 I would love to talk to you about this analogy of the symphony. And the reason why I'd like to talk to you about this analogy is because the unity of all being is the symphony. Infinite consciousness is the symphony. It is the seemingly or the illusory, which is that it does... The way that it appears is... It can lead people off from the truth. So it's not as it appears that the symphony has a good analogy in the sense that... And I want to hear what you think about this. There's the unity of all being, but then there is this, again, this illusory, this self, this Alan and Rupert and all of these 8 billion seemingly individuals. But part of the beauty of the symphony analogy is that people don't reside in the ultimate, which is, okay, non-duality. Excellent. And rather it's both the unity, it's non-duality. Excellent. And it's also I get the opportunity to be... We get to be artists. We get to make great studio pottery. We get to make great content. We get to engineer. We get to design. We get to tinker, but we do that all from the place of unity. We do that all from the place of non-duality. Is that about right? How does that resonate? Yes. Ultimately, everything, absolutely everything comes from or is an expression or modulation of consciousness or awareness. I use the words synonymously. Some of our thoughts and feelings and our subsequent activities and relationships are mediated through the belief, I am a temporary finite separate self. So even though those thoughts and feelings and the activities and relationships that they generate ultimately come from consciousness, they do not express what is true of the nature of consciousness or reality. Why? Because they are filtered through the belief in separation and therefore express that belief. Ultimately, of course, they still come from the same place that everything comes from. So I would suggest that true creativity could be said to be any form, be that form in words, in music, any art form. It is a form that comes unmediated directly from our deepest reality or being that is not filtered through the sense of separation, although it requires the agency of the person to articulate that expression. The source of that expression doesn't come from a person, the feeling of being temporary, finite separate. It is an expression of the reality that lies behind, so to speak, the finite mind or the separate person. Which is why the artist calls themselves a channel so often. Yes, yes. And the purpose of this art that is informed by the background of awareness is to bring the truth or the reality that is inherent in it out into the world in order to be shared with humanity. Yes, yes. And this is the idea that I may be a violinist, but you may be a saxophone player and there's also a drummer and there's a cellist and there's the clarinet. And that's the idea of, and they're all, and by the way, two clarinets may be playing different harmonies. And so there's that as well. So that's the idea that all eight billion are in that sense, artists in the symphony and that they have their unique expression. Yes. Okay, go ahead. Can I upgrade your metaphor? Please upgrade it. Yes. Because your metaphor is, it's a beautiful metaphor and it's true. I can see what you're trying to articulate, but the first metaphor that you referred to the metaphor of the dream has, I think is more efficient and is clearer. So can I, if you want me to go back to the symphony, but can I rearticulate what you're saying in terms of the dream metaphor? Because I think it's easier to speak about and much easier to understand. So as you said in your introduction, take what happens to us when we have a dream at night. Where are you located now, Adam? Where do you live? In South Dakota right now. You're in Dakota. Okay, so say you fall asleep in South Dakota and you imagine that you're walking on the streets of London. You don't view the dreamed streets of London directly from your mind asleep in South Dakota. Your mind has forgotten that it is dreaming. It has overlooked itself and your own mind has located itself within its own dream. You now seem to be Alan walking on the streets of London. That is the only way your mind can perceive the dream by overlooking itself, locating itself in the dream and viewing what is in fact its own activity from this localized perspective in the dream as the streets of London. Now everybody else that you encounter on the streets of London, which from your limited perspective, who seem to be separate people, are in fact the activity of your own indivisible mind. When you wake up in the morning, you realize the entire dream, all the different people and all the different objects were the activity. There were no entities there. It was all the activity of my own mind. It only appeared as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves from the illusory perspective of the self that I seemed to become in the dream. Now, let's say that you now you meet one of these people, you meet an old friend on the streets of London in your dream. You haven't seen this friend for a long time. You both go to a cafe, you sit down, and you have a conversation about something and you both disagree. You're talking about American politics, okay, and you completely disagree with your friend about so you have one point of view. Your friend has another completely point of view. So your point of view, you each have a series of thoughts. You think that your thoughts are right. You think your friends thoughts are incorrect. But so you can have two completely different thoughts opposing thoughts that seem to be completely opposite to each other and are indeed in the dream opposite to each other. When you wake up, you realize that both the true thoughts and the untrue thoughts were generated in your own mind, and that goes for the present sensations the unpleasant sensations that the kind thoughts the unkind thoughts the loving feelings the the behavior that is intelligent and loving the behavior that is cruel and unjust it all ultimately is the activity of a single universal mind. Yes, yes, and so in the analogy, the idea then is that infinite consciousness has within in the symphony has take we we we are we that all the artists in all the seemingly individual artists have the we we have a filter the filter of the mind in the dream that then is that there's there's a process of realizing for the the fight the seemingly finite minds to realize that ah ha the infinite consciousness and and and it's both the infinite consciousness and it is also that it's not a ha okay and but it's but it's a ha and so it's the realization and it's the creation from that place of realization. So then the clear the clarinet player, the violinist, etc. They create their melody harmony from that place of a ha and yeah. Yeah, exactly. Let's keep both metaphors alive. So let's let's take the essentially two possibilities. Let's go back and get to translate what you've now said into the dream metaphor. You're back on by the way Rupert I just want to say I think this is so powerful for the synthesis of East and West because the East is very on the non dual and the West is very on the individual and which is very interesting because then it can synthesize them into that. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go back to the dream analogy you meet your friend. So you are the dreamed character that let's continue to call you Alan. And your your friend. He's called, let's say he's called David. So Alan and David are talking in the cafe. So let's say that that Alan has recognized that the essential nature of his mind, the essential nature of himself is shared with everyone and everything. So he still perceives from the localized perspective of his body. He can only street the streets of London from where he's sitting on his cafe table but he knows that the nature of that which perceives in him is not limited to located in or generated in his body. So he knows that although he seems to be a separate individual, what he essentially is is shared by everyone and everything and his thoughts and feelings and his subsequent activities and relationships are informed by this understanding. Now, David does not realize this Alan's friend David believes he read Alan's friend David reasons with himself. Well, every time I close my eyes, the world disappears. Every time I open my eyes, the world or the streets of London in this case they reappear so it's perfectly obvious that whatever it is that perceives the world must live just behind my eyes in my brain and was obviously generated by my brain. It is limited to my brain and my brain dies. My consciousness will die with it. In other words, David believes that he is a temporary finite self that is separate from or be it related to everyone and everything else. And all his thoughts and feelings or almost all his thoughts and feelings and his subsequent activities and relationships are informed by that understanding. So Alan and David have very different kinds of thoughts. They're different instrument players in that sense as well if one player is playing. Well, they're different. They're different instruments but what's more important is that the understanding that is expressed through the instrumentality of each of their bodies is a different understanding although ultimately it is all the activity of Alan asleep in South Dakota. Yes, in one case, in the case of Alan in the dream, his thoughts and feelings express the reality and in David's case they do not express that they express separation. And as a result of the belief in separation, David is able to not only think and feel but act and relate in a ways that are not consistent with truth, love, justice and to extrapolate now from David. If you were to take David's point of view in extreme cases, one whose thoughts and feelings and subsequent activities and relationships are informed by this sense of separation is able to commit acts of gross unkindness and injustice. They are still the activities of the same infinite mind but filtered through the sense of separation. They are able to behave in a way that is not consistent with reality. Whereas what Alan in the dream does, everything he says, he is an artist and the purpose of his art is to express his understanding and communicate it and share it just as that is the case for Alan in real life as well. Okay, back to the symphony. This is playing so beautifully. So the ultimate dreamer of infinite consciousness dreams up the illusory universe in the sense that it doesn't seem to be exactly what it is. Can I hold that thought just for a minute? I don't like to interact but I wanted to say this the last time you mentioned the illusory world because I think this is very important. It's something that I misunderstood for years. And I think it's something that causes a lot of people who would otherwise be interested in these matters trouble for good reason with this approach. And that is because the world is referred to as being an illusion. And for many people the idea that something is an illusion is tantamount to saying that it is not real. So I want to make a very clear distinction between something that is not real and something that is an illusion. An illusion, yes. So let's just use an example. A square circle, try to imagine now a square circle. Or in the Zen tradition the one hand clapping. Okay, but let's stick with the square. Try to imagine now a square circle. We can't do it. In other words, it's not even possible to imagine the illusory image of a square circle. A square circle is not an illusion. It is utterly non-existent. Yeah. However, when we are watching a movie, for instance, and we see a landscape in the movie, the landscape is obviously an illusion, but it is not non-existence. There is something that is there. There is a reality to the illusory landscape. And of course, when we go up to it, we touch the landscape, we find, relatively speaking, that its reality is the screen. The screen, yes. All of this, the world, as you rightly say from this, in this perspective, the world is an illusion, not in the sense that it is not real. It is absolutely real. In the sense that it is, the world is an illusion in the sense that it is not what it appears to be. It appears to be a multiplicity and diversity of objects themselves only from the limited and localized perspective of a separate self or a finite mind. Yes, yes. This is going to play beautifully. So that was very important. Go back to your thought about the illusory world. That was very important, Rupert. Thank you. So the ultimate dreamer of the infinite consciousness. We have this, dreams this, the illusory, which is, it's not what it appears to be. Symphony. And then here's what, where I'm really interested in this symphony. Symphony has the, these eight billion seemingly, again, illusory in the sense, artists that are individual, that are being filtered through the finite mind. But here's, here's something interesting. My understanding of infinite consciousness, I think, and I think it was Atmananda Krishnamen and who said that if you do have to think of it in a sense, you can think of it as behind, behind, behind you, the infinite consciousness. And that the, the more that you go through the process of self-abidance, so you go through Atma Vichar, a self-inquiry to gain the realization of infinite consciousness, and then you have the process of self-abidance. The point is that you have potentially varying degrees of artistry in the sense that there are people that have deep self-abidance in infinite consciousness. So when they're playing their violin, they're doing it in, as in the acronym STO, service to other. So they're playing their violin with service to other because they're, they've, they've realized that versus maybe a clarinet player who, in the case of David in your dream, remember, so this is where we can connect the two analogies. David, in the case of the dream, hasn't went through the deeper self-inquiry and self-abidance process. And so he is under more of the acronym of STS, service to self. So he is playing the clarinet, but that's why he's also going through the process of seeking objects, relationships, substances, all these external things to make himself happy and peaceful. So how, how, is that where, I think, I feel like we're getting closer to an interesting synthesis between in the dream and the symphony. And do you see the spectrum also in terms of the 8 billion? And do you see them evolving as well in the sense that someone that is service to self, inevitably Rupert, we had slavery and we don't have slavery anymore in much of, in much of the world. And so there isn't sort of ethical or consciousness or awareness. Not in a sense that consciousness or the awareness is evolving, but our ethics and our morals and our philosophies are evolving to be more towards service to other and more towards the unity towards that truth of the infinite consciousness.