Mark Divine  0:05  

Coming up on the Mark Divine Show,

Tony Nader  0:07  

Consciousness is all there is and everything else is the waves of the ocean. So that is one unbounded ocean of consciousness, which means unlimited. And then all the different waves, some big, some small, some complex, some very, very tiny, some huge and complex and sophisticated that can actually be aware of the ocean, like a human being. And that is really consciousness.

Mark Divine  0:38  

This is Mark Divine. And this is the Mark Divine Show. Super stoked to be able to explore what it means to be fearless and conscious by speaking with some of the world’s most inspirational, compassionate, resilient leaders, thinkers, philosophers, and folks from all walks of life. In each episode, I get to speak to a remarkable individual and help them distill their information to actual insights to help you create a more compassionate, courageous life and be the change we want to see in the world at scale. 

I’m super excited today to be talking to someone I’ve known about for several years. Dr. Tony Nader, a Dr. Nader is an MD, PhD, a head of the Transcendental Meditation movement or organization, MIT and Harvard trained doctor and neuroscientist and the author of an extraordinary book called The One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness. Dr. Nader is an incredible human being. He’s extremely knowledgeable, and very articulate, and we’re going to have one heck of a conversation. Dr. Neeraj, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Dr. Nader, it’s really nice to meet you.

Tony Nader  1:44  

Thank you, it’s great to be with you. You’ve done a lot, I’ve also been introduced to you and you’ve achieved a lot and it’s a joy to be with you.

 

Mark Divine  1:54  

Before we get into some of the meaty issues around your work and consciousness studies in neuroscience and Transcendental Meditation. It’s very helpful, both for myself and the people who follow and listen to the Mark Divine Show to get a sense for how you got interested in this, like, what were your formative forces? What were your parents like? Were they… how did they shape you? Because you know, as you’re aware, so much of our mind is shaped by our early childhood, our beginnings and our first teachers and, and so what was that like for you?

 

Tony Nader  2:23  

I grew up with a sense of life being ideal. You know, I was born in Lebanon, my parents and my even grandfather, who was a doctor and many doctors in the family, I counted one day in the extended family about 17 doctors. There is a family kind of vocation. And at that time, it was a really peaceful, beautiful country. Absolutely. Everybody working together. And…

 

Mark Divine  2:51  

I heard extraordinary things about Lebanon back in those days, and it’s beautiful country.

 

Tony Nader  2:56  

Yeah, exactly. It has snow on the mountains, skiing with very beautiful ski slopes, you could just drive one hour, go to the beach and swim. The nature is so welcoming, the weather is very moderate. And it’s a very beautiful interaction between east and west and north and south and cultures, many cultures have moved there. So, you know, I was feeling I was born in a nice place like everybody who does their own country and feeling that it’s always the best in a sense. And besides that, it was so great that my education and upbringing was in terms of life being perfect, life being holistic life being grand, because there is a higher value that protects us that keeps everything fair and just and balanced and guides humanity, you know, the divine, the spiritual, and all of that

 

Mark Divine  3:58  

Did your parents bring that to you? Or was that kind of some…

 

Tony Nader  4:01  

Yes, my parents bring this to me, I went to a Jesuit school, we are in an apple getting getting of a Catholic background with, you know, high ideals of love and tolerance and understanding, of course. But there are some aspects that were remaining mysterious about the nature of life and why there is suffering and why there is sin and like that, and usually it was discussed in terms of two aspects of reality. One is the mind and the spirit, which takes us towards higher values. And we were told that the body is mostly taking you down towards more animal values, you know. And so there was this dichotomy. And I guess it had come from Descartes’ time, and even much before Aristotle and the scholastics that believed that we have this dual nature of something looking up towards some, some higher values and other aspects bringing us down, dragging us down. And the whole life was to, you know, to overcome that value that brings us down and go to the spirit to the higher values, but all looked fine in terms of reality and imagining the supreme justice and fairness and equanimity of the higher values. And so I believe very strongly in that, yet I found that human behavior and decision making wasn’t great. It wasn’t always perfect.

 

Mark Divine  5:39  

(laughing) That might be an understatement.

 

Tony Nader  5:41  

Quite an understatement. Of course, when looking at history, you can say this was evolution. And there are reasons why things happen. There is a lot of rationalization that takes place at that age, and you believe what you’re given what you’re asked. The Jesuits had quite a nice education in terms of mental discipline of rigorous thinking and analysis. And they encouraged us to ask questions, and many of the questions were answered, but a lot of them were left to what is called mystery. There is mysterious things, you know, you know why God is seen in this way in this religion and seen in that way that other religions in and other way, and yet another religion? And what is one or three, or many? And why is that? And everybody believes that it’s the absolute truth. And so these were questions that I was asking myself growing up, and I started studying a little bit of philosophy, even in high school, studied existentialism, phenomenology, and different values out of curiosity. And then I felt that the best way to understand humans is to understand what makes them make decisions, and what is the ultimate reality of who we are. And based on the physicalist perspective, on the fact that there are this duality of being which is the spirit and the material, the physical and the non physical, I saw that, you know, believing in medicine and science, that it’s the physical that actually creates the mental,

 

Mark Divine  7:23  

And that’s what most of western world would say, That’s exactly it.

 

Tony Nader  7:26  

Yes, absolutely. This is what we’re taught, this is what everybody was saying, except for the believers of something more like the spirit. And then you say, Where does the Spirit come from? You know, you ask yourself questions, how many spirits are there, you know, so that God’s kind of creates them or pulls them out of somewhere of the hat? And it is in your spirit? And I send that spirit? And why should you send some spirits to suffer and send some other spirits to be wealthy, some to be rich, some to be poor, some to be born, and, you know, and beliefs that are different and fight for their beliefs and all that? So all of these questions were bubbling up without really answers, no answers, no answers by anybody, even philosophers, thinkers, scientists, etc. So I thought I’d start with what is systematic? What is known, rather than all these different beliefs and philosophies and understandings, because they clash a lot, and they, they have different points of views. So why not go to the system that is systematic, which is science?

 

Mark Divine  8:40  

Yeah, I love that. And it makes a lot of sense, because you can’t deconstruct something until you understand how it’s constructed. If you get to the end of that road, and you found that consciousness, absolutely, in your experience came from the material, came from the biological functioning of this complex brain body that we have, then all would have been well, it would have helped you answer the rest of the questions. But if you get to the end of that road, and you recognize that the answers aren’t there, then at least you have have the foundation to begin to deconstruct, right, and to build a new reality, in a beautiful way.

 

Tony Nader  9:12  

You summarized even the logic that I’ve been through, right, you know, and so not to say it again, but quickly to confirm, yes, I saw the physical will create the mental and that’s the nervous system, because if you damage the nervous system, you lose consciousness or you lose parts of consciousness, or, you know, if you take a drug you change, you have hallucinations, and therefore, it’s obvious that it’s the chemical parts that are making a difference, and they are changing our awareness, our understanding, our interaction with the outside. 

 

So let’s delve into what makes us what we are as humans and why we make our decisions and so I decided to go to medicine, then Psychiatry and Neurology and brain science and research that I did in the United States. I was really feeling grateful and lucky to have been there, learning from a very systematic, very great scientists and thinkers. And so this is one task however, it didn’t give me the answers, as you said you cannot construct or deconstruct without knowing how it’s built or try to find the part if you don’t know the hole, or what is the hole, what is the part. So that can be part of our discussion about what really… Now in the meantime, I had read in my, of course, my research about techniques from the east, mostly from the east, China or, you know, Japan, and like this, and particularly from India, through yoga systems and meditation systems. And I was lucky to find somebody who was teaching Transcendental Meditation. I heard Maharishi on a tape, Maharishi, who is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who brought Transcendental Meditation to the west. 

 

And it was so compelling, the idea that I learned this simple technique, what happens is, at the same time, the war exploded, the Civil War exploded in Lebanon, mid to late 70s, and exploded more in the 80s. And this was a time when I was starting to go to medical school, finishing my high school. And it was a shock for me, because all these systems that are the spiritual part of human life, is motivating people to kill each other for their beliefs, or for the differences of beliefs, and to protect themselves. And there were a combination of things that led to a lot of questions about where is all this perfect justice that I have expected, this perfect balance, this you know, fairness and all of that, because even as the time went, as a medical doctor in the emergency room, I saw a lot of suffering and a lot of suffering from different camps that were fighting each other. And I saw the same tears in the eyes of the mothers that were Christian, or Muslim, or have a different belief systems, the Communist versus the, you know, the right extremists, the capitalist or the radical, and they say, and you will end up when they come to the emergency room, that there is that humanity which is there, which shows in that fashion. And so the question started to become more existential rather than philosophical. So I was first studying all of this intellectually and philosophically, but now it’s actually existentially, I’m living it. it’s no more a philosophy, it’s a life question about, you know, existence, about being, about meaning of life about why we’re going what we’re doing. And so this is where the tension between mind and body, between consciousness and physiology between the fabrics of our body and the fabric of our mind started to rise in my mind, and the question came, which is primary, which is more important? 

 

Now learning Transcendental Meditation was helpful for me a lot, because it showed that we can do something from the mind side to help also the physiology as well as the mind. So you can, through mental techniques, through meditation, Transcendental Meditation, in particular, in this case, make a difference in the physiology and the difference is quite profound. And it has impact on different aspects of our life, which means it has an impact on mental clarity, on mental peace and happiness, but also on the physiology, well being removals of stress, healing better, ability to concentrate and to feel better, and also behavior and openness to other feelings, other possibilities. And so here is a technique, which is a technique of consciousness, a technique of awareness, mental technique, that makes a huge difference on the body. And so now is the, came the question of which is primary? And what is reality? What is ultimate reality? And how we can have answers then, to all the big questions in life. 

 

Mark Divine  14:24  

So let’s put a pin in that right now, before we go too deep down that rabbit hole. I think one of the most profound contributions of phase one of Transcendental Meditation is the research behind what you just described, to bring this tremendous body of research to all the physiological and behavioral modifications or improvements that accrue through practice of Transcendental Meditation or meditation in general to say, but TM as a specific methodology. And I think that the world is just still not quite aware of the tremendous amount of research that is involved, you know, and verifying the claim that you just made. And I think that’s profound. 

 

And maybe we could just touch upon some of that because many people who take up meditation do it for the health benefits in America, you know, they’re, to be honest, we need it, right? Because people are burning out in large degrees and post pandemic, everyone’s stressed out and suicide rates are through the roof. And, and so one of the most profound benefits of meditation is first to get the physiology back under control, so that we have a platform to do a little bit deeper spiritual work

 

Tony Nader  15:28  

Exactly, because mind and body ultimately are not separate things, they are intimately connected at one level of understanding, but in my research, it went and philosophically and scientifically it went into that they are actually the same a continuation of the same reality we can come back to that but as the mind is improved or settled down, we can say the mind is like an ocean that is active on its surface and settled as we go deeper towards the depths of the ocean, the thought is like a bubble coming from the bottom of the ocean and going up to the surface. And then we are aware of a thought on the surface of the mind, the surface of the ocean, the bubble becomes big and it bursts. And you see, I have a thought, but where did this thought come from? What is the origin of the soul? It comes from somewhere within that is extremely quiet and extremely silent within ourselves. And what Transcendental Meditation does is take us to the source of intelligence, the source of thought, the source of creativity, which is our true inner self. This is this the understanding behind the practice, how does it happen, you know, we take a sound which has no meaning and there is a procedure how to learn it, how to deal with thoughts, how to deal with if you sleep, if you ah, if you this, if you that, what do you do so there is a technique to learn and it has to be taught by a teacher. And there is an app also now we have the teachers it but basically, even when Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who brought this knowledge from the east from yoga, because it is a mental yoga, it’s the most advanced mental technique of yoga, transcending because transcending is to go beyond that’s the meaning of transcending. So to go beyond the surface value of the ripples and waves on the surface level of the ocean of the mind, you dive to the essence, to the ocean’s button to the oceans origin,

 

Mark Divine  17:30  

It’s almost descending instead of transcending. (laughing)

 

Tony Nader  17:34  

Exactly using that, yeah, transcending is to go beyond. So you go beyond all thoughts or feelings or are like this, but you remain awake, this is what is beautiful is you experience a state of full awakening full wakefulness, yet without any thought, usually when we are awake, and this is also part of lots of discussions about philosophy, whether, you know, consciousness comes because we are conscious of something or there is consciousness by itself, we are aware, without being aware of objects. It’s a whole discussion. The reality is yes, there is consciousness in which you transcend all thoughts, all feelings, and you’re still awake. So usually, when we have no thoughts, we are asleep, then we have nothing, no experience. In Transcendental Meditation, you experience no thought, pure awareness by itself without any activity on the level of the mind. So this is consciousness meeting it’s own self. It’s like, you have a screen and your projection pictures on the screen, and then the pictures or the video, or whatever is fading, and fading and fading. And then suddenly, you have the screen, which actually upholds all the pictures, and all the movie of life is going on that screen. And so that screen is our consciousness, and ultimately, it’s also our inner self. Now, find this is a mental experience. It’s interesting, but what happens is the physiology follows. When the mindset is the body settles, it becomes very, very settled, very fine, refined level of activity. 

 

And this has been Shown through breathing rate, heart rate, blood pressure reduction, the reduction of cortisol, the skin resistance changes that indicate less tension, less stress. So these are the studies that have shown that you have really what we call a hypermetabolic alert state, state of great restfulness, yet wakefulness, which is something we don’t have in the normal states of consciousness, which is deep sleep, dreaming and waking. You don’t have that combination of very deep, deep rest at the same time, alertness. alertness is also studied scientifically, and there is the faster reaction time, greater ability to concentrate, better ability to solve problems, even improved intelligence, quotient, IQ, intelligence, you know, behavioral intelligence, and emotional intelligence improves, and there is greater coherence in the brain. Even when you analyze the electroencephalography of the brain and you see the waves, you find that the brain is acting in a more holistic way between front and back, right and left, and therefore there is a greater integration. And there’s some scientists who did this research called the opening of the reserves of the brain, because many parts of the brain are not always used, or used properly or used in an integrated way. And it’s like you have a computer, which has many chips, in this case, 1,000’s of chips, and instead of each working independently of the other, they start working together. And when they work together, they are able to solve bigger problems. And that’s why we find people finding solutions to their lives, behaving better. And the physiology follows. So, you know, you asked about. The research research, we have more than 600 scientific research studies published in the best journals from the best labs and research centers in the world that show the effectiveness of this technique on mind, body behavior, and even on society.

 

Mark Divine  21:25  

That’s tremendous. There’s so many questions I have. First, there’s a lot of confusion in the West about methods of meditation. I got my start in Zen, and I would call that a concentration practice. And I’ve done multiple mindfulness based stress reduction courses, and taught mindfulness. Well, those are two very, very different processes. And people love to go to vipassana retreat, silent retreats, which is a mindfulness technique out of the Far East as well. But you describe TM as automatic transcendence. And you said, there’s a qualitative difference from concentration training from mindfulness training, and we’re not even getting into the bucket of like visualization and guided visualization, which are different types of tools that will have different effects. 

 

What are the differences? Why would one use one versus the other? Do they work together? Or? Or is TM, something that kind of like transcends those other methods as a more direct route? In your opinion?

 

Tony Nader  22:20  

Yeah, in my opinion. And on the experience, and on the scientific level, because they have different signatures, you know, these different techniques have different signatures in the electroencephalography, in the reaction of the body and how it shows its effect. So a signature means, let’s say you ever reduce cortisol, you have alpha waves in the brain, you have skin resistant changes. So you can say, well, this group of findings are happening during Transcendental Meditation. While the other group of findings, it’s not the alpha wave, it’s, let’s say, beta wave, or whatever other waves, gamma waves that happen, or a signature of sleep or dream or of mindfulness, there are different signatures. So scientifically, they are different. And they have similarities, of course, many of them have some similarities. So from that perspective, they are also different, scientifically speaking. 

 

From the perspective of the experience itself, and the technique and its full results, they are also different. Now, in terms of technique itself, we can divide these techniques, broadly, roughly into like what you said, concentration technique, where the mind starts to drift away, and you bring it back to something, you could be looking at the flame of a candle, or you could be thinking of a thought, or you could be, you know, having a theme or a mantra, and you try to keep your mind on it. So you concentrate, you don’t want to leave it. And so as if you train the mind to force itself to be on that surface of the ocean on a specific value. 

 

Mark Divine  24:00  

By the way for many years, I avoided TM because I misperceived it as a concentration practice, because it had a mantra involved, we can come back to that later as you continue. 

 

Tony Nader  24:09  

Exactly. So, and many people are like, this is good to get it, you know, out of the way also now if you don’t, and that is mantra is a sound, sound that has no meaning. Some mantras have meanings in terms of you could take a flower, it has a meaning. So you can say I use the flower as a sound that I go back to, you know, there you have mantras and the market you say some market specialists keep saying you know, this buy when it’s low, sell when it’s high, whatever you can call this a mantra. So the different kinds of mantras that are there. And so if you focus on the mantra, you take it and you try to repeat it in a focused way and you don’t want to lose it. That’s a concentration technique. Transcendental Meditation is not that. And the aspect of mantras and different mantras, different meanings are no meanings of mantras is also a whole range. So even if it’s a mantra meditation, it doesn’t mean it’s Transcendental Meditation doesn’t mean it’s that kind of technique that transcends.

 

Mark Divine  25:14  

I’d like to pause at each one of these mantra mindfulness and then get into the automatic transcendence. Mantra meditation does, you know, to me, it has value, in a sense that if someone really is has difficulty concentrating, or has, you know, what we in the SEALs, we call attention, you know, control challenges, you know, then concentration, like all Navy SEAL training is essentially a concentration practice. But then, you know, if you add a mantra that has a certain, let’s say, from the yogic tradition of vibrational quality, like Om Namah Shivaya, you know, just the sound Ohm, and it’s been practiced for 1,000’s of years by millions of people, then it’s said that, you know, you can kind of resonate a little bit with that, meaning even if you don’t understand the meaning, culturally or language wise. What are your thoughts on that as a preliminary practice or a preparatory practice or, you know, the effect that would have on the mind?

 

Tony Nader  26:05  

it’s a practice that can be used, you know, there are repetitions, some people have, even, beads, they hold the beads, and they repeat a certain number of times, so that the beads help them to repeat things and concentrate on it and not lose the focus. Or if you try to do it. Now, this is actually an activity level of performance, it’s outward. So you’re taking the mind towards an object, whether it has a meaning or a feeling or significance in terms of emotion, or religious feeling, or spiritual feeling, whatever it is, it is an outward directed activity. Now, outward is also important, because we have to act, and we have to do things. But what we need is an inward also, this is the difference here, really, because that’s actually the basic difference between I would say, Transcendental Meditation, and almost all other techniques of the mind, whether you go outwards a lot, or you go outwards a little, or you don’t go outwards towards what is out, but in the mind, you stay on some level of attention, which is, for example, breathing, for example, or like this. So you are taking your attention towards some outer value, your breathing is not outer, but it’s much more inner than putting attention on a flame or on it on an object that is outside. But it’s still the mind is taken towards an object of perception, that is not the innermost value of your innermost being of your innermost being… 

 

Mark Divine

Which is pure silence. 

 

Tony Nader

Which is pure silence, exactly. Now, if you try to produce pure silence, you will never get it, it’s an imaginary thing, and you’re forcing it. So that is a nice distinction to have in mind. So you have concentration on the outer value, you can have contemplation on an outer value, which means you don’t try to concentrate but you let your mind like what is called open monitoring, open monitoring, which is mostly in mindfulness, you sit there and you observe, your mind goes to the breathing, you go to the breathing, you feel the breathing, you experience the breathing. So that’s what mindfulness means. It’s like being mind, being, minding what’s going on. And so, you try to follow your breathing without judgment, you try to follow your thoughts without judgment, you try to follow your emotions without judgment. And so these are the kinds of, you’re mindful of it, and you take an attitude towards it that is not aggressive or negative or fighting it, but still it is kind of looking for what is there what is there to put your attention on to be mindful of. And this has a different signature in terms of brain activity and physiological activity than concentration, for example.

 

Mark Divine  29:08  

Concentration is going to focus your mind, you know, the metaphor would be more like a laser beam, whereas mindfulness is going to allow you to have some separation from your thoughts and to be more expansive, less attached or non attached, which would be more like the floodlight, right? But but it’s still pointing outward, I see your point exactly.

 

Tony Nader  29:26  

It’s still pointing to something. So what’s interesting in Transcendental Meditation is that first it’s completely natural in the sense that it follows the nature of the mind. And the nature of the mind is to look always for more. When you think what we want what we why we’re talking because we want no knowledge, more understanding. Why we eat nice food because we want to have better days, beautiful things to see, beautiful things to hear. Emotions, we want more love, we want more. You know, we want to, more of everything that’s good that helps us to grow. Of course, we don’t want more suffering, because it’s just less happiness, we want more happiness. 

 

And so the nature of the mind is always to seek more. Now, we always seek more to the outside, again, that brings us back to our discussion, we are always seeking more towards the outside, through the senses, we want to see things, hear things smell things, through the feeling level, we want to have love from somebody, we have to have knowledge of experiencing things, of knowing things. Now, the nature of the mind, therefore, is always to go towards more, what Transcendental Meditation does is, directs the attention inwards, because of the feeling, the understanding that the innermost value of life has more than the most, is ultimate reality. It’s the ultimate fullness, it’s the source of intelligence, the source of creativity, it is the source of ultimate knowledge. And that is where the saying know thyself comes from in terms of ultimately knowing who you are, because then you are established on a platform of stability of knowing who you are. And that is all the most significant and important in that the ultimate definition of the ultimate reality of life is that we are everything, that consciousness is ultimately everything. And that pure consciousness, which we are, is actually not only our self, but it is the self of everything, and the self of everyone. This is where it takes us to a little bit of philosophical understanding. What is the ultimate reality? And what do we find within ourselves? And so if ultimate reality is truly consciousness, then the mind, if you give the mind the chance to go there, it will want to go there, guided by its own nature. That is its nature, to want more and more, but more than the most, is that ultimate reality.

 

Mark Divine  32:13  

Which is, itself.

 

Tony Nader  32:14  

Exactly. Experience itself. And by experiencing itself, it is experiencing the sense of everything, and everyone.

 

Mark Divine  32:23  

I’d like to stop there just for a moment, because not everyone experiences this inner movement. And you know, the yoga traditions would say, well, that’s natural, because left undisturbed, you know, we have an outward expression in our lives, you know, which generally takes us into youthful activities, adventure for me into the SEALs, and then family and then business. And then we, you know, we get kind of bored of all that stuff, you know, doesn’t bring as much excitement. And then there’s this turning around. And then there’s this inward movement, which quite naturally happens and, you know, they will also say, from a karmic sense, you might have several 1,000 lifetimes of outward moving until you finally get the turn around knocking on the head, and you’re like, oh, maybe, maybe there’s something more. 

 

And so what I’m hearing from you is a practice of TM can help us accelerate that maybe find that peace, and that the inner journey, here and now, instead of like waiting for some karmic miracle to happen.

 

Tony Nader  33:16  

Exactly, absolutely. And that was what actually inspired me to give, actually, my knowledge and my life and my studies and my experience to this program. That it’s something that at the same time gives you the inner and the outer, so you don’t have to go away from activity in order to be on the inner value. And it’s like, only a question of balance between inner and outer, because both are important.

 

Mark Divine  33:47  

And most American or Westerners aren’t interested in going to a monastery or a three year silent retreat, and they’re just like, no, that’s not for us. So we have that that can coexist, the practice is wherever you’re at, it’s in your daily life.

 

Tony Nader  34:01  

Exactly. And that’s the beauty of it. Also, in the sense that for 20 minutes, morning and evening, you close the eyes, and this is the time you are with yourself, you are on the inward stroke. And we usually use the example of if you want to throw the arrow in a most dynamic way on the bow, you pull the arrow back. And so if somebody sees you pulling the arrow back, they tell you, what are you doing, you want to throw the arrow forward? Why are you pulling it back? But it’s by pulling it back that you can hit the target. You know, when you want to jump? You don’t just stand on the border of this jump here, you go back, right. So you take strengths and then you jump. If you want to build the building, you know, if somebody doesn’t know the meaning of a foundation, they think you’re crazy. You want to build a building that’s very high and you start going down the ground. This is ridiculous. It’s crazy. It wants to grow. But instead of, you know, wasting its energy to grow up, it starts sending its roots and the ground. 

 

Mark Divine  35:09  

And we spend all this time looking at the tree branches without working on the roots here.

 

Tony Nader  35:14  

Exactly, exactly. So we have to water the root in order to enjoy the fruits of the, of life and the roots of life is within us. So if you just go to the roots, and you don’t produce a tree, then okay, this is your choice in life for your own self, but you are not contributing necessarily the best for yourself and for others. So you’ll have to have what we call 200% of life. 100% inner, and 100% outer. 

 

Mark Divine  35:42  

I love that. Because for so long, you know, I’ve been teaching people that the terms I’ve been using his mastery in service, right, they they go hand in glove, right. We work on ourselves internally to cultivate the interior life and our sense of why and this radical aliveness, every, all the outcomes that you know, will come from an effective practice. But it’s not so that we can hide. And this is the big back cheek, I have people who escaped to monasteries. And, you know, generally speaking a lot of times they’re unhappier than then the plumber or the carpenter who is you know, got the wax on wax off practice going and he’s he’s still at least engaged in building and contributing. Work on the inner but bring it to the outer, bring, be in service.

 

Tony Nader  36:24  

Exactly. It just to be fair, there are you know, people who want to just live the value in the beginning can we give them full respect, there are recluse, you know, there is a tendency of recluse, they are usually minority in the world, and but they are in all traditions, people who devote themselves to prayer to inward value, and they have their contribution. But the majority of, you know, the world, and it’s population is to work to create, to do things, and then you follow your nature. The problem has been that if you have to be active, and all of that, you think, oh, this is not for you, or this is not in this lifetime, maybe some other time, I will, I will be doing it or when I grow older than I will just retire and go back to the self and meditate. And what’s beautiful is we don’t have to wait and we don’t have to reject one or the other, everything is fine. But just root yourself, water the root to enjoy the fruit. Keep yourself grounded, anchored in yourself and your deep self. And don’t be a footballer of situations and circumstances. This is what the deep rooting in the self means is that you become unshakable, yet you are clear, you see things clearly, you have compassion, you have love, you have the ability to give, but then you give what you have. And what you have in this case is strength and happiness. And so you shouldn’t worry to go take time for yourself, just few minutes diving into the self and then going out into activity. This is a balanced life that can give greatest happiness and stability and peace.

 

Mark Divine  38:05  

You discuss the you know the brain or you know EQ, EEG signature of concentration being different than mindful awareness or open monitoring. What happens with automatic transcendence or TM?

 

Tony Nader  38:17  

What happens with transcendence is that, again, we follow the nature of the mind. So we don’t manipulate the mind, we don’t guide it towards specific concentration or contemplation or meaning. That’s why the mantras are used to, as vehicles, they have no meaning on purpose, but they are allowing the mind to settle. So you cannot just take any, any sound to use it because sounds that particularly, that, have meaning they limit your awareness to the meaning. So it becomes a structure of some level of understanding of experience. So you take the sound without meaning, and you learn how to use it. And the mind guides itself towards itself. And so diving in, that’s why it’s called automatic transcendence or automatic, you know, go automatically, going to inner silence. And here you have is specific signature of alpha waves coherence which is very high in all parts of the brain. Alpha wave means a certain frequency of, of brain, brain activity, brain electrical activity. And so it’s kind of specific things, we don’t need to go into that. And so it happens spontaneously, naturally. There is no forcing, no trying, no concentration, even we say no expectation of any results. Just innocence and follow the simple few steps. And then you see your mind settling down and settling down and becoming quiet and transcending and all the other results that we talked about and much more you know.

 

Mark Divine  39:59  

Let’s talk about states of consciousness versus stages in your phenomenal book, the unbounded ocean, or the One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness, thank you for that contribution, by the way, and I’m sure that was just both a trial, tribulation and a great joy to write that.

 

Tony Nader  40:19  

Many years to write that I had it ready already, like 10 years ago, but I kept refining it and the wording like, yeah.

 

Mark Divine  40:28  

Well, yeah, you put out such a monumental work I can, I’m happy that you took the time to do it, it really helped me understand a few things. Because I’ve experienced, you know, of course, the three primary states of consciousness, waking, sleep and dreaming. And I have a lot of exposure to stages of consciousness, both through yoga tradition, and also its intersection with developmental psychology, right? Ken Wilber’s integral theory, the different stages mapped out by Susan Cook-Greuter … and, and we use some of those in our teaching. 

 

And what I loved about your book, you go through in great detail, the seven stages, you know, three of which are quite natural and normal, and everyone experiences you know, waking, dreaming, sleeping. And then, this, this fourth, which you’ve touched upon, which is the recognition of this awakening experience, but it’s non permanent, right? So can you help us just kind of walk through those and in a way that might be accessible for our listeners?

 

Tony Nader  41:25  

Just for a little bit of analogy, to see that it’s real, let’s just discuss for just a minute, what physics has discovered about the nature of ultimate reality. So the physicists and the thinkers throughout time, have imagined, you know, what is actually the basic ingredients that make objects, make planets and make people, whatever it is. So they went from thinking there is some ultimate reality that is maybe indivisible, so they call it the atom, the times of the Greeks. And the idea was, if you take anything and you divide it, keep dividing it, you get to a point where there is some smallest entity that you cannot divide anymore. And that is the basic ingredient of everything, an atom. So what is the atom, then scientists went into the atom, and they found that actually, it’s more divisible into elementary particles. So what are the elementary particles, this is where when we got to the very small values, it created an unbelievable reality. And that is the reality of fields, that it’s no more actual, localized entities and time and space, but fields that have, it’s like the electron, we think the electron is like the tiny little billiard ball that is floating around the center. But it’s not, it’s like a cloud, and it could be anywhere, literally, there is a potential for it to be anywhere. 

 

So the objects dissolve themselves, into what you know, discovered as quantum mechanics and quantum fields, and ultimately, they started to look deeper and deeper. And ultimately, the scientists today think that the ultimate reality is like one field, which some give it the term unified field of all the laws of nature. And there are theories like this superstring theory and theory, we don’t need to complicate our life on this podcast to understand that, but it’s like again, as if there is a field a field is something spread out beyond limits, and that fluctuates, and as it fluctuates, it appears as particles and the particles join together to form what is called atoms, atoms joined together to form molecules, molecules come together to create cells, cells come together to create tissues, tissues come together, to create physiology, etc. 

 

So you have that beautiful following from energy fields, then particles and physics, then chemistry, then biology, physiology and neurology and all of this. And so there is that continuity of reality, which is all ultimately a unified field, which means if you ask yourself, who am I? Ultimately, ultimately, of course, might as what is making me You are the unified view, I am the unified field ultimately appearing in a specific way, obviously, of course. So there is an ultimate reality which is the unified field and it’s assumed to be a field of energy, we don’t know where this energy comes from, if we take that assumption. Now what I’ve done in the book is take the attitude that this unified field is actually consciousness, it’s pure consciousness, pure existence, and that it is itself that appears as unified field and elementary particles etc. 

 

Mark Divine  45:07  

So can I just make… So language is our limiting factor here, because you know, the medical field or the neuroscience field was, think of consciousness as pattern recognition or self awareness. And so you’re using consciousness in a completely different sense here, that would be inclusive of that more limited view of consciousness.

 

Tony Nader  45:27  

Exactly, exactly. So we were using consciousness here as that field because nobody knows what that field is. 

 

Mark Divine  45:35  

Where consciousness is where everything arises from.

 

Tony Nader  45:37  

Exactly, exactly. So that’s consciousness. So what we really are as humans, we are that consciousness, ultimately. In the same way, as we say that the field, the unified field, is what becomes the electromagnetic field, the strong force, the gravitational field, the weak force, whatever, these are the different fields. And these are the forces that interact with each other, create matter fields and like that, and they appear as the universe and all its objects

 

Mark Divine  46:08  

in this philosophy then a rock is consciousness, a human beings consciousness, a tree of consciousness, just different levels.

 

Tony Nader  46:16  

Exactly. And you know, once we get to that, so not to lose everyone, there is a human consciousness, which is higher, we have a sense of self, we have a sense of awareness, we are conscious of being conscious, which is called meta-consciousness. So consciousness, and its manifest values, is a whole range of things. In humans, it is of a higher value and animals, it seems to be of a lower value, some animals don’t even have a sense of self, you know, some animals just interact. So we’re saying that consciousness is any sensing, detecting, feeling, reacting, so we’re expanding the definition of consciousness. So even when an electron senses positron and they get attracted to each other, we are saying this is consciousness, this is a meager very little tiny amount of consciousness. When you say a stone falls to the ground, it is sensing gravity. We are saying this is a very tiny, small amount of consciousness. So the stone doesn’t say, oh, I’m going to fall, because it has no idea of what falling means. It doesn’t have a sense of self, it is not afraid that it will break itself. It has nothing like that, absolutely nothing. So because the problem is when you say that there is a consciousness in the stone, people will start imagining it’s the same consciousness as you are. And they say, you’re absolutely ridiculous. How can a stone kind of feel anything? it doesn’t feel anything, it just senses gravity. And we’re calling any sensing, any reacting as consciousness.

 

Mark Divine  47:55  

So in that thinking, through any matter. Anything that evolves into matter is a bit of consciousness.

 

Tony Nader  48:00  

The only thing that is not consciousness is nothingness. So whatever is consciousness, because consciousness is all there is. And that’s why the title of the book is One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness. And everything else is the waves of the ocean. So there is one unbounded ocean of consciousness, which means unlimited. And then all the different waves, some big some, small small, complex, some very, very tiny, some huge and complex and sophisticated, that can actually be aware of the ocean, like a human being. And that is really consciousness, and a higher level of consciousness. That is a kind of a pyramid of consciousness, with higher possibility of consciousness and lower possibilities of consciousness. And the lowest are with we can say, the elementary particles, etc. Now, the fields and their forces are forces within the field of consciousness. But we don’t need to get into that. We took a little bit of a tangent in terms of your question. Now we can come back if you want to the different stages.

 

Mark Divine  49:05  

Yeah, well, this brings us back to everyone’s familiar with the consciousness of dreaming and waking state. And many people will say that deep sleep is unconscious. And that can be argued as no, it’s just unaware.

 

Tony Nader  49:20  

Right? Exactly, exactly. Because even when you are in deep sleep, if the heat changes in the room, your body will turn, will uncover itself. Even when you’re sleeping, you don’t realize you’re doing it. So there is some level of consciousness, and since everything is consciousness, your body’s still there and it is conscious, and it is conscious, but on a very lower level. So what is nice about humans is that we actually get to experience what it is like to be conscious and asleep kind of consciousness, want to be conscious in a dream kind of consciousness, where you have illusionary reality, and what are we conscious as a waking consciousness, and all so to be conscious in terms of transcending, and that is the new value, which then we call it the fourth state of consciousness. So if sleep is one, dream is two, waking is three, now we have a new state of consciousness, which is transcendental consciousness in which you are only aware of that original unified field. And that’s why I took the example of the unified field. So we have a sense of this being a real thing, not just some imaginary theoretical or emotional experience, it’s just a true reality of an ultimate essence of things. 

 

So when we transcend, we are actually experiencing what physicists would call the unified field, that is our self. So what we do in transcending is experience our true inner self and know that ourself is unbounded, is infinite, is beautiful, is peaceful. And that is really the beauty already of transcending, because you discover that you are not such a limited person and a limited abilities, that all your stresses that have come what people have told you when you were young, that you are, you know, incapable to do this, you are, this is not for you, you are not that you are this, you are not that, which are on the surface level, fine, but on, or stressful if you are being diminished by others and told things that stay and cramp you and cramp your feelings and prevent you from being creative. 

 

Suddenly, you discover a self which is unbounded, which is infinite, which is totally silent, yet alert and awake. And that is the beauty of the experience itself. And that is why Transcendental Meditation as a practice is very enjoyable. So it’s not something you have to say all I have to do is okay, let me be good to myself. And I should do this. It’s something you look forward to doing, to having. You sit, you get quiet, you go to the self, and it’s a moment of bliss, a moment of happiness, a moment of going back home in a sense, going back to yourself. And that is transcendental consciousness. So we have for now, the next one is when this fourth state of consciousness, transcendental consciousness, never leaves you. So usually, you transcend. And then when you go out, you’re still feeling good, you’re feeling great, but it wears away, it goes away with the activity of the day, and then you are, again, projected fully outside, and something will remain from that. Otherwise, it’s not meaningful, if it’s sitting there for the 20 minutes, and then it’s gone, something will remain. And that’s why your behavior improves in general, but you still kind of get out of yourself, get out words. 

 

Now, as you practice regularly. And we have an example for this, if you want to dye a cloth, in the past that used to dip the cloth in the paint and the dye, and then remove it and wash it and put it in the sun so that it wears the color goes away. Because even though it goes away, it gets fastened, and it gets stronger, redeployed again. And then you put it in the sun, you watch it, you do this, and some little more color remains. So you keep doing, repeating this until the color is so fast and strong on the clause that it never is lost. So this is what we do, we transcend and then go out into activity. Now activity seems to remove the dye from the cloth to remove that feeling, but it actually is helping to fasten it. And so that’s why we have, we say evolution happens in two steps, inward and then outward, inward and outward. Through this repetition, the colors become so strong in the class that it never is lost. 

 

And in this case, of course what we mean is your transcendence, your sense of self of inner stability and inner sense of peace and harmony within stays with you, even when you are active. And when it stays with you all the time unshaken by situations and circumstances, we have to call this a fifth state of consciousness, which we have a name, Maharishi gave it a name, cosmic consciousness. Just to say that you are now cosmic. So you are established in the self and you perform action and it’s beautiful because one of the highest wisdoms of yoga that is spoken and the ancient tradition is to perform action, you have to be established in being. It’s in Sanskrit, Yogastha Kuru Karmani, established in yoga established in the state of unity, which is that state of the cells. Now you perform action in an effective way in a clear way, not based in stress but based on the unified field, which manages the entire universe, and maintains it in perfect order. 

 

So that is the fifth state of consciousness, cosmic consciousness. The fifth, we have seen that you’re established and the self, but the outer values, they still feel different and separate and disconnected from each other, you don’t understand the full value of them. Now you go into what we say glorified cosmic consciousness. In that state, you start seeing the harmony of nature and all of that. And that is one other state where you see the fullness of creation, it’s orderliness, the relationships, why things happen, then some call it God consciousness, which means you appreciate creation, you appreciate the Creator. Of course, you don’t become God, or you don’t pretend to become God, but you actually appreciate the creation. When you appreciate the creation, you appreciate the Creator. And you appreciate the beauty of life, that is a sixth state of consciousness. Again, one would say, what can there be more, because you’ve appreciated all the beautiful values outside and you are inside established in the self. 

 

The next one, the seventh state of consciousness is called Unity Consciousness. It’s a state where you actually realize that even the outer is yourself, which we really started with, because we said the unified field is the cell is the absolute self. And if it is in myself, it is also outside. And now you will see it not just intellectually, but you experience it directly you experience that everything is myself, everything is myself. And that is the beautiful field of unity, where everything is unified, you don’t, there is no fear, there is no sense of the other. Although, of course, you see the other but you know, it’s also yourself. So that’s the beauty of it, because ultimately, it has huge implications, in terms of our relations in terms of accepting differences, because ultimately, the source is one, but the appearance is different. The same field is appearing differently, but it’s the same one self that is in everything that is called Unity  Consciousness.

 

Mark Divine  57:20  

Consciousness expressing yourself in the multiplicity. 

 

Tony Nader

Right, exactly, beautiful. 

 

Mark Divine

And the practical benefits for leaders are a completely different level of leadership, you know, and we have such strife in the world and conflict. And, you know, in the Western world, we think that we, you know, we’re so committed to this idea of evolution. And yet, as you pointed out in the early stages of our conversation, the results don’t prove that theory very well, right? Because we’re not evolving it at a conscious level, we’re just evolving in a technological or civil complexity, civilization level, and even that’s not working very well. So the practical benefits in your words, for leaders and for everyday human beings, you know, what is it?

 

Tony Nader  58:03  

Well, the practical level is solutions to the problems of life, because if we think that life is material, and physical, and actually it is not, so we are fooling ourselves, and pursuing just the physical and the material, if we know and experience that not only intellectually knowing it, but experiencing it, which means we automatically become convinced through direct experience within ourself. And that experience grows in us spontaneously, without forcing it, just by directly diving into the self again and again every day. First, we see that the whole physiology changes, the mind changes, the behavior changes. And what we have seen is that also society changes which is a very powerful and important factor. And research has been done many, many research studies even documented and published in very serious top serious scientific journals that show that when a percentage of people practice this technology, they change the behavior of the society as a whole. They change even people who don’t practice Transcendental Meditation, because consciousness is all there is and when you improve your consciousness, as you are part of the society, the collective consciousness improves. And when the collective consciousness improves, that means reduction of stress, reduction of strain, reduction of improper seeing, feeling experiencing and therefore even the potential criminal will say I don’t want to, you know, do a crime. They start seeing better and we have seen this result that is dimension and accidents of the road, dimension of crime, better relation between nations, greater harmony, improved and prosperity and and social indicators many social indicators and they have been studied not only retroactively, but prospectively and proactively towards the decision making of saying, look, I’m gonna do this, you examine the results. So that means, we actually said that, for example, this was done in Washington and in the past, where a large group of those practitioners came together and the scientists predicted reduction in crime reduction and conflict reduction in accidents of the road and conflicts of different kinds. And we did the group and the scientists were sitting there and analyzing the situation. And they did find that the changes were dramatically happening. And when the group dismantled, then the situation came gradually back to where it was before. And this is not just that example, we have this in dozens and dozens of examples, and they have been published. And so when we know that consciousness is all there is, that consciousness is primary, then we are able to solve many problems, and we have many problems to face, you know, we have artificial intelligence, we have genetic engineering, we have conflicts on different levels, how to unify differences, and this is not going to happen only on an intellectual level, or on the level of compromise and sitting and having good intentions. It will happen through a transformation of consciousness. 

 

For example, climate, take climate change, climate change, there are things to do, but why we don’t do them? Well, there are different reasons, maybe the economy will suffer, maybe, you know, I will, my competitiveness in the world will be there. So how do I balance this with accepting new technology or new this, so where is the solution? The solution is in the mind of the people and the creativity of the decision makers, so that they can see the solution. And they get unified and lose the fear of the other and work for for the good of the world, and for their good and good of their children and the next generation, the next generation, and make life better, you know, whether we believe in it this way, or that way, what is needed is consciousness to improve our awareness. And this applies to all fields, artificial intelligence, if we create artificial intelligence, with the fear of the other, and we want artificial intelligence to tell me how to beat the other, how to destroy the other, and create better, you know, weapons or destructive means, then artificial intelligence will grow in this direction. And we become then, potentially, the first victims of it, even though, it’s own creators. So what we have to do is raise our consciousness. So we use artificial intelligence for the well being of everybody. What does it need, it needs the mind of the people, it needs the thinking process, because it’s through thinking that we get action and from action, we get achievement and ultimately fulfillment. And so we have to go to the source. It’s the decision making the source, the mind the consciousness.

 

Mark Divine  1:03:20  

I love it. You know, I’ve used this term, but you know, Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. And for the first time that we’re aware of, we can do that at scale, because of things like we’re doing here the sharing of information globally, because of the internet and because of mass communication. And you mentioned a certain percentage of a culture practicing, you know, TM, what if we had 10% of the global population, not just practicing, but attaining that fourth stage, and then this fifth stage that you discussed, permanent stage of awakened awareness or of consciousness. That’s the change where everyone’s taking the actions at scale, which changes everything.

 

Tony Nader  1:03:57  

Absolutely. And the good news is, we don’t need 10%. Actually, 1% is enough, just 1% is enough. And that is for the basic technique of Transcendental Meditation. And what we found is the square root of 1% is enough, if we have a large group that practices this advanced techniques together. And this also has been shown, for example, what we did in Washington wasn’t with 1%. We brought a few thousand people for, you know, creating the effect on the whole world, reality and we saw the effects that all in Washington, everywhere and we’ve done this repeatedly. So what is really needed is somebody to support some government, some people because we can’t do it by ourselves, all it needs is a few thousand, you know, the square root of 1% of the world population is something different.

 

Mark Divine  1:04:52  

Well different levels of consciousness will affect, you know, at a different magnitude, right? So, Dr. David Hawkins’ work supported that the conscious level of a Jesus or a Buddha is going to affect the world at a much grander scale than the conscious level of a Mark Divine, you know.

 

Tony Nader  1:05:09  

Oh it’s big, Mark Divine..

Mark Divine  1:05:11  

(laughing) Thank you, sir. Man, we could talk for hours, but I want to be sensitive to your time and we’ll wrap this up but um, One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness and Transcendental Meditation. Where can people learn more, and I want to encourage everybody listen, to learn this technique and to practice it. Meditation is not mysterious, it is normal, and it’s necessary.

Tony Nader  1:05:34  

And then us and also it can guide you to the whole world, we have a simple website, it’s called TM for Transcendental Meditation, so TM.org. And there you can have some more videos, some more knowledge about it. If you want to know more about me, what I’m doing is DrTonyNader.com. So DrTonyNader.com. And there also you can search for where you can have teachers. The book One Unbounded Ocean of Consciousness is available as as an ebook, and in different languages as a trend, and we’re bringing it out as a print on an English also.

Mark Divine  1:06:13  

I noticed that, I listened to the audiobook, I highly recommend the audiobook because you read it yourself. It’s fantastic. And I searched forever for an English version of the hardcopy, and I was like (laughing) either I’m doing something wrong or didn’t exist yet. So you just answered that question.

 

Tony Nader  1:06:27  

It didn’t get printed yet. Well, that’ll come.

 

Mark Divine  1:06:31  

So please, if you’re listening to this, and you were inspired with checkout TM.org and Dr. Nader’s book is a must read. Dr. Nader, thanks so much for your time. This is just a joy and great honor to talk to you. So thank you very much. Appreciate it.

 

Tony Nader  1:06:43  

It’s my joy, my honor. My pleasure. Thank you.

 

Mark Divine  1:06:46  

Yeah, thank you. Okay, so that was one of my favorite conversations ever. We spoke about consciousness and what does consciousness mean? Does it come from matter? Or does it come from something else? The seven stages of consciousness, the differences between concentration meditation, mindfulness, or open monitoring, and automatic transcendence, which happens with Transcendental Meditation, different types of mantras and why to use them. We talked about the difference in human consciousness and animal consciousness and even rock consciousness. I mean, just the conversation was absolutely enthralling, and fascinating. 

 

Shownotes and transcripts are up on our site at MarkDivine.com. You can find a video of the episode at YouTube at Mark Divine.com/youtube. And you could find me at Twitter at MarkDivine and on Instagram and Facebook at RealMarkDivine. And of course, you can find me on my LinkedIn. Send me notes, guests you’d like to see, you can hit me up on those social media channels. Also, Divine Inspiration is my new weekly newsletter that comes out every Tuesday morning, where I have the shownotes and my blog post and other inspirational things, people, habits, products, stuff that’s inspiring me, and that I think will inspire you to live a life of compassion and courage, and to be the change you want to see in the world at scale. 

 

Go to MarkDivine.com to subscribe. Special shout out to my super incredible team Jason Sanderson, Geoff Haskell who helped produce this podcast and find and bring incredible guests to you every week. Reviews are appreciated, so if you haven’t reviewed and rated the podcast please do so at Apple or wherever you listen to it. And again, thank you so much for being part of the show for sharing it, for forwarding it, for reviewing it, reading it, for being involved in the processes of improving yourself so that we can improve the world through our thoughts through our consciousness evolution into our actions. Till next time, this is Mark Divine.