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Dr. Marc Gafni on Anthro-Ontology: How We Know What We Know
An Excerpt from Our Online Course “Actualize: Living Your Deepest Heart’s Desire to Empower Your Life and Awaken Humanity”
Transcript
Bring it in. Silence of presence. Do we have a drum roll in the house? Do we have a drum roll in the house? Are we ready to go? Do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, okay, so let’s do addition. Ten second recapitulation. Here we go. This is critical. Here we go. So what did we say yesterday? What did we say yesterday? And kind of part two. Just in 10 seconds. Evolution is the evolution of intimacy. Evolution, which is an expression of ultimate reality, Divinity, one face of Divinity, that would be the third face, is the evolutionary impulse. The evolutionary impulse is desire. The evolutionary impulse is the desire that pulses through reality, the feeling of the evolutionary impulses, the desire of ecstatic urgency. What is it? Desire, desire’s intimacy. So desire is Eros. It desires contact, touch. That creates greater wholeness, which is a new intimacy, intimacy, shared identity in the context of otherness.
Otherness, as we’ll see today, is critical. Leave that aside. It’s not fusion. The atom doesn’t obliterate the subatomic particles. The molecule doesn’t obliterate the atoms. The cell doesn’t obliterate the parts of the cell. The organism doesn’t lose the individuated cells. Intimacy is shared identity in the context of otherness. Plus, stay with me, big additional sentence, plus mutuality of pathos, meaning we can feel each other. So in a cell or in any intimate new whole, there’s both telos. Desire has telos, direction and desire has pathos. When we’re in desire, we feel each other. And it’s another place that the sexual models Eros, it doesn’t exhaust Eros. Pathos means, we feel each other. So intimacy means shared identity. In the context of otherness, there still you and me, we’re part of a larger field plus mutuality of pathos, which means you feel me and I feel you.
So the first loop of IntimacyDesire is I feel you, You feel me. The second loop is I feel you feeling me. Isn’t that great? You feel me feeling you. You get what I mean by the sexual models the erotic? The sexual… that’s one of the places you can do that just by kissing shoulders. And I keep coming back to kissing shoulders to liberate us from that one vision of what the sexual is. So I won’t say it anymore, but just keep it in mind the whole morning kissing shoulders is our, our icon. Okay? So the second loop of Eros is: feel you, feeling me. Feel me, feeling you. Now that can be in terms of emotion, ideas, creativity, embodiment, but there’s loops of desire. There are loops of desire. So the third loop would be, this is totally hot. It doesn’t get hotter than this.
Feel me feeling you feeling me. Cha. Cha. And it’s hot. Emotionally, we’re talking about an idea. Just like at times you’re trying to share an idea, no no, feel the idea, feel me you feeling the idea, feel me you feeling me feeling the idea. It’s gorgeous. Does everyone, did you feel that? If you wanna know what they were doing in monasteries, well they’re doing a lot of things in monasteries, but, but you know what? They were trying. When they were trying, it was this, you were talking to your study partner and it was wildly, in Aramaic it’s called a chavruta. It’s a study partner. It’s short. I feel you feeling me feeling you. That takes time. Sometimes you gotta go a whole year till you get one walk for an hour.
Okay, we got to try. We could do that. It’s like that. But that’s, that’s, that’s intimacy. And we impact each other. Because we can feel each other. So, the third loop: Feel you feeling me feeling you. So, intimacy and desire merge together. So we live, and intimacy drives, we said yesterday, the entire process, all the way up and all the way down, the desire for intimacy. Evolution is the progressive deepening of intimacies. Now, I’m going to now resist the temptation to recapitulate that anymore, so stop. Okay? But now here we go.
Okay, here we go. Here’s the sentence. Ready? So what that means is: we live in an Intimate Universe. It’s a big sentence, but it’s only the first half of the sentence. We live in an Intimate Universe, but now that means something. And that’s what it means. We’ve created a new Kosmic habit. Those words have meaning now. It’s got all that. Had we not done yesterday, that would be just a nice sentence. Not even that interesting… We live in an Intimate Universe. Now, here’s the next step. It’s wild, but we need a drum roll for this. Give me a drum over this step. We’ve got a drum roll. We got drum roll, cheap seats in the back. Let’s get the hat. Don’t give me no flag, sag, ready? The Intimate Universe lives in us. Did everyone get that?
That’s why AI is such bullshit. Now you get it. Meaning not just we live in an Intimate Universe, the entire Intimate Universe lives in us. So in other words, all of that allurement, all of that attraction right from the first quarks, every one of those quarks and leptons and muons, they’re all in us. And every subatomic particle and every atom, right from the moments of the big bang, it’s all in us, the whole thing. But in all of them, all the cells, the whole thing, it’s all living in us. So the Intimate Universe, all the way up in all the way down in Linnaeus, who’s one of the greatest thinkers that ever lived, and Goethe said no man was greater to him. Linnaeus talks about this notion already a couple hundred years ago, about: it’s all in us. All of evolution lives in us all the way up and all the way down.
Linnaeus, by the way, is awesome. All the way up and all the way down. It’s everything’s in us. And then after all of that, vibrating, pulsing, feeling, pathos, is in us, then we finally evolve. 12 billion later, later, later, later, neocortex. But the neocortex is the thought. We don’t think just in our, our neocortex is utterly indivisible from everything. And we now know, we don’t even think from the neocortex. The frontal lobe, neocortex isn’t even where we think from. We actually think from the whole body, and that’s where we’re actually on. The whole body is thinking the neocortex is one of the organizing structures. But actually the whole body is thinking, there’s heart math. The entire body is awake and alive, which is why the word Ratzon – will – which is my intellectual decision means in the original Eros.
I’m seduced after you. So look, wow. So now we’re going to bypass all of that. You know what? You get it. Now we’re going to bypass all of that and we’re going to say, okay, let’s take computational power. Access through harvesting of data, because you’ve got a trinket, which was a free g-mail, you’re giving your data. It’s exponentially increasing in these next coming years. Biometric sensors that [inaudible] exponential data, and we’re now going to actually, we’re going to basically downgrade humans and upgrade computers. Do you get what I’m saying? And it’s like you’ve got a wild animal, a beautiful wild animal, and then you tame, not just tame, you domesticate and you crush the animal. So we’re downgrading humans. We can’t even taste anymore. We eat while we’re looking at our email.
Lunch, we’re being productive. Why are we being productive? Because there’s a win/lose metrics. And we need to actually be assured that we’re actually loved in some way or another. We have to be productive, stay on our horse, we look at our email. We’re getting… win/lose metrics all the time. All of them all the time. Never stops. We don’t even taste. We don’t even taste. We just had a whole lunch. We have no idea what we just did. “Taste and see that God is good.” [Hebrew text] We don’t even taste. We barely see what’s in front of us. We can’t hear anymore. We’ve got facial recognition. We’re in every room face to face. We don’t recognize ourselves or each other in any real way. We’ve actually lost the ontology that lives in us. That’s what we meant when we said that word where a couple of eyes roll.
Don’t worry. I caught it. God, really? I mean really. Could you come up with something better? It’s a great word. Okay, and it’s going to become famous, I promise you. Okay. This is the Anthro-Ontological Method, anthro, Anthropology, anthro. It’s in me, ontology, for realsies, isn’t that gorgeous and it’s for real. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good. Believe me, I knew it wasn’t you. Okay, here we go. So Anthro-Ontology means, ontologies, the mysteries are within us. That’s what it means: The Intimate Universe lives in us, like, wow. Which means I can trust my clarified desire. My clarified desire is a source of ontology and it’s a source of information. Harari writes, Yuval Harari, my colleague, writes one important thing. He’s a very good storyteller; the story is a bad story and it’s off in a thousand ways and he’s got some great sentences.
He says, the most important thing we need that we don’t have is we need new philosophers. What’s the story? He got that right. 1,000%. Anthro-Ontology, the Anthro-Ontological Method is: What are our shared deepest knowings and what are my unique, deepest knowings? But actually the mysteries, the ontologies live in me and they live in me and I can access them. That’s what we call One Love, One Heart. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s One Love, One Heart. One Love, One Heart. One Love, One Heart, isn’t it beautiful. It’s One Love, One Heart. We live in an Intimate Universe.
The Intimate Universe lives in us. And it’s trustable. It’s trustable. It’s not true. The second a society tells you you can’t trust your body, you’re a slave, I want you to get that. The second you can’t trust your own body… it doesn’t mean you don’t have to work with your body. It doesn’t mean you act out every bodily invitation. You’re discerning. You clarify desire. Well, but of course, duh. But, but at the core, you’re not living in a home you can’t trust. I mean, do you get that? I mean, it makes me cry. We’re told we live in a home we can’t trust. Wow. Wow. I’m living in a home I can’t trust. I can’t trust my body.
I can trust my body. Anthro-Ontology. And Anthro-Ontology is AO. And AO is the response to AI. You got that? And that’s, AO, that’s the response to AI. And I want to just, I just want to give you a sense for a second with your permission, just going to do this very briefly, this is about three hours and I’m doing it in like two minutes. Okay, here we go. Ready? Two minutes. One everyone, okay? Do we get a drum roll? Help me out. Give me a drum roll so we are awake.
I’ll just give you a wild thing. Okay. Here’s a wild thing, I’ll just give you one source, one text, something about Shimon and something about Werner. Shimon says, why are you talking about me now? Oh, okay. So, so I was talking to this dude. I shared with somebody, this conversation, great guy named Werner Erhart and Werner starts something called originally EST and it became called the Landmark, the Forum. And it’s the largest kind of personal development transformation kind of industry in the world. And he’s a brilliant guy. Of course, his original name is Jack Rosenberg, different story. He changed it on a plane to Germany to Werner, kind of thought about it on the plane. And I met him, I don’t know him well. You know, I met him because we made contact when I was having a kind of rough moment about three years ago.
And he called me and he said, that’s nothing. Let me tell you what I went through. And so we had a great phone conversation and we liked each other. So we kept contact and we finally met, you know, I don’t know, X amount of months ago and Werner’s kind of actually like every second watching. He feels very close to the end of his life and there’s things he wants to get done and he’s not doing it. So we agreed to meet and it was a kind of a big deal. And you know, everyone around his world knows, he’s kind of inaccessible, and is like, wow. So we met in a hotel in Silicon Valley, you know, at the bar. And we spent the first hour, I would say something, I talked about Unique Self, he would talk about something.
I would say something, he would talk about something, and whatever. We suitably impressed each other, but basically nothing had happened. And you know, we hadn’t… We’re pretty much done and it took us a long time to make, and I was disappointed. You see, he was disappointed. I said to him, let’s, let’s, let’s break out some wine. So we started drinking. Four hours later, his wife comes down in the middle, he’s taking notes, we’re going like, we went ballistic. We had this awesome few hours, but here was like the height of the whole thing. So Werner has a distinction that actually comes from a Hasidic source, but the core of the distinction is right, which comes from a story about a Hasidic master in the 1950s that made his way to him. But I’ll resist the temptation to tell you any of that.
Here’s the distinction. The distinction is there’s only two choices in life, and it’s a core Landmark distinction. Either you’re in the stands or you’re on the court. That’s a great distinction. Either in the stands, you’re watching the game, you’re watching, you’re in the stands, or you’re on the court. If you’re on the court, you’re in action. I sometimes call it that in my language you’re a victim. You’re in the stands of being a victim, or you’re a player. You’re on the court. That’s always what you got to ask, where are you asking from? Are you asking from the stands? Or are you on the court? And, and I’m so tempted, but don’t, Marc, do not tell them the story of the Hasidic master where this came from. They don’t need to know that. You just want to tell it. Okay? So, boom! I’m not going to tell you that story.
So, I said to Werner, at some point… And this is where we just kind of broke open. I said, “Werner, why are we here? Why are Shimon and I friends?” Same question, Shimon and I have known each other for 20 years. We don’t talk often. He does his thing, I do my thing, but I always know he’s there, and I’m always happy that he’s there.
And we went to a festival. “[Hebrew] Shimon, can’t do without Shimon.” “Why?” “Just because.” But what’s the core of our connection? The core of our connection is allurement. I like being with him. I like hanging out with him. Allurement. So, I said to Werner, “Werner, why are you and I in this meeting? You’re so busy.” I’m saying, “Why are we here? We’re here because of allurement. We were allured to this intimacy. And allurement drives your life.” And Werner went nuts.
He said, “Oh my God.” So, in all… And we recorded these conversations, all Landmark distinctions, I just missed allurement. That’s an on the court distinction, I’ve got to change and rework the system. He just got wildly excited. And the way a person does who is not egoically bound to my system that I… No, he’s just wildly excited. Allurement.
So allurement lives inside of me. Does everyone get that? Allurement’s Anthro-Ontology. Allurement actually… I can actually trust my allurement. My allurement… I follow my allurement. And to actually know that kind of changes everything.
So, I want to give you just a simple text, which is about: how do we know things? So, we know things, say the mystics, because, not that mystics are good. There are idiot mystics like there are idiot scientists. Mystic doesn’t mean good. A lot of corrupt mystics, a lot of mystics doing bad shit, … mystics. No, there are mystics who are clarified, and mystics who aren’t, just like anything else. But the best of the mystics. The best of it is an interior scientist. And I’m an interior scientist. I’m doing experiments in interior science.
So I want to read you just a couple of little passages, just you get Anthro-Ontology. And Anthro-Ontology is: the allurement lives in me and I can trust the allurement. The allurement means that which I desire, my clarified desire. And where does it live? In my body.
Here’s Kook, Abraham Kook, interior science, erotic mystic. He says, “To ask about the higher knowing… ” And I’m translating here. “To ask about the higher knowing, how do you know, has no meaning. Once we find it in the center of the heart-soul, there lives a higher spirit and a treasure of organized knowing which fit together. And this is the highest of all proofs. And all knowledge that comes from research is only a means by which to arrive and clarify this higher knowing, which the soul spills forth from within the deepness of her depths.”
Anthro-Ontology, AO. But if we don’t have a sense of AO because we’ve got a reduced human being who’s been disqualified, reduction, we have reduced the human being to a flatland, separate self, materialistic web of exteriors, well then, why don’t we get the most powerful web of exteriors we can find, which is AI. Do you get that? The logic makes sense. But no, it’s AO. But it’s Anthro-Ontology. It’s: the mysteries are within us, and if we don’t invest in info-tech and biotech and nanotech, which means the consciousness of those people who are creating it, with Evolutionary Love, and with the realization that I live in the Intimate Universe and the Intimate Universe lives in me.
We don’t put Homo amor into the world so that it’s accessible to every man, woman, and child, we don’t tell that new story, then the exponentialized AI, naturally becomes the culmination of reality.
Second text: “All words reveal themselves within the heart-soul. And the more we immerse…” Here’s the word, immerse. In other words what’s that word, immerse? Everyone? Immersion.
That’s what we’re doing this week. This week’s not… This week is beautiful, it’s not easy. Does everyone get what I mean by that? I’m having a beautiful week, I’m not having an easy week. Does everyone get what I mean by that? It’s a beautiful week, not an easy week. And there’s always a part of me that dreads the festival. Fuck! It’s festival time. It’s hard. How many of you can access that? Access it, it’s really important. In other words, the reason we need it is because we need immersion. I have to be immersed. We don’t immerse anymore. When they did Lakshmi chance in Kashmir Shaivism, they weren’t on the web and emailing and moving, they were deep in Anthro-Ontology. The mysteries are within, but we’ve got to go within. And we got to actually sit in it and let it well up. All the words reveal themselves within the heart-soul. And the more we immerse ourselves in inner knowing of the content of the heart-soul, the more our knowledge about everything increases and increases.” I wouldn’t miss the festival for anything. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
Last one. “Let each person describe with truth and completeness what his/her heart-soul shows them.” That’s not reduction, everything, no, it’s just, no, there’s a unique truth which is where we’re about to go.
“Let him/her bring forth his/her spiritual fruit from potential to actuality without false lips of superficiality. And from sparks like these…” from sparks like these, that is from each of us, “torches of light will gather, and will illuminate the world with their glory. Particles of inner truth of flame like these will gather together as great truth.” Anthro-Ontology.
Here’s the last piece, and then we’re ready to start. Here’s the last piece. Last piece, and we’re going to finish on time, for sure, it’s all good. Just relax. We’re in Vipassana, it’s all good.
What’s the definition of life? It’s very beautiful. What’s the definition of life? So you might say, everybody, DNA. But that’s not true because for example, when we find old remains of skulls, we check the DNA. So DNA as Dr. Venu knows, and who knows much more about this whole field than I do, of course. So I’ll go to him for questions. But just the basics. The DNA obviously lives after you’ve passed. So, DNA is obviously not the marker of life. So I looked up, I don’t know, 60, 70 texts over the last couple of weeks.
And pretty much what people say is that life is connected to metabolism. And metabolism means, there’s this process of life. So, for example, a mineral crystal is not alive. It’s got a pattern of intimacy, do you get what I mean by that? A mineral crystal has a particular molecular, atomic pattern, has a pattern of intimacy, but it’s not alive.
What does it mean to be alive? It’s very beautiful. And this just hit me six days ago, like middle of the night. Actually to be alive is to be in dynamic intimacy. Because actually anabolic, catabolic, what does it mean? It means I’m constructing, I’m building and I’m building. I’m building. That’s actually, there’s anabolic and catabolic pathways in metabolism.
And all what metabolism means is, it’s the livingness of a cell. A cell, a mineral… The crystal doesn’t have cells. A cell is the mark of life. And a cell means it’s metabolizing. And metabolizing means… But these are just words. What happens with scientists, science gives something a word and we stop thinking, we stop imagining. We can’t actually see what it is. Can’t see it in front of us.
So, metabolizing actually means, on the one hand, there’s these, we call them anabolic pathways, which means we build complex molecules, meaning new configurations of intimacy. But just… do you notice that? You could lose all of these; metabolism, anabolic pathways, complex, you don’t even see what’s happening.
Actually, what it means is, reality builds complex molecules from simpler ones. Meaning, new patterns of intimacy emerge, and then old structures break down, they’re called catabolic pathways, in order to pour new energy. So, old structures of intimacy break down because they’re not… You got to pour new energy into life.
So, life itself… This is wild, and we’re going to end our recapitulation here. Life is… the very definition of life, ‘evolving intimacy.’ Wow! And in all of the science, you could, as happens all the time, completely not even notice.
Let’s just breathe that in with permission. Thank you.