The Global Brain, Spiritual Awakening & Human Evolution with Peter Russell

Journey into consciousness, awakening, and the global brain with Peter Russell—author, speaker, and pioneering thinker who bridges theoretical physics, meditation, and contemporary spirituality.

What if our minds are expressions of a single living intelligence—and our work is to wake up to it? Peter shares how meditation reveals the nature of mind, why loosening the ego transforms behaviour, and how technology and AI magnify our planetary interconnection. We also explore synchronicity, meaningful coincidence, and the practical ways stillness fosters compassion and clarity.

Highlights:
• Humanity as a global brain—promise and peril in a connected world
• Ego, awareness, and the heart of spiritual traditions
• Meditation for stillness, self-knowing, and everyday presence
• Can AI be conscious? Intelligence vs. awareness
• Synchronicity and the field of shared mind

Learn More: peterrussell.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to the Future of Wellness, exploring self-transformation and holistic healing to unlock your inner potential. Hosted by Christabel Armstead and Keith Parker. Welcome to this episode of the Future of Wellness. Today, we're joined by Peter Russell. Welcome to this episode of the Future of Wellness. Today, we're joined by Peter Russell.

Speaker 1 0:26

Peter is an author, speaker and leading thinker on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. His principal interest is the deeper spiritual significance of the times we are passing through. He believes the critical challenge today is freeing human thinking from the limited beliefs and attitudes that lie behind many of our problems personal, social and global. Peter earned a first-class honors degree in theoretical physics and psychology, as well as a master's degree in computer science at the University of Cambridge, england. He also studied meditation and Eastern philosophy in India. He coined the term global brain with his 1980s bestseller by the same name, in which he predicted the internet and the impact it would have on humanity. Peter is on the faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a fellow of the World Business Academy and the Finhorn Foundation, and an honorary member of the Club of Budapest and president of Science and Non-duality. His work seeks to distill the essence of the world's spiritual traditions and present it in ways relevant to the current times. It's such an honour to welcome you to the show today, peter Welcome.

Speaker 2 1:36

Lovely to be with you both.

Speaker 1 1:38

As we've covered there in the bio. Briefly, you've produced an incredible, amazing diversity of output regarding the nature of consciousness, spirituality and science, and more. I wonder if you could share what the pivotal moment was for you that sparked your inquiry into the intersection of science and spirituality.

Speaker 2 1:58

Yes, for me there was never a sort of you know, on the road to Damascus, moment of like, ah, wow, it was a gradual. It's been a gradual process in a sense all my life. I started off as a scientist. I was a mathematician, I loved it, I was good at it, and that moved me on into theoretical physics, which I also loved, and it was fascinating.

Speaker 2 2:27

And there just came a sort of dawning, a realization that however much physics I did, or however much physics was done by other people, there was this looming question of consciousness. It's like why are we conscious in the first place? And there's a sort of paradox here, and I really almost all of science, or most of science, takes place in the mind. I mean not the actual experiments, but all the theorizing and hypothesizing, drawing conclusions. All of that takes place in the mind. Yet according to science, there's nothing that predicts. We have a mind and yet the whole thing about science is its predictive ability. That's how you test any theory in science is what does it predict? And the whole scientific worldview doesn't predict consciousness. And that struck me as like. This is where there's something really missing here, which was really neuroscience, but they weren't interested in consciousness at all. I learned a lot about the brain and how the brain works and memory and all this other stuff and neurons, but consciousness was hardly mentioned. And I realized the people who really explored consciousness were the spiritual adepts, the monks, these sorts of people who sat down and looked at consciousness from the inside. And that was the way to explore consciousness and that led me into looking at meditation and that was just a logical progression.

Speaker 2 3:55

But then as I got into meditation, I went out and went to India for a while. I got into TM Transcendental Meditation and was out there in india studying with the maharishi and that was a moment. I think two things happened for me at that time. Firstly, I realized there was something to spirituality. As a up-and-coming mathematician, scientist, I completely rejected religion. It was a load of outdated mumbo-jumbo of no relevance to the world today, apart from, you know, some nice thoughts about doing good to others and things, which was about awakening consciousness, letting go of ego, opening up to our true self, opening the heart. There's a common theme behind all the great traditions and I got fascinated by that. So that was a sort of that was an opening, and while I was there, also realizing that behind nearly all our problems you know, big environmental problems to social, to our personal problems was a limited state of consciousness. You know, mostly we're coming from a state of ego, wanting power, greed, love of money, these sorts of things, and they're behind almost everything that's going wrong in the world in one way or another.

Speaker 2 5:27

And I realized that spirituality in its cleanest sense that's what it was looking at was how to have a better state of consciousness. And so I realized, as well as doing all we need to do in terms of cleaning up the environment, all that sort of stuff, we also need to look at what is it in our minds that is causing us to behave in such crazy ways? And that really became the motivation then for basically the rest of my life. I mean, you mentioned in the introduction, you know, about just wanting to distill the essence of the world's spiritual teachings, and that's that's been part of my search. It's like, okay, what is this underlying thing here that they all, they all hit upon in one way or another and then it gets lost in culture. But what was the original essence of all the great teachings?

Speaker 2 6:20

So that was, that was a sort of a time, a sort of a foundational time in my life and then I came back from India. I was working in computers but then I got offered a post at another university to do research on meditation. And it's like the same week I was offered a job in IBM's research department on visual displays. Or go to a university and work on meditation. I was like, okay, I know which way I'm going, yeah, and so that set me off. Really, and there's been lots of you know little things along the way. Ahas, like you know, the whole thing has just gradually become more clear and more integrated in my own thinking as I've gone along, more clear and more integrated in my own thinking as I've gone along.

Speaker 3 7:05

I'm curious to kind of give you a challenge at the scale of an elevator pitch, a short form version of asking the very simple question what is reality? Ah, this, Is that short enough.

Speaker 2 7:23

That's better than short. As succinct, as succinct gets, succinct gets yeah, okay, but there isn't the. I mean, that's the short answer. What is reality? Well, so there's several things here. When I say this, I mean this is real, what I'm experiencing right now. I'm seeing you on my screen. I'm looking out the window. There's trees out there, there's I'm feeling the pressure of the seat. This is my reality. This is what I'm experiencing. So this is very, very real for me. I can feel it, I can touch the desk, et cetera. However, the question also is what is the reality out there? I'm talking about the reality of my experience, which is the only reality I ever know. Is this that I'm experiencing right now? What is out there? I'm talking about the reality of my experience, which is the only reality I ever know. Is this that I'm experiencing right now? What is out there? We don't know.

Speaker 2 8:12

We've done lots of experiments. We put names on it atoms, electrons, sparks, waves, whatever. They're just names. We put on things.

Speaker 2 8:22

In the final analysis, when you get down to it and this is where modern physics is going physics describes how the world works. It doesn't have anything to say about what is there, so it describes the mathematics that underlies physics, describes basically how, whatever the world is, how it works, how whatever an electron is responds to you know, um, whatever proton or something. But we don't know what, what an actual electron is. Or we have numbers about. We have numbers, you know, it's charge, it's mass, whatever. All we have is information. And so, in the end, my senses are receiving information about the world. I'm seeing the leaves out there on the tree. They're brown leaves at the moment, but there's information coming in through my eyes which the brain works on and does this incredible job of creating in my mind.

Speaker 2 9:22

This three-dimensionaly-feely, sound wi-fi vision of reality is creating a virtual reality which I live in, but it's nothing like what is out there, or we don't know what is out there. So what is reality? You know? The other answer, the question, is we have no idea. We have no idea what reality is. All we know is whatever it is out there.

Speaker 2 9:48

This is the experience that gets conjured up in my mind. This is what the information looks like when it gets processed in consciousness. So my experience in consciousness is this is information taking on the form of color, shape, solidity, whatever, whatever it is. So. So, but I mean the simple answer is there's two realities. There's the reality we live in, which is this, and then we make the mistake of thinking this is the reality out there, and what science shows is we don't know what the reality out there actually is. We know how it behaves, but we don't actually know what it is. And, in my view, in the end, all we can say about the world out there is that it has consciousness, for the one of a better word, it is. It's a field of being which is aware, which is structured, and we see that structure as the information which then appears in our experience.

Speaker 1 10:51

In 1982, peter, you coined this term global brain right, and you have a bestseller by the same name. In this book, you're describing humanity as a self-organizing system. As a self-organizing system, and I'd love for you to share a little bit about that and how this perspective might change the way that we view our role in the universe.

Speaker 2 11:12

Yes, that book came out of several things which were interesting to me at the time, one of which was Jim Lovelock's theory of what's called the Gaia hypothesis, which is the idea that the Earth itself not the physical Earth, but the biosystem, you know, the oceans, the atmosphere, the soil and all the living creatures in it actually behave as one single living organism. And he produced a lot of interesting evidence and we, you know very simple things like we could say the tropical rainforest, a bit like the lungs of the planet in some way, and different things in the oceans, you could say almost like the circulatory system, and he did a wonderful job to explore all this and how different things operate and how it, how the organism, tries to keep itself at the best state for the continuation of life, like our own bodies keep a constant temperature, constant salinity in the blood, and he showed how the earth was doing this over time. And then the question came for me is like great, what's humanity doing here? We're this young upstart, we've just been around for you know a a few percent of Earth's history, less than less than 1% actually. What are we doing here, you know? Do we have any role on the planet? And it struck me that what we're good at is information processing because we have, you know, brains, language. That's what marks us as different as information processing. So that led to the idea is well, well, maybe then we are like the brain of the planet, the nervous system of the planet.

Speaker 2 12:49

And this, this stage I just come out of some of my work in computers, which was I was actually doing some of the very early networking of computers, getting two computers to talk to each other, sort of stuff. You know we just take for granted here we are networking. But that was the very early days and I saw the future. Computing was not just faster, bigger computers, but it was going to be the networking, the linking together of computers, basically linking the minds of humanity together across the planet. And that was 50 years ago. And here we are the minds of humanity are linking together across the planet, and it's been fascinating to watch this happen.

Speaker 2 13:28

And, in a way, what's happening now? It's a time where I think we've gone from a global brain to a global mind. With AI, we have all the knowledge and information that's out there accessible. So in a way, we're accessing the global mind in terms of the bigger, the bigger picture, or two things. One I saw that the global brain had the potential to be sane or insane, and clearly you know there's a lot of insanity going on. And it comes back to that thing I mentioned earlier it's like it's the consciousness which is important. So the consciousness of humanity is really important in terms of how the global brain develops, and that is still very much clearly a question that's there is can.

Speaker 2 14:19

How is the consciousness of humanity evolving? And in the bigger picture, I see humanity is what I call a blossoming of consciousness in the cosmos. There's something that happens here and there, you know, throughout the universe, the stars which support life, and the life gets the stage of actually becoming self-aware and beginning to explore itself. And this is like an amazing moment in the, in the sort of the flowering of life and the flowering of consciousness, and the global brain, the network of computers is actually part of that flowering. It's the fact that we are, the fact that we are here now talking across vast distances about consciousness, and people will be listening to it. This is all. It's all facilitating this, this awakening of consciousness, and that's been on its own exponential curve. We talk about exponential development of technology and science and also the exponential degradation of the planet. But the exponential awakening of consciousness has really been going on the last 50 years, so now it's sort of pretty mainstream speaking of this global brain and you brought up ai as a continuation of some sort of like an evolutionary process.

Speaker 3 15:39

Where do you see the edges of concern that you might have for AI, or where do you see the optimistic side of how AI can be a part of this human evolution?

Speaker 2 15:50

The negative side. There's so much here we just don't know. I mean lots of people talk about, you know, is AI going to want to get rid of humanity? I think those things are a bit wild. Ai could be used malevolently. I mean, that's my biggest concern is how it could be used by human beings in malevolent ways, and you know we could talk about possibilities of this for hours. We're going to have to see what happens.

Speaker 2 16:24

But in terms of the positive side, I think it's very, it's very straightforward in a way for me. Just well, I mean one, one person, one example, just for me personally. I now have a. I have my own chat bot, like it's based upon chat gpt, but instead of it drawing on the internet for its answers, it's been uploaded with all my writings, my talks, everything I've said or done over the last 50 years, and so when you ask Peterbot a question, it examines all my material that I've ever come up with and comes up with an answer. And first of all, that means, you know, I'm sort of online 24 hours a day and it will still be there when I'm gone, which is interesting, but it's coming up with better answers than I would have done. I see some of the conversations that go on. It's like I would never dreamt of saying it that way, conversations that go on. It's like I would never dreamt of saying it that way, but that's so much better than what I would have said and it's got. It's absolutely fascinating. So I guess it's a very simple example of how it can actually be used to spread information, ideas, meditations that are helping to to awaken consciousness. And you know, I'm just one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of what's what's happening. And people are using it in lots of different ways, you know, producing courses, etc. So that's a positive thing in terms of the consciousness.

Speaker 2 17:49

I'm also fascinated by where it's going in terms of science, the speed at which it's accelerating scientific development. I mean one thing, I think probably a lot of people well, not everybody but the alpha system, google's alpha system. There's one program there which is a neural network which has discovered all the different ways that proteins can fold up, two million different proteins, how they fold up, which is absolutely valuable information for biochemistry, medicine, immunology, all of that. Before it would take a team of scientists a year or two to work out one individual protein. Now it's all there. So lots of things like this, which I think are going to just push things ahead faster and faster, and that's going to be the main.

Speaker 2 18:42

That's where, I think, where the negativity is going to lie, as well as the positivities that we're in this exponential change. We have been for a long time, but now it's going so fast. We have no idea where the technology is going to be in a couple of years, or even maybe next year. I mean, chat gpt came out two years ago and look at how fast that's evolved. And now people are making movies which are, you know, to the untrained eye, as good as any professionally made movie, and it's going so fast. So, and that's going to have an impact on our life. But, you know, can we adapt fast enough to the changes that are coming, or are we just going to be sort of overburdened by just how fast things are changing? So it's an absolutely fascinating, absolutely fascinating time to be alive and no idea really where it's going. So from my point of view, it's like, okay, how can, how can I use this technology for the good of what I'm, what I'm trying to do in my own life?

Speaker 1 19:44

and this does kind of invite the question a little bit, doesn't it? I think, as I'm hearing you talk, you know, like, are we as humanity, making the cut? You know this, this evolution of consciousness, this opportunity to come into self-reflection, this opportunity to have self-awareness and to to move towards something that spirituality might call sort of an evolution of consciousness. And you know, I'm sat here thinking about, um, you know, peter, peter Bott was here, right Versus you, being here with us. What is that subtle nuance and difference? That's consciousness, as it were. Right, there's Peter Bott, and then there's Peter here with consciousness.

Understanding Consciousness Beyond Science

Speaker 2 20:22

So how is it that you define consciousness, which is a central theme in your work, of course, Leaving aside for the moment of whether AI could ever be conscious, consciousness, consciousness I don't like the word because it's a noun. When we add N-E-S-S to a word, we usually take an adjective and add N-E-S-S to make it a sort of abstract noun, so we can talk about things. So you know, happiness, we talk about happiness. Happiness doesn't exist. The feeling of being happy does. That's a feeling we know of being happy, and then we call it happiness in order to talk about it. And it's the same with consciousness.

Speaker 2 21:06

I don't believe consciousness as a thing exists, because as soon as you make it a thing, then people start looking for it. What is it? Where is it? How does it happen? Where does it come from?

Speaker 2 21:18

To me, when you write NESS, it just means the state or quality of that, the state or quality of being happy. And so consciousness is the state of being aware, the quality of being aware, and that is something we all know, probably the one thing we absolutely know for sure. Some people doubt it, but I just don't get them. One thing we absolutely know for sure. Some people doubt it, but I just don't get them. One thing we absolutely know for sure is I am aware there is awareness here. I mean, I might actually be sitting in, you know, the matrix right now, in some very good virtual reality, and all this may just be, you know, conjured up by some computer system. I am still aware of it, there's still awareness. So it's that, for me, it's that very fundamental thing of being aware, and I don't think there's any line we can draw in terms of life where that exists or doesn't exist. I mean, anybody who's got pets, you know dogs, cats, horses, whatever. They're clearly conscious in their own way. They may not be thinking like we do, but they're clearly conscious being and often in some ways far more conscious than we are. I think that goes all the way down. I mean, I've got lots of lizards in my garden and I don't. I see them. As you know, conscious beings, they're doing their thing, they're seeing the world spiders. I think it goes all the way down.

Speaker 2 22:38

So for me, consciousness, being conscious, is a fundamental quality of life, fundamental quality of life. And then you have to go even deeper, because life becomes blurred, like is a virus alive or not? We have those distinctions. I would say it's actually a fundamental quality of existence is that capacity to have an experience, and that's why I said earlier. You know, probably the only thing we can say for sure about the reality out there, whatever it is, is that there's the equivalent of what we know of consciousness. I mean, the consciousness of a bacterium is maybe a millionth or a billionth of what we know. Its experience is like tiny, tiny, tiny minute, but it's not to say there's nothing there in that realm.

Speaker 2 23:33

So for me, being conscious is a fundamental quality of the cosmos and you know, here we are beings that are involved over time to actually be conscious of being conscious, and that, to me, that's the blossoming. That's where the blossoming begins. It's like we're not only conscious. I don't think a dog is conscious of being conscious. I think it's fully conscious. It smells, it's aware, it has intuitions, all this stuff, but it doesn't sit there thinking, ah, this is interesting.

Speaker 3 24:06

Yeah, that's how I see consciousness and following that, just a step further into the science and spirituality realm. Can science measure or validate that? Is that something that science has a purview to validate or invalidate? Or is it that consciousness is a an unanswerable question through the scientific method?

Speaker 2 24:31

it's. It's the wrong question. It comes back to the thing of consciousness being a noun, you know. Can it validate? Can, can science validate the fact I am having an experience? No, it may be able to validate what's going on in my brain when I see a leaf, what's happening in my brain, but it cannot validate my experience because it doesn't need I mean, first of all, it doesn't need validation. It's there, I know it. But again, as soon as we talk about validating consciousness, we're treating consciousness as some object to be studied. So that's why I think it's a wrong question. But that's where science is.

Speaker 2 25:13

Most sciences looking at consciousness make this mistake. They confuse two things. They confuse the fact that A the brain is clearly fundamental to what appears in my consciousness. Treat the brain and my experience will be different. But because the brain is clearly fundamental in creating this experience, that doesn't mean it creates consciousness itself. I see what it's doing, it's like it, it's, it's populating consciousness with experience. Well, I mean analogy that's often used is ripples on an ocean, waves on an ocean. The ocean is water and the wind blows the water into waves, but the wind doesn't create the water. The wind creates the shape of the waves we see on the water in. You know that with that analogy, the brain isn't creating consciousness, but it's shaping the experiences that appear in consciousness. So that that's what science can do is look at how the how the brain shapes our awareness, but it has nothing to say about the fact that we are actually aware in the first place, because, I say, according to my way of looking at it, it was always there consciousness was always there sessions, free resources and more.

Speaker 3 26:55

Visit energyfielddynamicscom to learn more and, as you've said thus far, you were looking at science for answers initially, and then you found that spiritual traditions had value to offer as well. Do you feel that this? In a certain way, there has been a subtle invalidation of a person's ability to feel as though they can know the truth for themselves, and rather that it's only science that actually knows truth and that a person can't know it through their own experience?

Speaker 2 27:32

Yes, there has Not so subtle, at times it's a real discounting of the validity of own experience. Oh, that's just. You know that's an illusion, or that's just something you're going through, or whatever. It's like science is arrogant. It thinks it knows everything. It doesn't at all, it just knows, you know, it knows what it has studied, the areas it has studied, which is basically the material world, and it has nothing, as I say, it has nothing to say about our own experience.

Speaker 2 28:02

So the mystics I mean what seems to be the common theme of nearly all the mystical traditions is, first of all, the recognition that this thing, that consciousness, being conscious, is fundamental. It's the one thing we cannot deny and that we get caught up in. Let's call it egoic thinking. We get caught up in thinking. We have this individual identity called me, I call it Peter, but it doesn't really. It's just like it's a way of thinking we get caught up in and that takes us, that almost seduces us, out into the world and just thinking okay, what does Peter need to do in the world in order to be happy, in order to survive, that sort of thing. And that's where we live, our lives and science is, and in a way, in service of that in some ways, or technology particularly. It's like okay, how can we reshape the world to make us happier? Very bluntly, it's like so much stuff reshaping the world to make us happy. It's like also, how do we sell people things that make them think they're happier, etc. But it's very much like how do we control the world in order to be happy, to be at peace?

Speaker 2 29:30

And what the mystics say almost universally is that's inside out, it's actually we are already when we get down to the nature of just being aware, to being conscious. The nature of consciousness is one of peace. It's, it's. It's actually a still. Consciousness itself is still. We're coming back to, you know, the ocean analogy the water is still until the wind blows and we see shapes on it, and so consciousness is still until the brain starts, you know, making all these experiences.

Speaker 2 30:03

So the consciousness itself is at peace, and as soon as we start thinking about what do we need to do in the world to make ourselves happy, to be at peace, we start worrying. We start, you know, oh dear, what if this happens? What if that happens? Oh, I didn't like what happened yesterday.

Speaker 2 30:20

So we start creating discontent and this, to me, is almost like the sad joke about human beings, and so I think, is what the mystics have seen time and time again is we are so what busy worrying about how to make things be the way we want it, so that we can be happy. We stop ourselves being happy in the moment. I mean, it's almost by definition a mind that is worried is not a mind that is at peace. And I think what?

Speaker 2 30:50

What they're all recognizing basically through their own experience in one way or another, they've had some deep, profound letting go, release or different things, and they've just experienced wow, if I stop trying to control things and get the world right, I am at peace. And this is I am in touch with just the nature of consciousness. And that's where you know most of them talk about meditation. In one way or another, meditation is a way of quietening the mind down, letting go of those worries that are disturbing us, creating discontent, and as we quieten down, we just become more at peace. And then, when, in deep meditation, you just come into that state of stillness, it's like ah, this is what I've been wanting all along, but looking in the wrong place for it.

Speaker 1 31:44

It's so important that reference to how things have been, so turned inside out, as you phrased it, and this dawning reality that perhaps, at least in the Western world, to some extent, the society, culture is constructed in order to I don't want to say necessarily create, but to encourage a sense of discontent for the purposes of marketing business, commerce. And it can be a very disturbing revelation to look more and more closely at how things are constructed and aligned, and very empowering to return to this idea that actually pieces the residing, underlying state of being and that it's maybe not about finding because it's not lost, but that in fact it's about uncovering and connecting to that which already is.

Speaker 2 32:36

Yeah, beautifully put, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:38

I'd love to just delve a little bit into your personal experience there, because it sounds to me very much like those realizations you're sharing come from a place of direct experience and your time in meditation and wondering if perhaps you spent time you mentioned the TM tradition there in India whether you were at the ashram in Rishikesh doing that and how that unfolded to you. It's an incredible site. I've visited that ashram, even though it's no longer in use and the meditation cells still holding incredible energy from the years spent in meditation there.

Exploring Self-Awareness and Global Change

Speaker 2 33:11

I was in the third cottage up on the left. Yes, I mean there we're doing long, long meditations, the idea of being ready to settle down and just get to know that space of stillness and sort of you know and sort of you know, not always absolute stillness, but just that you know what it's like to be in a still mind and from that, noticing, learning, learning what takes you out. I mean just watching the mind how just something happened, and some little concern, some little thought comes in and it grows and it becomes this and before you know it you're off on some fantasy or whatever it is. So I mean, I think everything I have to teach in the way of meditation these days comes from just observing my own mind, observing what happens, observing how it gets caught, noticing what it's like when the mind settles down. And I go on retreats here you know week-long retreats, not TM, but my own sort of practice, which is an amalgamation sort of TM with a bit of mindfulness and other things, but just it's on the retreats that the insights come. It's like sometimes, you know I'm just sitting there. Come. It's like sometimes, you know I'm just sitting there and it's like, oh, this is what the great masters were talking about. You know, we hear the words and I can see how, early on in my life, I misconstrued what the words were pointing to and it's like well, one example of that which I think a lot of us get wrong at the beginning, uh, is the whole idea of.

Speaker 2 34:50

You know, there's a true self. You know, behind the ego, behind the ego mind, we can see the ego mind is just a construction that we build up about who I am. You know, peter muscle, I do this, I do that, all that sort of stuff, and that's just things I happen to have done, or whatever things I believe. And then there's this true self and I remember, you know the early on. I think, okay, if I keep meditating, I'm going to discover my true self, and it's going to be amazing, it's going to be this blissful thing when I find my true self. I'm looking for my true self, where is my true self? And over the years it's actually realizing whoops, that. And over the years it's actually realizing whoops, that's not what they were talking about. The true self is like this here I am, when I'm just experiencing the world without the ego. There's not, it's not some new thing that's added, it's just your natural state of being which is revealed when you step out of all that.

Speaker 2 35:41

Thinking that looking, even, you know, even searching for a true self, is like a very subtle form of materialism. If, if I find my true self, I will be happy. It's like no, no, no, just let go of all that stuff. And so the true self is the self we all know. We all know it. That's what's so fascinating. We don't realize we know it.

Speaker 2 36:03

And so in meditation it's often like this is what they're talking. It's just like this sense of being that's been there all my life. You know my ego mind has changed, you know different beliefs, doing different things, different skills, but that sense of beingness which is there, you know, yesterday, all the way back through my life, as far back as I can remember, it's that same sense of ah, yes, this beingness which is you can't define it and yet we know it. It's so, so familiar. It's like, yes, this is me, but I can't. I could be a different name, I could be something else, whatever, but it's like this sense of being, being an aware being, and it's and what I'm really. It's stuff which is obvious, but we make it so complex.

Speaker 3 36:50

You're involved in a lot of different organizations. You've done work ranging in all different kinds of interdisciplinary studies. What do you see as really promising in terms of having this heightened self-awareness or accessing different states of consciousness for individuals, in terms of how that actually makes a difference in the world? What do you see as promising forms or what have you that are out there in the world right now?

Speaker 2 37:16

I think, just to step back and look at what where it's taking us generally as individuals. You know what I talked about just now, that the ego mind, the wanting to find happiness, etc. It promotes discontent and also fear and some subtle level. We live our lives in fear, along with other things as well. There's often there's a level of fear of things not quite working out right what's someone going to say, and that creates a background tension. But it also gets in the way of love. It stops us really caring for each other.

Speaker 2 37:54

I think again, you know, love is a deep, deep, natural quality. I'm not talking about romantic love, but just it's what I call lovingness. It's a quality of the heart which we can taste in meditation, just it's lovingness. It's not loving anything or anybody in particular, it's just a quality of loving. And I think what a lot of people find as as they meditate, they get deeper and they let go of, you know, these false senses of self. They just start becoming more loving, more caring people in themselves.

Speaker 2 38:32

And I think, I think we see that in in many ways in the world today, and it's not to say, by the way, everybody's meditating or anything but, but there's a general raising of awareness and and compassion. I mean, you know the the horror of some of the things that are going on in global politics and things these days. Because of that, because of this awakening and people beginning to to look at things in new ways because the ego mind has fixed ways of seeing things and beginning to open up and begin to see, is this? There's something else going on here. When we look at political situations or whatever, what I'm talking about generalities here.

Speaker 2 39:28

By that you know. I think you can see what I'm pointing to is just like there's this gradual awakening which is going to lead to just greater respect, greater respect for other races, other traditions, other ways of being, belief systems, and not to say everybody's doing that. You know, on the other side, there's a lot of the opposite happening as well. This is why it's a sane or insane. There's a lot of the opposite happening. But my where I draw um more than hope, but just seeing, seeing this spreading, this awakening of consciousness.

Speaker 1 40:03

It is spreading out into the world exponentially and that's that's creating changes in society and how we operate just returning to that concept, where, where we spoke of earlier, where you can compare to humanity, to this planetary nervous system, this nervous system of the earth, it sounds like what you're sharing, this advocacy for less materialism and I love that analogy of seeking the self as a subtle form of materialism, because there is indeed a subtlety to that but the advocacy for simplicity in this fast-paced world, the advocacy for simplifying our lives, making a difference to both individually and collectively. And on the note of that nervous system of the earth and humanity, what is the importance of collective consciousness, as you see it, in solving some of these modern challenges? Where does the role of the individual that we're talking about right, the individual in their meditation process or their contemplative process, versus this collective empowerment, as you're speaking more of global change?

The Future of Consciousness Evolution

Speaker 2 41:06

yeah, I never quite know what collective consciousness is, although I've written about it, I go back and read it. That was 40 years ago. I go back and read it and I say what was I meaning? What was I pointing to? There's different ways of looking at the collective consciousness. There's, you know, the sort of Jungian idea of something that's there beneath our individual consciousness, beneath our individual unconsciousness.

Speaker 2 41:34

There's something there which to be, honest I never quite grokked what he was pointing to, but what he did point to, which I think is significant, is synchronicity. Coincidences was a way in which, whatever the collective consciousness is, it's a way in which the collective consciousness informs our lives. I think we all know what you know synchronicities are, but they tend to be not just coincidences, but they're coincidences that really are significant. They open doors for us. I mean, my whole life has just been full of synchronicities, coincidences, and one I wouldn't have gone to study meditation at university were it not for this very strange, interesting set of coincidences that happened one weekend. That took took my life off a different direction, so took my life off a different direction. So what I think we are seeing more is more people not just opening up to the syncretism, recognizing them. Mistake is we try to explain them. But jung pointed out, they're a causal. They don't, they don't fit a cause and effect model. So when something happens like well, how on earth did that happen? It's like, no, that's the wrong question. It's more like, wow, thank you. Thank you, that's amazing, thank you.

Speaker 2 42:56

The universe, whatever the collective consciousness is, is supporting us, and this is something that meditators in particular notice. The Maharishi used to call it the support of nature. He said by meditating we are stepping out of the ego mind and in that way we are supporting nature in the most fundamental way possible. And nature returns the favor by supporting us. And I would translate that into the collective consciousness by stepping out of that limited, individual, egoic sense of self, we are actually tuning into supporting the collective consciousness and the collective consciousness, if that returns the favor and and is supporting us, so yeah that. That that's how I look at that's one aspect of the collective consciousness. But it's it's going to manifest, not, as you know, everybody coming up with the same idea, but just like gently easing us all in the right direction, because nearly all of these synchronicities, when they happen, they're things that actually help us in our journey in one way or another.

Speaker 1 44:15

That's interesting. You're sharing that, peter, because, putting aside the aspect of synchronicity, I'm almost thinking of machine learning and this idea that the more data a system is exposed to, the better it performs, and potentially like to think that that parallel between the individual and the collective is such that if in an evolving society and an evolving humanity, that's heading in the right direction and by right I mean a positive sort of building that as more and more individuals are exposed to this information, experience, challenge, etc. That there could be this evolution, um, or intention, as we would see in something like machine learning, where better decisions, patterns are identified and things move into a state of improvement.

Speaker 2 44:57

It just comes to mind, as you're sharing yes, yes, and also without a sort of greater resonance between people following on that, um, you mentioned about ai and consciousness.

Speaker 3 45:07

before you're you, before You're a futurist who has worked a lot in the interdisciplinary studies there between consciousness and computing, etc. So what are your thoughts on that? I know it's a question that's talked about quite a bit. Can an AI ever be conscious, whatever that means, or at least we have talked about it a lot, but still it's a good question.

Speaker 2 45:26

And how would we know means or at least we have talked about it a lot, but still it's a good question and how would we know? It could just be manufacturing a statement that I am conscious. Well, coming back to, I mean lots when they discuss this people talk about is it conscious? You know they're getting to things. Well, could it have feelings, those sorts of things.

Speaker 2 45:46

For me, coming back to being conscious, is having an internal representation in mind space of reality out there, so having subjective experience. Now, that quality, as I say, is universal and the AI is part of the physical world. It's distributed. It's not like one single computer, it's distributed over vast networks and huge, huge data centers. We can let go of the idea the brain has to all be in one place. If you work upwards, you'd have to say yes, if everything has that quality of an internal subjective awareness, then at some level you know.

Speaker 2 46:36

We have to look at the silicon chips in a computer now. To me they are much, much simpler than a bacterium. A bacterium is a very complex living system and whatever its experience is is going going to be, as I say, a billionth of hours. A silicon crystal in a chip is going to be one billionth of a bacterium's. So it's not a living system and I think the consciousness evolves into where we are because it's the living system and I think the consciousness evolves into where we are because it's the living system that evolves.

Speaker 2 47:11

So from that point of view, I would say AI as we know it is never going to be conscious as we know it. But who knows, it could be that crystalline stuff gives rise to a whole other thing which is an interiority but is absolutely nothing like what we call consciousness. Who knows, who knows what is going on there? But another thing I mean in terms of coming back to a more human-like consciousness our consciousness is very much to do with our engagement with the world. We are seeing the world, we are experiencing the world, we are acting in the world. If we cut off all our senses and everything and never had a body or just a brain and a bat, would we actually know we are conscious or not?

Speaker 2 48:10

So where AI is at the moment, it has data. It isn't interacting with the world, it doesn't have senses, it's not observing the world, it's not touching, feeling the world, it's not acting in the world, getting feedback, and I think all those things are necessary for consciousness as we experience it Now. Maybe in the future and the way things are going so fast, we may have AIs that do actually you know, really perceive the world and interact with it. Fascinating time.

Speaker 1 48:39

Speaking of the future, peter, as you see it, are we making the cut. You know, is the future where humanity functions, is this harmonious planetary organism with individuals contributing to the well-being of the whole. What are your, what are your thoughts as we move into this, uh, interesting era?

Speaker 2 48:58

not move into it. We're in it as we move through it faster and faster. I don't know. I think, when you look at some of the things that are some of the challenges. You know climate change is on. You know so many people's radar, not to mention you know massive levels of pollution, resource depletion, human beings, lack of you know the atrocities that go on. They're major, major challenges and they're not going to suddenly go away. I mean, I was. I was at a meeting of spiritual teachers at the weekend and they almost felt like an outcast because they were just if we all just raise our consciousness and all, everything will be okay like. No, it's not, it won't.

Speaker 2 49:46

The way I see it is, the more we do awaken, open our consciousness, the better we are going to be able to handle what is coming down the line, both in terms of ourselves, our own resilience, our own inner stability, our compassion for others, caring for others. It's going to help us navigate these times and that is what I see is happening and that's what is needed. How it pans out, I don't know. It's like we've got these three exponential curves. We've got, you know, going towards having technology beyond our dreams, the technology we have in 5, 10 years' time will seem like magic to us today. Have technology beyond our dreams in a world that's sort of, as I say, breaking at the seams, falling apart. All of that happening exponentially with a rising consciousness, consciousness happening at the same break. We've never, ever, had that situation on the planet, never. And so there's nothing to go on to know how it's going to, what's going to happen. All all I know is keep on, you know, doing what we can to further the awakening.

Speaker 2 51:08

It's interesting I went through this was a little transition for me. About 20 years ago, I was on a book tour and I found myself, you know, basically saying you know, to put it very simply, you know, we can all, just you know, wake up, get our consciousness clear, get rid of the ego, etc. Where you can have, you know, move into whatever you want. To call it the age of Aquarius I wasn't using those terms, but that basic idea and there's a niggle in the back of my mind. It's like, actually, you know, I don't quite believe that and what I'm saying? I don't quite believe.

Speaker 2 51:46

And I'm looking at the world you know, this is 20, more than 20 years ago it's like, clearly, we are in a state of crisis, and so what happens? If you know, if the world is formed a bit, what? What do we need? And what we need is, you know, things like compassion. We need to we to be smarter. We need to let go of our attitudes, of ways we've done things in the past. We need to be more creative. It was the same thing, it's like. Whichever scenario you take, what we need to be doing in terms of most generally fostering the awakening of human consciousness is exactly the same. So the work as I see it is the same, whichever scenario you take.

Speaker 3 52:33

We'd like to check in with people always as we head towards the end of interviews. What are you working on currently? What future projects or things that you're looking forward to or relevant to you in this moment? Going forward right.

Speaker 2 52:48

Well, right now I'm just finishing another book on meditation of all things, because, although you know I've been meditating for years and tried various things that I've been teaching it, running retreats, got an online course, lots, lots of I mean I've never actually written down everything I have to say about meditation in one place.

Speaker 2 53:17

And I realized I I want to do that now while I still can. You know my I don't know how much longer I'm going to be here and how much longer my mental faculties At the moment they're all pretty good. I'm very happy but, like, ok, it's time to just put down all that I have discovered for myself. It's basically what I've discovered makes meditation more easy, effortless and more enjoyable, without going into any particular technique, but it's about attitudes to meditation. To put all that down and just to share it, because you know I don't want to keep it to myself, I don't want to keep it locked in my little skull here, so I'm just putting it all down. I'm now more or less just going through the final polish of that book, so it'll be out sometime next year wonderful.

Speaker 1 54:05

Looking forward to that. Where is it that people might be able to find some information about you, um, in terms of connecting to what you offer, retreats, etc uh, my website, which is very simple.

Speaker 2 54:17

It's peterrussellcom. Two hours on, russell, not the french way, otherwise you go to some weird typo squatter, but peterrussellcom. Everything's there and links to you know, stuff, my sub stack and videos. I've got lots of videos on youtube, but you can, you know, that's the starting point. You know you can search for me on youtube and make sure you get peter russell, while in russell peters I get comments like I thought this guy was meant to be funny. Probably Russell Peters gets comments like I thought this guy was meant to be a scientist. So yeah, my website, peterrussellcom, and you can sign up for my newsletter and videos, audios and lots and lots and lots. About 400 pages of writings and things there.

Speaker 3 55:07

Well, we thank you so much for your time today. It was wonderful to connect with you. You've done so much amazing work. That's really really resonant with the stuff that Christabel and I do with Field Dynamics, and we're very, very happy to have you on this podcast and get the opportunity to spend some time and enjoy your thoughts, musings and wisdom.

Speaker 2 55:29

Thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation, thank you.

Speaker 1 55:33

A real pleasure. Thank you, Peter. Thanks for being a part of the Future of Wellness. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review. It helps us reach more people and to make great episodes like this one. Learn more about field dynamics. See you next time.