Eckhart Tolle is the author of The Power of Now and popularised new forms of Buddhism. He is one of the most significant figures of the New Age, a darling of Oprah Winfrey, and my personal favourite accessible spiritual teacher. In this episode, I talk to Eckhart about how he copes with the constant flow of terrible news, the inundation of crisis consciousness, and the questions you sent in. And I also get to ask him some of my own questions. This episode is sponsored by Books with Brad, a book club I run with philosopher Professor Brad Evans. Books With Brad is on all of the social medias, if you want to know more about Orwell's 1984, why don t you join Books WithBrad, my book club with philosopher Prof. Brad Evans, we've already done week one on 1984, it's fantastic! You will see things in 1984 that you've never seen before, beyond the surveillance, the thought control, the 2 + 2 = 5, the inability to communicate openly. And do you think that spiritual awakening, when attained, can only be in the present moment, when we are living in a time of crisis, where we move from a financial crisis into a pandemic crisis, into a war crisis? Do you have trouble squaring that circle? Well, we are certainly moving into turbulent times, and perhaps it s helpful to become more aware of one s own personal state of consciousness. of the past and all things that happened in the past, which is all a part of our collective experience. What do you have to do to become aware of your own personal consciousness? of your past? What are you do to make sense of your experience of reality? How do you know that you have all of that? ? What does that mean? Do you know what it means? what does it mean to be a good thing? and what do you do with your past and your past and all that you ve got to do with it? or what are you have in your mind how do you to make it to become a better version of yourself do you see the future ? What kind of reality in this video? in the future? In this video, you re going to see the Future? This is the future, you're going to have a good one? - by Russell Brand by
00:01:36.000In this video, you're going to see the future.
00:01:49.000Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:01:52.000Today it's subcutaneous, that means we look under the skin of an important guest and I'm so excited to tell you that today we're talking to Eckhart Tolle.
00:02:01.000Now if you don't know who Eckhart Tolle is, Eckhart Tolle is the author of The Power of Now.
00:02:05.000He popularised new forms of Buddhism, one of the most significant figures of the new age, darling of Oprah Winfrey and my Personal favourite accessible spiritual teacher.
00:02:18.000What I'll say about Eckhart is you feel it.
00:02:21.000You watch the show because now these podcasts can be watched as well as listened to.
00:02:26.000And you will see in Eckhart Tolle's eyes that he is connected.
00:02:29.000Now, the reason that I believe that Eckhart Tolle is an important guest is because on stay with Russell Brand, I'm so keen that we are able to align and combine individual personal spiritual awakening with collective cultural awakening so that we are empowered to run our own lives and run our own community and get beyond artificial divisions so that we can become collectively powerful enough to confront centralized authority wherever we experience it.
00:02:55.000Otherwise, we might end up in some kind of dark Orwellian nightmare.
00:02:59.000And if you want to know more about dark Orwellian nightmares, why don't you join Books with Brad, my book club that I run with philosopher Professor Brad Evans.
00:04:04.000And we're going to give it away as a prize at some point, aren't we?
00:04:07.000But when we've reviewed, oh, it's stuck to the wall.
00:04:10.000But when it's, when we've done it, quite rightly, really, because you should have pictures stuck to the wall, when we've, um, when we've reviewed 9-8-4, we're going to give this away as a prize, aren't we?
00:04:29.000So sign up to Stay Free AF for the chance to win that art, to join our book club, and also to watch the interviews live as they happen and ask your own questions.
00:04:39.000Like new members I Like Onion Rings, a Justy Crip, and a Rabbit's Home.
00:04:53.000We are going to talk to Eckhart Tolle.
00:04:56.000I'm going to be asking him about individual awakening, collective awakening, how he copes with the constant flow of terrible news, the inundation of crisis consciousness the whole time.
00:05:07.000I'm also going to be asking Eckhart some of the questions you sent in.
00:05:15.000What I'd love to frame our conversation around today, if I might, Eckhart, is the sense that we are living in a time of crisis, where we are lurching from one crisis to another, where we move from a financial crisis into a pandemic crisis, into a war crisis.
00:05:32.000How do we align individual spiritual awakening with collective awakening?
00:05:37.000And do you think that spiritual awakening, when attained, as it can only be in the present moment, means that we are somehow divorced or separate from community activity in the same way that we would be separate from sort of personal goals of the fulfillment of personal passions, say.
00:05:54.000Do you have trouble squaring that circle?
00:06:00.000Well, we are certainly moving into turbulent times and Perhaps it's helpful to become more aware of one's own state of consciousness.
00:06:21.000That's the main thing, is to become aware that everything is experienced through your state of consciousness.
00:06:29.000And your state of consciousness determines the way in which you experience so-called reality.
00:06:37.000So you could divide, for example, your experience of reality into three parts.
00:06:45.000One is you experience reality through your past, which is of course all the things that have happened to you and all the things that make up your personality.
00:07:02.000They are accumulations, mental-emotional accumulations from the past, and that's who you consider yourself to be.
00:07:12.000That's part of your reality, is your past, or whatever happens even in the more recent past.
00:07:18.000Another part of your reality is the future.
00:07:21.000Many people are very much focused on the future, what's going to happen to me, what's going to happen an hour from now, tomorrow, next year.
00:07:38.000So we have the past as part of your reality, which makes up your identity in the sense of personal identity.
00:07:48.000You have the future, which you look to for fulfillment or liberation from a state of Insufficiency or lack, you look to the future for liberation, which is normal.
00:08:00.000You look to the future to become a more complete human being, to achieve or acquire this or that.
00:08:09.000And then you have the present moment, the immediate experience of the present moment.
00:08:15.000And that's often overlooked because future and past have obscure In the cases of most people's lives, past and future, past in the sense of carrying the weight of a personality that's based on the conditioning of your mind, and then the future in the sense of desperately needing to get somewhere, there's the hope of fulfillment, and at the same time there's the fear of non-fulfillment or loss, so the future is a two-edged sword.
00:08:53.000On the one hand, it promises fulfillment and it might give it to you.
00:08:59.000Or it is experienced as a threat of loss or something bad happening or death or whatever.
00:09:10.000So they tend to obscure the present moment.
00:09:13.000And then there's, I would add, a fourth thing that's only come into people's lives in The past decade and the experience of reality, there's a virtual world of the reality.
00:09:27.000So there are many people these days who spend several hours a day focusing on the virtual reality of social media, whatever it is that they're engaged in, when they look at their screen.
00:09:41.000So we could say perhaps there's your screen reality, which for many people, unfortunately, especially young people, has actually become the main way in which they experience reality.
00:10:00.000Until recently, it's only been past, future and present moment.
00:10:05.000Now it's past, future, present moment and then the virtual reality.
00:10:12.000So that's something that we need to be aware of.
00:10:17.000The spiritual dimension can only come into your life through awareness of the present moment reality, your immediate reality in the present moment, here and now.
00:10:33.000That's the entry point into the spirituality.
00:10:36.000And that is often overlooked in people's lives.
00:10:40.000They overlook the most important thing there ever is, which is actually the immediate experience of this moment, which after all is all there is ever.
00:10:51.000So, past and future are actually experienced as mental formations.
00:11:00.000One could say that past and future don't really exist except as thoughts in your mind.
00:11:12.000Without the thoughts in your mind, there's no past and future.
00:12:22.000There were no mirrors, but he was just happy.
00:12:25.000One day he saw a very still pool of water, And he looked into this pool of water and he saw his reflection.
00:12:35.000For the first time, he saw himself in the reflection of this water.
00:12:41.000And as the mythological tale goes, it says he fell in love with himself.
00:12:48.000When he saw himself, he saw that he was beautiful and he fell in love with himself.
00:12:55.000And after that, he was never happy again.
00:13:00.000And there's enormous wisdom in that story because to me it tells the story, I sometimes jokingly say it's the story of the first selfie, but really it tells of the beginning of the human ego.
00:13:15.000The human ego is the formulation of an image in your mind that you have of yourself.
00:13:22.000It consists of visual image and, to a larger extent, a narrative that's connected, a story that you tell yourself, that you believe in, that you say, this is me, this is who I am.
00:13:37.000So you begin, as the ego developed, humans began to live with dividing themselves up into two.
00:13:45.000There's me and the image that I have of myself, and I live then through a mental image of myself.
00:13:54.000And so that is the split that happens.
00:13:57.000Perhaps this is what sometimes is described as the fall, the fall of humans into the egoic consciousness.
00:14:04.000And this is what we are still living with.
00:14:08.000And over the millennia, the ego has become stronger and stronger.
00:14:13.000So our Entire identity is then based on that mental image that we have of ourselves, which in most cases has now become a narrative.
00:14:28.000This narrative you call me, me and my life.
00:16:02.000We live through memory and anticipation.
00:16:06.000Humans live mainly through memory and anticipation.
00:16:12.000And what they don't realize is the primary importance of the present moment.
00:16:18.000The ultimate sanity, you have to seek that in the present moment rather than looking for it at some future point or in the virtual world.
00:16:35.000The virtual world is a An amplification and an externalization of the egoic mind in many cases.
00:16:42.000The human mind gets amplified there and then you have it there on the screen.
00:16:48.000So, I don't know what your initial question was.
00:16:51.000Let's see if we can get back to that, but it's all connected.
00:16:56.000You once told me that in one of the conversations where I was troubling you, having gotten your phone number by illicit means, that you said you can never be happy in the conceptual mind.
00:17:10.000You are trying to find happy in the conceptual mind.
00:17:12.000And of course the future is ultimately conceptual, the past is conceptual, my identity as an individual, as a male, the narcissus identity.
00:17:23.000I was very taken with your explanation of that myth in the pure pool of unbounded potentiality, the super state of all unconscious possibility, connected perhaps to the limitlessness, a choice is made to identify with form, whether that form is physical or thought form.
00:17:42.000I like that at this point of distinction, separation occurs.
00:17:50.000It reminded me too, as you alluded to, of the fall of humankind.
00:17:57.000Of course, regarded as expulsion from the garden, the garden being a cultivated space where everything is immediately available without requirement.
00:18:08.000Some people, I suppose they're not of a spiritual persuasion, would seek to say that this mythic memory of the garden is born of our shared individual memory of a uteral life where all of us live initially formless, then single cellular, bi-cellular,
00:18:25.000where we live suspended and all of our needs are met by the great
00:18:28.000eternal mother. And while we're on this sort of somewhat mythic pathway, Eckhart,
00:18:35.000I wondered if I might ask, as I felt you were on the brink of saying it when you talked about horizontal
00:18:42.000dimensionality of the function of the mythic symbol of the crucifix when it comes to enlightenment
00:18:50.000beyond Christ's ascension, is there a personal and relevant message for us in this image system?
00:19:02.000and to appreciate it and understand it.
00:19:05.000You don't need to be a Christian to appreciate this deep wisdom embedded in that image.
00:19:15.000So first of all you have, if you came here as an extraterrestrial, well they're probably here already, but and if you saw for the first time that... Don't think I haven't noticed your initials?
00:19:59.000So the central image of Christianity is the crucifixion, the man on the cross, which really is an image of suffering.
00:20:09.000The central image of Christianity is an image of suffering.
00:20:12.000In the same way that the central teaching of the Buddha is a teaching of the fact of human suffering called Dukkha, the primordial fact of human existence.
00:20:27.000Buddha taught the primordial fact of human existence is the fact of dukkha.
00:20:32.000Buddha said wherever you go, whatever you do, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, you will encounter some form of suffering.
00:21:04.000The central image of Christianity is also an image of suffering, but it is also an image of The transcendence of suffering, because the crucifixion is the image of suffering, but it also points to the resurrection.
00:21:52.000In other words, it points to something that perhaps no human would have understood conceptually at the time, that the path of human evolution is the evolution through suffering.
00:22:09.000Eventually, we awaken And we transcend through the experience of suffering.
00:23:49.000They say that... I talked to a gardener who did that.
00:23:51.000I said, why are you putting more soil on top of this thing that's already sprouting?
00:23:56.000He said, then they have to struggle and then they become stronger.
00:24:01.000When they finally emerge, they are a stronger plant through the struggle.
00:24:06.000The struggle attracts more energy, more life energy.
00:24:12.000And so this is why humans never evolve in their comfort zone.
00:24:18.000No human has ever achieved deep insights or in evolutionary terms, no human has ever Um, experienced a deeper awakening in their comfort zone.
00:24:36.000Sitting on the sofa, they're drinking their beer, watching Netflix.
00:25:46.000Firstly, to your point there about the precondition of suffering as the natural environment for enlightenment, it came to me the idea of Marcus Aurelius in this reified position as an emperor and indeed a philosopher king, presumably able to achieve a degree of comfort due to his authority and power and yet living in that place of stoic wisdom.
00:26:08.000I'd like to also add to this, because I know that I have to ask all my questions at once because I know I might not be speaking for a while after this, like there's the Marcus Aurelius in a reified position argument, then I want to add to that the idea of Epicureanism, the idea that Pleasure and hedonism can lead to some unbounded state.
00:26:27.000Is this not an ascetic model that is about the denial of pleasure and the denial of the body?
00:26:34.000Where do you place sex and sexuality on that spectra?
00:26:40.000But firstly, and I'd like you to cover all of this if you would, and you've still got a bit of question about the war left over from about half hour ago that's just warming on the stove for you in a Tupperware box to answer in a moment.
00:26:52.000And I'd also like to add that I want to talk to you about undifferentiated states because you used when talking about the sapling seedling metaphor that struggle attract you said, attracts more energy and I wonder where this
00:27:08.000attraction is from and where this attraction is going to. I also would like to recount a
00:27:13.000personal story if I may, Eckhart, that recently after doing a show late at night, which
00:27:18.000required of me that I be absolutely present in the moment in order for me to deliver what I was
00:27:24.000required to deliver. I had to function at a high state. After this, I was in this state afterwards.
00:27:30.000Another time when I was troubling you on the phone, you said to me, the minute you're not on the... you said the minute you leave the stage, you said you are no longer that person and that experience is over and you have lost that concept.
00:27:43.000I live in the velocity and momentum of that moment and still the next day after not sleeping well because my body wants to stay awake, it wants action, it wants...
00:27:52.000Essentially, if I may say, coitus and procreation.
00:27:55.000And the next morning when I wake up, I still feel I'm still in it.
00:28:00.000I'm still in it, but it's sort of glorious.
00:28:02.000And as I drove to work the next day, when I see the bins, the garbage left out, you know, the garbage cans, which are like wheelie bins in this country, when I see them, I see them in a sort of a joyful state, like saintly, like it's Disney versions of trash cans, like they make me laugh.
00:28:18.000I see them as funny, as if they're talking to one another.
00:28:21.000And when I see the pigeons on a wire, it amuses me.
00:28:24.000And I notice how close it is, this sense of the vibrant table.
00:28:33.000So I suppose I'm asking to you about these routes to enlightenment.
00:28:35.000First that Marcus Aurelius tag, reified position, how did he experience the struggle to come up with this sort of Stoic philosophy that he's a significant part of.
00:28:45.000What do you say about Epicureanism and the role of pleasure and is it not Like, because, you know, what about in Tantra, in the Vedas, where they say, just go crazy, man, and live it all out.
00:28:55.000And what do you think also about these transcendent states that are achieved through psychedelics, or whether or not they can be accessed, I'm guessing you say they do, whether or not you've ever taken any psychedelics, and if you understand what I'm saying about how close this is to a type of insanity.
00:29:11.000We talk about awakening, but isn't there a kind of danger in there, because obviously I'm very familiar with your personal awakening, but so that's just...
00:29:21.000Yes, well, there are many questions and ultimately probably boils down to one question.
00:29:30.000Every human is longing unconsciously, mostly unconsciously, longing for self-transcendence.
00:29:40.000They somehow feel that they are not comfortable with themselves.
00:29:45.000They're not comfortable in their own skin.
00:29:47.000There's always in the background and sometimes in the foreground, there's a sense of something missing, something not quite right, or I haven't arrived yet.
00:30:39.000You drink, you take a few, a whiskey or whatever you drink and what does it do?
00:30:47.000You have the first one and you begin to feel, let's say this, you're a normal anxious person stressed, anxious, you've had a rough day, and your mind says, come on, you deserve a treat, get the bottle, and the mind, even if you have a problem with alcohol, the mind will convince you, okay, just one more, what else do I have in my life?
00:31:28.000So then what that does is, because all the anxiety was your mind continuously creating Anxious states, by thinking anxious thoughts and creating anxious emotions.
00:31:44.000So that's a burden of the self, living with myself, this problematic self.
00:31:50.000After the first drink, mind activity slows down a little bit.
00:31:54.000And you go, oh, it feels a little better.
00:32:13.000Because the mind is slowing down even more.
00:32:17.000And so this does not happen in every case.
00:32:20.000There are some people, but that's another story I don't want to go into right now, some people actually become angry and aggressive when they drink.
00:33:24.000So you have this dried plant that for a long time was illegal.
00:33:31.000I mean, it's a bit absurd, people carrying in their pockets leaves of a dried plant and then they get arrested for carrying leaves of a dried plant.
00:33:52.000So we were in Amsterdam in a hotel and of course that's the ideal place to try, well it was at the time, nowadays it's available elsewhere too.
00:34:00.000So I tried it and I could see it did something to my mind.
00:34:04.000I could feel a dulling, a kind of dulling of my mind.
00:34:08.000It was not as... I would not want to repeat it because my normal state is so much more pleasant.
00:34:16.000Then I can see why for people who are burdened by this anxious mind or the problem-making mind, the egoic mind, they experience a moment of release.
00:34:29.000It gives them a glimpse of becoming a bit free of the me, this always anxious or always regretting this or looking, fearing this.
00:34:43.000All the fear and anxiety subsides for a while.
00:34:46.000So it's another glimpse of self-transcendence.
00:34:49.000But again, if you go further, that route, you again move towards unconsciousness.
00:36:00.000In that sense, it has certain similarities with the state of presence or the conscious, very conscious state of spiritual presence.
00:36:12.000Because in spiritual presence also the mind is still, but consciousness remains.
00:36:19.000The difference between all these things where people seek self-transcendence through drugs or alcohol or even sexual, the intense sexual pleasure will also stop your mind temporarily.
00:38:28.000But there are some similarities between the two states and the drug induced temporary glimpses that people have
00:38:37.000can be helpful if you don't get addicted Some people have started their spiritual life by taking acid once or twice or three times and then they started doing meditation and then they didn't need that anymore.
00:38:55.000The ultimate solution is not for us in falling below thinking.
00:39:43.000Our destiny is the next stage of human evolution.
00:39:47.000is not to let go of thinking completely, no, thought is the most wonderful tool that there is, but not to seek an identity through the movement of thought.
00:40:00.000Now Subi has joined us to pass on some of the questions of our audience, and my proposal Subi, having now spent considerable time speaking with Eckhart Tolle over the course of my life, not enough but enough to make this observation, perhaps we could find like 10 questions, ask all of them, And then Eckhart Tolle could answer all of them in his answer, because otherwise if we ask them individually, unless Eckhart Tolle says that Eckhart Tolle is leaving, we will be here indefinitely.
00:40:32.000I have got about ten, so I can read through them.
00:42:09.000Hetty Hope asks, how can we, in our day every day, increase positive spiritual force to awaken each other to understand greed and hatred in ourselves?
00:42:21.000Okay, so Eckhart, it seems like the ten questions in one that you will be answering is about the pain body, about the concept of struggle, your personal struggle when you find yourself literally trapped in the wrong hands.
00:42:53.000So the, of course, ultimately the answer to all these questions needs to point to a state of consciousness that you need to bring to whatever life situation you find yourself in.
00:43:13.000The state of consciousness that You need to bring to your life situation rather than being at the mercy of your life situation, whatever is happening to you in your lifetime, whether it's internally as your pain body, pain body is the term I use,
00:43:33.000to talk about the accumulation of painful emotions, often going back to childhood.
00:43:40.000So there's an accumulation in human beings of painful emotion that sometimes is dormant and other times comes up, uses your mind, indulges in drama with other people by feeding on it.
00:43:53.000And again, the answer to that is stay present with it.
00:43:59.000Be the observer of your mind and the observer of your emotions.
00:44:59.000There may be certain situations where anger Can be briefly applied and it can be helpful, but you need to stay conscious so that it doesn't draw you in.
00:45:10.000It's better, of course, to deal with situations in other ways than anger.
00:47:26.000Have you looked into the eyes of, let's say, a one-year-old or six-month-old babies and when they look at you, they go like, There's not a thought in their head, it's just pure consciousness running through their eyes, you can see.
00:47:42.000And people, when they look into the eyes of the baby, they feel, oh, they feel love.
00:47:47.000Even people who have a big ego can sometimes have a glimpse of freedom because they can sense the baby is not judging them.
00:47:57.000The baby is just, they connect with consciousness.
00:48:05.000The love is there when you don't judge.
00:48:08.000And so, when I can look at you, Russell, and yes, there's a personality there.
00:48:15.000Actually, your personality is quite entertaining and pleasant, so I can enjoy you on the level of personality, but I can also sense that behind the personality, there is a presence, there is a consciousness.
00:48:30.000And that consciousness that I can sense behind your personality, One with my consciousness.
00:48:38.000There isn't your consciousness and mine.
00:48:40.000We are both manifestations of the one animating presence that pervades the entire universe.
00:49:52.000Jesus, one of my most favorite My favorite parables of Jesus talks about a man who is building a house on the sand.
00:50:07.000He's building a house and then the floods come and the storms come and the house is swept away because it's built on the sand.
00:50:17.000And then there's a man who, before building the house, he digs deep Until he reaches the rock, the foundation.
00:50:25.000And when he reaches the rock, he builds the house on the rock.
00:50:28.000And the storms come and the floods come and the house is not swept away.
00:50:34.000And so Jesus said, everybody who listens to my teaching and lives it, He or she is the one who digs deep and builds this house on the rock.
00:50:46.000And when the life comes at you, the challenges of life come at you, the turbulent events in your personal life and in our collective life, you are rooted in this inner state of awareness, which is the vertical dimension, And there you are at peace even while the world is in turmoil.
00:51:10.000And not only are you passively at peace while the world is in turmoil, you can also make a conscious contribution to make the world a more conscious place.
00:51:26.000In whatever way you act upon the world through other human beings or actions you take, The way you communicate with other human beings is done in a conscious manner rather than in a reactive manner.
00:51:44.000We are going through a period of increasing insanity collectively.
00:51:48.000It's like an illness, collective illness, mental illness that's overtaken a significant section of humanity.
00:52:03.000And this is what we're moving into now, an area of great turbulence.
00:52:10.000So the parable of Jesus really becomes very relevant now, because the storms and the floods are coming, both maybe literally and metaphorically.
00:52:22.000The storms and floods are coming, and they will come into your life also.
00:52:28.000We are being challenged to wake up so that the egoic consciousness can be transcended and we can move on to the next stage of human evolution.
00:52:40.000The crisis point is also a great opportunity for moving out of the egoic state.
00:52:45.000It's been around for thousands of years and it had its function.
00:53:16.000I see, Eckhart, now the significance of individual awakening and the impact that it can have
00:53:24.000on a culture, particularly as it is evident that there is a unitary force of some kind
00:53:29.000unfolding, unravelling, even as we speak, and that our individual foundation, having
00:53:37.000a foundation on the permanent rather than the impermanent, temporal and ever-shifting,
00:53:44.000will be a great asset as these transitions continue to occur.
00:53:49.000And to your point earlier, Eckhart, this is precisely why I believe I've been drawn again,
00:53:54.000as I was once earlier in my life, into the concept of activism and critiquing power structures,
00:54:01.000because the function of our channel is to...
00:54:06.000Articulate the connection between individual awakening, collective action and our ability when unified to challenge current power systems and create new systems based on this true foundation.
00:54:19.000So I'm so grateful to you for helping me once again see these connections, see the importance of presence.
00:54:26.000See the importance of awareness, that my function is to remain present, to learn to observe my emotions as they come up, to observe my patterns that play out, be they behavioral or neurological or whatever magnetic field is below the observable level of my apparent individual beingness.
00:54:44.000I always say, as I've said again today, that I find you the easiest instantiation of the spiritual, that I find it makes sense to me, the way you communicate it.
00:54:57.000And I'm very grateful to you for that, Eckhart.
00:55:04.000So, your function is to, yes, to question many of these seemingly very unconscious or absurd things that are happening in the world.
00:55:19.000the narratives that are being created that are sometimes quite insane but you question it without malice, without demonizing any group of people and that's very important because if you see insanity manifesting in certain humans or groups of humans If you demonize them, then you become drawn into the same state of conscience that they are in.
00:55:58.000As Nietzsche, the famous saying, I think Nietzsche said, if you gaze into the abyss for long enough, the abyss gazes back into you.
00:56:08.000Or if you fight monsters, be careful that you don't turn into a monster yourself by fighting monsters.
00:56:17.000You are quite successful in that, so I appreciate that.
00:56:25.000I don't, very rarely, maybe never actually questions, specific things that I see as a manifestation of irrational, totally irrational thinking or even insanity.
00:56:43.000It's a little bit like a good psychologist or psychiatrist, I believe, if they are with a patient who believes in some delusion, let's say they believe that They are Napoleon.
00:57:00.000A good psychiatrist or psychotherapist would not say, no, obviously you are not Napoleon, because you would immediately lose connection with that person.
00:57:18.000The novelty to say, yes, you're right, you are, that would be wrong too, to say, yes, you're Napoleon, of course you're Napoleon.
00:57:27.000All a good psychotherapist would do is Be in that state of openness, perhaps ask questions and listen.
00:57:34.000Don't deny their reality because then they will no longer communicate with you.
00:57:39.000And that my function in this world is to be a midwife for the arising of awareness in human beings.
00:57:48.000And even if a human being is completely deluded in some kind of mental, some kind of totally deluded identity, For example, I would not question their identity because then I lose contact.
00:58:04.000There's no possibility for helping them to awaken into awareness out of that.
00:58:09.000So I would simply listen and ask questions perhaps.
00:58:14.000Then there's a possibility that awareness may arise.
00:58:17.000So that they're no longer trapped in dysfunctional or completely irrational thought processes, mental patterns.
00:58:27.000Then there's the possibility of awakening.
00:58:29.000But that's me because I'm a midwife for the arising of awareness.
00:58:35.000And you are doing it in a more, not in such a direct way.
00:58:39.000You're addressing individual instances of madness.
00:58:47.000Well, we don't know whether it's madness or... There's always the eternal question, all the things that humans, that are happening in the world now, what politicians are doing, what the media are doing, the eternal question that arises, are they evil or malevolent or are they just very stupid?
01:01:03.000Wisdom is a deeper intelligence that arises out of awareness, that can look at the totality of a situation and see what the right course of action is, rather than attack just one thing and think that's what we need to do there.
01:01:21.000How we've dealt with the pandemic is an example of that.
01:01:25.000Just attacking this one thing, complete disregard of secondary consequences that may be far worse than the original problem.
01:01:37.000Economic consequences, psychological consequences, completely unawareness, lack of wisdom, complete lack of wisdom.
01:01:46.000What humanity needs desperately is wisdom, not an increase of what conventionally we call intelligence.
01:01:54.000That has its place too, but intelligence without wisdom is actually dangerous.
01:02:50.000So when I say stupid, I don't mean necessarily low IQ, because they might have a high IQ and still do totally stupid things and be totally identified with this egoic self, called personal ego and collective ego.
01:04:51.000We're talking to him this week, and in Subcutaneous next week, we're talking to Jordan Pearson, and I'm very keen to talk to him about spirituality, morality, Christianity, the nature of love, the nature of God, and the obligations we have as individuals and as a collective.
01:05:06.000But you will be able to ask him your questions as well if you are a member of Stay Free AF.
01:05:12.000See you next time for Subcutaneous, and join us over at Stay Free AF.