Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations

Stephan Downes:
Hi, I’m Stephan Downes.

Adam Rizvi:
And I am Adam Rizvi.

Stephan Downes:
And this is Letters to the Sky, a podcast about the metaphysical iconoclasts, philosophical visionaries, and religious leaders of the world.

Adam Rizvi:
Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, neither, or something in between, we invite you to take a deep dive with us down metaphysical rabbit holes and learn to see your life from a new perspective.

Stephan Downes:
Hey, Adam.

Adam Rizvi:
Stephan Downes.

Stephan Downes:
How’s it going?

Adam Rizvi:
It’s a warm evening here in Tucson, Arizona.

Stephan Downes:
That is how it’s pronounced. That’s very good.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Tucson. Tucson. That’s how they say it around here.

Stephan Downes:
As the movie Hamlet 2 describes it, the place where dreams go to die.

Adam Rizvi:
You said that when I first got the job to come here. My dreams have not died, Stephan. They’ve only continued to flourish.

Stephan Downes:
No. I mean, it’s a comedy movie and I think it was you know, being hyperbolic. Okay, so anyway, guys, we’re using cameras today. So if you listen to this on Spotify, we’re starting to put these up on YouTube because apparently people like seeing faces, and they like seeing faces on the primary face app called YouTube. So we’re recording this, obviously, just audio, but also video. So if you want to see our ugly mugs, go to YouTube and look at Letters to the Sky and we’ll be there. And hopefully, we’ll make a tradition out of this, you know. Hopefully, this isn’t a horrific failed experiment. Spoiler alert, I am wearing a towel and it’s because there’s no AC in my house. We bought it last October and said you know we could deal. Turns out I need to now wear a wet towel at all times to cool myself off and prevent heatstroke. And it’s not even hot out today, so we’ll see. This is great definitely. What are you going to do?

Adam Rizvi:
You definitely got a post-gym look to you like you just had a great satisfying workout, and you know, you kind of walked out of the gym with a towel out over your…

Stephan Downes:
We’ll go with that. And then I kept wearing it-

Adam Rizvi:
On your neck.

Stephan Downes:
While recording. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, exactly.

Stephan Downes:
So I’m here in my little, or my wife and I’s art studio/sometimes workplace.

Adam Rizvi:
She shed?

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. She shed, yeah. And then Adam, you are in a bedroom in your sprawling estate, right?

Adam Rizvi:
That’s right. I’m in the east wing of my estate.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, there you go there you go. I love it. Okay, so onto business. So, today we are talking about Stoicism, which I have to say is right away I’m not even going to say it’s iconoclastic, it’s really exceptional, though, so we wanted to bring it in. You know, a lot of the philosophies that we’ve talked about I think are, we’ve really spun them as iconoclastic. Maybe some of them you think are, some of them aren’t. I actually don’t really feel that Stoicism is that iconoclastic. I think it’s really wise, and I think it’s still worth talking about though.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Yeah, actually, that’s a really good point. There’s so much of Stoicism that has made it into popular culture. It is super popular now amongst…

Stephan Downes:
It’s the philosophy of 30-year-old male entrepreneurs.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Yeah. It totally is. It totally is. Ryan Holiday is one of the biggest proponents. He’s on Daily Stoic. He’s got a YouTube channel, of course. And let’s see, who else? But it’s also big amongst politicians. The particular book that we’re covering, I felt in case we didn’t cover Stoicism again, which is a possibility unless it turns out to be a favorite of listeners, is a book called Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. For those of you who recognize the name, Marcus Aurelius was…

Stephan Downes:
He was in gladiator.

Adam Rizvi:
No, that’s Maximus Decimus Meridius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and he shall have his revenge in this life or the next.

Stephan Downes:
And who was the Emperor?

Adam Rizvi:
I have no idea.

Stephan Downes:
Are you kidding me?

Adam Rizvi:
I forget. Who was Emperor? Oh, he was a son. Wasn’t he the son of Marcus Aurelius?

Stephan Downes:
No, that’s Commodus.

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, yeah. Commodus.

Stephan Downes:
Are you going to really… I’m looking this up.

Adam Rizvi:
Wait, no. Marcus Aurelius, are you saying Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor at the time of that movie?

Stephan Downes:
Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, really? God I totally did not realize that.

Stephan Downes:
They even talk about his son Commodus in his book.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Wow. I did not make that connection.

Stephan Downes:
Really? All I could see was…

Adam Rizvi:
Gladiator the whole time.

Stephan Downes:
Commodus doing the thumbs down in the arena.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
Just Joaquin Phoenix being Joaquin Phoenix.

Adam Rizvi:
I was so caught up in the story.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, it’s Marcus Aurelius.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. But he’s the old man. He’s not Commodus?

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. Joaquin Phoenix is Marcus Aurelius’s son who we learned about in this book did not follow in his father’s footsteps and was a tyrant turns out. He didn’t, again, spoiler alert, he didn’t actually die in a gladiatorial arena versus Russell Crowe, just in case y’all aren’t history buffs. I’m going to spoil it for you right now. Gladiator was not completely true.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s true. Although Russell Crowe was a gladiator and he is immortal.

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. Russell Crowe has been fighting for millennia. There’s a famous South Park episode where Russell Crowe and his sidekick Tugger the tugboat go travel around the world for a TV show where he fights random people. And I mean, it’s a documentary basically, he’s been doing it for thousands of years. We’re off to a great start of this episode.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, we’ve covered impressive material here. Okay, back to what I was saying. So…

Stephan Downes:
Back to… Okay, I guess.

Adam Rizvi:
Marcus Aurelius, this guy, seems like my impression of him is that he’s a very humble man, and he lived in the second century. I think like 170 AD. No. Yeah. Am I way off here? Anyway…

Stephan Downes:
The book’s in front of you. Let’s see. You keep talking, I’ll look it up while you’re talking and i’ll correct you if you’re wrong.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Stephan’s going to confirm these dates for me, but suffice it to say it was roughly 2,000 years ago. And he was the last of a line of emperors of the Roman Empire, five of them in a row that were considered the peaceful emperors. And that particular time in Rome was a very relatively peaceful time. There were wars and he was fighting off you know, barbarian hordes and whatnot. And there was a war in Armenia, or what was now Armenia at that time, and he was definitely tried as an emperor. But the powerful thing is, Stoicism is a philosophy it seems that can be utilized by and applied to any human being. It’s not unique to the aristocracy. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor of Rome, but one of his teachers, in fact, he actually quotes from a teacher of his by the name of Epictetus, who wrote the Enchiridion. Epictetus famously was a slave and eventually gained his freedom, but the years of slavery actually you know, forged him and his character in powerful ways. And so you have a slave who learned tremendous insights categorized as Stoicism that then an emperor learned from and was grateful for. I find that so fascinating that that kind of dichotomy can exist within the same philosophy.

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. And I mean, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but the book itself is really interesting because it was Marcus Aurelius’ personal journal essentially. Like it was never written to be publicly read, and so there’s really not… It’s interesting because you know it’s written without the audience in mind other than Marcus himself, but at the same time, it’s written in a way that’s supremely useful to me, right? To me picking it up and reading it 2,000 years later. It’s exceptional.

Adam Rizvi:
It’s actually, we call it meditations or it was renamed meditations, but actually, the title on the top of the book that was found to contain this actually said, “To himself.”

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
Which is basically like notes to himself.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
Which is really nice. And you can kind of see, I have this really interesting vision as I was reading this of like you know, a man at night at a study saying, “All right, Marcus, don’t forget this. Marcus, you know better, you know better. Don’t do it.” You know like giving himself little reminders.

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, since we’ve already talked for a good 10 minutes now, you want to talk about what Stoicism is?

Adam Rizvi:
I would love to, thank you.

Stephan Downes:
I don’t think we should mention it the entire episode, personally. I think we should just go ahead and not mentioned what it is the entire time.

Adam Rizvi:
Well, who’s to say we know what it is? We have an impression of… What’s that face?

Stephan Downes:
You have no shame. Do you ever hear someone at like a big public event make a pun on stage and there’s that one person in the audience who boos them? That’s me.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s you.

Stephan Downes:
I’m booing them for making the pun.

Adam Rizvi:
Boo!

Stephan Downes:
Boo! So my shaking my head was shaming you for making… Go ahead. It was a good transition. I’m sorry.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, it’s I can rely on you for one thing.

Stephan Downes:
To interrupt your train of thought.

Adam Rizvi:
Cold water.

Stephan Downes:
That’s true. That’s very true.

Adam Rizvi:
So basically, Stoicism, the word actually when someone thinks of a person who’s Stoic, you think of someone who has a stiff upper lip. They’re very serious you know. They’re very maybe thoughtful. They’re very logical and they’re emotionless, right? That’s the adjective of the word Stoic, but that is not where the word came from in reference to this philosophy. The word Stoic was used to describe the students of one of the first teachers of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium. And Zeno of Citium actually traveled to Athens to found a school, where he took a lot of the thoughts that he had about life and how to live a good virtuous life and how not to suffer psychologically, but how to do what he thought was right. And he founded a school because people did those kinds of things, and he spoke from a square platform in Athens that actually looked like a porch. And it was a painted porch, it had some murals and frescoes and whatnot. And people would say, “Let’s meet at the painted porch.” And in ancient Greek then, I’m going to butcher this, but the name for painted porch is Stoa Poikile. And Stoa Poikile it means painted portrait, and Stoa is the porch aspect of it, and so a student of the porch is a Stoic. So it actually has nothing to do with the term or the adjective Stoic. However, there is this interesting aspect of Stoicism that asks you to be dispassionate with the events of the world to look upon things objectively. And it favors someone who is not ruled by the passions, which is to say, lust and greed, envy, anger, like to not be ruled by emotions, but rather to be their master. And I think that’s why they kind of overlap, the term at least.

Stephan Downes:
Sure. Yeah. And I think Stoicism in my reading of it from Meditations and you know there’s a huge, there seems to be a very… There’s a Venn diagram of Madhyamaka Buddhism and Stoicism, and there’s a lot of overlap there. So I appreciated a lot of it. I thought a lot of it was extremely wise, you know. It doesn’t go to the depth that Buddhism does, but it doesn’t have to. It was still, it’s a really lovely philosophy, and it’s something that it’s easy to take seriously and it’s easy to use, and I think that’s incredibly valuable.

Adam Rizvi:
Not everything is a competition, Stephan.

Stephan Downes:
I disagree.

Adam Rizvi:
When I first proposed this…

Stephan Downes:
If you know me and how competitive I am and what a overachiever I am.

Adam Rizvi:
When I first proposed doing an episode on Stoicism to Stephan, I don’t know what you said, but you were ready to shit all over it just like…

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, but I do that to everything.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, that’s true.

Stephan Downes:
There’s very little between you and I. If you mention something, I immediately criticize it. I think you have it too easy in life. I think you have too many people that like and respect you, and I…

Adam Rizvi:
That’s fair.

Stephan Downes:
I want to make sure you stay humble.

Adam Rizvi:
I’ve earned it though with blood, sweat and tears.

Stephan Downes:
Okay, whatever you say, buddy. If that lets you sleep at night.

Adam Rizvi:
Okay, Stoicism. Tell me, do you have a quote for us, Stephan to kick us off.

Stephan Downes:
I do. I do. I do. Okay, I do have a quote. So this is on page 140.

Adam Rizvi:
It was a very quotable book, by the way.

Stephan Downes:
Actually, it is. You know, we’re going to try not to make the entire thing a quote off. Wait, no, it’s not page 140. Oh, God! Wait, I have it written down, I don’t need the page. Okay, 104, page 104.

Adam Rizvi:
Close.

Stephan Downes:
It’s number 15 on 104.

Adam Rizvi:
Okay.

Stephan Downes:
“Remember, you shouldn’t be surprised that a fig produces figs, nor the world what it produces. A good doctor isn’t surprised when his patients have fevers or a helmsmen when the wind blows against him.” So I love this quote. And the reason why I love this quote is a long time ago when I was first really deeply getting into non-duality I was reading a book by a some guy who’s alive currently. And he said, “A lot of people think that I don’t trust people, that I’m like a pessimist, that I’m always looking out for the bad things.” And I think you could say that there’s a little pessimism in Stoicism, but he’s saying, “I actually trust people completely. I trust them to be human,” right? He doesn’t expect unreasonable things out of other people, and that comes from knowledge of himself, right? That comes from knowing that like I am a limited person, that there’s a limited personality here. I’m not everything that I want to be. You know, I have those personal limitations that sometimes I’m less honest than I want to be or sometimes I get angrier than I want to be or whatever it may be. And to like understand that other people are the exact same way and that you don’t have to expect… You know, you don’t have to be disappointed when people act like people and the world acts like you know, the world in this case. That things are happening, you don’t have control over them, you may not like them. That doesn’t change you know. A wise person could for lack of a better word expects it.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, that actually reminds me a lot of one of the concepts that I came across when reading about Stoicism, which is the idea of amor fati, which means the love of fate. And this is a very interesting thing which is that things happen. So I think, first of all, Nietzsche said that, and he said that thousands of years after it was first expressed in Stoicism. But the idea is like Marcus Aurelius would say, “What happened was supposed to happen.” And many people would even classify Stoicism as having a sort of soft determinism…

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
Or a softly deterministic way of looking at the world. And I can see how that actually would help people, especially people who are suffering, because it says, “Listen, this was supposed to happen, or there is an intelligence that knows better than you and this happened for a reason.” And so what Marcus Aurelius would do, at least I got the impression here is that if something bad happened, he said, “Yeah, but this having happened allowed me the opportunity to do this and this, to learn this and this, and to help this and that person.” And that I found was interesting, because to me, it was not so much… I didn’t care so much about the deterministic outlook on life which we could go into and all that, but it was more that he had mental fortitude, he was able to reframe an event or a situation in his life in such a way that he stopped becoming its victim, but he…

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
He really owned it. And he said, “Yeah, this is meant to happen.” And he said, “This is part of the logos,” which is roughly I think, his equivalent of God or the universe or whatever, but logos meaning law, right? So this is the Divine Law. It’s the universe functioning as it’s supposed to function. And this is very reminiscent of cognitive behavioral therapy or modern forms of psychotherapy, which I think has funnily enough stumbled upon these same truths.

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to read a little bit, this is a great chance for me to read about Stoic cognition. So like the quote-unquote theory of cognition for Stoics. So this is from the introduction. It’s XXVII, and it’s speaking about cognition. So it says, “We have seen that for the Stoics universal order is represented by the logos,” which Adam you just mentioned. “The logos infuses and is wielded by our Hegimonicon, literally, that which guides which is the intellective part of our consciousness. In different contexts, it can approximate either will or character and it performs many of the functions that English speakers attribute to the brain or the heart,” which is interesting if you think about Buddhism. Anyway. “One of its primary functions is to process and assess the data we receive from our senses. At every instant, that objects and events in the world around us bombard us with impressions. As they do so, they produce fantasia, a mental impression. From this, the mind generates a perception, hypolepsis, which might be best compared to a print made from a photographic negative. Ideally, this print would be an accurate and faithful representation of the original, but it may not be. It may be blurred, or it may include shadow images that distort or obscure the original. Chief among these are inappropriate value judgments, the designation as good or evil of things that in fact, are neither good nor evil. For example, my impression that my house has just burned down is simply that, an impression or a port conveyed to me by my senses about an event in the outside world. By contrast, my perception that my house has burned down, and I have thereby suffered a terrible tragedy includes not only an impression, but also an interpretation imposed upon that initial impression by my powers of hypolepsis. It is by no means the only possible interpretation, and I’m not obliged to accept it. I may be a good deal better off if I declined to do so. It is in other words, not objects and events, but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception with the aim of protecting our mind from error.” Do you see why it sounds so much like Buddhism?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
Do you get it now? Do you get it?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. So it’s this idea that a thing happened, it’s my choice, with my ability to reason, my ability to pause to reflect. It’s… I have the ability to choose how I react, to choose how I interpret it, which is I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s a beautiful philosophy. I love it. I love that part. Love it.

Adam Rizvi:
Thank you for sharing, because I think this is, I’ve heard a guy named Brian Johnson who’s also a proponent of Stoic philosophy, say that one of the primary tenets of Stoicism, it has to do with locus of control. Do not worry about that which is out of your control. The only thing that’s within your control is how you perceive things. So your thoughts, and then to a certain extent, behavior. But there are aspects to behavior that are conditioned from upbringing and from once…

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
The psychology and all of that. But one’s perception… And Marcus Aurelius talks a lot about the only thing that he can control is his mind, which again has a lot of Buddhist overtones. Let me share a couple of two quotes that I think gets at that exact idea, which is locus of control. This is actually the very first sentence in Book Two, page 17, page 17. “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil, but I’ve seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and I have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own, not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind and possessing a share of the Divine. And so none of them can hurt me.”

Stephan Downes:
You know, you know what this really reminds me of? And I’m going to make another Buddhist reference, but I think you’ll appreciate it.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, do it.

Stephan Downes:
He reminds me of Shantideva in the Bodhicharyavatara.

Adam Rizvi:
Yes.

Stephan Downes:
This is basically the Roman Bodhicharyavatara. This is like a guide for life. And all of these themes, I mean, except for like the Wisdom chapter in the Bodhicharyavatara are also here. It’s really exceptional. Like, like truly an exceptional book.

Adam Rizvi:
So what Stephan’s referring to is a book called The Way of the Bodhisattva, by a saint, a Buddhist saint, teacher, scholar named Shantideva, who was I think at one point a student and member of Nalanda, a super famous Buddhist University in India, many, many, many years ago, hundreds of years ago. And who… he was an iconoclast.

Stephan Downes:
That’s true, but we’re not…

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, we’re not talking about that.

Stephan Downes:
We’ll cover Shantideva in another episode.

Adam Rizvi:
We’ll have another episode.

Stephan Downes:
He was an absolute iconoclast.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. So okay, here’s on page, a little further, page 19, Book Two, line nine. He’s telling himself this, this is Marcus Aurelius sitting down telling himself, “Don’t ever forget these things: the nature of the world, my nature, how I relate to the world, and what proportion of it I make up. That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you from speaking and acting in harmony with it always.” And in particular, I want to highlight this aspect. He says, “Don’t forget these things: the nature of the world,” right? So he’s focusing on logos, how things are, right? Just being objective. “My nature,” he’s probably speaking to the mind, right? “And how I relate to the world.” This is the thing, this is like the one thing that is in our control. How do you choose to relate to what happens in your life? And when he refers to the world, this is a really humbling statement, “What proportion of it I make up,” and here is an emperor of the largest empire at that time, and really, for what’s been on the history of Earth, humanity…

Stephan Downes:
Genghis Khan would like a word.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. One of the largest. He says to remind himself, “What proportion of the world I make up.” It’s one man, one man. And multiple times throughout this, he repeatedly reminds himself, it’s just one life, it’s one man. And so it’s not about seeking glory or fame or even being remembered by your posterity. I can’t quote this, but even later on he has a line that says, “What use is it to have fame when the people who will remember your name after you’re gone will themselves die? And those after them will die? And then on and on.” He just really takes the point home that just not about you know, the so called successes of man at the time, which by the way, I’ll say are the exact same trappings of modern day man.

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. And I mean, again, we come back to the fact that like this is the private, essentially, diary or journal of an emperor, like literally an emperor. This isn’t like someone with nothing at stake, right? There are plenty of Roman Emperor’s that were complete tyrants you know, that were absolutely horrific human beings, and this is a man in the same position as them, but he has chosen something radically different. And I mean, it’s really exceptional. It’s truly exceptional. You know, you read about these leaders in history, these mythic figures almost who you can kind of romanticize as oh, they were you know, this perfect human who only did good things and completely had the good of humanity or whatever in their minds and hearts at all time. And you can kind of have rose tinted glasses on, but this is truly, like I don’t know much about Marcus Aurelius outside of this book you know, I’m not a student of Roman history by the imagination, but this is a really genuine, heartfelt journal about someone who’s trying to always show up and be as good as they can be. It’s really sweet. It’s exceptional.

Adam Rizvi:
I found it very telling that actually in this journal, the very first book, or the very first chapter is actually his gratitude to everyone he’s ever met in his life. Like he literally is like… Actually, no, the title of book one is Debts And Lessons, and he lists, I’ll give you an example, number one, “My grandfather, Verus, character and self-control.” He lists what he learned from him.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, what he… Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
“My father, from my own memories and his reputation, integrity and manliness. My mother, her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong, but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived, not in the least like the rich.” And keep in mind, he was the adopted son of the Emperor at the time. He wasn’t the blood son, and so he wasn’t born into aristocracy, the Roman aristocracy. I think it was a common practice at that time for emperors to adopt sons and have them become their heirs. But I just think it’s so sweet. It’s like he’s writing down all the people who have impacted him and how and why and what he’s learned. And I read this, and you know, it’s really beautiful. He has all these people and teachers that he’s learned from. I thought about doing that myself. I was like, “Well, let me take some time, sit down, and list the names of all the people in my life that have had an impact on me and what I learned from them, what qualities they’ve taught me, how I’ve grown from them. What are my debts and lessons to the characters in the drama and play of my life?”

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a great practice. I love it. And this was actually, I mean, this was a practice, right? So part of Stoicism at the time, especially in, I’m sure it’s recommended today is you know, the practice of journaling, the practice of reflecting. That is quote-unquote, the practice of Stoicism is this constant reflection which I think is really great.

Adam Rizvi:
Do you got another quote for us?

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, I think I… Well, I do, but you know what I actually want to do is I want to spend a little time… I mean, we could quote Marcus Aurelius for a while…

Adam Rizvi:
That’s true.

Stephan Downes:
And we could you know, talk about him, and I think we’ve covered him a lot, but I really would love to just discuss some of these principles with you because I find myself, you know I’ve compared a lot of them to Buddhism right now, but I really want to actually talk about them without just saying, “Oh, that’s just like Buddhism.” So, do you want to take some of these and maybe just hash them out?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. So I there’s one that I want to take, which is called… So we talked about amor fati which is the love of fate, which is accepting what is. The other one that I really liked was Deo volente. Deo volente means is that literally God willing. Deos is God and volente is will. So, God willing, which by some modern teachers is called the reserve clause, which is saying, you’re going to do what you feel is best in this moment, right? Let’s say, I am starting a business, right? And I don’t really know how to go about my marketing strategy, but from what I’ve learned and what I feel to do, I’m going to do X, Y, and Z. I’m going to take these actions, and my goal is to have success in this particular way. Now, that would be fine to end right there, that this is my goal, but I think the Stoic would say, “This is my goal, Deo volente.” God willing, right? Which is very interesting because in Islam and Christianity, there’s that idea. In Islam, you’d say inshallah, right? Which also is if God wills. In Christianity you would say God willing, right? But it’s the idea that as a human being you will take action of your own freewill to pursue what you think is the greatest good for yourself and those around you, but you understand that you don’t have the bird’s eye view, you don’t have the big picture, that there is something higher than you, maybe deeper than you, something about the universe or what Marcus would say, “Logos,” that’s part of the plan. And if your goal is not part of that plan, then it won’t happen. And a Stoic would be okay with that. They’d be like, “Yep, what happens is what is meant to happen.” And there’s a really great way of Stoicism, a great way that Stoicism teaches one to accept what is, and that is also very common in modern cognitive behavioral psychology, is super common in Buddhism and different philosophical traditions. But you know, you offer that God Willing reserve clause in order to be in harmony with what is.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. This is a… What comes to my mind when you talk about this is it’s like a remedy for like decision paralysis. So there are… You know we all know somebody, maybe it’s us, who is constantly worried about which decision is the best decision to make is, you know, if I make this decision, what are the bad things that are going to happen? How do I make the right decision? And I think that and in line with this kind of Stoic philosophy is really using the information that you have in doing the best you can. And that’s all you can do, right? Like there’s no presumption. Like you’re saying, we don’t have the bird’s eye view. We don’t know… We don’t have this view of time that is outside of what we see in front of us. You know, we can’t know what the best decision is, and in fact, it’s probably… Anyway, I won’t get into that. I’m going to get into technicalities.

Adam Rizvi:
I just remembered a quote that actually relates to just this.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, great.

Adam Rizvi:
I read this quote, I’m just going to give some context for anyone who’s listening and might resonate with this. There were moments in my life when I was a lot younger where I was depressed. And there were moments where I was in bed, I got up, and I did not want to get… I didn’t want to pull the covers off, I didn’t want to start my day. I didn’t see the point in it. And it’s to all of those who may feel that, I am going to read this, because this is what Marcus Aurelius would say to that person. And this is interesting, it’s a little bit of a long quote, this is basically him having a dialogue with himself. And I imagine Marcus Aurelius actually in bed, nice and cozy, trying to convince himself to get up and start his day, even though he doesn’t want to. “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, ‘I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’ ‘But it’s nicer here.'” That’s the other part of him that says that. “So you were born to feel nice? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? ‘But we have to sleep some time.’ Agreed, but nature set a limit on that, as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that, but not of working. There, you’re still below your quota.”

Stephan Downes:
I love it. I love it. Absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s cute.

Stephan Downes:
I don’t, I don’t relate at all.

Adam Rizvi:
Of course, you wouldn’t.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, that’s wonderful.

Adam Rizvi:
It’s nice because it’s like you don’t need to worry about what you’re supposed to do. I think it’s like, I was sharing this with someone, this might be a little controversial, maybe to some, but in the West…

Stephan Downes:
Uh-oh!

Adam Rizvi:
Especially in the modern day, there’s this obsession with what is my purpose? As if it’s like there is some written out purpose for every single person out there. And we spend half our lives finding out what it is you’re supposed to do, all the while living in this uncertainty of like, “Well, I have to find my purpose. I have to find my purpose.” I think Marcus Aurelius would say, “Just get up.” And then what did he say? “Get up and do what you were meant to do. Do your job as a human being. Put…” What is it? “Look at the plants, the birds, the ants and the bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can.” Hey, there you go. It’s right there.

Stephan Downes:
I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. You know, i’m definitely, I’m someone who’s on the far spectrum of action over thought, right? Like, I am someone who when I get into something, when I’m interested in something, I go like full blast 1,000 miles an hour, and then I like do some of it, and then I decide most of the time it’s not for me or whatever you know, but I got some experience and everything. And then there are people who are you know, again, the decision paralysis, like you’re saying, “What am I supposed to do?” And they’re people who are really waiting for like the universe or whatever to show them what they’re supposed to do. And I’ve always found that by doing things, like that’s how you learn if you like it or not, right? Because there’s a lot of people who are, whether they want to be an artist or whether they want to do XYZ, but then if you actually like put them in a situation where they have to do it professionally all day long, like they start hating it. That’s the classic. I mean, my wife’s a graphic designer, so I’ve seen this trope. And in her world is people who are professional artists, and it kind of like sucks the love of art from them. But I feel like if you’re not out there trying things, if you’re not out there in action, even if you don’t know if it’s for sure, right? You don’t have to have this like perfect picture of like what is the perfect thing for me, but you just try stuff, you just do things and see what works and what doesn’t. And that’s how you gain wisdom. You know, for me, that’s been a real source of wisdom is the fact that I’ve tried different careers, that I’ve tried different hobbies, that I have all these things that like have added to my life in so many different ways. And none of them they’re not the thing that I’m doing forever, right. None of them are my life’s-long passion, but they’re things that I’ve enjoyed and you know, I just take it as that. I don’t get lost in the search for you know, finding the thing that is the one thing I will wake up every single day and love every moment of.

Adam Rizvi:
Right. And I think I can’t help but…

Stephan Downes:
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, Adam.

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, that should have been slower. Sorry.

Stephan Downes:
Oh, I was imagining the like really chorus of applause of… You had me there for a second.

Adam Rizvi:
One of these days. One of these days.

Stephan Downes:
Cold water, Adam.

Adam Rizvi:
Cold water. Actually, this reminds me of… So one of the things that people might say when you say, “Well, go and do what you feel like doing,” there’s a fear of failure, right? There’s a fear of, “Well, I’m not going to succeed at what I do.”

Stephan Downes:
I have bad news for those people. It’s you’re just going to fail.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s what I say. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
One of my favorite quotes of all time is a Michael Jordan quote, and it’s something like, “I’ve missed over…” What is it? Oh, hold on. Hold on. You keep talking. I’m going to find it. It’s exactly to do with this since it was my…

Adam Rizvi:
Go ahead. I think I know where you’re going with this.

Stephan Downes:
It was mantra… Hey, you probably do. My mantra for years.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I think you’re looking for the exact number of shots he’s missed.

Stephan Downes:
Exactly.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
All right, I’m going to take a guess, all right, while you’re looking for it. I have no idea. But I’m going to guess 5,000, maybe 5,500? Wait, no. Let’s see. He’s been around for 20 years. I have no idea. I don’t know Michael Jordan enough. I’m sorry for all those basketball fans out there. I know I’ve disappointed you.

Stephan Downes:
God!

Adam Rizvi:
The show, the floor.

Stephan Downes:
No, no. I found it. Shit.

Adam Rizvi:
How many did he… How many shots did he…

Stephan Downes:
Okay, ready?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.”

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, I was close.

Stephan Downes:
“I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” There’s another quote. So that quote used to give me chills. I love that quote. There’s another quote that I love too. “The expert has failed more times than the novice has even tried.”

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, wow. I haven’t heard that one. That’s great.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
I have something Stoic Stoicism related to this.

Stephan Downes:
I bet you do.

Adam Rizvi:
Okay, so, did my research. So Epictetus is the slave Stoic, right? Who actually managed to make his way into Marcus Aurelius’ meditations. Like he is that influential. He talks about using challenges to strengthen oneself, or given what we were talking about, using the failure as fuel for the fire. He says, “Imagine the gods seeing that you are ready to grow, and you’re walking in the nature, sending you a young buck to fight with,” right? The idea that you’re going to come across the challenge, because the Stoics kind of believed that they were these gods and the gods would give them what they needed.

Stephan Downes:
You mean modern day 21st century Stoics, right? You mean like…

Adam Rizvi:
Well, no, Epictetus and the like.

Stephan Downes:
Young man number 2,074 who’s trying to start his new tech startup for the app that’s going to change the world. That guy?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, to him, keep in mind that there are Stoic gods out there who are capricious. I’m kidding. So for Epictetus, there were gods who would bring down challenges for you. And he says, “Imagine that the gods give you a young buck,” that is for you to wrestle with, that is for you to fight with. And through that, you become all the more stronger. And the other thing that was described about in my reading regarding Stoicism is this idea of like you can imagine yourself as a candle flame. If there’s a big gust of wind, right? The candle flame will be blown out. But if you become a fire, like a strong fire, and that same gust of wind comes, it will fuel the fire and the fire will grow, and it will spread. So it’s that either you get to the point where you are like consuming the challenges of life, you eat it up, you take it on, you face what you’re afraid of, you face the challenge, because you know you will get stronger through it. And so then it’s at a point where like you’re looking for that next challenge, you’re looking for what life throws at you. And Seneca, another famous Stoic, who was actually the mentor of Nero, one of the most horrible people in human history, and a horrible Emperor by different… By all accounts. Seneca tried his best I think, to steer him in the right direction, but ended up being forced to commit suicide by Nero’s decree. Seneca was the one that said, “We must always be ready for the challenges that life will throw against us because it will happen.” And I like that way of looking at things. It’s like you said, Stephan, failure is going to happen. Your choice, your only control is, how are you going to choose to react to it? How are you going to respond to the challenge that life throws at you?

Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean that’s… It’s directly tied into this idea of Stoic cognition, the idea that things are happening, and then we have these impressions of them, and those impressions may or may not be correct because you know life is happening to us. And, and we don’t get to always choose what happens, right? In fact, very rarely do we choose, you know. We might choose the direction we had, but we don’t choose you know, what the path looks like, necessarily, but that is our choice to act, right? And it’s our choice to take action. And we have no control over the things. Obviously, if I’m a locus of control, right? We just keep coming back to the same things. We don’t have control over these things, and we just have the choice to act. And so there’s this additional attitude of you know, using challenges as fuel for the fire, which I mean, makes coming from an emperor total sense, right? Because this is a man whose life is full of challenges, right? And he talks about them in detail in this book, whether it be court life or wars that he’s faced with, that his empire is faced with. So it’s full of it.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. I want to dive in a little bit into the metaphysics of Stoicism, which…

Stephan Downes:
Okay, let’s do it.

Adam Rizvi:
I don’t think I’ve really tried to do my research in this field, and Stoicism, I think one of its appeals to the modern man is the fact that it’s not religious, it gets at the… Which I think also incidentally, is the appeal to Buddhism.

Stephan Downes:
You mean modern Stoicism is not religious.

Adam Rizvi:
Yes.

Stephan Downes:
You mean secular Stoicism in modern times, right?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, exactly. Well, well said.

Stephan Downes:
You don’t mean Stoicism, you mean current 21st century stuff?

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. The way we interpret Stoicism now. Back then, this is the point that I want to make that…

Stephan Downes:
There’s nothing on my shoulder about this, just want to be very clear.

Adam Rizvi:
Except the giant chip.

Stephan Downes:
Maybe we’ll get into it someday. I don’t know.

Adam Rizvi:
Okay, so what I noticed is that in the modern way of talking about Stoicism there’s no talk about a metaphysics behind it, which is to say like the big picture, like a non-physical understanding of reality, like what is behind the veil or if there even is a veil, so to speak. Like, is there more than just physical reality? Is there life after death? Does the mind continue onward? Like these are questions that I’m sure Marcus Aurelius thought about. And so he offers a possibility of what he thinks might happen, but he himself even says something to the fact that this is one possibility, which is to say like, if this was him writing to himself, he didn’t really know what was after death, or he certainly didn’t have a strong belief in it. So okay, this is page 4121. Oh, by the way, we didn’t mention this, but Stephan and I are reading from a modern translation.

Stephan Downes:
Oh, good call. It’s important.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, of meditations by Gregory Hayes, A New Translation with an introduction. The reason why this was chosen is because there’s so many different forms of this, but this one was translated particularly for the modern, I think a contemporary understanding of Marcus Aurelius’ written language. So he says, “If our souls survive, how does the air find room for them, all of them since the beginning of time? How does the earth find room for all the bodies buried in it since the beginning of time? They linger for whatever length of time, and then through change and decomposition, make room for others. So too, with the souls that inhabit the air, they linger a little and then are changed, diffused and kindled into fire, absorbed into the logos from which all things spring, and so make room for new arrivals. One possible answer. But we shouldn’t think only of the mass of buried bodies, there are the ones consumed on a daily basis by us and by other animals. How many are swallowed up like that, entombed in the bodies of those nourished by them, and yet there’s room for them all converted into flesh and blood, transformed to air and fire? How is the truth of this determined? Through analysis, material, and cause.” To me when I read that, I think that he sees life as a huge cycle. In a later quote, he says, all of the world is one being, is one being that has an order to it. He uses the word souls and divine but he says that even after death souls go into the air, right? And are dissolved and converted into something new. And so I think that’s at least Marcus Aurelius… And I think he’s emblematic of a lot of the ancient Stoics as well, that we are a part of the universe, we’re part of the cosmos. And when we die, this life is over. It never comes back, and it gets recycled into the universe in a large cycle upon cycle of change. And he talks multiple times in this book about how change is like the one constant of life. Things will change. That to me is the closest I think Marcus Aurelius gets to a metaphysics.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. And it’s again, it’s very practical, and I find myself reflecting on things similarly. And this is kind of, as we’re talking about… I know, we’re trying to find some sort of metaphysics, and I agree with you that it kind of… You know and this could be because my understanding of like Roman and Greek, I’m bunching them together here, but belief of the gods, it wasn’t like modern religions where the divine dictates day-to-day activities, right? They were more about your devotion and reliance on them, and as you were saying, God willing, right? But there wasn’t like moral code of conduct that that God prescribed right, in the way that Christianity or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism does. There was a big separation between the like religious life and the private life. And so that’s why something like this, where you can kind of ruminate on metaphysics, and it really has nothing to do with the Roman gods right, they’re almost like separate in his mind it seems. And in a way that doesn’t make sense to the modern reader, because that’s pretty much no matter what culture you’re brought up in, the religion of your culture has a set of ethics, and they’re very related to the religion, and that just wasn’t the case back then. And so it’s you know, we’re getting these Stoicism isn’t supposed to necessarily answer those questions, right? It does get into them, and it does have these assumptions about the world, you know, the idea of a soul and things like that. And it has these assumptions, but it doesn’t really flesh them out. It’s not a theology, right. To me, especially the way Marcus Aurelius writes about it, it’s really about the practical day-to-day aspect. And that’s kind of what I want to talk about because obviously, this is something that I consider all the time. And so, you know I’ve been doing a lot of gardening recently. We have a house for the first time, we have a big beautiful backyard that we’re planting like crazy in. And I’m often thinking there’s a lot of worms in the soil or bugs. I dig up mulch, and there’s a bajillion centipede scattered everywhere. And I’m always thinking about like what kind of life I’m disturbing, right? And that these are animals. These are creatures that want to live just like I do, right. And the decisions that I’m making when I dig up a chunk of soil and put it somewhere, like how many beings am I killing, right? How much life am I disrupting? And instead of being overwhelmed, the extreme version of this is Jainism, just for anybody interested.

Adam Rizvi:
They wear masks that don’t breathe in microscopic insects.

Stephan Downes:
They wear masks and they don’t go outside in the monsoon season for fear of crushing anything under their foot and things like that. Anyway, we’re not talking about Jainism, but it’s really, it’s not to be paralyzed by this understanding as to really like be humbled by it, right? You know, the decisions we make have consequence. They do affect other people, other creatures. And then at the same time, as important as our lives seem to us right now, 500, 1,000 years, who will remember? Just like he said, one of the original quotes you had about fame, like not really worrying about fame as you know… For me, that comes back to how is this action I’m taking right now affecting the lives of others around me whether they be big or small. And some of those decisions I make and I say you know, like “I’m not really willing to compromise on this. This is something that I feel I have to do, whether it be the food that I eat, or the fact that I’m gardening” Right, like I really want to grow beautiful food, plants full of food to feed me. So like I have to make a decision like, “Okay, I have to disrupt this life.” Right? But at least you’re conscious of it, at least you’re aware of it and you’re respecting it. And I think for me, that’s what Stoicism comes back to is repeatedly is this contemplation, this moment by moment contemplation and consideration of the decisions we’re making.

Adam Rizvi:
Marcus Aurelius had to make similar decisions. As an emperor, he would go and lead…

Stephan Downes:
Gardening? He was a big gardener?

Adam Rizvi:
It’s possible.

Stephan Downes:
He made the same decisions I’m making, Adam?

Adam Rizvi:
Um, just some decisions with apparent gravitas. It might be a little bit more weighty of a decision than yours.

Stephan Downes:
Which Germanic tribe to slay next.

Adam Rizvi:
He had to decide who to kill, you know like, which armies to destroy, and he was pretty successful…

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, good point.

Adam Rizvi:
Actually, in his campaigns. But the life of a centipede and the life of a Germanic warrior are like you know I mean…

Stephan Downes:
Same thing.

Adam Rizvi:
Same thing. So but here’s the thing. This is not an emperor who I think would have treated the loss of life callously. Let me just read this quote, perhaps one of our last in this episode. Page 27 in Book Three, sentence number two, “We should remember that even nature’s inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven, the ridges are just byproducts of the baking and yet pleasing somehow. They Rouse our appetite without our knowing why. Or how ripe figs begin to burst, and olives on the point of falling, the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stocks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth.” I feel like here’s someone who is very attentive to nature.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Rizvi:
And I have no doubt he very much considered the fact that he was ending the lives of others. But it’s like he said at the beginning, “Do your job.” He was the Emperor and he had to make safe his empire, so he made decisions.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
So Stephan, tell me, how would you… This was the first time that you really dived into and explored Stoicism, right?

Stephan Downes:
For sure.

Adam Rizvi:
So having been exposed to it, at least Marcus Aurelius’ version of it, what are your thoughts? What’s the takeaway? What’s your takeaway?

Stephan Downes:
Legitimately, my thoughts…

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, straight up.

Stephan Downes:
Straight up?

Adam Rizvi:
Straight up.

Stephan Downes:
Wait, really? All right.

Adam Rizvi:
I mean, yeah. Just don’t… PG 13, buddy.

Stephan Downes:
Listeners of the show, we talk about a lot of religions. I am openly religious. I’ve talked about you know, my Buddhist life in pretty much every episode. And I have a personality that’s really well-suited for religion, it turns out, but there’s probably a lot of you listening that aren’t. And I really feel like if you want a philosophy that has pretty much the good stuff that I have found in the religions I have practiced without any of the religious trappings, Stoicism you should check it out. It seems like an incredibly useful, practical, humble tool, and philosophy for navigating day-to-day life, and I really, genuinely can’t think of a better one that doesn’t, unless you start going in religions. And that’s just my personal take and my personal take on religions too. I mean, I think it’s for all intents and purposes of as far as day-to-day life goes, I think it’s exceptional.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s great. Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
What about you? You’ve known what Stoicism was before this episode, yeah?

Adam Rizvi:
Right. I think I first really dived into Stoicism about a year ago, but really in preparation for this episode, this last month I’ve been reading a lot, watching a lot and sort of studied Seneca, studied Epictetus, Cato, Zeno and Marcus Aurelius. What I got out of all of it is this is so critical of a foundation, if every single human being took on these principles, I think there would be far less suffering in the world. And these principles, incidentally, I think are bubbling up in mass awareness, mass consciousness in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, in the form of modern psychology, humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, in the way that we understand modern sociology. The idea of what’s his name? Graves’ Spiral Dynamics was an idea of how the…

Stephan Downes:
You can’t be making stuff up like this.

Adam Rizvi:
I am not. Spiral Dynamics, check it out. I think Beck and Graves.

Stephan Downes:
All right.

Adam Rizvi:
Are the last names of the people. This idea that humanity sociologically is evolving and having greater and greater perspectives of itself. And the relationship between the individual to society is itself shifting as… Let me give you a brief example of what I mean by Spiral Dynamics is 1,000 years ago, maybe more, 3,000 years ago, we existed as individuals of tribes, right? And then who we were was the tribe, and we had to fight off animals, and the lightning that came down had its own will, and we were being punished by the gods, right? It was very a magical, animistic world. And then that expanded to nation states, right? And I’m jumping several layers here. And then who we were was the nation state, like I am a Roman, I’m part of the Roman Empire. And then it still has the us-then dynamic, but the sense of self has now expanded to something much larger. The modern equivalent of that is patriotism. Right, like Nationalistic fervor comes from that sense of self-identity. But then that expands even further where you see yourself as a global citizen, you are a human being, and we share that sameness. And I think Marcus Aurelius would sort of see himself as a human part of a grand cycle that is the universe, that is one with logos. He even says, “I am one with logos.” And so what I would say going back to that original thought is that Stoicism captures some of these fundamental ideas, and I’ll recap some of them here for those who want a summary. You can’t control everything that happens in life, but you can control how you perceive life, and to a certain extent your behavior, and the actions that you take. But your ability to be aware of your mind and decide how your mind functions, what you think, and how you respond to life, that is within your control. And an aspect of how you respond is do you shy away from the challenges that life throws at you? Or do you say, bring it on, knowing that you’re going to grow from it? And that would be amor fati. And then there’s this idea of Deo volente, like being willing to allow something unexpected to happen and going with the flow, rolling with the punches, and being in harmony with what is. I think those would be some of the core tenets of Stoicism. And like I said, I would suggest take one of those things, one of the ideas that you heard Steve and I talk about and see how it is to apply that in your life. I am sure it’s going to be helpful.

Stephan Downes:
Beautiful. Beautifully said.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s what I would have to say. What are we going to do next Stephan? What’s our next episode?

Stephan Downes:
You know what I really want to do is I want to do Pero.

Adam Rizvi:
What? What is that?

Stephan Downes:
Peronism. So this idea that Buddhists met Greeks in Afghanistan, and then Greece imported Buddhist philosophy, a lot of Buddhist philosophy.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, Greek philosophy meets Buddhism, that sounds exciting.

Stephan Downes:
That’s my own personal interest, but I think we have this huge list of books that we want to do, and every time we’re like… Adam, and I we’ll say, “Oh, you know, we should really do four or five episodes on like this topic.” Right? It will be like Christian mystics. We have this Christian mystics episode that has been percolating for a while or like doing keeping on with the masters of the Far East, doing like Krishnamurti and other like things that came out of Theosophy.

Adam Rizvi:
Esotericism. Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, like Western esotericism. And then something like this happens where it’s like, “Hey, let’s do Stoicism. Want to do Stoicism? Okay, great.” And then all of our plans go out the window. So like, I think we have a Christian mystics, some more Christian mystics in the oven.

Adam Rizvi:
I really want to do St. Teresa of Avila.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, we have…

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, she’s so good.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, and then Meister Eckhart.

Adam Rizvi:
Meister Eckhart. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephan Downes:
And then…

Adam Rizvi:
Man, those guys were so good.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. And then Krishnamurti and his whole like, his whole trajectory which is fascinating.

Adam Rizvi:
That’s fascinating.

Stephan Downes:
Sri Aurobindo.

Adam Rizvi:
Wow, yeah.

Stephan Downes:
I mean, there’s so many of these exceptional mystics. And you know, I mean, I guess, we’re covering a philosopher now, so maybe the next one we should do a mystic.

Adam Rizvi:
I think…

Stephan Downes:
Maybe we should, we’ve done with the heaviness of philosophy and maybe we can have this one with…

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, this has been heavy.

Stephan Downes:
Someone who like experienced miracles and communicated with the divine.

Adam Rizvi:
And who levitated, apparently.

Stephan Downes:
And who levitated. Oh, really, you’re going to like disclaim that? Apparently, she levitated. I don’t believe her.

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, I have so much to say. Okay, great. Well, for those of you listening, if this episode is on YouTube and you’re watching this on YouTube, fingers crossed, put it in the comments what you want us to do next. And for those listening on other formats, go to our Discord and/or go to our website, letterstothesky.com, send us an email, or shout our names really, really loud. There is a possibility we might hear, possibility.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah, guys, I’ve just gotten my second COVID shot so I have really good 5G reception, and if you scream really loud, there’s a chance that Bill Gates will patch you through to me.

Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, the microchip in your body now.

Stephan Downes:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Rizvi:
Oh, great.

Stephan Downes:
So scream really loud. Scream loud the topic you want us to do and we’ll get it here.

Adam Rizvi:
On that note, peace out Stephan.

Stephan Downes:
Goodbye, Adam.