The Sapient Cosmos: Where Physics, Psychedelics and Shamanism Meet | James Glattfelder, PhD

Your brain channels consciousness; it doesn't produce it. The cosmos becomes sapient from a computational perspective; super simple rules kind of suddenly give rise to very complex behavior. The cosmos appears to, like, be assembling very complex contraptions, like our brains, which are then able to channel the base consciousness. It's a participatory universe; the participation is consciousness—wave function collapse, and you have an observation here, and then the probabilities become something. What happens in between? There's like nothing—that's like metaphysical no man's land. You have two metaphysical choices: either it's like this cosmic nihilism—it's random, has no purpose, shut up, die, whatever, nothing's going to happen—or you have these dogmatic, static religions which tell you exactly, very detailed, what is what and how it works. So I find these are both disillusioned. I think a modern version of idealism is what we need—a scientific spirituality. So it's scientific; it means you're dealing with consensus reality, and you're not like denying it. And spirituality being that you are kind of open to working with your own consciousness; everything can be decoded and has a meaning. And I believe the western mind has totally forgotten about kind of this symbolic way of cognition. It's almost to me as if the universe grants us mathematic physics as sort of to comfort us, to give us a bit of a tiny bit of control, but then the moment you go in, then you're just like, nature is teasing us—like she reveals a bit, but then not enough, and it's like always teasing, like, "Look here, have another theorem, like, have another understanding," but that just opens five new doors of like, "Oh my god, what's happening?" And now I'm going to give them quantum, right, and then yeah, let's see what they do with it.

[Laughter]

Welcome at the Asencia Foundation's YouTube channel. We are in the Netherlands, welcoming um, complexity scientist and physicist—theoretical physicist James Gladfelder. James, a very warm welcome.

Thank you very much for having me.

Hunt: It's a great pleasure. I'm super happy you could combine this interview with a short city trip to Amsterdam, and uh, we took some of your time to sit down here, but I hope it's going to be worth it.

I don't have any doubts, but just great that you are here. Um, James, you have just written a book that the Asencia Foundation is very proud to publish, and I'll just give the title to our audience, then you will sense what it is about. Your book is called—your new book is called *Sapiient Cosmos*: What a modern-day synthesis of science and philosophy teaches us about the emergence of information, consciousness, and meaning. And what I loved when reading your book is that you, to me, chronicle what we are in right now, and with that I mean the paradigm shift that is happening in physics and that informs philosophy and is itself informed by philosophy. To just give us a starter for this conversation, what is that big shift that is happening that goes under many different names, like informational structural realism or pan-computationalism—there are many names what it goes by—but how would you briefly sort of summarize the change we're in, and that your book is very much about?

Yeah, so I would say that's like the first level, kind of this information theoretic level, which which starts to, like, yeah, question sort of the validity of physicalism—like reality is made out of Lego blocks and it's physical—but I think kind of the interesting part is if we go beyond that, like, okay, what does the context of information mean, and how does it relate to consciousness, which then really, like, opens up the world to sort of like crazy new metaphysical ideas. But I've kind of within a sort of more rational thinking context, it seems to make sense that you understand information and kind of like the question is what exactly is this, and again that's a hard question, but that information seems to be the kind of the ontological primitive—so kind of the basic building block of the physical universe—kind of these informational entities, and you kind of bring sort of reality down to that. But kind of moving on beyond that, um, like bringing in consciousness is is kind of like where you then start to sort of, yeah, move away from sort of, I don't know, a worldview or metaphysics which rational people are comfortable with and start to open up to crazier ideas; for instance, like, um, idealism is having a renaissance—that's what's so amazing.

It must have been sort of quite a journey for you, because this is not a book that does this or does this, but does at the same time. You just look at all of theoretical physics, you combine it with things like shamanism in the end even, right, and then you you try to sort of distill sort of a new metaphysics which you call syncretic idealism, and I definitely want to go deep into that, but first one step back: when did you personally encounter the hard problem, or like you saw, okay, we need to think about consciousness, coming from your own background as a physicist and complexity scientist? When, when did it dawn upon you?

When I was 15, and a random encounter with a chemistry teacher, and he kind of introduced me to chemistry, and I realized, oh wow, that's like quantum physics, and he explained quantum physics to me, and it was like blew my mind, and it was like, "15, okay, I need to study theoretical physics and then I like understand how the universe works." So I go and study physics; at the end of it, I'm like, whoa, that didn't help at all; it's like everything seems weirder and like less explained. And that kind of like got me on this sort of quest of like, why, why doesn't, didn't that help? Like, why doesn't studying physics answer more questions? Like, why is there still so much kind of, yeah, so many question marks? And then kind of, um, when I did my PhD in complexity science, um, we were required to take a course outside of the field of your expertise. I took an introductory course into the philosophy of science, and that blew my mind, because I never really was sort of got in touch or or was like exposed to this, and I couldn't believe it—like, how is this possible that like not everybody who studies physics at least like a little bit gets a little exposure to these ideas? I mean, like, what's the law of nature? What does that even mean? What can I know? I mean, kind of like all these questions of, of, of, of like knowledge and structure. And how is this possible that this is like so marginalized in physics? And I, I, I love the the quote they attribute to Feynman—I'm not sure, so no one's really sure if it was him—but he kind of said, "Yeah, you know, the philosophy of science is is about as relevant to physicists as ornithology is to birds." And I'm like, how, how can—I mean, this is just so mind-boggling and arrogant—like, how can questions of like, what does it mean to like exist and like, I don't know, knowledge have an inner perspective? So this kind of got me started on, on, on this journey. When then in 2013, I um, started writing the book *Information, Consciousness, Reality*, um, which only got like published in 2019, so that was kind of a longer arc there, but I kind of then started to sort of dive in and was like, okay, physics by definition is like the objective world, the third-person perspective; it's like the view from the outside. By def—by that definition, life and consciousness isn't like in there, and it's like, okay, but that seems to be kind of a a bit of a blind spot. Why couldn't you like expand this? And I always had this intuition that somehow consciousness seems to be something like, I don't know, crazier or bigger or more fundamental, but I didn't know like what. And then at one point, I stumbled upon integrated information theory from Giulio Tononi, and I was like, okay, that seems like really cool—a first attempt at like mathematizing and formalizing consciousness from this information theoretical perspective. And then later on, I got to read Bernardo Kastrup's book on analytical idealism. I was like, yes, that's it; that's exactly what kind of I felt was missing. And so this was kind of this, this slow sort of story of me kind of like, I don't know, meandering towards that, and then yeah, doing research. I, I realized how bad the situation is. So the new book starts with embarrassingly—in the in the west, the academic mind only got interested in consciousness around like 1994, with the hard problem, with with with Chalmers, was at a conference, and I was like, no, no, this, no, this can't be possible. And there's a quote in the uh, international dictionary of I think uh, not philosophy or or or something in that direction, in 1989, where they were like, "Yeah, consciousness is weird; no one really understands it or what it's for, and nothing has ever been written about it that's relevant." And this is where I'm like, "Okay, wow, that's so not true, because kind of we have a lot of cultures who have spent like millennia ago have spent so much work on, on, on experiencing and and kind of studying consciousness from the inside, the first-person perspective." So it starts with shamanism, which I don't know, goes back 50,000, 70,000 years, depending on how you look at it. I mean, this is like the first sort of like proto-religion, and in shamanism it's totally clear that there's the physical and the non-physical, and the non-physical is accessible through consciousness, and there's different like means of getting you there—psychedelics are one, but trance drumming—so like, okay, that's like way back. And then you kind of have the mystics who like spontaneously or through contemplation—Sufis also figured out that wow, we, I can experience within my own consciousness kind of this divine communion with God. So kind of interesting that our monotheistic religions today are all kind of like with this external authority—dogmatic and static, which makes sense, because if you like want to have a power structure, you can't really go and tell people, hey, you have to experience it yourself, which kind of these um, these mystical currents in in in the Sufis, in Kabbalah, in Gnostics, I mean, they all had these kind of mystical traditions where it was really about your experience of this thing through consciousness. And then the meditators, I mean, in in the Veda and the Upanishads, like three and a half thousand years ago, where they kind of set out that like, how do you kind of work with your own consciousness to to start to like experience this bigger reality which is not physical, which is out there. And now again with the renaissance of of of psychedelics, where the psychonauts are—I mean, yeah, so these substances have been destigmatized; they've been shown to have beneficial effects for mental health and well-being, but also that they're now being taken seriously in the philosophy of mind. So you have now the thing—it's the philosophy of psychedelics is a thing—and one philosopher of psychedelics is saying, hey, if you're studying the mind as an academic and you don't take psychedelics, this is like having kind of a pianist and taking away the piano, because this is the thing you should be doing. So before it was like, no, this is ridiculous, because uh, psychedelics are just like deluded hallucinations; they have nothing to do—they like, they have no import; it's just, it, it's just total delusion—like, there's no relevance in that—it's the mind on drugs.

Yeah, exactly. And now it's like, hey, what if the kind of this access to these other realms of reality through your consciousness, through—yeah, psychedelics—is what the shamans, the mystics, and the meditators have been talking about? And actually, in the literature, it seems to be that they all kind of describe the same thing—that behind all of this there seems to be some structuring intelligence or consciousness, or in the religious context, oh, it's it's like the the god field or or energy. And kind of that's where it was like, that's really bad. So in the west, the western mind kind of got really late into the game and was like super arrogant and like, yeah, no one else knows about this either, so like, huh. So yeah, that was kind of like very surprising; I found that there's so much wealth about this experiential multiverse, and and I mean, and we had a phase in like the 20th century where where um, William James, the um, psychologist, but then turned—or he was also a philosopher at the end of his life; he was like the most uh, famous US philosopher—he read this little um, text that I think Benjamin Paul Blood he was called, wrote about like crazy psychedelic experiences he had on nitrous oxide, laughing gas. So this was a time when they figured out that hey, you can knock out consciousness and you can go to the dentist and have your tooth extracted without like unbelievable pain. And so this Benjamin Blood has some whatever tooth surgery, and during those whatever 10 minutes of unconsciousness, he has this total mystical experience, because laughing gas is super psychedelic, and you wrote about that, and William James read it, and he was like, that doesn't make sense—very skeptical—and then he did his own nitrous oxide experiments, and that kind of messed with him for the rest of his life, because until the end, till yeah, for the his whole kind of like philosophical career, he was trying to figure out what does this all mean. And for him, it was like totally clear that like it's experiential—so kind of this radical empiricism; it's only the things you can experience are real—so like that's his term, right, radical empiricism—that's what he came up with. And he struggled—so he struggled with it, and it—um—yeah, what I what I'm hearing, James, what fascinates you and what really fascinates me and what you're trying to bridge in your book, so to speak, is—I'm I'm just trying to give words, words to it here—but it's like the the numinous, sort of the thing, the *Ding* in German, right? You're German; you speak German, and uh, of course, what we can know about the world, the phenomena, and physics, of course, is about the phenomena, and and and you're—of course, these deep, deep mystical type experiences, transcendental experiences are about the numinous, right? It's the the real thing. Can those two—can they be bridged? Can they be integrated in a new science? Because I'm I'm reading your book as one plea for that, but I also had a question on on how exactly—you you do have suggestions here—but I'm just super curious how you see that divide that many people see as a fundamental one. You seem to be saying that we can bridge it.

I think the divide is in like cognition. So we believe that the only way you can access knowledge is through rational common sense and logic, and that's the only way, but there are all these experiences you can make which cannot be understood, captured, or described rationally. So I don't know if you smoke DMT—for those 10 minutes you get teleported into DMT city, which people describe as having this structure—this kind of—it's empirical; you can go and visit it, make those experiences—but coming back to the sober waking consciousness state, you don't know what to do with it, because there's no construct, there's no thought you've ever had that allows you to make sense of what happened, because those experiences happened outside of space and time, or non-duality—like, also yeah, from like the eastern wisdom traditions—kind of like the object and the subject, they fuse and become one thing—makes no sense at all. I mean, this is like, this is like stupid, but you can experience that—that's a state you can experience—and like also with ego death with psychedelics kind of which goes into that. And I find kind of the same thing—this the or the problem with idealism is it's not a concept you can understand rationally. I mean, you can try and talk about it like Bernardo does, or um, this philosopher of mine, Meena Albahari, who has this perennial um, uh, idealism idea where she really sort of sources from all these mystics, and she goes into very like hardcore like language of philosophy and witness consciousness and and kind of like, yeah, this a perspectival unconditioned transpersonal blah blah blah, but these are all rational concepts, and at the end of the day you cannot know what idealism is, but apparently the shamans, mystics, meditators, and psychonauts all seem to get an experience of it. So I think we need to open up kind of our cognition, and maybe as a next step, kind of this um, I don't know, symbolic cognition. So with Carl Jung, who was like the synchronicities, where it's like physicalism says this is all random, there's no purpose, things just happen and you die and that was it, and if you see any meaning that's you being immature, just grow up and deal with it—but somehow many people feel that there's, yeah, things happen which seems so very purposeful. And I mean, again also in shamanism, like everything has meaning—like the the eagle flying over your head—everything can be decoded and has a—

And I believe the western mind has totally forgotten about kind of this symbolic way of cognition, which is also like dreams, or like just the interpretation of like the things happening around it, which of course you cannot do if you're told, hey, this is random, there's nothing, there's no structure or purpose. And I find this is like the biggest thing um, science has missed in in the complexity context. Like, there seems to be—so there seems to be a structuring force in the universe; the universe seems to want to build complexity; I mean, that seems to be a given, and like the craziness of the complexity around us and in us—I mean, we kind of like just, just shrug and say, yeah, whatever. I mean, the the intricacy, the the the intelligence in nature—I mean, all these things, this from like sub—like the the galactic structures to like cell structures—I mean, this is so intricate that there seems to be like a a guiding force, a, and that's where I kind of um, came up with the idea, kind of the will to complexity, like going back to Schopenhauer, that there is something that is being expressed here. And was he the first complexity scientist in a sense also?

Schopenhauer—well, for him it was like very sort of instinctual, so he didn't really think about it in in in in those terms, but but but kind of like that we sort of seem to have missed that this could be a possibility. And of course, in a physicalist context, this is like, this is like sacrilegious—like the universe doesn't have a purpose; come on, this is like you, this is you're talking about God, aren't you? This is like a disguise to bring religion back in, it's like through the back door. Or if it has, we cannot access it, because—I—that that was really new to me is of course not you—I mean, you did not come up with this, but you do very nicely sort of put it in your book, which dawned on me, is sort of this difference between Kant and Schopenhauer in the west—that sort of in in Kantian idealism, we are sort of trapped in the phenomena; we might sort of say there is a transcendent universe out there, but we just—we are trapped—it's all our mind. And with Schopenhauer, he does give us sort of an access to the transcendent; is that right?

Yeah, I, I think so. And maybe the reason is that like um, Schopenhauer, he was very much influenced by the the Vedas and these eastern traditions, so kind of these more sort of um, unorthodox kind of experiences, so he probably knew about those. I think it's that that probably helps—that kind of having had or just being open to knowing about these things, uh, these experiences, these non-ordinary states of consciousness can really help you sort of, yeah, sort of re, reframe your metaphysical beliefs, which you probably didn't even realize were there because they were like, like implicit. So that's where I believe that like psychedelics have a big potential as well. So if you come in and say, look, there's only the physical, obviously, I mean, come on, we—what else can it be? Yeah, you can touch it—okay, I don't know, take 400 micrograms of LSD or take ayahuasca, whatever, and then we have another conversation—like, is this still the case that you really have this strong belief that this is like exclusively the thing that exists, or maybe by experiencing these other levels of reality which are purely accessible to consciousness, it kind of changes your worldview? Because what I find is interesting that a lot of psychonauts say that state of of like in being in this transcendental mind state, this reality feels more real than sober waking consciousness, and I'm always like, how is this possible? Like, how, like, how could a state that is like so incoherent and and transcendental and crazy, and how can this feel more real than like this? And I think that's also kind of what what what kind of the spontaneous like epiphanies of mystics, where they suddenly like sort of feel this this otherworldly thing which feels more, I don't know, more real. And I like the interview you had with with um, Fritjof Capra, where he kind of—I think he talks about his mystical experience and he says it feels like coming home. So wow, so obviously we're not home here.

It's imbued with meaning, right? And exactly—um, yeah, there's so much here. Um, well, one thing I'm thinking is that sort of indeed the psychedelic renaissance in the west, and also just personally, and I'm curious about your own—we we spoke a bit before this interview of our own psychedelic experiences—and I needed the psychedelic states—I'm not an experienced psychonaut, and I'm afraid of that space because it's just the ego, my ego doesn't like it—but I needed it to truly uh, experience an enchanted world again. So I was brought up in Christianity, so I was brought up in religion, which should be all about transcendence, but to me it wasn't—I didn't experience it—and I needed an ayahuasca journey to experience pure transcendence. But I also thought afterwards, how have we come so far from home that we need these substances? I mean, it's awesome that it's part of nature; they're obviously there, but we are also apparently quite detached from that—we need such strong medicine to get back to just experiencing that transcendence real.

Yeah, um, but I think that's kind of the journey the western mind did when it became like individualized and and and like kind of physicalized and and and like totally—

Yeah. And now it needs strong medicine. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can like get there through meditation, but that just takes so much more effort. And again, like, I mean, the problem with psychedelics—so I mean, psychedelics are like super potent, and they're like dangerous; these are very dangerous substances, so it's not like, hey, everyone should take psychedelics, definitely not. But a big problem is the integration afterwards, so like having this kind of epiphany during a psychedelic state, it shows you like where it goes, but then like a lot of people then aren't able to integrate this, and they go back to living their lives like—like one example, or two people I know who are like, "Oh man, I had like this amazing like the the non-dual—I I kind of melted and and fused with all of existence; it was amazing—just like all of unity, we're all one"—and then they go on to lead like super selfish lives—like, what, that can't be true. And I think that's kind of the problem—that that um, the interconnection—we forgot—we totally forgot about interconnection in the west, because we so much focused on our hyperindividualization that we forget that we're like in this matrix of life and matrix of consciousness. And I think this is also a reason why so many things seem to be so crazy nowadays—kind of, it seems to be we're suffering from a mass psychosis. And I think one thing is that we just forgot of our that this is all like a connected thing, and and this seems to be something that was pretty clear for like most cultures always, and we're finding this in—yeah—entanglement—more holistic—so that there is like physics telling us about this holistic interconnected reality, but we don't experience that, and kind of that's the first step you need to take to be able to like just like be really cruel and horrible to other human beings and other animals and plants. I mean, we had to invent a word for the the kind of the damage we're doing—ecocide—we we're instigating the sixth uh, extinction event—collectively, all of us—like, how is like—what's happening here? And to be able to do that, it, it, you have to experience yourself as being separate from the other, so you don't have empathy. Like the incredible cruelty we're like exposing all these animals to—like uh, this—it's it's it's—this would be not something you would do if you feel that life is connected. And now there's like also sort of in the humanistics and going into biology where people are like saying, hey, okay, maybe we need to expand kind of our sphere of compassion a bit more, so first it was just like humans—like animals are like super like primitive instinctual; they're like little robots; they have no inner like perspective or they can't whatever—they can't even suffer—then it's like, actually, yeah, like I don't know, last year there were like 20 biologists and and and um, philosophers who were like, hey, maybe octopus, uh, insects, and like maybe they also have consciousness—that was like last year or two years ago—come on—but we kind of managed to sort of expand the sphere of empathy to animals, and now it's like, hm, plants, because plants they store information, plants they seem to like communicate, they even seem to have something like agency sometimes, so maybe like our relationship to plants should be changed—like we maybe should talk about like the personhood of plants—which then kind of like, yeah, makes everything even harder, unless you're Jane Goodall and like just eat the fruits from the plant—I mean, obviously, otherwise you have to kill something to be able to survive, and which, yeah, I mean, that's part of the the life cycle, but but still, that we start to become more empathetic to like—yeah—I mean, starting with our fellow humans—I mean, this cruelty that we in in our kind of modern society—it's crazy that that—I mean, this isn't normal—this is not this isn't normal human behavior, I would claim. I mean, this is like so dysfunctional and and and and just weird and cruel.

To what degree would you say, at face value—I, I really—I mean, it's not for nothing that we have—when you talk metaphysically about materialism—the other word for physicalism—and culturally about materialism—that it's it's funny, right? Because in culture, materialism is very much about just gaining more goods and depleting the earth; we don't—it doesn't have a good connotation. Um, so there clearly is a link. I always working for Asencia and and and sort of sharing all we can about scientific evidence or or work in favor of idealism—what drives me is that I truly believe that it's a better metaphysics for the world, but I'm also a bit hesitant or how strong I can make that connection or how strong exactly that connection is, because um, in the past cultures associated with idealism—shamanism—did pretty cruel stuff, right? And perhaps even on these substances, so we cannot say one-to-one that idealism or a metaphysics more in favor of is is is better for the world. So how do you see this, and to what degree would you really say that physicalism is sort of at the root of planetary problems we see right now?

I mean, I think a modern version of idealism is what we need, okay? So, and I think this is kind of goes into the direction of of of a a scientific spirituality. So it's scientific; it means you're dealing with consensus reality, and you're not like denying it. And spirituality being that you are kind of open to working with your own consciousness and kind—I don't know—open to the transformation of it—to trying to make yourself a happier person, basically. This is about you like becoming a happier person, which then just like radiates in and makes yeah, your your behaviors just so much better. And I think that would be something nice to have, because now it seems that you have two metaphysical choices: either it's like this cosmic nihilism—it's random, has no purpose, shut up, die, whatever, nothing's going to happen—or you have these dogmatic, static religions which tell you exactly, very detailed, what is what and how it works, and they were like, yeah, written down and never change. So I find these are both disillusioned and and and disenchanted ways of looking—

At the world, and I think like a middle way would start to like us to, to sort of in a a modern context, start to like re-evaluate our own consciousness and and and like try and cultivate it a bit more. And like, I mean it's it's I don't know, so many people seem so unhappy with their their material or their lives, although like there's so much material stuff. And it's like, well, kind of makes sense because I mean like the first thing in Buddhism is like, hey, as soon as you attach yourself to something physical, you're going to have a bad day, because reality is impermanent, so there'll be suffering. So the the reason is not for this kind of accumulation of stuff; outside happiness is an inner state you cultivate. And somehow the West didn't get the memo about that. It's like, no, I need a bigger flat; I need a bigger car, and then I'll be happy. It's like, how can we still like have this drive, which is like it's so sad because it doesn't help anyone gain any iota of happiness, and it just leads to a lot of destruction. So I find that like, yeah, we we need sort of modern iterations of of of of these ideas and and and like have very sort of um honest discussions about our metaphysics.

Because the problem with physicalism is that it it kind of just came in under the rug; it wasn't like ever sort of critically analyzed because um this happened; this is 19th century, right? So after Dayart made the sort of the cut, and then science progressed well, and then you had like, yeah, the enlightenment scientific revolution, and it kind of like, hey, we figured it out. I mean, there's even a quote from Michaelelsson, I think, the from Michaelels Morley, who then showed um the speed of light is always constant, which then led to special relativity. And I don't know, uh, he wrote like, hey, before they did the experiment which then kicked off stuff, he was like, I think we figured out everything; I mean, we know everything about physics; it's just about like, is it going to be the 12th or the 13th um place after the comma? He had no, I mean, he didn't see the relativity or the quantum stuff coming. So both physic physicalism is a sort of a naive metaphysics in a sense, and idealism, in the sense of organized religions worldwide theism, also a bit naive. And you're making a plea for sort of this more truthful metaphysics. Um, I think in the West we do recognize many people that regard themselves intellectual atheists do sense ah that that sort of theism that's naive, and then you think physicalism is sort of a an intellectional point you can defend.

And I want to talk a bit about sort of how in physics, because I do think that in physics something very important happened with, of course, quantum mechanics, but it also then how long it took physics, because your book is very much um pointing out how complexity science got at it first; like they they sort of truly grasp sort of that we need this this deeper metaphysics. So my question is, is actually where do you think metaphysics entered quantum mechanics and and the difference between physics and complexity science in how they then progressed? I mean, metaphysics entered kind of quantum mechanics from the beginning. So the pioneers of of of quantum physics, they were very much like curious of like what does this mean? What does this this tell us? And they were very very open to like uh more radical sort of views and and and like, yeah, maybe consciousness, observers, the wave function collapse, what does this mean? But the problem was that, yeah, these are, I mean, the quantum realm is not rational; has no, it's not, you can't grasp it with common sense, and it's illogical. I mean, wave particle tunneling, this all makes no sense. So so kind of the thing we have at our classical level, kind of that we want the world to behave in a certain way, is kind of a human prejudice, and fundamental reality doesn't care much about that. And the pioneers kind of they were really sort of open to to sort of understanding this, and then the next generation of physicists slowly came, and at one point it was it was like, you know what, just shut up and calculate; we will never understand this; this is this is philosophy; philosophy is a waste of time because there's no right or wrong; you can just spend hours talking about it; shut up, calculate, do the equations. Um, and then that's gives us all the amazing technology we have today, and science works; it's amazing. And but that kind of like this attitude got sort of came in pretty quickly then after, yeah, kind of a generation gave up on trying to understand it. And yeah, still to this day we have no interpretation of quantum mechanics because we just um kind of have I don't know, bad philosophy in in kind of scientists are mostly not trained in philosophy, whereas often philosophers of science are trained pretty well in the more technical stuff, and they arrogantly and almost arrogantly think they can do so right. I mean, I mean, I like how you, there's this famous Hawking quote, you know, saying philosophy is dead, and you also quote Freeman Dyson, and I say, well, he said when and why does philosophy lose its bite? How did it become a toothless relic of past glories? So the second and third generation physicist physicists gave up a bit on philosophy. We could say, did it stay more alive in the complexity science? Exactly because with complexity science you suddenly had the problem of emergence, where somehow it doesn't seem to be reductionistic but holistic, the very opposite, and kind of these ideas of structural realism. So suddenly it's not about the nodes in the network but the interconnection, the the stuff between the relations, and and this kind of like started to challenge kind of these these more sort of straightforward concepts of of physicalism. Who was the thinker behind that? Who came up with that? Um, and you mentioned, I mean, you mentioned Shannon in your book, Fischer, and you sort of these people who started information theory and from the very beginning, but in complexity science, who came up with these ideas of structural relation kind of like in the in the um beginnings with um Ernst von Glasersfeld with radical um constructivism, right? Constructivism from the philosophy, and then Heinz von Foerster from like the the the second-order cybernetics, where it's like about, okay, we need to put the observer into cybernetics. And these are all precursors of like modern sort of complexity science. So they there they realized what we're seeing in in this sort of way of looking at complexity; we somehow need new concepts, and that's where then the philosophers came in. So like the quote of von Glasersfeld is that, hey, physics has reached a reality domain that we cannot understand, full stop. And Heinz von Foerster was like, yeah, objectivity is the illusion that observations are made without an observer. So they were like kind of, okay, rephrase that again; what was that? Um, objectivity is the illusion that observations are made without an observer. So they kind of like got sort of were understanding that like there's more that's that's happening in in in in this context. And I mean like my favorite example, so um emergence, suddenly you have the system, you know, and understand, suddenly exhibits new a new level of organization; you cannot understand from studying the parts in itself. So um psychology is is is like not applied biology; applied biology is not a kind of chemistry; and chemistry is not physics; at every level you have different kind of concepts, hierarchies, ideas, and you can't really get from down here up here; that's kind of what they realize with with emergence; that's sort of their metaphysical assumption in a sense, because there's this distinction, right, between weak and strong emergence, and and people say, okay, weak emergence, I can understand sort of the snowflake has different shapes when in in a collective, but like real strong emergence, that which for instance would be like consciousness suddenly emerging out of brain activity, we don't believe in it. Does complexity science sort of uh uh is open to strong emergence, or or is that distinction useful? I don't really know, but but kind of like taking it a step back, like what could the mechanism be of emergence? And there um I really like Stephen Wolfram with his ideas, which um from a computational perspective, I mean, we saw this in the 70s, the like the game of life, where um suddenly Conway, like super simple rules, kind of suddenly gave rise to very complex behavior, and then cellular automata, which was like, hey, wow, what's happening here? Like, why is rule rule number so much like rule number 54 whatever like so different to all the others, because that creates like incredible structure and like information content where the the others are like random or or super ordered. And kind of I call this sort of like sort of the the sort of the miracle of like complexity seems to emerge out of simplicity, which is kind of crazy. So look, what looks like complex behavior from far away is often the result or can be emulated by simple rule rules of interaction. And this is where kind of the the the the first miracle of of Eugene Wigner, where who said like, why is mathematics so incredibly useful for for the natural sciences? Like, why why does math work? No one knows, except kind of idealism, because it's like inner consciousness, outer whatever, but but just like sort of bridging the the the the two there that um the simple rules thing seems to be something which is encoded in the universe; it seems to be this this thing that it does again, like a kind of the magic sparkle that allows like complexity to emerge. And this is also something which like, why should this why should this happen? But it it it kind of guides you towards like, okay, if you want to understand complexity, it's not going to be easy with equations because they somehow don't fit, but it'll be a lot better and easier algorithmically. So this is the computational aspect where you can't actually like solve I don't know like a bunch of la equations whatever; no, you have to simulate the system to see where it gets to. And where we start to sort of get into this um computational paradigm of understanding the formation of complexity better, where in 2002, I think, the new kind of science, the first book evol from where he was like, hey, cellular automator, everyone was like, whatever, don't care; now he's back with like the new project for a fundamental understanding of physics or whatever, where he's got hypergraphs and like shows that there's a lot of structure that we see in physics emerging out of simple rules of of updating these hypergraphs, which are graphs that can like the edges can connect more than like two nodes, and like it's more abstract, but kind of like this seems to be what life is doing; that kind of life should be understood more in a in a computational context, which means that somehow, yeah, there's if it's computational, it kind of begs the question, yeah, where from, how, and what? So it seems to be who computes it, sort of we have an out, because I'd say then you need a you need a system that computes, and you need an algorithm, right? And then you you get to output how how to, well, I mean, it can be more abstract, like um non-equilibrium thermodynamics, where they see like if you kind of have an imbalance in like sort of entropy, energy, so you like you have a sun which has like low entropy um energy coming out, and it hits like an atmosphere, and then kind of what reality wants to do apparently is like dissipate this gradient really quickly, and the best thing it can do is via complexity. So entropy kind of the production of entropy is like the engine for for complexity to happen, and you see this with like little vortexes or or or like molecular structures up to probably metabolic pathways, and you have like um this is kind of the idea of prioene, if I pronounce it correctly, and like I think Jeremy England who's continuing with this idea that you have this this dissipative structures dissipation, which is kind of kind of fueling the complexity. So I think the problem with kind of the the pan-computational aspect is is that it's like a very sort of human, the technology now thing, like before the universe was a clockwork, because that was kind of the thing, and now the computer, now the reality is a computer, because computers, I think we should be more sort of um maybe more abstract and less concrete in like how it exactly is embodied uh the thing that happens. But um I mean that would mean that basically the thing, life that's happening here, this program, it's not like, oh, there was this primordial soup and the lightning bolt hit it and kicked it off; no, this would be something that happens everywhere where you have a sun and an atmosphere, and this is kind of again like this will complexity, this teology which seems to be like programmed into it, and this is kind of where that's why I call the book the Sapient Cosmos, because this is like the intelligence that's around us; it's being computed, but it's not sentient yet, because that's like the hard problem of consciousness; how do you get consciousness in? And kind of I I kind of the this syncretic idealism idea, like drawing on what other people's have other people have kind of been thinking about it and saying, so this is like not not really a theory or my idea, but it's like if you have this base reality of you can call it whatever you want, like cosmic consciousness or this a perspectival like nondual whatever field of consciousness, which is the source of physical reality. So physical reality kind of is derived from this via maybe like, yeah, sort of this information paradigm, which seems to be like, so you have kind of maybe a silly sort of visualization, but you like have the the base layer of consciousness and like to to lift it up and have the physical, you kind of have this thisformational sort of transition, yeah, kind of with with cubits where there the the potentiality of the field and the actuality of when you measure it, but kind of like out of this you get then all these structures and complexity via the computation, but consciousness is the field itself manifesting in the physical. So the idea there would be your brain channels consciousness; it doesn't produce it. And that's where the cosmos becomes sapient. So the cosmos appears to like be assembling like very complex contraptions like our brains, which are then able to channel the base consciousness into individualized forms, where um Bernardo's ideas of of of of dissociation like how this could could work kind of I find playing in there nicely. And um yeah, that kind of means that maybe if If we with our technology build enough complex contraptions, maybe they too can start to channel this consciousness, and we have an inner perspective emerge within our technology, within AI. So I used to think, no, that's like consciousness is like biological, and I'm like, why? If the universe has this kind of trajectory to create more complexity, and apparently the complex structures then start to channel the base consciousness, then why stop here? I mean, then it's also not us; we can't take credit for it because we're just an expression of this process. So it's not like, yeah, but we created consciousness; no, we just like we continued this this path, this node computing what the universe wanted to compute through us, exactly. I'll put your model on screen for people to see, and which is in your book where you indeed say we have this source reality, abstract potentiality, which you actually equate to consciousness, then, right? In that sense, you're you're pure idealist. Like how far do we get with with like rational and words and concepts? Again, this is like somehow when you take psychedelics, when you meditate, when you have an epiphany, somehow you go back into this, and you can experience the thing behind it. I mean, that's Yeah, and I'm I guess I'm I guess I'm more, and I feel you there, but I guess I'm more interested in that first step then, which in your model um is information, mhm. And I think just very nice to unpack because within physics it was John Wheeler, within physics, who first said it from bit, right? So he seems to be one of the first physicists to say at the most fundamental level we have we have bits; we have information; so uh yes or no. Actually, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, one of the biggest physicists from the 20th century, he was talking about this information theoretic stuff like 17 years or whatever before before Wigner, yeah, no, before Wheeler, sorry. And he even invited Wheeler once to a conference, and for some reason Wheeler never ever cites his influence, because and this is like a problem with um like culture and language. So von Weizsäcker being a German, he uh the um his junior, Garnit, who then continued, he was also theoretical physicist, he continued kind of with this information theoretic idea with the philosopher of science, Hurl, but they only published in German. And Garnets really came up with this idea of like that quantum information and consciousness, and then he has this concept of proteiois, I don't even now know know how to pronounce it, and he says that it's like he he builds up this quantum mechanics with like two-dimensional Hilbert spaces, which is the cubits, and this is a very elaborate um construct which never made it into the English-speaking sphere. But in the English-speaking sphere, Wheeler was like, yeah, he was the the really kicking this off, and and and what I really like with Wheeler is that he was like, hey, this means it's a participatory universe; we are cocreating, which sounds very much like a new-age hippie idea, because this is like the crazy; it's like, no, I mean, I get okay, idealism whatever behind the scenes, but no, no, you can't get away with like telling me that I'm like creating this and and and this is kind of the I I that that's like I think the sort of the big legacy of of of Wheeler, his the idea of a participatory universe, which again functions through consciousness. So the participation is consciousness; I very much agree. So but I didn't know that, and that's very good to have that sort of historically, to have that history, right? You see how people walk away with with ideas of of others, um intended or not intended. What I'm curious about is um it seems to me that that that physics is now in the last 20 years or so, we just visited a conference on the foundations of of quantum mechanics, of which we're putting videos out also with Renato Renner, Chla Brookner, people who you also quote in your book. Now they're very much into this information, quantum information uh theoretical approach, putting the observer uh centric. How do you regard their work? Um, and and what do you find interesting about it? I mean, this is like totally a new paradigm that because up to now science has been by default the third-person perspective, the objective, because what else can it be? And now like Marcus Müller who really like, hey, let's start to build uh quantum mechanics with an observer perspective, and this cubism, I mean, these are like really great attempts to start to bridge kind of the gap, but I just fear that um maybe if they would have like more philosophical training and like get to think a bit more deeply about metaphysics that would really help, because I still think it's I mean, this is like super cool and open, and they're like really moving on to like, okay, we need new radical ideas, because let's be honest, honest like theoretical physics has been stuck for whatever 30, 40 years; nothing we have not like progressed on understanding like what this is about a lot like or arguably not at all. So it seems to be that people realize, okay, the thing we've been doing, we're kind of stuck with that, so we need a new paradigm; so from informational to like, yeah, the first-person perspective, and this seems to be the the clash, the I mean, the hard problem of consciousness is like the third person and first-person perspective; how do you bring these together into a unified theory? And we can do that; you think it is? It is possible. It's again that divide that I mentioned, right, between the phenomena and the noumena, and I think I does does sort of a great job at sort of poking, almost getting there, but I agree with you that these physicists, their work is very much observer-centric, and so they are very much they left physicalism, right? And and they're sort of on a path sort of it it you know how do you call it? The ta in Dutch we say with like ropes on a cliff of like metaphysical nihilism, and in my opinion towards an idealist or an idealist-friendly, but if I say that word, it's just for them; it brings solipsism, and they shy away for metaphysics still, I think, and that's in the community physics. I love solipsism. You love it because actually I have a book, but I never actually read it, where this one philosophy is like solipsism is really important, and we should take it seriously, because solipsism says, yeah, it's only my mind, and everything else here is my mind from me, and there's no theoretical or empirical way to diffuse solipsism; it's a rational perspective. And the only reason why it's kind of ignored in philosophy is because like the majority of philosophers agree that it has no utility; if I start with solipsism, that's like where do you go from there? It's like, come on, it's just it literally just stops and is is dead. So but yeah, I mean, these are like the questions we need to ask ourselves as conscious beings, or like the problem of other minds; how do I know that you have the same thing as I have? And it's kind of like I don't, but maybe it kind of makes sense because otherwise it would be kind of weird. Uh, so I kind of go with that, but then the question is, and the rest of objective reality, like how much is that a hallucination? And I kind of like how neuroscientists in the last decade or so have started to like say, yeah, you know, sober waking consciousness, it's kind of a hallucination; it's it's actually exactly hallucination, and what we kind of like really think is out there, and we like know the objective world, and come on, it's a thin slice of the of the visible spectrum; all these optical like illusions that show us that our brains are rendering something in our minds which is not out there. And again, like the work of Donald Hoffman, uh, yeah, we're locked in consciousness, and we kind of forget about that; we always we think that we we inhabit an objective reality, but no, we inhabit our consciousness; we're locked in consciousness, and everything we experience is through that, and everything we experience through that is a step away. So the closest thing is my consciousness now, my inner perspective, and this outer world is kind of debatable what it is, and that's why I find philosophy so important, that we really have these uncomfortable discussions about yeah, meaning and and and and like what does anything even exist, or is it only me? Or like what words would you give it, James? What we didn't yet touch upon, your own psychedelic experience; you've had experiences, right? You're not an experienced psychonaut, you told me, but you've had experiences, right? So um yeah, when I was 17, like my friends started taking LSD and like told me wide stories; I was I was like reading um Aldous Huxley, and like I was like, "Okay, this is super like super psyched." And went to the forest with a friend; he was a sitter, and um somehow took a bit too much LSD, and the experience I don't remember much of it; it wasn't too coherent. And then for like two years I had like panic attacks because of that. So again, like psychedelics are really dangerous, and not everyone should take them, but this kind of opened me up to like I think my life would be totally different without this experience. So kind of like this suffering for two years like just totally put my life in a different like trajectory and like opened me up to things which I probably wouldn't have like because yeah, sort of rational minded, and that that was kind of me. And and so this kind of like helped soften up, and yeah, kind of um like I find THC is very therapeutic; I find THC is something which allows me to like not lose my sense of humor in the face of a world I find is terrible; like we have the worst of all worlds; it's like we could have such a we have technology and everything; we could have such a wonderful world, and somehow we're just going all crazy. And I think this is also kind of the this spiritual disconnect; we we don't have we don't know what our meaning is; we don't know what we're do why we're here; what we're doing; and these are like philosophical questions. And kind of like slowly we are opening up to these things; like I I'm part of a study in Zurich where it's like I think six cantons are asking what happens if we legalize THC in Switzerland, h, and so you get a little card, and you can go to the pharmacy, and you can buy legal weed in Switzerland since like one year. So this is we're slowly like allowing these states to be like experienced, because that was another thing like the monopoly of sober waking consciousness. And again, it's like we know it's just this tiny slice in this incredible multiverse of experience which is out there, and we said, no, this is the only way of being; any deviation is delusion, hallucination, and now we're like realizing, actually, no, this like helps people, or like I like the like this study they did um on terminally ill people with LSD, and this one man then um when he was interviewed, he was like, he had a tear in his eye, and he was saying, yeah, I was kind of really scared of death because like, yeah, everything finished in my identity, and I just go, and that was it, but after this Alex experience, I'm I'm not really sure if like maybe I missed something; like maybe there's more to reality that I wasn't aware of. And sort of like he totally recontextualized the idea of his own death because he suddenly made an experience which was outside of space and time. So if you can have experiences outside of space and time, kind of questions physical death. But then we kind of move on into what I mean like in the Vedas, they also took they had s this this psychedelic brew which was revered in like the Rigveda, one of the earliest, and we have the Eleusinian mysteries in in in Greece where Plato took psychedelics; no one ever talks about it in philosophy class; amazing. But but kind of like um there's this book, right, that that sort of goes back to the Gnostics and how in early Christianity also perhaps psychedelic, but then it got like, hey, this isn't this isn't cool because we need to build power structures here. Yeah, yeah, I guess my my my big question here is because that's what your book's about, sort of this in this syncretic idealism; you see a strong place for these internal states that are not sober waking consciousness, right? Mystical type, psychedelic type experiences; how can we make them uh can we discover structure there? Can it be like empirical? I heard you say that in our convention like the this it's empirical; you can go back to these states; you can discover sort of laws that or structure. How do you see that? Because the majority of people, especially for physicalists, it's the mind on drugs, and there's no structure there; it's just chaos and noise. And I'm I'm super glad that now you experience meaning and that you're not afraid of death, but please don't put any metaphysical claims on it or grant it any structure. So yeah, empirical mysticism, that would kind of be the idea that you can yeah, you can reproducibly kind of experience these things which transcend your rational mind, and these experiences allow you to recontextualize a lot of like your life and your beliefs. And again, it's like you can't force anyone to believe anything, but kind of the experience of of these things for many people, they're like they're they're like super significant, and and and like I mean, I don't know, 2006, the the Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins study where they were like, "Hey, psychedelics can induce mystical type experiences," where kind of at when the psychedelic renaissance started where they were like the the people in this study were like, hey, this experience was like top three like up there with my first child or so; there seems to so humans seem to be meaning-driven, and somehow our religions should give...

Us meaning, but they don't. And we need to rediscover that. And like, going back to to to like the Indian wisdom traditions, I love this idea of of of leela. It's called it's like in the in the vas. It's the self, and only the self exists, and that's all there is. So, kind of the self being this kind of consciousness field, whatever, and kind of the self then starts to play with itself and starts to play hide-and-seek where it pretends to be not the thing it is and and not the unity it is, and the fragmentation. And so this is like recontextualizing the whole of like what we're experiencing here as a grand play, which I love. So it takes away kind of the the heaviness and like the sadness, because it's like it it's just part of this cosmic play where the self is like pretending to be sad and laugh and interact with itself that it's forgotten itself. And this is like three and a half thousand years old, so and kind of these ideas I find they they they can help us like, and if are they true or not? I mean, it's up to you to believe whatever is true or not, and and I mean, so we always pride ourselves of being like super rational, like the things I believe they make sense because I'm a rational person, but that's not true. I mean, behind the veneer of rationality, at one point you have to make up your mind about what is going on, what is the meaning of life, what is being, what is happening. And these are not rational; they can't be rational decisions or rational thoughts. So we all have kind of a a kernel of irrationality regarding like these existential questions, which we're not probably clear about or or like overt, but these shape how we interact and and and so I think it doesn't really matter if if like yeah, if people criticize it, that's fine. And that's another thing which I um, postmodernism, I love that cont that that concept because it basically says you it's up to you how you interface with it and everything. And this is again drives physicists insane because there's like no there's only this way; there's not there's only one way; all others are incorrect; there's only one way to knowledge. Yeah, there's non there are non nonorthodox ways of gaining knowledge, which like in shamanism, the healing is all like whatever as an counter example. But yeah, I don't know; that's that's kind of like yeah, with this work of Renato Rener and these these physicists who have this observer-centric approach, they're hitting on sort of hardcore postmodernism in in a sense. Yeah, and and and and it seems to be true, like I don't know for for like entanglement either. It's entanglement, and somehow it's holistic in a way that like defies anything we understand, or you can go to superdeterminism where like some physicists are like, no, this is all encoded in the beginning of of the universe and whatever. And both ways of looking at entanglement are correct; you can't say but reality chooses this over that. So you literally can look at it from here or here, and the choice is up to you, and we don't know which one is correct. And it's like yeah, but it is. James, wouldn't you say that? I I took that as a note, even as a question to you. Metaphysics comes at a price, right? You say you can pick both, but if you want to uphold super deterren—I'm not a physicist or a mathematician—but you pay a high price, right? It's difficult to to get get to that meta—that's what what I get from Marcus. He says basically, Marks Müller, it's much more easy to take this observer-centric approach, just saying what will I see next, don't make any claims, than the super deterministic approach, which seems so weird and constructed and like over constructed and just so bizarre. I mean, it's like in the philosophy of mind, so you have the physicists who are like, hey, we're rational, and then it's like the hard problem: how do you deal with it? And they're like, haha, we just ignore it; we say, "Yeah, uh, consciousness is an illusion." Like Daniel Dennett, who's like, "Yeah, do you know what? Consciousness is a bag of tricks; it's stage magic; we think it's like this crazy thing; we don't understand the hard problem of consciousness, whatever." But once you see behind the magic, you'll be very disappointed because it's just tricks, or epiphenomenalism. It's like, okay, consciousness is here, and you experience it, but it's just like a byproduct of your brain computing, and it has no causal power. So suddenly these people who started off rational here, they have to defend something which tell you you have no free will; you are a bunch of elementary particles that got kicked off in some deterministic arc, and you're just me doing this now; it's not my free will; this is just like the whatever. I don't I don't even know how to like how they I I can't get in my mind into that space, but that's what they do, or eliminativism, like yeah, consciousness isn't actually there. So it's kind of funny how you start off being hardcore physicalist, but then you have to kind of make, in my opinion, ridiculous claims about consciousness, which most conscious people would like instinctually say, but that's self-evident that this is totally wrong. So again, it's like how how dogmatic you are, and I find this is a big problem that we, at least in the west, or probably humans in general, kind of this dogmatism: you like you have something you ascribe to, and then you just you try everything cognitively to just uphold that, and and and you you you're not open to to changing. I mean, there's a cool—no, actually, a sad quote by Max Plunk where it was like, hey, if a new theory comes into physics, it's not that people see the light; uh, you have to wait for the older generation to die because they'll be fighting it to the very end, and the younger generation, because they see it's correct, will adopt it. So that somehow seems to be some part of the human condition that we are super inflexible in our minds, and that's where I also think um, psychedelics or I don't know, meditation, contemplative practices, mindfulness help us maybe become more le or less rigid in our thinking and our beliefs. And like, why do you care so much that this belief is true? Like, why can't you let it go and like go with another one if you see that things are changing? Why is it so hard for us? And I think this is kind of a this again this ego, sort of this this individual hyperindividualization thing, the identity with like your ideas. And I think yeah, we need to be more chilled with our yeah, also with our metaphysics and like just be more open and relaxed, and also and also be wrong. Like, maybe it's wrong. Hey, let maybe I've been thinking stuff which is wrong, so is that so bad? Like, okay, then. But you do need to in that I like in in your book and your approach and and and that's all what analytic the word analyticism is all about is that we try to be accurate because when you're accurate you can also be you also will accurately know when you're wrong, right? Where when you're vague, and that's what religions have often done; they make sort of true transcendent experiments, experiences; they turn them into sort of a a story that is just vague and not accurate. And I like like that sort of in this analytic approach, so that I truly believe that's what the western mind can bring right to these traditions. Would you agree there? So that we need—that's why you also say spirituality needs science in our pre-con conversation; you said to me like the Nazis were spiritual; you said that that rang with me. Okay, they were spiritual people. Yeah, that. Yeah, that's no guarantee. So like, just you have to kind of like look inside and deal with the thing you find inside and try and make that better. That's for me that's like the definition of spirituality, and and kind of like the thing maybe, and again it's like super selfish because the idea would be that you become a happier person. So okay, and and I I I really like these people. Would you—Yeah, I have a lot of questions still for you, James. I think first of all, I think a lot of people on our channel loved our interview with Federico Fine, who has a theory that I can plot quite well; it very nicely dovetails with your position; it's different words, right? He would say like it's it's quantum fields, and then um, those from the freebuild decisions of those quantum fields emerges sort of the classical world we see. Um, but I think what's what's nice about his theory is that you you sense that he it comes from a sort of a deeply heartfelt experience and sort of his mind as a physicist. And I I'm sensing the same with you; are you would you say that you you the two of you overlap or where is it distinct? I I love the interview, but I think one thing we also need to reevaluate like how far can you get with one brain, like one person having one theory. And I think that's like where we should maybe reconsider like nature loves to do collective intelligence. I mean, like termites building mounds which are which are ventilation shafts—like wow—so they they hacked ventilation; each termite is like super stupid, has no brain, nothing, but the whole swarm somehow taps into—again, like in a physicist context, makes no sense—into this collective intelligence. Humans are like super intelligent; I mean, language, abstraction, but collectively we're destroying the world. So maybe we should start to like figure out how we can like be more intelligent collectively, which means that probably the answer is not going to be one person coming like, hey, I figured out the theory of everything; it's probably going to be a mosaic; it's going to be like yeah, um, an attempt from like different traditions, bridging different stuff; it's going to be a lot bigger than just like one way of looking at it. And I think we're not quite there yet that we're like open to sort of like collaboration. I mean, like my experience in in academia with collaboration, it was always like, yeah, of course, like interdisciplinary, super cool, let's do that, but it never worked because everyone was like scared to like say something stupid about the thing they they they weren't experts in, which seems like so silly; that's why you're interdisciplinary, because the other person knows more about that, and you have your expertise and just be open and like, but that never happened; everyone was like had the cards here, and we're like, no, no, no, I understand everything of your stuff, and and and I think this is a culture that we need to change in the west, that we become more hive-minded. And I think again this is like this hyperindividualization and the yeah, I mean, other cultures they have a more collective experience of of of being and society and and civilization. So I think yeah, I I that rings with me that sort of the the intelligence on the on the individual level and the stupidity on the collective level. And as a complexity scientist, what goes wrong is that sort of source code; is that metaphysics? Wrong bad metaphysics? I I think that's it, because we we have the capacity for like abstract thinking and and and and ideology, and apparently we like chose the worst, which which then kind of yeah, emerges as as as kind of this crazy world we created where so many people are suffering and so many animals and just the whole biosphere is like being hit so hard because we all individually seem to be like freaking out because we don't really know what we're doing and why we're doing it, and and we're missing kind of a a sense or or or Yeah, or or and we we're not even seeing the connection of like the matrix of life or consciousness, like not even in idealism, just like your fellow conscious beings. Like, why wouldn't you be nicer to—why would you always have wars and like want to kill the your non-tribe? Like, I get it that this is like programmed into our like ancestry, and that's like how life was—competing—but we now have the possibility to transcend this because with our analytical abstract thinking mind, so I think we could I think there's no fundamental reason that human intelligent individual intelligence doesn't give rise to collective intelligence; it's a choice we make which we not even realizing we're making. I love how wide-ranging we touch on all the different topics in your book. One I still want to get back to, and that's sort of the the the difference between computationalism and sort of how we classically think of physics, so the difference between physics and and complexity science, because my lay understanding of it would say that aren't the fundamental laws of physics a sort of algorithm? So isn't computationalism already baked in into physics, or is it like really different? Could you help me understand this? So I kind of find that physics is basically um, taking an aspect of reality and translating it into equations, yeah, and then you can do the math and you're in your formal system, and then you translate it back. So physics is kind of like a translation thing, and mathematics again, like for some miraculous reason, maps how stuff works in the outside world, and it works really well for like more fundamental stuff, so fundamental like yeah, the quantum or cosmology, but when things start to get complex and there's a lot of stuff interacting like in a network, then you get in trouble with equations because like you can't solve 500 differential equations. So at one point you kind of run out of ammunition with your analytical approach, and even with—sorry, stupid question—but also with with the help of a supercomputer. If I'm if I'm a physicist and I have a supercomputer sitting next to me, I mean, it's like the three-body problem, which cannot be solved analytically. I mean, you can approximate and everything, but like yeah, if you want to really get to like the essence of it, you kind of are a bit restricted with with your equations. And then we kind of have like the complexity, the yeah, the complex stuff, the interacting stuff, which is a computation because what you do in in like with with the complex networks you it's again also a translation, so you take your complex system, whatever it is, like I don't know, birds in a swarm, your neurons, traders in a market, and you map it onto a network, so you have the nodes and the interactions, and now you actually don't care about the nodes, so if one node is like a human or just one cell or whatever, it's it's the whole information is in the topology of the network, and now what happens is the evolution, so you update it from one state to the next, so this is an algorithm, so this is like telling you in steps like to get from A to B, and with like very complex systems, the only way to know like if you want to simulate them, the only way to know is to actually run the whole simulation; there's no way to like cut the queue and and get to the end result. So you're really bound to the computation, but I think a problem that you kind of are alluding to is time, where you think of like, but physics is also kind of evolving in time; you have the the evolution of time, but that's kind of another fun thing that um, physics has a really hard time with time indeed. So there's actually a bunch of physicists like Julian Barber who actually claimed like time is an illusion, and time is really weird like in in in relativity theory where it makes no sense to talk about events happening at the same time because it depends on your state, movement, gravity. So in that framework, which is true, the future and the past somehow exists at the same time everywhere, and depending on how you slice this block universe, you get the future and the past, or like in fundamental physics, sort of the the Wheeler-DeWitt equation where time falls out. So we have a hard problem with time; time seems to be something which just runs because the universe started in a super low entropic state for some reason, and it kind of moves towards higher entropy, and that's why we have a direction in time, but um, I don't know; there's seems to be like recently sort of quantum um experiments which somehow hint at sort of time being in two directions, and we kind of missed upon that. So the question of time seems to be something, although it's like so fundamental to us and like again experiential, it doesn't seem to be something that our physics can deal with very well. And another like a nice illustration is the formalism of quantum mechanics, so you have an observation here, wave function collapse, and you have an observation here, and then the probabilities become something; what happens in between? There's like nothing; that's like metaphysical no man's land. So it it's not that there's like something evolving or it's like discrete like whatever steps when you do observations. So time is a really hard concept for us to understand in physics, which I don't know like how many people know this because physicists or the ones who do write about it try, but physicists don't really advertise that too much that, hey, do you know what? We actually have no clue what time is. And maybe quickly just a bracket to um, theformational stuff, so like one of the cutting-edge theories is at the moment is that maybe space and time is not a fundamental thing; maybe it's an emerging property from something deeper, and what's the deeper? It's entangled quantum information. So it's nicely captured in ER equals EPR, where ER is Einstein-Rosen, so these are wormholes, equals entangled quantum information, because entangled quantum information gives you wormholes somehow, which you can then stitch spacetime out of it. This is something new which is like coming out of this attempt of like quantum gravity, so like what? Space and time are not fundamental—again, like a hard thing for for a physicalist to wrap their brains around because this makes like no sense at all. I mean, we're like totally like I mean, this is like a totally different ontology to what anyone expected. So yeah, we we're still grappling with like the very fabric of reality, which somehow, although we have like yeah, we can manipulate it and do the technology and like have all the the fun stuff and technology, we still are wondering like what exactly is it. Yeah, so so actually we we I tried understanding time and only got lost, and we've spent conferences at Asencia hosting conferences about this; people should really watch that content; time and mind is a conference we hosted on the topic. What was what what came out of that? So many different views, uh, indeed physicists who have sort of a block universe, Einsteinian approach, and then people who say time is an illusion, um, and we had Lee Smolen, who I thought always was sort of like more like time is fundamental approach, now evolving towards more trying to account for qualia. I I really cannot sort of recount sort of a common thread of that conference to you, but that already points to how sort of how the field of physics now is. But in what you just told me, um, so so yeah, that's physics and time, and that's that's complex stuff. How is it then in complexity science? Because in computation, I'd say time has a more clearer function; it's just the update of a system. Exactly. So maybe that's kind of a hint of how we understand time. I mean, this is like how Wolfram with the Yeah, these are the time steps, the updates of the system to the next, the network at state one and state two. So but these are kind of like discrete jumps, so these are not like smooth evolutions of like this this kind of uh, classical world we thought we lived in. So it seems to be like something a bit more weirder, and I don't know, kind of um, the idea of of Wolfram is that he comes up with this idea of the rulard, which is again like a very sort of mind-blowing idea of like every possible computation executed in every possible way. So kind of you have the quantum world with all the potentiality, and now you have this computational thing on top, and he's now also starting to think about consciousness because he then starts to say that actually our kind of how we trace through this rule is a function of or gives you kind of the the experiences of of consciousness, and like he has an interesting take there how you kind of evolve through this computational haze and and how that kind of is an aspect of of of what consciousness is. And it's kind of funny because um, he he to quote him, he said yeah, my I think his mother was a professor of philosophy at Cambridge, and he was like always his whole life was like philosophy is like such a waste of time, and he's like arguably now I I started to do philosophy because that's where like the trajectory of my life brought me to now. So again, it's like yeah, being open to like thinking new concepts, being critical of like how much bias do I have in my worldview, like how much stuff am I excluding just because I was brought up a certain way at some certain geographical location in the world, and that we can maybe sort of try and transcend that and and and yeah, get this kind of syncretic thing where there's like take a bit here, take a bit here, which seems to make sense, and and that's actually kind of where I sort of see my role here that I'm more like the correspondent like talking about like what these different people are saying and somehow trying to bring it together because that was kind of a I found a bit of a problem with idealism. And that brings me back to what I wanted to say with Despa, that he criticized idealism as like I've never seen a good theory of idealism because there's so many different ones and they don't make sense. And I think like having sort of an attempt at unifying like the sort of the the basic elements that seem to be something people have been writing about in idealism—yeah, you have Bernardo, but you have like the this the sheamans and the mystics, and you you kind of have like this complexity thing, you have this potentiality thing with information—like bringing it all together and trying to like make a unified sort of uh, vision out of all these fragmented ideas, and that could also maybe help idealism become more mainstream because it's not like ah, philosopher A has this idealism, physicist B has this idealism, but that we kind of merge it and it becomes more of a again a like a collectively shared intellectual program. Yeah, but what I think complexity science teaches us in reading your book is is what you mentioned earlier also that out of simplicity, complexity can can emerge, and that to me—I mean, I've seen the cellular automata; that's crazy simple rules, and you get like cities and avatars and stuff out of these very simple rules—but it's that's one thing you see it on your screen; it's a computer program, but then to think that we're in something like that is something else, right? That at the very basis of what we as we are sitting here might be a very simple rule or is a rule; would know if if is it a rule? But again, it's like this some secret source of the universe. I mean, with the termites, they somehow interact in very simple ways because they can only run around; I mean, they can't like do any complex—I mean, it's all like simple interactions in the hive, and somehow they manage to geoengineer stuff. So we see this happening around, and and I think like maybe complexity science should do a better job in explaining how mind-blowing this is. So like, ontogeny is the word for how you get from a zygote to fused cells to an adult individual, so it's like that happens; it's like you know, there's like the DNA in the cells, and that's like the blueprint, and then you have it all makes sense; come on, you have two cells; you end up with like 30 or 50 trillion cells, and then you have another 30 or 50 trillion cells, the microbiome with like fungi and bacteria and viruses which keep you alive, which you live in symbiosis; without the microbiome we would be less healthy. So like this is mind-blowing structural complexity which emerges from a super simple state. I think maybe we should be more open to like, wow, this is crazy. I mean, like this is this is just unbelievable, and it's like no, it's just biology, and and even like I don't know, in the '90s the um, biologists were like, ah, the cell, and they started to talk about it in this um, computational framework; it's like and robots and and and like it it computes and DNA, and and nowadays biologists are like, actually this is a bad metaphor because the cell is so much more dynamic; it's so much more kind of um, self-interacting; pl the plasticity like the complexity of a cell is so mind-blowing that kind of saying it's a machine is is is like not even scratching the surface, and we're only now starting to realize how insane this is and like the intelligence in in in nature. So not too long ago we figured out that photosynthesis is like nearly 100% efficient; plants managed to hack this quantum process and make it like nearly 100% efficient, and people are like, "Wow, that's crazy." And so yeah, I mean, I'm saying that we are missing a large part of what's happening with complexity in our universe because we've been conditioned to not look; it's like, no, that's just happened; that's a brute fact; it's whatever. And and I think there's more, and I think we can understand more in complexity science with a better metaphysics. So I don't think we need better tools or bigger computers, but really to understand like yeah, kind of what is going on here; how do you get from simple to complex? Like, what is the universe conjuring up here? Like, what's the and I mean, yeah, non-equilibrium thermodynamics seems to be something which kind of at least starts to sketch what's happening, but we still don't know like why why why would that then give metabolic structures that dissipate entropy, dissipate better and do entropy entropy production, and and this is like something that the universe likes to do. Like, okay, yeah, yeah, this this also relates to to a couple of thinkers. We I mean, I spoke with Federico Fine, who also said you cannot see the cell as as a computer, and if it's a computer, it's a very complex quantum computer with quantum effects. Exactly. Yeah, and we have Michael Evan who's working on bioelectric fields that and morphogenesis and point to exactly what you're saying; you cannot just see this as a simple reductionist system. Um, what I but but moving back uh, to syncretic idealism and and and the way in right the the the shamanic, the psychedelic journey and then relating it to mathematics because in the I think somewhere in your book you write sort of the the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, that sort of wandered Eugene Wickner it was right, that you you then say it's not that unreasonable if you have from the syncretic eyeless perspective, you can see it's our kinship with the universe; it's the universe expresses itself towards in mathematics, and then you have this DMT trips where people uh, see of course mathematical structures, and there's new research being done. I want to dive a bit deeper with you into that; is are people discovering there the mathematical realm from within so to speak? I mean, that's what they often say that they like on DMT they visited like sort of the the computational origins of the universe or or suddenly everything was mathematical structures. So it does seem kind of interesting that people who are not like mathematicians or scientists default to this weird experience on DMT, but um, the I mean, the it does kind of seem weird that mathematics is a formal thought system in our brains; you can come up with maths in your basement in total darkness, and then you go outside and you suddenly realize, oh, but this math maps how the the stars move, how if I throw a ball. So the question there, Eugene Wigner, like why do these inner structures map the outer structures, and there is no reason; there was like he he says like miracle five times in the paper or whatever. So idealism in general, it kind of makes sense because the inner structure is consciousness, and the outer structure is also based on consciousness, so you would kind of expect there to be kind of an overlap. And again, it's like your metaphysical views really constrain what's possible; telepathy makes no sense; this is silly.

Everybody who claims telepathy is either a fraud or is delusional. This is not possible. This is silly. This is just it's it's it's a it's frustrating. It must—Oh, it drives—like this is so bad. But this is in a physicalist universe. If you're in an idealist universe, telepathy seems like a no-brainer. I mean, it seems like, yeah, that that should be able to happen.

So kind of the things that we maybe haven't discovered or are close to are probably a lot constrained just through our culture and and through what we deem is possible or not, which is based on our uncritically adopted metaphysical views. And you even speak about sort of the the—you even dare to combine the words physicist and shaman, I think in your book.

I did? I don't even remember, but I might be miscoding. Sorry, I have to fact-check. But I I did. You do make a link, yeah, kind of that. I mean, what can happen if you have this inner knowledge and this outer knowledge? Exactly. I mean, that's kind of like—this seems to be something we would be wanting to get to. And and I even remember that like I I don't know—the Tibetan Book of the Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche or something—I read like many many years ago, and he was saying what could a physicist discover who's like really trained in these consciousness kind of techniques of Buddhism? And I read that and was like, yeah, I wonder what one could—and nowadays it's like it's like yeah, kind of whatever kind of consciousness transformational techniques or empirical metaphysical journeys you take into this transcendental structure, like what can this bring us from like nonorthodox modes of knowledge generation? And we we tend to forget that the giants of science themselves had some of these ideas coming from visions, right?

So so it—or dreams.

Yeah, exactly. So we know that. And this brings me to to I think the most touching stuff in your book that sort of I really could feel in my heart, and that's the journey of the the philosopher Christopher Bache, who undertook sort of a systemic uh research of the psychedelic realm uh of LSD. He did 73 trips over a period of of of high-dose trips over a period of 20 years, trying to really sort of study it. And the stuff he experienced is like crazy, right? It's mind-blowing. And kind of I find this is like the only source we have of of kind of these insights because either um—I mean shamans are like psychedelically versed, but they didn't write this down. So kind of from someone who does this from like an analytical perspective, as from a research perspective, as a trained philosopher. And I mean, he explains how like these states get deeper and deeper and deeper. And kind of to be able to be coherent throughout these high-dose experiences, this is like, yeah, training. I mean, you can't just go out and run a marathon; you have to practice. And kind of his 20-year practice allowed him to just like go so deep into this metaphysical transcendental structure. And again, I read this book and I'm like, for me too, it just like resonated. I'm like, whoa, this just makes—this feels so right. And I I'm not like, oh, this is some random person on drugs hallucinating. I'm like, this seems—and again, this is like what the philosophers of or most philosophers of psychedelics would say—that we need to study the—even if it's just like the experience, the experiential part—like what is going on here? Like why are these experiences being made, and why do they have this nature? And the nature they talk about is that—so Laszlo writes the forward to to um Bache's book, and he says, okay, this is the most important book I've read in my whole life, when he's like 80. And three things you have to know if you want to read this book: there's an intelligence behind the things in the universe; there is purpose exhibited by this intelligence; and it's humanly possible to access some elements of this intelligence. This is it. This seems to be the thing that—yeah, since ages, the these masters of consciousness have been trying to tell us.

Yeah, and it's all about meaning then, right? In his book, you you you quote him very often, and I I've been on the top of my list to read that book as well now. But he he goes through sort of these different stages in his psychedelic trip. So he meets what he calls the Beloved, right? He in the end calls the universe the the Beloved, right? Of his beloved. And diamond luminosity is this pure experience of oneness on one end, but on the other, what he calls the deep sea of suffering. Yeah, he goes through both, right? And it's crazy how he he was saying that from the very beginning, it seemed to be that these experiences—experiences he's making—seem to be orchestrated by something, so this intelligence that it's like very purposeful and his sessions, because like I mean 600, 500, 600 micrograms is insane, and and like take a long time. And he was always saying there's first a cleansing phase—so very nice euphemism—because the cleansing phase—I mean, the things he describes—like the experiencing—experiencing suffering of like hundred thousands of people over vast amounts of time as like one unity or like—kind of last time it was so bad, the suffering that I couldn't imagine it getting worse, but this now just was just orchestrated in such a like torturing way that it just like totally destroyed me. And this was the cleansing part. And he then goes afterwards into the blissful part where then he like sort of gets instructed about sort of the metaphysical structure and this luminosity. He kind of only reaches at the end; first he glimpses it, and then he kind of like is able to go back to these states. So it's kind of interesting how the stability of like the depth of penetration he gets into this this multiverse. And that's why he had to stop because he said, I cannot stand knowing that I will have unity with this Beloved, this this diamond luminosity, in the knowledge that I have to detach again from it. I'd rather not go at all. I cannot stand experiencing this love, this blissfulness, knowing that I have to get away from it again. And that's when he stopped. I mean, that just like—I mean, and it took him 10 years to like get off the mountain, to reintegrate, to like—because again, it's more real, these experiences than this. And he found like sober waking consciousness was very bland; it just like didn't have this sparkle. So for 10 years it was kind of like, yeah, I don't know—this is—I mean, this other—these other experiences were just so much more meaningful. But then at the end of it, he realizes kind of like—because he kind of thinks maybe I don't know—he's just waiting to die to like unite with his beloved. But then he was like, maybe it's about getting it into here. And that's kind of where I I kind of sort of think the purpose of the universe kind of comes in, where maybe the universe wants to incarnate more transcendence and and and and consciousness into the physical. Maybe that's what this is all about. And Bache talks about this, and I find this idea like, wow, this this would be like, yeah, this would be very profound, meaningful, and purposeful, because it like recontextualizes suffering. And he kind of like sees suffering as as like a process of of of like something you—you kind of a devotion, something you like an offering to to to like this process of this incarnation of transcendence into the physical. Wow, it's just so deep, so so meaningful.

And indeed, the the the suffering is then just a a price of the self-knowing, of ever-increasing self-knowledge. Does—until suffering—that's how I read it in a sense. And and suffering is—you need—I mean, in a dual reality, you can't—I mean, if you have the light, you have the concept of darkness. So you have the love, you have the suffering. It's without the contextual—you can't experience. So either it's the self and everything at one, and and it's non-experiential, or it starts to fragment, become individualized, the leela play, and then you have suffering like as a means of of like getting somewhere. So I I believe in some sense suffering has a purpose. So it's—it's although it sounds bad and like no one wants it, but somehow it appears to be something very fundamental in our universe that this is is an experiential part which kind of allows us to maybe access levels of evolution we wouldn't get to otherwise. But this is like reading from Bache, so these are very—I have this weird—weird thought hearing you and and sort of observing our conversation and thinking about your book in that um—it's almost as if because he he he is truly ripped apart almost, right? He doesn't come out of it sort of unscratched—deeply scratched on his soul. And he knows that—even says that—taking this journey without a culture that substantiated—or because the shamanistic cultures have sort of a deep tradition, right? We don't. So if you go go into these deep trips without that culture, it's dangerous territory. And he doesn't come out unscratched. And um—so it's so real, it's so deep, it's so meaningful, so purposeful. And then on the other hand, we have—we've talked about information physics and stuff, and it made me think that the two clearly relate. It's both takes place in our universe, but the one—it's it's almost to me as if the universe grants us mathematic physics as a sort of—to comfort us, to give us a bit of a tiny bit of control. But then the moment you go in, then you're just like—you have to deliver over to this deep deep oceanic sort of ever-increasing self-knowledge. And then then your mathematics and stuff—it it doesn't break down, but I mean it's almost as if it's a toy the universe gives us to play around with it. But that's an association I'd like to share with you.

I like it because it seems to be that like nature is teasing us—like she reveals a bit, but then not enough. And it's like always teasing—like, look here, have another theorem, like have another understanding, but that just opens five new doors of like, oh my god, what's happening?

I I like that. Yeah, yeah. And like and now I'm going to give them quantum, right? And then yeah, let's see what they do with that. That's amazing.

Uh, final question to you—I've really enjoyed this confir—conversation. Thank you so much. How do you personally bridge those two—thinking about all of this, writing about it so beautifully—the sort of the the imminent that we're grounded here in spacetime, sitting talking to each other, and and the fact that that we somehow know or feel that we're part of this oneness? And do you find it difficult to navigate those two, or are you—have you found the balance in your own life?

I I don't know. I mean, kind of this writing thing is is more like kind of something that seems to like happen, so it's not that—it's kind of I don't know—sort of um—not something that I like seem to choose. It's like I have to do it. So so that's kind of like um—which makes it kind of just pretty easy and like part of sort of like my quest to understand, because all of it is just for me about trying to understand more—that's like—it's super selfish. I just like—what what's going on? I want to know. And this is kind of like, okay, the stories that I write from trying to like get there. So um—I I don't really know, but I think kind of like yeah, sort of from from these mindfulness traditions, I I I think—I don't know—we should try to become happier people, and I think this is possible. You can cultivate it with different means and techniques which have been around for millennia, so—which I don't do, but I know that—I mean, that's kind of where—yeah, I mean, just like—I don't know—being healthy, eating healthy, working out, having a healthy mind. I mean, I think this is like—especially as the world has become so dark—it appears that the only thing you can do is like try and sort of just cultivate a little bubble of of like sanity and and happiness and joy. And and that's all you can do. And and just not like—res—Yeah, kind of resign in the face of like this this this craziness, this increase of like this—the pace of information, the pace of destruction, and it just seems to be getting faster and faster and faster, and like just like not—Yeah, just—u—keeping the sense of humor. Yeah, and and the and sort of the knowledge that that that science and metaphysics can offer truly meaning. And I think that's really especially important at this moment in history. And I mean, and that's apparently the thing we can do—we have this capacity to experience, we have the capacity to think rationally, so yeah, we we should be able to make more sense of what's going on.

Thank you so much, James. Thank you very much, Hans. And thank you so much for watching this conversation. I could have talked to James for two more hours. There's just so much in his book. The link to the book is uh down below in the descriptions. Please leave all your questions and comments, and James, I hope you're up for a follow-up conversation if you—

Thank you very much. Okay, thanks for watching. See you in one of our next videos.