 I know that that means that you're bullshitting. Ain't no bullshit to me. I tell you what, if you lying with her don't lie to her. But I don't lie. Sound like some bullshit to me. Everyone sees right through you. Okay. How about if we go by your theory, about the voice thing? I think we're all getting off track. He's lied four times. That's Kevin Hart from the movie Night School talking about the law of attraction and the deep spirituality of truth. Well, maybe that's not what he's talking about, but maybe it is what he's really talking about. At least that would be the opinion of today's returning guest, Tim Grimes, and my opinion as well. Tim is absolutely one of my favorite deep thinkers, spiritual guys, and his books like The Joy of Not Thinking and Wild Calm are definitely must reads. But one of the other reasons I wanted to have Tim back on Skeptico was to tie together what you've heard from some of our former guests like Dr. Doug Matzky in his book, Deep Reality and with Riz Verk in his book, The Simulated Multiverse. And that is that this law of attraction stuff turns out to be fundamental physics. Turns out to be fundamental to the nature of consciousness in a way that we don't really understand. So this was a super fun conversation for me because this is really where I live. This is the stuff that is most important to me. So it was really cool to do a connect the dots kind of show with Tim. Here are some clips. Reality is hypnotic. Tell folks what you mean, cause you're serious. Yes, I'm very serious when I say that. But you're not a serious guy. Right, and I also have a whole video series called Stop Being Serious. So you gotta put all that together. We suggest things to ourself constantly. We don't have a choice in the matter. We're always suggesting things to ourself. And whatever we suggest and believe is what then is going to in some form or the other probably happen in our life. So in other words, what we choose to believe has a direct effect on what happens in our life. You are not hypnotized by somebody else. You hypnotize yourself. If you wanna really get deep about it and really contemplate it, the source or God or whatever you wanna call it, that deep spiritual nature thing, like that direct connection has absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing in your life. Your direct connection to God has nothing to do with what you're doing in your life. Oh my. Hope you like this interview that's coming up with Tim Grimes. If you like it, share it, tell other people. Let's keep it a secret among all the people we care about and we think need to be involved in this conversation. This is the ultimate next level, third level, level three conversation, isn't it? Where else are you gonna connect AI source physics with deep spirituality and your connection to God? Hopefully we're gonna do it on Skeptica. We're gonna do it. You're gonna do it along with me, but you gotta jump in and join the community. Here's my interview with Tim Grimes. Welcome to Skeptica, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Icarus, and today we welcome Tim Grimes back to Skeptica. Tim is the author of The Joy of Not Thinking, one of my favorite books that we talked about last time. Also, Wild Calm, A Direct Approach to Happiness, and a bunch of other books that you can see on his Amazon page. Quite a prolific author, Tim is. He also has a new podcast, very exciting. We're gonna wanna talk about how we got into podcasting. It's called The Law of Attraction Explored. I find, as you would hear from the last episode I did, I find this guy's work to be incredibly powerful, deeply spiritual, and even though he never talks about anything like consciousness or extended consciousness or a lot of the stuff we talk about here, it to me connects a lot of the dots to the deeper questions we're occupied here with Skeptico. So I'm excited to have him back and I warned him in advance. I'm gonna probably try and pull him into some of these deeper Skeptico waters because we can't just do a repeat of last show. But he responded exactly the way I would think. He'd say, yeah, I'll talk about anything. I sent him the survey, my wild survey that throws people off. He was down with it, answered everything. Exactly what I would expect. Tim, it's just so exciting to have you back. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you, Alex. It's great to be back because I know it's always open with you. That's what I like about talking with somebody like yourself because you never know what to expect because everything is open. Great. Okay. I'll point out too. I mean, we're gonna get into the consciousness stuff, I'm sure. But what I do, I mean, I find it hilarious that I'm even regarded really as a law of attraction, a person let alone teacher because really I think I come at these ideas of consciousness and how we can explore it from I guess you would say a spiritual perspective, but how I've ended up with a law of attraction thing is interesting to me is probably as interesting as this to you because really I'm into the same things I think that you and a lot of your listeners are into and that I think a lot of law of attraction people are into is just we have a hard time putting it all together. So yeah, just looking forward to our talk is what it comes down to, I guess. You know, I wasn't going to go there right off the bat, but maybe I will because you just brought it up in kind of a really interesting way that I wanted to explore exactly to your point if we can get there in a way. Just interviewed a guy, Riz Verk. He's got a book called The Simulated Multiverse. There was a book before that about the simulation theory and stuff like that. Also interviewed a guy, Dr. Doug Matzky, his book, Deep Reality. I mean, both these guys are like super duper smart. Doug, PhD in quantum computing, you know, connected with all these super smart guys, Riz Verk, super smart guy, super successful guy, MIT computer scientist, started the MIT game labs. I mean, we're talking about law of attraction with these guys. I mean, Doug is directly Doug Matzky, PhD quantum computing, his whole book, which is filled with like this mathematics and computational stuff that I kind of understand. I don't want to play up too much because I was in the PhD program for artificial intelligence at University of Arizona, but I mean, this guy is at, both these guys are at a much, much better level than deeper level, smarter level than I am. They're talking about law of attraction. Doug is talking directly about law of attraction. He's saying at a physics level of the universe, hey, sorry, sorry to tell you, that's how it works. That's how quantum, and then Riz Verk is saying, quantum computers essentially, he doesn't use law of attraction, but he says the same thing, simulated multiverse here in these multiple timelines, you're creating what happens. Isn't it really like the Matrix movie? So I think that's one of the things I guess would be kind of the reoccurring theme of this talk we'd have is I think what you're doing is spot on in terms of trying to connect law of attraction to deep spirituality in a way that a lot of people don't because a lot of people think law of attraction is scotch taping a picture of a land rover on your refrigerator and you're saying, wait a minute, it's more than that. And then I also want to jump off in this other direction and saying, what if it's fundamentally true at some level that we don't even think about like some fricking physics level, you know? So I kind of laid out the whole world there, but that's where I want to go with this. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, you just touched upon what I find so interesting about so many of these topics. As I said, I come at the law of attraction from probably more of like a spiritual angle, almost like a Zen non-dual angle compared to most people. And I don't pretend to understand the quantum stuff. I just don't understand the science, it's not my background, but the little that I do think I kind of grasp, I, in the best teachings in the law of attraction world that really deal with it intelligently, which is few quite frankly, because people love to toss out the quantum physics thing with the law of attraction, but I suspect, you know, most of the time the law of attraction teacher is discussing and don't really understand it. But when you do get a sense that they really do get the quantum physics, which I also do not pretend to understand, but again, it's pointing to the same thing. And so what interests me is that there's all these similarities and these cross sections of these different approaches that we can utilize. And instead of saying, oh, this is wrong, this is right, we should do it this way, we should do it this way. Instead of fighting about the techniques or the approach, we can, you know, synthesize these different ideas and hopefully make them work better in our life. And that's ultimately, you know, the practical application that I like working with people on, you know, and again, my background is more of like this spiritual take on it, but is it related to this quantum take on it? I think undoubtedly, I think it would be foolish to say it's not. Well, I think that's what really comes through in your work, in your, you know, tagline radical counselor, because in addition to writing these books, people do seek you out to kind of work through and kind of a coaching way, which I think is terrific. I think it's a great new option when we really think about what's out there in how, you know, talking to someone who's gone down a path can really be beneficial and the books can help, but it also helps in that way too. But now you've ventured into this podcasting thing as well, and the name of it again is Law of Attraction Explored, and I was just listening to the latest one, the latest episode, and it was fantastic, sure, just seven, eight minutes, but I think it kind of jumps us right into exactly what you're talking about, because the theme of it was reality is hypnotic. So maybe you wanna just start there and tell folks what you mean, because you're serious. Yes, I'm very serious when I say that. But you're not a serious guy. Right, and I also have a whole video series called Stop Being Serious, so you gotta put all that together, and it can't be an intellectual fusion, it has to be an experiential fusion. Reality is hypnotic. So what is interesting about the Law of Attraction, when I discuss the Law of Attraction, I mean really, America has this kind of great history of kind of like dynamic religious reinterpretations, and Emerson and Thoreau were doing transcendentalism, and transcendentalism, and this guy named Quimby, who was out of Maine, who was a healer inspired from by other previous hypnotists, they kind of created this, the groundwork for the Law of Attraction, even though those phrases weren't used. But a lot of the stuff that I like best in this mode of teaching, is just talking about suggestibility. And most of the great Law of Attraction teachers I like, particularly Emile Couet, who is my favorite Law of Attraction teacher, he basically was just saying that we hypnotize ourselves. We suggest things to ourself constantly. We don't have a choice in the matter, we're always suggesting things to ourself, and whatever we suggest and believe is what then is going to, in some form or the other, probably happen in our life. So in other words, what we choose to believe has a direct effect on what happens in our life. And that is the Law of Attraction in a nutshell, and that is how, in my opinion, most type of hypnotism really works. You are not hypnotized by somebody else. You hypnotize yourself. So let's pick up on that last point, because I don't think it might be helpful to take Law of Attraction out of that for just a second. Because the last point that you landed on, I think I'd like people to attack that directly and analyze that and see if that's true. Because I think at the end of the day, a rational look at that would lead you to your conclusion that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis and someone can guide us towards hypnotizing ourself, but it really can't be otherwise. It can't, if we think of the nature of consciousness, it is in us and anyone affecting that from the outside with these words, ideas, thoughts is ultimately directing us towards some form of self-hypnosis. That's kind of undeniable, but you're pointing it out in a way that sneaks up on us. We didn't see it. And then you're taking it one step further. You go, are you subjecting yourself to a hypnotic suggestion that, oh shit, you'll never get it all done today? Or oh God, that son of a, I can't believe he did that. Or what a beautiful sunset. That couldn't be more incredible and more inspiring. How much do I love those people around me? How am I, what kind of self-suggestive, hypnotic trances are you, you don't even, it, it, it's not on that. I'm sure you thought a lot about this before you put it out there, cause it is a radically simple idea, which is so much what you're all about. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. And I hate to do this, but I gotta bring it back to the law of attraction because this is the law of attraction. So let me back up and or go, I guess, to what I initially said. When we talked about the law of attraction, when I say I'm a law of attraction teacher, I do not mean the law of attraction that people are used to hearing about, okay? I can use that term because I use it very irreverently. I'm really talking about some of the great, primarily American, but international teachers that's sprung out of this transcendental movement. So Emile Couet, this is exactly what he talks about. Emile Couet should, you know, in a different world, a parallel world would be more famous than Freud. And for a while he was very famous because what he said and explained is that I am not hypnotizing you. I am teaching you how to hypnotize yourself. And what makes Couet so impressive is that he didn't just talk to talk, he walked to walk. He, people would come, thousands of people literally would come to see him every year. And most of them, or a large percentage of them would walk away in much better health than they had before. Now, most modern spiritual healers or whatever you want to call it, don't have that kind of success rate. And what's amazing is that Couet said, this has nothing to do with religion. This is not even spiritual. This is your psychology. You are suggesting things to yourself. And unfortunately you are probably suggesting the wrong things to yourself. So that is, in my opinion, the greatest law of attraction teaching of the last 100 or so years. Then you've got people like Joseph Murphy who wrote a very famous book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, that whole book is just about that. Just about how we suggest the wrong things to ourself, to our subconscious and how we should be suggesting more positive things to our subconscious. And he gives dozens of different methods to suggest better things to ourselves. So that is, when I say law of attraction, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the secret and crystals and all that other stuff. I don't even know about that stuff. I know that they're trying to connect with what I just referenced, but the truth of the matter is, most people these days who are into the law of attraction have never even heard of Couet or even read The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, even though it's one of the more famous books in the genre. So this is not a unique idea I have. I've already shared all the unique ideas I have in my opinion. The joy of not thinking, stop being serious. Those ideas are much more out there than these ideas. These ideas are just forgotten about. And that's why I'm doing this podcast because we're gonna actually explore the law of attraction. We're not gonna talk about crystals and what your moon sign is outside and all this other stuff that's going on outside of you. We're gonna talk about what's going on inside of you right now. What are you suggesting? How do you feel? And how can I suggest and be more present so I can suggest more positive things to myself? How can I learn how to do that? Yeah, I actually think it fits really nicely with your book, The Joy of Not Thinking, which I like so much because again, it kind of radically jumps you outside of this whole mind-mess trap that you get into. I just wanna make sure we touch on so, you know, in the little survey I sent you, I tried to get to this point of consciousness as an illusion to which you said yes and to which from a non-dual kind of yogic way, you say yes, it's all an illusion, but there is this other element to it that we're enmeshed in, in this materialistic scientific, scientism culture, neuroscience culture, which you are meaningless. You are a biological robot in a meaningless universe. There is nothing to that voice inside your head. So I think, I just wanna make sure, I mean, we're standing firmly on that ground that the only thing you know for sure is you're in there and it's not just some biological quirk that's just churning out all this stuff. In some sense that we can't fully define, there is a you that's in there. So the whole meaningless thing is, let me give a, do a little side note here. I saw this 60 minutes thing a couple of years ago and there were these brain researchers. And one of the researchers said something where they said, we've pretty much figured out how the brain works. And I saw, and that was one of the most offensive statements I'd ever seen in my life when I heard my life, when I heard that, I said, holy shit, these guys have no idea what they're talking about. And meaningless meaning is a human psychological concept, right? Most, you know, I don't mean to bash anybody, but a lot of neuroscientists and people talking about like, you know, your life has meaning or no meaning. They don't know what the, experientially, you know, if you talk to people who seem deeply spiritual or whatever you wanna call it, they all will say there's this depth to life and same with a lot of people who have near-death experiences. As you know, there's something there that is well beyond our normal comprehension. And I'm not just talking about like, forget our rational comprehension, but there's just something there that we can't even begin to understand. And based on what's my own life, I firmly believe that what's there is good. It's not actually not only is it good, it's ineffably good. It's like, you know, in the Bible, when they say the peace that passes the understanding, it's got something to do with that. So meaningless is really, I like using stark language like that sometimes, but I feel like it misses the point when we're having this kind of a discussion. I agree. I think it totally misses the point. I think whatever would be the opposite of meaningless, that's what life is. Yes, yes. You know, what they do there, and I think there's something very conspiratorial to this, but that's kind of another show for another time. But I think, you know, if you wanna control somebody, convince them that their life is meaningless, makes them a lot, lot easier to control. But to suggest what they do is kind of a little logic trick. Well, the universe is meaningless, right? We've looked out in the stars and there's no meaning in how these planets are just doing their thing and these stars are just doing their thing. So if there is no meaning in the universe, then Tim, there can't possibly be any meaning in your tiny little minuscule, unimportant life. And that's the mind trick that they're playing. And you are like way past that. So I just wanted to make sure we touched on that and did it. And now I wanna kind of return if we can to another angle of the law of attraction thing that I'm not sure that a lot of people have thought about. I'm not sure that I really got it until just recently, but you know, another person I've interviewed is this rather amazing person, Shirley Black. She's amazing in a lot of ways, but she did experience three near-death experiences in her life. And the last one almost killed her. I had on collision with a truck that I mean, should have killed her by all accounts and stuff like that. But as a result of that, she has these psychokinetic powers, right? So a lot of people here have psychokinesis, the ability of the mind to control things, you know? And they even have little devices like these little pinwheels that are sealed up in these things where they can kind of do laboratory testing. And I would add here, this is what's important about her. She's been tested at Duke. She's been tested at the University of Virginia. A lot of people don't know that, they hear psychokinesis and they go, oh, you know, no man, this is stuff that they've taken into the lab. Cause of course you would, it's an interesting phenomenon. You wanna know if it's true, if it's real, if it's replicable. It is that kind of in a way that we don't generally talk about really puts an end to the debate about law of attraction, right? End to it. I mean, there is experimental proof, scientific proof that your mind is exerting some force on the external, if you will. We don't even know what external and internal mean, really means, but it's there. So I just wanna throw that out there and just see if you had any thoughts or comments on that. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know her. I'm gonna have to check out that episode now. Three near-death experiences. Talk about manifesting something to get to that point where you have three, holy cow. Yeah, I mean, that's one wonderful thing about the law of attraction becoming so popular. And I think why I latched onto that term as opposed to some of the other terms I perhaps could have, you know, for instance, called this my new podcast, I could have called it something about suggestibility or something like that or self-hypnosis or something. But one wonderful thing about the law of attraction being so popular in our culture is that I do feel like more and more people are recognizing. Like this is not, even though there's a lot of hocus pocus stuff or whatever, there's something here that we can't turn back from. Like the fact, like thought and external reality are two inner lengths, like we were touching upon to just deny it anymore, you know? And there's been too many studies, there's been too many just examples to just deny that it's real. Whatever you wanna call it, there's this, you know, thought, you know, they said thoughts create reality, right? That might sound kind of simplistic, but without question, our thinking, our imagination shapes our lives, you know? And you use the word common sense, I use the word common sense all the time. There's this common sense element about this once you wrap your head around it some, that hopefully more and more people will recognize, you know, this is not like necessarily far out stuff. This is far out stuff in the sense that you control and are your own master a lot more than you might have expected, but that's what's far out. The fact is, you can do something about improving your life. That's what's so cool, you know? And I mean, it's really should be used a lot of time on a very practical basis. And that's again, what this is all about in many ways. Okay, let's talk a little bit about, maybe you could call it the dark side of the law of attraction. Sure, there's plenty of dark side aspects. You know, I appreciate it in your little newsletter email streams that you send out. You turn me on to something I totally didn't know. And that was that Napoleon Hill, for those of you and the name kind of might sound familiar, you don't place it, think and grow rich guy who turned out to be the inspiration for so many of the modern thinkers of our time. My gosh, if you go to any type of multi-level marketing or any type of marketing thing, he's the number one. He's the grandfather of all that. Tell us the truth about Napoleon Hill because it kind of gets us into this little bit of this dark side and this little bit of, you know, being able to call bullshit on people. And first of all, credit to you for being willing to share that to people who like me who subscribe to your email thing. And you know, you're not afraid to go, oh, geez, here's something. Tell us the story. Yeah, well, Napoleon Hill launched story short to Charleston through and through. I mean, he just, I first found that about Napoleon Hill like you just mentioned. And I hope that you don't, you know, I hope you include everything we just talked about in there. Napoleon Hill has an influence on basically all modern business advice. Thinking Grow Rich is that famous of a book. And it, you know, Thinking Grow Rich is a pretty darn good book in many ways. And it inspired a lot of good business books. So it has helped a lot of people. But back, I think in 2016, 2017, this guy named Matt Novak wrote this incredible article in Gizmodo, Alex, you can maybe link to that, the article. And basically the author had spent a couple of years trying to track down Napoleon Hill's history, his real history. And it just turns out that when I say he's a charlatan, I mean, Napoleon Hill, Thinking Grow Rich is all about how he met all these famous, incredibly famous people, presidents, people like Edison, you know, all these steel magnets, Carnegie. He just made all that up. It's all made up. And not only that. The only guy he met, the only guy he met was Edison. And he met him at a photo, he met him at a photo op. Exactly. So just that alone is crazy. I mean, it makes him, he's genuinely just a, you know, he just made all that up, right? And that's what people say. To this day, people are like, oh, you know, Hill met all these people, profile. It's all just made up. But if you read this article, it's just a great article, investigative article. Napoleon Hill was, it's just a criminal. And now he committed numerous criminal acts throughout his life. And I don't want to even go into it. I mean, I started, I know you wanted to talk about this. So I started rereading the article and I got like a third of the way through. I'm like, I don't want to read this anymore. This guy was just an out and out scammer. Scammer, scammer, total scammer. And it is unfortunately something that- But it's still a good book. But it's a constant- He's a good writer. He's a good, yeah, he's a good writer and he's got some fantastic ideas which actually make more sense when you realize he made most of it up. Like for instance, he has the invisible counsel idea where like you're meeting with all your, all the people you want to meet within your mind every night. Apparently that's how he really wrote the book, right? Cause none of that's real. So he just made it all up, you know? And I think as, as Novak points out, I mean, he had another guy and you mentioned him in the email too. Stone, W. Clement Stone. Yeah. Who was legit and who was legit. It's a great, much better law of attraction teacher or let's not even use that term now. You don't have to, you know, I don't think Stone ever used that term law of attraction. W. Clement Stone is who people think Napoleon Hill is. This guy lived to be a hundred, he was born in 1902. He died in 2002. He lived to be a hundred years old. Truly a great businessman, donated hundreds of millions of dollars in his career. You know, there's a plenty of stuff in his life that I disagree with, but was he a fantastic proponent and teacher of these principles of, you know, how to live a truly rich life? Absolutely. And was Napoleon Hill that? Absolutely not. So a big, big, big difference that more people should be aware of. The reason I guess I think it plays into this in a way that I kind of wanted to talk to you about is I think the whole cult thing is really interesting. The law of attraction thing too. I mean, just to, I don't mean, we'll definitely go into this next, but so unfortunately this Hill example is not uncommon with just what you see with so much law of attraction stuff where people follow blindly and just assume that whatever the teacher is saying is true. And it's really gullibility and you've got a lot of teachers who just kind of string people along and I don't know. I just don't, one reason that people don't like the law of attractions leaves kind of a bitter taste in their mouth. They're like, that just doesn't seem plausible, but it's not the ideas that aren't plausible. It's how they're presented in this fantastic, almost absurd and cultish way, which, you know, is what I think we're gonna touch upon. Well, we are gonna touch upon it. So since you brought it up, let's go right there because there's this other email message that I got from you that I just really, really appreciated. Again, it gets back to this kind of zen and the non-dual stuff and open-eyed man falling into a well. Tell us about that. I think that, I mean, that's a great, you know, just a zen phrase, but that pertains to, I think in general, the spiritual practice or just the practice of doing inner work and watching how you're feeling, where you think that you are on the right path, but then you really can get shaken up and not know if you're doing things correctly. And when you get used to working with yourself, you notice yourself, you become more aware of, oh, I feel upset now. I feel like I'm overreacting now. I feel like I don't know what's going on, but you can kind of learn how to deal with that in a more composed way, or maybe perhaps when you were younger, you would have gotten upset at yourself or gotten upset at other people. You can kind of ride the waves more easily. But what often happens when we're trying to apply a law of attraction, principles into our life, or just spiritual principles into our life to feel better and be a better person, is we'll be trying to do something and we'll be trying maybe various techniques, whether it's like meditation or affirmations or whatever it may be. And we'll think we're kind of getting somewhere doing something correctly. And then out of the blue, we'll realize that we don't really know what the hell we're doing. And that realization is a deep realization and kind of makes you realize that what's going on is deeper than what we're, again, aware of rationally and what we're imagining in our mind. It's like, when they talk about grace, like spiritual grace, like it's kind of like that. And that's very much a Zen concept where you think you know and then the more you know, the more you realize you don't know anything. I think that's awesome. I think to me it also relates on this other level that we're talking about, on the Napoleon Hill law of attraction, tape your land rover to your refrigerator so you can get one in your front yard kind of thing. And then the way it relates to me is kind of this bouncing back and forth between the spiritual and the more practical kind of world. We all think we've become that open-eyed monk. We all think, oh wow, now I get it. And then you find yourself in the well. And that's really the point at which you gotta go. One you can go, oh my God, how did I get in a well? Everyone has lied to me, otherwise I never would have wound up in this well. Or as you're alluding to, you can face the ultimate reality that you know what? I better climb out of this well and I better get used to falling in wells because no matter how wide open my eyes are, falling in wells is just kind of part of the thing. I love this line that is in that email dispatch that you did. Remaining calm and rational, which I think is really kind of an interesting word to explore, amiss the inner bafflement. And I would add outer bafflement too, but remaining calm and rational. And like so much of the stuff we're talking about here is irrational, right? Because it isn't the neurobiological robot in a meaningless universe. That's rational. Go talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson. He'll show you all the scientific evidence how rational that is. And then go show him Shirley Black's experiment on psychokinesis. And you know what he'll say, oh, that doesn't, that isn't there. That didn't happen. And how can that be rational, Neil? It's right there in front of your eyes. Well, no, I know that's not what I'm seeing because everything I know tells me that can't be what I'm seeing. This is falling in the well. We're all falling in the well all the time. Napoleon Hill, I guarantee you, is I read, actually I read his life story slightly differently. Yeah, he's a scammer. Yeah, he's a con artist. But he's also the monk who's falling in the well. You know, he is going someplace. He's just continuing to fall in this stupid well of being kind of a scammer. What do you think about all that? Yeah, I mean, Hill had a lot of trouble. So I will say that. But of course, I mean, my new book that I released a few months ago called The Law of Attraction Simplified, that's what it's about, okay? The title's a little bit misleading because there's nothing simple about what you just said and about the law of attraction in terms of actually applying it. The process is, you know, feeling like you know what you're doing and then falling in the well. In the book, I give the metaphor of you're riding a horse and then you get bucked off the horse, you fall off the horse and you get back on the horse and then you fall off again. And it keeps on happening again and again and again. And it's learning how to be okay with that. Realizing that that's just the practical process of living. You know, and it is the merging of this experiential feeling of, okay, this feels right. I know I'm doing something right, but it's just a feeling. And this rational, all right, what's the best rational approach I can do now? Knowing what I know about myself, how can I approach this in the best, most sound way? So it's a merging of a lot of different things. You know, and that's why a lot of folks say, like, you know, manifesting what you want, you know, it sounds easy to do, but it's never easy, you know? And when people say it is easy, it's sometimes I guess can be easy, but that's not what should be expected. And that's a big misconception about the whole thing. I really like this synthesis that you do of the American mystics, the American spirituality, even if it's a reinterpretation of the East in some cases, and we're willing to acknowledge that, that's great. But there is something American about it. One of my favorite American yogis is Michael Singer, author of The Surrender Experiment. And I'll just a little vignette. I mean, so Singer, if you read him then if you look at those videos, he does this video series. And it's like an eight hour video series. And it's all about just rational stuff. It's like, you know, rational, rational, rational, kind of science-based stuff. We live on this tiny little planet. Why do you think you're so important, you know, da-da-da-da kind of thing, which I like. And he goes, people are always hammering me for what's the advice? What should I do? And I'm sure you get this too. This is all the time. What should I do, you know? How should I tape the picture of the Range Rover? You know, should I tape it this way or that? How big of a, you know, like, and his advice. I love this. I say this to people all the time and they don't get it. Okay, stop complaining about the weather. Stop complaining about the weather. Realize how incredibly narcissistic we've all been trained to be to think that we should be, you know, our planet, our sun, the forces of wind and all that should conform to, and it's kind of a contradiction to the law of attraction, right? It's balancing this rationality and calmness of saying I am gonna die. All these worldly possessions I have are going to be gone. Things are not going to work out the way that I want. Cause even if I think that they are kind of, I can always think of a bunch of examples where they're not. My kids aren't gonna do what I want them to do. Maybe something terrible happened to them or me or, well, that's throwing a lot of ideas out there, but how do we balance that? Stop complaining about the weather. Things aren't gonna work out the way you think with law of attraction. They balance perfectly. The problem is that people have this superficial idea of what these law of attraction ideas are. You know, again, the term law of attraction, we could use other terms. I can't think of a better term to use. Perhaps it's better to say spiritual term. You know, I don't know, it's a spiritual practice. I will say, since I got into these ideas, I've become much less negative. So, you know, my background is really Zen, which can be pretty hard ass. And there's definitely an aspect of me that's pretty hard ass when it comes to this stuff. And I now expect things to turn out pretty well most of the time. And if I'm really working on myself, it does seem like more things turn out better. But inevitably life happens, right? And it's dealing with that. There should not be a contradiction between law of attraction principles and these other spiritual traditions, like what Singer's talking about, the, you know, these Eastern mystic traditions. We should be able to put them all together. And listen, everybody's different. People are gonna put them together in different ways. And some people, as we were talking about early on, are gonna be doing this in like more of a quantum way. And some people are gonna be using, you know, they're gonna look at it just through extra sensory perception or whatever, you know? And some people are gonna do it in, I don't know, maybe just a purely like spiritual way. But it's about putting this stuff together. And that's again, where rationality plays a part more than I used to think, you know? I mean, I'm all about not thinking. I'm all about not being serious. But as I've gotten older and gotten more into these teachings, I've realized that my rational mind is my great, great ally. And that a lot of my problems when I was younger was I wasn't rational enough. People, you know, you wanna talk about conspiracy, culture doesn't want you to be rational. Cause if you're rational and they say, oh, you know, your life's meaningless, but we still want you to work 40, 50 hours a week is something you don't like to do. That's totally irrational. If you're rational, you're gonna say, you know, screw that, I'm gonna do something totally different. I got nothing to lose, you know? So, yeah, I think we don't have to be as negative as we assume we have to be. And that's my criticism of a lot of Buddhist teachings and Eastern teachings, at least here in the West. I don't know how it works actually in the East, but in the West, you know, Buddhism has become so popular. Mindfulness has become so popular. And there's a lot of suffering and just frankly, bullshit there that does not have to be put on your plate in regards to this stuff. If you're a mature and open-eyed person, you're gonna be able to handle these law of attraction teachings or whatever you wanna call them without becoming this polyamish goofball. That's just ridiculous, you know? Unfortunately, I don't know if you wanna talk about this or not, an issue is that people don't wanna do that. They wanna make comments on YouTube and not really invest in themselves in terms of some of these deep principles that people like Emil Kuwe are talking about. So. Yeah, there's, well, we could jump off on any of these topics and talk for another hour. You know, one of the first things that really attracted me to your work is the point that you just made there, maybe because it's kinda my nature a little bit. But you don't feel, you're not reluctant to call bullshit where you see bullshit. And I think that is unfortunately, or fortunately part of this rational process. And what you've called bullshit on, which I really appreciate and think it needs to, is a lot of these kind of fake, westernized spiritual traditions that wind up just kind of rolling into very kind of cultish behavior and all the rest of that stuff. Not that our standard, we gold time religion things aren't the same because they really are when you deconstruct them. They're just a few generations down the road. But that kind of leads me into this whole thing about cults and about, because we talked about at the beginning, we talked about your outstanding latest episode on your podcast, little mini episode, just seven, eight minutes, people can go and listen to it, check it out, see if it's your kind of thing. And it might propel you into Tim's books, which are very accessible, very easy to read, profoundly simple, because I mean, it sounds like really too simple and it sounds like he's kind of repeating this stuff, but man, it works. It's very, very effective. I think strongly encourage anyone to check it out. If you get it, you'll love it. If you get it all, what he's saying, you'll love it. But here's the thing on the cults. Get your point. We're all self-hypnotizing, but Tim, we got at the same time in that rational thing, recognize that some people have worked really hard on some mind control techniques that are super duper effective and it's as simple as advertising, as news, as, you know, Facebook makes you want to do more. Facebook, all the rest of that stuff. Two, the very kind of things that we normally think of with cults. You know, I've interviewed at least two cult members on this show, depending on how you define that. I interviewed a guy who was in the Mooneys for 30 years. 30 years, remember the Mooneys? People will forget, you know, like these massive weddings where he's, this guy, this is crazy fricking Korean guy who isn't totally crazy because he's kind of fun. I'm God, I'm God. And, you know, the word of mine is divine and I'm pure. And Jesus is, you know, Jesus was good and I'm all for Jesus, but you know, I really got the word here. This is stuff that you would just sit back and go, this doesn't make any sense. And for this guy, 30 years, you talked to him. He's an awesome guy. He just passed away actually before we even got his interview up. Awesome guy, extremely intelligent, extremely effective at deconstructing the Mooneys and revealing some of the very, very shady political, you know, arms dealing, you know, connections, political connections and all that stuff. But Ed, he didn't lose that core essence of his spirituality, that of course, I am in some way connected to something greater and I might have spun my wheels for 30 years, but that connection is still there. And the other guy I think of is an ex-scientologist and he isn't, he's no longer connected. The only way he could deal with the self-hypnosis that led him into a cult, Scientology and kept him in a cult was to say, okay, then there's nothing. It's all fake, it's all, you know, the kind of total cynical kind of thing. So a lot to cover there. It's really about, I guess my topic really or my question really is about mind control, about how rationality plays into that and how the wide-eyed monk, which means I'm still connected. Monk means I'm still connected to the source. I haven't shut that down, but my eyes are open. To me, that's the rational part. So how do you think that relates to the mind control situation that we're in? There's a lot to unpack there because you made a lot of interesting points. I would say something that a lot of people don't recognize and this is just my opinion. I've long said that if you wanna really get deep about it and really contemplate it, the source or God or whatever you wanna call it, that deep spiritual nature thing, like that direct connection has absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing in your life for good or bad. There's no connection actually in my opinion in many ways. So this is a nuanced point. It's hard to explain, but what I mean is when we're talking about improving our life and using these various very practical law of attraction techniques or whatever self-improvement techniques, in a weird way, it has nothing to do with the deepest spiritual part of us. And there's all these, you just gave two examples. There's all these great examples. Osho or Rajesh is a great example that a lot of people know because you read. Remind people who he is. Osho is a cult leader from the seventies, became really, really big and internationally basically, but just led basically a criminal organization when all was said and done. Wild Wild Country is a good documentary that explains it. That's why I think a lot of listeners might have watched it. If they haven't, it's a wonderful documentary to get an idea. So he builds the big ashram in Oregon. He's famous for driving 20 Rolls Royces, which he bought with everyone's money. And so kind of in your face, screw you stupid people. Exactly. You're working, digging potatoes. I have 20 Rolls Royces and done it. And then all the guns and all this stuff, like you say in the documentary, then he winds up poisoning all these people in an attempt to kind of political. Oh, the classic, classic cult move. Perfect example of a very prominent cult. And really the movie, honestly, it's just like the tip of the iceberg because I've read some of the books about it. Like it's wild. But the point is that if you read or see some of videos of him talking or read some of his teachings, you're like, holy shit, this guy gets it. Like this guy is a deep spiritual dude. He's a criminal. And it's kind of like that brings us back to Napoleon Hill, Napoleon Hill for all his flaws, for all me knocking him. He probably did have something. He maybe was connected to the source in some way, but like Osho is an explicit example. I mean, you can just, if you don't see the videos, just read, there's this great book of his followers did of his. It's like considered his autobiography. It's called like ramblings of an irreverent man or spiritual man, some great title. You read that stuff and you're like, this is just spectacular. This is good as any modern Zen teacher or anything. And you would have no idea of what this guy was like a gun runner and had all was just leading this insane cult. You'd have no idea. So it's like there's, in a way, there's no connection. And I think it's our choice and our responsibility. Talk about the moral imperative or whatever to do good, to do one to others. And that's what I love about a lot of the great law of attraction teachers, Emile Couet, Joseph Murphy, people like that, because it's so clearly just about practically being a good person and being rewarded for being a good person. Cause like you feel better because you're helping more people. That seems very natural and right. It just seems right. Like can it go the other way? Absolutely. And I mean, there's, I don't mean to just be riffing on Osho, but like there's some incredible videos of Osho too. You really, like you'll watch him. There's this video of him near the end of his life. He comes into the Rolls Royce. There's all this insane music going, really good music, like, you know, and he goes into the hall and there's a lot of music's incredible. And he's just sitting there looking out. It's like a 20 minute video, just sitting there looking out. Doesn't say a fucking word. Doesn't say a word. And people are, you know, they're shitting their pants, you know, and having orgasms. They can't believe it. It's revelation. Doesn't say a word. Does this crazy half bow a couple of times, just spectacular. It gets in the Rolls Royce and leaves, you know? It's like, it's theatrical. It's theater. But that guy had something, you know? So that's, I think that touches a little bit upon what you were saying. Or Tim, I just don't want to pass by it, the first point that you said, because I just hadn't heard it before or hadn't heard it expressed that way. I think it has, it's something I'm gonna have to really mull on, mull over, but it has the potential of kind of taking us in a number of different directions. And that is that, you know, that ultimate source, again, if you apply rationality to it, there has to be a certain amount of distance and disinterest between that source and us. And again, I'm trying to take and rephrase it in just a very practical way. I mean, there is the tsunami that kills 250,000 people. There is the Holocaust. There is the killing fields. There is slavery in the United States when, you know, the local pastor and priests are coming over to dinner with the slaveholders and being served by the slaves and gonna, hey buddy, fill up my cup here, what's up with this? You know what I mean? So we are on a stage, we are playing out these roles. Maybe the roles, we don't understand why we're given the role of the cult leader. And are we supposed to overcome that or are we supposed to give in to that to play it out for other people? But I think there is, from a rational perspective, there has to be a fundamental truth to what you're speculating about that our connection to the source doesn't really matter in terms of what we're supposed to do here. Is that what I hear you saying? What we actually do, yep, yep, it's irrelevant. I say at the beginning of the joy of not thinking, the truth is blinding. It blinds you every time. If you, when you really, you know, when you really get hit by it, that's, it's impossible to word it, but that's, you know, like, yeah, it's way beyond good or bad or anything. It's just there and that's God. And whatever happens is irrelevant in that way. If we get really deep, you know? And so all this practical stuff that we're talking about is almost unrelated. So yeah, I mean, really, there's part of me that likes to just talk about this, that depth, right? Like that real depth that fascinates me, but it doesn't get you anywhere. And that's the point. I mean, like it's like, and so then it's kind of like, what do you do with it? You know, and in my opinion, and I have more and more conviction as the years pass, you do something good with it. Like don't get so philosophical. Oh, we could do, I could be bad, I could be good. No, fuck that. Do the right thing. Don't be an idiot. You know, I don't mean to use stern language, but like that's like what people need to hear a lot of the time because people get too philosophical about it. No, do the right thing. How would you like to be treated? If you were treated like that, would you like it? Yes or no? Because that, you know, that's the common sense element, but does it have to do with ultimate reality? You know, no, an issue, just to quickly bring it back to the law of attraction, too much law of attraction teaching makes it seem like it has to do with ultimate reality. Okay, that's my criticism with most of it, including someone like Joseph Murphy or Neville Goddard, two teachers that I love. They make it seem like your behavior directly has to do with the source in that way. Maybe there's some moral element, perhaps. While in my opinion, there's not. It's just you're, you know, there's no right or wrong. It's just God is, right? I am that I am, you know? And it's just, it blows you away. Awesome, awesome stuff. Tim, what are you working on these days? I know you're always for as much of a guy who's kind of checking out, you know, you're just working away there. Well, I'm working on just the normal, you know, the normal family stuff, first of all, you know, just trying to live a decent life. That's always the big priority, but work wise. Yeah, I mean, this new podcast, the intention was to make it low key and not to do it that often. So once I, once you get going with it, there's probably gonna be weekly episodes. But for right now, there's a couple new episodes a week. And like I said, if you want my take on a lot of these law of attraction teachings, the law of attraction simplified is the book that I released recently. And I'm working on a new book that's very practically based just dealing with stress reduction about finances and stuff like that. So, you know, I try to keep it fresh. I like to always have my hand in a couple different projects at once. So if I get bored with one, I can share something else with somebody else. You're not gonna tee up the next one that's out there a few months. You can leave it off. That's fine. No, I just don't really know what the heck exactly it's gonna be yet. Except it's gonna be very practical. You said something about quilting. Come on. Yeah, something about great. Something quick, something Christmassy. No, I'm just, yeah. The next thing I think it's gonna have to do, let me give you guys a teaser. It's gonna have to do with giving, you know? Cause that's I think something that is almost innate in us. There's a joy of giving. And we are told that that's not the case by a large part of society. And I disagree with that. I think the idea of giving is an inherent part of our makeup, probably from like an evolutionary and physiological perspective, as well as a mental perspective of whatever. So yeah, it's gonna have to do with that as opposed to quilting, I think. Sorry to disappoint people. Great, great. Our guest again has been Tim Grimes. You can check him out on Amazon, all those books, Law of Attraction. Simplified is the new one, Tim reminded us of, but there's a bunch of other ones up there. And be sure to check out the new podcast as well. Always so great to connect with you. And that's why I had to get you back on. You're just such an awesome, awesome. Great work, great work. You deserve to be famous. So thanks for coming out. Thank you for having me, Alex. Like I said, it's just, it's fun to riff on these times because most people don't even wanna talk about this stuff. They usually won't have me on Law of Attraction shows because everybody's afraid of what I'm gonna say. So glad to be in a free speech space. Right onto that, man. Thanks again to Tim Grimes for joining me today on Skeptico. The one question I'd have to tee up from this interview is this one, is reality hypnotizing us? Are we hypnotized by reality? Follow my voice as I hypnotize myself. Anyway, I think it'd be a great one to kick around. I'm looking for some new options for connecting with people. I'm thinking about Telegram. If anyone knows about that, I'm looking at some other options as well. So let me know if you have any thoughts about that. But the main thing is let me know your thoughts about how we create a community around these ideas and share these ideas with other people because I love doing that, it's fun. So thanks for joining me. So, so glad you're here. Learned so much from so many of you over the years. Thanks for being here. Until next time, take care and bye for now.