Your Pure Consciousness: A Dive Into Finding Your True Self With Tony Nader – Replay

 

Beneath the surface of thoughts and emotions lies an ocean of vast awareness – your boundless essence. Discover the unified field of all existence, and awaken to your true self in its depths. Today, Dr. Tony Nader, the author of One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, delves into how you can access your pure consciousness and find your true self. As we dive into the quantum level, this conversation reveals that individual consciousness is not isolated but a wave within the ocean of consciousness – a wave within the One Unified Field of all the laws of nature. Be grateful for the miracle of consciousness because it holds the key to unlocking your ultimate peace. Unchain your true self, explore the hidden depths of your consciousness, and join Adam Markel and Dr. Tony Nader as they chart the course to this inner sea.

 

Show Notes:

• 04:17 – Dr. Tony Nader’s Career
• 11:16 – Perception and Vision
• 15:51 – Evolution and the Expansion of Individual Consciousness
• 17:50 – One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness
• 21:18 – Pure Consciousness
• 29:40 – We Are Consciousness
• 30:39 – Elementary Particles
• 31:57 – One Unified Field
• 35:13 – Consciousness as Unbounded or Waves of Ocean
• 37:19 – Transcendental Meditation Technique
• 42:13 – Disturbances and Modifications in the Field of Consciousness

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Your Pure Consciousness: A Dive Into Finding Your True Self With Tony Nader – Replay

Before we dive into the episode, I want to remind you that life is an unpredictable journey, and sometimes the best lessons come from revisiting past conversations. This episode is one of those gems, a replay featuring an incredible expert guest that we’ve had the pleasure of hosting before. As always, thank you for being part of the show. Your commitment to growth and resilience inspires us every day. Without further ado, let’s rewind the clock and dive into this incredible replay episode. Get ready to be inspired and motivated, and become even more change-proof.

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I am feeling incredibly blessed as I sit here at this moment for too many reasons to count, which is fortunate. The most important of that is I’m sitting here at this moment, alive, breathing, awake, and conscious. My mind is still fertile, and this is the essence of life. I’m feeling blessed and quite fortunate to have someone else with whom I feel we are simpatico. We have never met before but we’ve been introduced to a mutual friend. I’m so excited for the conversation that will unfold in a fresh, organic way. All of you will enjoy it as well. I’m as excited and in as much anticipation perhaps as you are, even at this moment.

My guest is Dr. Tony Nader. He is a physician trained at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a PhD in Neuroscience. His training includes internal medicine, psychiatry, and neurology. He was a Clinical and Research Fellow in Neurology at Mass General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Assistant Director of the Clinical Research Center at MIT. His writings include the relationship between mind, body, consciousness, and physiology, which is something that we’re going to talk about.

Dr. Nader’s book One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness has been published by Penguin Random House. It’s available as an eBook. Dr. Nader is the successor to the Founder of the TM Technique, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. We’ll talk about his training in a moment. First of all, Dr. Nader, it’s so great to have you with us. I am looking forward to this conversation greatly. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you. It’s wonderful to be with you, Adam. Consciousness is so primary. We are so grateful to have consciousness. Without consciousness, we cannot dream, think, or experience what we have. We cannot plan and understand our life. We are meeting on a precious aspect of existence. Thank you for having the show and having me with you.

Our community is filled with conscious business leaders. To me, that means these are the people who are putting quite a bit of thought and intention behind the way they live their lives and conduct their businesses. It is quite a shift from the way that I recall starting in business a long time ago. I started as an entity and practiced law.

There wasn’t a lot of consciousness associated with that. It was more of a goal. The goal was to achieve certain professional credentials, start a business, earn money, and provide for a family. I suppose that there was an element of consciousness involved in all of that. I assumed that if I did those things, good things would happen. I didn’t put a lot much thought into it. You also have spent quite a bit of time developing your professional place in the world. I’d love to get a sense of where that all began and the origin story of your career. We could start there and we’ll gravitate forward.

We are similar in that sense, except I took the medical side. I wanted to understand life. I had a vocation based on my family background of many doctors in the family. Naturally, I gravitated towards medicine as a vocation to help others. I also wanted to have a good profession, which is something that’s how we choose our path in life. I was also most interested in understanding human behavior and human decision-making, why we do what we do, why there are wars, why there are conflicts, and why people kill each other for thoughts, ideas, or economic purposes.

When one looks around, we can live in a logical, happy, natural way. I thought the best way was to understand human physiology. I came to it from this perspective that some material energy created the assemblage of molecules, cells, and tissues that led us to a human body that ultimately developed and evolved into a nervous system where we have a mind, thoughts, intellect, and behavior emanating from that.

I went deeply into the study of medicine and found maybe I should go into psychiatry because internal medicine is more limited to the physical body. I tried to understand the mind but it was mostly in disturbances of the mind. That’s what psychiatry is. Although it has its effects, I wanted to know more so I went into neurology but also into research on the brain and the nervous system.

In the meantime, I learned transcendental meditation. It is a simple technique that allows the mind to settle down. The approach here was different. Rather than coming from the physical level, the physiological level, the chemical level of attending to the physiology, improving it, and healing it, one was able to come from the mind level, the consciousness level.

I found this so fulfilling for my life, situation, and ability to study, grow, and experience. I looked into its research very carefully and found that it is profound. It has a holistic value. Whereas in most of our medical approaches, we are targeting one aspect or the other. Sometimes we create side effects because one molecule will act someplace to calm you down or help you but will act in another place and create an imbalance or a problem.

This made me feel more and more fascinated by the aspect of our reality, which we can say seems to be not material but more abstract, more on the mind level, feeling, and consciousness level. Going deep into that, I studied and researched it. I even went around the world, particularly with the Founder of the Transcendental Meditation Program, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought this tradition from the ancient 5,000-year-old tradition of Veda and yoga, particularly yoga.

This is a yoga of the mind, how the mind can settle down and experience unity. I went deeply into that, studied, and researched it. I researched ancient knowledge, got fascinated by it, and discovered something that I didn’t think about originally, which is the other way around. It’s not that the physical creates the mental, as I assumed all my career because of medical study.

If you disturb the nervous system, you disturb the thinking process. If you take chemicals that disturb the functioning of the neurotransmitters, hormones, and electrical activity of the brain, you get changes in mind, mood, thought, and even experience. You can see psychedelic things, colors, hallucinations, and all of that. All things seem to indicate that if you act from the physical, you can change the mind and the experience in the mind.

One says, “Therefore, the physical is what creates the mind.” Going deeply into it, I came to a conclusion that was unexpected. Consciousness leads ultimately to the appearance of the whole physical universe. This is where I said, “How does this happen?” The theory of this logic has been presented throughout history. The question is, “How is it possible? How can it be?” This has been my path and where I came out with this book that explains these processes and their implications in different aspects of life.

A fascination of mine for some time is the sequence of whether it’s our thoughts that create the feelings that ultimately lead us to do certain things and take certain actions or whether it’s the feelings that create the thoughts that ultimately lead to these other results. For the longest time, my feeling was what we think and therefore, we feel certain things and so on. In the last several years, it’s been the opposite. I’m putting you squarely on the spot. I don’t even know if you have a theory about this but I have to ask you. Dr. Nader, what would you say is the order of events there?

I do have a very complete idea. That’s what almost the book is all about but it takes it a little further. Let’s see situations where we can ask these possible questions and see how we can deduce some logic from this. There can always be interpretation. The topic is wide and complex. For simple things, there is something different between perception and vision, for example, between how you digest information and experience it based on what is there in the information.

You can have a vision. You can be walking on the street and you see a rope. Maybe it’s dark or there is a rope there. Suppose in your mind, you are predisposed to thinking that this area has maybe snakes in it. Therefore, you already have a predisposition in your mind that there are snakes. It’s not clear and you’re walking on the street. You see something lying there and you think it’s a snake. In reality, it’s a rope but for you, it’s a snake. You get afraid. If you’re afraid of snakes and have a weak heart, your heart starts beating and you can get a heart attack.

You can also run around and explain to people that there was a snake. People are afraid that some accident might happen. There is a huge thing that takes place on the surface level of phenomena of reality, which means accidents. People died. The person had an attack. It must be a snake that does this, whereas it is a perception. It’s an experience that has been digested and experienced on the consciousness level and experiential level as a snake, whereas the reality, it’s a rope.

This is what happens on the level between vision. The eye saw a rope. The input that comes from the rope is a rope input. It went through the retina and nervous system but the vision of interpretation has led to a decision that this is a snake. Therefore, that is a decision that it is a snake. All of the other phenomena that happen are based on the experience of this being a snake. That leads to phenomenal realities in the outside world.

This is, by itself, a simple example of how we can be mistaken. It is not a proof. I’m not saying I proved that the mind is primary because of this example. It is just to emphasize the difference between our perception and what truly reality is. If you go deeper into what reality is from different perspectives, you find that our nervous system is only able to perceive a certain aspect of reality. For example, we do not see a frequency that is less than the red light. We cannot see above the violet. We will not see ultraviolet and infrared.

We can’t hear the frequency of a dog whistle and things like that.

We cannot also smell what a dog can smell. We only have a partial experience of the outer phenomenal world based on our nervous system’s ability to detect it. These are important ones that help us determine what reality is. Is there an absolute reality?

I want to pause you there, Dr. Nader, and ask you an awful question for science. You are not purely or even perhaps primarily, a scientist. You’re only taking in perhaps some small portions of all of the available stimuli, the things that we could perceive but don’t. Is there a reason for that? Why can’t we hear or see beyond what our nervous system allows us to?

The simple answer is that evolution got us to where we are. We can imagine evolution taking us to a different level. We are moving evolution to a different level by creating, for example, instruments that allow us to see the infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray, and also hear the music. We, as humans, participate in evolution by creating instruments that extend our nervous system’s ability. Evolution keeps growing and taking us to a higher level of perception of reality and the ultimate fullness of life, what is real, what is the reality of the universe, and where it comes from.

Evolution keeps growing and taking us to a higher level of perception of reality and the ultimate fullness of life. Share on X

The evidence is that our consciousness has continued to expand and the consciousness of our species has evolved. There’s a possibility that it could expand well beyond where we currently are.

It’s either physically or organically or through instruments. It has expanded. We can see the black holes and distant galaxies. We can see almost to the molecular levels through microscopes and electron microscopes. We are extending our ability to experience that. The main question is, “Who is extending? What is extending? What is all this? Where does it come from?”

That is the ultimate question. When people hear consciousness, they think of their brain or mind. That is a perfect jumping-off point. Is that where consciousness originates?

Yes. The theory that I present in this book is that consciousness is primary. The title of the book, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, says that ultimately there is one unbounded ocean of consciousness. That unbounded ocean of consciousness, reflecting on itself through a process that they describe in the book, creates a multiplicity of perceptions that lead to an ultimate reality of nothingness.

From which emerges the universe as starting from nothingness and building back into the primary consciousness. As we know in physics, the universe starts from a singularity, which is a point value that has no dimensions in time and space, which explodes, inflates, and leads to energy and forces. These forces then create the energy fields through their fluctuations and appear as particles.

These particles are assembled to create atoms and molecules. Molecules keep assembling to create cells or mineral life and also organic and more organic into cells. Cells assemble to create tissues and living organisms in our human body. As evolution developed, it created all of these other aspects of a complex organization leading to a higher consciousness nervous system. All this seems to say, therefore, all this material value.

The key in this paradigm that I present is that all of these are aspects of consciousness, reflecting on itself and seeing itself from different perspectives. When I look at you, it is consciousness looking at another aspect of itself from a certain point of view. Therefore, since there are infinite points of view, this is where the universe is an expression of consciousness. This is a summary that might feel too radical and crazy like, “What are you talking about? How can it be?” That’s why it requires a few steps of logic to understand it, why it makes sense, how it can make sense, and why the other theories don’t explain certain things that this paradigm explains.

Perhaps that’s a great place to not begin but let’s go back to the first domino. You were describing what’s been called the Big Bang Theory. Say a little bit more about this point of singularity. Before there was the universe as we understand it or know it, there was fill-in-the-blank.

There was one unbounded ocean of consciousness, which means consciousness. There was pure consciousness, which is immaterial. It has nothing material in it.

Is it particle, wave, or sound?

No, nothing like that. All of this is material. When we say material, it means condensing into an atom or a molecule on the most basic level and even a particle localized in time and space. Scientists have looked into the matter to try to see what it is made of. That’s how we got from the surface value to the molecular level, molecular to atomic level, and atomic to particle level.

We used to think that the atom is the last thing that’s indivisible. The term atom means indivisible. Atom from Greek means that you cannot divide it. By Democritus and others, this has been a term that has been coined to say that if you take something and keep dividing it into smaller pieces, you will reach one point where you cannot divide it anymore. That is called the atom. That is the elementary particle that constructs the universe.

We found that it’s not true. What we call the atom is made of even more elementary particles. These elementary particles turn out to be not particles at all. They turned out to be fluctuations and fields of energy. I’m not talking philosophy. It’s pure science and physics. That is when scientists started to say, “That is material and physical.” When you say physical, it means energy. We all know the connection between matter and energy that Einstein discovered, E=mc², which describes that matter is energy.

The statement that everything is energy implies that everything on some level is physical. The first domino that we want to see is pre-physical. We have a state of everything that is pre-physical at some point in time. This is more for people to fill their heads with sometimes knowledge they’ll never use. How many years ago are we talking about? What do you think?

For eternity. It’s something that is pre-time and pre-space also.

Even space and time is a construct?

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Yes.

It’s not arbitrary but it would be inaccurate to try to pinpoint a time.

It’s nothing that you can describe in time and space. That’s why we can say from the physical perspective that it is nothingness. It’s not physical if you want to weigh it in a balance, examine it in a microscope, or measure it.

You can’t do any of those things.

No, because it’s nothingness. It’s not a thing but it is everything. That’s the whole paradigm.

It’s nothing and everything all at once. We have this nothingness and then we go from nothingness to something-ness.

To wholeness, fullness, and everything-ness because it is not physical. You cannot talk about it in terms of, “When did it start? Where does it come from?” It’s nothing. Forget about consciousness. Say nothing. Can you ask, “Where did nothing come from?” You cannot. Where is nothing coming from? Nothing is nothing. How can it come from anywhere?

 

Something emerges out of nothing.

Yet it has a quality and that is consciousness.

I couldn’t track how we got here but this is wonderful that we’re at this point. Out of nothingness, everything-ness emerges, which is called consciousness. At a certain point, this is where my mind grapples with, as others have too. We think that when we die, it’s over. When our brain stops working, we are technically dead. All consciousness is also gone, at least for us. That’s the materialist view that our brain creates consciousness. It’s not what you’re saying.

This is a big problem. If there is consciousness, a soul, a human, or some reality that is beyond the material, then forever the question is, “Are they 2 different things or are they 1 thing?” The Cartesian view, Descartes, Einstein, and others but he formalized it is that there are two realities. One is a reality of being, which is consciousness. One is a reality of material, physical existence. Somehow they speak to each other.

“I think, therefore I am.”

That has an interesting meaning. What he meant is, “I am conscious, therefore I am.” When he said, “I think,” is, “I am conscious.” The thought is a process that also changes. He’s saying, “I am conscious of a thought. I’m conscious of myself. Therefore, I am.” Consciousness then is the one thing that doesn’t change. Why does he say that? Look at your body. It changes all the time. There is no one moment where anything in the physical remains the same.

You look at a stone. It’s been there for a million years and you think it hasn’t changed? It has changed all the time. Its electrons and molecules are moving within. It’s never the same. If it’s never the same, what is reality then? This is the big question. Descartes came and said, “I think I am conscious. Therefore, I am.” My consciousness is my consciousness of myself. I feel myself as a conscious individual. Even though I went through life, I changed. I used to be a baby. I used to be small. I grew up. My body changed.

There is not one more molecule in my body that was there when it was 10 or 15 years ago. Nothing. Not even one molecule or atom is still there. They have been transformed and changed. My function in life changed. My job and relations changed. I have that sense of being, self, and consciousness. Therefore, I can say I am. That was the challenge. If you change all the time, how can you say you are? You are not. You’re always changing.

We are tuned in. What would you say is the best analogy to describe our relationship with consciousness?

We are consciousness.

We are part of. We are not individual consciousness. As people have written beautiful poetry, music, and all that, we are one with all that we’re calling consciousness.

 

Let’s take physics, which can help us to see and understand this. Let’s go back to something that I said. We start with cells, molecules, atoms, and then elementary particles. We are together on that. What did physicists discover when they came to the smaller than the smallest? It’s like, “What is this universe made of?”

You can say molecules but what are molecules made of? Atoms. What are atoms made of? Elementary particles. What are elementary particles? They turned out to be fluctuations and fields of energy. There is the electric field, magnetic field, weak force, strong force, and gravitational field. They end up discovering that out of all possible fields, they are these few fields.

Is this quantum physics?

Yes, exactly. We’re getting to the quantum level. You say, “What is electricity and magnetism?” A little research discovered that electricity and magnetism are the same energy field appearing as electricity or magnetism. That’s why they call it electromagnetism. They went deeper into nature and found that even the weak-strong forces and the gravitational field are trying to be integrated. These fields are more unified as you come to the most basic or primary field of life.

Scientists talk about the one unified field of all the laws of nature. There is a field that is an abstract field that itself appears as the other fields. The other fields appear as fluctuates, which appear as particles. The particles come together and create atoms. Atoms come together. They create molecules. Molecules come together. They create cells and cells come together. They create organs. Organs come together.

You cannot destroy energy. Is that accurate or inaccurate?

It’s accurate.

You cannot destroy energy. My question was leading to what happens to us. It’s part of the greater whirlpool of consciousness. What happens when physically we are morte?

This is where you have to answer the first question and second question. One unified field of all the laws of nature appears as these different expressions on the surface. I have a logic as to why this field is consciousness. That is described in the book. Let’s take this for granted as a point of logic. If this field is consciousness, that means we are made out of consciousness but consciousness appears as different aspects.

I usually take an analogy. You have a gold bracelet, ring, necklace, and statue. They are different but they are all made out of gold. On one level, they are gold. On another level, they appear as bracelets, rings, and statues. In the same way, this one field of consciousness appears as many while it is one. It appears as many objects but the gold is one. This is how we are.

Consciousness appears as many but consciousness is one. That part of consciousness that appears in each of us, like the bracelet, earrings, or other ways that gold can be fashioned is still gold like we are still consciousness.

These are aspects of consciousness. Consciousness can be an unbounded ocean and waves in the ocean. Imagine your mind like an ocean. On a surface, there are waves. As you go deeper into the ocean of the mind, you get more settled until you reach the bottom of the ocean, which is silent and quiet. If you’re sitting in that perspective, you look up to the surface and have a wide-angle view, you can see all the waves and know that the waves are the ocean.

If you sit on one wave and your vision is only limited to that distance of the wave, you can only see a few inches away or give and take, a few feet away, depending on the big or small wave. You can think that this wave is all there is like, “That is me. That is my life. That is my reality. Nothing else.” A little bit further if you broaden your awareness, you can see another wave.

There is another wave. That wave might crush on me and give me problems. I don’t know what will happen but it’s another wave.” You see another wave and another wave. They are different waves. They are the ocean. The wave on the ocean is what we are from this particular perspective. This is why we brought to our awareness that we are a small part of reality. We see the wave.

Why do you think that is?

It’s because we haven’t grown enough to come back with the original full-vision

Is it like that moment in A Few Good Men where Jack Nicholson is saying, “You can’t handle it?” On some level, we cannot handle having access to and awareness of all of the waves.

We can’t handle it in our present situation. This is where I got fascinated and engaged with this. There is a technology that allows you to grow your consciousness and expand your awareness. That’s what got me onto this. That is the transcendental meditation technique. That allows you to dive deep within the ocean of consciousness and experience your true self, which is pure consciousness and being, which is the unified field of all the laws of nature.

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You are sitting from that perspective that sees reality as a real thing. For this, we had to evolve on a certain appearance of the nervous system to have so much sophistication and ability to view things from so many different angles and perspectives. Ultimately, we can see the wholeness of reality from within ourselves. When we go back to the great wisdom, “Know thyself,” people think it means to know your qualities, shortcomings, what you can handle, and what you cannot handle.

That is only knowing a surface aspect of ourselves. True know thyself means diving within and discovering the unified field of all the laws of nature, which is pure consciousness. Go back to the bottom of the ocean and then your consciousness exceeds all the waves as being part of the ocean and being yourself. That is what is called unity consciousness.

That is the supreme value of yoga. People think with yoga, you do some exercise. It’s very good. It relaxes the body, but the term yoga means unification. Supreme yoga is supreme unification, where you get freed from the ignorance of the separation of the waves one from the other. You get established in yourself as being the one unbounded ocean of consciousness. We can understand why the book has this title because it is the unbounded ocean of consciousness that is us.

We don’t have to look at it somewhere else, find it outside, or search for it in the wilderness. It is right here within us. Science is coming to that because science is saying, “There is a unified field.” Wisdom is coming to that. Religion has been talking about it but from a different perspective. Humans were made in the image of God. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You are the Dao. There is no self in Buddhism. There is one unbounded being. That is not in small individual self.

Spirituality and religion are different things for me because I distinguish them for my reasons. It’s a way of explaining what you are talking about and making sense of it. There is a union. You could have named your book Union or your podcast.

I wanted to use the term consciousness because it’s on the basis of consciousness that this union happens. The term one says that is union. That’s why I chose one. Unbounded means it’s not limited. It’s an ocean of being and in motion because it has waves. It’s an ocean of consciousness.

It’s the central metaphor for the book. That’s beautiful. I want to understand how the soul relates to what you’re discussing as consciousness a little more. Are those things separate? If everything is one, I would imagine that subsumed in this definition of consciousness of union would include the soul. I’m after this understanding, “Will our soul survive our physical death?”

The short answer is yes. When we create disturbances, changes, or modifications in the field of consciousness, this has to be transformed in one way or another. For the wave to melt into the ocean, it’s a wave. It has a process that has to happen within it. A big wave will go through a certain pass, a small wave through another pass, and a wild wave through certain changes. In the waves, it’s short-lived and quickly happening.

As we come, act in life, experience, and express our consciousness, we create certain dynamics in the waves of consciousness in the whole ocean. These dynamics have an influence. For them to settle down and go back to the ocean, they have to continue to work out their situation into a greater field of unity until they can settle.

 

There is a reason for it, not just yes on a belief level. I agree with you that spirituality and religion are not necessarily the same. You might have somebody who is areligious but extremely spiritual. You can have somebody who’s extremely spiritual and radical but not extremely religious, believing and doing the thing but not spiritual. I agree with you based on this and other aspects. There is a continuation.

The wave continues like the ripple effect or as Buckminster Fuller called it, procession.

That’s one way to say it. It has to work its way. That brings us to what happens. Not just that it continues but how does it continue? That is the understanding that it goes to heaven, hell, or purgatory. It gets punished, gets this, or gets that. There is also the perception that it can be given another chance to complete its past, understand the wholeness, rise to become the ocean, and then melt back into the ocean.

I went into the humanities field as a lawyer. It was less about science. That was because I had a difficult time in high school and even college grappling with some of these irreconcilable concepts. Rather than try to grapple with them, I pushed them aside and went into something I could create some certainty out of. My hat is off to you. I applaud anyone like you who has grappled with these very difficult questions, especially when there may not be concrete answers but questions that sometimes lead to more questions.

It feels to me that if energy is never destroyed, it cannot be destroyed. On that basic level, we are energy, even if at some point, they say the prayer and we’re done that way. We’re not done. That straddles that idea of what’s logical and what is based on faith and belief. The merger of those two things is what I’m more personally moving toward. It’s not just blind faith that we are not done because things continue in some form and that energy is not destroyed. It must be someplace.

You’re in the right direction of moving. That energy is consciousness. Consciousness is a dynamic thing, not just a flat consciousness. “I am conscious or I am not conscious.” You can be dull consciousness, alert consciousness, or awake consciousness. When you feel love, your consciousness is colored by love. When you feel happiness, it’s your consciousness that is colored by happiness. Without consciousness, we cannot experience love, wisdom, understanding, happiness, even pain, the universe, the laws of the universe, or what we are talking about.

Without consciousness, we cannot experience love, wisdom, understanding, happiness, or pain. Share on X

It’s consciousness that is there. We want to say it’s like energy because it is a kind of energy. As consciousness, it has to be balanced, the same, and itself. If you create a disturbance somewhere, you have to correct the disturbance. That is where you have action and reaction. Maybe we should do another session where we talk about freedom, responsibility, determinism, the purpose of life, and all of that. It’s a good start. It’s a joy to be with you, Adam.

It’s been wonderful, Dr. Nader. I’m so glad you brought it to that point because this will be both intriguing and interesting for some people there. It will resonate with some folks and people who will also get a sense of peace out of learning what you’ve shared. I also have a place in me that says, “Where do we put this to work? What’s the way to put something to work?” I’m going to pick one tiny aspect. This will be a great way to wrap up as well.

When we wake up in the morning, we have been “unconscious.” We have been sleeping. That’s probably not an accurate term for what is happening relative to what you shared but we are at a different level or state of awake-ness and then we wake up in the morning. I feel like that is the pivotal moment for so many people in their lives, my life, and my day. It’s that waking moment and those few early moments of the day when we are still in between, not fully awake and not asleep either. What we do and what I do then is very impactful. At least that’s been my experience.

Thoughts lead to feelings and actions, and then follow with results. Feelings create our thoughts that create actions that lead to results. I’m not trying to put it in a box here with you. We know from psychology that there are many ways people suppress and repress their feelings. How important is it that we cultivate the right feelings? Is it more important that we create the right thinking that creates the next step in the chain?

Feelings are hard to manipulate or control. The feeling is the total of the actions that are going on in the nervous system and physiology, which for me, are all the dynamics of consciousness. The overall experience of the dynamics that are happening within us is what we call feeling. When you feel happy, it means all the things have been coming together. Trying to control the feelings is a strain on the physiology and the naturalness of things. Ultimately, what we are controlling is our thoughts. We are controlling our thought process, which is about our awareness of our feelings.

I have to say there is another component that we talked about. There is consciousness, intellect, mind, feeling, the senses, and all the other aspects. If we want to look at all these layers, we find that consciousness is the most basic and primary level. The movie of life happens on the screen of consciousness. We tend to forget the screen. We say, “What do I project on that screen?” We project a good thought. We try to project a feeling and create a wholeness that will lead to a certain feeling.

Consciousness is the most basic and primary level. The movie of life happens on the screen of consciousness. Share on X

We forget that all of this is happening on the screen of our awareness. What we need to do is ultimately develop our consciousness. When we develop our consciousness and go to the bottom of the ocean of consciousness, we are at the source of thought, creativity, and intelligence. When we remove stresses and strains from our nervous system and establish ourselves in that balance, the feelings get more naturally and spontaneously aligned and in the right direction. The thought process becomes more evolutionary.

This is why I come back to this simple technique, transcendental meditation. This was the reason why I got into all of this. That is very simple, easy to practice, and natural. That allows you to dive to the ocean of consciousness, the bottom of the ocean of the self, and pure being. As the mind rests, the body rests because the mind and body are intimately connected. As the body rests, it gets rid of the stresses and strains because the nature of the body is to get rid of what is foreign to it.

You have that inner peace and harmony within. You discover yourself to be the unbounded ocean of consciousness. You know yourself to be everything and the source of everything. You are capturing the reservoir of creativity and intelligence that allows you to have the right thoughts so that from the right thoughts, you can have the right action and planning. From the right action, you get the right achievement. From action and achievement, you get fulfillment.

The feeling is there as a fulfillment of a holistic reality that starts from consciousness, thought, action, behavior, achievement, and fulfillment. The feeling encapsulates all of this. Having a good feeling, which is fulfillment and happiness, is not just something internal but also your life. How is it going? What is your future? What are your expectations, friends, country, things that you care about, the business you have, and your success? It’s inner and outer but it’s all on the platform of the infinite, inner, pure being.

I often ask people about their definition of resilience. You’ve defined how beautifully resilient we are. The source of that resilience is, in many ways, returning to this quiet place where we have the capacity to experience more of what is the oneness or more of the integration, the wholeness, our wave with all the waves. Our piece of gold forms with all of the other pieces of gold that exist and that we are connected to.

It’s difficult to do that when we’re under strain, the stress of so much of what’s going on in our lives, yet there’s a process. That’s what you’ve come back to several times. There is a way to get back to where that strain, stress, and pressure that is on our systems to abate long enough to experience more of itself. As with so many things in life, this is not a quick solution or an instantaneous solution. It’s a thing you practice. How many years have you been practicing transcendental meditation?

 

I’ve been practicing for many years. It happens from the very beginning. This is amazing. Even from the first sessions, you start discovering there is something different. My consciousness is expanding. I was deeper into myself. There is inner peace. You discover that wholeness and continuity, whereas usually, on the changing level, the mind is jumping around and seeking things. Now, there is some coming back home. That happens even from the first meditations.

I’ve so enjoyed our time, Dr. Nader. Thank you so much. For those of you out there who are looking for a great book, I want to recommend diving deeper into this topic. Dr. Nader’s book is called One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness. Penguin Random House is a wonderful publisher. It’s available in an eBook form but it’ll have other forms as well. You can go to Amazon to experience that.

We’d love to get your feedback as always. If there’s someone you know who would benefit from learning what Dr. Nader shared, please feel free to share this episode with them. Leave a comment as well at AdamMarkel.com/Podcasts. We so appreciate your time, Dr. Nader. Thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks to you. It’s wonderful to be with you. It’s great. I look forward to more meetings and the success of your great series of episodes.

Thank you. We’ll see you soon. Ciao, everyone.

Ciao. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Tony Nader
• One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness
• One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness – Penguin Random House
• Amazon – One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness

 

About Tony Nader

Tony Nader, M.D., Ph.D. is a physician trained at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in neuroscience. His training includes internal medicine, psychiatry, and neurology. He was a Clinical and Research Fellow in Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Assistant Director of The Clinical Research Center at MIT.

His writings include the relationship between mind and body, consciousness, and physiology. Dr. Nader’s book One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness has just been published by Penguin/Random House (eBook).Dr. Nader is the successor to the founder of the TM technique, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.”