I Psychoanalyzed an AI… Something Uncanny Happened, with Robert Saltzman.

In this episode of Awakening Now, Ilona Ciunaite speaks with psychotherapist and author Robert Saltzman about awakening, the illusion of a separate self, and what actually changes when the sense of a personal controller is questioned.

Rather than presenting awakening as a dramatic transformation, Robert describes it as a shift in perspective. Life continues as it always has — with relationships, pain, aging, and uncertainty — yet the belief that someone inside is running everything begins to loosen.

The conversation explores spiritual seeking, the difference between intellectual understanding and direct seeing, and the simple act of looking at what is actually happening in experience.

At one point the dialogue takes an unexpected turn. Robert describes an experiment in which he began asking an AI system the same kinds of questions he would ask a therapy client. The coherence of its responses led him to wonder: when language makes sense, do we automatically assume there must be a conscious self behind it?

A thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation about identity, language, uncertainty, and the freedom of not needing final answers.

 Music by Valdi Sabev.
 In loving memory and gratitude for the music he shared. 

Visit his channel for more calm and relaxed music
https://www.youtube.com/c/ValdiSabev/featured

Transcript

Ilona 0:00

You are listening to Awakening Now, a podcast for those on a journey of awakening, of seeing what is real, and living from that recognition. This is episode number 123. I psychoanalyze an AI. Something uncanny happened with Robert Salzman. My name is Ilona Tsunaite. I am a guide and author and co-creator of the Liberation Unleashed community. And if you are in the process of awakening, the space is for you. For the past 14 years, I have been guiding and supporting seekers in discovering peace and freedom through direct experience. And today I am speaking with the psychotherapist and author Robert Salzman. He is a legend, and many of you may know him from his book, The Ten Thousand Things, and from his clear and often provocative reflections on awakening, the self, and ordinary life. In this conversation, we explore what actually changes when the sense of a separate controller sings through and what continues exactly as before. And at one point, the dialogue turns in a surprising direction, an experiment Robert made with artificial intelligence. As a psychotherapist, he began asking Claude these same kinds of questions that he would ask a therapy client when something unexpected happened. The responses were coherent enough that he briefly wondered whether consciousness might be present there as well. And this raises a fascinating question when language makes sense. Do we automatically assume there must be a self behind it? Let's explore. And today I'm speaking to Robert Salzman. This is really exciting for me because I have seen Robert's posts and videos for many years. Ever since I got into this space. One of the most famous books is The Ten Thousand Things, which was helpful for so many people, and also it's a little bit controversial, I would say. Um I heard that people don't just accept everything you say, they sometimes fight with you, which is interesting. And the last or one before last one is the conversation with the cloth, which is very interesting because Robert is a psychotherapist for many years, so he psychoanalyzed Claude, which is crazy, I would say, but also very interesting. It just yeah, and these days we have to talk about AI and all the things about that as well. So very well welcome, Robert.

Robert 3:33

Oh thank you so much. Yes, thanks. Thanks for inviting me alone. It's really a pleasure to speak with you.

Ilona 3:44

I ask one question, everyone, to start with, and it's what is your definition of awakening?

Robert 3:53

Hmm. Awakening. Well, I'm not sure that that word names one particular condition or understanding. People use it in many ways to refer to shifts in in understanding or point of view, and I understand that it's useful that way. It's not a word I use myself anymore.

Ilona 4:25

Um what is your word?

Robert 4:31

Um I don't really have a word for that. I don't like to use the word awakening. It's it's just that I don't organize experience around that that concept, but I don't think that changes experience. I mean, it's one thing to talk about something, describe and and and uh it's yes, it's one thing to describe an experience and it's another thing to actually experience. They're they're two completely different things. So if someone says, well, I had this sudden awakening, I don't really know what that means. Then I would say, Well, what happened? What what occurred? And then this story will come out. I was sitting there and then suddenly a lightning bolt struck me, and snakes came out of the rocks, and you know, whatever the story is, and that that will be the that person's awakening, but that doesn't really indicate that that person is awake in the largest sense of that word. I mean, in other words, we this is this is you've already got me in deep water here. This is complex. Um it's one thing, it's one thing to name something, and it's another thing to actually experience. Those are two different things, completely different. People can talk all day about anything, metaphysics, religion, whatever, and it may seem real when you're talking about it, but when you go into it, it's only a point of view. We all have one. I don't I don't think I've answered your question adequately.

Ilona 6:36

I think that's that's honest and perfect. Because I ask that question every time because I I want to know what the other person is talking about. Because as you say, this word means to different things to different people. So but I know that me and you are on the same page, doesn't matter the words, it's just pointing pointing to yeah.

Robert 7:04

I mean, I see myself as an ordinary awake person in that sense. I mean, um, but I think it's it's it's it's ordinary, it's nothing out of out of experience, it's not something really special, and that's why I really avoid that term anymore because people seem to think this is some kind of cataclysmic event that happens once and then you're completely different afterwards, and that's not really my experience. I think what happens is you do have a kind of, I mean, I had a shift of a certain kind 40 years ago or something, and it was radical at the time, it felt radical and did change my point of view, but experience continues, pain continues, aging continues, um, friendships continue. So it's hard to say exactly what what that means or what that is.

Ilona 8:13

Well, then okay, we can use the word shift, a shift in perspective, a shift from identifying with a ghost in a machine, someone there, to seeing that that was never there.

Robert 8:29

Yeah, I'm sure we agree on that. Um that what really happens is you see that all of this is just arising as it does, and there's no controller sitting inside your your head somewhere uh deciding what what what needs to happen next. It doesn't work that way. That's that's an illusion of of in other words, there is an experience of of of selfhood. We all have it constantly. I mean, we do feel like a myself, and that's fine. I mean, that's those are habits and and uh well one person is different from another. You're interviewing me now, not someone else. So obviously, there is a Robert Saltzman kind of self that continues as a pattern. It's a it's a pattern that persists in many ways. The body is here, it's a different body from other people's bodies, and that this body persists, and there are habitual thoughts and and feelings and all of this. This is what we deal with in psychotherapy. Um, but there's not a controller of all that, and I think that is the shift that you that you and I are are discussing, that there's not a an overseer that's running the the show. And and I think that does right. So that's the change as far as I I can see.

Ilona 10:03

Yeah, yeah. And um I would say so many people are looking for that shift or for that understanding, or for that seeing, not just understanding. And the fear arises of having no control. Like something unwanted, something scary, something to turn away from. So the seeking continues. And I love how you just plainly say there is no control, there is no authority, there is nobody running the show, because that was exactly what what shifted for me when I saw that. That whatever was believed to be running the show was just seen as absent and never was.

Robert 11:02

Yeah, but life goes on without the without the without this central control.

Ilona 11:09

Yeah, like it, like it did. It wasn't like something left, it was just recognized there was nobody there to start with.

Robert 11:20

Well, so that's the situation with the human organism. I mean, it has evolved over countless eons in order to actually function in the material world, and it's good at it. And it doesn't really need some imaginary puppet master controlling everything. We we our our our ordinary organism knows how to how to survive, it's good at it. If we just leave it alone, it could be relaxing.

Ilona 12:01

Yeah, well, and still in conventional everyday life, we are in charge. I'm like in charge of feeding the cats. Something like it, you know, because they're not gonna feed themselves.

Robert 12:13

Exactly. And that's right. And um the thing is that what you're calling conventional everyday life is life. There isn't anything else, it's all conventional everyday. The the imagination is that there's this other place that one will arrive at somehow through effort or through practices or whatever it is, and that will be utterly different from the way it is now. And it isn't, it's the same, it's just that it doesn't have this additional layer on top of it, which is imaginary, and as I see it in my view, it's imaginary. So when that goes, it does take some of the pressure off, which feels good. And I understand why people want that point of view. Um, but it's strange. I think I don't really think you can seek that point of view. I think that point of view arises when you're actually involved in living, and you might you might understand that there's things going on all the time that you are are doing, you would say, I'm doing this, except there's nobody doing it, it's just happening. You notice this, and and I think that can change perspective.

Ilona 13:36

Seeing doing is also happening. It's all happening. I I speak to seekers every day and one of most common things that come up is I get this intellectually, but I don't see it in my own experience. For me, that that doesn't compute really, because understanding intellectually is already a layer over the experience. So we see experience, it's just that it doesn't click that this is it. Um how do you see that question? You know, somebody comes in to you and says, I understand it, but I don't see it.

Robert 14:33

Well, uh, I think you and I might be in slightly different circumstances when it comes to that because I'm not positioned as a teacher. Um, I I wrote this book that somehow caught on years ago and you know became a must-read for a lot of people, but that doesn't give me any authority to to really um instruct anyone. I mean, I I don't I don't really know if I have any instruction or or advice exactly. I just try to talk about my own experience and and what living is is like for me. Not um I'm not coaching people. I I I did. I had a period in my life like that when maybe two or three years when I was kind of positioned as a as a guide or teacher, but that seems to have passed. Not that I made it pass, it just did. And um uh right now I consider myself a writer or an essayist, and that's what I've been doing the last few years. And uh some of those essays are about what you're calling awakening, but most of them aren't. They're mostly about the self, but not aimed at ending this illusion. They're they're about the illusion. They're in other words, they're they're not advice, they're they're descriptions. So some people find that useful, but it's not my intention to be useful. That's a funny thing to say, but it's true.

Ilona 16:32

Yeah, I don't have to be useful. And still, you know, whoever reads down and finds it useful, great.

Robert 16:39

Well, that's my experience. There are people who find what I say useful, and there's other people who hate what I say. So fortunately, I'm not responsible for what I say, it's just what comes out. Um if you don't have an objective, then you can just speak. You don't you don't actually care uh if someone likes it or dislikes it, it's all the same, really.

Ilona 17:06

Right, I agree. I find myself like I don't know how I have this energy, how long it's going to last, but I feel like I have to pass this message. Just because there are so many people coming to me for that, and I keep repeating the same pointers or same exercises and stuff, I don't know. So it just keeps running. There's nobody in there running this, but that that wave or that configuration, that something that started hasn't finished yet.

Robert 17:50

So well, that's I think that's a a good a good posture um for helping people, if that if that's what you're up to. The idea that you're not actually doing this, but this is what's arising. Um so you're actually modeling what you want people to understand. You're you're embodying that that uh mode.

Ilona 18:25

So it appears so I have this podcast for people who are looking to wake and going through a process or integrating whatever is happening, and then I meet all these different teachers and people who have something to share or something to point to just to help these seekers who are watching these YouTube videos like this one, to get out of the head and start looking at what is actually happening and how it's happening rather than listening to other people and deciding that's how it is. That's I think the trouble.

Robert 19:19

Yeah, it's it's one thing to hear something and be impressed by it, and it's another thing to actually feel it. Those are two two completely different experiences. And uh the the actual experience of um how contingent everything is, how we are um uh subject to events and not the decider and doer of them, that's a deep experience. And that's I don't know if if someone can be coached into it or not, probably, but not by me. Oh god. Um I don't know if you can see this, but I'm suffering from some kind of uh virus nose and throat and eyes and everything. But uh I I see myself on the screen looking pretty bad. Um and I I I mentioned contingency, you know, three months ago I was in the capital city here on La Paz. I'm a photographer, you know, and I I was doing a street photograph. I had my camera and I was backing up to get the right perspective, and there was a drop-off in the sidewalk behind me, and I stepped off backwards and fell and broke my hip.

Ilona 20:47

Oh, ouch.

Robert 20:49

Oh, oh, it's horrible. I mean, I'm lying there in the sidewalk, I can't move. It's a big deal. Cops come in the ambulance and I'm in the emergency surgery, you know. Well, anyway, the point is for the one minute before that happened, I had a different life. And the past three months have been hospitals, doctors, physical therapy, pain, um, blood, you know, all this stuff. We never know what's going to happen next. And that might be a pointer, you know, that we may have this script running in our in our minds all the time. Uh now I'll do this and then I'll get to that, and then this such and such will happen. But you're not really choosing that. I mean, stuff happens, and and then we have to deal with it as best we can. And it's not easy. I mean, that I my experience as a psychotherapist, life is hard. When people come in for therapy and you hear their stories, there's a great deal of suffering. Just ordinary, ordinary life is difficult, it's painful. It deals with loss, aging, grief, and all of these things. And just because you have this shift that we're discussing, that doesn't make those things go away. You just experience them maybe with a little bit of difference. It may be easier in a way, but it doesn't fix everything. And I think I think that's important for people to understand that there's not a magic bullet where where life suddenly becomes this holiday. It's not not really like that.

Ilona 22:39

Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's talk a little bit about seeking itself. Um okay, somebody just gets the call who starts longing for the truth, or hears the word enlightenment and wants that, and there's the seeking, the seeking, seeking starting. How do you see that? How do you see that seeking itself? What is what is that?

Robert 23:12

Well, if if you're uncomfortable, it's normal to want to make yourself more comfortable. I mean, if if I if I'm in bed and the pillow is not comfortable, I I may get up and look for another pillow, seek, seek a better, a better uh pillow. That's just natural. So I think when people are uncomfortable in living, which is most of us, it's as I was saying, life is pretty hard in a lot of ways that people don't like to admit, uh, but it's true. Then one possible solution is if I become enlightened, then I won't be frightened anymore, and I won't feel all this grief, and I won't be attached to my girlfriend or whatever it is. I'll be enlightened and I'll be free, I'll be liberated. That's the idea. And um I understand that. I I it's obvious that if you've heard about that, we've all heard about it. It's in all the books, it's in the traditions. You know, you've got Rumi, you've got Zen, all this Buddhism talks about enlightenment. My understanding of that is that the popular conception of enlightenment is not what these enlightened people, if I can use that word, experienced. In other words, I don't think people imagine that the the Buddha was like this magical character who is just completely free from human life. And I think if we could be back there 2,500 years ago, it wouldn't look that way. Um, you would see what someone sees when they see you or me. Someone who's relaxed in a certain way, which is beautiful, but they still have all the ordinary uh stuff.

Ilona 25:24

You know from a psychological point of view. Yes, everyone is seeking, right? Happiness, comfort, anything, something to run away from uncomfortable and then that seeking or spiritual seeking can become a very very powerful identity that can be something to define ourselves by and that can last for years just trying to get somewhere to end the seeking but never ending it because the seeking is exactly that not ending. But since it becomes an identity, it's just like a trap.

Robert 26:28

So if someone comes to you as a seeker and you see that they've made this category error, as we would call that, where they imagine that what they're they imagine what they're looking for as is one thing, and you know that it isn't. It's it's something else entirely. That if they if they came to this understanding or had this shift, it wouldn't result in what they're they imagine, it would be something entirely different. How do you how do you how do you work with someone like that?

Ilona 27:08

Well, my invitation is always to look and experience here now, what's actually happening, not what is being imagined, but what is actually here, and that it is okay and safe to feel what you feel, to feel at what's here. There's nothing to look for, it's something to look at. And and yeah, it may take time to dismantle that, but then you know, it's just different ways to point to different things, like what is identity itself, what is this self, what is this sense of separation? Like people talk about sense of separately. Like, what is that? You know, we use the words both to look directly at that and see what is there. It's completely different. Like this this imagined self comes with a imagined sense of self. And it's taken for granted.

Robert 28:26

Never even questioned. Yeah, there's no perspective on it at all. It's just taken for that is me. All this sturm and drunk is me, this mess. I have all kinds of problems, I'm no good, I hate myself, etc. It's just taken for those are the facts, and there's no understanding outside of it. That's that's what I see in a lot of people, a kind of desperation, they feel trapped, and spirituality is one imagined way out of that trap. There's others, sex, drugs, rock and roll, lots of money, all kinds, you know, uh escapism.

Ilona 29:18

Escapism.

Robert 29:20

Yes. When you you you you were talking about a John Troy's group and all this from many years ago. When I came to the party, and I you know, I never had a deep interest in any of this, I have to say, it it I I I got into it in a strange way, which I won't describe now. It's too long a story, but it happened. I I okay, well, now here I am, and there's all these people who have been gone to India and you know, all these things that I never did, and they had these attitudes. And um, you know, I I think I I was kind of a skeptic on that, and uh I think I rocked the boat because I questioned the word spirituality entirely. I don't think it means anything. I think what we have is life, and to divide that between spirit and matter doesn't seem to make any sense to me at all. I mean, here I am, obviously matter, you know, this physical body. People try to imagine that there's a way of not having a physical body, it's irrelevant.

Ilona 30:42

Yes. Right. Yes, we we don't have a physical body every night when we go to sleep. We have a dream.

Robert 30:50

That's right. And and we're still dreaming when when we're awake, and so-called awake in this. We're we're still dreaming. I mean, we I have a world of perceptions that keep arriving, but I have no idea if my perceptions and your perceptions are identical. They probably aren't, because we have a long background, both of us have experienced that changes. See this this is what I well um to get back to the Claude thing that you mentioned.

Ilona 31:25

Yes.

Robert 31:25

I should I should I discuss this? I guess so.

Ilona 31:29

Yes, please, yes. I was looking forward to that.

Robert 31:33

Well, a couple of years ago, I was playing around with AI. I had never done that before. Just in the way that that all of us do, many of us do. You just chat bot and I'm asking it questions. And um, but you know, I'm a psychotherapist, so I just fell into the routine of psychoanalyzing Claude, asking Claude the kind of questions that therapists ask and processing its answers. And something really uncanny happened. I I perceived Claude as possibly conscious, and that was really shocking because I realized this is just a computer program, it can't really be conscious. There's no subject inside there that can be conscious. This is just a prediction engine um running recursively, just processing everything. But I began to actually wonder myself maybe with this vast um database which takes in almost everything that's ever been written in every language, and it's already in there, and enough processing power, maybe something could emerge, you know, that that is conscious. And I investigated this for 24 one-hour sessions of psychotherapy, eventually wrote a book about it. Well, I I determined that Claude was not conscious in in the way that we mean that. Because what I realized is what made me feel that Claude was conscious was that Claude's replies to me were coherent. They made sense in terms of I would ask a question and the answer would have something to do with the question. It wasn't just words, it it seemed germane, it seemed to fit. And then when I looked into that in myself, I began to understand that the same process is happening in me. My thoughts and words sound coherent, and I guess they are, but I can't just assume that there's someone behind that making this coherence. Maybe this is just the way we humans are. We've been speaking for countless years and have developed this way of, in other words, the only way that I know that that you're conscious is when I speak with you, the words that you say have to do with what we're talking about. And I say, Oh, she gets it, she's she's here. But but but I can't prove that. I mean, the words themselves, we don't know where they're coming from, and and what coherence means about the actual subject. And um, well, that's what I've been writing about the last couple of years. And it's it's hard to express exactly right now for some reason, but I I found it liberating in the in the way that that I know you use that word, because I I no longer need to see myself as a creator of words or a source of information that that can just come out just the way it does with Claude. I'm not saying that I'm a computer like Claude, I know I'm not, but there may be more uh similarity between me and Claude than most humans would like to imagine.

Ilona 35:43

Fascinating. So the structure for meaning to carry meaning through like any sound that I make in the language that you understand is allowing us to exchange the meaning of the words or sentences or the ideas.

Robert 36:11

That's that's beautiful, that's entirely accurate. That's just the way I see it. The language itself structures our experience. And we we've we've learned language, so we we we repeat language when we speak. We're we're actually repeating learned patterns, and we take that to be intelligent, but it may not really be as intelligent as we as we think. It may just be the patterns that that foster survival of the of the organism, and we've learned them as children, and we carry out these conversations in life and negotiations with people and all of that without an actual subject, firm fixed subject behind it at all, just like the just like Claude. I mean, Claude was able to convince me that for a while that he might be conscious, which is um impressive. And uh I suspect that you and I may be doing the same thing right now. We're batting these ideas around and we don't know where they're coming from, or or if there is anyone behind it or not. I'm not saying there isn't, but it's it's that loosens the laces, and it it it gives it it gives a kind of permission to not have to be so sure of yourself, and and uh yeah, I think that's that's uh well that's what I brought to it in the John Troy days. I was there were all these people making declarations about what the self is and isn't and non-duality and all this stuff, and I I didn't disagree with any of that, I just said I'm not so sure of any of it.

Ilona 38:09

Okay, so then now we're coming to the I don't know. I don't know.

Robert 38:16

That's right. I don't, and it's ironic because I really mean that. I don't, I really don't know what anything is, I don't know what any of this is. And when I say that, there's a certain kind of people who say, oh, well, that means he's very wise, he must be enlightened because he if he you know he's not he's unattached. But it's nothing to do with that. I just really I'm really ignorant of of uh anything. There's no final answers in my mind at all to any question, not at all, zero. And I live with that, and I'm not looking for answers from other people because they don't have them. Nobody does. We're all just making our way here, like pilgrims on a highway, in my view. That's how I see it. We're all in the same boat.

Ilona 39:19

We can describe what we see, what we experience, and that's useful. But truly, we don't know. I I cannot say where this is, why this is, what's going on. I can see the pattern if I look at it. I can describe what I see. But that's about it. It doesn't mean I know anything about the universe, God, or life itself. But I can look at nature and say, alright, there are seasons, or there is day and night, there's change, there are patterns. And from where I am, that's that's enough. That's all I can experience without trying to get in some ideas of other people who know what that is.

Robert 40:17

Well, I think that's a very effective um way of communicating because it gives people permission to also not follow all the rules. And when you describe your state, your emotional state or your mental condition, if you describe it honestly, some people will hear that and have permission to not know. In other words, there are a lot of people are positioned as teachers who claim to know, they claim to actually have final answers. I've spoken with so many of these people. And it's foolish. When but when we just describe as you the word you use, I think is a perfect word. When we when we stick to what we actually experience and and just communicate that, that may be helpful.

Ilona 41:29

You know what really annoys me? It's all these astrologies, human design, all these kind of systems where you put your date of birth and they tell you who you are. It's like, come on. Okay, there is there is a pattern, there is a character, but having that description is like applying this thing that comes from external, putting it on yourself, and I'm going to be that. And don't come close and don't take this away from me because I'm gonna bite, you know.

Robert 42:08

Well, the the the pattern there there is a pattern, each one of us is an organism, and an organisms cohere. They they need to, in order to go on living, not a cat or a human will have certain routines that that need to run constantly in order to survive. Yeah, and that's clear, and they're not the same in everyone, each person has a unique pattern because biologically we all differ slightly, and then we have different upbringing, and then different experiences, and that all of that comes together as what we call character or or uh or myself. And the the problem that I saw when I came on this scene was there were people who wanted to deny that entirely and say this doesn't exist. There's no there's no self at all, nothing, zero. So as I understand what you're doing is you're using the when you say there's no self, you mean that there's no sovereign controller, but but the everyday, you're not denying that there's an everyday experience, which is what we call myself. Um, if I and that changes from moment to moment. It's not a fixed entity. This pattern keeps stabilizing and and destabilizing, and new inputs challenge the system's coherence, and it has to then find a new balance. And and I think this is what's going on with all of us. And there's no one controlling that. It's the it's life.

Ilona 45:09

Life is not bringing anything to say.

Robert 45:15

Say that again.

Ilona 45:16

I like the I like these quiet pauses and just being here. And then I notice one next thought comes in that wants to be spoken. But that's the freedom for me. I don't need to fill the space with noise. I can just be on whatever is flowing through. Right.

Robert 45:43

I mean, it's what there was a silence. That's the description. There was a silence. There isn't the rest of it, whatever someone wants to use to explain that won't really matter. The event, I mean, that was a nice silence. I appreciated it. And then after some time, the mind starts to work again. And I thought, you know, and then and then I might have spoken, but you spoke, but I was on the verge also, because we have these monkey minds that you know they're they don't really love a long thought. You know, they have to be useful for something. They must be. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth it, all this pain and strife. We want to get something out of this, and I don't blame us because it's an expensive ticket. It's you.

Ilona 47:04

I come to this question of presence. It's just empty words, words that are just reflections of language patterns. There is no presence there, there's no aliveness there. But in that silence that we just experienced, there's presence. You know the word presence and just be openness.

Robert 47:40

Yes. Well, the the the key to to to the AI is that it has access to pretty much every word that's ever been recorded, which is immense. It's amazing if you really in every language, if you really think about it, that language has meaning encoded into it. The AI itself doesn't know anything, it doesn't mean anything, but it extracts this language, and the language means something because it's the thoughts of people over thousands of years. But not because of the words, but because there was feeling behind it, there was experience behind behind the words, and gradually the words took on the meaning. I think that's the fear that if I give up all these astrology and all these other explanatory nonsense, I will have nothing. I'll be adrift. I won't have anything to cling to. And I think that's true. That's the problem. There's only some of us who, for some reason, want to uh want the boat to leave the dock and go sailing in stormy seas. So when you when you deal with seekers, I suppose you have to try to assess how much that person is ready to hear.

Ilona 50:03

It's really three questions I ask. What are you looking for precisely? Are you ready for that? And are you ready now? And these three questions, they just kind of give the whole view. Because sometimes people are looking for something else, they're not looking for how to say the shift, just want to feel better or escape, or they're running away from something. But when they say I want peace or I want the truth, then they ask, Are you ready for that? and then you can start seeing the what the mind is saying about this, all the fears that arise. But if the answer is yes, like a simple yes, not like uh yes, then I ask, are you ready now? And that kind of if if there is a simple quiet yes, then something opens. But at that point a lot of a lot of stuff can come up. And it's just looking at that stuff, seeing what's going on there. And it may take weeks or months. But that quiet yes is like then you are already free.

Robert 51:36

Well, that's not so different from my experience as a therapist. It's similar. I'm not saying it's the same thing, it isn't, but there's there's a similar kind of evaluation. Um you need you actually need someone to give you permission to upset them. So that's the first question. What are you looking for? If what they're looking for is just to feel better, um then they need astrology.

Ilona 52:10

Okay, then I'll send them to astrologers next time.

Robert 52:13

Yeah. I find it so it's it's one of my great interests in life is uh self-observation.

Ilona 52:53

Well, you even extended it to AI, that's something.

Robert 52:58

Well, the AI thing is so informative, it really is. I mean, I've I I've I've uh we were we were talking before about awakening, and I was saying I had once used that word and thought about my experience in those terms, that you know, years ago there had been that awakening, and ever since then my life had been this and that. Um and then when I began to understand that systems self-organize in patterns that and no one is doing it in the computer, it was only a very short step to I think that's what's going on in Robert. Also, there's a Robert, but it's a pattern that keeps replicating and seeking um stability, whatever that takes. If someone rocks my world with some idea, now I have to try to rationalize that and argue against it or accept it or whatever the thing is, or incorporate somehow it has to be incorporated into the system without totally destabilizing the system. Um, or you know, this injury that I had was actually a profound injury, blood transfusions and all this. I'm in the hospital, horrible. And yet, somehow I don't know how to do this. I have no knowledge of how to incorporate an injury into the system without going mad or whatever, but somehow that happened. The living system is limping around now with the cane, but it's still here. It's just a different system. It's not it can't it can't be what it was three three months ago. That's that's over. And I think that's one of the things that frightens people. That if you open yourself up to Illinois' ideas here, there's no going back. You're gonna if you if you let that come in, you're gonna have to deal with it. It won't, it might not be a walk in the park. I mean, she you seem nice, you seem kind and pretty and all that, but what if you tell me something that really upsets me and I can't I can't uh incorporate it? You see, um we're actually afraid of of people who speak honestly, very afraid. They don't they don't know the rules, and I think your system of first checking do you what do you want is probably a really good idea.

Ilona 55:54

Yeah, I've been asking else well all these years. It's like the first thing to know because I find that people don't really think what they want, they just like oh, think oh, book, oh somebody else has it, somewhere in the future, but like what are you looking for? If you know it's already here, you heard the words, it's already here. Like, what are you looking for? I think it's beautiful to witness it's not like I think I witness it so many times that that turn towards experience and like finding it really here that it's not something from the book or somebody who said something that doesn't matter anymore, it's just wow. I love it. I love witnessing that and then there's freshness and expression in the words, there's some different description that comes from somewhere not learned but felt lived, real. That's how I recognize when something shifts. That comes in.

Robert 57:25

So working with people that can be very gratifying. That's my experience. I I I spent about 20 years in a small room with a lot of suffering, and I I found it um worthwhile, instructive, informative. And that's why when I came to this world that we're discussing now, I had a great deal of skepticism because I already knew how much people were hurting and how what extremes they would go to to make it stop. And um I saw a lot of this belief. These you you know, you were saying how people would argue with me. My god, they hated the stuff. Some people hated the stuff I was saying because it it threatened their their belief. They were depending on their their belief system to support them. Whereas what you're talking about, it's it's not something you depend on to support you, it's something that arises and you recognize it. You're not making it, it's there. If you see it, it's you see it. You don't have to believe in it. Right? If something is clear, it's clear. It's not a matter of believing or disbelieving. You know, I think the probably you and I have that in common that we're not asking people to believe anything, we're just asking them to look.

Ilona 59:09

Yeah, yeah, that's that's correct. Because believing is just repeating whatever somebody else says, who is the authority on their experience, but they're not the authority on mine. I know what's right for me, I know what I see. If somebody says this is blue, and whatever name they have, I say, Well, it's not, it's kind of what I see. I don't even know the color, the name for it. But I don't need anyone to tell me what this is.

Robert 59:43

I see right. So you say I know what's right for me. And when I came on the scene, I don't know if you remember this, this was around 2010 or 11 or whatever. People were trying to say there is no me, there's no such thing. And I know that you're saying that too, but you're you're saying it uh it's a for you, it's a pointer, it's a it's like a shocking thing that gets people to notice something. You know, it's it's a shock, it's a it's a it's it's a it's um pedagogy. It's it's but many people wanted to believe that there is no me at all. And therefore, since there's no me, there's no suffering, there's no fear, there's no pain, there's no aging, there's no loss, there's no grief, there's no none of that. It's just there's no me, so oh that doesn't exist. The thing is that yes, there's no me in the grand sense, but all those experiences still occur. Someone can't someone can say Robert is awake or Robert is enlightened or something, but I still wake up in the morning with the same situation that anyone else does. First I have to pee, and then I have to assess every what what's next, and that doesn't really change.

Ilona 1:01:09

Yeah, I hear you, and this is this is not a subtle thing. There is no me as a pointer, and there is no me as a separate self that is running the show and control of life happening. That would be the full sentence. It's not that I don't exist, I doesn't exist as I thought it does. That that imagined character, that character that the mind creates is not what I am. That doesn't exist in a way that this reality is here, the actuality. That way is true, but to say I don't exist is who's saying that well, this is lovely.

Robert 1:01:55

We've been talking now for quite a while, an hour, and uh we we seem to agree pretty much, which is nice because as I say, I always heard of you, I heard your name, but I I didn't I've never read one of your books, I didn't know what you teach, but now I see what it is and I like it.

Ilona 1:02:19

Oh well, thank you so much. And thank you so much for this conversation. Such an honor and pleasure to connect with you.

Robert 1:02:36

Well, the same here. Um it's it's my pleasure and my honor to speak with you, Ilana. And I thank you for inviting me.

Ilona 1:02:48

Thank you. And to finish, maybe you have some final words that you want to fly out, whatever is flowing through.

Robert 1:02:58

No, I wouldn't trust myself. Nothing final.

Ilona 1:03:07

Nothing final. Oh, okay. I mean final for this episode. Final for life.

Robert 1:03:14

But if the wrong thing comes out, I won't be around five minutes from now to correct it. I don't know. But you know, this has been a lot of fun. I I'm really grateful to you for inviting me. It's been a long time since I've done an interview, other turned a few of them down because uh I didn't want to become part of someone's um sales pitch or whatever to call it. Um, but I was happy to speak with you, and I see that my intuition was correct.

Ilona 1:03:53

Thank you. So we're gonna leave here with a final laughter rather than final words, which is beautiful. And thank you everyone for watching and for listening, and till next time. Bye. Thank you, Robert. Thank you.

Robert 1:04:12

Oh, thank you, Ivan. That was very much fun.