Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and of the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Today I bring you a grand conjunction of events. An interview with a subject matter expert in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which is also serving not only as a listener inbox feature, but also as a community spotlight feature.
As J Bird, as he prefers to be called, is a member of our Discord as well. I had originally planned out a 30-minute to one hour conversation, but we wound up talking for almost two hours because the conversation was just so engrossing. It will be split up into two parts. The first goes over his background, some information about Buddhism, and the six realms, including hell. We'll also cover some interesting parallelisms found between the recent trend and some Catholic circles to only categorize hell as a quote unquote mental state and Buddhism.
And you don't want to miss the second part coming out next week, where he shares some of his experiences performing house cleansings with Buddhist rites. The only other item I want to bring up is the movie for this coming Wednesday, August 24th at 9 p.m. So far, we've tackled some very serious and important horror films. The Exorcist, The Vigil, Terrified, etc. This time we're going to kick up our heels and enjoy one of the silliest and goriest zombie movies ever made. Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. Also called Brain Dead in New Zealand. It's rather difficult to track down now.
I'm not going to get into why that might be. But come by if you haven't seen it, I know you will enjoy. Because it brought us one of the most immortal lines ever said. I kick ass for the Lord. If you like this podcast and want to support it, then please consider becoming a Patreon. You can support us for as little as $3 a month, and the link is in the show notes. Anyway, let me stop battling so we can get to the good stuff. Sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation with J Bird about Buddhism and the paranormal. Hello all. I won't go into any more details because it's not needed.
He has been a very active voice. He's been a pleasure to be able to interact with, and he has graciously agreed to allow me to talk to him and record, and that is a nerve-wracking thing. So I thoroughly appreciate that. J Bird, how are you doing today? I'm doing good, JJ. How are you? I'm luckily recovered from COVID, thank goodness, and yeah, I haven't suffered any long-term effects that I can tell, and uh hope it stays that way.
But yeah, I recall you had a you had a couple bouts with it, huh?
I did, yeah. I was taking that Paxlovid, so I had an initial infection of it, and then I had a a rebound after apparently the medication that's just a common side occurrence of it.
Yeah, well I'm glad I'm glad you're all better.
Yeah, you and me be especially like the worst thing besides just feeling like I had the worst case of the flu in the world. The worst thing was I tasted metallic butt in my mouth for like two weeks straight. And that is not a pleasant experience.
Like the bad taste in the mouth.
Oh my god. Yeah, and apparently, like I was doing some research, like apparently five percent of people that take it have that experience, and my luck held true yet once again. So I'm glad you're all better. Oh, you and me both. Well, uh, I want to celebrate the fact that you were here. You have some really interesting backgrounds and experiences, and I would love to be able to share them with everyone who is listening. So let's just start off with some basics. How did you find the Discord server?
I think I found it, it was either late last year or early this year, through just surfing around online and I had an experience which we'll probably get into, which kind of thrust me into the world of what I'll just say kind of classical Christian theology, Catholic theology, angels and demons. And through that, the experience of doing all the research and and trying to learn as much as I could, I stumbled upon the podcast first, and then eventually made my way into the Discord server.
And I and I will point out, I was on I was on early this year, basically I had uh I was part of the whole, I don't know if you've read in the news, there was a T-Mobile breach, it was like a massive data breach.
Oh, yes, I do.
I went through this crazy period of like restructuring all of my personal information, including my cell phone and so on and so forth. So I was off for a little bit and then came back on recently once things had settled down and I realized I wanted to get back on.
Well, we are glad to have you again. Yeah, data breaches are never a fun thing.
Yeah, it's it's been a pretty eye-opening experience uh from all sides.
I can imagine. Yeah, I uh I'm a T-Mobile customer as well. Luckily, I'm pretty paranoid about my online stuff, so I had everything already kind of segmented, so it didn't really impact me all that much. But yeah, it's uh it is an absolute pain.
Yeah, I mean the the interesting thing about all this is I had transitioned off T-Mobile like five or six years ago, but the date of the breach, which act was actually prior to that. So the actual breach happened, I don't know, it was like 2015 or something, 2016, and they didn't they didn't even really catch on to it until late last year.
Uh, that's what they say, but typically it's they knew about it and they just didn't feel like they had to report it until much, much later, which is often the case. We are glad to have you back. It's uh it's been great being able to get your inputs. One of the things that has made your voice not only highly respected, educational, and has added a lot to the context is that you're Buddhist. And I was wondering what particular branch of the faith do you belong and what started you along that path?
Yes. I've been a practicing Buddhist for well over 20 years at this point, and my experience and my interest in it started when I was pretty young. I think I was about twelve or thirteen years old, and part of what compelled me into it was my father. I was raised pretty much, I'll say, like, be somewhere between atheist and agnostic. Uh my mother came up through Episcopalian roots, and my father came up through Roman Catholic roots, but both of them, as they were parenting me, didn't really push any religious agenda for various reasons.
I think my father had a very difficult experience in the Catholic Church. But when my father was talking to me one time about spirituality and religion, he really encouraged me to check out Buddhism. And he didn't go into a lot of details because his intuition about it stemmed from his experience in Vietnam. And he didn't he didn't really talk about his experience in Vietnam very much. But he had told me that he had some exchanges with Buddhists in Vietnam, and it really left a big impression on him.
And so, you know, I was struggling, I was kind of an angsty teenager, and he encouraged me to check it out, and he gave me a book by the Dalai Lama. It's called The Power of Compassion. And I still have that book, actually. And you know, from there I guess you could just say the rest is history. My training basically evolved into studying Indo-Tibetan form of Buddhism, or you know, we just call it Tibetan Buddhism, I guess. Which is one of the lineages that's within the Tibetan cultural practice of Buddhism. And it was it it was a pretty intense road of of study. I was I was very into it.
You know, at that time I would refer to myself as like hyper orthodox almost in my approach, and uh it led me into a lot of experiences. I had to learn Tibetan, I had to learn Sanskrit, I spent a number of years in Asia, and then also did a number of very long retreats, and that whole experience was kind of my formal formation of uh my Buddhist training, so to speak. And that was that was a period that lasted for, you know, I would say from the age of twelve all the way up until maybe my late twenties.
And then at some point I had to make a a very discrete decision about the course of my life, and it was basically, am I gonna move to the east for good and kind of become a hermit? Or am I going to try to integrate all this stuff into some kind of western western lifestyle experience? And so, you know, I chose the later for various reasons, and how is that gone?
How have you been able to take what you learned and apply it to a regular Western lifestyle?
I mean, uh, you know, to be totally frank with you, it was very difficult at first.
I could imagine.
Yeah. Uh, but that's that's part of why I wanted to do it, because there was a part of me that felt like I had seen a lot of people in a similar position as mine, that somehow their spiritual path became a way to bypass the realities of the world. Like it was uh it was a movement to say, okay, I just I just don't want to deal with this. This world's too crazy. I'm gonna go tuck myself away in in some like Himalayan retreat or something like that, just not deal with any of this. And you know, that I didn't want to go down that path.
But I would say for the first five years or so, as I kind of made this transition, and I I did it very quickly, I will, I will say, I was married pretty quickly, I had kids at still a fairly young age, and so it all hit me like a kind of avalanche. And I would say my whole practice since then has been about continuing this process of integrating. I had spent one point during my training in very strict retreats, which is it's actually interesting, it's something I wanted.
I've never really talked about it publicly, and and a lot of people that have done them don't for different reasons, some of which is it's not something traditionally that you're supposed to talk about too much. But you know, just to give people a sense is I I went from a period of my life, we were meditating somewhere between like 12 and 14 hours a day. We were in a retreat cloister which was completely sealed off, which meant there was there was no outside contact.
And the teacher would come in and and give us teachings, and then we would we would spend many hours of the day meditating and chanting and saying prayers. So you can imagine going from an environment like that and then coming out and all of a sudden it's it's groceries and it's bills and it's uh it's all kinds of things. And it can be very difficult.
Yeah, I especially in the beginning, I mean, if you're thrust if you come from the West and there's not a huge focus upon meditation, and then you're thrust into an environment in which is so intensive in that, how did you learn to adapt? And the the reason I ask is I remember going on a missionary trip as a kid and suddenly being asked for the first time in my life to pray for a couple of hours at a time. And I thought I was going to go mad.
Like I got the first five minutes filled with my normal litanies, and then after that, it was it it was a struggle to to keep going and to try to stay concentrated.
Yeah, I mean that that's definitely all real. And the interesting thing is part of my process of integrating these things is to try to explore other, you know, Western religious traditions to find synergies and experiences that are that are similar but within a Western framework. So some of it, to be honest with you, is I think my process of integration is very much part of what you know led me to your podcast. I have a very um, I'm not gonna I guess it's you could say a studious mindset, and I feel like I'm never done learning.
And um part of that learning process has been continually trying to figure out avenues to integrate what I've learned into a more Western framework so that there's some benefit for me and contextualizing my experiences, but also helping others when I can. But I will say there are many people that leave those retre those retreats and they have a very hard time ever really recovering, or they end up going back into retreat.
And I think that's part of the challenge of the tradition at this point, is that there are a lot of Buddhist centers that are developing in the West, but the the path working that is established for developing people into more or less what you would, you know, equivalent to priests or ministers, they still we still haven't really worked out a way to do that yet, because right now most of the options are to are to go into these very traditionally intensive programs. And the success rate, for lack of a better term, is still kind of to be determined.
You know, that being said, I I look back now and I the experience was amazing and I I wouldn't do anything differently, but I'm also trying to figure out ways that I can take that work into into the world I'm in now and and have it be some benefit for people. Because it it's kind of like you were saying, so in the in the tradition, there could have been people that had had done that retreat, and the second they come out, the whole community is rallied around them and they say, Yes, why don't you come to our center and or why don't you come to our monastery and help teach?
Or, you know, they become ministers in their community in Tibet and in India and other places. But in America, when you come out of a retreat like that, like literally nobody cares. Nobody there's no demand for your services, so to speak. And you know, I didn't I didn't even bother putting it on my resume because it just would have been too crazy. So in some ways, I had to put it all aside initially. I mean, I really had to kind of flip the switch in my brain and just say, okay, that was an amazing experience. There's no way I'm gonna be able to continue practicing like that.
So just focus on getting a job and feeding your family, and and as things come along, maybe you can you can figure out how to get it integrated back into your experience.
I can certainly understand that desire to compartmentalize uh or just to completely leave it off from a resume. Whenever I entered into the tech field and I had my education listed on my CV, then sure enough, I get some odd looks, and like even though you know religion is typically verboten during an interview, some people just break the rule and they just start quizzing me about stuff. And yeah.
Yeah, I mean it it's interesting because I've when I have, you know, this is the first time I've ever talked about it publicly, frankly. But you know, when I relay my experience, it's usually met with a lot of warmth and interest and inquisitiveness. But at the same time, it you know, there's no real translation for it into the professional workforce, right? Exactly.
For those who are not entirely familiar, are there any defining features of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism that separates it from other paths of Buddhism? I know that's a very broad question.
So yeah, it's it's a broad question, but I will say, you know, without getting into too much kind of like academic introspection, in the form of Buddhism I practice, it's called Vajrayana. Uh V-A-J R A Y A N A. And that translates into the diamond vehicle. It is a a corpus of teachings that came from the Buddha that we would equate to more of the mystic side of Buddhism or the esoteric side of Buddhism. So it's highly ritualized, there are prayer beads, there are mantras, and there is also a certain level a lot of work that is done with what we call the subtle body.
So it's not just a process of working with your brain and your consciousness, but it's also a process of working with your body through what we kind of define as a um, there's like a metabody that is composed of energy, winds, channels. And so in that way it is, it would be considered a more esoteric form. And you know, often when people are encountering it, they note how colorful it is. Sometimes you'll see pictures of these what we call tankas, which are Tibetan paintings, which have these really wild-looking figures on them.
They can be very beautiful, they can be very wrathful, but that's that's essentially the the encapsulation of of what it looks like kind of externally. And you know, the big claim to fame of the tradition is that you if you practice right and you're diligent enough, and this really separates it from some of the other traditions, you can achieve awakening in one lifetime by using these special practices that are more esoteric and not so public. And so that's why there's such an emphasis on doing these long retreats that I just talked about.
Gotcha. And would that be uh?
Yeah, parinirvana is the I think it's the Pali or the Sanskrit term for awakening.
And those are the only terms that I know. I apologize.
Yeah, no, no, it's okay, and it but what Distinguishes it is that uh, like in the traditions you might see in Thailand, they believe that awakening is a process that happens over many, many, many, many lifetimes. It's it's like a slow and steady wins the race course. And in the form of Buddhism that you might see in Japan, they at times almost throw the concept of awakening out the window and they focus on the ability to just help sentient beings through the path of what's called a bodhisattva.
This is somebody that has basically decided to put the welfare of all other beings first and foremost in their spiritual path. And in the Tibetan tradition, it actually encapsulates all of those other philosophies into one path.
See, that that is so interesting. I know that in China there's a s there is a strict differentiation between the northern and southern schools of Buddhism, where one focused upon instant awakening, the other only believed that through the slow grind could that ever be achieved. And you see that kind of split taken off into different traditions. If you compare Nichiren Buddhism to Zen Buddhism in Japan, or to to go on even further, it's just it's a beautiful kind of lineage that has progressed through the different traditions of Buddhism. It's a beautiful thing.
Yeah, it I really love it. I mean, it also makes it very hard to encapsulate what Buddhism is, right? Exactly. Like when somebody somebody's a Catholic, you say, Well, what do Catholics believe? And it's there's a whole corpus and ketchupism of orthodox theology and and ethics. But in Buddhism, it's it's much more decentralized than that. And and this is kind of one of the things I wanted to get into with you because it's interesting. Culture has a huge role to play as well, especially in the kind of view of the supernatural or the paranormal.
There is a core set of beliefs that all Buddhists pretty much hold in principle, such as, you know, rebirth, awakening, somewhere between four and six realms of uh reincarnated existence. But outside of those tenets, there's a lot of variety in how those things express themselves through culture.
True. And Tibetan me, I don't know too much about Tibetan Buddhism. It was never one that I specifically studied, but just as you said, it has one of the richest tapestries of the esoteric that surrounds. I know it has like a vibrant demonology that's associated with it. Is that correct or am I wrong?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was one of the things when I started for formally studying. So at some point in my practice, I made the transition from, oh, I'm I'm a Westerner and I'm interested and I'm learning. And then at some point, when you decide to start doing longer retreats, you transition into, okay, like now, now we're gonna get into the traditional lineage.
And, you know, this lineage is 1,500 years old, and these practices, some of them are over a thousand years old, and through that process of getting those transmissions, you know, in a lot of the teachings I received, there was a huge amount of what I will just describe as animist and spiritualist traditions, which I personally believe were probably they were residue of some of the cultural shamanic practices of the Indo-Tibetan plateau that had been appropriated into Buddhism so that the culture could take on the practice more fully. And it was an interesting experience.
I mean, some of the stuff I learned, it was so out there that you know I would go through the process and say, okay, we're gonna do this prayer, we're gonna do that. But it almost made no sense to me because it was so culturally specific, right?
And honestly, that's one of the things that fascinates me the most. I mean, one of the founding bedrocks of the podcast is examining how the remnants of Second Temple Judaism have been embedded and still influence the modern day, especially when it comes to demonology. So to hear kind of the same thing going on is it's absolutely fascinating because I think that you're right.
I mean, if you take and this is not a disparagement by any means of the word, but if you take, say, Pure Land Buddhism, in which the Buddha is actually worshipped as an actual deity, which is vastly different than almost every other form out there, you have to wonder, you know, how did that come across except for incorporating, you know, specific cart uh cultural touch points in order to get to that point?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think like with the Pure Land Buddhism example, and this is some of the stuff like once we start diving into the paranormal aspects of it that I'm really interested in, is you know, in Japan they had an overlay, so I would say their their more native underlying religious principles were based around Shintoism, right? Which was very kind of deity focused. And so, you know, you'll see an interesting thread of this kind of underlying Shinto culture throughout most of the Buddhist practices in Japan, whether it's Zen or Pure Land.
Yeah, in fact, in Japan, unless you are a priest for a particular religion, most common people they will celebrate both, and they don't see a conflict with that. Um it's just like how uh in early days uh in China people were Confucian during the day for business and then Taoist at night. And in in for Japan, it is we practice Shinto, certain rituals for these holidays, and then for major life events, especially weddings and for funerals, then all of that shifts over to Buddhist rites.
Yeah, that's right. And uh an interesting example of that that I always think of is that in Shintoism they have a certain element of ancestor worship or the spirits of their family and the people that came before them, right? But in the you know, Buddhist cosmology or theology, there really is no there is no room or accommodation for ancestor worship because fundamentally the belief is that when somebody passes on, they reincarnate into a new form. And their spirit, their spirit may be around for a period of time, but ultimately they transition.
Yeah, and so you do get this really interesting blend because you can see that ancestor worship very plainly in people's homes, they have altars to past loved ones. Yeah, exactly. They have a strict up to I don't remember the exact days, but to like 49 days after a person dies, that's when they ascend. Yeah, I mean, you have Oban, of course, which you know it celebrates the spirits of the dead coming back to the world, which is why summer is always the summer of fear for Japan. But yeah, it's that's right.
So it's interesting. So that that 49-day period is actually pretty orthodox Buddhist because there's a lot of teaching that stemmed from India about the longest it takes for somebody to transition in what we call the intermediate state or the state between death and their next life. The l the longest it can go is 49 days. But as you mentioned, so they will do the 49-day ceremony, but then they will also leave an altar up for their for their deceased loved ones and and regularly meet make offerings to it. Absolutely.
Well past the 49 days, like these these shrines can be um fixtures in people's households and stuff. And and that aspect of it is is not Buddhist from an orthodox perspective. It certainly is part of their uh interpretation of it, but it's something that I believe stemmed from their older, more resident spiritual beliefs.
Completely agree. And honestly, I I think that Japan is so willing to accept the paranormal as just a statement of life, as a, you know, it I I think that it truly is a remnant of of Shintoism that has pervaded all of culture. But I mean, I I think that Buddhism plays a you know a good part of that as well. But yeah, it's uh honestly, if I had five lifetimes to devote to different PhD topics, that would definitely be like number three on my list.
Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it. I love the conversation. I mean, this is all the stuff that I really get into. It's the the interplay between the very real, in my opinion, supernatural, plus belief, plus culture. All of these variables contribute to these experiences we have, and I don't think you can look at any one of them in a vacuum. You know, I think they're all related.
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So uh I know that uh in the Discord server, you have referred to assisting others with spirits, and I definitely want to take the conversation to the the more paranormal side, as we have alluded to a few times in the conversation. How did you do that and what have you experienced?
Okay, now we're gonna get into the the meat of it here. I'll just start with a little preamble, and this is part of the reason I decided I wanted to do this podcast, because not many people are speaking about this publicly from the Buddhist perspective. But I just have to point out that as Buddhism makes its way west, there is a strident, almost unconscious movement to put Buddhism into a materialist postmodern box. And I say this because it's it's really important in my persp my perspective.
When you learn about meditation or most of the things you hear about meditation these days, 90% of those practices stem from some orthodox form of Buddhist teaching on meditation. But those practices are provided as part of a spiritual path that leads to some form of what I'll just say is religious awakening, and it's being reduced somewhat to something that's on an app that something and it's something that can help you alleviate stress, and there's definitely benefits for that.
Are you trying to say that calm is not going to allow you to reach uh nirvana?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, calm will definitely help you. There's definitely benefit in it, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that Buddhist cosmology envisions a world that is way more dynamic, way more spiritual, and way more complicated than just meditating, right? Absolutely. I mean, just for example, the Buddha taught that there are six realms of existence in our consciousness, and four of those six realms are formless. Only two of them are something that would be identified as being here on earth.
The other four realms stem the gamut of everything from gods to demigods to what we call hungry ghosts, which I can talk about in a little bit. That's a that's a pretty uh common feature across all cultures, is this notion of hungry ghosts and hell realms. A lot of people are actually shocked when they find out that Buddhists believe in hell. And I would even venture to say that some notions of Buddhist hell would make the Christian version look like a walk in the park.
Really? I knew that Buddhism had a concept of hell, and yes, I was shocked the first time I ever learned about that, but how so? Like how how is it how is it worse? I I'm really curious. Well, I'm I'm not I was just saying that to be uh I know I'm not saying that I know you're trying to be that I mean I I would love to get a take like what's the what's the compare and contrast uh to you?
Good analogy would be like Dante's Inferno, where Dante envisioned these various levels, so to speak, yep, of suffering and hell. So that that idea has been around from the very beginning of when the Buddha started to give his teachings. He he taught something similar 2600 years ago. For example, in the tradition that I'm part of, there's actually 16 different levels of hell. Eight of them are associated with fire, and eight of them are associated with ice.
And you know, you can get into really nitty-gritty detail about each one, but like just for example, in one of them, in one of the fire realms, there are swords raining down on you consistently until you get chopped up, and then the second you die, you're reborn, and you proceed again to run around trying to get away while swords rain down on you. Or in one of the um colder hells, there's one version where you basically freeze to death, and then these demons come out and basically break up your body with a hammer, and you go through that process over and over again until you're reborn.
And and then, and then, of course, in some traditions, there's a special hell for lapsed Buddhists. So, depending on which country and which tradition you're in, there is a special hell for people that are more or less called oathbreakers, which is exceptionally tormentous because not only did they not live a good life, but they gave up on the path to awakening. So these are these are all aspects of Buddhist cosmology that are 100% real from a theological standpoint and a scriptural standpoint, but that nobody really talks about that much.
But the reason I thought it's important to bring up is because, again, going back to this whole idea of Buddhism being shoved into this materialist box, it is a little bit of what I'll just call, for lack of a better term, there's some cultural appropriation going on in which people are taking the aspects of Buddhism that comport to their mindset or their worldview. And if something like one of these hells is mentioned, or even the notion of ghosts, it is simply um thrown out as cultural superstition.
So it's the Lululemon of yoga applied to Buddhism then.
Yeah, that's a that's actually a really good example. Yes.
I do have a quick question, and this is not none of this is meant to be disrespectful. How does the concept of a of a hell realm coexist with an idea of reincarnation?
Yeah, so the so the whole idea is that within these six states of existence, so the so just to clarify, there's I'll give you all six. There's gods, there's demigods, which are like, you know, you might think of like as an analogy of like Hercules or something. They're kind of very powerful, but they can be spiteful, and there's a lot of feuding going on, right? There's humans, there's animals, there's basically what's called the hungry ghost realm or the ghost realm, and then there's hell.
And the whole idea is whatever your karmic disposition of your life is, as you pass on from this life into the next, the karmic propensities that you have incurred through this life then determine where you're gonna go in the next life. And it's not always guaranteed that you're gonna go be reborn as a human. And there's a whole set of teachings around the six afflictions for each realm, and which, like, for example, desire. Desire is the affliction of the human realm. So if your life is overrun with desire, then you're more likely to be reborn as a human, right?
Anger is the affliction associated with the hell realm. So if you're basically a a really bad person, and you know you're you're murdering people, you know, you're raping people, your whole life is dictated through anger, then the propensity of being reborn in the hell is greater. Gotcha. So all of these things fit into our own actions. It's our own actions that kind of determine where we're gonna go within one of these six six states of beings. And some some teachers also use an analogy that these six states of being are also an analogy for our mental state.
So, like you can be a human, but we've all experienced moments of severe anger or pain in which you could say you were in health. There is an analogous set of teachings like that. But from an orthodox perspective, they they are very much real and they provide a cosmological framework for the existence of things which materialism and science doesn't have an explanation for yet.
Are there any modern movements within Buddhism that attempts to distance the religion away from these physical realms and make it all about the mental? And the reason I ask is we've seen this happen within Catholicism, where we've had, you know, multiple people say, Oh, hell is not really a a real place, it's just uh it's a it's a mental condition, it's not so much of a you're gonna be thrown into a horrendous place for eternity if you do bad.
Absolutely. A hundred percent. I mean, that was why I kind of got up in my soapbox 10 or 15 minutes ago and started talking about this this movement to push Buddhism into this kind of postmodern box, so to speak. There are definitely people that view the tradition in from a completely psychological model. It is it is completely about your psychology and any reference to demons, ghosts, hell, you know, it's interesting. Anything they reference, when you look at it really closely, anything that looks unpleasant from an ego standpoint, they will immediately write off as metaphor or allegory.
But they still believe in things like awakening, right? So they they still think that it's possible to become enlightened, but they don't believe in the other side of the coin. They think all of that is is simply a metaphor.
Yeah, it's I think it's an unfortunate side effect of the scientific method. Science is phenomenal, it should be trusted in terms of the scientist if the scientific method is truly followed through, but you also have this unconscious bias now of unless it can be proven through theory and tests, then it absolutely cannot exist. And I uh you know, in addition to whatever fast-paced lifestyle that you want to throw into the mix that has made that crumble even more.
But yeah, I I agree, and I you know, I I have a great respect for science. I do too. You know, in my own personal life, my professional life, it's a mix of engineering and business. I work with a lot of scientists, I work with a lot of engineers, I've managed them. You know, but at but at a certain point, even science breaks down. You know, a lot of there are things that are starting to be discovered in quantum physics that can only be explained through theory.
They can make things work, but only by inserting theoretical variables to kind of represent demonstrated phenomena that they have no way to measure yet. And even, you know, if you go and look at the Big Bang theory, yes, we can say there was a Big Bang, but what created the Big Bang? And a lot of times what you'll get in response is, well, okay, just give me one miracle and then I'll explain the rest.
True, very true. If you happen to have ever peeked at my YouTube playlist, then you'll see me subscribe to like 30 different physics channels that try to explain quantum mechanics in great detail. And I I I love it. I love just the fact that you know, back in the 1890s, there was a definitive belief that we've nailed physics now, we know everything there is, and now we can cross-apply that, integrate chemistry, and we can explain everything. That's right.
And then, you know, everything since then has just blown the doors open of nope, now we have quantum foam, and it just keeps going on from there. It's a beautiful thing, honestly.
I have a deep respect for physics, and the thing that I love about the discoveries coming up in quantum mechanics is it's really just giving us insight into how much we still don't know. You know, I mean, if you look at these phenomenon of superposition and entanglement and these things, we can observe them and we know they now exist, but we have no idea why.
Spooky action of the distance, that's what it was, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.