Exploring Tom Campbell's Theory of Everything

Peter: 00:00:03

You're listening to the Tracking Wisdom podcast, exploring the universal truths that we see woven through culture, consciousness and the human experience.

Ryan: 00:00:17

Welcome back to the Conversation, everybody. We invite you to join as well as we share our discoveries and experiences along the way. I'm Ryan.

Peter: 00:00:25

I'm Peter.

Ryan: 00:00:26

And today we're discussing Tom Campbell's Theory of Everything, which was inspired by Talk Tapes, which is a new series of the Telepathy Tapes, a podcast by Kai Dickens. And she interviewed Tom Campbell. So we're going to be commenting on his theory of Everything that we learned through that.

And that episode is in the description. So we will learn more about Tom Campbell.

Peter: 00:00:53

Yeah, so Tom Campbell is a physicist who got 50 years of experience working in both physics and consciousness because he started apparently thinking about consciousness when he was a physics graduate student and was introduced to meditation. And then he started on this parallel track. But he's, he's a very hard science kind of guy who also has this other interest.

He was a NASA physicist for a couple of years. He's worked in, I think, defense and intelligence and like all this kind of areas where you wouldn't think of as being paranormal kind of stuff.

So I, I first heard about him, as Ryan said in interview with Kai Dickinson, telepathy tapes. But it really caught my eye because his toe toe theory of everything brought me back to Donald Hoffman.

And I'll draw some parallels back there, but essentially the key elements of his theory are that consciousness is fundamental. In other words, he rejects the materialist approach for an idealist approach, and that quantum mechanics shows us that reality is information based.

And so his theory is that we are in a simulation that space time. And I'm going to just lean on a lot of terminology that Hoffman uses. You.

d the Case Against Reality in: 2019

But nonetheless, because I'm more familiar with Hoffman, I'm going to kind of frame it that way. And listeners who've heard us talk about Hoffman are also going to be more familiar.

So consciousness is fundamental, not materialism, meaning not space time.

That in fact the material reality is a kind of simulation in which our body is an avatar into which we incarnate and our player, actual player, is just our consciousness, not our body. Which of course directly parallels.

Well, it's not just Hoffman's interface theory of perception, but also this bigger idea of reality as a simulation. Now what I like about what I liked about Tom right away is that he said consciousness is the computer because consciousness does, in fact, compute.

And what I liked about that is that he immediately kind of removed this idea of, oh, yeah, we're just in a simulation, and we're in a game simulation that's being run on a big computer, and that computer is just a simulation that's being run on another computer. And this.

This strained metaphor that I think really kind of kills the simulation approach because a lot of people are very literal about, oh, because we're in a simulation, that means that there is a computer, which means that there is a programmer, which means that. And it's like, no, it's just an analogy. It's not literally true.

And so that was the first thing that I noticed about Campbell is he says consciousness computes our reality and generates this simulation.

So the big overarching idea that he has is that our physical universe is a learning lab for our consciousness, and that the purpose of this lab is for our consciousness to grow and develop. And that development is, as he puts it, to minimize entropy, which means really to move towards love.

And so we can get into a little bit more detail as we go. So the first premise is that consciousness is the source of everything, which, again, remains.

Reflects what Hoffman wrote, that material existence arises out of consciousness, not the other way around. Now, we haven't gotten to detail with Campbell. I think Hoffman, as I've read him more explicitly, states like, this is mathematically consistent.

You can mathematically model how spacetime could possibly arise out of. Out of consciousness. Not that I think he said, at least not in the case against reality.

Not that he said that he had done it, but he said it's possible to do it. So another thing that Campbell says is that consciousness is a combination of awareness, of choice.

And I thought that was an interesting echo of Hoffman's conscious agents.

So Hoffman kind of postulates these kind of quanta of consciousness, like the minimum amount of consciousness is a conscious agent, and at minimum, it has the ability to perceive and decide. Actually, he. And then he adds, take, take action. And Campbell's idea directly aligns with this. The action is implicit. And I think we.

We've talked about this a lot of times, that when we see an idea presented by a different thinker in a different way, but that it has the same content. Yeah, that we go, okay, there's something here. And so this really pulled me in.

Campbell describes reality as a simulation, but as he puts it, it's a rule set, which I think. So the difference is Campbell is a physicist by training and profession and Hoffman is a perceptual psychologist by training.

So their language is going to be slightly different. And I think Campbell's language may be a lot more familiar to a lot of people because I think he works more with the idea of programs as a physicist.

And so he, you know, he's expressing it as a rule set rather than just vaguely as a simulation. He also raises the love fear dichotomy, which is an ongoing theme for us, and that entropy or chaos is lowered by moving towards love.

You know that when you experience fear, the more fear there is, the more chaos there is. It's very intuitively obvious.

Like, I feel like if I say that someone will immediately understand in their heart, kind of like, oh, yeah, of course, fear. Fear does create chaos. So, yeah, I'm just like really struck by his way of expressing these things.

He talks a bit about free will and constraints on free will, which he describes as decision space.

And we came across this as in Hoffman, where Hoffman talks about consciousness having an action menu, meaning a limited array of choices that can be made by the conscious agent that can perceive and decide. In order to decide, it has to choose off of a menu. And Campbell says the same thing.

You know, there's a limited decision space that you operate in, even though reality is created by your consciousness. That doesn't imply that you therefore can do whatever you want and you have unlimited choice and potential in every moment.

He's like, no, you're actually, because you're incarnated, you're operating within this decision space which has these, these constraints.

Now, we're not as constrained as we think we are because we're not constrained by space, time necessarily, but we are constrained by our decision space, the decisions that are available to us, given our history, circumstance, etc.

Ryan: 00:10:12

He was talking about you were constrained within the choices that you know of. That was him.

Peter: 00:10:19

That was. Yeah, that was a significant limitation. You have many more choices than you think you do, but. But you can only see so many choices.

But even if you could see all of your choices, you're still limited. It's just you may have 20 choices instead of five. At least that's. That's what I took away from it.

Ryan: 00:10:39

This brought me back very specifically to a conversation we had had previously. It was a while ago, not 100% sure it's actually published, but the conversation did occur, which was. I had brought to you the.

This idea of infinite potentiality when we were talking about time and everything existing at once, right. And Everything exists in this infinite potential space. All, all events, all potential outcomes and pathways.

And we move through that space, through our decisions, through our choices, as the. The experience of time comes by making a choice and following a conditional path away from that.

But it doesn't mean that the other things are impossible or inaccessible, but you are brought further from maybe a certain reality, the more choices take you in a different direction. I think this leads to his probability.

He was talking about probability and that part of the function of this decision space is probabilities of outcome based on your historical choices, like the things that have happened have cause and effect relation within this rule set.

So you will be constrained to some degree on what outcomes you can choose or manage because you've taken this branching logical pathway through time and space to get where you are. Kai asked about the idea of intention, setting intention.

People talk about and have experienced the seeming synchronicities that come along with setting a focus and an intention and having an outcome that arrives consistent with that intention. And he was saying that intention can rebalance or reweigh some of the probabilities of the. The probability role of the outcome.

Peter: 00:13:02

Right. Which. Exactly. So you're, you're still. It's still a stochastic process.

In other words, you still don't know what the outcome is, but your intention influences the probability.

Peter: 00:13:14

Right.

Peter: 00:13:15

And so what you're pointing to is, you know what.

What's popularized as manifestation, which is a term that we don't really like, but was popularized by, I guess, Oprah Winfrey and the book, like the Secret, I think.

Ryan: 00:13:31

I don't really know where.

Peter: 00:13:32

I think that's. I mean, that's interesting. Definitely part of recent popular culture. So.

So, yeah, I mean, you touched on a number of things that I guess, I guess I'll follow at least a little bit here. You know, this I. This idea of infinite potential and then the gradual limiting of the potential by choice.

I like to point out that the literal root meaning of decision is decision has the same root as incision and excision.

Peter: 00:14:05

Right.

Peter: 00:14:06

It's a cutting, and it's a cutting of a choice cutting off D. And so, yes, as you make choice, you're limiting. You're kind of pruning your probability tree. Right, right. And now I'm thinking of the. The TV series Loki and the multiverse and everything like that.

Lots of crazy popular culture touching on these things. But I think even that brief aside, you know, kind of tells me that there's. There's an increasing consciousness. What's it called?

Not A public consciousness. But.

But literally, because we're talking about pop culture, there's an increasing public consciousness of some of these concepts now because it's part of the new mythology. The references are vague and misleading, but nonetheless, it's there.

It's there in the form of these modern myths or popular media, which just is interesting to me. So the other.

The other thing that I think you're pointing to with this kind of infinite potential space is the idea of the cat, the Akashic records, which I'm not very familiar with, but I'm kind of coming into contact with, which is something that he references as well. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna put that off for a minute because I think some of these ideas are gonna come up. The.

But the idea of the nature of choice versus the infinite potential and this kind of simultaneous reality that. That you're referencing, which is what happens when you don't have space time. Right. Space time is what helps.

Space time is what prevents everything from happening at once. Without space time, you have the point reality before the Big Bang. And so all these ideas really tie together, and they're not crazy ideas.

Peter: 00:16:17

Right.

Peter: 00:16:17

Because generally we accept the Big Bang.

If generally you accept the Big Bang, then generally you accept a point reality, because that's what the Big Bang was was the transition from a point reality to this bigger universe. And we just tend not to think about the implications. People don't like to think about what was big before the Big Bang?

Peter: 00:16:37

Right.

Peter: 00:16:38

Well, what was the Big Bang? Big Bang was the creation of time, space time. So what was before space time? Well, everything, everywhere, all at once.

So one of the points that we have is. Is the way that this theory of everything, this big toe, overlaps with. With ancient traditions and perennial wisdom.

The emphasis of working towards love or unity with God through love, identity of love with universal existence and deity being.

Ryan: 00:17:13

In alignment with the flow of nature.

Ryan: 00:17:17

That nature being sort of the fundamentals of the rule set which he related to physics being that.

Peter: 00:17:26

Exactly, yeah. Oh, so you wrote the question, is Campbell just modernizing on perennial wisdom with a physics framework?

I think this is what we're always trying to do. Right. In general, we're trying to understand traditions and various different teachings in kind of a modern context that we can talk about.

Peter: 00:17:52

Right.

Ryan: 00:17:52

Well, he even.

I think it really drives back to his comment that there is one, one ultimate truth which is consistent with the perennial wisdom, consistent with what we've discussed in what we perceive and believe and has been discussed in people like Rupert Spira and others, you know, more spiritual or philosophical backgrounds, that truth is truth. Like there is just a. There is a fundamental essence to the ultimate reality.

And it's expressed through thousands of different metaphors and religious teachings. And so this is another metaphor, another way of describing the perennial wisdom, the fundamental essence.

Peter: 00:18:40

And in terms of his position as scientist, we've seen this before. So currently, the cutting edge of all of science is quantum physics.

As investigators get more involved in that, they tend to relate to ancient wisdoms. We've seen this in Hoffman, we've seen this in Ravelli, and now we see this in Campbell. In Campbell.

Just a caveat is, of course, we've got selection bias in looking at.

Peter: 00:19:18

Yes.

Peter: 00:19:19

This. This kind of thing. I'm not saying that all quantum physics physicists feel this way, but I'm pretty sure that there's a trend of that.

I mean, certainly I've looked at other pieces of media regarding quantum physics and interviews with people in. In the field, and this stuff comes up repeatedly.

Peter: 00:19:51

It's not just Campbell. It's not just revelli. It's. Yeah. I mean, it's not necessarily fringe. I mean. Well, here's the thing. Quantum physics is fringe. Right. Itself.

I mean, we have this huge body of knowledge of conventional physics. That's the part that's not fringe. All of quantum physics is fringe because it all opposes Newtonian physics.

Ryan: 00:20:16

Is that what makes it fringe, though?

Peter: 00:20:18

Well, I'm just saying it's a much smaller body of knowledge relative to the hundreds of years.

Peter: 00:20:24

Sure.

Peter: 00:20:24

Of investigation that it's working against, and it really is working against that which I. So it brings me. Now, this is something that I got from his book. So I did start to.

To listen to Campbell's audiobook, My Big Toe, and one of the things that he points out is that quantum physics, as he puts it, ends materialism. Like, once we start doing quantum physics, it's like, yeah, materialism's out the window. It's just that we haven't accepted it yet.

And because the establishment's instruction is essentially, shut up and calculate. Like, don't think about the implications of what you're doing. Just make another cell phone.

Just make another invention that exploits the weirdness and impossibleness of quantum physics in the framework of classical physics. It undoes all the science. It doesn't undo it. I know, I know.

Ryan: 00:21:30

It's just not fundamental.

Peter: 00:21:34

It undoes materialism.

Ryan: 00:21:35

Yes, right.

Peter: 00:21:36

Yes.

Peter: 00:21:37

You can use material existence just like you can use a computer game. It will operate. It makes sense. It makes sense. It has a rule set. Exactly. But quantum physics points beyond that rule set.

It points that, oh, we're just operating in a spacetime interface and there's all this stuff that doesn't operate in the space time rules.

Peter: 00:22:02

Right.

Peter: 00:22:03

And so, you know, the establishment says, yeah, don't look into the matrix. God, so much popular culture. Right. Don't look beyond that.

Just do your job and create another physical manifestation of the utility of this information without getting in, into the spiritual implications.

Peter: 00:22:25

Right.

Peter: 00:22:25

You know, or the ontological implications of, of what we're, of what you're actually working with. So anyway, I mean, obviously very big ideas. It's Theory of Everything by definition. So you did this great outline of key experiments and evidence.

And so I'm going to invite you to jump in on this.

Ryan: 00:22:54

He went through and explained through the interview with, with Kai a number of experiments and different things that he has participated in that helped to I guess solidify his own position in the space, but also to help validate or give evidence to what he's talking about.

And so the first thing he was talking about was this group of people that was involved in outof body experiments and he was going through explaining this remote viewing or out of body experience experiment where the participants were isolated in soundproof rooms, even with a soundproof room in between them to ensure that there was no way for them to hear each other. And they got into this theta state and they talked a little bit about binaural beats being a facilitator to bringing about that theta state.

He also spoke about Hemisync, which I guess is a branded proprietary. Yes, version, basically binaural beats. But that helped them to get into the space where they could then experience this out of body.

And, and the idea being that they would meet up essentially.

So, so having multiple participants get into that out of body state and then meet up and basically describe their experiences as they're together in this out of body state. And the rooms were recorded so, so they're speaking but they can't hear each other outside of, you know, this out of body state.

And as they recorded what they were saying and like, oh yeah, there's this thing over there that I see when the experiment concluded, they took those recordings and basically overlaid the tracks and they lined up perfectly.

Peter: 00:25:03

They made a coherent adventure, coherent mutual experience between all the, all the participants where one could say something like, oh, do you see that yellow thing over there? Yeah, you mean the, the pointy Thing with the round top. And, and, and they would say, yeah.

And these were not conversations that they had audibly together in real time. But in one room one person was saying this. And in a completely sound, isolated and physically separated other room, the other person was replying.

So what I learned from the beginning of the book was that Campbell's start with kind of exceptional experience came long before this. He was first introduced to meditation as a graduate student.

Just kind of randomly saw an ad for TM and Transcendental Meditation and it offered, you know, you can do more with less sleep, you can get more mental clarity. And as a physics graduate student, he was like, well, this is great.

So he went and did it and basically he found immediately that meditation gave him greater mental clarity.

And he started to apply meditation to actually solving physics problems to the point where he no longer worked separately from meditation, that he just, he was working on a problem.

And sometimes there would be people around and he would just enter this, what you might call a theta state or you know, this state that he's describing these other experiments, a deep meditative state. And then he would solve the problem in that state. And he said people would sometimes try to interact with him while he was doing this.

And they said it was like interacting with just a body. Like he was completely non responsive until he came out. And they were just like, yeah, this, he's really weird.

He has this very deep concentration that he does. So he had colleagues who were interested in the fact that he did this and kind of his effectiveness. And he encouraged them to try meditation.

And he said none of them ever did. But the point is that he talks about this as a practical experience, not as like, oh, it was a weird thing.

It's like, no, I became a more effective physicist. That's why it's interesting. And he said, you know, this is where non physical reality is affecting physical results.

Like, this is my physical product, but how am I getting to this physical product? I'm getting to this by entering this altered state. And that's when kind of this whole approach started. But it's strictly pragmatic.

And he, he remained like. I mean, he expresses it as a physicist developing a model, like, well, how could this affect this outcome?

And that's kind of where he started thinking about this stuff. So yeah, in, in the interview he talks about a lot of paranormal stuff and, and tells the interviewer, yeah, anybody can do this stuff.

They're not special abilities. It's just a matter of discipline and effort, which I find intriguing.

And I find a Little maybe misleading, because, I mean, you can also say, oh, well, anybody can meditate and experience this extreme state of clarity where you could solve problems. Well, theoretically, yes.

But that experience that he had, I read that, I was like, wow, this is no wonder this guy's the way he is, because this was his first experience of meditation. It's not typical, you know.

Peter: 00:29:10

Right.

Peter: 00:29:11

It's possible. Which is different from saying it's typical and kind of goes to, again, the recurring theme of the bell curve.

Peter: 00:29:20

Sure.

Peter: 00:29:21

Like, this guy is not in the middle curve.

Ryan: 00:29:24

No. But I think his point, at least what I gathered from the interview part of it, was the term paranormal is a misnomer.

He was trying to reframe it, that these are. This is normal reality. This is what things are. And it is possible, although not always likely.

Peter: 00:29:45

And I will say he does focus on reproducibility.

Peter: 00:29:49

Yeah.

Peter: 00:29:49

And so the methods that he's talking about are not inaccessible. It's just. What I'm saying is the amount of effort that it might take you to accomplish the outcomes that he's describing, your mileage may vary.

Ryan: 00:30:03

Right.

Peter: 00:30:04

You know, that's. That's the point I'm making. I mean, I totally agree with him. I totally buy into his assertion that it's possible for anyone. That's.

That's not why I'm disagreeing with. What I'm disagreeing with is the implication that someone could take a TM course and have their work problems all solved.

It's like, that's very unlikely. Yeah.

Ryan: 00:30:31

At least in the first go. But, I mean, he did say with effort and practice.

Peter: 00:30:36

Yeah. Yeah. So Kai's interest, because the. The way telepathy tape started was the discovery of paranormal abilities in autistic individuals.

And that's how Kai developed her whole podcast, or now, I guess, a growing industry or something. Like, it's a big enterprise other than just her. Her podcast. That's why Tom is saying it's not just for special people who are.

Are isolated by special circumstances. And so the. The story of the rest of Kai's investigations is very much like, oh, you know, these are very special people because they're.

They're disadvantaged in a lot of physical ways that forces them into this special focus which gives them special abilities. And. And Tom's message is like, yeah, no, it's just part of focus. Like, as long as you can focus and put the effort in, it's not.

It's not a magical, special thing. It's a normal thing. It's a normal function of consciousness. But again, Recurring theme. Our. Our culture devalues it.

Peter: 00:31:48

Right.

Peter: 00:31:49

Our values.

Our culture tells us it's all false, not much less that you should spend any effort on it, but it's just wrong and even evil and all these kinds of things. So.

Yeah, so one of the things that he specifically says which caught my eye, is that in the state of point consciousness, which he very, very easily got to in his first month of meditation, you can, for instance, establish telepathic connection with your teenagers so that you can talk. Because he says you can't talk to teenagers, but you can telepathically connect to them. And I'm like, oh, really? Tell me more.

Obviously, I'm like my jaws dropping and I'm lapping it up. I'm very intrigued by that.

And I would say I'm intrigued to the point of I'm actually interested in trying it, and I'm not exactly sure how to proceed, but it's something that I'm very interested in. In trying to empirically investigate.

Peter: 00:32:53

Yeah.

Peter: 00:32:54

And then, as you. As you already mentioned, he talks about intention and changing the.

The probabilities of the decision space, which is like manifestation, synchronicity, all the things we've talked about as recurring themes. Oh, okay. Yes. He does point out that Western culture ignores the intuitive.

And everything is netted consciousness is a phrase that he uses, meaning that all conscious agents are interconnected in broader terms. Well, I wish I knew what explicitly what he said, because this thing of everything is netted consciousness directly parallels Hoffman.

Peter: 00:33:45

Yes.

Peter: 00:33:46

Because Hoffman says that everything, every particle, every object, every particle is consciousness.

Peter: 00:33:54

Right.

Peter: 00:33:55

And we only see them as physical objects because we are perceiving other conscious agents in this physical interface.

Peter: 00:34:03

Right.

Peter: 00:34:03

Hoffman. I mean, Campbell pretty much says the same thing, as far as we can tell from the interview, and that it's all interconnected, which is something.

Well, obviously from a lot of wisdom traditions, this idea of inter. Being interconnectedness, it's something that I've come across a lot. Indirect experience in group meditation, experiences of interconnectedness.

Ryan: 00:34:43

He was describing it more specifically, at least in the interview. He was describing the metaphor being kind of like the Internet, where each individual perceptive Loki is connected like a network.

That's where the netted consciousness comes. And we can choose to be more or less in tune or like I think he said, turn it on or turn it off, but it's not that it's ever disconnected.

The Internet's always live. The. The interconscious network is always live.

But you can choose through intention and practice to open A browser, and tap into that worldwide consciousness. That's in part, I think, what he was talking about with his practice, where he solves problems, right?

There's access to that infinite potentiality, that ultimate database of information through this netted system. But, and I'm putting my own words in it, but this is kind of what I was gathering from it. Most people aren't connected.

They're connected, but they're not using it. They're not tapping into that network.

Peter: 00:36:07

So again, this is a major recurring theme is the idea of connection and separation. And, you know, the, the idea of. Of human experience as being the problem of perceived separation.

Peter: 00:36:24

Right.

Peter: 00:36:25

So it's not that we need to log into the connection, it's that we have to stop being deceived, that we're not connected.

Peter: 00:36:33

Right.

Peter: 00:36:34

And that deception is at the same time. So it's not inherently a malicious deception. However, I think it is a maliciously exploited deception, persistently and consistently and repeatedly.

And so I think goes back to what you introduced before as the infinite potential and the simultaneous nature of everything possible existing. And kind of what I touched upon as the point reality of pre Big Bang.

It's something that's pointed to by Buddhism in one instance of Buddha supposedly knowing, having infinite knowledge. Because I mean, how. How would that be? Because he's not deceived by his separateness of self.

And again, as we practice a lot, it's a recurring theme with a lot of people that I interact with of practice, resulting in an increasing sense of connectivity and a dissolution of the illusion of separateness. What else I wanted to point at with this, this idea of the Akashic record, this idea of your infinite simultaneous existing potential of everything.

And I want to pull in some thoughts that I've had. I might have expressed them before, having to do with past lives and some of these other paranormal things and how they would work.

And also a short story by Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian that everybody knows as that Matt Damon movie, but he wrote a short story called the Egg which really cracks it open. I think this is really potentially an example where art is hitting on this ultimate reality.

This story spoke to me like, is so intuitively true to me. And this is something that's attributed to art, right? Art points to the truth or literature, right? It describes the truth.

It's not reality, but what's true. And to me what that means is not reality.

Means not in space time, not in our physical reality, but really, how can it be true but not in our physical reality? Because it's True in the ultimate reality.

And what Andy describes in this story is someone who has died and basically meets his creator and has everything explained to him that all of existence is just to develop that individual's soul. Except that that individual isn't one individual out of billions of individuals. That individual is the only other individual that exists.

That there's a creator and there's a separate consciousness that has to be developed. And so he, he, you know, he asked questions about his world and all the people that he knew and everything like that.

And the answer is, yeah, they're all you. There is no one else. They're all you. You're just, they're all incarnations of you.

Which to me, this idea of space time not being essential, but consciousness being essential explains this really weird phenomenon of past lives, which is very illogical because people connect to past lives and they're like, oh, I was so and so. And many people are the same person. You know, I was Julius Caesar. What? Oh, yeah, I was Julius.

You know, it's, it's a, it's a thing like prominent figures are recurring or. Yeah. Recur in various accounts of past lives, which doesn't make any sense at all, of course, and kind of the logistics of souls and reincarnation.

So you think about it a little bit and it's like, well, wait a second, how are there more soul? Like, you know, if, if there was a creation and there were so many souls now how are there more souls?

And then anyway, there's just this whole logistic numerical problem. But if you see it as everyone being the potential of everyone else. And again, this is like there but for the grace of God go I. It's really there.

But for the existence of space time separating me, we are all not the same, but we are all actually the identical entity. And you and I are actually just different, as Hoffman calls instantiations of the same thing. We're just separated in space time.

But space time is an illusion. If we take away space time, we go back to the source, then we're one point reality.

But we're separated in order to have our individual experiences so that our unity can learn from our separate experiences. And this is the story that you've gone over before about now, this is from conversations with God, right?

That, that the purpose of incarnation or creation, same thing, right. Is to enable the divine to have an experience.

Peter: 00:42:34

Yes.

Peter: 00:42:35

And so the way I see this, how this all connects to reincarnation and past lives and whatnot, is that when we turn away from the illusion of separateness and we access this database, all of us have access to all past lives. And not only past lives, but current lives and future lives. Because essentially, I think what it's like is just reaching back to before the Big Bang.

And you're not really reaching back. I mean, only in terms of space time are you reaching back in time. But in terms of ultimate reality, you're just accessing, you're not reaching back.

Peter: 00:43:17

Right, right.

Peter: 00:43:19

Because it's everything, everywhere, all at once. There's no space. So everywhere is just here. And every. All at once is just now.

And so the problem that we have in interpreting these experiences is that because we're incarnated, we are constrained by the way we're able to experience it and interpret it. And so people interpret these things as. As past lives. Like, oh, I was this person.

No, you're contacting this infinite data, but in order to report it and process it and report it and describe it, you're expressing it as, I was Julius Caesar, as opposed to I accessed the data that was specific to what we call the individual Julius Caesar. And that it's merely. It's merely the constraint of space time that makes it illogical.

And it's merely the constraint of our individual incarnation while we're accessing this information that constrains us to say, I was this person as a past life, as opposed to, I was everybody.

Peter: 00:44:32

Right?

Peter: 00:44:33

And I am everybody. So that's my interpretation of past life experiences. But it also connects to the experience of mystics who.

And others who recognize that they're everybody.

Ryan: 00:44:50

So the time thing is interesting too, with the. The database, the infinite, infinite potentiality, the akashic records, however you want to describe it.

He specifically said, like, so you have access. You can access this database, find out things about the past and even the present. You can see things that could be the future.

But because the future hasn't happened, because the decision tree still is yet to fulfill itself into material form, those only become probabilities or are only probabilities. And I suppose that that goes to prophecy and some of the cultural, artistic phenomena that discuss changing the future.

Peter: 00:45:43

Right.

Ryan: 00:45:44

This is what it looks like if you continue down this path.

So it exists as a potential of reality, but it has not manifested into the array of choices and experiences throughout human history, which I think also I had discussed during that old discussion, is it's not just our individual.

The array of our own individual choices, but the fulfillment of the entirety of human material decision making that has created this reality that we perceive, this material form that we Perceive in the present.

Peter: 00:46:30

State, there is a specific corollary that or interpretation that Campbell mentions that I want to point out, which is the role of existence as a learning laboratory and kind of the relationship of the creator or the divine and the creation or reality. Right. And that the creator created in order to learn, which means that there's learning to happen.

And Campbell points at Old Testament, basically the evolution of the Judeo Christian deity, or I should say the Abrahamic deity, changing from a angry, vindictive parental type to a loving parental type. And I feel like we already mentioned this. We did mention this. Is it because of Campbell?

Ryan: 00:47:35

You brought it up in reference when we were talking about the Ten Commandments.

Peter: 00:47:39

Right. But I don't know if I'd already heard about Campbell at that point.

Ryan: 00:47:42

Yeah, I think you.

Peter: 00:47:43

Okay. Because Campbell explicitly says that.

Ryan: 00:47:46

I think you cited Campbell.

Peter: 00:47:47

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well worth pointing back to because it is.

It was a very interesting kind of very explicit theological observation to what he's saying, which is. Yeah, the. The idea of God being perfect always is part of the story of God as a part of. As opposed to the nature of God, which is love.

And in the ultimate is all there is. But in the context of our existence and of creation, there's a learning path and there is a growth of the Creator, which is a weird.

Ryan: 00:48:35

I think that growth is a better term for it, personally. And this is my own.

Sure, I say this because there's a number of people who assert, you know, there is no learning, but I think there is experience and evolution. Basically, there's no learning because we already know everything. We just need to remember kind of thing.

And in part, actually conversations with God touched on something similar. But the idea of growth and evolution, and this is how Campbell phrased it as well, like he. He did call it obviously the learning lab.

But the purpose is for the growth and evolution of the consciousness through experience that moves.

So the experience of both high entropy and low entropy and finding our way through those experiences, evolving to the lowest lower entropy choices, I guess. But it's more than that, right? It's being. It's the. It's discovery in a way, but it's discovery through experience.

And this is the nuance that I gather from like conversations with God and things. It's not a knowing. Learning to me elicits this knowing.

Peter: 00:50:06

Yes, yes, yes.

Ryan: 00:50:07

Thing versus experiencing versus experiencing it.

You understand it through the experience and through the embodiment of it, which can't happen in the ultimate state because there is no relational aspect. The Only way to experience is to have that separateness, to have a relation through space and time of any unique concept.

And you learn, you learn how, you learn about who we are. And the Source learns about itself, about the nature of itself through the experience.

And it was interesting and you mentioned this last time during the Ten Commandments as well. But he. I think it's worth rephrasing or re. Speaking about it again is the Source is also learning or growing, evolving through our experience.

It's not us specifically individually that is evolving, but through these experiences the Source, the oneness evolves. And that is the importance, I think, because we are all that one thing. What I think gets muddied both with Hoffman and with Campbell and with others.

I really enjoy these models.

Hoffman and I love that they're both bringing a scientific lens to it because so often it gets dismissed from an esoteric lens because our culture values and prioritizes this materialistic, physical, scientific form. So I love that these are being brought in that space.

I don't think they actually don't address this, but I feel like it is a bit of a muddy spot where it's the conscious agents we're talking about the incarnation of the avatar and nettedness. But even nettedness alludes to separateness. Like, you know what I mean?

And I don't think that ultimately I think they would all, all agree in the ultimate state there is only oneness. And yet there continues to be this essence of me versus you.

Peter: 00:52:41

Well, I think it's a way of pointing because we are communicating to entities that perceive themselves as separate.

Peter: 00:52:52

Right.

Peter: 00:52:52

And perceive themselves as absolutely separate. And so you need to point to nettedness.

Peter: 00:53:00

Right.

Peter: 00:53:01

First because I, I mean, yes, obviously in the literal sense, there's not nettedness, there's unity.

Peter: 00:53:11

Right.

Peter: 00:53:12

There's like there is no separation, there is no inter this and this. There are no nodes, there are no interstices. There's just total unity.

It's the problem of the whole adventure of trying to investigate reality and express spiritual experience. Right?

Peter: 00:53:31

Yeah.

Peter: 00:53:31

I mean, I think you just, you just said it. We are delighted and intrigued and drawn to these models of scientists grappling with ultimate reality and kind of the alternative to materialism.

And I like that.

I don't know if he coined it, but it's the first time I've heard idealism opposing materialism and that I would say these models in general supporting a love centered, cooperative worldview that is very much counteracting the fear, selfish, scarcity, mindsets of manipulation, exploitation, everything you know, all that more destructive, conventional worldview.

And of course this, this bridge between science and mysticism or science and religion as, as Hoffman pointed to also at the end, you know, that his hope is that a science of religion will be able to develop. And Campbell's clearly working the same direction.

Ryan: 00:55:02

There's an obstacle there, and I know we touched on it earlier in the episode and we talked about a little off mic, but there's, there is a concerted or intentional effort to silence the science of religion. My comment was this is 20 years old. Quantum physics is not new anymore.

It may not be as mainstream as it probably should be, because I think we're actually starting to move even beyond quantum physics and yet even still in mainstream culture, mainstream education, Newtonian physics is the model of choice.

And we like to ignore the inconsistencies in quantum entanglement and different kinds of things like that that are oddities from the lens of Newtonian physics and the materialism paradigm. But it is an observable phenomena within the reality that we experience. So it isn't not materialism because quantum is part of the material form.

Peter: 00:56:18

Right, right.

Ryan: 00:56:19

It's just a new or deeper, perhaps more detailed view of what's happening under the hood. And it doesn't discount the utility of Newtonian physics to manipulate the macro world.

But we still have obstacles and friction in moving culturally, conceptually, beyond materialism being fundamental.

And it's strange to me that we're in that kind of space and you know, maybe it is institutional and you know, we have that ongoing call back to this, this trap of institution suppressing growth.

Peter: 00:57:12

I, yeah, I, and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna point to something which is a little utre for me, I think, in that there's a recurring theme, a thing that as you investigate these spaces, keeps on coming up, is that there are issues of power.

Peter: 00:57:32

Yes.

Peter: 00:57:34

That are highly conflicted because I think the, the, oh, what are they called? The earthly powers.

I gotta say, I gotta say the earthly powers are very interested in the potential of this kind of reality and at the same time are threatened by it.

Peter: 00:57:58

Yeah.

Peter: 00:57:59

And so they're encouraging research. Like they want to pursue research, but they want that research to be secret.

Peter: 00:58:05

Right.

Peter: 00:58:06

And then we get all these leaks of like. Yeah, they're, they're investigating this stuff. So I mean, I, I feel weird getting into this kind of conspiracy space.

But it's recurring and I don't think it's, it's not all kind of tin hat talk. But going directly to your point of this weird suppression. And yet on the other hand, there's also an encouragement of it and a leveraging of it.

Ryan: 00:58:33

To your point, with, you know, using it for quantum computing and for cell phones and things like that. We are using this knowledge. We just don't want the implications of that to be widely disseminated and contemplated, apparently.

And I mean it's certainly easy enough to say that, yeah, it's a control thing or you know, a power thing.

Peter: 00:58:57

And I mean, but I mean that's, that's been.

Again, that is probably one of the central themes of our conversation is the role of power and self interest and control in how we're trying to talk about this stuff. Like how are these ideas developed? Spread, suppressed, manipulated, perverted.

Ryan: 00:59:24

I guess they're missing the, the main theme, which is the love and the low entropy and all of that.

Peter: 00:59:29

Right.

Ryan: 00:59:30

They want, they want to leverage the benefit. Which was interesting too because Campbell mentioned.

Peter: 00:59:36

Yes.

Ryan: 00:59:37

That it's very difficult to effectively.

Peter: 00:59:40

Yes.

Ryan: 00:59:41

Use these things.

Peter: 00:59:43

If you want to. If you want to use remote viewing to look into the girls locker room, you won't be able to develop the ability to use remote viewing.

And then he says it's possible. Yeah, it's possible, but it's extremely rare and difficult. And, and we're saying how rare and difficult in general. In general it is.

But if you really want to pose, which goes back to what we were saying about the commandments and the precepts, Right.

If you are oriented towards fear, it's not that you're condemned by sin, it's that you're creating a huge obstacle to moving in the direction that you're trying to move. But you're trying to move with a particular focus or motivation or constraint.

You're putting a constraint on yourself by saying, I want to use this, I want to exploit this to gain more personal power, then okay, well, you can pursue that now. You've just hugely increased the amount of time and effort that you will need to invest in and getting. Developing this thing that you're pursuing.

Ryan: 01:00:59

I mean, in a way it's like trying to pursue love through fear. Just like counter.

Peter: 01:01:05

Right.

Ryan: 01:01:06

It's counterintuitive. It's not, it's oxymoronic really.

Peter: 01:01:10

Well, I wonder if it's possible to be deceived into thinking that that's working. Because in terms of relationships. Yeah, right. Where you can easily. I mean, it's.

I think it's in popular fiction or it's even in true crime and real relationships. Right. That people do that. Yeah, right. It's like I have a relationship based on fear and I made her love me. It's a delusion.

Peter: 01:01:36

Yeah.

Peter: 01:01:37

It can be a mutually subscribed delusion though, right? Yeah, yeah. So. So I wonder if there are other phenomenon that are not like romantic love, but other things that are pursued using fear.

And then you get something that you think is.

Ryan: 01:02:01

I think that's.

Yeah, I think that was a very distinct thread that was investigated during our Ten Commandments discussion, which is you made the point that there's a value proposition, a valid value proposition that conducting behavior counter to these guidelines, waypoints of the path can bring material resource. So there's in that sense some level of winning or gaining, but it's at the expense of inner peace and growth and pursuit towards the divine.

Peter: 01:02:49

Yeah. But I'm thinking more almost literally in terms of say, remote viewing. Like is it possible black magic, basically. Right.

To use negatively, to use fear based methods to develop an ability that looks like remote viewing but in some way isn't true remote viewing. Just like this toxic relationship isn't true love.

Peter: 01:03:24

Right.

Peter: 01:03:25

But it looks like, like the participants agree.

Peter: 01:03:29

Right.

Peter: 01:03:30

That it's love.

Ryan: 01:03:30

They think they're remote viewing, but they're not actually.

Peter: 01:03:32

But there's some kind of weird falsity to it.

Ryan: 01:03:36

Yeah.

Peter: 01:03:37

You know, that maybe it has some utility. And so, I mean, this is kind of a definition, that is an operational definition of real that Campbell uses.

If it influences physical events, then it's real. Right. That's. I mean, that was something that's in the beginning of his book. Something when he's talking about his own experience.

And so, you know, is a CIA working with something that is influencing.

Let's say you have a remote viewer and it's like, okay, you're getting information that in some ways very verifiable, in some sense is verifiable and is effective in affecting reality. Like I can apply this information and get results and yet somehow it's tainted. Like there's some. I know, I'm kind of intuiting.

It pulls me into cultural tropes of demonic activity and deception and you know, kind of like what the monkey's paw? Like you get the wish, but you get the pri. You get the cost. Right. Whereas if it's a true benign love based thing, then there's no cost.

Peter: 01:04:59

Right.

Peter: 01:05:01

So referencing back to the telepathy tapes, which apparently is an extremely popular podcast, like just explode. Like went viral.

Peter: 01:05:11

Yeah.

Peter: 01:05:12

I guess I'd also like to visit. As for us, for us to investigate that, because this idea of the central database is something that actually comes up.

It's very interesting because I remain skeptical about this whole thing. Right.

But taken within its own context, there's a consistent story, I'm curious at really investigating this, as to what the criticisms and challenges are, because it's controversial. But that is a central thing of, yes, we are able to.

So first of all, yes, we, we meet telepathically and yes, we do have access to infinite knowledge.

And it's consistent with the idea of what, what Campbell's talking about, what, you know, what I've heard about the Akashic records with all this stuff. It's. Everybody's talking about the same thing. It's like, oh, I'm recognizing it. I'm just not recognizing from direct experience.

Peter: 01:06:14

Right.

Peter: 01:06:15

And that is why I am interested in pursuing these things.

So in terms of whatever ability I might gain access to, it's so that the ability to connect with others by recognizing something from a direct experience that I know is very, very important to me, both kind of aesthetically, like, it's just very, very pleasant. But also in terms of my growth, because I know that I develop that. I have been developing that way.

And so if I can increase the number of experiences by which I can interact with people and saying, yes, I know that experience, that's what's interesting to me. Because the people that I've contacted about these various things are generally uncomfortable with. Generally there's a.

There's a quality of loneliness to having this experience. And then my fulfillment is in removing that.

Peter: 01:07:28

Sure.

Peter: 01:07:29

Loneliness by saying, yeah, I, I know that. And at the same time, it removes my loneliness in a way that I don't think playing golf is gonna.

Ryan: 01:07:44

So next episode we're gonna touch on lucid dreaming, which is akin to this out of body experience.

Peter: 01:07:54

I would, I would subscribe to what Campbell says, which is that, yeah, they're all the same thing. Because in my, my interpretation, all this stuff is merely removing yourself from the constraints of spacetime.

Ryan: 01:08:11

Thank you for listening. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation. If you have your own experiences you'd like to share, we invite you to comment or email.

You can comment on Spotify, you can comment on YouTube, you can email us@inforackingwisdom.com and we would love to hear from you guys. Until next time.

Peter: 01:08:33

See you then. Thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to the Tracking Wisdom Podcast. Join us next time as we continue the discussion.

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and visit www.eth-studio.com for more information and.