Altered Consciousness, Altered Traits: Maturation, Uncertainty and the Power of 'Not Knowing'—with Ralph Cree

In this episode, Anna speaks with Ralph Cree—another long-time spiritual practitioner—about psychedelics, self-constructs, 'not knowing', maturation, and the current political and civilizational inflection point that humanity is facing.

You can find Ralph's work on Soundcloud and on his website. Watch out, too, for Anna and Ralph's new collaboration, 'Hypgnosis', a state-altering set of hypnotic, profound soundscapes that have, at least once now, stimulated a listener's first immersive experience of non-duality.

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https://www.bodyheartmindspirit.co.uk

#spirituality #consciousness #meditation #psychedelics #politics #materialism #idealism #newmaterialism #Earth #mothernature #identity #contraction #expansion #why #how #humanextinction #growth #hypnosis #nonduality

To find out more, visit https://www.youtube.com/@BodyGuru-AGx

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:13

My name is Annette Rear and I welcome you to Comp Explorations, a podcast that explores using a combination of conversation, meditation, hypnotic techniques, intellectual inquiries, sound, music, language, and curiosity to explore healing, spirituality, and imaginative reality tackling for the 21st century and beyond. I'm talking to my dear friend Ralph Cree today. Ralph is a longtime spiritual practitioner. He's adventured widely in the world of altered consciousness through psychedelics as well. He's a musician. We recently have collaborated bringing hypnosis, meditation, and music together to bring resonant shifts in states of awareness for listeners. We've basically been having some fun. And so today, Ralph and I want to just have a conversation around the power of letting go of rigid concepts of the self, different ways of loosening our grip on who we think we are, in order that we become the more profound open awareness that we fundamentally really are beneath our reactivities, our shadows, our ego constructs, and our identifications. And I feel, as a critical legal theorist in the past and as a practitioner now, and working extensively with healing, this is a really important invitation, precisely for human beings, at a moment when it seems to me that we're an inflection point between contractive identity-driven politics and backward-leaning, clinging to old ideas of who we might be as human beings, and something more invitational that is taking us forward. We're looking at the AI revolution, we're looking at climate change, we're looking at all sorts of challenges to previous assumptions about what it means to be a human being in the 21st century. So into this, I think, spirituality, alter states of consciousness, are really interesting portals into possible otherwises and certainly different ways of self-relating, ways of being grounded, flexible, mature, open, and secure, provided we do the inner, the inner work, the ethical work as well. So that's the frame, and Ralph, a very warm welcome. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

It's lovely to have you, Ralph. So um, just from the point of view of how I frame that, I'd love your um opening insights really, or your what you whatever you want to share with people about your journeys really as a kind of cosmonaut who's traveled through different conceptions of self and arrived where you are as an advanced Shaiva tantric practitioner, having done lots of drugs on the way. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Well, I mean, uh advanced maybe in in years of practice, but uh, you know, it just it just goes on and on, doesn't it? So uh I can't can't comment on that, really. Um so the yeah, I mean I I've um I've been d uh into meditation um for about 30 years and also psychedelics for the same number of years. Um you know I'm 48 now, so started when I was about 18, and uh it's been you know quite a long journey. Um if I die tomorrow, that's the end of the story, but if I live for another 30 years or whatever, there'll be a lot more to it, and I'll be someone completely different, hopefully. Uh you know, that's what life's about. Uh the continual transformation. Um and uh I think in relation to, you know, I know politics is something that you're very interested in, and and the law, and that's kind of a theme of of your podcast as well. Um, you know, we're all feel that acutely, and particularly with social media use um and the news there. And it's uh, you know, I'm also very interested in current affairs um of all types, you know, geopolitics and local politics and that kind of thing. Um so something I take very seriously. I never did at all. I only became political politically minded, I don't know, maybe um yeah, I was probably 30 or something when I actually really gave a shit like deeply about it. Um I've been a kind of uh an activist in the sense of like just a young activist who doesn't really know what they're doing, they're just going along, going to protests, it's just a bit of a scene, really. But then all of a sudden I was like, ah, it's okay. Um this is something that's really important. So, in terms of uh just setting the scene, um, you know, I've pushed and pulled my personal identity all over the place um over the last 30 years through different practices, and that loosens up one's identity, sense of identity. So that's how psychedelics and meditation weave together in that sense. But that can't be all you do, um, and I think there's this really useful distinction that uh is kind of like common out there in in the this kind of cultural sphere we're we're we're talking about. Um the difference between states and traits of consciousness. So, you know, you you can do all sorts of things with states of consciousness and um not it not necessarily turn into long-term traits of actual fundamental shifts in your identity. Uh, and I I feel that's where uh a consistent meditation practice, for example, um comes into grounding that, um, but also things like engaging with a wide variety of people. Um, that's something I take very seriously. So if you are in like a like a cult um or uh a particular political party or a cultural niche, uh you can end up in an echo chamber. Um and uh you know, we all know about echo chambers very much part of the conversation these days. Um and I I just have a an allergy to echo to the siloing. Um and um so I am an annoy politically I'm an annoying person because I'm kind of somewhere in the middle and a little bit all over the place. You know, I can hang with anybody of any political persuasion. I mean, I do struggle at the extremes, but uh um, you know, um, and I think I put I would put that down to having had my sense of identity loosened up through these kind of practices.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, I think there's a kind of flexibility that comes with maturation, and for me, you know, spiritual maturation is a theme that's really missing in contemporary discourse around spirituality. There's a lot of discussion of altered states of consciousness, which are great as apertures into otherwises, and they they open up different possibilities and they certainly extend your plasticity in really interesting ways, not just neuroplasticity, but the kind of bioplastic, almost so somatic plasticity of yourself. They loosen any rigidities, which is really important, I think. But there's something as well about maturation and you know, not taking shortcuts that bypass the need to confront your shadow, to learn not to be reactive, to be equanimous, but fully able to experience the full range of human emotions simultaneously, so that you're not unreal, you're not doing toxic bypassing or toxic positivity or floaty-waty kind of unreal, untethered kind of spirituality, which I don't think is particularly healthy or helpful. So I think there's the kind of maturation, you know, the grounded traits of love, joy, compassion, equanimity, and related traits is often missing from the contemporary conversation. And I lose kind of count of the number of podcasts I listen to where people are talking about experiences which are great and it's fantastic, and it's the icing on the cake. But to me it's not really what it's about, although the experiences open out layers and possibilities of different ways of inhabiting multiple realities. But there's something really important in what you're saying about I think the deeper you go as a grounded, flexible being, the more you're able to be comfortable with a multiplicity of worldviews, the more you're able to be with different people without being threatened, because there's nothing to defend. You're not defending anything in yourself if you've worked at letting go of all those kind of identity-level addictions that we have as human beings. I think it was Ken Wilbur who said the more advanced your worldview is, the more you can live with multiple truths simultaneously. And I think that's kind of beautiful, and it's not a chronic relativism, it's not a kind of all things are equal, doesn't matter what you believe, it's just your opinion, it's not that. It's something far more like a pure sound of a bell. It's something more like you have a capacity simply to allow others to be in their bubbles, to see their realities and to meet them where they are.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah, I I think one of the fundamental insights from um my my experiences with psychedelics and meditation and spiritual practice of all different types is now I just qualify this by saying there's a really important distinction between the implicit and the explicit. So to m to that sounds a bit philosophical, but basically, if I tell a joke and we laugh, that's an implicit experience. But if I tell a joke, you don't get it, and then I have to explain it, peep break the joke apart element by element, it's not funny anymore. But but yeah, so sometimes you you have to do that. That's where instructions for practice come in, and theories and uh you know all those meditation texts or political theories, these kind of things. You unpack it, make it explicit, but ultimately uh your direct experience is an implicit thing. Um so what I'm gonna say is it's it's an explicit statement about something that is implicit, can only be directly known, and any time you speak about these things uh they kind of come out a bit malformed and they're also a bit untrue. Um but yeah, in a in a nutshell that I feel that there is um a supreme being who I might call Mother Nature, um who is the only one living, and we are her and she loves being us, and buenos a us, all living creatures, all beings, everything. And um we are the contracted state of an uncontracted being we cannot fathom, you know, we just can't under it'd be way beyond our understanding. So once you've had that experience time and time again, um, and it really starts to land inside you, when you meet people or other creatures, um you really do feel um a sense of kinship with them and and and a and a unif not a unification. I don't mean it in the sense of like oh, we all kind of merge into one. Um I don't know whether you've seen there's a TV show called Pluribus, have you as it was seen? No, I haven't seen it. No, it's about this town where that gets like some weird virus that where suddenly they all just become one being, um, but in different bodies, but they're literally just one mind. Um I'm not talking about that kind of thing, but you feel a real sense of um um yeah, you know, to do violence to another person makes doesn't really make sense in that context. Yeah, uh I mean there is a place for aggression for sure. Um uh but I I um you know, vi uh classifying violence as a kind of there's something malicious about it, you know. Sometimes aggression is needed to put boundaries down and those kind of things, but um yeah, yeah, so a repeated exposure to that insight experientially. Um I I think that is it's just yeah, so in and it and again, this is such a cliche, but it's all about love.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yeah, no, I I agree, and I think there are many, many frames through which we could play that. There are many um statements in different faiths driving at that, particularly um that is definitely an experience with which mystics in particular strongly resonate. The idea that there's a one, however we conceive of it, there's a oneing that is that is expressed through a multiplicity of uniquely differentiated, valuable beings and entities that are valuable in their own right. So there is a sense in which we can love and respect what we experience as otherness, but there's a simultaneous sense in which we know ultimately as well that these are just folds in a oneness that we also ultimately are at a deeper, deeper level, far beyond just the human ego. Um and you know, if for example, I was brought up as a as a Christian, I was brought up as a Roman Catholic Christian. Um I don't identify as that particularly anymore, but you know, there are scriptures that talk about Christ being all in all and the one in whom all things hold together. These kind of monistic statements are very strong in many faiths and experiences. As you say, once you experience that oneness, once you have that experience of being one with all that is, you have a different experience, even of difference, even of even of the moments when you have to say to someone no. Because you know, there is there is an authentic place in which there's also a rub, there's also conflict, it's not endless harmony. You know, conflict and rubbing is also part of the one. Um, and if we try in the name of spirituality to kind of wish or imagine that away, we end up with something I think that doesn't do full justice to the enormity of what's really here, and disables us actually from coming back to politics, disabled us from radical actions of love, lovingness, instantiated in our capacity to identify with others in need, to you know, collective tensions and dynamisms in thinking and all the rest of it. It's all part of the game, as Ramdas would say, it's all part of the game. You know, it's all God in drag at the end of the day, but it's all part of the game. But you know, our job here is to love everyone and alleviate suffering. Uh, and into in order to do that, we sometimes do have to exert you say aggression, I think aggression is sometimes a really good thing, but force, yeah. Force is more neutral. Yeah, force is I mean aggression is a creaturely capacity, right? Sexual aggression, um, aggression when I'm going to play a game and I give it my all as a sportswoman or whatever, there's you know, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with aggression. There is something wrong with aggressing people inappropriately. There is something wrong with aggressing people's boundaries. Um, but force and violence, I think, are different things.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Um yeah. Yeah, it's uh um I think the game nature of life is really important to hop to and that's that is one of the probably the most common insight people have when when after the sake of psychedelic experience, most people come away and they're like, oh my god, life is just a game, I'm free, you know. But uh I don't know if you've ever done much computer gaming in your life. Um, I mean, I did a bit when I was a kid, and there's this thing called God Mode, where you just turn off all the limits, limitations on the on a game, so you have infinite lives, infinite ammo, you can't take any damage, and it's you lose interest in the game really quickly. You know, you play one god mode for 10 minutes and it's like I want to put all the rules back on because this is this is no fun, not not in in interesting at all. Um and I and again this is something that's that's common in a lot of spiritual traditions, um that the universe is a game, and in in um Hinduism they call it Leela is the is the term, and uh this is a game of hide and seek, and Shiva, the the one divine being, you know, it's lost themselves. Um I quite like to call this supreme being a they, uh you know, I god, goddess, I just to me doesn't really do it. Um you know to to kind of gender um the divine being doesn't really make sense, but having said that, I definitely there's a time when I am feeding the goddess, and other times I'm feeding the god side of it. Um there's a fluidity there, you know, that like God can be a they, a him, a her, something way beyond everything you imagined, you know. So the the game, the game thing, you know, yeah. So Shiva's playing this game, forgets they're playing a game, um, takes it all very seriously, and then realizes uh at one point, oh actually, yeah, I'm playing this game, and it's an amazing game. And then um that's what they you know, Shiva wakes up as you. Um but the and the other thing that you were saying there, which I think is absolutely key, this is a this is why any type of spiritual practice worth anything, uh, humbles you. And the humbling comes, I feel, particularly through realizing you don't actually know anything. I mean, we I'm talking about pure intellectual, philosophical, um, ontological honesty with yourself. You've got your direct experience, you know that you are, and that's it. And um that's incredibly freeing. It's it's also it's humbling, it's painful to begin with because we like to feel it helps us feel safe to know, to feel that we know what's going on. So we're I I feel we don't actually know anything. Um, and that's okay because uh once you go beyond and into that state of unknowing, you can trust this amazing thing that's going on called life, and it is just way, way beyond your understanding. But when you have repeated experiences of going beyond yourself, you know you can trust it. And that by extension uh extends out towards all different types of people. Um so you know in our country, well, the most of the media we consume I consume is to do with England, the UK, and uh American politics. You know, that's the America is just churning out just so much media, you can't avoid it. I do I do learn uh as much as I can about other parts of the world, but um American politics helped me understand English politics better. But um so they're very, very divided. People are always talking about this polarization that's going on, and it's incredibly destructive. And I uh when you meet real people offline in the real texture of a real interaction with a real person, it's not the same as as online. Um and I don't know whether this is because of my age and I'm like uh I'm uh too old or something to understand it, but I really feel it's different when you meet real people and you spend time with a lot of different people and you learn to get inside their perspective, and um you realise you that when you don't know you don't really know what's going on, so you become very open to hearing what someone else's perspective is and not put you know shutting the doors off.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Um Yeah, I think there's a couple of things there. I mean, I think online the algorithmic nature of online communication and just text itself strips away so much of the kind of interpersonal information that we rely on as embodied beings, right? We're reading each other's bodies, we're communicating non-verbally much more than we are verbally. And when you re when you think of verbal tone, that's important, but reduce it to text, and you lose so much texture. So there's a real gap then between you know, it's necessarily monodimensional online, not only because text is reductive, but because people identify with positions or they're put in positions. Whereas a real human being is so much more interesting, it's so much, you know, you can walk around a real human being and you can learn all their ways of being and their contradictions and the different energies they have and the ways that they move and all the rest of it. And the fact is, we are, you know, we're multiples, we're not any one thing as people. There are we have different dimensions and aspects of the way that we act and enact ourselves in the world. Different relationships draw out different aspects of ourselves. We've seen this when people go, they're in one relationship, and then we watch them leave that relationship and join a new relationship with someone, and a different dimension of them is drawn out by their new partner. And so I think the gap between the kind of monolithic flatlining that social media tends to produce and real fleshy, messy, exciting, interesting human beings is is one thing. But I love this thing about the not-knowing mind, because to me it's really important to distinguish between that, which I absolutely agree with you 100% and live from as much as I can, the the don't know mind, the beginner's mind, the you know, I'm thinking all the time lately, one of my mate latest meditations is so often um Jidukna Murch Krishna Murti's statement about the highest form of intelligence is to observe without evaluation. And I I've reflected on why is evaluation problematic from his perspective, like what's going on there? And I think it's because evaluation immediately closes down possibilities. Once I've evaluated something, I've made a decision about it, and so other possibilities that I'm also observing get maybe shut out because of the way the reticular activating system in the brain will then look at the interpretation and push the world through that interpretation. But equally, Ralph, you and I are not sitting here venerating ignorance. We're not saying it's important not to know things, we're saying that there's an attitudinal spiritual practice of not knowingness. But for me, that needs to come hand in hand with the development of real capacity to think critically, to be consistent in our reasoning, to question things in ways that enable us in the kind of relative dimensions of the world to interrogate things so that we're not accepting um things that are just empirical nonsense in the name of not knowingness. Because there's a lot of that too. And it, you know, you we can't be so open-minded that our brains fall out. And it's that it's that balance between that attitude, as you say, of humility, openness, not knowingness, and the knowledge that we do need to know, we do need to study, we do need to engage, we do need to reflect, we do need to critique and kind of interrogate things, but with provisionality, understanding it's contingent, it's provisional, it's the best map we've got for now in that realm. But of course, you know, we know that science is showing us things that are important that we that we know, but we also know it's not the final word because reality, like people, is more complex and interesting than any one theory or any one social media meme can capture.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

And it won't be the final science either. Sorry, say that again? It won't be the final science either.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

No, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

So what once you un, you know, so this is an example of where learning is important. If you learn history, you underst you learn about the history of ideas and you see how wildly they've changed over um you know the last few thousand years, um, and the last hundreds of years, you do you've got to extend that into the future. We we have this kind of like fallacy that humans always fall into, um, where we feel like we're living in the you know, the the time where everybody understands everything, and it's like, oh, it's you you get a study says blah blah blah blah blah. And yeah, and then it's like well, I just an example I came across recently was with this psychedelics research that in 2012 there was a um some research came out showing that in psychedelic states the brain activity of people in fm or i scanners was very low, which was a surprise. People thought like the brains would be lighting up like uh you know fairy lights, but um actually it was very the brains were very, very quiet. And then I was listening to a r interview with Robin Carhartt Harris, and I believe that's his name, who was part of that research and part of like pushing that idea, being interviewed by Sam Harris recently, and he was saying that actually um he needs to update that and that it's not quite as simple as it was put forward, and um he was kind of like uh yeah, yeah, just saying that um it the it's more complicated, and then they're doing more experiments which are kind of uh fleshing out the picture better, and that that was a bit of a simplistic statement they were making in 2012. And of course, the reason why I bring that up is that lots of people ran away with this data that came in in 2012 saying, Oh, you know, psychedelics make your brain um quiet and down, and um, you know, and um all these kind of things. So um, but uh what yes, this thing about the um not knowing, this is uh this is why I had my little throat clearing at the beginning of the difference between the implicit and the explicit. So I can say something like the not knowing mind is the essence of who we are. And of course, now I've said that, it's also not true. It really is true, but it's also not true, and I I think so. This is this is a key, key insight of psychedelic practice, meditation, um, emotional complexity, psychological work, whatever, growing up, maturing, is everything's paradoxical uh at a certain point, and you just have to get used to it, and you have to get used to the humil the sort of uh being humiliated by making a statement. Every statement you make, you know, is also a little bit untrue, and you just have to live with that, it's a mess. Um so yeah, learning's really, really important. Um, and uh, I mean, you know, just in my own life, I'm a devoted learner of all sorts of things, um, and I take it really seriously. So I'm playing a game, so I'm playing the game of life, and I'm playing it as hard as I can. And um part of the game is taking the rules very seriously, you know, and the rules being knowledge and understanding and what you think is going on, but at the same time, life suddenly, you know, things happen in life and the rules change all of a sudden, or the game board completely changes, and that's like whatever, a catastrophe in your life, or s some massive political instability, your country become a failed state, um, you know, uh uh some tragedy, um your personal circumstances, uh some extinction event that pushes humanity to the brink. You know, suddenly the God in a vertical has shuffled up the board. And people do that, and you need to be prepared for that to happen at any time, um, which is why you have to hold it loosely, the things you know. You know, but you but you that there is such a thing as survival knowledge, say, um, and that's gonna that helps us as a species, as an individual and communities and clans and nations and as a as a species, um, to just keep going, you know, with against all the odds. Um yeah, and there are so many You need knowledge for that.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah, and there's so many different ways of knowing. Like our cells know light and can produce energy in the body from light, you know, mitochondria in the cells, that's the language they speak among other languages, but one of their primary languages is light. There's such a multiple cascade of intelligences and ways of knowing in just the human body, let alone in the more than human world that surrounds us, let alone in the more than conscious capacities that we also have as beings, some of which we call unconscious, but some of which are, you know, people will call higher consciousness. I mean, there are just so many different ways of knowing. Um, and almost all those ways are non-lingistic. So, as you say, the minute you speak a truth, the very fact that you've put it into words reduces all the kind of potential resonance of it because we've used language to tie it down, and yet at the same time, language is agentic in its own right. Words change realities. We see this all the time. And I love what you're saying there about not getting too cozy with your reality as it is, so that you know, if we identify with this pure observational awareness, this pure awareness of being, like you said, you know, we know that we are, and that's it. If if we are that awakened, loving awareness, if that's where we choose to really rest, and insofar as we choose to identify with anything, identify there and live our life from that spring, then we are less shaken by all the other stuff that's on the move, because we I we're identified with that which, in a deepest sense, while it's fluid and moving and flexible, is fundamentally the unmoved mover. And so there's an enormous security that comes from that. And that also, I truly believe you said earlier, you know, it's ultimately about love. To me, love is the fundamental ontological reality, it's the fundamental given. Um, it might mean a trillion different things in different contexts, but I truly believe that the the the path is that of becoming a field of love, of embodying a field of love. Um and living in the in life in such a way that we don't cling on to all the false certainties. Um but of course, I mean at the moment we're looking at things that are potentially very shaking. You know, we're all we're looking at like the rise of techno-fascism, we're looking at, you know, anti-democratic movements that threaten our way of life, we're looking at the potential for mass movements of people and animals and viruses and birds aren't driven by climate change and all the rest of it. We're at a time of enormous complexity and change. And, you know, those who cling to uh certain answers are precisely those who are trying to push those answers onto other people in a way where they're externalizing, they're making explicit, they're implicit, but they're doing more than that, they're making an explicit claim on how others should live.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

And it ends up being oppressive.

unknown 36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

And there's an invitation here, I truly believe, to an expansive mode of being that is a fundamental not knowingness. Even as like you, I'm an input junkie and I think carefully about things. I'm a trained lawyer, I think with logic. I, you know, I try and penetrate ideas and test their fit with reality and their internal coherence and all that stuff, and it's all good fun, as you say. I mean, it's it's wonderful. But but it's but it's there's something really important as well in this letting-go-ness, this not knowingness, but this deeper knowledge, this lived certainty, this embodied material knowing of this fundamental ground of being as we experience it in it through practice and and just through as practitioners increasingly living in that reality, even as we are fully human, utterly human in all our ways. Um, I think that's one of the great invitations of our time is human beings, are we going to mature? Are we going to evolve at this moment, or are we going to contract into past knowings and identities that we set up against each other? And are we going to fight each other rather than expand as a collective and say, yeah, we're all human beings, we're all earthling creatures. Um, you used uh Mother Nature as the notion of divine, we're all children of whatever that is, but let's uh evolve collectively. And I think that's the choice before us. And so for me as a practitioner, I kind of feel this is a moment in which the invitation is as a practitioner to go deep, to to work on maturation so that our contribution to the collective effort and the collective consciousness is one that helps support that expansive capacity to not know but be utterly loving in that not knowing.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

But that the unfolding can only happen at the rate of nature. That so, you know, this thing of like, are we gonna make it, are we gonna pull together, and all these kind of things. Are we gonna grow up, are we gonna mature? There there's an impatience that we can all feel. There can be, definitely, yeah. And natural processes take the amount of time they do, you know. Um, for a sycamore seed to grow into a sycamore tree takes the amount of time it does. You know, you can't so there's there's that. We I think that's helped me feel kinder towards people or even entire nations, frankly, that um and that and and us us as a species, as as an entire planetary species, um, and even other species, you know, just all the whole thing, um to to feel kinder uh in my more generous in my assessment of the whole thing, because um yeah, it's you can't there's you can't rush a natural process. And one thing that I think you know when you were saying um what you were saying earlier made me think was I can't remember who it was, I don't know whether it's Victor Frankel or someone like that, said that if people if someone has a why, they can do any how. I don't know who that was, but uh by that what they mean is if you have enough faith in so let's frame it as Mother Nature is the one doing all of this, she loves this, she loves us, she loves life, she loves everything that's going on, can just absolutely totally in love with this mess of life. Um that's the why, you know, that's my why. Um, and that knowing that means I can do anything in my life, no matter what the circumstances are, if that's my guiding force. And I think that's why religious faith is so important and it's one of the perils of the secular age we live in. Um so I haven't got a problem with secularism. I love, I mean, I I I was really into the new atheists at a certain point in my life. Um, you know, I love uh all of the the the truths that those guys and and women bring to to the conversation. I love all of that, but I I'm not a materialist, and I'm also not an idealist. So an idealist being the opposite of a material, that everything is consciousness, um, I don't know. I mean I I just don't know. But but having said that, um I think we have to start with our own conscious experience, which is all we've got in life. That's a starting point. And I think one of the terrible side effects of secular materialism is treating people and animals and the environment as objects with no subject, no, none of it, no subjectivity. And so you can then treat people, animals, environment like trash because you feel you can't access their subjectivity. So, you know, that's a big one.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

Yeah, and there I think the kind of materialism you're talking about there is reductive traditional scientific materialism. There is there are forms of but there is a kind of new materialism which takes animal intelligence and agency much, much more seriously, even than needing to give subjectivity. It can give subjectivity effortlessly, but it will even look at matter itself as an agentic intelligent materialization in which matter is always intrinsically meaningful in its own right. Um, I can thoroughly embrace that kind of materialism because it's thoroughly incarnational, it's thoroughly respectful of what's here, it has a really intimate ethical gaze at what's here, and it tries to work out given the complexity and completeness of what's here, how do we ethically respond in this moment without being reductive? Um, so like one example used by a woman called Jane Bennett, who wrote an amazing book called Vibrant Matter, a political ecology of things, which is a wonderful book. Um, she used the example of a massive American uh power out that had happened. I can't remember when it was, but it was a huge. Power out, but there were all sorts of agencies, as in trees, wind, water, um, policy decisions, capitalist market influences, individual humans, all entangled in the assemblage of that blackout. Um, and the report on the blackout concluded that there was no way to hold any one person responsible. And now some people go, well, this distributed agency makes it impossible. It doesn't, but it's actually more realistic as an account of responsibility to say, all this agency is here, it's real, it's in it's involved. Um, so for me, that that kind of vital materialism, that energetic materialism, which isn't animism because it's not about spirit inhabiting, it's like um consciousness and spirit itself are expressions of a one that is also thoroughly material in certain of its manifestations. So, like you, I'm not a reductive materialist and nor am I an idealist. I don't believe that everything is consciousness, and if by that we mean something fundamentally disembodied. Um, but it's really, really interesting thinking about how these things come together and how we tease them, how we tease them all out, because to me, the new materialist account is the closest I've come to a kind of lived mysticism that takes the world seriously, scientifically on its own terms, or at least attempts to, without spiritualizing it in some way that doesn't take it quite as seriously as materiality. It's like Maharishi Karpriti says, matter matters, thou art that as this, and I love that. I love that incarnational celebration of each unique thing, whether it's uh mitochondria or whether it's my body or your body or my voice or your voice. There's something distinctive and beautiful in absolutely everything, and to me that's more loving than accounts that flatten it all out into just some flat spiritual kind of consciousness that never lands.

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Yeah, no, I'm not advocating that at all.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

I know you're not. I know you well enough to know you're not.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Um yeah, and I I think you know that maybe the the last thing I'll say uh about this well maybe two things. One is, you know, that I'm not this that sounds quite abstract, but I hope anyone listening to this or watching it or whatever can feel the the reality of this and that you know, this is these real ways to live your life, the actual interactions with people, ways to enact policies and make judgments about um all kinds of things in life. Um you know that's taking the this this explicit stuff and making it implicit. So you you know you take all of these kind of they can sound fairly abstract ideas, but they actually fold them back into the pastry of life. Um and um we we might not make it as a species. I mean, we seriously might not make it. That is like on the menu, and if it is, that's um it's okay and it's not okay. Uh and that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Um you know there's I think that the insight one gets this is my my opinion, um through experiences of going beyond yourself through whatever it is psychedelics, meditation, lucid dreaming, kundalini stuff and whatnot, all of that. Um that there's a kind of there's an there's there's an okay that life is okay, just as it is. And it's it's beyond your understanding. There's a there's a pit there is a there's a saying that there's a peace that surpasses all understanding. It that's true. It literally is true. That's a that's a that's as empirical a statement as as any other. Um and there is a love that also surpasses all reasonableness as well. And um, you know, these are really big things to come to terms with. And um so yeah, you know, yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna play the game as hard as I can right up to the end, but there comes a point where you just gotta say, alright, you know, uh I I can't play the game anymore when you can't.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

No, I agree, that's that's beautiful, Ralph. I would only say that the ideas sound abstract, but like if we take if we take the advantage, uh if we take the example of obesity, which is one of the examples that Jane Bennett uses, typically people always say it's either a problem of individual willpower or genetics or whatever. Um, and she renders it as this material assemblage of like food policy, uh, corn syrup, and the the gut microbiome that reacts in a certain way to certain syrups, to certain production methods. It's all kind of entangled, and yes, it's some individual choice, of course, genetics too, but it opens out the richer picture. Um, and to me, that's part of the game we're talking about playing is looking more closely. Um because the love that I love the way you said that. There's a love that moves beyond all reasonableness. To me, part of that lovingness that moves beyond all reasonableness is a greater degree of attentiveness to what's here, and what you pointed at before, that whole Cartesian mind matter, animals are objects, the world is just an object, the only thing that matters is the human subject, all that stuff that we see so embedded in how we got here as a kind of civilizational culture at this point. Um all that was a form of a failure to see what's really here. It didn't take full account of what's actually really here. And so the more we can take full account of all that's here and its wonderful uniqueness and its incredible similarities, differences, tensions, convergences, the pure dynamism of it all. To me, that's the most loving thing we can do because that's the most real thing that we do. It's it's it's kind of really, really looking at as it is. And as you say, there may come a point when we just have to say, well, I've done my my damnedest to contribute lovingly to this. I've I've used my intellect, my strength, my political choices, my money, my time, my understanding in a way to serve others in this context. And I've done all that I can do. We don't know when that moment will come. It might come collectively, it might just come individually, and even if it comes collectively, we're sure as hell gonna all experience it individually, even if it all happens to us all at the same time. But I think there's a real wisdom in that letting-go-ness, even as we continue to serve by the why, serving a bigger why that, as you said, always generates a how. And the why can be has to be a purposeful why rather than a backward-looking why, because backward-looking why questions are not always helpful. They can be, but they but if we get locked in them, they can be very unhelpful. But the purposive forward-looking why, particularly if it's inspired by radical love in the way that you've described, can generate a whole explosion of multicoloured hows that we can embrace together or separately as human beings and actually serve whatever it is that's seeking to emerge in this moment, which seems it seems to me like we're at an amazing invitational inflection point.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um just in response to what you're saying about the um you know, where where does obesity stem from? Um it was reminding me of Carl Sagan says to um make this apple pie, we have to first invent the whole, we have to make the whole universe, you know. Um so everything is the cause of everything else. But the trouble with that, again, this is you know, we we made a statement, but then we've got to contend with what do you do in a court of law, for example.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Uh someone is someone responsible for this? Does someone need to be made accountable? Does someone need to go to jail? Does a fine need to be levied against a company? You know?

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Yeah, absolutely. And those questions are really, really important questions.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

I mean, I I yeah it it is it it is absolutely true what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Yeah, it it is true, and those assemblages um don't mean everything, they mean things that are kind of relevant contingently for certain purposes in certain contexts, like the slight the scale of vision slides around. So in a court of law, you'd be saying, okay, under our existing concepts of law, we're looking for something that's humanly responsible for this. And so that kind of dictates certain parameters of gaze. And the question is, how just is that parameter? Are we looking too narrowly? Are we looking too broadly? Are we looking in the wrong direction? Because um, I would when you were saying Carl Sagan's statement, which I think is an amazing statement, um, I'm reminded of the statement that everything's connected. But Donna Haraway right wisely says, yeah, everything's connected, but it matters who's connected to who and in what ways. And I love that because it brings in the question of situatedness, like everything's connected, but how's this situated and in relation to what? And it again is that thing of like we can't ever get the whole truth in any particular statement about the truth.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

But you you've got to live with the imperfection of it. And yes, and that I think what you're saying, like in a court of law, it's almost like using a magnifying microscope, it's using a different lens on a microscope in the court of law than you are when you're like you know, smoking DMT or something. Exactly. It's lensing, yeah. You're not mixing up the lenses, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

Yeah, perfect, Ralph. Um, and yeah, just to say, I've really enjoyed our conversation and I've really enjoyed working with you on producing the um hypnosis, hypnosis uh set of recordings that we've been working on. I'm looking forward to making those available to people maybe listening to this. They're they're kind of um they elicit experiences and insights through a cunning combination of hypnotic language and Ralph's incredible music landscapes, which are incredibly three-dimensional and rich. So um I've enjoyed doing those immensely with you, Ralph.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

Yeah, yeah, me too. I really enjoyed it. And I think uh, you know, this is a way for people to have deep experiences um without risk of toxicity, uh addiction, uh illegality, you know, um g madness. Hopefully not. This is uh dim dim the lights, pop your headphones on, and uh just let Anna's um really rich and evocative vocals um and uh the sounds I make take you somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Forthcoming, not not released yet, but very close, very close.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Very close. And one beta listener had her first non-dual experience, which is yeah, pretty cool. Um anyway, uh if people are interested in that, reach out at hypnocatalyst1 at gmail.com and I'll put you on the list. Um, Ralph, thank you so much, as ever, for a wonderful conversation. And um, I look forward to working with you on some more recordings as well.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

When you're ready. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean uh this isn't a a fountain that could just keep giving. Definitely, that's for sure. Yeah. I'm gonna stop the recording now. Okay.