Skip the Big Life Overhaul in 2027 & Do This Instead | Robert Greene

Robert Greene 0:00 You have to be aware of how short life is. You need to get back to that sensation of being alive in the moment, and it's kind of an ecstatic experience, and so I wanted people to have that in their life without having to die.

Lewis Howes 0:12 He's the best-selling author, millions of copies of his books sold, was the very first guest on this show. Now, 2001 episodes later, welcome back to the School of Greatness, Robert Greene.

Robert Greene 0:23 When I had my near-death experience, I was slurring my words incredibly, and my face was falling. When someone saves your life, there's obviously a different kind of feeling, right? I have to look at her through new eyes. I have to see that I am here because of her. Love between two humans is of the highest form of the sublime. It's about experiencing life on a higher level.

Lewis Howes 0:46 Would you say that most of our pain and suffering comes from focusing too much on ourselves?

Robert Greene 0:52 Well...

Lewis Howes 0:56 Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm excited about our guest. We have the one and only Robert Greene in the house, and Robert was episode number one on the School of Greatness, and this is episode 2001. I get chills just thinking about it, because of so much that has happened in the last almost 14 years for both of us.

Robert Greene 1:16 Hey, hey, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:17 But I'm so grateful for you for being, taking a chance on me, being my first guest when no one knew what a podcast was back then, so a big thank you for that.

Robert Greene 1:26 What were you thinking back then? You thinking... It wasn't even called a podcast, was it?

Lewis Howes 1:30 It wa- it, it was, but no one knew what a, no one knew what a podcast was. I was thinking, "I'm going through a stage where I feel stuck in my life. I feel stuck in a relationship, my business is-

Robert Greene 1:41 What were you doing before then?

Lewis Howes 1:42 I was running a-

Robert Greene 1:43 Let's talk a bit about you here.

Lewis Howes 1:44 [laughs] I was running a, I was running an online marketing company.

Robert Greene 1:46 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 1:47 I had a business partnership, but we were kind of, like, arguing a lot.

Robert Greene 1:50 Oh.

Lewis Howes 1:50 And we weren't seeing eye to eye.

Robert Greene 1:51 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 1:52 I had moved to LA maybe six months before then for a girl. That didn't work out.

Robert Greene 1:57 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 1:57 And so I felt stuck in this kind of relationship that was off and on, and we weren't seeing eye to eye. And, um, I just... But I was making money in a business, but everything in my, my relationships were falling apart, and I was at the center of all those kind of breakdowns.

Robert Greene 2:13 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 2:14 And so instead of blaming everyone else, I s- kind of had a aha moment. I was like, "Oh, maybe I'm the problem. Maybe there's something that I get to look at within me that's causing these breakdowns, or choosing relationships that aren't in alignment for whatever reason." And that's when the healing journey began for me, and I said, "I feel stuck, but I also have access to really wise individuals who have given me mentorship for the previous few years. I want to..." And I'd kind of been interviewing people organically-

Robert Greene 2:47 Uh-huh

Lewis Howes 2:48 ... without recording it.

Robert Greene 2:49 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 2:49 And I would just take action, specifically in my business, and I was like, "Well, maybe I can just interview people and see if it can help me get unstuck, but also help others."

Robert Greene 2:57 Oh, interesting.

Lewis Howes 2:58 And I was actually stuck in LA traffic when this idea came to me.

Robert Greene 3:02 Interesting.

Lewis Howes 3:03 And I was like, everyone around me stuck in the, in the, the highway was, all looked frustrated, honking their horn. And I was like-

Robert Greene 3:11 Oh, yeah

Lewis Howes 3:11 ... "They look stuck. I look stuck. Maybe we're all stuck" [laughs] . And I was like, "What is it within me that's causing this, or that's attracting this, or aligning with this?" And the podcast began, and you were the first guest that we had on. So I wanna acknowledge you again for constantly inspiring me and so many people in this world for the work that you do.

Robert Greene 3:32 Oh, thank you.

Lewis Howes 3:32 And I'm grateful that this is the sixth time that you've been on for-

Robert Greene 3:36 Oh, thank you

Lewis Howes 3:36 ... 2001.

Robert Greene 3:37 I can't believe I let a total stranger into my house.

Lewis Howes 3:40 [laughs] Exactly.

Robert Greene 3:41 It could've been a... Who knew what you could've been.

Lewis Howes 3:42 Who knew?

Robert Greene 3:43 But anyway, I'm kidding.

Lewis Howes 3:44 Yeah, yeah. You've got a new book out-

Robert Greene 3:47 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:47 ... called The Law of the Sublime-

Robert Greene 3:49 Yeah

Lewis Howes 3:49 ... that everyone needs to go get right now, and I'm gonna read something really quickly for people. "Because most of us are consumed by routine, ambition, and anxiety, and we have lost our capacity for wonder, and with it, our awareness of what it means to be alive." And in your most original and expansive work yet, you reveal how to rediscover that lost perception, how to see beyond convention, to recover the curiosity of childhood, and to explore the hidden frontiers of the mind so that we can awaken the unseen dimensions of reality that surrounds us.

Robert Greene 4:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 4:24 And this has taken you seven years of your life to work on this book.

Robert Greene 4:30 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 4:30 And it's a masterpiece, and I know a lot of people are gonna love this. But I'm curious, we're talking about childhood awe and wonder that we

Lewis Howes 4:39 have as kids. I was telling you beforehand that my twin daughters just turned one.

Robert Greene 4:43 Wow.

Lewis Howes 4:44 And you have a whole chapter about childhood in here.

Robert Greene 4:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 4:48 What is it about childhood that allows for awe and wonder that we, as adults, tend to forget how to tap into?

Robert Greene 4:58 Well, um, it's hard because we can't remember our first months and first years of life, right? And it's kind of a strange thought. We can remember everything else. The, probably the reason is we didn't have language then, so we'd have nothing to ha- stick our memories onto. But I did a lot of research, and if you think, and if you've had children, you look at the baby when it's first born, and it's just this bundle of nerves and impulses, just crying all the time. It's got all these things you gotta attend to, and it's kind of in this strange state of just needing. It's an, almost like an animal, okay? Then around nine months or so, maybe 10, it's depending on the child, things start calming down a little bit, and they start looking up at the world. They start looking up in, in their crib. They look at the mobiles, things that are moving. They see their parents moving about. They start observing the world. And try imagining this for a moment at, in your adult perspective, but you're seeing the world for the first time. You're seeing things for the first time. So your mind is really open and expansive. We've ... The, the childhood brain is so much more plastic than the adult brain. It's constantly forming these new neural pathways in the brain and making all sorts of connections, which is why a child's imaginations are so powerful, right? So the brain is just really active, and it's seeing all these things for the first time, and it's utterly enchanted. Colors, right? Just colors, not for the object, but just the color itself is fascinating. Everything, you know, the sky, animals, particularly pets are, are absolutely mesmerizing. The world of adults, which seems so weird and strange, these tall figures moving about-

Lewis Howes 6:40 [laughs]

Robert Greene 6:40 ... doing their strange activities. You don't even know language, so it's just noise that you're hearing. The world is strange. You're not an animal, so that you don't have any ... You're, you're conscious, but you don't have words to hold onto, so it's this incredible experience that you're going through, right? So the adult brain operates through what we call inhibition. In order to get through our day-to-day lives, our brain is inhibiting the information that comes in, right? So that we can function. If we had to see all the colors and things going on around us, we, we wouldn't be able to handle our day-to-day business, right? The child's brain has very little of that inhibiting going on, so it's paying attention to everything, right? Even the silliest, stupidest thing, it's paying attention to and wondering what that is, okay? So it's this whole other world that they have entered, and then they learn language. You know, it depends on the age. I don't know if your ch- children are starting to speak yet. They're probably not-

Lewis Howes 7:38 Yes

Robert Greene 7:39 ... ma-ma-pa

Lewis Howes 7:39 They're ba-ba-ba, da-da, ma-ma, yeah

Robert Greene 7:41 ... babbling kind of thing. You know, I don't know exactly when, a little after a year, year and a half. You start ... You learn the word I, and that's a very powerful moment because up until then, you don't really have a sense of yourself as an individual, as something separate from mommy and daddy and the environment. And so you become interested in I'm this person, I'm this individual, and that's also very fascinating. And perhaps you look in the mirror for the first time, and you see yourse- an image of yourself reflected, and that's very strange experience, okay? So everything is weird and wondrous and strange and enchanting. Of course, there are people who have had troubled childhoods. We have to acknowledge that, and it's not all wonderful. But even still, their minds are, are still fresh and open, and there are moments of this incredible enchantment, right? Then slowly, slowly, day by day, we start losing it, okay? So that sense of having a self and an ego. So there's a proportion going on in childhood. The world is fascinating. 90% of your attention is in the world and how interesting things are. 10% maybe is about yourself and your needs and who you are because you're just beginning to think of yourself as an individual, okay? Slowly, those numbers start to reverse-

Lewis Howes 9:03 Mm

Robert Greene 9:03 ... until you're an adult, and 98% of your attention is about yourself-

Lewis Howes 9:08 Wow

Robert Greene 9:09 ... your ego, your insecurities, am I getting attention? And maybe 2% is noticing things that are around you, okay?

Lewis Howes 9:17 Is being in awe of something or noticing something.

Robert Greene 9:19 Just even paying attention.

Lewis Howes 9:21 Ah.

Robert Greene 9:21 People ... I walk, look at people. I'm up in the hills of Griffith Park riding my bike. It, it's, uh, spectacularly beautiful, and people are like this. They're not looking at the trees, the, the sky, the, just the insanity of our planet Earth. So they're not even ... So 2% of the ... you might even paying attention a little bit to the environment, okay? So in the book, I call it the lost self. Your childhood is your lost self, right? You've lost it. But if you never had your childhood, you would never know what you were missing, and you probably wouldn't be unhappy. But because you once knew this mind that was so open and fresh and excited and awe-

Lewis Howes 10:06 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 10:07 ... unconsciously in the back of your mind, you're going, "I'm missing something. I once had it." You're not thinking that consciously, but unconsciously it's affecting you, and it's secretly making you miserable because you once knew that you had possessed a mind that was experiencing the world in a very immediate and powerful fashion. And so I say, you know, you, you, you maybe try drugs. You try ... You get into addiction, all sorts of things to try and recapture that feeling of not being separated from the world. And in the book, I try and tell you, and there's a lot of research I go through, it, it's not about recapturing the paradise of childhood or being all nostalgic or looking at photographs and, and TV shows from that. It's about re ex- look- looking at the world through the eyes of a child again, re-experiencing your childhood in the present, how you experience the world, okay? And I give you exercises on that and how you can go back to ... So one, one example I'll give you is

Robert Greene 11:11 children experience time in a much different way than adults do. First of all, we obviously have to experience time for scheduling, right? And we all go crazy with that, particularly nowadays where we're expected to be on top of so many things, okay? But a child, I give the metaphor of imagine a river, okay? And you are in some, a raft, a canoe on the river, and you're just floating along the river. All right? The child experiences time as if it's inside that river. It just, it's a flow. It's a feeling of being, of movement, of movement, and it's a physical, sensual sensation of just being in the present and flowing with the time, and it's kind of an ecstatic experience of being alive, right? You can't look behind because you're not, you're just flowing down the river. You can't really look ahead. It's just the sense of flow is, is what it is. The adults are standing on the shoreline, and they're seeing the river pass, so they can see back to the past and they can see forward, but they're not inside time. They're not inside that flow. Time is this abstract thing of, "Tomorrow I gotta finish this. In an hour I gotta send this email. Yesterday that person said that. What'd that mean? I'm so, I'm angry and upset." You're not inside time. You're viewing it from the outside, and it's making you anxious and neurotic and upset and worried. When you're in the flow of time, it's this, like, liberating fee- Now, I'm not saying you can go around like that all the time. You wouldn't get any work done. But upon occasion, you need to get back to that sensation of just experiencing time as this sensation of being alive in the moment and being inside that flow, that movement.

Lewis Howes 12:54 Mm.

Robert Greene 12:55 Just the sensual feeling. I have other things about that that I'm gonna help, 'cause at the end of each chapter, I have exercises which I've never done in any of my books before.

Lewis Howes 13:06 Why did you d- do it in this one?

Robert Greene 13:08 Because I don't want it to be an academic book about a subject about the sublime. And the subject can be very academic. I want the reader to experience everything I write about because, I mean, we can get into this later. When I had my near-death experience with my stroke, the world ... When I emerged from it, the world was different. It looked different. It felt different. It had this sparkle, this intensity. And part of the reason to write the book is I wanted people to have that in their life without having to die.

Lewis Howes 13:39 Mm.

Robert Greene 13:40 So I wanted to give you exercises so that you can feel what I'm writing about. So that's one of the exercises, and I have others so that you can perceive the world-

Lewis Howes 13:51 Mm

Robert Greene 13:51 ... more in that immediate, fresh, open fashion and re-enchant it so everything doesn't seem so similar and the same and so, and you're always craving something new. Th- I have a quote in there, "You don't need to travel to different planets and, and, and have all these incredible experiences. What you need is a new pair of eyes." It's a quote of Marcel Proust. You want to be able to look at the w- the same world that you're looking at but with a new pair of eyes, and that's a lot of what I'm trying to do in the book.

Lewis Howes 14:21 How do we start to look at the world with a new pair of eyes when we are dealing with a lot of challenges or stress or re- responsibilities or overwhelmed constantly and it's hard for us to remove ourselves from that or, like you say, step into the flow of that feeling?

Robert Greene 14:39 Well, nothing really of great value in life is gonna be easy, okay? But what I try and say in the preface to the book, and I understand this is a strange concept. Uh, Robert writes about power. He writes about seduction. M- those I can get what that is, but the sublime, what the hell's that?

Lewis Howes 14:56 Mastery, all these things. Yeah.

Robert Greene 14:57 Yeah. No, well, I don't know. So I try and ground you in the preface, and I try and say that probably you've had moments where you've sensed something else about life, something greater than your individual concerns, but it's very fleeting. But I want you to get a feel, understand that a lot of your misery and unhappiness and depression come from feelings of being so disconnected from your surroundings, from other people, and even from yourself. It's making you miserable, right? And you don't think about that way. Your tendency will be to blame other people for your depression, your unhappiness, or the world, okay? But there's something about how you experience life that can alter all of that. And in, in experiencing life in this different kind of zone, this different kind of level, it doesn't mean you can't go around about your day-to-day work, you can't get things done.

Lewis Howes 15:59 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 16:00 In fact, being so anxious and depressed and having, thinking about constantly about emails you have to respond to, it's not making your c- your career, your parenting, your relationships any better.

Lewis Howes 16:11 No.

Robert Greene 16:11 It's probably making you crazy, right? So in some ways, feeling like there's something greater than your ego out in the world is gonna make it almost easier to, to function in the day-to-day life. So I wanna make it clear that this is a book that can actually h- make life easier for you if you can absorb some of the lessons.

Lewis Howes 16:33 For those that chase success, money, or fame,

Lewis Howes 16:37 and it, they realize that it doesn't give them the ultimate fulfillment they're looking for, how can chasing or tapping into the sublime bring them more joy and fulfillment than money, success, or fame?

Robert Greene 16:54 Well, it's a, it's a well-known aphorism, and I write about it in The Laws of Human Nature, that if you make things like money and success your goal, it's almost you're gonna get in your own way and you're gonna make life harder. So the most successful people in the world, you can take, you can take an example like a Steve Jobs, for instance. Notoriously, he never cared about money.

Lewis Howes 17:17 Mm.

Robert Greene 17:17 He, he, he hard- he wouldn't spend it. He lived in a very plain apartment. He didn't buy all these l- What his motivation was was creating these beautiful objects, was design. He was a designer more than anything. He wanted to marry technology with beautiful aesthetic design, right? It was his obsession. And in the process of mastering that and the pleasure it gave him and the flow, which is a s- subject in Mastery, he made a lot of money.

Lewis Howes 17:49 Mm.

Robert Greene 17:49 More money than pr- a lot of, you know, almost anybody else, right? So I don't know Elon Musk. I don't know him personally. I know s- I can understand Steve Jobs better. But I have a feeling that what motivates him is the excitement of some new bit of technology that he create, something like out of a comic book, a car that can fly, whoa, more than... I know m- money is certainly is probably important to him, but I think the, the real motivation is the excitement of creating something that he imagined, right?

Lewis Howes 18:22 Right.

Robert Greene 18:23 So this isn't a book that's going to make you more successful in life. I, I understand that, so maybe you'll be put off in reading about it. But to feel like there's something larger than yourself, that you're connected to something deep, for so many s- millennia, we humans needed religion. We needed the feeling like there was something transcendent, greater than our s- itself, our ego, our individual self. It kind of grounded us in the sense that there's something much more important, much vaster, right? And that sense of connection was very healing to the human being, because we're the only animal that's conscious of our mortality and our death, and if we think about it, we go, "Why go on l- doing anything when it's all gonna be canceled out by death?" Religion was an incredibly important value in our world, and it's largely disappeared. You can't get through life without having coming to terms with some of these things. At some point, your health is gonna leave you. You're gonna suffer. Your relationships will fall apart. People you know are gonna die, and you're gonna be f- confronting the bare realities-

Lewis Howes 19:36 Mm

Robert Greene 19:36 ... of life and how harsh it can be, and you're gonna want to have something that grounds you and that's more than just money and more than just success, more than your ego. And if you haven't been developing this in your 20s and 30s, you get to your 60s and 70s, and you can't cope. You can't handle what life is throwing at you. So I must, I have to say it, this isn't a practical book for success. It's a practical book for living your li-

Lewis Howes 20:06 Mm

Robert Greene 20:06 ... experiencing life on a higher level. That's the practical value in it.

Lewis Howes 20:10 Well, the, and the, the flip side of that, when you live your life on a higher level, you're, should be able to attract more success, more opportunities, more experiences that bring you more joy.

Robert Greene 20:21 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 20:22 And when you're in that joy state, you typically can create better results in your life, typically.

Robert Greene 20:28 I have a chapter in there about love. It's called The Love Sublime, and I'm trying to say that love between two humans is like the highest form of the sublime in so many ways, okay? And the reason is we're, we humans have two sides to us. We're physical. We're an animal. We w- we have sexual desires. We want that kind of pleasure. We're also spiritual creatures that are aware of our mortality, that are aware of higher things, and we have spiritual cravings for something transcendent, okay? Just sex by itself is a kind of an emptiness. We, we get sa- we get that satisfaction, then we want more or something. It doesn't-

Lewis Howes 21:14 Mm

Robert Greene 21:14 ... really fulfill us. There's something missing. Pure spirituality, going to the church, you know, it could be great, but we're also physical beings, and so there's something seemingly alienating about that. In The Love Sublime, you're combining the physical attraction to a person with the spiritual. Your love becomes something spiritual. The person that you are attracted to, normally the people in our lives are objects. They, we just pass them by. We, you know, we, we see them like anything else, right? In The Love Sublime, that person becomes a subject. They live inside of you.

Lewis Howes 21:54 Mm.

Robert Greene 21:54 You connect to their consciousness. They become a part of you, okay? The reason I'm mentioning this is we have the metaphor of falling in love, and it's like literally falling, okay? And there's a fear of that falling. We fear if we get too far, we're vulnerable, and we're gonna get hurt, and so we stop it, right? We start having doubts and mistrust, and, "I don't know if I can trust this person. They might hurt me," you know? Then power struggles start emerging, and the moment you stop the process of falling, the other person feels that, and it causes them to distrust you, and it causes them to stop falling. So your attitude affects the other person. But by letting go and letting yourself fall deeper into what I'm calling The Love Sublime, the other person is drawn into that and s- and goes into the same process. So how you feel about the world, how you feel about yourself translates to other people.

Lewis Howes 22:59 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 22:59 And in this one instance, that sensation of letting go of your defenses and your ego is gonna draw the other person into that.

Lewis Howes 23:06 Yes.

Robert Greene 23:07 So there is a power that comes in, in, in submitting to the sublime.

Lewis Howes 23:12 At work, greatness sometimes starts with a pile of meeting notes here, follow-up questions there, but that's okay because ChatGPT Work, a new way to work in ChatGPT, can organize multi-step projects and help you make progress while staying in control. ChatGPT Work can use your apps, connected tools, and files to create things like landing pages, trackers, internal tools, even web apps. Say your team has a new product concept. Use ChatGPT Work to review customer feedback, pull themes, and draft a prototype. Maybe there's a planning doc that ChatGPT Work can organize into owners, next steps, and a shareable status update. Make it even more specialized by installing specific plugins like Google Drive or Microsoft Teams. The big picture? ChatGPT Work helps you get unstuck between thinking about your work and actually making progress on it Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans Interesting. In the book, uh, The Law of the Sublime, you know,

Lewis Howes 24:27 in the, the first words you write are about how you owe your life to your wife.

Robert Greene 24:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 24:33 How has your relationship with the law of love and the sublime transformed since having your stroke eight years ago in your marriage? How has that law of the love of sublime transformed in some way for you?

Robert Greene 24:51 Well, uh, we'd been together for many years, and like any couple, we had our ups and downs, but it was... But we had a very strong bond. And then, um, it's hard to explain, but when somebody saves your life, you have a... It kind of alters things.

Lewis Howes 25:11 A literal saving, not just, "Oh, you saved me by coming into my life-"

Robert Greene 25:15 No

Lewis Howes 25:15 ... but she saved you-

Robert Greene 25:16 Yeah

Lewis Howes 25:17 ... from dying.

Robert Greene 25:17 Yeah, because I was driving my car in Los Angeles, and she saw that my... I was slurring my words incredibly, and my face was falling. Half my face was drooping, and she didn't panic. She didn't scream or, or once. She just, "Stop the car, pull over, get out." He s- I started getting out of the car. "Get back in," and she called 911 right away. She kept her... She was level-headed, you know, which is, uh, something a lot of people wouldn't be.

Lewis Howes 25:48 Right.

Robert Greene 25:49 She's a very level-headed person. She saved my life because 30 seconds later, I would either be brain dead or I'd be dead.

Lewis Howes 25:57 Wow.

Robert Greene 25:58 You know? They would've come, but it would've been too late to get the blood flowing back to my brain, 'cause my brain, there was a blood clot and no f- blood was flowing to the brain. So when someone saves your life, there's, there's a different, obviously, [laughs] a different kind of feeling, right? And, uh, I always very much loved her. I still love her, but it, it, it was, like, something e- even deeper. I, I have to look at her through new eyes.

Lewis Howes 26:25 Oh.

Robert Greene 26:25 I have to see that I am here because of her, you know? I literally would not have a brain to write a book, or I wouldn't... I'd be dead, right? So, you know, you have to think about that every day as you look in the mirror, as you get up in the morning, and as you look at her, this person that, that did that for you. And so beyond which, she had to deal with this lump of human flesh, me-

Lewis Howes 26:54 [laughs]

Robert Greene 26:54 ... that couldn't do anything. For months, I was like a baby.

Lewis Howes 26:58 Wow.

Robert Greene 26:59 And she had to be patient, and she had to be loving, and she had... She didn't wanna lose me, but she had to also pretty much take care of me. And I, you know, I don't like being dependent. I'm a very independent person, so it was rough for me. But her patience and, and she's still very much patient and understands my limitations. I don't know, what more can you get out of a- another human being, you know? So we already had a very deep bond. We don't have children. We have pets, which are, are our children, and she's a filmmaker, and I write books, and so we have... Those are our children. But our bond is very powerful, both through the book wr- through what we've experienced because she said that that was the worst day of her life. She's, she saw ver- how close she came to losing me, so it just brought us that much more closer.

Lewis Howes 27:57 What was the biggest lesson for you over the last eight years that you've learned about love, seeing it with new eyes?

Robert Greene 28:05 We're so wrapped up in words and language and ideas that we don't understand that we're animals.

Lewis Howes 28:11 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 28:12 And that our communication to other people happens prever- un- preverbally. Other people sense your emotions. They sense you're defensive, you're insecure. If you sense from me that I don't like you, Lewis, which is the opposite, but if you sense that-

Lewis Howes 28:29 Mm

Robert Greene 28:30 ... you would have a much different relationship to me, right? I don't have to say a word. We were talking about this earlier, right?

Lewis Howes 28:36 Yeah.

Robert Greene 28:36 So I know that, um, the moment I start getting... My ego starts popping up with a little voice going, "Am I getting enough attention? Is she... Does she really love me enough? Is she helping me enough?" I go, "Get down. That's, that's stupid. That's ridiculous," right? If I let my ego constantly come up with defensive, resistant reaction-type things that are, happen a lot with couples, she would sense that, and they would have this kind of back and forth dynamic.

Lewis Howes 29:09 Yeah.

Robert Greene 29:10 So the idea is, in your relationship, you can change that back and forth dynamic by how you relate to the other person. You can s- When, when your ego starts prop- popping up and you hear its voice, you can say, "Wait a minute. I don't need to go there. It's gonna cause problems. It's not important." The ego isn't important. What's important is giving to the other person.

Lewis Howes 29:33 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 29:33 If you give to the other person, they're invited to give to you. So I learned that in a very powerful way because my ego was dealt a very severe blow with the stroke. I can't... I'm somebody that likes to swim, to hike, to bike, travel. I can't do anything. I'm like, you know, I'm like this helpless creature. And so I became very aware-

Lewis Howes 29:59 Hmm

Robert Greene 29:59 ... of how small I am and how I am not this powerful person, and it kind of altered how I look at myself and how I deal with my ego, and that's the most important lesson in, in, in the relationship that I've had since then.

Lewis Howes 30:15 Would you say that most of our pain and suffering in life comes from

Lewis Howes 30:20 focusing too much on ourselves, what we lack in our ego?

Robert Greene 30:25 Very much so. I mean, um, you know, we're... First of all, we're a social animal, and we can't... Our whole sense of self and who we are comes from being around other people. If you've ever been alone for a long period of time, strange things start happening to you. You start wondering about yourself. You, you, you lose connection to reality.

Lewis Howes 30:47 Mm.

Robert Greene 30:48 We need other people to validate ourself. We need to be seen through their eyes. So we're a social animal, but we're also an animal that's aware that we're gonna die someday and that there are these forces that are much more immense than we are, like the universe itself, like life on planet Earth, like, like 13, 14 billion years of the life of our universe, like 4 billion years of our planet. We're aware of how incredibly insignificant and small that we are, right? And so to the degree that we can g- get outside of ourselves, we can heal some of those wounds that came from that period I mentioned earlier as a child where we were absorbed in the world and then we lose it. It's a wound that, that is constantly afflicting us. We can heal it. There's a story in there of a th- psychotherapist in Buenos Aires in Argentina who has a patient named Miguel. Miguel is happily married, beautiful wife, three loving, devoted children, a beautiful house, a great job, but something is missing. He's unhappy. He doesn't know what it is. Something feels flat in his life. So he goes to this therapist and they talk, and they talk. They go through his childhood. They go through all of his grievances, all of his problems at work, and the therapist is thinking, "This isn't going anywhere. You know, we're just going around in circles." And finally, one day, he says, "We're gonna stop all of this. We're gonna train for three months, you and I. You're not gonna ask me why, and we're going to go and climb Aconcagua, Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere in Argentina, right in the Andes, one of the most amazing... It's like the Mount Everest of the Andes, okay? And, uh, don't ask me why. We're just gonna train, and we're gonna go do that." And the guy goes, "All right. All right." So they train. They finally make this climb, and it's the most insane experience. There's storms. Their, their lives are at stake. The stars at night are spectacular. The scenery, the landscape is just unworldly. And then they, they don't make it to the top because the weather's bad, and they come home. But the guy is transformed. And the idea is all of the talking just centers you on your ego.

Lewis Howes 33:18 Mm.

Robert Greene 33:19 Getting outside of yourself and going to a landscape like that and putting your life at risk and seeing the stars and seeing the universe makes you realize that what is bothering you is so insignificant-

Lewis Howes 33:31 Wow

Robert Greene 33:31 ... that it alters your scale of values. So opening up to what I call the cosmic sublime is a way to kind of heal some of the wounds that your ego inflicts.

Lewis Howes 33:42 You know, when I think of sublime, for me personally, I think of God. I think of... When I think of awe, I think of wonder, like, and questioning. How is this all happening? What is this universe? E- even though it's... We s- we know what it's made up of, but how is it really made up of that? How long, you know... Why are we here? Is the soul returning from somewhere else? Where does the soul go afterwards? All these things make me think of God, this idea of sublime. How has your relationship or view of God evolved since writing this book?

Robert Greene 34:20 Well, I'm, I'm not... Uh, I was, I was born Jewish, but I never really got into the faith 'cause it just didn't relate to me growing up in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

Lewis Howes 34:33 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 34:33 It had no relevance. So I have no organized religious background. I've had girlfriends who were Christian, and I've kind of see- saw, you know, the world through their eyes.

Robert Greene 34:46 I, you know, I've been doing a form of meditation that's from Buddhism, and I'm very much involved in that, but there's no God in Buddhism. But so I'll say this, though, um, first of all, I have deep respect for religions, and I recently reread the New Testament-

Lewis Howes 35:04 Mm

Robert Greene 35:04 ... and it was just like, it's a incredibly beautiful document. And just as literature, it's, it's so beautiful. But I'll say this. In The Cosmic Sublime, I explain the insane chain of circumstances that led to the formation of planet Earth and life on Earth, starting from the Big Bang and how things could have gone completely differently, how a slight change in the temperature, there would be no matter because particles couldn't cohere. There would be no light 'cause photons of light couldn't happen. There would only be darkness. And how the first star evolved and then exploded, which sent all the elements that, that seeded other planets happened, and there was almost a chance that didn't happen, on and on and on to planet Earth, this, this rock, right?

Lewis Howes 35:58 It's crazy. [laughs]

Robert Greene 35:59 That, that gets-

Lewis Howes 36:00 It's crazy

Robert Greene 36:00 ... hit by another planet, uh, called Theia, another moon, that now creates the, uh, the iron core of our planet, that changes the tilt of our planet, and all these details that go into place that are just enough for the life to form. If we were 2% closer to the sun, life would not have happened, right? And that planet that hit Earth that caused the things that also allowed for our planet to have an environment, the chances of it hitting us exactly the way it did are in- insane, all right? When you go check list of all these things that happened with our, you know, the, the, uh, magnetic field that protects us from radiation, the oceans that came from a thousand years of raining that filled all the asteroid basins that give us water, the elements that came probably from asteroids, the unlikeliness of this makes you think, "Is there a purpose there? Was there some reason for this? Was there some reason that all of this came together so that, uh, humans, 13 billion, 14, almost 14 billion years after the Big Bang, could be conscious and recreate this entire story of our universe?" Maybe other people on other planets have, but maybe not. It almost makes you wonder if there was a purpose, if something is going on for a reason, right? To me, that's the closest I can get to this eerie sensation that there is something out there that's guiding it, but it, it might be irrational, but you-

Lewis Howes 37:43 Wow

Robert Greene 37:43 ... get that feeling when you read this story.

Lewis Howes 37:46 The crazy thing is, you know, my, my twins just turned one yesterday, and my mom is staying with us right now. My wife's parents were with us, and some of their family were there, having a little celebration. And at the end of it last night, I was just hugging my wife, talking about how great of a job she's done over the last year as a mom and going through the challenges she went through, and I was just like, "You know, you did it and we did it, and they're here, and they're so beautiful, and they're, you know, they're growing and they're developing, and it's just such a joy to be around these two beings every moment we have with them." And I was telling my mom, I was like, "Mom, thank you for, you know, having me so that we could have these girls."

Robert Greene 38:32 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:32 "And, like, none of this would be possible without you."

Robert Greene 38:35 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:35 And I- she's been telling me more about her life stories over the last, you know, couple of years about her childhood and then how she met my dad, and just the chances-

Robert Greene 38:44 Yeah

Lewis Howes 38:44 ... of them meeting.

Robert Greene 38:45 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 38:45 And then their parents, the cha- and like you just go all the way back-

Robert Greene 38:49 Yeah

Lewis Howes 38:49 ... for my kids to be born. The chances are so slim on everything lining up to be here now, and for us to be here now, 14 years later after our first interview-

Robert Greene 39:02 Yeah

Lewis Howes 39:02 ... or episode one to episode 2001. It's got, you know, the, you call it cosmic sublime, right? It's like, but there's gotta be some purpose to all this, right?

Robert Greene 39:12 Um, well, first of all, so you're... Th- that's, um, that's absolutely perfect. So you talk about your parents. I calculated or, or I read somewhere that there have been 70,000 generations of humans going back to the first Homo sapiens. So that chance encounter happened 70,000 times.

Lewis Howes 39:31 [laughs] That's crazy.

Robert Greene 39:32 Right? Okay. Now, you may have been born, but you'd be in a completely different fashion. You wouldn't be Lewis Howes.

Lewis Howes 39:39 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 39:39 Who knows what you'd be, okay? But also, uh, 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula.

Lewis Howes 39:49 Oh, yeah.

Robert Greene 39:50 The most devastating experience in the history of our planet. I have a s- I retell the story of that last day of the dinosaurs in the book. I did a lot of research because I liked that day, one day where all of life practically disappeared on planet Earth.

Lewis Howes 40:08 Crazy.

Robert Greene 40:09 If that asteroid... So if you think about it, the asteroid was pretty large. It was like the size of a, of a skyscraper. It was a very big one. But if you think of the empty space in the universe and the chances of it hitting the Yucatan Peninsula, where it caused the maximum damage because of these limestone beds that were there and the water and the tsunamis, if it had missed, if that hadn't happened, dinosaurs would be roaming the planet or something else, and we wouldn't be here. But look at your children. I mean, the, the fact of life being created is one of the strangest, most... If you just thought about it, it's so weird to see these, these beings come, come into life, you know?

Lewis Howes 40:52 When they were tiny little cells at one point.

Robert Greene 40:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 40:54 And now they... It's-

Robert Greene 40:56 Yeah

Lewis Howes 40:56 ... it's crazy.

Robert Greene 40:57 Yeah, and, and their bodies are, are like these miracles of, of, of something. I don't know what. So recently, I had surgery on my left eye. You might see little signs of it.

Lewis Howes 41:08 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 41:09 Um, I had a, uh, a cancerous growth on my eyelid. The doctor removed it. It was very bloody, and there's like a hole there. In two and a half weeks, it all, like, healed itself.

Lewis Howes 41:22 Wow.

Robert Greene 41:23 The powers of our body are just insane, but it's like millions of years of evolution going into your children's bodies. My book is about just stopping for a moment and thinking about these things, and get your mind out of your, for day, your day-to-day problems and just realize the chance, the, the unlikeliness of your being who you are and being in this world right now. My book is, there are, like, 12, I call them doors, 12 doors outside that circle, and the word sublime means up to the threshold of a door in, in Latin, up to the threshold. And so I'm taking you up to the threshold, and you're looking outside the circle, okay? And there are 12 different versions of that, the last one being death-

Lewis Howes 42:10 Mm

Robert Greene 42:10 ... looking through the, the doorway of death itself. So I could have had more points around the circle, but that's what it ended up-

Lewis Howes 42:19 Yeah

Robert Greene 42:19 ... being.

Lewis Howes 42:20 Yeah.

Robert Greene 42:21 It gi- kind of gives you a complete feel of what it could be to experience this other reality that is outside of what we normally experience

Lewis Howes 42:29 The School of Greatness is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. One of my favorite parts of travel is when a trip gives you a feeling you can't really plan for. You're walking through a new city in the morning, you're grabbing coffee, you're talking to someone local, and suddenly the place feels a little bit more familiar. These are the moments that stay with me. They're the things that I crave. Not just the photos, but the feeling of being somewhere new and still finding meaningful connection. And that's what I love about Airbnb. When you're away having your own adventure, your home doesn't have to just sit empty either. You can share your space on Airbnb and give another traveler a chance to fall in love with your city the way that you fall in love with the places that you visit. And maybe there's a big game coming up, or maybe people are coming in for a once-in-a-lifetime concert. They need a place that feels comfortable and inviting. And the income from sharing your home can help pay for your own trips. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host. What would you say is then the enemy of sublime for people?

Robert Greene 43:37 Well-

Lewis Howes 43:37 Is it focusing on their, their, their stressful thoughts, their phone, or just not paying attention to the sublime? Anything that distracts them from it, or what's the main enemy?

Robert Greene 43:46 Well, I have two things in the book. I talk ... It's a good question. I talk about the anti-sublime and the false sublime.

Lewis Howes 43:53 Oh.

Robert Greene 43:54 So the anti-sublime is kind of an attitude that you might ... We f- tend to find a lot in the world today where, "Oh, come on, Robert, there's nothing ... It's just ... The world is just what it is. Science teaches us there's just facts out there, you know? There's nothing to be- feel awe or enchantment about. It's just the world as it is, right? People are there. The mountains are there. There's no reason ... You're just adding like romantic h- subjective beliefs to it. There's no need to be subjective. It's just all objective, scientific facts."

Lewis Howes 44:27 Mm. Yeah.

Robert Greene 44:27 Kind of-

Lewis Howes 44:27 I was dealt the cards that I've been given, and this is the way life is, and ...

Robert Greene 44:30 Yeah. It's kind of a cynical, hard-edged view of the world under the pretense of being realistic, right? So there's no room for romanticism or sentimentality-

Lewis Howes 44:42 Mm

Robert Greene 44:42 ... which people would think that's what my book is about. And it comes from a kind of a fear of anything different. A- and in the end, it's kind of a fear of death itself.

Lewis Howes 44:53 Mm.

Robert Greene 44:54 But it's a fear of having to open up and be ... it ... open up your heart and open up who you are and your emotions.

Lewis Howes 45:01 Yeah.

Robert Greene 45:01 You wanna just narrow things down to hard, brutal facts, to data, to algorithms, to what computers give you. That's the anti-sublime, and it's very painful because we were children once, and we did experience the world as enchanted and whirl- weird and strange. And to completely repress that is gonna secretly make you miserable-

Lewis Howes 45:27 Yes

Robert Greene 45:27 ... if you want it. The false sublime is you want the sublime. You wanna be taken outside of yourself, but you want this ... You want it to come from the outside. You want it to come from stimulation. So I'll take a drug, and that will give me the feeling, right? I'll ta- I'll drink a lot of alcohol. That will give me the feeling. I'll play video games, or I'll go see Marvel movies with all these fantastic, weird imagery. That will get me out of myself, right? Or I'll get addict- any kind of addiction will do that, or online porn or whatever it is. So you want the feeling of being taken outside yourself, but you want that to come kind of easy and quick.

Lewis Howes 46:13 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 46:14 Something that you can take or something that somebody can give you. Whereas the true sublime versus the false sublime is ... seriousness comes from within.

Lewis Howes 46:22 Mm.

Robert Greene 46:23 It's nobody's giving it to you. When you climb that mountain, when you look at your child, when you think back at your own childhood, there's nobody stimulating you or giving you these images. It's coming from your own imagination, your own experience. And that is much more powerful, and that's much more enchanting and awesome-

Lewis Howes 46:41 Mm

Robert Greene 46:41 ... than having it c- come when you're never quite happy and you want more and more of it. Be- concerns do an addiction. Whereas the real sublime is, is a much different experience.

Lewis Howes 46:51 Interesting. From everything that you've studied and researched in your own personal experience, what do you think is the root cause to someone being addicted to an outside stimulus to try to give them a feeling of this? Of all addiction, what do you think is that root cause?

Robert Greene 47:09 Well, um, I don't know. This might sound weird, but when you, you spent the first nine months of your life or whenever it was in a womb, right?

Lewis Howes 47:22 Yes.

Robert Greene 47:23 And you were inside another body, and you were completely a part of it, okay? And then you're thrown out into the world through the birth canal, and you're screaming and crying, and it's light and it's bright and, and you're, you're, you're not happy. But you're still ... Your mother is there, hopefully, and you feel a deep, powerful connection to that body that you once were inside, right? And you're sucking on its breasts, and you feel that kind of oneness, all right? And then as I explained, you're slowly getting separated, and you slowly get inside of your ego and you feel, you feel the pain of disconnection and separation from what you once knew unconsciously probably, obviously, right? And so an addiction is an attempt to get back into the womb.

Lewis Howes 48:15 Really?

Robert Greene 48:16 Attempt ... Yes. Is to get a feeling of something so soothing. It brings back the feeling of oneness. It crowds out all the anxiety. And that feeling of being separated because you're, you're like with this substance and it's taking you inside this other comfortable zone where there's nothing else in the world. You're protected, right? And, um-

Lewis Howes 48:39 Huh

Robert Greene 48:39 ... I feel, I could be wrong, I'm not a- an expert on it. I feel like that is at the root of addictions, the sense of separation and trying to soothe yourself and feel that, and get over that anxiety that it causes.

Lewis Howes 48:54 I saw this story online. It was a video, I think. I think Wayne Dyer might have said it originally about, it's kind of relevant for my, my situation. It's about twins who are having a conversation in the womb, right? Imagine twins in the womb having a conversation-

Robert Greene 49:12 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 49:13 ... and saying, you know, "Is there life after the womb?" And you're saying to yourself, you know, "Is there life after the womb?"

Robert Greene 49:20 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 49:22 You know, it's safe in here.

Robert Greene 49:23 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:24 It's safe in here. I feel a presence, but I don't know what it is. But after the womb, like, we're gonna die.

Robert Greene 49:31 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:31 You know? There's no more life, 'cause how are we gonna live once we're not connected-

Robert Greene 49:34 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 49:34 ... to your mother anymore? How are we gonna get fed?

Robert Greene 49:36 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:37 It's a different way of living, right?

Robert Greene 49:38 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 49:39 I'm curious, have you, on all your research on the sublime, what do you feel like happens after life?

Robert Greene 49:46 I mean, this is not quite answering your question, but everyone was dead once already.

Lewis Howes 49:52 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 49:52 So before you were born, y- you didn't exist. So if you think about it, uh, you were kind of dead already.

Lewis Howes 50:00 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 50:01 And when you were i- c- in the womb, you're already kind of close to that moment where you didn't exist, which is a form of death. So now you're returning to it. You're returning to where you once were. Look, I, the last chapter is on the death sublime. It's very important because it's near-death experiences, which I didn't have as powerful a near-death experience as those who see angels and light and all these other things happening, so I have to qualify it, but I had a near-death experience. And so I did a lot of research and I wrote a lot of stories in the book, to me, some of the, the most interesting stories about people who had near-death experiences. Now, I don't personally have any, uh, experience of, like, angels or, or God or seeing my dead relatives, which a lot of people do have. And so there's a lot of literature on it. Um, and some people believe that these experiences prove the existence of an afterlife. I'm not gonna go there because it's not my experience, and I can only write about what my experience is. There are p- a, very interesting books, a book I highly recommend called After. It's an excellent book, a scientist.

Lewis Howes 51:18 Hmm.

Robert Greene 51:18 His name is Bruce Greyson, something like that. He's, like, studied all of these, uh, after-death experiences, and he, he's a scientist, but he's also made to wonder, is there something going on here? And there are examples of people who are hardcore scientists who suddenly think that there might be evidence of an afterlife, okay? But what I will say is very strange things happen in the near-death experience.

Lewis Howes 51:45 Really?

Robert Greene 51:46 Yes. So I have two stories in there. Um, I have many more, but two of them are ... So there's this woman who, uh, named Pamela Reynolds, a very famous story in the near-death literature. She has a brain aneurysm that could pop at any moment and kill her, but it's at the base of her brain, which makes it extremely difficult to put a clip on to stop it from popping. So she's at risk any d- she's, like, in her 20s, any day it could pop and she'll die, and there's no way to get that far down.

Lewis Howes 52:19 Ooh.

Robert Greene 52:20 So there's this man in Arizona who's devised a possible surgery that could work, and what it is, is he freezes the body. He takes all the blood out and he cools it and he puts it back in at a temperature in, like, 50 degrees where the, where the, you're actually d- you're dead.

Lewis Howes 52:39 Come on.

Robert Greene 52:40 Yeah, he, he brings you as close to death as you can. He puts you on a heart-lung monitor to keep you breathing from a machine.

Lewis Howes 52:48 [sighs]

Robert Greene 52:48 But everything is stopped, okay? And-

Lewis Howes 52:52 There's no blood flow.

Robert Greene 52:53 No.

Lewis Howes 52:55 Holy cow.

Robert Greene 52:55 Well, the heart-lung machine is keeping things, right, but there's nothing in the body.

Lewis Howes 53:00 Right. Wow.

Robert Greene 53:00 Right? And so, um, and then-

Lewis Howes 53:03 This, this happened?

Robert Greene 53:04 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 53:05 Holy cow.

Robert Greene 53:06 There's a name for it. I t- I talk about it in the book. And anyway, he, he puts these things in your ears to make sure that there's no brain activity, because he has to completely stop the brain so that he can see down far enough into the brain to see the aneurysm and put the clip on. If there's activity going on, he, it's too d- I don't, I'm not a surgeon.

Lewis Howes 53:29 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 53:30 Okay? So these things in the ears, you can't hear anything when you're ... And, and the bra- it's monitoring that there's no activity in the brain. He puts you in a barbiturate coma, right? And so you're essentially as close to death as a human being can be, right? He, and then your eyes are all, are taped shut, et cetera. Okay, she's in this hospital room and it, and she, last thing she remembers is the m- sound of the wheels of the gurney, and then she's out of it. Suddenly, in the middle of the operation, she wakes up.

Lewis Howes 54:04 Come on.

Robert Greene 54:05 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 54:05 [laughs] Ooh.

Robert Greene 54:07 And she s- finds herself perched on the shoulder of the doctor, okay? And she sees him taking out this weird, looks like an electric toothbrush. What is that? And he's putting attachments on that look like a po- socket wrench like your father used to use. And she goes, "Oh, that's the drill he's using to drill into my brain," right? And then she goes higher up towards the ceiling. She looks down and she hears these two people talking about trying to find a vein to put something in her leg. She's wondering, "Why are they messing around with her leg?" Anyway, she goes through this other journey with light and dead relatives, et cetera. She comes back into her body at the last moment, and she, they have to, she feels, she jumps up and down three times, and then she hears the song Hotel California by the Eagles.

Lewis Howes 54:56 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 54:57 And then it's gone, and then she's carried away. 12 hours later, she wakes up from the drugs, and this assistant doctor is there. And she says, "By the way, let me just tell you what I experienced." And she tells him about the drill, about the two people talking, about the bouncing up and down three times, about the music, and a few other things. This guy goes, "What the fuck are you talking about? You can't hear anything. Your ears are, are, have these things in them. You can't see anything. Your brain is dead. There's no activity. There's no- nothing going on, right? There's no electrical activity in your brain. This is impossible." He goes and tells the doctor, who says, "I've nev- this is, I don't know what you got, what you're smoking, but this, this, this is impo- this, you can't be." But the woman is obviously, she, she heard, and that is the song that they were playing at the time.

Lewis Howes 55:50 Wow.

Robert Greene 55:52 And so I have another story. Like, I won't go into it, but the idea is that your consciousness is not necessarily connected to your body, right? If your brain is dead, if your mind has nothing going on, if your eyes are sealed, you can't hear anything, how can you be conscious? Well, maybe consciousness is something that exists outside the brain.

Lewis Howes 56:15 Hmm.

Robert Greene 56:15 Right? It is something that we connect to with our minds when we're born, and it's out there in, out in the environment. And then when you're dying and the brain is, is closing off, it's connecting in another way, but you're still conscious. I don't know. A lot of scientists find that ridiculous, but it calls into question... Near-death experience call into question the very nature of our consciousness-

Lewis Howes 56:39 Wow

Robert Greene 56:40 ... in a very profound way.

Lewis Howes 56:41 I mean, what is your thoughts then, from all the research you've done, on energy and frequencies, and how consciousness, the mind, the heart, are connected through some type of energy or frequency that's tapping into the sublime nature of this universe, or other people, or being able to... I don't know. What's your thoughts on this topic?

Robert Greene 57:07 Well, you know, I, I, I am a, sort of a, my background is m- kind of a rationalist and kind of a materialist, but I'm open to things.

Lewis Howes 57:19 [laughs]

Robert Greene 57:19 And, um, [laughs] you know, uh, you, you, you, you wonder sometimes.

Lewis Howes 57:23 Mm-hmm.

Robert Greene 57:24 And, uh, in my connection to death, I had sensations that you can't rationally explain. Like, I was there witnessing my own funeral, essentially, uh, with my mother and my wife there at, at my funeral and stuff. And, um, but there is a lot of scientists, physicists, neuroscientists, et cetera, who prescribe to, uh, an idea called panpsychism, or in some version of it.

Lewis Howes 57:56 What's it called?

Robert Greene 57:57 Panpsychism.

Lewis Howes 57:58 What does that mean?

Robert Greene 57:59 It means that, pan means everywhere, everything, and it, and psychism. So it's like consciousness and, and, and the psyche are everywhere in the universe.

Lewis Howes 58:11 Hmm. Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 58:11 The question is, how could we become conscious if there wasn't already something else out there like it? It's like, uh, the chicken and the egg syndrome, right? How could consciousness emerge from nothing? It's the same paradox of how could the universe emerge from nothing? How could life emerge from nothing, right? It's very, can't get your mind around it, and science can't seem to explain it. Some people believe, and they're very eminent people, they're not quacks, who believe that there's a consciousness that pervades the universe.

Lewis Howes 58:45 Really?

Robert Greene 58:45 Yeah. And that all that happened was we humans now are tapping into the consciousness that is out there. Now, I'm not doing a great job of explaining it. It's much more interesting than that. But it's everywhere already in the universe, and that we are, are tapping into it, and that there is essentially... So in Buddhism, they call it one mind, and the idea, they say mind is Buddha, Buddha is mind. And so the mind consciousness is everywhere, and you're just a part of that, and you're tapping into it. It's transcendent. It's a transcendent consciousness. And it explains why we humans have transcendent feelings and emotions, and why we feel, we feel that there's something larger out there than what we can rationally explain. We feel like there's something bigger out there than what our minds and our egos can, can, can, can describe, you know? And that's really the essence of the sublime things that are beyond words that you can't really e- explain. And so I find it extremely fascinating idea and subject, and I, in my meditating, I can kind of, I can kind of try to go there and imagine it. I can't say for sure that it's 100% this is the reality, but it fascinates me, this concept.

Lewis Howes 1:00:14 From everything that you've researched and studied and also your own experience, at this season of your life, do you feel like there is a God of some sorts?

Robert Greene 1:00:24 Even if there is a God, you, you actually can't know it. It's like you have to experience it, right? It's not a question of knowledge. Like I can, like a formula, like in words

Lewis Howes 1:00:37 Mm-hmm. It's a feeling?

Robert Greene 1:00:38 It's an experience-

Lewis Howes 1:00:39 Huh

Robert Greene 1:00:39 ... of, of that sensation of something much larger than yourself. I've had that sensation. I don't know if it's like the God of Judaism, the God of the Trinity, of, you know, the Holy Spirit. I can't say if it's the, the God of Islam. I don't know. But there's a sensation that there is something larger than yourself, and there's something unifying the universe. Now, in Buddhism and in other indigenous cultures, there is a concept of one energy that permeates the universe, right? Um, and in ancient Egypt it was called ba. In Buddhism, it has another name. I can't remember it. And I talk ab- in this about an African culture that had a, a similar concept. And the idea is that everything in the universe originated from one thing, right? And if everything in the universe originated from one thing, the Big Bang, then everything in the universe is connected, is part of one.

Lewis Howes 1:01:42 Right.

Robert Greene 1:01:43 So there's one energy that permeates everything. So when you sense, in whatever practice you have or in every moment, that oneness, that everything originated from one thing, including yourself, that could, is a sort of an experience of God in some way.

Lewis Howes 1:01:59 Yes. What did ancient civilizations think, know,

Lewis Howes 1:02:05 or do differently that we don't do today?

Robert Greene 1:02:09 When I went to college, I studied ancient Greek, and so that was ... I'm fascinated with ancient cultures and their languages and their belief systems. So, um, in this chapter, I try, I tell a story of the greatest, um, ritual in the history of religion called The Eleusinian Mysteries. It existed for 1,000 years in ancient Greece and it was also in ancient Rome. And, um, it was the most powerful, uh, religious experience anybody could ever have gone through. And I'm not gonna tell you all the details 'cause I, I don't want your, your listeners to go crazy with this stuff. But, um, I take you through the entire ritual, a- as much as I could, because it's a mystery and nobody was allowed to ever talk about it or they would be killed.

Lewis Howes 1:03:00 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:03:01 But we know certain facts, and we've been able to piece together certain things. I take you, the reader, listener, reader, through this ritual, right? And it gives you a feeling of dying and then being reborn, okay? But the essence of the story is to tell you that your idea of pagan gods, ancient Greek gods, Egyptian gods, whatever, is completely wrong. They're not these silly little, uh, personifications, anthropomorphized entities out in there bickering, doing things like Zeus in the sky, like how we figure imagery of it. There's nothing to do with that. They are forces of nature. They are spirits. They are waves of energy that permeate the universe. So Aphrodite is this energy, the goddess of love, is this energy that permeates the universe, that makes things wanna come together, that wants things wanna unite, sexually, in whatever fashion, right? It's the goddess of love, okay? And when an ancient person fell in love, they felt it wasn't they themselves that were feeling the love, the goddess had inhabited their body-

Lewis Howes 1:04:16 Mm-hmm

Robert Greene 1:04:16 ... and was possessing them.

Lewis Howes 1:04:17 Interesting.

Robert Greene 1:04:18 So religion to them was a feeling of being possessed by something greater than themselves, by a force of nature, by an energy that goes on. Zeus is something violent. It's the violence of the universe. Poseidon is the energy f- coming from the ocean. You know, uh, Persephone was the goddess of the underworld who brings life up vegetation.

Lewis Howes 1:04:41 Hmm.

Robert Greene 1:04:41 You feel these energy forces through you. You feel possessed. It's not happening you by yourself, but the world is possessing you. I find it a very, very beautiful concept. I'm sorry it doesn't seem very modern, but the idea that your sensations don't come from you, but come from outside you, that there's something larger going on, that when you're attracted to a person in an overwhelming way, you're being possessed by this energy that is constantly throughout the universe trying to unite things-

Lewis Howes 1:05:15 Interesting

Robert Greene 1:05:15 ... particles, et cetera. And so in, in the ancient Greek world, theos, the word for God, really l- means something that is ... you com- that is like a shimmering, that something very quick that's passing through. It's not a thing. It's like this-

Lewis Howes 1:05:33 Is it like an energy or-

Robert Greene 1:05:34 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:05:34 Interesting.

Robert Greene 1:05:35 And entheos is to be filled with that energy, and it was the highest form of religious experience to feel you possession. And atheos, where we get the word atheism, meant-

Lewis Howes 1:05:48 It's without

Robert Greene 1:05:49 ... abandoned by the gods.

Lewis Howes 1:05:50 Huh.

Robert Greene 1:05:51 They don't even wanna bother with you.

Lewis Howes 1:05:53 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:05:53 And that's like the worst feeling that you can have. I don't wanna get too into the weeds into this, but the pagan indigenous experience of the world to me f- fascinates me because I, I, I'm constantly experiencing these things. I'm reading about them, and I'm very, very attracted to that, that-

Lewis Howes 1:06:10 Ah

Robert Greene 1:06:10 ... worldview.

Lewis Howes 1:06:11 That's interesting. Everything you're talking about in this book is fascinating to me. I'm curious, what surprised you the most in researching this, or lessons you learned, things you studied, stories that brought you awe that you didn't already know?

Robert Greene 1:06:27 There's two chapters, one about the brain, uh, called The Neuro sublime, and the idea is that the human brain constructs what we consider to be reality, right? So you think you're seeing the world as it is, but you're not. You're seeing the world that the brain creates for you and constructs for you. It makes everything simple, it makes everything orderly, makes everything patterned and familiar. And there's another ... And it's creating, uh, exactly how the world appears. There's another way of seeing the world, right? There's another reality out there. And I describe that, and I describe the story of a woman who had a stroke. I don't know if you've ever, uh, heard of her, uh, Jill Bolte Taylor.

Lewis Howes 1:07:10 Is this the brain surgeon-

Robert Greene 1:07:11 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:11 ... the neuroscientist who-

Robert Greene 1:07:12 Who had a stroke.

Lewis Howes 1:07:13 Yeah, yeah.

Robert Greene 1:07:14 Great story. Anyway, she experienced the world for three hours, where the brain isn't constructing what you see. And so I'm trying to go into that and show you that you can explore something similar. It connects to the next chapter, which is about what I call the interspecies sublime.

Lewis Howes 1:07:33 Huh.

Robert Greene 1:07:34 I happen to be, uh, a, a, a, a deep animal lover.

Lewis Howes 1:07:38 Uh-huh. You have cats or dogs?

Robert Greene 1:07:39 I have cats.

Lewis Howes 1:07:40 Yeah, I've got two cats.

Robert Greene 1:07:41 You do?

Lewis Howes 1:07:41 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:07:42 Oh, I've seen them.

Lewis Howes 1:07:42 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:07:43 A few times.

Lewis Howes 1:07:43 You got four? I can only-

Robert Greene 1:07:44 Two.

Lewis Howes 1:07:45 Two. Yeah, two and two. We're, we got twin cats, you know? [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:07:47 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, uh, cats are amazing.

Lewis Howes 1:07:50 They are different types of creatures. They're different ... Their energy is very healing from my perspective-

Robert Greene 1:07:55 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:55 ... but they can also be kind of crazy too at times. [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:07:57 They're definitely cra- they're not, they're part wild.

Lewis Howes 1:07:59 They're not predictable.

Robert Greene 1:08:00 No, they're not.

Lewis Howes 1:08:01 They can just-

Robert Greene 1:08:02 They're not like a dog

Lewis Howes 1:08:02 ... start biting you, like, in a second.

Robert Greene 1:08:04 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:08:04 They could be calm, and then you pet them a certain way, and they, "Mah," you know? It's like ... [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:08:08 Yeah. Yeah, it's very true.

Lewis Howes 1:08:10 Right?

Robert Greene 1:08:10 That's why we love them.

Lewis Howes 1:08:11 [laughs] Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:08:13 Um, and so in that chapter, I went very deep into the research. So for instance, I tell the story of a man who's obsessed with a, with a falcon, with a hawk, and he tries to become a hawk. And he follows this one hawk everywhere, and he studies it, and he gets so inside their way of thinking. And at the very end of the story, and it's a, from a book, and it's a fantastic book, called The Peregrine, he almost feels like, he's like, this hawk has accepted him and allows him to come closer. And, and so the point of this chapter is-

Lewis Howes 1:08:47 Like, a wild hawk, not a hawk that he-

Robert Greene 1:08:49 Oh, no, no, totally wild.

Lewis Howes 1:08:50 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:08:50 It's called a peregrine. It's a fal- it's a falcon-

Lewis Howes 1:08:52 Wow

Robert Greene 1:08:53 ... in England. Um, and, uh, the supreme hunter among predator bir- birds of prey. And I, I describe ... Its physiology is insane. It reaches the highest speeds of any animal on our planet, okay? Anyway, the point is, animals have a different consciousness and brain, and they see a different world than we see, right? So a hawk can see things we can't see, literally. Um, snakes feel heat. They can see heat around them.

Lewis Howes 1:09:31 Hmm. Interesting.

Robert Greene 1:09:31 And they're, they can feel the body temperatures of things around them.

Lewis Howes 1:09:34 Interesting.

Robert Greene 1:09:35 Spiders are essentially blind-

Lewis Howes 1:09:37 Oh

Robert Greene 1:09:37 ... but they feel vibrations, and they live in a world of pure vibrations. Elephants can feel the vibrations in the earth, and they can sense, like, a earthquake coming well before anybody.

Lewis Howes 1:09:49 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:09:49 Um, you know, on and on and on. Birds can navigate through knowing the magnetic fields of the planet. They see a different reality than we do. It's not to say it, it's different, but they see a planet Earth that we, our senses don't even reveal to us. But through our knowledge of their physiology and how their brains work, we can voyage into how they see the world.

Lewis Howes 1:10:14 It's fascinating.

Robert Greene 1:10:14 And, um, I'll just end with this story. Mozart, the composer Mozart, loved animals and loved birds, and one day he passes by this ... He, he hears somebody singing a song from one of his concertos that has never even been performed. He goes, "What is that?" He follows the sound, and it's a bird singing this.

Lewis Howes 1:10:37 No way.

Robert Greene 1:10:38 And it's a starling. The bird heard him, um, uh, per- um, rehearsing it nearby, and so he's, "Wow," and he loves birds, so he buys the bird. It's a starling, and he names it, I think he names it Star or something similar. He takes it home, and he and the bird bond. He just loves that bird to death. He takes it everywhere with him. Then when the bird dies, he's, like, just so depressed. He has a funeral for the bird-

Lewis Howes 1:11:04 Hmm

Robert Greene 1:11:04 ... with friends. They, they, they go on this big funeral, and they bury the bird. Anyway, he composed a piece that was dedicated to his bird.

Lewis Howes 1:11:13 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:11:15 And people for years thought this was the worst thing Mozart ever composed. It makes no sense. It's kind of ugly. It's discord. It was his great failure, right? And years later, this woman in, like, the 1990s, she has the same bird, a starling, right? And, um, she wants to see if maybe the starling will like Mozart's music, and the starling isn't really into it. It prefers bluegrass music, right?

Lewis Howes 1:11:41 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:11:41 It gets really excited with bluegrass.

Lewis Howes 1:11:43 Yeah.

Robert Greene 1:11:44 But then she plays this piece that everyone thought was horrible, right? And the bird's going crazy. She's never seen it react like that.

Lewis Howes 1:11:51 Oh, really?

Robert Greene 1:11:52 And then she does the research, and other people have noticed the same thing. So what it means is Mozart got so into the bird, the starling that was his pet, that he could think like a starling, and he could compose music that could communicate to this bird. I just find that story fascinating for the sense of crossing the species barrier and being able to communicate to another species, almost like Dr. Doolittle sort of thing.

Lewis Howes 1:12:18 That's crazy. Did you ... Well, first off, whatever happened to the eagle, the man with the eagle? Did something happen with that story?

Robert Greene 1:12:25 Well-

Lewis Howes 1:12:25 The end of that? Did he-

Robert Greene 1:12:26 Well, he, he'd been following the peregrine for years, and then he just, he learns that he's got, uh, uh, rheumatoid arthritis and he's dying. So he wants to spend one last year following these birds, and he goes to this part of England, and he hones in on one bird that's, that he just loves to death. And he's follows it everywhere, and the bird- ... avoids him because he's a human, and they don't, he can't eat a human, so he's not interested. Slowly, over the course of months, it takes place over six months, the bird will get a little bit closer and a little bit closer. At one point he has the feeling that the bird is going to k- attack him, but then it doesn't. Then at the very end of the story, the bird's, uh, the, the peregrine is gonna migrate out of Southern England because it's, the season is different, so he's never gonna see it again, and he's gonna be dying, so this is his last chance. He's despar- he, he's desperate to see it one last time. He, he doesn't, he thinks it might be gone. He finds traces of other dead prey, so he knows it's still around. He sees the blood. He follows it, and there it is overlooking the sea. And he crawls closer to it, and the bird moves away. He crawls closer, and then finally he gets, like, as close as you and I are sitting, and he goes, "Oh my God." The bird goes to sleep, which means that he's accepted him in a way.

Lewis Howes 1:13:52 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:13:52 And that's the end of the story.

Lewis Howes 1:13:54 Wow, interesting.

Robert Greene 1:13:54 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:13:55 Wow. I'm so excited for people to get your book, The Law of the Sublime. Obviously, you've had so many other mega hit books that have done millions of copies sold for many of them. Uh, but I think this is gonna be one that opens people back into their childlike sense of wonder-

Robert Greene 1:14:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:11 ... uh, which I believe is the thing that we are lacking the most right now-

Robert Greene 1:14:15 I do too

Lewis Howes 1:14:15 ... as a society. We're, we're too focused on timelines and-

Robert Greene 1:14:20 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:20 ... responsibilities and stress-

Robert Greene 1:14:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:22 ... overwhelm and-

Robert Greene 1:14:23 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:23 ... day-to-day things that we gotta get done-

Robert Greene 1:14:26 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:26 ... as opposed to taking moments-

Robert Greene 1:14:28 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:29 ... where we can really just be in awe and wonder.

Robert Greene 1:14:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:14:32 And so I really hope people get this book, The Law of the Sublime, and you, you dive in, and you allow yourself to feel awe and wonder in these different areas that you've talked about. You s- talked about some of them, cosmic, sublime, love, death, um, all these different things that you talk about in here-

Robert Greene 1:14:50 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:14:51 ... that you cover in this book. Um, and I want people to follow you as well because you always have great content online.

Robert Greene 1:14:59 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:14:59 Um, so they can follow you. What's the best place that people can follow you right now? Are you typically sharing the most online?

Robert Greene 1:15:05 Well, uh, we have a, an ancient website. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:15:10 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:15:11 Literally.

Lewis Howes 1:15:12 Uh-huh.

Robert Greene 1:15:12 Uh, power, seduction and war, and spelled out, .com, and there you'll find, uh, uh, links to all my other books, uh, this is my eighth book, um, and to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube channel, and all that stuff. So that's the best place to go.

Lewis Howes 1:15:31 Cool.

Robert Greene 1:15:32 And I don't know when you're gonna post this.

Lewis Howes 1:15:35 I think it's coming out right around this launch or so.

Robert Greene 1:15:38 Oh, okay.

Lewis Howes 1:15:38 Yeah, the week before I think.

Robert Greene 1:15:39 You can pre-order the book, but may-

Lewis Howes 1:15:40 Yeah, yeah

Robert Greene 1:15:40 ... it won't be...

Lewis Howes 1:15:41 It'll be the week before so they can pre-order it or order it whenever they want.

Robert Greene 1:15:44 Yeah. You, you get special goodies if you pre-order it.

Lewis Howes 1:15:46 Where, if they go to that website?

Robert Greene 1:15:48 Uh, an- yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:15:49 It'll be, it'll be on that website or-

Robert Greene 1:15:51 Yeah, or you go to Amazon.

Lewis Howes 1:15:53 Okay.

Robert Greene 1:15:53 Amazon, you can pre-order it on Amazon as well.

Lewis Howes 1:15:55 Cool.

Robert Greene 1:15:56 Or Barnes & Noble.

Lewis Howes 1:15:56 Where can they go get the, uh, goodies? Is it-

Robert Greene 1:15:59 So if you pre-order it and you send us the receipt... It, it's all on my website and, and the-

Lewis Howes 1:16:04 Gotcha. Okay, cool. Um, was there anything you wanted to add or share that's been on your heart or mind, um, before I get to the final couple questions?

Robert Greene 1:16:14 About the book?

Lewis Howes 1:16:16 About the book, about your life, about anything new, about anything else that we can be of service to you about that you want to share or that you want people to know about?

Robert Greene 1:16:23 No, I, I, I think you, you did an amazing job kind of covering things here. I think, um, I just want to leave people with the idea that, um, this book is designed to enter your bloodstream and halt... The people who have read it, um, have said that it, they don't look at things the same way.

Lewis Howes 1:16:44 Wow.

Robert Greene 1:16:45 You know? And they don't think about things the same way. So it's not like you have to suddenly quit your job and just go live in the desert and look up at the stars, but you can live your daily life, but you're ch- you, you see things differently. And to be... The moment where you f- the feeling that you look at the world differently is something I can't even describe in words. It's extremely powerful.

Lewis Howes 1:17:08 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:17:08 It's what happened to me in the first days after I nearly died, and I look at the world that just doesn't seem the same. So I'm trying to somehow draw you into what I had experienced in those few moments.

Lewis Howes 1:17:20 Mm. "Let the law of the sublime enter your bloodstream," I like that.

Robert Greene 1:17:24 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:17:24 That's good.

Lewis Howes 1:17:25 Um, I've asked you this before a number of times. This is your sixth time on this show.

Robert Greene 1:17:29 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:17:29 And I'm curious if it's changed. It's called the three truths question. So hypothetical scenario, you get to live as long as you want in this life.

Robert Greene 1:17:36 Uh-huh.

Lewis Howes 1:17:37 But far in the future, it's your last day. Uh, and you get to continue to create and make all the work you want to make and write more books if you want to, but for whatever reason on this last day, you have to take all of your content with you, social media, books, gone from this existence. Hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world on the last day, and this is all we would have of your content. What would those three lessons or three truths be for you?

Robert Greene 1:18:04 There's something larger than your individual self out there, and you want to tune yourself to it. You are a social animal, and by your ability to understand people and get inside their spirit, you will be happy, fulfilled, and powerful.

Lewis Howes 1:18:21 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:18:22 And finally, um, life is very short, and you, you have to, even though I was given 200 years to live, it's still very short, and so you have to have a sense of urgency in this world.

Lewis Howes 1:18:36 Mm.

Robert Greene 1:18:36 You could die tomorrow any moment, even though I was granted 200 years. You could die any moment, so you have to have a sense of urgency. You have to be aware-

Lewis Howes 1:18:44 Mm

Robert Greene 1:18:44 ... of how short life is.

Lewis Howes 1:18:46 Mm. Beautiful. I think they evolve every time I ask you that question.

Robert Greene 1:18:50 Oh, oh, well.

Lewis Howes 1:18:51 So yeah. You know, it's good.

Robert Greene 1:18:52 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:18:52 No, I like it. I like it that it's like-

Robert Greene 1:18:54 It's okay

Lewis Howes 1:18:55 ... that's great. Uh, Robert, again, I got one final question for you, but before I do, I wanna thank you again for all that you do for me, for so many people in the world. You've been a, a light with your books and the content you've created and all the interviews you've done for many years now. Before I interviewed you, I didn't see you doing a lot of interviews out in the world, but now with podcasts, I see you doing a lot more, which is a great gift for so many of us. So I want to thank you again for all you do.

Robert Greene 1:19:20 Oh, thank you.

Lewis Howes 1:19:20 For being episode 2,001 as well as number one as well, so it's a cool milestone for us there.

Robert Greene 1:19:27 Uh-huh. Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:19:28 Um, and my final question is what's your definition of greatness?

Robert Greene 1:19:33 My definition of greatness is knowing who you are to the core and realizing what that core would be, what, what, what is truly you, what is unique about you, the special, weird power you have been born into-

Lewis Howes 1:19:50 Mm

Robert Greene 1:19:50 ... the seed that was planted in your birth, knowing it and bringing that seed to life is truly greatness.

Lewis Howes 1:19:56 Robert Greene, thank you for being here.

Robert Greene 1:19:57 Thank you so much for Lewis. I always love it.

Lewis Howes 1:19:59 Appreciate you. Amazing. [gentle music] 25 years Secret Service, getting people to admit the worst things they've ever done, what would you say is the number one secret or communication tip to getting the truth out of anyone?

Speaker 1:20:13 It's not about asking the right questions. It's creating and being in an environment where the truth doesn't hurt. What's the off-ramp we can give that other person so they can save face? You blame outside factors-