But what we do here, if you haven't joined us over the last couple of weeks is similar to what I did last year with my second book in this trilogy series. So dreams of light was the second book. Dream Yoga is the first book The third one is a little bit it's drafted but it's a little bit on the Saudis backburner as I tried to crank out these two other books that I've been riffing about in terms of meditation and things. And so this is the one that launched something or other it was just translated. I don't know if I told you this was just translated into Japanese. So now they sent me five copies in this like, what am I gonna do with five copies of a Japanese translation? So I have to find five Japanese friends to give this book to. But anyway, it gives us an opportunity. I read it line by line, I make spontaneous running commentary, with whatever comes to mind, depending on what I've learned over the last five years or so since I wrote this book. And then we allow a little bit of time at the end for just q&a and discussion. So I really groove on it because it's, first of all, gives me a chance to reread my stuff which I never do. I really never sit back when a book is published. I never sit back unless I'm doing a proof which I do, you know, four or 5678 times. Once the book goes into print, I actually never look at it. I never read them. So it's kind of fun for me to go back there and go, Oh, that wasn't so bad. I have to share a story with you. I had dinner with my dear friend David Loy. Who I think I've been talking to about over the last year and a half or so. He's an amazing philosopher, really amazing thinker. I am really treasured blessed to have him. Just live 20 minutes from here. And so we were just hanging out after dinner talking. And he says something that I've heard from Ken Wilber, I have this time, so many people who are writers and stuff when I write this stuff. And this is what Dave was talking about. He was saying he was I didn't really write I asked him like, what is your favorite book? Because he's written like 16. And he said, lack of transcendence, which I agree with as well. This is a masterpiece. And we start talking about the book and he just said what I've heard over, over and over and if you are creators out there, you know, you know, he said he was Andrew. I didn't write this book. And you're not, you know, scholars and writers. You're not supposed to use the word channeling, right. But anybody, any creative person knows that when you enter this kind of creative zone, you're not you're not doing the creativity. It's not coming from you. And so when David said You know, I didn't really write this book. I totally agree with that. And it's really my experience as well. It's one of the great gifts when you when you get into the writing thing. It's almost like you just get out of the way and then whatever whatever that is. The demon the demon, the demon, there's a difference, the energy, the symbol, the Chi, whatever term you want. to append to, it just kind of flows through. And that's what really makes it great. That's I think that's what makes it so much fun. And so even Ken said this to me, he said, You guys, I write this stuff. And then I come back and reread it. And he goes, No, not too bad. It didn't come from me. So anyway, I'm gonna want to put this pen to paper. So on one level, I'm responsible. We really the stuff didn't come from me. So we left off page 10 If you have the book, you don't need it. I'll read it. So this is chapter one. The header code from zero culture who I love this guy, he he lives just a couple hours down and trust them. This amazing
kind of retreat area where if you haven't been there, it's where I do on my retreats now. Like three hour drive from here. The place is stunning. It's like Tibet. It's just absolutely jaw dropping beautiful. And it's a real PowerPoint. There like literally no exaggeration about 25. Centers, Ellen Wallace just opened to the center there just this year, which is really cool. There's Zen Center there and about four or five Tibetan centers and Hindu centers and Taoist and Christian. The places are real power spot. So it's a fantastic place to do retreat. There's lots of facilities there. I do most of my retreats at Tencel long gills place, a place called tumbling. So anyway, this is where he's from, or at least now and this is what he wrote. From the point of view of the Buddhist teachings. The way to make progress is to have a deeper understanding of our own mind, which amounts to understanding that the world and our perceptions of it are illusory. This is what I refined a lot in the second book is, as you know, from last year, right, the whole book is about this topic, but the one quote here that the one sends here the things to mind another statement from Jon Kabat Zinn, this is really beautiful that he says, When you know the mind fully you get beauty, the arts and all things wondrous. When you don't know the mind you get Auschwitz I mean, what a statement that is. So it really does come to like what Socrates said, you know, know thyself. Ramana Maharshi? Who am I? Answering this question, understanding our own mind, heart is really what the journey is all about. Then another line that comes to mind from Campbell cartography, this is a really great one. Show you how far this maximum goes. He says the only obstacle is to regard something as other than mind. So this is why understanding mind is it's so incredibly important. What is the lucid dream chapter one. Lucid Dream is a term hinted at by the scholar by Kido how to deactivate the salt any someone speaks French out there, you can definitely correct me. What was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederick van Eden in the West lucid dreaming goes back as far as Aristotle with the first western lucid dream report written in 415 by St. Augustine, Augustine. Well, lucid dream was when you wake up to the fact that you're dreaming, but still you remain in the dream that is your dreaming and you know it all these other synonyms right, hybrid, dreaming, dreaming. Mindful, dreaming is a term and hearing more and more conscious dreaming. There's all kinds of sentiments here. The validity of lucid dreaming was scientifically proven in 1975 by a psychologist Keith Hearn, the whole university and then totally independently by my friend, Steve libera. She was kind enough to write the foreword to this book for me in 1977, at Stanford, as many of you know what actually here Yeah. Lubbers is arguably the father of modern lucid dreaming in the West. I think that's really pretty fair. And he in a certain way, gave up his career. I wouldn't say he gave up his life. But he certainly gave up his his kind of credential, Lindsay credential reputation in a certain way as a psycho, spiritual, psycho physiologist to explore this stuff. When he did his PhD. I mean, like, nobody was doing that stuff. And so Steven just went way out on the limb to devote his life and career to this and one of the main inspirations for this was his experience with the Tibetan master, tartan. Tulku Rinpoche, who taught was teaching a Dream Yoga first person in the west and I'm aware of the teacher and Steven told me he was profoundly affected by tartan to glue. And then since then, when he was doing his programs, he's he's tried to bring you like ALAN WALLACE. We worked with him for a number of years and then I kind of stepped in. Steven has a deep deep respect for the whole Buddhist thing. In the Tibetan scene, but he is he really is the MAM I mean, his work. He can't really mention lucid dreaming of the West without his name coming up. He's really a seminal figure.
His books lucid dreaming, for sure the power of being awakened where your dreams and exploring the world of lucid dreaming. co authored with Ryan gold or classics, he has another one with sounds true. Can't remember the title of a very short pithy little thing that has a CD. These are really kind of classic texts, because he brings tremendous rigor. I mean, Steven is a he's a hard nosed scientist, and he brings just tremendous clarity and rigor into a domain that's otherwise just full of metaphysics and New Age Willy Woo. And so Steven really just did a tremendous amount in a certain way. They sacrificed his career but definitely he's been, you know, he's been kind of marginalized and sidelined. Because he studied kind of such a fringe topic. But as I shared with him when I, we were hanging out together, I said, Steven, no, you can always tell who the Pioneers are. Because they're the ones with all the arrows in their back, right? shot shot by those behind them. That's what I always like, shot by those behind them. So pioneers are leaning Yejin Stevens, definitely one of these. Prior to these pioneering studies, the idea of lucid dreaming was mostly dismissed by the scientific community, for sure. How could you be awakened dreaming at the same time it's an oxymoron or so they thought, the bears and harem prove that you can and lucid dreaming gained a foothold in the West. I mean, since then, this stuff has been proven over and over and over. He did with EOG CMGs. And he EGS. Now they've done it with MRIs and I don't know if they've done it with PET scans or whatnot. But this stuff has been documented. Over and over and over again. For the last four years. And the magical instinct of awakening within the dream as you know, everything changes with just a moment ago had total control over you now comes under your control. Instead of being blown around helplessly by the dictates of the dream, you now dictate the dream. You can do whatever you want and no one can sue you. You can fly have sex with a movie star or rob Fort Knox. Yeah, this is this is what this is what sells this stuff, right? This is why lucid dreaming proper is is kind of a hot topic these days. Both feel wildest fantasies within the sanctuary of privacy of your own mind. And I can't remember if I say this coming up here probably do. But what they do not say is that wherever intention is involved, even in a dream, karma is created. So lucid dreams are not karmically tax. Free. If your intention is involved, you're creating habits. You're creating karma. In a non lucid dream, you're not lucid dreams are the result of karma. But they don't create karma because there's no intentionality. And so this is good news or bad news depending on what you do in the dream. This by the way, parenthetically, is why Carl Jung who knew totally knew about this stuff, he was very sophisticated dreamer. was very cautious to endorses and dreamy he saw a lot of shadow sides to this. Definitely related to kind of this spiritual materialism thing. egoic conflation of like dreams are truth tellers, they reveal our deepest unconscious tendencies. As any psychologist determine interpret dream interpreter can attest. The same acts of applies to working with dreams on a spiritual level is we will see a moniker for Jane yoga and the classics texts is the measure of the path. Excuse me Dream Yoga will show you a great deal about who you are. And where you stand. Yeah, yeah, this is good. Try this brief contemplation and be honest of what would you do if you can become invisible? What my dad reveal, would you act selflessly or selfishly Plato, he was another amazing I mean, what did Whitehead say? All of Western philosophy is but a foot but a set of footnotes to Plato and Plato. And Plato was like talking about hybridisation. Plato slash Socrates right, Socrates is Plato's teacher. But Socrates didn't write anything. And so basically, it's almost Plato slash hyphen, Socrates. He addressed this issue in the Republic, one of his greatest texts, where he talks about the myth of the ring of guide GS. And this myth, the shepherd guide, GS discovers a magical ring and gives them the power of invisibility. Plato uses this myth to talk about morality. What would you do is a really interesting thought experiment right? What would you do if you were invisible, and no one could hold you accountable for your actions?
Would you work for the benefit of others? Which in Buddhist terms would reveal and evolved being with the purified mind or would you fulfill your wildest fantasies which would reveal a normal mind mind filled with a default I'm sorry, a normal being filled, defiled mine guys ease uses visibility to fulfill his ride desires? Yeah, what did he do I think he killed the he'll kill the king and raped the Queen and all mean that usual kind of stuff. You know, not the coolest things. Lucid Dreaming gives you a chance to live the myth of guide GS and to learn from it. lucidity is not an all or nothing affair. There's a spectrum ranging from barely lucid to hyper lucid on the shortest flashes of lucidity to lucid dreams lasting over an hour. Some people have been pinging me know saying that you know they've been having lucid dreams for like an hour and a half. Maybe that's that would be unusual. For example, being barely lucid might involve acknowledging on some level that you're having a dream, but not acting with full comprehension. And also I didn't I didn't do the research on this at the time. This kind of partial lucidity is also what kind of has traction in the world of liminal dreaming might still flee from perceived danger or dream characters or treecare dream characters as if they were real. Hyper lucid dreams would be full comprehension of the dreamlike nature of your experience in the dream. Recognize them that even the sense of self in the dream is being drempt. Hyper lucidity could also refer to the colors and forms of the dream that seem more vibrant and real than anything of waking experience. You can also be non lucid in the dream become lucid to it and then drop into our city again. So I riff on this a lot. I mean, in his book now this big Anthology for the really deep divers listening there's there's like a just a monumental set of books that started coming out, I think 1015 years ago, beyond physicalism irreducible mind and then consciousness on bound the each one of these are like five to 700 page anthologies that are out there just colossal contributions. To the world of idealism to the world of challenging the terrorists, the tyranny of materialism. They're really putting forth to the world is that the nature of mind? And I just devoured these things. They're amazing. So I'm reading the last one. They just came out on consciousness unbound. Something like overthrowing the journey of materialism. And no, they just finished this chapter last night on near death experiences. And it was super interesting because everything you're talking about there really relates to hyper lucidity in the dream where, where people have these MDS come back like Eben Alexander who, by the way, that little link up there he's one of the presenters at this memo thing coming up. This guy is you know, he's a neuro academic neurosurgeon who had this amazing experience just flatlined brain dead for I don't know how many days a week and then came back to write write this amazing book called Proof of Heaven. Kind of a strange title, but he definitely experienced reality irrespective of brain kind of unique constructs brain production, but irrespective of brain properties, because he was flatlined. And he came back from this book from this experience and if you haven't read the book, it's worth it's easy for me to share that what he experienced during this time was just hyper, hyper real, more loot more real than this. And so he's basically given up his career to now run around the world, sharing his experience and changing people's lives and hyper lucid dreams have that same kind of power because you're touching into something that's so real, so true, so foundational. You don't have to have a hyper lucid dream over and over you can have one hyper lucid dream. Just like you have one near death experience. One near death experience will change the course of your entire life, as it has with heaven. Same with these hyper lucid dreams are more real than this. The good news about lucid dreaming is that even though it may take practice to set have such dreams regularly, have you noticed it's not easy. It just takes one instant of recognition and you're in one flash of recognition transforms a non lucid dream into a lucid one.
I've been to many lucid dream seminars where people get discouraged by their inability to trigger lucidity. But then the next night it suddenly happens yeah, I'll share one story in particular. The I did a 10 day I was teaching co teaching with Steven in Hawaii. He did these 10 Day lucid dreaming things for years and years. And I was with him for the last two before before paleo erupted and just burned the whole thing down with volcano ash and lava. It was really quite touching because this exactly the same thing had happened. There. There was one guy who was really getting quite discouraged like everybody, I wouldn't say everybody but probably 75 80% of the people by the end of the 10 days were reporting lucid dreams and nothing nothing and I can see who's gonna kind of bond and they're literally the last night he comes in and the guy's just in tears. He had his first lucid dream of his life. And it was it was so impactful for this guy that you get to see it in the way he shared. He first of all, he shared the dream. And he was literally in tears and the guys just like forever change because of one dream that single instance is often enough to ignite a passion for lucid dreams. There's nothing quite like a lucid dream. When you have one it's irresistible to watch more. All chapters will show you how to have these magical dreams, facts and figures. Here are some general facts about lucid dreaming. There's a lot more data on this in the book I published last year to Harbinger press a year ago in December blusa journey workbook, I have like three or four chapters where I go into a lot more detail on this sort of thing. So this is a bit of an overview. Young children tend to have lucid dreams more frequently. than the current that drops off around age 16. Also interesting the other chapter. The other thing I read back though, is what I'm reading now, the work of Jim Tucker and Ian Stevenson, University of Virginia where they you probably heard His work of Ian Stevenson, you know, he's done. I don't know 6000 I mean, 1000s and 1000s of stories of these young kids who talk about these reincarnation episodes. If you have not read this stuff, you got to read it. It's just like, it's absolutely mind bending. There's no way using outcomes razor and the idea of parsimony that is much simpler to say okay, we want to carnation is really the way to explain this. Then to jump through all these crazy machinations and loops that the scientists have to go through to even approximate describing like how could this possibly describe without without reincarnation is the most plausible explanation. So something really interesting about kids same thing with dreams before they get to especially before age seven when formal operational thinking comes in a little bit more porous, translucent. And I remember actually I remember checking the marimba che in a unique moment of candor and the Paul he was doing a program and he said something he was you really hear teachers talk about like this sort of thing. And he was showing the same thing. He goes when I was a little boy he didn't say when it started fading, which he said I would have dreams I would frequently have dreams about my past life and my past lives. And he actually shared how it was a little bit unsettling How was a little bit confusing for him because he was he actually had a hard time sometimes sorting out his his memory coming from which life right so he was having all these memories from all these different past lives, and kind of was messing with him a little bit. So it's very interesting with kids before they reach around generally around age seven, where they're much more open translucent to these sorts of parents phenomena. You may have had these with your own kids or even in your own life. Younger people in general are likely to have lucid dreams that older folks Yeah, because we get crusty right. Everything is the Warren case that solidified and rigidify lucidity occurs as early age three but it seems most likely to happen around ages 12 to 14 On average, lucid dreamers have three to four lucid dreams each month. These are high frequency lucid dreamers with the average length of lucidity being about 14 minutes 58 to 70% of people will have at least one lucid dream during their life. The benefits of lucid dreaming are remarkable. Here's a sampling So again, my book from last year I have like three or four chapters on this. So this is just a brief riff on what I really unload in that book. This the dreaming can aid with nightmares and depression right so my friend Claire Johnson just wrote this book on the topic we had her on I interviewed her when that book came out. Actually a lot of my guests who talked about this
we said this literally lucid dream nightmare therapy can work with depression up to 8% of adults who suffer from up to 8% of adults suffer from chronic nightmares. In the study at the University of Netherlands participants underwent lucid dreaming treatment which included coming over alternative endings to their nightmares. Those who are able to do so reduce the number of their nightmares. And Steven actually raves about this quite a bit. We're basically if you if your lucidity is strong enough and this is my experience, then you don't have to rescript a nightmare. You can actually use the nightmare as a way to work with stage or Dream Yoga, working with frightful states of mind using the nightmare as an opportunity to work with fear. Lucid dreams can boost your confidence help you overcome shyness manage grief, and give you a chance to rehearse things like a performance or presentation. For sure. I still use it this way. I'm a pianist. I still well on different nights conjure up a piano. I just got a new count. Oh by the way, I should maybe next time I'll it's right around the corner. I just got it this week. It's a seven foot four grocery and Steinway. It's like one of the best candles in the world. So I treated it back to myself because because I deserve it. No, really, I didn't. I've had a nice a Yamaha grand for like 20 years. In my Pianoteq told me the summer he said you either have to rebuild this thing so I just there's so many miles on this thing. He said you either have to rebuild it or you have to sell it. And so I said okay, okay, okay, I'm just gonna sell it. So I was able to locate this. Absolutely jaw dropping, almost seven and a half foot semi concert brand, which is literally is just five feet around the corner. Maybe someday I'll take the computer outside and I'll play you a little list of Chopin or Beethoven or something. Would you move on that? Like a Chopin Etude or movement of a Beethoven sonata? That'd be cool. Rachmaninoff. So I'm into it right now. In fact, I had to stop my was like a kid on Christmas morning. You know, I get this amazing instrument. Yeah, and I just can't keep my hands off of it. So the way this ties into this section, this is my discursive mind at work. I still have lucid dreams where now I'm not going to conjure up my Yamaha. I'm not even going to conjure up a Steinway because grocery and Steinway is a hybrid Steinway. It's even better. It's even better than Americans that waste so now I'm going to conjure up my grocery bag and play it and so I've literally no kidding. I've played entire movements of visuals and sent out is in my dreams. There's a lot of data now right a lot of studies research coming out about people improving physical skills using their lucid dreams. You can also prepare for your for events You expected me emotionally difficult by giving you the chance to experience them in your dreams and advance of the actual worldly event. For example, a friend of mine true story was able to prepare for her mother's approaching get working with what's called anticipatory grief. By having lucid dreams about that sediment and using those dreams as opportunities to practice letting go oh yeah, this form of anticipatory grief can soften the blow of real grief. I've actually done this as well before the loss of my own parents. And it can also give you a kind of a powerful sense of permanence, working with what are called the Four reminders as a way to just understand the fragility and formality of things. Lucid dreamers may be better problem solving very interesting data on this according to recent studies, and some problem solving situations. People need to step back from perceived reality reflect on it and evaluate the perceptual evidence. This is also what Matthew Walker writes about. Again, his book was not available when I when I wrote this book. This is where my Matthew goes so far as to say that lucid dreamers that you hit you've heard me say this many times, is words. Lucid dreamers may represent the next iteration of Homo sapiens evolution because of their problem solving capabilities. What we do when lucid dreaming matures, and to Dream Yoga, we work to solve the most foundational problem of them all, which is the problem of duality, the problem of samsara that's the root problem. You saw that everything else is secondary to that fundamental salvation.
Salvation through salvation. How does this connect to lucidity and dreams Samothrace continue for the inside it leads to liquidity. People also seem to step back from the obvious interpretation and consider remote and at the same time implausible option that it's all a dream and quote. In other words, perspective can be innovative, for sure. I mean, we're often too close to things this is why I'm there's a vast literature. Deidre burette, who has just issued a featured by the way in the New York Times Sunday, I get the Sunday issue. In the New York Times Magazine, there was a long article in there you can probably get it online talking about dreams in the time of COVID Indeed, Uber read his features. She's the Harvard dream person. And she wrote a book called The Committee of sleep where she basically gives page after page after page after page throughout history and literature, music, you name it, all these amazing insights that come from all the different disciplines through the medium of the dream. Oh yeah, the biggest problem of the mall is samsara, which is the confused world of conventional reality defined by dissatisfaction and suffering and lucid dreaming has the potential to solve even that Yes. Once it matures to yoga. This dream has been shown to improve motor skills. Remember, I show that video in the deep dive programs that you can Google this so that German swimmer who masters or he actually facilitates the learning of his flip turn in the dream and also learns how to accelerate his playing of the ukulele instead of in the dream and there's a video where you can see him all hooked up the lab and the researchers are kind of quizzing him on what he's doing. So this stuff is really cool. This is where it's getting some traction, especially right now in Germany. That's where most of the researchers these days, Martin Dressler, and others are slow losses are really doing some very interesting work. It makes sense because, yeah, from playing the piano to athletic performance. It makes sense because lucid dreams activate the brain in the same way as waking life. If you work on a math problem in your dream, for example, your left hemisphere is stimulated just as it would be during the day. I've never tried to do that. Never tried to work out a math problem in the day in the dream I wouldn't be difficult I think if you sing in your dream but right hemisphere is activated. I've done that. If you do squats in a lucid dream, your physical heart rate increases. The extraordinary thing is that the effects from your nightly activity continue into the day. So this is the whole thing of neuroplasticity, right? That what you do with your mind affects your brain. And then in the world of Dream Yoga. Not only does it affect your brain with neuroplasticity affects your body, subtle body and gross body through Nadi plasticity through working with the subtle channel systems, literally configuring them, reconfiguring them training your dream body can train your physical body. For those with no time left during the day to do things like It's like getting a night shift for sure. This is one of the more interesting things this is one of the newer dimensions. Not a lot of hard data on this yet but it's coming out. And I've shared some experiences with you over the last year where I've had some dreams along these lines. Where one particular dream lucid dreams can facilitate healing. I think I shared this dream with you. This is one of the bigger dreams I've had in the last year it was in California. And I didn't really even click on it until the following morning. But this happened the other day. By the way. We had a we had that full lunar eclipse out here. It's amazing to me how often when there's this astrological thing going on, astronomical thing going on. How often it affects my dreams. I've had this I can't tell you how many different times. But this was last year in California when there was that big confluence of beingness and I don't know how many I don't know exactly which plan is we're all online. But remember that and I think it was in early January maybe or December I remember exactly. And I didn't think much about it when I went to bed. But this is one night next time won't happen for I don't know how long and I had just the most amazing set of dreams that night. I mean really big 10 dreams. And one aspect of his dream was I had one too many dreams. I had this I had I woke up and my back was in a lot of pain. Because I was out there playing golf. Golf is no good for your back. And
I woke up because my back was hurting so bad. And I just had a really major kind of lucid dream and I was like yeah, I don't want to wake up I want to go back into my dream. And so what I did was I actually went back into my dream and and I worked in in this kind of hypnagogic space actually this would be hypnopompic I worked with my dream body to alleviate the pain in my physical body. And it worked. I got rid of my back pain by what I was doing in my dream was pretty cool. One doctor published a paper about a patient with a 22 year history of chronic pain who cured himself overnight with one lucid dream. I'm no expert on lucid dreaming the psychiatrist morels. Tara says this guy but the man woke up with no pain. He said it was like his brain has shut down and rebooted A few days later you walked into the VA pharmacy and actually returns his medication to be 100 tabs Oliver propanol To me that's pretty convincing evidence. What do you do with that stuff? Right? Very compelling. Lucid dreaming is becoming the latest rage people are using it to get an edge on their competition researchers are working with it to tweak the SD. Scientists in Germany are using it to enhance focus and performance and athletes. Actors adventurers writers musicians are increasingly practicing lucid dreaming to enhance their skills. Psychologist Jeanine short J schmear gal and I'm sure I'm butchering her name, rights. The process of creation is accompanied by the capacity to communicate with the most primitive layers of the unconscious and grow layers of the unconscious that can be accessed in your dreams. Totally right so where does this creativity come from? Well, I wonder what you could say comes from outside like I was mentioning earlier. I think that's true. But you can actually access that seemingly outside by going deep deep into the unconscious mind what Jung called the collective unconscious and then even further and we talked about this when I talked about the structure of the mind later in this book, kind of the super unconscious, which is really where we go to tap into creativity at any level. Why not do this consciously when I do it volitionally And then, here is one of these little sidebar things that my editor said could be framed this way. So this is their introduction, or at least their structuring of it. Dreaming in general has been connected to creativity for eons for sure. Again, Deidre barrettes book, the Committee of sleep and the literature is replete with examples. Truly. The German chemist Frederick kukula, Kiko lay right discovered the molecular structure of benzene and dream James Cameron, James Cameron's dream of a robot man eventually became a movie Terminator. Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the plot for his novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a dream and Paul McCartney song Yesterday came from came to him at a gym, Michael Jackson, I mean, so many so many, many have talked about this sort of thing. Okay. The current popularity of lucid dreaming is both a blessing and a curse. We'll explore the blessings throughout the book. The curse is that dreams is being unreal are often not taking seriously. cultures that honor dreams are often dismissed as primitive it's just the dream as a trivializing actually pejorative statement, right? I'll be at one with provisional validity. So we're going to use this it's very interesting. We're going to use this mat this this negative statement is just a dream later, especially in the dreams of light book. When we work with expanding the notion of DREAM principle, to incorporate this. So on that level, that dismissive relationship actually is quite helpful because it's a term of negation, the term of dismissal and here in the waking state, we can use it as a way to dismiss the reified status of this seemingly solid reality. So to say this is a dream as a negative statement actually has validity if you can apply that statement to this dream. But if we dismiss our dreams and discharge lucid dreaming is just another virtual reality game or video game. We will dismiss a profound opportunity to explore the nature of mind and reality. The truly primitive cultures what to call poly phasic cultures, those who honor and respect information coming from so called altered dimensions, things like dreams. Truly primitive cultures may well be those that dismiss the power of dreams. Yes, that would be us.
And therefore, ignore the unparalleled opportunities for growth. In this book, we're going to talk about how to strengthen the world of dreaming as a way to weaken the world of daily appearance. So this is a this is an important deal for me. This is one of the things that I work with dreams reifying dreams, making them in a certain sense more real, by implication de reifies this and that's huge. If we make our dreams especially like I mentioned earlier, if we make our dreams, not make them if we can perceive our dreams to be as real or even more real than this. Then what does that say about this? Fundamentally what it will do it will deconstruct Yes, so that you can come to the same conclusion that all the awakened ones like the Buddha, the awakened one, this is when he woke up to a de reified reality that this so called waking state has no more status, literally no more ontological status than your dream last night. as radical as that may appear. It's totally the case. And in fact, the guy that I'm interviewing next week, Swami sarma Priya Nanda, this guy's a rockstar. You'll you'll see. He's like one of the leading I argue he's the leading proponent now in the west of Advaita Vedanta now do all the data. In that tradition, he draws mostly on the maduka bukata shot so we're gonna I'm going to be talking to him a lot about this. The central metaphor, really is the dream. Dream. Anytime you hear this guy talk, and this is why I'm super jazzed to get into this stuff with him. He always comes up with the dream, the dream example and my teacher camp over the take Richie and his book, progressive stages of meditation and emptiness. Those of you read it five stages. Every one of these is associated with a dream example. So dreams are colorful and that's why we work with them in this way.
In this book, we're going to talk about how to strengthen the world of dreaming as a way to weaken the world of daily appearance. So that worldly things don't have as much power over us technical terms. We can almost say they will reify or materialize the dream world in an effort to be de reify or D materialize the waking world until both are seen as equally real or unreal. And we awaken to the illusory nature of built in right so here's this line I this is such a compelling line I memorized it, from arguably the leading proponent of Advaita Vedanta from the last century Rama Maharshi. Right. This is what he says, I did come across a quote until after I wrote this book. So remember this, the sage dreams, but he knows it to be a dream so he knows he's lucid right? The sage dreams but he knows it to be a dream. In the same way he knows the waking state to be a dream. This is a dream. Okay, I can't interrupt myself. I won't remember this, quote The sage dreams but he knows it to be a dream. In the same way he knows the waking state to be a dream. Established in the state of supreme reality. The sage detachably witnesses the other three states waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep as pictures superimposed onto it for the sage all three states are equally real. That's the key. All three states are equally unreal. So again, this is a central This was called the state of Supreme Reality is called Turiya beforethe. It's not a fourth state, because states come and go. It's actually called the fourth because it's beyond those three. But it's actually before the three. This is the state of supreme reality from which you can say with total authenticity. This is a dream. And so in Hindu especially Advaita Vedanta language that's the goal is to return to Turia but what I'm going to talk to Swami about a little bit is why they don't talk about Tria Tita which is beyond the fourth. So stay tuned on that because that's, that's what I'm going to be riffing with him about. Anyway, he's the big deal in the world of DiVita. That's where freedom lies. And that's what waking up in the spiritual sense means we'll have much more to say about lucid dreaming throughout the book right now let's look at a map that can help us understand where we're going when we sleep and dream and then explore how to get there. Cool. Yeah, we got a few more minutes. Chapter Two by dreamlike form appear to dreamlike beings to show them the dreamlike path that leads to dream like enlightenment. What a great one. A map for the practices of the night before we start to journey, especially wanted to darkness we need some idea where we're going and what lies ahead we need to map Buddhism This is called right view, which is the first factor in the Eightfold Noble Path and arguably the most important view is a good term because it denotes a sense of vision and path to Kinder philosophy or I'll look at more practical. Not a good view. It's easy to get lost detoured or trapped in dead ends. Having no view is like crawling around the ground like a worm. You can waste a lot of time. Though with a bird's eye view, you can see exactly where you're going and the effort to get there faster. And so really the image here right those of you who know this languaging the first what the Buddha discovered on the night of his awakening, the 12 links of dependent origination, the 12 the Donna's what's the first Madonna? Ignorance? How is that I kind of graphically represented as a blind grandmother stumbling around in the darkness of ignorance. So blindness here is absolutely mimic this notion of vision right view. Now all the wisdom traditions. Good map is important for the practices of the Knights because some people are afraid of what they might find in the depths of their mind. Some people are afraid of the dark. Mind is uncharted territory shadowy and sometimes scary. Nightmares hide in the dark alleys of the night, along with all sorts of ghastly unconscious elements. This is well see is only in the intermediate unconscious mind. The conscious mind has at least five general kind of classifications I didn't pick up on this here but Ken Wilber his book IDI is a really great chapter for the unconscious mind and all the kind of gradations and dimensions of it really, it's definitely worth looking at.
So nightmares and stuff only hang out in the intermediate bandwidth of unconscious mind not the deepest dimensions. If you're on a spiritual path, the deeper mind is also strewn with all kinds of booby traps and obstacles that can bump you off the path. Having the right view is like entering a floodlight. It's the night which illuminates the journey and can eliminate the fear. central theme of this book is learning how to establish a healthy relationship to fear and to replace fear with courage. We use the darkness of the night as a segue into transforming fear into fearlessness. Everything we do in life requires some guts whether it's applying for a job, buying a house asking someone for a day taking a trip, opening a business making a presentation. Learning how to meditate or starting something as different as Dream Yoga. Even getting out of bed on a bad day can take some nerve is the motivational speaker. Matthew Kelly says the most dominant emotion today in our modern society is fear. Oh lordy. How true is this right? Because it's the primordial emotion of samsara, right. We are afraid Afraid of losing things we have worked hard to buy. afraid of rejection and failure afraid of certain parts of town or Fado, certain types of people afraid of criticism, suffering and heartache rate of change afraid to tell people how we really feel we're even afraid to be ourselves. Some of these fears we are consciously aware of while others exists subconsciously, that these fears can play a very large role of directing the actions of our lives. Like everything. fear stops more people from doing something with their lives than lack of ability. Context, resources or any other single variable. Totally, absolutely. But as valuable as what Matthew says here, he's just barely scratching the surface because what we're really afraid of is that we don't exist. Like I talked about, right? We're afraid of that. We're dead. We're afraid that we're actually dead right now. And so I riff a lot on this because this is a really important thing is our fear of death is actually an authentic secondary fear. What we're really afraid of is it we're dead. Already. Courage, on the other hand, is the spark of life that propels us beyond the straitjacket of our fear. nothing of importance is ever accomplished without courage. Look at the giants of history without bravery, their lives would have slid into mediocrity. Kelly further states that quote the measure of your life will be the measure of your courage. Yeah, that's a good one. And quote, When you die, do you want to be measured by your fear and what held you back or by your courage and what moves you forward? Do you want to live on the sidelines as a mere spectator or get into the playing field of life and really live it right? Take the risks. It's like this thing of upstairs. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? That's a good one. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? And usually that's a failure is associated with fear. That's a powerful thought experiment. If you knew you couldn't fail. What would you do? Go for that? Well, Courage catalyzes fear paralyzes fear and hesitation born from it smothers life so that burns on a pilot light level. Things are safe, but semi dead. The colloquialism frozen in fear takes on an entirely new dimension of a spiritual path and the meditations of the night. We're going to melt that frozen fear and replace it with calm courage so that we can come fully into life on a spiritual level fears what keeps us from waking up. This fear is mostly our fear of the dark darkness here represents the unknown or the unconscious mode of cold language. We're always afraid of what we don't know when we can't see. Darkness in other words is code language for ignorance in the trigger for fear. This darkness or unconsciousness has two levels the relative and the absolute. And their distinction is important. Cool. We have time for one more page. One more page. The relative level of our unconscious mind is where all the repressed psychological stuff hangs out. The spiders and snakes have our deeper mind right? Who wants to go into bed filled with spiders and snakes? Nobody When Freud said the dreams of the Royal Road royal road to the unconscious is monumental by far his most influential book the interpretation of dreams.
He was referring to this relative level. There's a reason we repress unwanted experiences into our unconscious mind. They're just too painful or frightening for consciousness. But what we refuse and conscious experience turns into the refuse to wonderful kind of double entendre. We refuse and conscious experience turns into the refuse heap or the relative unconscious mind. Out of Sight is not out of mind. Out of Sight is into the unconscious mind. As the saying goes, what we resist persists. We didn't want to face by the way for the deeper divers. This is what generates the samskaras which which basically in Hindu Buddhist actually, what is it which is well, this is what constitutes a large part of the unconscious mind the repository of all the some scours the karmic triggers. We didn't want to face this refuse when it was initially experienced. And we generally don't want to face it when it rises in our dreams of therapy or meditation. But if we want to wake up and grow face it, we must Carl Jung wrote, the personal unconscious contains all psychic contents that are incompatible with the conscious attitude. This comprises a whole group of contents chiefly those which appear morally, aesthetically or intellectually inadmissible, and are repressed on account of their in compatibility. A man cannot think and feel the good the true and the beautiful this the content thing and try to keep up an ideal attitude and then trying to keep up an ideal attitude. Everything that does not fit in is automatically repressed. This guy's an amazing one an amazing statement. The Shadow content scares only because we don't know about them. They can arise in dreams but they mostly generate fear when the dream was non lucid. Right? With proficiency and lucid dreaming. These frightening dreams become lucid to us and lucidity takes control. So instead of running away from frightening dreams experiences, from bright new dream experiences and further repressing the elements the spark the scary dream we can face are dreamers with dreams with awareness and therefore fearlessness and purify the elements that give rise to the dream. So my friend Charlie Morley, did a nice little TED Talk TEDx talk quite a while ago, where he talks about this, where how he related to a demonic figure eight his dream was they were able to resolve resolve some issues using the power of his lucidity to reduce nightmares.
Yes, and so doing we can purify our unconscious mind Absolutely. It's like lifting up a slab of flagstone in the middle of the day and having all those slimy critters slither away from the light. That's a nice image. The only difference is that with the light of awareness, the creepy craters don't just slither away to reappear somewhere else they disappear forever. Well, yes, they disappeared because they transformed. You're going to have scary dreams, whether you engage in lucid dreaming or not least as long as you have an unconscious mind right. And so this is why talking about how this applies to death we talk about later we'll talk about Bardo yoga and I've tried to come back to this line from Robert Thurman, where he says it's not safe. It's an amazing line. Where he says when I when I heard him, we're doing a program together and he riffed on this and I was like whoa, Bob, high five. This is awesome. It's not safe to die. As long as you have an unconscious mind, what an amazing line. It's not safe to die as long as you have an unconscious mind. Why? Well, because just like in the nighttime dream, the dream at the end of time death. That's what comes up. And so this is why when you die unless you're lucid, who makes the decisions? What dictates the machinations the journey through debt and the dream at the end of time? If you don't, what does your habits that's why Trump he said What is it the reincarnates your bad habits. So even now, in moments of intensity, if you're not lucid to what's happening, your habits decide for you. Your karma decides for you. You don't decide. This is exactly what happens in a non lucid dream at night. It's exactly what's going to happen when you die. So this stuff goes really deep. I mean, this will help you purify your unconscious mind. So you have nothing to worry about what you tied to my progress, but with lucidity, you can remove the fear by gaining control. Service has shown that while many non lucid dreams tend to be unpleasant, most lucid dreams are pleasant. Makes sense. Why would you be afraid of something you can control? Same thing with the death journey. If you can control your mind, nothing to fear I really look forward to so writer suggests that you can look for an ally in a new dreams a pacemaker yes or an eternal dream guide. Carl Jung had his own filamin or an internal dream guide that can accompany your descent into the unconscious. If you have a connection to Tibetan Buddhism, there are protectors that you can suffocate to help you on this inner journey. Certainly guardian angels on the light can also be engaged to hold your dream hand while viable, these are only relative forms of protected protections, ones that I have never needed. I haven't used them but I know a lot of people who do including I didn't I didn't know Carl Jung personally but he he ripped a lot of his relationship to his guy. The ultimate form of protection is having the right view and seeing through any apparent threat. In the final analysis, it's just your mind in there. And their mind is basically good. So that's why when we talk I think in the next chapter about the map or maybe actually coming up here. Oh yeah, it's coming up next. This is why it's so important to understand the basic identity purity and goodness of their mind. And the final analysis is just your mind and their and their mind is basically good if you don't reify the contents, nothing can hurt you. Cool, or as they say in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Emptiness cannot harm emptiness. Awesome, so we can take just a few minutes oh, look at that right on the money seven o'clock. We can take a few minutes if you'd like to talk about any of this if you have any questions or comments. Now's the time where we can chat for a few minutes. So fire away or I'll check there
were a couple that came in.
See, thanks Barry for mentioning David's book like in transcendence. This is this is a breathtaking book if you haven't read it to the global. Internet. Oh yeah. So from Bridgette, what is the title of book just Yeah, Proof of Heaven, Eben Alexander. He's a academic neurosurgeon. I've never met him but I get a chance to meet him. At the Menlo event.
Did you see the message from Kimberly? Uh
oh. Okay. Let me real quick. I am able to think myself I am able to think to myself in a dream now in other words, I can make mental commentary and hear my thoughts about the things that are happening in the dream. You said in Dream Yoga, we're not interested in the content. We're interested in transforming our relationship to that content. Could you please elaborate Sure. What you mean by relationship to that content? Yeah. Well, Kimberly, Kimber, the best way to think of this is really, it's really the same as the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is incredibly important. interpreting what's happening in your mind and all the blah blah blah, super important. I'm not dissing that at all. It's just a different way to work with mental content. When you're a meditation, you don't care about any of that. You're not doing therapy, even though meditation is therapeutic. It's not therapy. So when you're working with meditation, you're not interested in content. Leave that to the therapists. You're interested in transforming your relationship to that content. By making yours mate your thoughts so solid, not reifying the contents of your mind seeing through what appears so in exactly the same way, classic dream interpretation. Freud, Jung everybody, the interpretation of dreams super important. I still work with it routinely. But that's that's a different bandwidth of applicability. In Dream Yoga, you're not interested in contact. You don't care where the dream comes from. You don't care what's in the dream. You're interested in transforming the content of the dream and that's why if you've been doing the webinars, we'll be going through some of this later in this book. The different stages all the way up to stage and the formula stages are all about relating to the content, changing the content of the dream. I should say, changing your relationship to that content. And so it's exactly the same way you're not interested in what arises. You're interested in transforming your relationship, which is basically as I said, at the very end here, cutting through saying through penetrating through those appearances, so that they know or have that kind of power. Okay. If you have more on that you can raise your hand and we'll talk about it. Yeah, okay, so yeah, this is sweet about playing. Okay, I'll play some Chopin next time. Some of the Etudes
clearly did you. You put your hand down but I muted you.
Oh, yeah. Fire away if you have a question. Oh,
see? Okay. Yeah, um, so I'm quite cute. We talked a lot about fear tonight and I've read a lot of the Pali canon and in that the Buddha doesn't use the word fear, at least in any English translations that I've come across, and I'm wondering where I might read about fear besides right here.
Oh, goodness, well, the book that immediately comes to mind. In fact, I'm having dinner with Bruce tomorrow on Thanksgiving Day. Is Bruce TIFs. magnificent book already free, but as a meat psychotherapy on the path of liberation. I draw in his work a lot in liberally we've worked together we've co taught together and I'm sorry, di FF Bruce t, if T Tift. Bruce Tift. And in this book, he has a couple really good chapters on working with anxiety and fear. So I might recommend that otherwise chamalla The Sacred Path of the warrior I'm a Trump. He talked a lot about fear. He he wrote about it somewhat extensively. I'm trying to think where in a concentrated fashion he did that. He talks about fears is the primordial matrix of samsara a little bit like you said, it's a little bit of a kind of more contract approach. And the whole issue, his whole kind of narrative of the path of the warrior right, Sacred Path of the warrior. You use that strong term, because it takes warriorship It takes courage to relate to foundational fear. And so I would recommend Bruce TIFs book highly without equivocation is really a magnificent Bruce is incredibly humble. He could he could really just take off on this thing and make a big deal. He has so much more to say. But he's just really modest guy in this book is brilliant. And then I'm trying to think again, where else outside of Shambala the secret bathroom or something else comes up. I'll ping you I have your email Billy. I'll let you know. But he's the Jada Trump MJ has written about this quite a bit. Also wholesome fear. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he wrote an entire book on this topic called wholesome fear that just came to mind. That's worth looking at. Tick. Not Han is written about fear. There's a book called no death, no fear or something like that. That's worth looking at. So there's a lot out there once you start to shake the trees okay. Okay, Kimberly, you're muted. Andrew, hello.
How you doing?
I'm good. How are you?
Good. Thanks. So it was very serendipitous that you were talking about fear and death. today because I just quickly share it. I've always had a big fear of death, which I'm sure many of us do. And it's kind of actually held me back a lot because I'm scared of the pain of the actual death experience and then what's going to happen like what's really going to happen when I pass over to that side? So last night, I had a dream. It wasn't a lucid dream, but it was something that I remembered and in that dream, I was with somebody and we were going to die. Somebody was coming for us, and I was calm, and I said to my friend, or whoever it was with me, I said to her, I think you have to prepare, this is the end that we're gonna die. And, and then I just remember going and laying down and just waiting for that person to come and feeling very relaxed and peaceful. And then the person came and it was it was there was pain, actually, this was one of those dreams where you do experience pain, kind of like that. They talk about the the old hag sitting on you, and causes that kind of pain. And so that there was that pain there. And I remember just thinking like just bearing the pain and being like, just kind of you know, when you're at the dentist just holding through it. And at that point, I was just saying, hurry up, just get it done with but when I woke up, the dream wasn't scary. And I felt that that fear had actually transformed that I felt there was something shifted, and just when I thought of death, there was some kind of peacefulness there was, I don't know it just something had definitely transformed. And then you talked about that just now. And I was like, I have to share that because I was so like, yeah.
First of all, thank you for sharing that. That's fantastic. I love hearing this kind of things. And this is really one of the gifts of this kind of community is where we create an environment where we can share these sorts of things. Beautiful, fantastic and and you know, there's might be something very interesting in this game. Dreams are revelatory, they're truth tellers. Of the measure of the path you may not be as afraid of death as you think. And especially now that you have a dream that's intimating that yes, yes, there's still superficial residues, upper bandwidths of identity that are identified with form for sure. There's still that level. But the dream to me and again, I'm not here to run interpretive commentary. on it. But what I get out of this is perhaps there is a little bit into deeper levels of your being a deeper sense of peace with this whole thing. And it'd be interesting to see Kimber, how this dream, perfumes your life, how it may actually stay with you. Because I've had dreams like this lucid and non lucid. I mean, some of my super powerful dreams are not lucid. They deliver just tremendous impact, and sometimes as powerful as my lucid dreams that will last an entire life for me. So thank you so much for sharing that. That's really
good. Thank you very much. And I think what you're right that it's what like you were saying before, there's some dreams, you only need to touch it once have one experience and it changes a lot and that for me, I think that that is kind of one of those dreams. So thank you for listening.
Oh, absolutely. Thank you for sharing and what I would do is I write it down we date it. Sometimes it actually helps to title it. Write it down with as much detail and clarity as you can. And then sometimes with those big ones that call the authentic dreams or whatever big dreams. Sometimes I'll even highlight them in yellow or red. And then when I come back six months a year later, I'll come back and read. And it's always interesting to see how their dream still continues to affect me or how things have changed since then. So this is where again, Dream journaling is super, super helpful, especially with those kind of big dreams. Oh definitely write this one down. Take it to heart. Thanks for sharing Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, beautiful. Okay, hey, David.
Hello, Andrew. Hi. How are you? What's your last name? I don't think I've met you before. I know. I wanted to I didn't really have a specific question. But I have gotten me in person and I and I last week you be invited us you know, to raise our hands and and, you know, be present in the video which and I also want to say I'm on this Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful that I've found your work and thanks for saying that. And working through it. I've actually been a student of Kagyu Buddhist for about 25 years. And
and you know, like the, it's a very key piece that is is really opening up doors for me on multiple levels of the teachings I've you know, just been working with him as much as I can. Well, you know, I did I've got I did get to have a few lucid dreams already.
Okay, I'm looking forward to my next one. I mean, it's just so fantastic. I can't really believe it. But, you know, I get so excited in the dream that I woke up, like you said I just was That's it. I'm like, okay, that's so exciting that I can't even really believe it. But um, so other than having a question I you know, I've been listening your book and reading your book and I just wanted to say thank you and I'm looking forward to what manifests out of it because holy smokes, I'd love to hear your you play your new beautiful piano to appreciate that, David, that's very kind of you. And yeah, thanks for speaking up and sharing that and look forward to future encounters with you in cyberspace. Or maybe in person and Happy Thanksgiving to you as well. appreciate it so much. Yeah. Very, very much. Very cool. All righty.
Let's see there were a couple more that came in through the chat. That's from a Nisha said Can Andrew explain what kind of booby traps are might be in the depths of our mind? Example would help me understand what he means by this. I heard that this is also the reason a spiritual practitioner needs a teacher.
It helps definitely helps so you don't kid yourself. Definitely, why reinvent the wheel right? Yeah, so we traps basically, what I'm referring to here is that part of a really big part of the journey is making unconscious processes, conscious bringing everything into the light of consciousness. So to really to the extent that Nisha no exaggeration, that there's literally there's no no unconscious mind left at all. Everything is brought into the light of awareness, lucidity, there's no unconsciousness period. And so until that happens, some of the booby traps so to speak, are just the snares that we have thrown the unwanted experiences again in Buddhist Hindu language, the scars the rejected elements of experience experience. Sometimes when we're children that we really don't have much choice and we really we don't have, we literally don't have the neurological brain power to digest our experience. That's why we need like birds, Mother birds feeding the children we need to eat, eat the regurgitated reality of our parents and families of origin. And so often, we have experiences that that we can't digest, we can't metabolize. And so those are the ones that get lodged in our body mind matrix in the unconscious mind and they're they act as these kind of booby traps or whatever metaphor you want to use, snares potential deterrence. That the reason I called the booby traps is when they're brought to the Light of Consciousness and you don't have the right view. You're you're going to go with this meditation thing is BS, it's like, my life is falling apart. Well, Rinpoche right from from Jkr should be regarded as extremely good news. Meditation is the sedative, it's a laxative. You got to have all this crap come up. And so the booby traps are the snares that we have installed unconsciously by our inability either developmentally or sometimes intentionally. To stay with the raw intensity of life experience and we hurl that residue into our unconscious mind generating the unconscious mind. And therefore it percolates our lives fundamentally become symptomatic, really, of those underlying issues and result will be traps. And therefore, what we want to do what we're invited to do on this path of warriorship, which is why that term is used, it takes guts to do this. Go in and face this stuff, bring it into the light of awareness and then cremate it in the light of awareness and therefore purifying literally becoming lighter, freer, the energy is released. So these things are there. We don't want to reify them they're just energetic. Traps, they're energetic loops that have not been or knots that have not been processed that are still tying us into knots. And by having the right view, this is what we're going to continue with and in a couple of weeks, whenever I come back from Mexico, we'll talk more about this then the importance of right view that if we don't reify these, these aspects if we understand what's really going on, we will actually welcome them, we will actually embrace them is heightened opportunities for transformation. Okay, so stay tuned on that lot more to say about that, but that's a good one. We see what else here.
Tim said. It sounds like our goal in psychological terms. Is to make the personal unconscious conscious. Some people think psychedelics can help with this. I have chosen to mainly try the medication route in my life, but I know some others who have seemed to benefit from their use.
What do you think? Oh, totally, absolutely, positively. They have a place and I've changed my tune on this in fact, when I had my dinner with David Lloyd the other night, we were talking about this we had a really nice conversation. We were talking about like, I asked him I said, David, what? To me one of the great questions of my life is what affects transformation. What does it take to transform in developmentalists? I mean, some really clever people have been trying to figure out this for 1000s of years what actually ignites transformation? So we talked about that quite a bit of them. He shared the story as many have of his generation in mind that one of the great breakthroughs was psychedelics that having his his the neurological correlate. So this is where the whole idea of neuro phenomenology comes into play that whenever you have an experience, that's the phenomenology part. There's always a neurological correlate. There's a signature happening. They're they're related. They're not causative, but they're correlative. And so therefore, what the psychedelic agents do is they work with a neuro and they can change the neurology to change the phenomenology. So therefore, you can go in and have completely legitimate spiritual experiences. And there's again there's some really interesting data a ton of it lately. Starting with coming popular with Michael Pollan's book how to change your mind. James Kingston's book, how am I dreaming? There's a ton of literature here. But I would still strongly recommend meditation as a superior modality for transformation. Why? Well, because what do you do with that pointing, pointing out transmission when when the psychedelic shakes the snowglobe and you see the world in a new way. 100 100% Legit, in my opinion, especially with things like iOS go into like what do you do with that? That's the question. You just continue to trip out. Maybe not, you know, you'll fry your chromosomes. I mean, you get it, you know, you can do some real neurological damage if you just keep getting yourself up with all these experiences. From the pharmacological and so then to me, it's like then you bring it to the cushion. Then you stabilize that glimpse into a gaze through your meditation practice. So I'm with UTM. Meditation, to me is is a more superior organic way. It's a more natural way to do it. But I've also changed my tune on this. I used to be much more conservative, I think and again, I'm full disclaimer here in a public arena. I am not category categorically endorsing these agents because they're still illegal. Major waiver. You did not hear me saying everybody should go out there like Timothy Leary and you know, dropping acid into the water system. I mean, on one level it's probably not a bad idea these days these days I will be all for it you know when they're just be really just just flood the whole water system with LSD. Okay, we're gonna have to delete this part Alyssa from from St. Archives are my political my political career, my political career is totally derailed or what I'm saying. But hey, you get the idea. I think you get the idea. I am a cautious endorser of these agents. Now if it's done with a proper sentence setting in a really caring environment. And their agents their places now they do it. If you want to pay me I can. I don't want to advertise these over the line. live online. But if you pay me I can send you places where where you can do this safely. They have a place it's a part of an integral approach to awakening. So again, I'm not saying run out there and do this stuff. I'm saying it has a place. And so we get him the meditation path is more organic or natural. And that's what the stability is going to come from. But there's a lot to say here, remember? Who knows if it's true, I think it is when rom das gave his Swami something like 25 minutes of orange sunshine, right? Nothing happened. I mean, it didn't change at all, because he was already hanging out in that space. So it makes total sense to me. Why not work with a neurological correlates of a particular type of experience? Why not do that? It has a place we just have to be really careful about that place. Okay. Yeah, forget about running for president like no kidding. Okay, everybody, probably time to run.