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There Be Dragons: Daniel Pinchbeck Talks with Russell Brand

Mitch Schultz

Russell Brand joined Daniel Pinchbeck, Graham Hancock and a galactivated group of RS retreat-goers at the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch in Utah for a frank and funny conversation covering a wide range of topics including the nature of contemporary media, quantum physics, the difference between psychedelics and "horrible drugs that nullify you", what comes after time, and the idea that people have been "coded" by society not to anticipate change. 

A few weeks later, Occupy Wall Street happened, and they met in New York to visit it, as Russell writes about here: http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/10/occupy/

This video was directed by Mitch Schultz and edited by Bradley Smith.  Special thanks to Graham Hancock for being a part of the conversation, to Michael Robinson for providing still images and to Brandie Hardman and Ron Johnson for hosting RS at the beautiful starhub/portal that is the BMGR.

Follow Daniel Pinchbeck on Twitter: @DanielPinchbeck

 

Comments

Loved it!

Submitted by Rachael Ehrlund on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 20:36.
Great video! Daniel and Russel make a good pairing for a conversation such as this, and watching Russel's... emergence... transformation has been fascinating. There have been a handful of other famous mainstream figures to transition into metaphysical/fringe/spiritual arenas, but clearly Russel is EXTREMELY intelligent, therefor able to grasp and illuminate these subjects from a perspective that is refreshing, inspiring and ENGAGING. Honesty is beautiful! I found myself jotting down notes as well... and ruminating on several topics to write about in the next week or so. These are such amazing and exciting times... and I believe that conversations such as these are the seeds that grow the Future we are hoping for. One note that I will make to Daniel on his comment about ritual and techniques is this: Although I have a great respect for the historical and sacred traditions of native people, and I understand where the... cynicism towards New Age approaches and various meditations, etc. would arise from, I really feel that establishing what 'works' is an entirely personal process. For example, I can lead an amazing impromptu meditation, but tradition and ritual from a Native perspective are something that I do not easily fit into. The space or entry point for such techniques to work for me seems much narrower than something spontaneous and personal, and I am not going to struggle to fit into a ceremony- that seems counterproductive- considering their sacred and organic roots. I generally feel the same way about most New Age approaches as well... but I know that for every technique that we have trouble fitting into, there is someone somewhere who finds the space exactly what they needed and were looking for. Intention is the key, and in a group setting the energy of the specific facilitator. (Obviously a circle of Kogis would be a powerful group of facilitators, but this doesn't negate the abilities of anyone else based on their specifics.) Open is Open... Be Open. <3

Tobacco

Submitted by Pardeezy on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 19:04.
Tobacco is a sacred substance. There is a huge difference between Tobacco and cigarettes. Get it straight!

Really tired of seeing and

Submitted by Pardeezy on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 19:09.
Really tired of seeing and hearing "spiritual" people rip on Tobacco. 

Japanese Mountain-Dwellers Smoke, Don't Get Cancer

Submitted by CULTiE on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 09:59.

There's a news story I watched where these Japanese people smoke a pack a day and live to over 100 years.

Their diet constists mainly of vegetables and a variety of mountain sweet potatoes.

So it seems if the dietary regimen is correct, smoke all you want.

I'll try and find the link.

 

 

Japanese Mountain-Dwellers Smoke, Don't Get Cancer

Submitted by CULTiE on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 09:59.

There's a news story I watched where these Japanese people smoke a pack a day and live to over 100 years.

Their diet constists mainly of vegetables and a variety of mountain sweet potatoes.

So it seems if the dietary regimen is correct, smoke all you want.

I'll try and find the link.

 

 

Brilliant Conversation!!!!!!!!!!!

Submitted by dreaminglygrounded on Sun, 10/30/2011 - 08:54.
Wonderful conversation!!! Russel is inspiringly awake and love your work Daniel!!! Thankyou!!! Daniel I really appreciated your honesty regarding rituals. Your examples of diff meditations versus deep forms of rictual...... was a great example. Personally it is the difference between knowledge and knowing. Every individuals path is different, but they all lead to wherever it is we are going. I know for myself, when I think of my journey to now, there have been revelations that have been unveiled within the vast expanse of myself, (wow just talking about this is taking my vision into the universe within...this is cool! )! anyway they are truths about myself and who I am, which changes my universal viewpoint, these things cannot be swept way by the latest thing (rainbow bridge, unity meditation). They are me. "Maybe when something is imposed I step away from it" I don't think that is a problem at all.....Imposed wafts of control. More then likely during the Kogi rictuals your probably imbibing that light which is emanating from the Kogi....Once in Mediation "no rictuals" was whispered to me....maybe that is just for me alone, Maybe there is a time and place for rictuals, One should go down the Kogi or other tribal path if one was led too.....personally I prefer the flow of my heart instead. Everyone's path is perfect....Thankyou for your wonderful honesty, you are a shining star Daniel....:)

The True Nature of a Spiritual Solution

Submitted by kokolion on Thu, 11/03/2011 - 01:14.

Thank you Daniel, Russell, and Graham (and all the people who helped) for that really fun, consciousness-expanding session. I've always been a fan of Russell's wit, as well as an admirer of his uniquely principled angling off of the principle of anonymity that's a basic tenet of most effective recovery. I'm still not sure it should be done, but have never seen it done so well, and with such constructive possibillities. Perhaps honesty really is the best policy.

I'm another person who's life was literally saved by a spiritual solution, or to put it more accurately, my life ended, and then I got a new one. But it wasn't until after I'd been given it back a few times before – I'm a person who has had three "Near Death Experiences," and believe me, none of them was nearly as much fun as this video.

But they did, along with the power of "the spiritual" in my personal reconfiguration, inform me about how much of our collective crises have to do with being in this rather challenging human form, with all it's foibles, and mechanical (intellectual, egoic) limitations.

I am a spiritual being having a physical experience– of that I have no doubt, and so I know that the answer to our circumstances lay simply in our being. That is, holding Love in our hearts and intentions as best as we can.

Gandhi wasn't hopelessly idealistic, he was a prophet. We are in the process of a spiritual evolution, it's just that our damn human egos as usual want it to all happen during our lives. Well believe me, there is no death, so it will. It's just that 'faith isn't always a well-lit place,' so to speak. It's hard to see how far we've come, how much progress we're making now, but just look around, the genie has got out of the bottle.(...right mate?) Already there's a consciousness alive in this world that makes our mass recovery quite possible – thanks to the "higher power" of our collective compassionate consciousness (as measured "rationally" by the Princeton's Global Consciousness Project, a day at a time).

That's the problem with drugs opening one to "the spiritual" too – they can touch on it, but mostly engage our psychic (human form) connections, I believe, not the spiritual ones we develop through meditative practice, service, compassionate identification, and living with eternal principles, as best as we can. Oh, and...(ouch!) faith.

And when has there ever been a bona-fide sober and sane (...) Media Popstar/Moviestar like Russell who could even begin to articulate such a profoundly conscious message as he did in this session? That looks like change to me...

Gandhi would, I'm sure, be very happy with you guys "being the change you want to see in the world." I know that it certainly made me happy. Congratulations on a great, eye-opening, heart-activating Wow-Pow.

Cheers!  

Robert Kopecky

Graphic Designer @41 mins

Submitted by frazzle89 on Sat, 11/05/2011 - 20:28.
id really like to contact the graphic designer @ 41 mins. I am a student of graphic design and would to like use more efficient use of my skills and i understand where your coming from. If anyone knows him it would be kind of you to pass his email on to me. Great talk, good to see Brand helping to get this info out there. peace

Nice

Submitted by Blog Master on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 14:38.
I found myself jotting down notes as well... and ruminating on several topics to write about in the next week or so.

What if..

Submitted by Xetxuna on Thu, 11/10/2011 - 22:15.
What if, instead of needing to reach a collective consciousness, all we must do is realize that it already is just that. Becoming aware of it's presence between all things is not just half the battle it is the battle. Seeing what we cannot see from our narrow perspective bound by our limited spectrum of perceived light and therefore surroundings.

Seva, Homa, Bang and the integration of cosmic consciousness

Submitted by ariannasolare on Fri, 11/11/2011 - 13:09.
These are all very great points to look at and the holistic, hilarious and serious approach you have all engaged in, do cover a great deal of ground. What we find when we move deeper into integration consciousness is that Everything is coherently related. All problems stem from one seed. That seed is illusion. In the ancient land of India, where modernization and ancient practice live hand in hand Seva (service to the Divine though mundane acts) is imbedded in the psyche of the people. Not all people of course, as India is the most wonderful horrible place on Earth in many ways, but the way the culture has developed if we look beyond the things that aren't working, we will find sacred practice as an integral thread of the modernized culture. The sacred fire ceremony of India known as Homa or Yajna, is an ancient sacred science that "gives" back to the Earth in many ways. Using prayers, mantra and material items such as food and herbs, the smoke from a Homa fire has been scientifically proven to reduce pollution for instance. Bang is the drink of Shiva and is regularly taken during prayer ceremony. Often a group of people will come together to sing Kirtan, devotional music and drink Bang, which is made from Ganja (marijuana), the plant of Shiva. It has a similar effect to hallucinogens and helps the human to merge with Divine consciousness. These are practices that are part of the daily culture of India. We might look towards this model to find guidance here in the west.

Nihilist Protests in London?

Submitted by Yes_dear on Sun, 12/11/2011 - 22:00.
Is it just me, or isn't he sounding a bit classist/elitist when he talks at around 7:32 about the protests in London being nihilist? He keeps repeating about how the protestors could never in their lives have afforded the things with which they have been "unintentionally marketed." And then the audience is all like, yeah, uh huh... I get that the deeper point he's making is that we don't need the advertised commodities, but still... it comes off as sounding a bit condescending. Also, what's with the weird flashy camera freeze frame effects? (happens at 4:38 too).

Nihilist

Submitted by CULTiE on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 09:45.

I think the comment you mentioned did come off bad,,, but the Nihilist sentiment belongs to the outsiders perspective. There seemed to be no meaning, no message, to the protest. Just a bunch of kids saying gimme that stuff!

From the inside, however, I'm sure the message was clear, "We can't afford this shit and the economy sucks and Enlgand is still a classist nation and I have no future... Fuck You." 

But the deeper message you mentioned is that these people were fighting for for products that won't bring a higher quality of life. The same products that people on the other end of the spectrum are trying to get rid of. That is what revolution becomes when we're so stuck in a consumer culture.    

And the marketing isn't accidental. I think a lot of companies target people who can and can't afford their products.

England is still a very classist place. If you ever talk to a real upper class English person, you'll most likely want to vomit. 

I think Brand is somewhere in the middle culturally (lower class roots, new money) though he's filthy rich.

How to Heal a Sparrow, Literally

Submitted by KaitlynBadge_2012 on Fri, 12/30/2011 - 17:24.
Yes, you see dragons and such on LSD, and hardly anyone ever talks about it. Finally, someone did! How refreshing. And I'm glad I got off the LSD back in the 70s. Then later, I got into Yoga and Meditation and I once healed a sparrow who fell out of a tree and was dying. How did I do it? I took the sparrow to a warm place in the house, I started OM'ing, and using Jesus' name, and asking for Jesus to heal the sparrow. And with a tad bit of faith, size a grain of sand, with much time and much patience and lots of OM'ing, guess what, the bird started plumping up and chirping in my hand. Then wonders of wonders, the little parasite bugs that were trying to eat at the bird, ran away and left the bird, and off of my hand. Also when I was praying and OM'ing and using Jesus' name, even though my hand was on the floor holding the little sparrow in my hand, in my mind's eye, I felt and saw with eyes closed, my arm was above my head and the bird was in my hand on my head, in my mind's eye. And no, I was not on any drugs whatsoever. Well after the sparrow was chirping, as I felt surges of energy surging thru my arm to the hand and into the sparrow, which is when it chirped the most, well after a long time of that, I began to weary of the prayers and process and I thought it may be time for the sparrow to fly out the window. Maybe I should have lingered longer to make sure the sparrow was completely healed, but it seemed like it was healed and the little sparrow was plumping up with each energy surge and chirp thereafter. So, after wearying of the task I was doing, I gently took the sparrow in my hands to the window, and I showed it the outside. It didn't fly at first. And it wouldn't. So I just held it out further, out the window so it could feel the breeze, and I think either it took off on its own flying or maybe I gave it a little lift off into the air. And lo and behold, it took off flying. At first, after it started flying, it dipped a bit, but then it went back up and went out flying over the field behind our house. This is a true story. Albeit, I wonder if anyone would ever believe my story. Namaste. Hare Jesus. OM

Just a Video or Two

Submitted by KaitlynBadge_2012 on Fri, 12/30/2011 - 23:17.

Just Videos here, where I go rambling on and on in sparkly jewelry and somewhat sparkly hippie clothing, and others:

http://youtu.be/qhO_0Fd9saA

 

http://www.facebook.com/LoveIsMyBadgex2

Nothing short of everything will really do.

Submitted by deometer on Sun, 02/05/2012 - 16:46.

About a third of the way through and I'm loving it. I just want to talk to a few points real quick:

 

- Russel asks Daniel something to the effect of "what can we do to change this", and Daniel had a great response about utilizing the same tactics as those in power, education, etc... I'd like to add this insight from Aldous Huxley, which doesn't quite fall into the category of trite maxim just yet (and even if it does, it's bloody brilliant):

 

"Nothing short of everything is ever enough." (a variation of it is "Nothing short of everything will really do.")

 

I think this is the foundation/mindset we need to start from, and go from there.

 

- Speaking of Aldous Huxley, Daniel and Russel were discussing the fact that we essentially don't have any real blueprint for a system that really works. I'd like to point to Huxley's Island as a potentially phenomenal source for mining ideas, where "Nothing short of everything" was tackled and changed. From education to the very way jobs are performed (no one life-long "career", but the ability to move between work more freely - for instance, perform "muscle work" when desired), it's a top-down overhaul. The importance of a wildly new education structure is its emphasized backbone (with children even undergoing a "moksha medicine"/"reality-reveler" ritual under informed guidance when they reach a certain age), and ideas for how we can change ours can be gleaned from that book, teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti (such as Education and the Significance of Life), talks from Sir Ken Robinson (available on YouTube), and the book Brain Rules by John Medina (to name a few sources). For work, see William Morris' excellent essay "Useful Work vs. Useful Toil" (to name one place).

 

Here, a few quotes from Krishnamurti on the matter:

"We are not bringing about a vital change, uprooting the old ways of thought, freeing the mind from traditions and habits. ... We want to do patchwork reform, which only leads to problems of still further reform. We do not want to strip away all our false values and begin anew. But the building is crumbling, the walls are giving away, and fire is destroying it. We must leave the building and start on new ground, with different foundations, different values."

--------------------

"You are part of a society, and you are struggling to adjust yourself to it. But that society is the outcome of acquisitiveness. It is the outcome of envy, fear, greed, possessive pursuits, with occasion flashes of love. Surely, you have to create a new society. ... But, we do not think in terms of total transformation, we think only in terms of superficial change. And, if you look into it, you will find that superficial change is no change at all."

 

- To Russel's point about the emptiness of the London riots, I'd just like to leave one more relevant quote from Krishnamurti:

 

"Revolt is of two kinds: there is violent revolt, which is mere reaction, without understanding, against the existing order; and there is the deep psychological revolt of intelligence. There are many who revolt against the established orthodoxies only to fall into a new orthodoxies, further illusions and concealed self-indulgences. What generally happens is that we break away from one group or set of ideals and join another group, take up other ideals, thus creating a new pattern of thought against which we will again have to revolt. Reaction only breeds opposition, and reform needs further reform. ... Against this regimentation, many are revolting. But unfortunately their revolt is mere self-seeking reaction, which only further darkens our existence."

 

Now, back to watching!

"The word 'drugs' is very misleading"

Submitted by deometer on Sun, 02/05/2012 - 16:59.

I'd just like to supplement Graham's brilliant point about the trap of Orwellian-type language when it comes to 'drugs' with this wonderful talk from Alan Watts (it comes in 5 parts, I'll link to part 1):

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLly67wqsuI

 

The first line, which is a great way to establish the issue:

"The first thing I think we must be clear about is that the word 'drugs' is very misleading." 

"We are the stories we tell ourselves"

Submitted by deometer on Sun, 02/05/2012 - 17:33.

To Russel's point about defining a culture with the stories it tells itself, there's a book that touches on it exactly and elaborates on it thoroughly and brilliantly:

 

Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence

http://www.amazon.com/Madness-Gates-City-American-Innocence/dp/1587901730

 

This book also touches on the point of how we've lost meaningful ritual and initiation, and how it's affected our society negatively.  Speaking of "ritual," and something that woman hinted at, is the Zen Buddhist expression "When walking, walk.  When eating, eat.  Above all, don't wobble."  It's meaning is that the importance, the ritual, is found in the action itself.  You don't necessarily need any special sort of dress or to perform choreographed dance/drama, just to see the act as a ritual in and of itself.  And, in that "ritual," find the 'yoga' (the 'yoke', or 'union') with the whole of continuum of nature itself.  That's not at all to say that there shouldn't be ceremonial ritual, just that it shouldn't begin and end with the ceremony.

 

Back to the first point, Alan Watts has another great talk on the myths we tell ourselves representing, on a fundamental level, our image of the world:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfNbmwiTIlE

 

A longer version can be found here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INVjMaoA-yg

As always Russell Brand

Submitted by csimons on Thu, 02/16/2012 - 05:55.
As always Russell Brand talks frankly which is so refreshing whilst maintaining a fun presence

A solution?

Submitted by LilacLove on Thu, 02/23/2012 - 17:08.
I am so pleased to find this conversation occurring. For anyone who has explored these avenues of thought and is left seeking a method, I'd like to offer something: http://www.enterthezohar.com/ You are invited to check the above link and watch the video that just might lead to the answer. With love, Lilac

Russel Brand Walks the Talk

Submitted by CULTiE on Sun, 04/01/2012 - 20:50.
Just wanted to say that I saw Russel at the Secret Policeman's Ball, a comedy show in NYC, recently. And he definitely incorporated a lot of the ideas talked about in this video into his own standup comedy. He ridiculed the distracting nature of mass media and hinted at enlightenment as a real thing that people should strive for or at least be aware of. Good job. He's a good ally to have in the big bad world of media madness.

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