Your Life Meaningless? Choose Nothingness! (ENGLISH from 02:01)

I didn't know for sure what would happen but of course the enemy. The enemy.

More than 15 years. Twenty-five years.

Twenty-holts.

Thank you.

Look at us. This is where we ended after hundreds of years of alleged progress, science, reason. This is where we ended. We ended here.

We have wars everywhere. We have more refugees today than ever in history. 80 million. We have hatred between men and women, gender wars. We have collapsing relationships. We have anti-social behaviors, anything from adultery to crime.

We are not doing well. We have failed collectively and we have failed individually and we are still failing and it's getting worse by the day on every level.

It's not only the pandemic. The pandemic will go away. Viruses come, viruses go.

Unfortunately, we stay.

So we are faced with a systemic failure. Something is seriously wrong about us. We are not getting things done properly. We are making absolutely mistaken choices. Something in our decision-making process had gone awry and yet we don't pay attention to the really important things.

We live in a death cult. Our civilization had become a death cult.

What is a death cult? A death cult is when you prefer objects to people. When you're emotionally invested in smartphones, in television sets, in expensive cars, in beautiful furniture, while at the same time neglecting and abandoning your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your community.

We are living in a civilization that values objects in material positions over other people, over human beings. A civilization that sacrifices human beings to preserve material positions.

And so this is a death cult because material positions, it may come as a shock to you. They're dead. They're dead objects.

I've spent, I'm more known for my work on narcissism. My work on personality disorders, narcissism. This is what I'm known for.

And I have tens of millions of viewers on my websites and YouTube channels and so on and so forth and they're all focused on narcissism. I've taken a break from narcissism and in the last year I try to develop an answer or a solution to our predicament, to our current state.

Now that is very, very arrogant and very haughty to say that one can find a solution to the human condition. And narcissistic of course and grandiose.

But I think each and every one of us should attempt to come with a solution. Each and every one of us should wake up in the morning and ask, how am I going to fix this? How am I going to fix this in my family, in my community, in my neighborhood, in my workplace, in my country? How am I going to fix this?

It is not arrogant to ask this question. It is not even arrogant to give an answer. You don't have to have the right answer. You don't need to have the right answer.

But you need to ask the question. You need to ask it.

And today, together, we are going to focus on the questions and we are going to try to explore one possibility, one solution, one answer.

It happens to be mine.

So maybe it will not fit you. Maybe my answer and my solution would not be your answer and your solution and that is perfectly okay.

But I hope to provoke in you the need to ask the question.

Because we are all the walking dead. We live in a society of consumerism, short-termism. We live increasingly more atomized, increasingly more isolated.

Macedonia is a good case. The Balkans is a good case.

I have just come back from a trip to Canada. I work with the United States. I teach in the outreach program of the best universities in the United States.

The situation there is beyond hope. Beyond hope.

So this lecture, this conversation actually, it is not a lecture even, this conversation is about asking the right questions.

Before we go into the discussion itself, I have spent the last year developing what I call the nothingness system or the nothingness philosophy of life.

There is a new YouTube channel that I just opened where I am posting the steps towards implementing this philosophy of life. There was a documentary made about my new system of philosophy. It was made in Zolan's office, Zolan Vitanov's office.

The documentaries came here to shoot the documentary.

And this is the first lecture ever given on the topic globally. It is the first lecture ever.

So if we are making history or not, it remains to be seen. But we are definitely doing something unprecedented.

Before I start talking to you, I would like to give you four images or five images. I would like you to keep them in your mind because we are going to revisit them time permitting.

At the beginning, you will not understand what I am talking about. And that's okay. Sometimes I don't understand what I am talking about. It makes two of us.

But bear these five images in mind. We are going to come back to them.

Each one of us is like an onion. We have layers and layers and layers.

And the role of anyone who claims to have a solution or claims to ask the right question is to peel the layers of the onion.

So you peel the first layer of the onion and the second layer of the onion and the third layer of the onion, layer after layer after layer, until there is no onion.

People are very afraid of this process. People don't want to peel the layers of the onion because they are afraid that if they peel all the layers, nothing will be left behind.

It's a terror of being self-aware. There's a fear of being self-aware. There's a fear of asking the difficult questions about yourself, your life, people around you, your choices and your decisions. This is peeling the onion.

You don't want to peel the onion. You want to pretend that the onion is okay as it is, but it is rotting from the inside. You need to peel the onion.

And don't be afraid because after you peel all the layers of the onion, one thing is always left behind. One thing is always left behind. The smell of the onion. The smell of the onion is you. This is your essence, not the layers, the smell. And this will never go away. Nevermind what you do. Nevermind what you ask. Nevermind what you discover. There will always be the smell of the onion, your essence, who you really are, your identity.

Do not be afraid to peel the onion. In Western civilization, we say this Christmas soon, at least for the Catholics, and so being a good Catholic that I am, I'm a Jew. So we say, may all your dreams come true. It's a bad sentence because the dreams we have today, they're mostly focused on material objects. They are dead dreams. Our dreams are dead. We're going to talk about it soon. We are dreaming dead dreams. We are trapped in nightmares that used to be our dreams.

So I want to suggest to you another sentence. Not may all your dreams come true, but may all your gifts come true. May all your gifts come true. Each one of you is a packet of gifts. You're not even aware how many gifts are incorporated in each one of you. And so on this Christmas, forthcoming Christmas, may all your gifts come true, not your dreams.

Next thing, if you have the wrong key, and I want you to bear in mind this imagery. We're going to revisit it, yes?

If you have the wrong key, never mind how many doors you have. You will never find the right destination.

If you have the wrong key, never mind how many doors come across you in your life. You will never be able to open any one of them.

It's not the doors that matter. The doors in your life do not matter. It's the key.

You must not look for doors. All of us are looking for doors. Do not look for doors. Look for the right key.

Once you find the right key, one day you will find the right door.

You don't have the right key. No number of doors will help you.

Next, think hard. Doubt everything. Doubt everything except nothing.

Ask, don't answer. Ask, doubt. I'll give you an example.

Right now, where do we have more information?

In a system that has order and structure, or in a system that is chaotic and confused? Where do we have more information?

Order. Who said order? All right. Who supports this answer?

Number two, number three, four, five, many. Would you say that the majority think that where there is order there is information?

This is the majority view. It happens to be wrong. It happens to be completely wrong.

And the reason you believe that this is the correct answer is because you had been told that this is the correct answer.

The state, for example, is telling you we need law and order. You have been told since this age that order and structure are good for you, that rules are good for you, that this is the only place of safety and the only way you can extract meaning and information from the world.

And yet, what you have been told since this age is wrong. Why do you still believe it?

Because you are not asking questions. You are not doubting enough.

This is a system with perfect order and structure. It has perfect order and structure. This is a messy system, a system with disorder and chaos.

Would you agree that this system is more structured, more organized, more orderly than this system? You would agree.

Where do we have more information?

Here. One plus two equals three. There is no information here. There's a lot of information here.

Ask and doubt. Do not trust or believe.

And finally, you have three choices in life.

You can be, you can become, you can act. These are the three choices.

Western civilization, the civilization you're embedded in, the civilization that made you who you are, teaches you to act.

So we act.

You know the word business? Business.

Business means busyness, to be busy. We think that acting is the right way to live. We are told that if you don't go to work, you're lazy. You're a slacker. Something's wrong with you.

Action, action, action. In the Marines, go, go, go. In Hollywood, action.

It's all busyness.

But this is not the only way to live. And it's most probably not the right way to live. We will discuss it a bit later.

Because there is an alternative. Rather than acting, you should become.

There's a big difference between the two.

So with these images in mind, we can now start our conversation.

I would like you to be a bit more alive and more reactive and more responsive. I would like you to challenge me, disagree, agree. Don't be passive consumers.

Because you're sitting here as passive consumers. That's not the right approach. You will find no answers this way.

Even if you are given the answers, you will not get the answers. You need to be participants. You need to become.

This is the process of becoming.

So I would ask you all to be a little more active.

There is one biological species, and only one, that is willing to die for a story.

Human beings are willing to sacrifice their lives for a story. They are willing to sacrifice their interests, their possessions, their loved ones, and their own lives for a narrative, for a set of symbols.

What is a nation state? What is the Republic of Macedonia? It's a story. It's just a story. What is a family? What is a football club? These are all stories. These are narratives.

And people die for these stories. People paint a piece of fabric. They call it a flag. And they die for it.

There is no other species that does this. No virus, no mammal, no fish, no other species dies for a story. We do. We do. We are willing to kill each other for a story. And so we live in artificial spaces. Our cities, our homes reflect stories, reflect our narratives.

We take substances and materials, and we mold them into stories. We are creatures of dreams. We are made of dreams.

Do you know what is the percentage of information from the environment that reached your brain? What percentage of information from the environment reaches your brain? 100? Not even close.

Yes, five, exactly. Five percent of the information from the environment, from this hole, from this lecture, it's good for you that it's only five percent. Five percent reaches your brain.

How much of this information is direct? How much of this information reaches the brain as it is? As it is. No interference, no filtering, no processing, nothing. Get the information from outside, it reaches your brain.

How much do you think? Zero. Not almost. Zero. Everything you see, everything you hear is processed by your brain and made into a story.

Your brain has templates of stories, and it fits the information that does come in, the five percent. It transforms this five percent into stories.

We are made of stories. We are made of dreams. We are not real. We are not real, and we have no contact with reality. It's all a lie. Whoever told you that you are in contact with reality is lying to you. It's all a lie.

You live inside your minds. You live inside your heads. You are trapped inside your minds. There is no access to the outside. It's imaginary.

It's, in other words, a story.

Because we live in a story, we need meaning. We need to make sense of the story. We need to have some meaning. Meaning is more important to people than food. Meaning is more important than drink. Meaning is more important than sex, I think. Meaning is more important than almost everything else, possibly everything else.

There was a guy, his name was Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl was a psychologist. He was a Jew, of course, being a psychologist. So he was taken to Auschwitz. He was taken to Auschwitz and he spent in Auschwitz three and a half years.

No one survived in Auschwitz more than six months. No one. Viktor Frankl survived for three and a half years.

When he exited Auschwitz, he invented a whole system, philosophical, psychological system called logotherapy.

Viktor Frankl said that he survived in Auschwitz because he made his experience in Auschwitz meaningful. He made it imbued with meaning. He said there was meaning to my presence in Auschwitz.

I decided to tell the world what had happened there and to teach people how to be happy even in the worst circumstances that gave my life meaning. Meaning is the most important thing in life. Much more important than anything else because Frankl didn't have anything else in Auschwitz. He did not have food. He did not have sex. He did not have anything in Auschwitz except meaning.

And meaning alone kept him alive for three and a half years.

So meaning is the most important thing.

And when we don't have meaning, we reorganize life to produce meaning. We are desperately seeking meaning.

What happens when we have a meaningful life, everything is structured, everything is organized, all the symbols are in their place, all the signals are correct, everything we're happy, and then suddenly there's an enormous shock. Shock like a war. Shock like a pandemic. Shock like a change in gender roles where women become much more masculine.

It's a process documented in the last 40 years. That's a massive shock. It's a shock to gender roles.

What happens when we have such an enormous shock? Everything falls apart. There's no order, no meaning, no structure. The rules are gone. We are disoriented.

Can you think of another condition where this is happening? All of you have had this condition in your life without any shock.

Can you think of something similar? A nightmare. What is happening in a nightmare? What's happening in a nightmare is frightening because a nightmare has no meaning, has no rules, has no structure. A doesn't lead to B and yet B happens.

So a nightmare is meaningless, senseless, and that's why it's frightening.

When our reality receives a massive shock like this pandemic or war or whatever, we enter a condition of existence which is very similar to a nightmare and we react the same way.

We react surrealistically to this life condition. There are four reactions.

Just for you to understand, the first half is a kind of philosophical introduction and the second half I'm going to tell you what I think you could do.

So the second half is much more practical. A how-to.

But to understand the how-to, you need to go through the philosophy and the psychology and everything. There's no way to get to the how-to. The how-to would not make sense if you don't have this introduction.

So I apologize. Those of you who want to get immediately to the how-to and are getting bored, there's no way, there's no shortcut.

By the way, a general lesson in life. There's no shortcut.

So when we experience such an enormous shock to our meaning, because the world makes sense to us, the world has a meaning.

When there is a shock, there's no sense. There's no meaning. They're lost.

At that point we react in four ways and I call them the four malignancies.

The first way, malignant individualism.

Malignant individualism, you become self-centered. You become disempathic. You lose empathy for other people. You can think only of yourself, of your own crisis, of your own shock, of what to do. You can't think of other people.

So the first reaction to a massive shock is actually narcissism, self-centeredness, withdrawing, not thinking about other people, thinking only about yourself and losing connectivity.

The second malignancy is malignant optimism.

So malignant individualism, malignant optimism. A reaction to shock.

Some people react to shock by developing malignant optimism, not pessimism, optimism. They become too optimistic. They say someone is going to save me. Something is going to solve the problem. Things are going to get better soon. They expect a deus ex machina, some solution that will come from somewhere and salvage them. They want a miracle. They believe in the supernatural, in the occult, in anything from religion to witchcraft. They develop an external locus of control. They expect the world, the universe, a divinity, an entity, someone, a friend, family, the state to solve the problem for them. This is malignant optimism. It's a second typical reaction.

The third type of typical reaction is malignant egalitarianism. Malignant egalitarianism is to say everyone is equal to everyone. Everyone has the same power.

Because when you have a shock, when you experience a shock, you feel disempowered. You feel that you lost your power.

So one way to retake your power, to regain your power, is to lie to yourself that you have power.

Simple. Self-deception.

So you say I have as much power as anyone else.

Malignant egalitarianism. Yes. I have as much power as anyone else. And no one has any advantage over me.

So knowledge, information, education, erudition, experience, wisdom, age, they don't give anyone an advantage.

Because everyone is equal to everyone. Everyone is suddenly as good as anyone medical doctor. Everyone knows medicine as well as any medical doctor. Everyone understands the world as well as any analyst. Everyone is equal to everyone.

And everyone has as much knowledge as everyone else. And no one.

And so this leads to truthism. I don't know if you read this phrase, this word. Truthism.

Truthism is there is no truth. And there are no facts. Only opinions.

So when you try to argue with such people, they tell you, you have your facts, I have my facts. You have your truth, I have my truth. Everything is a matter of opinion. There's no reality anymore.

This leads to truthism and it leads to total mistrust. Mistrust in experts, mistrust in authorities, mistrust in each other.

Malignant egalitarianism leads to a collapse of trust in society.

So Americans don't trust Dr. Fauci because he tells them to put masks and be vaccinated. Never mind that he's one of the leading world's leading experts on viruses. They don't trust him. They have their own opinion. They talked to the neighbor.

And that's an equal source of authority.

Similarly, you don't trust the state. You don't trust each other. You don't trust other people. You trust your friends. You trust something you heard online because everyone has the same access and the same power and the same knowledge.

And the last malignantancy because I said you remember, when there is an external shock, there are four reactions. Four reactions and I call them the four malignancies.

Malignant individualism, integralitarianism, and the last one is malignant tolerance. Malignant tolerances, everything goes. Everything is okay. There are no values. There are no standards. There are no criteria. You can do anything you want. Anything you do is okay. It's your choice. No problem.

You know, if you don't harm other people, you can do anything you want. Even if you harm other people, sometimes it's okay. For example, you can refuse to take a vaccine and infect other people and it's perfectly okay. I'm giving an example, but there are many others.

So malignant tolerance is a form of libertarianism which says that choice and freedom are the ultimate values.

And so therefore, all other values should be suspended and eliminated.

Only choice is important. You can choose to harm yourself. It's perfectly okay. You can choose to harm other people. It's perfectly okay. You can choose to do anything you want with anyone you want at any time you want and all is perfectly okay. Anything goes and so on.

So this is malignant tolerance.

These four reactions to shock lead to a condition known as anomie.

Be patient with this part. It's a heavy part. It includes a lot of psychology, a lot of history, a lot of sociology and so on, but you will not be able to understand the second part if you don't get through this part.

The second part is how to, what to do, but you must have the background to understand why that's the right thing to do.

Anomie.

When we have the formal ignancies, so you remember, let's go back a bit. Two minutes, three minutes.

People live in their minds. People process symbols. Human beings don't live in reality. They live inside their minds. They live inside stories. So they need to make sense. They need to make a meaning, a meaningful story. Meaning is the most important thing for people.

Shocks like pandemic, war, gender relations, such shocks, collapse of the family, such enormous shocks. They take away the meaning. They make reality meaningless. They make the story meaningless. People need meaning more than food.

So they panic. They panic without meaning. And so they have four reactions.

When there is no meaning, they have four reactions.

The malignancies, malignant individualism, malignant egalitarianism, malignant tolerance, and what was the fourth malignant optimism. These are the four reactions.

Okay. So that's a recap.

Now what happens in society, in society when people react in these four ways, what happens in society?

Anomie.

Anomie is a term coined by Emil Dokheim.

Emil Dokheim was a sociologist about 120 plus years ago. And needless to say he was Jewish. And he came up with the idea of anomie.

Anomie is when society loses rules, normative values, internal structure, order, goal orientation. In other words, when societies disintegrate.

What happened in Weimar Republic before the Nazis came to power was anomie.

What happened in Macedonia and former Yugoslavia immediately after the fall of socialism was anomie.

What happened in Russia after the collapse of communism was anomie.

What happened to a large extent in the United States after 9-11 was anomie.

Anomies are societies, not individuals. Societies lose the story. When an individual loses the story, the individual reacts with formal ignancies.

But when all individuals lose the story, when they lose the collective story, then we have anomie.

Anomie is a very dangerous situation because it means not only you cannot find meaning inside yourself, you cannot find meaning outside yourself.

Sometimes my individual private life has no meaning. I lost the meaning.

For example, after divorce. Divorce is a cataclysmic situation that after that you feel meaningless. Even major shocks in private life, you lose meaning.

But you say, okay, I lost the meaning, but my nation gives me meaning. My school gives me meaning. My profession gives me meaning. I get meaning from outside. My club, my friends, my friends give me meaning. So if you can't find meaning inside, you take meaning from the outside. You always need meaning.

But you can outsource meaning. You can take it from the outside.

I believe in God. I believe in God. That's a source of meaning, gives you meaning.

What happens when you can't find meaning anywhere, when meaning collapses individually and collectively?

It's like death. It's like dying. People can survive without food. People can survive without drink.

A lot. People can survive without food for months. But people cannot survive without meaning for 10 minutes.

I know you don't believe it. Try to imagine this condition where everything is meaningless. You can't trust the people you love. Nothing around you has any meaning. You can't survive 10 minutes.

Hope is how we try to restore meaning. We'll come to it. That's malignant optimism.

So when meaning is lost outside as well as inside, we have anomie.

And what do we do when we have anomie?

We commit suicide.

Emile Dukheim wrote a book. And the title of the book was Suicide.

Emile Dukheim said, when societies will enter a state of anomie, the rate of suicide will go up dramatically.

He was right. He was very right. Suicide is the number two reason for death among people under the age of 35. Suicide has gone up between 2008 and 2018. It's gone up between 40 and 50% among people under the age of 25. Suicide is absolute pandemic all over the world.

Because we are in a state of anomie. And we're in a state of anomie in the vast majority of the world. It's the first time in human history, by the way, that we not only have individual shock or loss of meaning, we not only have collective anomie, but we have global anomie. Global anomie.

And we lost all the sources of meaning. All the sources of meaning. We lost religion. We lost family. We lost community. We lost belief in the state. We lost belief in science. We lost belief in experts.

We don't have any source of meaning left.

We are all in a state of massive, unmitigated, unprecedented in human history anomie.

Suicide is skyrocketing.

Now, there are three forms of suicide. There are three forms of suicide.

Never mind that.

The first one is mental suicide. Second one is physical suicide.

And the third one is social suicide.

So it's wrong to think that we commit suicide only by hanging ourselves or by shooting ourselves in the head. That's the easy way.

Many of us are already dead. Many of us here in this hall are already dead. They don't acknowledge it, maybe, or they know it and they're hiding it.

We had committed suicide in three ways, not one.

For example, by drinking this coffee. Put some sugar or I will expire. I know you better. You will never kill me before the end of the lecture. You're a very practical guy. I can drink this safely.

But if you bring me a coffee at the end of the lecture, that's an entirely different story.

Oh, lunch. Go for it.

The truth is that in my view, and I'm a professor of psychology in many countries, and I'm 26 years in the business of psychology, in my view, the majority of humanity today had already committed suicide. It's the zombie apocalypse. Absolutely.

And there are three types of suicide, social, mental, and physical.

Social suicide is when you avoid people, when you stay at home and you watch Netflix all the time. Social suicide is when you don't interact with people, don't connect with people, don't support people, don't have empathy for people. And so you're self-sufficient. Technology is helping you because if you have technology, you don't need anyone. And if you don't need anyone because you have everything in your hand, you know, why to waste time on anyone?

So we all commit social suicide. I've just been in Canada, and I've been in a building, and the building was constructed to avoid contact between people. I could see the mind of the architect, of the engineer, of the building, constructing it to avoid contact. One day I went out the door.

It's a true story. I went out the door, and a guy came from, opened the other door with a small dog, and the guy said, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Excuse me. And he ran back into the apartment. He apologized for invading my space.

This is the west. Atomization, atoms floating in air.

Do you know that in 2016 was the first year where the majority of men and women did not see the opposite sex, did not have a single meeting with the opposite sex, 54 percent in the United States and Canada.

I'm talking about the United States and Canada because, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to the future, you're all Americans. We are all going there. You want to see the future? Take a trip to Canada. That's the future.

So social suicide. That is for me social suicide.

Mental suicide.

Mental suicide is, similarly, when you are no longer emotionally present.

For example, you are not emotionally present in your relationships. You're absent. You're watched. You're not interacting with people who should be important to you, with your loved ones and so on. You withdraw. You avoid.

That is mental suicide.

How many marriages are like this? How many marriages are like this where the two parties are dead? It's marriage in a cemetery.

Many marriages, according to official statistics, 21 percent of marriages are sexless. The real figure, of course, is, I think, 60 percent or more, at least. Sex is life. At least with me. Sex is life. It's giving up on life.

So mental suicide, social suicide, and, of course, physical suicide. We cannot digest this reality. We cannot accept it. We cannot confront it. We don't want to hear about it. We don't want to hear about it.

Some of you are pissed off. You came here to have a good time because Zogan always gives you a good time. And he puts on stage an old Jew who is telling you you're dead. What the fuck, you know?

So, but you need to hear this to come alive. If you want a religious metaphor, Jesus would have never been resurrected had he not first been crucified.

You need to die in order to resurrect. And there is no form of dying more profound than self-awareness.

So this is the exercise we are doing today, right now.

We can't confront reality so we deploy, we employ, we use something called psychological defense mechanism.

Now, psychological defense mechanism was first described and discovered by another Jew, Freud.

Zigmund Freud was the first to describe psychological defense mechanism.

What is psychological defense mechanism?

It's when you falsify reality, when you lie to yourself about reality, when you make reality more acceptable, more palatable, when you reframe reality, when you redesign reality to allow you to survive, when you make it more acceptable, when you create a narrative or a story that lets you somehow, lets you somehow survive.

Because if you were to face reality really without defense mechanisms, none of you would be here a long time ago.

Defense mechanisms are filters, they are membranes, they help us to cope with reality.

Now, in a state of anomie, remember, anomie is when you cannot find meaning inside and you cannot find meaning outside. So you are in a meaningless state.

The first thing you do as human beings when you're in a meaningless state, anomie, you try to restore meaning. You try to create meaning.

I want you to understand it's like hunger. It's exactly like hunger. You're hungry, you try to find food. You're thirsty, you try to find something to drink.

So it's the same with anomie. You have no meaning, you try to find meaning, you cannot find meaning, you make up meaning, you create meaning.

Because you can't survive ten minutes without meaning.

And there are three ways to create meaning.

Psychoticism, narcissism, and nothingness.

Psychoticism is when we create meaning or restore meaning by totally divorcing reality, by creating alternative reality, virtual reality.

So we create another reality, another universe, another world, and we go there.

And we say, this is reality. Not this, this. This, what I had just created, is reality. What I left behind, what I cannot cope with, what I cannot survive in, that's not reality.

Psychoticism has many manifestations, not all of embed, not all of embed.

For example, I'm going to wipe these two. For example, creativity. Creativity is psychoticism.

When you create something, when you make a movie, when you write a book, when you write an article, when you make a business, when you create a business, whatever you create, you're making another world. You're making alternative world.

So you're creating meaning. If you start a new business, the new business is giving you meaning. You have a reason to get up in the morning. You're planning all the time. You're thinking all the time. You're proud of your accomplishments. If you lose money, you lie to your wife. It creates a lot of...

So it creates meaning.

Creativity is a form of psychoticism.

Why?

Because it takes you away from reality. It takes you away from reality and puts you in an imaginary universe. I can tell you, because I wrote books, I wrote books of short fiction and so on, when I write short fiction, I'm not in this world. I'm in my stories with my characters. I don't remember the world. So I think, I'm sorry, another Jew. I don't know what's wrong with these people. So I think, who was a famous psychologist, I think suggested that all creative people are on the verge of madness. They're almost crazy. So he said psychoticism, creativity is a form of psychoticism. They're almost crazy people. In other words, genius and creativity are on the border of madness. And in some cases, they cross over.

Me, for example. So creativity.

Another example of psychoticism, religion.

What do you do in religion? You invent an entity. You invent an entity. You invent a whole story around this entity. And then you pretend that this entity is real. This entity has a name. It's called God.

Religion is a form of psychoticism. It's a creative act. It's a creative act, because we create a narrative, we create a story, and then many of us pretend that it's very real.

So we create an alternative universe, an alternative world, and we go here. And this alternative story gives us meaning.

So religion is a form of psychoticism.

Another form is known as magical thinking. Magical thinking. Magical thinking is the belief that if you think about something, it will happen. Simple. When you're a child, when you're a child, magical thinking is very common in childhood. Children have magical thinking.

So children, for example, feel very guilty if something bad happens. A divorce or something bad happened to father or to mother, they feel very bad. Why they feel bad? Because they thought about it.

And the child says, I thought about it, and my thinking made it happen. This is magical thinking.

But when we grow up, we are supposed to lose magical thinking. It's supposed to stop, unless you're a politician, of course. So it is supposed to stop. And if it continues into adulthood, it's one of the main pathological symptoms.

We use it to diagnose. So magical thinking.

But when we have anomie, when we can't find meaning inside and we cannot find meaning outside, we develop magical thinking.

Did you hear? Any of you are acquainted with the secret? The secret, right? Or if you just think about it strongly enough, it will happen. The universe will rearrange itself and deliver what you want. Or all you have to do is think really hard about what you want and it will happen. Or I don't believe in coincidences. This and this happen for a reason. This is magical thinking. This is magical thinking.

So when you hear, even I went to listen to a Tony Robbins lecture in Moscow. Don't ask. $900. And most of the lecture, I would say 90% of the lecture is not a Jew and he charged 900. Had he been a Jew, it would have been 9,000. So that's why he's not getting very far in life.

So most of the lecture, what I heard, was magical thinking. Most of it. He said, you know, there's a giant inside you if you don't just focus, things will happen. The universe will arrange itself and you will get it delivered.

It sounds a little like Amazon drone. If you think very hard, Amazon drone will come and deliver the package or something.

So this is magical thinking. If these go too far, if these go too far, again, this is very complex.

So from time to time I will stop and make anomie.

The first, there are three solutions to anomie.

One of them is psychoticism, okay? Psychoticism, examples of psychoticism, creativity, religion, magical thinking. If these go too far, we have a mental health condition, a medical condition called psychosis or psychotic disorder.

Now, the second solution is narcissism.

In psychoticism, in psychoticism, what am I doing? I'm taking something from inside my head and I'm making it reality, right? Right. You should say right. In narcissism, I'm doing the opposite. I'm taking something out there and I'm putting it in my head. So narcissism is the mirror of psychoticism.

There was a famous psychologist, Otto Kernberg. Yes, of course he was. Otto Kernberg. And he suggested that narcissism is a form of psychosis, is a mental illness that is very similar to psychosis because the psychotic and the narcissist, they're doing the same. They're confusing the mind with reality and reality with the mind. They're in total confusion about what is in and what is out, what is internal and what is external.

But the psychotic takes his mind and puts it on the world. And the narcissist takes the world and puts it inside his mind. It's simple.

Why does the narcissist do that?

Because when he puts the world inside his mind, he can control the world. And then when he can control the world, he can rearrange the world like a story. And that gives him meaning.

So if I'm a narcissist and you are out there, I cannot control you. I cannot also tell you what to do. I cannot arrange you to produce meaning. But if I internalize and introject you, these are the clinical terms. If I internalize and introject, if I put you inside my mind and then I play with you inside my mind, I can make you do anything. And as I make you do anything, I produce meaning.

So the psychotic mistakes his mind for the world. Everything is happening in his mind, but he thinks it's happening out there. The narcissist mistakes the world for his mind. Everything is happening out there, but he thinks it'severything is happening in here, but he thinks it's happening out there.

So there is a mirror image. Narcissism is the second solution.

The best solution and the only solution. These are, these are sick solutions. These are pathological solutions. Anything that takes you away from reality.

Listen well, because this applies to politics. This applies to relationships. This applies to business. This applies to everything and anything and everything and anything. Anything and anyone that takes you away from reality is not good for you.

A great definition of mental illness is losing touch with reality. Anyone who makes you lose touch with reality or anything that makes you lose touch with reality is making you mentally ill. Do not allow anyone or anything to make you mentally ill.

Cling to reality. And there's only one way to do that. It's not narcissism because narcissism, you're confusing real with internal. It's not psychoticism because there is the same confusion there. It's an illusion.

Psychoticism, creativity, religion, magical thinking. These are all delusions. They're all fake. They're all lies. Same with narcissism. It's an illusion. It's a delusion. It's fake. It's a lie. It's self-deception.

Sometimes no one is lying to you. You are lying to yourself, but self-deception is even worse than a lie because a lie you can defend against.

Self-deception, you're cheating yourselves. You're your worst enemy. Don't allow this to happen.

And the only way to cope with anomie, only way to cope with anomie without self-deceiving is what I call, actually not I, but in many traditions it's called nothingness. Nothingness is the foundation of all major philosophies and all major religions.

And it is absolutely shocking. It's absolutely shocking that after 5,000 years of religion and 5,000 years of philosophy, we are here because if we are here, we hadn't been listening to any philosopher and any prophet and any leader, any thought leader. If we are here today with our smartphones and with our cameras and with our cars and if we are in this death count, it means we had not been listening because all philosophies and all religions tell you the same, nothingness.

Even for example, if you take Islam, not a popular religion in this room, I assume, but if you take Islam, this was a terrorist act. Even if you take Islam, the word Islam in Arabic, in literary Arabic, the word Islam means submission, subordination, acceptance, even via acceptance, nothingness, Buddhism, nothingness, Taoism, nothingness, nothingness, existentialism, which is not a religion, it's a philosophy, nothingness, all major systems of thought, reject narcissism, reject psychoticism and encourage you and recommend to you to adopt nothingness. Who is listening? No one. We have wasted thousands of years of brilliant minds which no one listens to, so it's not some balcony, it's bigger minds.

Well, some of them were not Jewish, unfortunately. It breaks my heart, but you know.

What is nothingness?

And now we are beginning to come to the practical part.

When people hear nothingness, they say, oh, it's a bad philosophy because it means to be nobody. I mean, I should be nobody, I should do nothing. I should not endeavor, I should not create, I should not initiate anything, I should be lazy, I should be static, I should not attempt anything, I should be a nobody and I should do nothing.

Of course, that is not nothingness. That's the opposite of nothingness, as we shall see.

So to clarify one thing in advance, the word nothingness is very unfortunate. It's very unfortunate, it's translation mainly from Asian languages and it's very bad.

It's not about being nothing and it's not about doing nothing. It's exactly the opposite, it's a lot of work. It's about choosing to be human, choosing to be human because as Jordan Peterson keeps reminding us, you have another option. You can choose not to be human, you can choose to be a lobster.

Yeah, so Jordan Peterson took a lobster and developed a whole system around it and deriving from natural laws and natural observations of nature, he suggested that people should go back to basics and essentially become glorified lobsters, lobsters with intelligence, those of us who have intelligence.

So nothingness is about not being a lobster, but being human. The minute you say this, you reject everything nature has to offer you. The idea of nature is a seriously bad idea. Why is it a bad idea?

First of all, there's no such thing. There's no nature and us. We are nature. Everything we do is nature. This is nature. This speaker is nature. We're all nature. This difference, this distinction between us and nature, it's biblical and it led to the destruction of the planet. This led to the destruction of the planet.

When we stop regarding ourselves as part of nature, we felt legitimized to exploit nature because it's not us.

So first thing, there's no such thing as nature. And the second thing is nature sucks. Nature is bad. Nature is ugly.

As some writers said, nature is red, red in tooth and claw. You don't want to be natural. You don't want nature. Nature is cruel, unremitting, unforgiving. Nature has no empathy. Nature has no imagination.

Who wants to be natural? It's a seriously bad idea. We should spend all our lives as human beings elevating nature, not divorcing nature. You can't divorce nature. You're part of nature, but elevating nature. Elevating nature not only in relationship between ourselves, but in relationship with nature itself, in relationship with animals, for example. We should elevate nature. We should not accept nature, but we should transform nature, not by exploiting nature, but by making nature more human.

Who wants to be a savage?

In the 18th century, there was a guy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not a Jew, shockingly, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau came up with a noble savage. To be a savage is to be noble. To be a savage is to be barbarian, to be a savage, to be disgusting and stupid and ignorant and cruel and sadistic. Who wants to be a savage? There's nothing noble about being a savage, and there is nothing noble about being a lobster. We should spend every minute of the life given us to not be lobsters.

So suffering, suffering is the opposite of life. Suffering, life is about shunning suffering, avoiding suffering, suppressing suffering. We should fight suffering, and we should promote and pursue happiness.

All the current philosophies make thinkers. I'm mentioning Jordan Peterson. He's one of many, but Peterson is one of the most prominent. His philosophy is shocking to me because he advocates, he advocates reactionary moves, becoming more natural in the best sense of the word, hierarchy and so on, and he promotes suffering. This is sick. The man is sick. His philosophy is sick. Life is about fighting suffering, eradicating suffering, and promoting the opposite of suffering, which is happiness.

Number three, nothingness is about networking, about hierarchy. Hierarchy is a very new invention. Our species, Homo sapiens, is about one million years old. Hominins, Neanderthals, Romanians, others, are about 3.6 million years old.

The first hierarchies were invented 5,000 years ago. These are new inventions, very new. There were no hierarchies among hunter-gatherers. Hierarchies came into being when we established cities. It's part of urbanization, and it was a massive, massive mistake, which caused huge numbers of lives and brought on big suffering.

Nothingness is about dispensing with hierarchy and instead promoting networks. Networking is about collaboration, about equality of power, about synergies, about the emergence of creation and about happiness.

The third element in nothingness is network, not hierarchy.

The next element, nothingness demands that you put clear boundaries between you and the world. Do not confuse the two and do not assume that you can be the world and the world can be you. Where you end, the world begins. Where the world ends, you begin.

So firm boundaries. We'll go into all this a bit later.

The most important element in nothingness, most important, you must exercise the world from within you.

We are all contaminated with the world. The world is like a virus. It infiltrates you, it replicates inside you, it contaminates you, and it makes you sick.

Exercising the world like some kind of demon, exercising the world from within you, expelling the world, the world from within you is the path to health. Mental health and later happiness.

Nothingness is about making firm boundaries between you and the world and then throwing the world out of you, purifying yourself. But purifying yourself or cleansing yourself, not in the religious sense, but reducing yourself to your essence. That's why we call it nothingness.

You don't grow outward. You don't grow, you contract. It's not a process of Big Bang, which is psychotic, but you contract. You peel the onion. You remember the onion? You peel the onion. You contract and contract. You shed one layer. You shed another layer.

What your mother told you, what your teachers told you, what the state told you, what authorities told you, and of course what Sam Vaknin told you. You throw everything away and you become minimal, small, self-contained. You become your essence.

This process, which I will describe a bit later, is at the core of nothingness. You shed the world.

Inside your mind, inside your mind there are many voices. These voices are known as introjects. There's a voice of your mother. There's a voice of your father. There's a voice of teachers, peers, influencers, media figures, important thinkers, many voices.

Your mind is like a cacophony of hundreds of voices and they compete with each other. They contradict each other. They tell you what to do. They tell you what not to do.

Some of these voices have a name, conscience. We call them conscience.

Other voices don't have a name, but they're very active.

And there is this enormous noise in your mind all the time. You think it's quiet in there because you have learned to live with these voices. You habituated yourself. You developed a habit of living with these voices.

But these voices are not you. These voices are not you. They come from the outside. These voices are the agents of the world inside your mind. These voices are the world reaching inside your mind and playing with it.

These voices are not you and they're not healthy and they don't allow you to ever become you. They don't allow you to find your essence and your identity.

A crucial part of nothingness is getting rid of these voices. One by one and all together.

Until finally, finally, there's one voice left. The voice that you cannot get rid of.

Never mind what you do. You cannot get rid of this voice.

Because this voice is you.

Nothingness is about finding the single voice. The single voice that is you. Differentiating it with the hundreds of voices that are not you. Voices from advertising. Voices from the government. Voices from mothers and fathers and all these voices.

Just taking them and dumping them in the trash and remaining with the single voice.

The big prophets of religion succeeded to do exactly this.

Someone like Jesus, even someone like Muhammad, they succeeded to do this. They called it the voice of God.

Because at that time, there was no vocabulary. There was no psychology, no professors of psychology like me. They didn't have the words to describe this single voice.

But someone like Jesus remained with a single voice. Only one voice was talking to him. There was 40 days in the desert where he heard a few voices. That was Satan. That was the devil trying to confuse him. Same with Muhammad by the way. Same experience. Same with Moses. In the Bible, Elijah the prophet talks to God. Actually God talks to him. And Elijah is standing and there's a big fire. And Elijah says you are in the fire. No, that's not God. And there's a storm. And Elijah says you are in the storm. It's not God.

All these voices are not God.

And finally, all the voices die out. And there's a normal silence. And Elijah realizes God is the silence. God is this silence.

You need to silence these voices in your head. These voices are not good for you because they are not you.

You had been hijacked. Your mind had been snatched. It's not yours anymore. It belongs 10% to Apple, 20% to the government, 30% to mother. It's not you.

Where are you in these voices? Where are you in these voices? Where is this core? Who is listening? Who is doing the listening?

You must find him or her and isolate him or her.

And that is the core work of nothingness.

Sartre, Jean Paul Sartre, yet another non-Jew.

I'm beginning to really resent this. Jean Paul Sartre, who was a philosopher and a Frenchman, quite a combination, in Paris, inventor, one of the main promoters of existentialism.

It's a philosophical system of thought. Jean Paul Sartre, in his famous book, Being and Nothingness, describes an episode. He said, I went to a restaurant. He went to a restaurant. He is French, so he went to a restaurant. And he saw a waiter. He said, I saw a waiter. And he said, the waiter was going, coming with a tray, this, that. He said, and then I thought to myself, Jean- Paul Sartre says, I thought to myself, there is no human being there. There is no human being there. There's only a waiter. It is someone acting as a waiter because society told him that this is the way a waiter should act. And this thing, this entity, this being, thinks that he's a waiter. He believes that being a waiter is him. Being a waiter is his essence, his identity.

But it's not. It is a role. He is acting. There's nobody there. So this is the core realization of nothingness.

That's why the book is called Being and Nothingness.

Now we come to what you should do. I promise you there will be how-to and so on. The lecture is only six hours, so we're still good.

What I forgot to tell you is that I love to hear myself speak and I love my voice. So, your hosts. Your hosts. You love coffee? No, it's okay. What time is it? Okay. We are nearing the core. Of course, listen, guys. This is kind of an overview.

The channel that I just opened where I'm uploading the stages, because there's like a book, you need to follow stages. There are 30 stages. And these 30 stages encapsulate all the work of nothingness.

So in the channel, there's about 100 or more hours of video. So you can imagine I cannot summarize this in 40 minutes or one hour. So I'm doing my best to give you a taste.

Let's call it a sample. If you want the whole meal, you have to go to the channel free of charges. Everything is up to you. What do you have to do?

So we identified the problem.

The problem is that we are in a state of shock, external shock, internal shock. We lost meaning. We have no meaning in life.

So some of us choose to be psychotic in effect. Some of us choose to be narcissists. It's a growing choice. The incidence of narcissism is growing all over the world. Some of us are choosing nothingness. Very, very few are choosing nothingness because most people don't understand what is nothingness.

But there are those who choose nothingness, those who are well acquainted with, for example, some kinds of schools of philosophy and religions and so on. They are more into nothingness.

So these are the three choices. I advocate nothingness because when you start with narcissism, you end up with grandiosity and you end up hurting other people. You end up harming and damaging other people.

When you start with psychoticism, whichever way you go, you end up being divorced from reality. Divorce from reality. This is mental illness. So I don't believe in these two ways.

Nothingness can lead you to a bad place. That bad place is called nihilism. Nihilism means nothing matters. Everything is worthless. There are no values. There is no value. Causality. Since the day, live today, forget tomorrow. This is the bad place of nothingness.

But if you follow a specific routine, you will not end there. But you will end in identifying your authentic, and this is what it's called, authenticity. You will end up identifying your authentic single voice, which is who you are.

You can't believe the strength this will give you. The minute you find your essence or your identity, get rid of all the other voices and follow some basic principles, this will empower you like nothing else.

Because you will finally get rid of a lot. Because right now, it's like you're walking around with a lot of suitcases on your back, you know? You're tired, you're weak, because you're carrying a lot of luggage that is not you. This luggage is not you, and you have no obligation to this luggage.

Get rid of it, and you'll be free and strong and handsome like me.

Right. I see that you disagree with some parts of this sentence. We'll talk about it later.

Okay. What do you have to do?

First of all, Jean-Paul Sartre was the first to suggest that there is a difference between authentic people and inauthentic people. So those of you who want to go deeper into this distinction, you can go on my channel, and there are two or three videos dedicated to authenticity.

But in a nutshell, authentic person is someone who found this single voice, someone who knows who he or she is, the essence, the identity, and also can differentiate between himself or herself and the world, and puts boundaries between himself or herself and the world, listens to the world, consults the world, gets information from the world, gets advice from the world.

Of course, you should not cut yourself from the world. I said that cutting yourself from reality is mental illness, but confusing yourself with the world, not putting boundaries, that's also mental illness.

So here are the things you should do to begin to attain nothingness.

And again, please go to the channel if you want to go deeper. Those of you who feel suicidal and want to go deeper, go to the channel.

So this speaker is antisemitic. I can identify an antisemitic speaker when I see one.

Okay. Five things.

You should do five things.

Number one, choose happiness, not dominance.

So today in Western civilization, we are focused on dominance, dominating, controlling. So hierarchy, who is on top? Who is more?

We compare all the time. What is social media? Social media is an engine of comparison. Absolutely this. It's a technology of comparing. We call it in psychology, relative positioning. It's a relative positioning platform. All the time we are compared. How many likes did I get? How many likes did you get? Am I as good as him? Is he as good as me? Is he as famous as me? Am I as famous as him? How many views do I have on my YouTube? Why don't I have as many as his? Et cetera, et cetera. It's a comparison engine.

So dump dominance, prefer happiness to dominance. Don't seek to control or to dominate.

Why?

Because if you did the nothingness work, you found the single authentic voice. You found yourself. You found your essence, your core, your identity.

You don't need to dominate because you dominate the only important object in the world. If you dominate you, you dominate the only object that matters to you. And you do not need to dominate others because the most important object by far in your world, of course, is you.

Nothingness leads you to domination over the only object that matters. And consequently you don't need to dominate or to control anyone else.

When you are a prisoner, something I have personal experience of, I've been to prison, those of you who don't know, when you are a prisoner, I can tell you from experience, they can take your body away, they can take your freedom away, they can take your food away, they can take your wife away, for which I'm thankful, they can take, not this wife, the first wife.

Let it be clear. Oh my God, am I in trouble? Okay. The first wife. The first wife.

So they can take away anything and everything. They took all my money away, taking quite an empire. They took away everything.

There was one place they could not take away. They could not touch. They could not reach. Never mind what they did. And they did everything. They could not reach that place.

Me. My mind. I was in control and domination of the only object that mattered in prison. Me. Who cares about the rest?

When I was in prison, I had written Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, which is a mega international bestseller. I've written other books which won prizes. It was the most productive, creative, wonderful period in my life.

Prison. I lost 23 kilos in a few months. There was nothing to eat. My wife divorced me. I lost all my money. When I sell all my money for you to get a glimpse of what I'm talking about, it was a $40 million empire. I had my own private jet and so on. I lost all of it. It was all confiscated by the state. I had so little money that my shoes were with holes because I couldn't afford a bus. I was reduced to that state.

And yet, it was the most productive, wonderful, happiest period in my life.

Why?

Because I owned the owned, controlled, dominated, and collaborated with the only object that mattered. Me.

So this is not theory, what I'm telling you. This is a survival strategy in the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

And trust me, in Israeli jail, the one I've been with is definitely qualifies as one of the most difficult circumstances.

So number one, ignore dominance, prefer happiness.

Number two, ignore complexity. Prefer meaning.

Dump look for complex issues, or complex people, or complex situations, or complex environments, or complex institutions, or complex structures.

Whenever you see complexity, ask yourself, is there meaning in this complexity? Is there for a good reason? Do not automatically assume that if it is complex, it's meaningful. That if it is complex, it's worthwhile. It's valuable.

We make this mistake. When we see a book of 100 pages, and a book of 1,000 pages, we automatically think that the book with 1,000 pages is more valuable than the 100 pages.

Why?

Some of the most important books in human history are 20 pages long. And I think that history is not a guarantee of meaning, usually even the opposite.

So look for meaning.

Meaning can be in simplicity, meaning can be in complexity, but don't make assumptions in advance. We complicate our lives all the time. I'm in a profession, it's called clinical psychology. In 1952, the first manual of clinical psychology was published in the United States. It was called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM. The DSM in 1952 was 100 pages long. They listed all the mental health disorders. They listed schizophrenia, paranoia. They made a list. And the list was 100 pages long. That was 1952.

2013. 2013, that's not so much. It's about 60 years.

This book, the DSM, is not 100 pages long. It's 1,000 pages long.

The Internal Revenue Code in 1949 was about 170 pages long. The Internal Revenue Code today is 19,000 pages long.

We are complicating our lives all the time.Governments used to be 3% of GDP. The number of people employed in governments at the beginning of the 20th century was 2% to 3% of GDP. Without computers, without technology.

And by the way, don't think that governments then did not deliver what governments today deliver.

For example, in Germany under Bismarck, social welfare was much more advanced than today in Macedonia. Fact. And in Germany, under Bismarck, less than 1.8% of the population were government workers. And they delivered social services, pension, you name it, to all the people. There's no problem.

Today, governments in the world consume anywhere between 34% and 52% of GDP. And in some countries, 70%.

We complicate everything. We make it more complicated, bureaucracies, texts, books, codes, everything more complicated. And we think that because we are more complicated, we know more. It's more meaningful. It's more valuable.

It's a mistake. Prefer meaning.

Look for meaning. Forget if it's simple or complex.

You can learn a lot from a celiac.

Yeah? Celiac. Peasant.

Ah? Celiac. Peasant.

Why we say celiac or peasant? Because it's simple. To itself. It's simple. It's not educated. It's simple.

We cannot learn anything from simple. Simple.

Look for meaning.

Do not pay attention to complexity or simplicity. I have learned a lot from celiacy. A lot.

I'm kidding you not. I've learned a lot from these people. They have the wisdom of centuries and millennia in their heads.

I wish modern people could have, for example, family and community life like celiacy. They have a lot to learn. Trust me. I've seen the young people in Canada and the United States. They have a long way to go before they become celiacy.

Number three. Always prefer the fuzzy, the incomplete, the unpredictable, the imperfect. Always prefer this over order, structure, rules, and perfection.

So if you have to choose between structure, order, rules, perfection, or ambiguity, fuzziness, imperfection, unpredictability, choose this. Choose this.

Why?

Because life is like this. Life is like this. Life is the product, we believe, life is the product of four and a half billion years of evolution.

Four and a half billion years of experimentation.

And what is the outcome? Total mess. Creative destruction, creative destruction. Schumpeter, the famous economist called it creative destruction. Life is a bloody mess. Mutations. What is mutation? Viruses, mutations, a mess.

But who is winning? Who is winning?

Let me remind you who is winning. The mess is winning. The mess is winning. Mutations are totally messy. They are random. Mutations of no order, no structure, no rules, no nothing. And yet they are winning.

I'm wearing the mask, not the virus.

So always choose life over death.

You know where you have order, structure? You know where things never change? In a cemetery. You want order and structure? Go to the cemetery. You want life? Accept uncertainty.

Empower uncertainty. It's your only hope. Uncertainty, unpredictability, fuzziness, ambiguity is your only hope as human beings.

Everything creative comes out of it.

You ask any scientist and by training, I'm a physicist for example, you ask any scientist and he will tell you nine out of ten discoveries are totally random, totally chance, totally intuition, not the result of order, structure, rules or even learning.

So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be in a world which has no order, no structure, no rules.

Embrace the flow. Go with the flow.

If you go back to the structure of reality, structure of reality today is described by a discipline in physics called quantum mechanics.

If you study quantum mechanics, you learn immediately that the world is a bloody mess.

For example, particles can be in two places at the same time, a phenomenon known as tunneling. A particle here can influence a particle there and when I say there, very, very far. Not in Zaire's office. Much further than that.

So a particle here can instantaneously influence a particle there. It's called entanglement.

And at the core of quantum mechanics, we have three uncertainty principles, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which tell us that we cannot know anything about reality fully with certainty.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the building blocks. These are the building blocks of reality. This is where reality starts. Reality starts with uncertainty.

How come we are so certain? What happened to us on the way? It's an accident. We've been lied to. Someone lied to us. Someone is making good money and has a lot of power because of this lie that he or she can bring order and chaos and order and rules and certainty into our lives. No one can ask the virus. No one can ever bring order, rules and structure into your life and shouldn't.

So choose uncertainty.

Number four. You remember these are the five principles of nothingness.

But on the channel, you see exactly how to do all this. I just started this work. It's a year old, just a year old. So probably a lecture two years from now would look very different.

But we are sharing together.

Number four. Always prefer the journey to the destination. Always prefer the path to the goal. Always prefer process over outcome. Always prefer question to answer.

Do not seek goals, outcomes, destinations and answers for two reasons.

One, they don't exist. What you call destination or goal or outcome is lying to yourself because you have no control over anything.

List of all over yourself. In the absence of control, you can't guarantee anything. So why waste time? Why is there waste time on setting goals, planning, controlling, managing?

These are all lies. You can be the best manager in the world. Best manager in the world. And then one stupid bat in China destroys your planning. You can be the best bat in the world. And one stupid bat in China destroys your planning.

Scientists destroy your plans.

So, yes. Marry the process, divorce the result. Marry the path of the journey. Divorce the destination. Marry the question.

Divorce the answers.

One of the reasons is that every question has multiple answers, not one. It's not what we call monopolants. Each question has multiple answers. One answer is good for Zolan. One answer is good for me. One answer is good for you. Some answers are good for nobody. Some answers are good for a big number of people, but never for everyone. There's no universal answer.

So why waste the time?

Ask the right questions and trust the path to choose you. You are not making any choices.

I want to make this absolutely clear. You are deluding yourself grandiosely that you are making choices, that you can control results, that you can guarantee outcomes, that you are setting goals, that you are going to destinations. It's all up and nonsense. It's all self-delusion. It's all focus on getting there.

Look around you. Waste time marveling, marveling at the process, marveling at the journey. Open yourself up to becoming, to experiencing, not to attaining or obtaining. Attaining and obtaining is consumerism. It's a death cult. Don't be invested in death or be invested in life. Death is a point. Death is an event. Life is a process. Life is always ongoing. Death is final. Don't be final. Don't be final. Become. Be something in the making. Always change.

So this is a very, it's a very important thing to understand that you are not the answer. Some people think they are the answer. You're not the answer. And you can't have the answers. You're not God. So give it up. You have to trust that life will tell you where to go.

The question, you remember how we started when we were all of us, a lot younger, how we started the lecture? Do you remember the key?

I can give you a hundred doors. Zoe will give you 10 doors. I will give you 20 doors. Someone will give you 30 doors. Government will give you 40 doors. You will have as many doors as you want and you will say, wow, I have so many options. I am so happy because I can now choose, make so many choices and my life is opening up and wonderful things are going to happen to me.

There's only one problem. All these doors are locked. You need the right key.

Forget the doors. You need the right key.

Once you have the right key, you have one chance in 100 to find the right door. You don't have the right key. Your chance is zero.

What is better? One in 100 or zero? One in 100.

Focus on the key. Forget the doors.

What is the key?

The key is you. The key is you. You are the key.

Once you have formed yourself into a key, the lock will be found.

If you search long and hard, then you need to be hard workers, of course. No one tells you to, I told you, nothingness is not about not doing anything.

You need to search and look hard.

But before you molded yourself into a key, what are you looking for?

What are you looking for? Why are you looking for all these doors if you are not the key? Why are you wasting your time?

You know?

So focus on the key.

Once you have found yourself, once you are authentic, this guarantees learning, inner peace, altruism.

Why does it guarantee altruism and empathy?

I am telling you that if all of you become authentic, there will be no conflict. There will be no war. There will be peace and harmony guaranteed.

Why?

Because peace and harmony create a good feeling. They enhance your well-being.

Who doesn't want that?

But today we can't have that because we are not one. We are not unitary. We are fragmented. We are broken people. We are fractured among a million voices, all of them competing, all of them conflicting.

Very often we act not as Zoan and not as Sam and not as Annie. We don't act as ourselves, but we act the other voices.

Very often we are controlled by these voices. We are like puppets. We are marionettes.

No?

This needs to stop. This needs to stop before it's too late.

We need to establish an equilibrium.

The authentic person, the person with a single voice, has one big advantage.

It's called regulation.

In psychology, when I'm asked, for example, how can I best define personality disorders, which is my field, my field is personality disorder.

How can I best define personality disorders?

I say, well, the main ingredient, the core ingredient, is dysregulation. Dysregulation is when your moods come from the outside, not from the inside. You allow other people to change your mood. You allow other people to change how you feel, your emotions. You let other people change your thinking.

So you are dysregulated. You are labile, volatile, fluctuating. You are dysregulated.

Something from the outside is regulating you.

This is a sign of mental illness, and yet I would say the majority of people today are dysregulated.

They allow other people, institutions, other groups, collectives, news, advertising, to regulate how they feel, regulate their moods, their emotions, their cognitions, so their regulation is coming from the outside.

How is this possible?

Because these people outside, they collaborate with the other voices.

I want you to listen to this well because this is absolutely the core of nothingness.

The people from the outside who are changing your moods, changing your emotions, changing your thinking, they have this power over you. They have this power over you because they're collaborating with the voices inside your head which are not you. The voices inside your head are like Trojan horse. They're like fifth column. They're like traitors. They're like double agents, double spies. They work for the enemy.

So if I want to shame you, to shame you, I would collaborate with your mother. From the outside, I will collaborate with the voice of your mother to shame you. And you will hear the voice of your mother saying shame on you. You should not have done that. You're a bad girl. You're not okay.

How did I do this?

I collaborated with this voice inside you.

Now imagine that I come to someone who has only one voice, only one voice, and that voice is him or her.

It's the essence. It's the core. It's the identity.

I have no one to collaborate with. I cannot affect you in any way.

End of story. I don't have traitors in your camp. I don't have a Trojan horse inside your walls.

So I have zero impact on you.

Authentic people self-regulate.

And other people have zero impact over them. Zero.

You cannot affect another person's moods, behaviors, emotions, cognitions if that other person doesn't have collaborating voices.

You cannot do that.

So self-regulation.

We are nearing the end of the lecture.

So those of you who are asleep, you have another 10 minutes.

What is this process of eliminating all the voices that work against you?

These voices work against you.

Even the most loving mother, even the most adoring teacher, these voices are not you. And because they're not you, because they're not you, by virtue of being not you, they are not your friends.

Even when they think they are your friends, they're not your friends.

So the minute you eliminated all these voices, you developed something rare. It's called self-love.

Self-love is not narcissism. Self-love is the opposite of narcissism.

What is narcissism? Narcissism is fear of reality.

The narcissist tries to control reality by digesting it, by assimilating it.

The narcissist takes reality and puts it in his mind because he's terrified of reality.

So narcissism is about fear. It's a panic reaction.

Narcissism is self-loathing and self-hatred.

The narcissist hates himself. He regards himself as inferior, not consciously, unconsciously.

So he compensates. He says, I'm not inferior, I'm God. That's his compensation.

Narcissism is the opposite of self-love. Self-love has four components.

Everything in my lecture has four, five or three components because I'm Jewish.

Right. I forgive you for this coffee. I thought you would never ask. I know you work hard for your money and I'm feeling that maybe I'm crossing the line.

There are four elements in self-love.

True self-love, not narcissism. Remember, narcissism is self-hatred.

Compensation for self-hatred. The narcissist as a child was told by his mother or parents or you're bad, you're worthless. If you want me to love you, you need to perform. You need to behave. I'm your mother and I'm going to love you only if you behave in a certain way. Only if you perform.

We call it conditional love. Self-love is never conditional. It's unconditional and it has four components.

Self-awareness. You can't love yourself if you don't know yourself.

So you need to become self-aware.

How do you become self-aware?

You eliminate the voices. You listen to the voices. You say, this is not me. This is not me. That's my mother. I remember her saying this. I remember her saying this. Delete. This is not me. This is Guweshi. I remember him saying this.

Or pick your politician. So delete.

So getting rid of these voices purifies you. Makes you a crystal. Makes you like a diamond. Purifies you. Makes you essence and essence.

And so the minute you've eliminated all these voices, this is self-awareness.

Finally for the first time in your life, you are face to face with yourself.

Reality, institutions, other people, they do everything in their power to prevent you from getting to know yourself.

So if you get to know yourself, you are empowered. You don't need anyone in a good sense. You don't need anyone in a good sense. You don't need anyone to regulate what's happening inside you.

And people want you to be dependent. They want you to be dependent. They want you to be weak. They want to control you as you want to control them. It's a power play. It's a giant power play.

And so you opt out of the game. You say not playing anymore. You overturn the chess board. I'm not playing. The minute you're not playing, you have all the power in the world.

Only when you're inside the game, you're powerless. Create the matrix. Unplug. No power over you. No power over you. You are the most powerful man or woman in the world.

What is the most powerful man and woman in the world?

It's a man or a woman where others have no power over him or her. It's not necessarily that you are godlike or it's simply that others have no power over you.

So self-awareness. Then self-acceptance.

So these are the four elements of self-love to remind you.

Self-awareness. Self-acceptance.

Once you become aware of who you are, your essence, your identity, you need also to accept it.

One of the major problem in modern people is self-rejection. I'm not good enough. I should have accomplished more.

You ask any successful entrepreneur. You read the book by Stephen Jobs. You'll see interviews with Bill Gates. Warren Buffet. Any successful entrepreneur. They will tell you. It's not about education. It's not about planning. It's about luck. They say 90% of their success is luck. What does it mean luck? Being in the right place at the right time and being open. Being receptive.

But you can't be receptive if you're focused on the goal. You know, it's like a horse with blinders. It's the goal. Wait a minute. What is this?

So you perceive opportunities as disturbances, as noise. When you're focused on a goal and other things happen that are not in the plan, you perceive them as bad things. Although they can actually be wonderful and lead you to a much better goal.

So the authentic person is always successful.

Okay, I thought you'd do enough. And I will stop here.

It's just a nutshell. It's just a taste of a taste.

It's like the smell of the onion. It's a taste of the taste of the onion. It's much, much more on the channel. And it's much more complex there. And there are 30 steps. And all the philosophies there.

For example, there's a video about the contributions of Buddhism to nothingness. So you'll find another one about Taoism. Existentialism.

There's a few videos about existentialism. So all the philosophical infrastructure, psychology infrastructure and so on and so forth. It's a very rich channel.

And if you want to kind of delve deeper, you can go there.

But in a nutshell, that's it. It goes back to the ancient wisdom. Be yourself. It's simply about being yourself.

The minute you are yourself, you are nothing and everything. You are nothing in the social sense. Because you got rid of all these voices. You got rid of the influence of society on you. You regulate yourself. You're self-sufficient in the good sense. So you are nothing. In the eyes of society, you may be nothing. But you're also everything. Because you have the best friend in the world and you control the only object that matters, which is you. And then everything you do is a gift. Everything you do is a success. You can never, ever fail. And you feel utterly comfortable in reality as it is without trying to dominate it or to control it.

Okay, guys. And girls, of course. If you have any questions, I'm here to give you additional questions.

And I have to. It's been a long lecture, so feel free to not ask questions.

A lecture when there are no questions is an exercise in euthanasia. Or everyone understood everything, which makes me a great lecturer. And since I don't believe the second option.

We confuse a lot self-confidence and narcissism. Because healthy narcissism is the foundation of self-esteem and foundation of self-confidence, which together are what we call sense of self-worth.

You cannot have a sense of self-worth without healthy narcissism.

The problem is that all these solutions become very fast, become malignant.

So if you start with self-esteem, very easy for you to become grandiose. It can deteriorate, decay, degenerate. So it does.

Now, in nothingness, in you, there is no feeling which is more empowering than getting to know yourself fully.

The minute you get to know yourself fully, you feel that you are in control of everything that matters. And you are. It's not an illusion. If you know yourself fully, nothing can surprise you. No one can destabilize you. You are in control of the most important thing in life for you, which is you.

That, of course, is a good definition of self-esteem.

So we say that in psychology that self-esteem reflects self-efficacy. If you are self- efficacious, you have self-esteem. Self-efficacy is simply the belief that if you apply yourself to a situation, you will get the best outcomes.

But to do that, you need to trust yourself.

And so you say, I know myself. I trust myself.

So that means I'm self- efficacious, and your self-esteem goes up automatically and will never become grandiose.

Is grandiose is not to know yourself?

Grandiose is based on lack of self-awareness.

Because you think you are more than you are. Your self-awareness is bad, compromised. Self-awareness is a protection against grandiose.

You know yourself. I'm up to here. The world starts here. These are my strengths. These are my limitations. This is what I can do. If I take my strengths and apply them, I'm going to get good outcomes.

That is self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem.

Never at risk of becoming grandiose.

Yes? Yes, please.

In 18th century British historian, I've said there's so much progress for us. Why are we to expect this fear ahead of us?

And I like to say it on my own, very good.

And you have the analogy about how the West, mainly America, and Canada, specialize. 50 years, basically, the American people are paying to be good, because society and whatnot.

And then before the early war, we've got faith in the more East-West, and everyone in the now world, and everyone in the East-West.

And it's not a criticism, but how do you...

It could be a criticism.

And how do you, as the inherent conflict lies here from recently, you've got the same...

How do you explain it?

You talk about someone being self-actualized and being so sure they're not glory- about what happened to their child.

But then you also talk about the issues of community, which I actually agree with community collaboration, feeling a part of something.

So how do you have one answer?

How do you...

This is a conundrum that was best dealt with by post-Marxists, like Louis Althusser, for example, Guy Debord, French post-Marxists.

They tried to square the circle. They, on the one hand, discussed the authentic person, because they were all influenced by Sartre and others. They discussed the authentic person. They said authenticity can reach the point of solipsism and isolation.

How do we transition from authenticity, from this diamond, purified diamond, how to make a transition to community?

And the answer was interpolation or spectacle.

They said that when you are not authentic, when you are not purified, when there's not total self-awareness and so on, when you try to form a community with other people, you would actually be creating a spectacle, a simulacrum. You would not be creating a real community, but you would be creating the appearance of a community. And this would be done through a process called interpolation, where society tells you, in effect, how to behave, which choices and decisions to make, etc.

So because you're not free to choose your own way of forming a community, what you get are clones, clones of...

So they are simulations by definition.

And so the idea is that once you are authentic, you will reach out to other people, because they are authentic as well, hopefully.

First of all, you will not team up with people who are not authentic. You will not, because you don't do this anymore. You don't need to act on their introjects. You don't need to trigger their introjects.

So authentic with authentic. The minute you're authentic with authentic, the idea is, or the idea is, because it's never been tried before, the idea or the idea is that you will negotiate a community, that each community will be highly idiosyncratic, idiosyncratic communities. You will not have spectacle. You will not have consumerism. You will not have interpolation. But you will have highly idiosyncratically negotiated arrangements.

Now, we're beginning to see this, actually. We're beginning to see this in interpersonal relationships. This is the first time in human history where you have a multiplicity of intergender arrangements, or not intergender, but cohabitation arrangements or relationship arrangements. It is the first time in human history where people don't come to the table and say, okay, we want to form a couple, and this is how it's done. We have a recipe, and this is how it's done.

So all these couples were fake. They were simulacra. They were simulations, copies, clones.

Today, people come to the table and say, I'm me, you're you. Now, let's negotiate a couple. I mean, do we want to live together? Can you see other people? Can you have sex with other people? I mean, everything is on the table. Well, it depends on the other people. It depends on the other people. But I'm giving you a radical example.

But today, relationships are totally negotiated. One by one, there's not a single relationship that is a clone of another.

So we are beginning to see the signs of authenticity.

But unfortunately, it's limited to this, and it is still subject. It's still subject to what radical families call the patriarchy. It's still subject to history. So we still have a lot of bias built in, a lot of expectations. And so we have, you know, conformity to male double standards. So it's still contaminated. The process is still contaminated, and there is no maximum authenticity.

But you're beginning to see the harbinger.

I think a historical context would be helpful here.

We are living in an aberration. For well over five thousand years, there was no distinction between family and work. There's no distinction between work and leisure, etc. These are utterly, there was almost no distinction between genders. There was definitely no age-based distinction. There was nothing as child. Child is a totally new concept.

So all these concepts, all this language that we are using today is 200 years old. And consequently, it does not capture real human dynamics.

So in the Victorian age, or even before the Industrial Revolution, they started to separate home life and work life. So you came back home, and home was supposed to be the antithesis of work. But this is totally new. This never happened before.

When you were a farmer, your family was the work unit. The factory was your home. There was no leisure. There was no, I mean, it was all one big mess. Your child works, worked with you from age four. It was all, and now we invented, we're trying to force upon reality constructs and which are not holding water, and they fail. They constantly fail. All these institutions are failing because we imbued them with counter-factual content.

And this is precisely psychoticism. It's precisely this. We created an alternative world, an alternative universe, created creativity, set of narratives which regrettably have nothing to do with reality. So we are utterly immersed in a virtual alternative reality, and it's failing big time. Big time.

And we don't know how to go back. We don't know how to go back because people like me, professors, academics, they're telling you if you want to go back, you're reactionary. You're misogynist.

So there's a lot of boundaries. You can't even contemplate going back.

For example, if I were to say, listen, I think actually whatever happened until the 17th century, it was a very good idea. Let's study these structures and see how to adopt them to modern times, taking into account technology, equality of genders. Let's try to modify them.

I will be fired. I'll be absolutely fired. I'm not kidding. I'll be fired.

There's censorship, there are things you should never ever raise or discuss. End of story. If you try to say that the current sexual mores among people under the age of 25, now we are redefining adolescence. It lasts until 25.

That's the work of Twinge Campbell. If we say sexual mores among people under the age of 25 actually perpetuate patriarchy and render the whole thing more chauvinistic and not less, you're at a serious risk of being cancelled. There are huge social and effective employment punishments, penalties to discussing the truth. The truth has been utterly sacrificed in this.

So we kind of, I think, prefer to live in a dream state embedded in this nightmarish thing. Anything that threatens confrontation with reality is rejected.

Did you understand a word I just said? Because I'd like someone to explain to me. Yeah, someone there? You would have to speak up. This ear is the Israeli army. I hear you now. That's actually an excellent question.

Very good question.

First of all, we should make a distinction with physical reality and mental reality, psychological reality. As I said at the beginning of the lecture, you can forget about physical reality. We are not in touch with physical reality. Everything you see, everything you hear, everything you believe you see and hear is processed by your brain according to narratives and structures which are encoded in neural pathways. For example, when you get vision signals, you combine them in your brain according to preset models and so on. Similarly, for example, you don't hear most of what I say. You reconstruct it in your mind. Memory. Memory is reconstructed time and again. It doesn't exist. Every time you try to remember something, you take bits and pieces from your brain and put them together.

That's why people don't remember anything after one year. Whatever they remember is false.

There's been a famous study by Loftus. She studied what people had remembered. They were in 9-11. They were on the street.

The twins collapsed and she interviewed them immediately after that, the same day or the day after. She interviewed them and they described what they were doing and what they were thinking and what happened and so on. Then she went to these same people and she interviewed them a year later. The vast majority of them did not remember a single thing, but they claimed to have remembered wrong things.

If someone said, for example, I was eating a hot dog, that same person would say a year later, I was running after the bus because memory is reconstructed. So forget physical reality.

When I say reality and non-reality, I'm actually referring to psychological or mental reality.

We have two tests to distinguish between what we call reality testing.

There's a concept in psychology, reality testing. How well do you perceive reality, but not physical reality? How well do you perceive what's going on around you?

We distinguish with reality testing and impaired reality testing.

There are two tests.

First of all, it's self-efficacy. If you keep doing things and not getting the results that you want, then in all likelihood you have impaired reality testing. In all likelihood, you have misperception of reality somewhere.

That's the first thing. The second thing, if you are dysregulated in the sense that other people can have massive impact on your moods, emotions, cognitions, and so on, probably you have impaired reality testing. Probably you're not in touch with reality well, but mediated through these people because they can affect your internal environment. So they are the buffer, they are the firewall between you and reality. So that's why in nothingness there is a focus on the second issue, eliminate voices and eliminate other people's possibility to access your mind.

At that moment, you're more in touch with reality and your self-efficacy increases.

Now, even then, don't misunderstand. Even then, even when you are this diamond, even when you're an authentic person, even if you are not influenced by anyone, even if no one has access to your mind, even then you are delusional. And the reason you're delusional is because no one can survive reality. Reality is too painful, too harsh.

So even then you have defense mechanisms, psychological defense mechanisms, filters, like filters on a smartphone, you know, like on filters in Zoom. Filters that falsify reality allow you somehow to survive. Even then, that's the best you can hope.

And when these filters break down, when defense mechanisms break down, you fall apart. It's a process called decompensation. You fall apart. You're no longer able to function.

It's bad enough that you are lying to yourself all the time through the psychological defense mechanism. You don't need other people to lie to you also. You don't need these two layers, double layers, because then you're totally lost. Your ability to act on the environment and to secure outcomes is gone or crucially depends on other people. You become dependent.

What do we call someone who is totally dependent on something disabled, invalid? You become an invalid.

And so we all use other people because we are invalids.

And the idea of nothingness is to empower you to restore, you know, to delete this invalidity somehow. And to leave you with the defense mechanisms, which unfortunately no one can get rid of or you will fall apart.

One minute with reality in your gun. Real reality. Really what's happening. We lie to ourselves about other people, about their emotions, about our emotions. We all the time lie to ourselves.

And the very few occasions when we come across reality, my wife is cheating on me, my friends don't like me, I lost all my money. These are the moments that the defense mechanisms break down.

You know the outcome.

People fall apart. Some of them commit suicide. We are not built to corporate reality because our brain and sensory mechanisms, they isolate you from reality. They reject reality. We are creatures, we are entities, we are organisms that reject reality. And that's why we live in stories and narratives and so on. That's why we are willing to die for this because that's our only reality.

Okay guys, I told you to do enough. And I've created a sufficient number of enemies today. If there's another question I will answer, if no one has any other question, then thank you for listening. You've been very kind. Thank you.