WEBVTT

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[Music]

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Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer.

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Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people.

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We've done over 700 of them now, and if this is new to you, and you'd like to check out previous ones,

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please go to batgap.com and look under the interviews menu, where you'll see them arranged in several different ways.

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This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers,

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So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are Paypal buttons on every

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page of the website.

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And donations are a little skimpy lately, so if you've been thinking of donating and haven't

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gotten around to it, give it a go.

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My guest today is Philip Weber.

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Philip had a 35-year career as an executive in the hospitality industry, hotel industry.

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He has been a member of Paramahansa Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship since 1999.

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He is known for his highly ecumenical outlook, holding a deep appreciation for many of the

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world's spiritual traditions and teachings, and often affirming Yogananda's adage, "Truth

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is one, paths are many."

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Phil is currently retired and living in Carlsbad, California.

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He prefers a quiet contemplative life.

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He is not a spiritual teacher and has no online or social media presence.

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And therefore, any comments or inquiries for Phil should be made through his editor's website,

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which I'll be linking to from his page on batgap.com.

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Phil wrote two books, one called Grace Happens and the other entitled Reflections of Consciousness,

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and I listened to them both as audio books, and I was just telling Phil that I've read

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a lot of spiritual books over the years, and these were among the most enjoyable I've ever

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read. And I think the reason was that he writes very well, for one. As you could tell from

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the intro I just read, he is somewhat self-effacing. He's not trying to make himself famous or

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even sell a lot of books. And the subject matter, the thoughts he expressed aligned

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very closely with my way of thinking about things. So, we're going to try to pack in

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a lot of points from both books over the next couple of hours. And if any of you, as I said

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in the beginning, have questions, go ahead and submit them through the question submission

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form on batcap.com. Obviously, that's for the live audience. You won't be able to do

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that later on. So welcome, Phil.

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Thank you, Rick. There are a few things in life that you end up doing and you go, "Yeah,

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I never thought I'd be doing this." And then there are a few that like, "I never thought

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I would be doing this and this falls into the second category.

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Just something you never think about.

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So I really want to share my appreciation for you and Irene for inviting me and I look forward

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to our chat today.

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Yeah, I mean, I never thought I'd be doing this either.

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If you asked me 20-25 years ago, the idea never occurred to me.

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But everything in my life kind of led up to this.

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And this has been the most fulfilling period of my life doing this.

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You know, I've been aware of Batgap for years and I think what you guys are doing is a real

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service.

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I'm sure it helps a lot of people, so I know it has me.

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Well, that's the aim.

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And we can discuss as we get into it what we mean by helping a lot of people.

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There's lots of ways of helping people.

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And they're all essential, really.

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I agree that there are an infinite number of ways to help people, and I don't think that

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one way is any better or worse than another.

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Help is help.

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And you do what you can, and that's what I would consider living a dharmic and self-fulfilling

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life. It's not about what you can get, it's about what you can give. Paradoxically, as

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St. Francis said, it's in giving that we receive. And it comes back, and in my experience, it

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comes back, it seems like I receive more than I give. And I don't know why that is. It may

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be an equal thing, but I feel very blessed by the people that I've been able to assist

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both through the books, through my years in hospice, through working with the homeless.

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And it's just a wonderful thing to be able to do in life.

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So I've been very fortunate.

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And you know, in a way, the receiving more than you give is not so much a reward as it

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is an augmentation of your ability to give.

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It's almost like the powers that be say, "Okay, this guy is giving a lot.

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Let's help him give more.

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Give him some more juice."

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That's true.

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And I think the more one is blessed, then the more it's incumbent that one does help.

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If you've been blessed with a lot of advantages, then I think it's even more important that

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you do help in the ways that you can.

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Yeah.

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If ultimately everything is God, then we're kind of agents of the divine or sense organs

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of the infinite or however you want to phrase it.

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So almost like it's not us helping, it's the divine helping through a willing instrument.

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Absolutely, yeah.

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And that's the purpose of the books.

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I'm by nature a very private individual and these things that I talk about through my

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waking experience and leading up to it and after are extremely personal and it's, you

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know, lifting my dress in front of the whole world.

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These books is not what I would have chosen to do but it's not about me and the book,

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particularly Grace Happens, I was on a 40-day and 40-night retreat at a private retreat

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at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat facility up in the Arizona mountains.

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And I hadn't planned on doing anything other than being in solitude and silence, they're

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two of my favorite things in life.

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And the third day, it just started gushing out and if I wouldn't have written, I think

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I just would have exploded there on the spot.

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So it just needed to come out and that was the contextual field in which provided the

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space for it.

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And then over the next year or so, 85% came out there and the next 15% came out, just

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filled in the corners here and there.

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And then fortunately, I have a wonderful editor who could piece it all together.

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The first one in particular was challenging because it had emails and journal entries

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from when I was going through the initial shift.

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And that wasn't my best time for communicating.

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So I did the best I could with it.

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And I hadn't planned on keeping the emails or using them at all, but I just had a little

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intuitive hit one day that said, "Just file these away and don't worry about it.

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It'll be useful later."

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And ultimately, they became the first half of the book and kind of shown...

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A lot of these books are either in retrospect or what it may be like, but mine is fairly

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unique in that most of what came through in that first book was as it was happening.

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I don't know if it came through for you, but trying to figure out what was going on and

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the rebirthing process into unity consciousness instead of separation was fairly difficult

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for me, and I hope that that comes through in the book.

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It does, and I think it'll be useful for people to hear, so we'll get into describing it.

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And you know, one of my initial motivations for starting Bathgap was to illustrate or demonstrate

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that awakening or enlightenment or whatever term you want to use is not the exclusive domain of

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really far out unusual people who live in caves. It's hotel managers and housewives and

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ordinary people. That's the subtitle of Bath Cap is "Conversations with Ordinary Spiritual

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Awakening People." And the reason I had that incentive was that I live in a town where a

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lot of people have been meditating for a long time and people were having profound awakenings

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and they would sometimes tell their friends about them and be scoffed at, you know, "Oh,

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this couldn't be happening to you. I know you. I've known you for years. You're an ordinary guy."

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So, people had this thought that, you know, you have to be something extraordinary in order to

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have these kinds of experiences, but I really think that spiritual awakening is the birthright

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of everyone. We all have the potential for it. We're all essentially awakened already and just

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have to realize it. You know, so that was one of my motivations for starting this, just to demonstrate

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that.

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In terms of the first book, Grace Happens, an awakening of consciousness, that is probably

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the main message is if it can happen to a guy like me, it can happen to anybody. And it won't

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possibly happen, it will happen, it's inevitable. It's built into the system. We're always playing

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with the house's money and you can't screw it up. You just gotta, you know, do your best and

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not worry about the result because you're already there. And if somebody is listening to this

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interview and they happen to be on their deathbed, this applies to you too. It doesn't mean it will

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happen in the coming month before you pass away, it'll happen. Life is not confined to

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the, you know, 80 years or whatever that we live in this body.

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Absolutely, and I think one of the big stumbling blocks to people awakening is that they may

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in their head go, "Oh yeah, you know, like Yogananda said, you know, it can happen in

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one lifetime and I get that." But in their heart, there's doubt or, you know, "I'm not

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doing enough of something or whatever it may be. And it's just simply not true.

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In the second book I write about when I first joined SRF, a lot of people I heard talk about

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a little metaphor of starting out in Glendale, which is near Los Angeles. And the idea is

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like, well, we're very close to Los Angeles, which was awakening, and that we just do the

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thing and it's a short path and you're there. And whether that's true or not, I don't know.

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I'm not passing any judgment on it, but what people tend to buy into that so literally

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that they think they're trying to get from point A to point B, from where they are to

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where they're not.

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And the truth is, they always were in Los Angeles.

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So to interpret the metaphor, in other words, on some level we're already realized.

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Techniques just take away the appearance of that not being the case.

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It's not like you're adding something.

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Right.

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already are a spark of infinite conscious awareness, but you just don't know it.

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Right. And so the technique isn't getting us from point A to point B, it's just

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blowing the illusion that you're not already at point B away. Right, and I just

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want to contrast that with what some of the neo-advaita people say, which is that

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you're already enlightened, so that's it, you're done, don't bother about practices

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or anything like that. And to take an extreme example, imagine saying that to

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somebody who is deeply chronically depressed or psychotic or something like that.

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Yeah, on some level they're already enlightened, but obviously some work needs to be done to

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enhance the functioning of the mind-body system so that becomes a living reality and not just a

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concept. And so it's very important not to mistake an understanding or a concept for actual realization.

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Absolutely. Like Nisargadatta said, earnest spiritual effort is critical. Like Adya says,

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it makes you grace-prone. There are certain things we can do, the methods and the techniques

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and the teachings, whatever they are that resonate with us, are really important. What

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I'm, I guess, wanting to stress through my writings is that it's more of an inner attitude.

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When I first started with SRF and I read that Yogananda said it can happen, you know, I

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didn't just mentally go, "Well, okay, it probably does for one in a million." You know, I said,

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You know, if he's saying it's true, then it is true for me.

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So the inner attitude was then this is going to happen, and he's trying to see it from

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the end, but you have to make your effort for sure.

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And just saying stuff like, "Wow, there's no one doing it and nothing to do and blah

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blah," you know, I don't think it's very helpful.

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No.

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We're going to get into your personal story a bunch, but let's elaborate on what this

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"it" is that we're referring to.

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And there was a question that came in from Anthony Parshall in Burlington, Vermont, who

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who asked, "What exactly is enlightenment?" So, why don't we start with that and then

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we'll loop back and get into your whole history.

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Pete: It's a great question. Enlightenment has got so much baggage around it, I wish

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they would just put it on the shelf for a couple hundred years and get a clean look

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at it because I think if you asked, you know, a hundred different people, even if they were

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all in the same spiritual path, I think you would get a hundred variations on it. You

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I'm not going to say anything theoretical, I just, from my own experience, it's the best

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thing that I can share. First of all, I'll tell you what it's not. It's not some finish line that

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you cross and then you're done. Because once the awakening happens, there's an embodiment

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that goes on forever. You become an ever clearer, more refined expression of the divine.

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And that doesn't eliminate our humanness and our personality quirks and our humanness.

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I think the idea that all of a sudden, you know, nothing goes wrong and I'm done and now I can just sit back and cruise

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It's an unfortunate misconception and I think I probably had that early on myself

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the fundamental

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Attribute to awakening in my experience has been that the first thing is a separation

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Consciousness dissolves. So the idea that I'm separate from everything else you wonder how you ever saw it that way

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It's like an optical illusion of consciousness.

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Before you entered that phase, did you go through a phase where you did feel separate

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in the sense that you began to appreciate the distinction between self and non-self

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or pure consciousness and the material world?

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Sort of a duality period before there was a merger in which the world is seen in terms

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of the self.

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I would call that witnessing consciousness.

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you realize that you're not the content of the experience. That there's experience and

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there's me, which is dualistic, but at least you're not caught in the illusion that I am

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what I have or I am what I do. And of course, that's how I was for most of my life.

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Or I am this body, etc.

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Yeah, I'm separate, I'm a body, I'm how much I have in my bank, and I am my car, and I am

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a house and all, you know, I mean, all this stuff is whatever identity you think that

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you are, you're definitely not.

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But the witnessing consciousness, it shares a cab ride about halfway there, I think, and

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it's an important demarcation.

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I found that there was just a presence there that grew, and the witnessing consciousness

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presence as I ripened, eventually it was too much for the ego structure to hold up and

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it crumbled.

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And that's when the other half of the equation came in.

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The first realization and the first moments was I am nothing.

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I am no thing in particular.

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And then like a tidal wave came back on that.

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Well, if I am nothing, then I am everything.

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And that was the realization.

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But then integrating and embodying that was quite a ride.

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And it took several years to really get comfortable with it.

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You mentioned an experience which you called the kiss, which you were playing solitaire

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on your laptop and all of a sudden you got zapped. Is that what you're alluding to right

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now?

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I am. I was out at the Hidden Valley Ashram and it was a normal beautiful day. I'd come

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back from lunch and at that time I was really enjoying listening to, on Sounds True there

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are a couple beautiful tapes of James Finley, one talking about Meister Eckhart and the

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other talking about Thomas Merton, both who I love.

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Incidentally, I just want to say that I've interviewed just about everybody you mentioned

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in your books, including James.

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So if you're reading Phil's books

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and you wanna know more about some of the people

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he mentions, look him up on Bat Cap.

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- James is a wonderful man.

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I've never met him, but I just love his work.

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And I was listening to his Meister Eckhart thing

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and just killing some time.

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I had some spider solitaire going on and listening to that.

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And it was just so beautiful.

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And I just kind of stopped and I sat back

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and it's just so beautiful, so beautiful.

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And I had just tears started.

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And then there was just this descent of grace

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that apparently I was ripe and that's all it took.

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And for the next hour I was drunk on energy,

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the Kundalini had gone nuts

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and I was having fits of uncontrollable alternating laughing

00:16:49.480 --> 00:16:52.840
and crying and saying, you know, take me

00:16:52.840 --> 00:16:55.360
and this is I am one.

00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:59.200
The curtain came down and that was the awakening.

00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:02.480
But of course, there was a lot of work after that that needed to take place.

00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:03.480
But that was the kiss.

00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:07.200
And incidentally, I mean, I've interviewed people who had an awakening like that while

00:17:07.200 --> 00:17:11.400
tying their shoes or while eating tomato soup or whatever.

00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:16.680
So you know, shouldn't all run out and get Spider Solitaire and a copy of James Finley

00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:19.020
and hope that it's happened a minute.

00:17:19.020 --> 00:17:22.680
You could be like, you know, breathing bus fumes in New York City and all of a sudden

00:17:22.680 --> 00:17:24.440
that could happen.

00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:28.560
And that's why I shared it just to point out that you cannot plan it.

00:17:28.560 --> 00:17:29.560
not going to be...

00:17:29.560 --> 00:17:30.560
It happens when you're ready.

00:17:30.560 --> 00:17:32.120
Yeah, it happens when you're ready.

00:17:32.120 --> 00:17:33.720
But you can enhance your readiness.

00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:35.680
Yeah, well that's for sure.

00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:36.880
That's what sadhana does.

00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:41.600
But ultimately, I wrote that our sadhana sets the table, but it's God's grace that delivers

00:17:41.600 --> 00:17:42.780
the peace.

00:17:42.780 --> 00:17:48.220
And you had an experience of remembering, or in some way recognizing a past life with

00:17:48.220 --> 00:17:51.480
Yogananda in Boston or someplace.

00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:56.620
So your spiritual sadhana didn't start in 1999 or whenever.

00:17:56.620 --> 00:17:58.120
You picked up where you left off.

00:17:58.120 --> 00:18:05.140
I think that's right. My sister and her husband moved to Waltham, which is just outside Boston.

00:18:05.140 --> 00:18:10.520
He was getting his PhD at Harvard in biochemistry. And so when I was first, I think I was 12 when

00:18:10.520 --> 00:18:17.360
I first went out there and there was an immediate familiarity with Boston and I couldn't explain.

00:18:17.360 --> 00:18:21.840
So I went back every summer and when I was 15, the third summer that I went out, by then

00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:26.840
I was bussing around the city by myself and going down to Cambridge Square and playing

00:18:26.840 --> 00:18:32.520
chest with the locals and we had an experience or I had an experience. We went up to the top of the

00:18:32.520 --> 00:18:37.160
Prudential building which had a great view and they kind of went their way and I kind of went my way

00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:43.400
and I was looking off into the city and suddenly everything kind of fell away and I could hear like

00:18:43.400 --> 00:18:48.120
an Indian drone. I'm 15, I don't know what any of this stuff is and I immediately had the

00:18:48.120 --> 00:18:53.880
remembrance that I had lived there. I'd lived there in the 20s and I didn't make it till my 30s

00:18:53.880 --> 00:18:57.280
and I was a white male and that was about all I remember.

00:18:57.280 --> 00:19:00.380
And it kind of went on the shelf for 20 some years.

00:19:00.380 --> 00:19:03.880
And when I first read the AY in early 1999.

00:19:03.880 --> 00:19:05.380
- Autobiography of a Yogi.

00:19:05.380 --> 00:19:06.180
- Yes.

00:19:06.180 --> 00:19:10.880
And when I was reading about his time in Boston,

00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:13.380
that came back immediately.

00:19:13.380 --> 00:19:15.680
And I realized that we had been together.

00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:19.880
So when I was ripe in this lifetime, finding him was easy.

00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:22.880
I knew there was something that I needed to find

00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:26.580
And I went to Barnes and Noble not knowing what I was looking for.

00:19:26.580 --> 00:19:30.780
And I looked up and I saw his picture on the spine of the autobiography.

00:19:30.780 --> 00:19:34.480
And it was such a magnetic pull to it that if I hadn't have picked it up,

00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:38.480
I think it probably would have just flown off the shelf and hit me between the eyes.

00:19:38.480 --> 00:19:41.780
And I just knew that as soon as I got it, I knew this is it.

00:19:41.780 --> 00:19:42.780
That's cool.

00:19:42.780 --> 00:19:45.680
Well, I don't doubt that in the least that kind of thing happens.

00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:51.380
Many of us who are listening to this interview today, if you've been really

00:19:51.380 --> 00:19:56.660
keen on spiritual development, this is not the first time around that you have had that

00:19:56.660 --> 00:19:57.660
interest.

00:19:57.660 --> 00:19:58.660
Clearly not.

00:19:58.660 --> 00:20:02.660
The verses in the Gita like that, which basically say like, Arjuna asked Krishna, "Well, you

00:20:02.660 --> 00:20:04.060
know, what happens if you don't make it?

00:20:04.060 --> 00:20:05.860
Do you not perish like a broken cloud?"

00:20:05.860 --> 00:20:08.580
And Krishna says, "No, you basically just pick up where you left off."

00:20:08.580 --> 00:20:09.580
You do.

00:20:09.580 --> 00:20:10.580
You really do.

00:20:10.580 --> 00:20:16.320
So, you know, for people who were a little iffy about gurus, and there may be fewer and

00:20:16.320 --> 00:20:19.020
far between now than there used to be.

00:20:19.020 --> 00:20:23.060
I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems like at least the emphasis on the Guru

00:20:23.060 --> 00:20:25.500
is at least momentarily kind of falling away.

00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:30.060
There have been a lot of Gurus that give Gurus a bad name, so people are a little squeamish

00:20:30.060 --> 00:20:31.060
about them.

00:20:31.060 --> 00:20:32.060
There are.

00:20:32.060 --> 00:20:37.380
Yeah, there are, but I wrote repeatedly in the two books that God, Guru, and Self are

00:20:37.380 --> 00:20:38.380
one.

00:20:38.380 --> 00:20:44.820
So, it's not about a loyalty to an individual and a body or about some organization.

00:20:44.820 --> 00:20:51.540
really about truth in capital T that as long as you're, is that your pole star that you want to

00:20:51.540 --> 00:20:56.260
find the true nature of reality in yourself, which are one and the same, then I don't think you need

00:20:56.260 --> 00:21:02.500
to worry about whether you have a guru or not. Yeah, I think that the ultimate ingredient or the

00:21:02.500 --> 00:21:10.100
most fundamental prerequisite to a spiritual path is just the desire, the earnestness, because when

00:21:10.100 --> 00:21:13.900
When you have that, then the means present themselves in whatever form.

00:21:13.900 --> 00:21:17.400
It'll be different for different people, but all kinds of opportunities.

00:21:17.400 --> 00:21:19.600
There's a British mountain climber, I forget his name,

00:21:19.600 --> 00:21:21.300
but this is often attributed to Goethe,

00:21:21.300 --> 00:21:23.400
but some British mountain climber actually said it,

00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:27.800
which is that there's really a great power in just starting a thing

00:21:27.800 --> 00:21:29.600
if you have the impetus to start it.

00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:33.400
And once you start it, then all kinds of accessories

00:21:33.400 --> 00:21:37.000
and aids and support opportunities will come to you

00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.200
that wouldn't have come if you just had waited for something to happen.

00:21:40.200 --> 00:21:41.200
Absolutely.

00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:47.160
You know, life is supportive and life is a contextual field that has always got our back.

00:21:47.160 --> 00:21:52.360
It's always got our long-term highest good, even though it may be hard to see that when

00:21:52.360 --> 00:21:54.400
you're going through a tough time.

00:21:54.400 --> 00:21:58.880
But you're right, when we make an effort, then things that wouldn't have presented themselves

00:21:58.880 --> 00:21:59.880
otherwise do.

00:21:59.880 --> 00:22:00.880
And it could be anything.

00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.760
It could be a book, it could be meeting someone, it could be watching a Batgap.

00:22:04.760 --> 00:22:05.760
It's infinite.

00:22:05.760 --> 00:22:13.760
That's why I would encourage anyone listening to this to not try to put any preconceived notions on what it ought to look like.

00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:18.760
Don't superimpose that onto the infinite because you're just making it more difficult.

00:22:18.760 --> 00:22:24.760
It can happen anyway and in all ways, CWG material says, which I love that line.

00:22:24.760 --> 00:22:26.760
What's that CWG?

00:22:26.760 --> 00:22:27.760
Conversations with God.

00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:29.760
Oh, Conversations with God, yeah, you use these acronyms.

00:22:29.760 --> 00:22:31.760
Sorry, yeah.

00:22:31.760 --> 00:22:37.840
You know, I read Conversations with God when I first started on the path, probably 2000,

00:22:37.840 --> 00:22:43.360
and I really loved Neal's, the message in the books, and I thought the early stuff in particular

00:22:43.360 --> 00:22:49.280
was beautifully expressed. And so, over the years, I've tended to just incorporate some of that into

00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:55.680
my own vernacular because it just resonates so well with me. I love the line that God is with

00:22:55.680 --> 00:22:57.960
with you always and in always.

00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:02.920
Now, you sent me some notes of points we wanted to discuss from each book.

00:23:02.920 --> 00:23:05.520
Do you have those notes in front of you also or just me?

00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:06.520
I do.

00:23:06.520 --> 00:23:07.520
Okay, good.

00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:11.760
As we go along, I just want to make sure we cover as much as possible and we want to be

00:23:11.760 --> 00:23:15.760
both horizontal and vertical in our coverage of all your points.

00:23:15.760 --> 00:23:23.360
Okay, so let's talk more at this point about your initial awakening while you were playing

00:23:23.360 --> 00:23:30.240
Spider Solitaire and listening to James Finley, and then the challenges you met after that,

00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:32.560
getting your feet back on the ground and integrating.

00:23:32.560 --> 00:23:36.920
My sadhana began when I was in my teens.

00:23:36.920 --> 00:23:40.760
And sadhana means spiritual practice, by the way, for those who don't know.

00:23:40.760 --> 00:23:46.480
When I was in my teens, I was very interested in philosophy, and I read widely both Western

00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:52.600
and Eastern philosophers, and I really enjoyed a guy named Alan Watts, who was one of the

00:23:52.600 --> 00:23:59.520
main vehicles for I think presenting Zen and Zen Buddhism to the West back in the 60s.

00:23:59.520 --> 00:24:07.020
And I really resonated with his stuff early on. And then I turned 18 and all I wanted

00:24:07.020 --> 00:24:10.680
to do for a few years was party and chase girls and...

00:24:10.680 --> 00:24:12.020
Did you catch any?

00:24:12.020 --> 00:24:13.020
My share, yeah.

00:24:13.020 --> 00:24:14.020
Okay.

00:24:14.020 --> 00:24:20.600
Never enough, but I did okay. And at about 23, an alarm bell went off and it was like,

00:24:20.600 --> 00:24:27.080
you need to do something with your life beyond this. And I was very fortunate to get a job at a hotel

00:24:27.080 --> 00:24:33.560
and I just loved it. It just was perfect. And within a year and a half, I was in management

00:24:33.560 --> 00:24:37.720
and within three more years, I was a GM and I went on to have a-

00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:42.360
General manager. You're really an acronym aficionado. Anyway, general manager.

00:24:42.360 --> 00:24:48.840
Yeah, general manager and went on to have a 35-year career in the hospitality industry,

00:24:48.840 --> 00:24:52.920
which provided me all types of opportunities I wouldn't have had in the world.

00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:58.600
And I got to see a lot of the country and it was really fortunate that I had this.

00:24:58.600 --> 00:25:05.080
But about 15 years in, that started wearing off in terms of driving my satisfaction for it.

00:25:05.080 --> 00:25:11.400
I couldn't understand the sense of dissatisfaction, but I had seemingly everything.

00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:18.200
I had a great house and beautiful convertible BMW, and I was making good money. And all these

00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:23.040
things you think are going to be fulfilling and ultimately they weren't.

00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:27.200
You know, fortunately I never had any addiction issues or I never really bottomed out in a

00:25:27.200 --> 00:25:32.920
bad way, but I was pretty unhappy internally and I was watching TV one night, just channel

00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:35.840
surfing and everything was just inane.

00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:40.080
It was just nothing interested me and I was, you know, 30 seconds or a minute and I'd hit

00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:42.400
the button and hit something else.

00:25:42.400 --> 00:25:44.680
And I can remember this like it was a moment ago.

00:25:44.680 --> 00:25:51.680
I hit the button and it was a PBS channel and there was this bald guy talking about whatever

00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:56.480
he was talking about and that wouldn't have lasted maybe a minute either, except he mentioned

00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:58.200
Alan Watts.

00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:04.240
And it just suddenly I froze and I was just enthralled in what he was talking about and

00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:05.720
it was Wayne Dyer.

00:26:05.720 --> 00:26:10.640
I immediately went out the next day and got a couple of Wayne books and that moment there

00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:13.440
was a shift and that was another descent of Grace.

00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:18.080
It wasn't the type that provided the awakening, but it was the type that provided the impetus

00:26:18.080 --> 00:26:21.080
for the reignition of my spiritual path.

00:26:21.080 --> 00:26:26.120
And within a couple of months, I got the Yogananda book and the rest just took care of itself.

00:26:26.120 --> 00:26:31.920
So there was about an 18-year period of, you know, my primary techniques were Kriya Yoga,

00:26:31.920 --> 00:26:35.300
Seva, which is selfless service, introspection.

00:26:35.300 --> 00:26:42.120
I went to SRF services on Sundays and the community in Atlanta there was just phenomenal.

00:26:42.120 --> 00:26:46.880
I mean, when I first walked in there, they didn't have the temple yet, but it was in

00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:50.480
a little business park and it felt like being wrapped up in a warm blanket.

00:26:50.480 --> 00:26:54.560
I just knew I'd come home and the people that were there became my family.

00:26:54.560 --> 00:26:59.720
Do you find Kriya Yoga easy to practice and effective, like gratifying?

00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:01.600
You had good experiences with it?

00:27:01.600 --> 00:27:02.600
Very.

00:27:02.600 --> 00:27:06.120
I think it's a very powerful technique, but it's not for everyone.

00:27:06.120 --> 00:27:08.760
I mean, there's no one technique that's right for everyone.

00:27:08.760 --> 00:27:16.120
So I make it a point in the book not to promote SRF or Kriya or anything as an ideology or

00:27:16.120 --> 00:27:21.680
methodology. I think you have to find that on your own. It worked for me. I also spent

00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:28.920
a lot of time investigating other teachings. I loved Nesargadatta and Ramana and the more

00:27:28.920 --> 00:27:36.280
contemporary things like Wayne and Deepak, David Hawkins, a little Eckhart Tolle. I soaked

00:27:36.280 --> 00:27:41.740
up whatever I could from whatever resonated. And that went on about 18 years. And I found

00:27:41.740 --> 00:27:49.840
myself in 2016, I had started a new job and it turned out within just a few weeks, it

00:27:49.840 --> 00:27:55.440
looked worse than worms on a waffle iron, Rick. I mean, I hated it. And then I started

00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:01.760
having health challenges and my heart was starting to go out and I ended up on disability

00:28:01.760 --> 00:28:08.320
in early 2017, I was sitting at home most of the time just sliding into depression, I would

00:28:08.320 --> 00:28:14.760
say. I wasn't clinically diagnosed, but I was in maybe the worst shape I'd been in.

00:28:14.760 --> 00:28:19.320
And suddenly, I thought about it. It's like, "Well, if this is the year I go down, I'm going

00:28:19.320 --> 00:28:24.840
to go down swinging. I'm not going to go down like this." And I talked about downsizing for

00:28:24.840 --> 00:28:31.040
years and so that's what I did. When the lease on the house that I had ran out, I gave away

00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:36.960
probably 80% of everything I owned, all the furniture, to the homeless facility that I

00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:41.700
was working with. And that was another thing that I did. One of the things I think that's

00:28:41.700 --> 00:28:46.800
really a great way out of whatever challenges you're going through is to find someone who

00:28:46.800 --> 00:28:51.300
has the same challenges, only worse, and help them. It's a great way to do it.

00:28:51.300 --> 00:28:56.180
So by the time I got rid of everything and I ended up back at the Hidden Valley Ashram

00:28:56.180 --> 00:29:01.700
in September of 2017, I felt better than I had maybe in my whole life. And within two

00:29:01.700 --> 00:29:08.060
weeks the awakening happened. So I had about an 18-year spiritual path that led up to the

00:29:08.060 --> 00:29:10.500
kiss and that's how I got there.

00:29:10.500 --> 00:29:15.660
And then after the kiss, after this blowout experience, you went through what we used

00:29:15.660 --> 00:29:21.660
to call in the TM movement "unstressing." There was this kind of a collection of deep

00:29:21.660 --> 00:29:27.260
impressions and gunk in your nervous system, in your subtle body, that a profound spiritual

00:29:27.260 --> 00:29:32.820
experience like that acts as a solvent to, and you know, this stuff starts to dissolve

00:29:32.820 --> 00:29:34.980
and come out, and then you have to deal with that.

00:29:34.980 --> 00:29:38.460
So talk a little about what that was like a little bit.

00:29:38.460 --> 00:29:44.740
First of all, I had intermittent bouts of bliss, and when I say bliss, I would describe

00:29:44.740 --> 00:29:54.500
that is like a fluid mix of peace and joy with a little dash of euphoria. And it was disorienting.

00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:59.380
And I never really had much in the way of Kundalini issues. I think in large part because

00:29:59.380 --> 00:30:02.540
Kriya you're really channeling that.

00:30:02.540 --> 00:30:08.300
You mean you're helping it to kind of flow in an unimpeded way or something? You're clearing

00:30:08.300 --> 00:30:09.300
the blocks.

00:30:09.300 --> 00:30:13.940
Yeah, and it's gradual. You know, up until that point, the only issues I'd had with Kriya

00:30:13.940 --> 00:30:19.980
and with Kundalini is occasionally I used to have what I call a Kriya or a bliss rush and

00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:26.540
I used to meditate in a chair and one day I had one of these rushes and the next thing

00:30:26.540 --> 00:30:31.860
I knew I face planted on the floor I'd fallen right off the chair and damn near broke my

00:30:31.860 --> 00:30:33.180
nose I mean it was bad.

00:30:33.180 --> 00:30:37.060
And you weren't just falling asleep you'd gone into some Samadhi state or something.

00:30:37.060 --> 00:30:42.660
Yeah the energy was so great that I lost bodily consciousness for long enough to fall out so

00:30:42.660 --> 00:30:48.260
So from then on I got a little bench and meditated zen style because I figured, well, I can't

00:30:48.260 --> 00:30:50.220
fall too far from there.

00:30:50.220 --> 00:30:53.460
But other than that, kundalini had never been a real problem.

00:30:53.460 --> 00:30:57.700
You know, it's an intelligent thing, so my attitude toward it is you just kind of let

00:30:57.700 --> 00:31:02.100
it do its thing and not try to force anything.

00:31:02.100 --> 00:31:07.220
I know people who've had trouble with it, and in some cases who have had trouble because

00:31:07.220 --> 00:31:08.220
they tried to force it.

00:31:08.220 --> 00:31:13.420
you know, they're doing like an hour of rapid pranayama or something or, you know, something

00:31:13.420 --> 00:31:18.780
to try to force the energy up and that can be dangerous. Well, you've probably read Gopi

00:31:18.780 --> 00:31:23.500
Krishna. Yeah, actually there's some guy we might interview who was his right-hand man. He like

00:31:23.500 --> 00:31:29.260
lived with him and it'd be interesting to get into that. Yeah, reading his book, I realized that I'm

00:31:29.260 --> 00:31:33.660
not going to push it. It knows what it's doing and I have a guru and I have my Kriya Yoga and I'm just,

00:31:33.660 --> 00:31:39.180
I'm not going to try to force anything and I would really recommend not forcing that because it's a

00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:45.500
powerful force. You can get fried pretty quickly from it. Yeah, safety first. Safety first. Yeah,

00:31:45.500 --> 00:31:49.500
and that implies with all kinds of things on the spiritual path including psychedelics.

00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:54.540
In my position, I get a lot of feedback from different people and I'm aware of people getting

00:31:54.540 --> 00:32:01.660
into trouble. Not implying that dictum of safety first. You bet. The spiritual path is not like any

00:32:01.660 --> 00:32:06.700
other thing in life. I mean, there are casualties along the way and whatever moderation means

00:32:06.700 --> 00:32:11.740
to the individual is probably what they ought to do and not go too crazy on any one thing.

00:32:11.740 --> 00:32:16.140
Which is the traditional approach, actually. The Buddha and the Bhagavad Gita and the middle way

00:32:16.140 --> 00:32:20.860
and balanced life. You don't fast yourself to death. The Gita says, you know, don't sleep too

00:32:20.860 --> 00:32:24.540
much or too little, don't eat too much or too little, don't work too much or too little, you

00:32:24.540 --> 00:32:26.740
you know, just balance.

00:32:26.740 --> 00:32:27.940
- Having said all that,

00:32:27.940 --> 00:32:31.940
suddenly I was having crazy Kundalini going on

00:32:31.940 --> 00:32:34.020
and it was disorienting.

00:32:34.020 --> 00:32:39.020
And I found myself not through any cognitive analysis of,

00:32:39.020 --> 00:32:41.180
well, this is happening, so I should do this.

00:32:41.180 --> 00:32:42.500
It just, it was intuitive.

00:32:42.500 --> 00:32:45.380
I found myself outdoors walking.

00:32:45.380 --> 00:32:46.780
- What do you mean by crazy Kundalini?

00:32:46.780 --> 00:32:49.680
I'm like, what actually was happening to you?

00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:53.620
- I was in a euphoric bliss and it was hard to operate.

00:32:53.620 --> 00:32:56.620
where you're having kriyas, where you're shaking around and stuff?

00:32:56.620 --> 00:33:01.620
Not so much shaking, but it was hard to do anything normal, like drive a car.

00:33:01.620 --> 00:33:07.620
It was interesting though, when I did need to drive my car, like when I would go down to the homeless shelter,

00:33:07.620 --> 00:33:11.620
for some amazing reason it would subside when I needed it to.

00:33:11.620 --> 00:33:17.620
But when I was back at the ashram, it was just raging, and I found myself just walking outside for hours, very slowly,

00:33:17.620 --> 00:33:23.660
slowly, like a meditation walk. And I would do that for hours trying to ground it. Not

00:33:23.660 --> 00:33:27.220
that I knew what I was doing at the time, but that's just what I found myself doing.

00:33:27.220 --> 00:33:30.700
Yeah. Some people say walking barefoot is very helpful.

00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:35.140
It is. And certainly, if that's happening, don't do anything that's going to stimulate

00:33:35.140 --> 00:33:40.260
it. I wasn't doing any kriyas, that's for sure. But I found myself doing that for hours,

00:33:40.260 --> 00:33:44.980
but everything else was difficult. I couldn't read very well. I remember flying out to see

00:33:44.980 --> 00:33:50.900
my sister and you know when I was in the corporate world I was like an advantage platinum you

00:33:50.900 --> 00:33:55.900
know I flew like a quarter of a million miles a year for a couple years and had more air

00:33:55.900 --> 00:34:01.340
miles than God. So I knew what I was doing and yet when I got to the airport the credit

00:34:01.340 --> 00:34:05.380
card that I used wasn't showing it up and I hadn't written the flight down and like

00:34:05.380 --> 00:34:09.220
I couldn't figure out how to get on the plane you know and I called my sister up and can

00:34:09.220 --> 00:34:14.840
you tell me what flight I'm on and she thought this guy's lost his mind you know. So everything

00:34:14.840 --> 00:34:20.320
was challenging in that respect. And that went on for about nine months. And what really,

00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:25.560
really helped me, SRF and I think most teachings in general on the progressive path, they're

00:34:25.560 --> 00:34:31.320
really good about helping you get there, but they don't do a great job, if at all, of telling

00:34:31.320 --> 00:34:33.400
you what to do once you're there.

00:34:33.400 --> 00:34:35.800
Paul You mentioned you actually had a thing where

00:34:35.800 --> 00:34:39.000
this anger was bubbling up and you were swearing and stuff like that.

00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:40.600
Scott That was a couple months later. I got back

00:34:40.600 --> 00:34:47.000
from my trip and it was just like all this gunk was being expelled and I was, you know,

00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:52.280
I would have made a sailor blush. Some of the stuff that I was doing and I felt horrible

00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:57.440
and I knew that this was just a cleansing process of some sort, whether probably at

00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:00.120
the subtle body level, I'm guessing. I don't know for sure.

00:35:00.120 --> 00:35:01.360
Yeah, I think so.

00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:08.280
But what really helped me during that whole time was Adyashanti's talks. He had a, imagine

00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:12.200
and he still does, there's a large audio library

00:35:12.200 --> 00:35:13.460
and they're keyworded pretty good.

00:35:13.460 --> 00:35:15.800
So I could target what I wanted,

00:35:15.800 --> 00:35:18.160
specifically about "Wakening" to hear.

00:35:18.160 --> 00:35:19.620
And I downloaded a bunch of stuff.

00:35:19.620 --> 00:35:21.200
And even though I couldn't read,

00:35:21.200 --> 00:35:24.720
his stuff was just like a lifeline to me.

00:35:24.720 --> 00:35:26.520
- You couldn't read because you were in the bliss

00:35:26.520 --> 00:35:27.760
in any phase and-

00:35:27.760 --> 00:35:30.160
- Yeah, I just, my mind, my memory,

00:35:30.160 --> 00:35:33.480
which is normally phenomenal, had always been phenomenal.

00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:34.920
My brain was mushy.

00:35:34.920 --> 00:35:38.120
So my memory was suboptimal.

00:35:38.120 --> 00:35:41.800
and I didn't have the concentration capabilities of reading,

00:35:41.800 --> 00:35:42.960
but I could listen.

00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:46.680
So that's why half the book is dedicated to SRF

00:35:46.680 --> 00:35:50.120
and Yogananda, but the other half is dedicated to Adya

00:35:50.120 --> 00:35:54.560
because his stuff was really helpful during those months.

00:35:54.560 --> 00:35:57.120
So Adya, if you're out there, you're the man.

00:35:57.120 --> 00:35:57.960
- He's out there.

00:35:57.960 --> 00:35:59.480
They probably won't be watching this, but--

00:35:59.480 --> 00:36:02.560
- Probably not, but I do sincerely appreciate

00:36:02.560 --> 00:36:03.400
his help during that.

00:36:03.400 --> 00:36:06.400
And then the other person at ground zero

00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:11.140
that really helped me probably the most of anything was the abbot, the minister in charge

00:36:11.140 --> 00:36:12.140
of the ashram.

00:36:12.140 --> 00:36:13.700
We'd been a long-time friend of mine.

00:36:13.700 --> 00:36:18.620
We'd known each other for close to 20 years at that point, and he had, in my estimation,

00:36:18.620 --> 00:36:20.380
was awake already.

00:36:20.380 --> 00:36:24.820
So he understood what I was going through and was really helpful in some critical junctures.

00:36:24.820 --> 00:36:29.340
Pete: Can people go there to this place and do retreats and things?

00:36:29.340 --> 00:36:30.340
Pete: They do.

00:36:30.340 --> 00:36:31.340
They do some.

00:36:31.340 --> 00:36:34.480
Pete: So people listening, if they think, okay, this might work for me, they could look into

00:36:34.480 --> 00:36:36.480
it and signed up for retreats and learned

00:36:36.480 --> 00:36:39.160
kriya there or whatever. Yeah, the only

00:36:39.160 --> 00:36:41.440
caveat to that I think is that the

00:36:41.440 --> 00:36:45.000
ashram is only for SRF members. Which

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:46.240
means you just have to get the right

00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:48.560
instruction and everything to be an SRF

00:36:48.560 --> 00:36:50.040
member. Yeah, so if you're a lessons

00:36:50.040 --> 00:36:52.800
student, you know, you slightly mail away

00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:55.200
for the lessons and you're... Yeah, so if

00:36:55.200 --> 00:36:57.080
you're into Zen or TM or something it

00:36:57.080 --> 00:36:58.440
wouldn't be appropriate to go there, but

00:36:58.440 --> 00:37:00.920
if you're into SRF then... Or if you're

00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:03.360
into both or multiple things. I mean

00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:08.120
I mean, they're not excluding anybody on that, you know, because both the Abbot and I had

00:37:08.120 --> 00:37:10.880
wide-ranging interests, including Zen.

00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:14.920
He was really into third Zen, patriarch, and some of this stuff.

00:37:14.920 --> 00:37:20.980
I recall that some SRF fundamentalists gave you a little bit hard time for being so eclectic.

00:37:20.980 --> 00:37:25.680
You know, that's true, but I would say it was the exception rather than the rule because

00:37:25.680 --> 00:37:31.800
Yogananda started SRF as a church of all religions, and I think most of the people that I dealt

00:37:31.800 --> 00:37:37.480
with or very understanding of my wide-ranging tastes.

00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:42.400
Truth is truth, and you get something said a little bit differently than somebody else

00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:43.480
and it clicks.

00:37:43.480 --> 00:37:48.040
And so, if someone out there just wants one teacher and that's all they need are those

00:37:48.040 --> 00:37:54.120
teachings and that individual, that's great, but that wasn't my route through.

00:37:54.120 --> 00:37:55.120
Yeah.

00:37:55.120 --> 00:38:01.400
I think for some people that might be an important phase that should be respected, and they shouldn't

00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:06.600
feel any need to be a dilettante, a superficial dabbler.

00:38:06.600 --> 00:38:11.320
You know, I get exposed to different stuff constantly and there might have been a point

00:38:11.320 --> 00:38:15.000
in my journey where that wouldn't have been a good idea, but now it does seem like a good

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:16.000
idea.

00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:19.360
You know, it's enriching for me as it is for you.

00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:24.280
There are times when, you know, in my experience where, you know, I was heavily into one thing

00:38:24.280 --> 00:38:28.240
or another and that just seemed to be right at the time, but then when the shift would

00:38:28.240 --> 00:38:34.520
come along and instead of diving deep into Dzogchen and diving deep into Kashmir Shaivism

00:38:34.520 --> 00:38:38.240
or whatever it might have been, just it was appropriate.

00:38:38.240 --> 00:38:42.020
And so I picked that up when the energy is there and I set it down when it shifts to

00:38:42.020 --> 00:38:43.020
something else.

00:38:43.020 --> 00:38:45.880
And one spiritual path can look like anything.

00:38:45.880 --> 00:38:53.080
And I think in our spiritual adolescence until we really are firm in our own path, I think

00:38:53.080 --> 00:38:57.200
the idea of swapping around can be a little bit disturbing.

00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:02.200
know, with the monks that I knew, they were all well enough along on their journey to

00:39:02.200 --> 00:39:06.640
understand doing that, and there was never any problem with that at all, and a lot of

00:39:06.640 --> 00:39:08.360
them did that as well.

00:39:08.360 --> 00:39:14.940
So, you kind of obviously have gotten through that initial phase, the dust settled eventually,

00:39:14.940 --> 00:39:17.920
and you got more integrated and you could actually get on airplanes.

00:39:17.920 --> 00:39:20.960
I actually got a job, that was a big one.

00:39:20.960 --> 00:39:22.280
You got a job, yeah.

00:39:22.280 --> 00:39:24.440
So, I could work, and that was important.

00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:28.940
Right, so just kind of like the transition phase just tapered off.

00:39:28.940 --> 00:39:38.340
It did. There was one key moment that really I think kind of bookended the kiss and I called it a karmaectomy.

00:39:38.340 --> 00:39:41.640
If that's not been copyrighted yet, I think I might do that.

00:39:41.640 --> 00:39:47.940
But I was doing Creo one morning, this was about nine months after the kiss, and I was at the ashram at this point.

00:39:47.940 --> 00:39:53.140
I think I had already secured the job, but because of the length of their process, it

00:39:53.140 --> 00:39:56.300
took a couple of months to actually start working.

00:39:56.300 --> 00:40:02.100
And I had been doing Kriya again intuitively, and one morning, from the very first Kriya,

00:40:02.100 --> 00:40:07.300
there was a deep, deep focus, and the energy was just immense.

00:40:07.300 --> 00:40:09.700
And for anyone doing Kriya...

00:40:09.700 --> 00:40:10.980
Let me just clarify one thing.

00:40:10.980 --> 00:40:14.860
So Kriya is the name of the practice in Yogananda's movement.

00:40:14.860 --> 00:40:20.700
do Kriya, but also Kriya is a word that sometimes means like involuntary movements that happen

00:40:20.700 --> 00:40:23.860
when you're having a Kundalini energy flowing.

00:40:23.860 --> 00:40:27.540
But in your usage of it here, you're talking about an actual practice you were doing.

00:40:27.540 --> 00:40:32.500
I'm actually talking about a practice, but during this particular practice, the latter

00:40:32.500 --> 00:40:33.500
happened.

00:40:33.500 --> 00:40:34.500
Okay.

00:40:34.500 --> 00:40:39.700
Basically, for anyone not familiar, Kriya is mentally channeling the energy up and down

00:40:39.700 --> 00:40:45.340
the astral spine, the Sushumna, and focusing it eventually here. So it goes up all the

00:40:45.340 --> 00:40:49.620
chakras and then it just goes back and forth.

00:40:49.620 --> 00:40:55.420
You know, when I was at the ashram in 2012 and 13, I got recruited out there and I was

00:40:55.420 --> 00:41:00.980
the operations manager. So I did a lot of what I did in the hotels. There were renovations

00:41:00.980 --> 00:41:07.500
going on and installation of big solar systems and wells for irrigation and renovating the

00:41:07.500 --> 00:41:12.460
the rooms in the front office and this is what I did and it was a way to serve the organization

00:41:12.460 --> 00:41:18.140
and have a lot of fun for a couple of years. During that time I was doing about eight hours

00:41:18.140 --> 00:41:23.740
a day of meditation, about four in the morning and four at night. So I would get up about

00:41:23.740 --> 00:41:30.280
four o'clock in the morning and I would do 180 kriyas and then I would do the same thing

00:41:30.280 --> 00:41:35.380
at night. So I was doing about 360 a day which is an enormous amount.

00:41:35.380 --> 00:41:40.380
And each Kriya is a whole cycle of going through the various points on the subtle.

00:41:40.380 --> 00:41:41.380
Yep.

00:41:41.380 --> 00:41:45.700
So, after the awakening, I wasn't doing any because that's not what I needed.

00:41:45.700 --> 00:41:46.700
I needed to ground.

00:41:46.700 --> 00:41:49.380
I didn't need any more energy throwing through.

00:41:49.380 --> 00:41:53.820
But it started to ground out and intuitively I picked it up again.

00:41:53.820 --> 00:41:57.740
Just that was the intuitive hit I got, so that's what I did.

00:41:57.740 --> 00:42:04.620
And in one morning, it was a Thursday morning in right about now, mid-June, there's 108

00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:08.820
beads as you know on a mala bead and I had that so I tracked it that way and I went through

00:42:08.820 --> 00:42:16.860
108 which is a lot and I just felt great and the energy was just incredible you know so

00:42:16.860 --> 00:42:22.500
I did another 108 and then another 108 and then another 108. I ended up close to 600

00:42:22.500 --> 00:42:30.060
that day and during the latter part of that my arms would raise up involuntarily and from

00:42:30.060 --> 00:42:35.540
the waist up, it was just like a white light of energy hitting me and I felt like it was

00:42:35.540 --> 00:42:39.340
just bliss beyond belief.

00:42:39.340 --> 00:42:46.460
The greatest feeling I've ever had in my body and it felt like I was being purged of the

00:42:46.460 --> 00:42:54.500
karma and then at the third eye at one point, it opened up and I could see somebody's face

00:42:54.500 --> 00:42:59.920
and then another and another and another and they flashed through fast enough to where

00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:05.500
I could see them but not so long as I could get distracted or lost in it. And hundreds

00:43:05.500 --> 00:43:11.580
went by. And I knew intuitively that this had been past incarnations that were being

00:43:11.580 --> 00:43:16.220
fried. It's like Nisargadatta talks, there's two types of Kriya, one that can be mitigated

00:43:16.220 --> 00:43:17.860
and one that has to be lived.

00:43:17.860 --> 00:43:19.540
Two types of karma.

00:43:19.540 --> 00:43:20.540
Yeah.

00:43:20.540 --> 00:43:21.540
Yeah.

00:43:21.540 --> 00:43:25.500
And this was the type that was being mitigated and this is what Cree ultimately is designed

00:43:25.500 --> 00:43:27.900
to do is to reduce that karma.

00:43:27.900 --> 00:43:34.740
And at the end of it, I saw like a symbolic type of thing, but this is infinitely long

00:43:34.740 --> 00:43:41.140
train with, you know, all these cars behind it and it had decoupled and they all fell

00:43:41.140 --> 00:43:44.700
away and all that was left was the engine in one car.

00:43:44.700 --> 00:43:50.420
I knew that that was the active karma that was left for me to burn out post awakening

00:43:50.420 --> 00:43:52.100
and that all the rest had been severed.

00:43:52.100 --> 00:43:56.900
And the reason it can get severed, I'm sure you know, is that it's not active.

00:43:56.900 --> 00:44:02.020
But what's active has to get mitigated through living it because that karma is what got you

00:44:02.020 --> 00:44:04.020
to the point where you are.

00:44:04.020 --> 00:44:05.020
So it's needed karma.

00:44:05.020 --> 00:44:09.940
Right, it's like Ramana, the electric fan keeps spinning even after you turn off the

00:44:09.940 --> 00:44:10.940
switch.

00:44:10.940 --> 00:44:14.940
That's right, you unplug, but it takes a while for the fan blades to slow down.

00:44:14.940 --> 00:44:20.540
And so how long it takes the fan blades to slow is unknown to me.

00:44:20.540 --> 00:44:23.500
I mean, it could take months, years, it could take lifetimes.

00:44:23.500 --> 00:44:28.900
I don't know, but they will stop and even then that karma will be gone.

00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:31.580
And this experience was the bookend.

00:44:31.580 --> 00:44:37.500
And once that had taken place, even though my memory was still a little mushy, the bliss

00:44:37.500 --> 00:44:46.320
subsided and I was able to work, which was a very strange deal. Somehow I knew what to

00:44:46.320 --> 00:44:51.220
do and how to do it, but there just wasn't anybody there doing it. And then I was on

00:44:51.220 --> 00:44:54.100
my road back to embodying it in a way that was useful.

00:44:54.100 --> 00:44:58.420
Well, it's funny you should say there wasn't anybody there doing it because Anthony Parchel,

00:44:58.420 --> 00:45:03.580
who asked that first question, sent in another one saying, "If you are not no one and not

00:45:03.580 --> 00:45:05.460
someone, who are you?"

00:45:05.460 --> 00:45:07.100
Well, you're both.

00:45:07.100 --> 00:45:16.100
If we are excitations of infinite consciousness, which I would posit that we are, then that is beyond duality.

00:45:16.100 --> 00:45:23.100
And so you can't name it. You know, reality is both illusory and at the same time here.

00:45:23.100 --> 00:45:30.100
What I'm trying to say is the unity and the multiplicity are both there, and yet it's neither on its own.

00:45:30.100 --> 00:45:35.500
Yeah, and also with relationship to Anthony's first question, let me take a quick crack

00:45:35.500 --> 00:45:39.820
at a definition and then see what you think about it, which is, like you, I avoid the

00:45:39.820 --> 00:45:43.940
word enlightenment because it has too static and superlative a connotation, but if we want

00:45:43.940 --> 00:45:51.140
to use it, I would say it's a state in which multidimensionality has been established in

00:45:51.140 --> 00:45:56.380
which there is a level of your life which is, you know, your fill, and there's a level

00:45:56.380 --> 00:45:59.580
of your life at which nothing ever happened.

00:45:59.580 --> 00:46:04.780
is no fill. And so you're everywhere, you're nowhere, you're right here, and all of that

00:46:04.780 --> 00:46:10.100
has been incorporated into a living experience, which is perfectly normal and natural and

00:46:10.100 --> 00:46:16.380
functional and you can drive cars and do whatever you need to do. But those subtler dimensions,

00:46:16.380 --> 00:46:21.820
you know, sometimes might be more predominant if the situation allows it and other times

00:46:21.820 --> 00:46:25.220
more in the background, but it's all always there.

00:46:25.220 --> 00:46:32.220
well put Rick. It does flow and it flows between those two like Nisargadatta said, "Wisdom

00:46:32.220 --> 00:46:39.180
is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing that I am everything and between the two my life

00:46:39.180 --> 00:46:40.180
flows."

00:46:40.180 --> 00:46:41.180
Yes, nice.

00:46:41.180 --> 00:46:48.620
So, ultimately you can't objectify existence as a thing. You have to just be it. It has

00:46:48.620 --> 00:46:54.460
to be lived because what would be there to separate and objectify it, it can't do that

00:46:54.460 --> 00:47:00.180
to itself. It does that essentially through separation consciousness, but once you realize

00:47:00.180 --> 00:47:05.500
that there is no separation, that the unity takes over, it can't be objectified, it can

00:47:05.500 --> 00:47:06.500
only be lived.

00:47:06.500 --> 00:47:09.740
It also can't be intellectualized, it can only be lived.

00:47:09.740 --> 00:47:15.180
Yeah, it's a non-conceptual understanding. So if someone's asked, "Well, what is non-conceptual

00:47:15.180 --> 00:47:20.100
understanding?" It's simply an understanding you can't put words around. It's the Tao that

00:47:20.100 --> 00:47:25.380
is the Tao is the Tao that can't be named. As much as you want to try, the intellect

00:47:25.380 --> 00:47:32.180
isn't capable of perceiving it. It's a non-conceptual perception. It's very self-evident when it

00:47:32.180 --> 00:47:38.060
happens. You can't miss it. But any sense of lack is gone. There's a fullness to the

00:47:38.060 --> 00:47:44.780
emptiness, if that makes sense. And for me, anyway, things like loneliness, they don't

00:47:44.780 --> 00:47:49.620
happen. Boredom doesn't happen. It's not an exotic state. They call it the natural

00:47:49.620 --> 00:47:57.140
state even though it's not technically a state, but it's very ordinary. And yet, in that ordinariness,

00:47:57.140 --> 00:48:02.520
because you're not mentally superimposing dialogue onto what's happening, you're seeing

00:48:02.520 --> 00:48:09.460
it as raw subjectivity, so to speak. And there's a beauty, a sacredness to that, that because

00:48:09.460 --> 00:48:15.540
the mental chatter isn't happening and the judgments and the evaluations and things aren't

00:48:15.540 --> 00:48:20.420
happening mentally, it's an extraordinary beauty to things that you see every day that are

00:48:20.420 --> 00:48:22.540
right in front of you, and it's a beautiful thing.

00:48:22.540 --> 00:48:23.540
Yeah.

00:48:23.540 --> 00:48:27.780
You know, we kind of started in the beginning talking about enlightenment and whether it

00:48:27.780 --> 00:48:33.420
was extraordinary or, you know, ordinary, and you're expressing it very well here.

00:48:33.420 --> 00:48:38.540
It's the natural state, as you just said, and it's everyone's birthright, as we said

00:48:38.540 --> 00:48:43.820
earlier, and it's not some kind of superpower, but it's the most wonderful thing that could

00:48:43.820 --> 00:48:44.820
happen to you.

00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:50.180
And everybody's looking for fulfillment, everybody's looking for happiness, and you were saying

00:48:50.180 --> 00:48:55.780
in the beginning, you were chasing it with BMWs and fancy homes and things like that.

00:48:55.780 --> 00:48:59.660
I mean, there's nothing wrong with that stuff, but ultimately it's not going to give you

00:48:59.660 --> 00:49:01.160
what you're looking for.

00:49:01.160 --> 00:49:05.900
And you live in a nice home now, you're not sleeping on a bed of nails, but I don't think

00:49:05.900 --> 00:49:10.780
that you primarily derive your fulfillment from the room you're living in here.

00:49:10.780 --> 00:49:16.580
No, but awakening doesn't preclude the enjoyment of anything either.

00:49:16.580 --> 00:49:22.880
I enjoy going out and having a nice dinner or a glass of Oregon Pinot Noir or whatever

00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:24.220
it may be.

00:49:24.220 --> 00:49:30.620
I'm not sitting around in a loincloth doing some practices.

00:49:30.620 --> 00:49:33.700
Enlightenment if that's the term you wanted to use, can look like anything.

00:49:33.700 --> 00:49:36.900
Our personality still is mostly intact I would say.

00:49:36.900 --> 00:49:41.460
Some things have changed, but it is the most ordinary of things and yet the most beautiful.

00:49:41.460 --> 00:49:42.460
Yeah.

00:49:42.460 --> 00:49:46.260
On the news at Christmas time, they always have these stories about how much people are

00:49:46.260 --> 00:49:50.540
shopping and they always have these scenes of people trampling each other when the doors

00:49:50.540 --> 00:49:55.660
open at 6 a.m. or whatever to get the latest big TV and having fistfights in the aisles.

00:49:55.660 --> 00:50:01.080
And it's like just such a demonstration of the desperation that is so common, trying

00:50:01.080 --> 00:50:04.540
to derive fulfillment from things.

00:50:04.540 --> 00:50:09.740
But people, the mistake that they make, at least the mistake that I made, is that once

00:50:09.740 --> 00:50:14.860
you, you know, like I really wanted the BMW, it could be anything, and then you get it

00:50:14.860 --> 00:50:19.740
and then you feel peace for a while and you think, well, it was the BMW.

00:50:19.740 --> 00:50:23.060
But then the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing and, you know, the

00:50:23.060 --> 00:50:27.340
bigger house and the cuter girlfriend and, you know, whatever it may be, you just keep

00:50:27.340 --> 00:50:28.700
going and going.

00:50:28.700 --> 00:50:34.040
And what's fulfilling that desire and that yearning, that feeling of lack for a while

00:50:34.040 --> 00:50:38.040
isn't the thing, it's that the desire went away.

00:50:38.040 --> 00:50:41.600
And ultimately, I don't have any desires.

00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:44.000
Now, that doesn't mean that I might not want

00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:46.240
a burrito for lunch and some ice cream afterwards,

00:50:46.240 --> 00:50:48.600
but there isn't anything I need.

00:50:48.600 --> 00:50:50.720
I don't have any sense of lack,

00:50:50.720 --> 00:50:54.560
and I live in a beautiful place, but I live very simply.

00:50:54.560 --> 00:50:56.760
There's nothing I feel I need to do or to have.

00:50:56.760 --> 00:50:59.720
It just, life takes care of me in the way that it does.

00:50:59.720 --> 00:51:04.120
So, what is awakening to me is being okay with what is.

00:51:04.120 --> 00:51:05.880
Pete Yeah, well, you were talking about bliss

00:51:05.880 --> 00:51:10.980
a little while ago, and you weren't experiencing bliss because of something you were tasting

00:51:10.980 --> 00:51:14.280
or seeing or smelling or hearing or touching.

00:51:14.280 --> 00:51:20.080
It was just bliss, like this intrinsic happiness that was welling up inside of you regardless

00:51:20.080 --> 00:51:22.200
of the external circumstances.

00:51:22.200 --> 00:51:25.360
Pete It's the peace that passeth all understanding.

00:51:25.360 --> 00:51:28.400
Pete Yeah, and that's kind of a vivid illustration

00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:32.640
of what all the scriptures say, which is the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, or Brahman

00:51:32.640 --> 00:51:39.520
is Ananda, Sat-Chen Ananda, you know, we all possess this inner reservoir of happiness,

00:51:39.520 --> 00:51:45.640
which we overlook for the most part, most of us, and, you know, desperately seek outwardly

00:51:45.640 --> 00:51:48.240
for that which we already possess inwardly.

00:51:48.240 --> 00:51:51.680
Pete That's right. And what I found, there was

00:51:51.680 --> 00:51:57.840
an interesting time in those first nine months where it felt like the inside was

00:51:57.840 --> 00:52:04.940
larger than the outside. It felt like in unity, the unity that I was experiencing,

00:52:04.940 --> 00:52:10.580
it was like Douglas Harding, the head just isn't there and the outside

00:52:10.580 --> 00:52:17.440
was becoming my inside. And so what it felt like in terms of a reference

00:52:17.440 --> 00:52:22.720
point, it was larger than anything that I had experienced because the reference points were

00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:31.400
gone. And so, I was, that was part of the process where the separation was falling away.

00:52:31.400 --> 00:52:37.360
And one of the things too I would say to anyone is that if you're a seeker, don't let that

00:52:37.360 --> 00:52:44.360
be an identity. And ultimately, the seeking doesn't end. The seeker dissolves.

00:52:44.360 --> 00:52:50.720
Papaji said, "Give up the search." And I think that that can be a premature instruction in

00:52:50.720 --> 00:52:51.720
some cases.

00:52:51.720 --> 00:52:52.720
Absolutely.

00:52:52.720 --> 00:52:56.360
Because one could say, "Alright, whatever, I'll just kick back and have a beer and watch

00:52:56.360 --> 00:52:58.680
football and it'll happen if it's supposed to happen."

00:52:58.680 --> 00:53:01.640
That's not the message.

00:53:01.640 --> 00:53:06.120
And maybe that's not what he meant, anyway. But in your case, let's put it in terms of

00:53:06.120 --> 00:53:10.560
you, wouldn't you say that in a sense, maybe you don't want to use the word "seeker" anymore

00:53:10.560 --> 00:53:17.040
because there's a santosh, there's contentment, but you're as, you know, as much of an enthusiast

00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:21.760
for all this stuff as you ever were. And you're like you're in a candy shop with all kinds

00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:26.080
of interesting things to explore and learn and all that.

00:53:26.080 --> 00:53:33.120
You know, the real voyage of discovery begins after the awakening because then you're right

00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:37.240
back where you were, only now it's like you're seeing it for the first time. Like T.S. Eliot

00:53:37.240 --> 00:53:41.560
said we arrived back where we were but now we see it for the first time.

00:53:41.560 --> 00:53:45.720
You know Rumi had said I've been knocking on the door only to find myself knocking

00:53:45.720 --> 00:53:50.320
from the inside and it's an interesting thing when it happens to say the least.

00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:55.680
But now I still enjoy things you know basically all the things that I used to

00:53:55.680 --> 00:54:00.680
enjoy I still do only I don't have any emotional investment in them. So if the

00:54:00.680 --> 00:54:05.280
Red Sox lose to the Yankees I'm not gonna be happy about it but it's not gonna

00:54:05.280 --> 00:54:10.400
to ruin my day either. Well, I prefer the Yankees win personally. I was a Yankees fan when I

00:54:10.400 --> 00:54:14.760
was a kid. I lived in... This interview is over! I lived outside New York City and I

00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:19.040
would lie there listening to my little crystal radio and Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and

00:54:19.040 --> 00:54:25.840
Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford and the whole gang. I'll let you have that. Again, these things,

00:54:25.840 --> 00:54:30.000
you can enjoy them, but you'll also see it for what it is and it's just not that important.

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:31.440
- Icing on the cake.

00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:34.320
- Yeah, but on the other side of that,

00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:37.960
I think it's really important not to deny your humanness.

00:54:37.960 --> 00:54:41.840
And, you know, things can still happen occasionally,

00:54:41.840 --> 00:54:44.760
you know, that are experienced, you know, as a cloud.

00:54:44.760 --> 00:54:47.360
You know, I see some things in the world that happen

00:54:47.360 --> 00:54:49.240
that are, you know, some of the just, you know,

00:54:49.240 --> 00:54:53.960
the utter unnecessary cruelty and poverty

00:54:53.960 --> 00:54:55.480
and war and things.

00:54:55.480 --> 00:54:59.840
And I feel those more intensely now than ever before,

00:54:59.840 --> 00:55:06.740
for two reasons. One is I view it as happening to me in one sense and also when the sense

00:55:06.740 --> 00:55:12.260
of separation dissolves, there's no defense mechanisms around the heart and so I tend

00:55:12.260 --> 00:55:19.860
to feel much more keenly now than ever. And I can be profoundly sad or angry or I mean

00:55:19.860 --> 00:55:25.660
these things still can come up. The difference is that they don't last as long and then they

00:55:25.660 --> 00:55:31.220
don't happen as often. But awakening is not some panacea that all of a sudden you don't

00:55:31.220 --> 00:55:35.940
feel things and things don't ever bother you and everything goes right and all that. That's

00:55:35.940 --> 00:55:38.180
not what it is. It's not for me.

00:55:38.180 --> 00:55:42.820
There's an analogy that's interesting here, which is, I didn't make this up, but let's

00:55:42.820 --> 00:55:49.060
say a very unenlightened state would be like stone and you can scratch a line in stone with

00:55:49.060 --> 00:55:52.620
an iron bar or something like that. It's hard to scratch a line, but once you've scratched

00:55:52.620 --> 00:55:56.920
that the line stays there quite a while. It's not a deep line, but it's there and it lasts

00:55:56.920 --> 00:56:01.780
a long time. Or, let's say a little bit more evolved state would be more like sand. You

00:56:01.780 --> 00:56:07.500
can dig a deeper line in sand more easily, and it's erased more quickly. Then, you know,

00:56:07.500 --> 00:56:13.020
line in water, you can make a deeper line so you can put your whole arm through it,

00:56:13.020 --> 00:56:18.100
but it disappears almost instantly. And then, line in air. You can just dive through the

00:56:18.100 --> 00:56:21.000
air and there's no trace.

00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:26.820
So like that in a nervous system, in a state of consciousness in which one is very bound

00:56:26.820 --> 00:56:32.240
and entrenched, you know, then you don't have the capacity for deep experience, but the

00:56:32.240 --> 00:56:36.080
experiences you do have leave very lasting impressions.

00:56:36.080 --> 00:56:39.840
And I won't go through all the steps, but finally, you know, in a state, the state you're

00:56:39.840 --> 00:56:46.400
describing, you feel very, very deeply, but it doesn't create this lasting impression

00:56:46.400 --> 00:56:48.800
that takes forever to work out.

00:56:48.800 --> 00:56:49.800
That's right.

00:56:49.800 --> 00:56:53.400
And the reason it doesn't last is because it's processed fully.

00:56:53.400 --> 00:56:54.600
Processed fully, yes.

00:56:54.600 --> 00:56:59.880
Whereas in separation consciousness, the impressions happen and they don't get, you know, things

00:56:59.880 --> 00:57:01.680
happen, traumas and...

00:57:01.680 --> 00:57:02.680
They accumulate.

00:57:02.680 --> 00:57:04.040
And they accumulate, yeah.

00:57:04.040 --> 00:57:07.840
And they don't get processed and, you know, you might get through some of it in a lifetime,

00:57:07.840 --> 00:57:09.280
but you're also creating more.

00:57:09.280 --> 00:57:11.940
And so that's the wheel you're trying to get off.

00:57:11.940 --> 00:57:17.560
things get processed fully because there's no fear there of feeling what you're capable

00:57:17.560 --> 00:57:18.560
of feeling.

00:57:18.560 --> 00:57:19.560
Right.

00:57:19.560 --> 00:57:23.420
One of my motivations with all this is, you know, like you were just saying, all these

00:57:23.420 --> 00:57:27.120
horrible things that happen in the world and how terrible they are for the people who experience

00:57:27.120 --> 00:57:34.340
them and they're very sad to observe, is the realization that if the world were populated

00:57:34.340 --> 00:57:40.140
more by people like you, or entirely by people like you, not exactly like you, but you know

00:57:40.140 --> 00:57:43.340
Red Sox fans, one and all.

00:57:43.340 --> 00:57:46.260
Red Sox fundamentalists.

00:57:46.260 --> 00:57:47.660
Everybody would have to wear Red Sox shirts.

00:57:47.660 --> 00:57:48.660
Line with that.

00:57:48.660 --> 00:57:49.660
You know what I'm saying.

00:57:49.660 --> 00:57:50.660
I do.

00:57:50.660 --> 00:57:55.940
Then, if that were the case, then we wouldn't have these wars and these inequities and the

00:57:55.940 --> 00:58:00.620
famine and the poverty and the fanaticism and all this horrible stuff.

00:58:00.620 --> 00:58:06.000
Because all that stuff is just the manifestation of the collective consciousness of billions

00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:11.800
of people who are like the rock, you know, that have all these deep grooves etched in

00:58:11.800 --> 00:58:12.800
it.

00:58:12.800 --> 00:58:13.800
That's right.

00:58:13.800 --> 00:58:17.880
However, on the other side of that, from a place of love, it breaks my heart, and that's

00:58:17.880 --> 00:58:18.880
what I'm feeling.

00:58:18.880 --> 00:58:25.120
From a place of wisdom, I realize that the things that are happening in the world are

00:58:25.120 --> 00:58:30.760
happening because, you know, without suffering, there isn't really any grist for the mill.

00:58:30.760 --> 00:58:36.520
If I hadn't been gradually more and more dissatisfied with the corporate world and everything that

00:58:36.520 --> 00:58:39.640
I had, the shift wouldn't have happened.

00:58:39.640 --> 00:58:41.660
That was actually fueling the shift.

00:58:41.660 --> 00:58:47.340
And so I realized from a place of wisdom that everything is happening because it had to

00:58:47.340 --> 00:58:50.680
happen and the proof for that is that it is happening.

00:58:50.680 --> 00:58:55.260
And that people are in their own way, in their own place, in the perfect contextual field

00:58:55.260 --> 00:58:56.800
for them to evolve.

00:58:56.800 --> 00:59:02.360
But I wouldn't want to live in that knowing alone because that would be a cold place.

00:59:02.360 --> 00:59:05.180
You'd just go, "Well, that's their karma, tough luck."

00:59:05.180 --> 00:59:06.180
And that's not where you want to be.

00:59:06.180 --> 00:59:08.200
That's not where I want to be living from.

00:59:08.200 --> 00:59:14.840
So knowing that helps me not become overwhelmed by the suffering that I feel, but feeling

00:59:14.840 --> 00:59:20.560
it allows compassion and then you do whatever you can do from wherever you are to alleviate

00:59:20.560 --> 00:59:22.560
it and that's part of the perfection as well.

00:59:22.560 --> 00:59:27.180
Yeah, and I totally agree with what you're saying, and it's easy for people to see how

00:59:27.180 --> 00:59:33.660
getting bored with BMW might be an incentive to spiritual advancement, but what would you

00:59:33.660 --> 00:59:37.060
say to the person who says, "Yeah, but how about the Holocaust?

00:59:37.060 --> 00:59:40.680
How about what's happening in Gaza to all those children and everything?

00:59:40.680 --> 00:59:45.820
How can you frame that in the context of some kind of a loving God that is trying to help

00:59:45.820 --> 00:59:47.500
all those people evolve?"

00:59:47.500 --> 00:59:52.060
It seems that you really have to step back and zoom out to make sense of that.

00:59:52.060 --> 00:59:56.660
do and that's the age-old question is why do bad things happen to good people and

00:59:56.660 --> 01:00:02.920
how can a loving God permit the evil that we see and my response to that you

01:00:02.920 --> 01:00:07.560
know from a place of wisdom is that even those things even the Holocaust even

01:00:07.560 --> 01:00:12.760
Gaza there's always something that really gets you and for me child abuse

01:00:12.760 --> 01:00:18.680
and animal abuse is two that really make me you know want to just strangle

01:00:18.680 --> 01:00:24.840
somebody if I see him doing it. Even those things though in the grand perfection are necessary

01:00:24.840 --> 01:00:31.760
because they're there. Life doesn't happen to look a particular way for me, but on the

01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:35.840
other hand, if there's something that I can do to help somebody, then I absolutely will.

01:00:35.840 --> 01:00:41.640
And that's part of the perfection of will. But I don't have an ego mind that is superimposing

01:00:41.640 --> 01:00:46.920
what it thinks life ought to look like onto life. Anthony DeMello said, "Awakening is

01:00:46.920 --> 01:00:50.360
and absolute intimacy with the 10,000 things

01:00:50.360 --> 01:00:51.560
or something close to that,

01:00:51.560 --> 01:00:54.400
that you realize that it is the way it is

01:00:54.400 --> 01:00:56.600
because it needed to be that way.

01:00:56.600 --> 01:00:58.400
And the proof for that is that it is.

01:00:58.400 --> 01:00:59.640
You don't have to like it.

01:00:59.640 --> 01:01:01.680
- Sounds very Byron Katie-ish.

01:01:01.680 --> 01:01:03.440
- It is, yeah, yeah, it is.

01:01:03.440 --> 01:01:05.080
And I don't like it.

01:01:05.080 --> 01:01:08.800
I wish we had a world that got along as a species.

01:01:08.800 --> 01:01:11.240
We haven't even figured out how to stop killing each other.

01:01:11.240 --> 01:01:15.400
I mean, people think we're some advanced point

01:01:15.400 --> 01:01:16.240
in our evolution.

01:01:16.240 --> 01:01:19.720
I would say, well, why are we still killing each other?

01:01:19.720 --> 01:01:22.640
And why did two billion people not have electricity

01:01:22.640 --> 01:01:26.000
and working plumbing and living in abject poverty?

01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:27.920
From a place in consciousness,

01:01:27.920 --> 01:01:29.400
we still have a long way to go,

01:01:29.400 --> 01:01:32.600
but you do what you do in the outer world

01:01:32.600 --> 01:01:34.200
because that's what you do.

01:01:34.200 --> 01:01:36.720
But then the main thing is that you work on yourself

01:01:36.720 --> 01:01:38.440
because that's the ultimate gift

01:01:38.440 --> 01:01:40.160
that you can give to the world.

01:01:40.160 --> 01:01:41.720
- I saw a touching thing the other day.

01:01:41.720 --> 01:01:44.360
It was an article and it was about this professional

01:01:44.360 --> 01:01:49.640
bullfighter who had been doing that for quite some time. And one day he was there, he and

01:01:49.640 --> 01:01:54.680
the bull were facing each other and neither was attacking at that point. And they looked

01:01:54.680 --> 01:02:00.840
into each other's eyes and the bullfighter just tuned in to the bull. And he sat down

01:02:00.840 --> 01:02:06.480
and started weeping. And he thought, "What am I doing?" He had this epiphany. Long story

01:02:06.480 --> 01:02:12.960
short, he left bullfighting, became a vegetarian, and became an activist for stopping bullfighting.

01:02:12.960 --> 01:02:18.120
It was just that moment of connection, you know, on a soul level that turned him around.

01:02:18.120 --> 01:02:19.120
And that's a great point.

01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:24.860
And what we were talking about earlier is these epiphanies, these satar eyes or these awakenings

01:02:24.860 --> 01:02:29.200
or shifts, whatever term you want to use, it can happen anywhere.

01:02:29.200 --> 01:02:33.240
And when we're open enough, you know, he was open enough in that moment to where the look

01:02:33.240 --> 01:02:37.600
in the bull's eyes was enough to create the shift.

01:02:37.600 --> 01:02:39.240
That's the beauty of life.

01:02:39.240 --> 01:02:43.560
His life is the ultimate vehicle for its own evolution.

01:02:43.560 --> 01:02:49.520
Speaking of shifts, let me do a dramatic, abrupt segue here.

01:02:49.520 --> 01:02:55.240
You recounted an experience in, I think it was possibly your second book, I'm not sure,

01:02:55.240 --> 01:03:00.080
where you went into this really deep state, you can elaborate, maybe it was an out-of-body

01:03:00.080 --> 01:03:05.800
experience and you encountered Mayor Bhabha, who you had had an affinity with, and he kind

01:03:05.800 --> 01:03:07.980
of did a number on you that was very interesting.

01:03:07.980 --> 01:03:10.220
You know what I'm alluding to.

01:03:10.220 --> 01:03:16.960
This was probably the most amazing mystical experience that I've had in this lifetime.

01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:20.420
Mystical experiences, they're fine if you have them and if you're not having them.

01:03:20.420 --> 01:03:22.140
I mean, people are wired in different ways.

01:03:22.140 --> 01:03:26.140
If you're not having them, I would almost say you're better off because mystical experiences,

01:03:26.140 --> 01:03:31.900
I mean, they're a blessing in the sense that you have them, but then the ego mind can attach

01:03:31.900 --> 01:03:34.780
to that and then go, "Oh, when's the next one?"

01:03:34.780 --> 01:03:36.540
or why am I not having another one?

01:03:36.540 --> 01:03:38.700
Or somebody else can hear it and is like,

01:03:38.700 --> 01:03:40.460
well, why has he got one and I don't?

01:03:40.460 --> 01:03:43.900
And that's just what ego minds do.

01:03:43.900 --> 01:03:45.420
In the experiences that I've had,

01:03:45.420 --> 01:03:47.740
I would use the term grateful indifference.

01:03:47.740 --> 01:03:49.860
So I'm always grateful for them happening,

01:03:49.860 --> 01:03:52.820
but I'm not going to, experiences come and go.

01:03:52.820 --> 01:03:54.300
And at the end of the day,

01:03:54.300 --> 01:03:56.900
has the experience changed where you're living from?

01:03:56.900 --> 01:03:59.420
And if it hasn't, then it's a blessing,

01:03:59.420 --> 01:04:04.020
but let it go and stay in the now and keep doing your work.

01:04:04.020 --> 01:04:07.460
So that's my spiel about this experience as a whole.

01:04:07.460 --> 01:04:13.080
And if anybody's been in a spiritual movement, and there's always been people who have been

01:04:13.080 --> 01:04:18.700
Mike Hoggs who get up and talk about their flashy experiences, and often it's a kind

01:04:18.700 --> 01:04:23.140
of a one-upmanship, ego aggrandizement kind of a thing.

01:04:23.140 --> 01:04:26.860
And you got to sort of look at how these people actually walk their talk if they do to see

01:04:26.860 --> 01:04:31.580
what you know whether that really is meaningful or significant at all.

01:04:31.580 --> 01:04:36.800
I did not want to include this experience in the book from a personal standpoint because

01:04:36.800 --> 01:04:38.040
of all that.

01:04:38.040 --> 01:04:42.480
But there was an energy that just said, "You need to write about this and you just really

01:04:42.480 --> 01:04:43.680
don't have much choice."

01:04:43.680 --> 01:04:45.960
So I trust that and I did.

01:04:45.960 --> 01:04:47.920
There's an energy that's making you talk about it now.

01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:51.360
There's an energy, yeah, it's called Rick Archer.

01:04:51.360 --> 01:04:54.240
Life isn't about me, so I'll do my best.

01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:55.240
It was an out-of-body.

01:04:55.240 --> 01:04:56.240
body.

01:04:56.240 --> 01:05:01.840
Yogananda is my guru and my foremost master, but there have been other masters that have

01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:07.400
also radically assisted me over the years at different times, St. Francis early on,

01:05:07.400 --> 01:05:11.240
Mayor Baba early on, and afterwards as well.

01:05:11.240 --> 01:05:14.800
Because you were inspired by their books or because you actually established some kind

01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:20.120
of a subtle affinity or connection with the soul of St. Francis or something?

01:05:20.120 --> 01:05:25.160
It was through their works, but through their works, it felt like a transmission.

01:05:25.160 --> 01:05:32.800
I never had any visions of St. Francis or anybody else, but there was a connection in the heart.

01:05:32.800 --> 01:05:36.600
Like it was a living thing and not just, you know, an intellectual.

01:05:36.600 --> 01:05:40.760
Yeah, but people really get that, I mean, with Jesus, with Ramana, they turn into these

01:05:40.760 --> 01:05:47.600
people that may have been dead for a couple thousand years, and it's very real and present.

01:05:47.600 --> 01:05:52.560
And during the time of the awakening, Maestro Eckhart was a big one, and Nisargadatta.

01:05:52.560 --> 01:05:58.680
And afterward of late, I really, the last couple of years, really connected with Lama

01:05:58.680 --> 01:06:05.840
Chenpa in the Dzogchen tradition, with Abhinavagupta in Kashmir Shaivism, even with Plotinus in

01:06:05.840 --> 01:06:06.840
the Neoplatonism.

01:06:06.840 --> 01:06:09.520
I really enjoyed that whole thing for a while.

01:06:09.520 --> 01:06:14.080
But as Mahar Bhabha, Bhabha was really, and still is, really important.

01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:19.240
I mean, he and Yogananda, I think, are my two main guys, you know.

01:06:19.240 --> 01:06:23.360
There's a wonderful retreat center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

01:06:23.360 --> 01:06:29.400
And the interesting thing about this was that this experience came during an SRF retreat,

01:06:29.400 --> 01:06:34.400
which just goes to show that these guys, you know, they're not fighting over devotees.

01:06:34.400 --> 01:06:38.360
It's whosoever consciousness is reaching out and needs it at that point, because ultimately

01:06:38.360 --> 01:06:40.640
they're just one aspect of ourselves.

01:06:40.640 --> 01:06:43.380
I don't really even look at it as personal so much.

01:06:43.380 --> 01:06:47.860
So I was at an SRF retreat and I had an out-of-body experience.

01:06:47.860 --> 01:06:53.020
And to anyone wondering how you know, if you've had one, you know, there's just a difference

01:06:53.020 --> 01:06:54.940
between a dream or even a lucid dream.

01:06:54.940 --> 01:06:56.800
There's a qualitative difference.

01:06:56.800 --> 01:07:05.340
And I was with Baba and he put his hands on the top of my head and I felt and I could

01:07:05.340 --> 01:07:11.180
see both from within or without a white light coming up all the way through my body.

01:07:11.180 --> 01:07:16.180
And when it hit, it was like I was being electrocuted from the inside out.

01:07:16.180 --> 01:07:17.180
It was agony.

01:07:17.180 --> 01:07:22.220
And I don't know how long that went on, but all of a sudden, it was like I was floating

01:07:22.220 --> 01:07:24.180
in the cosmos.

01:07:24.180 --> 01:07:28.100
And it wasn't that I was experiencing bliss, I was bliss.

01:07:28.100 --> 01:07:34.220
It was an ever-changing, ever-new bliss that the masters had written about.

01:07:34.220 --> 01:07:35.860
What the point of that was, I don't know.

01:07:35.860 --> 01:07:40.580
At least in my experience, when you're having these kinds of interactions, you're not thinking

01:07:40.580 --> 01:07:43.540
on a mental level, it just really wells up out of the soul.

01:07:43.540 --> 01:07:47.100
And I said, "Why isn't my master doing this for me?"

01:07:47.100 --> 01:07:48.440
Meaning Yogananda.

01:07:48.440 --> 01:07:53.660
And verbatim, he smiled so sweetly and he said, "Because at this level, we are all one.

01:07:53.660 --> 01:07:55.880
And lately, your consciousness has been reaching out."

01:07:55.880 --> 01:08:00.980
And I always knew from then on that no matter what we need, whoever the seemingly outward

01:08:00.980 --> 01:08:03.760
vehicle is, we get what we need.

01:08:03.760 --> 01:08:07.220
So if that would have been all the experience was, that still would have registered about

01:08:07.220 --> 01:08:15.220
a 9.5 on my mysticalometer, you know. But then I looked down for some reason and he followed

01:08:15.220 --> 01:08:19.620
my vision and there was just like a little freckle right here about halfway between my

01:08:19.620 --> 01:08:24.900
waist and my shoulder. And he reached out with his left hand with a little, like a carpet

01:08:24.900 --> 01:08:29.700
knife or something, just kind of wood with a kind of a slightly curved thing and he flicked

01:08:29.700 --> 01:08:36.460
it. And I fell back because it hurt. And when I came back up, there had been something attached

01:08:36.460 --> 01:08:41.820
to my energy body, I guess, because the half that he'd ripped out was kind of flapping

01:08:41.820 --> 01:08:46.740
around in the air and the other half was still hooked in. It looked like something out of

01:08:46.740 --> 01:08:51.540
a Hieronymus Bosch painting, you know, and this is just my intuition, I really don't

01:08:51.540 --> 01:08:56.940
know, but it looked like some sort of an astral parasite, which I've heard some people posit

01:08:56.940 --> 01:09:01.620
that these can be the source or at least one source for addictions and things like this,

01:09:01.620 --> 01:09:05.580
and they're really, that's why they're incredibly difficult to get rid of addictions.

01:09:05.580 --> 01:09:08.940
You almost kind of have to just starve them to death.

01:09:08.940 --> 01:09:11.060
Not the only reason, but one.

01:09:11.060 --> 01:09:16.820
And it was about three or four inches tall, and on the top, it had alternating yellow

01:09:16.820 --> 01:09:18.540
and red checks.

01:09:18.540 --> 01:09:19.540
And it was horrific.

01:09:19.540 --> 01:09:22.020
I'm like, what the...

01:09:22.020 --> 01:09:25.780
I started doing this, and I started saying, "Take this away."

01:09:25.780 --> 01:09:26.780
I freaked.

01:09:26.780 --> 01:09:30.380
I was like, "God dang, this thing's in me, and I want it out."

01:09:30.380 --> 01:09:35.760
And he sat there for a minute and then he flicked it again and I passed out.

01:09:35.760 --> 01:09:39.860
And then I woke up back in bed, obviously, I was back in the body.

01:09:39.860 --> 01:09:42.540
And it took a couple hours before I could move.

01:09:42.540 --> 01:09:45.900
I was just frozen, staring up at the ceiling.

01:09:45.900 --> 01:09:46.900
It was a little after dawn.

01:09:46.900 --> 01:09:50.140
There was a pale light, so I knew about what time it was.

01:09:50.140 --> 01:09:55.500
And eventually I got one finger to move and then another and then things, I started rebooting.

01:09:55.500 --> 01:09:57.180
And that was the experience.

01:09:57.180 --> 01:09:58.820
And it was crazy.

01:09:58.820 --> 01:10:03.060
When you got up and took a shower and started your day, did you feel like something huge

01:10:03.060 --> 01:10:04.060
had happened?

01:10:04.060 --> 01:10:09.740
Like you'd really been freed from something that had been plaguing you deeply for a long

01:10:09.740 --> 01:10:10.740
time?

01:10:10.740 --> 01:10:11.740
Two things happened.

01:10:11.740 --> 01:10:17.340
One is I woke up with a headache at the third eye, which I think was from some sort of overstimulation

01:10:17.340 --> 01:10:19.620
as he put that energy in me.

01:10:19.620 --> 01:10:21.140
And it got worse throughout the day.

01:10:21.140 --> 01:10:22.480
It was really bad.

01:10:22.480 --> 01:10:25.140
And then like an idiot, I threw gas on the fire.

01:10:25.140 --> 01:10:28.700
I tried to do Kriyas thinking that was going to help, but it only made it worse.

01:10:28.700 --> 01:10:34.380
do that if you've got something happening here. The other thing that it took about a year,

01:10:34.380 --> 01:10:39.500
it felt like there was a hole, like a membrane that had been opened up and it felt like kind

01:10:39.500 --> 01:10:44.660
of an energetic breathing right here. And it took about a year for that to go away. Like

01:10:44.660 --> 01:10:51.180
something in the etheric body had to heal over and that there was that gap there. It

01:10:51.180 --> 01:10:56.820
was a very strange feeling. I didn't have it 24/7, but I had it quite a bit off and on.

01:10:56.820 --> 01:11:00.660
I guess the reason I wanted you to tell that story is that I have a feeling that that is

01:11:00.660 --> 01:11:05.900
something fairly common that we're generally unaware of, and that, as you said, it could

01:11:05.900 --> 01:11:11.120
be the cause of addictions, of which there is a whole lot these days, addictions to all

01:11:11.120 --> 01:11:17.100
kinds of things, some sort of astral entities that are feeding off that kind of energy that

01:11:17.100 --> 01:11:22.340
are impelling us to behave in certain ways in order to be fed.

01:11:22.340 --> 01:11:26.960
So I don't know what people can do about it other than maybe do spiritual practice and

01:11:26.960 --> 01:11:29.780
any kind of purificatory things.

01:11:29.780 --> 01:11:33.440
I had a thing one time where something seemed to be attacking me and I just started to do

01:11:33.440 --> 01:11:38.160
this Sanskrit puja in my mind that dispelled it.

01:11:38.160 --> 01:11:44.280
Or people talk about exorcisms and prayers that dispel negative entities.

01:11:44.280 --> 01:11:48.840
So there are probably things in all the ancient traditions that deal with this kind of thing.

01:11:48.840 --> 01:11:53.720
So, I just wanted to touch upon it for whatever benefit it might provide people listening.

01:11:53.720 --> 01:11:56.440
Pete Well, sure. The human body,

01:11:56.440 --> 01:12:01.640
the physical body has all kinds of germs and parasites and things, so why wouldn't that

01:12:01.640 --> 01:12:03.080
be the case at the astral level?

01:12:03.080 --> 01:12:08.680
Rick Right, subtle body. There was another neat story you told about how there was a new

01:12:08.680 --> 01:12:16.040
Yogananda Center being opened in Atlanta and you felt this kind of compulsion to show up there at

01:12:16.040 --> 01:12:22.020
midnight and do something. I'm not sure if you knew what. It was kind of like a strange

01:12:22.020 --> 01:12:25.800
thing for you to do, but you've just followed your impulses and it turned out to be very

01:12:25.800 --> 01:12:27.200
interesting. You want to tell that story?

01:12:27.200 --> 01:12:34.360
Sure. So, somewhere in 1999, I mentioned that when I first started with SRF at the Atlanta

01:12:34.360 --> 01:12:40.040
Center Group that they were in like a business park. They had a rented place, but through

01:12:40.040 --> 01:12:45.720
some very generous individuals in the group, a temple was built. I won't go into all the

01:12:45.720 --> 01:12:50.280
details but it was pretty miraculous in how they found it and how it could be afforded and

01:12:50.280 --> 01:12:56.680
how the architect just happened to be there and then the construction company had a window when

01:12:56.680 --> 01:13:01.480
they could have done the work and everything fell together it was pretty incredible. I lived about a

01:13:01.480 --> 01:13:08.840
mile from where they built the center. I started feeling the fall of 1999. Someone should be there

01:13:08.840 --> 01:13:15.000
at midnight when the property came theirs. I didn't know why and I thought well it's Atlanta

01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:19.160
in the winter, it's going to be wet, it's going to be cold. This really wasn't what I wanted to do,

01:13:19.160 --> 01:13:24.760
but it just nagged me for a couple of months. And then as I got closer to the date, it was warm,

01:13:24.760 --> 01:13:30.600
it was dry, there was no reason not to, and I got, all right, I'm going to take my blanket,

01:13:30.600 --> 01:13:34.440
I'm going to go there, and I hope no one sees me. Police are out everywhere looking for drunk

01:13:34.440 --> 01:13:38.680
drivers, and there's this guy sitting out in the field, they think he's lost his mind.

01:13:38.680 --> 01:13:44.440
And I sat down and I tried to meditate, and there was traffic, and I felt like an idiot.

01:13:44.440 --> 01:13:50.680
I was restless. I'm sharing this because what happened wasn't because of me, it was in spite

01:13:50.680 --> 01:13:58.040
of me. Suddenly everything fell away and I couldn't hear any noise. I'm sitting there and

01:13:58.040 --> 01:14:07.240
in my hands was a like a small bowling ball size glowing orb of energy, I guess. And I didn't know

01:14:07.240 --> 01:14:11.640
what to do. I had my eyes closed, so I was seeing it through the third eye and something just said,

01:14:11.640 --> 01:14:13.020
"Don't open your eyes."

01:14:13.020 --> 01:14:17.020
And then I kind of mentally said, "Well, what do I do?"

01:14:17.020 --> 01:14:18.900
And I heard the word prayer circle,

01:14:18.900 --> 01:14:21.480
which at the end of an SRF service,

01:14:21.480 --> 01:14:24.940
everybody raises their hands and they own three times

01:14:24.940 --> 01:14:27.960
sending out healing vibrations to the universe.

01:14:27.960 --> 01:14:29.580
And so that's what I did.

01:14:29.580 --> 01:14:33.740
I raised my hand and I slowly went out like this

01:14:33.740 --> 01:14:35.820
and I could see the thing flying apart.

01:14:35.820 --> 01:14:38.180
They were kind of yellowish orange.

01:14:38.180 --> 01:14:40.780
And when the little particles started floating down,

01:14:40.780 --> 01:14:45.460
kind of look like a Cheeto and I could see them permeating the ground and most of

01:14:45.460 --> 01:14:49.420
them went in the direction I was facing but all of them kind of went somewhere

01:14:49.420 --> 01:14:54.380
and then just as fast as I went out of it I came back in and I could hear the

01:14:54.380 --> 01:14:59.820
noise and was looking at the ground and I'm like well my intuition said that the

01:14:59.820 --> 01:15:04.140
ground had been consecrated it had been blessed and that a physical

01:15:04.140 --> 01:15:09.100
intermediary had been needed for the energy to come through the higher planes

01:15:09.100 --> 01:15:14.460
into this plane. So I packed up my stuff and I went home, told a couple people

01:15:14.460 --> 01:15:19.380
about it and they were like, "Dang, that's really cool." And that was it. You know,

01:15:19.380 --> 01:15:24.220
clearly there were people in the Atlanta group that deserved it more than I did.

01:15:24.220 --> 01:15:28.780
They'd been working for 30 or 40 years to achieve all this and I was kind of a

01:15:28.780 --> 01:15:33.720
Johnny-come-lately in the group at that point. So maybe they just felt like, "Well

01:15:33.720 --> 01:15:38.020
hell, he's... they being the masters felt like, you know, he only lives a mile away,

01:15:38.020 --> 01:15:43.300
will use him. You know, I don't know how it happened, but I felt incredibly blessed to

01:15:43.300 --> 01:15:48.660
have been chosen for that. It wasn't anything I did. I mean, I just, I was the one that

01:15:48.660 --> 01:15:54.620
got picked and the land had been permeated. And what I found out later was the direction

01:15:54.620 --> 01:16:00.500
that I was facing was actually where the building was built. So the area that got the most of

01:16:00.500 --> 01:16:04.340
it was actually where the center, the temple was going to be sitting.

01:16:04.340 --> 01:16:12.580
Nice. Celestial Cheetos. Okay, so now we got about 20 minutes left or so, and there are a few points

01:16:12.580 --> 01:16:18.980
that maybe we could cover in the remaining time. The gradual, direct, and pathless path controversy

01:16:18.980 --> 01:16:25.220
it would be one. Grace would be another. Free will determinism, non-doership is another.

01:16:25.220 --> 01:16:28.820
Gradual, direct, and pathless. Let's do that first.

01:16:28.820 --> 01:16:35.820
I think that whatever path is resonating with someone at the time is the best path.

01:16:35.820 --> 01:16:40.820
So, a lot of people, when they hear short or direct path, and they think it's got to be better.

01:16:40.820 --> 01:16:44.820
And I would say that's not true. I mean, I woke up to the progressive path.

01:16:44.820 --> 01:16:49.820
So, McDonald's is not necessarily better than a fine restaurant where it takes a few hours to eat.

01:16:49.820 --> 01:16:57.780
No, no. If I have given up the techniques, the methods that I had chosen early on for

01:16:57.780 --> 01:17:02.860
something labeled short, I don't think I would be sitting here. I mean, it worked. The teachings

01:17:02.860 --> 01:17:08.900
through Yogananda and the NSRF do work and I can say that because they work for me. I'm

01:17:08.900 --> 01:17:15.460
sure they work for other people as well. But that said, after awakening, the short path,

01:17:15.460 --> 01:17:19.020
know, Ramana and, you know, self-inquiry and he's like a

01:17:19.020 --> 01:17:22.300
dot was another, I think, you know, major proponent of just

01:17:22.300 --> 01:17:25.540
resting in the I am and these types of things. It's like,

01:17:25.540 --> 01:17:30.700
well, geez, that makes a lot of sense. Because are you really

01:17:30.700 --> 01:17:34.340
purifying anything? Or is it just, it was like, when Rupert

01:17:34.340 --> 01:17:39.020
Spira talks about, you know, his journey, he was doing all kinds

01:17:39.020 --> 01:17:42.140
of progressive path for, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 years

01:17:42.140 --> 01:17:47.460
or something, he calls himself a late bloomer, but then it was more of a direct path encounter

01:17:47.460 --> 01:17:50.540
with his teacher, Francis Lucille, that brought the awakening.

01:17:50.540 --> 01:17:54.700
That wasn't the case for me, but I think it's whatever resonates and whatever you're right

01:17:54.700 --> 01:17:55.900
for.

01:17:55.900 --> 01:18:00.620
And then the pathless path is ultimately just not doing anything.

01:18:00.620 --> 01:18:06.100
You know, there's a non-meditation, non-method of just simply being here now.

01:18:06.100 --> 01:18:10.700
And that's really tough to do, you know, unless it isn't.

01:18:10.700 --> 01:18:14.700
I couldn't have begun to conceive of anything like that, let alone do it.

01:18:14.700 --> 01:18:20.020
I mean, when I started, I needed a technique, I needed something to do, and I needed a practice.

01:18:20.020 --> 01:18:27.340
But maybe somebody who is riper than I was back in 1999 wouldn't.

01:18:27.340 --> 01:18:33.260
I think when Ramana would meet people, he would always start at the default of the highest

01:18:33.260 --> 01:18:36.260
teaching, because you don't know if it's going to work or not.

01:18:36.260 --> 01:18:40.660
So he would bring that, and then if they couldn't conceive of a pathless path of just your head

01:18:40.660 --> 01:18:45.860
this is it, then maybe try the self-inquiry. And then if that wasn't going to work, then,

01:18:45.860 --> 01:18:50.100
okay, here's a progressive discipline that you could use. But I don't think there's a better

01:18:50.100 --> 01:18:55.860
or worse path. As an old former photographer, there's an old saying that there's an internal

01:18:55.860 --> 01:19:01.540
debate among enthusiasts, gearheads, they used to call them, about what's the best camera.

01:19:01.540 --> 01:19:06.340
And ultimately, everybody agrees that the best camera is the one you have with you when you

01:19:06.340 --> 01:19:12.940
you need to take the picture. I would say it's the same true with the spiritual path. If

01:19:12.940 --> 01:19:18.340
it's resonating with you, it's working for you, go with it. And then if a shift is needed,

01:19:18.340 --> 01:19:23.760
it'll present itself. And don't get hung up on one being better than another because it's

01:19:23.760 --> 01:19:25.500
solely dependent on the person.

01:19:25.500 --> 01:19:30.900
Rick: Yeah. My interpretation of those words and those paths is that on the one hand, different

01:19:30.900 --> 01:19:35.920
ones can be appropriate for different people at different stages. It's like mathematics.

01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:40.880
It's not that studying calculus is better than studying third-grade arithmetic.

01:19:40.880 --> 01:19:43.300
Both are appropriate for people at different stages.

01:19:43.300 --> 01:19:50.000
But also, in a sense, all three can be components of one's path at the same time.

01:19:50.000 --> 01:19:56.520
You can be having direct dives into Samadhi, for instance, and at the same time, day by

01:19:56.520 --> 01:20:01.400
day you're progressing, and then you also recognize that you're not doing anything and

01:20:01.400 --> 01:20:03.720
it's all being done.

01:20:03.720 --> 01:20:08.360
So all those three are just different components of a path.

01:20:08.360 --> 01:20:10.720
I moderated a panel discussion at one of the S.A.N.D.

01:20:10.720 --> 01:20:15.460
conferences on this debate of direct versus progressive, and what I've found is that in

01:20:15.460 --> 01:20:20.440
many cases, people who are advocating the direct path, like, "Boom, you're done.

01:20:20.440 --> 01:20:25.640
All this progressive stuff is a waste of time," ended up getting into trouble later on, behaviorally

01:20:25.640 --> 01:20:30.060
and different things, and obviously some need for progress was there.

01:20:30.060 --> 01:20:31.360
So I don't know.

01:20:31.360 --> 01:20:32.360
I don't think it's an either/or.

01:20:32.360 --> 01:20:36.360
It's definitely not. They're not mutually exclusive.

01:20:36.360 --> 01:20:41.360
For instance, in Yogananda's teachings, you know, one of the central premises that I adopted

01:20:41.360 --> 01:20:45.360
very seriously early on is that not only can you achieve it in one lifetime,

01:20:45.360 --> 01:20:49.360
but you're already there. All you have to do is improve your knowing.

01:20:49.360 --> 01:20:53.360
And that is certainly a short or pathless path tenet.

01:20:53.360 --> 01:20:57.360
So, you know, these things ebb and flow according to whatever is appropriate at the time.

01:20:57.360 --> 01:21:00.360
And they're certainly not mutually exclusive.

01:21:00.360 --> 01:21:05.440
Short path or pathless could even be a little bit of a trap in terms of spiritual bypassing

01:21:05.440 --> 01:21:10.800
and not owning up to the work you've got to do, whether it's psychological or purification

01:21:10.800 --> 01:21:12.340
or whatever it may be.

01:21:12.340 --> 01:21:14.480
It holds that caveat as well.

01:21:14.480 --> 01:21:17.840
It's been used that way, especially by neo-advaita people, like you're already enlightened, you

01:21:17.840 --> 01:21:19.440
don't need to do anything.

01:21:19.440 --> 01:21:22.320
It's a disservice to people to present them with that.

01:21:22.320 --> 01:21:27.400
If Yogananda said you're already there, that's very true, but it might take you 40 years to

01:21:27.400 --> 01:21:32.240
actually fully embody that realization and just the initial concept when you first hear

01:21:32.240 --> 01:21:36.100
it is not the same as fully embodying that realization.

01:21:36.100 --> 01:21:41.140
I would say particularly in Grace Happens, but both books, I mean they're written for

01:21:41.140 --> 01:21:43.080
anybody that's called to them certainly.

01:21:43.080 --> 01:21:48.220
They're not exclusive to one particular segment of the spiritual marketplace, but this one

01:21:48.220 --> 01:21:53.080
particular target group, so to speak, that I was trying to reach, it was the people that

01:21:53.080 --> 01:21:59.320
have been on the path for 20 or 30 or 40 years and seem to be able to get over the hump.

01:21:59.320 --> 01:22:06.400
And while you can't make it happen, I think having the attitudinal stance of there and

01:22:06.400 --> 01:22:10.960
then surrendering, you know, sometimes the step forward is the backward step.

01:22:10.960 --> 01:22:12.420
Your audio broke up a little bit.

01:22:12.420 --> 01:22:14.680
Having the attitudinal stance of what?

01:22:14.680 --> 01:22:20.360
Of surrender and knowing that we can't make it happen and that the methods aren't the goal.

01:22:20.360 --> 01:22:22.920
Don't mistake the map for the territories sort of thing.

01:22:22.920 --> 01:22:28.420
So even an attachment like the third Zen patriarch said, even an attachment to enlightenment

01:22:28.420 --> 01:22:30.280
is an attachment.

01:22:30.280 --> 01:22:36.440
After 30 or 40 years, if you haven't found yourself in LA yet, using the SRF analogy

01:22:36.440 --> 01:22:41.240
or metaphor, then I would say you've got to work on surrender because that's what I did

01:22:41.240 --> 01:22:43.120
at the end.

01:22:43.120 --> 01:22:46.280
Surrender to the point where I didn't even realize I was surrendering.

01:22:46.280 --> 01:22:47.280
You just give up.

01:22:47.280 --> 01:22:52.240
And I'm not saying you to give up your practice, but you give up trying to control it.

01:22:52.240 --> 01:22:57.800
And I think that vulnerability, that openness allows the grace to descend in a way that

01:22:57.800 --> 01:23:02.040
it finds it more difficult to do when you think you're controlling it and that you're

01:23:02.040 --> 01:23:04.360
gonna punch through.

01:23:04.360 --> 01:23:05.720
You're not.

01:23:05.720 --> 01:23:10.680
You do all you can, but then you just give it to God and let it happen the way it will.

01:23:10.680 --> 01:23:13.080
God helps those who help themselves.

01:23:13.080 --> 01:23:14.880
How about the free will and determinism thing?

01:23:14.880 --> 01:23:17.000
This is an age-old debate.

01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:21.860
That's one reason I wrote, it's like, I see another YouTube article or video about free

01:23:21.860 --> 01:23:26.280
will and determinism, I think I'm just going to throw up on my computer, you know, and it's

01:23:26.280 --> 01:23:28.840
just, it's not that difficult.

01:23:28.840 --> 01:23:33.120
There's always free will, but not in the way that people think.

01:23:33.120 --> 01:23:38.440
The ego has no free will, because it's just a mental construct, but we're not our ego,

01:23:38.440 --> 01:23:39.440
fortunately.

01:23:39.440 --> 01:23:44.140
So there is a connection, I think, to universal will, which does give us free will.

01:23:44.140 --> 01:23:49.880
So for me, the idea of surrendering and all the things we do in our sadhana is like opening

01:23:49.880 --> 01:23:51.860
a camera aperture.

01:23:51.860 --> 01:23:56.840
And the more we're out of the way, the more that free will can flow.

01:23:56.840 --> 01:24:02.000
Even without that, you know, relatively speaking, there are some pretty impressive results by

01:24:02.000 --> 01:24:06.840
people in the world who are operating under the premise that they're the ones doing it,

01:24:06.840 --> 01:24:13.360
you know, 20 gold medals in the Olympics or, you know, achieve some major, what most people

01:24:13.360 --> 01:24:18.400
in the world would call, you know, desirable goals. I mean, it's not like you can't achieve

01:24:18.400 --> 01:24:21.000
anything in separation consciousness.

01:24:21.000 --> 01:24:24.220
But even then, you know, some of the great achievers, Michael Jordan and other people

01:24:24.220 --> 01:24:29.860
talk about being in the zone, Arthur Ashe, others, where you just feel like you're not

01:24:29.860 --> 01:24:35.280
doing anything and it's just being done through you somehow. And that's when you're at your

01:24:35.280 --> 01:24:36.280
best.

01:24:36.280 --> 01:24:42.360
And that can happen all the time. Because once the ego mind is, has been transcended, and

01:24:42.360 --> 01:24:47.640
unity is a... I mean, there's always unity, but now you know it. Then that's the feeling you have all

01:24:47.640 --> 01:24:54.120
the time, that life just flows in a perfect way, and if action needs to take place, it does, and

01:24:54.120 --> 01:25:00.200
if it doesn't, it doesn't. So, free will and determinism, you could say both are true from a

01:25:00.200 --> 01:25:04.920
different perspective. Yeah, I think one thing that helps to resolve the debate is not to try

01:25:04.920 --> 01:25:09.240
to make absolutes out of it. At least in the ordinary state of conscience, we don't have

01:25:09.240 --> 01:25:14.160
absolute free will, nor are we absolutely determined. We have a certain amount of leeway, a certain

01:25:14.160 --> 01:25:19.040
amount of wiggle room, and according to how we exercise the free will we seem to have,

01:25:19.040 --> 01:25:24.120
we either move in the direction of less conditioning, greater freedom, or more conditioning, greater

01:25:24.120 --> 01:25:28.360
bondage. So, you know, you just kind of move up on the scale or down on the scale, as the

01:25:28.360 --> 01:25:32.840
case may be. But if you think about it, if we could do anything we wanted to do, what

01:25:32.840 --> 01:25:36.680
would we want to do? Well, the way you and I think about things, we would want to sort

01:25:36.680 --> 01:25:42.160
to be in complete attunement with the will of God. And in a sense, that would be the

01:25:42.160 --> 01:25:47.080
ultimate free will, and yet also that's the ultimate not having any free will whatsoever

01:25:47.080 --> 01:25:50.080
because it's God's will now, it's not yours.

01:25:50.080 --> 01:25:55.560
That's right. And I think Ibn Arabi said, I love Sufism and Sufi teachings, especially

01:25:55.560 --> 01:26:01.480
Ibn Arabi, and he said something to that effect where, "When I realized my greatest freedom

01:26:01.480 --> 01:26:06.780
when I became God's servant. Paraphrasing, but that's what you said, is that it's in

01:26:06.780 --> 01:26:09.720
surrender that we gain our ultimate freedom.

01:26:09.720 --> 01:26:15.340
We're using the word God here as if we assume that everyone agrees there is one or knows

01:26:15.340 --> 01:26:21.080
what we mean by the word. What's your understanding? I realize this is a big question.

01:26:21.080 --> 01:26:28.240
Well, I'm certainly not an old guy and a white beard. I get how you could maybe want to conceptualize

01:26:28.240 --> 01:26:35.040
at that at a certain point, but I don't see God as personal. I see it as infinite existence,

01:26:35.040 --> 01:26:42.840
infinite conscious existence, and that everything is happening in and as the divine mind. So

01:26:42.840 --> 01:26:48.080
there isn't anything that isn't God, and there isn't anything outside God. It is literally

01:26:48.080 --> 01:26:53.040
the light of awareness, you could say, or conscious awareness. There's all kinds of

01:26:53.040 --> 01:26:58.520
terms that point to it, but of course, you're never going to be able to objectify God. You

01:26:58.520 --> 01:26:59.520
can only live it.

01:26:59.520 --> 01:27:04.720
I'd like to say that God is hiding in plain sight. Just from what we know about what science

01:27:04.720 --> 01:27:08.920
has taught us, if you look closely at anything and understand the laws of nature that are

01:27:08.920 --> 01:27:15.560
functioning in the universe, whoa, that's just like this amazing display of intelligence

01:27:15.560 --> 01:27:21.600
at every level. A single cell, what's going on, is mind-boggling, or you know, clusters

01:27:21.600 --> 01:27:27.520
of galaxies, and at every scale, wherever you look, large or small, there's this orderliness and

01:27:27.520 --> 01:27:34.720
non-random, non-accidentalness of the way things are functioning that just makes you feel like

01:27:34.720 --> 01:27:41.920
it's just one great big ocean of intelligence, and we're just little fish which are actually made of

01:27:41.920 --> 01:27:47.600
the same stuff but often consider ourselves separate from it and often suffer thirst despite

01:27:47.600 --> 01:27:53.760
the fact that we're swimming in this ocean of infinite satiation. You've heard the old

01:27:53.760 --> 01:27:59.920
metaphor, it's like the fish don't see the water. It's hidden, so hidden in plain sight that you just

01:27:59.920 --> 01:28:06.720
you don't see it until you do. And so I think what's really exciting is science is starting to

01:28:06.720 --> 01:28:12.400
see that in its own way, the quantum mechanics certainly, but when I look at you know somebody

01:28:12.400 --> 01:28:17.200
like Bernardo Kastrup who's in his analytical idealism. I mean he's a guy who's like, "I'm

01:28:17.200 --> 01:28:23.320
not awakened, I'm a hardhead that way, you know, but through rigorous analysis I have

01:28:23.320 --> 01:28:31.080
determined that this is how things are." And the conclusions that he comes to beautifully

01:28:31.080 --> 01:28:37.120
elucidate my awareness experience now. But he's come about it from a completely, it's

01:28:37.120 --> 01:28:42.880
not a lived experience for him and he admits that, but yet there's a way of coming through

01:28:42.880 --> 01:28:48.880
from that angle that you can at least cognitively understand the mystical experience. I think

01:28:48.880 --> 01:28:51.080
that's really good for people who need that.

01:28:51.080 --> 01:28:56.840
He's a Giani, really. He's like a genius with this brilliant intellect and he's able to parse

01:28:56.840 --> 01:29:02.720
the subtle understanding of reality so finely that I think it's more of a lived experience

01:29:02.720 --> 01:29:04.280
for him than he might realize.

01:29:04.280 --> 01:29:08.960
Well, I agree, you know, it'll happen for him what I really appreciate about

01:29:08.960 --> 01:29:14.600
Bernardo and Rupert's as well who they're and their friends is I think part of the

01:29:14.600 --> 01:29:20.560
Obstacles that we have in understanding these things is everybody's got their own terminology and they don't necessarily

01:29:20.560 --> 01:29:27.400
Jive, you know, and so it's confusing. I think they both do a wonderful job of stripping

01:29:28.040 --> 01:29:33.480
religious jargon and spiritual jargon and being very, very easily approachable. And I've tried

01:29:33.480 --> 01:29:39.560
to do that as best I can. I don't write as well as Bernardo does, and I'm not as articulate

01:29:39.560 --> 01:29:46.740
verbally certainly as Rupert is, but I find myself trying to emulate their technical expression

01:29:46.740 --> 01:29:48.940
as much as I can because I think it's helpful.

01:29:48.940 --> 01:29:54.480
Yeah. I think you're a really good writer. You know, I'm not just saying that. You disincentivized

01:29:54.480 --> 01:29:56.280
me from writing a book because I think I...

01:29:56.280 --> 01:29:57.280
Oh, no!

01:29:57.280 --> 01:30:02.720
write a book that well. I'm telling you, I've got a great editor. That's why. Yeah, well, if I ever

01:30:02.720 --> 01:30:08.880
write one, I'll get in touch with him. And your books are interesting. I found them just full of

01:30:08.880 --> 01:30:13.040
all kinds of interesting points and thought-provoking, but they're nice reference manuals

01:30:13.040 --> 01:30:19.520
too, because you refer to all these teachers and footnote them in many cases where one can explore

01:30:19.520 --> 01:30:24.960
other angles, and you just give them a taste that might inspire them to explore those angles.

01:30:24.960 --> 01:30:29.600
Hopefully the second book which will be out in a couple weeks. It's early July

01:30:29.600 --> 01:30:35.540
I think is when it's gonna hit Amazon and somebody wants an autographed copy with a bookmark

01:30:35.540 --> 01:30:38.360
They can contact my editor as you mentioned at the beginning

01:30:38.360 --> 01:30:42.080
I don't have a website or any social media presence and I don't think I ever will

01:30:42.080 --> 01:30:44.640
But if you go to I guess you'll have the link

01:30:44.640 --> 01:30:47.080
Yeah, I'll put the links on your back that page

01:30:47.080 --> 01:30:50.720
then they go there and they can shoot a message to Ellie and

01:30:50.840 --> 01:30:53.840
and he'll forward it to me and I can send him one.

01:30:53.840 --> 01:30:58.520
Or if somebody is in the northern San Diego County area,

01:30:58.520 --> 01:31:03.280
SoulScape, in Ensigny, this is the exclusive bookseller for,

01:31:03.280 --> 01:31:05.500
well, they've got Awakening Now,

01:31:05.500 --> 01:31:07.960
and then they'll have Reflections in a couple of weeks,

01:31:07.960 --> 01:31:09.880
well, maybe about three weeks.

01:31:09.880 --> 01:31:11.920
- Awakening Now or Grace Happens?

01:31:11.920 --> 01:31:13.260
- Well, it's Grace Happens, sorry.

01:31:13.260 --> 01:31:15.440
Grace Happens, they have now.

01:31:15.440 --> 01:31:16.800
I meant Awakening Now,

01:31:16.800 --> 01:31:18.720
Grace Happens and Awakening of Consciousness,

01:31:18.720 --> 01:31:19.800
they have that now.

01:31:19.800 --> 01:31:20.800
Oh, I see what you mean.

01:31:20.800 --> 01:31:26.200
And then the reflections, reflections of consciousness and then the subtitle is Essays on the Journey

01:31:26.200 --> 01:31:28.960
of Awakening and the Nature of Reality.

01:31:28.960 --> 01:31:30.800
I'll have that soon.

01:31:30.800 --> 01:31:35.400
I like promoting the local bookstores because they're getting fewer and far between.

01:31:35.400 --> 01:31:38.280
So anybody in this area that wants one can get in there.

01:31:38.280 --> 01:31:44.880
So you have no intention to do Zoom meetings or any kind of interactive things like that?

01:31:44.880 --> 01:31:46.260
All right, no problem.

01:31:46.260 --> 01:31:47.260
I don't.

01:31:47.260 --> 01:31:51.700
you'd be good at it if you did, but it's no big deal. I'm not saying it couldn't

01:31:51.700 --> 01:31:55.520
happen. I mean, I never know, but that's certainly not my intention. But the

01:31:55.520 --> 01:31:59.500
books are, again, they're not promoting an ideology or methodology. They're just

01:31:59.500 --> 01:32:04.500
here's a description of what happened to me. And then here are the things

01:32:04.500 --> 01:32:09.620
that went into the particular stew that got me to where I am. And if you find

01:32:09.620 --> 01:32:14.660
them interesting, you can explore them. And it's across the board. I mean, I will

01:32:14.660 --> 01:32:21.260
forever be grateful to SRF and Yogananda as my guru. It bothered some people, I think,

01:32:21.260 --> 01:32:27.500
when I said that after awakening, you know, the guru isn't necessarily needed anymore.

01:32:27.500 --> 01:32:32.260
And it's not that there isn't still a relationship going on there, but the relationship changes.

01:32:32.260 --> 01:32:37.420
And the ultimate tip of the cap is you don't need him anymore because it worked. You know,

01:32:37.420 --> 01:32:42.900
if you had a great calculus teacher and you graduated, you don't need to go back and take

01:32:42.900 --> 01:32:47.820
the chorus singing, you got it, you know. So I'm forever grateful for that, but there was

01:32:47.820 --> 01:32:54.100
so much more that went into my process. And that isn't just spiritual teachings, but it's

01:32:54.100 --> 01:32:59.300
all the people that I've known in this life, my family, my friends, the Upa gurus, you

01:32:59.300 --> 01:33:03.800
know, that aren't necessarily the teacher, but teach you things about life. I'm grateful

01:33:03.800 --> 01:33:08.740
to everyone I've ever known and everything I've ever had to experience, whether it was

01:33:08.740 --> 01:33:12.300
pleasant or unpleasant, because it all got me to where I am.

01:33:12.300 --> 01:33:17.900
Yeah, that's very well put. I think we'll end it there. We can't top that little point. So,

01:33:17.900 --> 01:33:22.060
thanks, Phil. It's been really fun talking to you for a couple hours and it was really great reading

01:33:22.060 --> 01:33:26.780
your book and I hope we get to meet in person one of these days. That'd be great, Rick. Both you and

01:33:26.780 --> 01:33:31.580
Irene have been wonderful from the beginning and I really appreciate the opportunity to come on. And

01:33:31.580 --> 01:33:37.820
even if we don't do another one of these, I hope we stay in touch because I've heard some

01:33:37.820 --> 01:33:41.420
emails about some of the things we're concerned about in terms of spiritual ethics and

01:33:41.420 --> 01:33:44.820
and your involvement with ASI, which I think is commendable.

01:33:44.820 --> 01:33:48.820
Association for Spiritual Integrity, Mr. Acronym Man.

01:33:48.820 --> 01:33:52.820
I had to throw one last acronym at you there, just to drive people crazy.

01:33:52.820 --> 01:33:58.320
But there's enough out there that isn't necessarily what it purports to be,

01:33:58.320 --> 01:34:04.320
or what is healthy for people, that I think the group that you're involved with is really helpful for people.

01:34:04.320 --> 01:34:05.320
So I thank you for doing that.

01:34:05.320 --> 01:34:08.320
Yeah, that's part of what I'm inclined to do.

01:34:08.320 --> 01:34:12.320
Okay, so thanks to those who've been listening or watching.

01:34:12.320 --> 01:34:16.320
Most of you are probably familiar with BatGap and if you're not

01:34:16.320 --> 01:34:20.320
and you just stumbled upon this, don't just look at the YouTube channel.

01:34:20.320 --> 01:34:24.320
Check out the website because we have some things there that you won't find on the YouTube channel.

01:34:24.320 --> 01:34:28.320
And also there's some ways we've categorized and organized the interviews

01:34:28.320 --> 01:34:32.320
on the website that are hard to do on YouTube.

01:34:32.320 --> 01:34:36.320
You can sign up to be notified by email whenever there's a new interview

01:34:36.320 --> 01:34:39.520
And there's the BatGapBot, which is this big project I've been working on.

01:34:39.520 --> 01:34:45.280
It's an AI chatbot that has a vast wealth of spiritual wisdom loaded into it, and you

01:34:45.280 --> 01:34:48.240
can ask it questions and interact with it and all.

01:34:48.240 --> 01:34:50.400
So anyway, it rolls along.

01:34:50.400 --> 01:34:54.000
So thanks, Phil, and we'll be in touch, as you say.

01:34:54.000 --> 01:34:55.000
Thanks Rick.

01:34:55.000 --> 01:34:57.840
God bless to everyone out there, and I appreciate your time here today.

01:34:57.840 --> 01:34:59.040
I hope it helps.

01:34:59.040 --> 01:35:00.040
I think it will.

01:35:00.040 --> 01:35:01.040
All right.

01:35:01.040 --> 01:35:02.040
Take care.

01:35:02.040 --> 01:35:02.040
Bye.

01:35:02.040 --> 01:35:27.240
[Music]