Listening to Silence with Jeremy Vaeni
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.
AP Strange:I am your host, AP Strange, and this is my show. And today's show is brought to you by the Quackery Detector. It's simple software that you can add to your computer, so when you're scrolling through and looking at UFO stuff, can find the Quackery. It will flag it for you. It's not recommended to use on UFO Twitter or UFOX or UFOX or whatever it's called now because it will crash the program.
AP Strange:But if you wanna run this thing in the background on the computer about any UFO related subjects, it will flag those quackery statements for you so that you know right away, which is not to say anything bad about ducks, but there is a lot of quackery out there. Tonight on the show, I'm very excited for the guest that I have on because he's somebody that I had listened to an awful lot of over the years and read the books of, and I actually got a sneak peek at his newest book. My guest tonight is Jeremy Vaney, longtime host of both Paratopia and Our Undoing Radio, as well as YouTube stuff, like He's So Vaney. He's the author of several books, but his newest one, which will be out soon and available for you to read is Kundalini and the Secrets of Silence. And yeah, I'm just really excited to get right into this.
AP Strange:So welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy Vaeni:Thank you for having me.
AP Strange:Yeah. So this book is dropping in early January, I understand, right? Are you still on the same timeline?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah, January 8, yep.
AP Strange:Okay, wonderful, cool. I really enjoyed reading it and prior to even reading it back when I've been doing the show about a year and you were kind of on the list of people that I would wanna request to come on the show. So this question I had in mind prior to reading the book, but reading the book reinforced it, is I had to wonder if you ever got tired or disheartened of saying the same thing and trying to explain an esoteric truth in a lot of different ways with limited response to it. It always seems like over the years you've been kind of, what you describe in this book about Kundalini awakening and oneness and consciousness is something that you've been saying for a long time. And I wonder if you ever got disheartened about trying to basically explain something that's ineffable, but also a simple truth at the same time.
Jeremy Vaeni:Well, I mean, yeah. But I've I've also built up a callus over the years doing that with, you know, alien abductions and UFOs and hypnosis and all that. So I guess that's my shtick is to, like, live a life of weirdness that that other people seem to already have defined and then go, no. No. No.
Jeremy Vaeni:No. That ain't it.
AP Strange:And then
Jeremy Vaeni:they go, well, how do you know? And it's like, well, because I live with it. Well, so does this guy who has photos of a light. You know?
AP Strange:Yes. Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's not the same thing. I I get it. But, like, basically, both worlds of ufology, which is the other one I'm talking about, and and this so called spiritual stuff, they they have that in common of the already defined unexplainable thing that you're trying to sort of get at the heart get to the the heart at. But also, like, you know, I don't know. I I guess with that goes, you know there's going put it this way.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I came to the spiritual stuff via Jeetu Krishnamurti who lived to be a million years old and on his deathbed said not one person understood what he was saying. So you pretty much know what you're in for when you read that statement. Right? Like, here's a guy who spends his entire life talking about this stuff who lives who comes out of the Theosophical Society from which all the New Age stuff springs, from which we get all the, you know, eastern philosophies back in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, you know, comes out of Theosophy, really, to the West. Mhmm.
Jeremy Vaeni:And he comes out of a cult sect of that who believe he's basically like the second coming. And so while on the one hand, he has visions and astral traveling and all this stuff, he denounces it on the other hand. And Mhmm. I think when you live in a world that wants the powers and wants to know about the astral planes and the spirit masters and all that stuff, it's hard to hear. It's really impossible to hear.
Jeremy Vaeni:Don't bother with that. It's not what it's about. You know what I mean? And then to get back to, like, just sort of understanding yourself, it it's hard for anyone to hear. And so with Kundalini, which is an actual, you know, energy that people think is a power that they can have, that they can turn on and off, that they can accidentally bump into, to hear, no.
Jeremy Vaeni:That none of that is is it. I understand what you're saying, but you can't for some reason, you can't hear what I'm saying. Yeah. Well, you know why they can't hear what you're saying. But so, the short version is I'm used to it.
Jeremy Vaeni:The long answer is what I just told you. Plus, yes, you're right. It is frustrating.
AP Strange:Yeah. Because, well, I mean, Christiani Murti is like a good kind of avatar for this, which is ironic, but idea that Theosophy had bred so much of that kind of new age, especially the particular people that were building him up as the Matreya or the world teacher, the CW Ledbetter and Annie Bisson. From them, we get so much of what is new age jargon. So it's kind of tough to explain experiential truth that you've learned through doing or through experiencing when it's couched in the language of new agey stuff that people tend to ignore or brush off, you know? And I think language is a big part of it.
AP Strange:It's a part of the problem.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Language is a big part of it, And also, I think that to be into these types of subjects, you think that you've already given up the conformity and the sheepleness and what society says and you're you're nonconformist and you think like you're onto something, you're onto a path or whatever. And it's hard to, you know, that person is really hard to hear, no, you're still doing it. You're just you've just moved the goalpost but you're still doing a different kind of conformity and a different kind of wrong knowing, you know, this false knowledge that you've and it doesn't help that the universe will gladly back you up and say, yeah, you're on the right path. And I think that's the thing that's I don't know if what I'm saying makes is different than what other people are saying, but I'm definitely willing to point that out that it's not just that you believe things that are wrong.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's that the universe will gladly oblige you because the universe is knowledge. Right? Like, the human stream of consciousness wants to add to itself, doesn't want you to transcend it and step out of the stream. So it'll just add more knowledge to itself and go, yeah, yeah, this is it. Here's your path.
Jeremy Vaeni:Stay in me. And
AP Strange:Yeah. That yeah. I always like to think of it in terms of entropy where wherever there's a space to be filled, it will be filled with whatever. Yeah. And I mean, think you just kind of brought this up with experience or as term is a good example of how language can get in the way.
AP Strange:When you're talking about UFO experiences, there's a lot of spirituality in that. I mean, nowadays you're seeing a lot to do with like Chris Bledsoe and his experiences, but it has a spirituality really wrapped up on it, but you can see it all the way through to the earliest days of flying saucers. So it seems to me that it's like for listeners who may not know your whole backstory, we don't have to re litigate all of that, but it's like you kind of used to identify more as an experience or was that just a way of rationalizing the spiritual experience that you had?
Jeremy Vaeni:No. Well, I experienced it. So first it was alien abductions. Right? Like, and then I jumped the shark and it becomes all this other stuff.
Jeremy Vaeni:But with the alien abduction so alien abductees started calling themselves experiences.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I didn't care. Like, it did to me, it's like, I get it. Alien and abduction, neither word really capture what this is. And so I don't care if you call me an Experiencer or an alien abductee. But then I sort of geared I I veered toward experience or because it really doesn't make sense to say alien abductee anymore.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I I kinda I mean, I it really doesn't matter what label it is as long as we all know what we're talking about. I think that to me, that's the important thing. If Like, it's the irony of, like, we all need to know what we're talking about for me to tell you that what we're talking about is BS. Right? Like Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's the conversation I'm going to have. And but we all need to be on the same page that that's the BS we're talking about, whether you believe it or not. And so Experiencer but as far as like the spirit stuff goes, I don't call it anything. I mean, I sort of, you know, I talk about enlightenment and I try to say in quotes, you know, quote unquote spiritual quote unquote enlightenment or whatever. But, you know, I don't I I'm I go out of my way to say I'm not enlightened.
Jeremy Vaeni:Mhmm. And I guess, you know, you can't divorce. You can't I can't, you know, say these are divorced from each other. Like, I just coincidentally have one trough of amazing weird experiences and then another, and they're not related in any way, you know? So if if Experiencer covers all of it, great.
Jeremy Vaeni:Really, we don't have a good word for it.
AP Strange:Yeah. And I feel like in the field, quote unquote, for lack of a better term, we're always kind of changing out words for other terms, changing terms for terms to try to be more inclusive or accurate about a lot of things. But people tend to be stuck on flesh and blood aliens inside of mechanical spaceships coming from another planet.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right. That's funny you point that out because right. So like, yeah, you changed the word Experiencer and we still think alien abduction. So why did we change the word Experiencer, you know? You changed to UAP and everyone is kinda like, we know what you're talking about.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:UFOs, right? Flying saucers?
AP Strange:We're still just talking about flying saucers and gray aliens and maybe reptilians, you know.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah, non human intelligence is another one. Didn't want to jump to that right away because I feel like I had another point to get to. I actually wrote on cards here, notes on cards, but Well, yeah. Can be gotta tell you, I was a little nervous to do this one.
AP Strange:We haven't spoken before, so. I get it. Yeah. I don't typically get nervous, but I was a little nervous. So I wanted to make sure, I mean, because you cover a lot and I wanna make sure I'm accurately portraying what it is that you talk about and giving you the opportunity to, because, I mean, one thing I wanted to mention was it's not just you, I mean, it was Jeff Ritzman as well in the old Perotopia days, which I wasn't privy to when they were new, but I listened to all the old episodes that you put up on the feed and it seemed like, you mentioned the shroud guy that Jeff was seeing and all of your experiences.
AP Strange:And most of it didn't seem to have anything to do with mechanical ships little There gray was a whole lot besides. So yeah, I mean, I guess Experiencer is more inclusive of all of those things, but I mean, it must've been difficult to talk about. Think of it like where we're at now with a lot of, I'm not on Twitter anymore, but I imagine UFO Twitter is a lot of the same. And back then it seemed like that was probably really off the wall for a lot of people, even though it wasn't really all that long ago, you know? Right.
AP Strange:Yeah. But yeah, I mean, so I Was that like difficult to get across within the context of Uphology? It seemed like you were fighting against a lot of a lot of ideologies at the time.
Jeremy Vaeni:Well which part? The Kundalini stuff or the Shroud Man or something else?
AP Strange:Well either or because you guys kind of would go back and forth sharing your experience with each other and then Yeah. Yeah. It just it seemed like you were kinda onto something with with both but they running on separate tracks but with kind of a certain it's different.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, so I I came on talking about this stuff because it was already going on with me when I met Jeff, when we started pod when I started podcasting even before Jeff. So you come in knowing up front whether you're gonna believe me or believe that I believe me or or whatever. You know? But with the Shroud Man thing, that's something that happened to Jeff over the course of Peritopia where his experience is what we're talking about is his experience has changed from, like, you know, I don't wanna I wanna say the grays, but really, what I mean, the one time he drew me a picture, it looked like the cover of communion with, like, one of the, you know, like, an Asian hat on. Okay.
Jeremy Vaeni:So but it it changed from those beings to and a whole bunch of, like, spooky stuff to sit down chats with a shroud man, which is more like a for a tall shrouded being who, like, just came into his house and was like, okay. You're ready for this. And we knew I mean, we talked about it privately, and I think we even talked about it on the show later. Like, yeah, we knew that going public with that would be real challenging even for our own audience to be like, wait, what? Like, this is is this the turn into bullshittery?
Jeremy Vaeni:No.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:This is where we become Greer? And but so, you know, it's just like but you take you take the dare and, you know, maybe ironically, I don't know. The first thing that happened was trying to talk about it into a microphone ended up in Jeff getting hurt by this phenomenon somehow. Like, we had done it wrong or I don't remember what it was exactly. But I don't I don't I don't know if you saw this.
Jeremy Vaeni:I think I have the photos on our undoing.com. There's like a and it leads to the Perotope it's like a Perotopia portal in there. So perotopia.net also brings you there. And I think I have the pictures in there of Jeff's back, which look like he got into a fight with Wolverine. It's just like, unless his you know, the hoax version of this is that Jeff's wife took a rake to his back so that he could take a picture so that he could show me.
Jeremy Vaeni:And then, you know, however many months later, you know, we would come out with this publicly and you know what I mean? Like, it just is absurd
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:To think that because his back is all, like, bloody and scratched up, presumably because this thing didn't want us talking about it originally in the way that we were. And when he asked this shrouded being, why did you whip me, basically? He's you know, the answer is like, oh, no. That's not what happened. You don't understand.
Jeremy Vaeni:Anyway, let's go on. You know? And, like, typical of the phenomenon of, like, gives you an answer that's not really an answer and maybe because of the headspace you're in, that sounds okay at the time. And then when you think about it later, you're like, wait. What?
AP Strange:Yeah. It's all just like clean logic. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. So he got hurt first by this phenomenon for talking, and then we got piled on by, you know, some people who were rightly skeptical, I would say, but then some people who were nuts and just Mm-mm. Were looking for an in. I know this. At least one guy who was always wanting to take over for Jeff.
Jeremy Vaeni:He would always write to me and be like, I could fill in for Jeff. I should be Jeff, you know, kind of thing. And he took it and ran with it on his blog of like, this is BS, you know? So, yeah. I mean, that was tough, but it was also like in the midst of having gone after hypnosis, which was the cottage industry of alien abductions.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so we were already blacklisted and already crapped on, I think, by this point. Right? But bef Right. I think that happened before the Shroud Man stuff. So again, it's like, well, we're prepared for this moment.
AP Strange:Well, mean, I kept
Jeremy Vaeni:coming I'm told. I think we can actually kept more people like, people weren't as put off by it. There were a few, but people weren't as put off by it as as you would think. And I think it helped like, I think the reason we ended up talking about it publicly, if I remember correctly, was that Susan Kornacki came on the show and started talking about her abductions changed to these sit down chats with these shrouded people. And it was like, okay.
Jeremy Vaeni:Alright. This is happening. Let's do it. So it was in the air, you know? Yeah.
AP Strange:Well, you know, I guess I only bring it up because it seems to me that, I don't know if it's directly a result of your conversations about your respective experiences, but it seems like people became a lot more open to a broader idea of what the phenomenon is, you know, phenomena, phenomenon, whichever it may be. That's one big thing. But yeah, I mean, think was worthwhile because ultimately you don't hear people talking about UFOs as much as you hear people talking about the phenomenon. So I think it opened a lot of minds is what I'm getting at. I think it was
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. And I think part of the reason it opens minds is because Jeff sounds so serious. Right? Like, he's got that voice and he's meticulous in his detail, but also he's careful. I think he I I think he doesn't people don't know it to to give him the credit for it.
Jeremy Vaeni:But, you know, there were certain aspects of that that he held back and that I talked about after his death. Namely, what the being said to him about what's gonna happen to humanity and where what the being said he was. And one sounded like it could be scary and and or something that you could then, like, build a cult around, and he didn't want that. And then the other sounded like contact y b s. And and we were just both like, no.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, because basically, what did he say he was? I'm an Alad. That's what he said. I'm an Alad. You know, again, this is an answer that doesn't answer anything because what the hell is an Alad, but it sounds a lot like Allah.
Jeremy Vaeni:It sounds a lot like Aladdin. It sounds like a lot of things. And it also sounds like Valve Valiant Thor from the nineteen fifties or something. You know? It's got that feel to it of like, no, we lose all of our credibility if we say this.
Jeremy Vaeni:So we never did, but he would ask researchers in private, you know, after the show, like Colin Andrews, and say, have you ever heard of an Elad or Right. You know, any of them, any of the researchers that we had on that he liked, he would he would ask around to see if we could but nothing. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, it's I I I think it opened minds, but also allowed people a little bit of the courage to come forward with what otherwise they would have felt was too crazy a story to tell, you know?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. But that's the story of being like, again, this is getting back to like, that's the story of being an experience or of high strangeness versus an alien abductee, which is if you talk to enough so called alien abductees, you find out that they have a lifetime, usually, of weirdness. Mhmm. You know? That doesn't isn't answered by aliens coming here from another planet doing things that we can understand.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know, they're just like us doing doing doctor experiments. And it's like, no, that doesn't explain like an elf in your toilet. You know, like one of my favorite stories.
AP Strange:Those are just the classic. Yeah. Yes. Well, yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's like I had my own experiences with luminescent entities at the foot of my bed when I was really little. And I always kind of thought of that as like a ghostly thing or maybe like a time slip of some kind.
AP Strange:But then years later, I'm like, well, shit, a lot of alien abductees quote unquote have similar experiences. So it's hard to just describe. When you're talking about high strangeness, it's like sometimes the weirder and waggier stuff probably is more credible.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right. Mean, the reason that I can keep writing about this stuff now, these past experiences, is that I still keep finding things that I would self edit, you know? Like, and the big thing that I self edited that comes to mind is just the idea that in high school, I and a group of friends, we were obsessed with this Ouija board that was there were some legit strangeness things going on with this Ouija board. It wasn't all just unconscious. There were things happening in the room with it at times.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so but one of the things that happened was this being saying that on such and such a week, you're gonna all be tested. And it was that week that a shadowy figure with a long, you know, needle or I would I said sword back when I was, like, 15, but needle or something, you would say in the abduction lore, walked into my room and was babbling at me. And I associated that with UFOs and aliens. I did not associate that with Ouija board or this week of being challenged, and yet it happened during that week. And I in my head, you know, I'd always thought, like, I can't say these two things at the same time or I'm gonna lose credibility.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know? Like there's that fear of like how much can somebody hear and still think that you're sane or not lying Right. Whatever.
AP Strange:Yeah. It's like explaining a synchronicity and you have to get all the stuff, the background noise to Yeah. Make it make sense and then you just sound like a crazy person rambling at somebody with a bunch of disconnected things, you know? Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:But I think when I met Jeff, it really helped with that. Really helped with me understand that like, no, this is all happening and, you you know, just out with it because that way we're gonna figure it out. You don't have to keep it the thing that's TV friendly. You know? Aliens.
Jeremy Vaeni:So yeah. Yeah. I think I still find myself doing that.
AP Strange:Yeah and I think ultimately the more quote unquote rational explanation ends up being more laughable in the end anyway. You see people like pushing for government disclosure and it becomes this whole circus that that is is worthy of mockery, you know?
Jeremy Vaeni:I will say though that the difference between the so called spiritual and the so called paranormal is clarity. Like, in this with the spirits with the spirit stuff, you know what's true. Like, there's no I don't have a question. You know? I may not understand all of what's going on, but I don't I don't need to.
Jeremy Vaeni:And there's no question in my mind of, like, it's it's apparent in you. And with the alien stuff and the paranormal stuff there's always this what is this doing this? You know kind
AP Strange:of thing. Right. Yeah and then it comes to a question of motivation too where like, okay, why would aliens do that? And there's never an end of the question. Whereas if you're looking at it from a more spiritual point of view, it's more just kind of observance and acceptance, I guess.
AP Strange:Just observing the patterns and just trying to kind of accept it, you know, if that makes any sense. I don't know if I'm way off there.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I would say that one, like the spirit stuff is me and therefore it's readily apparent and this other thing is another intelligence and therefore it's not readily apparent. You know what I mean?
AP Strange:Okay. Like Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Even though there's overlap, there's still this sense of otherness with that.
AP Strange:Yeah. So it's kind of, I guess we can come back to the non human intelligence element of this because that seems to be one of the buzzwords that goes around nowadays.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right.
AP Strange:Again, something I find funny because we're surrounded by non human intelligences all the time. Yeah. Because when I picked up your new book, there was a lot more ducks in it than I had anticipated. But
Jeremy Vaeni:Yes. Yes. It's true. Yeah. In many ways, it's the same book I've been writing, and in many and in some ways, it's completely different.
AP Strange:Well, so that's what I really liked about it. I really enjoyed it because I've read some of your other writing and it seemed like, like I started out the interview, it's a lot of the stuff you've been saying, but it's like you're telling us about your ducks. It's a profile of each duck and different things that you can learn from them. You go on from there with a lot of other descriptors and what you refer to as silence, like the intelligence of silence and the will of silence. So it seems like you're more directly tackling a lot of the spiritual elements that maybe before you've alluded to or tried to couch within kind of humorous or high strangeness context.
AP Strange:But in this, it's like you're kind of going for it more directly by way of ducks.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Yeah. And other animals. Don't worry, folks. There's other animals.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Yes.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I mean, I wanted to deal with the myths upfront or what, you know, people common misconceptions about what Kundalini this thing called Kundalini is, I I didn't use at all in the book the word kundalini as you'll note, just the title so that we all know what we're we're gonna talk about, but then I changed the terminology. I don't even address kundalini as the word because that's another culture's word. And we all think we know what it is. And so I'd rather call it what I know it is, which is Yeah. The intelligence of silence.
Jeremy Vaeni:Really, kundalini is the will of silence. So if you would say truth is the intelligence speaking, you would say that this Kundalini is willing the body to do physical actions. Right. And so yeah. So I I I wanted to originally, I didn't want me in the book at all, believe it or not.
Jeremy Vaeni:I didn't want but I just couldn't figure a way to do that. So it ends up being me centric again, but also through animals. So basically saying, listen, if if you can find these things naturally, it's not it. You know, like like the ducks do these things. Like the things that people say are are symptoms of Kundalini, some of them, you can find just in regular relationship, can find in these animals doing them naturally or being natural.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I was just kind of like using that, I guess, as a thing. Then now that we got that out the way, let's talk about what this is to the extent that it can be talked about at all. And I don't know if you got this from like, I do a bit in there about our Peritopia trip to Gettysburg where we go ghost hunting in Gettysburg. And I went on a couple of chapters about that because not because, because I had an experience there that I never really delved into that I thought was fractally the same as this Kundalini thing and fractally the same as things that we see in nature, hive mind type things with bees and whatnot. Although it turns out bees aren't really hive minds, but that's another thing.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right. So but the point of that for me also was to say, like, not that and I say explicitly, I don't 100% know that this is true. I suspect it, and my suspicion is formed by experience. So it's not just some someone's suspicion. It's like an informed suspicion.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I can't have conversations like this with anyone until you get here. So get here. Like, that to me is the point of of that. I don't know if you got that. But that to me is also the point of, like, all of it.
Jeremy Vaeni:Is, like, how do we keep why do we keep having the same conversations about these types of topics over and over and over again? And each time, we think, like, oh, this is it. This is deep. We're on to We're just repeating the same things over and over. And it's like, no, I actually live a life of not just seeing it differently because I am a contrarian or something, but because, you know, the experiences transcend and include these experiences.
Jeremy Vaeni:Why don't you come here then we can have a talk about what's deep, you know? Let's do So I'm trying to I know you can't give this to someone, but is it possible to sort of, like, cajole the reader into, like, getting this? Like like, really, and I would love to tempt you with this, but also tell you that the temptation is in the way. So don't be be tempted enough to hear it, but then let that temptation go legitimately so that the death of self occurs, which is what is necessary for any of this shit to make sense.
AP Strange:Right. I don't know
Jeremy Vaeni:if that comes through, but that was kinda
AP Strange:part of the gist. Well, I think that's kind of the crux of what comes through. A lot of the times you talk about these things, and in this book it comes through in a way that's more meditative and I think patient. I don't wanna sound diminishing of your prior work, but it's almost a more mature kind of presentation of it in a way that I think will lead people to understand it a little better or maybe think about things a little differently because I think people need to move in increments and it really sucks to be sort of in the position you're in. I I can relate to this about slightly different things where I kind of assume that my readers or people listening to me talk are kind of where I'm at looking at things from outside and I don't know, like a more nuanced view of things, but you can't force somebody to be where you're at.
AP Strange:Right? You can't assume that from the get go, but so And I could already
Jeremy Vaeni:feel my frustration. Like, you were asking before, like, were you are you frustrated? It's hard to be like, it's at the same time that you're frustrated that nobody is hearing you or so few people are hearing you, there's also the anticipation that that's just the way it has to be because if they could hear you, we'd we'd all we'd all be living happily ever after. But so I'm already seeing that. Like, I've sent this to people to review.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so now some of these people are already, like, sending me articles on animal intelligence. Like, look how smart octopuses are too. Know? It's like, okay. That wasn't the point of including animals in this book.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. That's what but I'm already prepared. Like, that's what I'm gonna get is, like, people are gonna click with the animal stuff, and that may even make it a popular book. Who knows? But they're they're gonna use that to not hear it.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, to me
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:The thing that I understand that makes it less frustrating is that we are doing this to ourselves, like and I used to too, and maybe I even do in some ways still. But you like, you just unconsciously latch onto the thing that, that allows you to like it but talk about not actually be transformed by it because you're not allowing yourself to fully get it because of course the brain, the body doesn't wanna hear that it has to give up its sense of self. It wants to figure out a way to stay alive in hearing And so this is what we do. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah. And I think with the animal stuff too, well, two thoughts. You run the risk of sounding like you're trying to be a guru if you like are speaking from a point of, you know, this is the lesson you must learn my son, you know, like Yeah. And I think you go out of your way as you said to avoid that where you're like, I'm not claiming to be quote unquote enlightened here, but these are my experiences and these are truths that you can accept if you get there with me. But also, like when you talk about animals, people seem to have two extremes where one is that they're just dumb animals and there's nothing to learn from them, and the other is anthropomorphizing them and trying to think of them like they're people a little too much.
AP Strange:Where as you kind of say in the book, the duck is totally comfortable just being a duck, doing its duck thing, and that's kind of whole consciousness. It's something we could aspire to, but we have to build a facade where we can comfortably reside as know special intelligent beings and individuals, right?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah, it's weird because in a way it's like a human being a human in the normal way is resting in heart, is like these heart cultures, indigenous cultures where the culture comes from the land, etcetera, etcetera. In a sense that is us being natural and we got away from that by becoming book cultures. So we became sort of delusional with Bibles and stuff separate and divorced from nature And that's all a misstep. And yet, I would say that even a human being a human in the heart culture sense or in the indigenous culture sense still isn't fully it. You know?
Jeremy Vaeni:Like there still is this transcendent thing that maybe those cultures I don't wanna speak for all of them because I don't certainly don't know all of them. But it seems to me from what I know of any of them, they relegate those to specialists go off into the spirit world and Weber. From what I can tell, what they're really going into is the underbelly of the universe. There isn't a death of self where you're out. There is the engaging with what is there.
Jeremy Vaeni:And and so all of that is valid and it's what we can do, but it's also like, at some point, we need to do the death self thing. Yeah. We need to leave this. And I think that's that to my mind, that's the overlap with the so called alien abduction. And this is the other thing that I've sort of toyed with but not been explicit about necessarily.
Jeremy Vaeni:But I will be explicit here that there are two types of basic experience with this alien thing. One is coming from the universe, and then the other is coming from not the universe. And I think they look awful a lot alike because the universe is mimicking, right, these beings who are not from here. And I think the not from here, they're nondual. And they're so basically, if you wanna switch the terminology, it's like there are nondual beings that aren't in time, in our time, but they can sort of speak to us.
Jeremy Vaeni:And when they do, the message is the death of self. The message isn't, hey. I'm aliens here doing alien stuff. That's from the universe or hypnosis. But that's not from from without.
Jeremy Vaeni:And to I I didn't talk about this in this book. Maybe I'll just save it for the next. But I have talked about it of having this dream that wasn't a dream of these essentially, you know, these seals popping up out of a pool and showing me a scene of my sister being taken away by a military man. And I'm looking at this and I'm horrified and and she's a little girl and she's three years older than me, I'm really little or nonexistent. I don't know.
Jeremy Vaeni:But the feeling is like, know what's going on. I could do something about it. I'm not helping her and which is ridiculous when you consider the ages. I mean, if she was, like, four, then I was one or two or
AP Strange:whatever. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:So but it was visceral. It made me cry. It made me, you know, I was like, ah. And when that's over, the seal basically says, you know, you still have attachment. You're not ready.
Jeremy Vaeni:And then they leave. And I I take that to be and I woke up and I was bawling my eyes out and I wrote to her and I'm like, I'm sorry if this ever happened. I know it didn't, but now you know I'm crazy. But I think that that was a real experience. And this was after all, you know, this the so called enlightenment stuff.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I think even for me, that's the message is like, no, if you really want to be nondual, you know, want to be. If you're really going to be nondual, really have to give up attachment, like, and that's what it means. It means at that level, like all, all of it. And when I have told people this in the past, I I always get, oh, that's that's nonsense. That must be evil.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, whatever that was is evil. And it's like, no. God. You're so freaking simplistic. It's like, no.
Jeremy Vaeni:You don't get it. Yeah. That's the truth. The truth is that difficult. You know?
Jeremy Vaeni:Like,
AP Strange:you Well, yeah. I mean
Jeremy Vaeni:who dies and resurrects as self two point o now with Kundalini and has a big enlightenment experience of seeing and being the universe, even that guy has to give up give up the game. You
AP Strange:know? Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:Because once you're back in time, this is the thing that you so called enlightened people neglect to tell you to be enlightened for you is that once you're back in time, you're back in that corrosiveness. And so the ghosts of your previous traumas and problems, those are gone. You know, they're they're actually gone, but the ghosts still haunt you because you're back. Right? Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so these it's like an
AP Strange:addiction. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:You're in the stream again. So it's like the riverbeds of your your dysfunction have dried up, but they're still there. And there's this, you know, something wants to drip, drip, drip back in, and it's you because you're new again. But you can't but but it can't happen. So you're liminal.
Jeremy Vaeni:So, know, like, it can't happen and yet it wants to happen. Something has to happen because here I am talking. Right? Like, I'm clearly me and not me at the same time. And therefore you're back in duality, you're back in time, you're back in choices and free will and which you now know is actually code for choosing away from truth.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right? Like because you just were truth and now you're not. You're talking about it and truth is coming to you in the second person as words or an energy or however you wanna put it, but it isn't you. There's still a barrier. It's not your first person experience anymore.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so because that's the case, you know, you get seals coming to you in a pool telling you, you gotta give up the game again, Jer or whoever. And then I think that those beings are actual beings. Like, think that there is something waiting for us to like wake up or if we don't, we don't and, you know, life life goes on. But that is not something that ducks and other animals have, don't think. I think I get like you were saying, they're perfectly what they are.
Jeremy Vaeni:We're the only beings that aren't perfectly what we are and we're almost perfectly what we are. We are in terms of Earth, in terms of living on Earth when we're coming from that First Nations indigenous place that we gave up to be delusional Mhmm. But and selfish, self centered as opposed to social centered. Yeah. But that's still not fully it.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so I wonder if like the problem with humans is that we're always going to do that. Is that the great cycle that, like, the Lakota talk about that there's a cycle and others Yeah. That they've been us in the past and, you know, will be the ancestors to whatever comes next. Does it always go that way? I think it does.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I think you can see it especially in island nations, you know. Like, you look at the Tahitians I live in Hawaii. And so when the Tahitians came here, there were people here already. And the Tahitians, you know, they're nature cultures. They're both nature cultures.
Jeremy Vaeni:But the Tahitians already have a hierarchical structure that wasn't here. And when they came here, saw these people and they were like, we can dominate this because these people are, they don't have any social structure at all. They're just, like, you know, doing stuff, which probably is the most natural thing on earth. Right? But, like, for us.
Jeremy Vaeni:But again, there's this this sense of, like like, to me, I look at that as an intermediary or the Mayans or anyone who builds, like, a great society but is also sort of still indigenous. There seems to be this intermediary sort of society where that is betwee betwixt and between being natural and coming from a space of heart and the delusional power hungry thing. So I think you're seeing that in some of of those island nations where it like to me anyway, it's like readily apparent. Like, oh, okay. This is what happens.
Jeremy Vaeni:When you build up too much of a massive society and it's probably easier to build that mass up on an island because it's a smaller location, but you see it in coastal societies, right, in The Americas, that it becomes us. That's the transition to becoming this, whatever we westernize, we call it, but whatever, selfish. Yeah. So it's always going to happen until we transcend even the original thing, even the original, you know, from heart. From heart isn't enough.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's better, but there's something about us that that that is different from animals and I think that's what it is. We need to figure that part out. That's what it is.
AP Strange:Yeah. And it's super tricky because I think as you've alluded to in this conversation and in your writings is it's like once you kind of figure that out and human beings have this tendency to wanna feel special, like we're the special masters of the world and it's our right to take it all over and build cities and live out away from nature and all that, You feel special for figuring that out but then that's just another trap, right?
Jeremy Vaeni:It's all a trap, yeah. Anything you do is a trap, right?
AP Strange:Right. But I feel like there are breakthrough experiences and even outside of paranormal but certainly what we consider to be paranormal where you can enter that space outside of time. One chapter I really liked in here that I related to a lot was the chapter about chocolate, the duck, where you're talking about like the holy laughter. How this duck will kind of do a maneuver that makes you laugh and seem to wanna do it just for your benefit, you know? And it's just kind of like the laughter is the communication.
AP Strange:And it's not a verbal communication, but it's an altered perception in a way that takes you out of the moment, takes you out of time, right? Don't know if that's what you meant to get out with that, but.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. No. That that is what it is. And so I'm trying to get at and it's funny because this is something that professor Jeff Kripal of Rice University also latched on to that chapter when he I gave it to him to read. And but for a different reason.
Jeremy Vaeni:For the reason of, oh, this is the intermediary point between because they talk about laughter has a secret, which is that it's the sort of a go between between between what do you call it? Absolutism or whatever, you know, non duality and and feeling people's pain. Right? Like, so the enlightened people have this problem, which is that on the one hand, everything is as it should be. And on the other hand, people are hurting.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so, you know, Ken Wilbur has talked about this, you know, that they don't know how to rectify that. How do you, like on the one hand you feel the world's pain, you feel it all, and on the other hand everything is as it should be and no one has ever come up with a way to bridge that. And I thought like, no, actually the bridge is laughter. That is the bridge. And so there are certain things like laughter, certain aspects that have that are transcend all through, you know, the consciousness hierarchy that we've set up.
Jeremy Vaeni:So laughter means different things to different people at different points in their life. Right? And so but the reason but because it has this this aspect that is within the ultimate that I'm talking about here, that ultimate is, gotten to through selflessness. And so like you're saying, it can puncture it has the power to puncture the self, therefore psychological time, and bring you put you in the the moment as they say. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right? So you and the duck are having this moment, this momentless moment, this moment out of time, as you're saying. And that's why, because laughter actually does have a function that is, we would say, is higher. I don't like that word, but we know what the words are. Right?
Jeremy Vaeni:It's got a higher function. Right. And so therefore, it kind of trickles down into these other ways. And because of that, again, I think, like, unconsciously, these evangelist types who do holy laughter get that in whatever sick way that they do. And so they use that holy, you know, that holy laughter as a way to sort of, I guess, mesmerize their flock or whatever it is, you know?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Get people to to to get a release. People who live taboo lives where they're all pent up and, you know, full of angst. This is their big release in these congregations. Oh, you have permission now to act like a drunken fool and fall on the floor and flop around like a fish, you know? Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:But and and so you so again, I I try to make the point in the book, like, you look at that as an outsider and you think like, oh, that's stupid. That's crazy or whatever. But the reason that it works is because laughter has a comes from a really powerful place even though that's being ignored, it's being utilized. So
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I've said for a long time, I'm always beating the drum about humor and laughter being important and kind of intrinsic to understanding high strangeness and paranormal stuff. But I try to make it a practice that I make room to laugh until I cry at some point regularly enough. I'd love to know.
AP Strange:If I can manage it.
Jeremy Vaeni:Maybe you know because you've done more of the study than I have. But the what is like just roughly, would you say that there's a larger percentage of people who are into Eastern philosophy or Buddhism or, you know, any of that enlightenment y stuff and the occult, like, whatever the range is that you're that you're into, that you understand. Mhmm. How many people are self serious people and how many people are jovial funny people?
AP Strange:Well, from what I actually, it's difficult for me to say because people that are too self serious, I tend not to jive with, so I don't they're kinda not on my radar as much or, you know, they're I interact with them or they probably would just think I'm an irrelevant goofball which is fine. Because I can absolutely own that. I am a goofball.
Jeremy Vaeni:Because I just wonder if that's why Ken Wilbur has that question and why that question exists is because, oh, when you do this enlightenment stuff, you're acting a role and the role is I am serious, I am disciplined, I am meditative, I am balanced, you know? And so that's why they never get to the laughter part.
AP Strange:Well, I mean, I think a magicians lot that I've read and a lot of current practicing people that I've talked to, was a little surprised, but yeah, humor does play a role. A lot of them feel like you do have to have a sense of humor. You know? I remember asking Alan Greenfield about it at one point, and he said that if you're ever doing serious workings and you're you're really involved, it's good to take a weekend off and just watch Bugs Bunny cartoons or Mel Brooks movies because you need that release, you need that grounding. And a lot of practitioners have said that.
AP Strange:And actually, when you go back in time, it's like, Madame Blavatsky had a sense of humor. And I don't think people get the jokes that she stuck in there, but she did. Crowley had a sense of humor. A lot of these people weren't necessarily dour and self serious all the time. They were human beings too.
Jeremy Vaeni:But also think of it this way. Here's an example for you that we can all relate to, I think. Like, if you've ever had a serious conversation with a friend or a relative where one of you is crying and really, you know, bearing your soul and the other one is listening and trying to help you and all of that, doesn't it tend to end with one of you making a joke and then you both kinda laugh and that's what takes you out of it? So that's what it is. Like both are true at the same time and so laughter mediates between the, you know, in this larger sense between the absolute everything is as it should be and I feel the pain of the world,
AP Strange:I you mean, come from an Italian family, so if you're at a wake or a funeral, there's a lot of laughter and it's not disrespectful. Just like boisterous people and the Italian side of my family that wanna remember and honor the memory. And a lot of that is joke telling. A lot of that is, somebody, you have your time to cry a little bit, then you laugh too. You gotta laugh.
AP Strange:And it is, it pierces through that. And I think that tension between profound sadness and high elation is you wanna try to straddle the middle somehow. Don't wanna do it constantly because then if you're alternating between sobbing and laughing, they'll put you away, but
Jeremy Vaeni:Right, right. Well, this is more like, I think the laughter laughter comes from in this larger sense. Like, it it, you know, it it is all an illusion. Right? Like, oh, this is an But it does no good to say it's all an illusion when someone's in it and crying and and Mhmm.
Jeremy Vaeni:Or starving or being bombed or whatever it is, you know? Right.
AP Strange:It's not helpful.
Jeremy Vaeni:The illusion is real too. Like, both are true. It's an illusion and the illusion is real. That's what we're living. That is our Yeah.
AP Strange:That's where a lot of people kind of red pill themselves into a smooth brain these days on the internet, is that you see a lot of this where they take a quote unquote gnostic interpretation where this is all a hologram or it's all an illusion or a computer program. It's like, nope, it's also real though. Nothing is real and everything is real, so everything matters. That's the real lesson of Gnosticism and a whole lot of other traditions. It was like you were saying earlier, the death of self is necessary and to the wrong person that will sound like an evil thing where you have to shun the world, or people think Gnostics are meant to shun material reality as being evil, or people will see the concept of nirvana within Buddhism, the annihilation itself as being like a nihilistic and self loathing affair and it's not.
AP Strange:You're becoming one with everything and you already are one with everything. You're just finally recognizing that and dropping the facade. Right. Yeah, you're just melding right back in and becoming part of whatever you want to call it, the pleroma or whatever, know? What I want
Jeremy Vaeni:to call it. I want to call it the pleroma.
AP Strange:There you go. That's probably not even the right term.
Jeremy Vaeni:I don't know, but it
AP Strange:sounds smart, so I'm saying it. It comes from gnosticism. It's supposed to be the outside reality that our material reality is couched within, you know.
Jeremy Vaeni:Was like, I'm eat. Tortellini that I would eat, but okay. I'll I'll go with it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Or, you know, like, you throw some Alfredo on it, I'm sure. Maybe that'll be a sponsor for a future program when I
Jeremy Vaeni:Excellent.
AP Strange:Cover Gnosticism more directly. Yeah, mean all of this stuff is incredibly frustrating to try to explain to people I wouldn't, you know, I'm not trying to presume that I'm in the same Before we started talking, I sensed that you and I would be simpatico talking about this stuff, but I don't wanna presume that I'm coming from the same exact viewpoint as you or that my experience is the same as yours, you know, but
Jeremy Vaeni:Well, what is your experience?
AP Strange:Well, my larger point is that I think everybody is going to have their own version of any particular person that's gonna have breakthrough events into this timelessness is going to express itself differently, you know, as an extension of them, you know? Like you're talking about like seals in a dream directing you to a moment outside of time just to test your attachment to it ostensibly, And it's reminding me of dreams that I've had that felt like it was an initiatory experience.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right.
AP Strange:Where I've been led to a goblin marketplace and there were all these goblins and trolls walking around. And then I was given a gold key by Jeff the Mongoose. And I woke up like, but it didn't feel like a dream because I mean, we all know what dreams feel like and then there's the ones that you have that don't feel like a dream. You know? It feels like something else.
AP Strange:Right. But
Jeremy Vaeni:So here's the here's the question about that. I I I acknowledge that, but do you think it is possible that or what do you feel is calling to you from that? Is it something that is bringing you deeper down into the rabbit hole or something that wants you to forget about the rabbit hole?
AP Strange:I don't know what its intention was, but I treat everything more or less the same, which is acknowledging that something happened and accepting it and trying not to get hung up on it. Definitely it's something worth thinking about, you know? So I don't know what that was. I mean, was during a period of time where I had on a whim decided that I was going to try to contact space intelligences on World Contact Day as an experiment with a few other people. And it was a pretty simple thing and it was lighthearted and fun.
AP Strange:We had got a bunch of people to listen to the song. The song was based on the original World Contact Day thing, the Carpenters song, calling occupants of interplanetary craft. Everybody listened to it at the same time and just kind of meditated an intention out there. And that came as a result of that. I had a series of dreams.
AP Strange:I'd have one once a month where there was some kind of interaction with things that didn't feel like my normal dreams. And I think that was the culmination of it. I think that was the last one. Right. So but there again, I never really tend to feel like when I try to explain my dreams to people that it's all that interesting.
AP Strange:Well, depends on what it is.
Jeremy Vaeni:Mean, if a dream that's not a dream, you know, that's interesting. If it's just a dream, that might just be for you.
AP Strange:Yeah, exactly. But I think a lot of this is though. I think a lot of personal imagery that something that's going to be important to you personally is not gonna translate as well when you try to express it, whether it's a dream or whether it's a high strangeness experience.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right. But the message is universal, right? Yeah. That would be difference.
AP Strange:Exactly, but the forms are only so much
Jeremy Vaeni:dressing
AP Strange:on the idea, right? I don't know, think you actually kind of say as much at one point in the book when I was combing through and making a couple notes here and there or something about how inessential the forms themselves actually are, all the different forms that things can take to convey truth. You know?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, like, it it it really is kinda simple. It's like there's this one thing that has to happen before anything else can be fully fleshed out, which is this coming to terms with ourselves, the death of self or whatever. But, like, we learned during COVID that we don't even wanna sit in a room by ourselves. Like, we're still coming out of the craziness that is a couple of weeks of, you know, not being able to go out and have a normal quote unquote life.
Jeremy Vaeni:People went crazy. People don't want to sit with themselves or their family, apparently. Yeah. Themselves. I mean and yet we wanna explore powers and aliens and ghosts and angels.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, we want all the magic, but we don't wanna deal with ourselves. We're running from ourselves. Right? Yeah. Like, so if you're running from yourself and you don't know what you are and you've got but you you claim to have enough of it all figured out.
Jeremy Vaeni:Oh, everything's just human nature. You know? That's of course, we're gonna screw up and go on with life. That's what we are. You don't know that that's what you are.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's just a story you tell yourself. But if there are beings who have reached that plateau, doesn't matter what form they are in, like, the consciousness is the seal is the consciousness. How are they to talk to you? Like, what are they gonna talk to you about? What's the the only conversation that's fruitful is about that, getting to chisel away at, like, you need to be with yourself.
Jeremy Vaeni:So, yeah, I think the form doesn't matter. And I think the conversation the only fruitful conversation is going to be really limited. And one of the ways that you may get there is by flooding the zone with a whole bunch of crazy stuff Mhmm. To the extent that you can't you can't really rest in a definition because none of the definitions work. So you have to sit with that.
Jeremy Vaeni:You have to at some point, you have to sit with the meaninglessness of what you've got. And is there anything meaningful? Like, what am I missing here? Because why does Bigfoot look like an alien, look like the devil, look like an angel, look like the trickster theory? Is this?
Jeremy Vaeni:And why is it all hap how how many things can happen to one person if they're not lying and they're not mentally ill before you realize, like, all those things have to be, like, finger puppets on the hand of an intelligence? There just one intelligence finger puppeting? Or is it that when we get to like, consciousness has a ceiling, and when you get there, both hands with finger puppets share the same consciousness. They the same Right. Nondual understanding.
Jeremy Vaeni:And they know what you don't, which is you're that too. Just that you're asleep. And so how do you wake up a sleeping person? If you go into the dream, you become a character in the dream and that ain't helpful. But yet you have to go into the dream to have a prayer of so maybe you go into the dream as a whole bunch of stuff.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. You flood the zone, like I'm saying, to make people realize, like, wait. This is crazy. Something's not right here. Maybe that's it.
Jeremy Vaeni:I don't know. Yeah. You to sit with a question like I can't answer it. Right. It has to be a question.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's just it.
AP Strange:Well, Everything's always going to end up with a question mark. One of my favorite things that's happened in all of the news that came out with the James Webb telescope was a couple of years ago, they took a picture of this nebula that's shaped like a question mark. It's so beautiful because it's as far out as you can go into space and what we have a picture of is a question mark. We have about answers. We've got more questions out there.
AP Strange:And I think about that the heart of it is like you talk about this as well as capital M mystery versus like the smaller mysteries. Because I mean with your story about seeing your sister taken away, I think the traditional resolve for a story like that in paranormal literature would be you called your sister and you found out that something just happened, but you didn't. You contacted your sister and she's just like, okay, whatever weirdo, hope you're all right. Because your sister wasn't the target there. Were testing your attachment levels.
AP Strange:Similarly when you talked about the thing in Gettysburg where it's sort of like a two dimensional shadowy shape, it reminded me of when I was a teenager and dabbling in witchcraft, and I could see those shapes when I would do workings. And then I was like, but that's not what I'm to take away from this. That could just be a coincidence that we both saw something that matched the same description. Or maybe I'm just projecting what I saw onto your description thinking that that's what you meant because it's my only frame of reference for it. So I can't assume that, but just because some forms are used doesn't mean that that's the point of it, right?
AP Strange:Guess is what I'm getting at. I would even It's means to an end to get you there.
Jeremy Vaeni:I don't even think, I think it's the seal dream is presented as a test of my Mhmm. Levels, but it's not. They know.
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh, they're starting
Jeremy Vaeni:see my levels. And in the same way, like, I remember, you know, Jeff with the shrouded man, that whole contact stopped for him when he I think he was touching the guy's robe and did the guy say to him, yeah, this is the same fabric that we used to sheet that we used to cover you when you were a kid?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Something along those lines. So when he was a kid, he had these scary experiences again with the classic alien of being covered with a sheet.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:A black sheet. So he's one, acknowledging that, yes, I'm part of that same phenomenon you thought just went away to have conversations with me. And I did the scary thing when you were a kid. And Jeff reacted by jumping away from him and telling him to go f himself and get the hell out and he doesn't want this anymore. And the guy was like, woah, woah, woah.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know, I didn't expect this. I guess we'll go away until you're ready. You really think the guy didn't ex I mean, I asked Jeff this on the show. You honestly think he didn't know you were gonna react that way? He just thought he would bring up the the scariest thing of your childhood and be like, yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:I did that nonchalantly and that that was now and you can say that was a test, but I think he knew what the reaction would be. He knew Jeff would fail the test. I think the test is whether Jeff would see it in himself, what whether Jeff would be able to step back and see the whole rigmarole going on here and and and take it from there with himself. There comes a point a point in all this. Again, we're talking about, like, being with yourself where you have to sit with yourself with this.
Jeremy Vaeni:It can't just be social. I do I'm a ufologist. I'm an experience, And I go to these chats and I go to these conferences and online groups and stuff. And we just talk about this forever and ever and because it's interesting and it gets the cockles going and I feel whatever I feel about it. You have to sit with yourself to to really bring have a chance of bringing it to the next level, you know, this terminology.
Jeremy Vaeni:But that's it. Like, it can't just be happy fun time or a social experiment or going and recording EVPs. Eventually you have to sit with yourself with this stuff and go, okay, what's going on here?
AP Strange:Yeah. As you noted, like people hate doing that increasingly so because we have ways to distract ourselves all the time, you know? I remember like years ago, I had a job, kind of a crappy job cleaning a building at night and I had to work with a woman that was doing the same thing and she could not go anywhere without having earbuds in and either music or a movie playing on her phone. There always had to be distraction, there always had to be noise, and it never made sense to me because, I mean, that was one thing I liked about that job is nobody was in the building, peace and quiet. It's just a mop on the floor, you know?
AP Strange:Like, but people hate silence. They hate being alone with themselves.
Jeremy Vaeni:I think it's even harder nowadays than it used
AP Strange:to be. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
Jeremy Vaeni:You and I are of a different generation. Like, yeah. Because I think, like, even our silence I mean, I know this just from living now.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:The difference between me sitting around on my own now as when I was younger is that you were allowed to sit around more in silence then. Now it's like my mind is racing with stuff, you know, crap from the Internet or TV or conversations or whatever. It's like so it's like just to say be with yourself, it's almost like you've gotta be doing something, listening to music or something to block out the noise that's just going on in your head and be able to focus. You know what I mean? Mhmm.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, I feel like for a lot of people that is their their alone time is narrowing it's a Buddhist thing, narrowing down all of that thought to one thought, except this time you're talking about a song or a movie. It's like honing your focus because we're so all over the place. But the we still get you gotta find it in yourself to to to not try to block all that stuff out, but just, you know, acknowledge that it's there and that's it. Be fine with it and then still find the focus in yourself to, you know, figure out the meaning of life, man, or whatever.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that brings us back to silence. Actually capital S Silence, being alone with yourself and allowing that to work through you. I mean, I get the sense that this stuff in particular is stuff that you're being more forthcoming about in this book than you had been prior, right?
AP Strange:Mhmm. It seems to be kind of the ultimate lesson of it. But
Jeremy Vaeni:I'm being more forthright about it and and I'm I mean, again, it's a tough thing because I'm not a guru. I certainly don't wanna start a cult, all of that. But I'm also, I think, asserting my I don't know if authority is the right word, but just the fact that I do know these things. How about that?
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:So which is why I make it clear when I am not 100% certain of something. But I'm being clear that I am 100% certain of some things. And that's new for me. Because normally
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:I do shy away from that. But I'm doing it here because it's it's just time to do that. And I don't know. Did I send you the part with the postscript?
AP Strange:Yes.
Jeremy Vaeni:The the version with postscript? Oh, okay.
AP Strange:Yeah. Think that's what I'm referring to here. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So as a result, I think, of that, definitely of of writing certain things because there are things in this book that I haven't I have not said or I haven't said in the way that I'm saying them.
Jeremy Vaeni:But I also think there's things that I haven't said. And I think I did it right in in that my my back, which I bitch about in the book and in pretty much every book since time immemorial, which went blew out when this so called Godelini first rose the first and final time it rose because it only rises once, folks. But it blew out my back because I was out of shape as I am. And so I've had for twenty five years, I've had, you know, this back pain, which is gone. And not just that these bulging discs on either side of my spine are back into place, but that these two sort of fatty congealed calluses basically on either side have disappeared, which were causing me I think were probably causing me a lot of the pain, are gone, magically gone after after unleashing this energy, this will of silence out on the gazebo.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I think I didn't say this in the thing, the reason I had really hurt exasperated the problem recently because we had someone staying at the workshop. And so I had to clear away a bunch of tree branches and and pluck up giant grass roots and stuff like this. And basically, I strained my back to the extent that, like, usually the problem is on my right side, but my left side was so bad that I couldn't stand or sit or lie down and be comfortable, which is a bad place to be. So I had no choice but for, you're right. So for days I would go out there and concentrate on, or, you know, just ask basically, like, can we heal this?
Jeremy Vaeni:And I'm not expecting because obviously in twenty five years, this has not healed my back fully, but I just wanted to get back to normal. This thing was I mean, I was feeling things popping deep inside my body that didn't seem to be actual places in the body. Like, felt like this is weird. Like, chiropractors were not able to get to this. This energy was not able to do or didn't do this before.
Jeremy Vaeni:And lo and behold, it cleared me all up. And so on the one hand, it was the reason that I went out and did that. There always seems to be a reason like, even me who writes about this stuff and lives this life, I'm still, like, lazy, you know? I don't really wanna go out there and meditate or whatever. So it gives me a reason to.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, okay. Now you're really screwed up and you have no choice. So now I'm going out there and it fixes this. And I think in response to getting the book right, because there just felt like a big sigh of relief in, you know, in me of like, ah, this is it. I did it, which I haven't felt with other books.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know? Like, I didn't do this after urgency. I wrote urgency, which is all about not specifically Kundalini, but the the general spiritual stuff. And I didn't feel obviously I still had the back problems. Yes, I don't know what I just answered, but the answer is yes.
AP Strange:Well, yeah, I mean, I think some of this stuff is, again, difficult to write about and talk about because like you say, you to give the reader the impression that you're trying to be a guru or that you're going to show them the way and everything. But it is pretty interesting the way that you kind of work with silence and the will of silence. I guess you just kind of let it animate you, right? This is stuff you're spontaneously making these hand gestures and mudras and moving your body in different ways toward different ends where it's almost a collaboration with whatever the will of silence is. Where it's not like you're a wizard, like, casting a spell for a specific end, but it's just kind of compromising with the energy that is there, I guess, to
Jeremy Vaeni:It's basically like, you know, either I will have nothing in mind or I will have something in mind that I would like to accomplish. Like
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Help me heal my back. Let's make it rain. You know, my cat is injured. Can we heal her? And it's always an ask.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so and then there especially, like, I talk about changing the weather, which sounds ridiculous. And, like, this is easily provable. I could just record it. You could look at what the weather is supposed to be that day, but I'm not gonna do that. So Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Because who gives a shit? Like, it doesn't matter. Go do it But I talk about, like, even with that, there's, like, there's the ask. Can we do this? Can I really because this is possible?
Jeremy Vaeni:And then finding out other ways. Like, it's And like the answer is then there are different ways. And it's kind of like you have to be specific, right? In some sense. Because some ways of making rain make more rain than others.
Jeremy Vaeni:And funny enough, those are more inclusive of, like, trees and the land and the wind blowing off the ocean as opposed to, like, can we just make rain? It becomes, like, a symphony or something or, like, a group effort with other beings. You know, trees. I don't mean like aliens or But so but all of that comes from right. I mean, ultimately, can make the ask, and the answer will be yes or no.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's not me doing the movements. It's not me figure it's not me so because it's not me doing the movements, it's not my my personal intelligence. So I don't actually know that we need rain. I just know that I feel like we do. But it may be that we're gonna have a storm coming through in a few days.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know, you may ask, like, hey. Why don't you just turn on the TV and get a weather report? It's because I don't have cable. So
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:I am at the whim of whatever comes to YouTube, which is usually late. But anyway, so and and that's the way it is with, like, trying to heal a person or heal an animal or something. It's like, I may think that the problem is your leg hurting because you tell me that. The energy knows better. Or the energy knows what the leg is actually hurting in response to which another problem that you may have.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so it figures that stuff out and it acts accordingly. And But all of that is a silence that I don't think you know, this is where I get cringey in myself saying this out loud, but you don't have access to because you haven't done the death of self thing. So for you, I don't mean you personally, I mean the general you
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:Silence, sitting silently, when I say sit silently, I don't mean that you're gonna sit silently and suddenly this magic energy is gonna come. I mean, like, there are different versions of sitting silently. One version is sitting with yourself and contemplating things, contemplating your own experiences and meaning and all of that. The other is there may be other ways to get there, but the way back to heart and out of brain and selfishness for me was doing positive negation on my own personal issues. So I sat with myself and I thought about like why do I do the stupid things I do?
Jeremy Vaeni:I thought about them individually, the bad things, you know, the stuff I don't like to talk about even to myself. Why do I do them? Why am I this way? And then deconstruct well because this is how this unfolded in your life and it always goes back to your parents and then you think like, you know, okay, why did they do the things they did? Why are they the people that they are?
Jeremy Vaeni:What do I know about my grandparents? What do I know about their growing up? And what do I know about my great grandparents? You'd go back as far as you can. And then spoiler alert, you may just come to this full bodied realization that the answer is this is what we do.
Jeremy Vaeni:This is what all humans do throughout all time. We're all in this together, this sorrow, this tragedy, this screwing everyone up, screwing each other up. That's what we do. That is what we do. And when you come to that realization, it's your your problems are no longer yours.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's everyone's got the same problem. And it's like that revelation, when it's not just intellectual but full bodied, is, like, moves you, literally moves your center of being such that you may think that's enlightenment because it's so blissful and like, you know, you're now whole in some sense. And part of that and it has repercussions like, I don't care about music anymore or movies or TV or any of that stuff because I don't need to fill anything. So I never get bored. I never you know what I mean?
Jeremy Vaeni:It, like, does these things that may lead you to believe that that's enlightenment, and it's enlightening. It's certainly pretty damn good. But it's actually not something that nature cultures, for instance, need to really go through because they never left heart and that inclusiveness and that being for all ness. Mhmm. They never left that for the delusion of me.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so that should be a clue that it's not enlightenment. So, but that's a type of sitting with yourself that I think is super important to do. That also isn't going to lead to this energy for me, at least. And I think, you know, again, this is the part that takes various forms, But they're all leading to the same thing of, like, for me, it was being that guy, the heart guy, and sitting on a couch and reading Krishnamurti for the umpteenth time and realizing, oh, wait, I'm the guy who does this. Like, I just moved my own goalpost.
Jeremy Vaeni:So I'm still me. Like, why like, it just dawned me. Like, why am I still reading this when I completely get this and could teach it at this point? Oh, because you're that guy. You've just become that guy.
Jeremy Vaeni:And that realization shut me up. There is no me shutting me up. It's just having this realization that's so, like, obvious that the brain tilts, the brain projecting you because you wanna think that you're your, you know, a soul or a person or an entity on onto yourself, an individual. Well, you're not. And so the brain shuts up.
Jeremy Vaeni:You shut up. You go away. And then you come back. You resurrect two point o, you know, with this energy. And that's and now when you're silent or when I'm silent now, the truly silent, that's the energy starts speaking.
Jeremy Vaeni:This, you know, silence itself starts maneuvering the body. So, again, I I all of this is to say that there are different versions of silence. And I'm not saying if you sit quietly and even sit quietly and just, like, contemplate your weird experiences if you're an experience there that that's gonna bring you to this because I think people expect that, you know? Well, if I just sit quietly and meditate, it'll come to me. And it's like, no.
Jeremy Vaeni:There is no you. It's not coming to you and you're not doing anything. You're in the way. You're the problem. So Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's, you know, if you want if you if you want access to to this or whatever, you gotta give up even wanting access to this.
AP Strange:That's the hard part. That's the real trick, I think. Mean, that's kind of where I began my practice of casually observing, taking note of and acknowledging things rather than acting on them or extrapolating too much from them is just that that's one of those Buddhist precepts that's like, yeah, the wanting stuff is what really trips you up.
Jeremy Vaeni:But then you but see and and you're right. But then you've gotta come to that point where you realize, oh, now I'm the guy who does the note notations and just observes shit.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, now I'm that guy.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:And the universe will keep you here. Again, I I keep coming back to this because it's powerful, like, to hear you know, I I always not always, but I often hear from Buddhists or Zen people who say that this sounds a lot like what they're talking about. It's like, no. But you this is the part that's hard to hear, and it will sound like I'm trying to be super special in saying that you can't get here. Only I am here.
Jeremy Vaeni:But it's like these Buddhist meditations and these Zen things are facsimiles. They bring you to a narrow focus, but they don't dissolve you because the person who was dissolved, who came back with this, people in thought want to create thought constructs out of it. That's what the universe is doing, literally doing. It's padding itself out with this stuff. It's like you have a non dual experience and you bring it back and you bring it to your people and they're gonna weave it into a carnival ride.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's gonna become a thing that you can experience. And it's funny, I don't know, if you're Buddhist then maybe you know that you'll know this better than I do. But it it from what I've seen, it looks like including the Kundalini stuff, which isn't Buddhist, I guess that more hin Hindu, but it's all the same in that it's like a lot of visual creative visualization. It's like Mhmm. Visualize this so intently that it then happens.
Jeremy Vaeni:It sort of spills into the room or hone your thoughts down to just one focus. So like practice, practice, practice and or do the mantra over and over and over again. Keep repeating, keep repeating, keep repeating. And then eventually, you know, you'll you'll do that sigil magic that brings the thing into the room. Is that correct?
Jeremy Vaeni:Or are the does is it your experience that no, actually Buddhism says not do that? Buddhism says give all that up too. What's a
AP Strange:Yes, I guess is the answer there. I have a theory that a lot of Goetic Western Hermetic traditions that are talking about conjuration of demons or calling down angels and all this stuff, It's an elaborate means to trick you into self purification so that by the time you're, if you're doing it right, by the time you're equipped to conjure demons, you don't want to anymore. You know, like it's a way to trick you into some kind of transcendent enlightened experience. But the you know the reason you have all the horror stories is because people skip to the back of the book and just yeah yeah yeah purification. Where do we get to Astaroth?
AP Strange:I want to talk to that guy. But yeah I mean there's there are so many different forms of Buddhism and I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Buddhist but I have studied with Buddhists and have read a lot of books. Reading books is different than practice, I think I have an understanding. The Tibetan type traditions and the Vajrayana traditions have a lot in common with and are more tied to Hindu ideas. So that's where you might see things like Kundalini and conjuration and the idea of Tulpas as misunderstood as that can sometimes be.
AP Strange:But yeah, ultimately that's not the point. All of this stuff is still phenomena and phenomena is tied to Maya the material world, which is illusory. And ultimately the which again doesn't mean it's not real, but it's ultimately an illusion because there's a reality beyond that. And But
Jeremy Vaeni:in terms of just the meditation, though, like saying to meditate and to either narrow all of your thought to one thought or to say that you're different than your thoughts, just let them float by, just be the passive observer, the witness, the whatever Mhmm. There's still you involved in that. Right? Like, to me, it really is not just TULPAs and stuff like that, but the whole thing of saying how to quiet your mind. The fact that the word your is in there and how
AP Strange:That's to problem.
Jeremy Vaeni:These are problems.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. They're very large problems, yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:So we acknowledge that, and yet we still keep doing it. So how is that? Like, does like, I would imagine Buddha, did not say a lot of the things in Buddhism unless he knew that people wouldn't understand, by and large, the truth. And so for them, here are ways to be better people in the world. You know?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. You'll get this, and then maybe a few of you will see past it. I mean, does that sound like kind of what happened?
AP Strange:I think that's true of a lot of religious and philosophical thoughts is that it has to be boiled down to something that even if you can't take away the grand truth, you can at least take away things that will make you less of a dick people. Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:I try to not offer the less of a dick part. I go right for the grand truth. So it's not so, like, when I'm when I'm poo pooing these things, I'm only poo pooing them in the sense that to say they're not what I'm talking about. And that doesn't mean that they're not valid or better than smashing each other in the face. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Right? Like, they're way better than that. And it's not to say that they're not interesting. Like, I go into a thing about my mushroom trip, and it's not to say that
AP Strange:a dick has a place also. So I
Jeremy Vaeni:think Being a dick has a place. Yep. Ayahuasca journeys have a place. Like, all these
AP Strange:things
Jeremy Vaeni:have a place, but they're not it. And my fear is that we live at a point now where we can't afford not to engage with the it because the it part, not the clown, of course, but it is what is our wholeness, is what human nature really should be. And if we keep putting this off or keep not seeing it because that's scary, that's death, even though the body remains alive, I don't know what that is, will I be possessed, whatever. Like, we've gotta wrestle with this a little bit better or a little bit more and get a little bit deeper because we're killing ourselves and we're taking as much of Earth with us as possible. And I'm sure in the long run, Earth will be fine and will flick us off and all that.
Jeremy Vaeni:But is that what we want? Like, and then what? The next version of us comes along? Because there's got to be a sentient portion of the program here that is not quite animals, but also animals, you know. Must be And is that representation always going to cyclically fall to its own devices?
Jeremy Vaeni:Or will we ever see through the game? We got to get to that, you know? Like, it just isn't enough. So again, it's like it's not these things are wrong or bad or whatever. They're just not it and we need to get to it because we keep thinking they're it.
Jeremy Vaeni:And then, like, I try to make the point of the mushroom trip. Like, how many people do you know who have done Ayahuasca or, you know, DMT or shrooms or whatever, and they've had these big magical mystical experiences that Mhmm. Changed them personally or whatever, but they're still dicks. Yeah. They may have changed you for the better in some ways, but you're still now you're a narcissist, but about this stuff, but with a different language.
AP Strange:I do admit that I find that incredibly tiresome hearing, like, trip reports from people and especially people that think that that had led them to some grand epiphany. I'm not saying it's impossible to get there through psychedelics or
Jeremy Vaeni:I am.
AP Strange:But, well, I mean, I wouldn't rule it.
Jeremy Vaeni:I'll say it.
AP Strange:I wouldn't rule it. Most of the time, most examples I've ever had put in front of me is I'm just like, yeah, that ain't it, man. That's not the thing, though. You know, you kind of miss it. I mean, one of the early influences for me was Ram Dass, and he kind of started on that whole LSD thing and then abandoned it in favor of spirituality.
AP Strange:So, it's kind of really interesting. I read in his book that there was a yogi that he gave LSD to that told them that it only gave him a headache. Then there was another one that had no effect on him at all. The one time I ever took it, immediately fell asleep, which I guess I don't know what that means. But that Probably one again, if means I'm saying that right now is try to puts me, you know, makes it sound like I'm putting myself in parody with these yogis and ascetics in India, which is not what I'm trying to do.
AP Strange:That's just what happened. But yeah, I mean, and you talk about your experience with that and you kind of become the clown in that. You said it jokingly the clown just now, but it's kind of funny because in the book you have this kind of fictional character of Giggles the clown that you temporarily become during the trip. Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. I mean, so it's not like, you know, there there's definitely a message for me there Yeah. That I can use to explore myself with. But I also at the point that I did shrooms, I had already had the big I Am, universe exploding out of nothingness. So I already knew that this was not that.
Jeremy Vaeni:This was Yeah. This was different and annoying to me in some ways. As I say, you know, it's like being tickle tortured with a feather versus understanding a good joke. You're laughing in both instances, but one is torture and one is understanding. And that Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:To me, the shroom trip was the tickle torture. Fascinating and all that, but not it. And the reason that I say, like, you're never going to get there there. What we're talking about there is nothingness. I mean, silence and nothingness are the same thing.
Jeremy Vaeni:And you're not gonna get to nothing through something. You're not gonna even being a witness is something. Even being a tiny voice in the back of your own consciousness as like Toontown and Imagination happen in the foreground and you're just feeling out of control, that ain't it. Being immersed in Krishna consciousness out in the ether, that was part of my experience. That ain't it.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's like these are all things.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:And the nothingness is nothingness has the to be the absence of things has to be the case. But it's
AP Strange:also all of
Jeremy Vaeni:things is all things. Right. Because that absence I mean, when again, this gets back to the illusion. What's the illusion? The illusion is the separation.
Jeremy Vaeni:All of these separate things are one consciousness, which is, you know, nothingness is basically, you know, a formless awareness, being. What's it being? All things. So getting back to the self awareness of that oneness is what we can do. I think that's the difference between us and ducks is that, you know, we can be ducks, but we can also, you know, we can be humans as we are, but we can also be the first person experience of truth, of nothingness, of the consciousness that is doing the illusioning.
Jeremy Vaeni:That can be so that is the merging of timelessness and time. This construct Jeremy and this construct AEP Strange, you know, these constructs are the brain faking it. And it really is a good fake because we so much believe in it that we want to bring that into death. We want to bring that with us when we go. But it's a psychological time construct.
Jeremy Vaeni:You take from the past, you project it into the future, and that's your present moment. And this is what we all do. It's a time we're a psychological time construct. So but what we what we have the ability to be also is like the body's already a time construct. So you don't need the mind to be that too.
Jeremy Vaeni:The mind can be timelessness. Nonduality can be the case, can be the mind, oneness, you know, god, whatever word can be the case of the mind while the first person identity as you while the body continues on in time. And, you know, that's it may seem like a wild notion or it may seem like, you know, to most people, it's not a wild notion. Most people, oh, I've done that. You know, it's like, this is where I wanna, like, shoot myself in the head.
Jeremy Vaeni:Die die is meeting the people where you say all of this stuff to and then they're like, oh, no. I've done that. You're like, oh, really? Okay. I gotta go because you haven't.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, I I like, it's it's not nothing, and I don't mean nothingness. I mean, it's not just a throwaway line. You know what I mean?
AP Strange:Well, I mean, that's where
Jeremy Vaeni:the first That
AP Strange:that's where the first question that I had for you kind of came out of trying I was trying to frame it in a way I was hoping to frame it in a way that would be funnier than what I said. But
Jeremy Vaeni:This is where we've moved as a society. Right? Like, old days was like, I don't know what any of this stuff is. It's mystical and meaningful, and I and I gotta get to it. And now we're at a point where, like, after decades of that not happening for us because we don't really want it, we just think we do because it nags at us, that pit in our belly.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know, it nags at us. You're
AP Strange:not Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know? But then we put all of our energy into the arts and stuff. It's like, oh, well, I'll find it in a U2 song. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. That makes me feel, well, okay.
Jeremy Vaeni:But you gotta sit with this. And instead of doing that, we go, oh, I guess I've already mastered it because I've read all the books. I've listened to the songs.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:We've been here, done that. You know, everything feels blase. So I must have already done it. I guess I'll go teach it. You know?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:We've just skipped over the part of being and or non being to to say we've mastered something. Like, this that part does bother me because it's hard to break through without you sounding like the arrogant prick in the room. Like, how do I you know what I mean? And part of the inoculation people have is in in saying like, my truth, my what's right for you may not be right for me. And there you know, and I surround myself with people who are nonjudgmental because I don't like to be judged.
Jeremy Vaeni:And it's like, when you have that level of barrier around you, treating yourself like a billionaire, just putting yes men around you in your normal life, how do you break through to that, you know, without without because people like that are so super sensitive because they don't wanna look at themselves so deeply. They've already claimed that they have or that they do and that they've mastered something and that they know something. And then if you're not if you don't engage and validate their belief system, then you're the a hole. So yeah, that kind of is frustrating. Like how do you talk to people at that point when they're the only people interested in this stuff
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Are the ones who think they've mastered it. Like, what do you do at that point? I guess it is game over.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I mean, it's it's difficult because, I mean, you're gonna express some of what you've expressed tonight that might just sound like common sense to some people and then, oh, okay. I I accept that. And they feel like they might understand intellectually whether they do or don't, but they still don't. You know?
AP Strange:They still don't get it unless they've had the experience. But also then you have people that either disingenuously believe themselves to have mastered everything or have clung to yet another delusion in the procession of phantoms, that they Yeah, I mean, guess the best you can do is lay out a trail of bread crumbs and hope people pick up on it and they don't all get eaten by ducks in the meantime.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's true. Yeah. I mean, I just hope that people, you know, watch your reactions even to what you're hearing with this podcast or that, you know, like just watch your reactions. If if anything I'm saying or he's saying like greats on you, be nonjudgmental. Don't judge that.
Jeremy Vaeni:Don't judge yourself or us or just look at it. Just say, okay, why is be the be the scientist. Ask yourself, why am I feeling that way?
AP Strange:Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Or allow yourself to to to be okay with not knowing also because a lot of what I run into also and probably more than even like, oh, I've mastered this. I mean, it goes hand in hand with that. But is the person who listens to stuff like this or like UFO shows and because we're using the same language, they think we're speaking the same language, you know? Like, they hear Kundalini, they hear Alien or whatever, and then and then they think we're all on the same page here. And they don't listen any further or any deeper than that.
Jeremy Vaeni:And it's like, no, we're we're not I'm not talking about the same thing you are. And it but they
AP Strange:Oh, they're can't front loading it with their own assumptions too.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. It's like they don't allow themselves to hear what's actually being said because they only hear the buzzwords that feed them and we gotta get beyond that. So if that's you, you'll know that that's you because you're either pissed off by what I just said or you completely ignored it and went on to something else.
AP Strange:Well, yeah. I mean, that's where I feel like an outsider with today's disclosure movement, especially, but with a lot of things. I mean, I feel like I just turned into the old man Lebowski from The Big Lebowski and I'm just like, know, watching God's holy name are you blathering about? Like I hear terms thrown at me. I'm like, are you talking about, man?
AP Strange:You know? So I mean, I try not to engage it too much, you know? I feel like I put out what I put out and it's there for people and I think it hopefully reaches the right people.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's it. I mean, that's all you can do, you know.
AP Strange:I
Jeremy Vaeni:I
AP Strange:one
Jeremy Vaeni:person when I'm dead understands what I have written to the extent that it has the effect where they put the book down and go, oh, wow. I'm that guy or that gal. That's it. That's the best that's the best that can happen.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And as you say, it's like you're on the danger of either just sounding like the arrogant prick in the room when you're trying to just relay what your experience was, or you end up being frustrated with people misinterpreting it and projecting themselves onto it and thinking that that's what it is. Yeah.
AP Strange:Or not That's partly why I was nervous is it's I I do wanna kinda compare notes a little, but I don't wanna make it sound like I'm trying to say, oh, yeah. No. I have that too. I I get you, man. I'm right there with you.
AP Strange:You know? I don't wanna be that guy. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:But you may also. I mean, maybe you are I right don't know. You know? Yeah. But I do know that, like like, in talking to people about especially about Kundalini because I'm that is one of the subjects where I have certainty because I live with it for twenty five plus years, you know?
Jeremy Vaeni:So when I hear people say I turn it on and off or it's my even the terminology like my Kundalini, my Kundalini activation, you would never say my. Like, that would never be a thing. Right. That's part of the death itself. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:But, you know, feeling hot and cold or feel whatever, you know, to say like, I hear you. That's not this. I don't know what you're going through, but that's not this. Like, can you be okay hearing that or have you built up a belief around whatever you think this word should be, should mean that that sounds like offensive. Like it shouldn't sound offensive to say you're misdiagnosing the problem, you know, or you're misdiagnosing the case.
Jeremy Vaeni:It might not even be a problem. But there are lots of things that can give you psychic abilities. There are lots of other energies in the body that you can play with. Just ain't one of them, you know? That's all.
Jeremy Vaeni:But we've built up all this belief around it that it's hard to talk about without immediately offending people. And but I so my hope would be that in hearing what I'm saying about it in terms of it being an intelligence and all that that moves the body that you would see that that, oh, wait, that transcends and includes what I'm saying because it you can have these psychic abilities and and whatever through the Kundalini. You can also have it without it. I I understand. I guess that's my point.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's like there's gotta be something in you that goes, oh, you gotta be willing to acknowledge that like, oh, what this guy just said actually makes more sense than what I've been thinking this whole time. You know? Like, unless I'm wrong. Like, if I'm wrong Yeah. Then you can think obviously you can think that too.
Jeremy Vaeni:But you've got to make the case, right? You've got to make the of why it is that I'm wrong. It can't just be like in one ear and out the other and I go on saying I've got Kundalini activation or whatever. It's like because it's more important than that. Like this is what we are fundamentally.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I don't think that I've like there's still a difference now between me and Kundalini. They're like two operating systems in the same body. And I think ultimately, you know, when I give up my own new sense of attachments that perhaps two will become one, you know. I think that that's the case. And so, again, I'm not a complete person telling you all of this but I am alive with this and so I know that it's not what you're talking about and don't be offended by that.
Jeremy Vaeni:Just look at it. I could be wrong. I could be delusional. Know, all that stuff is true. But just look at it.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's all. Because if it it does you no good to just have these conversations over and over and then pretend like, you know, I've got a power too. It's like, alright. Do you wanna be romper room for the rest of your life or do you wanna actually figure this shit out?
AP Strange:Well, yeah. I mean, there's a point at which you just kinda becomes navel gazey and you you just you know, it seems to me that the only reason you're expressing it is because other people might benefit from it if they can get what you're putting down, right?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. I mean, I think it's super important. It's us, you know? It's like my God man, look at what we are. It's like, this is what we are.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I know it because I live it. And it's it's like, this is ridiculous that I'm alone with this. You know? I don't feel like alone and lonely and like I'm not a Morrissey song here. This isn't the Smiths.
Jeremy Vaeni:But because that's part of understanding. That. Yeah. Yeah. But it is frustrating.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's like, oh my god. This is what we are. We're so much more in in you know? And if you just look at what you're even saying about what you claim you're experiencing, oh, it's a goddess energy. Oh, it's, you know, it's really?
Jeremy Vaeni:You think a goddess? You think any sort of living intelligence is just in you making you feel hot and cold or making you, like, do sporadic psychic clairvoyant shit? Like, you think that that's what's going on with an intelligent bee it's the same thing with aliens. Right? Really?
Jeremy Vaeni:You think an alien doctor Yeah. Right. Is Spock is coming down to, like, go boogity boogity boo every now and then to punctuate your life with weirdness that has nothing to do with actual aliens? Like, you think that?
AP Strange:Yep.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, see it. Not not because I'm I can be a a dick pointing it out, but you still have to, like, wrestle with the the fact of it. Right? That it doesn't make sense. And there has to be a rational anchor.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's not that this isn't transcendent of rationality, but it's transcendent include. So there's always going to be a rational anchor point in this. Right? It's not gonna always be like, people wanna say, like, anything can be real. And it's, like, not really.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, there still the has to be weirdness is that it transcends, but the inclusive part is that there is sense to it. It's not nonsensical even if you don't understand all of it. There's enough there that there's gotta be a rational anchor. And so one rational anchor would be just to admit that you can't say that this is a living energy or a goddess or a god or something or even a demon possession or whatever, you know, the Christian version of that. And then say that, like, what they came to do in this body was just to, like, make me a little bit uncomfortable sometimes that is easily answered by like science.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like I know a lot of old people who feel cold too when it's hot out. No. That ain't kundalini.
AP Strange:It sounds like a blood pressure issue my friend. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, science is real and medicine is real. So listeners, go see a doctor first.
Jeremy Vaeni:And Reiki Reiki might be real too. You know? So Yeah. But that doesn't mean it's the same thing. I mean, I my my mom is a person who, I guess, does Reiki.
Jeremy Vaeni:And she called me recently. She's like, Cher, I just saw your I did this Kundalini demonstration or whatever on a He So Vain So Vainy episode. She said, I just watched that and, you know, next time I come visit, maybe, know, you can activate that and I can activate my Reiki and we'll see what happens. And it's like, no, this isn't Wonder Twin Powers activate. Like, come on, man.
Jeremy Vaeni:Let's be you're my mom and all, but let's be serious here. You know? Like, this is like, that's just gross to me. No offense, ma. But, like, that that is offensive in a way.
Jeremy Vaeni:You know? Right. And it also is, like, not hearing what's what's being said. But it's interestingly, she said it got her sort of hackles up. Like, it sort started watching that video triggered her Reiki energy in some way which is why because normally my mom's very skeptical about things that come out of my mouth.
Jeremy Vaeni:But I guess because that happened, she thought there was something to this. But it's like this isn't trivial. Let's put it that way. And a lot of these signs and symptoms and claims of how it came alive for people seem to be very trivial to me. And if there's no death of self, there's no silence maneuvering because you are the blockage that's in the way of that which is being blocked.
Jeremy Vaeni:Nothing other than you is the blockage. You are that blockage. Unless there's you gone, this can't come in. That's it. That's it.
Jeremy Vaeni:And and there may be numerous ways for you to go away, for you to have the epiphany of I gotta go, you know, for the brain to see it deeply where you stop trying to seek away, it just stops you in your tracks. See you see that the seeker is useless in this instance. But that's what needs to happen. Otherwise, you're just you're playing with yourself, as I say in the book.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah and I mean it's kind of it trivializes things in the same way or it would trivialize things in the same way that trying to prove you can manipulate the weathered wood you know it's not it's not like a parlor trick you're not like Yeah,
Jeremy Vaeni:we're moving a drought zone.
AP Strange:Yeah, trying to prove anything to anyone for any particular gain. But yeah, it's pretty amazing stuff. And I mean, I think that kind of gets to something I had kind of planned to ask is in respect to your own personal experiences is that with with what what you call the silence or variously kundalini energy is that you know? I guess you kind of already answered it, but it's guess you're not trying to show people the way with it that it means to you. No, I don't even know how to phrase this now.
AP Strange:Language is really tripping me up at the moment. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, there is that danger of people hearing what you have to say and thinking that you're trying to say that you're special or you have like ownership over this one thing that nobody else can touch it, right? Like, right. Or more so it's kind of a glimpse of experiential knowing of a type of energy that people try to tell you is something else. Right?
AP Strange:So or trying to identify with in a way that isn't accurate to your understanding of it.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. I mean, don't obviously, I'm not the only person on the planet that this is, you know, has be become this or whatever. But the popularization of of wrong things has is a problem. Right. And, no, I'm I'm not really even setting up a road map to it.
Jeremy Vaeni:I mean, I'm telling you what what happened with me and which may even be problematic because it's hard to say to people, look, don't don't seek, but here's the ending to the story. Right? Now don't seek this. Here's what happens next, but don't seek it. Christian Murti would never do that.
Jeremy Vaeni:He was perhaps smarter than I am in not doing that. He would never he I've seen, you know, video of him talking about Kundalini twice very briefly because people had asked him questions about it. And but he always prefaces it with, dear god, of course you people wanna know about this shit. Right? Like, nobody cares.
Jeremy Vaeni:And you say this stuff over and you don't care about that. You want this stuff. Okay. Fine. He never says what happens next after the death of self.
Jeremy Vaeni:He just says, see all of this, find out for yourself, and that's it. He never had the conversation about after. So I which is great for me because I had no expectations for anything. I you know, Kundalini or otherwise, I had zero. I don't have a belief system in this.
Jeremy Vaeni:I'm not well studied in it. So, you know, what the hell? But I'm talking about it because I think, like, we're at a different point in history than we were in, you know, even the eighties where, again, people already think they know what this stuff is and they think they're engaging with it or they've mastered it or they're whatever. They already think they know because they've read. And Mhmm.
Jeremy Vaeni:And so I think it is helpful to to to say, look. This is this is what it is. Meticulously, here's here's where we keep getting tripped up. Here is what happens afterward, but don't but don't worry about it. Like, what Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Just just know that it's that that you're wrong. Guess that's the like, part that because if you know that you're wrong, then you know you're not experiencing it right now. Therefore, haven't you skipped a step. Like, you can see that this is what it is, and if what I'm telling you makes more sense, all of the steps here, then you see that you're not right. Doesn't matter that I'm right and you're wrong.
Jeremy Vaeni:What matters is that you're wrong. Right? Like, doesn't matter that I'm right. Like, like, it's like, take me out of the equation. I'm just pointing out that that that there's a wrongness here that you are engaged with, but that that is also what we all do.
Jeremy Vaeni:Like, it's not just you. It's like that's what the brain does. This is what the universe wants. It wants you here. It is time.
Jeremy Vaeni:It wants you in time. It takes the again, the whole thing. This is just what we do. Just see the the whole there's no way to not use language that is gonna be offensive because that's part of using language. Mhmm.
Jeremy Vaeni:It was like, people are gonna find a way to, you know, frame it in such a way where they can go on with themselves. But no, just see, like if it makes sense that, oh, okay, I see the error here. Then you wanna say, what's the remedy? And the remedy is there is no remedy. Just sit with the error and ask yourself, why do I engage in this way with the error?
Jeremy Vaeni:Why am I doing this? And that's it. You've got to deconstruct you. I can't do that. Nobody can do that.
Jeremy Vaeni:That's it.
AP Strange:Yeah. There's no universal roadmap for that. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. I don't know if that's a path or what, but even that won't necessarily lead you to this because you're gonna keep tripping yourself up all the long way even with the you know, after the Kundalini awakening. And then there there becomes this unfolding of the psychic stuff and all this these tastes of what's real that are beyond my normal, you know, everyday existence, those wanna trip you up. It's like the poppy, Land of the Poppies in in Mhmm. The Wizard of Oz.
Jeremy Vaeni:It's like all along the way, you wanna trip yourself up into going back to sleep. You know? Go back to Yeah. Oh, be a clairvoyant. Be a master of this.
Jeremy Vaeni:Oh, go teach people this. No. Just be so interested and so childlike and so honest that you wanna know that you know that you don't know and you wanna see where this is going. Not that you wanna know what what the end is, but you wanna you're interested, like, in the journey. This is the journey you should be interested in.
Jeremy Vaeni:Not like Yeah. Life's a journey, man. But, like, when this shit is unfolding in in impersonally now, life is happening at you in a completely different way. Just be so interested in that that you don't wanna take up any one aspect of it as a trade. Right?
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Okay.
Jeremy Vaeni:And then and then see if you don't get to somewhere. You know? Like, that's it.
AP Strange:So you shouldn't set up something in the desert where you can contact lights in the sky and direct people to it. That's what you're saying.
Jeremy Vaeni:Well, if you do, just realize that whatever is there isn't an alien from another planet because they're not sitting in a desert waiting for you to set up a shop to shine a flashlight at them so that they can shine a light back at you. That's not what aliens spend their tax dollars on. I guarantee you that.
AP Strange:Yeah. I mean, guess my only thought with all of that way to sum it up is like if somebody's trying to tell you that they're enlightened, it's like, or that they've gone through self death in that respect is like, well, why are you still here then? Shouldn't you have just ascended or transcended experience? And I mean, what your book tells of your journey is that you become yourself again, you become reborn as Jeremy two point zero in your case. I mean I feel like there are I think we've just been outlining a lot of the traps one can fall into because all of it seems to be a trap.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. And there's a lot of fluidity there, you know, there are no, you know, this, that, this. So but yes. A lot a lot of these everything we've described is basically this book is a trap when you think about it. Right.
AP Strange:But it was an entertaining trap. So
Jeremy Vaeni:But it's okay. If you can if you can be remain self aware to know that that it's a trap, then it's not a trap. Right? Right. I mean, that's just it.
Jeremy Vaeni:None of these things are a trap. You just have to be self aware in the moment, you know, which means watching your reactions to things. I mean, that is so more fruitful than than any of the magic books you're ever gonna read. It's just it's amazing that that we're all we're all looking to be whole, to be complete, to be a real human being, whether we frame it that way or not. And yet, because that requires the death of self, we're just, like, unconsciously, we're like, nah.
Jeremy Vaeni:I'm gonna just go pretend. I'm gonna go fake it and have some superpowers.
AP Strange:You know? Right. I mean,
Jeremy Vaeni:You still feel like crap. I'm still gonna feel like crap.
AP Strange:Yeah. I'm still gonna be miserable, but
Jeremy Vaeni:But that's just human nature. And then we just go, that's human nature. That's the way things are. And it's like, well, it is the way things are, but it's not natural. Yeah.
Jeremy Vaeni:It it just is what is. There's no denying that. But we do we have to be that?
AP Strange:Yeah, it's not inevitable.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah.
AP Strange:There are things that could be adjusted to help that along. So yeah I mean I I for listeners I would absolutely recommend getting a copy of the book when it does drop. There's a lot there's a lot to chew on in there and there's a lot to like I said I feel like it's more meditative and lays out the breadcrumbs for people to follow in a way that maybe hadn't really been done before in quite that way for your writing. I really enjoyed it. Where would you recommend people find the book?
AP Strange:Is it just Amazon or whatever?
Jeremy Vaeni:Wherever. Yeah, Amazon or I don't know. I mean, it'd be interesting if you order it through your library, suppose your library would be forced to buy it. So maybe you could try that too. But yeah,
AP Strange:Amazon. Yeah. Then unsuspecting people can stumble onto the mind of Vainy and
Jeremy Vaeni:Yes. Yes. Torture people with more me, please.
AP Strange:Do you have anything else coming up? Are you working with with podcasting and video stuff?
Jeremy Vaeni:No. I mean, you know, I I do I've been on hiatus from doing Wise Ask with Tom Cheatham.
AP Strange:Right.
Jeremy Vaeni:But we'll probably get back to that. And then I've I've definitely gotta start recording another season of Hour and Doing Radio. But other than that, I have no big plans.
AP Strange:Okay. And you're still doing the He So Vainy videos on YouTube?
Jeremy Vaeni:Yes. Yeah. In fact, I wanna do one I haven't done one on Krishnamurti. There is a long chunk of a an interview that he does about AI and computers and stuff.
AP Strange:Oh, interesting.
Jeremy Vaeni:God. One of the forefathers of that movement back in the eighties whose name eludes me at the moment. And I find it interesting in what that guy can't hear, and so I wanna do a thing pointing that out.
AP Strange:Well, it's kind because Christian Worty lived kind of near what became Silicon Valley, right? Yeah. It's kind of right in that area so he would have known a lot of the same people. Interesting. Yeah, that's funny too, because when I was reviewing your book, the PDF of your book to make a few notes, was trying This had an AI pop up that was trying to summarize the book for me.
AP Strange:Really? I was tempted to just click it and see what it said and, you know, God,
Jeremy Vaeni:this stuff is so intrusive. Like, really? This is what we wanna do?
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, I'm actually now curious what it would have to say about your your book.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Go for it.
AP Strange:This guy really likes ducks.
Jeremy Vaeni:I mean, somebody sent me what AI had said about me. They put AI into some I mean, AI. They put my name into some AI engine. Yeah. And they they sent me a screenshot of it.
Jeremy Vaeni:And I thought it was pretty accurate. I thought it was pretty fair. I was like, maybe there's something to this. I don't
AP Strange:know. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm not a fan personally. So
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Me neither.
AP Strange:I think it's gonna contribute to people not thinking, but yeah well this has been a pleasure talking to you and it was a pleasure reading your book so thanks so much for coming on the show.
Jeremy Vaeni:Yeah. Thank you for inviting me and for chatting me for as long as you did. I appreciate it.
AP Strange:Yeah. Of course. Alright. I'll talk soon.