Alex O'Connor

I can't learn Hinduism and even so it's not like you can just have a Hindu on the show and that become like oh you've done Hinduism now it took me a long time like even sort of finding my feet

as to like where to start looking for interesting stuff.

And my way in ultimately came through my study of consciousness.

I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind.

And of course, the Indian tradition has this amazing content, essentially, on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really encountered before.

Becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness, about how it's not reducible to material and how it's not as simple as saying that brains just produce consciousness, that kind of stuff.

sort of led me into learning about specifically the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

Advaita Vedanta meaning like the Vedas are part of the Hindu scriptural canon.

They're like the oldest religious scriptures in the world.

I think like Anta means, I think it's the addendum Anta means like end.

So you get like end of the Vedas, meaning like the latter part of the Vedas, which collectively are known as the Upanishad.

And Advaita meaning like a

like non and vita, meaning dual.

So in the philosophy of mind, I think in philosophy generally, one of the biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there?

Because there's this really weird sort of division of reality where we're conscious, we have subjectivity, like inner thoughts, and this mug over here doesn't.

So there seems to be kind of two different kinds of things.

You've basically got three options when it comes to explaining that.

One is that there are just two types of things in the

And there's body.

There's mental and there's physical.