Duncan Trussell is an actor and comedian, a contemporary shaman, and a peculiar mystic star of the Midnight Gospel on Netflix. But he is so much more than none of those things, beyond them, beyond their ulterior motives. In this episode, he talks about his spiritual journey, and how he copes in a world where he doesn t have a cultural home, a tribe, or a sense of belonging. He talks about how he deals with the doldrums, and what it means to be lost in the modern world, and why it s important to have a spiritual home. He also shares a story from a Ram Dass retreat, and talks about a story about a spiritual teacher he had in the 60s and 70s named Krishna Dass. And he explains why he thinks there's no such thing as a "home" in this world, but rather, a feeling of being lost in time and space. And why it's important to be grounded in the present moment, no matter where you are in your life. Stay free, and remember that you're not alone in the universe. You have the right to remain silent, and you have to be loud and clear in your voice to be heard. You have to stay free. - Russell Brand Stay Free, Stay Free. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus Vellian. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Used w/ permission from Zapsplat. Subscribe to stayfree.co.nz.nz/Stay Free, and use the promo code: stayfree at checkout to get 10% off your first pack of books, $10 or more than $25,000, and receive a free copy of the book Stay Free with Russell Brand's latest book, and more! is a big thank you, stay free, I'll send you a copy of Stay Free With Russell Brand is available on all good books, and I'll be giving you a discount code: Stay Free by clicking here. If you're looking for a signed copy of my new book, I'm giving you $10,000 and you can get a discount on my new ad-free version of my book: stay free of course, you'll get 20% off my next month, $20, $50, $75, $99, $55, $60, and more, and $75 gets you an ad-only course, get the book is also getting a VIP discount, and get a VIP membership, plus I'll get a free shipping offer, and all other shipping starts starts starting in two days, and they'll get my free shipping starts start-up shipping starts are also getting my ad-up in two weeks, shipping starts begining at $24,99, and there's a discount of $95,99 gets $5,99 and I'm also getting your first promo code, they'll also get a special offer, too get a $24th place offer, plus a discount, $24/day, and shipping starts will get you a 2-place promo, $16, VIP 4-place only, and my ad is $4-place gets $4, VIP is $24-place is $19,99 & $8-place will get a pop-up course, and will get $4 of your first place is $5-and they'll receive $4/place gets a VIP offer, AND all of these things will get it all-of that's a course, plus they get it's all-in-depth, plus all of that gets a $4 and a $5 and a course is $8 and a promo is $6 and a VIP is also $24 and $8, she'll also receive a $10 and a print and a discount is $16 and a few other is that's also a promo, and she gets it's $4 & a $13 and a pop
00:00:55.000Hello, welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:58.000Today's episode is subcutaneous, where we take an under-the-skin, deep-dive, cut-to-the-bone guest and delve into their psyche, their minds, their experiences.
00:01:08.000Previously on the show, we've had Tim Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Jordan Peterson, of course, Maya Van Dyne, Shiva, Jocko Willink.
00:01:13.000All of those are available to watch on Rumble now, today.
00:01:17.000I'm joined by Duncan Trussell, who's an actor and a comedian and a contemporary shaman and a peculiar mystic star of the midnight gospel on Netflix and host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast.
00:01:31.000But he is so much more none of those things, beyond them, ulterior to them.
00:01:37.000Duncan, thanks for joining me on the show.
00:01:44.000I feel like when I knew that I was going to be speaking to you again, I thought this would be an opportunity for me to revise where I am right now in my life.
00:01:54.000Are you available for that experience with me?
00:03:22.000I think it's, you know, this is the What you're talking about is it it's kind of like the doldrums or something or this is the moment on the uh archetypical moment when jesus is being crucified it says father why have you forsaken me it's that moment or what do they call it the uh
00:03:43.000The abyss where you it's crossing the abyss so you know you go through these periods in your life where suddenly all the sparking beautiful spiritual stuff doesn't seem to be there anymore you're just filling out forms and you can and you have a sense of um uh I was just at this Ram Dass retreat and Raghu Marcus, who was hanging out with Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass back in the 60s in India, was telling a story that Krishna Dass told him.
00:04:17.000Krishna Dass goes over to Ram Dass' house and Ram Dass is like, Kind of depressed.
00:04:25.000And he says to Krishnadas, you're a fraud.
00:04:33.000And Krishnadas gets a big smile on his face and goes, but we're authentic frauds.
00:04:42.000And so, but you know, it's that sense of like, you're not always going to get the feeling of being buoyed by some benevolent super intelligence in your life, though I would love it.
00:05:01.000That feeling of benevolent super intelligence.
00:05:04.000My problem is that I consider that home.
00:05:07.000And because I consider that home, I am dependent on a certain state of consciousness to have a sense of being grounded, which produces an imbalance in my life.
00:05:16.000But I don't mind the imbalance so much.
00:05:19.000I, too, want to be continually buoyed by a benevolent superintelligence.
00:05:23.000In fact, everything else I'm talking about is a sort of a derivative of my faith in that.
00:05:29.000One time I chatted to Bobby Roth, who taught me Transcendental Meditation.
00:05:33.000He, like, runs the David Lynch Foundation, who dish out meditations to people and stuff.
00:05:37.000And I said, after I'd spoken to Eckhart Tolle, I said, I can tell Eckhart Tolle lives there.
00:05:42.000He lives buoyed by that benevolent superintelligence.
00:06:29.000I guess that's why we look to them, you know, our elders are Ram Dass, they are Terence McKenna, they are those figures that came from the 60s, because we are not Indian mystics, are we?
00:06:39.000We are Western and trying somehow to create some perennialism out of this stuff, to bolt together some kind of new faith out of the remnants.
00:06:50.000of secularism and what the dry rubble it's left us.
00:06:57.000Yeah, yeah. Well, you know the best description I've heard of it is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
00:07:04.000in talking about how to know if you've encountered like authentic spirituality.
00:07:09.000He says, it should feel like fresh baked bread.
00:07:12.000It should feel like, you know, fresh baked bread coming out of the oven.
00:07:16.000There shouldn't be that stale, dry, dead, you know, or the just the creepy sense that you're watching like an echo of an echo of an echo of an echo of an echo that at some point meant something, but now it's just people echoing the thing, you know, but then I do think if you have a sense of this is the path, then you're going to have a sense of this is not the path.
00:07:46.000And the Tantric idea is that when you're off the path, that's the path too.
00:07:52.000When you're in the doldrums, really what you're experiencing is the benevolent superintelligence, is the sweetness of life, except you don't like that particular flavor of life.
00:08:03.000You want a different flavor of ice cream, and it's training yourself to find it within every single part of the spectrum of experience.
00:08:13.000And people like Tole Ramdas appear to have done that, but then we don't know!
00:08:19.000We're just seeing them when they're on stage.
00:08:21.000You don't know what's going on with them.
00:08:30.000When you're around them, you feel like you're standing in front of some kind of space heater that is radiating love and present moment awareness.
00:08:39.000So it's hard to imagine that there are times when they're also kind of slumped over, feeling a little blue.
00:08:48.000Our chat, firegirl2020, points out that this conversation is happening during the winter solstice.
00:08:56.000This is when we find ourselves colliding.
00:08:58.000You mentioned that sometimes you feel like you're living in a simulacrum.
00:09:02.000Some image so frequently repeated that there is no essence left.
00:09:08.000And I feel that that's where we have found ourselves in the culture.
00:09:12.000A lot of the conversation I have with Duncan We have people like Barry Weiss or Matt Taibbi, the people that were involved in the release of the Twitter files.
00:09:20.000A lot of people that are essentially attacking establishment liberalism from the left, but are being condemned for being right-wing.
00:09:28.000We're in a very unusual ideological space, I feel.
00:09:32.000I loved it when, on perhaps your most recent Rogan episode, you used the phrase, from woo to cue.
00:09:43.000Like, sort of like a lot of people that are, you said, maybe you buy a balm, you buy a balm or something.
00:09:49.000Like, you know, the idea that a lot of people that are anti-establishment and embrace spiritual ideas might end up believing in kind of Baroque conspiracy.
00:09:59.000There's a sort of a necessity, I think, somehow, to Present our discourse reasonably to not sound like hokey or crazy or like we're part of the terrifying idea of a new right-wing movement which I never thought that I would ever be accused of being a part of.
00:10:19.000I just don't know how this has happened.
00:10:21.000What do you, how do you think that we are, how do you try to present the intersection of spiritual values and political ideals without Finding yourself in either Wu or Q territory.
00:10:46.000And I love his recommendation to maintain agnosticism.
00:10:50.000And when you're looking at any of these, like, fringe theories, just don't become a true believer.
00:10:55.000And this is a way to inoculate yourself from becoming like, you know, Potentially being swept out into, you know, a lot of irrational thinking.
00:11:07.000Because I think, you know, what has, the creepy thing that you've identified, and I've watched many of, lots of clips of you, like, very fearlessly talking about this stuff.
00:11:19.000The thing that you've identified is that our idea of what the left was, or liberalism was, was that there was a kind of like, Rebellion or pushback against the state.
00:11:31.000There wasn't a collusion with the state.
00:11:34.000Generally, there was like the radicals that we're thinking about, they were really like involved in a wrestling match with the state to try to achieve usually some kind of peace, get out of Vietnam, stop bombing people, things like that.
00:11:48.000Now what's so confusing, I think, is that you're seeing like The FBI, the state entities, at least in the United States, who are, like, kind of in this strange relationship with people on the left who are controlling media to some degree.
00:12:07.000And so, and the reason that they like it, I don't blame them.
00:12:11.000Man, I was just watching this show on Netflix, something about the CIA.
00:12:26.000You get to fly anywhere you want and sneak around.
00:12:30.000But what I'm getting at is that the people who were controlling Twitter, they liked working with the state because the state, they felt, was representing their ideals.
00:12:40.000And it's a kind of short-term thinking, which is like, the more you allow the state to embed itself into your particular private business, you have to hope that the state maintains your ethics Your ideas of what's right going forward forever.
00:12:56.000And if you look at the history of the United States, you can see it's pendulum between left and right, left and right.
00:13:02.000And so it's a really, I don't think it's a safe bet.
00:13:05.000It's like, yeah, right now it's great.
00:13:14.000When something awful has happened, and now there's some very powerful, megalomaniacal tyrant who's not as abrasive as Trump was, but more like a JFK-style fascist person who is not half the country that likes him.
00:13:32.000It's 70% of the country that likes him, and they love him a lot.
00:13:37.000And now it's like, wait, why did you say that?
00:13:39.000Six years ago on Twitter about this person or that person.
00:13:43.000You know, I think you might need to be taken into a special kind of hospital.
00:13:53.000So this opens the... it's like you end up accidentally laying down tracks that lead to a kind of
00:14:02.000super techno-fascism and nobody wants that.
00:14:04.000I don't, it feels like they haven't thought it through enough. Like, let's keep the state out of
00:14:10.000private business as much as we possibly can. It shouldn't just be the separation of church and
00:14:14.000state. Let's face it, capitalism is a religion anyway. Let's just admit that capitalism is some
00:14:20.000kind of secret religion and follow through with the separation of church and state in, like,
00:14:26.000capitalist enterprises. I think that's what we have to do because otherwise shit gets really warped.
00:14:32.000Sorry for the rant. It's a beautiful rant.
00:14:35.000I feel that we live in this place of total immersion.
00:14:40.000When you used the simulacrum reference earlier with regard to pseudo-spirituality, the kind of phatic and impersonating spirituality that we're kind of offered in yoga centers and places of privileged retreat where the Our aesthetic of individualism has just crept into another quarter.
00:15:06.000Ultimately, spirituality for me is about dissolving the boundaries between myself and everything else
00:15:12.000and not living my life ultimately in the pursuit of some variant of my primal desires.
00:15:19.000My desire for status, my desire to mate, my desire...
00:15:24.000You know, I don't want to be governed by some distortion of this biochemical processes
00:15:30.000that are required for the survival of the species that I'm a part of.
00:15:33.000Now when you talk about the ideals that are being mimicked, I believe, like in social media spaces
00:15:40.000and utilised by the state, my concern is that they don't care about equality, identity equality.
00:15:52.000I do think that, in a sense, you can see how the kind of political libertarianism ...expressed by someone like Tucker Carlson would necessarily lead to.
00:16:02.000If you want to identify as whatever, that's cool.
00:16:07.000If you ultimately want to be allowed to have a gun and live wherever you want to live and you don't want to pay any tax, how could you have a problem if someone says, I consider myself to be this gender, none of the language that's around now represents how I feel, could you talk to me like that?
00:16:20.000And I had this conversation Duncan, with Jordan Trussell, because I said, like, God, I agree with you so much.
00:16:25.000When you're talking about myth, when you're talking about archetypes, when you're talking about duty, when you're talking about becoming the person you need to become, the inverted commas, the father, I agree with you.
00:16:34.000But why, what's the deal with, like, Elliot Page?
00:16:39.000And of course he believes it's deeply insidious and he feels that it's like creating a radiation that breaks down sort of fundamental components, the building blocks of our language and our culture.
00:16:48.000And ultimately, I suppose, you know, God, I'm trying to praise see Jordan Pearson's position for which he would not thank me.
00:16:54.000But it seems that he believes that many of the building blocks of patriarchal traditional culture have value, doesn't he?
00:17:01.000But the thing that I want to see, the baked bread fresh that I want there in all of these conversations is love.
00:17:07.000I want to feel that people are coming from a place of love.
00:17:12.000And I don't think that the people that stand up for the rights of people to identify however they want, on a corporate level certainly, I don't think they give a shit.
00:17:23.000I don't think they give a shit about racial equality.
00:17:26.000In fact, I think they're deliberately using it because they've abandoned economic equality.
00:17:30.000They've abandoned working-class people all over the world, and in order to distract us from that, they, you know, I don't mean it in such an obviously conspiratorial way when I say they to distract us from that, but I mean to say the way that the culture is mobilized is that there is no socialist left left in terms of what are we going to do to help the
00:17:48.000millions of Americans and people all over the world that simply don't have enough access to
00:18:08.000So I don't think it's just bad in case the regime ends up in the wrong hands.
00:18:11.000I think the regime's already in the wrong hands.
00:18:13.000They've just got some nice, some cute understanding of the aesthetics of the cultural revolution that gave birth to many of the icons behind you, or at least the one icon I recognise.
00:18:30.000We're from that place where spirituality and political radicalism were necessarily one and the same.
00:18:35.000Where it was necessary to bring a new energy into the culture.
00:18:38.000And I think that what we're experiencing now is the commodification of everything, the commercialization of everything, the imitation of everything, and it's fucking getting harder and harder to taste something real.
00:18:57.000And then you throw the tables over and you're pissed and that's the, that's the, it's really a... This experience, the encounter with the world, is generally like I think the first reaction anyone who isn't like dead asleep is gonna have is like if you do get into like any authentic spiritual thing you might start realizing that
00:19:27.000The whole world is this beautiful place.
00:19:30.000What an incredible place we find ourselves in this particular incarnation.
00:19:35.000And then when you start having that realization and you look around and realize that this world is like actually filled with people and things that seem to be trying to distract you from recognizing that you don't really need much it's beautiful all the way through and then when it gets really maddening is when you realize oh my god
00:19:59.000But they're not just, like, distracting us.
00:20:02.000They're using the very same language that used to point towards how beautiful everything is to, like, sell war, to sell violence, to sell all kinds of bullshit.
00:20:15.000And so then that's where you can really start feeling the great.
00:20:19.000Dizzying sense that we hear about archetypically and all the stories of the avatars.
00:20:25.000You've got Jesus in the desert and you know the temptations.
00:20:30.000Dostoevsky did a great like in the Brothers Karamazov talks about breaks down what each of them meant.
00:20:36.000Like why don't you turn the stones into bread and then you can feed the people.
00:20:40.000And Jesus says, well, men cannot live by bread alone.
00:20:44.000And Dostoevsky breaks that down by saying, if, you know, the priest class were just started feeding the people, then all autonomy would go away.
00:20:54.000And then you would have a, like, it would just essentially the church would go from being a place where autonomous individuals go for connection to the divine to just some sort of Food nipple, a soup bank or something where you pretend to bow down to things to get stuff.
00:21:09.000Anyway, Buddha is met by Mara and is visited with three temptations, one of them being death, which, you know, if you've taken enough psychedelics or if you have really plugged into that unified consciousness field you're talking about, It's not like your fear of death goes away, but it certainly will change and become a little less intense than if you haven't had that experience.
00:21:32.000But then the second temptation was the Daughters of Mara, which is what you're talking about, I think, which is where Mara shows Buddha his beautiful daughters.
00:21:41.000It doesn't really represent, like, hooking up or something.
00:21:44.000It represents this is the fruit of the world. You could have this with all that you've
00:21:50.000achieved and obtained, all of the cities, all of that glowing thing that you're talking
00:21:55.000about when you run into people who have had an authentic enlightenment experience. I mean,
00:22:01.000that could be used for lots of things other than teaching people. This is the idea there, which
00:22:07.000is like, why don't you marry You could be a great king of the whole world.
00:22:13.000And so apparently, and I don't know for sure if this is bona fide, but I've heard that Buddha said that was the most difficult of the temptations that he was visited before his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
00:22:24.000And so What you're talking about is the Daughters of Mara.
00:22:28.000What you're talking about is that invitation from the world.
00:22:34.000Use all of what you have learned to bring people deeper into confusion.
00:22:40.000Use what you've learned to bring people deeper into the Into the demiurge, into the secularism, as you call it.
00:22:50.000Away from the fresh-baked bread and towards the shit bread in front of McDonald's.
00:22:57.000At that point, if you decide to do that, you become an unholy shepherd of death!
00:23:03.000Now you have experienced unitive consciousness, but instead of, like, recognizing that all that's left is to try to ease the suffering of the people around you, if you can, you're like, let me trick them!
00:24:58.000When there are no values, when there is only the impersonation of values, these inversions become possible.
00:25:07.000The kind of Orwellian literalism of war is peace becomes actualised.
00:25:14.000It becomes actualised because nothing is anchored.
00:25:17.000Now this is sort of like one of the dangers of post-modernity, and this is where some of those sort of like, sort of, late Christian right-wing folks, J.P.
00:25:25.000Jordan, you know, like, this is where they're right about the, I believe, about that post-modernity denies archetype, denies essence, therefore means that the pursuit of the kind of materialistic, rationalistic, individualistic goals that post-enlightenment thinking appears to have led us to become valid, in the end it becomes I think that even across our lives, you feel that.
00:25:49.000to bomb children. Now when you like, you know, what kind of...
00:26:19.000Hollywood, you know, all of the excitement, the glitz, the red carpets, the sex, all of that, you know, like, I've experienced it and I, you know, like...
00:26:28.000The reason I sort of, one of the reasons I believe in God is because of this sort of certain sense of like I kind of knew already, I knew already, you know the last words of the Bhagavad Gita someone once told me after, after Krishna has shown Arjuna the battle and who is the real ally and the way it's gonna go down and you're gonna lose cousins, that apparently like Arjuna's last words, and please bring out a Vedic scholar to prove me wrong, like that Arjuna This says, I remember, I remember, that we are of course part of the total, that we are not separate from God, we are a manifestation of God and when we find ourselves becoming the unholy shepherd, and this unholy shepherd mentality I think has become the dominant strand in our culture, that this is what I believe we're sort of living through, that it has become enough
00:28:03.000So everything has become an impersonation.
00:28:05.000And I don't know how these values find their way back into our culture.
00:28:09.000When we find ourselves traditionless, when we are in like a sort of like a Baudrillard, like a nightmare-scape of everything's an impersonation, there ain't no way you're gonna be able to anchor yourselves.
00:28:22.000You know, a little while ago, Duncan, I had the thought that Between medieval times and late renaissance, say, like that 500 year period, imagine the total amount of documented material there would be with a pre-printing press.
00:28:38.000That would be printed online now in 10 minutes!
00:28:40.000So information is moving so fast that you can't sort of like you can't place it and then everyone's telling you nothing's real nothing's real nothing matters you know during the pandemic yeah um you've got to take these vaccines to stop the spread then a few months later yeah we never tested them for transmission hey we're not going to make any profits out of that vaccine hey we made record profits out of that vaccine uh the NATO were not involved in impeding upon uh Russian territory there was no deal between Gorbachev it's like oh my god and suddenly you're back they Well, look, I mean, child sacrifice is one of the oldest games out there, man.
00:29:25.000It's been going on for a long time, and all cultures, it's not a new thing.
00:29:30.000It's a horrible thing, but it's definitely not new.
00:29:33.000I don't know if there's any comfort in that.
00:29:35.000I mean, wait, but at least... No, that's worked.
00:29:45.000And in the Bible, of course, I mean, Jesus was a human sacrifice.
00:29:48.000And you can go through all the religions and find some version of it.
00:29:52.000So it's like a weird, I don't know if it's just some...
00:29:56.000vestigial epigenetic thing inside of us where it's like shit we gotta like to appease the gods you need to blow up some kids and then all of a sudden that you're trying to make sense of that as I'm sure every generation watching the child get its heart ripped out on the pyramid certainly there are people in the crowd thinking I don't know I don't know if this is really stopping the drought like does this stop the drought?
00:30:57.000Um, so what ends up happening is, and especially now because we're getting shotgun blasted in the face by disparate data streams, that one thing and then the next and the next.
00:31:07.000And honestly, like the culture shifts from what's right and what's wrong so quickly.
00:31:12.000It's like now it's a weird game of like, what's it called?
00:31:16.000Uh, where you jump around the chairs, you know, it's like at any given moment you're sitting in a seat where like, Oh my god, I'm fucking against the culture!
00:31:24.000Holy shit, ten minutes ago I was with the culture!
00:31:29.000And I think maybe in that, it's becoming increasingly...
00:31:35.000Easy to recognize how absurd the whole situation is.
00:31:38.000And that's an invitation to return to your heart, to return to something that you're not going to find on any online source, on Instagram, on Twitter, or even in any book necessarily.
00:31:51.000And that's the, you know, to me, what's wonderful about this weird game that we're playing is that any second you can wake up from the nightmare by just going into your heart.
00:32:03.000and feeling love and feeling vulnerable and recognizing all the people on the left that
00:32:09.000you are feeling completely annoyed and freaked out by, they also have been shotgun blasted
00:32:17.000in the face by weird streams of data and many of them are fucking terrified.
00:32:24.000They didn't recover from the global pandemic.
00:33:19.000On one side, they think that fascism is going to take over the planet, the United States
00:33:25.000is going to, the government will be overthrown.
00:33:28.000Trump will be in some like golden fucking, like wear a golden crown and dance in robes.
00:33:35.000You know, on the other side, they think that, uh, you know, all of us are gonna, like, no longer be able to say man or woman, and that, uh, we're gonna, like, go plunging into some confused universe of madness and a biblical thing that makes Babylon seem like the Boy Scouts.
00:34:00.000That fear is being capitalized on because there's a lot of money in fear.
00:34:04.000So you recognize that on top of that, in the shadows, there's corporations just blowing into the fire because the hotter the fire gets, the more people buy shit that they think will protect them from whatever the non-existent thing that's out to get them is.
00:34:21.000And so I really think all you could do is first see if you can make it yourself.
00:35:11.000And I think that's fundamentally what humans are underneath it all is just, we all want to help.
00:35:17.000We're just confused about how to do that.
00:35:20.000That impulse to help that you beautifully described there, its veracity and how indigenous to us it is, seems to me to be a derivative of unitary awareness.
00:35:34.000On some level, beyond the mapped on culture, We know, we are one, that love is the felt experience of unity.
00:35:43.000So when the context demands it by raising the frequency to crisis, oh my god, a fellow human being, a part of me, a part of the whole, requires help.
00:36:11.000And I think that you can only attain those states through a spiritual experience.
00:36:17.000You can't get there through rationalism very easily.
00:36:21.000And even, you know, as Carlin pointed out, and as great thinkers have pointed out, that humanism in its secular values derives its scaffold from Christianity.
00:36:34.000The idea, you know, like what is a human right?
00:36:37.000Why would a human have a right in infinite space?
00:36:40.000Why would this cluster of Molecules have a thing called rights, and you know, you can't get there without spiritual recourse, without saying there is something else, there is something beyond this.
00:36:52.000And when you are deluged, when, you know, as Melville said, when Noah's flood is still happening, we're still in the flood, it's impossible, it becomes impossible, man, to sort of like, to access that.
00:37:07.000I wonder if we, if I can pull up, or someone could pull up.
00:38:25.000Hardly are these words out when a vast image, a spiritus mundi, troubles my sight somewhere in sands of the desert.
00:38:34.000A shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving its slow thighs while all about it reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
00:38:48.000The darkness drops again, but now I know that 20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
00:38:57.000And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.
00:39:51.000I'm writing a poem about this asshole.
00:39:54.000That's the beast part, you know, because Crowley called himself the beast.
00:39:58.000So, yeah, there's all kinds of stories about, like, physical altercations between the two.
00:40:04.000They really didn't get along, apparently, which is very funny to me, to imagine those two having, like, the smartest argument you've ever heard in your life, you know, bringing up, insulting each other with probably ancient Egyptian curses.
00:40:20.000If you're actually in a pretty esoteric sect, like the Order of the Golden Dawn, and you can't even get on with the other members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, like, you've got to that point!
00:44:42.000You know this, like in the information age, it's very easy to become kind of embedded in cerebralism, that intelligence becomes only data rather than intuitive intelligence.
00:44:57.000You know, the message of Christ is a message of intelligence, to live in true intelligence.
00:45:02.000But this dislocation, we have been decapitated and placed on neurological rails, a kind of a heartlessness.
00:45:18.000And I also am encouraged when you say that the ice can thaw and we can move back to the heart just in an instant.
00:45:27.000I know that Ram Dass is a treasured teacher and influence on you and a few of my like thoughts on him in the moment are like that when on that documentary when he talked about when he nearly died I think when he had his stroke and he just said oh no I'm dying and I'm just looking at the ceiling and I'm just looking at the cracks in the ceiling this isn't like a powerful experience it's sort of boring I'm just a person like he felt like you know that And the other Ram Dass thing I wanted to mention, see what it sort of brings up in you, is that the famous, I think it's called Letter to Rachel, the letter he wrote to those grieving parents, you know, who had lost a child, and that his ability to, because what I guess I'm trying to say, Duncan, is that you and I have these conversations that are, I pray, certainly on my part, are most heartfelt, and they feel heartfelt from you as well, and passionate, and wise, and funny, and brilliant, and just how I like my gear.
00:46:20.000But there's a point where it has to You know, like you say, you'll find yourself parroting a child.
00:47:07.000As far as the way that I get from my head into my heart, it's gotten easier.
00:47:12.000When I met Ram Dass, I was fully in my head, but I had sort of reached out to the Love Server Member Foundation because I was so depressed, and I'd heard somewhere, when you're depressed, offer service.
00:47:28.000Spiritual service is a great way to help your depression.
00:47:35.000So I emailed just some email I found in a copy of Be Here Now saying like, well, I do podcasts.
00:47:41.000Maybe I could show you guys how to do podcasts.
00:47:44.000And then Raghu Marcus, who is the one of the people who runs that Ram Dass' foundation, reached out to me.
00:47:51.000And then just by good karma, you know, I remember meeting him being terrified of like, not terrified, but fully prepared for disappointment.
00:48:00.000Raghu, you know, this is going to be bullshit.
00:48:03.000Like for sure, it's just going to be somebody wearing like embarrassing beads and like you just want some money or something.
00:48:11.000And it wasn't, it was just a normal guy.
00:48:12.000Totally normal, totally, just like us talking, just completely nothing in there, like, that all the things my cynical mind at the time was fully prepared for.
00:48:21.000It's either gonna be a grift, or it's gonna be a cult, or it's gonna be something worse than that, or who fucking knows.
00:48:26.000But it was just a really normal, down-to-earth guy.
00:48:29.000I would try to offend him initially, because I thought, well, if I say awful things about their guru, and they reject me, good, because it's a cult.
00:48:38.000You know, if I say terrible things, then there's like off-limits things to talk about, then I'm not interested.
00:50:16.000And that's when he, like, gets that radiant, like, incredible, Ram Dass, beautiful, like, that thing when you're around Tole, that thing when you're around him and whatever your neurotic bullshit is, just for a second melts away.
00:50:29.000And it's like, it's like suddenly you're open to it.
00:50:40.000And it was in that moment I could see, oh my God, of course, it's right there all the time.
00:50:47.000It's when they talk about hollow earth theory and the second sun.
00:50:50.000They're not talking about the hollow earth and the sun inside the earth.
00:50:54.000They're talking about the sun inside your heart.
00:50:56.000They're talking about Shambhala, the ancient civilizations, all the data reservoirs right there inside of you all the time.
00:51:03.000All you got to do is have the guts and the discipline to some degree to go from the surface, which is up here in your intellect and your very powerful mind, And start going down into your heart.
00:52:05.000Just that alone will inform your next step.
00:52:08.000That will tell you where, that is all the scriptures right there.
00:52:12.000That's the singularity that contains within it every holy word ever spoken by any saint or guru or any great being.
00:52:20.000It's all just right there because that's what they were in that space and then they started talking.
00:52:26.000And whatever came out of their mouth just ended up in things that now we call scriptures and stuff.
00:52:31.000But it's just, I think that's why Jesus was like, probably why it was such a threat to the priest class.
00:52:38.000Because they want you to think that they're the intermediary between the headspace and the heartspace.
00:52:44.000They can, you know, there you have to go into the holy of holies and get permission by some dude dressed like a gnome to make connection with that divine space.
00:52:54.000And so that's where the world kicks in.
00:52:57.000And, you know, I think that's what you've identified.
00:52:59.000And a lot of people have identified who right now are like, you know, very bravely, if you ask me, sort of, Pointing look at that.
00:53:10.000That doesn't seem right It's just right now what all of a sudden y'all are getting like such intense blowback that it's it's I think weirdly Encouraging because you only get that kind of blowback if if we're getting close to something You don't get that kind of blowback when there's nothing there.
00:53:29.000You don't when someone's insecure You know when you hit the spot That's when they get real angry, you know?
00:54:50.000Like, I'm not like... I'm not... Every time I talk to you, you're like a magnet!
00:54:56.000Mahariji, you know, when they talk about him, like when Ram Das and like, you know, Krishna Das, you know, see, like, on one hand, here, Duncan, you beautifully espoused, describe and demonstrate the power of the heart space, the necessity of the heart space, that it ain't, it is not esotericism that brings you there.
00:55:17.000It is not education, not the burned libraries of Alexandria, But simple kindness that you may have known in your grandmother.
00:55:30.000These people that I hector and bombard in my angry adolescence, they knew what I have taken a lifetime to understand.
00:55:40.000But also as part of the narrative of these Great mystics is the axis of the sublime the axis to the sublime and that kind of stuff that I guess titillates us you know like when when they tell those stories that he would go you know why were you down by the lake you know like they'll tell some mad little story like I suppose that and in that is
00:56:03.000An indication that there is more than one science.
00:56:06.000There is more than the measurement and observation of the material world, of the supramolecular, the expressions through material.
00:56:16.000There are subtler forms of information.
00:56:29.000And then the next bit of my question is whether or not you ever want to just go via, you know, like, the intermediary, you know, the priest class intermediaries, the ongoing commodification of everything, even the divine.
00:56:42.000You know, that's one thing, and I like how you described that.
00:56:45.000You know, like Krishnamurti said, you know, truth is a pathless land.
00:57:22.000Or do you think these kind of things are sort of a little baroque and a little fancy and that we should just focus on the heart stuff?
00:57:29.000You know, this is a thing that gets brought up about Ram Dass is they asked him, I think the question was, what brought you to Maharaji?
00:57:38.000Like, how did you Get to this being that like
00:57:45.000Transformed you and he said I trusted the mushroom because the whole thing started with a You know with psychedelics for him.
00:57:53.000This was the illuminating the original illumination the original like holy shit our maps for the mind or They they're they're they might be accurate for a small aspect of human consciousness.
00:58:05.000They certainly aren't mapping the entirety of what psychedelics are showing us so for sure psychedelics are Not just for Westerners who might have grown up outside of a culture where they're used sacramentally or in some initiatory way.
00:58:24.000Even they're powerful enough without any of that stuff, without being introduced to the ancestors or being taken to a space where generations of your family would sit to commune with the departed.
00:58:37.000Even without that stuff, you can still have a reconnection with your heart space, which is a huge relief for people.
00:58:45.000To quote Ram Dass some more, death is like taking off a shoe that's too tight.
00:58:50.000So if you are pinchered off in your head, it's like the tourniquet has been wrapped between your head and your heart, then it's like being in clothes that are too tight.
00:59:20.000It's like a kid lost in the forest just trying to get home.
00:59:24.000And it's like, you know, instead of like getting home, he's like getting lost in big piles of ketamine or, you know, whatever your particular drug of choice is.
00:59:34.000Anyway, the point is, so So as far as so I think psychedelics are a great way to sort of give you the GPS coordinates like look remember you're not just your body remember there's a lot more going on here you're not just stuck in that body thing you remember don't you you're everything this is a dream and you're in and it won't go on forever and that isn't bad news and then when you come down from a trip like that your depression eases your relationships get better because that
01:00:07.000Like, nyeh-nyeh-nyeh-nyeh thing that comes from living in a world where you're lost and defensive, that softens up a little bit.
01:00:17.000So, magic, I mean, my God, ceremonial magic, it's, for sure, I don't practice it.
01:00:24.000I know people who do, and oh, yeah, they certainly, there's, I think, very difficult Very difficult techniques that let you experience unified consciousness.
01:00:40.000And again, this is all just anecdotal.
01:00:43.000I don't know for sure about that because I've never had the discipline to do, like, ceremonial magic.
01:00:50.000You've got to draw... I can't draw a straight line!
01:00:54.000Like you got to draw these pentagrams on the floor and like if you've ever been to someone's house who does it it's like this is that would have to like what are you going to call someone at id home depot to come over and draw an inokian spirit board on your floor and then the robes and you got to make your own dagger i don't know how to forge I can't forge iron, whatever you use.
01:01:37.000And, you know, sorry, but I just don't have the... I'm not smart enough.
01:01:42.000I'm not embarrassed to say I'm not smart enough.
01:01:44.000I am not smart enough to practice ceremonial magic.
01:01:47.000It's like when I watch Jeopardy and I'm like, oh my god, I am as dumb as I thought I was.
01:01:55.000So, so yeah, but I do think it must be an access point because I have friends who practice it and who have You know demonstrated You know a lot of things that seems to point to the to the connect the invisible Whatever they are my silly old quantum Tubules that connect all of us it can be sort of played around with if you want to get into that stuff So for sure there's miracles to the other part thing you're talking about the miracle stories for sure There's miracles and you know if you haven't experienced them yet
01:02:35.000Just find a practice you love, take it up, and you will.
01:02:39.000It'll go from being like, that's just a bunch of grifters or acidheads or bullshitters talking about this nonsense, to, oh fuck.
01:02:56.000And then, now you've got to deal with that.
01:02:58.000Now you have to work with that, because that's a lot to work with.
01:03:01.000That's a lot to work with, to realize that it's not just nonsense, that in fact, things happen around certain people that are impossible, that can't happen, shouldn't happen, that point to some kind of interconnectedness, or a shared mind, or, you know, some kind of I don't know, extra dimension to reality that we just haven't quantified yet.
01:03:27.000And some people think they want to experience that, but when they experience it, it's a little off-putting.
01:04:38.000You know, you've brought me back there, you've brought me back there.
01:04:40.000And what, it becomes evident to me that even in, like when you use sort of the accepted metrics of our age, that we live in the liminal space that is determined by the senses and it would be a ludicrous, outrageous and implausible coincidence If the range of sensory data that we had the instruments to detect was the entirety of the total range.
01:05:03.000And that is the assumption of rationalism.
01:05:06.000That which we can measure is that which there is.
01:05:11.000That's like saying, that's like what a child would believe.
01:05:13.000Like, you know, when they do that test, when they show them what's in the doll's house, but what can the teddy that's outside the dollhouse see?
01:05:20.000They just think that the teddy can see the same thing they can see, you know?
01:05:24.000And don't forget they irrelevantize the whatever you want to kind of scope the human body is.
01:05:29.000So any kind of intuitive sense of anything, any kind of dream state or any kind of anything, this is just no, no, no, we don't use that to measure things.
01:05:44.000And so you get this, you know, in the UFO community, I love the term, they call it swamp gassing, which is like the version of gaslighting, but for UFO people, which is like, you just saw swamp gas, you didn't see anything.
01:07:13.000And then, sadly, because of the, what can accidentally happen is because people who seem like authorities on things are telling you that's not real.
01:07:25.000You didn't experience a dream in which you met with your deceased relative.
01:07:35.000That was just your subconscious bubbling up like bad gas from grief.
01:07:40.000It's like your brain farting out a very sweet dream where you felt like you were in the presence of a loved one or whatever the particular paranormal experience is.
01:07:49.000It's very sad and because you believe that, Then you cut yourself off from the possibility of experiencing it.
01:07:57.000And so, you know, it's a priest class.
01:08:02.000And I think what's so dangerous about it, them, and by them, I mean the people who are what are known as antinatalists, You think of that shit.
01:08:35.000Because what brings you more into the heart than I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm glad to hear that you landed in the heart space again for a moment, but I do have to point this out.
01:08:55.000In Bhakti Yoga, there are various ways of connecting with the Divine.
01:09:00.000And one of the most profound and holy ways is not direct connection, but pining after
01:09:33.000The longing for it is it wrapped up in the longing is the experience of the thing itself.
01:09:40.000And that sad, oh God, there's like literally an entire.
01:09:44.000An entire genre of devotional Hare Krishna songs, which are just about how much they miss Krishna, how much they want to see God, and like love songs but for God.
01:09:57.000So congratulations, even if You're not in the art space and you're just mourning some sense of disconnect.
01:10:34.000I don't know what kind of crazy city you have there, but every time we talk, I feel like I go into some weird dreamy state, and then it's over.
01:10:44.000But during the conversation, I always think, I wish we could talk for, like, 10 hours, 100 hours together.
01:11:01.000I was thinking about one thing that Vandana Shiva says, that the earth is being desacralized.
01:11:06.000We're losing our sacred connection, our connection to the sacred.
01:11:10.000When things are demystified, overly rationalized, everything becomes measurable, everything becomes data, the inevitable conclusion is that you are an individual and you're going to die and there's nothing else so you might as well pursue profit.
01:11:21.000And it's a deep, deep ideology and like you said, all of the mystical data that is dispatched because it's random and it can't be quantified or utilized or ultimately garnered towards profit, This is the area where we must dwell, and at least now we know well what our part of our mission must be, is to convey this love, to feel this love, to speak from that place of love which you've done so elegantly today, Duncan.
01:12:19.000Don't forget you can catch up on all our shows on Rumble.
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