WEBVTT

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[Music]

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Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people.

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My guest today is Vivi Jokula, and she lives in Finland.

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I recently got to know about her through a mutual friend to whom we'll probably be referring in this interview because the mutual friend,

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He and I have had long conversations over the past year or so about all kinds of spiritual

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and philosophical things, and he's a friend of Vivi's, as I just said, and has given us

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some valuable points to talk about also.

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I'm not going to read a long bio of Vivi, partly because she didn't send me a long bio,

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but also I'd like her to just tell her story.

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She had a deep awakening to true nature in 2022, followed by what she called a strange

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and at times intense acclimation, which she refers to as "no self-realization" or simply

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the natural state.

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She hasn't really been a spiritual teacher yet, but I think she's kind of shifting into

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that and she communicates a direct approach to realization grounded on experiential insight

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on the aspects of awakening and invites you to inquire into and recognize the awe-striking

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immediate inherently awake radiance of your own being and of all being.

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Okay, Vivi, so for starters, let's get to know you a little bit. As a child, did you have

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any inklings of interest in spirituality, any kind of far-out experiences or anything

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like that?

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I don't have too many memories from the early childhood, and not really spiritual memories,

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but I do recall a very fascinating contemplation on the infinite, and it would just be when

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my, I think my dad would give me some kind of books about space, you know, or the universe

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or something like that. And I would just be reading, oh, the universe is infinite. It just

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never ends. It doesn't have any borders or something like that. And then I would just

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start to feel into that. And it was just take me into this kind of just total state of like, wow,

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or just some kind of cessation. And my mind would just be very immersed into that.

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That's nice. Something like that, but it wasn't really an experience. It was more like a

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contemplation. Well, contemplations can evoke experiences. I used to, you know, lie and look

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at the stars when I was a kid, or my parents would take me to the planetarium in New York

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for my birthday, and I still love space. My background images on my computer screen are

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all pictures of galaxies that rotate every five or ten minutes. I love it. Puts things in perspective.

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Yeah, but when did you first consciously and intentionally get interested in spirituality?

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Like, you know, you saw an autobiography of a yogi on a bookshelf or something that first

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woke you up to the possibility that there is such a thing. I think something like suffering,

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because I started to suffer kind of intensely already at the early age, not in the early

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childhood but somewhere I don't really know exactly what age but looking back at it there

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started to happen some kind of like alienation from that direct experience and for me that was

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really painful. I started to feel more and more constricting like something just didn't feel good.

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I didn't feel good in my body, I didn't feel good with other people. I just started to feel more and

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more kind of anxiety, I guess. I would say I had a relatively happy childhood. There wasn't really

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anything that traumatic happening in my early, early childhood. So I can't really explain why

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I started to suffer so much. Was it like you were losing something? I think it more started to feel

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like a sense of isolation. And it started to highlight itself when I felt that I couldn't

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really be part of the way that the children were connecting. When the school started to

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progress to the later stages and the whole socialization, something about it just felt

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weird and I couldn't really be part of it. And then that increased that sense of like

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aloneness or something like that.

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I've interviewed some people who felt like they were in unity when they were children

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or even maybe some of them saw angels or something and then as they got into their late single

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digits and early teens, it started to fade away and they went through the whole teenage

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angst kind of thing.

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So maybe you're referring to something like that, although obviously you didn't see angels

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and you haven't said you experienced unity, but there was something you had as a young

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child, it sounds like, which was fulfilling or comforting and natural.

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Yeah.

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And I can recall that at that time I had like a couple of friendships and they were so natural

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and so easeful and it was just so amazing to spend time together and do all kinds of adventures.

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And there was just this amazing ease and just thought-free quality to it. And that's the thing

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that got kind of lost. Did you have a rough teenage years? I mean, I did. I mean, just got really crazy,

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you know? Yeah, the teenage years were like really horrible. They were like bad. Yeah.

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self-destructive perhaps. So it kind of just all really intensified and then somewhere when I was

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about 19 I guess I ended up having a car accident and I had that car accident after a really really

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bad day when I would reach again that type of suicidal thoughts and desire like wanting to die

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and having a kind of a very weird fight with my boyfriend at the time and then I would just end

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up walking straight in front of a car and a car would hit me. And yeah, and it had all kind of

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complications, the healing, so I spent a lot of time in the hospital and that somehow hit me more

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than just physically. And I remember that in the hospital there was a little library and in the

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library there was a little book about yoga, just a tiny little thing about some sort of wisdom of

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the Oriental, nothing too complicated. And then I was like, "Oh, I gotta find out more about that."

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Like, right when I get out of the hospital, I gotta find out more about it because it felt like

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some sort of voice of sanity inside all the craziness and suffering I was enmeshed in.

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- That's great. That's quite a story. People say that, and I had something like that too,

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where I just first heard some little mention of this kind of thing, you know,

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enlightenment. It's like a little light bulb went off. Whoa, that sounds important. You got to check

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it out. Yes. So what did you do? Start learning yoga? Yes. What happened then that the first

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yoga school that I found and I got enrolled with, that ended up turning into a 10 years of journey

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and it wasn't really like a normal yoga school. So it was the kind of spiritual organization that

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after I left it I would find out that it was a like a cult. It's a cult that actually at the

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moment it's in international court charged about human trafficking and rapes so like all kind of

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heavy abuse happened there and it was a weird mixture of many many elements like

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kind of Patanjali's yoga, Hatha yoga and neo-tantra and classical tantra and a lot of new age stuff

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and a lot of Christian stuff, so I don't need to go into the details.

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Pete No, no, we don't have to.

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Anna But yeah, it was a 10-year journey, and

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it kind of just, well, got me deeper and deeper and deeper into layers of conditioning, conditioning,

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conditioning, and it's almost a miracle that I got out, but somehow then that happened,

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like around the age of 30, I kind of left that behind.

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Pete Unfortunately, it didn't disillusion you

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because you continued on in your spiritual quest. Yeah. Yes, I mean, obviously you did, so you

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didn't decide, "Okay, the whole thing is garbage. I'm not gonna go in that direction." You found

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something else. Yeah, actually, like, right after I left, I had a very powerful Kundalini awakening,

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and that's actually the first time that I ever directly had this type of non-dual opening,

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and then it made such a big contrast to that whole 10 years of nonsense that I had just been through,

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which was all about conceptualization, all about just increasing levers of identity fixation.

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And this was what I experienced when this non-dual opening happened. It was so radically

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different than anything that I've ever experienced. And at the same time, it was so familiar and it

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was so clear that this is what I've always been longing for. But it was energetically very

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powerful experience also, so it was hard to make sense of it. But because it, I don't know, it

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charged me with so much freedom that it was so easy to leave the past behind me and just follow

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that, that inwards. Did you feel that your participation in the yoga school for 10 years

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had somehow contributed to the Kundalini awakening or was it unrelated?

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I wouldn't say so.

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So, the Kundalini happening just happened out of the blue, huh? You just had a Kundalini awakening.

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I did have this orientation all my life, I would say, but it was I didn't really

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understand what any of these things are like awakening or enlightenment, but the

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orientation had been there, even it was very vague and weak at that time. That's what pulled me into

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at yoga school in the first place. So maybe that did something, I don't know.

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You were doing a lot of yoga, I guess.

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Yeah.

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Some kind of meditation or something.

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Yeah, a lot of yoga, a lot of meditation, but very kind of progressive practice. Like,

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that's what's the approach that that organization was teaching. It was a very progressive path and

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like a lot of effort and a lot of this type of really like intense effort. And this was so

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different because it was very clear that it was very free, it was very spontaneous and it just

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didn't fit that kind of willful striving. It had a very different quality, it had a very different

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fluidity to it, that energy that's always been awake inside of me, always, always from that moment

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and it's like 11 years now and it never really left me. It was a very powerful impulse,

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you know, I could never really forget it, even if it was a kind of opening. Yeah, it was a unity

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consciousness and all of that, but it closed, of course, because it was just an experience. But

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I don't know, it brought me here, wherever I'm now, whatever it is.

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You remember Adyashanti's story about how he was doing all this intense practice and it was like

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really pushing himself and at a certain point he was on some retreat and he got to the point

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where he thought he was just going to go crazy if he kept pushing himself. So, he left and he went

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home and he just had this attitude of giving up and then boom he had the big awakening, his first

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big awakening. So, when I hear something like that I think, all right, well all that progressive

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effort stuff probably contributed to what ended up happening but the giving up was necessary,

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leaving it was necessary in order for the awakening to happen. Yeah, I love that story.

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Okay, as I understand it, you went through a lot of maybe purification after this Kundalini

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awakening. There was a kind of a house cleaning that took place and some very difficult adjustments.

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You said intense acclimation to what had happened.

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Yeah.

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That was in 2020.

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That was the awakening like two years ago.

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Yeah, later on.

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But yeah, all in all, I can't really separate the awakening from this whole process of 11

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year's journey that it's been. So it didn't just come out of nowhere. So yeah, like a lot of

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purification that would start quite immediately after I had that initial opening experience.

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It had a kind of honeymoon after that, like amazing flow and amazing inspiration. And then when that

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kind of started to cool down, then this terrifying just notingness started to like shine in the

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experience I would just turn away from it. That was like the instinctual reaction and then it

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kind of like depression, like a lot of depression started to surface really really intensely.

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I would have really low periods of depression that were again then followed by another flow of energy

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moving through the system, kind of more inspiration, more bliss energy and then it would drop

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and there would be again in a period of just kind of suddenly like really intense voidness and

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resistance, tremendous resistance to feel the voidness because everything inside of me just

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wanted to go towards the energetic radiance or whatever it was that kundalini energy but it was

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kind of pulling me all the time to the void and I did everything I could not to go there looking

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back at it. At that time it didn't feel like that it was all just happening I didn't have that type

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of self-reflection. The attention was more on the surface level of experience, but now I can see

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what was happening underneath, something like that. So what would be your explanation or your

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understanding of why you went through these cycles after you couldn't lean awakening? Why

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wasn't it just smooth sailing? Why did you have to go through these dark periods? Well, there was all

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that 10 years of traumatic experiences that I had behind me in that organization that I was part of,

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and also the suffering from my childhood that was like still completely unprocessed because all the

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practice that I had done so far had only been repressing it and pushing it down and trying to

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get somewhere. So after the Kundalini awakening happened it's like the repression didn't really

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work anymore so all of that started to surface but I didn't really have tools like somatic tools to be

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in the physical experience to be really present and to digest emotions. I didn't really have any

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tools and I still didn't really understand what awakening is. So, I think that's what made it a

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little bit challenging that period of my life. My sense is that, you know, everybody has a lot

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of house cleaning that really needs to be done and a kundalini awakening like that can really

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kickstart it, you know, where it just the energy is flowing and it's hitting all these blocks and

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and it starts to clear the blocks and so you have all these emotions. I interviewed a guy a couple

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weeks ago who had this profound beautiful awakening. It was like being kissed by God. It was just

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wonderful experience, but the next thing he knew he was swearing like a sailor and getting angry at

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people and just all this stuff that was coming up. And there does need to be a house cleaning,

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don't you think? An energetic opening like that can really get it started. And I guess one good

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question is, how can we make it as smooth as possible and as efficient as possible so we

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don't get stuck in that cycle for a long time?

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>> Well, I think what helps a lot for someone who's going through that phase, that phase

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of the journey, is to have access to, like, a really good teacher who would actually clarify

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what awakening actually is about. Because that can clarify a lot of things. Because if

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still searching for the experience and kind of associating, awakening the experiential qualities

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that the Kundalini can bring because it has that very experiential quality to it, then that can help

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a lot. Because it's like a blessing but it's a curse when we have these powerful experiences.

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It's a blessing because it opens inside of us possibilities that we didn't know that exist,

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But at the same time, there can be attachment to those experiences and wanting to get back to them,

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wanting to make them permanent and not understanding that awakening is actually

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something completely different. It's about looking into the nature of experience itself.

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So there needs to be genuine curiosity about reality as it is, instead of going for those

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peak experiences. Let's say you had a friend who had a Kundalini Awakening like this and they were

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going through what you had gone through. What would you say to them or what would you recommend

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to enable them to do what you just said, which is not be hung up on the experiences, not be

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chasing experiences, but to shift to a more fundamental understanding of what's going on?

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Well, this kind of natural meditation, which is sometimes called the methodless method,

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which is just the practice that is not progressive, which doesn't have a goal, where you're just

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being with the reality of the experience as it is, as it is arising moment by moment.

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And there are many different teachers within non-duality that are teaching this practice and

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it can be called in different ways, but that's like really, really great basic practice that I

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think supports this type of Kundalini awakening. If you can take daily time like that, that you just

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relax into the experience, like either eyes closed or eyes open, you relax to the direct experience

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and you learn the difference between the direct experience and interpretation of the experience,

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like mental representation of it, like the meaning and conceptualization, and you all the time bring

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yourself back to the direct experience and resting that, I think that gives a really great support

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for this whole process of liberation. Yeah, I think Adyashanti teaches meditation kind of that way.

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Yeah, he's really good at it. Yeah, he is. I have a friend actually who has been studying various

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meditation traditions and there are a bunch of them. There's a kind of Christian centering prayer

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and then there's something taught by a Catholic priest, I believe his name is Lawrence Freeman,

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whom I've interviewed, that is mantra-based, but the way you described where you're not trying to

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make a particular experience happen, you're just settling back in and letting what happens happen,

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and not holding on to any experience, not being upset if you're having thoughts,

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you know, just being really natural about it. So, there are a number of traditions that teach

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meditation in that way. Yeah, and I like myself a lot the Chochen type of approach to it.

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So, and they call it recognition of the ground of being and then you're just abiding as that

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and it's like the idea is that the goal and the ground and the paths, they are three names for

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for the same thing and that's what's happening moment by moment and that's your true nature.

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Do you think that a person has to have a certain degree of clarity or a certain degree of advancement

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before something like that's going to work for them? After you have a genuine opening like that,

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it's going to be so natural, at least for me, it's going to be so natural to just meditate.

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There's something about it that just opens up in a completely different way that wasn't available

00:20:17.860 --> 00:20:25.540
for me prior to this opening. So no, it doesn't require like any kind of level of anything. It's

00:20:25.540 --> 00:20:30.900
so natural to who we are just to relax into the experience, to relax into the presence.

00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:36.980
It can be difficult prior having this type of awakening experience because then we are so

00:20:36.980 --> 00:20:42.500
tight inside of the mind and it's just the mind trying to meditate and that can be a little bit

00:20:42.500 --> 00:20:49.620
hard then to try to create that initial, to penetrate that conceptualization. But when that

00:20:49.620 --> 00:20:55.460
is penetrated even a tiny tiny little bit it's so powerful the reality just starts to move through

00:20:55.460 --> 00:21:00.980
Yeah, so you had had a pretty profound opening and so it was natural for you, but I'm just

00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:06.000
thinking of people who haven't had any kind of opening that they know about.

00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:10.560
Maybe they need some kind of instruction that will enable them to meditate effortlessly

00:21:10.560 --> 00:21:13.600
in the way you've described.

00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:17.680
Like I said, that mantra meditation or there are various other kinds of meditation like

00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:22.200
that where you have a tool that enables it to be effortless so you're not just sitting

00:21:22.200 --> 00:21:27.080
there with your mind wandering and it's not just some imaginary thing where you're contemplating

00:21:27.080 --> 00:21:31.000
about some state that you're not actually experiencing. So different.

00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:37.880
Yeah, I love mantra. Yeah, I've worked a lot with mantra because it's part of the traditions that

00:21:37.880 --> 00:21:40.840
I've been studying throughout the years. Yeah.

00:21:40.840 --> 00:21:45.080
So I'm just saying that for the benefit of listeners, there could be different practices

00:21:45.080 --> 00:21:50.200
that would be useful at different stages. And so if you try something and you're not

00:21:50.200 --> 00:21:54.520
getting anywhere with it, then maybe try something else. Find what works for you.

00:21:54.520 --> 00:22:00.200
Yeah, you should get results from the practice within a few months, and if you don't, then try

00:22:00.200 --> 00:22:05.640
something else. I don't think it's a good idea to keep pounding on something year after year if it

00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:12.280
doesn't generate some sort of beneficial results. I agree. And whatever that, you know, that

00:22:12.280 --> 00:22:16.840
something like that might work for somebody, but not for somebody else. So you have to

00:22:16.840 --> 00:22:23.320
find what works for you. Yes, exactly. In my case, I had results from day one and so I kept doing what

00:22:23.320 --> 00:22:29.560
I was doing. Other people don't. You really have to experiment a little bit. What kind of meditation

00:22:29.560 --> 00:22:34.520
you do? In 1968, I learned transcendental meditation and that worked for me very well

00:22:34.520 --> 00:22:39.880
from the start. I became a teacher of it and everything. I'm not a teacher of it now, but I was.

00:22:39.880 --> 00:22:43.640
But other people, you know, learn it and they didn't feel like anything was happening and they

00:22:43.640 --> 00:22:48.760
stop doing it and so maybe they'd find something else that worked for them. So one size does not

00:22:48.760 --> 00:22:55.960
fit all necessarily. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, everyone's path is so unique and I think the right

00:22:55.960 --> 00:23:01.720
tools, they will come to us because the path is really magical like that. When we just orient

00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:06.440
ourselves and we start to walk the path, we take one step, two step, you know, the teachers, they

00:23:06.440 --> 00:23:11.800
will appear in our life, the practices, they will appear, but maybe in an unexpected manner. So

00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:17.960
It's an amazing journey. I love that point. There's some saying in India, they say,

00:23:17.960 --> 00:23:22.680
"Take one step toward God and He'll take a thousand steps toward you." Or Jesus said,

00:23:22.680 --> 00:23:27.320
"Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added unto thee." So, you just start,

00:23:27.320 --> 00:23:32.600
and then all kinds of opportunities come along that you would never have if you hadn't taken

00:23:32.600 --> 00:23:40.200
the initial step. Yeah, it's a leap of courage. Good. So, let's define our terms a little bit.

00:23:40.200 --> 00:23:45.480
we've mentioned awakening, liberation, self, no-self. Let's make sure we're all on the same

00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:51.080
page with those kinds of terms, like enlightenment, for instance. Do you like that term or do you feel

00:23:51.080 --> 00:23:56.840
like it's too misused? I don't like it, yeah, because it instantly gives this idea of some

00:23:56.840 --> 00:24:01.880
sort of superhuman achievement, but at the same time there are all these non-dual traditions that

00:24:01.880 --> 00:24:07.160
kind of talk about it and it does refer to something that is actually a possibility,

00:24:07.160 --> 00:24:12.600
I believe for everyone, if you're into that, but there are just so much misunderstandings about

00:24:12.600 --> 00:24:18.440
what it is that makes that term very heavy. Just like God, that also is a term that has

00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:24.280
like such a mound of baggage in it that I don't like that one either, the G word or the E word.

00:24:24.280 --> 00:24:29.800
Yeah, especially the E word for me. I mean, the G word is okay, but in either case,

00:24:29.800 --> 00:24:34.760
you have to define your terms. Otherwise, you're just talking past people because they might have

00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:39.160
a completely different understanding of the word than you do, and so the word's not helpful.

00:24:39.160 --> 00:24:45.960
>> But enlightenment, generally, at least the way these perennial traditions are talking about it,

00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:52.920
it refers to liberation, which again, I don't see it as some sort of state that someone achieves

00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:59.240
because that's exactly how the self is hearing the teaching and it imagines the liberation or

00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:05.800
enlightenment it's going to be something it will get to experience if it manages to get all the

00:25:05.800 --> 00:25:10.280
way there. And it's always something other than what's happening right now from the perspective

00:25:10.280 --> 00:25:16.040
of self, from the perspective of the seeking mechanism. It's always going to be something

00:25:16.040 --> 00:25:21.320
that is not quite right now. Something needs to be a little bit different. Something is not fully

00:25:21.320 --> 00:25:28.520
complete here. There's a truth in that. It's just being missing the credit, this whole impulse of

00:25:28.520 --> 00:25:33.240
seeking that we go for. You know there's that saying you can get a donkey to walk by fixing

00:25:33.240 --> 00:25:38.280
up a pole so that a carrot dangles in front of him and he keeps following the dangling carrot

00:25:38.280 --> 00:25:43.880
but he never catches up with it. Yeah something like that. Yeah so yeah actually it is kind of

00:25:43.880 --> 00:25:48.760
fun because the self is attracted to this whole game of enlightenment like that, that it thinks

00:25:48.760 --> 00:25:53.960
it's going to get something out of it so it has a kind of a purpose also like that. So that's what

00:25:53.960 --> 00:25:59.400
motivates it, so it starts to pursue it, but at some point it kind of becomes obvious that it's

00:25:59.400 --> 00:26:03.320
actually the other way around, that something starts to pursue the self and it's like, "Oh my

00:26:03.320 --> 00:26:08.600
god, I'm the one being highlighted here. I'm actually threatened by whatever this thing is

00:26:08.600 --> 00:26:13.480
that is happening for me," and you know, that you could call liberation or enlightenment. It's very

00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:17.720
threatening for self, actually, the real thing, because it's going to be-- For a small self,

00:26:17.720 --> 00:26:23.560
you mean? For any kind of self. How is it threatening? It's the end of it. But the

00:26:23.560 --> 00:26:28.480
But the self is really nothing other than this movement. It's very hard to explain what it

00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:33.320
is. It's kind of a distancing movement that's creating distance somewhere where there is

00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:39.240
no distance at all. It's like zero distance is totally indivisible. And that's the reality

00:26:39.240 --> 00:26:44.840
for everyone already, every moment. But kind of like superimposed on top of that, there

00:26:44.840 --> 00:26:50.600
is this, what I call the experience of self, which creates this whole interior world of

00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:56.840
subjectivity and an exterior world of objectivity because that's what the self is. It comes with

00:26:56.840 --> 00:27:02.840
something that is other than itself. So it's like a whole paradigm. It's not just self but

00:27:02.840 --> 00:27:07.720
it's everything that it's in relation with that is not the self. But there's all the time this

00:27:07.720 --> 00:27:14.200
primary reality which is what we are, what everything is and it's by its nature awake.

00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:19.640
You could say it's underneath it but that's just the figure of speech because it's not really...

00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:25.000
it's closer than clothes, it's closer than your breath, it's so intimately what you are.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:31.560
And the self is a kind of an intermediary that's somehow in between. But the self is a very

00:27:31.560 --> 00:27:37.480
complicated phenomenon because it can take so many forms. It can take the form of a very egoic sense

00:27:37.480 --> 00:27:44.120
of self which is very contracted, very conceptualized, very fragmented. And then the self can also take

00:27:44.120 --> 00:27:51.080
more boundless form, more transparent form, which is more unified and which feels a lot more

00:27:51.080 --> 00:27:58.280
authentic than the constructed sense of self. But it's still a kind of intermediary that it's there.

00:27:58.280 --> 00:28:04.440
So that's the way I understand it, or at least one way of trying to put it in words. It's kind of

00:28:04.440 --> 00:28:10.440
hard to say what it is, but when it's not there, then there is just this amazing immediacy, amazing

00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:16.120
immediacy. It's so unfiltered. So we're defining terms here a little bit and so I'm sure you're

00:28:16.120 --> 00:28:20.840
aware that a lot of times in the spiritual literature they have self with a capital S

00:28:20.840 --> 00:28:25.720
and self with the lowercase s and the lowercase s is supposed to be just the individuality that

00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:30.200
everybody feels they have and then the capital S is supposed to be Brahman or Atman, you know,

00:28:30.200 --> 00:28:36.760
universal awareness which is not individual in its nature but which is your true nature. So really if

00:28:36.760 --> 00:28:42.200
you have a self, that's what it is, that's what you essentially are. It has this universal quality to

00:28:42.200 --> 00:28:48.600
it. Yeah. So, are you comfortable with that terminology? Yeah, it's interesting. So, this

00:28:48.600 --> 00:28:54.440
thing that I call no self, like I never had any intention for something like this. I remember I

00:28:54.440 --> 00:29:00.520
heard Adyashanti once talk about it a long time ago and I was like super fascinated. I was, I never

00:29:00.520 --> 00:29:05.720
heard anyone to say anything like that in my whole life and I was just, that's like the most interesting

00:29:05.720 --> 00:29:11.480
thing that I ever heard but I never really thought about it after that. So I didn't really have this

00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:18.120
sense of no self because my tradition was a tradition of non-dual Shaiva Tantra which is

00:29:18.120 --> 00:29:21.880
a Hindu based tradition. I mean that's a tradition that I did mostly practice with.

00:29:21.880 --> 00:29:30.200
That tradition doesn't really have this term of no self at all or this type of mode of perception or

00:29:30.200 --> 00:29:36.440
experience. It's just not part of that view. So when this thing happened for me, it actually

00:29:36.440 --> 00:29:43.000
took a lot of time to somehow be able to integrate that because I didn't have any context for it. It

00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:49.560
took me at least a year to find teachers or people who would talk about it, and then I realized that

00:29:49.560 --> 00:29:55.480
it seems to be something quite different than that universal sense of self that they talk about in the

00:29:55.480 --> 00:30:02.040
Hindu-based traditions. Yeah, I did a whole interview with Adyashanti and Susanna Marie

00:30:02.040 --> 00:30:06.680
about the loss of a sense of personal self. I don't know if you've seen that one. Did you see

00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:11.720
that? Yes, and that was one of the first videos that I saw that was like so helpful and that was

00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:15.960
about a year into this thing. It was so helpful because they were talking about it in a very

00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:22.280
practical manner and I got a lot of practical pointers from it. Great. Frankly, when I hear this,

00:30:22.280 --> 00:30:28.120
I try to square it with my personal experience and I was talking to our mutual friend about this and

00:30:28.120 --> 00:30:33.560
he and I sort of agreed about the way we experience it and I wanted to bounce this off you and what

00:30:33.560 --> 00:30:40.040
we were saying is there's kind of a multi-dimensionality to life where on one level nothing's

00:30:40.040 --> 00:30:46.040
happening and it's impersonal and it's total silence and all that and then on other levels

00:30:46.040 --> 00:30:51.720
it's more active and then on a certain level you kind of have a self if you bang your shin into the

00:30:51.720 --> 00:30:57.880
coffee table, ow, that hurts. There seems to be some pain here. It's not some guy in China

00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:02.840
experiencing it, it's this here. It's a sense of me, it doesn't like this. And you know,

00:31:02.840 --> 00:31:08.680
in your own life, you've been going through things and dealing with psychological development issues

00:31:08.680 --> 00:31:13.240
and all kinds of stuff like that, which we'll talk about more as we go along. And so that to me seems

00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:19.400
like the personal dimension, which most people view as the entirety of their life, the entirety

00:31:19.400 --> 00:31:24.680
of their experience. Like an iceberg, all they see is the tip of the iceberg above water.

00:31:24.680 --> 00:31:30.440
And someone like yourself has opened up to the rest of the iceberg that is not ordinarily seen.

00:31:30.440 --> 00:31:36.040
And that's their main orientation, is the 90% of the iceberg that most people don't see.

00:31:36.040 --> 00:31:40.360
But still there is the tip. You know, you have a tip above water just like everybody else does.

00:31:40.360 --> 00:31:46.040
It's just like you have the whole iceberg. Right. Yeah, that's a great metaphor. I love it. And

00:31:46.040 --> 00:31:51.080
and that's a really good point. I actually don't experience it like that but that's how it can

00:31:51.080 --> 00:31:57.320
kind of feel when we first have that very personal experience of ourself like just this persona and

00:31:57.320 --> 00:32:03.080
individuality and then we open up to this infinite vastness like we could call this transcendental

00:32:03.080 --> 00:32:08.520
dimension or impersonal dimension and it can feel that it's just this infinitely more

00:32:08.520 --> 00:32:15.480
vast and deep reality that is more fundamental to what we are and then the personality is still

00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:23.160
there but it seems not so significant compared to this which is much more foundational. But how I

00:32:23.160 --> 00:32:28.200
actually experience and that's not even the right word to use but it's because it kind of feels like

00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:33.880
there is not really even experience anymore. The personal and the impersonal are they are literally

00:32:33.880 --> 00:32:41.240
not two. So I can kind of feel everything very personally but that very personal and intimate

00:32:41.240 --> 00:32:47.560
experiencing is by its nature totally impersonal and universal but at the same time it's very

00:32:47.560 --> 00:32:53.880
personal. So they are like in perfect balance and they kind of cancel each other out and the reality

00:32:53.880 --> 00:32:59.000
is you could say it's neither impersonal or personal or both are neither but these are just

00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:05.560
words. I'm trying to talk about something which is a non-conceptual moment by moment way of

00:33:05.560 --> 00:33:11.320
experiencing reality. And for me, there is no distinction whatsoever between the personal

00:33:11.320 --> 00:33:17.400
and impersonal. It's hard to explain because the mind cannot understand it. They seem to be like

00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:23.720
two contradictory perspectives, but they are not. Rick: Could you say that there is the personal

00:33:23.720 --> 00:33:28.680
and there is the impersonal, but they're both contained within a larger wholeness that is

00:33:28.680 --> 00:33:33.240
more than the sum of its parts? Christina: It's just one indivisible whole.

00:33:33.240 --> 00:33:40.980
Yeah, it's just one seamless whole and it has those two aspects and it has many, many,

00:33:40.980 --> 00:33:45.720
many aspects that appear to be two, you could say complementary aspects, but they are not

00:33:45.720 --> 00:33:49.980
two and that's why I think they came up with this term non-duality because that's what

00:33:49.980 --> 00:33:55.860
it means. It's not two, but it's not like oneness because I wouldn't say that it's one,

00:33:55.860 --> 00:34:02.040
it's just this paradox. It's this amazing paradox that there are all these apparent opposites

00:34:02.040 --> 00:34:07.720
somehow are not opposites. I don't know. That's really good. There's a saying in the Brahma

00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:13.800
Sutras which is Brahman is the eater of everything. Brahman meaning the totality. So, all the apparent

00:34:13.800 --> 00:34:19.480
diversities are subsumed within the totality. And you know, when they describe Brahman and

00:34:19.480 --> 00:34:24.680
Advaita Vedanta, for instance, they enumerate its attributes, you know, existence, consciousness,

00:34:24.680 --> 00:34:29.400
bliss, some inherent quality of maya, all these different things that are supposedly contained

00:34:29.400 --> 00:34:35.240
within this wholeness, but they're not like individual parts that are in a basket. It's

00:34:35.240 --> 00:34:40.440
the wholeness. It's like the blind man and the elephant. You can sort of feel different qualities

00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:45.560
of it, so to speak, depending on where you're coming from. But I think it's a kind of

00:34:45.560 --> 00:34:51.320
misunderstanding, like when we have these powerful openings to the impersonal dimension of being,

00:34:51.320 --> 00:34:59.240
which is again so infinitely vast, if we then take that to be more true or more real than the type of

00:34:59.240 --> 00:35:04.240
kind of relative human experience, which is personal in a way.

00:35:04.240 --> 00:35:06.360
You know, even there's not a person there.

00:35:06.360 --> 00:35:10.920
I don't experience like myself as a person, but there is that, it could call dimension

00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:12.540
of being.

00:35:12.540 --> 00:35:17.800
In my experience, they need to come to a perfect balance, like the relative and absolute, the

00:35:17.800 --> 00:35:25.760
human experience and the infinite, the personal and impersonal, the individual and universal.

00:35:25.760 --> 00:35:30.260
And when they do that, then they kind of collapse into each other.

00:35:30.260 --> 00:35:31.260
That's like dance.

00:35:31.260 --> 00:35:33.200
That's really nice.

00:35:33.200 --> 00:35:38.120
There was a couple of essays you sent me and I highlighted some of the things.

00:35:38.120 --> 00:35:44.160
One was you said, "One of the classical pitfalls on the path is premature transcendence.

00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:49.920
The immaculate nature of pure awareness transcends the body-mind condition and it may at times

00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:55.120
feel like most of our psychological issues have magically evaporated or they simply no

00:35:55.120 --> 00:35:57.020
no longer feel problematic.

00:35:57.020 --> 00:36:01.360
This type of liberating disintegration could be called waking up from life and it can feel

00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:02.780
quite peaceful.

00:36:02.780 --> 00:36:07.180
But I think what you're saying there is that there's a kind of a hiding out in the transcendence

00:36:07.180 --> 00:36:12.940
that's taking place where you haven't included the totality of the personal.

00:36:12.940 --> 00:36:19.100
Like you were just saying, it's personal and impersonal, one big totality with both aspects.

00:36:19.100 --> 00:36:24.060
It's like people are trying to sort of hang out in the transcendent and avoid the personal

00:36:24.060 --> 00:36:25.060
qualities.

00:36:25.060 --> 00:36:31.460
of related to what you were just saying? Yeah, and whenever we have a position, if we are attached to

00:36:31.460 --> 00:36:36.740
that position, if we are deriving our identity from that position, then we have a fixation.

00:36:36.740 --> 00:36:43.620
And awakening, the way I understand it, its quality is exactly that it doesn't fixate.

00:36:43.620 --> 00:36:50.660
It doesn't have any view or perspective or position that is like the one and only and true. It doesn't

00:36:50.660 --> 00:36:56.820
have that. It can accommodate a position or view a position for a moment if it's necessary,

00:36:56.820 --> 00:37:01.940
you know, but it can also drop it instantly when it's not necessary. So it's very free like that.

00:37:01.940 --> 00:37:07.060
That's what non-fixating quality is. That's the quality of freedom. There's no need to be

00:37:07.060 --> 00:37:11.620
forever transcendent and forever unborn and undying, you know, if there's another moment

00:37:11.620 --> 00:37:17.700
when it requires that you embody various experience in a very kind of particular and specific way so

00:37:17.700 --> 00:37:22.780
so that it can fully assimilate, for example. And then you have to let go of that position

00:37:22.780 --> 00:37:28.260
of vastness, but you don't really let it go because the vastness, you can find it also

00:37:28.260 --> 00:37:32.780
right at the core of any particular sensation. It's made of the vastness, so that's the magic

00:37:32.780 --> 00:37:33.780
of it.

00:37:33.780 --> 00:37:37.780
It's good. It's amazing that English is not your first language because you express these

00:37:37.780 --> 00:37:41.660
concepts very well in English. I imagine Finnish is your first language, right?

00:37:41.660 --> 00:37:46.700
I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, it's easier to me in English than in Finnish because Finnish

00:37:46.700 --> 00:37:53.180
tends to be a very concrete language. It's not made for these kinds of ideas. Yeah, subtle,

00:37:53.180 --> 00:37:57.980
subtle stuff. So what you're just saying, do you actually find that even with things like

00:37:57.980 --> 00:38:04.300
political disagreements or Gaza and Israel or, you know, the political parties in Finland or

00:38:04.300 --> 00:38:09.260
whatever, if you talk to friends about these things, your orientation that you've just described to us

00:38:09.260 --> 00:38:15.980
enables you to kind of see both sides more easily? I have a broader perspective that includes

00:38:15.980 --> 00:38:22.380
all these more polarized perspectives? Kind of, like I'm not really a political person myself,

00:38:22.380 --> 00:38:27.100
so I haven't really been in that type of situation where I would be discussing political views,

00:38:27.100 --> 00:38:32.140
but I've had other type of situations in my life where there are conflicting perspectives

00:38:32.140 --> 00:38:36.620
in human interactions. And yeah, that's the interesting part that I can kind of feel all

00:38:36.620 --> 00:38:43.020
of it simultaneously, and it's sometimes very hard for me to hold my position because the empathy can

00:38:43.020 --> 00:38:49.980
be so strong sometimes and I can't control it. And I can kind of sense how each perspective arises

00:38:49.980 --> 00:38:54.700
but it's just, you know, it's always limited because it's just one way of seeing things.

00:38:54.700 --> 00:39:00.940
And perspective, it's always going to be some sort of conceptualization and if there's any

00:39:00.940 --> 00:39:06.140
tendency to kind of try to understand or try to hold on to anything, try to know anything,

00:39:06.140 --> 00:39:11.580
then that can be frustrating. But if you just relax into that kind of baseless nature of reality that

00:39:11.580 --> 00:39:16.860
that nothing can really be known and you can never really know what anything is.

00:39:16.860 --> 00:39:22.660
That's just the essence of it, but it's actually amazing freedom in that because we want to

00:39:22.660 --> 00:39:25.500
know things because we want to feel safe.

00:39:25.500 --> 00:39:26.980
That's basically the mechanism.

00:39:26.980 --> 00:39:30.580
Yeah, it creates a false sense of safety.

00:39:30.580 --> 00:39:36.180
It doesn't really, really fulfill us, but that's what we are kind of trying to do when

00:39:36.180 --> 00:39:41.620
we try to find an explanation for something that can make us feel safe, that now we understand

00:39:41.620 --> 00:39:44.500
what's happening here, we understand what reality is.

00:39:44.500 --> 00:39:51.020
It can feel very insecure to feel that crownless, baseless nature of reality that actually we

00:39:51.020 --> 00:39:52.020
can't know.

00:39:52.020 --> 00:39:53.900
We can't know what anything is.

00:39:53.900 --> 00:39:58.140
We can only feel how everything is just kind of spontaneously happening.

00:39:58.140 --> 00:40:00.660
Yeah, no, that's good.

00:40:00.660 --> 00:40:04.580
It has very practical implications because these days there's so many conflicts around

00:40:04.580 --> 00:40:10.340
the world where people are dug in to a particular position and they can't communicate with each

00:40:10.340 --> 00:40:11.340
other anymore.

00:40:11.340 --> 00:40:14.100
It's gotten worse with all the social media and everything.

00:40:14.100 --> 00:40:20.460
And I think that if the kind of orientation that you're expressing became more common,

00:40:20.460 --> 00:40:23.320
it would just neutralize a lot of this polarity.

00:40:23.320 --> 00:40:25.580
It would dissolve a lot of these conflicts.

00:40:25.580 --> 00:40:28.920
It's really probably ultimately the key to world peace.

00:40:28.920 --> 00:40:35.140
being able to appreciate differences from a perspective of wholeness and not just feel

00:40:35.140 --> 00:40:40.520
like their particular viewpoint is the only one and everybody else is wrong.

00:40:40.520 --> 00:40:43.720
>> Exactly, and I would say that's maturity.

00:40:43.720 --> 00:40:50.200
That's maturity to experientially be able to appreciate other person's perspective, even

00:40:50.200 --> 00:40:53.960
if it's different from you and even if it challenges yours.

00:40:53.960 --> 00:40:54.960
Yeah.

00:40:54.960 --> 00:40:59.160
And you can see, you know, Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

00:40:59.160 --> 00:41:04.360
I felt another way of interpreting that is your neighbor is yourself on some deep level.

00:41:04.360 --> 00:41:08.440
And so, if you could love your neighbor in that sense that we are actually one person

00:41:08.440 --> 00:41:14.320
fundamentally, one being fundamentally, then the differences are irrelevant.

00:41:14.320 --> 00:41:18.200
They get harmonized in the unity of the ground of being.

00:41:18.200 --> 00:41:24.280
Right, it's so interconnected, like it's this one fluid and empty and dynamic

00:41:24.280 --> 00:41:31.960
co-arising, like what's happening all the time. So when we step into the situation from that

00:41:31.960 --> 00:41:37.880
undivided place, yeah, I believe so, yeah, there's a possibility for like genuine meeting.

00:41:37.880 --> 00:41:42.840
Of course, it's going to be challenging if the other person is coming from a place of division.

00:41:42.840 --> 00:41:46.600
At least it helps if at least one person.

00:41:46.600 --> 00:41:47.800
It helps. It helps.

00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:53.080
Pete: All right, let's do an overview now of what we've covered and what we have,

00:41:53.080 --> 00:41:58.840
what we want to cover in our meeting today. So, we've talked about your personal journey up to

00:41:58.840 --> 00:42:03.640
a certain point, you know, the ten years in the yoga school and then the Kundalini awakening and

00:42:03.640 --> 00:42:10.200
some of the developments after that, and we've defined some terms and there's more to tell about

00:42:10.200 --> 00:42:17.560
your personal journey and there's a whole issue about ethics and appropriate behavior of a

00:42:17.560 --> 00:42:22.520
spiritual teacher and things like that that we want to cover. What's your feeling of what we

00:42:22.520 --> 00:42:28.440
should cover next? Well, I guess it would be good to talk a little bit about awakening because we

00:42:28.440 --> 00:42:33.800
did talk about those awakening experiences and powerful openings that radically shift your

00:42:34.680 --> 00:42:39.800
sense of self and sense of reality and penetrate the veil of conceptualization.

00:42:39.800 --> 00:42:45.240
But there's a difference between these kind of openings and experiences and then something

00:42:45.240 --> 00:42:51.320
which is a permanent shift at the identity level, a permanent shift in the way of perceiving

00:42:51.320 --> 00:42:57.080
reality moment by moment, for the lack of a better word, because it's going to be more and

00:42:57.080 --> 00:43:04.120
more difficult to put in words the further we go, but we'll try. But that would be one point

00:43:04.120 --> 00:43:09.320
that I think it's important to make that awakening, at least in the way that I use it,

00:43:09.320 --> 00:43:15.720
it's a permanent shift at the identity level. And the glimpses and openings, they prepare us for it,

00:43:15.720 --> 00:43:21.640
and they kind of show us what is possible, and they also orient us at the very deep level of

00:43:21.640 --> 00:43:27.960
our being to watch this fundamental shift. But there's a difference between an experience and

00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:33.720
an abiding weakness. We've heard people talk about the "I got it, I lost it" syndrome.

00:43:33.720 --> 00:43:38.720
You feel like you got it and it's beautiful and blissful and then, "Ugh!" and it's gone.

00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:42.920
Do you feel that when you're going through that cycle of "I got it, I lost it," and I

00:43:42.920 --> 00:43:48.160
guess you went through that yourself for a while, is the "I got it" phase similar to

00:43:48.160 --> 00:43:55.520
the permanent abiding awakening phase, or is it just like a continuum in genuine awakening?

00:43:55.520 --> 00:44:00.400
Is it a continuum of what you experienced temporarily when you had a flash of "I got

00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:03.000
it," or is it altogether different than that?

00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:09.920
It's different because the continuum is exactly, or the idea of continuum is exactly that it's

00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:14.720
an experience that could just last indefinitely and all we would need to do is to somehow get

00:44:14.720 --> 00:44:16.000
there.

00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:22.560
When the actual shift in orientation is actually looking like how are we dividing the experience,

00:44:22.560 --> 00:44:27.720
how are we creating the experience of separation moment by moment because it's not like some

00:44:27.720 --> 00:44:33.320
side of some kind of mode that we are trapped in. Like the self is not something that we are trapped

00:44:33.320 --> 00:44:39.320
in, it's something that we're actually doing and we can become aware how are we doing that,

00:44:39.320 --> 00:44:46.600
how are we dividing the experience and then that mechanism can naturally come to cessation

00:44:46.600 --> 00:44:52.280
and it doesn't necessarily permanently just cease but it can cease enough that we recognize that

00:44:52.280 --> 00:44:58.680
"ah that's what's actually here underneath". So it's not like a step forward towards some state

00:44:58.680 --> 00:45:05.400
which lasts forever but it's more like a step backwards into something which becomes available

00:45:05.400 --> 00:45:10.600
when the self thing it stops doing it. And the selfing thing is kind of like a self-referencing

00:45:10.600 --> 00:45:17.880
way of experiencing reality and it's constantly active when we experience life from the point

00:45:17.880 --> 00:45:23.080
of yourself. It's constantly active except for very short moments usually for people

00:45:23.080 --> 00:45:27.320
prior to awakening when it's you know when we watch the sunset or something it just

00:45:27.320 --> 00:45:31.800
dissolves and you know it's not happening and there's like oh there's just a sunset

00:45:31.800 --> 00:45:39.800
something like that but then it comes back so it can actually stop doing that. We can actually live

00:45:39.800 --> 00:45:44.680
in a mode where it doesn't constantly happen that that we interpret everything that oh it means

00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:49.400
something about me, it means something about me. Everything that I'm seeing, everything that I'm

00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:55.240
hearing, other people, how they are acting, what they are saying, it's this constant reference that

00:45:55.240 --> 00:46:01.240
"oh it means, how does that relate to me?" So when the "me" at the center of it, it seems to be

00:46:01.240 --> 00:46:07.320
actually just a mental construct, then we can kind of experientially see, and it's a very

00:46:07.320 --> 00:46:13.000
non-conceptual seeing, that the self-reference actually refers to nothing. There's nothing here,

00:46:13.000 --> 00:46:19.240
it's just a kind of function. And then it's a very different experience. I mean, it can still happen,

00:46:19.240 --> 00:46:24.840
the selfing can still happen, but now we know, and again, it's not a knowing in any normal sense of

00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:29.400
knowing, but we know that it doesn't have any inherent reality to it. Like, it doesn't have

00:46:29.400 --> 00:46:34.680
any substance. There's not like some sort of substantial entity called "me" here that it's

00:46:34.680 --> 00:46:39.880
referring to. It's actually literally referring to nothing. So that's the clear seeing that's

00:46:39.880 --> 00:46:44.520
possible with that awakening or what I call the first awakening because there's actually many

00:46:44.520 --> 00:46:51.320
many awakenings. Okay, so is what you just said a description or a prescription? In other words,

00:46:51.320 --> 00:46:57.000
did you just describe what you went through or could someone extract from what you just said

00:46:57.000 --> 00:47:04.120
instructions in order for them to have the same shift? Yeah, you could extract instructions from

00:47:04.120 --> 00:47:10.920
this. Instead of trying to get to an awakened state, instead of look how you are creating the

00:47:10.920 --> 00:47:17.320
divided state, how does that actually happen in the direct experience, be more interested about that

00:47:17.320 --> 00:47:22.520
than getting somewhere. That would be an instruction, sure. But it's also based on my

00:47:22.520 --> 00:47:27.720
direct experience, like how it happened for me, the first awakening. So, did you figure this out

00:47:27.720 --> 00:47:31.240
on your own or did you have a teacher at the time that gave you these kinds of pointers?

00:47:32.120 --> 00:47:37.400
I went through this really heavy dark night and I kind of like the whole spirituality fell away

00:47:37.400 --> 00:47:43.880
for me. I went through four years of dark nights at one point prior to the first awakening and

00:47:43.880 --> 00:47:48.440
when the first awakening happened I had pretty much given up everything. I was so exhausted

00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:54.680
and then it happened just totally randomly. It was super weird. I wasn't trying to make anything

00:47:54.680 --> 00:48:00.520
like that happen. I was actually just doing a trauma type of inquiry, like somatic inquiry.

00:48:01.400 --> 00:48:05.880
something like that. But there was just this exhaustion that I was finally looking to the

00:48:05.880 --> 00:48:10.120
experience like genuinely like, "Hey, what's actually happening here? I'm not going to try

00:48:10.120 --> 00:48:15.080
to make anything happen. I'm just generally interested in like, what is this?" And then

00:48:15.080 --> 00:48:20.600
the awakening happened. I can talk more about it. Yeah, so please do talk more about it. And

00:48:20.600 --> 00:48:25.800
there's these different stages that you outlined in one of your papers, experience of separation,

00:48:25.800 --> 00:48:30.600
initial awakening, dark night, first awakening, expansion of the primary awakening, transcending

00:48:30.600 --> 00:48:35.400
the dream and true no self, all those different stages. So maybe go through that, but at the

00:48:35.400 --> 00:48:41.640
same time, keep in mind the average listener who's trying to figure out how this could

00:48:41.640 --> 00:48:47.160
happen for them. What should I do? What should I read? What should I practice? Sounds good.

00:48:47.160 --> 00:48:52.400
I'm happy for her, but what should I do? Right. It's very tricky with the awakening because

00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:57.240
if we are trying to make it happen, then it's very likely it won't happen. That's just like

00:48:57.240 --> 00:49:02.360
the way it works. So we have to stop trying to make it happen. So that's the first thing. Stop,

00:49:02.360 --> 00:49:07.800
stop, stop. Stop trying to do anything. Stop trying to manage the experience in a certain way,

00:49:07.800 --> 00:49:12.680
you know, that the awakening would happen. Like you have to give it up. And instead, it's a lot

00:49:12.680 --> 00:49:19.880
more fruitful for the cultivation of awakening, which is, it's just grace when it happens. But

00:49:19.880 --> 00:49:25.880
if we want to orient towards it, what's really beneficial is a kind of curiosity, but genuine

00:49:25.880 --> 00:49:31.880
curiosity and they call it beginner's mind in many non-dual traditions and it's a surprisingly simple

00:49:31.880 --> 00:49:38.760
thing and it's surprisingly easy to lust and it never ever ever stops being relevant on this path

00:49:38.760 --> 00:49:44.200
ever and that's what the natural state basically is. It's just continuous fully immersive beginner's

00:49:44.200 --> 00:49:50.920
mind where we are continuously approaching, we are not even doing that but there is this constant

00:49:50.920 --> 00:49:56.120
sense of "I don't know what anything is and I'm genuinely curious, you know, I'm open, I don't

00:49:56.120 --> 00:50:02.600
come with assumptions, I don't come with knowledge to this experience." It's a kind of childlike

00:50:02.600 --> 00:50:07.960
curiosity, but not in a naive way, but in a kind of pragmatic way, because that's how children are

00:50:07.960 --> 00:50:14.040
playing, right? They don't come with an agenda to the play. So it's a very simple thing and it's

00:50:14.040 --> 00:50:20.520
super essential. That's good. All right, keep going. So we have these different stages you outlined

00:50:20.520 --> 00:50:26.120
separation, initial awakening, dark night. So the first awakening, which is the fundamental

00:50:26.120 --> 00:50:31.640
shift at the identity level, is the primary awakening. What's really surprising about it,

00:50:31.640 --> 00:50:39.000
that it's tends to be where it is, it not just tends to be, it has these amazing neutral qualities.

00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:44.920
So that's why we miss it. It's all the time here, but the mind is looking for something complex,

00:50:44.920 --> 00:50:50.280
you know, and it's looking also for those powerful experiences if we've been having those.

00:50:50.280 --> 00:50:55.960
and that's why we miss something that is so immediately available but it's just completely

00:50:55.960 --> 00:51:02.680
like featureless. It doesn't have any experience or qualities. It can take any form of experience

00:51:02.680 --> 00:51:09.320
but in itself it's completely transparent. It's just pure neutrality like that.

00:51:09.320 --> 00:51:15.880
So that's just good to be, that's just something interesting to bring up that that's

00:51:15.880 --> 00:51:21.800
I think why they call it natural state because it really is supernatural. It's always been there,

00:51:21.800 --> 00:51:28.600
it's nothing new, it's very familiar in that sense, but somehow what needs to happen is this type of

00:51:28.600 --> 00:51:36.360
recognition that, "Ah, that's actually what I am." It is like this simple sense of being, which is

00:51:36.360 --> 00:51:42.680
just the being in itself or presence in itself without any kind of sense of that comes after

00:51:42.680 --> 00:51:48.600
that, right? It's like just the I am, just a pure sense of I am, but not the words. And without

00:51:48.600 --> 00:51:54.440
anything that usually comes after the I am, because that's the constructed identity. So just that,

00:51:54.440 --> 00:51:59.880
that's it. And it's kind of so simple and so ridiculous that when it's realized, it's like,

00:51:59.880 --> 00:52:06.680
how could I not see it? It's been staring, not staring, because you cannot, it's not objectifiable.

00:52:06.680 --> 00:52:11.800
I mean, it's not an object and you can't like perceive it. But at the same time, it's been right

00:52:11.800 --> 00:52:19.240
here so it's not far away. It's close and I'm close. Back to the description/prescription

00:52:19.240 --> 00:52:25.080
conundrum, you described it very beautifully. Is there a prescription? Would you recommend people

00:52:25.080 --> 00:52:31.240
meditate X amount of time every day or something to get away from the usual distractions and tune

00:52:31.240 --> 00:52:37.240
in to this? It really depends on the person. Yeah, it's so unique. If you feel called to meditate,

00:52:37.240 --> 00:52:44.680
yeah sure but if you're that type of personality that really likes to perform maybe it's not so

00:52:44.680 --> 00:52:50.840
good then to do that type of meditation because you really want to more attune with this with

00:52:50.840 --> 00:52:55.720
the whole of your being and you could also do it by taking a walk in nature so it doesn't have to

00:52:55.720 --> 00:53:01.880
be that type of meditation where you close your eyes and sit in stillness but some sort of orientation

00:53:01.880 --> 00:53:08.600
I think it's very beneficial that we orient towards this in an experiential manner. Inquiry could be

00:53:08.600 --> 00:53:15.480
also a really great way, somehow inquiring, something that's genuinely interesting for us

00:53:15.480 --> 00:53:23.000
about the nature of reality, whether it's peace or silence or truth or freedom or something like

00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:28.680
that, that we start to really inquire into that in a deep and non-conceptual manner.

00:53:28.680 --> 00:53:35.760
Maybe it's like what we said earlier, which is have the motivation and opportunities and

00:53:35.760 --> 00:53:40.280
possibilities will present themselves and you experiment and you see what works.

00:53:40.280 --> 00:53:41.280
Yeah, exactly.

00:53:41.280 --> 00:53:45.840
I guess that's a good general prescription, because this is a general audience.

00:53:45.840 --> 00:53:50.160
I mean, there could be a hundred different things that people could do at different times.

00:53:50.160 --> 00:53:52.840
Okay, you want to say anything more about all of that?

00:53:52.840 --> 00:53:56.360
Or should we shift into this whole thing about ethics?

00:53:56.360 --> 00:54:03.160
just what I feel to emphasize is that there is this thing what I call first awakening and then

00:54:03.160 --> 00:54:08.120
there is this thing that I call sometimes full awakening which is very hard to talk about because

00:54:08.120 --> 00:54:12.600
it instantly sounds like it's like some sort of higher achievement or that there's some like a

00:54:12.600 --> 00:54:19.000
hierarchy and it's not really that at all but there's a fundamental difference between these

00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:26.600
two. I think most of the confusion within spirituality comes from mistaking these

00:54:26.600 --> 00:54:31.160
two things to be one and the same or there's just one spectrum of awakening and then everyone who

00:54:31.160 --> 00:54:35.800
has an awakening there is just put there into the spectrum and it's just not like that because if

00:54:35.800 --> 00:54:42.440
you have this second awakening that I call well no self or full awakening there's many names for it

00:54:42.440 --> 00:54:49.880
but nothing really manages to explain it because it's going in such a paradoxical and non-conceptual

00:54:49.880 --> 00:54:56.120
dimension. I don't see there's necessarily something different than from the first awakening

00:54:56.120 --> 00:55:01.240
but it's kind of like the first awakening if you think of a flower like a bud and then the bud

00:55:01.240 --> 00:55:07.400
opens just a little bit and then the opening it's it's always there it's like open and people often

00:55:07.400 --> 00:55:12.280
experience it that oh they can access the awakening it's always there you know when they sink into

00:55:12.280 --> 00:55:17.080
they can kind of attune with it but they usually use this type of language that I can access it.

00:55:17.080 --> 00:55:21.160
It's always there, sometimes more, sometimes it's a little bit more closed, sometimes it's a little

00:55:21.160 --> 00:55:26.120
bit more open but it's an opening that is always there to a certain extent if you have a shift at

00:55:26.120 --> 00:55:31.400
the identity level. Okay so the second awakening is kind of like a full blossoming, it's like a

00:55:31.400 --> 00:55:39.720
blossoming 300 degrees to all the directions, okay? So it's a very different type of experience of

00:55:39.720 --> 00:55:45.640
senses for example and some people describe it that it's completely headless because you don't

00:55:45.640 --> 00:55:51.320
anymore experience like that the perception happens somehow inside the head or that you are inside

00:55:51.320 --> 00:55:55.960
the body or anything like that. All of that completely collapses like all these fundamental

00:55:55.960 --> 00:56:02.920
structures of reality like time and space and dimensionality it collapses when the self-structure

00:56:02.920 --> 00:56:10.120
or the identity structure in itself collapses, and then this thing just opens up. And it's like

00:56:10.120 --> 00:56:16.840
this type of zero-distance sense experience or immersion into the senses, which is so immediate

00:56:16.840 --> 00:56:23.480
and so vivid, so complete. Pete: One way I've heard it described, and this might,

00:56:23.480 --> 00:56:28.920
I think this might derive from Kashmir Shaivism, is that the first awakening might be that there's

00:56:28.920 --> 00:56:34.240
There's realization of one's essential nature, but everything else is somehow separate from

00:56:34.240 --> 00:56:35.240
that.

00:56:35.240 --> 00:56:38.960
And then maybe what you're calling the full awakening is you realize that that essential

00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:42.760
nature you realize is actually the essential nature of everything, and so it's all just

00:56:42.760 --> 00:56:49.520
one unified wholeness instead of a kind of a duality between inner self and outer relative

00:56:49.520 --> 00:56:50.520
world.

00:56:50.520 --> 00:56:52.560
Does that fit or is that not what you're saying?

00:56:52.560 --> 00:56:56.320
That's actually more what I would call the universal experience of self.

00:56:56.320 --> 00:57:00.960
So, that would still be like the first awakening, but it kind of then starts to expand.

00:57:00.960 --> 00:57:07.360
So, yeah, it expands that you kind of realize that, "Oh, it's actually not just my awakening,"

00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:10.320
and it's like you can recognize it in everything.

00:57:10.320 --> 00:57:15.080
But then the full awakening is more that the self in itself drops away, and then it's not

00:57:15.080 --> 00:57:18.520
really even unity, it's something more primary.

00:57:18.520 --> 00:57:24.680
I mean, it's not absence of unity, but unity only makes sense if there is separation, and

00:57:24.680 --> 00:57:30.440
unity only makes sense if there is something to unify. But when you kind of drop into this all

00:57:30.440 --> 00:57:37.240
the way through with it, you kind of land in this, it's not a place, but it's so primary again,

00:57:37.240 --> 00:57:42.840
and it's always been there. It's not one, it's not two, it's not many. It's very hard to say what it

00:57:42.840 --> 00:57:48.840
is, but it's completely uncompounded, it's completely seamless. For sure, it's unified.

00:57:48.840 --> 00:57:54.280
It's not like the absence of unity, but it's something even more primary. Because there is

00:57:54.280 --> 00:57:59.880
this void also that becomes very salient but not as something other than sense immersion.

00:57:59.880 --> 00:58:05.960
That's very well put. I won't try to embellish it. I'm not capable of embellishing it.

00:58:05.960 --> 00:58:12.520
That's good. Now some people take issue with this no-self business. I've interviewed a woman named

00:58:12.520 --> 00:58:17.640
Jessica Nathanson or Jessica Eve and there's another woman in Germany that's been talking

00:58:17.640 --> 00:58:24.120
a lot with Tim Freak about this and they've run into a lot of people who are sort of into neo-advaita

00:58:24.120 --> 00:58:32.120
and who had been having it drilled into their heads that you don't exist and there's no self and no person and yeah all that stuff and it's kind of messed them up.

00:58:32.120 --> 00:58:43.120
It's caused people to lose incentive or you know to become disinterested in their family and their job and things like that and even to become depressed and suicidal.

00:58:43.120 --> 00:58:48.120
So maybe you could distinguish that from what you're talking about here.

00:58:48.120 --> 00:58:55.280
Yeah, I'm not so familiar with Neo-Advaitam, but I did go to this type of radical non-duality

00:58:55.280 --> 00:59:00.640
meeting not too long ago. I was just curious what it is. And then there was this teacher

00:59:00.640 --> 00:59:06.200
and first I was super excited because he was talking about the "No, I am" and he was

00:59:06.200 --> 00:59:10.680
using the same language as me and I was just excited and then he was describing this type

00:59:10.680 --> 00:59:16.160
of death and it was like, oh, it felt like going to deep sleep with eyes open, you know,

00:59:16.160 --> 00:59:18.960
And I was like, "Yes, that's exactly it!"

00:59:18.960 --> 00:59:22.760
And you know, I was crying, it was just touching me so deeply.

00:59:22.760 --> 00:59:27.900
I don't often get to talk with someone who has experienced that type of death, you know?

00:59:27.900 --> 00:59:32.800
But then he was just like, the response was this total emotionless ghost, like, "No one

00:59:32.800 --> 00:59:33.800
cares.

00:59:33.800 --> 00:59:34.800
There's no one here."

00:59:34.800 --> 00:59:38.440
And everyone would look at me like, "Why is this person crying?"

00:59:38.440 --> 00:59:47.120
So apparently emotions were not part of this radical non-duality or whatever.

00:59:47.120 --> 00:59:50.760
And the further this teacher was speaking, yeah, it's just something about it.

00:59:50.760 --> 00:59:55.280
I don't understand what's happened there, but first of all, it's a very rigid position

00:59:55.280 --> 00:59:56.280
it feels like.

00:59:56.280 --> 01:00:02.440
And it doesn't feel like it's very fluid because there's not like actual dialogue that happened.

01:00:02.440 --> 01:00:06.520
They always say the same things when you're trying to speak with them.

01:00:06.520 --> 01:00:12.680
about it doesn't feel quite right to me. It doesn't feel very embodied, that no self,

01:00:12.680 --> 01:00:18.520
maybe there is a genuine death there, you know, I don't know, who am I to tell, but if that death

01:00:18.520 --> 01:00:24.120
is not followed by a rebirth, it's kind of like you climb to the mountaintop and then you just

01:00:24.120 --> 01:00:28.680
stay there, but that's not really enlightenment. You need to, you know, come all the way down,

01:00:28.680 --> 01:00:35.160
back to the human, and that's the downwards movement of liberation, and that needs to happen,

01:00:35.160 --> 01:00:39.800
and that's not something that's going to happen overnight. It's going to be a lifelong journey

01:00:39.800 --> 01:00:45.480
of embodiment. That's the way I see it. That's good. Let's talk a little bit more about embodiment

01:00:45.480 --> 01:00:51.960
because that neo-Advaita perspective has become popular and it does seem to be a life-negating

01:00:51.960 --> 01:00:59.400
kind of philosophy. I had a friend who went and visited a neo-Advaita teacher in England for a

01:00:59.400 --> 01:01:04.280
while and then he went to see another friend and the other friend said, "What's going on with you?

01:01:04.280 --> 01:01:08.760
you seem kind of nihilistic. There's some kind of disinterest in life that has crept into you.

01:01:08.760 --> 01:01:12.760
And what you're just saying here is, you know, you come down off the mountaintop,

01:01:12.760 --> 01:01:17.880
which reminds me of the 10 Zen ox herding pictures, where in the last one, the guy is

01:01:17.880 --> 01:01:22.920
coming into town laughing, riding the ox and coming in to be with the people and

01:01:22.920 --> 01:01:28.840
share what he's found. This whole idea of lifelong integration, that fascinates me,

01:01:28.840 --> 01:01:35.320
because I often say and think that there is no end. It's not like everybody is continually,

01:01:35.320 --> 01:01:41.320
we're all works in progress. St. Teresa of Avila said it appears that God himself is on the journey.

01:01:41.320 --> 01:01:47.160
So, the whole universe is continuing to evolve, including all beings, regardless of their level

01:01:47.160 --> 01:01:52.680
of spiritual development. So, maybe elaborate on that a little bit. And the fact that rather than

01:01:52.680 --> 01:01:58.520
in some way causing one to lose interest in life or lose interest in family or whatever,

01:01:58.520 --> 01:02:04.120
Has it been your experience that this has made life more sumptuous, more enjoyable?

01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:09.800
Yeah, those are really good questions. I think it's a pitfall, you know, to get kind of stuck

01:02:09.800 --> 01:02:16.120
in the transcendent position or stuck in the void, something like that. And I've had my moments of

01:02:16.120 --> 01:02:23.160
that as well after I had the big release. The first one year, I would say it was very transcendental,

01:02:23.160 --> 01:02:27.880
but for me there was a lot of this energetic intimacy also because the Kundalini was so

01:02:27.880 --> 01:02:34.120
salient for me throughout this whole journey. But I also had this, it's very hard to talk about

01:02:34.120 --> 01:02:39.960
because there's no time, but you could say periods when there would be just this devastating void and

01:02:39.960 --> 01:02:46.920
it was so stark, just stark nothingness and almost no thoughts at all, almost all the sensations they

01:02:46.920 --> 01:02:53.480
felt very transparent. Everything was almost like paper thin and the nothingness was just shining

01:02:53.480 --> 01:03:00.360
true and there was almost no emotion. But for me those moments, they didn't really last usually

01:03:00.360 --> 01:03:07.320
long so it kind of like balanced itself. But there was a kind of terror that came with it and it was

01:03:07.320 --> 01:03:12.680
exactly that. It felt like the humanness was completely gone. It was completely like I

01:03:12.680 --> 01:03:18.920
couldn't feel anything. But it was only terrifying because the mind started to react to that. So

01:03:20.120 --> 01:03:25.800
I don't know what would make one kind of fixate there, like what would make someone stay there

01:03:25.800 --> 01:03:32.040
and fixate there like years and years and years because I think it has a natural momentum and

01:03:32.040 --> 01:03:39.080
at least for me it just pulled me into itself kind of naturally like this whole embodied experience

01:03:39.080 --> 01:03:44.680
and it has an amazing way of doing it. It's very intelligent, the way it happens is not like the

01:03:44.680 --> 01:03:50.200
the mind rational kind of intelligence, but life just orchestrates everything in a way.

01:03:50.200 --> 01:03:53.640
Life is really inseparable from the realization, like inseparable.

01:03:53.640 --> 01:03:54.640
Yeah.

01:03:54.640 --> 01:03:56.040
Well, let me ask you this.

01:03:56.040 --> 01:04:01.880
Do you feel like as the days, weeks, months, years go by now, your life keeps getting richer?

01:04:01.880 --> 01:04:08.840
Your emotions, your love, your perception of the world seems to become more refined or

01:04:08.840 --> 01:04:14.600
beautiful or, you know, there's just a continual enhancement of your life by virtue of the

01:04:14.600 --> 01:04:20.520
integration of this true nature into your relative expression.

01:04:20.520 --> 01:04:26.000
For me this is so fulfilling. It's everything I could have ever wanted. But it's not really

01:04:26.000 --> 01:04:31.080
wantable because there is this death, you know, and there is this dissolution of kind

01:04:31.080 --> 01:04:38.100
of soul and all of that and dissolution of reality, kind of extinction of reality. So

01:04:38.100 --> 01:04:43.880
it comes with a price. But for me, it's just so worth it. It's so worth it. Yeah, life

01:04:43.880 --> 01:04:49.480
is not what I once thought it was. Relationships are not what I once thought they were. Nothing

01:04:49.480 --> 01:04:55.280
is what I once thought it was. But it's much, I don't want to say better, it's not better,

01:04:55.280 --> 01:05:02.240
but this is real. This is reality. This is actual reality. And for me, it's been a tremendous

01:05:02.240 --> 01:05:06.840
relief. It's such a deep homecoming. It's such a deep homecoming. But I don't want to

01:05:06.840 --> 01:05:12.440
advertise it like, oh, this is like the fulfillment of everyone's dreams, because it may not be

01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:18.280
that I don't think this is necessarily something that everyone wants and there's no specialness

01:05:18.280 --> 01:05:24.120
about this. It's really nothing special and I don't see it like that. I know it's available

01:05:24.120 --> 01:05:29.480
if you want that, but it's good to be aware what you actually want. So it comes with a

01:05:29.480 --> 01:05:35.680
price. That's all I'm saying. I mean, it may not be what everyone wants on the near horizon,

01:05:35.680 --> 01:05:40.720
but it might be ultimately what everyone wants. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. And it

01:05:40.720 --> 01:05:44.520
It does sound better in the sense that you wouldn't trade your current life for your

01:05:44.520 --> 01:05:45.520
life 20 years ago.

01:05:45.520 --> 01:05:46.520
It's better now.

01:05:46.520 --> 01:05:51.960
Yeah, it has these challenges like functionality has been maybe one of the main challenges

01:05:51.960 --> 01:05:57.200
and also going through a lot of healing, like having this background with the trauma.

01:05:57.200 --> 01:06:02.480
So there's a lot of healing that actually becomes only possible after the realization

01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:08.520
because all of that just so, it just surfaces and that's the nature of realization that

01:06:08.520 --> 01:06:10.100
nothing can be hidden.

01:06:10.100 --> 01:06:16.900
it has that type of illuminating quality which is also intensity. That's why I like the word radiance

01:06:16.900 --> 01:06:23.380
because it has that quality of illumination but also radiance. It's warm, it's kind of like

01:06:23.380 --> 01:06:30.020
redemptive love almost I want to say. What it makes possible for me at least this type of

01:06:30.020 --> 01:06:37.380
healing. It's like healing beyond healing when you are able to meet all the trauma and all these

01:06:37.380 --> 01:06:45.380
places, residues of suffering and pain that the body is carrying, if that's even the word for it.

01:06:45.380 --> 01:06:53.060
So when that is released in this space, which is so amazing because it's so intimate and it's so

01:06:53.060 --> 01:06:59.300
unconditional and it has the capacity to just assimilate anything without leaving a trace,

01:06:59.300 --> 01:07:04.900
and it's so intact. It's like wholeness beyond wholeness. It's intactness beyond intactness. And

01:07:04.900 --> 01:07:10.500
no matter how amount of shattering you've been through, like how broken the psyche has been,

01:07:10.500 --> 01:07:16.660
it all just melts into this wholeness which is indestructible. It's like indestructible

01:07:16.660 --> 01:07:22.420
foundation. What else would anyone really want? It sounds like the ultimate healing mechanism.

01:07:22.420 --> 01:07:28.740
A question came in from my friend Chitra Polanski in California, who is one of our

01:07:28.740 --> 01:07:35.220
volunteers that proofreads transcripts, she said that Ramana Maharshi said, "When you realize the

01:07:35.220 --> 01:07:40.260
Supreme Self, the world vanishes." Did the world vanish when you realized that?

01:07:40.260 --> 01:07:48.660
Petra - I love that quote and the way that I remember it is that the world and the I and God

01:07:48.660 --> 01:07:56.340
all arise together. So, when the I sense is gone, also God and world are gone. And then,

01:07:56.340 --> 01:08:02.500
I don't know, you could call this Godhead, I guess, like Meister Eckhart was creating this term,

01:08:02.500 --> 01:08:07.300
which I think it is this experience that there's, when even the God disappears.

01:08:07.300 --> 01:08:12.660
Pete: Which means it's just resolved back into such an unmanifest level that there's no

01:08:12.660 --> 01:08:15.780
relative expression, right? Is that correct?

01:08:15.780 --> 01:08:21.380
Anna: It's not unmanifest or manifest, it's just, there's no relationship. So,

01:08:21.380 --> 01:08:26.980
that's the thing with the God, how people usually experience it, even if it's from the point of view

01:08:26.980 --> 01:08:34.340
of kind of unity, that there is a kind of relationship. But when the self falls away,

01:08:34.340 --> 01:08:39.060
that's why it feels, how it actually feels like is that God falls away if you've been having that

01:08:39.060 --> 01:08:44.020
type of relationship, if you are that type of person who has a relationship with God. So,

01:08:44.020 --> 01:08:48.180
it actually doesn't feel like that self falls away, it feels like God disappeared, you know,

01:08:48.180 --> 01:08:53.380
because there's not any more, any kind of relationship possible. In the tantric tradition

01:08:53.380 --> 01:08:57.620
that I've been practicing, it's not God, but Goddess. So you can have that type of very

01:08:57.620 --> 01:09:03.860
beautiful relationship with the deity like that, which is based on identification. So, you know,

01:09:03.860 --> 01:09:07.940
it's not something other than you, but yet you can have that relationship and that's just not

01:09:07.940 --> 01:09:14.420
going to be possible at some point. But it's its own beauty in it that becomes then available.

01:09:14.420 --> 01:09:18.980
Sri Ramakrishna said, "Would you rather be sugar or taste sugar?"

01:09:18.980 --> 01:09:21.640
You can have a choice, maybe.

01:09:21.640 --> 01:09:23.380
Maybe you can even go back and forth.

01:09:23.380 --> 01:09:26.140
I think he's describing his own experience.

01:09:26.140 --> 01:09:30.100
In fact Shankara said, "The intellect imagines duality for the sake of devotion."

01:09:30.100 --> 01:09:36.020
So, there could be the tasting sugar periods and then the being sugar periods.

01:09:36.020 --> 01:09:43.620
Yeah, there is devotion, but it's different because there's not that type of a...

01:09:43.620 --> 01:09:48.300
It's just that something that kind of arises from the depth of being or something like

01:09:48.300 --> 01:09:54.700
that, then it's kind of like a deep orientation in life, but it's not really a devotion towards

01:09:54.700 --> 01:09:59.220
anything because there is, you know, no that type of, well, like I said, relationship,

01:09:59.220 --> 01:10:00.220
yeah.

01:10:00.220 --> 01:10:01.220
No separation, yeah.

01:10:01.220 --> 01:10:07.980
There was this guy named Adi Da, he was a spiritual teacher, he's dead now, and I had a conversation

01:10:07.980 --> 01:10:13.220
with an old friend of mine who's a student of someone who had been a student of Adi Da,

01:10:13.220 --> 01:10:20.900
And he had a profound awakening, no doubt about it, and he had all this, he glowed in the

01:10:20.900 --> 01:10:26.140
dark, you know, I mean, he was just brilliant and charismatic and eloquent and radiated

01:10:26.140 --> 01:10:28.540
a lot of Shakti and so on.

01:10:28.540 --> 01:10:34.340
But then he developed this really abnormal obsession with sex and drugs and he had multiple

01:10:34.340 --> 01:10:38.260
wives and he was sleeping with other guys' wives and all this stuff.

01:10:38.260 --> 01:10:44.320
And there's a lady I interviewed named Joan Shiverpita Harrigan who has written some books

01:10:44.320 --> 01:10:50.640
about Kundalini Vidya and she describes something known as a deflected rising where the Kundalini

01:10:50.640 --> 01:10:55.440
rises but then doesn't rise all the way up to Makara point, you know, to its home where

01:10:55.440 --> 01:11:00.800
it can rest but gets deflected off on some channel and this can result in what I just

01:11:00.800 --> 01:11:01.800
described.

01:11:01.800 --> 01:11:05.760
You can even develop Siddhis when you're with one of these but then you're heading for a

01:11:05.760 --> 01:11:13.600
fall because it's not a full awakening and it's unstable and it can sort of magnify certain

01:11:13.600 --> 01:11:19.120
unhealthy aspects of your personality. You can become megalomaniac, you know, or a sex addict or

01:11:19.120 --> 01:11:25.360
things like that. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, that, yeah, the relationship with Kundalini

01:11:25.360 --> 01:11:32.000
and yeah, it makes sense that that's what's maybe what has happened there. Yeah, Kundalini,

01:11:32.000 --> 01:11:37.760
it's a very, very, I mean it's the most powerful energy in the universe and it's a very explosive

01:11:37.760 --> 01:11:45.520
energy and it's very unpredictable like that and no one can control her. Right, there are

01:11:45.520 --> 01:11:52.960
teachings and practices, Jones tradition offers them, where it can be directed properly so it

01:11:52.960 --> 01:11:56.800
doesn't go off on side channels or if it has gone off on a side channel it can sort of be

01:11:57.360 --> 01:12:04.480
re-guided back into the proper channel and reach its culmination without causing all these problems.

01:12:04.480 --> 01:12:11.360
Yeah, when I had the final awakening, it was like there was just this upsurge, like it was like from

01:12:11.360 --> 01:12:17.760
the heart, this upsurge, it just exploded, you know, all the way like that. And after that,

01:12:17.760 --> 01:12:23.520
it's just like, it was so slow, it was almost like a deadly slow, but it was just like,

01:12:23.520 --> 01:12:28.640
descend, descend, descend all the way down to the earth. And then it was just complete. I mean,

01:12:28.640 --> 01:12:34.560
that was kind of non-conceptually how it felt like. It just came to my mind now when you were

01:12:34.560 --> 01:12:41.760
describing that. Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah, so that just might be one explanation of why so

01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:47.680
many teachers get into trouble. And I also think this is a quote I've used a million times,

01:12:48.400 --> 01:12:54.400
that Padma Sambhava, you know, the Buddhist sage, said something like, "Although my awareness is

01:12:54.400 --> 01:13:01.760
as vast as the sky, my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour." In other words,

01:13:01.760 --> 01:13:05.840
he's really kind of an enlightened dude, but, you know, he's still very careful about his behavior.

01:13:05.840 --> 01:13:11.840
>> Ksitigarbha: Yeah, because Kundalini amplifies everything. So, whatever we haven't looked in

01:13:11.840 --> 01:13:17.520
ourselves, in our psychology, it's going to amplify that. So, that's why doing all this

01:13:17.520 --> 01:13:23.680
psychological and trauma work is really beneficial in case something like this would happen because

01:13:23.680 --> 01:13:29.760
it kind of prepares the crown. The more unified the psyche is, the more prepared it is to contain

01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:35.680
this type of experience. But again, my experience was that the psyche shattered, you know, was very

01:13:35.680 --> 01:13:40.560
rude, rude awakening like that. - Well that's an interesting point. - But still, like everything

01:13:40.560 --> 01:13:47.440
has to be faced, like I had to face everything, all these psychological issues that I hadn't fully

01:13:47.440 --> 01:13:54.320
look that it's so merciless like that. And it's a grace that it does that. But did you get some

01:13:54.320 --> 01:14:00.080
cases it can just amplify them and maybe a person can get even possessed by this unresolved

01:14:00.080 --> 01:14:04.800
some scars or psychic tendencies? Maybe? Yeah, I think you're really right. I mean,

01:14:04.800 --> 01:14:09.520
that's what happened to this guy. I'm Adi die, he was just like, became a sex maniac.

01:14:09.520 --> 01:14:15.440
Although his followers don't see it that way. They had some whole interpretation about his

01:14:15.440 --> 01:14:20.560
divine status and higher than Jesus and Buddha and all this stuff, and therefore everything

01:14:20.560 --> 01:14:25.840
he did was cosmic. Anyway, I shouldn't pick on him so much. In your own case, have you

01:14:25.840 --> 01:14:30.120
gotten any help with all this psychological processing or have you done it on your own

01:14:30.120 --> 01:14:31.120
pretty much?

01:14:31.120 --> 01:14:37.760
>> I've done it on my own, but I feel the kind of trauma that my system is processing is a

01:14:37.760 --> 01:14:43.040
relational trauma, like attachment trauma, so that can really only come to resolution

01:14:43.040 --> 01:14:44.040
in interaction.

01:14:44.040 --> 01:14:49.160
in relations with people or what? Yeah, just like friendships are really good,

01:14:49.160 --> 01:14:54.520
any kind of genuine connection, authentic connection, sharing, all of that has been

01:14:54.520 --> 01:15:01.960
very helpful. I have quite a few good friends, so I'm lucky with that. And then I've done some

01:15:01.960 --> 01:15:08.200
therapeutic sessions also, more focused on this stuff, and that's been really beneficial as well.

01:15:08.760 --> 01:15:15.560
Oh, good. Okay, so let me see. Well, there's a whole spiritual bypassing concept which relates

01:15:15.560 --> 01:15:21.720
to all this. You're excusing abusive behavior by using non-dual language. And this is interesting,

01:15:21.720 --> 01:15:26.520
and using an absolute perspective to dismiss the dynamics of the relative. That's a useful

01:15:26.520 --> 01:15:33.240
phrase right there. Yeah, and I think it's part of that misunderstanding that when we awaken to

01:15:33.240 --> 01:15:39.160
the absolute or to the immensity or to the vastness, to the transcendence, then it can

01:15:39.160 --> 01:15:45.000
kind of feel like it's so much more real and the relative is just like a tiny little thing there.

01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:50.760
It's almost like the absolute has the 98% of emphasis of realness and the relative is just 2%.

01:15:50.760 --> 01:15:57.080
And it's kind of natural to go through that kind of phase, but it's very partial of you if you then

01:15:57.080 --> 01:16:01.480
stay there. If it kind of feels like, oh, the relative is just nothing. It's just play of

01:16:01.480 --> 01:16:06.280
colors and light or something like that. It doesn't really happen. It just appears to be happening and

01:16:06.280 --> 01:16:11.720
it's already gone so who cares? This kind of dismissiveness, right? And it's not part of

01:16:11.720 --> 01:16:17.160
genuine realization where this thing really come into this amazing balance like the relative and

01:16:17.160 --> 01:16:22.920
the absolute. They just meet each other and they kind of collapse into each other. So there's no

01:16:22.920 --> 01:16:29.320
need ever to dismiss the relative experience or its flavor, its qualities. There's no need to

01:16:29.320 --> 01:16:35.880
dismiss pain because realization doesn't mean the end of pain. You can totally experience pain

01:16:35.880 --> 01:16:41.560
after realization. It's not going to be suffering in that type of sense that we are used to think

01:16:41.560 --> 01:16:46.760
about suffering but there can even be some forms of suffering after the realization, kind of

01:16:46.760 --> 01:16:52.120
universal forms of suffering but there's no need to dismiss that just because you have awakened to

01:16:52.120 --> 01:16:58.200
the absolute. It's not some sort of escape away from here. It's not meant to be used like that.

01:16:58.200 --> 01:17:02.920
it's the identity that is trying to use it like that when that is happening. You know, use it

01:17:02.920 --> 01:17:09.640
as a position, use it as a safe way to keep yourself apart from this human experience.

01:17:09.640 --> 01:17:12.200
Pete Yeah, interesting what you just said,

01:17:12.200 --> 01:17:17.240
that these people who sort of feel like, "Whoa, the absolute is 98% of my experience and the 2%

01:17:17.240 --> 01:17:23.240
relative is like, it's my play toy, you know, it hardly exists." I had a spiritual teacher who was

01:17:23.240 --> 01:17:29.620
was very disdainful of human laws that governments would establish. He felt like the ends justify

01:17:29.620 --> 01:17:36.220
the means, and if I want to ship money from this country to that country and the government

01:17:36.220 --> 01:17:40.620
is interfering, they're stupid, they make these dumb laws, and so I'll just have my disciples

01:17:40.620 --> 01:17:45.940
take cash in suitcases. Some friends of mine ended up in jail in Spain for doing that, but

01:17:45.940 --> 01:17:54.580
there's a sort of dismissal of the mores or laws or rules of human society because he felt he was

01:17:54.580 --> 01:18:01.060
above all that. And I imagine he's not the only example of that. Right, and if you haven't really

01:18:01.060 --> 01:18:06.900
fully encountered the suffering in yourself, like really, really fully, and the root of the suffering

01:18:06.900 --> 01:18:14.420
and all of that, you can't really have compassion and empathy in it in other people. So there can be

01:18:14.420 --> 01:18:19.620
this premature transcendence and then when people around you are suffering then there can be this

01:18:19.620 --> 01:18:24.100
dismissive attitude. It's like, "Why are you suffering? Why don't you just rest in your

01:18:24.100 --> 01:18:29.700
true being?" or something like that. In my experience that just cannot arise if you

01:18:29.700 --> 01:18:36.100
genuinely know what suffering is. To me it has been the biggest teacher. I can't really

01:18:36.100 --> 01:18:42.740
separate the realization from it. It's been an amazing teacher and it still is. I have a lot

01:18:42.740 --> 01:18:49.060
lot of respect for anyone who's genuinely turning towards the pain and the suffering. I think

01:18:49.060 --> 01:18:53.180
that's something that could be called the work of liberation, which is not a state,

01:18:53.180 --> 01:18:58.100
it's that attitude of turning towards anything that doesn't feel free, anything that is in

01:18:58.100 --> 01:19:04.780
pain. And there's something really gone wrong if we use awakening to hold us apart from that

01:19:04.780 --> 01:19:07.220
or look down upon that in some manner.

01:19:07.220 --> 01:19:13.620
Yeah, what comes to mind as you say that is that compassion should be a symptom of spiritual

01:19:13.620 --> 01:19:20.300
attainment and if a teacher is compassionate toward his students and not using them as

01:19:20.300 --> 01:19:26.180
play toys or as means of gratifying his own desires, which denotes lack of compassion,

01:19:26.180 --> 01:19:31.020
terrible lack of compassion, and I think compassion would go along with a full development of

01:19:31.020 --> 01:19:32.020
the heart.

01:19:32.020 --> 01:19:34.580
Yeah, I agree with all of that.

01:19:34.580 --> 01:19:40.100
Yeah, there's something kind of like scary about it when you meet this lack of empathy

01:19:40.100 --> 01:19:44.260
in another human being, especially if it's a teacher who's teaching these things and

01:19:44.260 --> 01:19:49.580
then in their private life, they don't really embody the essence of the teachings. For me,

01:19:49.580 --> 01:19:52.820
there was just something like kind of shocking about it.

01:19:52.820 --> 01:19:58.060
Yeah, well, some development yet to undergo. I don't think either of us is just trying

01:19:58.060 --> 01:20:02.540
to say that we are better than these people that we're talking about. We used to have

01:20:02.540 --> 01:20:06.780
comedy troupe in the US called the Firesign Theatre and one of their albums was "We're

01:20:06.780 --> 01:20:08.180
all bozos on this bus."

01:20:08.180 --> 01:20:13.500
You know, "For the grace of God, go I."

01:20:13.500 --> 01:20:18.780
But perhaps a good teaching point here is that everybody should be on their toes and

01:20:18.780 --> 01:20:27.100
be introspective with regard to their own behavior and never rationalize inappropriate

01:20:27.100 --> 01:20:34.860
behavior with some kind of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, you know, because it seems like it's so many

01:20:34.860 --> 01:20:38.460
people have screwed up and it could happen to anybody.

01:20:38.460 --> 01:20:42.620
>> Yeah, it could happen to anybody. And yeah.

01:20:42.620 --> 01:20:47.580
>> Yeah. Now, here's a good point you made, the contradictory nature of the experience,

01:20:47.580 --> 01:20:48.940
I'm sorry, you were about to say something.

01:20:48.940 --> 01:20:51.420
>> No, I lost the track of my thought. Go ahead.

01:20:51.420 --> 01:20:56.060
>> Okay. The contradictory nature of the experience when there are many authentic

01:20:56.060 --> 01:21:03.580
elements with practices and teachings, which mixed with disturbing aspects in the teacher's behavior

01:21:03.580 --> 01:21:09.020
when having these types of abusive experiences. It's not black and white. It makes it challenging

01:21:09.020 --> 01:21:13.180
to process. And so, I could say that, too. I mean, I derive so much from that teacher that I

01:21:13.180 --> 01:21:20.300
alluded to, totally saved my life, changed my life, still benefits my life, but then there

01:21:20.300 --> 01:21:25.980
were these disturbing elements, you know, which didn't quite fit. And so, you have to kind of,

01:21:25.980 --> 01:21:29.740
it isn't black and white, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying

01:21:29.740 --> 01:21:35.580
goes, but you have to kind of discriminate and say, "No, this good aspect over here doesn't

01:21:35.580 --> 01:21:41.900
justify this bad aspect over here." Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's challenging to process because,

01:21:41.900 --> 01:21:48.380
yeah, the ambivalence is always challenging for the mind who wants to understand and wants to

01:21:48.380 --> 01:21:55.740
have an explanation and it can't understand that many kind of dimensions can kind of simultaneously

01:21:55.740 --> 01:22:06.540
be happening and real. So that's why the mind kind of always just lets go in the end. Like,

01:22:06.540 --> 01:22:15.180
it can't be understood, reality is just what it is and there is this inherent completeness to

01:22:15.180 --> 01:22:23.020
everything, even in challenging situations and difficult situations to process. And part of that

01:22:23.020 --> 01:22:30.620
healing is letting go of that need to understand. In my experience, you have to let it go completely,

01:22:30.620 --> 01:22:39.260
the hope for an answer, the hope for that type of, you know, resolution. And then something

01:22:39.260 --> 01:22:46.700
much more real can start to blossom. Yeah. Yeah. That's good advice. I don't completely take it

01:22:46.700 --> 01:22:51.980
myself. Unfortunately, I keep like rehashing certain lines of thought thinking, you know,

01:22:51.980 --> 01:22:57.020
this doesn't make sense. You know, how could somebody who is so bright and so inspiring and

01:22:57.020 --> 01:23:01.420
all be behaving like that? You know, what does he think? No, I do that also, of course. Yeah.

01:23:01.420 --> 01:23:05.340
It's like, you know, what does he think when he goes to his room at night and it's quiet and he

01:23:05.340 --> 01:23:13.660
thinks, "What am I doing?" You know? Is there any self-reflection there? Anyway, it is perplexing.

01:23:13.660 --> 01:23:21.500
But it's a good thing with all things, I think, to try to have a broad perspective and not polarize

01:23:21.500 --> 01:23:27.020
yourself, you know? Not say, "Oh, all the Republicans are bad and all the Democrats are

01:23:27.020 --> 01:23:31.420
good," or whatever. You can still vote one way or the other, but there's so much polarization

01:23:31.420 --> 01:23:37.340
these days, and I think what you were saying earlier about the vast container that harmonizes

01:23:37.340 --> 01:23:43.820
differences is an important lesson for us all. >> Yeah, I think that's, again, also maturity,

01:23:43.820 --> 01:23:53.420
to be able to sense these nuances in situations and then to not to resort to this type of polarizing

01:23:53.420 --> 01:23:58.220
because it's very dividing. >> There's another good point you made here.

01:23:58.220 --> 01:24:03.500
The way Tantric teachings talk about reverence of the feminine, about how it usually always turns

01:24:03.500 --> 01:24:09.580
out to be just lip service, and how that has been adapted as part of the self-image by many male

01:24:09.580 --> 01:24:14.780
teachers. They give lip service to the divine feminine, and yet they don't embody it in their

01:24:14.780 --> 01:24:19.740
relationship to the feminine. It's more of a philosophical ideal than a lived quality in

01:24:19.740 --> 01:24:25.020
their lives. I think the divine feminine thing is, we didn't really get into this, but it's

01:24:25.020 --> 01:24:29.660
probably a very important point. We could have a whole interview about it. It's so much needed in

01:24:29.660 --> 01:24:36.780
the world today to counterbalance the mess that the masculine dominance has made, but a lot of

01:24:36.780 --> 01:24:44.780
people are using it as an idea and then violating it. In that organization that I was part when I

01:24:44.780 --> 01:24:50.700
was younger, that was the central ideal, of course, of that because it was a kind of tantric organization

01:24:50.700 --> 01:24:55.660
that it was all about the reverence of the feminine but women were heavily abused there.

01:24:55.660 --> 01:25:01.660
Yeah, it's definitely we could have a bigger discussion about it and it's such an important

01:25:01.660 --> 01:25:08.300
topic and that's a fascinating thing to discuss and I don't want to simplify it but in a very kind

01:25:08.300 --> 01:25:14.300
of concrete way the feminine is not really of course something to do with the gender but it's

01:25:14.300 --> 01:25:21.260
this intimacy with our embodied experience. Like it's intimacy with our physicality, intimacy with

01:25:21.260 --> 01:25:28.700
our emotions, intimacy with our thoughts also, intimacy with sensations and respecting that

01:25:28.700 --> 01:25:37.740
non-rational instinctual intelligence that is inherent to our physicality, something like that.

01:25:37.740 --> 01:25:43.660
So if we don't have that relationship first and foremost with ourselves, that type of intimacy,

01:25:43.660 --> 01:25:49.100
that type of radical intimacy that really includes the whole spectrum of emotion, for example,

01:25:49.100 --> 01:25:55.580
in a very personal manner, that you really know what is shame, you know it, you really, really

01:25:55.580 --> 01:26:01.100
are very intimate with that emotion, you know what is hatred, you know what is aggression,

01:26:01.100 --> 01:26:06.780
you know, you know, there's not that type of repression in yourself, then it's a lot easier

01:26:06.780 --> 01:26:13.260
to respect that in another person, like their embodied experience, their emotions, their

01:26:13.260 --> 01:26:17.900
intuition, their thinking, the way they are thinking, the way they are organizing reality,

01:26:17.900 --> 01:26:23.820
their intuition, their judgment, all of it, if you have that with yourself. So, that's something that

01:26:23.820 --> 01:26:29.100
I've been just feeling into lately. Pete: Good. Okay, so we're just about out of time.

01:26:29.100 --> 01:26:34.380
There's so many more questions I could ask you, and I hope the questions I have asked you have

01:26:34.380 --> 01:26:39.340
been useful and that I haven't just taken us off on tangents that you didn't find that interesting.

01:26:39.340 --> 01:26:41.980
No, I've been loving this conversation.

01:26:41.980 --> 01:26:48.460
Okay, good. How about the people listening and watching this? Do you teach in some way? Do you

01:26:48.460 --> 01:26:54.540
have Zoom meetings with people? You don't have a book and you're just getting a website as you're

01:26:54.540 --> 01:26:59.660
starting to put it up, but if people want to be interacting with you more, what can they do?

01:27:00.300 --> 01:27:08.060
So I have a website, it's called sensingradiance.com and right now there's just a one pager but I will

01:27:08.060 --> 01:27:14.060
get the proper website done probably until the end of summer and then there's going to be material

01:27:14.060 --> 01:27:23.020
about embodied non-duality and awakening and liberation work and all of that. I've started

01:27:23.020 --> 01:27:29.900
to do this type of one-on-one work within the last year and yeah I love it and I'm open for it

01:27:29.900 --> 01:27:37.100
if someone feels called to have that type of support. It's a type of intuitive inquiry.

01:27:37.100 --> 01:27:41.660
It's actually very similar to what I was doing when the first awakening happened.

01:27:41.660 --> 01:27:48.300
I was just realizing it today. I don't have anything like step one, two, three, four,

01:27:48.300 --> 01:27:54.860
like do this, this, this, this. But what I am interested in is exploring that quality of

01:27:54.860 --> 01:28:02.700
effortlessness and spontaneity which is so inherent to our true nature and kind of seeing where it

01:28:02.700 --> 01:28:10.780
goes from there. So that can be very beautiful when we are processing trauma or doing that type

01:28:10.780 --> 01:28:16.940
of emotional digestion or if we are interested about non-dual inquiry like really inquiring

01:28:16.940 --> 01:28:23.580
into the nature of sensations. So effortlessness and spontaneity they are essential qualities in

01:28:23.580 --> 01:28:29.980
that type of exploration. And I don't separate these two from each other at all, like the type

01:28:29.980 --> 01:28:36.380
of trauma work or emotional work and then the non-dual inquiry. They are all part of the awakening

01:28:36.380 --> 01:28:42.620
for me. Do you have a contact form on your website or email sign up thing or anything like that? Yeah,

01:28:42.620 --> 01:28:47.180
there's an email address. You can drop me a message after watching this if you feel like,

01:28:47.180 --> 01:28:52.780
and I will probably create some sort of letter to everyone who writes me after seeing this video.

01:28:52.780 --> 01:28:57.260
You know what you could do? You could set up a MailChimp account and have a form on your website

01:28:57.260 --> 01:29:02.300
so people could just actually get on your email address list if they wanted to. And then when

01:29:02.300 --> 01:29:07.820
you're ready to start announcing things, you could just send it out to that list. I guess there's also

01:29:07.820 --> 01:29:11.180
a contact form. So if somebody just wants to contact you and say, "Hey, I want to have a

01:29:11.180 --> 01:29:14.460
Zoom session," they can do that, right? Yeah, absolutely.

01:29:14.460 --> 01:29:18.140
Okay, good. So I'll be linking to your website on your Bath Gap page,

01:29:18.140 --> 01:29:22.540
and people know how to click on a link. Great.

01:29:22.540 --> 01:29:26.780
Okay, well, thanks, Vivi. It's good, you know, getting to know you and we'll be in touch.

01:29:26.780 --> 01:29:29.820
I'll follow up with some emails about this and that.

01:29:29.820 --> 01:29:31.340
All right.

01:29:31.340 --> 01:29:36.060
Okay. Thanks to those who've been listening or watching. My next interview will be with a fellow

01:29:36.060 --> 01:29:42.860
named John Audette, who had all kinds of interesting friendships in his life, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and

01:29:42.860 --> 01:29:51.180
Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut, and all kinds of people. And he's all about divine influence

01:29:51.180 --> 01:29:57.740
guiding our lives and life after death and stuff like that. So, we'll be talking to him next. So,

01:29:57.740 --> 01:30:03.740
stay tuned.

01:30:03.740 --> 01:30:22.940
Thank you.

01:30:22.940 --> 01:30:26.300
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