Sand Talk with Tyson Yunkaporta

What? Hi everyone, I'm Josh and this is the Emerald. Currents and trends through a mythic lens, the podcast where we explore an ever changing world and our lives in it. Story. The emerald. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who is a member of the Appolech clan in far north Queensland, Australia. He carves traditional tools and weapons.

and also works as a senior lecturer in indigenous knowledges at Deacon University in Melbourne, where he lives. There are an increasing number of books these days looking at how indigenous thought systems can be used for things like planning long-term sustainability. Sometimes the incorporation of indigenous thought models can be something that happens at a fairly surface level. As Tyson says, hold a sustainability conference, open and close with a native performance.

And check your box on the incorporating indigenous thought systems category. But Tyson's book Sand Talk is completely different. It's about looking deeply at the basic pattern that is nature itself and reflects through all of creation, informing not just our understanding of natural systems, but also how we conduct ourselves and how we communicate with one another.

Everything is creation, says Yankeporta, and there are always patterns to perceive. If wombats are on the move, the sap is running in the gum trees, and it's time to cut bark. If the tea trees are flowering, lychee's and cherries will be available at the supermarket, where Jingle Bell's Rock will be playing in an interminable loop. This pattern radiates out from a single point.

a big bang of sorts, an infinite source into a honeycomb or sugar bag, as he calls it, of intricate relationships. As he says, quote, it all comes out from that central point of impact. That Big Bang expanding and contracting, breathing out and in, no start or finish, but a constant state where past, present, and future are all one thing, one time, one place.

Every breath ever taken is still in the air to breathe. I breathe the breaths of the ancestors, and everybody else's too. Always was, always is, always will be, and there are flowers here, and they make me smile. End quote. When this pattern is recognized, it yields insights into the nature of things. Insights like those that come from walking the countryside with Noel Nanop, who's a local elder, from the book.

Noel says things like it's going to rain in twelve minutes, and the kids time it on their phones and laugh in amazement when his prediction comes true. He predicts events like an annual emergence of flying ants from the ground, then follows seasonal signals winding through the bush with us to stop under a tree, then snaps his fingers. Now as the ants explode out of the ground in that instant. Knoll's process is all about seeing the overall shape of the connections between things.

Look beyond the things and focus on the connections between them, he says. Then look beyond the connections and see the patterns they make. Find the sites of potential risk and increase, like judging where the ball will go in a football game. End quote. This pattern is mystical and majestic, one could say, but it's not just something to be beheld in some kind of psychedelic awe. Pattern is law.

It's written in the land and stars and in the relationships between people and land and stars, the law of what constitutes harmonious behavior. It forms the basis of true relational communication systems that move far beyond people just Yelling at each other or declaring their opinions on the internet or monitoring each other's speech. This is how, as Janka Porta says in the book.

Indigenous models have a lot to offer current communication models by helping us understand complex relational thinking and communication. As he says quote, the only sustainable way to store data long term is is within relationships, deep connections between generations of people, in custodial relation to a sentient landscape, all grounded in a vibrant oral tradition.

As you can guess if you listen to this podcast, I have an affinity for anyone who recognizes that the last twelve thousand years of human history is really just the last five minutes, who talks about the emu egg harvest reflected in the stars. native corn and pattern disruption, with a few Game of Thrones and Black Panther references thrown in. So let's take a journey through the pattern, a topic which ultimately begs the question that

Old Man Jumma in the book keeps getting at If all this is pattern, then is even the current destructive paradigm part of some greater pattern too? Sand Talk with Tyson Yonkaporta Today on the Emerald.

very foundational, but you say there's a pattern to the universe and everything. And there are knowledge systems and traditions that follow the path. I wanted to start with the pattern um because I feel like it's a good place to start. What do you see are some of the defining qualities of this pattern? What if you had to summarize the pattern, what would you

Yeah. Well i i if I had to translate it into sort of abstract Which, you know, i it's funny, like,'cause we've never had to describe this pattern because we've just been the pattern. You know, and when when we committed that original sin of of abstraction, of separating society and nature. And separating humans and nature, like naming even just naming nature as a separate thing. You'll find in in any of the original cultures of the world, in the languages there's no word for nature.

You know, so when we talk about these things that it must be in abstractions and then I have to try and find things that are um consummate with that, y I guess I guess you would say that it's fractal in nature. And, you know, anybody who's started to look into complexity theory um started to do biomimicry stuff and and looking seriously at ecosystems and looking seriously at the patterns of these things. You know, you've seen since the seventies, you know

Things have been coming out b going, Oh my goodness, it's fractals. It's all fractals. It's these patterns that that repeat, you know, from the macro to the micro, from the micro to the macro, you know, it's uh It's those same patterns repeating over and over again. And and there's, you know, a few of them and they express themselves in different ways.

You know, uh so you see it in a tree fern, you know, with the little patterns within the leaves that they're repeated out, you know. You can see a tree inside a leaf, you can see, you know, all these things. Those things are there. Like one of the core patterns is a um is is just a circle um with a point in the middle of it, a dot in the middle of a circle. And

To me I I I feel like that's a foundational pattern or a way into the pattern, you know. And and it's our point of intersection with it. And to me that's that's uh that's beautiful because that repeats at the micro and the macro. You know, galaxies look like that. Cells look like that, atoms look like that, you know. It it's it's a big one. But then when you look closer, there's a lot more going in than just a circle and a dot.

If you bring that out into a three dimensional image, it's got that apple shape, you know. And you can see a lot of the sacred geometry work with people looking, looking and they find all those geometries that end up making that shape. But that that circle with the dot in the middle, you'll find that carved into the rock, painted on rock and in objects all around the planet. You know, it's the oldest symbol on the planet and it's the most crucial central symbol.

And you know, so paleontologists find these things and they say, you know, if only we could go back in time and see what it means. You know, it's just like, well ask the people who are still using it'cause we still have this. you know, we're doing it in this kinda in in this living culture here in Australia still, you know, and it's and even expressed in just this sand talk activity of of drawing. you know, sacred symbols and um and learning symbols and and things like that in in the sand.

sitting around and telling stories and mapping knowledge for each other. But that one is the centre of of all human society. And the idea of that before those societies became things that were separate from nature, before the societies stopped being patterned on natural systems. complex dynamic systems and it's the center of your society and everything if you if you're a sustainable group of people or a sustainable community of anything you know everything is feeding into and coming out of that.

It's that circle with the dot in the middle and it's quite simply it means mother mother child. So it's it's that foundational kinship pair of mother and child that is the centre of of everything. You know, all honour and respect and all resources are coming into and going out from that sacred place of increase.

You know, mother and child is the center of everything. And if your society is not built around that, then it it will fail. If your society is hostile to that relation, then it will do worse than fail. It will destroy everything, you know. So I mean we're currently living in a system and in a global culture that is um

intensely hostile to motherhood, to mothers and to the mother and child, you know. Um yeah, every expression of this culture is is one of hostility towards that. Um the way cities, towns, houses, roads, all the infrastructure and all the cultural infrastructure, access to everything from theaters to Ubers to anything is um is not mother friendly. You know. Yeah. You know, and and a mother is a thing that is judged, you know, against impossible Standards.

Everybody knows that a child is meant to be raised by a village, that it takes a village to raise a child, but we've got this single person who's supposed to be a village. for a child and do the rest. With this expectation of having it all, but having it all isn't having it all. It's just doing it all. It's doing everything, doing all the work of the of the mother, but then doing everybody else's work as well.

um and then being judged for it'cause of course you're gonna fall short somewhere. Yeah, I keep coming back to this and people think I go on about it too much, but um but I really do think it's the it's the fundamental core unit of our disconnection.

Yeah. Everything, men and women. Is this is this unequal relation in the And it's it's the worst aspect of this um this culture and this society, this global Anglosphere that's taken over our lives. This liberalism, this neoliberalism. you know, is that hostility to women and children?

And that and that core wound, that that separation of men and women, which is a very recent thing. That's only been the last that's only been the last twelve thousand years or so, which is like the last five minutes. of the history of our species that that that has arisen because it's never been that before. It's it's a very recent phenomenon. And that required a severing.

of people from nature. You try and harden yourself and make yourself into a being that can extract from the mother and destroy the mother in doing it. Then of course that pattern's going to repeat, you know, from a planetary

There's many levels to what you're talking about. One of the things that's really fascinating for me is most of my background in terms of the study has to do with the study of Indian tradition within India and uh the point the point at the center and the point within the circle is something that you find reflected all throughout Indian cosmology, with the with that exact same sense of it being the source and the mother and the womb that vi vibrates into infinity and

And it is fractal. It it is fractal. It it goes out to everything. It um it takes on larger meanings and more complex meanings. And if you're you're moving out of that circle and and worse, like standing outside of it, well what are you going to do? What's going to nurture you and allow you to thrive and survive and be nourished if you're outside of it? circle and you're not not interacting with it. Well of course you're going to have to destroy it.

uh the nourishment you need, like a virus does to a cell. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You know. Yeah. And um and it's just awful, you know, because all of our masculinity our our our models of masculinity are are extractive, are within that extractive paradigm. So, you know, our very identities, you know, as men and women are really, you know, designed to facilitate that that extractive process.

You speak about emu, the kind of the start of it all and the the whispering of you're better than everyone else. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, the original, original sin. Yeah. The ab original sin, the yeah, that first sin. And yeah, it was that um that poisonous thought, you know. that suspicion that you might be better than, you know, might be greater than um somebody or something, you know. And that um the way that was introduced to me was with um those Sand Talk symbols.

Th they were greater than less than science basically. They were exactly like the mathematical one. You know, but they were showing the direction that the leg bends at the knee. you know, uh birds and mammals, you know, as two sort of totemic groups. That emu one that bends that way, it makes a greater than sign, you know, mathematically, which I thought was a really nice

alignment of um of ideas, you know,'cause the old fellows will talk about that that um that emu having that uh that original sin thought, I'm better than you, I'm better than him, I'm better than all of you. I'm better than this land I stand on. There's All these things and all these people, they exist for me. Like uh I'm above them, you know, that that idea.

And you know, of course all the stories that come out from that are about can what needs to be done to contain that and what needs to be done to transform that. But Kazimia's not it's not evil, it's just had that seed of narcissism. And you know, after the emu goes through all its trials and tribulations and and loses its wings you know, has all these problems, you know, it is transformed into, you know, a very sacred and perfect being as well, you know.

That was I was always worried in the book that I might give that impression that emu and a lot of emu totem people Yeah, quite offended by it, you know. It was It's also a very, you know, gracious and noble and extending connected relational dreaming as well. uh the the female emu doesn't doesn't sit on the eggs. She just lays the he eggs and then she takes off. But it's the father it's the father emu. that actually sits on, hatches the chicks and then raises them. Thank you.

feeds them. So with with emus it's the male that is the nurturer. You know. Um and that's that's always, you know, put up really strongly as a model for manhood, you know, for people who hold that email sacred. That that's the role of a man is to be a nurturer and to not to look after people.

And it really struck me, like you talked about in the towards the end of the book, you talked about in the vision of the Milky Way, the other animals kind of constraining the troublemaker. And I just found it's like the law is even built into the Yeah, that's Like every time every time you look up to the sky, it's like you're seeing that law that uh reflects back into the human paradigm in a way.

Well and and it's it's it's maps of all that law but it's also maps of a dynamic landscape as well. So you have your landscapes through different seasons, you know, are reflected in the night sky as the as the sky changes throughout the cycles of seasons too. Mm. So, you know, when that that um You see there's a there's that dark shape of the emu in the Milky Way. But when that bright star when he when that's right up there, front and center.

and the bright star comes in uh at his eye there, then that's the season. So that's when the eggs are being laid, right then. You know? So there's these seasonal signs that are in in the sky. And that will only that'll that will you know, they won't start playing until that happens. Huh. So that's the time when everybody jumps in the trucks and heads out Bush and collects EMUG.

Yeah, Mum Doris, who's in the book I talk about her in the last chapter there and probably a few times, Doris Shillingsworth. Yeah. Uh she called me the other day and said, Oh, my son, I'm having a big feeder, he knew eggs for breakfast this morning. Yeah. Well, you know they're about It's big as a child's head. They're big. And it's like having a a you know, twelve eggs all just in one. Wow. And it's just and it's so delicious.

Such a strong flavor and and you don't need much of it. You you can feel it doing you good. As with most of these, um most foods that aren't kind of domesticated and, you know, hybridized and sort of broken down over time. Yeah, those wild foods are um they're incredibly nourishing.

Yeah, if you wanna have something resembling that now, you it's m it's marketed as a superfood, you know. All these superfoods we're bloody eating and all our paleo diets and that, they're not super foods, that's just food. Yeah, right. The other foods are just subsistence, no good, ridiculous foods that just they can't keep a person. Mm.

So, okay, the grocery store, which is a very strange place. Yeah, it leads me to a question and and this is kind of a big question, but so in the book Old Man Juma, he's talking about how it's all pattern, right? Yeah. even the caution signs, even the cell phones, it's all pattern. And and you I mean you talk in the book how this kinda like grates at you a little bit, like, you know.

Yeah, me too. So is it ultimately possible for there to be something outside the pattern or is it just like there are levels to the pattern and the ultimate level stays kind of in its primordial state and we've kind of screwed up the relative levels or Yeah, well this is this is the question because um you know, is that seed of narcissism, you know, is that something that's outside of creation? And is attacking it or is it a necessary part of creation?

You know what I mean? It's um funny because you look at, you know, natural systems and they're and they're kind of um I don't know, they're kind of defined by disruption and um it's like the the pattern breakers. are kind of just as important as the pattern itself. I mean a pattern that just keeps replicating over and over, that's a pattern, that's entropy. That pattern will break down, you know, if the pattern isn't being disrupted and reforming, you know, it's stagnant.

So there's kind of something sacred about the So I I guess over, you know, where you are there there's I mean you look at the native corn is very different from the corn at the grocery store.

No, there's a reason for that because in in in this economic system we want things uniform and we want to select to the best and brightest seeds because that will produce things that have all best and brightest seeds. The the native women who are who've basically been for thousands of years genetically engineering the native corn, you know, they have an algorithm for seed selection, like a randomness algorithm for how they choose the seeds out of the basket of corn um for planting.

You know, and they'll follow the algorithm. So you know, and every now and then they grab a seed and it's and it's small and shriveled and it might be diseased or whatever, that gets planted too. Yeah. You know what I mean? There'll be something else in that seed, you know, some other aspect of its DNA there that might be resistant.

to an insect that hasn't arrived yet. You know, and there's that idea, that that diversity idea, it's not diversity just to be nice to people in your society either. You there is value in in those who are different or those who are, you know, not able in the same way that um the majority are able. You know, that's always been regarded as a as a sacred person.

somebody who would be r regarded as handicapped today would be, well that's somebody who's been marked by spirit for something special. And they're a seed that needs to be in the mix. Yeah. Um if you ever if you get to have the experience of being um somewhere out in in a natural place or a sacred place or you know, somewhere special in the landscape uh with somebody who's, you know, would be regarded as mentally handicapped or or whatever, you you listen to them there because

They'll be saying strange things that don't make any sense, but listen to that because there's things will come out, there's the spirit of the place that's talking through them, and there's messages there, you know. My woman and I, this was a couple of years ago, we were somewhere, yeah, in a forest on on a ridge. It's about an hour's drive from here. We're standing there in this old growth rainforest remnant.

And and there was there was a there was a fellow there who was who was um quite severely mentally handicapped and he started and he started talking and we just stood there listening to him. And his Cara. you know, kept interrupting and apologizing to us and we're like, No, shut up, we're listening. Yeah. We're listening to this fella, he's like, he's giving us truth bombs here, you know? Yeah. And he's talking about, oh, and they took me up into the sky here and

And it made my nose bleed. And I saw that and we're like going, Oh, I was just getting gooseies with Oh my God. You know, the the the things, the story that was coming through this this boy.

And he was not indigenous, but you know, he was connected in spirit because he's marked in that way in spirit, you know. And that's that's something special, something sacred. So to come back to that bigger question, you know, the pattern breakers are as important as the pattern breakers. So if we viewed this civilization, this last twelve, thirteen thousand years or so, as a pattern breaker, is that then something that's necessary and part of a deeper cycle of change that just continues?

And keeps going around. Old man Jorma says yes, you know. Yeah. I I find it hard to get out of this um sort of combatative resistant mindset though. This mindset that wants to resist it and wants to change it and end it and wants to condemn it. There's somewhere in between where you can just sort of stand, you know, in the middle of that circle and and say, Well, this is interesting. Or even better, this is funny. Thank you. Just laugh at the absurdity.

There's a temptation of narcissism in that to put yourself above things and go, you know, oh, I'm the wise one who notices these things and loves that. So at this point in the conversation, Tyson pulls out a throwing stick with intricate carvings all over the surface of it, and he uses it to illustrate the

Primary pattern and then the disruptions of the pattern that end up creating a new pattern. It's a beautiful piece of art. I'll post some pictures of So you know, there's that basic uh little symbol of those sort of three lines that are jagged and then and I talk about how if you keep repeating that pattern, if you keep following along on those lines.

inscribing them on a page or an object or anything at first it might it'll be uniform for a bit, but then there's these pattern breakers that come out. And then the pattern has to get creative and try and reassert itself around all of these obstacles. And strangely enough it's the obstacles that create the most

Amazing patterns and diversity. I mean, all those words that I just said for the last bloody ten minutes to try and answer that question, I think I'm doing it better just by showing you this right now. In some stories, this fundamental pattern and then the disruptions that follow emanate from a conflict, a conflict between turtle and echidna. And that conflict leaves a point, an impression in turtle's shell which then emanates

out into the diversity and complexity of creation. There's a line in the book towards the end again where where you basically say turtle doesn't hate echidna because without the battle The universe wouldn't even be So in a way, I mean, that's kind of a similar thing. It's like you said the universe starts with a kind of moment of conflict in a way. And um that blast and the turtle shell, which is also, I guess to me like kind of that same point. And then

radiates out from there and and, you know, all of this movement, you know, you can't necessarily hate Echidna, right? Echidna comes around and cut's this incredibly smart creature. That's it. And that's I mean, you know, transgressions, they're not something that you can't just cancel echidna. Right.

Our culture is not a cancel culture. You know, he has to be punished, but the punishment has to be something that's going to transform him and make him into something that's better than what he was. And so you find that a lot of our heroic in our dreaming and our and our, you know, most sacred, revered ancestors are are

usually like they started out as criminals and just became something else. All these patterns, all these stories are are repeated around the world. You know, we're talking about the night sky before, you know, a lot of those constellations are named the same way around the planet. So Orion is always a powerful man who's a hunter or a warrior. Every culture is Yeah. How is that? It's it's just bloody a rectangle. It doesn't look like a man shape in the sky. How is it we all have the same story?

The Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, everyone calls them the Seven Sisters. And it's a very similar story everywhere. How are we all looking at that and saying, Yeah, that's seven sisters? Nah, there was a a common originating culture. We're all coming out from one place and we all have those stories.

So, you know, these people who are seeking indigenous wisdom and paleo this and that, you know, and seeking it in the exotic other, you know, trying to mine mine the margins of the civilization for something authentic. or something real. But they're looking outside of that circle. You know, it's circle with the dot in the middle. They're looking outside of it so they won't find it there. They keep looking to Maci and whatever else to try and find

that thing. That's not where they'll find it. They're gonna find it at the center. They'll find it in themselves. you know it's there like you've got it You know, if you're European, you know, five minutes ago you were hunting aura. on grasslands somewhere. That was five minutes ago. You know, just just sit for a minute.

You know, notice the pattern in the world around you, notice the pattern in the fragments that are left of you that aren't industrialized and domesticated yet. Hold on to those fragments, you know. Uh and look at the pattern in those fragments because That pattern repeats out to make a a a whole thing.

So understanding that there is this deep pattern to exist. Understanding that this pattern reflects in all of us. And understanding that there are deep protocols for how to ultimately connect with this pattern are themes that are interwoven throughout the book. Here's a quote. The Big Bang pattern, that initial point of impact, is not just something that occurs at the massive scale of the universe, but is repeated infinitely in all its lands and parts.

Many creation stories refer to this point of impact, often represented by a stone at the center of the place and story. Uluru is the stone at the center of this continent's story. A pattern repeated in the interconnected and diverse stories of many smaller regions, reflected in our own bodies at the navel, and then down into smaller and smaller parts at the quantum level of our cosmology.

In this way of knowing, there is no difference between you, a stone, a tree, or a traffic light. All contain knowledge, story, pattern, and the story. Sit with this story to discern the pattern, we need to begin by explaining You know, you're talking about rocks at the beginning of the book and and you talk about to really get to know the rocks, it's not helpful on the one hand to be a scientist who's like calculating quantities of

dressed in tie dye and run up and say I'm communing with the rocks and and and I appreciated that. And then you said something really interesting which I think could be easily missed, but y but you said you have to go in from the side a little bit. And and I just found that that really like you have to, you know, cultivate some respect, I think is what you said. Uh and I just found that really interesting. Like that sense of like you have to sit with it and get to know it and Yeah.

What did you how do you see that that coming in from the side? Yeah, well it it's it's just kinda natural from our point of view here because it's a cultural protocol of how you approach knowledge and people of knowledge. You know, so um I recall one time I was in um Northern Territory and there was a old man there making a dugout canoe.

And so, you know, we can't just walk up and go, Oh, that's amazing. Show me how you do it. Can you teach me how to do that? That looks great. You know, can I take a photo you know, it's like no no no like uh I went off like maybe a hundred and fifty meters uh you know, away, like and I just

Stood for a minute, you know, I I didn't I didn't look directly at him because that's rude, you know, it's just in this peripheral. And I could see that he knew I was there, so I I just kind of sat down. And I sat down there in that spot. Sat and waited for maybe an hour. Finally, he he just kind of looked up at me and he just lifted his eyebrows, which was just a yes.

Then he gesture, you know, come over. So then I come over and and so I just stand there and, you know, I introduce myself and all that sort of thing and you know, so we say who we are and then I sort of stand and wait for a bit. And then he'll start to show me what he wants to show me. You know. I'm not asking questions.

about it or telling him what I want to know because it's rude. And then the idea is that over a few hours he's like sussing me out and getting a sense of what I know and what I'm ready to know. And then he'll decide, you know, to share knowledge or not to share knowledge. You know, it's very it's very straightforward what you're talking about, and it's also something that I think has some really profound levels to it because the

I mean, if we take again this like mythical uh girl with the navel ring and the tie-dye. One of the thing one of the things I've noticed about modern pop ways of seeking to understand the spiritual or the spiritual realm is that it tends to be kind of this free form thing, like you know, this kind of amorphous Energy and you talk about like the discipline that it takes.

and the patience that it takes and the respect that it takes. And this is and and this is something that is inherent to so many wisdom traditions and indigenous traditions and really understanding that, you know No, we're talking about a deep pattern. We're talking about the the structure of things and there's a structure and an order to how we approach them if we want access. And this is

It's it's a it's a pro profoundly in the European tradition too. Yeah. You know, I I just I really don't like all this this idea of the way people have conflated modernity and industrialization with with European is annoying. Well, I g I guess if Europeans are are trying to claim centrality for all the world's knowledge and technology then then they're gonna get blamed for the bad stuff too. So yeah, you deserve it. Stuff yeah. Um but at the same time, you know

The the the European traditions from just a century ago, even, so much more than that. If you look at how guilds operated until very recently. And there were remnants of that even just a few decades ago, you know, guilds and apprenticeships and um, you know, the whole idea of the journeyman and all that sort of thing. You know, you had that built in respect.

respectful relations there. That idea of the the master, the teacher, the learner. And there are fragments of that that come through in New Age culture. But, you know, the problem is that um you know, new age culture is is is is i it's coming from deep seated sense of entitlement and uh just blind privilege of just being able to be this will o' the wisp child of the universe and that in expecting to just show up in any context and be recognized by the universe as a child of it and special.

Love me, Rocks. Rocks, come to me. Tell me your secrets, you know. You know, and everyone's a shaman. I I I know I'm being a bit mean, but th there's something in our tradition of the slap, you know, and the growl. Like there's a thing we call growling you know, in in Aboriginal English. It's like you know, where you really do, you know, you yeah, you growl somebody.

You know, and it's it's supposed to shock them and cause them to reflect and and it's supposed to transform them. It's it's not I'm not saying these things to condemn people or cancel them or anything else. You know, it's there to help. You know, the idea is that you know, it's gonna help you transform. Well, and what transforms is the slab, right? I mean, you can't separate out, you could say like the

depth of spiritual vision that a person is permitted to attain from their responsibilities and from what they had to go through to get to that place. And often what they have to go through is transformative pain. I mean there's A good deal. Yeah, there's a good deal of uh the alchemical crucible that's required. And if it's you know, if it's no crucible and it's all like you said, I'm just gonna show up and it's gonna happen.

The ordeal I think is important, you know, and and every culture has that a as part of its foundational culture, every human culture. And it's supposed to be, you know, and cyclically throughout your life, you're supposed to go through a ritual of ordeal at least every fifteen years. you know, to go to the next stage, you know,'cause your life is in these fifteen year stages.

So when you turn fourteen, fifteen, you know, in every human culture before industrialisation, before modernity, you know, you would have to go through something. Um it would have to be hard. physically, spiritually, you know, and these are usually quite secret rituals'cause there's sacred aspects to them. But it's um But the upshot is, you know, you can't talk about the actual what happens in these ceremonies, but the upshot of it is you come to a profound realization, and that realization is

That you're not special. And that's a hard one because you've you've come out of that sacred uh mother-child space, and in that space you are special. You're raised through childhood in that magical world of illusion where you're special, all your aunties and uncles. fathers and mothers and grannies are just, you know, you're the center of their world and you're special, you know. And suddenly you fifteen years later, hey, by the way, you're not special. You know.

It it's a violent process that I ordeal and you have to go through it to transform. Um,'cause that's a hard lesson to learn. You have that moment, you know, of suffering and hubris where you think that you're You're destroyed by that and you feel depressed and horrified. But then you come through that, and there's cascading realizations that come out of that. So wonderful and so empowering.

First of all you realise you look around at the other people who are going through the same thing and you go, Okay, so I'm not special, but they're not special either. No, and then you look at the adepts who are putting you through that process and you go, They're not special either. All right, so I'm not special, but nobody's special. And that's a a small consolation for a moment. Uh because then you start to see, oh, so we are all We're all equal, you know.

We there's nobody above me and there's nobody below me. So what happens to that seed of narcissism then, that greater than illusion? It's destroyed. Yeah. And you're like, ah, I'm not above anybody, but I'm not beneath anybody either. And that's lovely. But then the big learning that you eventually come through when you you go on right all the way through those rights is you realise, okay. So I'm not special. Nobody else is special either. We belong to something special.

Oh, I'm part of something special. No. And I'm essential to that. you know, I'm part of this land here and I'm part of this this this group of custodians. I have a custodial role, you know, within this group here for this land, but then beyond that, I'm part of a custodial species. And all these lands are connected, all these systems are connected, and we're all exchanging knowledge and energy and resources and material a a across all of that. You know, it's exciting.

And you you start to see your role in the world and it's and it's not disempowering. It's empowering.

Timothy Leary said the only good trip the only good trip is a bad trip. Right. Yeah, and I think and I think that's that's something that um the new age community needs to embrace. It's like yeah, no we need to have the bad trip. We need to be shattered a little bit. Yeah, because that's the only way we transform.

And and that's the role of violence in any complex dynamic system that is sustainable. You know, violence is present and it's not a bad thing, but it must be distributed throughout the system and every agent within that system must be competent with violence. You know. So if you restrict

a significant part of your community from access to violence, access to the tools of violence, then you're uh stagnating that system. So if you say, Well, this half of the population is not supposed to fight. So women, for example. in this industrial culture. Women are it's frowned upon if women if women use any kind of o any form of violence.

You know, that's only acceptable for men to do somehow. You know, and then we project that story back into a Paleolithic past where we go, Oh, men were the hunters and women were the gatherers. Yeah. Men were the men were the chieftains and women were the oh, piss off. You don't have to flip around the other way and go, oh, matriarchy either. It's it's it's neither of those things.

So yeah, this is a big part of why I wanted to interview Tyson. Because he understands the ancestral vision. He understands that twelve thousand years ago was five minutes ago. He understands the whole thing about paleo mind. But you know, the it's it's it's all great to like have a paleo diet and eat like a caveman, but what about thinking like a caveman?

Yeah. What about feeling and emoting and and and having and doing that like a caveman as well, you know? I think when people start to look into it and start to get in touch with that side of themselves, they find that it's not, you know, It's Yeah. It's actually it's actually a lot more sophisticated than they even imagined, you know.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and and well understanding like you talk about in the book that the cognition and the trance states and the states of concentration that defined you know, that era or something that's totally lost to how we think about that era. Well, we have this kind of industrial domesticity that's that's sort of scabbed over. Mm scabbed over that part of ourselves, but and that's just it's a wound.

That we all have from being separated, you know, from what's real. And um but it's not lost, it's just it's under that scab. You can pick that scab off and heal that up your vivid scar, but it's there, you know, you have it. And what do we find when we pick those scabs off? We find deep states of concentration. We find a deep understanding of the pattern, as he says, the reclaiming of indigenous ritual as exercise in concentration rather than performance.

is maybe what is needed to grow or repair the mines required to create complex solutions for sustainability issues. This is something, as he says, that is meatier than mindfulness course. Quote, you have to be connected daily to intuitive or extra cognitive ways of thinking if you want to utilize this knowledge, near death experiences, peak performance moments.

or even doodling. This incredible ability is a gift from your Paleolithic ancestors, who lived within this heightened mind every day. But of course we don't see them as living in a state of heightened mind. We see them as Primitive. I mean, I even talk about this on the podcast episode I did about the Paleolithic mind, but where did the caveman as rapist?

You know, where did that even come from? If you look at any Paleolithic, you know, or people who live in an approximation to that mm lifestyle, they have some of the most ordered roles and responsibilities around male female relations that you'll see on the planet. And so it's an it's an utter fix.

Yeah. Well people project people project um whatever they want. And and I guess that's that's how civilizations work and that's what writing is for, because once you can write your story of the past of how you want people to see where they've come from. Then you can control the present and you know and you record all transactions in writing and then you can control where the benefits of those tr transactions go. And then you can control the future with contracts.

So that's that writing thing. But it's first thing you need to do is control the past, control that story. So you project people project whatever they want to the past, you know. And so this sort of vicious, brutish, savage, simple caveman thing has been projected back. And that cavemen is rapist is a really important thing. This industrial culture that is basically based around the act of rape. I mean

you know, uh Francis Bacon, he he described science. He was one of the fathers of Western science and he described it when they first started getting the scientific method together. He described it as as a tool for being able to hold nature down by her hair and force her to submit to our will. And the idea of mining and extraction and and and and factory farming and all these things are

you know, they're sexually violent. So of course, they're doing two things. First of all, they're they're projecting a justification. For that, oh, it's just human nature. We rape, men rape. They're projecting that back. But then they're also projecting it as a um as a kind of a judgment.

on on primitivism and um, you know, oh all you human beings in this Anthropocene because you did it, it wasn't like a few assholes who were running the industry. It's it's it's humans and their their natural, rapacious, bloody greed or uh we're destined and doomed to destroy the planet, you know. But also, you know, you y it's your flawed natures. Therefore you need rule of law.

And um and I guess that's how you get women on board too, is you you tell all the women, you know, look if you if we don't have this society and this boss in charge Then we won't have rule of law and we'll descend into anarchy and you know, before our Western civilization arrived, uh all your life was just rape. Which seems to be like the Don't for walk in the bush and see it, it's just animals raping each other all the time like

Wait and so many television shows reinforce that though. Now like you know, since the kind of Game of Thrones thing, it's like I mean television show after television show is is showing the path

as just like utter brutality and constant rape. And it's like well, there is a sliver of the European past where people used to do a whole lot of that and then You know, what they're finding now about the Paleolithic, I mean not to idealize it and I have fallen into that trap before, but what they're finding out about the Paleolithic is that you don't see like you don't see large scale violence, you don't see That type of thing for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

Yeah, well you know even I mean uh that that's a civilizational thing. Even Game of Thrones knows that, you know, the further you go beyond the wall, the less rape there is. Right. Yeah. What what are they calling the the the free folk? The um Right. Something lings, the wildlings. Wild links. Yeah. You can try. You can have a go with with that wildling woman. You could see if she You want to force her to do something, but um good luck to you. You

Yeah. So actually since we veered into pop culture I have to'cause in the book you uh in the book you talk about Wakanda for a minute. Oh. Ha ha ha Yeah. Okay, why am I asking him about Wakanda? Well... first of all, he's the first person that I've seen mention Wakanda in a kind of uh questionable light. He mentions Wakanda in terms of civilization, and he's got a lot of things to say about the journey towards civilization. And the reason this struck me is because

Look, I loved Black Panther. I thought it was a visual feast. I thought there were all kinds of interesting shades of purple going on in that movie. I thought it was nice to see an all black cast and one little white guy relegated to the role of of, you know, supporting character. But the issue I had with Wakanda and is just that it seems to me that there's a deeply patronizing aspect of the premise.

And that premise has to do with the civilization narrative. It's like, okay, African people, you've arrived now that there's this vision of you having this technologically advanced civilization. It's not like let's celebrate African culture for all that it's been, all the profound things that it's brought to the world, all the profound technologies that Africa has brought over the centuries, all the profound spiritual traditions and ways of seeing the world.

No, you've arrived means that you have a modern, Western, progress-oriented, technologically based vision of civilization. And that's why I wanted to ask him about Wakan.

Eh, you know, so it's projecting that the the kind of mythos of inclusion. you know, onto a past and and kind of I don't know, it every empire inclu inclusivity is one of the signs of the apocalypse for any empire, any civilization. Always in its final stages it has two things. It has celebrity chefs. Okay. Yeah.

Inclusion and inclusivity. So, you know, the Roman Empire w when its decline started, you know, i in its decline, it was very inclusive. So it had um you know, it had senators and consuls who were from Gaul. You know, it was including people from all these nations that they'd plundered.

you know, in the highest level of government government. So you had, you know, people running the empire who weren't even Roman. You know, you had but they were Roman. They just, you know, they had a toga and a mustache. You know, it is like look, we've got someone with a mustache in in in in in power, isn't that lovely? You know, things are gonna change now, everything's gonna be fine.

You know, so you have this inclusivity. So it's kind of but it's always like, Yeah, you can be included but you have to be with the project. So yes, yes, we can we can we can elevate the idea of, you know. Yeah, Africans as as human beings. We're happy for you to come up uh yep into these highest levels. But the the mythos around that it has you have to be with the project of civilization. Right.

You you have to be with with the project of instrument extraction. So it's kinda like, Yes, you know, uh look, you know, uh Vibratium. Black people can build like yeah, can build cities and and murder murder millions of people the same as anyone else. Isn't that great? Oh, we're all equal. Yeah.

Hillary for president. It's like, yeah, she could start a nuclear war as well as any man. Ah, it'll be a matriarchy. It's not a matriarchy if you've just got a woman in a doing a patriarch's job and like, you know What Hillary did to Libya is

you know, just as Secretary of State, it that it was horrific. Yeah. You know, but it wasn't it wasn't any more horrific than any other politician has to do. You know, they have to m when they show that they can murder hundreds of thousands of people and be alright with that. then then they're allowed to progress. You know, whether you're male or female, black or white, yeah, yeah, we're being inclusive now because the the whole thing's falling apart.

And now that it has no value, we're happy to include you. And we want you to do the heavy lifting of trying to kick the can down the road for a minute while we retreat to our bunkers underground in New Zealand. So anyway, yeah, I I can't remember what the question was. But yeah, it's Yeah. Inclusivity is just one of the horsemen of the apocalypse as far as I'm concerned.

You you talk you talked about language and you were speaking about that about written language. And you said the spread of print literacy throughout the West would allow the individual expression of ideas without dialogue. and even individual words to be examined in isolation.

causing reductionism to take off like a brush fire. And I find that interesting because a lot of the social justice vernacular these days seems to be based on isolating which words people are using and telling'em whether they're using the right or wrong word, which really has nothing to do with forging the bonds of dialogue that you're talking about.

Okay, so I'm gonna take a parenthetical pause here and talk a little bit about why I'm asking Tyson Yakaporta this kind of contentious question. And it really has to do with one of the things that I absolutely loved about his book. Which is that he's a really honest communicator. And he continually emphasizes what it means to value differing points of view. And in fact, essential to the communication paradigm that he

forth in the book, which I'm gonna get into a little bit in a minute, is the sense that communication needs to be relational and it needs to be built on respect. And so even people that I've dismissed outright, like flat earthers, well he's got something positive to say about them. Here's a quote. from the book.

Quote, I might say to the growing number of flat Earth theorists out there, blow me a flat bubble and I'll consider your theory. But that would be placing myself in a greater than position. So I need to check myself and pay attention to them, remembering that there is always value in marginal viewpoints. So I listen to them online and realize that the sphere is not the final shape of this creation. Our own galaxy began as a sphere and flattened into a disk.

And the earth is gradually flattening itself too, as it spins like a lump of clay on a wheel. It's only flattened by just over twelve miles at the pole so far, but it's getting there. It's a good thing I didn't dismiss the flat earthers out of hand. Otherwise I might never have understood that property. This emphasis on relational communication is deep.

And it's difficult. But as he says, quote, a focus on linear, abstract, declarative knowledge alone not only fails to create complex connectivity, but damages the mind. What he's talking about is the world view and cognitive mechanism that would be see each one of us as little isolated points. And each isolated point states its opinion and then the other isolated points state their opinion and that somehow passes as communication.

As he says, quote, people today will mostly focus on the points of connection, the nodes of interest like stars in the sky, but the real understanding comes in the spaces in between, in the relational forces that connect and move the point. If you can see the relational forces connecting and moving the elements of a system rather than focusing on the elements themselves, you are able to see a pattern outside linear time. This is the space of relational communication.

Western thinkers, he said, quote, viewed space as lifeless and empty between stars. Our own stories represented those dark areas as living countries. This means that when you and I are having a conversation, the space between us is alive. It means that as he says, quote, Thinking and learning also occur outside of the brain in the objects and beings we interact with and the relationships in between.

Why is this important? It's important because our entire model of modern communication is based on the reductionism of the written word. And what that means is that we've found a comfortable yet ultimately catastrophic form of communication in which Which we can simply declare opinions and declare our opinions about other people's opinions, and the living space between the living country, one could say, can be ignored altogether.

This is what he says about yarning in Aboriginal culture. Quote Yarning is much more than just a story or conversation in Aboriginal culture. It is a structured cultural activity that is recognized even in research circles as a valid and rigorous methodology for knowledge production. inquiry and transmission. It is a ritual that incorporates elements such as story, humor, gesture, and mimicry for consensus building, meaning making, and innovation.

It references places and relationships and is highly contextualized in the local worldviews of those yarning. It has protocols of active listening, mutual respect, and building on what others have said rather than openly contradicting them or debating their ideas. There is no firm protocol of only one person speaking at a time, although the mutual respect protocol ensures that interjections are in support of what a speaker is saying.

Enriching what is being said. There is a lot of overlapping speech that makes yarning vibrant and dynamic and deeply stimulating. It is nonlinear, branching off into diverse themes and topics, but often returning to revisit ideas in ways that find connections and correlations between diverse sets of data that would otherwise not be found in more analytical modes of dialogue.

There may be periods of comfortable and communicative silence that are reflective and not considered to be awkward. The end point of a yarn is a set of understandings, values, and directions shared by all members of the group. In a loose consensus that is inclusive of diverse points of view So imagine, for example, discourse that is sought as a way to grow connections.

Increase points of connection, vibrate the space between those points of connection. What if we were the sacred sites connected by song lines? And what mattered most is not who's right or who wins the argument on the internet. But the relationality of the This is how sustainable systems work, relationally based communication patterns. in which the fundamental connectivity of one part to the next is never in question.

It's another way of asking would your dialogue with the person you're calling out or canceling or battling with on the internet change if you knew that ultimately you were both responsible for the well being of your society? You were both responsible for making sure everyone had enough to eat. How would your communication change then? So I'm bringing it up and I'm contrasting that with the modern day tendency towards discourse that is declarative.

And that gets little further than a series of declarations which often result in one person being unfriended or cancelled or And while Tyson talked about the growl or the slap

Like isn't there a time when it's necessary to kind of shake people awake? The fact is that the growl or the slap isn't being done in order to convey that one person is better than The growl or the slap is not I'm going to prove that I'm right in this situation or I'm going to dig up something you said twenty years ago and hold it against you so that I can feel better than you.

And the reason I'm bringing it up is because I share many of the aims and goals of the social justice movements on the left. I just think there is a dangerous shift in discourse taking place, and this shift in discourse has deep ramifications. And that if we really want to pay lip service to things like sustainability and modeling communication models on indigenous patterns, then we have to look strongly At the pitfalls of digital declarative speech So yeah, there's my parenthetical statement.

Mm. It's just it's the tragedy of the left. Yeah. The contemporary left is, you know, uh the most important thing and I think the only fundamental truth in my book. There's only one thing because the rest of it, you could take it a thousand different ways, and it's just a point of view. But the one perfect truth in that book is never wrestle a pig because you both get covered in shit and the pig likes it.

You know, the left wrestled the pig, you know. It thought I can we can we can change the pig. We can no. So the the left jumped in and started wrestling the pig. And now the left is a pig. It it's and it's just it's an absolute tragedy.'Cause it's the same I mean, you know, the right is always Managed to maintain a a grip on power just through the lowest common denominator, most stupid, simplistic memes, sound bites out of context.

You know, a and the left wrestled the pig and now that's all the left does too. And it it's it only works with the most pure reductionist logic. But it's funny because the person that's there spouting that with authority, it kind of everybody else has to come into that paradigm and try and argue it from that point of view. And then it's just all these just isolated. things budding ahead in a lawless void and it's just uh it's so exhausting.

of it, all the virtue signaling, the endless virtue signaling and you know echo chambers. Viral stupid memes going around. Yeah. It's like uh it's I I just so don't want to be part of it. It's such a an entropic system. It's a closed system. Of people who are sitting in their own bubbles, entropic bubbles of their own personal algorithm. And it's just like oh It's that neoliberalism, you know, every person is like a little corporation unto themselves. Yeah.

And and they have to brand themselves and market themselves and this is my brand. And all of our minority identities have just become brands to leverage. Ah we're wrestling the pig. Everybody's wrestling the pig. And like you said, it's just an echo chamber. It's like you know, and I think about again the pattern and the different levels of think thinking that you talk about in the book.

and and how quickly, for example, the left uses terms like sustainability and how Really the vernacular and dialogue isn't operating within anything that reflects the supposed interconnectedness that you know is inherent in a natural system. I don't know, it it's an assault on your dignity to even speak about it because there isn't a position or a place to speak on any of this. Yeah. You know, that isn't just just awful. It's wrestling.

I got a lot of I mean You know, if you remember when, you know, the term political correctness first came out, it was it was all the same conversation. Yeah. Went round and round and we're still going round and round and round and round. You know, um it's we keep having these

trying to have these cultural revolutions when they need to be economic revolutions. Th these are these are economic systems that we need to be addressing and critiquing. And all of the critique was shifted away from that. to cultural critique, you know, and policing that. Yeah. But basically the rapacious system that we were talking about before, that's what's producing all these cultural horrors, you know, and you can't address

the the problem by trying to address these little symptoms bubbling up of, you know, oh well that's that's incorrect to say that. Or oh what what you know, th th these are little cultural errors coming out of a much larger pattern of error. But

That's off limits, you know. You can march for gay marriage, you can protest for gay marriage, you can promote gay marriage, you can fight for gay marriage, but you can't fight the uneven, h horrendous economic system that's producing those um those biases in the first place. Right. You know, those inequities in the first place. There's a a growth based economic system demands inequality. It demands a a constant, you know, growing body of um oppressed and marginalized people.

in order to work. And that's you read any economics textbook, you see one oh one, the the economic problem. And the economic problem is that in a growth based economy, you know, demand needs to exceed supply. So there needs to be more people needing the things that we need to survive than there is a supply of those things. So that's why you've got people starving while mountains of food are being is being destroyed.

And we're supposed to look in our own garbage bins and feel guilty. Go, Oh no, we need to, you know, we can't be wasting food, you know. Twenty million tons of food gets wasted every day, you know, in our own garbage bins. That's nothing. It's a fraction of a percentile of the food that's deliberately and willfully destroyed. Huge.

factory farming, monocultures that are producing more food than anyone could ever eat under these massive subsidies, this huge corporate welfare. And as long as you've got that economic system in place, there will be inequality. You have to direct people's attention.

you know, um, not just to foreign enemies but to domestic enemies. You need to vilify and other, you know, certain populations and sections in your community in order to to keep that that going because you need to alienate them economically. and you need to have them suffering and missing out in order for anything to have value. So, you know, and instead of doing the business of of reimagining these systems and even reimagining what value is.

uh which would be a neo-Marxist thing, which um you're not allowed to do. Um instead of doing that work, we're all encouraged to look inward. And we're always all encouraged to you know look sideways. We look inwards to punish ourselves and find the sin within us. We're not recycling enough. Oh, we're destroying the planet. You know, I have to have shorter showers.

you know I have to recycle more. Oh my God, I threw I yeah. Oh look at the packaging on that. You know, that's not your fault. You're not doing this. You know, and the people around you with their poor language choices or whatever, they're they're not doing it either. These are all just sort of symptoms of a bigger thing that needs to be looked at. Yeah.

But you talk about in the book how the word dreaming is maybe the best people could do as a translation. And I'm wondering if we could uh kind of bring it full circle to the pattern and maybe talk a little bit about dreaming and how you see Dreaming. Yeah. It comes back to what we were talking about with the night sky and how it reflects patterns on on on Earth.

So you've got these two worlds facing each other. And can you think of a culture that doesn't have that? So immediately in English I think um of the concept of as above, so below. You know, every culture has this. So it's something that's universal and human. You know, there's this idea and we would call it sky camp there and then the earth camp here. and that um uh at the moment of creation, those two were one thing.

They were one thing. And then you have somehow a big bang, that point of impact, whether it's a turtle fighting in echidna or whatever your metaphor is, there is a big bang and those two worlds separate and there's a turnaround, you know, and they face each other, those two worlds. And there's communication, constant communication of matter and spirit between those two worlds. Um, but it happens in certain ways. And so there's sacred sites. I I I would refer to them as story places.

story place was that's how we say it, my mob, but then other people would call them dreaming. You know, places, all that sort of thing. There's those sites where there's a constant overlap between the two worlds. Ritual, ritual practice. even meditation, anything like that, uh can create like that sacred space.

And have that overlap between the two worlds. You know. So the dreaming i is kind of everywhere, you know, but it's also up there at the same time. But it's it's also here and there's a there's an interaction. You know. And so it's a it's this this it's not even a parallel world because it

It is creation, it part of creation and the engine of creation at the same time. But you're communicating constantly between the two worlds if you're living properly. And that's part of our role as a custodial species is to mediate, you know, between the two worlds. and to um uh to do ceremonies of increase.

See that's the difference between growth. Growth means increasing the size of the system, like this economy, but increase means growing the relationships within that system. So a scientist might decide they want to make a smarter human buy genetically modifying somebody to have a larger brain. And that wouldn't necessarily make them smarter.

'Cause it all depends on how many neural connections they're making, you know, and and you have the capacity right now in your brain for trillions of potential neural connections that are not being used. So increase would be about increasing the connections between points. So we have as humans and indigenous peoples, but humans forever. You know, our role has been to do the ceremonies that create that increase.

That interaction between Sky Camp and Earth Camp that is kind of this this magical way of of of making these points of connection between things. You know. Now see all those sacred sites, they're also connect connected by lines uh with my callsong lines. You know. And so you can actually also get into that state following that song line intentionally and doing, you know, singing that song or telling that story or, you know, mindfully being aware of that story as you walk that song line.

And you know, that's something that we have the world over as well. You know, in Europe they call them ley line.

You know. And th they are energetic lines, but they're also a map. They're a cognitive map, but then a map in the landscape as well. And those are reflected in the night sky, you know. So you've got that constant interaction between earth and sky. And so the dreaming is Is all is that. Um, and it's more Yeah.

Yeah, it's a lot of complex energetics. To interact with that it takes rigor. You know, and here's where the we're we're talking about the lack of rigor in the New Age movement. Yeah. But that's kinda that's what gave rise to the internet was um you know, psychedelic hippies experimenting with like peyote and, you know, different kinds of mushrooms and mescaline and all that kind of thing. Uh they were experimenting with those and they were experiencing that dreaming space.

They were experiencing that that that world. But because they had no law or story for that, they were just kind of floating right in this space of infinite possibilities that they couldn't read. They had no map for it. So they were just kind of drifting in this space and seeing whatever narcissistic patterns they wanted to project onto it. And so that was where the idea of cyberspace was born. And so, you know, I I'm worried about the cyberspace because where is it?

Where is cyberspace exactly? Yeah. And I kind of feel like it's it's been this uh this tinkered kind of shadow world, shadow spirit world that's been created where all our images and you know weird projections are are being sort of uploaded into the Cloud that is not a cloud. Well it's like a mimicry of the dreaming in a way. It's like a a mimicry of the dreaming, but it doesn't have the connection to spirit. It's some part of a part of our spirit that's sort of trapped in there and

howling eternally around it in this this horrendous purgatory of zeros and ones. And the logics of it, uh it w of that binary system, it it culturally it creates because it feeds back into us just like Skycamp does. So culturally it creates all these um these false binaries. in our systems of thought. Everything is one or the other, it's black or white. Right.

And everything, you know, if you're inter if you're interfacing with one of these machines, it's always a choice, you know. Do you agree, you know, to this contract? Yes or no? Right. There's only a yes or no. There's never a maybe. Well, I'm gonna take option C. There's never an Yeah. And so we're being trained by using these devices into this binary logic. And so of course, what are you gonna find back on this side in the way that we interact in our politics and

online, offline, in a relations, everything there's always going to be these forced choices and trying to dominate someone else into coming over into your truth. Because there's only one way of looking at the world.

And I guess here's where the the dreaming of this uh recent So you look at European civilization, you know that s image of the Ouroboros I talk about in the book, the snake eating its tail, you know, and that's described, it's kind of a curse because it's described as a symbol of infinity, but it's not infinite, because the snake is eating itself. There'll be nothing soon. So you know, you look at that act of creation that the created the dreaming and the tangible world.

the turnaround. The state before that, everything was one. And because everything was one, there was nothing. Get that concept? Oh, yeah So yeah, I mean this idea of you know, oh we're all one, you know, is is it permeates through all of new age culture is this idea of you know uh unifying, becoming one. And the whole mythos of the of the Western civilization experiment is is grounded in that. So even the word universe.

You know, so the verse part is is i i you look at the Latin, verse is the past tense of vertere, like to become and then uni means one. So even the word for universe in English means Becoming one. So it's kind of like this massive entropic curse of bringing on this end times apocalypse. This return back to being just one. But see, then when old man Jummer talks about the way the universe behaves, is that there isn't this stable.

system of earth camp and sky camp. He says that the universe is constantly breathing out and breathing in. Right. You know, and that the Big Bang is forever. It just keeps going. You know? So you can hate on civilization, but maybe that's the purpose of it. Maybe it's not entropic, maybe it's not evil, maybe it's just part of the cycle of things. Part of the end howbe the dreaming needs to be ended periodically and everything has to become one again and therefore nothing.

And so that's why this pattern of this globalizing culture is all tending towards uniformity. We have to create these great nations that have one language. Mm and one uniform set of beliefs. And then those nations need to battle each other for supremacy until there is one globalized culture. Then everybody has uniformity.

culturally in thought, word and deed, which was in the original um syllabus documents of the public education system as the goal. The exit exit goal for all schooling was uniformity, national uniformity in thought, word and deed. You know, maybe you know, and monocrop agriculture, everything else. It's a culture of monoculture. And so maybe it just tends towards this idea of the snake eating its tail until there's nothing left.

You know, of heaven and earth passing away as it says in the Bible and becoming a Then reappearing again. Yeah. Yeah.

So here's what I see in this conversation. We started with the pattern, we went deep into the pattern disruption, and then we returned back to the pattern again, back to the in-breath and the outbreath. And to the doctrines of continual creation, which you'll find in many, many places. So who gets the final word on whether even the disruption is part of the pattern? Well, naturally, old man Jumma gets the final word.

But I do have one quick question for you. So yeah um you hint at this in the book, but what happened with old man Juma at the airport? He he shut it down. Yeah. He was just um you know, he's telling a story and and someone said something cheeky and you know, but he was referring to ah all this, you know. And he and he was He was asserting that that that all this and and I was disagreeing with him going, No, this is

This is the death of creation, all this technology, you know. You say now it's all one thing, one sign, you know. And he's just I mean he's looking at you know, the signs in the food court and seeing And sort of seeing ancestral messages through there and I'm like, that's that's not dreaming.

None of this is is part of the dreaming, part of creation. This is this is a cancer. This is a wrong thing, you know. And um, you know, so he starts talking this up this story and he starts talking about and and the final thing that he and he said But the final word was power and he shouted the word power. You know, a and and it was all about illustrating how this was part of creation and within, you know, his law.

And he shouted power and clapped his hands and all the lights went out, all the screens went blank, the entire airport shut down. Everything stopped. And it was like, this was a Sydney airport. It was like ten minutes, nothing happened. People are freaking out. You know, I've never seen that happen in an airport before. I don't know if you have. I never even heard of that happening in an airport. And anyway, then like so ten minutes later, he he sort of casually does it again.

Power, clap, and roll come back on. Yeah. And I don't know if that's just one of those coincidences where like some guru is using, you know, a solar eclipse to make it look like he can I don't know but um yeah it happened. And that's as good a place as any to wrap this one up. But I gotta get back to the right. Yeah, baby. Do it, man. Yeah. We've been ages and and I'm I'm gonna get in so much trouble. Sorry. I can't just do Talking about stuff.

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