Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome, everybody, to the second issue or edition of our podcast, Fierce Grace.
We should probably explain what we mean by the term.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, explain it, Steve.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Oh, I thought you were going to explain it.
No, I'm joking.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Thought you could do it. This time.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I'll start.
Well, to me, that there is. There is often association, a kind of a myth that spiritual people are quite passive and maybe indifferent to the world. Everything is really perfect, so we don't need to worry about anything. We don't really need to interfere with world events because everything is basically perfect. And if you can't sense the perfection, if you can only see the suffering and discord, maybe there's something. Something wrong with you.
But I don't think that's the case. I think if you are truly spiritually awakened, you feel a very strong impulse or a sense of mission to help others and to make the world a better place, to alleviate some of the suffering in the world, to bring harmony into the discord of the world. So I think that's what Fierce Grace is. It's the endeavor that comes from that is basically a deep spiritual impulse to bring harmony into the world, to alleviate the suffering and actually to enact change in the world. Positive change.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely, Steve. And also, I don't think we have to be spiritually awakened in order to do that, because if we had to wait till we were spiritually awakened before we did anything, none of us would ever be able to do anything.
So I. So I think that.
So, yeah, but I just want to make the sort of point, is that there's a grace in painful and difficult things happening. That's the point that we think difficult things and painful things and suffering things is not grace. It's bad. I mean, you know, if we were spiritual, we shouldn't have these things happening. But actually, it's in our dealing with life's difficulties, in our enduring the suffering that. That we have.
You know, our partner dies, we have a serious disease. In sort of taking these feelings into our heart and working with them, we sort of grow as a human being. And therefore, the grace element is that what seemed to be the opponent is actually the friend. So the opponent, the thing that opposes you is actually the friend helping you. And I think that that's an important part. Don't you think, Steve?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: Definitely, yeah. Maybe that's another myth about spirituality that, you know, to be spiritual means that life becomes incredibly stable and peaceful and easy and blissful.
But actually, as you say, it is when life is challenging, it's when crises arise in our lives that we grow the most.
And I mean, I have this concept which has really emerged from my research, which is called transformation through turmoil.
And that shows that a lot of people do experience a spiritual awakening in the midst of trauma and turmoil, which could be a diagnosis of cancer.
It could be a bereavement, as you say. It could be a long period of depression or a long period of addiction.
And it's often when we get to the lowest point, when we think that we've lost everything, that's when we undergo the greatest, the deepest transformation.
And I've met hundreds of people who've undergone that transformation.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I worked at a rehab center for a few years, and it was really interesting seeing how people were in denial. But when they reached rock bottom, you know, when their life.
When their life stopped working, you know, they couldn't hold the job, their wife sort of left them, and they suddenly lost somehow they were a space to let in the help of the universe. Because I would also like to say that I feel we live in a universe that.
Where we have an availability to be helped, that the universe is a helping universe.
It kind of helps us in our journeys. And so if we meditate and we tune in and we try to help others, the universe will help us as well.
But we need to be tuned into the. To the universe. And sometimes the universe thinks, ah, yes, that person has so much ego that they're not listening to anything else. And so. And so we'll have to give them a crisis in order to take their ego away. And then the health forces can come in.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Sometimes the.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: And then the Force can be with us.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Said about Luke Skywalker.
Yes. And now the Force is with him.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And it is.
Now that I think about it, you. You know, the. Use the term grace is very important here because it does seem to be a kind of, you know, a miraculous form of grace that engineers this transformation that some people go through. And I met one person who I interviewed, who I became friendly with, a Scottish woman who was a heroin. A heroin addict for about 20 years.
And she basically lost everything in her life. She became homeless. In the end, she was living on the streets in Edinburgh, and she. She tried to give up drugs but couldn't. So she kind of. In the end, she gave up. Giving up. She thought it was impossible. And in the end, she felt that she had no alternative but to kill herself. So she attempted suicide.
But in that moment when she. Unfortunately, she didn't die. But in that moment, something Changed inside her. She sort of let go of something, and it was as if a new self emerged inside her.
And she said that once she sort of got through the withdrawal symptoms, she was free. She had no desire to take drugs ever again. The craving for drugs had just spontaneously, miraculously disappeared.
And then she. She. She told the story about looking at herself in the mirror, and she didn't recognize herself. She thought, who is that person? I don't know that person. Because she felt so different inside. She didn't recognize her previous normal self. And from that point on, she was a completely different person. And still is, 20 years later as it is now, she's never felt the desire to take drugs or drink again.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Well, we get caught in these identities, don't we, Steve?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And, you know, and so many of us are caught in our. Our socialized identity, and we believe that who we are are the images we have of ourselves.
Like, you know, I can say, well, I'm a.
I'm a suntanned nice kind of chap who is blah, blah, blah, who.
But my ideas about myself are not who I really am.
So it's something to do with letting go.
Our ideas about who we think we are and when we can do that, that's race. And sometimes it can only happen in a very difficult way, I'll tell you. You know, just a small thing with me. I had sort of treatment for leukemia a few years ago, and the medication I had was really tough.
And it really sort of got me to get into meditation more in order to feel a connection with sort of nature. And suddenly I began to have a much stronger connection with sort of nature and trees than I'd ever had.
And at the same time, another interesting thing happened.
My vanity and my ego was really caught in the idea of being really fit. I kind of prided myself, you know, on having stayed fit all my life. You know, I've done a lot of sport, and suddenly I didn't feel well enough to do any sport. And my kind of muscular body, it all kind of faded away. And so. And so I had to sort of see how identified I was with Serge, with, you know, strong and, you know, and going for runs with his dog. Suddenly, you know, I was this little sort of weaselly little person.
But then I saw how much of my identity was in that sense of how I felt I looked. Yes. So Grace sort of took that away.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: I am happy to say that a little bit of my muscle has come back, Steve.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Just a little bit, you know, that's good.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: It kind of exemplifies that as human beings, we're conditioned into the idea that happiness comes from accumulating things. You know, like accumulating a good body or accumulating possessions.
You know, we associate happiness with achievements and success, but often real happiness comes from letting go of those things.
I think, I always think that the more you depend on external things like possessions or your appearance or your success or achievements or even your beliefs, the more you depend on those external things, the less access you have to an internal well being.
And sometimes when those things disappear or when you let go of them, that's when you do get access to the inner well being.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: But sometimes we're so attached to these things that we need the universe to intervene fiercely to force us to let go. That is, there has to be a financial crisis. I mean, do you remember in the 1928 financial crisis?
[00:10:51] Speaker B: 1928?
[00:10:53] Speaker A: No, no. Sort of.
When was that? Big, big. The Wall street crash.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't remember that.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Sort of 1920 or something. I mean, sort of hundreds of stockbrokers and CEOs began jumping out of their skyscraper sort of windows because that. They didn't have any money and so their huge identities sort of faded. So. Yeah, so. So aren't we talking about, Steve, that, that at one level, I like to talk about becoming more fully human as opposed to becoming more spiritual. Because spiritual sort of, it kind of has sort of, kind of funny connotations that you've got to meditate every day. You have to be vegetarian and stand on your head for half an hour in the morning, and then you're spiritual. I like to say, kind of be more fully human because that's what's needed. In fact, that's what's lacking in the world, our humanity. Steve, there's far too many people who have far too much power and far too little humanity.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: I agree, I agree. I mean, the term spiritual, a lot of people associate it automatically with religion.
And I, I think, you know, spirituality essentially is nothing to do with religion. It can overlap to some degree, but. But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with spiritual traditions or spiritual practices. I, I've met a lot of people who are very spiritual and they don't know anything about spirituality. They've never meditated the. So, I mean, I guess that begs the question, what, what is, you know, what does spirituality or being spiritual meaning? To me it means connection. Connection to others, connection to nature, connection to a deeper part of your being.
It means transcending separation Expanding awareness.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Well, Steve, you wrote a book about disconnection, a very, very interesting book. And you know, and there your thesis was that what's wrong with people, what's wrong with humanity, is that we're disconnected from ourselves. We're disconnected from who we are. And you suggested that some people were mega disconnected. Do you want to say a bit about that? Because it's very interesting, your thesis, Steve.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I have a model. In fact, the book was based on a model that I call the continuum of connection.
So you have, on one side of the continuum you have people who are, I call them hyper disconnected. They're so disconnected that they have no empathy whatsoever. They have no emotional connection or no capacity for emotional connection or love with others.
They are completely self absorbed, completely self immersed. All that matters to them is the fulfillment of their own needs and desires and ambitions.
And if you want to talk about these people in psychological or psychiatric terms, people call them narcissists or psychopaths, sociopaths, and they know they are the worst human beings. Most of what we call evil behavior flows from these people.
On the one hand, they have no empathy, so they have no qualms about hurting others or exploiting others.
And the other thing is that because they are so disconnected, they feel a tremendous sense of lack or incompleteness. So they're continually wanting, they're wanting more power, more wealth in order to compensate for their sense of incompleteness. They have this continual desire to add things to themselves. And usually that means adding more power and more wealth.
I know. Unfortunately, they tend to rise into positions of power in our societies.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Well, well, Steve, I was just thinking, you know, three, three good examples are Netanyahu, sort of Putin and a certain person in America who has a rather orange complexion.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: I don't know who you mean.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: I know you don't. I know, but, but, but the interesting thing about all these mega sort of disconnect is that they're very militaristic, you know that they have a lot of violence in them as well. Yeah, I mean, sort of look at what, what is happening sort of with Ukraine, sort of look at what's happening with the Palestinians in Gaza.
And so you're talking about the, the psychopaths who are mega disconnected. But you were also talking about the ordinary disconnection of the person in the street. Do you mean by that, Steve, a person who's not connected to their own essence, but they just live in their inauthenticity as their personality?
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it means a number of different things.
Most people are not as disconnected as psychopaths or narcissists.
And most people are not as connected as spiritual, spiritually developed people and so called enlightened or awakened people. They're at the other end of the continuum of connection. They are people who feel a tremendous sense of empathy, compassion and altruism and so forth. Most people are kind of somewhere in the middle.
And it does mean on the one hand, on the one hand that you're not connected to your essential self. You are caught up in an egoic, a kind of superficial egoic kind of identity.
But it also means that you're not strongly connected to nature, to the cosmos, and also to other living beings. There's a basic sense of separateness which I think is common to most human beings. We feel that we are separate entities living inside our minds and bodies, in separation from the world.
And I believe that most of what we call human suffering arises from that sense of separation or disconnection.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Could I just jump in a second and say something about the ego? Because I think a lot of people associate ego with disconnect and that the idea of being spiritual is to be egoless.
Well, I don't agree.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Neither do I.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: A Jungian analyst suggested that Charles Manson, who did all those murders, do you remember in the 60s that the problem with him was he didn't have enough ego, so he had no scaffolding. His ego was not strong enough, so he didn't have enough scaffolding to hold his impulses.
So I think that the problem is the unhealthy ego, where our ego is either too small or too big.
But a lot of gurus say, oh, you have to be egoless and then you'll be spiritual. I don't want to be egolisti because my ego does certain things for me. But what is important is that I hope I'm not led by my ego. I hope my ego is my servant more than my master. And Jesus said to the devil, he didn't say, hey buddy, get lost. He said, get thee behind me, Satan.
So we need to have an ego because it allows us to do, to function. Certain things in the world kind of run into, you know, rule of the roost.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: I, I completely agree. I think that's a, a bit of a misunderstanding that some people have about spirituality.
And, and I think, you know, if you want to talk about not having an ego, it's actually a form of psychosis. You know, I think the, the characteristic of psychosis is to have no sense of control of a controlling ego.
No sense, no coherent Sense of identity,
[00:19:28] Speaker A: like Charles Manson did not have a secure sense of identity.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: But I think what some people maybe misunderstand is that to have an ego or a sense of identity doesn't necessarily entail that you are separate. You can have a sense of identity and feel completely at one with the universe. You can have a sense of ego and feel attuned to other human beings and to the whole cosmos. They're not mutually exclusive.
And I agree that to live effectively in this world, obviously we need some sense of identity. Obviously we need some sense, some ability to organize our lives, to concentrate, some self control.
So, yeah, I completely agree.
Well, maybe one. One interesting aspect about this is that disconnected people, or the kind of hyper disconnected people that we've been talking about in connection with politics, they can also actually become involved in spirituality.
There are. I think at the moment there is.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Say more. That's interesting.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Well, there always has been an issue in spiritual movements and spiritual communities about disconnected teachers, people who present themselves as enlightened and maybe believe that they are enlightened or maybe they. They were at one point enlightened, but they are actually quite malevolent and disconnected, narcissistic, even psychopathic.
Would you.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: So could we say.
I see those people as being enlightened in their mind, but not enlightened in their soul or their body or their feelings.
So they know about truth, but they don't live that truth.
And it's very interesting that we see a lot of cult leaders who are like that. I mean, Jack Kornfeld, in the.
In the 80s, he wrote a paper, the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfeld. He's a psychotherapist.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: And sort of Buddhist teacher. And he's written a lot of excellent books. He wrote a paper on the dark side of spiritual sort of masters, you know, and he. And he did a survey of the sort of top 20, you know, hit parade of the, you know, the sort of gurus that were most in vogue at the time. And he discovered that about 70% of them were more sexually deviant than humanity as a whole.
And I think it's something to do sort of with the fact that there's certain temptations in the world.
And I think one of the temp. Two of the big temptations that draw.
That both draw people, some people to be gurus and can pull them down is the lure of money and power.
Like, I'm going to, you know, talk about him now because he's dead.
And he helped a lot of people and I have certain friends whom he helped A lot. But Rajneesh or Osho. Oh, yeah, was absolutely an example of someone who for me, was enlightened in his head. He gave wonderful talks, he wrote wonderful books. In fact, I've got two of his books here that have been incredibly useful to me.
And I really respect him as someone who has helped a lot of people, but somehow in his own life, he never grew up and was completely narcissistic. And as someone said about him, because he didn't know how to relate intimate to anyone, he had to create a situation of everyone bound down in front of him.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: And so. And his, and his driving all those Rolls Royces to show that, you know, money was not important, it's just abundance.
And, and I had a girlfriend who was in the inner circle of what, what, what happened around Osho. And his sexual deviancy was very extreme. You know, I'll just say that. But it's interesting that that can coexist with a person who did help a lot of people and. Yeah, some fantastic techniques.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I, I've read a couple of his books and they, they are very clear, very wise and intelligent. I also felt the same about another teacher who is now deceased, Andrew Cohen. Did you come across.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: Oh, is Andrew Cohen dead?
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah, he died two or three years ago.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: But he wasn't very old, was he?
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Probably mid-60s, I think. No, so not very old. But he, I, I read some of his books. I, I used to get a magazine that he edited called what Is Enlightenment?
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yes. And so did I. And yeah, and it was great with Ken Wilbur.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: That's right, Ken Wilbur. I remember Eckart Toll was interviewed. They interviewed all of the major spiritual authors and teachers. It was a great magazine. And I used to read his articles, Andrew's own articles and his editorials, and they were very wise, very intelligent. I read a couple of his books. I thought, wow, yeah, this guy sounds great. Then I went to one of his talks. He came to England a couple of times, maybe more than that, to do talks, but I was disappointed. I thought, wow, this guy seems kind of sounds kind of petulant.
He doesn't sound enlightened to me. There was something a bit kind of dismissive and narcissistic about him. I actually remember asking a question at the end of his talk. I remember putting my hand up and I said, andrew, a lot of people believe that there is a collective spiritual awakening taking place now. What do you think? And he said, I think that's complete nonsense. And that was all he said. I thought, wow, doesn't seem like an enlightened guy.
And then slowly, I heard stories from members of his community.
And then a lot of his. A lot of members of his community came out and said that he was abusive and sometimes physically violent, sometimes financially abusive, you know, extorting money from people.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: I had one of his people come to me who. Who sort of needed deprogramming because he'd been so abused by Andrew, really, Cohen.
So sort of. So sort of, what is this sort of mystery that. That highly intelligent people somehow have something about them, a je ne sais quoi. What's that? Je ne sais quoi? I ask you, as a psychologist, that somehow that they can create situations for themselves where they seem to have this power?
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Well, others, I think in many cases, they are actually extremely disconnected people to begin with. They are very strong narcissistic traits to begin with.
And if you think about it, being a spiritual teacher is a perfect role for a narcissist or even a psychopath because you get unquestioning devotion from a number of people and girls.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: And girls love you.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: And you can get all the girls
[00:27:17] Speaker B: you want if you want. If you want to.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: I mean, if, you know, sort of. That's your.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure many people cases all
[00:27:28] Speaker A: the boys and this, you know, but
[00:27:30] Speaker B: yeah, certainly many spiritual teachers have taken advantage of that and exploited that.
But I think, as I say, you know, you. You could choose to become a politician if you are extremely disconnected, or you can choose to be an HGO or, you know, a corporate executive, or you can choose to be a spiritual teacher. You know, they're all perfect roles for that, that personality. And also, I think one thing about these people is that they project certainty. They have no conscience. They lack human emotions and human, Human inhibitions like self doubt and, and guilt or conscience or anxiety. So they project supreme confidence and certainty, like very attractive.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Like Trump, I am your retribution. He said, really, Steve. So the question we're sort of getting onto is this. What is it about our society that these kinds of people are encouraged or able to come into positions of power? Why is it that we want people to project certainty? Why? I mean, I mean, again, the Trump phenomena, because he's a sort of guru, a kind of malevolent guru in a way, but he projects this certainty.
His physical size, his boorishness, his apparent enormous wealth.
And so therefore, it's very attractive.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And also, I think it's very important that these people lack human emotions and people misinterpret that. They interpret that as strength. These people appear decisive.
They are actually very impulsive. But people interpret that as being decisive and they lack inhibition, and people interpret that as courage.
They don't feel anxiety for some reason. They lack these emotions.
So people interpret that as strength.
I mean, this is a problem in spiritual circles, isn't it? It's not just the gurus who.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Can I just say one thing sort of quickly? When Trump said, I'm going to bomb.
I'm going to take Iran back to the Stone Ages, a lot of his MAGA people said, we have a man who shows great strength and courage and determination.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So again, they misinterpret cruelty as a form of strength, don't they?
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: They misinterpret a lack of empathy as some kind of strength.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Well, what do you think? Why do you think that these people appeal to large numbers of.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. Here is a psychological explanation.
I think society has a soul wound where sort. We're a soulless society.
And so instead of sort of wanting sort of goodness and beauty and huge sort of, you know, opulence of kindness and inner abundance, instead we project soulfulness onto soulless human beings.
Trump.
So that the MAGA people.
I know I'm going to be attacked for this, but I'm going to say it. But the MAGA people have an issue with soul. And so in the soullessness, Trump has soul projected on them, in other words, what is desacralized becomes sacralized if you don't have soul.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: I mean, sort of. Have I explained that clearly?
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's. It's really interesting. Yeah. And I think that is probably the case.
There is another way of looking at it. I mean, if you think about spiritual groups.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: And it's not just the spiritual teachers themselves who are to blame for this kind of syndrome. It's also the followers who unconditionally worship these people. They. They actually inflate their egos even, you know, to an even larger degree, because they offer them unconditional devotion and they explain away all their abusive or cruel, cruel behavior. All of their selfishness is explained away. Even, you know, if. Even if they take drugs or get drunk, that's explained away.
You know? Yes.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: I Adafrey John or Adi Da.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: His crazy wisdom tradition sort of people would come to Adi Da. A couple would come and. And if the wife was very attractive, Adida would say, you need to learn disidentification. I'm going to sleep for three days with your wife. And it will be A good training for you in, in, in, in. In. Letting go.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: And so of course, the person would sort of go along with this, but it was tremendously abusive.
Again, Adi Da wrote really good stuff.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. Ken Wilbur was a big admirer of Adidar, wasn't he?
[00:33:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: And, yeah, his books are great. Very, very clear.
But, yeah, I mean, everything is explained away as some kind of test or some kind of divine challenge or divine play.
I met a follower of Osho and I said, you know, what about these 93 Rolls Royces? Can you. How can he just. How can you just justify that?
And she said, well, actually, he was making a satirical point about Western consumerism, which is one way of looking, I guess it. And there was Chogyam Trungpa. He was also very controversial, wasn't he? I think he was basically an alcoholic.
But his followers would say, ah, you know, he's in his. In his. In his enlightened state. You know, there is no intoxication. You know, he's beyond intoxication or, you know, he's beyond morality. He can be as cruel as he likes because he's in a state that's beyond morality.
So it's this kind of like unconditional worship and this. Almost like people are hypnotized by these gurus.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Well, Steve, we're talking about the bad eggs. There's a lot of good eggs.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: And. And I say that for myself. I've always been drawn by teachers who have a kind of humility and a gentleness and don't pretend to be special.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: And I'm lucky to have had a couple of those teachers come into my life who were very ordinary human beings and they had a great sweetness and humility about them. And I was also.
I would go to Pune and see Punjaji or Papaji. And he, for me, was a lovely man. Yeah. One evening I stayed late with him and a few other people and we all watched cricket on his black and white sort of rickety television.
And.
And there was a real sweetness about him.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: And so that there are sort of teachers who have a great sweetness and who don't get pushed into that.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: That's true. Who were the others, if you don't mind mentioning them?
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Well, I hold Rum Dust in great reverence and sort of Rum Dust was the one who.
Who engineered the saying Fierce Grace.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Ah, of course, yeah.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah. For.
For 10 years I was around Ram Dass a lot.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: He. And he had a lot of sweetness and humility and grace.
And, and then, and then he had this stroke at the height of his powers, you know, and, and he told the story of how he got to see how much he was getting off with being a successful spiritual teacher and, you know, being asked to give talks and being paid a lot of money and, you know, being invited by people to go scuba diving with them, you know, and then, and then you saw that his ego was sort of grabbing hold of it.
And now that he couldn't move around, he had to go more deeply into himself. And I think that he became an even greater teacher then.
Interesting thing, Steve, what we're really talking about is that, and Jung talked about it and he called it the Christ complex, is that the ego can grab hold of, of certain spiritual understandings. This happened to me in my early 20s. I was doing a form of yoga called Kriya yoga, which was much too advanced for me. But I was suddenly doing these, these, these exercises and, you know, everything became light. And I found this tremendous spiritual light inside me.
And for about two weeks I thought I was some extraordinary sort of human being come to save the world. And I was working as a publisher, Steve, and I'd been assigned to work on the novel of a very well known writer who subsequently became very, very famous.
And in one session I told him that your book is absolutely useless. It's not spiritual enough.
And I mean, of course the young man, you know, he's now my age, was incredibly insulted. And I'm happy to say, apart from having been taken off as his editor, I bumped into him 30 years later at Victoria Station. Oh, really? Apologize to him. And you remembered that incident, really? That's the example. My ego was not formed properly. I was having these experiences and my ego grabbed them and said, sir, some wonderful person. I have come to save the world.
That's the interesting thing, why we need to have a disciplined ego.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's the reason some gurus become corrupted. I think maybe that happened to Adi Dar because if you have a sort of a glimpse of awakening and you're not ready for it or you're not well developed in other areas, it can really inflate your ego. And you can think, wow, I've seen the truth. I need to spread this truth to other people. Maybe I'm enlightened. If you, maybe if you have a tendency towards narcissism, it can really inflate that tendency and take you off into, you know, that Christ complex that you described.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Steve, you have done huge research.
What do you mean by Awakened and enlightenment. Because you've done a huge amount of research in this area.
And I think that we need to get beyond the point of thinking that we're only okay if we're enlightened or awakened. I mean, I can say about myself that I don't feel in the slightest bit enlightened or awakened. And I don't know if that's because my. My ego isn't grabbing hold of anything. But I just feel a very ordinary person who's interested in these things. But you've done research.
I sort of talk about it, Steve, because it's very interesting.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Maybe I have a different conception to other spiritual authors because I see enlightenment as a continuum.
I actually don't like using the term enlightenment because it's very rarefied. It suggests something unattainable. So I like using the term awakening or wakefulness. And I think it's much more common than most people realize. And it is a question of degrees. It's not either or. A lot of people think that, oh yeah, there's this state of enlightenment in which you become a completely different person and all of your problems are solved and you feel completely at bliss and at one and at peace. But there's a big, you know, there's a big continuum. There are lots of degrees of awakening. So I think you can talk about it in terms of different characteristics.
And one characteristic is.
You get. Well, there were. In my research, I actually identified 16 major characteristics of awakening.
And one characteristic is a heightened perception. So the world around you looks more real and more beautiful.
Another characteristic is a sense of gratitude.
You know, you don't take things for granted. You're aware of the value of certain aspects of your life.
Also that you have a sense of disidentification from your mind. So you don't necessarily have a quiet mind. You can still think, but you're aware that you are not your thoughts.
You know, there's a certain space between you and your thoughts. You also feel a strong sense of empathy towards other human beings and other living beings. So I think. I think you can talk about it in terms of those characteristics. Sixteen altogether. And obviously those characteristics can vary in intensity. So. And the more intense they are, the more awakened you are.
But, you know, so it's not something esoteric. It's not something unattainable. It's something that a lot of human beings possess to some degree, even if they're not, you know, what we would call enlightened. They are awakened some degree.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: I mean, one has this image that the enlightened person sort of walks around sort of feeling one with everything. Yes. I mean I'm in this room but I'm one with this picture. I'm one with.
Well, look, I've got a person who is pretty awake who's just here and I'm going to introduce him because here's
[00:42:30] Speaker B: a person, he's enlightened.
Hello.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: Who's who sort of knows how to flow with it.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: He's definitely enlightened.
What's his name?
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Crumble. Crumble as in apple, right?
As in apple. Yeah.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: But I think I was going to say when you were talking about your spiritual teachers, just before I was going to mention my spiritual teacher because I only, I've only really had one spiritual teacher and he was my teacher for maybe 20 years or so. And he was a guy called Russell Williams.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Based here in Manchester, England. And he was a very, very ordinary, very humble man. In fact, when I first met him, I was probably 29 at the time and I still had this image that to be enlightened you had to somehow wear a robe and have a long beard and you had to live in a state of bliss and a state of complete oneness with everything.
But he wasn't like that. He wore a suit and tie. He looked like a very normal 70 year old guy as he was at the time. And he even talked quite normally. He had quite a strong kind of working class type accent and he talked about normal things. He talked about the price of food and he talked about television programs. And I thought, wow, why do people think this guy is enlightened?
But as I spent time with him, I realized that he had a very powerful radiance which would fill me with a sense of well being. And I felt great for days afterwards after meeting him. And then I realized that he was extremely wise and he did experience a sense of oneness with other beings and other people. And he was extremely benevolent.
But he never tried to draw attention to himself and he never actually tried to write a book. I persuaded him to write a book and I helped him to write a book. But he was always reluctant because he never wanted to get too much attention.
He was always happy just working with a small group of people, helping a small group of people to become awakened.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: Here's an example of what one refers to as the hidden sage.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of people, a lot of the most awakened people have probably passed away unknown because they didn't draw attention to themselves.
Although at the same time, if you are awakened to some degree, you do Feel a sense of mission or a desire to help people.
A desire to help the human race, you know, as a whole, in some sense. And that can mean. That can mean becoming a teacher in some way.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's interesting, Steve. I mean, just talking about myself, I've, you know, I've always felt a mission to help the human race and you know, and to help people, you know. That's why I've spent the last 50 years teaching, teaching spiritual retreats and seeing people as. As clients and sort of. And more recently, following your example, writing a few books. But, but the whole idea of me being in any way enlightened, I really don't sort of hold that, you know, I'm, you know, I see myself as a decent bloke and it feels better to see myself in that way. Yeah, I'm quite a kind person.
I mean, I don't sort of steal, you know, and I don't sort of.
I sometimes lose my temper, you know, sort of with my daughter. Once I lost my temper because, you know, but. Well, that's.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: That's human, I think maybe, but human.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: And we say, ah, but he's only human.
So therefore that, that one can get away with anything. Implying that being human means that, you know, that we can tell lies and.
Oh, well, he's only being human. Yeah, sort of. Epstein, you know, I heard someone say about him, well, he just loves the young girls. He's only human, you know. You know.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: Yeah, they say that about this. They sometimes say that about right wing politicians. He's just an ordinary working class guy. Of course he's racist and sexist, you know, it's a terrible excuse. And most working class guys are not like that. Anyway, it's an insult to working class guys, but. And it's an insult to humans to say that these people are only being human.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: By the way, I just heard that song by John Lennon, a working class hero. What a fantastic song. I mean, I just happened to hear it again the other day. I hadn't heard it for years. What an incredible song.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that verse when he says they keep you doped with religion and sex and tv.
You think you're so clever, so classless and free, but you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see.
That's so.
It's so angry, but in a way very possibly true as well.
Yes. I mean, that's from an album which he wrote after his primal scream therapy and it's a really.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: With Yanov.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. The whole album is kind of imbued with this kind of trauma and in his attempts to. To exercise his trauma. It's a really powerful, moving album. There's a song called Mother, when he writes about his childhood, where his mum leaves him, his father leaves him. Yeah, yeah, you left me but I never left you.
I wanted you, you didn't want me.
It's so simple but so powerful and they're so sad.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: I am so impressed, Steve, that you have written that. You've just written a book about the Beatles and, and it.
About their creativity and I think it'll be coming out soon.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah, in September. Yeah.
Where are we now? We're in June, so, yeah, three, three or four months in September.
[00:49:02] Speaker A: Do you feel that they had something enlightened about them?
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Definitely, I feel that they were conduits, you know, they were channels of something transcendent. And in their early songs that comes out in the kind of the positive energy of their music. It's tremendously exciting and positive.
But in. In their sort of mid career when they were interested in psychedelics and spirituality, it came out in a more obviously spiritual way. You know, a lot of their songs are imbued with. With spiritual elements like across the Universe, Let It Be and many others.
So I think they were. They were opening themselves to something transcendent to spiritual impulses. And in some ways they were, you know, they were expressing the zeitgeist as well. I mean, there was a lot of consciousness expansion at that time. There seemed to be a collective opening of consciousness.
A lot of people were interested in spirituality and psychedelics.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: But it's interesting, I read a book about John Lennon and apparently in the last few years of his life, he kind of sort of withered away as a man with sort of Yoko Ono and his other sort of Chinese lover that he had. And apparently, I mean, I read it in this book. I mean, you know, it may not be the truth, but the reason why he died when he was shot was because his body had no muscle in it. You know, sort of muscle is very important for our strength, you know, for all the other system. And apparently that his body couldn't take the impact because all the other systems had slowed down because there was no sort of muscle mass.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Because he'd possibly, I don't know, taking,
[00:51:03] Speaker A: you know, taking drugs.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: I'm not sure. I. I read that he actually cleaned up in the last few years of his life. There was a guy called. Have you ever. Have you ever heard of a TV program called Everybody Loves Raymond?
No, no, it's A famous American comedy show. And there's an actor in it. I can't remember his name now, John somebody, but he was actually a friend of John Lennon's. In the last five years of John Lennon's life, John Lennon was the best man at his wedding. And he said that he was so close to John because they were both spiritual seekers, they were both seeking enlightenment. This guy was an ex Christian monk, this actor. So I think, you know, I heard another person told me that John Lennon used to visit the TM center in Manhattan in the last. In the late 70s. So I think maybe, you know, maybe there's another story there that he did become. And I think he definitely cleaned up in the last five years of his life. And maybe he did turn. Turn towards spirituality again.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: But sort of what it does show is that people with a very strong spiritual awakening impulse are also.
Are often also very vulnerable human beings in other areas. And so sort of, if what I think that the more sensitive one is, the more susceptible one can be to being pulled down or being.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: I mean, a thing that I found sort of interesting, I don't know if you agree, is that however high and evolved we are, that the dark forces, whatever we want to call them, can sort of reach up and pull us down. And by the same token, however, in the darkness, in the dark night of the soul, sort of. We are, however, lost and desperate. The forces of light can also reach down and pull us up.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: That's a beautiful way of looking at it, Serge.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: I mean, sort of people who've been very lost and desperate have, you know, talked about.
Yes, a sort of rescuing force coming in, sort of. Which is what we talked about at the beginning about, you know, about fierce grace.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I think if you. If you have a strong ego, if your ego boundaries are solid and strong, it can make life quite easy. You know, you don't. You're kind of shielded against too much negativity. You don't really feel other people's sufferings. You don't. You're not really aware of world problems. You're not really worried about the human race as a whole. You kind of enclose within your ego and you feel quite confident and have a strong sense of identity.
And it's. But it's. When your ego is soft, when your ego opens up, that's when you become open to spiritual experiences.
[00:54:09] Speaker A: Well, is it the ego opening up or is it something else opening up?
[00:54:13] Speaker B: Well, I'd say it's the ego boundaries, open ego Boundaries. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that goes back to what we were saying earlier. You need a sense of ego.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Yeah, but.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: But you don't need ego boundaries. You don't need to have strong and solid ego boundaries because they separate you from the world and separate you from others. But on the, on the, you know, the one.
You know, it makes life easier in some ways because you defend yourself against all that negativity. You don't get overwhelmed by experience or overwhelmed by situations. You feel confident and strong, but it's, you know, it's a poison chalice because it does separate you from your deep spiritual self. It separates you from creativity, too. You know, to. To. To be creative, you've got to have soft ego boundaries.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: Yes.
Well, Steve, this seems a good.
A good time to go our ways. And, And I just want to say that either next week or the week after, we're going to be sort of talking with a very interesting man who's. Who's become a good friend of ours called Philip Cargom.
God, I always forget.
And Philip Cargong, who's written hundreds of books on. And he's like Steve on all sorts of different subjects.
And.
And he used to be head of the Druids.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: That's right, yeah.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: Very, very, very interesting.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: Very interesting guy.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: So. So. And he'll either be sort of coming on. So next week or the week after.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:01] Speaker A: Depending on his availability.
[00:56:03] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to that.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And good.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Would you like to say something profound to end our podcast?
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: I'm putting you under pressure.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: The answer lies in the soil.
[00:56:21] Speaker B: The answer lies in the soil.
[00:56:23] Speaker A: Sort of. Who was it that said that there was.
[00:56:25] Speaker B: I never heard that before.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: That there was some guy.
Yeah. Steve, you weren't sort of alive in those days when that. Those.
Yes, there was this person on. On English television. He'd always say, oh, yes, the answer lies in the soil.
[00:56:44] Speaker B: It wasn't David Bellamy, was it? It sounds like David Bellamy anyway. Could have been, but it sounds profound. Anyway. The answer lies in the soil. Yeah, but did he. Did he mean the soul? The answer lies in the soul.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: Well, no, I think it was soil, but then Satish Kumar wrote a very good book called Soul and Soil.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: Ah, yeah.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: The connection between.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it is interesting, that. Soil and soul.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: But actually the thing that I would just like to end by saying is that for me personally, and it's the thing that I.
When I teach my retreats, I.
We all work out of doors. I think that that soul can be most found Outdoors in nature, in experiencing the beauty of nature.
[00:57:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
[00:57:42] Speaker A: I think that the more that we can connect ourselves to nature and sort of feel into the earth and the air and the fire and the water of nature and. And fill ourselves with it, I think.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Very important.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: I completely agree.
Yeah. That's why so many poets write about nature. That's why so many mystical experiences occur in nature.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: Yes, Yes. I love Wordsworth.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: Patience of immortality.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: That's right. And it's interesting that we talk about being grounded and mystics talk about the ground of being,
[00:58:25] Speaker A: the deeper ground of being. We need to be grounded. I think.
You know, I also sort of will say this sort of spirituality is often associated with airy fairiness. We need to be grounded. We need to be solid. We need to be earth based.
Because often, unless our feet are walking on the earth.
There's a wonderful quote by.
By that great existentialist, and I can't remember Walt Whitman.
I tell you a thing of getting older, Steve. I forget.
I forget.
I forget facts. Anyway.
Anyway, we say goodbye to you all and we hope you've enjoyed our little.
A little discussion and. And we welcome you to many more of them. Okay.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: That's right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Serge, beautiful talking with you.
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:59:32] Speaker B: All the best, everybody.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: All the best.
