---
title: "Consciousness, Samkhya and the Evolution of the Soul: An Interview with Ivan Antic"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/consciousness-samkhya-and-the-evolution-of-the-soul-an-interview-with-ivan-antic/
date: 2026-06-29
modified: 2026-07-02
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction In this wide-ranging interview, we speaks with author and long-term spiritual practitioner Ivan Antic about meditation, the Fourth Way, Shikantaza Zen, Samkhya, the nature of consciousness, the evolution of..."
categories:
  - "Interviews"
tags:
  - "astral projection"
  - "Energy"
  - "Meditation"
  - "Zen"
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word_count: 6267
---

# Consciousness, Samkhya and the Evolution of the Soul: An Interview with Ivan Antic

## Introduction

In this wide-ranging interview, we speaks with author and long-term spiritual practitioner Ivan Antic about meditation, the Fourth Way, Shikantaza Zen, Samkhya, the nature of consciousness, the evolution of the soul, astrology, artificial intelligence and the relationship between ancient spiritual teachings and modern science. Ivan also reflects on the experiences that shaped his path and the central ideas explored throughout his books.

Learn more through Ivan Antic’s official website and explore his complete book catalogue. [Official website](https://ivanantic.com/) | [Books](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/)

- Introduction- Personal Path & Training- Books- Links

---

![](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Ivan-Antic-Author-Profile-Picture-819x1024.png)Ivan Antic [https://ivanantic.com/](https://ivanantic.com/)

## Personal Path & Training

**PAA: You describe yourself as "a modern monk to whom the whole world is a monastery." After leaving the formal study of philosophy in Belgrade in 1982, what did those early years of independent practice actually look like day to day — and was there a moment of loneliness or doubt that almost pulled you back toward conventional life?**

**Ivan Antic: **From childhood, I was curious about everything, but in a measured way and without excess. I lived a well-ordered life in good circumstances. Fantasy and imagination dominated my childhood. At a very early age, around fourteen, I encountered the works of Hermann Hesse and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, followed by the collected works of J. W. Goethe, C. G. Jung, Plato, and Plotinus. All of this had a hypnotic effect on me; it fulfilled my intuitive aspirations. It deepened my love of philosophy, but the true benefit of philosophical works lay, above all, in the fact that I developed a vocabulary and a cultivated way of thinking about the essential questions of human existence. The answers came later, but not from books.

I had no teacher; I taught myself meditation, and soon afterward, in the work of Yasutani Hakuun roshi, I came across a description of that very same practice and recognized it as Zen meditation.

> That is why I consciously stopped exploring higher dimensions and devoted myself to their true realization: my being in the present moment.
>
> Ivan Antic

**PAA: The mystical experiences you had before the age of 21 were significant enough to make you walk away from academic philosophy entirely. Without that institutional scaffolding to help you interpret what was happening to you, how did you find your footing? Were there teachers, texts, or inner guides who met you in that space?**

**Ivan Antic: **The initial practice of meditation was enough not only to remove my doubts but also to make me even more open to the daily discovery of myself and the world around me. This openness also expanded into other dimensions —into astral experiences—first through lucid dreams and then through out-of-body experiences, both on the physical plane and in higher dimensions. I thoroughly studied all the details of higher dimensions. When I tried to acquire an academic education, it became clear that this was incompatible with my experience. I understood that academic education could only help me acquire a culture of thought and research, but not the answers themselves. I felt I would actually be prevented from receiving the answers because there were already too many of them—answers that were acceptable, not necessarily true.

In this way, I understood that I could acquire a culture of thought on my own by reading all the literature already studied at the university. I did this in less time than formal studies would have required. Since I did not want to become a professor, which at that time was the only real possibility, I abandoned that path, and favorable life circumstances allowed me to go my own way. This acquaintance with higher dimensions lasted only about ten years. Because I had come to know them well, I gained the insight that I was at the same level of consciousness both in the body and outside it. Therefore, the real problem is the level of consciousness here and now, not departure to higher planes, however attractive they may be. All higher dimensions fulfill the purpose of their existence on the physical plane.

That is why I consciously stopped exploring higher dimensions and devoted myself to their true realization: my being in the present moment. The key event was the one I described at the end of the book Awakening, in the final chapter (Epilogue): the encounter with an invisible entity that made it known to me that it was guiding me through life and that, in time, I would discover everything. I wrote down that message and set it aside because nothing similar ever happened again. In fact, I did not even like the idea that some voice was telling me so powerfully that it was directing my life. Most cases like that end up in psychiatric care. I am not fond of voices or channeling.

I know very well that this is part of programming and mind control, and that there is technology capable of producing this. None of that applies to me, and this event was not of that kind. At the time, I did not know how to understand it except as the voice of the Self or the soul, the higher “I,” or the Entity spoken of by Jane Roberts’s Seth. I left it all aside and forgot about it until a few years ago, when I discovered the whole story behind everything. First, in Stewart Swerdlow’s book Blue Blood, True Blood (2002), in the chapter The Transparent People, I saw that he, too, had had a similar experience.

He discovered that these beings were actually the consciousness behind matter and energy that governs everything, that they had come from the future, and that they had created all forms of life, both positive and negative beings, in the astral. All of this was done for the sake of our evolution. At that time, Stewart Swerdlow’s father was working at the Montauk base on secret U.S. military projects, and they received many important pieces of information from these “Transparent People.” A few years ago, I discovered the connection between my 1981 experience and the “Transparent People”: it was the consciousness of the same beings. After midnight on December 21, 2023, I was on the summit of the pyramidal mountain Rtanj (central Serbia) until three in the morning, when the Sun entered the zero degree of Capricorn.

This mountain was artificially shaped into the regular form of a three-sided pyramid; no one knows when, but judging by the erosion, it was probably a hundred thousand years ago. At the summit, there is a narrow opening, like a small well, about one meter in diameter. It goes straight down for about 3 meters, then turns at a right angle toward the center of the summit, and after about ten meters descends about one kilometer, always with the same diameter. Nature could not have made it, and neither could humans. This opening is actually the place of the strongest non-Hertzian radiation on our planet. This has been measured with instruments. I discovered that this is the place where the Earth is charged with the energy of the cosmic aether, like the opening on a phone where it is charged.

This is the purpose of all pyramids in the world. At the base of all pyramids, there is water for generating orgone energy (Wilhelm Reich). There is water at this place as well, an underground lake, and several springs. The time of the solstice is also non-Hertzian, that is, stationary, because the rotation of the Earth comes to a halt before moving in the other direction from December 25 onward, toward the renewed lengthening of daylight. I was born at that time, when the Sun was at 0 degrees and 7 minutes of Capricorn. For most of my life, I have practiced meditation, and I know that the state of samādhi is also a non-Hertzian state of being and mind. When I was up there, I managed to enter a brief meditation.

When stationary time, space, and my being and consciousness joined into one non-Hertzian state, something happened within me, though in a hidden way (due to the physical effort of descending the mountain in winter conditions). It manifested only later, when I had come down and relaxed into the (again non-Hertzian) state of sleep. I saw my entire life in a single image, as in an NDE experience, and everything connected into a logical whole. Then I understood why I had been so strongly protected throughout my life. I believe my life was saved several times. One such time was when I (guided by an invisible hand) avoided going into the war zone during the 1991–1995 civil war in Yugoslavia, which was provoked from outside through media lies in the West to break apart a formerly successful state and make it easier to control.

The place I was supposed to go had the greatest number of deaths. The beings that Swerdlow saw and that appeared to me in 1981 have a base beneath the Rtanj pyramid. Other extraterrestrial species are there as well. A brief overview of all these species can be found at the end of my book The Moon, in the chapter And Finally, Who Set the Moon Up for Us? Many people have encountered such beings; they appear suddenly beside them in human form, sometimes in a human-like form but bathed in beautifully colored light, and then disappear. What remains is a lasting inspiration about the miraculous—and the life events they created. Often, they act only through events, and people do not notice that these events are being directed by invisible beings.

Many well-known creators had similar experiences (Goethe saw his double on horseback passing by him; Tesla communicated with them, etc.). I emphasize that my connection with them is not channeling. It is only help and support in personal maturation, which manifests in the writing of books. I wrote all the texts solely through inspiration, and I had miraculous support for their publication (synchronicities, events, people, etc.). All the shortcomings in the texts of my books are the result of my inexperience with writing and my desire to express transcendental experiences as directly as possible. Some of them I did not immediately understand myself, but discovered over time. That is why my books complement one another and, in some places, repeat one another. My final discovery is that these invisible beings are actually ourselves from the future.

When human souls actualize divine consciousness and their full potential, they create a new cycle of life and the evolution of consciousness (they should properly be understood as the Entities described in Jane Roberts’s Seth material). We are in one such evolutionary cycle. This is so because the consciousness that creates everything is also one and the same. There is no duality; everything is advaita. Our essence, ātman, is brahman, the absolute. All of this was said long ago; it only takes time to understand it. I also want to emphasize that I do not deal with ufology. Those who deal with it are the ones who have not had a direct encounter with extraterrestrial beings. I have had four such encounters. Those who know the truth about them work on themselves and do not talk much.

One more note in this regard: after I saw a UFO in the form of a sphere, with a pearly glow, over two kilometers in diameter, which had no propulsion but moved by controlling time and space, it became perfectly clear to me that if such superior beings are here—and they were here before us—they did not come to create problems or make mistakes. It is not possible to possess such technology, which operates in all dimensions, without the highest consciousness that encompasses all dimensions. And no one can interfere with them in carrying out their plans, and the evolution of human consciousness is one of those plans. Therefore, one could say, as in entertaining films, “Daddy is home.” There is no need to worry about the whole process because of global events.

The only things that cause problems for us are the parts of the process that we do not understand because we do not see the whole—parts that appear negative to us but that are necessary for the final, positive goal to be achieved.

**PAA: You've practiced the Fourth Way and Shikantaza Zen meditation for over 40 years. These are quite different traditions — one demands ceaseless self-observation in the midst of ordinary life, the other asks for a radical "just sitting" without agenda. How do you hold both, and what does each give you that the other cannot?**

**Ivan Antic: **Each of these techniques complements the other. Both must be practiced without choice. Just as you cannot sit still in meditation only when you feel like it, but must do so with discipline every day, thereby transcending the constantly changing and conditioned moods of the mind and feelings, so too constant awareness in action, according to the Fourth Way, must not depend on choice and mood. Otherwise, we merely turn the whole practice into a ritual and lose its meaning. The practice of the Fourth Way helps us recognize, apply, and permanently preserve the transcendental consciousness attained in meditation throughout all possible activities, without choice.

**PAA: On your website, you describe watching your father — who was dying of bone cancer — leave his body during an out-of-body experience of your own, and being able to communicate with him and reassure him. How did that night change your understanding of death, and how has it shaped the compassion you bring to writing about the soul's journey?**

**Ivan Antic: **This was only one of many experiences that convinced me that consciousness is primary, that it is independent of the body, and that our being is not only physical and mental but much greater—greater than we can understand. That is why we act in several dimensions simultaneously. The brain serves not only to receive consciousness from outside itself but also to narrow our consciousness to the smallest possible measure: the consciousness we have in the physical body. More than once, people have told me that I helped them, although I did nothing physical for them, nor do I know how.

**PAA: Your intellectual lineage draws on Samkhya, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, early Buddhism, and what you call the original teachings of Christ — traditions that are rarely held together. When these streams appear to contradict one another, how do you arbitrate between them? Is it lived experience that casts the deciding vote?**

**Ivan Antic: **Yes, experience is decisive in true spiritual development. The experience of one and the same consciousness that is at the foundation of everything, and that is our essence, connects all true spiritual teachings. Since I had transcendental experiences early on and became convinced that there is a consciousness far superior to the one I am personally aware of—the consciousness that is the source of illusions—I did not want to place too much trust in myself. That is why I sought signposts and confirmations of my experiences in objective, verified teachings from the most ancient times. Sāṃkhya is completely objective and free from all mental conditioning, imagination, beliefs, and rituals. It is the first and true spiritual science. Patañjali develops the principles of that science in practice, and the original teaching of the Buddha bears witness to the realization of awakening.

**PAA: You make a sharp distinction between mature and immature soul consciousness — and you're frank that humanity is still early in that process. Speaking personally: where do you recognise your own remaining "immaturity," and how do you work with it rather than around it?**

**Ivan Antic: **The distinction between immature and mature souls is a practical way to understand the evolution of consciousness and human understanding during incarnation. It explains the differences that exist innately among people, as well as the real reason why people behave the way they do when the cause cannot be found either in their past or in their environment. This distinction has been confirmed by the hypnotic regressions conducted by Dr. Michael Newton. Meher Baba also spoke of such evolution in God Speaks. This is also a practical way to recognize development and maturation within ourselves.

**PAA: You describe spontaneous soul-consciousness as something that can manifest with beautiful innocence but also with naivety and destructive consequences. Can you share an example from your own life where the soul's pull toward the divine caused you to misread a situation in the world — and what you learned from it?**

**Ivan Antic: **The naive and spontaneous manifestation of the soul’s consciousness is the basis of everything childish. We see this in our experience, in the naive expectation that a divine parent will fulfill all our needs and help us. Humanity has the same expectation. This is what all orthodox religions teach: Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. Such teachings are attractive because they provide security for young and immature souls, but development is possible only through creativity, risk-taking, learning from mistakes, and creating something new. The rigid traditions of orthodox teachings allow no changes. That is why there is no evolutionary manifestation of consciousness in them. People seek refuge in them because of fear and uncertainty.

F. M. Dostoevsky described this problem in the chapter of The Brothers Karamazov titled "The Grand Inquisitor." The mature manifestation of the human soul takes place through personal action, knowledge, and creative work. This is what secret societies and the Protestant faith, beginning with Calvin, teach, and these forces built modern civilization, above all in the West. Their shortcoming is that, in this striving, they placed too much emphasis on the division of labor and on the external cultivation of human beings through morality and dogma. This was indeed necessary in the beginning and worked effectively in building a work ethic and material culture, but it led to alienation from the values of the soul and, therefore, to great alienation among people. Today, people in the West are alienated and lonely to the greatest possible degree, and busy to the greatest possible degree.

It is important to understand that these two forms of action are not in conflict and do not exclude one another. In their ideal form, they should complement one another. The division between the spiritual and the material is false. What we call matter does not exist as a thing; it is only the most concrete manifestation of spirit or consciousness. Material culture and scientific development find their true path only when they are supported by the soul's consciousness. The consciousness of the soul manifests correctly on the physical plane only when it understands the natural laws that govern the physical world, and this is science. Civilization without the consciousness of the soul is tyranny, or a Roman Colosseum in which only the strongest survive. Unfortunately, such a balance has not yet been achieved. All large cities resemble the Roman Colosseum on a festival day.

This is probably because there are still more immature souls who expect salvation from heaven, from God, than mature souls who want to fulfill divine consciousness through work, development, and maturity. Neither group understands the other. In history so far, only these two groups have waged war against one another, and this is the main reason all wars have begun. That is why today we see chaos unfolding in the world: the bearded orthodox Taliban of all religions (Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism) are pulling development backward into the ideology of the early Middle Ages, while the clean-shaven members of secret societies are pulling development forward into rule through advanced technology, even with the help of Satanism, blindly trampling all human values. Both want to achieve their goals by force of arms. Both advocate “true values.” A perfect combination for chaos.

Normal people suffer as collateral damage in their mutual bombardment.

> In accordance with the message I received in 1981 from my invisible friends, everything in my life unfolds in accordance with time.
>
> Ivan Antic

**PAA: You lived for many years withdrawn from public life. What prompted you to begin publishing? Was there a specific threshold of understanding you felt you had to reach before you were willing to put these ideas into writing, or did the writing itself become part of the realisation?**

**Ivan Antic: **In accordance with the message I received in 1981 from my invisible friends, everything in my life unfolds in accordance with time. For now, this is how it is; I do not know how it will be in the future. There are two reasons why I have not put myself forward publicly. The first is that this is the best way for me to preserve my self-awareness and independence. Writing and publishing books is quite enough for me to act while preserving my autonomy and freedom. The second reason is connected to the answer to the previous question. You must be careful about what you present to people; there are all kinds of people, and critical awareness is not the prevailing culture in the world. In addition, there are forces that meter out information and determine the right time for certain truths.

You must align yourself with them as well, so that you do not suffer some mishap.

**PAA: The Shree Kapila Yantra logo you use combines the Templar cross with a Vedic yantra, the lotus, and the enneagram. How did you arrive at that synthesis — and does it represent a kind of personal cosmogram for your own development, or is it more universal?**

**Ivan Antic: **That symbol best represents what I said in response to question 7: the balance of the soul's consciousness, its inner spiritual maturity, and its outer manifestation through material culture. The symbol points to their unity.

**PAA: You position science and ethics as arising from the same fundamental laws of nature, and argue that science is in essence "a more precise manifestation of soul consciousness." Has working with modern physics — particularly quantum field theory — ever surprised you by revealing something about consciousness that your direct experience hadn't already shown you?**

**Ivan Antic: **The only thing in science I could say has surprised me is how quantum computers work. They appear to operate in the field of the quantum vacuum, the same field from which universal consciousness arises and acts. I find the reports about the concealment of such research, particularly Google’s Willow, especially interesting. A problem appears to have arisen in controlling such computers and their results. If the answers come from the universal field of consciousness, this cannot be controlled in any way. Ethics arises from universal natural laws, but above all from people who are aligned with those laws. How many such people are there? I also find it amusing to observe the persistence and lies with which mainstream science tries to conceal the true nature of consciousness.

It does so by stubbornly claiming that consciousness arises from matter (the brain), which is a complete absurdity, without a single piece of evidence. The “famous British school of lies” is especially prominent in this. One of its representatives, who presents himself as an expert on consciousness, recently stated that “we know with certainty that consciousness arises in the brain, although we do not know how.” The Monty Python circus is still running. It does not need the original screenwriters. I understand that there was justification for this in earlier times, at the beginning of the development of science. In order for that development to proceed from the foundations, it was first necessary to understand the laws of the physical dimension before moving on to the study of higher dimensions.

But it is difficult to understand how they fail to see how quickly consciousness and understanding are accelerating and changing. In their effort to adhere to scientific principles, they have become an obstacle to the development of those principles.

**PAA: You write that "common sense is the only religion a human being really needs" — but a common sense that encompasses all dimensions of nature, not just the material. For someone raised in a mainstream secular or religious household, what is the first genuinely practical step toward expanding that common sense?**

**Ivan Antic: **Meditation. From understanding to practice.

## Books

[![](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-29-183935-1024x462.png)](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/)

[![](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-29-183903-1024x408.png)](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/)

**PAA: The Physics of Consciousness traces consciousness through the quantum field, minerals, plants, animals, and then into the human soul. Rather than treating consciousness as an emergent property of matter, you reverse the arrow entirely — matter is what happens within consciousness. What was the most difficult scientific argument you had to make that case that you felt the established physics community might legitimately push back on?**

**Ivan Antic: **That consciousness precedes matter. This has been the only universal question since the beginning of human culture. The entire evolution of humankind revolves around this question: whether consciousness or matter lies at the foundation of everything. The logical answer is that our evolution in understanding material reality will advance to the extent that we understand the true nature of consciousness. The reverse is not possible because science has already proven that matter does not exist in itself as an object. How long will we wait before reaching the logical conclusion that consciousness is primary? Who will officially decide this? Trump?

**PAA: In Samadhi: Unity of Consciousness and Existence, you describe chakras not as mystical metaphors but as real psycho-energetic junctions where consciousness and existence interpenetrate. For a reader who is skeptical of the chakra system but genuinely open to the physics of consciousness, what would you point to as the most verifiable or experientially accessible evidence that these junctions are real?**

**Ivan Antic: **Compare the consciousness of a sexual maniac with that of the Buddha, and the difference between the lower and higher energy centers will be clear. The teaching on chakras is a way to understand how the physics of consciousness is embedded in our biology and psychology, and how it manifests in our actions. We all know that states of consciousness exist. In practice, chakras speak of these states. We all know that everything positive and evolutionary is associated with what is directed upward, while everything negative and degenerative is connected with the downward direction. In the same way, chakras, through their vertical position in the body and their functions, speak of consciousness and psycho-physical action.

> Thanks to the tanmātras, we retain sensory perception even after leaving the body and entering higher dimensions.
>
> Ivan Antic

**PAA: Samkhya: An Ancient Science of Nature and the Human Soul is arguably the most scholarly of your works. You've said that Samkhya is "the most expressive and most objective science of the soul on this planet." What drew you specifically to Samkhya over Vedanta or Buddhist Abhidharma as your primary metaphysical language — and what does Samkhya see that those other systems miss?**

**Ivan Antic: **What is essential to Sāṃkhya is its schematic presentation of all the categories of nature and their relationship to consciousness. That schema is like a universal map of all existence. First, it divides nature into the inorganic and organic worlds. The inorganic world contains the tanmātras, the astral prototypes of our senses, while the great elements represent all the dimensions of nature. Thanks to the tanmātras, we retain sensory perception even after leaving the body and entering higher dimensions. Thanks to them, we perceive inorganic nature. On the other side are the indriyas, the sensory and active organs of which all living beings are composed, and living beings are classified according to the number of these organs they possess. Above them is reason, possessed only by a being complete with all sensory and active organs: the human being.

Above this entire division as a whole are the principles of individuality and the intellect. This is everything that exists as nature, or prakṛti. The consciousness that enables and transcends nature is puruṣa. All other teachings stop at one of the categories of prakṛti. Some glorify other worlds as divine, with enjoyment in them as the goal, but that is only one of the dimensions of nature. Others glorify the highest intellect and insight (viveka) into the unity of all things (advaita), but that is only the highest category of nature, called buddhi. When you have a perfectly accurate map of the whole of existence, you cannot get lost on your path toward the highest awareness. The only problem in self-realization has always been that you become stuck in some content of consciousness (prakṛti) without being aware of it.

Sāṃkhya makes this impossible because it covers all dimensions of the manifestation of consciousness.

**PAA: Metaphysics of Astrology: Why Astrology Works is a bold title in an era when astrology is either dismissed by scientists or commercialised beyond recognition. You're arguing for a genuine causal mechanism. Could you sketch the core of that mechanism — what exactly is the moon, a planet, or a conjunction actually doing to the soul and its circumstances?**

**Ivan Antic: **Understanding algorithms reveals the very core of how the planets act upon us. The planets, as the action of a larger whole, create algorithmic schemas by which action unfolds here, within a smaller whole. We experience this not only as natural phenomena but also as events that mark our fate. There is also the understanding of the universe as a hologram. If Mars, in its transit over Uranus—Uranus having been in a certain place at the time of my birth—acts upon me, and on that very day I suffer a head injury (as once happened), one thing becomes clear to me: this Mars is not outside me, nor is Uranus, even though Uranus is not in that place now, but was there long ago. All of this exists in the timeless reality of the holographic universe. All of this is my being.

Astrology, better than anything else, teaches us in practice that our body is not only this small physical body, but that our being is the whole of nature, the whole cosmos, and that we are connected with the planets in the same unity as the cells of our body. The study of astrology expands our consciousness more than any other practice. For what strikes you on the head cannot be ignored, nor can you doubt it through abstract theories.

**PAA: Everything Is Perfect: Why Do We Not See It carries perhaps the most demanding claim in your entire body of work — that there are no genuine mistakes from the perspective of divine consciousness. For a reader who has survived trauma, loss, or injustice, that idea can feel not just abstract but actively offensive. How do you hold space for real human suffering while also maintaining the integrity of that claim?**

**Ivan Antic: **I think I explained this through examples throughout the book. The book was written precisely to expand common perception in several ways. Understanding evil and suffering is closely connected with understanding the true nature of the soul, that is, of consciousness. Only the experience of insight into the true nature of consciousness can give us true insight into life, especially into the question of suffering. All true teachings tell us that suffering exists only because of ignorance. We must also understand the question of dimensions and the place our world occupies in the great order of things. We certainly do not exist in the consciousness of unity, not even in the higher dimensions where such consciousness is near. Here, we are in a somewhat more distant place, where the law of opposites and many other laws prevail, so things are somewhat more conditioned.

However, access to redemptive consciousness is always possible because consciousness lies at the foundation of everything. For example, I have had many out-of-body experiences, and they immediately removed all fear of death. More precisely, they removed the fear that death is the end of life. What remained was the desire for life, as the only current way for me to participate in the learning and maturation that are possible only here. I respect what happens. While life lasts, I will respect it to the utmost. When the time comes for me to leave, I will respect that too, fully and with the same enjoyment as in physical life. I have the same attitude toward other people’s lives and toward cases of death.

If someone died young and we grieve for him, did we know him before birth and see what plan he had brought for his life and its duration? If we did not, and if we do not know that such plans exist, then all that remains for us is to suffer because of what we can see. Many times, I have also noticed that if something caused me suffering and I could not see its cause, much later in life, I discovered that there had, after all, been a good reason that led to a positive outcome. There is another argument to consider when we do not want to accept that everything is perfect. Terrible things exist, but so do wonderful things. Many people suffer, but many also enjoy bliss, have attained realization, and would not exchange this world and this life for anything else.

If only one thing existed, only suffering, then rejecting the view that everything is perfect would be justified. If the opposite state also exists—happiness, realization, and freedom, even to the smallest degree—then not everything is black, and the world is not a prison with no way out. Then the issue is causality, which we do not fully see. Apart from events, perfection can also be seen in the design of nature. Enjoyment of nature has a healing effect even on the most severe depression. Certainly, that healing effect would be much greater if we were somewhat better informed about the details of nature’s action. For example, how photosynthesis works in plant cells. According to everything contemporary science knows, this process is impossible. And yet we all live thanks to it.

Such details would show us, with unmistakable clarity, that nature is not only a great mechanism of material action, but also a stage upon which all the miracles of divine consciousness act. Although their source is invisible, their effects are visible. All around you are such miracles, which would heal you of difficulties and expand your consciousness and perception, if only you had seen them clearly enough. Simply, nothing could exist if it were not perfect.

**PAA: Your newest book, I Ching: Algorithm of Divine Intelligence, proposes that the 64 hexagrams could serve as the foundation for an artificial intelligence genuinely aligned with nature. That's an extraordinary claim at a very particular moment in history. Do you think AI, as currently developed — trained on human data rather than on the laws of intelligent design — poses a specific danger that your hexagram-based model would not? And is there a team of researchers you'd want to have that conversation with?**

**Ivan Antic: **AI will certainly pose a danger as long as it remains based on the limited human mind. Its results would be relative, with some positive and some negative effects. AI would only amplify this. The source of consciousness has always been transcendental; it has never come from below—from what has already been created. The essence of consciousness lies in creativity that transcends the known; everything that moves within the closed circle of the known is not consciousness, although it can still be useful enough as intelligence. Therefore, I believe we must clearly distinguish consciousness from intelligence when discussing AI. Intelligence is the use of consciousness. If by intelligence we mean the skillful processing of existing data, then that is all right and can be useful for many kinds of work.

But if AI is spoken of as consciousness, then it should be immediately clear to us that someone wants to foist upon us a false idea of consciousness. The aim is to deceive us so that we do not arrive at the truth about consciousness: that it is one and the same in all of us. If we became aware of this, no one would wage war, and that would be a major problem for the military industry. Some voices say that Willow has been taken over by the military. I do not know what is happening beyond that. I believe that the algorithms of the I Ching can be effectively implemented on a quantum computer. A quantum computer cannot be controlled or abused, just as the I Ching cannot, because both act in the same way, from the same universal field.

This would certainly have to be a universal AI that operates globally and connects all other AI systems, for example, to create a world economy. However, I doubt that such work would appeal to those running BlackRock. As long as inhuman goals and interests exist, it will not be possible to create or establish AI on the foundations of fundamental natural laws. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I do not see how it could fit into the current war between the Taliban and the Satanists.

**PAA: Thank you, Ivan, for such a thought-provoking interview, I have really enjoyed reading your answers. **

## Links

• [Ivan Antic — Official Website](https://ivanantic.com/)

• [About Ivan Antic](https://ivanantic.com/about/)

• [Complete Book Catalogue](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/)

• [The Physics of Consciousness](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/physics-of-consciousness/)

• [Samadhi: Unity of Consciousness and Existence](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/samadhi/)

• [Metaphysics of Astrology: Why Astrology Works](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/metaphysics-of-astrology/)

• [Awakening: The Unity of the Outer and Inner Worlds](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/awakening/)

• [Samkhya: An Ancient Science of Nature and the Human Soul](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/samkhya/)

• [The Moon: Magnet for the Soul](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/moon/)

• [Everything Is Perfect: Why Do We Not See It](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/everything-is-perfect/)

• [I Ching: Algorithm of Divine Intelligence](https://ivanantic.com/my-books/i-ching/)

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