Reality Is Not What You Think (w/John Astin)

[@ZDoggMD]

Find John's books, teachings, and more on his website: johnastin.com Timecodes and topics: 0:00 Introduction 9:01 The role of psychedelics, self transcendence & wonder 13:25 Awakening to non-dual reality 18:10 The miracle of our present experience 25:00 How words and concepts can’t capture experience 28:35 Conceptual vs. Experiential perspective: an exercise 34:10 Analogy to the vase illusion image: parts and whole coexist 49:28 The inconceivability of any experience, including emotions like worry and anxiety 58:29 The fractal/holographic nature of reality, the oneness of experience 1:01:28 Awakening as a sense of homecoming 1:05:15 The paradox of suffering and our frame of reference 1:09:50 “Relative” medicine vs. “Ultimate” medicine, clarifying the nature of pain 1:17:18 The impermanence of experiential phenomenon 1:26:40 The paradox of striving/seeking, allowing experience to be 1:29:00 Drifting reality and what is attention, the groundless nature of experience 1:33:28 The paradox of meditation and effort, the role of teachers 1:43:06 The dreamlike quality of waking experience 1:45:20 Zoom as an abstraction vs. in person experience 1:48:50 What is meditation? What is common to all experience: one taste 1:55:05 What is consciousness? Reality is “just this”; what is “presence” 2:04:55 All views are partial, the Alt-Middle, Integral perspective, thoughts are just thoughts 2:07:43 McGilcrist and left brain vs right brain, Jill Bolte Taylor 2:10:40 Wrapping up, links, and the book This Extraordinary Moment

[@TB-jg2oq]

Thanks Z

[@gendashwhy]

Teledoc and friends have swarmed this talk like mosquitoes...

[@peterkuhn78]

Raw Experiencing is formless and therefore ineffable, forms come into existence through naming, that is separating out, and thus falling out of paradise!

[@TomKaszuba]

One of the most important conversations I have ever seen. Full stop.

[@johnc.9035]

Dr. Zdog, these interviews are literally saving my life right now. I've been through a varied life, to say it lightly. War, prison, survival situations, family betrayal, abandonment, depression, and I've held on. But, quite literally, at the point of putting the Noose around my neck, I discovered these series on consciousness, and reality. I took the belt loop off of my neck, and have been binge-watching these for 2 weeks.. Sometimes over and over. This is taking me down a good road right now, and I think I'm going to stick with these for a little bit thank you brother zdog!

[@sunsofavilabeach3090]

God bless you and I’m rooting for you too

[@sonordstrom]

Cheers, mate!

[@marie6508]

Suffering is "real" but the perception of anything is key. It isn't what we are feeling per say, but how long we stay in the interpretation of suffering. So glad this stuff is getting talked about! I know going to listen to this one again and I am not even all the way through!

[@sherrybutts5947]

Meeeee too!!!

[@alantasbler4581]

"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create a universe." - Carl Sagan. Everything is connected. Everything depends on everything else.

[@will95515]

So what was first in the sequence? Obviously something that depends on nothing else.

[@will95515]

So what was first in the sequence? Obviously something that depends on nothing else.

[@will95515]

So what was first in the sequence? Obviously something that depends on nothing else.

[@alantasbler4581]

@@will95515 That's not known, and may be unknowable.

[@will95515]

@@alantasbler4581 hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people do know. He has revealed Himself partially through creation, specifically through the Holy Scriptures and personally through the person of Jesus the Christ

[@susanjonesnow]

Some people can’t learn to meditate. So thankful I did learn. It puts you in a different state of being, experiencing life completely from a different feeling and point of view.

[@markupton1417]

Like self hypnosis

[@Cheese-is-its-own-food-group]

I enjoy listening to you and your guests while I’m doing chores, driving, or just relaxing. Keep these coming because this is the ‘good stuff!’

[@jenpearlman9133]

I'm only 6 minutes in and I'm already nodding, 'yes, yes, yes". He's 10 years older but we had very similar experiences. I too was a big activist but also questioned the tactics. I had a similar epiphany that I had to work on myself & find peace within myself. So grateful Zdogg has these kinds of guests on!

[@IlonaCiunaite]

Thank you for this great conversation! Really enjoyed it. For seekers who are looking to experience reality, come to Liberation Unleashed, there are guides that can help you to realise this, free of charge. It’s wonderful that more and more people talk about this.

[@final6warning]

11:02 literally me since 2018. Thought leaving the horribly underpaid 24hr shift realm of EMS a couple of years into this state would help, turns out the inverse is true. Keeping my fingers crossed that someday I'll be able to break this perception barrier. Meditation sounds so appealing but every time I've attempted it, for that matter every time I turn the knob down on chronic hyperstimulation, the inevitable "You are the epitome of failed potential, it's too late for any meaningful change, just get it over with and 'go away'" thought storm rages seemingly immediately. But I refuse to give up, even though I don't know why. Psychedelics sound very tempting as well but I'm not sure I could overcome my apprehension about them. And I'd love to try regular ass therapy for that matter, but 10 years of EMS and the last 2 of being a FedEx fella have left me squarely in PovertyLand, in a very rural area. Not many resources around. Anywho, in the unlikely event anyone read through this whole whiny shit smear of a comment and has come through something similar, I'd love to hear your thoughts. 🖤

[@saraazar223]

I am wishing you the best because it's obvious that you care about this. The effort & honesty are contagious. I think the only missing ingredient in these ZD spiritual explorations is an expert neuroscientific POV. It's just a hypothesis, but I think the brain's temporal lobes are greatly implicated in how & how often the brain removes these "perception barriers." Personally, I think temporal lobe health affects perceptions, experiences & whole personalities. I also think these effects can be opposite depending on whether left or right hemisphere is more involved in the processing. Actually, I believe some of the circumstances you describe (& probably deal with every day) produce perception barriers by engaging the left temporal lobe more frequently than the right (which I think is more suited for processing in ways that break the barrier). This could be total bullshit, too.. lol. I'm not a doctor or any kind of scientific professional. But I really want ZD to devote an episode to the whole CNS & perception as they relate to spiritual phenomena... with special attention to temporal lobes' unique functions. -The God helmet, -Gastaut-Geschwind syndrome, -the FOIA "accidental" (yeah right) neuroweapons info leak, and -prolonged fasting's brain effects (reported as early as some religious doctrines) ... These concepts all point towards things happening in the brain regarding spiritual perception, but somehow people aren't writing about/discussing in a way that can be translated to practical wisdom. I wonder if the reason for this sudden drop-off in the literature is political or security-related. Anyways, ZD is one doctor I trust to finally direct that discourse in a way to make it helpful to those interesting in understanding and developing upon their personal spiritual practices.

[@markupton1417]

@@saraazar223 no reason to believe that perceptions changed by magnets or mushrooms have ANY value or are in ANY way related to truth . For alcohol they even have sayings about it...ten feet tall and bullet proof for instance.

[@saraazar223]

@@markupton1417 Wait, did someone say there is? I only think there are explanations for spiritual experiences that can be described with neuroscience (which may have been related to findings from experiments involving substances or electromagnetic tools.) I'm still confident that awareness of truth & feeling present in a state of natural law aren't conditions that can be induced or even manipulated too much.

[@LunaticAstrology]

When I tried to explain to people the outcome of the dramatic 2011 shift of perspective (An overnight spontaneous awakening) I always used the vase-face illusion example, or perceiving from the foreground (the thinking conceptual mind) or the background (the ground of being which gives rise to everything - like that white vase or candlestick formed by the black backdrop of two faces in profile. Loved this interview!! John is easy to listen to and Z asks such on point questions.

[@praviplavokutnik]

That's a nice way to describe it. When I try to describe mine, I go full adhd and after 5 poor descriptions I just regret doing it.

[@summondadrummin2868]

We still run into the paradox of perspectives, okay there's no boundaries experientially, but were still uniquely experiencing that.The Universe appears to be both Unified and Polarized or One and Many simultaneously.

[@lucas_segeren]

This episode is fantastic.

[@davidsanford9701]

The mind thinks. That is what it does. Notice that that is what the mind does... the mind thinks that is its "job". It always wants to create a "narrative". Learning to refine our ability to "notice how the mind reacts to its experiences", as we practice our ability to notice the mind, we get more and more adept at experiencing the moment. This moment, this here and now is the gateway to this reality that l am. We practice this "noticing" and accessing the moment, the NOW, mind will begin to surrender its need to create the narrative about the experience. At some point the ego will surrender the "narrative mind" and silence will become our modus operendi .

[@TB-jg2oq]

Thanks so much for the chapter listings. I was trying to catch points I want to go back to. Such a great discussion and thanks for links

[@shakbhaji]

At 34:10 the way he talks about two different ways of perceiving the visual image, one that breaks it into the components (reductive left hemisphere viewpoint), and one that sees the whole thing all at once (gestalt, right hemisphere viewpoint) maps onto some of the work of Iain McGilchrist, and John Vervaeke. Edit: ah this does come up at the end.

[@joeyvanshoot1340]

Unfortunately I'm experiencing a lot of pain as I'm listening to this and can't even stand up without increasing the pain. So for me, right now, this talk seems very conceptual, and the pain very real... its controlling me. I don’t have to label it pain, it hurts and im trying to avoid creating more of it. Difficult to believe that i could experience it as the shining wholeness of the universe. That's what sounds conceptual to me right now. This my experience right now.

[@gendashwhy]

Stay on your back. You can't beat gravity. Make friends with it and your demons.

[@James-mk8jp]

I think it just hit me. Love is the infinite expression of the 6th sense. You really FEEL a oneness with that which you love, which can expand to everything. Vision sound etc. senses change because you perceive them in the state of LOVE now. The senses don't put you in a state of love, love turns your senses into something lovable. It isn't an emotion. It isn't a set of chemicals, nor a set of beliefs and conditionings that TRIGGER those chemicals. It is an expression of your 6th sense, an infinite identity in a way, which will lead to those beliefs and chemicals downstream.

[@TomDavidMcCauley]

Love this, love you, and love Angelo Dilullo

[@moopius]

The funny thing is that it requires effort to see a conceptual descriptive world, yet we have been in a habit since about 2 years old of using effort to experience the world this way. Meditation, psychedelics, letting go and mindfulness practices help break the habit.

[@malenagamboa3915]

Ken Wilber ❤ (ZDogg, I'd love to see an interview with Stuart Davis!)

[@georgeshepherd3381]

Thank you! This is great!

[@arcian2519]

Very interesting discussion but just mind

[@JayCaseGT500]

This is a good chat. I'm an hour in. The thought I have initially is; Now I know why nobody wants to go to work any longer because what is a job? What is working? Am I even here? What's a Supervisor? This building where I walk to go to work inside, does it exist? This money I earn, Is it real and do I have an actual hand to actually touch it. Ok, video games and shrooms are fun. I'll stay home.

[@jamesthomas1244]

What is the "I" that stays home? ;-)

[@markupton1417]

Staying home to eat shrooms and play video games requires a home, shrooms, video games, electricity....lots of stuff you're gonna need to go to your unreal building and do your unreal job to be paid unreal money.

[@LS-jr1wv]

"The Alchemist" comes to mind. You already have everything you've been looking for.

[@TB-jg2oq]

I’m excited. Ordered the book. Will see if I put as many page markers as Angelo’s. Lol.

[@karenjohannessen8987]

Do John Astin and Angelo DeLullo (sp?) know each other? 'Cause that could be a Good Deed for the cosmos! This was an incredibly liberating mental adventure - Thanks, ZDogg.

[@alreadyshining]

I've never met Angelo but imagine I would enjoy connecting with him sometime...

[@yifuxero5408]

Right, Reality is not what you think. It's what you Are, pure "Being-In-Itself" ( Aristotle's expression). That Essence is Pure Consciousness, Sat-Chit-Ananda, and is experiential but not in a dual sense. No problem. Access "Mahamritunjaya mantra - Sacred Sounds Choir". Listen to it for 5 min per day for at least two weeks. Enjoy the Sat-Chit-Ananda, Truth-Consciousness-Bliss.

[@marymamabear5415]

wonderful, validating, thank you!

[@AtypicalPaul]

Really enjoy your conversations.

[@spandon]

That was so good.

[@RadioactiveDoggy]

Mathematicians always want to avoid those infinities. Maybe there's a reason they keep popping into existence. You just need to go back to the play "Our Town" to get it. The recently passed character seeing for the first time how wonderful her life was.

[@11scarymonster]

"to talk about it is almost doing it violence" ....

[@yamaddahk]

"...to conceptualise an experience that's not even an experience...."

[@thomasjearson3193]

If you have hate, you cannot see. Thank you for speaking up. I’m in the so-called “control group” . Wink, wink.

[@jzen1455]

I bet John was thinking "I'm old, but not that old ZDogg!" when ZDogg asked him if he was a part of the 60s hippie Eastern religion psychedelic culture. Or maybe it's my ego projecting.

[@ZDoggMD]

😂

[@moesypittounikos]

What Astin says about his Trojan horse, as a joke, smuggling in his crazier ideas is almost exactly what Terence McKenna said also

[@sherrybutts5947]

Loved ole Terrence

[@nancyg3590]

Link not working

[@pdetrick]

Agree. No stream.

[@JayCaseGT500]

The video? I'm at 27 minutes and it seems fine thus far.

[@brianmagnuson4666]

Our minds are like the jpg image compression where 90% of the analog (continuum) of reality is tossed for processing. The same sort of thing occurs when people say you can't see where on the moon the astronauts landed on the moon with a telescope. The reality is that a physics of a limited camera cannot represent that 1 pixel to our mind. Same goes for the detail in multispectral reality.

[@DaveSomething]

dad told me once upon a time that "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs..."

[@Channeler324]

Ha, I love that and intend on borrowing! Thx PS - Your dad is a smart (& funny) man! 👍🏻

[@jonahjohnsen6519]

Reality is consciousness. Consciousness when structured correctly forms mind and awareness and everything else we perceive as the Universe physical reality but that's an interpretation that happens inside the mind giving the illusion of an outside universe interpreted from information that the brain creates into what you believe to be physical reality. Atoms are made of consciousness a Cat's level of consciousness and interpretation of reality is different from yours and that's if the cat actually exists.

[@Snuffkin]

Reality Transurfing by Zeland adds a lot to this discussion.

[@LuvLite]

I’ve read Be Here Now, was there then

[@georgeshepherd3381]

This talk brings me to thinking Godel Escher Bach... Theres no fulcrum, but it all hangs together. And what is "it", anyway?

[@Logotic]

So this comes across my feed, Zdogg talking to John Astin, like, wut?, Gomez from the Adams Family, I thought he was dead. Turns out it's somebody else and I almost shut it off but this guy doesn't sound like an idiot at all.

[@ZDoggMD]

😂

[@alreadyshining]

He's actually my Uncle (brother of my Dad). :-)

[@Logotic]

Don't miss our next episode: "Silent Meditation (w/Ted Cassidy)"

[@phoggee]

Amazing, I see no resemblance at all, but that really is his uncle!

[@yoyoos]

Hi Zdogg… regarding what attention is, all it is, is where perception occurs. You think u still have ability to control attention, but let the controlling of attention go and see what happens. “Watch” how attention just happens and what u thought was focusing attention is just “where perception occurs”. Don’t believe me, look and experiment in your own experience.

[@williamrunner6718]

Objectively and unambiguously define your keyword, REALITY_________________. Until you do nobody can understand what you're talking about.

[@TB-jg2oq]

It looked fine until the ad finished now not working. 😢

[@TB-jg2oq]

Yippee now it works

[@carlobruna5171]

❤️❤️❤️👌🙏👌❤️❤️❤️

[@samlee1609]

He knows. ZDoggMD, you know too.

[@LizzPaintz]

I can appreciate his idea, and I do believe there is a plethora of people who need a drug to have the experience, I just think that for a lot of people the same result happens without the use of a chemical and that is what we should be studying. Meditation is just as powerful (if not more), but a person has to let go of all of their conditioning and preconceived beliefs...and knowledge!!

[@alreadyshining]

Just to be clear, I don't believe psychedelics are necessary to realize what I'm pointing to. Not in the least :-). There's a chapter in my last book which I titled, "Reality, the Greatest Drug of All" which kind of says it all.

[@LizzPaintz]

@@alreadyshining I'm so glad you said that. 😊👍

[@alreadyshining]

@@LizzPaintz 🙂

[@IntegratedWellness]

@elizabeth what may be helpful in understanding this concept more is to reframe it. “Need” and “has to” are absolutes. Having an absolute thought will almost always keep one in a polar state. Either it’s this or it’s the opposite. This leaves out an entire whole realm that you may not know. The original idea is based upon what you take reality to be, a way of something “needing”’or “having to be” and in actuality you really don’t know. Once the controlling ideas of needing to know can dissolve, a whole new version of your reality can come forth. One in which a plethora of people may not need a drug to have the experience. Now you’re facing an entirely different reality than before. The limits of our own beliefs and views limit us from understanding anything not in those views. The constructs of language and culture also limit us from anything other than them by the dualistic nature of these constructs. A non-dual way is possible. What is likely required is finding a way to get out of the current mental constructs of which your reality is made up of. The difficulty is a non-dual way can never be explained as language is a dualistic construct. There is a way, I promise. I’ve been there. Coming and going and sometimes staying longer :) just be careful. Many seem to use cognition as a way to beleive they are out of cognition… which just is ego disguising itself to trick the self to be where it thinks it wants to be. Which is still just a thought :)

[@stangss1]

Cool, you look like Joe Rogans older brother.

[@georgeshepherd3381]

Language is leaky...

[@salemcanadian]

Are you still on KZbin with all your misinformation about the vaccines? You’ve got courage bro.

[@martingifford5415]

I think it's unethical for teachers to "teach" their hobby horses rather than teaching the subject in a straight way. I had a Social Justice professor forcing his biases down my throat, then there was Jordan Peterson "teaching" conservatism and religion, and now John Astin is "teaching" non-duality to his students. So why is ZDoggMD cool with it? Maybe it's because he's a believer. Of course, it's hard for people to be objective because society says humans are lacking and flawed, and so people desperately compensate by becoming dependent on beliefs.

[@alreadyshining]

Martin, for what it's worth... I am not shoving anything down my students' throats. I am simply introducing them to a perspective, one that many of them find profoundly transformative. Just as their other professors are introducing them to the myriad psychological maps they've found most beneficial (e.g., cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic), I am inviting them to explore a particular map of the territory of human experience. We all have our particular perspectives on what will be of most benefit to others. And those are the maps that we tend to share with others, be they our friends, family or students, right? I'm sure that's why you share what you do with others through your own writings. I'm inspired to introduce my psychology students to many of the things ZDogg and I discussed in this conversation for one simple reason and that is because I have found this way of encountering reality to be so powerful and transformative in my own life. Based on years of feedback from my grad students, it would appear that many of them are finding these ideas to be quite powerful and transformative in their own lives as well. I don't want or ask them to believe anything that I'm saying; I simply invite them to experiment with their experience, exploring the ways in which it deviates from what they typically hold it to be conceptually. I simply invite them to test the ideas out empirically in the laboratory of their own experience.

[@futurewisdom3552]

​@@alreadyshining So you think your students need to be transformed. Have you told them that they need transformation by you? I was amazed to read a University agenda that said, "Of course, we want to shape students." It's so presumptuous and insulting. The whole problem with the human world is that we spread the belief that humans are lacking and flawed, which makes people dependent on particular material, spiritual, or social gains and beliefs. Talk of transformation reinforces that problem. There should be a proper curriculum, not an agenda that is based on teacher preferences. You claim that your ideas are a "map of the territory of human experience". That's a claim, not a proven fact. I don't think we should be sharing maps if we have an agenda like Nonduality. Sure, we should encourage enquiry, but it should be openminded. Unbiased thinking requires investigating assumptions, motivations, and contexts, as well as cause and effect. It seems to me that you and other Nonduality gurus want to question one assumption (separation), and then pounce on any subsequent experience. You say it was transformative for you, but you ended up with a belief that Nonduality is a fundamental truth about reality, which is shared by ZDoggMD. The chapter titles are blatant, e.g. "Awakening to non-dual reality" and "Reality is “just this”". Whenever we explore things with an agenda, it's a case of one step forward followed by one step backward. We get the suggested experience, and then if it feels good or intense, we believe that it is the truth about reality. Nonduality has become the default New-Age religion, but all kinds of gurus form beliefs. For example, I spoke to the Headless guy and he said the headless experience is the ultimate reality. Experiences are cool, but pushing for a particular type of experience and claiming that it is the truth or reality spoils the whole thing and closes off further enquiry. BTW, my experience suggests that Nonduality is just one kind of experience, not the ultimate truth, but that's because I didn't settle for Nondual states or Headless states or whatever states. It only takes a tiny amount of questioning to undermine Nonduality beliefs.

[@alreadyshining]

@@futurewisdom3552 Hi Martin. A couple of things. First, I agree one thousand percent about the belief that we are lacking and flawed being the fundamental human problem. When I say, "transformation," discovering that this belief (of lack) doesn't hold up under experiential scrutiny is very much what I point to in my work. Second, I am not talking about having certain kinds of experiences but rather realizing something about ALL experience, discovering a well-being that doesn't depend upon particular experiences but is, we could say, the fundamental basis of all experience. I don't speak about what I'm sharing as some sort of ultimate truth, but simply a perspective, albeit one that brings with it, a very different set of implications than so many of the typical human perspectives, including the central one you mention of believing we are somehow flawed. Incidentally, per your comment about a "proper curriculum, that notion - i.e., that the belief in lack and flaw is the central human problem is itself, a map, not some proven fact. That said, it happens to be a belief that I think is (as you appear too) profoundly beneficial for humans to see through.