I‘m skeptic, I think Hobbes was pretty correct - whatever is true, a primary condition is that it works in reality. If it doesn’t, you modify or abandon it
@@charlesbourgoigne2130 I’m also a skeptic. I like Spinoza’s philosophy because he does away with the supernatural, and rationality deduces his ethics, AND then, by all accounts, LIVED those principles
On every level what does nature do? It folds and unfolds. It makes copies of what is working and incorporates what works better. At its base it is mindless and at its apex it is mindful. It dances to the harmony of seasons to sustain itself and to evolve a greater unfolding. Perhaps it is unfolding a god-like mind somewhere in the cosmos.
Never stop jeff!! I'm only 26 and I've loved u for almost 10 years! I started with Terence McKenna and john lilly and watched nearly every video since!
*Only those people can understand Spinoza correctly who are guided by God, and they know that Spinoza was not Pantheist but Pure Monotheist. Some people say that he told that "Every thing is God", so he was a pantheist but he never told that "every thing is God" but he said "every thing is in God". These both statements differ each other like darkness differ from light. Many verses of Quran also support what Spinoza said but what Mullahs follow is not from Quran but from millions of fabricated hadiths*
Wow amazing! Dr. Neal is so humble while being so brilliant. Both Neal and Jeffrey smile the entire time, what kind and extraordinary men they are! Thanks so much for sharing your mission to increase the understanding of human consciousness.
It's because they understand it so well, that they manipulate us so good..You should wish they had conscience and empathy for others, which they don't. What is happening now and what will happen in the future, is due to their decisions regarding humanity. How many stages of cruelty does one have to go through.. The cruelty is their invention! Like nazis vs jews.. Congrats for your choices and collaborators..
Interesting reference to ACIM; would enjoy further expansion on that material. Perhaps an interview with Dr. Jon Mundy would contribute to the NTA program.
I’ve recently reopened ACIM after being introduced to Spinoza. And it’s so funny because I started noticing similarities between these two texts. The first being that this world and what it deems to be important is actually not. And the 2nd that man chooses fear over love because of his belief in fear and the world this fear has created. It is only until you understand that you are choosing fear because the ego has built up a false case that you can realize your priorities are mixed up. I’m still reading Spinoza and I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who saw the reference to ACIM as something that was popping up
Too many religions and philosophies have this pessimistic and apocalyptic/day of reckoning-style worldview. Why can't this world be the ultimate form of reality and the pinnacle of existence? Maybe even our creator's masterpiece?
God is the universe we all take part, it's the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, it's infinite and ever existed. The present moment is all there is, the now. Life is God and is wholly, only our minds recall the past through memory stored in the brain and dream of the future, but it doesn't exist. Only the now is real. God is all the particles of the universe collectively, our bodies are also part of it. To those who destroy the Earth knows he destroy himself. The truthcontest thepresent
I just bought the book. I like that the author isn’t a Spinoza scholar. Otherwise, he would never be able to take leaps like the near death experiences analogy. Spinoza died young so it’s important for educated modern authors to make inferences, otherwise his work remains confined. I tend to trust his author more than most given his background and appearance of genuine love for Spinoza. I hope not to find a cancerous political message hidden in there as it’s so often the case.
@@TheSoteriologist I actually read your comment the other day, didn't know you are the same person. A glitch stopped me from seeing it again till now. Well, in a sense Christian-Judeo beliefs do regard God as a separate deity, unlike a Buddhist view, no offense to the former. Separate as a glass of water from the ocean is what I mean. A Buddhist, however, would see "God" as in the person himself.
@@TheSoteriologist I can relate to the motif that Christians and Jews (non-Kabbalists) see God as separate and Buddhists view the higher consciousness in all things. I disagree with New Agers regarding the law of attraction. They overapply it to everything and overgeneralize.
I loved this interview!! Grossman’s energy for his subject seems powerful! I have loved the work of Spinoza for decades, and I loved Deluze’ work on him as well. I had somehow missed the “worm in the blood” reference but find it fascinating that a “mystic” in the 1600’s imagined DNA... I also wonder how his contemporaries Edward Kelly and John Dee (and Shakespeare) , perceived his work!! Thanks so very much...
Spinoza was not a mystic, he believed science would set us free, knowledge would set us free from superstition, I believe he was a truly amazing human being
Thanks Darren. They are 2 nice guys talking about Spinoza but when they say he was a mystic and when they use the word "he" talking about god as he had intention, like a person... it really surprised me! No god has no intention, we should able to use the word "nature" instead to be clear.
Jewish excommunication or censure was fairly common in very orthodox communities in Amsterdam during Spinoza's life. It is called *herem* or *cherem.* A great novel to read about this is by Irvin Yolam entitled _The Spinoza Problem._
So fascinating that so many great thinkers come to the same understanding, that all is one and that that unity is divine. I’m so glad to understand Spinoza more now...my thanks for yet another ‘enlightening’ (and it is!) interview.
Unity is Reality. I promise, if you'll quiet your mind, for long enough, 5 minutes, 7 years, you will eventually look out and see that 'your' everything your looking at. Gotta be still and quiet though
We all get angry because we think that the world should be different than it is. Is anger a form of suffering? Ask that question to the Buddha and he would say yes. Of course, the Buddha used the word dukkha to refer to suffering ( it rages from mere disappointment to other despair). Anger isn't the same thing as depression, but it seems to be rooted in sadness. In other words, under our anger is often a sadness we don't want to face. We get a sense of some deep sadness and rather than face it we erupt in rage and anger. " We never get angry for the reasons we think we do." -ACIM. In this interview the best advice is given for how to deal with the anger problem. Namely, to sit with the feeling of sadness and allow yourself to experience it. If we feel do this (as most of us do) then we are just contributing to our shadow material. All these repressed feelings build up over time and shadow material becomes our habit energy. This is why genuine/authentic meditation is essential. We don't know why we got angry because we are not the Knower (of the thing) but we can become the observer and the forgiver. We need to retrain our mind. Every time we get angry, stop. Feel the sadness under it. And see this as an opportunity for forgiveness. Then we can relinquish our personal views, our desires, our fears (and our ego-story). This forgiveness is a returning to a certain knowledge that we don't know what we don't know and we need not look for someone to blame...
I find the talk about play-like amnesiac performative roles that we intentionally have chosen/fallen into, paired with the cosmic unity concept, exactly the same lesson psychedelics seem to teach. The similarities are mindblowing.
@@TheCapasio Man, I made that comment 4 years ago so.. not really. I guess I was talking about the feeling of remembrance you can get out of transcendental experiences, as if that's the "real", in contrast to the malaise that is our default state of consciousness. The thing is even if you know both experiences, you can eventually suppress the memory of the former as to re-claim your ego persona, and fall into it. Is comfortable to "know" who you are and where, is functional. The little voice that calls bullshit gets smaller with time, eventually you discard it as that wild thing you did back in the day. You become an amnesiac "god", knowing the reality of unity consciousness but performing as a separate being.
Schopenhauer said the only reason Spinoza used the word God was to avoid persecution. Pantheism is a bizarre concept; how is it different from atheism? Saying God is the world is making the word God or world superfluous.
The existence of God and/or gods IS a superfluous concept. That's why people have been debating the existence of god for thousands of years and why most people do not live lives that acknowledge the existence of gods. If god was real, we wouldn't be arguing about it. God is a truly superfluous concept because it can't withstand either empirical or rational explanation and is useless because it has no explanatory power or value. It is an idea that reflects underlaying fear and ignorance and I think you would find that most Trump supporters would call themselves 'god fearing' people:) Don't forget that we invent these terms and then get all confused by the poorly understood definitions we assign (and do not agree to which leads to endless debate about nothing). If there is One universe, defined as everything that exists is, which includes this invisible but apparently real and important god ... then that definition is self evidently true by definition regardless of what god is and including if god is nothing. God is an absurd notion for the completely insane. Its also a big money maker and a powerful technology for tyrants. Better than bit coin.
Great interview. It would seem that as we progress in our own consciousness, understanding the wholeness of creation would be an experience-enabled reality. Now with relationships of consciousness, space and time tethered across dimensions, it would only seem rational that it would be so... experience-enabled.
I love Spinoza, but strongly disagree with Einstein. Einstein believed in a finite universe AND in a universe that had a beginning. Spinoza argues that the universe is infinite and eternal, and I agree with Spinoza. The 2 people argued for entirely different things.
@chris evans You are right that I don't like Einstein. I think he gave very little credit to other scientists, whose ideas he sometimes plagiarized, and I think his theory of relativity is illogical and demonstrably false. I see Einstein as the first 'celebrity scientist', who ushered in a new age of science by thought experiment, rather than science by experiment (aka real science). I have far more time for Michelson, Morley, Sagnac, etc. They were doing real experiments, which makes them real scientists.
I absolutely loved this. ❤ What a great man. ❤ I was surprised to find my own views coming from a completely different angle as Spinoza’s views, and even some of Dr. Grossman’s views. He described them so well, I am going to get his book. Great minds don’t only think alike. I’ll just leave it at that. 🥰👍🏻 Plato and Spinoza, 😊 and seeing between the lines 😊❤
An excellent treatment of Spinoza can be found in The Radical Spinoza. This book was written by a professor of philosophy with an interest in Zen Buddhism. He also encourages the reader to try acquiring Latin. Even two years of high school Latin, a dictionary and a good translation should make this not too difficult.
@@johnstewart7025 Spinoza says we love something which makes us happy and hate it when it doesn't because joy increases our power of acting and sadness decreases it. that movement/speed is real, even if the emotions are relative to that movement.
Evil isn't bad, don't get confused. Evil only humans can do it because of the devil's mind. Things like intentional murder, and cruelty is evil, things that happens on the battlefield during a war , torture and so on. Bad is what we perceive in life we don't accept or like. Like being grown in extremely poverty
Who said that the Judea-Christian concept of God is that he is separate from creation? The ancient and medieval understating is that we participate in God's being, which obviously means that we are not separate from God. God is wholly other in the sense that we cannot grasp or comprehend God; but he's not wholly other in the sense that he is separate from creation.
What is love? Or what kind of love? People will kill to protect those who they love. Hatred and love are only concepts just like good and bad. People like to romanticize the word love as just something good, when it is by the grace of love that everything happens in itself.
16:28 the reason I as an atheist don’t come to your conclusion is because we stop at things we don’t have evidence for, you keep saying “it’s gotta be “ that’s classic assumption about things we have zero evidence for
God I.S. 01 Self-Creation Time/Yahweh/Naturally/Neutral breathing universe. There is a succinct difference between Believing and Understanding the G.U.T. ~ feeling.
I was hoping this dialogue would bring us closer in comprehending the truth, turned out to be jargon from beginning to end, I don’t know how my question could reach either, sirs, when it comes to human behaviour why is it that we live in a constant state of conflict, they say that living in the moment is how it should be, so WHY are we being cultured to live OUT of it? Maybe language is not the apt instrument in reaching truth, is there an alternate? Also in all humility would there be a chair at the table for one more, we never know something new may arise. My first of question of significance is, AT WHAT POINT IN A HUMANS LIFE DOES CORRUPTION TAKE PLACE, by way of inculcation, conditioning, doctrine or wrong education.? 🙏. Anyone may answer 🤷🏻♂️
Embrace 10 grams of P.Cubensis, where boundless realms unfurl, Behold, a taste of transcendence, an experience to truly swirl. In Spinoza's realm of God and thought, where philosophy takes flight, We explore the limits of being, unbounded by day or night. With each sacred sip, perceive the dissolution of self's decree, Merge with cosmic vibrations, unraveling what it means to be free. Infinite horizons of consciousness, where limits gently fade, Spinoza's God whispers truths, in psychedelic serenade. Let us dance amid philosophical musings, bathed in mystic hue, Pondering the divine essence, as mind and spirit intertwine anew. For in this journey beyond boundaries, we touch the eternal core, And through the lens of P.Cubensis, glimpse the depths of Spinoza's lore. So, let us honor this fusion of minds, where wisdom and wonder unite, In Spinoza's godly tapestry, embracing the infinite's cosmic light. May our shared exploration ignite sparks of insight profound, And through P.Cubensis' embrace, let boundless wisdom resound
The Road to Eleusis and The Immortality Key, books assisting in fleshing out the mystical experiences these ancients were having-particularly the Greeks for over 2,000+ years. They used hallucinogenics! God is there, just suck down the cocktail and you will see him. Now, if we could just get modern religion to reinstate the worship that Greeks, Romans, early Jews and possibly, early Christians partaked in, then the churches would fill to the brim and humanity would change
I am very sorry to correct you here, Sir! Unity of being is a concept that existed in islam even before the 9th century and especially within the Sufi discipline. Al-Bastami, Al-Hallaj and Ibn Arabi Al-Taai were some of the biggest theologians that brought it up. Thanks for this episode tho
We are never upset for the Reason we think! Yes, finally, now go one step further and state: We are upset because the breadth of scope of factors that are entirely out of our control, ie ancestral genes, mother's stress hormones will you were a fetus, the 25 year development of your frontal cortex, environmental and cultural factors throughout your life, your diet or lack thereof for the day of your upsetness and BOOM, you have it! Biology baby! Spinoza just called it GOD or the paradox: We are God, God is us.
Affirming positives is love. This is obvious. But negating negates is also love. This is not so obvious. If you affirm negatives you get the same result as negating positives, anti-love or negative love. This is why pacifist philosophers suffer a lot, because they are trying to defeat negatives with positives. This is like giving candy and flowers to your bully and smiling sincerely after he just beat you up. Einstein talked about militant pacifism. I think Einstein got it right. If Germany and Japan were not defeated in WW2 we'd all be giving flowers and candy to them. This is just multiplication of negative and positive numbers. Fighting is negative and Injustice is negative but the fighting of injustice is positive (love). The only remaining point is defining injustice. I believe the silver rule is the best definition; don't do to others what you'd not like done to you, namely doing things you'd not like done to you is injustice. This also means that we should not let others do to us what they would not like done to them, we should either fight them or flee. Lastly I see no problem in viewing God as the affirmer of positives those who acted by the silver rule(giving heaven) and the negator of negatives (punishing with hell) those who violated the silver rule, becausing negating of negatives equals positives. The negative stuff people acquired into their minds needs to be scraped off.
To me god is something you worship. God is not only the creator, hes also a lawgiver. Without a law, what would it even mean to deify god? What even is god, if theres no right or wrong way to worship it? Whats the actual meaning of godhood from a human perspective? How does such a god answer the big questions in life? If god is the universe, then god is what is, and what is cant tell you what ought to be, as per Hume.
I'm not sure Spinoza's philosophy is more eastern as it is based on Jewish Rationalism in its earliest form. In it, God isnt viewed seperate from creation, but rather God is seen as manifest in the material universe but also having infinite attributes beyond it. This panenthestic (as opposed to pantheist) view of God is as Jewish as it gets. In both early Jewish schools of rationalism and Spinoza's writings, God is ultimately seen as all their is. Everything material and immaterial is simply OF God. Just as a wave is seemingly independemt for a short time, but of the same essence and never really seperate from the sea from which it emminates, so is it with everything and God The only real difference is that Spinoza did not subscribe to the idea that one manifestation God is personal.
Does the body create the cells of which it is comprised ? Or do the cells create, repair, maintain, replace other cells on the level of cellular automata with communication / interaction with other cells and the body is merely the aggregation of the collection of cells ? Like anthills or bee hives are the aggregation of the individual members performing special functions as directed by phenomenal messaging
Spinoza's explanation of God is what he tells those who insist there has to be a God. You can't pray to Spinoza's God unless you think praying to everything has value, and you can't expect Spinoza's God to talk to you. This "everything there is in the universe is God" means that there is no God and if you're hung up on having a God, you are side tracked. If you ask if there is a God, you are wasting your precious time in a short life. There are things to pay attention to, like people you relate with, the nature of your physical world, your thoughts and your subconscious, and your behavior. And there are the practical things in life, like career, personal economics, morality, ethics and kindness.
Outstanding video, I'm an engineer and was drawn to Spinoza due to Einstein's quote, as well. Professor Neal does a brilliant job of describing the philosophy of Spinoza. Liked and Subscribed. Thank You for this high quality content!
Before reading Ethics by Spinoza I would consider reading ' On the Improvement of Understanding', probably his earliest work, but never finished. He tries to paint a whole picture from ontology to ethics in Ethics, like the Bible does, but by means of reason. I would not consider him a rationalist, because he has also written about the complexities of affects, and already saw that a person can only substitute one affect for the other. You cannot just stop feeling, but you can test your feelings and idea's through means of reason. Resulting in another affect. This idea is so futuristic that it almost the same as cognitive therapy, where for instance fears are substituted for reasonable thoughts by means of testing them rationally
@N30N 0M3N It appears so. Quantum theory has made numerous verified predictions, so it seems reasonably sound. The fundamental nature of the universe seems to be random and paradoxical, ergo no rationalist Prime Mover.
No, not odd at all. The thoughts of guys like these is the foundation upon which we built our western society. I do like Grossman's sweet style, but I jerked at his words about all emotions being "bad" (after just having stated that Spinoza didn't differentiate between good and bad), so that the most enlightened state would be a totally "rational" mind. Well, what does "ratio" mean, really? I think the devil's in the detail here. We modern beings totally "rationally" and "intellectually" and "void of emotionally" destruct the very ground we are living off. Is that rational? I think there is some kind of over-arching rhythm to ideas like these. It's interesting and worthwhile to learn about the philosophy of these intellectuals, but their time is gone. We need new heros who can understand, contemplate and divulge knowing about our own time.
What like or dislike has to do with philosophy? You either have an argument for or against a certain philosophical argument. Philosophy is not your damn spinach pudding!
I've been drawn to Spinoza's teachings for the past year, but I couldn't distill why. I think Neil and Jeffrey succeeded in distilling Spinoza's contribution to peace of mind in a subtle and precise way. I'm so glad I discovered this channel, this interview and this book😊
Overly happy people bum me out. Whenever a person beaming with happiness engages me in conversation, I look for an exit. Can't they have a back pain, sleep impairment, maybe an itchy crotch, a daughter or son with pink hair, anything to take the edge off of their outwardly radiating happiness?
Not sure I understand Mr Grossman at around 14:40 . How is one to understand the term " Universe " ? Surely it is not a top down picture - the one he describes . Rather things are creative , indeed ultimately creative of all other things ? The universe does not exist either from the top down or the bottom up. All of the things that exist that are things that exist are ultimately ( that is , in the final analysis ) responsible for the sum total of existence ( because, being existent they are , prima facie, part of the description or constitution of all things that exist and of all existence as a whole ) - not any one of them in particular is ultimately causa sui or sui generis but only all of them , together, as a whole . Each one part contains as a condition of itself the property to be itself precisely because it is a part of the whole thing ( all existence ) that does actually exist and it does so precisely in the manner of its existence ( that is, the precise nature of its existence ). Consecutively, the whole thing ( existence as a whole ) has ultimately the property to be itself ( that is , in the form that it is or rather actually may be ) especially because all of its infinitesimal parts of it are precisely what they are and each of them not another thing than they are. The whole of everything , Spinoza's Nature, Spinoza's God , is the only thing that could possibly ( reasonably ) be a possible cause of itself for the reasoned fact that anything finite is unlikely to be capable of absolute self generation since in some sense or another sense all finite things rely on other things so that they can be. Nonetheless , each thing that does indeed exist must by definition contribute to the ultimate nature of whatever that thing is that is the whole thing that might be , that is to say, Nature/God/Universe. I admit no great familiarity with his work but I speculate that the thinking of David Bohm may be of some use in clarifying what it is the fuck I am trying to say.
OMG!!! Neal!! I took philosophy classes with you at UIC back in the late 70s! So good to hear you on the topic of Spinoza, one of my favorite philosophers! Hope you are well.
I wish I understood Spinoza much better. I believe it entirely possible that a combination of the Stoics and Spinoza may be the actual Truth.
??? why the stoics thought
Read the the present on truth contest.
It's the truth of life that agrees with Spinoza point of view
Indeed. 🙏🏻 thanks ❤
I‘m skeptic, I think Hobbes was pretty correct - whatever is true, a primary condition is that it works in reality. If it doesn’t, you modify or abandon it
@@charlesbourgoigne2130 I’m also a skeptic. I like Spinoza’s philosophy because he does away with the supernatural, and rationality deduces his ethics, AND then, by all accounts, LIVED those principles
Thank you, Jeffrey and Neal. Spinoza can appear daunting so I appreciate how you were both able to make this accessible and relevant.
It's wonderful to find a philosophy professor who is indeed a philosopher, one devoted to wisdom.
On every level what does nature do? It folds and unfolds. It makes copies of what is working and incorporates what works better. At its base it is mindless and at its apex it is mindful. It dances to the harmony of seasons to sustain itself and to evolve a greater unfolding. Perhaps it is unfolding a god-like mind somewhere in the cosmos.
Dr Grossman’s book “The Spirit of Spinoza” is a book that is very much worth buying and reading. Highly recommended.
Awsome interview! I'm surely going to dive deeper in Spinoza's Phylosophy. "If it was good enough for Einstein, it's good enough for me. "
BEST SHOW ON RUclips! Thanks for your hard work Jeffery.
Never stop jeff!! I'm only 26 and I've loved u for almost 10 years! I started with Terence McKenna and john lilly and watched nearly every video since!
*Only those people can understand Spinoza correctly who are guided by God, and they know that Spinoza was not Pantheist but Pure Monotheist. Some people say that he told that "Every thing is God", so he was a pantheist but he never told that "every thing is God" but he said "every thing is in God". These both statements differ each other like darkness differ from light. Many verses of Quran also support what Spinoza said but what Mullahs follow is not from Quran but from millions of fabricated hadiths*
Wow amazing! Dr. Neal is so humble while being so brilliant. Both Neal and Jeffrey smile the entire time, what kind and extraordinary men they are! Thanks so much for sharing your mission to increase the understanding of human consciousness.
It's because they understand it so well, that they manipulate us so good..You should wish they had conscience and empathy for others, which they don't.
What is happening now and what will happen in the future, is due to their decisions regarding humanity.
How many stages of cruelty does one have to go through..
The cruelty is their invention!
Like nazis vs jews..
Congrats for your choices and collaborators..
Great interview! Thank you!
Been an adherent of much of Spinoza’s thinking since I were a lad . Got to say, Mr Mishlove, your sitting posture seems to be excellent.
Extraordinary conversation. We could learn a lot from Grossman not just as an academic philosopher but as a spiritual guide.
Interesting reference to ACIM; would enjoy further expansion on that material. Perhaps an interview with Dr. Jon Mundy would contribute to the NTA program.
I’ve recently reopened ACIM after being introduced to Spinoza. And it’s so funny because I started noticing similarities between these two texts. The first being that this world and what it deems to be important is actually not. And the 2nd that man chooses fear over love because of his belief in fear and the world this fear has created. It is only until you understand that you are choosing fear because the ego has built up a false case that you can realize your priorities are mixed up. I’m still reading Spinoza and I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who saw the reference to ACIM as something that was popping up
Thank you gentlemen: You are Quantum Mechanics ~ Creation ~ Evolution and Entropy
Nice to see Grossman here; I took a course on Spinoza from him at UIC in the 70's.
Thank you for the interview, Neal Grossman is absolutely wonderful :)
Spinoza was one of the greatest, ever! I would mention only Marcus Aurelius as maybe equal!!
Wow, one of the greatest conversations I ever had the privilege of listening too.
Too many religions and philosophies have this pessimistic and apocalyptic/day of reckoning-style worldview. Why can't this world be the ultimate form of reality and the pinnacle of existence? Maybe even our creator's masterpiece?
God is the universe we all take part, it's the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, it's infinite and ever existed.
The present moment is all there is, the now.
Life is God and is wholly, only our minds recall the past through memory stored in the brain and dream of the future, but it doesn't exist. Only the now is real.
God is all the particles of the universe collectively, our bodies are also part of it. To those who destroy the Earth knows he destroy himself.
The truthcontest thepresent
I just bought the book. I like that the author isn’t a Spinoza scholar. Otherwise, he would never be able to take leaps like the near death experiences analogy. Spinoza died young so it’s important for educated modern authors to make inferences, otherwise his work remains confined. I tend to trust his author more than most given his background and appearance of genuine love for Spinoza. I hope not to find a cancerous political message hidden in there as it’s so often the case.
Spinoza's views are very similar to the conceptualization of the Creator and the Creation in the models of Sufism.
Thank you to both of you...
very fascinating talk!
Hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Love. The doctor's book is now on my Amazon wish list.
@@TheSoteriologist Where?
@@TheSoteriologist I actually read your comment the other day, didn't know you are the same person. A glitch stopped me from seeing it again till now. Well, in a sense Christian-Judeo beliefs do regard God as a separate deity, unlike a Buddhist view, no offense to the former. Separate as a glass of water from the ocean is what I mean. A Buddhist, however, would see "God" as in the person himself.
@@TheSoteriologist Your right to disagree. I have mine with New Age thinkers as well.
@@TheSoteriologist I can relate to the motif that Christians and Jews (non-Kabbalists) see God as separate and Buddhists view the higher consciousness in all things. I disagree with New Agers regarding the law of attraction. They overapply it to everything and overgeneralize.
@Myth Tree Indubitably. In the end, it's the lesson we came to earth to learn, to experience, I believe.
I loved this interview!! Grossman’s energy for his subject seems powerful! I have loved the work of Spinoza for decades, and I loved Deluze’ work on him as well. I had somehow missed the “worm in the blood” reference but find it fascinating that a “mystic” in the 1600’s imagined DNA... I also wonder how his contemporaries Edward Kelly and John Dee (and Shakespeare) , perceived his work!! Thanks so very much...
Spinoza was not a mystic, he believed science would set us free, knowledge would set us free from superstition, I believe he was a truly amazing human being
You can be both.
Brother of the Worm yes you can but I do not believe Spinoza was a mystic, have a great day
@@darren.davies3957 Spinoza was the definition of a mystic.
@@mertkusluvan3107 no you are wrong. he was not a mystic and his philosophy shows us why.
Thanks Darren. They are 2 nice guys talking about Spinoza but when they say he was a mystic and when they use the word "he" talking about god as he had intention, like a person... it really surprised me! No god has no intention, we should able to use the word "nature" instead to be clear.
Jewish excommunication or censure was fairly common in very orthodox communities in Amsterdam during Spinoza's life. It is called *herem* or *cherem.* A great novel to read about this is by Irvin Yolam entitled _The Spinoza Problem._
So fascinating that so many great thinkers come to the same understanding, that all is one and that that unity is divine. I’m so glad to understand Spinoza more now...my thanks for yet another ‘enlightening’ (and it is!) interview.
Unity is Reality. I promise, if you'll quiet your mind, for long enough, 5 minutes, 7 years, you will eventually look out and see that 'your' everything your looking at. Gotta be still and quiet though
So I and the serial killer are together in oneness?
@@JavierBonillaCshush 😂😂😂
Love this video powerful thought about emotions HOW to deal with .mind and body thru our intellectual minds to better understand our feelings.
This is right up my street, but I'd like to ask: "is anger a form of suffering?" Anger isn't the same thing as depression.
We all get angry because we think that the world should be different than it is.
Is anger a form of suffering? Ask that question to the Buddha and he would say yes. Of course, the Buddha used the word dukkha to refer to suffering ( it rages from mere disappointment to other despair). Anger isn't the same thing as depression, but it seems to be rooted in sadness. In other words, under our anger is often a sadness we don't want to face. We get a sense of some deep sadness and rather than face it we erupt in rage and anger.
" We never get angry for the reasons we think we do." -ACIM.
In this interview the best advice is given for how to deal with the anger problem. Namely, to sit with the feeling of sadness and allow yourself to experience it. If we feel do this (as most of us do) then we are just contributing to our shadow material. All these repressed feelings build up over time and shadow material becomes our habit energy.
This is why genuine/authentic meditation is essential. We don't know why we got angry because we are not the Knower (of the thing) but we can become the observer and the forgiver.
We need to retrain our mind. Every time we get angry, stop. Feel the sadness under it. And see this as an opportunity for forgiveness. Then we can relinquish our personal views, our desires, our fears (and our ego-story). This forgiveness is a returning to a certain knowledge that we don't know what we don't know and we need not look for someone to blame...
Thank you, Jeffery and all for allowing such wonderful conversations to take place
I find the talk about play-like amnesiac performative roles that we intentionally have chosen/fallen into, paired with the cosmic unity concept, exactly the same lesson psychedelics seem to teach. The similarities are mindblowing.
Yup I've done so much LSD and I knew I knew the truth after learning about Spinoza and how he saw the world. It had made life so much better
Can you expand on what you mean
@@TheCapasio Man, I made that comment 4 years ago so.. not really. I guess I was talking about the feeling of remembrance you can get out of transcendental experiences, as if that's the "real", in contrast to the malaise that is our default state of consciousness. The thing is even if you know both experiences, you can eventually suppress the memory of the former as to re-claim your ego persona, and fall into it. Is comfortable to "know" who you are and where, is functional. The little voice that calls bullshit gets smaller with time, eventually you discard it as that wild thing you did back in the day. You become an amnesiac "god", knowing the reality of unity consciousness but performing as a separate being.
Watched all of it 23:27
Schopenhauer said the only reason Spinoza used the word God was to avoid persecution. Pantheism is a bizarre concept; how is it different from atheism? Saying God is the world is making the word God or world superfluous.
The existence of God and/or gods IS a superfluous concept. That's why people have been debating the existence of god for thousands of years and why most people do not live lives that acknowledge the existence of gods. If god was real, we wouldn't be arguing about it. God is a truly superfluous concept because it can't withstand either empirical or rational explanation and is useless because it has no explanatory power or value. It is an idea that reflects underlaying fear and ignorance and I think you would find that most Trump supporters would call themselves 'god fearing' people:) Don't forget that we invent these terms and then get all confused by the poorly understood definitions we assign (and do not agree to which leads to endless debate about nothing). If there is One universe, defined as everything that exists is, which includes this invisible but apparently real and important god ... then that definition is self evidently true by definition regardless of what god is and including if god is nothing. God is an absurd notion for the completely insane. Its also a big money maker and a powerful technology for tyrants. Better than bit coin.
Great interview. It would seem that as we progress in our own consciousness, understanding the wholeness of creation would be an experience-enabled reality. Now with relationships of consciousness, space and time tethered across dimensions, it would only seem rational that it would be so... experience-enabled.
I love Spinoza, but strongly disagree with Einstein. Einstein believed in a finite universe AND in a universe that had a beginning. Spinoza argues that the universe is infinite and eternal, and I agree with Spinoza. The 2 people argued for entirely different things.
@chris evans You are right that I don't like Einstein. I think he gave very little credit to other scientists, whose ideas he sometimes plagiarized, and I think his theory of relativity is illogical and demonstrably false. I see Einstein as the first 'celebrity scientist', who ushered in a new age of science by thought experiment, rather than science by experiment (aka real science). I have far more time for Michelson, Morley, Sagnac, etc. They were doing real experiments, which makes them real scientists.
Superb. One of the very best discussions that Jeffery has ever had. Thank you Neal Grossman and Jeffery Mishlove.
Thank you.
Beautiful conversation
Loved this. I’ll be looking into Spinoza now. Thank you.
I absolutely loved this. ❤ What a great man. ❤
I was surprised to find my own views coming from a completely different angle as Spinoza’s views, and even some of Dr. Grossman’s views. He described them so well, I am going to get his book. Great minds don’t only think alike. I’ll just leave it at that. 🥰👍🏻 Plato and Spinoza, 😊 and seeing between the lines 😊❤
Great discussion I really enjoined it. Thank you💜
An excellent treatment of Spinoza can be found in The Radical Spinoza. This book was written by a professor of philosophy with an interest in Zen Buddhism. He also encourages the reader to try acquiring Latin. Even two years of high school Latin, a dictionary and a good translation should make this not too difficult.
Spinoza on evil: there is no such thing.
No evil is the classic Jewish position. But there are bad inclinations, by tradition
good/evil are relative to the modes of god; ie, eating the zebra is good for the lion, bad for the zebra... god persists in the entire thing, though.
@@ancapistan but the bottom line though is that you can't have the good or love without the bad / hate.
@@johnstewart7025 Spinoza says we love something which makes us happy and hate it when it doesn't because joy increases our power of acting and sadness decreases it. that movement/speed is real, even if the emotions are relative to that movement.
Evil isn't bad, don't get confused.
Evil only humans can do it because of the devil's mind.
Things like intentional murder, and cruelty is evil, things that happens on the battlefield during a war , torture and so on.
Bad is what we perceive in life we don't accept or like. Like being grown in extremely poverty
I had the privilege of being in Dr Grossman’s class on Plato at UIC. Amazing professor
Thinking has always been allowed, expressing your thoughts not always.
Who said that the Judea-Christian concept of God is that he is separate from creation? The ancient and medieval understating is that we participate in God's being, which obviously means that we are not separate from God. God is wholly other in the sense that we cannot grasp or comprehend God; but he's not wholly other in the sense that he is separate from creation.
No, it does not "obviously" mean that we are not separate from God. Old Testament theology is opposed to this idea strongly.
@@PercyGold-gb8xb The OT has a multiplicity of theologies.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️💜💚 Thank you both! 💪💪💪
What is love? Or what kind of love? People will kill to protect those who they love. Hatred and love are only concepts just like good and bad.
People like to romanticize the word love as just something good, when it is by the grace of love that everything happens in itself.
16:28 the reason I as an atheist don’t come to your conclusion is because we stop at things we don’t have evidence for, you keep saying “it’s gotta be “ that’s classic assumption about things we have zero evidence for
Seems, Spinoza embraced an AMORAL God. That is, the God that created everything, good and bad depending upon your perspective.
God I.S. 01 Self-Creation Time/Yahweh/Naturally/Neutral breathing universe.
There is a succinct difference between Believing and Understanding the G.U.T. ~ feeling.
I was hoping this dialogue would bring us closer in comprehending the truth, turned out to be jargon from beginning to end, I don’t know how my question could reach either, sirs, when it comes to human behaviour why is it that we live in a constant state of conflict, they say that living in the moment is how it should be, so WHY are we being cultured to live OUT of it? Maybe language is not the apt instrument in reaching truth, is there an alternate? Also in all humility would there be a chair at the table for one more, we never know something new may arise. My first of question of significance is, AT WHAT POINT IN A HUMANS LIFE DOES CORRUPTION TAKE PLACE, by way of inculcation, conditioning, doctrine or wrong education.? 🙏. Anyone may answer 🤷🏻♂️
Embrace 10 grams of P.Cubensis, where boundless realms unfurl,
Behold, a taste of transcendence, an experience to truly swirl.
In Spinoza's realm of God and thought, where philosophy takes flight,
We explore the limits of being, unbounded by day or night.
With each sacred sip, perceive the dissolution of self's decree,
Merge with cosmic vibrations, unraveling what it means to be free.
Infinite horizons of consciousness, where limits gently fade,
Spinoza's God whispers truths, in psychedelic serenade.
Let us dance amid philosophical musings, bathed in mystic hue,
Pondering the divine essence, as mind and spirit intertwine anew.
For in this journey beyond boundaries, we touch the eternal core,
And through the lens of P.Cubensis, glimpse the depths of Spinoza's lore.
So, let us honor this fusion of minds, where wisdom and wonder unite,
In Spinoza's godly tapestry, embracing the infinite's cosmic light.
May our shared exploration ignite sparks of insight profound,
And through P.Cubensis' embrace, let boundless wisdom resound
The Road to Eleusis and The Immortality Key, books assisting in fleshing out the mystical experiences these ancients were having-particularly the Greeks for over 2,000+ years. They used hallucinogenics! God is there, just suck down the cocktail and you will see him. Now, if we could just get modern religion to reinstate the worship that Greeks, Romans, early Jews and possibly, early Christians partaked in, then the churches would fill to the brim and humanity would change
I am very sorry to correct you here, Sir! Unity of being is a concept that existed in islam even before the 9th century and especially within the Sufi discipline. Al-Bastami, Al-Hallaj and Ibn Arabi Al-Taai were some of the biggest theologians that brought it up.
Thanks for this episode tho
Spinoza also taught a kind of panENtheism. Nature is "modes" of God but not equal to God.
Good and Bad, God and Yahweh, Words expressed by the G.U.T. feelings,
01-0 Grand Unified Theory.
We are never upset for the Reason we think! Yes, finally, now go one step further and state: We are upset because the breadth of scope of factors that are entirely out of our control, ie ancestral genes, mother's stress hormones will you were a fetus, the 25 year development of your frontal cortex, environmental and cultural factors throughout your life, your diet or lack thereof for the day of your upsetness and BOOM, you have it! Biology baby! Spinoza just called it GOD or the paradox: We are God, God is us.
Affirming positives is love. This is obvious. But negating negates is also love. This is not so obvious. If you affirm negatives you get the same result as negating positives, anti-love or negative love.
This is why pacifist philosophers suffer a lot, because they are trying to defeat negatives with positives. This is like giving candy and flowers to your bully and smiling sincerely after he just beat you up. Einstein talked about militant pacifism. I think Einstein got it right. If Germany and Japan were not defeated in WW2 we'd all be giving flowers and candy to them.
This is just multiplication of negative and positive numbers. Fighting is negative and Injustice is negative but the fighting of injustice is positive (love). The only remaining point is defining injustice. I believe the silver rule is the best definition; don't do to others what you'd not like done to you, namely doing things you'd not like done to you is injustice. This also means that we should not let others do to us what they would not like done to them, we should either fight them or flee. Lastly I see no problem in viewing God as the affirmer of positives those who acted by the silver rule(giving heaven) and the negator of negatives (punishing with hell) those who violated the silver rule, becausing negating of negatives equals positives. The negative stuff people acquired into their minds needs to be scraped off.
I would love to know the professor's thoughts about the Spinoza's critique on free will.
The Universe I.S. an 0n/0f switch, all at 10nce in T.E.N. (the Eternal Now) 010 dimensions.
To me god is something you worship. God is not only the creator, hes also a lawgiver. Without a law, what would it even mean to deify god? What even is god, if theres no right or wrong way to worship it? Whats the actual meaning of godhood from a human perspective? How does such a god answer the big questions in life? If god is the universe, then god is what is, and what is cant tell you what ought to be, as per Hume.
I'm not sure Spinoza's philosophy is more eastern as it is based on Jewish Rationalism in its earliest form. In it, God isnt viewed seperate from creation, but rather God is seen as manifest in the material universe but also having infinite attributes beyond it. This panenthestic (as opposed to pantheist) view of God is as Jewish as it gets.
In both early Jewish schools of rationalism and Spinoza's writings, God is ultimately seen as all their is. Everything material and immaterial is simply OF God.
Just as a wave is seemingly independemt for a short time, but of the same essence and never really seperate from the sea from which it emminates, so is it with everything and God
The only real difference is that Spinoza did not subscribe to the idea that one manifestation God is personal.
Does the body create the cells of which it is comprised ?
Or do the cells create, repair, maintain, replace other cells on the level of cellular automata with communication / interaction with other cells and the body is merely the aggregation of the collection of cells ?
Like anthills or bee hives are the aggregation of the individual members performing special functions as directed by phenomenal messaging
Spinoza understood God, rather than believing in God.
Everything that I.S. Information System.
I don't know about being free from emotions, I know sometimes I don't give attention to things or emotions because I don't feel it at that moment.
Spinoza's god a described here has no theology, only a deity. It is atheist, having no theism.
Two terms have different meanings: God, and attributes of God
closer to Taoism then western religions.
It's also nice to listen to those who cherish honesty.
Thanks for interview.l bought that book and I am reading it now
I love people but I dislike a lot of their behavior.
When considering I have a biome makes me a we in spinoza's whole of we.
Neal is the cutest older man I've ever seen! I'd marry him in a hot second.
Is life chemistry and the mind these questions and answers add to my understanding of who we are
Thought (God) I.S. Neutral good and bad.
The caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it...
Yahweh Is Uni-verse ~ 010. From 0 we come to 01 we go.
🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
All eyes are the eyes of the self-creating /Yahweh.
The universe is a prefect machine made of imperfect parts.
If it is good enough for ryan stein it good enough for me.
Great guest, coherent conversation. Thank you Jeffrey
Spinoza's explanation of God is what he tells those who insist there has to be a God. You can't pray to Spinoza's God unless you
think praying to everything has value, and you can't expect Spinoza's God to talk to you. This "everything there is in the universe is God"
means that there is no God and if you're hung up on having a God, you are side tracked. If you ask if there is a God, you are wasting your
precious time in a short life. There are things to pay attention to, like people you relate with, the nature of your physical world, your
thoughts and your subconscious, and your behavior. And there are the practical things in life, like career, personal economics, morality,
ethics and kindness.
Now that is a meaningful conversation
Brilliant discussion. Thnx.
18:00 ish
42:00 too attached
Outstanding video, I'm an engineer and was drawn to Spinoza due to Einstein's quote, as well. Professor Neal does a brilliant job of describing the philosophy of Spinoza. Liked and Subscribed. Thank You for this high quality content!
0:50 a radiantly sparkling smile !
May I recommend Steven Nadler’s “Think Least of Death” it’s the most comprehensive breakdown of Spinoza’s Ethics I’ve come across
Before reading Ethics by Spinoza I would consider reading ' On the Improvement of Understanding', probably his earliest work, but never finished. He tries to paint a whole picture from ontology to ethics in Ethics, like the Bible does, but by means of reason. I would not consider him a rationalist, because he has also written about the complexities of affects, and already saw that a person can only substitute one affect for the other. You cannot just stop feeling, but you can test your feelings and idea's through means of reason. Resulting in another affect. This idea is so futuristic that it almost the same as cognitive therapy, where for instance fears are substituted for reasonable thoughts by means of testing them rationally
Is it odd that I dislike the philosophy of Spinoza and Descartes?
For me, rationalism's flaw is its assumption that order is a fundamental property. I think it's an emergent property.
@N30N 0M3N It appears so. Quantum theory has made numerous verified predictions, so it seems reasonably sound. The fundamental nature of the universe seems to be random and paradoxical, ergo no rationalist Prime Mover.
No, not odd at all. The thoughts of guys like these is the foundation upon which we built our western society. I do like Grossman's sweet style, but I jerked at his words about all emotions being "bad" (after just having stated that Spinoza didn't differentiate between good and bad), so that the most enlightened state would be a totally "rational" mind. Well, what does "ratio" mean, really? I think the devil's in the detail here. We modern beings totally "rationally" and "intellectually" and "void of emotionally" destruct the very ground we are living off. Is that rational? I think there is some kind of over-arching rhythm to ideas like these. It's interesting and worthwhile to learn about the philosophy of these intellectuals, but their time is gone. We need new heros who can understand, contemplate and divulge knowing about our own time.
.. While at the same time I hold the philosophies of Ibn al-Arabi and Rumi in very high regard
What like or dislike has to do with philosophy? You either have an argument for or against a certain philosophical argument. Philosophy is not your damn spinach pudding!
seems to have no awareness of epigenetic dna communication. A very big issue.
Why would that be relevant to a discussion about Spinoza?
I've been drawn to Spinoza's teachings for the past year, but I couldn't distill why. I think Neil and Jeffrey succeeded in distilling Spinoza's contribution to peace of mind in a subtle and precise way. I'm so glad I discovered this channel, this interview and this book😊
Overly happy people bum me out. Whenever a person beaming with happiness engages me in conversation, I look for an exit.
Can't they have a back pain, sleep impairment, maybe an itchy crotch, a daughter or son with pink hair, anything to take the edge
off of their outwardly radiating happiness?
Not sure I understand Mr Grossman at around 14:40 . How is one to understand the term " Universe " ? Surely it is not a top down picture - the one he describes . Rather things are creative , indeed ultimately creative of all other things ? The universe does not exist either from the top down or the bottom up. All of the things that exist that are things that exist are ultimately ( that is , in the final analysis ) responsible for the sum total of existence ( because, being existent they are , prima facie, part of the description or constitution of all things that exist and of all existence as a whole ) - not any one of them in particular is ultimately causa sui or sui generis but only all of them , together, as a whole . Each one part contains as a condition of itself the property to be itself precisely because it is a part of the whole thing ( all existence ) that does actually exist and it does so precisely in the manner of its existence ( that is, the precise nature of its existence ). Consecutively, the whole thing ( existence as a whole ) has ultimately the property to be itself ( that is , in the form that it is or rather actually may be ) especially because all of its infinitesimal parts of it are precisely what they are and each of them not another thing than they are.
The whole of everything , Spinoza's Nature, Spinoza's God , is the only thing that could possibly ( reasonably ) be a possible cause of itself for the reasoned fact that anything finite is unlikely to be capable of absolute self generation since in some sense or another sense all finite things rely on other things so that they can be. Nonetheless , each thing that does indeed exist must by definition contribute to the ultimate nature of whatever that thing is that is the whole thing that might be , that is to say, Nature/God/Universe.
I admit no great familiarity with his work but I speculate that the thinking of David Bohm may be of some use in clarifying what it is the fuck I am trying to say.
OMG!!! Neal!! I took philosophy classes with you at UIC back in the late 70s! So good to hear you on the topic of Spinoza, one of my favorite philosophers! Hope you are well.
That helps me understand but i might have to listen to it again thank you.
This is beauty.