Kind: captions Language: en [music] Hey fellow G&Ters, those of us who like our spirituality with a twist. So, uh, in this episode of our little pod, we're going to do something very G&T and start a little series looking at the underlying philosophy of one our one of our favorite psychologists, one Carl Youngung, which is very much in the spirit of our little podcast. The only thing that is maybe a little different because we've done episodes on Yung before is that we are going to go we are going to look at his stuff via the work of another really interesting if less famous figure the modern philosopher of consciousness Bernardo Castro. So from a a Buddhist tantra point of view this would be what might be called a commentary and they'll do that they'll do commentaries and commentaries on the commentary. So that's kind of like the space we're in. Uh so we'll get to learn more and think more not only about Carl Young but we'll learn a little bit about this Bernardo Castrip along the way because he's kind of an important person thinking about the mind and consciousness and what to make sense of all that. So key ideas maybe for us will be something like how does Jung think about the different parts of the psyche and how can that be helpful to us as spiritually curious people. But before we get into the good times of talking about all that, if you could do all the usuals that people ask you to help all of our spiritual curiosities like uh like write a review, subscribe, share an episode uh to help get out some more of this spiritual useful stuff that we're trying to do and get that like through the algorithm out to people. That would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. Labor of love for us, right? As we always say. All right, Daniel. I mean, just out of curiosity, um, we know a lot about Jung, but have you heard about this Bernardo Castrip guy? Has he crossed your path before?

He has not crossed my path, but I have not been looking for a lot of men named Bernardo. So,

if you're not looking, you might not find. That's true. Seek and you shall find. Someone famous said that.

That's right. I believe that is Matthew.

Yeah. Um, yeah. And then the guy he was writing about. So, um, okay. Okay. So, with Young, I mean, we've done multiple episodes on this. I think this should be kind of a little bit of a different take because what this Bernardo Castrep is trying to do is get to like the underlying philos philosophical ideas or even what you might call metaphysical ideas that underly Yung, which is interesting because Yung Yung is a psychiatrist, but he also does have a lot of ideas that you might say are philosophical or even metaphysical if you're not familiar with that term so much. just the idea of like what's the nature of reality, you know, deep spiritual stuff is like within Yung for sure. So, he tries to like take this apart. Um, but if you're not familiar with Castrip, I'll tell you a little bit about him and uh I know maybe if you have any follow-up questions on it, then you'll let know. But I don't think Castrip is like obviously not as well known as Jung for sure, but he has kind of a presence, you know, and uh he's kind of an interesting person. and he was originally from Rio di Janeiro and then he eventually ended up in the Netherlands. His background is more IT and kind of AI oriented stuff. So I think he made his living and what whatever fortune he has kind of through that. But what that seemed to have taken him to was an interest in things like consciousness, philosophy of mind. And so he's kind of in that headsp space. And he writes a lot of like interesting philosophical kind of stuff around this. And I think another thing interesting about him is he sees himself as kind of like an independent scholar and author which is a cool idea. He's just sort of a free floating thinker. He's not tied to any particular institutions and he makes a kind of a big deal about that especially because he feels like it puts them in a position to advocate for ideas that might not be as overall popular. So one of his big things is like to challenge the idea of like materialism in a really deep way. not just materialism and like shallowess, but materialism like the philosophical idea that the world is made up of like material stuff. He's more of what you would call an idealist that he feels like the world is really made up of mind and consciousness as opposed to physical stuff. And in some ways that's kind of out of sync with our present time. Uh but he's a very interesting kind of person to think about with this. And obviously in the Asian spiritual world there's a lot of that kind of conversation about to what extent is things really made out of consciousness and mind and what's the connection between mind and body and what's the connection between

mind and the universe you know and so you know it's kind of in our wheelhouse all of this kind of stuff and he's a very thoughtful person on this Castro and pretty deep. So anyways that's some background on him. um we're looking at him like looking at Yung but kind of considering those two but he has sort of books written around these general ideas too. So all right um yeah and yeah again in terms of the Buddhism stuff I kind of jotted this note down for myself. I've been very interested in this question kind of personally. So, it's kind of fun I think given where my head space is at too. And there's this kind of famous quote in parts of the Buddhist world where the Buddha will be kind of described as saying all the world is only made up of mind and then the big debate is well what does that mean exactly?

But that's kind of some of the stuff we'll be exploring too.

Um you got thoughts on that before we jump in and

No, no, we're good.

Okay. Um, one other thing about this, there's some prelims I have have here. Is Bernardo Castro kind of a complicated thinker? My thought is, yeah, he has some really deep ideas. He's talking about difficult questions. So, this is a kind of an episode that if you like it, you might find yourself like going back to a little bit to explore his ideas more in looking at his book on Carl Jung. I've like I have as an audio book and I've listened to it like a number of times.

And that one that one's decoding Young's metaphysics, correct? Yeah. Mhm. That'll be kind of the basis for our conversation. Yeah.

And I've listened to some of his other things and it's the kind of thing where you're like, "Okay, I'm interested. I don't know if I agree with everything, but I'm interested."

And you might find yourself going back to it again going, "Okay, let me really think about this because he's a deep person." I had a funny experience with this with a student, you know, on campus, Daniel. Uh I was teaching a class on physics for uh Chinese medical people. It's one of the things that I do. and he kind of came up in the conversation and there was a student in the class who was like a really big fan

and she was dropping all this stuff in the chat and I was like oh this is cool and I did say like I think he's really deep and interesting though he's kind of complicated and she like obviously loves him so she was like no he's not complicated and I was like he kind of is

and then I talked about you know his connection to Asian culture especially uh uh invited Vanta right he has lots of connections to sort of like yogic stuff and And the idea of the divinity want wanting to know itself for something. You know this whole

Indian philosophy that part of what happens in creation is God wants to be able to create so he can look at himself for something.

Yes. Yes. Which is a very uh prevalent thought in those traditions.

Yeah. So I was like yeah he has a lot of connection to this. And she was like no he doesn't. And I was like I think he does.

He definitely does. And so I had a break and I went in and I kind of went to like just the Wikipedia page on Bernardo Castro and I just took a screenshot of the whole part where he says, "Yeah, I'm into this." [laughter]

And I kind of showed it in the class and I wasn't trying to be mean to the student. I was just saying, "Oh, this is kind of cool. Like he's interested in this Asian philosophical stuff." And I never saw that student again.

Yeah, I was going to say because you're rubbing their nose in it a little bit there, guy.

I didn't mean to. It wasn't my intention, but like she like disappeared from the class, dropped the class, never saw her again. And I was like, dude, I just was like showing something else. I was like, it should be okay, you know? Anyways,

that's annoy. Yeah, but when you when you bring screenshots and you're you know, someone's they don't come. Yeah, you went to war a little bit. [laughter]

I really didn't. I was just like had to teach a class. I was like, "Hey y'all, I just went and took this thing and he is interested in this Asian philosophical stuff and it's cool." Well, keep in mind you're the teacher, Eric. [laughter] Everybody's like,

"My job to do that."

I understand. I understand.

So, I was like, "God damn, this person did they get pissed off and just drop the class?"

Well, probably better to send them that as like a direct message than

Oh, I [...] that. I mean, like, it's just something in the class. You're just like, "Hey, this dude's into it. It's cool." You know, like

can't be that sensitive. I don't even know if that's the reason why. I might be wrong.

No, no, it's that's totally why. [laughter] Well, that's a little overly sensitive, I think. But anyways, we can

Yeah, it's a you know, just a brief a brief aside, you know, in there's a lot of online learning that happens now, right? Particularly postco pre-COVID, it was like what Phoenix University was like the online thing and that's pretty much it.

Trump University, was that online?

Uh, no. I think that was imaginary actually.

Oh, yeah.

That was everything is the mind in a sense. So, yes.

Right. No real money imaginary school. Well, you know, it's all the minds ultimately

u but I think that you know there wasn't online thing online learning wasn't a big deal right and then obviously postco that's remained that way and it sort of changes the dynamic I think between teacher and student a little bit because you're not there in person and it's you know I don't know I just feel I mean obviously you've been teaching you've taught infinitely more than I have and I taught a little bit before and a little bit after but it definitely felt a little bit different afterwards. it's a little more disengaged. Um, it's already hard enough to get students to talk just in general, but when you're teaching online though, then it's even easier. People turning the screens off and you know, it just I I don't know. It just it seems more like a a different kind of chat room. I don't know. From my experience.

Yeah. I mean, I have been honest with this is like kind of an aside to the thing, but I've been honest with students about it where you'll ask a question, I'm like, "Yeah, I totally get no one wants to put a wrong answer in the chat. So, I get why no one wants to answer these things,

right?" because you feel kind of mortified if the answer is wrong. And so I just accept that, you know.

Yeah.

I had the thought like as I was pulling this thing, I was like, well, I just wanted to make the point that the guy's into it. And like for us as TCM people, it's cool to know that there are people out there advocating for traditional Chinese medicine. That's what I'm teaching, right? But, you know, as like uh people are interested in these Asian cultural ideas and these spiritual ideas, it's cool to know there's people who have some name recognition who are out there advocating for these things. I wasn't trying to like

here, let me like uh

your dreams about the fact [laughter] the fact that

Wikipedia disagrees with you. It wasn't my thing.

Oh, there's your hero.

Okay, here it is. You know, but she was on fire. She was really like whatever about it. And and maybe she dropped the class for other reasons or whatever it is, but I I thought it was awesome that she knew who he was. So, if you happen to listen to this, [laughter]

I loved what you were doing. I thought it was great.

Yeah.

Come on back.

And it's also cool that he's into this, you know. Yeah,

I think it's great.

Um, so little anecdote from our actual lives. Um,

I mean, the other thing I wanted to say about Jung again, and I kind of just had this thought, you know, we're recording this, who knows when you'll be listening to this listener, but we're recording this in May of 2026, which is, you kind of relatively shitty time for the US and hence the world at large.

Yeah,

we'll see what happens as we go forward. But as I was thinking about Jung,

and this was like, you know, part of the reason why I wanted to do it too. Jung lived through really bad times. He's part of that group of people who had to live through World War I and then he had to live through World War II. And uh when we get to some of his things, he was even having like nightmares and visions from his point of view about World War I before it even happened. Like he could feel that things were

heading towards really dark places. And I think it's interesting then where you have people who've their work has grown out of difficult times, you know? I think there's something comforting about that.

Yeah. like Victor Frankl.

Victor Frankle's like that. I like Einstein a lot. I mean, when I really thought about it, they're in that same time frame, probably give or take. And he had to live through two world wars. And there's a quote from Einstein where he says something like I'm paraphrasing but he says something like I like science even more during difficult world times because it puts me in touch with things that are kind of real. You know

it gives you a chance to kind of look at some of the deeper parts of life and not just get rolled over in the chaos of like you know the the bigger social world, the bigger geopolitical world. And so I thought it's kind of a cool time to talk about Jung because his work grew out of those time periods, right? Yeah.

And you know he wasn't he wasn't not in those spaces. He was and this is the kind of stuff that he talked about. Okay. So that's my prelims. Anything else before we do it from you Daniel or keep

No, just want to give a a special shout out to one of our sponsors for the episode. Air

breathe it. It's good for you.

So big shout out to Air.

Sponsor. Special sponsors. Yes. [laughter] Air orqi in the Chinese. Mhm. Yes.

Um okay. Um so for talking about Jung does Bernardo Castrip dry divides up his ideas into like a few major topics and we'll kind of check them off as we go through. If you do get interested in the book is it uh decoding Jung's metaphysics right Daniel?

Yeah. So um he's going to talk about psyche. If you know Yung, he's going to talk about this idea of archetypes and synchronicity. Then kind of like just maybe the philosophy or metaphysics of the season, all of this, summarizing it, and then Jung's ideas of religion, or we might say spirituality for our pod. So, we'll probably do episodes around these things. We get a chance to explore this stuff. Um, all right. So, the first of these is a discussion about psyche. And um so one of the things that Jung does that our Bernardo Castro points out is he divides the psyche up into sort of like three different parts and kind of a really interesting way. I have like a psych degree. So dividing up the psyche in different ways isn't that unusual. Like really famously in the sigman freud world you have the id which is kind of like the more biological drives and needs. And we're going to have yung's take on that too. and then the ego your sense of self and then the superego which is sort of like the values that you take on from the society and the culture. So Jung was you know kind of a protege of Freuds you can get this idea of dividing things up into different parts. I think those parts are really interesting too but uh from you know this presentation around Jung that we're looking at the vision gets into like three different kind of layers within the psyche and he's going to talk about um body psyche and spirit. this kind of three-part division. And this division also deals with like the other big question that's going on in this whole thing, which is what's the difference between having things that are conscious and things that are unconscious and how does this stuff all fit together? So, that's going to be like kind of our first subject matter here. I think looking at this idea of um conscious and unconscious, you know, these are really big questions, right? So maybe it makes sense to talk a little bit about that and then we'll do the three-part division if you're cool with that, Daniel.

Yeah.

So I think as clinicians, we think a lot about conscious and unconscious thoughts. I know you and I I think we both do, right? This is a big deal for both of us, right? And in the Chinese medical world, there's a lot about how the mind and the body interconnect with one another. So the basic idea is that there can be emotions, thoughts, memories that affect a person so deeply [clears throat] that this can create physical symptoms, sometimes physical symptoms that are really bad, right? And [clears throat] I don't know from your work, but sometimes when you talk with people about this, I think people could be shocked at like how much these thoughts, emotions, memories can really [...] with the body.

It's very deep, right?

And some of the symptoms are really extreme. So people can faint, people can have tremors, people can have things that uh you know are like debilitating pains, people can lose I had a a patient who like had so much of this sort of emotional trauma and stress built up that she lost vision and went up her eyes. Like it can be pretty dramatic. So I don't know part I want just want to share about that part is I think a lot of times people don't realize if you don't work in medical circles like how intense these symptoms can be. Don't you think that's true, Daniel?

Yeah. And and even like less uh intense on the scale of like extreme physical symptoms. I I've been talking about this with the with the this whole week. Basically, this I've been having the same conversation with people. So, I'm going to have the conversation here because, you know, this is the place for me to share those kinds of insights. Uh, I don't know about you, Eric, but I treat probably mostly neck pain in the clinic.

Neck pain stuff.

I would say out of 100% neck pain is probably 65 to 70.

I know like that big for me, but it's a obviously it's a pretty common thing.

Yeah.

And what I have I found a couple things is that people don't breathe well. So, I'm gonna be featured in a little magazine coming up here in June. I'll I'll try and link it to the Instagram whenever I get it so people can read it and whatnot. And uh one of the things questions the lady asked me, she's like, "What could uh you know, people do to improve their health right now?" And I said, "Shut your mouth." I like literally breathe through your nose. Mhm.

And the reason being is that to to your point, people tend to um change their breath pattern when they are under stress.

And so some of this is a physiological response to fight or flight sympathetic nervous system. And so they the breath gets a little bit more shallow. They breathe with their mouth. But what ends up happening and and I apologize for those people who are just listening but your rib cage your this the rib cage lifts it lifts up it pulls up to the chin as opposed to the diaphragm kind of

get like all this pressure will build in the chest right

yeah and so in order to accomplish the the the breath you have to use these muscles these secondary muscles of inhalation in and around the neck and the traps to lift the rib cage up towards the chin. as opposed to your diaphragm descending down towards the hips. And the problem then in the short run that's not a big deal. Body is adapting to momentary situations and it's fine. But you know in in agree in agreeance and in in you know reality to what you're saying about the body making changes to uh the psyche if you are experiencing yourself under threat or under duress on a normal basis you're going to be in that state more often than not. Meaning you're going to be breathing through your mouth more often than not. meaning you're going to be using these secondary muscles of inhalation to do your primary respiration more than not. And then muscles that are not supposed to be used that frequently for those purposes are going to become taxed and then you get supreme tightness in and around the neck. You couple that with being over screens, over your phone, looking down, forward posture from sitting in the car in traffic or typing all the time and you get this like rounded posture and it's just very very very common. And what I see is that I'll sort of like press on people's like just behind their clavic their collar bone here in this sort of soft space

and kind of stuff going that way.

Yeah. Galen stuff.

People go through the roof and I'm not even pressing very hard.

And then I'll sort of guide them to like, hey,

when you breathe in, you should not be feeling the pressure from my hands by your collar bones here. You should your lungs don't need to lift when you're lying down and breathing slowly. And then after a few breaths, they get it.

Yeah.

But it takes time to like relearn. And you could see their brain fun, you know, like reworking itself to not return to that pattern of breath, which is a pattern of pain. And so all of these and I'm saying all of this because the psyche kind of habitual tendencies that get absorbed you know genetically or socially or whatever manifest in the body and then the body stays that way moves it forward and then then it becomes more of a problem as time goes on. So anyways, that's a practical uh experience from what it is that you're talking about.

Yeah. Know with those muscles, the Zen people I was studying with initially when I first got interested in all this Asian cultural stuff and uh body mind connection, they talked about those that lifting thing a lot too. The m I mean like if you're

it's the scalines a lot of the time, right? which is this like muscle group that does this thing and there it's really affected by

like physical trauma too like whiplash injuries was part of their point, right? A lot of people have these like lingering car accidents where there's been whiplash stuff, right?

Uh but you know, you take that a little further, then you're also thinking about

how this connects to some of the the the not the acute injury but the psychological stress of the repeated stressors day by day, right?

Yes.

And the internalization of this So I mean part of the insight and then you know with our Jung thing Jung is around people exploring this you know and he's exploring it which is this idea that these unconscious things these you could say unprocessed thoughts feelings and memories like kind of build up and they can affect people either psychologically which is um you know these unconscious things can build up not only in the body and we'll get symptoms there. But it can also affect the person in terms of like what otherwise would seem like they're kind of conscious thoughts. These unconscious things kind of put this pressure underneath and this starts to affect the person's thoughts, feelings and then even their behaviors. So this was the idea of like the personal unconscious which I still think is like one of the major psychological ideas as we got down to the present day, right? All this stuff gets stored up. So you know in our culture now we talk a lot about like trauma, right? And

this is kind of where the trauma kind of sits in this kind of personal unconscious.

Jung is going to like expand this and like take this in other directions, but I think he still believes in this thing. And I think you and I believe in this thing too. There's this personal unconscious feature going on. Whatever words you like, right? And we've done different kind of psychological episodes where people might use different words, but that's essentially what you're talking about, right? Mhm.

And then, you know, as far as our pod, if you want to roll back, because some people really like this one. We did a thing on the defense mechanisms from Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, and we kind of took those all apart, and there are people who were kind of into that because we went to a lot of the detail of what this looks like, right? And that could be spiritually helpful, too, to be able to recognize those things in yourself when these unconscious personal things are putting pressure on you inside

and either creating physical symptoms or making you act weird,

which it can do, right? So that's a thing. So this conscious and unconscious thing, if you're in on that, you're already kind of part of the way in. But then the whole question that Jung is trying to think about and Bernardo Castro is trying to think about too is well, okay, so how does that kind of totally work? Like there's a conscious and there's an unconscious. And you know, how do those things fit together? And how does this fit into like the overall structure of how you might imagine our internal worlds are like, what our psyches are like? Okay. So what happens here and you know when I'm reading the Bernardo Castro stuff I'm always like does this seem like this is what Jung is saying and I think this is what Jung is saying. So he breaks it down in a really interesting way. He's still going to do like a threepart thing but he's going to talk about like we said a little bit ago body, psyche and spirit that we have these like multiple levels and who we are. And for me, Daniel, I don't know, looking and reading this stuff has been very like, okay, that's an interesting way to break this down, right? There's going to be part of what you're going to feel that's going to be coming from the body itself. There's going to be part that's going to be coming from what we're going to call spirit, and we'll have to take that apart to figure out what that means,

right? And then we'll think about what this has to do with our maybe more individual sense of ourselves. So, I think it's a really interesting kind of a breakdown. It fits into a lot of things where you break things up into threes. Like that's a typical thing to do in our traditional Chinese medicine kind of dowist world. We talk a lot about the three treasures, right? Kind of like what they call essence or the body, the [clears throat] energies, and then the shen or the spirit. So that kind of resonates with that kind of stuff, too. And there's a lot of these little three-part divisions, right?

Yeah. Father, son, holy spirit,

the trinity again, the mystery. Let's explore the mystery of faith. That's the Catholic way of talking about that. But not the Trinity from Neo. A different Trinity. Eric,

is Trinity the lady in uh that thing?

She was and she is.

She's the one who ends up playing Hoggarth in the Marvel universe, if I have that right.

I believe that's correct.

Yeah. So, good actress for these things. So, um Okay. So the interesting thing about this and I think this is like definitely in our pod wheelhouse to talk about. So the body is going to be the source of what you might call drives or needs. So they use that kind of language and these are kind of then instinctual and very physical right and this puts pressure on the psyche these parts that come from the body.

Yes. Now,

one of the interesting things about this in the Buddhist world potentially and in the Bernardo Castro world, uh, for sure and in the Buddhist world will be that when you think about the body and this is like again kind of a tricky point, but one that we're here to talk about is that like when you think about the body and your experience of the body, one of the ways of looking that at this is to go all that really happens that we experience is really only coming from the mind. that we can't experience anything else except our own minds because what else would it be? It's always our minds. Even when we're experiencing our own body, we're experiencing it through our mind because we're experiencing it like through the sensory aspects of things which are actually castrop make a big deal about this. Jung cares about this. I think Buddhist tantra and spiritual traditions care about this. One of the if you flip the script and you say okay what am I really experiencing you could say what I'm really experiencing all the time is my own mind even when I'm taking in sensory information from the outside world what I'm really experiencing is my mind so sight sound taste touch smell all these things are sensory things that are ultimately being processed like through the mind and there's no other way to know the world

except through the mind and that's even true of like our own bodies. What we're getting through that is like our mind's experience of the body which can't do anything else except come through like the sensation of tactile stuff, right?

Mhm.

We can't know our body kind of like directly. What we really know is some interconnection that we feel coming through like to our mind. So this is like what's the mind only point about a lot of spiritual stuff and Castrip is into this and I think Jung cares about this too. this recognition that what you're really doing if you take that attitude and you take a step back and it's a deep kind of Buddhist point or a deep Asian spiritual point or maybe a deep spiritual point overall is that all the time we say outer world senses we say our body but what we're really experiencing of that is whatever is actually coming in through the mind so in this way of thinking about dividing up the psyche into three kind of what you're talking about is the sense sensory information that's coming from the body that you're experiencing like in your mind because there's no place else to experience stuff except in your mind. And then whatever you're experiencing of like sort of the pressures within the body, the what they're going to call drives and needs. So hunger and thirst and whatever the body is sort of triggering, right? And its connection to the mind. And this is I mean this is a a [...] deep question obviously, right? This is like getting to the heart of some of the deepest spiritual stuff. This is what Jung is trying to deal with, what our Bernardo Castro is trying to deal with too, which is going to be what's then the connection between the mind and the body and that's super difficult. But anyways, we're in that headsp space. I'll throw it back to you Daniel because it's such a deep thing. It gives us a chance to think about this kind of like wild kind of question because it's

such a deep question. I'll let you I'll let you handle it first. [laughter]

Well, I was trying to I was trying to talk about it. I'm like really fascinated by this. It's always been kind of this deep thing. It's not easy at all.

So there's um there's a piece of of the Zen teachings that I really like in reference to this and they'll say that you know the experience of one's own the true experience of one's own mind is an is on the path of enlightenment. Right? And they say it's like uh the tongue tasting itself or the eye seeing itself right or the sound of one hand clapping right so this sort of single flavoredness this is that's I believe that is this kind of discussion and you know to the question of like mind and body connection I don't know the way that I think about it is that mind I have a problem with the word mind actually I have a problem with the way the word mind is understood. I think that the word the and we should maybe talk about this before we even move forward. Um the definition of the word mind I think when people understand or talk about it they what they're really saying is brain.

Mhm.

And the brain in the way that most people are going to discuss it is not body right. It's a separate thing. It's like everything is in the brain. Mind is inside of the brain and the brain is above the body. The mind is above the body and we have feelings but feelings are again going to the brain slashmind. And I think this kind of reductionistic view of mind as brain, brain as mind uh limits what I think these people are trying to say or at least the the eastern philosophical schools are definitely not saying brain. It's not brain, body, speech. It's mind, you know, and mind is not limited to brain. So before we move forward, I wanted to kind of

Yeah, it's a pretty wild question and then you know this this episode's like this one in partic.

Yeah.

But this is getting to like some of the deepest stuff because there's a really deep question of like uh what's the connection between if you whatever word you like and these words are all super [...] slippery. I agree with you. They're all really slippery and then like what people actually mean when they use them is like

then kind of like imshed with that slipperiness.

Mhm.

But you know what you're really like again this Bernardo Castro guy cares a ton about this. So this is going to weave in and out of these conversations. But you know the the one of the big questions is like you know what is consciousness then? [laughter] you know, we're all having our own subjective experiences,

right? From one point of view, and you get this in like the Buddhist world. If you really like get critical about this and you look kind of deeply, [snorts] you'd have to answer the question of like, well, guess all I'm really ever experiencing is my mind

because I can't really experience anything else because there's no way of knowing anything else kind of directly. All I can really know is my mind. Even when I feel like I'm feeling sensations of the body, what I'm really feeling is like sensation which is like part of the mind. If you take that attitude, if you really try to flip this script

and that is a difficult thing to wrestle with, I think as a 21st century person to get yourself in that mindset because we don't walk around in that mindset,

right? we walk around in the mindset of like well there's all this material stuff around this and I'm a body and I'm moving through a physical world where I think at least in part what's happening in Yung and then I think this is part of why this Bernado Castro is interested in this and likes Yung is because you're trying to flip a script script so I don't know even just as an exercise and you'll do this in the Buddhist meditative world is you go like well let me take the attitude of that let me just try on what that feels Like whereas opposed to saying everything is physical all the time, we flip that and we try to go let's like acknowledge the fact that what we're really experiencing is kind of mental and that's the exercise that they're asking you to do here.

So think about it for yourself if you happen to be listening to it. I take this exercise on too because it's part of like

trying to understand aspects of like Buddhist tantric philosophy or Asian philosophy overall, right? zen like these kinds of things is to take that exercise and like try to say to yourself as you go actually what I'm really experiencing is like my own mind all the time let me just do that as a thing that I try to acknowledge then you get to a deep question of like what's the relationship then between what this body is doing to the mind and what the mind is doing to the body that's important too and we care about that a lot obviously is like Chinese medical people and people interested in like the mind body connection But this is the the idea of like flip it for a while and just see what it feels like, you know, like you actually kind of recognize to yourself, well, I think I'm seeing things through my eyes and it looks like an outer world that's independent of my own mind, but let me try the exercise of going, it's not really like that. when I see something or I hear a sound or I'm interacting with things in a weird way if I follow this kind of logic through what I'm really getting is all the time my mind even if I'm doing like a brain study

and Castro makes this point and I'm looking at the brain I'm actually looking at my mind's interpretation of the brain

right

or even if I'm a great physicist like we talked about like an Albert Einstein earlier who you know like on some level if you have a great physics theory it's a product of your mind producing So, it's kind of trying to take on this kind of more radical attitude and explore it a little bit of what it would be like to think about yourself as like mind and consciousness, which is kind of tough for 21st century people because it is all of this is kind of intrinsically challenging

and slippery but probably really slippery in our culture.

I think Castro's point writing as a 21st century person, you know, Jung's already passed away, right? I think Caster's point would be something like we're we're we live in such a materialist kind of paradigm. We think so much that way that it's hard for us to like even start to explore these kinds of ideas because they're so they're it's just not how we're trained,

you know. And what do you think about that Daniel? I mean it's a deep point obviously but

yeah to it but yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's what I was kind of saying earlier with like the the brain and the mind being sort of viewed as simultaneous, you know, as the same thing. Sort of just locked into this one particular piece of material. And, you know, you and I really didn't, you know, you and I really didn't discuss it, but you know, for the last few minutes, I'd like to do that. Like, how do you view how do you view mind? Well, I mean, I'm like attracted to like sort of this like a lot to do with it. I'm still exploring it, you know, as we all are. But I'm very attracted to sort of these like, uh, Tibetan tantric things, right?

Where, you know, uh, and it comes from the Zen thing, too. I always think about like Hosakaro Roshi, my initial Zen teacher back in the day when I was in my 20s, would say, okay, well, there is the body and there is the mind. And if you think about those things as if they're one thing, like if you try to reduce it to the idea of like your mind is just a like a byproduct of the functioning of your brain or something or even the functioning of your body overall, you know, the kind of biological robot thing. That's wrong. That's not correct.

Right?

On the other hand, you have to deal with and think about the fact that the body and the mind are somehow interacting with one another and influencing one another. Right? So it's kind of a kind of a zen take. If you think about body and mind being the same thing, Hosakawa Roshi would say that's wrong, you know, but if you don't think about the body and mind influencing and impacting one another, well that's obviously wrong, too. So you have to kind of find this spot. That's a very zen thing to say.

Yeah. [laughter]

But I mean, I think you get what he's getting to. You have to deal with both of those things, right?

Yeah. And so, but in the Tibetan uh tantric world, there's a whole thing about you meditate about kind of disconnecting, feeling the disconnect between your spirit and your consciousness and your body. Like that's a daily meditation for me that I do over and over again, right? In the uh the Tandric Buddhist tradition, you kind of are kind of asked to do this like multiple times a day. Let's imagine what it's like to feel my mind separate from this body, you know, because in this world view, shen or spirit or consciousness or whatever word you like, right? Whatever word [...] with you and you like interacts with the physicality of the world and then separates from it. So there's something about trying to get this feeling

that you know uh what uh you know we would call spirit or something connects with body and then disappears from body and it goes back and forth like that. So I think I've been so influenced by that that that affects how I think about this. No.

And then the idea would be I don't know again like we were on retreat, we did our retreat and then I was on retreat after our retreat and you know again deep ideas through this particular whole episode but you know in in this point of view when you look at like someone passing away like the death of a person what's happened well the mind and the body have disconnected from the spirit and the body have disconnected. The mind and the body have disconnected. that energy that is the mind or the spirit is traveling along its way and that body's dead, right? And that body's gone. And we're gonna be talking a lot about consciousness in these episodes, right? So in this way, like what's the difference between like a corpse and like a live person? Well, that shen, that spirit, that consciousness, that mind is no longer attached to that body. So that body is just just material and that other stuff is gone. I guess if you're a pure material person and you know that's not an an un like reasonable position you might say well the computer just broke and there's nothing else so that laptop broke this body's dead it's broken that's the end it can't produce its things but that's not the attitude that I follow right I'm more into the idea like yes something has happened and like in our Chinese medicine world we say how do you con how does a person be conceived spirit connects with genetics and or essence and now we have a new person and that happens at the conception of that person and then you know at the death of that person then you know that's gone but it also has to do with like what our consciousness is because in this way of thinking our awareness our consciousness is coming from this shen part this spirit consciousness or mind part so that's how I tend to think about it that's a pretty traditional way of thinking admittedly maybe a little bit outside the box though for 21st century America because we don't always talk that way

but I think I think for me what's interesting I think in Zen or in Buddhist tantra or in a lot of things that we're interested that's what they're trying to explore right what's this connection between like spirit and body and like what does that totally mean so that's my thoughts for what it's worth I can throw it back to you if you got

other things you think are important to say about that but that's kind of the space I tend to come from

yeah no and that's I mean I think that is a traditional way of well an eastern traditional way of thinking not a western

yeah yeah

um Yeah, I I think um and we've had this we've been having these discussions for a long time. I feel like there's a localized phenomenon and then uh diffuse or universal phenomenon. And so as we are because we're in a body, the the sort of diffused or universal phenomenon becomes uh congregated in an area and localized to us here. So and we've used this example many times but the example of a radio. So the radio waves our mind but the radio station i.e. me, you, whoever is listening to this is also mind. There's no difference between them. It's just that the density has changed or however you want to, you know, call this energetic process from being everywhere to being somewhere. But you're somewhere. You're also still part of the everywhere thing. If I take a drop of ocean out of the water, I take a drop of water out of the ocean, that's still ocean. It's just in a little container. Does that make sense?

So,

yeah. Mhm.

Yeah. So I so that I that's generally kind of how I feel and then the influences from the body that is being inhabited by this localized mind influence the mind and then vice versa. So there's this sort of experiment that is mind influencing body, body influencing mind and in each of us individually on a on a one-on-one basis. But then I do think that the collective gets influenced gets uploads by the experiences of people because I just that's just kind of generally how I think. I mean that that you know I don't know if that's a common thought or an uncommon thought but I I tend to believe that. And the reason why I believe this is we are a lot less tolerant of um hate, bigotry, and suffering now than we have been in the past. It doesn't mean that those things don't happen. They do.

Doesn't mean in the things that we've been talking about that there isn't resistance to these more enlightened perspectives. There may be there may [clears throat] be tension around this that you see, but yeah, I hear what you're saying.

But overall, people are not they don't like they don't they're not most people don't tolerate it. They just they're can't they don't like it. And you know, we can um look at the the weird connection points that are happening between the left and the right in this this country here, the US currently. Random thing, you know, people who couldn't agree on basically anything before. Now all of a sudden there's overlap between Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson and you're like well that's strange

you know and and I think that that is because of the the evolution of the species and I don't know how that occurs but I tend to think that there is this you know universal you know presence of of what we're going to call call mind that is there that we have connection to and that is also present with us in terms of our own individualized being. And you know, we didn't we didn't say this, but that the process of, you know, enlightenment, if you want to call it that, is the uh the transcendence or the unification, maybe better said, because I don't want to be reductionistic. the unification between one's individual mind and the universal mind while still maintaining your sense of being while you're here. So enlightenment is a is a un is an eternal um process but the more that you work on it the more that you are changed while you're here. That's kind of this is sort of you know that's my working hypothesis

is a word that has like a lot of different possible meanings to it obviously but that's a way of thinking about that and certainly that's an enlightening experience right to think okay

I can feel my connection between my individual sense of myself my individual consciousness and how that connects with either some bigger sea of source you know I can I can feel that I can also feel how this connects with like the other living things around me.

Right.

So these are kind of these like uh interdependence kind of feelings, right?

Yes.

And you know there's like this is like again tough kind of zen stuff. The minute you start talking about this stuff, you find yourself in this place. But

part of what I hear when you're talking about that would be kind of the Zen idea like no matter what you're looking at, you can call everything Buddha nature if you want. Or if you want to call everything God, you could call it all God. Or if you want to call it all Brahma, you can call it all Brahma. Or if you want to call it all consciousness, you can call it consciousness. I smile because I have a student who we joke about this because he's like everything is just consciousness. And I'm like, okay, cool. I know what you mean when you say that, right? Everything is like one universal thing. You could say everything is Buddha nature.

That's a thing. That's true, right? And then there's a certain kind of like insight and wisdom which is just like just that to recognize everything is manifestation of this pure energy, right? So that's one thing and I I I love that idea and I'm down with it. Good. That's true. The other part and again being a student of like the Daly Lama school, they ask you to think about this other part of this too which is like also I'm like supposed to recognize how uh what I'm experiencing in a moment by-moment way is actually my mind working all the time. They want you to reflect on that piece too. M

and then they also want you to reflect the idea that none of us are immortal. Sad, you know, but none of us are. And there's something that's happening when a life ends, right? And even though all of this might be Buddha nature, ultimately at some point something relatively speaking that we're calling spirit or mind or consciousness has hooked up with some material body and it's going through its story, right? And at some point they're going to separate, right? So even though all of this is consciousness per my student and if you're listening hey hi may or uh or uh dao or brahma or whatever word you're into

right love

right

yeah whatever what you want to call it you're saying there's some substance that everything is made out of okay cool you know there's also something that's going to happen that's more of that relative story that even though this all might be different manifestations of the same thing there is something that's going to happen like all of us are going to have a life. Spirit, mind, consciousness, whatever word you like is going to hook up with matter. It's going to have its story and then it's going to split apart. And they want you to think about that, too.

And then I think what you're also talking about is the idea like, well, there's an interconnection between

we'll get to this idea of collective unconscious,

right? Yeah. That there's this overlapping thing where all the different parts of the collective unconscious are kind of like connected to, right?

This sea of mind um you know has like its own like interconnections between all of us and what you were saying what the collective unconscious can learn and grow right and maybe some of the things that would have been horrible and shallow and terrible prejudices can get weeded out of this collective unconscious and there can be movement forward. So like you get into this stuff and all of a sudden you find that you're talking about all these things to my mind.

Yeah.

Yeah. you're like you have a like a you do have an optimistic view on that and I mean I think there reasons to be optimistic about that that the collective unconsciousness collective consciousness is growing right and then you know that there's things happening within that if you want to visualize that as like this big sea and all of our individual aspects are just droplets within that sea that is not connected with matter if we want to have that as our visualization right there are ways of thinking that that collective thing can grow and evolve. And I know like uh uh that's really important to you. You love that idea.

Yeah. So we can kind of start to weed things out that are toxic within this collective thing and that would be better for us as individuals because it'll be gone then and the water won't be as polluted, right?

It's not Indra's net. It's mine. It's mine.

Indra's net's like an old uh Indian metaphor of like how everything is interconnected, right? The god Indra has this big net and all the beats are connected. So

yeah, but you put more emphasis on that probably than I do, but I still like the idea. So when you bring it up, I'm always like, okay, that's a very optimistic view that in the in the shared space that we're all a part of, we can start weeding out this toxic [...]

like filter out the pollutants and the collective oceans of our minds. Yeah.

Yes.

You have a you have an optimistic view. So that's good. That's a good that's a good place to be.

Yeah, it is. I know if I share it totally, but I like I like the idea. So,

it's okay. Glass half full.

Yeah, I'm in it. I'm in it. I'm in. I like it when you say it. Like, okay. Yeah, that's good.

All right, fine. Sign me up. All right. I'm good.

You know, why not? What the hell? I like it.

I don't want to You don't You don't want to argue against it. It just seems really depressing.

No, it's I like it. It's optimistic. I'm like, okay, cool. Daniel has brought up this idea. [...] it. I'll be optimistic, too. [...] it. Good. Why not?

I like it.

Yeah, why not? It's great,

Eric. I think that's a good place to call it.

Yeah. Sounds great to be picked up on next time. Mhm.

So, as as always, my brother, thank you so much for uh for rocking. Audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Uh we are we are in our era, as they say. This is this is the flow right here. So, uh if you've made it this far in the episode, congratulations. You are at the peak intellect of all human existence. Forget it. That's it. You're the best. Uh and

funny about that, Daniel, for signing it out. They had the thing I was listening to today about how like because you bring this up a lot, how bad human attention is now.

Yeah, human attention is bad, man. It's worse. make it to the end of things, y'all. We got it to the end of things.

Get your attention better.

And it's a long form uh you know, conversation. There's a lot of there's a lot of gems in here. So, you know, people show us some love. Uh hit us up, leave a comment, like, subscribe, do all that stuff. Hit us up jinantra@gmail.com. Hit us up jinantra uh podcast on Instagram. You know, if you know us, send us a message. Send us some love. It's all good. Tell everybody you love them. Life is short impermanence. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.