Unveiling Life as a Simulation for Spiritual Awakening and Growth

All right, I'm really excited to be here with Christian Sundberg. It's funny, I'm a little star-struck to be honest, Christian, because I met you through watching a compilation video of stories about near-death experiences. Then I think I watched another one of your interviews or something, and then I saw that you've been interviewed a bunch on different spiritual channels. This channel, my channel, isn't mainly spiritual—I mean, that's not mainly what I talk about—but there are a lot of spiritual people that tend to be the people I draw. So I think a lot of folks will be glad to find you, and I think they'll find this conversation quite interesting because it's going to be different than most of the interviews you've done.

I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself and any part of it that you want to. I will, of course, link below this video to your other interviews so that people can hear your story in full. I think it's really interesting and the spiritual insights that came from that. Now, just to be clear, you didn't have a near-death experience per se, right? Not to my knowledge, right?

Christian: Right, right.

Host: You had spiritual experiences as a kid that obviously created a lot of opening of your heart and soul and insights, and you briefly kind of forgot about it for a couple of years. Then you kind of had this awakening later in your adulthood where you remembered those early experiences. Am I right to say that you then explored out-of-body experiences? Is that right?

Christian: Yes, not intentionally. So your comment about my experiences as a young child—it wasn't so much that I had spiritual experiences as a child per se. It's that as a very young child, I still had recollection of the pre-incarnation state. So for me, it was normal. It was the normal thing. Like, this was the strange thing, yes, right now. But that left me, though, being here. But that left me—the veil works; it does this job, right? So the more I became form-focused, you know, focused into the identity, eventually by the age of five or six, that memory left me completely. But then at the age of 30, after taking a long-term meditation practice, I began to have out-of-body experiences. And the pre-birth memory—that's kind of what I'm known for sharing, although I don't think it's the most important thing to talk about. But that awareness of what I am and what we are before, you know, preceding the human experience—that was just there. It was seen; it was known, yes.

And so now, my body is 44 years old, and now it's just kind of normal. I can feel the veil resting on and within my consciousness, yes. So I'm passionate about sharing that. I'm passionate about reminding everybody else that's interested that we really are multi-dimensional beings of love. Love and joy is our true nature, yes. And this human experience is just like a big play or video game simulation, you could say, yes, that we're here experiencing. And it really is like that. I mean, it's not just like a woo-woo thing or religious thing. It's like, no, we really do transcend the physical, but we take this very deep dive into this experience, yes, for specific purposes.

Host: It's interesting that you had these out-of-body experiences because I have been fascinated by that for a long time throughout my life. I've been touching into that every now and then. You know, the Monroe Institute is well-known—for those of you who haven't heard about it, you can Google it and find out more info. I tried doing some intentional out-of-body experiences, just like before falling asleep, trying to do all that stuff—body asleep, mind awake, yeah.

I feel like a couple of times I had this vibrational buzz or whatever, like, you know, people I've heard about—oh, that's the edge of getting out of your body or whatever. But the experience has never panned out because it always was really dark—not dark in terms of theme, but dark in terms of visually. Like, I couldn't see anything. And it's also the same thing with—I feel like I've probably had a lot of out-of-body experiences at night, like, just not realizing we're having them. And I feel like I have two types of dreams. One is, you know, a lot of us have such vivid dreams that we're like, "Wait, that wasn't real." And they're often like experiences that are—it's not like literally, "Oh, I was in my neighborhood and I saw it." It was like really bizarre stuff, right?

So I'm like, "Okay, maybe just my mind making stuff up." And then I've had some dreams where I feel like I'm walking in my house, but everything's really dark, like, well, the lights are off, okay, obviously at night. And so I feel like—and same thing with my intentional out-of-body—it was like the little I got to, I felt like it was just all really—I couldn't see anything. And it reminds me of the condition that some people have. There's a spec recently—it's been in the news—how some people have the ability to see pictures in their minds very clearly, right? And then others have a very difficult time seeing pictures in their minds. I'm one of those people who have difficulty. I've always had difficulty. People say, "Close your eyes and imagine you're on a beach." I'm like, it's a little hard for me to do that. And so I wonder if there's a connection between that and out-of-body lack of ability to do out-of-body.

And the other thing, Christian, I have to say is that I feel like all my life I've been so open to spiritual things and believing in lots of things, and I have never—I still can say this to this day—I have never had a spiritual experience. I've done spiritual practice, I've done prayer, I deeply have deep faith actually, and this is why we're talking because I really believe, perhaps as you do as well—I mean, you probably have even more memories than me—but I really believe it. I really believe that this is a simulation, but I've never had any paranormal experience before. Like, the veil is so thick in my life. But anyway, I just wonder if you had anything you wanted to say about that.

Christian: Oh, yeah, there were a lot of things that were interesting there that you commented on. I mean, we all have a unique limitation set that we wear while here, yeah. So to put it in very crude, overly crude terms, the veil is thicker or thinner for different individuals, yes, depending on many things—depending on certain spiritual elements, so soul elements, but also depending on the biology, yes. The energy of all sorts of things—the family, the country, the race. I mean, you think, yes, we have to be human or something, and then even the human race is like—every aspect of the human condition has some level of limitation that's definition. It's just definition that goes with it. And so biology is a huge part of that. And so just our biological state can very much change the level to which we experience veiling, interesting. So it's like we all have that now.

Like your comment about being able to picture something in your mind—I'm not in that camp that I can't picture something in my mind. I have a very vivid imagination visually, great. But when I was writing the book, my editor was actually commenting, "You know, a lot of people experience this; you should kind of comment on that in part four of the book when I speak to meditation." So I thought that was very interesting, and I did briefly comment on some other focuses. If you can't focus something in your mind, you know, some image, then what else can you pick to focus on? That's right. So that's not my personal experience, but I understand that that happens.

Regarding dreams versus other experiences, I feel there's a very distinct difference. There's dreams, there's lucid dreams, and then there's out-of-body experiences, right? And the lucid dream—I find that lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences can shift between them with some ease. Anyway, the darkness you experience may be a part of veiling, you know, because you're starting to look in the direction of non-physical information, but if you're really focused into the form, it might arrive very dim until you're really focused into it.

When you made that comment about vibrations—hearing vibrations—okay, so like the first non-physical experience I had during my awakening at the age of 30 was purely a vibration experience, but it was not subtle. It was the most physical, violent, loud, extreme vigor. It sounded like someone had parked a jet engine on either side of my head. That's how loud it was. It was not a joke. It was like the most real—you know, it was so tangible. And I actually jumped out of bed because my body was asleep when I experienced this moment. I was wide awake—my consciousness was wide awake—even though my body was asleep, and I was experiencing this vibration through my body. And when my body did wake up after that, I actually leapt out of bed. I was sweating; I was freaked out. I was like, "What the hell was that?" you know, because it was so not subtle.

So I'm just saying that there are degrees to which we might tap into it. I would always encourage—don't be discouraged, okay? Because you know, you made a comment like, "I haven't had a spiritual experience." No, I mean, right now you're having one, yeah. And I want to clarify—so yeah, I want to clarify. I like I said, I don't believe I've ever had a paranormal experience. I mean, I've hired—I've had sessions with psychics. I've done an in-between lives session with—oh my gosh, what's his name? The guy who wrote "Your Soul's Plan." Oh my gosh, Robert Schwartz. Robert Schwartz, no—Robert Schwartz, yeah, it probably is, yeah, think so. "Your Soul's Plan." He speaks so eloquently to sort of in-between lives and our soul planning and all that stuff. He, on—recently I heard his old interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump, but I had one of the multi-hour between-lives experiences, and I still—yeah, don't—I still feel like it was interesting, but it could have been made up in my mind. I feel like my karma or my destiny—I mean, just apparently is what I can tell—is to not ever, perhaps until now, have a paranormal experience and yet to practice the faith of it all.

Christian: Well, you have such a presence of awareness that I'm not surprised that—wow, because okay, so just one comment—like, okay, it's just like I hear from people sometimes I say, "Well, I've been meditating for 20 years, and I never experienced anything." Okay, so the thing is, it's like this is just a metaphor, but imagine you're walking along the edge of a cliff up on a plateau, and it's foggy. You could be one inch away from the edge, and you don't know it. And so it's like that when it comes to how close we are to the non-physical. We tend to think, "Oh, I'm a million miles away. I've been walking on this cliff for 20 years or 50 years or 100 years. I never experienced anything. I'm me; it's just this is endless."

No, no, no. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you're not right next to it. And so I just think that's important to lift up because I have personally found that, like, meditation—it all of a sudden, you'll fall off the cliff. It's not like you—I mean, I personally don't have—I mean, there's only been one time in my life I've been able to go out of body and meet someone on purpose, only one time. Other than that, all the non-physical experiences have just arisen on their own, and it's like I just walked off a cliff that was always there.

You know, like, basically, we were always in the movie theater watching the movie. So you don't have to go anywhere. If you're in a movie theater watching a movie screen, the shift—you don't have to escape the movie. And I think what happens is when we believe so deeply in the movie, now we think, "I have to go somewhere. I have to create some new experience," right? No, it's a shift in awareness back towards the person sitting in the seat. And then when you do that—which is actually looking away from the sense data, away from the thoughts—and then once you do that sufficiently, all of a sudden you just go, "Oh, I'm in the seat. Oh, I never was in the movie. Oh my gosh, that's amazing," you know? That's right.

Host: Yeah, this is brilliant, actually. I like both of those analogies a lot. And this is maybe a good transition point to the main thing I wanted to talk to you about today, which is the reality—with a capital R versus small R. Well, the movie metaphor is perfect, or the video game metaphor as well. Like, this is something that I have believed for a long time, and those who watch my videos have probably heard me talk about how—you know, and it's like I sounded more crazy years ago, and as years have gone on, it sounded less and less crazy, which is—I truly believe we are—I mean, ever since I was—well, when I was young, I played this video game called Ultima, the Ultima series, which was about a hero, an avatar who came from Earth through the portal, right? It's this idea of a matrix. This guy, you know, goes from like normal life, just like a middle-class guy, and then goes into a portal into Britannia, this—you know, plays with dragons and orcs and all that stuff.

And he—but it wasn't just about battling yourself through the dungeon, but as the series evolved from Ultima 1, 2, 3, and then suddenly 4 introduced virtues—or no, I think 1, 2, 3 already had virtues before—introduced, okay, now you're going to work on your virtues. I'm like, as a kid, I'm like, "Whoa." And they had like—yeah, and it's like, "Oh no, you're going to go on these quests, and every choice you make either increases your compassion or your courage or decreases them or decreases your honesty." And all these dialogues, you make a choice. This is back in the late '80s, '90s, you know, early '90s. It was like really revolutionary to me, and I'm like, "Wait, isn't life like that?" And the thing about the game is that you could never see your virtue scores. You could see your health score, like if you're going to die or not physically, you could see, right? Just like in regular life, you can see you're going to die, but you can't see your virtue score.

You have to kind of intuit into that and just know that every choice you're making is either increasing it or decreasing it. And some choices are neutral, of course, but my God, ever—and then in the late '90s, 1999, "The Matrix" movie—I saw it like at least twice in the theater because it blew me away. I'm like, "That makes so much sense." Like, yes, like it was so profoundly powerful that we are so plugged in, we don't even realize we're plugged in. Yes, and then there are Neo figures, well, you're here, you are coming along and saying, "Listen, you're in the matrix. Let me show you a way that you can—" So I am really—first, I want to allow you to speak to how your experiences and remembrance speak to this idea, the matrix idea, and like what we're here maybe to grow some virtues or something like that.

Christian: Yeah, yeah, no, those are both really apt metaphors. I will just disclaim very quickly that these are just metaphors, of course. Our language cannot speak to this, so you know, we're going to try, but I just have to highlight that because, you know, the form-focused mind is like, "Oh, tell me what object it's like. Tell me what symbol it's like." Okay, now it's that we transcend all of the physical universe in all of its context. We transcend linear time, discrete location, all this stuff.

So it's far bigger than we can articulate successfully. But I will say that in my pre-life planning—to your first metaphor of Ultima 4—okay, so like, I remember reviewing what I can only describe as like virtues. Okay, so it was like—whoa, it was more like—what am I? It's like the best way to describe it—like, it was like this is just a metaphor, but it was like if you put graphs up on a wall, and there were hundreds of like energetic points. Wow, I could see the one that was so obviously the thing that I needed to work on. Okay, now it's not "need to work"—I mean, I have to take the words tough because it's not like we have to do anything. Nothing is required of us. And I don't like the words "work on" either because that makes it sound like a task.

Okay, it's neither of those things, but it was an opportunity. It's not an imperfection or a weakness. Yeah, yeah, it's not an imperfection, and it's not like, "Oh, you got to go do this, man. Get down there," you know? It's not like that. But I could see very obviously, "Oh man, like I—I mean, I knew I had certain—I'm careful to use the word qualities or virtues, but I just say areas of experience that I understood that I had evolved like that. I had been that.

I understood at a being level I really was the—you know, I engendered maybe or something. I don't know, represented—I don't know, but there was this one that was like this fear that had bested me before, and it was so deep and it was so profoundly challenging for me before, and I was like, "Oh man, I didn't have to look very far." It was like it was almost like a joke. It was like you look at this big—oh, I'm just making this up, but like a thousand lines on this graph, but the one is like way down there. It's really easy to identify. Like, that was how it was for me. It was okay, that's obviously the most optimal thing I could do to balance myself out would be to really process that. So that is kind of like an Ultima thing.

Host: Yeah, well, it makes me think of like—let's say an athlete is good at multiple sports, right? And then they're like, "Oh, I'm really good at swimming. I'm really good at cycling. I'm really good at running." Or maybe they're not good at running, and they're like, "I'm really curious to know what would happen if I could increase that because I could see some of my athlete buddies are really good runners, and maybe they're not as good swimmers, but whatever." Like, is it something like that? It's you don't have to—so it's pulling at you, right?

Like, you want to—yeah, pulling at you is not a terrible way to put it. It's more like you have your own interest—not even desire; I don't want to use the word desire either. You have your own interest in balancing out, you know, because the more that we integrate, the more we balance out, the more capacity we have for the knowing of all the joys and all the love and all the expression. Like, we want to know more of it. We want to feel; we want to be more expanded because we choose to, not because we have to.

And so when there's some area that has been a challenge for us, we come to walk on the weak leg of that area. That's a metaphor I've often mentioned with my wife. Like, I have certain areas I may be strong, but I have one area that's okay—it's a weak leg for me. And it might not be hard for anybody else, and that's fine. It's a personal challenge area, and that's okay.

And I think sometimes we see that in other people, like maybe close friends or family. It's easy to see, yeah, maybe like maybe we have a friend who really struggles with—I don't know—self-confidence or something or shame or whatever, and maybe that's an area that for us, like, okay, we don't really have an issue with that, but maybe for them, it's man, it's hard. That's okay. Like, we all have that thing, you know, those areas that we're dealing with.

So experientially, we grow through the integration of those experiences. And so this is like the matrix in that what it does is it gives us a very super consistent, persistent, dense, in-your-face context through which—guess what?—you actually have to make choices here, like real choices. And the choices feel like it's high stakes, and yes, because obviously, if it was—well, that's that's how we—that's the name of the game. That's how you tell a good story, right? Like, director, writers, story—exactly.

Well, you know, the character has to go through this arc, and at certain points, there has to feel like a high-stake conflict, like they could die or they could lose this relationship or something bad could happen that they would have trouble recovering from or never recover from. Like, the higher the stake, the more exciting the story is, yeah. So it definitely is like that.

And what comes to mind for me is just a personal short personal story about three or four weeks ago—guess it was three and a half weeks ago now—I was in a car accident. I was hit from behind, and my car was totaled. Oh my God, very violent, very sudden. Wow, you know, I was not aware that it was going to happen. I was stopped when it happened. So I went to the ER that morning because I couldn't focus my eyes properly, and I had a headache. So I'm in the ER getting checked out, and I'm kind of like, "Oh wow, like I just experienced a very violent thing."

So the thing is, the ego is very quick to do something with it—justify it away, tell a story about it. No, but I want to allow all that has arisen or arises. I want to just—I want to actually know it because that's how we really grow through it. So I always just hit—you know, okay, I—and I have swelling behind my left eye, okay, you know, and I have—like, how do you respond to that now?

And the reason I'm mentioning it is that feels like high stakes. I'm telling you, you walk out of a car accident, your nervous system is kind of shocked, you know? And I think I had a mild concussion, so I'm dazed. My brain is not working properly. So that feels very high stakes. So because it's like I feel threatened, you know? The body feels threatened, and then the car is destroyed, so that has implications, you know? So then, but that feels high stakes.

So but then the question is, what do we do with that? Because even though it's very intense, high intensity, there's no question to me that that experience, at least for me, was a high-intensity experience. It's actually neutral. Actually, everything that arises—it may be less or more intensity, less or more sensation, less or more meaning, like contextual meaning, an implication upon us.

But whatever arises, we always have the choice how we respond to it and what choice we make. Now, you see, that's all it's about because what we are is consciousness. We're not the body; we're not the car; we're not the circumstance; we're not the money. Yeah, we're the experiencer who then has to wield an intention.

So I'll just say really quickly—like, back to my pre-birth experience—I remember when—so I won't go into it in depth, but because I shared it, as you said, many times—but I remember communicating with a being who had been physical many times before I had ever incarnated and feeling from him this incredible power and expansiveness and capability that I just didn't know. Like, and so I was immediately, "I want to do that." Like, I could not believe what I felt that he was capable of.

And what he communicated initially was something to the effect of, "That's what they all say." Like, "You just don't know." Like, it wasn't negative; it wasn't like making fun of me or anything. Like, it was just a simple, neutral comment like, "Well, you just don't—you're just ignorant to how hard this is." Like, "It's no joke," kind of thing. And I was like, "No, I want to do it." And I didn't understand experientially how rigorous the human experience can be. It can be freaking rigorous, you know?

We can have very extreme, painful experiences here, you know, high stakes, like you said. Yeah, oh my God, then what do you do? You know, that then has the human—now what do you do? It's one thing on the other side to say, "I'm kind," right? It's another thing when someone flicks you off on the street, and you've had a long day, and are you kind? Yeah, you see? Wow, and the high stakes make the choice deeply meaningful and transformative, right? Yes, exactly.

Transformative is the key. You got it. It makes it valuable because otherwise, it's like, "Yeah, no big deal. Nothing's a big deal. I choose this way or that way or whatever, yeah, sure." It's like, right, it's like if someone doesn't care what they're eating, you know, let's say your wife says, "Well, let's go out to a restaurant," and you're like, "Oh, we could do this or that. No, no, no big deal." But if you have dietary restrictions, right, right, it's higher stakes. You go higher stakes. That's this one, you know?

Host: It reminds me of a comment Tom Campbell made that stuck with me. I remember him saying something to the effect of—early on, okay, so this reality system is not the first veiled physical reality experience. This is—we've done this a lot many times. It continues to refine and get even more rigorous potentially.

But Tom Campbell talks about how early veiled experiences were very low stakes. They had no—there wasn't a huge—so he compared it metaphorically to like a big chat room on the internet. Ah, interesting, where you could say anything you wanted, and it didn't really matter. It didn't hurt anybody; it didn't hurt you. It was just a bit like—so is there a lot of learning opportunity there? Not really, a little bit, but really, you know, you're like, but here, you flip somebody off on the street, they might punch you in the face, yeah. You see, like, so now the stakes are different, you know? Yeah, totally.

Oh my God, speaking of—yeah, Tom Campbell, right? Like, I have listened to a lot of his stuff as well, and he also is very into the simulation idea. And so we are entering this age of artificial intelligence, AI, right? And I'm actually a big fan. I mean, I've always been a techno-optimist. I'll put it that way. Like, I've enjoyed playing with new technology. So when AI started, and you know, ChatGPT came on, and then you know, AI image creators—I'm like, "Oh, this is amazing." Like, you can actually have conversations with the computer never had before.

And then, you know, AI image creation allowed us to type in a few words and go, "Please create me an image of a 44-year-old man walking on the beach," and it's like, "What? That looks really realistic now." Now it's—you know, it's only gotten better over the last couple of years. It's gotten from like people with six fingers to now hands are really realistic, and faces are really realistic, and landscapes—you can't tell if it's a real-life photo or not. And it made me think, "Well, of course, I mean, this is only going to get more realistic." And then we're going to have virtual reality headsets that, combined with AI, are going to make our virtual reality seem so real.

And maybe eventually, there's probably going to be—not saying I endorse it, but there's going to be brain implants that people are going to put in, which make the experience even more real. Which at some point, I can imagine there probably is going to be eSports evolving to that state where it's like they're going to have people with brain implants in virtual reality playing athletic games with others where they feel the tackle or they feel the fear of doing that ski jump or whatever. Like, it's that real, which is what makes the game—what makes the athlete much more credible to us than just eSports where it's like, "Oh, it doesn't—there's some credibility there with the reputation loss or whatever, but it's like, oh my God, this athlete is actually experiencing that."

And so I'm going all this, I'm like, "What about—what is this?" You know, it's like, is this simply—you know, it's like ChatGPT 1000, you know, or ChatGPT 4, or ChatGPT 400. It's like, how much is this a generative AI experience? And I heard you say in one of your interviews—you mentioned, "Oh, you know, that reality before Earth—when you were in your soul body, that was much more thought-responsive.

You think something, and then it's created." And we hear this with near-death experiencers or people who are channeling people who have been in heaven or whatever. It's like, "Oh yeah, it's so easy. If I want to be on that mountain, I just think it, and then now I'm on the mountain. If I want to—if I want to eat this—" Oh, I'm not sure about eating food. I've heard that you can't eat there, but yeah, I tried it. Oh, okay. Well, I want to stop here, and I want to hear—I want to talk about this because what in the world is happening? And is—you know, will AI allow us to—well, essentially, will AI allow us to grow spiritually? I'm really curious about that. But let's just stay with this thought-responsive idea for a while. Like, are we in that trajectory where, who knows, maybe within 30 years, 50 years, probably there's going to be experiences like this that feel so real, and then after they unplug, you're like, "Oh yeah, welcome back, avatar."

Christian: Yeah, well, I can at least say, "As above, so below," you know? Basically, we live in a fractal multiverse. So even our physical reality is like a lower fractal of higher systems that represents the content of those higher systems in some new expressed way. So in our case, what we're doing here—the simulation is focused in part, but this is one thing that makes our universe very unique—is on the experience of separation. So here, we think we're separate. Like, we feel separate from each other.

That's very unusual. It's a very unusual experience to actually feel separate from other things and other people and other beings. That's—and also to feel separate from the unconditional love of source. That's very, very unusual. But we thought of this—speaking generally, we created—there was an idea set first. Higher realms or thought forms created, and eventually, we made it into this full-blown experience where we 99.9% believe we're separate. It's never going to be 100% because the being we still are—what we are—okay, we can't actually not be consciousness. And consciousness is connected. So at some level, whether shallow or deep, we all know there's something else going on here, and we all know that we're actually connected to each other at some level. It's just we're pretty obscured, okay?

So now, within each system, we like fall asleep into the system below it metaphorically. So you're actually on the other side right now, having the dream of Earth, so to speak. And it's like on Earth when you go to sleep as a human, and you have a dream, okay, it might seem real, but when you wake up in the morning, it's pretty obvious that now you're in the real bed. This is real; that was just a dream.

When you die, it's the same thing. You wake up—I mean, not the same; it's similar. You wake up with much more awareness, much more clarity. "Oh, that was just a dream. I was not the human. I see." You see? But here, we might also play with it in new ways. Even just playing a video game, you know, if you lose yourself in playing a video game, that is falling asleep into a lower level.

You see, if something happens to your body, it will pull you out of that video game because the body is the higher—you know, the higher dimension, you could say. The video game is the lower dimension, but your consciousness has lost itself down into it. Same thing with like a movie, like we just said.

Okay, so what we call AI—I mean, really, my understanding is, at this point at least, AI is complex algorithms that are taking existing information and doing things with them. It's getting better. The algorithms are getting better; the coding is getting better. Now, the thing is though, all the physical—all the form is non-fundamental. It's not a fundamentally real thing.

Consciousness uses it, though. So like physical bodies, physical avatars—we have the ability to utilize the physical avatar. I can—I can anticipate—I don't know, but I would anticipate that there would be some moment when our information systems are complex enough and have the ability to adapt and modify themselves enough that maybe consciousness will use that system. You see, we're not the body anyway. That's interesting. That's really—we're the consciousness utilizing an avatar.

So in Tom Campbell's terms, it's all information, right? The body is information; our computers are information; the information they're running is information. Yeah, and in higher systems, those reality systems—which, by the way, are even more real than this—they put this to shame. This is like a black-and-white movie by comparison.

When you engage with those systems, the thing is—how do I describe this? Okay, so the key—this is really important; this is key. So we keep talking about simulation. Where is the simulation occurring, right? Because we like to think of places. There's places—you're in Mexico; I'm in Pennsylvania.

Like, you're so many distances away. You're such a distance away from me in this physical space, and there's stars out in the sky, and then you know, I have a shirt close to my—we have all these ideas about distance and location. Where is all that occurring? It's all occurring on and in consciousness itself. It doesn't—there is no distance. There is only with a capital C. So, yeah, when I use the word consciousness, I'm not referring to you know, conscious human character like the avatar is awake at this moment. Yeah, I do tend to use the terms consciousness and awareness interchangeably because I don't like to distinguish. It's all the one, yeah, knowing, yes, the eye that is knowing, yes.

And so a simple way to put it is—right now, you may feel like you have a body, okay? So when you feel your body, there's an aliveness in your body. And if you try to spend some time feeling the aliveness in your—like, how do you know you have a hand without feeling the wind on it or without touching your fingers?

Can you feel there's like an aliveness, a knowingness, a life? Okay, that is consciousness. That is like spirit is present, knowing that. And the body—it's not that that consciousness is in a body. I know it feels like that; that's backwards. It's actually that the bodily experience is a folding down, a densification, a crystallization of the consciousness into some experience. And so when you meditate, what happens? There's this—what can happen is there's this beautiful unfolding—which I don't want to stimulate the ego too much because it sounds exciting, and it is amazing—there's this beautiful unfolding where all of a sudden, it feels like your body is way bigger than a physical body. It's everywhere, okay? And then the physical body is just this little clump of tiny pinpoint of denseness that was always within the consciousness and not the other way around.

Now, the reason I'm lifting that up is because what I'm saying is all the simulated content, the form, is arising on consciousness and in consciousness by consciousness. So in Tom Campbell's metaphor set, he has an acronym, TBC—the big computer. And in his model, TBC is just the portion of consciousness that is dedicated to running our simulation, the physical simulation, and it provides the data to the data stream, basically, to the consciousness of each participant.

So in the matrix, we're all lying in our little pods, and TBC is flowing the data to our consciousness as we're lying in our little pods, okay? So I'm lifting all that up because in higher systems, the you that is you is still you. Like, you're still you; it's just now that knowingness, that awareness, that consciousness is much less limited, and it can be felt that the environment is within you.

And you are—even though you're over here, you can be looking at a tree—a literal tree with colors and everything. The tree can be seen as over there, and yet you know it's within you, yeah, even and it's even more real than this. And so if you want to go to the tree, that's fine; you just think you're at the tree. And the reason you're at the tree is because you are what's real. You are the consciousness; you can move to the tree. There's no big deal.

So the difference with this reality, of course, is our reality—our rule set, our reality rule set—is just much more firm, much more dense, much more limiting—high constraint, high limitation, extreme limitation. We really cranked the knob up, yes, on how limited we have—you know, I don't want to say constrained ourselves, but yeah, I mean, that's basically what we've done is committed ourselves into an experience of profound limitation.

Host: Yeah, so I went down a bunch of paths there, but I'm trying to lift up that the simulation is occurring within consciousness, right? And so, as above, so below. So yeah, now here that we have these objects, we create computers to do AI, and now we're doing the same thing here in a smaller, lower, much more crude scale, yeah, than consciousness does at the higher layers.

Christian: It's incredible, yeah. It's a really good explanation, and which makes me wonder—well, the other side, or the other side—the heaven, perhaps, is a lower version of whatever is higher above that.

Host: Okay, so let me just—so okay, all form is not fundamental. That includes higher systems that are even more rich. That doesn't mean they're not real, but the thing that is the most real is consciousness itself, spirit itself. And that thing—let's just call that a substance for now. It's not a physical thing; it's not a substance. Let's call consciousness a substance. That substance is love and peace and joy and freedom. That is its true nature. That is synonymous with the nature of being itself.

So when that nature of being wants to then express that being in a reality system with far less constraints than ours—oh my gosh, it can do so. Like, all the beauties of this universe are nothing compared to the rich beauty of even one—oh, I mean, the language is so limiting. I'm just—yeah, any one experience, any one visual experience, any one feeling experience is like billions of times more full of that love and that peace and that freedom and that joy because that is our true nature, and it's expressed in some way in some form, yes, highly concentrated versus diluted a little bit like that.

Host: Yeah, it's more like less constrained, more constrained. And if you want to—okay, so we transcend duality itself. So I'm not trying to make this sound like a big duality spectrum either. That's like one of—it sounds like a big paradox like what I just said, but it's not. We transcend duality. We are non-dual, yeah.

Language makes it pretty much impossible, yeah. It's pretty much yes because it's a duality language, yes. So but to use crude terms, if you want to—if we can paint a crude duality spectrum here, at the far end of what's most real is love and peace and joy—the love and peace and joy of consciousness itself. And so then as it takes steps into some distance, then it can express that native love and that peace and joy and freedom and all the virtues in some capacity. You could just say simply.

And what makes our universe so unique is that we are way on the other side of the spectrum where we are in an incredibly high limitation simulation. And within that incredibly high limitation simulation, that means incredibly high opportunity for growth because of the incredibly high opportunity for contrast, you see? Yeah, so it's not like we—so, um, like I don't mean to—I'm not in any way belittling this experience. It's so valuable. It's like winning the lottery, being given a chance to play a human. But on the other hand, you wouldn't commit yourself into this limitation just because it's good unto itself. Like, there's not really a reason to do that except that that which is real—spirit—can grow forever, expand forever through the contrast that created within itself, yes.

Host: Yes, I heard—oh gosh, it was another NDE who said, "Imagine you were—imagine that God couldn't be here today and sent you, yeah, to be a representative today of God." You, a consciousness, literally is manifesting itself through you and me today, walking around, yes. How would that consciousness interact, you know? Well, it interacts however we end up interacting, but it's like, is there more purity and more truth, true consciousness, you know?

So I want to bring this a little bit more practical now, right? Like, this is amazing that—well, okay, before I end on this practical, I've always been interested—I've always, when I was—I used to be very religious, and one part of my life I was very religious, and I was trying to convert people to a particular religion, sure, and I was like, "No, you're going to go to hell if you don't believe these particular statements to be true." And now, now that I believe this—this, like, the veiling is important, as you've established, meaningful, yeah, it's meaningful. I'm like, maybe I shouldn't try to convert or tell—it's like if they are really believing this is it, this is life.

Like you get one life, then their choices are very meaningful, you know? Like, sometimes I wonder, like, holy—like, maybe we're—I like found a cheat code, and I'm like, or cheat sheet—I'm like looking at the cheat sheet a little too much because my—because I once I—the more I believed what I believe, the less it matters if I die or even have pain, yeah, you know?

And also, like, in my work, in my business, like I used to be so pained when something didn't go well in my business, like, "Oh no, because financial distress could happen," like, all this stuff might—reputation, whatever. But now it's like, "Ah, I'm just a fool." I mean, I'm just so—what? It's kind of like you mean that in the liberated sense. I understand, yeah. It's like, it's okay.

And I'm here for the learning; I'm here for the experience. And sometimes it's intense still, obviously, but it's like, it's okay if the business fails; it's okay if my—if true, there's—I would have somehow maybe even chosen it to learn something from it. So I'm like wondering, maybe atheists and like people who really—maybe they are playing like the most intense game, you know, because this is it—high stakes, yes, right?

Christian: So I feel that that intuition is exceedingly important when it comes to how we choose to interact with others in these areas because there are many who will not benefit from having their apple cart tipped over, and it's not helpful to them. So we shouldn't tip over the apple cart, you know? Belief is a primary tool of the ego to protect the self from fear and to justify the self, to give the self some semblance of control. "Now that I believe this, it's taken care of. I don't have to think about that anymore. It's taken care of."

But when someone is ready—like, put it this way—contrast is not inherently valuable unto itself. So we're allowed to wake up. Like, we are allowed to pull each other out of the mud. In fact, that's what love does, okay? So like, you know, I've had people ask, "Well, maybe you are removing contrast from others by sharing that this is what we're really doing." That's possible, that's possible, yeah.

But the thing is, we're all completely free. That's right. So I'm trying—I seek to make a decision that hopefully will liberate more and help more than it will remove opportunity, you see? Because when we basically get to know our true nature again, we are so empowered. And if we can do that while we're so veiled—like, if we can do that down here, man, yeah, that's awesome, you know? If you could wake up inside the matrix, you know, like in the movie "The Matrix," there's only a handful of people who know they're in the matrix.

You know, like, if you can wake up in the matrix, that takes some—that's pretty interesting. That's powerful stuff. And if you can help others around you by saying, "You know, it's okay. You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to take it so seriously," yeah, then what happens is you actually become liberated to use the simulation in a way that is most joyful and free.

So just one example—like, there are things in my life that I have felt, you know, I really do care about this certain thing, and the ego might say, "Oh no, we don't want to care because then that could be lost, and you might lose it, and then let's just like care less." No, love and joy and presence and alertness means even acknowledging the way that we love the way that form is expressed in our lives—our families, our businesses, our relationships, our bodies, whatever.

You know, we can actually basically commit fully to experiencing it even as we recognize that's not who I really am. You see, you can be liberated and still play the game with open eyes, do your best, and if something falls apart, okay, you know? Like, what matters is your quality of intention, not even the physical outcome. Like, every one of us is going to physically die. Like, one of the essays in my book is entitled, "Don't Take Life So Seriously; No One Makes It Out Alive." Yeah, I mean, simply like, you don't need to take it that because all of us will pass, yes, in some duration of time. For almost every human on the planet, no one's going to really remember you specifically. That's okay, yeah, but you will still exist very much, yes.

Host: Yes, man, this is really good. I mean, yeah, it just gives me a lot of peace as I go about experimenting with life, yes. And I'm grateful. I'm really grateful that the earlier fears of my life—of most of my life—has subsided more and more. I have dived into this faith, this belief, this experience, and affirmed it, and it seems like it's having a positive effect on others too.

And I realized, okay, I'm not going—because it's funny because, yeah, like as I learn more and see the impact I have on others, funny things—I'm like, I don't want to have that much impact on anybody. It's like I want them to make their choices and to really have the experience that they came for. Like, I don't want to push—no, exactly, right? It's like the same way, yeah, right. It's funny because my earlier faith was like, "I gotta push as much as possible because it's high stakes," and now it's high stakes, gotta do it. Now it's like it's more like it's more like the Dao. It's like, "Okay, all right, I'm you know, like—" There's that term from some Dallas books that's like, you know, the Dallas leader makes it so that the people said, "We did it ourselves." Yes, you know, the leader led so well that we're empowered, and we did this ourselves. "What do you mean? Where's the leader?"

So I mean, one quick comment there—like, I feel like the most valuable thing we can do for each other is empower each other. Like, give—okay, put it this way—like, we live in a world where so many people are disempowered. We believe in disempowerment really deeply.

All the power is out there; it's in the money; it's in the government; it's in the systems. Now it's in the veiling. "I'm limited; I'm shameful." No, no, no. If you can hand someone back their own actual power—and actually, you can't even hand it back to them; they have to reclaim it themselves.

All you do is say and or do something that reminds them of what they are. Know that's it. Like, there's a great—oh, eerily, a quote that I put in the book—something to the effect of, "A spiritual teacher has nothing new to hand you in the way of dogma, belief, activity, behavior. Their only function is to remind you of the deep peace of what you really are already."

Yeah, oh my gosh, yes, because when we find that, okay, the other is yourself. Okay, so when you empower the other, you are empowering yourself. We are all one family; we're all one thing; we're all drops in the one ocean. Like, when the other person wins, you win, right? Like, really. So if they're at a place where something that you might offer is not helpful, that's okay, yes.

You know, I found—I see I'm so passionate about sharing this because it's so freeing. It's like, you know, in Christian terms, it's the real good news is that we have nothing to fear, right? So I found that like I might just feel a nudge. I try to follow intuition and share where I feel I should. Sometimes I might share in a very gentle way, and I feel like if you put down that drop, there might be five people in the room—metaphorically, there might be five people in the room, and one of them might turn and say, "Wait, what? That's interesting."

That little tiny nudge might be all that was needed, you know? That might be so empowering to them and helpful. Yeah, I'm really passionate about this. I mean, I feel like this is the real work actually because if we can affect consciousness—if we can liberate consciousness, it's a strong word, but if we can remind people of the power that they already have in consciousness—that is the real playing field. The physical stuff will all manifest; it will all actualize through choices and through manifestation and all the activities that are taking place to get the rise of the physical.

That will all happen after consciousness shifts. So the real work is consciousness. And by the way, you don't even have to focus on the other people's consciousness. Just know yourself, you know? Just find who you are. Be authentic. It doesn't need to be big. You don't have to affect a hundred people, right? Yeah, or a thousand people. Yeah, you don't even have to affect one person.

You can look at the sunlight in a way that is open and more you, and that change actually—and I know you don't may not see this—but that actually changes the vibration for the entire pond of the collective consciousness. It actually contributes to the solution. Like, when you choose love and peace and joy in your own life for real, genuinely, you are helping the whole world. You are helping everybody else even if you can't see that.

Host: Very empowering, dude. This is amazing, and this is a great place for us to conclude. Sorry, I went down a tangent there. I know that's not as—no, no, it's perfect. It's actually perfect. I mean, it couldn't get more practical than that. And so one last comment—one last comment I feel to make there.

So, you know, I come from an extremely intellectual background, history. Like, I was a very intellectual type person, and many people who are interested in this type of conversation are intellectual too. There's nothing wrong with that. I honor and enjoy the strength of the intellect. However, just a comment that what we're describing here is actually deeper than intellect.

The intellect is a tool. All it is is a tool. It's a hammer that is more or less sharp, and the thing that's wielding that hammer is consciousness. So the reason I'm lifting that up is this quality of intention thing that we're talking about. It is a move back towards the real you—what is most you—and it doesn't have to make sense even on the surface to the thinking mind if it is more of love or freedom or peace or ease or compassion or kindness, you know?

Then that is a move back towards where the power really is. I'm just lifting that up because we like to think about all these things, but this is a very personal—like, no, but what are you actually experiencing, Mr. Intellectual? I love this, you know, because there are many different levels of intellect in the world, and even the least capable in mind or brain can still experience and oh, yes, be most fulfilled in their purpose here. Oh my gosh.

And the other thing I want to say is the power—so when we're talking about layers of computing power here, right? The power of the big I AM, the big system, is ludicrously bigger than the brightest intellect of a personality in the universe. You don't—so basically, you already have access to all that. You don't need to be able to think. Like, when I—after the car accident, it's like, "What? I can't think very well." That's okay. Like, if my brain can't process information here in the physical way, so be it because I'm just saying that we actually can find more understanding when we let go of the thinking understanding and seek that which actually knows, which is awareness itself. It already has everything in it.

I know that it's veiled—super veiled. It might not be obvious. You turn towards the silence for the first—you know, 100 hours, or it doesn't have to be 100 hours. I'm just saying it could be a while. You turn—the sounds you hear nothing; you think nothing. It's—I'm not even talking about thought. I'm talking about that which transcends the thought but contains all the knowledge.

There's a comment in my book—I forget where I made the comment, but something to the effect of that I felt strongly of pointing towards, "You are consciousness, so you already are connected to all the knowing and understanding of all of this." And so but that's why like near-death experiencers—they have these experiences; they get connected to that; they know it; then they come back, and they're back down in the tiny little—you know, crude, local PC human brain, yeah, and they're like, "Man, I don't know. How do I even—I can't even retain it.

And for the little parts I could retain, I can't possibly articulate it." Man, I relate to that so much, yes. Like, it just cannot be said. So I'm just encouraging—I just felt nudged to encourage if there's someone leaning—like, basically, go investigate. Be a scientist. Go investigate your consciousness beneath thought consistently. Don't look for more thoughts. Just for a minute, for 40 minutes a day or something, for three months, just investigate very objectively. Don't make anything up. Go experientially explore, "What is my consciousness beneath all thought and all feeling?" Go look.

Host: Excellent, excellent assignment. I don't need to give an assignment. No, it's great. No, I think it's very valuable. I'm going to be sure to put your link—the link to your book, of course, below because I think people should go and check it out if they've resonated with this conversation. I think they'll love it, and you have other interviews as well that I will put below. And thank you, man.

One real quick comment—I feel like, so, just a comment that the first of all, the book is available for free on my website, so it's not about money. I just want to make it available to people. Thank you. I want to say that the book is basically that step out of the intellect to that which is real—the spiritual reality. It's like a guide back towards, and it wasn't something that I wrote. I just enabled it. It was like spirit brought me chunks over six years, and it's produced in a way that is meant to present a framework to an intellectual but guide the individual back towards who we really are to find it experientially, you know? That experiential step is what it's about.

Host: Yeah, that's beautiful, man. Yeah, and I want to say I do believe in supporting good books and authors on ecosystems like Amazon because if people aren't buying books there, the books aren't going to be known and visible, and this won't come up in searches. So I really believe in that, and books are—you know, I mean, for the kind of knowledge or the kind of experience that one might have on something like this, how much is that worth?

It's like money doesn't compare. But dude, thank you. Thank you for saying yes to this interview and giving us so much to really reflect on and to experience. I'm honored. I sense this awakeness. You have such an awakeness, and you have such a love in you. So I know that you may feel this dichotomy of the depth of form focus versus but whatever you are, who you are, and you have so much love and presence and awakeness. Your light is bright, so I'm honored to share.

When I watched one of your videos earlier today just very briefly to kind of prepare and bring myself into the correct space, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be really rejuvenating for me because when I get to connect with someone of your energy and your lightness and your kindness, it's a gift. It's beautiful." So I just want to recognize you in that way because I know you probably don't think of yourself in that way because all I haven't had experience. Yes, you have. Don't worry about that. Yeah, you are awake.

Host: Oh man, I appreciate you. I appreciate you, man. Yeah, thank you so much.

Christian: You're welcome. Well, to be continued.

Host: Yes, excellent. Thank you so much.

Christian: Thank you.