#2137 - Michelle Dowd

And just to fill people in, just explain what happened.

And my grandfather became his father figure. So my mom was married off to this man who was a follower of her father. And I am the second child of their union.

A. in Pasadena, which most people know because of the Rose Parade and other things like that. When he first started it, it started, my understanding is he was a Boy Scout leader.

And he was an orphan. He had come from Oklahoma when he was a young man. And the Boy Scouts didn't allow him to have as much control as he wanted to have over the boys. Oh, boy. So, yeah, which is a lot of control.

So he left the Boy Scouts and he took the boys with him. And some of the boys from his original troop in 1931 stayed with him past his death. One of the first boys took over after him in the late 1980s. Wow. Or the early 1980s, actually.

Yeah, so he was really good at getting followers.

later. It wasn't until I got to college. I'm not even 100% sure he knew how to read, to be quite honest. Really? He came from a family where he was the only child that lived out of his particular mother, who was married to a man.

It was a second marriage. And his first wife had died. And then, you know, he had a bunch of kids or whatever. So he had a bunch of half-siblings but no full siblings. And apparently, now this could be lore, too.

They kind of excommunicated him. He compared himself to Joseph, you know, like of the multicolored clothing and everything. So he was like put down a well, he liked to say. And he escaped and he came to L.A. in the height of, I don't know, the silent films, things like that.

He said he was in silent films. There's no chance. that is true. But he said he was. And he got some sort of probably church education when he got here.

And he declared to everyone he was the prophet of God. He was going to live 500 years. And he was going to lead the army of God in the second coming.

It clearly is.

And they were all presumably celibate. And it was just men.

They had three boys first. And so this was his first daughter. And he decided that, since the world had not yet ended, that maybe he should marry her off before she either became an old maid or maybe a loose woman. Who knows?

. Want some more fire? Sure. I'd love some fire.

A lot of the femininity was considered a temptation to the boys, and since it was supposed to be, they thought it was better to burn in hell than to lust after a woman. They quoted some stuff from Paul in the Apostles and the Epistles that basically, you could get married as opposed to lust. So eventually, in the 1960s, they allowed their first wedding, which is 35 years. Think about that, 35 years of celibacy. Just a bunch of dudes.

He was a yoga teacher, but he was also a gay porn star and a hypnotist.

He changed his name. I forget what it was. He had two different names. I think one was Michelle and there was another one. Then he came out here to Austin because right after Waco, they were kind of cracking down on cults and they were trying to find him.

I could see why. Yeah, so they're like, we got to go. The cult awareness network was on to him. Also, family members were calling in. Hey, we lost our children.

They're with this guy and he's crazy. They've got the people in the woods in LA. He moved out to Austin and had his followers build him this theater where he could dance in front of them. Wow. Yeah.

I think he also was kind of exotic looking, so he had this guru thing going on. Then he was also a hypnotist, so he's really good at manipulating people's consciousness.

It doesn't work unless you do.

But I think there's states of mind melding that happen with people, where you all get sort of locked into a state of consciousness. I think it happens in riots. Definitely. You know what I'm saying? Like the madness of the crowds.

There's something real about that. If you've ever been in a chaotic public environment where, like, fights break out or something like that, there's a very strange feeling in the air that leads people to do things that they would never do before. People that would never pick up a shopping cart and throw it through a Starbucks window will do that. now. It's like everybody just loses their fucking mind.

And I think it happens in concerts when people are, like, jamming out together. You all get in the same, like, mind frequency. And I think a really good cult leader does that, too. I think they get these people and they lock them into this way of thinking. And, you know, we don't want to call it hypnotism, but I think there's a lot of states that are very similar to hypnotism, in that something happens where you enter into an altered state of consciousness.

It's probably accessible somehow or another, but you don't know how to get there. But then this song brings you there, or this person brings you there with their talk about the impending apocalypse, and we're all locked in. And it gives people, like, a sense of belonging and purpose that you're locked into this frequency that everybody else in the room is locked into.

Or if you have a hundred different ones and they're all different gods and different people, somebody's got to be wrong. But the one common denominator that they share is that if you do believe in these things, it seems to aid you in life. People seem to be happier. They seem to have more of a sense of purpose. They don't feel lost.

You know, some of the least happy people I know are atheists. I have a joke about it where I say, you're really dumb for not believing in stupid shit. Because if you believed in stupid shit, if you believed in dumb shit, you'd be happier. That would be a smarter move. Because it's kind of true.

And I think that's what's so fascinating to me about these cults is how they do it, how they lock people in. I mean, I'm sure because of your experience, you've probably seen a few of these documentaries, right? You've probably seen.

But to not have the ability to think for yourself and that to be trained out of you. So I went to lunch a couple of days ago with someone I hadn't seen since I was three. And he, so a lot of fellow former FIELD members have come out of the woodwork since.

And they have lots of stories. Anyway, he was on one of these things we called the trip, with a capital T. And what we did on the trip, I mean, there were different things in different years. But this one was in the early 1970s. And he was, you know, doing all the things you do on the trip.

But one thing they required, which my father required of us at home, too, is to run every morning. First thing in the morning, which you can say. there's some good things about this. But you slept together in tents, and then you'd get up, and you'd run, and you'd have to beat your time. And my father used to time us as a kid.

So, like, I had to beat my time every day, which is really hard to do, of course, because at some point you're not going to be able to beat your time, right? Like, you, can't always get better. But at this point, he was 19, and he was beating the time, he said, and that time was in relation to the fastest runner. And so if the fastest guy was going really, you know, fast, you had to keep the same ratio of distance. So, anyway, he didn't make his time.

There were three guys who didn't make their time, and they had to go through the SWAT machine. So my grandpa often made boys go through the SWAT machine. And the simple version, which was done at the actual location of the field, was you'd crawl through the other boys' or men's legs, and every boy would spank you. I know. I know.

Oh, my God. I know. They're little. Well, we won't even get into all the things. You can think about that.

But there was a different version that was only done when the boys were separated from their parents. And so when they would go on these trips, and my dad was the original driver. He started driving. By the time he was 18, he was driving all around the country, taking my grandfather's boys. So, again, my father was not his son.

He was just some dude who, like, you know, joined this cult. And my father would drive these boys around, and he would time them when they ran and did all those things. And so in this particular case, they did SWAT machine, where you have to hold on to a fence pole, and you face the fence, and then all the guys come and they hit you. So they're not just spanking you, but they're hitting you. And so he was getting kidney punches and all this stuff, and he was saying he fell to his knees, and he was almost died.

He was so bruised up. And he did not want anyone to know this story. He hasn't spoken of it because he's so shamed that potentially someone might think, why didn't you fight back? And, of course, I said, but you were trained, not to. You trained that you deserved this, you know.

And then apparently one of my uncles, you know, was really worried, wanted to take him to the hospital, but couldn't or didn't, because they had no insurance. And this young man, who's no longer a young man, said that, you know, he could never tell his parents. And he never, to this day, ever told his parents or anyone. He and his brother have never spoken of their time in the fields. It is like this big taboo.

He got out maybe a year later, but he was, I mean, that was only one of many, many, many stories he told me. But that one just really struck me to feel ashamed of that, you know. Like, I guess, for many years I, too, did not tell people where I came from, because you feel like you must have done something weak to be a follower. And that's just not true. I mean, if someone gets a hold of you as a child, they can program you to think almost anything, especially if they're good at it.

Why didn't you leave? You know, or people that, you know, never really thought about it, never thought it through, because they haven't had to. Right.

And I mean that. And I was born there and indoctrinated. And I would have completely taken anything that my grandfather or my parents told me was going to kill me. I would have, you know, I would have felt that that was going to take me to heaven quicker. And everyone I knew would have done that.

Oh, yeah, they're successful. Like there's some successful cults.

It's a very strong religious organization, but they don't have the control they used to. Because, like when we were young, we didn't have social security numbers. There was no way to track things. Yes. And now, you know, it's hard to get away with.

And anyway, but there's other forms of abuse that go on. I mean, there's obviously physical abuse, but there's a lot of psychological abuse. There's a lot of ways that it gets inside of you that you're worthless and that you can't trust yourself. And you can't even trust yourself with your own stories. And I have a slightly younger brother who adores you, by the way.

She and I, we loved each other deeply, but we weren't allowed to speak to each other, sometimes for weeks or months at a time. Oh, my gosh. And they were just strongly against you, forming what they would call allies. They didn't want friendships that could turn into anything that would be a little bit probably cold to you. But, no, like anything that would form a clique, they used to call it.

I felt like it was a huge compliment. One of the former members came out of the woodworks after this, and he said, you know, I knew that you would never rat us out.

And it was something we were all taught so, so, so deeply.

That's what's crazy. And how is he able to pull it off? That's what's always so fascinating to me, that it's not like children. With children, it just makes 100% sense. You're raised there.

You think this is reality. And you think that the world outside reality is all a bunch of evil demons or whatever it is. But if you're an adult, like you're a grown adult, 34-year-old man, and you meet this dude at the auto repair shop, and he hands you a pamphlet, and the next thing you know, you're on a farm somewhere. Like, how do those people?

Most people join when they're five or six. And they are indoctrinated. And then they play sports. So, for example, they play tackle football at age five. And so they teach everyone how to play a game.

But it's only the people who are really good at the game that they continue to court, I would say. You could call them groom, whatever. But there's a lot more kids there than will ever get into the inner circles. And it's a little like the mob or something. Like.

I was born in the inner circle, but there are plenty of people who came out of that cult who honestly weren't harmed by it because they got out young. So, as long as you get out by the age of 12, you're probably okay. But they don't keep you unless you're really fully indoctrinated. And most of the people who stay really don't have a family to go back to. And they separate you from your family.

And so they do more and more separation as you become a teenager. By the time you're 18, you're signing a commitment for life form. Jesus. And I'm not saying that's happening now, but that was 100% happened, not just during my era, but all the decades prior to me.

I mean, you have to have something to strive for.

There's some sort of calling card, whether it's a pamphlet or something else. Yoga class. But once you're there.

You're the special one for choosing to stay. In this particular cult, they always would say, there's 20 of you in this room. 19 of you will fall away. There's only one of you. Oh, boy.

You know, will make it into the army of God.

It's a, the whole thing's a big, foggy haze. There's no internet. The world's, we have like one 10th of access to information that we do today. And you're also a child and you think this is reality.

And I mean, they're like, well, I don't think my kid's doing drugs or I don't think that they're like in prison. So it seems like they're doing pretty well.

The women I come from, I mean, like my grandmother who had my father, who joined the SCOLT, she was always a working woman, minimum wage working woman. She didn't have more than eighth grade education. She worked because her father, excuse me, my dad's father, her husband had been in World War II and got pretty severe PTSD or whatever, was an alcoholic and beat her. And so she ran away from him. She just had one child, which was my father.

She was living in a chicken coop near LA just with this one son, and she was the first woman to get hired in a factory. But this was in the 1940s. So there were always women, of course, and lots of women of color who were working, but it wasn't the middle class women who were working. But the poor women were always working. Right.

So if you're a 35-year-old man and you're listening to this today, you're like, I wouldn't get sucked into that. You can't say that because you're not a five-year-old boy. If you're a five-year-old boy, you don't know what the fuck is going on. You're a child. By the time you're 18, you sort of get a, especially if you're a little streetwise, like, all right, some people are shady.

I know what the fuck's going on. Listen to this guy. He's trying to rope me in. I remember there was this Christian group when I was in college that was trying to indoctrinate people. And they were like young, good-looking people.

And there was this beautiful Puerto Rican girl. And, uh, she was always trying to get me to go to parties with her. And I was like, wow, did I hit that jackpot? Like, eventually I'm going to get a date with this girl. Like, this is amazing.

You know, I was probably 1920, I guess, 20, 21, maybe. And, um, one day, um, she invites me to go to this retreat on the weekend. Like they have some, some crazy Christian retreat. And I'm like, oh my God, a retreat. Like.

she's not telling me it's a Christian retreat. She's telling me it's like this fun party and this whole thing. And I said, I can't. I have plans this weekend. I go, but if you guys ever do another one of those things, that sounds like fun.

And so Monday morning, or whatever the day was, I'm in school and we're all in the cafeteria. And it was the day that Trump's airplane, the landing gear, failed to open. And so, uh, we all sit down at the lunch table and I had just seen it on the news. I said, did you see this thing on the news about the plane? It's crazy.

Like the landing gear didn't, didn't go out. And so the plane just on the belly of the plane, skid across the runway and there's all these crazy sparks. And I go, but nobody died. And they go, oh, praise God. Praise God.

And I was like, what? Like what's going on here? This super hot Puerto Rican girl's like, oh, praise God. They're all praise God. Praise God.

And I'm like, oh, and then it just immediately click you dummy. They were trying to get you to go to their church thing. You thought she liked you. And then they started talking to me more about God. And then I was like, oh, I got to go.

I got a class. I got to get out of here.

Can't be involved in this. Because they were all glossy. They were all like, they were all believers. Not, this is not saying that God's not real. This is not saying that Christianity is not true.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you could have got those people with Scientology. You could have got those people with Mormonism. You could have got those people with the Moonies. Whatever.

They were just looking for a thing that they could attach themselves to and then formulate their identity based around this thing. And for them, it was Christianity. And it was this like youthful form of Christianity, where they're trying to get young people. They're making it like retreats. We're going to have, we're going to party.

And they were all socially odd. They were all real, awkward people. It was really, it was very interesting, though to me. The person is always curious about human beings. So it's like, this is wild.

I think high control groups slash cults are a whole different experience. And yes, they use religion. But they don't teach you to have faith and to trust yourself and your faith. They teach you to follow someone else's faith.

That's what I think. I think. if you tell me a story and I tell Jamie the story. And then Jamie tells someone out in the lobby a story. By the time it gets to me all the way again, it's going to be screwed up.

Right? Sure. Now, imagine this over thousands of years of just oral tradition. And then writing in lost languages like ancient Hebrew. They wrote them in Aramaic on animal skins.

Some of these stories like the Dead Sea Scrolls. And then they eventually translate them to Latin and to Greek, and to Roman, and to English and to German. What?

Yeah. Sounds a lot like if you would tell the Big Bang to your kids and your kids would tell it to their kids. And you're going to do this for a thousand years. At the end of it, you're going to get some real. .

. People are gross. They always like to, like, twist things around and make things. . .

You know, they add their own little spice to a story. Like if you ever have a friend that tells a story, you're like, hey, bro, that didn't happen that way. Like, you didn't say that. You fucking ran for cover. Like, everybody's got their own version of a story.

Yeah. And then, when we read the King James Version of the Bible, I mean, you know, the king pronounced it to be so. And so anything that was left out, I mean, there was a lot left out, right, in what was canonized, because it was perhaps dangerous to the particular regime that he was running. And so not to say that there's not truth.

My problem is never with religion. My problem is purely with human nature and what we know about humans. If there was a way that you got religion through some sort of non-human source, like, if you achieved your experience through a non-human source, I would go, okay, well, maybe there's a place that you can go and you could actually go meet God. There's, like, a portal you walk through and you meet God. But as soon as you're doing, you're letting people tell you a story, people are full of shit.

They just generally, generally at least a certain percentage are full of shit. And the people that want to control people have a much higher likelihood of being full of shit. because to really do that correctly, like, if you want to be a president, like, you've got to lie. You've got to lie. It's, like, really important.

So the people that are, like, good at that job are generally full of shit. And so then you have a problem with the interpretation of the past, right? And you're seeing that right now in universities. Like, people are trying to reinterpret certain events because of the way people feel about sociopolitical issues today. So they're trying to reinterpret history, take down statues.

There's a lot of, like, craziness that's going on today. Well, that's like a microcosm of the ancient history of human beings. It's not that God's not real. It's that people are full of shit. And so there's a lot of wisdom in a lot of these ancient religious texts in particular, which is really fascinating.

Like, how much did they know about the human experience? How much did they know about how you need to live your life in order to be harmonious with the universe? How do you, like, how do you accentuate positive experiences? How do you leave the world a little bit better than it was before you got here?

So we were in the middle of, like, we lived near Lombard Street. We were in the middle of, like, the hippie anti-war revolution of the 1960s. And then I moved to Gainesville, Florida. My stepdad was going to, he was becoming an architect. He was a computer programmer, and then he switched careers, became an architect.

And so he was going to the University of Florida at Gainesville. And so we were there. So now, all of a sudden I'm around alligators. There's fucking alligators everywhere. It's like, what are you, are you people retarded?

Why do you have giant monsters everywhere? This is so ridiculous. So we had alligators, super weird, swampy weather, and religion. Religion was in the schools. Like, in public school, you had Bible class.

And they also paddled you. It was the first time I'd ever been hit by a teacher. In Florida. I got in this fist fight with this kid, and they whacked us with a paddle.

This way. This way. The other way.

Pull the sucker back like that, like there.

I see golden blur. I don't know what the fuck that is.

What were we just talking about?

I used this little pin light and did it late at night, but I read the whole thing cover to cover when I was eight. If you read every single book in order, you start to find that there's a lot of really beautiful, beautiful, beautiful places in the Bible, but there's a lot of stuff that's really violent, and then there's a lot of stuff that contradicts itself. It's because it was written in different time periods, by different authors, in different languages, and it also has a historical context. Generally, there's a lot of stuff that people leave out when they teach the Bible, because it's really hard to explain.

Right? Anyway, he demands that she come to him, and she is the wife of a soldier of his named Uriah, a top soldier. He commands her to lie with him, and she becomes pregnant. Then King David, who is the same guy who had the slingshot of David and Goliath, decides that he's got to figure out how to get her husband back, so that her husband can go sleep with her, and her husband won't do it, because he's loyal to the army. He comes back, but he sleeps at the floor of the castle, trying to-.

Then David sends him to the front lines to have him be killed, so that he can marry his not being a bastard child. Illegitimate.

. Think about poor Bathsheba. She's just been wrung around. Her husband gets killed, all these things. Her kid dies, because God is punishing David.

Occasionally, they'll say, so-and-so, Boaz, through Ruth, or David's, the father through Bathsheba. Bathsheba ended up having a child who became Solomon, who we know, a lot of people know this, of being the wisest man who ever lived. He wrote Ecclesiastes.

There's four women who are named. As a child, that was really interesting to me. I would ask, why are these four women in the line of Christ? No one would tell me. I started doing the research about that.

One was a prostitute. Here's a story you don't hear a lot. Want to hear another Bible story? Sure. There was a woman named Tamar.

She had been married to one of three sons. I think there was three. Her husband died before giving her a child. As was the custom in the time, and perhaps the law, she married the brother of her dead husband. That man would not give her a child because he didn't want to have a child in his brother's name.

They're allowed to have more than one wife, but this woman was not allowed to have a child. He did something they call onanism. He spilled his seed on the ground instead of inside of her so that she couldn't have a baby. God gets really mad because onanism will not impregnate her. Onan gets killed too.

Then her father-in-law decides not to marry her off to the youngest brother because two of the brothers are already dead. He doesn't want to lose his only son. He just vanishes her. She has nothing, because what does a woman have at that time? She doesn't have a husband or a child.

She has no ability to make a living in the world. This man, the father-in-law, is really unkind to her in a way that she decides she needs to take something into her own hands. She dresses up like a prostitute and goes to the side of the road. As he's traveling on the road, she puts herself in front of him and offers her services. He sleeps with her.

He does not have payment on him. for some reason. He gives her his staff, which is a token of his word, or something. At least he's paying his prostitute. She gets pregnant from this.

He orders her, when he finds out she's pregnant, to be stoned to death, to be killed and executed because she's not allowed to have a baby outside of wedlock. She said, okay, but let me just return this staff to you that I got from the father of the baby. Then he ends up protecting her. She gets to have the child. That child is in the line of Christ.

Really interesting things. I don't know what you're supposed to learn from that story. When I was a kid reading this, I would ask, and, of course, no one really wanted to tell me, because she was rewarded for that. That's the interesting thing.

It doesn't mean that. It means there's probably something in these stories, but we have to be real careful with what that something is.

Listen to your body. Do what's great for you. If this doesn't feel right to you, please don't do it. Then you offer modifications, et cetera. And what high control religion does, and I'm not saying all religion, I'm saying the culture.

religion, doesn't give you the option of listening to your body or opting out of anything. This is the interpretation of the word of God. And the one thing I will say is I don't know why Tamar did what she did or why Onan did what he did. I don't know whether or not the stories were transcribed accurately or not, even if they were. That is a different culture.

I wasn't there.

And it depends on who gets into power, whatever version gets propagated.

So our own history is sketchy as fuck. Our own history, our real absolute history, is sketchy as fuck. Yeah. And that's why conspiracy theories are so fun.

And no one's allowed to question it. And if they do, they're excommunicated. And one of the ways you know something as a cult is they will always tell you that anyone who left – it's different than outsiders. I mean outsiders are people who maybe never had access to the truth. But people who are quitters, they literally call them quitters.

where I come from. Quitters. It's a good name. I know. It really is.

God damn. It's so interesting how these patterns reoccur all over the world. You know, there's a guy in Australia that says he's Jesus. And he runs this whole cult in Australia. And he has this woman who, he says, is Mary.

But the problem is there was another woman who was Mary before. And it didn't work out with the original Mary. So he tells this new lady, I was wrong about that other lady. You're Mary. And so –.

There's people that lived – they know what they said. They know where they ate. They know where they went. They know so much about them. But the Jesus one is kind of – there's people that say yes.

There's historical documents that show he existed. And then there's a bunch of documentaries that you can watch that are like, boy, the evidence is kind of sketchy. It seems to be a thought, like a recurring thing in many religions. It seems to be like Hercules, right? It seems to be – there's a bunch of these that are like real, similar to that, like the child of a god that comes down to fix everything.

Even though they were the versions like of when you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are the versions that they were told. So I don't know, maybe 100 years.

And people are full of shit. That's it. It doesn't mean that he didn't exist. Because if someone did exist, like if the early emergence of humans in the world. Let's imagine what they mean by this story.

If the early emergence of humans in this world were put down here to figure it out on their own. Like a bunch of lock key kids, like latch key kids from the 1970s. Figure it out on your own. I'm going to give you ways to live your life. Tell everybody.

But I'm hands off. I'm hands off. I'm an afterlife type of guy. I'm not going to come down and explain it again. Pop out of the clouds and freak everybody out.

I did that once. I did it. once. I'm done. You guys killed me.

So I'm just saying. Live your life this way. If that was a real thing, what would be any different than the Bible? What would be any different about a real event like that actually happened. Where the son of God came down and explained to mankind what they're doing wrong.

And lived this amazing life and taught so many people. And they spread his wisdom and they spread his information. It wouldn't be any different than the Bible. Because you're still – even if it was like very clear what he was saying. And very clear what he had done and the impact and how.

they all knew he was the son of God. By the time, 100 years go by, people talking about it, who the fuck knows? Who knows?

So if you listen to his Sermon on the Mount or these various things, it's possible that some of these stories. Which they can be interpreted more than one way. But to say that – have you heard the expression, casting pearls to swine?

Just give me my inheritance now. I want to go experience life. And the father gives his younger son his inheritance. And this young man, who is raised well, goes out and hires prostitutes. Does all the things, right?

And lives this loose life. And he finds that he runs out of money. And he is in a pen of pigs. And he is willing to eat what even the pigs won't eat. Like the leftovers.

And he is face down in the mud, according to the story, in the pig pen, and says, even if I was a servant from my father, I'd be treated better than this. And so he goes back, et cetera. And his older brother is really upset because the father brings the son back and treats him. You know, he's just so grateful his son's returning to him. And his brother says, you know, or an expression like, you're casting pearls to swine.

I mean, like my brother is a pig. My brother is like, you know, from the pig pen. And you're giving him something that he doesn't deserve. And that whole story, I mean, you can interpret it any way you want. But this idea that you tell stories like this and someone could say God is willing to take you back.

And perhaps even better if you have experienced life. And that just being obedient isn't the only way to live a life. Maybe that's the, I don't know what the real interpretation is, right? But like when you read a story like that or you hear the story, like Jesus didn't write it down. But if you told that story, then now people come to that and they think, what does that mean?

Does that mean, when I find myself in a pig pen, that I can repent and go back? What does it mean?

Like if someone's standing in front of a group of people imparting wisdom, that's a very bizarre relationship. It's a very slippery position for the person that has the podium. Very slippery. Because you could start believing all this nonsense. You could start believing that you're different than everybody else.

You could start believing that you are the son of God. Even if you're not. I'm not even talking about Jesus. I'm talking about someone today. Someone today.

Even today, in this day and age, with the Internet. If you started doing something like that and you're schizophrenic, you could believe it.

Right. Which is a problem. Which is a real problem. If you want to like, put all your eggs in one basket, you've got to pick a religion. Boy, if you're agnostic, like which one of you guys is right?

Are the Hindus right? Maybe. Are the Buddhas right? I don't know.

Like what are the universal truths? But we always, we have to look at things through a filter of reality. And the filter of reality, we know human beings are full of shit. So you have to put that in there. You have to put that with everything.

You can't just say they wouldn't lie about religion. Stop. That's nonsense. It doesn't mean that God's not real. It doesn't mean that Jesus didn't exist.

Because, look, maybe Jesus is the ultimate. It's like this is the last word, and then we're going to let you guys figure it out on your own. And maybe, if God exists, okay. Let's use it as a thought experiment. If God exists, why would God engineer an animal to be at the top of the food chain that is so filled with greed and wants so much power that it's willing to take over enormous swaths of land with his hands?

With his giant machines, and murder anybody who gets in their way. And it's all justified in the name of nationalism. Why would God universally impart that kind of sensibility on a species? Why would God tolerate it? Why would God tolerate crime and murder and all the horrible things that we see today?

Why would God want any of this stuff to go on? If God is so all powerful that he created the universe, is this just a first draft? Did you like try, like, say...

Like that could. it could be like a test. Like the entire human species, the entire civilization, the whole thing. It's just some gigantic test to see if you get it right.

But that when you see the light and you're drawn to the light, that you might be tempted by the darkness. But when you really know what light is, that you'll always choose that. And so that the end of the day that we're all going to see the light.

And the greater picture of your existence. And as you go further and further, you go, if you're living a harmonious life, you go almost naturally towards that direction. Trying to be nicer to people, love your neighbor, have more peace in the world, don't be murdering people. You know, and that's generally like how most religions want you to believe. It's like.

the origin of it is God. There's some sort of a guidebook for being a human. That's the origin of it, it seems like. That they were just trying to like, you can't just let people be feral. You got to give them some guidelines.

And one of the best ways is to, someone's watching all the time. There's a dude in the sky. But maybe he really is. Maybe there really is something that watches everything. It might not be watching, but it might be like integrated into the entire existence of the whole thing.

He wrote Meditations 2,000 years ago. Like his understanding of how to live a life. Right. It's so valuable. And his concept of forgiveness.

Like forgiveness. He's a fucking Roman. I mean, this dude is like this badass soldier. And he's like, it's very important to forgive everybody. Even forgive your enemies.

Like he, had this incredible wisdom about maintaining your objective perspective of the world. It was really interesting. So we know people were smart as shit back then.

All of these traditions have to be passed down for humans to stay alive. I mean, we're really fragile creatures.

And that's the thing about forgiveness or anything else. Even if somebody is telling you something that is in their own best interest. Doesn't mean it's not true. Right. And that there's so many truths in anything.

And so learning to survive literally off the land or in the desert or things like that. Was a really harsh training that I had as a kid. But it taught me to look around everywhere that I've been ever since. And to pay attention. And I mean that's a gift.

And I think about that when I think about forgiveness too. Like part of forgiving people is because on some level they taught you a lesson.

it was giving you a very specific date. Like repent, the end is here. And it's going to be this time. I'm like is this is like the most brilliant album release. Like that.

You know, I'm saying like some rock band has figured out a way to like make something go viral before the Internet. I guess the Internet was around then. It was not that long ago. I want to say like maybe eight years ago. Ten years ago.

Monday through Friday. live open forum on family radio dot com.

. That was the end of the Mayan calendar. My license plate used to be December 2012.. DEC 12.. Whatever it was.

But that was the end of the long count of the Mayan calendar and all the kooks thought that was the end of the world. So we actually did an end of the world show in Los Angeles with my friends from Honey Honey Band. My friend Suzanne. Joey Diaz. Doug Stanhope.

It was wild.

It's a very bizarre ancient calendar that they don't really fully understand. So to say that was the end of the world seems a little silly.

. They can also say anytime it doesn't happen that the calendars are wrong.

What is the Lilith story exactly?

Oh, Satan.

How do you say that word? Do you know? Mandaean? Mandaean and Jewish sources? from 500 AD onward?

Lilith appears in his Storalus incantations, incorporating a short mythic story. Various concepts and localities that give partial descriptions of her. She is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Nadah, Shabbat, Bava, Batra and the conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, as Adam's first wife. And in the Zohar Leviticus 19a as a hot, fiery female who first cohabitated with man. Wow.

Many rabbinic authorities, including, boy. there's another word, Maimonides and Menashem Mary reject the existence of Lilith. Interesting. So Lilith is controversial.

I mean, she caused the downfall of humankind. She's the reason why we're all here. That's right.

Anybody know what the fuck's going on up there? I know.

But we sacrifice it almost for everyone that lives in cities. If you live in cities, you don't go anywhere and see it. You sacrifice a humbling spiritual experience of just staring at the stars. And I think it's spiritual poisoning. It's just like if you have vitamin deficiencies.

I think you have a spiritual deficiency, just a natural, universal, spiritual deficiency from not seeing the stars. I think it puts our place in the universe in perspective like nothing else can. Because it's there. It's real. It's not a concept.

It's not something that you have to use a microscope or a telescope to see. It's right in front of you. And it's absolutely spectacular. on a clear night in the mountains, where there's no light pollution. You see the stars.

You're just like, wow. Is that up there every night?

If we were consistently humbled every night, I think we'd generally be like you could tone people down a little bit.

And if you're in the desert, it's hard to tell seasons. But if I was on land, I could do it. Yeah.