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Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads, the show where we grab the

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most tangled complex ideas out there, pull on one thread

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and see what reality unravels.

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Speaker 2: And today we are going full reverse engineer. We're not

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just you know, talking about the mind. We're trying to

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decompile the actual software that runs what we think of

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his reality.

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Speaker 1: That's right, and we've got the notes. We have the

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field notes of a scientist who systematically and frankly terrifyingly

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mapped the entire geography of innerspace.

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Speaker 2: It's a huge topic.

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Speaker 1: It is because there's a hitting code, right, a kind

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of programming governing every single experience you have, and most

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of us never even define it, let alone try to

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rewrite it. It's the operating system in your own head.

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Speaker 2: And our guide for this entire journey is doctor John C. Lily.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so before we go any further, we have to

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ground this. Who is John C.

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Speaker 2: Lily?

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Speaker 1: Because he wasn't. He wasn't some guru on a mountain.

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Speaker 2: No, absolutely not, and that's essential. This guy was a credentialed,

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rigorous scientist. He was a researcher for the National Institutes

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of Health the NIH. He invented the isolation tank, the

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sensory deprivation chamber. He spent I mean decades researching dolphin communication.

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He genuinely believed they had a language far more complex

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than ours.

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Speaker 1: So this is a serious person who approached the bazaar

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with just absolute scientific discipline, exactly.

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Speaker 2: And when he found really it changes the whole conversation

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about free will, about destiny, about your own personal power,

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And it.

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Speaker 1: All kicks off with his foundational principle, his core maxim.

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He calls it the belief engine, and it's always running.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and his maxim is so direct, I'll just quote

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it here. In the province of the mind, what one

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believes to be true either is true or becomes true.

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Speaker 1: Okay, But when you hear that, I mean, come on,

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that sounds a lot like something you'd see on a

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manifestation vision board, a self help mantra.

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Speaker 2: It does. It sounds suspiciously close to that. But Lily

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treated this like a law of physics, like the first

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law of thermodynamics. It was a non negotiable principle, but

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only within a very specific domain. Right.

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Speaker 1: And this is the part where it gets really interesting,

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because he didn't just leave it there. He immediately defined

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the limits.

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Speaker 2: He did. And the limits are the most fascinating part.

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He says, these limits, they have to be found experimentally, experientially. Okay,

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And here's the kicker. He says, those limits, they just

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turn out to be further beliefs that you then have

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to transcend.

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Speaker 1: Just a feedback loop.

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Speaker 2: It's the ultimate terrifying feedback loop. If you believe deep

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down that you can only ever earn, say one hundred

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thousand dollars a year, that belief acts as a hard

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ceiling in your reality. You will experimentally run into that

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ceiling again and again. But the ceiling isn't the market,

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it's not the economy. It's a program you installed.

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Speaker 1: And the only way to get past it is to

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truly believe the ceiling isn't real, to just move the code.

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Speaker 2: Which brings us to the two provinces. This is so critical.

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The first profits the province of the mind.

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Speaker 1: In that space, he says, no limits.

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Speaker 2: No limits whatsoever. You're terrifying, unadulterated, infinite freedom. You are,

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for all intents and purposes God in that space.

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Speaker 1: No. And this is a huge butt, a huge But.

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Speaker 2: He was not a fool. He was very clear about

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the second province, the province of the body, the physical

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world we're.

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Speaker 1: In right now, and here the rules are different.

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Speaker 2: Completely different. He drew an absolute red line. There are definite,

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non negotiable limits that are not to be transcended. Gravity, pain, death.

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You can't just believe your way out of walking into traffic.

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Speaker 1: That distinction is everything. He's not selling some kind of

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mystical escape. He's giving you a guide to separate the

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external physics from your internal programming.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. So, our mission today here on thrilling Threads it

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isn't to argue if these experiences are real. It's to

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understand the hardwired mechanics of this human biocomputer he talks about.

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Speaker 1: And maybe the strangest part of all, to explore the

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intelligence agency that he claimed runs the entire universe's timeline.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going way beyond simple self help here. We're

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looking at the actual structural mechanics of belief and reality

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as defined by this this groundbreaking and let's be honest,

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sometimes incredibly reckless scientific journey.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so the first big implication of this maxim this

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belief engine, is that we are fundamentally not really in

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touch with reality.

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Speaker 2: We're divorced from it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he found that you're not You're not the conductor

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operating to your brain.

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Speaker 1: You are the brain.

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Speaker 2: You are the software running on the hardware of the brain.

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So when you think you're seeing objective reality, what you're

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actually seeing is a highly refined, extremely convincing internal simulation.

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Speaker 1: I think we've all had those moments, you know, where

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you realize how subjective everything is. But what he's saying

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is it's total. The simulation is entirely constructed by your beliefs,

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the ones you don't even know you have.

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Speaker 2: The code you got from your parents, from your culture,

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from trauma. Your brain just generates a virtual reality that

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perfectly conforms to that core programming.

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Speaker 1: It's the ultimate eco chamber.

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Speaker 2: It is. But if the brain's a computer and the

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mind is the program, why does it feel like we're

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watching the world through a screen, why does it feel

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so separate?

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Speaker 1: He had an answer for that. He identified the specific mechanism,

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and it's something we use every second of every day.

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Speaker 2: Language, the screen of language.

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Speaker 1: He described it as a literal film, a tangible screen

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separating us from raw, nonverbal reality, and we spend our

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whole lives making that screen thicker.

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Speaker 2: It's so counterintuitive, isn't it. We're taught that words illuminate things.

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You label something to understand it, right, Lily concluded the

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exact opposite. Words don't just describe the world, they actively

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block it. They prevent direct perception. He called language, and

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this is a quote, a very poor instrument.

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Speaker 1: And he wasn't the first person to think this, right, No.

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Speaker 2: Not at all. He was building on ideas from people

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like William James, the great American psychologists, who said language

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was the filmiest of screens. Yeah, it's not totally opaque,

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but it just it obscures the vastness of what's really there.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's make this practical. If I'm walking down

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the street and I see a tree, this idea of

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the descriptive loop trap suggests I'm not really seeing the tree.

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Speaker 2: You're not. You're seeing the word tree. You're seeing the

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concept of tree, which is a file in your brain

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that's loaded with associations.

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Speaker 1: Like provide, shade made of wood, leaves.

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Speaker 2: Fall in autumn, exactly all of it. And you're instantly

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trapped inside that descriptive loop, that automatic need to label everything,

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and that stops you from just experiencing the raw physical

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reality of the thing itself.

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Speaker 1: It sounds exhausting, like a low level hum of cognitive

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noise all the time, a prison made of dictionary definitions.

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Speaker 2: It is, And Lily realized the only way to really

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explore that first province, the province of the mind, was

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to abandon description completely. You have to shut off the

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internal monologue.

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Speaker 1: Stop talking, and start traveling exactly.

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Speaker 2: And once you strip away language and your attachment to

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the body, which you know often took deep isolation or

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for him, powerful chemicals, then that terrified buying freedom the

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no limits of the mind is finally revealed.

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Speaker 1: The terror isn't just the infinite space. It's that there

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are no signposts, no walls. If you can become anything,

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how do you choose? How do you even navigate a

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place with no map?

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Speaker 2: And that's what Lily the scientist decided he had to

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solve next. He wanted to make a map.

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Speaker 1: So instead of running away from insanity, he treated it

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like a like a travel destination.

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Speaker 2: That's a perfect way to put it. He didn't want

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to pathologize these states of consciousness. He wanted to quantify them,

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so he developed a quantitative coordinate system for innerspace.

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Speaker 1: He put a number on the state of your.

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Speaker 2: Soul, pretty much shifting it from vague spirituality to structural geography.

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Speaker 1: Let's walk through this map, then, because these coordinates are

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the key to understanding the programming. We have to start

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at the bottom level nine to six.

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Speaker 2: Level nine of six, the dark knight of the soul.

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This is the place of absolute, maximum terror. Lily described

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it as a guided tour of hell, intense psychological pain,

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crushing guilt, existential dread. He said he was quote totally terrified.

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Speaker 1: And everything in our biology. When we feel those things, pain, guilt, dread,

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it screams at us to run, to distract, pull out

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your phone, turn on the TV, do anything to avoid

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that feeling.

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Speaker 2: And Lily says running is the fundamental mistake, that's what

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keeps the program looping forever. The key action in this

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state is completely counterintuitive, which is don't run, don't distract,

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his advices, stay there, remain perfectly aware.

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Speaker 1: Stay perfectly aware of the worst possible thing. You can imagine.

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Why what's the point of that?

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Speaker 2: He called it burning karma. By staying fully, conscious fully

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aware of the pain without fighting it, without reacting, you

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are letting this psychological energy that fuels that negative cycle

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just burn itself out.

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Speaker 1: So you're depriving the fire of oxygen.

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Speaker 2: You're letting the program run to completion consciously until it

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runs out of fuel. You are in effect consciously deleting

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the fear program from your own hard drive.

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Speaker 1: That's a really powerful action idea. Okay, so that's the basement,

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the terrifying basement where do most of us live?

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Speaker 2: According to this met most of society resides at level

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plus twenty four the professional.

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Speaker 1: State functionality, competence, getting things done.

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Speaker 2: Yes, you are completely lost in your discipline. You're the

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perfect lawyer, the dedicated doctor, the focused parent. You're functioning

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flawlessly within the rules of the province of the body.

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But this is critical. You're also asleep a.

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Speaker 1: High functioning bio robot running a very successful script exactly.

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Speaker 2: And the cost of being stuck there is that you

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are so immersed in the simulation that you believe the

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simulations all there is. You're efficient, but you are profoundly

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unaware of the deeper code You're.

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Speaker 1: Playing in the game, so well, you forgot it was

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a game. Okay, I'm moving up from there, level plus

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forty eight. This sounds like pure detachment.

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Speaker 2: It is level plus forty eight, the neutral state. It's

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pure information exchange. Think of a server farm, just data

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moving back and forth, no emotion, no connection, just the

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network operating at peak efficiency.

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Speaker 1: A place of cure calculation.

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Speaker 2: Right. But the state that sounds the most alluring, the

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one people are actively trying to get to, is the

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one that breaks the ceiling of that professional state.

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Speaker 1: Level plus twelve the blissful idiot.

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Speaker 2: Ah, the blissful idiot. This is where this filter just

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drops away. You're still in your body, but everything is beautiful,

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everyone is happy. You feel this intense positive energy moving

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through you.

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Speaker 1: Lily described hearing a bird saying and feeling like it

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was an echo of the entire galaxy. Everything connects, everything

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is meaningful. Sounds like nirvana.

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Speaker 2: It does. But here comes the big flashing warning sign.

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Lily says, this state is dangerously useless, useless.

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Speaker 1: How can bliss be useless?

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Speaker 2: Because you can't do anything. It's not much use unless

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you can find another bliss ninety, as he called it,

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another blissful idiot in the same space. If you get

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stuck there, you become useless to.

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Speaker 1: The simulation because you're too busy floating in golden light

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to pay your rent or feed yourself.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, the province of the body demands engagement. You found

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the fire exit, but you can't leave the building, and

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you can't go back to class to do the work.

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You have to keep moving. The point isn't to rest

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and bliss, it's to integrate what you learn there.

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Speaker 1: But if we're trying to move up this ladder, what

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keeps knocking us back down? Why is innerspace so unstable?

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Speaker 2: The hardware. You have to look at the biocomputer itself.

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Speaker 1: The physical brain.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the brain is hardwired for survival, not for enlightenment.

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It has these powerful ancient survival programs burn right into

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the circuits. These aren't you. They're just loops of code

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designed to keep the meat suit alive, the carrot and

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the stick absolutely the rewarding systems pleasure, euphoria, sex, and

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the painful punishing systems, anger, rage, fear. These are physical

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parts of your brain, non negotiable hardware, and.

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Speaker 1: The cortex, the part of us that thinks that reasons.

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Speaker 2: It's just a switchboard. This is the shocking part. The

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conscious thinking mind is just a switchboard that triggers these

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powerful survival programs based on you.

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Speaker 1: Guessed it, your core beliefs, the code that was installed

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in you.

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Speaker 2: Yep, your cortex doesn't decide to feel fear. It just

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reacts to a situation based on the installed code of

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what you believe is dangerous, and it flips the fear switch.

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Speaker 1: So if your code says being vulnerable will get you abandoned,

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your cortex just flips the switch for the painful system,

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and you feel anxiety even if there's no real threat.

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Speaker 2: You're just running the abandonment script. And Lily being Lily,

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had to test this. He had to push the fear

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program to its absolute limit.

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Speaker 1: And this is where the story shifts from you know,

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intellectual exploration to something closer to a horror movie.

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Speaker 2: It really is. He read a study about psychiatrists curing

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patients by putting them through their worst fears. He decided

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to do it to himself.

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Speaker 1: He used a sledgehammer, a massive dose of ketamine, a

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dissociative anesthetic, fifty milligrams. The goal was to exit the

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body completely.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a dose for major surgery, not for a

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Tuesday afternoon experiment.

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Speaker 1: And the story he tells is, well, it's terrifying. He

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mentally leaves his body and he finds himself under the

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control of this entity, the Earth Coincidence Control Office.

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Speaker 2: And in his mind. In this reality, these entities start

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removing his body parts. He specifically details them taking his

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hand and his penis and experience of just profound, agonizing loss.

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Speaker 1: He screamed, He said, it was this visceral, absolute terror.

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His wife ran in saw him thrashing around, and she

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confirmed his physical body was completely fine, it was whole.

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Speaker 2: But the mental terror was one hundred percent real to him.

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Speaker 1: It was happening, and his first reaction, his very human reaction,

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was to just scream at the ceiling, who is in

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charge of there a bunch of crazy kids.

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Speaker 2: And the answer he got back, this voice he heard,

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defines the entire relationship. It was so simple, so chilling.

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It just said, well, you had an unconscious fear, so

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we put you through it, just the way the arrangement did.

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Speaker 1: The arrangement.

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Speaker 2: The arrangement, this is the whole point of mental destruction.

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The province of the mind lets you face any fear, dismemberment, drowning, anything,

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without any physical damage to the meat suit.

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Speaker 1: You can be mentally destroyed. And wake up perfectly fine.

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Speaker 2: And the purpose of that is the realization Lilly understood immediately.

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Fear isn't your fate. It's just a program. It's code

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waiting to run. And if you consciously run that fear

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program to the very end, it deletes itself. You can't

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control the switchboard anymore.

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Speaker 1: But that voice, the entity that administered the whole terrifying

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lesson that raises the biggest question of all. If reality

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is a simulation, who is the system administrator?

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Speaker 2: And that brings us to the core of this whole thing,

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ECO the Earth Coincidence Control Office.

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Speaker 1: Most people would call this God or fate or the universe. Lily,

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being a scientist, gave it a hilariously bureaucratic name.

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Speaker 2: He didn't see it as a vague spiritual force. He

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described it as an intelligence agency or quote, one of

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God's field offices. He even liked that echo an Italian

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means this is it. This is it.

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Speaker 1: This is the office running the long term timeline, and

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their main job is what coincidence control?

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Speaker 2: Coincidence control. We've all felt this. You think of an

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old friend and suddenly they call you missed the train

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that later crashes. Those moments where reality seems to bend

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just for you.

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Speaker 1: Jun called that synchronicity meaningful coincidence.

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Speaker 2: Right, But Jung saw it is just spiritual poetry, a

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causal Lily said, no, it's not random. Synchronicity is management working.

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It's Eco adjusting the dials of the simulation to guide you.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but hold on an office. Is he being literal?

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Is there a cosmic bureaucracy running the universe?

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Speaker 2: He's serious about the function. He's not saying there's a

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guy named Dave in a cubicle somewhere. He's saying he

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experienced a systematic, coordinating intelligence that uses coincidence as its

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primary tool, and that led him to the contract of coincidence.

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Speaker 1: The contract. This defines our free will in this whole system.

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Speaker 2: It does. The contract is explicit. Eco controls the long

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term coincidences, the big stuff, the arc of your life,

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the people you meet, the accidents you avoid.

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Speaker 1: But you, the human agent, you control the short term ones.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. So, Eco builds the maze, but you choose how

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you walk down the hallways.

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Speaker 1: That's our free will, which means if you decide to

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work for Eco to be an intentional agent, you have

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to accept something.

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Speaker 2: Massive, you have to accept that there are, as Lily

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put it, no discoveries. There are only revelations.

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Speaker 1: Meaning even his greatest scientific breakthroughs, the isolation tank, the

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dolphin research, he didn't invent them.

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Speaker 2: He downloaded them. He was just the antenna, a really

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sensitive receiver picking up a signal from the field office.

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If you want better data, you have to accept you

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are not running the show. Your job is just to

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have a clear reception.

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Speaker 1: And the ultimate goal of this whole bizarre arrangement, the

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simulation we call life. ECO told him what it.

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Speaker 2: Was they did, and it's a bombshell. They told him,

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when you find out how we do the long term ones,

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you no longer have to remain on Earth. You don't

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have to return there.

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Speaker 1: Graduation. The whole point of life in this model is

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to figure out the algorithm of coincidence. Crack the code,

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and you graduate from the simulation.

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Speaker 2: It changes everything. The real work isn't striving or creating.

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It's cleaning the antenna, reducing the noise from the survival

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programs and the static from the descriptive loops of the

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signal comes through.

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Speaker 1: Clearly, and when you start bitting those clear signals. When

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you step outside of linear time, you enter a state.

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He coined a new word.

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Speaker 2: For alternity, not eternity, a state where all possibilities exist

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at once. He saw it as this cosmic tapestry, a

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series of branching paths where every outcome is happening right now.

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Speaker 1: He used the analogy of a tree. The trunk is

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this present moment, but branching off it are thousands of leaves,

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and each leaf is a different reality, one where you

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took that job, one where you never met your partner,

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one where you're dead, all of it existing simultaneously.

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Speaker 2: And being a scientist, he immediately saw the connection to physics.

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He said, this lines up perfectly with the Many world's

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interpretation of quantum physics.

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Speaker 1: Which says that every time a quantum wave collapses, the

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universe actually splits into parallel branches, one for each possible outcome.

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Speaker 2: So when you make a decision, you're just chew using

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one of those leaves of alternity to become your new present.

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The others keep going without you.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like ultimate power, But seeing all of those timelines,

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it came with a very serious warning.

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Speaker 2: Hubris, a huge warning about ego. The moment Lily felt

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this immense cosmic power. He started to think, wait, did

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I cause this? Am I John Lilly generating the universe

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just by observing it?

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Speaker 1: And the universe responded immediately and physically.

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Speaker 2: Very next morning, the huge nineteen seventy one San Fernando

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earthquake hit Los Angeles. It threw him out of his.

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Speaker 1: Bed, a literal physical slack from reality.

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Speaker 2: The lesson was instant. He realized he didn't cause the earthquake.

384
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He was just tapped into the same energy source that did.

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He'd confused the observer with the creator, the antenna with.

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Speaker 1: A transmitter, a devastating clarification. In the mind, you are limitless.

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In the body, you were fragile. And he kept pushing

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that boundary, trying to bring the no limits rule of

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the mind into the physical world, and.

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Speaker 2: The results were brutal. He totaled his car driving it

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up a sand bank, got battery acid burns on his hand.

392
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In another incident on a bicycle, he broke nine bones

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and was in the hospital for five days.

394
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Speaker 1: This wasn't bad luck. This was him trying to hack

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his own biocomputer with a sledgehammer. He admitted taking forty

396
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two milligrams of PCP when the safe dose was two.

397
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Speaker 2: He was trying to download the entire Internet onto a

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floppy disk. He was seeing planetary destruction and atomic wars

399
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in his mind, and he could barely get back to

400
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his own body. He was gripping the bedrails for six hours,

401
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just trying to stay grounded.

402
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Speaker 1: The system's message wasn't a punishment, it was just maintenance advice.

403
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The vehicle is fragile. You can't download infinite data without

404
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melting the hardware, and Lily was melting.

405
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Speaker 2: Which brings us to the ultimate paradoxical punchline of his

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entire life's work.

407
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Speaker 1: After all that time trying to escape the meat suit,

408
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the tanks, the drugs, the dolphins, the system administrator's ego

409
00:19:50,759 --> 00:19:53,680
finally stepped in. They cut off his high level access

410
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and gave him a direct order.

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Speaker 2: A completely unexpected order. They told him stop using it

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and get back here and learn how to be human.

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Speaker 1: Learn how to be human. That was the final assignment.

414
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He realized that getting high mystically or chemically was the

415
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easy part, the blissful idiot state. That was the trap.

416
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Speaker 2: If you're floating in gold light, you're not learning the

417
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lesson of the simulation. The problems of the body is

418
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the classroom. You can't skip class just because you found

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the fire exit. The lessons about limitation, about pain, those

420
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are the ones you need to solve the algorithm.

421
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Speaker 1: So he had to ground himself, stop the extreme doses.

422
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He realized the biocomputer needs maintenance. If you crash the car,

423
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you can't drive it.

424
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Speaker 2: But once you've been through all that, once you've seen

425
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the code behind the curtain, you have a huge social problem.

426
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Speaker 1: You can't tell anyone.

427
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Speaker 2: You can't tell anyone or they'll lock you up. If

428
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you walk into your professional level plus twenty four office

429
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,799
and start talking about eco and alternate realities, Yeah, you're done.

430
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That's the problem of insanity.

431
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Speaker 1: So what was his solution. This is one of the

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most brilliant punts of his work. He called it outsanity

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shared madness.

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Speaker 2: Shared madness. He said, if I am crazy alone, I

435
00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:05,279
am sick. If we are crazy together, we are a culture,

436
00:21:05,319 --> 00:21:09,119
We are a movement. His books, his lectures, they weren't

437
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for everyone. They were a beacon call to find the

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other outsane people.

439
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Speaker 1: So it's like spycraft for the spiritual agent.

440
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Speaker 2: It is the core rule is never express your full

441
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insanity in the outside world. You have to protect the signal,

442
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and you have to protect yourself.

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Speaker 1: Find your tribe, the people who know the code, and

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speak the truth only to them, to everyone else.

445
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Speaker 2: You play the game, you wear the mask of the professional.

446
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:35,119
You function at level plus twenty four on the outside

447
00:21:35,319 --> 00:21:38,200
while operating with the knowledge of everything else on the inside.

448
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You're a cognitive double agent.

449
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Speaker 1: And this all leads to the final metaprogram, the master

450
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key that unlocks everything else, including the idea of ECO.

451
00:21:45,519 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 2: Itself, radical agnosticism.

452
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Speaker 1: All beliefs are unbelievable.

453
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Speaker 2: Every single one. Christianity, quantum physics, simulation theory, even the

454
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maps we just talked about, the coordinate system ECO, they

455
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are all just tools.

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Speaker 1: Use the tool, never ever mistake the tool for the truth.

457
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Use the story of the Eco if it helps you

458
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manage coincidence. Use quantum physics if it sharpens your mind.

459
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Speaker 2: But once you cross the bridge, you burn it. If

460
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you get stuck clinging to the map, you've just built

461
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yourself a new prison. Lily eventually abandoned his own maps.

462
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He realized the map is not the territory.

463
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Speaker 1: So the final conclusion is it's the most empowering one.

464
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You are the programmer of your own human biocomputer society,

465
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your parents social media. They installed the default software fear

466
00:22:32,680 --> 00:22:35,799
dot execonsumerism dot app.

467
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Speaker 2: And Lily's work. It doesn't just show you the map,

468
00:22:38,519 --> 00:22:40,119
It shows you where the keyboard is, so you can

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finally start rewriting your own operating system.

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Speaker 1: He showed that if you're brave enough to face your

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own level leven o six your personal hell, and you're

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smart enough to listen for when a coincidence is management working,

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you can actually become the controller of your short term reality.

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Speaker 2: What does this all mean for you listening right now?

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We've gone from the hard limits of the body to

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the infinite, mapless province of the mind, led by a

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scientist who intentionally mapped hell.

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Speaker 1: The lesson isn't to escape reality. It's to understand its

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rules and to understand that the rules themselves are just

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self imposed beliefs waiting to be deleted.

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Speaker 2: We're all stuck here in the province of the body,

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but the mind is unlimited territory. The real challenge is

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finding that balance. Being brave enough to sit with your

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own deepest fears to burn that karma, and smart enough

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to live as an outsaane agent protecting your signal.

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Speaker 1: And it brings us back to that ultimate choice from

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the system administrators. If the purpose of life is to

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figure out the algorithm of coincidence so you can graduate

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from Earth, what short term coincidence could you control right

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now to move one step closer to that final revelation?

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What small intentional choice today signals to ECO that you

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are ready for a new assignment. But do you think