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- [00:00]
A
When I'm born as Jeffrey Mishlove, I know what it is to be Jeffrey Mishlove. Yep. So awareness is is one transcendent thing and it wants to experience all of itself. So when I'm born as you, then I know what it's like to be you.
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B
Keep watching to learn more.
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A
Book 4 in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogue series is Charles T. Tart, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
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New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spiritual the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingalowed.org. Thinking Allowed Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we'll be exploring the topic of meta theurgy. My guest is Kevin can, who has been a guest three times previously on the new Thinking Allowed channel. Kevin is the founder of a school of I'll call it a school of philosophy, perhaps better thought of as a school of metaphysics known as Platonic Surrealism. Kevin was also a major contributor to Jeffrey Kripal's recent book, how to Think Impossibly. In addition, he has been offering workshops on Platonic Surrealism at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Kevin is based in California. And now I'll switch over to the Internet video. Welcome Kevin. It is a pleasure to be with you once again.
- [02:40]
A
Jeff, you're one of my favorite people in the world and your work is just outstanding. It is such an honor.
- [02:46]
B
Thank you, Kevin. Well, in our previous interview we talked about how to summon. I suppose it might be fair to say that the idea of summoning a UFO or creating phenomena of any sort at all or I think you used the phrase wonder working in one of your messages. To me, those would be examples of theurgy or I like the phrase you have meta theurgy, but actually theurgy is a much larger topic, wouldn't you say?
- [03:24]
A
It is quite a topic. Most people are left in the past with Iamblichus and how theurgy is kind of trying to beg God for results but throwing a lot of philosophy at it to make it acceptable to the time and era that it originated in. And metathurgy is no such thing. It's more of a recognition that all of us are a part of the great cycle of life, most welcome, and we don't need to beg. We are already, all of us, the most downtrodden of us, really pretty awesome in what we can have in life. But maybe we might need a little help.
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B
So.
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A
So if I can give a little help, and I've certainly been given a little help many times, then let's make this work. Jeffrey.
- [04:17]
B
Well, as you point out, theurgy goes back to the ancient Greeks, to the Neoplatonists, at least, if not much older. I think it would be fair to say that it involves attaining what you might think of as more expanded consciousness.
- [04:39]
A
There's no question about it. You're certainly not going to find your creative center if all you do is listen to the empty words of other people who don't have your best welfare in mind, or even people who do have your best welfare in mind, but they don't happen to understand the entirety of space, time, reality and beyond. And they might just want you to get your overdue library book back in time, and that's their only concern for you.
- [05:05]
B
Going back to the summoning of the ufo, which we talked about before, as an example of theurgy, it seems that pure theurgy, I guess I might have been led to believe by some of my conversations with a fellow named Ronnie Pontiac on the same topic, who translated the hymns of Orpheus as a form of. Form of theurgy is mostly about bringing, elevating consciousness to become closer to the divine, one might say, and in ancient Greek terms, closer to the gods. It would seem, though, that it also includes this element of wonder working.
- [05:52]
A
Absolutely.
- [05:53]
B
Or magic.
- [05:54]
A
Absolutely. But let me put a more postmodern glaze on it. And I am not a slave to postmodernism, trust me. You know, and here I'm going to get off the track just a little bit, because I love to do that and I haven't done it yet, so I'm going to do it now. We certainly had our problems with pre modernism, where if you didn't agree with someone, they felt that they could, you know, cut your head off or something if you didn't want to go along with their way of viewing the universe as probably revealed by someone who caught fish or something. We're in a different era, and I'm very thankful for the scientific progress we've had. The. Oh, I guess, is it the. See, I'm not either. French, Italian Enlightenment, French Enlightenment, I guess the European Enlightenment. Very Grateful for it. But as you know, I think it threw baby out with the bath water a little bit, and it's time to circle around. So a lot of people are in. Are in this postmodern morass where the old meanings aren't working, the current meanings aren't working, and they want something from the future, but we haven't created it yet. So thus the meta. I. People might think I've got meta obsession. I know it's not, you know, the parent corporation of Facebook, though they're fine lads too, over there, but I mean, just in the sense of above or from a higher perspective, a more complete overview. We need these metas now, the old things of the past. They were great for what they did, and we need to improve on them. And I'm just overjoyed to work with anyone, to meet with anyone that wants to participate in that. So Platonic surrealism, which was the core system, but which eventually I wrote up as encapsulating modified general relativity, comments about quantum mechanics, all this stuff beside, I feel it is deeply part of physics, or rather physics is actually deeply part of meta theurgy. But, you know, everybody always wants their club to be the one that's number one. You know, the. The physicalist, the pure physicalists go, well, you know, consciousness is just a little. A little bit of confusion between atoms, and let's not worry about it, just shut up and calculate. And, well, you can do that if you want, but then you often wind up with an empty heart, or if you fill your heart up, your mind might become so open your brains, dribble out. So we got to go beyond the past and we got to go beyond postmodernism. And that's what I'm working to make my very humble, My very humble little voice be heard. And how this is a real thing for me that we can actually do this. At least there's something solid to investigate. So, yeah, we don't like to say the divine, even though metathurgy is wonder. Working with the permission of the divine is really what it came from and what it means. I think it's insulting to put the divine in a little box and say, well, we sing hymns to you on Sunday, but we're real bastards the rest of the week. No, no, no, no, no, no. And physics should not be excluded from the church either. It's just one stuff. And let's not put these ridiculous titles on it that then cause us to fight wars with each other over. Let's not do that. I hope I indirectly addressed Your question.
- [09:45]
B
Well, you addressed my question and raised several others. As you hinted, we live in what people call a postmodern era. And to me, postmodernism is sort of the way I interpret it. It's like nothing means anything. There is no absolute meaning to anything in the world. All meaning is relative. And usually when we ascribe philosophical meaning to anything, what's really going on is it's a cover for some sort of power manipulation.
- [10:24]
A
Oh, yeah, that's the modern critical teaching that. For example, my best male friend in the world, probably, Sorry, Jeff, you're only like down number two or three of best friends. Jeffrey. James Kripal, he's an expert in critical theory, like other scholars of religion and philosophy. And I really, I'm grateful to him. He wrote the book, one of the foundational tomes from Chicago Press on that process. So critical theory and we needed to disentangle from the confusions of the past. And I am not seeking a naive mysticism or spirituality or groping after some feeble hope for perennialism. I have no interest in any of that because I've landed firmly on the very heartbeat of reality and the physical universe itself. I have. And so I don't care for any of that naive bullshit. Not any of it.
- [11:32]
B
You've developed a series of rituals or exercises, actually a combination of exercises, I think, to prepare one for rituals. So I think it would be fair to say that theurgy or metatheurgy, it does involve ritual.
- [11:51]
A
Yes. And I want to address that very basic premise of ritual because it'll turn some people off. You see, what people may not realize, people who may not be amenable to such talk because it smacks of the past, right? You know, candles and some people say, oh, he's playing with demons. Demons or something like that. But nothing of the sort, my friend, nothing of the sort. The way we carry ourselves during the day is a ritual. I just wanted that to sink in. We're all doing rituals constantly. And the quote, rituals of, well, the rituals of Platonic surrealism are non verbal. So you can do them while taking a shower, while, you know, instructing your kids not to steal a car and bring it back broken. You can do them at any time. They're contemplation and focusing of awareness, rituals. Nothing spooky, nothing occult, nothing arcane. Now, meta theurgy at the very top end, if you want to do like group rituals or something, it is a little more ritual like. But, you know, people go to church on Sunday and have their little rituals or they go to a sports game and they have their rituals. It is a ritual to go to a sports game. You got to have your cheese head or your finger and your air horn, and you got a bad talk. The people on the other team, there's rituals club, you know, maybe not moment by moment, but so frequently we can't go an hour without a ritual. So ritual is not a dirty word. That's what I'm saying. And I don't want people to get into weirdness or weird spirituality or yoga or the occult. That's not what I'm talking about here. We have been ritualized into a defeated, broken people in many places in the world, crushed by postmodernism, tending towards despair and confusion. And that's what our rituals that we are observing right now have turned us into. And I say that it's not that hard to back out of that defeated framework.
- [14:14]
B
Well, that's encouraging news, because some people, I hear from people, as a matter of fact, on a regular basis, who feel trapped in their sense of powerlessness, in their sense that other people, the elites of one type or another, are controlling their lives, that they don't have agency, they don't have sovereignty over themselves. Suicide rates seem very high and possibly increase. So you're addressing a very real problem. But for many people, including myself, when I hear from these people, I feel kind of helpless. Like, what can I do to help this person who is on the edge of suicide?
- [14:57]
A
Well, exactly. I assume, Jeff, that it's okay to discuss the place I just was this last weekend.
- [15:08]
B
Absolutely.
- [15:09]
A
I had one of the most lovely weekends of my life, Honestly. Probably. Well, my first weekend when I met my wife, was right up there. But that should tell you something how highly I rate the weekend I was invited to go to Esalen. Esalen itself asked me to come and present a class called the Soul is a ufo. And, you know, I know about these things. I've summoned a ufo. I know what the soul is. So it was a fair ask of me, but I'm still rather gobsmacked. You know, I really was, oh, I'm supposed to do this. And I've got less than four hours total to do this. It was quite an event. There was a lot of hugging, a lot of crying, a lot of great conversation. I had PhDs of various kinds, engineers. I had people that wanted to show up and just feel good about themselves. I had people that wanted me to help them with serious illness or pervasive life problems. And I helped a lot of people like that. Well, apparently that's what they seem to. That was their takeaway. But I'm afraid I didn't prove the paranormal with physics. Some wanted me to do that. They came across the country for that or something of that nature. And I could not do that in under four hours. And my apologies, I, I did the best I could, but I learned a lot and I'm really grateful for the experience. I was like I say I was with Jeff Kripal and Joshua Kutchen, very esteemed author. I was a fanboy of his before he was a fanboy of mine and I still am a fanboy of his. What a guy. What an author. On the heat. There's just no one that can touch him. On Ecology of Souls and Fairylorne.
- [17:13]
B
Now which of these two are you referring to? Kripal or Joshua Kutchin?
- [17:18]
A
Both of them, they're both, they're both giants to me that I just admire and they both have contributed highly to my life and welfare and they've given me a little boost up and so I want to return the favor. And, and last but not least, Jonathan Zapp was my other instructional assistant and his Singularity archetype is really quite magnificent. He wrote a book on the topic and I talked about it a little bit. We might want to talk about it if there's time. Just in the fact of people feel that we're coming to the end of history sort of feeling nowadays. And of course that happens about every 200 years since, since, you know, Throg smashed Ugg with a club and he didn't like it. They thought it was the end of the world. But there's certainly a confluence of many potent and not necessarily life affirming forces and people are looking for something transcendent. Well, I want to give them one small dose of transcendence if I can. And yeah, I did. I did a metathurgy ritual at Esalen and one beautiful lady, I mean she's probably 60. I, I'm not sure she'd appear on the front of, you know, the swimsuit model list, but she was beautiful throughout her being and that's all that I care about. You know, she, she had a lifelong affliction and she, she said she felt much better. Now. Will she go back to her full gravitas of her health condition? You know, tomorrow? Maybe. I don't know. Hopefully I'll get to hear from her. It could have been a permanent improvement. These things do happen from time to time. And we also did have a black triangle UFO purportedly purportedly show up at Esalen. Now the story behind that is that it appeared over the hot tubs where all such things happen at Esalen, going back, you know, since the place was opened up, that's where it appeared. So of course, you know, with my, you know, firm waistline, I don't go to the hot tubs much. So we only had one or two people see it and report back. But I had the realization that there was going to be people that not only wanted me to like solve the problems of modern physics, but they wanted me to and heal their health problems. And I'm not mocking anyone, I'm just saying everybody, you know, these are valid things to want. But they'd want me to summon a ufo. Well, the last time I did it, it took me three days. So I knew I wasn't going to have three days. So I pre summoned it to be waiting for me when I got the Esalen. I try to think ahead, you know, live in the present moment. But still, thinking ahead is not a bad idea. So yeah, it seemed to be waiting for me there, but I didn't get to see it. Well, I saw it last time. It's fine. And of course it could just be, honestly, it could be bs. But the young woman who saw it was so sincere and she'd also snapped a. Oh, she's just gonna be so pleased with herself when I talk about her. I called her UFO Orb girl in the class and she just died. She was so proud of herself. She also claimed to have seen an orb, but what it turned out to be actually was an iPhone digital artifact and not an orb at all. And I wasn't certain if that's what it was or if it was a real orb. It could have been, could have gone either way. I've never used an iPhone or Apple products, so I had no expertise in this. But someone who did said, well, sorry to break your bubble. I said, no, I didn't have a bubble. You know, everything is subject to investigation and revision. That's what makes science beautiful and that's what makes historically made religion ugly, because they wouldn't let themselves be proven wrong even when they were. So we need that kind of freedom. We need the wonder of religion and metaphysics and we need the clarity of collaborative cross checking of each other so that we can make the best possible lives for each other.
- [21:48]
B
Getting back to the topic of metatheurgy and ritual, why would I want to do. Here I am living my life, doing interviews. What value would I find in my life or one of our viewers, what value would they find in their lives from seriously considering the topic of metatheurgy?
- [22:13]
A
That's the question, isn't it? If you have a happy, perfect life, if you don't suffer. Now, of course, you know, I got you right there. Because everyone suffers. It's impossible not to suffer. Even the very wealthy that have estates and half a dozen places in the world, they suffer because they have all that money to guard and fight over and try to maintain. Everyone suffers. But let's just say you're a regular happy person. You've got a job you kind of like. You've got a wife or husband and whatever, partner and family, and you're just happy more often than not. Stay away from this, okay? The people that try to sell you a bill of goods will say that you need it, whether you do or not. And I'm not one of those people because I don't make any money on this stuff. I lose a lot of money on this stuff. I don't even get paid generally for anything. Some people press a little money on me here and there, but it's like I'm playing a guitar and they throw it in my case, you know? You know, it's kind of like being a writer, Jeff. Sometimes young people, they're like 17 or something, and they're asked what they want to do with their life, and they say they want to be a writer. And then some more seasoned person will kind of laugh and say, well, you can't really do that until you've got some life experience. You've got to hurt first before you can heal, have a story to tell. So people who have been hurt and want to heal, and they want a new story that is postmodernism and despair and all this shit, and they want something that squeezes out all the bullshit as best it can, and then just simple things that they can do, simple thoughts they can have in their head, and it might all just get better rapidly. I mean, not necessarily the life circumstances. God, no, we're kind of in a. You see, I say God. I'm not ashamed of saying God. When I say God, I really mean potentiality and awareness, though that's as high as platonic surrealism goes. There are no old white men who want to tell women that they've screwed up since the Garden of Eden, then blame everything on them. And they're not even allowed to have their head uncovered in church or to speak or to have input. That's. No, no, no. We gotta. I have no time for that personally. So, you know, the original concept for botanic surrealism was to help people who were mystics, who were having dark nights of the soul. Because there's no, you know, there really is. No. There really are very few good instruction manuals for this stuff. And if you're caught in the middle of it, I mean, where do you find help? You go find some guru and he's going to want your billfold at least half the time or whatever else of you he wants. So I just want to put information out there. Everything I write is public domain. I want people to steal it and I want them to argue about it. I want them to tell me I'm wrong. But I'm getting people increasingly starting to steal my material, that is, use it, and they take concepts from it and they use it in their own walk. See, that's actually why early Christianity worked, because there were many Christianities in the beginning and there was a new entry in the marketplace of ideas, the words, an example of Jesus, you know, like, love your enemy. Nobody had ever said that before, so people wanted to steal it. And you had this kind of Gnosticism and this kind of Gnosticism and this kind of not orthodox Christian Christianity. So you see, if you're a selfish bastard and you want to, like, copyright everything and make money off it, it's going to die on the vine most of the time. But if you put it out there in the marketplace of ideas with an open heart, I'd like to think that some people will find some merit in some of the material.
- [26:30]
B
Well, I think that what you're getting at is a way of, minimally speaking, reframing some ancient ideas and putting them into a contemporary metaphor, that's it. But I say minimally because I think you go even a step beyond that, which is that the contemporary metaphor actually works to a certain degree. It works, let me put it this way. I think it works better than some of the very revered ancient ideas, like, let's take Vedanta as an example, Vedanta philosophy or Buddhism. They are wonderful, they are comprehensive. They have lasted thousands of years. But there are many aspects of the modern world that they simply don't address.
- [27:28]
A
Now, you can talk about chakras, you can talk about nadis, you can talk about this and that, but for the modern sensibility, and I'm not saying those things aren't there, because I, you know, I studied yoga for about 25 years. Not Hatha postures, but the metaphysical type of yogas. And, you know, if you say left brain Hemisphere. Right. Brain, hemisphere. If you opine about the possibility of senient plasma and maybe we're in a symbiosis with it, you know, if you say, well, the universe is filled with plasma, 99.99%. Could that be the demiurge of Gnosticism? Well, now. Now we're stepping it up a level. Like that TV chef says, we're stepping it up a level. And I believe in my humble estimation that Platonic zeruism has stepped it up a level.
- [28:26]
B
Let's talk about wonder working again. What value is there in wonder working?
- [28:33]
A
Tremendous value. What else would I say if I couldn't say that, I wouldn't come on the show because if I don't have something to give, then I'm not going to be some liar, you know. You see wonder working. Historically, people wanted what we would call nowadays video game cheat codes. That's what they were looking for. They wanted to do magic with personal benefit without running afoul of the church, that sort of thing. That's really how I think it developed. I mean, there were earlier concepts, even before Christianity, but then they had their own, let's call them pagan sensibilities that theurgists might run afoul. But it's not about, can you summon a UFO with it, though you can and I did. In fact, I did twice, apparently. Though of course I don't have photos. And we can talk about that too later if you want to. This whole photo, no photo thing with UFOs drives me nuts. Well, it doesn't. But it should. Or shouldn't. But anyway, here's the thing. Wonder working should start at home. It should start in your heart, in your mind, in your body and in your family, in your sphere of influence. That's where the wonders should really be. And you know, the longer I relax into the practices of Platonic surrealism and metathurgy, the more they just become a daily habit. And I don't have to do rituals anymore. I become a walking ritual. See, that's what I was talking about. I don't have a negative attitude about hardly anything. I mean, and I'm not going to go into it, okay? That's not this kind of episode. The politics in the United States is pure offal. It doesn't work for anybody. And, well, it works for one person. I'm going to stop right there. That's the only person it works for. Maybe a few cronies, but if you look at all the polls, it's really, you know, politics in the US is hurting A lot of people, it doesn't seem to be helping really anyone. And you know, meta theology can't fix that. And that's, this is very important here. Jeffrey. Platonic surrealism views our world as a movie. A movie. And I'm going to use, I always wind up using the word God. It's like a movie in the mind of God and God watches all the movies, only there isn't a God in that sense because humans created all the gods, you know, because nobody has come down moment by moment and said I'm God, so that you're not allowed to argue. It's always things, stories passed on by men, usually men and women, but stories passed around. And it's, you know, in Platonic suruism we give a lot of honor to people like Jung because actually God is just a projection of a white male power stereotype held in the super ego. That's what God is. That's what that is. The God of pretty much all the religions.
- [32:07]
B
Now that sounds like post modernism to me.
- [32:11]
A
It does. But then I add the healing. There really is something transcendent there. Just don't loop women out of the picture, don't loop children out of the picture, don't loop animals out of the picture. Life is there, life is transcendent. But our self serving power concepts do not do justice to it. And we need to stop, in my opinion, we need to stop using them before we nuke ourselves to death or plague ourselves to death or cook ourselves to death. We need to stop that. We're not headed in a healthy direction.
- [32:48]
B
Sort of paradoxical because on the one hand, if I recall correctly, earlier in this very interview you suggested that metatheurgy could help us to address the alienation, the ennui, the horrible stress and suffering that people are under. And then again you're saying it can't. And I guess what you're ultimately saying is that both are true.
- [33:18]
A
Both are true. Let me explain further. In fact, this is at the very core of meta theory. This is at the very core, brother, you hit on, you hit it, Hallelujah. You hit it. You hit the core. You're paying attention with your bright exuberant mind. So we're in a movie and in a sense in the terms of physics. We haven't talked any physics. It's super deterministically generated outside of time. And in a sense we're living in a read only copy of patterns and potentiality that are infinitely spun with minor variations so that all experiences are experienced. In a sense, we don't have enough free will to not sneeze or, you know, what we have for lunch? We don't have any. In a sense, we have no free will at all. Zero. And then people get all depressed and angry and throw things at me in the cat. But here's the good news, you know, free will. My, what a topic. I get tossed these topics, don't I? So, free will. I want to talk about free will for a bit. This is so important. It's the crux of everything. Well, that and the fact that we live across multiple time eras. I'm always referring to the loop. You know, the future self is transcendent and the past self isn't. But they both need each other. So they're in a loop of growing together, needing each other, bounding each other, fertilizing each other. The past can greatly influence the future, which then feeds back to the past. It's all a loop. Or it can be. Or we can just keep our head down and let assholes run the world. And we suffer. We've got a choice. Actually, we do. There's a very narrow thread of free will that we can have. And that's what meta theurgy is actually all about in Platonic surrealism. So if we're in a read only movie, then why do anything? I mean, you know, you might wake up in the morning and be a rabid follower of botanic surrealism, though there's nothing to follow, it's just some information. Or you could wake up and, you know, be like the apostle Paul and want to wipe it out. You know, I mean, well, when he was Saul. Anyway, I like my Bible. I like to know everything someone might want to throw my way. So super determinism is a solution to quantum mechanics and many things in physics and even physicists don't tend to like it. Most of them want quantum mechanics because they think that in what they view as random acts there's some sort of free will. And then if you throw in Roger Penrose and his quantum stuff in the brain, then people can use quantum mechanics kind of mystically, whether they admit to it or not, and look for free will. But sorry folks, it doesn't quite work that way. At least not in my experience. So here's the deal. Meta theurgy. A strong part of the meta is what's called reverse path integration. You see, in standard theurgy you've got like God up here, the one, the father, whatever the old Gnostics and Platonists and people called him. And then you've got this like emanation wave, you know, God's perfect and then the wave spreads out and it's less perfect and less perfect. And then you wind up here where I live, which has really bad air and it's some of the. Yeah, so you had this progression of perfection to brokenness in those standard old systems. Well, they really didn't do us any favors with that. Because when you see the world that way, then either nothing matters because you're in the shittiest place in reality and so you might as well be an asshole and get what comfort you can by oppressing others, or you just give up, you let it break you and you turn to like, I don't know, Merkaba or whatever to try to ascend your way out of the mess. I don't pronounce anything right. You know that. Jeffrey, I've been a hermit my whole life. I'm just coming out, talking to people, sharing my data. So that emanationist model doesn't do us any good. It's really shitty because there's.
- [38:12]
B
Emanationist model. Can you amplify what is that?
- [38:16]
A
Yeah, that's where the good, the perfect God is in the center. And then life's like a degrading radio signal where the farther out it gets from God, the crappier reality gets. That's the emanationist model. But that emanationist model isn't true. Isn't remotely true. The one of the first catchphrases of Plotinus realism was and is. Reality is broken by design. But broken doesn't necessarily mean a negative thing. It can simply mean broken apart so that we can get a better look at things. You see, if you're a transcendent being beyond time and space and you're 100% complete and perfect, well, you are the most bored dude in all of reality. There's nothing to do, there's no one to talk to, there's no one to love. And so that's why in some interesting systems from the past, for example Lurianic Kabbalah, you've got the perfect one that shatters into many fragments. And Platonic surrealism is similar to that, but it doesn't proclaim it was a one time event. It says that it happens constantly. Like in the great cycles they talk about in Hinduism and Buddhism sometimes that as soon as that. Yes, in Platonic surrealism, it's called primordial consciousness. First you've got potentiality, which is the potential for any attribute, any weight is raw potential that doesn't do anything. You've got awareness, which is the ability to perceive. And there's only one awareness. The same awareness that, quote, God has, we have. There's just one awareness. And it watches little slices of potentiality. And in those watchings, it takes notes in the form of monads that record experience, gain a sense of self. And then each monad, which I know means the One. And, you know, according to Leibniz or Plato, it meant the One. And it's like the Father. But now, the reason I called him monads is that when you are a monad, let's say you're a new baby monad, you think you're Jehovah, that you've created everything, that there are no other gods, for example. But as we know, Jehovah was actually brothers with baal, who was. They were sons of a Canaanite God, El. So even the Christian God thought he was. See, he was a monad, actually. You could see his behavior. You could see his behavior evolving from how monads are. They want to think that they're everybody's boss, but they're just one squeaky voice. And you can ignore them in that burning bush, you see, you can ignore them because they got to grow up. You know, all this rampaging around and destroying countries and taking their stuff and doing it in the name of your God, that kind of stuff needs to stop. The world's getting smaller every day, and we need to get along with each other. We're all part and parcel of the same thing. So where I'm going with this, and no, I wasn't entirely off track, is that the perfect kind of materialized basis of awareness, grasping as much of potentiality as it can, is called primordial consciousness. And I think in Kabbalism, they've got a term for it. Other systems, they have a term for it. I don't know what their terms are necessarily, but it doesn't stay that way. You know, there's always this, like. Regardless of tradition, there's always this, like, Garden of Eden sort of thing where everything was perfect and beautiful and then it all goes to shit. Every tradition seems to have that. Well, thank goodness Platonic surrealism is not a tradition, it's a framework. See, Platonic surrealism doesn't say there was some catastrophic event and that we were in the garden and then everything got all screwed up. It doesn't say that at all. It says there are regular cycles of coming together and breaking apart, coming together and breaking apart with a great deal of what's called Divine amnesia. Because if you remember, if you're sitting in a movie theater and you've got to forget that you're a person who walked into a theater and let the movie absorb you or you're not going to have a good time. So there's this mandatory element of transcendent forgetfulness that is required. So there are many shitty things that happen in, in this world and others, but they're all part of what we experience and there's purpose and there's meaning and there's room for us to take a shitty world, a so called read only world. It's possible to feed back via reverse path integration and tell the monads, hey, wouldn't it be more fun if instead of being a red shirk on Star Trek, I'm. I'm going to be the plucky comic relief like in Journey Quest the movie? And you can do that, you can do that. And you're your old compatriot Ted Owens, he was a prime example. He was so entertaining. Reality let him go around and play quite a lot.
- [44:21]
B
Let me ask you this question, Kevin, to try and push a little deeper. What is a human being?
- [44:29]
A
Why a human being is a ufo. Let me explain. And the human beings, a soul and a ufo. Here's the deal. You've got awareness, okay? First you've got potentiality, which has the potential to be anything, but is actually nothing. It's the potential to be things. You've got awareness, which carves out a subset. But awareness can just be a looking at data and not really doing much with it. It isn't so much a thing yet. But when it loops back on itself and investigates itself, then you get a conscious being. It's what Bernardo Castro talks about too. Guy's brilliant, you know, just utterly freaking brilliant. And I honor and recognize his brilliance. And Platonics realism didn't. Did I steal that from him? I don't know. The universe knew it though. I don't know who did what. We're not going to worry about that. I called him brilliant. That, that'll suffice. But once you've got subjective, subjective awareness, then you've got skin in the game. And once you've got skin in the game, then you want to use it, you want to accomplish something with it. So all these vast seas of monads, they start out as a one, what I say is a one bit entity. And that bit is, oh, I exist. They suddenly realize they exist. It happens right after primordial consciousness breaks into chunks. And then you get beings because there are no beings in primordial consciousness in any recognizable way. So you get these monads now at first, and I'm getting the human being, you can trust me.
- [46:25]
B
At first.
- [46:25]
A
The monad goes, I am Jehovah, you know, my will is all. And you know what they are. They are until they meet someone else. I mean, you can go, I want things this way, I want things this way. And if you've got the imagination and it's in your head, so to speak, you can dream up anything you want. So monads, they dream up vast worlds and vast creative palettes and experiences and then sometimes they stick on one for a trillion years. I mean, every morning you get up, you have the best breakfast. It's never different. Because anything different wouldn't be perfect, you see. And after a few trillion years, or though time is kind of a silly flexible concept, but just, just metaphorically you get sick of your own shit and you want some excitement. It would be as wonderful if there was someone else. Well then when they want to meet someone else, they do. They realize, oh look, there are others besides me, just like me. And then they go, hi, hi, hi, I want to be friends. You ever seen two dogs? You know, there's the friendly new dog and he runs up and tries to smell the butt of the cranky old dog. And the old cranky old dog goes and doesn't necessarily like it. Well, that's often how it is with monads. It's like, oh, there's a newborn here, I'm trying to create 11 galaxies and he's just trying to get into my ship. Monads are attracted to each other, but they dislike each other in general. Kind of like people imagine that monads are people too. And the core problem you get is that since a monad, it's kind of like a soul in the. It's not a soul, but I'll get to that. That's the next step. But a monad is kind of like a soul in that long running TV show Supernatural where sometimes the angels will stick their finger in the chest of a human to get a power zap to do some time travel or something. And they were leeching off power from the human soul and they'd say it was like a unregulated massive nuclear reactor in there. Well, that's what monads are like. They've got so much raw power, so much. I mean, take all the matter in our universe, convert it to energy, and that is 1% of what any one monad has, more than that. And so they go up to another guy, another monad or girl or they don't have genders, but. And they want to make friends. And what, Juggling unlicensed universe scale nuclear reactors and trying to get them to play nicely with each other just doesn't tend to work, especially with the newbies. They don't know how to do it. So you know what they need? They need an interface like a nice, nice, safe, much slower in time and space, physical world, to meet other monads through the context of living beings, like people. So it's in, it's to the benefit of monads to further learn about themselves, not be bored, and to the benefit of reality as a whole to send these little probes down into space and time so that it can play, not be bored, grow as a being. You see, if you're in the infinite light or the infinite dark, you're torn apart. You can't function as a being. You have to be in a gray zone, an intermediate realm. And that's where we are, is an intermediate realm. Now in Platonic surrealism we say that monads, if they're wise, they will collaborate with their fellows and mutually, with some experience, send down souls that are really combined data streams of the collaboration between multiple sources of wisdom and knowledge. Multiple monads. So I, in Platonic zeruism, we call souls purposes. Or you could say mission, but mission gets all glorped up in our culture. I like purposes. Souls are purposes and they could last for 20 years. Like I had a soul originally that only had four monads sending data streams. And as discussed a little bit in how to Think of Possibly with Jeff Kripal, I got flung into the bardo and I watched the four streams of information from monads discuss their many adventures as a singular being. They sort of the treasures in the bardo and then they split up and went their separate ways as information streams. So it took, it took a while to get a new soul. And I think I got several hundred of those fellers now as part of my purpose. That is, my ideas have become very expansive and I'm drawing on a lot of sources. If you just want to make it a metaphor.
- [51:46]
B
I know that your work seems to be expanding and you're putting a lot of meat on the bones, so to speak, with the concept of Platonic surrealism. Getting back though, to metatheurgy, let's talk a little bit about the exercises. You have, I think a list of 10 different exercises. Or is it nine?
- [52:08]
A
Yeah, it's 10. And actually metatheurgy is kind of a capstone 11. But I need to finish answering your first question. Jeff. I'm sorry if I was making you a little silly.
- [52:17]
B
Oh, did I interrupt you? We haven't gotten to what is a human being yet.
- [52:21]
A
We haven't.
- [52:23]
B
Okay, because I thought what you were saying is that a human being is essentially a monad, not an animal.
- [52:31]
A
A human being is awareness and potentiality that has a reflexive capability. That is the ultimate thing that a human being is. But here in this world, we've got the five interfaces of Platonic throughism that work with the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere with the neurons in the gut, which is often associated, which is 20% of the neurons in our body are actually in our stomach and intestines. And often the shadow, Jung shadow, the parts we suppress about ourselves wind up down there, not in our brain actually. So much I know neurologists would argue with me. I'll argue right back, buddy. And then we've got the. Of course, as we discussed, the monadic layer and we've got the plasma symbiosis layer.
- [53:22]
B
So.
- [53:23]
A
And I'll just do one nod to UFOs with that plan. Plasma symbiosis layer and the paranormal people go, oh, how did the UFOs know what we're gonna do before we do it? Well, you're a plasma symbiote with the field that powers them. So yeah, I think they kind of have some idea what you're up to. So there's that plasma symbiosis layer. It's very important. So those are the five interfaces that we work with in Platonic surrealism. And you know what? It's not just bullshit because like in class, if your plasma sheath is self reflexive and not just purely asleep, hell, you can touch people from across the room if you're young and strong. I can't do that anymore. I could when I was young, but.
- [54:18]
B
Now you're doing something with your hands and I'm not sure it's showing up on the camera.
- [54:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, you can see a field around yourself. If you look and you can feel one part of yourself slice through another part of yourself. When I was a kid, I played with it and I found out that I could shoot it through walls. I could shoot it through anything, but the more dense the material, it started to fight back. So it seems more of a physical ish thing now I'm saying, you know, the ancients would say that that was prana, that was chi, and who cares what you call it if it isn't late for dinner. But call it what you want, but. And you know, some people might say, well, it's biophotons, but they're so feeble that you probably really aren't feeling anything. Or you just go for it. And you say, well, the lowest layer is something like sentient plasma. Maybe it's not actual cinema plasma. People go, oh, plasma has to be high temperature. Well, wrong. It doesn't have to be plasma, just ions in a medium. That's it. And it doesn't have to be gaseous. It can be liquid, it can even be solid. Okay, so just to say Platonic surrealism isn't all just poofy in the upper atmosphere playing with monads it acknowledges down in the dirt. Physics, cosmology, matter, energy, time. Of course, all those fall out of platonic suruism. So a human being is a rare and precious opportunity not to be squandered. They are both a vessel and they are a confluence of many kinds of mind, which sometimes is received as matter or energy or mind of one kind or another. But the whole spectrum of existence, from awareness all the way down to the most gloopy stuff, is accessible when you're a human being. The great tragedy of humans in this era, in my view, is they focus on at most one fifth of who they are, their conscious, rational mind. And a lot of people never even tap their artistic creativity, the joy and wonder and transcendence. Oh, just their artistic capability. Enjoying transcendence is like even kicking it up a level. Beyond that, the pure, unlimited, unbound, transcendent spiritual experience that humans from time to time experience. Platonic surrealism teaches you methods to make those states more likely and more enduring without chasing after miracles. So that is what a human being is.
- [57:38]
B
Thank you, Kevin. And now can we go into some of the exercises, some of the methods?
- [57:43]
A
Absolutely. Let's start with 10,000 foot tall ego practice and Platonic surrealism. It's one of my favorites. You start out simply saying, I am unbound awareness. I create the movies and I watch them all. I am not the movie, except when I forget and make myself believe I am the movie or in the movie or trapped in a movie. But my truest nature is that I am potentiality and unbound awareness. And that's it. That's the very beginning of the practice. And you know, like other systems, this is still a framework and not a system so much, because I'm not proselytizing, you see that? That's what makes a system. I'm not proselytizing anyone I'm putting out free public information. It's kind of like mindfulness meditation that. But instead of getting yourself in a goofy, goofy pose on a goofy mat. And I'm sorry, people, there's beautiful traditions that do beautiful, wonderful things, but I don't need them, so they don't have power over me. I can do Platonics realism wherever I am. So just like with, like, mindfulness meditation, you finally start to realize you are that which perceives. And it doesn't matter what form is perceived, because you perceive them all in one time or another, you perceive them all. Actually, I want to burst the nice feelings some people might be having at this point by mentioning Kant, just briefly. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, tore apart mysticism as best he could, apparently because he sent some letters to a mystic who didn't answer him nicely. So then he got nasty, or that's probably trivialized. I don't mean to disrespect the man. He was a giant. But his main concept that is quite correct is that no thing can understand what it is to be another thing in and of itself. That's why mysticism doesn't work. If you think you can get inside someone else's head, it's just a fantasy. He's basically saying, and. Or the universe or whatever. Now, here's where he's brilliant, and here's where he's dead wrong. I absolutely can get inside of Jeffrey Mishlove's head. 100% accuracy. You know how I can do that, Jeff?
- [60:43]
B
Well, you could have a conversation with me.
- [60:45]
A
Well, that's a good start, but I need something much more clever than that. When I'm born as Jeffrey Mishlove, I know what it is to be Jeffrey Mishlove. Yep. So awareness is one transcendent thing, and it wants to experience all of itself. So when I'm born as you, then I know what it's like to be you. You see? And thus Immanuel Kant is proven correct in a way. Though of course, there are psychic things where you can gather, you can form a link, and it's like you're almost that other person. You know, you've studied these things, and so have I. But I'm talking about absolutes here. So in a way, Immanuel Kant is correct, and I'm not arguing with it. But Platonic surrealism is the answer to him, that we are actually awareness and we get around to being everyone eventually.
- [61:50]
B
Kevin, when we talk about metatheurgy and as I reviewed the materials that you've sent to me about it, One thing really stood out for me, and I've sort of been saving it for the end of the interview because it seems to get right to the heart. It's very personal. Concerning your beloved wife and her heart condition and your statement that you would not use meta theurgy as a form of healing.
- [62:26]
A
Let me just very slightly amend that, clarify that. I'm going to be extraordinarily vulnerable here so people understand the depths of what I'm saying. And it's gonna make me cry, you know. Yeah, I'm immensely strong now. I'm. I'm off the chart strong now. But I've suffered so much in my life. And as a regular human being, I was kind of a sad sack loser for a long time in that. In the human realm, that everyone who ever approached me saw me as a sucker and took my money sort of thing. And my wife is the only person who ever truly gave to me and loved me. And I've had her for 11 years and she's had me. So to say that she means the universe to me is an understatement. And so some might think that I might try to twist theurgy or metathurgy or whatever into a form where I could heal or stage four heart failure. I will not do that. Do I think I have the ability? It doesn't seem likely, does it? I mean, let's be honest, Jeff, come on now.
- [63:54]
B
Let's not.
- [63:55]
A
I know this is new thinking a lot, but it doesn't. On the surface, it doesn't seem likely. Right. I'm not a bullshitter. It doesn't seem likely. Now, are there miraculous healings? I think there really are. But here's the thing with meta theogy, the way it works is you do the 10 practices of platonic surrealism. We really should cover at least a couple more. But you do them and you develop what's called the wholeness interface. That's where all the different autonomous collectives of feeling and thought in you, from the monads to the cineoplasma, they all line up on your side and you become fully individuated, a full individual. And that wholeness interface can choose to participate in the larger life of the universe and the universes and awareness and potentiality and the whole vast circle of life. And you can choose to respectfully participate as one voice, one vote in a vast, often cacophony of votes and voices. And you are allowed to shine brightly and say, I see my wife as being healed. And that is allowable I'm not saying it isn't, but I would not force my will on anyone. Even if I could, I would not do so. Now, my wife, she's had a very long, hard life. She. She apparently had heart failure from the age of nine. But they always said, oh, don't, don't, don't get yourself excited, little one, with your vast imagination here. And they let her die slowly, miserably, over her whole life of heart failure. And she avoided, like walking and running and exerting herself. Her body knew she wasn't well, but she'd been to the doctor many times and no one, no one gave her an EKG or whatever. Just, even though when she collapsed and had chest pain, say, just, oh, just take some aspirin, call me in the morning, you know. So she suffered long and she was a very abusive child like I was. She had a lot of suffering in her life and she just wants to go home for her. She wants to go to the fairy realm. She feels that's her home. And you know, we were visited by gnomes. They woke us up from a sound sleep. We both saw them. I talked to two of them, you know, they were there and they came and they said, it's your time to go home to her. And at that point, before she was just diagnosed, she might have died within a month or two and she could have just gone with her probably, probably even almost right then and there. But she wanted to fight a little bit more, so she got on the modern heart medicines. And now she might be with me five years, but in her heart of hearts, she's just worn out. My poor love, she's worn out. She just wants to go home. I won't take that from her. I'm sorry. Sorry, it's just too much. It's not too much. I'm just trying. Okay, there we go.
- [67:33]
B
See?
- [67:33]
A
You can have all the feelings you want and they're valid. You don't make them go away. You experience them like I just did. And I have a 10,000 foot tall ego and I feel happy and love and oneness. And I felt that. That is aplomb. The final state of platonic surrealism where you live with grace and dignity and then you're allowed to speak back to the universe itself and it will hear. I hope this was helpful for your understanding of this matter.
- [68:16]
B
Thank you for being so vulnerable, Kevin.
- [68:26]
A
Or you can summon UFOs of this shit. What a waste. What a waste. It's just another aspect to yourself. All the movies are an aspect of yourself to learn from. And if you need a UFO like I did in 2013 when I summoned the big honk and black triangle UFO, I needed it. So I'm not picking on anyone. If you want to summon a ufo, go ahead. But just learn from it. Just learn from it.
- [68:55]
B
Kevin, this has been a magnificent conversation and I know we're just scratching the surface. We've only covered the first of your 10 exercises. What I'd like to do, if it's okay with you, we'll do a separate program where we'll go through all.
- [69:14]
A
I'd be delighted.
- [69:15]
B
Or maybe I'd be delighted. Let's do it that way. I think for today, we have given our viewers a lot to digest.
- [69:26]
A
That's the goal.
- [69:27]
B
So I love you, Van. You are a shining star in the firmament in my mind.
- [69:35]
A
Well, standing right next to you, I'm in the sky with you too, brother.
- [69:40]
B
Thank you so much for being here, Kevin, for being with me today. It's been a blessing.
- [69:48]
A
It has been a blessing for me too. Thank you.
- [69:51]
B
And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [70:24]
A
Book four in the new Thinking Allowed dialogue series is Charles T. 70 Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
- [70:38]
B
New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spiritual the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org for early access to our videos and livestream events. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter@newthinkingallowed.org. Sam.