Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hey Steve, how are you?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: I'm fine, thanks. Yeah. What about you?
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Good. I've just come back from Austria where I've been hanging out in some nice hot springs with my wife.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Oh, very nice.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Those kind of things that make you all sort of nice and healthy.
And I love the Austrian food. And I realized that if I lived there I turn into a big fatty puff because I love all that. All those Zacher Torti and artful strudel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: They're very. They're very good at cakes, aren't they? Cakes.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: They're great at cakes. Gate at cakes and Venusnitzel.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Right, right, yeah.
Sorry, sir.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
So where have you been?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Well, I. I was in Germany for a holiday, you know, not far from Austria because I used to live in Germany. So I looked up some old friends and hung out with some old friends.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: That's when you were a musician, isn't it?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: That was when I was a musician, yeah. I traveled to Germany if this would have been in the early 90s with my band.
We did a tour of Germany.
I met a girl in a town where we played the Old Story, I guess. And I ended up living with her in, in a town called Hala in eastern Germany.
And I settled there for four years and joined other bands, played music, used to go busking on the, on the subway in Berlin or the S Bahn in Berlin to earn money. So it was a kind of. I lived a kind of hand to mouth existence kind of outside the outside normal society, just sort of.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: So really Steve, your new life. Well, you've been in your new life for a long time as a writer and psychologist and university teacher. Sort of emerged out of, out of having been a musician. I mean, I tell you, it reminds me of my new hero, who is Patti Smith. I always loved her rock and roll music. And she's written the most incredibly sensitive books about her relationship with the author, with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and her life in the whole sort of burgeoning counterculture. And she's the most sensitive poet. I don't know if you saw her on the Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan. He didn't turn up. And she sang Song to the Nobel Contingent Desolation Road by Bob Dylan.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I didn't see that.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely beautiful. But she's so, so sensitive. She's my new hero.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Right?
She's.
She's interesting because she's one of the. There aren't many poets and singers. She's one of the singers who are also poets, like Leonard Cohen's another example.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Well, exactly, exactly. You know, and there's not sort of many sort of pop singers who are inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame and have the highest awards, they.
The highest sort of medal that is given in France, the Croix.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Wow.
Yeah. Well, I've been. I've been writing about one of my heroes. I've always been a big admirer of D.H. lawrence. And I started kind of spontaneously writing a book about him about two months ago.
So it's kind of overtaken me. Overtaken me. And I've been writing very intensely on this new book on D.H. lawrence, who was also a great poet. A lot of people know him as a novelist, but to me, he was a great poet, particularly in the last phase of his life when he was dying of tuberculosis, from which he died at the age of 44.
In the last months of his life, he wrote a lot of really beautiful spiritual poems about death and about the spiritual fulfillment he was experiencing in the face of death and about the glory of being alive in the present moment.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: So how interesting, isn't it, Steve, how many great creative people find greater life emerging as death beckons?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that was the, you know, in terms of D.H. lawrence, that was maybe the. The important factor in his whole life because he was always close to death. He almost died when he was two weeks old. He wasn't expected to survive childhood. I mean, a lot of children did die young in the 19th century when he was born. And every few years he had a serious illness like pneumonia and almost died. So he was always kind of hovering on the brink of death. And I think that death awareness was the main factor in his consciousness. I think it was a stimulant to perceive the world in a very intense way.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: How really interesting, because it's the same with Patti Smith, who is a very ill child. She had tuberculosis, you know. You know, and was always being ill as a child. And then as she grew up, all those closest to her died. And so she too. And so her great life, her poetry came again in the shadow of death, which sort of makes us realize, Steve, how close life and death are.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I've always thought that human beings, most human beings take life for granted. We don't realize that we are mortal. There's a part of our consciousness that kind of thinks, ah, I'm actually immortal. I'm not going to die. And we live from day to day, kind of ignoring the fact that death is a reality and that we could die at any moment. We are going to die but there's some sort of mechanism in our consciousness that switches us off to the reality of death.
But when we, when we, we are forced to become aware of the reality of death through maybe a bereavement or a serious illness or an accident, then everything can change. We can really wake up to the preciousness and the temporariness of life.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Because inside, you and I, Steve, ourselves are dying all the time.
So death is really interwoven with life. Which actually brings us to what we'd like to explore a little bit more today.
That is what's going to happen for the rest of this century. Steve, is humanity going to make it?
Is death going to lead to resurrection? Are we going to break through, as Jim Morrison said in his Psalm? Are we going to break on through to the other side?
Or are we rapidly on a downward spiral?
I mean, my friend Pete Russell, for example, wrote a book called the Awakening Earth. And he doesn't believe that humanity is going to pull through because of our species relentless drive to exponential growth.
And he says that our innovations create feedback loops that accelerate change ever faster. But our brains are wired to think in linear terms, so we're unable to grasp the consequences. You know, and I think about AI. This runaway pace of development, he says, creates an escalating stress on personal, social and planetary systems, making systemic breakdown increasingly likely. And Pete doesn't assign blame. You know, that's why he called his book Forgiving Humanity. He suggests this is an inevitable fate for an intelligent, technologically empowered species, and eventually the pace of change will overwhelm our ability to adapt, leading to breakdown and unlikely extinction.
Well, what do you think about that, Steve?
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Agree to an extent. But I think the essential problem is even simpler than that.
I think even though it seems quite simplistic, all of the problems that we're facing as a species can be traced back to one distinct cause, and that is ego separation.
And I think as I expressed it in my book before, there was a certain point in, in history, or rather pre history, when human beings developed a strong sense of separation. I called it the ego explosion.
Before then, human beings did not experience themselves as separate individuals. They, they had a sense, I'm sure they had a sense of individuality, but they didn't perceive themselves as separate. They didn't live in duality.
And I think this happened around 6000B. Sorry, 6000 years ago, 4000 BC there was a certain point when human beings seem to develop a new sense of individuality and that there are lots of cultural signs of this. Suddenly you get Hierarchical societies. You get wealthy individuals who are buried with lots of wealth and possessions rather than communal burials, and suddenly you get patriarchy, which arises at this time.
Also, warfare develops at this time. Early human beings were not warlike and they were also not patriarchal. Early human societies were egalitarian, both in terms of gender and in terms of social classes. Well, there weren't any social classes, but there were lots of signs that a sense of individuality developed at this time. And that's when social chaos erupts. That's when warfare, patriarchy, hierarchy and oppression erupt also. This is when the human beings first become theistic. They start to believe in, in gods who are overlooking the world.
And, and that sense of separation also had some positive effects. It, it also led to a new sense of an acute intellectual ability, a new ability for abstract and logical thinking, or an enhanced ability for logical and abstract thinking, which gave rise to a lot of new inventions, a lot of technical technological innovations.
But still, now we are facing suffering the consequences of this ego separation.
The illusion that we are all separate from each other, that we are separate from the environment, we are separate from nature, we even separate to our own bodies. You know, we are egos that inhabit our own bodies.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Well, what you're saying, Steve, I mean, I know like me, you're positive about the future, but what you're saying is not very positive. You know, what you're saying is that we're as a species where, sort of hampered down, we're tied down, where we're held in, in harness by our demented egos.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Therefore demented egos is a good way of saying it.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, by our demented egos. And now what's happening is that the billionaires seem to be taking over the world who seem to have an agenda that is mainly in their own interest. It's pretty Armageddon oriented, but it seems to be that they're all, you know, a lot of people today think the world is coming to an end.
You know, the Peter Thiels, the multimillionaires, and they're all building their billionaire bunkers for themselves.
And, and the, the fundamentalists think that the end of the world is coming and they'll be lifted up to heaven. You know, Jesus will come in a sort of jumbo sized UFO craft and sort of lift them up because they're the chosen ones so that sort of miserable sinners like you and I can rot in hell.
And, and first there's a lot of Armageddonism, if there is such a word, Steve. That is implanted in the fascism and populism that we're seeing emerging in the world today, which doesn't look, you know, which does not look healthy.
Coupled with the fact that all the wars we're in at the moment, that Ukraine and Russian and.
And America and Iran and what's happening in. In the Gaza Strip, they're all beginning to link up together into a.
Into a world war.
Things.
We have to accept that things don't look good. Right.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: No, that's true.
But we also should take the long view. I mean, human beings for the last 5,000 years or so have constantly fought wars.
You know, the last 5,000 years have been an era of complete chaos and conflict and pathology.
You know, it's slowly spread around the world over the last 5,000 years. Hierarchy, patriarchy, warfare, conflict, and other forms of suffering.
In my view, the basic problem is that when you exist as a separate, isolated ego, you feel that something is missing. You feel like something is lacking.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: And you. You feel a desire to accumulate. So you want to accumulate power, wealth, to add something to yourself. Take away.
Yeah, to take away this sense of lack. And the more separate you are, the. The stronger that impulse is. So you have the. You know, the most separated, disconnected people are the ones with the strongest desire for power and wealth, and they're leading the world. Oh, yeah. They inevitably rise to the top because they have the strongest desire. And so, you know, you end up in this situation as you described, Serge, where, you know, our world is dominated and led or governed by these extremely separate and disconnected people.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: So it does not look. You and I are both optimists and idealists and visionaries. I think we can sort of give ourselves these. These roles. We've both written books about how we're gonna break, how we are going to break on through. But, you know, everything that you've just said kind of adds to the difficulty.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I. I mean, I. I would say that I am a pessimist and an optimistic. You know, I have mixed feelings.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: A possibilist, maybe? A possibilist.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: A possibilities.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: A pessy optimist, maybe.
Well, I. I would say that there are signs of optimism, and I. I can trace them back to about 250 years ago.
Again, this comes from my book before and also my book, the Leap. I suggest that about 250 years ago, a change in consciousness began to arise.
If you look at the second half of the 19th century, it was an amazing time. There were so many social advances, so many progressive movements that happened that occurred or developed at that time.
So first of all you have the movement for democracy and equality represented by the French Revolution, the American Constitution.
You have the Romantic movement in poetry, in music and art, and then you have social advances like the beginning of the women's rights movement, the animal rights movement, the anti slavery movement. They all arose at this time.
So it was, it was as if there was a new sense of empathy spreading around the world.
And I, I call this the transform movement. It was a moment when people began to transcend the separate ego. They began to empathize with one another, to feel compassion for each other's fights or predicaments.
So it was a new sense of connection between human beings which arose to arose which gave rise to all of these new social movements.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: And so, and so these movements are happening underground. I think it's interesting that our social media does not talk about these things. All we get sent, you know, the price of houses, the latest disaster and how many people have been killed in, in Ukraine or Russia. That's the, that's what's on the news.
So we don't have a positive news. I'll tell you, Steve, about, about 40 years ago, me and couple of friends, we tried.
We, we realized that the Vogue magazine in England had an issue on Tibetan Buddhism and it sold more copies of the Vogue magazine than it had ever sold. And so we thought let's get together and start a positive magazine, you know, and, and we got some money together. It actually never happened.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Oh right.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: It actually never happened because our sponsors in the end thought that it wasn't going to work. And so this vision sort of didn't happen.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: That's a shame.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: But, but the movements that you're talking about, they're all kind of a little bit undergroundy or counterculturally I think. Do you think, or are they enough out in the open?
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Well, they, they've definitely been growing. Yeah, I mean, think the thing about the Romantic movement was that it was a sudden upsurge in emotion and it expressed a sense of connection to nature, but also to human beings own inner beings. It was the first time that poets and musicians had expressed their emotions fully in their art. It was as if there was a barrier that broke down.
And I think since then it has grown. If you look at the 20th century, there have been a lot of positive developments. There's been an increasing acceptance of the body, an increasing sense of connection to the body, you know, a transcendence of sexual repression.
If we went back to the 1930s, we'd be amazed at people's attitude to sex. It was so repressive and so kind of guilt ridden, but also a sense of connection to nature. When you look at the.
In the 20th century, the environmental movement, it expresses a sense of connection to nature and a sense of responsibility to nature that I think ultimately comes down to a sense of empathy, you know, a transcendence of separation.
And it's. It sort of. It recalls indigenous people's attitude to nature. A feeling that you have a responsibility to look after nature and that nature is in some way part of your being.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Well, Steve, if we were all born into indigenous tribes where.
Where the ego we learned was a unitive ego that we're connected to other people, were connected to our planet, we wouldn't have the problems that we have today. It feels as if today, Steve, my sense is that we are moving into a whole new world and those movements you talk about are happening. But in order to get there, we first have to face the shadow or the darkness of all the unworked through evil that humanity has experienced through the ages. In other words, the. I know that in my individual class, if they're going through a breakthrough, they often have to face what in their shadow side is standing in the way. What in them? Fears, joy, why they feel afraid of being free, why, why?
Intimacy is a difficulty they've got to work through what stands in the way of the moving forward. And it seems as if what is happening in the world, Steve, is that everything that humanity has not worked through, has not integrated, is now coming up to see us. I think there's a poem.
Thank God this time is now when wrong comes up to face us, never to leave us, till we take the greatest step of soul man ever took. I forget the name of the poet.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Christopher Fry.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, Christopher Fry. Exactly. Thank you, Steve. And somehow we're being faced with this because somehow at the moment, there's three things that disturbed me.
One, AI and where it's going to lead us.
Two, the fact that the billionaires are having more and more power and even with political parties.
And three, the fact that war is now more prone everywhere on the planet than it's been in the last, you know, ever since the end of the first of. Of the second World War. And so there's a lot of darkness there, there's a lot of evil, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of suffering around us.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: That's true. But again, you could take a more positive view.
Like I said before, the human race's history for the last 5,000 years has been completely full of suffering and chaos and conflict and oppression.
Well, let's say if I was born a thousand years ago, I would have lived a terrible life. I would have been a peasant. I would have never left my village. I would have been enslaved to my landlord, who could send me off to war any moment. I would have probably. There was a good chance I would have died of starvation or disease as a child.
My life would have been absolutely horrible. And the same probably applies to 95% of human beings alive now.
Life has always been incredibly full of suffering for human beings for the past few thousand years. So in some ways there's actually less suffering now. I think for many people, more people have leisure time. It obviously depends where you are in the world. But I mean, I was reading about, going back to D.H. lawrence, I was reading about child mortality rates in the 19th century. Child mortality rates were incredible. You know, like 30 or 40% of children died before the age of five.
And tuberculosis, for example, killed one in five people before they reach their natural lifespan.
So there are some positive advances. Lifespans have increased over the past few decades massively for human beings.
So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of negativity, but we shouldn't forget the positive developments too.
And I mean, the reason why I have some optimism is because I think there is a process of collective awakening happening.
And again, I think it began about 250 years ago and it slowly intensified. Even though, as you say, Serge, it's kind of slightly underground. But I think it is intensifying.
More and more people are having spiritual experiences. More and more people are following paths of spiritual development.
And I think this is the most, maybe the most important thing which I found in my own research.
More and more people are having spontaneous awakenings in the midst of suffering and turmoil.
I call that transformation through turmoil. And it's almost as if there is something. There is a kind of latent awakened self in the collective human consciousness which is slowly unfurling, if you like.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: I absolutely agree that while one world is. Is sort of collapsing, is unraveling. I've. I've just written a new book about how to regenerate an unraveling world. Whilst one world is falling apart, a new world is beginning to come up. And I think that both these things are happening at the same time. I'll just read what the Bulgarian spiritual master Peter Dunov wrote. We are now entering a new phase. A great future awaits you for those who fulfill God's law. I. E Live with harmony and wholeness.
Great opportunities awaken us. One day every one of you will receive an inheritance that has awaited you for century.
Every person needs to develop the latent path within them that all the endowments which the divine has bestowed upon them may be fostered.
God has imparted to every man one primary gift he needs to, to.
To develop.
When man develops his deeper self, he'll be able to enter into communication with the advanced beings from the invisible worlds. I mean that's pretty cool stuff, Steve. And you well have both.
All our lives being, being involved with the transformational movement. I mean I was part of the cult to culture in America where, where, where a human potential movement was, was growing. And we all came, you know, together to explore how can we evolve deeper aspects of ourselves. How can we be the full human being that we really are becoming? And my sense is, and this thesis is backed up by Duane Elgin in his great book, I think it's called Awakening Respecting Earth or Awakening Earth. And Chris Bash and his new book is that somehow as we move into the light, that the suffering around us is going to be part of our transformation.
And this is a theme we've talked about. I just like to quote Duane Elgin, something he said in his book. It's the immense suffering of millions, even billions of precious human beings coupled with the destruction of many other life forms. Forms that will burn through our complacency and isolation, suffering. And here's the key point is the psychological and psychic fire that can awaken our compassion and fuse individuals, communities and nations into a cohesive and consciously organized global civilization.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Wow, that's amazing.
That's beautiful.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: And Chris Bash says basically the same thing.
And he feels that.
He sees the species mind as a unified psychic field.
And that this field, he writes, will be driven into a tumultuous stage state by the suffering generated by a monumental global ecological crisis.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: And that in this hyper aroused state, the species mind will exhibit the capacity for rapidly accelerated change, heightened creativity and higher self organization.
In other words, the human psyche is going to become alive at new levels and the interconnections that that are previously not realized will begin to happen.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sorry Serge.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Yep. No, I just finished this point. And he says the whole system will become alive at new levels. As if the eco crisis had allowed new and deeper levels of self awareness to spring into being everywhere. New social institutions spring into expression, new ways of thinking, new values that had been, that had only been discovered through the crisis.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that, that speaks to me about, you know, as individuals, we, we often undergo growth and transformation through suffering. And obviously that applies collectively too. It reminds me that I had a spiritual teacher here in Manchester where I lived, a guy called Russell Williams.
And somebody said to him once, why did you. He was originally from London. Somebody said to him, why did you settle in Manchester?
And he said, in Manchester there's a, there's a powerful spiritual vibration. You know, there's a powerful spirituality in the atmosphere. And I thought in Manchester, you know, Manchester is pretty, not very, not very attractive industrial city.
You know, it's a city with a lot of overcrowding and some crime and so forth. But then he said, Manchester is a spiritual place because there's been so much suffering here. Because it was the center of the industrial revolution. There was so much suffering from the people who worked in factories and mills. There was so much poverty and hunger. And that, that suffering has created a, created a spiritual resonance.
And. Yeah, so that's maybe an example of what you're talking about.
But I think if you look back at evolution right from the beginnings, you know, to go beyond the human race, maybe it's important to think beyond the human race. We are just one species. There are millions, billions of species on our planet.
If you go back to the beginnings of evolution, right from the first single celled creatures, amoebi, they had a little bit of consciousness. They were aware of their environment to an extent.
And as life became more complex, as more cells grouped together to form more complex living beings, and those cells became more interconnected, living beings became more conscious.
And that happens all the way through evolution. As living beings become more physically complex, they also become more conscious.
So you end up with beings like us, with 100 billion brain cells, all incredibly interconnected in very, very complex ways. We also have a very intense form of consciousness.
Probably there are some other animals who are as conscious, as intensely conscious as we are, like dolphins or perhaps some, some whales, some other animals.
So all the way through evolution, you have this expansion of consciousness as living beings become more complex.
And that, I think maybe what's happening now can be seen as part of that process.
Human being. I think human beings are becoming more intensely conscious. Our consciousness is slowly opening.
We're slowly opening to each other, to nature and to our own beings. And in a way that, that's part of the whole evolutionary process. This, this process of opening and expansion.
And that process will continue even after the human beings. Even if we survive our present difficulties and challenges and crises, even if we become extinct, other species will arise who become more Conscious than us. That process is going to continue long after we've disappeared.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Well, do you think we're going to disappear?
[00:34:01] Speaker B: I.
I think. I'm not clear. I think there are some positive trends and negative trends. It's a question, Steve.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: I quote from you. You said the human race will rise again. The chaos isn't inevitable. The evil that flows from us so easily isn't innate.
Our discord, our discords, our distortions, not permanent conditions, symptoms of a disease which one day will be cured.
You are very optimistic. Well, Steve, I was.
Ah, so are things.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: I was in an optimistic frame of mind when I wrote. Well, as I said, I'm optimistic and pessimistic. So there are those optimistic trends. We are going through a process of awakening.
For me, it's a question of time. It's a question of whether the. That process of awake, of awakening can occur in time before the negative forces manifest themselves more destructive.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Aren't they manifesting themselves?
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Well, they are, yeah. I mean, that's part of the problem. But whether those negative forces is a question of whether awakening can occur before those negative processes have a really catastrophic impact. They're starting to now having. Well, they are starting to.
Well, they are starting to.
But, you know, who knows in 50 years what will be left? You know, what situation will. Will we be facing?
Peter Russell, as you said earlier, Serge, he believes we're going to become extinct. But I don't think it's cut and dried. I think there is a chance that we will undergo an awakening, a collective awakening before a catastrophe occurs.
What do you think?
Well.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Well, the Hopis had their prophecies, and they, and they believe we suffered three previous world catechisms. The first time the world was destroyed by fire, then by ice, and then by a deluge. And the hope is, say, that these cataclysms were brought about by our disregard for our planet and not living to spiritual and ethical worldviews. And the Hopi elders say that we're now living in a fourth world and that when these cataclysmic events begin, which I see they are, we're now in the middle of them.
We will have a chance if we follow the wise way, which they described as the not zigzag way, I. E. The zigzag way being the way of the fascists, the materialists, and the transhumanists.
So that I see that we have a huge responsibility, you and I, to not walk the zigzag way and to somehow use these difficulties as stepping stones to awaken our Consciousness.
And again, Steve, I quote you, your thesis is always that, that we use the problems of the world in order to grow. And spiritual development doesn't happen through escaping the world by choosing to enter it ever more fully.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: That's right.
I think everybody has a responsibility.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: I often say, I've often said in my books that when one person undergoes spiritual development or spiritual awakening, it helps the whole human race to move closer to awakening.
And it goes back to our fundamental interconnection. We share a collective being.
So when changes occur within that being, it affects everybody.
And that's one of the positive signs that there are millions of people around the world following paths of spiritual practice, some who are undergoing some form of spiritual development.
And that makes it easier for everybody to undergo spiritual development.
You know? You know, and maybe, I guess this goes back to what Chris Bass was saying earlier when you quoted from him. Maybe we will move to a certain threshold when the awakened state becomes human beings normal state. At the moment, the sleep state is normal to us. The vast majority of us are born and live our whole lives in a state of sleep in a very constricted state of consciousness with a sense of separation and the delusion that we are completely isolated, separate egos, living in our personal space.
That's normal for us at the moment. But maybe when enough human beings move towards wakefulness and experience wakefulness, a threshold will, will be triggered and wakefulness will become human being, human beings normal state.
I think that will, that will, that will probably happen at some point. But it's a question of whether it can happen in time before even greater catastrophes occur.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Or perhaps the catastrophes as both Chris and, and Duane suggests, are part of the awakening. I mean, maybe, I mean my sense, I've just written this book, is that we to suggest that we need a warrior mentality. And yes, it's great if we manifest a higher consciousness that touches the world around us. But we also need to take on the fascists. We also need to address the evil in the world. We also need to address what underlies why we fight wars and the psychopathology of those war leaders.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: And how do we do that? How do we do, how do we take on the fascists? And how do we deal with these issues, do you think?
[00:40:05] Speaker A: Well, well, I've tried to explain how in, in my new book.
I mean, I think that we have to out them for the evil that they stand for. I think that we need to take stands for a whole new way of seeing the world and that we need to challenge Those people who live lives that are anti the health of humanity.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: And so, and I talk a lot about what's happening in America is that those people who don't, who want to see democracy continue, they have to fight for it. Not against the forces, but somehow to fight to stand for a healthier world.
Yeah. And each of us have different challenges. You're doing it in your meditation life and you're being a beautiful poet and creating joy and beauty in the books that you write that enlightened our minds. And we all have our different ways of doing this.
But I, at this moment, I'm going to stay with the story that we're going to make it because if I hold that story strongly enough in my consciousness, it's going to become a reality. If millions of us hold a story that we're going to break through that the forces of darkness and anti lifeness are not going to triumph over us, but we're going to make it. We're going to break on through to a higher consciousness, then it's more likely it's going to happen. Yeah. So I have to deal with that part of me that sort of looks at what's happening with Putin and Ukraine and Trump and Iran and Netanyahu and Israel and I need to remind myself to not get disheartened. Yeah. Hope is important, but to stay in my hope.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: That's right.
Yeah. It's. It's about.
Sorry.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Yep, yep. I just quick to say, but not in a Pollyanna ish way. Oh, well, you know, it's all going to be fine if we just love and light and, and you know, an arm at the top of things, the, of the mountain in the sun. I say that we have to hold to our hope through fighting, through confronting the darkness, through dealing with the evil that is really out there in the world.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: I agree. And I, and I think maybe it ultimately comes down to bringing light into the world. The only way to defeat darkness is to bring light into the world.
And you can do that. Maybe there are two important ways in which you can do that. The first is through focusing on your own spiritual development, following your own spiritual path and practices so that you contribute to the awakening of humanity.
But also through goodness, through bringing light into the world, through benevolence, through the radiance of your spiritual being as it expresses itself in your life. Through, through helping others, through kindness, through service.
You know, so that's one way.
The great. The best way to defeat evil is to bring goodness into the world.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Beautiful. Absolutely. And Steve and You do this. And in my tiny way, I.
I try to do this.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: And, and.
And really, here we come to define what, for me, spirituality is all about in terms of the world we're in.
I think spirituality is all about sort of not pretending that we're some, you know, we're unified with all that is. And we're so, you know, holy.
I think that it's about being a decent human being and being kind to our neighbors and sharing our resources with other people and kind of honoring those who feel sort of depressed and doing our best to make a difference in the little worlds that we.
We live in.
And.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: And that. That will contribute to the process of awakening that will help to safeguard our future as a species.
But, but now that.
Let's bring this dialogue to a close. Serge, so what. What is your feeling about what's going to happen over the next few decades?
What's your prediction or prophecy?
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Okay, so here's my prophecy. I think things are going to get a lot worse.
I think a lot of the institutions we have which are no longer smelling of roses like the, you know, the United nations, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, I think they're going to go into crises.
I think the great, you know, organizations like Amazon and.
And those kind of things, I think they're going to fall apart.
I think that the wealthy who believe that, you know, if they have 10 houses all over the world, that they'll be able to escape what's happening. They won't be able to, and they'll be in the same condition as us.
And I think that we have to see a shedding of. Of a dysfunctional system that does not work for far, far too many people. And this dysfunctional system has spawned evils like fascism and colonialism. Yeah. And it has allowed a situation so that the poor remain poor and the rich become richer. And that is one of the great dangers that.
That the money in the world at this moment is being used for the wrong purposes.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: And so sort of, basically, I think it's going to be challenging this century. It's going to be challenging for young people.
I think it's not going to be easy in every way. I think that AI is going to bring huge, huge complications. We can talk about that at another time, but I don't think it's going to be easy. But I think that out of the ashes, that new phoenixes are going to fly. And we're going to be surprised.
And we're going to be surprised at how quickly we're going to see the emergence of a new kind of world, perhaps the beginning of next century.
So in the long run, Steve, I'm optimistic, I'm going to stay optimistic. But I'm not underestimating the challenges that we face.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think it's important to remember that all of those systems that you mentioned, the oppressive social systems, the oppressive political systems, like fascism, they are ultimately a reflection of our state of consciousness. They are produced by our state of consciousness.
They are ultimate, ultimately produced by a sense of separation, by ego separation.
So we can only overcome those challenges by overcoming ego separateness.
And I'm also both pessimistic and optimistic. I think the challenges that we are facing now are going to become more intense. I think there will be more environmental catastrophes.
The climate will deteriorate, and I think there will be more serious.
I think we will face such serious issues that there may be some form of social collapse.
There may be some very serious problems ahead for us.
And maybe the human race's population will diminish, Maybe the problems will become so severe that we don't all survive.
But I think there will be. Ultimately, we will return to a state of balance.
I think ultimately, after a series of catastrophes, after the diminishing of the human race's population, I think we will rise again. And I think we will create a new civilization, a new world based on a state of wakefulness. And maybe that will be in a century or so. But I think ultimately it is our destination to become awakened as a species.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Ho, yeah.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: And also forget that we are just one species. There will be other species in the future.
10,000 years in the future, 100,000 years in the future, a million years in the future, this planet will still exist. There will be other species who are as conscious, more conscious than we are.
So shall we leave it there, Serge?
In a moment of cautious optimism.
[00:49:50] Speaker A: Of cautious optimism.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Cautious optimism.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: And the key thing is that we keep our hearts open to ourselves, our fellow human beings and the world.
Because heart will heal the world.
What's wrong with the old systems is that they're led by men whose hearts are closed. Because one of the symptoms of the disconnectedness you talk about is closed heartedness.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we will.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: And, and, and as you say in your poem, we will rise again, Steve.
And, and, and we hold with hope and love and joy and optimism.
Yeah.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Every day we can make a choice to bring light into the world.
[00:50:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Thank you, Serge.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Dear Steve, lovely to speak to you again.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: Great to speak to you again.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: Thanks, everybody. For for watching and listening.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: I hope you found this an interesting discussion.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: By the way, everybody who is watching and listening, don't forget to enroll to sign up for the YouTube channel so you'll get an immediate notification when our videos appear. And feel free to leave your comments
[00:51:16] Speaker A: after the Please leave your comments and we will reply to them.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Thanks everybody. Thank you Serge. Lots of love.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Steve Bye.
