Changing Kosmic Habits: Rupert Sheldrake & Andrew Cohen

[Music] what I become very interested in this is also something I very much want to talk with rt about tonight is is what happens when when the when when the process when The evolutionary or developmental process awakens to itself becomes aware of itself as it must at least be to a certain degree for us even to be able to have this conversation tonight the process is talking about itself since because we're all here to talk about it or to listen to rivert and I talk about it or if we take questions we'll all be talking about it so the process is beginning to talk about itself so then the question is uh uh and this is what this is what I'm very very interested in is is uh what does it mean for the the the the conscious uh human being who's who's passionately interested in the evolution of Consciousness and culture to deliberately and intentionally choose to create new habits and there and and you know individually and collectively and uh for the very for the very purpose of the evolution of our capacity for Consciousness in and also so that we can very consciously and deliberately create this new inter subjective context of relatedness which which is what culture is all about [Applause] what I work on is is habits new forms new patterns and the way they're organized in different levels more and more inclusive the fact that the universe is and all nature and we too are so deeply habitual is good news and bad news it's good news because it means we can change change habits where fixed laws couldn't be changed it's bad news because it means that we're all gripped by habits we've inherited from the past and habit by their nature are unconscious and we be we we're subject to all sorts of unconscious habits and so let me just say two things on habits one is that we inherit habits of thought and and one of them we're all deeply steeped in is materialism materialism says that the mind is nothing but the brain and we've all been brought up to believe that our minds are located in our brains inside our heads according to standard science and medicine um it's all just in your head and this is taught in every Medical school it's the foundation of modern medicine and mechanistic science but I don't think it is and part of my own work on the nature of vision just how you see things uh is really looking at a way in which interiority which Andrew rightly says is the key thing about Consciousness isn't necessarily limited to the interior of your body when I see you now um what's going on what's actually happening I think is lights coming from you reflected from you coming into my eyes inverted images on the retinas changes in the optic nerves and the Brain the standard view would say I then produce a tiny image of you somewhere inside my head and ex experience a kind of virtual reality display of this whole room inside my head because all Consciousness is in the brain I don't think that's what's happening at all I think what's happening is I'm projecting out an image of you which is a projection of my mind outwards my image of you is located where you actually are it's not inside my brain it's in my mind but my mind's projected out in Every Act of perception when I look at a star my mind is literally projected out over astronomical distances so it's interiority in the sense that it moves outwards from the center my Consciousness but it's not interior in the sense it's confined it suddenly stops when it hits the inside of my skull and can't get any further and once we realize this false view of Consciousness that it's all in the brain a very eccentric provincial view that came into Europe in the 17th century uh when we see that this is actually a very limited view no one the idea all our images and thoughts are inside our brains and no one's ever seen an image inside a brain it's just an assumption so this is a habit of thought we can break and by breaking this habit of thought most of us have been brought up with that our minds inside our head it changes our sense of our identity who we are and indeed our immediate experience because our minds link us to The Wider World in Every Act of perception our minds connect us with the environment Beyond us and to think otherwise is a habit of thought that goes against our most immediate experience so I think there's all sorts of habits that uh one can positively adopt that can help reestablish that sense of [Music] connection sometimes for for human beings like us who have tended to live very much in our heads in our minds often we're so disconnected from nature from our own physicality that getting in touch with you know for us reconnected for especially with the postmodern highly mental mentalized you know self to kind of to just say well wa just to expand our perception of our of our what our experience already is who we are so what's the relationship between the body and our capacity for Consciousness and then to begin to then then also beginning to just get in touch with Consciousness itself you which and you know rert talked so much about this and through and through his work it's also helped me to appreciate you know how profound the effect of materialism has been on all of us so even people like myself you know who who believe we take for granted you know the fact that Consciousness is the ground of all things still I I to me it it shocked me over and over again to see how materialism has affected the way I and the way I see the world the way I see my own experience I mean it's it's it's become so automatic because that's the the cultural worldview that I grew up within um on the plane over I was reading some of Rupert's work and and if you really spend little time with him he helps you to break this to break through this fundamental Duality and it's you know because he's very systematic and very repetitive and and I I know in my own experience it was helping me to see through this deeply ingrained materialism to to to begin to see through just to see through a fundamental dichotomy or doing that doesn't that doesn't really exist so so the interior of the the interior of the material Cosmos the interior of the material Cosmos is your capacity for interiority there's an external and an inter I don't know if we would agree with this maybe not but nevertheless there's there's there's there's a the matter is the exterior and consciousness of subjectivity is the interior so when you begin to see your own capacity for interiority especially as you begin to awaken spiritually Beyond ego that your own capacity for for for the direct cognition of Consciousness itself as as the Leading Edge of the interior of the cosmos itself of the process you you begin to see how directly related you know how how your own experience of interiority is directly related to the whole process itself you see it as one thing in the most dramatic thrilling way possible [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for