Alex O’Connor: The Logic Of Atheists & Theists Stem From Emotion. The Illusion Of Free Will.

[00:00:00]Welcome back guys, or if you're new, thank you for stopping by on this cold Australian winter. I usually get some good natural lighting through the window, but it's a bit dark and gloomy.

[00:00:10]But you're not here for the lighting, are you? You're here for the message.

[00:00:14]And in this video I'm going to refer to an interview between Alex O'Connor and Jay Shetty.

[00:00:22]This interview was a treasure trove of wisdom. I've already made one video in regards to this interview, but in this second video Alex touches on some really great topics. How we're all emotional, not logical.

[00:00:35]He talks about the illusion of free will and the research into these split-brain patients.

[00:00:43]I'll get into more detail. I won't explain it all now in the intro, but basically we're going to cover a few things and how it all ties into the teachings of Hinduism.

[00:00:52]And this first one, how we're all emotional, not logical. I've made videos on this in the past. I've made so many videos, I can't even refer you to the one I made it in. But once I realized this, big game changer for myself and how I view others.

[00:01:08]We tend to view life as in the Western culture at least, there's the logical rational thinker, perhaps an atheist, scientifically minded, and the emotional irrational spiritual or religious person. But on investigation we realize we're all emotional. All logic stems from emotion.

[00:01:29]Now in this first clip, Alex will talk about atheism.

[00:01:35]The type of atheist that is quite clearly emotional.

[00:01:40]They just say, "I don't believe in God.

[00:01:43]Even if God appeared, I would not devote to that God." Let's play the clip and have a further discussion. You'll see it here. There was a recent poll run by The Atheist Experience YouTube channel, which I know Jonathan you're a fan of, uh which asked, "If there was a God, would you worship it?" To which an astonishing 85% of respondents said that they would not.

[00:02:01]>> So, in that clip Alex was pointing to a poll done by the YouTube channel Atheist Experience. Now, they have a large subscriber base. You'll see it here. 433,000 subscribers. So, if they did a poll obviously not everyone would have answered the poll, but a good majority of their audience would have answered that poll.

[00:02:22]And a staggering 85% of people said even if they knew God existed existed, if God appeared in front of them, they still would not submit serve that God. What is that showing you? This is not about belief.

[00:02:37]It's about emotion.

[00:02:39]Now, Alex does not identify with this type of atheist. He says, "Look, I'm willing. I'm open to have an experience of God. I'm willing to believe in God, but I just need to be convinced." So, he's a What does he call himself?

[00:02:54]Non-resistant non-believer. He's open.

[00:03:00]And let's dive into this top topic more on how we're emotional, not logical.

[00:03:09]Let's play this clip from Alex where he expands on this idea further. You'll see it here.

[00:03:14]>> I think that most people don't live strictly according to philosophical principles.

[00:03:19]I think they develop philosophical principles based on how they live.

[00:03:22]>> Mhm.

[00:03:22]>> Agreed.

[00:03:23]>> I think it's kind of the other way around.

[00:03:24]>> I like that. Yeah, I like that.

[00:03:25]>> And I think that the best so Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus which is like a a sort of very sort of mathematical quite short work has this introduction.

[00:03:38]And the first words he writes are, "This book may only be of use to people who already agree with its contents."

[00:03:46]>> [laughter] >> And I think that's so fair enough.

[00:03:48]>> Mhm.

[00:03:49]>> This might seem like a weird thing to say in response to your question, but like I don't think people just read like a philosophy and become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put something they already kind of think in the right words and they go, yes.

[00:04:02]>> Hey, I like that.

[00:04:03]>> Yeah, that's what I That's what I think.

[00:04:04]Which is why I think people are sometimes a little bit confused if they want to get into philosophy.

[00:04:09]They look up the 100 best philosophers and they think, okay, let's go and learn about it. And just out of the blue it says, oh, you should go and read like Jean-Paul Sartre.

[00:04:18]And so, okay, so they pick it up and they read it and they're like, I I'm not I don't really get this, you know? Oh, this doesn't make much sense to me. They read Spinoza and they're like, what's he talking about? I don't It's a bit mathy. I don't really understand, right?

[00:04:29]And it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done.

[00:04:31]People sometimes ask me, where would you recommend I start? Have you got any recommendations for like how to get into philosophy? And my advice is always very simple. Just read whatever you've heard of. And the reason for that is because if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in contexts where they have come up. Right? Like if you listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him talk about Nietzsche.

[00:04:50]And you might never have read Nietzsche, but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzsche means it's likely if you read Nietzsche, you're going to find something that you like in there, right? Likewise, if you listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard them talk about the church fathers or Augustine or people like this. And in which case, just read that. Because there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who are attracted to those bits of content, right? Because to some degree, you can read a philosophy and go, that's an interesting argument, that makes sense.

[00:05:20]But you're not going to read it and and it sort of wash over you with this wave of conviction, I think, unless you've already got one foot in that worldview.

[00:05:27]And it's just somebody has finally put into words what you were thinking this whole time. And so, I think that we're very intuitive creatures and I think that our philosophizing often gets in the way.

[00:05:34]I think that we act according to our intuition and our emotional impulses all the time and then we rationalize them after the fact. And then we debate about who was right and wrong.

[00:05:45]>> So, as you can see in that clip, Alex was clearly pointing to a fact you can realize about yourself with a bit of contemplation.

[00:05:54]All our logic stems from emotion.

[00:05:57]Why we think and feel what we think and feel is due to our conditioning. We're also devotional faith-based creatures.

[00:06:06]In other words, we look up to authority figures.

[00:06:09]Those that we are attracted to, as Alex O'Connor mentioned, just say you're into Jordan Peterson.

[00:06:16]For some reason you like what he says, and then he mentions Nietzsche, then you study Nietzsche.

[00:06:22]We're emotionally drawn to people that we perceive as similar to us or above us, and then we take their lead. And this is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, by the way.

[00:06:31]Let me read a verse from the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 3, verses 20 and 21, in regards to those that are authority figures, or we perceive as authority figures, need to set a good example for the rest of us.

[00:06:46]We're devotional by nature. If we're not devoting to a god, we're devoting to rock stars, celebrities, people with money, people with power. We're devotional.

[00:06:55]And we imitate and follow the lead of those we perceive as authority figures.

[00:07:00]That perception is different for all of us. But here's what Krishna has to say.

[00:07:05]Chapter 3, verses 20 and 21.

[00:07:07]By performing their prescribed duties, King Janak and others attained perfection.

[00:07:13]You should also perform your duties to set an example for the good of the world.

[00:07:18]Whatever actions great persons perform, common people follow. Whatever standards they set, all the world pursues.

[00:07:25]In other words, great persons, that's different for all of us. We all think of great persons differently.

[00:07:37]And Krishna was talking about King Janak. King Janak, in these Hindu tales was an enlightened king.

[00:07:45]And he ran the kingdom from an enlightened state for the benefit of all his subjects. In fact, there's another tale of Hinduism, another question.

[00:07:56]A king asked an enlightened sage, "What is the role of the king?

[00:08:03]I'm in a place of authority, what is the role?" The sage guru told the king, "The role of the king is to run the kingdom in such a way that all the subjects are in a position for God realization. In other words, create an environment that is peaceful, harmonious, devotional, so all the people you're leading can realize God."

[00:08:26]When you run a kingdom on your ego, it's all about me, my happiness, everyone should serve me, corruption, selfishness, people follow suit.

[00:08:36]They see the king doing it, so why don't we do it? They see rock stars, celebrities doing it, why don't we do it?

[00:08:41]So, in other words, we're emotional. We take our lead from people we view as authority figures. So, as Alex was saying, "How to get into philosophy?" he was saying.

[00:08:53]If you hear it come up by the people you listen to frequently, you're going to be drawn to that and study that because you have an emotional attachment to this person.

[00:09:04]Now, in this next clip, it's going to be a longer clip, over 5 minutes. He's going to talk about a lot of things, split brain patients, illusion of free will, how we're ultimately emotional, not rational, and how how all this ties in with Hinduism.

[00:09:20]You'll see the clip here.

[00:09:21]>> Speech and language communication is broadly speaking governed by the front left part of your brain, left hemisphere.

[00:09:28]Remember the left hemisphere controls like the right hand side of your body and the right hemisphere controls the left hand side of your body.

[00:09:35]So, with humans, cuz our eyes are on the front, our right visual field goes to the left brain and our left visual field goes to the right brain.

[00:09:42]So, in a split-brain patient, they look at a screen. You can watch this experiment on YouTube, by the way.

[00:09:46]They're looking at a screen, and on the right-hand side of the screen it'll flash a word. So, it goes to their left hemisphere, and it will say "umbrella", and they'll say "umbrella, car, car, chair, chair."

[00:09:56]Then they'll flash a word on the left-hand side of the screen, so just the right hemisphere, and it will say "cowboy hat", and they'll say "I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I don't I don't know what you're talking about." And then, the experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and tells them to draw something, and they draw a cowboy hat.

[00:10:13]Cuz the right hemisphere saw it.

[00:10:15]And so, the left hand can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say that they didn't see it. Wow. Because the left hemisphere, which controls speech, broadly That's a bit of an oversimplification, but broadly speaking didn't see it, and so they can't tell you that they saw it. So, they saw it and they didn't see it at the same time.

[00:10:31]So fascinating, right? Means you kind of got these two brains that are both doing different things. And I think the most significant experiment of this kind is where And And bear in mind, these people are agreeing and and thankfully so, they've already been through a traumatic experience, and now they're agreeing to do these experiments. They're waiting instructions, right?

[00:10:50]So, you can flash an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain, and the instruction will say something like uh "get up and walk over to the window."

[00:10:56]So, the patient stands up, and they walk over to the window.

[00:11:00]And then, the instructor says "Why did you just do that?" And you know what they say? It would be weird enough if they said "I don't know", right? But they don't. They make something up.

[00:11:09]And they believe it. It's called confabulation, right? Like they they they say something like "Oh, um I was getting a bit warm, and I just wanted some fresh air." I mean, we know that's not why they did it.

[00:11:20]But their left brain has convinced them that that is why they did it. Now, the reason I'm talking about all of this is because this has given rise to the idea that that the left brain is the so-called interpreter.

[00:11:32]That the right brain kind of intuitively does stuff and then the left brain retrospectively sort of rationalizes and justifies that behavior. In split brain patients, you can prove it experimentally. But the idea is that in healthy brains, you couldn't prove it, but the same thing might be going on.

[00:11:46]So, you know when you see someone who like they're arguing with a taxi driver and they're and you're like, "Why are you shouting at that guy?" And they're like, "Because, you know, he didn't give me my change." And you're like, "Well, actually, the reason you're shouting at him is because your dog died yesterday.

[00:11:58]That's the real reason you're shouting at him."

[00:12:00]Like, we know that this kind of thing happens all the time, but I think it happens like literally all the time. I think like so much of our decision-making, we just intuitively move throughout the world and then our left brain interprets what we've done and rationalizes it after the fact. And I think that so much of our philosophizing is like this is very like left brain dominant. And Iain McGilchrist says that one of the problems that we face as a sort of society is that we've become too left brain dominant in our thinking.

[00:12:26]Everything is sort of hyper-rationalized and discrete, sort of abstracted, and none of it is intuitive, none of it is is flux, none of it is continuous, but that is the nature of reality. So, Iain McGilchrist's first book was called The Master and His Emissary.

[00:12:41]The Master and His Emissary. And the idea is that the right brain does stuff and the left brain is the emissary, but there's this there's some kind of myth or story where an emissary thinks that he can do the job of the master, so he kills the master and then ends up doing a terrible job.

[00:12:54]>> [laughter] >> And he kind of thinks that's what's happened with our with our left brain.

[00:12:57]So, the reason that I I brought that up is because when you ask like, "How do you sort of navigate the world not having a certain philosophy?" And I think we all navigate the world extremely intuitively and that when we come up with reasons and explanations for our behaviors, a lot of the time those are like post hoc rationalizations without us even realizing it.

[00:13:15]He also has profound implications for free will, of course, because we think you know why you performed a particular action, but is that just because your brain has convinced you that that's why you did it when it's It's the real reason? At the very least, whatever the reason is, it's something that the that the left brain might not be able to communicate cuz it might be a very right brain kind of thing. But yeah, these split brain patients, I mean, I I don't know if you agree, I think that it's one of the most significant facts in the world because also it might interest you if if you're interested in the Indian traditions that we were talking about earlier, like the concept of the self, right? Once you have experimental evidence that an individual self can both see something and not see it at the same time.

[00:13:54]I think that has profound implications for the idea of the unity of personhood.

[00:13:58]Like, how many people are there there?

[00:13:59]If you want to say there's only one person, you have to admit a literal contradiction, that it is both true and false that they saw it, which you can't do. There has to be like a part of them which saw it. At the very least, you have to say part of them saw it and part of them didn't. And immediately, at the very least, what you've done is you said that the self can be split into parts.

[00:14:16]That's hugely profound. Because if your left brain and your right brain can have independent sort of centers of awareness and yet somehow are also part of this one connective thing, I think that has some profound implications for the fact that I've got a brain and you've got a brain, but there are a great many philosophical traditions who think that we're all sort of part of one great big thing. It at least opens a door to all kinds of interesting It's sort of like when I tell people this, if they haven't heard about split brain patients, they're sort of like, "What?

[00:14:44]Really?" I'm like, "Yeah, like this stuff is way more complicated and way more weird."

[00:14:50]I think a lot of people are like, >> that clip, there was a lot to cover.

[00:14:52]Like I said, there was He talked about split brain patients. I've got my notes here. There was a lot to cover. Split brain patients, illusion of free will, how we're emotional, not rational, and how all this ties in with Hinduism.

[00:15:07]That there is the one self appearing separate.

[00:15:11]First of all, this split brain patients, absolutely amazing, shocking, weird, and wonderful. Like he said, it's so odd that the human brain can be split into two and basically have two separate containers of consciousness, the left brain and the right brain. And you heard him in those experiments.

[00:15:33]You can flash signals to the right-hand side of the brain and the right and the patient will say, "I did not see anything." Yet give them a pencil and they can draw a cowboy hat, an umbrella, anything.

[00:15:47]They're not registering anything, yet they can draw with the left hand.

[00:15:52]Kind of weird and kind of weird and creepy, isn't it?

[00:15:56]Even creepier, the part where he said, "You can flash instructions to someone on the right side of the brain, they'll get up and do it."

[00:16:04]Instruction, go walk over to the window.

[00:16:06]They'll do it and then ask, "Why? Why did you do that?" They say, "Oh, I was feeling a bit warm. Thought I'd get some fresh air."

[00:16:15]Or whatever example Alex was using.

[00:16:18]Kind of weird and creepy because we're doing things intuitively, based on emotion, based on wherever we're getting this information. Where's this information coming from?

[00:16:28]Then we create a story. The left brain kicks in and says, "I went to the window freely because I was feeling a bit warm and I wanted some fresh air."

[00:16:39]We're performing actions then justifying our actions.

[00:16:43]And this has massive implications to the illusion of free will, something that Alex has talked about for many years, illusion of free will. They also talk about this in Hinduism. Sri Ramakrishna was asked this.

[00:17:01]His thoughts on free will.

[00:17:03]He said, "Free will is this an English term?

[00:17:08]It's a contradiction in Hinduism. Free will because they say we we don't have free will in Hinduism ultimately.

[00:17:17]We go from Here's how they'll put it. We go from free will to freedom itself, bondage to freedom.

[00:17:23]Free will is a contradiction in terms as Swami Vivekananda said. Will happens at the level of causation, cause and effect. This caused this, this caused that, cause and effect.

[00:17:35]To say you can freely will the laws of cause and effect would be like saying what sounds more accurate?

[00:17:43]The waves control the ocean or the ocean controls the waves?

[00:17:47]Do the waves follow the ocean's lead or does the ocean follow the waves' lead? If [clears throat] you're a wave in the ocean, can you bend the ocean to your will? How would you do that? If everything's made of water, it's the one fabric, water, appearing as all waves, how can this little wave of a person bend the ocean to its will?

[00:18:06]So, in Hinduism, they say, "This is a contradiction of terms. Free will?"

[00:18:12]They say, "Look, here's how to view this. You're either in a state of bondage, trapped in causation, or in a state of freedom, enlightenment. They're the only two options."

[00:18:23]But, Sri Ramakrishna beautifully summed this summed this up. He said, "Look, God is the doer of all actions. Everything that you think is your free will is actually the will of God."

[00:18:32]And of course, we're going to say, "Sounds cool and all, but practically speaking, I feel like I've got free will. So, how do they solve this contradiction?"

[00:18:43]Look at it like this.

[00:18:45]If you're very devotional, if you have a faith in a God, they talk about God's will and free will, your will.

[00:18:52]Free will is what you freely try to make happen. God's will is what ends up happening.

[00:19:00]So, how do we resolve all this?

[00:19:03]Freely do whatever you think you should do. No one's stopping you. Freely try to make this happen. Freely try to do this.

[00:19:11]What ends up happening? God's will.

[00:19:14]We see this all the time in life.

[00:19:16]There's that saying, God laughs when we when we make plans.

[00:19:19]We think we figured out our life. I'm going to marry this type of person, have this type of job, perfect, nothing will go wrong. It all goes wrong.

[00:19:27]That person wasn't the person for us ultimately.

[00:19:31]You get a terminal illness.

[00:19:33]You lose your job. We have a plan, but God makes other plans. He laughs at our plans.

[00:19:38]So, here's what we need to do.

[00:19:41]Here's the path in Hinduism, the path of love, devotion to a God.

[00:19:47]God's will, your will.

[00:19:50]Here's what we need to do.

[00:19:51]Freely try to do what you think you should do.

[00:19:55]Sometimes God's will is in alignment with your will, and you're happy.

[00:19:58]Sometimes God's will is out of alignment with your plan, and you're unhappy. But, when you're very devotional, here's the whole point of devotion.

[00:20:06]Developing a love of God.

[00:20:08]Humility, faith, surrender to God's will. Saying, "Look, God, I wanted it this way.

[00:20:13]You led me this way. I'm humbly going to accept your will.

[00:20:17]I love you. Your will is my will.

[00:20:19]I'm ultimately wanting to serve and devote to you, surrender to you. So, whatever you says goes."

[00:20:24]I'll keep my head down I'll keep my head down and know this is for a greater purpose.

[00:20:28]What this does over time, God's will, your will, is like this.

[00:20:33]Sometimes together, sometimes out of alignment. The more and more faith, love, devotion, surrender you have to a God, your will and God's will lines up.

[00:20:43]So, in the final realization, God's will is your will, your will is God's will. Total alignment.

[00:20:52]So, in Advaita Vedanta, they also say we need to pick a side.

[00:20:56]What's causing us suffering is saying, "I'm just this part of reality and not this.

[00:21:02]I can freely control this, but not this.

[00:21:03]Pick a side.

[00:21:05]You're either all of this or none of this. In other words, if you're going to say I can't control the world, I cannot freely control the world, you need to also say I can't freely control this body.

[00:21:17]This body, mind, thoughts, and feelings belong to this world.

[00:21:21]So, if you're going to say I don't control this world and people, you need to say I don't control this body either.

[00:21:25]Surrender it all to God.

[00:21:28]Or, you can go down the other way of embracing all of reality.

[00:21:33]If you're going to say I control this body, these thoughts, these feelings, these actions, you need to claim responsibility for all of reality.

[00:21:39]You're either controlling all of it or none of it.

[00:21:42]There are your two options.

[00:21:44]When we play this little egoic game of I control this, but not this, we suffer.

[00:21:48]I'm this, not this, we suffer.

[00:21:51]That's the whole game and problem of ego.

[00:21:54]Not a problem once seen through the illusion of ego. Fine. It feels like you're playing a role, acting.

[00:21:59]It won't hurt you anymore. But, when you think I am the ego, I have free will, I'm here, the world's there, suffering.

[00:22:07]So, Sri Ramakrishna says, free will is a a contradiction in terms. Free will is an illusion, but only those that have realized God can say free will is an illusion.

[00:22:17]Why did he mention only those that have realized God? Because to realize God is to give up ownership and control, the realm of ego. And when you give up ownership and control, it is revealed that God was always the doer of all actions. But, you can only realize God is the doer of all actions Firstly, you need Firstly, to do this, you need a faith in a God. Secondly, you need to surrender your ownership and control to a God. Then, you realize free will has, is, and always will be an illusion.

[00:22:47]This will what This will not work if you're not devotional.

[00:22:52]Because if you take this as a belief and still have a lot of ego, you'll say, I'm not in control of hurting the person.

[00:22:59]I'm not in control of what I said and did.

[00:23:01]True.

[00:23:02]But, then you'll get angry at others still. You'll say they shouldn't have done this. They shouldn't have said that.

[00:23:07]If you're feeling anger, judgment towards others, you still feel like free will is a real thing.

[00:23:13]So, that's the true test.

[00:23:16]To realize God is to go down the path of love, humility, surrender, all that kind of stuff.

[00:23:22]What's true for you is true for others.

[00:23:24]So, you'll have a peaceful, accepting nature.

[00:23:27]If you're saying free will's an illusion and still getting angry, you have not realized God. You still feel like you have ownership and control. What is true for them is true for you.

[00:23:36]So, that's another one, big one, free will.

[00:23:39]And again, don't overthink this. If you feel like you've got free will, freely keep praying, meditating, be a loving, kind person. Freely do this.

[00:23:48]This will evaporate, melt ego, and then the final realization, I have gone from free will to freedom itself.

[00:23:55]I never had ownership and control. What a liberating surprise.

[00:23:59]That peace you feel in deep sleep, so peaceful. There's no ownership and control.

[00:24:04]When your eyes are open, you'll still maintain that feeling of peace that you find in deep sleep because ownership and control has been surrendered to the Lord.

[00:24:13]That's what we're all seeking.

[00:24:15]Peace, freedom, happiness, which can only come when we stop claiming responsibility for things that we're not ultimately responsible for. God's world, God's will.

[00:24:27]And finally, he mentioned how all this ties in with Hinduism.

[00:24:33]This split-brain patient kind of stuff.

[00:24:37]Alex's reasoning and intuition is, "Hang on. If we feel like a unified entity. I feel like I'm just a unified person with one brain.

[00:24:46]But when we split the brain down the middle, it's quite clear that there are two centers of the brain operating independently.

[00:24:53]Then, Alex, I can see what he's coming to the conclusion of.

[00:24:58]They talk about this in Hinduism. They say there's the one mind, the one source, unified, yet simultaneously can appear separate as all of us.

[00:25:11]Don't think about God's brain as two separate halves halves, think about God's brain as 8 billion sections, 8 billion humans. Well, let's just exclude the animals for now.

[00:25:22]So, we're all having our own point of view, 8 billion points of view, but it's unified under the one mind, God.

[00:25:29]Just like with our brains, split down the middle, two separate experiences, yet simultaneously unified.

[00:25:34]That's the paradoxical nature of reality and God.

[00:25:37]Also, just quickly, is God does God have form or is God formless?

[00:25:44]Both. How? Look at our experience. If you're into Advaita Vedanta, we obviously have a form that is changing.

[00:25:51]Baby, youth, middle age, old age. The form is constantly changing. We have a form.

[00:25:58]Yet when we do self-inquiry, we realize we're actually formless.

[00:26:01]Our true essence is formless, not objective qualities, yet we're experiencing a form.

[00:26:08]Paradoxical, isn't it? Formless form.

[00:26:12]Split the brain down the middle, two separate selves, yet one.

[00:26:17]That is this world. They call it Maya in Hinduism. An illusion, a paradox. Works very well when you don't question it.

[00:26:25]When you just live your life, don't question too much, the paradox, the the illusion works very well. But when you start zooming in, asking deeper and deeper questions, you come up with paradoxes because God is a paradox.

[00:26:37]Greater than the great, smaller than the small. Formless, yet can appear in any form.

[00:26:42]Not in time and space, yet appears in all time and space. Paradox.

[00:26:46]Don't question reality, it all works very well. Start questioning, it all breaks down and falls apart. You see through the illusion.

[00:26:52]And that is the whole point of Hinduism, to break through, pierce through the illusion, to realize your union with God. That you were never separate, you just imagine you're separate through the lens of ego.

[00:27:06]And the final clip, Alex is just summing up basically what we should do with all this knowledge.

[00:27:14]About studying ourselves and living more from a state of intuition. You'll see the clip here.

[00:27:18]>> Also, pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something, just step back and and really think about what might be going into it.

[00:27:26]It's literally what I said at the beginning of this conversation when I said, you know, why are you an atheist?

[00:27:30]It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound.

[00:27:34]Or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine. The first of those is a very left-brained answer. The second of those is a very right-brained answer. And so, if you're having an argument with your wife, you know, C.S. Lewis in the in The Screwtape Letters, which is a wonderful little novel where there's this like demonic undersecretary, like there's sort of a demonic civil service, and this demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's trying to make into an atheist.

[00:27:58]And one of the instructions that he has is like, "When this person has an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing about the dishes."

[00:28:07]when they're not really.

[00:28:08]Cuz he's going to come home and he's going to say, you know, his wife's going to say, "You didn't do the dishes today." And he's going to go, "Oh, for goodness' sake, I've had a long day at work." And she's going to go, "Yeah, but you never do the bloody" And he's going to go, "Really? You're going to You're going to raise your voice at me right now because I didn't do the dishes this morning."

[00:28:21]Because it's not about the dishes. She's not saying you didn't do the dishes, she's saying, "I feel like you don't pull your weight around the house and you don't listen to me and I don't feel heard." Now, this is very sort of like self-helpy type stuff, you know, you sit on podcasts like this and you sort of go like, "You know, and like really you need to like listen to your But like I think very specifically we are literally becoming convinced that like we know why we are acting and behaving in particular ways when we're not, because our left brain is rationalizing things for us.

[00:28:47]So, just take a step back. Think a bit more intuitively about like what's going on in a in a very sort of non-rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't try to think about this individual case and go, "Okay, let's let's trace the logic."

[00:28:58]Just like step back and like feel for a minute. You know, like like reintegrate feeling into your life.

[00:29:04]>> That final clip, like I said, Alex was just summing up what he was mentioning basically in the other clips.

[00:29:10]We're emotional, not logical. And it would do us well to study. Whenever we make a logical decision, find the root of that decision. Why am I saying this? Why am I doing this?

[00:29:22]You'll you'll come to the realization it's from an intuition, an emotional response.

[00:29:27]And honestly, this was a big game changer in my life.

[00:29:31]I was very logical, left-brained.

[00:29:35]I didn't live much from the right side of the brain. But now, through the teachings of Hinduism and spirituality in general, I'm more right-brained. I live off intuition.

[00:29:45]I live off emotion, feeling-based.

[00:29:48]Overlaid with logic, of course.

[00:29:50]But when you live in that flow state of just intuition, creativity, not needing things to make sense, life just flows so much more beautifully, peaceful, natural, like a child again.

[00:30:01]You find the inner joy and peace of a child, and then you can spread that outwardly to others. And consciously or unconsciously bring out their inner child. When you're very happy, playful, bubbly, it brings that out it brings that out in them.

[00:30:15]You're pulling out the happiness within that person by finding it within yourself.

[00:30:21]That inner joy, peace of a child, we all have it in us still. It's just been overlaid with all this conditioning.

[00:30:27]Thoughts, conditioning, belief systems, break out of it, and you'll realize the inner peace, joy within. And that can only happen when you get out of this left brain more and more and into the right brain.

[00:30:39]Now, we need a balance, of course.

[00:30:41]Too much left brain will cause suffering. Too much right brain, you won't be able to function in reality, society.

[00:30:48]So, you get to this balance. We're too much on the left brain, in Western culture at least. We just need a balance. Bring it back into alignment.

[00:30:57]And that has changed my life. It will change your life.

[00:31:00]And when you realize the mechanism of your logic stemming from intuition and emotion, you realize it's the same for everyone. And you can be more loving, understanding, and accepting for everyone, no matter what their belief system or what they're doing.

[00:31:15]Hope this video helps. Take care, guys.