Soul Boom - LIVE with Pete Holmes!

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Comedian Pete Holmes (I Am Not For Everyone) joins Rainn Wilson LIVE to dive into the nature of God, spiritual awakening through psychedelics, and why ego isn’t the enemy...it might even be divine. They unpack the parable of the Prodigal Son, discuss mystical consciousness and atheism, and reflect on comedy’s role in revealing truth. Plus, Pete shares early jokes, voice memo rage, and his unique way of merging stand-up with sacred insight. THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! ⁠⁠⁠Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.stamps.com/soulboom⁠⁠. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Fetzer 👉⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.stamps.com/soulboom⁠⁠ Bragg (20% OFF! CODE: SOULBOOM) 👉⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.bragg.com⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 👉 TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Soul Boom. Testing, Justin. Is this thing on? Hello. Hi, everybody. Look at all of you, beautiful, spiritually curious weirdos. Welcome, welcome to the very first Soul Boom live show. It's the first time we've ever tried this.

Yes. Thank you so much for coming. I am truly, truly humble. humbled that you are here tonight. Are you ready for a good night? Yes. Good. A night of life, meaning music and idiocy, deep idiocy. Yes, the kind of idiocy that only happens when you ask questions like, what is the soul? And will God judge me for asking chat GPT how to fake humility? Did I mention I am truly humbled that you are all. here. Now, if you're wondering if this is going to be a night of intellectual rigor and spiritual

elevation, it's not. It's going to get way weirder than that. We've got an amazing show tonight. Thank you all for coming out. This is a crazy experiment doing a live podcast. We've never done this before about idiocy and spirituality and mental health and, you know, a few laughs along the way. And thank you very much for coming out. I'm sure there's some office fans here. I'm sure there's some Soul Boom fans here. It really, this really means a lot. I want to thank the Largo at the Cornette for having us and, and my producer Kartik for putting everything together.

He's amazing. And this is welcome to the stage and more importantly to the podcast, Pete Holmes. Thank you. You look like Dwight got shipwrecked. That's, that's my first bit. What if we hate each other? What if it's tense? What if it's tense for 40 minutes?

No, we love each other very much. And backstage, Rayne, you didn't know that I've seen the office in its entirety five times start to Finn. This was a huge surprise to me that you have seen the entirety of the office like four or five times. Yeah. I love it.

Very, very much. And I had no idea that you were that much of a fan. Yeah. Big Krasinski head. Yeah. Yeah. Team Jim. Why do you think I'm joking? I love Grisin. But one of my favorite things about you is that you actually do a Robert

California impersonation. I do. James Spader's character from like season 13. Where it really picks up steam. Yeah. The show really finds its stride. Wasn't your fault, Rainey. Yeah.

A lot of people don't know this, but To do a very good, Robert California, you just finished eating a very fine cheese. It's like that. It's pretty good. Everything is... Yeah, it's all right. It's all right. Everything is sex.

It's like that. That was really good. Yeah, yeah. Everything is sex, Dwight. It's kind of got like a, what is it? It's almost like Garrison Keeler. It's like, in Lake Woebegone, there was a small paper merchant that I worked at. You know what I mean?

Everything is Garison Keeler not wearing any pants under the table. Yeah. Rock hard. It's not that kind of podcast. You said without pants, I took it over the goal line. Over the goal line. What does this mean that you've seen the office so many times? Because I'm genuinely surprised.

There's honestly not a lot of like comedy glitterati in Hollywood that have seen the office multiple times. I don't think that's true. I think almost everybody's seen the office many, many times. Tastemakers with Netflix specials? I don't know. Well, I don't like that very much. I said this to you back to stage.

I really think it's a deep comfort that show. It's an excellent show. And then after you've seen it once or twice and you really appreciate how wonderful it is, it does, and I'm not just blowing smoke, it becomes a place that you want to be. It becomes, those are, obviously not in reality, but they feel like your friends,

and you just kind of want to go to work. and the phones ringing and the color palette and the costumes and everything about it. The layout. Every person in this room could walk through the office at Dunder Mifflin in pitch black and find the conference room. Another way around. We could find it. That's amazing. I could find my way to the annex.

Wow. That's right. Yeah. That's after three viewings, you can find your way to the annex. It's tricky, but you can do it. Yeah, so I think when the pandemic happened, that's when we really started to notice the supreme comfort of it. And I don't just mean that mindless comfort. It's not like, I don't think it's scrolling on Instagram or just something that occupies your dopamine seeking behavior.

I think it really is like a beautiful, cozy, warm place. And there is also psychologically something very nice about watching something you've seen before. You know it's going to be okay. You know what I mean? Like, it's going to be all right. And they're always glad you came. I mean, I love wings. They said it best.

But you said... Only this section knew I was joking. Everyone else was like, wings. They don't know what wings. They think they're thinking like wing stop or something. If you got my wings reference, it's time for a colonoscopy. Just sound advice. That's sound medical advice.

Here's how old. I am, I've had two colonoscopies. Wow. For me, Chen, simultaneously. And they met in the middle, like tentacles, just filming each other. You were a spit. But I measure my life in colonoscopies. I've yet to have one. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, get on it. Yikes. Death is here. Get on it. Or don't. Good for business. Don't get on it.

I did get my prostate check today, though. So that's... Don't worry about it. How is it? How's my prostate? Yeah. Swole. Swole.

You know, your prostate is like linked to peepee. And after you go pee pee, now that I'm older, more dribbles out. And I know that's an overshare, but it is this kind of podcast. I'm not ready for a diaper, but I could wear a bathing suit most of the day. With the double layer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't need a full depends, but I would love just. support of just a regular bathing suit.

Like, peeing in the shower makes so much sense now. I'm like, this is where it should be happening. I still can't swim with trunks that don't have the little underwear built in. Is there something wrong with me? No. Is that just a 70s thing or 80s thing? What do you think? No, that's the cutting edge future material. That's what the NASA astronauts wear? Absolutely.

On this international space station. There's freeze-dried ice cream. They're wonderful. You mean you want to wear just like a bucket that you can just look up and see all the... See both the rain and the Wilson's? It's another castaway reference. I don't want to see your Robert California that bad, man. This guy.

I wanted to know, you live in Ohio and one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is, oh my God, the hippies were right. Yeah. Were the hippies right? The hippies were right. And everyone else was wrong? Well, I actually think, like most things in America, we took it too far. I think the hippies went a little far with it.

You know what I'm saying? Okay. Like, I think there is... Like the not bathing? Like, bathe once a week or twice a week or something like that. In a river, an ice cold river. Right. Where you can pee and the dribble doesn't matter.

I just think we tend to go too far with things. And no matter what the movement is, it will be co-opted by people. people that don't really have an interest in the deeper message. You know what I'm saying? Like I think, and you and I have disagreed about this in the past, but I think psychedelics are a wonderful tool to spiritual awakening. Shall we disagree about that in the present as well? You couldn't even wait for me to finish this point? I'm just kidding.

This actually might be kind of on your side for every person that is taking psychedelics and having some sort of self-realization. even if it's not a full self-realization, there might be seven people that just really love listening to Tool. You know what I'm saying? And that's fine. I'm not even mad at that,

but when I look at the 60s, I see it getting a little off the leash and getting co-opted by, you know what I'm saying? Like you call it tantra, but you're just really horny. You know what I'm saying? Sure.

Or like you call it a spiritual retreat, but you just really love not having a job? Like the lines, the lines get blurred. Yeah. I'm not even joking. I'm saying there are earnest people, and there were a lot of them. And we found a lot of them in the 60s. But, yeah, those things can get caught.

My mom is still a hippie and lives in a cabin by a river. And my son, whose 20 was visiting her. And then they both said very cheerily the other day, like, she was like, I'm going to teach Walter gardening. And we're going to spend the day gardening. And I was like, yeah, I was like, the hippies were right. Yeah. We should all be gardening.

We really should not be scrolling. We should be gardening. Well, that's true. That was very real time. That was the Greenpeace moment. We shouldn't be scrolling. We should be gardening. Yeah, well, it is all there, isn't it?

The idea of nothing ever really dies. Everything is just repurposed. The cycle is all in the garden for sure. Got to make our way back to the garden, great hippie song. But truly, like, God is love, communion with nature, sharing resources. Sure. I mean, you go item by item by item, and the hippies were right. And according to you, psychedelics, is a great path towards spiritual enlightenment.

I would agree with that, but I can see you setting me up. You know, Jesus had a great line about the gardening. But there's two things Jesus said about gardening. I'm not relaxed. I'm not, don't worry. Don't have church PTSD. There's some great stuff in there. He said,

let the weeds grow with the wheat. That's something that is less quoted about Jesus. What does that mean? It's all in the game. It's like you're not going to get rid of weeds. Christianity has sort of been turned into like, if we can just not swear or smoke or have sex long enough, God will like us.

And Jesus has a much more let the weeds grow with the weed. I mean, that sounds like something the Buddha would say, but there it is in the New Testament. He also says the rain falls on the just and the unjust, which growing up in America, I always thought that meant bad things happen to good people. But you have to remember, you know, we're in the Middle East. We're talking about rain being a very, very good thing. And a precious thing. A precious thing. So the rain falls on the just and the unjust. It waters both the thorny plants and the roses. It's just... And that's God's mercy, God's grace. You could look at it that way as well. Well, look, you got me on a Jesus tear here, but like one of my... Who better? Who better to be on a Jesus' ture? Who better? Who better? because you were a young evangelical. I do have resting Latter-day Saint-face, but I like a lot of the things Jesus says, but one of my favorites,

which actually will tie into my defense of psychedelics, is, and I'm going to paraphrase here because if I told it in the original King James, it would be so boring. But Jesus tells this story. How about the original Aramaic? I can do it. Okay.

Don't tempt me. No, no, nope. That riff, I'm walking away from that. rough. He tells a story about a wealthy landowner. You know if you hear the phrase, wealthy landowner, you're reading the Bible. And the wealthy landowner hires three guys to work in his fields. And the first one shows up at 9 a.m. And works. Is this a real Bible story? Yeah. It sounds like you're making it up. I'm changing the specifics, but the content is the same. Okay. Okay. Which is very Semetic of me. Three. No, no, that sounds like I'm being funny.

In Semitic storytelling, if you're talking to a rich person like you, I would say, I lost a million dollars. But if I was talking to a regular person, I'd say I lost $100. And that's the literal truth. Now you got me on a... You have to go a hundred million higher. Yeah. Ray and I lost $100 million.

$10 million. It was in the back of my Rivian and it blew up. I derailed the story, though. Tell me about the landowner and the three people. No, you're an agent of Satan. and you don't want me to tell this story. I understand. It's a little too helpful,

a little too bringing in the kingdom for your taste. I understand. I'm the weed among the wheat. Yeah, I like it, and you get rain just like me, which is a beautiful flower. Anyway, no, I'm kidding. So the three guys come. I am changing every detail,

but the message will be the same. First guy shows up at 9, and he works until 5 p.m. Second guy shows up at noon and works until 5 p.m. Third guy shows up at 4.15 p.m. works until 5 p.m. wealthy landowner comes out, pays each of them the same. Jesus is always telling stories like this that are deliberately frustrating. They're infuriating to the ego that would like to earn it.

We want to be the person that work from nine to five and gets paid more, that is recognized more. But in my interpretation, the lesson of that parable is you can't divide infinity. To tie that into meaning God already loves you maximum. You understand? So there's nothing you can do, which also brings me to psychedelics. And we have, I'm not here to pick a fight with you, I'm just saying you think psychedelics are cheating. I think the idea of you cheating is looking at it very wrong, meaning God or reality or truth is so madly in love with you.

It can't even comprehend cheating or not cheating, doing it properly or doing it improperly, working from 9 to 5 or 4, 15 to 5, or not coming at all because it's already your birthright. You can't become what you already are. So you can't do it right and you can't do it wrong. Psychedelics isn't cheating, not doing psychedelics and meditating in a cave isn't doing it better because at the end of the day, the wealthy landowner gives everybody the same amount. Wow. You've convinced me. Did I really?

Let's go. Oh, I like that. Yeah. That just stood out to me. I didn't come here hoping to convince you, but I remembered when you did my podcast the second time that we did. We disagreed on them. Look, folks, I love control. I like deciding when I do things, how I do things, and preferably why I do them.

So waiting in line to mail a package? Yeah, no. That's a big no from me. But with stamps.com, I can mail anything. Documents, packages, a handwritten apology note to my third grade music teacher, right from my desk or even my toilet. That's between me and my conscience. And Mrs. Larkin, who never completely required.

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weeks free plus free postage and a free digital scale no long-term commitments or contracts just go to stamps.com code soul boom yeah i mean i've spoken about it a bunch on on the pot i don't really need to get into it but i just think that oftentimes psychedelics can be commodified for a consumer audience and in between time in our hectic schedules we can pay 1,2505 billion $57 to a shaman at a motel in Costa Rica and get enlightenment over a three-day Memorial Day weekend and be back to our job on a Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. sharp and focusing on making even more money. And I just think it kind of misses the point that psychedelics, when used in an indigenous tradition, are part of a multifaceted plan and program for spiritual enlightenment. They're a part of

they're a part of that. They're not the whole sum of the game. I agree. And it's kind of the Joe Rogafinification of psychedelic enlightenment is not cheating, I would say, but there are, there's no shortcuts, I don't think. But there are no long cuts either. Remember, you can't become what you already are.

You already are awareness. And that can either be veiled or unknowledge. But it can't be true or untrue. You're already that. What else could you be? You are the I am. You are the knowing. That's done. And if psychedelics reveal it, this lava lip could reveal it. This conversation could reveal it. It's not really, I really see it as a benevolent booby trap that you're playing on yourself. And that's really something that you would feel that I felt on psychedelics, where I'm like, oh, I did this to find myself. and they say this thing in India, God loves us so much that, and the West were so materialistic, God came to the West as a material. You understand?

So there are other cultures where it might be more, it looks exactly like the thumbprint of God to me that we love eating stuff and feeling groovy, and God's like, well, guess what, bitch, I'm hiding in there. You know what I mean? Like, that feels exactly... That's where our work is.

That feels exactly like how the mystery moves to me. So do you think that maybe I'm mistaken in the sense of like there's a kind of ingrained Protestant work ethic that like one has to work towards some kind of spiritual enlightenment in the same way that one has to work a cornfield? Yes. And I would say you almost, and not just you, but all of us almost certainly got our notion of God from how our parents were. Exclusively. So if you have a drunk, angry dad, you probably have a drunk, angry God. And it's what you're dealing with, what you're churning.

over, which is fine. I wouldn't change it for the world. It has a lot more to do with psychology than it does ultimate reality. But that's fine. It's completely lawful and it's valid and it's beautiful and I wouldn't change it. So I would describe my father as fascinating and emotionally vacant. Yeah. So maybe that's the God that I've been chasing. I completely understand it. And I spent a lot of my time really hoping that my God parents aren't secretly mad at me or disappointed.

it. You know what I mean? So I'm also trying to earn it. I'll say this as often as I can because I really do think the prodigal son, the story of the prodigal son, which is the end of the sermon on the Mount. So it's Jesus's closer. So he does the sermon on the Mount, which is a little bit cryptic, if you ask me, but then he closes with the prodigal son. And I'm saying this with full respect. There's nothing cheeky about this. I think it's a masterpiece. And if you look at the prodigal son, everybody knows this story. Guy, it's actually not a king, but we say it's a king. So we might as well say it's a king. There's the same. son of a king, and he says, give me my inheritance. I want a party. I want to, I know I sound like a

youth pastor. I want to party. I sit backwards in a chair. He wants to rap. He wants to listen to this metal. I get it. I get it. But he does. He wants his inheritance. I would say that's a metaphor for, I want to leave oneness. I want to play. I want to get in a mess. I want to go into manifestation. It's very similar to Adam and Eve. But anyway, Give me my inheritance. Give it to me. It's mine. And I'm going to go squander it.

And the father watches him do this. And that's what the son does. He goes to a far off land, to a distant land. You could say this is where we are. We're in a distant land. And he blows it. It doesn't say this, but it's kind of implied that, you know, it's a wild time. It's women, drugs, whatever.

Claim, yeah. Sex, it's that. Sports betting. What's that? Sports betting. Sports betting. Reality Kings is a sponsor of this episode. Anyway, he ends up working with the pigs.

He can't find any other work, and he's starving to death. So he works with the pigs, which is a very deliberate joke to the Jewish audience, because working with pigs is very unclean. So that's just Jesus' way of saying, in my understanding. And when you say that in Los Angeles, it means an entirely different thing. Working with the pigs? Yeah. Means you're doing nonscripted?

My man. Anyway, so if you're working with the pigs, that's Jesus' way of saying, on Big Brother. You're on... Right. I'm trying to say... You're on... You're really low.

Yes. Dancing with the stars. You're down and out dancing with the stars. Yeah. I was going to say that. I'm not judging. It's, you know...

You're not a judge this season? Next year. Next year. If they ask. Anyway, so he's down and out. And this is the key, and we're almost done. And I promise no more Jesus after this. Unless you love it.

Here we go. What he does is he remembers who's... son he is. He remembers that he's the son of this man and he can go home because his father is loving. And that's what he does. He goes back and he goes, maybe my father will make me a servant in his kingdom. And instead, before he's even gotten all the way there, the father runs out and meets him, which is, again, how I believe ultimate reality moves. We make a little gesture and it comes all the way. It can't. It's so madly in love.

with you. It doesn't matter how you do it. It just wants to do it. It meets you and runs out and says, you know the rest. Get the finest robe, slaughter the fat and calf for what his loss has been found. And they sell it. They put a ring on his finger and they sell it. But what about his brother? You're leaving him out of the story. I haven't finished the story, but I was going to leave him out. Let me finish this part. And then we can talk about the brother. Fair enough. Because the brother is a little bit like the worker who shows up at nine and works to five. So it does tie into what we're talking about. And I love that you knew about the brother. I'm secretly a little upset.

I'm just kidding. No, no, no. This is the part that really gets me going about this story that I love to just talk about because honestly, every time I talk about, I get to remember it, is that in the story, the sun doesn't become anything.

The son wasn't already. The son doesn't do anything. Nobody is murdered. There's no blood sacrifice. There's no crucifixion. There's no Jesus character in this story. as we understand Jesus, there's no atonement in this story. In the way that we have Christianity now,

the prodigal son would go, the kid ends up with the pigs and he's broken and he's destitute and he's like, my father's probably mad at me for squandering my inheritance. And then the Jesus character would come and find the kid in the mud with the pigs. And it'd say, look, I know your father is a tyrant. Your father's a tyrant. He's a bully and he's a man.

menace, and I know he wants to kill you, but I'll walk you home, and I'll say, kill me, because I know you have bloodlust. You have to have blood spilled. You kill me, and you take your son home. That's what we've turned Christianity into. But what Jesus actually says is, just walk home. It's your dad. It's your dad. That's the whole thing. You can throw the rest of it away, really, in my opinion. It's all in that story. And to add your little, your addition, there is a son who stayed in the kingdom the whole time and said, what about me? Where's my part?

And marked his ass off. Well, he's the worker who showed up at nine. Yeah. And got paid the same as the guy who came at 415. And this is what we do. We go, I stayed in the kingdom. I did what I was told. You know what I mean?

I never left. And the message to me seems to be the point is to leave. The point is to die and to be. and to be reborn. It's not to just stay in the kingdom. It's order, the kingdom, disorder, far off lands, reorder coming home. That's the way of the universe.

And if you look at your life, it's most likely the way of your life as well. But so many of us are like, if I just don't do anything, Jesus tells another story about the guy that gives out the talents. All of his stories seem to be about this. He gives three, a wealthy landowner,

gives three guys talents, which was another way, word for money. The first guy buries the talent. He buries it in the ground. He goes, this is the wealthy landowner's money. I'm going to bury it. The second guy invests it, the third guy, whatever, makes more with it somehow. And the guy that buried it gets yelled at. We think Christianity, we think holiness is somehow avoiding reality, opting out.

Like this is an error. Like you're not supposed to be angry or, confused or an atheist or a fucking pissed or horny or heavy metal or whatever like that's all holiness is wholeness it's the same word is the same etymology it's wholeness the mystic holds it all says yes to it all and i would say that's the nature of god the nature of god is like the space in this room nothing we do can change the space of this room and there's only one space the space here is the same as the space in outer space. There is no other space. There's one space. God is like that space. And we want to go, if we're nice in this room, the space will be better. No. Or you could change

metaphors. These are all Rupert Spiro metaphors. God is like the screen and we're in the movie. And we're like, if we do this, the screen will be mad. The screen is, we live and move and have our being in God. That's the screen. And the screen doesn't even, sorry, in my understanding, The screen doesn't even know subject to object what's happening in the movie. That's not what the screen does. The screen is so whole and so complete, it can't know something subject to object.

That's our job. That's what we're doing. And at the end, all there is is the screen. A couple things. I had a wonderful conversation this morning on the podcast in the studio with Britt Hartley, who might be here today,

who is a spiritual atheist and has a fascinating book called No Nonsense spirituality, about looking at spiritual ideas through an atheist lens, which might sound dichotomous, but it's really fascinating. And she was talking about the story

of the prodigal son and saying, perhaps, from a storytelling perspective, we are all those characters. We are the loving father, and we are the person that goes and squanders their wealth and then works with the pigs, and we are the hardworking guy who wants his props.

and that all three of those, it's the id and the super ego and the ego, and it is all us. I would completely agree. That's what I mean by a benevolent booby trap. You're playing on yourself. To speak in atheistic terms, I'm sure some of you are atheists,

I think that's, you don't need my validation. I'm just saying I think that's totally valid. This I gave it to you anyway. Something that I can never make work on stage that I firmly believe, because I would rather talk to a thousand atheists any day than a thousand people that are like dyed in the wool anything that's that's a drag you're just going to offend those people that it's fine i was one of those people but atheists that's great we can

we can play but i was going to say i believe in god but i don't think god exists and it goes you already know where i'm going because i'm saying it's like the screen you can i don't think you can go somewhere somewhere and find something called God, working the levers, watching the screens, whatever you want to say, that's Oz. That's a different idea. Right. That's Santa Claus.

So, me and an atheist, we both believe that God doesn't exist. But the reason I hold on to it as a metaphor, and I say this all the time, but God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought including being and non-being. That's what Joseph Campbell said.

So it's very useful as a symbol. You know what I mean? Like we want to talk about it, but it's really hard to talk about it. So you use a symbol. An atheist also uses a symbol. They call that symbol nothing. Nothing created the world.

There is nothing. And I would say we're still in agreement because my God is not a thing. It's no thing. It's not an object. It's awareness without an object. So that's the bit that was on that special that you talked about.

actually I wasn't trying to say I'm right I believe in God I'm right you should come to my side I'm actually saying we're saying the same thing you either think God created the universe something you can't see touch taste photograph and science can't prove or you think nothing created the universe something you can't see touch taste photograph and science can't prove but where we get a little weird is I go if one of the things your nothing does is spontaneously erupt into everything we can agree that's a pretty magical fucking nothing. Yeah. And ask the nothing people, who make fun of the God people, by the way, and say,

God doesn't exist. I'm like, sure, maybe, but you know what doesn't exist for sure? Nothing. That's the defining characteristic of nothing, is that it doesn't exist. If it becomes something, it's no longer nothing. So what do we talk? We're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about no thing. You're talking about nothing. And what happens? Ask the nothing people. what happens when you die. They'll say you go into nothing. They go, you mean you merge back with your creator? That's heaven, bitch.

You know what I'm saying? So a lot of spiritual people have kind of taken that joke, and I'm fine with it, and they use it, and they go, like, here's an argument for God. I actually think what I'm saying is, you can't become what you already are. There's only one thing happening here. We're all the screen.

It's like we're all pens and we're filled with this mystery, and we call it consciousness. You are having the experience of being aware. You hear my voice. You've had this sense of being yourself your whole life. You are conscious. Here it is. It's happening. So that's like the ink in the pen.

It doesn't really matter what you write with the pen. Where the fuck did the ink come from? Some of us, right, there is a God. Some of us write, this is bullshit. It doesn't matter. The pen is amazing. The miracle is there. So it doesn't matter.

You can, I don't want Bill Maher to say, new rule, Jesus is the king of kings. I don't want that. You can do whatever you want. It doesn't even matter. No movie tarnishes, taints, colors, or changes the screen. It wants to play all kinds of movies. It wants atheists.

It wants doubt. It wants broken heart. It wants all sorts of, wants, now I'm adding it as a thing that's orchestrating it. I just seen, it seems to be its nature to play out all sorts of dances. all sorts of games. It seems that existence is a condition of something kind of limited by

this physical plane. Like this pen exists. Although, when you really examine it, it doesn't really exist. It's illusory. Right. It's just, it seems like it's solid, but it's not really. You could be dreaming that you're holding a pen and when you woke up you would say,

oh, the pen was just something that I sensed, but it was all my mind. That's true. In my opinion. This is God's dream. So to exist is a quality of the physical world. So how could God exist? It means to stand out. Again, this is also... If you like what

I'm saying, you should look up, Rupert Spira, he's my teacher, he's unbelievable. I recommend he wrote a book called Being Aware of Being Aware. He explains, exist is Exist. I wasn't aware of that book. Nice. See? Craig Daniels didn't write that. He would have

written a better. He would have written a better version. Stop it. You get paid the same. Good night, everybody. You probably got paid more, actually. Mm. Not as much as Correll. That's true. So, no, you're absolutely right.

To exist means to stand apart from. Right? Right. So this stands apart from the background of existence. What I'm trying to, well, what I'm trying to make sense of for myself, but also what I'm trying to share is there is a way of thinking of God as the ground of being, is a Bible term. or in Christ we live and move and have our being.

We're talking about that which is sustaining you right now. Like the piece of paper that the drawing is on or we're fish in the ocean, whatever you want to say, God would be the water. But it doesn't exist. There's a wonderful quote from the Quran that says God was a hidden treasure that wished to be known. And I love that idea because I think as artists,

you have in your head, let's say you're coming up with a stand-up routine. You have a bit, let's say, about castaway or what have you. You were doing a bit about Seinfeld earlier. That was hysterical. I said, you should actually do eight minutes on the show, Seinfeld. But that is a hidden treasure that wants to get known. And it gets known by you testing it out in front of an audience at a coffee house

and then bringing it to the Largo and then filming it for a Netflix. special. So that, that kind of, there is a, I always love thinking about those kind of, those similarities to the connective tissue between the creative impulse and God's creative impulse. Yeah. I, you know, I've heard some people that took psychedelics say, oh, God was lonely, right? God was lonely, so the one became the many so it could like entertain itself. I, again, I got this from Rupert, but it resonates with me as true. It's more like, there is one being, and its nature is to express itself in the same way that are, not for everybody, I'm not saying for everybody, but when a person decides to have a baby,

that's just, it just feels natural. It's like, let's do it. It's an act of love. You know this baby's going to ruin your life. You know what I mean? You're not going to sleep. It's going to become a teenager. It's going to hate you.

But you can't help it. Like my wife and I, we have a baby. couldn't help it. It was our nature. Again, I'm not saying everybody has to breed. I'm just saying that was one way that I can understand. I don't think perfect oneness is at a deficit where like you or I, if we were floating in a void,

would be like, this is unbearable, and you'd start doing a puppet show. Or you said Castaway, you'd talk to a volleyball. I don't think it was out of desperation. I think it's a clue that when you close your eyes, you see geometry, or when you go to bed, you dream. or when you walk, you start whistling. Like, it's in you.

You want to be known and you want to share and connect and appreciate. I think it is very divine and in line with your DNA to kind of share that creative impulse. Now, you started as a youth pastor. I want to go back to the Jesus thing. I didn't. I went to school to become one, but I didn't. But I thought you did at summer camp.

I thought you were a youth pastor and would tell youth pastor jokes. No? You did Christian open mic stand-up? No, that's not true. I'm sorry. I'd love to go with that. Who am I thinking of Judd Apatow? Well, we did that on crashing. We had my character to do the Christian comedy circuit. And then I think that's on my Wikipedia page. I'm not trying to make fun here. Okay, sure. I think people...

I read your book, which was wonderful. I know you did it. And I can't remember the name of it now. It's... It's comedy sex God. Comedy Sex God. Because those are the three things it's about. Yes. But we also knew... what we were doing, that it sounded like comedy sex god. God, it's not a perfect book.

So tell me your seminal Jesus camp connection and how comedy came out around that time. Or were they not connected? They are connected, of course. I think it was too dastardly or pirate-like to say I wanted to be a comedian, even though I did. So I said I would become a youth pastor, very similar skill set. You know, you like public speaking. I can play the guitar. And I liked making people feel happy.

You know, I wanted every, I loved my youth pastor. A guy named Mike, I was obsessed with him. And it was kind of an uninspired idea. You know, when you're in high school and all you know are teachers, so everyone at least briefly considers becoming a teacher. Right. Some people are called to be teachers. It's a noble thing.

but I remember being like, it's the only grown-up I know, and they all seem to do the same thing. There's like one principle and then 500 teachers. I guess that's what I'll do. It was similar. I wanted to be a bus driver because I saw how much change was being put into the container. I thought the bus driver got to keep all that. Oh, nice.

Swing by the arcade on the way home. Yeah. A couple of pockets bulging. A couple of pay phones. I'm calling Tokyo today, baby. But I loved my pastor, and they did get laughs. Like, I remember watching, especially visiting pastors. The Pope gets laughs.

Pope gets laughs. American Pope, you think he's not going to come up there with a slap base? No, no, don't, the no. But my book opens with a quote where it says, my mom wanted me to be a youth pastor, this is true. When I became a comedian, she said close enough. That was true. And then as I started getting some distance from my, honestly, from my church and from my family, I had the insight to be like, oh, I think I do want to be a comedian. But there is sort of like, it's embarrassing to say you want to be a comedian. And anybody here thinking about doing it,

I really do feel for you because there's a moment where you have to tell your friends Like, you know how we're all joking around together? I think you owe me $30. You know what I mean? It's what everyone does with their friends, but you want to turn it into a job. So there is kind of an insult. It's like I think you're good, but you're Bush League.

You know what I mean? Like, that's what you're saying to your friend. Yeah, sure. I'll go to the real thing. Right. Luckily, I had some very supportive friends. Nice. And what, do you remember some of the early jokes?

I love asking comedians some of their earliest jokes, fabricated jokes, yeah. Oh, my God, yes. I was a big Seinfeld. I still am a Seinfeld fan, but he was a big influence when I started. And my first big joke at the open mic in Chicago, then I took it on the road. It didn't work on the road, but it worked at the open mic. Is I went, I would, oh, God, it's embarrassing.

But I would work in the phrase, spill the beans. Like, I would be like, I just saw the new Jason Bourne movie. Don't worry, I won't spill any beans. Like, that was part of the setup. And then I would go, do you think the phrase spill the beans originated in a situation actually involving beans? Like some guy was walking down the street, big sack of beans. Like, hey, what's in that sack? Nothing.

And they go, beans! This is where I take it over the top. at that moment, people are letting cats out of bags. Someone's literally painting the town red. Someone named Ollie is letting all the oxen free. This was a hot joke in 2001. This is a hot joke in 2025. No, no, no, it's awful.

It's not awful, but look, when you're starting, I'm just glad I didn't grow up in... The joke's a B-plus, but the delivery was... Chef's kiss. Do you want to hear one that I do stand by? Yeah. This was one of my earlier jokes, and I still think this is funny. This is first year of stand-up for sure.

I go, uh, robo-cop. Robocop is a cop that's a robot. But to save time, they call them Robocop. What kind of an abbreviation for robot is robo? By dropping that tea, you're really saving any time? It's like scene of the crime. They're like, there he is, robot cop. Get him.

They got away. And then the, you got to take it over the top. I go, that's like calling storebot cake, storebo cake. Is this homemade or storebought? That's storebo cake. Thanks for saying storebo because I don't have all day. This is what comedy was. We were all doing Seinfeld.

We were doing Riser. Yeah. You know what I mean? We were doing Ray Romano. Alan Degener. That was what you did. I've only written a handful of jokes in my life. This was my, perhaps, I think this was my first joke that I love and no one, I mean, not a single other person on the planet loves it.

And that is, women, you can't live with them, you can't live within them. It's a preposition joke. It's not a sex joke. It's like you literally can't live. within a woman. Well, that's what people always take it as a sex joke. I would pitch the tag. I'm not saying it's going to help, but you go,

women can't live with them, can't live within them. Ten months is the record. Because that's what I thought the joke was, is they kick you out, they evict you. You call it a birth, I call it an eviction.

See, to me, it is totally a joke, it's only a joke about syntax and a proposition. Well, you'll like this. I'm not even, this is a terrible, Sorry, I don't think that's a terrible joke. No, go. This is a terrible joke I wrote that I think you'll like as a lover of words.

Okay. As I went, hi, I'm Pete. Some of you may recognize me. Some of you might be cognizing me for the first time. Recognizing. It's awful. I love it.

I love it. I did it once. Yeah. I was like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to hear it. Some of you might be cognizing me for the first time. I had a joke where I go, do you think the word you're recalienable?

is bored sitting around just waiting for someone to invent something. And then he goes, he's out there watching a scientist, like, ah! And then it was like, he went with, what was it? What is something else you would say when you invent something? He went with bingo or something. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then the tag was, I went, in that joke,

words care if you use them. That was the best part. Yeah, there's a reason these aren't on any specials. as a stand-up and a mystic I'm intrigued by something which is I've loved over the years what you've talked about in terms of

like there's this Buddhist concept of like empty mind and no self there's a Hindu idea of Atman or the soul there is a self and it's reborn and there's a journey of a soul which is much more similar to the Abrahamic tradition. But then there is the ego. You talk a lot about ego, the dangers of ego, but yet

the glory of God in the ego. He gave us all these scintillating, vibrating, gigantic, troublesome egos to wrestle with. And you're a stand-up and in Hollywood and as an actor, you need a strong ego. You need to take up space as a person. and have a loud voice that's vibrant, that cuts through. And you're often in competition with other people. There's issues of envy. It's a very kind of ego-driven profession. How do you balance all of this?

Like Atman, soul, empty mind, no-self, self, no-self, ego, stand-up performer? I mean, yeah, it's a good question. I think the practice of trotting out, my ego. They go late in gentlemen Pete Holmes and then I come out as that and I speak from that perspective. And I'm just speaking to myself, about myself. I think that's helped me gain perspective on him to speak a little bit crazy and be like, there's the peedness and there he is. And there was a time when I spent, I think I would say, I wasted a lot of time trying to denounce my ego or say that that's just an illusion or, you know, that's not really who I am.

and now you can hold that in one hand but then hold in the other I love my ego I love your ego who are we to say that we could do it better that it should be different that goes back to that rejection like this

it's a flaw that's burying your talent or that's staying in the kingdom and never going out and squandering your inheritance so I think I think there's something very powerful or at least I hope

it's powerful to me is that going on stage as a spiritual person but talking about sex, talking about being mad, talking about drugs, whatever it might be, and being unashamed. I think that actually is a really powerful message. My Franciscan father, Richard Rohr, says that the whole gospel is accept that you are accepted, right?

And it's only the ego that needs to accept that it's accepted, right? The real you is already cooked. There are no enlightened beings. There's just egos that have stepped out of the way to let the light shine through them. nobody becomes enlightened. But so when you're on stage celebrating, showcasing, delighting in, I love how, I just had dinner with my friend Michael Gunger who's here,

and I was complaining about how I just want everyone to stop sending me fucking voice memos and I was yelling about it. And I was like, and he was dying laughing. And I was like, that's divine. That's divine. He's a spiritual person. He didn't go, well, Peter, you know, it's all just you and it's all just a dance.

He didn't say that. We fucking ripped into Pete, and it was hilarious. And I think there's something very valid. I think it's a trap. What's wrong with voice memos? They're better than voicemails. When you get a voicemail, you're like, oh, my God. That's how we feel about voice memos.

We can find our common ground there. Who's the Royal Wee? Who's the we? You and I. Oh. If you don't like voicemails, yes. That's how I feel about voice memos.

Oh, okay. So I can have a deep empathy for your suffering. Yeah, but you seem like a voice memo guy. A voice memo is, I wish life were a play and I had a monologue. It's just like, I'd like to call you, but could you shut the fuck up? And it's always like,

oh, I'm on the one and I just saw a bird. One of the things, Sunchip bags are really loud. That's no way I called. That's no way I called. I'll be there at eight. That's a text, dip shit. So that's great.

Why would we want to steam clean it? Like, you know, we want, like, I grew up thinking that God wanted us all to be the same. And that was a person who didn't smoke and drink and have sex before they were married. This person is straight. This person is Christian. All of these things. And then you look at, again, I'm back to Jesus. But so many times Jesus is trying to tell you about God by pointing to nature, right?

and he's just, we already talked about letting the weeds grow with the wheat. And when I look at nature, I don't see one kind of flower. I see every kind of flower. I see endless diversity. And that's celebrated. And he just keeps pointing us to that, to that, to that.

And somehow we turn that into, we all must be Gerber daisies. And that's the biggest missing of the point I've ever heard. That's beautiful. Has your ego ever gotten you in trouble? the mind has. My ego has caused me a lot of pain in my life. Yes. And obviously, you know, this is the mechanism that social media operates under.

That's not a new take. You know what I mean? Like, I can't go on that stuff because it, it, it manipulates and takes advantage of that. I can't either. Yeah. We all, this isn't just, you know, you'll see somebody doing something. that you thought should have been you. It's that compare and despair kind of thing. Sure. So, yeah, I would say only the ego gets you in trouble, that everything comes from a sense of lack.

In fact, if I were to summarize Rupert, Spiro, who I love very dearly, and again, the way he articulates it resonates with me, is that you are happiness. You can seek happiness. Oh, I hope this podcast goes well. I think it did. I'll drive home. and all the most fleeting,

it's like a Kleenex on fire, just like I did that. Good job. It'll be gone before I hit the 405. Right. So you guys listen to Soul Boom. That means, to quote Rupert, you've been sufficiently dissatisfied with the hedonic treadmill,

with samsara in the Buddhist term. The idea that the next orgy or the next meal or the next movie, I know, I said orgy first. But you know what I mean? It's like if I can get... Rookie mistake. If I got to end on orgy.

If I can get enough nacho cheese, you know? That's a Ram Dass thing. He's like, you eat ice cream and you're like, I finally have ice cream. And you kind of feel happy. But then it's gone. And then you're like, now I want water. And now I'm bored. I want to watch the office.

And now I'm tired. I want to sleep. Now I'm achy. I got to stretch. And now I'm hungry. I got to eat breakfast. This is your fucking life. It never ends.

the only game in town, and believe me, I'm not fully cooked in this regard. I'm still looking for it. I'm still, you know, I don't think it's even wrong to kind of look for satisfaction, but knowing that it won't ever fully satisfy you. When people tell those stories about the beggar sitting on the box and he's asking for change, someone says, have you ever looked in the box? He goes, why would I look in the box? He's a box.

You find little looks in the box and it's filled with gold. That story. These are the stories that the teachers tell us. Did Jesus tell that story? I heard that in the power of now. It's not a Jesus story. But I don't think Eckhart-Tully made it up. But anyway, it's these stories of you are what you're looking for.

And by the way, that's not just something to think about. That's something to investigate. When you are deeply asleep, that's consciousness without an object. You have no sense of, I am rain or I am peter, or I am male, I am female, I'm an American, I'm this age, I'm this weight, I have these needs. you're gone. And we don't dread sleep. Sleep isn't annihilation.

We look forward to it. We love it. We love being objectless awareness. Just luminous emptiness is another Buddhist term I love. It's kind of like the term you use. We love being luminous emptiness. So you're empty but full of yourself. You're full.

I know, I don't mean it in the ego way. I mean you're full of the sense of I am. And that is peace. So the trick is, not the trick, but is to realize that you're having that experience now. You couldn't not be having that experience. That experience is the spacious field that you are. So the first step is to realize, right,

the progressive path would say, I'm the witness, I'm watching Rain's life, or I'm watching Pete's life, but I am the awareness that's watching it. The next step is to say, what is the nature of that knowing? And then when you're driving home today, especially if you drove alone,

you can get curious and go like, is that luminous emptiness that I am, that's the same awareness that when I was five years old, when I was 15 years old, when I was 30 years old, when I was 40 years old, it's always been the same. It's always been with me. What are the qualities of that knowing? What are the qualities of that presence? Does it need anything? Is it missing anything?

Is it waiting for anything? This is what meditation is. It's not really mantras and stuff can help you, but it's a lot faster, and you can get there with practice to just sink in, sink back, so to speak, into that you are when you lose all of those labels and explore its nature and see that the ego can't find peace, but when we quiet it down or let it settle away, you realize you're made of peace. You are peace. You are joy. Joy is not being at six flags and it's finally your turn. You know what I mean? That's, that's another

clean X on fire. It's nothing. The Hindus would call it bliss, right? Kind of that next level of joy. Sat Chittinanda. Is that what you mean? So Saad is like, I believe Chit is consciousness.

Being consciousness joy. We're bliss. So the way that Rupert and myself would translate that as being and consciousness is bliss. Rupert wrote a book called You Are the Happiness You Seek. But what's really, again,

let's not think, oh, I'll explore that later. you can explore it now. If you think of yourself... Like right now, right here? Yeah. As the knowing... The brain goes,

there's nothing here. It won't find it, but you can be it. This is where it gets frustrating. You can't ever go, I found it. It's like, when does a flashlight shine on itself? When does a knife cut itself? These are co-ons.

You know what I mean? How can that which knows turn around and know itself? Well, you can't turn it around and know itself, but you can surrender. And just like the prodigal son, the father will come out and run to you before you're even halfway there. That's beautiful.

Don't take my word for it. Reading rainbow. I find in my rather feeble meditation practice that what I love to achieve, and it's, it actually just gets easier and easier is what Arthur Brooks calls, and positive psychologists, call metacognition because I find myself kind of worn down by my own consciousness because it feels like a oftentimes like a pachinko ball of you know anxiety and a ball that that that I'm constantly tracking you know thoughts and feelings and when I am in a meditative state I kind of have a loving embrace of the of my pachinko ball of of yeah of cognition and

And I'm like, oh, and I'm able to have a mercy for an awareness of a luminous emptiness, relationship to that guy who often suffers with that Pachinkgo ball of anxiety. And just in that, those fleeting moments of peace can sustain me for hours. Yeah. Forgiving reality is really powerful. And recognizing that your mom. mind is a lawful expression of reality. Even the thoughts that you don't like. A powerful mantra, whenever I talk about things like this, I always share, yes, thank you. It's the first thing I say

every morning. I literally, I wake up and say yes, thank you. I try to say it as many times as I can. And if I'm having thoughts like you're saying, Pachinko ball, or just, let's be honest, horrible thoughts, just like weird misfireings of fucking 1989 Boston bullshit. It sucks. It's counterintuitive, but those things are charged, like

pushing a rubber ball under water. It's charged by you pushing it down. It doesn't know what to do if you say yes, thank you. It short-circuits it. You go, yes, thank you. You love

them like little, like when my daughter is screaming, I don't yell at her. You know what I mean? I tussle her hair and I chase her and I give her kisses and I love her. Like your unwanted, let's say, thoughts, if you engage with them in that level on their frequency and go get the fuck out of here, it's not going to, it doesn't work. You have to, you have to be like, again, the space of this room, you can make your nature like the space of this room and be like, yes, thank you. You're welcome. It doesn't know what to do.

What have you learned about your spiritual journey from being a parent? Well, I mean a lot. It's been wonderful for me psychologically because as somebody, we talked about my ego being in show business, having a baby makes you, you know, I'm now a background actor

in my own life. And you get a lot of good material from being a parent. I do get a lot. By the way, that's not a whole set on... Yeah. Yeah, I do. I have a lot of jokes about my daughter. My daughter's name is Lila, which I think is the meaning of life.

Lila means the play of the universe or the dance of the universe. I like the play. I like the idea that Alan Watts talks about this, that all life is a stage. That's Shakespeare, obviously. But we're all doing this show, and you have people you like, you have people you hate. And at the end, when the curtain goes down,

we all go backstage and take our masks off, and it was all us, you know what I mean? So it's the play of life or the dance of life. So we don't, obviously she's only six, but I don't even plan on giving my daughter too many spiritual things. But her name is one of my favorites. And that'll always kind of be with her, I hope. But you know, you learn a lot of surrender. You learn a lot of humility.

And when you have a baby, I think that was a really good. I think one of the reasons we're so drawn to babies is because they are just that word. The chapter in my book about my daughter being born is luminous emptiness. So when we're talking about this idea that we are luminous emptiness, there's so much sediment in our water, we do need to like sit and let it settle. But a baby is just light. It's just pure, I'm not saying they don't cry or do this.

I'm just saying, but they are just, they don't know what they are. They don't know what they are. Or you could say they do know what they are. So they go around, this is Ram Dass, like pinching, trying to figure out, I'm this, I'm not this. but anybody that's done a strong psychedelic knows that that's absurd that you and I are something different

like your voice and my voice appear in the same place let's do some ketamine like Thelman Louise this is absolutely my dream come true to be here tonight this is just exceptional that I get to talk to one of my favorite

human beings on the planet who I find absolutely fascinating and please check out his podcast. You Made It Weird. And that's what it's called. You made it weird. But this is what I have loved since I was a kid. So this is very strange that my hobby was not beekeeping

or comic books or anything like that. It was engaging in kind of deep probing, meaningful discussions about why we're here and why we are having this experience of consciousness. So that's part of my journey and what brought me here. And then I get to do it at the Largo. Thanks Flannie for having us. The Largo.

I used to go to the Largo all the time over on Fairfax and see John Bryan and Sarah Silverman and Tignitaro and so many great comic and music forces and to get to sit here and do a live podcast recording with one of my heroes. Rocco Ha ha ha ha ha ha Um

Very good This is a dream come true So Thank you Pete For coming on the Soul Boom podcast Thanks to Creed Bratton For being here Thanks again

Thank you Thanks very much To my producer Kartik Chynani To putting all this together Everyone at Companion Arts Our camera folks From the Voicing Change

Network a lot of, it takes a village to put on a live podcast. It takes a video village to raise the child star. And there's a merch table out there. Thank you all very much for coming. Thanks, everybody. You were great. The Soul Boom Podcast.

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