Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
WIZARD: Was that a choice for Ramana himself, when he had the
panic attack?
TRIP: I don't know, but this is supposedly the only choice that we
have. What do you think about that, Greg? I don't know.
GREG GOODE: I think it's a rhetorical statement, something to
encourage people to keep them from going totally nihilistic. On
the face of it, if you look at the mechanics of choice, then there's
nothing different about the choice to inquire versus the choice to
do something else. Nothing that would make that particular
choice any different. But if you didn't think you had that choice,
and then you'd think that there'd be no choice whatsoever. And
for people who feel there's no choice whatsoever, some people are
liberated by the thought, and some people are depressed, and they
feel like “What's the use of anything, why even get out of bed in the
morning?”
WIZARD: My own paradigm shift was choiceless.
GREG GOODE: I'm sorry?
WIZARD: For myself, just speaking for myself, the paradigm shift
was like a synchronistic event, it was choiceless.
GREG GOODE: Mine too; in fact, I also experienced choice itself
as choiceless.
WIZARD: Yes, yes.
GREG GOODE: So, I think that Ramana didn't want to close the
door altogether on the possibility of using inquiry to help
themselves.
TRIP: Well, I think, for me the answer to that choice, I'm
comforted by the fact that I don't have any real choice. I'm one of
those people that, you know, find it comforting, but I see my body
as a mechanistic hologram that has feelings and it is running in
189