 And this is the connection that I think we can talk about now. It's basically the connection between enlightenment and health or awakening and health. So the more in a sense that you recognize the what al-ujud, the unity of all being, the unity of all existence, that deep interconnectedness of all, and also that source that you come from, that you are that, we are that, and that the more that you really embody that, that the impenetrable piece and the causeless joy, and you basically stay in that state and you make art from that state, the healthier you are on all your health biomarkers. Yes. You touched on something that's, you know, what's interesting is that illness medicine always demands proof, right? And that's because they're based on population-based thinking, right? So when you're, and you're talking about quantity, the quantity of people that have survived because, see, they're after survival rates, right? That's their measure, the measure of the success of any intervention that they do is after survival rates. So they're after quantity. And for me, I'm after quality, right? What's the quality? One of the things that I learned early on in medical informatics when I was doing, you know, research on how much is the value of life and, you know, in dollars, you know, how much is one life worth and all that, yeah, we do those kinds of research. Those are done, right? You don't know that the actuaries and all of the people that provide you with life insurance, those are all computed and those are all known, right? But when you look at all of the stuff, it's like, what is the quality of your life now? And the thing that I learned there is that there are outcomes that are worse than death, right? And we don't like to admit that, that there are outcomes worse than death, but that is already the finding of studies, what, in the 1990s, right? We know that. And, you know, only the most ignorant of doctors would say, well, I took an oath, well, you know, that's just for Hollywood, right? So we already have established a kind of thing. So we now have to turn our focus on what's the quality of life that we're living. And the quality of life that you live is actually inside you, right? Yeah. Yeah. Remember John Kabat-Sin wrote a famous book, right? Wherever you go, there you are. So what's that status of the folk mode network inside your brain? Are you too self-referential all the time? But for me, it's like, what is, you know, how do you live life with a sense of equanimity? And I was asked this question one time, by a psychiatrist, he said, Dr. Tad, you know, your health optimization medicine model, which is seven pillars, it's just brilliant, but I'll be include spirituality, right? In health optimization. And I said, oh, you know, it's really very simple, right? You know that DMT is called the spirit molecule. So just give the person DMT and you solve the spiritual imbalance. It's the fastest way to just obliterate the ego, obliterate the ego and just melt, melt right into the infinite consciousness, just melt right into it. And then hopefully you can re-baseline. The big thing is to re-baseline after entheogenic experience is unleashing the divine within. But then can you re-baseline to that level? Well, re-baselining is actually done through practice, like a meditation practice or other practices that actually point out to you the illusoriness of the self, right? You know, ego is a very heavily laden term, you know, it's Freudian, it's your sense of self-importance. But so I tend to use this self-referential system more than I use the ego, but people understand the ego because it's everything from which everything is centered, right? But that center is an illusion, right? It's just created by the brain. It's part of what evolved to give us a sense of continuity, but it's also the source of our suffering. And if you take a look at our website for, you know, Transcriptions is a brand of my company called Smarter Not Harder, right? And if you take a look at our mission there, is to decrease suffering in ourselves and to decrease suffering in others, knowing that there is no other. Exactly, beautiful. So we come to a definition of what's suffering, you know? For me, suffering is really very simple, you know, in common parlance, for me suffering is identifying with the self or, you know, getting lost with the thought, you know, you think the thought is you, right? Like, so there is someone that's owning the experience. Obsessed with layers of identity that we've put on as onion layers and that we have ever peeled off. We've got to feel the source, to feel it and live from that source. And for me, you know, I have less grandiose plans, you know, I have a simple definition of enlightenment, which is, you know, the cessation of suffering and other sources of suffering. The source of suffering is the ego, which is an illusion anyway, that clings to or is averse to certain things. So it wants this, doesn't want that, wants this, wants that. And soon all of those wants, wants, wants accumulate, right? You want more profits, you want more, therefore you're going to pollute the oceans more, and therefore you're going to use child labor more, therefore you're going to do a traffic humans more, you know, all in the name of want, want, want, right? So, and therefore, for me, that is suffering, you know, if you, the clinging and aversion of the ego is the root of suffering, right? May, I would also say, yes, yes, there's a there's a balance here. And I'm curious how you align with this idea. It's called like the dreamed symphony in the sense that the infinite consciousness creates the dreamed reality that is, that is this. And then there's the multiverse, which is all of the dreamed realities. This is just one observer verse, and there's many other observer verses happening and an infinite amount of illusory affinity, in a sense, that is happening. And so here you, here, here we have this, this dimensionless singularity that is indivisible. And it's indescribable. The, the, the Dow that can be named is not the eternal Dow. Okay, so we have that. And then now we are the, the dream symphony. And so here's the symphony that's happening. Now in the symphony, I'm playing the violin, but you're playing the trombone. And then someone else is playing the clarinet and someone else is playing the cello. And we're all playing different melodies and different harmonies. And people that are playing out of tune are people like you described that are suffering. They're still suffering. They're still in the service to self mentality. And people that are playing in tune are playing in the service to other mentality. Everything's in service. They're, they've, they've a clear gnosis of the divine that they are and what, and what's going on. They're very clear seer of truth consciousness. How do you resonate with that dreamed symphony analogy? Man, that's fucking heavy. I mean, the one thing that I, you know, I, you know, I, I, I told you, I was just with friends here. And one thing that I usually totally inject into all of these things is levity. You can never be too fucking serious about anything. Right? And, you know, I, I, you know, my pedigree is in neuroscience and I'm still a neuroscientist and even I'm a physician, you know, even in, in, in as a physician, I still deal with the brain. So let's bring down. So for me, right, right now we're trying to, there's a $20 million price now, the Templeton to, to, to elicited the, the mechanism of consciousness, right? And one is the causal model, which is the integrated information theory, right? And one is the causal model, or the non-causal model, which is the global work workspace theory, among others, right? You know, because my interest in this is still in consciousness. And then there's of course, you know, philosophers, you know, that, you know, to say, well, maybe it's a panpsychism, whether or not it's inherent or emergent panpsychism, you know, you don't know who wins, right? But, you know, my thing is, this is fun. And this is my answer to you. My answer to your question. Ever since I was a kid, all the way to now, so my first experience with ayahuasca, for example, it's as if a rug was pulled from under me as a strict scientist, you know, just looking at the world with this, you know, and then you, it's as if a rug is pulled out under you. And suddenly, that there are dimensions out there that were unavailable for you before, right? So, and then it's easier for you to actually realize that the self is an illusion, you know, and then now physics is saying that space time, we're losing space time to be, it's an illusion, right? And we now have people saying that all we're doing in this world is like we are just a user interface with fitness functions. That's Donald Hoffman, right? We evolve, we see an apple, we see this, only because that's, you know, that's our user interface in order to execute our programs or survival and reproduction, right? And so, but, but for me, the side guys, the spirit of everything else is a fucking game. Yes. You know, you, when you, you best enjoy the game, you know, when, when you an MMORPG, massive multiplayer online role playing game. Yeah. Yeah. This is what I, this is what I say, you know, it's very difficult to convince people, unless they have done programming, that what you believe in is not necessarily true, right? So, but the biggest punch that I give them is that when you were a kid, you believed in Santa Claus, right? And then you were able to shed that belief. Other beliefs are harder to shed, right? And when you're programming, for example, if you set a global variable, if you set that God is true, then do the following. If Jesus Christ is true, then do the following. If, if, you know, Gatama Buddha is true, then do the following. So you could see that, you know, whatever it is, it's set in there. That's right. It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's programmatic, right? It's super programmatic. But, but that, but that's hard for us to accept, right? Because it's easier if you take an integral view. So when, when you, when you embrace all that is, and especially all eight billion of these individual players and what they see as true as their scripts, if you have an that's important as their scripts. But the thing is, they cannot see beyond the script. If we can augment their awareness beyond the script to the integral embrace of this beautiful mystery and expressing unique gifts, then we are into that more harmonious world our hearts know as possible. Yeah, that's why can I combine some molecules that can balance the default mode network and the past past not past positive network in such a way, right? That it is evident to you that there needs to be no owner of the experience, right? That there, that it is there only so that it provides its continuity for you to have a story every day, because that's what allowed you to survive in evolution, right? So it's embracing that, but going beyond that, right? And when we notice that I tell people this, that's why I tell people, you know, all of us should be educated after evolutionary biology, evolutionary biology, we should be educated in evolutionary game theory. We don't realize as much of our behavior is dictated by that, you know, by zero some dynamics. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it, why is it for that game? Why is it successful all the time? You know, and so on. But people will go, huh, those are very difficult concepts, right? We need to tell better stories, which links us to the beginning when we tell better stories. It's hard to tell, it's hard to tell, engaging stories in science, right? Unless you engage them and when, when... Well, we have to tell the story, the big metaphysical story that is like, in a sense, like the Harry Potter of, you know, like that, like when we can do that, then we can really inspire that awakening. For example, you know, right now, you know, we don't distinguish when we're teaching kids, we don't distinguish between, you know, teaching them religion versus teaching them spirituality, which are two different things. Yeah. Right? Yeah. We just shove in them and the same in these types of religious neurosis, and they end up having the same religious neurosis as when... There's a very clear baby in the bathwater that we can lift up and yeah, and bring up with the spiritual. And that requires and, you know... It requires a lot of good stories told, like... A lot of education. Yeah. Or what we can do is we can say, okay, how can we take that, what looks like a lot of education? How can we compress that down Pareto-efficient into a couple of, you know, stories that can really awaken people? I think we can do that. And that's pretty much what not only this project is that will be... Oh, I don't know, Alan, even if it's on me, I'm kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, but this is why we are so passionate also about the space of, you know, what like Los Angeles is doing with able to put together like the best animated content as well. Like why is, you know, Pixar's like Inside Out so popular or why is like Rick and Morty so popular in that sense? Can we make it into, you know, or like SpongeBob SquarePants for like the... Like how can we tell a story that's so deeply or like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter that's so deeply interwoven with metaphysics, though, and that animation and storytelling? That's what we're passionate about in 2021. Yeah. You can also do the flip side, right? Yes. Tell, what is that? What is that? My friends know that I have an allergy to stories because they have always fucked us up. You know, if they're just, we are predisposed to stories. That's why we have all of these conspiracy theories. We were born to gossip and so on. You can also do the flip side, like we can teach children to meditate earlier, to have a practice earlier in a neuroscientific way. Here is how you observe the contents of your consciousness, right? That's part of what I'm describing in terms of metaphysical stories. Observing the contents of your consciousness, right? Early, right? Yes. Realizing that the self is just another content of consciousness. Attention itself is another arising in consciousness. So you see all of these arisings in consciousness and especially when you teach them to kids before they develop that hardened sense of ego. Ego. I want this. I don't want that. I want this. Is they have this skill to take a look at their desires and aversions and say, okay, will I follow this desire or will I get rid of this because I'm averse to it? A meta consciousness. Yeah. There is a pause that happens, right? Before they actually act. There's that pause. And in that pause, the entire destiny of your life outcome in the world, it happens at that pause. Yes. Because maybe it's you're going to scream and yell at someone who is going to be the most influential figure in your life and you lose it, right? Yes. So it gives you that, it stops you from being reactive into being responsive. Yeah. And all it takes is being able to examine. For me, it's just a simple skill. It's difficult. It's a difficult skill. That's why you can turn it into a mental game, right? Of being able to identify your thoughts and emotions. An investigation into the nature of your being. And Rupert Spira uses a very good modern day analogy, which is the simple screen. Because if you think about that infinite consciousness as your being as that screen, and then having all of the different cravings and aversions and scenes that come up of the illusory multiplicity and diversity of objects and people as the scenes in the screen in the movie that you realize that you are that blissful, eternal, infinite screen that's always having these different slices of the movie. So yeah, you're right though that that first principle at the young age, you know, there's so many indigenous cultures around the world, like the baby in their bathwater is the fact that they have what you described, which is that depth of truth, that depth of interconnection, that depth of unity, that depth of understanding the nature of their own mind. And, you know, Buddha was one of the best indicators and Adi Shankara was another massive one, Ramana Maharshi. They were excellent at that investigation. So I mean, infants are fantastic. They're great until we fuck them up, right? Because they are evolutionarily and biologically programmed, right? And then we begin the social-cultural programming with education, you know, with education with how the parents raise them with, you know, the environment that they're in. So they're continuously getting programmed. And in fact, one of the things that I- Interesting. So a script being the most open and integral and understanding the nature of mind and reality at the youngest age, that script. Yeah. And also, you know, aside from, as I said, going the opposite, it's teaching kids, you know, how to examine the contents of your consciousness and why they need to do so. It's an essential skill that will not make them suffer in the future. Exactly. Because they know that they're just arisings in consciousness, right? And the other thing is when it's too late for you, what I say is that, you know, when you're 21, 22 years old or whatever, just go out and try to examine all of the beliefs that were placed in there by your parents, by your siblings, by your teachers and everything, and see if they're still working for you, you know. Yes. All the lines of code. Yeah. Yeah. Those may not be yours, right? Yeah. As I say, you know, you can set something if false. Or my favorite is if you don't need the variable anymore, you put the semicolon to it. Yeah. Archive some code and update that with some new lines that are more integral. Yes. And then, barring that if you're still all older, it's like, what kind of molecules can we use in order to break through that? Right? So you have, you have a psilocybin, you have MDMA, you know, you have all of these things that can break through, which is, you know, they're used therapeutically, but they're also consciousness-racing molecules. You know, there are non-addicting consciousness-racing molecules. They're not addicting because they don't raise your dopamine at all, right? Yeah. We know the mechanism, we know the mechanism for addiction, right? So there's no more reason why they say, oh, these are because they cause addiction, they won't. Yeah. The hacking your script. I don't know of anyone who would like to take ayahuasca for fun, right? Yeah. We do it to hack our script. That's why we do it. Yeah. Although, you know, I hacked ayahuasca to my version of it called pharma oasca because I didn't want to vomit, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the future. Yeah. It's a no vomit ayahuasca because I couldn't for the life of me just, you know, continue vomiting. But these are the kinds of things that are available, you know, on the flip side of telling stories is, you know, educating children, teaching them how to meditate and, you know, and making it a practice and making it a habit for younger people to examine the contents of their consciousness, right? For us, it's difficult, but if you start them young, it's easy for them because it's like seeing your optic blind spot, as Sam Harris likes to say, you know, once it's pointed out to you, you cannot, you know, not remember seeing it, right? And then there's this period where there's a time where you should examine what beliefs are in there. And, you know, and then we have now this psychedelics that allow us to investigate our mind and allow us to change our scripts and so on. And for me, it's, as I like to say, those are like a bodybuilding steroids. Now you use them only for a while. And then after that, you will have to do the exercises yourself off cycle. Yes. You have to have a exactly. And, and that's how, you know, for me, like, yes, we're advancing in the world and so on, but are we alleviating the suffering of people? So yes, we have all of this high tech stuff, and we have all of this biometrics and so on so forth. But fundamentally, you know, I'm not even saying anything about happiness. You know, we're not wired for happiness, we're not wired for survival and reproduction. Happiness is an inside job. But for me, happiness is not suffering. So, so if we can teach, it's a skill that can be learned, right? Observing the contents and not be identified, as you said, not identifying with the ego or not identifying with the self-referential system, and knowing that things just arise, you know, these are just neural networks that fire, you know, as I like to say, as a neural network guy, you know, when you see something, your visual neural network fires, when you hear something, your auditory neural network fires, you know, and it is in the same space where your thoughts arise. They're also just neural networks firing, where your emotions arise, your limbic system, neural networks are firing, they're all just neural networks firing. And if you could see that, that when, when they fire in such a way that there's, it seems that there is someone orchestrating them, that's where we actually get fucked up, right? When we, when we, when we, when we begin to own that we can control these things. That's why the most difficult thing in meditation, right, is like, I want to control my thoughts. No, you can't. You have allowed them to go, right? And see that they, they disappear. They appear in the same space of consciousness as everything else. As what you see, what you hear, you know, what you feel, you know, the pressure in your body, the concept of you having a face and so on, they're all appearing in the same consciousness space as where thought arises, where emotion arises. And it's a skill, you know, that can be taught to be able to see the arisings of those, and you could see suffering decrease. And when suffering decreases, then you could see creativity arises, right? Because you're not craving for something and more, right? You are, you are in equanimity. As I, as I tell people, I don't like extreme happiness and deep whirlpools of sadness. I like, you know, gentle ways of things. So, so when you learn, when you learn that, then you, you know, you can gamify it if you want, right? We have friends that are, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and, and so you begin, you begin not to take yourself seriously. Exactly. That's the levity piece. I agree. I agree. You begin not to take yourself seriously. You begin to see, well, you know, what purpose, you know, it's like, you set whatever purpose you like, you know, and so on. It's like, you know, we grow up thinking that, you know, there's purpose and meaning and so on and so forth. And you realize, like, no, you're the one setting all of that. So you set your script properly. You set your script. Amen. You set your script. One more time. You use that script. However, you should be aware from where the script is coming from. You are talking about the source. Exactly. Where does, from where does the script arrive? Beautiful. Beautiful. From where does the script arrive? Yeah. Yeah. And, and when there's fucked up scripts in there, man, because it's fucked up code. It's 100% your ability. 100%. You can, like you said, contemplate what is written in there and go through the experiential practices. There's all these modalities for, for that, that exists now. Yes. Yes. Okay. The last, last thing. Yeah. Go ahead. Don't believe in what you think. Right? I have this thing where I always say, and this would be a good end to your, our podcast here. Yes, yes. Don't think, feel, don't feel, be. Be. Right? Yeah. So don't think that you're a love. Don't feel that you're a love. Be love. Be it. Hmm. Hmm. And then we just butterfly effect that out all over. I love that. I love it. That's a logo of homeboat, by the way. Yes, it is. Yeah, I know. I know.