🌀 What if reality is all in your mind?
How the radical view of mind only can free you from the cage of materialism
Most of us experience reality as existing outside our minds.
We believe that there is a material world that exists separately and independently of our perceptions.
This view is known as physical materialism and it’s the dominant paradigm in today’s world.
But what if despite seeming unmistakably true this view is completely wrong?
What if everything we experience is an appearance of and within the mind?
This is the radical view that the philosopher of Mind Bernardo Kastrup has been proposing for over a decade.
When I first ran across Bernardo’s work I had already had many experiences that put cracks in my then-dominant physicalist-materialist worldview.
But reading Bernardo’s books and listening to him on podcasts helped me make sense of these experiences and further dismantle this paradigm.
Since starting my podcast over two years ago Bernardo has been on the top of my list of people who I want to talk to.
I’m pleased to say I finally got the chance.
This interview was one of my favorites to record, and even though Bernardo had been interviewed hundreds of times before, he expressed several times during our conversation that this was one of the more unique and personal interviews he has done.
With that said, click the video below and tune into this unique conversation where we discuss why all of reality is mental, why the brain does not generate the mind, how to avoid cognitive entrenchment, how idealism impacts meaning in life, suffering & happiness, psychedelics & self-deception, If enlightenment is real, and so much more.
Memorable Quotes 🗣️
On the Role of Suffering:
“Suffering is the most powerful engine of insight, the most powerful fuel for the generation of new insight that I have ever come across.”“
“If your not suffering you are not asking yourself the deeper questions.”
"Suffering has also become unnaturally high, and therefore we have now mobilized all of our energies to stop suffering. But in the process of doing that, we forget to live because life is not about your attempt to stop suffering."
On Psychedelic Experiences:
"Even if all of those stories were untrue, they felt more real than real. They felt more real than this right now."
"Normal brain activity is partly what the dissociative process looks like. If you reduce that, then you're reducing the dissociation. And when you reduce the dissociation, the richness of experience increases."
“Mind is perfectly capable of creating extraordinary compelling realities”
‘We are not the ego”
On Self-Deception:
"Mind loves nothing more than to deceive itself, and the history of humankind bears witness to that overwhelmingly."
On Contentment & Happiness:
“Contentment is when you see that your life is unfolding the way nature intended it to”
"I think what is possible is to live in contentment, which is different from happiness. Contentment is a place where you don't need anything other than you already have, even if you're suffering."
“The ultimate joy is the ultimate sadness”
On legacy & Influence:
“Even if all my books disappear with me, there is one thing that would never disappear, which is what came to the minds of people when they read or listened to me."
Dive Deeper 🤿
Analytic Idealism Course - Check out Bernardo’s FREE Analytic Idealism course and start breaking free from the confines of the physical materialist paradigm
Why Materialism is Baloney (book summary) - Check out this in-depth book summary I did for one of Bernardo’s more popular books
Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell - Pre-order Bernardo’s upcoming book
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