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Does epistemological primacy equate to ontological primacy? That is, does the fact that consciousness is the most immediate and foundational basis of knowledge mean that consciousness creates reality? That’s what’s discussed in this clip.
The full 90 minute interview is available with a subscription to Sam Harris’s Making Sense podcast at https://samharris.org/. That will give you access to all of his full length conversations. This one is from the Waking Up series and is called The Nature of Awareness.
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The full 90 minute interview is available with a subscription to Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast at https://samharris.org/. That will give you access to all of his full length conversations. This one is from the Waking Up series and is called The Nature of Awareness.
Sam, PLEEEEZE shut up. WHY have a guest if YOU do all the talking???
It’s so crazy how Sam just totally misses it.
Sam should debate Bernardo Kastrup! BK would wipe the floor with him.
Most of the people in the comments are pro Rupert. Confirmation bias in full effect in my opinion. They both seem like intelligent people and have different opinions on things. I'm more in alignment with Sam but I'm not going to say something stupid like Rupert is intelligent but Sam has mastered intelligence or one is awake and the other is just waking up. Stupid stuff in the comments.
Sam pointed out something that always bothered me about Rupert, which is that he says that the universe is concious. i dont know about that
lets explain some basic things. Spira is a pseudo philosopher. This techniques are from a different era when people made up invisible substances/entities/realms and conveniently "accused" them for having the same properties displayed by the phenomenon in question.
Its a god of the gaps made up explanation.
Idealists are more materialists from the materialists. They think that a label of a process (consciousness, disease, life etc) is a name for an entity…a thing.
We have a long list of made up substances (Phlogiston, Miasma, Panacea, Orgone energy) in our attempt to explain the causal mechanism of a phenomenon.
It is sad to see people still falling victims to the same pseudo philosophical practices…specially when they can easily educate themselves academically through the internet.
lol this is the most rediculous pseudo philosophical opening statement I ever heard…..gods, consciousness, realities, minds.
This dude doesn't understand Parsimony and the Null Hypothesis of Logic.
Its a case of mind over matter – if you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
For anyone who wants to learn more..Look up Gregg Braden…two gg's..Gregg. You will enjoy what he has to say..Gregg, has quite a few scientific disciplines. He is a spiritual person as well as a scientist.
Materialism is the lack of experience of the other so believe that if they can't use their five senses to measure it, then it can't exist. Many spiritual people have experienced the other, and this is where they get their knowledge. I heard on materialist scientist say..Science will be able to explain consciousness within about 40 to 50 years. Meaning, science doesn't understand it yet..but in 40/50 years, etc ? Now that is a leap of 'faith'. A guess. I have had many experiences during my 71, years of life..that science would not be able to explain or measure..but I know are real. For instance, I have had OBE's, Lucid dreams and ordinary dreaming. I know the difference. They also feel different afterward. The first can change your life and for many, it has. The second is exciting as you can experience anything you wish, including flying, sex, chatting to a friend you have not seen for years who is still alive etc..you are in control. Dreams can be confusing..a jumble of all kinds of things you can't work out. As far as life after death..I know this is real..and not because I died..because a loved one visited me at a time when I didn't know she had died..and is was not imagination. I was also wide awake. In editing..I will also add..the person who had died also visited a close family friend and her brother..on the same evening she passed. Neither had any idea she had died. I only found out later about these events. One mentioned it to me, the other refuses to talk about it……I am not a religious person….I believe religion is a barrier to spiritual truth as much as science is.
Neither one has any True Spiritual Experience ….both are clown acts in their self created man made respective fields …..(imo)
Never trust anyone who uses drugs
The MATRIX ( front cover link updated with audio by Adi-da,)
You are not the body but are Eternal. The MATRIX is the modern version of ancient Vedanta meditation as taught by Ramana Maharshi from the Heart of the Ribhu Gita.
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Harris is way out of his league here 😑
Science and spirituality struggle to sit together. Glad to see these two together having this conversation. Open it all up. Look at everything. Get it all on the table. Great conversation here.
Rupert and Sam are both in Duality, Consciousness happens, but only apparently.
I’d like try and weigh in with my 2 cents. It seems to me that unconsciousness is the default mode in the universe. The state of awareness (and in particular, self-awareness) is entirely unnecessary!
Stars and planets and cosmic dust and light and gravity don’t have or need consciousness or to be conscious.
A flower grows towards the sun because of an automatic mechanism. Nobody (and no thing) needs to be aware of the flower for it to grow.
I am not aware of my heart beating but it beats anyway. Maybe some mechanism deep in my brain is aware that it’s beating or changing rhythm. But I’m not. I can infer that I have a heart beat by feeling my pulse in an artery. But I’m not and never can be aware of my heart!
Similarly with what goes on in my stomach and the digestive processes (most of which is performed by bacteria that live inside me and over which my body and brain has little if any control), etc.
My understanding is that consciousness is very rare and perhaps a freak occurrence, something that came into being by accident – possibly one (and eventually more) feedback loops, something like a thermostat maybe…?
(Not such a good analogy coz thermostats, like ecosystems, are “deaf” and “blind”; or at least not aware of themselves in the system!)
Bringing GOD into the picture is a real cop out and actually destroys Rupert’s own argument. If you simply believe in a god then you are saying that consciousness is therefore irrelevant coz you cannot experience GOD directly. It’s simply a decision to believe in one!
The question really is (I think this is what Sam argued) is that consciousness is arbitrary and unnecessary. The universe, earth and life on it can continue just as well without it. It may be that we (as humans) are the only beings who have experienced self-awareness. How could it have ever happened at all is the question.
And in fact (and this is where I may differ with Sam), it may be that what we experience as “consciousness” is actually an illusion after all!
It’s always the highly scientifically trained people that have trouble grasping the biggest things.
I find it a bit disingenuous for Spira to say he experienced loss of awareness when under total anaesthetic recently, but not loss of consciousness (at 17.55). What is loss of consciousness if not loss of awareness? I'm surprised Sam Harris let this pass. I was under general anaesthetic for quite a long time a year ago and when I regained consciousness/ awareness I had no memory of any consciousness/ awareness during the period I was unconscious/ unaware.
I found it uncomfortable and slightly cacaphonous to listen to Sam Harris ask his questions. I didn't even understand often what he was trying to ask….I had to shut this off after 8 minutes. I Love Spira and would prefer to listen to a monologue instead.
I'm very happy Sam addressed some of the issues of non-duality. Couldn't agree more.
Actually, you're on very shaky ground when you imagine there is intelligent matter, a fleshly brain with a mind in it somewhere, that gives rise to consciousness. But this isn't just shaky ground, it is illogic, because when investigated no personal mind is ever found.
Even if i truly like and love and appreciate Spira, sometimes he should just listen carefully and accurately accept that there are aspects and facts which go totally against his vision
Again, even if i love both of them, but, one speaks about what he thinks and believes and perceives, the other speaks about and upon MERE FACTS objective facts
Not everything which exists is in consciousness, stones and lava and electrons existed WAY MUCH TOO MUCH BEFORE the existence of humanity
my material self loves pizza. my spiritual self enjoys naps. You're welcome
So all we are really left with is that there is no scientific consensus on conscience, and this idea that the brain somehow is the only organ to name itself. Lol…joke
Rupert reminds me of SpongeBob, an atlantian who's world has passed on.
Sad to hear
Who holds the keys to all the doors of this great mansion?
Nor Rupert nor Sam know who, but both help each other to find it.
Rupert fails to find the Owner because he cannot account for ‘awareness of’ when no one else is ‘in the room’. Since for him, awareness is only aware of itself in that chirurgical room and not of anything else existing there.
And Sam fails to give account of the scenario (which happens all the time) when there are no surgeon besides him to be aware of whatever exists and he himself is not aware of either.
So if given the premise that in order for something to exist someone must be aware of it, who is aware of that which no one else is aware? Rupert has contradicted himself, as in many times has said that awareness is aware of it, when in the chirurgical room awareness is not aware of the activities going on in that room. The answer to this question is very simple and basic, that no simple mind questions. God is that being, not us (even I-awareness) nor matter.
"What would count for you as evidence against what your considering the parsimonious take on consciousness being the single mode in which reality appears?"
"Experiential evidence of something outside consciousness."
lol, hes defined his position as the only possible correct one by definition, only something someone truly lacking curiosity would do. This would be like me asking what evidence would you require to be convinced of the existence of a square and the reply being 'show me a triangle with 4 sides.' Likely confusion, but possibly dogmatism.
It's pretty incredible how many people get trapped in solipsism and can never escape.
This is why Sam Harris is one of the most intelligent people ever to have lived. He takes the ideas of someone who you would be very tempted to dismiss as an idiot and surgically removes the baby from the bath water.
Sam Harris asserts that we are not conscious in deep sleep. In deep sleep you (you, the Consciousness) are conscious, you are conscious of the absence of objects/world including your own body. Your own body/mind is not there in deep sleep, yet you were conscious. You, obviously, existed in deep sleep (if you didn't exist you would wake up as a different person). If you existed, then you were conscious of your existence. That's why every time you wake up, you would say that you enjoyed peace and there was just blankness/nothing. You would not say that you experienced a pink tiger. In other words, you had the experience of no body/world but peace in your deep sleep. Deep sleep, from its own perspective, is Pure-Consciousness. Only in waking state, your mind says it was blankness. Your mind was not there (or dormant) in deep sleep, so how can it claim that it was all blank or nothing? This is like putting cart before a horse. Sam Harris' assertion is against reason and experience. It is common sense to recognize Consciousness as primal, not matter!
Yes, Rupert Spira is a Master! His words are not mumbo jumbo. He certainly knows what he is talking about!
My challenge for anyone who questions the existence of an objective universe to do the following: Find the nearest train track. And just as a train is approaching, step out onto the track. At that point, you'll feel the impact of the objective universe.
Sam is helpful in the longer dialogue in exposing Rupert's beliefs. Rupert says "nondual understanding, in whichever tradition it is expressed… is that there is a single reality" which is monism, not nonduality. And it is not true that most traditions like Buddhism/Dsogchen, Toasim etc believe this. There are words for "single" in all these languages but the word "nondual "is used as "both/and", "neither this nor that" or "inseparable pair" not single. Rupert reduces everything in other talks to awareness only 'saying who we are is awareness which is like a movie screen and "things" come and go on screen" so there are two different levels in this view, which is a new dualism that is more detached. Listen to Sam's dialogue on his app with Loch Kelly on nonduality which is so clear and experiential and was the most popular podcast on Sam's app in 2020.
very good. the only thing we are absolutely certain is this awareness. What is being witnessed by this awareness could be real or merely a dream. There is no way for us to know which one is true. That's the rule of this game. Now be happy with this awareness whether it's real or a dream. If it's a dream, it better be a good dream.
My guess is that consciousness is the infinite being aware of the finite manifestation of itself. My reasoning is that consciousness is aware of the world which means that there is a duality yet reality is at the same time one "thing".
Billions of years of data trying to converse with whatever age Sam Harris believes he is! Nothing wrong with Sam but he must understand emphatically that science is an infinitesimal faculty of MAGICK!
Would love to see him try Bernardo Kastrup. He'd get destroyed.
Why hasn't Harris interviewed or debated Bernardo Kastrup yet? Kastrup has the most articulate and comprehensive understanding of ontological reality and its relationship to consciousness, which are one and the same.
This the only YouTube comments section that I like. One of the few that isn't a cesspool of really nasty stuff.