Soul Boom - Pete Holmes' Obsession w/ Hell (BONUS!)

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

BONUS! Comedian Pete Holmes reveals why he became obsessed with hell and how the idea of eternal punishment forced him to question the version of Christianity he had inherited. He traces his journey from viewing God as a terrifying judge to discovering Joseph Campbell, Ram Dass, non-duality, and a radically different understanding of consciousness. Pete also shares his unforgettable Harry Potter analogy for why searching for physical evidence of God may be completely missing the point. SPONSORS!👇 If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://www.nocd.com⁠ Cowboy Colostrum (promo code: SOULBOOM for 25% OFF!) 👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://cowboycolostrum.com/soulboom⁠⁠ Nutrafol 👉 (Promo code: SOULBOOM for $10 OFF + FREE shipping!) ⁠⁠⁠https://nutrafol.com⁠⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠ Cozy Earth 👉 Go to ⁠⁠⁠https://cozyearth.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠ for up to 20% off! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I wanted to focus on hell. I was obsessed with hell. Wow. It was another thing where I was like, why aren't we all obsessed with hell? Why aren't we talking about this? Yeah. And that's an uncomfortable question

for a lot of the people in my church because it was, I don't, I can't know another person, but I get the feeling that it's sort of like the string that you pull and the whole thing kind of like gets a little wonky. Because when we start talking about

like, so everyone who died in the Holocaust went to hell? So every starving child in Africa went to hell. Pick your thing. Sure. They all got sucked into eternal torment after that life. And then you start getting into certain things about accountability. And Rob Bell wrote about this in Love Wins.

There's the age of accountability. It's not biblical. But people would say, like, no one under seven can go to hell. Because people were grappling with this. Sure. And I appreciated it. But you get into some wonky territory. Sure.

If you start looking at it too hard, I was looking at it really hard. You literally cannot have an all loving God where people are burning for eternity. Not burning for like seven years or something like that forever. Right. And I have a vivid imagination in a deep at this time, especially a deep, not anymore. If you're a grown up and you tell me something, I just kind of believed it. I'm like, this guy has a wallet. You know what I mean?

He has keys, his tick tax. Like he pays taxes. Like he told me that, I believe him. So I really wanted to unpack it. And I got into the different things. There's like annihilationalism. The wages of sin is death. That verse in Romans, not the wages of sin is eternal torment.

It's boring. Every verse about hell became very, very dissected and interesting to me. I played Frisbee in Gahena, which is a valley in Israel, which is what Jesus says instead of the word hell. Jesus says two words. He says, Hades, because the Greeks

would have known what he's talking about. And he says, Gahna, which is where they burn the garbage. Right. We turn that into like the Looney Tunes pitchfork,

you know, the laughing devil that just won't stop ripping your balls off or whatever it is. But Jesus, anyway, I really got interested in it.

My mom at this point, like, was calling some of the pastors to call me, and they would like explain why we need hell. And I remember somebody saying, hell was a monument to God's love of justice or something.

Like, oh, and I remember a guy, I was like, how can there be a place where God isn't? God is like the foundation of reality. And my friend lit up and he was like, no, Satan isn't the ruler of hell. God is. God delights in hell and loves watching people get burnt up forever. And he's watching. It's like his favorite thing. And Satan is there too.

YouTube channel. But Satan's also in hell. Satan's just running the YouTube. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's the manager. God owns Google. Yeah. He added one channel manager, which was Satan. So anyway, that was God for me for a while, was the

surveillance system and the judge. And frankly, I don't think this is what God is, but I looked at him as a very terrifying enforcer. And that, you know, I'm trying to go in order, but, you know, I had my mushroom thing and my divorce, I had my divorce, which made me start questioning things because I really thought I was in God's protection plan. And I took

mushrooms and mushrooms started, I always say this when we talk about this, I don't think that's necessary, but it was important for me. I had an experience where I was, I didn't know it at the time, but tasting what we're talking about, naked being, awareness, the kingdom of whatever. I had an experience that I couldn't talk about, meaning like I literally couldn't talk about it. And then I found Joseph Campbell, who explained to me that the Bible is using myth and metaphorics, excuse me, he's using metaphor, which I always thought calling the Bible a myth was an insult, but he as an academic, I tend to like academics, was like, no, this is looking at it how it was written, how it was intended to be understood. Alexander Shia did my podcast,

who is an expert in myths as well. And he was like, a Semitic storyteller knows who they're talking to. And if I'm talking to you, I'll take you out of it. If I'm talking to a poor person, I would tell a story about losing $20. If I'm talking to Elon Musk,

I'm going to tell a story about losing $300 million. And nobody would go like, but you change the, it's about the feeling. It's evocative. I'm evoking a feeling from you. So literal truth, this is Richard Gore, is the lowest level of truth.

It's great to build a bridge. But when you're talking about divine reality, the only thing giving tours of God Island is metaphor. It's the only way to get close, which I got really excited about it. I was like, of course, how are you going to talk about God? Directly? You're going to overnight it?

You're going to Amazon it? You're going to stream it? It's arrogance. You can only kind of point vaguely towards, and then you, you know, We talked about how you are it, all that. But Joseph Campbell and the power of myth, which I believe is on Netflix, changed my life.

You also get the book, which is the transcript of the series, him and Bill Moyers, change my life. That's where I got God as a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all categories of human thought, including being and non-being. So even talking about whether or not God exists or not is missing the point. It's a metaphor for a mystery. It's the name of the blanket we put over that mystery to give it a shape. That's Barry Taylor, as you know.

So God is not the thing any more than a menu is the food. We're just, it's a pointer, it's a sign, it's a hint, it's a clue, it's Obi-1 trying to explain the force to Luke. The best he can do is like, I don't know, use your lightsaber on this little zappy thing. We'll talk about the better stuff later. So anyway, it was that for a while. And then I found Ram Dass and I love Ram Dass. Ramdas, his main teaching was I am loving awareness. That is non-dual. That is, I agree with that. I'm still with that. He's funny. He's brilliant. He's vulnerable. He talks about his foibles. He wasn't what I was

used to in a pastor where with all respect, a lot of pastors, I think are burdened by being the Mickey Mouse of Disneyland. They have to be always friendly, always happy, all this stuff. They're not, they can't be people. They have to be like an ambassador of a brand. Let's get real. Have you ever had a thought that is so strange, dark, or completely unlike you, that your brain immediately goes, oh, excellent, let me turn this over and over and over and over again for the next six hours. Folks, this last year, I have been struggling with OCD. Despite what people think, it is not simply being fastidious or a neat freak or hanging the clothes in your closet according to color.

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That's NutraFol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com. And Ram Dass wasn't doing that at all. He was talking about horny, being horny. He was talking about being angry. He was talking about being petty, being greedy, being all this stuff. And he clearly loved truth. And he clearly loved God. And he was clearly looking for some sort of answer.

And what he came upon was, I am loving awareness. You are not your feelings. You are not your thoughts. You're nothing that comes and goes. You are the constant loving, meaning spacious, just like a mirror. You could say a mirror is loving in that it will reflect anything. You are like that. You are a loving awareness.

At some point, and I don't mean any shade to that community because I still love them, I just lost my taste for beads and incense and deities. There was actually a Ram Dass retreat where I had started getting non-dual because of my friend Michael Gunger wrote this book called This. Brilliant book. A great audiobook, too. So I started getting into non-dualism. And I was like, so what are all these Hinduism?

Ram Dass had a lot of Hindu stuff. I just felt myself being a little distracted by all of the different stories. And this works for a lot of people. And the guru path, like, you go through the guru and all that. When I found Rupert Spira during the pandemic, I didn't know I was looking for something. I thought I was going to be Ram Dass forever. I knew I vaguely wasn't as interested in chanting or Kirtan as I used to be

or meditating even, for that matter. and I found Rupert because I was trying to listen to someone else on a podcast and I ended up listening to that person interviewing Rupert. And when I heard him say that consciousness, I always wanted to know what reality was and what is going. How am I experiencing this? And when he said you are like consciousness or awareness is like a screen, we already talked about this,

and everything appears on it. You could also say it's like a mirror. It's that pristine, clear, immediate, ever-fresh, spacious knowing that allows, you can call that love, allows, it's allowing my hand, all these sounds. I go, that's the medium. I was waiting for someone to tell me what the fuck was going on. And he goes, it's appearing in and receding into this ever-fresh awareness. And you are that. That's Nazar Gadada.

You are that. you are that. That's who you really are. Everything else. So there's this pointer that John Wheeler has that I love and we've caught up to present time where he goes, before the next thought appears, you can say before the next feeling appears, before the next sensation appears, before the next thought appears, you are present and aware. And you are that non-conceptual awareness. Anything else is an appearance in that. already talking about sounds, but you are, you're that water with the ink. It comes and it goes. Go to that which doesn't change and we're back to where I am and I'll rant about that all day.

Now, in a non-dualistic viewpoint, what is God? How do you conceive of God? Obviously, God is inconceivable. I do not think that would mean to what you think it means. Yeah. But how does God fit into? a non-dual Rupert Spiro way of looking at things. Is everything just God? We're all waves on the ocean and the container for the ocean is God. No, I think we're all one. God is the ocean itself. We're all aspects of it. We're all facets of the mirror ball of God. Those are all good. I like the one, my favorite, even though we've been doing the screen a lot, is that you can say there's an ocean that is an aware ocean, right? So it's a,

It's a self-knowing ocean. And God is that ocean. And then the ocean seems to divide itself. It never does into waves. And this is a classic. That appear and disappear. That appear and disappear. Or agitated, stormy, calm, but the ocean is always the same.

So I like to tether this to my Christian upbringing. It is I am that I am. So God, when Moses says, who are you, says, I am. The burning bush. I am. I am, emness. When I did my mushroom trip, I was like, it's all one thing, thinging itself. These are the kind of things you say when you're trying to explain.

You're like, it's thisness. That's why Michael Gunger's book is called this. I am this. You are that. You are this. The other metaphor I really like is empty space. Buddhist calls consciousness space-like awareness, right? Consciousness is also kind of misleading because you can be conscious and unconscious.

The awareness precedes that. There's an awareness behind that that's aware of the coming and going of consciousness, but we don't have to get into that. But the space of this room, this is Rupert and others, but I love the way Rupert says it, isn't, we're like a room. You know, the walls give the appearance of separate, right? But this space, he goes, if we could take a sample, I can't do his voice, we could take a sample of this empty space and a sample of the infinite space of the universe, same empty space. So that's God. God is that same empty space that apparently divides itself.

Now, this is really interesting because that's what love is. This episode is brought to you by Fetzer. You know, there's this tendency in modern life to believe that every problem has a material solution, more technology, more product. activity, more money, more apps reminding you to breathe while you ignore the fact that your soul feels like a raisin. But the folks at the Fetzer Institute believe something deeper. They believe that behind humanity's biggest challenges are spiritual ones. Loneliness, division, disconnection, our inability to see each other, the planet, or even ourselves as sacred. And they're asking a really beautiful question. What if shared flourishing begins with the sacred? Fetzer supports stories,

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Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them.

So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. I don't like everybody. I don't think that's the point.

You can be in the place where you love everybody, which is recognizing that even though this room is filled with stuff I don't like, the space is the same. That's what Namaste means. It means when I'm in my heart and you're in your heart, we are one. That's non-duality. And instead of looking to merge or reunite or find God, you recognize that it's actually blasphemous to say you ever stood apart from God.

It's like it's a character in a movie looking for the screen. You go, I'm going to find the screen. And then the teacher goes, laughs. Okay, good luck. And we go on those journeys and we're humiliated and we're lost and we're frustrated. And the whole time, the ground of your being, the substance, Your essence was always 100% there. That's the benevolent joke.

I don't mean joke like mischievous mean. It's a beautiful thing to go like, you don't go anywhere. Things are added to or taken away from the ever-present. I don't know if it was a comedy routine. It was something I read online. You talked about how God is kind of like Harry Potter. in the middle of the Harry Potter series going, I don't know if J.K. Rowling exists

or how do I find J.K. rolling in the middle of the narrative. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I love that idea. And I love my atheist friends. I give them a hard time because honestly, traditionally it's always been people who try to talk about these things that get ridiculed. So it's fun to kind of go the other way with it.

But my friends say there's no evidence of God. And my favorite part of the joke, which people don't talk about, is I go, no, I have evidence. I'm like, what more? I just go like this, what more? That's like Buddha holding up the flower. It's just like, everything is everything. The Sufis say, everything is the face of God. It's just like the flower is as much the face of God.

Anyway, then I go, plus I agree with you. You're not going to find evidence for God. Here, we're like characters in a book looking for evidence of the author inside the book. but the author isn't in the book. Harry Potter can't find J.K. Rowling at Hogwarts. She's not there. I go, so it would be within his rights to be frustrated. Like, well, this is clearly bullshit.

I've looked everywhere. She's not there. So I'm conceding the point. You will not go far enough into the universe and find a guy pulling levers. That's Oz. That's not a thing. Right.

I don't believe that God, exists. You can't find something somewhere called God and look at it and point at it. Existence is a quality of creation. Something is created that exists, but the creator or creative force is above beyond existence. And the ground of it and the substance of it. And that's the later part of the joke as I go, Harry Potter can't find J.K. Rolling because deep in his essence, he is J.K. Rowling. She's a creation of her mind. His mind in the book, the mind

that he thinks with. Harry Potter is also anti-trans? Well, the joke addresses this. Sorry, I keep learning your joke. No, you're not ruining it. Okay. No, keep that. That's wonderful. It's fine. I address it lightly by saying

and J.K. Rowling isn't mad at you, even if some of us are mad at J.K. Roling. So I address that because I know you say J.K. Rowling and people sometimes go there. But this is all Rupert language. I go deep down in his essence, Harry Potter is J.K. Rowling. He borrows his reality from J.K. Rowling's reality. The only reality there is in this world is J.K. Rowling's mind.

He borrows it. I can't remember what they're one. He borrows his reality from J.K. Rowling. His mind is an apparent limitation of J.K. Rowling's mind. And the greatest evidence for the author isn't in the book. The greatest evidence for the author is the book. And then I go, look, there's a book. Let's pray.

And then big laugh. And then big laugh. But the better analogy, I was trying to come up with a fresh one, so I wouldn't just be ripping off all my heroes. Rupert uses the dream. In your dream tonight, you reign will not be in the dream. You'll localize yourself as a character in the dream because that's the only way that the dream is experientable.

If you were looking at it from, this is all Rupert, from every, possible angle, it would be blackness. You have to seemingly localize yourself in one body or one perspective in the dream so that you can experience the dream. He would say, I would suggest that's very much what's going on here. And that's love. And that's, when we say why does God do that? Again, Rupert, he goes, any reason in perfect oneness would disrupt that oneness. You can't be oneness with a reason. It's just its nature. I like to think of it like a fountain. It's this undulating fountain for no reason other than it loves to express and splash and is always falling in always different ever-changing expressions and it's beautiful. It's this beauty. It's just, Rupert again, says,

why do people have kids? There's no good reason to have kids. It ruins your body. It ruins, you know, it takes up your, we both know this. It takes up so much your life. My wife had to give up so much, pain and body for all that. It's just our nature. Not for everybody, but it just felt natural. We wanted, we were in love. We wanted more. The universe seems to be saying more. It's almost madness. It's just like more. And the cost of that is all of this suffering and all of this pain. As soon as you have forward and behind you, you're going to have light, you're going to have dark, you're going to have pleasure, you're going to have pain. That's the price. That's the sacrifice. it makes to do what it loves to do.

And yeah, let's do some ketamine. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

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