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The Advaita Podcast #30 – When The Truth Stops Working
The Advaita Podcast #29 – In Search Of Truthiness
December 13, 2006nothing but sophisticated meat machines
January 9, 2007Today my guest is Mike Arnold aka Dharma Mike. He says that the idea that there is no free will stopped working for him after a while and explains what he lies awake worrying about. We also talk about:
Thomas Merton – link
Scott Adams of The Dilbert Blog and his post on free will
The Economist’s recent article on Free Will
John Dobson’s article on Science and Advaita
I’ll apologize in advance for the poor sound quality on this show. I think I moved away from the microphone a couple of times to read stuff on the screen and it caused problems. Well I WOULD apologize, except I don’t have free will so… nothing I could do about it I guess. 🙂
PRESS PLAY [audio:http://advaita.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_advaita_20061228_030.mp3]
OR DOWNLOAD THE ADVAITA SHOW HERE
Want to come on the show? Now you can. Here’s how it’s going to work.
Step 1. I will post up the future schedule (a few weeks in advance) to a Google Calendar. You can view it here.
Step 2. If you want to come on any particular episode, look to the associated post up on the Advaita Forum. A link to the forum will be in each calendar entry so it should be pretty straightforward.
Step 3. Reply to the forum post for the episode you want to join, with your name, Skype ID and the topic you’d like to discuss.
Step 4. When it comes time to record the show, we’ll hook you in via Skype!
Hopefully that isn’t too hard to follow. Hit me up here with any questions.
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49 Comments
If we are the slaves of our biochemistry etc then how do ugly people get laid?
I find it fairly interesting comparing Advaita to Dzogchen which I am more familiar with. Unfortunately I am not well versed enough in either philosophy to draw any deep conclusions however they appear to take the same concept and come to fairly different conclusions.
Dzogchen is often criticized (particularly by Advaita practitioners) as being ‘Advaita lite’ but the further you look into them the more fundamentally different they appear.
Methinks I will have to look into both of them further; although, my mother warns me that due to the lack of emphasis on lineage in Advaita there are alot of idiots running about spouting off at the mouth and calling themselves gurus when they haven’t a clue. Whilst this is generally just funny it can also be dangerous.
I guess as in all things regarding religion and philosophy it is important to look at everything you are told with skepticism and make up your own mind.
I’ve got a couple of Dzogchen books around here somewhere and as far as I can tell, it’s all the same stuff. At its heart, dzogchen seems to be about the direct experience of what-you-are, as is advaita, zen, and quantum mechanics. Just written in different eras by people from different geographies.
I’ve sort of absorbed a lot of Dzogchen by osmosis because my mother and aunt have both spent quite a bit of time around it and I’ve been to (but not participated in as such) a couple of retreats at the Gar in Tilba-Tilba. I like the idea that our ultimate nature is simply awareness; although, it tends to remind me of Douglas Adams’ idea of hyper-intelligent shades of the colour blue which take on a form for the sake of convenience.
Since talking with Cameron, I’ve begun to question this idea…”the idea that our ultimate nature is simply awareness.” Before we talked, I thought I understood this statement, but Cameron commented that awareness is also just part of the phenomenon and now, I’m not so sure. And that’s okay…the uncertainty is better than the spiritual hubris that goes along with faith. (The neo-cons and the religious right in the U.S. exhibit that spiritual hubris and it’s disturbing even to someone living in Texas.)
Cameron’s interrogation was refreshing. I don’t get the opportunity to discuss non-duality with other people, so the only interrogator I have is myself, and it’s easy to outwit oneself. When he posed questions to me about my identification with the body-mind, I would quickly ponder each of my potential answers and discount them all…there was no satisfactory answer to any of them. My super-ego has had a real fucking field day with that, and I’ve been criticizing myself heartily since the recording of the podcast. However, I’ve since come to accept my not-knowing as a good thing. One important lesson learned from talking with Cameron is that spiritual knowledge (or the belief that one knows anything at all about the truth) is a hinderance to realization/enlightement. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I can proceed with humility.
Thanks for the show, it broaght me back to some of the basics I needed to look at.
Stop refering everything back an imaginary me and there won’t be a problem.
Mike sez “My super-ego has had a real fucking field day”… like the super-ego exists beyond a thought and then …”and I’ve been criticizing myself”! LOL!!! I love it! Illusionary “I” criticizing the illusionay “myself” over another illusion that couldn’t be helped because there is no free will (another illusion) and no-one to have it!
It’s funnier than Bill Hicks on acid.
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is mearly energy condensed through a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, life is only a dream and we are the imaginations of ourselves.”
Easy to say…not so easy to realize. Thanks for the reminder.
Cam–I’m sure there are moments when you want to knock somebody over the head. But you don’t. Why? Because some sort of (what I call) “will” stops you, no? Or…perhaps in the past you did knock a few people over the head and suffered the consequences. As a result, you later used “will” to stop yourself from taking action. That “will” is unique to “you”, is it not?
It seems to me that, , unless you’ve got a serious chemical imbalance, most people use their “will” or “spirit” to change their lives from unhealthy actions to healthy ones. There comes a point where a choice is made, a SWITCH happens—and it sure does seem like someone or someTHING, some CONTROLLER is flicking that switch. That’s how it appears. So Cam, if it’s not that, what is the illusion that I’m under?
Take Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search For Meaning”; isn’t the whole point of that book to say how, even in the most horrific circumstances, man still has the “freedom” to choose his attitudes?
DharmaMike – “Easy to say…not so easy to realize. Thanks for the reminder.”
Dude, you are not going REALIZE this, you are not at some point going to see waves of energy, and if you did that would soon become yesterdays experience. It is enough to understand and then let go.
….
About the free will thing, I don’t think it is proper to say so and so had no free will in commiting a crime. There was a weighing of desire versus punishment outcome in the person and the desire won out. There was no seperate enity doing it but that is beside the point.
Dude, I’m pretty sure that seeing waves of energy is what is commonly referred to as SIGHT.
As far as your point about free will: if there is no seperate entity doing the weighing of desire versus punishment, then how can you say it occured “in the person?” Doesn’t “desire versus punishment” imply duality?
Mark, re free will. Don’t take my word for it. Or Frankl’s word for that matter. Investigate it for yourself. Thoughts appear. Decisions are made. Actions happen. No doubt about that. The question is – are “you” in conscious control of those thoughts, decisions, actions? Or do they appear spontaneously?
From there we can also talk about who or what the “you” is that you think is in control of them, but that’s another bedtime story.
Mike, great Bill Hicks quote above. But you left out the punchline….
“And now… the weather.”
Cam,
You ask me to investigate it myself. I guess I fail “Advaita” school, because it feels very much like there is someone in here called “ME” who is making a thousand little choices every day…..choosing this over that…..etc.
My spontaneous actions are unique to “me”, my agendas, etc.
Who is the “ME” you ask?
Can I point to “ME”? No……
It really just feels like an Awareness that is encapsolated in “my” body….It’s the “ME” that is not “YOU”. My unique combination of experiences, talents, personality, habits…
What Bob calls Intelligence Energy expressing itself in different appearances….I am one of those appearances….unique….just a bit…..somehow…..one wave on the ocean….
Intellectually I see the point—-“ME” is none of those fleeting things.
And YET!….I feel very much feel that I am “ME” and you are “YOU”, even though I simultaneously know that we’re both the same pure awareness underneath everything.
I understand it when you say decisions are made spontaneously, without a “me” doing any of it. Been there, ….I experience it….
But all this arguing over there not being any independent entity here is just driving me up the freaking wall. Because we all enjoy playing the game of being UNIQUE individuals, do we not?
Mike – Good point about sight.
My point about evaluation in action is that if you asked a pedophile whether he would rather have 1 million dollars or a kid, he would probally that afternoon go for the million dollars. Saying just ‘he had no free will’ is misleading. What he or anyone else refers to as ‘I’ is still a delusion but there is still intelligence functioning there.. Ultimatley it could not have happened any other way becuase it is going to function how it’s going to function but laws an punishment are the same reason I don’t start a grow op. in my basement.
I encourage everyone to listen to the G’day world podcast about free will mentioned in this Advaita Show episode. It can be found at http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2006/09/28/gday-world-155-on-energy-string-theory-and-free-will/
Mark Carpenter: if you’re right and what the pedophile refers to as ‘I’ is a delusion, how does a delusion make a choice? How does a delusion *do* anything for that matter?
And, for the record, I am not posting comments as someone named Mark. 🙂
Hi Mike – Sorry for busting your balls before, I didn’t mean it to come off that way, it takes a lot of guts to go on the show and ask questions and discuss your life.
The concept ‘I’ what I take to me is a delusion, the natural intelligence and functioning is still there, memory, intellect and everything else. You can still do math and make out a grocery list while at the same time knowing that the ‘me’ is unreal. The concept ‘me’ never actually did anything, we attribute what is happening to a me.
Mark, it’s SUPPOSED to drive you up the wall. That tends to be part of the process. Of course you feel very much that you are the ME and I am the YOU. You’ve been seeing the world that way almost your entire life. But if you already experience that free will isn’t real, then stay with that. If you don’t have any free will, what is this ME you are convinced exists actually doing?
My balls are okay, Mark C. And I dunno that it took guts since really I just didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to chat with Cameron and others, you included, about advaita.
My take on free will is that a choice is never really made at all. Free will implies there might have been some other decision made, and that’s impossible. What happens is the only thing that ever could have happened…no past, no future, only what is, right?
Re-reading your comments, that’s basically what you’ve already said. So it sounds like you’re on the other side of Mark’s and my issue: while we can’t get past the idea of an independent entity, you see through the illusion of an individual entity but still think choices are being made. As you point out, it’s a mistake to “attribute what is happening to a me” but doesn’t that mean it’s a mistake to attribute what’s happening to any entity all? Then how can a decision be made when a decision implies a decision-maker (Dubya “the decider”)?
By the way, Cameron, I found on his bio that Bill Hicks was born in Georgia and grew up in Houston. Is redemption in the happening?
“Then how can a decision be made when a decision implies a decision-maker (Dubya “the deciderâ€)?”
That’s deep, Mike… deep! I also subscribe to Thomas Pynchon’s view of the decision making process, as such:
“Decisions are never made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations, and general assholery.” – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
I am the decider. Coo coo, ka choo!
my definition of a decision (and I haven’t checked this with Hoyle) is “a thought which leads to action”. That’s all a decision is – a thought with consequences. And if any of you can tell me how you make thoughts, I’ll pay up. If you can’t, then you aren’t in conscious control of the process, it happens by itself, and you are being lived. Deal with it!
Cameron you are dead right ; i don’t make thoughts , thoughts make me. Though I am still ‘thinking’ of how to deal with it..hee hee
Mike – the way I look at it is there is intelligent evaluation within the organism. If I ask you were you want a tuna sandwhich or pizza for lunch that will clunk around in your brain or whatever and a decision will be made. The distinction is a ‘you’ never made it. When you say “I walked up a hill” the “I'” as a concept never did anything, walking up the hill happened.
-but doesn’t that mean it’s a mistake to attribute what’s happening to any entity all?- Maybe, but life still works the same way.
Life is an imposition.
Who’s the imposer? Well… that very thing itself, that which you are and could not be anything else.
What else could be giving the orders(so to speak)?
But maybe imposition sounds a bit too harsh. For example, this morning, I had a wank. Since ‘I am that’, that means that you all played with my penis this morning – you dirty dirty filthy bastards…. there was no need to be that aggressive. So who decided to have a wank this morning?
What else could be giving the order? (sorry, thats a really really bad way of putting it(instantly implies duality) and makes it sound like ‘a’ GOD is yelling out orders “at 8:45 Marcelo will have a wank” “at 11:49 he will humiliate himself on advaita podcast comments” “at 11:59 Cameron will block Marcelo from commenting ever again” “at 12:01 Cameron will have a wank”
Sorry, thought you should have some pleasure Cam (since your married with kids and such)
But is ‘that’ making orders? How could that which is untouched do such a thing? I mean, it’s untouched!
Like cam sais, it’s spontaneous, it’s a happening. How much reality do dreams have? Well, none clearly, it’s a fucking dream.
Reality is not a happening – it’s a non happening – aww hell, lets just call it ‘no thing’.
And were back to what we all already know.
Marcelo
Mark C: you wrote, “there is intelligent evaluation within the organism.” What if we change the level of magnification on that organism, zooming out or zooming in to the macroscopic or microscopic level, respectively? Then where is the intelligent evaluation occurring?
From a scientific standpoint, the boundaries between the organism and the environment are dependent upon the level of magnification. As such, the thought and the action it leads to are both part of the phenomenal realm. The individual does not exist. And if there is no individual to make a decision, a decision isn’t being made.
Marcelo, I didn’t want to say anything, but when we were giving you a wank this morning, I couldn’t help but noticing that “the happening” didn’t really bless you down there. Sorry about that buddy. Better luck in the next life. 🙂
Mike – Maybe you are right there about that.
Good on ya Marcelo, what you have discovered and, indeed, obviously “mastered” — which BTW Bob, Niz, Jesus and every “awakened and non-awakened” female “saint” (love these silly labels) all mastered as well if not as adults then no doubt as children — is the old koan:
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Go right ahead, expert boys and girls all, go ahead and make the joke about just one hand.
Really got a good laugh at your comments, Marcelo.
Love.
ko·an (k?än´) noun
A riddle in the form of a paradox used in Zen Buddhism as an aid to meditation and a means of gaining intuitive knowledge.
Joel and Ethan Koan: creators of meditative, paradoxical independent films.
Leonard Koan: Jewish Zen lyricist with a paradoxically deep voice.
And don’t forget:
Sasha Baron Koan – creator of paradoxical characters which lampoon the United States.
I heard Leonard C. went to visit Ramesh Balsekar.
They had an Ali G marathon on yesterday, one had him as the gay german character interviewing a pastor about getting converted to hetrosexuality. Frickin priceless.
Ah yes “Bruno”. Rumour is that Bruno will be the next character to have a feature film.
The Leonard – Ramesh story checks out!
http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/bombay.html
How about that.
I should state for the record that I am a HUGE LC fan. He’s probably in my top 5 artists. I’ve got every CD he’s ever made.
Firstly, I’m originally from South America, we are all endowed. Secondly http://www.mypenis.com.au
God must have had humour in mind when he created the sense of duality.
Bruno and the Pastor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW8_cz-6qro
By the way, last night I watched ‘I heart huckabees’ – am curious to see if you guys have seen it, and what you thought of it? The director spent some years with a Zen Master apparently.
And yes Steve, I have definately mastered it. Actually Koan is a good word to describe such a thing. A paradox(masturbation) that leads to intuitive knowledge(orgasm- or as the French call it “le petit mort”)
p.s.
Appology for quoting the French
thanks for the show guys – especially Dharma Mike for agreeing to take on our Cam! Very interesting.
Holy Darwin Marcelo, I spent a good ten minutes trying to get to that site before I realized it was a dud. Don’t do that to me.
This “enlightenment” thing.. Is it anything like the scene at the end of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, where Scout happens to look behind the door, and there is Boo Radley, right where he has always been, and she recognizes him?
For those interested, filmmaker David Lynch just released a book about his creative process. He has practiced transcendental meditation daily for 30 years. He really swears by it.
Maybe you guys could discuss transcendental meditation in the next show.
Cam– lately, I notice a couple things as I wander the world doing stuff.
1. No matter what teachings I’ve learned from Advaita, I still walk around thinking “I’m” doing this or that. I still feel like there’s a me. The only time I notice the “functioning” without a ME as the controller is when I DELIBERATELY notice “fingers tapping keys on the keyboard” and not “I’m typing”. But this doesn’t last more than a few seconds. Then it’s back to believing that “I’m” a “ME” doing stuff. I believe I am the character, not just an actor playing a part. “I” take action, or not.
2. Simultaneously, I try to stay out of the way and just let life occur…..things happen as they do….without my help.
Interesting paradox.
MichiganMark – It’s more like the end of The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis realized he doesn’t exist. 🙂
The Other Mark (can you guys call yourself something else besides ‘Mark’ please?? Get yourself an original name fer crissakes) – I don’t see anything wrong with walking around not noticing the functioning. You will live life like you are a ‘me’. Actors playing a role on TV know they aren’t the character they are playing but the continue to act like they are. That’s their job. Being “you” is “your” job. So go do it. Just don’t start thinking you are the character you are playing. 🙂
This reminds me of a movie. I think you mentioned it: “Existenz”. In the movie they play a VR game in which each person plays a role, and some of the stuff they do and say inside the game is generated by the program, in accordance to the plot of the game.
And now that I am here I wanna say I heard Tolle in MP3 and kinda liked it.
It was a great show.
Hoping for the next on to arrive…
Hey Cam…
Next time it’ll be a real link. Although with xtube.com we finally may all have our penis’s on the net for generations to come(apparently). Maybe we could start an advaita xtube channel. We just have to find a shot of the niz’s privates(for the lineage aspect).
Y’know, if there is such a thing as Advaitic blasphemy, I think I just wrote it.
I also heard your G’day podcast for the first time… i liked it, except for all the sciency stuff. My science take sounds more like this “dude, did you hear those words… check this out, I can wave my hands, blink and make noises with my mouth!”
I’m a simple man.
Butt seriously… I do get it, atoms, molecules, string theory, falling asleep, get over it…
I do like all this talk of free will though. The science stuff doesn’t really affect me, in the sense that I have no control and also I have an inability to understand something that isn’t funny. Does it matter that I understand string theory or not? If I understood it, what could I do with it? Create another universe?
hmmm… another universe ay? Maybe I’ll look into that after all. If you create another universe, do you still have to call it a ‘universe’?
How about I call it a ‘Marcelo’ It’s full of black holes, now called pink holes and Quazars, now known as Xuazars(ok, ok thats all I could think of – damn you brain chemicals, damn you to my anus).
In that Marcelo, I’m more like Bob, a wise old man with tempered words, as apposed to me, a retarded mongoloid who flippantly uses great wisdom to make jokes. Offcourse, In that Marcelo I’ve changed my name as to not let the ‘Gods’ get confused and angrily create Christians and Muslims. I am now known as Universe.
In my Marcelo children flock to my house to hear pearls of wisdom
In this Universe I go blank when people look at me
In my Marcelo I tell people that there’s no point in meditating, because that which you are needs no friend.
In this Universe I forget when I fall and use anything to get up.
In my Marcelo I tell people that the threat isn’t real, nor is it really a threat.
In this Universe I’ll go deeper than deep, so know one can find me.
The question is, which Universe will swallow up the other Universe?
Will it be the pink or the black hole?
What about it Cam, are you a pink or black hole kind of guy?
Universe
p.s.
You don’t have to touch that question with an answere Cam, just let it swirl in your mouth, then spit into glass.
p.s.s.
That above p.s. was not in any way a sexual conotation.
Hi Cameron, Mike,
Thank you for podcast number 30. I was quite moved to hear the “yes, but..†conversation you had. The analogy about the mind seen as a splinter popped up spontaneously.
In Advaita terms: you use the mind to get rid of the negative side of the mind. Like using a splinter to get rid of another splinter. What is fascinating is to see that people get intrigued by the splinter. So much that they keep hurting themselves over and over by sticking it back into their finger.
The Niz said more than once that one has to be “seriousâ€. Don’t know if this is the exact term as I only read I am That in Dutch. It is popular in the Advaita scene to retort this by questioning: WHO should be serious?. Which is true of course but not always helpful. I think that the “message†will find you one way or the other. By a “guru†or by other means (podcast, books) etc. It is totally unpredictable what form/way will vibrate sympathetically within your specific body/mind mechanism. Within this proces, “seriousness†is not necessary. Some get in instantly, some have to struggle by investigation of the mind. In this proces the mind is useful. But, if you have used the mind to “SEE†the falseness of it (no free will, you are not your thoughts etc.) then it is time to STOP. FULL STOP, as Bob would say. Sticking to what you have found to BE (true) is the “serious†part of it all. Give it a shot Mike: the work has been done and there is knowingness that you ARE already that!!! So maybe Full Stop is the way. Man, words are so “not-it†… but still.. hope this babbling has its use. No way of knowing though hihi
Love,
Wim
Does one have to be named Mark to post on this site?
It’s like an auto repair shop I use. All the mechanics were named Jimmy. There were two Jimmys and one Jimmy junior. Finally though an Eric joined them and broke through the Jimmy barrier.
A few days after talking with Cameron, I took a nap and when I woke up, I had what felt like a total epiphany. I was laying there thinking about Cameron’s and my shrink’s points about identification (or mis-identification). Cameron’s point was about the mistake of identifying with the body-mind while my shrink’s was about the mistake of identifying with roles (father, parent, employee, etc). I opened that door about free will as well and somehow the two ideas coalesced. The question asked was:
“If I am not the decision-maker, who or what is? More specifically if I shouldn’t identify with the body-mind or the sense of me-ness that it produces (ego?), how can I identify with he/she/it/that which is the decision-maker?â€
This was followed by the sudden realization that it is the identifying which is the folly, not the mistaken object of identification. Anything the ego can identify with cannot be it, as the ego and the body-mind are aspects of a subject which has no object. The subject is, therefore, not a subject at all because the term subject implies an object and there simply is what is. The axioms of the eye seeing itself or the tip of the finger touching itself became perfectly clear in their simplicity. All the other questions that seemed so important once also faded away when countered with the questions “Who cares?†and “Who is asking the question?†I used to get so annoyed by that response, but it’s the only one that makes any sense at all.
The rest of the day was spent wandering in a blissful state of awareness just being. Nighttime and sleep followed and then waking and then everything was the same as it was before that epiphany. Later, I read a bit more of Ramesh’s “Ultimate Understanding†and coincidentally came upon a stanza that discussed moments of understanding and their resultant consciousness expanding capabilities as opposed to enlightenment and how these moments are sometimes a hindrance to enlightenment but still necessary as groundwork, blah fucking blah blah. Maybe that’s the case. There are no claims to enlightenment here, but…who cares?
KA-CHINGGGG!
@Mark
I doubt that most of the crime fighting and punishing is actually purely motivated by logical solution thinking. A large part of it is the need for revenge. Emotional compensation for the victims. I have suffered, now you suffer. That kind of thing. In the absence of a believe in free will I think this would change. Why blame someone for something he couldn’t do anything about? Of course you still want to get the criminals of the street, but you wouldn’t want to punish them, you would want to reprogram them. That is something that is attempted even today, but it is done wrongly, clouded by emotion and revenge-thinking. There are probably better methods that putting someone in a prison full of other criminals.(who will enforce each others beliefs)
Doing things and not doing things. It’s basically the same. As long as there is a doer-mentality there is no way that you can’t do anything. So why fret over practice and who is doing the practice? If there is a desire to know yourself and you don’t who you are then you need to search. Again and again. Keep inquiring; who am I? Not that anyâ€thing†can be found that is truly you, but you need to make sure of that, especially that you are not the body or the mind-stream (thoughts). There seem to be difficulty doing this, boredom, lack of motivation, but ones you have seen that nothing else gives you what you want (everybody wants to know who they are) than you can’t help but returning to advaita, to self-inquiry. That’s how I feel today.
hi Cameron, did you start this podcast website and does it have any podcasts similar to yours? I’ve listened to all of them and need more to do my qi gong by. Carol
which podcast site Carol? This one? Yes. I also started http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com where you will find over 70 podcasts on different subjects.