Hi, this is Against Everyone with Connor Habib, a podcast featuring my conversations with countercultural figures and presenting complex, spiritual, philosophical, and political ideas in an engaging and accessible way.

Well, I want to start this episode with some stories or some perspectives on a group I started years ago.

Gosh, now over a decade ago in San Francisco.

When I lived there, I had an apartment with my best friend, Jeb Havens,

who's been a guest on the show,

and I wanted to meet people who would be interested in talking

about spirituality and science. So I started a spirituality and science discussion group,

and I called together some of my friends, and I also sought out people who I didn't know.

Sometimes strangers would come up and talk to me, a lot of times because they recognize me from what I was doing in porn.

And I would say, hey, I'm doing this thing.

Would you maybe like to see if you want to be a part of it?

Every two weeks, a group of us would meet and we'd discuss a topic, then discuss

a reading that I had offered to everybody on photocopied handouts, and then we'd have a break.

There were some cheese and crackers and spreads and stuff, though no alcohol.

And then we'd have a meditative or contemplative exercise.

It was about two, two and a half hours every two weeks.

And there were a few principles to this group.

One, it was based in Western esotericism.

So we mostly centered around anthroposophy, the approach to I've developed

by Rudolf Schneider, but we also would sort of dip into other Western esoteric philosophies.

Two, you had to commit to three meetings if you wanted to come to one for the sake of the

integrity of the group.

...