How to Find Happiness, Peace & Purpose Even When Life Feels Hard with Mo Gawdat #596

30:09Mo Gawdat:And if you take that within yourself, our experience of space and time, especially the passage of time or the arrow of time, as we call it in physics, is not possible if you existed within the arrow of time. So if we are, you know, the description of the arrow of time is that, you know, we're moving from frame to frame along the space-time continuum. All of us, you know, all of us and the whole universe, we just move from frame to frame. It's actually not the time that is moving. We are moving through time, right? That's our understanding in physics. But if you need to experience that arrow of time, you have to exist outside it, okay?

30:48Mo Gawdat:And if you exist outside it, that basically means that you are not part of space-time and so accordingly time doesn't apply to you at all, okay? And that basically means that your physical form is, you know, is subjected to time and to space, you know, to this physical reality. But the real, you know, if you want, entity that's holding the controller that manages your physical avatar experiences all of this because it's not part of it. So that's number one. The only way to experience space time, like the only way to experience this building is to be outside it. The only way to experience space-time is to be outside it.

31:28Mo Gawdat:So this is one side. The other side is from a physics point of view. You know, if you understand the only commonly agreed explanation of the small mass that was condensed enough to explode into the Big Bang, you know, 9 billion years of nothingness, then, you know, the planets and the galaxies start to form. and then within them, you know, planet Earth forms 4.3 billion years ago and then and so on and so on and so on and so on until a few million years ago, life starts to exist on planet Earth. You know, that view of existence is temporal. So it follows the arrow of time. It's within space-time.

32:11Mo Gawdat:But the other view of it is the view of quantum physics, the Heisenberg interpretation of the uncertainty principle, if you want. which basically says that nothing exists until observed by a form of life, right? And so who observed the original mass, who observed the 9 billion years of gas, who observed planet Earth before life became part of it? You have to understand then that the observer has never been part of that system. The observer, life itself existed outside space and outside time. And I can give you a million other proofs, But the reality is, whatever it is that animates us, call it life, call it spirit, call it consciousness, whatever it is, whatever animates this avatar is not within this avatar.

33:00Mo Gawdat:That's very simple to prove. Now, if that is the case, then death is not the opposite of life. Life has existed since the Big Bang happened, okay, in forms that we are unable to comprehend because we live within the illusion of this 76 years life expectancy, right? But the truth is that life has always been there. You know, life is not the opposite of death. Basically, death is the opposite of birth, right? You come to this form, this physical form through a portal called birth and you leave it through a portal called death. And then life exists during before and after. Okay. Life's always been there.

33:48Mo Gawdat:My, you know, my, my son Ali, if you understand any, any little bit of the theory of relativity. Okay. Where basically Einstein teaches us and we can prove this with absolute observation. It's not just theory, you know, that there is a slice of time if I was approaching planet Earth at, you know, at speed, at very high speed at an angle. There is a slice of time where my reality would see my birth in the US, for example, in the US time zone, my son's birth in Dubai time zone and my son's death in Japan's time zone all as one slice of time. That would actually become my reality. Which basically what Einstein shows us, the relativity of time, is that time doesn't exist at all.

34:41Mo Gawdat:Okay. And so accordingly, my son Ali was not born after me and died before me. Okay. My son's avatar was existed on a slice of space time that came after the slice where I existed. And he decayed on a slice before the slice where I decayed. But Ali himself was always there during before and after Ali is not younger than me is not older than me. as spirits, as souls, as consciousness, we're the same. We've always been there. We've always, I jokingly, because I love that image, we've always, me and him, been sitting on that red sofa as souls holding the controllers of our avatars as we went through this physical life.

35:27Mo Gawdat:And it's interesting because I can talk about this for hours, but I don't want to overcomplicate the physics. But it's interesting because most people who have faith would have doubt in their heart around around you know those non-measurable realities if you want those people who believe in science will say anything after life is not measurable so it's not the concern of science but if you really look at science with a bit of spirituality it's undeniable that we're just here experiencing the physical world yeah i mean thank you for sort of going through that and I would love at some point a two-hour deep dive on that I'm very much of that belief as well and what you said there about science is really interesting I think these days people misunderstand science in a massive way and the simplest way I can put it is that science is our best attempt to understand reality but it's not reality reality is reality right and what we're trying to do with our limited methods is trying to study what's actually going on in reality but we think science is reality so people especially in my profession and in the healthcare world get obsessed and they are literally disciples of what is in the publication that was peer-reviewed without realizing that these are all limited measuring tools They're only there for a certain subset of populations.

37:05They may not be relevant to you. And they're fighting about it as if that's truth. Even though we know, as I learned in week one in medical school, 50 % of what you learn here is going to be found out to be untrue and wrong. The only problem is we can't tell you which 50%. 100%. So if you take that approach, which really has humility at the heart of it, you go, actually, we don't know. There's a lot we don't know. We're just trying to make the best sense of what we do know. And this is not the best example, but last week's episode was with Bryce Applebaum, who's this wonderful board certified optometrist in the United States.

37:50And he's doing some really interesting work where he's talking about the difference between vision and eyesight. But one of the things he managed to do with me is over five days, three hours training a day on eye exercises and brain exercises, my eyesight got sixfold better in five days. Wow. Right? Same room, same lighting, same time of day, everything, right? No part of this is exaggerated. And of course, most people love the episode, but there's a few people who are like, that's nonsense and it's usually people from the optometry world right so what if you look at this objective and you stand back you have to go there are tens of thousands of adults around the world who are reporting improvements in their myopia in adulthood in a variety of different ways yeah right some are doing it from just spending a ton of time outside and no longer looking at near things.

38:48Some are doing exercises, some are using red light therapy. You'd have to be willfully ignorant to go, that's not happening. I don't understand why some of my colleagues don't go, wow, that's not what I was taught. Isn't that interesting? But a lot of people don't do that. They go, that's rubbish. That's BS. Can I tell you why?

39:10Mo Gawdat:Please do. Because science is the religion of the modern world. Yeah. It totally was, again, deliberate to replace spirituality with science. Now, science is not only a religion where people are blinded by what they believe, right? It's interestingly very egocentric. Why? Because the scientific statement, and I'm a scientist, so don't get me wrong, I adore - There's nothing wrong with science once you know its limitations. Exactly. I adore science, but science tells you this. Scientists tell you that if we can't observe it and measure it repeatedly, right, then it doesn't exist. That's the absolute wrong statement.

39:52Mo Gawdat:If you can't observe it and measure it repeatedly, then it's not the concern of science, right? Love exists. You can't measure it and observe it repeatedly, right? But we all know it exists, right? And, you know, germs existed before we created microscopes. And the interesting bit of this is if you have that humbleness to accept that these things exist, but as a scientist, they're not part of my domain, then whose domain is it? Spirituality and philosophy. And spirituality and philosophy come in and say, I can't measure it, but I feel it and I understand it. And I want to give you 14 explanations.

40:33Mo Gawdat:None of them I can prove with science, but maybe choose one that comes close to you. Right. And interestingly, that didn't help the separation of the church and the state. And so we, again, live in a world where we are told to believe certain things. And if you're dumb, you just believe whatever you're told. If you're smart enough, you start to become fanatic about what you believe, which you were told. But if you're really smart, you start to question everything. anything that you and I will say in this episode I invite everyone to question it 100 % you may be wrong I'm certain that something I will say is wrong yeah and that's okay 100 % and that's okay yeah I think what really matters is that you genuinely try to say your truth okay but that you humbly try to say and I don't know I mean one of the topics I cover extensively is artificial intelligence right and you know I say it almost every time I remember to say it that anyone that tells you anything about the future is arrogant or wrong.

41:37Mo Gawdat:Okay. Because the future is in flux and it's moving so fast and the technology is changing every day. And, you know, people are using it for so many things that I don't know. I can only tell you the sum of what I crunched together so that you can make up your mind. Yeah. But in this world today, it is so interesting how people now take 60 second clips of anything and either take an absolute position for or against it. which, you know, remember, you know, when I was growing up, we used to call it common sense. It's a very interesting skill. I don't know if we remember any of it. But basically, someone tells you something, you go and look for what else is being said about this, and you make up your own mind.

42:19Mo Gawdat:Do we remember that? Make up your own mind. It's your truth. The way modern science has been interpreted by so many people is to give us the illusion of certainty. yeah and i think people like certainty right people like to feel that oh i know what's happening um i can control this but actually that's a very limiting viewpoint it's a very fragile place to live because there is so much out there that is uncertain and but also remember science is a cult it's not just a religion okay it's a cult and you and i know if you've been in the scientific community that there are taboos okay there are things you cannot you cannot touch right i had a guest on my podcast when I was podcasting, Dr.

43:04Mo Gawdat:Stephen Seymire. Incredible. He wrote Darwin's Doubt, one of his books. Okay. And he basically took Darwin's research, which had a disclaimer at the end that said, here are some of the things that I don't know enough about and you guys need to research after me. One of them was the Cambrian explosion, which was an era in history where an an endless number of species appeared in a time, you know, in a sort of a period that does not correspond to evolution at all. And he said, you know, someone needs to study that. So Stephen studies that and he has an incredible, you know, debate around the possibilities of how that happened and so on and so forth.

43:46Mo Gawdat:Completely gets banned from science because that's taboo. Don't discuss, you know, it's, it's, you don't discuss Darwin. Darwin is like God, right? But if we don't discuss darwin how do we find out if part of what he's saying not all of what he's saying i actually believe evolution is a method of design right but but but you know if you if you don't question that how do you find out the 50 that you're wrong yeah whenever you can't question something you've got an inherent problem 100 you've got an arrogance within you that actually says that I know this to be true. There is no possible way that this can't be true.

44:25Mo Gawdat:Yeah. And the only time when that happens, Rangan, is when there is someone in power that's telling you not to question it. Yeah. Okay. Look at this nation at this time. Okay. And how many things are, you're not supposed to say in public. Yeah. Okay. And once you realize that, you realize that if you say it in public or you discuss it or you debate it or you ask your friends about it, you may actually find out something other than what you're being told. Yeah, and to bring it back to an individual, if you're someone who, I would say, if someone's listening to this or watching this and finds themselves getting very defensive or triggered when they see something online or someone in their network says something that they don't naturally agree with, and you're having this disproportionate emotional reaction, I think you should put a mirror up and go, why on earth?

45:18Does someone having a different perspective from me trigger me so much? 100%. And that's a much more, it's like happiness being a choice. We can choose our mindset in every situation. If you're getting triggered by something, if you don't take that empowering perspective, you're a victim to the world. You're walking around getting triggered all over by everyone. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to your belief system and the way you see the world actually is problematic. people don't realize there is such a massive dose of arrogance within that but there is also a

45:52Mo Gawdat:massive dose of unfairness to oneself think about it right because if what you want the most is to be right then what you the best way to get there eventually at the end of the of your life is to be told you're wrong when you're when you are do you understand the logic of this it's like if i really really and I genuinely I love knowledge I know you do too because we have our conversations around things that we're working on internally right I love knowledge but the only way I can continue to know to learn is to remove part of what's filling my glass and replace it with something that now makes more sense and yeah and and the whole idea of evolving as humans is all about continuous development, continuous debate with everything that you've believed.

46:45Yeah. Well, we could go down a deep rabbit hole there. That's a two hours there. Yeah, let's just get it. I'm going to just because I want to make sure we get to AI and why you believe, I think, that it can save relationships. We'll come to that. I just want to get to the third one. So I've covered two, Zavar. Things that you believe that a lot of people don't believe. Happiness is a choice. We've covered that. death is not the end we certainly covered that and I want to talk more about that I'm having to restrain myself here the third one which I I kind of feel relates to the last two actually as I hear you talk about them is this idea that solitude is an essential ingredient for a meaningful and purposeful life oh my god yes not everyone shares that perspective I certainly do.

47:39But why are you so certain, given what we just said, that solitude is an essential ingredient?

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49:49Mo Gawdat:Every sage, every prophet, if you believe in prophets, every saint, every monk, everyone that wanted to understand the non-physical went on 40-day retreats. It's shocking when you think about it. Moses walks up the mountain or, you know, Muhammad stays in the cave or Buddha sits under the tree and you get countless stories of that, perhaps other than Jesus who might not have needed it. But, you know, the idea is that if you believe that there is a point in your life where, you know, eating less or fasting is healthy for the body, consuming less and engaging less is very healthy for the mind. It's just as simple as that.

50:37Mo Gawdat:It's the idea that that constant stimulation that comes into our minds, the constant demand to analyze, to solve, to, you know, engage, does not allow you to reflect, does not allow the dust to settle. So one thing I do almost twice a week now is I would, you know, extend my intermittent fast for a long time, you know, stop eating at 4 p.m. and then not eat again until maybe 5 p.m. the next day or something like that. And you have no idea how much relief my body gets out of that. And it's quite interesting. If you think about, yeah, some people will say it's healthy or not healthy. I do it not for the autophagy of it, as they say.

51:26Mo Gawdat:I do it because it actually really gives my digestive system a break, right? And so the interesting side of it is your mind, when you give it a break of silence, gets to settle all of the stuff that has been suspended in constant analysis, okay? And silence, so I do 40 days. I unfortunately this year failed because of the projects I'm working on. uh but but generally you do a 40 day silence retreats i do 40 days a year yeah and are you going somewhere for this or yeah so so the the interesting thing is i always acknowledge to myself what i'm very bad at so i don't go to a monastery because if a if a monk wakes me up at 4 a.m in the morning to meditate my day and his day are going to be horrible okay so that's not good behavior.

52:17Mo Gawdat:I'll be very honest about that. But what I do is I go somewhere in nature where I stop using words. You know, I can write, I can listen to music that doesn't have lyrics in it. And I allow myself every other day a 10 minute check on my phone just in case there is an emergency. But I don't respond. I just look at the messages quickly. Because unfortunately, I'm not a monk, I'm half monk only. So, so, you know, and, and, and so when you really, when you really do that, you, you get a lot of walks in nature. I allow myself again, which is not the typical Vipassana, I allow myself paper and pen and I write my thoughts and so on.

53:02Mo Gawdat:And, and it is breathtaking. You know, the first few days are very unfamiliar. You're constantly in constant FOMO, you're constantly reaching out to your phone. you're wondering what to do after 7 p.m. if there is no YouTube or, you know, whatever you're used to in the evenings. I normally eat very light, so I completely change my diet and basically walk and exercise and so on. By day seven, you settle, okay? You settle in that, you know, now you're busy. You're really busy. You're processing a lot of thoughts. you're taking notes down, you're, you know, you're feeling stronger physically, you know, it's a beautiful time.

53:48Mo Gawdat:By day 21, you start to get massive, massive downloads of clarity. Okay. You sleep better, by the way, your body relaxes a lot more. By day 32, 33, you start to cry because you don't want to go back. Okay. And I believe, believe it or not, it is probably the highlight of my year. Now, what normally happens is I write in a very unusual way because I don't start writing a book until it's completely formed in my head. And so normally by day 17, I can sit down and like write four and a half, five chapters in the next two weeks, right? Things like that are not the property of analysis. They're not the property of deep, you know, work or whatever.

54:39Mo Gawdat:They are the property of a brain that has a massive amount of noise in it. Then you let it settle, which is all of us, all of us have a mind that's completely confused. And then you let it settle. And then suddenly you see with clarity with, you know, like a tranquil lake, you can easily see everything that you need to see. It's, it's heaven. it's like you're doing less and in some ways producing more. Producing way more. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, isn't it? That like so many people will say they don't have time, will say that, oh yeah, I have this great idea for a book, but I never get time to write it.

55:21And because the way a lot of us think these days is we think we have to add more things in. You know, yeah, I need to do something else. I need to watch a new video. I need to download that course and learn more productivity techniques or whatever it might be. But actually what you're saying is, it's actually way simpler than that. Actually, if you can, now, of course, some people will say that they can't do 40 days.

55:48Mo Gawdat:100%, yeah. But just that concept that actually if you can have some more silence in your life, it is amazing what will come up from within you that you have buried. I mean, this is absolutely not the same thing. Every summer, I go off social media for about four to six weeks. And I also take time away from this podcast, which consumes a lot of my time and my wife's time weeks a week. And I go and see the world with my wife and kids for a few weeks. Beautiful. And yes, of course, being on holiday is nice. Being together with your wife and children when you're not distracted is lovely. and I'm very fortunate to be able to do that.

56:33And being off social media, I frankly just hardly go online in that time. You just don't realize, people do not realize how much their thoughts are influenced by the inputs they keep putting in each day. I realize every summer, I start to tune in on myself again. I go, oh wow, this is what I think. And you're less confused by the world around you, by the thoughts of others. You have more conviction in who you are and what you're doing because you've allowed yourself to spend time with yourself. And I also, the days before I go back on, I don't want to go on. I know. I know. And of course, I don't want a pity party.

57:15No one makes me go on, right? I choose to go on and I choose to share hopefully helpful information on my channels, right? So I'm not asking for pity. It's just an interesting, like you found your version of something that works for you in your life. You know, I found a version

57:32Mo Gawdat:and it's definitely nowhere near as intense as what you do. But when you have a wife and kids, it becomes very difficult to do this. Exactly. So I think at the moment that works for me, but you also mentioned fasting there. And I think this links back to what we were just saying about science, right? A lot of people ask, is fasting good or bad, right? Which I would say is the wrong question because it depends for who and in what context. Yeah, exactly. Now, a lot of people also looking to science to tell them if they should be fasting. Correct. But here's the problem with that, right? I'm not saying don't do that.

58:08I'm not saying, you know, I'm very familiar with the science of the literature on fasting, but that's only looking at fasting through one lens. What is it doing to your autophagy? What is it doing to your insulin? What is it doing to your lean muscle mass? That's a fraction of the potential benefits that fasting can give you. What about the mental benefits? What about the psychological benefits? What about you start to get in touch with yourself and your cravings and realize, wait a minute, half the time that I think I'm hungry, I ain't hungry, right? But because we're not measuring that, fasting becomes this really divisive topic online where it's like, no, you shouldn't be promoting fasting.

58:50The world seems to have gone mad. It's like, listen, an individual is more than capable if they tune into themselves of deciding, is fasting good for me? Do you know what I mean?

59:00Mo Gawdat:And when is it good for me? And when? You see, the challenge we have is we've come to a world where someone has to tell us what to do. Yeah. Why don't you just tune into your body and say, I've been eating a little too much. I think I'll, you know, I'll skip dinner. Don't call it fasting. Just say, I'm going to skip, right? And if you skip dinner, by definition, you've done 12 hours. It's as simple as that, you know, maybe even more. And so it's really interesting that if you tune into those things, one of the biggest challenges for me is because I travel so much. It's actually almost certain that I will eat crap, right?

59:39Mo Gawdat:And recently in my older years, as I, you know, try to be more and more healthy, I just realized that actually eating crap is worse for me than not eating anything at all. Yeah. Okay. And so when I'm in an airport and, you know, because of my Islamic background, we fast 30 days a year in Ramadan. And so, you know, I'm very used to that feeling of being hungry, but deciding I'm not going to eat until 6 p.m. Right. And it's a wonderful feeling. If you tune into it, it's actually really, really, you know, somehow, you know how your sore muscles after a gym workout actually feel good because you know they're good for you.

1:00:19Mo Gawdat:I actually love that feeling of I'm hungry, but I'm not going to eat. Yeah, it's very, again, it's the theme of empowerment. It's I don't have to be a slave to my cravings and my feelings and my emotions. I have personal power to go, actually, I know I'm feeling that, but I don't need to engage with it. Yeah, to submit to it, yeah. Now, at the same time, I also very much acknowledge that for some people, fasting is not the best thing, But sort of bringing solitude back to those first two points, I'm a huge fan of solitude. Like you, I think it is essential. I don't think you'll ever know yourself without solitudes.

1:00:58And if we think about that first theme, happiness is a choice. Well, I would argue that it's in solitude where you'll realize, oh, I keep making disempowering decisions. I keep making myself a victim to what this person said or that person said. It's in solitude where you'll realize, oh, I can actually change that. And then even the second point of death not being the end, in solitude, you may find that you tune into...

1:01:27Mo Gawdat:You bring the best questions. Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what I mean? So one of my favorite, let me keep the audience waiting for this for a second. if people don't want to do 40 days what i really normally recommend is a mini silent retreat every other sunday you set your alarm clock to 3 p.m and you just disconnect from the world until your alarm clock uh you know goes off so you wake up when you wake up you don't interact with knowledge you don't interact with your phone you don't speak you don't uh you know look at time and then you give yourself what could be seven to eight hours. So from Sunday morning until 3pm, you're having this mini silence.

1:02:07Mo Gawdat:Every other week is I think a reasonable rate. I love this. Tell me more. So a Saturday evening before you go to bed, you set your alarm to three, not to wake you up, but to not engage with knowledge until three. Okay. Not engage with knowledge. That means no books? No, I'd rather because it's a mini retreat. I'd rather you do nothing but a paper and pen. So you're not consuming anything from the outside. It's all kind of internal, basically. Not including time pieces. You're not consuming time. If you can not consume music or at least, you know, just instrumental music and you tell your children, you tell your wife, I'm on a silent retreat and basically just give yourself those seven to eight hours.

1:02:49Mo Gawdat:It's incredibly, it's even more empowering, believe it or not, because of repetition than doing 40 days. Not to belittle this in any way, because I want to do it, but I just had a thought that I think my wife would love it if I did this. Every day. Genuinely, I think she thinks I talk too much. I think she would be so happy if on a Sunday I didn't talk till 3 p.m. She's wonderful, so I'll take a coffee next time. But in all seriousness, I think this could be a super valuable practice. Yeah, it is really, it really is. And so we were talking about how silence relates to death. So one of my favorite, favorite spiritual practices is the Sufi approach to enlightenment.

1:03:37Mo Gawdat:Okay. So the Sufis believe that the way to find enlightenment is to die before you die. Okay. And it's quite an interesting definition. Death is defined as a detachment from everything physical. Right. And dying before you die is to be fully alive, fully healthy, fully engaged, fully in love, fully reflecting, but you're not attached to the physical world. And silent retreats and fasting, believe it or not, or a combination between the two is the closest you get to that. Because suddenly you're basically putting a distance between you and everything that distracts you. Okay. And, and, you know, in a, in a, in a grieving heart, believe it or not, one of the most empowering things that I, that held me when Ali was leaving was that idea that we're all already dead.

1:04:33Mo Gawdat:If you think about the idea that we're all eventually going to leave. So it's a zero sum game. You come to this world with nothing, you leave this world with nothing. So why are you attaching? Why are you holding on to all of those things? Right. and and and if you know in my mind you know pilgrimages you don't have to be pilgriming to any place but you know to just walk slowly to another place the written silence and fasting are some of the top practices that can get you to to that state of disconnecting from life if you want to be fully alive but dying before you die it's so powerful um i've been meditating a lot over the past few months and i recently had henry shookman in the studio he's a zen master he founded the way app which is amazing and we spoke for the first time on this podcast about non-duality and he shared this experience where I think he was 19, he was backpacking around South America and he was just looking at a sunset over the ocean and suddenly everything changed where he realized that he wasn't separate from anything.

1:05:50He realized that the end of the boundaries of his body almost weren't there. He was part of everything. And I know in our first conversation, you very evocatively described how Ali, I think he said, didn't he, before he wanted, or you said he's now... Everywhere and part of everyone. Everywhere and part of everyone.

1:06:10Mo Gawdat:Yeah. But if you take this more non-dual perspective on life, so are all of us. That's it. I think we can end this podcast and every other podcast here. This is it. Okay. The illusion of this physical world is incredibly powerful. If you want to experience that, go to a movie theater. You sit in the movie theater. There is this annoying guy next to you with popcorn. There are those people that are talking. There is the red exit sign. The carpet is not really clean. And then they switch off the light and they play the movie. And you completely get absorbed into that reality. Okay. You completely forget everything else, right?

1:06:58Mo Gawdat:You're like in the movie, time passes differently. You don't feel the passage of time. You end, you know, two hours and you were like, wow, that was amazing. Right. And that truly is what life is. Right. You, you, you get sucked into that physical experience, this avatar, and you believe that this is everything. You believe that this is your entire existence. When in reality, without the avatar, your existence is so much more expansive. And if you really understand the passage of time, this 76 years is a blip. It really is insignificant. Remember, we are an insignificant drop on an insignificant planet in an insignificant galaxy in a massively endless universe.

1:07:45Mo Gawdat:Even the known universe, not even the parts that we don't know, is endless. Okay. And, and, and, and, and, and you're living on it for 76 years. And yet you tell yourself that this is it. I can guarantee you this is not it. This is just one, literally you want to picture it. This is you going home in an afternoon, waiting for dinner and deciding to play one level of a video game on a console. Yeah. Okay. You have a full life, full life. And this is just one game on a console yeah bringing it back to why solitude is so powerful what henry said um to me is that you don't meditate in order to get those experiences but the more you meditate the more likely it is that those experiences are going to be felt you know or some version of that which sort of speaks to solitude the more time you spend by yourself we're not talking about loneliness here we're talking about intentional solitude the more you start to tune into things the more you start to feel things the more you actually start to realize that actually there are multiple perspectives one can take on the things that you see online the way you perceive your life everything but you kind of need the time away because when you're constantly consuming and sucking in knowledge from everyone around you, it's very hard to get that.

1:09:20Yeah. So I love the idea of many silence retreats. Mo, listen, I am literally having to restrain myself from going deep.

1:09:28Mo Gawdat:I know you want to go to a different topic. I advise everyone to watch the TED Talk of Jill Balty-Taylor. How do you spell that? Jill. Jill, J-I-L-L. Yeah, Balty-Taylor, B-O-L-T-E and Taylor, basically. And Jill had a, she's one of my favorite neuroscientists in the world. And she had a stroke, you know, where her left side of her brain was basically paralyzed, if you want. And she describes that exact experience in the TED Talk of the boundaries between her and everything would disappear. Okay. It is our mind that's creating that boundary between you and me. to navigate the physical universe, you need to believe in individualism, in that I am an entity and that table is not me.

1:10:20Mo Gawdat:Okay, that you are different than me, that my safety can be benefiting or threatened by your existence and so on and so forth. And if you really, you know, if you meditation silence long reflections uh breath work uh basically enable you to switch that dominance of that mind uh that is creating the illusion of the of this of the movie theater right so you suddenly realize i'm not in a theater at all i'm not in that movie yeah and you see the world very differently yeah okay we're going to put a pin in those things because I know you're here to talk about AI and you're here to talk about, I don't even know how to describe Emma.

1:11:05I mean, who is Emma?

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