The Deconstruction of a False Perspective With Greg Goode

In this episode of Awakening Now, I speak with Greg Goode about self-inquiry and what is actually being seen through.

Greg Goode is a nonduality teacher and author with a background in philosophy. He is known for his clear and structured approach to inquiry, guiding people to look directly at experience and question what seems obvious — especially the sense of being a separate self.

In our conversation, we explore a simple but often overlooked shift: seeing is not about finding truth or adopting a new perspective, but about recognizing and deconstructing what is false.

We look at how the sense of self appears, how it is reinforced through thought, and why it can feel so real even when examined closely.

This is a grounded and practical conversation — an invitation to look, rather than to believe.

More from Greg:
https://radiuspress.org/greggoode/

His latest book, Enlightening the Physical World, explores the nature of matter through both philosophy and direct experience:
https://radiuspress.org/enlightening-the-physical-world-investigating-matter-with-berkeley-and-the-direct-path/

Direct Path playlist with Terry Moore:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf0MTUdIZxcwgcyMSNTyeDHvwmaOg2w8K

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

Transcript

Ilona 0:00

Awakening isn't about becoming someone new. It's about seeing through what you are not. You're listening to Awakening Now, a podcast for those on a journey of seeing what is real and living from that recognition. This is episode number 127, the deconstruction of a false perspective with great good. My name is Delona Tsunaite. I am a guide, an author, and co-creator of the Liberation Elite 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 sit down with Greg Good. Greg is a non-duality teacher and author with a background in philosophy. He's known for his clean, structured approach to self-inquiry, guiding people to examine direct experience and see through a sense of a separate self. He's an author of several well-known books, including Standing as Awareness, The Direct Path, A User Guide, and After Awareness. These are often used as practical guides for inquiry with step-by-step exploration. In this conversation today, Craig shares a clear and grounded look at self-inquiry, a way of seeing through what is assumed, rather than searching for something new. We explore how the sense of self appears, why it feels real, and what becomes clear when it is looked at directly. Let's begin. Very, very warm welcome to Great Good. Such an honor and such a pleasure to have you here on the show. Welcome.

Greg Goode 1:51

Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here. Very happy to speak to you.

Ilona 1:57

I know your name, and we spoke many years ago, I think 2011, 12, around that time. We never actually met on a video.

Greg Goode 2:08

It's true.

Ilona 2:09

Yeah.

Greg Goode 2:09

I don't I don't do a lot of videos. You do, I don't, I don't um do a lot of videos. So and I hadn't heard your name for a long time until we just reconnected about a couple months ago.

Ilona 2:21

Yeah. I remember your books Standing as Awareness and Direct Path, a user guide. Uh-huh. And awareness, and there was another one on the emptiness that you co-wrote.

Greg Goode 2:32

Emptiness, right? And then real world non-duality, which is a collection of people's stories with the direct path and non-duality. Yeah, so you have the like so and a new book is coming out.

Ilona 2:47

Yes. And you have been non-duality teacher for so long. And what I like about your path is just no philosophy, direct looking, simple exercises, very approachable, very available. And so many people benefited from that. So I thought you would be a wonderful guest on this Awakening Now podcast.

Greg Goode 3:10

Great. Great. I think of my think of myself more as a writer than as a teacher because most of my communication is written. Even if it's on like my iPhone, like typing, you know, with my thumbs or something, it's it's writing. It's almost like my first language.

Ilona 3:29

Sweet. Okay, so before we get into all the juicy and interesting stuff, I'm gonna talk about your new book. I ask one question, everyone who comes on the show. Um the show is called Awakening Now, and it's really about this shift. Whichever way you want to call it. Um if we just call it awakening for the sake of the this moment. What is your definition of this awakening? How do you see it? What happened?

Greg Goode 4:04

Um it's the uh it's the um a deconstruction or a a a um refutation or or a seeing through of a false perspective. However that however we might consider the false perspective about what's going on in reality. And it's not the adoption of a true perspective, it's just that's not needed, just a uh deconstruction of a false or erroneous perspective. And so if I talk about that in terms of the direct path, it's what the direct path says is going on is that everything is awareness and that's all there is. And so you don't have to sort of believe that, although some people do. All you have to do is uh see how believing that we are something other than that is not it just doesn't make sense, doesn't it doesn't um it's not true. It's not that you have to adopt a new belief and start going around saying I'm awareness, I'm awareness. It's people do that, but it doesn't really help a lot.

Ilona 5:20

I try that.

Greg Goode 5:21

Um all you have to yeah, and and um, you know, it's another it's another belief and it's another teaching. Um some people say, well, doing that it helps at first, maybe for the first like two weeks or something. You know, it helps you maybe understand it, but it's not necessary, and to hold on to that belief is another one of those false perspectives.

Ilona 5:47

I love how you simply put it, it's just deconstructing of the false view.

Greg Goode 5:54

Because what is already there will catch us, it'll it'll be right. It's not that we have to maintain something true to have it be true.

Ilona 6:04

Yeah.

Greg Goode 6:04

It's not that it won't it it won't be there unless we think about it. It's it's not like that.

Ilona 6:10

Actually, it's just illusion is here because we think about it.

Greg Goode 6:14

Yeah, because we think about it, right? So we just somehow stop doing that. And I mean, by somehow, other than just going to sleep, because if you're in deep sleep, it's not there. But um it has to be somehow deconstructed or refuted or defeated or set aside somehow. And I I think there's lots of ways to do that. And the way that I've been the way that you and I know each other the most of the time is through at least my participation in this thing called the direct path.

Ilona 6:51

Um would you like to share a little bit about your deconstruction, how you came to see this?

Greg Goode 6:59

Maybe not the whole big story, but like I was gonna ask you how long medium, short, or long the best moments. Um well, I've always been interested in what things are, what things are made out of. And it goes back to even my childhood. I remember when I was 10 years old, we had a in our backyard, we we were backyard up against a hill, and at the top of the hill, there was this concrete wall. And that concrete wall was the division between our yard and a school, like a school yard. So I used to look at that wall, and I thought, there's something very forbidding about that. That's 10 years old, and there's something that I seem not to be able to penetrate, although there's something there, and I'm curious to be to know what it is. And it seemed to me that what it is, what it was, is not something I could see. So that if I started crumbling or breaking apart that wall and seeing what's inside, that wouldn't be the answer. So there I was thinking there was something that it really is that mean that that it is its nature. And so that's 10 years old. So I kept looking into things like that, you know, teenager, young 20s. I got involved in a lot of different philosophies and studied a lot of things. You know, I have a history, you know, I'm I'm 72 years old, so I've done a lot of things and been around a lot of places and stuff. And one thing that really struck me was idealism. And this is when I was in my 20s. I thought, well, this provides an answer to what physical things are, like that wall, like like um the objects around us. And it seemed to have better answers than the ones that than the answers that said we are molecules and atoms. You know, I knew that I knew those answers. So I studied that deeply. And then it didn't really help me understand what I am, what I was, but it helped me come to peace with what things around me were. Um then I had a like the spiritual intuitive musical experience when I was like 33 years old, when I was in a church, I was in an actually a concert hall in Rochester, New York, and I was listening to this gospel song with a background orchestra with a you know Eastman Philharmonic, I believe it was, so big, big orchestra, and something had came over me, and I was never the same again. I had been I had been feeling really lonely and really sort of alienated. I was in graduate school and I was very I felt very alone. I didn't have many friends, and I felt kind of um kind of chilled and alone and lonely and um as though something were missing or something were not complete. And then after that four-minute song, three minutes and 50 seconds, or whatever it was, everything changed. I had no no way to describe it. It was a Christian song, but I wasn't a Christian, I'd been an atheist all my life, and something changed, and all of a sudden I felt like that gap had been filled, and I never felt that alienation ever again. Um, and I started caring about things I'd never cared about, like I started caring about the idea of goodness. I had never even had a thought very much about it my whole life, and so I started seeking out more of that, you know, more of that energy, more of that music, more of that thinking. And I started going to church and I sort of became a Christian, and I found out that they have lots of ways to explain it because I had no language for it at all.

Ilona 11:14

And so that was a big thing that happened. How do they explain it? What happened?

Greg Goode 11:21

Oh, that was the uh uh that was the uh showering of the Holy Ghost, you know, the the Trinity, the Christian Trinity, yeah, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that was in the Christian story, the part of God, the the the Trinity, the part of God that's still present with us these days is the Holy Ghost. It's like it's like thinner than air, it's like always there, always everywhere, and it can work on the soul. So that's what their story was. I remember in the early days of non-duality, like people on the internet, I was talking about this experience. I wasn't being dogmatic about it, I wasn't saying that's what it really was. I'm saying that's what I was told. That's the you know, the approach they took. I remember one person said, No, that's not what really happened. I said, Oh, what really happened? That was a kundalini experience. Your kundalini was opening, your chakras were opening. That's the real truth of what happened to you. I see your face. That's what I was thinking too, like, oh, okay, yeah. So then, um, but I still I still had questions about what it is that I am, and so I looked, I just kept studying, and then sooner or later, we're up to the 1990s now, and I encountered uh non-duality, Eastern teachings, and I particularly liked the kind of non-duality that focused on the same question that I was asking. You know, what it is that I am. I knew that I couldn't be anything having to do with the body, the body or the subtle bodies, you know, the you know, the subtle layers of energy and things like that. They're basically different layers of matter that are more and more um subtle. So I studied those to make sure to learn if there's anything in those things that I could be. Could I be some kind of um layer or level of a subtle, you know, subtle energy or subtle body that surrounds the gross body? No, because I didn't believe any of that was physical in the first place. So it couldn't possibly be anything like that. So I kept looking and looking and looking. And uh got I sort of I sort of um I sort of uh stabilized my thinking on it having to do something with my choice, my thinking, my my my values or my decisions, or the part of the part of me that whatever it is that makes decisions or chooses. So I focused on that for about a year. Is that is there anything like that? And those were like pre-internet days. So there wasn't, you know, you can't like go Google stuff and see what it is I am. That that wasn't there at that time.

Ilona 14:20

No, Chad GPT.

Greg Goode 14:22

No, way before that, yeah. Um and those were the days when if you wanted to find out a little bit about spiritual teachings, spiritual teaching, there were this was before blogs, this for before people could make personal pages. So if you had your teachings represented on the internet at that time, so the early to mid-90s, some someone with a big website had to give you space. So it's almost like though you had to have permission to be on the internet and present your teaching because there's no other technical way to be there. So I looked at things like that, and some of that didn't really bear upon what I was interested in. And then I was reading a book by Ramesh Balsakar, and he's all about how there's no chooser, all about how there's no agency. And I said, it just clicked. I said, of course, the things that I thought might have been lodged in the subtle body aren't there at all. Um, and there's so there can't be a place or a function or a little um like an entity present that is doing that, so that came all of a sudden, and then um that was the end of suffering for me, um, but it wasn't quite non-duality. By then I knew non-duality, and I knew that that was what some people said is the nature of reality, and so to know that there are actions and thoughts and feelings appearing, some of which look like choices or actions, you know, some of which might feel like we're doing it, it didn't feel like that to me anymore. It didn't feel like anyone had that, but it still was not quite a non-dual realization because it still accepted the notion that there are things happening. And I thought, okay, I don't mind things happening. Um, it doesn't seem like they're happening to me, but it doesn't quite, it's still a little bit mysterious because it still assumes that there are things happening and a witnessing consciousness to which you know the witches to which they appear. That seemed quite dualistic to me. So, but it was a friendly, benevolent, sweet investigation that I was doing at that point. It didn't seem like anything hung on it, nothing, it didn't, you know. I already knew that I didn't really think that I was there. Wasn't there a feeling that I had to do this in order to arrive somewhere? It was just a warm, appealing curiosity, and that was another year. I've worked only on that, and I mean like vacations and weekends and evenings, and you know, I was always thinking about that and looking into that issue. And then one day I was in London, and there was a bookstore called uh it's a Watkins Books, I think. It's a you know, big uh big bookstore, it had a lot of esoteric, mystical, spiritual books. And there was this little tiny book by Sri Atmananda, and it talked exactly about that question, how there might seem to be duality, but there isn't. And I found out that the same, the same investigation that I had done about physicality and about um a supposed entity somewhere hidden in the subtle layers, not existing, applied to duality itself. So following that that teacher, that teaching who put things in the same very um rigorous, like logical way that I like to approach things, it took away the the notion, the feeling that there was all this stuff happening, like all the stuff I said before. Oh, there's a a witnessing awareness that that takes note of things or to which things appear, and there are those things that appear, that whole structure just evaporated. So, in the in I could say that it's a kind of a version of the deconstruction of a false notion. The notion being there's stuff happening, and there's this very thin awareness to which they're appearing is a kind of perspective, and then when that perspective uh becomes dismantled and not replaced by a new one, that was I I kind of like I didn't look anymore. I stopped looking.

Ilona 19:26

Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Greg Goode 19:29

That was a medium. I'm sorry, that was made a medium length story. Sorry about that. I didn't know if that was too long.

Ilona 19:34

No, it's perfect. You know, what needs to be said will be said. I'm always going with that one. That's a good one. Right. This this uh podcast is for primarily for seekers who are still looking at trying to ID going from a teacher to teacher, from a tool to tool. And I just want to kind of give a hand to these people by sharing people like you, teachers so that it would be easier or clearer way to look, how to look. What's this really about? So maybe we can talk a little bit now about your new book. And can you tell us what it is and what it's about?

Greg Goode 20:34

Yeah. It's called I'll tell you a little bit about it, then I'll tell you why I went into such depth with this or in so much detail with it. It's called Enlightening the Physical World. And the subtitle is Investigating Matter with George Barclay and the Direct Path. And um George Barclay is an 18th-century philosopher, and most of his famous work has to do with arguing that there's no such thing as physical matter. He was a Christian bishop, and he wasn't trying to do non-duality, but he argued that the the notion of matter as something external to the mind, he didn't have the notion of like global awareness or anything non-dual like that. His his starting point was what appears to the mind. And so at the time, and I I would say that even to this day, we think of matter as something, some either the particles or vibrations or solid bodies as existing, whether they're observed or not. So somehow objectively and independently of the mind. And he has lots and lots and lots of arguments that go to show that that thinking like that just doesn't make any sense. And I was noticing because I had I had studied him in graduate school. I had a professor who loved his his, he used to teach a lot of classes on Barclay. And so I had a good background in Barclay. And he's a very easy to understand philosopher and made a lot of sense. And at the time I studied him, I was a Christian too. And so his the idea that his idea is where do these ideas come from? Like what we seem to the tree in the forest, we think a tree in the forest is there. And let's say we walk in the forest, we see a tree, we see the big trunk of the tree, we see the we hear the leaves kind of like rustling in the wind. We can smell the the you know the rich warm earth around us, and uh we can maybe see some of the sunlight poking through the leaves as we look up. All of these are not because there is physical matter out there that somehow comes into the uh perspective of the mind, it's just ideas for Barclay, just ideas, and for Barclay, the source of these ideas is God. Now he doesn't push the Christian notion of God too strong in his philosophy, so he just says God. And God is an infinite mind, and he sends these ideas to our finite minds. So for Barclay, his model is there's finite minds, you know, one per person, and there's an infinite mind that is the source of these uh perceived ideas. So with that, he has arguments that that against the notion of materialism. Materialism is there's stuff outside of the mind that the mind somehow takes note of.

Ilona 23:58

Like a photo camera.

Greg Goode 23:59

That's how yeah, the the stuff's out there, whether the camera's there or not. And so the camera is able to grasp some of it, and there's much more out there that is not able to grasp, but when it is able to grasp this the stuff that's out there, that's a perception. So that's what how we usually think. And so he has lots of arguments against that. Now, why is that important for the direct path? Because the way what Barkley is arguing against is the way a lot of us think today, anyway. Even though it's hundreds of years ago, we still think in that way before we should really start looking into it. And so his arguments are so clever and his writings are so appealing that um I said, you know, direct path students can learn a lot. In fact, I learned a lot from it, and I've actually shared his readings with other people studying the direct path, and usually they get stuck on the physical part, even though, like if non-duality students, well, let me ask you if you have people who are interested in the non-dual approach to things, yeah, what is their reporting issue? What like in your experience, what are the things they're interested in going into? What do they want to what do they want to investigate?

Ilona 25:21

Well, primarily is the suffering.

Greg Goode 25:24

Yes.

Ilona 25:25

Yes, and um when I meet somebody, I ask them first thing, what are you looking for precisely? And that's kind of a starting point. And when I meet people, they are not in the uh deconstruction of physical world or anything, they just want to start. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a starting point. And after that, once this investigation appears and things fall apart and away, then there are many, many different things to explore. Say it's like your own amusement park that opens and you can look into whatever energy or into what this is made of, or how do we perceive, and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, but definitely what you are talking about is part of that investigation.

Greg Goode 26:16

Right. And it's not the first thing I think of.

Ilona 26:19

No, it's not.

Greg Goode 26:19

It's happened to be for me, like if as you as I talk, it's probably the first thing I thought of. Um but for most people, it's something that they like if they open a book of mine and my book, you know, like my direct path book, the first third of it talks about that stuff. They've they page right past that and get into the part that talks about the emotions and things like that, the suffering.

Ilona 26:43

Yeah, because it's so uh intimate, it's every day here, you know. This this um outside wall. Questions about it comes a little bit after once the immediate problem is.

Greg Goode 26:58

Or if they say, Well, maybe not at all. Maybe I why ever do that? If I cannot suffer, then I will I want the fastest, fastest route to the non-suffering.

Ilona 27:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Goode 27:08

Yeah, and uh my route, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I mean, why why read about anything? I remember one long, long time ago, one of the uh I was talking to one non-dollar teacher and he said, People don't read anything anymore. And this is the 90s. Greg, why are you you know write, why are you writing stuff? Like people aren't even doing that anymore, you know? And then he went on to write several books. But I've noticed that a lot of people who a lot of people who are on this path to reduce suffering, they end up in a non-duality path, which may or may not be a really great path for them.

Ilona 27:53

I agree.

Greg Goode 27:54

And that yeah, it just you know, just one that I happen to like. I like it. Um so they end up bringing me lots of questions, and their questions about anything that might happen along their path of that that route, non-duality or direct path or something, and they'll say something that sounds really technical, like um, okay, if awareness is everything, and I am awareness, then why do I see different things from what you see?

Ilona 28:30

Oh yeah.

Greg Goode 28:30

Why do you why do you see, yeah, why do you see different? And there I he's not suffering because he thinks this. I mean, he doesn't he doesn't really draw the conclusion that he's suffering because he thinks this way, but he knows that it doesn't make non-dual sense, you know, like this guy over there sees the stuff that I don't see, and I see stuff he doesn't see. And I think that might be the the most common question I've gotten in in decades. There's another there's another question, and that is which path should I follow? But that's kind of like a meta question, but inside the path question would be why is it that if awareness is all and everything, that there's these differences in like focal points or different perspectives? And I think that that question is impossible if you don't believe in physical matter.

Ilona 29:31

Yeah, okay.

Greg Goode 29:32

If not, if not all the way impossible, at least uh it won't it won't seem to you as a um as a big puzzlement. Like if matter doesn't seem to be there, then you won't even have the idea that inside your own head there are thoughts. You won't even think of yourself as a physical entity. And if you don't think of yourself as a physical entity, you won't think of other people as physical. Well, maybe I I should reverse that. You won't think of other people as physical entities, therefore you won't think of yourself as one. I know people who think that they're the only non-physical entity there is, other people are physical, but they're not. Like I've realized something that you you haven't realized, but I have, and so you're physical, but I'm not. Um, I'd so that's why I'm gonna put it, reverse it. If I realize that you are not physical, then I probably realize that I'm not. Because if I'm not gonna allow myself to be the only physical entity in the in existence, so I'll accept that I'm not either. So if you have that, that there are no physical entities anywhere, you're not gonna you're not going to have the question, why is this physical entity seeing different stuff than that physical entity over there? Yeah, it just it won't be a it won't be a puzzlement. So there are so many questions like that. I thought, well, maybe this physicality notion is something that deserves its own treatment. And that's why I wrote this book.

Ilona 31:13

Just a little like taste of what you are talking about.

Greg Goode 31:18

Okay, there's a couple. Um Barclay would say, Okay, this is this is honoring Barclay, and inside my book is a is a complete text of one of his most famous books. It's three dialogues. It's a dialogue between a character who's like Barclay and a character who's a materialist. And three mornings they're walking through these wonderful wooded gardens of a university, like a it's a like a religious university, and they're having these wonderful conversations until the materialist gets tired of talking and he can't think of any more ideas, and then they break for the day and then they start the next day. So this is a text, and so I examine every single argument in that text. So the first thing that Barclay says is that what is it that we what is it that we perceive? Like, do we perceive a tree or do we perceive a color sound? And so for Barclay, the actual perception, the direct, the direct uh experience of a perception is not of the tree, it's something we see, it's a color or a sound. Um and we can test that, you know, if we um let's say that you see a picture of a tree, same color as the tree, and let's say you have a wonderful, you know those chalk drawings they have on like you see these on YouTube and on Facebook where you know a cat walks up to something, it looks like a big hole in the sidewalk, and the cat goes like that. And then the guy comes and washes it away with a bucket of water. It's so realistic. So you can see something that appears to be a tree or a or a hole in the sidewalk because it's got the same colors, but you're not seeing the tree. You are seeing colors, but you're not seeing the tree. So Barkley would say you can't say that you're seeing the tree. You know, the tree is supposedly exists outside of the mind. Um, we normally think that it does, but all we know of it is what appears to the mind, which is an idea. So Barclay's first insight there is that a perceived object is not physical, is a perceived object is a color sound, or he calls them all ideas.

Ilona 34:02

Like if I would say it would be direct experience of actual color sounds and sensations that are happening now. And then there's an idea overlaid, oh that's a tree, like a labeling, and concrete line.

Greg Goode 34:17

And that label isn't that label is not something that that comes visually, right? And I'll tell you the thing, and and so a person will will push back against that, and you know, there's lots and lots of arguments there, but I can tell you the thing that that made the most impression on me from Parkley, and that is he has a whole chapter on our whole like conversation on this. You never see the same thing you touch. Um, that made a huge impression on me.

Ilona 35:08

Hold on, let's let's let's look at this closer. You never see the same thing you touch.

Greg Goode 35:15

Yeah, it seems like you can touch and you can touch and see the same thing. And let's say we have a like a ball, or let's say we have a um Okay, I have a pen. A wooden okay, all right. So it seems like you see the pen and you can touch the pen. And it seems like you can coordinate the two sent senses together, and they communicate, you know, it's like it's like the pen is talking to you. The pen is outside of your perception, and it's sending you itself, and those signals are able to reach through your perception and be represented in the mind, and you're able to think about it. That's how we normally think. Okay. So right, okay.

Ilona 36:03

So there is touching the pen, perceiving it as a sensation.

Greg Goode 36:08

And it seems like, and you're coordinating, I can see that you're coordinating the movement of your hand with your eyes, so that it right, you're doing two things at once, and you're seems like the pen is is is being perceived in a sort of holistic global way. Okay, but let's go back to Barclay and how he analyzes vision. We already sort of looked at vision and we saw that back to the tree, that when you are perceiving the tree, you're not perceiving the tree. What actually appears to you in direct experience is a color. Okay, a color is something intrinsically inherently visual. Like you can't touch a color. You might think you can touch a colored object, but you can't touch a color itself.

Ilona 37:02

Okay.

Greg Goode 37:04

So then let's look at touching. Okay, so we know about vis we set that aside. So vision is a matter of color. Touching is a matter of tact extra texture, you know, resistance, temperature, you know, roughness and smoothness, things like that. That's what it is of touching. It's not that you're touching a pen. You know, if you were um if someone made a mock-up of a pen out of a piece of wood and it wasn't even hollow, and it felt, you know, shut your eyes and it felt exactly like that pen, it would be the same tactile experience, but it would not be a pen. And your touching is unable to distinguish that. And like you said before, you you noticed it doesn't pres the touching itself or this vision doesn't supply the label.

Ilona 38:03

Right?

Greg Goode 38:04

The label comes from another another modality. So a matter of touching is tech, let's say texture for short, texture and uh you know the feeling of resistance. Let's just call that texture. So texture is not color, correct? So feeling is not seeing, it's not what you see is not the pen, what you see is colors. What you touch is not the pen, you're touching texture. Okay, so what you see is not what you feel, so they're not the same thing, yes. And now, how does Barclay uh how does he explain that? How does he explain that they seem to be so connected? Um God does that. God basically creates a language of nature, and that our colors seem to appear in a um, and this is these things all come up with direct path through those, too. Um, our experience or even our visual experience seems to be very orderly, and it seems to be um, you know, not not chaotic, not random, but it seems to come, uh things seem to be things. For Barclay, God is the is the one who creates uh perceptions in a way that they appear to us to be coherent. That's uh to God. God's doing that. So one of the things that God does is coordinate the seeing the seeings with the touchings so that it seems to work, they was seemed to work together. And he mentioned an experiment that people it was a thought experiment in Barclay's time. Let's say that someone was born blind and they were able to get around the world without vision, and let's say that they were a high-functioning individual, and so they could do things, and you know, they had they were able to live life. And as an adult, let's say that all of a sudden they were able to see. Somehow medical procedures happened and they were had an operation, they can see. Oh, let's back up. Sorry, I let's back up a bit. Let's say that this person, before they're able to see, you do an experiment with them and you place that ball that we were talking about before on a desk in front of them, and also put a cube on the desk in front of them. And by touch, you know, they can't see yet. By touch, the person is able to distinguish the cube from the the ball, the sphere, to know which is which. The language works too. So they've been taught, you know, this thing that seems round and curved is the ball, and this thing that seems angular with corners with flat surfaces, I know to be the cube. And let's say they're totally functional with that. And then they can see. Let's say that they, you know, their their eyes work, and now they can uh see what's in front of them, supposedly. So now the question was this is their their thought problem. Would they be able to distinguish from just vision, which is the cube and which is this the sphere?

Ilona 41:30

It's interesting.

Greg Goode 41:33

Because the old way of thinking, that you know, the objectivist way of thinking, where the I'm getting cube signals because the cube is sending me those signals and they're coming to me in all modalities, and my mind happens to connect with them, it seems like I ought to be able to tell, whether through visions, whether through touch, that it's a cube there, or it's a it's a sphere there. So the I the question was, what you know, what would that person be able to do upon first being able to see? And um Barclay and at that time that this was first proposed, no one had ever, they had no empirical evidence about this. And all the people that Barclay uh argued against were saying, yeah, he'd be able to do that. Barclay would say no, he would not be able to do that. He'd not be able to, he would not be able to distinguish the cube from the sphere with vision. And for Barclay, you have to learn to coordinate what you see with what you touch. It's a matter of learning a new language. And we learn it fast, you know, we it it's something we can learn pretty quickly, but you can't do it without learning. So then uh, you know, by now we have lots and lots and lots of empirical data, and the data has supported this. That there's a period of accommodation and learning and training that has to go on before they're able to do that.

Ilona 43:13

Because you read something about like this about when people regain their vision, they cannot understand uh distance bumping into things they don't recognize stuff.

Greg Goode 43:23

It's very interesting, and it feels it feels chaotic, you know, and has to it acquires order by our orderly training and our orderly interactions with it. Right. So when I learned that, you know, that my Barclay teacher in in university, he he made us understand that experiment. We didn't care about, we didn't, you know, said if one is this class over, he made us like understand that experiment. But when I did, it clicked. And I thought, well, that the reason. I thought things were objectively existent was that I thought that I was seeing the same things I was touching. The mere fact that that that's what made me think it was out there was that it was able to communicate to two senses independently. It's like having two witnesses reporting on a bank robbery. You know, you the police think it's more true because more people report on it, you know. Um but let's say that one guy one guy said it only because he heard the other guy say it. You wouldn't believe him as much. And so that helped me. That actually was the the the shoe that needed to drop for me to see. Ah, that was the last argument that objectivity had for me, that that it supposedly communicating with me in two modalities at once. Like that was the deconstruction of a false perspective.

Ilona 44:56

Impressive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and when when you pointed that out, it's so obvious. Yeah, yeah, and once you think about it's I mean pressure, yeah. I cannot touch color. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the and the mind and the labeling is so quick, so I say it's like a musical. You know, you can play music, guitar.

Greg Goode 45:21

It is, and music is a language too. Yes, yes, and it happens so fast. We don't have I remember when I had a driving uh driver's ed class in high school. Um, he said that when you see a stop sign, your foot goes down to the brake. You don't have to subvocal it's stop. You don't have to do that. You have to tell yourself that that that means stop. It's just automatic. And of course, the first time you ever see a stop sign, your foot didn't do that. It came to be able to do that because of repetition and training and things like that. But once it did, it seems so natural that it seems like that stop sign is that's you know, if God had to name that object, he would say stop sign.

Ilona 46:08

Yeah, so what makes your foot go in the brain? That's the sign. Right. When is your book coming out?

Greg Goode 46:23

So uh next week or the week after. Oh, so um we're doing a cover, yeah. It's uh um we were doing it, you know, you get page proofs, and so I saw I saw the I mean I cannot see it. Okay, it is a little bit it's like oh it's moving. Okay.

Ilona 46:47

See, that's that's moving, it's the background is being erased.

Greg Goode 46:51

Yeah, so it's I know it wasn't trying to check, but anyway, that's it, it's not it's not there yet. That's a pay that's a test copy from from the publisher. And uh when I saw that, I wanted to make some changes to the cover. So we're making changes to the cover and um maybe basically to make the text a little bit larger and easier to easier to read. And so when that's done, um you know we have the ISBN number, it's ready to go on Amazon, and I have a um, you know, uh web pages about it and stuff like that. So it's ready. So it's only a matter of weeks now.

Ilona 47:31

Oh, wonderful. So we'll put the link on whoever is interested can can go and pre-order it.

Greg Goode 47:38

And I I had promised we had a direct path group on Facebook uh back in you know the in the teens. Um were you active? You were, I mean, Liberation Unleashed was active then, yes, on Facebook, right?

Ilona 47:52

Yes.

Greg Goode 47:53

In fact, I'd say that probably the majority of active direct path students were also liberation unleashed people.

Ilona 48:05

It's like a natural next next thing to question. Yes, exactly. I mean, who doesn't know about the orange?

Greg Goode 48:14

Yeah, right. Right, right, right. So um, so why did I mention that? Um I had done some the and because the physical stuff is so hard to realize, you know, not like you say, just to just to alleviate suffering, not every path that it that alleviates suffering focuses on this physical stuff so much, right? This is just this path, does that?

Ilona 48:43

So how do you see that if we just you know speak to the seeker who's a little bit confused now, what what this physical stuff got to do with suffering? How would you bridge that gap?

Greg Goode 48:56

Well, um, there are people who don't who um, for example, like in Buddhism, you don't have to deconstruct the notion of physicality in order to alleviate suffering. Um, the folks in emptiness, the folks who follow the madhyamaka, they allow physicality to remain conventionally existent, just like everything else. They say it just doesn't exist objectively or inherently. So you don't have to, you don't have to refute it all the way, and you don't have to bear down on it the way that that the direct path bears down on it, and that I have been doing that. So they would just consider uh physicality like like so many other things, just don't reify it, just don't treat it as though it exists independently of the mind, independent of awareness, which is the same thing Barclay did. I think though, I mean, so that's what it takes to if you do think of anything that it exists objectively like that, in a very stiff, dogmatic way, um it will be hard to stop suffering. Because you will think that you, your your body or yourself or your person is also one of those objectively existing things. And if you start seeing it disintegrate with aging or disease, and if that's what you think you are, something like that that exists inherently, you're gonna think that it's gonna stop existing and that's gonna cause a lot of suffering.

Ilona 50:46

Oh, you mean the fear of death, right?

Greg Goode 50:50

Fear of death, yeah. Yeah, fear of death, yeah, fear of disease, death, decrepitude. Yeah. I mean, apart from you know, apart from say um abuse and trauma and things like that, um, you know, like the Buddha story, the Shakyamuni Buddha. Um, before he remembered when he was a prince in India, he didn't suffer anything like from life at all. He was he was privileged, he was royalty, but then he had been actually protected and been prevented from seeing death and disease and things like that, old age. But when he did see them, he went traveling. When he did see them, it started becoming very chilling for him, and that's when he started seeking. Even though he wasn't um unhappy with his life, when the the notion of death came into his awareness, he was started suffering like that. He wanted to he wanted to um eradicate that possibility that he would have to confront death. So he went on the large, you know, a spiritual search. So, yes, that's what I mean, like that. So it's very difficult, you know. I don't want to say impossible, um, but it's very, very, very, very difficult to eradicate suffering of that type when you believe that things exist inherently or objectively. And if you think you're gonna, if you think you're going to um, if you think that you are the body, and you think the bodies exist like as bodies, then you're thinking that you will stop existing.

Ilona 52:38

Yeah.

Greg Goode 52:41

And so this thing about non-physicality is one way to short circuit that, to show that your nature is not, even if if uh the body goes, you won't go. So maybe that's an answer to your question. Like, what does it have to do with suffering?

Ilona 53:05

So it's I mean, that's not enough.

Greg Goode 53:07

It's it's it's it's necessary, but not sufficient. You can still suffer and know that you're not the body.

Ilona 53:12

But yeah, that's one of the things to look at.

Greg Goode 53:17

One of the one of the things you you know to look at, right?

Ilona 53:19

Yeah. Because this is what we normally like by default, we think I am the body, I am the mind, I am the spirit, or some entity inside having this physical experience. That's just like everyday dogma.

Greg Goode 53:38

Right, right. And if you think about all the different areas of investigation, there are the looking. You know, you um if you let's say that you well, in my own case, I already did not have the notion of physicality before I even started non-duality. It wasn't even a it wasn't even a path to the alleviation of suffering for me. You know, but back when I studied Barclay and you know, I studied idealism while he was in the army too, for years and years and years. I had I read lots and lots of philosophy about this idealism and no physicality. It was just that was my experience for for decades, you know. So then when I when I encountered non-duality, I saw that a lot of it had to do with that, and like, okay, what's next? You know, um, that's not the end of the story, it's necessary but not sufficient, you know. So the other things that that they focused on, the things of the mind, the things of our beliefs, um, our false stories about things, even non-physical things, they were a lot easier because I wasn't complicating them with the assumptions that things were physical. Like if I if I felt can disconnected from loved ones, let's say I had a romance and I'm traveling and I feel disconnected because I think I'm the body and that other body is thousands of miles away, I might feel lonely and separate.

Ilona 55:15

Right, good.

Greg Goode 55:15

But if I don't if I don't think I'm a body, then the whole notion of physical, you know, space, distance, separation just doesn't come into play.

Ilona 55:26

That's it.

Greg Goode 55:28

In that respect, the person's right there.

Ilona 55:31

Yeah, okay.

Greg Goode 55:33

Zero distance. Right.

Ilona 55:48

Okay.

Greg Goode 55:49

So that the the re I about uh back to the book in a second. The reason I did this um is that I had had a um a direct path group on Facebook, and I had um created an outline for the book. And people love that. And it took a lot of work at the time, and I was very busy with my professional, you know, professional corporate job. So I never had time to finish it. And I said, I'll I promise you guys I'll finish it one of these days. And so I'm now 10 years later, you know. Yeah, so that now is and people seem to find it helpful. It see people seem to find it helpful. So so uh that's that's why I went into so much detail about this book. And it's it goes over every single argument in Barclay's book called Three Dialogues Between Hylus and Philonus. And they're very uh I mean, you know, very nice uh conversations they have over three days, and um, this book goes into it. There's even a version of their book, you know, that philosophers talked differently in the 18th century than the way they do now, and Barclay was one of the most clear of all of them, but even so, that language is hard to read these days. So there's a version of this uh of his works uh that you can download as free PDFs. It's called the early modern text website, and they have a lot of different philosophers. And this uh wonderful professor named Jonathan Bennett had um translated all these older translations into modern English for this specifically for students to work on this because it's important. He thought it was important that they read this philosophy, and um they, you know, as as time goes on and our language kind of drifts from older style language, it becomes harder and harder and harder to read these things. So he translated them into modern English. So I'm using that version of the of the text in my book, and my book has his entire book inside my book.

Ilona 57:58

Wow, you know what? I'm gonna read it. Um you got me curious about this because I never heard of Berkeley before. So oh yeah.

Greg Goode 58:10

Um thank you. Thank you for introduction. Sure. Can I ask you questions?

Ilona 58:18

Of course, yeah, why not?

Greg Goode 58:19

Um, how is Liberation Unleashed doing these days?

Ilona 58:23

It's still going. Oh it's still going. There are still people coming and getting guided and guiding others.

Greg Goode 58:33

And the guidance is always in a very democratic way, right? It was always peer-to-peer, right?

Ilona 58:38

Yes, because you know, people to people, right? Volunteers, there is no ruler or commander or anyone, it's just if people step in and do what they feel to do.

Greg Goode 58:51

That's one thing that made it so powerful and so like like uh it spread so quickly when it first came, you know, it was so different from anything that just that that that um that friend-to-friend, peer-to-peer setup is so different from other spiritual offerings, you know, of that, even now, different.

Ilona 59:16

Yeah. I moved on from guiding on a forum. I work with people on on Zoom. Like live guidance, it's so much more satisfying, and I can see the reactions and responses and the pauses and the changes in the face, and whatever.

Greg Goode 59:35

Because it used to be uh typing into text boxes at a forum, right?

Ilona 59:39

Yes, it's still going. That's still going. Yeah, but for me now it seems like almost impossible to go back to the old way. Yeah, yeah. This live conversation is just a different level, the exchanging this.

Greg Goode 59:55

I know people who who who um gel with that very rarely go back to the written form as a as their main driver, you know. Yeah, I I would probably get more into it as my myself, but my voice just doesn't have the stamina. It starts crackling, getting dry, and of course I'm drinking coffee, which is not good for it.

Ilona 1:00:15

It's good. Coffee's good.

Greg Goode 1:00:20

So you're drinking water, right?

Ilona 1:00:21

I am today.

Greg Goode 1:00:23

I should drink I should drink one cup of water for every cup of coffee.

Ilona 1:00:29

I'm doing that for you.

Greg Goode 1:00:31

Thank you. I I feel it.

Ilona 1:00:34

Wonderful. Oh, okay. So do you have any final thoughts or something, some advice for a seeker who's still looking to realize their true nature?

Greg Goode 1:00:52

Yes, uh yes, I do. Um well first let me before I say what I want to say, let me ask you if you get the same question. Do you have questions from people who say which path should I follow? Sometimes like they're looking at they're looking at you know, like paths with names, you know, like Buddhism or Advaita or non duality, or you know, one of the the traditional religions. People ask you often like because they're okay.

Ilona 1:01:24

Mostly what they what I meet is that people are getting confused because they get information from different paths and they try to fit it into one.

Greg Goode 1:01:33

Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, um, that so I would say two things along those lines. So that you and I have the same um experience there. One is is I like to treat the paths as like treating like people and give them respect and honor and let the path speak for itself. Instead of trying to mix it, you know, try to make a like a like a salad path and putting bits and pieces of different paths into your into your salad bowl and making it into one, like you say. Let the path speak for itself and and see what it has to say. And then then the next question, this is a question I was going to, my bit of advice I was going to give people before asking you the question. And that is, okay, so let's say I can do that. I let this path say what it wants to say, and let that path say what it wants to say. Which one should I follow? Like which one's right. And I would say to that person, just follow your heart, follow your what resonates with you.

Ilona 1:02:42

Yeah, in the moment. And then you will change.

Greg Goode 1:02:46

Yeah, you'll see what happens. Because what's not true is that there's a path that truly accurately captures reality as it is. And we probably think that, right? Just like we think about the tree out there, we might think that reality is shaped in a certain way, and that we need a path that captures that shape. And so that if we don't get that path, we'll go to the wrong place or something like that, you know. Um, it's not it's not set up like that.

Ilona 1:03:15

Yeah, I to this I I say that our view is like this an image of how realistic looks, yeah. It's just tiny, it's a very small image. And then we try to fit the reality into this and see if it fits, and it it will never fit. Yeah, yeah. This is this is right, but this is to be thrown away.

Greg Goode 1:03:41

Yeah, it's that's yeah, that's a frame. That's a framework. Yeah, um, and your heart won't your heart will tell you. Yeah, you'll resonate with it, you'll see, and it might change through time, but at least you'll get a you'll get a more a deeper, more authentic um reaction from the path than if you think, oh, that's correct and that's incorrect. Let the heart decide. Follow your heart.

Ilona 1:04:11

Oh, that's a such a beautiful and sane advice. Not philosophical, it's like practically applicable.

Greg Goode 1:04:20

I I had that question myself when I first started getting into the all the the the this non-duality teachings, and you know, before I was a Christian, then I kind of like somehow broke that bubble or just sort of came out of it. I went to one of these big esoteric bookstores in New York City, and there was this guy um at the at the front desk, and he was it wasn't too busy. And they had Buddhism, they had Hinduism, they had Western esotericism, they had uh magical paths, they had um individual teachers' paths, they had uh new thought, new age, all everything. And I was and I still had that feeling that oh, maybe one of these things is right and the other's wrong. So I asked the guy at the front desk. He said, There's so many, you've got so many different kinds of books here. I don't know what I should. And he said, just he said, um, just find what you resonate with.

Ilona 1:05:17

And stick with it.

Greg Goode 1:05:18

Study that. Yeah, you'll see what happens.

Ilona 1:05:27

Well, thank you so much, Greg. Such a pleasure, an honor to share with you.

Greg Goode 1:05:32

Oh, my pleasure.

Ilona 1:05:33

My pleasure.

Greg Goode 1:05:35

It did, and it did. I will send you an email with links.

Ilona 1:05:39

Uh-huh.

Greg Goode 1:05:41

And there's a picture of and there's a good picture of the book cover in the links and stuff like that.

Ilona 1:05:45

So and thank you so much. And thank you, everyone, thank you for the invitation. Um, for the listening. And if you have a comment or want to share something, ask Greg or me, just put it in the comments and Get back to you.

Greg Goode 1:06:02

Oh, and in case I don't uh read the comments, can if there's something that is could you can send it to me, right? Forward to me anything. Yeah, let me know.

Ilona 1:06:10

You know, there are questions for you.

Greg Goode 1:06:13

If if there are because I mentioned writing is my first language, so I have to write very fast. I'll answer it.

Ilona 1:06:19

Writing is my first language. I love it.

Greg Goode 1:06:25

Okay.

Ilona 1:06:26

Okay, well, thank you so much. Uh thank you. Bye bye.

Greg Goode 1:06:32

Bye bye.