Dr. Roger Walsh | A Deep Exploration Of Enlightenment

Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. DHL. graduated from Australia’s Queensland University with degrees in psychology, physiology, neuroscience, and medicine.

Roger’s research and writings include the nature of psychological health and wellbeing, meditation and contemplative practices, religion and spirituality, wisdom and other virtues, integral studies, and the psychological roots of our current global crises. He is deeply immersed in contemplative practices as a student, researcher, and teacher.

Transcript

Okay,

Roger Walsh is a professor of psychology,

Philosophy and anthropology at the University of California.

He has degrees in psychology,

Physiology,

Neuroscience and medicine.

Roger Walsh,

Thank you for joining me.

I appreciate it.

Well,

Thanks for the invitation,

Alex.

I look forward to the conversation.

Yeah,

So Roger,

How did you fall into this line of work?

Because there's a lot of big body of knowledge and work that you've done there.

So how did you fall into that?

Well,

Fall into is probably the right description,

Alex.

I went through medical school and got my PhD in neuroscience in Australia.

And then I came to California on a Fulbright scholarship to do my psychiatry training.

And California has a way of changing people.

I was a hardcore materialist,

Neuroscientist,

Had no interest or belief or faith in anything contemplative or and had no knowledge there was an inside world.

So I found myself doing psychotherapy with people and felt like I had this kind of moral obligation to try it for myself.

So I did.

And fortunately,

I went into therapy with a very remarkable man who was truly a therapeutic genius.

And he just enabled me to get in touch with recognize that there's an inner universe as vast and mysterious as the outer.

And I ended it's a source of wisdom and insight and guidance and intuition that I've been totally out of touch with.

And I felt like I'd lived my entire life on the top six inches of a wave on top of an ocean that I didn't know existed.

And it just blew me out of the water that there could be such a an inner universe,

But we could be so out of touch with it.

And as I looked around at the culture,

It seemed like pretty much everyone was out of touch with it.

And so I really struggled to make sense of this over quite some time and studied psychology and,

And,

You know,

Contemplative practices and so forth,

And eventually dove into those fairly deeply.

But that was psychotherapy was actually the entry point for me.

Was the therapist,

The way you described it there,

It comes across quite Jungian in a world and mythology and things like that.

Was that the route that that therapist in particular was going with?

No,

Not particularly Jungian.

He was more what would be called a humanistic existentialist.

That is someone who was interested in direct,

In experience,

In direct experience,

In getting in touch with,

At more refined levels,

Our own experience and existential in the sense that he was deeply concerned with the fundamental central issues of existence that all of us faces simply by virtue of being human and having a body and aging and dying and having to find meaning and purpose in these curious lives of ours.

So,

So that was more his orientation.

You mentioned meaning and purpose there.

I struggled with this myself a little bit in the sense that I currently sit here and I have the,

Let's call it belief that meaning and purpose is something that the individual brings to a meaningless and purposeless reality.

Could you maybe expand on your thoughts around that?

Yeah,

That's one of the great questions of life,

Isn't it?

Whether there is some order,

Meaning,

Purpose,

Larger design to the universe and to life as a whole.

First off,

Clearly all of us are responsible for finding meaning and purpose in our lives.

That's our choice to make.

Now there's a question of whether we create it or we discover it.

That is whether we,

Whether we,

It's something we manufacture for ourselves out of a considerate discussion and thinking,

Or is it something we actually get in touch with,

With our deeper being?

And historically there have been a number of themes that have recurred in both East and West.

In the Greek,

Ancient Greek tradition,

There was the idea of when everyone has their damon,

They're in a,

It's hard to translate,

But they're in a guide,

Shall we say,

Or purpose or calling.

And certainly the idea of a calling has been part of many traditions.

And in the East,

For example,

In Indian philosophy,

There's the idea that our sva-dharma,

That is our unique dharma or purpose or work in the world or path is a function of our sva-bhava,

Who,

Our unique way of being.

So that's part of the consideration in looking at meaning and purpose.

First,

Do we create it or do we discover it or is it some combination of both?

And then there's a larger question of meaning and purpose.

Is there some larger meaning and purpose?

Is there some larger purpose that we discover and align with?

And I think that the answer to that largely that people come up with largely depends on the variety of ways they look.

If you look purely with a,

Say a scientific materialist observation,

Then yeah,

The universe looks like random clashing of atoms.

If you do deep contemplative practice and as people do really deep contemplative practice,

They tend to discover that consciousness seems to be something to the idea that consciousness is a fundamental substrate of reality in the universe.

And then things get more interesting because if this is all the play of consciousness,

Then well,

Maybe it is a,

There is a larger purpose and meaning and design to the whole thing.

Yeah.

And what I've come up there is the,

Perhaps the Eastern traditions,

The non-dualistic teachings,

Whereby there is no individual doing anything.

Consciousness is just happening and there isn't essentially a center point of individuality there.

I know you,

You,

Ken Wilber,

You've spent quite a bit of time with Ken Wilber and he talks about non-duality and everything because in his integral theory,

Do you,

The contemplative work,

As you've mentioned there,

Do you tend to lean towards Eastern traditions or do you think the Western traditions also hold similar thoughts?

Yes,

I think there is a similarity in both East and West and Western culture has gone through an interesting process of,

Of recognizing its own heritage.

And I guess many of us,

Myself included,

Maybe I can just speak about my,

My own path as an example of a larger cultural trend that is,

After having done psychotherapy,

I began exploring all sorts of growth practices and eventually ended up with exploring contemplative practices,

Such as meditation and yoga.

And I couldn't understand why they seemed to be helpful because at the time I was a,

I was an atheist materialist and thought that these,

These old ideas of,

Were relics of primitive thinking.

But,

But I,

As I began to appreciate that these practices were very sophisticated psychotechnologies for,

Then a whole new understanding of them opened up.

So I dove pretty deeply into the contemplative practices of the East,

Buddhist mindfulness meditation first,

Yogic practices,

And eventually kind of explored a variety of them,

Taoist yoga.

And,

And,

And then when I started,

When I came,

Started to look at the,

My own Christian tradition,

I was astounded to realize that there was also,

There were also these contemplative practices and contemplative wisdom within the tradition too,

But just more hidden because in the West,

Of course,

The,

The,

The mystics,

The people who had direct experiences of something transcendent or even divine were very suspect to the church hierarchy and were suppressed and some even ended up on funeral paths.

So the contemplative side of the religious traditions were all always more hidden in the,

In the West.

That's also true of Islam and Judaism.

Western monotheisms,

The contemplative dimensions have been less obvious,

Less evident.

They've tended to be hidden,

They've tended to be reserved for monastics,

But that changed.

As the first,

There was this influx of Eastern traditions into the West and beginning of meditation and yogic research,

Which found a wide variety of effects that these have and psychological benefits and physiological benefits of many kinds.

But then that led to the recognition that,

Oh yes,

We in the West have these practices ourselves.

And so there's been a revival of those practices in an interesting way.

I think it's,

It's common,

Particularly in the materialist,

Potentially you could call it also capitalist type thinking,

Western,

Modern Western psychology,

The average person say that a lot of the meditation and practices like that are some sort of escape from reality.

I have people sort of saying that to me,

If I suggest that I meditate,

They very often say that,

You know,

It's simply a coping mechanism with the suffering of life.

What would you say to that?

Well,

It certainly can be.

It certainly produces a number of psychological benefits like relaxation,

Calm,

Equanimity,

Which are wonderful buffers against the insanity of our world.

So,

It can certainly do that.

But as with so many things,

And particularly so many practices,

Much depends on the intention with which it's done.

You know,

You can meditate to reduce your blood pressure,

You can meditate to wake up,

To grow up,

To learn,

To heal,

To become a more effective instrument of service.

It depends in large part on why you do it.

And Roger,

I've read on your website that you have done work with psychoactive drugs.

Can you talk about that?

Well,

I've done a little bit of research around them,

Which,

You know,

If you get into consciousness studies,

Into contemplative practices,

All the states of consciousness sooner or later,

You run into psychedelics,

Because these curious chemicals have such powerful effects.

And in my own case,

The main research I did was to interview the original researchers to find what wisdom they had learned from their extensive sessions with subjects using psychedelics.

And that came about in an interesting way,

Alex.

I actually,

Actually,

My wife,

Late wife,

Frances Fawn,

Was a subject in one of the early psychedelic research studies.

And she had a profound awakening,

So profound,

That's been written up many times,

Available on the web.

If you look up Frances Fawn and Google,

Google her psychedelic experiences,

You'll find a description of them.

But then I began to,

I met over the next few years,

Five other people who had been subjects in those early studies.

And every one of them said their life had been transformed and benefited by them.

So I was really intrigued.

And I realized that the original researchers who had done that work had seen among them thousands and thousands of psychedelic sessions and had seen a wider array of profound experiences than anyone else in human history.

You think about a psychotherapist watches people,

You know,

Heal and grow in multiple ways and sees maybe a few hundred,

You know,

Maybe watches a couple of really profound experiences.

A Zen master has a few hundred students and sees,

You know,

A few dozen satoris.

But these people had witnessed,

Witnessed hundreds or thousands of subjects going through some of the most intense and profound experiences that any human has.

So I was really intrigued to know,

Well,

What have they learned?

And so we put on a conference and got the original researchers,

People like Ram Dass and the religious scholar,

Houston Smith,

And even Albert Hoffman,

The man who synthesizes LSD,

And brought them all together for the last time and really just wanted to ask them what they learned.

And basically they came up with a variety of things.

One was that there are depths to the human psyche that most people never are aware of.

That has certainly been my own experience in psychotherapy.

They suggested that the mind,

Given the right circumstances,

Given a safe,

Supportive environment,

The mind can,

Is innately self-healing,

Self-actualizing,

Self-transcending.

That is,

The mind has its own inner dynamic and direction towards growth and healing.

They found that there were a wide array of states of consciousness that most of us never access unless we use these chemicals or unless we do contemplative practices of one kind or another.

And they felt that the worldview or understanding of reality that emerged for these people was,

From the deepest experiences,

Tended to move people towards a spiritual orientation.

That is,

There have been quite a number of hardcore materialists,

And even when some of the Russians came over as part of the original Soviet-American program,

Even hardcore Marxists had some spiritual experiences,

And some of them dramatically changed their understanding of reality.

So,

Those are some of the things they discovered.

There was more,

Of course,

But maybe that's enough for now.

Yeah,

And you have wrote a book on shamanism and psychoactive drugs and shamanism nowadays,

Particularly in the West,

Seem to go pretty hand in hand.

I've done AOSCO myself a few times.

I haven't read that book of yours,

Shamanism,

But do you link those two as well?

Well,

There is a link,

But it's only part of a much larger picture.

Shamanism is a tradition unto itself.

It's the earliest of the world's spiritual traditions.

It's more than the spiritual tradition.

It's really the shamans were the original GPs or general practitioners of thousands of years ago.

They were the healers.

They were the tribal wise people.

They were the counselors,

And they were spiritual,

Kind of the priests,

If you call them that.

And they were also the ones who had direct access to older states and spiritual insights.

And in some parts of the world,

Some shamans use psychedelics,

But not in all parts of the world.

They weren't obligatory in certain places like Central America and South America.

They tended to be widely used.

So,

Well,

There's a link there,

But it's not,

You know,

It's only part of a bigger picture.

I should say,

Alex,

I should mention,

Just because the stories in it are so fascinating.

I mentioned the,

You know,

Interviewing all the original psychedelic research.

We pulled all that,

Those interviews together in a book called Higher Wisdom,

What elders have to say about psychedelics.

And that has some very fun stories in there from the interviews with these people.

Yeah,

It always fascinates me,

Psychedelics.

It might have been Aldous Huxley,

Where I first read it,

Doors of Perception.

And he talks,

I think it was Aldous Huxley,

And he talks about whether the psychedelics actually knock out our barriers,

Which just allow more information to come in,

Or whether it's actually having an effect on the mind to open the mind up.

So,

I've always contemplated,

In my experience with them,

It's more a sense of everything that you're experiencing is already there.

It's just everything that has been piled on top of you is stopping that coming in,

That sort of sense that I've had while I've been out doing psychedelics.

Yeah,

And obviously they're very complex,

Psychological and neurochemical,

Etc.

,

Effects going on.

No one fully understands the mechanisms by which psychedelics work,

But they clearly have the potential for enhancing our interceptive,

That is,

Our internal experience,

Our sensitivity to our internal experience.

And they also have the potential,

As the term psychedelic suggests,

Being mind manifestors,

That is,

They manifest depths of the mind,

Which we're usually out of touch with,

And deep symbolic layers of the mind,

And basically allow us to touch into depths within us that most people usually never access,

And which can be very valuable when they do do arise,

If done in the right context,

Of course,

Psychedelics can be used very unskillfully and very stupidly,

Without any,

You know,

Without any safe environment,

Or without an experienced sitter,

Companion around.

So,

As again,

Much depends on how these things are used.

Roger,

The link between spirituality and psychology,

I think they seem to overlap somewhat,

But I think there is a clear distinction between them.

Could you talk about your experience of that,

And also perhaps the recent development of maps of consciousness?

Yeah,

Well,

Psychology and spirituality both,

Both certainly,

Parts of them anyway.

Well,

Let me back up and say psychology,

Obviously,

Is a huge field,

And ranges all the way from behaviorism,

Which only looks exclusively at outer visible behavior,

All the way into more introspective psychologies,

Like humanistic,

Transpersonal,

Or Jungian,

As you mentioned,

And those are much more concerned with inner experience and psychological depths.

Those kinds of psychologies have an affinity to spirituality,

And I would define spirituality as that which is concerned with a direct experience of the sacred.

And what people find is that if we go in deeply enough,

If we explore deeply enough,

If we,

And particularly if we take up practices such as meditation,

Which allow us to develop the concentration,

Calm,

Clarity,

Stability,

So as to be able to see more deeply into ourselves,

Then we find that psychological experiences tend to deepen and often take on a more sacred sense or dimension to them.

So one could,

One way of saying it,

Rather simply,

But it's useful,

Is to say that the spirituality emerges when introspection becomes very deep and particularly is systematically explored,

And that one finds that there are depths to the psyche that usually don't emerge just with psychological exploration.

So the maps of consciousness,

I mentioned Ken Royal Borrelia,

I've read a lot of the work of Dr.

David Hawkins as well with his map of consciousness.

The distinction between evolving spiritually and evolving psychologically,

They don't necessarily go hand in hand,

Do they?

You can have somebody who's not very advanced psychologically,

But they're very spiritually aware and vice versa.

Could you perhaps expand on that and share your thoughts?

Yes,

Well,

Psychological growth can occur in many dimensions,

You know,

And we can have distinct imbalances.

You can have a very smart person,

Intellectually sophisticated,

Who's a moral idiot.

You can have people who are deeply sensitive to their own experience,

But not particularly effective in the world.

You can have,

So there are multiple skills and capacities.

And so if we think of psychological and spiritual development,

I think perhaps one way of talking about this is distinguishing between states of consciousness and stages of psychological development.

It's pretty clear that one can have open to a variety of states of consciousness,

A huge variety of states of consciousness.

And actually,

Perhaps we should just backtrack and say that one of the things that's happening in the West is anthropologists draw a distinction between what they call monophasic cultures,

Which draw their understanding of reality just almost exclusively from the waking state,

And polyphasic cultures,

Which draw their understanding of life and themselves and reality from multiple states of consciousness.

Until quite recently,

Until really until the psychedelics hit,

The West was a monophasic culture.

But most of the world's cultures are so-called polyphasic.

They draw their understanding of life and reality from many states.

So we in the West have with first the discovery of psychedelics,

Then the influx of Asian psychologies and contemplative practices,

And then the revival of Western contemplative practices.

We've been moving from being a monophasic to a polyphasic culture.

And you can see some of the disruption of the 60s as a reflection of that,

As a growing number of youth experienced,

Altered states of consciousness,

And began to have a different view of what really mattered in life.

They ran into the established so-called counterculture,

Then that came to loggerheads with the conventional culture,

Which was puzzled and surprised and horrified by some of the things that the counterculture was suggesting.

So that's a context for what's been a cultural context for what's been happening and an historical context too.

But one can have clearly have state a variety of states of consciousness without necessarily growing psychologically.

That is,

States of consciousness,

You know,

If you're an olded state,

You know it,

You can experience it.

But there are also stages of psychological development.

And let me back up and say that to my mind,

One of the most exciting discoveries that Western psychology has made in the last 50 years is that psychological development doesn't have to stop when the body stops.

That we can keep growing,

But it takes a commitment to learning and to growing to really have that happen.

But now we have maps of psychological development from well beyond the so-called conventional stages into what are called post-conventional stages.

And that is,

That can happen without a person experiencing altered states of consciousness.

And likewise,

Altered states of consciousness can happen without a person necessarily experiencing altered states of consciousness.

And likewise,

Altered states of consciousness can happen without a person necessarily maturing through developmental stages.

So these seem to be two independent kinds of growth that can happen.

Not fully independent,

Because a person who has exposure to a wide variety of states of consciousness is likely to catalyze some growth by that.

Doesn't have to be a single person.

Those are two different dimensions of opening and growth that are quite distinct.

And so you can have meditators who have lots of old states of consciousness,

But aren't necessarily as,

You know,

That mature.

And you can have people who grow up,

You know,

Who are at post-conventional developmental stages,

But have never had older states of consciousness.

And where would postmodernism and those stages above that fit into those psychological stages?

Because we're going through big shifts in culture at the moment,

I think it's fairly clear to see.

Do you perceive that to be a move into postmodernism or through postmodernism?

Well,

Postmodernism is a description of a cultural and historical movement from,

And one can say that there are three major cultural developmental stages that are apparent now.

There's the traditional,

Which is rooted in traditional views of religion and culture,

And the most dramatic of those are kind of fundamentalism.

There's the modern worldview,

Which is more science logic based.

And then there's the postmodern,

And then there's the postmodern,

Which has come into being with its recognition of the uniqueness of individuals and the cultures,

Of the sensitivity to individual differences,

The sensitivity to the ways in which power structures marginalize and oppress some people.

And so we have those different,

Three different cultural movements at the moment.

And people like Ken Wilber say that these reflect different psychological stages of development,

That the traditional represents a stage of more a mythic stage,

That the modern culture represents more rational psychological stage,

And the postconvention,

Sorry,

The postmodern represents the early postconventional stages of psychological development.

But I think those,

You know,

There's some interesting correlations there.

They probably have some validity how,

You know,

Just how tight those links are.

I'm not sure.

I've checked in a little,

Roger,

You said something along the lines of when the body sheds psychological development can continue.

Do you remember saying that?

Yeah,

I'm not.

I think I said when the body stops growing,

We used to think that when the body stopped growing,

The mind stopped growing.

But now we realize the mind can keep growing long after the body stops maturing.

Yeah,

Because obviously we say that,

It's a known phrase that wisdom comes with age,

But I also think that very often when I communicate with people who might be a lot older than I am,

It doesn't seem that wisdom has come with that age.

Well,

It certainly doesn't have to.

I think,

And there is a whole field of wisdom research now,

And the link between wisdom and age is a very,

There's not much of one.

My own understanding would be that to really develop wisdom takes time and a commitment to learning and understanding and growing as much as one can.

But it's a minority of people who have that intense commitment to learning and growing.

And so if wisdom takes time,

Then what you would expect is that with age,

A small percentage of people would indeed grow in wisdom.

But most people,

If they're spending five hours in front of a TV and another two or three in front of a computer screen,

Well,

That's not a good recipe for growing in wisdom.

And if you're sitting in front of the TV for five hours with a beer or two beers or three beers,

Then I don't see any expectation on necessarily make you wise.

Yeah.

So that brings up a question to me,

Roger.

What is wisdom?

Well,

All right,

You're asking the big ones.

Probably the best way of describing this is to say that if you look at both East and West,

There's an interesting distinction between two kinds of wisdom.

The ancient Greeks,

And for example,

The Buddhists would say that there is a wisdom,

Which is a kind of understanding,

Insight and understanding about the way things are.

And then this practical wisdom,

How we can apply,

How skillfully we apply our understanding to the world and to our relationships and to life itself.

So with those two things in mind,

I would say that wisdom is deep insight and understanding of the central existential of oneself and the central existential issues of life plus practical skill in responding effectively and benevolently.

And there's a lot in that,

So let me unpack it.

So first off,

Wisdom is deep insight and understanding of oneself and the central existential issues of life.

So,

You know,

As the temple of Delphi for a thousand years in ancient Greek or 900 years,

There was the inscribed word delphi,

There was the inscribed over the entrance was know thyself.

So deep wisdom is knowing oneself,

But it's also knowing the central existential issues of life.

Existential issues are issues that all of us face simply by existing as human beings,

Having a body that sickens and ages and dies,

Needing to find meaning and purpose,

How to relate,

How to handle aloneness,

All those kind of things that all of us have to face.

So wisdom is deep insight and understanding of oneself plus these central life issues.

But wisdom is also more than that.

That's the understanding side of wisdom.

But the practical side is the ability to respond to these issues,

These great challenges of life,

Skillfully and benevolently.

And the benevolently is really crucial because wisdom,

The East and West agree completely,

That wisdom consists in looking after more than yourself.

A person can be smart and just aim to live well for themselves.

But wisdom is concerned with the well-being of many people and even eventually of all people and even beyond that of all beings or conscious creatures.

Yeah,

I think the more contemplative practices naturally without needing to do anything in particular,

It seems to be an inherent quality that you become more loving of everything.

If you see a spider,

You don't just go and tread on the spider anymore.

You walk around the spider and you don't touch it.

That seems to me that that's something that it's not necessarily that what something does,

It's what one becomes.

And then what somebody does naturally follows that becoming and that beingness.

Yeah,

I think you're right,

Alex.

And the world's contemplative tradition,

Spiritual practices certainly aim at the transformation of emotions,

The reduction of painful,

Destructive emotions like anger,

Fear,

Jealousy,

Hatred,

And the cultivation of positive ones like love and joy and compassion.

And that naturally,

Those emotions naturally lead,

As you were implying,

Towards a more compassionate attitude towards life and others.

And if you look at across the world's great spiritual traditions,

You find that all of them agree that the aim of practice is not just one's own well-being,

But the welfare and the well-being of first one's larger community,

Then of all people,

Then of all conscious creatures.

And so if you,

It's basically one practices for the welfare and awakening of all,

But one does it not as sacrifice,

Because you realize that contributing to the well-being of others is just a life enhancing for oneself.

As the Dalai Lama said beautifully,

If you just live your own happiness,

You got one chance.

If you live for the happiness of 5 billion people,

You got 5 billion chances.

And I actually did,

One of my big projects was I did a book called Essential Spirituality,

The Seven Central Practices.

And I looked across the world's traditions,

I really wanted to know,

What were the qualities of heart and mind that the greatest sages of human history had said were really important in order to be able to live fully and well.

And it seemed that across traditions,

There are seven capacities or qualities of heart and mind they all agreed on.

And the Coleman,

And there were things like living ethically,

Transforming emotions,

As we just talked about,

Refining one's motivation so that one didn't get distracted by trivia,

And instead focused on what's really important in life,

Cultivating wisdom,

Becoming more sensitive,

Becoming increasingly sensitive to one's life.

So one really is very aware,

And particularly with a kind of spiritual awareness.

And the culminating practice is selfless service.

So,

And this gets to what you were saying before about stepping around the spider.

The culminating practice is not just one's own well-being,

The well-being of all.

And those traditions just agree that you can't practice for yourself alone,

Because that just enhances the ego,

Egocentricity,

And defeats the purpose in a way.

You can certainly practice for your own health and well-being,

But eventually it has to broaden out into a bigger motive and purpose for life.

Yeah,

I think if you look at the natural world,

It sort of gives you all the answers if you're quiet enough to listen to it,

Whereby everything just is a completely abundant state of giving all the time.

It never stops.

It goes through seasons,

But it's just a constant outflow and outpouring of life for us.

And when we,

As humans,

I think we use our mind sometimes to just grab onto things and conceptualise things and put things into boxes.

And we seem to stop that flow of abundance by trying to fit things into our own narrative somewhat.

And we end up suffering,

Which is,

I want you to come onto that a little bit.

What role do you think that suffering has in the development of a human?

Well,

Again,

It depends significantly,

Of course,

On a number of things.

One is the extent of suffering.

The second is how people relate to it.

You know,

If suffering is overwhelming,

If a person has a horrendous disease of some kind,

That's just a horrifying type of situation to be in and very hard to work with,

No matter how psychologically or spiritually sophisticated you are.

You know,

Life can just be overwhelming.

We need to face that.

On the other hand,

Lesser amounts of suffering can be used for learning and growth.

Unfortunately,

Most of us need,

You know,

Need some,

Most of us begin to grow and learn from suffering.

As long as things are going along,

All right,

We tend to be a little complacent.

So,

And if you interview people who are deemed to be wise,

A lot of them will,

And ask them,

What were the turning points in your life?

A lot of them will talk to various life challenges and suffering they faced,

Where they really were brought up short and realized they had to really look at this and how they were living their lives and what they could do better.

So,

Suffering can be transformative.

It doesn't have to be,

But it can be.

So,

That's one important thing.

But again,

It has to be manageable.

There's another thing that's really important to know about suffering,

Psychological suffering,

Alex,

And that is that psychological suffering is like physical pain in a way.

Physical pain is the body's way of saying,

Pay attention.

This needs,

You know,

You need to pay attention to this.

This needs healing or removing from the stove or something.

And psychological pain is in many cases similar.

That is,

If when we are,

And we're not talking about say,

Extreme depression with its biological basis,

But ordinary everyday suffering,

We get angry,

We get upset,

We get scared.

If we look at what's going on at that time,

And we look very carefully,

We know it will tend to find that when we are angry or afraid or jealous,

We are attached to something.

That is,

We are hooked on it.

We're kind of almost like a little addiction.

We think we have to have this in order to be happy.

And when we don't get it,

Then we suffer.

And for example,

If we're scared,

We won't get what we're attached to.

Sorry,

If we think we may not get what we're attached to,

Then we get anxious.

If we give up hope of getting what we're attached to,

We become depressed.

If someone gets in the way of what we're attached to,

We get angry.

If someone else has what we want,

We get jealous.

And so it goes on.

So there's a very precise relationship between the type of painful emotion and the indication that there's something we're attached to there.

And that's feedback is,

Okay,

I'm attached to,

I think I have to have,

You know,

This new car or this person or something,

Or I'll suffer.

And it's for a person who is committed to learning and growing,

That's the feedback that,

Oh,

I need to let go of that attachment.

I'm going to suffer.

And this is rooted very deeply in a variety of traditions,

Most formally in the Buddhist tradition,

Where the Buddhism is centered around four so-called noble truths,

The first one of which is,

You know,

Life has suffering in it.

It's just part of life.

The second one is suffering comes from attachment or craving.

And the third one is the end of suffering comes from releasing craving.

And the fourth noble truth is some guidelines for how to release craving.

So this is a very important idea.

Yeah.

So are you saying that,

Roger,

That a lot of the time that the root cause of all human suffering is that attachment?

Let's say,

I would modify that in a couple of ways,

Alex,

I'd say that psychological suffering is often,

Not always,

But often an expression of and a pointer to an underlying attachment or craving of some kind.

Yeah,

These ancient Buddhists that were smarter than what some people give them credit for.

Oh,

Well,

There have been an awful lot of very wise people over the centuries.

And yes,

They have a perennial wisdom that we keep discovering we need to discover.

It's desperately needed at this time in our world.

We're in a race between consciousness and catastrophe,

Between growing up and blowing ourselves up.

So this is crucial.

Hmm.

Do you think we're at that point?

I question sometimes whether this is a normal,

Not natural,

But a normal human cycle that we're going through,

Or do you think that we've just come to the point of maybe technological advancement with next to no spiritual advancement and it's leading us to our own destruction?

Well,

I think there's a very real possibility about our destruction.

And I think you put,

You named it very well,

Alex,

That there's an extraordinary imbalance between the exponential technological growth and the extraordinary power that gives us,

And the relatively slow growth,

Certainly not exponential,

Of our psychological,

Spiritual maturation,

Of our morality,

Our wisdom,

Our understanding.

So there's this extraordinary imbalance.

And we,

To the point that now technological power is so great that if we,

Those state of the world really reflects the state of our individual and collective minds.

And so what we call our global problems are actually our global symptoms.

They're symptoms of our individual and collective psychological immaturity and dis-ease or disorders of one kind or another.

And so we are going to,

If we're going to make it through this existential risk that we now face,

We're going to have to do a lot of things.

One is,

Of course,

We're going to have to do,

We're going to have to correct the situation in the world.

We're going to have to stop polluting and,

You know,

Reduce nuclear stockpiles and find better ways of establishing peace and the ways of feeding the ever-growing numbers of people.

But we're also going to have to deal with and address the psychological dysfunctions within us and between us that created them the same in the first place.

We're also,

Of course,

Going to have to correct the social,

Political,

Cultural structures that reinforce our psychological dysfunctions.

We're also going to have to address the new technologies we have like social media,

Which are thriving on polarizing us and allowing disinformation and the so-called meaning crisis that we currently face.

So we're going to have to work on a lot of different fronts.

When in the book Ireland by Aldous Huxley,

The famous utopian novel,

The explorer comes to this island where they've developed the utopia and he asks them,

Well,

Where do you start?

And they reply,

We start everywhere at once.

That's where we're going to have to have to go,

Both with the psychological and with the actual global problems themselves.

The root cause being the,

To me at least,

The psychological development of the people who are sort of in charge of all this.

And I think that leads me onto a question that I'd like to ask you about success and how one would define that success.

Because if you look at the social media,

To use your example there,

And the companies that are behind that monetize people's attention by polarizing them this way or that way,

There's no nuance going on anywhere.

If their profit is billions of dollars,

Billions of pounds,

Whatever it may be,

That is considered a success in this civilization that we're living in.

Whereas to me,

At least success needs to be broader and more expansive than that,

More holistic than that.

Could you give me your definition of what success means?

Oh,

That's an interesting one,

Alex.

I don't have a definition of success,

But clearly it depends on one's value system and contemporary,

Rather materialistic capitalist assumptions that success is measured in income is,

As you said,

Extremely limited and may destroy our civilization.

If these tech companies,

Which have huge monopolistic powers and a reach far beyond any companies in human history,

You know,

Facebook with its 3 billion users,

These companies are basically controlling what we know about the world and how we see it.

And we are being conditioned to respond,

As you said,

In very divisive,

Polarizing ways.

The sad fact is the business model of say,

Facebook,

Facebook does a lot better with angry people with low attention span who are divided and polarized.

It makes much more money out of those than it does out of people who are calm,

Reflective,

And not buying into a lot of the,

Lot of the simplistic explanations that are being given.

So we have business models,

Which are inherently destructive,

And they may mean more income and quote,

Success for the company,

But it means the potential destruction of our democracy and of our,

Even perhaps of our civilization,

If this kind of polarization continues.

So success,

You know,

And so much depends on one's value system and one's motives.

And,

And as people mature,

Their values also mature,

Their motives mature from first material success to then people,

If they mature beyond that,

Tend to become interested in in living fully and well,

And then they move,

Become,

Move to explore their own capacities and and potentials.

And beyond that,

People tend to be motivated by,

By service.

They've realized that,

That service is incredibly rewarding,

That to contribute to others,

It has,

It has this innate tendency to make us feel good.

And first immediately with what's called a helper's high,

But then long-term with a variety of benefits extending from greater psychological health to even greater physical health.

And even if you look at the research on people who contribute and serve in their communities,

They tend to live longer than other people.

Now,

You know,

I don't know why,

But the research is very clear.

So,

You know,

Service,

Serving others,

Leads to one's,

Enhances one's own wellbeing,

Both physical and psychological.

It's crystal clear.

I think it's important as well there,

Roger,

To what you said earlier,

It isn't a place of like sacrificing one's values to make that happen.

It has to be like an overflowing of one's life force rather than a sacrifice of it.

Yeah.

And what we discover is that our culture has a very grave misunderstanding of both ethics and of service.

It thinks of both of them as self-sacrifice,

But what you actually discover as you attempt to live more ethically and considerably of others,

And to be more generous and service-oriented is that ethics and service are not self-sacrifice.

They're enlightened self-interest.

And that you feel better as you live more ethically and cleanly and as you contribute more to other people.

Your life is just fuller and better.

The research is crystal clear.

Yeah.

And I don't,

You know what,

Roger,

I don't even think if people aren't,

You know,

Intellectually stimulated by reading loads of research,

It's just inherently apparent.

Reality is showing you this by how you feel.

You can't escape it.

It's just the way that life is.

And we tend to,

I know I was like this myself.

I was a professional football player or soccer over in the US.

And it was all about that.

There was nothing else.

It's completely irrelevant what went on as long as I succeeded.

And I was just throwing my arms out the way to make sure that that happened.

And then I was like,

I'm not going to do this.

I'm not going to do this.

And then as soon as that got stripped away from me,

I had no choice but to re-identify who I was,

What was really going on here.

It completely broke me apart.

And that was when it's sort of,

I went into various different fields trying to find myself again and whatever.

And that's when it sort of come up through that broken identity that as soon as one really begins to get on the path of knowing yourself,

For the lack of a better phrase,

That's when you can really overflow and really assist people.

But I can speak from my own experience that it isn't necessarily because I want to do that.

It's a natural thing that happens on its own.

So I can't choose to do it because there isn't really a choice.

For me,

It's just,

That's what happens.

Well,

That's a beautiful description of the point you were raising earlier,

Alex,

About the way that suffering can be a catalyst for growth and learning.

And your own life demonstrates that.

And you make the point that contribution is,

We discover that it's something we really want to do.

And that's true.

And we still make a choice.

We make a choice about it too.

So I would say both and.

Yes,

We discover that we really want to contribute and we have to keep making that choice.

There are always little temptations to be self-centric.

You've mentioned mobility a few times here,

And I've put on a show called You've mentioned morality a few times here,

And I've pulled and pushed on this one numerous times.

My mind flickers.

Is there an inherent morality in humanity and in life in general,

Or is it man-made concept?

Can you give me your ideas on that?

Well,

Let's see,

Maybe both.

We have our concepts and understandings about ethics,

Morality.

But again,

There's a significant large body of psychological research on this.

I have a huge 600-page textbook behind me there on moral development.

And what it shows is that as we mature,

Our understanding and ways of being moral mature with them.

So we come into the world as what's called in the so-called pre-conventional stage,

Which is very egocentric.

It's all about me.

I always see that in a young kid.

It's like,

You know,

Me,

Mine,

Etc.

But then as we as we mature and we gradually become socialized,

We grow into the so-called conventional or socially-centric stage,

Which is more a recognition of what the rules and regulations are.

And yes,

It's good to be with,

You know,

Keep those rules and regulations.

It's a pretty rule-oriented perspective.

But then there's a possibility of moving to a so-called post-conventional morality,

In which we begin to look at the general principles of life instead of the conventions.

You know,

Is it true that my country is better than everyone else?

Well,

Maybe not.

But we begin to reflect and see that,

Okay,

Well,

Really,

Life really does work better when we're kind and ethical and sensitive to people.

So at that stage,

Ethics or morality becomes something that is done from one's own understanding of what makes life work.

So there's a very distinct development.

And then I would say that there's a stage beyond that,

A trans-conventional stage where people begin to have these deep contemplative or spiritual openings and recognize their interconnection with everyone in the universe.

And then morality becomes a natural expression of this larger sense of identity.

Now it's like,

Well,

As Jesus said,

You know,

Love one another as yourself,

Love your neighbor as yourself.

It's like,

Because in those states of consciousness,

One,

There's a sense of one's interconnection with and even oneness with others.

So it makes,

It just makes natural sense to,

Of course,

Want to contribute.

It's,

Again,

It's not a self-sacrifice.

Roger,

We've come to an hour.

Do you want to tell people where they can find more of your work?

Have you got interviews online,

New books in the making?

Have you got anything like that?

Well,

Thanks for asking Alex.

Yes,

I have a website,

Drrogerwalsh.

Com.

You can find lots of interviews and articles there.

I think books that are most relevant to our conversation are the ones I mentioned before.

And I think that's a really important part of the conversation.

And I think the ones I mentioned before,

That is Higher Wisdom,

That's about the interviews with the psychedelic pioneers,

And probably the book Essential Spirituality,

The Seven Central Practices,

Which looks at the common practices across the world's traditions.

I think that's probably enough.

Beautiful.

So what was the website again?

Drrogerwalsh.

Com.

Beautiful.

I'll leave that in the show notes.

Thanks for coming on,

Roger.

I really appreciate it.

You're a wealth of knowledge and wisdom.

So I've loved talking to you.

Thanks so much,

Alex.

It was a delight.

The invitation.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Interesting conversation. Thank you 😊

I enjoyed the interaction and excellent framing of questions that prompted thought. The responses and explanations were easy to understand, for subjects that can sometimes be difficult to "get."
It was also easy to follow and grasp the comparative concepts that were presented. Thank you! I enjoyed this very much.