 We have become prisoners of our fears and desires, but to what end is the entire meaning of modern life to simply seek pleasure and avoid pain? Is this enough to live? In our past, there were hidden esoteric paths that guided the wise through the matrix of control, but these ancient learnings have become obscured by pseudo-transcendent materialism and false prophets. That's from a movie by today's guest, Robert Bonomo, who has a lot to say not only about the situation we find ourselves in, but how to transcend it. Stick around, I think you'll enjoy this conversation. Welcome to Skeptica, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Sekaris, and today I welcome back my Dharma brother, Robert Bonomo to Skeptico. You know, we're just chatting a minute ago. I feel like I've known Robert. I have known him for a long time. It seems even longer, and it seems like I've had him on the show a bunch of times, but I really haven't. I've only had him on the show once, but I've listened to a ton of his interviews. He's out there on a lot of the folks that I like to talk to and listen to and are part of this community, and he's always cranking out some of these incredible new films of his, his latest, I have up on the screen, Twilight of the Archons, a deep dive into the manipulation of money in consciousness by the powers that control our daily lives. This is a good one, really, really great film, and you can watch it for free on YouTube. How are you going to beat that deal? Robert is, can be found at cactusland.com, where if you go there, and I'm scrolling through now, you can see some of his previous films, some of his books. He's a novelist. He's also a university lecturer, and he's a blogger and is just really, really, really an interesting creative guy, but also has this very grounded background in kind of real world stuff. We're just talking about a minute ago, NBA from Boston University, very successful at internet marketing in a former life. I think that's why I say he's my Dharma brother, because I get him on so many levels, and it's almost like this free flow of kind of exchange, and hopefully we'll have that today, right, Robert? Yeah. So I think it's true, because we have somewhat similar backgrounds, and when we look at for things like artificial intelligence, one side of me said, yeah, you know, the Archons, but the other side's like, wow, I could make so much money with this stuff. You know what I mean? Exactly. And you know, I mean, if you want to, we're going to get there really soon. I don't necessarily want to jump there right from the beginning, because what I thought we would do is you don't have a trailer per se on the movie, and there's no reason to have a trailer. You can go watch it on YouTube. There was a trailer on the YouTube channel. I made a real short one, but it's about 40 seconds, but it doesn't really say much. It's music and images, just music and images. So it's better. It's not really a spoken trailer. Let me play a clip from his, this latest movie Twilight of the Archons, which you can watch on YouTube for free, and you'll immediately see why you might want to go take a look at this thing. We have become prisoners of our fears and desires. But to what end is the entire meaning of modern life to simply seek pleasure and avoid pain? Is this enough to live? In our past, there were hidden esoteric paths that guided the wise through the matrix of control. But these ancient learnings have become obscured by pseudo transcendent materialism and false profits. So Robert, I've shared a short clip there. I hope everyone can get a sense for what the movie's about. Tell us more, particularly before we launch off into a million inside baseball deep dives, which we're bound to do. Tell folks a little bit about this particular film, how and why you put it together. When you put it together, it seems incredibly relevant. It seems very immediate, but I'm sure you've had to work on it for a while, which makes it even kind of more interesting. Tell us about the film. Yeah, I started this film in 2018 as soon as I finished 21 Faces of God. But the initial idea had come in about 2016. So I've been playing around with this idea a long time. So in 2018, and it takes me a couple of years because I collect pieces of things. And so once I have enough stuff collected, then I begin to lay it out. So I started laying it out pre coronavirus. And then the whole thing, when the world just kind of blew up, I had to start again. So I almost didn't finish it. I almost didn't finish it. I would say the kernel, the real essence of this film is, do you remember I used that quote from Joseph Campbell about the time? There's a lot of Joseph Campbell in here. And we're going to talk about that. So tell me that particular Joseph Campbell clip, because I have some other ones I was going to pull up as well. It was one, I watched that as a kid. I was about 20, maybe 23, 24, something like this. And I remember watching that thing about time and how it's, he talks about it's, it's a condescension of the infinite to the mind of man. And that's what we see as God. And that drove me insane. I never understood what he was talking about. What do you think now today, that's still very, very deep. And you might have to say that again and break it down. What is your understanding of that now? A condensation condensing down the infinite. A condescension. A condescension. Did he mean as a condescension? There's kind of dual meaning there, right? It's condescending, but also a concentration, right? Or am I wrong? And that would that not be a fair dual meaning? I think he really meant it as a condescending on the part of the infinite to the mind of man. And that's what we see as God. And you, and of course, we all know his famous bliss quote, right? Yes. You have that in the film as well. So, so, but tell, tell folks what the, what the bliss quote is. I want to try and be as non inside baseball to start out here. But, but first go back to the, to the God thing. If you, if any of the folks here have watched the 21 faces of God, they'll notice at the end, there's a little bit of, it becomes a little, you can, you can taste and smell it because I'm starting to smell this Vedantic culture that's really starting to interest me. And I start reading the Upanishads. And then I get into Ramakrishna a little bit and something happens. I'm reading the English translation of the Gospel of Ramakrishna. And it says edited by Joseph Campbell. And I said, you son of a gun. Now I know what you meant. You don't know. I'm not sure many people know this. You're familiar with Sachi Ananda, no? Remind me. Be consciousness of bliss. Yes. Yes. Right. It's one of the fundamentals of Vedic culture really. He's bliss quo. He's, he didn't, now I'm not saying he stole it, but he, that's what it is. And the, I, that's, it's, it's being when you, when you know you're being, you have bliss. And if you look at the one I use of Campbell talking about bliss, he goes, when you're really in it, that's when you find your bliss. Campbell was, was all in Vedic. You see what I mean? He was a non dual Advaita. That's what he was. That was his thing. And I didn't understand it when I was young. And when I finally got it, I was like, ah, you son of a gun. I know what you were up to. You see what I mean? Oh, it's very, it's very much a part of the film. And it's, it's wonderful. And, you know, okay, I'm just kind of, I feel like I'm holding back, holding back. So now we're going to kind of launch into this in, in only so many different levels that we're kind of playing around with and talking about. So the first thing that I'd say about Joseph Campbell and the quote about bliss from a business guy from an BU MBA guy, to me, that is the most misunderstood quote in the world because where I see it, a lot of people go with it is do what you love and the money will follow. And they think that's what he's saying. And do what you love and the money will follow is bullshit. Money doesn't work like that. Money doesn't follow your bliss. Bliss follows your bliss. If you seek bliss, your best hope is to find bliss, but it isn't to find more material shit that you want. But Campbell sometimes isn't totally clear on that. It's sometimes he, he, he does seem to straddle into this place where we all want to go called backdoor materialism, where we want to say these ideas that work on a spiritual non dual level might also work in the real world too. And I don't, I don't know that the evidence is there for that. And then I'd shoot out one more little Easter Bunny on Joseph Campbell. The question here, what propels Joseph Campbell into our culture? What is the work that really propels him into our culture? Oh, the Bill Moyers interview. Exactly. Bill Moyers, who, who is one of the co-conspirators deeply entwined in the coup that most people point to as being a major turning point in American history. And that's the assassination of JFK. So by these forthright Nazi, you know, Alan Dulles, CIA, Project Paperclip. Well, a lot of people forget, do you remember who Bill Moyers was in that? Right. He was Lyndon Johnson's press secretary by president, right? Right. There's a, there's a picture of Bill Moyers when the plane lands in DC and Johnson gets off the plane now president because remember he, Johnson took the oath on the plane. There's a very, you see Moyers waiting for a very young Bill Moyers. He goes up and shakes his hand. He was the guy who took the bubble top off the limo. He was the guy who, and you know, the JFK thing, it's like ancient history for most people because they're just not of that age, but it's just so many people will point to like with this latest kind of round of, you know, recapturing the castle that happened. And not to say that Trump wasn't part of the same gang, just a different faction anyway, because we won't get into all that. But in this latest round of just kind of absurdity, it directly traces back to the JFK coup. And not the JFK was perfect either, but it's just unraveling history in a way that most people don't want to do. And what I think is interesting about it is, so there's two ways of looking at Bill Moyer, right? Bill Moyer is fantastic. I love Bill Moyer on PBS. But what does he do? What does he do with this part of his life? What is it? Because anyone who was involved at that level with Johnson, if they didn't know it beforehand, before the shooting, they knew it soon after, right? Because their plot to cover this up is so transparently, idiotically just stupid that he had to know. And then what did he do with that? Did he ever speak out about it? Did he, you know, it's like Dan Rather, you know, it's like, I've watched the subredor film and the head goes down, you know, it's like lie upon lie that was spread throughout the media and these guys perpetuated. I don't want to get off on the JFK thing. I want to get off on the Joseph Campbell thing in terms of how do you be in this world and not of this world? How do you be the mystic that Joseph Campbell is? And how do you at the same time be best-selling author and PBS celebrity? You know what I mean? I think that is the BU MBA, hey, I could make a lot of money in AI kind of thing that I think is also and then I'm going to shut up. But I think there is that tension in your movie and your movie is beautifully done, but you don't fall for the kind of sucker kind of one way or another. The lawyer connection, I think, is it's interesting to look at it that way. Bill, where's a complex guy? A very complex guy. And so is Campbell. Campbell was not a simple guy. Very interesting to remember once Campbell died, the wolves came after them. They called him first, they tried to attack him as an anti-Semite with no, just by hearsay. The guy had written and spoken, I mean, unbelievable amount of video with him, never said anything. But oh, in private, he said this and privately said that. And the second thing is they attacked his credentials because he never had a PhD. So he never finished the PhD. So the Sanskrit scholars came after him. If you look, if you academics hated him because he became a superstar and he didn't, he never got the PhD. He was not a full professor. And I don't think he wrote a lot of academic papers. If he wrote books. So he was a little bit different. He followed his own hang. And so yeah, Campbell was not somebody that a lot of people liked in academia. And that gets even deeper, right? I mean, first to address the anti-Semite thing, straight on. I am so anti-Semite. I mean, just unapologetically. I'm anti-Christian, unapologetically. I'm anti-Islam, unapologetically. Religion is a great mind control game that folds into this social engineering project in a way that if we don't address it straight on, then we have no chance. So all these religions are just out in the open about promoting these cultish practices that seek disintermediation between you and God, for lack of a better term. So I think it's really easy to read into what Joseph Campbell is saying as being anti-Semitic in the same way that you could read into what he's saying as being anti-Christian, because you can. He's kind of calling for a larger Christianity that Christians would say, would just kind of react against. You're kind of very open to the Gnostic vibe. Whenever I say Christ consciousness to someone who's Christian, they just tighten up like, oh, you're going to try and pass some kind of Gnostic stuff. And I know that's bad. They're just programmed kind of in this robotic way. And I don't know why we would want to give Judaism some kind of pass. I mean, it's a wonderful social tradition. Frick, there are values. But it's kind of like Mormonism too. Mormonism works incredibly well too. It doesn't mean that it doesn't have cultish origins. So I think that's on one hand kind of that. And then the academia thing is a complete joke. I mean, all of academia is built on this falsified idea that you and I cover beautifully in the film that there's tried to sell you that consciousness is an illusion. And they're doing it because they want to sell you stuff and they don't want you to get this expanded view of who you are. And that's what they're pushed back on Joseph Campbell. So let's push back on both sides. Let's push back on the religious side. And at the same time, we'll push back on the scientific side disguised as this social sciences academia. Because I mean, they are just all everyone in the social sciences are just water boys for the hard science. I mean, they just follow like lap dogs. It's a joke. And I just wanted to remember that quote I used from Max Plank, that is brilliant. He said, you can't get behind the consciousness. I mean, it's so simple. But when you really think about it, he said, if you can't, you can't get behind it. So from a scientific point of view, that's very profound. You can't how can you how can you look at it? I mean, he clearly states that. And so if you can't get behind it, how can you ever escape it? You know, you can't do science without without thinking about that. And if you don't think about it, what are you really doing? Okay, so there's a whole bunch of different points we could jump to. And we could jump to the technology part of this, which you do a beautiful job of covering and our Google Netflix kind of what we call it. Google Netflix. Yes. So talk about that. Talk about the gospel of Google and Netflix and how they seem to be kind of overtly prepping us for what's coming down the road. Yeah, I use I use a clip of ex Machina. And but if you watch, I mean, I to name the series, but there's so many in the series. But I have gotten the sensation in the last 10 years that there's a lot of good television being made from a technical point of view, excellent writing, good acting, TV has become almost like cinema. But the underlying message of all of this is pure materialism, absolutely pure materialism. That's all you have. There is no transcendent message in anything that they produce. So your values and goals as far as, for example, social justice, overt ethics, this is the value of life, but there is nothing more, absolutely nothing more. And that is something that I think is extremely important because it's completely taken over our culture. That really is the paradigm. Well, I want to explore that a little bit further because I don't know that they're not offering a transcendence. And I think you say this in the film, they're really suggesting that there's a different kind of transcendence that we need to be kind of ready for. Do you want to kind of speak to that? Because I think that you do, you do at some point say the fundamental question is, is consciousness of the machine something that we need to fully consider and fully embrace? And is that ultimately our transcendence? Yeah. And I think I dance around it a little bit when I say it's not at all clear. It's not at all clear that the machine could be conscious. And I can explain that why I danced around that a little bit. This is the balance I actually appreciated in the film because anyone who, you know, we kind of get stuck in our little echo chamber too. And we all start saying the same thing. And people are like, ooh, AI bad, Neuralink, Elon Musk bad, you know. And it's like, you know, what if, what if this is inevitable? Because one of the things of the Google Netflix Gospel that rings true to all of us is that unless you're a Luddite, stick your head in the ground, you know, ride your horse and buggy, there's a certain ability of this that you want to say, I hope somebody is mining store and is getting us ready for this future. And, you know, hats off to X Machina for, you know, kind of allowing us to explore these topics. So what do you think about that? I completely convinced that I don't put any sort of moral judgment on AI and on technology. It's absolutely inevitable. This is something that is happening, just like the printing press happened, like the internet happened, et cetera, et cetera. What do they call it? The fourth industrial revolution. This is happening. And Alex, you and I, I think realize it's not like it's going to happen. It has happened. We're in the middle. Explain that a little bit. How do you know we're in the middle of that? Give people concrete examples. This is just a stupid example. From 2017, I'm sure that you remember that article in The Guardian about how the AI can tell if you're gay or you're straight with five pictures of your face. Now remember, 2017 in today's terms is like 100 years ago. That's five, the research, the data is alive from five years ago. Five pictures, five pictures, and they can tell if you're gay or you're straight. And like I tell people, who cares? But what about five pictures? You have depression. You have deviant behavior. They have that today. Today, give me, for example, Alex, think Foxconn, a million employees, right? Now they have a million employees. How many employees have they ever had? What must be 10 million? They have 10 million pictures of people. 10 million pictures of people they know. This guy stole, here are all the thieves. Here are the depressed ones, the ones that missed work. Here are the ones that were sexual deviants. You don't think they have this data now? Explain who Foxconn is. Foxconn does all the manufacturing for Apple. I think they offer Dell, HP, the largest company in the world by employees. That's not a military. Just so people kind of refresh their memories. When you see those pictures of these Orwellian, Orwellian factories in China with the nets on the side to kind of catch the bodies of people who curl themselves off of it because they just can't face an existence of this future, this dark dystopian future that is their life with their social credits. And they just leap on the other side. That is Foxconn. That is who we were talking about, Foxconn. Exactly. And remember, I taught in China, so I lived in China. I met people who worked at Foxconn. Chinese universities, Chinese universities, all the kids must live in the dormitory and they live in dorms of about seven boys per room and like nine girls. So for them to go even from a university to a Foxconn dormitory, remember in Foxconn you live in the dormitory. You sound like a, I think it's a 12 month contract to go year to year. And, you know, your contract is for five days. If you don't work six days, it's not good. You got to work the six days. And you're not working eight, you're working 10, 11, 12 hour shifts. I used to talk to some industrial engineers. You know, the guys are kind of managing things. You could feel that just like, oh man, six days, 12 hours was rough. These were engineers. We're not talking about the, you know, the people, you know, lower down. So. Well, that kind of leads to another topic that you address in the film and in all your work. And I love your quote from Anne Bernays, who is the daughter. Right. Right. The daughter. That was the daughter. That's a great quote. Enlighten, enlighten despotism. Tell us, tell us about that. So we all know who Bernays was, right? He's the nephew, I think, of Sigmund Freud. Either that or he's related by marriage. But he's the one who takes Sigmund Freud and says, hey, you got some kind of interesting ideas there, but you haven't begun to think about how to operationalize these, how to productize these, right? That's where he starts. He's got a little of you and I in this. He's like, wow, I can make a little money off this. He got women smoking. The whole idea of how to get women to smoke in the Mason's Day parade. He got those seven women out there smoking, showing the power of cigarettes to get women, because women used to not smoke in public. It was frowned upon. So he twist, he changed that social norm to get women to smoke. Bernays brought. What Bernays, the genius of Bernays is this. Bernays understood that you can create desires, then fulfill them. Before people had needs and we fulfilled their needs, but Bernays understood you can develop, you can create that desire and then fulfill it. That's what I did as an internet marketer. I would show you a picture of a guy with a hot girl in a bad car and say, hey man, you want to learn how to trade options? I'll show you a couple of grand weekends. Come on, man. Alex, I had the numbers down on that Excel sheet. So many millions of impressions, so many clicks, so many registrations. I'm going to go fishing and I'll get, and that's what every Bernays did. I created that desire, put the picture out, so many would react, get them to buy and make some money. Let's play that. Let's play that. No, you're not a bad boy. Don't say that. We're going to talk about that in a minute. We're going to let Ann talk about that. Hold on. He called it the engineering of consent. Democracy to my father was a wonderful concept, but I don't think he felt that all those publics out there had reliable judgment and that they very easily might vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing so that they had to be guided from above. It's enlightened despotism in a sense. That is fantastic. I got to give a shout out to Adam Curtis. The nicest thing anyone said about Twilight of the Archons for me, some guy on Reddit said, it looks like a low-budget Adam Curtis film. I was like, yes, that's what I wanted to hear. That's what it is. It's low-budget Adam Curtis. So again, you might have mentioned a century of the self if anyone doesn't remember the brilliant. Yeah, and you got to go watch it in several parts. Kind of turning this back to the film where you say, hey, don't be so quick to just think, you know, we're just going to rip all this stuff down because we don't know. It's easier to destroy social structures than it is to. Absolutely. Can I play that clip and then we'll talk about it? Sure. We have explored their methods and false myths, but in order to defeat them, we must be able to identify them. Know your enemy. He knows you. So is the answer revolution? Should we take to the streets and throw the rascals out? Who would we replace them with? Could it really be that easy? Unfortunately, reality is more complicated than comic book characters would have us believe. And we shouldn't forget that it takes much more energy to create a social order than to destroy one. So Robert, speak to that for a second, because again, that is the what I loved about the film is another example of this subtle tension that you're developing because you're taking us down one path and then you're hitting us with the cold reality that are you naive enough to think that just a simple revolution is what you seek. What's that saying? If you're not a socialist by the time you're 20, you don't have a heart. And if you're not a conservative by the time of your 40, you don't have a brain. Order, social order. What's it? The second law of thermodynamics entropy to create a social order, the complexity of our society. You're going to destroy that. And what are you going to? There's a 99.9 percent chance what comes after is going to be a full disaster. What are you going to do? No, no, no, just relax because the AI is going to go where it has to go. The economy is going to go where it has to go. History is going to go where it has to go. It's about us. It's not about it. I really believe that. This is the next level, shit, Robert, that I rarely hear you talk about. So it's a real treat. I totally, totally agree with you. The chaotic nature of the entrepreneurial spirit and how it manifests in the United States is hard to recreate. And it's fundamentally essential to how and why we've gotten this far. What we know to be the alternatives there and how those get played out. And we should be careful with the unintended consequences of both, the unintended consequences of communism, which is this kind of complete virus of the mind that is just absurd to think that you would give up all your rights, you would give up all your possessions in order to give them to some non entity state that would then decide your life. And you should resist that with every fiber of your being. And the messiness that comes with that that we call capitalism will prevail over that because that is a fundamentally flawed system that I think will always collapse upon itself. What would you have any thoughts on that? Oh, yeah, the communism, I mean, it just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Now we're at a crisis now in capitalism, especially in the West. And I would say, I agree with you more, it's a false crisis on the economic level on the economic level. People come live here and try and I mean, I don't want to tell you how much money I make, but it's pretty, pretty depressing when you go to university professors that what you can do in the United States today, if you have an idea and want to get something done, it's still exceptional. It still is. So I think what we're having is it's the cultural side of it. We're having a cultural breakdown. But I'm not so sure that on an economic level, things are as horrific as people think they are. So, so then let's get to the real stuff, which is when we do look beyond the material, then we see how pitifully small of a game we're playing when we worry about any of that stuff, when we worry about the materialistic, even when we're railing against the materialism or we're railing against ex machina and the culture shapers, because what you're really pointing to is something that truly transcends that. What are we seeking at that soul level that is beyond materialism and is portrayed in film? It's something that's come to me as I've gotten older. If the key to everything, I mean, if we could agree that being happiness is what we're all looking for, I mean, it's not that complicated. You know, we just want to feel that sense of peace and happiness. You don't get it out there. It just doesn't come out there. You can have fun out there, and I think people should go out and have fun out there. But in the end, that thing that we're all, and I think it's as simple as that, that thing we're all searching for, no matter in what it is, if it's in material things, in relationship, whatever it is, you can't get it out there, and eventually you've got to turn in. And that's the only place you can find it. That's been my experience. I'm not, I'm not saying that this is, I'm just saying this has been my experience, and I've seen it related in many traditions. And like what you say about religion, so true, no? That when I was growing up, I had certain very traditional, say, Catholic beliefs. And when Campbell, in that interview, in that Moyers interview, he said something very important, he said, Moyers asked him about a personal God, and he said, you know, of course not. I don't know what, you know? And when you have to transcend those ideas of, you know, I mean, if there was a time for me that if you said, Jesus maybe didn't exist, I would have, you know, been scandalized. But now, it doesn't really matter, I don't care. I can honestly say, I mean, what difference does that make? That's not where the truth is. The truth is, in turn, great. So let's find another clip, I think that reinforces that. Realizing the world we experience as a reflection, a perception in our mind is a key insight. There is no world out there that we experience. What we experience is perception itself. Is reality the images and the sensations we experience, or simply the awareness in which they arise? Our culture insists that it is the objects themselves. But are we being deceived? Rise, wake up, seek the wise and realize. The path is difficult to cross, like the sharpened edge of a razor. So say the wise. And I have a firm belief in this now, not only in terms of my own experience, but in knowing about the experiences of other people. When you follow your bliss, and by bliss, I mean the deep sense of being in it and doing what the push is out of your own existence, you follow that and doors will open where there would, you would not have thought there were going to be doors and where there wouldn't be a door for anybody else. And there's something about the integrity of a life and the world moves in and helps. Great, great stuff, Robert. Do you want to comment on any of that in that last piece? I'll edit that down a little bit because it went on a little bit too long, but I can't stop. I like, I want to keep playing more and more. Joseph Campbell at the end is the bliss quote, but come in on the whole, the journey you take us on. Yeah, it's really important. We only know our perceptions, but we never interact with this material world. We don't. And then if you follow philosophically, you go to Kant and then you go through Hegel and all these people. And what does science do? Science, this is important. Science measures perceptions and manipulates perceptions through technology, but the actual material world, what is it? We don't know. The only thing we know is our awareness and those, and in the field within which all of these perceptions arise, that's all we know. You know, Donald Hoffman, I think, really nails this when he really goes into exactly what is our experience and our experience is only that awareness. Like Planck says, you can't get behind it and you can't get in front of it. So that's all, we're right there. That's all we have. And when you bring that down, when you think about concepts like time and space, do they really hold up? And I don't know. I'm not a physicist, but I do know what I know and I know is my experience, and my experience is simply this perception. And if you drill it down to what you know and you get rid of the stories, like I say in the film, the story of money, you know, what money is and what people perceive it as are very different. And the same as our experience with the material world, when you drill down, you know, what do we have? We only have that experience of the here and now. That's all we have. Everything occurs there. And so, if you go there, there are some traditions who seem to think that, you know, you can find that bliss there, not yesterday, not tomorrow, you can find it there. Robert, tell us a little bit about your personal spiritual life and practices. How do you bring that down to a practical level? What do you believe in practice? Yeah, because I spent a long time in sort of the at Western, I'm not going to go through the whole trajectory, but a lot of time in the Western esoteric tradition, a lot of time, a lot of time in Gnosticism. And I found one problem, one problem. It's fascinating, but it doesn't get you over the edge. Do you know what I mean? Like you can really, it's very interesting. But there seems to be that the sort of that last leap is a little bit difficult. And then I got into invited non-dualism. You know, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, this whole thing in the modern, in the modern, I guess, opponents with this would be someone like Rupert Spira or Francis Seal, these types of people. And getting into that, it has, I mean, anyone who's into that non-dual thing is going to see it in the film very clearly. It's obvious for those people who are there. But yeah, I would say that's where I am now. Pretty serious into that. And it seems like it's working for me. And I didn't set out to make the film this way. I really did. I promise you I didn't. But it's just kind of evolved this way. And then I got to the end. I just want to tell one kind of interesting story. When I understood what Campbell was saying, that Campbell was basically a proponent of a divider completely. If you look into his past, he's completely a divider. And I understood about Bliss. Bliss is really love. Then I said, that's it. Because I don't know if you noticed what the end is one Corinthians about love. That's one Corinthians in Greek. And I was like, that's it. And for you fans of Kizlowski out there, I changed the timing to get love, hopes, all right, when Julia's smile comes on. So I switched it on Kizlowski a little bit. I moved it up a little. So sorry, Christophe. But that was the idea to bring it up to there and then sliding Corinthians. I thought that was kind of a nice little move. And then you end with the very excellent Natalie Merchant. And I thought that was, that was a great, great connection in a way. Tell folks, this is maybe inside spiritual religious, if you will, baseball. How do you understand at a super high level the difference between Gnosticism and the non dual stuff? And then I'll kind of offer my perspective. Oh, I think fundamentally it's very similar because Gnosticism means gnosis. It's the experience of the divine, the actual experience. It's not about beliefs. There's a cosmology and a mythology, but understood correctly. It's about an experience of that, that divine experience, which is inexperience. I think saying anything more, speaking anything more about it is bullshit. When you've had the experience, you know, there were ways to get you over the top. But a lot of those were lost. A lot of those traditions were lost. But in the non dual tradition, the invited tradition, they've kept it alive pretty clearly. You know, they said, you know, to get from here to there, there are certain methods, depending on your personality type, what's better for this person and that person, it's pretty clear. If you brought it to a Christian level, I would say it has a lot to do with the cross. The vertical is the eternal and the horizontal part of the cross. That's what comes and goes. That would be my, for example. So where you want to be, you want to be right in the center between where they, where they need. That's where you want to be. And that where it was Christ, he was right there, right, right in the center of that cross. When you think about it that way, between the infinite and what comes and goes, you can kind of make the connection. But yeah, go to how I'd like to hear, I'd love to hear your, your take. My take is, Gnosticism is about dam the archives. And non dual thinking is world what world. And to me, it's more direct. The non dual approach is more direct. And I particularly like where people in the West are non dual Dharma brothers in the West have taken it. I really think they've taken it further than the Eastern tradition did. The thing that always I pull up a little bit short on the Gnosticism is they see this battle, see this big war. And it's like, how can there, if you, if you truly are transcending, how do you see this as any war? And how could you see good and evil as some kind of war? It's all good. It can't be otherwise. It's non dual. There's no dual, you know. And I think you captured that beautifully in the film. The battle is inside you. If you choose. We are our own archive. I'll give you an example. I have a lot of beliefs that are absolute nonsense, absolutely nonsense. I believe a lot of stupid things. Like for example, imagine, you know, the keys are on the kitchen table and I checked five times and they're not there. I have a lot of beliefs like that in my life. But to get rid of those beliefs, oh my God. And that's a little bit the demure. He's holding on. Yeah, it does. And I'm all for Joseph Campbell and you like stories and myths. And we all do to a certain extent. I like, to me, there's something more direct about the non dual. And you know, even though I said I love my Western non dual teachers, hey, the people from the east know some shit too. And I'm the hugging saint. I always have this kind of quote of this wonderful experience. She's one of her followers have when I'm not at all down with followers. We don't need to follow anyone. We don't, we can disintermediate and go. But anyways, I'm a is giving is giving these incredible facilitating these incredible awakenings by people just by hugging them and she hugs anyone and thousands of people line up to just get one of her hugs. That's what she does. But then she also works tirelessly digging these latrines in India with the untouchables and is just like imagine a mother Teresa and one of her followers goes up and says, how can you do this? I mean, you say, we're not of this world and yet all your time and energy is put into this world. And she says, world, what world? That is non dual. That is I do. I do. This is Jesus, right? I'm in this world, but not of this world. That living that is just strikes me as a little bit different than Gnosticism. And I love Gnostic vibe and I love the films and stuff like that. But just we're just sharing kind of our perspectives. And I agree that for me, when I found the non dual path, I took a deep breath and I was like, I think this is it. I think we're on the final approach here. Do you know what I mean? There's a sense of it grabs you and it doesn't let go because I love Gnosticism, but I never knew how to crack the code. Like I want to crack the code, man. I mean, this is cool, but cool is not enough. The non dual stuff, it gives you says, all right, son, let's go. It's very powerful, but you have to be ready. I don't think it's for everything. You know, you got to be, you got to be kind of sick. You got to have to, you know, you got to pay your dues a little bit beforehand. One of my great non dual teachers has a great way to start for anybody. Don't complain about the weather. Don't complain about the fucking weather. It's the most non dual you can get. That's the essence of it. You think you're the center of the fucking universe. You think you're the center of the continent of Africa that the weather should you're crazy. You left the keys on the counter five times. You check what are you doing? Stop it right now. Let's just stop complaining about the weather. Okay, enough. Robert, it's been fantastic. Tell us, tell us where you're going with the film Twilight of the Arkons. Anyone can go watch it on YouTube and should watch it on YouTube. Tell us what other things you're working in, how you're getting the word out. What's in the hand that looks like a peyote button or something in the hand of this cactus land logo that you have? That's the old Hunter Thompson logo, you know, the Gonzo logo. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's from Hunter Thompson in cactus land, of course, comes from TS Eliot. And so it's kind of a, you know, a mishmash of that. But I've kind of created the brand and I just want to say, and this is shameless self promotion, the film is completely free. And I don't want money. You know, I have a day job. I pay the rent. I don't need money. But please promote the film because I think it's important. It's not maybe it's not one of these things going to get, you know, but it's a kind of message. If you get it, I think it's important. So folks, if you like the film, I'd really appreciate just a couple posts on Facebook, I read it, you know, just a little bit. If you feel like you like it, just promote it a little bit because I think it's it's there's something worthwhile about this film. Absolutely, absolutely true. Our guest has been so excellent. Now you know why he's my Dharma brother, Robert Pinamo. Thanks so much for what we'll definitely have to do this. Again, I know you, you'll be cranking out another one of these in a couple of years. A couple of years now maybe. But terrific having you on Robert. Congratulations on this great job. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks again to Robert Pinamo for joining me today on Skeptico. One question IT up from this interview, kind of an offbeat one, but it's the one we wound up on. So let's see how deep down this kind of wacky rabbit hole you want to go. How do you understand process the differences between the Gnosticism stuff and the non-dual stuff? I'd love to hear a conversation on that. Join me over on the Skeptico forum. If you want to chat about it, please stick around for future shows. I got a bunch of them coming up until next time. Take care. Bye for now.