Transcription
Bottom line, yes, I think that as an individual consciousness, I'm probably not separate from the One. And that I can tap into an infinite intelligence if I open myself up to it. And that's what many spiritual traditions have also been saying. Is, is that through the practice of meditation and so forth, you let go of your ego. You let go of, uh, attachment to this, this body and and and me being better than you, me being different from you, you know, competing with you. All of that, all that stuff that that is part of the sort of evolutionary, you know, competition realm. And you get to this deeper realm in which that's all just a game, right? It's just a headset, a projection of a much deeper unity that we're all, we're all basically perhaps just one consciousness looking at itself through different avatars, right? And in science and in, in everyday life, we have access to that very, very deep realm of consciousness, the infinite, unbounded intelligence, literally infinite, unbounded intelligence that that we are at the deepest level. And the only barrier is opening ourselves up to it, um, which is a pretty big barrier. Um, it is, it is.
What role has meditation played for you in thinking through all of this? Does, if that's, if thinking is the right word, um, but in, in the process of discovery and insight, how has meditation played a role?
I do meditate, and I've meditated for about 22 years. I wasn't for any deep spiritual reasons. I just needed to sleep and I didn't want to take pills. And so I said, okay, maybe meditation is a way to relax myself. And but then I realized as I started to do it, you know, it, it has a life of its own. MH. It, it starts to, you begin to realize this is pretty important. Uh, and then it starts transforming you as you really start to to let go of of your fears and anxieties, or or at least face them, um, and then slowly have your your personality transformed by it. It's, it, it, it, it's so it's played a, a big role. It's helped me to take consciousness quite seriously because when you spend time in meditation, you're, you're letting go of sort of attachment to the the physical realm, the realm of form, so to speak. And you're, you're in the realm of conscious experiences. And so I think that that's helped. And there are times when I, you know, I'm working on a technical problem, I will just ask the One for help. And sometimes yes, and sometimes no, right? I, but sometimes I get help almost immediately. I'm, I'm stuck on a problem, I'm walking, I just ask for help and three minutes later I've got the answer. And then other times it's no, you, I can't give it to you because you simply don't have the the mathematical background to even understand the answer, right? So there are cases in which you can ask for for help. But but since I don't know the math, I I can't get the help. I couldn't understand it if it was given to me, right? Right. So so there's going to be, but then I might, the help I get might get is okay, well, you need to learn this. And yeah.
I mean, one of the things that really clicked for me with your work was, if you meditate for long enough, um, on a regular basis, at some point you have an experience where you realize you are not your thoughts. Yes. Yes. Because most of us walk around thinking that our, we are our thoughts and that they belong to us. But with meditation, at some point, there's a break from that where you see this thought machine firing off ideas, and yet it does not feel like that is what is at the most fundamental level.
That's right. That's right. And the only way I've ever known how to describe it is consciousness is all that's there at the in those deep levels of meditation. And I'm certainly no master meditator, and I think other people are able to stay in that space for a lot longer. But even glimpsing it, yes. When I was reading and listening to some of your your latest work on this internet-connected consciousness, it really reminded me of those experiences. And so I wanted to ask about the meditation. I, I agree that meditation does lead you to realize at some point that thoughts are just thoughts, and we tend to identify with the thoughts, that's me, and and and believe our thoughts. And at some point, you get to step back and say, I can just look at those thoughts and I can realize that many of them are are dumb, and they're painful, and they're stupid. And and and the emotions that come with them are are just emotions. And I don't have to believe the emotions either. I, I can just watch the emotion. Um, some of the emotions are very, very deep. And so I have to watch them and and and, you know, spend time with them before they dissolve. But but but no, I agree. And and what's below all those thoughts and feelings is just a field of awareness, pure awareness without any particular content.
And that has a mathematical concomitant in our in our theory. There are the contents of the conscious exper conscious experiences of the agents. But the the fundamental structure itself is a measurable space. And that that measurable space really is our mathematical structure that's pointing to this awareness without content. So so we, and by the way, I didn't intend it that way, right? I, when I was writing down the mathematics with with of course my colleagues Chayon and and Bruce and so forth, we're forced to write down these measurable structures. You can't write down probabilities unless you write down these. And and it was only years later that I was looking at that and going, so what does that measurable structure correspond to when there's no contents? And I realized, oh, that must correspond to awareness without contents. So so so we were, so the mathematics forced us to write it down. And and I was, you know, so slow that it took me more than a decade working on the theory before I realized the implications that pure awareness is the infinite intelligence. And our scientific theories and our thoughts and so forth are the dumbed-down projection of it, right? So science can never be a theory of everything. The everything is that awareness. And of course, I'm only pointing to it, right? By saying that, I'm not defining it. I'm just pointing to it. And that's an important point.
Let me just say what I mean by that. If I talk about cinnamon, say, you know, if you've never had cinnamon, and I want to try to describe it to you, I say, well, it's, it's slightly sharp, but, um, it's not really sweet. It's not. I'm going to have a hard time, right? What's the best way to? I give you a piece of cinnamon, say, taste it for yourself. And then you taste it and go, we call that cinnamon. Mmm. And so now I can use the word. Now, did I explain anything to you? No. I let you taste it for yourself. And and and that's that's how you, you got it. And it's the same thing with this awareness. Awareness is awareness. No description. It's descriptions don't come anywhere near the reality. Descriptions are just. If you want to know cinnamon, you got to taste it for yourself.
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