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Today on the show, I have the distinct privilege of interviewing author and philosopher Charles

Eisenstein. Born in 1967, Charles describes himself as a very sensitive,

intellectual, and dreamy child. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in mathematics and

philosophy, but his scholarly development brought him no closer to the truth he really cared about.

After college, he went to Taiwan, learned Chinese,

and soon found himself working as a translator. He spent most of his 20s there educating himself

in Eastern spiritual traditions and reading voraciously on topics from health to psychology and spirituality.

After an extended period of searching, Charles birthed his first book, The Ascent of Humanity,

where he originally articulates his theory of separation, which serves as the philosophical

underpinning for much of his work.

And we do talk about this in the interview, but I feel compelled to outline the basic idea here as it is so fundamental to Charles' work.

So here it is.

Human kind has developed a story that we are discrete, separate individuals, amongst other individuals living in an external universe that is separate from us.

This duality influences our spiritual and scientific stories,

the separation of the spiritual from the material,

the separation of the mind and the body,

evolutionary biology that frames life as a competition

...