A curated collection of documentaries, scientific insights, and philosophical perspectives on quantum physics, non-duality, and the mysteries of existence.
This vault archives YouTube transmissions and corresponding literature across meditation, neuroscience, ontology, ecology, AI, spirituality, and cosmology.
Latest Explorations
495 Transmissions
Art
Waking Life (2001)
Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up,...
Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life's mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.
Neuro-Science
Dr. Ruth Kastner and the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics
In this episode I am looking forward to exploring more about alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. In previous episodes exploring consciousness, I’ve encountered several people who believe that Quantum Mechanics is at the root of consciousness. My current thinking is that it replaces one mystery...
https://youtu.be/x-zks53ZiTo
In this episode I am looking forward to exploring more about alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. In previous episodes exploring consciousness, I’ve encountered several people who believe that Quantum Mechanics is at the root of consciousness. My current thinking is that it replaces one mystery with another one without really providing an explanation for consciousness. We are still stuck with the options of consciousness being a pre-existing property of the universe or some aspect of it, vs. it being an emergent feature of a processing network. Either way, quantum mechanics is an often misunderstood brilliant theory at the root of physics. It tells us that basic particles don’t exist at a specific position and momentum—they are, however, represented very accurately as a smooth wavefunction that can be used to calculate the distribution of a set of measurements on identical particles. The process of observation seems to cause the wavefunction to randomly collapse to a localized spot. Nobody knows for certain what causes this collapse. This is known as the measurement problem. The many worlds theorem says the wavefunction doesn’t collapse. It claims that the wavefunction describes all the possible universes that exist and the process of measurement just tells us which universe we are living in.
My guest is a leading proponent of transactional quantum mechanics.
TDr. Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She was one of three winners of the 2021 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland, College Park (https://tinyurl.com/2t56yrp2). She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition just published, 2022), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory, and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org. She is also a dedicated yoga practitioner and received her 200-Hour Yoga Alliance Instructor Certification in February, 2020.
Imagination as the ground of reality, with Patrick Harpur
In this wide-ranging interview, one of our favorite scholars, Patrick Harpur, discusses the fundamental role of the imagination in human history, the human mind, and reality at large. He also discusses the daimons, those elusive, contradictory figures who inhabit minds and the world, but who...
https://youtu.be/w_sj8KOgO3Q
In this wide-ranging interview, one of our favorite scholars, Patrick Harpur, discusses the fundamental role of the imagination in human history, the human mind, and reality at large. He also discusses the daimons, those elusive, contradictory figures who inhabit minds and the world, but who appear only to those with the eyes to see. Harpur's extensive, extraordinary, life-transforming body of work is one of the most criminally underrated in modern scholarship.
This video has human-created English subtitles, so don't forget to click on the 'CC' button below the video to enable them.
Ralston College presents a lecture by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things....
https://youtu.be/N4AFdNxLmb4
Ralston College presents a lecture by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things. He focuses especially upon the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), which he explores (providing an extraordinary range of illustrative examples) in such a way as to make manifest both its universality and its particular relevance to our present historical moment.
Books
Thich Nhat Hanh – Oprah Winfrey | Full Length Interview
This is the full-length version of a truly insightful, deep and powerful Interview. Oprah Winfrey talks to Thich Nhat Hanh about becoming a monk, meeting Martin Luther King Jr; The powers of mindfulness, insight, concentration and compassion, how to transform warring parties and how to...
https://youtu.be/tVr5ala7xZg
This is the full-length version of a truly insightful, deep and powerful Interview. Oprah Winfrey talks to Thich Nhat Hanh about becoming a monk, meeting Martin Luther King Jr; The powers of mindfulness, insight, concentration and compassion, how to transform warring parties and how to deeply transform relationships.
Using the Great Tradition of Global Wisdom to Move Beyond Religious Provincialism & Scientific Materialism, God’s Great Tradition of Global Wisdom, Chapter 1, Part 1, Brad Reynolds
The entire Great Tradition must be accepted as our common inheritance…. I Call for the universal acceptance of the total tradition or Great Tradition of humankind as the common inheritance of humankind. — Adi Da Samraj, 1982 Source: God's "Great Tradition" of Global Humankind, God's Great...
The entire Great Tradition must be accepted as our common inheritance…. I Call for the universal acceptance of the total tradition or Great Tradition of humankind as the common inheritance of humankind. — Adi Da Samraj, 1982
XUAN ZANG: Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film
Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film (at the 89th Academy Awards) The epic film account of Xuan Zang, the 7th-century Chinese monk who travelled overland to India and back, returning with the Buddhist scriptures that would shape East Asian thought for a millennium....
https://youtu.be/ulDzLjz0wdw
Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film (at the 89th Academy Awards)
The epic film account of Xuan Zang, the 7th-century Chinese monk who travelled overland to India and back, returning with the Buddhist scriptures that would shape East Asian thought for a millennium. China’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film.
Buddhism
Inquiring Mind-Magazine
From 1984 to 2015 Inquiring Mind was a semiannual print journal dedicated to the creative transmission of Buddhadharma to the West. This archive contains interviews, essays, poetry, reviews and art from the issues shown below. Our goal is to ultimately offer all...
From 1984 to 2015 Inquiring Mind was a semiannual print journal dedicated to the creative transmission of Buddhadharma to the West. This archive contains interviews, essays, poetry, reviews and art from the issues shown below. Our goal is to ultimately offer all thirty-one years of the Mind for your enjoyment.
Scott L. Byrd and Paul Smit talk about nonduality and the difference between the direct- and indirect path. An examination of the two great approaches to non-dual realization — the gradual path of purification and practice, and the direct path that points immediately to present...
https://youtu.be/cq4vvikorKU
Scott L. Byrd and Paul Smit talk about nonduality and the difference between the direct- and indirect path.
An examination of the two great approaches to non-dual realization — the gradual path of purification and practice, and the direct path that points immediately to present awareness. Each suits a different temperament; neither arrives anywhere new.
Documentaries
IS GOD A NUMBER?
Is mathematics discovered or invented, and does the answer point to a deeper intelligence behind the cosmos? This documentary explores the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical reality, from fractal geometry to the fine-tuned constants of nature, and asks whether number is the...
https://youtu.be/Ji97Gl6cB4A?si=DOTHfiRJ97L6C7zH
Is mathematics discovered or invented, and does the answer point to a deeper intelligence behind the cosmos? This documentary explores the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical reality, from fractal geometry to the fine-tuned constants of nature, and asks whether number is the fundamental language of existence. It is a fitting companion to the ILC view that reality is structured by harmonic and geometric order.
Books
My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.
https://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.
Lectures
Entangled Minds and Beyond – Dean Radin, Ph.D.
Anecdotal reports of “experiential entanglements” – spontaneous mind-to-mind and mind-to-matter interactions – can be found throughout history, in all cultures, and at all educational levels. For over a century, such experiences have stimulated controlled scientific experiments to explore whether the anecdotes were best explainable as...
https://youtu.be/kKuwWBYHQ50
Anecdotal reports of “experiential entanglements” – spontaneous mind-to-mind and mind-to-matter interactions – can be found throughout history, in all cultures, and at all educational levels. For over a century, such experiences have stimulated controlled scientific experiments to explore whether the anecdotes were best explainable as coincidence, confabulation, or genuine anomalies. Based on analysis of thousands of experiments published in peer-reviewed journals, the cumulative evidence is now clear: mind-to-mind and some forms of mind-matter interactions have been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt.
For the most part, this evidence is ignored or denied within the academic mainstream, probably because it implies that certain long-held assumptions about the nature of brain, mind and matter – assumptions that are inculcated in universities and repeated as fact in textbooks – are in some cases wrong and in others in need of radical revision. I will review the evidence for these entanglements, the resistance to the evidence, and the implications for a more mature science of the future
Dean Radin, PhD (Psychology, University of Illinois), has been Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences since 2001. He previously held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, Bell Labs, and SRI International. Author and co-author of over 200 technical and popular articles, he has also written several books including the bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997), Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006), and Supernormal (Random House, 2013).
