Phil Stutz & Elise Loehnen Share Tools For Inner Well-being, How To Embrace Pain, Uncertainty & Constant Work As Divine Invitations, & Why Everything You’re Avoiding Will Transform Your Life

Phil Stutz is the legendary psychiatrist, author, and protagonist in the Netflix documentary “Stutz.” Alongside co-author and writer Elise Loehnen, they explore their new book “True & False Magic.” This conversation delves into “Part X”—the destructive force within us all—along with Universe 1 vs. Universe 2 thinking, and how pain, uncertainty, and constant work serve as unavoidable portals to growth. Together, they present actionable tools and a profound spiritual framework for living fully. Along the way, Phil illustrates concepts with hand-drawn diagrams, while Elise translates these insights into everyday practice. Their complementary wisdom offers a rare treasure—an invitation to a more expansive way of being. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: iFit: Use the code RICHROLL to get 10% off any purchase of $999+ 👉NordicTrack.com/richroll On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll Bon Charge: Get 15% OFF all my favorite wellness products w/ code RICHROLL 👉 boncharge.com AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll Squarespace: Use the code RichRoll to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉BetterHelp.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:06Phil Stutz?

  Every human being has an enemy inside themselves. Everyone. Everybody has some set of assumptions about the character and the shape of the universe. What's out there is chaos, as far as we think, because we don't know what it is. If you want to have faith, you just have to take it.

• 1:28Rich Roll?

  For whatever bizarre evolutionary reason, the human animal just doesn't seem to be a huge fan of uncertainty. So much of our thinking is all oriented around denying it, to perpetuate this illusion of security. But uncertainty is reality. Or, as psychiatrist Phil Stutz puts it, "One of the three unavoidable truths of life." You might remember Phil from the fantastic Netflix documentary, Stutz, or from his appearance on this very show about a year ago. Well, today, Phil returns, this time accompanied by Elise Loehnen, his co-author in the new book, True and False Magic, a podcast host and celebrated writer in her own right, whose

• 2:13Rich Roll?

  insights have helped countless people navigate life's challenging terrain.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  We're all stuck in our own dioramas in the Natural History Museum. And the things that don't fit into our worldview are out of sight, but they're still present.

• 2:27Phil Stutz?

  Whatever projection, whatever image you have is wrong. In a sense, it doesn't even exist. It's a representative of nothing.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  Together, they make the case for why uncertainty is not our enemy. Because the very confrontations we find ourselves running away from actually are doorways to everything meaningful in life. Quick note, before we get into it, Phil suffers from Parkinson's disease, but what suffers no impairment is his wisdom.

• 2:55Phil Stutz?

  People think that they need to sun them on the stars to be lined up properly and then maybe they'll be strong enough. No.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  Well, Phil, Elise, delighted to have you guys here today.

• 3:13Phil Stutz?

  Thank you.

• 3:14Rich Roll?

  So excited to talk about the new book. And I just want to say up top, up front, you know, Phil, our first conversation together was really impactful for me and very meaningful. And subsequent to that, my wife and I had a session with you. And it was a real wake-up call for me. You really identified something in me with your X-ray vision that was very astute. And so I just want to thank you for that.

• 3:43Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, I think the main part of my job that's accessible is just to see, do they know what part X is? Have we discussed?

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we talked a little bit about it, but you know, it's been a minute. I don't want to presume that anybody who's watching or listening to this, you know, can remember what we talked about or even enjoyed that episode.

• 4:04Phil Stutz?

  Okay, so every human being has an enemy inside themselves, everyone. It's not, and I don't agree with the kind of the new age assumption that it's the people who've been traumatized the most or who've had the worst experience possible. I mean, those people count. And obviously, the part X, what we're talking about, the destructive part.

• 4:33Phil Stutz?

  Is going nuts in them. But what's happened is really interesting is that inner enemy is now spreading. So you can see something which on a individual basis is easier to see. But I can't say how many people have come up to me in the last, I would say, three weeks and say, what the fuck is going on? I have no idea what to do, what I'm supposed to do.

• 5:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think basically what you're getting at is like, what is the diagnosis for America right now? It's fucking crazy out there and all the rules, you know, are just sort of out the window and it feels like chaos and it's forcing us to confront our own relationship with uncertainty and the anxiety that that's producing because we're seeing things, you know, kind of unfold rapidly, especially in Los Angeles with the fires and all this sort of thing. Like, what is happening, right? And so there's the individual diagnosis and how the part X and the tools and the things that you talk about in this book are applicable, but like writ large, like, how did we get here and what is happening? Like, how do you answer that question?

• 5:46Phil Stutz?

  It's a great question. It's a $64,000 question. The best way to say it is that irrational part of each of us that will end up causing us to function irrationally and to our own detriment is growing like topsy. And we cannot stop that unless every single human being, and that could take a thousand years, unless every single human being feels that somehow they're responsible for the

• 6:25Phil Stutz?

  whole, which means in terms of talking about now, it means they're responsible for, I forget how the Bible says it, but they're responsible for your brothers and sisters. So that's really obvious. The question is how are you going to get there? And that brings up faith. So faith. Is faith is something that cannot be proven, impossible. If you want to have faith, you just have to take it for no reason, completely irrationally. And one of the three, he was talking about the intuitive

• 7:08Phil Stutz?

  experience of connecting to something that you need, but you really don't know anything about. So faith means, I don't know shit about this. And I have to go forward with the faith that somewhere in the future, something's going to come into my life. That will be at least one step towards, I like to say it's one step towards freedom. And freedom to me means, not you can go to whatever hotel you want to go to or anything like that. It means freedom from Part X. So there's still a question is how can everybody have this?

• 7:50Phil Stutz?

  And the reason is the world now is falling apart. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. There will be a lot of people that will be terribly hurt by it. But the only thing that can effectively deal with this situation is the willingness to move forward into complete surrender. That even though it's surrender, you're not finished with it until you can take action. So it's the ability to take action in the face of complete uncertainty. And the faith has to become a choice that you have to make for no reason. Now, the way our culture is set up is the opposite of that.

• 8:35Phil Stutz?

  In other words, and the bottom line instead of faith for most of us is doubt. And doubt means I doubt everything and everyone. And I demand proof, and if I don't get the proof, I'm gonna remain in doubt. The problem with that is, if you remain in doubt, eventually you get paralyzed, because you can't, you can't get enough proof to allow you, the rational part of the mind, to move forward.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that's, that's the frame, right? So if, if your frame is, you need proof in order to act, that will short-circuit your ability to have any faith whatsoever.

• 9:23Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  And if you don't have any faith whatsoever, you are basically stuck in this part X paradigm, or you have this sort of universe one and universe two. And when we look at, you know, whether it's America or modernity at large, and try to canvas or make sense of what's happening right now, it's sort of like part X, you know, kind of like writ across the world by a collective that's lost their connection with the importance of tending to the collective. Like, I know, like, so much of your work roots back to, to Rudolf Steiner, and he talks about the beehive, and like, you know,

• 10:07Rich Roll?

  we're so obsessed with our individual liberties, and we're caught in this universe one paradigm, where it's about, you know, money and power and success and status, that it blinds us, and please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, it's like blinding us to reality, like it is a, it's an illusion in which we're living out our lives, that is preventing us from not just, you know, maintaining a cohesive society, but from accessing our, our true potential, which is to kind of co-create with higher forces and be fully expressed.

• 10:49Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. Now, here's a trick of that. For something to be real, if you want to create it and you want to create something that's worthwhile, you can't do it by yourself. You need a partner. And the nature of the human psyche and human identity is you can't do anything yourself at all. So, everything you're gonna do has to include a partner. Now, the ultimate partner is God, obviously. And people get really upset when I talk about God, so.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  I love it when you talk about God.

• 11:27Phil Stutz?

  Oh, so maybe we can skip this part of our program.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  I mean, this new book is all about God. Like, you're just in the deep end. You know, this is profoundly spiritual work. Like, it takes these ideas from the tools and you're just extending them and really, you know, kind of embracing this ineffable spirituality that's required in order to kind of like overcome like our own shortcomings and disabuse us of this waking dream that we live our lives in.

• 11:56Phil Stutz?

  Correct.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:57Rich Roll?

  But I'm all up in my head still.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  It's interesting, as we were going through this book, there were more, we took out some of the references to sort of impart because we didn't want to talk about it in the context or the metaphor of war, but how the need, to your earlier point about what's happening in the collective, for people to find their own faith, both singularly and collectively. And we took some of it out because it felt, ironically, quite dramatic. And then, now I wish we'd left more of it in, because it feels like that's the moment that we're at. And you talk about it as sort of this nonduality of working on yourself, which in itself is in service to the collective, and that both things need to happen simultaneously, alone and together.

• 12:44Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. Here's the thing, it's very hard for people to accept, which is we were designed to do the impossible, which is to be in two places at the same time. So, it's actually more possible than you might think to do that. It's the significance of this. It's indispensable that you have immediate information, that you can feel the state that you're meant to be in, that the human race is meant to be in forever. Okay. There are three.

• 13:19Phil Stutz?

  We call them domains. And every person has to face God. God can only speak to you. And if you don't like the word God, it doesn't matter. But it's a force that's so much bigger than you, so much wider than you, that the only way it can reach you at first, it feels like you're just punching in the face by somebody who has a fist that's, you know, six blocks long. And I call that death. You have to be killed to go back to the frame, because it's very important. The frame is the set of assumptions that someone has.

• 14:03Phil Stutz?

  And everybody has some set of assumptions about the character and the shape of the universe. Now, that sounds to most people like, hey, man, paying you a fortune and give me a shirt. But it's actually true. The space that you inhabit, the boundaries of your world, limits you. Even the idea we're in Calabasas, or wherever we are, or we're in California, anything like this, we think we're building some kind of spiritual structure. It doesn't matter what we feel we have to do. Part X will tell us you can't do it.

• 14:47Phil Stutz?

  Human beings are, probably you could say, they're born with limitations. It's like somebody being afraid of something that doesn't even exist. It's probably the best way to say it. Now, here's a trick of it. So that, I think, is understandable. It's this little square that you have to live inside of. It's how I feel a lot of times when I'm working. I'm stuck and I have to cease to be more patient. At that point, it's my little box. You can only change that or escape from that limitation by changing the frame.

• 15:30Phil Stutz?

  But the only way to do that is death. And I mean, death in the broadest...

• 15:37Rich Roll?

  Ego death, basically.

• 15:39Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, yes.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  So, my sense of what you just said, if I can like... Try to share it back to you is that our brains are wired in such a way in order to survive as like these pattern making machines to make sense of all this stimuli coming into us to create a map of the world and with that we create a frame. This is the way it is, this is the way it isn't, this is who I am, here's what I do, when I do this, this happens, etc. And as much as that is beneficial in order to like, you know, get up in the morning every day and like, you know, not crash our cars or whatever, it's inherently incredibly

• 16:21Rich Roll?

  limiting because it prevents us from experiencing reality as it actually is and it prevents us from tapping into these unseen forces that defy our brains desire to prove with evidence and as a result, we live our lives like reduced from what we could be. And the only way to shake us out of this illusion is some intervening event, a comet, you know, hits our life and explodes everything that forces us to question the very nature of like these rules that we've established for ourselves.

• 17:02Rich Roll?

  So whether it's like a bottom with addiction or, you know, a divorce or, you know, some kind of crisis to like shake us up and create the willingness to, you know, kind of look at things a little bit differently, is that?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  A plus. You could have written this book.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  No, I don't, definitely not. This book is beautifully written and I'm curious also, Elise, about how you came into it, but like, anyway.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  No, that's, I think, accurate. You, in the book, we write about it as we're all stuck in our own dioramas in the Natural History Museum and the things that don't fit into our worldview are out of sight, but they're still present until life comes collapsing in on you, right? Death explodes.

• 17:43Rich Roll?

  And so pain is a necessity, like some kind of crisis. Is it possible to shift this frame and open yourself up to these ideas short of experiencing a crisis that, you know, allows you to expand your perspective?

• 17:58Phil Stutz?

  No, I would say it's possible to prepare yourself to something even though you don't know what it is and when it's going to happen, but you can orient yourself, it's something like you can say to God. I don't purport to have any knowledge of what's gonna happen. But if there's anything you can do to help me, please help me.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I mean, you talk a lot about this book as a training process or a protocol that regardless of what might be present is getting you oriented and organized to understand that there's no exoneration from pain, the need for constant work and confronting, yeah, dealing with uncertainty in an ongoing, regular way.

• 18:44Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. Now, if you come across any of those three, and most people confront with all three of them, that's the presence of God. In other words, it's like getting punched by four or five people. No, no, by three people. God announces His presence with the number three. And, you know, it's been a sacred number for thousands of years. But in this case, you actually need the confrontation with each of these domains. Now, and the hardest one for people to tolerate is the uncertainty.

• 19:27Phil Stutz?

  Because our whole society is premised on the idea that there's some built-in protective mechanism that will help you to deal with uncertainty.

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  That will make you feel secure. That will make you feel safe. Yeah, we're so deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty. But uncertainty is reality. And we believe that, you know, we can do certain things and avoid that uncertainty. And when these three unavoidable truths come knocking, pain, uncertainty, and the need for constant work, what you're saying basically is this is God knocking, saying, "I'm giving you an opportunity to confront yourself, to grow, to evolve, and, you know, I'm beckoning you to collaborate with me. And this is my way of like making myself known to you."

• 20:20Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, that's well said. There's another slice of this, which is if you're prepared to accept these three domains, you don't have to evoke them, you don't have to do that. But when they come, and they come very fast usually, you have to accept them. If you can do that, or you make it, you condition yourself so at least it's part of your life, at that point, the frame is weakened. At that point, you become more sensitive through a different organ. In other words, this organ here, for you, for the rest of your life, it's not going to help you.

• 21:02Phil Stutz?

  Particularly because you're so fast, you know, and all these talents, you know. But when you, if you are committed to breaking the frame, what actually happens is, because the frame holds things out, because it's a small little world, it wants to keep you. But once you can see that, then something else happens, which is the entire universe slugs you. If you're not prepared for it, that's why so many suicides, there's so many people who are seeing shrooms, etc., because they're inundated with a force.

• 21:44Phil Stutz?

  Not only don't they understand it, they don't even know that it's there. And what society does is it offers you this fake solution. You can't have it in one incarnation, but what you want to have is you have to allow in the whole universe.

• 22:03Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. You have to allow in the whole universe? Like, that's a mouthful. Like, how does one do that?

• 22:11Phil Stutz?

  Because what's out there is chaos, as far as we think, because we don't know what it is. And all the societal defenses against chaos sense a breakup. Look, it's breaking up right now. How do you know when the universe, that's the real universe, you can say. What is the stamp of approval of reality? And the answer is, I don't know.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  One thing that on the frame that I think is important that I didn't understand at first too is that I assumed when the frame explodes and you've had some exploding frames in your life that you enter a larger frame, but that's not right, right? It just it's essentially what's driving you is this nonlinear growth where you're moving forward and you're still in a frame that continues to explode, but it's not like you ever get out of the frame.

• 23:07Phil Stutz?

  That's correct.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:09Phil Stutz?

  That's correct. But there are frames that are almost inborn and people are somewhat aware of them. And by the way, they're aware of them based on what they see as possible.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 23:24Phil Stutz?

  Part X tells you you have a problem that you don't really have, but you believe him. And then after he's giving you this specious problem, he gives you a solution to it that makes the problem worse. That's how Part X functions. And all of this stuff is centered around uncertainty and the other aspect of Part X, which is false magic. And false magic means it's like the devil coming up and saying to you, hey, just do what I tell you, which means believe in this in these constricted senses what's possible.

• 24:09Phil Stutz?

  And you won't have to meet the three domains. You don't have to do that. All you gotta do is follow me. Now, that doesn't work too well, obviously. And it's a death because he's promising you something that actually is impossible, so you're gonna fail at it. However, being the devil.

• 24:33Phil Stutz?

  It's okay with him because he's just gonna hit you again with it, and again, and again, and again. And that is a war, a war footing. You can't deal with that by yourself. It's impossible. So, which brings me to a whole other dimension to this, which is, what role does other human beings play in this? Because you can't attack this just by yourself individually. It's impossible.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  But don't you think it's also Part X that would say, "Oh, you just need to, you know, you need to blow up your life once, Rich, and then you're done. You're exonerated. That's it." But in reality, you're gonna get punched in the face. There's no avoidance.

• 25:19Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, even if I'm an addict, and I go to a program and have a... I still don't have the absolute certainty that I want. I never have it.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  It's tough medicine.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  So, on the subject of threes, there is Part X, which is basically like your shadow self. Maybe you have a different kind of ripple on that. And then we have life force, and then we have higher forces. There's this triangle, right?

• 25:51Phil Stutz?

  I love you so much.

• 25:53Rich Roll?

  So, I'm trying to make sense of, like... Go ahead.

• 25:58Phil Stutz?

  Which, what, which, uh, the life force, what?

• 26:01Rich Roll?

  Life force, higher forces, and Part X.

• 26:04Phil Stutz?

  I don't love you anymore.

• 26:06Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 26:08Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, I can have... Okay. The higher forces are the most accessible and understandable because they're very behaviorally oriented. Anybody could tell themselves, or could make themselves believe that they're going in a way that ultimately is gonna give them a respite from the uncertainty. Okay.

• 26:35Phil Stutz?

  The next deepest thing is invisible explosion. And I never presented this to anybody before. So do your best. Röder's son says, "And death. You don't go anywhere, you're still right here." Probably you turned inside out. Everybody took their shirt off and turned inside out. Now, once you've turned yourself inside out, then what you think is coming from the outside is coming from the inside. So it's almost like you've reached a point where you're in the... The whole universe is inside you, is probably the best way. And that's not the solution,

• 27:20Phil Stutz?

  but that's the mindset that you have to get. And there are other religions, obviously, we've talked about. But this is deeper than karma. It's the ability to create something out of nothing, which is really... I'll probably spend the rest of my life trying to figure it out. But think about it. If you go backwards and you say, "How is the universe created?"

• 27:46Phil Stutz?

  Whatever it is, it's a big question mark because you're creating something out of nothing. Now, the idea of creating something out of nothing is a complete violation of our frame, complete. And the way you sell that to somebody is you tell them... Or you tell them this force that created the universe is a total mystery and we have no idea really how the fuck they do that. We suggest, at least to the patient, or whoever you want to call, that that force, that mystery, cosmic mystery, that created something out of nothing...

• 28:32Phil Stutz?

  Is the force human beings need to really feel themselves? So, think of it as like a... Did you ever get the small candy bars?

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Phil Stutz?

  Like those two cent ones? So you're giving each human being, if they want to take it and if they want to do the work for it, you're giving each them a little piece of that force that created something out of nothing. Even though you don't know what the force is, they don't know what the force is. And you can't know what the force is because it impuses something, something was there before the universe.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  So, fundamental to reality is the idea that you can create something out of nothing, because otherwise the universe wouldn't exist. And what plays out in that, in the most macro sense, is available to us in our individual lives on a micro level, right? Like, just accepting that that's real. Like, you can create something out of nothing if you can cultivate your life force and like, dance with the higher forces. Did I get that idea right? How do you think about this, Elise?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's sort of the whole nut of this and of every bit of your work, right? Is how do you create a really potent... How do you turn yourself into a potent creator in your own life?

• 29:56Phil Stutz?

  I will change this slightly, I would say. It's, um, how do you elicit the ability to... Because you can think of it as a very specific skill. People don't like it because part and parcel with developing that skill is the idea that you've given up any kind of certainty about anything. Now, look, I'm making it oversimplistic. Everything's always a little bit of this and a little bit of that, of course. But that force, have we talked before about a human being having two different poles?

• 30:41Phil Stutz?

  Do you remember that?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  You might have touched on it briefly, but not today.

• 30:45Phil Stutz?

  Human beings are dual beings. They have to have two poles. I said at the beginning, people think that they need the sun, the moon, and the stars to be lined up properly, and then maybe they'll be strong enough. No, it's like, anything that has to do with that cannot help you, because it's only something that came from beyond that announces itself with no explanation.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  What struck me in the book is the fact that you define creativity so broadly. I mean, we think of creativity as like, oh, this is what you need to do to like, you know, make art, or write a book, or paint a painting. But you define it as like, this essence within us that is fundamental to, you know, pursuing a life of meaning and purpose. And it's part X that gets in the way and quashes that. But, you know, creativity comes alive when we, you know, kind of indulge our life force and play with these higher forces. And it is creativity, you know, not in that like restricted definition, but in this broad definition, that is what, you know, kind of what being alive is all about.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:07Phil Stutz?

  Yes. It's almost a definition of it.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Well, and you have a line where essentially you're like, God doesn't care what you create. It has, it is ultimately, God's not interested in whether or not you write a bestseller. God is interested in you engaging in life.

• 32:25Phil Stutz?

  Every minute.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Tell them the biphasic fantasy, Phil.

• 32:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:32Rich Roll?

  People love terms like that, too.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 32:37Rich Roll?

  This doesn't sound like a term you would do. Is that your idea?

• 32:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 32:40Rich Roll?

  No? Bi-phasic?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Bi-phasic fantasy.

• 32:43Phil Stutz?

  All right, since you're breaking my balls, I will tell you what that means. The ego wants to become God, right? Control everything. But the only way he can do that is by lining up the bad guys on the other side of the field and defeat them. So, but if there's no bad guys, there's nobody for you to defeat. And you start to get this sinking feeling, oh, I didn't do it myself. I did it with help. And I'm starting to sink back into that cosmic glue or something.

• 33:22Phil Stutz?

  But it's a fraud. So the origins of bi-phasic fantasy is you can see it in people who seem to have the need to get thrust down into almost death. And some people, it is death. And the only way to get out of it is to go back to the first state. But if you do that, you may feel better, but simultaneously, you need an adversary to prove that you are God. And unfortunately for you, that never, it can't last.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  And within the bi-phasic fantasy, there's a need, right? To keep that fantasy going, to continue to create adversaries that you are going to vanquish and beat.

• 34:12Rich Roll?

  Because you need them. If you slay them all, then your whole frame is like, you know, thrown out the window, right? That would create its own existential crisis. Like, you can no longer be the victim.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Rich Roll?

  You need those adversaries. So, once you've slain them all, then you have to create new ones for yourself.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:28Rich Roll?

  In this quest to become God.

• 34:30Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. And that's where you see the public, self-destructive, unexplainable activities.

• 34:40Phil Stutz?

  Of whatever, you just see in the pathogen see the most clearly. So that's called a biphasic fantasy. And it's it's the secret of the ebbs and flows of the up and down of human events.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Would you say too that in the corporate world or in a relationship, it's that need to self sabotage, blow things up, create chaos so that you can then solve the problem?

• 35:07Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  That keeps you in universe one.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Successful person implode their life.

• 35:15Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  I bet you don't see any people like that, though.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  Here in Hollywood. Well, I think you say like all these successful people, there's like a 50 50% chant, you know, 50 50 chance that they're gonna, you know, kind of sabotage their life.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Blow up their whole career.

• 35:31Phil Stutz?

  Fine, but okay.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so you would, what is it 70, like in most cases, like they're they're sort of purposely stepping on landmines, even when, you know, life looks good.

• 35:43Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, but they wouldn't, they don't think of it as life looks good. They think of it as I want more, more, more, and I want to go to the next battleground, fight the next army, and then suppose that I can get more and this stuff, which will start to erode the moment the last cycle is finished.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  Sure, but where does the self sabotage sabotage part come in to that?

• 36:07Phil Stutz?

  Oh, there's two phases. One is the alienation phase, which that's where you need something fucked up always to be affecting you. And then there's the conquest phase, which is you can't have a conquest phase unless you have alienation phase first. And why does that even matter? The reason it matters is all those back to human beings functioning as a group. And that would include functioning as a group in a marriage, like a small thing, or

• 36:46Phil Stutz?

  Somebody totally unqualified becomes the president of some country. I just picked that up.

• 36:56Phil Stutz?

  See, and shrinks don't understand this, there's always two things going on at once. One level of this is called contextual level. It means like if I have somebody in a marriage and the guy, they're so angry at each other that they're not even talking to each other very much. Let's say you're the person, I say, your job is to create a context, even if you don't believe what you're saying, even that doesn't matter. And the conquest is I'm always aware of the other person and I'm always trying to support their view of the world, even though in a specific sense, you may want to smack them in the head and it's unbearable.

• 37:41Phil Stutz?

  So you have to do both. You have to say, hey, you're not available to me, you're not present to me, you're not helping me. You can say this of your partner, but at the same time, same time, you have to take action steps to give the person what they want. People don't believe they can do things at once. And they can, but products doesn't want them to know that.

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  So there's alienation and conquest. You need both of these things. You share an example in like a marriage dynamic, but I'm imagining, you know, the powerful, successful person. Is the alienation piece like the motivation of feeling like you're not part of, or you're like, you know, I'm not, I'm not being accepted by this group. I feel alienated and so I'm motivated to like. You know, for conquest, so that I can be part of the in-group. And then when you succeed, you then have to still feel like you're alienated from like, I guess, the next level of that, right? And it creates this cycle. So those two things have to go together.

• 38:52Phil Stutz?

  Yes, that's correct. And it might sound extreme, but that's behind most of human psychology is that because people need the context. I mean, the way you explained it, it doesn't matter whether it's a chicken or the egg, neither person will allow the thing.

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, I was hoping you were gonna do this. He's gonna draw.

• 39:20Phil Stutz?

  Oh, sorry.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  Well, maybe while he's drawing, you can share, Elise, how you got involved with this project and like what your history and relationship is with Phil.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Phil won't remember this, but I met Phil probably 10 years ago. Maybe it was even longer. He did an onstage session at In-Goop Health. I think it was the very first In-Goop Health that we ever did. And it was stunning, I have to say. And I knew of the tools. I knew of the work. You worked with someone live.

• 39:52Phil Stutz?

  Oh.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  And I don't even remember the specifics, but I'll never forget watching. I mean, there's something so compelling about watching live therapy when it's done masterfully. And then I interviewed Phil for, similar to you, Lessons for Living, and he was drawing tools for me and sharing concepts that I had never heard of that weren't in the tools. I mean, more practically, we share an agent, but I was like, I'd love to work with Phil on something. And we were hired to write a workbook.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  But it's very of a piece with your other writing in the sense that what Phil is presenting is a feminine frame on like how to think about like. You know, emotions and what's important and painful.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Well, now you cut right to it. I think what's so compelling to me personally, I love a framework. I want to understand how all of these things fit, how you create a wide enough context to understand human behavior and culture and sociology. And Phil does that, I think, in a very masculine way and in a way that appeals to men, that is somewhat of a counter to the way that I see the world, which is more feminine and more intuitive. And so, working with him, I don't know, it felt, well, you would say you can't create anything alone. And you don't really, as much as everything comes out of your mind, you collaborate on everything. You're forced

• 41:22Speaker 02

  to collaborate on everything. And so, I don't know, it felt like an interesting pairing. And I love Carl Jung, and he says Carl Jung is too teutonic, and he doesn't like.

• 41:33Phil Stutz?

  No, I don't say he's teutonic. I say he's lazy.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Oh, he's lazy. Sorry. Apologies.

• 41:40Rich Roll?

  You heard it here.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  One of the most prolific, but he's a lazy sack of shit, guys. But you love, obviously, Rudolf Steiner, as you mentioned. But for me, it's just added, I feel like I'm good at the subtleties and the shadow, and you are so clear, actually, in the way that you perceive the world, that it's like catnip to me personally.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  Well, I think where Phil really excels is, you know, taking all these very ephemeral concepts and like drilling them down, you know, into not just practical tools, but like languaging that allows you to kind of like, in our limited minds, you know, kind of conceptualize what is fundamentally, you know, so difficult to understand. And I think maybe that's the masculine piece. Because on the surface, it's like, okay, you know, men are in their heads and women are in their hearts. And like, we've all heard that a million times before, right? I think there's a frustration with therapy, like Jonah says it beautifully in the documentary, where he's like, he's like, you know, look, you pay this therapist to give you advice, and all they do is listen. And then you go to

• 42:48Rich Roll?

  your idiot friends and want them to listen, and they give you unsolicited advice. Like, the whole fucking thing is upside down, right? And you.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  You've created a situation in which you are providing like actionable takeaways, which I think appeals to the masculine kind of sensibility of like, just tell me what to do. Like, I want to fix this. I don't want to spend 10 years talking about my bullshit and be in the same place. And how do you do that while also embracing that this requires kind of like a feminine, heart-opening approach that the masculine resists?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and it's true. That's so incredibly well put. And it's so compelling to me how I understand it. But for example, my husband loves Phil. And I can't get my husband to go to therapy, period. But he, for whatever reason, you are a bridge for a lot of people into a world that's more familiar to me, and probably more familiar to Julie.

• 43:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what's interesting about Julie is that she's pretty therapy resistant. She's this, you know, she's very devoted to her spiritual practices, but kind of resistant to traditional modalities of therapy. And like Phil is like the only guy, she like loves Phil. And she has a masculine kind of edge to her as well. But, you know, she couldn't, you know, she couldn't have been more enthusiastic to go see Phil. So Phil's playing both sides of the coin.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at you.

• 44:20Phil Stutz?

  I'll take this as a tremendous compliment.

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you should.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  You should. Well, I think the people who, and there are many, who love you are often quite admirable people, too.

• 44:31Phil Stutz?

  Not all of them.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Not all.

• 44:33Phil Stutz?

  Sorry.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  Name names.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was just about to say that.

• 44:36Rich Roll?

  What did you draw? What did you draw there?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  I know what this is.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  What do you got?

• 44:40Phil Stutz?

  This is a dissection of the life force. I'll just put L F, because I'm getting lazy.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  So lazy, Phil.

• 44:49Phil Stutz?

  So, this is what it looks like, those pearly key things.

• 44:57Rich Roll?

  What do you got here? You got a little curlicue line. On the far right, it says LF.

• 45:02Phil Stutz?

  This reminds you, it's the life force. The life force presents itself to you as if it just died. Now, you might say, "Well, are you crazy?" But no, because you just died. But which would be the down part of the circle?

• 45:23Rich Roll?

  If I got this right, basically, something happens in your life that shakes you up, and you feel like you're dying, and you think that's your life force that's dying. But actually, this is the moment where your life force might be awakened.

• 45:34Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, that's correct. The life force has two phases to it. So the first phase is death, or some kind of execution failure. So that's when the curve goes down. And then it goes back up again, and that's the rebirth. So you have death and rebirth. But you don't have death without rebirth. Not because you have such a strong will, or you're so committed to serpents. The reason you can't have one without the other is because the cycling part,

• 46:16Phil Stutz?

  the death and rebirth, is built into the system. So, and that's where faith comes in. Let me give you that thing, okay?

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  It's also, I mean, it keeps, it continues to swirl, right? So you can't have rebirth without death. You can't have death without rebirth, but it's not a one-time affair.

• 46:38Phil Stutz?

  No, not only isn't it a one-time affair, it doesn't even exist without it. Okay, so this, on this one, first one enjoys the downward part of the cycle. So that's over here. And then it's gonna start to come up again, which is the rebirth. So I'll put rebirth. And I don't wanna give any shit if this didn't come out so good.

• 47:09Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna give you any shit.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I'm gonna give you-

• 47:11Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna make you sign these things, though.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  A lot of shit.

• 47:15Phil Stutz?

  She's giving me the chocolate.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  Pathetic artwork. Okay, so you have rebirth on these little curved parts of the spiral.

• 47:24Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, the downward part is death.

• 47:27Rich Roll?

  The downward part's the death, and then it comes around for the rebirth?

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:32Phil Stutz?

  And that's built in, it never stops.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  The need for constant work, right? Like, the idea like, "Oh, I had my, I had my death, I've been reborn, that's in the past, and now happily ever after," right? That's sort of the more, kind of like, traditional narrative.

• 47:47Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, that's what the devil is telling you. "Yeah, stick with me and I'll, I'll teach you a way to avoid this all together."

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  And the resistance that, like, this is just an ongoing process that's constantly looping is, is the source of our suffering.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we live in a culture that wants to insist that growth is upwards and to the right. And essentially, your model of the life force and lawn linear growth is that you are gonna get cold. We write about it as sort of plant trauma. The plant persists and keeps growing, but it gets, it's going to suffer these curlicues as its potential is revealed. The death and rebirth is part of the healthy, it's not even part of a healthy cycle, it is built into the, it is the cycle.

• 48:37Rich Roll?

  But we also misdefine growth. Like, we think growth means, you know, the accumulation of material possessions and success and power and money and prestige and all of that, right? Like, we're caught on that hedonic treadmill and, you know, then become disappointed when we feel our lives lack meaning, and then we end up in Phil's office.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Right, in the realm of illusion, which I think is one of the most compelling concepts, which is this idea that you accrue enough power and money and you're immune from life, right? That-

• 49:10Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  That you're good.

• 49:12Phil Stutz?

  Here's the nature of the realm of illusion. I mean, we can be sitting here talking, and we could be either in the realm of illusion or not, that's our choice. Okay. It's your lucky day.

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  All right. There you go. More drawings.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Needs to be a triptech.

• 49:29Phil Stutz?

  This sounds so crazy. This is for a perfect life. And this is what I wanted to say.

• 49:35Rich Roll?

  So it's a sort of a line that denotes the ground, a little stick figure, and a dotted line to a square that represents the perfect life.

• 49:44Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 49:45Rich Roll?

  Like a thought bubble.

• 49:48Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, that's probably pretty much. So that's, we don't want that for obvious reasons.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  We don't want what?

• 49:59Phil Stutz?

  We don't want to believe in Santa Claus. We don't want to believe that that's even possible.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  A perfect life.

• 50:08Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, a perfect life. Usually it's like a perfect spouse or something. But it doesn't matter what the detail is. It only matters that whatever projection, whatever image you have is wrong. In a sense, it doesn't even exist. It's a representative of nothing.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  But you would say it doesn't even matter. All that matters is that you're cultivating your life force and, you know, in this process of like constant creation.

• 50:37Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, now look at the two together and tell me how would they fit?

• 50:42Rich Roll?

  They don't really fit at all. Like the, you know, the curlicue lines of like rebirth and death. This is like saying, you know, it's about the journey, not the destination. It's just, it's a process, right? Whereas this perfect life is about going somewhere with a destination.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, static or snapshot.

• 51:08Phil Stutz?

  Okay, give me that thing back.

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  Which one?

• 51:11Phil Stutz?

  Self help.

• 51:15Phil Stutz?

  See, one says you can attain a state of perfection,

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:20Phil Stutz?

  which you can't, but the other one says, yes, you can't actually reach a state of perfection, but in a longitudinal way, you can. The way Rudolf Södergaard says it is, "The world is perfect because it's imperfect."

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:41Phil Stutz?

  So each one of those turds is an effort that's imperfect. As long as you can stay in that line, knowing you're just piling up turds, you're safe. And what you say from the devil or from Part X. So it's Paramount, pardon the expression, to see the events in your life, regardless of what they are, is all of them are failures.

• 52:10Rich Roll?

  All of them are failures or?

• 52:13Phil Stutz?

  They have a turd in them.

• 52:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Is that a way of saying, basically, you know, life unfolds exactly how it's meant to and everything, you know, that you experience is here for your growth and evolution? And it's a perspective frame as much as anything else? Like, it is, the imperfections are its perfection, right?

• 52:38Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, yes, 100%. That's why Rudolf Södergaard says, "The world is perfect because it's imperfect."

• 52:46Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 52:46Phil Stutz?

  There's more to this, but the point of the whole book, which, no offense to you, but Random House had a little trouble grasping this. The whole point of this is to give human beings the power to create something out of nothing. And a million different ways that Part X will try to convince you that that's impossible.

• 53:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:15Phil Stutz?

  And the ego says, "Don't worry about it, because I got a better solution." You don't really have to ride these cycles and accept the inevitable failure or at least...

• 53:32Phil Stutz?

  Imperfection of the medicine, you don't have to do that, but you gotta pay. And in the old days, you just said, "The devil has you sold." But now, it's actually worse.

• 53:45Rich Roll?

  How so?

• 53:46Phil Stutz?

  Because some super rich billionaire and/or...

• 53:50Rich Roll?

  The industrial fill-in-the-blank complex. The industrial defense complex, the industrial pharmaceutical complex, the industrial political complex, banking, right? All of it. We're more... Giant institutions.

• 54:03Phil Stutz?

  That's right. So institutional certainty, maybe for a while, more or less from 1920 to maybe 10 years ago. But now, all the institutions have broken down. So even the species faking certainty that you can get from it, because the corruption is now out in the air.

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  Right. This is our great opportunity, right? Because we're being confronted with uncertainty on a level that is, you know, sort of unprecedented in our lives. And what are we gonna do with that? Are we gonna wring our hands and, you know, be upset? And there's lots of things that we can do. But can we look at it as an opportunity for our own personal growth and evolution?

• 54:49Phil Stutz?

  Excellent.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like how you did that. Do that again. I feel very validated.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  Here's the thing, Phil.

• 55:08Rich Roll?

  This is like a deeply spiritual, like, you know, like sort of dowding, like manual for life, that's sort of costumed or, you know, kind of presented in this package of like, you know, psychological tools for better living. Like, it's a Trojan horse on some level. And so I want to know, like, last time you were here, I was like, "How do you have this x-ray vision? Is this a gift you've always had? Your ability to like, see right through people and get right to the heart of the matter?" Like, you have this uncanny, like, preternatural ability to do that. But on some level, like, there is an enlightened perspective on the human condition. And I want to know if you had like, a spiritual epiphany or some kind of occurrence?

• 55:51Rich Roll?

  Did you come out of the womb just wired with that level of sensitivity? How did you develop this, you know, expansive... You know, view.

• 56:00Phil Stutz?

  I developed them, probably not for the best reasons. I was always afraid of not having enough money. So therefore, I would both work really hard on each patient to help them because then they keep coming back. And also, I knew that I could feel myself developing these skills, for better or worse. So, and because I needed the money, I kept working harder and harder. Finally, I reached a point where I think I was seeing like seventy people a week. Now, now, I wouldn't even try to think, seven a week. But I needed it, I thought I'd die. That's the real answer.

• 56:45Rich Roll?

  And so, that was a death moment for you?

• 56:48Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 56:49Rich Roll?

  So what was the epiphany that grew out of that? Like, the rebirthing process from that?

• 56:56Phil Stutz?

  Well, when my brother died, the family fell apart. And this is not stated, but the responsibilities for holding the things together was me. And my father wanted me to go to medical school. This is what this fuck said, I loved him, he's a nice guy. He says, "My friend fell down in an elevator shaft at Metropolitan Hospital." And he lived. So, we go to the next night, he's in the ICU. And whatever, he was conscious. So they were walking out of this hospital.

• 57:38Phil Stutz?

  And we're about fifty feet past the door of the hospital. And he says, he turns me around, he says, "Look in there." And what you see is the whole fucking, it's a city hospital. And he says to me, "That's the only profession." And it was the most fucked up thing anyone, because it said, "It doesn't really matter what else you do in life. I'm telling you, that's the only profession." Which you could just say, "Add as an addendum, so don't even consider taking one of these inferior professions." So that held me back. But it wasn't, again, all these things are two-headed monsters. So...

• 58:23Phil Stutz?

  It got me into this, so it wasn't that bad. And then the same thing happened with medical school. You know, at that time, like 1971, psychiatry was considered losers. It was like a bucket of shit for losers.

• 58:40Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 58:41Phil Stutz?

  There was no...

• 58:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:44Phil Stutz?

  So I said, I don't want to do this. I was very good with my hands. Because I have small hands, I was very dexterous. And for a minute, I thought, okay, maybe I should do this. My father would be thrilled. Plus, he had a, um, he had just had a child die. And my father and mother were without any kind of spiritual feeling. Period. So for a minute, I said, maybe I should do this. I know he would love it.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Surgery?

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  Surgery.

• 59:14Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  Because of your fingers. And yeah, I got it.

• 59:18Phil Stutz?

  But luckily, this voice sat on my shoulder and said, you're allowed to do what you enjoy. And I remember the exact moment I had this. So I guess I have had an awakening. And I did it, even though I was afraid of what everybody would think. The fucking dean of medicine there, he couldn't believe that I wasn't going to become, you know, some kind of big shot in the hierarchy. It's interesting, you don't have that at all, really.

• 59:47Rich Roll?

  What do you mean?

• 59:48Phil Stutz?

  You're very competitive, but you don't, um, you're not that identified with it.

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's true.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Did you, have you had a spiritual awakening?

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  I've had a couple. Yeah, sure. You know, I've had, I've had, I had to have my life shaken up a few times. You know, for sure. And I guess I, I find myself wanting to like, lay on top of, you know, the life of Phil Stutz, like this sort of Joseph Campbell hero's journey. Like, here's where he, you know, had his awakening, and here's what happened as a result of it. You know what I mean? I want a very clean, you know, kind of narrative to the whole thing. And like, you keep coming back at me with this like, you know, hot mess. You know, and it's like, oh, but that's actually... The profound answer, because that's what life is.

• 1:00:44Rich Roll?

  We, our brains, my brain, wants to be reductive, you know, and, and point to one thing as being the reason.

• 1:00:53Phil Stutz?

  And you're right in the razor's edge, by the way. You could fall off on either side.

• 1:00:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I do that every day. It depends on how well I slept.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  And by that, you mean of falling into the sort of reductive, rational?

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  Like the universe one versus the universe two? Yeah, like, I asked you earlier, but maybe like, define that difference, because we didn't actually get an answer to that.

• 1:01:19Phil Stutz?

  Define one and two?

• 1:01:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:21Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. Universe one defines value mathematically. Nothing, and that's the strange. Nothing that you can't understand mathematically really is irrelevant. So, or if you want to say it more simply,

• 1:01:43Phil Stutz?

  universe one can only speak through mathematics. When you think about it, it's like dried up.

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  The material world.

• 1:01:52Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Rich Roll?

  And the rules that we've created about how it works.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Money.

• 1:01:56Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Success.

• 1:01:58Phil Stutz?

  So that's universe one. And what it creates is, not even purposely,

• 1:02:08Phil Stutz?

  it creates a tremendous amount of conflict. Because once you can measure something and define it clearly, as far as who's the winner or whatever, once you have that, you have a war. Universe two is different. Universe two does not value anything with numbers. Numbers mean nothing, which means what's in your bank account means nothing. It's like, it's a belief system that doesn't include anything. See, you, we all wanna think about that as, oh, if we could only solve these equations or algorithms, what the fuck, if we could only do that, we'd feel secure.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's the antidote for our deep-seated discomfort with uncertainty.

• 1:02:55Phil Stutz?

  Correct.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  But you have this great line in the book about Universe 2 that I think kind of distills it down into what you're trying to say, which is, if you wanna know who you really are, ask yourself what you would spend your time on, even if you knew it would never make you money.

• 1:03:13Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  And then, subsequent to that, God only cares that you don't quit.

• 1:03:18Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Rich Roll?

  So maybe elaborate on that, or maybe Elise can

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  share her

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  perspective on that.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Well, and I'm sure you can relate to this, Rich. I mean, I feel this way about so much of my work, where, well, it's a balance, right? Like, I wanna believe that everything I do, I do for free. And this is probably true of every creative that you treat, right? And there's a monetary value to the work that we do as well, and it's hard to not, I call it my more masculine mind, and I find myself getting sort of sucked into the vortex of numbers and rankings and financial stability. But Universe 2, when I'm most alive, is when I'm co-creating or creating on my own. And yes, I would do it all day. I mean, it's flow, in some ways, right?

• 1:04:10Phil Stutz?

  Now, there's one state or one emotion that will protect you from getting drawn back into the mathematical world. Do you know what that is?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:22Phil Stutz?

  It's rage, hatred.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Say more.

• 1:04:25Phil Stutz?

  Because all these battles are fought right here. This is where I find my capacity to sense reality is here, which means most of it isn't in words. There's no answer to your question, but what you can, as you develop this, you become more sensitive and you trust your instincts more. Nothing's close to 100%. If you think you need 100%, then you're just wasting time.

• 1:04:55Phil Stutz?

  And the funny thing is, I mean, if you, you probably studied this. If you, if you study theoretical physics and subatomic physics and all that shit. Think about it, it's pure movement. There's not, even if I said, I know what that, wherever these particles are. Even if I know what it is and I can identify it, it's gonna move.

• 1:05:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when you drill down to the very essence of it, at the subatomic level, like, you, you know, you can't really definitively like say what's like matter or energy or the position of a subatomic particle is dependent upon the observer or not. Like all of the, all these sort of weird like quantum physics things that come into play that are kind of offensive to our desire for certainty that math, that math is supposed to give us.

• 1:05:47Phil Stutz?

  So, and the problem with that is you can't possibly feel God with that set of variables.

• 1:05:53Rich Roll?

  Sure, but isn't that, that's where God dwells.

• 1:05:57Phil Stutz?

  Yes, exactly right.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  You said to stay in universe two, I need rage and hatred?

• 1:06:04Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  But wait, can you?

• 1:06:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know. That, that, I didn't expect you to say that.

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  Oh yeah, we got two, two fists on the table.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Is this when you tell me I need to be more of an asshole?

• 1:06:16Phil Stutz?

  Well, you couldn't be more of an asshole.

• 1:06:21Phil Stutz?

  But yeah, no, seriously, yeah. Because what you want to do is you want to overcome this, which thinks it knows what it's perceiving. But the, and you want to use this, and this is the instinct system, so to speak.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  And is the way to get your instinct system online to tap into sort of like a holy fire anger?

• 1:06:47Phil Stutz?

  All right.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  All right, another drawing. Yeah, this is, this is sort of contradicting everything I thought you would say. Cause I thought you would say to stay in universe two, you have to be creating from a place of like joy and abundance.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  And love.

• 1:07:00Rich Roll?

  And love, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anger and rage.

• 1:07:04Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, I'll show you why. This is called cosmic rage. I don't know if you've seen it. Now, there's certain kind of rages that aren't good. They're not good. They don't do anything for you, but this one does a lot for you. And the reason is, is, uh, this is called the I am space.

• 1:07:24Phil Stutz?

  Yes, it's not nice screaming, and a lot of times it won't work. But it's the life force demanding its own existence. See, out here.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Is this like you're screaming at Part X?

• 1:07:41Phil Stutz?

  Yes, so you're creating space for yourself and Part X is going to fight you on this to the death. However, now that you know that if it drives you to the death, all that's going to do is reactivate the rebirth. So I actually can't win.

• 1:08:01Rich Roll?

  So we have a circle here in the middle. And inside of it, you have written the I am space. Is that correct? And then you have arrows pointing out of it. And then outside of it, it's this is the cosmic.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Rage.

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  The cosmic rage. And then surrounding that, I guess these are like incursion forces that are trying to like come come into you. And so while they're trying to attack you, you need to resist and push back against it.

• 1:08:30Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, you can't do that.

• 1:08:32Rich Roll?

  And that's the that's the cosmic rage that you're talking about. So I interpret this as like just to, you know, create an example from my own life. Like, for example, this podcast, like this is something that I would do for free and did do for free for a long time out of like joy and creativity and just like the incredible experience of getting to meet people like yourself. Like, it's just like the coolest thing, right? And then at some point, it grows into a commercial, you know, enterprise. And that's wonderful. And I get to not only support my family, but provide livelihoods for other people. But that comes with these pressures. And then, you know, when it becomes this, you know, kind of material thing, then you're

• 1:09:17Rich Roll?

  just you you it immediately goes from universe two back to universe one. So the cosmic rage is to like push against that and protect like that spirit that birthed it in the first place. Because I'm sure with all these amazing, you know, kind of. Patients that you've had over the years in Hollywood, you have these amazingly creative people who just, from a place of childlike wonder, you know, like, like just imagine fantastic things and suddenly, you know, a waterfall of cash falls on top of them, right? And, you know, with that, the blossoming of the ego and suddenly they're a big deal in Hollywood. And then what was beautiful about that gets eroded and supplanted by this, you know, material pursuit for like, how do I stay at the top?

• 1:10:01Rich Roll?

  How come that guy is getting, you know, the next studio gig when I should get it? This is what you're talking about, right?

• 1:10:07Phil Stutz?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:10:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Phil Stutz?

  And it's not limited to showbiz. It's now occurring worldwide.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  So the best of what makes us human gets co-opted and then kind of like corrupted?

• 1:10:20Phil Stutz?

  Correct.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  One of the most, I think, powerful ways that you describe Part X too, is that Part X doesn't want to kill you. Part X wants to conscript you and slave you.

• 1:10:32Rich Roll?

  Tell me more about that.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Just this idea that I think we, we perceive it as outside of us and we perceive it as something to be vanquished, or it wants to vanquish us. And your point is no, Part X ultimately wants to sort of dole you and conscript you into servicing its agenda in the world.

• 1:10:52Phil Stutz?

  Yeah. You can think of it like, it doesn't, it's okay with Part X to give you all these bribes and suggestions, as long as you know that ultimately you get nothing. And the nothing goes back to the creation of the universe.

• 1:11:15Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. It seems to me that, that the Part X, this darker side of ourselves, is one in which we either deny or pretend doesn't exist or compartmentalize to Elise's point, right? Like, we just, we shove it aside because we don't really want to face the fact that we have dark thoughts and like, you know, we're not good people and all that kind of stuff, right? Or... We so self-identify with it that we can't tell the difference between like our life force or our higher self and that part X and they become like the same thing and override our operating system and like drive all of our decisions.

• 1:11:55Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, now there's something about the life force that I forgot to tell you. Do you want to hear it?

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  Of course, that's why you're here, buddy.

• 1:12:02Phil Stutz?

  Okay, I accept that responsibility.

• 1:12:05Rich Roll?

  I was trying to get another fist on the table with that, but I didn't succeed. Go ahead. There you go. I feel better.

• 1:12:14Phil Stutz?

  Okay. The key of the life force is relationships relating, connection.

• 1:12:25Rich Roll?

  That's very offensive to the self-made man idea upon which America was founded.

• 1:12:31Phil Stutz?

  Fuck you. Okay, you can you label it, but this is the model for remaining connected. It doesn't depend on how well your life is doing. You know, the classic thing is that comes into my office and he'll say, I don't know why I keep getting fired from these jobs. My friend makes much more money than I. Whatever the universe wants stuff is now. And he says, if I only knew where I belong in the universe, if I knew that, I could act on it.

• 1:13:14Phil Stutz?

  And if I could act on it, I wouldn't conduct my life like a piece of shit. But I'm not going to just arbitrarily do that. I have to be sure I'm doing the right thing. Only then will I become disciplined. And what I always tell these guys and a lot of them, first thing I say is fuck you. You're ungrateful. That's number one. Number two, we're talking about something that has general meaning.

• 1:13:45Phil Stutz?

  Independent of anything except the fact that you're human. And there's three levels of asserting your humanity.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  You were telling the story about a typical patient who comes in and essentially wants you to tell them what their purpose in life is so that they can become more disciplined.

• 1:14:04Phil Stutz?

  Correct.

• 1:14:05Rich Roll?

  So that they can get the stuff they want that other people are getting that's making them so mad.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, and I think they have to pick the right job, high school, whatever it is. If they get it right, then all of this will flow to them. If they don't get it right, they get nothing. That is complete bullshit.

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  Right, it's transactional. Like, yeah, I got you, Phil. I'll do all this shit as long as I get all these things that I want, that I'm still convinced are the things that are gonna, that my life is missing and will make me happy.

• 1:14:34Phil Stutz?

  Correct.

• 1:14:35Rich Roll?

  So you've got this triangle here, this pyramid, and it's divided into three layers, sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the bottom, it's relationship to the body. The middle is relationship to others, and then the top is relationship to self.

• 1:14:52Phil Stutz?

  Right. And it's more complicated than you'd think, but the point of it is not reaching it, but even the act of trying to form a relationship with yourself on each one of these layers starts. This is the blueprint for the universal connection, because this whole thing is about connection. In order to take advantage of the situation, so to speak, you have to reduce everything

• 1:15:31Phil Stutz?

  down to the lowest possible level, which is, I think, has broken it up by the three things. And then every time you're not sure what to do, you feel lost, you're unable to gain the confidence that you're in the right direction. Don't do that. Stop. Just to work on this much smaller, but much more accurate, I would say. But the point is, this is universal. That's the key thing you have to remember. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, what you do. It's not a guessing game. We used to say this or that or this. I mean, you could try, you know, once in a zillion years it works.

• 1:16:15Phil Stutz?

  But this is a pure study you're making, especially the top one. Your relationship to yourself. Now, would anybody like to hazard an idea about how do you? What would that entail?

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  The relationship to yourself?

• 1:16:32Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Well, this triangle, right, is this is your way of activating your life force?

• 1:16:37Phil Stutz?

  Yes.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  And when people come in to you, sometimes titans of industry and everything has collapsed around them. They want to sort of start even above the triangle, right? And understanding like, what's my God given purpose? And I don't want to deal with any of this other pedantic bullshit.

• 1:16:55Phil Stutz?

  Excellent.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I said bullshit. And so your instruction to all of us regardless is you have to reactivate your life force by invoking your relationship with your body, which is your world, right? Like get up and walk around the block.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, isn't that the initial source of activation? You know, and I think, I think people are fundamentally disconnected from themselves in so many ways. But it begins with like, well, what are you putting in it? You know, and if you're just eating garbage and not sleeping and, you know, overstimulated, then how are you going to actually feel yourself? How are you going to connect with that life force? Because there's so much interference going on. And so you got to do that before any of these other things can take place, right?

• 1:17:40Phil Stutz?

  Correct. And you have to keep doing it. Some months or weeks is going to help you, others it won't. But the whole point is you solidify that relationship through the constancy of your efforts.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  One of my favorite concepts in the book actually is the plane of will, which is this idea that's similar to relationship with your body or this whole life force, which is that you make a commitment to yourself and you show up and you practice the piano at 10 a.m. every day. And that there's like a pre cognitive momentum that you're generating, where you're strengthening that relationship.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Sometimes to your body, sometimes with other people, and sometimes to yourself. And that that action alone is primary momentum.

• 1:18:30Phil Stutz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  In your life. And that you don't, again, there's no exoneration from pain and the need for constant work and uncertainty. You don't get to the point where you get to abandon your body.

• 1:18:42Phil Stutz?

  Correct. So, once you start this, you have to keep it going for the rest of your life?

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's the good news and the bad news, right? You know, before we complete this, like, I'm curious, Elise, like, what was your experience working with Phil? And, you know, are you, like, different on the other side of collaborating on this book? Like, what did you take away that has been helpful on your own life?

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  Well, it's been a total honor and

• 1:19:11Phil Stutz?

  Thank you.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Quite hilarious at times, as you can imagine, but and very nonlinear in a way that actually is, I think, quite magic, considering the title of the book. And we just talked like this, probably 30 times, 40 times, and I just asked questions again and again. And similar, I think, to probably your experience with Phil or your experience with the content. It wasn't always what I thought it would be. And so that, to me, was also really moving in a way, to be surprised that, like, the answer is cosmic rage and not love, for example.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  But at the end of it, what emerged wasn't, we didn't sit down and write this book from beginning to end at all. But we just sort of built it in layers over time. And I've never had that experience, actually, of creating something in that way. Usually, it's very tactical, chapter by chapter, story by story. And instead, it felt like it emerged out of, we created something out of nothing.

• 1:20:16Rich Roll?

  Well, it had to.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Rich Roll?

  Otherwise, it wouldn't be, you know, an organically, you know, Phil Stutz's production, right?

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  It would not be.

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if you, if you had conjured it in the, in the frame of your brain, like, it would have fallen short.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Rich Roll?

  So that's like its own, like, like, sort of meta story within the book.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  Which is really cool.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  It was so, and honestly, the assignment was to create a workbook for the original tools. And this is nothing, nothing like that.

• 1:20:41Rich Roll?

  It's not a departure from the tools, but it's sort of an extrapolation.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Rich Roll?

  And I think You know, while this conversation may have come across as like difficult to, you know, get your arms around or a little bit too like ephemeral, I promise you that it's filled with actionable, practical things that you can do. Cause that's, that's really what you're all about, Phil. Like you're drilling it down and like, here's some things you can do that will actually immediately change your life. And that's part of why you're so revered. But I think fundamentally to kind of, you know, end this, it's a very, you know, beautiful and expansive book that is really about, you know, our relationship with faith

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  and the extent to which, you know, we as a collective have kind of divorced ourselves from ancient practices that came naturally to us. And so it's sort of a, a call to action to like reclaim this part of what it is to, to be human. And there's a, you know, a quote in the book that I want to read, that I think really kind of encapsulates the, the whole thesis of what you're trying to get to, which is, "The most important tool for contending with life is freely chosen faith. This faith is chosen for no other reason than your desire to have faith. To deal with reality, you must accept the fact that reality is unpredictable and that

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  you must act anyway, using only the faith that you've chosen to have."

• 1:22:11Phil Stutz?

  Who wrote that?

• 1:22:12Rich Roll?

  I don't know, maybe Elise wrote it.

• 1:22:16Phil Stutz?

  I don't remember.

• 1:22:18Rich Roll?

  That's it, right?

• 1:22:19Phil Stutz?

  That's it.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  That kind of says it, doesn't it? I think that's kind of a, a nice landing place for this. Is there anything final you want to say before we?

• 1:22:27Phil Stutz?

  Yeah, I want to thank everybody, including the crew. It's like a privilege to do it with people who have goodwill. That's the best I can say. And there's not that many of them.

• 1:22:40Rich Roll?

  Thank you. I mean, it's, it's a real gift, honestly, to, to, to be with you. And I, I feel honored to have been able to spend some time with you. And I think you're a, you know, you're a magical creature and, and what you offer everybody is, is meaningful and real. And I just want you to feel acknowledged for that. And Elise, for you to collaborate with him and bring the best out of him and, you know, bring your sensibility and what you have to offer into this book. I think it's, it's, it's really, you know, it is a gift for, for everybody.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  Thank you, Rich.

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So thanks, buddy. Come back. Be my co-host. You want to come in every week?

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  I was helping you to run.

• 1:23:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. All right.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  He needs his own show.

• 1:23:21Rich Roll?

  Thanks, you guys. That's the luck with the book. You can find the book everywhere. Elise, where do you want to direct people for? People who are curious and-

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  About my world?

• 1:23:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, about your world and your books and your podcast.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  I have a podcast called Pulling the Thread, and it's similar. We cover some similar ground, although you've been at it for so much longer. You're a titan. And my book is called On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good. If you like Stutz World, there's probably something in that for you.

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  Amazing. Thank you.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Good luck.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  All right, you guys.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  I love you.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  Thank you.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  I love you, Phil.

• 1:24:00Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors, who keep

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

  this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, The Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the- Podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Thanks. Namaste.