Ludwig and Dr. K's Journey of Death and Consciousness

uh the ultimate way to come up for air is a dick joke that's yeah to tie a dick joke into my dad's death would be phenomenal yeah i'll come up with one rigor mortis who knows right there look at that look at how easy it is hey man hey how's it going does my camera work for you and all that it does work for me so many things about what i see work for me that's i'd love to hear that let's enter it it's not centered okay nope all right we're money all right there we go it's nice so you go by ludwig it's uh yeah it's supposed to be ludwig but i go by ludwig yeah and what would you prefer that i call you today i go with ludwig yeah ludwig okay that was great so ludwig um thanks for coming on i really appreciate it especially oh is that a deathly hallows water bottle it is it is i can't take credit it is my girlfriend's butt a quick pick up yeah you get to cr you get to take credit for having a girlfriend who has a deathly hallows water bottle though that was the plan all along all right i wouldn't have dated her if she didn't have the water bottle yeah that's that's dope man um so you know thanks for coming on i i really appreciate it um especially today because we are you know doing a fundraiser for chalk um and and i understand that you're a pretty big deal in the twitch community so thank you very much for offering your time well absolutely you know a big deal seems flattering but you know this seems like a cool charity i like get gamers for chalk yeah i heard you talking about it it sounds really nice yeah so hopefully we can help them out a little bit um is there something in particular that you were hoping to talk about today or or anything that um any questions or anything that i can potentially help you with you know i i have a couple of topics that uh that came to mind um i don't feel like i have like you know compared to most maybe uh as deserving of a spot on the show um like like my girlfriend actually i think she came on cutie i don't i don't know if you remember it was a bit ago uh you know she she got she got the bag she got anxiety depression the whole works and uh and i feel pretty good you know like um or fortunate i should say that you know i don't have personal problems that i think i mean that i know of that i feel they need to talk to but uh maybe broader subjects like um they talk about uh parasocial relationships a lot on stream sure and uh and i'm sure you have some some sage dumb about it and then um the only other thing is death i figured you probably know what happens after we die and i wanted to ask at some point sure so i let's man well said so like i i i really first of all appreciate how you kind of laid out how you're thinking about coming on stream and the first thing that i want to say is that i think you are just as deserving as anyone else and and i think that um part of the problem i think that we sometimes get into on stream is that we tend to over emphasize people's struggles and really we're not and that gets like i think a little bit too close to psychiatry so like part of actually what i really like about um you know understanding the mind and understanding like life and understanding yourself is that it's not necessarily pathology focused so i think that's where we just you know a lot of people need help and we're here to help people but i think like understanding having conversations around death or having conversations even about what you deserve and what you don't deserve and do people who struggle with anxiety quote unquote deserve more than you do i think those are actually really important conversations too um and i love talking about death cool so yeah i don't i you love that sure all right yeah that's high i love talking about most things sure i guess that makes sense for you um and yeah so what what do you wanna do you wanna talk a little bit more about you know sort of deserving this spot or are we kind of done with that and we can dive right in i feel fine about it just wanted to just lighten it up so i i think um because the other way to think about it ludwig is like if we are going to talk about parasocial relationships and death really the goal of stream is to you know help one person hopefully understand something but really the goal is to like talk about things that would benefit our audience and you know i think these two things like if we have a conversation about these two things i i have to imagine that a lot of people will appreciate it and will benefit from it so i think it's totally cool yeah makes sense i'm on board so we starting with parasocial relationships or death i think you're supposed to end with death so parasocial it is okay so tell me what is uh and i may not have sage advice because i think you guys probably know more about this than i do so can you tell me what a parasocial relationship is okay yeah so well yeah basically it is uh you know a one-way relationship um with with someone and uh and i think that's the gist of it but the way i understand it is basically people who form relationships with me their streamer um even though i can't give anything back personally uh and then you know they might gain too much of an attachment you know a lot of people say things like i love you and and uh and basically treat me as a friend and i can't reciprocate okay and and what do you think about that you know i've always been pretty chill with it because i kind of grew up on youtube and uh and i feel like i grew up pretty fine um but my my roommate slime always seemed very concerned about it and uh and then i think as i grew a bit i was like huh you know this can be a bit problematic because i think my viewership started getting a bit younger and uh and i guess more impressionable um and i just think that especially now that covet people are on twitch so much that you know they sometimes forego irl relationships for online ones with people that can reciprocate what's wrong with that i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with online relationships i think that i see myself being like i read my dms and the dms people send me it feels like it's i mean i don't know if i want to say crossing a line but i'm not the guy for the job a lot of the time um and they're using me as the guy for the job and i can't fulfill the role what what's the job help me understand like hey this is going on do you have any advice you know um i don't know what to do for my major any basically piece of advice or just try to talk to someone who will listen even um like you would with a friend they though they might with me uh and i can't answer of them all because there's a lot sure and and i have in the past a bit but you know then it gets weird too because i don't you know i'm not particularly in like involved in the person's life so i don't know the whole thing so sure so basically that yeah if that makes sense how do you think that these relation why do they dm you for advice about what they should major in how do you understand that i don't know i don't particularly know why i'm the first maybe i've thought about this because people do it for advice they'll also do it for like maybe just like money straight up or they do it just for like like they'll ask you for money yeah or just simple pleasantries or like terms of endearment um and i i think it's maybe a mixture of a shot in the dark and maybe it's just easier to say to me first if that makes sense yeah let me understand that say it to you first like if you were gonna be like you know if i was broke imagine i'm broke as hell and you're my good friend and i like i've come to you before and i don't want to be like yo dr k can you just slap me a thousand like it's easier to just ask a random man on the internet who probably will ignore it but there's a chance i'll answer and at least like practice how i'm gonna say this before i go to you yeah sure so why do you think it's easier to approach the random man on the internet because you don't think they'll respond yeah that's kind of interesting but i also think devastating because what you're suggesting and i think this is true is that sometimes it's easiest to take the chances that we know have the highest likelihood of failure yeah yeah i think people do that a lot they do do that who like send me emails with a resume being like can i be an editor i feel like it's the absolute minimum you could do um but still doing something yeah and and you also mentioned at the early on something about i love you you know and what do you think what do you think people what do you think your viewers what do how do they view their relationship with you well that's what i'm concerned about you know i would hope it is like you know um like youtube was for me as a kid or like any show is i guess like a little form of entertainment you can hop online too and maybe pull some character traits for me that you like and get some laughs but that's kind of the uh the extent of it is that what youtube was for you entertainment it was entertainment in some like life lessons yeah i would say it was both those things but i wouldn't say it was like you know a source of friendship or uh camaraderie or anything so i'm hearing you kind of if i were to infer i'd say that you didn't really form parasocial relationships with the youtubers that you watched i like to think i didn't i could be wrong but i i imagine i didn't did you ever tell a youtuber that you love them i don't think so it's also just weirder in a youtube comment sure um did you ever tell a youtuber did you ask them to for a job no i did send a youtuber my youtube videos asking for advice oh sorry what no we oh my god you got a thousand dollar donation yeah um by anonymous and 500 from chewbacca sorry we're get we'll get to donations in a second i don't want to cut me off for a rack that's fair thank you guys very much for supporting chalk yes good job 11k here we come um anyway you were saying that you you never asked them for a job but you maybe did ask for advice i i might have asked for a job you know when you're 16. i definitely have asked for jobs in a lazy fashion um before 100 but i do vividly remember asking for advice on a youtube video i made when i was 16 from like a larger youtuber and uh he actually replied um which was hype he said kind of funny jokes but [ __ ] quality setup that's what he said yeah and replied what was your question i don't understand no it was like do you have any advice on like my youtube videos because i sent him a video i had made oh i said i thought to this video and how that's pretty good how did that make you feel when you responded it i think didn't matter because i had already quit at that point but i thought it was cool that he replied for sure what was cool about that that he took the time for a young 16 year old boy yeah so we're going to point something out ludwig what did you just do uh thanks the anonymous donator in conjunction with you and brought up a story about uh addiction yeah so so so like you just changed your voice a little bit uh-huh right yeah and yeah you kind of made a joke out of it you're like yeah oh like was nice for a 16 year old boy you're roasting me live on twitch.tv you know well i can stop if it if it makes me oh you're so good you're so good i did do that yeah what well how do you understand why you did that uh how i made the voice you make it more spicy no no no i mean but why did you make the voice in that moment a little flare yeah but why flare at that point i completely agree it's flare you're cracking a joke you're making it a little bit funny well then because i guess it was a bit i was a bit goofy that i uh everybody just put me laughing you got me it was a bit goofy that the whole entire situation but it's something i look maybe fondly back on yep um but you know yeah yes so it's kind of interesting because i i think actually like what you're doing is lightening i think the significance of it okay yeah why'd i do that so so i i think it we can get to that in a second i just let's notice it first right so we start with observations and then like we can develop hypotheses down the road the more data we collect the more accurate right but like i think that sometimes people feel uncomfortable if i had to venture sometimes like people feel uncomfortable like talking about things that are impactful to them and so what we do is we like make light of it gosh okay right yeah well yeah i just don't like bringing too much gravity to gravity to to things that's around me usually i like to keep it light fluffy yeah perhaps that's it yeah so so then if we if you really want to go off the rails what what makes it hard for you to sit with gravity like you know important things well you know gravity comes with a bit of weight and i don't like throwing weight around i like throwing light and fluffy it's a little more fun a little easier yep absolutely it's fun it's easier serious i'm i'm with you so now i'm going to give you a choice ludwig we can dig into that we can go off on that tangent but that tangent is going to be a little bit more personal but i also want to fully respect you know what you want to do and what you don't want to do we're going to ignore twitch chat don't care about what they think it's not about that gotta go down the road dr k that's why you we have to nope i want to do you feel beholden to in yeah okay what does that word mean so it do you feel obligated to hmm um or do you really think it's i think it's a more hype road to go down and that's what i'd prefer okay why do you choose the hype road well because when it's hype it's more fun it would be regrettable to not pick a hype decision yeah so so once again you gravitate towards fun and lightheartedness see it's happening right now you're doing it again no it's just like it's something that's hype like like i could i could go down the road that i had predetermined and then i could think a week later like damn maybe dr k had some [ __ ] to say like he probably had some bars to drop and i didn't like go for the bars is it okay to not go for the bars sometimes yes but if you can and it's not that problematic why not okay cool so if you want to go down the road enough of them oh [ __ ] lost my pen yeah you do it new doctor k way to make a lighthearted joke in the moment no i mean i i seriously my fingers are slippery which is a you know a whole different discussion but um i'm supposed to ask you about coombers at some point too okay sure um speaking of making things lighthearted but so so tell me what i mean do you you know were you always kind of the joker yeah for sure class clown can you tell me a little bit about that um yeah you know i i remember started third grade we had uh i think it was called brambling where you write for like 15 minutes uninterrupted you're not allowed to not write you can write whatever and then at the end of it you could volunteer to share and i shared my parody of the book um my brother sam is dead remember that one it was about uh civil war and i called it my brother slam is dead and i had this hilarious joke where slam his mother told him to take a shower and wash the dishes like a mother would and he and then he says like as a narrator he's like and then i wash the dishes and took a shower at the same time and everybody thought it was the funniest thing ever and ever since then i've just been on a high road i just ride that high what is that high they all laughed they thought it was funny it was a classic good one and how did that make you feel 10 out of 10. it was a banger certified good one live in front of all the people in my class and my crush and the cool teacher sounds amazing did i do the voice again yeah it was amazing it was good yeah um and it sounds like you've been chasing that high ever since is that why you is that kind of how you can you tell us how you got into streaming uh yeah i did comedy in college and then i thought i should do something with this after graduating and i did a podcast with a friend and he streamed it on twitch and um that was slime as well and i was like oh you know i could just maybe stream while i try to find some comedy group in la or whatever and then i just did streaming and then that worked out cool well congratulations thank you can you can you tell me a little bit about um what growing up was like uh grew up in new hampshire it was chill i had like a like a nice house indoor pool that's cool that's like a weird thing that people don't have a lot um dad died high school was great 3.0 i would say yeah pretty good high school all in all did you say your dad died yeah my dad died my dad died when i was 10. yeah but also 3.0 i was in choir honors wire wow that's impressive can i just think for a second go for it go for it varsity soccer how old were you when you were into the 10th grade uh no he died when i was 10 not in the 10th grade unless you're just wondering sorry how old were you it when the the joke story is from the third grade it was uh on hindsight i misremembered it's fifth grade i believe actually how old was your fifth grade eight no wait ten wait i was 10 dr k see you did it again oh [ __ ] yeah i was 10 years old a detective voice do you remember what else happened that year wait my dad died that year wait okay i'm i'm using a voice but i do think i haven't wrecked yeah i guess that does add up sure you're onto something here i think i mean maybe mm-hmm so it's okay let's just sit for a second how are you feeling right now ludwig i feel good i'm trying to remember dates uh because he died in march i can't remember if it was before or after the story but i don't i don't remember i can't remember can you tell me a little bit about what growing up was like before your dad passed away uh chill i don't remember a lot which uh is regrettable but you know i was i was like 10 and now i'm 25. why do you regret it well you know i'd like to remember my father uh but i can't remember that much from when i was 10 because i had smaller brain less formed uh but it was good i remember we went on a lot of vacations to europe where the family lives so we'd see family a lot um school was pretty bomb uh played a bunch of video games wouldn't you play i was the renowned worst gamer in my friend group but i played a lot of smash and uh pokemon snap and kingdom hearts wow cool um never really got into any of those really yeah well i've seen your show in no offense dr k you're a bit of a boomer i mean you're whipping out like i feel like the references you whip out in the games you're playing are dated yeah they're a little bit older even absolutely man you'll always be like you guys ever play star quest 17 and it'd be like for like windows 84 yeah so so you know it's strange thing because i feel the boomer inside me yeah i feel like coming too like it's it's it's interesting because like when i see games now it nowadays i think to myself like this thought pops into my head man games are so much better like everyone talks about ff10 like you guys need to go back and play ff4 and f6 yeah you know let me tell you i was just watching right before this uh one of the streamers i really like play ff10 i'm like damn this game's goaded the kids won't know these days they're all playing persona now yeah i need to give persona a shot i want to give pokemon a shot too with my kids but it seems like pokemon sword and shields suck yeah i think pokemon kind of fell off after the ds when they went 3ds it's kind of but the old ones hold up like black black and white um they're good cool so what we just did there is something called coming up for air okay okay so sometimes when we talk about things that are serious we sometimes crack a joke or we talk about games for a little bit and then we kind of come up for air and now we're going to go back in again okay yeah i go for air a lot i don't have a big lung yeah we'll see okay we'll see but yeah i think so i think so i think that's sort of i think you have a bigger lung than you give yourself credit for okay yeah that's fair uh but i would say you do come up for air a lot so let's just try to notice things about what we do right and maybe we'll learn something so you say that you kind of wish you had more memories because can you tell me a little bit about that yeah you know like like dad dead boom i'm 15. remember a good amount only like a few years ago five years later 20 in college can't really remember like maybe like his face or something you know it was like you know you forget the voice the face and then you gotta go to like pictures and stuff like just like conjure it up and uh like the smell just like things you'll forget over time because um it happens over time you forget this sounds kind of weird but it almost sounds to me like you're you know he didn't die at the age of 10 it sounds to me like you're actually like kind of losing him piece by piece i think you do right i think that's kind of how it i think it's a a constant war when someone dies to keep them as much as you can in their lives and you can't because you will lose to time every time good job no i'm i'm very impressed by you not coming up for air because that's some heavy [ __ ] that's a bar you're the one you're the one dropping bars there bro okay that's it did you notice that like oh i look i tried it man i think coming up for air is good for others as well so if i'm live with you know 20k on the reg you know how it is uh just came back i don't actually i do those that come up for errors come up for air dr k um uh you know i think other people also might appreciate that if they're not trying to have you know because i think the vibe of the stream is expected to be a certain way so you come up a good amount then everybody else gets to come up too yep yeah i wonder if the parasocial relationships form when you don't come up for air dude yeah yeah yeah i feel like even coming on this show could promote social relationships if i'm being too real sure and not as much of a character yeah and then they're like damn it's so real i actually like them now and then they give me their money so they're like i love you and then they're my dm's dr k and and then how does that make you feel a little bad can't respond all you guys appreciate the money easy clap um i'm gonna toss out a word do you feel inadequate i used to i think a good amount i remember i used to stream like a year ago and my viewership was like booming and i'd have like a really good stream like a banger like 10k people would be there and then i wouldn't want to stream the next day because i'd be like i'll never hit this again like this is i've peaked this i've done more than i can handle and i would just i would i would not be able to hit the go live button and i would just lie down on my floor for a while but i kind of got over that um i don't know why i can't exactly pin it but i think i got over that yeah so i think there's a lot to cover do you want to you know stick with the dad or you want to talk about the parasocial i'm so open i feel like you're my sherpa in a way and i would hope you can guide me i i'd happy to i'm happy to be your sherpa on this journey on a shit-covered mountain my dream um yeah so tell me what what do you remember i i know that things fade over time and and that's sad yeah but what do you remember about kind of growing up like like like more specific about is this about anything about yeah sure anything any memories from when you're sure uh remember a few from it's funny the thing about memories in that if you look up pictures or videos you will form like fake memories based off your like nostalgic re-looking at it but i would say the actual memories that stick out are i used to do a lot of shower races with my dad which was basically we would both start the shower at the same time who could finish first probably not the best way to teach a kid how to shower on hindsight you know should take your time behind the ears the whole works but uh but those were fun um i remember sleeping over friends houses uh a bunch playing video games and uh yeah there's there's a quit there's a few memories school can you tell me a little bit about your mom yeah uh my mom's dope she was a software engineer and she was let go because like the company was um it was it was hewlett-packard and they were just like downsizing um and then instead of looking for another job in software engineering and making bank she just like went to school got a business major then became a teacher in french and in uh spanish uh so she could um like hang out with us because then i think my dad died and she was like oh you know i can't be at work until five cause my kids get out of school at three wow um and then she was solo mom doing the shits killing it and yeah and do you have siblings i have a sister yeah an older sister and can you tell me a little bit about her sure yeah she was angsty teen you know on aim i take a peek she gets mad she got that journal that would be on like infomercials that would lock to voice activation a bit of a klepto a bit of a trouble child great heart gotten a bunch of fights with my mom um yeah no that was that was my sister are you guys close now we're pretty close yeah we both live in la we see each other occasionally we text a good amount i think okay cool let's see if we can get a relationship now tell me you know what can you tell me about your dad or is that hard yeah no i can tell you uh he was uh he was a cool dad like uh you know like not allowed to watch tv after school because my mom would get mad but the dad would be like because he worked from home he was like you know run it and then she comes home and we have to like you know go through the tom and jerry sequence to clean up the house and stuff uh and then you know he would he would never narc um so he's definitely cool dad wore sperry's because he was a big sailor from sweden uh lived there most his life well yeah wha were sperrys yeah the boating shoe oh i don't know what that is you might recognize them because like oh i guess maybe not it's a newer but it's like uh now it's commonly worn by like frat boys and stuff it's sperry's and that one brand with polos okay uh but he was a sailor from sweden and so that's why he wore it and i was berries for a while after what kind of after what he died what and what does that mean you wore sperry's for a while after he died like he died and i was like hey this is our thing like this is the this is the augren thing we wear sperry's in this house i'm going to be a sperry guy and i rocked this berries and the frat boys took it over and i backed out frat boys took that away from you they took it away they did i'd never they took it away from me yeah you didn't want to be like them no god no do you wear sperry's now no no i wear flip-flops comfortable i'm not i'm not hearing any emotion around wearing sperry's now it's just sort of like a yeah i think i have made very uh deliberate decisions to move on from certain things um that felt like i was attached to for no reason like um like i had like his whole wardrobe and i threw out a bunch of stuff and uh and moved on from the sperry's and like i had a belt that was his that i wore a bunch and i've whittled it down to uh to uh i wear his ring and i have his watch but i'm not wearing the watch right now so it sounds like you know you're not only losing him in your mind you're sort of like losing you're like sort of letting go of the possessions one by one yes yeah because i i thought it was unhealthy what did you think was unhealthy about it like putting so much of an importance on inanimate objects and feeling the need to like use them or wear them when like if i were to look at it objectively like boating shoes are not that convenient for a man who's not on a boat and his shirts are not that stylish anymore so you know it i can keep it in the closet and that's fine and that's great um but i don't think it like it's not like it helps me recall anything and i don't think it is functional in my day-to-day sure where i feel the need to keep it yeah i think sometimes um you know you can also kind of think of it as like growing out of it like i think there are times where you know you may have needed those things for a particular reason and and maybe you just don't anymore um sounds like a natural part of the grief process to me yeah i would i would agree and and how did he pass away if you don't mind me asking alcoholic uh and i forget my mom told me like a couple years ago but the nitty gritty is probably not that fun to talk about because it's like something but basically it comes down to he was an alcoholic [ __ ] up his insides was refusing to go to the hospital coughed up blood for a bit and then uh and then just died internal bleeding stuff like that i think wow that's kind of grim yeah yeah you wanna i can we can come up for air i'm okay are you okay i'm good i'm good um i mean did you understand what was happening yeah yeah i was 10 i do remember this quite vividly i was sleeping in my mom's room because he was like not having the best day he was sleeping in the guest room and uh at some point during the evening my sister went to the neighbors because she was like a bit like stressed out like she gets really stressed and then he went into the bathroom and then my mom got up and i think he started throwing up blood she called the cops they came i went to the neighbors and they came back the next day and it was uh it was bad news do you remember anything about what you thought was happening or how you felt at the time uh i was pretty scared when i was in my mom's room and then i went to the neighbors and i just kind of slept and chilled and just tried to like wait and then yeah and then they came back and i and i got and i kind of got it frame one cried i think things that died for me before so i kind of knew what death was i'm sorry i always what like like animals have died i think oh is is my thing cut out where are we good no no no no i just understood you i thought you said things have died for you before yeah like i think i understood the concept of death i think we had had a family cat die and and so i think i had understood my mom had explained it to me because one time i asked her i said how many lives do we get after playing like mario 64 and she's like oh like one and i was like damn that sucks and she was like yeah so i kind of knew going in that you get the game over bowser screen um on your first go so when she was like he's dead i was like oh that sucks you know should have got 100 coins kind of stupid of them but hmm just a quick come up just a quick yeah i know it's okay um if i don't come up with you it's because i'm trying to stay down and and you'll if i come up with sure we'll be up for a little while i just can't farm too many sages i have a quota yep that's why we come up for air the ultimate way to come up for air is a dick joke that's yeah to tie a dick joke into my dad's death would be phenomenal yeah i'll come up with one rigor mortis who knows right there look at that look at how easy it is look at how look at how buoyant your mind is classic good one yeah that's what you got to come up with um it's important to you to be funny isn't it yeah it's my job now yeah coming up is what you do for a living yeah i would agree um you're very good at it you're very funny i think uh weaving serious topics while i guess we'll phrase it coming up is uh i think good because it allows you to talk about more serious things with people who might not want to because it usually sucks yep it's it's very very um healthy actually so i think it's interesting because one of the things we realized uh in the healthy gamer community communities we're like starting to actually like get into comedians or it seems like a lot of comedians seem to really need a lot of mental health support i think they're another population that like gets very very poorly served by the mental health system so it's a bizarre thing that we're sort of noticing um and i think that there is a lot of like there's a lot of truth in comedy right comedy helps us sit with very very scary things yeah more easily i i i know that you know sometimes some of the in a sense most insensitive jokes but also some of the most important jokes that we make or after codes in the hospital a code is um when you know like on these like medical shows when they're doing chest compressions and they say clear and paddles and stuff like that i think you'll hear the most jokes like after that really yeah okay it's just hard to sit with like trying to keep someone alive for 40 minutes and then you know yeah so they die yeah so you got to break it yep um but you know did you understand that your dad was an alcoholic when you were growing up yeah for sure i think yeah how did you know that he got arrested for a dui we lived very close to the liquor store uh maybe a mile away and i think he just he went he bought it six to 12 pack whatever cracked one and then they pulled him over in our driveway actually arrested him took him to jail i don't think he was even drunk and then he got his license suspended so it was obvious because he would walk to the liquor store every day uh and like you know like i was like eight nine but i know where he's going you know because i also called her the candy store because they had candy there but he was never going for candy doctor kevin it was always for the alcohol uh and kids had brought it up as well and oh kids that brought about what what is that yeah i mean this [ __ ] zack on the bus one grade older uh would sit in the back because that's where the cool kids sit and he was just like i forget exactly how it started but he's like he was just roasting me because my dad didn't have a license and would go buy alcohol and walk there and [ __ ] like that yeah that sounds do you remember how you felt or how you responded i think i got mad called him a pimple butt you should have seen him he was torn up from that one nice yeah well well played um and do you know if your mom had did your mom and dad ever talk about their his drinking yeah i mean they definitely had some some fights about it she definitely wanted him to not drink because she was like you're gonna die if you keep drinking and he had periods where he would stop because of that um but then you know he's addicted so he would eventually relapse and he didn't really like professional help because i think he thought it was like maybe admitting a problem too much or whatever so and he just thought he had control over it and uh i don't think he really did now ludwig i would i would say that you know sometimes uh kids in your situation end up being very very like angry with their dad but what i'm hearing from you is that it's super matter of fact yeah i don't think addiction's his fault i think that was like passed to him yeah do you blame him no not really i think he could have gone to the hospital and he would have probably had a few more years but no i think he uh he did good as a dad i feel he did a good job for 10 years could have done it longer admittedly but the 10 were good so you know who are you to complain i can't complain i got a good tenant kids who have a worse upbringing are more deserving than you huh to complain um yes they are in fact yeah people who haven't like so you know other people with anxiety their their deserve to come on but you know a kid who loses his dad from alcohol and watches his dad vomit blood and um then dies you don't deserve to come on and get support i would agree agree with what that at the end of the day if anything bad happens in life someone else had it worse and i think that you can uh just look at the positives i'm gonna have to sit with that for a second and also i'm gonna grab a tissue is that okay go for it just let me let me think about my comeback if he says pimple butt we're over professionally and romantically hmm full disclosure i came up for her when you were gone oh you did yeah just full disclosure what'd i miss it was it's less funny if i tell you if you go back and watch it you might have a laugh okay do you remember thinking when you were young that there are people who are like like you're actually pretty lucky despite your dad passing away that i was yeah i mean that you were lucky to have him around as long as you did and stuff like that yeah for sure so i mean i'm a yeah i was gonna say i think in general i had a good upbringing like you know in middle class dad died but he had life insurance so college paid mostly outside of like a bit of student loan but true you know i think that's that's pretty pretty good that's a good life mom bought me a car that's nice that's easy move to la you have a lot to be grateful for yes yes let me ask you something if you have a lot to be grateful for does it mean that you have is it possible to be grateful for things and ungrateful for things at the same time or is it either or it is but i think the energy spent reflecting on what you're grateful for is more valuable than what you aren't or upset about because that you cannot change and what you're grateful for is something that you can keep and continue to grow and like you know i think it's more valuable i can get behind that at the same time i disagree look you know i can be 15 maul that you know my jonah had a dad until he was 17 and my dad died at 10 or i can be like damn i got this sweet car because my mom is nice that's pog and i think that it's a better head space to be in the second world i agree with that so there's there's there's one thing there's one thing that i would switch in your words okay sure you can be mauled at whoever that is at 15 because they have a dad or you can be grateful for the the car and this is where i would say replace the ore with an end but why be mauled because you're only mauled at life which you have no control over getting mad at something i have no control over seems like a fruitless endeavor let me think about that for a second because i i think you're right what do you have control over current life relationships and um how do you have control over your relationship what do you have control over in your relationship how i act in them [Music] uh and i would say that's the biggest one yeah how i act in relationships how i show appreciation everything perfect right so what do you have control over in your stream um everything really if it even starts you have control over your viewership i in a way i would say yeah how so i can choose what i do uh which will influence it i think everything i do will impact that okay okay hold on though so sure what i'm hearing is that in your relationship you have control over your actions in the relationship you don't have control over qd's responses right that is true yeah in streaming you don't really have control over your viewership but you have control over what you do i think the comparison of like because i get it like i don't have control over other people's responses i would say two things one you can like kind of predict based off of like previous encounters what might be a positive response and i think that is even more viable in streaming where data is everywhere and i can very quickly understand you know hey this will do great so let's be a little bit precise i have control over flushing the toilet but i don't have control over whether the poop goes down yeah but it's gone down like almost every time sure but let's let's be precise okay sure what i have control over is whether the toilet gets flush that is true right i did i've never i always thought i made the poop go down but you're right i only just flick the nozzle yep yep and and so i i i ask you to kind of revisit this idea of like okay so you know what do you have control over like you can't change it like you can't change anything anyway i think if i thought that way i would not be a big streamer though because if i thought i had that little control i would never have tried streaming because i would thought i can't get people to come on stream yeah so this is this is the really challenging thing ludwig is i think you i think you're doing great i don't think you're someone who has all these problems or things like that i i don't mean to make a mountain out of a molehill um at the same time i think that there are still like areas that all human beings can grow and i think the real challenge here is that what we have to what i think would help you move forward in life which by the way i think it's just you know i i don't know if you if i had asked you to start with death do you think we like it's just weird like the themes are just like in your face from today right so first of all you toss out this comment about how you're not deserving to be here it's also kind of like i think you could ask a thousand people on the street you know you're you're grateful for everything that you had in life which is awesome but like i think if you polled a thousand people and they're like you know this kid had his dad die from alcoholism at the age of 10 and he saw him vomiting up blood like and he's grateful like is that you know feels a little bit weird to me and yeah i mean if you boil it down sure yeah right so so you didn't even add in the pog car sure and a car makes it okay wow like it was a dog car i mean must have been yeah right to outweigh losing your dad at the age of 10. yeah well i mean jetta they do it right in germany i'll tell you yeah so so i and and like i don't and i think what you're doing is is healthy right so i think you're right that like most people learn that dwelling on the past and like getting hung up on things that i can't change is not like productive or healthy and doesn't make me happy i'm with you we've we can talk to or have talked to on stream i've certainly talked with people not even patients just people who get caught up in the past and it's not healthy so i'm with you there but i think that like the challenge is that when we think about you know growth there's the low-hanging fruit and then there's the high-hanging fruit and i think where we are is all the low-hanging fruit has been taken care of like you've survived you've thrived you've grown it sounds like you're in a healthy relationship sounds like you appreciate your mom sounds like you know i haven't asked you if you drink and stuff but you know i don't think we need to but you know i'm guessing that you don't and that it isn't a problem for you even though genetically you may be predisposed once a week you do a what a classy once a week what's a classy like a classy once a week drink what does that mean like you know just like like a classy one it's not like early enough and i'll just do like once a week just have my classy drinks and then move on with the rest of my week okay um and yeah so like i was saying you realize you railed you my bed it's it's all good man um but you i gotta i gotta get back on the rails hold on a second yeah so like low hanging fruit and high hanging fruit right so i think this is the challenge so if you look at like the yogis would say that the first problems you solve in your mind are the easy ones and the more the higher up you go the more you level up like it's almost like an rpg where you need more xp to level up and the issues become more and more subtle and i think you've adapted really well you've bounced back really well you have a lot of like really like you're an incredibly resilient person right you've learned how to look at the positive instead of the negative that's helped you like not wash away with like the negativity that you deal with it probably has a lot to do with like how successful you are on twitch because your mind is it's really healthy it's like your mind has learned how to shift away from the negative and look to the positive the challenge is that looking at the positive instead of the negative doesn't actually make the negative go away yeah and and this is where you know if you really i think there's this like there's a and i think we'll get to this because you already said we're gonna talk about that today so so you know i i i mean i wonder if that has anything to do with um oh god you know whether there's whether it's one life and then game over or you can collect coins and and you know i wonder if there's some part of you that's like curious about like where is your dad now yeah yeah probably i think he thought he was very uh agnostic he was like you know it'll be nothingness type of guy sucks for him if that's the case why is that bad it doesn't seem very fun what you want to talk about that let's do it i wanted to coming in what did you want to talk about uh help me understand what you want to understand about death okay so i had this moment in disneyland i think before my dad died i was like nine um where i had a dream and then the dream was life after death and but my dream was nothing and then i woke up with a panic attack and then i think i've been a little monka w on death ever since what does monka w on death mean scared what are you afraid of when it comes to that if i'm right um then life is so much better than death yeah and death is so much longer than life okay so ludwig we can do this two ways okay i can just tell you oh yeah or we can like you know ask you questions and sort of like or we could just explain how death works hey i prima strategy guided every game as a kid i am unoffended if you just tell me the answers okay so let's talk about death so let me think about how to do this where do you start man a little bit prepared sure should i ask questions sure you you can but i i may just get there if i i'm just trying to figure out the sequence of things but go ahead and ask a question oh okay dr k what happens after you die it's a good question let me think about it so i think to understand what happens after you die you have to start by understanding like what is like how does the how does like the universe work okay so i'm gonna start actually with a story so i was um i was working uh at um this place called massachusetts general hospital and if you grew up in new hampshire sometimes you know we would get people from new hampshire um and you know i'm a psychiatrist so i was doing my psychiatry consult rotation which means that you work in the general part of the hospital you don't work on the psychoard and so different teams will call you so like we would manage alcohol so like sometimes you know someone would come in for like a knee replacement and then they would start going into alcohol withdrawal so we would like help people manage alcohol withdrawal and i got a call from the the folks in the neuro icu okay so this is the neurological part of the hospital intensive care unit and so um there was a patient who had gotten into a motor vehicle accident was in a coma for two months and then was out and then so anytime you consult a service you have to have like a question so you can't just like call a cardiologist and be like we need help you have to call a cardiologist and you have to say hey we did an ekg which is something that checks your heart rhythm and the ekg looks weird we don't know what to do with it can you come help us out so the consult question for us as psychiatrists says the patient cries when no one is looking and so they're like we're not really sure like what's going on like he cries when no one's looking and so i'm like all right cool so we get a lot of weird questions because a lot of people don't have the vocabulary to like understand what you know how to frame things for a for psychiatrist so i was like okay cool so i go and i talk to the guy and you know i asked the team i'm like you know what you know what's going on like what's his prognosis and they're like oh he's gonna like he's gonna need to do probably three months of physical therapy he'll make a full recovery his family is thrilled they come in every day he's got two young boys um you know like they're all super happy like they were super worried for a while he seems to be happy that he's with them okay like what's going on with his job and they're like i don't know because we don't ask those kinds of questions i'm like okay so like maybe he's upset about you know something so i go and i ask him and i screen him for depression and the screen is negative i ask him are you sad and he's like no like what's your understanding of like what's happening like or you know you're gonna be disabled and he's like no i'm not gonna be disabled how are things with your wife things are great she's super happy they were worried for a while i'm glad i'm going to be okay if she's going to glad she's good being you know everything's going to be okay so like no divorce or anything like that you know you guys like having marital trouble he's like no he's like okay so maybe it's the job right like maybe his dude's been in a coma for two months so he's like broke financially and like that's why he's depressed it's like no my boss is super understanding i have really good health insurance like you know i'll go back to work like you know my co-workers have come to visit me like it's actually fine i'm just like really confused and i'm like you know what's going on with this guy and so i screen's negative for depression i'm just not sure like i don't understand right and so then like i check on him every day because that's what we've been assigned to him and i go to the team and they're like what's wrong with him have you fixed him yet and i'm like no i don't know what's wrong with him and then you know i come back the next day and i like i'm like how's the you know how's the patient doing he's like yeah he's still like cries when no one's looking i was like what the [ __ ] am i supposed to do about that and they're like i don't know what you're the [ __ ] psychiatrist you figure it out have him stop crying he's like really like bothering like the nurses are super worried and so i check on him day after day after day asking you know you think about killing yourself are you suicidal are you depressed are you anxious are you hearing voices you know he's like no no no everything's fine i'm happy i have a lot to be grateful for a lot of gratitude i've got a nice job i've got healthy family kids you know i could have been disabled i could have been brain damaged i could have been dead and those things are true so finally like on day four day five i'm working this weekend and it's a [ __ ] saturday and i'm [ __ ] pissed because it's a saturday i'm at the hospital come see this guy every single day then i'm like dude so i just asked him i'm like so you don't seem depressed you say everything is fine why do the nurses keep on writing my ass about you crying when no one's looking just that i was like why do you cry when no one's looking [ __ ] tell me and so he's conceived that i'm frustrated and this is you know it's actually a little bit of a calculated play but i you know i've come and i built a rapport with him and i asked him just tell me like what's going on why do you cry and he says doc if i tell you you're going to think i'm crazy and and then i say okay i mean that's i mean i may think you're crazy but i'd love to hear and he says like when i was in a coma like i lived another life and like i have memories just like from this life and i was married and i had two little girls and like i was happy in that life i was you know he was like some kind of engineer or something like he remembers like he remembers all of these things and he's like the reason i cry is because i realize like i'm never going to see my girls again and i mean what do you mean you're never going to see your girls i thought you had two sons and he's like yeah i have boys in this life but i like i had girls and like i loved them i was there when they were born i was there when you know my daughter got her first period because my wife was like traveling for work and like i had to go pick up tampons and like i have all of these like memories and and what i realized is like the dude is like he's like grieving a life that existed within his coma and it's really wild because if you actually talk to people who are in comas this is a relatively common experience that what they experience in the coma feels real what do you think about that uh sounds like some inception [ __ ] it is some inception [ __ ] yeah um yeah i don't know it sounds it sounds interesting and i feel like there's some explanation in your brain right neurons firing yeah yeah some nerdy scientists who can use words to explain that but yeah so that's where you know it's interesting because science so you know when we look at scientific evidence there's no evidence of any kind of thing in the afterlife or anything like that right yeah so you've got like religions who believe in heaven and hell and whatnot but the really interesting thing like the the method that i kind of prescribe to is is a couple of things first is that you have to understand the nature of like experience mind consciousness and existence and what i mean by that is like how do you know ludwig that you were alive uh cause i because i am okay so how do you know that you are because i interact with a human world in a i feel like a way that is tangible and vivid enough that it can't be fabricated okay hold on a second so let's let's get into tangible and vivid what about the world is tangible and what about the world is vivid what do you mean by those words well like everything you know like i like i can i can like i can pick up a crush cup and crush it you know how do you know that the cup is real because it feels real okay it looks real yep okay so so if we think about it yep so so if we really think about it what you're saying is that you're using your sense organs to collect data from the outside world yeah but ultimately it is your feeling of those things that determines existence yes right so this is kind of interesting because like let's say i'm gonna you know ask you i hope this is a safe question do you love cutie yeah how do you know feel good when so it's feelings right so like this is this is really important to understand so there's a barrier between the outside world and the inner world and all of our understanding of what happens in the outside world is actually through the inner world it is your experience of things that that determines that is the foundation of what you understand to be real okay right and and this is where like this is um you know descartes sort of said cogito ergosome i think therefore i am yeah and what descartes sort of noticed is that like even if i'm hallucinating there has to be something that is experiencing just yarn bro it's cool just um there has to be there has to be something that is still being tricked right even in a hallucination even if the outside world is real there has to be something that is observing the hallucination so something has to exist yeah and the yogis determined the same thing and what they realized is that actually like if you look at dreams and reality there's actually no difference between a dream and reality because in the dream it feels just as real as reality does okay right so so then it yeah what about like the laws like i feel like science makes everything make sense like it's real if that makes sense like there are laws and rules and a system and it's and everything falls in line quite well and we can predict the mars will be here because it does that and i feel like in dream you know i i'm running away from big crab man and like it feels real in the moment but like a a dream has an internal consistency okay why do we wait the internal consistency of waking more than the internal consistency of dreaming because if you really think about it in the dream you're not like there's no such thing as internal there's like giant walking crab men you do sometimes though right like occasionally the dream will be so preposterous that you'll like you'll be like and wake up okay now we're getting somewhere wait was it a trap okay if by trap mean you've made a very important discovery then yes okay right so so this is where there's a set of meta so what happens in that moment in the dream usually i wake up yeah so tell me about your experience just say as much as you can sure yeah i remember i had dreams a lot as a kid that a samurai would come to my house and i would wake up in my house and i saw the samurai through the window bad samurai the samurai was coming to kill my mother and i i couldn't lock the doors the samurai would always break through and then and then would get go into my mom's room and and i was like [ __ ] this guy is owning me because it happened so many times and then a couple times the samurai came through and then i would i would i would be like you know i would try to notice something specific about the samurai that looked goofy because and i would be like that's samurai i was wearing no shoes or something then i'd be like that's weird and then i would and then i would wake up okay so you would find some internal consistent inconsistency in the dream yeah you would wake up yeah right let me think about how to so this is i'll just sort of try to toss something i'm going to toss out a hypothesis okay so the first thing to understand is that like with the the experience of things in the dream is just as real as the experience of things in reality yeah the fear that you feel in a dream is just as real you know if you wet your pants in a dream it's it feels the same yeah the interesting thing though is i thought i peed myself today can't remember my dream but i woke up and i was like i [ __ ] peed myself and there's no pee on me so i was good yeah yeah so so it and then similarly like if we think about it like if if you you know went to bed with heartburn in reality in the dream the heartburn disappears right so like there are conditions from reality that disappear in dreams and their conditions and dreams that disappear from reality yeah and we tend to wait reality but really we're not waiting reality we're just waiting wherever our mind is at the moment as real yeah okay so then the question becomes how do you do this thing of snapping out of it and what what the yogis sort of realize is that that there is there is actually something that is outside of your mind so this is where like the next step is that they realize that the observer and the observer the in the object of observation can never be the same so when you look at your face in a mirror what are you looking at are you looking at yourself yes no uplift no you're not looking at yourself what are you actually looking at what is what absolutely you're looking at an image right right so you're looking at something outside of you so the eyes cannot observe themselves you can never see your eyes what do you think about that i get it conceptually but i still feel like i know my eye like if oh if i pulled out my eye i would know that's my eye have you ever seen your eye before only through reflections good right so so i don't doubt that you know what your eye is and now we're getting into sort of the nature of knowledge you know what your eye is because you have an experience of your eye but you have never seen your eye you've seen pictures of your eye you've seen reflections of your eye you've seen images of your eye completely agree but you've never seen your eye yeah so the yogi sort of realized like this is kind of weird because if i can observe my thoughts then my there must be something outside of me that is not my mind and what i would say is that in the dream so we're going to call that thing consciousness okay and i would say in the dream you become conscious that the mind in this reality is not real and it is that rising of consciousness above the mind which experiences thoughts and fears and predictions and analysis and tries to control the reactions of others that all happens within the mind and then the consciousness realizes they're like oh [ __ ] this is this is weird yeah and then you snap out of it okay so is this also like because i used to lucid dream as a kid is the ability to live in your mind understanding it's something your mind created similar then too sure we'll get there okay so i'm not surprised that you lucid dreams so there's a very interesting garment to this entire conversation about is it worth it karma karma okay okay so uh because i i think i'm going to teach you a meditation technique which which i think is works better for people who are capable of lucid dreaming okay because lucid dreaming is sort of the first step that allows you to separate consciousness from mind essentially what i'm going to try to teach you is how to lose a dream while you're awake okay that'd be hard i've not done it in like 15 years so so this is where like the yogis ultimately what they concluded so if you succeed at pulling your consciousness out of your mind that is what we call samadhi or temporary enlightenment and what happens to people who become enlightened is they begin to realize that there literally is no difference between dream and reality now people may think that that means that what you do becomes irrelevant but we'll get to that in a second it's not actually true okay um it actually becomes even more relevant and but essentially like so the nature of reality is that like there's this thing called consciousness so now i'll just explain a couple of other things so the yogis ultimately came to the conclusion that so they did these practices where they essentially like lucid dreamed in reality and they did a lot of thorough studies their particular techniques which are funny because the techniques around dreaming and the techniques around death are very closely related so they're actually like a stepwise if you really want to understand death you have to start with techniques around dreaming and it's all part of like it's bizarre that you're a lucid dreamer you're interested in learning about death and like we're going to teach you about that um so this is what they ultimately concluded that reality the basic unit of existence is consciousness that when consciousness oscillates at a particular wavelength i know this is going to sound super hokey you know it doesn't need to make sense because ultimately all this is experiential once you experience this then you'll understand it it's like i'm trying to explain to you you know what what love is and like you're not gonna understand it until you experience it yeah so based on some of their explorations and i'll teach you one practice today the conclusions that they came to is that consciousness is the basic unit of existence when consciousness coalesces it forms energy and when energy coalesces it forms matter so in a small amount of matter there's an exponential amount of energy and when there's in a small amount of energy there's an exponential amount of consciousness and what is this thing consciousness it's kind of hard to describe but the best experience that you're going to get is it's your awareness that exists outside of mind okay yeah so then we sort of start to get to death and it's like so what is death so death is sort of the annihilation of body and mind but the yogis actually claim that the consciousness still persists like so matter and energy cannot be destroyed right like nothing in this world can truly be destroyed yeah that's true it just changes so then the question becomes like okay so your matter changes into fish food your body is made of stardust that we're fine with energy cannot be created and destroyed but what about consciousness now this is where there's like a very important deviation between west and east because west says that consciousness is simply a manifestation of neurons firing but i don't know how to explain this but like it's fundamentally wrong because like an experience is not an experience is qualitatively different from matter and is it qualitatively different from energy does that make sense yeah like you do there they might fire the same but they can be different no it's like it's exists on a different like so you know matter and energy are fundamentally different right yes is experi is experiencing something yeah matter i would think not right and is experiencing something energy i would think not maybe like energy of me burning my brain cells but no no but that's all matter right so what i'm saying is that fundamentally these buckets are like different stuff the stuff of experience sure there's a neurological correlate like i don't doubt that right so for example when i drink this water i have taste buds on my tongue that will detect certain chemicals those chemicals will route to my gustatory cortex and my gustatory cortex will sort of route to my gustatory association cortex and will tell me this water is good yeah but even though that neurological pathway happens it doesn't capture the actual experience of water yeah okay so you can study the neuroscience of fear as much as you want to it's not going to teach you what feeling afraid is like yeah okay so the yogis sort of concluded that like there are these three buckets experience is its own bucket and this is where things get really interesting because still in a dream you experience so they actually concluded that dreams and reality are actually like no different that all of and so when we talk about enlightenment one of the things that people say is you sort of like wake up and that's when you become enlightened and that may sound like super mystical but we actually do this [ __ ] all the time where like you kind of talk about getting caught up and stuff right so you say that you used to feel inadequate you would lie down on the floor and your mind would be telling you all sorts of things and then i think at some point you woke up and you stopped doing that and you're more at peace because you kind of just woke up and if someone were to ask you ludwig how do i stop caring about my viewers and you'd be like i don't know and they're like how did you do it and you were like i laid down for a while the thoughts were in my head i tortured myself and then it just kind of stopped one day and then they they go and they lay down and they're like i'm being tortured ludwig how do i stop and you're like i don't know it just kind of happened that is an example of you becoming more conscious okay you're less trapped within your mind it's just like you snap out of the dream and then you awake to reality you snap out of that mental pattern you're like i really can't do anything about it i'm just gonna make the [ __ ] content that i want to i'm just gonna control whatever i can which is myself it's like does that make sense you become more conscious it's also like we call this like taking a step back right where sometimes you get so tangled up in something and then you learn how to take a step back and if we think about what you did in the dream you took a step back from the dream and it shattered the dream and so what the yogis say is that this is something that can be learned it is a skill the process of learning to stay take a step back makes you more conscious results in more peace and tranquility results in more control over your mind and moves you one step towards something that they call divinity which is like the ultimate realization that it's like taking the complete step back yeah with me you can only do that you can just do that whenever is like this complete step back sort of yeah or arguably you've already done it you just don't realize it i have i have one hole that i want to talk about real quick yeah people old people are my whole why are old people your whole because they get we get like dumber and when you're older your brain starts to i feel like deteriorate a bit and it can be because of you know whatever uh malady you've gone through but you know like the older you get like when you're like 95 sometimes your brain starts to like you know get a little less sharp but wouldn't the conscious only get stronger why would the consciousness get stronger because it's experienced more and it's not weighted to bodily problems let me think about that so you're saying that since there is a brain that decays and older people appear to be less conscious the more their brain decays wouldn't that imply that consciousness is born of the brain yes yes you are correct bro the yogi should have brought me in what now so that's where i would i don't know whether consciousness i the short answer is that's something i actually don't know so the only way to really understand that i think it's actually still holds up but really the true way to understand that is to have a mental decay and see if you can preserve a sense of consciousness yeah because i guess we only know that based off how we perceive them to act but maybe their brain is chilling yep so so you may just you just may be aware and this happens sometimes right where like you're observing your mind going wild like you'll see this a lot in people have panic attacks where they recognize that their mind is going crazy and there's a part of them that's like holy [ __ ] my mind is wild i can't control it at all it happens sometimes if i take an edible you so you can still so so but then the question is someone on the outside even though your awareness of your mind and your consciousness may be intact someone on the outside would say you're impaired i it's not that they outwardly say it but i'm like that's what the perception would be yes yes right so so like and i think so then the question becomes does your quality of so actually you can do this experiment so this is where ultimately ludwig like it's not going to be logic that pokes a hole in this the only way you can ever poke a hole in this is to experience something come to me and then you're not going to poke a hole you're going to tell me you are wrong because then you will have an experience of it so this is what i would say first of all understand that the the quality of consciousness and then see if the quality of consciousness alters through alterations in your neurochemistry and this is where like one of my favorite experiences is meditating while drunk because my experience has actually been that the consciousness remains exactly the same it is simply the mind and the body which change yeah and actually the more that i think about it that actually what your suggestion is probably actually gives us better evidence for what i'm saying which is that mind and body are actually fundamentally different from consciousness i'm following i have never thought about that but it is true that i have reflected on how i am acting which yeah yeah that's philosophically deep for my brain i think so forget about philosophy this is not about philosophy this is about experience okay so the question is like close your eyes right now okay and notice yes okay [ __ ] okay notice your thoughts and notice that there's a noticing capacity and then there are thoughts sure right and so now like the next time you take an edible i'm not saying that you should use drugs but if you use drugs yeah try to see what the difference between those two things is and see what it is that has changed within you yes and and this is where what you'll really discover is like this gets like super deep into [ __ ] like the self right what is it that's you you're ludwig you have facial hair right now i do i haven't shaved and there was a ludwig that existed before you had facial hair is that still ludwig yes so how do you know who ludwig is because it's not your physical form if you lost a hand would you still be ludwig i think it's uh how i interact with the world based off of my previous experiences okay so this is stuff that you should explore but essentially what the yogis concluded is that you think about anything that you use to define ludwig including your name and that's not really who you are yeah because you could say ludwig is a twitch streamer and but you were ludwig before you were a twitch streamer you're gonna be ludwig after your twitch streamer yeah ludwig is single like so if we look at in cells like in cells identify with the concept of being in cell and then one day they get a girlfriend like what happens do they are they shattered so this thing that we call identity this is a hamkar ego the i feeling or identity is all false and the yogis realize that the only thing that truly exists is this consciousness that your mind changes your emotions change your bodies change your status and life changes and therefore all of these things cannot be real so matter can change but at the end of the day there's like a finite amount of matter in the universe there's a finite amount of energy in the universe and there's a finite amount of this third thing called consciousness and the essence of who you are still exists no matter what kind of change you go through and so now we get to death because what happens to that essence when you die is death a physical thing is it a mental thing both right sure is it a thing of but what we're saying is that there's a consciousness there is a ludwig essence yeah that [Music] transcends your body and your mind because your body and your mind change all the time but there's a certain constant blood weakness and that is your consciousness yeah so what the yogis would claim actually and this claim is based on practice so what they claim is that that ludwigness is like always going to be there just like matter is always going to be there and energy is always going to be there it can change form but there is a certain amount of permanence of stuff in the universe which is actually like scientifically supported right so like we know that matter and energy can't be destroyed and so now the real question is is this do we have scientific evidence of this third thing and the short answer is not really but maybe and this is where you get into hokey stuff around quantum mechanics which one of my friends a lot of people like draw parallels between like yoga and like these eastern mystics and quantum mechanics and i have a friend who's a quantum physicist who's like that shit's [ __ ] quantum mechanics is about math it's not about like yoga hippies saying that like you know whatever we can get into that if you want to so now going back to your original question of like what happens after death and why do you think this question is important to you because i'm gonna die and everyone i know will so you know i'd like to know like if a friend moves to europe i'd like to know if they're okay and they're doing well is it about your dad for sure yeah right yeah so you want to know everything i mean every everybody right yes everyone but i think for you like let's admit it and i think your mind deviates away from this right because your mind focuses on the positive yeah but you want to know if your dad is doing okay yeah that's it right yeah sure all this other [ __ ] is philosophical that's the way that your mind cloaks something negative in something positive if you don't look at the badness and like you want to know like is my dad doing okay and it's okay to ask that right this is where now we get to the subtle layers of where you need to grow it's okay to sit with that thought and like not know you don't have to think about your friends and what's gonna happen to you it's okay to like not know and sit with that negativity it doesn't mean that you're molding and this is where molding is within the mind the more you become conscious and now we come full circle because what i'm saying is that as you gain in consciousness you don't need to wait positive greater than negative everything is what it is right so like you used to be trapped in this idea of like oh my god i'm not gonna get enough viewers i'm not gonna get enough viewers nothing changed when you became more conscious you were just like i just can't control that [ __ ] whatever i'll get viewers i won't get viewers i know analytics i've done my homework i've studied for the test i can't control where i whether i get an a but i can be confident in the work that i have done yeah i like that analogy right and that's that's consciousness so then suddenly if i had asked ludwig before your realization and after your realization ludwig hold on let me think about this i just lost it because it's trying to tie so many threads together [ __ ] i had something oh yeah so so prior to your realization negativity meant more to you even though your situation doesn't change your mind was like more like nothing changed after your realization right like all of the bleak things that you were worried about are still exactly the same does that make sense yeah that's true and so the negativity was born of your mind it wasn't actually born of reality and when you become more conscious that negativity that all of the all of those things that you were struggling with were just as true although they feel less negative you with me yeah i'm with you and so as consciousness grows the difference between positivity and negativity starts to shrink and now we get to where you need to grow because your mind focuses on the positive instead of focusing on the negative which is absolutely adaptive the next step is to recognize that you don't need to do that anymore because there's no difference right [ __ ] happens so be it i don't have to look away from it yeah yeah i feel that sometimes i do think about the negative sometimes then though when i think about the negative i feel like i'm thinking about it in a performative way like i need to think about this yep which is also a weird experience um like even like just by myself so yeah so that's why it there's a lot of reasons why it feels weird to think about the negative i think yep and so the key thing is going to be that you don't as you grow in consciousness you don't need to focus on the positive anymore okay and you can sit with both things you can be grateful that you got a car but for [ __ ] sake man your dad died when you were 10 yeah and you're allowed to be upset about that like what the [ __ ] yeah right you're allowed to like you're entitled to a little bit of like sag and pity and compassion from other people and it doesn't change the two are completely unrelated like like how the [ __ ] just look at that it's absurd that your mind has an equation where the death of your dad in a car or like one to one it's more one to one just the fact that your mind even associates those two things is like [ __ ] dumb okay sure okay right yeah that's not wrong and so that's that's how you've that's how you've grown and that's how you've adapted and it's like awesome that you have gratitude for life it's awesome that you're compassionate it's awesome that you put other people first it's awesome that you try to make people laugh and are you a positive person yes but being a positive person doesn't mean that you're not entitled to like some amount of grief and some amount of like that sucks for me yeah right and so like learning to sit with it is gonna happen the more like so the more you try to learn how to sit with it the more conscious you will become the more conscious you become the more you will be able to sit with it okay so the advantage of sitting with negative thoughts and emotions is that i'll become more conscious ideally yes because sitting with it is not reacting to it the even the phrase sitting with it implies that the consciousness is there so the opposite of sitting with it is getting wrapped up in it and if you talk about getting wrapped up in it then we're kind of stuck where we're walking around in the fogginess of our mind where our mind is telling us all kinds of things and we think that and this is wild just think about this for a second you think your thoughts are true yeah which is the dumbest [ __ ] thing in the world because like what is a thought chatting uh yeah that's a good point that's a good right but when we get caught up in our mind it's like i can think about you know i'm gonna make a paladin who's a half orc half unicorn that's a [ __ ] thought it has no bearing on reality yeah like that's gonna be my next dd character you've thought it up already it doesn't make it real like it's just thought yes i yeah i've always thought i guess it's not real until it's actualized you know yeah but then we get down to the whole rack of the road of dreams and [ __ ] right so then like ultimately yeah you know yeah so is that is a dream real because you certainly experience it so if dreams didn't exist for sure nothing happens after we die because if dreams didn't exist we'd have no qualitative evidence that anything but nothing is uh certain after death right like i feel like dreams are the one wrench in the science community's beliefs on death no because the science community's beliefs on death will just be that dreams are just figments of the like they're very materialistic in their view yeah they just say that like dreams are a creation of the brain whereas the way that i talk about it is like just because you see the sign of something reflected in something else does not mean that that is all there is so what i mean by that is let's say i have a sheet hanging in the wind and all i see is the movement of the sheet and therefore i conclude that the wind doesn't exist and all that exists is the sheet because it's all that i observe it's the only thing that i can see it's the only thing that i can touch but the wind exists outside of the sheet and ripples into the physical world on the sheet so in the same way just because the brain is a physical ripple of experience doesn't mean that the brain is the only thing that exists yes i don't know if that's going to make sense or not i think that analogy caught on for me yeah yeah right so it's just the brain is simply like the physical reflection of certain things that happen and we're falling into a really tricky trap because just because we can observe the brain and we can't actually it's not a tricky trap it's just how science works we just don't have any direct ways to observe consciousness yet and so all we can see is the brain so that's all we think exists do you think that's okay though that we don't sure i think it's the way that science works right so this has been around huh they've been around like no one's done it you know what i mean like observed it in a yeah so so that gets into the problem of the observed and the observe that the observer and the observed can't be the same thing yeah right so this is where this is where the hokie quantum mechanics stuff kind of comes in because some people believe like there's this thought experiment called schrodinger's cat are you familiar with that yeah yeah of course so like the thing with schrodinger's cat is that reality doesn't actually exist reality is just sort of this weird wave form of probabilities and that matter is like coalesces into reality through the act of observation which is [ __ ] wild because the yogis for thousands of years have been saying that the most fundamental thing that exists is the act of observation yeah right and so this is where the the counter argument to that if you're a physics is you can say whatever you want to with real language but unless there's math to back it up you don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about which is you know fair yeah has a yogi or anyone ever gone in to the wake up mode um enlightenment and then just and then just never came back to their body because i feel like that would be a a good observation of it being real does that make sense he has not come back to their body but then how would you know then if they had gained enlightenment because then it was it was like they self-actualized leaving the body like if i said hey i'm a dip now i'm going to let my brain leave and then my body never comes back and i called my own shots yeah so so this is the short answer is yes lots of people but i sort of have skepticism over that so a lot what a lot of people will so this is where like people in religious traditions ramakrishna you can look him up on wikipedia it's just the first person that comes to my mind who sort of did this and he's like i'm a peace out now i'm done you call this shot yeah and then everyone was around and then he just never came back yep that's insane i think it happens a lot so this is also where i think what happens is religious traditions say that that's what their spiritual master does when they just die yeah okay so i'm a skeptic by by nature so ultimately ludwig so that has people have called their shots absolutely ultimately this is what i'm going to tell you if you want to understand what happens with death step number one is like just experience it and i don't mean commit suicide so i don't think you should commit suicide but what what i what i mean by that is like there are certain meditations that you can do to like recall your past lives and so that [ __ ] is just it's hard to describe but it's just wild it's like the best thing that i can that's what i can use wonderful so basically you have memories of your past right yeah so so like there's some meditation techniques that you can do where you just like have memories of your past except they're just not this life yeah it's like you remember like this thing that you used to do with your dad where you guys used to do the shower race yeah it's like you know you just have a memory where like you and your dad used to like you know put horse horseshoes on a horse and you're like oh [ __ ] i was a girl back then and i just it's just it's the same quality of memory and then you're like whoa that's [ __ ] weird i have this whole like pile of memories sitting in my hard drive that i just don't that now i remember even though and it just it's weird it like really causes you to question because you've got this whole consistent memory bank but it's just not from this life and then like then how do you reconcile that do you call it fantasy but it feels so consistent and it's so like longitudinal and and this is where like i've seen this in [ __ ] weird ways okay so like i had this one patient who had like really bad ptsd except she had never had a trauma she went to like a bunch of psychiatrists and this is weird like i i'm i'm the first one to say like i don't know what the [ __ ] to make of this except it's happened she went to a lot of psychiatrists and wound up with me because you know she was interested in holistic psychiatry like meditation oh my god so we like did that [ __ ] for a while and it wasn't really helping and then like i kind of asked her i was like you know so it seems like you've got all the features of ptsd but like there's no trauma like we dug and dug and dug and dug and dug couldn't find any trauma in her life and it's like what the [ __ ] so then one day we were just like kind of talking i was like did you get traumatized in a past life and she was like yes and i was like tell me about that and then she just started telling me all this [ __ ] that didn't happen to her and i [ __ ] you not she got sexually abused by a cult leader in a past life and then like the second we figured that out i know it sounds weird it's [ __ ] weird it didn't happen to her it's not real but from a clinical perspective once we did therapy over that trauma she got better and as a scientist i have no idea how to understand that yeah so this is like the best i can come up with is maybe she saw like a movie when she was a kid and she thought it was her and that was traumatic but that just sounds like a stretch right like yeah i mean people i would just mark it off as loony yeah absolutely so she's off her rocker i'm off her rocker i sure as hell i'm not scientific you know because that doesn't bear in reality but as a clinician like what do you do when you do therapy for memories that don't exist and a patient gets better like how do you understand that like the clinical result is absolutely real i don't know i really don't know yeah and this this happens occasionally you'll get people who like you know hypnotize and like it's like really bad science like really kind of hokey [ __ ] i don't trust most of it i wouldn't trust myself like it's not a technique that i employ on a regular basis it's like because i don't know what the [ __ ] happened there i mean maybe she's delusional maybe i'm delusional maybe i implanted something or steered her in a certain way i have no idea yeah anyway that's earnest yeah so questions thoughts um i think my current thoughts are uh to sit with negative emotions and then the rest of it kind of sounds like the avatar state which i don't think i can do at this point but seems cool yeah i'm gonna teach you two practices i'm down i'm just so you know let me just say this i gotta dip in about i would say about like five minutes that's totally fine practices are gonna be short perfect so first practice i'm going to teach you step one and it's going to be sort of the same as step two okay i want you to sit in the moment between inhalation and exhalation but don't hold your breath okay okay i'm manually breathing now though yep so notice the inhalation notice the exhalation don't pause in between but there is a space where between inhalation and acceleration must exist it does exist i can't tell if i've manually made it longer or slower or faster you know yep so just sit in that space helps with your eyes closed we're going to do this for about 60 seconds okay come back to us what was that like for you breathing out is way easier okay were you able to even find any inkling of the space between the two yeah i think in a way i don't know it felt like i'm like a mario party mini game yep and i was good you know i was i was thinking about that great way to describe it yeah that's how it felt okay wow that's the best description of meditation i've ever heard now that i thought about it so here's the next thing okay so this is going to be practice for the real technique okay catch the moment of sleep so there is a moment where you were awake and then there is a moment that you were asleep yeah right yeah sit in the in between space between wakefulness and sleeping okay and and come back out or just try to sit there sit there baby don't be asleep and don't be awake i catch the moment a lot actually because the way i sleep is with my head hanging off the bed and i have my phone and i usually have a stream open and the moment i'll fall to sleep i'll let go of the phone and so i'll catch myself in that moment a lot right before i fall asleep because the phone will fall out of my hands stay there yeah stay there as long as you can okay okay and and this is where it's interesting because there's another conversation for another day about your karma and how you were meant for this okay that you are halfway on this road baby you're already halfway there i'm just gonna give you a couple of techniques to help you go the rest of the way if the techniques don't work you're going to get there the rest of the way on your own okay okay and then once once you do those for a while then we'll give you a technique specifically on death but in that transition period when your mind it's anyway i won't say anymore but just do it for a while and check back with me in a couple months if we ever meet at twitchcon or something i'll teach you something in person sounds good that sounds lovely thanks a lot for coming on bro absolutely and chat by the way hey charity for children we're at 3.4k look boys it's very easy if you got some liquid income i know it'd be covid but i know you be rich if you on twitch sometimes so take just a quick bank account for the kids bring back the policy no child left behind today wow you have some great energy about you bro i'll match all donations for the next hour by the way are you going for another hour um we're done you're done you're done you're gonna end yup like feel for 30. okay sure and i'll imagine all donations for 30. okay cool we'll do that okay i don't know what i'm going to figure out what what i'm going to do for 30 but thanks a lot for coming on absolutely thank you for having me you don't have to do 30 if you don't want but um uh appreciate it it was a good time it was a good time sorry cutting it short but it went no no no no two hours is exactly what we normally do is perfect take care all right bye goodbye thank you okay chat you

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 478,220

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, ludwig, ludwig dr k, ludwig healthy gamer, dying, death experience

Id: CHzOedHm_kM

Length: 108min 6sec (6486 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021