MIT Scientist: "This Is What God Actually Is"

Ajouté : 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]You've gone through your own arc like this where you started religious. Then you got into this sort of dog eat dog Darwinian model which you know it's actually adaptive for us not to see reality because of evolutionary game theory. And then you figured out this sort of matrix model which if you go all the way up the chain of consciousness you end up with this unified field of consciousness. So you moved from God and then you moved away from God and then you moved back to God.

[00:00:29]Right. And part of the journey for me was what I loved about science was the mathematical rigor, precise theories with precise assumptions and mathematical precision and testing.

[00:00:49]You knew the theories were consistent.

[00:00:51]They may not be true, but they're consistent.

[00:00:54]But it was physicist and that didn't I mean ultimately it felt like there was something missing in the physical and it turns out there is we we can't get a theory of the observer yet in a in a physicalist framework. We just can't and we can't get a theory of conscious experience and we can't get a theory of the illusion of conscious experience.

[00:01:12]There's nothing that gives us uh any specific illusion of a conscious experience. So that that would the plus of science was rigor nonsense consistency. The the downside was the physicalism assumption seemed to be too restrictive. On the religious side, the downside was complete lack of rigor and no consistency and no tests, no empirical tests. It was and and as a result, a lot of the stuff you hear, a lot of stuff I heard is just utter nonsense. That that was the downside. The the upside was The idea that consciousness is fundamental and somehow love and unity is is I mean like with with a lot of the religions the fundamental thing is love your neighbor as yourself because your neighbor is yourself. If you stick to that fundamental idea in the in the religions and cut away everything else, I'm on board. That seems really right.

[00:02:17]most of the other stuff is all this inconsistent nonsense and you know all the snake oil and so forth. So you can see the the problem that you've got as a as a human being in in this kind of situation. There's snake oil and so forth yet the fundamental thing is love your neighbor as yourself. Science has got the rigor they got the mathematics that that seems really good but but there's no reason to love your neighbor as yourself. I mean in the sense that I mean it's doggy dog Darwinian kind of thing. I love my neighbor myself as long as it's convenient for me and you know and so forth. But there's no deep sense in in which I'm one with my neighbor.

[00:02:53]And so for me the synthesis is to pull the to take the rigor of of science, the mathematical precision and the the absolute insistence on data careful observations and to take from the the spiritual traditions. Get rid of all the nonsense.

[00:03:11]Get rid of all the handwave and and dogma and keep the essence which is there is a fundamental unity. Love your neighbor as yourself because your neighbor is your take that from the spiritual tradition. Bring those two things together and then I think we have a new thing going forward that could really be the aspirational science meets spirituality that you were talking about.

[00:03:35]>> Do you believe in God?

[00:03:37]I believe that there that I would say this as best as words can do it right. So I so I'll say this. I think to answer the question I have to be very very careful.

[00:03:54]Words are just words.

[00:03:57]I said then you know science starts with assumptions. There is no scientific theory of everything. And so so we whatever reality is infinitely transcends what science could do. Right? And yet I'm a scientist. I think science is a fantastic tool. I want to use it. But reality, whatever it is, infinitely, not just a little bit, infinitely transcends anything that we could come up with in science.

[00:04:25]But to answer your question, so I'm not dodging your question. I'm going to get to your question, but it's it's so deep that I have to say a couple things.

[00:04:33]There are most of the stuff that we know, we don't know through science or through study.

[00:04:42]um the color green. At some point in your life when you were two, someone said, "Jesse, that's green." And you looked and you go, "Oh, okay. That's green." Someone pointed to a rabbit and said, "That's a rabbit." And you you got it. And if you think about what went on there, it's a miracle, right? Your mom sitting with you and points and says, "Rabbit." And you look once or twice and you get it.

[00:05:11]There were a thousand h a million hypotheses that you could have what maybe it was the ear and the rug. Maybe it was the color of the fur. Maybe it was the left eye. Maybe it was the, you know, the left paw and the cup over there. What what could you possibly mean by rabbit? And yet at the right age, someone points says rabbit just once or twice is all you need typically and you get it. This is called um learning by ostensive definition. And almost everything you know is not because of a scientific theory. It's because of ostensive definition. Every everything of everyday life that you know colors, shapes, someone pointed and said and you got it. That's ostensive definition. So now what do I mean by God? Because God is just a word, right? So I'm getting so I want to get escape from the trap of of using words and getting trapped and just So I'm going to use ostensive definition. Here's what I think God is.

[00:06:11]I I'm I'm going to say um what I'd like you to do is um ask yourself the question, I wonder what my next thought will be. And then just wait.

[00:06:29]What happened?

[00:06:31]>> Thought about God because but it was it was sort of silent for a little bit and then >> did you have a a point there when when I said um I wonder what my next thought will be and then you just were waiting for a minute to see what your first thought will be. Was there a little gap there? There's a gap there and I was waiting for what my next thought would be which is I'm assuming what you generally are pointing to. That's right.

[00:06:55]>> But my thinking is also very weird and I don't think in words. So it wasn't like I wasn't saying that in my head. I was just sort of waiting out about God. So that that that's the best pointer I can give for what I mean by God >> is that awareness that you can have and and you can do this anytime you want to actually is to just say I I'll just not think for a while and just be aware without thought that that awareness is what I think is God and I believe in that >> and it it um cannot be described.

[00:07:33]>> Yeah. And you almost you got me thinking about this when you said, you know what, how did I learn about the color green?

[00:07:39]And probably all sorts of concepts that I take for granted in everyday life. And it's almost like we have meme libraries in our head and we attribute like what we see is an interplay between what's adaptive for us to see as you describe so well in your book. But there's also some superimposition of what we have in our head, some like Beijian priors of like what we think the concept is that we're like imposing on reality at all times.

[00:08:09]>> Yes.

[00:08:09]>> And so when you say God is the suspension of thought, I think it's almost impossible. Like in waking life, everything has that all these connotations that I've placed on all these things. There's nothing like going to like an entirely new context like going on a trip and like you're in some vast new landscape and you can't detach any of that sort of baggage to like all the concepts that you're like taking in.

[00:08:39]>> Right. So that's a very good point and I would just say that what I'm trying to point to then with that little thing I did, you know, I wonder what what my next thought will be. What I'm pointing to is just the raw awareness >> in which all these things arise. the colors, the sounds, the emotions, the thoughts, that raw em that raw awareness that doesn't require any of these things. That is what I'm trying to point to. But I'm still I'm looking at your shirt and I'm looking at the chair and there are all these things that I have superimposed ideas about that might not you know be at the forefront of my mind in my sort of waking consciousness reality but it's impossible for me to like strip my preconceptions about those things while I'm processing them.

[00:09:26]Whereas someone like the Daly Lama might be able to, right? Someone who has been spending years in meditation would be able to say, "Yes, I I can just be the presence, the awareness and no content."

[00:09:45]And that's what I mean by God is that awareness without any content. I I think it's accessible to all of us, >> but um >> it's something that requires practice to let go.

[00:09:58]>> Why do you think there's a a bliss in that? Does that speak to this sort of again meta level like not not the Darwinian but the meta level if you have all these matrices the adaptiveness of seeing more? Uh does does the the fact that meditation you end up in these sort of city states or whatever you know that different traditions call it different things but you end up in these states of of of joy >> right >> just about reality itself is there something adaptive about that I don't know if I would put it in like the evolutionary adaptive kind of context because I think it transcends that >> in in some sense evolutionarily it's not adaptive >> to not be thinking about stuff and planning and and watching out for things that could kill you and and and >> but it is if consciousness is best not embodied and then if your consciousness persists past life and if you're going to dissolve and or self-nullify into into you know sort of this greater harmonic consciousness which is not at all a prescription or something I would propose but on some theoretical level >> yes I think and and by the way now I'm speaking beyond my spiritual attainment but I >> me So just with that proviso I'm no saint but I would I would say that the point of going into silence and letting go of all thoughts is and the reason it leads to to bliss is is that is the fundamental nature of reality. None of this really does matter in a sense. This is just a headset >> and you you put it on. You let yourself get lost in the game for a while.

[00:11:45]>> You let yourself get upset for a while and then you woke up and go, "Oh, >> you take the headset off." Oh, okay. I So, I learned something about myself from from that that that that perspective. Now, let me try on this other headset.

[00:11:58]>> And and but but you were never in any danger. M >> you'd let yourself feel like you were in in danger. But the bliss is there there is in some sense only you >> the the the one um and there is no danger. There's only the love, the unity, but the it's in the headset that you get all these emotions, but you and you let yourself have them. You you that's part of experiencing all the possibilities. You let yourself experience that and then you transcend it. That's the And again, I'm speaking way over my pay grade, but but yeah, >> how do we triangulate or figure out what true reality actually is? So, I'll take at face value your theory that, >> you know, the reason I see your face, I see your shirt, and it looks a certain way to me is because of that's somehow adaptive from some evolutionary game theory perspective. Um, but what about like, yeah, what do what do you actually look like? What is what is the chair you're sitting on actually look like? What does this table actually in some like platonic higher sense or in your case this higher context window matrix? Is there some way to get at that with your theory? Oh, I I think that all that all these things that you're talking about only exist as icons in the headset. They have no deeper reality than that. So the these these so I'll >> but it is still some unique binary code sequence ultimately um or maybe not a completely unique >> yeah go for it. So yeah so I I would so I'll I'll put it this way because it's very stark >> right now I have no neurons.

[00:13:46]>> I have no brain. If you looked you would see a brain. If you and I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. I like neuroscience.

[00:13:54]>> But I think that neurons do not exist when they're not perceived. And this table does not exist when it's not perceived. There is there is nothing more to the table than the raw perceptions I'm having right now. There is literally nothing more to it than that really because there are, you know, people who are Yeah. sort of solopcistic holographic universe types. And then there's like the neutral monists where you know there's some interplay between conscious and then consciousness and there is but there is something objective and then there's like the materialist reductionist you know this is all very separate mind matter are very separate and so what you're saying it sounds like you're more in the like it's all it's all like a product of your perception and this isn't real. Well, it's it's a real experience and and it's it the experience is there only for for so long as I choose to look and make that experience. And as soon as I go away, my table is gone. Jesse may still see this table, but but it's your table.

[00:14:56]It's not mine because that that's your experience. There's no such thing as the table. There's only your experience and my experience. We coordinate such that we think that there is the table. But what if the monad were perceiving the table? Wouldn't it see something discreet? It might be more complex than what we see because it's like way more involved than us, but well, but I would say you are the ultimate consciousness through a Jesse avatar talking with the Hoffman avatar. And through the Jesse avatar, you're creating a table. Through the Hoffman avatar, the same you is creating a table. My my table is now gone, whereas your avatar's table is still there. Where do you get that? the idea that we are sort of fractal almost pinched nodes of a larger >> the recursive trace logic itself >> that is the mathematical so when Linus was saying that he wanted a theory of observers being fundamental with a with a pre-established harmony what I'm proposing is that this recursive trace logic is that pre-established harmony and it shows how you can talk about separate monads separate observers and yet the pre-established harmony shows that they're all one.

[00:16:08]>> So there is it's like um almost like a stylus on an LP player or something like we're uh the measurement instrument.

[00:16:16]>> Right. Right. Right.

[00:16:17]>> Of something that is uh fundamentally there, >> but there's it's I'm seeing this unique perception based on my own measurement instrument of my body and and what's adaptive for me. You are seeing that as well.

[00:16:32]>> That's right.

[00:16:32]>> The monad would see something different, but there's no objective. It's it's always going to be unique.

[00:16:38]>> The only objective thing is you you the awareness staring through a Jesse avatar and staring through that's the only thing that that that is the objective reality. All this other stuff literally comes and goes. It's just very much like again a VR headset. When I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, I look over there and I see a red Ferrari and you you're you're you also are playing with your Grand Theft Auto. And I say, "Jesse, look at that the red Ferrari." and you say, "Oh, yeah, I see it." And then I look away. My red Ferrari is literally gone. There's no red Ferrari anywhere for me. And you might still see it. So Jesse has his own red Ferrari, and there's no red Ferrari in the supercomputer that's running this thing.

[00:17:19]There's just bits running on the computer in this example. So my red Ferrari is gone completely. And if I go back, I'll render a red Ferrari. And then I've got one. So I'm really saying I render a table when I look and it's no, it doesn't exist because I'm not rendering it. So I'm rendering and that is actually impressive if you think about this is a really complicated world and I render it effortlessly. I just look and it happens. That's how good you are. That's fascinating. So it's almost like conscious agents or perceivers >> are the fundamental units of the real ultimate reality.

[00:17:58]>> It's kind of empowering in some sense.

[00:18:00]>> It is. I would just make one pro visual and that is I think there's the there is only the one awareness.

[00:18:06]>> Sure. And but all these conscious agents that that I talk about and are a scientific tool to to talk about it but but I would want to say the the awareness transcends my theory. It transcends any theory. But given that then I agree with you. I just want to always make sure that we're we're humble about our scientific. Well, you could say we're we're windows and the sunlight peering through the windows is what's ultimately, you know, binding all of us or something. And so >> that's right.

[00:18:32]>> We're or we're like pinched nodes on a circuit or something and we have unique signatures of what we see. It's all of the same thing.

[00:18:40]>> I agree with those metaphors. It's it's really the one looking at itself through different pinches or different windows or um or it's almost like one light shining through different films. It's like a movie projector and um there's a you know it's one light but you can block the light. So Jesse is a way of blocking that light. Hoffman's a way of blocking that light >> um in different ways. That's another These are all metaphors. Um