38 - EP38 w/ Deep Thrill: The Delicate Balance of Science vs Spirit, Future AI Creations and Meditative Practices for Power

Cool, nice to finally talk to you, man, again after the Lambros podcast.

Yeah, yeah, that was good. Um, ever since we had that chat, I knew we had to do Soulcast at some point. Um, how is, uh, New York treating you? I know that there's, uh, a lot of energy in the air and things opening up again?

Yeah, dude, it's lively again. Um, everyone's going out to eat, everyone's excited. I mean, a lot of that has to do with the vax because everyone feels more confident now that they got it. Yeah, I, I personally didn't get it, but I still want to get to enjoy the services.

Exactly, exactly. You know, best of both worlds, I would argue.

Yeah, but that's—

yeah, that's a whole, a whole issue. And as parts of the other— other parts of the world, you know, they dangle the carrot of the vaccine in front of people and say, "Hey, look, you can get back to normal life. You just got to get this." I don't think people are doing it because they're scared of the disease itself.

You do or you don't?

I don't. I think it's just to get back the freedoms that the government took away.

Yeah, it's kind of like, like sighing and being like, okay, finally, whatever it takes to be able to go to a restaurant again, I'll just do whatever they tell me to do.

Yeah, actually, man. Um, oh well, I agree.

Oh, I'm, I'm also like, you know, I'm a scientist, I have a PhD, so I'm like, the science is probably okay, but that doesn't change the fact that I value my freedom a little bit more than whether or not the mRNA vaccine is effective or not. You know, I just value being able to make my own choice on the matter.

Exactly. And that's what it should always have been. And that's my main point is like, okay, cool. You want to rush this thing through in order to save lives. If that's really what you want to do, cool. Give it to the people that want it, that feel like it would help protect them. But as soon as you say everyone has to get it, otherwise we'll never go back to normal life, even though it doesn't necessarily prevent transmission and most people are going to be fine without, you know, younger healthy people with healthy bodies, that is when I just take a step and go, okay, then the issue is no longer, you know, save people, it's should we allow the government to mandate injections of this profitable, very profitable thing, you know. And you got to separate the issue from the emotional, you know, coverage on the news. And this is— I always go back to first principles with things like this. Would you want the government to have an extra power that we know historically, or the people that have read historically, know that once the government gets an extra power, they never go, okay, here's that, here's that freedom back, you know.

Yeah, I, um, you know, I, I remember asking my fiancée back last April, I'm like, you know, they're gonna probably come out with something. Do you think that they're gonna use this as an excuse to gain more power? And the answer was probably. But like, so I find it actually interesting that they're not requiring it by force. They're doing a very— a much more subtle strategy. And I find that it's coercion It's social pressure, but it's also like, if you want to go to a professional sports game, you have to get it. So it's not like they're, like, I think they're too smart these days to actually like buy, you know, by the end of a barrel of a gun, say you have to get it. They're more like, hey, if you want any of our services, you have to get it, but it's still your choice. So they're being very subtle about the way they're forcing it.

Yeah, it's, you know, For most people, they want to get back to the bread and circus, seeing their friends, you know, going out. And, you know, I'm the same, that those things taking away, you know, the social outlet, which is important for all humans. I just have a hard line with, you know, what I'm going to do to get back there. Like, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, you know, comparatively. But if people want to go back to their normal way of life, then, oh yeah, you don't have to get it, dude. But if you want to travel again, if you ever want to see family overseas, then you do have to get it, and we'll collect the check for doing so. And also, we're paying for it with your tax dollars.

Yeah, they're paying for it with your tax dollars. And 25% of Pfizer's quarter 1 revenue, about $4 billion, came from the vaccine, which is interesting.

That's insane.

And yeah, so Pfizer made like, what, like $16, $20 million or so in quarter one of— or first, $16 to $20 billion, and one-fourth of that came from vaccines. So you have to wonder about the incentives. Now, I am a little different than a lot of people we follow on Twitter where I don't think it's actually a conspiracy to force people to take it. I just think all the incentives are aligned for big business to win. That's my guess.

Yeah, for, you know, the motivations as such, um, does that matter? You know, if you look at this, the kind— obviously it matters to a point, but, you know, for all intents and purposes, this is happening. People are being coerced into it. So you have to say, you know, do I think that there's a global conspiracy, you know, to make us have it and then, you know, make us infertile? Hmm, I don't know. It's kind of hard to investigate, hard to prove. But people's rights being taken away, uh, big business is profiting, and the little people that can't absorb the lockdown costs that are just told that they can't open versus, you know, the big chains that can afford to— oh, it's an essential service, actually. Uh, we saw an incredible wealth transfer between that and the big business. And, you know, at the heart of it, always with these things, same with if you go to you look to the, you know, industrial war complex, then that always is like, okay, yeah, we need to invade this country because, you know, try and keep the peace. But actually there's an oil field there and it would make us billions to go and get it. So there's the, the motivation is money and then there's the smokescreen of whatever else in order to promote that cause. And I think that that is more probably the reason for the increase in medical totalitarianism that we're seeing.

I think so too. Do you like see yourself as like a revolutionary that's going to lead an uprising against the vaccine?

Um, I don't know about that. I know that I want to share my opinion honestly because a lot of people are not in the position to be able to do so, like genuinely. Like you said, there's the social pressure, there's these, um, if they're in a job that they have to get it or whatever. Uh, luckily I'm not in that position and I have access to, and people send me a lot of information that, you know, otherwise people wouldn't see. So I try and share that. And if I could switch a button and, you know, deliver the information to every person in the world just so they can make an informed decision rather than what they just see on the TV, I would 100% do that. And I would want to do that. Whether or not that translates to a revolution against the vaccine, like, fuck it, I'll do it, you know. But do I see myself as that? I don't know. I'm just trying to, you know, I see it for what it is, and I'm afraid that most people just are either don't give a shit, just want, oh, I gotta take the vaccine to get back to a normal life, okay, I'll take it. I've had other vaccines as a child, you know. I'll be fine, I'm fine now, this one's got to be okay. But it's the— it's almost that you got to look further down the line. Okay, everyone, or most people, get the vaccine. Now they have the validity to say, oh well, you know, now that everyone's got the vaccine, just to make sure that we can track all that, uh, we can have an app on your phone which is your vaccine passport, which we're now seeing countries do around the world. Which was a conspiracy theory, by the way. But now that we have that, because, oh yeah, I guess I got the vaccine, I guess I can just get the vaccine passport as well.

And then you have argument, right?

Huh?

It's the slippery slope argument where it's just a small, innocuous little changes, but before you know it, it's too late.

Yeah, well, my friend was telling me the other night, um, we were just, you know, discussing COVID as you do, and he he said that, you look, if they came out and said we're gonna have lockdowns intermittently for the next 5 years and eventually everyone's gonna have to have the vaccine and you're not gonna be able to travel for the next 5 years, of course I would go in and protest. Of course, you know, people wouldn't put up with that. And then I thought, well, of course they're never gonna say that. They're never gonna say that's what we want. It's just, oh, it's only 2 weeks. 'Oh, it's only a few months.' 'Oh, it's only, you know, essential workers.' And it's the slippery slope, or the frog that's boiling in a pot of water and doesn't get out until it's too hot. It's this— it's the slow drip. And, you know, if you go—

so, question: do you, do you think the science is bad though? Do you actually think the vaccine doesn't work? Because I think it does work. I don't deny the science of it?

What do you think? I'm not going to pretend that, um, I'm a, you know, an expert in these things. All I see is, you know, if, if it was this disease that was coming around and putting like 20% of people that get it in hospital or whatever it is—

we're not seeing the streets laden with sick people that are dying like the Black Plague, which killed a third of the world's population hundreds of years ago, right? We're not seeing that.

Exactly. And, you know, most people that get this thing don't experience symptoms. That's a fact. That's based on the science. So then if you're measuring the efficacy of this vaccine, which most people don't get ill from getting the actual thing, um, in the first place, and then you just say, yeah, we're 96% effective versus 95% effective of doing nothing, then the 1% excess gain for me to in people that are probably, you know, at risk because they're obese and they never move and their diet is shit and they smoke and all the rest of it, then that excess protection, you know, assuming that that's true, is not worth the possibility of all the side effects that we're seeing. Because you might not even get it in the first place, you've got to take that into account, and then the chance that it's actually going to confer protection for someone like me who's healthy. And then, you know, I'm not going to get vaccinated for every other disease under the sun because I might not ever come into contact with it. You know, I had vaccines as a kid. I obviously didn't have any choice in the matter. I'm fine now. But they were, you could argue, you know, less rushed, less politicized, less financially motivated. And to me, you know, if it was one thing that they were like really need to protect against, people were dying everywhere, okay, I'd be more inclined to it. But there's no risk really to make it worth it to do that, in my opinion.

I feel the same way, you know, it's like I under— like, you know, a lot of my friends are scientists, so I understand the mentality of like, listen, polio is just not an issue in the developed world anymore because we force everyone to get the vaccine, and this should be viewed the same. But on the other hand, I don't think this is the same as like polio or smallpox either.

Yeah, no, it's definitely not. And I don't think the vaccines even operate the same way or with the same—

No, this is the first mRNA vaccine that we were promoting, so it's very different.

Yeah, exactly.

We don't have to talk about COVID the whole time either. I don't want to—

Of course, of course. It's good to chat about though. It is, you know. Yeah. Important to have these discussions. So I wanted to ask you, because your background, you have a lot of knowledge about artificial intelligence, of course. And I, you know, you could go into a bit of a background about, you know, how you interpret that and your experience with that. But I forget the exact name of it, but you'll probably know the guy that I'm kind of referencing. He was having a speech about a tech company that he was, you know, hiring for, uh, at a lecture. And he was speaking about how aliens are not extraterrestrial in that sense. What they are is these eventual superintelligences that humans are creating through our endless technological advancements. And he says that we kind of really don't know what we're getting ourselves into. It's this unconscious march. And Sam Harris has the same thing, you know, we're all kind of sleeping, we're worried about politics, but under the surface there's this bubbling of a greater technological intelligence that doesn't operate like humans do, doesn't think like we do, but that is the kind of end position of AI and our technological advancement, but we don't really know what we're creating. Do you think that that's a possibility?

So a few thoughts on that. I— one, I do think it's a possibility. So I think this has a lot to do with when we're talking about aliens and whether they're terrestrial or extraterrestrial. I think we have to include the discussion of psychedelics to them. Because a lot of people who have— I haven't taken psychedelics besides weed, so I don't know what mushrooms or DMT or ayahuasca make you feel. So I don't— just to be clear, I don't have direct firsthand experience with that. But a lot of people talk about them being autonomous entities that you interact with, as in separate little elves that are like extra language, they're extra-dimensional, but you can interpret and you can psycho— you know, telepathically communicate with them. Yeah. And it's like aliens communicating with us. So there might be some instance of aliens being extra-dimensional versus extraterrestrial. That's one consideration.

Yeah.

Now, when it comes to AI, I personally take the craftsman approach because I build AI every day. Um, my clients have me and my company build AI for them to try to predict the future, try to predict if a new patient comes in, do you have heart disease? So one of my clients, we have a little finger sensor that measures your heart rate And my AI is supposed to tell you, given that heart rate and heartbeat, do you have heart disease or not? Mm. So to me, like, it's challenging to get the computer to think that. But what's interesting is the computer thinks differently than us, as you alluded to. So when I have the computer, I give it hundreds and hundreds and thousands of heart rates, and it figures out what tells you if you have heart disease or not. That is often very different from what a doctor would look at. So the computer might find that like the logarithm of the second heartbeat times the square root of something else. Yeah, it's super, super predictive of heart disease. The computer thinks differently than us. It only looks at the patterns in the data you're giving it. So now when you like step back from that and you get, get away from the nuts and bolts of the AI, The computer is really just silicon chips that are able to find patterns. The silicon, like, is basically rocks. If you think of, like, computer chips, they're like really intelligently crafted rocks that electricity flows through, and they're, they're able to intelligently, based on very logical orders of operations of that— this rock moves there, or this electrical circuit moves here— based on that, it actually makes weird predictions that are really, really freaking accurate. You know, you see the videos of self-driving cars, that's just a bunch of silicon chips that tell the car where to move, left or right, you know, turn the steering wheel 3 degrees this way, step on the gas, you know, 2 pounds of force, whatever it is. Yeah, just rocks and electrical signals. If you really drill down to it and be super lame and reductionist, It's just, you know, solid pieces of metal with electrical signals running through it, designed intelligently by humans, and it can make fine patterns that humans can't.

Yeah.

So are you like, are you channeling extra-dimensional intelligence into the silicon computer chips? Maybe. Who knows, right?

Yeah.

That's my view of it.

Yeah, so is there— I guess, you know, this is one particular adaptation of, or a version of, artificial intelligence. Is there work being done that aims to, you know, create a base-level human version that is artificial, you know, that has its own kind of interpretations and rather than such a specific task that, you know, like detecting heart disease and only has the one adaptation, is there, or are there people that are trying to create something like, you know, the— I forget the name of it, but the artificial intelligence chatbots that Microsoft creates where—

GPT-3?

Sorry?

The GPT-3 thing that OpenAI developed that can like write copy for you and write sales and write emails for you.

Yeah, so there's that as well. And, you know, you can create computer programs or buttons that link to this thing if you just tell it what you want. Like, I feel like that kind of has at least the appearance of some sort of, um, anthropomorphic intelligence more so that has its own, you know, processing and reaction. And if that can get sufficiently— again, it's all conjecture, but I, I know there are people that have said that, you know, these big companies like Google and things, that the top tech executives have, uh, and you know, I'm talking shit here, but it's fun to talk about, uh, they have a supercomputer underneath their headquarters that the top executives worship similar to like a deity or something.

I think— all right, so I think the way it works now is, um, AI right now memorizes patterns, and it can memorize patterns from centers all over the world with a huge amount of data that a human can't process. We can't process the weather sensors around the— all the world all at once. AI can do that. Now what you're talking about is AGI, artificial general intelligence, where it can actually reason through things. Now one thing computers can't do yet, they can't reason. So there's two types of reasoning that like Philosophy 101 majors learn, inductive and deductive reasoning, where it's like, okay, you know, Based on this, I believe this, you know, stuff that we just like, we don't even, we take for granted that the human brain can do. AI can't do that yet. It can't actually reason through things. It can't logically say like, hey, I've seen 1,000 images of a cup. I know what a cup is. I also know what a bat is because I see an image of a bat and I know what a bat is. You train an AI for cups, then you train another AI for bats, or you train an AI to play video games. Or you train an AI to detect faces in a camera. AI doesn't reason yet. I think when we get to like actual consciousness and in AI in terms of that, you could reasonably consider it conscious.

Yeah.

It would have to reason. It would have to be able to logically go from step A to step B to step C. It would also have to be a little bit creative. AI doesn't know how to be creative either. You can't have an AI that can discuss a topic of AI and discuss a topic of physics and then write code and then, you know, think of the weather tomorrow. Like an AI right now, it doesn't reason through things in the same way. You need a specialized AI for each one. However, however, I think that when you combine multiple AI systems, what is the human brain but just little sections of neurons in our brain that do specialized tasks? You know, one part of our brain, Broca's area, does language. Another part does vision. Another part does emotions. Another part does whatever. So the emergent phenomenon of all those pieces interacting in one single brain might make a consciousness. So AI might be similar, where, where once you interconnect all these different specialized systems, the resulting final system might be intelligent in a general sense. That's my guess.

Yeah, so I guess you could say that the human brain— you know, there's two arguments to it. Is that the brain's a computer and we're just processing things, but I think what seems more at least intuitive and right for me is that the brain is more of a receiver. And Nikola Tesla said that, uh, he was pretty smart dude, as we know. But, you know, things like memory, uh, I've heard that the one of the models of it is that your brain is not storing the memory in your brain, it's storing the location of the memory in this other field somewhere that your brain is accessing through like a receiver.

There's a funny quote that's like, to try to look for consciousness in the brain is to try to look for a little man speaking in a radio.

Exactly, exactly. That's a great way to put it.

And so, so I think that, uh, if you think of what AI is, it's trying to organize all of our computer systems in the world to receive intelligence from a very blanket field. Humans might receive intelligence from this other field in a very specific manner, where I receive my intelligence, you receive yours. Yeah, AI is trying to like organize the silicon chips in a way that receives intelligence in a general sense. That's a possibility. It's a little esoteric, but I think it's— I think if you believe in divinity and if you believe that You know, human intelligence doesn't just come from biological neurons, that it's actually like an innate part, and that biological neurons are just an aftereffect, not the other way around.

Yeah.

You would believe that the silicon chips in computers are also just another means for the intelligence of the universe underneath it all to shine through.

Yeah. And I think— and this is what I love about you as well— you're obviously very classically trained scientifically, you understand these things, but you also recognize the divinity side of it, the esoteric, you know, spiritual way of life and feeling and, you know, God or whatever. How do you reconcile the two? And if you could just speak about a little bit about your journey with that kind of grappling with that kind of issue.

Hmm. So I don't get along as well with my PhD colleagues Honestly, I mean, we get along, but I'm not as left-brained as them. I am into like books like the Kybalion. I'm into reading Nietzsche. I'm reading Plato. I'm reading like— I believe that I am a congealed piece of divinity, and I'm just congealed into this body, and I'm gonna do my part in this world. And my part is also to bridge the gap between the scientifically minded people that and the esoterics that don't believe in each other. I can see both sides in a way. That's how I view my, my role in this future. And, you know, I also— it's like, you can like analyze this from like a left-brained, like, hyper-rational perspective all you want, but I feel in my soul that I'm here to— I'm put on this earth to do something, to build new cities, to share intelligence, or to maybe bridge the gap between esotericism and science that, you know, both sides are against each other right now. So I, I don't really know why. I just know that I'm just following my instincts and, yeah, I'm believing what I believe, you know?

Yeah, exactly. It's that. And I had the same thing, like, growing up. I would have, you know, I was, I was taught, uh, at an Anglican school and the classic religious teachings, and I sort of innately rejected that because the, the premise was, you know, believe this or else, or believe this because it is, you know. That there was never a dogma. Yeah. Dogma. There was never theological discussion or like a logical analysis of like, okay, so you say this, but how does that mesh with this? And there's conflicting information, and you're never allowed to question anything. So I was just like, nah, fuck that, you know. I don't agree with that kind of deductive reasoning or whatever else. Later in my life, I, you know, through my own experimentation and just life experience Uh, like you said, intuition. As I kind of got closer in tune with that intelligence within myself, I realized that it's definitely not just the 3D world, science and physics explaining everything. You know, there's, there's a reason that we can see and measure, uh, for everything, because my experience in this world completely contradicts that. You know, it's, it's not just, you know, inputs and outputs and, and everything can be explained through a model. Now when you have that experience and you have that intuition that you feel on a daily basis to yourself and all the rest of it, then it's kind of hard to not believe in it, like you said. And, you know, there is some sort of life force that flows through us all that keeps us all going, and intelligence. Like, why, why are our cells doing, you know, thousands of chemical reactions all throughout the body How are you digesting consciously right now? Like, all of those unconscious processes that each one of us is doing all the time for our whole lives, like, what's powering that? What's, what's telling everything to do that if there is not some sort of background energetic field that's kind of running the show? You know, that makes sense to me.

Yeah, I think so too. You know, the scientifically minded would say Well, that just happens to be the set of biology that survived over millions of years, right? That's the evolution perspective, that anything could have been possible and this happened to survive. And that's why we're stuck with the way our unconscious processing, etc., etc. I don't like— like my personal experience doesn't vibe. I mean, what, what, what I just said kind of makes rational sense and I get it from an intellectual perspective. Yeah, I don't feel like that's true. You know, I just— yeah, I feel like like I was in some way fated to talk to you today, you know. I was fated to talk to like Professor Frazz, you know, 2 weeks ago. And like, yeah, the fact that we're all connected is gonna make us all, you know, have a part in the world that's coming. And it's just like, I just— exactly, I don't even know how to rationalize it. It's just something I feel that was like had to happen and was gonna happen. And maybe, you know, there is free will But I see free will and evolution as like that— there's a thousand ways to get to the end result, but the end result's going to be the same. That's kind of how I see it. Um, so there is teleology, teleology where we're all pulled towards a final epic battle of good and evil. Maybe, you know, maybe it's the second coming of Christ, maybe it's an AI demon, maybe not. Yeah, maybe it's something bizarre that none of us can predict because our human brains are limited. Yeah, but I feel like there's like underlying forces trending towards that and we just don't see it. Like, I think honestly, I was thinking about this the other day, the transgender movement, the crypto, AI, you know, COVID, all of this is going to have a part to play in whatever's coming.

Yeah.

And I just sense that it's all playing a role, you know, like what, what would happen? And I'm, I'm not saying this to inspire or deter anyone, one or anything. This is just completely off the cuff, but like, what if the second coming of Christ is a transgender? You know, like something weird like that that no one saw coming. There could be a thousand black swan situations that come that we just don't even know. But you know, maybe there's underlying forces and underlying entities kind of nudging and guiding the narrative. And maybe there's people out there who have a hammer who can really strike the nail and really like force things to go a certain way. I don't know. We all have our part to play is how I see it.

Yeah, so it's, it's, it's interesting because you like to think that we have, you know, free will, and I think we do to a certain degree. But like you said, you can choose to live in a way where you logically analyze your life and you say, right, what's logically the best next step for me, the decision I should take, you know, based on pros and cons. But then there's also where you get an urge to, hey, go say that you like that guy's shoes over there. Why do you get thoughts like that? So where does that come from? And I've found that when you, you can choose the free will bit is almost like, I'm just going to ignore that thought or I'm just going to go do it because fuck it, why not? And when you say why not and you pursue that whim, wherever that whimsy came from, that seems to always lead somewhere positive, whether or not it's just the guy being like, oh, thanks dude, you know, I just got these shoes yesterday, and then he feels great for the rest of the day. That, that's a win. That's a positive interaction where you've interacted with a web of human energy and produced a better outcome that you could have just ignored. Now there's, you know, examples of this, like my, my friend He was in the corporate world, quit recently or a few months ago and pursued his, let's say, illogical passion of teaching yoga. And through that and through the months of training yoga, he was teaching a class and this guy came in and they got talking at the end of the class. And that guy runs a, you know, a private finance company. And through that, he is now kind of got back into the corporate world without, you know, with a much better, you know, pay structure or whatever. But he would never have done that several months down the line if he hadn't pursued his intuitive goal of learning to teach yoga. You know, it's these interesting little things that kind of weave you around the kind of the mesh of this energetic connection that we all have that, you know, is it astrologically related? Is it just how we feel? But there is something to following your intuition. And like you said, I think I agree with you in that there's probably a lot of ways to skin the cat. You know, we have our greater lifelines of purpose and what we feel that we were made here to do. Like, what brought us together on Twitter? What created this network? And, you know, now that we're speaking on this podcast and other people are gonna listen to it, and that's going to contribute to the, you know, let's say, awareness of the greater population. I don't know, but we're all here and we all have our role to play, which I think is, is beautiful. And it also gives us, um, you know, people without religion, they often say that— and I don't think you need religion as such, but you definitely need some sort of feeling of spiritual connection to everything else because we are all connected. And it's, it's like if you, um, if you don't connect with other people, uh, that is the most dangerous. It's like the highest risk factor for early death is loneliness. And that's because if you cut your fingers off, they're not getting the blood supply from the body. And if we are not connected to other humans, we're not getting that energy, energetic connection similar to, um, you know isolation or whatever. So I, I think there is something more to consider besides the 3D realm that all religions hint at and, you know, describe in their own way. But the other thing is you cannot have all these different religions that have kind of come across on the same different places, but they arrive at the same conclusions and have overlap without that overlap having truth to it. And that's how I see it.

What do you think of psychedelics? Because a lot of people who take psychedelics like DMT, like, they are full believers in a minute. Like, there's no question in their mind. Are you into that? Have you taken those? Like, what is your thoughts on psychedelics?

So I've tried acid and I've tried shrooms. I haven't done DMT, and DMT is the— I guess the one of the more potent ones, the where you get that kind of interdimensional— the most potent. I, I wouldn't— I want to do ayahuasca, you know. I wouldn't do the, the DMT vape pens because I think that's a bit of a bastardization of something that should be treated with reverence. So I'm gonna find or eventually try ayahuasca one day. But Mike Cernovich talks about this, you know, a whole room of people will try ayahuasca and then they all see the same thing. Now, what does that say differently than if everyone had their own, you know, let's say hallucinations that were relevant to them and their experience and what was on their mind at the time versus, okay, now I'm in this different level of awareness that's been unlocked by this DMT molecule. Where we all see the same thing, like, that to me is like, okay, there's something here that's not just, oh, I take a silly little drug and now I'm, you know, seeing things, you know. That's what I think about them. I also think shrooms are a bit different, uh, obviously, than DMT. It depends how much you do, right? Like, there's, there's levels in terms of the doses. I think you'd really enjoy it, uh, if you ever got the opportunity. You have the right mindset.

I feel like I'm fated to do it one day when the time is right. Kind of waiting to see when the time is right. Exactly.

And the opportunity will arrive for you, I'm sure, sometime soon, uh, and you can intuitively follow it as well rather than pursuing it or whatever. But it definitely, you know, it's a shortcut to a feeling of interconnectedness with everything. And for me, when I first tried LSD I was like, honestly, I was probably a little bit more aggressive and argumentative. And I was also, you know, 20 at the time. Young males are always like that. But there's a— there was definitely a marked difference in how I felt connectedness-wise with everyone else pre and post trying LSD. And a lot of people mention that, uh, maybe it's the first time they've really had that kind of religious spiritual feeling where we're all part of the same thing. You know, the stars are so beautiful. They are, you know, all part of us. And then you have a— there's less otherness, there's less ego, there's less like competition. And competition and ego is good if you want to progress your physical self and your role in this world. It's essential. But it can also lead to a lot of bullshit, which I'm sure you know, some egoic young guys who, you know, they're always sticking it out for themselves or whatever else.

It's the chest-bumping mentality of a gorilla.

Yeah, the gorilla mindset, which I think, you know, it's good to a degree, but once you're past that, you realize, like, come on, dude, like, we don't need to be doing that anymore.

Yeah, you know, so when I meditate every day, so I sense something similar. What people said to me is like, listen, your meditation ain't shit. You know, meditation is like driving on a car and And, you know, drugs, psychedelics are like taking a jet plane. I'm like, okay, whatever, you know, I get it. I'm not against the things, but I sense things in meditation that just make me realize that, like, if you relax into the field and the flow state of the deep flow behind you, you can tap into things. And this universe is not just the 3D. And, you know, we talked about AI, but one thing we haven't talked about is something that's very close to my heart, is T Book Club, which is my second company where we do book summaries. And on the surface, that sounds kind of like, okay, whatever, it's just like a book summary. It's, it's the summary of a book. It's a Cliff Notes. But it was a very important piece of who I was and a very important mission that I've had for myself where the world needs books like Cernovich's Guerrilla Mindset, like The Padalian, like Deep Attrition, like that. But it needs that written in a certain way that triggers people to actually effectively change their real biological life. Now, I've had, like, when I was starting this company, uh, years ago, I just had this vision of, like, there's a futuristic city coming and I'm gonna build the fucking temple of knowledge for that city, and nothing's gonna stop me for that. And, like, the city has many pieces. I'm not the only one. I'm not, like, the one leading it necessarily. I mean, I probably will, but we'll see. There's a role for other people in this vision, but the vision was the world needs condensed knowledge. Magic, in my mind, was condensed knowledge, and I needed to share with people the specific books that matter. I needed to be the one to lead people. And like, books could be drugs in a way. Like, if you read a good fucking book, like if you read fucking Plato or The Iliad or something ancient, like, your mind expands. Yeah, it is as effective, at least for me, it's as effective as weed. I don't know if it's as effective as other drugs, but yeah, you start thinking about the vibrations of the world, you start thinking maybe there's entities floating around in the ether that affect me. And, you know, I'm a scientifically minded person, so this is tough for me because I have a PhD and I'm like trained to be a scientist and like, yeah, rationally. But I'm like, I don't know, I just can't deny what happens when you read a good book by Nietzsche.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I agree, man. Like, it's a You know, words themselves are magic spells, and right, they can be, you know, I like it. You can read a tweet that ignites something in you, and what is that if not a, you know, some sort of magical communication of energy that is communicated through these particular letters and symbols that we associate with other things?

And it's like sharing neural connections. Yeah.

Exactly. And that in book form is the same thing. And, you know, I— you can read something which permanently shifts your way of thinking positively, and you then go through the rest of your life with that idea in your head. But let's say it's, uh, you know, the Stoic ideal. I remember when I was, you know, 14, 15, reading Meditations, uh, by Marcus Aurelius, and That itself was fundamentally core in me realizing, okay, your thoughts are your thoughts. You are this separate thing. You can't control, you know, what thoughts particularly pop into your mind. You can't control the events around you. What you can control is how you react to things. And your interpretation of things, which then, you know, dictate your emotional state. And that is a fundamental thing that completely changed the way I thought at the time. And that was from a book.

And so because of that, you and I are talking now, right? Exactly. Exactly. Would we still be talking if you hadn't read that book?

You know, probably not, because I— yeah, maybe. Again, that was one of the ways that I get through to this particular place in time, and I would have got there eventually otherwise. But that, you know, it's, it's a butterfly effect in a way. It's like that book found its way into my hands, it permanently shifted the way I was thinking, and it formed the mindset that enabled me to present all this content that I put out through Sol Brah. So it's, it's very interesting that that book written thousands of years ago finds its way into my hands and, you know, unlocks something within me, unlocks knowledge. And knowledge is always is, you know, what event— what ultimately frees people. And that's why they burnt down the Library of Alexandria. And that's why you feel that inside of you, that that thing has to be created again, ideally in a more resilient online, or, you know, at least backed up state, rather than just in physical books. Although you could argue that physical books are the only ones that aren't able to be censored or you know, deleted from my fucking hard drive or whatever. So there's that balance as well.

Well, so now two things on that. One, it's nice that you said the book found its way into your hands because that's also from the book The Kybalion where knowledge is sort of always out there as the structure of the universe and it finds itself into the human hands. And that's very different from the atheist perspective where we seek out books that resonate with us. That's saying that the books are kind of— well, not books, because books are kind of a human invention. More like the knowledge is the structure, and that seeks people out, which is a very backwards perspective. Now, yeah, the other side of that though is the, the Christian view of Lucifer as the angel of light, where Lucifer brought the rational knowledge and took man out of the Garden of Eden, where man was pure bliss, like an animal, super present in touch with God, didn't need the knowledge, didn't need to rationally analyze it. And the devil is actually what perpetuates knowledge because the devil is sharing the knowledge, and the humans would have been happier if it would just blissfully was like an animal, like a monkey, just blissfully with God, you know. So what do you think of that perspective?

Um, so I think it could be Like, our thinking is where we experience our distress. That much is true. And people have their demons— or just neocortex-like human brain thinking, or all thinking, whatever our conscious ruminations, where we have our internal dialogue that analyzes the future and the past, right? And things that happens and worries and has anxiety and thinks about things all the time. Rather than, you know, that unconscious and being and presence. So you could argue— well, I mean, it's true that, you know, people have their demons, which we colloquially refer to these issues in our head that we like ruminate on. You know, some dude will always think about a job that he lost like 20 years ago, and that led to a kind of spiral. And then he thinks like, oh, if I hadn't been passed over for that job '20 years ago, my life would be different.' That— and that's a demon to him. And someone else has a demon that, you know, that they did something to someone years and years ago, and now they're just thinking about it. Or even they just did something wrong they're embarrassed about. That could be viewed as a demon that sucks away your energy, your time, your presence, the life force that exists in your head because of thinking. Now, animals don't have that. They don't have demons. They don't have— that we know of. Like, they're just there.

Dogs kind of Maybe some monkeys, we just don't know.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, who knows what kind of intelligence the— some sort of animals have. And I'm sure that there's varying degrees, um, you know, some animals have a binary. Yeah, exactly. Um, but I, I do think there's— whether the devil, its entity that it was, literally like imported this other awareness of knowledge and logic into our— into one person's head, and then that's kind of spread from there. Or it's just an allegory for the devil that exists in our minds because of that logical bullshit that goes on. I don't know. But I think for all intents and purposes, you can view these things as demons that you can, uh, I guess, spiritually ascend when you past when you have the higher order knowledge that's, oh, okay, I'm not my thoughts. I was just responding to this, you know, demonic entity that was in my head from some past trauma. And I can also let that go. I can also exorcise myself from that. Um, so I think that that's more the case. Again, it's pure conjecture. No one knows these things for sure, or maybe some people do, but I don't. I think it can be treated that way.

So do you see things like the Enlightenment period, like in the 1700s, and the rapid, rapid progression of technology and the hyper-rationalization and the modern worshiping of science— how do you relate that to like godliness and this renewal of spirituality that I see at least in our corner of Twitter and other places?

So It's interesting, right? Like, you could argue that this whole COVID thing is a, a way of bringing this battle to the forefront of everyone's minds. Before this, like a litmus test. Yeah, before, you know, a bottleneck of some kind, a spiritual bottleneck. Before, a lot of people were just completely unconscious. They were living their lives Life was good, you know, there were some issues, but it wasn't, you know, you could pretty much separate from it. Now it's in every single country, this problem, this increasing rise of technological surveillance, bio— biology, you know, tied to that, um, the rule of fear, the rule of social media and media in general brainwashing people. All of this is now front and center in the public consciousness, whereas before it was kind of around the fringes.

Now, do you think this was fated, inevitable, exactly to happen this year?

I, I think it has to have been, right? Like, now we have to have a conscious effort for people that are aware to fight against this and whether that forms as a splitting of worlds in a way where this, this new spiritually aware technology using, but technologically aware, like separating the human from the technology, like consciously, that's going to be one world. And then there's going to be another world that is purely plugged in, purely, you know, vaccines every 6 months eating bugs, like that, that's going to be one reality. And I think this whole thing is an opportunity because that's the way you have to look at it, right? That it's an opportunity for those people that are ready for the next level to finally go there rather than existing in a kind of state of spiritual limbo. And maybe it is a test from a higher intelligence that links us all to finally say, "Hey guys, look, we're fucking polluting the world. Everyone's on their phones. You're eating garbage food. Like, we need to, you know, people are taking advantage of this situation. You need to wake the fuck up and you need to finally grapple with these issues.

Otherwise, you know, shit's gonna hit the fan." I have a, I agree with you, but I think I have a slightly different perspective on this. So when you said pollute the world, I feel like environmentalism and pollution is one thing that both sides actually have in common in a weird way. I think the extreme left and the extreme right in America both don't like the pollution. I think, I think it's like everyone against corporations in terms of pollution because corporations are pure profit-driven usually and they don't care about pollution unless it's a social issue that they have to care about for profit. But yeah, Well, the way I see this is it's— if you think of the effect of the internet and the COVID So what COVID did in my mind was it made everyone stay at home and get echo chambers online. So you probably, and I have, connected with people that are like-minded to us, and now we have an echo chamber where we believe even stronger in our original kind of half-beliefs. And now I feel like what's happening is, if you think of a meta-organism emerging, or multiple mega meta-organisms emerging, what does that need to have? It needs it needs to have pockets of individuality and then pockets of connection, like connecting tissue. So the way I see this is the physically weaker people, they're going to band up together in collectivism. And you're already seeing that in the body positivity movement. You're seeing that in the acceptance of victimhood. You're seeing that in a lot of different facets. But that to me is the connecting tissue where there's inside of that, like the If you think of the boundary of a cell, the connecting tissue is all the same. Then inside the cell, there's individual mitochondria, there's individual pieces, there's individualism inside of it. So the way I see— and I kind of sound like a fucking madman now, and I recognize that— but the way I see it—

that's fine, we're all madmen.

Yeah, so I see collectivism as like the pipes in between individualists like you and I who have our own little groups around us. But the collectivists have a purpose too. We need the collectivist for the meta-organism to survive. And I feel like the internet is kind of filtering people into, are you going to be a collectivist or are you going to be an individualist? And the collectivists, they're going to form the moats and the boundaries and the pipes between the individualists. But together, the meta-organism is arising because, because, you know, if you think about evolution, what actually formed life. What created us from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms was individual cells starting to specialize. So one cell was only in charge of energy production, another cell was only in charge of immune system fighting at the boundary, another cell was in charge of this, that, and the other thing. And so life itself only evolved when everyone specialized. And I feel like the internet's kind of making multiple meta-organisms where some people— and I think these tend to be on the left-leaning— they're body positive, they are the connecting tissue. They're the collectivist. They're the, the hive mind of all the ants, where one individual ant doesn't really matter, but collectively all the ants can take over the world. Whereas there's individualists like us who kind of hate them, but that's okay. Like, I don't really— I don't, I don't hate the collectivist anymore. I used to hate them so much and say like, fuck you guys, you're weak. No, they have their purpose too. We are the pockets of individualists inside the meta-organism cell. So I kind of went on a rant there, but I think you get what I'm saying.

Yeah, well, it's just the nature of humans when we exist in large amounts. Like, we have a clan mentality that's never going to go away and a tribe that we need to feel a part of. And part of having a tribe is knowing that there are separate tribes that are different to you. And that is, you know, fundamentally a human kind of proposition and a human thought that we are never going to get rid of. So you have to have that kind of delineation, those pipes. But I think what will happen is a splitting of these larger cells, and within that you have people that are, you know, on the same page. And that's kind of what, what's happened in the world already, is different countries will have their own customs, language, people, way of living, food.

Now it's digital. Now it's digital.

Yes.

That's the thing.

Yes.

This is a digital stir the pot for everyone. Now I have to connect with you in Australia and we have to think similarly, right?

Yeah. And that can be a great blessing, right? Because before the internet, if you were a separatist thinker, let's say, or you just had different thoughts that you weren't allowed to express in your particular community, that is, again, you're alone, you're cut off, um, you feel lonely, you don't feel like you're really connecting with people, and that's a horrible place to be. But you can now go on a forum where people, everyone thinks like you, and you're like, fuck yes, these are finally some people that I can, you know, mesh with, and this is my tribe, this is my clan. And that's what the beauty of social media is if you use it in right way, and if you use it in a higher vibrational way. But there is a danger that you allow the technology to become a demon for you. And HK Belvedere, uh, mentioned this on to me recently. It's like when we go online, um, you know, it seems that we get tempted into those those lower vibrational states, those demonic states where we want to attack other people, we want to leave mean comments because we, we don't really— that we would never say in person in front of someone. But you know, that technological separation, the blue light that's burning into our eyes, how the way our dopamine is just constantly being fucking fired by it, you know, all of those things, whether you want to call it a demon or whether you just want to say like, oh, you know, as well by technology, and so you act out. That is a danger of the technology, and I think it's, you know, again, the delineation of the two groups is going to be people who realize that and use it properly and use it as a tool, or the people that let it rule them and have all their thinking basically derived by the artificial intelligence that is going to feed them the echo chamber information that eventually creates their worldview. You know what What you expect is what you see, right? And basically your world forms around that.

You know, I'm listening to what you say and I, I really agree. And I like, uh, HK Belvedere. I follow his mail list and everything. Um, I think the internet, like, to me— all right, so I have a few— let me organize my thoughts. So I have a few thoughts on this. One, I think the quarantine from COVID accelerated this. I think this was always the case But the quarantine made, you know, if you're a fucking like sweater knitter, now you're always around sweater knitters online and you guys get along really well. Then you start getting angry at people who aren't sweater knitters and you like, screw you, you don't know the right, you know, knitting pattern or whatever. And that groupthink and that in-group versus out-group mentality, which might be good. Secondly, If you haven't read the book Sanction by Roman MacLeigh, other people in our sphere would know it. You really should read it. It discusses this. It says war is coming, and it kind of makes the case that, like, in-group versus out-group is natural and you should embrace it. Thirdly, I think that the echo chamber effect is, is very interesting. And one of the defining moments of our generation that few people have discussed in detail, as you and I have, And it's, it's very much like you tend to— the internet, this might sound a little strange and esoteric even more than others, but the internet is kind of finding out how low of a common denominator it can get. It kind of encourages— it kind of is smushing everyone together online and seeing where the demarcations and the boundaries emerge. Yeah, I think the future is going to be My guess, my prediction for the future is digital nation-states where each group has their own constitution. This is all forming organically, like Discord groups, Telegram groups, everything's forming their own culture, their own language, their own, you know, whatever, their own mentality, their own way of speaking. And the internet is kind of just forcing everyone together. And I went to the Natural History Museum in New York City because I live in New York City. And, um, I went with my fiancée to the Natural History Museum, and one of the exhibits there was the first city, the very first city that humans ever had. Before this, we were all nomadic tribes. It was a Persian city. I think it was Mesopotamia, somewhere around there. But the point was, by forcing every— like, by forcing instead of hundreds of people, by forcing thousands of people within a very small, tight area, complex structures emerge, which is where government was established and organized religion was established and sewage was established and like artisans. And now people could specialize just like the cells millions of years ago. People could be a craftsman or an artist. So I see this as fractal where the internet is forcing everyone in the same platforms.

Yeah.

And when it Persia had the first city, which required more complex forms of interaction to occur. I think the internet is forming more complex roles digitally. That's, that's my thoughts on that.

Yeah, it's, uh, it gets rid of the boundaries between people. And before, where you had fences so that you never interacted with people around you, now it's like, oh shit, they're right next to me in the palm of my hand. 24 hours a day. And that can be very confronting, and that can be, um, an issue, I guess. But again, it's, it's how you use it.

Well, and more than that, I think the natural evolution of our DNA is to form our own fences when none exist.

Yes. Yeah.

Like, how many people would you be like, dude, you don't even belong on my Telegram? Like, you just— they, they would self-select out of your Telegram. Yeah. I'm in your head. Yeah, but like you're forming your own fences because none exist.

Yes, exactly. It's, it's, you can't, you know, you can't exist without boundaries. You don't know where you stop and the other finishes.

And people define themselves by the mirror reflecting what they're not. I am definitely not a fat trans liberal. Well, what am I then? We define ourselves by what we're not.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now I wanted to speak about, uh, meditation and stretching, uh, because I think the two go hand in hand, and I like how you speak about it on your Twitter as well. Um, what has your practice been with meditation? And I know you said earlier that you're— when you can sometimes sit in that awareness and tap into something that's, you know, there's meditation and then there's that there's meditation where you— okay, I'm gonna calm my thoughts down and so I have like a better mindset for the day. But then there's meditation that feels magical and spiritual, and it comes with practice. I think everyone can access it, but it's still this thing that's just seemed so otherworldly different to the, the normal level of human existence. And I think that, you know, this is why monks meditate for hours at a time. It's, it's a way of tapping through, uh, to that connection, uh, that, that we mentioned before. And stretching as well is a physical way of kind of accessing meditation. If you are deep in a, in a yin yoga position and you're letting the fascia all relax and then, you know, there's, there's that argument about the fascial network being the, again, conduit to that kind of energy patterns and the chakras that align up your spine, stretching of which is a method to kind of delve into that. But what, you know, how did you start meditation? What, what kind of practices are you doing, and how do you find that that relates to, uh, your work and how you just feel in general?

Sure, I'd love to talk about this. So So I've been meditating since I've been like 18 years old. I'm 34 now. So I've been meditating maybe not every day, but probably if I averaged it out over the last 16 years, 3 times a week. I do it more now because I got into it, but that's kind of the average. Stretching, I just got into. I use this app, Habitica, and it makes like your habits like a video game. So it's really useful to keep me on track. It hooks into my dopamine system. It makes me feel like every day if I stretch and I meditate, I give myself 2 points in my little character. Levels up. So anyway, I don't mean to be a fucking walking billboard for something I'm not an affiliate for, but Habita is what I use for that. Anyway, in terms of the spiritual side, so stretching— when I stretch, it has to be over 2 minutes for a given stretch for me to feel the real effects. Now, if you look into the history of yoga, like before the birth of Christ, like in the old Hindus, yoga was about exploring yourself. Yoga was the science of self. It was meant to say like, hey, I am this this thing that can experience sensations throughout this body that I kind of got stuck with. So like yoga to me, when I hold a stretch for a long time, it's kind of painful but kind of not. And I start vibrating. Like, I feel like there's like an internal metronome that just kind of fits a certain vibration. And when I vibrate, like if I hold, like let's say I touch my toes and I literally touch my toes for 6 minutes. Like, just hold it for 6 minutes. After minute 4, I feel like my spine's vibrating. And I feel like most people, when they do stretches, they'll touch their toes for 30 seconds to 2 minutes, but they don't actually hold it for the full 4 to 6 minutes. You vibrate. It's just weird. But the ancient yogis were like, that's just a method for them to explore what this thing I called I or me is. Like, when you feel like something's vibrating, but it feels like you are vibrating, am I a vibration? I don't know. Now that's stretching. Meditation, I sense that I am an observer. When I say I, there's like thoughts that come into my mind. There are sounds that come into my ears, photons that hit my eyes, sensations called interoception that I feel like I'm hungry or I'm stressed where I feel the cortisol. But if you really, really get into it, that's all just entering into an observer. Maybe that observer is my brain. Maybe I'm just feeling my 5 senses or whatever. But meditation means that when I ignore the sentence that enters my mind, what am I? What if I am not the sentence entering my mind? Am I the listener? Am I something else? And do I have control over this? Or are my muscle movements outside of my control? But then you're like, well, hold on, that's just another fucking sentence that I'm supposed to ignore. So it's very exponential where I start noticing and listening to the sentences that enter my mind, and then I start asking myself questions about those sentences. But then I'm like, wait, I'm the one asking the questions. What does that make me? But then you're like, wait, that itself was just another question. So that's the process, what I just described. The effect of that is that if I do that for 10 minutes to 30 minutes a day, I just tend to be more clear-headed the rest of the day. I tend to be a little bit more able to pay attention to the questions you would ask on this podcast. I tend to do a little bit better code when I write my AI code. I tend to lift a little harder because I'm more aware of my body. Somehow I've just listened to the monks that teach me how to do this. But I mean, I haven't talked to any in person like Fraz has, but I've read all the books. When I ignore the questions and realize that I am just an observer, just an observer that just wants to observe the thoughts entering my mind, it just tends to make my days better. So that's kind of my view of meditation. I feel like I am a soul that's listening to the thoughts in my brain.

Yes, that's exactly it. And like, you know, that way too, or no?

What's your experience like for stretching and meditation?

So stretching in particular, um, the vibration, some people say, is, you know, some sort of release, and finally your body getting in touch with those muscle cells that were lying inactive and dormant because you've never really pushed to that end range.

And that's a very materialistic view.

Yes, it is. And that's, that's the physical view. Um, but it also is inexplainable— well, not inexplainable, but non-reductionist physical, uh, to say that, you know, you are and release energy energy that you feel up through your whole spine when you do holds. You know, it's orgasmic almost. Like, sometimes I'm holding stretches and there's energy pulsing up from my legs to my spine to my, to my third eye. Yeah, yeah, it really is, um, you know, higher level, uh, and it feels super good. And, you know, that's not just your muscle cells awakening. And And the more you can kind of tap into that, I think the more spiritual awareness you get. It seems to be like the less anxiety and uptightness you hold in yourself as well, just day to day when you go to those deeper levels of stretching. So yoga is— and stretching is, you know, just yoga poses essentially. It's a way of exploring the physical body, accessing spiritual energy. And also being able to practice the skill of being present. Because if you're holding a stretch and then you start thinking about work, you're not really putting as much effectiveness in the stretch as you're capable of. And I find this is an interesting tool to use as well, is that when you have something that's holding tension, if you just sit in a stretch and then you focus— like, so you can stretch unconsciously, think about other things, but then you can also stretch in a way that you are almost beaming your attention and focus into whatever muscle you're trying to stretch. And the stronger and more intensely you can focus that laser of attention, the more that tension melts away out of the muscle. And I found that true with all things. You know, if you're more present during a bench press, you think, okay, now I'm contracting the shoulders and the chest and actually conscious and present in the rep, it's going to be more effective. And the same is true for stretching. Now, that translates to a meditative awareness. And if you're going to do, you know, one thing over meditation or stretching, I choose stretching because you can I mean, you should do both, obviously, but stretching is meditation as long as you do it properly. It's a physical meditation. And I treat the gym in the same way, is that this is a time where I'm going to be present in my body. I'm going to be focused. I'm going to be aware. And that, I think, is one of the reasons why people enjoy working out so much is because it's a time where they're, you know, if your muscles are burning, you're not fucking worrying about work or anything. You're just present and thinking about the next rep, and you're aware and in your body. And I think that that's the benefit of working out. It's a benefit of yoga, stretching, uh, and meditation itself. I also find with focused meditation, your intuitive sense increases. And you could argue that meditation is a way of connecting to the intuitive energy that guides us, that you can't really be aware of if you're constantly worried about the 3D realm thoughts that bang around in our brains causing anxiety and things like that.

Yeah, I think it's like you just like, you can't think about those things when when you stretch long enough or meditate long enough, like, it's just impossible. Like, the thoughts bubble up to the surface, but then you're forced to face the stretch feeling. Like, you just can't help it. Stretching is like forced meditation where, like, if you're holding a stretch for like 4+ minutes, like, you can think all the stressful thoughts you want, but like, your attention is gonna go to it. But when you're at the gym, it's like you pay attention to your muscles contracting and you're hyper-present. It's just, it, it prevents the thoughts from entering your mind because you have to focus on, on the bench press. If you're benching like over 230 pounds, like you need to be focused or you're going to drop the fucking bar. It's just like simple like that, right?

Exactly.

I think, you know, like presence to me, like I see presence as hyper-focused on like the ripples on a leaf on a tree, and you have to train yourself to pay attention to that, and that's important. And it's like, how often do you really notice the subtle ripples of, did this part of the leaf move up or down as the wind breeze blew by? You know, it's like, yeah, it's a training. I try to look at it like training too, you know.

Yeah, and you can meditate wherever you are. Like, you don't have to have your legs crossed with your fucking fingers touching or whatever. You can just suddenly access— pay attention to your senses and be aware of whatever thoughts come into your head. And that now can be done anytime.

Now, I sometimes see meditation at odds with like the spiritual, like, I am fated to change the world in this way. That's a very ego thought that like, maybe you and I are fated to affect the future of culture in a very significant way. How do you reconcile that sense of destiny, which is very ego-driven in my mind, with meditation, which is very ego-less?

Yeah, well, I don't think that I— like, you need the ego to exist in this realm, right? If you have no sense of I, there's no sense of other, and then you can't love another, right? If there was no ego, there'd be no separation, so you couldn't, you know, exude love for the other. So it's important. But the intuition and the feelings that I get and whatever drives me to do and say and write the things that I do, that there's, there's always going to be some egoic, uh, motivation behind it, uh, because of that, because of your needs to succeed in the environment and propagate your genes and, you know, have enough money to eat and all the rest of it. Like, that's all needed and that happens, and I don't think you can get rid of unless you go full monk mode or whatever. But I think the intuition side of it is— I don't know, it's an interesting question. I don't— at least I hope I'm not doing these things because I want to be the person that, you know, is exalted for whatever it is that I want to do. You know, I'm doing it because something is acting through me to present this information to help people. And I think it's a dangerous place to be, you know. Some spiritual leaders, they eventually turn into cult leaders where they have that power over others, and they, you know, because they have that particular energy about them, they abuse it. And I think that that's, you know, that's an issue to work with, with any success. And some people let that power corrupt them when they, when they are successful, or they are just, you know, that they forget the roots of what drove them to start.

And I guess it's just, I'm careful by asking these questions to certain people because I don't want to be the corrupting influence to anyone, you know. Yeah, I can ask questions that corrupt people, so I'm trying to be smart. I mean, I don't— not, not about you, but You know, one of the things I was talking about before was like, I felt like I was destined to start Key Book Club, to be the pyramid of knowledge of the future. And one of the books we recently summarized was A Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by James—

great book—

or whatever. Yeah, great book.

So heavy.

It's heavy. And you know, one of the most interesting pieces of that book was the analysis of The Iliad. And the book's premise is that the voices of God, whether from a religious person or schizophrenic, are actually the hemispheres communicating with one another. And it made the point in the Iliad, the very first written story that humans have ever written down, that there was no actual point where there's the character saying, "I think." It was more they were conduits for the muses. That work through them. That was kind of the sense of the way the book was written, that they just kind of followed the voice in their head. And that always stuck with me in a way, because the way you just described, like, you want to share the thoughts you're meant to share with whatever is forcing you to share them— it's kind of like when artists talk about the muse kind of inspires them, or, you know, Einstein I mean, general relativity came to him, or Newton wanted to discover the mind of God and it came to him. Like, how many science discoveries were from a dream where after they did all the grunt work— they do, you do have to do the grunt work, there's no denying that. Yeah, but your neurons sort of coalesce, and in the dream state, like, there's something that, like, like, you're like a conduit or a receiver through which the muses work through you. Now One, I was talking to, um, Fraz a couple weeks ago, um, Professor, you know, whatever he calls himself. He says that the word apocalypse means a lifting of the veil, which is an interesting phrase he used because it makes me think that, like, you know, we're talking about aliens before with AI, or demons, or angels, or God, or divinity. Or, you know, the cabal or whatever. But like, lifting of the veil, like maybe there's muses out there outside of this 3D, very limited electromagnetic spectrum we see that are influencing this. And maybe the apocalypse is us being more receptive to the muses or the semi-deities that used to influence humanity. Now I sound like a fucking crazy schizophrenic person right now, so all those I fully recognize that, and I swear I have a PhD and I'm a scientist. I have to say that it makes me feel something.

Yeah, well, exactly. You know, the muse—

I—

there's no other way to put it. You know, I sit down and I write fairly regularly, and the more you do that and the more you show up each day, it's like there is some other intelligence in another realm that goes, look, he's putting in the work, I'm gonna give him some fucking ideas.

And only first hour. It doesn't happen for the first hour. You have to really get into the flow state, I feel. That's my impression. Maybe you're—

maybe you're different, but sometimes I instantly get into that state. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all, and I'll just close my laptop and go do something else. But I know exactly what you mean, because sometimes it all comes out and I'm like, this is really good. And then other times I'm kind of, you know, really trying trying to write something and it just doesn't, it doesn't flow. And the feeling of that is like there's, there's something else kind of putting the words into your hands, which then you then type out. And again, you know, the model of the universe that works for you. Believe that there is a muse, because whatever is doing that, whether it's your particular brain working a certain way or an energetic, uh, being in another kind of insane realm, right?

Rational and biological, we don't know. It could be completely not esoteric. Yeah, just to be clear.

Exactly. But, you know, these ideas that have existed in ancient times as well are obviously things that humans feel, whether it's the brain, whether it's, you know, some people say that they were possessed by the gods, possessed by the god of anger at the time. Time, or whatever it is, like a huge state. Yeah, yeah, you can be and channel those emotions and those energetic states. Um, they could be gods possessing you for the— you know, sometimes you feel— not so much for me now, but sometimes back in the day that, you know, the anger that you would feel, um, the sadness, the, the any emotion, like there There are people do, you know, they get legal defenses that I was consumed by rage and when I did what I did, I didn't know what I was doing. Like, is that a possession? For all purposes, uh, it could be viewed as such. So, you know, I think you have to take a— you don't want to, you don't want to absolve your responsibility of like, oh, I can only work when the muse is flowing through me. And, you know, oh, I was possessed by the, the god of anger when I said— yeah, not my fault. 'Not my fault.' You can't do that. But I think having an awareness of that relationship is imperative to know that, like, oh shit, you know, that there's something trying to get a hold of me. There's a demon in my head that's trying to make me go down this path, which I know consciously is, is not a good thing to do. And it's not really— I don't really want to say those things. It's just what I said in the moment, responding to the ego. I think it's a delicate balance of of both, and you take the positives of that mental model and then leave the negatives.

I like that. You know, it's like the, the Jewish people have the view of the golem, which is just like the meat sack, like the Frankenstein's monster, like just the animated fucking meat flesh sack, whatever. And it's kind of like the muse is like the perfect, you know, Nietzsche's Übermensch. Maybe Übermensch is more grounded, but maybe something, you know I'm sure there's some philosopher who's talked about it, but like the higher self. And I think it's like, it's like the simplistic view is like, oh, I'm either the brute, the meat sack, or I'm the higher self and the muse. And that's very much what you see on Twitter. It's like, be your higher self or embrace the beast. And it's like, I don't think that's a very nuanced view. And I think the view is like, communicate with the muse because the muse, we all have our own individual muses. I think it's multiple. People, but they don't understand the material realm. And we kind of have to be like, okay, you make us feel something, you make us write something, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna nudge this very, very slightly to fit in with actual society. It's like they don't understand society. They're just— if they're real, they're in the fucking spirit realm and they don't really know what's going on in the world. But we don't get what's going on in their realm, and we think they're just stupid and we're super scientific. So it's kind like you want to like open a channel of communication where you kind of work together and kind of like navigate your way very intelligently and subtly and divinely through whatever's halfway between the material and the spiritual realm. That's how I view it.

Yes, exactly. With, you know, the knowledge that we've curated in our scientific models so far, but not discounting or solely believing either one. I think is the smartest way to, to do it.

There's no reason to deny gravity. Yeah, yeah. When I get in— when you and I are— we get into a flow state and I write code or write, write a, write an epic poem, I might write, or you might write something for your followers and you just, you know, the spirit took you, you know, there's no reason to deny that either, right? You don't want to deny either.

Yeah, exactly. All right, dude, well, I think that will wrap us up. Um, thanks for joining me on the Soulcast. Where can people reach you, uh, for more Deeper Thrill, uh, content?

Twitter, man. Deeper Thrill on Twitter. @DeeperThrill. I, I always DMs. I'm very responsive. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm very open to conversations, and I'm also on the Lane So join the Lambros.

Join Lambros Society. More hitters like David Thrill in there, so lots of wisdom to get. All right, bro, thanks so much. That was a great discussion. Uh, thanks for joining me on the Solcast, and I'm sure we'll do this again sometime.

You got it. Take care, man.

See you, bro.