Closer To Truth

Is the world we experience truly real, or is it more like a dream we haven't yet woken up from? Michael James, a leading scholar and translator of the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, explores how Ramana's philosophy challenges our most basic assumptions about the self, the world, and the nature of reality. Michael James has spent nearly 50 years studying, practicing, and translating the works of Sri Ramana Maharshi. He studied under Sri Sadhu Om, a direct disciple of Ramana, and is the author of Atma-Vidya: The Science of Knowing Oneself. He is regarded as a leading authority on Ramana's primary sources and experiential practice. Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls: https://shorturl.at/OnyRq 

Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls. I like arguments about God, whether based on science, philosophy or personal experience. I like to push and to be pushed, explore the possible existence of a Creator. I must also consider defeaters of God. Featuring interviews with Rebecca Goldstein, Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne, Robin Collins, Anthony Grayling, Yujin Nagasawa, and Alvin Plantinga.  

Support the show with a tax-deductible donation of any amount so we can continue exploring the world's biggest questions without the need for paywalls.   Can physical facts about the brain account for mental experiences of the mind? Has philosophy of mind made progress? We take a 15-year journey with John Searle and David Chalmers.    

Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls.   We like pushing boundaries, trying to discern existence, searching the foundations of reality, knowing all that can be known. Overly ambitious? Sophomoric? We don't care. We do it anyway. Here are ultimate questions.   Featuring interviews with Lawrence Krauss, John Leslie, Max Tegmark and Paul Davies

Contribute what you can to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls. Explore diverse theories of consciousness, like materialism, dualism, panpsychism, idealism, and diverse ways of thinking about consciousness, like neuroscience, philosophy, wisdom traditions. Compare theories of consciousness on a ‘Landscape of Consciousness'.

Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywall   What kinds of afterlives do the world’s religions offer? Soul/spirit in heaven or hell, with or apart from God? Reincarnation with innumerable rebirths, seeking liberation and nirvana? Resurrection of the body, reuniting with a soul/spirit?

Life after death is a haunting and deeply personal longing. Can we explore life after death in relation to theories of consciousness, ranging from strict materialism to imaginative philosophy to ancient wisdom traditions?

Explicitness is one of the fundamental mysteries in which our lives are wrapped. Our capacity, as conscious subjects, to make things explicit, so that what-is presents itself as “that-it-is” or “that-it-is-the-case” is at the heart of the mystery of human being. Philosopher Raymond Tallis explores how explicitness connects with fundamental ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological questions.   Tallis' latest book, Circling Round Explicitness: The Heart of the Mystery of Human Being, is available for purchase now: https://amzn.to/3MUX5Ke

What causes consciousness, our inner felt experience, like the smell of garlic cooking in olive oil? Explore diverse theories from quantum consciousness to consciousness as fundamental reality. We seek the edges of consciousness.

Almost all religions use art in their sacred spaces and many use art forms in their worship rituals. Certainly, there is powerful social cohesion at work. Can cross-religion communications in art, largely nonverbal, work to enhance similarities and mitigate differences among religions that, at least superficially, have significant differences? Can art be a much-needed unifier? Featuring interviews with Oludamini Ogunnaike, Jamal Elias, Kutter Callaway, Garrick Allen, and Anjan Chatterjee.

Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral seeks to shatter complacency in modern physics and show why five revolutionary experiments in quantum physics promise to open the gates separating us from a true understanding of the universe. They may sound very strange—one essentially involves entangling a human with Schrödinger’s cat—but they lay bare elements of our theories that are particularly problematic, such as the widespread belief that nothing truly exists unless it is observed.   Vedral's book, Portals to a New Reality: Five Experiments to Unlock the Future of Physics, is available for purchase: https://amzn.to/3LGqd77   Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian-born British physicist. He is best known for his contributions to quantum information theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum entanglement. He earned his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Imperial College London, where he graduated with a PhD.

Many belief systems, religions in particular, use art for promoting their messages and furthering their missions. What makes art so effective in building and solidifying religious traditions? Can art attract and motivate converts? Is affecting or changing belief systems a proper use of art?   Featuring interviews with Justin Barrett, Marlene Altenmüller, Mario Gollwitzer, Jamal Elias, Robin Jensen, and Stacie Friend.

Throughout his career, Penrose has challenged conventional wisdom in physics, mathematics, and the philosophy of science. He has tackled some of the most profound questions of the universe: How do quantum mechanics and cosmology shape our understanding of reality? Can human consciousness be fully explained by physical laws, or does it transcend computation? This wide-ranging conversation spans Penrose’s most influential ideas, from black holes and the Big Bang to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, quantum gravity, and the role of mathematics in uncovering ultimate reality.

Understanding the nature of transcendence requires careful experimentation and innovative ways to reveal essence and tease out aspects of aesthetics. What are key characteristics of transcendence? Tracking imperceptible eye movements, or brain blood flow during mental activity, reflect neural activity, which is always ready to spring surprise.   Featuring interviews with Elisabeth Schellekens, Helen De Cruz, Kutter Callaway, Joshua Wilt, Bahador Bahrami, and Oludamini Ogunnaike.

There is an idea that shakes the core of our scientific principles: That our consciousness participates in creating our physical reality. It’s an idea that runs counter to the materialist worldview we’re all taught in school. But the outer edges of scientific inquiry bleed into what can only be called ‘magic.’ With a uniquely science-backed approach, parapsychologist Dean Radin explores the "magical" elements of consciousness including telepathy, spell casting, conjuring spirits, and more.   Radin's book, The Science of Magic: How the Mind Weaves the Fabric of Reality, is on sale now.   Dean Radin is an American parapsychologist. Following a bachelor and master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in educational psychology Radin worked at Bell Labs, as a researcher at Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh, and was a faculty member at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Mathematics describes the real world of atoms and acorns, stars and stairs, with remarkable precision. So is mathematics invented by humans—like chisels and hammers and pieces of music? Or is mathematics discovered—always out there, somewhere, like mysterious islands waiting to be found? Whenever mathematics is will help define reality itself.   Featuring interviews with Roger Penrose, Stephen Wolfram, Max Tegmark, David Gross, and George Lakoff.

Compare inner-life practices among diverse religions/traditions. Islamic prayer as the core of Muslim belief. Buddhist meditation calms the mind. Hindu meditation can be theistic-devotional or non-dual inner exploration. Embodied practices in Chinese traditions.     Featuring interviews with Helen De Cruz, Venerable Dr. Yifa, Swami Sarvapriyananda, Franklin Perkins, Aaron Segal, and Hamza Yusuf.

This holiday season, support Closer To Truth with a tax-deductible donation of any amount.   What is intelligence, and how is AI emergence a natural consequence of evolution? In his book "What Is Intelligence?" and in this conversation, Google's Blaise Agüera y Arcas takes up the idea that prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain but to life itself, and explores the wide-ranging implications. These include radical new perspectives on the computational properties of living systems, the evolutionary and social origins of intelligence, the relationship between models and reality, entropy and the nature of time, the meaning of free will, the problem of consciousness, and the ethics of machine intelligence.   Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP/Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society, and the founder of Paradigms of Intelligence, an organization dedicated to fundamental AI research. He is the author of Who Are We Now?, and his research has included work on privacy-preserving machine learning, on-device AI, large language models, and human identity.

Giving Tuesday is around the corner! Make a donation to Closer To Truth to help us continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls.   How do diverse religions/traditions treat the “person,” present status and afterlife future? Buddhism’s no self. Hinduism’s soul illuminating the mind. Prior lives in Eastern and African traditions. Body and soul, resurrection and judgment, in Abrahamic traditions.   Featuring interviews with Jay Garfield, Yang Xiao, Oludamini Ogunnaike, Imran Aijaz, Andrew Loke, and Swami Medhananda.

Make a donation to help Closer To Truth continue exploring the world's deepest questions without the need for paywalls.   The Ruliad is a term that Stephen Wolfram developed, which he describes as the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible, the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways.   Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research, where he works as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine.