Interview with Peter Russell

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, Serge. Lovely to see you again. [00:00:13] Speaker B: Lovely to see you again. I think we had a really good talk with. With our friend Jim Garrison, didn't we? It was interesting. [00:00:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it was very inspiring. He. He is a very inspiring guy with a whole life of sprouts, spiritual service behind him. [00:00:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:00:29] Speaker A: And in front of him, too. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Yes, and, yes. And I felt. And I felt touched because. Because one felt that he spoke with heart. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah. With passion. [00:00:42] Speaker B: And as I know our new guest is going to speak with heart. So shall we invite him in? [00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm looking forward to this because I. I was a big admirer of Peter's book many, many years ago called the Awakening Earth. It was my favorite book for a long time when I was a young man. So I'm looking forward to. To meeting him. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Same here. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Okay. Should we invite Peter in? [00:01:05] Speaker B: Yes, let's do that. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Here we go. Hello, Peter. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Hello, Peter. [00:01:17] Speaker C: Hello there. Hang on. You cannot see me. [00:01:21] Speaker B: We can see a picture of you. [00:01:24] Speaker C: Yes. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Is that a real picture? Is an AI generated picture? [00:01:28] Speaker C: This is a real picture taken long before. Not. Not long before, but. Okay. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. I was just watching the AI interview on your website. Very interesting interview between two AI versions of yourself. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. Still not. Still not liking me. [00:01:52] Speaker A: I think it's coming through. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Ah, Peter. [00:01:56] Speaker C: Hello, Peter. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Peter, it's only been 40 years since we last said hello. When. [00:02:02] Speaker C: Yes, when. [00:02:04] Speaker B: When you stayed a few weeks in my house in Fairfax. [00:02:08] Speaker C: I remember that well. [00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:02:11] Speaker C: But one of my very early trips to the US and then you stayed, [00:02:16] Speaker B: Peter, and I came back to England. I felt I needed to take the vision down from the mountain, and I sometimes wish I hadn't returned. And I think that you were wise in staying, but actually, I'm not so sure. [00:02:34] Speaker C: That's a whole other. Whole other debate we can have. [00:02:37] Speaker B: So that's a whole other debate. Anyway, dear Peter, we're terribly honored and happy to have you on our little show, and I'm just going to say a few words about you. My old friend Peter Said, leading thinker on consciousness and contemporary spirituality. He coined the term the global brain in his 1980s bestseller of. Of the same name, in which, Pete, you predicted the Internet and the impact it would have on humanity. You're the author of 14 other books, including Waking up in Time and how to Meditate Without Even Trying, which we're going to talk about here. And your mission, and it's a beautiful mission, is to distill the essential wisdom on human consciousness found in the world's various spiritual traditions and disseminate their teachings on self liberation in contemporary and compelling ways. And I just want to say I think you've been and are continuing to be very successful in your mission, Pete. [00:03:56] Speaker C: Oh, thank you. Yeah. [00:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe I can begin. I feel very excited to talk to you, Peter, because I was just saying to Serge, actually, that when I was a young man, maybe in my early twenties, your book the Awakening Earth was one of the first spiritual books which really inspired me, for. [00:04:16] Speaker B: As it did me. As it did me, yes. It inspired all of us. Yeah. [00:04:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:04:21] Speaker A: I love the. The kind of sweeping range of the book from the beginnings of life on Earth to the. Into the future and the kind of inspiring vision of a world and coming into union. And so, yeah. So I've always been a big admirer of your work and including your. Which brings us to your latest book, how to Meditate Without Even Trying. Maybe we can begin by speaking about that. [00:04:44] Speaker C: Okay. [00:04:45] Speaker A: Yeah, So, I mean, it's great. I was really pleased that it's been published by Eckhart Tolle Editions, with whom I've also published a few. [00:04:52] Speaker C: Right. I know. [00:04:53] Speaker A: And we. [00:04:53] Speaker C: Yes, we share the same publisher. Yeah. Even endorsed each other's book at some time in the past, I'm sure. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great that we have these connections. And so how would you summarize the kind of basic premise of. Of this. Of your new book? [00:05:12] Speaker C: It comes out of a lot of. I've been meditating most of my life, and I've learned a lot of things about meditation from my own experience. Basically, what makes meditation easier, more enjoyable, because people come at it with this idea. It's difficult, it's challenging, it's going to take you years, etc. Etc. And over the years, I've just learned a lot of little finesses, little sort of mini practices that just help meditation just be much easier so you can just drop into the silence more easily. And I've talked about it. I've talked about it in seminars. I made videos on bits of it. I realized I'd never pulled it all together in one place. And so I decided, you know, while I'm still on the planet, I'd like to do that and just make it available to help people, really, just to share what I've learned to help people. And so that's how the book came into being. And it's not really about a particular technique. I mean, I use as a very core practice just simply just being present as in the most simple sense, you know, but that sounds easy, but. But that in itself isn't easy. And so it's just lot things like, you know, noticing. Noticing what's going on in your body, your feelings, that sort of thing. Noticing. I mean one, one thing is, you know, noticing when we've had a thought how tension can creep into the mind generated by the thought itself and how to let go of those tensions in the mind, that sort of thing. So it's a series of tips, but also I go know I start off from very, very basics, but gradually go deeper and deeper. And so the end, the last few chapters of the book are really about a non. Dual perspective of meditation. What is the nature of self, that sort of thing. [00:07:06] Speaker A: So you, you mentioned your experience with, with tm, Transcendental Meditation. Obviously that was very, you know, it was very influential on you. Just did you, do you still practice that technique yourself? [00:07:18] Speaker C: Difficult to answer. Maybe it's a simple yes, no answer. TM was where I started way back in the 60s. It, it introduced me to the idea that meditation should be effortless. And that's what stayed with me all my life. Do I still practice it? Occasionally. If I've got a very busy mind, I will start with a little tm. I found it the most, I find the most effective way of settling the mind down. And I, I have nothing against tm. I stopped teaching it because I travel a lot and with tm because it is so delicate, I feel I need to be around to follow people up, that sort of thing when they learn. TM has taken me to where I am now, which is I become familiar enough with that stillness that TM takes you to, familiar enough with it that I can just go there. I don't need, I don't need the practice to take me there. So in a sense I'm doing, I'm still doing tm, but I'm not doing it as efficient, you know, with the mantra, etc. So I'm not not doing TM in that sense because it really does involve the mantra. That's why it's a difficult question to answer. TM has led me to where I am and my own practice has come from tm. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I think for a lot of people TM was, it was an introduction to spirituality and meditation. Was it for me too, actually. I mean, I got to TM because of the Beatles, because I heard that the Beatles did it. [00:08:56] Speaker C: Yeah, same with me. Yeah, yeah. I've been exploring meditation and suddenly here was the Beatles. And I looked into it and read Marsh's book and it's like oh, this makes sense. I've been trying various Buddhist things, Vipassana and some Tibetan stuff. It's like didn't get it. [00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe it's simplicity. Is it straight? Is it strength? Isn't it? Yeah, very simple. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Well, well, Pete, I, I have had difficulty in meditation in the last couple of years. It's fallen off and reading your book and doing the practice, what I find is that meditation is that there's a current. It's sort of like a bird flies and it, you know, and it gets on a stream and the air takes it along and the art is finding it. I found that not trying so hard has allowed me to get onto those streams of consciousness that took me along much easier than if I would say now I've got to just, I've got to sit and Vipassana. I've done a couple of vipassana retreats and they were always a horror show for me. I'd always be grateful when the bell would ring at the end of the. [00:10:17] Speaker C: Yeah, well we make it much more difficult. It need to be. I mean I, I, even the word meditation is a bit of a barrier. I sometimes talk just sitting quietly with yourself, which sounds, oh, I can sit. Can you sit quietly with yourself? Try it for 10 seconds. But, but that's what it is for me. That's what it really is. Just learn to sit quietly with yourself and then enjoy the quietness and the stillness that comes and just almost diving into the quietness. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's amazing actually in my experience, so many people mentioned that they have difficulty with meditation that they say I just can't do it, I just can't sit still. And I think you mentioned this in your book. [00:11:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean the most common complaint I hear from people when they start meditating, also from people who meditating some time often. I can't stop the monkey mind. The monkey mind refers to, you know, the fact you're all these thoughts keep coming in and you can't stop them. Like my retort is whoever said you meant to stop them? You know, there's a misunderstanding we have because meditation leads to a quieter state of mind and our thoughts become quieter and you arrive at a state where basically normal thinking is no longer there. We think we get there by stopping the thought, we don't. That just creates more tension, more anxiety, more self blame. I can't meditate. I'm going to give up. No, it's not about. Thoughts are going to come. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Thoughts. [00:11:51] Speaker C: And we now understand this in the brain in terms of the default mode Network. When you're concentrating on something, a task, a conversation, now talking to you, the attention is focused, thoughts don't come in. But when you stop focusing, the default mode network comes into play, which has various functions. It used to just be thought of as the idle mind. It isn't, it's doing a lot of functions, but part of, part of what it's doing is it's looking at things, looking at this, oh this, this I should be concerned about. It's doing self maintenance operations. It's natural, completely natural. And then the thing is learning how to, to respond to it. And basically what I share in the book is when you find yourself caught in a thought, don't feel you've gone wrong, whatever, don't try to push it away. But we can actually make a choice and it's a very simple choice, but it works. Just not to follow that thought any further. We can do that. It will come back. Who says it shouldn't come back? But just right now, don't follow that thought any further. And when you do, your attention comes back into the moment because the thought was taking you out of the moment. You stop following the thought and your attention just comes back to this moment. And the other thing is, I think people think it, you know, meditation will take years and years of effort and I think, you know, if you're putting a lot of effort in, it is going to take years of effort and that becomes a self reinforcing prophecy. You know, oh, I'm not getting anywhere. You know, I've tried to meditate or you're not trying hard enough. It's like people say that I think, oh my God, this is not going to help anybody. That's why I call it how to Meditate without even Trying. The least bit of trying is actually getting in the way, in my opinion. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah. You can also think in terms of active meditation. Like walking in the countryside in a, in a mindful frame of mind. [00:13:48] Speaker C: Yes, yes. [00:13:49] Speaker A: With a mindful attitude. [00:13:51] Speaker C: Right. [00:13:51] Speaker A: You know, working with a mindful attitude. [00:13:55] Speaker C: Yes, that's all true. And when I'm talking about meditation, I'm basically talking about the sorts of meditations I'm interested in, which is how to allow the mind to settle down and come back to stillness. There's many other techniques aimed at, you know, achieving certain mental states, various things, they're all different, many different sorts of meditations where some of what I teach may apply to that meditation. But basically I'm not, what I'm saying is not covering all sorts of meditations. There's very complex ones that do require a lot of concentration of the attention and may take years of practice. [00:14:32] Speaker B: Well, Pete, I hope a lot of people will buy your book. I've ordered it. I mean, I read it because you sent it to me online. But I think it's really, really important to have a copy of it just beside you so you can hold it up and we can see it by chance. [00:14:53] Speaker C: Duly. By chance. I do, yes. [00:14:55] Speaker B: Good. So we can all see how to meditate without even trying. By the by, the maestro himself holding it up. Good. Well, look, Pete, I am now going to engage your mind, you know, and take it away from stillness. And I'm going to ask you this question in the Awakening Earth, which again, as with Steve, touched me a lot. You said that our test was whether we are psychologically and spiritually fit to live on planet Earth. Can we live in harmony, not conflict? And if we pass the test, we may make it, I'm quoting you, into our next evolutionary phase of our integration into a single being. If we fail, we'll probably be discarded as an evolutionary blind alley. Humanity will be spontaneously aborted. Mother Nature from her cosmic perspective is not going to be too perturbed if we, if. If we don't make it now. Very interesting. And I remember reading that at the time and thinking, yeah, now in Forgiving Humanity, the book you wrote just before the meditation, what I guessed is that it's not so much that we fail the test, that is that we haven't been spiritual enough to have got enough humility and wisdom and kindness and courage, but it's that our innovations, you say, create feedback loops that accelerate change so fast that our brains are not wired to think in linear terms, so we're fully unable to grasp the consequences. And there's so much stress on us at all levels that it makes break down increasingly likely. And then you suggest eventually the pace of change will overwhelm our ability, leading to extinction in the not too distant future. That is, it's not that we, as I see it, it's not that we haven't failed the test, but we're not up to it mentally. And I wonder if you could say a few words about that and perhaps in the light of what you also see happening today, because the world has changed quite a bit since you wrote Forgiving Humanity. [00:17:51] Speaker C: Okay, well, there's two questions there. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah, two questions. [00:17:53] Speaker C: Okay, so the first one, it isn't that we're not mentally up to it. And when I talk about the stress, the stress on humans is just One small part of it, I'm also talking about the stress of accelerating change on the environment, on everything, on economic systems, political systems. Climate change is the result of accelerating development, accelerating use of fossil fuels. Almost everything that's going wrong you can trace back to a consequence of this, accelerating technological growth. Basically, what I'm talking about is technological growth. And as you say, it's powered by the fact that every innovation is, makes future innovations easier and more efficient and faster. And I say this is inevitable for any species, intelligent species, that develops technology. It's inevitable. So it's nothing wrong with us, nothing wrong with us mentally or spiritually or anything. It's going to happen to any species. This is my argument. Any species that develops technology will inevitably be in this feedback loop of innovation breeding further innovation, technology breeding better technology. And so they will find life speeding up their technology speeding up everything speeding up. It's inevitable. You know, I think I spend time with whales and dolphins and I think they are, let's say, as intelligent as us, more so in some ways, less in other ways, but the same level of intelligence, roughly as usual. Their hands are safely wrapped up in blubber. They can't make tools, they haven't made tools, they haven't made technology. And they have been evolving gently for, you know, 40, 000 years in the case of some whales. And they're not messing up the planet. They're not under stress. I think they're very conscious, caring beings, but they haven't had the opportunity or the missed opportunity, opportunity even to start developing technology. So I think it's. But, you know, it comes back to this, our opposable thumbs. We can do things, we can make things, we make tools. So there's nothing wrong with us. That's why I say in the book, there's no, no blame whatsoever for where we find ourselves. It's absolutely inevitable for any species like ourselves. So that, that's the first thing really emphasize there's no, no blame. That's why it's called forgiving humanity. I mean, we've made, we've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Yes, we've done things that haven't been, have been very harmful to people, things that in hindsight weren't good decisions. So there's blame to be apportioned for individual actions that have just, say, caused harm in one way or another. But there's no blame for the acceleration and where we found ourselves as a result of the acceleration. So that's why it's called forgiving humanity. So go on yeah, [00:21:01] Speaker B: what's happening at the moment is that the billionaires are running the tech field and they are crazy people who now are in charge of powerful technology and they're initiating what Naomi Klein calls Armageddon fascism. Can we not put quite a lot of blame on these Peter Thiels, these Elon Musks who are doing incredible damage to the planet because along with the fundamentalists, there really is, we are coming to the end of it. And they seem to be hastening the destruction that they're warning us about destroying the planet in every single way. And their vision is that they want a world that will be safe for themselves and the other billionaires in their bunkers or Elon Musk on Mars or the evangelicals, you know, they'll be scooped up by Jesus on a flying saucer into heaven and all of us, the miserable sinners can rot in flames. This seems to be a lot of blame because somehow this, the capitalist system has run away. Greed and the desire for power and control created by men who feel inadequate inside themselves and have no sense of unity. A kind of taking charge is not any blame. Can we not put some, a certain yes. Kind of blame on these people? [00:22:54] Speaker C: Yes. And that's what I say. I mean, it depends how you view AI. I mean, you're putting a very negative view on it and you're projecting a lot onto the psychology of these people, which I think is unfair. You know, I think with, before we project anything onto somebody, I think we always need to get to know them, you know, whatever phrases. Walk a mile in my moccasins or something like that. [00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:19] Speaker C: So I think your view is extreme there and I think some of it is unjustified, but certainly for what, what is happening, they are responsible. And if we feel that is a bad turn, then we can certainly blame them. So that's what I'm saying. You know, many bad turns we've taken, we can hold individuals responsible. So I'm not saying we cannot apply blame to individuals. I'm saying we cannot blame humanity for having got to this point of ever accelerating change. I think artificial intelligence in some form or another would have been an inevitable technological development. So there's no blame for the situation we arrive in. We can't blame ourselves for things going faster and faster and faster. It's inevitable. That's where I say there's no blame. That's where we must forgive humanity. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Can I make a couple of points there? [00:24:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:23] Speaker A: From my perspective, I would say that we did go wrong at a certain point. And I wrote a book called the Fall, which suggested that prehistoric humans and also some of the world's indigenous peoples didn't experience the extreme sense of separation that modern humans do. I think the basic problem of modern humans is that we. We experience a severe sense of separation or duality between us and the world and also ourselves and our bodies. But I think early human beings didn't. Didn't experience that. I think there was a fall into separation at a certain point. And, you know, our attitude to nature is based on that sense of separation. We don't. Many indigenous peoples feel a sense of kinship with nature. They feel that nature is part of their being, whereas we seem to see nature as a supply of resources. We don't really feel a sense of empathy to the natural world. I'm talking in general terms, obviously. Yeah, yeah, that seems to be our general perspective. [00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah. I would say go back in history, 10, 20,000 years, we were indigenous peoples to Europe. And I don't know, but I would guess from what we see of indigenous peoples today, we'd have been similar. We've, you know, we've had a much greater respect for nature. I mean, what we know archaeologically suggests that we did so as a race, a certain subspeed, whatever we are of the human population. We've come out of that. So the question is, how did we. How do we come out of that? How did we. How did that sense of unity or oneness with nature gradually dissolve and gradually became what we are today? And so I would say maybe, you know, we see an indigenous population in the Amazon somewhere, hardly touched by Western civilization on their own. Where. Where would they become as they slowly develop, develop better, you know, axes or something? Where would they be in 25, 000 years time? Who knows? [00:26:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I don't think. Yeah, sorry. No, you. Sorry, you go on. Pisa. [00:26:34] Speaker C: No, no, no, I couldn't ramble on, but you asked the question. Respond to my answer. Yeah. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Archaeologically speaking, the fall into separation seems to have originated in the Middle east around about 6,000 years ago due to population pressure. So maybe that, you know, that fits into what you were saying. It was a. There was basically an explosion of population in the area about 6,000 years ago. And that's when the first signs of what we would call modern technology began to develop. And the first signs of hierarchy and a sense of real sense of individuality, also warfare, you know. Yeah, there were very few signs of warfare before that period. [00:27:14] Speaker C: Right. So I think, you know, growing population, that's one of the effects of growing population, which again is, you know, probably inevitable because society, if it learns how to, you know, better health care, more babies survive, that sort of thing is going to happen. But also, it's back then that, you know, talk about capitalism. You know, if you get a bigger population living together, you've got to have some form of barter rather than just in a very simple. It's like, oh, here's a chicken, don't want anything for it, fine, you know, I'll help you. But then gradually, when you're dealing with people you don't know so well, there's, there's a sense of barter and then as time goes on, that bartering needs some token to go with it. You know, I haven't got any chickens to give you, but you know, here's, here's a, you know, here's a little piece of metal that says I owe you something, whatever. And then we love, you know, and I think the love of money comes out of that. So. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I mean, the end of the, the hunter gatherer lifestyle was a big factor. You know, the advent of farming. Farming was such a massive change, the settled lifestyle and you suddenly, once you settle down, you get a sense of territory. You start to accumulate possessions, you start to cover. [00:28:27] Speaker B: The other person has. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you start to cover all the people's possessions and their territory. [00:28:33] Speaker C: I agree, farming, yes, was a major thing. There's that book, what, 30 years ago? Was it better? But anyway, Monkey who, hey, but would you, would you go back and blame people who started farming? Would you say they did wrong? [00:28:48] Speaker A: No, obviously not. No, we can't blame them. But the other point I was going to make is that I think maybe there's been a reaction against this process of increasing technologization. I see this, I see this in my students at university, mostly sort of 19 year olds, early 20s. And also my own kids and their friends, they're sort of turning away, some of them anyway, are turning away from technology. They're kind of like they've overdosed on technology and they're turning back to nature almost. They enjoy walking and they've started to meditate. And not just my kids, you know, a lot of meditation has become more popular in the younger generation. So I think there's been a kind of reaction against it maybe. [00:29:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I see that around with some of the kids I know here. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I think that's healthy. That's healthy for people to see that and probably as much as anything, seeing the effect it has on our own lives. I mean, I participate in a program at my local high school where they bring in us old daughtery folk to actually have conversations with these young 14 year olds. And the last conversation I had with them, they were saying, you know, they're glad their schools stop them having iPhones at school. They're glad that. And they don't want to be on technology so much. They want to do other things. So I think it's a. It's a healthy reaction to seeing how technology is controlling their lives. They're not just controlling their lives, but how they're missing stuff because they're spending so much time on technology. So I would say that's. That's a very healthy reaction to seeing the disadvantages of technology. Yeah. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Could it be part of a. Sorry, sir. You go ahead. [00:30:35] Speaker B: No, no, go on, Steve. Okay, I'll come in. [00:30:40] Speaker A: I was going to say, could it be seen as an. As an evolutionary reaction to, you know, to our potential imminent catastrophe? [00:30:51] Speaker C: Evolutionary reaction. Yeah. [00:30:53] Speaker A: I mean, I'm thinking about this. [00:30:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:30:55] Speaker A: Well, I'm thinking about, you know, in the 1960s, there was this wave of interest in spirituality which probably can be traced back earlier. And it was almost as if there was an evolutionary change, change in the collective consciousness of humanity. We were opening to new perspectives, almost as if consciousness was collectively expanding in some way. And since then, there's been an, you know, continually increasing interest in spirituality. Yeah, I mean, to me, this suggests some kind of evolutionary change. [00:31:25] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, yeah, I. I get what you say. Yes. And I think that that's been important. And I would say, again, it's hard to say because, you know, we're embedded in the Western world and that's really what we see. I mean, whether. Whether that same thing has been happening, you know, in African nations, I don't know. But yes, definitely in our Western culture. We've come to value spirituality more of. Value inner development, that sort of thing. More. So there's certainly been a shift in our culture. How much impact that has had? I don't know. [00:32:05] Speaker B: I mean, do you feel that if people learn to meditate and quiet and they open their hearts and they connect to their souls and their spirituality deepens, that those people are more able to deal with the technological challenges that you suggest man is unable to. To do. I. E. Could. Could the hidden factor be the emergence of spirituality? That. That this. This expands us at emotional and at mental levels? Again, we think of Sri Aurobindo and the superconscious and the super mind. [00:32:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it would definitely help us manage it better. You know, as things hot up there's going to be, we can have so many unexpected changes, things to adapt to. And I think having a more stable sense of being as individuals will help us manage things better. I don't think it's going to change the world. I mean, let me go back. I made this shift 25 years ago, something like that. I was going around my book waking up in time was just out. I was on the lecture circuit and I was going around, you know and I basically say yes, if we all get, if you know, get the whole world's conscious waking up, you know, etc. And I thought, I came back one evening, I thought, you know, I'm out of integrity here because I don't really believe this anymore. And at the time I was working with major corporation on scenario looking 25 years ahead at scenarios. And the purpose of scenarios is to see almost cover your basis. If this were to happen, we should do that. If that were to happen, we should do that. Scenarios aren't about telling the truth or forecasting the truth. They're about looking at possibilities and preparing. So I said, and at that stage in this company we'd actually looked at what we call scenario X which was basically we things up and that was not a useful scenario to put to the board. And I looked at, okay, so let me look at the other scenario that consciousness raising consciousness, everybody meditating is going to change the world. I look at myself, I have been meditating for most of my life. I have certainly gained from it. I would say I am more in touch with my true nature. That is a benefit in my own life. Am I enlightened? No. Am I a really await loving person? No. Have I got room to grow? Definitely. So here am I, someone who's been actually focused on this and where I am is not the sort I'm claiming this is the world should be enlightened. Somebody like me who's been at it is not enlightened. And I'm one of a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people on the planet who are actively working on this. So what help is if I, if I'm not enlightened and I'm one in a million, what chance is there that the 999,999 people will get enlightened? It's like, hang on, wake up, wake up. And I just realized no. But then, so I thought, okay, let's face what I see now as the truth is that widespread shift in consciousness is not going to Save humanity, which is where I'd been, you know, where I was when I met you. So what now? This is the purpose of scenario. What now should I be working on? And look, so look at this world where things are just going to be gradually falling to bits. More and more, what is going to be needed? What's going to be needed is greater compassion, greater flexibility in our thinking, to be more stable, to be more in touch with ourselves. And the more I looked at it, it was like, it's exactly the same thing. Whether we're going to save humanity by getting everybody enlightened or whether we're going to navigate our way healthily through what's coming is exactly the same thing. It's about meditating. It's about being more aware, being more. I don't know the word, more conscious. But like, doing that inner work is important, whatever the outcome we're seeing. And so that just led me straight back to, okay, I'm not going to be talking so much about how organic, enlightened to save the world. But what I want to talk about more and more is how can we each go through this process for its own value? So, [00:36:53] Speaker B: Pete, I absolutely agree with you. And I feel extremely unenlightened myself. And one thing I've discovered is that I've had some encounters with people who are so called enlightened. And they like to tell you that they're non dual, you know, and they're superior to you. [00:37:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:15] Speaker B: And I've often. And I found these people not having the qualities that you just said are needed on the planet. What we need is compassion, the ability to share, the ability to withstand suffering, the ability to be courageous. These are the qualities that humanity needs. Not this ridiculous thing called enlightenment that I don't know what the hell it is because I've been meditating all my life and sort of devoting myself to this in exactly the same way as you. I feel incredibly whatever this thing called enlightenment is. [00:37:59] Speaker A: You know, there's a great song by Van Morrison, actually, it's called Enlightenment, and the chorus is Enlightenment. Don't know what it Is. It's a great song. It's about, you know, he wrote it after decades of spiritual searching. And he concludes that you don't know what it is. [00:38:15] Speaker B: So the question is if more people develop more compassion, more kindness, more selflessness, more ability to be more fully human. Forget this spiritual stuff. [00:38:27] Speaker C: Well, yeah. [00:38:28] Speaker A: Can I say something here? I think maybe the concept of enlightenment is the issue here. [00:38:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:33] Speaker A: You know, nobody seems to know what it is. I'M not sure it actually exists in the way that people believe it to be real. I think it's better to think in terms of degrees of awakening or wakefulness. I don't think there's a dividing line between the normal human state and the enlightened state. I think there are lots of gradations and I don't think we need to reach a state of complete non duality. I think there are lots of stages of increasing compassion, stages of increasingly heightened awareness, intensified perception, increasingly deeper awareness of our own being. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:10] Speaker A: And, you know, there's a. Gradually we don't need to think. Think in terms of complete oneness. There are increasing degrees of connection. So I think a lot of people are moving in that direction. Maybe they haven't reached a state of complete union with the universe. [00:39:25] Speaker C: Right. And I'm very dubious. Maybe one or two people have that experience, which is wonderful. [00:39:31] Speaker A: When you read the experience of complete union. [00:39:34] Speaker C: Yeah. When you read, you know, or hear people who I would say have. I don't even like the word achieved, who are in that state of consciousness, it shines. It really shines. And it resonates with something inside us. The best definition I heard of enlightenment was coming from a Buddhist teacher who's talking about. It's an. It's a lightening of the burden. The burden of living in this world. It's a lightening of the burden. I thought that fits much better. You know, we're more stable, we're more grounded. We don't get so caught up in all these petty worries about things or imaginations of the future. The burdens we create for ourselves in our thinking. And so I like that. The lightning of the burden of life. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. [00:40:21] Speaker B: Lovely. And I also like, Pete, that you talk about forgiving humanity because forgiveness is one of the great qualities that's needed in the world. And it was interesting when I began to talk about these bad. These evil tech people who are destroying it all. You said, hey, sort of calm down. That's a little bit extreme. And I heard that space of forgiveness. It seems to me that this is a really important quality because I think that one of the wounds that we all inherit, which goes along with our separate, with our feeling, separate with the story that we inherited, that as an ego we're separate from everyone else, is that we're critical, that the world is hypercritical of everyone and everything. And I think much more forgiveness needs to come into. Into the world. And I try to work with that with a lot of my. With a lot of my Clients who, who are often very hard on themselves. And I, you know, and I try to help them forgive themselves. And so. Yeah, Steve, I, I interrupted because you were going to ask. [00:41:45] Speaker A: Oh, well, I wanted to move on to a slightly different topic, actually. I was wondering about your, your kind of metaphysical perspective. Peter, you know, would you, would you say that you're fundamentally an idealist, you know, in a kind of vedantic perspective, from a pedantic perspective. [00:42:04] Speaker C: If we get into the metaphysical side, which I get into less and less these days. Yes. An idealist in the Depends, there's different sort of subjects. Idealism in the sense that ultimately all we know is our conscious experience. That's all we know. An idealist in that sense that that is all there is. And in that sense consciousness is fundamental to our experience. And then I can argue from there that consciousness must be a fundamental quality of the cosmos. I don't know where to go with this, but I stopped talking about this a few years ago when I sitting in my garden one day looking at a flower, and I thought, what the hell do I know? I'm very good at my argument. I've spoken at conferences, I get invited to speak about it. I've written about it. And I can argue my case very well and show where other more materialist people are wrong, etc. And what do I know? What do I know? And so I sort of decided to stop pontificating on that. [00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:25] Speaker C: And just come back. [00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:27] Speaker C: Coming back to living. But certainly follow on. Go where you want to go with this. I'd be interested. [00:43:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, there is a certain arrogance in presuming that you can understand the nature of reality. [00:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:38] Speaker C: I mean, why should we be able to understand reality? Yeah. We can understand the physical world better and better, and it's still pretty confusing and mysterious. [00:43:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, I would say that I'm a trans materialist and I, I don't believe that materialism can explain human experience or consciousness or the world itself. [00:44:02] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. I haven't heard that term, but yes. [00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:05] Speaker A: You know, so, but, you know, but as to the nature of reality, you know, it's difficult to make any judgments really. So it may be the, the most sensible attitude is to be humble and to admit that we can't really know and ultimately it's a mystery. [00:44:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. And I have my own personal ideas of what it's all about. [00:44:26] Speaker B: So how can we be humble and yet stand in, in, in the affirmation of the ideas that, that we know what it's About. I think that that's. [00:44:38] Speaker C: We don't know what it's about. It's clearly. Clearly we don't know what it's. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Well, but we think we know what it's about. [00:44:45] Speaker C: Well, other people think they know. [00:44:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:44:48] Speaker C: Not we. I mean, it seems pretty clear amongst us that none of us know what it's about. You know, lots of different people have different ideas. People who know. People who know what it's about. Fine. We don't. We don't need to correct other people's point of view. I mean, that's the thing I came to recently. Lovely. Lots of people. And I realize it saves a lot of time, a lot of energy, and if it's on personal levels, it's like more and more just say, okay, you know, I'll let you have that point of view. I think you're wrong, but I'm not going to show you that you're wrong. And it just makes life so much easier. [00:45:27] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting that fundamentalists, whether they are religious or scientific fundamentalists, they always take the opposite attitude. They're really keen to impose their views on others. And also they're really certain about everything, you know? [00:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:40] Speaker A: There's no room for doubt. [00:45:42] Speaker C: Right. And also, I think what, you know, we all begin to learn from experience. You cannot change other people's points of view. Once somebody has a strong point of view, they. That's it. Same with me. I have my point of view. It's going to take a lot of argument for you to change my point of view. [00:45:57] Speaker B: Well, can we change our point of view? [00:45:59] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And. [00:46:03] Speaker B: And I think that that's the important thing. [00:46:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. But that comes through a lot of, I would say, deep investigation of where. Where our point of view comes from, how it serves us, how it limits us, that sort of thing. We don't just change our point of view on a whim. It's a. It's a deep process. [00:46:26] Speaker B: And. And the wonderful thing is I think that when we investigate that deep process, we're just walking in the street one day and we suddenly find that we no longer have that point of view and it's fallen away. [00:46:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:46:42] Speaker B: Or without us doing anything. And I think that. That it seems as if the journey is that we have to learn to fall into or surrender into or let go into our humanity and connecting again with your. With your meditation, Pete. I think that when we're sitting simply and letting go and not trying to struggle, somehow, we're sitting in our gentle humanity. And I think that meditation gives us the experience of doing that. [00:47:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:47:29] Speaker A: It seems to me to be a very Taoist perspective. In fact, when I was reading your book, Peter, your new book, I was thinking that this is very Taoist. [00:47:36] Speaker B: Yes, it is. [00:47:37] Speaker A: Yeah. The idea that effort takes you out of the dao, you know, you need to relax into the dao and allow the dao to. To carry you. [00:47:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:48] Speaker C: I don't know much about Taoism at all, but I. I get what you're saying. I hadn't. I hadn't thought about it that way, to be honest, but, you know. Yeah, but yeah, it resonates with what little I know of Taoism. Yes, definitely. [00:48:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:02] Speaker A: I mean, the biggest. One of the big concepts in Taoism is wu wei, which means actionless activity. So it's basically activity without effort. [00:48:11] Speaker C: Right. [00:48:11] Speaker A: That just arises and occurs naturally. [00:48:15] Speaker C: Yeah. My teachers say spontaneous right action. It's right action that is coming from what the situation calls for rather than what your ego mind thinks should happen. [00:48:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:29] Speaker B: And Lao Tzu puts it, the man who is in touch with the dao does nothing, and there's nothing that doesn't get done. And I like that. [00:48:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:48:41] Speaker A: And this is how life. This is how life occurs, isn't it? I always find that things in my life happen without any volition from me. You know, they happen kind of involuntarily. When I try to make things happen, they don't usually turn out very well. [00:48:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Think that many people have that experience. I know my whole life has been led me where it is without me, with all the goals I've had on my part. Life, it just ignored them and took me to wonderful places. [00:49:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:49:17] Speaker B: It took us to California, Pete. Me, me going to California. I was 28 when I went and I left at 4. 41 was the most important time of my life because I felt I was. I came as you came right into the human potential movement. That was so exciting. This, this, this countercultural. Who are we? How can we get the best out of ourselves? And it was a very extraordinary, exciting time. It was a very creative time. And I think that you probably, along with idol Rolf and Fritjof Capra and Moshe Feldenkrais and, and, and. And all. And, and all the great sort of visionaries. I think that you had to come to California because it was the only. It was the best place on the planet to develop new ideas. And there's a wonderful freedom there. Do you still have it? How is it being in America right now in terms of Everything that's going on, I mean, does it implode upon your personal life? I mean, do you read the papers every day and discover the latest cruelty that your president is inflicting on people? Or what's it like being in, being in California now? [00:50:56] Speaker C: Quite different from how it was back in the 80s. I never moved there then. I used to come over what I call fishing expeditions. I come over and do these workshops and go back and I was working corporations and how do I take what's happening in California, all these new ideas and gently integrate them into the world? Now I'm living here. First of all, that, that's died, it hasn't died away, that's become mainstream. I mean, this course is on no end of different courses on personal development. I mean, I could fall back, you know, exactly that. That's all happening. But your question is how do I handle what is happening in the country in terms of the decay of democracy? Yeah, yeah. I'm in a fortunate situation, which I'm grateful that it doesn't actually affect me individually at the moment. So I glance at the newspapers. I like to keep up with a general sense of the insanity. Not to get up, not to get upset about it. I see certain people reading the newspapers and tearing their hair out and what am I going to do? And getting so angry at this or that person. I just like to keep up with a general, general sense of this, how this Shakespearean comedy is unfolding. For me. As yet it hasn't affected me in any way. That's just because I live in a very fortunate. I now live outside of. I live up in Sonoma, 50 miles north of where you were living, you know, and it's very much more rural and the people I know are much more, you know, they're community orientated, they're down to earth, very compassionate people. So I'm in just a fortunate situation. As I say, I don't. I just like to keep a check on what's going on partly to see if there is something that does affect me or will affect me. I think it's, I think it's the most fascinating time in history to be alive. All my life has been the most fascinating time in history to be alive. To see television come in from then on, you know, and this is like, it just gets more and more intriguing. And this is no way diminish the horrors that more and more people are experiencing around the world. In this country, the people, the less well off people. Not that I'm well off, but people who are the Poor. End of the spectrum. It's awful. And you know, I read just one case of. It just takes one case of reading something just to feel. [00:54:05] Speaker B: I mean, there is something about the capitalist system that is. It's evolved into a system that benefits the rich and is done at the expense of the poor. And it's now being rabbed by the fascistic forces. [00:54:21] Speaker C: But hasn't that always been the case? Hasn't always been the case with capitalism. Why did Jesus throw out the money lenders from the temple? [00:54:29] Speaker A: I would say that capitalism is really a symptom rather than the cause. [00:54:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:54:34] Speaker A: A sense of separation. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Yes. [00:54:36] Speaker A: In turn gives rise for a desire to accumulate possessions and property. [00:54:41] Speaker B: But somehow it's coming to a head now. [00:54:45] Speaker A: It's becoming more extreme. [00:54:46] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Technology. [00:54:48] Speaker C: Yeah. That's why I was saying more extreme, becoming more extreme. [00:54:51] Speaker B: We didn't have trillionaires 20 years ago. [00:54:55] Speaker C: We had billionaires and we worshiped them. When I was a kid, we. When I was a kid, we had millionaires and it's like. [00:55:00] Speaker B: We had millionaires. Exactly. [00:55:02] Speaker C: That's a millionaire. Yeah. It won't be long before we have a quadrillionaire. [00:55:08] Speaker B: When we were kids, Pete, a person who had a million pounds was, was, I mean, extraordinary. Wow. [00:55:16] Speaker C: Exactly. They were a millionaire. And we now, now we have trillionaires. Million times more wealthy. It's just getting more and more extreme. [00:55:25] Speaker B: Well, okay, in extreme, I've got one last question I want to put to you, Pete. Your. Your vision of AI, where it's going to lead us, what you think of all the negative things that are being said about it in the media. What I mean, I know it's something you've thought a lot about. I just wonder, can we talk about [00:55:52] Speaker C: the positive sides as well as negative? [00:55:55] Speaker B: Yes, yes, please. [00:55:57] Speaker C: Because I hear a lot of people talking about the negative side. [00:56:00] Speaker B: Well, you know, that's what I'm asking. Your sort of vision of AI. [00:56:06] Speaker C: I don't know where it's going. I found every vision I've had as a future or most people have is wrong. It's going to go. It's going to develop so fast, we don't know where it's going to be in six months or a year's time. We're going to look back on now and say, wow, I never realized this was going to happen. Just, you know, six months ago, we didn't realize that agentic AI would start hacking other people's websites. We didn't realize that would happen. And now that's happening, becoming almost normal. There's immense dangers of AI. I think this one of AI being loose on the Internet is the most serious danger at the moment. I don't think AI is going to go to war with us. I think there's many fallacies in that. It is dangerous and I don't want to take. But it's also where it can lead us positively is fantastic. I mean, the way it's being used in science now in medicine, for example, you know, there was this thing called, what was it? The Google one Alpha fold. I'm sure you've probably heard of alpha fold, where this was about three years ago. Google has this alpha engine. It was the one actually run at chess. One at chess. Initially it's developed or go. It's one that one go. They. Predicting the shape of a protein as it folds up is really, really critical for analyzing viruses, for developing new drugs in medicine in general, the shape of a protein is the key, Literally the key. How it fits into other amino acids and things. It would take a team of four or five scientists a year to work out how a protein folded. We know the chemistry, we know the string of 100 atoms. They gave 2 million possible protein strings to alpha to alpha fold. It worked out the likely folding pattern, the likely one. It came up with two or three likely folding patterns of every protein. There's now a database. If you're working in molecular biology and you want to know how this particular protein, what, what its shape is, there's a database on it. AI produce that database. It's done the same with metal structures. If you're working on metal structures, whether you're looking for superconductivity or other things, there's a database on how if you add, you know, a little bit of germanium and a tiny bit of aluminum in this proportion to this, you will get. You will get a material that actually has, you know, less resistance, greater structural strength, whatever, in all these areas. Many, many. I'm just quoting two. There's lots of areas where AI is again accelerating, is pushing development in these areas faster and faster, and we've no idea where that's going to lead. [00:59:07] Speaker B: What I don't understand is that if it's a higher intelligence, why do we project on it that it's going to do evil? Surely a higher intelligence will want to do a higher good. Surely a higher intelligence will develop a more unitive way of looking and have. [00:59:31] Speaker A: And not necessarily. [00:59:32] Speaker C: No, no. [00:59:33] Speaker B: I mean, [00:59:36] Speaker A: intelligence can be devoid or divorced from compassion and empathy, can't it? [00:59:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:41] Speaker A: As it was with The Nazis, for example. [00:59:43] Speaker C: Yes. [00:59:44] Speaker A: Or as it always has been with the, you know, the worst regimes in history. [00:59:48] Speaker C: And you're using higher intelligence in the sense of, you know, some better values. Higher intelligence, spiritual, higher. It isn't that. It's probably. It's gonna, it's. It's. It could think many, many, many times faster than us. It can solve problems faster than us. It doesn't have its own value system. It doesn't make. Ah, it doesn't. So it's not. [01:00:12] Speaker B: No. [01:00:13] Speaker C: I mean, it may do in time, but not at the moment. We. That's the whole question of alignment that's going on. The big question in AI is alignment. How do you align the AI with human value systems? That, that's the challenge that people are facing. And that's why these breakouts that have occurred recently, AI going out and hacking other people's websites, that's seen as an alignment issue. So how do we, how do we set the rules for AI? That's the big challenge that people are looking at. [01:00:46] Speaker B: But it seems that those who are setting the rules for AI are those who are the CEOs of the big companies who want to make more money and want to. And want. [01:00:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's the way it is. [01:01:04] Speaker B: What about if you and, and Swami Sacha Dananda and the Maharishi were to have set and Steve were to have programmed. [01:01:18] Speaker A: I don't want anything to do with it. [01:01:19] Speaker C: Yeah, well, first of all, AI isn't programmed. Ah, it's a neural network. It's actually, it's independent. It's not programmed. It's set up. And that's why these people are amazed at what it can do. I'm amazed at what it can do. I use it a lot and I am fascinated by, by things it can do. [01:01:42] Speaker B: You asked, you, you asked it to write a book for you. [01:01:47] Speaker C: Yeah, totally not. Not write a book with me. This came out of some discussions I've been having in Europe with some pretty wealthy people who read my book Forgiving Humanity and said, this is really, really important. It changed their whole view of what they were doing in the world. And they asked me over to meetings. We had various meetings, discussions which I found really fruitful. I discovered some wonderful minds thinking the same way. And at the last meeting, we thought we should write a book on what we've been talking about. It's so important. And when they said we, they appointed. They said, well, you. You're the author. I said, no way, no way. I've just finished a book. And every time I finish a book, I say, I'll never do it again. And then my mom said, well, why did you get AI to help you? And I said, I am not going to write a book with AI helping me. I want any book I write needs to be my own creativity. That night I thought, what the hell, I'm not going to spend any time writing this book. It would be an interesting experiment to see what AI would do on its own. So the next morning we sat down with Claude, because I love the way Claude writes, and we said, we want you to write a book on accelerating change and some of the hidden costs of accelerating change. We want it to be grounded. We want it to be an honest account, not alarmist, but also not too, you know, airy fairy about what, what it is we want to be solid book. We had a conversation with it about an hour, just shaping, telling it what. When we felt we're on the same page, it then said, okay, what's the first chapter? So I said, climate change. We came back with something that stunned us, absolutely stunned us in terms of the cross connections. It was seeing nothing fundamentally new, but it was having insights into what was happening that we found fascinating. So we gave it, in the end, about nine different chapter titles. Nothing else. Didn't any. Any view we had of those subjects. And it came back each time with chapters that stunned us. And we sat there and thought, what do we do with this? And we all felt, this is important. We should get it out, make it more available. We started making it more available and the responses kept coming back. This is really important. Other people should read this. And so eventually we put out various forms. I published it, I have it actually as a real hard copy now, just to make it available. It's not my book, although it has to have my name. [01:04:35] Speaker B: And who did you make its authority in the end? [01:04:40] Speaker C: Technically, on Amazon, it has to have an author, which is either a human being or an organization. It cannot have AI as an author. So it lists me as editor, which is true because I put the chapters together in one place. I wrote a preface so it has my name on it, but right at the beginning it says I am not the author. [01:05:05] Speaker A: Is it available on your website, Peter? [01:05:07] Speaker C: Yeah, it's available on my website. Well, not on my website. It's available. It has its own website, which is the cost of exponential growth. The cost of exponential growth, yes. [01:05:19] Speaker A: All right. [01:05:19] Speaker C: I think it's hyphenated, but I should put it on my website. [01:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure people would like to read I'D like to read it. [01:05:27] Speaker C: Yes. Search. Search for the cost of exponential growth. Actually it's not well linked and it's hyphenated. It's hyphenated. [01:05:37] Speaker A: Fascinating. We're coming to the end of our conversation now. Would you like to ask any final questions, Serge? Or would you like to make any final comments, Peter? I mean, while you're thinking, let me. We like to end our. Our interviews with four simple questions. Partly as a way of decompressing after. So heady. Okay, heady conversations. But also as a way of offering recommendations to people. So the first question we ask is what is your. The most influential or inspiring book that you. That you've read in your life? [01:06:15] Speaker B: Oh, [01:06:23] Speaker C: Most. Which ones? This may sound strange, but A Course in Miracles. [01:06:33] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. [01:06:34] Speaker C: It's not, not a normal book, but I just feel, yeah, it's. It's been a teacher for me. It's essential. Wisdom is right in line with, you know, human masters. It's essentially, it's a non dual teaching. It's really influenced my life. I've read it a number of times and it's influenced me in terms of how I am in the world with people. So it hasn't influenced my thinking much, but it's influenced how I am Beautiful [01:07:06] Speaker A: and how about the same. But in terms of a person, the most influential person in your life or in terms of your teachings and writings? [01:07:15] Speaker C: Oh, in terms of. That comes back to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who started, who brought TM to the West. I studied with him and I would say 50% of what I have to share in the world today comes back from spending time with him and learning from him. And he was very much in the Advaita tradition of Shankara. And that has really, that's been, that has remained fundamental what I learned there. Fundamental to what I have to teach. [01:07:56] Speaker A: And also, what about a place, the most sort of sublime or serene place that you have visited or returned to [01:08:03] Speaker C: for inspiration or for inspiration [01:08:09] Speaker A: or just for a soul, for spiritual sustenance. [01:08:14] Speaker C: West coast of Ireland. Oh yeah, west coast. County Cork Bearer peninsula down there. I love it down there. But there's other places too. I'm sure. Going to the coast here. Obviously. I like coasts. Yeah. [01:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. [01:08:38] Speaker C: Looking at the sea, Just watching the sea. I can watch the sea for hours. [01:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I always find it interesting that I feel such a pull to the ocean. It's almost like I feel like I'm going home. It feels like going home, going to the ocean. [01:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:08:51] Speaker A: And becoming Warm with the ocean can be a spiritual experience. Swimming in the ocean. [01:08:56] Speaker C: Yeah. Not so warm here. But anyway. No, we're on an Alaskan current here. In California, you're on the Gulf Stream. In Europe, you're on the Gulf Stream, which comes up from the Caribbean. Gulf of Mexico. We're on a stream that comes down from Alaska. [01:09:13] Speaker A: I didn't know. [01:09:15] Speaker C: Yeah. That's why people go in wetsuits. [01:09:19] Speaker A: The sea would be warm. [01:09:21] Speaker C: No. [01:09:23] Speaker A: And final question. Music, the same, but in terms of music, the most inspirational music that you've. You could recommend or that you've ever heard. [01:09:32] Speaker C: Inspirational music. I'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. Leonard Cohen was really important. [01:09:48] Speaker B: More. [01:09:49] Speaker C: More in his later years. More in his later years. You know, Fleetwood Max Rumors, for all its history, it was real, it was human. You know, it was basically the dynamics of the relationships and the breakups and what was going on and the feelings amongst the band members. So it wasn't, you know, people singing about love in the abstract or what's wrong with the world. It was gutty, really gutsy. It was like, this is real human relationships. [01:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:29] Speaker C: Being sung about. [01:10:32] Speaker A: I was thinking about Leonard Cohen earlier, actually, when you were speaking about how enlightenment is the lightening of a burden. Because I read a biography of Leonard Cohen and he. He suffered from depression for most of his life, but he was also a spiritual seeker. He went to India a lot to. To study with spiritual teachers. And he said that was. There was just one point in his. When he was in his 60s, I think in his late 60s, where the background of unease and anxiety in his mind just fell away. And suddenly he realized that he wasn't depressed anymore. He was, in a strange way, contented. And it just happened for no particular reason. It just sort of seemed to slip away. [01:11:11] Speaker C: Maybe a result of a lot of the work. And he lived in the Zen monastery as well, I think. I think he spent 10 years at the end. In his end monastery. So I think probably, you know, these things happen. I think as a result of this, the work we do, it's gently loosening up something. Loosening up, loosening up. And then suddenly it's so loose, it just drops away. [01:11:32] Speaker B: And then he had the challenges at the end of his life when his manager took all his money, so he had to go on tour again, which, again, got him out. And. And he found that there was a lot more oomph in him still. [01:11:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:48] Speaker B: By the way, Pete, Steve has just written a book on the creativity of the Beatles called. [01:11:56] Speaker A: Called beyond across the Universe. [01:12:00] Speaker B: Across the Universe. It's a fascinating book. I really recommend it because Steve used to be a musician, so he really. And is reincarnating himself as a. Yeah, [01:12:14] Speaker A: I'm sort of resurrecting my musical career at the moment. [01:12:17] Speaker C: Right, yes. And of course, I'd add. I'd add the Beatles, particularly the. The latter years of their career, when they were not just singing lovely love songs, but actually singing from their hearts and stuff. [01:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. That was the amazing thing about the Beatles, how quickly they evolved from their original style, you know? [01:12:36] Speaker C: Yes, yes, in a year or two. Yeah. [01:12:42] Speaker A: Okay. So sorry, Serge. [01:12:46] Speaker B: Well, Pete, what an honor and pleasure to see you after so many years. And I'm touched by your big heart and your humility and your honesty, and it's lovely to connect with you again. So thank you for hanging out with us. [01:13:11] Speaker C: Well, thank you for bringing me on. And thank you, Steve. Lovely to meet you in person. [01:13:16] Speaker A: You, too. Yeah, thank you very much, Peter. That was an inspiring conversation. Thank you very much. [01:13:21] Speaker C: Great. [01:13:22] Speaker A: All the best. [01:13:23] Speaker C: Okay, bye. [01:13:25] Speaker B: Bye. [01:13:34] Speaker A: Well, search. Yeah, it was a lovely conversation, wasn't it? [01:13:38] Speaker B: A lovely conversation. Absolutely lovely, man. [01:13:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:13:42] Speaker B: I look twice as big as you. [01:13:45] Speaker A: Well, I've become increasingly smaller since we last spoke. No, it's just because you're closer to the screen. [01:13:54] Speaker B: All right. Oh, of course, yes. [01:13:57] Speaker A: But, yeah, that was great. I've always been an admirer of Peter's work, so it was quite. I was quite amazed to finally meet him in person. [01:14:06] Speaker B: Sort of lovely and humble and real. I mean, it's so interesting that all our. All our podcasts are completely different. [01:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It depends entirely on the interviewer, doesn't it? On the interviewee, yes. But what I found striking about Peter, he obviously feels a sense of concern for the human race's predicament, but he. He. He maintains a sense of stability and balance and ease and contentment and presence. Presence, yeah. At the same time as, you know, a sense of activism, you know, a sense of involvement. [01:14:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Steve, are you. Have you got this? Your friend's sort of mother. Have you got her on? [01:15:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:15:05] Speaker A: This is Shakti Durga. She's an Australian spiritual teacher. So we'll speak to her in maybe two weeks or so. [01:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:14] Speaker A: In our next podcast, I think we're speaking to Andrew Harvey, aren't we? Another great spiritual teacher and author. Okay. Should we say goodbye then, sir? Shall we say goodbye to our viewers? [01:15:29] Speaker B: Oh, yes, yes. [01:15:31] Speaker A: We're still recording. [01:15:33] Speaker B: We're still recording. Yeah. Well, thank you, viewers. I hope I hope you enjoyed this. [01:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And just a reminder everybody remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you'll get notifications when videos appear. And you know we, we love to see your comments so feel free to leave comments if you enjoyed the video and were and inspired to. [01:16:00] Speaker B: And in a few days I'm going to be speaking to Steve about his wonderful new book which is very, very exciting and I hope if you can get the technology sort of working that you could even play a Beatles song for us. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we can, we can sing a few. We can sing two or three. Yeah, I'm sure I'll be able to [01:16:22] Speaker B: work maybe you, I'm not quite sure me at this stage but you know you can see we'll have a little practice. [01:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah we can, you can sing along. [01:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll get everybody. Okay. Bye everybody. [01:16:39] Speaker A: Bye bye. [01:16:39] Speaker B: Bye.