trained at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT as it's called, with a PhD in neuroscience. His training includes internal medicine, psychiatry, and neurology. He was a clinical and research fellow in neurology at Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the assistant director of the Clinical Research Center at MIT. His writings include the relationship between mind, body, and consciousness and physiology, which is something that we're going to talk about today. Many, many things we're going to get to cover today. Dr. Nader's book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, has just been published by Penguin Random House. It's available as an ebook. We'll say more about that later. But Dr. Nader is the successor to the founder. of the TM technique, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And we'll talk about his training more in just a moment. But first of all, Dr. Nader, so great to have you with us today. I really am looking forward to this conversation greatly. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you. Wonderful to be with you, Adam. It's great to have— because consciousness is so primary, as you said. We are so grateful to be conscious, to have consciousness, because without consciousness we cannot dream, we cannot think, we cannot experience what we have, we cannot plan, we cannot understand our life. And so we're meeting on a very, very precious aspect of existence. And thank you for having the podcast and having me with you.

Yes, I was saying to you before we started the recording that our community is just filled with conscious business leaders. And to me, that means that these are people who are putting quite a bit of thought and intention behind the way that they live their lives, the way they conduct their businesses, which I think is quite a shift from the way that I recall starting out in business a long time ago. Maybe I should say, I mean, it's been, gosh, 25 years at this point since I started as an attorney and practicing law and There wasn't a lot of sort of what I would call consciousness associated with that. It was more of a goal, and the goal was to achieve certain professional credentials and start a business and earn money and provide for a family. And I suppose that there was an element of consciousness involved in all of that, but I just kind of, you know, assumed that if I did those things, that good things would happen. I didn't put a lot of much thought into it. So you also have spent quite a bit of time developing your professional place in the world. I'd love to get a sense of where that all began, the origin story of your career. If we could start there and we'll gravitate forward, if that's okay.

It's wonderful. I think we have similar paths in that sense, except of course, I took the medical side. I wanted to understand life and I had a vocation based on my family background of many doctors in the family. Naturally, I gravitated towards medicine as a vocation to help others and also to have a good profession, which is something, you know, that's how we choose our path in life. But I was also most interested in understanding human behavior and human decision-making and why we do what we do, why there are wars, why there are conflicts. Why people kill each other for thoughts, for ideas, for economic purposes, for whatever. When one looks around, we can live in a logical way, in a happy, natural way. So I thought the best way is to understand the human physiology because I came to it from this perspective that actually it is some material energy that created the assemblage of molecules and cells and tissues that led us to a human body that ultimately developed and evolved into a nervous system, and then where we have mind and thoughts and intellect and behavior emanating from that. So I went deeply into the study of medicine and then found maybe I should go actually into psychiatry Because the internal medicine is more limited to the physical body. So try to understand the mind, but it was mostly in disturbances of the mind. That's what psychiatry is. Although it has its own effects, I wanted to know more, so I went into neurology, but also into research in the brain and the nervous system. In the meantime, I had learned Transcendental Meditation, which is a simple technique that allows the mind to settle down. And so the approach here was completely different. Rather than coming from the physical level, the physiological level, the chemical level of attending to the physiology and improving it and healing it, one was able to come from the mind level, from the consciousness level. And I found this so fulfilling for my own life, my own situation, my own ability to study and grow and experience. And looked into its research very carefully and found that it is really very profound. It has kind of a holistic value, whereas in most of our medical approaches, we are targeting one aspect or the other. And sometimes we create side effects because, you know, one molecule will act someplace to calm you down or help you, but will act in another place and create an imbalance or a problem. And so this made me feel more and more fascinated by the aspect of our reality, which we can say seems to be in not material, but, you know, more abstract, more on the mind level, more on the feeling, more on the consciousness level. And going deep into that, I studied it, I researched it, and I even went to around the world, including particularly with the the founder of the Transcendental Meditation program, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought this tradition from the very ancient 5,000-year-old tradition of Veda and yoga, particularly yoga, because this is really a yoga of the mind, how the mind can settle down, how the mind can experience unity. So I went deeply into that and studied it and researched it and researched the ancient knowledge and got fascinated by it. And discovered something which I didn't think about originally, and that is that actually it's the other way around. It's not that the physical creates the mental, as I assumed all my career because of medical study, and because for simple reason, if you disturb the nervous system, you disturb the thinking process. If you take chemicals that disturb the functioning of the neurotransmitters and the hormones and the electrical activity of the brain, you get changes in mind, changes in mood, changes in thought, even changes in experience. You know, you can see psychedelic things, you can see colors, you can see hallucinations and all of that. And so all things seems to indicate that if you act from the physical, you can actually change the mind and the experience on the mind. So one says, well, therefore the physical is what creates the mind. But going deeply into it, I actually came to a conclusion which is completely unexpected, and that is that it's actually consciousness that leads ultimately to the appearance of the whole physical universe. And this is where I said, well, how does this happen? Because The theory or this logic has been presented throughout history. Now, the question is, how is it possible? How can it be? And so, this has been my path and this is where I came out with this book that actually explains these processes and their implications in different aspects of life.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. It's a fascination of mine, has been for some time, the sequence of whether it's our thoughts that create the feelings that ultimately lead us to do certain things, take certain actions, or whether it's the feelings that create the thoughts that ultimately lead to these other results. And for the longest time, my feeling was, well, we think, and therefore then we feel certain things and so on. And now, more in the last several years, it's the opposite. So I'm putting you squarely on the spot. I don't even know if you have a theory about this, but I have to ask you while I have you. So, Dr. Nader, which would you say is the order of events there?

I think, yes, I do have first a very complete idea. That's what almost the book is all about.

Oh, how wonderful. That's so convenient.

But it takes it a little further, you know. So let's see situations where we can ask these possible questions and see how we can deduce from this some kind of logic. Of course, there can always be interpretation, and the topic is very wide and complex, but for simple, simple things. There is something that is different between perception and vision, for example, between how you digest information and how you actually experience it based on what is there in the information. So you can have a vision, you can be walking on the street And you see a rope. Maybe it's dark or there is a rope there. And suppose in your mind you are predisposed to thinking that this area has maybe snakes in it. And therefore, you have already a predisposition in your mind that what is there in this area are snakes. And it's not very clear. and you're walking on the street and you see this lying something there and you think it's a snake. In reality, it's a rope, but for you it's a snake. So you get afraid. If you're very afraid of snakes, if you have a weak heart, you know, your heart starts beating and you can get a heart attack. Now you can also run around and explain to people that there was a snake and people are afraid and some accident might happen. And there is a huge thing that takes placed on the surface level of phenomena of reality, which means accidents, people who tire, the person had an attack, it must be absolutely a snake that caused this. Whereas actually what it is, it's a perception. It's an experience that has been digested and experienced on the consciousness level, on the experiencer level, and as snake, whereas the reality is a rope. Now, this is what happens on the level between vision, because the eyes actually saw a rope. So the input that comes from the rope is a rope input. It went through the retina, went through the nervous system, but the interpreter, the vision of interpretation has led to a decision that this is a snake. And therefore, now there is a decision that it is a snake, and all of the other phenomena that happen are based on the experience of this being a snake. And that leads to phenomenal realities in the outside world. Now, this is by itself a simple example of how we can be mistaken. It is not a proof. So I'm not saying, oh, I proved that the mind is primary. because of this example. It's just to emphasize the difference between our perception and what truly reality is. And if you go deeper into what reality is from different perspectives, you find that our nervous system is only able to perceive a certain aspect of reality. We can only perceive a certain aspect of reality because, for example, we do not see light that is a frequency that is less than the red light. We cannot see above the violet, so ultraviolet we will not see, infrared we will not see.

We can't— we can't hear the frequency of a dog whistle, things like that.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. We cannot smell also what the dog can smell. So what we are having is only a partial experience of the outer phenomenal world based on our nervous system ability to detect it. So these are important ones that help us determine, and what reality— what is— is there an absolute reality?

I want to pause you there for just one second, Dr. Nader, and ask you a An awful question for science, but I know you're not purely or even perhaps primarily a scientist. Only taking in some portions, small percentage perhaps, of all of the available stimuli, the things that we could perceive but we don't. Is there a reason for that as far as you can tell? Why it is that we can't hear or see beyond what our nervous system allows us to?

The simple answer is that evolution got us to where we are now, and we can imagine evolution taking us to a different level, or we are moving evolution to a different level by creating, for example, instruments that allow us to see the infrared and the ultraviolet, that allow us to see the X-ray that allow us to hear the music. So we as humans participate in the evolution by creating instruments that extend our nervous system's ability. So evolution keeps growing and keeps taking us to higher level of perception of reality and perception of ultimate fullness of life, ultimate fullness of, of what is real and what is the reality of The universe? Where does it come from?

So the evidence is that our consciousness, our individual consciousness, has continued to expand, and the consciousness of our species as well has expanded, evolved over time.

Exactly.

There's a possibility—

Exactly.

That it could expand well beyond where we currently are.

Exactly. Either physically, organically, or through— so it has expanded. Now we can see You know, the black holes and distant galaxies. We can see, you know, almost to the molecular level through microscopes and electron microscopes. So we're extending our ability to experience that. Now, the main question is, who is extending? What is extending? And what is all this? Where does it come from?

That is the ultimate question, because when people hear consciousness, they think their brain, they think their mind. So that is a perfect jumping-off point. Is that, is that where consciousness originates?

Absolutely.

Okay, beautiful.

Absolutely. And my theory that I present in this book is that consciousness is primary. And the title of the book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, says that ultimately there is one unbounded ocean of consciousness. And then that unbounded ocean of consciousness reflecting on itself through a process that they describe in the book creates multiplicity of perceptions that lead to an ultimate reality of nothingness. But you know, this is complex to go through in a few seconds, from which emerges actually the universe. As starting from nothingness and building back into the primary consciousness. So the universe starts from, as we know in physics, from a singularity, which is a point value that has no dimensions in time and space, and explodes and inflates and leads to energy and forces. And these forces then create the energy fields that are then, through their fluctuations, appear as particles. And these particles assemble together to create atoms and then molecules. Molecules keep assembling to create cells or, you know, mineral life, but also organic and more organic into cells. And cells assemble to create tissues, to create living organisms. In our human body, as evolution developed, it creates all of these other aspects of complex organization that lead to a nervous system with higher consciousness. Now, all this seems to say, well, therefore all this material value. Now, the key in this paradigm that I present is that all of this is actually Consciousness aspects, aspects of consciousness reflecting on itself and seeing itself from different perspectives. So when I look at you, it is consciousness looking at another aspect of itself from a certain point of view. And therefore, since there are infinite points of views, this is where the universe is an expression of consciousness. So this is a summary which might feel like too radical, too crazy. What are you talking about? You know, how can it be? And that's why it requires a few steps of logic to understand it and to understand why it makes sense and how it can make sense and why the other theories actually don't explain certain things that this paradigm explains.

Perhaps that's a great place to, uh, not begin because we've begun, but to go back, let's say, to the first domino. And I think you were describing earlier what's been called the Big Bang Theory. Is that in essence? Yes,

yes, yes.

So this point of singularity, say a little bit more. So before there was the universe as we understand it or know it today, there was Fill in the blank.

There was one unbounded ocean of consciousness, which means consciousness. There was pure consciousness. Pure consciousness, totally immaterial. It has nothing material.

Immaterial, right. Is particles, waves, sound?

No, nothing, nothing like that. All of this is material. All of this is physical. All of this is either material. When we say material, it means condensing into an atom or a molecule on the most basic level, and even a particle localized in time and space. This is what you call material. Now, scientists have looked into matter and to try to see what is made of. That's how we got from the surface value to the molecular level, from molecular to atomic level, from atomic to particle level. So we used to think that the atom is the last thing that's indivisible. The term atom means indivisible, atom from Greek, that you cannot divide it. And this has been by Democritus and others a term that has been coined to say that if you take something and you keep dividing it, dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces, you will reach one point where you cannot divide it anymore, and let's call this the atom. And that is the elementary particle that constructs the universe. So we found that actually it's not true. What we call the atom is made of even more elementary particles, and these elementary particles are actually— turn out to be not particles at all. They turned out to be fluctuations and fields of energy. And here I'm not talking philosophy, it's pure science, it's pure physics. Yeah. So that is when scientists started to say there is material, there is physical. When you say physical, it means energy. You know, we all know the connection between matter and energy that Einstein discovered, E= mc², which describes that matter is actually energy.

Right. And the statement that everything is energy is implying that everything on some level is physical.

It's physical. Yeah, it's still physical.

The first step that we're wanting, this is pre-physical. Is that what we're saying? This is a non—

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Beautiful. So we have a state of everything that is pre-physical at some point in time.

Yes.

Any sense— just, this is just more for, uh, you know, people fill their heads with sometimes knowledge they'll never use or whatever. Maybe me, you, you know. How many years ago are we talking about where it— best guess, it's pre-physical. What do you think?

For eternity. It's something that is pre-time and pre-space also.

Pre-time as well. So even space and time is a construct?

Yes.

And so that's— it's our— it's not arbitrary, but it would be inaccurate to try to pinpoint a time?

Yes. That's why it's beyond time, beyond space. It's Nothing that you can describe in time and space. So that's why we can say from the physical perspective that it is nothingness.

Right, not physical.

Because it's not physical. If you want to weigh it on a balance, if you want to examine it in a microscope, if you want to touch it, if you want to measure it—

See it, feel it, hear it, can't do any of those things.

No, because it's nothingness. of that kind of thingness. It's not a thing, nothing, not a thing, but it is everything. That's the whole paradigm. It is everything.

It's nothing and everything all at once.

All at once.

Yes. And we have this nothingness, and then we go from nothingness to somethingness.

To wholeness, to fullness, to everythingness.

To everythingness.

Yeah.

Okay.

And that everythingness, because it is not physical, actually you cannot talk about it in terms of start and end, in terms of when did it start, where does it come from. It's nothing. Imagine, forget about consciousness, just say nothing. Can you ask where did nothing come from? You cannot, because think, where is nothing coming? Nothing is nothing. How can it come from anywhere?

It's Something emerges out of nothingness.

Yet it has a quality, and that is consciousness.

Okay, so this is wonderful. I don't— I couldn't track how it is we got here, but this is wonderful that we're in this point, because out of nothingness, everythingness emerges, and that everythingness, a name to it, it's called consciousness.

Yes.

Okay. Now, at a certain point, I think this is where the mind, or my mind, you know, grapples with this, as I think others have too, that we think that when we die, it's over. Because when our mind, when our brain stops working, we're technically dead. All consciousness is also, at least for us, gone. But that's the materialist view. that our brain creates consciousness. That's not what you're saying?

Absolutely.

Okay.

What I'm saying, that is where, you see, this is a big problem. If there is consciousness, a soul, a human, some reality that is beyond the material, then forever the question is, are they 2 different things or they are one thing? You know, and the Cartesian view, Descartes, Stein, and others, but he kind of formalized it, is that there are 2 realities. One is the reality of being, which is consciousness, and one is the reality of material physical existence, and somehow they speak to each other.

I think, therefore I am.

Yeah, exactly. And that has a meaning, that has an interesting meaning. Actually, what he really meant is, I am conscious, therefore I am. You know, when he said, I think, is I am conscious really, because the thought is a process that also changes. But he says, he's saying, I am conscious. I am conscious of a thought at least. I'm conscious of myself. Therefore, I am. Because consciousness then is the one thing that doesn't change. The thing is, why does he say that? Is that you look at your body, it changes all the time. There is no one moment where anything in the physical remains the same.

Nothing is static.

Nothing. You look at a stone and it's been there for a million years and you think it hasn't changed? It has changed all the time. It's changing. Its electrons are moving. Its molecules are moving within. It's never, never exactly the same. So If it's never the same, it means it's— what is reality then? And this is the big question. And then Descartes came and said, well, I think I am conscious, and therefore I am. So my consciousness is my consciousness, my consciousness of myself. I feel myself as a conscious individual, even though I go throughout life, I change. I used to be a baby, I used to be small, I grew up, my body changed. There is not one more molecule in my body that was there when it was 10, 15 years ago? Nothing. Not even one molecule is there. Not one atom is still there. They all have changed. They have been transformed and changed. My function in life changed. My job changed. My relations changed. But I have that sense of being, that sense of self, that sense of consciousness, and therefore I can say I am. So that was the challenge. If you change all the time, how can you say you are? You are not. You're always changing, always changing.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. So we are tuned in, or what would you say is the best analogy to describe our relationship with consciousness?

We are consciousness. We are consciousness.

That's what we are a part of, not it in its— we are not individual consciousness. We are, as people have written beautiful poetry and music and all that, we are one with all that we're calling consciousness.

Yeah, let's actually take physics, believe it or not, which can help us to see this. to understand this really. So let's go back something that I said. So we start from cells, then molecules. We are together on that. Then atoms, then elementary particles. And then what did physicists discover when they came to the smaller than the smallest? It's like, what is this universe made of? You can say molecules. But what are molecules made of? Atoms. What are atoms made of? Elementary particles. What are elementary particles? They turned out to be fluctuations in fields of energy.

Hmm.

So there is the electric field, the magnetic field, there is the weak force, the strong force, the gravitational field. They end up discovering that out of all possible fields, there are these few fields. And then somebody

said, no, this is quantum physics.

Yeah, exactly. We're getting to the quantum level. And now you say, what, what is electricity and magnetism? A little research and they discovered that electricity and magnetism are actually the same field appearing as electricity or magnetism. That's why they call it electromagnetism. And they went deeper into nature and they found that even the weak strong forces, and even the gravitational field now is trying to be integrated. So basically, these fields are more and more unified as you come to the most basic field, the most primary field of life. And scientists now talk about what they call the one unified field of all the laws of nature. So there is a field that is actually abstract field that itself appears as the different other fields, and the different other fields appear as fluctuates, and they appear as particles. The particles come together, they create atoms. Atoms come together, they create molecules. Molecules come together, They create cells, and cells come together, they create organs. Organs come together, they create our—

You cannot destroy energy. Is that accurate or inaccurate?

Yeah, it's accurate, of course.

Okay, so I want to come back. I was a lawyer, if you'll forgive me, Dr. Nader. This would be funny, like, if we were doing this, you know, like, in a, in a court situation, right? But so you cannot destroy energy. My question earlier was really leading to what happens to us to our whirlpool of consciousness, it's part of the greater whirlpool of consciousness. What happens when physically we are morte?

This is, you know, where we have to answer the first question, Hans Christian. The first question which I didn't answer, which I was coming to, is if we understand that there is one field, one unified field of all the laws of nature that appears As these different, different expressions on the surface. This is where we see that if that field— now suppose I have a logic why this field is consciousness actually, and that is described in the book. But this field is a field. Let's take this for granted for now as a point of logic. If this field is consciousness, that means we are made out of consciousness. But consciousness appearing as different, different, different aspects. I usually take an analogy. You have a gold bracelet, you have a gold ring, you have a gold necklace, you have a gold statue, and they are different. They are very different, but they are all gold. Gold, made out of gold. So on one level, they are gold. On another level, they appear as, and they are for sure, bracelet, ring, statue, whatever. Okay, in the same way, this one field of consciousness appears as many while it is one.

Hmm.

It appears as many objects, but the gold is one. The gold is one. Now, this is how we are actually—

So, consciousness appears as many.

Exactly.

But consciousness is one.

Yes.

So, that part of consciousness that appears in each of us, like the bracelet or the earrings or the other, the ways that gold can be fashioned, is still gold, just like we are still consciousness.

Absolutely. Absolutely. But these are aspects of consciousness. So consciousness can be an unbounded ocean and can be waves in the ocean.

Hmm.

Imagine your mind is like an ocean, and on the surface, and as you go deeper and deeper in the ocean of the mind, you get more and more settled and more and more settled until you reach the bottom of the ocean. which is totally silent and quiet. If you're sitting in that perspective and you look up to the surface and you have a wide-angle view, you can see all the waves and you can know that the waves are the ocean. If you sit on one wave and your vision is only limited to that distance of the wave, you can only see— The ocean. like few inches away, or give and take few feet away depending on the big or small wave, you can think that this wave is all there is.

Right.

That's all there is. That is me, and that is my life, and that is my reality, and that is me, and there is nothing else. And a little bit further, broaden your awareness, you can see another wave. Oh, okay, there is another wave. That wave might crush on me and might give me problems, or what will happen I don't know. But it's another wave, and another wave, and another wave. They are different waves, obviously. But what they are—the ocean. They are the ocean. They are the ocean. So the wave on the ocean is what from this particular perspective. And this is why at the beginning we brought to our awareness the fact that we are small part of reality. We see the wave. We see—

Why do you think that is?

Because we haven't grown enough to come back to the original full vision.

Is it like that moment in A Few Good Men, I think, where Jack Nicholson is saying, you can't handle it? Yeah, because on some level we cannot handle having access to an awareness of All of the waves that we could potentially—

We can't handle it in our present situation. But this is where— and I go— this is where I got fascinated and engaged in this. There is a technology that allows you to grow your consciousness and expand your awareness. And that's what got me onto this. And that is the Transcendental Meditation technique, which actually allows you to dive deep within the ocean of consciousness. and experience your true self, which is pure consciousness, which is pure being, which is the unified field of all the laws of nature. And then you are sitting from that perspective that actually sees the reality as a real, real thing. For this, we had to evolve on a certain appearance of a nervous system to have so much sophistication and ability to view things from so many different angles and perspectives that ultimately we can see the wholeness of reality from within ourselves. So when we go back to the great wisdom, know thyself, know thyself— Yes. People think know thyself means know your qualities, know your shortcomings, Know what you can handle, what you cannot handle, and that is actually only knowing a surface aspect of ourself. True know thyself means dive within and discover the unified field of all the laws of nature, which is pure consciousness. Go back to the bottom of the ocean, and then your consciousness expands all the waves as being. part of the ocean.

Yes.

And as being yourself. And that is what is called unity consciousness. That is the supreme value of yoga. You know, people think yoga, you do some exercise, it's very good, it relaxes the body. But the term yoga means unification. And supreme yoga is supreme unification where you get freed from the ignorance of separation of the waves one from the other. and you get established in yourself as being the one unbounded ocean of consciousness. Now we can understand why the book has this title, because it is the unbounded ocean of consciousness that is us. We don't have to look at it somewhere else. We don't have to find it outside. We don't have to search for it in the wilderness. It is right here within us. And what is funny is Science is coming to that because science is saying there is unified field. Wisdom is coming to that. Religion has been talking about it, but from different perspective. You know, humans were made in the image of God. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the Tao. There is no self in Buddhism. There is one unbounded being, and that is not in small individual cells.

Spirituality, and maybe even religion, which those are different things for me because I distinguish them for my own reasons. But it's a way of explaining what you're talking about. It's a way of making sense out of this great truth that there is a union. You could have named your book Union. Podcast could be called—

Absolutely, absolutely. But I wanted to use the term consciousness because it's on the basis of consciousness that this union happens. And the term one says that is union. One, that's why I chose one. Unbounded means it's not limited, and it's an ocean of being. Ocean, an ocean in motion because it has waves.

Yes.

And it's an ocean of consciousness.

It's the central metaphor for the book. It's— that's beautiful. I wanna, with our time, and it's, it's short at the moment, we've got only got a few more moments left here. I wanna ask this question and If there is an answer, I'm content with no answer. I want to understand a little bit more how the soul, what we call the soul, relates to what you're discussing as consciousness. Are those things separate? Are they— if everything is one, I would imagine that subsumed in this definition of consciousness, of union, that would include soul. So I'm after this understanding of will our soul survive our physical death? That's what I'm after.

Yes, the short answer is yes. And that is because we have created in our life, when we create disturbances or changes or modifications in the field of consciousness, then this has to be transformed in one way or the other. So In order for the wave to melt into the ocean, it's a wave and it has a process that has to happen within it. So a big wave will go through a certain path, a small wave through another path, a wild wave through a certain kind of changes. Of course, in the waves it's short-lived and quickly happening, but as we come in life and act in life and experience and express our own consciousness, we create certain dynamics in the waves of consciousness, in the whole ocean. And these dynamics have an influence. And for them to settle down and go back to the ocean, they have to continue to work out their situation into a greater and greater field of unity until they can settle. So yes, the answer is yes, and there is a reason for it, not just yes on a belief level. And I agree with you, spirituality and religion are not necessarily the same. You might have somebody who is irreligious but extremely spiritual. You can have somebody who's extremely spiritual and radical or whatever but not really extremely religious, and, you know, believing and doing the thing but not really spiritual. So I agree with you based on this and, and other aspects. And so the short answer is yes, there is a continuation.

The wave continues to— like the ripple effect, or as I think Buckminster Fuller called it, procession. This idea.

Yes, yes, this is one way to say it. That's one way to say it. It has to work its way. And that brings us to what happens, not just it continues, but how does it continue?

How does it continue? Yes.

Yeah. You know, and so of course, there is the understanding it goes to heaven or goes to hell or goes to purgatory or gets punished or gets this or gets that. And there is also the perception that it can be given another chance to complete its past and understand the wholeness and rise to become the ocean. And then melt back into the ocean.

I'm thinking just about that one scientific— and I was never, you know, I went into a humanities field, you know, both as a lawyer, it was more of a— it was less about science. And I think that was because I had difficult time in high school and even college grappling some of these sort of irreconcilable concepts. So rather than try to grapple with them, I just pushed them aside and went into something I could create some certainty out of. So my hat is off to you. I applaud anyone like you that has grappled with these very difficult questions, especially when there may not be concrete answers, but questions that lead to more questions at times. It feels to me that if energy is never destroyed, cannot be destroyed, on that basic level, we are energy, even if at some point, you know, They say the prayer and, uh, you know, we're done that way. We're not really done. And that, I guess, straddles that idea of, you know, what's logical and what is just based on faith and belief. But the merger of those 2 things, I feel, is, is where I'm more personally moving toward, where not just blind faith that we are not done because, as you said, the wave, you know, that things continue on in some form, that that energy is not destroyed. So it, it must be someplace, I guess, is, uh, where I sit, you know.

Absolutely. I think you're absolutely on the right direction of moving. And that energy is consciousness. And consciousness is a dynamic thing, not just a flat consciousness— I am conscious or I am not conscious. You know, you can be dull consciousness, you can be alert consciousness, you can be awake consciousness. And when you feel love, it is your consciousness that is colored by love. When you feel happiness, it's your consciousness that is colored by happiness. Because without consciousness, as we said, and as you highlight, without consciousness, we cannot experience love, we cannot experience wisdom or understanding or happiness or even pain or the universe or the laws of the universe or what we're talking about. So it's consciousness that is there. And now we say, okay, we want to say it's like energy because it is kind of the energy. And fine, yes, it is the energy. And as consciousness, it has to be balanced, it has to be the same, it has to be itself. So if you create a disturbance somewhere, you have to correct the disturbance. And that is where you have action and reaction and the reason for these things. That is where, you know, you if we wanted, we maybe should do another session where we talk about freedom and responsibility and determinism and the purpose of life and all of that. But I think it's really a good start. It's a joy to be with you, Adam.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof. It's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. It's been wonderful, Dr. Nader. I'm so glad you bring it to that point because I think for some people there, this will be both intriguing, interesting. It will resonate with some folks. And for people, they will also get a sense of peace out of hearing this, what you've shared today. I also have a place in me that says, well, where do we put this to work? What's the way to put something to work? And I'm going to pick one tiny little aspect, and this will be a great way to wrap up as well, which is to me, When we wake up in the morning, we have been, quote unquote, unconscious. You know, we have been sleeping in our— we are— and that's probably not an accurate term for what is happening relative to what you just shared, but we are at a different level or state of awakeness. And then we wake up in the morning, and I feel like that is the pivotal moment for so many people in their lives. In my life, in my day, that waking moment. And those few early, early moments of the day when we are still sort of in between, not fully awake and not asleep either. And what we do, what I do then, I think is very impactful. At least it's— that's been my experience. So when we asked the question earlier, thoughts lead to feelings lead to actions and then follow with results, or Feelings create our thoughts that create actions that lead to results. I'm not trying to put it in a box here with you. I just want to get a sense of how important is it that we are either cultivating the right feelings, which we know from psychology in many ways people resist their feelings, suppress and repress their feelings and all that kind of thing. How important is it that we cultivate right feelings? Or is it more important that we create right thinking that creates the next step in the chain?

Feelings are hard to manipulate or control because the feeling is a sum total of the actions that's going on in the nervous system and the physiology, which for me are all the dynamics of consciousness, of course, as we're saying. So the overall experience of the dynamics that are happening within us is what we call feeling. So when you feel happy, it means, you know, there are all of things have been kind of coming together and you feel happy. And so trying to control the feelings is a strain on the physiology, is a strain on the naturalness of things. Because ultimately what we're controlling is our thoughts. We're controlling our thought process, which is about feeling, which is our awareness of the feeling. Now for this, I have to say there is another component which we talked about today. So there is consciousness, there is intellect, there is mind, there is feeling. And there is the senses and all the other aspects. So if we want to look at all these layers, we find that consciousness is the most basic level, the most primary level. The movie of life happens on the screen of consciousness. We tend to forget the screen. So we say, what do I project on that screen? We project a good thought. We project try to project a feeling. Try to create a wholeness that will lead to a certain feeling, but we forget that all of this happening on the screen of our awareness. And what we need to do is ultimately develop our consciousness. When we develop our consciousness and go to the bottom of the ocean of consciousness, which we describe, we are at the source of thought, at the source of creativity, at the source of intelligence. When we remove stresses and strains from our nervous system, and establish ourselves in that balance, the feelings get more and more naturally and spontaneously aligned and in the right direction. And the thought process becomes more evolutionary. This is why I again come back to this simple technique, Transcendental Meditation, which was the reason why I got into all of this. That is very simple, very easy to practice, very natural, that allows you to dive to the ocean of consciousness, to the bottom of the ocean of the self, to pure being. And as the mind rests, the body rests, because mind and body are intimately connected. As the body rests, it gets rid of its stresses and strains, because this is the nature of the body, to get rid of what is foreign to it. And then you have that inner peace and harmony within. You discover yourself to be the unbounded ocean of consciousness. You know yourself to be everything and the source of everything, and you are capturing the reservoir of creativity and intelligence that allows you to have the right thoughts so that from the right thoughts you can have the right action, the right planning. From right action you get right achievement, and then from action and achievement you get fulfillment, and the feeling is there as a fulfillment of a holistic reality that starts from consciousness, from thought, action, behavior, achievement, and fulfillment. So the feeling encapsulates all of this. To have good feeling, which is fulfillment, let's say, and happiness, it's not just something internal, but it's also your life. How is it going? What is your future? What your expectation? Your friends, your country. the things that you care about and the business that you have and your success. So it's inner and outer, but it's all is on the platform of the infinite inner pure being.

I ask people often about their definition of resilience, and I think you've just defined how beautifully resilient in fact we are. And the source of that resilience is in many ways returning to this quiet or this place where we have the capacity to experience more of what is the oneness or more of the integration, the wholeness, our wave with all the waves, our piece of gold is a form it's in with all of the other pieces of gold that exist that we are connected to. It's difficult to do that when we're under strain, as you put it, the stress of so much of what's going on in our lives. And yet there's a process— that's what you've come back to several times— a way to get back to where that strain, that stress, the pressure that is on our systems to abate long enough to experience more of itself.

Beautiful.

And yeah, and that, I guess, is like so many things in life. This is not a quick solve, an instantaneous solution. It's a thing you practice. How many years have you been practicing Transcendental Meditation?

I've been practicing almost 45 years or so.

Okay.

But it happens from the very beginning. This is— that is amazing. Even from the very first sessions, you start discovering there is something different. My consciousness is expanding. I go deeper into myself. There is inner peace. You really discover that wholeness and continuity Whereas usually you are on the, you know, changing level, the mind is jumping around and seeking things. And now there is some kind of coming home, coming back home. And that happens even from the very first meditations.

That's beautiful. As you said, we can continue this. I look forward to the time we will schedule the next chapter, if you will, in what is a very, very eternal And infinite book. So I've so enjoyed our time today, Dr. Nader. Thank you so much. I want to recommend for those of you out there that are looking for a great book to just dive deeper into this topic right now, Dr. Nader's book is called One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, Penguin Random House, wonderful publisher. And it's available in ebook form, but it'll have other forms as well quite soon. You can go to Amazon to experience that. We'll have full show notes as well. For this episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. So check out the show notes, you'll find out more about how it is that you can interact with Dr. Nader and with his content as well. We'd love to get your feedback as always, and if there's someone who you know would really benefit from listening to what Dr. Nader shared today, please feel free to share this episode with them. Leave a comment as well at adammarkel.com/podcast. We just so appreciate your time today, Dr. Nader. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks to you. It's wonderful to be with you. It's great. I look forward to more meetings and success of your great series of podcasts.

Thank you. We'll see you soon. Ciao for now, everyone.

Ciao. Take care.

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