S2 Episode 015 Transcript

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0:00

Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been the original change makers and stewards of Australia for over 60,000 years.

Their profound wisdom, resilience and deep connection to country have fostered countless stories of survival, adaptation and transformation.

0:18

The knowledge held by these communities is an invaluable resource for understanding how to create positive change and build a more just and sustainable world.

Welcome back to Change Maker Q&A, everyone.

I am excited to jump into today’s topic.

0:35

We’re going to be talking about something that is a little bit spiritual in nature, but I also think that spirituality and science as ways of obtaining knowledge about reality do not conflict one another.

0:50

I think they complement one another, and I’m going to be diving into an example of this as we explore today’s question, which is can we manifest social change Now, before I dive into this, first of all I want you to just get rid of any preconceived ideas you might have about what manifestation is based on what you see online.

1:13

A lot of the kind of new age spiritual approaches to manifestation and like the Law of attraction and things like that, I just want you to forget all about that clear that from your mind.

I’m going to be going through exactly what manifestation is from a more philosophical perspective and looking at what that means in the work that we’re doing as social change makers.

1:33

If you have any questions about this topic or any topics related to social change, definitely head to Humanitarian Change makers.net/podcast.

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1:51

So let’s dive in to this question now.

I mentioned before that spirituality isn’t at war with science, right?

It’s not a battle of spirituality.

Or we could put religion under the category of spirituality versus science.

2:09

These are both kind of ways of making sense of different aspects of reality, and spirituality in particular is a way of making sense of the aspects of reality that we can’t use science to make sense of.

So science we should first of all just acknowledge is not reality.

2:30

A lot of the time people say I don’t believe in ex spiritual view or ex religious view.

I believe in science.

Science isn’t something to believe in or not.

Science is an epistemological approach to understanding reality.

2:45

It is not reality itself.

That is probably one of the biggest mistakes that we tend to make, particularly in Western societies and even in the Academy.

We have this tendency to reduce our understanding of reality to our epistemology, to our knowledge of that reality.

3:06

And you know, I really do think this is one of the greatest flaws of so-called modernity.

There’s a great quote by Vandana Shiva.

She is an Indian physicist and activist, academic scholar, All the things.

3:22

And she says that we have moved from wisdom to knowledge and from knowledge to Wis.

That’s not right, she says.

We have moved from wisdom to knowledge and knowledge to information, and that information is so impartial that it’s creating incomplete human beings.

3:48

I obviously love that quote because I know it off by heart.

But I think it really speaks to the way that we have a tendency in Western societies in particular to really, I guess, value so-called objective knowledge over more subjective or not even subjective knowledge, but more kind of like holistic or contextual knowledge.

4:11

We seem to prioritize facts rather than what we might call truths about reality.

And this is something that I think Martin Luther King Junior also speaks about in one of his speeches that I’ve listened to.

4:27

I am a bit of an MLK nerd.

He talks about how facts are these kind of pieces of information that don’t have anything about them that conflicts with what we know about the world.

But facts are not truth, because truth has to contain within it more context.

4:49

It has to, I guess, bring together different conflicting ideas in a way that kind of says this is what’s right in both of these and this is what we can kind of ignore in these conflicting ideas.

So I really like that approach.

5:05

But anyway, I think what all of this kind of really speaks to is the way that we have a tendency to reduce reality to our knowledge of it, and in turn, how that then influences the way we think about reality.

5:26

Now, when we think about things that exist in reality, there are things that exist intransitively.

For something to exist intransitively, it exists beyond human knowledge of it.

5:42

And when humans can obtain knowledge about that thing, it then exists transitively.

It exists through our knowledge of it.

That might be through science, that might be through religion.

But when we have transitive knowledge, including scientific knowledge, that transitive knowledge is always fallible.

6:04

It’s always going to be open to correction and reinterpretation.

As things change, as we change, as the way that we are able to obtain and test, our knowledge about this thing changes.

And the reason for this is because I think at its core, we as humans can never really observe or experience something as it exists intransitively.

6:31

All we can ever really obtain knowledge about or experience or observe is the effects of these things.

So this is what we’re doing in science, whether that’s the natural sciences or social sciences.

6:47

We are making sense of a phenomena by observing its effects.

We’re not observing the actual thing.

So that affects our understanding of that thing.

As a quick example, just to like kind of illustrate what I mean, there is if we looked at a phenomena or a concept, something like patriarchy for example, we can never observe patriarchy itself.

7:16

It exists intransitively, but what we can observe is the effects of patriarchy, the way patriarchy manifests in our reality.

I’ll illustrate this with probably my favorite example to use, and that is the example of gravity.

So we can assume that gravity has always existed here on Earth, and it existed before humans were here, and it existed before humans had knowledge of it.

7:43

OK, so we would say that gravity existed intransitively.

In the intransitive dimension of reality, we could never really observe gravity, and we still arguably can’t observe gravity.

But what we could observe or experience was the effects of gravity.

8:02

So throughout history, people likely knew that if they dropped an apple and a feather at the same time from equal heights, the apple was going to fall to the ground faster than the feather.

And we knew that because we had experienced gravity, we had experienced the effects of gravity.

8:20

We had seen in the past that, you know, if you drop two different things at equal distances, you know from the same height at the same time, the heavier one or the one with less surface area is likely going to hit the ground first.

We could explain it like that, but we didn’t really have a way of explaining the cause of that gravity being the cause.

8:44

Until one day Isaac Newton sitting under a tree doing his thing, apple falls on his head, bam, he creates the law of gravity.

And suddenly Isaac Newton’s law of gravity was a way to transitively make sense of gravity as a causal law.

9:03

And this was transitive knowledge.

So it was always going to be fallible, always open to reinterpretation, adjustment, fixing, challenging.

And we saw this later when Albert Einstein came along and developed his theory of relativity and basically offered a more comprehensive, more complex way of making sense of gravity and our knowledge of gravity.

9:29

So I reckon one day we’ll probably get, you know, an even more comprehensive explanation of gravity as a causal law.

I don’t see why not.

But one thing is certain, We’re never going to observe the causal law of gravity.

We as humans are only ever going to observe or experience the effects of that law.

9:50

Just because we can’t directly observe the law doesn’t mean we can’t make sense of it, OK?

That’s what we do through our transitive knowledge of that thing.

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10:06

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When it comes to causality, science never creates causal laws.

All science does is uncover those already intransitively existing laws, and science makes it transitive.

10:50

This is why we don’t call it a process of creation.

We call it scientific discovery.

It’s because we’re not using science to create something.

We’re using science to discover an already existing causal law that explains phenomena that we experience in reality.

11:12

In the same way that, you know, if you’ve got a scientist in a lab and they’re mixing two different chemicals and you know there’s a reaction, the scientist didn’t create the causal law behind that reaction.

That reaction, the causal law explaining why it reacted the way it did always existed, regardless of who had come along and put those two chemicals together.

11:34

It was always going to react the way that it did because that causal law explaining why it existed intransitively.

What the scientist has done is they have come along and they have created the right conditions by mixing chemical A and chemical B to activate that causal law.

11:56

And what manifests is chemical C that these two things create.

This is the same as maybe to illustrate it a little bit differently.

If you have a painter come along and they mix for the first time ever yellow and blue paint and they get green paint, did this painter invent or create the process of getting green paint?

12:26

No, there was a causal law that already existed.

To explain why that was going to happen we would use maybe the principles of colour theory or the science that explains how human eyes see light and how that affects the colours that we see.

12:43

That is the causal law that would explain why that happened.

What the painter did was the painter came along and they created the right causal conditions to activate that ’cause they created the right conditions.

They mixed the yellow and they mixed the blue, and green was the inevitable result.

13:03

So this is what manifestation is in a nutshell.

When you were creating the right causal conditions to activate some kind of law or principle that already exists intransitively as potential, right, the potential for that thing to happen is already there.

13:25

It’s always there.

The potential for yellow paint and blue paint to make green paint was it always existed as potential.

You just needed something to come along and activate that potential.

And that’s really what manifestation is.

13:42

It’s creating those conditions, whatever conditions are needed to activate the right law, principle thing, whatever it is that allows that thing to manifest or be brought forth into reality.

So don’t think of manifestation in terms of like new age practices, like positive thinking or the law of attraction When I use manifestation, and I would argue that when anyone uses the term manifestation, we should be using it in its most fundamental, I guess, term.

14:13

And that’s, you know, to manifest as a verb.

It’s the way in which something intransitive is experienced or brought forth into our reality.

And we see this in a lot of the, I guess, like kind of common uses of the word manifest.

14:30

If I said that the increasing average temperature was the first obvious manifestation of climate change, that makes sense.

That’s use of the word manifestation in its more fundamental sense, not in the woo, woo, spiritual sense.

We could say that his fear of public speaking did not manifest during the presentation.

14:52

That also makes sense.

The panic attack she had was a manifestation of her social anxiety.

Their failure to comply was character was a characteristic manifestation of the team’s distrust in the team leader’s leadership.

15:11

The workers chose to manifest their dissatisfaction in the form of a series of strikes.

All of these things make complete sense.

They are examples of the term manifesting as a verb when we manifest something.

It’s the way that something that exists intransitively, something that is already there, is kind of brought forth and experienced by humans in our reality.

15:35

So a lot of the time the origins of the use of the word manifestation tend to be quite spiritual or religious, just because I think that it was often used to describe something becoming real that couldn’t be explained by science.

15:53

And for that reason it does tend to be used a lot in a more spiritual or religious context.

But it has definitely spread to all aspects of life.

So we’ve got this much more nuanced but fundamental definition of manifestation that I want us to use.

16:11

Manifestation is when something exists as potential, as a possibility intransitively, and it is brought forth into reality.

And we do this by creating the necessary causal conditions to activate that potential.

16:33

So with this more kind of philosophically grounded definition of manifestation, I think we can reject quite a few of the misconceptions that people have or the arguments people have against manifestation in like mainstream spiritual discourse.

16:49

First of all, you know manifestation is not thinking positively.

Although I think most kind of like spiritual approaches to manifestation don’t actually assert that a lot of the time it tends to be interpreted in that way.

Positive thinking might be needed in a lot of instances in order for a person to actually be able to take the correct actions that they need to take in order to create those causal conditions to manifest something.

17:16

But the positive thinking alone isn’t the thing that is creating the causal conditions.

Doesn’t mean it’s not important, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place, but it’s not the only thing.

Similarly, you know you can’t manifest anything.

You can only manifest something if it already exists as potential in the intransitive dimension of reality, right?

17:40

So you know, I could not manifest being born in a male body because there is nothing in the intransitive dimension of reality.

There is no potential for me to, first of all, travel back in time to when I was born and change the body that I was born in.

18:02

But there is the potential that exists for me to identify as a different gender, for me to change my physical body.

These all exist as potential.

18:17

They’re all possibilities.

So I could manifest becoming a boy.

Does that make sense?

So you can’t manifest anything if it doesn’t exist as potential.

So a lot of the times what you might need to do is if you want something that seems like it doesn’t exist as potential, like if it’s not possible, think of the ways in which it could become possible.

18:44

Another example might be.

I probably could not manifest being in London tonight.

It is already 2:00 PM here in Brisbane, and I don’t think that in the in transitive realm of possibilities, it is possible for me to get from Brisbane to London in such a short period of time.

19:04

But I could manifest going to London in the near future.

I could put a specific time frame on that if I wanted to in the next few days, that would be possible in the next week.

In the next few months, all of those are possible.

So I could manifest that I would need to create the right causal conditions.

19:22

For that I would need to buy myself a plane ticket.

I would need to, you know, book the ticket.

I would need to take all of these actions and do all of these things that create the right conditions for me to actually get there.

But it is a possibility, Whereas me being in London in a few hours is not something that exists in the realm of possibility.

19:44

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20:02

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20:21

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So manifestation is also not really about being like high vibe or low vibe.

This is something that is spoken about a lot and sometimes people will use the terminology, being an energetic match for the thing that you want to manifest.

20:42

I don’t really reject that.

I think that is a totally fine claim to make.

I think that being an energetic match is to embody something, and to embody something is I guess, a more holistic way of saying you are aligning with that thing, so your thoughts align with it, your actions align with it, your attitudes towards certain things align with it.

21:07

I think that’s completely fair to say, but I don’t think that it is necessary to manifest.

It’s well, I know that it’s not not necessary to manifest.

You do not need to be like an energetic match for something.

21:25

You don’t need to have the right attitudes and beliefs and take, you know, the right actions, because it is possible to manifest something without having that.

It’s not a necessary causal factor at play.

Similarly, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to manifesting.

21:45

So there are always going to be things that are necessary in order for you to manifest something.

But a lot of the time there are multiple different possibilities.

So if I wanted to manifest $1,000,000, there’s a number of ways I could do that.

22:05

OK, I could go and buy a lottery ticket and I could win the Lotto.

I could get a really high paying job and I could really aggressively save and invest that money and you know, eventually those returns and my savings would get me to $1,000,000.

22:25

Or I could start my own business where I’m able to generate less restrictive amounts of income depending on the services or products that I provide to the market.

So each of these is a possible way for me to get $1,000,000.

22:41

Obviously one of these is a lot easier than the others, but less likely so.

There’s always going to be a lot of, I guess, factors at play, but nonetheless, all of these things have the potential to activate the causal conditions for me to get $1,000,000.

22:59

It’s just a matter of it actually happening.

Finally, manifestation happens whether you are doing it intentionally or not.

So I like to use the example of my PhD program and how you know I manifested getting into that PhD program.

23:19

The reason I well, the way I did that was I created the causal conditions that I needed in order to get offered a PhD scholarship in this particular PhD program.

So how did I create those causal conditions?

I applied for the specific program.

23:35

I had an application that met all of the minimum criteria.

I sat 2 rounds of examinations and obviously did well enough in those exams.

I proposed a specific project that appealed to the advisory team for that particular PhD project.

23:55

So all of those things working together was what created the causal conditions for me to get the PhD scholarship offer.

So throughout that process, was I thinking positively?

More or less.

I had my moments of doubt.

24:11

But more or less, yes, I was thinking pretty positively.

I had created a vision board for my life at that point.

It was the start of COVID, and on that vision board I had a PhD.

So, you know, I was doing these things that we might consider to be like more spiritual or new age approaches to manifestation.

24:30

Were they the things that manifested the PhD?

No, it was all of those other things that kind of created those causal conditions.

But that doesn’t mean they weren’t important and it doesn’t mean they didn’t help.

Having that positive mindset was the thing that kept me going when I looked at the criteria and I thought, I don’t know if I meet all of the criteria or when I start that first exam.

24:51

And I thought, man, that did not go well.

I can’t believe I have to do another one of these exams.

Similarly, you know, I had the vision board, and that kind of motivated me in a way not to give up because I had all of these other things on my vision board.

And I thought, you know, one day I will probably do a PhD, and if this isn’t the program that I get into, that’s OK.

25:11

I want to start the Humanitarian Change Network, so I’ll do a PhD in the future.

Spoiler alert, I try to do both at once.

So I hope that kind of clarifies a little bit what manifestation is, but more So what it actually means in a more fundamental sense of it and how we actually manifest.

25:36

So this brings us to, I guess, the end of the episode, but also the first question that we kind of started with and that is this idea of, you know, can we manifest social change well with this understanding of manifestation being the process of creating the right conditions to bring forth something that exists as potential into reality?

25:57

Yes, we can.

That is literally what we are doing in our work that we do across the social change phase.

It’s simple.

It’s not easy.

You know, whether it is investing in a certain company or business, whether it is engaging in activism, whether it is social work, whether it is starting a not-for-profit or teaching a particular skill to a particular group of people, Whatever it is that we’re doing, these are things that we’re doing because we believe it is going to help to create the necessary causal conditions, the right environment that we need to bring about the change that we want to see.

26:43

So whether we are aware of it or not, we’re taking these actions and doing these things because we somehow know or believe that the world we want to create exists in the intransitive dimension of reality as potential.

We wouldn’t be taking the action if we didn’t think that right.

27:02

And we’re doing it because we believe that the thing we are doing is one of the things that is going to create the right conditions for that potential and whatever causes that potential to activate and manifest in our reality.

27:21

So one more thing I might add to this is this definition of manifestation, I think is something that I have developed not only through my PhD research, but with the intention that I have in a lot of the more spiritual stuff that I kind of delve into in my work.

27:46

Something that I developed in a way that would appeal to people of all faiths and no faiths.

If you take the way I have defined and explained manifestation, regardless of what your particular spiritual or religious beliefs are, I really do think that your beliefs will fit into this.

28:06

Or you can fit this into your beliefs however you want to look at it.

For example, if you are somebody that believes in this idea of destiny, you could say that your destiny is the things that exist as your unrealized potential.

28:24

And when this potential actualizes or manifests in reality, that’s the manifestation of your destiny.

If you are a Christian and you believe that one of the kind of big forces behind causality in the world is like the will of God, you could say that the will of God is what always exists there as unrealized potential.

28:56

And when we as humans do the things that create the right conditions for the will of God to manifest in our reality, that’s what we’re doing with, you know, the thing that is manifested was God’s will.

29:13

The Buddhist notion of karma, I think also works here.

We could say like in terms of causality, karma is what exists as your potential and the things that you do, the actions that you take are going to, you know, lead to specific consequences.

29:35

And those consequences, good or bad, was your karma, the things that already existed as your karma.

So I don’t think it really matters, you know, what you believe about the world, the stories that you kind of use to make sense of this stuff.

29:53

I think that this notion of potential always kind of pre-existing, the manifestation of something in reality is really kind of the only way of explaining causality in a way that appeals to people of all faiths and no faiths.

30:10

So that is why I am such a huge proponent of manifestation as a way of making sense of social change.

So I don’t think I have anything to add.

I’m just trying to check over my notes, which are really messy.

I think that kind of sums up everything I kind of wanted to say.

30:29

I hope this made sense.

Again, feel free to ask me any questions.

If you want to hear me talk more about manifestation, definitely give me a follow on Instagram or TikTok.

It’s at Tiana, JTIYANA and the letter J.

30:45

As always, give us a follow on Instagram at Humanitarian Change Makers.

Head to our website.

We’ve got heaps of goodies and freebies to help you manifest change, and I look forward to connecting with you all and seeing the amazing things that you’re doing out in your communities to make change happen.