He Studied Every Religion This One Came Closest To Truth

TITLE: He Studied Every Religion, This One Came Closest to Truth CHANNEL: Johnathan Bi DATE: 2026-05-04 ---TRANSCRIPT--- The Christian says to the Buddhists, “You’re either a demon or you are a lesser revelation.” The Buddhist says the same thing about the Christian. You’re actually not Jewish. You’re actually not a Christian or a Catholic. You’re actually not a Buddhist. You think you are. I can’t. I’ve spent my life looking at all these traditions. Good luck. You’re not going to find a tradition that has all your answers.

Who is Jesus? Who is Muhammad? Who is Moses? I’m completely convinced that people levitated. I’m completely convinced people have near-death experiences. Two years ago, I witnessed a Christian miracle, but I still did not convert. I didn’t convert at the time, not because I thought it was fraudulent. I think the miracle was genuine, but because of the existence of other genuine miracles in competing religious traditions. But they can’t all be right. So, who has the ultimate truth? I’ve been tortured by the question of which religious tradition has the right God ever since. And my guest Rice University’s JeffRal has given me the most compelling response yet. After years of talking with every scholar of religion I could get my hands on, it is these sets of interviews that I find most compelling by far. And if you are at all curious about the religious question, I cannot recommend Jeff’s work enough for both scholars and seekers. If you want to be invited to online and inerson lectures, seminars and events that I host across the world, then please join my email list at jonathanb.com to be kept up to date. Without further ado, Jeff Krypaul. So Jeff, I come to you asking for advice as both a scholar and a seeker. And so to give you a bit of backstory, I was raised Protestant like many teenagers, uh, grew away from the faith. And in college, I was working through personal suffering, this worldly suffering about desire. Uh the classic growing angst of a teenager. Yeah. And I got into two religious traditions. Reneard’s Catholicism who problematized desire socially and certain sects of Tibetan Buddhism who problematized desire ontologically and phenomenologically. And my first foray was to solve just worldly problems. Okay. So I wasn’t really interested in the metaphysics the next world. But what it did do was it convinced me that there was something here. Yeah. This is not as the modern uh scientists or what you say just complete voodoo. Right. Right. Now my second foray into into religion was actually uh about last year when I read one of your colleagues Carlos’s book on they flew on a historical argument for levitation that I couldn’t find a materialist explanation for. And because of that I actually witnessed a orthodox miracle myself. So, it’s this icon, Orthodox icon, yay big, of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It’s in Taylor, Pennsylvania. And, uh, it oozes oil mirror uh, infinitely. And I saw it do that for 15 minutes as the as the priest or the father took it out and proceeded to anoint everyone in the room with it. And I was just, my metaphysical worldview was completely bone blown out of the water. And then to much of my Christian friends chagrin, I did not immediately convert to orthodoxy because I felt like that was the wrong conclusion to draw. Witnessing this one miracle gave a lot more credence to the other miracle traditions that I was familiar with, right? Whether this is the Buddhists, the Hindus. And I feel like my problem with religion is the exact opposite of many moderns. They don’t think that there’s anything here. I think there’s too much here to decipher. And my problem, I framed it as what sexist empiricist calls equivalence. It’s not when I think a tradition like Christianity is wrong. It’s that there’s an opposing and mutually exclusive orthodox claim that I can’t determine between. And so my problem is not whether to take a leap, it’s whether to take a leap. Right. So that’s the problem I’ve been stuck in. What do you got for me? Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to the club. Um that’s my problem. Um I believe too much as it were. You know, one of the things that I grew I grew up Roman Catholic uh in in the American Midwest and the the the claim was always that well the Catholic Church is right because miracles only exist in the Catholic faith. And that’s just not true. Right. Empirically that’s true. It’s just not true. And when you study comparative religion, you learn that there are actually miracles everywhere and and always as it were as far as we can see back and everywhere we can see. And so the question for me isn’t whether to be religious as it were, it’s how to be religious. And um the the problem is religious identity. It’s it’s it’s not it’s not that there aren’t things happening. It’s not that there aren’t miracles happening. It’s that those ethical systems get built up through very elaborate social and political and and economic channels. And I just look, I grew up inside a tradition and I don’t have a problem with Catholicism per se, but I know that it’s ethical systems have histories. You you know how the sausage is made. I know. I I know that for a fact. And I know that what the ethical systems are, what the Catholic ethical systems are, have an inside and an outside. And I know that they’re very different on the inside than they’re on the outside. And my assumption, which I think is perfectly true, is that the same is true everywhere. That that and once you once you reduce religion to ethics, uh I think you’re done. Uh I I I think it’s not even interesting at that point. Um, so this this is a different conversation. Yeah. Whether truth is ethical at all, right? And whether those categories even make sense. I’m not saying it’s unethical. I’m saying it’s it’s it’s truth is beyond good and evil to to use Nichzche’s language or or the uponadotic language. I mean, I I really don’t think it’s ethical or moral in in a social or or egoic sense. Right. Um, we’re we’re going to talk about your methodology of new comparativism and looking between the religions. I still think I’m still at the stage of examining each Orthodox tradition to see if any of them can be true. Yeah. For the following reason. They’re all true, by the way. Well, the Orthodox claim reading of the Orthodox religions, the Orthodox and exclusivist claims. They’re they all say we’re the only true. We’re the ultimate. We’re the ultimate. Yeah. Yeah. after Vatican 2 and stuff. Yeah. And so my question is the problem I have right now, right? Again, it’s not I found I found this great contradiction within within a tradition. It’s that they’re equivalent, but that equivalent doesn’t mean that one of them is necessarily wrong, right? And so so I also don’t want to draw the opposite conclusion. So my question is, why are you so certain that one of the orthodox like maybe the Christians just got it right? Maybe everyone else is a demon or a lesser revelation. Why are you so sure that’s wrong? I’ve spent my whole life looking at different religious systems and that is a that is a conclusion I’ve drawn or that is an intuition that all of these religious systems give people something and they do different things and they lead to different ends but none of them are ultimate in this in the sense we’re talking about. I mean, look, when I was a I was a kid and I was surrounded by people who were religious in what I would call transactional ways. They they believed such and such and and perform certain rituals to get certain things. And I was always the kid who said, “Yeah, but what if what if it’s not true? What what about the truth? What about is there a God? Did God have a son? Is Jesus truly human and truly divine? I mean, these these were like real issues for me. And I think what what educa what modern education does to to some of us is it holds out this this this truth that isn’t just transactional and because I think a lot of education it’s about vocation, it’s about business school, it’s about medical school, it’s about law school. It’s like skill sets essentially. And let let me back up. Yeah, please let me back up. So, um, over this last, um, holiday season, I did something really nerdy and I I read Plato’s Republic, believe it or not. I I read the whole thing. And it’s very clear that education even in ancient Greece, yes, part of it was very much about the making the better soldier or the carpenter or the but part of it was getting out of the cave, right? And if you’re out of the cave, you see the light. You literally see the light. You see the good or the beautiful. And then the goal is to come back into the cave and to talk to the people, talk to the prisoners back in the cave. But the cave’s the cave and you’ve seen the light. So, you know darn well that that people are seeing shadows on the wall as it were. And I can’t that’s really where I’m at. I think is I think all of these religions are shadows on the wall and they give the the prisoners something, but they also take things away, right? And and all of them are like that, right? I haven’t again I’ve spent my life looking at all these traditions. Good luck. You’re not going to find a tradition that has all your answers. You often say that the best hermeneutic is one that can explain all the data, that doesn’t have to take any the data off the table. Again, my challenge to you is the orthodox interpretations of the Orthodox faiths, they do explain all the data. In the following example, the Christian says to the Buddhists, you’re you’re either a demon because you’re trying to use your emptiness nonsense to make our believers nihilistic. You’re not a demon. Or they say Vatican 2, you are a lesser revelation, right? You are a lesser revelation for less advanced cultures. Essentially, the Buddhist says the same thing about the Christian. I’ve talked to these masters. They either say they’re a demon. They’re trying to believe, help you believe in an essentialist soul, get you stuck in samsara, or and Buddhist master literally told me this last year, this is for, you know, lesser revelation. You know, this is this does not approximate our ultimate truth. So my challenge for you is they do explain the data. They do explain that the other miracles are black magic, right? It’s not persuasive though to me, right? I mean, I understand the the religions at at their most acute or their most intellectual do comparison. They do explain why there are other religions and they relate themselves to those other religious systems, but I’m just not persuaded by their answers. because I’ve heard all those answers. I’ve heard that. And no, they’re not demons. They might be lesser revelation. I mean, we can talk about how reality is is organized and what reality is, but I don’t think the orthodox Christians have the ultimate answer either, right? You know, um I think it’s much more likely that the the Buddhists probably they might actually have the the closer closer to Right. They might actually. But that that is a a choice I make. Let let me let me let me switch metaphors. I switch. So I I train graduate students and I say, “Look, you don’t have any business being a a scholar of comparative religion until you’ve lost at least two worlds.” And they look at me and they’re like, “What do you mean?” And I’m like, look, if you haven’t lost a world, you still think your own religious or cultural or secular world is is ultimate. You think it can answer all these questions. If you’ve lost that world, the chances are extremely high you’ve just jumped into another. And that might be Orthodox Christianity, that might be secular scientism, that might be whatever. And now you think that one has all the answers. But it doesn’t either. And when that world then starts to collapse or you start to question it, you start to hesitate. You’re like, well, why do why should I jump into a third world? Right. Because that third world isn’t going to be ultimate either. And it’s at that point you become an intellectual. Right. Right. Right. And that kind of mirrors my journey where I’ve investigated two traditions and I’m like, well, hold on. But they seem they say they say claims I can’t differentiate. Uh but then what about the others? I I draw that conclusion, right? But the here’s the problem with that answer. You’re you’re basically alone. You know, you’re or you’re you’re talking to weird people like me. You’re like, you know, um there are people who inhabit that space. Yes, there are. But we tend to be very nerdy and very intellectual about it. And we don’t persecuted often. What’s that? Persecuted historically. Yeah. and we don’t have these large communities or these large traditions. So this is why I say this orientation is represents a kind of new era or a kind of future h humanity that doesn’t exist yet in any large any large numbers. Right. Um this is a question I have for you, but maybe I’ll I’ll frame it in my own context, which is I’m not even sure what it would take to get me to go into one of these Orthodox religions. Let’s say Jesus comes down right now in this very room. It’s on camera and he says, “Jonathan, I am what he says in Matthew. I’m the the one true way, right?” And I’m like, “Wait a second. Jeff’s had that experience with Khali like like showing up to him and this Buddha master has a experience of Nagarina popping up. So is there anything in the world historically, philosophically, that could happen to to you? Is there anything that could happen to you to get you convinced by let’s say one of the western monotheisms? So again, I think Jesus actually does appear to people, you know, um but so does the Buddha, so does Nagarian, so so do all these other. So I’m I’m deeply suspicious of religious experience and it doesn’t mean I don’t take it very seriously. Of course I do. But I want to keep all of these religious I believe too much, Jonathan. Right. I want to put them all on the table and I want everybody’s religious experience to be considered, not just this one or that one. And once you put all those on the table, it really changes the table. But that’s why I ask you the question, what would it take to get you at this point to go back to the let’s say Catholic? Like what would it take? I don’t know. Right. But isn’t that isn’t that concerning? I mean, is it concerning for me because No, it’s not concerning to me at all because I think going back to the religion is going back. I think, you know, I I I often recall refer to believing backwards. Belief itself is your affirming to someone else’s altered state that happened in the past or someone else’s interpretation of that altered state really is what you’re really affirming. Why? Right. Why are you doing that? It’s like it’s like it’s like near-death experiencers. They often they they’ll want me to sign their name or my sign my name to whatever that they think the afterlife is. And I’m like, I can’t do that, right? Because if I do that, then I can’t affirm this other person’s near-death experience. Everybody is having a slightly different experience of of the afterlife. What what I can really affirm is when you come back from the afterlife or you come back from a near-death experience and you affirm that these are all interpretations of something that that people are experiencing. Yes. Um then then I can sign my name. Then I can say okay let’s go that direction. Let’s do that. And again just for our audience this is not going to be the entire conversation. We’re actually going to go to a positive view of uh like uh non uh non-dualism filter. But let me let me again continue grilling you on this one point. That’s okay. Because I mean this drives my Christian friends crazy when I say this, but I tell them if everything in the in the Bible happened exactly as it said literally. I say what’s the big deal? Resurrection that happens all the time. Pagan gods get resurrected all the time. Empty tomb. Tibetan Buddhists today their bodies disappear. Rainbow bodies. Very well reported. Miracles. There’s a lot cooler miracles in the history of religion than multiplying fish and turning water into wine, right? Eternal life, dowist, dowoism. Yeah. Uh forgiving sins, tantric masters, taking up people’s karma and then resolving it. And I asked them like it drives them crazy, right? Like what what is the big deal? Even claiming that he’s God, I and the father are one. I This is a common claim within Indian mystics, right? Is is that the kind of thing you’re gesturing at? Like I can affirm everything. Well, again, it’s it’s more complicated than that because of course not everything in the Bible happened. Right. Right. But but I’m saying even if even if Yeah. I I think again I I it’s believing too much. It’s not believing too little. It’s you’re affirming everything. You’re not you’re not just affirming this particular tradition or this particular community. I listen I was I read the entire Bible. I I was trained in biblical studies. I know I know it well. That was my original tradition. It’s just it just ain’t true what people say about about the Bible. It just it’s just nonsense. It’s not true. Can you give give an example of think you you think the uh most compelling example? Well, this whole notion of of of family values is complete nonsense. It’s not in the New Testament text. It’s anti-family really. At the end of the day, there’s a kind of there’s a kind of sexual transgression that runs throughout the all of the biblical texts, both the Jewish and the Christian text. And and the idea that we’re going to get some family values is just it’s just nutty, right? Jesus says, uh, if you don’t hate your your your family, you can’t, right? Or he tells be a unic for for the kingdom of God. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I literally, you know what? I I’ve written about that. I wrote I wrote about the unic passage. And a unic is someone who’s who’s feminized. I mean, whose balls are cut off, you know, and um so he there was really this affirmation of of sexual renunciation and a kind of sexual transgression in the teachings. And you know, I’ve literally had copy editor a copy editor tell me that’s not in the Bible. I’m like, “Well, it is. It’s right there. It’s like, you know, Matthew 17 or whatever it is.” I’m like, “Come on. It’s right there’s the Greek.” And he’s like, “No, it’s not. It doesn’t exist.” And I’m just like, “But it does exist.” And this is this is the problem I have with with a lot of thing with a lot of a lot of religious claims. They just they’re just not held up by if you just look at the scriptural text. Why are you giving so much authority to a bunch of texts written thousands of years ago? Why? What is why why do you have to have everything rooted in the Bible for goodness sake? What what about all these other scriptural text? Why any scriptural text? Why not rooted in in human experience and in the human being? You know, why why why give yourself over to to some authority or some textual tradition from the past that that certainly exists, but it it’s still a it’s still a kind of willful submission. Yeah. Well, I think this is the maybe difference between where our paths are, you having been so far ahead of me in the sense that I’m 663. I’m really crabby. I’m like, yeah, that that’s not going to work. Exactly. Because I think I’m still at the stage of look, I just want to take the Christians in the most charitable light. Everything you say is true. This is Hegel’s method in the phenomenology of resolving equivalence. I’m going to say everything you say is true. Can I still find imminent contradictions within your text? That’s that’s kind of my project now. But I but I know it’s not all true, right? So how can I say that? And so let me ask you this. In your current view, who is Jesus? Who is Muhammad? Who is Moses? are these uh who they exactly who the Orthodox faiths claim they are. Are these complete frauds? Are these genuine saints that their tradition kind of got carried away with? So my my own view is well first of all we don’t know we we don’t even know if Moses existed. Um Jesus and Muhammad certainly historical figures but we don’t know their personal experience. I mean the Gospel of John is not the historical Jesus. Um but my assumption is is that a lot of these historical figures had some kind of experience of divinity and their followers frame that in a particular way. You know they used Greek categories and and to to talk about Jesus and they used Arabic and categories to talk about Muhammad. So everybody gets framed in a different way and it and it’s part of the culture and part of the historical tradition. But this experience of divinity or what I call the superhuman I I think it’s it’s it’s universal and I think it’s as far back as we can see and I think it gets framed and interpreted in very different ways in the following sense. Today we see a glowing being come down from the sky. We say it’s a UFO encounter in Fatima. They say it’s a miran apparition and Muhammad thinks it’s the archangel Gabriel. Is that is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that is that is what I’m saying. And um so I think the the orb of light really comes down and really really messes with human beings. Um but I don’t I’m not at all persuaded by the religious reception or the religious interpretations in that. Right. And I’m not persuaded by the UFO interpretations either by the way. Right. Yeah. That was abundantly clear in your books. Let me give you a quote uh from one from your first book actually. Jesus hardly knew himself in some clear and unequivocal way. Rather, he came to or constructed his own self-standing through the abiding sense of this powerful presence, through the sacred narratives of Jewish scripture, ethnic memory, and colonial suffering, through the efficacy of his magical works of healing and clairvoyance, and in the mirror of his followers answers to his own honest question. Who do you say that I am? In this reading at least, Jesus was not asking a question for which he already had the answer. He was co-constructing his identity through the answers of his disciples. fascinating interpretation because it goes even stronger than I think a lot of the historical critics. Yeah. Who claim that the early Christians didn’t know who Jesus was. You’re saying Jesus himself didn’t even know who he was. Why is that? Why does anybody know? I mean, I I think if you talk to experiencers to this day, there is a level of experience where if people are really honest, they’re like, I don’t know why that happened. I don’t I actually don’t know who I am. You know, the the the ego or the self is is a social um contract for sure, but am I just that? I mean, I wake up every morning and I’m like, “Wow, that was a weird that was a weird dream. Who who was telling that crazy story?” Well, I was, but it was a part of me I don’t have access to and I am not controlling and it’s just it’s going off on some weird story. And I I think a lot of religious I think most religious experiences like this to a certain extent. it’s some other aspect of the human being who who is having this experience or showing this to to to to the social ego and and the social ego doesn’t understand or doesn’t know and I I don’t see any reason why Jesus would be different right um I I guess so that’s the assumption is that is that he was a human being you know and and and he had this split in him and there was one part talking to another part. One of the things this raises for me is first of all that passage you read that was really good. And but that’s kind of my point is that I’m better writing than I am speaking. Um and so like people often write me or they’ll say, “Well, I’d really like to meet you.” I’m like, “No, you don’t want to do that. You stick to the books. The books are better than than the person.” And so that’s kind of what I’m trying to say here is that we articulate ourselves differently in different modes or different mediums and the books are one thing, the person’s another, the dream is another, the religious experience is yet another and and certainly experiences of divinity are yet another. And and I do think human beings, you know, I debated evangelical scholar on whether Jesus was God. And my my response was, “Of course, he was God, right? We’re all God. So are you. So am I.” And we all have experiences of deification. Well, not all of us, but there are all of these experiences in the history of religions of human deification. And I gave a gave a few of those. And I don’t think they were expecting me to say that. I I think they were expecting me to be the the evil liberal professor and I was like no right deification is like global. This is the problem that I began with which is there’s too much not too little right for for most people that the evangelicals argue with there’s too little right for for us it’s it’s a bit too much. Yeah. Uh so they’re not used to arguing with that. By the way, after some reflection, I think the difference between our positions is just a matter of where we are on the stage. Because I’m sure when you were my age or or younger or slightly older, you had to go through my process of seriously taking the faith on its own word and seeing if it holds. And your conclusion was that it does not hold. Yeah. And of course, I did that, right? And it’s not again that I think that the tradition or the traditions are wrong. It’s just that I think that they’re partial and that they give certain things, you know, to to certain communities, right? Um fundamentalism, I think, has become quite untenable because of uh the tradition of historical criticism that uh among others, it was always untenable. David Strauss, right? The more untenable, the more obviously untenable. Um, have you investigated into uh historical criticism into the Quran? Because there the tensions seem greater, right? Like in the same way that I can still be a Christian if you show John and Luke don’t necessarily agree. I can say, well, the large message is right, but there’s a bit of erency because it’s a human text. That move is not available for the Muslim because of their orthodox view of the text. So can you give an example maybe of the Quran where historical criticism has surfaced something that makes the orthodox position untenable? Well, I I’ll say this. I mean to answer your question, yes, I have looked into historical criticism of the Quran. And part of the issue or part of the problem is historical criticism comes out of the the Christian tradition, the Christian and the Jew Jewish traditions really. And it comes out of biblical studies. And Muslims have do not have that tradition. and they need to, you know, I think I think that’s part of the modern world is questioning the religious text as a religious text. It’s it’s not enough to to to just stay inside the religion and and and read the text. So, I just don’t think that exists, you know, in any broad fashion where it’s it’s integral or organic to the to the Christian Jewish traditions has been so for 220 years, you know. I mean, right. I mean, we’ve been doing that a long time in in Europe and the US. So, no one has yet applied that same kind of rigor to to the Quran or Sure, you can, but it’s it hasn’t been done to the same extent, you know, is is what I would be be my guess. I mean, I’m not a I’m not a scholar of Islam, but um uh it just doesn’t it doesn’t exist in the same broad. I see. Let me read to you another quote from uh one of your books. By Gnostic, Alan Moore means a particularly kind of direct and immediate experiential knowledge of one’s own divinity that cannot be reduced to reason or faith and stands very much opposed to the consensus reality of society and religion. Faith is for sissies who dared go and look for themselves. That’s my basic position. Magic is based upon direct knowledge. You seem to have quoted So that was Alan Moore, right? Yeah. Yeah, that’s Alan Moore’s quote. Exactly. But you seem to have quoted that approvingly. Um, my question for you is, do you think faith is a valid epistemic mode at all? Yes, for some people, not for me. I mean, look, most human beings don’t have the time or the luxury to ask questions of their culture and their tradition. And so I think faith is this sort of ascent to to to to one to altered states that that exist in the past. It’s clearly the norm in human history. Um it’s the norm because again most people don’t have the luxury or or the the time to to to ask serious questions. I don’t think faith is an option. It’s not a it’s not a um pressing option for me because it it requires a kind of intellectual suspension suspension and I’m not willing to do that. Um now that’s a choice Jonathan that’s my choice. Um if there are there are intellectuals who are willing to do that because they they see that the tradition has some um reasons for them to leave. Yeah. And I I respect that. I honor that. But that is not certainly my choice and it’s certainly not my conclusion. But Jeff, isn’t that another leap of faith in the following sense? Yeah. that you have faith in your reason or in your direct experience that that is sufficient to grasp at the most ultimate questions in the universe and and that is once you frame it that way that is a statement that requires some faith. It’s not clear at all why we humans should be able through either direct experience or reason to to to to get at these fundamental truths. Right? You certainly wouldn’t say maybe you would a dog uh would be able to do calculus. Uh then then then why why are we able to grasp at through our own faculties the ultimate truths? So why but why are why are people able to grasp what they experience as ultimate truth in all these traditions in all these cultures? That’s always the question I come back to is is why why is that? And and and the answer of faith doesn’t have an answer to that. You you you select you usually it’s your own tradition that you happen to grow up in or you happen to be a part of. You say that’s the ultimate truth. You believe that. You have faith that that’s true. But I’m just like that’s too convenient. It’s just too convenient for me. And I and it is a it is a position maybe you could call it a position of faith but but for me it’s a it’s a position of nosis because it’s rooted in people’s experiences and people’s direct direct experiences. And you think so so you are making the claim that direct human experience can get at the ultimate in some sense. Yes, I am I am making that claim and that’s sort of the realist impulse of of of my scholarship is that I do think human beings have access to to ultimate truth. What about animals? Can they have I don’t know. I they might as well. I I can’t talk to animals. Your dog might be enlightened the whole time actually. That’s why they’re so happy. Yeah. Yeah. I listen I don’t make a distinction. Um there’s this wonderful text that that the a physicist wrote and and basically he says well do dogs have souls? And he says of course not but neither do human beings. and he has this wonderful wonderful idea that that there’s one light and there’s one there’s one form of mind and we’re all we’re all manifestations of it you know that he draws from Sufism and I’m much closer to that right than than I am well let’s talk about uh that a bit because we talked a lot about western orthodoxy and now I want to move to the eastern orthodox traditions in your books uh and in our conversation you’ve said that your metaphysics aligns a lot better with with them. It does. So, what have you taken from the non-dual traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Dowoism and and why don’t you consider yourself like just a heretical Hindu, a heretical Buddhist and practicing that tradition and why why do you still kind of distance yourself from those traditions? Yes, because okay well what I take from non-dualism both in its well in its Hindu and Buddhist and dowist forms is a kind of serious questioning of God and the soul. This idea that God is somehow objective that there’s some being out there that created me and that I can relate to this being or this idea that I have a soul. These are very dualistic notions. And once you adopt a non-dual world, you no longer accept that God is external to one or that there there’s something called a soul. And you can find these experiences in the west as well. The the these are in the mystic the mystical authors as well. So I I see it everywhere. I don’t see it just in the east. Although it’s more developed. It’s more developed in Asia. It’s more and the metaphysics aligns a lot better. Yeah. Now, why don’t I why don’t I uh um call myself a heretical Hindu or Buddhist or well because they won’t have me. And um a lot of those identities require what I would think of as faith. They require me to to have devotion to some guru or some swami or some llama or something. And I just I I’m constitutionally unable to do that. I can’t do that. I’m like, no, not gonna do that. Why? But you did do that when you were young. Yeah. Why? It’s a good question. Um I think I’m hopelessly um democratic and individualist and western to be to be really frank about it. Um, I think there’s a there’s a serious conflict between devotion to to a realized human being and this idea of the freedom of the spirit or the the freedom of the intellect to ask any question. I think there’s a real conflict there. And it’s not that I don’t think that the the human being has had an experience of non-duality or isn’t realized. I’m like, “Yeah, you he you obviously are, but I still can’t ascent to to to that.” Yeah. And this is kind of a tension or maybe an imminent I was trained by Hegelian so go after these imminent kind of things. In your thought, I think there is a tension like for example how I uh pointed at you do have a faith in a certain gnostic realism. Uh there are these premises you seem to hold maybe just on your culture in the same way you critique others of just being culturally relative. Yeah. Yeah. But like my my my cultural um convictions in in the individual or in the the relevancy of of asking questions. I mean this is why I developed this sort of idea of the humanist too. I don’t I really don’t take that as as ultimate either. I I I really don’t. And I mean I often joke I don’t believe in myself. And what I mean by that is I actually don’t believe in a self, right? I think I think that’s a cultural and grammatical construction and I’m convinced by the arguments uh against it from neuroscience to to to Buddhist philosophy and I just think that’s true and but that doesn’t mean I’m not a human being and I don’t have an ego and I’m not I’m not Jeff Krile and I’m not I’m not a professor and I’m not here. I mean those are all true too, right? So this is why I talk about the humanist too. It’s it’s not to right it’s not to affirm two substances. It’s just just to affirm this contradiction or this this complexity of things. Right. Yeah. So, um it’s interesting when I tell my Christian friends about Buddhist metaphysics and emptiness and how there is no self, they say this is completely ridiculous. And I’m like and trinitarianism is like a piece of cake that you can just swallow with a um anyways uh yeah this is a very classical Buddhist idea both that uh emptiness itself is empty right as well as certainly the no self that I would say is a very distinctly kind of Buddhist position contrahinduism certainly contra the western monotheisms so yeah why why are you convinced of that idea I just I just see so much evidence for it Please, for example, death, you know, I mean, every human being on this planet is going to die. Life is going to annihilate the ego of every single person, every eight billion all eight billion people. So clearly that’s not that’s not ultimate. Okay. But okay, but you know better than I the research coming out of UVA and reincarnation, you you know you know very well how the soul exists in the Christian again again. So what? So you have these reincarnation memories. I I understand that the ego or the self is that people have extraordinary experiences of it around death. And the thing about reincarnation is these are memories that children have. We don’t actually know that that that these things exist, right? But but come on, Jeff. Like to to say that clearly you’re not making the claim. Maybe you are that physical death it just just well this is the knockdown argument for non-self because you know the Christians will say when the soul survives and there will be a physical does it what’s your evidence for that I mean um again I you don’t believe the a soul or something survives after after after death I think consciousness survives I’m not sure the soul I don’t I don’t think the soul does I don’t think I don’t think immortality is personal and I do think that there is a survival of persons, you know, beyond death, but I don’t think it’s ultimate. In other words, you know, somebody can have reincarnation memories, somebody could have a near-death experience, you know, mediumship, all these things can happen. Mediumship can happen. Um, and I think they’re all real in the sense that they actually happen, but I don’t believe for one second that Jeff will exist, you know, um, in any sense, you know, down down the Okay. Okay. Well, well, this is a very interesting claim, right? Because again, let’s take the reincarnation data where um again, it’s temporary, right? So, it seems to me all the phenomenon you mentioned there, and this is actually really surprising in this interview, I wasn’t expecting this, which is great. It seems like the easiest explanation for all of this data that mediums talking to spirits, if you take the data seriously, reincarnation data, um sightings of dead dead people. Yeah. is that there is some continuation of the person after death. I mean it doesn’t ne necessitate that but I think there is I just don’t think it’s ultimate. I don’t think it’s permanent. I think there is continuation of the personality after death. But but okay so so this is just the Buddhist position then because they also well this is why this is why I joked that I think well maybe the Buddhists have it right you know. Um, I’m persuaded by that, you know, just from the the data and from people’s experiences that I hear about over and over and over again. I’m like, yeah, the personality exists. Yes, there are reincarnation memories. Yes, there are all these phenomena, but none of that means that the self or the the the soul is is ultimate. So, I mean, I’ve been to UVA. I’ve been to to the department. And there’s this whole, you know, I don’t know what it’s not out like now, but but when Bruce was was not retired, he had all these filing cabinets behind him of near-death experiences, and you’d walk across the hallway to Jim Tucker’s office. Jim’s retired now, too. And there were all these filing cabinets on children who remember previous lives. I’m like, well, how are those connected? I Nobody knows. Nobody says. I’m like, wait, there’s a one life model here and there’s a multiple lives model here. What’s going on? Wait, near-death experience doesn’t necessitate a one life model, doesn’t it? That’s what they’re usually assuming. And sometimes they do have reincarnation in them, of course, but we haven’t got to that stage of the conversation, right? We haven’t even done that comparison. That’s what I’m trying to say, right? And it’s not like, you know, pe people ask me for answers all the time. I’m like, I don’t know. You’re as stuck as I am. But let’s have let’s have a conversation. Let’s put everything let’s put the near-death experiences on the same table with the children who remember previous lives and then let’s talk, right? Okay. So, let me ask you this. What do you disagree with the Buddhists on? Because because everything you said so far, Yeah. Like, and again, there’s obviously you can say, well, I don’t believe chanting like the the Pureland stuff. that there’s like a core Buddhist philosophy in metaphysics. What do you disagree with them all? I’m not so sure what I disagree with. Wow. Okay. I I don’t know. I mean, this is a good question. This I’ve never been asked this question, but um I mean, there are a lot of Buddhist traditions, as you know. Of course. And there a lot of them insist or require some kind of um faith in a in a in a realized teacher. And I mean, that’s probably where I I fail. the practice. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And also, you know, um you know, when I when I was in my adoto vanta days, uh Shankurachara was often called a secret Buddhist. And I suspect he was I think that’s a correct charge. I actually don’t see any difference between Adua Vanta and Buddha and Buddhist philosophy. I just don’t right. And I understand that there is this distinction of course between the atman or the self and and and the anata or the no self. But to me it’s it’s it’s kind of irrelevant when it comes to to extreme human experience. I want to push you a bit on uh the problem you said you have most with this kind of devotional teacher. uh the western Buddhism I was taught and I fully recognize you know packaged by colonialism and there’s a mc mindfulness the thing that I was taught was that Buddhism is different from the other religions because through your own personal experience through meditation through reason you can validate the claims that the Buddha himself made practically that’s obviously not true because obviously you don’t get to get the experience before you follow the teacher but but do you think there’s something here to that claim let me let me let me put it this way. I mean, just listening to you, I’m thinking I think human beings have experiences the Buddha never had. Okay. I mean, think about that. That’s really that’s a that’s a pretty radical statement. But I just talking about like like what? Like playing video games? Like of course, right? But you’re saying mystical experience. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That that human beings have experiences and future human beings will have experiences that none of us have had. And what what you get at least in the study of Buddhism certainly in in in the US is you get a complete denial of what I call the superhuman. You know, you don’t talk about reincarnation. You don’t talk about levitation. You don’t talk about rainbow bodies. But that’s all in the tradition. That’s like right that’s like staring you right in the face. And if you really push on people, by people I mean professors of Buddhism, they’ll they’ll open up and they’ll say things like, “Yeah, I I’ve had my first enlightenment experience reading Alan Watts or taking LSD or something.” I mean, they they’ll get really really weird on you really really fast. And I’m like, “Okay, now we’re now we’re on to this. Now we’re in now we’re now we’re into it.” Yeah, it is very interesting the weird relationship religions have with the supernatural and magic because you think they would be big fans like look look at all this stuff but I think on one hand there’s uh well well there is on one hand our tradition our magic’s better than yours right this is Moses dueling with the magi let me let let me speak in terms of of Christianity because I know the most about the Christian tradition the problem with magic as it’s called is that it’s human. It’s it’s the human being is doing the weird Okay? And what Christianity declared to be a miracle is if the agency came from God. If it was outside the natural world and God did it. And the problem with magic is that humans did it. And I want to say humans did it. We’re always doing it. We actually made up God. You know, I want to say we’re responsible for God. We made God. Okay. So, I want to reverse the This is thenosticism. I want to reverse the the claim. And you know, one of the things I say a lot is it’s us. It’s us. We did it right. And that’s a suspicious claim, but it’s also a deeply religious statement. because it’s not clear that we did it, but it’s actually not clear we didn’t do it. So, you you make it on a leap of faith or best explanation for the data or it always works. I I have yet to find a situation where I’m like, it doesn’t work. And so, I just keep saying, I think it’s us. I think it’s us. And and by us, again, I mean the humanist, too. I mean, there’s a part of us we’re not aware of that is appearing as the dead soul or is appearing as the Buddha or Jesus or whatever, but we’re we’re having this experience. Let me let me put it this way. I have never ever heard of an experience of God that wasn’t told to me by a human being ever. Right. But but but but Jeff like surely you see the problem here which is what is a counter example like like what what what is a counter example? No, but but but but don’t you see you you’ve designed the theory such that it it can’t be I’m not saying everything needs to be falsified like but you see you see the issue right like like for example let’s take levitation okay the Tibetans human being the Tibetans this human being they practice they go through walls so they claim but then you have as you well know the Christian levitators who they get pulled up by some force they they’re they’re grabbing on to stuff also a human being by the way right and then you explain it as humanist There’s a secret part of you. You don’t know it. But but your model prevents any example from falsifying. So So my question is like what do I have to show you to convince you there is a God? I’m not sure. I’m not sure. But is isn’t that worrisome? Don’t you see? Don’t you see? No, I’m not worried about because I don’t see even if you know the alien came down in the spaceship. Well gosh, it looks really human. It’s it’s got eyes and hands and it’s it it’s communicating and I mean gosh it looks really really human. Okay, maybe this is an example. Alien spaceship comes down. USS Enterprise or something and nonhuman aliens start walking down. Is is that human? Is it what? Like nonhuman looking aliens start walking down like like Octtopi and is that is that human? It still wouldn’t bother me because it’s it’s life. It’s what it’s what life has done on some other planet or in some other part of the of the universe. Okay. But now now you’re shifting the goalpost. Yes. Yes. So okay, this is where I become deeply religious. So I think the history of religions is about humanity on this planet on earth and when we start to relate to to the broader cosmos or the broader universe then the cosmic comes in. But I think it’s the same life life force. It’s the same stuff. It’s just it’s just on a different um planet or as it were, a different star system. Um so I don’t to me I don’t I don’t draw a distinction. Okay. So, if I were to show you like an angel, not in human form coming down, your response would be that would be that that’s that’s First of all, I would say that what you’re calling an angel is your ideology. You just made up. Um, this is an angel. That one word you’re going to call like all these beings with one word, you know? Um, and these are demons. Okay, now you got two words. Well, okay. What about diamonds? you know, neither angel nor demon. What about that? You know, right? The jin, right? Yeah. Yeah. What about the jin? You know, what what about all these other things? And um so I would I would turn very quickly to other cultural frameworks and and want some complexity there. And why why do like let’s go back to Christianity. Why do we keep um uh worshiping Greek terms from the 3rd and fourth century like logos or like us and h homeo usio and you know the nying creed basically was completely Greek right oh the third AD I see I mean it’s literally Greek and why do we think that human deification follows Greek grammar Why do we do that? Why not Chinese grammar? Why not Sanskrit grammar or Arabic grammar? Of course it does. Of course it does. You just have to look at these other traditions. And it’s it follows those those languages, you know. I see. So before we talk about your actual worldview and we’ve we’ve uh hinted at it already and talk about new comparativism, I I want to open up another war on another front. Not that we haven’t declared a war on every religious tradition, but there’s there’s someone we haven’t offended yet, and those are the materialists and the scientists, right? Okay. Okay. Good. So, let’s talk about why you think uh materialism is just untenable. And maybe let’s go with the empirical data. Like what are the single instances of the most compelling empirical data, not just your own experience, but that someone could go verify that you think is look, this just can’t be absorbed. So, first of all, I’m not against materialism or or or science. I I I I I don’t think that they’re wrong. I just think that they’re inadequate again. Right. So, that’s a different claim, by the way. No, no, no. I I totally agree with you. Newton’s not wrong. Right. Newton’s not wrong. He just doesn’t have the full picture. Yeah. Right. And Einstein’s not right either. Einstein’s limited. And we’re again, we keep assuming presentism. We keep assuming by presentism I mean the history of science. We just assume that our present science is is the full deal. I’m like what what why do we do that? Right? And so that’s my problem. Materialism often sounds to me like 19th century materialism. It’s not even the latest physics. It’s it’s not I mean you just read you just I mean the layers read science science books for lay people like myself and you’re like this doesn’t work right this is just this is just 19th century mechanism that is kind of silly right now right however this is probably still the dominant kind of metaphysical view at least in in the west so can you can you tell us about like some of these studies or people who don’t know the reincarnation stuff the NDE Stargate. Yeah. To tell us about some of these. Okay. So, here’s my problem thinking that the scientific method is complete or full. It has to do with non-dualism. Again, it’s that whenever you have a scientific method, you’re studying an object and a subject’s doing it and you’ve split it. You’ve already begun with a split. And it’s that split that I’m really worried about because I don’t think that’s really faithful to to actual reality. Yeah. To actual reality. Um and again it’s not that and and the the strange thing about mathematics which is behind all the science is that again it’s us. It’s like why why does stuff that goes on in the brain why does it correspond to material reality? Why does why do these mathematical equations get a a person to the moon in that? That’s like crazy. That is wild. Well, there’s a there’s a tradition there. there’s a Pythagorean and and Platonic tradition there. Why why the the inside corresponds to the outside and and we can talk about that and and we should. So my my my problem with the scientific method is that it’s not aware of its own history and it’s not aware of how religious and mystical it really is. Right. Um and then you get to things I think this is what you’re asking. My other problem with the scientific method is it takes a lot off the table and it says this is nonsense or this is fraudulent or this is hallucination. I’m like those are just rhetorical bad words. You’ve taken things off the table so that you could explain everything on the table but the only reason you can explain everything on the table is you’ve just taken off what you can’t explain. Right. So what do you mean about the mystical origins of the scientific method? uh Pythagoreanism, the idea that mathematics there’s this correspondence between this internal reality and this external reality. Um I and I mean that I mean that deep deep correspondence or that deep deep relationality, right? Um and you know and and I for example in Albert Einstein I mean Einstein would talk about the greatest miracle is why the universe is comprehensible at all. Yeah. Why is it comprehensible to the human mind? Well, there’s something in the human mind that is is is is accessing and can do the physics can do in his case relativity theory. I mean, why is that? Right? So, that’s the philosophical critique. Um, but what I think most people don’t know is that even on empirical scientific grounds, there is just a lot of data that the kind of brute materialism is not the final story. So, tell us about what you think is most convincing empirically. Yeah. So the the scientific or empirical study of of phenomena particularly around death has been going on since the 1870s 1880s. I mean there’s there’s a ton of literature like it’s bigger than anybody can possibly read. And so anytime you get a claim like there is no scientific evidence for telepathy or precognition or or whatever it’s that’s just nonsense. It’s just not true. There is there was a psychical research tradition in England then there was a paras psychological tradition in the US and it still goes on it’s still happening and there are a lot of lame arguments about why this is sleep paralysis or why this is hallucination or or whatever it is but it’s just pulling words out of the out of the sky to just declare someone else’s experience is illegitimate and that’s what I object to is that that rhetorical claim of illegitimacy that I just think is and it doesn’t mean that these are completely applicable to the scientific method. Sometimes they’re not, right? I want to acknowledge that too, right? But but but just give give us like a concrete example in one of these traditions of one of the mediums they studied or like whoever you think is the most compelling case like give us an actual example where they’ve actually shown. I personally think the most compelling evidence is precognition. I think human beings experience the future in great detail and related in great detail by the way and I don’t think we have taken that seriously because we don’t think that’s possible and I think it’s obviously possible for example um just to take one example Barry Windsor Smith is a young man he’s a young comic book artist he’s He’s he’s drawing Marvel comics, uh, Conan the Barbarian actually in the early 70s and he’s living with his parents outside of London and the comic book page disappears and he has this vision of this office in which these people are talking and that there’s this uh traffic jam and it’s three stories up and it’s it’s in great detail. And three years later, he’s in that office and it’s in New York and there’s the traffic jam and there’s the person saying it and and it all plays out in perfect detail. Why? Why is that? I I don’t know. I don’t know why. I don’t know why people have pre-cognitive experiences other than to say this is possible. The future already exists. It’s already happened. But that’s just one case. There are there are thousands thousands of those. I I mean I get them every day in an email by the way too. I mean people are writing me constantly about their extraordinary experience and sometimes before the event happens. So you have the timestamps right like well Elizabeth Cone I mean this I I wrote this book with Elizabeth called Change in the Flash and she did use timestamps and it involved plane crashes and um tsunamis and earthquakes and things like that. Really? So she sent you an email with a time stamp? She sent herself. Here’s here’s the thing though, Jonathan. I actually brought in a forensic computer scientist to look at Elizabeth’s computer. And he was very clear that he didn’t have any evidence that it didn’t happen, but he didn’t have any evidence that it did. What the emails? Yeah. And it’s because as you as you buy new computers and transfer your email, it slices off the data that the computer the forensic computer scientist needs to say if she really sent her if she really sent this email to herself. We have the email. We have the the the time stamp of the email, but we don’t have the actual computer details. So, there’s something about what I’m trying to get at. There’s something about these experiences, and this gets to the science question again, too. There’s something about the phenomena that’s tricky and that it’s tricking us and that is hiding itself. It’s camouflaging itself and this is this drives the scientists. This is where they invoke fraud. But I don’t think so. I think that this is the phenomena itself is doing. Okay. So, so this is the part of your thesis that I have the most maybe problem with. Yeah. your claim if I understand it correctly and tell me if I don’t is that these things resist being studied by the scientific method. They trick you for example by okay the first question is if an orthodox faith believer go back to the first part of our of our conversation said the same thing about their book you would be like all right well that’s very convenient right let’s say maybe we’ll take the Mormon example that the plates happen to have got have gone after that the the plates resist being captured you’d say okay well that’s that’s kind of suspicious right like okay I guess my my real push back to you Jeff is this which is there are as you and you and and I’m very surprised you didn’t go to this first there are things that are studied in controlled environments like the Duke’s research right there like the remote viewing stuff right right but I think when you control something with the scientific method you make it go away but it doesn’t go away in the Duke but it kind of does you don’t the most explicit the most robust phenomena we have is always is always personal testimony anecdotes That’s a bad word that that scientists want to use to like lop off and take things off the table. I You’re an anecdote. I’m an anecdote, right? So what? It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And to call something an anecdote is just to take it off the table so you don’t have to think about it anymore. Okay. So So let’s talk about let’s zero in on the Duke study because I think that that’s one of the most compelling the the Duke study so and maybe you can explain it for our audience the background and set up there. The Duke study was founded by a couple named JB and Luis Ry and they both had PhDs in botany by the way and JB Ryan became the kind of u classical parasychologist that he was using statistics to study things like psychokinesis and telepathy and things like that. But the thing the thing that’s so interesting is Louisa Luis Ryan was writing books on testimony and that’s where all the robust phenomena is. It’s not actually in the statistics to do the statistics. You got to be a statistician and the data is like you know if there are 50 if there are 100 trials there might be 60 of them or 55 of them. But with Louisa, you have things like chandeliers are going to fall on small children and you have mothers going to the to the the crib and and taking the child away. I mean, you have really dramatic um situations in real life that involve things like precognition that you don’t get in a laboratory because the laboratory kills it is what I’m going to say. So there’s the star candidate. So the laboratory for our audience at Duke what they did was uh cards right they had five different cards and and they asked uh the Xer cards if they can effectively through whatever method we don’t know guess which card that is going to be cut up next uh obviously you expect there’s what four cards so you expect to be 25% one and 20% 20 because there’s five cards sorry yeah the star candidate Hubert Pierce had as you know over 30% Okay. So again, so it’s not being resisted. So again, that’s not that dramatic. It’s like that’s not a chandelier. That’s not a chandelier falling on a crib, you know? It’s it’s it’s you’re selecting. I mean, but but for a statistician, I was trained in math. That that is crazy. Like like 35. That’s like one in a million or But you have to be a statistician to be impressed by that, you know? That’s my point. You don’t have to be impressed with the mother rescuing her child from the chandelier at 4 in the morning, you know, and the and the chandelier really does fall on the ground, right? You you you you get that story instantly. And so that’s what I’m trying to say is that the the the problem with parasychology is that the the the distinctions are minor and you have to be a statistician or a mathematician to appreciate what’s going on. You do not. They’re very dramatic and they’re very extreme with the with the quote unquote anecdotal cases. But if your thesis is that the phenomenon resists study, it does. Then why why doesn’t it resist a statistician study? Like surely if it resists study as soon as you put it in the lab, it should just be 20%. No. Well, the the scientists just poo poo the 10%. They’re like that did, you know, so what? I mean, so in some ways, in some ways, what I’m trying to say is you need trauma, right, to invoke these extraordinary superhuman abilities. And you don’t, what the laboratory, what the scientific method does is it removes trauma and it removes all of this all of this real world stuff. And so it disappears. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, so so there’s two actually theories I’m I’m I’m getting from you of why this thing disappears. One is that the phenomena is conscious and it wills its own secrecy because I don’t know, it doesn’t want to reveal itself yet. That’s one explanation. Well, it does that too, by the way. The other one is that trauma does not exist in the controlled environments. But as you know, uh I don’t know if this is just myth. Nazi scientists did try experimenting or people think that they did try experimenting introducing trauma because they don’t have the ethical standards that we do. So, do you think it’s both of these explanations? Oh, yeah. I think it’s really complicated. I think it’s super messy, right? I think life is I think where where I think you really see extraordinary phenomena is in is in real world circumstances. You know, my my joke is you don’t go to the North Pole to prove prove that zebras exist. Because if you do, guess what? There are no zebras. Because you went to the North Pole, right? If you go if you go to the subsaharan plains of Africa, guess what? You’re going to find lots of zebras. So, let’s say we don’t have any complete ethics whatsoever. Can we design lab experiments to produce the significant forms of this? Or even then, we can’t. Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, there are movies or television series like that. people without any moral moral standards. Um I So here look look Jonathan let’s let’s we’ll kind of dig down into this. I think that paranormal phenomena are moral or ethical at their root. And I think it’s us trying to speak to us. And I think, you know, when with the the the example I gave of the chandelier and the and the crib and the baby and the mother, um I don’t think it’s any uh accident at all that the mother knows when knows has a bad dream about the chandelier falling on her child. I mean, it’s it’s important for her. It’s her child for goodness sake. It’s about reproduction. It’s about survival. I so I think there are are survival or reproductive or or evolutionary reasons for this is what I’m trying to say. But I I ultimately think it’s the mother who’s precognizing the event so that she can preserve the the the life of her child. Okay. So I don’t think it’s God. I don’t think it’s it’s it’s not Jesus. It’s it’s the mother. But the mother’s not going to own it either, right? you know because the the dream just appeared to her. So um let me ask this question. What do you think is the most compelling data that has come out of controlled experiments? There’s the Duke study, right? There’s the remote viewing stuff. That’s pretty crazy. First of all, I don’t know I don’t know the controlled studies well enough. I’m not a parasychologist. I’m a historian of religions. Um, you know, speak to Dean Raiden, you know, speak to uh, you know, Marilyn Schlid, speak to, you know, these people would know what the most control the controlled studies that have produced the most data. I think the remote viewing stuff is which we have in our our our archive here um, is really interesting, but again, it it it reveals the messiness of the situation, right? Because there’s a lot of failed there’s a lot of failed, right? Is that Yeah, there’s a lot of fail there’s a lot of failures but there’s also this tension between can these experiences be trained or are they in unique individuals right nature versus nurture I’m much more on the unique individuals by the way I think people are simply different and I think some human beings are set up for these kinds of experiences for reasons we don’t understand because we haven’t looked into it. We haven’t tried to understand. I think it has something to do with trauma. I think it has something to do with genetics. I think it has something to do with with culture, obviously. I think it’s really complicated, right? And I don’t want us to be simplistic about it. Right. You you want to keep the questions open. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I see. So, let me ask you this, and again, I’m I’m just going to harp on the empirical stuff just because I know to a to a scientific audience, that’s what’s going to be most compelling. When you say testimony, there’s actually like really strong testimonial studies, let’s call it that way, of NDEs, of reincarnation. Yeah. like like what what they found like for NDEs wasn’t you know a million patients telling the doctor guessing the wrong thing and then one of them got them right it’s like more often than not when they tell us about these experiences they get them right so is is that fair so and okay so Carlos’s book on levitation is another great example yeah if Certino didn’t levitate how do you explain all the yeah right so is that fair like I guess I’m trying to say is through reason alone and by reason I don’t just in controlled stats environments. Yeah, we can gain very comfortable certainty that there’s I’m completely convinced these things happen. I’m completely convinced that people levitated. I’m completely convinced people have near-death experiences and I’m completely convinced we don’t have a model for any of this, right? At least in the academy. Uh I know there are models for this in in some of the religions, but um you know the levitation thing is really is really um fascinating. Um Theresa Vavala and Joseph of Certino certainly did did levitate and they believed it was God doing it but I don’t you know I think it was them doing it or some aspect of them but but again is that really different than the God explanation? I don’t I don’t know. Right. So our audience at this point might be worried that you might be too gullible. So let’s talk about that. Can you talk us about how you vet these experience because some of your authors of the impossible like Valley he did say you know I I seriously vetted them I thought 90% of the UFO stuff was just wrong right so tell us about how you so first let me say a few things about that that issue first of all gullible is a it’s like anecdote it’s like uh fraud it’s like sleep paralysis it just you just pull it out of the air and and you say you’re too gullible I do have criteria and there is I do have deep suspicion by the way. So it’s not that I’m not suspicious of the experiences but I think the experiences happened and you can’t be suspicious in this way until you say they happen. In other words, you can’t say it’s us until you say this this person floated or this person pre-cognized the chandelier coming down. But are you ever suspicious of the happening of that? Surely you must be right there because there are just frauds. I am. I am. I’m I’m I I do have criteria. I’m not sure they’re completely conscious. But right um because people do fake things and they do claim that things happened when they didn’t. But generally they don’t. By the way, what what when when I was first converted to this and by converted I mean it I guess in the religious sense I was talking to people in in the counterculture um and they told me all of these crazy crazy things that I knew didn’t happen but I knew happened. Wait, explain explain it because you just said A and not A. Well, they were talking about things like subtle energies erupting in their spine as they’re giving birth to a child or, you know, an orb coming out of the sky or leaving their bodies or some kind of psychedelic trip. And I um I realized we didn’t have any way of thinking about those things in the academy other than fraud or exaggeration or hallucination or all these words. But that these people were not telling me these things because they didn’t happen. They weren’t after money. They weren’t after fame. They weren’t they weren’t after anything. They were just sharing these things because I was um a sympathetic ear and and they wanted to tell me what I think really happened to them. Now, is that gullibility? I don’t think so. Um do I think that what happened to them I do I honor the experiencer? The experiencer is not the authority of their own experience as I often think. Yeah. You you you honor the legitimacy of the experience but not necessarily the interpretation. Correct. Right. And the interpretation is often inside the experience, by the way. Right. The interpretation is part of the experience. And so I’m deeply suspicious of the experience, but not that it didn’t happen. Right. Right. If that if that makes any sense. And I Yes, I do have criteria. I don’t listen to everybody. I don’t I don’t think I’m gullible. I quite the contrary. People say to me all the time, they think I’m an atheist. Um, I’m actually not. But I understand why they say that because I think their image of God or their view of whatever happened to them religiously is not true. Right. Right. But but not in the usual way that the atheist believes. You’re hallucinated. I am not I am not denying verticality or some kind of transcendence. I I’m affirming it. So there’s a there’s there’s an affirmation of verticality, but there’s a deep questioning or suspicion around the the interpretation of that. So what one of the things that this will take us I think into another conversation but so I’m deeply suspicious of both the argument from religion which is just a a word that we made up again in the last few hundred years to talk about what our ancestors um said about their own experiences. But I’m also deeply suspicious of science. So it’s and this constant call for empirical proof. It’s just science proving science. It’s just it’s circular to me. It just goes around and around and around. So what I mean by thinking impossibly is thinking after both religion and science and that’s really hard for people. Right. But Jeeoff, the reason I keep pushing you from empirical evidence isn’t because I think that’s the only valid mode of uh epistemic uh inquiry. It’s that again, this is my Hegelian tendency. This is the same thing as the orthodox face. I think the strongest thing is an imminent critique. I know and I think we can show on the scientist’s own grounds that it’s incomplete. So, let me ask you this. The miracle icon I don’t 50 60 70% chance I don’t think it’s a fraud. I think it’s oozing oil. What do you think is going to happen if I put it in a laboratory, cameras on it? Do you think it’s going to stop? Nothing. Nothing will happen. You think it’s going to stop? The oil is going to stop. I do. Right. Well, that has nothing to do with trauma. So, that’s just the will. The will of the phenomenon. Well, but there’s not a community there. There’s not a there’s not it’s not in a church. I mean, I think all of these things really matter. Okay. What if I put the scale and brought the scientists to the church? I don’t know. But I suspect by applying the scientific method, you will make it go away. Right. Interesting. And so here’s my question for you. Um, we’ve given a few explanations for why things resist being studied. One is the trauma explanation. Um, and we can test that, right? By having trauma in laboratory. The other one is will the thing the thing itself resists being studied in the same way you’re playing hide-and-seek. And the third one is maybe technology. Maybe there’s something with with technology that that scares the phenomenon. But yeah, maybe we don’t want to know. Maybe we’re afraid. We are hiding it from ourselves. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I again I again I’m not I’m not resistant to the materialist explanation, but I think it’s it’s um it’s a kind of refusal to think about the situation. Uh but so I think the religious explanations are equally or even more so copouts. Um and I I think we’re just afraid of ourselves, Jonathan, at the end of the day. Yeah. So if your assumption is that you are sp dedicating your life to investigating something that resists being studied in certain ways and is very powerful, aren’t you in a lot of danger in the following sense? Right. I the closest analogy I have is you’re an investigative journalist poking at an authoritarian government’s thing that they don’t want to have studied like like why aren’t you fearful of your life is those your assumptions here’s here’s why and this is definitely a faith position um I think that the world or the universe is essentially beneficent or benevolent and with a lot of paranormal phenomena Uh, it’s trying to communicate. It’s trying to say things. I mean, it literally says things literally, right? And my argument is listen because you’re listening to yourself. It’s like talking to you right now and you’re trying to talk to yourself. And if you’re not going to listen to this, I think it’s sad. I just think that’s really sad. It’s like It’s like the dream interpretation. It’s like when you have a dream, you you you need to interpret it and you need to listen to yourself having that dream. Uh and that is a faith statement. That’s a kind of psychoanalytic conviction that that the unconscious becoming conscious is a good thing. And and maybe it’s not always a good thing. I don’t I don’t know that that. So again, this is not a direct contradiction, but there’s a tension here. On one hand, these things don’t want to be examined. On the other hand, they’re trying to communicate. Yes, they are. I think so. I think paranormal fella are trying to speak and take the demon explanation. You know, my joke is I’ve never met a demon that didn’t look like a suffering human being ever. And so, even the demon is trying to heal. It’s trying to speak. It’s trying to speak of its suffering. It’s trying to speak of its whatever whatever the trauma is. And I think by virtue of us not listening to it and not trying to integrate the trauma or the suffering into some into some other system, I think we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re just causing it. We’re causing it to happen. But but but if it’s but if it wants to speak, why then does it resist being studied? I think it resists being studied scientifically. Why? Or I guess you Yeah. Yeah. Well, because it’s not an object. It’s not It’s not a material object. It’s degrading to it. It feels It feels It feels low integrity for you to study it that way. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like you basically by science you mean you want to study something that’s dead and insensient and and and and behaves in a particular uh predictable way and it’s not. It’s alive. It’s minded. It’s conscious. It it it’s right. So So it’s almost offended that you would you would treat it that way. Something like that. I wouldn’t speak like that, but but maybe it is. I see. Um I want to now discuss one of the most exciting um ideas you had around fraud. Actually um you had a three-level defense of fraud I found fascinating. The first is just because fraud exists in one of these people doesn’t mean we discount to all of them, right? The second stronger claim is that just because this person had fraud in one instant doesn’t discount their other things, right? The third level is even more exciting. That practice of fraud can lead to the real the real magical thing, right? Give us an example of the third case. I was training to become a monk and and presumably a priest. I think a lot of religious practices, you’re faking it, right? Until you make it. Like prayer. Yeah. Until it actually happens. Um, and so there you have you you have a situation where you’re engaging in a ritual or um some form of religion and you’re pretending essentially that it that it’s real or that it’s happening and at some point it it really does happen. Um I think I think the one one example here is the shaman who who learns a certain set of tricks to work on on patients or people who are suffering from medical illnesses. But the tricks work, you know, the person really gets healed and the shaman knows thinks it’s tricks initially. Well, the shaman knows it’s a trick, meaning that it’s a it’s a way to get some money or something like that. Well, uh I mean I I’m not a shaman, but I mean like using the guts of of chickens to to to to sort of pretend that you’re pulling something out of a stomach or something, you know, right? So the shaman doesn’t believe initially, but then it starts working is what you’re saying. The role of belief is is fuzzy is what I’m trying to say and ambiguous. And like you know the example I always give is is the uh placebo effect. We we know it works about 25 30% of the time, but it’s a total fraud, but it works. So, there’s something the it’s as if the human being needs to be tricked to access its own healing abilities or its own miraculous abilities in the case of levitation or in the case of Okay. Well, well, okay. So, this is a slightly less exciting conclusion than I was hoping. In the third case, I was hoping you would say, for example, someone would do a magic trick. Yeah. Knowing that’s and and Okay. But that’s different from the placebo example because because that means that in the the magician initially knows that he’s doing fraud whereas the placebo person is fooled into it. There’s a big difference there. So, so have there been magicians who who start Yeah. Russell Russell talks about being a magician and you know performing tricks on stage and realizing that sometimes it works like what kind of tricks levitation or mentalist tricks like being able to read minds or something. Um I it’s been a long time since I read that biography. Right. Right. But Russell does talk about that. And so I think you know what we mean by magic today is basically stage magic. It’s basically people performing fraud fraudulent illusions. But I think the the distinction between trickery on stage and something actually happening is is fuzzy really really fuzzy. Right? And the the example that also I want to invoke here is fiction. By the way, fiction is a word that we invented again in the 19th probably 19th century. And the relationship between people writing stuff and people doing stuff is like really not clear, Jonathan. Um, and people people experience characters and and personalities in novels appearing in real life all the time, right? Um, so before what is that? Before I had read uh your kind of defense of fraud or or craziness to to not even then not take the data off the table. Um I had thought something like Mormonism I could just dismiss entirely, right? Because there’s clearly issues of Mormonism. Smith is of a dubious character. It’s pretty clear Native Americans aren’t Jews. Um the the papyra, the Egyptian papyrie, which he said was Abraham, turned out exactly not to be Abraham. There’s all kinds of failed prophecies. But now I’m having second thoughts of whether I might be missing something. Dismissing the tradition. Yeah. Am I missing something there? I think I mean my my my gut feeling is that that Joseph Smith probably was was having real experiences and probably was performing tricks. Probably they’re both together, right? I I just I don’t make these distinctions. I I don’t think they’re separate is what I’m trying to say. I think particularly for religious charismatic leaders, I I do think that they have experiences embedded in these in these in these acts of of trickery or fraud, right? I mean, and and and they’re not always responsible. So, they’re not they’re not okay. But but let’s take the strongest case where where it is. Okay. Let’s let’s take um for example, this is one of historical criticism. There’s translation errors in the KJV that shows up in the Mor Bible that allegedly is from this angel, right? That to me reads, okay, this is probably not from the angel, right? And so that would be a very clear instance of fraud. And I I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t lie to people like that. Like like my friends who are high integrity don’t lie to people like that. So why are you saying ah this is I guess you’re not saying this is no big deal, right? But but I’m saying compare that to a religious leader who only had legitimate experiences. Maybe they interpret it wrong. That’s a difference, right? Yeah. I’m just I’m just saying I think the relationship is way more complicated. I I’m not I’m not trying to defend someone or defend some notion of integrity or honesty. I’m I’m saying it’s it’s complicated. It’s really complicated. And that whatever this phenomena is Jonathan is using we are constructing it all the time and there are different ways to construct it is what I’m trying to say. It’s it’s constructed but there’s there’s a constructor us right and and so I’m suspicious at the same time that I’m affirming if that makes any that again that makes any sense. So I I’m in tech entrepreneurship. I’m also an investor as well and I think everything we said about fraud applies to that as well whereas just because there are some or many frauds doesn’t mean everyone is a fraud and importantly the same instance of fraud can exist in the actual real entrepreneur as well and even stronger maybe it’s the act of fraud think about Elon saying don’t worry the car is going to be delivered xdate it’s just complete lies but that gives the capital for the real thing to be engendered. That’s the kind of model. Anyways, that that thought just popped into my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it’s a binary. I don’t think it’s fraud or legitimacy. I think that’s a frankly that’s a scientific um principle that doesn’t apply to this. But I also I think if we can talk about the phenomenon in general, it’s not just human fraud. I think there’s something in the phenomenon itself. And by the phenomenon I mean the the paranormal weird stuff that is tricky and that is explicitly camouflaging itself. So I I don’t want to just and and and fraud is not being sinister if I can say that. In other words, we we deceive human beings and deceive people all the time and so does the natural world for reproductive reasons, for hiding, for praying. I mean, it it fraud is is a sign of intelligence. It’s not it’s not necessarily a sign of being sinister or bad. That’s kind of what I want to say, right? But there is also sinister and bad fraud. Of course, there is. I mean, it’s all it’s messy, right? So uh we’ve talked about the first part critique of orthodoxy. We talked about the critique of uh naive materialism. Now let’s move to your actual theory which is um the dual aspect modism. Yeah. So dual aspect modism basically says that there’s a mental world and there’s a material world that we all assume but that they emerge from this common source which we don’t have generally have access to this this this unis mundus or this one world. to speak in Carl Jung’s terms. And I I find that incredibly um powerful because it keeps a lot of things on the table. And the example I always give is is synchronicity where something is happening in the physical world that corresponds basically perfectly to something happening in the mental world and there isn’t a causal a physical causal relationship between them. If they emerge from the same unus that explains it that explains it to me. I mean it’s like yeah they correspond because they emerge from the same the same thing and that same thing is neither mental nor material right so I see the advantage of this over uh cartisian dualism but what is the advantage of dual aspect monism compared to regular old monism like idealism for example I certainly assume that there’s a mental world that’s looking out onto a material I mean dual aspect modism explains that for me. It explains that that that exper that common ordinary experience of tuness which I think a lot of human beings walk around assuming is the case. But what dual aspect modism gives me is it also explains the moments of unity or those those weird experiences that speak to some deeper unity that that is neither mental nor material. And it also the thing that that really fascinates me about paranormal phenomena, one of many things, is that they’re they’re physical. They’re they’re precognition. The icon, the icon, right? That that’s a that’s a public physical thing, right? It’s material, but it’s also mental. There’s there’s a meaning that’s that’s being communicated through this material object. And this is why I I kept saying to you, I don’t really have any problem with materialism. I just think it’s incomplete because I think there’s this whole other mental world and then there’s this zundus woundus below the tomb that I think is even more interesting. Does this position commit you to a kind of pansychism? It does. So the chair is conscious in some sense. Um the chair the chair is material is a material object, but there’s a a a a mentality that’s perceiving it and deeper down there is no distinction. So it I see the chair is not conscious. Yeah. Right. But but deeper down in some other in some other realm the distinction between the mental and material is is is not does not exist. Right. So one view of pansychism states that you know the an atom is conscious and and the chair is conscious. But but you’re saying it’s almost like we are the ones who are making the chair conscious or or something like that. Like I’m not sure what I’m saying, Jonathan. Um I mean this is why I don’t have any problem with science. It it’s the mental perceiving the physical or the material and and performing all kinds of mathematical equations on it. But there’s always a mental kind of material relationship here. And what I’m trying to say is there’s something below that or deeper than that that that explains the science and the the materialism. So what you’ve defined as the split from the one to the two as a kind of splitting and we humans are the splitters. This is a contian move in some sense, right? You’re almost saying a transcendental prerequisite of consciousness is this splitting function. Yeah. Why? Like I mean obviously you don’t have the full answer. I don’t know why. Why are we why why do we split? Well, obviously it’s very useful for us to split the world into two. We’ve reproduced and survived that way. So, I’m not I don’t know why we do that. I just know that human beings have moments where there’s no splitting. Okay. So, so this is what I want to push you on here in the theory because if you’re saying a transcendental prerequisite of consciousness is the splitting, there are moments of consciousness where there’s no splitting. No, I’m not saying that. I I don’t I never say that. Right. You’re just saying it’s the most likely most common mode. I’m saying that human beings have an experience of the world that is neither mental nor material and is they can access the unus in these mystical states. I’m not saying that those mystical states are useful or moral or or even reli or religious. I’m just saying people have those experiences and that this is what reality is, you know, deep down. Why do you take those experiences as not just some heightened formed within the splitting and but as but as unifying with the one clearly neither mental nor material that those those categories don’t even work right can you give an example? Yeah. Um I’m just thinking it’s something I just wrote. Um, so there’s a there’s a a woman named Dina or Dina Bazaar and she’s dying of cancer and um she she’s given um a psychoactive substance actually and she says um basically she said she loses all fear of death because there’s nothing to die anymore. And she says it’s not as if I’m looking out on the world or the universe. I am the universe. I am it and there’s no death. So that to me that is that is a non-dual experience because the the subjectivity objectivity is completely broken down. It doesn’t compute anymore because when we think of death we think of a subject or a or or or person ceasing to exist. And what what she’s saying is there is no person there. There is no and the universe itself is is alive and is this one thing and death is nothing. Death doesn’t mean anything. Right? So so that that’s that’s breaks our head that breaks our c because we think and our grammar grammarizes or we we language in dualism. We we assume that there’s a subject looking out on an object. We just assume that, right? And I’m interested in these states where that’s actually not true. Okay. So, here’s my next question, which is let’s say your interpretation of that state is correct of a monism. What makes you a dual aspect monism instead of a one aspect dualist in the following sense? Because you pref you prioritize the mystical state of unity ontologically over the dual state. I do. But what part of the data makes you prioritize it? Why not flip it on its head? That the real is a duality. And then in certain This is why I think I’m deeply religious. It’s a faith. It’s a faith. Yeah. Because part of it is that the people who have had these experiences come back from them and say, “This is what life is all about. This is the goal. This this is your nostic realism. This is it. This is the ultimate tilos of all existence.” that and I you know maybe I’m naive but I’m like yeah they’re right that I I believe that you know but it’s not that I ex I exist in some kind of non-dual state. I I don’t I’m terrible at it. I’m terrible. I Me too. I I can’t meditate. I’ve gone on a few retreats. I’m just I can’t even stop talking and so just hungry all the time. Me too. Um welcome to the club again. Uh, but but but I don’t care because I really don’t matter, Jonathan. I really don’t. I’m like Dina dying. I’m like, there’s a matter. It’s like, who cares what Jeff thinks or what he does? It’s like it it’s irrelevant. So, what troubles me in part of your explanation of the supernatural phenomenon is if it was all radioactive raccoons, talking mantises, and UFO apparitions that don’t have a clear religious bent. Okay, I I can kind of make sense of that. But a lot of these phenomenon, they show up in very clearly religious forms like the icon. They do, like seeing Jesus, like seeing Buddha. They do. Why? Because that’s how it camouflages itself and that’s how the person can understand it, right? I and again I think it’s us you know um okay but let me ch challenge you in this way a naive interpretation of what you’re saying you might disagree with this is that our beliefs our cultures shape how these events show up but then how do you explain where for example the Christian doesn’t see the Christian afterlife and near-death experiences right it also goes against our I know it doesn’t that’s why I love near-death experiences they often don’t agree with their their So, how do you explain it? Well, I I think the human being in truth is none of these religions. I think these are all our stories and we’re none of them. And so, when an a religious experience happens that doesn’t cannot be reduced to the social surround like see I told you you are you are actually not Jewish. You’re actually not a Christian or a Catholic. You’re actually not a Buddhist. You think you are. Okay. Okay. You think you are. Okay, play that game for however long you want, but you are not it. You are not your story. Right. But but I’m not bringing up this empirical data point uh to talk about that part of the argument. I’m bringing it to challenge your claim that it is our beliefs and our cultures that shape it. But but but it that’s but but that isn’t always successful. I I don’t I don’t think that always works. And I think what a paranormal experience often is is it’s it’s a communication inside a story saying this story isn’t working so well. Right? So sometimes it’s pro the story, sometimes it’s transgressive depending on what’s needed. The story will tell itself or it will reflexively challenge itself and it’ll jump out of itself and it’ll make fun of itself. And I’m like that’s that’s because it’s a story. It’s it’s actually not ultimate, right? Um let me let me give you an example of this. So just a really kind of um Benol example. So I was with a um a loved one once and this person was was suffering um emotionally a lot because of something that happened. And I said to this person, “Can’t you see that you’re not your emotion? Can’t you just step back and and and and not and the loved one looked at me and what do you mean? The person couldn’t do that. Absolutely could not do that. There there was zero separation between the emotional response and the person. And as an educator, as a human being, I think that’s a really bad idea. I do not think we’re our emotional responses. I do not think we’re our cultures. I do not think we’re our religions. I want to affirm the human being beyond all of those things. Yeah. You had this beautiful analogy about these paranormal phenomenon as Manurva’s owl. And if you relate to it the right way, it will give you wisdom. If you relate to it the wrong way, you’re the owl’s prey. It’ll eat you. What can one do? Asking for a friend here. um to get the good experiences is is it the right belief is it the right disposition like like practically how do I prepare myself so that if something happens it’s not getting anally probed by an alien it’s getting wisdom from the owl I I think we have we have to have compassion I mean that’s that sounds very Buddhist doesn’t it right we I don’t mean it in a Buddhist sense though I think we have to have compassion on each other and we have to have compassion on ourselves and I think when these things show up we have to have compassion on what shows up too and I think that’s the old that’s the best response to these things is is frankly a a kind of loving listening if I can put it that way and not a dismissal. This is why again I object so much to the the dismissal or the demeaning of these things because I think it’s morally bad. I think it’s really the wrong way to to to interact with these. So So let’s take one of the most most scary phenomenon that you take seriously, which is alien abduction. Let’s take it. May maybe it’s they’re not alien, but they they they’re perceived as I actually know a lot about that. Yes. Alien abductions and the story usually goes it’s frightening. There’s usually some sexual stuff going on. They’re anally probed and they get examined by doctors who say, “Well, we don’t know what happened.” Or there’s a little device installed in their ears. You’re saying if you go with the flow so to speak when that happens to you, how will the event change? I I you know my my advice to the person who’s had those exper first of all it that those things really happened to affirm the experience itself I think is a moral act right and and I think it’s really important um and by those things happen I mean they really happened the person really had those experiences and those experiences sometimes morph into something very positive they don’t always And all of that needs to be listened to and taken into account. I I think we should take that all seriously. We should take the the the negative terrifying aspects as seriously as we take the positive transformative aspects, but we shouldn’t separate them um because they might they might go together too. Got it. You’re not saying if the person is open to the experiences the anal probing alien will transform into a beautiful event. But you are saying even the negative event you can interpret it. What I’m saying too is that affirming that that really happened uh it’s more likely that that will then morph into something transformative and positive. But it may not and it doesn’t always do that. But that the negative terrifying experience is as much an experience of this other realm as the positive transformative experience. that there’s they’re really both uh uh genuine and and and actual and real and that the negative experience it might be the response of the human being having it. This this comes up with negative near-death experiences too. Why the negative near-death experience? Why the experience of hell? Is it really because there’s a hell or is it because that the person is not ready for that? is not ready for for ego dissolution or whatever whatever the case might be. Uh I mean to see in other words to see terror as a human response to to infinity and not and not as as that the the the presence is evil or something. Yeah. So your explanation for these events is that it’s us trying to communicate to us in some sense. Um and sometimes that doesn’t work by the way. Sometimes that theory doesn’t work either. No, no. Sometimes it doesn’t work, right? The communication fails. You’re saying, “Oh, of as communication always fails.” Sometimes sometimes people really sometimes trauma is really a bad thing, too. I’m not I don’t want to romanticize trauma. I mean, look, some of us self-destruct and some of us, you know, we don’t respond well at all to to to mental illness sort of medical challenges. Yeah. So the Tibetan saint who levitates on his own will versus the Christian saint who feels an experience pulled by something else like yeah they seem like distinct phenomenon. Yeah. So this is where my historical criticism comes in. I I suspect that the Tibetan saint doesn’t will that. Oh, you think the stories of them flying at their own will and trying to I I I wanna I want to read you want to problematize it. Yeah. Yeah. I again I don’t I don’t think just because a text comes down to us or a story comes down to us means it’s true, right? Or it happened, you know, I shouldn’t say true. I don’t think it happened that way necessarily. And when you say it’s us trying to talk to us, is it always the same person in a future or pastime talking to themselves or it could be humans in general? You don’t know. I don’t know. It’s like I think we’re tapped into this larger kind of superconscious mind. Um but then we’re also these social egos and these identities and I think both of those are true, right? And and it’s not always pretty. It’s it’s it can be really messy too, right? Back to the uh empirical question. I I remembered something that I always get asked when I bring up this phenomenon, which is why have these events stopped happening since the invention of smartphones and cameras? I imagine you’re going to say because it resists being being captured or because it’s not the trauma thing, right? Like you can just capture trauma. Well, I don’t I don’t think it has stopped, but but I think we live in a very different culture. I mean, I think it’s a good question. Why why was levitation so prominent in the 17th century but it it’s so rare in the 21st? And you know I think we live in a much more buffered scientific culture that where things are possible or impossible in a very different way than they were in the 17th century. Um I’m I’m kind of an idealist at the end of the day. I mean, I really do think that culture and and worldview determines what’s possible and impossible. Um, right. So, people do have videos of people levitating. They’re just not being taken seriously. Are you or you’re saying they’re just not levitating? First of all, people do levitate today and things like possession. They or things like alien abduction. They they report levitation all the time. But on camera, you know, not not so much. But but I suspect there are such such things. But I I don’t know. I’m not again I’m not a parasychologist. Okay. I don’t know the photographic evidence. This is another place where I sense attention. I’m going to quote uh another one of your paragraphs. This is from the secret body. The new comparativism works from the present to the past. Yeah. More specifically, it zeros in on the anomalous experiences of contemporary individuals and the phenomenology of paranormal or imaginal events, both empirical and symbolic, in order to better understand the anomalous experiences of past individuals and communities, and how these were remembered, textualized, disciplined, and so fashioned into the institutions, scriptures, mythologies, and ritual systems that eventually became religions. Yeah. Okay. If that’s your methodology, that seems intension with what you just said before, which is that a lot of these supernatural phenomenon are historical and and so you you run the risk in, for example, dismissing levitation historically if you just project back what happens today. So I don’t think that these things stop happening. I just think that they’re not picked up by the culture and received in the same way. For example, when somebody floated in the early 1600s, it was a sign of sanctity or or it was a it was a an object of the Inquisition. Um, when they float today, it just didn’t happen. It’s fraud or or you need or you want it on you want empirical proof of it or whatever. There all these ways of dismissing it and really not taking it up in the culture. I I totally agree with you there. Do you also agree that the miracle happenings themselves also might be historical? Yeah, I do. Um, and I see the tension you’re talking about. I just don’t think it’s it’s an absolute tension. I think things still happen today um that we can use to to do better history or to do to do better anthropology. I I think it’s a matter of look just because you can’t create an absolute pure surgery room doesn’t mean you operate in gutter right there there are there are degrees there there’s a kind of relativity here or kind of degrees of of of of antiseptic purity in in this case um and I and I think there’s there’s degrees I think things like this do happen today you know Abduction, abductions happen, possession happens, um, levitation happens, pre-cognition happens, telepathic communication happens, all of the near-death experiences happen, but it doesn’t happen the way it would have in the 14th century. Let’s talk, let me just say something about near-death experiences. I mean, I think that whole language and that whole literature depends on medical technology, by the way. Mhm. Um, and the development of medical technology in the last 50 or 60 years because I think in the 14th century or the 15th century, lots of people had near-death experiences, but they just died. So, this is a reverse case where it’s taken more socially modernity because it’s captured in the Yeah, it is a reverse case. And I think today we just hear way more stories because we’re people are further into the death process and we pull them back. When I think about this one world, this realm of mystical, whatever you want to call it, it seems like we can say something about its nature. One thing I want to say is that it’s semantic over physical. That what we see aren’t blobs of goop popping up around us that’s completely meaningless. It’s meaningful. It’s trying to communicate. The second thing I want to say is that it seems to be organic rather than mechanical. Yeah. organic meaning that it has a purpose. It is a will. It is a it is a thing. It is a is a it is an agent. It is a person, right? It’s not laws, which might explain why it doesn’t want to be studied. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. It’s minded. It’s it’s life. It’s I and I don’t think a lot of our science is is is appropriate here or or set up for this that it you know, science is great at studying dead objects. The dead something is, the better. But when it’s alive and intentional and will that it just falls, right? It just would like ah yeah and for that we need the humanities which is your superhumanities thesis which we’ll talk about tomorrow. But today I think I want to wrap up this interview um to talk about ethics and what this means for how we should live. The first, I think, most obvious ethical demand this realm might make of us is to study it, to to do what you’re doing, to listen to to to to listen. And my first question is, my first objection concern is most of these mystics that you bring up in your books, maybe also the scholars of mystics, they don’t end up well. They’re persecuted, they go crazy, they commit suicide, right? that that seems to be reason alone maybe enough to not want to study this more. I I’m trying to make a red pill blue pill kind of decision here myself. Right. So tell me about that. Well, first of all, most of literature, you know, the main figures, it doesn’t go so well. It it makes better stories if the the heroine or the heroes messed up. But you’re documenting real people here, real scholars. But of course, the literature I think is based on real life, too. I And and again, this goes back to what I call the traumatic secret. I I really do think that there’s something about trauma that induces these experiences. Do you think it’s certainly not sufficient, but do you think it’s necessary trauma? I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s often the case. And I think that’s why you see so many of these cases it not going well, as you say. Right. And also I think the cultures and the societies are set up often against these experiences because these experiences are challenging or deconstructing society in a way. Um so I think there’s a kind of reason for the resistance. Um but I think that’s why you know a lot of these don’t end up so well. Well, even an example of people who maybe they haven’t been that traumatized, just looking at the power they develop. I’m thinking about the the Lightning example or the uh the comic book writer example. It’s striking to me that they want the experience to stop. Yeah, that’s the traumatic secret. again they they don’t No, but but they weren’t traumatized before or or or the event itself is traumatizing in in addition to whatever trauma that exists before. So like with Elizabeth, I can speak the most to Elizabeth Chrome is her name and changed in the flashes the book and she was struck by lightning in 1988 and she had all of these these paranormal abilities particularly all of these pre-cognitive experiences and she definitely wanted them to stop. Um, and she still Why actually why? Well, for one thing, all of the precognitive dreams are of bad things happening. There’s there’s not a good thing in it, right? And so, and and their sufferings, you know, why do you want to see a plane crash or why do you want to see um a an earthquake or or a tsunami? You don’t. And so there’s something really natural about about wanting these things to stop. There’s been a lot of conversation, a lot of literature around why they’re negative. And again, I think it it probably comes down to they serve an evolutionary purpose. If um if the mother dreams of the the chandelier falling, I mean it the chandelier fell, you know, I mean it’s she’s not dreaming of unicorns and angels and and happy things. She’s dreaming of something really bad, but that dreaming of something really bad allows her to save her child from from something really bad happening. And so I think there’s an evolutionary purpose in the negativity of of of the of the events is what I’m trying to say. Um and that’s kind of where a lot of the literature goes. Um because people generally don’t have these experiences around happy events, right? So I right now as a seeker I’m trying to decide whether I continue, whether I can I stop. There’s an interesting question whether I can stop I think but I think let’s exor the normative question and here would be my pitch to take the blue pill which is if in addition you say blue pill red pill truth you stay in the matrix you say by the way everyone who takes the red pill ends up depressed and unhappy and live bad lives and everyone who takes the blue pill they live fine that changes the calculus of which one to take in fact I’m going to bring in both of ours uh uh I’ll speak for me one of my favorite authors Nietze and one of my books of his untimely meditations right and in it he essentially asks what is the value of truth and it’s not a question that most academics ask they think well it’s just an imperative moral obligation to purs to the truth and I think he convincingly shows no truth must be judged on its effects for life this by the way is one of the reasons I didn’t do grad school I saw all the grad students were depressed I mean it was also Columbia so they were doing a lot of critical theory and so that that might be the reason why but I do I think truth is not a exhaustive normative obligation. Yeah. And so so h how should I respond to this? Yeah. So I I once wrote an essay. It was called the purple pill. And um I had this student was this moment teaching and there was this footnote in an essay that was about a sexual scandal around a spiritual teacher. what I’ll say about it. There’s a lot of those. Yeah. Oh, there’s a lot of those. And um this spiritual teacher happened to be the spiritual teacher of her own family. And so she was really disturbed, I think, by this. And I said to her, I said, “Okay, you can write your essay for the class around this footnote and the literature around this, but you don’t have to.” And and I said, “Don’t tell me now. you could tell me later. And she looked at me and she said, “Oh, you’re offering me the red pill or the blue pill, aren’t you?” And I was like, “I suppose I am.” And then the class went on, the course went on, and I could tell she was somehow different. She was asking different kinds of questions. And I w I went up to her and I said, “You you took the red pill, didn’t you?” you know, and and she kind of smiled. She did answer the question, by the way. And so I wrote this essay called Taking the Purple Pill because I think that’s what most human beings do is they take the blue pill, but they also take the red pill. They take a little of both, conventional and ultimate. Yeah. Clark Kent and Superman, right? Yes. And that’s the humanist too again. And they and that’s certainly what I’ve done. And and they combine them. And so that would be I guess I don’t know if that’s advice, but that’s what I and just knowing you, Jonathan, just this brief time together. You’re I can’t stop. You’re you’re going to take the red pill. You’ve probably already taken it. And um but the blue pill is pretty good, too. And um you’re probably going to take both of them, right? So the answer to should one explore this path is in my case at least there might be no decision because I can’t stop. But the practical advice is don’t forget to take the blue pill as well. Don’t forget to still maintain normaly. Right. Yeah. How do you weigh experience of the one, mystical experiences with normal conventional experiences? I don’t think they’re compatible. By the way, I think I think experiences of the one when you talk to the experiencer, you’ll get this. This is the goal of of human life. Um, but I don’t see how that feeds into judgment or or esquetolo es esquetology. I mean, I suppose it can. Um, and it might fit into some kind of non-dual non-dual sotiology, but right, but I think there’s a tension there. I think there’s a real tension because because the experience of the one there’s often um there’s often a complete collapse of temporality by the way. It’s it’s not that there is some kind of future that you’re you’re you’re moving towards. It’s said it it’s eternity. It’s already perfect. It’s already the past, the present, the future already exist. Right. Okay. But but do you take the people to be right when they say this is the tilos of life? I mean what they are saying is they’re effectively saying everything else is instrumental to this right they’re saying everything artistic pleasure recognition uh family that is second to this. Did you agree with that? I don’t agree with anything. I mean I I I want to put their experiences on the table Jonathan but I don’t want to say that’s the goal of all of human life. Right. I don’t know personally and I don’t think they know. But I think if we put everybody on the table and we line up all of these human experiences, we’re going to get this richness. We’re going to get a plurality of of how to how to have a human life. We’re not going to have a singular answer. So you had a mystical experience yourself most famously in Khali. Yeah. And do for you, but I I don’t think that’s ultimate. Okay. You don’t think that you think that that was a this is going to really degrade it like cool experience. That was one of many cool experiences. Is that too much? I think it what’s I think it what drives me to this day to write books. I don’t think it was just a cool experience. I think it was definitive for this particular human life. But I don’t think it uh it doesn’t demand anything of of of other people, right? Nor yourself to recreate that. No. Yeah, I’ve tried to recreate it. I fa failed completely. I mean, it’s not going to happen, right? So, and it probably shouldn’t happen. Probably doesn’t want to happen. So, I interviewed uh Dale Allison, who’s a who’s a friend of yours, and I find I think your position much more intellectually consistent because I kept pushing him like why are you still within the tradition? And the only compelling answer I I really got from Dale was it’s because of the practice. It’s because there’s a community. There’s there’s a tradition. What is your practice? Um, do you have a practice? Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s that’s a good question. So, I I don’t want to speak for Dale, but I I think Dale’s answer is he wants community um and he wants a tradition. I don’t valorize my own decision um to not have a tradition or not have a community. I think it’s very lonely. Um and I don’t and it may be the wrong answer by the way. I mean I’m wrong. Uh it it may not it’s certainly not right for everyone. If I have a practice and I do it’s writing, right? Um, and I don’t understand writing as you know in a benal or ordinary sense. I understand writing an inspiration as a kind of paranormal activity uh from the future. And it’s definitely how I interpret the Collie experience today is I what I think happened in 1989 with the Collie event was that that all of the future books somehow um downloaded into me. We’ll have an entire uh interview just dedicated to this idea of writing as mystical experience and not just as documentary mystical experience. And this I think explains one of the most curious things about your life which is surely if you believe in these experiences, you would just be a mystic instead of a scholar of mysticism. In the same way that it’s weird to be a child who wants to grow up to be an NFL commentator. Yeah. Right. Most children want to be the quarterback or the linebacker or the wide receiver like Yeah, which I I wanted to be a quarterback, right? And so, but your answer is that you are a mystic that writing is your mystical practice. First of all, I I I just don’t have the constitution to be a mystic, you know, and why is it I don’t know why. I I don’t I honestly I don’t know, but I’ve been around truly charismatic people who are, you know, radioactive in the metaphorical sense, and I’m like, whoa, that is that’s not me. That’s well, it’s not me, but wow, they’re different. And I’m not that. And so I’m Jonathan, I’m okay being a writer. I I I have access through the writing and through the books and through the experiences to other people’s experience to these experiences. I am not a mystic or a magi magus or a a great um experience in any sense. I’m just not but but I can help experiencers and I can help authorize this space by doing this this writing. Right. So again, I want to lay out a few kind of orthodox if one of them’s unorthodox positions of how people have um valued mystical states relative to other goods in the world that we that most people know like family or artistic achievement or recognition, money, pleasure. One idea and this is court I think to the Gnostic traditions, the mystical traditions that this is the end- all beall, right? like this is the this is the tilos of life another I think the I think that’s actually not the orthodox religious tradition right the orthodox religious traditions often say these things are good and valuable but that’s this is not the point like even the Buddhists warn against getting stuck in the yanas and and the the the the Christians certainly do then there’s a third I don’t want to use newagy but there’s a third more radical position that says because this is just a cool experience. Like in the same way, if you never had sex in your entire life, you’d say, “Ah, that’s that sucks, man. That you never had that.” But you know that that’s not You can live a a great life without that. And and this is just like that. Yeah. And your position three, not really. No. I I’m obsessed with religion, obviously, Jonathan. I mean, I spent my whole life thinking about it. I I’m much more that this is what a human life is about. You’re position one. Yeah. I mean, um, but I don’t, look, I’ve tried I’ve tried so hard to to be that that mystic or or that saint and and it didn’t work. Um, and I’m fine with that now. Really am. This might be really helpful for me because I’ve always had, you mentioned you want to be a monk. I I’ve been thinking about monasticism for for a long time, but kind of like you, I just I just suck at it. Like I just suck at meditating and I’m pretty good at the intellectual stuff. Yeah. And so so do that. But it but but but to your point, isn’t the purpose of life, am I taking a worse option here? Am I taking like a I guess I can’t be a quarterback. I’ll just be a NFL commentator. Well, I didn’t become an NFL quarterback for obvious reasons, too. I mean I I think I I this is you know I often talk about my lie dah nature and by that I mean um I am generally happy and I look at things from the bright side as it were. Um but but this means ignoring a lot of things which by the way I can’t change. Um, but it it’s a certain attitude towards life, I think, that that you’re really asking about. And I just think pursuing something constantly that you’re that isn’t going to happen and that you’re not going to be is self-defeating. But but that’s what I’m saying. Should is your self-conception like number one, this is a lesser tier. I’m gonna use the word human because you think this is the tilos of of human existence. But number two, this is the best I can do and I’m gonna be great at that. Is is that what you’re saying? Yeah. I I guess it’s more more the position I mean I learned this from the Hindu tradition but also my own Catholic tradition. People are just different, right? And they have different skill sets and some are oriented towards Jana or or the intellectual life. Some are interested more oriented towards bakti or devotion. more oriented more towards yoga or spiritual practice or or some people have a vocation, some people don’t. But I um I I really don’t think I have that vocation or I I I I’m just not that person and and I’m totally okay with that right now. of the people who are those people. Yeah. Who who have that mystical disposition who are radioactive in the way you said they are. Um does it demand a kind of renunciation literal or at least psychological of the classical worldly goods? Again I think it just I don’t again I think this is where I’m nichian. I think we’re transitional. I think we’re we’re kind of feeling our way towards a new era toward towards a different kind of orientation. I think personally Jonathan I think you um are on the vanguard of the future and I think this being a mystic is also being a believer. It’s being this traditional kind of religious person. I think that’s in the past. Um and I know there are some people who are oriented that way but I think they’re looking towards the past for the truth and I think we’re looking towards the future for the truth. And I think that turning around is fundamentally different. And I think what I I speak for myself now certainly what I’ve invested in is I don’t think any of our former answers work anymore, particularly the religious ones. And I’m oriented now towards answers in the future that don’t exist yet, that I don’t have yet. And that that’s a good thing. Okay. But when you say that I am on the vanguard, that is in contradiction to your claim that the tilos of life is this thing. No, because I’m not on the vanguard. I’m commentating on the on Tom Brady’s throw. I’m not doing the throwing. Well, well, but you’re also life and you’re also pushing these questions in a way that a religious person couldn’t do and a straight intellectual person couldn’t do. So yeah, that to me is like really significant. Um, that’s kind of what I’m meaning. That’s when I say you’re on the vanguard. And and I mean that I mean that in a in a special sense, too, in an evolutionary I don’t I don’t have a problem with anthropocentrism, by the way. I think I think that I think the future is anthropocentric. I think we are anthrop I think that’s the way it is. And um and so when I say you’re on the vanguard, I I mean to affirm your questions because I’m affirming myself obviously too here. Yes. Um um but but I think I really do think most intellectuals I won’t say all but most intellectuals they really do think that they’re they know more than than their ancestors. I don’t know why you would do this. I have no idea why you would do this. If you didn’t think that more knowledge was possible, then why are you in this why are you in this game? Right. Um, so then it becomes a careerism or or Yeah. So, so okay, let me ask you a slightly change topic of conversation about the guard rails of exploring this realm. On one hand, we clearly don’t want to say what all of the Orthodox traditions say is demonic is demonic. Mediumship in Leviticus strictly banned, right? Um but we also want to avoid the opposite extreme of anything goes. Yeah. If I come to you and I say, “Hey, I’m going to draw like a Satan uh star here. I’m going to start uh doing all this crazy stuff. I’m going to sacrifice a baby goat and summon the demon.” You’d say, “Yeah, probably don’t do that.” Right? So without an orthodox tradition about guard rails, how do we stay safe while we investigate? You know, the reason I’m suspicious of guard rails is the same reason I’m I’m suspicious of spiritual direction as it was called in my early life. It’s a good way to keep you in the tradition. Okay? But but clearly, let’s say I tell you this right now. I’m going to draw a Satan circle circle right now. I’m going to start I’m sacrificing. First of all, Satan is just us again. Okay? I’m gonna try to summon a demon here. Like, okay, let me ask this. Is there is there any mystical practice I can do that you say, Jonathan? Probably don’t do that. Don’t Don’t hurt anyone. But other than that, all bets are off. Have at it. I listen. I think so. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know where I would draw the line. Jonathan, hold on. Is this because of your fundamental belief that it’s it’s human and it’s benevolence? And it’s benevolence. Yeah. Right. And and I’ve thought about this quite a bit actually. So I I off I often teach in the public realm and I I often do workshops and people want me to do experiential things and I’m really resistant to that. And I thought about why why am I so resistant? And it’s because I don’t think it works. I think that’s the deepest reason. I don’t think it works. Guard rails or no practices in in a workshop. I I I don’t think you can do something for a weekend and have any result whatsoever. I think any practice done over a long period of time probably will have some results sometimes but again I think it’s depends on the person doing it right and I I really do think people are very different and and some people like kundalini experiences some people just have kundalini experiences other people do not yeah I’m very uh thick to this stuff me too I’m a thick I but you got your I feel jealous yeah you got your experience but I was very I I was very sick. I was medically sick and I was in another country and I was surrounded by a a a wild set of rituals and and texts and it was great. I was also young by the way. Yeah, that was awesome. I better hurry up. Okay, so let me ask one one more question here about uh Dale and his recent book, Encountering Miracles. He clearly distinguishes between an exposure to some fundamental good uh and just feeling of sheer evil in this mystical realm. evil reporting. I I have felt sheer evil. Do you think there’s this Manachian thing going on in this realm or do you think No, I don’t think so. But and you think it’s fundamentally all good? That’s even stronger claim. Um I mean, again, I’m I don’t want to question people’s experience of evil, but but I I would want to hear more about that. And I again, I you know, my joke, I’ve never met a demon that it doesn’t look like a suffering human being. I I suspect the evil is because of some form of suffering. Why do you believe the world is ultimately benevolent or that’s just a faith? Why do I I don’t I don’t know. That’s just a faith claim, right? Yeah, that’s definitely Are you satisfied by that? I mean, take your own comparative critical lens. Are you It just seems that way just to me looking at history and reading a lot of people really really the world wars, it seems it seems that way. You look at the Aztec, it seems that way. Um I I I mean yeah I do I do think that why how is this not just your imported uh Christian prior or something? Maybe it is. But but come on, you’re the one who’s human with suspicion and poking out at everyone else’s bubble. Like, why are you not more troubled by this? Because I think when human beings really try to access these realms, they experience something beneficent, they don’t generally experience World War II or the Holocaust, for example. I think that’s people doing that to people. I get that, right? But when when human beings access this humanist too, this other realm, I think it it it often not always but it it often is is very very benevolent, right? But but then that you you only sustain that in the data by reading a theotine to the bad experiences because you know as well as I do that people see de demons. You know as well as I do that there’s UFO and and people are heard but but then you say well those have a pedagogical function and so there’s a little theodysy and What I find another tension in your review is on one hand you you treat the one as benevolent as good and we talked about the kind of cultural reasons for that. On the other hand you comment that these experiences are transmoral. Yeah. You also say that um this is clearly true that there are great saints who are terrible people. Yeah. How do those two things square? Again when I say something’s transmoral I don’t mean it’s bad you No, I don’t mean it’s evil. I mean it’s literally not an ethical or a moral thing. You know, I I I think moral categories are often social categories. They’re they they imply a subject and an object or or lots of individuals. And I don’t think those things even exist in in the one or in these kinds of experiences. So, I just think applying moral categories to these experiences is just but but you do say the one is good fundamentally good. I don’t mean good in a in a moral sense. I mean I mean affirming affirming sense, right? A deep ontological affirming. I mean the one is is life. The one is is is the universe. The one is the cosmos. It’s there’s something um affirming and lifeaffffirming in the one itself. But I don’t I I I think this is the problem with these too. I think a lot of theodysy questions imply that we are the center of the universe and that we’re somehow at the apex and I just don’t believe that. I I just think we’re part of this larger ecosystem and um human beings do a lot of horrible things and bad things and I’m speaking morally to other human beings but that’s where morals and ethics I think are appropriate on the conventional on the conventional layer. Yeah. Um one derivation of the one or or consciousness being connected in some sense uh is veganism. veganism, vegetarianism, that doesn’t fall, that doesn’t flow for you. Yeah. Yeah. I you know, so vegetarianism, you know, at least religiously speaking, is often for moral reasons, but it’s often also used to classify hierarchies and social systems. And so I’m just innately suspicious of drawing distinctions between what eat one one eats because you’re also drawing distinctions between classes and and people as well when you do that. And I’m suspicious of vegetarianism like I’m suspicious of everything else. I mean, I think people who eat plants, you know, there’s a consciousness in plants, too, or there’s a life force in plants. And um they would say there isn’t as much life force or there isn’t as much consciousness in plants as there is or as there is in in animals. Um okay, that’s one way to draw the line, but I just you’re destroying your in either way. Yeah. I I think reality I think reality is built on predation. I I think that’s what it is. I think the life cycle is is one species eating another. And I don’t think there’s a way out of that. Right. Let me actually read you a quote actually where you articulate this perfectly. This anyway is my philosophy of suffering and evil. In other words, a theodyssey. I think the little social self of the human is pretty messed up and will inevitably mess up other little social selves and actually must mess up other forms of life to survive as eat them. The truth is that as individual bodies or souls, we have to kill things in order to live. Whether those are intelligent plants or animals, regardless of what those who wish otherwise want to wish or believe. I’m sitting here right now, my white blood cells murdering countless tiny infectious organisms just so Jeff can stay conscious and upright just to tap out these few lines. This is your kind of theodysy. The one is is good in a deep onlogical affirming sense. the two is messed up for reasons we don’t know but it clearly is and that’s not that’s not a that’s not a get out of jail free card for every bad act but it’s it’s it’s reality that we have to live with. Yeah. And I think I mean even something like the Christian sense of of everyone’s forgiven to me I read that in a non-dual way. I mean, I think everybody is part of this part of this one where being forgi it literally makes no sense, right? Because there’s no no one to be for forgiven, right? There’s no one to be forgiven. There’s no one to forgive. It’s it’s it’s just irrelevant. I think your theory, it’s interesting. Remember early in this conversation when I pushed you about the Tibetan masters levitating and you challenged whether it was them willed versus being done upon them. You seem to interpret all of these phenomenon as something else communicating to the person as being done on them, but clearly there are people who have controlled these powers, right? I’m not so sure really. You don’t think the remote viewers gave control? You know, again, I’m not of the position that you can train these things. I think I think these are essentially wild talents. I think there are degrees of this. Yes, people can call on these things and and and do them, but I think those are very special people. I think there’s a kind of gift there that is then trained. But just to be clear, not all paranormal phenomenon are done upon you. There are some that are initiated by people. I think the robust ones are done upon you. I think I think the the non-rouss ones now you could some people could do. What do you mean non-re? Well, like the chandelier falling on the crib, I think that’s a very robust phenomenon. And the precog mother to me that’s robust. That saved a life. I think um the statistical stuff and a lot of the remote viewing stuff is not robust. It’s not it’s not saving a life. It’s not it’s not available on command. It’s it’s it’s maybe trainable, but it’s the little stuff. strainable. It’s not the extreme stuff. Reading minds would be the little stuff. Interesting. Depends depends on on how that happens. It could be really robust. Like if I know instantly that my grandmother has died to me that’s robust, but that’s not trainable. That just happens. And you know, so so for me, Jonathan, let me to take this back to religion. There is this distinction between revelation and and knowledge or or knowing. I think revelation is something it’s a form of knowledge that’s given to human beings that that they’re subjects or objects of. I don’t think they’re they’re consciously willingness. Even though I think they’re responsible for it on some level, but not certainly not on an egoic or social level. But even though it’s not trainable, there are certain things one can do to be more receptive. It’s almost like the Christian idea of grace to these for example you mentioned you had your uh mystical experience while you were sick you were in a foreign land so for the exact same person exact same genes exact same talent there are things you can do to be more receptive to these yeah so you know I’ve been very informed aeticism right pain on the body trauma active trauma yeah but but here I’ve been very informed by a colleague and friend of mine named Kevin K and he talks a lot about neurodeiversity I I think the way we talk about neurodeiversity, the way we talk about autism for example, I think those people are just set up differently and I think they have a capacity to experience these things that other people just don’t. Right. And even with a normal spectrum there there are people like you and I who are thicker and harder to experience and there are people who are much more attuned to this. Yeah. Um the last set of ethical questions I want to ask you is around politics. Um, and the first question I want to ask you is I would generally describe your politics reading your books as standard academic left progressive defending gender theory and and liberal values and the little guy and egalitarianism, right? Why haven’t you put the compar maybe you have the comparativist lens on politics in the way you have religion? like why haven’t you um entertained the rad the radicality of all various political positions and dealt with them in the same way as religion? So a lot of a lot of my work is dealing with marginality. I really believe that profound religious experience comes from marginality and my early career was really on sexuality and gender but I think it’s the marginal sexuality the marginal gender that ends up having the the inspiration as it were and that my interest in the paranormal is again it’s about marginality I I I think we dismiss these experiences in general so I went from queering religion essentially to weirding religion and I think but it’s all about social marginality and I think that’s drives a lot of the political values that I have if I could put it that way. I see. Let me try to articulate this which is as a scholar of mysticism you see the people and groups that are being ignored and you realize how important they are and that’s where your politics flows out of but I think they actually drive the ideas and the religions. It’s not just like Jesus of Nazareth right. Yeah. It’s not just I think they’re marginal and therefore they’re they need to be uplifted. It’s like no, they really they really are driving closer they’re closer they’re closer to the truth of things than than than the people in the mainline as it were. So the the politics and the ethics are driven by by this marginality but also by my sense of reality. I just think I think people are closer to things closer to reality. Right. In the same way that um you think for example Buddhism is closer than the monotheisms, right? Yeah. So um let me give you a quote from your book that I think is pushing back against over politicization and over activism. Okay. Imagine a secular world, a secular social world in which all our class, gender, sexual, racial and ecological concerns were acknowledged and adequately met. Imagine in effect a moral utopia. Would any of this resolve the ancient and universal religious questions of the human condition? Would we then be able to answer the ultimate questions? Who are we really? Where did we come from? What is the world we find ourselves in? How did we end up here? And why? And where will we go after we die? So, I take this to an epicuran extreme. My politics is don’t get involved in politics, right? It’s I’m going to step back. Uh, I’m going to protect maybe a small community where I can do my sol um but I’m not going to get involved because of this intuition. I I just don’t think it’s anywhere close to the highest thing. I don’t either. What am I missing with my apoliticism if if anything in relation to the mystical realm? You know, part of it is that as you know the academy is driven by political issues. It’s a very it’s very much formed around political identity and and moral issues. And my my area of expertise is religion. And so part of it is just poking poking at where I think the field is and saying look um this isn’t going to get you there. This is this is this is not the ultimate. This is not the ultimate. And so this is really driven by metaphysical commitments commitments of mine that I just don’t think that these are ultimate concerns. And I think you’re going to die anyway. I mean, look, life’s going to kill you. None of us get out of here alive, as we say. Um so you know and there are good and there are bad political systems in terms of human flourishing but but life itself um frankly sucks you know in terms of the end point. So how do we address that? How do we talk about that? You know that that’s really my that’s really the the question that drives a lot of my work. Right. I don’t think it’s a political question. Interesting. And so you don’t I’m actually surprised by this. You don’t see an issue with my political withdrawal into a perhaps almost monastic community to investigate these questions? I mean, no, because because I feel like you you quite engage with this on some level, right? On but I’m engaged with it because I live and breathe in the academy and I I I work in university administration and I want to I want to engage people and I want I want to authorize this conversation. I mean, I do it for very practical, I guess, political reasons. This is your epicurian community, right? This is the small community you have to protect to do your work. Yeah. But but I, you know, I wanted to be a monk, Jonathan, and that in some ways is an apolitical uh uh as apolitical as it gets. Yeah. Choice as well. Um so I it’s I don’t disagree or or or want to disallow that in or dissuade that in any way. I think that’s that’s um I get it. I totally get that. I see. Thank you for a fascinating interview, Professor. Yeah. Thanks for watching my interview. If you want to go even deeper into these ideas, then please join my email list at jonathanb.com. You not only get full length episodes, but also transcripts, booknotes, and invitations to future lectures. Now, if you like this interview, be sure to check out my other ones with Jeff Krial as well. You can find links to those episodes and everything else we discuss in the description and on my website, jonathanb.com. Thank you.