Nate Hagens

And you are an interdisciplinary scholar and meditation practitioner who, I understand, has studied under Tibetan Buddhists and other non-dual wisdom traditions.

And you write extensively on the topics of lucid dreaming and death and meditation and darkness.

So with such a segue, maybe we could start.

What are some of the first things from modern culture that you unlearned?

Well, first of all, you're like the fourth person that I've had on that has mentioned the word non-dual, and I don't think I still understand that.

Could you give me a brief unpacking of what that means and why it's important?

Do other great apes have this dualism?

Do ancient humans pre agricultural revolution have this duality and do babies born today?

What are your thoughts on that?

Did we have this all figured out back in the day, the wisdom traditions, and we just lost our way?

Or like, what is this deep scholarly study of ancient wisdom traditions concluded for you, if anything?

So the juxtaposition between display and reality is manifesting in so many ways in our culture.

There's the technology and money is the display versus energy materials and the ecosystem is the reality.

There is the social status of primates that try to

get status by shows of conspicuous consumption and display, but they're not healthy for us or for our culture.

I mean, there's a lot of ways that you could unpack your summary statement there.

I'm curious about that transition.

I still am a macro guy, but I feel like this is what we need to figure out en masse, starting with individuals, then larger groups, and then society.

Sorry to interrupt you.

I'm going to throw one more geeky, nerdy quote, and then we'll get back to the...