Russell chats to Michael A. Singer, the author of the New York Times bestselling book ‘The Untethered Soul’, about whether the current political system is designed to keep us in fear, why the elites want power so badly and how to cope with mental health in a culture that appears to exacerbate it.LIVE EVENT: Grays, Essex UK - Monday, December 5th - https://www.russellbrand.com/live-dates/ JOIN: Stay Free AF Community - https://russellbrand.locals.com/COMMUNITY FESTIVAL 2023 - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We've got a fantastic show with you today.
We're talking about myocarditis and the recent revelations that both Pfizer and Moderna are testing for myocarditis as a potential consequence of their vaccines.
We frame this also with the recent appearance of the former British Health Minister Matt Hancock on the British TV show, I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
And I suppose what question that leads me to ask is, Are we kind of living in a bizarre spectacle now?
We've asked this question so much on this show.
Where politics is entertainment, where entertainment is politics, and where conversations with a former high-ranking government official pass for entertainment on a mainstream TV show before We've had a chance to resolve many of the issues that affected so many people during the last two years, whether it's lockdown, regulations around medications, there are so many questions to ask.
Then we'll be talking to our guest Michael Singer, who's the writer of the fantastic book, Living Untethered because as you know on this show, we
believe that your personal spiritual awakening and Political activity are connected that if we are not in a
fit state to deal with our own Emotional and psychological reality we won't be able to
deal with the complex sociological conditions that we live within
We've been talking about Pfizer and Moderna's recent tests for myocarditis
On the NBC website that we looked at the story broken on, it says they're testing for any connection between the vaccines and myocarditis, if there is any.
So there's literally no confirmation that there is a connection between vaccines and heart disease, but it is now being trialled for.
That's just to sort of set out what the conditions are.
But the conversation, generally speaking, around the pandemic is altering.
And I think it's important for us to avoid hysteria when discussing this subject, to avoid conspiracy, speculation, pointless pontification, to focus on just what's being proven and what's demonstrable.
But it does seem that people are starting to re-evaluate their perspectives on this subject.
People that were Very, let's say, pro-vaccine, pro-mandates, pro-lockdowns are starting to suggest now that condemning unvaccinated people, for example, as you know, many unvaccinated people lost their jobs, for example, are starting to suggest that this situation ought be looked at differently.
Even in the same article it says both Pfizer and Moderna are launching clinical trials to track health issues, if any, in the years following a diagnosis of vaccine-associated heart problems in teens and young adults.
But in the same article it then says there have been around a thousand reports of vaccine-related myocarditis
in children under age 18 according to the CDC.
So even as I say in the exact same article at the start they say if any
and then they go on to say that there have been reports of around a thousand.
So we do know that that's the case and that's in the same article.
Right so it already suggests there's a connection.
Suggests that there is a connection.
And obviously this has been something that has been, you know, we know about the Florida surgeon who was banned from Twitter for recommending that men under 40 didn't get the vaccine due to cardiac related deaths.
Obviously it's one of those areas where you have to Where the idea of censorship comes into, I mean it's very important at this point, like who's able to talk about it and who's not?
Even on this channel, or certainly on YouTube, we've had to wait until it's been discussed in the mainstream media.
And I also, sort of from a personal perspective, don't want to find myself encamped with people that are kind of crazy about this stuff.
But what is troubling me existentially is that a couple of years ago there was a complete inability to discuss these things.
Take just any one of many examples.
The emergence of coronavirus.
Was it from a laboratory leak or was it from a wet market?
That was once the territory of conspiracy, the necessity for lockdowns and their success and impact.
We now know that across the world, and speaking particularly and personally about the UK, that the government ministers and officials that were in charge of implementing those lockdowns were ignoring them.
Now, the most cynical analysis of that would be that, for some reason, they did not share the fear that they were inviting us to participate in.
You could even Further, extrapolate that a culture that is governed by and guided by fear is a culture that's easier to manage.
If you note how often you're invited, outside of the issue of the pandemic, just generally to be in a state of anxiety, desperation and fear.
Desire continually stoked, fear continually provoked.
You have to ask yourself, what kind of society are we inhabiting?
What kind of culture are we being invited to participate in?
This is why I reiterate that there is a necessity for a personal and collective spiritual awakening.
One of the challenges that I find with spirituality is that it's often presented as a kind of solipsistic issue, something that's personally undertaken in private.
But all of our morals and ethics and systems of government are undergirded by, for example, humanitarianism, which is derived from spiritual ideas like, for example, I don't know, equality, human rights.
From where do you derive those principles if there isn't something spiritually valuable about humanity and even life itself?
That's why I'm so excited to be speaking to Michael Singer, the author of Untethered soul and also his new book, Living Untethered, who's been on our show many times and who I'm always personally grateful to see because I'm always quite close to a mental breakdown.
Michael, thanks for joining me today.
Oh, thank you, Russell.
It's a real pleasure.
I love talking to you.
You're a lot of fun.
Michael, thank you so much for saying.
The last time we spoke, I was in a state of crisis.
I recall using you almost as a therapist.
I felt like, right, I'm talking to Michael Singer now.
This is a person who I regard as a sort of a modern day sage, a contemporary yogi, an unordained priest.
So, now that I'm in this position of crisis, instead of interviewing Michael in an abstract way, I'm going to speak to him plainly and candidly about my fears.
Well, today, I feel that because of the nature of the work we generally do, where we talk about political corruption, centralised power, the nature and role of the media in keeping a population spellbound, I wonder how you feel that your work, which focuses on individual and personal awakening, an ability to sort of almost become, I don't want to mangle your life's work, but to become the witness consciousness rather than the objects within our consciousness, to try to get beyond the stored fear and anxiety that most of us experience.
How do you feel that this individual work relates It's actually a very easy answer.
The question is, how do you want to go?
systems that we occupy and also Michael, because I know your answer, I pray your answer will be a long and coherent
one, how do you feel that these are individual problems that we're
experiencing or problems that are somehow socially induced?
Okay, thank you.
It's actually a very easy answer. The question is how do you want to go?
Let's start with a hypothesis.
Let's say that every single person on the earth was completely content, happy, filled with love, and feeling peace inside.
There would be no wars.
There'd be no conspiracies.
There'd be no conspiracy theories.
There would just be people getting along.
John Lennon.
Imagine all the people living life in peace and sharing all the world.
If you're okay inside, You're not manipulating other people.
There is no fear of some centralized government that wants to take from you or has some motive that individual, you know, Congress and different people have motives to stay in power and so on.
The only reason people want all that is because they're not okay.
That's why people want power.
That's why people want to control other people.
Because they're not okay with themselves.
So kind of a fun way to talk, which is very different from how people talk.
What if everyone was okay?
Yeah.
You wouldn't have these problems.
All right.
So I don't see it.
I don't see working on yourself as an individual thing.
I see it as the only solution in the end.
That can bring about peace and harmony and people not manipulating each other.
Because that's all you're talking about is why are people manipulating each other, right?
Why do big companies try to make money?
Why does this happen?
Why is all the difference happening?
Because they're not okay.
Why do people, other than basic needs, why do people need all this money?
Why do they need Jets?
Why do they need to do all this stuff?
The answer is they don't.
But they do because they're not happy.
They're not satisfied with their lives.
They need to do things to compensate for the fact that they're not okay inside.
That's the basic bottom thing.
Everybody is out there, whether it be relationships, whether it be money, whether it be power and pride and success.
I'm not okay, and I feel great when everybody claps.
I don't know about you.
If everybody writes, if I get, excuse me, if I get 7 million upvotes, I'm not a Facebook guy, I'm not on Facebook, but I think there's such a thing as, you know, acceptance, whatever it is, you feel wonderful that day.
If all of a sudden you get a bunch of downvotes, you don't feel so good.
That's because you're not okay.
You need things from outside to fix what's wrong inside of you so that you can get energy inside so it can come out.
I like to imagine what it would be like if everybody naturally felt all this beautiful energy, this beautiful love.
We would not have a single problem.
You might not have a podcast.
I don't know what I would do.
All right?
There'd be no reason to be having all these talks, because people would respect each other, they'd honor each other, they'd share with each other.
Why would they share?
Because they don't need anything, right?
If I'm totally content, I would rather help you, because I don't need anything.
So that's what this work is inside, and it's not an individual thing.
It's how to fix all of society.
If people are not okay, they rob, they steal, they rape, they do all kinds of things.
Correct?
Yes.
What if they were okay?
The only way to actually change that is for a person to work on themselves.
You're the only one in there.
Only you can work on yourself, right?
You can get other people to behave in a way that makes you feel better inside, but then you're manipulating.
All right, I'll stop.
Now I'm not OK inside, and I still believe that my inner life can be improved by the management of external circumstances.
I've found this to be Sisyphean, an endless daily task that seems futile and resets each day at dawn, draining and unsuccessful.
Even though I've been in recovery for almost 20 years, that means I'm abstinent from drugs and alcohol, even though I meditate every day, even though I place spirituality at the forefront of my life, I still find that a lot of my time is spent feeling inadequate, inferior, hungry, hungry for pleasurable experiences.
My primal drives often dominate my psychological life.
Now, I...
I don't want to make excuses for myself, Michael, but when we talk about, say, if we isolate even the issue of mental health and the sense that we are experiencing a decline and a deterioration in the area of mental health, on one level this is of course a situation experienced subjectively by each individual, presumably, but on the other hand It appears that we're living in a culture that is inducing this state.
Now I'm not suggesting here that this is a result of a centralised massive conspiracy, but it does indicate to me that there are a set of values that are promoted and almost enshrined, that are to do with materialism,
individualism, and a kind of negligence of the kind of principles that we're
discussing, surrender, gratitude, acceptance.
You know, in your book, The Surrender Experiment, it's almost like you said you used the fidelity of
surrender as a guidance principle, and the results were a kind of
abundance.
So, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that these conditions,
you know, to just speak of myself, are not occurring in a vacuum.
I'm a participant in a cultural discourse and my own not-okayness in here is being exacerbated and stoked by cultural conditions that, admittedly, I'm participating in and seem unable to surmount.
But what is the role of our culture and how do we alter that culture?
I'm weird, right?
I look at the core of things because I think things have to change at the core, and I can't change everybody else.
I really can't, okay?
I can manipulate somebody or try to make them be the way I want them to be, but I can't do everything, all right?
So I have to decide at some point in my life, and I decided very young, Am I going to sit there and let all that stuff you just talked about ruin my life?
Because it is that way.
It was that way when Christ was here.
It was not that way when Buddha was here.
It's been that way for a very, very long time.
Why is it that way?
I told you.
Because people are not okay.
That's the core.
People are not okay.
So therefore they're doing all the things that you talk about, right?
They're manipulating, they're taking, they're advertising so they can make money.
They're doing everything you say.
You're right, you're absolutely right.
If things are the way you want them to be outside, you feel better inside.
If things are not the way you want them to be outside, you feel worse inside.
So you have a choice.
Go out there and say, I have to change everything which you already told me, makes you neurotic.
I have to change every single thing, every single moment, so I can be okay inside.
Or you can say, wait a minute, I'm the one who's in here, and you're going to find out if you do real work on yourself, and I'm not saying you don't, but if you do real work on yourself, that you're causing your own problems inside.
You're not causing everybody else to be the way they are, but you're causing the fact that if somebody doesn't like you, it bothers you.
Well, that's silly.
Everybody's different.
Everybody likes different people.
It doesn't have to bother you.
So you start to work inside to say, can I at least set an example for humanity that you can be okay in the middle of all this?
Or you can complain about it, but it doesn't do any good.
You understand that?
You don't just sit there and talk and complain about how things are.
Yes, they are that way.
You are absolutely correct, they are that way, okay?
And it does affect you inside.
Why?
You're inside, it's outside.
Can you do something to where you're at peace inside, you're whole inside, so that now you can come out and instead of complaining, I'm not saying you're complaining, you're very good and you help a lot of people, but instead of it just being a lot of what's wrong, you can come out here and help.
Right?
But you have to be okay yourself.
So how do you do that?
And you talked about meditating, and you talked about, you know, beautiful that you got off of substance abuse, and so on and so forth.
I'm very, very proud of you.
It's very beautiful.
And it sets a good example for everybody, all right?
And I'm very happy that you're such a popular physician, and you can set that example.
That comes naturally.
But inside, why are you bothered by what's going on outside?
Literally, let's be scientists.
Why are you bothered by what's going on outside?
If you close your eyes, you're still bothered what's going on outside.
You understand that, right?
It's because your mind has decided how things should be for you to be okay.
But everyone's mind is different.
Remember Skinner?
I'm the sum of my learned experiences.
Is that B.F.
Skinner?
Behavioralism?
Yeah.
And he said, man is the sum of his learned experiences.
You're not the sum of your learned experiences.
You're the consciousness that is aware that your mind is the sum of your learned experiences and your emotions are the sum of your learned experiences.
Period.
You know that.
One change and all of a sudden you're thinking different.
Okay?
So you look at it and you realize, I have made up in my mind how everything needs to be for me to be okay.
And I've made up in my mind how if things are a certain way, I won't be okay.
That would kill me.
I can't handle that.
My favorite word, I can't handle that.
In other words, I'm going to get screwed up inside.
Why can't you change that?
You're in there.
And what I found over years and years, 50 years, is it's because I blocked everything that ever bothered me throughout my life.
Right?
If my parents got divorced, if this happened, if I hurt somebody and now it bothers me, I stored bother inside of me.
Correct?
Yes.
Everything that ever bothered me.
It comes back up.
It comes up in my dreams.
It comes up when somebody says something.
Oh my God, that hurt me.
Okay, why?
Because you stored this stuff inside.
And my experience is, as you learn to let go of that stuff inside, underneath it there's this beautiful energy.
The energy that you feel when things are the way you want, whether it be relationships, whether it be success, that energy is always there.
It's just you set up conditions that have to happen for you to feel it.
When you start to let go of those conditions which are based upon your suppressed stuff, it's not different than psychology, it just goes deeper, all right?
It's based on this.
Freud was right.
You store stuff inside.
You have hands inside that push things away and grab things, don't you?
Yes.
Okay, well you learn to stop doing that.
It's very deep.
You learn to relax when you would have pushed it away.
What happens?
All of a sudden it makes it through.
Like 99.99% of everything you ever experienced made it right through.
But that .001, that's a problem.
All right?
You understand?
And you see trees, you cars drive by, the weather happens, all kinds of things happen
every moment in life.
You don't store those inside.
You can bring them back with memory if you want, but you do not suppress them, 'cause you don't need to.
But the things that bothered you, they're kept inside.
So this is what I have found is why everybody's bothered.
Everybody, it's the same answer for everybody.
You're bothered because you made a storehouse of things that bothered you inside yourself.
If you will work on letting those things go, you can be okay all the time and feel great joy.
And then you come out and give.
It's not that you don't interact with society.
You just don't interact to get, to get it the way you need it.
You interact to give because you don't need it to be a certain way.
There are things that you are saying that have a universal resonance.
It appears that my inner life is a response to a set of embargoes and injunctions that I have placed upon reality, that I have curated an inner geometry that traps certain experiences.
I identify with what you say about there being hands, that I am curating a museum of personal misery and experience within myself.
I know this to be true.
I know that what you're saying is true.
Where I am, and there are times actually, and it's exactly in accordance with your guidance Michael, there are times where I think I'm going to let go of how I think this organisation that I work within, this movement, is going to be run.
I'm going to let go of it.
I'm going to let it be happen.
I'm going to just let it happen.
I'm going to even let go of how I think my children should regard me in reality.
I'm going to let go of how my wife sees me.
I'm going to let go of what I think I want and what I think I'm entitled to, this sort of inner religion, because My understanding of reality is negligible.
The amount of reality that I experience through my limited five senses, it's so close to zero that it's almost not worth basing opinions on.
The sum total, in fact, of human knowledge when compared to the vastness of all potential knowledge is negligible.
So is it then that what you recommend at the level of the individual, a kind of total surrender and recalibration towards service, is what you believe ought be the guiding principles of humankind?
And if this is so, why Why would the optimal state for a human being and the optimal state for a society and a culture be so hard to achieve, to be so antithetical?
Why have we found ourselves at odds with reality?
Okay, deep question.
No, I like it because we have to work at the core.
So even this thing about saying that there's a concept we're supposed to give.
No, I don't teach that.
No.
If you let go of what's making you take, you don't even know you're giving.
You understand that?
In other words, you don't need to be taking from other people.
You don't need to be making things be the way you want.
You're at peace.
You're at whole.
You feel contentment.
You feel joy.
Then giving happens.
Love likes to express itself.
So it's not like you don't interact with people.
It's not like you don't interact with your organization.
You don't do it in order to fix yourself.
There's no motive under there which says, I'm not okay and I need things to be a certain way for me to be okay.
You are okay.
That's the core.
I am okay.
Now what?
I don't go sit in a cave somewhere.
The Bible says you don't light a lantern and put it under a bed.
Okay, I'm a nice Jewish yogi, but I love Christ, right?
I love his teachings anyways.
You don't light a lantern, put it on a bed, you put it on a windowsill.
So when you become whole and complete within yourself, you don't hide, you don't need to.
You interact the same as anybody else, except you end up not taking, you end up giving.
So now you asked the question, why, if it's true that that's the highest state, and of course it is, right?
It's called, you didn't fall from the garden.
That's what the fall from the garden is, right?
Why did that happen?
Okay, the great masters teach when the consciousness drops into the body.
Consciousness is individual.
You see your body.
You're not your body.
You're the one who sees your body.
You can see your hand.
I do that in the book, right?
It's very clear.
I'm looking at my hand.
That must be me.
Cut it off.
Don't worry about it.
Cut it off.
It's not there.
Do you know it's not there?
Is it still you who saw that it was there and now you see it's not there?
Well, then it's not you.
It's time to experiment.
Take a variable out and put it back in.
You're still there.
You can take it all away.
You're still there.
So basically, when you drop into the body, the consciousness is like stunned.
There's all this input.
It's true.
Psychology teaches this.
That's so far out, right?
They just don't start with consciousness.
There's all this input coming in.
There's sound.
There's this.
There's sight.
There's people picking you up.
Oh my God.
Millions of things.
So you're lost.
You need to somehow find a way to pull it together, to get some stability.
That's what it's about.
So what you do is you pick, this is my mommy, this is my daddy, this is my crib, this is my blankie.
And if things are constant, you build a self-concept that I am the one who lives here that does this.
You just build a fake you.
that says I am this person. You're not. You're the one who's protecting yourself by building
the self-concept. It's a mask that you put around yourself and if you can get things to be the way
you want them to be, you feel better. Somebody takes your blankie, you freak out. They give it
back to you even as a baby. We're doing the same thing now.
There is no difference. You understand It's just more complicated, because you use your mind now, not just your physical stuff, to figure out what your blankie needs to be, how everyone needs to talk to you, how everyone needs to behave, what they need to wear.
Everything you talk about, how society enforces everyone to be the same way, because that's the only... religion does that.
You understand that?
Religious history says everybody should be the same way.
Which, my way.
Okay, here it is.
There's the rules.
Because if you are that way, I can trust you.
I can know what you're going to do.
I can control you.
You understand that?
And even if controlling you is for a good reason, it's still controlling you.
So we're still doing the same thing the baby does.
So ultimately, the answer is, can you inside go deeper than your self-concept?
Or do I have to make things be the way I want them to be to be okay?
So I'm not saying you should, I'm not about renunciation.
I don't think people should renounce what they want.
I think they should go deeper inside so they don't have needs and they don't have to be a certain way.
Then they can come out and enjoy your pizza and enjoy your car.
I don't care if you want a Tesla, Ferrari, it's your business, right?
But you're not doing it to show off.
You're not doing it because I feel better when I pull up on my Ferrari.
Right?
And people awe and ooh at me, right?
Except nowadays you pull up in the Ferrari and it's not a Tesla, they boo at you, right?
Look at how it changes, like you're talking about.
The only reason society is a problem is because you let it be a problem.
Because you are saying it needs to be the way I want for me to be okay.
The moment you stop that and you look inside and say, I can be okay inside, then interact with society.
I'm now a plus.
I'm not part of the problem.
I'm not causing trouble.
All right?
So that's why it is.
I go back to your question.
Why are people this way?
Because they protected themselves and they built this concept of how it needs to be for me to be okay.
And everybody did it.
And they've always been doing it, except for some great masters.
You understand that, right?
That's why I'm into that stuff.
Except for some beings who work with themselves enough to where they don't need to do that.
And somehow they have had a major effect on the world.
I mean, Christ died thousands of years ago, and what he taught is not any different than what we're talking about.
Okay?
The kingdom is within you.
Correct?
The kingdom is within you.
It's not in society, it's within you.
If you find that, you're a positive input to everybody.
Imagine if you interacted with your kids and all there was, was love.
Doesn't mean you don't discipline them.
You may need to, okay?
But it's not because you need them to shut up.
It's because they need to learn to shut up.
Not because it bothers you when they're ruckus.
Do you follow me?
It's not about you.
You're not interacting to make you be okay.
Why?
Because you're already okay, right?
And so I don't like when people, somebody say, oh, you mean I should behave this way.
No, I don't mean anything like that.
I mean, you should do the work inside yourself to let go of why you're not okay.
Then be however natural it is.
Everyone will interact differently.
But not because I need you to be this way, because that's really your beef.
Society is trying to make you be the way that makes the majority or the powerful people be okay.
Right?
Behave this way because then I can control you.
Right?
Why do they need to control you?
Because they're not okay.
The people that have the most power are the most not okay.
You understand that, right?
I mean, look at what's happening in the world, right?
They're out there taking land, they're out there taking this, they're out there killing people.
Why?
Because they're not okay.
Why did Hitler kill the Jews?
I'm a Jewish, right?
I can talk about it.
Why did Hitler kill the Jews?
He wasn't okay.
Seriously, not okay.
That's a not okay dude, all right?
And he decided, I can't be okay while there are Jews.
Right or wrong, right?
He was not okay with it.
He was not okay.
And look what he did.
He overreacted.
That's to say the least.
The point is he was unable to work with himself.
Imagine if he could say, oh, this is silly.
They're people like anybody else.
Let me get my act together.
All of World War Two doesn't take place.
One person.
That's how important it is to say the answer is inside, not outside.
The cleansing.
You see, it feels like we have a set of systems that are based on materialistic drives.
The reason that the 12 Steps continues to fascinate me is because it's predicated on the idea that Speaking personally, my addiction to alcohol or drugs is merely an epitomising symbol of a kind of attachment to an external object required in order to be okay.
And even in the most rudimentary and formative texts of the 12 steps, it says,
your alcoholism, for example, is merely an outer symbol of a deeper problem
that are defined colloquially in that literature as self-centeredness.
You're obsessed with yourself and you're obsessed with your desires.
Firstly, let go of the alcohol.
Then you will be confronted with the degree to which this self-centeredness is governing your life.
Then we will show you what this self-centeredness looks like.
And interestingly, one of the aspects of the 12 steps, steps 4 and 5 in particular, are an inventorying and confessional protest where you say, here are all the things I'm not okay with.
My mum did that, my dad did this, this person broke my heart, my body's not how I want it to be, this happened, that happened.
And then on sharing that, you recognize that it isn't the objective facts in
themselves, but that at some point you've formed an impression
of how reality ought be. And I suppose where I get fixated, and it's probably
just another blankie, Michael, just another object, is that I wonder how we might
influence cultural artifacts and conduits in the way that you do for your writing.
I've got Living Untethered here.
Influence these spaces so that they become avatars of a different type of reality.
Because I don't know why I fetishize the global, perhaps because of the scale of my own ego, but like I Fetishise, oh this is what's happening in social media, this is what's happening in geopolitics, the current war in Ukraine.
Why are we being told this information and this information is being excluded?
Why during the pandemic was this aspect of truth highlighted and this aspect of truth neglected?
And obviously the answer is this truth suits the interests of the powerful, this truth is inconvenient to the interests of the powerful.
My idea, Michael, one of my challenges is that I find it impossible to move between these rather narcissistic, personal travails, like, you know, I want this, I want that, people need to treat me this way for me to be okay, and these, like, extraordinary
Just global issues, which I suppose in the scope of the cosmos are similarly trivial, if you can adapt and adjust to that scale.
So, I suppose then, it seems to me that your way of dealing with this has been to continually devote yourself to this truth, the truth that you explain obviously better than I could, and To not allow yourself to latch, limp it, attach or connect to any of these glittering baubles on the carousel of apparently external experience.
To remain devout, to remain faithful to this idea, to this sort of one truth, to this one truth of I am the awareness, like I am free from this.
And I wonder, I wonder then, Michael, when do you experience either grief, agitation, pleasure stimulation, desire?
Has it happened to you in the last 24 hours?
What happens to you around the rudimentary things like the appetite, hunger, sex?
What happens to you around competition?
The drives that we fetishise, the drives around which we formulate a culture, sexuality, appetite for food, desire for status.
What happens to you when you experience them?
And are there, in your experience, more insidious forms or simply more personally effective forms?
And how do they affect you?
I always come back to the same thing.
If you're not okay, all of those things you talked about help you feel better.
Okay, including alcohol, right?
I mean, not long run, okay?
But like, I love the teachings of the Twelve Steps because they're my teachings.
I mean, I'm their teacher.
I don't know, I never read them, right?
I hear them when you talk about them.
I wasn't a drinker, right?
So I didn't get involved in that.
But the more I hear about it, they're the absolute truth.
Like what you said, making that inventory, what's it saying?
You have stuff inside that made you drink.
It's not like you like drinking.
You need to drown the stuff in there that's causing all the trouble inside.
Well, that's what I'm talking about.
You need to get that stuff out.
That's what they're saying.
You need to get that stuff out.
So basically, at some point, if you're okay inside, it doesn't look like you're talking about.
There's not a fetish about sex.
There's not a thing about having to have special foods.
There's not a thing about needing acceptance and all that stuff.
Why?
Have you suppressed it?
No!
Underneath all that junk is a river of joy.
Literally, there's a flow of energy that is always flowing up inside of you, intoxicating you all the time.
It's feeding you all the time.
Okay?
So, imagine for a moment that that's going on.
Then the question has no relevance.
There's no need for any of these things.
Okay?
Do you need basic food?
Of course you do.
Food, clothing, shelter.
Okay?
Does it have to be a really big house?
No.
Does it make any difference?
Why?
Because you're totally filled with joy.
You're filled with love.
Now, does that mean you go in there and just become a hermit?
Right?
That I have so much love I don't need anything?
Love loves to express itself.
Therefore you may get married, you may have children, you may do all kinds of things, right?
Inspiration loves to create, do things, but you're not doing them because you're not okay.
You're doing it because you are okay.
So it's a real paradigm shift.
People think paradigm shift is I change what I like.
No, no.
Paradigm shift is I'm so full I don't have a preference, right?
I'm not renouncing anything.
I'm not renouncing anything.
I'm just enjoying the beauty of what it's like to be, relatively, clean inside, right?
And that there's all this joy, there's all this, like, here, Christ.
Again, I don't know why, I read the Bible once, in 1971, and when I talk, the words pop back in my mouth, right?
Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that leaveth the mouth of God.
That's talking about what I'm talking about.
You're talking about people live off the bread, off the sex, off this, all this outside stuff, right?
There is this river of joy, of the rush of holy waters, call it whatever you want.
There's something very beautiful inside of everybody.
You know, I did three years of prison work, right?
So I got, and that's maximum security prison, killers, rapists, right?
There's beauty inside of everybody.
The trouble is the psyche is so screwed up, That it causes them, in order to be okay, to do very unacceptable things.
You understand that?
Sociologically unacceptable.
I mean, you hurt other people.
All right?
If you tune in to the beauty of this inside, and you actually do the work that's necessary to get rid of this personal psycho mess.
I call it, I don't call it psyche, I call it psycho.
Right?
That's causing all this trouble.
The question has become totally different.
Okay, they just become, okay, if you had beauty going on inside of you and some radical activist came to you and said, oh my God, there's all this trouble with the virus and this kind of stuff, the first thing you would do is look with compassion and understand that is a view.
I can see it.
And here's another view, and I can see it.
A truly wise person is not caught up in their own views, not caught up in themselves.
They have compassion and understanding why people see things the way they do.
Why?
Because I am the sum of my learned experiences and you are the sum of your learned experiences, right?
And that doesn't always sit real well.
So you basically do the work on yourself so that you can be a positive input to society.
So you ask me a question, what about those things to me?
I don't ever think about them.
They don't cross my mind.
I don't suppress them.
I don't do anything.
The moment unfolds in front of me.
I'm generally, okay, not completely, but generally I'm happy to interact with it.
I appreciate it.
You know how I look at the world?
You're sitting on a planet spinning them out of a little nowhere.
That's the truth, okay?
It's just as true as anything else you talk about.
1.3 million Earths fit inside the Sun.
1.3 million Earths fit inside the Sun.
And the Sun is one of 300 billion stars in one galaxy of which there are two trillion.
Get your act together, okay?
Your mind is welcome to think about that.
Why?
It's the truth.
Correct?
Yes, yes sir.
I'm just marking that as a clip that should be used in social media.
That's what that was.
But you see what I'm saying?
Yes I do.
I have a question though, Michael Singer.
It is about the nature of consciousness.
Whilst materially we may be demonstrably finite, is there something about the nature of consciousness that may be beyond spatial and temporal dynamics?
And if that is true, does it matter?
And what do you feel about atheism as a sort of the pinnacle of material rationalism, i.e.
you are your...
Atheism appears to me, and I'm sure there's much more complexity to it than this, but it seems like a certainty that what is materially rendered and measurable is the apex of reality.
And it seems to me that that's at odds with many of the things that you are saying.
And it's curious to me that much of what you're saying is found in various spiritual, which I suppose by its nature means not material, Not dogma, but writing and scripture.
So what do you think, may I ask you sir, is there something about the nature of consciousness that is transcendent of these systems of limitation and measurement?
We can either make it a difficult question or a very simple question.
Do you notice that you have thoughts?
Yes.
Oh, I think you do.
Do you notice you have thoughts?
Do you notice you have feelings, emotions, drives?
Yes, yes.
Who notices that?
Who notices that?
Okay, there.
I don't care if you're an atheist, or the most religious person, or agnostic.
I don't care.
You're still in there, right?
And you're noticing.
An atheist notices a mind that says, I don't believe in God.
A religious person notices a mind, I believe in God.
A spiritual person, a truly spiritual person says, I know God.
Okay?
And there's the mind talking.
Okay, or let's say a spiritual ego person says, oh yes, I'm close to God, right?
And you're in there, you're conscious, that's as far as I'm going with consciousness.
So you are transcendent, and we can talk about it, but you are transcendent to what you're looking at.
Those are objects of consciousness.
All your talk about materialism, those are objects of consciousness.
That's something that is out there, that is coming into your consciousness.
So you're aware of it.
The problem is, you have a psyche in there, that while it comes in, says, I don't like this, I want this, oh my God!
And so you can't stay conscious.
You're conscious, or you wouldn't know what's going on, but you can't stay centered in the seat of consciousness.
How about that?
Right?
There's a way that you can sit inside, your natural state is to sit inside, notice the thoughts, notice the emotions, and notice the world.
You didn't make any of them.
Right?
If your mind is that somebody learned experiences, you didn't make it.
It's like a computer and the learned experiences programmed it.
Your emotions are the same thing, all right?
You did not make this world.
All this thing about, you know, co-creating and all that kind of stuff.
Give me a break, okay?
You didn't make anything, right?
Every single thing in front of you.
Yes, you have a thought, so you say something.
Did you make the microphone?
Did you invent the microphone?
Did you make the wall?
Did you build the house?
You didn't do anything, right?
You just wake up and realize this is my ego saying I is important, but the I is in the middle of this whole universe of which It's vast!
So, you stop with that kind of thinking, and the next thing you know, it's more peaceful inside, because your mind is not pulling you down into it, which is what our minds do.
They pull us down into it, because we're not... they bother us.
How about like that?
You just said that, that what people are materialistic.
What does that mean?
I'm not okay.
I need material things to be okay.
People are not materialistic.
They renounce things.
What does that mean?
I'm not okay, so I need to stay away from things to be okay.
I won't touch money.
Sooner a camel should pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man go to heaven.
Well, what if there's a tremendous rich man and he's sitting there giving money to everybody and all the poor.
He doesn't go to heaven?
It's just these things are not true.
The problem is that you are not okay inside.
So therefore it's saying that if you're not okay inside and money's making you be okay and you're a miser and you're grabbing and you're holding and taking it, well then you're not, you know, definitely not in a good state.
So materialism is not a problem.
Material objects are not a problem.
The problem is that you need them in order to be okay.
So the whole conversation changes if you keep coming back to, I'm not okay.
What am I doing because I'm not okay?
There's your 12 steps stuff, right?
Make the list of why you're not okay.
Now, what are you doing because you're not okay?
Well, I'm so not okay that I'm drinking.
That's not okay.
The only time I'm okay is sex.
I'm not okay.
And so the only time I'm okay is if people are googling over me.
Probably googling also, right?
But basically, I'm doing things because I'm not okay.
So, if you don't start there, everything looks different.
If you sit there and say, why are people materialistic?
I told you, they're not okay.
Why do some people like this and some people like that?
Why do people not like gay people?
Why do people like gay people?
I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not okay.
Therefore, I'm judging.
Therefore, certain things need to be a certain way for me to be okay, and I can't handle that, and I really like this.
It's so much deeper.
Who is noticing this inside?
Who's noticing that if you see a person of a particular religion or culture or something like that, that you either feel good or you feel yicky?
Somebody's noticing, right?
What is prejudice?
That if somebody comes in my presence, something inside of me doesn't like it.
You hear me?
I don't like it.
And don't tell me I should.
Okay, well, why don't you like it?
My daddy, there's all kinds of reasons that you got programmed to be that way.
So ultimately, you come down to the point that the answer is always, you work on yourself to let go of this garbage that you've collected inside.
And only when that ends up happening, people will be okay.
And the people that are okay are helping everybody else.
You understand that?
The people that are not okay are taking from everybody else.
But there are plenty of teachers out there and plenty of good people out there that are helping others around them.
And they do it naturally, because they want to, not because they were told to.
All right?
So, basically, it all comes down to, you just may have consciousness.
So, consciousness is noticing all this.
Okay?
It's noticing.
If you feel hate, it notices you feel hate.
If you feel love, it knows you feel love.
What is the nature of consciousness?
Awareness.
Where does it come from?
That's my world.
What is the source of consciousness?
Okay?
You know you're conscious.
What is the source of consciousness?
When you meditate deep enough, and it can happen naturally, by the way.
Meditation should not be, and doesn't have to be, that I go sit down somewhere and make my mind shut up.
Okay?
When you're clean inside, relatively, only the great masters are clean inside, right?
But when you're clean inside, it happens spontaneously.
Instead of watching a football game, And all of a sudden, all this joy wells up inside of you for two hours.
You can't even watch the stupid game.
You keep falling into these, just like we fall into terrible states, you start falling into these beautiful states inside.
They overwhelm you.
They're just gorgeous.
They're wonderful.
You would never trade them for anything, and that's the key.
Would I trade it because somebody doesn't like me?
No, I'm not going to trade the joy inside of me.
He has the right not to like me.
Does that mean I don't deal with it?
I deal with it, but I deal with it out of compassion, out of understanding.
He doesn't not like me.
He doesn't like himself.
Do you understand that?
He doesn't like what happens inside of him or her when I'm around.
Isn't that what it means?
Okay?
It has nothing to do with me.
Nothing.
Okay?
So basically, consciousness has a source.
You can't find that source when you're busy being involved with your thoughts.
Because then you went the wrong way.
You went down, right?
Or you're busy being involved with your emotions.
You went down.
So basically, when you naturally start to understand, I can let go of my addiction to myself.
How?
My teachings, I know what I've learned, which means nothing.
It's just what I've learned in my life.
Relax.
Relax those hands in there, right?
They start to grab, they start to push.
Relax.
Just relax.
Relax.
And you're gonna find just what Tulsa finds.
If you relax and don't push it back down...
It comes up.
Oh my God, that hurts!
Yes, it was stored with pain, it's coming back with pain.
If you want to go drink to get rid of it, it's just going to go right back down.
If you want to suppress to get rid of it, join a blog where everybody has the same problem and we all agree we have the right to have this problem.
My mommy did this to me.
Go on, it'll stay in there.
If you want it out, relax.
It will naturally come out, just like your body has an immune system.
Correct?
You don't do anything to make the white corpuscles, white blood cells come up and attack the enemy.
It happens all by itself.
Your heart and your mind are way higher than your body.
They have a natural system to try and push the garbage that you shoved in there out of the way.
But when they do, you shove it back down.
The mind tries to purify itself.
There don't need to be teachings.
If it pushes the stuff up that's causing all your trouble, keep your hands off of it.
Let it happen.
That's hard!
You ask me why it's hard.
That's hard!
I couldn't handle it when it happened when I was five.
But you're 55!
Your mommy died a long time ago!
Right?
Why are you still reacting to something that's not happening?
And at some point you're going to say, well, that's not logical.
You're very logical.
You're a very intelligent man.
It's not logical to be bothered by the past.
by your past. Why? It's not happening anymore, but it did.
I know, but it shouldn't still be in there.
And what happens when it tries to come up, you push it back down. So that's the total teaching.
Don't push it back down. But that's hard. And you read, you know, "Living Untethered." It gives you
stages, just like 12 steps. It doesn't have 12 steps. All right.
It has a few steps.
It gives you stages.
It says, I know that when your mother dies, and you weren't able to get there because the plane was late, and you felt guilty, and you had all kinds of trouble for the rest of your life, alright?
I know that when you hear the word mother, you feel weird.
When you hear the word death, you feel weird.
When a plane is late, you feel weird.
Because you stored all that stuff in there.
So what do you do?
You can't start with that stuff.
That's too big.
Just like you don't start your piano with Beethoven.
You start with scales.
So you start by saying, I am bothering myself about things that are meaningless.
The driver in front of me.
The fact that the sun is hot.
The fact that it's cold.
Okay, yes, I don't have to stay in the cold.
I can walk toward heat, right?
But while I'm doing it, And I say, oh my god, it's so cold!
This is terrible!
And then once I get into the heat, you have no idea how cold it was!
Right?
You're making... One of the best lines in that book, Oprah said it was her favorite line, all right?
Is, the moment in front of you is not bothering you.
You are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.
Right or wrong?
Not all the time.
You know, if there's a fire in the house, it's bothering you, you better do something, right?
But if the driver in front of you didn't put his blinker on, and you spend the next five minutes driving, damn drivers, what's the matter with them?
If they're driving in the wrong lane, when they're going slower, you're bothering yourself about stuff that you don't need to bother yourself about.
So you start practicing Truly practicing, not on a meditation pillow, in real life, practicing letting go of the meaningless stuff.
As a business person, you know I did business, right?
I sit there and say, we made decisions based on cost-benefit analysis.
If somebody came to me and said, here's an investment, the cost is 100% and the benefit is zero, do you want to do it?
Oh, let's see.
That's what's happening inside ourselves.
What is the benefit of being bothered by the driver in front of you?
What is the benefit of being bothered by the color of this wall or by this or by that, right?
They're just things you're bothering yourself about.
If you will stop doing that, it will all happen.
Literally, it will all happen if you take the attitude, I'm going to watch today what I bother myself about that there's no benefit for doing that.
Oh, it doesn't screw me up.
And I'm going to learn to let that go.
That's what letting go means.
It doesn't mean letting go of money, letting go of a relationship.
It doesn't mean that.
It means learning to let go of what's bothering you when you bother yourself.
And then what's going to happen when you learn to do that, and that's not that hard, you understand that?
You just make it, it's so logical it's ridiculous, right?
Stop bothering yourself about things that have no benefit to bother yourself, all right?
And then what's going to happen is something bigger is going to come up.
Either because somebody does something or it comes up by itself.
And you're going to find, I can handle this because I practiced the piano.
Now that I can do the scales, I can play Twinkle Twinkle.
You understand that?
And so now you start letting that go.
And just, it's called the ascent.
It just happens naturally.
It's not a fight.
It's not a struggle.
It's not hard.
If you will do it step by step, step by step, right?
And you just keep letting go.
And you're gonna find there's no reason to drink.
There's no reason to be, you know, overly sexually driven.
People are that way because they need to be because they're not okay.
And it gives me joy.
No one can argue these things don't give you joy.
No one can argue that if you're really, really bothering, your mind's driving you crazy, that drinking helps that, right?
Or drugs help that.
So the answer is not, don't do drugs.
The answer is, stop bothering yourself so that you need drugs, right?
It's a core thing.
We're to say, work at the root.
So there's the answer, right?
And then what happens is this joy starts flowing inside of you, and the more joy you have inside, the less you feel attached to things outside, and the more you're okay, and then you become a giver.
So we didn't answer the source of consciousness.
You're welcome to go back to that.
Yes, because Meister Eckhart says, the eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me, and that suggests that the idea of source, a teleology, an origin and a destination, is a difficult one to frame in an aspatial and atemporal, I can't even use the word context because it suggests that it's somehow contextless, So, when you talk about Source of Consciousness, and thank you for that by the way, I was really trying to do it and I was really recognising how embodied this pain is for me, that I wake up and I immediately feel like it's here and here, anxiety, pain, unhappiness, what's going to make it happen?
Like, you know, something for the mouth is what I always think.
Put something in your mouth.
Put a person or a substance in your mouth.
Eat something up.
to do something about this.
And of course, the sort of dedicated clinical trials that I've been doing for 45 years, by the way, Michael, I hope 55 was an arbitrary example, because I caught that when we used the number earlier, and it was 10 years on top of my stated chronological time on this planet, in this form, with this identity.
The 50 was me.
My 50 years of doing that.
Go ahead.
So, You know, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work.
And the other thing may I say, is that there are times when I experience this actual non-separateness, this beyond abundance, total unlimited-lessness.
But like I, you know, I don't want it ever to go.
I want to kind of live there.
I'm like, I have this greed for bliss.
I have this greed for bliss.
I want it.
That's beautiful.
And you can live there.
And you were meant to live there.
You weren't meant to put garbage inside yourself and then wonder why it smells, okay?
If you're in a house and you're the only one living there, and you're the only one living in that house, and there's pizza crust all over the place, and boxes, and roaches, and all these things, you did it.
There's nobody else in there.
Russell, you're the only one in there.
You're the conscious being.
It's a single-occupancy apartment in there.
Your mother's not in there, your wife's not in there, your husband's not in there, kids are not in there.
You're the only one in there.
So if it is a mess in there, you did it.
Now, psychology doesn't like me saying that, right?
But if it's a mess in there, you did it.
But it's wonderful because it empowers you to say, if I did it, I can undo it.
I can stop doing it.
And that's all I'm teaching, right?
I can stop putting messes in there.
I'm so, so sorry you feel the pain that you feel these things,
but it is an indication that something's wrong.
The answer is not aspirin or Pepto-Bismol, right?
Or food.
Why do you like putting food in your mouth?
It distracts you from yourself.
You understand?
The senses are strong enough to pull the consciousness into them, listen to me, to pull the consciousness into them so that then you are distracted from this garbage as you store it inside.
That's why everybody's doing everything, to distract themselves from themselves.
Why not fix what's wrong inside and live a totally different life, which you say you've experienced sometimes, that is really beautiful in there?
It can always be beautiful in there.
Let's start by... Stop here.
Let's say you feel love in a relationship.
You feel love.
You're just sitting there blissed out.
It happens, right?
There's a little love pouring out of yourself.
And all of a sudden, the other person, right, does something that is not, you think, you wouldn't expect them to do that.
They say something, right?
You actually leave the love to get involved in the disturbance inside of you.
What a trade-off!
What's wrong with you?
I'll tell you what.
I'll give you a quarter, give me six million dollars.
That's what you just did.
You just sat there and said, I love the love.
You do it the way you want.
I ain't giving up the love.
Why would I give up the love?
Because you said something.
Because you didn't say something.
Understand that?
Yeah.
So you just finally get wise.
You're so smart.
You're so sharp.
You use this wisdom to look inside and say, I am screwing myself up!
That's a perfect example, right?
You said sometimes you feel this joy, this openness and spiritual.
Why does it go away?
Because something happens that brings you down.
But it happens outside.
That doesn't bring you down.
The outside, all kinds of things.
Like you said, the whole world, billions of things are happening all the time.
They don't bring you down.
It's because it hits something inside of you and you left.
You left that state to go get involved with the garbage inside.
You understand that?
Yes.
All right.
You decide, I decided 50 years ago, no, that is not logical.
It doesn't make sense.
Right?
I'm going to learn not to do that because I really liked that state you talked about.
Okay.
And I'm going to learn to stay there.
But yet I built a business and I did this and I got three grandchildren.
I'm not some way out there.
Will you live alone?
I do live in the woods.
I still live in the woods, but now there's all these people calling.
So it's your willingness to say, I like this interstate.
Everything I ever, even the sex and even the food, it's because you enjoy what happens inside of you.
Right?
You don't need these things outside to distract you from your problems inside.
If you get rid of your problems inside, then it is always that way.
And then, basically, people sometimes say, well, then you're not part of society, you're not being social.
Well, you're very social!
You're just out here giving, loving, compassion.
That was a Buddhist thing, right?
It's all about compassion.
But people don't understand.
People think compassion is sympathy.
No.
Sympathy is, I have the same problem you did, at least I did.
I can really relate to what you're talking about.
Oh my god, I'm sure it hurts a lot.
That's sympathy.
What's compassion?
I used to I feel things like that.
And now I've learned to be higher than that, that I can let go of that stuff.
And so can you.
So I'm compassionate that you're suffering for no reason.
You're suffering because you haven't done enough work.
So now you're helping somebody instead of getting down there with them.
Right?
You're teaching by your example, not with words.
Right?
Somebody once asked Ramakrishna.
Great.
Ever heard of Ramakrishna?
Great master.
Fully enlightened master.
One of the really great ones.
Does an enlightened being ever feel anger?
You'll like this.
He said, yes.
Everybody pulled back.
He said, but it's like riding on water.
As soon as it starts, it's gone.
It just passes through.
It just passes right through.
Right?
You can do that with the stuff inside you when it comes.
There's nothing wrong when it comes up.
There's nothing wrong that you have different needs and things like that.
They just come in and they pass through.
They come in and they pass through.
And your consciousness stays seated in the higher state.
And it never leaves.
Never leaves.
Never ever leaves.
Nothing can bring you down, all right?
And then there's, how about that?
Nothing can bring your consciousness out of the seat of consciousness.
You're established in that seat.
Things go on down here, right?
And you let them go.
That state is nothing compared to the high state.
Should you be in a state of joy and not being disturbed by anything, you haven't gotten anywhere yet.
That's the source of consciousness.
We're very high beings.
You're a very great being, Russell.
You don't need to be struggling with all this stuff.
It's just a matter of being willing to do the work.
The appetite feels so strong sometimes.
I recognise there is no choice but to become awakened immediately.
There is no choice.
Thank you so much, Michael Singer, for spending time with us today, for providing a beautiful, expansive framework for the challenges that we face individually and culturally and collectively.
I found your books incredibly useful, evocative and powerful.
Living Untethered and Untethered Soul, I love them.
The challenge is, I suppose, for me personally, is that I have to continue this practice.
I must have some kind of, accompanying these extraordinary drives that I feel, a type of amnesia.
I move so easily away from principles that have been successful for me in the past.
So it's very beautiful to not only hear what you're saying, but to feel what you're feeling.
It's a very, very helpful experience.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
You're a beautiful being and you help a lot of people.
And I would love, because every time I talk to you, you talk about these problems that still hurt inside, right?
I hope they're getting less.
And in terms of remembering, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening is all it really takes to remember the purpose of my day is to let go of this stuff that's inside and not put any more in.
when you're done at the end of the night, did I let go? It's very still stuff stuff, right? Did I
let go of what I stored inside during this day? I'm sitting in a little plasma in the middle
of nowhere. I'm supposed to be able to handle what goes on.
All right. If you will do that morning and evening, morning and evening, you will wake, you will
go, excuse me, you will wake up and you will go to bed at night in a higher state than you woke
up in the morning.
Every day.
Because you didn't take out more stuff and you let go of stuff.
Wouldn't that be fun?
Every day.
It's a video game.
Every day, you go to bed in a higher state than you woke up.
And it gets beautiful.
Alright.
Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
Imagine if all I took from that was, yeah, I'm going to go and live in the woods.
Yeah, living in the woods.
Yeah, the woods.
It's the woods.
Yes, yes!
If I change the outside, I understand now.
All I have to do is manage everything around me all of the time and then I'm going to be fine.
Michael, thank you so much.
Thank you for that.
It's so beautiful to spend time with you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Russell.
Thank you, Michael Thinger, as always.
Let me know in the comments, let me know in the chat how you find that helpful.
And if it makes you feel better about the things you're personally experiencing in your life, whether that appears to be induced by social, cultural or economic conditions.
I want to let you know that this Wednesday, we've got Books with Brad and we're going to be talking about Alice in Wonderland.
And our guest this Friday will be the farmer Will Harris, who's the owner of White Oak Pastures.
He's a regenerative farmer.
Who's overtly, adeptly and articulately critical of Bill Gates in ways that I think you'll find very interesting.
I also want to let you know about a live event that we're doing in the town that I'm from, Gray's.
There's a campaign to save the theatre there, save our Thameside Theatre, but when they were investigating they discovered council level corruption that involved billions of pounds.
It's an extraordinary story and we're doing a one-day event on the 5th of December Tickets are £22.
You can come and see me, Brad Evans, Mr G and participate in a one day event that will lead to that theatre being handed to the community.
That thing that I'm always saying is the solution.
Decentralising power and allowing communities to run their own lives.
It's something that we're focusing on this event.
There's a link in the description if you want to join me there on the 5th of December.
Thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks everyone that's in the chat.
ET, Free Local, Bob the Bird, Blessed El Bird, Sue Thomason, Mr Galway.
Thanks all you guys for joining us.
I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Michael Singer.
