Mu: Recent Episodes
Lucas Perry
Seeking to uncover all that is true, good, and beautiful of our fundamental nature and realize its expression in the world of form.
This is an exploration between Shinzen Young and Bernardo Kastrup on mysticism, science, and liberation. Shinzen Young is a mindfulness teacher, the author of the Science of Enlightenment, and is the co-director of the SEMA lab at the University of Arizona. Bernardo Kastrup is an analytic philosopher, computer engineer, metaphysical idealist, and executive director of the Essentia Foundation.
Essentia Foundation: https://www.essentiafoundation.org/
Shinzen Young: https://www.shinzen.org/
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Video episode: https://youtu.be/syb-oSaDZZE?si=ShNPJXXmuEBHGVDC
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:46 Can philosophy, science, and mysticism align?
7:39 What does liberation consist of?
11:38 Bernardo’s path to insight
17:43 The paradox of cultivated improvement vs. nothing to improve
31:16 Blocking ourselves from life’s teaching
36:01 Did Spinoza have mystical experience?
48:58 The truth is not vulnerable
51:29 Training people in the spirit of science
1:06:59 Reflecting on Bernardo’s insight
Jordan Myska Allen is CEO and founder of The Relateful Company, an organization focused on building inner peace and interconnection through truth and love. At the heart of their approach is Relatefulness, a practice emphasizing present-moment relating, construct awareness, and non-duality. Jordan is also a practicing life coach, the author of A Beautiful Apocalypse, and a long-time practitioner of A Course in Miracles.
The Relateful Company: https://www.relateful.com/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/9ENdAlvkOQ0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:24 Switching between the ultimate and the relative
5:48 Everything is either love or a call for love
7:52 ACIM doesn’t comment on the world of form
9:21 Fundamental existential guilt
11:58 Leaning into what we flinch from
14:31 What it means to flinch from God
20:12 Transcending but including all that is
25:20 The opening quote of ACIM
26:36 What does it mean that “the world is an illusion?”
33:15 What’s so good about choosing fear over love?
36:43 The choice between love and fear, and coming to surrender
42:40 What is forgiveness?
54:27 Clarifying perfect forgiveness
1:00:32 The Diamond Sutra
1:05:24 The gateless gate
1:12:45 Key takeaways
1:19:17 Final thoughts
Federico Faggin is an engineer and physicist who invented the world's first commercial micro processor, the Intel 4004. He is also the founder of the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation which is dedicated to the scientific study of consciousness.
Faggin Foundation: http://www.fagginfoundation.org
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/7HgXwbIMRsc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:54 Federico’s awakening experience
12:36 Consciousness, free will, and identity
18:09 Truth and freedom from suffering
21:55 “The one” that seeks to know itself
26:22 How “the one” becomes the many
28:55 “The one” and classic/quantum physics
41:51 Fundamental entities with free will, identity, and consciousness
44:15 Consciousness needs classical memory to store experience
46:06 Was the Big Bang a free will choice
56:06 The reality of the irreducible
1:00:39 Semantic space
1:04:41 Methods of inquiring into symbolic and semantic space
1:11:17 Will everything eventually converge?
1:14:58 Taking semantic reality seriously
1:21:13 Near death experiences
1:23:33 Taking experience seriously
1:29:28 Quantum information as a representation of inner experience
1:33:03 What do we do given this understanding?
1:35:37 We are not machines
1:42:15 Negating the reality of the soul
1:46:08 Meaninglessness and dynamic truth
1:51:29 Goodbyes
Bruce Tift is a licensed Psychotherapist and the author of Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation. He is a long-time practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism and was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Bruce's website: https://www.brucetift.com/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/cESdYTKz0dM
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:09 What is freedom?
4:39 What is conscious participation in open awareness?
6:47 Is this the fruitional view?
9:09 The western therapeutic perspective of healing core wounds
11:18 How do the fruitonal view and the developmental view relate?
14:31 Commiting to experience sense of problem without trying to resolve it
19:12 The path of Vajrayana Buddhism
29:42 Belief is a substitute for groundlessness
34:21 I give myself permission to never experience what I most want in life
38:13 What is non-divided reality?
43:29 Freedom is not synonymous with positive feelings
47:47 Neurosis is always a substitute for experiential intensity
51:35 Falling through the air with no parachute
52:25 Challenging our identification with hope
55:17 Bruce’s gradual shift towards freedom
58:00 Being profoundly limited
1:03:03 Asking if what you most want is available right now
1:04:44 One taste
1:05:54 Impermanence and dependent origination
1:10:27 Enlightenment
1:13:24 Trying to experience no-self can be motivated by fundamental aggression to experience
1:15:04 Maintaining a center through problem maintaining
1:18:53 The function of neurosis
1:26:00 What’s fundamentally disturbing about our experience?
1:33:05 How does groundlessness fit into freedom and nirvana?
1:34:33 Do we know anything?
1:39:05 What does it mean to be “Already Free?”
1:43:24 Neurosis is a clever way to pretend to ourselves we’re addressing our life while guaranteeing nothing happens
1:47:08 What’s always available?
1:48:08 Final words from Bruce
1:50:30 Outro
Andres Gomez Emilsson is the director of research at the Qualia Research Institute where he works to build a science of consciousness to improve the lives of sentient beings. His work at QRI ranges from psychedelic theory, to neurotechnology development, and mapping the computational properties of consciousness.
Qualia Research Institute: https://qri.org/
Andres' Twitter: https://twitter.com/algekalipso
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/xJzBjBo24g8
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:13Are current AI systems conscious?
4:10 Marr's levels of analysis
9:16 Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment
20:53 The binding problem
35:25 Computers do not leverage the EM field to do computationally useful things
46:46 Equanimity and the sense of self
53:36 Binding is frame invariant and provides computational benefits
56:41 Avoiding strong emergence
58:37 Sidestepping the hard problem of consciousness
59:03 Avoiding epiphenomenalism
1:01:07 Being compatible with modern scientific world picture
1:04:56 Experiments for testing to see if electromagnetic fields of human brain form unified global topology
1:07:14 Merging your consciousness field topology with someone else’s
1:14:07 Summary of if current AI models are conscious
1:16:55 Doing and undoing the topological twist of consciousness
1:24:56 What it’s like to be the field before topological segmentation
1:27:43 Why is there something rather than nothing?
1:32:04 Does valence add up to zero?
1:35:42 The symmetry theory of valence
1:39:20 Does the static field of consciousness have an experience?
1:41:07 Grounding ethics in open individualism and valence realism
1:44:57 Clarifying ethical thought experiments with a science of consciousness
1:47:33 Why does valence exist?
1:48:45 What does it mean for the field to tear?
1:50:51 Infinite universes through the fracturing of nothing
1:53:20 Would replacing humans with happy AIs solve the alignment problem?
1:55:28 If AIs don’t leverage field topology for computation, does that null the alignment problem?
1:58:30 Non-linear wave computing
2:01:08 How does the enteric nervous system fit into sentience?
2:03:49 Why is the electromagnetic field especially relevant to consciousness
2:05:25 Cosmological qualia
2:07:40 Hedonium shockwaves and Andres’ shirt
2:08:32 The perfume “Hedonium Shockwave” by Andres Gomez Emilsson
2:15:47 Using Hedonium Shockwave to explore consciousness
2:17:46 The future of art given the rise of AI models
2:22:42 Final thoughts from Andres
2:23:53Where to find and follow Andres
Culum Brown is a professor at Macquarie University where he is a behavioral ecologist studying fish behavior and cognition. He is a long time proponent of fish intelligence and welfare, arguing for interventions to improve the lives of fish. Culum has over 150 research publications and is in the top 2.5% of Research Gate.
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/LN6cgNu9QAM
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:10 Better understanding fish
4:44 Fish learning and memory
11:20 Social learning and culture
20:56 Cross species relationships: offering backrubs
27:59 Fish participate in predator evaluation together
32:57 Knowing their place in the hierarchy
37:18 Cooperating across species to hunt
41:58 Fish accumulate cultural knowledge across generations
43:46 Machiavellian intelligence in fish
46:12 What brain size means
49:04 Tool use and house building
58:14 Intelligence in parrots
59:28 Breadth of fish sensing
1:03:44 Pain in fish and other animals
1:14:24 The experience of farmed, wild-caught, lab grown, and pet fish
1:27:58 How fish are caught and killed
1:34:19 What do we do given all this suffering?
1:37:58 Policy solutions for fish welfare
1:42:43 Can we abolish the biological roots of suffering?
1:49:19 Why did land animals become generally intelligent instead of sea creatures?
1:52:49 Final thoughts from Culum
1:54:18 Where to find and follow Culum
Philip Golabuk is founder of PhilosophyCenter, where he offers philosophical counseling, self-study courses, and LIFECOACH Training. Their mission is to encourage and facilitate the self-work that leads to greater awareness, creative expression, and personal evolution as well as a deeper appreciation for the miracle, mystery, and opportunity of being alive. Philip is a member of the National Philosophical Counseling Association, has taught college level philosophy courses, and has worked as part of a community outreach program to inmates in jail and prison.
PhilosophyCenter: https://philosophycenter.net/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lucasperry
Video episode: https://youtu.be/ZcOcZ_EZDD8
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:54 Life principles: Truth and uncertainty
6:50 Life principles: Limitation and responsibility
13:10 Useful questions in self-work
16:40 Being in conflict with your own truth
20:19 Off handed remarks that confess beliefs
23:47 Bottom up and top down self-work
30:29 Accessing and practicing bottom up and top down self-work
35:50 The decisive question: What bad thing happens if I have what I want?
38:18 Willingness being 90% of self-work
44:35 The mind as a good servant but a bad master
50:33 Degrees of certainty, induction, and truth
55:05 A perspective on Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person by Scott Alexander
1:04:20 Outro
Bernardo Kastrup is a metaphysical idealist, arguing that universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is. He holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering and another in philosophy. Bernardo is also the executive director of the Essentia Foundation.
PhilosophyCenter: https://philosophycenter.net/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Donations: paypal.me/lucasperry
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8&nd=1
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:42 Bernardo’s metaphysics
4:15 What does it mean for something to be a transpersonal mental process
10:11 What is it like to be nature at large?
12:20 Is the consciousness that underlies the inanimate universe like dust or completely unified?
16:55 How is it that mind at large fragments into particular beings?
22:40 How can we remember our original state if it's formless/contentless?
28:39 What is it like to be the field when it’s completely at rest?
32:17 Is there formless or contentless consciousness?
39:25 The great void state
43:13 Being and seeing god
45:40 Knowledge without intermediation of a mental model
48:03 The role and place of introspection
52:38 Physicalism robs us of meaning as the entities outside of us are their own ends
56:58 Is there a necessary relationship between truth and freedom from suffering
59:28 What it means to be set free
1:08:50 There is freedom is seeing what you think you are doesn’t exist
1:10:22 Surrender and defeat
1:19:16 Embracing duality and the western background
1:35:40 The importance of suffering
1:47:05 The maturation of religion
1:52:45 A spontaneous unfolding can still follow a telos
1:56:50 The telos of universal mind
2:01:43 Innocence, evil, and the asymmetry between truth and illusion
2:11:40 The s
Roger Thisdell is a long time meditator who over the years has managed to increase his baseline of well-being to a level much higher than the norm. Rodger's mind now features a permanent sense of centerlessness where there is a lack of the sense of an epistemic agent at the center. He aims to help others achieve similar well-being, unperturbability, and freedom from suffering.
Follow Rodger: https://www.rogerthisdell.com/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:15 What is suffering?
4:29 What is contraction?
8:12 Why does contraction entail suffering?
9:21 The relationship between truth and freedom
10:58 How do we defabricate experience?
13:57 Rodger’s spiritual path
15:21 Practices for defabricating experience
17:37 What are the stages of awakening
18:34 Different paths to the same thing?
24:23 What’s Rodger’s current experience like?
29:16 There is only negative valence and its attenuation
35:16 Does taking a bunch of MDMA not add positive valence?
37:35 The void at the center of the soul
39:18 Meditation instructions
46:37 How does insight work?
49:56 Insight practice on the sense of separate self
54:57 The will as a way of maintaining separate self
57:55 Cessation, true nature, and neither perception nor non-perception
1:04:35 Practicing the jhanas
1:16:25 Cessation and nirvikalpa samadhi
1:19:47 Is the void preferable to highly defabricated consciousness?
1:24:11 How does this all fit into the 21st century?
1:26:40 Using insights from meditation for architecting new minds
1:28:48 Immoral behavior as a failure to see the truth
1:30:23 Where to follow and find out more about Rodger
Philip Golabuk is founder of the PhilosophyCenter, where he offers philosophical life coaching, self-study courses, and LIFECOACH Training. Their mission is to encourage and facilitate the self-work that leads to greater awareness, creative expression, and personal evolution as well as a deeper appreciation for the miracle, mystery, and opportunity of being alive. Philip is a member of the National Philosophical Counseling Association, has taught college level philosophy courses, and has worked as part of a community outreach program to inmates in jail and prison.
PhilosophyCenter: https://philosophycenter.net/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8&nd=1
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 intro
2:03 What is suffering?
3:05 How do we turn pain into suffering?
4:56 What is resistance?
7:00 How does alignment with truth lead to freedom from suffering?
14:51 Non-local will and our resistance truth
21:25 How do you let go without it being an act of will?
27:08 Allowing unwillingness and how non-resistance shifts problems into solutions
32:20 Deconstructing false belief (bottom-up) and living from the higher-self (top down)
39:15 How are unwitting beliefs released from the top down approach?
42:34 Nirvana and samsara as undivided, and whether suffering is an illusion
52:06 Where to find and follow Philip
53:00 outro
Laura Perlin is a tarot reader and ritualist working with personal and collective healing and self-actualization. She join us to explore the practice of esoteric healing arts, the role of true nature in freedom from suffering, and perspectives on reindiginization and wisdom.
https://www.lauraperlin.com/
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:43 What is the nature of suffering?
3:27 What’s divinity?
4:25 How does one live from true nature?
6:13 How does true nature fit in with tarot reading and ancestral work?
17:04 What is the phenomenology of card reading and do you have particular metaphysical positions about it?
27:23 What about a secular or non-spiritual path to true nature?
30:48 What’s reindiginization?
35:09 Cancel culture
39:14 The identities of privilege and the victim
45:27 Pointing back to true nature
55:08 How does this all fit in with the 21st century?
59:22 How does wisdom and true nature fit into the practice of technology?
1:04:21 Perspectives on capitalism
1:12:14 Not making capitalism, products, and wealth wrong
1:18:30 What is the nature of suffering and what is the path to its cessation?
1:19:40 Closing thoughts from Laura and where to connect
1:21:02 Drawing a tarot card to end the podcast
Phlip Golabuk is founder of the PhilosophyCenter, where he offers philosophical life coaching, self-study courses, and LIFECOACH Training. Their mission is to encourage and facilitate the self-work that leads to greater awareness, creative expression, and personal evolution as well as a deeper appreciation for the miracle, mystery, and opportunity of being alive. Philip is a member of the National Philosophical Counseling Association, has taught college level philosophy courses and has worked as part of a community outreach program to inmates in jail and prison.
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LucasFMPerry
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:15 What is suffering?
3:58 How do we meet pain skillfully?
5:50 What is our true identity?
8:41 How to practice self-inquiry into identity?
12:55 What does non-local mean?
16:57 Is awareness our true nature?
22:05 What is philosophical life coaching?
25:12 How does working with beliefs fit into freedom from suffering?
30:45 The relationship of truth to freedom from suffering
38:47 What does a disordered soul look like?
40:07 What should you do if you suspect you have a disordered soul?
44:50 Is living from the level of true nature sufficient?
51:30 What is enlightenment?
53:00 Parting words
54:30 Outro
Rupert Spira is a non-dual teacher and joins us to discuss the cause of suffering, the path to returning to our innate happiness, the realization of our true nature, and we also explore whether awakening has a moral dimension.
Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Mu_Podcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5VYkm1iU0tmbBvJohdTZcv?si=4be5c4df79fc4aa8
ApplePodcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mu/id1640125881
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:37 What is suffering?
2:01 What veils our innate happiness?
2:09 What is the mechanism by which thoughts and feelings veil our happiness?
5:28 What is our true nature?
8:40 Isn't "I am" merely another piece of content?
10:46 Experience as a property of being
11:53 There's never a point in which there's no awareness
23:13 Non-materialist physicalist idealism
28:15 Consciousness as non-local
30:57 An experiment in inquiry
36:46 Experience, awareness, and the brain
45:49 Is awareness independent the brain?
51:30 The risk of reifying consciousness as a thing
54:17 The silence of understanding and the mind bringing itself to its own ending
55:42 The stages of awakening
59:52 First stage: The witness
1:02:55 Direct and progressive paths, and how purification and defabrication fit in
1:07:20 Rupert's definition of enlightenment
1:07:56 The insights of the second stage of awakening
1:12:00 One taste and recognizing aware being is the nature of everyone and everything
1:16:50 How does ethics fit into the realization of true nature?
1:22:17 World peace would have to based on a truth we can all agree on
1:27:29 Where to find and follow Rupert Spira
1:28:40 Outro