Rainn Wilson

speaker

3,063 appearances 12 recordings 7 series first heard Jul 2024 last heard 7 Jul

Rainn Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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Know Thyself · E131 - Rainn Wilson: Comedy, God & Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution · 21 Jan 2025 podcast

Like, let's go back to the source and really get connected from these incredible, beautiful teachers.

That is such a key question and it's very important to set our terms. What do you mean when you say a spiritual revolution? What do you mean when you say spirituality? Because it does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And even working in this space, as you know, I'm doing a spirituality podcast and people want to come on my show that channel angels.

There's nothing wrong with channeling angels at all. I believe that one can channel angels. I believe that we can speak to the people that have passed from this tiny kind of pathetic material realm that we live on, you know, into the realms beyond 100%. That's not exactly what I think of when I think of spirituality, however. So, you know, who am I at my core? Know thyself. I'm knowing myself.

What do I know about myself? Well, I just pointed at my body. I felt a sensation in my chest with my finger. I have a rapidly decaying 58-year-old, still pretty. fucking amazing body that does all kinds of weird things. My right knee creaks, right? My sinuses are a little stuffed up right now. My neck has a little tweak in it from how I slept on my pillow last night.

I certainly have an awareness of my body, my breath, my blood. And frankly, this body is gonna serve me for what, 20, 30, 40 more years. And then, what is spirituality? Whatever is left that is going to continue the journey is spirituality. So it's like science and faith, or science and spirituality being two sides of the same coin of reality.

I remember when a friend of mine told me once, and he was kind of refuting spirituality, he was like, aha, they found in a brain scan the exact place in a human brain where you have spiritual experiences. And he was saying it like that. Aha, that disproves. You know, it's all an illusion. It just happens in the cerebral cortex or whatever. And I was like, yeah, exactly. Because it's one.

It's all one. The physical realm and the spiritual realm are the same. They're in complete harmony. My... Consciousness is kind of the best way for a kind of spirituality 101 to understand what spirituality is, because what is consciousness? Like, here I am having this conversation with you. I'm taking in your radiant face, you know, and I'm...

I'm breathing and we're communicating, yes, with words, but we're communicating deeper than that too. We're communicating with our bodies, with our energies. Memories are coming up for me. I'm feeling things. I'm feeling joy. I'm feeling self-doubt. I'm having memories from my past. This is all part of consciousness. And...

this consciousness doesn't go out like a light bulb when this rapidly failing body ends. So it's the divine spark that's within all of us. I don't even want to say within, without all of us, around all of us, inhabits all of us, that can be cultivated within,

that can be cultivated in meditation and in prayer and in service and in elevating and centering those qualities of the divine that we all have. In Islam, there's 99 names for God, right? The compassionate, the kind, the loving, the strong, the, you know, the list goes on and on. These qualities of God are qualities that we have to know thyself.

To know God is to know thyself, it says also in the Qur'an. I think it was, maybe it was the Imam Ali's hadith, I'm not sure, but to know God is to know thyself. What does that mean? Because God is in each and every one of us. When I am in compassion to someone who is hurting, that is, I'm flexing a divine muscle. When I experience real humility, not fake humility, That's a divine muscle.

When I'm honest with someone in a way that's uncomfortable and difficult, that is flexing a divine muscle. I even hate using that analogy. That is opening a divine window. But these can be cultivated. Honesty, compassion, humility can be and should be cultivated. So that's what the spiritual path is for me. So... I don't want to say it's dualistic. There's body and spirit.

Body and spirit are commingled, just like that brain scan. They work in tandem. They work in harmony. And it's a glorious journey that we're all on. Believe me.

Well, Carl Jung, when asked if he believed in God, said, I don't believe in God. I know that there's God." It's one of the most important conversations that one can have with being alive. It doesn't end. You know, it's cyclical. Faith isn't something like you find and then it stays like this incredibly powerful, dominant force in your life that's unshakable and unwavering until death.

That's not how it works. Faith is fickle. I will say that... I've never wavered in knowing that I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I just know this to be true. I know it in my prayer and in my meditation practice. I knew this especially when my father passed away about five years ago, and I prepared his body for burial in the traditional Baha'i way, which was to wash it.

and to wrap it in silk and say prayers over the body. And it's an incredibly beautiful experience. I think there's many other faith traditions that prepare the body in a similar way. And for a very good reason. I'm there with the corpse of my father. and I see his little eyebrow hair sticking out and his little mole that he has here.

And then, you know, the scar he had on his neck from a surgery and, you know, his thinning, you know, gray hair. He was 79 at the time. And it became so clear to me, just like a gong ringing, just gong. This body is not my father. His light, his spirit, his experience, his consciousness, his beingness, his personality, his laugh, his beauty has moved on.

And this was the vessel that contained it for 79 years. And, you know, I love that vessel. I have an experience with that vessel. I've hugged that vessel hundreds of times. But that's not the reality of my father. And anyone who has that experience of seeing someone that's passed, this can really... help one to see the continuity of existence.

And everything I read, everything I think, every time I connect with nature, I see a continuity of existence. And so I just have a profound fundamental sureness about that. It's in every faith tradition. You can read about near-death experiences. And in every culture of the world, near-death experiences have the same kind of essential tenets, right? And...

this idea that our ancestors, our family members, greet us and move us on is in every culture on the planet. You know, from Pygmies to Andean Indians to Inuit peoples to you name it, Vikings. It's in the mythology of being a human being.

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