Category: Philosophy

Links to philosophy resources.

Mystic Tibet

Follow fifty pilgrims as they travel to the roof of the world for the spiritual adventure of a lifetime. In 2002, ordinary people from around the globe were drawn to this mystical land of enlightenment. Guided by renowned Tibetan master Lama Zopa Rinpoche, this was no common tourist trek, but a rare and powerful experience in which the invisible world of great yogis and saints was magically revealed.

This intense journey takes one directly into the culture of Tibet and its arresting, spiritually rich landscape in a way that is not often seen. It explores the deep inner meaning of pilgrimage, which purifies the mind and creates the good heart. These pilgrims discovered more than temples and holy mountains. They touched the extraordinary potential of their minds, their enlightened nature.

How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard

“A forest is much more than what you see,” says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.

Paul Hawken Pt 1 | Social Dynamics Of Food, Farming and Climate Change | 098

098: Climate activist and author Paul Hawken joins us for his fifth interview, focused on food, agriculture, climate change, and greenwashing. In this episode, the first half of Dave Chapman’s conversation with Paul, they discuss whether regenerative agriculture is organic and vice verse.

Paul Hawken is a climate activist, entrepreneur, and the author of nine books including Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, and his most-recent, 2022’s best-selling Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. He serves on Real Organic Project’s Advisory Board.

Exploring Liminal Spaces: A Workshop with Andrew Holecek

In life and in spiritual practice, we will encounter many in-between spaces: times of transition from one stage of life to the next, from one state of consciousness to another, and even from death to rebirth.

How can we navigate these liminal spaces—and unearth the riches contained within them?

Join Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author Andrew Holecek for an hour-long virtual workshop looking to ancient Tibetan wisdom for insights on how to work consciously with the transitory places and processes in our lives. Looking specifically to two realms of the liminal—dreaming states of consciousness as encountered in Tibetan dream yoga, and the bardo teachings, which explore the realms between death and rebirth—he will suggest how we can approach uncertainty and impermanence as opportunities for awakening.

Holecek is the author of numerous books on Buddhist teachings and the teacher of Tricycle’s online courses, Dream Yoga, Living and Dying: Navigating the Bardos, and Transforming Obstacle into Opportunity.

Ray Kurzweil Wants To Put Nanobots In Our Bloodstream

Would you want to live forever? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil discuss immortality, longevity escape velocity, the singularity, and the future of technology. What will life be like in 10 years?

Could we upload our brain to the cloud? We explore the merger of humans with machines and how we are already doing it. Could nanobots someday flow through our bloodstreams? Learn about the exponential growth of computation and what future computing power will look like.

When will computers pass the Turing test? Learn why the singularity is nearer and how to think exponentially about the world. Are things getting worse? We go through why things might not be as bad as they seem. What are the consequences of having a longer lifetime? Will we deplete resources?

Will there be a class divide between people able to access longer lifespans? What sort of jobs would people have in the future? Explore what artificial intelligence has in store for us. What happens if AI achieves consciousness? We discuss the definition of intelligence and whether there will be a day when there is nothing left for humans to do. Will we ever see this advancement ending?

Jim Tucker || The Science of Reincarnation

Today we welcome Dr. Jim Tucker who is a child psychiatrist and the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson on reincarnation. He has been invited to speak about his research on Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and CBS Sunday Morning. He recently published BEFORE: Children’s Memories of Previous Lives, a 2-in-1 edition of his previous books.

In this episode, I talk to Dr. Jim Tucker about the science of reincarnation. We delve into his research findings and methodology on children who claim to remember their previous lives. Dr. Tucker notes that these children don’t just recall biographical details of their past, but they also retain feelings and emotions. His findings have important implications for how we understand consciousness. We also touch on the topics of mortality, trauma, quantum physics, and panpsychism.

The Death of SpaceTime & Birth of Conscious Agents, Donald Hoffman

Spacetime is doomed. It, and its particles, cannot be fundamental in physical theory, but must emerge from a more fundamental theory. I review the converging evidence for this claim from physics and evolution, and then propose a new way to think of spacetime: as a data-compressing and error-correcting channel for information about fitness. I propose that a theory of conscious agents is a good candidate for the more fundamental theory to replace spacetime. Spacetime then appears as one kind of interface for communication between conscious agents.

Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and three books, including Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (W.W. Norton, 2000). He received his BA from UCLA in Quantitative Psychology and his Ph.D. from MIT in Computational Psychology. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1983, where he is now a full professor in the departments of cognitive science, computer science and philosophy. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research into visual perception, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was chosen by students at UC Irvine to receive a campus-wide teaching award, and to be included in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Hoffman studies visual perception, visual attention and consciousness using mathematical models, computer simulations, and psychological experiments. His empirical research has led to new insights into how we perceive objects, colors and motion. His theoretical research has led to a “user interface” theory of perception—which proposes that natural selection shapes our perceptions not to report truth but simply to guide adaptive behavior. It has also led to a “conscious realism” theory of consciousness—which proposes a formal model of consciousness and the mind-body problem that takes consciousness as fundamental.