All is fair in love and war.

You're doing a fabulous job, leading this interview. Wow! Thanks to both of you! (For nothing, of course.) 😉

Is Kastrup a version of Castro? I recognize his accent as Brazilian

Dr James sounds like Bodhipaksa

21:00 Excellent distinction by the Dude -- choosing to regulate is more than just redirecting to mindfulness of thought etc

Fascinating interview! I love hearing about the Bayesian brain hypothesis and the free energy theory of consciousness. 57:01 great point about how human thought processes can often be suboptimal and not arrive at conclusions that would be predicted by Bayesian computation if we assume correct priors. 1:00:57 meditation and psychedelics lessen the contribution of the more general models/priors in the hierarchy

Are they really race riots? I thought they were more political/cultural riots, where the UK govt is not listening to its own citizens and is creating more problems by bringing people in who are not integrating well into UK society?

If awareness is the space in which experience is happening, I've always wondered what happens to the awareness once the body is destroyed, how does the awareness lock itself onto a new body? Does our body and awareness share the same co-ordinates, like on indras grid, and once a new body system shares the same co-ordinates, does the awareness/space capture the next body for experience? I do believe that awareness/nothingness and physical reality are interdependent on eachother to manifest. I mean it feels like my awareness is locked onto my physical body, or is it my body that is giving the illusion of having a stable awareness?

As an old hat this is old hat. Its called growing up.

How many sessions on average does one need to process trauma?

Masters: be still and quiet We: let's talk about nothing

Can’t wait for my pre-order to arrive 😁😁😁

Hi. Thanks.

The more I learn, the more I think that everything we do is driven entirely by our subconscious and consciousness exists only to provide our subconscious with a predictive and introspective model of our own body and actions and how others interact with it. Somehow that model of a self in charge of our body must have provided a reproductive advantage to early hominids. Maybe because they could explain their behavior even if those explanations were completely inaccurate. This viewpoint is also supported by Gazzaniga’s split brain experiments where the left hemisphere of the brain comes up with (i.e., “confabulates”) explanations for what the body is doing even if those explanations are completely wrong. For example, show a message to the right hemisphere asking the person to leave the room and the left hemisphere will explain that the subject suddenly decided to go into the hall and get a soda from the vending machine.

Probably the most intelligible conversation with Jim Newman I’ve ever heard. Thank you.

I must buy this book...it sounds great!

Great interview!

Order The Dawn of Mind now! www.amazon.com/Dawn-Mind-Matter-Became-Conscious/dp/1633889920

What a refreshing interview! Does not defy "common sense" (esp. for those with some kind of scientific background). Non-dualism does have its value. But it can be over-extrapolated into claims about reality (as I've seen too many times, proponents have done). Also, Buddhism (some version of it) seems to be precocious, at least paradigmatically, on what maybe going on. Though the modern details of how things occur, may differ from the traditional understandings (given what was known at the time).

This life is the dream.

Its always baffaled me how alcohol is legal but not psychedlics x.x trully idiotic

They fry your brains and give you psychosis.

One of the difficulties in discussing the self or ego is the many ways in which the terms are defined. Most dedicated spiritual seekers seem to transition through several self identities. Initially, almost everyone believes their self to be the combination of their thoughts, body, history, and desires. After some self inquiry it might seem that the self is reduced to a small homunculus inside the head that is the thinker of thoughts and the doer of actions. Eventually, it can seem that one’s true self is pure awareness. For some who persist, it might be realized that there can be no experiential distinction between awareness and the contents of awareness. The sense of awareness was itself yet another arising in awareness. The self was nothing more than a bundle of thoughts and sensations that must be continually recreated.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. -Carl Sagan

❤💖 🌈🍄☮️

I love the discussion about what’s been called the awareness trap. When I began self-inquiry, “who am I?” became “what am I?” when it was realized that the sense of self wasn’t a person. Still without an answer, the question became “where am I?” Am I behind my eyes looking out at the universe and controlling this body? The next question was “am I?” Is this sense of awareness or consciousness that’s seemingly separate from the contents of awareness really me, or is it another thought? Can awareness ever be completely separate from the contents of awareness? If not, then can I even be awareness? Isn’t it the case that the sense of self as pure awareness is just another arising in awareness?

Beautiful neuroscience explanation of how the DMN creates the self. Thank you 🙏

Interesting….how matter became conscious….implying that matter precedes consciousness….my question would be, how can matter, or anything, be considered existent in the absence of consciousness? Guess I’ll have to read it!

brother, DUDE! Everything you are both saying, regarding an initial awakening experience that 'happened' earlier in life, when you were a not really some archetypical 'spiritual' seeker, anxious, purely rational, scientific minded etc, literally EXACTLY what 'happened' to me. I was previously a very anxious teenager, a 'radical' atheist and had no intention of seeking any of this sort of 'stuff'. Afterwards, I too sought EXACTLY as you both did to find 'confirmation' from others of this 'experience' not so much from personal gurus IRL but within Buddhist literature, things I could find on the internet etc and it never sought of satisfied me because of the reasons you describe. The path of cultivation that is spoken about is NOT what I had practiced before it 'happened' and I couldn't really rectify how that could be so, and yet intuitively, I KNEW it, that I wasn't wrong or that what had happened wasn't some mistake or false perception, that there was nothing to be attained, reached, sought after etc. And yet, I was very uneasy. To be honest I'm freaked out by this, it still makes me uneasy, I wrestle with it all time and sometimes it doesn't feel 'healthy'. I can't really explain it. I'm only 12 minutes into the video, perhaps you give some advice on this later on Is there anyway I could get in touch with either of you two dudes and just talk to someone? I have met very few people if any that seem to have shared this 'experience' if you can call it that, I'm very lonely at times and sort of really struggle with it. I know that is just more seeking for confirmation, but like, you are describing the EXACT thing! I found this video completely by chance when someone mentioned Jim Newman in a comment and described him as lacking compassion etc in his description of it, that made me curious because it seemed he had upset some people that want to cling to it being pure consciousness, love, light etc, which is at odds with my direct intuitive knowing of what it is, something beyond that duality, grasping only to the 'light' or one half and denying the other.

Donald : the truth will lead u to death.... Also donald: let me search for d truth and tell u all about it.

LSD didn't make the Manson Family nice people.

Will there be an ebook available on release?

I look forward to reading :)

Fascinating. Robert Sapolsky had a very similar experience, immediately followed by the realization that free will was an illusion.

1:29 There is thinking, therefore consciousness exists.

I feel like these ideas of "there is no self, no James" are overused and not really accurate to describe our true self. I'd say the same for ego "death". It's just too negative and self-rejecting to be true -- it doesn't resonate with my heart. And our hearts are surely beyond the limitations of our human identities, and that's my point. It's not that the person doesn't exist, it just doesn't capture you. Yes, it is artificial, but ~you~ are not. ~You~ are real. And I don't mean this cosmic, higher, other you. I mean the you that ~you~ have always meant when you say 'James'. 100% of your sense of self is real. You have never been mistaken when you meant 'I'. However, in the very same breath... you go on past 'I' to say 'I am this person with these tendencies, etc.'. And now you are filtering yourself; it's a lens. It's the pure, real you, that you've always known, expressed as one facet of itself. It's not really false... you are still there... you make up that whole, limited projection. It's just that you are not ~only~ that. You can be mistaken in forgetting that. You can believe you are only these qualities you've labeled James... you can pretend to be inside this box. But really this box is within the whole of you, and that whole of you is that place from which you feel you can say ~I~... am James. There are many angles on this and many ways to explain it. My point is that the language is misleading. When people say great statements like "You don't exist", "Reality is an illusion", "I took 5g and died~"... they aren't always communicating the loving, whole, immortal quality behind it. The real thing must be joyful, exciting, blissful... a relief to know. It's like there is still this overcast of glass-half-empty mentality pervading the spiritual discussion. Even freedom, unity, and infinity are still interpreted as these dire, painful terms like ~death~ and ~nothingness~. And I'm not saying that isn't what people are experiencing. Give me a high dose of mushrooms and I'm probably going to seriously feel like I'm dying too... but that must be because that's the consciousness I'm coming from on this side of the veil... not necessarily the pure thing.

If its understanding of bias is naive, then its idea of how not to harm humans would be skewed, as well as how to help humans..

“I think, therefore I am.” -Rene Descartes “I am, therefore I think.” -Karl Friston

In your own words, stick with what science does, offers descriptions and processes and not go any deeper. Maybe it’s deeper than the zeitgeist of science allows.

Hi James, really excited to read your book. Will it be available in Kindle edition as well? Thank you

Do you have any new kind of insight in this book? Why should I buy it over thousands of other books on the same topic?

Can't wait for my copy to arrive!!!

Sounds brilliant- Very excited to read this!