What is the Nature of Reality? with John Vervaeke

In this week’s episode of Waking Up with Brooke Sprowl, my guest, cognitive science researcher Dr. John Vervaeke and I explore topics such as the fundamental nature of reality, non-dual awareness, the practice of overcoming self-deception, transjectivity, relevance realization, optimal grip, neoplatanism, self-transcendence, complications of AI, and the necessity of a spirituality that is scientifically rigorous.

 For the latest updates, offerings, and ponderings visit www.brookesprowl.com

Transcript

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[Music] welcome to on living my name is Brooke Sproul and today we have a very special  

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guest a personal hero of mine Dr John  vervaki John welcome thank you Brooke 

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

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as well we get started on that thank you  I'm um I'm John rovicky I'm a professor   of cognitive psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto  

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I'm also the author of a YouTube series called Awakening from the meeting crisis I  

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

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nature of the Consciousness the nature of  the self often with I think every time with   Greg Enriquez and usually somebody else um and I um and so I do a lot of work  

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um using cognitive science to bridge between the scientific world view and uh spirituality  

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the pursuit of meaning the cultivation  of wisdom and how people are  trying to respond to the meaning crisis yes  and John 's well instrumental in my personal 

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Spiritual Development and so I'm  eternally grateful to you for just   the concepts ideas and the work that you've done that has helped guide my process and  

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and inquiry so I'm so honored  to be speaking with you today  um one of the things that struck me  from our last conversation was something  

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you said about mindfulness you said mindfulness is frame awareness that   allows us to get an optimal grip on our temporal spatial and social awareness yes  

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so talk about what optimal grip means uh so optimal grip is a notion uh from  

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Marlo Ponte and uh he talks about the fact that whenever we're trying to  

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pay attention to something and perceive it or conceive it I'll use a perceptual example  

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um like like say here's my phone right um there it what we're always doing is  

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we're trading off between things uh so  for example there might be I need maybe 

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there's a scratch on my screen I need to  be really close right and I zoom in on a   feature but then I lose the ability to sense the whole if I pull back because  

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I want to see the whole phone I may not  be able to read what's on the screen and  right and so I'm constantly toggling  between them depending on the relevance  

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to the frame I'm in and remember the frame your mental framing is what   you're ignoring is irrelevant what you're  what you're bringing into awareness as 

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relevant and you're constantly uh toggling  between all these various trade-offs think  

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

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um all the ways you can imagine using  it and what your cons constantly doing   is you're trading between all of those in a way that's relevant to your framing of the  

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situation which is how you're making  what you're trying to find how you're  trying to make sense of the situation  and so you're always trying to get an  

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optimal grip so in mindfulness what you do is normally we're not aware of that   mental framing it's transparent because  you're becoming aware of it and that 

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

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through your glasses and looking at them  to try and get sort of an optimal grip  translucency so that you're well  fitted to uh the world you're in  

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in a particular situation around and there's usually almost always those three dimensions   uh the temporal the spatial and the social beautiful yeah understanding framing has  

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been a really important part of my Awakening and understanding that our   sense of separation from the world is  actually a frame a perceptual frame a 

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

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

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

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

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um and then with the Cartesian Revolution  following upon Copernicus and Kepler   there was the idea that we're actually trapped behind sort of  

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how we're framing the world and we're representing uh we're trying to get   representations from inside our  frame about outside the world 

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

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

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made it into two Realms the inner  subjective realm and the external   objective realm and then the project has been well how do we possibly connect  

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subjectivity and objectivity together  and this has been very very problematic  and it hasn't stayed as sort of a  philosophical idea or problem within  

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Ivory Towers it has permeated the culture because people are really  

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wrestling with how how does how does this scientific model of the world and my  

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inner experience how do they possibly mesh and work together I feel very   disconnected from myself from other  people from reality and so that's the 

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

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come to a place where I think the science  broadly construed to include philosophy  and other things has uh there's been a  long-standing recognition that we have 

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

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well I mean the one practice is is sort of phenomenological philosophy uh where  

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you're trying to practice phenomenology you're trying to really get into the  

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the structures of your experience when  you're making sense and you know and and  and see what's actually at work so  for example when you do that and  

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this this is influenced by Marlo Ponte and my my uh my friend and colleague Evan Thompson uh when  

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you do this you realize the body has a very special place   um so for example your body is both an object like all the other objects uh  

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but it's also you and it's part uh right of who and what you are and and what's really weird  

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about the body is whenever you're touching something you're also being touched   uh and so what you realize is wait I'm living this in my body and my body is neither  

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cleanly objective nor cleanly subjective and so what I want to do that that phenomenology brings  

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that into awareness and then  I want practices that really  bring that to life like Tai Chi Chuan uh  in which I'm moving my body in a mindful  

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fashion I'm getting into the Flow State I'm feeling very connected and I'm both   touching and being touched because when  you move for example when you're when 

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

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feeling as well as projecting uh like projecting Force um so uh and of course doing  

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the the meditation and the contemplation which constantly make you aware of the fact that  

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actually these two are deeply linked my my contemplative  

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awareness into the world and my meditative awareness into myself continually uh reflect  

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

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literal space you're inside some space  and that's because you're internalizing   the world but when you're in there you also get right you get aware of right  

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how how that world is being shaped for you and and so you internalize the world  

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but you also indwell the World by how you fit yourself to it and so the   meditation and the contemplation make  you aware of it most importantly perhaps 

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our dialogical practices biological  practices make you aware of the   reality of other Minds that are shaping information separate from you and really  

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make you beholden to the fact that the objective and the subjective are deeply  

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into penetrating in something like  dialogue so those are some of the   practices that help do that how does the last thing you said relate to what you  

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defined as transjectivity lasts  in our last conversation ah so 

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

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that the world is intelligible um  you realize that that intelligibility 

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isn't like a property of you  subjectively or just of the  

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world objectively but how you're bound to the world so intelligibility is very analogous  

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

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

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think where think doesn't just mean run  things in my head but also move around  and navigate my environment and uh catch  a football Etc and so the idea is is 

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that intelligibility like adaptivity  is neither subjective or objective   but binds them together which is transgactivity and the reason why  

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you want to think about this is without  intelligibility there's no realness and 

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intelligibility is ultimately  transgactive and also uh not only   intelligibility but in truth truth is neither subjective nor objective but  

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precisely how the subjective and  objective are bound together in a  transgative fashion and this of course  was made uh very famous by uh Heidegger's  

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notion of alothea and so the these these practices this is  

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an argument that Clark makes and his  amazing book explore Explorations and  metaphysics these dialogical practices make you  directly aware of transjectivity at the heart of 

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

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

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the subjective or the objective because  it is what grounds both and grounds the  relationship between both of them and  and dialogical practices are a flowing 

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

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

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

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practices and then you do them in  a in an alternating self-organizing   dialogical fashion then you can they can break like almost like stereoscopic Vision you  

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go from meditation and contemplation into this non-dual and I think what the non-dual is why  

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it's experienced they're so real and  so profound is it's it is the ground 

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of adaptivity intelligibility of  subjectivity and objectivity of Truth so 

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

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

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can you define trans activity so  transjectivity is that which is 

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

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

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that's quite profound um well I I hope so um I I I'm not claiming that's my idea in  

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

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

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

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um so it's got significant provenance  and I think It ultimately goes back   uh to a neoplatonic understanding of cognition and and as you said I think  

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also in eastern Traditions that also get  access to non-duality that's what it's  pointing non-duality is non-duality is  the realization of realization which is 

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

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by you that's sort of related to what  we're talking about I heard in an   interview once that Consciousness is a fundamental uh ontological substrate  

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of reality and for me that has really  profound kind of day-to-day implications  if it's true I was curious if you'd  given that any thought I've given that  

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a lot of thought I'm going to be talking to Donald Hoffman on Sunday and uh uh   now I actually I actually uh reject that notion that Consciousness is fundamental  

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um I think that Consciousness  is inherently transjective  um I think part of the problem we  understand Consciousness is in here  

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um where Consciousness is properly between you because we could we   tend to concentrate on introspective  Consciousness as somehow prototypical of 

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

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introspective it's it's prospective  right in an important way and of   course your conscious of the past which is neither in you nor in front of you but some  

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somehow behind you and so uh I think of Consciousness as  

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a higher order form of this more basic process of relevance realization I have  

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

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questions about Consciousness the video  that I recorded at the Consciousness and   conscience conference where I bake this argument about I think that your core  

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cognitive ability is this relevance  realization ability a lot of it's going  on unconsciously for example you're  somehow picking up on relevant 

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sounds and making relevant Connections in  memory so that the noise is coming out of   my face hole are becoming ideas in your mind and you have no idea  

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no awareness of how that's happening  there's all this relevance realization  going on and but some of it comes into  your working memory and working memory 

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

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

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holding things in mind it's also  designed to screen out irrelevant   information and enhance relevant realization but I think when the  

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unconscious relevance realization comes  into working memory and we get this we 

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

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those connections between how  we're sizing things up and how   we have a perspectival awareness of them I think that that's what Consciousness is when you make  

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consciousness of fundamental property  you then face really difficult  problems of okay if Consciousness is a  fundamental property and all of these things  

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

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intelligence and allows me to do insight  and to experience Wonder that's clearly not   happening in the chair or the sofa so then I have the problem what's  

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the relationship between the universal  Consciousness and my Consciousness and  that doesn't seem to be any better  than what's the relationship between  

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my Consciousness and a non-conscious reality there's a longer argument   there and I don't want to burden you  with it but I think what people are 

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I think people are genuinely  arguing that like Bernardo Castro   look like have a lot of respect for um but I think when people say that it  

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means something really powerful to them  I think what they're more likely saying  is consciousness is starting to disclose  to them the fundamental transjectivity 

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

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non-duality is fundamental  then Consciousness can't be   fundamental this is platinus's point because Consciousness is inherently dualistic I'm  

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conscious of that there's a subject and an object in Consciousness and  

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when so if you think that reality is fundamentally non-dual what you're  

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probably saying about Consciousness I  I'm trying to be I'm being presumptuous  here but it's something like oh I'm now  conscious of like non-duality I'm conscious of 

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

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

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non-dual is also conscious I would argue  sorry that was a long answer to a really   thorny question I hope it made at least wasn't just garbled nonsense not at all  

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it takes me back to what you said about  intelligibility though and I wondered 

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

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of intelligence and then how does that  relate to what we're just talking about   in terms of Consciousness right so I think that's a good question uh and again  

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I would say that you have to think  of the the transgative relation of  intelligibility is primary and then there's two  poles to it one poll is intelligence and the other 

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is uh like this structure uh the order that also grounds and makes intelligibility possible and  

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we the problem is we tend to use  the word intelligibility for both  of those the relation and the fact a  property of the world so I'm trying to 

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

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

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capable of generating intelligibility  in partnership with intelligence 

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yeah and that's where there feels it  feels like this relationship between   Consciousness though and existence and there's a way in which things are all  

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interdependent yes and objects are in  some way and I don't understand this at 

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all really but what it seems what seems  to be true based on some of the kind of   quantum physics stuff is that there's a way in which we we don't exist without the  

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world and the world doesn't exist without our  Consciousness on some level do you believe that 

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there's a way in which that makes sense  and then there's a way in which you have   to be very careful about it uh because you don't want to say things like and  

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um you know that well that means the world didn't exist when there was no   human beings and that's quantum physics  does not want to argue that most Quantum 

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physicists would say no that that  doesn't make any sense so we're   the quantum mechanics has to be integrated with the best cosmological explanations we  

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have the big bang relativity uh Etc and so you don't want to say that  

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the Universe can't pre-exist human  consciousness this is another reason why  I don't think Consciousness is fundamental  um but you you do want to say things like  

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Consciousness again it's it's not here and and pointing to something  

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there it's bound up with it like my hand is when it like my hand takes the shape of and  

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

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not take up very much quantitatively  in the universe we're very small   compared to all the all the stuff we're qualitatively really important  

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because we have this capacity through  our Consciousness and our intelligence  to disclose properties of the world  that are not otherwise disclosable 

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

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

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

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

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

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Franca philosophy uh of the Silk  Road integrating East and West 

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

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cognition and Consciousness are fundamentally  operating that gives you sort of a grammar  

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of how we make sense of things and what that  

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you then in a choice you you say that fundamental grammar either   fits something a fundamental grammar in  reality they co-participate in the same 

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grammar or they're they're orthogonal  to each other or separate from each   other if you take the second and there's a much longer argument about this so I'm just  

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can we get just you're sort of Trapped  in sort of solipsism the only mind you 

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could possibly know that exists is yours your  in skepticism you can't really know anything   about the world and this is a radically impossible like thing  

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to live you'll just be performative  contradiction moment after moment or you 

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

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co-shaping and co-participating between the grammar of intelligence and  

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the grammar of the world such that  intelligibility is always possible and  then once you have that view you get  the sense of how we can be we can re-see 

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

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levels of intelligence and Consciousness  we are correspondingly disclosing levels 

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of reality and that that means not only are we woven together in contact with we're not  

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alienated from uh reality we are in a transformative relationship with it we  

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can right we can Ascend we can move up in a by cooperating correctly with  

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the world if I can put it that way we can move up these Mutual disclosures of levels  

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of the self and levels of reality and I think that's the fundamental   project of of spirituality and I think there's important ways in which that's analogous  

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to you know uh Traditions from the East that are similarly as comprehensive like Zen the way Zan  

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integrates taoism and Buddhism and  Shinto but I won't make that second  argument but the basic idea  is once you get this view 

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

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

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

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this mutually accelerating disclosure  self-transcendence the other is is also   being a fort right so you can fall deeply in love with reality again  

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um and that to me I think is the heart of spirituality now if you could do that  

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in a way that is philosophically  intelligible and scientifically  legitimate then I think you have powerful  resources for responding to the meaning crisis 

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

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

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material meaningless world and a genuine  encounter with spirituality opens up 

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

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idea Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah from  Christianity which I actually   hate because I didn't experience it like that I experienced it as this like anthropomorphized  

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uh God this this yeah in my head  you know that old saying what 

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was it uh I realized I was God because  I realized I was praying and I was   just talking to myself it was like that was my experience of it was having a conversation  

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with some intellectualized  kind of um Bible in infused uh 

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

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

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this experience of partnership and  conversation with the sort of imaginal   Realm yes yes so talk about the imaginal realm and are you how familiar are you  

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with humans work I do a lot of work on  the imaginal I'm both uh the sense drawn  from Corban and more recently from a a  very similar distinction by Cool Ridge 

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

25:43

tradition so the imaginal is the use of images but 

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unlike the imaginary where what  you're doing is taking yourself away   from reality like when I ask you to imagine a sailboat and ask you are  

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the sails up or down right there's no  sailboat there's no but if if I'm trying 

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

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

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

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enhancing your perception putting  you getting you to realize subtle   patterns getting you to reframe and reorient right and this is the kind of imagination  

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that kids use when they when they  pretend to be Superman they're not  picturing something in their head  they're they're they're trying  

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to project the the the perspective of Superman so that they can see patterns  

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in the world and themselves and become  more heroic for example right so that's  that's one so the imaginal is the using  imagery that way and then what you're 

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

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

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

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they integrate that which is what the level of the space in which we are   conceiving reality and the space in  which we're perceiving reality so that 

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

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

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

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math other than geometry there is  nothing in math in the ancient world   other than geometry so no and notice what a geometrical figure is it's  

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sensible but you don't think that  geometrical figure is actually what a  triangle is because it's not right  that there's the perfect triangle you  

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can almost hear Plato here that's conceptual the perfect circle the triangle with all those   Eternal truths there's the sensible  thing here the sensible world 

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

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

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

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

28:32

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

28:40

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

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

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norm rather than how we break apart  in the pathology and we're talking   about things like wisdom and self-transcendence the imaginal  

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plays a critical role in the cultivation of wisdom because of the way it binds things  

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the imaginal is the enacted symbol  on symbolon means to bind things  together so that they they so the  possibility of contact Conformity 

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

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cultivation of wisdom in the affordance  of self-transcendence when you are binding   yourself to your future self and aspiration I want to be more like  

29:27

Socrates with and that's a symbol on  but you're there's an imaginal there  Socrates is taking on an imaginal role  for you so that you can bind yourself  

29:36

to your future self so you can realize those patterns and I'm using realize   that both sense will become aware and  actualize right make real suck that 

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you're using Socrates imaginately  in order so that you can come into a   real relationship with your future self and pick up on those patterns in your behavior  

29:54

that are going to get you there as  opposed to those ones that are going   to divert you the imaginal plays a significant role in any aspirational  

30:01

project any transformational project any cultivation of wisdom or virtue I'm so  

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curious about your take on like the Joe  dispenzas and the Bruce Wilson's of the  world in terms of you know they're kind of in  that new AG um if you you know mind over matter if 

30:16

you can kind of you can kind of heal  yourself and I I kind of struggle in   with with those thinkers because on the one hand I know there is a power that we  

30:25

have right we know the mind can't I know that we have the capacity to go beyond our  

30:30

ordinary limitations and and part of  that is through the power of the mind  and what we believe is true and how  what we believe is true informs what  

30:39

we create and what we do and yet at the same time there's a lack of rigor it   seems in some of those yeah some  things that make me question the 

30:47

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

30:55

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

31:00

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

31:07

and wisdom is essentially  about overcoming self-deception 

31:13

and that means adopting a  lot of rigorous practices and 

31:19

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

31:25

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

31:31

I reliably and systemically and  systematically overcome self-deception   um and then wisdom is how can I do that across all the kinds of knowing across  

31:41

all of the domains of my life that binds  this objective and the objective binds  the intelligible and the sensible so  it's this very power I gotta remove all  

31:49

this self-deception and enhance all this connectedness that takes tremendous rigor  

31:54

it takes tremendous you know it it takes a tremendous amount of being  

32:00

able to subject your ideas to rigorous argumentation empirical investigation  

32:08

um so while I don't think science can generate a spirituality nor do I think   science is conducive of wisdom I think  anybody who's trying to be wise who's 

32:19

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

32:26

right so we that's what science is it's  a family of methods for overcoming how we   deceive ourselves that's what it is and if you disconnect your project  

32:36

from this very powerful engine your ability to cultivate wisdom  

32:41

I think must necessarily be seriously truncated and you're going to make yourself prone to all  

32:47

kinds of self-deception that can only  be caught by uh you know a certain  kind of scientific and rational rigor  I want to repeat I'm not saying that  

32:55

science can give you wisdom nor am I saying that science is spirituality but   I'm saying the spirituality that ignores  or tries to take place orthogonal or 

33:04

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

33:09

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

33:15

going to eventually and psychologically  you're going to make yourself more and   more vulnerable to all of the pathologies that follow from  

33:23

self-deception your spirituality is  going to degrade I guess probably into  spiritual bypassing in which you're  using spiritual experience to ignore the 

33:33

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

33:39

um rationally ratio properly  proportioning yourself to reality right 

33:45

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

33:52

positive psychology slash more  particularly New Age practices while   they can be really valuable for me they're not valuable without the  

34:01

complementary Shadow work the bottom up  the healing the you can't simply because 

34:06

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

34:13

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

34:19

what are some of your favorite  positive psychology techniques 

34:25

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

34:31

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

34:37

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

34:43

scientifically study flow like what's  going on in flow and then of course I do   all these flow practices taoism is the philosophy religion of how to get into  

34:51

the Flow State and transfer it to as  much of your life at as many levels of  your psyche as you possibly can  that's taoism in in a sentence and so 

35:02

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

35:11

transfer it to many domains of my life  and many levels of my psyche but that's 

35:16

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

35:29

broadly and deeply into your life and deeply and broadly into your psyche and  

35:36

um Tai Chi Chuan for example does that so whenever uh I you know the any of the the 

35:45

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

35:50

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

35:56

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

36:02

I think things like touch each one  are actually superlative positive   psychological practices because they have this is a well worked out tradition  

36:11

of a very sophisticated ritual that is designed to be practiced in a way within  

36:17

a framework that gets you into the Flow  State and helps you transfer it broadly  and deeply both without and within and  so for me and it's amazing uh you know 

36:28

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

36:34

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

36:42

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

36:47

right so I've studied with the flow  research Collective are you familiar   with Stephen Cutler's work no it is is it connected to Jamie wheel's work or  

36:56

anything no they they did co-author a book and they worked together originally   I've worked with Jamie as well but um  the flow research Collective Stephen 

37:04

Cutler he's done some work on a lot  of different things but particularly   flow Neuroscience he does some really uh incredible training programs uh and he  

37:13

also has written books on kind of impact and social change in terms of you you   know entrepreneurship and how we can  create abundance for the world and 

37:22

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

37:29

transformative purpose as their kind  of word for that that higher purpose in  life that allows us to really you  know as we talked about uh in our last 

37:39

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

37:44

mental health Transcendence right we  cannot really actualize our potential   as humans and enter into our highest possibilities without serving something  

37:53

Beyond ourselves and That's essential to entering into flow is knowing what our  

37:59

purposes and sort of orienting every  aspect of our lives uh toward that  higher purpose and I think that for me  when I have that sort of North Star and 

38:10

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

38:15

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

38:23

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

38:29

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

38:35

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

38:42

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

38:49

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

38:55

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

39:01

happy we need it to be real we  need it fundamentally to be real   if I can show you that your source of Happiness involves some kind of fraud  

39:08

or deception or Illusion that will  completely undermine your happiness  um and so I I I think it's important  that we are connected so when people 

39:21

talk about purpose they think they're  talking about everything that's needed   for meaning in life but meaning in life that that the sense that your life is  

39:29

worth living even though it's filled  with frustration and failure and  futilities and right and the need for  forgiveness and all that kind of stuff  

39:37

the beset human beings meaning in life is my life is worth it even though all  

39:42

of this but purpose is only one of the four dimensions that gives you meaning   in life there's also intelligibility  uh there's also a sense of depth of 

39:51

realness and then there's mattering  which is a sense of connectedness   to this intelligible realness and mattering is more important than Purpose By the way it  

40:01

looks like in the reader's research you need to be  connected to something Beyond yourself that has a 

40:07

reality and a Value Independence of  your egocentral perspective I often   give this test to people I'll say if you want to know what your meaning what's giving you meaning  

40:15

in life ask yourself this what would you want to exist even if you didn't  

40:21

and then you know what you are connected to that has a reality and a value beyond  

40:28

your own egocentric existence and you in the degree that you're connected to those  

40:33

things that answer that question  is it which you find your life  meaningful Iris Murdoch I love this  quote she said love is when you what  

40:41

love is when you first recognize that something other than yourself is real   um and so that kind of the way you are connected and she doesn't mean romantic  

40:51

love I mean she's not excluding it  that's the that's another problem with  her culture we always hear romantic  love when we hear the word love right  

40:57

um but you know when you when you really love a work of art there's a great piece of music  

41:03

and you feel that reciprocal opening between you and it and you feel that depth and you feel like  

41:09

everything is making more sense  and you would want that piece of  music to exist even if you didn't right  that's what I'm talking about I'm talking  

41:17

about that that connectedness and you're right I think  

41:22

I think we we don't want to have we don't have to we don't we we don't   want to have disparate fragmented centers  of connectedness we want them to all be 

41:31

connected to each other um  and and so many philosophical  traditions Neil platonism it's  the one taoism it's the Dao  

41:41

Buddhism it's shinyata Buddha nature right uh Christianity it's God of course Judaism and Islam  

41:48

Etc and so right this sense of that the thing we should matter this is politics  

41:55

idea of ultimate concern we should  be ultimately concerned with what is  ultimately real we should try what we  most want to matter to is what is most 

42:04

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

42:10

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

42:16

say and I think you're trying to address  this given our previous conversation is   we've lost a language that resonates for most people for how to enact what we  

42:27

were just talking about we have older  languages from the religions that don't  that really don't Vibe for most people  uh we have we have met we have Arcane 

42:36

metaphysics from New Age people and  other things that that just don't take   because they don't connect us up uh with you know our rationality so our job part 

42:48

of our job and you know and I think  you're undertaking it is how do we   get how do we get the language and the practices that allow people to do what I  

42:58

just said in a way that's both intellectually respectable   scientifically legitimate and yet deeply  personally existentially meaningful to 

43:08

them part of my you know work was how do I find a language that is both meaningful and uh  

43:21

and non-dogmatic non yes that was free of the baggage of this this old  

43:26

religion but it's also rigorous yes you you know you're just sort of like you  

43:32

there's a systematic aspect of your thinking and how you're organizing   it and it's principled and it's  intelligible and it makes sense this is 

43:42

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

43:50

to an optimal grip across different domains of Our Lives I totally think so so this is this  

43:56

is sort of uh John raviki's particular uh uh scientific  

44:02

theoretical hobby horse I think um that capacity for relevance realization  

44:09

is our fundamental religion or fundamental binding to reality it's our cognitive   adaptivity like I said and that sense of  being bound and connected to reality is 

44:18

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

44:25

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

44:35

that as meaning in life I think  that that's my central argument  um yeah and and I think it's mine as well  because that's really what emergence is is  

44:44

you know here's what happens when we bring all of the domains of Our Lives   into Integrity balance and wholeness  there's an optimal grip that allows us 

44:53

to navigate the world more accurately  like the map is more matched to the   territory that's this kind of I think your definition of relevance realization  

45:01

and kind of coming into greater contact  with Ultimate Reality in a way and then 

45:06

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

45:13

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

45:20

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

45:26

North Star we're properly oriented this  is you know this is like our fundamental   uh relevance realization and then we know how to navigate which is we know  

45:36

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

45:42

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

45:48

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

45:54

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

45:59

physical orientation and physical like  perceptual optimal grip and sensory 

46:05

motor navigation optimal grip of your  environment that's actually exacted up   into conceptual space and how you make sense of things so it yeah it's about  

46:16

it's it's about um giving people  

46:22

those two dimensions of optimal grip the orientation which is like sort of your   metal optimal grip it's where you place  yourself so you have access to multiple 

46:31

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

46:40

that's my definition of character right  is the meta process we own that helps us  navigate excellent excellent and in a  way it's not separate from maybe an old 

46:51

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

46:58

understood the way you've talked about  it and as that which allows us sort of   to integrate and track the through line of reality so that we're more and more  

47:08

um optimally gripping it in touch with it and it's touching us when we say   optimal grip you have to understand it's  both ways it's not just you grabbing 

47:16

it's also the world has the capacity to  grab you moments of beauty moments of   Truth moments of astonishing goodness you want you you want both right  

47:25

um and yeah I I think that idea I mean it certainly goes back to Aristotelian  

47:31

Notions of the soul and character and  the Soul are deeply interwoven together 

47:37

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

47:44

you could see with the soul is a ghost  inside of you then it doesn't really   Jive but if you think of it more as you know you have all of these disparate  

47:52

faculties and your work speaks to this  and they're all typically fragmented but  just like just like I can find the  through line of all the aspects of the  

48:00

thing right somehow I'm showing you all these different aspects and they're not   identical to each other but yet they all  hang together there's a through line and 

48:08

the through line is not an aspect and  the through line goes beyond any uh   also all the aspects you've seen because there's many more aspects you haven't seen  

48:15

just like there's a through line of things  I think there's a through line of the psyche  um and I think that's what we're  talking about uh about a soul and when  

48:23

the through line of the psyche can track right the through line of reality that  

48:28

I think that's when people are  properly in the spiritual domain  and it brings me back to uh you know  the conversation we had last time about  

48:36

emergence and you know emergence from the biological level event as you define  

48:42

obviously the simultaneous differentiating and integrate yeah exactly  

48:49

that's such a you know in a way it's a contradiction but that's where the thing   opens up yes in that uh in that space and that feels like it's not only true  

48:58

at a biological level but that feels  like the essence of spirituality which  is why you know I talk about emergence  in my work as a it's like this  

49:05

integration and you know this this simultaneous honing in and opening  

49:11

up and that's what's so clearly that's right and that those that's  

49:16

exactly the opponent process that's going on within relevance realization   your attention is doing it now it's  opening up with mind wandering default 

49:26

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

49:33

and integrating differentiating and  integrating you're complexifying   your cognition so that it can more and more conform to the complexity of the world exactly  

49:42

can you define relevance realization for those in my audience who aren't familiar with   your work so relevance realization is the process by which you zero in on relevant information so  

49:54

the the problem that's facing you and all cognitive dimensions of domain is there's  

50:00

way too much information available  to you there's way too many  ways in which you can combine the  information combine your actions  

50:07

and what you do is you intelligently ignore and it sounds like a Zen Cohen you intelligently  

50:12

ignore most of the information  so most of your viewers were  probably not thinking or aware of their  right uh big toe until I said that 

50:22

because it's been backgrounded there  right and they're not they haven't been   thinking about Australian kangaroos until I said it right and so all of  

50:30

the information in your memory all the  information in the world all the ways  that can be combined is overwhelming  this is the central problem facing  

50:36

artificial intelligence how do you ignore most of that information zero  

50:42

in on the relevant information so I use the word realization I got this use from nishitani   because it means both to become  aware and to have something be 

50:51

real so you're making aspects of the  world you're disclosing aspects of the   world you're connecting yourself to certain realities in the world  

50:59

real patterns at the same time you're  realizing right so it's becoming aware 

51:04

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

51:10

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

51:16

and consciousness and how is that  related to the frame question the   frame problem is exactly the problem of uh of relevance realization this is right  

51:28

um so the original example of the frame problem is uh well original presentation  

51:34

is Dan Dennett uh he talked about so we're going to make it we're going to   make an artificial intelligence  and we're going to make an agent  

51:42

agents are different from things that just be everything behaves this pillow   behaves if I punch it it index so agents are things that not only behave what  

51:51

they could do is they can detect the  consequences of their behavior and then  alter their behavior in order to achieve  certain goals so that's an agent okay so we  

52:00

make this robot we're going to make it give it a very simple task it's   going to find energy sources which are  batteries and then take them to another 

52:06

safe location take them to a safe  location where it can consume the   battery this is analogous to you and food you typically don't eat your  

52:15

food where you first encounter it you  usually take it to some place or you have  special places uh set up for it okay so  this robot comes along and it finds a 

52:25

nice juicy battery sitting on a red wagon  and it determines that if it pulls the   wagon the battery will come along that's the intended consequence yay  

52:33

unfortunately there's a lip balm on the  wagon as well and it an unintended side 

52:39

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

52:49

but all the unintended side effects so  we make a new robot we put it into the  same situation it comes up to grab the  wagon and then it's just calculating and  

52:57

calculating for the rest of Eternity it's like why what's going on there   because it's calculating all the  unintended side effects if it pulls the 

53:04

wagon the battery comes along that's the  intended effect but the front one wheel   the freight the right front wheel goes through more than 30 degrees of Arc the  

53:12

left front wheel goes through more 30  degrees of our the left back wheel the  right wheel the grass underneath  the wheels is being indented the  

53:19

air patterns around the wagon are being slightly altered the position of the   wagon with respect to Jupiter is being  changed with respect to Mount Everest 

53:28

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

53:34

astronomical so this is  what you now have to do how 

53:40

do you zero in on the relevant side effects and what people attempted to say well it's obvious  

53:48

that's the problem that's the result of relevance realization relevance realization makes things  

53:54

obvious to you so that you are a good  Problem Solver obviousness is not a  physical property here's 17 grams of  obviousness right it's like you're  

54:03

giving that ability to find things uh sorry I'm preventing you no it's Opera   it's Opera right like that's Peterson's  argument it's like built into the 

54:12

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

54:18

what's most relevant yes failing aunt  and so we take it for granted we don't   recognize that if we're creating a machine for example we have to we  

54:26

have to attend to it it's so obvious because it's inbuilt but it's not actually obvious  

54:31

objectively but it's built into our  neural structure and such is that is  that am I understanding that yes you're  understanding it very well and and trying  

54:40

to build machines that can instantiate that ability it   we still haven't done we still haven't  accomplished that we're making a little 

54:48

bit of progress people in AI are  concerned about is that that's right   machines that are you know that where we fail to attend to some fundamental the  

54:58

important uh irrelevant detail and that somehow that causes them to destroy the world  

55:04

not because they're smart and Machiavellian and  develop this Consciousness I think that's another  question about whether they can  actually develop a sensory perceptual  

55:12

or experiential qualitative experience but uh the idea that maybe even without that  

55:18

there could be this a way in which um you know there are these unintended  

55:24

side effects and they could destroy  the world just through kind of a simple  glitch in our inability to know what  what not to to attend to or what what uh 

55:33

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

55:39

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

55:47

understanding your interpretation of  the situation that excludes all the   irrelevant but only and includes only the relevant the problem is nothing  

55:55

is intrinsically relevant or irrelevant  right this glass is relevant to me right  now it'll be irrelevant to me an hour  from now right right and so there's no 

56:04

property you can point to and say always  pay attention to that property and this is   why it's so really hard and what's so fascinating about you and I as we do  

56:14

this we're doing it right now and it's not only at the guts of something that   technical like AI I argue it's at the  guts like this is this is so primordial 

56:24

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

56:34

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

56:40

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

56:46

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

56:54

everything we suppose is outside of  us it's an external problem actually  reflects uh something within a  psychologically and spiritually that  

57:02

if reframed can be uh used as a lesson to help us transcend and move beyond our  

57:09

our current limitations so that's an example of a way of a of a conceptual   frame that can be used in service of personal transformation so I'm noticing  

57:19

it's uh we're kind of at the end of our  time but any any final words you'd like  to to share or or leave our audience with  uh no I mean I I I other than I want to 

57:31

thank you for this I I always enjoy our  conversations I've enjoyed both of them so   far I I really think what you're doing is important work  

57:40

um and um I guess maybe if I could say a final parting thing  

57:46

is we have to stop thinking about science and spirituality as oppositional or we will  

57:53

not solve the meaning crisis we have to move to it and what and   we've been showing how that's possible in  our conversation we have to move to a an 

58:03

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

58:10

intuition metacognition in my work right  the spirituality experiential intuitive 

58:17

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

58:23

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

58:31

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

58:38

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

58:43

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

58:49

to speak with you always um thank you  so much for your time and your support   thank you so much Brooke it was a great pleasure and please uh check out John's  

58:57

work on YouTube he's an incredible  thinker he has an incredible body of  work um John verbaki's uh YouTube  channel and the the meeting crisis  

59:05

particularly is his sort of Signature Series so uh if anyone's interested   in and really understanding this in a  much uh deeper and more systematic way I 

59:14

highly recommend his work there thank you [Music] thank you