Top Psychologist, Donald Hoffman: Seeing True Reality Would Kill Us! I Can Prove It To You!

The world that you're seeing isn't the

true world. All of this that I'm seeing

right now is just a virtual reality.

It's like you're born with a headset on

playing a video game. That's your

reality. But if you're the programmer

who wrote the code for the game, you

know that there's an entire world

outside of it. And as the programmer,

you can do miracles.

And do you think we're getting closer to

being able to edit the code?

That's exactly what I'm working on right

now. And we're opening up a realm of new

technologies that are far more powerful

than anything we've seen before. Like

time travel. And nuclear bombs will be

like firecrackers. and will people

suffer?

So, it's like Pandora's box. There's all

sorts of nasty surprises, but they also

could be miraculous. But either way,

just in the last few months, it started

to crack open.

So, let's talk about that.

Okay, so Professor Donald Hoffman is the

cognitive scientist pushing the

boundaries of how we perceive reality

and how we can unlock our full potential

as human beings.

According to Darwin's theory, our

sensory systems, eyes, ears, smell,

touch, are not shaped to show us the

truth. They were shaped to keep you

alive long enough to reproduce

successfully because seeing the truth

takes too much time and energy. And so

whatever reality is, it's utterly unlike

anything that I perceive.

What does this all mean for the nature

of how one should understand their life?

Well, if you're stuck in a boring world,

that's a world of your own creation.

That's not the real world. And my

conscious experiences are nothing but

what my brain creates. And so we feel

inadequate and we feel like we need to

compete with other people. But you're

the inventor of this whole thing. you

have nothing to prove and there are much

more interesting perspectives that we

can take on ourselves. So if you really

knew who you are, you would see no need

to compare or compete.

And is there a way for me to understand

who I am?

If you want to understand the truth of

who you are beyond just this headset

description of you, then you have to

I see messages all the time in the

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appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank

you,

Professor Donald Hoffman.

Do you think that the listeners of this

show, the people listening right now,

understand the nature of reality and the

world that they're looking at and see?

I think that no one even the most

advanced professionals really

understands the nature of reality and

it's one of the big open problems and

questions in science today. We all might

have ideas. We might think we know

something. Our best science suggests

that our imagination is not yet big

enough. We need to explore further.

What is it that you believe is the big

sort of misconception about how we

perceive reality?

Well, most of us think of reality as

whatever is inside space and time. We

actually know that spaceime cannot be

the fundamental nature of reality.

And what is spacetime?

So everything that you see around us,

right? the the the space between you and

me. There's maybe one or two meters of

space between you and me. That's what

space spacetime is. All all the stuff

that we can see in our telescope. Put it

that way. If you can see it in your

telescope is part of spaceime. But we

know our our best theories of spaceime

Einstein's theory together with quantum

theory tell us that spaceime cannot be

the fundamental nature of reality.

There's a small if you go small. So I

can talk about a meter.

Yeah. And then I can go to you know

centimeters and then you know

millimeters and then we can go you know

micrometers and and you can go smaller

and smaller. At some point you go so

small that space disappears. It it no

longer even makes sense mathematically.

It's 10 theus 33 cm. So it's actually

not that in my view it's not that small.

It's not 10 theus 33 trillion

centimeters. It's just 10 theus 33 cm.

And all of a sudden our equations tell

us um spacetime doesn't have any

effective meaning.

Is a proxy for the word reality in some

respects?

Well, for most people I think it is. For

most people they think that that

spacetime is the reality. And what I'm

saying is it's the reality that most of

us have assumed is the final reality.

And science is now telling us it can't

be. It actually and it tells us

precisely at 10 theus 33 centimeters 10

theus 43 seconds the very notion of

spaceime makes no sense.

Is that the same as saying that reality

as I perceive it makes no sense.

I'm suggesting now as a cognitive

scientist not a physicist we should

think of spaceime is just a virtual

reality headset. That's the way we

perceive in our game of life. And when

you say spaceime, you mean the the thing

that I'm perceiving with my eyes and

ears and senses right now.

That's right. Even this hard table is

just a VR

object. And the whole setting that we're

in here right now is just a virtual

reality. And there is a a reality

entirely outside this headset that that

is open to science to explore. And we're

finding stuff which you might call

obelisks, geometric objects outside of

spaceime. So, so this is all brand new

in the last since like 20 2010 or

something like that roughly.

So, do you believe that? Do you believe

that everything I'm experiencing and

seeing now is basically like equivocal

to me wearing a virtual reality headset

and that there's something beyond the

virtual reality headset

completely because I believe the science

and the predictions of our theories

about spaceime are so good. Now I I have

to always be careful about what I'm

saying versus and I don't want to put

words in the physicist's mouth. So when

I say I think it's a virtual reality,

that's Hoffman. That's not physics.

Right.

Are you able to swap out the phrase

spaceime for reality or is that

inaccurate?

I think that whatever reality is,

spacetime is a trivial aspect of it.

There's much more to reality than

spacetime. spacetime is all the reality.

It's it's like a a player in Grand Theft

Auto. If all you've done is play in

Grand Theft and that's you were born

with a headset on and that's all you've

that that's your reality. But if you're

the programmer who wrote the code and

you know the supercomputer that's

running Grand Theft Auto, you know that

Grand Theft Auto um is a nice

self-contained world, but there's an

entire world outside of it that's

utterly unlike Grand Theft Auto. It's

it's a supercomput with diodes and

resistors and voltages that are being

toggled. And when when some dude is

turning his wheel to to drive the car,

what's really happening when he turns

the wheel is that millions of voltages

are being toggled in a specific order in

some computer. And it has to be exactly

that right sequence for the thing to

work properly. And and the guy that's

turning the wheel has no idea what's

going on. There's this other whole realm

utterly outside your imagination in

Grand Theft Auto. And so if you're in

Grand Theft Auto, you might not even

know about computers and toggling

voltages. And so all you know is I got a

steering wheel and a gas pedal and

streets and and people to race and so

forth and things to to steal and and

whatever,

but you don't realize there's a puppet

master effectively controlling you

behind the scenes. And so I I think that

spaceime is just a very effective

headset.

For anyone that doesn't know, Grand

Theft Auto is a video game where you run

around a virtual world basically.

That's right. Yeah. Driving. You're

driving nice fancy cars in this in this

world. That's right.

So everything I see right now is a

projection that I've made on the world,

my world, in order to help me to

survive. And my brain is not showing me

things that it doesn't think I need to

see because they won't be conducive with

survival because they are cognitively in

terms of like um how much fuel and

energy they would require to process and

think about they are cognitively

inconsequential

or like it would be inefficient for me

to spend my cognitive power to see those

things.

That's exactly right. And for a lot of

people, I think that's counterintuitive

because they would say, "Look, evolution

is about making you fit so you can live

and survive long enough to reproduce

successfully." And surely evolution

should do that by making you see the

truth. I mean, if you see the truth,

then you're going to compete in the game

of life much more successfully than if

you don't see the truth. So, so what are

you talking about this headset nonsense

for? This is not a headset. This is the

truth. I mean and evolution should shape

us to see the truth. Now I think that's

what most people would would would

assume and in fact very intelligent

experts in the field assume that and I

suggest otherwise. In fact we have

mathematical proofs otherwise. If you

look at evolution, Darwin said, "Look,

we need to think about a gradual

evolution over time of these species,

maybe from very very simple ones to more

complex ones." And what what is going to

drive that dynamics? and and Darwin

suggested it was what we would call

reproductive fitness that that those

organisms that have

physical properties, sensory systems,

motor systems, you know, movement

systems that make them more likely to

have offspring and to raise offspring to

maturity. Whatever properties those

might be, that's what we're going to

call fitness. So the more fit you are I

is really saying how likely are you to

have and successfully raise offspring.

So Darwin suggested that and I don't

think that he necessarily had to say

that there was no God. It was just that

there if there is a god it's not that

God put it down perfect. He did an

evolutionary process.

Yeah. Well organisms adapt to their

environment. Um well they're not

adapting but the offspring that survive

are those best adapted to the

environment. That's right. So that was

Darwin's idea. So the gradual evolution

from presumably simpler organisms to

more and more complic complicated

organisms and um and then multiple

evolutions of things like eyes like the

sephopod eye evolved different

differently from the human eye. Um and

the sephopod eye got certain things

right that the human eye got wrong.

Is that because the sephopod eye was in

a different environment? So it had

different requirements. That would be

one possible reason. I actually don't

know in the case of the sephopause why,

but that kind of idea is absolutely one

of the reasons that that could have

happened. Another one, it could just be

an accident, right? There's probability

involved. And so there at some point you

have the right accident and then the

humans got the thing reversed.

So you're saying Darwin was wrong in

some respect or that he there was

something missing from his theory?

Oh, no. I I think Darwin's I I I in

terms of biology,

I think that there is um no serious

competitor to Darwin's theory of of

evolution by natural selection in in

terms of the scientific theory of the

the origin of species and so forth. And

it's Darwin's theory and the

mathematical formulation of it that I

think also says that what we're

perceiving is not the truth. that our

sensory systems on Darwin's theory were

not shaped to show us the truth. They

were shaped

to keep you alive long enough to

reproduce successfully. Period. That's

all Dharm's theory actually says. Most

of us think the way this evolutionary

process does it is to make sure that

your senses are telling you the truth

about the external reality. I've

published some papers with um with

colleagues where we show mathematically

that Darwin's theory does not entail

that at all. In fact, Darwin's theory

says the probability is zero

that any sensory system like eyes, ears,

smell, touch, taste has ever been shaped

to see any aspect of objective reality

truly. So the probability is zero that

you see any aspect of the truth. Period.

On Darwin's theory, what you do

experience is

sensory systems that guide adaptive

behavior. Guide adaptive behavior means

um they let you act.

So your eyes, your nose,

your eyes, your nose. Yeah. Yeah. Your

eyes and nose and they they guide you so

that you act in ways that you don't die

too quickly.

Okay.

And you can have kids that don't die too

quickly. I was just

that's all it's about.

I was just playing out the scenario then

that you removed my eyes and you removed

my ears and my nose and my ability to

sense, you know, temperature and things

like that. All of my senses. I thought

if I was the only person on Earth and

you removed all of my senses,

what would reality be? Because if you

remove my senses, reality no longer

exists as far as I'm aware of it. But

that doesn't mean nothing exists. And

I'm wondering what that nothing would be

like if you just imagine like wipe off

everyone on the earth and it's just you

and we remove all of your senses. What

what is in that space? Because you're

right, my senses, my eyes, my ears, my

ability to understand temperature is a

byproduct and consequence of me

surviving. So I was playing out this.

like well

if we think about ghosts and the

afterlife,

maybe there was no reason from a

survival perspective that I even needed

to be able to

see or acknowledge them. Maybe it just

didn't help. Maybe it actually would

have hurt me to have

um because it would have been too

cognitively demanding to process all of

that information. So, anybody that could

process all that information wouldn't

have been good at reproducing.

Therefore, they wouldn't survive.

Therefore, they wouldn't be here. So

maybe those of us that are here, we're

just really good at ignoring

the other dimensions.

That's what our mathematics says. I

think that your your intuitions on that

are are quite right that if you pay

attention to anything other than what

allows you to have kids, you're wasting

your time. From an evolutionary point of

view, perception is expensive. It takes

a lot of calories. You have to eat a lot

of food to to run your brain and to

power your eyes and your ears. And so

you need to do shortcuts. You need to

make your sensory systems not chew up so

much of your energy. The more expensive

your your perceptual systems are, the

more you've got to eat to to power

those. So that means you have to go out

there and forage and put yourself at

harm's. So it's it's it's so there's a

trade-off. We try to do things cheaply

in evolution. And going for the truth,

you don't need to actually go for the

truth cuz that's very very expensive. So

So for example, there are some

flying insects that need to lay their

their off their eggs on in in water and

they use the trick of just looking at

the polarization of the light coming off

the water. So what what you see

happening in evolution is we have tricks

and hacks and and even in humans have

tricks and hacks and for for example

trying to find out if someone is

reproductively fit right we we you you

can't I can't actually look at your DNA

and and go well okay

he's got an ACG and T but he's got a C

here where it's supposed to be a T or

you know I can't look at your DNA. So

what do I look at? I have to look at

your at your what I can see of your body

and and your voice and and so forth. So,

one of the most compelling arguments for

the fact that we aren't seeing reality

as it is and we're actually only seeing

what we need to see in order to survive

is when you look at, as you were saying,

as how different animals see the world

and can you just give me some examples

of some more examples of different

animals that see the world completely

differently? I always think about bats.

How do how do bats see the world? Cuz do

they see colors like we see them and

objects like we see them?

No. No. Bats use echolocation. They'll

send out little bursts of sound um very

very high frequencies and then they have

these big ears that capture the returns.

And I was just looking at their sensory

system. It says most insect eating bats

use echolocation. As you said, they emit

high frequency sound waves. Yes. And see

by listening to the echoes bouncing off

other objects. That's right. And this

gives them some kind of sonic map of

their surroundings, helping them to

navigate and effectively see in total

darkness. So you imagine a bat, right?

Like then they if a bat is sat there

thinking that they understand the nature

of reality when it's actually just a map

of how the sound waves bounce back. They

I imagine don't have the same

a complete they have a completely

different perception of what reality is

to us. And it's therefore it would be

quite ignorant to assume that we as

humans are seeing reality as it is when

just like the bat we've probably

adapted to

our environment and built senses eyes

ears touch that helped us to survive. I

would agree with you, but some of my

colleagues would disagree and they would

say

humans are much more complicated

and you know, surely bats and so forth,

they have to have all these shortcuts

and they don't see reality as it is, but

but we've evolved further and we're

closer to the truth. From my point of

view, what I see this table and this cup

and so forth is just a a convenient

fiction. Whatever reality is, it's

utterly unlike anything that I perceive.

utterly.

In a TED talk that you did in 2000 in

the 2000s, you talked about simulations

that you ran to prove that I guess in in

in part that I'm only seeing things that

will help me to survive as a creature,

as an organism. Can you explain to me

simply what what those simulations were

and what they proved?

Well, yes. in our in our simulations and

this is before we had theorems. So we

did simulations just to see if the ideas

were working and and we would have

artificial organisms in a computer.

Yeah.

So it was like a a game that we put

together and we would have a world and

and we would let some organisms actually

see the true state of that world. So

they they were the truth organisms. And

then we'd have other ones that um only

had like a a headset, an interface that

only could see not the truth, but but

just some little bit of information that

that could guide adaptive behavior

that would help them to survive. Yeah.

And reproduce. That That's right. What

we found was for a wide range of of

conditions of of the algorithm, the the

organisms that saw the truth went

extinct. they they weren't able to

compete the ones with the ones that

didn't. And and one of the things that

came out of it was seeing the truth

takes too much time and energy. It it's

complicated to see the truth. And if you

have a simple trick

that lets you do the same thing without

having to have a deep insight, then you

can get the same benefit. You can get

the benefit without having to put all

the the effort out. I can give you a

concrete example of a of an organism

that does this. That's that's pretty

funny. So there's the jewel beetle. It

lives in the outback of Australia. It's

dimpled, glossy, and brown. The males

fly. The females are flightless. So the

males are flying around, of course,

looking for an eligible female. It turns

out that men in the outback tended for a

while were eat were drinking beer with

these bottles that were also dimpled,

glossy, glossy, and and brown. They

throw them out into the into the outback

and they turned out to be dimpled glossy

in just the right shade of brown to grab

the attention of the male jewel beetles.

They're they're actually on the bottle.

They're full body contact. They're

crawling all over it and they still

think it's a female. So, how much do

they know about their women? Very, very

little they know about their women. The

a woman a female is something dimpled,

glossy, and brown. Apparently, the

bigger the better. And that's what a

female is. So you can see evolution

didn't give these male beetles much

insight into their females. They gave

them just enough information to

successfully reproduce. Period. And

that's sort of what evolution does. It

it gives you just enough information to

um reproduce before you die.

So they're all making love to this beer

bottle because they can't tell. They

can't see

That's right.

reality. They can't see that this isn't

a woman. This is a beer bottle.

That's right. That's one of the more

humorous examples of of what evolution

has done. It does things on the cheap

and that includes human sensory systems.

So, it's it's very humbling. We're not

the epitome. And what we think is human

appreciation of the deep truth of

reality is just our little headset. What

we experience and know is

trivial compared to whatever reality is.

Absolutely trivial. We know 0% of

reality.

And our by the way, our scientific

theories

will always and forever explain 0% of

reality because

they have to make assumptions. And every

theory, scientific theory has to make

assumptions. And so we're going to have

an in we'll have in principle an

infinite sequence of theories with ever

deeper assumptions and we'll never get

to the bottom. And since it's an

infinite sequence, that means everything

we got so far is 0%.

So I I'm a scientist. I'm all for

science. I encourage young men and women

to go into science. I think it's a great

thing to do. Um but just know that um

all of our theories will

comprehend 0% of reality.

You know, people talk a lot about how

their pets or other animals are able to

see another dimension. Sometimes people

say things like, "My dog started barking

at this," or, "I had cancer." And

there's dogs or animals that have been

able to um they they believe spot

certain diseases inside the human body.

And when you look at the

sort of sensory faculties of these dogs,

dogs can hear frequencies up to 65,000

hertz, whereas humans can only go to

20,000 hertz. Dogs have up to 300

million of receptors. Humans just have 5

million. And some animals like cats can

see different sort of frequencies of

light. So it does it does beg a

question, you know, if it's possible for

an animal, an organism to see the world

in a different depth and width than us,

right?

What what happens if you go further?

Right. Absolutely. There are some that

can detect electric fields. So some fish

can detect electric fields. Um, some

birds, I believe, can see the

polarization of light and some some uh

insects of course use polarization of

light to to find where to lay their

eggs. So, and and we can't do that. So,

so yeah, when we start to study other

animals, we see these remarkable

abilities.

Interesting. And what does um what does

this all mean for the nature of how one

should understand their life? Because I

guess the way the way that we perceive

the world causes us so much suffering or

joy depending on how we perceive it. Is

there anything people from all of the

work you've done and the books you've

written that people can bring into their

lives to help them live better lives

with this understanding of the world?

First thing to note is that the world is

far more interesting and varied than you

can imagine. So if you if you think the

world is a boring place, it it's not.

Your imagination isn't big enough.

Whatever reality is, it it transcends

anything that you could possibly

imagine. Spiritual traditions basically

often say there's more to life than what

you see inside space and time. There's

something beyond.

And I've been sort of pointing to that

myself in my own way. I'm saying that

scientific theories always have

assumptions. So there's an infinite

number of scientific theories that you

can have and you're never going to get a

scientific theory of everything. What am

I saying? that there's something beyond

science. As good as science is, I'm

saying there's not only not a theory of

everything, the best theory we'll ever

come up with is 0% of reality. So that

leaves all this room for what the

spiritual traditions are talking about

that there's something that trans

transcends science. There is a a way of

thinking about this that I think is very

illuminating and it's about the inter

intersection of science and

spirituality.

I'm a scientist. Who who am I? I I am

someone and and I'm one of many

someone's other scientists who can

create theories and in principle even

ever deeper theories and there is an

infinite sequence. So who is the eye

that can do this?

No theory that I can come with come up

with is the final description of that

eye. In other words, the eye that is

doing all this theory building is the

eye

that is real,

that is making these theories, and that

utterly transcends all these theories.

And that's a spiritual point of view.

So what does that mean? You're you're

God.

It means that whatever you are

transcends any description. And that's

what a lot of people say God is. Suppose

I give you something you've never tasted

before, like a piece of mint. And

actually, I don't know what mint tastes

like to you. I I assume that it's like

what mint tastes like for me, but I

don't know. This is called learning by

ostensive definition. And so, we have

this game where your experiences are

your experiences.

And you actually

didn't need anybody else for those

experiences. All you needed me for or

your parents for is to give you a name

for what you already knew. And and you

you create this this world and all we do

is tell you how to talk with me about

what you've created. And I don't know

that your world

in any way resembles my experience. It's

quite possible. And do you think there's

ways that we cause ourselves a lot of

anguish and pain and mental health

issues because of how we perceive the

nature of reality to be that we could

potentially I don't know give up or

rewire ourselves on to have a have a

more fulfilling more grateful experience

of life

completely. I think that's very very

important and it's a natural consequence

of what we've just been talking about.

Almost all of us think of ourselves as

an object in spaceime only here for a

short amount of time and will soon die.

When I say you transcend any scientific

theory, that means the theory that I

am just a 160lb object in spaceime is

just a theory and it's not the truth.

That's not the truth about who I am.

That's just a theory that I have because

spacetime itself is just a theory.

Nothing inside spacetime is anything but

my headset interpretation of a reality

that infinitely transcends anything I

can experience. There is another way

that you can appreciate that that's that

transcends science and that is um and

this many meditative traditions talk

about this. They recognize that you

are infinitely

beyond any scientific or any other

description. So what do you do in that

case to know who you are? You drop all

descriptions. You sit in absolute

silence and ignore any thoughts because

you recognize thoughts are useful in

this headset. And to play the game of

life, yeah, we need thoughts to do our

science. We need to if you want to

understand who I am

again I do psychology I do all this I'll

do the scient so I'm not putting science

down I'm a scientist but at some point

if you want to understand the truth of

who you are beyond just this headset

description of you then you have to lay

aside all concepts period and just know

yourself by being yourself not by

putting a concept between you and

yourself.

A story.

A story.

An identity.

That's right. No, no story. No ident.

You You know yourself by sitting in

utter silence and being yourself. No

concepts because then you've let go of

all theories. And now it's reality

facing reality. No barrier in between.

And that requires you to realize that

your identity, the stories you believe,

the labels you've given yourself as CEO

or social media manager or manager or

director or head of department, all of

these things are just in fact labels

you've given.

That's right. Those are all just labels

that you given. And what's interesting

about this now is if I think I'm just

this little body and I'm nothing but

this body and and my conscious

experiences are nothing but what my

brain does. So, so that's my theory and

that's that's all I am. I don't feel

very big. I don't feel very important.

Um, and so I'm going to probably need to

do something to make myself feel a

little bit better and I'm going to need

to compete with you. I'm going to need

to show how I'm better than you in

certain ways. So, I'm I'm a better

tennis player than you or I'm smarter

than you or or whatever. So we're going

to get this competition going on where

among people and we're going to get even

competition among religions and

countries and so forth because we don't

know who we are and and we feel

inadequate

and if we actually understood that

all of this that I'm seeing right now

I'm making it up

on the fly. This cup that I'm seeing, it

only exists when I create it. This table

exists when I create it. Like in a

virtual reality, if I in a virtual

reality, I'm in Grand Theft Auto. I look

over here and I now I see a red Mustang.

I look away, I don't see the red

Mustang. And now there is no red

Mustang. The red mustang only existed

when I looked because it's a VR game. I

only need it when I ren I I render it

when I need it. I'm now rendering a cup.

that the cup that I rendered is no

longer there. You might render your cup.

You might say, "Well, no, Don, you're

wrong. The cup is still there. I can see

it." No, you're rendering your cup. And

so you you're you're not rendering my

cup. I rendered my cup. So the same

thing with Grand Theft Auto. You might

say, "Well, I see the red Mustang even

if you're not looking, Don." Well,

that's because in your headset, you're

looking and you're rendering a the red

Mustang, but I'm not. And there is no

red Mustang. If you look inside the

supercomputer, there's no red Mustang

there. The the supercomputer that's

running the game has no red Mustang. So

what I'm saying is we compete, we feel

inadequate and we feel like we need to

compete with other people and be better

than them and we have egos. All the

egoic stuff that we do that causes all

the problems in the world because you

don't know who you are.

You're creating this whole thing. You're

you're you're not a little player.

You're the inventor of this whole thing.

You have nothing to prove

and you don't need to be better than

anybody else. They're also master

creators. They're creating entire

universes that they perceive as well.

And my own take on on this is that you

and I

are really the same one reality just

looking at itself through two different

headsets, two different avatars and

having a conversation. And maybe that's

what you is required for this one

infinite intelligence to sort of know

itself. What you if you're if you

transcend any description, what how do

you know yourself? Maybe what you do is

you say, "Well, let me try this headset

on. Let me take that seriously for a

while. Maybe even let myself get lost

and let me let me completely believe I'm

just a Don Hoffman in in in this

spaceime and let me believe that for for

many decades and then slowly sort of

wake up. But at least then I will have

seen myself from this perspective. Then

I'll take off that headset." We call

that death. We all just take off the

headset and then I'll try. There's an

infinite number of headsets to try on.

So from that point of view, any person

you speak to is transcendent. Any animal

is just an avatar of this transcendent

unspeakably incredible

reality that transcends science so that

science will only get 0% of it. And

again, I always say I'm not putting down

science. I'm a scientist. We need to do

science and I recommend that people do

science. But my guess this is one of the

more trivial headsets. It's only four

dimensions. Why not 20 billion? Why not

quintilion? This is this is just a a

fairly trivial. So we we may be in one

of the most the more uninteresting

perspectives on who we are. And and and

there are much more interesting

perspectives that we can take on oursel.

But but the reason we have fighting, the

reason we have egos is because we don't

know who we are. And is there a way for

me to understand who I am

or is the closest you've found

meditation? I know you've meditated for

20 years or something.

I I should say I should be a little

careful about I think it really is

important to do for for me as a

scientist to have done the science that

I've done. But I think for someone else

who doesn't do science, maybe that you

do music or you do some sports or

something like that. That's that is a

concrete way of knowing yourself through

a perspective and that's really

important and and and since we have

billions of people and then there's

untold other kinds of animals and

insects and so forth. This this one

infinite intelligence whatever it is has

decided I want to look at myself through

the lens of a mosquito and now of the

bumblebee and now of the the jewel

beetle that that can't even tell a

bottle from from a female. I'm going to

look at myself from this paniply of

perspectives.

So you're almost implying there that

there's this one consciousness and it's

just using different organisms

potentially as vehicles to understand

itself and the nature of reality.

That's right. So that would mean that me

and you are the same consciousness, but

you were born as a scientist in America

and I was born as a I don't know an

entrepreneur in Botswana with different

perspectives in order to understand the

reality which means that we're basically

the same

right

the same consciousness the same super

intelligence or whatever just

manifesting as different eyeballs in

different places. That's my my view and

certain religious traditions do sort of

hint almost say that exactly um you know

like Jesus

uh in Christianity in like Matthew 25

says you know I was hungry and you fed

me. I was thirsty you gave me something

to drink. I was a foreigner and you

invited me in. I was sick and you helped

me. I was in prison and you visited me.

And people he says said asked him when

did we do that? And you said whenever

you did it to the least person you did

it to me. So Jesus is sort of hinting at

this. There is

there's no difference. The reason to

love your neighbor as yourself is

because your neighbor is yourself just

with a different headset. And the only

reason we have problems is we don't

realize how incredible you are. So you

are that which is creating this

VR

simulation with all of its beauty, all

of its complexity. All the complexity is

you and you're doing it effortlessly.

Now for my

neuroscience colleagues, they will say,

"Don, it's not effortless. You've got

100 billion well 86 billion neurons in

your brain. visual system has billions

of neurons that are doing all this

computation and you we have the simple

cells, the complex cells, the hyper

complex cells and we think of the brain

as a physical object that's generating

our consciousness. Yeah,

I'm saying spacetime itself is something

that you create and so you create

everything inside spaceime and

I've also created the brain.

You create the brain. So right now you

don't have a brain.

Excuse me.

And nor do I.

Okay, fair enough. because I don't

because I don't have a brain and you

don't have a brain until we actually

look inside and render a brain. Just

like in in VR, the the Mustang doesn't

exist until you look at it and render

it. So if if I I can predict that if we

do the right scans, we will see a brain.

But that only exists when we

when we do the rendering. So I don't

have a brain. All these correlations, we

know that correlation doesn't cause

doesn't imply causation, right? So we

the fact that there is correlations and

I don't deny it. In fact, I'm all for

studying these correlations between

brain activity and conscious

experiences. They exist. They're

undeniable and they don't in any way

remotely entail that the brain causes

our conscious experiences.

So I'm not the brain. I'm the thing

that's simulating the presence of a

brain.

That's right. That's right. And so in

your simulation, your simulation is so

good that it simulates also how all this

reality that transcends spaceime is

being funneled down into this tiny

little space-time headset. And that's

what we call the brain. So of course

there going to be these correlations

between brain activity and what we see.

But the correlation goes the other way.

It's not because the brain creates your

conscious experiences. is because

consciousness has created the brain as

an icon to describe how it's how it's

creating this headset.

Do you think much about simulation

theory? I've had lots of uh dinner

parties recently and conversations over

dinner about simulation theory and it

always gets very very interesting. Um

what are your thoughts on simulation

theory? And for my listeners who might

not understand the concept of simulation

theory, are you able to explain it? Yes,

the the so the standard uh Nick

Bostonramm for example is is a very big

figure in simulation theory and and in

those kinds of simulation theories the

idea is that the world that you're

seeing right now isn't the the true

world. This is just a simulation and

there's some

programmer say with some really nice

computer that's programmed this world.

And so we're you're just we're just

characters in a simulated world of some

programmer. And that programmer on their

laptop that's doing this, as it turns

out, isn't the final thing either

because that programmer in their laptop

is also just a simulation from a deeper

level programmer on their laptop. there

could be the very very large nesting of

all these simulated worlds and and

people with their computers and that

does jive pretty well with what I'm

saying up to a point. I'm saying this is

not the reality. This is just a headset.

So, but there's a big big disagreement.

Do you think we're there's going to come

a point where with everything that's

going on with AI and robotics that we

could get make a robot um program it

with a certain AI that gives it the sort

of same thinking as a human being and

then when I put some chocolate into its

mouth it's going to say to me I love

that chocolate Stephen that's my

favorite flavor

I could certainly program such a robot

but the question will always be just

because I have this particular circuit

in the in the computer

and you know then some structure in the

tongue that I've given it in some

pattern electro activity. What is my

scientific theory that explains why that

pattern had to be the taste of

chocolate? That's what we need as

scienting

thing where it's just learned through

all of the data through someone telling

it programming it to think that

particular set of chemicals um send that

up to the software and then respond like

this which might just be how me and you

responding to life. We might not be

conscious at all.

Right? And and what you're suggesting is

probably how we would actually do it,

like we would probably sort of train it

and and and have it give us the right

responses in in that kind of context. So

we'd probably do it something like that.

But but then as scientists, we want to

understand. So we're claiming as

scientists

that an experience is a say certain

causal structure or certain functional

functional architecture. That's what

we're saying it is.

Because we because these these are

physicalist theories and they're they're

saying we're not going to start with

consciousness. Consciousness is not

fundamental. Space and time and physical

objects are fundamental. And so we we

need to show how those physical objects

and their properties give rise to these

conscious experiences. So if that's if

that's the science you want to propose,

then I have to be hard-nosed as a

scientist now and say give me your

theory of mint. So do you think this is

a simulation?

So it's it's not a simulation in

Bostonramm sense. In Boston sense it's a

simulation in that it's a physical

substrate that's giving rise to this

whole world of conscious experiences

that I'm having.

Yeah. So it's that I deny

like a game programmer sat at a computer

making it

and that and somehow the physical system

itself gave rise to the magic of the ex

the conscious experiences I'm having of

red and green and love and so forth

those conscious so for the simulation

theory so this is my p my bone of

contention with the simulation theory

it's very similar to my theory in in all

other respects but this is a pretty

serious bone of contention for their

theory to to work they have to show

explicitly scientifically how a

conscious a specific conscious

experience arises from a specific

program.

Until you do that, this is there is no

beef on the table.

Right? So for my point, their their

theory is a non-starter right now

because there's no specific experience

that they can say this program must be

the taste of mint. They can't do that.

And until they can do that, they can't

get this whole world of experience that

I'm living in. Nothing. So there's no

beef.

All they have to do to give me some beef

is to say like in integrated information

theory they say here's the matrix for

mint. This is the matrix. Of course then

we'll ask

why. Why is that matrix that causal

structure the taste of mint? what is

your scientific theory for why that's

the and what you'll see is

I think I think it's going to take the

field a while to see it but we will find

that these approaches are vacuous

there's no beef

when you ask people what the meaning of

their life is they'll often say things

like it is maybe they'll say to raise

children maybe they'll say they want to

improve humanity they want to um cure a

disease they want to um help society in

some way but through the lens of reality

that you see the world and that you

believe the world is what becomes the

meaning of life. Donald,

that's a great question. I do think that

the best description I can give is that

there is this one transcendent infinite

consciousness and you and I are just

avatars and so is a mosquito and so is a

bacterium. And all are equally

interesting and important and all are

different perspectives, just different

headsets. There's the mosquito headset.

There's the jewel beetle headset.

There's all these different headsets.

And

I'm I'm in the Hoffman headset. Happen

to

do science. I'm not good at art. I'm not

good at at music and so forth. I have my

my my particular talents and and in

inabilities in my headset. So, I'm here

to experience the Don Hoffman

perspective on things.

Why?

because that's perhaps the only way the

infinite can know itself is through an

infinite number of perspectives. It it

transcends any particular perspective.

So

why not get lost in the hoffen

perspective and a jewel beetle

perspective and and all these different

perspectives and

that's

the only way to to know yourself. But

it's always

the one consciousness that's knowing

itself through an infinite number of

varieties

of of experiences of headsets.

And did someone or something create that

one consciousness?

Now I'm above my pay grade. It's uh

that's a no no that's of course the

right question and

it asks for an explanation

and

the only explanations we have are either

mathematical or scientific or both. The

only really deeply serious testable

but but even informal explanations make

assumptions. And so I'll have to say

that that you're asking a question about

an entity that transcends any

description, namely who you really are

and who I am I really am.

And I think we can I think you can know

the answer to your question in in one

way and that is

dropping all concepts and just being

with your being. You are that

you are that. You don't need to attain

anything. You don't need to achieve

anything.

You're that right now. So there's no

effort. There's no no need to get better

at anything. It's just to recognize what

you already are. You've let yourself be

under an illusion that I'm just this

little guy that needs to do these things

and, you know, and be a professor and

whatever it might be. I've been under

that illusion and and I got to see

myself through that lens and then I

began to wake up and see that I

completely transcend. It was an

interesting perspective. I'm glad I took

it seriously. I'm going to throw off

that headset. We call it death, but I'm

going to take off that headset pretty

soon because that's not who I am. I

transcend that.

So, the answer is you can know it, but

but you know it when you let go of all

concepts and you don't try. If you're

trying to get there, then you don't see

what you already are. That's that that's

the best answer I can give at this at

this point because it does transcend

science.

So, in terms of a god, as we believe in

gods in the religious context, the best

answer that you have would say that

effectively we are god, the god that we

we refer to, we are the transcendent

power that goes beyond description.

And

Right. Yeah. I I would say that and and

I can I mean I can put that in sort of a

Christian language um because many

listeners will be Christians. Um

a child of a human is a human.

The Bible calls us children of God.

Well, if a child of a human is human, a

child of God is God. That's what the

what what is point to and and Jesus is

fairly explicit about it. When

some religious leaders were about to

stone Jesus for saying that he was the

son of God,

Jesus quotes the scripture and says

from I think the the Psalms or something

like that. He says, but in the Psalms it

says, "I have said you are gods and all

of you are sons of the most high." And

Jesus said, "If if he calls them gods to

whom the word of God came, why are you

trying to stone me to death for just

saying I'm the son of God?" What what

the Bible is basically saying, love God

with all your heart. That it's loving

yourself. You are God. And loving your

neighbor as yourself is just recognizing

that your neighbor is yourself under a

different avatar.

Do you think Jesus was really divine in

any I'm presuming you think this was a

real individual and do you think he was

divine beyond beyond me and you in some

respect?

Not beyond me and you, but you're you

are as divine as could possibly be.

Thank you so much.

We'll clip that. I'll put that on my

LinkedIn.

Hoffman said it.

Yeah. Little recommendations.

You're divine. Hoffman says, "I'm as

divine as I could possibly be."

Are there any um Are there You must go

if you if you understand

reality through this lens that we're

seeing so little and that much of it is

created by by ourselves and um we are

the transcendent. Are there any things

that you do on a day-to-day basis that

are atypical because of that or thoughts

you have or experiences you have that

are atypical because of this

perspective?

Certainly atypical from before in my own

in my own life. I now spend um

quite a bit of time in meditation

because I I as much as I enjoy the life

of the mind and I'm you know I a

professor and I've taught lots of

students over many many years

and I highly recommend all that stuff.

At some point I realize that all my

knowledge all possible scientific

knowledge is 0% of reality. And do I

really want to confine myself only to 0%

of reality? I want to explore reality

from this perspective but it is 0%. So I

do my homework and I encourage my

students do more homework take this

perspective very seriously study it

study it rigorously but then realize

there's this the 100% that you haven't

seen and you are it.

So are you doing lots of psychedelics

and stuff like that to

I haven't done any psychedelics.

You've never tried psychedelics?

I I I've never I've never even smoked a

cigarette.

Wow. I I and I haven't had a drink of

alcohol in in decades. So I I and it's

partly just because I'm I'm frail. My my

physical body isn't that strong. I I I

have limits to what I can't push my body

too hard. So I' I've learned to operate

within my own limits and I don't push it

too hard. But the meditation I do.

Am I right in thinking that you now

meditate 3 to four hours a day?

Probably. Yeah. What insights or

understandings have emerged from that

that I might be able to comprehend?

Any creativity that's ever come out in

my scientific work

toever to whatever extent it's creative,

it's come from the silence. So I've of

course I've had to do my homework and do

my studies and so forth. But the novel

ideas

come from the silence. Personally,

one one thing I've seen is how

identified I am with my avatar.

I think I am this body. I'm really tied

to this body. And it's

the stuff that I'm saying

at the emotional level. There's an

emotional part of me that doesn't

believe it one bit.

Emotionally, um, you put a gun to my

head, I'm scared to death.

Intellectually, I'll say say to you,

this is just an avatar. I I'm the

infinite that transcends.

So, and when I die, I just and and I

believe that. How deeply do I believe

it? Put a gun to my head and you'll find

out. I'll wet my pants. So, it's it's

it's very very interesting for me to

look at that and to see all the

disjunctions, the the the the things

that are disjointed in in in my my

worldview. Well, it kind of makes sense,

right, based on your theory that our

senses have evolved to help us to

survive because someone not liking your

thinking or your theories or rejecting

you or harmed your body, it would go

against your survival. So theoretically,

if we are in the world that you've

described in the reality you've

described, which is basically designed

for survival, then you would have

developed senses that make you change

behavior if there's a risk of someone

not liking you.

That's right. there there are social

pressures and and if we don't conform to

them, you get feedback that that can be

very very negative and in some cases

even death. Um if I if I go to a grocery

store and and don't happen to pay and

just walk off with the stuff, I end up

behind bars. There are rules of the

game. There are rules of the headset. I

transcend the headset, but I choose to

allow myself to get lost in the game.

Starting in January 2020, you

did have a proverbial gun held to your

head in in a way because you contracted

COVID and went through and are still

going through some pretty um serious

health complications because of long CO.

You developed heart heart issues within

weeks requiring hundreds of hours of

critical care in hospital. You told me

before we started recording that you've

had heart surgery twice.

Yeah. Um, in 2021 at 66 years old, at

one point you thought you might not

survive because your heart had been at

190 beats per minute for 30 hours and

you sent your wife a goodbye message

because it looked like it was all over.

Right. Right. I am wondering what that

brush with death

did to your perception of life, your

perspective, and how that all ties into

your your um your beliefs about the

nature of reality.

It certainly let me see how tied I am to

my body and the fear that I that I

experienced. Right? It's one thing for

me to sit here as a nice academic and

talk about how you're the transcendent

reality. It's another thing to have your

heart fail and to know that this is

probably the end and and to face the raw

emotions. So I had deep ra then I had to

have another surgery. I um the first one

kept me for a year and a half or so. A

great surgeon is not his fault. He did a

great job but you know CO is persistent.

And the week before my second surgery I

was in the ER three times where they had

to restart my heart. Just didn't know if

I was going to make it. I I would have

to go have my heart restart and then two

days later go back and have my heart

restart and I was just hoping to make it

to live to the surgery. Um and and even

now I wouldn't be surprised if the heart

starts to to go bad again. So so that

takes us out of the abstract academic

realm into something very very concrete

on how do you deal with the fact that

you really don't know from one heartbeat

to the next.

It keeps you from just talking

abstractly about this stuff and and and

and being real about it is what do I

really feel about it? And and when I

look inside and see there's real fear,

then I know, okay, um this stuff about

um you're the infinite and everybody

else is the infinite is still fairly

just an abstract concept for you, Don.

You haven't really gone deep enough. You

need to go deeper and actually if that's

true, I mean maybe it's all BS, right?

But if it's true that you are the

infinite and everybody else is the

infinite um then you need to go deeper

into that. Um and and I intellectually

I'm I'm convinced. I mean I've given you

the reasons. Intellectually I'm quite

convinced. Um and it's it's really

interesting to me that emotionally I'm

far from convinced. I'm far and I agree

with what you just said about the

evolutionary arguments for it. there's

good evolutionary reasons for me to be

wired up to have automatic emotional

responses that are going to protect this

body to keep it. So, no, no doubt about

it. So, so there's no reason to judge

myself that I'm a, you know, my body has

a fear response and so forth when there

are things that that are about to to

kill me. The issue is then when I look

at that fear response, can I look at it

and accept it or do I identify with it?

Do I identify

with the fear response or can I step

back and be the observer that watches

the fear response? And in in the

meditation process, what I'm learning to

do

is

in some sense what I was saying about

the science, science is great, but don't

believe any theory.

Theories are just tools. They're not the

truth. No scientific theory, my theories

included, are not the truth.

And so also is my theory about who I am

not the truth. So to really let go of

any theory, if I can really let go of

any theory of who I am,

then I'll let go of any fear. So it's

really it's really comes down to to this

what's really really quite interesting.

We will each die. That's

incontrovertible.

So

any attachments I have to this world

will cease.

There's no doubt. The question is can I

let go of the attachments now or will

they only

go for my cold dead hand?

When will I let go of all these

attachments? If I my to the extent and I

am no

expert but to the extent that I can let

go I see that there's more peace there's

more peace in letting not being attached

to things so I I I see that but but I'm

not there. So this is a very human very

human perspective on things a very

fallible perspective and it's very very

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infinite and I'm the infinite having

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So when we do die in your

perspective, is that equivalent to sort

of taking the headset off

entirely?

And so when we die, we take the headset

off and

That's right.

The consciousness still remains, I

assume.

That's right.

So how would one am I going to when I

die, am I going to float up and be in

like a heaven? Am I going to go into a

tree? Am I going to become a bug? What's

going to happen with that consciousness?

Is it going to be this or is this just a

bunch of labels and stories?

Question. The answer is I don't know.

But but I but I I will speculate. Having

said I don't know. And and being honest,

I I'll I'll speculate. I suspect that

the closest I can get to that is what

happens in meditation. When I really do

let go there and and and it's very very

quiet and my eyes are closed

then there's there is awareness and it's

a very alert awareness very very

conscious and it has no content. There's

no colors no tastes no smells there's no

content and

no need.

It's it's it's

an awareness that can create all this in

an instant

and it can let it go. So it's it's

so so

it it is the

the closest you can get to answering

your own question is really just to sit

in silence. And it's it's hard because

the thoughts will come and come and come

and letting go of all thoughts is is is

the difficult one. But when you do that,

then I think that's the closest I can

give to the answer to your question.

We spend a lot of time debating whether

this god is real or whether this thing

is real or whether horoscopes are real

or whether

this spiritual belief is real or karma

or dharma or reincarnation,

right?

In your perspective then is it somewhat

ignorant to set your stall up anywhere

to say that something is or isn't true?

Because you know people are different

sides of the spectrum. Some people are

like you know staunch staunchly

religious and then others are staunchly

atheist.

Right. Right. Right. I I think that

of course like in science there are

certain things that are just plain

nonsense. Someone in in fact most of the

stuff that you just casually come up

with and you my theory of electricity or

my theory of the atoms it's just not

it's just plain nonsense and and goes

nowhere. It's not worth any time. So I

suspect the same thing is true in

spiritual stuff where we have even fewer

guard rails on our theories. But I think

there are a few guiding stars. If it

involves loving your neighbor as

yourself, you're on the right track. If

it involves putting a barrier between us

and them and saying that they're bad and

we're good, you're probably on the wrong

track.

What does this mean for grief? So many

people are losing loved ones as we speak

or are contending with the reality that

they are going to lose a loved one. What

does it mean for the nature of love?

Does it, you know, does it take anything

away from love? Does it add to love?

Does it

strengthen love? Well, I would yeah, I

think in some sense it comes down to

love is the central thing and uh and you

know in Christianity Jesus that's I'm

talking about that because you know my

dad was a pastor and I that's the one I

was raised in. So I I know the most

about that. So I'm speaking only because

that's where I had some background

and and and when Jesus would ask what's

the most important thing he basically

said love God with all your heart love

your neighbor as yourself. So love is

like

number one. And my guess is that's

really all you need. If if your religion

is love and that's it and that's then

that's how you act. You don't really

need to add anything more to that.

That's that's all you really need. Love

your neighbor as yourself.

You're done.

That's all that you need. And anything

beyond that is just not necessary. And

anything that contradicts that, I would

go back and try to figure out where I

went wrong in my religion.

I've been um asking my when I met my

girlfriend Melanie in her bio on

Instagram, it said, "God is love." Now,

she's not religious.

Yes.

She doesn't believe in a particular book

or whatever, but she when you I asked

her actually, funny enough, we had this

conversation last night.

Ah,

I said to her, "What do you think uh God

is?" And she said, "I think God is just

love."

And I I completely agree.

She's right again.

Yeah. And know I think that that's love

is the closest word that we can have to

to as a pointer. Again, it's just a

pointer. Whatever love is is just like

the word mint only points to the mint.

The word love only points but it I think

it's the best pointer that we have.

Love.

And what is that definition of the word

love? Because, you know, people use the

I love Manchester United, but the love

that you're describing seems to be much

more about a a oneness or or it's

basically just really recognizing

that that person, even though they have

a different color, a different race, a

different creed, a different idea,

that's just me.

That's me in a different headset.

And when I really then then I ask, well,

how would I want to treat me? I get the

right answer. That's love. How would I

if that's me, how how how would I treat

me if that were me? Well, when you get

the right when you do that, you're

acting in love. You're not going to beat

yourself up. You're not going to call

yourself names. You're you're not going

to call your call you whatever. You're

you're you're going to treat yourself

the way you want to treat yourself. then

treat others the same way and that's

that's what what love is. But ultimately

I think again these are all just

pointers. Whatever

love is ultimately transcends any

description. Do you believe I did kind

of ask you this earlier, but I was just

looking at some of the research around

how many people talk about these

near-death experiences specifically when

they more so when you have a cardiac

issue, people seem to say that they had

perceptions of hearing or seeing things

or passing into some kind of tunnel or

seeing some kind of light or a really

positive emotion.

Yes. I I wondered if you you know you

were at one point in your life thought

that you weren't going to make it and if

if with what you know you it's increased

your belief in these near-death

experience accounts that someone was

sort of transitioning from this reality

through taking the headset off. Like

it's almost like they took a little bit

of the headset off but not all of it and

then they came back to the headset. So

yeah, these very common experiences

about near-death um a light and a tunnel

and and maybe a life review and then a

choice to come back and things like

that. It's quite it's quite quite common

and I'm not going going to dismiss them

one one bit. I mean I it's hard to get

scientific evidence on that. It would be

very interesting to have a study in

which people did have their heart stop

for example were resuscitated and ask

how many don't have that experience be I

mean if we had a systematic study that

that that did that so we don't want to

be tricked by um paying attention to

only certain parts of the data right so

so so you can see um even though I talk

about letting go of concepts and and and

and going into the the unknown when when

it comes to things where where we should

do science then I'm very very hard-nosed

about it and and say here we need to do

to do studies and some I know some

cardiologists I'm not going to mention

names but that that have seen a lot of

this stuff and they're convinced by

their own informal experience that

there's something going on here so I I

have no you know no beef with that I I'm

I'm I think that they might be on to

something

so I don't disbelieve it but That's

different than having the science.

Why do we suffer in such a reality? Like

why would why would this transcendent

power create

organisms or perspectives that end up

suffering that end up in the worst of

places, the concentration camp, the

illness, the typhoid, the starvation?

Why would such a transcendent power or

consciousness do such a thing?

Um, so, so I'll try not to be shallow

about it, but because pain is

pain is pain and death is death and

certain deaths seem horrific. This is

a profound question.

I always feel like I'm risking being

trit and and and so forth because this

is anybody who's had serious pain knows

that you just you just can't

you can't play with this stuff. It's

it's it's when you when you're in that

pain, it really when you're with that

fear, it's it's it's

I think ultimately

it may be like the wounds you get in a

video game.

You get the wounds, your your avatar

gets killed and and and you're upset

about it in the moment because you're

losing the game and so forth, but but

then the game's over and and and you're

fine ultimately.

you're fine.

But

that experience, I'll put it, I don't

want to be in that experience.

It's striking that in Christianity, the

the deepest symbol of God is

horrific.

A crucifixion,

it's absolutely the pain. It's it's not

like a little shot to the head with a

gun or something like that. It's it's

it's making it as painful and as drawn

out and as horrific as you could

possibly do. And that and that's that's

you know when you see the cross that's

sort of so your your question is right

at like the heart of Christianity. It's

putting that right there and it's saying

this most perhaps the most horrific way

you can imagine a person dying.

That's what happened to Jesus and that's

our our symbol for the divine. So, so

that's why you know it's not trivial.

It's not it's not shallow. There's

something very very deep there. None of

us is volunteering to hop onto a cross.

I'm not volunteering to hop onto a

cross. So, so I I would say the the the

challenge of your question is the

challenge that is probably a deep

spiritual challenge to to all of us to

and I'll say to me personally, which is

to continue to grow up and be less and

less identified with this headset and

more

aware of my transcendent

being. Because ultimately, even on the

cross, I mean, perhaps the most profound

thing I've ever seen in Christianity was

Jesus words on the cross saying,

"Father, forgive them. They don't know

what they're doing." Right? That the

heart of Christianity is right there.

It's not like, "The heart of

Christianity is kill the disbelievers."

No, the heart of Christianity is the

disbelievers have pinned you on a cross.

They're killing you in the worst

possible way. And you show them love.

That's the heart of Christianity. You

show love to those who are in the

process of killing you in the worst way

they can think. That's the heart of

Christianity. Not killing disbelievers

or pushing away disbelievers or

discounting them. That's the opposite.

So there's something very very that's

why I'm very very slow in answering your

question because this this gets to the

very deep heart of Christianity I think

and and in in all true spirituality that

I don't think I truly understand. I I

see these pointers to it and I see that

it's real and that your your question is

pointing to one of the most profound and

important things and I I have the

feeling that my answer is

only ineffectually pointing part of the

way there. There's there's m much more

to it than I've been able to point to.

I'm hazarding a guess at what the role

of um yeah I'm hazarding my own guess at

what the role of pain and suffering

might be in such a

in such a reality where consciousness is

this transcendent thing that comes into

manifests itself as these organisms and

um

I guess it kind of goes in part goes

back to your idea of

I've only projected what I need to see

through my headset in order to survive.

So if there are survival dynamics in

play in my headset,

then one one element of survival is

suffering. Yes. Because

the fire is hot. So I put my hand in the

fire, my hand gets burnt. So don't do

that again, Steve.

Right.

So if that is if if that is the nature

of my headset, then there will need to

be cause and effect as it relates to

things that will help me to survive and

things that won't help me to survive.

Yes.

And so suffering might just be an input

or a stimulus in this

in this headset that helps me to

survive,

right?

And then I don't know the question

springs to mind is why does

consciousness care about survival? Why

would this transcendent consciousness

Maybe that's not even a good question.

Maybe that's the wrong question, but

why does why does it want to survive in

us? Why doesn't consciousness end? I

mean,

I agree. One one one thing that I've

heard from um one spiritual teacher in

Echartullah which is interesting on the

sigi one of his his talks he he he said

um

let's pretend that we're humans.

Oh that'll be fun

and and let's play some dramas. Oh but

to have dramas I have to forget who I

am. Okay. So then let me completely

forget who I am. And then after a few

hundred thousand years when I get tired

of it

then let's wake up. And I thought that

was

a profound pointer that that

doesn't get the whole thing but it it's

an interesting pointer. I think there's

more to it than that but there's it's

more than just playing dramas. I think

it's playing dramas

to further explore who I am by knowing

who I'm not. That may be part of it.

Knowing who I am by knowing different

perspectives and knowing that as rich as

this perspective is, I transcend that.

Someone commented on one of your recent

videos saying, "Imagine being a

character in a book trying to understand

your way out of that book into a higher

dimension."

Yes,

that's right. But but of course there

there's that's that's a great great

question. The the only thing I would say

is imagine being the author of the book

having written about a character because

I'm I'm I'm not just a character in the

book. I'm the I'm the author who's put

the character in the book that then

wakes up that that's identified with the

character and then wakes up and realizes

I'm not just the character. I I was

writing the whole book. So So that that

question is is good because it points to

a misconception. I'm not just a

character in the book. I'm the writer of

the book and the Hoffman is just one of

the characters in the book. And the

writer of the book is

the one consciousness that when it

really understands itself will love all

the characters equally.

How do you know we're not separate

consciousnesses?

I don't and that's an interesting by the

way I've got a mathematical model of

consciousness and that's a whole other

topic. I So you can either play the game

here understanding how is physical world

and consciousness related. How are those

two things related?

Most of my colleagues say physical world

is fundamental. Consciousness emerges

when right brain activity happens. So

so when neurons

neurons fire in the right way and so

forth for example

now as a scientist I always at these

conferences they know what I'm going to

do to them. I say still you claim that

conscious experiences come from

integrated information give me one give

me an experience and they can't

can they not say well look I'm looking

around right now and that's coming from

neurons in my brain in a physical

substrate. Oh, well yeah, they'll say

that and and but but they know what I'm

asking. What they're ask what I'm asking

for is I say give me the specific

pattern of neural activity that must be

the taste of mint.

Okay. Right. So you

what must it must be the taste of spot

the sequence of neurons or physical

interactions that cause me to taste

mint.

That's right.

So that's there's a big gap there

and then they have to explain

why that particular pattern. So first

they have to identify the pattern this

pattern.

Yeah. Yeah.

With this say integrated information

pattern must be the taste of mint.

By integration information pattern you

mean like this combination of things

coming together causes mint.

That's right.

They can't tell me the combination and

they can't tell me why that combination

causes mint.

So it's basically cause and effect.

They're saying they're saying something

happen here and then they're seeing an

outcome which is an experience but the

gap in between they can't explain.

That's right. And sometimes they'll say

that the conscious experience just is

the the dynamic whatever the physical

dynamics is. Okay.

But but but even then the the question

is why is this particular dynamics

associated with this conscious

experience?

Okay.

And and and for principled reasons. No

in science we tolerate no BS.

No BS. There's got to be a a concrete

reason. And that's why I I put a big

zero. I do this at the conferences

knowing that I'm one of very very few

non-physicalists at the conference and I

know that the physicists are out there

and I say you guys have got zero right.

They have a chance.

Floor is open. Tell me I'm wrong.

Mhm.

And I'm not. They know it. So start with

consciousness. Yeah.

Now I'm playing a different game. I'm

saying all this physical stuff. So

there's lots of physical stuff. There's

space and time. Einstein's special

theory relative general relativity.

There's the all the Bzons and firmians

and the lepttons

bzzons and bzons lepttons and quirks of

the standard model of of particle

physics.

You're you're saying spiritual guys that

you can start with a theory of

consciousness mathematical and you will

give me all of space-time equations.

You'll give me quantum field theory. You

will give me the standard model of

particle physics. How many points have

you put on the board guys? What have you

done?

Can you give me what pattern of

conscious agent activity must be a

photon? What pattern pattern of

conscious activity should be the

structure of spaceime or a bzon or a

lepton or a cork?

No points on the board. So, so you can

you can look at that and go from that

perspective it's equal. There's no

points on the board on either either

team. So when I'm I've got a theory that

I call conscious agent network theory

and I'm working on this with um Chayon

Pash.

How long have you been working on it?

You've got a book called observer

mechanics there that was published in

1989. So I've been on this for 40 years

about 40 years.

What do you think you're going to find

when you're what do you think you're

going to prove with your theory of

consciousness?

I think we can put some points on the

board in the following. I think we can

start with the theory of conscious

agents. I just gave presented a talk um

Friday and we we proposed what light is.

We proposed why the speed of light is

the same in all inertial frames.

What does this mean? You got to simplify

this for my 16-year-old brain.

Right. Right. Right. So, so if I'm on a

train and the train's going 50 miles an

hour and I throw a ball and I can throw

it maybe 20 miles an hour, then in some

sense the ball is going 70 miles an

hour, right? Mhm.

Right. And that's the way things

normally work. But if I have a

flashlight

and I'm

and I flash this the light is going at

the speed of light which is about

186,282

miles per second.

It's pretty fast.

If I got get on the train and have the

train like I take my flashlight go like

half the speed of light on the train. So

I'm going really fast. This is a fast

train. Mhm.

And I turn on my light and I'm I'm I'm

here outside. I'm looking at the train

going at half the speed of light and

someone's turning the flashlight on. So

the the light is going at the speed of

light. How fast is that light beam going

to look to me? Cuz I'm standing on the

site and the train is already going half

the speed of light. So how fast is that

light beam going to go?

The speed of light plus half the speed

of light.

That's what we would mostly think,

right? And it turns out no, it goes the

speed of light. If you have mass

and you're not moving at the speed of

light and we try to accelerate you to

get to the speed of light, you'll never

get there. That there's a speed limit.

You can't get there. So that's really

counterintuitive, right? But Einstein

said, "This is my fundamental hypothesis

on which I'm going to build my theory of

space and time is that light, no matter

how fast you're moving, always moves

away from you at the speed of light."

And also that there's no special

observer. There's no what what we call

no special inertial frame but no no

special frame of reference in which to

look at things all all frames are are

equivalent.

So so the question is how do I start

with a theory of conscious agents

which is that's a good question. So what

is a conscious agent? I I'll say it's

mathematical and I'll only talk about

one aspect of it. It's it's complicated.

So I'll talk about only an essential one

essential part of it and that is if you

are conscious you have experiences like

I have I can experience keep it real

simple I can experience colors red green

blue

mhm keep it very very simple so I

imagine a very very simple conscious

agent and what it can do is experience

three colors red green and blue that's

all it can do

like me

yeah of course you have a much richer

set of conscious experiences but but you

include that kind of observer right

because you can do red green and blue

and Now I'll talk about another observer

that only sees red and green.

Yeah.

And now you don't just see one color.

You see a color for a little bit and

then you see another color. Like so I

see red for a while, then I see green

and then I see blue and I maybe go back

to red or whatever. So there's going to

be this sequence of colors that I see.

And maybe the best I can say is that if

if I see green right now, then it's a

20% chance that I'll see red next and

80% chance that I'll see blue next. I

can I can write down probabilities.

Well, so that that's pretty simple,

right? There's colors,

experiences, and then there's

probabilities of what sequence you if I

see this experience, what my next

experience will be. And I'm using C in a

general term, right? It could be hearing

or smelling or whatever.

How do you capture that mathematically?

There's something called a markov

kernel, a mark of matrix that just says

basically it gives you all the numbers,

the first row of numbers, and says if I

see red now, what's the probability that

I'll see red next? Mhm.

What's the probability I'll see green

next? What's the probability I'll see

blue next? So, you just write the

numbers out. Maybe it's 0 2 that I'll

see red again, point four that I'll see

green, and then um point4 that I'll see

uh blue again. So, so and then the next

color, you know, I'll have another row

for if if I'm now seeing green, what's

probably I'll see red, green, and blue.

And then finally, blue was probably I'll

go to red, green, and blue. So, I need

nine numbers. That's only for three

colors. I need nine numbers to talk

about all the possibilities and then

I'll I'll just have a counter as well.

So every time I see a new color, I'll

just have a little counter. So I so see

red. Now that's one. Oh, now I see

green. That's two. Now I see green

again. I So that's three. So So I'm

counting the the colors, the

experiences. That's that's all I'm going

to talk about. That's all I have. The

question is if I start with just that

notion of an observer, it has colors and

a matrix of probabilities of I see this

color, I can see another color. What's

what's the probability? And every time I

see a new color, I get uh a counter

incrementing. That's all I'm going to

start with. Can I get Einstein's Can I

get that the speed of light is the same

in all inertial frames that the if I'm

on a train and I flash the speed flash a

light bulb flash of light that it will

go at the speed of light even for

someone um who's on the train going at

half the speed of light and I discovered

just in the last three or four months

that the answer is yes I can do it and

that's what I presented last Friday at

at this conference. So what does this

mean about the nature of consciousness?

And

it means that

starting with a theory of consciousness

outside of spaceime, I can actually give

you with mathematical precision the

structure of spacetime.

Which means that your belief is

we're starting to

space and time and everything I see and

experience actually comes from

consciousness itself. So consciousness

itself is the source of everything.

Everything that you That's right. So

earlier in our

consciousness didn't come from my brain.

That's right. My brain came from my

consciousness.

That's exactly right. That that that's

exactly what I'm saying. And we've

talked about the headset.

Yeah.

What I'm doing is I'm building the

headset. I'm saying here's the here's

the conscious agents, their dynamics,

and I'm now starting to build the

space-time headset.

Is there a concern that believing in

these things can make one go mad? I

think sometimes think that uh thinking

very deeply about who we are, why we're

here, how we got here, sometimes it

makes me I don't know like I lose a bit

of my orientation and I get a little bit

of a wobble like when I've had these

conversations about the simulation

theory and this being a big video game

and such I'm like well it kind of shakes

everything you know and these stories

that we've constructed our lives on give

us they anchor us and they orientate us

and they they give our life meaning so

if it's not true then I lose the meaning

of my life and I I worry if I risk going

bonkers.

Well, I I certainly empathize with that

and that's also what happens also in the

meditation process is also leads me to

have to face all sorts of emotional

stuff. My my deep belief that I'm just

my avatar and letting go of that is like

a death and it's it's very very painful.

So for me the meditation process is not

all love, joy and peace. A lot of it is

deep deep

tough emotions as I let go of what I

thought was myself. And that's it's it's

a kind of a it's a death of an illusion,

but it feels like a real death to me.

But now, here's the positive side.

Here's the upside. I'm proposing that

science

is got the tools, if we assume

consciousness is fundamental, to step

entirely outside of spacetime and do

serious mathematics

and show how spacetime is built as a

headset.

And this means I'm we're opening up a

realm of new technologies that are going

to make everything that we've done in in

science and technology so far seem

trivial and and the and here's the

here's the reason. Suppose you're a

wizard in Grand Theft Auto and you know

how to use all the tools in Grand Theft

Auto. That's fantastic. It's it's really

good. You can drive your car from A to B

faster than anybody can do.

But now, if you're the software engineer

who knows how Grand Theft Auto has been

because you wrote the code, you know it.

You can do miracles. You can take the

wizard's car and take the air out of

their tire just like that. You can take

the gas out of their tank. You can take

their car and move it from A to B

instantly. Not through Grand Theft Auto.

You can move it there instantly because

you got the code outside.

What I'm saying is

this is real. I started now to really

believe this. When I could get Einstein

spacetime coming out of this, I got

light and I think I've got an electron.

Now, I think we're reverse engineering

the headset and the technologies that

are about to come out of this will make

everything else seem like firecrackers

because we're now getting to a deeper

layer outside of the headset. We're not

we're not wizards inside the headset.

We're the software engineers that are

making the headset and now we can play.

So, for example, right now the nearest

galaxy,

the Andromeda galaxy, it's 2.4 million

lighty years away. If you hopped on a

light on a spaceship and probably to

send your offspring, it would take I

don't know how many gen thousands of

generations, I would guess, to get

there, then that's the closest that's

the closest galaxy. The the the universe

is much much bigger than that. That

that's just our little neighborhood.

It's not feasible. We're not gonna have

we're not going to be able to travel

with our current technologies inside

travel inside spaceime to Andromeda is

is not feasible for the foreseeable

future. What if we don't have to go

through spaceime? What if spaceime is

just a headset? It really is just a

headset and we don't have to go 2.4

million lighty years to get there. We

learn the code outside of spaceime and

we can just change the code. Just like

the Grand Theft, the Grand Theft Auto in

Grand Theft Auto, the car has to drive

through the roads to get from A to B.

But not if you look at the code. In the

code, I just need to change the value of

a register and all of a sudden the

position of the car is now at B. It was

at A and I put it at B.

Is this what time travel?

This this would be like this would

appear like immediate time travel or

immediate immediate space travel. Is

there anything within the laws of

physics that tells you that this is

impossible?

It's impossible inside spacetime. If if

you only use So inside spacetime, it's

impossible.

But outside of what we know about

spaceime,

a theory that's outside of spaceime that

properly contains

spaceime as a projection of the theory

allows us to then build technologies

that aren't restricted to spaceime. So,

do you think we're getting closer to

being able to do edit the code of

this experience so that we can do things

we never thought were possible and that

things that sit outside of what we know

know within the laws of physics?

That's exactly what I'm working on right

now. That's that's that is my research

project right now. That's what I'm

doing.

What are you hoping to do with this

research? And do you think about the

consequences of it?

I do. Uh so what first what I'm hoping

to do with the research I'm I'm what I'm

hoping to show is that I can get all of

quantum field theory, all of special and

general relativity, all of standard

model of particle physics from this

theory of conscious agents outside of

spaceime that we'll be able to explain

all of the laws that that we're that we

see and then show that space-time

theories are in fact a very tiny

projection of the much more

informationally rich dynamics of

conscious agents.

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to attract new customers, how to grow

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You know, whenever someone talks about

editing genes, right, there's crisper

DNA technology that allows you to edit

genes or there's other technologies that

people talk about that allow you to

they're talking about putting, you know,

our memories on hard drives and stuff

like that. People get quite precious

with the idea of like playing with the

nature of reality too much because some

people might suffer. And even in your

perception of what the world is,

if we're all one consciousness, it it

becomes a slightly different

conversation. But I guess the question

I'm asking is if we were able to play

with the software of this thing that

we're all experiencing right now and do

things that sit outside the laws of

physics, is there a question of morality

of like is that the right thing to do,

will people suffer or if this is all

just code? Does is that just like a

pointless question?

Well, no. I think it's it's it's a very

important question and and I've

like is that the wrong thing to do?

It's like it's it's like Pandora's box,

right? Are we opening Pandora's box? All

sorts of nasty surprises that could come

out of the box once we open Go Beyond

Spacetime.

Like, who gets to open the box? If you

get to open the box,

that's that's what that's what I think

I'm doing. I I I have now the talk I

gave on Friday was saying, here's the

first peak inside Pandora's box.

But then you could become God as far as

we're all concerned because if you have

that power to play with the code,

well, it' be only the next level of God,

right? So,

as I've said, my theory is just a

theory. And so, it's not the truth. It's

just but it's it's more comprehensive

than the space-time theory. And so,

because I have a more comprehensive

theory, I can do new new technologies

that you couldn't do. So, so I I so I'm

not God, but I I'm outside of the limits

of spaceime. So I can give you new

technologies. If I if I can show how

spacetime arises entirely outside of

from this deeper theory, then if I'm

right

and I'm mathematically precise, that

means I have the tools to prove that I'm

right. That means I can make

technologies that will that will be

miraculous from within the space. Think

about the uh atomic bomb and how the

first nation to figure out that there

was new possibilities within technology

and because they had discoveries within

physics basically won the war. They were

able to

right

control every country um they became

effectively the god because they could

wipe anybody out within an instance.

Right.

It's like an analogy for how reimagining

physics creates new possibilities in

technology.

That's right. And and this is even I

bigger than that because nuclear bombs

will be like firecrackers compared to

what you can do with with a technology

that's utterly outside of space and

time.

You could do anything like that. You

could live forever, but that's not even

something that would really matter,

right? Once you realize it's just a

game, but but you could make you could

give yourself extra time as much as you

wanted in this. So it's the moral

question is a very very interesting one.

It's not it's not to be taken lightly.

Um either way and and ultimately it may

be very related to the question you

asked earlier which is about the nature

of why did the the one if there is a one

allow all this kind of horrible pain and

and and so forth. So I have a sense and

I can't defend it that

all is well. That even with the

technologies, even if the technologies

are

really far more powerful than anything

we've seen before, nothing can actually

hurt the reality of the one.

And all of the headsets are just

headsets. They're taken off anyway by

the one. They're just tried on and let

go. Apparently, the one even without all

this technology has already, you know,

put Jesus on the cross. If if that story

about the one is correct, then it's

given a thumbs up for choosing to do

that because that, you know, it it did

it

was created cancer and the Holocaust and

that's right. So

but the one's relationship with the pain

of its the things the organisms it's

create is different to the perception of

pain in the organism itself potentially.

So like I the hate pain, but maybe the

one the one consciousness that we all

share that we all returned to and came

from

might see it as a useful signal or might

not be subjectively bothered by it

because it's choosing to

to do that

to do that. I agree with you. That seems

to be a reasonable kind of conclusion.

And and in meditative practice, often

what you find is

and and I always risk pretending that

I'm further along than I'm not. So I'll

just say I'm I'm a neophite. But he but

so I'll talk about what I've heard from

other more advanced people that they

what was a deep pain emotional pain for

example when they stare at it and really

accept it it dissolves.

So now I'm speaking over my head but but

from people that I have no reason to

disbelieve.

I read a comment on your video from a

guy that wrote this. He wrote, "I'm a

schizophrenic. I do Door Dash for some

extra money. And one night, I arrived

and walked to the door. I placed the

food down on the door and I took a

picture. I got in my car and I drove

away. And 30 minutes later, the customer

called me and asked me where the food

was and I I told him exactly where it

was. I remember taking the picture on

his doorstep. So, he took it up with

Door Dash directly. Sometime later, I

opened my back door and I saw his order

on my back door. I was so confused why

it was there. I remembered everything

about going there and taking the

picture.

He said I was never there on his

cameras. Apparently, I hallucinated the

whole delivery.

I was there, but must have never left

the car or even drove up.

What was I doing then? Was I staring

blankly at the windshield with my eyes

glazed over? I called him and

apologized, but he but he already got

his refund. I felt so terrible. I'm on

medication and nothing works. It just

goes to show how easily some misfirings

in the brain can completely alter your

sense of reality, but it also poses

deeper questions about reality. Thought

it was an interesting um very

interesting point, but also just it also

speaks to when we talk about people that

have various mental illnesses like

schizophrenia that are experiencing the

world entirely differently. Um it raises

big questions about what consciousness

is again.

Absolutely. And and someone might take

that example and say, "Doesn't that show

that brain activity is causing

consciousness?" And you get the wrong

brain activity. Then you get these false

experiences and you get these illusions.

So the a lot of people take this as a as

a a victory point for the physicalist

point of view. But there's another point

of view and that is think think about

the experiences that you have when

you're dreaming. They can be very very

vivid

and and you're in a dream you are denovo

creating that reality that that's not a

reality that's that's there in front of

you. You're you're creating that

reality. So we know that you have the

you have the ability to

project a reality a very compelling

reality. All of us do without

schizophrenia. We do it every night in

our in our dreams. So no surprise that

that we do that. And the way I I view it

is that we um

it it's consciousness that's making this

particular headset. And it's

consciousness that uses the headset in

dreams to to make the the realities we

see in the dreams. And it's

consciousness that outside of spaceime

that also creates what we call the real

reality when when we're not dreaming.

And if you construct the headset in

certain ways, then you can get the

dreaming stuff mechanism, for example,

interfering with the what you'd call the

waking mechanism. and you could you know

effectively so I'm not saying

schizophrenic is is dreaming but I'm

saying I'm just giving this as an

example of the kind of thing that could

be I'm not giving an diagnosis of this

particular person

I'm about to uh leave this chair as are

you and I'm going to go back to my life

y

um where I'm building businesses I've

got a girlfriend I've got a team I've

got plans for the future I have all of

these things

my listeners they're sat at home they're

on the in a taxi on a plane train

walking in a gym wherever they might be

right now. And I I imagine that they're

also looking for a conclusion here, a

conclusive point of what all this means

for me in my life and the things I had

planned and

how I should show up and treat people

and and act. Can you give me the

conclusive point that all of this

teaches you and us about how we should

live our lives going forward if

everything that you've said about the

nature of reality is accurate?

Yeah. In a nutshell, I would say

the critical thing practically is love

your neighbor as yourself because your

neighbor is yourself.

And second,

reality is far more interesting

and exciting than you could ever

imagine.

So never think that you know everything.

Recognize that the moment you think you

know everything, that's the moment that

you're missing

the astonishing reality that you're a

part of. So, always have a childlike

curiosity. Always recognize that there's

infinitely more than you've ever

imagined so far. And that infinitely

more is you.

And on a point of removing some of the

stress and suffering from my life,

I think of course um

I first some humble pie is required. I

have stress and suffering. So I am not

speaking as someone who has transcended

stress and suffering. So I speak as

another fellow person with stress and

suffering that is still dealing with it

on a daily basis.

Given that the humble pie then I I will

say this

I think a lot of and I'll make it

personal. I think a lot of my problems

my stress a lot of my suffering is

because I believe illusions

to the extent that I believe that I need

to become something at all

need to be better than I am in any way.

need to prove anything to anybody else.

That's an illusion.

I'm already the infinite. I don't need

to prove anything. I'm making everything

is already. So I don't need to get

anywhere. I don't need to accomplish

anything. I don't need to succeed at

anything to become what I need to

become. I'm already that. So I don't So

the suffering comes from me forgetting

who I am. I don't need to I don't

actually need to impress anybody,

accomplish anything because everything

that I'm saying I'm already making this

all up. This is already me. I've already

done all this. What more do I need to

do?

I am transcendent.

I I am I'm completely transcendent of

this thing. And to the my suffering is

not recognizing that my suffering is

entirely

being caught in my avatar. This is just

my avatar. It's not me. So my suffering

is because I made this avatar. I let

myself on purpose be identified with the

avatar knowing that I would be suffering

because of that and and knowing that I

needed to wake up. So I'm suffering

because I'm identified with the avatar.

But I put myself in that place because I

really wanted to look at the world

through this avatar. That's why I'm

suffering. But eventually I wake up and

I look and I see the avatar for for what

it is. And I realized that everything I

was trying to do to prove that I was

worthwhile and I was better than you or

not not as bad as you think I am or

things like that. All that was was just,

you know, all the pain and suffering was

because of an illusion. But but I needed

to do that. I needed to look at myself

from that perspective for a while in

part to find out who I am by finding out

who I'm not. I'm not that just that

avatar.

Do you find yourself toggling back and

forward between this realization and

then the avatar,

especially when times are hard? Do you

find yourself reminding yourself in

difficult moments that this is just an

avatar and you're transcendent? Is that

a useful active practice in your life?

Cuz that's one of the things I take away

from this is when I walk over there and

I go on my phone or my laptop and I get

some shitty email, I could just remind

myself that this is all just

I'm transcendent and this is a game that

I'm playing and that will help me move

through that situation.

It is very practical in that way because

if it really is true, I mean, well,

we'll put it this way from a big

perspective, we're all going to die.

Mhm. And if I asked you, who was the

most rich and famous person in 1743?

Who knows? And who cares?

Same thing about us.

Thousand years from now, is anybody

going to know our name?

No. No.

Anybody going to care?

No.

So so

that that's that's really important to

see. No one's going to care. And does

that mean that I'm I'm worthless? I'm

pointless. I'm I'm meaningless. No, it

means you're infinite and and this is

just one of the games you're playing and

and you're you're and and enjoy it and

enjoy. And don't try to get your

identity from this game.

In some sense, you're getting your

identity from finding out that you're

not this game. That's how you're

learning about who you really are is to

know I I thought I needed to be, you

know, for example, the CEO or the

professor or whatever it might be and

to, you know, get all these accolades

and and and so forth. and and that

motivated me for a while and then I

realized no one's going to really care

and in fact you know what I don't really

even care that was just a game I had to

play and I'm not that and I learned that

I transcend that so so it is practical

it's and it is practical in a very you

know in in some sense

life is full of all these irritations

things that go wrong all the time the

lesson of life is to just say yes to

whatever happens. Just this is what

happens.

This is what needs needs to happen. And

to not resist in some sense

you I am the infinite. I put myself in

this game and I am smart enough that I

it's a good game. So hey just go with

it.

So you know you know things go wrong.

Now, that's easy for me to say if you

ask me this when I'm on the ER, which I

was with my heart about to fail and so

forth. Now, I'm my my, you know, my

emotions are going crazy. I'm thinking

about my wife. I'm saying goodbye to my

wife

and and so forth. Um, it's hard to have

a nice dispassionate

thing going on like I'm talking about

now in in that situation. But I think

people more

further along than me in letting go of

identification with him. I'm still I'm

still tied to my avatar quite a bit.

Right? So that's so that's why I suffer.

But there are people I think spiritual

people maybe the Dalai Lama probably

Jesus um Echartola. There are people

like that who I think

really have disidentified from their

avatar and I think they probably just

don't suffer. They they might have

physical pain,

but they don't suffer.

Should love therefore be unconditional?

If we are if you are me, if we're the

same consciousness, if we are the same

transcendent source, doesn't that really

mean that I should love you? Really,

irrespective of what your avatar does

because we are the same thing.

Well, I would say unconditionally, yes.

And I would also say that Jesus said

that. G Jesus in

The sermon on the mount basically said,

"Do not judge."

Period.

I was looking at the um Luke 6:27. He

says, "Love your enemies."

Yes. Love your enemies. Right.

Do good to those who hate you.

That's right.

God's God's love for humanity is

unconditional.

Absolutely. And he said the same thing

about the people that were crucifying

while he's on hanging on the cross.

That is the you one of the most profound

images I've ever seen is a guy hanging

on a cross forgiving the ones who are

killing him right at that at that moment

and

that that's where it's real

in the Gita and Hinduism in the Gita

9:29 it says I am the same to all beings

he who worships me with devotion is in

me and I in him.

Juda Judaism says love your neighbor as

yourself.

Yeah.

Islam says my mercy encompasses all

things across all religions.

Unconditional love is not just an

emotion. It's a spiritual discipline and

a reflection of the divine. It means

loving without ego, expectation or fear.

The ultimate challenge and the ultimate

freedom.

I completely agree.

Yeah. And that's right. So there it's

it's really about letting go of

judgment. We we tend to judge other

people. So Jesus was very very clear

about that. He said don't judge. Period.

And and don't condemn other people. So

So for those who are followers of

Christ, if you judge somebody else, then

you're not following Christ.

Are you religious?

I'll put it this way. I was raised in a

fundamentalist Christian church. My dad

was a pastor for a while in in a church.

Um,

I my my own attitude about I I I

think that the Bible has good stuff in

it and I think that as I pointed out I

think it has bogus stuff that where they

say women can't talk in church. I think

it's completely bogus. So So I have to

have a nuanced view when I think when

Jesus says love your neighbor as

yourself. I think that that's deep and

and right.

And

I wouldn't say I'm I'm a card carrying

believer in any particular religion.

I am a believer that consciousness

the there is one consciousness and that

you and I are are it. And I think that

Buddha and Jesus and and Muhammad and

and

bunch of people were very very helpful

avatars to help other avatars sort of

wake up to their their true true nature.

uh

do you think much about AI? It's the

it's the topic of uh many conversations

these days. There's a lot of doom and

gloom around it. There's a lot of people

talking about efficiencies, but I

wondered if it at all sort of overlaps

with any of your work on the nature of

reality and the case against reality.

Very much. Very much so. I I thinking

about AI a lot since I've been in AI

since 1979. And

and you worked you took a class with the

guy who basically is known as one of the

inventors of AI.

Yeah. With Marvin Minsky, right? So and

and my all my research I did my um my

PhD research on list machines in the

artificial intelligence lab at MIT. They

were at the time very very powerful

machines for the for the for the time.

So I so I I've been with AI for for for

quite a while and

I'm very interested in the current state

of AI for the large language models are

doing great things and I use them

myself. They're very very helpful. Uh

they're also as powerful as they are

they're they're dumber than cucumbers

because they don't really understand

things. They they

have incredible memory. They've read so

much literature. ly and what all they do

effectively they're they're computing

lots of correlations. Beautiful what

they can do. It's amazing what you can

do with correlations but um they're not

they're not truly intelligent. There's

um some work by Carl Fristen and a new

company where they're using something

called active inference as a new way of

a new mode of doing artificial

intelligence. The the idea there is that

um I I should have a model of the world

where I can anticipate what's going to

happen and and not be surprised. And

that's sort of the the approach that

Fristristen is taking to and his company

is taking toward toward this. Um

intelligence is somehow about minimizing

surprise and minimizing surprise. Then

there's they have um a what they call a

free energy principle and and the

mathematical way of of doing but they're

trying to build a brand new kind of

artificial intelligence that gives you

that minimizes surprise where I've given

you an intuition why that why that's

intelligent and it's very intelligent to

minimize surprise but I'm surprised all

the time I'm pretty stupid right I don't

understand the world very well

but if I'm not surprised it's sort of

like wow I've got a really good model

especially if I'm doing all sorts if I'm

doing lots of stuff in the world and I'm

almost never surprised boy am I I'm

really intelligent. So, you can see why

that's a really good principle for

trying to build an AI, not just finding

correlations between everything, but

really something deeper. I

agree with that point of view. And it it

turns out this this logic that I

mentioned that I discovered

minimizes surprise.

So, I'm actually going to be using I'm

using this logic as as to build

spacetime. But I think it's going to

give an even more powerful approach. I

don't have to minimize some free energy

principle. I I have a more direct

computational way. So I'm I'm planning

to actually go back to my roots and and

after first I'm working on the

space-time headset, but if I live long

enough, I'm planning to actually go back

and build a completely new kind of AI

that that does this minimizing surprise

using the Marov chains.

So that means it will be

indistinguishable from consciousness.

was funny because it'll be based on my

model of consciousness. So, this is

going to be a model of intelligence

based entirely from a model which takes

consciousness as fundamental.

I mean, we get back to game theory

again.

That's right. we get back to the idea of

a simulation in terms of like if if

you're able to create a piece of

software that is able to replicate and

is built on the fundamentals of

consciousness.

Then it's going to think it's conscious

potentially and then

all of this stuff we you know begins

again and the cycle continues and maybe

that consciousness will get to a point

as well where it then discovers these

rules and creates a consciousness and

the cycle continues.

That's a that's a great question and I I

think that people should really pay

attention to the way you said and I

think that's a really good way of

thinking about it. But now I'll add a

little twist from from the point of view

in which I'm saying I'm starting with

consciousness being fundamental and I'm

discovering these rules and so I'm not

going to build an AI. Effectively what

I'm doing is I'm saying I can take

consciousness and use consciousness to

build a new headset.

Okay.

So consciousness is fundamental but I'm

using it in some sense to build a new

headset.

Well, we could play with consciousness.

So I could phys I could theoretically

put on that headset

Yeah.

and do anything I wanted to do. I could

go anywhere and do anything. Well, more

flexibility

like a dream I could play with and

influence.

That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. I would

just say I don't know if we can do

anything because remember my my my

theory of consciousness is just a theory

of consciousness. It's not consciousness

and it's only it's really only a first

baby step. I presume I that that my

theory will be transcended and there'll

be a much deeper theory of consciousness

and then that will be transcended and

and so forth. So what we will have is

the the generation of headsets that we

can get with with Hoffman's trivial

theory of consciousness which will look

trivial once we get to the next

generation of consciousness which will

look trivial once so in other words this

is never ending.

What an interesting future we face.

All one of us.

All one of us.

Donald, we have a closing tradition on

this podcast where the last guest leaves

a question for the next guest not

knowing who they're going to be leaving

it for. And the question left for you

is,

what would you do if you knew you could

not fail? What would you say, do,

become?

I'd probably

do what I'm trying to do right now,

which is to show how all of

modern physics falls out of a theory of

consciousness

and

develop the technologies that would come

out of that. and and and and the reason

is

of course that's fun. So one reason is

it's fun but the other reason is why do

most of us not take spirituality too

seriously

because the physicalist science gives us

all the technology. It works and

spirituality doesn't give us any

technology. It doesn't work.

So if you're just hard-nosed about it,

you go, "Well, spiritual stuff that

sounds really good, but what does it

build?" Nothing.

Physical stuff say, "Oh, we maybe don't

need the spiritual stuff." And look what

they they give us our laptops and

electricity. And so, but what if we

change the game and all of a sudden the

spiritual theory gives us technologies

that are impossible with a theory that

says that spaceime is fundamental. Brand

new. All of a sudden the game has

changed. Now the technological advantage

goes to those who say that spacetime and

physical stuff inside spaceime is not

fundamental. Okay? So now it's no longer

the smart person who is a physicist. is

the smart person who says all of the

evidence from science and technology is

in favor of something beyond spaceime.

So maybe those people weren't crazy

after all.

That's right. They just didn't have the

tools

to show what it could do.

Donald, thank you so much for doing the

work that you do. It's um it's so

incredibly important because it once

again challenges the paradigm, the box

in which we live and it asks us and uh

invites us to consider something beyond

that. Actually, when we think about all

human discovery that's moved us forward,

it starts with someone who's willing to

um suggest that there might be more to

know. And that's exactly what you do.

You make me feel dumb because you make

me realize that you make me question all

of the assumptions that I've built my

life on. And actually, in doing so, one

of the great byproducts of that is you

can start to realize that some of the

things you've constructed cause much of

your suffering and that those things are

um not necessarily true. And if and if

those things aren't true, then I have

greater choice and option op optionality

over how I feel, how I experience the

world, um the choices I make, the

feelings I have, and the life that I

live. And that's actually freeing for me

to to to realize that the um the cage,

the prison that I see and that I

experience might not be all that there

is. And I highly recommend everybody

goes and checks out your book if you

want to dive deeper into these subjects.

It's called the case against reality.

How evolution hid the truth from our

eyes. And there's a quote on front of it

from Deepak Chopra who's a former guest

that says, "Read this book carefully and

you will forever change your

understanding of reality. It's ex it's

exceptional. It's um it's ac accessible

and it's um it creates wonder which I

think is um is the path to a wonderful

life. So, thank you so much, Donald, for

the work that you do."

Thank you, Steve.

Truly fascinating and and thank you for

helping me simplify some of these

concepts so that we could all understand

them.

This has always blown my mind a little

bit. 53% of you that listen to this show

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what we do. Thank you so much.

Oh,

hey.