Access Your Divine Intelligence! Dr. Bernardo Kastrup Provides a Mind-Expanding Explanation of Consciousness that Leads You to Higher Meaning

Summary

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Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown

Episode: "Access Your Divine Intelligence! Dr. Bernardo Kastrup Provides a Mind-Expanding Explanation of Consciousness that Leads You to Higher Meaning"
Host: Mayim Bialik (with Jonathan Cohen)
Guest: Dr. Bernardo Kastrup
Date: September 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features a deeply philosophical and practical exploration of consciousness, the nature of reality, and human meaning with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup—a leading philosopher, author, and scientist with a background in AI and computer engineering. Through their wide-ranging conversation, Mayim, Jonathan, and Dr. Kastrup discuss analytic idealism, the mind-body connection, metaphysical frameworks, and how understanding consciousness and interconnectedness can reshape not just our inner life but society at large. The discussion also touches on mental health, navigating existential uncertainty, and pathways toward greater compassion and meaning.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Reality? (07:27–09:52)

• Dr. Kastrup defines reality as "this, whatever this is," but stresses the challenge of capturing reality in neat conceptual frameworks.
• Mayim references mystical traditions and the idea that life is akin to a dream or projection, drawing parallels to The Matrix as the “closest articulation” of long-standing mystical legacies.
• Dr. Kastrup explains that our everyday sensory experience cannot possibly encompass the totality of reality, given the evolutionary limits of our perception and cognition.

Dr. Kastrup (09:52):
"There is no way a monkey would have evolved a cognitive system and a perceptual apparatus to pick out everything that is philosophically salient about reality."

2. The Importance of Metaphysical and Philosophical Inquiry (09:52–11:22)

• Even those who claim to have no metaphysics often do, they are just unaware of their own unexamined assumptions.
• Our metaphysical narrative shapes how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world at large.

3. Is There Proof of Something 'More'? (11:22–13:36)

• Mayim asks: Why should we believe there is more than what we experience day-to-day?
• Dr. Kastrup: The burden of proof lies with those who say there isn't more. No satisfactory, complete scientific or philosophical account exists for consciousness or fundamental reality.

Dr. Kastrup (11:39):
"There should be proof that there isn't more. Because the zero hypothesis here is that the cognitive apparatus of a monkey doesn't pick out everything that is out there, right? ...Our little narratives of completeness, they don't hold. There is more going on than we think because we don't have an explanatorily satisfying account of the world."

4. Materialism, Physicalism, and Intellectual Arrogance (19:35–29:23)

• The conversation tackles critiques from strict materialists—those who dismiss anything not rooted in physical explanation as "mental masturbation" or "religious fantasy."
• Dr. Kastrup: Intellectual arrogance often hides deep psychological insecurity. Today, even staunch academic defenders of physicalism struggle to argue their case.
• Jonathan & Mayim: Note the “fanaticism” of some physicalists mirrors that of religious fundamentalists.

Dr. Kastrup (21:39):
"Those who think that physicalism does, or materialism does, give us a complete account. Frankly, they just don't know what they're talking about."

• On the difficulty of distinguishing between the delusional and valid, transformative human experiences: laboratory science cannot always access the realities of subjective, emotional, or societal phenomena.

5. Cosmopsychism & The Nature of Consciousness (29:23–36:23)

• Definition: Cosmopsychism posits that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, not a byproduct of brains. Physical arrangements—be it brains, stars, or supernovae—are “physical configurations that betray the presence of an inner psychological, subjective state.”

Dr. Kastrup (33:12):
"Material arrangements, physical configurations correlate with inner mental states. We know that for people, panpsychism would say, now do the same thing for the entirety of the universe."

• Mayim notes that this is similar to indigenous spiritualities, early Greek philosophy, and transcendent psychedelic or meditative states.

6. Fractals, Network Topologies, and the Cosmic Brain (46:34–51:36)

• Dr. Kastrup describes simulation results demonstrating the universe’s structure—distribution of matter, including dark matter—resembles the network topology of a mammalian brain, suggesting a “fractal” relationship ("as above, so below").
• However, the universe is not a brain in a biological sense; rather, similar organizing principles manifest at different scales.
• The resemblance implies shared underlying principles but does not support over-simplified claims of a sentient, self-reflective universe.

7. Societal Implications: Interconnectedness, Politics, and Compassion (37:53–45:12)

• The philosophical framework implies that the world is of the same kind as us. We are not accidental consciousness in a dead universe.
• Individual identity across time is not fixed; this logic also permits identification with other beings.
• Practical implication: Increased possibility for sober, mature reconciliation and compassion, not naive romanticism.

Dr. Kastrup (42:04): "Now you can even identify with everything else and everybody else. Because distinctions... are as significant to identity as the distinctions between you and your five year old self."

8. Meaning, the Loss of Transcendence, and Addiction to Distraction (53:45–61:15)

• Philosophical naturalism struggles to contend with the "fine-tuning" of the universe's constants and the emergence of life: “Life is a miracle.”
• The greatest threat to humans is the loss of meaning. As transcendence is denied (e.g., by materialism), people compensate via addictive/self-soothing behaviors and pursuit of closure and certainty.
• Our economic system is built upon distraction and addictive consumption to avoid existential questions.
• Nietzsche’s "last humans": We invent happiness by distracting ourselves from life's real questions.

Dr. Kastrup (59:35): "The lestermensch is one that will pursue any addictive avenue available to distract themselves from the immediate questions of life. Who are we? Why are we here? ...We will engage compulsively in patterns of addictive behavior to take our attention away from that. This is how we invented happiness. Lo and behold, this is what moves capitalism."

9. Reconnecting with Instinct and Nature (63:35–68:14)

• Humans are the first species to experience a radical disconnection from instinct, supplanting it with personal narratives and stories.
• The price is a "profoundly unnatural" life and a loss of embodied, instinctual wisdom.
• Light pollution and urbanization have cut off many from the most basic forms of connection with the cosmos (e.g., seeing the night sky).

10. The Uniqueness and Challenge of Being Human—Death, Suffering, and Compassion (68:14–74:22)

• Humans are unique in their knowledge of mortality, causing existential struggle.
• Blame and compassion can coexist: we each face the exquisite difficulty of being human.
• Near-death experiences (NDEs) often highlight inexpressible communal consciousness and love, regardless of the existence of “evil.”

Dr. Kastrup (70:54): "Many human beings do not know what they are doing. ...Many times not in a malicious way."

"Sometimes the game is not to solve the problem, but to abide in the problem with some degree of compassion for ourselves. Some things are not problems to be solved, but experiences to be lived."

11. Why Dr. Kastrup Rarely Gives Interviews (74:22–75:17)

• Dr. Kastrup rarely does interviews now because he’s often asked repetitive questions; this conversation was distinct for its depth and fresh approach.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Consciousness & Cosmopsychism

  "Behind the physical universe, there is the inner life of the universe, which presents itself to us in the form of physical arrangements, just as my inner life presents itself to you in the form of the physical arrangements we call my body, my words, my smile."
  — Dr. Bernardo Kastrup [33:12]

• On Materialist "Closure"

  "There is a theory in psychology called fluid compensation... The greatest threat to a human being is the loss of meaning... So even though the universe has no meaning, at the end, you're gonna die anyway. You understood it, you got one up on it. You figured it out, SOB you figured it out how it works. This is a powerful psychological motivation for people to communicate with great certainty hypotheses that are extraordinarily implausible, let alone proved or substantiated."
  — Dr. Bernardo Kastrup [53:45]

• On Identity & Sameness

  "If we were to both be in a perfect sensory deprivation chamber and become completely amnesic for 30 seconds, during those 30 seconds, you and I would be completely identical... not two identical units of the same model, but effectively the same model." — Dr. Bernardo Kastrup [41:15]

• On Social Disconnection and Consumption

  "Capitalism wants you to be distracted. Take this away and many less pairs of shoes will be sold. That's a problem."
  — Dr. Bernardo Kastrup [59:59]

• On Compassion Amidst Human Flaws

  "It's exquisitely difficult to be human... I think that's the realization that we should always keep in the back of our minds as a background to casting blame. We should cast blame. Sometimes we must cast blame... But the background of my blame casting is it's exquisitely difficult to be Vladimirovich Putin, just as it is exquisitely difficult to be me."
  — Dr. Bernardo Kastrup [69:36]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• What is Reality & How do We Know There is More?
  [07:27–13:36]
• Materialism Critique, Rigor in Metaphysics
  [19:35–29:23]
• Cosmopsychism & Unity of Consciousness
  [29:23–36:23]
• Network Topology of Brain and Universe
  [46:34–51:36]
• Societal Implications, Modern Disconnection
  [37:53–45:12] [53:45–61:15]
• Instinct, Disconnection, and Nature
  [63:35–68:14]
• Death, Suffering, and Compassionate Acceptance
  [68:14–74:22]
• Meta-Comment on the Interview
  [74:22–75:17]

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is candid, intellectually rigorous, sometimes playful, and often deeply reflective. Mayim and Jonathan create a supportive space for Dr. Kastrup to explain both complex abstractions and their everyday applications, while also probing personal and societal stakes. Kastrup’s measured, humble approach imbues even heady topics with a sense of practical compassion.

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For listeners seeking the intersection of consciousness, philosophy, science, and practical living, this is a masterclass in thinking big without losing touch with what matters most: understanding, empathy, and the courage to face hard existential questions.

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Transcript

[Mayim Bialik]

What is the proof that there is more?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

There should be proof that there isn't more, because we don't have an explanatorily satisfying account of the world.

[Mayim Bialik]

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup is a renowned philosopher and prolific author whose groundbreaking work challenges how we understand consciousness and the nature of reality. His tech background in AI and Innovation bridges his rigorous scientific insight with details deep philosophical inquiry.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

We are changing all the time. There isn't a single atom in the body of my five year old self that has stayed in my body. Everything about that five year old has changed. And yet I have the clear sense that I was him. You take aggressive cancer cells. Cancer takes hold, multiplies. There is a bioelectrical field that seems to coordinate morphogenesis. Coordinate. Coordinate how cells grow. A field that seems to give the body a cue about the body plan. If you control the biochemical field that surrounds the cells, lo and behold, the cancer doesn't grow. We are the first animals that have disconnected from the supercomputer of natural instinct. We don't trust it anymore. We don't listen to it. We replace it with our own stories, our own narratives. We live now profoundly unnatural lives. What was the last time you looked up to the sky at night and saw the stars? The greatest threat to a human being is the loss of meaning. When you deny transcendence, you are robbed of the source of meaning that has given meaning to every generation of humans before you. And now many of us deny that. So they lose their key source of meaning, so they have to compensate to another source of meaning. Consciousness is imminent in everything. The stars, the quasars, the galaxies, the black holes and supernovae. They are like your smile. They are physical configurations that betray the presence of an inner psychological, subjective state. So what is death? Think of it as what happens when you wake up from a dream. Why are you dreaming? Your mental inner life is constrained by the circumstances of the dream. When that dissociative state ends. Because you woke up, now you know much more. You went back to a much broader state of mind.

[Mayim Bialik]

I can't explain it. Unbelievable.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Time.

[Mayim Bialik]

It's always vanishing. The commute, the errands, the work functions, the meetings. Selling your car. Unless you sell your car with Carvana. Get a real offer in minutes, get it picked up from your door. Get paid on the spot so fast you'll wonder what the catch is. There isn't one. We just responded. Respect you and your time. Oh, you're still here. Move along now. Enjoy your day. Sell your car today. Carvana pickup fees may apply. Go all in on Fall with Abercrombie Kids. Their newest drop of on trend outfits are ready for everything from the bus stop to family bonfires. And it wouldn't be fall without football. Gear up. The kids with officially licensed NFL tees and sweatshirts shop Abercrombie Kids this season in the app, online and in store. Hi, I'm Imy Alec.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Mayim Bialik]

Welcome to our Breakdown what if we were to tell you that we have an episode today that breaks down and covers nearly every aspect of the exploration that Jonathan and I started this podcast in order to discover? What's the nature of reality? What is our role in the universe? What happens when we die? How do we explain things that are outside of a materialistic framework? Does it matter if you find love? What's the purpose of suffering? Is there any pain too great to overcome? Why are we here and what does it mean?

[Jonathan Cohen]

You may think this is highly metaphysical and philosophical, and while it is, it has very intense practical applications to how our bodies function, how the mind influences us, whether or not placebo can be used to decrease pain, reduce surgery, and even overcome very intense real physiological issues such as a cancer diagnosis.

[Mayim Bialik]

We're gonna be speaking with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup. He is a Dutch philosopher. He has a PhD in computer engineering, worked in the high tech industry for almost 30 years, but he also holds a PhD in philosophy. He's part of a branch of philosophy that falls under analytic idealism. But what we discovered is that there is an incredibly rich, deep, nuanced and very creative way that Dr. Kastrup has for understanding the nature of our reality, the purpose of why we're here, and literally how to apply these principles to a life well lived. Dr. Kastrup, who goes by Bernardo as he asked us to call him, is the Executive Director of Essentia foundation and he's the founder and CEO at AI Systems company Euclid bv. We're going to be discussing the daimon and the soul of the west, but more importantly, we're going to be talking about kind of all of the things that make us able to function in a world that is so complicated, so enormous. And the notion that we can understand the smallest things and apply them to the biggest things is running through the thread of this entire conversation. We can't, cannot wait for you to hear this.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This interview is unlike any that he has given before. He actually came out of semi retirement from interviews in order to do this one. We are excited to share it. Dr. Kastrup also talks about how we are the only animal that has been disconnected from our intuition and very practical steps that we can do to feel a connection to something greater than ourselves and reconnect with our instincts. If you haven't already checked out Mind Bialik's breakdown on Substack, we have a growing Breaker community there and we release content exclusively there that is not released anywhere else. Check us out.

[Mayim Bialik]

This is, we think, one of the most personal interviews that Bernardo has ever done, and he really doesn't do interviews anymore. But we're so grateful that he opens up about suicide, which he talks about in his book, and some of his struggles with a variety of complex issues surrounding that. So we hope that you get a lot out of this episode. We certainly got some so much from talking to Bernardo and yeah, let's welcome Bernardo Castrup to the breakdown. Break it down.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Thanks for having me.

[Mayim Bialik]

We often have a lot of clarity about what we're going to talk to people about. And then sometimes we do research and we learn about someone like you. And I literally say to Jonathan, I could talk to him about everything and I don't know where to start.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Okay, let's do that.

[Mayim Bialik]

So we'd love to get to as much as as we can. I do want to start by saying I read this book of yours and you've written a lot of books.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Oh, I am surprised you read this one. I thought you would go to the hardcore philosophy stuff.

[Mayim Bialik]

You know what, Dr. Kastrup, I am a very surprising person.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Please, call me Bernardo. This doctor thing, it's.

[Mayim Bialik]

We did a lot of research on a lot of the different fields, but I really want to make sure that we get to this. So I'm just going to flag right up at the top that I'm a huge fan of Peter Kingsley and I'm a huge fan of Brian Murarescu. And I found all of these beautiful and profound and, you know, in many cases, very kind of upsetting. Right. Intellectually upsetting threads throughout the. The whole book. So we think that a simpler place to start, and I'm putting simpler in air quotes, is what is reality?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

It is this. Right. Whatever this is. It's not like we are not acquainted with reality. We. We came out of it, we live in it like fish and water. We live and breathe it all the time. We are very, very intimately acquainted with reality. The problem is when we ask ourselves the question, what is reality? And then we want to sort of capture that in some nice, neat conceptual framework, hopefully without contradicting ourselves in the process. And that's what is difficult.

[Mayim Bialik]

There are many different versions of reality that we can interface with. One of my father's favorite quotes was La vida esueno. You know, life is a dream. And in the religious tradition and the mystical tradition that my people come from, this is a projection, you know, as if something's being projected on a screen. The Matrix movies came closest to kind of articulating what many of us have as our mystical legacy right over thousands of years. I wonder, can you give us a little bit of framework of why it's important to consider that what we see and what we touch and what we taste and what we smell is not the entirety of our actual experience?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Well, first of all, because it is a virtual certainty that it's not right. There is no way a monkey would have evolved a cognitive system and a perceptual apparatus to pick out everything that is philosophically salient about reality. There is just no way that would happen. So this can't be everything. And the ones who maintain that it is have the burden of argument and perhaps proof, but at least argument our conception of what this is, especially if we understand this to be all or a sliver of reality, it modulates our sense of meaning, our sense of purpose, the way we relate to ourselves, to other people, to animals and nature at large, the way we relate to past and future. Very important. And therefore it modulates how we live life and what we make of it. People who say we don't need metaphysics, it's a waste of time. Well, they say that because they are assuming thoughtlessly, a sort of defoe metaphysics. And they say that they don't have a metaphysics. Well, in fact they do. They are just not self reflective enough to explore their own minds and their own hidden assumptions and their own dispositions to see what it is. But the metaphysics is critical to live life. It's the narrative in terms of which we relate to self, to others and to the world.

[Mayim Bialik]

What would be the proof that there is more? Right, because if I go about my life and I go about the world and I'm interacting with things and I don't know, I wake up, I make breakfast, I take my kid to the bus, what is the proof that there is more? Why should I believe that there is more?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

There should be proof that there isn't more. Because the zero hypothesis here is that the cognitive apparatus of a monkey doesn't pick out everything that is out there, right? Evolutionarily speaking, that's the null hypothesis. But I will entertain it there are lots of indications, very strong indications. I hesitate using the word proof because proof is something that mathematicians do, usually science and philosophy. We don't deal with proofs. We deal with what is the best hypothesis at hand. The indications are, for instance, from certain experiments in foundations of physics that show that some basic assumptions we make about reality, like physical entities, have standalone existence don't seem to hold. When you put a big enough microscope and you magnify reality to a point where you can really see the details. And when we when you look at reality at that level of detail, oh, those assumptions break. Physical things don't seem to have standalone existence. You can only say that they exist if you make a measurement. If you're not making a measurement, you can't say that they exist. In the neuroscience of consciousness, we have no account of how seemingly unconscious material stuff arranges itself in such a way as to give rise to the qualities of experience. There is a gargantuan gap between the two. I will limit my answer to these two fields. I could go on and on, but these two fields very compellingly tell us that our little narratives of completeness, they don't hold. There is more going on than we think because we don't have an explanatorily satisfying account of the world.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Well, let me first acknowledge there is a lot of mental masturbation in philosophy, even in science. In science it's called P value engineering. A lot of mental masturbation going on in there, and there's a lot of it in philosophy as well. There are whole feuds of philosophy that are mental masturbation, metaphysics, is not one of them. And the only way for one to hold the opinion that materialism has accounted for everything and therefore anything else is a waste of time. The only way to hold that position is to be vastly misinformed of the issues. Not even those who defend physicalism in academia would say that it's a done deal. Actually, they are on the defense right now. It's very hard to find a physicalist philosopher today willing to go on stage and actively defend physicalism. It has become very hard. So physicalism does not provide us an account of a great many things. It doesn't give us an account of experience. Any experience. The taste of a chocolate cake, a belly ache, falling in love, any seeing the stars in the night sky. None of it has a physicalist account. Physicalism, when applied to foundations of physics, doesn't give us a causally closed picture of the world because we cannot predict the outcome of any single quantum event. We can predict the statistical distribution of many, many outcomes taken together, but we cannot predict any single one. And there are great many things in nature that depend on the outcome of a single quantum event, perhaps even our thoughts. Materialism does not give us a metaphysically tenable, let alone satisfying of what's going on. And this is largely acknowledged in philosophy and in science today, even physics and neuroscience. So those who think that physicalism does, or materialism does, give us a complete account. Frankly, they just don't know what they're talking about.

[Mayim Bialik]

Is that what we should tell people? You just don't know what you're talking about?

[Jonathan Cohen]

But they're so sure of themselves. We spoke to someone recently who is a staunch physicalist. And just. He's like, there's no such thing. There's no credibility. There's no data. There's no evidence. All the studies that you think you've seen, you haven't seen, people misremember. They come at it with such fervor that it's. It's, you know, you need a repository of ammunition to fight back against.

[Mayim Bialik]

We need Bernardo. We need him sitting right next to me all the time.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

I was thinking, invite them to have a live debate with me.

[Mayim Bialik]

Will stand behind you with boxing gloves like this, like you tell him, Bernardo, tell them.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

But look, the attitude you describe is not new. You see that in religious people, fundamentalist religious people.

[Mayim Bialik]

This is exactly what I said. I said we were speaking to a secular professor of psychology who sounded more fanatical about me being wrong than I, as a person of faith, am about being right. He was more certain and I said, who's the fanatic here?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Usually this betrays a lot of insecurity about the position they hold. It's important to live the position that this is a settled question, because if you acknowledge that it's not, many insecurities come to the forefront. Look, I say this not as a criticism, but as a human being who suffers as well. And I'm not going to say that I would never fall on that trap, because I just may. But this is psychology. It's not metaphysics, it's not science. We are talking about the psychological issue here.

[Mayim Bialik]

You know, Jeffrey Kpel is a friend of the podcast and we love him.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

I love him too.

[Mayim Bialik]

One of the things that Jeffrey taught us is that the notion that someone's experience, no matter how fantastical, how out there, how unbelievable, how impossible it seems, is in some ways a portal, right? Either to someone's particular experience or to a larger experience that we're all having. Where is that line between delusion, between madness, and between an open understanding of what could possibly be aspects of the human experience that may not be easily verifiable, quantifiable, or able to hold up to the stringency that, again, mathematicians would have?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

It is not an easy line to find. I mean, the scientific method offers us some tools to use, some best practices, even some pre engineered value judgments, let's put it that way. It is not infallible. I'll give you an example. The scientific method presupposes that we can isolate all the circumstances, all the variables that matter to an experiment within a laboratory setting. So you're only allowing the variables to play a causal role in what you're experimenting with. The variables that you know, everything else you controlled for or eliminated, and then it expects that it can trigger any phenomenon under those controlled conditions in a laboratory. Well, that is an incredibly constraining assumption. That presupposes that all causal influences in reality operate at a microscopic level. Because you can only isolate things in the confines of a small laboratory if the causal change here are only microscopic and operate locally. But many of this stuff people call psi, I would imagine that they are only triggered under circumstances that evoke one's emotional reaction, and you can't have that in a laboratory setting. Or you could have natural causal chains that operate only over large distances, at the level of families or societies or cultures, all of which is beforehand eliminated by this notion that you should be able to see everything under a laboratory setting. So why, why should reality conform to our experimental convenience? Reality is what it is. If we can't trigger a phenomenon in a laboratory. It doesn't mean that the phenomenon doesn't exist. It only means that it's very hard to study. We have to use observational science as opposed to experimental science. And there is nothing non scientific about it. Astronomy is an observational science. You can't trigger a black hole in the laboratory or a quasar. You are limited to watching it with care.

[Mayim Bialik]

The notion that if something exists, that it has to or can exist that way every time and for every person is absurd. It's the equivalent of saying, I've had great sex before, and so I assume I will have great sex with every single person I have sex with. That's like. It doesn't work like that. You could put me in an appropriate setting that is just like the setting I had. And I will not have an orgasm, I promise. Right. Because it is dependent on the mood I'm in. What I saw on Instagram that morning, who the president has censored what's going on in global politics and hormone fluctuations and things that do not travel. I mean, if you want to question science, be a woman in perimenopause. You know, there's no chart. All those charts. This is your luteal phase. When you get to like 40, it's like it. That's what it's like to try and recreate something in the lab.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This is the first conversation about consciousness that has gone to menopausal sex.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Oh, then we are not having enough conversations. That's a major event in consciousness, I suppose. I'm totally with you there. People who think like that, and I'm not saying this to put people down, but they are not serious participants in the discussion. And it's perfectly okay to be like that. I am not a serious participant in a discussion about art. What is not okay is to not be a serious one, but think you are and act accordingly. That's a kind of intellectual arrogance that backfires spectacularly because one just makes a fool of oneself. People make a lot of metaphysical assumptions in the process of denying metaphysics. This happens all the time, and it happens even in language. For instance, when people say, can consciousness exist outside the body? What is the assumption they are making? Dualism. There is the body and there is consciousness. Well, it's not the only option. It could be that the body is a construct in consciousness, and therefore consciousness is not in the body, it's the body that is in consciousness. And then you say that and people go like, oh, let me think about that. Well, there is a menu of hypotheses that are internally consistent, perfectly coherent, but which requires a little thoughtfulness and not knee jerk metaphysical reactions based on assumptions one doesn't even know one is making. And that's why often these people are not serious participants in this discussion. They don't even know what assumptions they're making.

[Mayim Bialik]

You find ways to use words where I'm like, I think I know how to say this, I think I know what it is, but let's just be sure. Talk to us about what cosmopsychism is.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

So our current mainstream metaphysics says that the world is physical and that consciousness is a sort of a secondary or an epiphenomenal construct of certain material arrangements like brains. And therefore consciousness only exists within brains. Another hypothesis is that consciousness is everywhere and that particular material arrangements simply reflect or betray the presence of certain states of consciousness or arrangements of consciousness. So my brain betrays the presence of a human arrangement of consciousness, but consciousness is primary. It's spread throughout the universe. So that's what is cosmopsychism. There are many variations of it.

[Mayim Bialik]

What do you mean that consciousness is separate from what I. I'm experiencing right now in my head, in this body, in this chair, looking at a screen.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

I'm precisely saying that it's not separate, that it's intrinsic to your body. But since your body is made of the same kinds of atoms and fields as the rest of the universe, then it's intrinsic to the entire universe. So consciousness is everywhere, which doesn't mean that everything is conscious in and of itself. A single neuron in my head doesn't have its own inner chatter talking to its neural neighbors. There is only something it is like to be me, not something it is like to be a single neuron in my head. By the same token, there may be nothing. It is like to be this bottle of water right now. And that doesn't contradict the hypothesis that consciousness is everywhere. Just as it correlates with the whole of my brain, including every neuron, it may correlate with the entirety of the physical universe. And that does not mean that everything is consciousness. It only means that consciousness underlies or is immanent in everything.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What this leads to is if the body is a part of a larger consciousness, is the mirrored systems that we're interacting with all throughout our existence that are actually just mirrored reflections of different forms of consciousness. Meaning that if the body is a reflection of some larger system, what am I connected to? How do I operate? How does that change what I understand? My physical reality to be.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

When you look in the mirror, you see a physical body that you can describe. You can delineate its boundaries, you can say, there it is, there is a physical body there. But you know from direct experience that behind that physical body you see in the mirror, there is the entire inner life of Jonathan, an entire universe of subjectivity, of inner experience. Behind that image or underlying that image, there is the entire subjective inner life of a person, of the person who is looking.

[Mayim Bialik]

And one of the best examples of that is when you were five years old, you were looking in the mirror at a completely different body. It was much smaller, it had a completely different experience. But you did not have a problem when you turned six being like, who the fuck is that in the mirror? You were like, five year old. Me is now six, and then I'm 20. And one day I'll be, God willing, you know, 120. Right? That's the you inside, that's the observing mind. Correct.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

We have no problem in understanding that behind that image in the mirror, there is the entire subjective universe of me. Cosmopsychism would say the same applies to the entire universe. Behind the physical universe, there is the inner life of the universe, which presents itself to us in the form of physical arrangements, just as my inner life presents itself to you in the form of the physical arrangements we call my body, my words, my smile, my. My facial expressions, those betray the presence of my inner life. If I cry, you will say, he is sad. So material arrangements, physical configurations correlate with inner mental states. We know that for people, panpsychism would say, now do the same thing for the entirety of the universe. There is a universal mind that underlies all the physical universe. And the configurations of the physical universe, the stars, the quasars, the galaxies, the black holes and supernovae, they are like your smile. They are physical configurations that betray the presence of an inner psychological subjective state. And look how beautiful this is because it eliminates all arbitrary differentiations in nature. In all cases, matter, material arrangements, physical configurations are the extrinsic appearance of inner mental states that holds for your brain and it holds for everything else that is made of the same kinds of atoms and force fields as your brain. There is no arbitrary discontinuity in nature. Matter is always the external appearance of inner experience. Under, under cosmopsychism, it's.

[Mayim Bialik]

That's staggeringly beautiful. You and your consciousness, right, your conscious experience, you have the ability to be enamored with the fact that you even have the ability to think to experience you are, I mean, one with nature is like putting it mildly and what it sounds a lot like from Jonathan and my experience here talking to people from all different backgrounds and perspectives is this is very, very similar to a unifying and loving understanding that many indigenous communities have that many of the early Greeks experienced, right? This is also something that people touch in transcendental states, often with the use of psychedelics or other, you know, you know, highly, highly focused meditative practices. We had, you know, Thomas Campbell on and, you know, I, I joked that he accidentally proved God, you know, through an understanding of, of energetic fields and consciousness. And, you know, he accidentally proved that there is something that wants less chaos for us, right? Even as the universe is tending towards chaos.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails.

[Mayim Bialik]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Over.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Roger, wait.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

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[Mayim Bialik]

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[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

I wonder if you could extrapolate the idea that matter is always a reflection of an inner experience to the structure of society. Political discord, Fractions in social bonds? Can we take it not only to the Milky Way and the existence of the stars, but actually to the structure of what we're seeing in society and international politics?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

The first Thing to notice is that a direct implication of this notion that matter is always in all cases the extrinsic appearance of subjective states is that the world now is of the same kind as us. We are no longer this rare accident in which a world that is fundamentally unconscious temporarily became conscious. Behind everything you see around you there is something of the same nature as you. So now you belonging here, you are not an accident, a temporary epiphenomenal aberration. The world now is of the same nature as you. You have an inner life, so has the world. That's the first thing. Now the next thing to understand is that what we identify with, and that's your point earlier, what we tend to identify with is a particular narrative of self. Could say, well, I am Bernardo, I am a philosopher, I live with Claudia, I also happen to do computer stuff and I love to watch the Big Bang theory and I go to work the high tech campus and you know, this whole narrative of self and we say it's me. But if we follow this narrative over time we realize that we are changing all the time. That my 5 year old self had different thoughts, different opinions, different perspectives, a completely different body. There isn't a single body, a single atom in the body of that five year old that has stayed in my body until today. Many have left and returned. There are atoms that were once in the, in the lungs of Napoleon, in my lungs at some point in my life, but it has never stayed static. Everything about that five year old has changed and yet I have the clear sense that I was him, even though everything else changed. Now, you can extrapolate very easily now and you can easily imagine that by the same token that you believe you were your 5 year old self on the same logical grounds, you must then believe that you are me. I am like your 5 year old self. I'm completely different from you. But the core subjectivity in me is identical to the core subjectivity in you. If we were to both be in a perfect sensory deprivation chamber and become completely amnesic for 30 seconds during those 30 seconds, you and I would be completely identical. Not two identical units of the same model, but effectively the same model. Because you cannot talk about spatial or temporal distinctions in a state of complete mental emptiness, not only is there subjective inner life behind everything you see around you now, you can even identify with everything else and everybody else. Because distinctions are as significant to identity, distinctions between people are as significant to identity as the distinctions between you and your five year old self. Those distinctions don't stop you from saying I was my five year old self. So if you are to be logically consistent and rigorous in this line of thought, you must also acknowledge, I may just as well be.

[Mayim Bialik]

Jonathan, I know that philosophers don't get to decide world politics, but this is one of the best and most compelling arguments for an understanding across political divides of our shared humanity on this planet. Meaning this is potentially the most love filled perspective on our existence. Which would then lead you to say, what is a border? Right. Who are those people versus these people? And you know, I don't think it has to be a political conversation because it's a consciousness conversation. And you know, there's this mystical concept that in order for us to live on this planet, we have to be able to block out a certain amount of pain and suffering so that we can just walk around, go to the bathroom, raise children. That if we were awakened to the true suffering, right, that exists as the human condition, no one would be able to exist. Right. So the notion is that being human is about this balance of being able to say, where do I end? Where do you begin? And is there a way to introduce that into a conversation about belonging and, and justice?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Right, Absolutely. Look, I don't think these notions, these philosophical ideas mean that we should all hold hands and sing the Kumbaya. I tend not to be a romantic philosopher and I'll tell you why. If I could go back in time and watch my 10 year old self throwing a fit and being nasty and destructive, I wouldn't go to him and say, come here my darling, give me a hug. No, I would say, this is not fine. And you would set boundaries and you would set a stake on the ground and say, until here and no more. Even though it is your 10 year old self, you would still do that. So I think it's perfectly valid for there to be disagreement, for there to be robust discussions. It's perfectly valid for there to be criticism. There is nothing in me that cannot criticize what's going on in Ukraine and Gaza right now. There is no way I'm going to hold hands with certain people involved and sing the Kumbaya. But what it also means, ultimately this philosophical idea is the recognition that what is behind their eyes is what is behind your eyes. So there is a chance for reconciliation. It is not romantic reconciliation of singing the Kumaya and giving three kisses. It's a more mature, sober reconciliation. It's the notion that there isn't a fundamental chasm that cannot be crossed. No, these chasms do not exist. You can Always cross, you know, we.

[Mayim Bialik]

Can'T avoid what is happening. When I see what's happening in Sudan, and I say, if everyone could see what is happening, it would collectively break the heart of the world. And I want to believe that it would then lead to a different conversation. And yet we're human, and we have to live, you know, kind of this human experience. There's one more thing that I wanted you to talk about in terms of the universe has this sort of network capability of a brain, right? And, you know, the first kind of environmental level that many of us think of this sort of microcosm on is to say, like, oh, the world is, you know, kind of. It's an expression of the human experience. And the trees are the lungs and the. This is the, you know, and the streams are the circulatory system, you know. But if we expand that out, you know, to the size of the universe and beyond meaning, beyond what we can even encapsulate. Can you talk, like, in a way that maybe can help people understand what it means to say that the universe is kind of mimicking the network that is a brain? And the brain itself, then, is made up of all of these separate networks, and that each cell, you know, as Bruce Lipton talked about with us in a very different way, that each cell has that kind of capacity for memory, for consciousness, which recently Essentia foundation talked about. Can you give us a little bit of a fractal understanding under this idealist.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Or cosmopsychist notion that matter is the outer appearance of inner experience, not what creates inner experience, but just what experience looks like from the outside. If you interpret this rigorously, then we will realize that the brain and its network structure, which has a certain network topology that can be quantified. The brain is the outer appearance of our inner life, of our subjective experience from within. So if the universe has a subjective inner life as well, at the largest cosmic scale, you could say, well, it's plausible that we should find a network structure that, once quantified, would resemble that of a brain because they are both representing the same phenomenon at different scales. It's like the fractal you alluded to, as above, so below. So it's a brain at our level, but something resembling a brain. That's a valid hypothesis. If cosmopsychism is correct, something resembling or having some of the features of the network topology of the brain should be found at the largest scales that we can discern. Lo and behold, that's exactly what we find. So what Franco and Alberto did they did a spatial Fourier transform of the distribution of matter, including dark matter, in the universe at its largest scales, as simulated by the best models we have today, the standard model of cosmology. And the result of that spatial 4 here transform shows a pattern of distribution of matter that is very, very much like what you find in a brain. The network topologies are very similar. It's not vaguely similar, it's quantifiably similar to a disconcerting level that nothing in physics would allow us to explain.

[Mayim Bialik]

Can you talk a little bit about what it specifically means to say that we see the topology of the kind of network that we call brain in the larger universe?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

So if you simulate the universe at its largest scales, you have to simulate, because you cannot take a telescope and figure out that structure since you are within it, right? So we have to use our mathematics to simulate it. Matter is not distributed uniformly across the universe, including dark matter. It forms these filaments and these areas of concentration and different areas of concentration of matter connect together through these filaments of material distribution. You can look at the topology of the network that is formed that way. You know, the galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the way they connect through these filaments of normal matter and dark matter. You can look at the topology of that and compare that to how neurons connect to each other in a mammalian brain. So you would have the accumulation of matter, that is the neuron body, and the filaments would be the axon and the dendrites that connect each neuron to the other neurons. And then you do a mathematical quantification of that network topology in both cases, and you compare the numbers, and the numbers match surprisingly well in a way that is difficult to say. Well, it's just an accident. Now look, this doesn't mean the universe is a brain, because we define the word brain to, you know, biological organisms on this particular rock, the third rock from the sun. And functionally, it also cannot possibly work very much like the brain, because the distances involved at the largest scales of the universe, given the speed of light limit, would mean that the universe cannot form what integrated information theory calls these re entrant loops of information integration. It's physically impossible, based on what we know today, for the universe to form those re entrant loops. So you could infer that, okay, the universe cannot be self reflective because there isn't just time since the beginning of the universe. And given the rate of expansion and the speed of light, limitations for these re entrant loops that are required for self reflection to form, but it can very much be a brain like an instinctive brain, the brain of a nematode that also doesn't form very, very many re entrant loops. But the suggestion is that something in the very fabric of reality, in the basic organizing principles of reality manifests itself. These organizing principles manifest themselves at one scale as brains, mammalian brains, and at another scale the very same organizing principles manifest as the network topology of the web of galaxies.

[Mayim Bialik]

I think many of us think that just like the universe is like if you take a pile of confetti and you throw it up in the air and wherever it lands, that's the universe. But what we're saying is that there's density, right? There's density and collections for gravitational reasons, for all sorts of fascinating reasons beyond my pay grade. But to say that there is some sort of order like that, you know, for me, and I'm often asked as a person of faith, like how do you believe in science? And any, in my opinion, anyone who has studied neuroembryology and sees how you go from one sperm and one egg and when they meet it floor it forms a blastula and you get an implantation that leads to a folding in I the way I described it to my students when I taught nurse. It's like a hot dog in a bun. You look like a hot dog in a bun. And then something incredible happens and the hot dog folds and all of a sudden you see a forebrain and you see a midbrain and you see a hindbrain. That is the holiest, most divine thing I have ever tried to understand. And to me that's kind of what we're talking about. If I think about that on a galaxy level, right? We have, we have nonsense, we have tohu va vohu as we say in Hebrew, you know, we have a nothingness that becomes a somethingness.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It also then speaks to if there's a level of intelligence with intent for, for the structure of the earth and the people on the earth. Materialists say everything. There's no intelligent force in the universe. Everything is random. Nothing cares about us. And of course the religious fanatics will say, go the you know so far as to say that we should follow this dogma. Where does understanding that there can be a brain of the universe for over simplistically repeating? Where does that take us to understand if this force has our highest good in mind or some sort of benefit for us, or an intention for how the world should unfold?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

I am a naturalist. You could even say that it's My natural prejudice to be a naturalist. Everything in me resists the idea that this is a deliberate game and maybe that resistance is a sort of inner acknowledgement. I don't know. I'm open to my psychological limitations here, but I hold on to naturalism. But as a naturalist, I will immediately volunteer to you that there are incredibly difficult problems for the naturalist, such as the fine tuning of the universal constants, which is just mind boggling. If anything would deviate like a tiny, tiny, tiny little amount from their current values, there would be no complexity. There wouldn't be life, planets, galaxies. The fine tuning is just mind boggling. And life, life is, we use a word that the naturalist shouldn't use. Life is a miracle. It's again, mind boggling how the organizing principles of nature seem to push towards richness, complexity, to a great stage, like Shakespeare would call it, with a very complex play going on. I acknowledge that. To go back to psychology, I think to be a good philosopher in this day and age, you have to have some affinity with psychology. Because philosophers use only their minds as their instruments. They are not using oscilloscopes and telescopes and whatnot, they use their minds. So it's important that they be acquainted with how that instrument works so they know how to operate it reliably. When people say, look, we figured it all out, there is no mystery. We know how morphogenesis takes place in the growth of an organism. It's the distribution of certain fields and signaling molecules and whatnot. And the fine tuning, well, it's some kind of evolutionary universe in which new universes are produced on the other side of a black hole. And therefore only universes that have complexity can produce black holes and give rise to other universes. And you get the fine tuning that way. So all of these fantastical stuff that you wouldn't take seriously at all, it's like the talk of a drunk on the corner of the street. And yet people with PhDs will defend this as established fact. Look at the psychology. I think the psychology here is the incredible human need to find closure. Look, there is a theory in psychology called fluid compensation. It's part of terror theory and all that stuff. How do we react to threats? And the greatest threat to a human being is the loss of meaning. Amazingly enough, Viktor Frankl was onto this in the 40s and 50s. Now it's sort of experimental psychology showing us the same. It's an enormous threat if we are robbed of meaning. When you deny transcendence, you are robbed of the source of meaning that has given Meaning to every generation of humans before you. Everybody was religious in one way or another until the middle of the 19th century. And now many of us deny that. So they lose their key source of meaning. So they have to fluid compensate to another source of meaning. What are the other sources of meaning? Fantastically positive self image is one. The notion that you contribute to something that survives your existence is another. But a big one is closure. So even though the universe has no meaning, at the end, you're gonna die anyway. You understood it, you got one up on it. You figured it out, SOB you figured it out how it works. This is a powerful psychological motivation for people to communicate with great certainty. Hypothesis that are extraordinarily implausible, let alone proved or substantiated.

[Mayim Bialik]

Well, and you could even extrapolate that out to say, I mean, I don't want to go here, but I kind of do that really. All of our capitalistic, materialistic culture of consumption is one gigantic distraction from actually having to figure any of this out. Meaning. Like, when I look through my Instagram feed, and it is. It's war, it's protests, it's got. And then it's like, check out this thigh slit on my dress, right? And I totally get it. Like, you don't have to constantly be immersed in misery. I live it. And it's not really fun, but the. The cognitive dissonance that I have to sort of like. Like, oh, this is all going on. And there are people for whom that is a safe place to exist. But I think for me, when I was younger and you and I are the same age, when I was younger, I felt like no one understood me. Like, everybody was so interested in, like, parties and boys and makeup, and I was like, don't you understand? We're all going to die, you know? And, like, that's what happens if you read Sartre and Camu and Dostoevsky too early. You know, you become this, like, misanthropic, like, horrible teenager. But now that I'm an adult, I see that there are. We need all these different kinds of people, but our culture really is priming us to distract. Drink it away, smoke it away. Like, whatever makes you not have to be having this. This conversation.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

There you go. It is the basis even of our economic system. Look, I'm not saying that there is a grand conspiracy, because I don't think any human being is smart enough to find himself in the position of directing a grand conspiracy. I think we are all lost, right? And we react to it in a very spontaneous way. Nietzsche saw this in the second half of the 19th century. He talked about us today as the Lester Mensch. The last humans. And the last humans hop around planet Earth and they think they invented happiness because they have their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night. And then they blink and say, we have invented happiness. I almost quoted Nietzsche literally here. These are his words. Largely today we know that he was right first and we have even a deeper understanding of what the lestermensch is. The lestermensch is one that will pursue any addictive avenue available to distract themselves from the immediate questions of life. Who are we? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? And what is this all for? We don't think about that. And we will engage compulsively in patterns of addictive behavior to take our attention away from that. This is how we invented happiness. Lo and behold, this is what moves capitalism. Take this away and many less pairs of shoes will be sold. That's a problem.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Less pairs of shoes. But also, we were talking earlier today that 40% of the s and P is focused and propped up by technology companies. That their primary motive of interacting with the public is to incite rage. So it's rage capitalist. And you can see, is that a reflection of our internal state that requires us or tries to have us distract from these other meanings? And if so, what is the alternative? Right? Like if it's not religion and we need to reconnect with some form of meaning, how do we go about that?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

I don't have a recipe for the solution, but I think the path towards a solution doesn't go through blaming, doesn't go through saying that evil people are in control and that this is a deliberate move to destroy the lives of most of us for the benefit of the few who know exactly what's going on. I don't think anybody really knows what's going on. I think everybody's lost. The billionaire is as engaged in compulsive patterns of addiction as anybody else. But instead of buying the next pair of shoes, they are buying the next yacht, the next mansion. And they are also suffering. They also cannot find fulfillment. They are also desperately looking for distraction. Everybody is deep in the crap. So I think the path to a solution is not blaming and revolution. It is a form of mature, non romantic compassion. It's the recognition that every human being is just trying to do something to suffer less. I think this realization, it's not a solution. I'm not giving you a recipe or the seven steps to world harmony, but I think at least this gives a direction. The direction is not blame. The direction is a mature, sober form of compassion.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I like that because it really says, let's accept things as they are without trying to vilify and create more drama, which will only lead us further away from the type of love and openness that is required for a solution.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Yes, Jonathan, just. Just look at our situation. As humans, we are the first animals that have disconnected from the web of instinct that for everybody else, gives them instant answers about what to do and how to behave and how to go about life. We disconnected from the supercomputer of natural instinct. We now think for ourselves.

[Mayim Bialik]

And Jonathan. It's funny because Jonathan and I met, I don't know, over 15 years ago. We met because we had children the same age. And Jonathan and I both, you know, followed a style of parenting where people told us, you're crazy. You should have a wipes warmer because the baby's tush can't. And we were like, no, we're gonna be hipp. We're going to do it. And, like, I'm a lactation educator counselor, right? Like, I help women breastfeed. I gave birth with no drugs. And people like, you're crazy. All the benefits of society are waiting for you. What could possibly be wrong with that? And the notion, and it's not just about parenting, but the notion that saying, there is a wisdom in my body, there's a wisdom in my soul. Like, I'm even going to say that. And it may not feel the same to you as it does to me, but my experience on this planet is to listen to that, to learn the information, that I want to listen to other perspectives and decide how I want to live my life. But that the notion that we have instinct, that there's something evolutionarily beneficial to tapping into that part of us is part of what makes us an organic aspect of the universe. Yeah.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

But we don't trust it anymore. We don't listen to it. We replace it with our own stories, our own narratives. So we become utterly disconnected from it, and we. We live now profoundly unnatural lives. What was the last time you looked up to the sky at night and saw the stars? If you ask that to most people, they will. Let me think about it. I mean, this was a daily occurrence.

[Mayim Bialik]

It's fascinating. When you look at the star, like, the shit happens up there. Like, there's shooting stars. You see patterns. And I always try and figure out, like, why would the Greeks make that a lion? Okay, there must be a lot more stars than I can see, but that you can see the band of the Milky Way where Jonathan lives. You can see the band of the Milky Way. Like, that's amazing. And it was that. That was what you did to feel closer to something bigger than you. And that's what I always say. If you live in the projects, I understand you don't have nature. If you live in an apartment, you don't have the beautiful look up at the sky. That's it. One little hole, one star. That's your connection.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yes. And not to vilify anyone who may be purposely trying to remove us from this, but there have been a lot of unintended consequences based on decisions that prevent and separate people from this instinct. For example, the fact that most of the sky has so much light pollution in major city centers that you can't actually see it. There are so few dark sky cities. I happened to live in one last year and it was shocking how dark it was. Like terrifyingly dark in a way that you had to get used to. And you're like, oh my God. We have been removed from accessing this connection to nature that, that could be available to us all the time.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Yes, but why have we been robbed of that? It's because of our own addictive patterns of behavior that aim at distracting us from the real questions that confront us. We want to continue to be distracted at night. Therefore, we have to illuminate everything, you know, and we still want to go for a drink and dance at night and talk to others and read and whatnot. So that's the first tragedy that happened to us and that we should feel compassionate for. We've lost our connection to instinct. We are the first and only animal on this planet that unplugged from the supercomputer, that oriented, that orients life for everybody else, not for us. We replace that with our own tiny little chatter. That's the first tragedy. The second tragedy is also the greatest tool we have always had. We have become self reflective. We are the only animals that die. Nobody else dies because they don't have the thought, I'm gonna die, Tudy never die. My cat doesn't die.

[Mayim Bialik]

That doesn't feel very fair.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

We are the only ones that die because we are the only ones that know that we are going to die.

[Mayim Bialik]

Having a conversation about death is uniquely Homo sapiens sapiens. As far as we know.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

Yes. You can see other higher animals grieving. I think there is sufficient evidence that some higher primates, pachyderms, like elephants, they do grieve Even Covidians, some birds that they do grieve. But I don't think they are going around telling themselves, one day it's going to be me. Therefore, what should I do? We are the only ones. So it is exquisitely difficult to be human. And I think that's the realization that we should always keep in the back of our minds as a background to casting blame. We should cast blame. Sometimes we must cast blame. I damn blame Putin right now for the catastrophe that is unfolding in my continent again after eight years at this scale. I blame him squarely, and there is nothing, my philosophy, that tells me that I shouldn't. But the background of my blame casting is it's exquisitely difficult to be Vladimirovich Putin, just as it is exquisitely difficult to be me. And his humanity connects with mine, not in the sense of holding hands and singing the Kumbaya, you bet. If I had the chance, I would shove him in a very nice cozy cell here in the Hague.

[Mayim Bialik]

This comes up when we talk to people who have had near death experiences. And this comes up frequently because people love to ask, you know, because people with near death experiences, most typically, statistically speaking, right, Thousands and thousands of reports, they report experiencing a connection with something greater than themselves that is indescribable. It's eternal, it's light, it's love. Some people see Jesus like whatever you, God, whatever you want to call it. And what do people love to ask these individuals? Where are all the bad people? Where's Hitler? Is Hitler there too? In God's warm, loving embrace to which people who have had NDEs say, I can't explain it. I can't explain that there is a aspect of being in touch with consciousness, is that there is something that potentially unites all of humanity and horrible things will happen in the human experience. But where are the places where we can still say there is, I don't want to say goodness. They're all just human words, right? It's like you can't even articulate it.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

From my human, limited human perspective. I look around and I see a nature in which what we call evil is as prevalent as what we call good. And some, many times not in a malicious way. I mean, I often talk about this experience I had many years ago as I was watching a nature documentary in which a pride of elephants isolated a grown elephant and brought the elephant down. The pride of lions consumed the elephant from the hind legs up for six hours before the elephant passed out. Passed out, not die. That is nature. This stuff happens. If we were in the neighborhood of a star about to go supernova. Yeah, we should be giving ourselves our last rights right now. It's nature. It's not like supernova is malicious. People who are killed by tornadoes, you don't go and say the tornado is malicious. No, the tornado just doesn't know what it's doing. It literally does not know what it's doing. Many human beings do not know what they are doing. Supernovae don't know what they are doing. And the pride of lions doesn't really know what they are doing. They don't have the capacity of empathy to realize what they are putting another living being, which is themselves, through. So there is reason for compassion, I think. Look, we are always looking for solutions, and sometimes that's not the game. Sometimes the game is not to solve the problem, but to abide in the problem with some degree of compassion for ourselves. Some things are not problems to be solved, but experiences to be lived. So when we say we are distracting ourselves because we don't want to confront the real problems and people believe it, and then they will say, okay, now I will confront the real problem, but I need to solve it. That's the gut instinct of our society. We are culturally indoctrinated to think in these terms. If you acknowledge a problem, you have to immediately start thinking about solution. And your life will only be worth living after you find that solution. And until then, it's just work to be done. It all just only starts when you find the solution that is a problem. I think an avenue to explore is to, okay, stop the compulsive, addictive pattern of distraction that we are all engaged in and which moves our entire economic system. Look deeper and then it will stop by itself. And then you will see the real problem. And it's a gargantuan abyss. It's monstrous. It's about to swallow us up. And then the way to go, I think, is not to say, okay, how do I solve it? Then how do I close the abyss and walk to the other side? No, I think acknowledging how frightful our condition intrinsically is as human beings disconnected from instinct and knowing they're going to die. How frightful it is inherently, and then having a little compassion for ourselves and being okay with not being able to solve everything immediately and abide in the presence of the problem, of the question, without having to solve it or being distracted from it.

[Mayim Bialik]

I'm going to ask a question that might sound funny, but I don't mean it funny. Why don't you do interviews anymore? Why Are you talking to us? I would listen to you all day, every day. Why are you keeping humanity from you?

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

This is a completely different interview from what I usually go through. And I knew that. That's why I accepted your. Your invitation, because I smelled it. I watched some of your previous episodes as well. Normally in regular interviews, I'm just asked all the question I've answered 3,000 times already. And there is a point where I think I'm not really adding value by doing it again, you know, But I am not surprised that you guys didn't that at all. You didn't even use the word idealism or daimon once today, and I'm very grateful to you for it.

[Mayim Bialik]

We're gonna hit pause here on our conversation with Dr. Kastrup. There is so much more. In part two of our conversation with him, we're gonna talk about some of the extremely practical implications of an understanding of the universe and the brain as a microcosm of. Of what's happening in the larger universe. And we're also going to talk about diagnoses like cancer and how we can understand the dissociative aspects of things like cancer. We're also going to talk about the placebo effect and what happens when we die. In addition, he's going to really go deep into his own mental health journey and also his experience with psychedelics as consciousness expanding. So from our, our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.

[Dr. Bernardo Kastrup]

It's Maya Bialix breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two, but now she's going to break down. To break down. She's going to break it down.