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What's on the menu at Lucid Cafe? Stories of transformation; healing journeys; thought-provoking conversations about consciousness, shamanism, psychology, ethics. Hosted by Wendy Halley of Lucid Path Wellness & Healing Arts.
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hello, and welcome back to the Lucid Cafe. And if you're a new listener, thanks so much for tuning in. Well, folks, this season is winding down. We have one more episode before my annual podcast summer break.
Wendy:But if you're hungry for a different kind of thought provoking conversation you can check out the new podcast I've started with my friend Sarah Finley called Realms of Curiosity with Sarah and Wendy. Each episode is a candid unscripted conversation exploring shamanism, consciousness, intuition, dreams, otherworldly experiences, and the mysteries of being human in a rapidly changing world. We don't claim to have answers because we don't. Instead we follow our curiosity into the unknown, questioning, exploring, and inviting you to do the same. Because in times like these curiosity might be one of the most powerful tools we have.
Wendy:You can find realms of curiosity on YouTube and all major podcast platforms. A link is in the show notes. In today's episode I speak with world renowned consciousness teacher Peter Russell about his new book, How to Meditate Without Even Trying. Our conversation gets right to the heart of why meditation is so challenging and ways to address these challenges. So it turns out it's not just me.
Wendy:Peter is on the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He's a fellow of the World Business Academy and the Findhorn Foundation and an honorary member of the Club of Budapest. He's also the author of 11 other books including Letting Go of Nothing and From Science to God. At Cambridge University in The UK, Peter studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind, he changed to experimental psychology.
Wendy:Pursuing this interest he traveled to India to study meditation and Eastern philosophy and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation. So please enjoy my conversation with Peter Russell. Peter, thank you so much for joining me.
Peter:Thank you. I'm looking forward to this.
Wendy:Well, me too, because the title of your latest book is kind of a tall order. How to Meditate Without Even Trying. So I was intrigued by this title because I am a shitty meditator. I'm gonna put it out there, folks.
Peter:And Probably because you're trying.
Wendy:Exactly. And that's partially also the way my brain is wired, I think is makes it a little challenging. But that's what I wanted to really get into, which is the theme of your book, The Trying Piece. So why don't we just jump off right there. Tell me about how we got to this place where we end up trying to meditate.
Wendy:What's your thought on that through all of your experience and teaching and I
Peter:think there's several factors one is just we are conditioned into this idea you know if at first you don't succeed try try again it's like is there an and that's true in many many areas of life that's really true if you're training for something learning a new skill yeah the thing is with meditation that the meditations I'm interested in first of all let me just make that clear I'm interested in meditations that allow the mind to settle down to become quiet and become more peaceful be in the present moment. There are many meditations where you know they're very they involve concentration and other things and they may involve trying so there's no when we're concerned with just letting the mind relax and settle down trying gets in the way because it actually makes the mind more tense. Just as soon as you're trying, you're focusing the attention. And I see the essence of meditation is letting the attention relax. And so the trying in a way is going the opposite direction from relaxing the mind and coming back to a peaceful state.
Peter:It's it just gets totally in the way. But I think what what happens very often is people they start meditating and they're not doing very well and so they try a little bit harder and they go to their teacher if maybe their teacher says well you know I told you it was difficult you've to try harder
Wendy:so reinforcing that idea yeah
Peter:that idea yeah I'm being maybe that's unfair to meditation teachers but I think that's very much in our culture if you're not very good at meditation you're not trying hard enough
Wendy:I think that's fair yeah
Peter:yeah yeah we're putting you're putting effort into it And so yeah, go on.
Wendy:I was just gonna say it and the idea of like, well, now I have to try to relax into it. Yeah. I mean, that is is it could be a setup if you have that mindset of trying.
Peter:Right. Yeah I think I mean just taking an example that we all know if you've got you know a muscle cramp or something or some other tension if you try to relax it it often just you know gets worse if you just sort of let go breathe and just allow your whole self to relax it goes away and this is really allowing just allowing the mind to relax.
Wendy:Right and you just gave a great example of your body trying to give you a big clue, forcing you to relax so that you can get out of pain. Yes. Because you can't try to get out of pain. You just have to like in a cramp situation, you have to allow it to relax. Right.
Wendy:The more tense you become, the more the cramp increases its pain
Peter:right
Wendy:that's a good analogy so I guess if you could apply that to your mental state somehow
Peter:exactly yes yes yeah I often just I mean coming back to that thing with the body if you just I mean what I found personally I mean it's made up of universally true but if I get a cramp in my leg the way to let it relax is to feel it not to try and get rid of it or push it away but to actually get into okay what's it like what's this cramp like because as you say it's a message it's a message to us it's a pain it's a message and so I sort of get in tune with it and just like okay what do you like what do you feel like ah okay that's who you are and usually it just begins to soften and go.
Wendy:Yeah. So it's there for a reason. It's trying to communicate something to you. So yeah, the idea of making friends with it rather than trying to get rid of it.
Peter:Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. I guess break up with it.
Peter:Yeah.
Wendy:To use a bad analogy. So did it take you because I know in your book, you talk about your journey to discovering a lot of this and getting to a place of really wanting to simplify the process for us Westerners who make things much more complicated than we need it to be. Yes. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about that journey for yourself, like the arc of that experience of starting to meditate and then bumping up against some of these challenges and the insights you came to through the process that helped you get to where you're at right now?
Peter:Right yes initially I had no interest in meditation or anything quote spiritual I was a mathematician then doing theoretical physics at Cambridge in England and doing fine but but there's this niggling thing in my mind the whole time it's like why are we conscious what is consciousness and
Wendy:I Great realized question.
Peter:And no amount of theoretical physics was ever going to answer that in fact physicists would be much happier if there's no such thing as consciousness.
Wendy:I bet.
Peter:It's inexplicable but it's undeniable and so I started moving in that direction, studied psychology a bit, but that they weren't interested in consciousness. I learned a lot about the brain and then I realized the way to study consciousness is the way that spiritual people have done it, the yogis, people you know recluses, which is actually you go inside and observe your own consciousness. And that's what and I thought, oh, that's That's meditation. And so I started getting interested in meditation, tried a few things, and then came across transcendental meditation. And this was back in the late sixties, which was getting a lot of attention then, and that worked for me.
Peter:And one of the core principles in transcendental meditation, often called TM, is effortlessness. It's being completely effort, and so allowing the mind to gently unwind of its own accord as soon as any effort to say it tightens up again. And so I I was teaching TM for a number of years and then just began just continuing on my own and did some mindfulness work, but all along that attitude of complete effortless stayed with me, and being a scientist I'm not one to take anything on faith. You know it's like does it make sense, is it true for me? And so I started experimenting with my own meditation and looking at ways to really help it be completely effortless and allow me to go deeper and so that's what I've been doing maybe in the last twenty years is just really exploring that personally and then in this book I just wanted to bring together everything I've learned.
Wendy:The process of effortlessness, was it this sort of jerky experience where you had to recognize what effort felt like in order to back out of it?
Peter:No, that is, that is one thing that I touch upon in the book you can do. And that's when you, when you notice you're putting effort, when you do notice that, and usually notice it because there's some tension somewhere or maybe sort of tension in the mind or something, you notice that, then usually just by noticing it, bring it into awareness, it will relax. You know, like the muscle relax. The effort will relax. But the main thing isn't about trying to spot effort.
Peter:It's about a process which is in itself doesn't involve any effort. Learning a process which doesn't involve concentrating the mind I mean even in mindfulness when you start mindfulness there's that intention to to be with a certain experience often begin as it be with the breath be with the breath and that easily becomes, you know, translated in the practitioner's mind as, you know, focus on the breath, concentrate on the breath, or, so the effort creeps in, effort creeps in almost invisibly.
Wendy:Yeah it's tricky.
Peter:Yeah it is and that's one of the things it is tricky and so part of what the practice is is noticing noticing when that happens to yourself but more it's just starting off in a completely effortless way I mean and noticing what's happening I mean usually I just suggest to people the first thing to do is just take a few deep breaths you know because as soon as we sit down to meditate out we're busy and things you take a few deep breaths I mean I just noticed my body just going ah.
Wendy:It's very true yeah it's like your nervous system gets the message everything's okay call off the troops yeah start from square one
Peter:yes and so that's the beginning and that doesn't take any effort it just takes the the intention the remembering just take a few deep breaths
Wendy:yes because you're doing it all the time it's just now do it deeper
Peter:yeah Yeah. Now, consciously breathing like a sigh. It's almost like taking a sigh as a sort of sign to the body or the mind, everything's okay. Right now, everything's okay. I don't have to worry about anything.
Peter:And then just being aware of what's happening in the moment okay not trying to concentrate on anything but not like being aware concentrating on some aspect of the present moment but just opening like oh here I am, here's my body, here's sensations in the body, oh there's a bird singing, but not trying to focus it or label it, just being sort of just innocently gently aware And of what usually happens to people then is that's fine, but after a short while, the mind comes in, what people call the monkey mind. You're off thinking some thought or other, or series of thoughts. And either because you might seem important or interesting, and then you come to this period where you, this point where you wake up, right, in a sense. You just realize, oh, people say, oh dear God, I've been thinking. I shouldn't have been doing that.
Wendy:Meaning that you slipped into it and you weren't aware that you slipped into it but until you became aware that you slipped into
Peter:it yeah because when you're when you're slipped into it you're engrossed in it because it seems important in some way and then when you realize you've slipped into thinking in a way as you've already become present again you become present to the fact you were thinking.
Wendy:Right and you bring up a really great point in your book which I want to highlight and that is the idea of thinking of thinking as a habit.
Peter:Yeah.
Wendy:And when you think of thinking as a habit, then it takes on a whole different, has a whole different flavor to it. Meaning that the lack of awareness, I think a lot of us like to fancy ourselves as being very involved with our thinking, like we're really engaged with our thinking process and we don't realize that we're probably not that involved with it, that it's happening just in the background, in the foreground, in the middle ground. Right? Does that make any
Peter:sense? Yes. It's going on, but we don't pay we're sort of engrossed in it, but don't notice it too much. And by the way this is not to say that thinking is not good, mean thinking is a great human, it makes us what we are.
Wendy:It has its place, yeah.
Peter:It has its place but not in meditation and yet it will keep coming up because it's a habit it'll keep coming up and so when you you realize you've been thinking what people call the monkey mind and they think I've gone wrong I'm no good at meditation blah blah blah.
Wendy:Said it already yep.
Peter:And tried and tried to you know stop it, they try to conquer it or stop it or say oh I must do better next time, must keep my mind on the present moment and stop the thoughts coming in whatever, it's completely natural and you know brain studies have shown it's it's completely natural thing to happen and what you do then in my practice is very simple you just make the choice not to follow that thought any further which is basically withdrawing your attention from the thought you know so there I was engrossed in some thought about what I'm going to say to somebody in a meeting and I noticed that and just like okay instead of trying to stop it just pulling back no longer interested in that thought for now it may come back again but right now I'm not interested in it. Just withdraw the attention. Just choosing not to follow it. And the present reemerges because your attention had been caught up in the thought, and so you're off on that. Now, you take your attention away from the thought, the thought was blocking your experience at the moment, taking your attention away from the thought and here I am, here's my body or here there's that bird again, whatever it is.
Wendy:So all those sensory experiences come to the fore ground then if you're in the moment right?
Peter:Yes.
Wendy:Your physicality, this sounds, sights, smells.
Peter:Whatever's happening in the present moment yes you're aware of again because it was being pushed out you weren't really aware of it when you were thinking because the attention can really only be on one thing at a time. If the attention was on a thought, it wasn't you weren't paying attention to your body or what was going on. So when you take the attention away from the thought, then the attention because the thought is taking us away from the present moment, it's nearly always about the past or the future in some way. Take our attention away from it. It's like the present reemerges, you just notice it.
Wendy:It's such a simple point, but it's a really deep, great point that you're making. Right? And how often do we think about it like that?
Peter:Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. We don't have control of much. I don't think that's at least the conclusion I've come to over the years. But one thing we do have control of is where we point our focus.
Peter:Exactly.
Wendy:And how often are we exercising that Yeah. Control.
Peter:Yeah. I think that's the one I mean, don't get into the whole philosophy of this, but I think that's the one point where we do have a sort of free choice is what what we attend to, where we place the attention.
Wendy:Right. Exactly. No. Yeah. The whole free will thing is tricky territory as
Peter:well. Yeah.
Wendy:Depending on where you
Peter:come So so basically, we don't have any choice about what thoughts arise.
Wendy:Yeah. Where do they even come from? That's that's another interesting topic. Yeah.
Peter:But we do have a choice to retire our attention from that particular thought. That's I think that's the choice we have.
Wendy:I like that language to retire our attention. Yeah. Give it a gold watch and some golf clubs.
Peter:Yeah. And so the point about this, it doesn't take that doesn't take any effort. It just takes a decision, a choice. That's all. And and you come and so you haven't done anything to become present.
Peter:It's just the present has reemerged in your awareness, because there's no longer a distraction taking you away.
Wendy:Right. So, yeah, so there's an awareness that you're not in the present, and then a shifting focus back into the present. And then I imagine just the repetition of that to try to create a new habit of trying to be more present?
Peter:They they're more trying, you see, comes in again so easily.
Wendy:Yeah. Guilty
Peter:It's in their language. Yeah. I would say it just it starts it starts becoming a natural a more natural practice. It's it's just like, you don't need to try. You just learn you just learn this is what you do.
Peter:You just no longer follow the thought.
Wendy:Okay. So how important do you think it is to have the desire to do this to be successful?
Peter:That's an interesting question. I mean, obviously we have the desire to meditate, actually, the desire to make us sit down on a cushion or chair and actually meditate, in that sense. The desire I would use the word I like the word intention better.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:Intention. So I think when, when I sit to meditate, you know, having settled down, there is then the intention, but it's not even a conscious intention anymore, but earlier I said it's just an intention that when I notice I've drifted off on some thought, then the intention is just to withdraw the attention from that thought, to retire the attention, and and that's it, and then that happens, and then I'm off on another thought and do the same and then as you repeat that process gradually the mind settles down of its own accord because you're not feeding it with anything whilst focus on anything you find the mind just settles down and so the meditation just naturally becomes deeper or quieter as you do it.
Wendy:And and for you achieving that that present moment experience, what is the appeal of that? Why would that be more advantageous in your everyday experience or as much as possible in your meditative experience than not having that experience?
Peter:Right. Well, firstly, it's enjoyable. When you're just when you're just in the present moment, just quietly there and not even focusing on anything just like ah I like this it's peaceful
Wendy:it feels nice yeah
Peter:yeah it feels nice and that that alone is worth it just though if we're stressed up busy day worrying about this or that to actually sit back and just go ah this is nice this is this is what I need this is the break I need is valuable in itself but then also we come back into life everyday life, with something's coming back with us into life, that sense of ease, that sense of peace is coming back into life and we begin to just see things more clearly. We're not so caught up in our thoughts. I mean as you go on through the day you know it all comes back, but you're learning in a way to practice the same thing in life And so you've I found because I'm seeing things more clearly, I'm making better decisions about things.
Wendy:Makes perfect sense. Yeah.
Peter:And so my life is and there's, you know, there's also lots of evidence, scientific evidence now on the effects on health and various other things, and relationships and stuff. There's lots of areas where it's beneficial. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. As I was reading your book and the conclusions I've been coming to in my own work about, especially the state of the world now and how I'm describing it as noisy, a lot of mental and emotional noise that people are having internally. And, of course, it can be palpable if you're sensitive person. You can just feel it. It's like out Yeah.
Wendy:There in the world. And when you have a lot of that internal noise, it can be extremely difficult to get that clarity that you're talking about. Yeah. So Yeah. Meditation is a pathway to get that clarity because if you want, you also have a really lovely chapter on intuition that to me, if if you can quiet the noise that will allow you to hear and access your intuition, your intuition.
Wendy:But it's always there, but if the noise is getting in the way, you can't quite grasp it or pick up on it or get those messages, that clarity.
Peter:Yeah.
Wendy:So another reason to to not try, but Now now I'm gonna be the word police for myself.
Peter:Good. It's it's important. I think it's important.
Wendy:It is. You're right. Because language matters. Yeah. Words matter.
Peter:And we fall into when we say it, there's an implication of what it means. It's a habit that we use the word.
Wendy:Oh, yeah. You're unconscious. We'll we'll take that very seriously. We have to try now. Yes.
Wendy:Okay. Let's try.
Peter:And let's come back to what you were saying before I interrupted.
Wendy:Oh, no. No. Just the the idea that we have access to great wisdom
Peter:Yes.
Wendy:If we can get out of our own way
Peter:Yes.
Wendy:And and quieting that internal noise is the only way, I think, that you can access it. But you have to realize that you have all of this internal noise to begin with, but most of us, it becomes a baseline. We don't even realize how loud it is. It's just and it comes across in symptoms of high stress and bad communication or conflict or whatever.
Peter:Yes. And most of that noise, I mean, some of it is when it's extremely it's actually physical noise, it's a background tension in the body. And so that's part of it when you're relaxing the mind like this you'll notice in meditation, the body begins to relax as well. But a lot of that noise is mental noise is thought noise is worrying about this worrying about that getting upset about this or angry about that or whatever it is wishing the leader of our country would do something different
Wendy:oh I hadn't noticed oh god
Peter:sorry no
Wendy:man just gotta say
Peter:it yeah and so in meditation we're just not getting caught up in those thoughts anymore getting less getting caught up in them less and less as the meditation progresses so you may start what I call a fizzy mind just being busy and just gradually it settles down and and that's when you you know you touch into the the quietness the peace when you're stopped when you're no longer disturbing the peace by all the thoughts because I would say, don't know, but I would guess 99% of our thoughts are not ones that actually encourage peace of mind. We may have a few, but most of them are actually disturbing our peace of mind.
Wendy:Absolutely. And if you took an inventory of your thoughts, the content of your thoughts, it would probably be a lot of repetition of not very pleasant things.
Peter:Yeah. Or worrying things. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But coming back to the intuition, yes, I agree I think we have an incredible sense of intuition.
Peter:See it you know more in animals. I think we sort of we don't have we don't access it so much because we're so busy in the thinking mind and when when the mind becomes quiet that intuition it comes it's there as you say it's there the whole time but it it's a quiet voice and so the mind needs to be quiet in order to hear that quiet voice of the intuition and that's you know usually like it isn't even words it comes through as impulses more often. It's just like an impulse to whatever it is. Go somewhere or something sometimes you even that that's like wow, that was really important, I did that, it could be on that level. But I also
Wendy:Branding too, yeah.
Peter:Yeah, meditation, what I talk about in meditation is that our inner knowing can actually spot when we're trying a little. It's like the inner knowing in the background, oh Pete's Peter's just getting into trying again. And so what I found a really useful way to sort of access my inner knowing is to ask it a question
Wendy:and
Peter:so but a very open ended but I'm not asking me I'm not asking me my conscious ego mind so the question typically might be something well a very simple one is could I be even more relaxed and then just then just not try to answer with my mind because that would just laying it as a seed with the attitude could I just possibly maybe be more relaxed and
Wendy:then it almost sounds like a dare
Peter:yeah and then just and then just wait and then often what happens is the answer comes through as my body beginning to relax more or something in my mind relaxing so the answer doesn't come through in words it comes through as as a shift in my being in some way
Wendy:I love that. Yeah. Do you do you think that the reason why meditation is so challenging could be kind of a byproduct of our culture, like the Western way of being and how we're so externally focused as opposed to internally focused from an early age?
Peter:I don't know. I mean, my experience I mean, my own experience real experience of other cultures is India. And from what I know, they have the same problems.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:And the same challenges, and a lot of the a lot of the teachings, I mean the few I come across, do involve concentration and effort and things. So I think a lot of it is in the teachings there.
Wendy:Okay. So it could be just potentially a universal, for lack of a better word, discipline that we could all benefit from if we put our focus in that direction?
Peter:Yes. Practice rather than discipline.
Wendy:Okay. Yes. And nobody likes that word. I know. It's I think
Peter:it will benefit almost everyone I mean there there are cases I'm in contact with someone at the moment these people who do not have thoughts they that they don't have any internal verbal representation of anything It's, it's weird. There's just a few cases that I'm actually communicating, actually with the wife of someone who's, has this.
Wendy:So this is an individual that, like these are people who just, way their brains work, they do not have thoughts.
Peter:They do not have thoughts the way their brains work. And so meditation doesn't, in a sense, have anything to work on in that way. He seems generally much more at peace. She says, but he still gets upset at things which to me is completely natural. Mean getting upset, getting angry at something is at its root, it's a biological reaction.
Peter:This is not good for me so he still gets upset but doesn't then hold on to the upset because his mind isn't going three days later that's silly whatever he's putting or
Wendy:imagining a scenario that could be upsetting just right conjuring it
Peter:Right.
Wendy:Which is not a reaction. It would be a conjuring. Yeah. Yeah. Which is what most of us do.
Peter:So leaving aside these unusual cases, yes, I think it is something that we could all value To one degree, I mean, people just naturally more relaxed, in their attitudes to the world. Other people, the a types are just on it, on it, on it. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. I wondered, yeah, how much mindset has to do with it too. Like, just beliefs. I think beliefs color so much. I don't know if you see it that way, but
Peter:Oh, yes. Every yes.
Wendy:Pessimistic versus an optimistic mindset, for example, is a really lame kind of black and white example, but
Peter:Yeah. Yeah. Colors. Mindset behind almost everything. Mean, they really they affect the way we not the way we perceive the world so much, the way we evaluate the world, the way we judge what's happening.
Peter:They they can have quite deep influences, mindset, in terms of how how you frame what you see.
Wendy:I would love to take a little deep dive, if you don't mind, into what you've discovered about
Peter:at least
Wendy:your because this topic no one really knows, as you pointed out a little while ago, but what have you learned about consciousness in your studies and your practice so far?
Peter:Time for another show?
Wendy:Just real quick, you know, just
Peter:real quick.
Wendy:Just teasing
Peter:I think we talked a lot about already about meditation and and the attention and that's why I'm following up a lot more how the role of attention in consciousness and so that's something but also I've been really interested in the sort of philosophical side what is consciousness where does consciousness come from the brain and that's been a question I've been fascinated by really ever since I had that sort of shift away from physics like
Wendy:that's what I was curious about yes do you have that more mechanistic kind of perspective yeah or has it shifted or
Peter:it shifted it shifted about thirty years ago it shifted, and I realised, well, first of all, scientists study consciousness, they study the brain, and they find that, you know, if you switch off this part of the brain, consciousness is affected or whatever or here we can trace you know when a person had this experience they heard this noise we can see that trace in the brain of how they heard the noise so there's no doubt in my mind other people might doubt it there's no doubt in my mind that what appears in our consciousness is determined by the brain. I mean, I'm leaving aside for a moment, you know, extra sensory stuff, etcetera. That's an open question in terms of how it whatever. But for most of us, in most of our daily life, what we are conscious of is dependent upon the brain's functioning. Now, there's actually two questions here, which they always confuse together.
Peter:The first question is, does the brain affect consciousness? And my answer would be yes. Does the brain create consciousness? And this is where it gets really tricky. Because they call this the hard problem of consciousness.
Wendy:That's right. David Chalmers. Yeah.
Peter:Yeah. How does this lump of gray matter actually lead to an inexperience? Why does it all just go on? I mean, Chalmers says in the dark and so to speak all that processing go on but why does it lead to this this experience I'm having right now and there's nothing that can account in science for subjective experience in itself nothing and so the view I've come to is it's pre existing, it exists in all life basically, all life is aware, is conscious.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:Very simple life you may have a very, very simple awareness of the world and, you know, as the brains have evolved and different structures in the brain, the consciousness has become more complex. And because we've added thoughts to it, it's even more complex.
Wendy:Very true.
Peter:Yeah. So I take the view that consciousness is there already. It's in the end, it's an aspect of the cosmos. And, but I would, but definitely of life. But I mean, to be in an aspect of life, it has to actually still be there originally anyway and I think life sort of amplifies it.
Peter:So that's the view I have and slowly more and more of the philosophers scientists who are now looking at consciousness are coming around to that point of view that the consciousness itself is pre existing. I think David Chalmers himself has come around to that view and some other
Wendy:people right Yeah. Yeah. No. It it is truly a mystery. Right?
Wendy:And I was wondering how much the evolution of our thinking about it has been informed by your direct experience doing meditation and any other consciousness altering experiences you've had may have had over the years?
Peter:Not directly.
Wendy:No. Okay.
Peter:I think it's more been a sort of
Wendy:More of an intellectual exercise?
Peter:Yes. I mean, I you know, when I see it I don't have a dog now. When I had a dog, it was impossible not to see it as a conscious being.
Wendy:Very true.
Peter:And I get into empathetic relationships, but the dog clearly had better intuition than me, because it wasn't clouded up with thoughts. But then, know, most people, where do you draw the line? I would accept that, you know, fish are conscious, like vertebrates. Where do you draw the line? Are spiders conscious?
Peter:And so I'm just seeing, beginning to see consciousness in every scene. It's like seeing, if you say, you know, to acidic spiders are conscious, but flies aren't. What happens between a
Wendy:Yeah, do you draw the line?
Peter:Where do draw the line? And you can't draw the line anywhere, so it has to go all the way down.
Wendy:Oh, there's interesting studies being done on plants as well. Yeah. Fungi, trees.
Peter:Yes.
Wendy:All kinds of fauna. Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. It's it's it's getting really interesting, I think.
Peter:Yes. And just slowly, gradually, more and more people are coming around to seeing it this way.
Wendy:Which is
Peter:the way that, you know, ancient traditions have seen it all along.
Wendy:Right. But but they were much more in tune with the natural world. Yes. And that's kind of more where my western mind question was coming from. There was a point, it seems to me, that we kind of disengage from the natural world and
Peter:Thank you. And
Wendy:and that lack of interrelationship with the natural world. I think I mean, if you look at the ancient medicines that were created plant medicines, you would ask the shamans, they talk to the plants, the plants were the source of the recipes for how to use these medicines to help to help the humans.
Peter:Yeah. They
Wendy:can Which is very interesting way of looking at so that suggests that the plants have a consciousness and that they have an intelligence that can be communicated with, which suggests that earlier humans had a much different relationship with the world around them than we contemporary humans do now, which, yes, kind of a lost thing, but maybe we're coming back around?
Peter:Some people are.
Wendy:To a degree, at least opening the door to Yeah. Like, oh, that's a possibility. Yeah.
Peter:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:Does sound crazy. I mean, you take it on its face, especially from a very scientific standpoint, it's like, that sounds batshit to be able to communicate with the consciousness of a plant or an animal.
Peter:Right. Yep.
Wendy:But maybe not.
Peter:Just because, you know, in a scientific materialistic worldview, there isn't the possibility for that, and so it's excluded. In fact, last month, there was an issue of Scientific American on consciousness.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:And we went through 20, I think it was 21 different theories of consciousness, all about how the brain creates consciousness. Oh, okay. As an aside, they said some people are looking at, you know, we've been talking about, panpsychism.
Wendy:Yes.
Peter:But that's a really, you know, that's not a scientific approach at all.
Wendy:Yeah. That was more of a footnote, I guess. Right?
Peter:Was. There was one paragraph somewhere. Dismissing it. Dismissing it.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, it's interesting too, because I suspect the ways in which early humans have made these connections is through an altered state of sorts of sorts. Right? So a meditative practice using plant medicines to alter consciousness, like psychedelics. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. So basically doing what you're talking about, what you're a proponent of is getting quiet inside so that you can perceive more.
Peter:Yes. Yeah.
Wendy:Of yourself and the rest of the world. Yeah.
Peter:Yeah. And even, you know, when I'm doing other practices, plant medicines or something just to, I want to just be in a meditative state to fully explore what is happening, what's being shown.
Wendy:Which makes perfect sense, and that kind of is what led me to the question about direct experience, like if you had had any direct experiences that sort of said, maybe there's more to all of this than my thinking had allowed me to see before. Oh, And and now that I've had these experiences, like, it's a lot richer maybe than
Peter:Yeah, yes, yes. I wouldn't say they converted my thinking, like trees, I mean I have where I used to live this tree and one one time I was having this wonderful connection with this tree. But it wasn't like, oh wow, trees are conscious. Like I'd already accepted that in my mind. It's just like, oh, this is, you know, this is how it can manifest.
Peter:This is what it can feel like.
Wendy:Ah, so it just allowed that that connection to happen. Is that what you mean?
Peter:It it allowed Because
Wendy:you're in that It
Peter:the experience of connection to my consciousness. It allowed me to experience the connection.
Wendy:I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Thanks for indulging me in that that little side trip.
Peter:No. It's it's good one. I'm glad you wanted to go go there.
Wendy:Oh, yeah. No. I mean, the the name of my podcast is Lucid Cafe. So I I love the word lucid.
Peter:Yep.
Wendy:So how to meditate without even trying?
Peter:Yeah.
Wendy:Keyword being trying, effortless meditation. So are you still actively teaching people how to meditate?
Peter:A little. With the book coming out I'm going to revitalise some online teaching I was doing a lot of my in person teaching various groups and things died with Covid. People didn't want to come along and I didn't like working with these groups particularly online and I did I have a few local groups which I'm reactivating again now, now people got over the idea of getting together in groups so but a lot of that stopped then.
Wendy:Yeah it's a sad thing.
Peter:Yeah.
Wendy:Well I'm glad to hear that it's starting it back up again.
Peter:Yes I want to get into doing more of it online.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:Particularly with the book coming out now is to help people when people read the book. It still takes you know, they can lead they can lead a lot of advice or find advice helpful, they come across questions what I do if this happens and so yeah.
Wendy:No it's a very helpful book, really helpful book and it's not a tome, It's a it's a short book packed with lots of really good information. So what's the best way for folks to learn more about you and your books?
Peter:My website.
Wendy:Okay. Which is? Peterrussell.com. Okay. That's pretty straightforward.
Peter:Which is and just make a point, the Russell has two l's, not the French way, which is one l.
Wendy:Okay.
Peter:Pete peterrussell.com.
Wendy:I will include a link in the show notes as well.
Peter:Yeah great and then people can there's everything I've got about 400 pages there of things I've written videos courses lots of stuff it's all there
Wendy:awesome well Peter thank you so much. This has been really fun. I appreciate you coming on.
Peter:Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Wendy:So the whole goal is to try not to try. Got it. Oh, our brains. Actually, it's our unconscious minds that makes things so damn challenging. But as Peter eloquently pointed out, it's doable.
Wendy:To learn more about Peter and his work, please look for the link to his site in the show notes. Thank you for joining me. I'll be back soon with the final episode of the season, where my pal Linda River Valente will be joining me once again for an astro forecast. She'll give us a glimpse into the astrology for the second half of twenty twenty six. There's a lot going on.
Wendy:Shocker. Alright, until next time.