Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello there, Serge. How are you, my friend?
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hey, Steve. I'm. I am pretty good. Yeah.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: You look well. You look well.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: I mean, this, this hot. I'm lucky. I'm based in Mallorca, but this hot weather doesn't kill me.
Right? Right.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I'm here in England, where it's quite cool at the moment. It's pleasantly fresh and cool. So that's really. That suits me because I don't really like the sunshine.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Well, that tells us that we're English because we English love to talk about the weather, don't we, Steve?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Well, we're going to be talking about some other things today. Steve, you explain what we're going to be talking about.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: We're going to talk about religion and spirituality today.
The difference, if there is a difference between religion and spirituality. How religion and spirituality can overlap sometimes, how they can be distinct areas that don't encroach on each other. How people can be religious without being spiritual. How people can be spiritual without being religious.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. In fact, I'd like to start with a quote by the Dalai Lama that I really like.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: And here's what he says. Spirituality I take to be concerned with qualities of the human spirit, such as love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, commitment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony.
And there is no reason why the individual should not develop these, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical system.
This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can do without, but what we cannot do without are these basic human qualities.
And, Steve, this is absolutely what I feel. And the question I think to ask ourselves is, how do we access these higher order qualities? Is it possible to access, to access them, as the Dalai Lama says, outside religion? And is it also possible to be part of a religion and not access them at all, at any depth?
Because for me, what I see spirituality as being, and Stan Grof, the father of transpersonal psychology also agrees, is that spirituality is about depth, going deep.
We human beings have an addiction or a fixation with superficiality.
And I don't think that to go deep we necessarily need religion.
And whatever takes us into the deeper dimensions, be it through the world of music. And Steve, you're a musician or the world of being, a novelist or a poet. And Steve, you are also a poet, a healer, whatever it is. If we go deep, then we touch these qualities that the Dalai Lama talks about. And I think that what we need today is the capacity to go deep. To touch love at a deep level, to touch kindness at a deep level, to touch integrity at a deep level.
Do you agree?
[00:04:05] Speaker B: I. I do agree. I think some people obviously don't go deep into religion and that these are the people who are fundamentalists who have a dogmatic approach to their religion, who believe that they have the truth and oppose other people who have different beliefs.
These people are not spiritual. You know, for them, religion seems to be an attempt to reinforce the ego, to support the ego.
I think these people derive a sense of identity from their religion. They derive a sense of certainty because they feel that they can explain the world and that there's something very, very egoic about it. Very, very superficial.
And as I say, I don't think this is where religion and spirituality do not encroach on each other at all. They're very distinct in these people. They're not spiritual.
And on the other hand, there are people who go deep into religion. I think if you go deep into any religion, you do find a spiritual core.
And I think for many people who are deeply religious, their beliefs and practices are a framework for their own spiritual development.
You know, and obviously you don't need that framework. You can be spiritual without any beliefs or practices in particular.
But I think a lot of. A lot of us do need a framework for spiritual development.
And, and when people do access this. This deep spiritual core in religion, they. They do become very spiritual people. You know, I'm thinking of examples, like a lot of the great social activists in human history were very religious people like Martin Luther King, Martin Luther himself, who obviously Martin Luther King was named after Gandhi.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Sorry, Thomas Merton.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, all very, very spiritual people. Even Florence Nightingale, one of the great kind of social activists in, in history. She was a deeply religious person, deeply spiritual person, a kind of Christian mystic.
So, yeah, I think deep in religion, there are, there are, there are, there are some human virtues which we associate with spirituality, like empathy, compassion, honesty, courage.
And I guess these are all the kind of the virtues that we're talking about that we are referring to in Fierce Grace. This is what Fierce Grace is about, isn't it?
[00:06:41] Speaker A: I mean, Steve, if I define myself, I was brought up Christian, and at school I was taught that I shouldn't enjoy myself too much, you know, and that I had to remember that God died on the cross for our sins and that I always needed to remember this and that I should behave myself. And I had priests who talked about love, who gave sermons about love, but I didn't feel that they were connected to the source of that love that they talked about love. And it didn't help make me more loving. It didn't help make me sort of deeper. And for me, I was disappointed in Christianity because I hoped for something that it would give me, but it didn't, or the way that I received it. And so I had to try to find myself outside of that Christian framework. Although I'm very deeply in, in all of Jesus's sacred teachings, as say, they appear in the Nag Hammadi Gospels as a very important. So thank you for pointing that out, Steve. I'll try and be more centered and central now, right?
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
In relation to that, I didn't have a religious upbringing at all. My parents were not, they weren't atheists, but they just weren't interested in religion. There was just no religion in my background. Even at school I didn't know any religious people. I think the only religious person I knew was a Jehovah's Witness at school.
And we had, we had hymns at assembly and prayers, but nobody really really listened to them. We all kind of just giggled through the hymns and prayers.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: So I was never religious.
And I sometimes think, you know, was that an advantage or was that a disadvantage? Maybe it was an advantage because once I began to explore spirituality, I didn't have any preconceived notions or beliefs to contend with.
But maybe if I did have a, if I had had had a religious background, maybe it would have helped me to understand my experiences a little better.
If I'd known about Christian mystics, for example.
You know, when I was younger I started to have mystical type experiences, but I didn't have any idea what was going on. You know, I felt that they were kind of, they offered further evidence that I was a bit crazy and that there was something wrong with me.
But maybe if I'd known about Christian mystics, those kind of experiences would have made more sense.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: I think it's so sad that the Christian sort of mystic is kind of likened to the psychotic as, you know, as sort of being a bit crazy.
And because our normal reality, our three dimensional space time reality that says that the only things that exist are what our five senses tell us exist in which conventional Christianity exists, doesn't allow for, for those kind of experiences that you had, Steve?
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. In general, anybody who has mystical type experiences, anybody who experiences higher states of consciousness or what I call awakening experiences,
[00:10:31] Speaker A: which you've written about in great detail.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Those experiences can be Pathologized easily. A lot of psychiatrists do not understand those experiences, and they immediately think, oh, this is an anonymous. This is an unusual experience. It must be pathological.
It. It kind of diverges from the normal view of reality. Therefore there's something aberrational about it. Yeah, so that's a, that's a real shame.
I mean, I, I hope that there is more when there is a growing awareness in psychiatrists that, that these experiences are, you know, massively positive rather than pathological. Maybe there is a growing awareness.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: But, Steve, what is really aberrational. Oops, wait, this has just fallen out of my ear. Excuse me, but what is really aberrational, for example, is what the Christian nationalists in America stand for.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: There. It's a war to have a very rigid interpretation of the Bible and turning America into a state of white.
Of white Christians only.
And anything that they don't agree with, it's fine to get rid of and destroy and which therefore legitimizes violence. For instance, Pete Hegseth, the American minister for war, he talks about, you know, and he's a big Christian nationalist. He talks about, and we'll kill those Iranians when they're down. We'll kill the evil enemy.
I see that there's something inherently inhuman or unspiritual or undeep about that kind of mindset, but it's taken over a lot of America and it's dangerous.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Anything that is not it or doesn't see the world as it sees it is the enemy.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: He's an appalling human being. He's a psychopath.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: And I think this goes back to what you were saying earlier about deep spirituality equating to depth. These are not people who go deep into religion. They are using religion in an egoic way to support their sense of identity, to strengthen their sense of identity.
And, you know, this is. I think this is one important distinction between religion and spirituality. Religion in this sense, you know, in the kind of fundamentalist sense that we're talking about, is a way of supporting the ego, whereas deep religion or spirituality is a way of transcending the ego.
So it's two completely different things. This is why deeply religious people who are spiritual, they are not opposed to other religions. They don't believe that they possess the truth.
They don't see themselves as enemies of, of Islam or Hinduism or whatever the opposing religions are. They are open to different faiths. They have a very ecumenical perspective. A good example is somebody like Gandhi, and Gandhi was obviously A Hindu, you know, a very religiously devoted person, but he also read the Bible. He read the. He had a copy of the Quran, and he. He believed that there was truth in all religions. And I think, you know, this is. Demonstrate. Demonstrate. Destroy. What's the word I'm looking for? This is demonstrably the case.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Demonstrate.
Yeah, yeah, this is.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. This is obviously the case that all religions contain elements of truth.
As soon as you believe that your religion possesses the truth, then you cease to be spiritual.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: I mean, for me, the worst thing about religion is that it's been used for the most horrendous purposes. I mean, if we look back at our history and the religious wars or the Crusades, where the vile infidel were sort of butchered to death because they didn't believe in Christ, or we look at Putin, who's ordered the patriarch of the Russian church to preach the fact that it is a noble for young men to give their life for their beloved country, sort of Russia that is the know to sacrifice themselves on the altar of a sort of Putin's megalomania.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: And again, it's religion that got those.
Those guys who flew the planes into the twin tires, that they were doing it for Allah.
And, And. And these terrible distortions can come in. That's the. That's the danger that if depth is not there, if integrity is not there, religion can be used for things that are completely inhuman.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Exactly.
I have this model that I call the continuum of connection in my book Disconnected.
And I have the main continuum of connection, which suggests that human nature covers a wide spectrum of. All the way from psychopathy and narcissism, which is a state of extreme disconnection.
That's where the psychopaths and narcissists who often gravitate to political power, they. They are situated in a state of extreme disconnectedness, extreme separateness, where they have no empathy for others. They are completely motivated by their selfish desires.
But at the other end of the continuum, you have extreme connection, extreme empathy, intense compassion, intense altruism and so forth. And this is where enlightened people are situated. Spiritually developed people are situated.
But most human beings are somewhere in the middle between those extremes of disconnection and intense connection.
And you can apply that to religion, too. I also have what I call the religious continuum of connection.
So on the left side, in the extreme disconnected state, you have fundamentalists, ethno nationalist religious people like Pete Hesketh, and, you know, the fundamentalists, the intensely dogmatic fundamentalists who believe that they possess the truth and see other religions as enemies.
But at the other end of the continuum, you have the spiritually religious people, you know, know the people who use religion as a framework for their spiritual development, the people who are inspired by the true teachings of Jesus, which are about compassion, empathy, mercy, forgiveness, all of those higher human virtues.
So in that sense, religion, it covers the whole spectrum of human nature, from intense selfishness and even psychopathy to intense empathy and compassion and enlightenment.
So it covers the best and worst in human nature.
And I think the best and worst human beings use religion as a framework for their state of being or as an expression of their state of being.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: I think that's beautifully put, Steve, which makes me think that really the dark side of religion is expressed by people who've not healed their own inner wounds. I mean, the people who become terrorists, the people who become Christian nationalists, the people who become fundamentalists are emotionally wounded human beings.
And I mean, I don't believe that ego is bad, but I believe that if we have a wounded ego, as opposed to a healthy ego, that that does not serve us. You know, the name of the game is not to kick ego out of the way. The name of the game is to have a healthy ego. So it's our servant and not our master.
And that's why I.
I mean, if I look at my work as a transpersonal psychotherapist, it's kind of spiritual work in a way, because people come to me because they want to feel sort of more abundant.
And again, that.
That. That could be at a financial level. You know, they have difficulty making money, or it could be at an emotional or spiritual level.
And often I have to find what are the blockages, what are the traumas that they are carrying.
And so I think that if more people who go into religion could work through their traumas, their religion could become deeper. Because I think what superficializes us is that we disconnect from the world of our unconscious because. Because our traumas are hurting us. And so we remain at the superficial egoic levels, and then we're subject to all those distortions that we both talked about.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's beautiful. So. So you're saying that because the trauma lies at the deeper level of our being, we're afraid of going there, we remain at the surface.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Well, yes, kind of. We protect ourselves from our pain. And so we.
And so I loved your book on disconnection, by the way. I recommend Steve's book on disconnection. It's an absolutely extraordinary book. And so in order to avoid the pain, because we don't know how to deal with the pain. We cut off. And so we cut off from our depths. And so therefore we're attracted to these fundamentalists, therefore we're attracted to, to become a member of maga, therefore were attracted by, by the false prophets. You remember what we talked about when we had our talk about gurus were attracted to these religions that are not about love, but about.
Well, I don't know what they're about, but they're not about love.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: No, they're about certainty, an identity providing a sense of security.
Yeah.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Insecure, you see? And so we need certainty. The fundamentalist, I mean, I've given talks to some fundamentalist churches and they found me sort of extremely upsetting, you know, and they've, you know, and they've sort of outed me as a, as a sort of heathen of the first.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I, I had an interesting experience just a couple of weeks ago.
I was invited to Northern Ireland.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: To speak at a retreat center which is run by a Catholic order called the Passionists, who I've never heard of before.
So they invited me to, to do a workshop based on my work on transformation through turmoil.
They were interested in learning about post traumatic growth, how trauma can be the trigger for personal development and even spiritual transformation. So I was there for four days. I gave a two day workshop.
And in some ways I was incredibly impressed because I met so many inspirational, truly spiritual people who were expressing their spirituality through their religion and the focus of their lives was healing. They were all healers in a different way.
And I was, I was really impressed because as you, as, as we're all aware, Northern Ireland has a history of, of terrorism and what they call the Troubles. So there's a lot of trauma.
Even though it's now 30 years since the, the Good Friday Agreement, there's still a lot of trauma and there's still some tension in the communities who are not fully integrated.
So all of the, all of the priests, a large part of the audience at this workshop were priests and they were all psychotherapists. They trained or were training to be psychotherapists.
So they saw their role as healers. They were bringing healing to their community in the aftermath of the Troubles.
So, so, you know, in some ways they were.
Yeah, well, they were both religious and spiritual psychotherapists. They were, they were providing healing to the community and they wanted to learn how the trauma of the Troubles could be harnessed for, for positive development. For positive development.
And at first I thought before I went, I thought, oh, maybe these people, what are these people going to think of me? You know, I'm not religious, I'm not a Catholic, I'm not a Christian. What are they going to think of me? But they were completely open, they were, they were completely tolerant. There was only one guy, a bishop came up to me and, and talked to me about Catholicism and wondered why I wasn't a Catholic and, you know, tried to persuade me to become a Catholic. But even he was a lovely guy and he was a. And I went to morning prayer one day and it was a lovely experience.
You know, it made me realize that religion can be a portal to a kind of transcendent dimension in the midst of everyday life. Some people, many people, need some connection to something beyond, something beyond the mundane, something beyond the, the chores and the responsibilities and the troubles of everyday life.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: And not having a religion does not give you that connection every day that you've got to do the work for yourself. Because I was just sort of looking, if I look at my life, I've had to be my own director as to which direction I go. Do I need to go and sit with this guru in India?
Do I need to go and study with shamans to learn more about Earth energies?
Do I need to hang out with the Sufis and learn a little bit more about Sufi mysticism? I've always had to be my own guide. Now for some reason I've had the time and the inclination to do that. And some people don't. And so if they have a church that they can go to, it's of immense help.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it does give them a connection to something beyond the mundane world and that's beneficial to people.
Even if it's only a connection to an ancient tradition which is centuries or millennia, you know, which dates from centuries or millennia ago. There's a connection to something beyond, isn't there? And I think when we're trapped in everyday life, life can become very constricted and suffocating and oppressive.
So I think for some people, religion serves as a connection to something beyond that.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: I mean, for about 20 years, Steve, I taught week long spiritual retreats on themes like living life as a celebration, opening to joy, awakening the heart. And I just thought that, you know, that sort of people needed to enjoy life because we're too repressed and, you know, and us Westerners are afraid of letting go and enjoying life. I now look back and I think, wow, that these were really about spirituality because I help people to connect to the four energies of Earth Air, fire and water.
I, I sort of got them to connect to their deeper inner being.
But at no point did I ever think I'm doing something religious or spiritual, although I think I was probably doing both.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Because, because, because that's what it's about, Steve, that we need to connect to something deeper than our ordinary reality. We need to connect and it doesn't matter how we do it. And it can sometimes be through a terrible trauma as. As. Yeah, and we've spoken about that. And it can sometimes be through incredible joy. I mean, Steve, when my daughter was born, I was a bit scared of my first child and suddenly. And she was taken still attached to the umbilical cord of my wife and put in my arms and I burst into tears and I had this incredible sense of love. And it was the deepest bonding spiritual experience, you know.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: It's sort of valuing those experiences through joy and through pain, because both can take us into the depth and at this time on our planet, there's a lot of pain around.
So we both need A, to know how to activate more heart and joy, and B, learn to go down into and work with the shadow, the dark, the pain, and not repress it.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: That's right. I think, interestingly, the meaning of the term religion, it derives from Latin religio, which means to reconnect. Yeah, in Latin. Yeah. So that, I mean, it's kind of ironic that religion often doesn't do that. It often disconnects people because it provides an ideological dramatic framework that enables people to believe that they possess the truth and they become disconnected from others, disconnected from anybody who, who holds different beliefs. You could also say that religion has a history of disconnecting us to the body.
A lot of religious traditions have a very ambivalent attitude or even a hostile attitude to the body Saint Paul talked about and to the emotions and the emotions. I think that's. This is the egoic side of religion. When you emphasize or strengthen the ego, you separate yourself from the body and the emotions. St. Paul talks about the spirit and the flesh, or the war or struggle between the spirit and the flesh.
A lot of religions have a dualistic attitude that the. The soul and the body are in opposition. That. Oh yeah, first of all, they're separate substances who kind of uneasily live together, like, like flatmates who don't really get on with each other and often have arguments and fights.
But yeah, that, that dualism that's caused a lot of problems in, in human cultures throughout history, created sexual repression, created even you know, hostility to the body.
When we think about the ascetics who used to inflict pain on themselves, I think even now it's a problem in some religious groups, you know, the hostility and ambivalence to the body.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: I mean, why.
Why has there been this war, do you think, Steve? It's because in the past, religion had been taken over by the patriarchal mindset. And now that the divine feminine or the goddess energy that people like Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring are beginning are writing about, that the body and the emotions are beginning to be more included and that and that. And there was a kind of rigidity, you know, because it was entirely patriarchal.
The religions of the.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: I think so, Sergi. I mean, if you look into history of religion, maybe you remember that I wrote a book, the Fall, which was published about 20 years ago, and I looked into that. I have a chapter on the history of God in. In that book.
And I suggest, and this is based on very clear evidence actually, that if you go back 5,000 years in human history, 5,000, 6,000 years in human history, you enter an era before religion, an era before the concept of gods.
And this is reflected in some. Some of the remaining indigenous cultures in the world who are not religious in the sense that we understand. It may. Maybe it's difficult to say nowadays because so many indigenous cultures have been affected by contact with. With colonial influences.
But if you look at indigenous cultures around the world at the time they initially had contact with colonists or the initial anthropologists, none of them were religious in the sense that we understand it.
The Native Americans had a concept of the Great Spirit, which all Native American groups had some term that they used to describe a universal spiritual energy or force that pervaded all things. But it wasn't a God. It wasn't a God who overlooks the world and controls the world. It was an energy. It was a spiritual force which was in all natural things, which pervaded the sky, the air, and which also pervaded human beings. It was also the essence of our beings.
And not just Native Americans, all indigenous peoples around the world had some equivalent term for this universal spiritual force.
And as I say, it was not theistic. It was not a God. This force did not have any personal qualities, did not have a personality.
So that that was the main feature of indigenous worldviews. The other feature was that indigenous peoples believed in spirits in an individual sense. They believed that the air around them, the natural forms around them, were inhabited by spirits. And again, spirits are not personal entities. They're like forces or kind of shades or vapors that can enter our beings and enter natural phenomena.
They also include the spirits of deceased ancestors.
So most indigenous peoples believe that the air around them is full of the spirits of deceased ancestors.
So this was the worldview of all human beings before 5,000 years ago, before referring to 3,000 or 4,000 B.C. and it was only around that time, around 4,000 B.C.
that the first theistic religions developed. Initially, they were polytheistic.
So we know about the polytheistic religious beliefs of ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Do you define polytheistic for those who might not understand that word?
[00:34:59] Speaker B: I think that that means that you believe in many gods, like Hinduism still is polytheistic. There are many gods who overlook different features of human life.
But that's a fairly late development in human history. Obviously, polytheism led to monotheism.
You know, the first monotheistic religion was Judaism. Possibly there were some monotheistic trains in ancient Greece as well. Sorry, ancient Egypt as well.
But theism in general is a late development in human history. And my theory in the fall is that theism was an expression or a reaction to the development of a new sense of ego, a new sense of individuality, which led to a new sense of separateness and a sense of duality.
Because people felt a new sense of separateness and a new sense of duality. They felt vulnerable, they felt incomplete.
And life also became full of new, new suffering.
There was individual suffering that come, the individual suffering that stems from a sense of separateness, a feeling of incompleteness. As I mentioned, a sense of insecurity.
Religion was, was a reaction to that. The belief in God was a reaction to that. There was also the suffering of warfare, oppression, hierarchy and patriarchy, which also emerged at this time.
They did not exist in the past.
Ancient prehistoric human cultures were not warlike, were not theistic, were not patriarchal, were not hierarchical. These are all fairly late developers, new history, and they all emerge at the same time as theism.
So there's obviously a. A very strong link between all of these developments.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah, well, well, I have always been drawn. In fact, if you just hang on a second, I'm going to get a beautiful ancestor figure that I have because I've always collected tribal art. I don't know why I felt moved to it. It's always touched my spirit. And I will bring you a little piece I have that shows when an ancestor dies, they are honored. They go to the craftsmen in the village and say, please make me a replica so I can honor the ancestor who has died. And so these.
These figures get inculcated with a certain kind of power.
And I also have the beautiful staff of protection.
And all these figures, again, as you said, Steve had that protection, sort of. Had that spirit moved into them, and somehow we've lost all this in the modern world.
And what I find is so terrifying is this movement of transhumanism where instead of honoring the deity and sort of trying to give birth to a deeper spiritual sense inside ourselves, a lot of people, you know, and it's led by Musk and the billionaires, they want to upload themselves onto AI and so believe that we have that sort of human, that humanity on its own has failed in its task. And somehow we need to get AI to help us in this next step of evolution.
And I think that sort of. This is very dangerous because it takes responsibility for our development out of our hands and into the hands of.
Of.
Of artificial intelligence.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah, this is.
Again, it's. It's the ego is.
It's living from the center of the ego.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: I'm going to go. I'm going to go and get my statue. And you go on talking. Yeah, okay, just a second.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah. This is just when you're living from the center of your ego, rather from the. Rather than from your deep self.
It's a desire to.
A reluctance to accept the fact that the ego has a temporary existence, that the body has a temporary existence. It's a selfish desire to continue to live forever, you know, a reluctance to accept the reality of life, that life is temporary and fragile.
So it's a. It's a very.
A very destructive syndrome.
If you are. If you accept the reality of life, you flow with life. You accept the fact that life is limited, that the ego and the body will one day pass away, and you gain contact with a deeper sense of self beyond and beneath the ego.
Oh, who. Who is this? Search this.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: This. This is a beautiful ancestor figure.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: About a couple of hundred years old. And he was made to sort of honor.
Honor and. And protect the tribe.
And he's a beautiful figure. And I really feel that he has a protective influence and carries a power.
And again, that's the thing of the indigenous, that they feel that.
That the land and objects carry a power.
And here is another sort of. Another sort of tribal piece of the woman that in the Luba tribe, they believed that the rulers were women, that us men were dependent on the women. So she's holding her breasts, source of nourishment.
But it's lovely to have this in My house.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Beautiful.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Because it reminds me of the true. Of the power of women.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: So these are from Africa. Search.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: It's so sad that we've lost that sense of connection to the power of the landscape.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: And I think nature for us has been desacralized.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: It's been turned into a source of resources.
You know, one. One of the things that Native Americans could not understand when the first Europeans went to the American continent, they couldn't understand the idea that you could sell. Buy and sell land.
There were so many meetings. There's so many records of treaty meetings between Native Americans and European Americans where the Native Americans just basically laugh at the absurdity of the idea that you can sell land or own land.
And they also hated the idea that you could mine land, that you could cut into the earth and use it as a supply of resources that you could tear into the earth to try to find gold.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Because we can do this because we've lost that connection with the earth. So we don't have a feel of the earth. I mean, it's like if we have a. A bad cold, we can't taste food. And so we can be given terrible food and we eat it and we won't notice it. But we've lost that.
Well, we've lost that sense of the sacred.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: Because of the.
You know, that fall, we've sort of fallen into desacralization.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: And somehow the desacralization, the inability to see the divinity in all things, the divinity in. In my dog and in my cats, the divinity in. In.
In my wife, the divinity in myself.
We've somehow been taken over by the desacralization of life. And it's led to. And it's led to all the problems that we have today where greed and power for fame and glory has overtaken.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: That's right. That's right, Serge. Even indirectly, it's led to the fires that are taking place in Spain and France now. Now it's basically led to a sense of duality between us and nature.
A feeling, a drive for the dominance. For dominance over nature, a drive to exploit nature, and a lack of responsibility for the natural world.
One of the things about. One of the things about Native Americans, and not just Native Americans, but all indigenous groups, is that they had a sense of kinship with nature.
In. Some anthropologists actually use the term akin centric ideology.
So you believe that animals are your cousins. You believe that all natural phenomena are related to you. You talk about the mother Earth and you mean it. You mean you literally feel that the earth is your mother and you, you feel that everything around you is connected to you. So that brings a sense of responsibility as well. The same way that I feel responsible for my kids, that I, you know, I have a role to nurture and to, to love my children.
Indigenous peoples feel the same towards the whole of the natural world.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: I studied with indigenous people and they had a. A wonderful chant which we'd start off each day. And it went, the earth is our mother.
We must take care of her. The earth is our mother, exactly. We must take care of.
You know, and then we play the drums. And that whole shamanic sense is returning. And I think that this is a good thing because.
Because the weapon that. That needs to be used to defeat what is happening in the world and destroying the world at this moment is not sort of greater, you know, thinking as to how to deal with politics and war, but a greater spiritual sense. And I've just written a book, it's with the publisher saying that what is needed to heal our planet today is the spirit of the spiritual warrior.
And the, and the spiritual warrior we get in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Sen.
You know, the Zen warriors, the samurai. It's a kind of spiritual warrior hood that has a toughness and a core and an integrity.
The spiritual warrior is willing to be uncomfortable. The spiritual warrior is willing to face suffering. The spiritual warrior operates with integrity, with resoluteness. The spiritual warrior operates with mindfulness. They live from their heart.
We need to develop this kind of fierce spirituality that the warrior is not against life. It's not the warrior like Pete Hesketh, that's a bogus kind of warrior. But the warrior is a warrior for life.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And for the earth.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Fight for, not against. Who will fight for the earth? Who will fight for human rights? Who will fight for the well being of women? Who will fight for the reinstatement of democracy.
Because we're involved now in a kind of.
In a struggle between those forces that want to destroy the world in an Armageddon like way and those forces that want to build a new and better world.
[00:48:05] Speaker B: That's beautiful, Serge.
I sometimes call this the transform movement.
We are beautiful.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: I suggest in my book the Fall, it's been happening for around 300 years. The transform movement has been underway. It started with the romantic movement in the second half of the 18th century, which was also the time of the Enlightenment, the time of ideals of democracy, the beginning of the animal rights, the women's rights movement. The anti slavery movement, all of these movements occurred at this time.
And I think what it is, is it's a reconnection with nature.
It's a reconnection with our own deeper being.
It's a reconnection with other human beings.
It is a movement towards connection.
It's definitely happening now, but there is still a lot of extreme disconnection in the world. I think the disconnected world is resisting this rising movement of connection.
And there's a conflict.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: Yes, it's very threatening.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Yes. So the, the disconnected world is becoming more rigid.
It's feeling threatened, so it's becoming more aggressive.
And that's why there is this resurgence in the far right at the moment, I think in nationalism, that they're feeling threatened because of the rising movement of connection.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: It's so interesting how there's something in us human beings that, you know, just as there's a pull in all of us to become more fully human, there's also a fear against becoming more.
More fully human. And so, and, and, and in psychology, it's called a repression and a fear of the sublime, that we fear being the beautiful, alive, whole human being that we, that we truly are, that we fear what is best in us. And so we take refuge, many of us, in what is worst about us.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: And yet it's not happy. If one looks at the fascists, if one looks at Putin, who's perhaps the richest man in the world, do we see a happiness there? Do we see an authenticity?
No. We see human beings who are completely disconnected from their true essence, who are this. Who are inauthentic. They're not coming from their true essence or their true being. They're not.
And, and that doesn't make us feel good or happy or whole. And so to bridge and so to fill that emptiness of disconnection that you talk about, Steve, we try to fill it with false pleasures, with, you know, more money.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: Sort of bigger yachts, more, more, more expensive artwork on the wall. You know that the whole world of billionaires is sort of taking us over and they're assuming more and more.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: This needs to be, this needs to be addressed. I've tried to address it in my book.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: Right.
If you, if you feel a sense of separateness, there is a desire to accumulate things to compensate for that sense of separateness. So people feel a desire to accumulate money, power, possessions, but it never works. It never takes away that sense of separateness.
It never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. It just creates a greater feeling of frustration.
Ultimately, a Greater sense of lack, which ultimately leads to frustration, depression and even self destruction. You know, at the end of that process, people often end up incredibly, you know, with incredible self hatred and incredible hatred to others as well. It always ends in chaos because it stems from a sense of separation.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: And I think we need to be aware of the great despair and depression amongst many of those men. And they're mainly men who are leading the world at this moment.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Like one thinks of Trump, who somehow belongs to the whole world. You imagine him alone, you know, at night, sort of, you know, unable to sleep, eating another hamburger like Elvis Presley and you know, and sort of, and kind of getting onto his truth social and sort of sort of writing new messages of, you know, of how he's going to invade Iran. That there must be an unhappiness and a despair inside this man.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Of course, he's an extremely disconnected person. You know, he's at the far end of the continuum of connection in a state of extreme, extreme separateness. And then he manifests itself in his.
Sorry, Serge.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, Steve. And there needs to be a compassion for him because I think it's really, really important that, that, that we learn from, from Gandhi's doctrine of Satyagraha that when he met the, the English, he said to them, I hate what you have done to my beloved country, but I honor the humanity and the divinity inside you as another human being. I don't hate you as a human being, I hate what you've done, but I honor the divinity. And I think that this is really important so that we don't get into another polarity with the fundamentalists, the Christian nationalists, but somehow we sort of honor them as fellow human beings who.
But sort of not in any self righteous way. Well, I'm superior to them because I'm not.
But, but somehow sort of honor the difficulties that they have.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: And so sort of how can we sort of operate with strength and compassion? I think this needs to be the new religion. I think that a new kind of spirituality or a new kind of religion is emerging.
Could I just read for a couple of minutes sort of something that I wrote in my book?
[00:55:12] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: About a new spirituality or a new religion emerging.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I was going to ask. Serge, we're moving towards the end of the, this dialogue. But yeah, I was going to ask about.
We both feel that there is a process of healing underway. The Transform movement.
[00:55:33] Speaker A: The Transform.
[00:55:34] Speaker B: Do we feel that religion can contribute to this or religion is an obstacle to this. So maybe, maybe this will.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Okay. As I see it 21st. Spirituality must move ever further away.
Or I think I could say 21st centuries century religion must move ever further away from the idea that it be about denial, repression, deprivation, nationalism, exclusivity and sacrifice, and the despising of those who see the world differently from us. These characteristic only serve to keep us manacle to our disconnectedness, fear, guilt and aggression.
Indeed, I would like to see a new, joyful, celebratory and inclusive spirituality begin to arise in the world. A spirituality that includes joy?
No, a religion that includes humor, joy and laughter and which delights in being celebrated in all the arts and in dance and music and theater and embraces the notion that we're all united in the mind and heart of divine consciousness which lives both inside and outside of ourselves.
I would also like to see all religions being stripped of their institutionalisms and dogmas that are such a source of violence and hatred in the world, together with a gradual moving away from all the fundamentalisms which are so corrosive and dangerous. I would like to see new dimensions of soulfulness arising as a powerful force of freedom. Banishing totalitarianism and embracing women's rights and embracing all gay and trans people and honoring the fact that all of us humans are linked together, are all aspects of one collective being, whatever our skin colors, nationalities, sexual preferences or beliefs.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: Beautiful, Serge, that's profound and beautiful. Thank you.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: Thank you.
That's.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: I. I would. Yeah, I would agree with every word of that.
I think my own perspective is pretty much the same. But I would say that in a sense we're going to move beyond religion in the sense that we had. We had a pre religious age.
We're going to move into a trans religious age.
I think we are moving into that.
As we said earlier, I think religion has a very positive role. It can harness people's deepest spiritual impulses, it can provide a framework for spiritual development.
And these are the greatest aspects of religion, the inspirational aspects of religion that can inspire the most positive, the highest, most noble human deeds, as we know from many examples throughout history.
But there is also the very negative side of religion when people use it as a support for the ego, when people identify with a particular belief system and believe that they possess the truth.
So I think as the human race evolves, we will gradually we'll certainly move beyond fundamentalist religion, beyond egoic religion. We'll move closer towards a deep religion as you described it, but also we'll move beyond religion.
I think ultimately, when you feel a sense of connection to the cosmos, to nature, to other beings, all other forms. When you feel that sense of oneness, you don't really need religion, you don't need the security of any belief system, the certainty of any belief system.
You just exist within that oneness with a sense of compassion for all of the beings, a sense of responsibility towards the earth and other natural phenomena.
And yeah, as I say, at that point you move beyond any religion.
I think that's the place that we are ultimately moving or evolving towards.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: Beautifully said, Steve. And I'll just finish by saying that what both of us share is that we believe that a new humanity is going to be born. That this is not the end, that. Yes, it's the end of a certain phase of our civilization, it's the end of a particular era.
And we both feel that this century is going to be challenging. That's why we. Our little podcast is called Fierce Grace. But we believe that out of the darkness, out of the difficulties, out of the suffering, out of the death of the old, that something new and beautiful is going to be born.
And you have a beautiful poem about that, Steve. I wonder, would you be able to. To remember it or to. Or to find.
[01:01:04] Speaker B: You mean the human race will rise again?
[01:01:07] Speaker A: Yes, and you can just finish on that, on that positive note, Steve, because it's so lovely. Okay, Steve. Steve is a wonderful poet.
[01:01:19] Speaker B: I'll see if I can find it. Oh, here we go. I'll read a couple of verses of it.
[01:01:23] Speaker A: Read a couple of verses, yeah.
[01:01:31] Speaker B: The human race will rise again as the cold, hard, masculine mind opens to the soft, warm spirit of the feminine, as our solid, frozen selves begin to melt and merge with nature again.
And selfishness gives way to empathy, hierarchy to equality.
And the impulse to connect transcends the desire for control.
And we will be part of the whole again and know the harmony of belonging and the peace of participation.
The human race will rise again as our senses wake from centuries of sleep and nature shines with sacredness again.
And we're dazzled by the world's pristine beauty and the depths of meaning which open up beneath the old flat surface of reality.
The human race will rise again and is slowly rising now.
Balance is returning. A new structure is emerging, patterns of vibrant new colours and shapes.
An order that's stronger because it incorporates chaos, a sanity that's deeper because it arose out of madness.
The human race will rise again and life will no longer be a frenzied struggle full of stress and fear, but a rich, glorious adventure full of grace and ease, no longer a punishment to be endured, but a privilege to be savored.
We were born for wholeness and we will be whole again.
We were born for joy and we will return to joy.
The human race will rise again.
Thank you, Serge.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: Thank you, Steve.
[01:03:31] Speaker B: Thank you for your inspiring words and this inspiring dialogue.
[01:03:35] Speaker A: Thank you for your beautiful poem.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: Thanks for listening and watching, everybody. Yeah, all best wishes and blessings.
[01:03:44] Speaker A: And we've got some very interesting people we're going to be interviewing in the future, so sort of. So stay in touch.
Hi.
[01:03:57] Speaker B: All the best, everybody.
