Russell Brand FINALLY Opens Up: Escaping A Lifetime Of Anxiety, Addiction & Finding Love!

37:13Maybe they can't be relied on. I mean, I was kicked out of school. I was expelled from school. I went to university for one day, left that. Yeah, I did all these things. I remember it. I recognize it in your story, but I don't have the same level of... I'm skeptical. I require evidence to accept things, some kind of subjective or evidence that I, but I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm distrusting broadly. Or maybe I am to some degree. Maybe my scepticism is that, yeah. It's a critique, it's an analytic, it's a perspective of until you know. But your problem with your challenges with authority that are clear in your story through school and institutions and all these things, where does that come from in you?

37:54that that what is and how would you describe it well now i would describe it as a very deep love of god and a great deal of respect for other people's individual liberty and freedom and the idea that any central authority would impose that without clear consent achieved through democracy and community a community dialogue seems ridiculous to me but obviously it's biographical and interpersonal that the circumstances of my life have shown me that the people one way or another that are in positions of authority on the various scales of authority that most people encounter familial social educational have not been able to fulfill the duties required of them of course as a person that's a certain way down the path now because in the words of philip larkin they in their turn were fucked up too.

38:49That we are just part of a long lineage of people coping with broken systems. And I would say from agriculture onwards, systems of aggregation, centralization, accumulation that can't enshrine the rights of the individual, except for a certain set of individuals, that we are living in a system that's about centralizing power and increasing authority, diminishing individual freedom, using whatever rhetorical tricks are required, safety, convenience, whatever is required to achieve this centralized authority. Now, so I now feel, like you said before, there are other ways that you could have ended up being this man in this chair.

39:28Now I am glad that I've been deeply schooled in mistrust of authority, that it's almost like it burns in me. I can tell. Watch them. Watch what they're telling you. Watch what they're telling you. I give it to my own children and I hope I'm not doing them a disservice question authority question it question it and of course this makes bedtime difficult because who's the person telling them bedtime but it makes schooling because institutions have an inertia institutions have a tendency they might start off with we're going to educate these kids to be creative and individuals but in the end it's going to be about health and safety in the end it's going to be about fire drills in the end it's going to be a set of a bureaucratic enmeshment and maze that prevents individual freedom.

40:11The great David Graeber, God rest his soul, though he was a communist, so he maybe wouldn't thank me for saying that. David Graeber says that one of our great dialectics against Soviet communism, for example, was that they were bureaucracies that prohibited individual freedom. But look at the bureaucracies we live within now. How do they solve the problem of spying and stealing your data? Just make someone tap, I agree. Don't stop spying. Continue to spy. Continue to accumulate the data. Just tap agree. You agreed to be spied on. This is bureaucracy. These are the observable tendrils and symptoms of a centralized authority that is not necessarily sentient, occultist or overtly corrupt, but a tendency to accumulate power, to dominate resources that is plainly observable in the geopolitical dramas that play out in our time, the ecological crises and the evident main stage players that occupy our current time, that many of whom have not been elected to get there.

41:14I'm talking about unelected acronym organisations that have a great deal of influence in the world today. So the reason I don't trust is not, you know, I love my mum and dad, Ron Brand, Babs Brand. If I'm like today, sat here in Shoreditch as an adult man, I wouldn't just walk around Essex and go to find some couple of working class kids and say, why don't you and you take responsibility for my spiritual development? They did their very best they could and I couldn't love her more. I couldn't love her more. But my mum, she had cancer like eight times in a few years. My dad, he's got his own deal.

41:47He's got his own deal. And I recognise what it is to feel strong, individualistic fervour. I love them. I love them. And when I'm trying to formulate, and I know I'll make errors as a parent, of course I will. We all do. And as you will discover, it is our duty to wound our children. It's not our duty. It is a necessity beyond the duty. It is a tendency. It's just going to, they're going to end up wounded. They have to, they're going to have to find a second mother, a second father. They're going to have to, they're going to have to. so it's not anybody's fault it's not even the system's fault i'm kind of grateful to all of it now i'm grateful to these institutions i'm grateful to the mainstream media i'm grateful to these governments i'm grateful that they have set out the instruments required for the change that we will encounter in the coming few decades you you mentioned your mum and your father again there um your father what role what impact was did his departure have do you think on hindsight on your relationship with authority, if any at all?

42:49I would say fatherless men, like I don't want to be so solipsistic as to make this entirely about me, he says 20 years into a career. But I think, and I experience with fatherless men who I deal with a lot in my, what I would say my spiritual life is to be around men a lot that are in recovery, both being men or by and mentoring and recovering mutually in support communities. is broadly fatherless men feel a big burden and they do not feel safe in this world a big burden not safe in this world if they're with the mother i think they feel it is their duty to look after the mother if they are without other parents i mean you know if without either parent my god who knows what kind of chaos and i'm not saying there is only one way and that there is only template but one template but i'm because i'm already talking about a subset i'm talking about a subset of people to become drug addicts and alcoholics in order to deal with these kind of challenges but also i know people that don't identify as addicts in exactly that way and still the absence of the father and that also by the way you know could be through death or it could be could break up of the relationship or it could be because the father doesn't have the emotional lexicon to connect yeah one way or another because i can think of examples top of my head of all of those i think it feels that you are prematurely invited to be a man in fact when i was thinking about our interview, Stephen, because you'll be glad to know I thought about you before I met you.

44:14I felt the significance of anthropology, the significance of what the original condition might be. I do not use these terms to suggest there is some one template that could be imposed and stamped upon everyone. I would never take away people's individual rights or struggles, particularly those connected to obvious and evident civil rights, cultural and identity issues. Those are their stories for them, and I support them in those stories. But when it comes to how human beings might have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, it appears we do well when we are a connected unit that communicate together in order to achieve a common goal.

44:53Time and time again, when anthropologists and even contemporary psychologists study these forms of society, they discover that there are rights of initiation for both males and females, although they're often appears based on what I have heard. And as you know, I'm not an expert to be particular emphasis on male initiation as the body is not so uniform in the way that it informs a boy that it is a grown up now, not a child anymore, and that there are new duties to be undertaken. One of the best examples I ever heard, and I feel like this is somewhere in Freud or maybe in Joseph Campbell, is that I feel this is some Australian Aboriginal tribe that they, what they do, and I think they're doing this now, I figure, I don't know, you know, I'm putting this stuff together, you know how it goes, that the boys at a certain age are dragged away from the mother, and they make much of it.

45:49They wear masks, the men of the village, all the men are part father, all the women are part mother, and of course there are categories for other forms of identity too, which they honour and revere, often in the form of the shaman, who is beyond gender identity, incorporating both. You see reflections of this to this day, even in monotheistic faiths, where the priest wears what appears to be neutral or androgynous attire, distinguishing them from the rest of the community, yet honouring them and revering them. And you went through that initiation way too early. In your own words, you say that you were prematurely forced to be a man because you've got the duties of care over your mother.

46:33at a young, young age. Your father leaves, I think, six months old. And then the other thing that happens, which feels like a horrible turn in, you know, horrible sense of trance is your mother has cancer and she struggles with it for many, many years. So you've got this young boy, and I was thinking about this when I was doing the research for this conversation. You've got this very young, young, young boy who's struggling with a lot of things on his own, disconnection coming from all angles. And then the stability in his life gets the uncertain horror of cancer come into her life. And what that does to that young boy who's already destabilised in sense of connection.

47:12These are all interpretations I have from reading a piece of paper. If I'm just being honest, they are. I was putting myself in those shoes and saying, I've got this stable figure here in my life, my mother, and I'm dealing with all this instability over here. And then this becomes unstable. Yeah, it's good analysis. but you know really my mother struggles them's her struggles she had to go through that and bravely she's done it what life force that woman has in her and to pick up on a point within your question you cannot fake being a man or a woman or an adult let's say a word that doesn't have any cultural load to bear you can't fake that or you can fake it and i did fake it and that is what people do they fake it they fake it but in a sense maybe you need another adult to make you that you need to be initiated you need a code you need to know that it's about duty and responsibility that it's not all just about swagger and personal achievement and like many young men i joined the group of lost boys i found men young young men kids kids because if i met them now that's what they were as kids a couple of years older than me that that becomes your tribe unless you have hierarchies and systems of acculturation and inculcation that are based on higher values remember our earlier point about moral authority and trust who you're going to give it over to you'll create your own one you'll create your own little community without elders without elders that are reliable and trustworthy and dutiful and understand the nature of sacrifice sacrifice of themselves in order to perform them duties.

48:47So of course, yes, I feel like when you feel the incumbency of adulthood upon you early due to the conditions of your domestic trial there, you will have to, as they say, man up or woman up, you will have to, but it won't be real, because it can't be real, because it's not only a set of endocrinal imperatives, it's also a system of instruction as laid out in that as laid out in the previous anecdotes the cambellian analysis of the anthropological conditions of that aboriginal group there so really until you find other adults elders that are like i'm i know what i'm doing you don't need to worry i'm stronger than you it's going to be okay i'll look after you it's all right do this that a father, like a father is, you're going to forego this now because in the future, this.

49:44Without that, you will not forego. You will consume now. You will consume now. You will not understand your role. So it takes a long while. I've said it before, Stephen, but I'll say it again because it bears repeating. Thou shall worship no other gods than me because otherwise you will worship them gods. You will worship pleasure, money, fame. Them gods are greedy little gods too. They're easy little deities to start worshipping. And the problem with the worship of those gods is you lose the principle of the divine, the interconnectivity, the pleasure is not the result. Pleasure is a byproduct.

50:19Pleasure is an inadvertent byproduct, please God, of doing the right thing. I was just thinking then as you're talking about all of that and the gods we choose to worship and young men and fatherlessness. I was thinking about the Andrew Tate phenomenon as a form of, he really seems to have captured a huge amount of young men for some reason. And trying to diagnose why, why that is, is a very multifaceted process, isn't it? Because there's elements of purpose and meaning and having a figure in your life that can guide you, can initiate you into what being a man is that it seems that young men are in search of.

51:02Yes, I agree. I agree. I agree. No doubt. One of the challenges it feels like we have culturally, Stephen, is we are unable to observe the difference between symptom and cause. Yeah. Symptom and cause. And obviously, as with matters medical, cause is what we must analyse. Cause is what we must understand. there's no point saying you shouldn't do this you shouldn't do that if you have a set of values that are pretty simple i call them sesame street values kindness love service that's going to take care of a hell of a lot if you have kindness love service it's going to take care of a hell of a lot are you being kind right now no you've gone off track mate you've gone off track you're not being kind are you being off service no then we can maybe sift through different also we've we live such a curated space that it's difficult to discern what people are actually angry about sometimes what is it as one of my great teachers says to me what is it don't get caught up in the phenomena the epiphenomena the distractions the static what is it that you are trying to understand what is it you're trying to do all of these groups then people that are big fans of and people that are radically left, people that are radically right, what is it that they are seeking or that they are getting from such a radical pursuit?

52:31Well, a argument might be that we are recognising that there is nothing in our evolution to suggest that we live in cultures of 300 million people who live by one ideology. that we have to truly respect diversity, that we have to acknowledge that many of our most influential and powerful systems do not have our best intentions in mind, that they in fact benefit from ongoing cultural conflagration. If we can do one great service in this cultural space, I recognise that part of your goal and your mission is to awaken latent potency in individuals in honour of your own journey, and it is a great mission, if I may say.

53:19But part of this mission must be for us to learn this simple lesson. We have more in common with one another than divides us, and it is our duty to reach out in particular to the people we disagree with in a spirit of love and good faith. Firstly then, identify, oh, am I reaching out in good faith to people I already agree with? No, no, no, no, no, that's not it. Disagree with. I disagree with that on this important hot button topic of guns or pro-life, pro-choice or identity or tradition or progression. I disagree with them and I respect your right. I respect and I love you. And I know that I do not know what you know, that I am not God.

54:03I am not God. I do not know. I do not have any authority over you. But I believe that together we can achieve a consensus. And this consensus must be founded on good faith. We must allow one another to communicate in good grace and openness. We cannot yield to censorship, not because we want people to fill the air with toxicity and hate, but because we know that if we try to control it, who has the right? Who are we granting the right to now? Have you investigated any of these organisations? Have you investigated their funding, their affiliations, their agenda, their imperative? Because to some degree, I am sorry to report that I have and I have found them wanting.

54:44They will not be getting my consensus for authority anytime soon. And I would offer you this. You have more in common with the people you are fighting with, those you most loathe, whatever hue, persuasion, or a cultural garment you've conveniently strewn upon them, than the people that are saying that they will protect you, the institutions that are saying they will protect you. Are you optimistic? Yes, God is real. you're optimistic that we'll get to a place where we're we recognize that our similarities are greater than our differences yes and so if i make russell brand i know i don't think this is a role you want but if i make you prime minister or president of the world how how do you systemically change things to help us achieve the objectives you've described in connection community kindness and togetherness what are the thing i've asked so many people this question no one's ever wanted to answer it well because it's so big here i am bring power as close as possible to the people affected by it default to decentralization and localization wherever possible of course this will not immediately yield perfection but have you looked out of your window we are not competing with perfection we are competing with corruption so what do we want most of all we want true democracy all the values that people espouse are the values we should be practicing they say the world does not need more people to believe in god just for those of us that do to start acting like it to start acting like you believe god is real We redistribute the control of municipal facilities to those that are affected by them.

56:30do not have water companies in the United Kingdom, like Thames Water, owned elsewhere in China or Canada or Kuwait or Qatar or wherever those facilities are held, have municipal facilities run by the community that is affected by them. I'm not talking about renationalization. I'm talking about community. The community runs its water wherever possible. I recognise that there is some complexity when it comes to electricity, municipality, running roads, running hospitals. But who among us has ever been into a hospital and not marvelled at the beauty, the compassion, the ingenuity, the commitment, the devotion of the people that work there?

57:11Wouldn't it be better if the people that clean the floors in the hospital felt that they were invested in it, that it was their hospital, the nurses that work there, the doctors, that they have real power, that those are their hospitals? Wouldn't it be better if both sides of our political conversation, I'm talking about the United Kingdom right now, hadn't agreed already that privatization is the way to go and they're not going to do anything about it? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with capitalism in its basic format of we create a product and the people want the product. And look at that.

57:40We made a little bit of money. I'm talking about this gigantic, metastasized monster devouring everything right down to spirit. We must recognize where centralized authority is coalescing most. And this we must address. This we must address, whether it is financial, corporate or state power, wherever it is possible. We, the people, we, the people, those three magical constitutional words, if they were listened to, if they were lived by, it's already there. The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and man sees it not. It's already here. It comes from inside your consciousness. You awaken.

58:23You believe it's possible to change. You act like it's going to happen. That's how these things unfold. It's happened again and again. the miracles of transition and change, the great beauty of science and medicine and technology, when it is freed from its tendrils, when it is untethered from the mendacious objectives of a system that sees all things as dominion for materialization and commodity, when it is freed from that, you will see the true genius of our scientists, the true genius capable in technology. If we can just address the model, if we can just have as an agenda an awareness that we are just on one little rock in infinite space right now, that we're all participating in this one centralised idea.

59:07And yet infinite diversity, infinite individual freedom, infinite ways of being human. We must all take responsibility for becoming the person we're intended to be. And if you don't know who that is, you find someone who does, and you find a system and a programme that can help you, and we'll all do our best together. And it's going to be glorious, glorious, but beyond glorious, it is necessary. One of the things you said within there was about empowering nurses. for example in cleaners cleaners in a hospital and it reminded me of a study i read many years ago that showed nurses that were given ownership about the decisions within a hospital had um higher satisfaction there was less accidents there was less um accidents with with misprescribed medications there was um higher retention and when they've they leveled out the payment um the remuneration policy so there was less unfairness in how people were remunerated all the standards of the hospital went through the roof because people were empowered they had autonomy and control over their lives and work so i completely relate to that my question though is about step one because it what you described there sounds like it's at the top of everest and sometimes when something feels it does for even for me it feels like it's a long way away from where we are now so i'm asking what's the first pebble what's the first domino that has to fall what's the first thing that i can do as an individual to help us get closer to that world well firstly steven people People climb Everest every single day.

1:00:27They have to clear the litter from that mountain now, once it was considered inconceivable. And every time there is an epochal shift, every time we say, oh, it seems that the sun doesn't go around the earth. It seems like the earth goes around the sun. Oh, there are things that are smaller than atoms. It appears that these sub-particular phenomena that are so small it's even difficult to label them exist in a unified field, that they are emanating but somehow connected to. I'm speaking, of course, of quantum entanglement. If you reverse the charge of a particle thousands of miles away, the partnering particle will reverse its charge also.

1:01:08There appears to be some unitive force. What I'm expressing is the most simple, practical, effortless achievement that we will ever yet undertake. It is merely the realization of the truth that we are individual, yes, but we are connected also. That there are Goliaths that have incrementally coalesced due to the progression of the great, sometimes unacknowledged revolutions. I'm not saying unacknowledged agriculture, industrial revolution, technological revolution. that all of these have been undergirded by principles of dominion that might as well be feudalism. In a sense, there is no change at all, except for the individual change that you yourself can make.

1:01:56This is why I think people get a lot of traction when they say, you know, look after yourself. This is part of it. Eat well, awaken, pray, meditate, recognise that it is normal to feel sometimes total despair and total despondency. Remember, all of these great journeys that we're describing that you're fascinated with began with exactly that, exactly that. that the great sages and secular saints that we have been granted have shown us and told us be the change that you want to see in the world whether it's al gandhi or al malcolm x people that are willing to give their life for what they believe in because what they believe in is bigger than their life and you're gonna die anyway you're gonna die anyway but your principles this is eternity that we can touch eternity in the moment so it's not like woo woo to say meditate, wake up.

1:02:41This is changing the prima materia. It is the field of consciousness. This is, I suppose, what I'm advancing. Consciousness precedes matter. You have unique individual access to consciousness. You are online. You are on the grid. You are responsible for whether or not you believe this is possible. Nobody else can tell you what to do there. That is your private kingdom, your private domain, where you can be for now, for now, whoever you want to be in there. please do not relinquish that right by not taking it now for i tell you authoritarian forces are abundant and abound they are looking to colonize the very space of attention that exists right now this moment this is what is being colonized attention data they are on what you the territory of the self this is fertile this is not nothing it is not nothing to awaken to the reality of who you are in this very moment.

1:03:37That is not nothing, Stephen. One of my team members had a question for you. I was just chatting to them about you. And they said, you know, I'd really want to know how he lives on a day-to-day basis. Because I know from your books and stuff, the Russell that roamed the streets of Shoreditch once upon a time. The Russell I see now is through the lens of YouTube. And I see him, it looks like the countryside somewhere with like some logs in the back. What is your, how do you live your life now? I'm glad you've asked this because this is proper diary of a CEO stuff because this is actual scheduling.

1:04:09I have to live sort of like a monk, basically. I have to be conscious all the time. I have to be conscious about what I eat. Otherwise, I'll eat something stupid. I have to be conscious about what I say. Otherwise, I'll say something stupid. I have to be conscious about what I do. I have to familiarize myself with extremes continually. So I, thank you God, have access to hot temperatures and cold temperatures. I expose myself to them. regularly every day if possible. I do a lot of cold therapy. I get right in that cold. And while I'm in that cold, I think this thing taught to me by Michael Singer and anyone who's willing to watch Michael Singer stuff.

1:04:45The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. Then I get in very, very hot temperatures. And I think the same thing. The moment in front of you is not bothering you. You're bothering yourself about the moment in front of you. I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu because for me, it was not natural to tangle like that and i love brazilian jiu-jitsu so much koza rogan actually was the first person i talked about all that stuff and i do that a couple of times a week i do why i need more detail on my well you see why like we it's good for i think people to touch one another in a way that is playful and absolutely consensual but sort of assertive it's like kind of i heard a youtuber say like dance actually and it's very good for me it really puts me in my body it's not cerebral all i don't know about you steven but i suspect you're the same i am very uh intellectually oriented i live in here i'm if i find it very easy to be self-obsessed and to get just caught up in all that stuff so things that put me in my body the body the body holds the key the body the body you've got a body is important the body of christ it's very important to get in that cold water it's very important to get into that yoga very important these things are important and beautiful and connecting so i do a lot of bjj i do a lot of yoga i do a lot of other type of exercise calisthenics body weight type stuff to try and stay fit i got you know i've got young children i have another child coming i have to stay fit i have to be able to be god willing present for these children going forward and i love it and it's what we're going to do we're animals again this anthropological idea how might we have lived for those hundreds of thousands of years that predate the great miracle of agriculture how might we have lived we work we touch one another we are socializing we groom and we graze together it's nice like the kind of trust you develop with people in brazilian jiu-jitsu like that they choke you to the point of unconsciousness but then when you tap it's over and this is something that you share between you it's there's a trust in that as well isn't there yes trust good to embody the trust that experience the trust as they say if you want to know if you can trust someone trust someone and maybe it's difficult to seek out those kind of opportunities where it can play out you know so microcosmically and practically because i did a brazilian jiu-jitsu lesson or two and that man could have killed me at any moment i really knew he could have killed me he had me like tied up like a i don't know like a ball like a ball of elastic bands and i knew at any moment he could have killed me but i trusted him and i didn't know this man it's lovely isn't it there's something amazing about it and it's an instant bonding that this man has his life in my hands yet he's he's teaching me an art form he's teaching me a discipline um and holding my literally my life in his hands um it's funny because i didn't know him but i felt like he was my mentor my father my immediately after yeah because i trusted him so much my life right so absolutely wonderful thing touch very important for us late ape creatures that's why a hairdresser's you tell the hairdresser or the barber stuff this is why like aren't strictly come dancing they can't stop falling in love they're performing these rituals that are designed to elicit certain states the vulnerability isn't it that's the connection the vulnerability the touch the awareness of sameness but differentness the acknowledgement that we are creatures that we are embodied creatures all of these things i think contribute to that so for me on my day yes every day prayer and meditation first thing every day rigorously ensure that I've done things for other people, preferably without letting other people find out that I make myself available to other, in my case in particular, men that require help with their issues around addiction and mental health, that I have checked in with other people that I consider to be peers around the challenges that I face psychologically, that I don't spend all my time obsessing just about what I want.

1:08:38I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy. I have to do quite a lot to not be crazy. So the hot, the cold, the BJJ, the yoga. There's someone I worked with once who said every day I get up, I meditate, I pray, I do exercise, I do green juice, I do hot, cold, I attend a support group and then I feel okay. Okay. That's what I get to feel if I do all that. Then I don't feel like a lunatic, a vacillating wild glassoo of mad vicissitudes that could lash around anything in its search for connection is there not another way at this point this also is attached to another question i've often pondered from doing what i do here which is about how i mean says steve peters who's a psychiatrist i believe talks about these goblins and gremlins and i spoke to um gabble mate as well i know you've interviewed him and i watched that fantastic unbelievable guy but i wonder if the the traumas the things that are hard I use the word hardwired tentatively, but the things that are hardwired into us are ever overcomable.

1:09:44If we can ever take them to zero in terms of the power they have over us or infants we have over, all we will spend our lives managing. I was taught from the wound comes the salve. From the wound comes a salve. The place of the deepest wounding will provide your salvation. This is what you must investigate. It is not... when people love you, we always feel it's because of their strength or the capacity or the virtuosity. But often it's the vulnerability and the fragility, because we all know that this vulnerability and fragility is something we share. This is what comedy is to me, Stephen, is the ongoing acknowledgement.

1:10:22Everyone's running some game. I'm this, I'm doing this, I've got this going on. You're going to die. It's all going to fall apart. It's all going to fall apart, except for these permanent principles and a connection to the eternal achievable through consciousness. This is why I need ceremony. This is why I need practice. This is why I need peers and mentors and mentees. And from the wound, from this place of I'm not good enough, nobody loves me, I don't fit in. The only way that I can achieve trust is through having some authority or value as accredited by a culture that I don't even bloody trust as compared with a metric that I don't even agree with.

1:11:00Instead of this now, and again, continual, moment to moment, I'm not suggesting that I am any better than anybody else, just that I'm not any worse than anybody else. That's the biggest thing that I'll offer. It's ongoing. It's continual. But the thing, I'm glad of it now. I'm glad of the wounding. And you will be too, whoever you are. You will be glad of the wounding too, because it is sadly a gift to you. That doesn't mean it was right or that there weren't perpetrators or that it's not bad or that the culture doesn't need to change or any of those things. All those things are definitely true.

1:11:35But from it, all of the time you see it, go Great Ormond Street, go anywhere. Watch the Paralympics. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. People overcome. And I ask that because so many become frustrated that the wounding, they haven't been able to overcome it. they become frustrated by that because a lot of the kind of i don't know maybe spiritual doctrine maybe whatever says you can take this pill or you can do this exercise you can do this retreat and then you won't be a narcissist or you won't be a whatever right and then they try it they they buy the course then they still are they find themselves reacting in those old ways and being triggered in the machinery that you spoke of that comes up when we're triggered it's still there and they go, fuck, I need to buy another course.

1:12:20We do need to be very self-compassionate and I think we have to perhaps recognise that it is not a commodity that can be externally required, but an external co-ordinate can indeed ignite that which is already there dormant and latent and awaiting to be born. Precisely the necessity for initiation we return to here, the initiation is to activate, activate that which is already there. activated surrender not passive surrender but not passive surrender activated surrender i'm a vessel i'm here for whatever you are i trust myself god i pray to you god not my limited conception of you god with my tiny little mankind mind i pray to you god as you know yourself to be and i offer myself to you god 100 and totally please use me please take away from me everything that is not of use to you put aside all my preconceptions and use me god this this utilizes the wound the wound becomes a portal you become a vessel i want to stay on how you live so i understand your sort of morning routine there but if i zoom out on where you live why you choose to live there um your relationship with work now now that you have this i think greater clarity on institutions and how you balance that well like i have to make a lot of content yeah because every day i'm on rumble every day i make an hour of content every day we make an additional 10 to 15 to 20 minute video on a news subject that generally encompasses an establishment narratives and a way of explaining that that is hopefully inclusive every day we have other social media content we have a business like that i'm part of a significant business endeavor that i regard as a movement rather than a business but as you are all too aware if it doesn't function as a business it will not function at all so it has to have good hygiene and housekeeping you're a ceo i literally am here not under the pretense of being a ceo but because it is part of my job and i do have a diary although i don't keep it myself and i try not to look at it but it exists and so i have to participate continually with that and ensure that an organization is around me that is able to facilitate the things that I'm good at and accommodate the many things where I am currently looking to improve.

1:14:44I have to make all the content. We try to do this in three days. That means a couple of days a week I'm available for different types of expedition and adventure such as this one. This is why for me the spiritual life has to come first but not out of a sort of an ethical evaluation. Spirituality in the end is a survival technique. It's not like esoteric. It's not like I'm doing this thing like waving around incense or dressing up in a robe. I'm trying to not go crazy and end my life and damage the life of people around me by devoting myself. They say only the really crazy people become saints.

1:15:21Only the really crazy people would even consider it. You have to need it. It has to be beyond wanting because wanting is just here to keep the blob going. How does it feel to be in your mind? Could you describe it to me? Well, sometimes it's amazing, but sometimes it's very, very, sometimes it's very, very fast. Sometimes it's very volatile. I feel like it undulates a lot. This I understand to be very common to addicts. Experiences of extreme high, extreme low, fastness, not natural to be serene, evaluating information very, very quickly. It feels fast sometimes, very fast. And it has a strong sense of craving and longing, which is a type of magnetism, I suppose.

1:16:00And I suppose magnetism is a longing for unity, connection. It's very difficult to discern physical forces because they are by their nature, non-anthropological. And it's very easy to anthropomorphize physical phenomena like gravity or magnetism or whatever. So what it feels like with me is that there is a great deal to get done. That's what it feels like. There is a great deal that needs to get done. And in order to do it, I have to surrender strongly. Otherwise, I will mess it up badly. That's what it feels like. So that's why there is a lot of ceremony that is communing with that which is unknowable.

1:16:36You know, prayer, ceremony with other people, acknowledging the sacred, not forgetting the sacred. That the most important things are difficult to measure and weigh, but they are there anyway. And so each day there is much work to be done. and I'm a father of young children and I have a dog that I adore and I have many animals. So I have a lot of very simple pastoral duties that have to be done. And I have a lot of spiritual things that have to be done to hold me together. So there's a lot to be done. And then often I get to a point where I'm so tired that the whole enterprise feels like it could collapse inward like a narcissistic semi-Gothic souffle.

1:17:17so there has to be a lot of caution a lot of caution also i'm a person i perhaps you identify and agree with a sense of purpose and mission and a deep deep belief that the most profound and significant changes imaginable are possible by virtue of the fact that they are imaginable in fact because the role of imagination we see all around us in every building every object every book every cultural artifact as well as the many flawed and defunct aspects of our culture also imagination is the device that brings the unmanifest into the manifest this do you ever find yourself because you are a content creator do you ever find yourself slipping in and when you play that game you're dealing with algorithms and metrics and numbers and rankings and i'm trending and i'm not trending do you does that ever trigger your old you know the old machinery yeah i try to not go near it i try to not go because in a sense back to basics for me recovery is somewhat based on abstinence like i don't have an odd drink or the occasional line or the occasional or the occasional i don't do it i don't do it so i try to practice good hygiene there because if i start it's very difficult to stop and another momentum takes over so yes it is of course it is because these are part of you know again part of the blob part of the primal it was competition is part of who we are status is part of who we are so i try to stay out of the ring as one of my teachers says stay out of the ring stay out of the ring what are you working on what are you working on improving you talk highlighted you set out your strengths and then your things you hope to improve what are the things that you hope to improve for me always patience patience try to be patient because impatience is ridiculous to think i know when something should happen is a mental concept so i try to work on patience to be very very patient mostly i work on this there is more to be achieved by surrendering self-will than can ever be achieved by utilizing it and that's a very very very very difficult thing to practice particularly when agitated what does that mean i didn't understand oh okay we achieve so much through will i'm going to create a podcast oh look i did that thing i was going to do now i have to create various sets around the globe but to believe that there is a greater power that will come into being if i surrender but become intuitive to what one of my teachers calls the whispers on the wind that i will be directed that i my job is to stay out of my way that my life is none of my business to not look at my day like it's a chunk of thing that i want my day i'm going to eat it up this is oh wow oh, this gift, I'm alive.

1:20:02Oh my God, what a miracle. It's incredible. And to stay in that feeling of grace and stay in that feeling of gratitude and to spot as quickly as possible when I inevitably give it up. Give up your connection to God for a biscuit. Give up your connection to God because someone has a nice car. Give up your connection to God because someone says something about you on the internet. Give up your connection to God because people lie about you or attack you. Don't give up your connection to God. And in order to not give up your connection to God, you are going to have to cultivate a very strong connection to God because elsewhere, as you say, much noise, much distraction.

1:20:34What a coincidence that we live in an environment that seems to be cultivated in order to distract us from the ever-present divine. When you say God, are you talking about a religious, specific religious deity? Or is there, how do you define your God? Loving unity and absolute respect for individual identity within that. Do I find this God in a particular book or every book? It's up to you, mate.

1:21:04Do you consider yourself to be part of a religion? I do. Yeah, I mean, this one, the only one, they're all the same. I suppose if you want some help, Perennialism by Aldous Huxley is a good place to look at, where he identified, in the same way that Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, it could be said, identified respectively, that there are mythic tropes that appear to recur in all cultures. He began to write a famous book, which I believe gave the name to the phrase perennialism, in which he observed that Eastern mysticism, Sufism from the world of Islam, and certain aspects of Christianity, particularly Gnostic Christianity and what is commonly regarded as first century Christianity, had within them not archetypes as in the crucifixion, which we know occurs in many folktales and mythologies, not just in Christianity, not narrative devices or characters that recur, but ideologies that recur, principles, values that occur in all of them.

1:22:07And many of them, Aldous Huxley, as his Huxley offers, are about overcome the self. There is something bigger than the self. You're not real. Who are you when you don't have your name? They call it the unborn in Buddhism. Marcus Aurelius says, you are dead. Your life is over. Now live the rest of your life properly. Get rid of it. Put down the corpse, they say in Buddhism. In Christianity, die that you may be born again. The flesh man must die. The carnal man of wanting and longing must die that the transcendent man be born. You're getting in the way. You're getting in the way with your memories and your story and your projects and your values and your virtues.

1:22:49all but the universal ubiquitous ever-present archetypal virtues that huxley explains and elsewhere for young and campbell we get the idea that there's some sort of ulterior cultural force not cultural force beyond that way beyond way way way beyond culture culture is what we create indigenous primal reality trying to not trying to expressing itself through us it's talking to us all the time all the time it's here it's everywhere it's waiting to be discovered by us collectively and individually. And what better job could we have than to find it ourselves and help others to find it? But I think the reason why is because when people hear the word God, they think of a man in the sky.

1:23:28Well, they should stop that unless it helps them. If you don't behave, you're going to go to hell. And that's an idea that a lot of people struggle to get on board with. But that's because people have been lazy because we are in the Kali Yuga. We are in a time of darkness. They're forgotten in this darkness that when people say there is a father, they mean there is a figure that is more powerful than you that loves you and if you don't do what's right you are going to hell not after you are in it if you don't do what's right you are oh no i'm so unhappy i'm in this bed seat that we talked about earlier why because you didn't listen to the father because you perhaps couldn't find the father because as i've alluded to many times you live in a culture that wants to distract you from the father or the mother or whatever word helps you that is there within you waiting to be born that you've been distracted from understandably because of the primal urges to compete and acquire and eat and defecate.

1:24:21All of this is normal, ordinary, forgive yourself immediately. And now move forward to what it truly means. Well, you understand to me, I understand all the problems of religion. Religion shouldn't make you hate other people. Religion should make you love everyone. They've all got that written in there. Why don't we focus on that bit? Because if people start doing that, you can't manipulate them moving around on a little chessboard and turn them into little consumer blobs. Obviously, obviously. Well, where does love fit into all of that romantic love? Because I thought about some of the stuff you said about our ancestors.

1:24:46is monogamy is is monogamy the the path forward is is romantic love a framework for stability that we need to find god oh my friend well there is an argument that romantic love is derived from the idea of chivalry which was as the word suggests a kind of late medieval notion that we should focus our ardor on the individual like a knight would attach the colors of their bequeathed betrothed or beloved to their lance as they jousted metaphorically. And really though, this chivalrous idea is but one aspect of love. And they note that many people never had actual conjugal relationships with the symbolic feminine, divine feminine figure that they would attribute that quality to.

1:25:32Romantic love, I feel, romantic love perhaps, as all forms of love, obsession, attachment ultimately are, I was taught this, I didn't make this up, are the inappropriate substitute for the true love of God. What is love? Whether you love West Ham United or your wife or your children or your beautiful, it sounds, new breath worker girlfriend, except for the desire, longing, yearning to be at one with, to be connected to, to acknowledge that what's in there is the same as what's in here, that we have a shared purpose. Isn't love the felt awareness of the true unity that undergirds apparent separation.

1:26:10We come into form for a little while. All of us were twice, twice before we were a single cell. You were a single cell, then you were two cells in the belly of your mother, and way, way, way back you were an amoeba. And there it is in your programming and your coding. The unity is there materially and practically. Forget esoteric theology, forget ontology. It's there as a fact, as an observable fact. It's there as a cosmic fact. There was a big bang. Unity is there. Love is the felt remembrance of this. Why does love feel good? Although love, as we know, can be very painful when love is not reciprocated, when love is rejected, when love cannot unfold.

1:26:47This love is more than a sensation. It is a duty and it is the deepest truth of our kind, that when we love one another, we acknowledge the truth that we're not separate from one another. Isn't it glorious to move from that position where you think, I don't like that person. I Oh, my God, they're the same as me. I love them. I love them because you have recognized the truth and truth and beauty are one. As Wilde says, that there is something we it rewards us. It rewards us. It's speaking to us. I heard it argued that once there was a great unity and the infinite intelligence for its own amusement lost in the atemporal, temporal a spatial abyss sent all things into fragmentation only to see which ones would awaken and recognize the unity of our origin the deep unity of our origin when will we come home when will we come home to love you fell in love then you had two children you've got a third on the way around the corner that's a very special love that you've um you've you've found fatherhood what his what his i'm not a father yet but i'd love to look down the road and get some lessons from you as a father what lessons did fatherhood teach you about life and how we should be living teaches you teaches me taught me there's a lot more important things in this world than me but i learned this lesson in a variety of ways now there's a lot more important stuff in this world and what I want and what I think and what I reckon.

1:28:15It don't amount to much amidst the infinite. It taught me that love is real, that the most miraculous things are accessible and ordinary, an animal, that you can procreate life into being what a gift and it flows through you and we're part of an endless chain and God has no grandchildren. They belong to the world. They don't belong to you. And it's your job to just stand there and bring out of them whatever's in them and just stand back and marvel and weep at what's in them weep like the horror the beauty the horror the dreadful beauty of what a child unfolds into the your awareness that they that they in the best case scenario the best case scenario they are walking into a future

1:29:05that you will not be there to guide them through.

1:29:19So I suppose what that asks of you is an understanding of your place in this world and acknowledgement both of your relative insignificance but simultaneous omniscience, omnipotence, simultaneous. It's a paradox. All energy comes from polarity. Acknowledge the polarity. Don't hate the polarity. Don't hate the others. Don't let them tell you those people are different from you because they wear a baseball cap or they voted to leave Europe or because they identify with these pronouns. or because they believe in this cause or that. Absolute unity. It shows you that the way you love your children must become the way you love all people.

1:30:04Love, as Ram Dass was told by his teacher, tell the truth and love everyone. Not easy. Not easy if you tell the truth to love everyone. It teaches you everything. It teaches you everything to become a father. It teaches you you're going to need other fathers. It teaches you you're going to have to become a father. It teaches you you're going to have to become a father to that little boy. It teaches you everything. All lessons are there. All lessons are there. A future you're not going to be a part of. Why it was so visible in your body and in your consciousness that that particular sentence was difficult for you to say as it relates to your children?

1:30:47Because it's so ordinary, Stephen. any old lady any old man who's chatted to anywhere oh yeah my mum was like that my dad was like that my little girls it's just it's just so beautiful

1:31:14What are the lessons about the future that you try and give them, if any at all? And how do you feel about the future that they're going to go into? I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them. I'm trying my best to arm them like Sarah Connor or something. I was trying to tell them like, and also they are them. There's, I see every day how they're more powerful than me already. So, you know, they'll be all right. God has no grandchildren. They'll be all right. They've got their path. I know they're going to hurt me. You know, I know that I, all we can do for each other beyond father, daughter is become who you are, become who you are, become who you are, become who you are trust that it's going to be beautiful that you're not ugly that you're not hideous that you've made mistakes you've done stuff wrong you've had stuff done to you make also all of this all of this and yet become who you are become who you are become who you are so all i want is i try to not go this is everything i think don't go unconscious don't go unconscious like stay present stay present things will make you go unconscious it might happen as i leave this room it might happen when the people from the next room come in i don't you can go unconscious at any moment don't go unconscious stay present stay present now god is now may you find god now that's the only place you're going to find god you're going to find him yesterday you're not going to find him in a week god's ear now find it find the absolute and when i say god i mean absolute unity absolute inclusivity absolute love absolute unity among us all so me i'm basically look you know i mean i can't live like that with my kids can i like banging on them like john wesley from the pulpit or MLK.

1:33:01I just got to say, all right, how's it going? Do you want that to eat? I'm not letting you eat that. Why not? You know what I mean? I'm laughing. Why don't you tell me stuff you've done at school? What do you mean you've got a boyfriend? I'm doing all that. I'm saying all the normal chats everyone's happening, having, but what I'm trying to do is recognize they ain't going to get a better conduit than me for good or for real. So I better get out of the way. I could get out of the way for them. You know, Russell, thank you so much. Thank you for, um, Thank you for being an inspiration to me in so many ways.

1:33:32One of the ways that I think, I mean, you're completely in a league of your own, outside of the comedy and all that, is the way that you communicate ideas in a way that is so... And I know you must be aware of this, that it's so brilliant and poetic. And you said it halfway through this conversation, that it's intentional, your use of words. Yes. You know you could use simpler words. Yes. But you choose the poetry. That's the best way I can describe it. Why? Because it's a big item. Why? It's not only erudite to talk like that. Think of perhaps one of the great archetypes of the working class we have nowadays, Danny Dyer.

1:34:10He's a poet. He talks beautifully. It's nice to be specific. yeah if you can be specific what do you mean what do you mean and to be honest it's uh you know it's always been there it's always there it's there it's funny because as i was observing you today you seem like you're just one step ahead of the thing coming out of your mouth and that's why you're able to string this poetry together in such a cohesive way in a coherent way because your brain seems to just be one step ahead of mark like of the way that i would speak yours it's wonderful to observe and it's a it's a wonderful talent i observe it as well in your your new show um oh yeah yeah brandemic well done jesus no no no i but no but it was a one it's wonderful i i watched all of the clips i watched the trailer what you managed to do in that show so for anybody that doesn't know russell has a show called brandemic which is going to be available for just two weeks from june 25th which you can watch online globally you can pre-order it now i pre-ordered it and my partner's pre-ordered it so we're even though we're gonna be watching on the same screen so there's two pre-orders but it's this wonderful confrontation of the last couple of years of our lives mixed with comedy at the heart of it with also this this permeating really important message underneath there somewhere which you i think you use comedy in such a wonderful way to um if i may say uh inject an important message into me through the through the medium of humor and it's it's a wonderful skill that i've seen in some great comedians some of you know jimmy carter to his credit he's wonderful at what he does he uses a different form of comedy but the form of comedy you use to address very important subject matter is genius it's very very hard to do and in fact when i sat here with jimmy he said he's trying to do more of that um i've seen a few great comedians like the chapelles of the world who i saw in new york a couple of weeks ago and um aziz and zari aziz and zari he's fantastic at that i saw him at the store do that as well I highly recommend everybody go and get pre-order Brandemic.

1:36:10It'll only be available for two weeks. And if you go check out the trailer on YouTube, it is fucking hilarious. It confronts all the things a lot of people are a bit too scared to confront, but with a real elegance and a real class. So thank you for that. And also, I have to mention Community, which is an event that's taking place. When is it? July? Yeah, July the 14th to July the 17th. Is it polite for me to ask your girlfriend's name? Melanie. Melanie. yeah come with Melanie she should be right up her alley we're moffs there biet simpkins there vandana shiva proper leaders both in political and spiritual spaces because in the end these are fake divisions there is only one space you'll love it come come and do a turn on a saturday night i saw i saw a poster for it and i thought this can't be real because of the the people that are there and they're all gathering i thought it can't be in person it must be online and then i found that was in person as well so 14th of july to the 17th of july um in hayon way hayon why why is there a river that uh like that bifurcates england and wales or at least separates england and wales although actually england and wales are both conceptual so bifurcates that bit of land that is currently called england and wales it's a there on a campsite i went to during pandemic i went there and a holiday in a one in vans you know that you can do up from within and we had such a lovely time there and we did a small festival last year and this year we're doing a bigger festival and the money that we make we give to people with addiction and mental health issues various charities that we support for the stay free foundation is proper it's an attempt to live how we might live that that is probably the most compelling thing to me because i literally read a chapter in my book called the journey back to human and so it's wonderful to see something called community that's doing exactly that bringing us back to what it is to be a human And as you say, the cause is that the proceeds of this event are going to are phenomenal, including a Plymouthian charity, I believe.

1:38:03Which one is that? It's a charity in Plymouth, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. Trevi. Trevi, yeah. Trevi Women. That's the only treatment centre in the country that is able to take women with addiction issues and complex needs that have kids already. Because obviously it's very difficult to look after women that are drug addicts that have kids and stuff. So that place, though, they do a fantastic job down in your end, just in Plymouth. My old neck of the woods. So you can heal yourself, but also the proceeds will help to heal others, which I think is a phenomenal thing. So thank you for that. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1:38:45You can have a 60 second conversation with anyone in your life, but it is the last conversation you will have with them. No, I can't. That's a brilliant or evil question. It's evil. I always tell the guests, I say, because they've all been stitched up by the last question. So I say, stitch, pay it forward. You know? What, you've already got to know them and it's 60 seconds. And then that's the last one you're having. Who do you call and what do you say? Well, but the thing is, is that, can I just break this down a bit? You're dispatching them after that. Yeah. So it's in a way, and you have to know them.

1:39:16Is that containing the connection? Well, it's, you can interpret. It's only 60 seconds. 60 seconds. 60 seconds and I've never seen them again. I mean, there's no one in my life that I love that I want to give up on that. So 60 seconds, I'm never going to see him again afterwards. God, there's some good people that I've met though, aren't there? Because I'm going to pluck a stranger, like a virtual stranger. A virtual stranger. Because it's only 60 seconds, and you're letting go of them. Oh, no, you're not. I don't think it means that you can never see them again. I don't know if my daughter or my wife or the dog.

1:39:46I think the way I interpreted it was, it's your last day on earth. You get a phone call. This is getting worse. Then there's no more me. Oh my God. Who wrote this question? Some evil. No, I'm joking. You don't tell us. It's anonymous. Sometimes it'll eventually come out on a card that people can play with their friends. Oh, you bastard. You'll find out. You're always a hustler. You're a hustler every day. All right. So just say something I love that I'm going to talk to you for 60 seconds. Yeah. And they're alive already. You can't even get someone that's dead back. Can't do. Can't do. Can't have my nan back.

1:40:23I'd love a minute with my nan. 100%. I'll take my nan. I'll take 60 seconds of my nan. I love you, nan. I'm all right. I'm not so crazy. You were right about the drugs, though. Why, huh? Because she was so lovely. She loved me so much. It was so unselfconscious. It was so unselfconscious. Oh, you all right, darling? Shame, isn't it? I will have old twaddle. That's kibosh. What's that drug she's doing? I'll tell you, I see on Kilroy, it'll lead to worse things. 60 seconds. Let her know you're okay. Yes. You're okay? Yes. Perfect. Thank you, Russell. An honour to meet you and thank you so much for being here.

1:41:00You could have been anywhere, so I really appreciate your time. I really, really appreciate that. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a really lovely, intense experience. The scenery, the environment is so grey and the conversation is so colourful. Yeah. Intentionally, I told you. Excellent.

1:41:25Thank you.