Podcast Summary: The Illusion of Separation with Jonathan Bricklin

Podcast: New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
Host: Jeffrey Mishlove
Guest: Jonathan Bricklin
Date: October 2, 2025
Theme: Exploring mystical experience, consciousness, free will, and the legacy of William James, with a focus on the illusion of separation in self, time, and will.

Overview

This episode delves into the deep philosophical and experiential questions surrounding the illusion of separation—the perception that we are isolated individuals, disconnected from the rest of reality. Through the lens of both personal mystical experience and the teachings of William James, Bricklin and Mishlove explore the boundaries between self and other, time and eternity, free will and determinism, and science and mysticism.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jonathan Bricklin's Mystical Experience

• Setting & Background:
  At age 35, Bricklin, confused about life direction, attended his first meditation retreat, where he underwent powerful transformative experiences.
• Bliss and Connection:
  By focusing on the pain in his knee rather than avoiding it, he enters a state of bliss and unity:

  “These waves of bliss just came over me, just, just ecstatic feelings of love and connection with everything... you just feel love and connection with everything. You’re just radiating it.”
  —Jonathan Bricklin (04:10)

• The Life Review:
  During a powerful energetic episode, Bricklin has a panoramic vision of his life—experiencing pairs of painful episodes and their redemptions, appearing in black and white:

  “…my life was passing before my eyes, cut in pairs… Everything I thought I needed to avoid brought me something. Wow.”
  —Jonathan Bricklin (16:57)

• Loss of Past & Future – “Living the Gap”:
  Experiencing only the immediate moment, with no past or future, described as living ‘the gap’ between moments, akin to Zen and mystical traditions.

2. The Illusion of Self and Free Will: The Legacy of William James

• William James’s Struggle:
  James, deeply influenced by scientific determinism and Newtonian worldview, wrestled with the concept of free will versus determinism:

  “I’m just, not a wiggle of my will is free.”
  —William James, as quoted by Bricklin (23:41)

  • James’ experience of crisis, relief upon accepting the belief in free will, and the persistent psychological need to affirm it.
• James’s Insights on Consciousness and Will:
  • Free will as an illusion—action arises not from conscious effort but from the spontaneous rising of thought.

    “The fundamental fact of consciousness, he says, is not ‘I think’ but ‘it thinks.’ If we could say it thinks the way we say it rains, we’d be speaking with the minimum of assumption.”
    —Bricklin summarizing James (32:29)

  • Effort is a feeling of afference (incoming tension), not a creative force.
• James and Mysticism:
  James (often torn between science and mysticism) became open to mystical states, esp. via his research into psychology, parapsychology, and nitrous oxide experiences.

  “James cared about philosophy and metaphysics and I would say religion, which he got from his father, who I think consciously set him on a path to reconcile science and religion.”
  —Bricklin (33:05)

• James’s Resistance to Precognition:
  Although open to psychical research, James resisted the implications of precognition, as they threatened his need for free will (38:25-41:11).

3. Metaphysics of Oneness: The One and the Many

• Nonduality and Absolute Reality:
  James, his contemporaries, and later thinkers (e.g., Vivekananda, Planck, quantum physicists) contemplate an Absolute ground of being beyond multiplicity.

  “We humans and all other sentient creatures are all joined at the center point. This source… we’re all entangled with each other in the quantum sense. And that’s our deepest reality. That’s who we are most ultimately.”
  —Jeffrey Mishlove (59:32)

• The Role of Leela (Cosmic Play):
  The Sanskrit concept of "leela" (cosmic play) is invoked to interpret suffering and the paradoxes of evil and existence in a holistic, nondual context (92:06).
• The Dream Analogy:
  Evoking the Hindu “dream of Brahman,” the duo discusses how life’s vivid multiplicity might be grounded in a fundamental unity—a dream generated by an ultimate consciousness.

4. Paradoxes of Suffering, Evil & Love

• Integration of Tragedy:
  The hosts grapple with whether ultimate unity or the Absolute can “sanction” great evils like the Holocaust, Hiroshima, personal loss, etc. They reflect on the tension between spiritual solace and confronting suffering.

  “If I can verify one near-death experience…they all do seem to have the same trajectory of like bliss…”
  —Bricklin (96:29)

• Responses to Suffering:
  Cautious not to trivialize tragic events, they acknowledge critics who find mystical explanations unsatisfying or offensive.

5. Mystical States, Dream Yoga, & Consciousness

• Gaps Between Thoughts:
  Referencing both Eastern and Western philosophy, the conversation highlights the primacy of the gap—those awarenesses in consciousness unfilled by content (49:58-51:14).
• Dreams as Proof of Non-Ordinary Reality:
  Bricklin discusses Tibetan dream yoga, capacity for lucidity and intense reality in dreams, challenging reductive materialist dismissal of “dream-like” experiences (77:23-81:06).
• Impersonal Source of Thoughts:
  Who or what is the thinker? The question remains a koan: “What is it that speaks, is silent, looks and listens?” (20:49; 118:16)

6. Time, Eternity & the Block Universe

• Sphere/Block Universe as Metaphor:
  A “block universe” or sphere (inspired by James, Parmenides, and later by Einstein’s spacetime), suggests all moments exist simultaneously—no real separation between past, present, future (90:24 et seq.).

  “For us believing physicists, the separation between past, present and future is an illusion, however stubborn.”
  —Einstein, as quoted by Mishlove (90:24)

• Eternal Recurrence:
  Drawing on Nietzsche, the Tao, and the American Transcendentalists, the idea that all is cyclical, endlessly recurring, is explored (114:16).
• Hakuna Matata – “What Is, Is”:
  Drawing from Buddhism (and Whitman), the stance is offered: Equanimity with whatever arises. “What is, is.”

7. The American Transcendental Lineage and Legacy

• Henry James Sr., Emerson, Whitman:
  The conversation regularly refers to the deep spiritual roots in 19th-century American thought, with the James family, Emerson, and Whitman as key figures blending Western philosophy and Eastern views (106:24-108:46).
• Creative Genius & the "Whole":
  Noting how creators (Mozart, Nabokov) sometimes experience their works as “arriving whole,” the hosts ponder whether the universe could be likewise an always-already completed whole (87:32-89:14).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Unitive Mystical State:

  “I'm feeling all this bliss, but what do you do with it?... She [the teacher] looks me right in the eye and she says, well, maybe you just do nothing…”
  —Jonathan Bricklin (approx. 10:25)

• On Free Will and Illusion:

  “The fundamental fact of consciousness, he says, is not ‘I think’ but ‘it thinks.’ If we could say it thinks the way we say it rains, we’d be speaking with the minimum of assumption.”
  —Bricklin channeling William James (32:29)

• On the Center and the Circumference:

  “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, circumference nowhere.”
  —Bricklin referencing James and mystical tradition (54:57)

• On Love As Expression of Unity:

  “Love everyone and all the time, which is an expression of the idea of the one.”
  —Jeffrey Mishlove (76:14)

• On Facing Suffering and Cosmic Play:

  “If I can verify one near death… and they all do seem to have the same trajectory of like bliss…”
  —Bricklin (96:29)

• On Life as a Dream of Brahman:

  “We could be the dream of Brahman. We could be... In your dream at night, you go through everything’s real, as real as what we’re having right now, and then you wake up, oh, it’s all on the pillow.”
  —Bricklin (77:23)

Key Timestamps

• 03:36 – 16:57
  Bricklin’s meditation retreat and mystical experience, life review, loss of sense of self and time.
• 23:38 – 33:05
  William James: struggle with material determinism, depression, the leap to belief in free will, and the genesis of “it thinks.”
• 37:30 – 41:11
  Scientific resistance to psychic phenomena, precognition as a challenge to free will.
• 49:58 – 53:58
  Mystical gaps between thoughts and the marginless present.
• 59:32 – 62:09
  Oneness, the Absolute, and quantum entanglement as metaphors for mystical unity.
• 90:24 – 92:06
  Block universe, sphere, eternal recurrence.
• 106:03 – 108:46
  Transcendentalism, American religious heritage, Emerson and Whitman.
• 114:16 – 120:17
  Eternal recurrence, James’s block universe metaphor, abiding mystery and open-endedness.

Tone and Style

• The tone is reflective, warm, and philosophical, blending personal narrative with erudite exploration.
• There is frequent affectionate humor, a sense of shared “pilgrimage” toward understanding, and deep mutual respect.

Summary Takeaways

• Both the mystical and philosophical traditions point to the illusion of separation: our sense of being discrete selves, isolated in time and space, is provisional—a product of consciousness, habit, and "common sense," but not ultimate.
• Science, mysticism, and personal experience converge around themes of interconnectedness, a possible eternal present, and the unreality (or conditionality) of free will, time, and self.
• The conversation honors suffering and individuality, acknowledging the danger of bypassing the real pain in existence, but posits solace (and perhaps greater reality) in the insight of unity and “cosmic play.”
• The inquiry remains open, emphasizing humility before the mystery and the invitation to "double down" on wonder, love, and the adventure of consciousness.

A Beautiful Exchange on the Greatest Mysteries:
To paraphrase Bricklin near the end: “We’re just the actors, not the playwrights… Isn’t it easier to begin with the One and then understand how we get fooled by the Many?”