Stay Free - Russel Brand - The Battle for Your Soul - SF740

00:00:19.000 Hello there, you awakening wonder.

00:00:20.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:00:22.000 Today I'm talking to Greg Pye and Vernon Lynch.

00:00:25.000 They wrote the book Voice of the Heart.

00:00:28.000 It's a pretty brilliant personal and social message for how to incorporate the Christian principles in a modern way.

00:00:36.000 Sometimes I myself, as a new Christian, feel that a lot of the language that's churchy is a bit laboured and even ecclesiastically accurate language can seem off putting, like that sentence I just said then.

00:00:47.000 Sometimes I wish Jesus Christ could be called by another name.

00:00:51.000 The way, you know, the way.

00:00:52.000 I am the truth, the light, and the way.

00:00:54.000 The mystery of him is so extraordinary.

00:00:58.000 Greg, Vernon, thank you very much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:01:01.000 Appreciate you having us.

00:01:03.000 Thanks, Greg.

00:01:03.000 Thank you.

00:01:04.000 Thank you very much.

00:01:05.000 Thanks, Greg.

00:01:05.000 Like me, you both believe that modern life has somehow captured our nature, prevents us from accessing the source of grace and power to which we are all.

00:01:21.000 Born, can you?

00:01:23.000 I mean, obviously, it's a pretty broad and general area, but you guys have generated a lot of content, literary and online, describing the need for Christian values as the center for our spiritual and social lives.

00:01:41.000 But let's start with an area that I feel pretty somewhat at least competent in discussing and experienced in the fallenness of this world.

00:01:53.000 Even prior to my recent conversion, which incidentally I consider to be a return to my original nature rather than any kind of conversion in the sort of true sense of that word, prior to that I knew that there was something not right about the world. 0.55

00:02:12.000 I recognized the kind of corruption and the hypocrisy, but most of my takes and my position on it was sort of informed by what I would call the counterculture.

00:02:24.000 By that I mean it could be as Broad as the 1960s in your country, great civil rights leaders, but also entertainers, figures that came out of socialism, figures that came out of the independence wars for former British colonies.

00:02:42.000 I mean, more like Gandhi, really, and maybe Stephen Beko, and like sort of civil rights leaders, like from, as I say, former British colonial census.

00:02:52.000 But I didn't, even though I recognise that you can't have values without.

00:02:57.000 God.

00:02:57.000 You can't have justice without God.

00:02:59.000 You can't have truth without God.

00:03:01.000 I actually saw Christianity really as one of the tenets and pillars of the kind of establishment conformity that I was railing against.

00:03:10.000 You guys seem to have a similar diagnosis when it comes to the problem, but of course, your solution is the only solution that I would agree now that is available salvation through Christ.

00:03:24.000 But can you talk to us, maybe, I don't know, Greg, your name's first on the list.

00:03:30.000 Will you talk to us first of all about how, what your diagnosis is when it comes to this war on humanity and what Voice of the Heart is for?

00:03:47.000 And how, you say here that you work across secular and Christian audiences.

00:03:52.000 And that's, yeah, that's something I'd like to sort of break down a little bit.

00:03:55.000 But let's just start firstly.

00:03:57.000 What do you call this problem with modern life?

00:04:00.000 Right.

00:04:01.000 So thank you, Russell.

00:04:02.000 So the opening line in the book is when the snake moved into the garden, there went the neighborhood.

00:04:09.000 It's a categorical and a universal statement.

00:04:13.000 I mean, one would, if we're Christian, we would say, oh, that's biblical.

00:04:18.000 But the second line of the book is we sense the slither, but we never really see the snake.

00:04:25.000 And so the point being is that there is a common denominator of disruption to the cycle of humanity's purpose and fulfillment that I saw through a moment in time in Africa, taking a picture of a tree called the Tree of Light, which spoke to me.

00:04:47.000 After having an illustrious life of different experiences, I mean, I came from poverty and then had my own wealth and I had many different extraordinary opportunities, but never found joy and peace and happiness.

00:05:02.000 And when I got to that breaking point, of course, for me, which I always believe is a personal journey, I found it through giving my life to the Lord.

00:05:11.000 In fact, my wife and I together at 9 16 a.m., February 12, 2012, at the very same exact moment.

00:05:19.000 And from there, The tree of light presented itself in a photographic opportunity that spoke to me about disruption of humanity's cycle of purpose and fulfillment, a universal idea, by the way.

00:05:32.000 We, like you just said, Russell, we experienced this disruption, sort of even absent from knowing that salvation is available to us.

00:05:41.000 I started to get a vision of the world that it was like this crime scene tape was wrapped around it, and that there was no place to hide because the enemy, and we'll talk about who that might be.

00:05:55.000 Was in every corner of society.

00:05:57.000 And this led to the masterwork, The Voice of the Heart, a 500 page document.

00:06:04.000 But it's really a framework for a movement that is both individual in nature as well as for humanity as a whole.

00:06:13.000 Well, that's, Vernon, do you want to add to that?

00:06:16.000 And Vernon, perhaps you could take up what, like, how there's a, he says here, a framework that works across secular and Christian audiences.

00:06:26.000 My sort of assumption would be that.

00:06:28.000 Secularism is the kind of neutrality that St. John of the Cross would warn us against.

00:06:35.000 That the minute you have a world set apart from God, the sort of literal definition of secular, I suppose, you have a territory for that serpent to thrive in.

00:06:47.000 So, what do you mean by secular audiences and reaching secular audiences?

00:06:58.000 Well, the voice of the heart is designed, well, it was.

00:07:03.000 Divinely given and inspired, and was given to Greg.

00:07:07.000 And he wrote what God instructed him to write.

00:07:11.000 But what he was blessed with was something that not only a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu could appreciate.

00:07:23.000 It's like even the person that is not a believer at all, the atheist, could still take the information in this book and be enlightened.

00:07:35.000 Once we get to When we start to deal with various forms of religion and sects, we start getting the world starts to get very, very crowded.

00:07:51.000 The water is pretty much very muddy.

00:07:56.000 And the world needs something that's universal.

00:07:59.000 And as you know, Russell, the gospel is universal.

00:08:04.000 When it comes to diversity, that's not something that.

00:08:10.000 That God intended to have at play when it comes to worship of Him, because He is one.

00:08:19.000 He is one holy, omniscient, omnipresent God.

00:08:23.000 And the gospel itself is designed for everyone.

00:08:28.000 And so, Greg's book, Voice of the Heart, is also designed for everyone.

00:08:32.000 It's actually the enlightening road to restoration of life and liberty, you know, so that.

00:08:42.000 We can get over this hump and regain some liberty and some freedom that has been stolen from us by the enemy.

00:08:55.000 See, no one ever discusses, everyone argues about the existence of God and all the different versions and the ways to get to Him, but no one ever discusses the enemy of God, which is Satan.

00:09:09.000 And once that is identified, which Greg has done in this book, Through his identifying the 12 systems that the enemy works within to rob, steal, and destroy, kill, steal, and destroy, you have a fighting chance.

00:09:30.000 So once we identify the enemy and that his job is to pervert everything that is meant for good, then you have a fighting chance and you get the opportunity to get out of the matrix, so to speak, and see what truth really is.

00:09:47.000 And to have an abundant life like God wants us to have.

00:09:52.000 But we need a roadmap because the enemy has done a bang up job.

00:09:55.000 So, Voice of the Heart is definitely that roadmap to enlightenment.

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00:11:03.000 Will you tell me now, then, Greg, as you mentioned prior, what do you mean by the enemy?

00:11:10.000 And what are these 12 systems that the enemy will use?

00:11:17.000 So, you know, when I became a Christian, I then, not too long after, became sort of a counter Christian because the wisdom that I had from, I guess, you know, that God was preparing me to use pattern recognition and just seeing things, you know, having had an isolated childhood, you're kind of separated from the world.

00:11:40.000 That might sound like a terrible thing, and it is, but it also keeps you away from the world and the influences of the world.

00:11:45.000 And so I was looking at Christianity and I was saying, I'm a Christian now, but I'm not like these people in the room, I'm not like these people in the church.

00:11:55.000 Like, I love everybody.

00:11:57.000 And I want to reach everybody.

00:12:00.000 And I was in the field.

00:12:01.000 I mean, within six, nine months after becoming a Christian, we found ourselves in Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, using my business skills with businesses' missions to help missionaries bring the gospel into those parts of the world.

00:12:17.000 And I saw things wrong with that process because I saw that even though the missionaries were well intended and they were risking their lives, I saw them kind of going in, like in the back door, and hiding their faith.

00:12:30.000 And I said, you know, That can't be the way it works because the only way our faith is ever shared is by expressing it by who we are, not by telling somebody.

00:12:41.000 And so the voice of the heart was written on that foundation.

00:12:45.000 That is a book that finds the common denominator, which is the revelation of an enemy against humanity.

00:12:52.000 Now, to go right to your question, Russell, who is that enemy?

00:12:56.000 So when I came to this conclusion that we're at war, an invisible war, I realized the first thing I had to do was I had to let people know there's an invisible war.

00:13:06.000 The only way I could do this is to tell them who was in the war, who was fighting.

00:13:10.000 So that's where the voices came from the voice of the world and the voice of the heart.

00:13:14.000 Now, here's what's interesting the voice of the world is obvious.

00:13:18.000 Now, people say you're hearing voices.

00:13:19.000 Maybe you need to go see a psychiatrist.

00:13:20.000 But the truth of the matter is, we have conscious, subconscious.

00:13:23.000 We have our mentors.

00:13:25.000 We have our parents.

00:13:26.000 We have people that love us, people that don't love us.

00:13:28.000 We have social media.

00:13:29.000 We have news.

00:13:30.000 We have politicians.

00:13:32.000 These are voices, and these are the voices of the world.

00:13:34.000 So someone might ask, well, what is the voice of the world?

00:13:37.000 Of the heart.

00:13:39.000 And that's actually very easy.

00:13:41.000 Once I was able to discern, I realized it's the language of absence of voice.

00:13:49.000 In other words, it's a whisper that can only be heard in absence of the world.

00:13:53.000 Now, here's where, so people say, you know, because I'm somewhat left and right brained.

00:13:58.000 So, how is that empirical?

00:13:59.000 Can you prove that?

00:14:01.000 You ever at a club and you have a group of people you're talking to, and all of a sudden you lower your voice, they lean into you physically.

00:14:07.000 So, there's nothing that extraordinary about that.

00:14:10.000 I mean, that makes sense.

00:14:11.000 They want to hear you.

00:14:12.000 But here's the other phenomenon the people around the group who were never in the conversation, they too start leaning in to see why other people are leaning in.

00:14:22.000 And that is the power and the energy of silence when God's voice can be heard, which is the only time we can hear it.

00:14:29.000 And it's secular.

00:14:30.000 How is it secular?

00:14:31.000 Well, when we were young and our parents maybe punished us, what did we do?

00:14:39.000 We ran to our room, closed the door in silence.

00:14:42.000 What do we do when we want to kind of escape anxiety?

00:14:46.000 We put on the headphones andor we shut out noise or we meditate, we pray.

00:14:51.000 So, there's something very special about silence.

00:14:53.000 And in silence, we can hear God's voice.

00:14:55.000 We know that as Christians.

00:14:57.000 And so, this ties it all together.

00:15:00.000 So, once you can establish that there's a war and that there's an enemy, the noise of the world, the whisper, you have even the atheist.

00:15:12.000 Is moved that much closer to filling what we would call, and I know I've heard you refer to this, is a void.

00:15:19.000 It's an emptiness inside that can only be filled by one thing.

00:15:22.000 And it's a personal journey in filling that.

00:15:25.000 Thank you.

00:15:27.000 Yes, I understand.

00:15:29.000 I'm thinking about my addictions and like that.

00:15:36.000 My first, the addiction always had this sort of pattern of solitude.

00:15:44.000 I was, even though I took a lot of drugs, and people think of that as being sort of hedonic and decadent, sort of celebration enhancing outward and ecstatic.

00:15:58.000 For me, it was always about solitude.

00:16:02.000 I wanted to be alone with drugs.

00:16:05.000 That's what I wanted.

00:16:06.000 And before even drugs, TV maybe, TV and chocolate.

00:16:11.000 Like, I want to just go and sit.

00:16:13.000 And even still now, right, when I eat, I'd rather, like, I don't want to eat with people.

00:16:19.000 I don't really eat with people.

00:16:20.000 If I'm in a restaurant with people, I get up and go.

00:16:23.000 I don't sort of, I'm not like that.

00:16:26.000 And before the drugs, bulimia, you know, I used to make myself puke in toilets and stuff.

00:16:33.000 And then before I go on stage, generally, I'm realizing how sacred my life has always been.

00:16:42.000 Like the sacred has always been present, even prior to the understanding of the sacred, that I was trying to improvise a kind of holiest of holies, an inner sanctum.

00:16:56.000 I was trying to create a space for kind of deep intimacy with God.

00:17:02.000 But because this.

00:17:04.000 You know, still quiet voices are in some ways subtle.

00:17:09.000 I'm considering these various images the crucible from which reality emerges.

00:17:16.000 The crucible, I'm considering the stave upon which musical notes are played.

00:17:23.000 I'm considering the thread, the thread upon I consider perhaps Yahweh's I am that I am as the kind of master signal.

00:17:36.000 Of the thread, like that, all of us might align to where is your I am that I am?

00:17:43.000 How can you locate your I am that I am?

00:17:47.000 You have one.

00:17:48.000 Moses said to him, didn't he?

00:17:50.000 Who's there?

00:17:51.000 I am, That there is this sort of cathartic, purified version of self before it acquires the voices, which are vibrations, the disruptions.

00:18:07.000 Frequencies that you may accrue, acquire, and bond with, particularly if you enter into the culture.

00:18:15.000 And I mean culture both in terms of, you know, human culture as well as like a culture of bacteria self propagating glomdon.

00:18:23.000 And when you described the 12 systems of the enemy there, I think a lot of parasites.

00:18:30.000 I think of like how parasites in the gut and in the body create their own ecosystems and they rob and they're invisible and they contribute nothing, that they are death, they are decay. 0.94

00:18:41.000 The murderer, the father of lies, the serpent.

00:18:44.000 From the beginning, he is the introduction, he introduces death to our kind.

00:18:51.000 So there is, as you said yourself, it's a system for the individual, voice of the heart is, and a system for the whole. 0.77

00:18:59.000 Of course, I mean, in a sense, that's a very, they would call it, what's that word?

00:19:07.000 It's an alchemic principle, as above, so below, in the individual, in the whole.

00:19:13.000 I think there is a fraction.

00:19:15.000 The incarnation must have a fractal dimension to bring it into flesh, to bring it into flesh to show this is what it is to do it as a person.

00:19:24.000 Absolutely.

00:19:26.000 Yes.

00:19:27.000 Absolutely.

00:19:28.000 And, you know, this is four building blocks of the framework, if you will.

00:19:34.000 The second one kind of touches on this the idea of what I call selfless help, that self help in a broken system will never work.

00:19:45.000 I use the.

00:19:47.000 Metaphor of the ferris wheel.

00:19:49.000 If you're stuck at the bottom of a stuck Ferris wheel, you can never ride that again until the people at the top are brought safely down.

00:19:59.000 The idea is that the enemy has convinced us that we need to be divided in so many ways, and that individualism, which ironically, while they're preaching individualism, they're actually aggregating us through the data and technology fusion.

00:20:19.000 So it's all a farce.

00:20:21.000 But the idea is that anything that can keep us away from one another is a power.

00:20:25.000 It's a superpower of the enemy.

00:20:28.000 We were designed to be one creation to worship the Father, not separate ones.

00:20:34.000 Like a choir is one, it's one choir, but it's seven billion people.

00:20:40.000 So the concept of selfless help says self help doesn't work and self sacrifice doesn't work because that leaves you available for no one, including yourself.

00:20:51.000 But the yoking, And again, how the enemy works with the English language and others, yoking of our helpfulness is exactly how we were designed.

00:21:02.000 If we think of the yoke as bondage, then yeah, well, who would want that?

00:21:08.000 But a yoke allows us to pull something we otherwise couldn't alone, together, in harmony.

00:21:16.000 So, you know, I have another quote in the book.

00:21:20.000 It says, you know, even the most greatest hearts of ours.

00:21:25.000 Sometimes we don't know how to help.

00:21:26.000 We fail at helping.

00:21:28.000 So I say, don't give a man a fish.

00:21:30.000 Don't teach a man a fish.

00:21:31.000 I say, first, ask him if he even wants fish.

00:21:35.000 That's an important idea.

00:21:36.000 But the nuance of the enemy is where we need to understand how he operates the infiltration and the nuance.

00:21:43.000 So, for example, you get on an airplane, they tell you when the mask drops down, put it on your face first and then put it on people next to you.

00:21:51.000 Makes sense.

00:21:53.000 However, it's the tonality and the nuance.

00:21:56.000 What they're not saying is, Put the mask on yourself first because it's your responsibility to take care of the person next to you.

00:22:05.000 See the difference?

00:22:07.000 And that connectivity is a nuclear weapon against the enemy coming together.

00:22:16.000 So when we can coagulate around the idea that there's an invisible war, and again, an atheist is not going to disagree that the media is manipulated.

00:22:25.000 They're not going to disagree that there's something deeply wrong with society.

00:22:29.000 They're not going to disagree that even religion.

00:22:31.000 Has been hijacked, you're going to find a lot of commonality.

00:22:35.000 So, the invisible war, who is the war against?

00:22:38.000 Well, here's another thing, Russell.

00:22:40.000 The enemy wants you to name him Satan.

00:22:42.000 Now, as a Christian, we can call him Satan because that's who we know he is, but we need to be mindful.

00:22:48.000 This is how slippery he is.

00:22:51.000 So, an enemy that wants to be named is encouraging you to name him because he wants you to limit his identity.

00:23:03.000 His pervasiveness.

00:23:06.000 Now, let's understand what happened in the garden.

00:23:08.000 This is the trick Satan wanted to be God.

00:23:12.000 So, what did he do?

00:23:13.000 He convinced us that we wanted to be God.

00:23:17.000 So, in our pursuit of being God, we were really elevating him to be God and not ourselves.

00:23:23.000 It's like an artist's contract in the entertainment business.

00:23:26.000 I always used to say, they give it to you on page four, they take it away on page 11.

00:23:31.000 This is the trick of the enemy.

00:23:33.000 So, understanding his pervasiveness, understanding That if we call him Satan, we're going to eliminate half the population who do not know the name of Satan, but they know the weight of the enemy's devices.

00:23:46.000 So, don't name him Satan.

00:23:49.000 Name him the enemy, whatever that enemy is.

00:23:53.000 A person, think of a guy, he's got a job, he hates his boss.

00:23:59.000 So, he blames everything in his life on his boss.

00:24:01.000 That becomes his enemy.

00:24:03.000 But he doesn't, that diffuses his interest in going and finding out what about his entire life, what I call the soil, where the roots take.

00:24:13.000 What about his entire life actually led him to even work for somebody like that or stay?

00:24:17.000 With somebody like that, like in a relationship that's abusive, perhaps.

00:24:22.000 So when we name the enemy, we limit the enemy.

00:24:27.000 I also consider that the neutrality to which St. John of the Cross refers is this kind of terrain, a field that can bear a charge, that can bear a charge, that can withstand various timbres, tones, qualities of energy.

00:24:48.000 This moment in the Garden that exists somewhere between a dream and a reality, difficult to detect and define with a merely human mind, symbolizes as well as realizes the decision to move.

00:25:05.000 I understand and agree with what you have said, Greg, a kind of self deification that self, that to want an independent self separate from dependency on God, to want to be a branch not connected to the vine, to want to be your own source is impossible.

00:25:21.000 You are sourced from somewhere.

00:25:23.000 You will worship something because you are made for worship.

00:25:26.000 And the skill of the deceiver is to redirect that worship towards him via the claim that you will get additional freedom, that you are already in a state of deception.

00:25:43.000 And I suppose that my, you know, the reason I'll tell you why it's good.

00:25:48.000 I don't know if either of you have had any experience with chemical dependency.

00:25:53.000 But the reason that chemical dependency is a very good way into a life with God is you have lived a metaphor.

00:26:00.000 You've lived the metaphor.

00:26:01.000 You are dependent on, let's say, for example, alcohol.

00:26:04.000 If you're dependent on alcohol and the alcohol is making your life worse and worse and worse, when you work a 12 step program, people will say, firstly, you have to admit that you're drinking this alcohol is a problem and it's making your life worse.

00:26:19.000 Do you admit that?

00:26:20.000 And the person will say, eventually, hopefully, yes, I do admit that.

00:26:25.000 Okay.

00:26:26.000 Do you believe that there's a power greater than yourself that could restore you to some original state that we'll call sanity?

00:26:34.000 A lot of people struggle with that.

00:26:36.000 No, you know, it's not possible.

00:26:37.000 I need it, but maybe you can get them there.

00:26:40.000 The third step is you aren't going to do this on your own.

00:26:45.000 You're going to need to invite a new force into your life.

00:26:50.000 You have to specifically and explicitly and literally the aid memoir for the process of the third step is.

00:26:58.000 We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

00:27:03.000 And the third step prayer, as it's known, is this God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt.

00:27:13.000 Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will.

00:27:20.000 Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life.

00:27:28.000 May I do thy will always.

00:27:30.000 Amen.

00:27:31.000 And that prayer is so sort of explicitly, clearly about you've become glommed on, alloyed to a false identity of which alcohol is merely an observable practice and avatar.

00:27:48.000 It's also helpful in that once you come off the alcohol, you'll be confronted with probably a spiritual void, a sense of lack, loss, hopelessness, despair.

00:28:01.000 And Jung, Carl Jung, in his.

00:28:05.000 Diagnosis of one of the people who went on to influence the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous observed there have been rare cases in history where people of your hopeless disposition have changed as a result of a profound spiritual experience and the ongoing support of a community.

00:28:24.000 Now, like this being Jung and this being, you know, I guess, well, the 1920s, I'm thinking also his use of the word history.

00:28:33.000 He's talking about, I feel like he's talking about saints, and I think he might be talking particularly about Augustine.

00:28:39.000 Maybe.

00:28:39.000 I don't know.

00:28:39.000 There's no research.

00:28:40.000 That's just things I think inside my mind on my own.

00:28:44.000 It's not like academia.

00:28:46.000 But anyway, but my point is that, like, because of, like, like I said to you a minute ago, that because I had those experiences of trying to find God in a very deliberate way, and because, like, because my appetite is strong quickly, oh, you can't do, you can't drink and take drugs.

00:29:04.000 Look, you're destroying yourself.

00:29:06.000 You can't even have sex, really. 0.99

00:29:08.000 You know, not in the way that you are.

00:29:10.000 And you can't pursue fame, and you can't, until in the end, it's like, ch It's just like gradually, like layer after layer of false God having to be shed like a serpent's skin, actually, till in the end, you know, through desperation and a total lack of viable alternatives, God.

00:29:30.000 So I've had both this educational variety of spiritual experience over a 23 and a half year period of like, you know, getting off drugs, learning about mysticism in a variety of ways, and then this sudden.

00:29:44.000 Theophany, where in an instant, it's weird because I try and describe it to people, but I can't describe it because it's not rational. 0.73

00:29:51.000 I went from, I don't, you know, Jesus, he was a great teacher, like to, oh God, oh no, oh shit, oh no, what's that?

00:29:59.000 Like it suddenly, it's like, it happened, he's real, like that happened to me. 0.98

00:30:03.000 Yeah.

00:30:04.000 Vernon, I wonder, you've got anything on that, mate, whether or not, like, how you came to the Lord and whether it was a very gradual experience or a rapid experience?

00:30:12.000 Because, of course, I only know what you've told me.

00:30:16.000 Yeah.

00:30:19.000 I came to the Lord roughly about 35, 36 years ago.

00:30:25.000 How old are you?

00:30:29.000 I'm 59.

00:30:31.000 What?

00:30:32.000 I'm not having that.

00:30:33.000 Who are you about 25?

00:30:37.000 Don't ask me, Russell.

00:30:38.000 You might throw me on the floor.

00:30:40.000 I'm going to get some of that, by the way.

00:30:46.000 I'll send you it.

00:30:48.000 Greg says, I'm 22.

00:30:51.000 Yeah, actually, 22 times three, Russell.

00:30:55.000 So at least you've got the numerator.

00:30:57.000 Yeah, yes.

00:30:59.000 Oh, my God.

00:31:00.000 Yeah, but I came to the Lord.

00:31:03.000 You know, I grew up in a God fearing family, but there was no organized faith other than my grandmother, who was a Catholic, but she believed in a different kind of way.

00:31:20.000 But she served the church well.

00:31:25.000 And we all, I think the desire to seek something greater than ourselves came from my grandmother, my grandma Harethi.

00:31:37.000 When I got married, I was introduced to my wife at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

00:31:46.000 And once I met her family, I saw that her grandfather was a man of faith.

00:31:54.000 I did not grow up with a grandfather on either side, never knew either one.

00:31:59.000 So I took a liking to him and I learned about the gospel.

00:32:03.000 I learned about how to be a godly man through Elwood Hoyle.

00:32:10.000 I met a friend of the family who was a pastor, Pastor Dines, who is past now.

00:32:19.000 And he had a small little church, Community Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey.

00:32:24.000 And we went for marriage counseling and things like that.

00:32:28.000 He helped us out.

00:32:29.000 And then ultimately, I gave my life to the Lord through that church.

00:32:37.000 And I never looked back after that.

00:32:40.000 Once we moved from New Jersey, and I wanted to do that because we had a baby on the way.

00:32:48.000 My oldest son, my firstborn, was a honeymoon baby.

00:32:51.000 So when you start to have children and build a family, he said, we got to get on track.

00:32:57.000 I'm a guy that grew up in the entertainment industry.

00:33:00.000 So I've seen and done way too much, way too much.

00:33:05.000 And at that point in time, I knew that there's more to life than this, that type of a lifestyle.

00:33:12.000 And I was very, very young.

00:33:15.000 But thank God for being introduced to the gospel through the Hoyle family.

00:33:22.000 And once we moved out of New Jersey and moved into New Jersey, We moved to California.

00:33:30.000 I found a nice non denominational church and I continued my studies there.

00:33:38.000 And I just never looked back at that point.

00:33:41.000 And God has been so good to me.

00:33:43.000 He's been able to show me how the truth of the matter.

00:33:50.000 I can stand in a room with any pastor and talk about the gospel.

00:33:54.000 I'm not intimidated to talk to a Bible scholar because I know what I know.

00:33:58.000 And I read the book, which is the master text.

00:34:03.000 And it's very important when you want to build a family to try to do it, do your best to do it in a godly manner, a godly way, so that when your kids grow up and they get older, and they may depart, right?

00:34:19.000 But they'll return back to the ways that you taught them as they get older, in their 30s and their 40s.

00:34:27.000 They won't get kind of lost in the sea of religion.

00:34:32.000 And that's what happened for me.

00:34:33.000 I have three kids.

00:34:34.000 My oldest is Brandon Lynch.

00:34:36.000 My younger son is Elias Lynch, and then I have a daughter, Kendall, whom you took a picture with at the One Night Only event.

00:34:48.000 And they all love the Lord.

00:34:51.000 They all understand that they're individuals and that loving the Lord is not a bad thing.

00:34:58.000 Where this world teaches you that to be a devout Christian, to believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, the world teaches you that you're going to lose something, you're missing out on something.

00:35:09.000 And it's been a blessing that they understand that you only gain, you don't lose.

00:35:17.000 That's a lie of the enemy, so that he could have you on his path, which is the broad path versus the narrow path, which leads to salvation and leads to eternity in the presence of our Almighty God in heaven.

00:35:35.000 Tune in for the second part of this conversation on Friday's show.

00:35:41.000 This episode is sponsored by Enhanced.

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00:36:55.000 Hey, if you don't have Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium right now.

00:36:59.000 And do you know me and my wife Laura, we make Sunday supplement every.

00:37:02.000 Not Sunday supplement, why do I always call it that?

00:37:03.000 It feels like that.

00:37:04.000 That was a football show from.

00:37:05.000 It actually was a good show, I used to love it.

00:37:07.000 But anyway, this is Sunday service.

00:37:08.000 It's difficult to describe.

00:37:09.000 Have a look at it.

00:37:19.000 We are away still, and we're kind of managing, not talking about where we are, not out of being needlessly clandestine, but because part of the process is one of enhanced sanctification as well as preparation for the literal and figurative trials that we face.

00:37:40.000 And in part, in honor of both the time itself and the generosity of the provision, we're Being respectful of that and keeping that privacy.

00:37:56.000 But it's interesting because of the much of the topics around obviously the physical experiences we're having in this remote, wonderful location, and also the personal experiences we're having as a result of living a different life for a while.

00:38:07.000 That's been very impactful.

00:38:10.000 Last week, we, for a start, time feels like it's something I can't even really keep a hold of.

00:38:16.000 I mean, we're on a totally different time zone.

00:38:19.000 And because we have like family in England and we have kind of a life in America and we try, I'm I'm trying to juggle these different times.

00:38:27.000 And at the end of the day, nothing teaches you to be more present and in the moment than, I mean, you have to just entirely give up trying to trace and track time for other people.

00:38:39.000 Like, what time is it?

00:38:40.000 All I know is that we need to get this done by a certain time in order that it can go up.

00:38:47.000 So it was, it feels like not challenging, but it does feel a bit more.

00:38:55.000 Like, I don't know.

00:38:56.000 I feel like I'm in a different position with Sunday service because of living a different type of life in this place, which, yeah, feels like a kind of a private time.

00:39:08.000 That's what I said to you earlier, didn't I?

00:39:09.000 I said it's difficult to talk about things we're experiencing because I feel like it's kind of private and it's very family orientated.

00:39:19.000 But actually, like Russell said, it's actually no different from what we're doing because we always have quite a family orientated life.

00:39:27.000 Don't we?

00:39:28.000 Yes.

00:39:28.000 And when you're in Florida, you're not like, and I was in Publix, right in the aisle in Publix.

00:39:33.000 You're better with the address.

00:39:34.000 Yeah, no, you're right.

00:39:36.000 You're right.

00:39:36.000 Where they sell those beach balls, or if you're in the UK.

00:39:39.000 So I was in Asda.

00:39:40.000 Do you know the Asda?

00:39:42.000 Yeah.

00:39:42.000 No way.

00:39:44.000 So anyway, Aquinas says famously, the kingdom of heaven is lain upon the earth and man sees it not.

00:39:51.000 All culture is lain upon the earth.

00:39:53.000 One day, all will be swept away.

00:39:56.000 There will be the merging of the kingdoms.

00:39:59.000 That's that heaven and earth will.

00:40:01.000 Bind together, form a new kingdom.

00:40:04.000 That's the sort of Christian theology, and it's obviously by its nature profoundly difficult to conceptualize.

00:40:12.000 The people here have an unusual attitude towards time, and yet we're in the middle of the World Cup, so which is by its nature a global sporting event.

00:40:21.000 And in such highly politicized and fractured times, the World Cup provides in some ways a sort of opportunity for unity, even though football by its nature is competition, sport is.

00:40:34.000 Sanitized war.

00:40:36.000 It sort of functions as a valve.

00:40:38.000 It's, you know, there's a bread and circuses component to sport.

00:40:41.000 But also, you're aware of yourself as being a participant in a global culture.

00:40:47.000 Like wherever you are in the world at the moment, you're about to talk about Erling Haaland or Harry Kane or Messi or Ronaldo.

00:40:53.000 It brings you together, even if you're displaced.

00:40:57.000 You sort of feel like if you're in a place that you wouldn't ordinarily be, not with your normal set of friends, not with your normal.

00:41:02.000 Do you think you would feel the same if you were in America?

00:41:04.000 Do you think you'd be seeking out groups to watch it with?

00:41:07.000 Football functions.

00:41:08.000 Football for me has always functioned as I heard someone say it's male Esperanto.

00:41:15.000 It's a language you can talk everywhere, like that, with in particular, customarily with around men.

00:41:25.000 But also, World Cups being every four years, you can measure your life in World Cups.

00:41:31.000 Peggy was born in a World Cup year, so there will always be every four years, there's going to be a World Cup birthday.

00:41:37.000 And like I can remember Mexico 86, Italia 90, 94, England don't qualify, 98, like I sort of always went in 2002, I'm at college again.

00:41:47.000 Like, you know, it's like the end of my drug using.

00:41:49.000 Like, they're so sort of, yeah, so they're significant not only in terms of community, but they're significant in terms of time.

00:42:00.000 And I think football, in a less overt way, serves that function anyway.

00:42:05.000 But, you know, I was actually remarked earlier because England's match with Norway will compete with a church service where we are at.

00:42:15.000 And so, but like Paul says, All of the offerings of the world, everything that you could accrue, are filthy rags before the Lord.

00:42:26.000 Filthy rags.

00:42:27.000 Meaning, I suppose, well, firstly, this is to emphasize this Christian idea that we are saved by grace, not by works.

00:42:34.000 Any works we do will be as a result of the faith we have in God.

00:42:37.000 But I think also, I think it serves to remind us, looping back to that Aquinas idea, that, well, this is a concoction.

00:42:47.000 It's all made up, all this stuff, money, time, all of it.

00:42:51.000 Wednesday, Tuesday, what are you talking about?

00:42:54.000 It's like a kind of football.

00:42:56.000 It's all like, you know, what is it really?

00:42:58.000 As our great teacher, Christopher Fettis, used to say, what is it?

00:43:02.000 What is it?

00:43:03.000 No, that's Bruce, actually.

00:43:04.000 Bruce is, what is it?

00:43:05.000 And Christopher Fettis was, what's it all about?

00:43:07.000 What's it about?

00:43:08.000 You know, like, what is it really?

00:43:10.000 And like, you know, you were talking about dreams earlier.

00:43:13.000 Actually, I just want to say before we move on from the football thing, did you read or did I see something that looked like the American team uniquely prayed before the match?

00:43:22.000 Did you see that?

00:43:23.000 I didn't.

00:43:23.000 You didn't?

00:43:24.000 Okay.

00:43:24.000 Maybe someone's like that.

00:43:26.000 But I thought that was nice.

00:43:28.000 And I don't think that other teams are necessarily doing that.

00:43:31.000 I think that I read somewhere that it was like a people were, it was a spectacle because it was like they got down and prayed.

00:43:39.000 I might be wrong.

00:43:40.000 Do you mean spectacle as in?

00:43:42.000 Because it was like different and people online and stuff were like commenting, look at the US team like praying as a group before going on.

00:43:49.000 I just thought that was an interesting thing because, of course, you know that each of those.

00:43:56.000 Talented sportsmen are channeling something, and what they're doing before going on is presumably honoring God before they go and play in a big game.

00:44:06.000 Well, when you use the word spectacle, spectacle sort of like it refers to the visible dimension, as in a pair of spectacles.

00:44:13.000 And Aristotle, in his poetics, said that as drama degenerates, spectacle is in theater, spectacle is all that is left. 0.85

00:44:22.000 Is them praying the same as taking the knee, you know, like from the Black Lives Matter? 0.72

00:44:29.000 Wearing a poppy in our country to honor the dead of war, or wearing rainbow bootlaces to commemorate or acknowledge sexual orientation and diversity of sexual orientation. 0.54

00:44:47.000 What is it?

00:44:48.000 Or is it an attempt, as you say, to channel?

00:44:51.000 And in answering.

00:44:52.000 Or honor.

00:44:54.000 Or honor God before going out.

00:44:56.000 Well, we obviously don't know what the prayer was, and we don't know how.

00:44:59.000 I mean, one would assume it was like a Christian prayer, and I guess the assumption is that the American team are sufficiently and significantly Christian.

00:45:07.000 Yeah, I thought it was not interesting and nice, but I'd like to look into that a little bit more. 0.85

00:45:12.000 What I'm going to say is like that.

00:45:14.000 What you know, why sport?

00:45:16.000 Why is it interesting?

00:45:18.000 What does it uh conjure in us?

00:45:21.000 You know, it is about channeling what's underneath it, yeah.

00:45:25.000 Really, what's it reaching down to?

00:45:26.000 Why are people affected by the taking a knee or not taking a knee, or wearing a puppy or not wearing a puppy, or praying or not praying?

00:45:34.000 Because it's sort of like who owns the culture, but God owns the culture, God owns all things, God owns everything.

00:45:43.000 The culture is.

00:45:44.000 I suppose I misspoke because the culture, in a way, for me seems like enmity in general towards God.

00:45:50.000 In the end, enmity towards God.

00:45:53.000 Yeah.

00:45:54.000 Yeah.

00:45:54.000 I mean, sometimes you think with sports, like when it's like a genius sports person, you do think that they're outside of the culture because really they're doing the thing that they're intended to do.

00:46:05.000 That's true.

00:46:06.000 I do think that.

00:46:06.000 So actually, I think what it is is if you look at any one of those sports team players, team players, team players.

00:46:15.000 Team, any one of the team, you would look and individually, it's what the culture bestows upon them rather than them being.

00:46:23.000 That's true.

00:46:24.000 Because actually, what they are just that boy that's got that talent.

00:46:28.000 Then they're just that team that's on that team.

00:46:31.000 Then it's just that person that's just being held up high, held up high, held up high.

00:46:35.000 And then they don't get a penalty and they're taken down, you know, or they do.

00:46:39.000 And then they're raised up and they're the person, you know, the world is chanting their name.

00:46:44.000 Really, that's what the culture puts on them.

00:46:47.000 And really, all it is is that.

00:46:49.000 That they are the person fulfilling their potential.

00:46:53.000 That's brilliant.

00:46:55.000 Oh, whose potential, you know?

00:46:56.000 I mean, it's got, yeah.

00:46:57.000 Because, like, that's what I was thinking about Muhammad Ali, why perhaps he truly is the greatest, because Muhammad Ali refused to be owned by the culture, like that.

00:47:06.000 His famous moment, like when he refused the war draft to fight in Vietnam, he said, I ain't got no beef with a Viet Cong.

00:47:16.000 And so pointed out that he, as an African American, Why was he being enlisted to fight in a war against a nation of people that you don't even know anything about?

00:47:27.000 And he had the bravery and the courage, and indeed the greatness to say it.

00:47:31.000 I think that all genius is an indication ultimately of God's presence because whether it's a work of art or, as you said, Laura, an athlete, that sharp intake of breath, that gasp, that awe is how on earth can a human being in a split second make a decision that leads to that goal or that turn of pace or that pass or that punch or whatever?

00:47:52.000 It's the presence of.

00:47:54.000 And indeed, as most of those great athletes, and you have one in your family, and so do I now by marriage.

00:47:59.000 When talking about how did you make that putt, land that punch, make that basket, score that goal, as the great American writer David Foster Wallace said, it's always unsatisfying to read sports biographies because you want insight into what it was like to experience that moment.

00:48:17.000 And they can't tell you because they weren't there.

00:48:20.000 They were in the zone, they were completely in the flow of life.

00:48:25.000 And I suppose perhaps that, yeah, the excitement of sport.

00:48:28.000 Is that it for a moment?

00:48:29.000 There's a suspension, there's an agreed upon set of rules, and grace might appear within it grace, glory, diligence, values, and virtues that we all sort of recognize as magnificent.

00:48:41.000 But, like, well, what we wanted to talk about somewhat, Laura, I believe, is depth.

00:48:47.000 And I thought that you and you bring in dreams, and we've been having extraordinary dreams in this place because we're living a different pace of life.

00:48:55.000 And why don't you sort of introduce that subject?

00:48:57.000 I was explaining to Russell.

00:49:00.000 Last night I woke, like I thought I was waking and it was going to be five o'clock in the morning or something.

00:49:04.000 It was actually like 12 55.

00:49:06.000 I looked at the clock.

00:49:07.000 I had had just this nightmare, like a real proper full on nightmare where I was scared and I woke up feeling like, oh, I don't want to be, I'm glad I'm out of that dream.

00:49:17.000 It felt like, I said it's like born identity, but I was the Matt Damon born, but it was also like I was out of breath.

00:49:25.000 I was like, I couldn't keep up.

00:49:27.000 But before people get too on board with how terrifying a dream it was, let's let people know that there was a key role played in the dream by Nicholas Lindhurst, aka Rodney Trotter, in the much beloved Fools and Ourses.

00:49:39.000 I said, Laurie, it's difficult for me to believe.

00:49:41.000 This dream's as terrifying as you're saying, when there's such an important part in the dream played by beloved actor Nicholas Lindhurst.

00:49:49.000 I know, who American audiences might know from, I think, being.

00:49:52.000 He was in Frasier, the reboot.

00:49:54.000 Yeah, now the reboot.

00:49:55.000 And he's a real much beloved and gentle British comedian.

00:50:01.000 Do you know why I like Nicholas Lindhurst?

00:50:02.000 Check this out.

00:50:03.000 Years ago, I saw Piers Morgan on a TV show, sort of generally talking about probably the hacking and all of the hacking of British media into the phones of the royals and celebrities, et cetera, which was sort of.

00:50:14.000 It's demonstrably true and further indication of the deep corruptness and malevolence of the British media in particular.

00:50:21.000 But there was this bit where Piers Morgan, who was still working in sort of tabloid media at that time, said, You know, look, these celebrities, they don't have to turn up to the opening of a paper bag if they don't want to.

00:50:29.000 They participate and form.

00:50:30.000 This is a reasonable point.

00:50:31.000 He goes, And they all do it, even the ones that you think are sort of nice.

00:50:33.000 They're all like got their faces in the trough.

00:50:36.000 They're all participating.

00:50:36.000 He goes, It was maybe not Nicholas Lyndhurst, actually.

00:50:40.000 He goes, I'm not even sure I know where Nicholas Lyndhurst lives.

00:50:42.000 And I thought that's so amazing that.

00:50:44.000 It appears Morgan just like does know where everybody else lives, like just naturally, and also that Nicholas Lindhurst he's purely was about go in, do Rodney or whatever, and get out.

00:50:57.000 He's not bothered about any of that other stuff.

00:50:59.000 And with Leanne, the relationship we've had with celebrity, doesn't it show you?

00:51:03.000 Oh, it is, it's Babylon, man, it's Babylon, and like you, but you can only blame yourself for being a participant in whether it's financially or culturally or socially or psychologically or whatever you've done, whatever you've taken from the culture.

00:51:16.000 But back to your Terrifying dream. 0.79

00:51:18.000 Well, it was.

00:51:18.000 Populated by national treasures.

00:51:21.000 Oh, and then.

00:51:22.000 No, I'll tell you what it was.

00:51:24.000 I actually told Russell the dream when we woke up in order that we could analyze it a bit and deconstruct it.

00:51:28.000 And then right at the end, I went, and then Nicholas Lindhurst, he played a sort of butler in a hotel in town.

00:51:35.000 Russell went, hold on, stop.

00:51:37.000 Hold on.

00:51:38.000 Nicholas Lindhurst.

00:51:39.000 Yeah, man.

00:51:40.000 He was like, I love Nicholas.

00:51:41.000 Right, no.

00:51:42.000 It can't be a frightening dream.

00:51:44.000 No, no, seriously, it was because, anyway, as we all know, when we have a dream.

00:51:48.000 Oh, it's Rodney.

00:51:49.000 Ooh.

00:51:50.000 And then, like, and then you said there was a tortoise in the dream.

00:51:53.000 Our tortoise was in the dream.

00:51:55.000 Nicholas Lindhurst was very crass because the tortoise was desecrating everywhere.

00:52:00.000 But anyway, it was an insight into your psyche.

00:52:02.000 I've had a terrible dream.

00:52:04.000 Nicholas Lindhurst is very crass.

00:52:05.000 Our tortoise is soiling the carpet at this hotel that we're staying at.

00:52:10.000 Let me get a glass of water.

00:52:11.000 This sounds terrifying.

00:52:12.000 Oh, my God.

00:52:13.000 Things that go on in here.

00:52:14.000 Oh, no.

00:52:15.000 No, you don't.

00:52:16.000 Listen, the beginning part of the dream, I can't even talk about, but it was not a good dream.

00:52:20.000 And that was the born identity.

00:52:21.000 Well, when you were in Chase, the Pursuit.

00:52:23.000 Yeah, Chase, yeah.

00:52:23.000 Anyway, all that stuff.

00:52:24.000 All the balaclavas.

00:52:25.000 Balaclavas and all that stuff.

00:52:26.000 Anyway, the fact is, wait.

00:52:28.000 Up comes the balaclava.

00:52:29.000 It's David Jason.

00:52:30.000 It's Dell.

00:52:32.000 No, okay.

00:52:33.000 So we get to the. 1.00

00:52:33.000 That's equivalent to Golded Girls or something. 1.00

00:52:35.000 I woke up this morning and I needed to decompress it.

00:52:38.000 And I said to Russell, isn't it weird that we are in this place and we've found real peace and serenity in the daytimes and we're really, you know, we're still, we've still got things we've got to deal with, but it seems that we've got more time with each other to.

00:52:52.000 Play, like there's more, like I'm engaging with the kids in sort of a great way.

00:52:57.000 We're having funny, funny chats and conversations.

00:53:01.000 We're reading together, although Russell and I are enjoying it a lot more than the kids because they're falling asleep pretty quick.

00:53:08.000 We're reading Swiss Family Robinson as a family.

00:53:10.000 We're doing individual, like little one on ones, like, you know, kayaking and all this stuff.

00:53:16.000 And we're having a good time in prayer together.

00:53:18.000 And then I said to Russell, but then these dreams, like, why the vivid sort of nightmares waking up in the night?

00:53:27.000 Like, Nicholas Lindhurst, no.

00:53:29.000 Why waking up in the night when the days are so peaceful and We're surrounded by good people and just positivity.

00:53:36.000 And my friend, actually, today, my friend Fran was like, spiritual warfare, spiritual warfare.

00:53:42.000 Like, you're being attacked in the dream because you're letting go and you're in a space where you're trusting.

00:53:49.000 Go on.

00:53:49.000 One of the things I love about being a Christian is people saying spiritual warfare.

00:53:53.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm honest.

00:53:55.000 It's very new.

00:53:56.000 Although some people are using spiritual warfare too low a threshold.

00:54:00.000 Like, you know, my kids got in trouble at school.

00:54:02.000 It's spiritual warfare.

00:54:03.000 Like, what?

00:54:04.000 Are you sure about that?

00:54:06.000 You're sure about that?

00:54:07.000 That's why.

00:54:09.000 You actually, someone said it today in the restaurant, actually, where we were.

00:54:13.000 Someone said, you know, spiritual warfare.

00:54:15.000 And I said to her, oh my gosh, my friend just said that to me.

00:54:18.000 But it's commonplace to say that, isn't it, in Christian conversation and culture?

00:54:24.000 Anyway, so my friend said, spiritual warfare.

00:54:26.000 You're being attacked like in your sleep because in the daytime, you're sort of getting to a place of like good, a good place of wholeness and peace.

00:54:37.000 And then we talked about how.

00:54:39.000 Obviously, we are in the waking life.

00:54:42.000 We are trying to surrender.

00:54:43.000 We're trying to let go.

00:54:44.000 We're trying to let go and let God.

00:54:47.000 And so, the night times, the times of processing, is where we're still clinging and holding on to stress.

00:54:54.000 And really, it made me think about how when we do wake up, as we all, I'm sure, do, because it's a common idea that wake up at 3 a.m. and totally be just kind of overwhelmed by anxiety and fears and everything, whether you've had the bad nightmare.

00:55:12.000 Dream or not, or whether you've just simply woken up in a start and just been like, I've not done those things tomorrow.

00:55:18.000 I'm nervous and worried about this, this, and this.

00:55:20.000 I feel like I've got to do all these things.

00:55:22.000 Everyone knows what this feeling is.

00:55:24.000 And so, my point being about that is, what are we to do in that moment?

00:55:31.000 And we, if we awake at the same time, we will pray together.

00:55:36.000 And it does work, doesn't it?

00:55:38.000 Would you say it works?

00:55:39.000 I think your prayers are better than mine, even not just the ones you're doing publicly.

00:55:43.000 Right.

00:55:44.000 And frankly, becoming unbearable because of the comments about them.

00:55:48.000 But like, when we pray together, like when it's actually that kind of prayer, not just a commonplace prayer, we pray every morning, pray all the time.

00:55:56.000 But like, I mean, when I'm like, Laura, I think we need to pray because I'm feeling this is on me.

00:56:01.000 I'm feeling oppressed.

00:56:02.000 I'm afraid.

00:56:03.000 I don't know what to do.

00:56:05.000 But those prayers where you pray on our behalf, I always feel that has a, is deeper and more, frankly, more effective.

00:56:13.000 Well, when it's, well, thank you for saying, but also, I don't, I always think I'm not going to know what to say.

00:56:20.000 And then when, because when it's in the dead of night and you sort of think, and also you might not both be feeling the same.

00:56:26.000 Like if one wakes up and is fearful and the other's just like, oh, I was asleep.

00:56:31.000 I'm all right in my dream, whatever's going on, I'm going back in there.

00:56:35.000 But you have to be, that's when you have to be there for one another.

00:56:37.000 And that's when you have to think, oh my goodness, there's a moment where I think, what am I going to say?

00:56:43.000 Like I said, explained last week before I get, before I pray, I get nervous about what I'm going to say.

00:56:48.000 But what happens in the night, I suppose, is because it is so, it feels like so raw to be awake in the night because it's like, like there's, it's dark.

00:56:59.000 It's dark and you have to find your way.

00:57:03.000 You are in the dark and you have to find your way.

00:57:05.000 And the way of doing that is by almost like thinking, what am I feeling right now?

00:57:09.000 What am I, what am I trying to say?

00:57:11.000 What am I asking for?

00:57:13.000 And really often in those, 3 a.m. prayers, it has, it ends up being almost a plead for safety, right?

00:57:23.000 Doesn't it?

00:57:23.000 And peace.

00:57:24.000 And just the lifting of the darkness from the spirit in order that you can sleep.

00:57:30.000 Often when we pray, though, you go straight back to sleep into a deep sleep.

00:57:34.000 Do I?

00:57:34.000 You might not know that you do.

00:57:36.000 No, come to sleep.

00:57:37.000 So that's why I'm saying that the prayer in the night.

00:57:39.000 Did that what happened last night?

00:57:40.000 Is that what I'm saying?

00:57:41.000 Yeah, straight away to sleep, way before me.

00:57:43.000 I'm left worrying about Nicholas Lindhurst and his dad.

00:57:45.000 What's he going to do?

00:57:46.000 What's going to happen in the carpet?

00:57:48.000 Oh no, Trigger and Boise have turned up.

00:57:52.000 But the truth, the thing is that that led us to talk.

00:57:55.000 Well, we talked a little bit about this, and you, of course, know more about the sort of the psyche, I guess, and what's happening to the mind in sleep.

00:58:05.000 It's processing.

00:58:06.000 So it's processing.

00:58:07.000 Yeah, I don't know that one can be entirely.

00:58:09.000 And funnily enough, one of the colleagues was talking about us using secular analytics in spiritual terrain.

00:58:16.000 But of course, dreams, whether from a religious perspective, From every religion in the world.

00:58:23.000 And of course, Christianity, there are many examples of dreams throughout scripture, dreams and dreamers.

00:58:29.000 But in, say, psychiatry and the dreams, and it seems to me often that dreams feel like a process.

00:58:39.000 I'm sure there are prophetic dreams, insightful dreams.

00:58:42.000 And indeed, one of my mates, Carl, actually, years ago said, like, people talk with such fascination about DMT and ayahuasca and LSD and the encounters one can have on psychedelics.

00:58:54.000 Without really paying attention to the fact that every night you go to sleep and enter into this sort of kingdom.

00:59:00.000 Like, what's going on?

00:59:01.000 I mean, it makes you think so.

00:59:03.000 What is the reality that takes place when stripped of sensory connection to an apparently external world?

00:59:09.000 An apparently external world being the key phrase.

00:59:11.000 But it does seem to me the analysis I was offering, and although I do prefer your friend Fran's spiritual warfare conclusion, is that because we are in general in peace while we're here, being cared for and surrounded by incredible nature.

00:59:28.000 Both human and botanical, and you know, in every conceivable form of nature, that when we actually sleep, we're dropping to a deeper and more cathartic, and pure, therefore, purifying, sanctifying, purging, purgatorial kind of place.

00:59:46.000 That was what I felt.

00:59:47.000 Yeah, you're right.

00:59:49.000 There was this time where, um, do you remember when there was a time where people sort of were into the idea that you could control your dreams?

00:59:55.000 That's called lucid dreaming.

00:59:56.000 And Massey, who's cutting this, is really into stuff like that, if I may say, on that, because I'd be into that too.

01:00:03.000 Yeah.

01:00:03.000 Amazing.

01:00:04.000 Like you're able to.

01:00:05.000 I'd misuse that like I did normal life.

01:00:07.000 Isn't that just the ultimate form of like you're taking control to another level?

01:00:10.000 Right.

01:00:11.000 That's you're a control freak.

01:00:12.000 No, no, you don't. 1.00

01:00:13.000 Nicola Slinders. 1.00

01:00:14.000 We'll do what we like with that carpet. 0.78

01:00:15.000 It's our tortoise.

01:00:16.000 I built this hotel.

01:00:18.000 Yeah.

01:00:18.000 Like I sort of think like there's the idea.

01:00:20.000 It seems nice, lucid dreaming, but it also seems.

01:00:22.000 I mean, pressure.

01:00:23.000 Like.

01:00:24.000 Avatheos.

01:00:24.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:00:25.000 I wouldn't want to be in control of my dreams as well as the sort of daytime reality.

01:00:29.000 No, I like.

01:00:30.000 Yeah.

01:00:30.000 I hear what you're saying.

01:00:31.000 But also, I mean, lucid dreaming, you could enter into an entirely different reality.

01:00:35.000 Right.

01:00:35.000 And of course, I guess that's what sort of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse or the various virtual realities that we're being offered are sort of pledging that you will enter into a reality where, as far as you're concerned, you could be and look at what the culture offers you pornography, pleasure, et cetera, that you can just be in a state of constant stimulation.

01:00:53.000 And beloved Ruth Burroughs here talks about how your prayerful experience might not be rewarding often.

01:01:07.000 Pointed out that in my personal questing for enlightenment or what it would have been, as I would have regarded it and perhaps described it then, are you not really just finding fancier ways to say, I want to feel good?

01:01:21.000 Is that not what you're saying all the time?

01:01:23.000 And what she's saying, Ruth Burroughs, is that living under the touch of the living Christ, there will be suffering.

01:01:31.000 And I think about saints all the time, Laura, because I mean, what's it like to be.

01:01:38.000 Uh, Saint Francis or Saint Paul or so, you know, any of the saints, Saint Teresa.

01:01:43.000 Yeah, like I think what was it feel like on the inside?

01:01:45.000 What does it feel like?

01:01:47.000 You know, one might imagine that there's quite a lot of suffering involved, quite a lot of it's not like this is brilliant, but then Saint Francis, I think that he was he sounds like he was having a good time, right?

01:01:56.000 Birds landing on his hands, butterflies flying around.

01:01:59.000 That actually sounds incredible.

01:02:01.000 Actually, um, who was the person who the omelette?

01:02:05.000 What was the name?

01:02:06.000 That's Brother Lawrence.

01:02:07.000 Brother Lawrence, he wasn't the same.

01:02:08.000 He's not being canonized, as far as I understand.

01:02:10.000 But, like, by its nature, it's posthumous, and people I think are only saints after they die.

01:02:15.000 And it's normally on the basis of the Catholic Church that issues sanctification, excuse me, rather, canonization.

01:02:22.000 I wonder if they're just feeling, because presumably, to get to a level of saintliness, there's absolutely zero ego.

01:02:30.000 You've annihilated it.

01:02:30.000 So, in fact, they might not feel any different from a person who's not a saint because.

01:02:38.000 Because they're just, that's just absolutely, they're totally at one with that behavior.

01:02:43.000 Well, I guess we have the writing of saints, don't we?

01:02:46.000 We have the writing and the significant writing of St. Paul and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.

01:02:52.000 But, like, you know, from scripture, what, like, say, Paul in Romans, he, like, he's really what he's describing is a transcendent state of bliss in which suffering is irrelevant.

01:03:03.000 And, like, that's Eastern mysticism talks about that, you know, like, a good example is, say, Thomas Merton, who was both a Buddhist monk and a Catholic priest, correct me if I'm wrong, but he said that in the end, sacrifice need not include suffering.

01:03:20.000 And the way he explained this was there's a point where you're so connected, like the sacrifice is a portal to another reality, is one way of putting it, and you are so engaged by, overwhelmed, in tune with, enmeshed with, an expression of this supreme reality that suffering isn't part of sacrifice.

01:03:38.000 The presumption of suffering as part of sacrifice is, oh, I don't want to give up.

01:03:43.000 Having sex or eating nice food or status.

01:03:47.000 You know, the asceticism, what St. John the Cross calls animal penance, the domination of which he was actually using as a sort of a pejorative term, like the animal penance, just the sort of annihilation of the flesh, mortification, flagellation, overcoming the body.

01:04:03.000 He's like, that's not really a value.

01:04:05.000 That's not what you're trying to do.

01:04:06.000 That itself could become a kind of vanity.

01:04:08.000 But there's a point where, like you were saying, the saintly are so identified with God that they have no identity outside of their identity in God.

01:04:18.000 And that is the aim.

01:04:19.000 What I'm just saying is, I am obviously so human, so full of longing, so easily stimulated, you know, that it's just sort of difficult to imagine these wonderful states.

01:04:32.000 Yeah.

01:04:42.000 Well, thank you very much for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

01:04:45.000 I hope you're enjoying this interview series.

01:04:47.000 I hope you're having a good time.

01:04:48.000 I hope you feel spiritually free and peaceful.

01:04:50.000 Get Rumble Premium if you want additional content.

01:04:52.000 Please keep up your own personal relationships in the chat.

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01:04:57.000 Remember, more importantly than any of it, stay free.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - July 13, 2026

The Battle for Your Soul - SF740

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