[0:00]Hi Jeff, this is Deepak. So I got your two messages and I just finished my morning yoga
[0:07]class and I have to meet somebody at 8 and then I'm taking a flight to Nantucket. And
[0:15]actually I'm really looking forward to this. There's a lot of excitement around this Nantucket
[0:22]project and it seems the whole town is coming. And a friend of mine, Elizabeth Backley, who's
[0:28]with Hillary all the time and is leaving the campaign trail to come. And I'm staying
[0:35]in the home of Johnson and Johnson, whatever that is. The Kennedys are coming and it's
[0:41]like the talk of the town. And the local newspaper has written an article apparently
[0:47]that I'm the biggest charlatan in the universe. But notwithstanding that, I'm really looking
[0:53]forward to it. They have seven cameras. They're going to do two filmings.
[0:58]One tonight and one tomorrow night. So let me first address the two things that you spoke
[1:05]about. One is that meditation can be dangerous. So, you know, there's lots of misconceptions
[1:11]about meditation. And I think my last book, I'm going to do this present book, You Are
[1:18]the Universe. Then I have to do a book with Rudy on the healing response. And, you know,
[1:26]my, apparently my MGH appointment.
[1:28]is coming through as scientist, MGH, and co-director of whatever this brain institute will be.
[1:38]So I'm doing a book with Rudy on the healing response. But I think I'll do one more book
[1:46]after that, probably. And it should be the Encyclopedia of Meditation. Because there
[1:52]are hundreds of meditations and most people don't even know most of them. These days,
[1:58]you know, the most...
[1:58]The most popular is what they call awareness, or even worse, they call it mindfulness. But
[2:08]it's not really the right word. Because the awareness of a thought is not a thought. The
[2:15]awareness of the mind is not the mind. And the awareness of awareness is the deepest level
[2:23]of being.
[2:25]So, you know, nobody...
[2:28]knows all these meditations. They don't talk about them. And there are traditions. But
[2:33]I will write a whole encyclopedia. That'll be probably, hopefully, maybe. I don't know.
[2:41]But I want it to be the last book. Okay. And then I'm done. So that's my take on meditation.
[2:49]Yes, you know, simple meditations can cause depression, psychosis, all kinds of things.
[2:55]If one has an unstable personality, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that.
[2:57]But if one has an unstable personality, as I've always mentioned, there's a thin line
[3:00]between sages, psychotics, geniuses, and rebels. These are people you can vilify,
[3:08]you can praise, you can attack, but you can't ignore them, because they change the world.
[3:14]So yes, I have a lot of respect for depressives, like Van Gogh and many others. Even Schopenhauer
[3:25]was a depressive.
[3:26]Okay.
[3:27]I think he was jilted by a girl and then he became a philosopher. In any case, so I
[3:32]will write on meditation. On the mathematical formalism or structure for soul, I'm going
[3:38]to think hard about it, because it would be great to have Gromov as an ally, but I
[3:49]also don't want to encroach on his territory, which people get so upset when you do, because
[3:55]frankly speaking, it's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:56]It's not a good thing.
[3:57]It's not a good thing.
[3:57]It's not a good thing.
[3:57]You don't even know what their territory is, and I tried to understand that theory
[4:03]once, and I didn't understand it at all. But I think we're on to something here, very,
[4:10]very, very important, and that the universe we experience is a human construction, and
[4:20]that not only is all civilization a human construction, that is obvious, right?
[4:26]We created civilization, music, art, science, et cetera. It's a human construction that came
[4:36]about as a result of experience and the knowing of experience and the interpretation of experience
[4:45]and the labeling of experience and the classification and coding of experience, all the semantics
[4:52]that actually allowed us to understand also the regularities.
[4:56]So, we had the concept of experience, which we then call natural laws. And then we manipulated
[5:02]those experiences and we created civilization, but in the same way we have created stars
[5:08]and galaxies and the entire universe because all we have access to is experience and the
[5:17]knowing of experience. And that experience occurs in a fundamental awareness because
[5:24]you can't have experience without awareness.
[5:26]and that includes your body.
[5:28]How do you know you have a body?
[5:31]Well, you sense it.
[5:32]How do you sense it?
[5:33]Sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, sense perceptions.
[5:37]What are these?
[5:38]These are activities in awareness of awareness
[5:43]and actually modified forms of awareness itself.
[5:47]Similarly, the mind, it's a subtle form of the same thing.
[5:51]The ego is the same thing.
[5:53]The intellect is the same thing.
[5:55]And then because of our ability to, you know, kind of parse this out
[6:00]into bits and pieces and parse it out
[6:05]and call these activities, which are essentially sense perceptions,
[6:13]sensations, images, feelings, thoughts,
[6:15]that's raw experience in awareness.
[6:18]And then, you know, because of our ability to, as I said,
[6:22]parse it out, classify it,
[6:25]manipulate it,
[6:27]we conceptualize.
[6:31]Also in awareness, also in consciousness,
[6:35]mind, body, universe,
[6:38]stars, galaxies, Big Bang, the whole history,
[6:41]which we're creating right now.
[6:43]We're creating it right now based on our imagination.
[6:48]Had we existed, this is what we would have experienced.
[6:53]Had we existed,
[6:55]as a species called human,
[6:58]then this is what we would experience.
[7:02]But we didn't exist as a human species
[7:04]and therefore we can't say what it would have looked like,
[7:09]okay, or what it was,
[7:11]because what we have is human experience.
[7:16]Similarly, as we move forward, this is the universe evolving.
[7:20]What we're saying is if we're around a million years from now,
[7:24]then this is what it will look like.
[7:27]But there's nothing like the look of the universe.
[7:31]It's only a way of looking through an experience that we call human being,
[7:39]through an experience that we call human mind.
[7:43]The human mind, the human body, and the universe
[7:46]are all objects of experience and the knowing of experience.
[7:52]And that is happening in awareness.
[7:54]And awareness can't be seen, touched, tasted, or smelled
[7:58]because it is the one that is having those experiences.
[8:04]It has no form.
[8:05]And having no form, it is not in space-time.
[8:08]And that's fundamental reality.
[8:10]If there is one, that's who we are.
[8:13]We are a species of awareness.
[8:16]And all the animals of the world, all the plants of the world,
[8:20]they are part of the human universe.
[8:23]Anything that we can give a name to, that's part of the human universe.
[8:29]Whether it's a giraffe, or a hippopotamus, or a plankton, or an algae, or a bacterium,
[8:36]we have created a name for a modality of experience and a knowing of experience.
[8:43]And then we call it that.
[8:46]And so the entire universe is a human construct, the one we experience.
[8:53]Are other animals having an experience?
[8:58]Well, I have no idea what the experience is
[9:03]to a species of consciousness that I could call a bat.
[9:10]You know, what does the world look like to a bat, or taste like, or smell like?
[9:15]The bat itself is also a species of consciousness.
[9:20]But I know it as a species of consciousness.
[9:23]In the human universe.
[9:25]In fact, now that I think about it, since other species presumably have no language,
[9:31]they live in a dream world of sensations, images, maybe some feelings and thoughts.
[9:38]And they are living in that dream.
[9:40]And they don't conceptualize the dream and objectify it as the objective world.
[9:46]We too are living in a dream, which we call the world.
[9:53]I'm going back to your philosopher that you quoted the first time I met you, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
[10:01]who was Bertrand Russell's favorite student, by the way, before the First World War.
[10:09]And Wittgenstein said,
[10:13]Our life is a dream, we are asleep.
[10:16]And once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we are dreaming.
[10:23]So I think the most important task right now is to wake up to the dream
[10:28]and understand that we are a species of awareness,
[10:34]one rivulet, and probably the biggest one, the Ganges or the Nile,
[10:40]amongst many rivulets of a fundamental, formless entity,
[10:47]which we can call awareness, the thing in itself, Immanuel Kant's.
[10:53]We have to rephrase it, though.
[10:56]And otherwise, they'll say, oh, he's not just talking old philosophy,
[10:59]and it's no longer relevant, at least.
[11:02]That's the Dawkins and the Krauses of the world,
[11:05]and even Neil Tyson and all these guys, Brian Cox in England.
[11:09]They just dismiss philosophy as useless.
[11:14]But the ability to think is an extraordinary ability.
[11:17]The ability to reflect and the ability to express language,
[11:23]which has given us a clue to the human universe,
[11:28]the construct in consciousness that we call the universe,
[11:35]the physical universe, the construct in consciousness that we call a body,
[11:40]the construct in consciousness that we call a mind.
[11:44]So whilst my body, or that which I call my body,
[11:48]has been on this tour selling ridiculous books,
[11:53]a book with a pretty girl called Radical Beauty,
[11:57]actually I've been exploring all this,
[12:00]and I'm going to articulate it to the best of my capacity tonight
[12:05]at the Nantucket project, and again tomorrow,
[12:10]and we'll see where it goes.
[12:13]And I do think Gromov could be a huge help in creating a model of that,
[12:19]but in his language,
[12:21]which we should,
[12:23]respect and,
[12:24]you know,
[12:25]honor.
[12:25]So that's it,
[12:27]and this long message,
[12:28]but you gave me a lot of food for thought.
[12:31]Take care.
[12:31]I'm sending you lots of love,
[12:33]and I'll be in touch.