Spirituality is one of the themes that runs through Nectar of Time. Below is everything in the Nectarium that touches on it.
Where it comes up 12
Within this theme 82
Concepts 22
- Gnosticism
Tamir's 'thought experiment': unlike the Judeo-Christian view of a perfect world and imperfect humans with a divine spark, Gnostic mythology holds that creation on Earth was a cosmic…
- Stoicism
Discussed via Ryan Holiday and Seneca as a daily practice that prevents the hell we create on earth by lacking tools to handle loss and volatility.
- Channeling
Receiving information from a source beyond the conscious self, from the Oracle of Delphi to Esther Hicks to musicians who say an album 'came through' them. Tamir and Samantha conclude we…
- Ayahuasca
Psychedelic brew used in ceremonies in which Mia felt she communicated with her late mother; her first experience brought the message 'let me go.'
- Bardo States
From the Tibetan tradition, the intermediate states a soul passes through after death, which depend on how one dies. Mia describes monks commanding their bodies to die while family pray…
- Grief as Love's Shadow
The episode's central image: grief is love's shadow or ghost, so like love it is a unique thumbprint, inherently personal and subjective, and possibly spiritual in nature.
- Samsara
The Hindu cycle of rebirth that brings you back until you figure it out. Tamir contrasts the comfort his 'Hindu side' finds in it with the pressure his 'Jewish side' feels to get it right…
- Work as meditation
Sheela's form of spirituality. She skipped the commune's meditations and treated her work building Bhagwan's dream as sacred. Bhagwan backed her, telling people who complained to leave her…
- Advaita Vedanta
Non-dual school of Hindu philosophy, the source of the Princess of Kashi story Tamir learned from Swami Sarvapriyananda: the beloved one seeks outside turns out to be oneself.
- Karma yoga
The Gita teaching Tamir cites: your dharma is your work; you have the right to your work but not to its fruits.
- Dharma
One's vocation or duty, discussed via the Gita as the practice to which one has a right, independent of its fruits.
- Holy Books
Scripture comes up in the talk about big questions. Tamir values holy books as conduits of truth but rejects them as total truth that 'spoils the ending' of discovery. Logan, not especially…
- Prayer as presupposition
Samantha, who isn't religious, thinks prayer is powerful because asking presupposes an answer exists. That breeds faith and trust, and so a feeling of safety in the body.
- Altars and Grief Objects
Physical shrines to grief, such as Mia's family leaving her mother's clothes untouched for a decade. Impractical as use of space, but nobody calls an altar inefficient; Tamir likens them to…
- Buddhism
Raised via the teaching that life is suffering and that suffering comes from desire; Ian partly disagrees, locating suffering in resistance.
- Duality
Ian argues we constantly create separation (me vs. the Bugatti owner, one religion vs. another), and that spiritual growth means dissolving the beliefs about why we're different.
- Earthly vs. divine love
Tamir's framework: divine love treats the beloved as a conduit for a greater force, while earthly love falls for the smile and the body. Sheela refuses to place her love for Osho on the…
- Karma
Tamir: if you bypass a hard conversation, 'as the Hindus say, you're going to face it in the next life'. What you avoid now returns later with bigger consequences.
- Maya
Hindu concept of illusion; Tamir uses it to say that even achieving the goal (the Bugatti, the house) is still illusion if triumph and disaster are impostors.
- Nishkama Karma
The Gita's teaching, paraphrased by Tamir, that you have a right to your work but not to its outcome; part of his 'baseline game' of equanimity.
- Greek mythology
Mentioned as another ancient source steeped in dreams, and as the frame for Apollo and the Oracle at Delphi.
- Hinduism
Named among the traditions that offer tools for living, alongside Buddhism and Stoicism; source of maya and the Gita.
Books 10
- Bhagavad Gita
Hindu scripture Tamir calls entirely dedicated to treating triumph and disaster alike; he highlights its reconciliation of conflicting desires and Krishna's teaching that you have a right…
- Divine Comedy
Dante's epic in which Beatrice has a clear role. Tamir mentions it with La Vita Nuova as Dante sharing a piece of his heart with the world.
- This Is It
Alan Watts's essay collection 'This Is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience'. Tamir reads its preface aloud: it argues that the spiritual can't be separated from the…
- Bible
Cited for Joseph's dreams and his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, which saved his life and made him second-in-command in Egypt. Tamir's example of how much ancient cultures valued…
- Dhammapada
Buddhist scripture Tamir cites (paraphrasing its opening) as saying you suffer because you desire; Ian counters that resistance, not desire, creates suffering.
- Upanishads
Tamir, who is Jewish but loves the texts, paraphrases a line saying rituals and prayers are 'a poor raft to cross the sea of samsara' and that true devotees come directly to God. He uses it…
- The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
The book Mia actually draws on (correcting herself from the Book of the Dead) when she teaches grievers about the bardo states and how Tibetan lives are ended.
- Siddhartha
Part of the philosophical fiction Tamir read before getting into modern fiction.
- Tibetan Book of the Dead
Mia first names it before clarifying she means the similar Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
- Vedas
Mentioned with the Bible and Greek mythology as ancient sources where dreams are everywhere and significant.
People 15
- Tamir Barzilai
Host of the Nectar of Time podcast; in this second official episode he shares his own path back into fiction via a pandemic book club and Haruki Murakami.
- Alan Watts
British-American popularizer of Eastern philosophy; Tamir cites his lecture on the court jester about taking life sincerely rather than seriously.
- Osho
Indian mystic also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh ('Bhagwan', meaning Lord), whose provocative teachings joined sex and spirituality. Sheela fell in love with him in 1972 at 22 and…
- Swami Sarvapriyananda
Likely the speaker of the cold-open clip about a lion in a dream: inside the dream there's no logical answer to where the lion came from, because the real answer is to wake up. The clip…
- C.S. Lewis
Author of the Narnia books and science fiction whose nonfiction Tamir has recently started reading; his memoir of losing his wife gives the episode its line that grief feels like fear.
- Ryan Holiday
Tamir saw him speak in Vancouver a few weeks earlier, where Holiday told the story of a philosopher asking the Oracle of Delphi about wisdom and being told to converse with the dead…
- King Solomon
Tamir recalls Solomon (in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes) advising that some questions aren't worth trying to answer, supporting detachment from questions like the afterlife.
- Eckhart Tolle
Spiritual teacher and author of The Power of Now, mentioned in passing in the discussion of living in the past.
- Esther Hicks
Channels 'Abraham', a council of non-physical beings, at Abraham-Hicks conferences. Samantha went to one in 2022 and found the message 'very high frequency', all love and acceptance. She is…
- Gautama Buddha
Tamir uses the Buddha as an example of someone perfectly happy to leave his body behind in search of full oneness, which he sees as a late, advanced stage of a death practice.
- Jesus
Tamir's example that there can be no redemption or deliverance without a world of terror, suffering and malice to be delivered from.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
20th-century sage whose parable of the devil and the dropped truth Tamir tells to illustrate how organizing truth into religion and dogma obscures it.
- Krishna
In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to act while remaining detached from outcomes; Tamir cites this as the reconciliation of desire and non-attachment.
- Oprah Winfrey
Mia says she subscribes to 'the Oprah Winfrey belief' that you can wish for something but then have to let the wanting rest, applied to her longing to reconnect with her mother.
- Abraham
Tamir quips that the founder of the monotheistic religions was Abraham, who arguably had his own 'inner Abraham' to channel the idea of one God, a play on Abraham-Hicks.
Quotes 10
My wings are not capable of this flight.
The pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.
The Stoics realized that their daily practice is preventing the hell which exists on earth.
I think we all have an inner Abraham. Just because Esther Hicks has branded and named hers and decided to host conferences doesn't make hers more valuable or more omniscient than your own sense of knowing.
If you're creating structures that cannot be touched, that's where the shadow is going to hide. And it knows you're not going to be able to go in.
My qualm with religion is that these are books that have decided what the future is, and I really don't like that, because I like the idea of exploration, of discovery.
There's only the question and no answer. On the side of those who are enlightened, they don't seem to ask this question. They have the answer, but not the question.
Spirituality is a fashion in the moment. But one doesn't have to follow old fashion. You create your own fashion... And don't compare yourself to others. You are you, others are others, and both are individuals.
We are supposed to know things, but we also need to know that we don't actually know things. Part of knowing is knowing what you don't know.
The only Zen you find at the top of the mountain is the Zen that you bring with you.
Insights 9
- Untouchable rules give the shadow shelter
Moral structures that can't be questioned, such as rigidly held religious law, are exactly where the shadow hides, because it knows you won't go in. Religion, like the shadow, has to be…
- Work for a beloved's dream can be meditation
Spirituality doesn't have to look like sitting or dancing meditation. Sheela found jumping up and down boring, but working toward the dream of the man she loved was sacred to her, and…
- Everyone wants the same few things
Across religion, background, and ethnicity, people want connection, love, purpose, impact, and fulfillment; organizing into competing traditions perpetuates duality.
- Seeking afterlife answers is seeking certainty
Researching the afterlife or the simulation is mostly another way humans search for certainty; unless you're on physics' front lines, leave those questions be and focus on living well here.
- The highest influence doesn't proselytize
Alan Watts never tried to convert anyone; he stated things as they are and let people be enchanted. Being secure enough not to care whether someone converts is the pinnacle of influence.
- There's no redemption without the trough
Deliverance only means something because there is terror, suffering and malice to be delivered from, which may be why darkness in films and literature pulls at us.
- We are all conduits
Inspiration and insight seem to 'come through' us, as musicians and the ancient idea of the genius suggest. Either we all are conduits or none of us are, whether the source is the depths of…
- Whether it's real matters less than openness
As a psychology student through and through, Mia doesn't need her ayahuasca contact with her mother to be objectively real. What matters is accepting that it may be, and that we may not…
- The perennial is perennial for a reason
Old scripture and classic questions keep being criticized precisely because they are still relevant. What endures does so for a reason and is worth revisiting.
Practices 2
- Letting the Wanting Rest
Like a watched kettle, desire (including the longing to reunite with someone who died) eases when you wish for it and then let the wanting rest for a while, rather than clutching at it.
- Create your own spirituality, don't compare
Don't envy meditators or follow spiritual fashion. Take care of your own responsibilities and the desires you need to fulfill, don't compare yourself to others, and let spiritual people 'be…
Stories 10
- Meeting Bhagwan through her father
Sheela wasn't looking for spirituality and 'didn't even know what it meant'. Her father asked her to come with him to Bhagwan's discourse because he believed that if this man lived long…
- Sheela doesn't meditate, leave her alone
Sheela was bored by the meditation exercises and found her work more fun than 'jumping up and down'. Commune members complained to Bhagwan that Sheela didn't meditate, and he told them to…
- Mother's message: let me go
On her first ayahuasca ceremony, Mia felt her mother tell her 'let me go': stop thinking about what I want and live your life. It was hard because she didn't know who she was outside 'the…
- Growing up Serbian Orthodox and strict
Nev grew up in a strict Balkan family in the Serbian Orthodox faith, which gave her a lot of shame. She notes that her clients from strict religious homes now mostly call themselves…
- Seeing Ryan Holiday in Vancouver
The week before, Tamir saw Ryan Holiday speak in Vancouver, contrasting religion's focus on avoiding hell after death with the Stoics' daily practice for avoiding the hell created on earth.
- Falling asleep at morning discourses
Asked what besides her parents shaped her, Sheela says Bhagwan's teachings added a lot, though she went to his discourses every morning and often fell asleep on the floor. Tamir jokes she…
- Krishnamurti: the devil and the truth
Tamir retells Krishnamurti's parable: the devil drops the truth from his pocket and a passerby picks it up. His companion asks if he's worried; the devil says no, 'he's going to organize…
- Losing her mother at seven
Mia lost her mother at seven. She doesn't remember her voice, laugh or favorite color and barely knew her, yet still feels a strong, 'spooky' connection to her, which is why she won't tell…
- Synagogue as a social club
Tamir grew up going to synagogue with his father, where many people just chatted, and religion felt like a social activity. He finds more spirituality climbing a mountain, on a hike, or 'at…
- Abraham-Hicks conference
Samantha attended an Abraham-Hicks event in 2022. Measuring it by 'vibrational resonance', she found everything said came from love and acceptance, but she stays one foot in, one foot out…
Films, music and art 1
- The Princess of Kashi
A Vedantic story Tamir tells at the end. A prince falls in love with a 15-year-old portrait of a princess, then learns it is him as a child, dressed for a palace play, and his longing…
Organizations and movements 3
- Rajneesh movement
The spiritual movement around Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), which many considered a cult. Its members saw it as an attempt at utopia. Sheela was its secretary and spokesperson in the early…
- Oracle of Delphi
The Pythia, priestess of Apollo at Delphi, who answered questions by channeling the god. Tamir has been studying her lately and lists the theories about her source (vapors, hidden priests)…
- Serbian Orthodox Church
The religion Nev was raised in within a strict Balkan family. She says it was a source of shame in her upbringing.