[Music]
Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.
My name is Rick Archer.
at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We've done
over 700 of them now, and if this is new to you and you would like to check out previous
ones, please go to www.BATGAP.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and check out the previous ones. This program
is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate
it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on the website and a page
giving you more details about donations.
My guest today is Philip Wade.
Philip lives in the UK and he is kind of an ordinary guy who had a spiritual awakening
and has become a spiritual teacher of some kind, although I don't know if he would define
himself as that, but we'll see.
He had been meditating for about 14 years when he experientially realized the nature of the
the true self, which referred to itself as infinite silence.
And before that, he was a chartered civil engineer and operating group director of a
large business.
In 2000, in response to dreaming about work on a skiing holiday, what were you doing dreaming
about work on a skiing holiday?
>>Rick: Yeah, I was just...
>>Benjamin: Philip began meditation.
Ultimately, this led him to leave his old world behind in 2009 at the height of his career
to focus on a deep inner calling. So,
Philip, why don't you take it from there,
elaborate on what I just said, and
continue on and tell us a little bit more
about yourself. Yeah, sure. So, the skiing
holiday thing is probably the point I
most often refer to, say, "What started you
on this?" Because we were in Whistler on
the west coast of Canada, so probably
skiing-wise, about as far as you could get
from home, certainly from the UK. You
- You could have gone to Chile.
- Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe.
That would have been further, wouldn't it?
But anyway, it was a long way, 13 hour flight or whatever.
And I used to go for two weeks and skied hard.
And I remember waking up, having dreamt about work.
I kind of sat on the side of the bed, I think.
I remember saying under my breath, this has got to stop.
- Dreaming about work?
- Yeah, dreaming about work, yeah.
You know, like I've come here to ski,
you know, I worked hard and this was my break.
That kind of led me in fairly short order,
that was in the year 2000, to meditation.
I'll skip a few steps there.
And I kind of just read this book by this guy,
Paul Wilson, I think his name was,
called "Calm for Life" and it included some instructions
about how to meditate in there.
And I thought, yeah, okay, I'll give this a go.
- I know that guy, I think.
Is he an American?
- Australia. - Australian, okay.
That doesn't help him then.
- I think he was referred to as the guru of calm
for quite a while.
He was written quite a lot of books.
But anyhow, I read his book and I kind of learnt the basics of meditation and I just basically
totally committed to it.
And as I did that, I mean I was pretty calm on the outside but inside there was stuff
going on.
And things just kind of settled down really quickly and I thought this was really beneficial.
And even though I was working 60 hour weeks probably, was the norm, and quite a bit of
that period traveling around the country for the businesses I was running, I still
managed to get my half an hour meditation a day in and out. If I could do it before I
left for the train in the morning that was great. Sometimes it was on the train,
sometimes it was back after a day's meeting, but half an hour was my kind of
commitment to myself. And that was profoundly beneficial in my work but in
my life in general. That led to exploring a few things with my then partner with
complementary therapy type things and I found out that you could learn these
things and I thought wow this is amazing and the results I got for myself were
profound but also part of it was sort of sharing with others and it had a big
impact on the people I worked with at the time and it just became clear by
about 2005 that I was being called in a different direction with all this I could
sort of see it coming and it took about four years to make the decision to leave my old
world behind. I kind of knew it was going to come. I changed, I kind of left my old relationship
behind at the time. I wasn't married but we kind of mutually decided it was time to move
on. And in 2009, just after I'd turned a big business around, which was nothing to do with
my core discipline that the company had asked me to do, I just knew that that was the time.
It was a big contract extension for the company,
but I thought I've got to go.
If I don't go now, I'll regret it.
And I left and kind of walked into a big void
with a vague plan in my head about the things I might do.
Very little of which actually turned out
to be the things I actually did do.
Some months before, maybe not quite a year before,
I met my now wife at an EFT workshop.
- EFT is what?
emotional freedom techniques.
- Is that the tapping thing?
- The tapping, yeah.
I call it acupuncture without the needles.
I don't use any of this stuff anymore, by the way.
That was an insight I got.
I had to drop all that, but that's where I met her.
And she, as I walked into the room with this lady I knew,
who was the teacher for that class.
So he said, "Oh, you're Philip Wade."
And I'm thinking, how does this woman know who I am?
And she'd found me on the internet,
through the FT, I think it was.
But anyway, long story short, she contacted me in the May,
I'd already handed in my notice.
And by the end of July that year, I handed in my notice
and we started seeing each other.
A year later we were married, but I was kind of meditating.
And as soon as I left work,
which was ridiculous and long hours,
the energy in my body just started to transform
and I carried on meditating.
And a couple of years into that,
I think that was around 2011.
I left work end of July 2009, the first really major insight emerged, which I won't bore
everybody with the details, but in essence it is what became known as, if you look on
my website now, you'd see a reference to spheres of light or the spheres.
I'm basically in this kind of deep meditation kind of space.
I got a vision of leaving something behind that I'd just paid a lot of money for.
presence said you don't need any of that just do this and it basically just said
to me just connect from your heart with the spheres and I was lying in bed and I
remember doing that I remember just think okay well in for a penny in for a
pound kind of thing as I just opened to that there was a whoosh of energy
through my body and it felt like I was being upgraded in some way it's like
something really powerful was going on for quite some time and I wasn't really
quite sure what it was at the time but I remember being clear that I was to tell some friends
who I'd connected with and I said, "Hey guys, just try this." And there was about seven or eight of
them and they all came back over the next few days. They came back and asked, "Wow, that was fantastic.
What was that? Where did you get that from?" I said, "Well, it just came in this meditation."
And then the next thing that happened was I was stood in the kitchen and washing the dishes
and I suddenly got these words appeared in consciousness suddenly it was like open source,
open source and I knew the words and I knew it was connected with this thing called the spheres
which became spheres meditation or the spheres like meditation and I looked it up and it just
happened so happened to be 20 years to the day when the open source foundation had been created
by Linus Torvalds and there was this some principles on there that really spoke to me about what this
was supposed to be and it was really clear and I became bombarded with messages saying right you've
now got to put this out there to the world and essentially what happened was this group of
friends helped me and we built a website and put it all out there and it touched quite a lot of
people very very quickly and I was getting asked all sorts of questions about where this came from
What did it mean?
What was it?
And like these answers were just coming out of nowhere, thinking where's this stuff coming
from?
And it just accelerated, accelerated and deepened, accelerated and deepened.
And it was clear that I was meant to be sharing it.
And I ended up doing loads of events, not because Philip wanted to, but because like
I was being kind of pushed into it.
I remember somebody said, Oh, you should come to this place called the Sanctuary of Healing.
And I thought, okay, I'll go there.
maybe half a dozen people, that'll be fine.
And like 30 people showed up and like they were having wow, wow moments, you know, like
we'd be sort of five minutes into the workshop.
I'd start the meditation and somebody would have an absolutely enormous energetic shift
and leaving all sorts of trauma behind.
And people were like 30 people in the room were kind of like a bit spooked by it.
But I was just like totally calm.
And I would go over to these people and say, you all right?
"Yeah, I feel completely held. Don't worry, I'm okay." And this happened regularly at the events.
And it just went on like that for a while. And then about a year and a half later,
and there was a ton of energetic shifts going on in me in that process as well. All sorts of
baggage being left behind, stuff being cleared out of the emotional body and so forth. And like,
just off the scale experiences that I can't really put into words, one of which I call my annihilation
experience. I mean, I literally thought I was going to die. And I thought, okay, we'll get on
with it kind of thing. And it was just the energy was buzzing in my body for days. And then in 2014,
which was about a year and a half later, it was the unequivocal realization flowered, you know,
like there was just no sense of this body. I couldn't even recognize the idea of a Philip
in that process. There was just awareness, just awareness and a knowing and it was eternal. I'm
trying to use words to describe that something that I cannot put into words. It was just eternity
was the word I guess you'd use. And somewhere in that space, suddenly these words, infinite silence
emerged and in that same moment the very subtlest sense of this body I thought oh yeah yeah yeah
there was a kind of body here vaguely so I recall that it's really really subtle though I wouldn't
have been able to tell you where I was and then it with those words and knowing the clarity that
that's whom I really was and I sometimes refer to it now as everything had changed and nothing
had changed and it was like all that I thought I was, Philip Wade, this guy who used to be a
civil engineer and all the rest of it, yeah well that was all kind of an experience that I'd been
had but it wasn't that which I really was and so all of that had changed and nothing had changed
in the sense that oh yeah yeah infinite silence that's who I am that's who we all are and it was
made clear that I was to use this term in the sharing that had already been going on, but
this was the words he gave, the new way.
And that kind of eventually came out of that.
I don't know how long it lasted.
It was quite a long time.
And my body was like, it was plugged into the universal grid and it was absolutely buzzing.
And this lasted for about two weeks and my body wouldn't sleep.
the kind of mind started to try to kick back in going,
what on earth is going on?
And I remember I kind of just sitting there,
that kind of question came up and consciousness said,
life is death.
- Life is death.
And I realized instantly that it wasn't the body
that was dying,
which is what the mind thought was happening.
It was the identification,
the attachment to and the belief that all I was that,
that was dying, that was really clear.
life is death it said. And then it gave me a date saying, you know, basically no need
to worry, this phase is going to finish on this date. And we were part of that phase,
we were on holiday, we planned to go on holiday. And I wasn't sleeping. And I was kind of walking
around in this garden barefooted to try and ground myself. And then it ended whilst we
were on holiday, that kind of the energy settled down and I could sleep again. I remember sharing
It was Sue, my wife, when it had happened.
She just loved the words "infinite silence"
and everybody I started using that term to
just somehow seem to resonate with it.
And in that process, it became clear
that I'd had this website domain appear
in consciousness in 2007.
It happened twice.
And what happened was I'd got this name, gatewaylocation.org.
And I thought, okay, I'll go and look at this domain
and it wasn't there.
So I thought, well, strange.
And then six months later, I got it again.
And this time it said, do you want to buy it?
I thought, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do
with this domain.
So come fast forward seven years, this happens.
And it suddenly became clear,
Gatewallocation.org was basically to be used
to share this, the message of self-realization.
So the website got built from that process
and that's what happened there.
Let me pause you for a second and ask you a few questions about everything you just said,
because I'd like you to embellish on some of it.
So, first of all, you strike me as, from everything you've said,
and I've heard you say on recordings, as being a very intuitive guy,
very much guided, actually, I don't know, you can perhaps suggest by whom or what you are guided,
and trusting of your intuitions, which is a good thing.
I mean, there are a lot of fairy tales about this, you know, where Frodo, you know, just
has this impulse that he has to go and do this thing, or Jack and the Beanstalk, "I think
I'll sell the family cow for a handful of beans and see what happens."
And so, it's kind of a leap of faith, but in these stories it works out.
So, it's kind of part of the culture, actually, that people can operate this way.
So that's interesting.
And then, I find it interesting that you took to meditation so readily, just learning it
from a book.
that is usually the case with most people, at least most people I talk to. I run
into a lot of people who say, "Well, I've tried to meditate in this and that and it
never, it's not easy for me, it's hard for me to keep at it and things." So you do
seem like a fish to water in terms of meditation and to my mind it suggests
past life involvement in this kind of thing which, you know, we pick up again at
certain point and take to it naturally. The intuitive bit, I wouldn't have necessarily
said that, to be honest, back in 2000. You know, if I was necessarily looking at other
people who had seen it, I thought it was intuitive. But I think reflecting on it now, with the
benefit of a lot of hindsight, there was this sense that I'd had, that by the time I was
50 I was going to be doing something different but I didn't know what it was
and it was 48 when I left work 47 48 so I suppose that was a bit of intuition a
sort of knowing and what I think I'd established from the small amount of
stuff that I've read it was kind and I really knew nothing about this subject
whatsoever just trust I totally committed to that I realized that I
needed to do that because I knew nothing really. That was pretty clear to me, I knew nothing.
So you hadn't had any interest in, you hadn't read like the Power of Now or
Autobiography of a Yogi or something like that when you were younger?
I read Power of Now when it first came out, I think that was around 2000, 2001 was it?
Something like that, I think.
Yeah, I remember reading that thinking, yeah, this speaks to me. And I think I read the
the conversation with God Books at the time and I remember having an experience with that.
It's right at the beginning of the book where it well sets the question to whom does God
talk and when. I know what the answer is going to be and he says, you know, he says, I talk
to everybody all the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens. I
completely get that. It just made so much sense to me and the books when I read them,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of, but
which was a complete contrast to the
Catholic upbringing I'd had. So that
was interesting. I wouldn't have classed
myself as intuitive, but trusting
probably, and I think I've probably
become, as this has been integrated, more
intuitive. What do you think intuition is in
the deepest sense, you know? Do you think it
comes exclusively from within us, or do you
think that there's some kind of divine entity or entities or something that guide us and
are concerned with our welfare? What's your personal hunch about that?
Okay, I refer to it as coming from the silence.
Okay.
The infinite silence as was realized. And that is, for me, if you like, is the source of
wisdom. So, I don't class anything that I share as Phillips. I refer to it as coming
from this silence. What I found over the years, particularly since things really
flowered, was that it just comes up with insight, clarity, and it feels like it's
arising from that space and then, you know, the brain or whatever translates
into a word or a vision to show me something and I just trusted that
completely because it was clear it wasn't coming from here, you know, my head.
The way I look at it, it's just the silence speaks and it'll do that in many ways.
And it'll do that through intuitive insight, it may give you a word.
I often get a set of words that I'm to use as a message to give to people, like in a little quote or whatever.
And when I do that, it has a big impact on people.
So, it's all arising from the source of wisdom that I refer to as the silence or the infinite
silence.
David Well, it's interesting how the silence is
so pregnant with possibilities.
You hear people like Beethoven or Mozart or great writers and J.K.
Rowling or whoever talk about how this idea will just come to in a flash out of apparently
nowhere.
Or like Mozart, he'd say he would cognize a whole symphony in a few seconds, and then
taking hours and hours to write it all down, but sometimes this word silence has a kind of a plain
vanilla connotation, like it's just this flat nothingness. But some people, like Deepak Chopra,
likes to use the phrase "field of all possibilities". It's this cornucopia of creative possibilities.
Yeah, I like that. I mean, actually, the words that were coming to me there,
it's not a phrase I've used for a long time, but "a sphere of all possibilities". And the reason
And sphere is because when I got, just use your intention, your heart based intention
to connect with the spheres, I realized or one of the realization was that it's just
a metaphor really, but if you were to consider a single finite point and radiate out equally
in every direction, you get a sphere.
And so you could think of the universe as an infinite sphere, not that it has a shape.
And so the sphere of all possibilities, that silence for me is the birthplace of everything.
And the bit about the spheres bit, what I realized was the spheres, that meditation,
just usually, I was shown that that was connected with what's referred to in India as Hiranyagarbha.
I might not get the pronunciation.
No, that's right.
Golden egg.
The golden egg, the golden womb of creation.
became clear was that the reason that meditation and the reason that appeared
first was it was both an energetic bridge to the silence, so it would
transport you there, if you like, like a portal to it, but also it was the
creation point, the womb of creation, the golden egg of creation, through which the
manifest realms occur. And I refer to this now as, you'll see this in many
spirit traditions and you must be more aware of it than I am, but the triality of
consciousness, so in my terms that would be infinite silence, spheres or spheres
of light and the physical domain form. It has many names and I realized that those
were the three in one that's referred to in many traditions. But going back on
the intuition question I wouldn't have necessarily said that but I was
certainly trusted, certainly trusted. What was the other thing that you asked? There
something else.
Pete Well, I do want to talk more about the spheres
of light, but what you just said about the intuition thing and the universe, you know
how there's that saying, "Man is made in the image of God."
You kind of think of the universe as just the expression or the manifestation of that
infinite potentiality, but then we are a microcosm of that just as the universe emerges from
that and evolves and evolves into greater and greater expressions.
You know, from within us there can be these seeds of impulse that give rise to an expression
of something, and I think you've just described that process to some extent.
You know, I have this friend who's been on Backgap a few times, we have this ongoing
debate.
He somehow feels that God or the creative intelligence that governs the universe is
just developing as the universe grows.
And I keep saying, "That's like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps."
It's got to come from some place ultimately, and I think that we could think of God as
having an unmanifest phase and then a manifest phase, and perhaps it's cyclical.
And so, yeah, in the manifest phase, the universe is evolving, we could think of that as God's
body, but it comes from a field of potentiality that makes that possible.
So anyway, my debate with him is kind of on my mind, but you're kind of reminding me of
it by what you're saying.
I can say something about that if you want, because this phrase "made in the image of
likeness of God" in my Catholic upbringing would come up, you know.
But what I eventually realized is that there's a misinterpretation of what that actually
means because you get this thing where the bearded guy in the sky, the typical image
that you see of God, looking down upon humanity.
Right.
That's not what it means.
The maiden, the likeness of God,
as experientially seen, means that we too are that.
- Yeah, yeah.
That's what I was trying to get at there.
- And so I use this metaphor.
Do you mind if I just use it?
- Oh yeah, I like that metaphor.
I heard you use it.
- Yeah, actually the first part of the metaphor
came to sue my wife,
but I've developed it a load over the years.
But the metaphor's really good.
It's really helpful for people.
Typically--
- Explain what you're holding,
'cause some people will just be listening to this in audio.
- Yeah, I'm gonna do that.
So basically I've got a fiber optic lamp in my hand
and you can see if you're on audio only,
some points of light at the end of the fiber optic filaments.
And typically if you consider yourself,
your body mind experience as one of those points of light,
then most people spend most of the time thinking,
believing that that's all they are.
And they look outward into the world
and it's a world of separation.
You know, every other point of light is separate from every other point of light and the world's
a pretty scary place when you look at it that way, this separation.
There's them over there and there's us over here and all the rest of it.
The whole meditative journey, the whole self-realization journey is about turning what I call a turning
point and we start to look down the filament, look down the fiber optic.
And the first thing that we come to on this metaphor is this blue light at the base here.
And for those that can see it, you'll see that all of the light in all of these filaments
at the end of the fiber optic, all of the light comes from this one source.
So it's the single source made manifest in multiple variety.
And this in the experiences that emerge are referred to as the spheres.
is the spheres bit, the Hiranyagarbha bit.
But why is spheres, the word
spheres, first of all it's plural and
secondly it implies some kind of
limitation because you have, you could
have a sphere here and a sphere there and
a sphere there, but you're alluding to
something which is universal, not
individuated. Correct. The reason it's
spheres, the reference for that, because it
was plural, it was plural in the
inside is its multi-dimensional,
multifaceted nature. If I just said
sphere, it would kind of just think like
just...
So that's its multi-dimensional nature.
This sphere
of like the Hiranyagarbha, I've been shown
a visual for this which I'll try and
articulate to people,
but if infinite silence had an edge and it
doesn't,
then this abuts it or is like
birthed within it. It's the first expression of that. So it's within that infinite sphere,
Hiranyagarbha appears and it's powered by, using the rest of the metaphor, the battery here at the
base is the power, the infinite silence. Now, that's a limitation in the metaphor because actually
that power is everywhere, so it would be infinite silence would surround this completely and this
wouldn't be at the base only, it would be everywhere. And the dots, you know like Russian dolls?
>> Yeah.
>> You'd have spheres within spheres, and this way you'd get multiple universes,
multiple expressions, multi-dimensions, all occurring within the infinite sphere. And
how I see it or how it's seen is that all of its expressions, all of its manifestations
are here now because the infinite silence, one of the many things that was clear was that it was
beyond time, beyond space, beyond form, beyond contrast, and there was just no thing happening
there, yet it was full of infinite potential. And without its first expression as Hiranyagarbha
or spheres and then the form, it wouldn't have any experience because there was no time,
no space, no form, no contrast. And so it creates this, if you like, it chooses to create this
first Hiranyagarbha or spheres of light, then the physical domain and those are
spheres within spheres and through that triality it comes to know itself in its
own experience. So it goes, "Hey, wouldn't it be a great idea to be Rick Archer?
Wouldn't it be great to be Irene Archer? Wouldn't it be a good idea to be
Philip Wade?" And through this vehicle, without that, it wouldn't be able to come
to know itself is in its own experience. So, that's how I kind of articulate it.
That's great. I love that.
It's more than that, but that's a way of expressing it.
That's so interesting. Have you ever seen that picture of Vishnu lying on his serpent couch,
and these spheres are bubbling up out of his mind or something, and each one of them is a
little universe that is getting created? Kind of what you said reminded me of that.
I'm not sure if I have, but it sounds perfect to me.
These spheres are being burst from, you know, like the Russian dolls almost, you know, the kind of spheres.
Yeah, in fact, I think the picture might show them coming from his heart area, just as you've gestured.
I have a picture, I went, unexpectedly a few years ago, I went to Iceland and I met this intuitive artist lady.
I was like, she has to draw a picture for me. And she has a picture.
I said, what I want you to do, your commission, is to create a picture that represents this.
It's not quite the same picture as Vishnu, but it's got spheres.
Yeah, well what you're saying is so interesting and might be worth dwelling on for a little bit.
I've heard this whole explanation in very similar terms about what you could call the
self-interacting dynamics of consciousness, where in its primordial unmanifest state it's all oneness,
but then through some mechanics there's some kind of emergence in which you end up with
knower, known, and process of knowing, and all of that really is just the oneness, but somehow it
has become three, and that three-fold nature enables experience to happen, and yet it's still
one, and yet it's three, and yet it's one, and yet it's three. Somehow the one in three creates this
infinite frequency which results in a sort of a tremendous dynamism at the foundation of creation,
and that dynamism is what gives rise to the whole show. I also love what you said about
through these manifest forms that that oneness becomes a living reality.
Pete Yeah, yeah.
Pete Yeah.
something, which some say is actually the whole purpose of creation. It's like God got bored
just being one that's, "Let me play the Leela, let's have some play." And so, then we're
all kind of like your filament thing, we're all expressions of the one having a relative
experience which wouldn't be possible if diversity hadn't arisen. And our whole purpose is to
embody to greater and greater degrees that divinity or oneness or whatever you want to
call it, and yet be human beings, breathing and acting and living and loving and doing
all the things we do as that.
Absolutely.
I mean, I have a whole live stream on this called Life, Purpose and Meaning, and basically
I take people on a journey to help them sort of start to open up to this.
Because without this three in one, there wouldn't be experience, there would just be infinite
silence, there would just be silence absolute, that's all.
It would just be silence aware of itself as that, and there'd be no experience.
So this process, if you want to call it cyclical, you could do, that's necessary for it to come
to know itself.
And it's all here, is how I see it.
It's all here.
I don't ask anybody to believe this, by the way, because when the clarity of that silence
emerges, it will become what I call it, capital S self-evident, that although we experience
linear time, time is not an intrinsic property of the universe. Physics is seeing that now.
It's just all here. I remember seeing a great metaphor many years ago. It's like a light
flashing on and off on now if you do that fast enough but it looks like the lights
on all the time sure like a movie movies are actually
discrete frames but they look like basically now you know you take out to
infinite speed if that's if there was was such a thing as infinite speed then you
kind of get is like on and off it is just the infinite means it's infinite is
it's unlimited, it has no limitations whatsoever, whatsoever.
And so it's just all here.
And so we experience linear time
because that gives us the gift of experience.
Without linear time, we wouldn't have experience.
But it's like if you, actually,
it's just a movie running, you know,
a universal size movie running at how many frames per second
and you're just looking at those frames.
That's one way of looking at it, I would say.
- Yeah.
It's not about believing this, it's about realizing this.
Yeah, everything we're saying here is about that.
And there was another thing you just said which actually adds another little flavor to the
whole thing.
You said something about silence being aware of itself or something like that?
Yes.
If you think about it, at that fundamental level, there's nothing else down there for
it to be aware of other than itself.
But in becoming aware of itself, that automatically begins to set up the three-in-one structure.
all of a sudden there's the observer and the observed. And it does that by virtue of the
fact that it is consciousness. And consciousness by its very nature has to be conscious of something,
so it becomes conscious of itself. And then boom, you end up with the whole phantasmagoria
unfolding from that. It all flows from that. In fact, I used to, but now let me express it this
way rather than what I say, I used to say, what came into articulating this for people was,
So if it's infinite silence, just infinite silence, and then if I said at this point
there's no awareness there, then awareness is what I would refer to as its first born.
Yes.
First born.
And then spheres of light, this bit on the metaphor here, the base of the fibroptic lamp,
that is its first expression, and through that golden womb or golden egg, Hiranyagarbha,
the physical domain emerges.
fall happens in no time like that. Did most of this just come to you or have you?
Yes, it just came to me. It's really cool because I mean what you're elaborating is some of the
deepest principles of Hinduism and Kashmir Shaivism and some of these different traditions of knowledge
who these guys came up with the same thing and elaborated it and these days I know scientists
who are trying to take that knowledge and then you know juxtapose it with modern scientific
understanding and figure out, you know, to what extent they can align. And so it's
really cool that you're expressing that so clearly.
I was like just bombarded with insight after insight after insight after insight.
It was kind of difficult to keep up from the human perspective. Like,
showing more and more stuff and I was kind of just gradually piecing it all
together. So it took a while for the kind of intellect part to integrate it all. So
So like over, well, 13 years since 2011 now and 10 since the Infinite Silence Realization,
all of that's been integrated.
So I can articulate it a lot more clearly now than I would have been able to 10 years
ago.
Yes, it's really good.
But I was still pretty clear then.
You know, I look at some of my old stuff and think, "Wow, did I say that then?
Or was that said then?"
But it's definitely clearer now.
It takes practice to work out all the words.
just more immediate, more instant.
What is the significance of the phrase
"gateway location"? I have a feeling what
it might be, but I want to hear you say it.
Yeah, well, it took me a long time to
figure that out, because like in 2007 I
had no idea what that meant.
Essentially, you are, we are the gateway
ourselves. It's located within us.
The gateway location is within. It's not
something that's outside of you,
it's within you.
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
Correct, that. And that's a phrase that's been misunderstood because...
Right, because they attribute it just to that guy who lived 2000 years ago.
And actually, no, no, it doesn't mean that. What he was saying was, I am, not me personally,
I, infinite I, I, infinite I, am, which is pure being, that's this bit. So that's the entry point
to the realization of the infinite silence at the base of the lamp here. I am the way, the truth,
and the light means through this vehicle of I am, the infinite I am, non-personal I am, through that
you will go through the portal to realize the essence because people often stop at this I am
and the first thing that mistake is it's a personal I am. No, it's not that. It's an infinite I,
But even the sense I am, infinite I am, pure being, that can be recognized as a phenomena,
as a phenomena that's I am. And that's seen or aware of from the silence itself,
from the awareness of the silence. And so when I sort of share this with people, like,
you know, like it kind of blows a gasket because they start to see something deeper that they
hadn't realized before. "I am the way" means infinite "I am."
Right. Another way I take it is that not only that subtle level you're talking about, but
the whole mind-body structure is a vehicle. And we need this gross fleshly body, as well
as all the subtler realms that nest within it, like the Russian dolls. And the whole
thing is a vehicle through which we can traverse the full range of creation and arrive at its
source and then live it through this vehicle.
Exactly. So, this body that you have, we call it Rick Archer, but it's like a car. You might
have a car, but you're not your car. And the silence creates its car and it gets called
Rick and it goes around experiencing itself as Rick and comes to know itself through that
vehicle and it does that in infinite
variety because it's infinite, so why
wouldn't it? You know, like, let's try
everything. Yeah, mosquitoes and
elephants and... Yeah, let's get planets,
stars,
neutrons, electrons, I'll try all of
those things, you know, everything.
Why wouldn't it? It's infinite. It's like,
you know, let's try everything and I'll
do it all now.
All now. I found all this fascinating and
I'm sure the listeners do,
but it does seem rather philosophical.
So how do you help people make this more practical and concrete and experiential?
Yeah, it's a good question. And that's really been the focus of my last 13, 10 years,
depending on where you measure it from, really. It's been about how do you then translate this
into life and share it with people. Loads of insight has come around that. And basically,
I use a number of key tools to do that. I introduced them to back in 2011. First phase was the spheres
meditation. I used to do like a whole two day event just on that. That was like a big impact.
Just use your heart based intention to connect with the spheres. We'd go through multiple exercises
over those two days, kind of getting people used to that. That was the first part. The next part
that came was the Infinite Silence meditation, which is the natural progression. And the simplest
version of that is just be open from your heart to the experience of Infinite Silence.
And I used to do these with like next to no guidance in those days, no guidance at all.
Just say, "Right guys, you're going to really have to trust this and we're just going to sit here."
And we're going to, and like people used to go, "Oh." What do you mean they went, "Oh, what happened?"
it's like a big impact because like the minds couldn't cope with it.
So it actually did something? Yes, it switched the mind off. It would switch the mind off.
They wouldn't just be sitting there getting sleepy or thinking about what's for dinner?
That was one of the comments I remember said like, "Well normally when I'm meditating and
I'm thinking about what's for dinner and all the rest of it." But it wasn't with that,
with your meditation. It was like, I just went somewhere else.
And do you feel that's because of the instructions you gave them or because of the atmosphere that
got created when you're sitting with a group of people?
bit of both, I would tell them the story and then we'd do the exercise. It felt like it wasn't
Philip, it was like just that presence was there imbued in the space, it was like that. So that was
kind of how I started it and then I got a vision. I wasn't planning to do this, I wasn't asking to do
this, but I was shown a vision of a glass sphere, a bit like you would see as a goldfish bowl really,
and people were putting questions in it
and I was to put this in the middle of
the room during these events
and I'd invite people to put their
questions in
and then I was to go through and look
at these questions and answer them
live. So that was a trust thing because
I'd never done that before. So that's
something you actually did?
Yeah, yeah. So I actually physically
did that. I used to put the glass spear in
the middle of the room.
I bought this three pound goldfish bowl
and said, "Right guys,
this is what this is for. People used to put in, there'd be like 20, 30 questions in there.
Why did you do that rather than just have them ask the questions vocally?
Because that's the vision I was shown. So I did that for quite a long time. Now I just get them
to ask it. The reason it was done that way, it was kind of like representative of the spheres,
this glass bar, right? Right. And it was a way for Philip to get used to being asked questions that
could be about anything. So I did that and like the answers would just come. So that was so the
inquiry part started from that and then I realized that a lot of the books were kind of after the
realization. I realized that all the questions came down to the one key question which is who or what
am I. So I then guided people to explore why that was, why all the questions came down to that and
then developed other elements to that. I ask all sorts of questions now when I'm doing meditations,
which kind of snaps people out of their minds. So I bring them in like kind of by surprise,
you know, like, so I might ask them to say, Who am I without memory in meditation? Or
Who am I without knowledge? Or Who am I without time?
- You're almost like Zen Coens.
- Yeah, yeah. Or Who am I without this body mind? What if I know nothing? I've got a list of these
that I just throw in when I feel it and it just snaps people out and they get
answers like space, silence, awareness, stillness, consciousness and it's the
first time for some people that they've had that opening and they tend to
feel very expanded, you know, like something's opened up.
So the inquiry came, this was all in quite quick succession, I didn't
plan to do inquiry, inquiry was that you've got to do inquiry. And then I was
shown what I referred to, was something I use very sparingly, the infinite touch.
This was another vision. If I was to try and show you physically, if I was to put
my thumb on the third eye area, this thumb, and then fingers on the crown of the
head like that, I was shown that I was to do this for certain people at certain
times and it became known as Infinite Touch. Basically, I do use it fairly
sparingly, but if somebody's particularly struggling either with some emotion
coming up or they can't connect, I usually get this kind of pull and go, "Are you
okay if I just do this?" I remember I went to a place called the Monastery in
Manchester to a couple of people and they said it was like a morphine high.
Morphe is kind of a downer. Well, yeah, that's what she said anyway.
But there was one massive kind of like spiritual experience when I did it.
That was with another lady. Other people, they struggle and then the Somatics
seems to connect them. So I use that pretty sparingly, but if people are
struggling then I'll kind of feel like, oh, I'll help them. Yeah, I had a dream one
time in which some kind of a Rishi or a sage did that to me in my dream and it
It was really powerful. I woke up in a really profound kind of state.
Yeah, I can imagine. And you can't do it energetically. You know, you could just literally...
That was the next part you just reminded me just there.
The other thing I got was a really strong calling and a vision that I was to do what I now call the "open gaze".
Like gazing?
It's not new.
A lot of people do that, yeah.
Yeah, a lot of people do it, but I hadn't thought about doing it.
it and I remember I was doing a series of live streams I think the first time I
did it was around 2017 2018 possibly and the final thing you've got to do it on
this live stream tonight and I'm thinking really on the live stream you
know could be anybody watching and I did it and I had a big impact I see and I
was shown that it had to have its own this this gaze thing had to have its own
web page. So I've now got a sister
meditation site. If you look in the main
navigation of my date location, there's a
meditation site and one of the
experiences on there is the open gaze.
So they just all evolved over time. So
now it's really just a combination of
meditation and inquiry. Cool. I have a
question for you. First I'll put it in the
nutshell, which is what is it like to be
be Philip Wade, but let me elaborate a little bit. If you were to suddenly snap back to
where you were 15 years ago and kind of remember what it was like to be Philip then, what your
day-to-day moment-to-moment experience was like, or conversely, if you were back then
and you were all of a sudden to be transported to your current state, how would you describe
the contrast? What is your day-to-day experience like in your relationships, your friendships,
your marriage, your whatever you do?
Good questions. Looking back there, I can see all of that happened and it was all necessary to happen.
And in a way, it feels like a bit of a dream in a way, but they were all important experiences, I would say.
Even right back to childhood, there were things that happened then that I now see clearly.
There was an awareness there that I hadn't realized what it was.
So I can kind of see that part of it feels like it's a bit unreal and a bit of a dream.
and another part feels like, yeah,
it was all necessary to get to this point.
- Did you ever have phases in your life
where you suffered a lot?
- No, I didn't, not major.
I remember being, when I first went to university,
that was probably the biggest challenge I had
because I came from a background,
I didn't even, in the UK,
we have something called the 11 plus.
And I remember in the year leading up to that,
which is where you get to go to the stage
before you go to the secondary school.
and somehow or other they left their name.
- Except to like middle school, we call it here.
We have grammar school, middle school, and then high school.
- And then you go to English school
where you do your O levels
and then your pre-university stuff.
And then somehow I'd forgotten my name on the list
and they put me in the wrong class
and it was known as the dunces class.
And six months into that,
the kind of teacher realized that I was in the wrong class,
but I kind of wasn't ready to then take the 11 plus,
so I got sent to this other school.
And of course I was probably in the wrong school at one level because I ended up top of the
class in everything, top of the year.
And I was offered to go to the grammar school, but my parents turned it down.
Which in a way was a good thing, but I remember being miffed at the time.
So by the time it came to university, I had to transfer schools because you didn't do
what was called A-levels in the UK at this school.
deputy headteacher called me in and I'm thinking, "Crikey, what have I done wrong?" You know,
like, "If you're going to see Miss Hall, you've done something wrong." And she says, "Oh, I've
got a place for you at the grammar school." I'm thinking, "Really?" So, then a bunch of
lads who were all expecting to go to university. Nobody in my family had ever thought of going
to university. So, that was kind of challenging when I first got to university. Like, I was
amongst all these people who basically had parents who had been to university or had been
into public school and I found that quite hard.
I remember being really, really down at one point
in the first year at university,
looking out the window thinking, "Oh, this is heavy."
But kind of got through it.
And I remember shortly after that,
lying in the study bedroom.
And I think that was probably my most
really profound spiritual experience
where I think everything was okay with the world.
This one mustn't have been long after
that kind of heavy experience.
And it's like, I just thought I could just stay here forever,
sat in this study bedroom.
It was incredible.
And that was like the other side of the coin
to the heaviness I'd felt before that.
But other than that, no,
there was challenging experiences
'cause people didn't understand me.
And I was a very friendly and affable type person
and probably misunderstood in the industry
I went into in civil engineering,
which in the UK is a very hard, full of conflict type industry.
And I was forever trying to bring people together to work together.
So I was a kind of a bit of a misfit, but I enjoyed civil engineering.
Well, to get back to my question though, my essential question,
what is it like to be Philip Wade? So as you go through your day,
do you feel bliss? Do you feel silence? Do you feel detachment from activity?
Do you feel unity? Do you see angels?
I mean, what is your subjective experience as you go through your life?
Peace.
That's your primary thing.
Yeah, I would say...
Even in the midst of running through a busy airport or something?
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Ever since 2014, the silence, that awareness has never gone.
How about during sleep?
You know, it's awareness of absence, I think is the best way to describe that, but it's
just there.
You could say there's a sort of a witnessing of sleep.
Yeah, yeah.
have a dream that's being watched. Peaceful, I would say, that doesn't mean I don't
make a mistake or do something wrong or cut your finger when you're chopping
some veg, you know, because you do all that stuff, you've got a bunny, but peaceful.
It's in the past and as it's integrated more, what I noticed over time is that
because of the emotional body, I wouldn't say it's 100% cleared, but a lot has gone.
Was there some turbulence as it was being purged? Did you go through like emotional
upheavals? Yes, multiple releases but very short. Not a lot. Feeling strong emotions, crying,
different things like that? Yeah, yeah. The EFT and the quantum touch and stuff all
helped with a lot of that. I did a load of that then but then there were some
other big releases but they were short-lived, they weren't long phases,
they were kind of like gone, gone like that in a matter of usually minutes and then the
body would take a while to recover. But now it doesn't seem to get triggered but if something
is in there and I notice it, it's like something comes up, awareness sees it and it kind of
feels like it gets lasered, something like that from the inside. Mostly it's just peace.
I mean my wife Sue, she says you're like, you're kind of just like this.
last time you lost your temper? I can't really recall. Like years ago? Yeah, I mean it worked
probably. Let's say that some situation is very frustrating, maybe you don't run into such
situations, but do you find that in a situation like that where you might have lost your temper
years ago, you can feel the impulse but you're kind of able to nip it in the bud because you
actually reside prior to the expression of it, kind of like as if you were at the source of a
river and you can block off the river right there rather than down at the
mouth of the river where it enters the ocean where it's too late to do anything
about it. I wasn't actually big on losing my temper anyway when I was working. I
can remember sort of three or four big occasions like I would tend to it would
just come out in a short burst. But that's kind of going back to what you
just saying there was kind of like if I notice anything now that would have been
say a trigger event in the past it's instantly seen like you say you know
year before that, and then it gets dissolved. It's mostly like that. I wouldn't claim perfection
on this. Who can? You know, who can? I don't think it's possible whilst you still have a
body, but you can get "oof, you know, why has that happened?" But it tends to be very, very quick,
and it's not, you know, in the past when you've had a stressful day, it's not really like that anymore.
There's an analogy they use in the Eastern teaching where an impression caused by some
experience can be like a line in stone, which is kind of hard to etch, but once it's etched
it doesn't go away. Or it can be like a line in sand, which is easier to etch, but it goes
away more quickly. Or it can be like a line in water, or it could be like a line in air.
And in air, you can actually have a deeper experience, you know, so you can put your
arm right through it, which you can't do with stone, but it's instantaneously gone. And
And so that's used to kind of illustrate the conditioning process of our nervous system
and how we can have rich deep experiences, but they kind of pass right through us and
don't leave a "samskara" as they're called, or an impression, which is going to condition
us to a cycle.
Definitely.
What I would say is the process both before in the lead up to and post in integration
phases, huge amounts of energy have been cleared from this emotional body and ever since the
realization and the deep integration, it's much more like the air kind of thing.
It feels like once it's gone, it's gone now.
And it feels more like whatever was there in the energetic imprint of the body, in the
cellular memory body, I wouldn't say it's 100% cleared, but it's definitely like vastly
different from 20 years ago.
Nice.
I was listening to an interview the other day with an older Buddhist nun who had actually
lived in a cave for 12 years, and she brought up an interesting analogy.
She said that, and she was getting this from one of her predecessors, but she was saying
that the mind is like a mirror with a lot of dust on it, and you know, you can take
your finger and clear away a little spot of that dust, and if you look at that spot, you
can actually see your image.
like a self-realization thing that can happen where you see your true nature, but there's
still a lot of dust on the mirror. So, as you said, you're not finished. It's going
to be quite some time, perhaps your whole life, getting the whole mirror dust-free.
I would say there's truth in that because it's 10 years since the full-blown realization
and I would say integration has deepened in that time, as I was saying earlier. But I
sometimes refer to it as ghosts in the machine, is the analogy I use. There was a lot of clearing
of the emotional body beforehand, fortunately in my case because of the EFT and the Quantum
Touch and all the things that I've done.
They were really helpful stepping stones, but sometimes, you know, like an insight will
come up and it just clears something.
I don't spend ages thinking about it, it just happens.
And I think as long as you've got a body, there's probably stuff like that's going to
happen.
What you say about the EFT and Quantum Touch and many other such things is interesting
because you know there's that saying that you should just dig one deep well, don't try
to dig a lot of little shallow wells because you'll never hit water.
But another way of putting it might be to, you know, okay but maybe use ten different
tools to dig the one deep well.
You know, you need a pickaxe and a drill and a this and a that.
So it can be useful to have a toolkit of different things that can help you along.
Sure, what I found with those is that they were basically what, as I was going through that process, which was quite intense and sure, was that each one had a different entry point.
There was a dawning awareness, a realization that these aren't it, and I could see that there was a golden thread at that point, that I just didn't know what that was.
These aren't it, meaning this technique isn't going to be the be-all and end-all, but it's useful? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah exactly that, exactly that and so I could see I thought this this isn't quite it, this
isn't quite it, it's really good EFT, quantum touch really good, reconnective healing really
good but it wasn't it and I knew that it wasn't it and I was kind of sense I was sensing this
golden thread emerging and when Spheres bit came through that was another part of it that
That wasn't quite it because that used to have big energetic shifts, not just for me, but
for the people as I was explaining earlier.
And then the dawning realization with the infinite silence, it was awareness.
It was awareness that was going to dissolve all of the crap, the emotional body.
So now when I'm guiding people, particularly people who are kind of on the path, so to speak,
I'll point them at awareness. This is your, you are that and this is your tool and if you let this
emotional release, this wave or tsunami of emotion occur in front of awareness, there's only one
thing that's going to happen and it's going to dissolve. It's going to fade to silence. So I
endlessly talk to people about understanding, recognizing awareness, trusting awareness and
and that will clear the emotional body.
However, for some people who are in unstable positions
might be getting psychiatric help or psychotherapy help,
then that's probably too big a step.
And there's gonna be other things like these tools
that have become very, very useful for those people
to get people to a kind of point of stability
where they can trust awareness.
'Cause as you know, just as well as I,
spiritual journey isn't a bed of roses at times, you know, you've really got to face the music,
so to speak, and that's very important. So, this kind of stability is very, very important,
but ultimately it's the awareness, it's the awareness that you're looking for.
Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking, I'm still a little bit incredulous to some extent,
because you seem to have taken to it like a duck to water, but I'm thinking of the general audience,
and the general audience that you encounter, and perhaps some of the people just feel a little
frustrated because they say, "Well, I'm not getting it the way Philip got it. It was so
easy for him. What's my problem?" And you have in your notes here, you say the fundamental
block to self-realization, and then you just refer to people that might need to see a psychiatrist
or something like that. So, obviously, we're all at different stages of development, and
some people do take to it like a duck to water, and others might think, "Well, this is rubbish.
I'm not even interested." Or others might say, "Well, I'm interested, but golly, my life
is so difficult. There's so many different possibilities. And so, how do you accommodate
yourself to all these different varieties of human beings?
One of the things I have on my website is that if you want to have this upfront thing,
if people want to have a one-to-one with me, for instance, or you come into an event, I
say things like, "This isn't a bed of roses. It's not a fluffy bunny. You kind of have
to be ready." And I even have this caveat saying, "Look, if you're under psychiatric
treatment or psychotherapy, don't come. And I've said to people don't come for that reason.
Or maybe come a year from now once you've... Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I've even had some people
who've been at an event, and they've just not been ready for it. And I said, look,
you're not ready for this. You really need to go away and do X, Y and Z and spend time with them,
get guiding them, pointing them in that direction, and then later come back. So I'm very clear about
that but apart from the few occasions where that has been an issue and it has been cropped up in a few
times what I find is or the kind of if you can say it's put out there is that people that have come
and you know showed up they've usually felt called and they're ready to hear this I'll ask as many
times as I can why are you here whether it's on a live stream or you know why are you here why
you listening to this now with Rick and
Philip speaking? Why are you here? You
know, people say it many ways but usually
they feel called to be here
and then I know that I can guide them
and some people
using the analogies you used earlier
about the stone, one of the guys
helped quite a bit, he used exactly that
same, you know, I says I'm the stone
guy
and there are some people like that and
there are others who are just like
they just open up. But Jesus used the, remember the parable of the sower where you throw the seeds on
the ground and some of it is rough stony ground, nothing happens, some of it is fertile but it's
only an inch deep, so it sprouts but then it dies and then some of it lands on deep fertile soil and
it really grows. Yeah, exactly, and I see all of that. I see a spectrum of that with the people
that I see. Usually it's people, without trying to sort of overgeneralize, people kind of lost
in the intellect and trying to understand it too much and trying to get it from the mind,
those are the ones that tend to sort of struggle more. Whereas if there was a spectrum, people are
kind of like ready and I'm ready to trust and I'll just go with my heart. They tend to open up more
easily. Yeah, and about the intellect people, you know, "seek and ye shall find, where there's a
will there's a way, one thing leads to the next" and that might be a phase that they'll grow out of.
"Oh yeah, I don't think there's anything
wrong in it, it's just a different set of
conditioning."
Some people need to control this
and they try to control it by
understanding it from the intellect and
manage the spiritual process,
whereas in reality you've got no control
over it at all.
Kind of tough when you come at it from
the mind.
Which reminds me of something I heard
you say in one of the talks you sent me
which was
about neo-advaita, you know, which always
strikes me as mistaking of intellectual understanding for actual realization.
And I've run into a number of these people over the years and interviewed a
few of them and there are actually people these days, Jessica Nathanson is
one, there's a girl in Germany, Tim Freak, another person, who are kind of on a
campaign to bust that bubble because it actually has a deleterious effect on a
lot of people. I've seen that too, by the way, that deleterious effect.
the way things opened up for me, some of this stuff came to me after the fact and I started to see that
and I thought what's Neo-Advita and then I started seeing it and I thought wow really and I could
sort of see at what some level that what it did is kind of stepped people out of their mind and had
at some level it could have a benefit but what I saw happening and I've seen it happen, various
people come to mind is that they're going to run into a brick wall at some point
and I've seen this happen with various people who tried to take this really deep intellectual
understanding of it and kind of bypass all the emotional energy that's stored in the body and
you can't do that in the end. Yeah, I could just hear one of them saying in response to that,
"Well there is no emotional energy because it's all an illusion and there is no body
And don't worry about practices because that implies that there's a practicer.
So chuck that. Just realize you're already enlightened.
And basically you're going to run into a brick wall is what I've seen multiple people do.
I've heard people, know people, and I've seen people who were advocates of that run into those
walls. I'm not going to, you know, we're just going to get into sort of speaking about people,
but I've seen it all, seen all those things happen. I say seen it all, seen those things happen.
and it's sad in a way, but it's just part of their path in another way.
Yeah, and I don't want to sound holier than thou, or...
No, absolutely. It's a different route, that's all.
Yeah, well that's an interesting point in itself. There can be routes that one takes,
which you look back on 20 years ago and you thought, "Well, that was kind of stupid,
but hey, you know, that's where I was 20 years ago, and now I'm here, and one thing led to the next."
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You might have done some things, think, "Well, you know..."
But actually it just all went led to that. It just all went to that. So I don't see it as wrong or right.
When I see it, those kinds of things, I just feel the word the silence gave me for all of this,
because the kind of question came up, why share? Why share? And it was just got...
What do you mean why share?
Why share the message?
Why should you?
Yeah, why should I share the message of self-realization? You know, like, you know,
know it's all okay at this absolute level and I got the words compelling
compassion. Yeah there you go. It's a compelling compassion so when I see
whatever it is whether it's somebody who's new to the path or somebody who
might be if there is no this there is no the other kind of a point in the
spectrum there's just this compelling compassion it's just there it's like I
I know who you are, I can see the identity overlay, and that's not who you are.
And it's just this profound compassion that I feel.
It reminds me of a story of Sri Ramakrishna, when Vivekananda had his realization.
He came to Ramakrishna and said, "Oh, this is so wonderful.
Now I just want to go to the Himalayas and sit in Samadhi for the rest of my life."
And Ramakrishna said, "Oh, I'm so disappointed in you.
I expected you to go out and help the people, you know, do something with this."
Yeah, absolutely. I did ask that question. I remember in the spheres of light phase,
just before the full realization, I was doing this talk in my hometown in Manchester and
Sue turned around to me and said, "Why are you doing this?" And I thought, "What a
great question." And I kind of just stopped and closed my eyes. And about two seconds
later I said, "He's bursting out of me." And she thought, "That's a good answer."
So I went ahead and did the talk.
But then the question came up again, perfection, if you like, if you can call it that, the
absolute essence, it seemed like, well, so what, kind of like, what is the reason then
for sharing?
And that's when the "it's a compelling compassion" came up and I thought, okay, and that did it
for me.
I thought, okay, because Philip was resisting kind of the idea of sharing.
And then I thought, okay, that's why I'm sharing.
It reminds me of the 23rd Psalm, that phrase, "My cup runneth over."
You know, once the cup is full, it overflows.
And you can just think of every spiritual luminary throughout history.
I keep quoting Jesus today for some reason.
They didn't hide their light under a bushel.
They felt compelled to be an instrument of the divine, not just to enjoy it for themselves,
but to, you know, enable others to enjoy it.
Yeah, and that's what it feels like. It's kind of like this listening process going on saying this way now, that way now, kind of this next.
It's kind of like that and I wouldn't say claimed affection on that but the things that have unfolded have unfolded because this essence wanted it to unfold.
And the things that hasn't necessarily come as easily because the mind was trying to get involved in making it happen.
And it's far easier when it just flows and it comes from within.
Yeah.
And that includes anything I write down, endless videos I've recorded, like, "Talk about this
today, five minute video, done.
Don't think about it, just do it."
Nice.
St. Francis, "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace."
Yeah.
You know, that whole beautiful prayer.
Yeah.
One of the notes you sent me was just the line, "There's no spiritual bypass."
What did you mean by that?
Yeah, this was a term I came across again after the realization,
because obviously I've gone through all these complementary therapy things.
And I started hearing this term.
John Wellwood.
Yeah.
I coined it.
I found out it was John Wellwood.
I thought, where's this come from?
What on earth is a spiritual bypass?
And I found a wiki article.
Oh, right.
Okay, John Wellwood.
And I thought, oh, yeah, okay.
I can see what he's getting at now.
because I was wondering what spiritual bypass was.
And obviously that's the kind of there is no whatever and then you're kind of
forgetting to address something I'm quite keen on people recognizing that
there's this emotional body and whether you like it or not
as you deepen into awareness, awareness is going to like jet wash you
from the inside and it's going to show you all this crap that you've been
carrying and it's going to go so here you are have a look at this and if you're not ready for that
that can be challenging so I sort of say to people you know there isn't a bypass you're going to have
to face this stuff it's going to come up at some point and here are the ways that you can address
this so people will try to bypass but that's a delusion that's kind of like the neo advita type
stuff we were talking about you know there is no this there is no the other whatever but actually
you know you've had 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in this body and I can tell you from direct experience that
all of that is stored in your emotional body and at some point it's going to come out and I've seen
it so often. So for me the whole idea of trying to bypass this is a it's like a delusion and it's
better to come at it from a space of awareness rather than trying to do something that ultimately
is impossible, which is bypassing.
It seems to me that pretty much everybody has stuff bottled up, and if you don't do
anything about it, it'll just plague you your entire life, influencing your behavior
patterns and things like that.
And processing it, actually resolving it, can be uncomfortable.
And so there's a tendency to want to avoid that, but things are so much better off if
you do deal with it and process it and rid yourself of it.
almost like to take a simple example,
almost like the heroin addict who
doesn't want the withdrawal symptoms, so
he takes some more heroin and then that
makes the problem even worse and you
know he can go on like that for a long,
long time just trying to keep all that
pain bottled up, but sooner or later you have to
go through, what do they call it,
withdrawal and process it and then
you're in the clear and then you're no
longer plagued by this baggage you've
been carrying around. Yeah, because it
affects your behaviors even unconsciously. You might not be aware that this belief or this
experience, this trauma, for which I have profound compassion because anybody you look at has got
some of that there somewhere in their system. And whether I'm unusual on this, I don't know,
but the view I took was if it's there, let's face it and let's deal with it head on.
Well, that's good. I don't know if you're unusual, but I think we all have a tendency to,
you don't want to jump into cold water, you stick your toe in and then maybe your foot,
and it might be easier to just jump in and get it over with.
What I found is life presents you the opportunities.
Yeah.
So I'll say to people that you don't particularly need to go looking for this.
What you'll find is that relationships, events, places will present you the opportunity.
And so when the trigger arises, I refer to it as a treasure, triggers are treasures.
And I then say that's not a challenge. It's an invitation from, oh, hang on a minute,
Rick or Jane or Joe, you've been carrying this now for 20 years, 30 years or whatever.
Now is the time because this event has arisen for you to face it. And if you're ready to look at it
from the space of awareness in that moment, then just by literally looking at it from within,
trusting only that awareness, feeling it in the body, this tsunami will just fall away.
And what I've guided hundreds of people with that in person, online, whatever, and consistently when
they allow that to happen, they go through, it comes in waves, it falls away, and then
often sadness will crop up. And I'll just say, "I'm feeling sad now," so that's great,
because that's a letting go energy. I've witnessed the sadness, and when the sadness goes, I
say, "What's here now?" and they see stillness, peace, silence. So, these invitations, these
triggers are invitations, are treasures.
which has an interesting implication, which is that life is not a series of accidents.
It's meaningful. Everything that happens is actually a potential lesson for us,
or an opportunity to grow in some way.
Every experience, I would say, you know, some are, might be trivial,
like putting the dishes in the dishwasher or whatever,
but at the heart of every experience is an invitation to this.
And these big ones, people might like to have profound spiritual experiences, blissful states,
and they're great, but they're also invitations because they're not it. They're not it. There's
a witness even to those profound ones that's completely still and untouched and silent and
moved. And that's an invitation for you to go deeper. And the emotional release is just another
manifestation of that, you might label one good and one bad, but take that label away,
and they're both just imputations. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is 51, and since the age
of 15 she's had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and stuff like that, and I can tell
she can't even walk very fast, she has low energy, and she's saying, "But you know, I realize that
Everything is a gift. You know, I feel like this has taught me a lot about patience, about tolerance,
and about my own body. She doesn't have poor me syndrome. It's more like there's some kind of
wisdom guiding life and this is meant to happen for a reason and I'm just trying to extract
maximum insight from it, you know, rather than feel bad about it.
That's a good place to be. I've come across people with chronic fatigue syndrome and that's very
debilitating as you well know and if
she's in that space with it and is at
peace with it then there's a reason
that's showing up
and there's an invitation there that
is unique to her experience. It's not
better or worse than anybody else's.
It would be my perspective on that.
Of course we would all prefer to just be
radiantly healthy and have plenty of
money and great relationships and
everything's going well but
if that was the way life was supposed to
to be, it would be. That's what you said earlier, "What's my relationships like?" and I forgot
to answer that bit. I would say relationships are good. Yeah, there was a famous line by
Ram Dass, "If you think you're enlightened, go spend a weekend with your parents." Yeah,
yeah, I'm aware of that one. I was just chatting, I don't want to go into it too much, but my
mum died last year and we had like three or four intense weeks, 24/7 in the hospital.
I was just calm throughout the dip yet I released once she eventually passed but it was noticeable
I wouldn't have been able to do that.
Which probably had a much better effect on your mom.
I was actually shown what was going to happen.
I saw this expansion taking place.
So yeah whilst there was a sadness at the end I was shown what was going to happen and that
was very very very very helpful.
You mean like a premonition or something?
Yeah, yeah.
Now was the time and I kind of saw, I was sharing a vision of mom, kind of like this awe opening
up within her once she passed.
Ah, yes.
That was helpful.
That was really helpful.
Yeah, I find it inspiring to interview people and read books about near-death experiences.
I was doing that years ago, long before I started doing these interviews, just because
it broadens your perspective beyond the confines of this life and you kind of realize that
this life is like a brief chapter in a big book and that there's many wonderful chapters
yet to come.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, no, indeed.
Somewhere in the process I read about near-death experiences and past lives and stuff like
that and it all made kind of sense to me as the process was unfolding and integrating.
really helpful for people to touch on some of that stuff because it can open people up I found.
I remember seeing a guy called Dr. Lloyd Rudy. He was a heart surgeon. I'm not sure where he was.
Anyway, I think he's passed over now, but he was being interviewed by another doctor.
And basically he was describing this experience where this guy had basically been dead for 25,
30 minutes. And he was there at the side of the operating room and they'd left all the kit on.
and they were thinking was there anything else we could have done you know something else we should
have done the rest of it and suddenly this guy 25 30 minutes later kicks back into life and this guy
reports afterwards once he's been brought back to life he'd seen everything happening in the
operating theater the notes that Lloyd Rudy was being given phone call or everything and he
couldn't believe it and then he shared this news with his other colleagues around the country and
they all said, "Oh yeah, we've had one of those."
Yeah, this is especially true
in recent years since the resuscitation
techniques have become so much more
effective.
You know, it used to be people would just
die, but now they get them back to life
and so
the incidence of these near-death
experiences has become quite
common. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I think that's
something that helps open
people up. There's this kind of ongoing
debate.
In fact, you mentioned the Scientific
and Medical Network in your notes here,
here and I've interviewed David Lorimer and other people like Marjorie
Willicott and people like that who are involved in that, but there's this whole
issue of the paradigm shift from materialistic, reductionistic thinking to
the understanding that consciousness is fundamental and so on. Why did you
mention Scientific and Medical Networking? Because I came across them a
few years ago through another route and ended up speaking to David Lorimer, who
you've interviewed. And Peter Fenwick, who is the president emeritus of the network.
Long story short, Peter has this weekly meditation on a Sunday, so I was invited
to participate in that and lead one of their Sunday meditations for other
people. So they seemed to quite like that and then discussed it further with David
and Peter and said, "Well, you know, why don't I do an event for you?" So I ended up doing
one of their events online three or four years ago and I realized that whilst they were interested
in meditation and do loads of stuff around this paradigm shift and what have you, I wasn't quite
sure whether they were going to be ready for what I was going to share so I thought well okay well
I'll take them on a journey because I like to make it experiential for people so I explained all this
to Peter what I was going to do and he was happy with that. Right at the beginning I said I want
I want to kind of get a feel for you guys because,
so I asked, I think it was three or four questions
about how many were regular meditators,
how many had had a profound spiritual experience
or expansive sense of consciousness
that they couldn't explain, things like that.
And 80 odd percent were regular meditators.
I think there was something like that.
No, 60, 70% were regular meditators.
80 odd percent had had a profound spiritual experience,
but only 40% of them knew what it was about.
And these were people who were scientists, medics,
and people interested in that kind of thing.
And I thought, "Wow, that's interesting."
So I took them all on the journey
and it kind of just was really profound for them.
Peter emailed me the next day and said,
"That was absolutely brilliant.
"I've had emails coming in from everywhere."
And so it was kind of interesting
because here are people who are,
you wouldn't necessarily put in this,
you know, scientists, medics, people interested in,
applied scientists and so forth,
really being touched by this. But that
group is very consciousness oriented, they're
interested in this kind of stuff. But then
I read recently, I was in touch with,
was it Marjorie Wallachar, via David, because
there was an Indian guy who contacted me,
wanted to do some research on
Kundalini. He was going through a
Kundalini awakening and then Marjorie sent
me some papers that she'd referred to
that I'd heard of earlier. And one of
those papers focused around people who
scientists who've all had some kind of
spiritual awakening type experience. That
was kind of interesting reading those as
well. I think these were people who weren't
necessarily meditators. Yeah, I think there's
something in the water, so to speak. I
mean, these days, well, even people like
yourself. Here you were the 60 hour a week
civil engineer and this whole
spiritual awakening bubbled up and
that's happening more and more, I think.
There's some kind of ambient uprise
in the level of world consciousness that
is lifting all boats, at least those
which aren't firmly anchored to the mud.
Yeah, yeah, no, I feel like I see it.
Sometimes I refer to it as we're
standing on the shoulders of spiritual
giants. There's, well, I was it 15,000 years
since A.D. Yoga or whatever, something's
happened in that time. Consciousness has
gradually been rising, and yeah, it looks
pretty messy if you listen to the
news right now. Right. Well, what I've been
shown is that's kind of like the
collective release that's going on. All
of this has to come to the surface. Yeah,
let's talk about that some more. A question
did come in which I'll ask you in a bit.
Talk about your vision, your
perspective on the whole world situation and
the prospects for a better world and
you know things like that because that
world does seem to be going to
hell in a handbasket in many areas and
people are rightfully concerned about
these things. Yeah, I've had some
insights around this without getting into too much controversial stuff but around
COVID I was shown a lot of stuff and I was called to do a series of online
events there that varied from people who had never meditated before, I was doing
lots of meditations, introducing people to meditation, through to I ended up
doing this live stream mid COVID and it was called, the title I was given was
was this earthquake, this earthquake, a shift in consciousness.
And there's a whole series of insights
that had come from the silence that we talked about earlier,
that was made clear that I needed to share.
So I guided people through that on a live stream,
gave them, and the day after I'd done that,
I got this insight that came through.
I can't remember the full detail of it now,
the live streams on my YouTube channel and it was something like the world's in a deeper
place now, the world's in a deeper place now. So what was being shown there was that whoever
people wanted to attribute that whole thing to, for whatever reason that was there and I now realize
after the fact I was shown that this was going to happen. I didn't know what was going to happen
precisely but this event was going to happen, a worldwide event and this was somehow the whole
of that process was necessary and the insights on that live stream were about some of the things
that I had seen at that time and in that process the world was shifting with this kind of, you
talked about the tide rising but with the tide rising like I was saying earlier as the tide rises
as the awareness arises within you, all of the collective rubbish that we're either carrying
individually or collectively, somehow that has to come out and it looks pretty chaotic.
And it's a bit like it's darkest before the dawn. It kind of feels like that. But I feel this phase
is really quite long from what I've been shown. I'm talking a long time. Decades. Yeah, beyond my
lifetime, beyond yours. So do you think that we could look at history as being a, you know, all
the plagues and pandemics and wars and genocides and all these things as being a necessary purging
of rubbish or symptomatic of that anyway? Symptomatic of it, a function of it, yeah,
all of those things. At the human level, of course, it looks horrific. You know, some of the events
that we've experienced as humanity, even right now, there's plenty of it that's horrific. But
somehow all of this process is unfolding and all of this is happening and it's a pretty noisy
phase, but somehow it has to happen. It's very hypothetical, but I wonder if people could be more
proactively on the spiritual path in greater numbers. I wonder if the severity of these
turbulences could be diminished, sort of like if static electricity and clouds could be somehow
drained off slowly rather than
allowed to build up, then we wouldn't have
huge lightning strikes. It could just be a
cloudy day or something like that.
There's some truth in that. The more
people that
will be meditating, opening to this and
so forth, all of that is
definitely helping. In fact, I think
there's some research on this.
There is. That shows the effects of
people in large groups
meditating on crime in
an area and stuff like that.
I've been in some of those groups. Okay, so I'm certain that that will have an impact both from
that research but also from direct seeing. Let me see what this question is. It came in.
This is from someone named Prachi Dixit. Sounds like an Indian name. What do you think about
sharing knowledge in exchange for money or other material things? Since this is an earth experience,
how do you balance that? Yeah, it's a great question and it's something that's been a long
journey I would say. One of the things that happened when the Spheres of Light bit came through,
the open source bit that I referred to, what that was about was making this freely available.
There was no entry portal to it. The meditation was there on the website and you could just use it.
You didn't have to pay Philip or the other people that were helping me at the time to experience
that it was there and we're providing a load of free resources. And I then got, I remember getting
this insight. It was at a time when money was fairly tight for Sue and I, but I got this clear insight
to say you've got to share this for free now. So I used to go and do these events and actually what
it was was share it for free but you can accept donations. So I sort of said to people just come
along. So I did that for several years sharing it for free and that was kind of an interesting
journey because loads of people came and benefited from it greatly. But what started to happen
fairly quickly was because it was free and nobody paid anything before they came.
In the 48 hours before the event, I'd get anywhere between 50 and 70% cancellations.
Because they weren't committed?
Yeah, because they weren't committed. And there was a bunch of people,
as long as you're armed on the waiting list, because they would fill up very quickly,
then I'd then start phoning saying you can come. But I can't come now because...
Yeah, I had something else scheduled.
So I realized the insight then came was to do a fixed donation.
It was a very small sum and that stopped the cancellations dead in their tracks.
Just like that.
And what I discovered was that people who were then, even if it was like 10
quid or 15 quid or whatever it was, what's a quid a pound pound.
Yeah.
One pound would be like one 20 to one $30 or something.
Right.
Even if it was a relatively small, some people just came because they were committed.
It wasn't because I was trying to earn money.
It was because they wanted to be there and they'd spent some money.
And so what I've been shown is I've got a number of streams now that's
evolved even further over the years from basically the open source has
been a principle I've stuck to all the time.
So everything I share is freely available.
I've got 260 YouTube videos, 50 live streams on insight timer, tons of stuff.
There's more than enough material there, but if you want to come to an event or have a one-to-one,
then there's a donation that you choose to make.
I remember being asked by this guy, a highly qualified guy, who had come to see me for the first time,
who'd been on the path for some time but had come across my work and had been really taken by it.
And he suddenly turned around in exasperation and he said to me, "How much do I have to pay?"
And I said to him, "Nothing, it's completely free. It's right here for you, right now.
The question is, are you ready to open to that? You're not paying for this. You will never pay
for truth. You will never pay for self-realization. But you might pay for, to contribute to the
lighting, the heating, the food or whatever, because we live in a commercial economy.
fortunately or unfortunately we live in a commercial economy. So I had a whole phase of looking at the
difference between a gift economy, like you people say the Native American or first peoples as you
now call it, was largely a gift economy but it got destroyed by the west and became a commercial
economy. So we live in a commercial economy and so the matter of the fact is that for now at least
we pay money for certain things, certain facilities and certain events. So the way I approach it is
I've got a vast array of material and if people want that for free I say, "There you go, have a
look at that. There's more than enough stuff there to keep you going for the next two, three years,
but if you do make a donation then it helps fund more of that." So that's the way we've done Buddha
at the gas pump is, you know, to make it freely available and you grow it to the point where
voluntary donations without a lot of arm twisting and fuss enable us to vote all the time. We
devote to it. Unless you and I can get to the point where the local grocery store and gas station and
everything else are just going to give us stuff, it's necessary to pay for things. Absolutely,
indeed, and so that's the fact of life. But the point I like to make to people is you're never
going to pay for truth. You're never going to pay for that because that's who you are.
It's priceless. It's priceless, but you might need to contribute to your service that you're
providing, which is an invaluable service as I see it. Yeah, I mean it's like, I don't know,
for an analogy perhaps, the water in a reservoir is free water, but it costs money to hook up the
pipes and filter it and bring it into people's homes and all that stuff. Rain comes down for
free, but it costs money to the infrastructure to get it into your tap. I was a civil engineer in a
in a previous life, so I know all about it.
Oh, there you go, right, that is your thing.
So, yeah, I don't see a problem. Money
itself, but here's another part, isn't a
problem. It's an energy and it's an
energetic exchange. It's the beliefs
that people have around it is where the
problems arise. Just in case anybody still
has a problem with this, in ancient India, for
instance, you would join an ashram,
perhaps, you would serve the guru for a
number of years, or maybe you'd bring a cow as a gift or something like that. It was called
a dakshina and service was a thing. And so, you know, there was always an understanding
that there had to be some kind of support on a material level in order for this non-material
priceless teaching to be disseminated.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's how I kind of see it, basically. I've kind of been on probably
a 13-year journey with that. And I've got stuff about it on my website if people want
explore that journey. I can't remember what it's called now but there is stuff
on the website. All righty, so what would you like to say in conclusion either as
some kind of a philosophical wrap-up or just in terms of practical things like
how people can interact with you in various ways? On the practical level the
main site gatewaylocation.org, that is an entry to a vast array of freely
available resources, whether it's on the website itself, on the YouTube channel, or
Insight Timer, where I've got a whole free self-realization program there. And I'm
linking to all these from your Backgap page. Yeah, you'll have all that on the Backgap page.
The website, YouTube channel, Insight Timer, there's years of material on there.
Insight Timer is a little bit unusual in that, why I did, I felt a call to do a
a live stream self-realization program. So there's a whole, it's the first time I've done it that way,
structured program there that's on there. You can work your way through those live streams
and it comes along with freely available Infinite Silence meditations. So that's been profound for
many people, so that's a good tool. There's a whole series of live streams on the YouTube channel,
hundreds of insights on the website and then alongside the main website are the three
main meditation experiences I use. So I'd guide people to that. On the header bar of
GateLocation.org you'll see meditation site. You'll find those there.
A question came in that I think you might be able to weave your general statement into as part of
the answer. This is from my friend Kanta Dadleni in Bombay. She asks, "It seems a little ironic
that despite the sudden surge in so many people holding talks on spirituality, meditation, and
more, the world is in a mess. Most people are vulnerable and follow self-proclaimed realized
individuals at the drop of a hat. Holding talks, teaching people how to meditate, how to realize
the self, seems to have become a money-making industry. Okay, your thoughts please.
I think there's truth in what your friend's pointing out. There's definitely a case of,
just one thing on the reality and money thing, I think it has become a bit of a money-making
business. There's no doubt about that. That's not why I'm here fortunately, and my previous
life pays for my life. So I've never made any money from this. But all this noise,
this chaos, this vulnerability that you see in the world, that's where the
compelling compassion bit comes in. And for me that's the reason for sharing. And
what I'd like to say to people is, going back to that question I asked, you know,
why are you watching this? Why are you here now? And beyond that, why are you
here in this body and what I'd offer to
you is that you're here. This is the
primary reason you're here. It's not to get
married, have 2.4 children, have a
nice house, have a nice car. You might do
those things and they might come with it
and they'll be nice and there's nothing
wrong with that. Yeah, it's really rough on
the point for child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a
tough life. That's a thing from many years
back in the UK. That was the average number
number of children. Oh I know, I know, I'm just making a joke. But yeah, all of those
things may happen in your life, but the real reason you're here in this form, as
I was talking about in that very kind of philosophical sort of phase or insight
or whatever you want to talk about earlier, the real reason you're here
manifest in this form is because the universe itself chose to express itself
in your form and it's choosing, if you like, to come to know itself in its own experience.
And so life is its own purpose, its own meaning, and the purpose and meaning of your life wrapped
into one is to realize this.
That's why you're here.
You don't need to believe me, but when this is seen, when this is realized, then it will
become self-evident and capitalized self-evident the true essence. That's why you're here. That's
what I'd like to say. Good. And I think hopefully most people listening to this will heartily agree
with you. You know, I think a lot of us have that feeling that all these relative expressions are
just icing on the cake, but there's a more fundamental reason for our being here. And
you know, if we can, to whatever extent we can make that our highest priority,
the better things will go. Make it your highest priority. There's nothing more important than this.
But that doesn't mean, you know, because everybody's journey is different, that doesn't mean that you
have to do Philip's journey, leave your old world. People can still integrate this into their lives.
And it just happened to be that that was the way for me at that time. Yeah, obviously you couldn't
be doing this if you were working 60 hours a week as a civil engineer. I didn't anticipate being
the term the silence gave me for many years thinking what on earth am I supposed to sort of
say having used spiritual advocate for a number of years. It said use western mystic. Yeah. That's
what the silence said. So I didn't anticipate that 20 odd years ago, 25 years ago when I began
meditation that was like unbelievable you would never have dreamt that. I've seen people come to
realization people are guided and they're not. Specifically going out there, you
know, it might be parents, they might be doing music, they might be doing other
things. It doesn't have to be what Philip does.
Nope. But anyway, I appreciate what you're doing and I've really enjoyed talking to
you and listening to your recordings before this conversation and I think you
made a good choice following that intuition. You have a knack for this.
Maybe. Seems like it. Keep doing it. Thank you very much for everybody listening and thank you for the
opportunity. It's been fantastic. I should have said that right at the beginning.
Oh, that's okay. Yeah, thank you, Philip. And we'll be in touch, you know, we've got
some interesting ideas we've been cooking on. Yeah, let's talk further.
Alrighty, and thanks to those who've been listening or watching. My next interview
will be with a Brahmacharini, I guess you would call her, in India and she has a
a big long name which I couldn't recount without looking it up and reading it.
But she looks very bright and very interesting and she has a beautiful website with all kinds
of profound content on it and I'm really looking forward to that conversation.
So we'll see you for the next one.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Thank you.