Imaginary Reality (What Is Now? Podcast)

What’s the difference between what you imagine and what’s “real”? Saqib and Charles explore this question and more in today's experiential conversation. Each of these sessions begins with one minute of silence followed by an unplanned interpersonal exploration of the present moment and finishes with a short guided meditation based on the themes of the session.

Transcript

Welcome to the What Is Now experience.

We begin with one minute of silence,

And then explore whatever arises.

So please join us for this one minute of doing nothing.

We begin with one minute of silence.

Anything you noticed right now?

I think I was getting a few thoughts,

Like my mind was,

I was not acting much in the now,

But I was getting a lot of thoughts in my mind.

And those thoughts,

Again,

That is a now experience also,

I somehow feel that we sometimes also judge our own thoughts,

You know,

As if thinking is something wrong,

But I think that is also important.

And the now experience has,

You know,

Also includes our thought.

So the thought that I was getting was,

What does it mean to be connected to something just beyond our day to day natural physical,

You know,

Lives?

So when we say that,

Okay,

Let's journey in words,

Or let's connect to something,

What is what,

What does it mean?

And what is that threshold,

You know,

At which we get connected to that?

And when we are not connected to that?

Are you getting that?

I think so.

I have a variety of thoughts and questions.

My first one is in relation to,

You said,

The thinking felt maybe like it wasn't so in the moment.

He also talked about that just maybe being a judgment,

But I was wondering,

What about the thought,

That thought pathway felt like it was not so much in the moment?

If that makes sense?

Or like,

Is there any thinking that feels like it is present or in the moment versus some that doesn't?

What I feel is that,

So this one was like,

I felt it in the moment,

This thought that I had,

But what I feel is that the difference between,

You know,

Maybe which is in the moment and which is not in the moment is that thought is that the thoughts which are not maybe in the moment,

I'm just doing some guesswork right now,

Is something that is forced.

You know,

Maybe for example,

The question that I think you also have sometimes,

And I also have,

What is it that we are going to speak about?

So that is more kind of a forced kind,

Trying to bring forcefully thoughts into our mind.

Like grasping for something.

Yeah,

But in the moment would be for me,

It would be something that arises from total presence.

So as soon as I went into that state,

Again,

The thoughts started coming that,

Oh,

What are we going to speak about?

But then I pulled my awareness back to this moment and I,

You know,

There were those glimpses of nothingness.

And then the thought that came up was regarding this connection that I was talking about.

And so it felt like that thought or that pathway is something that was more of just an arising out of the moment versus searching for something to come up with.

Kind of interesting.

Tell me if you feel like these are related,

But what you described feels related to something that came to my mind,

Because I was also,

I was just noticing a sort of busy-ness feeling of my mind.

And that led into a vision of,

It's almost like a kind of looked like a video game.

It was both two dimensional and three dimensional.

It was like a kind of two dimensional stick figure character,

But it was on a three dimensional plane and the character was like running,

Sprinting forward.

Like you had a controller,

You're pressing the turbo button or something like that.

And they just run forward.

And that to me felt like thinking mind just sort of in control on some path or they're like going all these different directions.

And then a feeling of stopping the character or slowing down to the point where they're just standing and then they lean backward and fall through the bottom plane.

And then it like bursts into something that is even beyond the three dimensions.

It's like this other whole space.

And then there was a shift back and forth between those two,

Because then you find the character running again on the,

So maybe that's like a two dimensional version,

That first level and they're just sprinting.

And then there is a possibility of maybe pressing another button or letting go of the turbo button and then the slow down and gradually fall backward.

And then it's like this opening up into a whole different dimension,

But that popped up for me.

Yeah,

I think that's a very good way to put it.

I think that also answers the question that I had regarding connection.

What is that threshold where we get connected to what we say,

Getting connected to something beyond the physical?

I think what you're saying is that physical in this sense would be the two dimensional plane.

But as soon as that person just simply stands in the original position and they are just,

That person falls off to a three dimensional existence.

So maybe part of that two dimensional being that the third dimension is the beyond what I was talking about getting connected to the book.

And maybe for us three dimensional beings,

You know,

The beyond is maybe 4D or 5D.

That to me seems like a certain kind of effort maybe that it takes to experience such a dimension,

The falling back kind of effort because it's like,

It's sort of counter,

It's still,

It's doing something,

But it's counter to that forward movement that's trying to reach a goal.

It's like a stopping of that and you don't see what's behind you and you're just,

You're vulnerable too.

You might get hurt or you might,

Or maybe how other people perceive you.

You're supposed to be running and they look at you just stopping and giving up or whatever it might be.

So it's a certain kind of,

I think significant effort that it takes to move into whatever that other dimension is or to find a new thought or a new experience,

This like counter effort of falling backward.

So would you say that it is more of a mental effort or is it like physical effort in that sense?

So what I'm saying is what I'm sensing is that like,

I think I'm seeing it in a bit different way in the sense that what I feel is when that 2D,

You know,

When that person is running on the 2D plane,

They require a lot of energy,

You know,

A forced energy to do that.

So that might exhaust the person,

But when the person is standing and,

You know,

Just falling to that three dimensional pain,

That falling is coming from maybe not forcing that energy that is not exhaustive,

But more of a natural energy that just happens,

You know,

That comes from that three dimensional space.

And it is more of like that potential energy where,

You know,

For example,

Someone is skydiving,

So they don't need to put maybe that physical effort because automatically gravity is pulling them down.

Right.

And gravity would be working in that situation too.

There would be a certain effort on one's behalf to begin that momentum backward.

And then at that point,

You're no longer exerting effort.

You're just allowing this natural force to take you somewhere.

So basically you're saying that the effort required to maybe,

You know,

In case of skydiving,

The effort required to maybe jump off the plane.

Right.

And to go up there.

Yeah.

And to go up there.

Yes.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I was just noticing it's a cool thing or opportunity,

Which we've mentioned before,

But just to be able to explore this kind of stuff with each other.

Like this was an image that I've never had before and just popped up in my mind and then to have a space to just kind of share it with you.

And now we're both talking about it and becomes so much more fleshed out and it becomes this kind of metaphor for everything.

And also just nice to have another person,

You know,

Listening,

Genuinely listening and not in a space where we're intellectually trying to figure something out or I'm providing some particular answer,

Sharing something about my life.

It's just like this thing just popped into my mind.

Yeah.

Now we're exploring it together.

It's a pretty cool interpersonal space to be in,

I think.

Yeah.

And what fascinates me the most is that these are just like,

You know,

These are just visuals and these are like just concepts and the ability for us to like for the other person to grasp that,

You know,

To,

To like share that vision.

So for example,

You know,

When I,

When I,

You know,

When I take this bottle and I tell you,

See,

This is a bottle,

So,

You know,

This is a bottle,

Right?

But if I,

If I tell you that,

Okay,

You know,

Imagine,

You know,

Imagine that this bottle turns into,

You know,

This monster and this monster is like,

You know,

Golden colored monster who is like throwing this golden color fire and,

You know,

Then,

You know,

This monster had,

You know,

Gets those wings and starts flying in the sky.

So this is all just like a vision,

You know,

It's like,

Imagine you will get that,

Right?

That's that's the most fascinating part when I'm,

Now,

This is not something tangible that I'm talking about,

But still we have,

We can still build a shared experience in consciousness having this,

You know,

Which is not physical actually.

So that brings me to the realization that maybe a lot of people in those early times started sharing these stories with each other,

You know,

Which may be turned into beliefs or,

You know,

Maybe rituals or religions or,

Or anything like that.

You know,

I,

I remember that there,

There are many traditions,

Example,

For example,

The,

In the Hindu tradition,

There is,

I don't exactly like know the terminologies,

But it is something like when a solar eclipse happens,

The imagination that goes with it is like,

You know,

That there is a monster that eats up the sun.

So this was the belief in the earlier times,

There is this monster who eats up the sun and you know,

The people would start drumming at that time and trying to,

You know,

Make that monster go away and after some time the monster would go away.

So they would like see our drumming work.

Right.

So this is how mythology gets starts getting created.

Now that monster is just an imaginary thing.

It's not something real,

But for that particular community,

It becomes a very real thing in shared experience.

So this is fascinating to me.

What do you think?

It just makes me think of the fun of creativity too but as you were describing the,

The sort of expanding story of the dragon that began with your water bottle I was also thinking of like myths and archetypes and you just sort of beginning the story.

I wonder if to tap into the creative mind like that is maybe to inevitably find yourself in some sort of shared creative stuff that we all have,

Which would date back to ancient times that they would also kind of create the same stories or if,

You know,

Just through repetition and many stories happening over time,

We tap into all those stories that we've heard.

And I think that's something similar,

But I just wonder maybe if we move into sort of a pure space,

We will inevitably kind of recreate these myths.

Like even though the running person in my vision probably relates to some mythological thing or you probably find those themes in different myths or if I was a powerful enough person in a certain period of time that this iconography probably could turn into some huge story and philosophy of beliefs based on this dynamic of the running person versus the person who falls back into this other dimension.

But just as you were talking,

Maybe think of sort of you in that moment tapping into this basic kind of creative source that we all have very intimate knowledge with,

But we have to allow it to be unleashed.

But that would connect us with all these different sort of myths and traditions.

Yeah,

It's fascinating because,

You know,

The fascinating part is that,

As you correctly said,

The archetypes,

These kind of symbols that are kind of common,

For example,

Dragon,

We see this word repeated so many times in our shared experience.

And a dragon is again an archetype in that sense.

And I think that makes me feel that Carl Jung was absolutely right about this collective unconscious that we share,

That has those archetypes and that's why these archetypes pop up in those dreams and in our visions.

And I'm also thinking that maybe this is how,

I don't know,

Maybe this is how telepathy works in the sense that we kind of are sharing this vision,

Which is not physical,

Which is not tangible,

But there is a field where we are sharing this vision together of a dragon,

For example.

So this field,

Maybe this field,

Maybe the way to communicate to you telepathically without maybe bringing that dragon into physical space,

Or maybe at some point of time without even talking about it,

They might be,

I'm just guessing that there might be species who are not even using words like dragon,

But they are still having a sort of a shared experience of that dragon,

You know,

Without even saying the word of it.

I was just wondering in this moment in maybe the mind of a person who might be listening and in your mind and in my mind,

What the image of a dragon is like?

Yeah,

That's a good question.

What do you see?

I see like a very long,

Long creature that is flying,

That is red in color with green scales on the body.

And yeah,

That is.

.

.

Is it doing anything in particular?

Just flying around and breathing fire.

Yeah.

Well,

What is that just,

Is that just part of its being or is the fire being breathed with some object that it's aimed at?

Or is that just part of what it's doing?

Just part of what it's doing more of a,

More of an act to kind of to show its power,

To show people that you can do that.

What is it for you?

Mine is like a,

This,

It's also very long,

But it's a windy and upward dragon that's green and yellow.

And it's actually kind of like a happy or silly dragon,

Kind of a mischievous dragon.

And it's like looking out of the corner of its eye at me,

Sort of frozen in space.

But it's vertical.

Nice,

Nice.

And I think we do share a lot of like commonalities in that,

For example,

Along the length of a dragon,

It's long and it's also green.

I also mentioned green color.

So there is these commonalities maybe because also because of the tradition and the images that we see.

For example,

When I go to Chinatown here in Vancouver,

I would see those images,

Red or green.

I think maybe it's also coming from that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what,

What do you feel about this in the sense that what do you think that if I,

If I asked like in a,

In a,

In a simple language,

Although the word is not simple,

It's complex,

But what is the meaning of like,

What would be telepathy for you?

Telepathy,

Telepathy.

What would it be for me?

Yeah.

Like when,

When you listen to this word,

What comes to your mind or what is your experience of it?

The first thing I think of is being able to think something and transmit it into your mind.

Although that might not be,

So maybe it's either that or it's me being able to be aware of what it is that you are thinking.

And is that possible?

Do you think is that possible?

The first thing I think of maybe has to do with language.

And I wonder if that kind of maybe that,

Of course I have no idea.

And maybe that the first thing that comes to my mind is maybe that kind of knowing happens on a pre language level.

And potentially I can know maybe very intimately what you know,

Like and feel,

But then I would have to turn that,

I would have to translate it into my language.

Which might,

As we know,

Language is something that can really be a barrier to seeing and feeling truth or really being present.

And so that's just sort of what I think of that maybe I could tap into something that is like exactly what it is that you're feeling,

But then it would have to come through all,

For me to then repeat it back to you or to articulate it in some way would have to go through all of my layers of language and experience and kind of ego quote unquote filters,

Which might be very far removed from the actual meaning maybe based on my own sense of being in touch with that first part or that deeper layer.

What do you think about that?

Yeah.

So what I'm listening and what I'm hearing is that the knowing you are saying the knowing is maybe more pure than when it is translated into language.

Maybe at a level we know that something is true that is a shared experience,

But when we try to translate that and tell it comes out as a different meaning,

Right?

What I'm also thinking of right now is the ability,

For example,

When two people,

And I think I have experienced this in my relationships.

Maybe you have also when we spend too much time with the person maybe when we are very close to a person,

There comes a point of time when there is a knowing,

For example,

A situation happens and that person is standing with you,

Who is close to you.

And you see,

You look at that person and you just know what they are thinking.

And you know,

You sometimes you also say that,

You know,

Are you,

Are you thinking the same thing that I'm thinking,

You know?

So it is like a knowing that what would you,

The other person would be thinking,

But yeah,

When it comes to language,

Then it comes from a different lens,

Totally.

Then it becomes different.

But the knowing is greater when we are closer to that person.

Maybe I was just wondering if,

If that could even work in reverse in some way,

When you're with someone that you spend a lot of time with,

That you can maybe fall into very sort of familiar patterns of thinking and being and potentially,

At least this is something that I tried to practice,

Like with my wife,

For example,

Of there's always the possibility to let go of any idea of what she is thinking and I wonder if,

If via that connection,

If it's also possible through that openness,

Like for that to change,

For even what the other person is thinking to change through their sense of your openness to them being able to think anything versus thinking that I know what she's thinking,

Even if I might've been right in the first place,

If that makes sense.

But I,

Yeah,

You're absolutely right.

But what I feel is that there is a difference between the egotistical knowing and the true me.

So what I feel is when I say that,

Oh,

I know,

You know,

When I tell you,

Oh,

I know,

You know what you are thinking because I know you,

Because I know,

I know your behavior,

You know,

I know you're so that,

That comes from a more place of an ego,

You know,

Egoistic knowing,

Which is,

Oh,

I just know,

You know,

Because I have spent so much time with you.

This is what you're thinking.

I know it.

Yeah.

Like kind of trying to act smart,

You know,

I can figure it out.

I know you,

But the other one is more of a feeling like more than the rational,

Like rational,

You know,

Words that I,

I know what you're thinking.

It is more about truly knowing that truly feeling that with someone's presence,

As if you are so much connected,

You know,

I think this is how empathy works.

Maybe that you are so much connected to that person,

That if that person is feeling that pain,

Your heart also starts feeling that.

And that is more of a knowing than the,

You know,

The,

The knowing that comes from the mind.

I think it is more of,

I would say it is more of a knowing of the heart than the mind.

I just thought of a pretty benign example.

It may be more of the mind,

But maybe not.

My wife and I were watching a show yesterday and it got halfway through and no one had said anything and I just paused it and I was like,

How are you feeling about this?

And she described like the exact feeling that I was having.

I was like,

It's interesting,

But I don't really,

I think I get it.

And I'm not that interested in watching the rest of it.

But it was kind of cool.

Cause I think if I had a sense that,

That she was really into it or enjoying it,

I wouldn't want to inject that.

I might say it afterward,

But there was a sort of like a sense in the way we were both sitting or something.

Or maybe just my understanding of our past shared experience together.

And it was sort of a nice feeling too.

It was like,

Yeah,

That's exactly what I feel too.

Do you feel at some point of time,

The the words,

You know,

Or the need to have a conversation becomes lesser and lesser in a,

In a relationship that you just maybe,

Maybe do we have that ability to reach to a point when we are,

For example,

You are sitting with your wife and just,

You know,

Things,

And there is no need to say in that,

Do you feel that that is it that can happen?

Probably potentially.

Interesting.

I was,

You know,

When we were also discussing about the,

These archetypes and,

You know,

The dragon,

It also reminds us something that I,

I just read in,

In one of the books,

I think I showed you that book.

I think it's called the shamanic,

The way of the shaman.

It's my Michael Horner.

So he was telling us,

You know,

His story of,

Like his,

His experience of going deep into that shamanic practice and having certain visuals and,

You know,

At night having certain,

You know,

What someone might call hallucinations or visuals or imagination or imagery.

So when he did a shamanic practice after that,

In night,

He explained that he was having certain visuals and those visuals were something like,

You know,

Something like a boat made of a dragon,

An actual dragon turned into a boat and someone is sitting in that boat and someone is rowing that boat.

They,

They arrived to a certain point and that then that dragon starts flying and all that.

So he,

He kind of explained his visuals.

So in the morning,

He,

He went to another like indigenous shaman and he told him his story of what he saw in his visuals.

And he said that,

You know,

That is the exact thing that I saw,

What you saw.

And this is,

You know,

It means that you are like,

You,

You are a powerful shaman,

Shaman yourself,

You can become a shaman.

And then he started his training and,

You know.

So that is something very curious to me.

That is something in the sense that these visuals that,

You know,

We can or the archetypes or,

You know,

All these stories that the mind makes up the commonality of it in,

In our experience seems to be something which is not just a probabilistic in the sense that something which does not happen just because,

You know,

We talk about it or we see it in our physical experience,

But there is something deeper than that,

Which is,

You know,

Again,

Not physical,

But a part of our consciousness where we share this,

You know,

As,

As Carl Jung said,

This collective unconscious,

Where we share a consciousness field,

Which we can access,

Maybe,

And it has similar stories.

What,

What,

What do you feel about this?

The thing I was just thinking was maybe the value of tapping into this stuff for yourself and maybe following it or allowing it to infect was the first word that came to mind,

But I don't know if that's quite right,

But just allowing these images to sort of guide you in some way towards something that is maybe like the,

The deeper path or like,

I was just thinking of the shaman and having this vision is making me think maybe it's because I recently reread the Alchemist and it's,

It's full of this talk about omens and that's kind of been on my mind a lot,

But if you're sort of aware of this stuff in your mind and in your environment,

That can lead you to become increasingly aware of it.

And then you see more of all these like archetypes and that that can maybe guide you in some powerful and important way to find what it is that you should be,

Quote unquote,

Should be doing or what you're meant to be doing,

Like being a shaman.

That's just what it made me think of.

Like maybe that image of this running person and the falling into space,

Like that's my most true kind of understanding or language.

And if I just keep following that same sort of area of my mind,

It will lead me in the,

Like the truest direction.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

I think that what you just said about the omens is,

You know,

So brings into my mind the idea of synchronicities,

A lot of people have like these common experiences in synchronicities,

For example,

Something very common is new,

You know,

Numerology in the sense that some people see certain numbers again and again,

You know,

I think one,

One,

One,

One is something very common,

Which a lot of people see.

Also,

You know,

These like waking up in the night at 3 PM,

For example,

Is a common experience.

So these,

These synchronicities,

I think what the omens can be,

And,

You know,

I'm just guessing what you're meaning by this.

Is it similar to that?

What you're saying,

The omen and the synchronicity?

I think so.

Yeah.

I think you're tapping into something that is kind of close to the thread that ties everything together and maybe inherently by following that you're,

You're,

You're,

You're moving in the direction that is most natural or most real maybe versus something that is running away from that.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

So what was your,

What was your experience?

So that was one experience,

But did you have any other experience during the silence?

That was the main one.

I think what happened for me is I,

I don't remember what the other thoughts were,

But I was having a variety of different sort of jumbled thoughts.

And then that led into a vision that was sort of describing that experience.

I think that often happens for me,

Which is,

It's just a really cool thing.

I think of having some kind of more,

You might call it conceptual or intellectual,

Or even just mundane experience of something,

And then allowing a vision to come up to sort of symbolically represent what's happening.

So there just having a bunch of jumbled thoughts and then leading into this vision of like a me that's running and at any moment I could drop back and fall into something that's much more vast,

But can't really be explained any other way,

I think,

Than a visual like that.

Yeah.

I read kind of a cool description of consciousness.

I'm reading this book called Living with the Devil right now.

You might actually be interested in it by Steven Batchelor.

He wrote Buddhism Without Beliefs.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one,

But he was talking about consciousness and how it's something that is indescribable because the way that we describe things is by comparing them to other things that they're like.

And that consciousness just eludes that because,

You know,

When we look at anything,

We're experiencing it through consciousness.

It's not something that I can hold and say,

Consciousness is like this thing.

But so maybe we can get closer to,

Or I just think this for myself anyways,

Closer to truth or like an explanation of something like that that is beyond explanation in this area of just kind of creative visual.

Or maybe that's what art is like,

Getting close to describing something that can't be described otherwise because you can't compare it to something that's just tangible.

It has to be this kind of expression that helps you to feel something.

The question is,

You know,

Is how real is that?

Like lately I have started questioning the concept of what's real and what's not real.

I think maybe my delving into shamanism is making me question that because for,

You know,

What I read was,

And you know,

What I also heard from a shaman was that for a shaman,

No reality is like,

There is no thing as such as more real or less real.

Everything in the experience is real.

So maybe that,

You know,

We call this physical reality real because,

You know,

This is something very tangible to us.

We can touch it.

We can,

You know,

We can,

This is a very tangible table for me.

I can touch it.

But again,

If we go deeper into also science,

Then this is just,

You know,

Vibrating energy at a very basic level,

Vibrating molecules and atoms.

But the question is,

You know,

How real is this experience,

Which we kind of usually,

You know,

Judge as a hallucination or,

You know,

Maybe schizophrenia to an extreme extent where we say that,

Okay,

These visuals,

For example,

The visual you had of this person,

You know,

Now this is something which is in your experience,

Subjective experience,

But someone else,

You know,

Would just say,

Oh,

This is just a hallucination.

This is not something real.

That's me like closing my eyes and imagining,

Which on the surface seems different than when I open my eyes back up and now I'm talking with Sakib recording a podcast.

Like that's the real world.

But in what you're describing,

That is no different at all.

Maybe even that's more real because all that other stuff is like conceptual dressing on top of what's actually happening right now.

And even now the visual is something kind of different when I talked about it in that moment than whatever is most real right now.

Right,

Right.

Because you know,

Even this vision of yours,

It can get to the extent of becoming your reality in the sense,

Like if you get too much into it,

For example,

Right.

If you visualize it very vividly to the extent that you might deprive yourself of the senses,

You know,

There is some sort of sensory deprivation.

You are kind of not in your body.

You're not feeling what's happening around you,

But you are more in this visual and you kind of in your,

You know,

That's what we do in meditations.

When we visualize,

We kind of make it a very vivid and real experience for us.

So then the question again arises that,

You know,

Then,

You know,

Why do we consider it as not real?

Maybe that is also real in our experience as,

And also like the dream state,

For example,

Some dreams are so vivid.

You know,

I just remember a dream I had a few days ago and this dream was,

I'm a little bit diverting from the topic,

But it was so vivid.

And I was so like,

As if when I woke up,

As if this world is kind of a dreamy space,

Which is not very experiential,

But this dream was so experiential.

And I saw myself,

You know,

It was a very kind of a Harry Potter,

Like of a scene,

You know,

Kind of a big university,

Which was like Hogwarts.

And I was,

I went there for learning music and,

You know,

There were all these tall beings there and I was so I was kind of feeling that music all around me.

I was feeling the bliss of that music all around me.

Then it was as if this experience is more real than anything.

And in the dream itself,

I was kind of saying that to myself,

This experience is real than more than anything,

You know,

That makes me wonder,

I'm really fascinated by this,

But what do you feel is this idea of reality for you?

What would you say about that?

I guess I don't really,

It doesn't to me feel like something I need to figure out or can figure out.

It makes me think of how I think maybe the Buddha responded to some questions of,

Like there's no figuring that out.

Or maybe the question doesn't even compute.

Because it would mean to create some sort of duality,

I guess,

To say something is real or isn't.

But I,

For me,

I don't see a dream as any less real than waking,

Quote unquote,

Waking state like it's all a conscious sort of projection.

And I got fascinated by dreams.

And the way you can remember dreams and how they sort of can stay alive,

Like,

Or how a dream can,

You might not remember it and then it'll just come up out of nowhere.

You recall back to this experience from a dream,

Like a memory.

This is really interesting.

Like,

So do you allow this,

I don't know if allow is the right word,

But does this dream impact you now?

This specific one that I talked about?

Yeah.

It impacts me in the sense that the feeling of,

I think it was the feeling of that bliss that maybe,

You know,

In that feeling of bliss,

That musical bliss that I experienced,

It was so profound that I couldn't find any of such experience in the physical,

You know,

What we call the physical life here.

It was as if,

You know,

I am the music itself.

It was as if,

You know,

I've become one with the music.

Also like makes me think,

You know,

I used to sing and I used to have this maybe natural capability,

You know,

Since my childhood of being able to understand music,

Especially when it comes to vocals.

So maybe I was thinking,

Is it possible that what I was seeing was kind of,

You know,

What,

What is called as a past life or something?

Is it kind of,

You know,

Maybe I developed this naturally,

What I,

What we call a natural capability,

Maybe it was something developed in a previous life or a parallel lifetime.

That stays with me and that yearning for that experiencing that bliss again of that musical bliss that stays with me.

And it makes me,

It makes me happy at the same.

It makes me happy that we still,

We have that potential to experience all those emotions.

You know,

It means that we have that potential to go beyond our suffering,

You know,

That we experience in this world and have those blissful experiences,

Which as human beings,

We might not have experienced yet,

You know,

In the physical body.

So yeah.

Well,

An interesting exploration as it always is.

It's gone in many different directions.

Yeah.

It is food for thought.

Like it always leaves me with this yearning to explore.

And I'm sure,

You know,

After our session,

Maybe in the evening today,

I will definitely start exploring more about this,

You know,

Dream space and the visions and visuals.

So I'm always left with a more curiosity when our sessions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah,

Another line from this book,

Something like,

He's talking about this notion of a path.

And so I mentioned,

It's called living with the devil and it's describing the quote unquote devil as like what creates blocks to a path or what gets in the way of a path and sort of keeps you on.

It could be like the notion of samsara or vicious circles of living.

You maybe it has some sense of what your path is,

Which is moving away from this onto something that's much more winding and unknown.

But the devil quote unquote keeps putting barriers in the way of that.

And I think one description of the path that he used was life becomes a question as opposed to a fact,

Which I just kind of liked.

And you just mentioned being left with more curiosity.

I always feel that way too.

Everything is kind of unfinished.

But that's just fun.

It's just like the expansion of this dynamic path.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

I absolutely agree.

That curiosity again is a very blissful feeling.

It can be both ways for people.

For someone it can be an irritation that it is not,

The questions are not answered,

But for some it is also a very beautiful feeling of the existence being infinite and our potential to explore the infinity is still there.

It's not a full stop.

It is still a question mark.

And that is that it's beautiful.

Great.

So great time with you today.

Same with you.

I'll talk with you next time.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us in the what is now experience.

We hope that you liked the episode.

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Then you can share those ideas through your comments.

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Namaste.