[Music]
Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people.
We've done over 700 of these now, so if this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones, obviously you can do that on YouTube, but you'll find that if you go to batgap.com, we have some ways of organizing, categorizing the interviews, which is hard to do on YouTube.
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My guest today is Thomas LeGrand.
Thomas lives in Plum Village in France,
or near Plum Village, which was the home of Thich Nhat Hanh.
He'll be talking about Thich Nhat Hanh and about his teaching.
Thomas is a wisdom seeker, a social scientist,
and sustainability practitioner.
He is the author of the internationally acclaimed book
called "The Politics of Being, Wisdom and Science
for a New Development Paradigm."
I just finished reading the book, nearly finished,
and enjoyed it a lot.
This book won the Grand Prize
of the Nautilus Book Award in 2024.
Thomas's spiritual journey began at the age of 23
with an encounter with native spirituality in Mexico
before embracing the wisdom of a wide range of traditions and practices, including meditation,
energetic healing, and Tai Chi Chuan.
He lives with his wife and their two young daughters near Plum Village, as I just mentioned,
the monastery of Thich Nhat Hanh, which is in the southwest of France, is the country
where he grew up.
He is currently the lead technical advisor for the United Nations Development Program.
Is that what the DP stands for?
convened, it's a conscious food systems alliance
that he is the lead technical advisor on.
People might be wondering, okay, Buddha at the gas pump,
it's about spirituality, spiritually awakening people.
What does it have to do with politics?
And of course, the title of your book implies
that politics and spirituality might actually
very much have something to do with one another,
the politics of being.
So why don't we start by answering that question.
People usually don't associate politics
and spirituality in the same thought.
I think it was Mark Twain who said,
"Politicians and diapers should be changed often
and for the same reason."
(laughing)
- Yeah, and I don't think it will get us,
you know, through the crisis we are facing now,
which I think, you know, call for a connective awakening.
And my question is, how do we organize societies for that?
You know, I'm also, you know,
often people think about individual processes of awakening.
It's very important, of course,
but I'm a social scientist,
so I know that we are fashioned by society, right?
We are modeled somehow by society.
And actually, right now,
All institutions are based on a wrong paradigm, which is trying to bring force.
They are based, let's say, on a vision of human nature that is not very accurate
and rather emphasizes what's wrong with human beings in terms of, you know,
it's based on this economic paradigm that people are selfish, competitive,
and only looking to maximize their own material interest.
So we have to understand that the ethical crisis we are facing now is a result of how our design, our institutions, our society,
and we can intentionally design in a different way in order to bring about the best in humans.
Myself, as an environmentalist, I've come to the conclusion there is little we can achieve
until we keep viewing progress in terms of having and material prosperity,
because at some point it has become antithetical with respecting the planetary boundaries.
So that's why I think we need to reinvent a new vision of progress,
which is more about being rather than having.
And I build on what the inter-religious, inter-spiritual movement has said about it,
especially in the Earth Charters, it says, "When basic needs have been met,
human development is primarily about being more rather than having more."
So I was looking for a wisdom-based approach to politics or development,
and that's how I designed, I found out, developed this concept of politics of being.
Good. Personally, since the 1970s, I've always felt that spirituality
and the world situation are very much intertwined,
and that ultimately spiritual development
is the most influential factor that
could change the world situation, because it's
the most fundamental thing.
And the more fundamental a level at which you operate,
the more leverage you have.
But you look at the world and so many situations,
and industries are so powerful, and governments
are so powerful and weaponry and these huge forces, which
seem so intractable, so entrenched.
It seems like a David and Goliath situation.
You wonder, it seems like there needs
to be a radical restructuring of everything
in order for humanity to survive.
I can resort to my thinking about consciousness
being fundamental and a change in consciousness resulting
in a change in the world.
but I can easily sympathize with the average person who thinks that that would be magical
thinking and that they might despair that any fundamental change is ever really going
to happen or we're doomed.
Yeah, well I think you know maybe it's because a lot of people fear looking reality in that
way that we need you know almost a miracle that maybe we're not able to point out really
more clearly what is wrong and address it. I see that myself and I work, as I said, in
climate change, environmental conservation, etc. And I do feel that people are not aware of the
depths of the change that needs to happen. And there's always this thing, "Okay, we'll bring some
negativity, we'll have to be hopeful, etc." But sometimes that prevents looking more clearly at
the real, the deep roots of our problems. And I do think it's something very profound that
needs to happen and I do think it's possible. And I think what we need, I mean the main narrative,
let's say, I'm trying to promote, which is a positive one and I think more important than
the eventual collapses that we'll be facing, is the fact that we are close to make that
historical breakthrough towards spiritual civilization. And I think that's what needs
to happen to bring the world into balance. It has been prophesied in many traditions,
and I think a lot of us agree that this world is not so far away, which is the best,
but the worst is also right here. And it's a kind of yin-yang thing, right? They bring together.
Without this vision, we may not have the willingness, the capacity to make that big leap in collective
consciousness.
So, now, today is the 9th.
Election Day in the US was four days ago and Donald Trump won.
And a lot of my friends, a lot of people I've spoken to have jumped to the conclusion, which
I might agree with, that perhaps there needs to be a serious destruction phase or dismantling
or chaotic phase before things can get better.
They say it's darkest before the dawn.
Well, maybe it hasn't gotten dark enough yet, and maybe he's the guy to do it.
And of course, his supporters would say, "Oh, no, no, it's going to get so much better now.
We'll see how it goes."
But there have been many prophecies from ancient traditions saying that a time of great trial
and tribulation will happen before there's going to be a significant about-face, a significant
transformation to a more enlightened age.
Do you resonate with those types of prophecies?
Yes, completely.
You know, as I said, I think evolution is a dialectical process, and we see right now
that even in America it has been used for a couple of years already, very spiritual language,
the soul of America. So I would say both the light and the darkness somehow are competing
together and because the darkness is showing up that we may turn towards greater spiritual,
let's say, solution that address this issue at the root level. Having said that, I have to
recognize I'm also you know I'm also a little bit perplexed about
theoretically destruction you know we are into that it makes a lot of sense
what Donald Trump seems to be bringing to me in terms of destruction may not be
the best destruction I would like to see you know because he may also strengthen
a capitalist system which become increasingly more destructive I think
democracy needs to evolve it doesn't need to be destroyed.
As you were speaking I was reminded of some verses in the early part of the
Bhagavad Gita where initially Arjuna has this bravado, certainty, confidence, "Let me
at these guys, I can beat these guys" and so on. And then Lord Krishna says a few
things to him and he begins to doubt himself and he sits down in the chariot
and he's feeling dejected and he thinks, "I can't do this." And one
commentary on the Gita that I've read said, "As long as people think that they
can manage, that they have within their own capacity the ability to solve their problems,
then they haven't necessarily gotten to the point where they can solve them because there's
a higher authority, you know, the Divine that ultimately needs to come to their assistance
for the problems to genuinely be solved.
And those verses in the Gita kind of illustrated that turning point for Arjuna.
Perhaps there needs to be a similar turning point for the world where all the strategies
and methods that we have used to try to deal with our problems need to be shown to be inadequate
demonstrably and definitively before we can perhaps even consider that there could be a
spiritual solution or a consciousness-based solution to those problems. Yeah, definitely.
One way to make that a little bit more concrete would be just to say that until we think we can
solve our problems, you know, looking at their manifestation, but not their roots, which I think,
you know, we have to recognize that's a spiritual crisis. I'm trying to make also, you know, I'm,
of course, I have a very spiritual background, but I'm trying also to translate that for people,
for decision makers and people more using the language of social science, etc. But yeah,
Until we look at superficial solutions, we are losing our time because they won't bring us where we need to go.
You know, sometimes when you use spiritual teachings which are usually targeted at the individual level,
they are, you know, they're very profound and quite radical.
And I'm trying to see how these spiritual teachings relate to society.
society and I think maybe at some point there's some differences that I think there are a
lot of solutions that have a spiritual nature and some not so radical that you know there
is no solution until you know we have this great collective awakening but that's my way
to translate it at the collective level. But yeah I think to really recognize because I
I think, you know, in the book I show that there are lots of existing solutions, but they are
not brought together in a collective vision which is spiritual, which I call the politics
of being, and which recognize that until we don't acknowledge our spiritual nature and
what does that mean for our life on Earth, we probably won't be able to put them together
into this new vision.
As you know, and you can perhaps elaborate, there does seem to be some kind of spiritual
epidemic or renaissance or something going on in the world, facilitated in part by our
technologies.
I mean, the fact that you and I are having this conversation wouldn't have been possible
even 20 years ago, because we didn't have Zoom and the internet was too slow and stuff
like that.
So, all these spiritual teachings are spreading around the world like crazy, in addition to
all the crazy stuff that's spreading around the world, all the misinformation and everything.
Millions of people are tuning in and getting interested in spirituality and practicing meditation or other practices.
Something's happening here, to quote Dylan.
On the other hand, it might seem airy-fairy, you know, or pie in the sky,
to suggest that, oh, a bunch of people sitting on their butts meditating and doing Tai Chi and whatnot
is actually going to change climate change or solve the Middle East conflict and things like that.
things like that. It just seems too abstract, too ethereal. Let's say someone said that to you,
what would you say to them? As I said, I think, you know, these individual transformations
are happening, but how do we put what we have not yet managed is to translate that into society.
And for this is not only spiritual teachings, but, you know, there is this discussion like
how spiritual teachers, let's say, are qualified to talk about, to address world issues. And I think,
you know, they are part of the solutions, but they don't have all the solutions. It's really
a field in itself on how to translate our spiritual understanding into practical solutions for the
world. And that I think we are lagging behind somehow. The importance of building communities,
is very important to translate that,
these individual transformation into something
that can transform our world.
I think it will take a little bit of time still.
- I used to think that if a person meditated, let's say,
and developed consciousness,
then automatically every aspect of their life
would just be transformed spontaneously.
They wouldn't have to attend consciously to their ethics
or their health, or their social behavior, or other things.
All those things would automatically flourish.
I no longer believe that.
Through decades of observation, I
feel like you do have to consciously attend to that.
I know people who've been meditating
50 years who would still cheat people in business,
or very difficult to get along with, full of anger,
different problems like that.
So perhaps the same thing applies to spirituality and the world
situation, if spirituality is going to be a solution to the world situation, it can give
us the tools to be more conscientious, be more concerned about the environment or animal
rights or different things like that.
But it's in our hands whether we're going to use those tools or not.
It's not adequate to just sort of do your spiritual practice and everything's going
to ripple out and change the world.
I really think there needs to be people on every level that use that inner development
in a very intentional way to bring about changes and innovations?
Definitely. In Buddhism, I know you refer to often, you know, we talk about wisdom and
compassion and we said compassion is blind without wisdom. So you may have a think, you
know, often what you see is that indeed when people go into some spiritual transformation,
tend to care more about others and the earth, but to be able to translate that into practical
solutions to have the wisdom on how to apply that to transform societies, that takes also
an understanding about how each of these things work.
Without even mentioning, you know, those that may get lost and you know, we know that some
spiritual world, for example, there is some because we as spirituality leaders to look
at things in a different way, in a way that is often not acknowledged.
There can be conspiracy theory, etc.
And sometimes it's not so much for the good as I would believe myself.
That's an important point.
A few years ago around the beginning of the pandemic, I interviewed these three guys who
do the Conspiratuality podcast.
that's an interesting word, "conspiratuality," because it turned out that a lot of so-called
spiritual people had gotten into conspiracy theories much more than the general population.
So that tells you something, which perhaps is that discernment and discrimination are
important on the spiritual path.
Spiritual people, by definition, believe in things that are not so obvious, so that's
good thing, but it perhaps inclines many of them to just believe any suggestion of things
going on that aren't obvious. It makes them more gullible in a way. I mean, we've seen
that with cults, how gullible people can be, how easily manipulated.
Yeah, no, and you know, all the spiritual reality, let's say, is very complex. You know,
I feel myself quite a lot of experience and insights, but I'm always cautious about what
I'm really seeing and what will really happen. So it's very difficult, as you said. There needs to
be a lot of discernment. And when we talk about reality, you need also to just, if you don't have
understanding of this more practical material reality and how things work in this world,
can lead you to interpret your spiritual insights, you put that on the world in a way that's not
really real and realistic. Which brings up the whole thing about spirituality and science. I
really happen to be very fond of collaboration between spirituality and science. They're not
opponents, they're actually collaborators, at least they should be and can be and need to be.
But that's a whole topic, I mean you can comment on that if you want or we can just keep moving on.
But, you know, I mean, the scientific method is designed to enable us to discern truth from
falsehood and to allow consensus to arrive at truth rather than just a person's individual whims.
>> Bruno: Yeah, definitely. So, my method, I would say, has been to look at what are the main
spiritual insights of many traditions, and especially how they relate to certain aspects of
life so that we can develop a way of organizing societies based on spiritual values as often
been prophesized and I think in the book I show very concrete, I name these spiritual values,
I show how certain ways of organizing societies, certain policies are linked to the spiritual
values and by bringing them together we can have a very concrete, tangible politics of being with
actionable agendas. Yeah, good. We'll get into some of those specifics as we go along. One other
general theme I just wanted to throw in. If you look at history, it seems to me that the changes
that happen in history are not just the ripple effect of individual people changing, but there's
some kind of, you could say, more cosmic forces that govern the trends of time, and things move
in vast cycles of time and various ages and huge changes in society.
Spirituality is important, of course, but I think there's more than just the individual
efforts being made.
There's a story from the, might be from the Srimad Bhagavatam, where there was this village
and for some reason Indra was mad at the village, I guess, because it was Krishna's village
and Indra and Krishna were having a fight.
And so he made it rain, and it was raining and raining and raining, threatening to kind
of drown out the village.
And Krishna came along and picked up a mountain and held it like an umbrella over the village
and protected the people from the rain.
And then the people thought, "Oh, it must be a very heavy mountain.
He might strain his wrist.
We better help."
So they picked up sticks and kind of helped hold the mountain.
And of course, they weren't really doing anything.
It was Krishna holding the mountain.
So like that, I sometimes think that there are vaster forces that are governing the trends
of time and causing major changes over the centuries, and that such forces may be very
evidently in play right now, as we appear to be in a time of very intense transformation,
and perhaps with some kind of cataclysmic quality as we go through the coming decade
or two.
Myself, I'm inspired by the work of Sri Aurobindo and the mother, right?
And Sri Aurobindo was a guru, let's say, in India.
He died in 1950 and he was a leader of, an independentist leader of India.
And then he retired for the last 25 years of his life in his room, not going away,
and really working on these planetary energies.
And this part of his work is not so known, but it's very interesting when you get into it.
And he said that, you know, he was actually harnessing these spiritual energies for
political, social transformation, even in the Russia revolution, and especially also during
World War II, seeing that beyond Hitler was a lot of dark spiritual forces that he was fighting,
including the mother. You know, there is a whole spiritual history that is completely
behind the historical facts that we completely ignore collectively. And you see, you know,
some people use, you know, in France we have a philosopher quite famous called Edgar Morin.
He looked at what was happening during World War II, which were like some small miracles,
and he's not using the language of spirituality. Maybe he doesn't have this understanding, but
you know, when you know what, for example,
people like Shobindo were doing,
you can bring the two together, right?
That's interesting.
There's a man, I believe, in Holland
named
Jürgen Zewi, you know Jürgen Zewi?
He's been on BatGap and
he has had these deep mystical experiences
most of his life, where he travels into
the astral and celestial realms and
sees all the beings there and what's going
on, and he's written a new book
beautifully illustrated using AI technology to create what he feels are realistic depictions
of what's happening in these subtle realms. Anyway, you and I have been talking back and forth and
agreeing on the point that you and I have just been discussing, which is that there are subtler
forces at work than the obvious ones that, you know, we see in politics and all that stuff.
There are deeper forces that you were just alluding to in Sri Aurobindo's work,
that what we see is perhaps a tug of war between various forces on the surface is just symptomatic
of a tug of war between these deeper negative and positive forces.
Yeah, definitely, and I think in spiritual work, ceremonial work, etc., we know that
we tend to think that the spiritual reality is what informs the material reality, right?
Actually, from that point of view, yeah, I do believe that what happened at this level is
really tough at the moment, is really strong, and this is spiritual work in that, you know,
working on subtle energies, etc., can help shift the reality that we see at the political, social
levels. Which reinforces the point we've been making, because if you're just working on political
or economic levels, then you're not even touching those deeper, subtler forces that need to be
purified in some way. But if a person is doing deep spiritual practice, as Sri Aurobindo was,
then you're actually venturing into those realms and helping to purify them,
both within yourself and within the collective. >> Yeah, but I think it can be even powerful to
make the link, you know, even when you're working at the spiritual level, I've been doing some
healing ceremonial work, if you're able to talk to the people where you are and kind of open their
hearts at a more material level by talking to them, you know, you connect the material and
the spiritual and that makes seeing much more effective, right? Yeah, that's very important,
meeting people where they are.
There's a proverb in India that when the mangoes are ripe,
the branches bend down so that people can just pick them
at their level, rather than having to climb the tree.
OK.
You provided very useful points at the end of your book,
10 main points that summarize what is discussed in the book.
And I'm going to start going through these points,
in most cases, actually just reading them, and then
having you comment on them and having us discuss them.
So point number one is,
we need a collective shift of consciousness,
a cultural evolution of a spiritual nature
to address our current challenges.
It is already ongoing,
and we are currently facing an evolutive crisis,
which requires individuals and societies
to look inward and transform.
- What's more systemic?
what's common to all the crises we see in the world
is the same kind of consciousness.
If we bring it a little bit down, something more concrete,
we could talk even of mindset, of culture,
which mainly is the result of modernity
and based on specific values,
materialism, individualism, reductionism,
anthropocentrism, et cetera.
And we need to understand that what we see
or the way our world functions,
the way our institutions are designed,
our laws, our policies,
they reflect this kind of worldview or mindset.
And that's what we need to change
to be able to live in harmony.
- And there's a quote which is attributed to Einstein,
which is that you can't solve problems
from the same level of consciousness
at which the problems were created.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- And in the book, I say it's funny
because I often see these quotes in some reports, et cetera,
And often the same report to me doesn't go deep enough into the chain.
They often still work in the same paradigm that I qualify of this, you know,
modern worldview and paradigm of economic growth and having.
And yeah, often it feels a bit like, you know, there's this other sentence from
the, from a movie, which says, you know, everything needs to change so that
nothing, uh, so that nothing changes.
Right.
So often they kind of changing to preserve still what I qualify as the main paradigm
and I think we need to go deeper into that kind of spiritual transformation.
They're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Yeah.
Okay, here's point number two. As a wisdom-based, science-informed approach,
a politics of being can support this evolution, the evolution that we've just been discussing.
"Its main goal is to support the fulfillment of all beings, that is to say, the realization
of our truest and highest being.
Being, in quotes, is a wiser and more adequate development objective than having.
It applies to the whole Earth community."
And of course, that gets us into the wealth gap, the wealth disparity, where you have
like what 10 or 15 people in the world have more wealth than the 90% of the population
or you know the statistics I'm sure but there are huge disparities between the rich and the poor.
Yeah and this health really does not really matter so much from a point of view of being you know to
help them become who they are and the best version of themselves you know nobody needs that amount of
well. So this concentration is just a manifestation of this paradigm of having we are in. If we would
rather think in terms of being, then one doesn't have to have extreme wills to be. And it will
lead us to address inequalities because being, you know, having make us competitive. If I have more,
probably you have less. Being works for everyone. If I be more, I mean, because we inter-are,
if you are more, then I can be more. Also, you're helping me to be more.
There's an interesting section in your book about universal basic income,
which would mean that everybody, either in a country or even in the world, gets a certain
amount of financial support so that all their basic needs are met.
And as I understand it, the means are there to provide such a thing.
I'll let you elaborate, but there's even sections about where people wouldn't be obligated to
work, they would just sort of have a basic income, but when this has been tried experimentally,
it's found that people do work, or they engage in something constructive or creative or whatever.
to consider the possibility of the whole world functioning that way?
Well, that change of paradigm has really to do about all views of human nature.
Either we think, you know, we're just selfish, materialist, and we don't want to support
other people.
So if you think that way, we give you money, then you work less.
But if you think that people are naturally drawn to find meaning in their lives and to
contribute to society. And that's what we see more in these studies, is that they just,
this extra money just help them build the conditions to express themselves in this healthy
manner and trying to contribute positively. So it's an evolutionary process and often
our institutions are what maintain that kind of vision of human nature. We assume that
vision, a negative vision of human nature, but we can also construct our societies or
even our organizations in a way based on completely different assumptions.
And the funny thing is that it's called also Theory X, Theory Y.
You know, there's these two different ways of functioning.
And then the question is, which one is real?
And the answer is people react about how you frame the situation.
If you frame it in a way that you're not trusting people and then everybody is trying to cheat,
if you're rather trusting people and then people respond with responsibility to this assumption.
Now I can hear people objecting that, well, there are always going to be jobs that no
one wants to do.
No one wants to lay asphalt on a highway in the summertime or work in a pig slaughterhouse
or do a lot of horrible things that people seem to think need to be done.
I sometimes think, "Okay, well, there are a lot of jobs which probably shouldn't exist
in a more enlightened world.
Do we really need tobacco and whiskey and gambling and all kinds of things that just ruin people's
lives?
Maybe in a more enlightened society, those industries wouldn't even exist, but, you know,
we still need to lay asphalt on the highway and do some stuff that isn't necessarily that
pleasant.
But maybe with AI we'll have robots that can do that.
We don't have to get people out there to do it.
If everyone just sort of did what they found most creative and fulfilling, I wonder if
major sections of the workforce would go empty.
Yeah, no, and I think we will try collectively to minimize that kind of work because we're
not assuming some people we don't care that will be doing it and we'll just, you know,
them, let's say. So I think we would organize in a way, I think by sharing, you know, these
tasks so that people don't spend their whole life doing the bad things and also trying to
find ways to either have robots or trying to minimize this kind of things that require
works that are not very fulfilling, right?
Yeah. Another interesting section of your book was about the prison system and how, you know,
United States has the highest per capita percentage of people in prisons and you
were contrasting the conditions of US prisons with places like Norway or maybe
it was Denmark, one of the Scandinavian countries, which you know prisons are
almost like these little country clubs which are you know not so bad, hey sign
me up, but they produce tremendous results in terms of...
Yeah exactly, it's a view you know if you think people are you know I've done a
crime because they are bad people and you need to be tough on them in order to create that kind of
incentives because that's how people work so they don't want to be in prison. That's your view.
People in Norway, they would rather think, you know, there have been some causes and conditions.
People, you know, don't want to do crimes naturally. It's because of their conditionings
And prison should look like any house and community so that people then can reintegrate when they end
their stays in prison. So it's really based on this kind of, you know, how do you think
people are and how do you think things work, right? Yeah. And getting back to our earlier point about
collective consciousness, and we could call it maybe the stress in collective consciousness,
You know how in clouds the static electricity builds up and eventually you have lightning
striking because the cloud can't hold that much static electricity before it has to be
neutralized or balanced or released.
So you could think of collective consciousness as being like a cloud and qualities build
up in the collective consciousness such as tension and stress and then eventually you
have a war, you know, or you have a crime wave or something.
And if you think about it, the prisons, at least in the U.S., are like little stress
factories where people are living, a couple million people are living under very miserable,
difficult conditions, becoming more stressed.
The stress that caused them to commit crimes in the first place is being amplified in many
cases.
Obviously, some people undergo transformations and come out and live a better life, but there's
high recidivism rate and many people come out hardened criminals who weren't actually that
hardened when they went in. I mean that's one major thing. It's like we have this
network of little transmitters of negativity throughout the country.
And we have to understand that there are very strong social
determinants of crime. There is this video, you may have seen it, where
you have all the people in the prison in a circle and then someone asks, "Okay, who
who had been abused as a child, make one step.
We have some people and you see that
there have been a lot of traumas
that has led them a lot of violence,
that led them to be in prison.
So, you know, it's not because they are bad people,
it's just because of social conditioning.
The other thing then it's also because it's a business,
you know, so instead of addressing the causes of crimes,
now it has even become a business,
know, the prison and it fuels, you know, that kind of dynamic of economic growth
without creating any prosperity or well-being. But, you know, it fuels an
economy also. Oh yeah, you probably know that in the United States many of the
prisons are actually run by private corporations and just since the other
day when Trump got elected the stock in these corporations has gone up 30 or 40
percent and they're all like really excited. Well, this is such a great
business opportunity we're going to lock up 20 million people and throw them out of the country.
Okay, I'm going to go on to point three before I start ranting and raving too much.
Cultivating our fundamental interbeing or relational nature is instrumental to allow
us to live in harmony with one another and the earth community. Our spiritual nature makes us
interconnected at the level of being with everything that is. Only by recognizing their
interconnectedness and sustaining the whole can each part thrive. So that's a beautiful point.
And just towards the end of your book, I was just listening to this section about
unity and diversity, which that point relates to.
There is a reframing of the social crisis, ecological crisis we are seeing as relational
crisis. And we know that mystics from all different traditions, it's a very new understanding,
they all have the same kind of experience. They use different names, different concepts, but it's about
the fact that we are one or we inter-are with everything, you know. And if we have this
understanding, obviously we want to take care of others and nature because we don't feel separate
from that, right? And this is a very deep spiritual insight that maybe we won't all of us, you know,
experience. But I think the importance is the direction. And even the science that tells
us the more we are closer to being healthy, the connection to self, others and nature,
they go together basically. And we see that someone that is more connected to his own
needs, more healthy, will take care of others and nature better. And these three connections
also, they fuel well-being, they fuel happiness, and that's why it explains why this inner human
development is also good for societies, for nature. So, I tried to read that language,
spiritual language, and the science language. In science, we talk about our relational nature,
and it's a fact, you know, our own identity is based, we know from psychology, our identity
is based through relationship first, especially with our mother and our parents.
And when you look at scientific studies about the most important drivers of happiness,
relationship comes first, right? So that's, you know, it's a way to show how this spiritual
understanding is reflected in a more scientific, more concrete evidence that we have, right?
There's a verse in the Gita which talks about enlightened people seeing all beings in the
self and the self in all beings.
And Jesus said, "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."
So I think he was describing his experience.
Also in the Gita, going back from Jesus' quote, it talks about seeing the same self, not only
in our self, but in the dog, in the elephant, in the cow, and so on.
So Jesus is describing his experience of if you mistreat a dog, you're mistreating me
because my innermost being is the same innermost being that the dog has.
So obviously if we could all see the world that way, the golden rule, do unto others
as you would have others do unto you, because actually you are them, they are you.
Yeah, and I think it's true that through Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings, we kind of have a different
view but to look at that maybe a little bit more concrete, saying that a lot of our suffering
is collective in nature. A lot of it comes also just through our ancestors, you know,
we have their genes and this is being transmitted to us. I, you know, meditated quite a lot on
that and at some point, you know, really asked myself, does all the happening in the world
really affect my own well-being. And yeah, I mean, maybe sometimes, you know, I see some
catastrophes in TV, etc. And it does not necessarily change my day. But at a deeper level, I think
the way I inhabit the world is very much influenced by how things are here, about all the suffering.
Yeah, I mean we're all in the same big swimming pool and if some people are peeing in the
pool, pooping in the pool, it influences us.
That's kind of a weird way of putting it.
I don't experience this but I've talked to people who when some terrible thing happens
some place, they feel it as if they're right in the middle of it.
I've even heard people describe how they hadn't even heard the news that something had happened
some place, but they're having this horrible feeling. Something's really shaking them up.
It reminds me of Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi stopped all of a sudden, and just as Darth Vader
with the Death Star had blown up the planet Alderaan, and he hadn't gotten the news of that,
but he said he just stopped. He said, "I just felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions
of beings were crying out in alarm." I think that's the way he phrased it. So, yeah, I think
that's a real thing. Yeah, I think that, you know, I think I've done so much in the force
these last few days, we could say, and I have experience of that. I remember once I had a
nightmare about some people wanting to kill me or something and my wife had the same and then I
checked later on during the day I noticed that we were one year after some important terrorist attacks
and friends. So basically my own consciousness was just sensing, I think, what was happening at the
more subtle level in the collective consciousness of the country. And... Charlie Hebdo or that...
Yeah, yeah, that was Charlie Hebdo in January. So, you know, that really can tell us, you know,
what's happening to your consciousness is not separated from the collective consciousness.
I had this friend, he's passed away now, but he used to teach Transcendental Meditation in Louisiana,
where he grew up, and that's, you know, the Bible Belt. One morning he was just sitting in meditation
and all these negative images started coming at him as if he was under attack or something,
and he thought, "What is going on?" And then later on he discovered that a newspaper article had been
written about him, that he's a devil worshiper, he's serving Satan, and all this kind of stuff.
So he had all these people faking that kind of thoughts about them and it was getting to him.
I will go on to point four. Okay, point four. Societies progress as they increasingly honor
the highest values, qualities, and ideals such as freedom, goodness, beauty, truth, understanding,
life, happiness, love, peace, etc. These are spiritual qualities in the sense that they
reflect an awakened human being or divine perfection. Science and practical
initiatives shaped around these universal values can help us design a
politics of being. Cultural development relates fundamentally to an evolution of
our values which shape our worldviews and institutions. All right, so how do
science and practical initiatives shape themselves around these values? How can
we get those who are holding the reins of science and government to shape their initiatives
around values such as freedom, goodness, beauty, truth, it often seems like they have a different
agenda, many of the people. We vote, but that doesn't always seem to work out in the interest
of those qualities.
So you have mentioned freedom, goodness, truth, and beauty. So goodness, truth, and beauty
are called the Platonic transcendentals and they have been recognized in Western philosophy as a
kind of template for the good society. Friedem Hegel, the philosopher, used to say that history
was about the manifestation of the nature of the mind, which is freedom. And in this book,
I mentioned, I rather have one chapter on all the others that you have mentioned.
And just acknowledging a new reality is that we now have happiness science developing, we have
a compassion empathy science developing, we have a peace science developing, etc. And all these
things tell us how to cultivate these qualities at the individual level sometimes, but also at
the collective level. And actually a lot of cutting edge, I would say, social change initiatives
are built around explicitly. All of these values you have social change initiatives that are
finding new models based on these values to transform society. Understanding is, I refer
to systemic and complex thinking and a kind of spiritual understanding of how we should think.
I think I mentioned life in all the regeneration movement, for example, this idea we should
harmonize ourselves with how nature works, which all indigenous wisdom has been about that, we could say.
So the idea is that now we have very concrete, practical ways that have some science backing to tell us how to transform society in that way.
Obviously, it's not yet an agenda that is very recognized, that we now have this possibility of being more intentional about how we transform our cultures.
But I think it's there now, and that's what I propose.
Yeah, one time I attended one of the Bioneers conferences.
I didn't go in person, but they had it video-streamed locally here.
And it was really interesting. At the end, they had this long, long, long list of organizations.
It took quite a few minutes to have them scroll down the screen,
who were doing all these amazing things, you know, all this really cool stuff.
If you rely on the 6 o'clock news for your information on what's happening in the world,
you don't get to see that stuff.
They don't cover those things.
In your book you mention a lot of things like that.
There's some really cool, interesting, inspiring, hopeful initiatives taking place around the
world.
There's that saying in the newspaper industry, "If it bleeds, it leads."
So we see the bloody stuff, but we don't see some of the good stuff.
just doesn't really make news. So it could be perhaps uplifting, can counteract the
depression one might feel, to realize how many good initiatives are underway.
Yeah, and definitely it's the same thing, as you say, the media rather are
feeding the bad seeds in us, the seed of fear and this whole vision of
humans are not trustable. And they are, in the media, I would say,
the solution in the politics of being would be to have this kind of more positive media.
And I know Chick Natan at some point was a guest editor of some Indian magazine, and
that's what he emphasizes that we need to feed different stories, we need to feed different
seeds in our consciousness that can develop then new collective possibilities.
Yeah, I'm on an email list called the Good News Network.
And I get an email every day with like four little stories of something really good that's
happening.
I read the other stuff too, as you can tell from the things I'm quoting here, but I try
to keep it balanced.
There is some good stuff going on.
Point five.
The focus on being, the highest values, wisdom and science, which can integrate all relevant
claims and initiatives.
As such, it can help unify this vision and strengthen this movement.
There was a spiritual teacher, one of whose favorite slogans was "Highest First."
And he also liked to say, "That to which you give your attention grows stronger in your
life."
You know, "Highest First" would mean there's so many options, so many things you could do,
so many things you could try.
Figure out which one is the highest, which would have the most impact and beneficial
influence, and do that one.
Maybe you'll get to the other ones later, maybe you won't, but you start with the highest
one that you can perceive.
Yeah, and I would say also the highest, because these values are universal, it's also the
highest that can bring us together as one humanity.
When you see what's going on in the world, like the situation with Israel and Palestine
or the Ukraine war, things like that, in your mind, do you have ideas of what you would
do if you were Vladimir Zelensky or if you were Prime Minister of Israel or for that
matter Vladimir Putin, you have ideas. How would you do things differently to move
the situation toward a resolution which isn't happening at present?
Yeah, I think we have to recognize that these are based on deep, long traumas.
It's incredible what we're seeing in the Middle East. It's probably rare to see
such a conflict. You know, they are all traumatized victims on both sides. It
It seems to me like we have reached, it's almost a historical, yeah it's very unique to reach
that kind of situation where you can say there's so much trauma on both sides and offenders
are also victims.
I think that we really need to have some place for deep collective healing.
same in Russia and Ukraine. There's a whole history that has not been unpacked and healed,
and we need to be proactive. I think we're in a process somehow, as we were saying in
the beginning, of purification and all the shadows, all the bad things are coming out,
asking for healing and transformation so that we can move to the next stage. If I would have
some responsibility around that, I would be much more proactive, intentional, creating
this space for collective healing.
Which some people in those situations are doing.
I mean, there are groups of Arabs and Israelis that meet together.
In fact, I think you quote Thomas Hubel in your book.
I've interviewed him a couple of times.
He's German, his wife is Israeli, and he's been working on trying to heal the trauma
even from the Holocaust still.
I think it can be healed.
You and I have been on a spiritual path for many years, and we've probably both felt that
a lot of healing has taken place within us as a result of our practices.
And I think that can happen on a societal level.
It's not that these patterns have to repeat themselves endlessly.
Even if you look at the more spiritual level, you know, this notion of egregores, if you
look at what's happened in Jerusalem over centuries, you know, you really see that kind
of pattern that always come back and not necessarily through even through the same people.
And even I would say in Europe and Russia, etc., I would say, you know, there is a pattern
of domination starting, you know, with the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, etc.
There is always this vision that one has to dominate to flourish.
So there are also probably some healing to be done at more subtle and spiritual levels,
right?
It's not only about the Palestinian and the Israelis and the Ukrainian and the Russian,
there's even a deeper, more profound pattern that's the only part of that.
Yeah.
It seems that sometimes, at least superficially from my perspective, which is relatively superficial,
It's sometimes a war, as horrible as it is, and we don't want to hope for wars, but a
huge transformation happens afterwards.
Look at the transformation that Germany underwent after World War II, and Japan for that matter.
They both flipped to being US allies or Western allies, but also their societies flourished
as compared to what had been happening.
So it almost seems like maybe they had a load of karma to pay off or something, and the
The leaders they chose, you know, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito, were instruments of leading
them into a dire situation which would burn off that karma, and then once it was burned,
everything could get better again, which harkens back to something I said at the beginning
of the interview about our current situation.
Do you think there's any merit to that?
How do you understand the somewhat radical transformation that a society can sometimes
undergo after a war? It's a complex process, you know, it's true we could say on one side that
somehow Hitler unified Europe, you know, if you look at history that's what happened and
you know it's this process by which the bad can have at the end ultimately, you know, be part of
a deeper process that can actually bring some good. I do think that we humans seem to only really
make change because of breakdowns. There is this sentence from historians saying, "After
the breakdowns come the breakthrough." And I think what we see right now, it seems that
we really need that kind of breakdown to be able to, some can change our models. Otherwise,
people think we can go on like that, even if that can lead to catastrophe. So I would
So at the material level, you know, it's true that sometimes it works that way.
If we go back to World War II and let's say the merry days also, we have to look
also at the traumas that have been led, no?
And I think when we're talking about what's happening in Israel and Palestine,
obviously there is some deep trauma by the Jewish people because of the Holocaust.
And then that has some implication about what's going on right now.
So it's a very complex pattern, but to me, just to say that, you know, there's the good
and the bad work together and sometimes, you know, some very bad things can have some positive
effects, but they do also leave an imprint that needs to be transformed later.
Yeah. Maybe it doesn't always have to be that way. In a minute, I'll ask you to think of some
examples of breakthroughs that weren't preceded by breakdowns, but even in nature, leaves have
have to die and fall off the tree before you can have spring and new leaves.
And caterpillars have to turn into mush and lose their structure as caterpillars
before the imaginal cells can mold them into becoming a butterfly.
There are a lot of examples.
Things have to die and rot in the forest in order for new growth to appear.
It would be nice if we could just transform without the trauma
and without the suffering.
But maybe it's part of nature's plan.
Can you think of examples of profound transformation
that didn't necessitate a breakdown?
- Well, I think the work of Gandhi, right?
I think he has been instrumental
into making a very deep political transformation,
relatively peaceful, in a relatively peaceful way
and led a strong heritage for that in history, right?
- That's a good example.
And Martin Luther King, who was inspired by Gandhi,
did much of the same, could have been worse.
Gandhi has had a different view on Hitler, for example, than Schrobingo.
He was assuming maybe that his non-violent ways of working would be effective, and Schrobingo was
rather saying, considering the spiritual forces that are behind Hitler, it's a spiritual battle,
You know, probably all have a role to play and some means are more effective than others in different situations.
Yeah, I think Gandhi thought that perhaps the same Satyagraha that had worked in India would work against Hitler.
I don't think he was right.
Of course, in India itself, the story of the Gita, at one point Arjuna said, "I don't want to fight this battle. Let's just be friends and make peace."
and Krishna said, "Sorry, it's gone too far.
It has to be an actual physical fight at this point.
So get up and do it."
Okay, point seven.
Concrete and actionable policy recommendations supporting this agenda already exist in many
sectors.
A politics of being can bring them together and scale them up, articulating them in a
coherent and meaningful narrative.
So how can a politics of being do that, and how can a politics of being actually begin
to happen in a more manifest way because certainly our contemporary politics aren't much about
being.
And maybe back to the previous point, I think, is that this idea that we see a lot of different
social change initiatives based on these highest human values, but they are not necessarily
conscious of being part of something, you know, something that can bring them together
and articulate them in a new vision for society, which is what I developed with The Politics
of Being. What was your question? How can we... Well, I mean, your book is beautiful and it's
a nice concept, the idea of a politics of being, but it's not the predominant politics anywhere.
We have different politics going on. And you say a politics of being can bring them together.
How does it get into the game more effectively?
I think it's just because
here and there in different fields
all the real
paradigmatic solutions
Are from this new paradigm of being so if you're looking at you know
How to deal with education how to deal with justice how to deal with governance how to deal with health
You will end up
with these
policies, these new models that are part of the politics of being. So being very pragmatic,
probably what we will see is that all these solutions will get traction in themselves because
they are the real solutions before we bring them together, before we can assemble them
in a new vision for society because yeah, it's a big shift to have people seeing progress
in that way. So I rather trust that rather a separate solution, they will make all their
own ways before being assembled in a new meaningful vision and narratives, right?
You know, while I was working on this book, I really reflected why is it that because I was
starting from spiritual insights and just seeing how they were translated in different sectors,
basically in different parts of society. And then I was really pleased to see that actually
these are the real solutions and people who are to me the most the smartest people thinking about
these problems in all these different fields, they come to the same conclusions. So why is that? And
that just made me realize it's because we have gone so much in the direction of the old paradigm.
So there's a kind of imbalance and now all the solutions are on the other side.
So in other words, you're saying that the pendulum has swung about as far as it can swing
in terms of the old paradigm and its ineffectiveness will become glaringly obvious
and it's going to have to swing back in the other direction inevitably at this point.
We have been so limiting and so playing so negatively with human dimensions, let's say,
that has brought a lot of problems and ineffectiveness, and that's why most of the
solutions need to address that inner human dimension. So another thing I think I heard you
say just now is that maybe visionaries initially have these concepts of how it could work, how it
could be more ideal than it is, and initially that those visions are just in their heads,
but they are perhaps just more sensitive receivers of ideas whose time has come, and that over a
period of however much time, a few years, many years, whatever, those ideas will percolate into
the mainstream, be received by less sensitive receivers than the visionaries themselves,
and become more normalized. Yeah, I would say maybe I've found these ideas coming from a spiritual
understanding of things, but people who are dealing with very concrete problems in health,
for example, or in education, I think the smartest people are getting at the same solution that I
come to from my spiritual understanding. Yeah, it's in the zeitgeist somehow. You're probably
familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's work in morphogenetic fields and so on. He cites examples
of ideas that someone had, like Sir Isaac Newton, that someone else had at the same time.
And perhaps Newton was able to publish it first, or Charles Darwin is another example, was
able to publish it first.
But the idea was ready to pop, and people were starting to get it, people who hadn't
communicated with each other about it.
It's starting to rise up in society.
Just to reiterate a point I was just making, perhaps the visionaries, the mystics, pick
up on ideas first that are surfacing in collective consciousness, but they are surfacing irrespective
of the mystics and they will soon become more prevalent. Less sensitive people will begin to
pick up on them and at a certain point they could become mainstream. What I would say is that also
a lot of the solutions that I'm pointing and maybe at some point we can mention a few of them
are not necessarily people who are reaching that conclusion.
They are not really thinking that these are spiritual solutions
because they don't look like that necessarily.
But I think an important part of my work has been able to
recognize the spiritual nature by defining it
so that I can recognize it in other completely different language,
words or aspects, right? One thing is for specialists in one field, education or health,
to point out these solutions, but they are not necessarily, they don't see them as spiritual
solutions. And my own vision, you know, the way I define very, trying to be very simple with
spirituality, translates in terms of the highest, you know, human values, for example, as we have
said or certain ways of thinking that we find in wisdom traditions, etc. But you know, it's also
the what's often missing is that the acknowledgement of their spiritual nature. And it goes both ways
because often when you think of people talking about spiritual evolution of humanity, etc,
often they are not able to lend that vision into practical solutions. So I think what you
What you may have seen in my book is trying to make that bridge between a very deep understanding
spiritual on one side and a very concrete, grounded way of translating that in societies.
Yeah, in a way it's an artificial dichotomy because everything is spiritual.
So all the practical concrete stuff has its spiritual essence.
So it's a little artificial maybe to say spiritual solutions, practical solutions.
So maybe you could give us some examples.
You mentioned you could give a few examples of some of these so-called spiritual solutions
that practical people might begin to implement without even using the term spiritual.
For example, if you look at health, especially in our western countries, we have an aging
population, the cost of health are rising, there's a whole industry that is looking for
how to maintain or grow their profits and if people are healthy maybe it doesn't work.
So the main burden now is coming from what we call civilizational disease, right?
They are not like in the past infectious disease.
They are more related to our way of living.
Do we live healthy lives?
Do we eat well?
Do we sleep well?
Do we exercise?
we don't have so much stress, etc. So I think all societies will have to empower people
to live healthy lives. What is the main insight of an important wisdom tradition in relation
to health, which is Ayurveda, right? So there are this whole chain of causality leading
to disease, and you know, at some point, they have the kind of healthy life. And before
that, this is at the end of where you live your life is a reflection of your own mental
health. You know, if you are healthy internally, let's say you will live a healthy life. So
I think that brings us to mental health just to remain very concrete. And we have a mental
health crisis in many of our countries. It has a huge economic cost, and it can make a
a lot of sense to try to address our health crisis from that level of healthy lifestyle,
mental health, and then even if you go one step beyond, you know, before a lot of mental
health issues have to do also with some trauma, so trauma healing.
There is a good case to argue that a public health policy should rather focus much more
on not that kind of disease-centered paradigm,
but health-centered paradigm,
prevention and the quality of being, we could say,
of the people as an important part of health.
- Yeah, a good point.
I mean, to take an example that came to mind,
let's say you live down at the mouth of the Ganges
as it enters the Bay of Bengal,
and there's all this garbage floating down the river,
and you think, "We gotta do something about this garbage."
So you have boats going out and picking up the garbage
and taking it to the shore, and you keep doing that every day.
That's going to be an endless task
if you don't prevent garbage from being
put in the river upstream.
So of course, we hear about preventative medicine
and don't smoke, don't drink, get exercise.
People are encouraged to do all these things.
But then ultimately, the majority of cost
involves treating people who haven't done those things, who
end up sick, and then trying to deal with their sickness.
The prevention health-centered paradigm goes at some point against that logic of economic
growth.
If you don't attend the root cause, you always have symptoms to treat and that's a business.
If you address the root causes, there is a business for that also, obviously, but it
probably can be much more economically sustainable for societies to direct our attention on these
things.
Yeah.
I heard some quote the other day, something like, "There isn't a hunger problem, there's
a greed problem," or something like that.
There's so many examples we can think of in so many different areas, health as we're discussing
now, or hunger, or various other things, where, to quote Benjamin Franklin, "A stitch in time
saves nine."
In other words, if you could stop these things at their root cause, then it would be so much
more efficient than having to deal with the symptoms later on.
What is the main driver of public health?
It's not health care facilities, etc.
It's economic inequalities.
So a lot of social ills we have, crime, teenage pregnancy, even level of litigation, etc.
So you can tell, and they say, you know, there's a book on that, and they say you can tell
people to behave, to not get pregnant early, to do sports, to do things, but the real driver
of all these manifestations is actually economic inequality.
It's interesting to ponder this stuff. As I try to understand it, I keep trying to put
it in the spiritual context and I keep thinking of metaphors such as getting to the source
of the river rather than trying to deal with things downstream. And again, you can think
in terms of education. There's so much that could be done in preschool and early education
and everything else that would change the whole trajectory of children's lives. And
I don't think society has quite gotten that point yet of getting to the root of everything
rather than dealing with the symptoms.
Especially if the roots is inside each of us because...
It is, yeah, ultimately.
I think what we see in general is that for human beings, you know, we prefer to avoid
looking inside until we have to do it.
You know, doing all this research, I was surprised that there are some studies that shows, you
know, the economic benefits of addressing trauma or taking care of children, well-being,
etc. or mental health.
It seems like we're not able to see these potentials because we are just so used to look
at external solutions that we don't see all the potential that lies in terms of addressing
these issues at the root level inside our own consciousness.
That's very interesting.
Just the way individuals are structured, the senses are designed to be pointed outwards,
you know, to be directed outwards, and that becomes deeply ingrained.
And starting a spiritual practice is a process of turning 180 degrees and beginning to go
inward. And I think if the majority of people were doing that, then the society
would do that also. Our systems and our policies would be inward-looking and
preventative and so on. But if the majority of people aren't doing that, if
they're habitually outer-directed, then it would be impossible for our systems to
be anything other than outer-directed. You know, we have seen a lot of progress
progress in societies for the last centuries, you know, thanks to science, which led us
to understand how the material world works and develop the technologies to be able to
live better in that material world. I think we are on the verge of just starting to the
next stage of our evolution is to look inside and develop that collective understanding of
human psychology and consciousness and then honors that for our collective evolution, for progress.
And obviously it's a huge potential, even I would say greater than this outer, than controlling the
outer world. And that's really the shift in all the politics of being, I call it a development
paradigm. We have right now economic growth, it's a reflection of that kind of culture that we have
with modernity and the new paradigm would be the politics of being, how we can flourish
as human beings, even as souls coming on earth for our own evolutive purpose. And once we develop an
understanding about what needs to happen for that, we will create the basis for a flourishing world.
I don't know about you, but I know in my own case, I didn't have my big turnaround until I had kind
kind of reached rock bottom and realized that whatever I was doing was not working and I
had to totally change my life and my direction.
And they say that with alcoholics too, they have to bottom out before they can seek help.
And perhaps that is also true of society.
Maybe it has to be unavoidably proven to us on a mass scale that the way we are doing
things doesn't work.
And doing them more isn't going to yield different results.
Einstein quote, I think he said his definition of insanity was doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results.
Exactly.
You know, that's a kind of definition somehow of intelligence and wisdom to be able to anticipate
and take the right decisions before you see the consequences.
But I think what we see often, both at the individual and the collective level, is that
there is very little anticipation and we keep the same kind of way of doing things until
we really face a wall and we need to change, right?
Yeah.
Well, maybe that wall is getting closer because we definitely need to change.
Yeah, that's what, you know, we were saying at the beginning, you know, after the breakdowns
come the breakthrough.
I think it's also very important.
That's how I see my work is also preparing the ground so that when we have this opportunity
for breakthrough, there's a new model that is most already there.
That's a good point. Yeah, it's not like you have to wait until this thing can actually go
mainstream before you develop it to get it all ready.
At small scale, as I see, I'm building on a lot of things that are already happening.
Maybe it won't become the new paradigm before breakdowns happen because we are so
attached to our ways of doing things. There are so much powerful interest that are keeping things
ready and we don't see, you know, through our any political systems really the way to make
this kind of big shift, you know, even in the political conservation, you know, to face one
problem it needs to have something really serious to happen often so that we change on one thing.
But to change the whole society and its direction, yeah, it will probably take, you know, really major
crisis to force us to change and overcome the hold of powerful interests.
Yeah, so true. Okay, I'll read the next point. Spiritual teachings and wisdom traditions,
through dialogue among them and with science, have much to bring to inspire, help design,
and implement a politics of being. They are our most valuable common heritage, able to offer a
profound understanding of human nature, as well as practical knowledge and tools for inner
and ultimately social development.
Again, most people in the world, even though they might be religious people and they go
to church and all that stuff, well, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.
A lot of people do seem to think that their religion has practical application to current
situations, although sometimes they support policies that I think are retrograde or not
so positive, like homophobia.
The 10th commandment says you shouldn't covet your neighbor's slaves, basically.
They want to put the 10 commandments up in the school so the Bible actually condones
slavery.
Just because spiritual traditions are ancient doesn't mean they're right about everything.
obviously there's a lot in them that is good, and perhaps that's where science comes in, helping to
separate the wheat from the chaff and distill out the stuff that is still applicable in the modern
age. Yeah, and also inter-spirituality, you know, I said through a dialogue among themselves. I think
when the more you're looking into different wisdom traditions, where you see convergence,
They are on some bad points also, but you can recognize a common direction.
And I think, you know, it's more like a kind of insight, we could say, a direction that tells you
what to look at somehow. And then we can move then to specialists of a specific situation to see,
you know, what does that mean in practice? A good example I like to mention is the Bahá'í vision.
You know the Bahá'í right here? Sure.
There's been a prophet in the 19th century, Bahá'u'lláh, born in Iran, and he was telling
to be the kind of new prophet for all times. And he has this vision of progressive revelation,
that all prophets come from the same source and their teachings vary according to what's
needed in different times and different places. And he realized that often clergy was a barrier
for the next revelation. And so he decided to be very intentional in building a way to organize
its religion without clergy and he designed some institution that says that could provide a
template for humanity to freely adopt if they choose so. And it's very interesting. I could go
into more details about what it is in practice, but it's a lot about a kind of pyramid where people
elected at the local level, choose among themselves a representative at a higher level.
There is also collective use of the power. So they have a whole system and I mentioned in my book
a book who tried to ask people in Asia what is an ideal governance system. They asked people
in America what is an ideal governance system and both kind of converge into a middle way,
combining somehow the best of democratic system, America, and the best of what they call meritocracy,
you know, like the learns, decides, into one system. And this system is striking similarities
with the Baha'i system. And it's a lot also about how to avoid political polarization, which is,
you know, the main ill we see now in our modern democracy. So I do really think in that case,
There have been a very deep vision from Bahá'u'lláh and the Baha'is about developing something
which great wisdom that is proving to be probably a direction of a solution for all times.
Yeah, you talk about that quite a bit in your book.
We'll go to the next point.
Each nation needs to reconnect to its own soul and wisdom to develop its version of
a politics of being that can support its development and help it bring its unique contribution to
the world. Unity and diversity is the key to harmonious coexistence of nations in a globalized
world.
Okay, a couple questions about that. If you think of the soul of a nation, let's say
the soul of the United States, is that Native American? Because those are the people who
were here for thousands of years and now we're a mishmash of immigrants from other places.
Or do the immigrants, such as myself, whose ancestors came from England, is there an English
soul for the people from that, a French soul in America for the people who came from France,
and a German soul for the people who came from Germany. What exactly is the soul of a nation
in this age when everything is so intermixed? Yeah, to start with, yes, it has to do at some
point with the land. In the land are certain energy. It's, you know, even indigenous people
in different parts of the world, see the earth as one living organism, with different parts,
having a specific function, you know, like organs in a human body. So that's one thing, you know, and
you know, we could say, for example, the America would be probably, you know, where
a lot of different people in the world connect a kind of spine or nervous systems. So each nation
has a specific function and has a specific mission to realize specific energy. I would rather think
people in the history of nations, we have seen first as kind of ethnicity, then as kind of a
project to which people are there to some specific values. And then I think the next stage, which is
more of a spiritual understanding, is that nations are actually like energetic fields and people
connect to that energetic field for, or soon we could say connect to that, choose to incarnate or
come to a specific place because they feel it's an opportunity for their evolution.
If I look at France, for example, I think the soul of France, you know, it's interesting to see that
it has been, if you look at Paris and a lot of artists and intellectuals who has made what France
is and what Paris is, has come from outside. So they kind of probably, you know, more embody that
truth of the French soul, even if they have not been born in France. Think about all the
Picasso, etc. who all converged to Paris in these times. So I like that vision of a nation
which is more, you know, it has a specific purpose, it has a soul, it's an energetic
field. So from that point of view, an immigrant that comes to a specific country may have
you know, sometimes maybe more even resent because they are more intentional maybe about
it for being there and participating to that soul of a nation than, you know, people that
are there but may feel less connected or with less energy to nourish that kind of energy
that is there.
I remember when Seals and Crofts were very popular in the early 70s.
They were Baha'i musicians.
Remember Seals and Crofts?
Summer Breeze was one of their songs.
There are a couple of white guys and they both married black wives.
And I remember hearing at the time that that was some part of the Baha'i tradition or
faith was intermingle the races.
I believe your wife is Costa Rican, right?
And obviously we are all one planet.
Do you think that there's some kind of destiny of the world where eventually there'll be
a blending of all the different races?
Or do you think that something of cultural integrity will be lost if we do that?
You know, that vision of unity and diversity I think is important.
A lot of different cultures need to somehow protect their uniqueness so that they can
offer their gifts to humanity.
And I also think that humanity is going in the direction of being one, that's its destiny,
but one but diverse also, right?
So that we can keep maintaining the different wisdom,
the different visions, different cultures,
so that they can enrich our humanity.
And I think, you know, we're talking about Sulum Nation,
I think the US mission somehow is has to do
with that kind of unification of humanity.
And just by observing the history
and how this country has populated itself
and what it is now, I think it has a great role to play
in that process of unification.
- When this point comes up,
I often think of the rainforest
where you have the most fertile growing conditions
in terms of the soil and the rain.
And that results in the most diverse plant and animal life
all in one particular environment.
So you would think perhaps that diversity
will not be blotted out by global spiritual awakening,
but it will actually be enriched and enhanced,
even magnified.
- Yeah, it's the same thing, I think,
at the individual level.
Spiritual growth, I think, you know,
brings people together,
but it allows everyone also to be,
or manifest more,
realize his or her own specificity, right?
- It's true, people tend to be less conformist,
more autonomous, more blossomed
in their own unique personality.
- More authentic, yeah.
- Authentic.
sometimes just very distinctive, colorful personalities.
If you think of some of the spiritual greats
throughout history, they really stood out
in terms of their uniqueness.
Interesting, so I think the whole world could be like that.
We could all be like the rainforest
where we're all brilliant in our own right,
but quite distinct from other people
with a common unifying foundation.
- Yeah, that brings me to the last point you mentioned.
I think, you know, like each nation have their own,
have to design at their own view of the good life
and somehow it relates also to their spiritual understanding.
And we have mentioned these different human values
and it's interesting to show that somehow
they are present in all traditions,
in all wisdom traditions.
But if you look at different cultural contexts,
they will emphasize one or the other.
You know, let's say Buddhism and Bhutan,
we have this gross national happiness
because a lot of Buddhism has, you know,
vision of happiness. Another one I mentioned is in South America and all indigenous cultures,
the living well, good living, it emphasizes also very much a connection to nature. So,
different cultures will have different labeling on this politics of being, will put some emphasis
on different things, but when they are balanced, all these values are connected.
And in a balanced vision, we found them all, but maybe they would put to the front different names
according to, because they have a different understanding of the good life.
This reminds me of when October 7th happened in Israel and the war started and everything,
I began having conversations with this woman in Israel named Georgie Y. Johnson,
who's been on BatCaptain. She's a therapist, a very wise person. But we were talking about how
how difficult it is to arrive in any kind of harmony there
because there are so many extremists on either side.
There are kind of reasonable people in the middle
who could actually get along,
but the extremists insist that,
no, Israel has to be wiped out,
or no, Gaza has to be wiped out,
back and forth.
And it's really hard to resolve,
but this whole notion of the ground of being,
being a unifying force,
which enables differences to thrive
and yet be harmonized.
You can have uniqueness and distinctiveness
and yet harmony simultaneously.
It doesn't have to be that everybody becomes the same.
I think that's really the solution.
- Yeah, definitely.
To me that conversation brings to me that thought about,
you know, I'm surprised that we are not trying
to be more intentional in looking into wisdom
for dealing with the problem that we have.
I made with this book, you know, that very concrete,
what is a wisdom-based approach to politics and development.
And what, I mean, myself as an individual,
at some point when I came with some problems in my life,
to me, it's natural to take refuge in wisdom
and trying to find what would be a wider way
to deal about these things.
And I think if we unpack,
if we go through that journey and unpack that reflection,
you know, that's why I'm trying to show in the book,
you know, we could really agree
about these universal human values.
and then all these principles
and what they mean in our societies.
If we would have that understanding
as our collective basis for our discussion,
then I think we have a greater possibility
to deal with what we are facing now.
- Yeah, and I think some people are doing that
in Israel specifically and also obviously around the world,
but generally that's not the way the powers that be think,
those who are actually in control at this point.
And maybe that brings us back to the point of trauma,
which is actually the 10th point in your list here.
You say, "Healing trauma is, for individuals and societies,
"the gateway to being.
"It is fundamental in order for new ways of being
"and living together to be possible,
"and for the whole Earth community to flourish."
So perhaps the reason that these opposing forces
in these different places, like Ukraine, Russia,
or Israel, Gaza, can't resolve things
is that they haven't addressed their trauma,
and that keeps their thinking polarized and fragmented.
- Yeah, definitely their thinking,
but also all these emotions that manifest
because of these traumas.
I think it's just a recognition
that healthy human beings do naturally good.
And why we are not manifesting that healthy ways of being
is because of the traumas that have disconnected us
from what we really are.
And I think that the work of all times to address that
and the individual and collective level.
We have to be proactive for that.
We can't wait for conflicts to manifest.
We need to in advance, discuss and heal all these aspects.
- Yeah, and unless we do,
conflicts will continue to manifest.
- Exactly.
- Do you outline in your book ways of healing trauma?
What I mentioned, Thomas Hubble's work, for example,
which may be more on the subtle level part of things,
even indigenous people do also ceremonies
to take care of these things at more subtle levels.
But historical examples of the truth
and reconciliation process, for example, in South Africa,
we have it in Canada also.
I think these are very good models
have proved quite effective in terms of bringing, opening the conversation and developing spaces
where truth can be said and healing and reconciliation happen. President Biden recently
apologized to the indigenous people in America for those schools that were set up which tried to
strip the children of their cultures. I think perhaps it takes a lot more than an apology to
to really heal deep trauma.
But there are a lot of methodologies.
I mean, all the different spiritual practices and therapies
and possibly psychedelics and just all kinds of things
that are becoming more and more popular,
perhaps we'll be healing trauma more and more deeply.
- I think psychedelics is more and more science
about showing their effectiveness,
more at the individual level, I would say,
but I think it's quite amazing what can be done
with ayahuasca, for example, et cetera.
But that's the individual way.
I think the collective way, you know,
has more to do with restorative justice, you know,
with being all in circles where we can really listen
to the pain, to the violence that has been done
and to take responsibility for what has been done
and find ways to, victims to feel they have been hurt
and we are able to find ways that can compensate
or provide some healing in a way that is a bit more concrete,
but we need to have these conversations.
- Well, I think your book will prove to be prescient.
People will look back and say,
"Wow, this guy really saw the future
when he wrote that book."
I think we will eventually end up with a politics of being
and a world based in being.
I don't know exactly how much turbulence
we're going to have to go through between here and there,
between now and then,
but I suspect there will be a fair amount of it.
In any case, I hope it can be as smooth as possible.
And to whatever extent the recommendations you provide
in your book can be adopted,
can help to make it more smooth.
- Thank you.
Yeah, I think it's also, you know, I'm not naive.
I know that doesn't work like you're putting,
you know, I think there's a sentence here,
Yiddish proverb says, you know, tell your plans to God and he will love you, you know, or
something like that.
It's rather to put kind of a map so that we can know what we decide, what we discuss, how
does this fit into the journey of where we are in this paradigm of having an economic
growth and modern worldview towards in the journey towards a more evolved being paradigm
and what it means for society. So to navigate that transition, I think the book is a kind of a map
to navigate that transition. So besides your United Nations work, what are you doing? Do you hold
courses or webinars or anything like that? Do you mean on Politics of Being? Yeah, is there any way
that people can interact with you about this stuff? Well, they are welcome to connect with me
and spread these ideas. I've not yet built a course, I think I will in the future or maybe a community,
but I'm quite focused on my work with the Conscious Food Systems Alliance, which I think is
also a great opportunity to pilot that from the United Nations, that agenda about the role of
consciousness and inner transformation, post-systemic transformation. So I feel I kind of
receive that opportunity and the way to test in one sector, the food and agriculture sector,
that kind of, you know, what conscious systemic transformation means. So I've been, you know,
spending quite a lot of time in the recent years on that. But yeah, no, I think in the future,
I want to, and I said, obviously, this is a collective project. And I would really like,
you know, to bring together all the people that are part of the solutions in many different
sectors together and being able to work together to support that change. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot
of conferences and things that you could speak at that would be relevant to this, like Bioneers,
as I mentioned earlier. I do some speaking and teaching and yeah, teaching with some universities,
etc., but you know, not a whole course on Politics of Being. I've been also part of
different collective books with different communities, you know, that think about these
these ideas. All right, well thanks Thomas. Really enjoyed speaking with you. Any closing thoughts?
Well, I don't know, maybe just thanking you also, Rick. I think it's very great work you're doing.
I've enjoyed watching a few videos and spreading that understanding, you know, and that acknowledgement
that there is a lot of this spiritual transformation happening in the world that goes a little bit
and notice often, so I think it's very important to make that more known, tangible, acknowledge,
and that's the basis for the change we want to see outside in society. So thank you.
Thank you. And thanks to those who've been listening to or watching this interview. Stay
tuned for the next one. Visit the website if you like. You can sign up for an email list to be
be notified of future interviews and check out the menus on the website for a few other
interesting things we have to offer.
So thanks, Thomas.
Thank you, Rich.
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Thank you.