Ep. 608 – Facing Our Collective Karma with Dr. Bruce Damer

Continuing their earlier conversation, Dr. Bruce Damer and Raghu Markus have a socially charged discussion on facing our collective karma with equanimity and grace. 

Start with the first part of this conversation HERE.

In this episode, Raghu and Dr. Damer explore:

• Ram Dass’s teachings on social justice and keeping our hearts open in hell
• Understanding collective karma and how it shapes the world we live in today
• Why this moment in history may be the most powerful time for spiritual awakening and intellectual growth
• Balancing awareness of global challenges with one’s own personal and spiritual development
• Cultivating equanimity and positivity instead of falling into fear, stress, or panic
• The importance of satsang and sangha—gathering in community for deeper spiritual connection
• How spiritual wisdom from gurus and teachers can be misinterpreted or become misunderstood over time
• Dr. Damer’s connection to philosopher Dr. Kaushik, wisdom from Krishnamurti, and psychedelics from Terence Mckenna
• Altered states of consciousness and connecting into the mind at large

“These beings don’t just come out of nowhere. There's a karma that we collectively have, actions that we have taken that have created what we are now looking in horror at.” – Raghu Markus

Links & Recommendations from this episode:

Read more of Ram Dass on Finding Space for Equanimity in Social Justice

Preorder the upcoming book Strange Attractor, to learn more about the hallucinatory life of Terence Mckenna 

Listen to Dr. Kaushik’s insightful audios HERE

Check out Dr. Bruce Damer’s Podcast, Levity Zone, featuring episodes with Dr. Kaushik 

About Dr. Bruce Damer:

Dr. Bruce Damer is a scientist, psychonaut, and humanitarian. Dr. Damer is Chief Scientist at BIOTA Institute, UC Santa Cruz. He is an astrobiologist working on the science of life’s origins, spacecraft design, psychedelics and genius. Dr. Bruce has spent his life pursuing two great questions: how did life on Earth begin, and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the cosmos? A decade of scientific research with his collaborator Prof. David Deamer at the UC Santa Cruz Department of Biomolecular Engineering resulted in the Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life published in the journal Astrobiology in 2019. Dr. Damer also has a long career working with NASA on mission simulation and design and recently co-developed a spacecraft to utilize resources from asteroids. Advancing research into altered-state innovation, Dr. Damer recently cofounded the Center for MINDS. You can keep up with Dr. Bruce Damer on Twitter or read his scientific writings HERE.

“Perhaps what we’re doing now is we’re getting ready to go through another one of these compression points and shed off those things and then emerge back out. It’s possibly the time for the greatest spiritual growth as well as intellectual, we have the tools of A.I. It really challenges us to decide what’s essential.” – Dr. Bruce Damer

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