Aug. 1, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
55:30
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| So, thought, without the awareness behind thought, can become quite destructive. | ||
| Thought is a wonderful tool. | ||
| You can manifest things through thought, it can be very creative. | ||
| It's an amazing evolutionary step for humans to have developed the ability to think. | ||
| But there is a downside to it, and that is thought can become your worst enemy. | ||
| There are many people in this world for whom their greatest enemy lives between the two ears, in their mind, making your life impossibly difficult, creating problems that don't actually exist, and so on. | ||
| So, toxic thoughts. | ||
| You're probably right with reference to contemporary culture, Gatzart wrote the book, The Parasitic Mind, very good book. | ||
| So, he talks about how the human mind can be invaded by toxic thoughts that cut you off completely from reality. | ||
| Music All right, ladies and gentlemen, as I tape this right now, it is 3.56 p.m. Eastern Time on July 31st, 2025. | ||
| About eight hours from now, I officially go off the grid for the month. | ||
| And I could not possibly be more pleased to bring on my last guest of the season. | ||
| We will be airing this on August 1st, my first day off the grid for the month. | ||
| He is a legendary spiritual teacher and author, and perhaps I should ask him what he likes to be referred to most. | ||
| But I like to call him my friend Eckhart Tolle. | ||
| Eckhart, it is great to see you, and of course, the author of Power of Now and many other books. | ||
| How are you, my friend? | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good to see you again. | ||
| It's been a few years since we had our last, well, we had a private conversation in Miami not long ago, but the last interview was perhaps four or five years ago, right? | ||
| Yeah, well, it's great to see you. | ||
| Yeah, we saw each other in person just a few months ago, but my guys just checked. | ||
| The first time we sat down in person was 2019, and then we did it again in 2021. | ||
| So it's been, you know, about four years since you've been on the show. | ||
| And I meant what I said up top. | ||
| I don't think there could be anyone that I could end this season with, end this period of time with, and really put up as our first interview when I'm gone than you, because your life in some sense perfectly embodies, I think, why I'm trying or why I've been trying to take this month off the grid. | ||
| So maybe before we get into that and sort of our relationship with technology and some of the other things that you talk about, particularly mindfulness, which is really why I'm, and being present, which is more than anything else, why I'm trying to do what I do. | ||
| For somebody, if there's somebody out there that doesn't know you, how do you describe yourself at this point? | ||
| I mean, I know everyone knows you, but how do you describe yourself at this point? | ||
| Well, sometimes people ask me, what do you do? | ||
| Well, I'm getting old now, so everybody probably assumes that I'm retired. | ||
| But occasionally still people ask me, what do you do? | ||
| Or they ask, what did you do? | ||
| So sometimes it's best to simplify things, give people something that they can immediately relate to and understand. | ||
| So the simplest answer I sometimes give is, I'm a writer. | ||
| And sometimes that's it. | ||
| They're happy. | ||
| And sometimes they ask another question, what do you write about? | ||
| And then, of course, becomes a bit more complicated. | ||
| Everybody has a certain conceptual identity. | ||
| So obviously, I'm what one could call a spiritual teacher. | ||
| And to some people, that term makes sense, to others it doesn't. | ||
| But whatever conceptual identity one uses, that's not ultimately who or what I am. | ||
| There's always a deeper level to your being. | ||
| So the way I talk about it is, say I'm a human being. | ||
| So there's a twofold identity. | ||
| Everybody has a twofold identity. | ||
| On the one hand, you have the human identity. | ||
| As a human, you have a physical body and you have a mind. | ||
| You have a psychological identity conditioned by the past. | ||
| That's the personality, the person that you are as a human. | ||
| And I call that sometimes your surface I. It's also what can be called the ego, the egoic identity. | ||
| And for most people, that's all they are ever aware of. | ||
| But there's always a possibility of accessing, of finding, of discovering a deeper identity. | ||
| I call it the deep I that transcends who or what you are as a person. | ||
| And then you are no longer, when you access that, you can sense that, you can feel that deep identity. | ||
| And we'll be going into that perhaps in a few minutes to see how to access that. | ||
| When you access that, you're no longer trapped in a conceptual identity. | ||
| So if I believed, some people believe that I'm what I talk about is nonsense. | ||
| Other people say I'm fantastic, I'm a great teacher, but I refuse to carry around a conceptual identity. | ||
| I sometimes have to tell people that's what I am, but I don't feel that that is my true identity. | ||
| Nothing in the conceptual realm, which is thought, is my true identity. | ||
| So I'm not looking for any identity in the dimension of thought of thinking. | ||
| So, and on the dimension of form, man, woman, race, gender, age, personal history, achievements, victories, defeats, sufferings, what people did to me, what I've done to people, all those things become your personal identity. | ||
| It's a collection of memories and reactive patterns. | ||
| Everybody has that, but that becomes who you are as a personality, as a person. | ||
| Our true, as I see it, our true purpose in life is to go deeper into the, we could call it the spiritual dimension, to connect with a level that is within yourself that is deeper than the personality, | ||
| the deep I. The deep I is where you, that the deep I transcends who or what you are as a person, and it connects you with something infinitely greater than you, than who or what you are as a person. | ||
| And ultimately, one could say that is your connection with the spiritual dimension, or that is your connection with God. | ||
| In order to find it, because maybe that's your next question. | ||
| In order to find it, you need to access within yourself a dimension that we could call stillness, where the mental noise or the mental clutter, | ||
| because everybody lives with this mental noise, I call it the voice in the head, that comments on whatever you're perceiving, it comments on your experiences. | ||
| This voice in the head thinks about the past a lot, thinks about the future a lot, has very little connection to the actual present moment. | ||
| And if it connects to the present moment, it interprets the present moment through its mental conditioning. | ||
| You have certain thoughts. | ||
| You interpret what you perceive through the veil of these thoughts. | ||
| For example, that could become an ideology. | ||
| There are millions of people who are trapped in an ideology that they have taken on board, and they look at the world through the veil of their ideology, and then that distorts reality completely. | ||
| So you have thought. | ||
| It's very important to ask what kind of relationship do you have with the thoughts in your head, with all their thinking. | ||
| Are you aware of the thoughts in your head? | ||
| And here we come to the key term, to the key word awareness. | ||
| Another word for that would be presence. | ||
| If you're not aware of the thoughts that go through your head continuously, you are identified with all those thoughts and you are completely conditioned by the thoughts. | ||
| They become a veil. | ||
| You cannot really, you don't have the clarity to see reality as it is. | ||
| So, and as you know, there are many types of thoughts that are actually completely dysfunctional, that have completely disconnected from reality. | ||
| I first discovered that when I was young, one of my family members was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and I could see how he was unable to see reality as it is because he had a veil of assumptions and beliefs that all those people are out to get me, they're all out to destroy me. | ||
| And so completely misinterpreting reality. | ||
| So thought, without the awareness behind thought, can become quite distracted. | ||
| Thought is a wonderful tool. | ||
| You can manifest things through thought. | ||
| It can be very creative. | ||
| It's an amazing evolutionary step for humans to have developed the ability to think. | ||
| But there is a downside to it, and that is thought can become your worst enemy. | ||
| There are many people in this world for whom their greatest enemy lives between their two ears, in their mind, making your life impossibly difficult, creating problems that don't actually exist, and so on. | ||
| So toxic thoughts. | ||
| You're probably right with reference to contemporary culture, Gatzart wrote the book, The Parasitic Mind. | ||
| Very good book. | ||
| So he talks about how the human mind can be invaded by toxic thoughts that cut you off completely from reality. | ||
| Carl Jung also pointed out that the greatest danger for human beings, at least not in the outside world, the greatest danger for humans is mass psychosis. | ||
| When a large group of people become infected by thoughts that take over your mind, like a virus infection in the body, nobody actually knows what exactly a thought is, because nobody knows exactly what consciousness is. | ||
| Thoughts are a manifestation of consciousness. | ||
| Obviously, it's a form that consciousness takes. | ||
| But thoughts are actually invisible. | ||
| If somebody opened my brain and looking for the content of my mind, he wouldn't find it. | ||
| Thoughts are actually, there's a connection between thought and the human brain, but I don't believe that the brain actually produces thought. | ||
| It's like a radio receiver for thought. | ||
| But let's put that aside for a moment. | ||
| So Aristotle said that it is a mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. | ||
| Very interesting statement. | ||
| I don't know what the original Greek is. | ||
| Educated, I would change that. | ||
| I don't know whether he actually said educated. | ||
| It is a mark of an aware mind, of a present mind, to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, which means you can look at a thought that arises in your mind or thought that you see when you interact on social media. | ||
| Something arises in your mind and then you can stand back. | ||
| If you are aware, you can look at the thought. | ||
| Then you have a kind of immunity against being taken over by a viral infection, a mental viral infection. | ||
| You need that without the immunity. | ||
| You are exposed to this danger of being taken over by thought and then believing that what you are. | ||
| Then that's your personality. | ||
| And then that's me. | ||
| You have all kinds of opinions, not realizing that you are not actually thinking. | ||
| The thinking is happening to you. | ||
| You have involuntary, incessant mind activity, voice in the head. | ||
| It doesn't create any great ideas, deep insights, interesting perspectives. | ||
| No, it's repetitive. | ||
| Often it's destructive, self-destructive, destructive of others, sometimes complaining continuously about this or that or the other. | ||
| So people, they live with that identity that's based on conditioned thought activity. | ||
| And that's the, in spiritual terms, that is the unawakened state. | ||
| In spiritual terms, you could say these people are actually unconscious, spiritually speaking, which means there's no awareness of their thought. | ||
| They are so identified with their thoughts, they are bad. | ||
| So they are trapped in a conditioned personality. | ||
| And then life becomes very frustrating because this conditioned personality is never happy for long. | ||
| It always needs some kind of enemy to fight against because it defines itself through the otherness of others. | ||
| So it needs to emphasize the otherness of others. | ||
| It loves its enemies. | ||
| You can see it online how people argue. | ||
| That gives food to this egoic identity. | ||
| It's all fiction. | ||
| It's all crazy. | ||
| So what we need is an awakening, an awakening to this deeper dimension of consciousness that we could call awareness, or we could call it presence. | ||
| Awareness is a, one could say, a different dimension of consciousness. | ||
| It's not difficult. | ||
| All that is required is a moment of becoming present in this present moment, coming aware, looking around, you're breathing, you're alert to your sense perceptions. | ||
| You can sense your own being, perhaps, beyond thought, perhaps the aliveness within your body. | ||
| And for a moment, the voice in the head subsides and you're just there. | ||
| Your tension is completely in the present moment and you're free of the conditioned entity. | ||
| You have gone deeper, or you could say higher, depends how you look at it. | ||
| And you become, you started to access the deep I that is beyond the conditioned mind. | ||
| So the deep I is you as consciousness itself, whereas the conditioned entity that is the surface I is the forms that consciousness has taken temporarily and become a person. | ||
| So my true identity and your true identity is conscious, your consciousness. | ||
| Then your secondary identity is consciousness has incarnated into a physical form and consciousness has taken on the form of who or what you are as a personality. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| That's how it operates. | ||
| But unfortunately, most people are completely trapped in the conditioned part of consciousness, having no access to the deeper, unconditional, where you find inner peace an intense sense of aliveness, a sense of beingness, a almost sometimes you could say a joyful presence. | ||
| You simply become aware, and this sounds a little strange perhaps, you become aware that you are aware. | ||
| You become conscious of being conscious. | ||
| You can sense your own being as consciousness itself. | ||
| This is not complicated and don't even try to understand it because it's not conceptual. | ||
| To feel the being of you that is deeper than any thought or any emotion. | ||
| And that is freedom from the conditioned entity of the person. | ||
| Then the two can live together and in this world, face the challenges of this world so that you don't lose yourself in your mind and lose yourself in the stuff of this world, so that there's always some connectedness with the deeper dimension of being. | ||
| So it's another word is stillness. | ||
| So your great opportunity, now that you are going away for months, disconnected from all the digital world, that is a wonderful opportunity to find the stillness within you. | ||
| It is helpful to go out into nature as much as you can. | ||
| Not everybody can take a whole month off, but so you are privileged to be able to do that. | ||
| But all those people are not able to do that. | ||
| It's highly important to take opportunities in a daily life as much as possible to step out of the continuous stream of thinking and it clutters your mind. | ||
| A cluttered mind is not creative. | ||
| When you have a cluttered mind, no creative solution to any problem will come to you. | ||
| A cluttered mind creates its own problems continuously. | ||
| You lose access to the realm of creativity within yourself. | ||
| So I'm very concerned about what's happening, especially to youngsters, because their minds become totally cluttered. | ||
| They're interacting with the digital world, social media, and so on, in many cases, five, six hours a day. | ||
| The world of the digital world, social media, which ultimately is really an externalization of what's within you of the mind. | ||
| So the mind was already a problem before we found, created all this new technology, but now we have the externalization of the mind in the form of social media that gives even more power to this useless thinking that people are trapped in. | ||
| As you probably know, youngsters, young people who have grown up with the social media and all that, many of them are incapable of forming true relationships anymore. | ||
| Their attention span is extremely short. | ||
| The mind is continuously cluttered. | ||
| They do not have a moment of even boredom. | ||
| Boredom, people used to complain about being bored. | ||
| Nowadays, nobody's bored anymore. | ||
| It's a terrible loss. | ||
| Because with boredom, at least something opens up and says, what do I do now? | ||
| Don't know what to do. | ||
| At least there's a little bit of inner space. | ||
| But nowadays, the moment you feel the lightest beginning of boredom, you pick up your phone and you start strolling, which means you're adding clutter to your mind. | ||
| And so this, I believe, there are some indications that the level of intelligence in humanity is decreasing, that humans are becoming more stupid. | ||
| If you look at many movements in politics and so on, not cultural movements, you can see, well, that's actually true, reminiscent of the now well-known movie Idiocracy that describes our humans, our decrease of intelligence in humans. | ||
| So I'm very concerned about how social media affects the consciousness of humans, especially those humans who grow up with it now. | ||
| It offers enormous possibilities, like what you are doing and other people are doing. | ||
| So you're using the possibilities that social media offers. | ||
| And it's a great thing because it means humans have an alternative to the brainwashing of mainstream media. | ||
| So now you have an alternative and it's a wonderful thing. | ||
| But on the other hand, there's a danger that humans lose touch with reality because the digital world is not real life. | ||
| Life is out here. | ||
| And in worst case scenario, I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it is the worst case scenario. | ||
| Within one or two generations, civilization collapses because humans are incapable of creating anything new and solving their problems anymore. | ||
| And so, you know, so let's not go there. | ||
| But hopefully, that's not going to happen. | ||
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| So I must say, I think it's fairly obvious in that answer why I wanted to have you on for my last moments on the grid. | ||
| I mean, you just gave a better explanation, I think, of much of our political fighting and cultural fighting than people that do that for a living, actually. | ||
| So much of what you described as a somewhat psychological spiritual condition, I think actually is a far better analysis of the political stuff. | ||
| But I certainly don't want to do the political stuff with you. | ||
| But also, interestingly, during your answer there, I tried my hardest to stay with you on the higher eye there, right? | ||
| I was trying my hardest to be with you. | ||
| And when I'm interviewing somebody, that's where I want. | ||
| I want to be as present as possible with them doing it. | ||
| I find it's a little more difficult when I'm doing it digitally with someone as opposed to sitting across from them in person. | ||
| But then there's the other part of me, the lower part that you're talking about, that you said so many brilliant things that you were giving me, you know, 50 different avenues to go off. | ||
| And so I had to have an internal battle to be as present with you as possible, to hear you as much as possible. | ||
| And yet the other piece of me saying, well, I'm interviewing somebody, I should be able to do the work that an interviewer should do. | ||
| And I really just tried to traverse that to the best of my ability. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I'm not exactly sure how well I did it, actually. | ||
| But would you say that is the ultimate goal then as a human being to have presence? | ||
| Do you want to have full presence all the time? | ||
| Or is it just that you want to have accessibility to the presence perhaps more than your default position, if that makes sense? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, before I go there, first of all, interesting point you mentioned about listening, listening to another person. | ||
| That is a skill, that is an art. | ||
| And it actually, through listening, which I believe when you are able to do, although, as you said, as an interviewer, you always think, what's my next question going to be? | ||
| Because as an interviewer, you don't want to, when the interviewee suddenly stops talking, you need to know what the next question is. | ||
| So that makes it a little bit more difficult. | ||
| But in an ordinary interaction, the ability to truly listen to another person is a fantastic thing. | ||
| And it requires awareness. | ||
| It requires presence. | ||
| It requires a certain alertness. | ||
| In that alertness, you listen to the words that are coming to you and you're not evaluating or preparing the next thing to say. | ||
| That actually greatly improves any relationship if you are able to listen to the other in that state of open presence. | ||
| It's a wonderful gift to give another person, to simply give them attention, listen. | ||
| And then the moment this other person stops speaking, perhaps there's a moment of stillness, maybe a few seconds, and then usually some kind of response or additional question comes to you. | ||
| So that's something to practice, but it's actually a spiritual practice, I would say, to listen to another human being in that state of openness instead of mentally preparing, already preparing the counter-argument. | ||
| Now, your other question is being present all the time. | ||
| I think that was your question. | ||
| Being present all the time. | ||
| Is that really the goal to be present all the time? | ||
| Or is it to just understand yourself enough to have accessibility to it? | ||
| Because we all live in a world where we're hit with all of those things that you talked about. | ||
| It would almost be impossible to function in a society that is not present, to be present all the time. | ||
| I'm sure, I mean, I've spent, we had a meal together two months ago. | ||
| I can't imagine that. | ||
| Well, it was, we were pretty present, actually, I would say, but to be there all the time seems Herculean or almost inhuman in some sense. | ||
| So it's about the access to it. | ||
| Yes, it's not necessary to be continuously. | ||
| Sometimes I might be engaged when I'm alone. | ||
| I'm not always in the state of thoughtless awareness. | ||
| Like I don't go around like there are random thoughts that come up. | ||
| But as awareness grows in you, one could almost say it's a power that gradually grows. | ||
| I call it sometimes presence power. | ||
| As you begin to be aware of this, this presence power grows in you. | ||
| And then gradually, even while you are engaged in thinking or talking to another person, this in the background, you can still feel a little bit of stillness or awareness or your own beingness. | ||
| So there's always, you don't lose yourself completely in the stream of thinking. | ||
| Also, when you are, let's say you're having an argument with somebody, that's how very easy for people to lose themselves when they are arguing with somebody, because there's a great need in the egoic mind to be right. | ||
| For the ego to be wrong is a small death, because the ego is identified with opinions completely. | ||
| Identified with an opinion means you derive your sense of self from your opinion. | ||
| You don't just have an opinion. | ||
| Opinion becomes you. | ||
| And then anybody who questions your opinion becomes your enemy. | ||
| This is delusion, but millions of people operate in this way. | ||
| So the danger is when opinion becomes identity, you're lost. | ||
| You're lost in your mind and you create a lot of unnecessary Conflict. | ||
| Now, I have opinions, of course. | ||
| You can't go aroundline without. | ||
| I have certain opinions about, I have even political opinions, not that I talk about them very much, because my function is, I see my function as helping people to become more conscious. | ||
| I don't want to go to the various positions and I don't want to interact with to immediately, when I can see delusion in people, I don't feel the need to go out and tell them you're deluded. | ||
| Rather, help them to be more conscious. | ||
| Let's say if I were a psychiatrist and somebody came to me and says, I'm Napoleon, he leaves it every time. | ||
| He identifies as Napoleon. | ||
| I would not say, you are crazy. | ||
| Of course, you're not Napoleon. | ||
| Get rid of that idea because immediately he would the connection would be lost to him. | ||
| Nor would I say, yes, you are Napoleon. | ||
| No, that's wrong too. | ||
| But listen, bring some present into the interaction. | ||
| And then there may be a possibility that this presence affects him in some way and helps him to go beyond his illusions. | ||
| I'm given this example to say what I, in my work, I consider most important is that not to immediate other people, it's other people's function to actually attack totally erroneous and crazy beliefs. | ||
| That's perfectly fine. | ||
| There's a need for that also, as long as they are not completely identified with their position. | ||
| As I said, I have opinions and I could sometimes explain to people my opinion, private interactions, I give my opinion and that's fine. | ||
| If I'm not identified with it, the person who disagrees with my opinion does not become my enemy. | ||
| But I'm still very thorough. | ||
| I can still very clearly state my viewpoint. | ||
| But I don't become my viewpoint. | ||
| Because who I am is not my mental position. | ||
| I'm not looking for myself in my mental position because I have access to a deeper level of my being itself in that alert stillness between two thoughts. | ||
| Some you feel the I am, one could say. | ||
| The I am without any addition to the I am, the beingness itself, the being of you. | ||
| The ability to sense the being of you is a wonderful liberation from the personality. | ||
| The personality, of course, continues to operate, but you're not completely lost in the personality. | ||
| Then you can actually have a discussion with somebody without making them into an enemy. | ||
| Occasionally, I see conscious people talking about politics with different positions, and they're able to not completely identify with their position, but simply state it clearly without becoming enemies. | ||
| It's always wonderful to see. | ||
| And then other interviewers, they thrive on the controversy and shouting of people. | ||
| I don't want to mention any names, but some interviewers are actually quite successful because they generate in the viewer, they generate negative emotion. | ||
| And some people are addicted to, the ego is addicted to negative emotion. | ||
| Give me more of this controversy. | ||
| Well, I know that when you reached out to me, which must be around 2018, probably a year before we ever sat down and ever met, and you just basically said something like, I enjoy your work. | ||
| And I thought, I thought, well, that's really something because I'm talking about all this. | ||
| Everyone's fighting about it. | ||
| You know, that was sort of at the beginning of wokeness and the whole thing. | ||
| Everyone's fighting all the time. | ||
| I get so much hate online. | ||
| And here is this, I've read the power of now. | ||
| And now that you've met some of my family members, you know how influential you've been in my home. | ||
| And I thought, well, I guess I must be inherently doing something good if Eckart sees value in this. | ||
| And that actually makes me think, you've referenced the internet and social media as it relates to all this. | ||
| And clearly that's why I'm trying to do this off-the-grid thing and why I've been doing it. | ||
| Do you see the internet now because of some of the things that you mentioned and the scrolling and the fact that we never, you know, I really like that you said we never have a moment alone anymore. | ||
| There's no boredom anymore. | ||
| You know, in the old days, you used, if you were meeting a friend before cell phones, you'd have to say, I'll meet you on the corner. | ||
| And if they weren't there at 7.30, you had to just stand there and wait. | ||
| And you might look at people or stare at the sky. | ||
| And we just literally never do that anymore because of the phone. | ||
| So my question is this. | ||
| Do you think that this is, is this genuinely a unique moment that we're in because of the internet? | ||
| Or is this just the next turn of humanity? | ||
| That this, you know, there was the printing press, then we got radio, we got TV. | ||
| The internet obviously is unique in some sense because of the interconnectivity. | ||
| But do you view this as just the next version of this? | ||
| I mean, you've been talking to people and writing for decades. | ||
| Do you see a fundamental change in the frustrations, the neurosis, the confusions now that maybe you didn't see 20 or 30 years ago? | ||
| Yes, perhaps to do with the technology, there's an intensification of the craziness. | ||
| The craziness was already there before, but the craziness becomes amplified by the technology that we have. | ||
| So that's the challenge we face. | ||
| But at the same time, it's a great opportunity because when the craziness becomes amplified, For some people, it becomes easier to recognize it. | ||
| You see suddenly an amplified version of a craziness that was kind of often underneath the surface. | ||
| There were always people with crazy ideas before the technology, all they could do is talk to their next-door neighbor or some sort of crazy ideas. | ||
| Nowadays, everybody can put out their crazy ideas. | ||
| That's the negative part of the internet. | ||
| So the craziness grows and is amplified. | ||
| But there's also the positive side of it, of course, that which counteracts the craziness can also operate more effectively now through the internet. | ||
| So you have the two, an amplification of the craziness. | ||
| And at the same time, the possibility of sanity being disseminated also through this technology. | ||
| You have the two. | ||
| I think you're telling us that the world is what you make of it, perhaps? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Make sure that you are part of the sanity of the technology, that you're not drawn into the insanity, which is very easy to happen when you start interacting on social media, to become reactive, to find enemies online, people you've never met, and you insult them, you call them names, totally crazy. | ||
| And it amplifies your ego. | ||
| You feel a total illusion. | ||
| So there's mental illness is growing through that, but the possibility of going beyond the craziness is also there at the same time. | ||
| So where it's going, I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So that's, in some sense, probably that's the ultimate question here. | ||
| I mean, does that leave someone like you, is hopefulness useful to you even in some sense? | ||
| I was going to say, are you hopeful then with that dichotomy? | ||
| But I guess in some sense, hopefulness probably isn't that important in some ways. | ||
| No, no, it's hopefulness is not, there's not real power behind hope. | ||
| It's nice to hope, but there's no power. | ||
| Make sure, I would say instead, make sure that you embody, you represent the sanity in this world. | ||
| This obviously the famous saying, I can't remember who first said, is be the change that you want to see in this world, some said. | ||
| And that's very true. | ||
| So you need to in your interactions, whether personal interactions or online interactions, make sure that you are not drawn into the useless, the craziness. | ||
| Sanity, you represent, you embody the sanity. | ||
| But people, you may do, people, different people do it in different ways. | ||
| Some people just state, give information out, instead of attacking crazy ideas, they just put out information to counteract what state the truth to counteract the craziness. | ||
| There are other people who are a little bit more aggressive. | ||
| And as long as you don't lose yourself in it, that has a function too. | ||
| Godsad is an example of that. | ||
| I don't think he loses himself in that, but he can be quite confrontational. | ||
| There's a place for people who have that function also. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I find, I mean, even when I'm doing my show, I find there's moments where I can be extremely calm telling people what's going on, and that is the authentic me. | ||
| And then there's time where I'm obviously more ridiculous. | ||
| And then there's times that I am more on the attack, and I try to do it in a way that's usually couched in something funny because I'm not, the last thing that I would ever want to do is people, you know, shut off my show and then feel worse. | ||
| I want people to feel better. | ||
| And it's actually, to me, it's the best compliment that I get that people always say to me, Dave, I feel saner when I watch you. | ||
| And to me, that's like, if I can offer a little of that, that's pretty good. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| You do not disseminate toxicity, but other people do. | ||
| And some become very successful, but it's not good. | ||
| So you don't, I don't, I never, I don't watch everything you do, but I don't feel that you disseminate toxicity or negativity. | ||
| So that's quite an art for people to represent sanity, but not make anybody ultimately into your enemy. | ||
| Because there's always the opinion that people have, people have opinions, and they may be completely deluded, but ultimately that's not who or what they are. | ||
| So in a way, it's important not to confuse the perhaps totally erroneous viewpoints or opinions that are disconnected from reality that people are possessed by, not to confuse that with who they are truly and ultimately are. | ||
| Behind there is a deeper being. | ||
| And if you want to use religious terms, you can say everybody is a child of God. | ||
| Everybody is an emanation of the one that we call God. | ||
| God, this is our sea. | ||
| God is the incomprehensible one in a transcendent realm. | ||
| There is this incomprehensible, unbelievable, vast intelligence power that emanates like the sun emanates light. | ||
| The power of God emanates into this world as consciousness. | ||
| I see consciousness emanates from the source of all life that is transcendent and totally incomprehensible. | ||
| But the consciousness that you can sense within yourself is a ray of that. | ||
| So that's your, when you become a little bit still, you can sense the essence of who you are as consciousness. | ||
| You suddenly feel all you, what you can know for sure, because everything may be a dream. | ||
| Perhaps the philosopher has been talking about that for centuries. | ||
| Perhaps this whole life is a dream. | ||
| And in some ways, it is a kind of dream because everything dissolves very quickly. | ||
| And so maybe it is a dream. | ||
| But even if it is a dream, there's one thing that must be real in the dream, and that's the consciousness in which the dream appears. | ||
| And that you can be sure of. | ||
| Oprah used to call her interviewee, the last question she would usually ask the people she interviewed is, what do you know for sure? | ||
| And people all give all kinds of answers. | ||
| Ultimately, really ultimately, you cannot know anything for sure because everything may be illusory realm. | ||
| Maybe it's in the matrix. | ||
| You don't know any. | ||
| There's only one thing that you can know for sure, and that is you are conscious of consciousness. | ||
| Because otherwise, nothing could be. | ||
| Even if it's a dream, there must be a consciousness in which the dream happens. | ||
| If I am to go off the grid with the last thought in my mind being that Eckhart Tolle said we might be in the matrix, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble here. | ||
| So I'm going to ask you something that I think I know the answer to, but I think it would be, it'll perfect, it will actually, I'm asking this for myself in this sense. | ||
| And I think it will help other people too, but I think it's a perfect final question for what we're doing here because I'm really, I'm going to try to incorporate all of this. | ||
| I try it in general, but really what you've laid out here was what I sort of unknowingly was thinking when I started doing this off-the-grid thing. | ||
| And it's why it's been so good for me. | ||
| It's why so many people are so fascinated by it. | ||
| And now every year, more and more people reach out to me and say, Dave, I'm doing the same thing, or I can't do it for a month, but I could do it for a week or two weeks or three weeks. | ||
| But I want to ask you one piece of advice. | ||
| And again, I think I know the answer. | ||
| But when I come back, I am going to sit down with my guest host. | ||
| I'm going to learn all the stuff that I missed. | ||
| I'm going to be right back in the throes of the internet, of the scrolling, of the news, of the current events, all of the craziness on top of just back to work and interactions with people and all of that, on top of the nice things about it where people say nice things to me or the bad part about it where they say terrible things. | ||
| But it's all going to come flooding back in a pretty small amount of time. | ||
| What is the best way to deal with that? | ||
| Well, staying as present as you can without being totally drawn into the mental stream of thought so that you can always on a daily basis, as much as possible, take little moments of stepping back from thought where you're only looking at the screen and look out of the window. | ||
| Take a few conscious breaths. | ||
| And as you do that, conscious breath means your attention is on your breathing, which means you're not thinking. | ||
| Simple. | ||
| Which means a little bit of space opens up within you where you're just conscious. | ||
| So that you are still connected with who or what you are beyond the personality. | ||
| The ancient Greeks said, know thyself. | ||
| It was one of the most important dictums of ancient Greece, Greek philosophers. | ||
| Know thyself. | ||
| And at the deepest level, that means know the essence of you, which is the presence, conscious presence. | ||
| So as much as possible, stay connected with that. | ||
| And even when you are, after a while, as I said earlier, presence power grows in you. | ||
| And then there's always some presence even while you're talking. | ||
| While talking, no, I can feel the presence behind my words. | ||
| There's a presence. | ||
| And that works quite well. | ||
| Also, when you're present, whatever needs to be said in that moment can come out of that state of presence. | ||
| Preparation becomes less important for what you want to say and need to say. | ||
| What needs to be said, because there's a vast intelligence in that presence, it's the unconditioned intelligence. | ||
| All creativity arises from the presence. | ||
| And creativity can be just the simple fact of saying the right thing at the right moment is already a creative act. | ||
| Creativity can manifest in many ways, but any creative person, truly creative, must have some access to that presence, only in the area of their creativity. | ||
| Often creative people, sometimes as crazy as others, outside of the area of expertise, but within the area of expertise, the ability to be absolutely present, you have the alertness, the quiet, intense alertness of presence. | ||
| And you can look at a situation or a problem without thinking, just applying the intelligence of presence. | ||
| And there's a moment of stillness. | ||
| And then some creative answer comes in words or action, whatever it may be. | ||
| So staying connected to the presence, because that's where the power resides. | ||
| It's not some egoic power. | ||
| The power of life itself lives within you. | ||
| So make sure you stay connected to the power of presence. | ||
| And that presence, then, this is beautiful, that presence lives through you. | ||
| The personality shrinks a bit or becomes transparent. | ||
| And the greater power of presence can use your mind and your personality and express itself through you. | ||
| And that is how sanity and true intelligence comes into this world. | ||
| So you can bring that into this world. | ||
| Ultimately, that's what the purpose of human life is, to represent that, to become a conduit for that. | ||
| One can use spiritual terminology for it or neutral terminology. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| If you want to use spiritual terminology, although some people may not like it when I say that, in esoteric Christianity, that presence is the Christ in you. | ||
| And as St. Paul said in one of his letters in the New Testament, I can't remember the exact quote I'm paraphrasing, I must diminish and Christ in me must grow. | ||
| So that is the, and Christ is the timeless project. | ||
| Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. | ||
| We're finishing on a religious note. | ||
| He said, before Abraham was, I am. | ||
| It's what it seems incredible statement. | ||
| He didn't say, I was already, of course, obviously Jesus wasn't alive when Abraham was alive. | ||
| But he said, before Abraham was, I am. | ||
| So I am is the timeless beingness of the Christ. | ||
| Jesus realized the Christ in him. | ||
| So that is in other religions that other terms. | ||
| So that's why it all, the purpose of human life is to connect with that and be that. | ||
| Everybody does it in their own way. | ||
| It manifests in many different ways and you do it in yours. | ||
| And I wish you well. | ||
| I'm sure it'll be great. | ||
| You're already doing great work. | ||
| It'll be even greater. | ||
| Well, my friend, I thank you so much. | ||
| I know this is an easy interview to do because you offer so much and a perfect interview, as I said at the beginning, to be my last interview before I go off the grid. | ||
| And I will warn you in advance that perhaps on August 31st, I will show up somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and knock on your door so I can get a little extra presence for my return because I will need it. | ||
| I thank you. | ||
| Enjoy the rest of your summer and I look forward to seeing you soon. | ||
| Thank you, Dave. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| If you're looking for more soulful vibes to spark your inner guru, check out our spirituality playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist, all right over here. |
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