Ep. 49 - J.R. Morton

I think a really important thing that average religion has is mythology, and I think the problem is where people get the purpose of the mythology mixed up with the substance of it. This is synchronicity. Welcome to episode 49 of Synchronicity. Synchronicity kind of said that a little funny. Well, I had 48 other episodes get it right. No, seriously, welcome to episode 49 of Synchronicity. It's hard for me to leave. We're at episode 49. 52 will be a year, so that's nuts. Yeah, I've done one every week, and I got a couple recorded, so we're going to hit a year officially. I'll cue in party sounds here or something.

My guest this week is J.R. Morton. J.R. Very cool guy works with Ron Buss' foundation, loves to remember, works with the Be Here Now Network. Just a cool dude. I'm going to get J.R. in a second, but first we're going to get to other stuff. Congratulations to this week's book winner. I sent you the email. I don't know your name, but you are getting a copy of "Mind Beyond Death" by Zugchen Polnopurimpoche. I might just keep giving this book away on about two-thirds of the way through it, and it is absolutely phenomenal. Even books I really like, I speed through them, but this one, the little inner voice inside of Synch slow down.

Take it in. You're going to enjoy this, and I really, I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a long time, hat tip to the excellent David Silver, who recommended it, really, just a fantastic book. So congrats to the book winner. I'm going to do another book giveaway next month, I'll let you know when. Okay, another pretty cool thing going on this week. This episode is brought to you by, that's right, we have a sponsor. This is not made up, this is not Tom Foolery. This week's episode, the episode, this week's episode is brought to you by the Alan Watts Foundation, and let me tell you how this is going to work.

If you go to synchpodcast.com, that's what S-Y-N-C podcast.com/wats-W-A-T-T-S, you will get taken to the secret Alan Watts online shop, and this shop will be updated pretty much on a weekly basis with some new cool sound clips and other stuff in there. But right now, you can basically purchase any Alan Watts talk, anything that he's ever done on the shop, and if you use the code S-Y-N-C at checkout, you will get 30% off your first order. Now, some of you may be saying, I love Alan Watts, of course, but all this stuff is on YouTube, it's all over the web, why should I pay for it? Let me tell you why, there's a few reasons, and I think they're all pretty good reasons.

I've paid for them, even though I have access to all this stuff, and I'll tell you why I did. I don't know anything about Alan Watts, you will know that he is one of the most, he's just a wise, profound thinker who inspired people like Ramdas, even, Richard Alpert. He really predates a lot of these people on an incredible person, and over the past 10, 15 years, a lot of his talks have made their way onto the public open web, and people have been finding them amazingly useful and helpful. The problem with that is, is people are basically, the people putting those up, those talks up, are profiting from them.

They're stealing the content, and because his family and the foundation has chosen not to go after these people, because people are finding it valuable, people are turning on monetization on YouTube, and basically making a few thousand dollars a year serving up other people's content. Which to me, not so cool, I've had to deal with this in a lot of ways, working for organizations who are trying to control their copyright. And this is a very interesting topic, and we could argue that, well, everything should be free, it's wisdom, and I am absolutely in the anti-soface class. Like I'm with Socrates, I don't think people should have to pay for wisdom, but you don't have to pay for this.

You can pay for it, and it's more like if you get value out of it, it's the reciprocity of it. The other reason I think it's worthwhile to purchase something from this shop, is it's really well organized. A lot of the stuff on YouTube is misnamed, it's edited weird, there's no flow, you don't actually know where it's from and why it was recorded. So if you're into that kind of stuff, you know, this is very helpful as well. The other thing is, is when you purchase something on this shop, you're basically joining a community. It's this new Alan Watts community that's getting off the ground. There's going to be never-before-hard stuff, it's not on YouTube, it's not on the torrents, there's going to be interviews with people, asked about their thoughts on Alan Watts and some of the things he said.

It's going to be cool. So I feel like there's a lot of reason from your perspective to potentially get this stuff, especially if you like Alan Watts or are interested in Alan Watts and don't know anything about this. And for those of you who have no fucking idea what I'm talking about, at the end of this episode I'm going to play a little clip from an Alan Watts talk so you can kind of hear what I'm talking about. But anyway, back to the point. This is going to be something, again, if you go to sinkpodcast.com/watts, you will get taken to the shop, use the code SYNC at checkout 30% off. That's pretty cool.

And that's how I think I'm going to get these episodes to be sponsored going forward. I'm working on basically like a really cool affiliate system. So something I was talking about with a bunch of people is, you know, we want these podcasts to make money. We want them to be able to support the people who are making them. You know, it's a fair amount of work getting these out. And the problem is, is we don't want to go to advertisers and just say like, hey, you know, just give us some money, we get this many downloads, we'll promote whatever it is. Yes, that works and yes, it's cool. And yes, you can even do it in a fun and interesting way.

But I really want to make sure that if we're getting advertisers or sponsors, that they're totally aligned with what we're talking about. And I say we, I'm talking about the people on mine pod network and anyone else who's going to participate in these affiliate programs. That being said, if you're interested in being an affiliate for the Alan Watts shop and some other things that are coming up that I'll mention, shoot me an email, Noah@sinkpodcast.com. And I'll hook you up with something. I can get you your own code and you can let your friends know and get a little percentage. So there's ways as this can work that I think we're going to organically be able to fuse a lot of these things that are going on with the podcast.

So that's kind of my plan. We'll see how it goes. And of course, this mindfulness book that we're coming out with from mine pod network is absolutely going to be a part of that. Okay. Again, and I'll say it at the end of the episode, sinkpodcast.com/watts. Use the code sinkSYNC at checkout 30% off your first order. Pretty, pretty cool. Okay. On to the next few stuff. I want to talk about first off, first off, first off, first off. Next week, I guaranteed that Miami Dolphins would win. And holy shit, they needed to go over time to do it against a really shitty team. If you're listening, Caleb, I'm talking about your team, but the Dolphins did win.

So I don't have to go on a vision quest and take all these psychedelics I have and go understand the meaning of life. Everything is as it should be. The Dolphins beat the Browns. We're good to go. All right. Got to get that out of the way. Second thing I want to go over. Fitbit. Who is a Fitbit out there? If you answered, I can't hear you. But still, I got a Fitbit about four or five months ago and I am 100% addicted. I also found out I am a psychotic person who will jog around my house to beat people in competitions like a work week hustle, which is where you try to get as many steps as possible during the work week.

Yeah. I'm a psychotic person. But I really love Fitbit. If you're on that, add me, find me. I don't know how to do it, but I will compete with you and jog late at night to beat you. So I think it's cool. I like the Fitbit because it taps into that mentality and that aspect where if you're into gaming, you know, you want to, there's a, there's a, it's like a leveling up type thing. You get badges. It's fun. The gamification of exercise is definitely working for me. So whatever it takes, listen, Fitbit plus Pokemon go, I'm going to be like an Adonis in two weeks. Don't worry. There's a couple updates on upcoming shows, couple, couple, uh, Robert Wagner just did a podcast with him on lucid dreaming next week, part two.

I will say this. The first one was really cool. I really enjoyed it. The second one I'm going to release next week is amazing. One of my favorite podcasts, we talk about some really, really cool stuff related to spiritual practices and dreaming and Robert deals, you know, he goes into in more depth to some of his experiences that are fascinating. So yeah, that's going to be good. Stay tuned for that. Also, I have scheduled that it's locked down for the people who have been asking Steven Campman. We're going to talk about dreams. There's a dream theme going on, um, we're going to be talking about dreams, specifically the book, Demian, Damien, uh, which Herman, or Mon Esse, I don't know why I say his name like that.

Herman Esse. He wrote the book, uh, Steven had me read it before our last podcast and it's incredible we're going to kind of give a process of breaking it down and filtering it through a Jungian lens, uh, an individuation process. Very cool. So stay tuned for that. Finally, if you're in New York City this Sunday, I will be there. I am there to go listen to a sound healer type guy. This is totally fucking crazy, but this guy, I've seen him now three times. He's got like a five and a half, uh, octave vocal range. Those elite channels, lots of weird stuff. I'm not really into the channeling medium stuff, but I really feel like this guy is doing it.

Um, his name is Tom Kenyon, uh, he essentially funnels in, uh, these fifth dimensional beings made of light and sound called the Hathor's, which I know how crazy this sounds. And I know this is where I'm losing at least a percentage of you, uh, but I will say this. One of the reasons I really like Tom Kenyon, he, he does the, the, the Buddha thing, which is basically if you don't believe what he's saying or what he's doing, you know, have an imaginary box and everything you don't believe and, you know, it's too weird. Put it in that imaginary box. You don't have to believe it. Like it's the most important thing.

It's not a dogma. You're not being asked to, to, to, to, you know, join anything, but, uh, I got to tell you, I've asked for a lot of external validation about these Hathor's and they seem pretty legit. They're going to go there, suck it up the Hathor juice. Wow. That came out wrong. That is not how I meant to say it, uh, but I'm going to be there Sunday. So if you're around in the city, uh, we're also going to look at houses in the Hudson Valley. Going to be making that move soon, folks. So if you're in New York area, uh, come say hi, drop me an email. No@syncpodcast.com, uh, okay. Now we're getting to JR.

This is a long intro. I know. JR is a very, very interesting person. I've spoken to JR twice. This conversation is the second of those, um, and recorded it. Uh, JR works, like I said, with the, the love server member foundation, which is Ron Das's foundation and the be here now network, um, and also just has a very interesting story. Um, and he's young and where his path has taken him thus far, uh, his father passed away last July, um, which I can only imagine. I mean, I, I, both my parents are here. Thank God. Um, I really, I don't know what it's like. To lose, um, apparent, um, but this kind of took him on a path where he started experimenting in a very healthy way, I would say, with psychedelics starting with mushrooms and then LSD through some family members who kind of clued him in, um, has some cool rhombus connections there.

Um, and then fast forward a month later, he's in Maui talking to rhombus at lunch. So listen to how he got there. He also has some really interesting perspectives on video games, um, and just life in general, uh, one of these people who I think, you know, a lot of people will hear about someone like named Karole Baba, who is this magical mystery being just so interesting and they'll, they'll seek out a connection, um, which is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with, I mean, I think that's how it works for a lot of people. But then there are people who have these experiences kind of thrust onto them where they're not really asking, you know, consciously for anything, um, but all of these things start having them synchronicities, lots of stuff.

Um, and JR is certainly one of those people. And I like that because it's like, you know, you get to a point where you have all these direct experiences and you just have to kind of accept the fact that like, okay, something else is going on here. What that is, who knows, we'll see, um, but JR is definitely one of those people. So this was a very fun episode to record. I am going to shut up now, uh, thanks to everyone who is rating and reviewing synchronicity. I absolutely love that and appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who is donating. Don't feel shy. You're allowed to donate. I have an infant son. He's not really an infant anymore. He's like, uh, almost five months.

Um, and he's super cute. So, you know, like every donation gets like a sock or something. Uh, baby clothes and diapers. Uh, so, but seriously, thank you to everyone who has contributed in any nice way. You can join the synchronicity community and be entered in a book giveaway and a bunch of other cool stuff. It's not an email once a week. I try not to be annoying. Um, you can do that at syncpodcast.com. Um, but that's it. Without further ado, here is JR Morgan. Uh, thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Um, yeah. Also, I'm recording my microphone. Oh, great. So you said perfect. Perfect.

Yeah. Send it to me when we're done and that'll make it sound a lot better. Awesome. For sure. Cool, man. Uh, well, yeah, I mean, I know that we just officially met what like a week ago less, like a few days ago, not that long ago, but I, I was really impressed. I know it was just a conversation, um, due to both of us working with loves of remember Ramdas is foundation. Um, really not even particularly thrilling conversation. It was just about analytics. Um, but in the midst of that, you know, some interesting stories came out pretty organically. And I was like, you know what? I think you would be an excellent guest on the synchronicity. So thank you. Cool. Yeah. That conversation was interesting because I pretty much didn't say anything for about 30 minutes straight. I was just listening to you explain Google analytics. Uh, and then suddenly you're like, so how did you get into this? You know, I have, so I have a, I mean, one of the things I like about this show, at least for me is that I talk a lot. I like talking. It's fun. I don't think I'm particularly bad at it. So I like to talk, but this show forces me to ask questions and then kind of get out of the way as much as possible, which listening, I think is a skill that could benefit everyone. Um, but especially people like me who just kind of yammer on about all this stuff. So, okay, let's, let's get a little background on who you are. Um, I'm finding out much of this is the first time, uh, as our listeners because we don't know each other that well. So why don't you recount our connection? So like I said, we were having a conversation about analytics related to rhombos.org. How did you get involved with rhombos.org? So, uh, my father, I guess I'll have to give you more context than just like I went to Maui and met Rhonda's a little bit more. Yeah. Um, I, I guess my father got sick while I was in college. Um, it started out around the end of my freshman year. He was in an ATB accident and it broke. Um, like two vertebrae in his neck and his back. And you know, he, he wasn't ever quite the same after he had this weight loss surgery. Um, I guess it just made it hard for him to get proper nutrients or something like he wasn't, uh, getting as much as he was taking in. I think it was something like towards the end of his life. He had to get like 10 times the nutrients and all of a sudden one to get like normal caloric intake. But that, it got worse every time, I guess. Um, but that caused this issue when he was having the surgery to fix his neck. They put him under an anesthesia or whatever. And his, uh, things is like magnesium levels were low and he ended up actually dying on the table. And after that, he definitely wasn't the same.

And then it was just like a progressive, uh, spiral down. Um, you know, he, he had like a completely unrelated injury where he like slipped and fell on his leg and then broke his leg. And then when he was in the hospital, he got MRSA. Mm hmm. And then he got sepsis and pneumonia. Well, he got pneumonia. And then the MRSA and the pneumonia led to him getting sepsis. And he got through that somehow. And then he was back home and then somehow ended up in the hospital again in the whole thing repeated itself. And I guess that was, uh, the spring of 2015, um, that he was back in the hospital again. And I was really, um, I guess I started to grieve before he even died. And I didn't even know, um, at the time I was at school and we'd just been through so much in the last like three years of him slowly getting sicker and sicker. Right, right. My mom wasn't even telling me like what was happening. And but somehow I knew, you know, I just kind of, it just started happening. Like I started doing poorly in school, uh, for their reason stuff like that unconsciously or subconsciously, you're like picking into what's going on. Yeah. Yeah.

And, um, you know, he ended up passing away in July, um, midway through July of 2015. And I was in summer school at the time I was taking a calculus to over the summer at a university of Tennessee while all this was happening in Atlanta, Georgia and sorry. And, um, I guess when I moved back home after that summer class in August was when things really started to change. Um, I kind of had this feeling that things were going to change whenever my dad passed away. And I didn't know in what manner they would. Um, then that night that I came home from Knoxville, my brother and his friend had mushrooms and I decided to partake. And I'd never done them before at that point. I'd done a little bit of research on, uh, the subject matter. I actually met this one guy who was tripping on two CB in Knoxville and he was just like talking to me. Like he was currently tripping on it.

And I was like, what's it like, you know, I was just really curious and he was like, man, after you do LSD, you'll never view the world the same. That's true. Yeah. And I took that to heart. I was, I really wanted to know, uh, what the difference was, I, I asked him, I was like, is it like a bad thing or a good thing? Right. You know, and he just, he said it's a thing. Yeah. It's the right answer. Yeah. Yeah. And when he said that instantly my curiosity took over and I started watching stuff like DMT, the spirit molecule. I watched that on Netflix and then, um, I haven't read the book, but it's in my house. So, you know, I got interested in all that stuff and it just so happened that mushrooms entered my life right when I was out of school for a period of time hanging out with family, recognizing, you know, it lined up perfectly. And then I learned a few life lessons during that period of time of, you know, I inherited some money after he passed away and I learned, you know, money doesn't buy happiness really early on. And that was, that was nice. You know, like driving off the lot in a convertible and then just realizing in that moment, like, wow, I feel the exact same. I felt driving in my like little Saturn ion, you know, right, right. Totally the same and having that experience, um, I guess it led up to this. I guess it is just a ton of life lessons happening over and over and over again for me in the short period of time that led up to, um, me taking LSD right after Christmas and having this weird trip when we were watching, um, Bruce Almighty. Right. And I was just like hearing Bible verses and like, not knowing where I'd heard them before, but definitely having heard them. Um, and I told my cousin about it and then he gave me, uh, the book be here now because he'd, he'd had it for about two years, someone had given it to him. And it was bought at this used bookstore and he said he felt like he was supposed to give it to somebody and he never had given it to anyone. And he just carried it around in his bag and was struck for two years and gave it to me. And I didn't even know he gave it to me. I was like, I don't know, I guess I was really tired. We had just come home from Tampa that day or whatever. And I, I didn't even remember the conversation we'd had. So I woke up and there was just this book on my bed and I started reading it and it was all about LSD and the spiritual experience and then Ramdas going over to India and meeting this guru. And I was just like, I had to make like a conscious decision at that moment because I'd always been like a Christian, you know, yes. Yes. Yes. I was raised as a Christian and you know, I kind of had fallen into that trap. Well, not so much a trap, but I'd had a spiritual experience through Christianity and I didn't explore anything else. So I was just like, well, this worked for me that one time, you know, and then I was, I guess I was just hoping it would work again. You know, like, I don't know how I like, it's kind of hard to think about like what your logic was when you were like a long, like way far back.

Well, what's funny is, is that in my experience, you know, whenever you look back five, 10 years, like, oh man, how did I ever, why, why did I think like that? Or why did I act like that if I knew what I knew now? And then you actually do that 10 years past then too, when you look back, you're like, oh, I thought like I knew so much is going, I think when you get to the point, you realize like, you know what, I'm going to be continuously learning and experiencing my entire life. And yes, it looks like I didn't know a lot then. But who knows, in 10 years, it could look like, Oh my God, that was exactly what I needed and exactly fit into my life in the perfect way. So yeah, I totally know what you mean.

For sure. And hopefully this is that thing, you know, because it's only been nine months or so since the next part of the story where I move back to Knoxville after having Red Bee here now, and plan on going back to school and getting a job up there because I'd already signed the lease for the year to live in Knoxville. And then my dad passed away and the lease started in August. So like, I couldn't get out of it. So I wanted to stay up there and it just so happened that I had an extra room. So I brought my cousin with me because he needed somewhere to stay. Well, he had somewhere to stay, but he was looking to move, you know, and he'd have been homeless if he moved anywhere else. So it worked out really well that had an extra bedroom and he was able to stay and we were able to kind of like work on each other through our spiritual journey to kind of have like an immediate satsang. I was really surprised to find that a lot of people don't have any sort of like spiritual family at home and they only get it out of retreats. Well, I mean, I think because you grew up in the Christian atmosphere, which if you're born into that and have any, you know, any interest in religion, you're going to have a community that's there anywhere you go. You know, there's going to be a church community, there's going to be organizations. I mean, that's a big part of anything. So a lot of people who, you know, don't identify with one of the major religions or don't identify necessarily with the particular teachings of something that they've been exposed to and kind of go on their own path. It's incredibly common, less so now because there's conversations like this, there's places on the web and it's much more accessible than it was in the past. But I remember being in a not dissimilar kind of point in my path and just trying to understand this when I was, you know, from the ages of 15 to 18. So that's late 90s or early 2000s. So the internet was around, but it was still kind of in its fledgling thing. And I think God Arrowwood was there. I mean, it was that was around. But, you know, there was, it was tough to link people. And I remember talking about this and anyone unless they had picked up a book or listened to a talk by like Alan Watts or something like that, like it's very common that people feel isolated. And what you're talking about and just like actually having your family there, your cousin is hugely important, the concept of Satsang or Sangha or just a community that you can, you know, talk to and also have to get too far off on a tangent with this. That also applies to everything. Like I do like business mastermind meetings with some of my friends to talk about ideas related to business. If you can have people, a person or other people to bounce your ideas off and hear what they are, that's like really where the magic starts to happen.

It's this interesting time, like we're talking remotely here. We both warp remotely with organizations. But really like communing and talking and really being together in whatever way digital or otherwise is incredibly important. So I'm glad, I'm glad you touched on that. Yeah, it is important. I think that we all kind of build each other up, you know. And if one person's having a bad day and you know, their roommate happens to be like a Yogi or something, you know, they might be able to tune into that energy and kind of come out of it, you know. Totally. So I guess getting back to that story, Corey, my cousin, had moved up and that night we scored some LSD and we had a big party, I guess. And I guess I took a good bit. It was more than I've ever like tried to do again, you know.

Yeah, heroic dose. Yeah. I didn't even think it was heroic. It was only like 300 micrograms. Yeah. Back in the day, that's like a tad odd dose. But yeah, I know it's I mean 300 mics of a really good LSD is a genuine bonafide psychedelic trip. So yeah. Yeah, it was crazy, man. Like it's just weird going back and thinking that because that was like my first real trip. Like all the others were mild. It was like three people split and ate the mushrooms. Right, right. Low threshold. Like, oh, I see kind of something's going on. I get it, man. My first one was 900 micrograms of sunshine in San Francisco. So that was a nice little 18 hour journey. Oh my God. Yeah. So I guess everything was just kind of gold. Like, you know, I don't know if you know what that's like, but it seemed like all the colors bled together to create this holographic. And I was talking about, so you know what's interesting about that. I know exactly what you're talking about. So with Kundalini practices, which is like a Vedic, you know, it's essentially the premises that there's Shakti coiled up kind of like a snake from the base of our spine. It goes up and there's these nadis and this energy channels through. And I personally believe I had a Kundalini experience brought on by psychedelics once. And what you're talking about that gold sheen, where everything is I know exactly what we're talking about. It's like your what it is also, I think physiologically, is our pupils become very dilated. And, you know, you've taken a lot more than you would and especially regardless of the light around you from an esoteric standpoint or energetic standpoint, I do think that's Kundalini energy. There's a great book. I forget the name of it. I think the guy's name is Gopi Krishna. I think it's, I'll get the name. I'll put it in this podcast notes. He wrote a book. What happened was he's an Indian guy. And he basically opened up, he popped open all his Kundalini channel and it was an incredibly unpleasant, intense experience for like five years or something. Like he couldn't eat, he couldn't breathe, like everything he felt he was on fire, his family, like, you know, he's basically kind of like a Kafka esque transformation into someone who can't function in the world. And he eventually figured out what was going on and kind of got it under under control. But what he described, I think the first day or night he popped it open was this clear everything was brilliantly gold, like overwhelmingly so. So that's interesting you describe. I know exactly what you're talking about.

That's interesting. Yeah. So I had that gold on this pyramid shape and I was at like the head of the pyramid. And you know, I've heard from people that that's like the Godhead experience, you know, and I was hearing all these thing, like all these different humming vibrational sounds and they were really high pitched. I don't want to try to mimic it on the Skype, but it was really high pitched and they all came together to create this one high pitched noise. And as each one like got in sync per se, there was like a green light that lit up on the on the like lower part of the pyramid. And everything was just kind of happening, but it was all perfect. You know, it was the whole like bliss mixed with union of the universe. It was like a samadhi experience, I guess. And I don't, I didn't even know what that was. And I was like reading Ramdas books months later. And I still didn't even know.

Right. I made that realization like two weeks ago. No, I totally get it. I know that goes. And I guess that experience was then followed up with a full ego death trip where I saw my roommate as if he was like the one. And I saw the clear light behind him. And you know, I die. And when I wake up, he says, I'm even acting like a baby. You know, and after he leaves the room and I'm just sitting there like after dying, basically, I see all these lives flash before my eyes. And it's a complete third eye experience at this point. You know, the pyramid experience, my eyes were open and my hands were in a triangle. And that's the pyramid I was seeing. Sure. And in this other experience, my eyes were closed and there wasn't like light in the room, you know, the lights were off. And I was just sitting there and seeing all these different lives flash before my eyes. And I mean, I'm a Christian. So at the time, and I don't even know what like, I don't want to like call any of my beliefs now, like anything.

I'm not really sure, of course, about it all. But it's so crazy having this experience. And then, you know, I kind of skipped ahead, but there, there was a point right after the pyramid trip, where my friend was in the room. And I thought I was named Carlie Baba. And I was like, hugging him. And I kissed him on the forehead, you know, it's just like divine love. Right. I guess it's just so interesting having that experience, which then shot me forward into going to like group meditations and studying Buddhism. And I stumbled upon this book called The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary and Ram Das. And the third person that I can't remember Ralph Metzner. Ralph Metzner. Yeah. And I didn't even know what it was about. It just looked really cool from the covers. Yeah, it's about it. And then, of course, it's got the whole books about ego death and the psychedelic experience. That's right. That's when I realized what my trip was, was while reading that book, I was like, wait, this is what happened to me. And it's like broken up into the bardos. Like, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. So I mean, the way that I like experience this trip, and then was able to break it down, you know, months later, to figure out like different teachings, basically, that happened and be able to relate my experience to what these people are talking about in their ancient texts. It just worked out so perfectly. It's like a bunch of synchronicities, you know, just going off over and over again. It's true. And we were talking about in our last conversation, how those types of experiences, I think, are the most poignant, or some of the most poignant, because you're not inducing a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're not inclined to believe anything. You, in fact, sometimes I've had experiences where I don't want to believe actually the synchronicity of the moment, or that this is actually happening. And it comes from some place outside of yourself seemingly. Those experiences are what people refer to, I believe, ancient mystics and everyone who smart, smart, modern people. That's direct experience, right? You, you know, someone who doesn't believe in God, who hasn't had a divine-like experience, you could, you could give them 5500 million proofs. It doesn't mean shit until you actually experience what's going on and how you interpret that, which I think is a very, you know, subjective and personal experience and process. But those are the things that are so interesting. I've told the story all the time, like, where I used to tell the story of this guy who went to India and went to the Malias and gave this, this guru guy, LSD. I would tell that story literally. I mean, if it wasn't 9 times out of 10, it was 8 times out of 10, every time I tripped from when I was 15 years old until I was like 25 years old, had absolutely no idea who Rambas was. I knew of Richard Alpert, who had went there before, and the books I read, like Acid Dreams and Storming Heaven, had no idea who named Karole. Boba was, I then started working in a not-to-similar fashion to Love Server member, then pieced together throughout the years that I've been telling the story about this guy, that I'm working for this organization now. When I was in the Omega Institute, after kind of I had like a very, what I would call a profound spiritual awakening followed by a profound spiritual crisis and crash, I found myself at the Omega Institute and I'm walking in this library, it's the Rambas library, I'm like, I don't know who that is. And there's a statue, there's a little like thing of Maharaji and I just stare at him like, I don't know why I know this guy, but I feel like I know what this is, like this is something, I didn't know anything about anything we're talking about now, then looking back, it's like, holy shit, there's a thread that connects all this, those are the experiences like, okay, even if I don't want to believe in the guru sometimes, even if I don't want to believe that everything is connected, even if I don't want to believe in any of this other stuff, like I can't eliminate the things that I had experienced that put them together without me, any presupposition of knowledge. So yeah, I love that, I love that you've had those experiences too. Yeah, it's crazy. And I mean, my mom today posted on Facebook that she doesn't believe in coincidences, you know, and a synchronicity translates to a meaningful coincidence. Right. And when you take enough coincidences and you add them together, you start to take all this empirical evidence and it becomes much harder to refute it as something that's just coincidence. Right. No meaning behind it, exactly. Right.

I guess, I guess my whole life has had a bunch of synchronicities like that, that there is kind of a thread. I could go back to when I was four and my dad got me into video games and then I loved video games and he got me into programming when I was like nine, I was learning Java. Cool. Yeah, like, I figured out how to make websites and I ran on website author high school that was a really active forum. And just having those skills worked out so well when I eventually had this meeting with Romdas and everything just clicked, you know, like day one, I got to sit at the table with Romdas and he was by himself at the time, which never happens.

This is at the retreat, right? Yeah, like day one at lunch and I got to meet Raghu and got set up to meet Kelly and then I was working with Kelly doing some stuff later on in the retreat before like by day two, you know, and like three weeks later, Raghu's like, we need you to help with these podcasts and videos if you can do it. Yeah. Like, well, I've totally done YouTube channels I can help with websites too, like all this stuff I've done in the past that all of it was related to playing video games and programming, but it completely translates to podcast networks and running like websites that are WordPress based, you know? Totally. It's incredible. Well, talk about getting started kind of on this path, which is now these skills are valued professionally.

The same way that I basically fell into digital strategy is I used to run a personal blog on Blogger back in like 2005, six around then, and that led to me learning Google Analytics, right? That now is a very prized skill because it's basically determines how a website is working, which is what actually how we met talking about this stuff. Video games too. I mean, video games, I play a lot of video games, so I was just telling people recently, I was at the farmers market, my wife took a picture of it, but I'm like battling a kid in Pokemon at the farmers market and I look like an idiot just like tapping my phone like ridiculously. I really love video games and I think there's there's a few reasons I love them. One is from an early age, especially with games like Final Fantasy, some of these narrative driven role playing games, they're just really, really, really excellent works of art. Like if nothing else, no other mystical, no other relationship stuff, they're just really well produced things. People care about this. Secondly, I think there's a wonderful relationship between playing a video game, controlling these avatars as we do with controllers now and waking life and running our lives. People refer to like leveling up in life, you know, all of these things. There's even a game over in life. There's there's these parallels that run very, very close together and I think are intersecting, especially when you start to consider some of this VR stuff that is starting to come out and that's blurring the lines even physiologically how people interpret what's going on in a virtual world, how that actually relates to to life. So I, I forget at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about something you mentioned video games. Oh, because you're gaming headphones. I was like, what kind of headphones are those? So talk a little bit about why you love video games. What were so your dad got you into games? What were your first games you were playing? Um, I don't even remember the name of it.

It was this weird maze game and we were flying a little plane around and I don't know. It looked like we were in a space station. I have no idea. I just remember that being like the first game I played and then he liked to play Madden and CAA football games and all that. And I guess I was in fourth grade, my dad bought SOCOM US Navy Seals for PlayStation 2. Sure. And it came with a headset and I was trying to use the headset and I was like nine. So I was a little speaker talking in the chat and it was, it was great. But that got me started in online gaming and I, I really enjoyed playing SOCOM from like fourth grade until seventh or eighth grade. So I guess nine years old to 13 years old, I was pretty much addicted at points. Yeah, totally. It was so much fun. Yeah. You know, I had a clan and we got on into clan battles. It was, it was a blast. And then sometime in eighth grade, I got into playing guitar hero. And I just wanted to be good at it. I don't know. It looked like so much fun to play an expert. Yes. Yes. Yes. I started out on easy and I beat the game on easy and like one day and then I did medium. But then hard, you had to incorporate your pinky. And well, I guess you had to use your pinky on medium too. But like you had to slide really five buttons and with four fingers, it was kind of really complex if you didn't know what you were doing.

And I got really into guitar hero and I started getting to where like, I could get 100% on all the songs. I mean, that took actual like mindfulness and practice. You can't do that. Yeah. I mean, it's insane level of practice to like some of the songs you had to actually tap with like, you do the hammer-ons or like hitting it with like two fingers, you know, like on with your right hand. I don't even know. It was just insane. But that was really cool because it taught me the value in, you know, slowing it down and really going step by step to learn everything from like, a basic level. And you know, it helped me with my actual rhythm with real music.

I was going to say, I see a guitar. I think I see tablas. What do you, you play other instruments? Well, I got really inspired when I was in Maui and I bought a harmonium. Yeah, I got one after my second retreat to love the harmonium. So it's so much fun. It's really fun. I played it on mushrooms once that was really fucking nuts. That was, it wasn't a heavy dose. I probably took like two grams, but I was alone. It was during a work day, like on a Friday. I was like, cut a half day short. And I was like, Oh, I have this harmonium, you know, like I'll trip. Well, my, my, uh, I guess she was my fiance at the time is at work. And, uh, it was really pretty awesome. Pretty, pretty cool instrument. I have an interesting story about that. Yeah, let's hear it. So I was tripping on just like one tab of LSD with my friend Ryan. And he's going to love it because I've not mentioned him on the only two podcasts. But I met him in Knoxville at this group meditation thing. So here's another synchronicity. Sure. Second, uh, group meditation I go to on a Friday night. There's only like five people that are three people that ever showed up. And then me and Ryan both showed up to this one.

And afterwards, I was talking to him in the parking lot. And he asked me like, if, you know, how I got into Buddhism or whatever. And I showed him this book called Be Here Now. That was in my car. And he pulls out his phone and it's gotten him curly baba. That's the screen saver. And he's like, Oh, I already know all about that. So I was like, let's exchange numbers, you know, we'll hang out sometime. There was another group meditation at the same place on like Monday that a lot more people went to. And I invited him to come to that. And that was the only one he ever went to. But we ended up hanging out afterwards.

And we didn't really talk much, you know, or like stay in touch or anything afterwards. And I hit him up sometime after I went to that retreat in Maui in May asking him if he wanted to hang out. And he's like, Oh, I live in South Carolina now. So I was like, all right, whatever. And then in July, I went to Taos with Raghu and Saraswati for the bandara they did. Hanuman Jayanti. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, because we did how do Krishna for 24 hours. It was something else. Yeah, I forgot what it was for. Oh, guru, Pranema, exactly. That's what it was. Yes. And lo and behold, I like going to sit down in the temple room and Ryan is right there behind me in New Mexico. And I'm just like, what are you doing here?

And then he ended up driving home because he had road tripped out there and on the way through, I'd just gotten LSD like the day before. And he stayed at my house that night. And we tripped. And it was wonderful. It was a very pleasant night. And he was playing the tabla and just sitting there with like his ear up next to it, just hitting it in all the different ways you can. Yeah. It's just really interesting watching people on psychedelics. It is very interesting. It's exploring it. It's pretty interesting. I've had the pleasure of babysitting back in the day, a lot of my friends and people who would do it. And it is interesting.

I mean, you really get to see it. Honestly, the way I the only other correlation I could draw for it is I never understood when people were like, Oh, well, you know, you see, see the world through your children's eyes. Now I have a kid and I actually get what they're talking about when, like I'm pushing my son who's four months old in a stroller around the neighborhood, I can watch him experience like a tree or birds or like this car going by and you look at their eyes and you actually see like kind of what's going on. It's it's pretty nuts. The same thing for psychedelics. People are in that kind of like amazed all filled state and the way they interact with things can really give you insight into how they're experiencing stuff. I know exactly who we're talking about. It's great. Do you think that might have something to do with mirror neurons?

I do. I do think it has something to do with mirror neurons. I mean, I think obviously they're just now discovering what mirror neurons do and allow us to kind of experience like empathetic joy and things like that and even learning things like, you know, when a child sees, you know, you do something and then emulates it like there's obviously some connection going on there. Yeah, I mean, I do. I am I'm very much interested in the physiological connections between kind of the more esoteric kind of, you know, stuff that you can't really see or observe empirically. And I think hopefully, you know, as time continues to go on, that's explored more and more and it seems like neuroscientists are doing that. So yeah, I definitely do. That's awesome. Yeah, I kind of agree. We just did a podcast or I guess it wasn't a podcast, but it was a blog post. I'm here now network about mirror neurons and how you can feel empathy for someone just by observing their predicament. That's right. It's it's pretty. I mean, that's that's I think the goal. The more you can do that, the more you tap into the fundamental truth of the world and reality, which is we are interconnected. You touch the web somewhere there, it's going to affect it somewhere else. I mean, that's that's that's it's like a mystical and esoteric truth. That's hard to kind of remember as we go throughout our days and kind of get caught up in our own machinations and all these things. But yeah, I mean, I think the more you can I think it's moodita. I think is that's the poly word for it. That's basically sympathetic joy, right? Experiencing. And this is this is the hack. This really is a hack in life. If you can if you can learn to do this, this is amazing.

When you can genuinely feel happiness and joy when something happens, good to someone you know or someone you even don't know, you're pretty much going to be predisposed to be happy most of the time. And that's really pretty looking awesome. It means you don't actually have to be the person who won the lottery. You don't have to be the person who, you know, had a kid. You don't have to be the person who went on a great vacation. You can see the people having fun and be like, oh my god, that's so amazing. You know, that's a little cheat code for life. Yeah, I think having an open heart is part of that though. I know just from my perspective, the more open that my heart has gotten on this journey, the more I've been able to feel that for people. Otherwise, you know, if you're too stuck in your ego, you're not even going to see that someone's enjoying life, you know, if it doesn't pertain to you. It's totally true. I mean, I think this is the balancing act that we have to walk in modern society. The way to succeed quote unquote in the world, assuming you want the things that are presented to us as though we should want them is you, if you have an open heart, it can actually be a detriment, right? And people are, well, they hear you say something like, hey, yeah, open heart, that sounds great. But what happens when this is going on? This is, here's, here's my classic question. This is what I'm going to start asking people because I'm trying to reconcile it.

So I was reading a story in this book about this Tibetan master who actually like gave oral instruction to the Dalai Lama, kang kangaroo Rinpoche. Anyway, he's telling this story of he's going to this monastery and Tibet. This is before the Chinese invaded and he's walking up with his like teacher and these monks come running out there, coming running, flying out of the monastery. They're like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. And they're like, what, what? And they like, there's this ants right in front of them. Like, you're going to step on the ants. You're going to step on the ant. And he's highlighting that these people are so concerned for the well-being of all sentient beings that like, you can't even kill an ant. Right. So this is my issue right now.

We have an ant infestation problem in our house, right? They, they, they come from the kitchen, you leave something out too long. There's a whole swarm of them. So like, I'm basically like, I am ant Hitler. I am creating basically a horrible genocide for ants. And like, I'm aware of it. It's not just, I'm like, fuck these ants. So I have, fuck them. Like, oh, I'm sorry ants. I have to kill off like a thousand of you right now because you're doing it. So this is the kind of the, the reason I find this to be a particularly interesting question is this is how do you walk the line between being open-hearted, generous, compassionate, which I think you have to have some base level of extending that at all times. But doing it in a way that doesn't actually interfere, like it's one thing if I'm like, you know what, these ants are valuable people. Sorry, Alexis, my wife and Eli, we're going to have ants now. You know, and I was, I was reading like another story like there was this, uh, sadu who was like this enlightened being. And like, he let lice live on him. Like, he let them live on him because he didn't want to harm them. And he wanted to like, feed them. And like, he was doing it in a way that kind of made sense. But like, it was like, all right, I don't know if I need to get to the level where like, I, that's like too crazy. So, I bring this up because I know that for people listening, including myself, open-heartedness is such a critical, critical part of living a happy, meaningful, and fulfilling life. It's, it's totally important. But also having this wisdom to know when to do certain things and how to gauge like open-heartedness. If you're working with the sociopath, it can be a very dangerous thing, right? That person is going to take advantage of that situation in ways that isn't going to help you spiritually, them spiritually, anyone spiritually. So, I think the two things to remember when we're talking about this stuff is that yes, open-hearted, but also yes, discernment, wisdom. When those two things are combined, this is why I love the bhakti and Buddhism thing. To me, that's, that's a wonderful illustration of a key principle on Buddhism, which is the merging of emptiness and bliss, right? The bhakti is the bliss, and the Buddhism is the emptiness. And emptiness doesn't mean void in nothing. It means spaciousness more than emptiness. So yeah, I, I totally am with you. Open-heartedness is a prerequisite for experiencing what we're talking about sympathetic joy. I, I really feel like having an open heart, like you said, is core. And I kind of look at it whenever I, I guess the other day, I had to perform a massacre on these fleas that had taken over the trash can, and there was like little eggs or something. I don't know. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I had to kill them. And I, I even said a little prayer before. And I was like, please, like, I, I at least had to make peace with myself or the, the massacre that was about to happen. And, you know, I guess I look at it, like, it's the play of life. And there's even a Buddhist temple, the biggest Buddhist temple in the US in Colorado, they use pesticides. So I mean, if they can justify it, I can justify it on a smaller, much smaller scale. And also, you know, perhaps that aunt got put into your life to be killed for a reason. You know, maybe it's done its work here for whatever work and it does. I don't know, but you're talking about awareness too. That's the decider in this stuff. If you're doing these things with the awareness, it's not that there's necessarily a right or wrong, right? The karma for that aunt and for me could be that, you know, I am harming it in one way, but for a greater purpose. But the awareness that you're doing it in the first place is what I think is your king into, which is incredibly important. And Ramdas also talks about having compassion for suffering. So when you see somebody suffering on one level, you see it's horrible. But on another level, you see it's completely perfect and it's just happening and it's required for them to move further on in their spiritual work in some way, right? So you can have compassion for the aunt as you slaughter it. Yeah, you know, like it's painful. Like it hurts to do it, but just because it hurts to do it doesn't mean that like that's right. You're not going to do it.

So this is another interesting thing. So in Buddhism, and especially in Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana, they're half of the deities are wonderful, loving, beautiful gods and goddesses. And then the other half are wrathful and they're not wrathful because they're assholes. They're not wrathful because they're evil. They essentially, and they have swords and they're cutting up what those really represent is cutting through ignorance using that strong, basically, Vajra compassion, this wisdom compassion to cut through ignorance and delusions, which is, you know, in any given situation, the seeds of that can exist. So yeah, I mean, this is this is really, this is good important things to be discussing because I know a lot of people, I know this from social media, right? I ran Rambas's social media page and I trained my buddy who's running it now and all these other ones for a lot of these big teachers. And what you were just talking about, there's a post on rhombas.org Raghu is going to love this. We're talking about rhombas.org. You know, we, there's a post that's, it's all perfect. And it's exactly what you described. It's, Rambas was having trouble with something he went to Maharaji. He couldn't understand why there'd be this suffering in the world. And Maharaji basically says, listen, it's all perfect. Like the suffering does have a place too. There's a reason it's happening. It's not meaningless. So I'll post that. We used to post that on social media. And immediately, immediately, you will see one in the first comments. Oh, yeah, well, it's all perfect. How do you explain starving in this country? How do you explain genocide? How do you explain terrorism? And what it obviously is more than anything else. This is why I love these types of things is it shows you where that person is at more than anything else. And you could have a discussion. You can try to attempt to say, well, listen, it's not saying that this is a good thing that this is happening. But they're saying that there is potentially reasons for this. And it may be beyond our conception to understand, which is not the lazy man's way out to say, well, I don't have to think about this anymore. But it's to broaden our perspective to see that maybe our limited viewpoints on what's going on isn't the full picture. But I like that these things kind of draw this out of people because there's there's one thing I fundamentally believe it's before embarking on any major work to help in the outside world. Start with yourself. Start with this. You have to start at home. You have to make sure that when you encounter situations that are going to be difficult, especially if you're trying to help in a large scale on any way, if you don't deal with your own shit, your own shadow elements as Jung would put it, you're gonna be for a rocky fucking ride. You're in for a rocky ride no matter what. Life is a rocky ride. But if you're not dealing with the things that are there anyway, it's tough. So yeah.

Man, yeah, that's very true. I feel like when I embarked on this journey, I guess, if you could say I started on it about January of 2016, it was really weird because I'd never done really any work to open my heart. So whatever was open was just from my upbringing and where I was at naturally. Related to Christianity, because I remember telling me another you had visceral spiritual experiences. I did have a yeah, I had a couple prior to this experience that I guess these experiences that started this year. The first one being when I got baptized, you know, it was just a really small thing. But we'd done this car wash that day and I'd had flip flops on and the chemicals like made my feet swell up. And whenever I got baptized the moment I got dunked back, my feet were completely back to normal. It was crazy. Yeah. And then the other experience was, and I guess that happened when I was 11. So for age context, there I was 11.

And then when I was 14, right up my birthday, going from 13 to 14 was another spiritual experience induced through, I guess they did this, people getting saved by Jesus thing, like people stand up and they accept their savior. I wasn't even paying that much attention. I kind of went into a trance. And then when they said stand up, I just stood up and then I was like one of only five people. And it just felt it felt natural. But at the same time, I felt like I wasn't paying any attention, you know, and I just stood up and, you know, not everyone stood up. And I understand what's happening. And like, suddenly I was overcome with emotion and tears and crying. People in my small group were crying. There's like six of us out of 12 that were just in tears. It was a crazy experience. And that always gave me that kind of peace. My mom calls it the peace of Christ. But it's that peace that pass, you know, it's passed everything that you can understand. Somehow, you still have this peace about you that amid all the chaos, you're still floating along.

I'm familiar with the peace of Christ, which is, I was born Jewish. I didn't really study anything about Jesus, but I had a couple of psychedelic experiences where I really feel like I tapped into Christ consciousness overwhelmingly. So, and I know that peace. And I think that Jesus and Christian mysticism and the parts of Christianity that aren't, you know, politically and susceptible to corruption are some of the most beautiful teachings we have period in ever in the history of what we ever know about religion and philosophies. I mean, Christ is regardless of whether you think Christ was a real person, I happen to, or whether you think he's a prophet or a saint, I happen to.

There's some really good stuff there. And I think that energy that you're talking about and your mom refers to is the peace of Christ. I do think that's a real thing. I mean, I think that's something that carries over. And if you look at it the right way and you do enough investigation, internally, externally reading, meditation, I think you pretty much tap into that this is something that transcends all philosophies and religions. And any religion that would specifically say, well, no, this isn't like this in other places, you know, investigate. That's what I would say. Just investigate because I don't think like you said, well, you know, this current path, this is maybe a new permutation of your path. Maybe a new maybe you were a caterpillar before and now you have a butterfly or maybe not whatever it is, whatever metaphor you want to use. This is something that I think is these seeds are born in us, like they come with us as a package. And if the conditions are around to kind of have this stuff grow, they'll manifest and grow. So I think you've probably been on this before birth, as evidence also by your trip where you're seeing all these past lives. Yeah, no, right. Yeah, I don't know. I must have some connection to name Crowley Baba in the past. I don't know. And I mean, he said, Hanuman and Jesus are the same. Same thing. You know, you can go out on a limb and make claims that some people think name Crowley Baba is an incarnation of Hanuman. Absolutely. And I mean, ultimately, when I was reading Be Here Now the first time, I just interpreted name Crowley Baba as Indian Jesus. Like, as like, all right, I mean, I've always, I'd always had the issue of like, why do all these religions have reincarnation?

This religion that I was culturally brought up and doesn't incorporate it, and they say this guy came down and is the son of God, and there are no other sons of God. That's it. Like, they've, I mean, they put themselves in a box at that point, like, the Abrahamic religions all did that. And I think it was more, from my understanding and just reading about this stuff, it was less to do with the philosophical and transcendental aspects of the religions and more to do with the cultural and societal implications of these patriarchy dominated societies that, you know, also had a lot to do with agriculture and kind of just shaping the world. They started taking over. And the first thing they started doing is they kicked out all the goddesses. And they said, there's no relationship between masculine and femininity. The only relationship is men are better. This is dominant.

We don't want this stuff because a lot of the priests class, especially in Christianity and Judaism, all this stuff carries down to all of Islam. There was danger in femininity. I mean, if you look at, look at the, the reposition, one representation of the feminine divine in Hinduism is Kali. That's a scary fucking thing. We don't know what it means. That's a destructive force that can really fuck with order and, you know, logic and all of these things. You know, I think that aspect of Christianity had probably more to do with cultural and societal implications. I mean, if you look at what Jesus said, a lot of what he said does not line up with any of the other stuff in the Bible. It's almost like directly like the Yahweh, Old Testament stuff like, you know, it's, it's tough to reconcile those two things, this, this message of love and peace and harmony. It's like, Oh, yeah, but you're going to die if you do this. Are you gay? We need to stone you. Sorry. That's, that's our, that's our, that's our compassion. So that's an important distinction because I, I think there's so many beautiful things about Christianity, just so many really awesome. And I think that's why it's still to this day is a very popular religion, is there's some real truths and beauty there. It's just when it's mixed and conflated with all these other things, you can kind of get like a nasty weird replication of it that doesn't really represent what it is. Yeah. And the replication that we have of it right now is unfortunately being used the same way that religion has been used throughout time. And it's, it's used politically.

Right. And that's what's really, that's what makes me have an issue with it. And maybe I'm just against the establishment too much or whatever, you know, it just when things get changed in the book to make things work better politically, it takes like devalues the religious text for me. And I really loved, I guess Gandhi said it best, like, I love your Christ, but not your Christians. You know, I, I never connected with Christians. And I was in a Christian fraternity. And I was in small groups and high school and going to church all the time. And I did sports and was in the like, FCA, I guess, like the fellowship of Christian athletes. And I just never connected with them because I honestly felt like I was being judged on like my decisions, because I didn't agree with everything in the Bible. Right. I would be open about that. And it's just like, you know, it's you're challenging people's egos more than any. That's what it is is when someone says, Hey, I'm JR. I believe in this. I'm Noah. I believe in this. This is who I am.

This is what I do. You have two options. You can believe that story is totally true. Or you can say, when I look at this, these things who I think I am, I mean, psychedelics are very helpful for this meditation is very, very helpful for this. It dissolves these conceptions of ideas of what is actually going on. But if you're in the world and you have identified, especially when faith is involved with a tricky thing when beliefs are involved, where it's like if someone insults your mother or your family, people are you're going to get upset. Like this is my mom. How dare you? How dare you do this? You're identifying with something and then you're susceptible for the grasping and aversion that comes along with that, especially when it comes to, I mean, the funniest thing to me about this JR is there's a new brand of atheism that's about, which is hilarious to me because it's basically religion. These people are so utterly against all manifestations of religion or faith or anything. They're 100% sure there is no God. They're not agnostic. They know there's no God and they're basically acting like a religion. They're saying, we know this. And you say, well, no, I believe in God. Well, you're an idiot. You're an idiot. There's no way there could be a God.

It's like, well, you're acting just like the thing that you don't that you hate. Like you can't be certainty. There's no certainty here in this. Like, you know, as much as I've read and I tend to take these people who seem very wise and very smart and I use my direct experience and I use my intuition, I believe there's life after death in some way. I don't know exactly what it resembles, but I'm confident on it. That being said, I don't remember dying the last time. So I can't say this is exactly what happens. And I would never go and say, well, when you die, this is exactly what happens. You can say, well, the Tibetan Buddhist believe this is what happens. The Hindus believe this is what happens.

You know, Egyptians believe this is what happens. But there's no, there's this rigidity that comes with identifying with things that can really make it counterproductive to trying to grow and evolve and understand this as best as we can. So I'm not surprised you encountered that, you know, a phrase that I think is incredibly important with all of this stuff when discussing this is, you know, always be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it seems like you pretty much did that you believe in Christ, there's still something there. And I think that's important to kind of relay because I, you know, I'm sensitive to how religions are discussed, because I think there's validity in almost every single religion. I haven't encountered something where I'm like, nope. Boak, maybe Scientology. Is that really a religion? Maybe there's like a few things where it's like, okay, I don't know about that definitely seems way off. I don't think 747s were in space, just saying. But you know, for the most part, I do think there is validity in all religions. And I think that's, that's important to honor. I think a really important thing that every religion has is mythology. And I think then the problem is where people get the purpose of the mythology mixed up with the substance of it. So when you are told Noah was, or I guess Noah was on the ark or whatever, right? And you don't have to take that literally.

What the story is doing is it's painting a picture that your imagination can create, because that is how we can manifest God in our own minds, is to use our imagination to create it. So when you have these stories that point you in the direction of some esoteric truth, that's really what's happening through the mythology. And Hanuman and Ram and Krishna and all the Hindu gods and all that, like, I don't know who they were, if they're talking about real people or not. But what's important is the story and the concept of the, I guess they call it Guru Purnima, or not Purnima, Guru Kripa. And that's, that's kind of like Christianity. It's surrendered to the Guru. This isn't everything. This is, I was reading this last night into Benton Buddhist book called Beyond Death, that the practice that a lot of people resort to ordinary and advanced is at the moment of death, they picture their Guru about a foot above their head or in their heart center. And that's the easiest way to kind of ensure a favorable birth, because it's something you can do. And the Tibetans do a very intense Vajrayana practice where they basically visualize down to like the very detailed of details. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah.

You know, it all breaks down to the same kind of concept. And, you know, there's a lot of different spiritual practices out there. And people interpret things differently, like shamans talk about spirits, helping spirits that come to them and they have all these different ideas. But I ultimately feel like it's all coming from within the higher self. And these spirits are like, they may be portraying themselves as external, but you know, if we're all connected in one, it's still somehow internal as well as... Yeah, that's right. They're manifestations of mind, if you're looking at it from one perspective. And I am of the belief, I don't know this, but I do believe that these gods and goddesses, even going to Greek gods and goddesses, I do believe that these are actual realms that exist out there. I think almost anything that can be imagined exists fundamentally somewhere.

And this level of 3D reality? No, probably not. That being said, I do think those spirits or angels or, you know, subconscious archetypes, I do think they interact with our world. I think they're below our threshold of experience. So we can't say with certainty, oh, well, there's Hanuman. You just jump out of that door. There he is. But I've heard from a lot of people, even who've written into the show, who tell me things they experience in their dreams, weird synchronicities of seeing stuff. So I think these things overlap. But I think what you're talking about is, again, incredibly important, the juice behind myths and mythology, the symbols and the things, the lessons that they tried in part. Like, this is a fact. People learn through narratives. That's why some of the most successful people in modern and ancient culture were some of the best storytellers, whether they're musicians, artists, orders, whatever it is. It's a very that's like with the, you know, Joseph Campbell and the monomyth, the hero's journey. That is a tried and true thing that is identified all over the world independently because it is how we kind of interact with this world. Because if you think about it, most of what we're doing all day long is telling ourselves stories. Well, this is who I am. This is where I am. This is what I like. This is what this person did. This is why they did it. And it's something that we just naturally have seemed to have built into us. And if you conflate that with literal things that are going on, like Noah was 700 years old, well, maybe there was a no 700 years old, but I don't think the story of Noah's Ark is necessarily that there was all these animals in the boat. It was that something happened. There was a reason it happened, and there's a lesson in it. So try to figure out what the lesson is rather than saying, oh, okay, we're literally interpreting this. There's no dinosaurs or we lived with dinosaurs because we empirically it says that in the Bible. It's like, okay, maybe not. Maybe not.

Okay, I'm going to cut this off. We're going to have another podcast. I think we can do some really interesting things because I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's just been like an effortless back and forth, which I love. But I'm going to end with four questions. It used to be one. Now there's three little quick ones and then one at the end. So first question, what's your favorite color? Oh, see that my culture influences already because I want to say orange because I went to university at Tennessee and the balls. Yeah. I guess I go with like my actual favorite color that I think looks best on things is kind of like a light blue. Nice. Nice. What's your favorite number? Two. Cool. Very cool. What is your favorite animal? My spirit animal I was given as a joke by my fraternity was a giant otter. But I'm going to go with just a just a plain old. No, I want to say dog, we're going to ask that question again because I want to say dog, but I know that like my real favorite animal is probably a koala bear. There you go, koala bear. We got to it.

It's hard though because you know, I just love all the different animals. I know it can shift. I'll ask you again. We'll see if it's still koala bear. Okay, last question. Offer or share a practical tip that has helped you in your life that you think would benefit listeners. Probably one that I need to practice more of is just always going back and checking over what you've done. So like if you have to turn in a project or something for someone just like making sure that you go back and like double or triple check it is really important. Like I think I sent Raghu the wrong video link like three times in a row or something and I've been very mindful ever since then of ensuring everything is perfect before I click send in the email. It's a really good practical tip. It's also when you do that you can find I think when you review things maybe if it's just a link or something it's not the same. But when you write an email if you review it a couple times before you send it you may pick up on a tone sometimes that you didn't intend to have because something was going on or you were experiencing. So I like the reviewing and checking is a very good practical tip. JR this has been super duper fun. We're definitely going to have to do it again and I think we should talk about some other stuff too because that's a lot of synergy and crossover what's going on. So thank you so much for coming on.

[Music] Now existence you see is something that is spontaneous. The Chinese word for nature means that which happens of itself. Your hair grows by itself. Your heart beats by itself. You breathe pretty much by itself. Your glands secrete the essences by themselves. You don't have voluntary control over these things. So we say it happens spontaneously. So when you go to sleep and you try to go to sleep you interfere with the spontaneous process of going to sleep. Try to breathe you know real hard and you find you get balled up in your breathing. So if you go to be human you just have to trust yourself to have bowel movements and go to sleep and to just your food of course if something goes seriously wrong and you need a surgeon that's another matter. The by and large the healthy human being doesn't right from the start of life needs surgery or interference and he lets it happen by itself. So with the whole picture that is fundamental. You've got to let go and let it happen because if you don't you're going to be all clutched up. You're going to be constantly trying to do what can happen healthily only if you don't try. But we have a strange anxiety but if we don't interfere it won't happen.

Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble. But the basis of it all is this. If we say you must survive or I must survive life is earnest and I've got to go on. Then your life is a drag and not a gang. Now it's my contention my personal opinion this is my basic metaphysical accident show we did it that way. Doesn't exist. The physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn't going anywhere. Don't you say he doesn't have some destination that it ought to arrive at. And thank you for listening past the music dear listener. A reminder there is what you just heard is the Alan Watts clip that I played. If you're interested in any way shape or form of either being an affiliate getting this discount. If you're interested in being an affiliate for the store send me an email. Noah@syncpodcast.com and we'll talk about it. If you're interested in getting that 30% discount from the Alan Watts shop go to syncpodcast.com/watts. Enter the code sync as YNC at checkout. You got 30% off. Bing, bang, boom. So yeah that's it. Next week stay tuned for the episode with Robert Wagner part two on lucid dreaming. Seriously it's a doozy. It's awesome.

But that's it. Really. Officially. Thank you, and I will see you next week.