Gavin de Becker

Something is presented to me, go left, go right.

I might get the choice, but what is presented to me?

What is presented to me is not up to me.

The idea was dropped into my skull so quickly, like it was a journalistic report that said, here's the way the world works.

Something or somebody or everybody or everything types into Google what it wants to see, and occasionally you are

the body that it works through.

Because if the rest of the universe, and by the way, kind of interesting, this very moment we're in, Stephen, because that experience I had is now being relayed to a few million people courtesy of you and your question and that question in this podcast.

So now you do know a little bit about what it's like to stand in the water with the current trying to pull you over and see a whole school of fish go around you and see a whale breach right in front of you and see this massive rainstorm come and go in a matter of minutes.

Now you get a little piece of that experience.

Now do I think – here's the punchline.

Do I think I created that experience?

No fucking way.

I don't.

I think it's predetermined.

And I think – I said to you the scientific version is you're going to ask me this question and that's the answer you're going to get.

That's what I believe.

Based on what I ate today, based on what I ate 40 years ago, based on childhood, based on who you are and who I am, that's the answer you're going to get.

And who left it and how their day was and what they ate that day and everything else.

I believe in predetermination.

It comes from a teacher of mine in India, my best teacher in life, Nisargadatta, wrote a book called I Am That, recommended to everybody.