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[Music] welcome to on living my name is Brooke

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Sproul and today we have a very special guest a personal hero of mine Dr John vervaki John welcome thank you Brooke

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it’s a pleasure to talk with you again I really enjoyed our last conversation a lot I did as well

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as well we get started on that thank you I’m um I’m John rovicky I’m a professor of cognitive psychology and cognitive

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science at the University of Toronto I’m also the author of a YouTube series

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called Awakening from the meeting crisis I also have an ongoing dialogical series

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called voices which were vaky and I also do a bunch of uh Standalone series called the cognitive Science Show on the

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nature of the Consciousness the nature of the self often with I think every time with Greg Enriquez and usually somebody else

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um and I um and so I do a lot of work um using cognitive science to bridge between

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the scientific world view and uh spirituality the pursuit of meaning the cultivation of wisdom and how people are

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trying to respond to the meaning crisis yes and John ‘s well instrumental in my personal

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Spiritual Development and so I’m eternally grateful to you for just the concepts ideas and the work that you’ve

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done that has helped guide my process and and inquiry so I’m so honored to be speaking with you today

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um one of the things that struck me from our last conversation was something you said about mindfulness you said

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mindfulness is frame awareness that allows us to get an optimal grip on our

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temporal spatial and social awareness yes so talk about what optimal grip means

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uh so optimal grip is a notion uh from Marlo Ponte and uh he talks about the

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fact that whenever we’re trying to pay attention to something and perceive it

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or conceive it I’ll use a perceptual example um like like say here’s my phone right

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um there it what we’re always doing is we’re trading off between things uh so for example there might be I need maybe

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there’s a scratch on my screen I need to be really close right and I zoom in on a feature but then I lose the ability to

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sense the whole if I pull back because I want to see the whole phone I may not be able to read what’s on the screen and

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right and so I’m constantly toggling between them depending on the relevance to the frame I’m in and remember the

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frame your mental framing is what you’re ignoring is irrelevant what you’re what you’re bringing into awareness as

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relevant and you’re constantly uh toggling between all these various trade-offs think about all the different

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aspects of this all the different distances you could look at at all the perspectives you could take on it

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um all the ways you can imagine using it and what your cons constantly doing is you’re trading between all of those in a

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way that’s relevant to your framing of the situation which is how you’re making what you’re trying to find how you’re

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trying to make sense of the situation and so you’re always trying to get an optimal grip so in mindfulness what you

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do is normally we’re not aware of that mental framing it’s transparent because you’re becoming aware of it and that

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right by stepping back and looking at it in meditation and then seeing if you can see a new in contemplation and you’re

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toggling between those right looking through your glasses and looking at them to try and get sort of an optimal grip

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translucency so that you’re well fitted to uh the world you’re in in a particular situation around and there’s

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usually almost always those three dimensions uh the temporal the spatial and the social

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beautiful yeah understanding framing has been a really important part of my

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Awakening and understanding that our sense of separation from the world is actually a frame a perceptual frame a

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conceptual frame that has been in in essence indoctrinated into us since the

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Cartesian Revolution can you talk a little bit about that yes um so before the Cartesian

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Revolution we had uh what what is called a contact epistemology we had the idea

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that when we know something we are we’re coming into some kind of cognitive contact with it

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um and then with the Cartesian Revolution following upon Copernicus and Kepler there was the idea that we’re

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actually trapped behind sort of how we’re framing the world and we’re

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representing uh we’re trying to get representations from inside our frame about outside the world

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um and and and link up that way now um what Descartes did was he took

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that division that that sort of replacement of contact with pointing a representation and he

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made it into two Realms the inner subjective realm and the external objective realm and then the project has

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been well how do we possibly connect subjectivity and objectivity together and this has been very very problematic

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and it hasn’t stayed as sort of a philosophical idea or problem within Ivory Towers it has permeated the

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culture because people are really wrestling with how how does how does

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this scientific model of the world and my inner experience how do they possibly

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mesh and work together I feel very disconnected from myself from other people from reality and so that’s the

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Cartesian framework that we’re bound up in right and Descartes did that for very good reasons uh he’s not malevolent and

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tribalicious but nevertheless we come to a place where I think the science broadly construed to include philosophy

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and other things has uh there’s been a long-standing recognition that we have

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to overcome this divide in some important way right and what are the practices that help you overcome this uh

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frame this divine well I mean the one practice is is sort

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of phenomenological philosophy uh where you’re trying to practice phenomenology

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you’re trying to really get into the the structures of your experience when you’re making sense and you know and and

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and see what’s actually at work so for example when you do that and this this is influenced by Marlo Ponte and my my

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uh my friend and colleague Evan Thompson uh when you do this you realize the body

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has a very special place um so for example your body is both an

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object like all the other objects uh but it’s also you and it’s part uh right of

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who and what you are and and what’s really weird about the body is whenever you’re touching

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something you’re also being touched uh and so what you realize is wait I’m

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living this in my body and my body is neither cleanly objective nor cleanly subjective and so

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what I want to do that that phenomenology brings that into awareness and then I want practices that really

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bring that to life like Tai Chi Chuan uh in which I’m moving my body in a mindful fashion I’m getting into the Flow State

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I’m feeling very connected and I’m both touching and being touched because when you move for example when you’re when

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you when you take a like even if you hold your arm you hold your arm in tai chi in a way that it’s both a weapon and

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a sensor and you’re simultaneously feeling as well as projecting uh like

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projecting Force um so uh and of course doing the the meditation and the contemplation which

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constantly make you aware of the fact that actually these two are deeply

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linked my my contemplative awareness into the world and my meditative

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awareness into myself continually uh reflect each other and are shaping each

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other and like even think about in meditation you go into a space inside your head which of course is not a

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literal space you’re inside some space and that’s because you’re internalizing the world but when you’re in there you

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also get right you get aware of right how how that world is being shaped for

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you and and so you internalize the world but you also indwell the World by how

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you fit yourself to it and so the meditation and the contemplation make you aware of it most importantly perhaps

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our dialogical practices biological practices make you aware of the reality of other Minds that are shaping

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information separate from you and really make you beholden to the fact that the

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objective and the subjective are deeply into penetrating in something like dialogue so those are some of the practices that help do that how does the

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last thing you said relate to what you defined as transjectivity lasts in our last conversation ah so

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that’s a very important point I think the if you take seriously the the idea

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that the world is intelligible um you realize that that intelligibility

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isn’t like a property of you subjectively or just of the world objectively but how you’re bound to the

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world so intelligibility is very analogous to biological adaptivity if

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I’m adapted to my environment as an organism the adaptivity isn’t in me or in the environment it’s how we’re fitted

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together so that I can live Intel intelligibility is the same kind of affordance it’s how my mind and the

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world are fitted together so that I can think where think doesn’t just mean run things in my head but also move around

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and navigate my environment and uh catch a football Etc and so the idea is is

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that intelligibility like adaptivity is neither subjective or objective but binds them together which is

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transgactivity and the reason why you want to think about this is without intelligibility there’s no realness and

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intelligibility is ultimately transgactive and also uh not only intelligibility but in truth truth is

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neither subjective nor objective but precisely how the subjective and objective are bound together in a

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transgative fashion and this of course was made uh very famous by uh Heidegger’s notion of alothea and so the

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these these practices this is an argument that Clark makes and his amazing book explore Explorations and

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metaphysics these dialogical practices make you directly aware of transjectivity at the heart of

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intelligibility at heart at the heart of adaptivity you the way you are in

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reality and how reality is making demands and calls on you and you come to realize that this transgender transient

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activity is more primary than the subjective or the objective because it is what grounds both and grounds the

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relationship between both of them and and dialogical practices are a flowing

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and Powerful enactment of this um and how does that relate then that

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sort of reminds me of the idea of non-goal awareness yes yes I think

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I know I’m not claiming that everybody who talks about non-duality is doing this but I think when we get so when you do the meditative and contemplative

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practices and then you do them in a in an alternating self-organizing dialogical fashion then you can they can

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break like almost like stereoscopic Vision you go from meditation and contemplation into this

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non-dual and I think what the non-dual is why it’s experienced they’re so real and so profound is it’s it is the ground

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of adaptivity intelligibility of subjectivity and objectivity of Truth so

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it it it’s it strikes people as uh uh profoundly more real because I think

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they’re actually getting a disclosure of Transit activity which is primordial

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can you define trans activity so transjectivity is that which is

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neither subjective nor objective but is between them and beneath them and is the

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grounding source of both of them and their possible relationship to each other

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that’s quite profound um well I I hope so

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um I I I’m not claiming that’s my idea in total I mean I I coined the turn and

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I’ve been working on it but many people in 4E cognitive science are talking this way and and the notion goes back to

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people like Marlo Ponte the way the body is transgactive uh JJ Gibson and the

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notion of perceptual affordances the walkability of the floor the graspability of the cup

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um so it’s got significant provenance and I think It ultimately goes back uh to a neoplatonic understanding of

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cognition and and as you said I think also in eastern Traditions that also get access to non-duality that’s what it’s

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pointing non-duality is non-duality is the realization of realization which is

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itself inherently transjective um wow and uh there’s something I wanted to run

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by you that’s sort of related to what we’re talking about I heard in an interview once that Consciousness is a

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fundamental uh ontological substrate of reality and for me that has really profound kind of day-to-day implications

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if it’s true I was curious if you’d given that any thought I’ve given that a lot of thought I’m going to be talking

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to Donald Hoffman on Sunday and uh uh now I actually I actually uh reject that

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notion that Consciousness is fundamental um I think that Consciousness is inherently transjective

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um I think part of the problem we understand Consciousness is in here um where Consciousness is properly

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between you because we could we tend to concentrate on introspective Consciousness as somehow prototypical of

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Consciousness um where of course your conscious you’re conscious of me right now which isn’t

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introspective it’s it’s prospective right in an important way and of course your conscious of the past which is

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neither in you nor in front of you but some somehow behind you and so uh

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I think of Consciousness as a higher order form of this more basic

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process of relevance realization I have a lot of argument for this I just uh for people are interested I have three

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questions about Consciousness the video that I recorded at the Consciousness and conscience conference where I bake this

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argument about I think that your core cognitive ability is this relevance realization ability a lot of it’s going

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on unconsciously for example you’re somehow picking up on relevant

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sounds and making relevant Connections in memory so that the noise is coming out of my face hole are becoming ideas

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in your mind and you have no idea no awareness of how that’s happening there’s all this relevance realization

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going on and but some of it comes into your working memory and working memory

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is itself organized in order to be a a higher order relevance filter the point

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of working memory this is Lynn hash’s work a colleague of mine at U of T is working memory which is where you’re

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holding things in mind it’s also designed to screen out irrelevant information and enhance relevant

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realization but I think when the unconscious relevance realization comes into working memory and we get this we

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get how attention Shines on things and makes them more Salient and we get all

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those connections between how we’re sizing things up and how we have a perspectival awareness of them I think

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that that’s what Consciousness is when you make consciousness of fundamental property you then face really difficult

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problems of okay if Consciousness is a fundamental property and all of these things have Consciousness it’s obviously

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not the Consciousness that I have right now the reflective self-aware Consciousness that’s bound to my fluid

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intelligence and allows me to do insight and to experience Wonder that’s clearly not happening in the chair or the sofa

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so then I have the problem what’s the relationship between the universal Consciousness and my Consciousness and

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that doesn’t seem to be any better than what’s the relationship between my Consciousness and a non-conscious

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reality there’s a longer argument there and I don’t want to burden you with it but I think what people are

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I think people are genuinely arguing that like Bernardo Castro look like have a lot of respect for

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um but I think when people say that it means something really powerful to them I think what they’re more likely saying

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is consciousness is starting to disclose to them the fundamental transjectivity

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the non-duality and that is uh is is fundamental see if you think the

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non-duality is fundamental then Consciousness can’t be fundamental this is platinus’s point because

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Consciousness is inherently dualistic I’m conscious of that there’s a subject

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and an object in Consciousness and when so if you think that reality is

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fundamentally non-dual what you’re probably saying about Consciousness I I’m trying to be I’m being presumptuous

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here but it’s something like oh I’m now conscious of like non-duality I’m conscious of

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transjectivity and in that state you can actually enact that you can move into a

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state of non-dual consciousness but that doesn’t mean that reality as

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non-dual is also conscious I would argue sorry that was a long answer to a really thorny question I hope it made at least

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wasn’t just garbled nonsense not at all it takes me back to what you said about intelligibility though and I wondered

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does the fact that the universe is intelligible mean that it has some kind

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of intelligence and then how does that relate to what we’re just talking about in terms of Consciousness right so I

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think that’s a good question uh and again I would say that you have to think of the the transgative relation of

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intelligibility is primary and then there’s two poles to it one poll is intelligence and the other

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is uh like this structure uh the order that also

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grounds and makes intelligibility possible and we the problem is we tend to use the word intelligibility for both

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of those the relation and the fact a property of the world so I’m trying to

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be a little bit more careful because I make that mistake too and I’m trying to say there’s intelligence and there’s intelligibility and then there is the

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logos of the world right there’s a structuring of reality that makes it

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capable of generating intelligibility in partnership with intelligence

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yeah and that’s where there feels it feels like this relationship between Consciousness though and existence and

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there’s a way in which things are all interdependent yes and objects are in some way and I don’t understand this at

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all really but what it seems what seems to be true based on some of the kind of quantum physics stuff is that there’s a

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way in which we we don’t exist without the world and the world doesn’t exist without our Consciousness on some level do you believe that

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there’s a way in which that makes sense and then there’s a way in which you have to be very careful about it uh because

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you don’t want to say things like and um you know that well that means the

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world didn’t exist when there was no human beings and that’s quantum physics does not want to argue that most Quantum

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physicists would say no that that doesn’t make any sense so we’re the quantum mechanics has to be integrated

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with the best cosmological explanations we have the big bang relativity uh Etc

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and so you don’t want to say that the Universe can’t pre-exist human consciousness this is another reason why

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I don’t think Consciousness is fundamental um but you you do want to say things like Consciousness again it’s it’s not

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here and and pointing to something there it’s bound up with it like my hand is

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when it like my hand takes the shape of and so Consciousness is in that sense

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disclosing properties of the world and of the universe that otherwise would not not be disclosed and so while we might

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not take up very much quantitatively in the universe we’re very small compared to all the all the stuff

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we’re qualitatively really important because we have this capacity through our Consciousness and our intelligence

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to disclose properties of the world that are not otherwise disclosable

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we actualize the universe qualitatively in a really powerful and important way

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that’s beautifully put and and so how does that relate to your relationship

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with spirituality and the Divine and kind of your meaning and purpose in life

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so I I mean I I agree with Arthur Brooks Lewis that neoplatonism is sort of the

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uh spiritual backbone of the West and Thomas plant that it was the the lingua

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Franca philosophy uh of the Silk Road integrating East and West

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um and so for me um I I think that if you take a look at how

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cognition and Consciousness are fundamentally operating that gives you sort of a grammar of how we make sense

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of things and what that you then in a choice you you say that

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fundamental grammar either fits something a fundamental grammar in reality they co-participate in the same

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grammar or they’re they’re orthogonal to each other or separate from each other if you take the second and there’s a

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much longer argument about this so I’m just can we get just you’re sort of Trapped in sort of solipsism the only mind you

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could possibly know that exists is yours your in skepticism you can’t really know anything about the world and this is a

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radically impossible like thing to live you’ll just be performative contradiction moment after moment or you

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can say no no no there is some fundamental and here I’m doing it again the contact epistemology there’s there

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there are some fundamental co-shaping and co-participating between

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the grammar of intelligence and the grammar of the world such that intelligibility is always possible and

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then once you have that view you get the sense of how we can be we can re-see

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ourselves as radically connected to reality and that as we move through

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levels of intelligence and Consciousness we are correspondingly disclosing levels

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of reality and that that means not only are we

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woven together in contact with we’re not alienated from uh reality we are in a

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transformative relationship with it we can right we can Ascend we can move up

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in a by cooperating correctly with the world if I can put it that way we can

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move up these Mutual disclosures of levels of the self and levels of reality

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and I think that’s the fundamental project of of spirituality and I think

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there’s important ways in which that’s analogous to you know uh Traditions from the East that are

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similarly as comprehensive like Zen the way Zan integrates taoism and Buddhism and Shinto but I won’t make that second

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argument but the basic idea is once you get this view

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um then you can well think about that think about when you that the levels of the self and the

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levels of the other are participating each other and they’re disclosing more and more of each other and you’re

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getting deeper and deeper and more real well that’s love that’s love that’s what love is it’s

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this mutually accelerating disclosure self-transcendence the other is is also being a fort right so you can fall

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deeply in love with reality again um and that to me I think is the heart

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of spirituality now if you could do that in a way that is philosophically intelligible and scientifically

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legitimate then I think you have powerful resources for responding to the meaning crisis

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yeah I think of it as in conversation or in a dance with life yes yes

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and there’s a way in which we’ve been taught to see the universe as this dead

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material meaningless world and a genuine encounter with spirituality opens up

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this you know it almost reminds me of like the personal relationship with God

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idea Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah from Christianity which I actually hate because I didn’t experience it like that

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I experienced it as this like anthropomorphized uh God this this yeah in my head you know that old saying what

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was it uh I realized I was God because I realized I was praying and I was just talking to myself it was like that was

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my experience of it was having a conversation with some intellectualized kind of um Bible in infused uh

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caricature of uh an anthropomorphic God in my head but the personal relationship

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with God in this sense or with with reality with life with the universe is

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this experience of partnership and conversation with the sort of imaginal Realm yes yes so talk about the imaginal

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realm and are you how familiar are you with humans work I do a lot of work on the imaginal I’m both uh the sense drawn

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from Corban and more recently from a a very similar distinction by Cool Ridge

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and others um but also it’s in in IBN Arabi and it’s a a central part of the neoplatonic

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tradition so the imaginal is the use of images but

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unlike the imaginary where what you’re doing is taking yourself away from reality like when I ask you to

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imagine a sailboat and ask you are the sails up or down right there’s no sailboat there’s no but if if I’m trying

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to teach you Tai Chi and I say like relax your arm but imagine there’s water

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flowing through it a very powerful and then and then you use that tongue as

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right the kind of force rather than locked Force that’s imagination for the sake of

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enhancing your perception putting you getting you to realize subtle patterns getting you to reframe and reorient

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right and this is the kind of imagination that kids use when they when they pretend to be Superman they’re not

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picturing something in their head they’re they’re they’re trying to project the the the perspective of

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Superman so that they can see patterns in the world and themselves and become more heroic for example right so that’s

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that’s one so the imaginal is the using imagery that way and then what you’re

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the patterns you’re in particularly um trying to focus on within sort of the

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spiritual use of the imaginal is the those patterns that integrate not only

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that they do they integrate the subjective and the objective like I just said but they also integrate the

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intelligible and the sensible they enter they integrate that which is what the

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level of the space in which we are conceiving reality and the space in which we’re perceiving reality so that

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they mutually make sense and are connected with each other and so for

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example uh Plato said you can’t come into the academy unless you can do geometry now

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people don’t unders fully understand that because we have other domains of

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math other than geometry there is nothing in math in the ancient world other than geometry so no and notice

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what a geometrical figure is it’s sensible but you don’t think that geometrical figure is actually what a

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triangle is because it’s not right that there’s the perfect triangle you can almost hear Plato here that’s conceptual

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the perfect circle the triangle with all those Eternal truths there’s the sensible thing here the sensible world

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and that you they they they are co-present within the practice of

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geometry this is why geometry was sacred in the ancient world and that’s an imaginal practice and it’s a way of

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bridging propositional thinking and non-propositional thinking binding the subjective so the the horizontal and the

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vertical dimensions are properly integrated in the imaginal and how does the imaginal relate to

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positive psychology and and those kinds of practices says so I mean no not enough people are

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talking in positive psychology about the imaginal um that’s something I’m trying to redress

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um insofar as positive psychology is oriented towards how we Excel beyond the

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norm rather than how we break apart in the pathology and we’re talking about things like wisdom and

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self-transcendence the imaginal plays a critical role in the cultivation of

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wisdom because of the way it binds things the imaginal is the enacted symbol on symbolon means to bind things

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together so that they they so the possibility of contact Conformity

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transformation are all made possible so the imaginal plays a pivotal role in the

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cultivation of wisdom in the affordance of self-transcendence when you are binding yourself to your future self and

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aspiration I want to be more like Socrates with and that’s a symbol on but you’re there’s an imaginal there

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Socrates is taking on an imaginal role for you so that you can bind yourself to your future self so you can realize

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those patterns and I’m using realize that both sense will become aware and actualize right make real suck that

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you’re using Socrates imaginately in order so that you can come into a real relationship with your future self and

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pick up on those patterns in your behavior that are going to get you there as opposed to those ones that are going to divert you the imaginal plays a

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significant role in any aspirational project any transformational project any

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cultivation of wisdom or virtue I’m so curious about your take on like the Joe dispenzas and the Bruce Wilson’s of the

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world in terms of you know they’re kind of in that new AG um if you you know mind over matter if

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you can kind of you can kind of heal yourself and I I kind of struggle in with with those thinkers because on the

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one hand I know there is a power that we have right we know the mind can’t I know

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that we have the capacity to go beyond our ordinary limitations and and part of that is through the power of the mind

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and what we believe is true and how what we believe is true informs what we create and what we do and yet at the

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same time there’s a lack of rigor it seems in some of those yeah some things that make me question the

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validity so I’m curious about your take and your experience in that for me

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and and this is a platonic stoic Buddhist Taoist thing to say where

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there’s not very many things that I can do but spirituality is inseparable from the cultivation of wisdom

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and wisdom is essentially about overcoming self-deception

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and that means adopting a lot of rigorous practices and

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this is ultimately what we how we should understand rationality rationality isn’t

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logic um it’s it’s sometimes you use logic in order to be rational rational is how can

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I reliably and systemically and systematically overcome self-deception um and then wisdom is how can I do that

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across all the kinds of knowing across all of the domains of my life that binds this objective and the objective binds

31:45

the intelligible and the sensible so it’s this very power I gotta remove all this self-deception and enhance all this

31:51

connectedness that takes tremendous rigor it takes tremendous you know it it

31:57

takes a tremendous amount of being able to subject your ideas to rigorous

32:05

argumentation empirical investigation um so while I don’t think science can

32:11

generate a spirituality nor do I think science is conducive of wisdom I think anybody who’s trying to be wise who’s

32:19

not taking advantage of this powerful machine for overcoming self-deception

32:26

right so we that’s what science is it’s a family of methods for overcoming how we deceive ourselves that’s what it is

32:32

and if you disconnect your project from this very powerful engine

32:38

your ability to cultivate wisdom I think must necessarily be seriously truncated

32:44

and you’re going to make yourself prone to all kinds of self-deception that can only be caught by uh you know a certain

32:52

kind of scientific and rational rigor I want to repeat I’m not saying that science can give you wisdom nor am I

32:57

saying that science is spirituality but I’m saying the spirituality that ignores or tries to take place orthogonal or

33:04

independent from scientific and rational criticism I think it’s ultimately going

33:09

to be the disset by all kinds of self-deception uh and I think you’re

33:15

going to eventually and psychologically you’re going to make yourself more and more vulnerable to all of the

33:21

pathologies that follow from self-deception your spirituality is going to degrade I guess probably into

33:28

spiritual bypassing in which you’re using spiritual experience to ignore the

33:33

epistemic and moral demands that rash that that reality can rationally make upon you

33:39

um rationally ratio properly proportioning yourself to reality right

33:45

um and so yeah that’s my criticism of all of that that’s the issue I have with some of the

33:52

positive psychology slash more particularly New Age practices while they can be really valuable for me

33:58

they’re not valuable without the complementary Shadow work the bottom up the healing the you can’t simply because

34:06

because there is a bypass there’s an override that’s actually a form of denial right but there is a way in which

34:13

they can be valuable in context of a more honest inquiry and self-examination

34:19

what are some of your favorite positive psychology techniques

34:25

um so I mean um the POS like the the most important positive psychologist for me is Chick

34:31

sent Mahi um and his work on Flow and I think you know I think he he’s one of the people

34:37

that made positive psychology sort of possible and so for me uh and see I both

34:43

scientifically study flow like what’s going on in flow and then of course I do all these flow practices taoism is the

34:49

philosophy religion of how to get into the Flow State and transfer it to as much of your life at as many levels of

34:55

your psyche as you possibly can that’s taoism in in a sentence and so

35:02

um for me the practices that help me get more reliably into the Flow State and

35:09

more systemically and systematically transfer it to many domains of my life and many levels of my psyche but that’s

35:16

and that’s what I mean by a ritual is something that where you get a way of fitting the world right uh using

35:25

imaginal practices that transfers broadly and deeply into your life and

35:32

deeply and broadly into your psyche and um Tai Chi Chuan for example does that

35:39

so whenever uh I you know the any of the the

35:45

whenever positive psychology is talking about um you know ways of enhanced getting

35:50

into the Flow State things like that um that’s something I take up so I would

35:56

say to you and I I don’t mean this to sound sort of like koi I was like

36:02

I think things like touch each one are actually superlative positive psychological practices because they

36:08

have this is a well worked out tradition of a very sophisticated ritual that is

36:15

designed to be practiced in a way within a framework that gets you into the Flow State and helps you transfer it broadly

36:21

and deeply both without and within and so for me and it’s amazing uh you know

36:28

just get just get people more reliably into the Flow State and also in a way that

36:34

transfers broadly right within and without and a lot of their hunger for

36:42

meaning and connectedness and well-being will be addressed will be addressed

36:47

right so I’ve studied with the flow research Collective are you familiar with Stephen Cutler’s work no it is is

36:54

it connected to Jamie wheel’s work or anything no they they did co-author a

36:59

book and they worked together originally I’ve worked with Jamie as well but um the flow research Collective Stephen

37:04

Cutler he’s done some work on a lot of different things but particularly flow Neuroscience he does some really uh

37:10

incredible training programs uh and he also has written books on kind of impact

37:15

and social change in terms of you you know entrepreneurship and how we can create abundance for the world and

37:22

things like that and one of the concepts that they talk about they talk a lot about chicks at me high but they also

37:28

talk about having your massively transformative purpose as their kind of word for that that higher purpose in

37:34

life that allows us to really you know as we talked about uh in our last

37:39

conversation are alluded to is a Step Beyond self-actualization into

37:44

mental health Transcendence right we cannot really actualize our potential as humans and enter into our highest

37:51

possibilities without serving something Beyond ourselves and That’s essential to

37:56

entering into flow is knowing what our purposes and sort of orienting every aspect of our lives uh toward that

38:04

higher purpose and I think that for me when I have that sort of North Star and

38:10

everything’s pointing in that direction it allows my life to unfold in this way

38:15

that is kind of self uh perpetuating energizing motivating uh because it’s

38:23

not just about me the self-indulgent you know project of Happiness yeah you know

38:29

reaches you know a sort of resounding thud you know I think I think there’s a

38:35

real uh I mean we we need to care for our own well-being And yet when we

38:42

become so self-focused uh there’s something missing in our essential Humanity it seems

38:49

well I agree with you I mean one of your one of our driving meta drives is any in

38:55

addition to any in in addition to for anything in addition to us at making us

39:01

happy we need it to be real we need it fundamentally to be real if I can show you that your source of

39:07

Happiness involves some kind of fraud or deception or Illusion that will completely undermine your happiness

39:13

um and so I I I think it’s important that we are connected so when people

39:21

talk about purpose they think they’re talking about everything that’s needed for meaning in life but meaning in life

39:27

that that the sense that your life is worth living even though it’s filled with frustration and failure and

39:33

futilities and right and the need for forgiveness and all that kind of stuff the beset human beings meaning in life

39:39

is my life is worth it even though all of this but purpose is only one of the

39:45

four dimensions that gives you meaning in life there’s also intelligibility uh there’s also a sense of depth of

39:51

realness and then there’s mattering which is a sense of connectedness to this intelligible realness and mattering

39:59

is more important than Purpose By the way it looks like in the reader’s research you need to be connected to something Beyond yourself that has a

40:07

reality and a Value Independence of your egocentral perspective I often give this test to people I’ll say if you want to

40:12

know what your meaning what’s giving you meaning in life ask yourself this what would you want to

40:19

exist even if you didn’t and then you know what you are connected

40:25

to that has a reality and a value beyond your own egocentric existence and you in

40:31

the degree that you’re connected to those things that answer that question is it which you find your life

40:36

meaningful Iris Murdoch I love this quote she said love is when you what love is when you first recognize that

40:43

something other than yourself is real um and so that kind of the way you are

40:48

connected and she doesn’t mean romantic love I mean she’s not excluding it that’s the that’s another problem with

40:53

her culture we always hear romantic love when we hear the word love right um but you know when you when you really

40:59

love a work of art there’s a great piece of music and you feel that reciprocal opening between you

41:07

and it and you feel that depth and you feel like everything is making more sense and you would want that piece of

41:12

music to exist even if you didn’t right that’s what I’m talking about I’m talking about that that connectedness

41:19

and you’re right I think I think we we don’t want to have we

41:25

don’t have to we don’t we we don’t want to have disparate fragmented centers of connectedness we want them to all be

41:31

connected to each other um and and so many philosophical

41:37

traditions Neil platonism it’s the one taoism it’s the Dao Buddhism it’s shinyata Buddha nature right uh

41:44

Christianity it’s God of course Judaism and Islam Etc and so right this sense of that the

41:53

thing we should matter this is politics idea of ultimate concern we should be ultimately concerned with what is

41:58

ultimately real we should try what we most want to matter to is what is most

42:04

real and we want to be most connected to what is most real and so

42:10

I think what you said plugs into that perfectly the problem we have I would

42:16

say and I think you’re trying to address this given our previous conversation is we’ve lost a language that resonates for

42:25

most people for how to enact what we were just talking about we have older languages from the religions that don’t

42:31

that really don’t Vibe for most people uh we have we have met we have Arcane

42:36

metaphysics from New Age people and other things that that just don’t take because they don’t connect us up uh with

42:43

you know our rationality so our job part

42:48

of our job and you know and I think you’re undertaking it is how do we get how do we get the language and the

42:56

practices that allow people to do what I just said in a way that’s both

43:01

intellectually respectable scientifically legitimate and yet deeply personally existentially meaningful to

43:08

them part of my you know work was how do I

43:16

find a language that is both meaningful and uh and non-dogmatic non yes that was

43:24

free of the baggage of this this old religion but it’s also rigorous yes you

43:30

you know you’re just sort of like you there’s a systematic aspect of your

43:35

thinking and how you’re organizing it and it’s principled and it’s intelligible and it makes sense this is

43:42

also an important feature of what you’re doing I would argue when we talked about meaning I was wondering if the

43:48

experience of meaning is related to an optimal grip across different domains of

43:53

Our Lives I totally think so so this is this is sort of uh John raviki’s

43:59

particular uh uh scientific theoretical hobby horse I think

44:05

um that capacity for relevance realization is our fundamental religion or fundamental

44:11

binding to reality it’s our cognitive adaptivity like I said and that sense of being bound and connected to reality is

44:18

that the core of our cognitive agency and therefore whenever we are doing things that

44:25

we get a sense are enhancing that connectivity to ourselves to each other to the world and thereby causing our

44:33

cognitive agency to flourish we experience that as meaning in life I think that that’s my central argument

44:39

um yeah and and I think it’s mine as well because that’s really what emergence is is you know here’s what happens when we

44:46

bring all of the domains of Our Lives into Integrity balance and wholeness there’s an optimal grip that allows us

44:53

to navigate the world more accurately like the map is more matched to the territory that’s this kind of I think

44:59

your definition of relevance realization and kind of coming into greater contact with Ultimate Reality in a way and then

45:06

the meaning that’s forged as a result of this uh this ability this this

45:13

Attunement to reality in a new way yeah I mean so we have

45:20

exactly we have metaphors of orientation and navigation uh we we you used your

45:26

North Star we’re properly oriented this is you know this is like our fundamental uh relevance realization and then we

45:34

know how to navigate which is we know how to have a fluid evolving optimal grip on the terrain so that we can move

45:42

with right with the guidance of our orientation we can move competently

45:48

through the terrain of reality and of course I’m trying to speak metaphorically but well the point the

45:54

the actual cognitive scientific point is that that that that capacity for

45:59

physical orientation and physical like perceptual optimal grip and sensory

46:05

motor navigation optimal grip of your environment that’s actually exacted up into conceptual space and how you make

46:13

sense of things so it yeah it’s about it’s it’s about

46:19

um giving people those two dimensions of optimal grip the

46:25

orientation which is like sort of your metal optimal grip it’s where you place yourself so you have access to multiple

46:31

kinds of optimal grip and then you you you stitch them together with the orientation as you navigate uh through

46:38

your life and through your world and that’s my definition of character right is the meta process we own that helps us

46:45

navigate excellent excellent and in a way it’s not separate from maybe an old

46:51

idea of the Soul right yes it I I mean I think I think character properly

46:58

understood the way you’ve talked about it and as that which allows us sort of to integrate and track the through line

47:04

of reality so that we’re more and more um optimally gripping it in touch with

47:10

it and it’s touching us when we say optimal grip you have to understand it’s both ways it’s not just you grabbing

47:16

it’s also the world has the capacity to grab you moments of beauty moments of Truth moments of astonishing goodness

47:22

you want you you want both right um and yeah I I think that idea I mean

47:30

it certainly goes back to Aristotelian Notions of the soul and character and the Soul are deeply interwoven together

47:37

um and I it also picks up on a certain neoplatonic ideas of the Soul what if

47:44

you could see with the soul is a ghost inside of you then it doesn’t really Jive but if you think of it more as you

47:50

know you have all of these disparate faculties and your work speaks to this and they’re all typically fragmented but

47:57

just like just like I can find the through line of all the aspects of the thing right somehow I’m showing you all

48:03

these different aspects and they’re not identical to each other but yet they all hang together there’s a through line and

48:08

the through line is not an aspect and the through line goes beyond any uh also all the aspects you’ve seen because

48:13

there’s many more aspects you haven’t seen just like there’s a through line of things I think there’s a through line of the psyche

48:19

um and I think that’s what we’re talking about uh about a soul and when the through line of the psyche can track

48:26

right the through line of reality that I think that’s when people are properly in the spiritual domain

48:32

and it brings me back to uh you know the conversation we had last time about emergence and you know emergence from

48:38

the biological level event as you define obviously the simultaneous

48:44

differentiating and integrate yeah exactly that’s such a you know in a way it’s a

48:51

contradiction but that’s where the thing opens up yes in that uh in that space

48:56

and that feels like it’s not only true at a biological level but that feels like the essence of spirituality which

49:01

is why you know I talk about emergence in my work as a it’s like this integration and you know this this

49:08

simultaneous honing in and opening up and that’s what’s so clearly

49:14

that’s right and that those that’s exactly the opponent process that’s

49:19

going on within relevance realization your attention is doing it now it’s opening up with mind wandering default

49:26

mode Network the task mode network is then selecting it opens up and selects and oh and so what you’re doing is

49:31

you’re constantly differentiating and integrating differentiating and integrating you’re complexifying your cognition so that it can more and more

49:38

conform to the complexity of the world exactly can you define relevance realization for

49:45

those in my audience who aren’t familiar with your work so relevance realization is the process

49:50

by which you zero in on relevant information so the the problem that’s facing you and all

49:57

cognitive dimensions of domain is there’s way too much information available to you there’s way too many

50:04

ways in which you can combine the information combine your actions and what you do is you intelligently ignore

50:10

and it sounds like a Zen Cohen you intelligently ignore most of the information so most of your viewers were

50:16

probably not thinking or aware of their right uh big toe until I said that

50:22

because it’s been backgrounded there right and they’re not they haven’t been thinking about Australian kangaroos

50:28

until I said it right and so all of the information in your memory all the information in the world all the ways

50:33

that can be combined is overwhelming this is the central problem facing artificial intelligence how do you

50:38

ignore most of that information zero in on the relevant information so I use the

50:45

word realization I got this use from nishitani because it means both to become aware and to have something be

50:51

real so you’re making aspects of the world you’re disclosing aspects of the world you’re connecting yourself to

50:58

certain realities in the world real patterns at the same time you’re realizing right so it’s becoming aware

51:04

so it’s realizing in the sense of becoming aware and actualizing and so

51:10

this is the core ability uh that I argue is at the center of both intelligence

51:16

and consciousness and how is that related to the frame question the frame problem is exactly the problem

51:23

of uh of relevance realization this is right um so the original example of the frame

51:30

problem is uh well original presentation is Dan Dennett uh he talked about so

51:37

we’re going to make it we’re going to make an artificial intelligence and we’re going to make an agent agents are different from things that

51:43

just be everything behaves this pillow behaves if I punch it it index so agents

51:48

are things that not only behave what they could do is they can detect the consequences of their behavior and then

51:55

alter their behavior in order to achieve certain goals so that’s an agent okay so we make this robot we’re going to make

52:01

it give it a very simple task it’s going to find energy sources which are batteries and then take them to another

52:06

safe location take them to a safe location where it can consume the battery this is analogous to you and

52:13

food you typically don’t eat your food where you first encounter it you usually take it to some place or you have

52:19

special places uh set up for it okay so this robot comes along and it finds a

52:25

nice juicy battery sitting on a red wagon and it determines that if it pulls the wagon the battery will come along

52:31

that’s the intended consequence yay unfortunately there’s a lip balm on the wagon as well and it an unintended side

52:39

effect is that the bomb comes along and blows that up and then we go oh stupid us we have to make the robot not only

52:46

pay attention to its intended effects but all the unintended side effects so we make a new robot we put it into the

52:53

same situation it comes up to grab the wagon and then it’s just calculating and calculating for the rest of Eternity

52:59

it’s like why what’s going on there because it’s calculating all the unintended side effects if it pulls the

53:04

wagon the battery comes along that’s the intended effect but the front one wheel the freight the right front wheel goes

53:10

through more than 30 degrees of Arc the left front wheel goes through more 30 degrees of our the left back wheel the

53:16

right wheel the grass underneath the wheels is being indented the air patterns around the wagon are being

53:22

slightly altered the position of the wagon with respect to Jupiter is being changed with respect to Mount Everest

53:28

it’s being changed and you go oh my gosh the number of side effects is

53:34

astronomical so this is what you now have to do how

53:40

do you zero in on the relevant side effects and

53:45

what people attempted to say well it’s obvious that’s the problem that’s the result of relevance

53:52

realization relevance realization makes things obvious to you so that you are a good Problem Solver obviousness is not a

53:59

physical property here’s 17 grams of obviousness right it’s like you’re giving that ability to find things uh

54:06

sorry I’m preventing you no it’s Opera it’s Opera right like that’s Peterson’s argument it’s like built into the

54:12

structure of our nervous system to uh ascertain what’s what’s most meaningful

54:18

what’s most relevant yes failing aunt and so we take it for granted we don’t recognize that if we’re creating a

54:23

machine for example we have to we have to attend to it it’s so obvious because

54:29

it’s inbuilt but it’s not actually obvious objectively but it’s built into our neural structure and such is that is

54:35

that am I understanding that yes you’re understanding it very well and and trying to build machines that can

54:42

instantiate that ability it we still haven’t done we still haven’t accomplished that we’re making a little

54:48

bit of progress people in AI are concerned about is that that’s right machines that are you know that where we

54:55

fail to attend to some fundamental the important uh irrelevant detail and that

55:02

somehow that causes them to destroy the world not because they’re smart and Machiavellian and develop this Consciousness I think that’s another

55:07

question about whether they can actually develop a sensory perceptual or experiential qualitative experience but

55:15

uh the idea that maybe even without that there could be this a way in which

55:21

um you know there are these unintended side effects and they could destroy the world just through kind of a simple

55:27

glitch in our inability to know what what not to to attend to or what what uh

55:33

what to leave out I think that’s well said um it’s so just Affinity it’s called the

55:39

frame problem because you have to somehow put a frame around right the situation that you’re

55:47

understanding your interpretation of the situation that excludes all the irrelevant but only and includes only

55:52

the relevant the problem is nothing is intrinsically relevant or irrelevant right this glass is relevant to me right

55:59

now it’ll be irrelevant to me an hour from now right right and so there’s no

56:04

property you can point to and say always pay attention to that property and this is why it’s so really hard and what’s so

56:11

fascinating about you and I as we do this we’re doing it right now and it’s

56:16

not only at the guts of something that technical like AI I argue it’s at the guts like this is this is so primordial

56:24

and it’s so powerful about your connectedness it’s also at the guts of your spirituality

56:34

yeah and I think the friend or or the framing effect is one of the most

56:40

kind of practical ways to engage with self-transformation is just simply

56:46

reframing our problems and the ways that we look at life it’s an idea that I’ve developed in my work it’s I call it the

56:52

reflection principle this idea that everything we suppose is outside of us it’s an external problem actually

56:57

reflects uh something within a psychologically and spiritually that if reframed can be uh used as a lesson to

57:06

help us transcend and move beyond our our current limitations so that’s an

57:11

example of a way of a of a conceptual frame that can be used in service of

57:17

personal transformation so I’m noticing it’s uh we’re kind of at the end of our time but any any final words you’d like

57:24

to to share or or leave our audience with uh no I mean I I I other than I want to

57:31

thank you for this I I always enjoy our conversations I’ve enjoyed both of them so far I I really think what you’re

57:37

doing is important work um and um I guess maybe if I could say a final

57:45

parting thing is we have to stop thinking about science

57:50

and spirituality as oppositional or we will not solve the meaning crisis we

57:56

have to move to it and what and we’ve been showing how that’s possible in our conversation we have to move to a an

58:03

integration of Science and spirituality and I I recommend that it’s analogous to the concepts of

58:10

intuition metacognition in my work right the spirituality experiential intuitive

58:17

realm of life and then the metacognitive the kind of science uh ability to look

58:23

at examine um determine the validity of that process yeah is is this are you really

58:31

attending to reality in which science can be the process by which we affirm

58:38

the reality of spiritual consciousness rather than either at all rather than

58:43

them being at odds with it I couldn’t have said it better well thank you John it’s a great honor

58:49

to speak with you always um thank you so much for your time and your support thank you so much Brooke it was a great

58:54

pleasure and please uh check out John’s work on YouTube he’s an incredible thinker he has an incredible body of

59:01

work um John verbaki’s uh YouTube channel and the the meeting crisis particularly is his sort of Signature

59:07

Series so uh if anyone’s interested in and really understanding this in a much uh deeper and more systematic way I

59:14

highly recommend his work there thank you [Music]

59:30

thank you