[Music]
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. We've done
over 700 of them now and if this is new to you and you'd like to check out
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My guest today is Tree Wiseblood.
Tree was on BatCap about six years ago and recently reached out to us and said that she
feels like she has a pretty fresh batch of information or knowledge to express that we
didn't cover thoroughly in the first interview, so if you have seen that interview, this shouldn't
be redundant. And if you haven't seen it, you might want to watch that even before watching
this or afterwards if you prefer.
Tree works as a spiritual mentor in Kundalini support. She's a certified global TRE instructor,
which she'll remind us what that means, a transformational body worker and a healer
from the shamanic tradition. She believes healing trauma can precipitate spiritual awakening
and it is from this precept that she works. She works with the body, releasing contraction
and with the nervous system establishing balance, with the understanding that a dysregulated
nervous system can hold the beingness hostage. She believes enlightenment is achieved not
by bypassing the body but by going into the body, by addressing and releasing trauma bound
in the flesh and stored in the nervous system. This is true freedom and the result is presence,
embodied.
Tri has been a devotee of Mare Baba since she was 21, whose pictures you see behind
her on the wall there. She and her husband are establishing a retreat center on the far
south coast of New South Wales, Australia, called Mare Farm Healing and Awakening Center.
She is the author of Hot Flush Dark Cave, describing her healing and awakening journey
through the portal of menopause. She's a devoted mother, grandmother, and healer. Her favorite
pastime other than being on Buddha at the gas pump is swimming in the river and the
ocean and chanting to God. I love your emphasis on the nervous system because a lot of spiritual
teachers don't talk about it too much or other people might go into the body and health and
physical stuff without talking about awakening too much, but as Jesus said, the body is the
temple of the soul, and many spiritual teachers have spoken about the body as a vehicle without
which we couldn't achieve enlightenment. And there is clearly a correlation in everyday
life between our subjective experience and our neurophysiology, and it stands to reason
that if the neurophysiology is gunked up, if it's full of stress and tension and physical
and structural abnormalities and impurities and so on, that is going to reflect in our
conscious experience.
I would surmise that someone with a radically different state of consciousness, such as
Mehrababa or Ramana Maharshi or any great sage, actually also had a radically different
style of neurophysiological functioning, which could have been measured, and these days scientists
are trying to measure that sort of thing.
They're trying to correlate higher states of consciousness with brain activity and so
on.
It's a field that is pretty much in its infancy still, but as time goes on I think it'll be
better and better understood.
In any case, that should get you going.
I think your emphasis is in the right place, and there are, again, spiritual teachers and
teachings which bypass that altogether. It might dismiss the body as an illusion and so on and not
give any consideration to it and yeah, I think that's a partial approach.
Mary: As far as I see it, you know, ultimately no, we're not the body. We're consciousness having
visits through a body, but at the same time, the body is the vehicle to work through
sanskaras in this life and I feel like a lot of people dismiss this life condition, even
the person's sort of destiny, where to live out, what we have to live through,
what our destiny is and a way of working through the sanskaras. So yeah, ultimately not the body
and yet the body, from what I can fathom,
sometimes we are triggered into an awakening experience,
which was my own case, through trauma.
So trauma can actually give you a pure consciousness,
a state of being pure awareness,
because the ego has been shattered at some point.
At the same time, we can have awakening experiences
through other mediums,
and there's so many that we could mention,
but we probably don't need to. But even when people have had profound awakenings,
what generally happens is the personhood gets triggered in life and so we contract back and
person arises again. So I feel we have to work through the trauma which is bound in the flesh
and which is really active in the nervous system. What is the awake state but being here and
and generally want to be in a peace.
We don't always want a calm nervous system,
but what we want is a resilient one.
Most of humanity is, and myself was included
until I did a lot of trauma work,
trapped in a nervous system
that initially was working for us.
So we need to be able to go into fight or flight
or freeze or thaw to protect ourselves.
So if someone came in here now, a robber,
I might fight them or I might run out the other door
or I might go into a freeze, no one here,
take what you want, or I might fawn and say,
"Oh, all the gold and diamonds," which I don't have,
but in the cabinet in my room, you know, help yourself.
So it can be really helpful to preserve our organism.
Fantastic, and yet what tends to happen is
I get stuck in this loop that is stuck on.
Now my nervous system, I feel like,
was like that from in utero until about 50
when I started to take on a really significant
healing journey.
Life was a dread and the ego identity
is really quite loud and noisy
when the nervous system's activated.
So there's no inner peace whatsoever.
There's no chance to be able to sink down further into the beingness that always exists here,
that's always here in all of us, but with the noise and traffic of an activated nervous
system, we can't even feel into it.
It'll begin to dissolve into it.
Yeah, so you said we're not the body, true, and we're not our car either, but if you want
take a cross-country trip and you have never changed the oil and you put cheap
gas in the car and you know you just don't upkeep it, then your car might
break down and you know it's not going to be a very smooth journey. So you
know we need to make sure that the nervous system, the body is functioning
optimally in order for it to serve us well. That kind of dawned on me
when I was about 18 and had been doing a lot of drugs and I in a very kind of
confused, foggy state, it dawned on me that if I keep carrying on as I was, I'm going to damage my
body and then I'll be stuck in a damaged body for the rest of my life. And as a matter of fact,
I have hep C antibodies in my system because I exposed myself to it. But my doctor said that,
"Oh, well, actually you're more immune to it than anybody now because your body beat it on its own
successfully. So don't worry about it." But you know, that's how things were going.
And just one more comment on what you said and then you can bounce back from that.
When you talk about an agitated nervous system or over activated, it doesn't mean that we have to
be placid in life. You know, you talk to some great athletes who are in the midst of the most
dynamic activity and what they report subjectively is an inner quietness and silence and their mind
is just clear and they're able to totally engage in what they're doing without a lot of inappropriate
and distracting inner commotion. So I think one's whole life can be like that, whether
one's an athlete or whatever one is doing. One can be in the midst of dynamic activity
and yet there's an inner silence that supports and underlies that. And there's actually
a neurophysiological component to that, which I don't want to talk at too great a length,
but very briefly, at least in the Indian tradition, it's understood that there are two nervous
systems which kind of take turns being active and if the nervous system is
properly developed there's always one which is sort of maintaining the silent
aspect of our awareness and the other which is maintaining the dynamic aspect
of our activity and the alternation of those nervous systems actually
corresponds to a subtle predominance of breath through one or the other nostril
so there's a whole science to that. Okay enough said.
Athletes can get into that beautiful flow state and people in general can be in
that beautiful flow state where there's not the doer, there is really just the
doing happening. And I think athletes sort of tap into that or can tap into
them. Yeah, the greatest ones they consider it to be their kind of secret
to success in a way. They're able to function in that way and be so focused
and still and you can see it in their faces sometimes. You watch somebody like Coco Gough
playing tennis and there's just this sort of laser-like focus and the crowds are screaming,
but the mind is just zeroed in on the task at hand without a lot of inner turbulence.
Beautiful. Yeah, I feel, Rick, about the whole general healing trauma as an absolute path
for beginning this awakening process.
I feel like ego is formed up out of sanskaras,
so impressions we bring with us from past life,
conditioning, and trauma.
So the trauma is somewhere
where the person can actively work.
Often we need God's grace
to assist us on this involution process,
but healing the trauma is where the person
can be really quite active
and take an active role to release it from the body
and really tend this nervous system
so that we can be present, or even better, be present
so that we're not living out of past
activated nervous system states.
And when I look at humanity,
the majority of humanity is living out of
really activated states.
And so there is no inner peace, there's no world peace.
And yeah, it's exciting because we can do
this hero's healing journey for ourself
and our nervous system.
So that sort of really does excite me.
And I would share that sense of inner peace,
that sense of being grounded
and being able to have the consciousness exist in the body,
to have that embodied sense of consciousness
Previously, my nervous system was so dysregulated
before I did healing that I couldn't be in my body.
I was always dissociated, so I was always living out here
'cause the body didn't feel safe to exist in.
It was just full of a soup of sensations and trauma.
And by trauma, I suppose at this point
I would give a definition that any time
that the system's overwhelmed and stores it in the flesh,
in the muscle, in the fascia,
and has a really strong imprint into our nervous system.
So obviously, hard trauma is easy to recognize,
but also softer traumas,
every time we have had that overwhelm
and that contraction is stored.
So there's lots of beautiful things that we can do
to help release that and settle everything.
- You mentioned some scars and past lives and all.
So, would you say that even a newborn baby has some scars and some impressions?
And we're not just talking about the gross flesh and blood nervous system, are we?
We're also talking about the subtle body, the subtle nervous system.
We'd have to be, otherwise how could it be that some scars could be carried over from life to life?
Because obviously between lives we don't have any kind of gross body.
Would you also agree that even if somebody had an idyllic upbringing and a very good
family and everything was smooth and comfortable and all that, you know, the very fact that
we are a human being means that there are some buried traumas, some impressions.
Maybe one way of putting it is, if we're not enlightened, there must be something yet to
resolve in the mind-body system.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's why we're still here.
Yeah.
of us. Some people become fully God-realized and I'm excited to talk
about the levels of consciousness and they choose to come back and help
humanity. So how wonderful. That's pretty rare. Yeah. And also too, Rick, trauma is not
just what happened to us but it's what didn't happen for us as mammals. So often
as babies, as wonderful or not as our parents were, but even when they tried
really hard, particularly in our age group,
we weren't fed on demand.
We weren't scooped up every time we cried.
Now as mammals, if you look at the monkey world or whatever,
where the baby's continuously hanging off the mother,
fed on demand, always held,
regulating its nervous system and being cared for,
often, particularly in the West,
you know, we were put in a cot away from our mother
or caregiver and left to cry.
And that is an enormous,
it doesn't sound like it to some people,
but that's a big trauma for a little mammalian organism
that just needs skin contact reassurance.
So often our childhood,
just not having those oral and mammalian needs met
creates a lot of contraction in our system.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, a lot of trauma.
So yeah, it's sort of fantastic now that there's all this information about conscious parenting
and hopefully, you know, more natural births, less medical intervention. So, you know, often there's
medical intervention and look when it's needed, how wonderful, mum and baby are safe. That is
fantastic when it's an emergency or needed, but I feel even with birthing people are getting
down medical corridors when it's not necessary.
I don't think that they realize the impact that has on the mother and child.
That whole birthing process sets the baby and the mother up, natural birthing if possible,
and if the mother's not taking drugs, she's actually present and there.
She's not off with the fairies on drugs.
first connection where the baby meets
the mother's eyes is a really profound
moment, a welcome to the planet. I've got
you, you're safe. A sense that just embeds
in the nervous system. If that doesn't
happen and you're looking up at a white
ceiling in a hospital... Being spanked. Yeah,
being spanked. So there's, you know, so
There's so much that we can do for babies
and young children now,
and there's a lot of information about that,
conscious parenting, which is, I think, is brilliant.
I've got grandkids now, so I've been studying all that
to do a better job of my grandchildren
than I have done of my own children,
although they were fed on demand and home births,
and they got a pretty good go,
but where they didn't get a good go
was my nervous system was dysregulated.
I would have absorbed my parents' nervous system
and didn't know anything other than
I thought this was life.
This sense of having an activated nervous system,
I thought this was life and I was stuck in my ego identity,
my person, and I was in fight and flight.
I regret that.
I see this beautiful conscious parenting now,
But unless the parents do the work on their nervous system, it's just a script.
Yeah.
So, to have that embodied sense of conscious parenting, the parent's nervous system needs healing.
They need a resilient nervous system.
Because children, even before verbal, they absorb the sense of the parent, the sense of safety, the sense of how they are in the world.
Sure, even in the womb the child must be absorbing the traumas of the parents, both the parents,
you know?
I mean, if the mother and father are having a fight or something and the child is in the
womb, certainly that influences the child.
But I mean, you shouldn't blame yourself for what you didn't do 30 years ago or something,
you know, you did the best you could.
I feel like all parents do the best they can from where they're at and where their nervous
systems are and how they are in life.
Like, yeah, absolutely no blame, but now that there's this knowledge, if they combined it
with healing their own trauma before they have children, tending their own nervous system,
then they've got a nervous system that's beautiful to regulate off.
And then we could have a whole incoming humanity that aren't as traumatized.
Yeah, that's great.
I was born by caesarean myself a few years after World War II, which my father had fought
in and been very traumatized by and became an alcoholic. He was and all that. But I remember
at one point I had the opportunity to say to my mother, "Don't feel bad about anything you did,
you know, bringing me up. You did the best you could and I'm really happy with the way my life
is turning out now. This is after I've been meditating for a while and things were going
really well. So, you know, don't worry about it." And that really kind of relieved her to
have that said to her. But the point you're making about the world, I think, is really significant.
And, you know, we look at the world and we look at various wars and famines and all kinds
of terrible things happening all over the place, the drug crisis, and, you know, we could spend
all night just picking off all the problems that plague the world.
I think you're saying, and I would agree with you, that all of these problems are symptoms
or manifestations of large numbers of traumatized people, basically universally traumatized
people just behaving naturally from a foundation of trauma.
And it takes a collective form, just as it does an individual form.
I mean, a traumatized individual is going to screw up their life in certain ways.
A collection of traumatized people in a country, the country is going to have problems as manifestations
of the millions of traumatized people in its populace.
Absolutely.
And the beauty of it is, yes, you said before, we are human, we will experience trauma, it's
part of our existence.
But the beauty is, we can heal it.
We don't have to be stuck in concrete.
And this should be a national priority.
We do need to take care of the economy and the environment and all the things that governments
are supposed to do, but education, in my opinion, should include methods to de-traumatize the
kids.
You teach them factual information, but at the same time you help them culture their nervous
systems to be trauma-free by the time they graduate from college or whatever.
Yeah, I have quite a few parents say, "Oh, I'd love you to teach TRE to my child." And I say,
"Yeah, I'd love to, and it would be great if we started with you."
Yeah, very good.
So the parents and then the kids. Yeah, like it can be profoundly different in that
when we heal the trauma and the nervous system is regulated, you know, we can experience that
sense of presence that exists here because we're not depressed, we're in freeze, you know, we're
not in fight, we're not, you know, we're just here, really just here. And that really excites me that
humans can come to that quiet mind by doing trauma healing. Yeah, it's our natural state. It's not
something exotic, you know. It's the state that one would naturally be in if one were
free of accumulated trauma. Yeah, I feel, yeah, absolutely. The trouble is, and myself was
included, I thought the natural state was being really bound up in a highly activated ego identity.
Yeah, because that's what everybody seems to be, and so you look around and you think, well,
this is what's natural, but it's not. It's abnormal, it's just common. Abnormality is common.
- Yes, yes, and I say to people that come here
for retreats or body work, you know,
if they have a spiritual slant,
and that tends to be my clients,
but I say to them,
have a look at the countenance of the great masters.
Have a look at their sense of,
you know, even, I think of Ramana Maharshi's body,
who was quite deformed,
is the only one that I can think of,
because of it, you know, his body's quite held and yet his countenance and his nervous system
and everything else is so relaxed, even around the body that's a little held.
But everyone else, I think of them and I see them and the grace and the groundedness, they're
not passive, they're active, but in a graceful way.
Yeah.
In a graceful way, yeah.
Did you ever see that movie Koyaanis Kwatsi?
No.
I don't know the derivation of the word, it's some native tongue, perhaps Native American, but it means "world out of balance."
And it's quite a harrowing movie to watch, because it just sort of comes at you at a mile a minute with just all these images of people rushing down the street in New York City, and forest fires, and bombs, and all this crazy stuff for the whole length of the movie.
movie, and it means world out of balance. And I think they made one later on, and I forget
the name for that one, but it was more like world imbalance, and it was just all this
beautiful serene kind of stuff. Anyway, I guess the principle we're making, and it bears
repeating is that it's theoretically possible for the world to be populated by saintly people.
In fact, in my last interview, or the one before that, I read this quote from Yogananda
that someone had sent me about how we need everyone, stockbrokers and street sweepers
and this and that, to all be living Buddhas, you know, or Christ's, or people in an enlightened
state and then we would have an ideal world.
Yeah, I think it's in progress.
I feel like it's in progress.
It's involution, yeah, but I just do really feel that the trauma healing can really speed
up the process.
It can quite quickly make significant changes.
at the end we say, "Okay, what can people do practically?" But we also say it now,
a handful of them possibly could fly to Australia and hang out with you at your retreat center for
a while and maybe some people will do that. It would be a cool thing to do. I'd like to do it.
But practically speaking, people who are in Europe or the US or elsewhere, what can they do without
having to fly around the other side of the world? I tend to share what worked in my own
journey of healing because for me they
were really quite pinpoint. Now they
mightn't be for everyone and again
discernment and feel into it yourself but
for me
going to a TRE instructor and learning
TRE
which is trauma release exercises
and that was devised by David Berselli
and it's really about invoking our natural
healing mechanism which is to shake out
contraction held in the system. So somehow when you practice TRE you physically shake? Yeah,
I can now say to my body, "Would you like to tremor?" And it just starts to go. It goes, yeah.
Yeah. Pulling apart the fascia, releasing the muscles, and in doing so after continued practice,
the nervous system comes down to a more baseline state, which is that inner peace. So I would say,
yeah, learn TRE. It's quite quick, it's incredibly quick in its processing. Like I think for me,
three months my body was pain-free and because I was so dysregulated I feel like it probably took
a year for the nervous system to shift, but even still a year of practice. So there's a lot of
instructors worldwide. I feel like yes, it's good to go to talk therapy and talk about it, but
but at the end of the day, it's in the body,
it's in the tissue, it's in the nervous system.
So doing this body work, this fantastic TRE process,
is life-changing.
Some people, after their first shake, will come out,
they'll sit up and they'll look around the room
and they'll be in the awake state.
Mind is stilled and they say,
"Oh my God, look at everything.
"Ah, it's all like three-dimensional."
So after one shake, they're getting a little taste
of what it's like to be, not everyone of course,
but some, this is the capacity that Thierry has
as a path to spiritual awakening,
just quieting everything down.
It relaxes the body.
Also, I would suggest I do something called
transformational body work,
which was devised by Diva D'Aricia, an Australian man.
He went over and studied postural integration, which is John Painter's work, Ida Rolfe's
work which is Rolfing.
So these are deep tissue body works.
So again, tremoring is shaking out of the armour, all this armour that we have in our
body and forming up these character structures.
That's another thing I'd love to mention too is the Rikian character structures.
but also the body work is working into the flesh
and moving the armor off the body,
so the body is freer, the psyche's freer.
The body work works on in utero, early childhood,
past life, all of this life, intergenerational trauma.
I've been on the table and experienced
some of my mother's trauma.
And also you get beautiful infill
from transpersonal experiences.
So it's both releasing and you're getting some nourishment
into the system.
So I would say TRE and deep tissue body work.
I would say probably the most important thing,
as well as releasing the armor
or having it sort of help to work through
is making sure that practitioner,
that you feel really comfortable with your practitioner.
And I think the greatest gift a practitioner can give
is being fully present.
For me, I feel really happy about my work
because after having a series of awakenings,
which I'd love to discuss too, Rick, not just awakening,
is being able to be literally like presents
for the body on the table.
So not thinking about, as I would before awakenings,
about what's for dinner or the fight I'd had with my husband,
but literally being there for that body to release.
So try a few practitioners.
You know when they're with you
or when they're in their mind away.
So you really want someone present and grounded
for your nervous system to have the power
to be able to heal and release.
And of course, you can have various tools in your toolkit.
You know, an effective meditation practice or yoga practice or various other things.
They're not contradictory.
You can do a number of things that work for you.
In my case, I've been meditating for a couple of years and I started to shake.
The first time it was after a one-month meditation course that I was on and I went and got a
job driving an ice cream truck.
And when I was meditating, you know, I'd kind of shake as things were releasing.
and while driving the truck if I stopped at a stop sign or a red light because I was sitting still,
it would start to happen. But I suppose it could freak somebody out if that started to happen to
them. I think there's something neurologically wrong with them, but I kind of had an understanding of
what was going on, so I just went with it. And then you see groups, meditation groups,
sometimes people are doing all these wild kriyas and making noises, and I think sometimes it becomes
a contest of who can do the wildest
kriyas, but some of it is also
genuine. So perhaps the attitude should be
don't milk it, don't use it as a way of
showing off, but don't try to suppress it
either.
Absolutely, don't let, you know, if
Kundalini awakens,
it's an evolutionary human process,
so don't let the ego run with it, but
allow the Kundalini to
clear what it has to clear. Yeah,
beautifully said, Rick.
or there was few thoughts through there. Absolutely, there's so many techniques of working with the body.
Yoga, meditation, craniosacral, there's many, many techniques to help you through this.
What's your attitude towards psychedelics? I'm not keen. I know a lot of people have had success,
particularly they're looking now at depression and trauma. So I think as a medicinal
approach, I think there's probably worth to it, but as far as quick fix for awakening, I'm not keen.
Pete Yeah, I'm kind of with you there. I mean,
I appreciate the work being done at Johns Hopkins and NYU and places like that, and in many cases,
alcoholics or PTSD sufferers and terminal cancer patients who are terrified of death and all have
wonderful transformational experiences which have long-lasting benefits, but I don't know if I've
I've ever talked to anybody or met anybody who through long-term use of psychedelics has
achieved what I would consider to be abiding spiritual awakening.
Oh, I forget who it was, it'll come to me, but with regard to this, he said, "When you
get the message, hang up the phone."
So it can give you a sort of a kick and a realization that there's so much more to life
than you had known, but it's not a healthy long-term strategy, I think, for most people.
Alan Watts, that's who said that.
Yeah, it can also, if it's not sort of evolving on your trajectory. I do a bit of Kundalini support
and I get a lot of clients that, particularly young men, that have had an opening through
psychedelics and it hasn't grown steadily through meditation or a spiritual practice, but they've
just had some sort of experience, an experience. And then their everyday life seems useless,
futile, unpleasant, and so it can cause a lot of havoc.
Pete Yeah, I've been contacted by such people also.
They can't hold down a job, they're living in their parents' basement or whatever,
they've just been thrown out of balance by it. And then there's also the syndrome of,
"Okay, maybe the next trip this weekend is going to do it for me."
There's that saying, I guess it was the fable of the tortoise and the hare,
"Slow and steady wins the race." Yeah, yeah. And I say to these people that we have this
jivatma, we have this lifetime where we have to work through our impressions.
Sure, a sense of oneness, beautiful, and beautiful when it's more sustained,
but perhaps that can come through spiritual practice, loving the Guru, service, meditation,
I think more profound long-term builds of this process, because we do have to have this life
on planet Earth in this body to work out those samskaras. So I tell them the importance of
even the personal life, the person's life. Yeah, and I'm wondering if psychedelics can
work out some scars. I somehow have the feeling that if you're full of some scars, these neurophysiological
gross and subtle abnormalities we've been talking about, can you really resolve them
just by taking some mushrooms or something? Or are you just sort of adding a psychedelic
experience to a traumatized nervous system? Well, again, you know, there is research that
it helps people with PTSD to overcome it.
So maybe if done properly, it can have that benefit.
But I think a lot of times it's done rather recreationally
and might have the reverse effect.
- Yeah, look, I think there have been really good results
and in the proper conditions by people
that know what they're doing.
But I also think just recreationally
to have these awakenings now, like instant is,
I don't know, it doesn't sit with me.
So I have you ever done them yourself?
No, but you know, you can tone, you can sit under the moon in the night and tone and have transpersonal experiences.
People on the body work table, working into the flesh deeply, have transpersonal experiences.
So we can understand that there is more than the gross experience.
And as I implied earlier, I certainly did them back in the 60s, but I can confidently say
now that I feel better all the time now than any drug ever made me feel temporarily.
So there's absolutely no incentive to do anything like that because I don't think it would enhance
my state.
What did you want to say about awakenings as opposed to awakening?
Yeah, I wanted to talk about, you know, I feel like some people, you know, have an awakening
experience and I feel it's over. You know, we're all cooked and we're enlightened and
you know, there's seven planes of consciousness and possibly my...
Pete Mayer
Nehobaba's model, right? I just listened to that article today that you sent me.
Mary Gamba There's seven planes of
consciousness to God-realization and I feel a lot of us that having these awakenings as the planet
is awakening, maybe having that first turning towards an involution, the involutionary process.
So we evolve and then we go into this involutionary process which…
David Define involution so we make sure everybody
understands what you mean by the word.
Gail Okay, we evolve from rock to plant to fish
to animal, the soul's involvement, this is Baba's cosmology, to humans. And then I
I wrote down the figure because I had to have a laugh.
Around 8,400,000 human lives is in Baba's cosmology, so that makes me laugh.
That's a lot of human lifetimes.
And not just his cosmology, other Hindu and Buddhist teachers have said similar things.
Yeah.
When we come to that point of going, whether the Sanskrit are light enough at some point,
it's God's grace, I'm not sure what occurs, but we go, "Hmm, this isn't it. This gross world,
this outer, this person, ego identity isn't it." So we start to inquire within, we start to go
within. So that is what I would call the beginning of the involution. And I would say we're heading
maybe, you know, maybe towards the first plane,
away from that gross, dense plane.
Can I read you something, Rick?
- Sure.
- This is Meher Baba's little paragraph
on the seven planes of higher consciousness.
The first plane, when the pilgrim arrives at the first plane,
he experiences his first merging,
which consists of the minor annihilation of the ego.
The pilgrim is temporarily lost to his limited individuality and experiences bliss.
And I feel like, okay, so this is a really interesting part for me.
Many pilgrims who thus fallen away and in my own case, you know, I was nine months in
bliss staring at the floor with no thoughts at all.
You went through all these dramatic incapacitating phases.
And I feel like, oh, you know, maybe we're heading towards this, you know, this first
plane.
I probably wouldn't hurt the world for us all to stare at the floor for nine months.
Somebody would have to feed us.
Okay, so this is a really interesting part for me.
Many pilgrims who thus get merged in the first plane think that they have realized God and
get stuck in the first plane.
But if the pilgrim keeps himself free from self-delusion, or comes to realize that his
His attainment is really a transitional phase in his journey.
He advances further on the spiritual path
and arises at the second plane.
And I feel that, you know, people,
particularly with just non-dual speak,
where it's an intellectual understanding,
and Barbara is a non-dual avatar,
where he says we are not we, but one,
but how much are we really experiencing that divinity?
that divinity, you know, what level and I feel like and it's wonderful because when you have that first
Ego annihilation and person falls away and there is just a sense of pure consciousness
and I feel like a lot of us have experienced that and a lot of Western spiritual teachers and
beings have experienced that and
Yet, it's the beginning of the involution. There's a Tibetan saying don't mistake
understanding for realization. And just to comment very briefly on what you just said,
I think it would be a good thing for all of us to have drilled into our heads that growth
is going to be a continuous process and if you feel you're done, question that. There's
teachings like that in many traditions where the tradition warns against the sense of jumping
to the conclusion that one is finished. It can be a trap and it can be dangerous if one
presumes to be a teacher at that point.
And in fact, in the Zen tradition, they apparently advocate waiting 10 years after your realization,
see how it goes, before you start teaching.
I've quoted Saint Teresa of Avila many times.
She says that it appears that God himself is on the journey.
If that's true, then certainly we are.
Which is not to say that we're going to be forever chasing the dangling carrot, hoping
for some kind of fulfillment to somehow come to us.
The goal can be all along the path.
At every stage, like you said, even at stage one, there can be a great bliss and release
from the binding influence of the ego and so on.
And every stage, I think you're going to outline seven stages, has very beautiful characteristics
that one can enjoy, but one shouldn't just rest on one's laurels at any one of these
stages.
Or assume it's done, and I feel like a lot of people do.
I'm glad I've got Barbara in these seven stages
of realizations because it feels so complete
when you've been trapped in that crystallized
ego identity shell and person has that first falling away.
It is blissful, you know, that person's not there
trying to run the show in that contracted form.
It does feel so complete and so it is beautiful
to perhaps mentor and share that first shift
in consciousness because other people are still struggling
in their contracted form. So I think it's all okay, but I have the suspicion that maybe some people,
the person or the ego takes it and they run with it and I think, "Oh, be careful."
You've heard of the Association for Spiritual Integrity, perhaps you're a member.
There's so many examples of spiritual teachers using their supposed status to excuse sexual
abuse and other misbehaviors with their students. And that's a great danger for them. In fact,
stage four, which you'll probably describe can be a stage which, you know, one can be gifted
with tremendous powers. And if those are misused, you can be back to square one, as a result.
Mary: Just done. Yeah. That's why I say to people that come here for healing work or
interested in awakening, I say to them, "If you have the propensity to have a guru or a teacher,
I would choose an avatar because they're not going to have the underlying lack of
what-more-than-one information. They're not going to have that integrity, that purity,
that integrity." So, I say, "You know, there's plenty of avatars, you know, Jesus, Buddha."
Yeah, there have been plenty of people who have said they were avatars and probably were.
I can also think of people living now who say they are avatars and I'm a little skeptical
of some of them.
Yeah, don't just jump at the first avatar who puts out a shingle.
Absolutely.
I think there are, well, ones that I feel totally confident in are Jesus, Buddha, Krishna,
Zoroaster, Muhammad, and Meher Baba, I feel is the latest form of that first realized soul.
So there's plenty to choose from there.
And yet look, spiritual teachers can possibly help you with that first one, but why not
cut to the chase?
Why not head to the creme de la creme is my suggestion.
We talked about this a little bit in our first interview, but then, you know, some people
say, well, I want a living teacher.
I want somebody that I can actually talk to and interact with and I'm not so good at relating
to an abstract being living on some other plane.
And again, I would say they're not abstract just because they're not here in the physical
body.
They're very, very real.
They're very palatable.
You can smell them and feel them and they can actually guide the person's life very profoundly
and pinpoint.
I wouldn't say that they are abstract even though they're not.
You know, you are not claiming to be a spiritual teacher per se, you mainly do TRE and body
work and stuff like that, but would you discourage people from associating with a so-called,
"Oh, you've been to Mooji, you're really into Mooji, he doesn't claim to be an avatar, but
he's definitely alive."
Yeah, no, I wouldn't discourage anyone from anything, and Mooji was profoundly influential
in my own awakening journey, as Mayor Bhabha has been.
I wouldn't dissuade, but I would probably more,
you know, everyone has got their own path,
and if that's where they're drawn,
that's where they're drawn.
But I would say if you can go to the top, why not?
Because they can take you through
the seven planes of consciousness.
The spiritual teachers can probably help you
understand the ego identity.
and you know, I can perhaps talk about that,
what ego is and how to relax the person
and how to relax the character structures
through trauma healing,
and you can have experience of the beingness more and more.
So I wouldn't dissuade anyone,
but I would probably encourage them, go to the top,
because to get through the last phases,
you know, in our 8,400,000 lifetimes,
400,000 lifetimes. You need God's grace and you do need the guide of an avatar or a perfect
master.
I'll tell you a story. I interviewed a guy about a month ago named Philip Weber, who
had actually remembered a past life in which he was with Yogananda and he was really pretty
much into Yogananda's movement in this life, although also a bit of a free agent doing
different things and checking out different things. But he went into this deep state at
one point, he was in some kind of samadhi state where he wasn't even conscious of his body,
and Mayor Baba appeared.
So there he is in the presence of Mayor Baba, and there was this little bump on his side
in this vision or this experience, and Mayor Baba took this little knife and cut this bump
off, and this worm-like creature emerged from it and was kind of like wrrrrr, writhing around,
and you know, and Phillips said, "Get it away from me, get it out," and Baba actually completely
extricated it. But then he said, "Hey, how come you did this? I thought Yogananda was my guru."
Then Baba said to him, "Well, on this level, we're all the same."
- Yeah, beautiful.
- So, it's just sort of this astral exorcism or something.
- Yeah, gosh, and don't they occur often in healings? Yeah, I had a client on the table
the other day and she's on her third round of body work and Mayor Barbara appeared to her
And at the same time she was chanting Ma and her body was going into spontaneous
sacred dance gestures while she was having body work. So it was all happening in the healing room
there too. So yeah, I don't feel because they're not in the body that they're not
totally available. I feel they really are. Just to pursue that line of thought a little bit more,
and a question just came in from a listener which I'll read to you in a minute.
How do you protect against imagination or wishful thinking? What if a person gets lost in sort of
fantasies about disembodied masters and stuff? Is there any kind of safety measure to assure one that
one is actually connecting with the real deal and not connecting with some malevolent entity
that might be posing as a master? Yeah, I don't sort of tend to worry about that. I feel if you're
calling out to God with your whole heart and being, then God's going to be there in an instant.
You know, what does, I think, Barbara says it too, you know, "One or more gather in my name,
I will be there." Jesus said it, yeah. I don't feel that anything benevolent could appear,
but also too, if you're in a bit of a spiritual emergence and things are going a bit rocky,
I would say that the God element won't tell you to do harmful things to yourself or to anyone else.
Pete So that's for sure. I mean, that would be a good litmus test for ascertaining the
legitimacy and the beneficial nature of anything you're connecting with, living or ascended.
Barbara Yeah, if you're connecting
someone and it's going a bit skew-whiff, then you need a bit of help there.
Pete Yeah. Let me ask this question that came in. I think it'll be relevant to our conversation.
This is from Santiago Gomez in Colombia asking,
"What role do you think Kundalini plays in the releasing of trauma?"
I think it plays a big role.
Yeah, I think Kundalini refines the whole system,
enlightens the whole load.
I think it's a human evolutionary, involutionary system
that clears our vessel, clears out everything.
Why I say to people, "Do body work and TRE,"
because if you're on a spiritual path and you're already clearing out the system, when Kundalini
comes there's maybe less to clear because you've done the gross bodily ones. So that can be helpful
but I feel Kundalini is a profound process in clearing everything and enlightening us.
I think that's a good point that bears emphasis, which is that I think people who have trouble
with Kundalini, who have traumatic experiences when Kundalini awakens or aren't able to function
well and stuff like that, it's because Kundalini is encountering so many obstacles, there's
so much to clear, and it's hitting blockages and perhaps being diverted off to side channels
and stuff.
So I think that what you're saying is very true, that the more we can clear that stuff
out, the smoother the Kundalini process will be.
Yeah, and then you get to the beautiful, you know, the mudras and the sacred dances and
the beautiful, enlightening, enlivening parts of Kundalini as opposed to the more difficult
parts, yeah, which are still wonderful, really.
But, yeah, if you do the trauma healing, Rick, first, you've cleared the system a lot.
Do you think that everybody goes through some kind of Kundalini awakening in the process
of evolution?
Is that like just a necessary component of it?
I don't have a definitive answer, my suspicion is probably.
If the whole Kundalini Vidya, the whole knowledge of Kundalini is valid, then it would seem that
the Kundalini has to be involved.
This is one way of explaining what the awakening process is, but it needs to do its thing.
And it's described across so many traditions in so many different, you know, we're using
the term Kundalini, but it's described as Christianity, the Holy Spirit perhaps, or other
traditions, which I don't think someone would know about.
Someone would come from a tradition, perhaps listening to this, and they would use another
word for it.
So, it does seem to be an evolutionary process of the human beings.
I guess, Rick, I don't know, that it's probably someone in one of these 8,400,000 human lifetimes
when it's time.
Some people say that the caduceus, that symbol of modern medicine with the snake coiling
around a staff is symbolic of kundalini.
Yeah, yeah.
You can say because we're mentioning her, she's having a little bit of a run in my body.
Yeah.
So, it's getting a bit busy.
But I guess it's worth mentioning that kundalini, it shouldn't be a scary thing.
It's not necessarily going to cause your loved ones to lock you up.
It can be smooth and something good is happening and it should just be dealt with.
For one thing, it shouldn't be forced.
I mean there shouldn't be some kind of great effort made to awaken it, you know, doing
fast pranayama for two hours or something could get you in big trouble.
When it's time, it will happen and again it's this sort of, perhaps the Western mind that
wants, you know, awakening now or kundalini now again.
When it's time, I think that's fantastic.
It can be, my own process was quite tricky, Rick, the Kundalini process, you know, it
had a lot of blocks even though I had done a lot of trauma healing.
So mine was pretty dramatic and intense and quite funny at times because, you know, you
can be burst into spontaneous yoga poses and...
Yeah, you're doing that in restaurants and stuff as I recall.
Yeah, and I don't do yoga, so one night here I ran out onto the, you know, had a heavy breathing
pattern that came on spontaneously. I ran out onto the front lawn and launched into a,
I don't even know what they are, a backwards something or other.
>> Back bend or something. >> Yeah, thank you. My body's not up for that,
but it managed it at the time. So, it was, you know, in hindsight quite funny because
I'm not that physically fit. >> Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But it did it, you know, my consciousness,
you know, blew out through into the galaxies
and it was, you know, magnificent,
but sometimes it can be quite busy and overwhelming
and particularly if you haven't dealt with your trauma
in the system beforehand.
But again, if you can just relax around it,
know that it's a human process, breathe.
I can say to Kundalini clients, perhaps learn TRE
because that will not only help release the trauma,
but you will get used to and begin to enjoy
spontaneous movement as part of being a human being.
- Yeah.
- And in TRE, you can control it.
You can stop and start the spontaneous movement.
And so that gives you a sense of,
ah, yes, my body knows what to do.
My body knows how to heal itself.
I think in tribes,
I can remember seeing two things on television as a kid
that stuck with me.
And one was a tribe dancing around a fire
and they danced and danced and danced
until the spontaneous movement came.
And I remember thinking, gosh, that's incredible.
These people are really living, you know.
I was very excited by the fire, the elements
and the human beings and their bodies
doing these incredible spontaneous releases.
Now they would have done that every month,
probably around the full moon, or other acknowledgements that this unwinding is a natural process for
bodies as we have trauma, we also have a counterpart which is releasing trauma.
So even just understanding that, putting it in, this is a helpful thing.
And it's worth mentioning, I suppose, that trauma release might be accompanied not only
by physical movements, but by emotional upwellings and, you know, various things like that.
Absolutely, yeah.
I feel like even when people have profound awakenings, they will be called back to the
person, the ego identity, because they'll be triggered in life.
So, we have to work through the wounds, the emotional wounding, we have to deal with it
to be freer and freer.
Sometimes when people have profound awakenings, all hell breaks loose, you know, that happened
to that fellow Phil Weber I was just talking about.
He had this really beautiful awakening and next thing you know he was swearing like a
sailor and just going through all this, you know, gunk, just purging himself of all this
negativity.
(EP) It seems that everything that's left in the system will come out to be dealt with
and that's hard work.
(RT) You mentioned you studied with Bonnie Greenwell.
I had the privilege of interviewing her a couple of times before she passed away and
meeting her in person.
You included that in your notes, is there anything you wanted to say about Bonnie?
I just loved being in her class, in her energy field, just a really beautiful, grounded, wonderful
human being, yeah, glorious, glorious.
And yeah, to do that study with her just to assist people to be comfortable with the process.
It was a really enjoyable study.
I did it after I had had big Kundalini awakenings and years and years of Kundalini doing its
thing and then I saw Bonnie Grenwell doing a course and she at the time knew that she
was dying of cancer and she wanted to teach a few people around the world to sort of carry
on her thread of work to help people.
There's another one I've interviewed named Joan Sheever Peter Harrigan who has written
a massive book about Kundalini, everything you ever wanted to know about Kundalini you might learn in
that book. And she had a facility in Tennessee where you could go for a couple weeks with a small,
you know, just four people or something and work intensively with her or with her Indian guru.
And she stopped doing that, but she's also trained some people to carry on
that work. So if you look up my interview with Joan Harrigan, you'll see a link to her website.
Yes, she's extremely, extremely knowledgeable. I suppose what I offer is a grounded nervous
system to... like I don't have the knowledge of the woman you were just speaking about,
I've forgotten her name.
Joan, yeah.
She's extremely knowledgeable about every aspect of the history. I don't have that.
What I offer is a grounded nervous system to just reassure people that... and then I
try and encourage them to learn TRE.
No, that's great. People don't have to get overly intellectual about it. I never read
her whole book, I just read some of it and thought, wow, this is really a treasure trove
of knowledge.
Too much for my brain, it wasn't that fascinating, but incredible work, and if you want to really
understand it, then you would do it. I just enjoyed the experience.
So let's see, we were going through those seven stages, so we can talk a bit about that
and some other cool things in your notes here that we want to be sure to cover.
Okay, I'll go through the planes.
The second plane.
Merging into the second plane is called
the annihilation of the false.
The pilgrim is now absorbed in bliss and infinite light.
Some think that they have attained the goal
and get stranded in the second plane.
But others who keep themselves free from self-delusion
march onwards and enter the third plane.
The third plane.
The merging into the third plane
is called the annihilation of the apparent.
Here the pilgrim loses for days all consciousness of the body or the world and experiences infinite power.
But since he has no consciousness of the world, he has no occasion for the expression of his power.
This is the state of divine coma.
Consciousness is now completely withdrawn from the entire world.
The fourth plane.
If the pilgrim advances still further, he arrives at the fourth plane.
The merging into the fourth plane is called the annihilation, leading toward freedom.
The pilgrim experiences a peculiar state of consciousness at the fourth plane,
since he now not only feels infinite power, but has plenty of occasions for the expression of that
power. He can know everything. He can, for example, know what anyone situated in any part of the globe
is thinking or doing. Further, he has not only occasions for the use of his power,
but has a definite incantation to express them. If he falls prey to this
temptation, he goes on expressing powers and gets caught up in the alluring
possibilities of the fourth plane. The fourth plane is for this reason one of
the most difficult and dangerous planes to cross. The pilgrim is never spiritually
safe and has always the possibility of a reversion until he has successfully
crossed the fourth plane and arrived at the fifth plane. That's what you were
talking about Rick, where we can return to stone, you know, a bit like Monopoly but a
bit more serious. The fifth plane. Emerging into the fifth plane is called
the annihilation of all desires. Here the incessant activity of the lower intellect
comes to a standstill. He does not think in the ordinary way, yet he is indirectly a source of
many thoughts inspired in others. He sees, but not with the physical eyes. Mind speaks with mind and
there is neither worry nor doubt. He is now spiritually safe and beyond the possibility
of a downfall. And yet many a pilgrim on this exalted plane find it difficult to resist the
delusion that they have attained Godhood. In his delusion he thinks and says 'I am God' and
believes himself to have arrived at the end of the spiritual path. But if he moves on he perceives his
mistake and advances to the sixth plane. The sixth plane. The merging into the sixth plane is called
the annihilation of the self in the beloved. Now the pilgrim sees God directly and clearly,
as an ordinary person sees the different things of this world.
This continued perception and enjoyment of God does not suffer a break even for an instant,
yet he does not become one with God the infinite.
The seventh plane.
If the pilgrim ascends to the seventh plane he experiences the last merging,
which is called the final annihilation of the self in God.
Through his merging the pilgrim loses his separate existence and becomes permanently united with God.
He is now one with God and experiences himself as being none other than God himself.
The seventh plane is the terminus of the spiritual path, the goal of all search and endeavor.
It is conscious Godhood. It is the only real awakening. The pilgrim has now reached the
other shore of the vast ocean of imagination and realizes that this last truth is the only truth
and that all other stages on the path are entirely illusory. He has arrived at the final destination.
Paul You probably don't want to answer this,
but do you have any idea what plane you're on?
Mary I think I might be heading maybe
towards the first one. Paul
That's a good honest answer. All these planes sound a little bit fantastical.
Mary They're beyond our...
Not too many people have reached these planes. In fact, there's this whole teaching called
the Law of One and it outlines similar strata and you can only get so far as a human being
actually and then after that you're on some other level of existence proceeding through
various planes and strata. So, is it implied that all these seven planes are human experiences
or kind of superhuman?
talks about the first three stages being the subtle, you still have a human body, the subtle,
and then four is a little bit subtle and mental, and then five and six are the mental planes,
and it's beyond my perception.
I've just had a few little awakenings.
I often think when I see people teaching, and I think, yeah, it's nice to mentor people
out of that psychological suffering of the bound ego identity and that's perhaps our role,
but to think that we are God realized.
Pete Could be presumptuous.
Mary Yeah, and probably trapping a lot of
Western spiritual teachers in one very small mode of heading towards the first plane.
Pete Yeah, I hate to sound so critical, but I've
actually heard of teachers claiming to be God realized and then seducing a lot of their women
students and blaming it on God. "Oh, I'm not doing it, God is doing it." That kind of thing.
It's going to have repercussions on your spiritual evolution if you do that kind of thing.
Absolutely. So, I think, yeah, it's nice to mentor people and I probably go from
Barber's incredible cosmology where we don't know where we are in our human lives, but
some of us have had openings and tastes and awakenings. And I suppose what I would like to
share is what I said before Rick, when some of us have had heart awakenings, so
unity consciousness, the hearts open, head awakenings where you know you have that
what Baba describes as that person falling away, the ego identity falling
away, to we've become vast and spacious and dry and in my case I became very
dysfunctional and if you recall our first interview eight years ago I was
pretty ungrounded and didn't have a lot to say and I had only come back to the
body maybe four days before our interview. You did pretty good, I listened to it
this past week and you know I talked a lot because it was a little hard to get
you going. And at that time I was four days into realizing that I was a person.
I felt like the vast spaciousness and if you I was having conversations with
Irene about, "Is there a person?" and I would have said then, "No, there is not."
Which is what a lot of spiritual teachers emphasize these days.
I would now say that I am attempting to open and be the hollow bone for God to come through
me and not be the doer, but I can only do that to the extent that I have realized.
So I feel a lot of people get stuck and I was in the vast spacious of the first awakening,
the head awakening for nine months with no thoughts and I would see my body waking up
in the night, "Oh, my body's waking up."
My husband would be laying next to me and I'd be, "Who's he?"
I don't think human life meant anything for a long time.
But four days before the interview with you, God gave me that beautiful night of a slideshow.
It was all night and I saw and experienced myself as everything, the rocks, all the creatures,
and then myriad human life.
It seemed like quite a few of those millions of human lives.
And not only did I see them, but I experienced them.
and in experiencing them, I experienced the great beauty of our human existence
and also the great suffering, and particularly the suffering in each one of those souls.
I feel that my gut awakened and I came back into the body.
And so there was an embodiment and a realization that there's this Jivatma that has to experience this life.
There is a personal life as such, however I try and just leave it to Baba to do,
not claim that personal existence. But there is obviously Sanskrit to still play out in this
destiny, in this life. That was lovely and it's really sort of nice being embodied on the planet,
so I would say that is another awakening. And I feel a lot of teachers are stuck in that vast,
dry, spacious, non-dual speak awareness. It's a stage and it's a beautiful stage. It's lovely,
you know, nothing touches you there. Yeah, but it's not tremendously helpful to their students.
You know, you hear examples of students listening to that stuff for hours on end and then losing all
interest in their family or their job or even becoming nihilistic and suicidal even, you know,
life loses its luster.
And when you have that vast, spacious awakening and you are just pure awareness, it's wonderful
and it is a stage, but it's not the end.
And I feel like a lot of teachers get stuck there just doing a lot.
And you can see it, you can see it in their body, you can see it in the energy field,
it's very intellectual.
So that return back to the body, the embodiment, and then it's like, well, for me, then there
was an enormous Kundalini awakening.
So that can be another awakening, which then clears out more and more of the system, lightens
the load, and makes you to whatever extent, and again, there's seven planes of consciousness,
so it's minuscule, but to whatever extent, more of the hollow bone to do the service
when you're grounded and embodied.
I think you said to me, I don't know if it was in an email recently, or I listened to
all your talks that you have on your website this past week, so I'm not sure where you
said this, but I think you said that according to Baba in this outline of states that you
just read to us, one always has a sense of self or ego up until the seventh state.
Is that correct?
Yeah, he says that an extent of ego remains until the God realization on the seventh plane.
So in light of that, what would you say of these teachers who emphasize, it seems to
be their main teaching that you don't exist, you're not a person, stuff like that.
Well, ultimately, no, we're not.
We are God, but how much of that Godhood are we realizing?
And if they're saying that to people who haven't even reached the first stage, and if people
listen to that for hours on end, what effect does that have?
For some people, perhaps they have the vast awakening and it could be helpful, but for
others it could be detrimental to them living their life and working through their Sanskrit
in this human life.
We only have these awakenings on earth in a human body, so this human life is profoundly
special as well.
Then just a sense of grace, so a sense of grace into the system from outside, so Kundalini
from, in my case, from the legs up through the body clearing out, and then this sense
of grace coming into the body and informing and it feels like I've just
spent 10 days up at Mayor Barber's place in Queensland, Australia, which is one of
his three places of pilgrimage in the world. So for some reason we're lucky
enough in Australia to have a place called Avatar's Abode. In America you're
lucky enough to have a place of pilgrimage called Myrtle Beach Barber
center. I interviewed Daniel Stone a while back who's there. I've never been to Myrtle Beach but
of course I have been to Barber's in Queensland and his tomb shrine is in Avandhaga, India. So
there's three places of pilgrimage and I feel like these influxes that you can get from sacred sites,
you can feel the whole physical nervous system and the whole physical body as well as the
energetic bodies all realigning and moving and shifting. You wanted me to show this picture.
Yeah, this is Mayor Baba's bedroom at Avatar's Abode, which is in Queensland, Queensland,
Australia, which is a place of pilgrimage. And Baba's room is open from six in the morning until
nine at night. I recently took a group of people up there that wanted to know more about Mayor Baba,
and the people that run the abode put on a really beautiful program for them.
So there's community with Baba and there's also just Baba. My whole life I have just done Baba.
My husband has done the Baba community and Baba. So depending on what you like to do, I now am
open to the community because my nervous system is settled enough to sit with people and enjoy people.
but I'm also glad that I just pursued Baba holos bolos.
And so every morning while I was staying there,
6am, I'd knock on the door and spend an hour just sitting in Baba's room.
Probably the awakenings that I have experienced with the Kundalini, you know
that amrita, that beautiful flow of
sacred fluids. I experienced during the Kundalini process,
which, you know, Kundalini is still active.
I don't know if it ever stops,
but it definitely settles from more vigorous
and rigorous training for the body and nervous system.
But during that process,
and I think it was around the time of the descents of grace
when God seems to enter the body from the outside
and fills the body,
yeah, I did experience this magnificent fluid
coming down the back of my throat
which was sort of like spicy, warm honey. And I don't really know what that does, but it
obviously informs something of the restructuring of the system.
Pete Yeah, I wonder if that's what is meant by
Soma. That's often described in Indian tradition, using that word and their whole scripture is
devoted to it.
Dr. Anneke Okay, I don't know much about it, Rick. I've
only, this system's experienced it. And I could have used the wrong word, perhaps Soma
is the-
I think is also a valid word in that context.
Yeah, I feel like those are some of the awakenings and then there's probably how many more of
those 8,400,000 lifetimes.
For more to come.
But the beautiful thing about the first awakenings is there's not really that psychological suffering
that was in this person.
So it is a beautiful shift.
So we realize we're not the body, so that existential fear of death subsides, there's a relaxation
in the system, and feel that we can just empty out, empty out and experience more of the
fullness of the human existence at the same time.
You might be on lifetime number 8,399,999.
I don't think so.
I think of people like Rudolf Steiner who was purported to be on the fifth plane, or where
was Ramana Maharshi in armour, or you know, these different beings, you know, what levels
of consciousness are they on?
Yeah, it's entertainment in a way to talk about this.
I went through a phase decades ago where I really wanted this to be my last life, you
know, I was like, get me out of here.
Now it's like, whatever, I'm having fun.
- Relaxation, and non-dual speakers say,
and I am into non-duality,
but more an embodied non-duality.
They say we're all God.
Well, yes, that's true.
And they say there's no hierarchy, we are all God.
Well, the experiential reality of our experience of God,
to me, I can see a hierarchy.
I can feel the energy of the different beings,
and there is a hierarchy.
Of course. I interviewed a woman. We had a little disagreement. She was saying, you know,
there's no hierarchy, all beings are God. And I said, okay, so let's say that in Africa
kids are dying of malaria, and we want to do something to get rid of the mosquitoes
so they don't give the kids malaria. Is the life of a mosquito equal in value to the life
of a child? And she was saying yes, and I was saying no. I mean, there's definitely a hierarchy
and any mother would swat the mosquito rather than have her child die. And there's nothing
really unspiritual about looking at it that way.
To me, it's just factual. It's an evolutionary, involutionary process, and we're all on the
journey.
Yeah, okay. You have one bit in your note here about meditation and disassociation. Are
you suggesting that meditation causes disassociation? Why did you write that down?
Yeah, I feel that a lot of people, and I feel like meditation can be great for some on their journey,
like it really works for some, but I found it at retreats a lot of people, you know, seemingly
peaceful on the mat and then they'll get up and even if we're at a silent retreat, the noise
emanating off their person is big.
For me, I can enjoy meditation because it's like just,
you know, wallowing in the beauty of the depths of the self
to whatever level it's discovered, and it's lovely,
but it's sort of no different than walking around
or working or working with clients or grandparenting.
It's all the same.
But what I did notice was there's a sense of peace
on the mat, and yet people have described,
maybe for 30 years I've been meditating and it hasn't really made any progress in the way I am
in the world. So for some people I got the suspicion that perhaps they're just dissociating.
Yeah, no you may be right. I mean if they haven't made any progress in 30 years there's something
wrong either with their meditation or something else they're doing in life or not doing.
Or their nervous system. I feel like sometimes too meditation isn't right for everyone first.
Right, agreed. Yeah, they're often sitting and it's uncomfortable. There's too much trauma, there's
too much sensation and they're sitting in the soup and it just doesn't work. So for me,
working in TRE and releasing the system so that we can sit, it just seems a bit easier.
It also depends on the proportions. You know, maybe you're doing too much of it. You know,
you need water but drinking too much water can kill you. Yeah, so for some people I can see
It's brilliant and it is their path.
It is their path.
But for some people I have noticed not a lot of shift.
When they get off the mat,
they're still really contracted in their ego identity
and even at silent retreats, they can be quite noisy
and I think, "Hmm, okay, let's look at that."
The meditations we've been doing here on retreat
and I bring into what I did,
I was told by spirit guides, because I couldn't just sit,
It was too dysregulated, unpleasant for me.
So I was guided to tone and do vocal toning.
So I had something to do while I was sitting.
And of course we realize now, years later,
with all the nervous system work,
that vocal toning tones the vagus nerve,
which settles the nervous system.
So it was a double-edged thing.
So an active meditation like that for some people
is really, really helpful until they settle their nervous system.
Yeah, that's good.
There's friends of mine whom I've tried to get into doing the kind of meditation I do
and they've said just what you were saying, which is that it's not for me just sitting
silently like that.
I need something more engaged and that's great.
I mean, whatever floats your boat.
It can be a beginning and it can help settle the system so you can just sit quietly as you
Yeah.
Another one that I encourage people to do is, it's probably more lovely out in nature, but
we go on the property to the circle and it's open-eyed meditation because dissociators
will often, the minute the eyes are closed, they're gone, they're out of the body.
So we do an open-eyed and we just look around and we look and before the mind can name the
object, we start looking at leaves on the floor and we come up to the tree trunk, up to the leaves,
up to the sky and we just cycle our head around before brain will name, "Oh that's a black-spotted
something or other," you know, as the mind does, to interrupt just a steady state. And then when
you're quiet you can just stop the swiveling and just sit and the minute mind takes off again,
don't worry, but just keep moving.
So open-eyed, simple meditations can be a really good
in as well.
And from there, I do one called Body, Breath and God,
where people from different traditions come here
and they've all got different names of God.
But on the in-breath, we say one syllable, sitting,
and on the out-breath, we say the second syllable.
So for me, it's, "Mea Bhava."
We relax the body and it becomes a whole body thing.
Other people say Jesus Christ,
whatever your God name is.
Some people it's pure consciousness.
They don't have a person,
they have the vast sky or whatever they have,
they use that name.
And we relax the body and the body becomes involved
and it starts to unwind.
So it's quite an active meditation,
breath, name of God and body releasing.
So, that's a win-win too. That's one of my favorites.
>>Rick: A question came in from Ahmad Koyeb in South Africa. The question is,
"I experience mental releases all day. I can be in the middle of a conversation with someone and
experience neurological releases which look weird. Although there is much peace and silence, I see
how futile my spiritual efforts are, since a wave of intense emotions can rise up and drag me right
back into a contracted and noisy state. Is this normal at this stage? I feel I will never
get through this."
Yeah, I think it is normal. You know, those tastes of the wholeness, when we get a little
taste of that wholeness, we can then start to tinker with the person and it's not so
drastic. Don't lose hope. Often we're triggered back into person and our emotional states
will arise when we haven't resolved something
that's deeply set in our tissue and nervous system.
So again, I come back to healing trauma
so that the system clears and clears
and you're not triggered.
One day something will say something.
I can think of triggers in my life
and you know when you can speak about the situation
and it's not stuck in your throat or your body contracts
contracts that you've resolved it and you're over it.
And I'm also too not one for bypassing the emotions.
It's like the emotions have to be felt
so that they can be released.
So if we've got anger and sadness in our system
amongst other emotions, we have to tend them.
We have to tend ourselves.
We have to feel the sadness.
We have to feel and express the anger in an acceptable way.
acceptable way. I've smashed quite a bit of cutlery. One of my best teapots went one day
and I thought... Cutlery is knives, you don't want to throw those around. And again, like,
you know, allow these things to release. And if little grandkids were here, I obviously
wouldn't smash a teapot. But in the right time and the right place, and for me, teapot
smashing. Fantastic. As long as someone's head is not involved as the target. Awareness to
release in intelligent fashions, you know, for anger you can push on the wall,
you know, to help release that. Interesting knowledge. Wow, I've got anger in my system.
There's a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which goes, "No effort is lost and no obstacle exists."
and then it goes on from there. But I would say to Ahmad, don't feel that you'll never get through
anything. There's no obstacle, ultimately. And it might seem at times hopeless or that we're stuck
or we'll never get, but if you have the sincere intention and desire to progress, and if you just
take advantage of opportunities that present themselves as a result of your having that
desire, and they will present themselves, then you'll find a way. You'll clear through this,
that and the other thing and you'll look back at your life as having been very well spent,
having cleared through tons of stuff. That's it, that's it, and it's a journey, you know,
be patient, be patient with yourself, be patient with your person. You may be young and you know,
young people can be very impetuous and impatient and so on, but if I look back at my life a decade
at a time, there's huge shifts every decade if I'm going in that large increments, but they may not be
be so noticeable from day to day, but if you just keep at it, your whole life will blossom.
Nothing is really still. It's all in movement except the stillness itself. It will be shifts,
and I also use the technique too. I was teaching my grandson the other day. If you're feeling
stuck, I recite God's name, so whatever your name of God is, you know, you can use it like
a blanket around you.
They call that japa in India.
You know, you can have a mantra or a name of God or something and just chant it as you
wash the dishes or whatever.
Absolutely, it can soothe you, you're calling God, perhaps you'll get some help.
We were talking about in the very beginning in reference to Baba, the presence of benign
and caring intelligences, we could say.
And for some people it's Jesus, for some people it's Baba, for some people it might be Ramana
Maharshi or whatever, but there's just so many examples of people receiving blessings from
some dimension that is not obvious to the naked eye, and it's very palpable, sometimes
life-saving.
And it could sound like a matter of belief, and you don't have to believe it, but you
may end up believing it if you experience enough of it.
But I suppose the way to do that is just to have this sincere desire to continue progressing
and have an attitude of innocence and maybe surrender to some extent.
Yeah, ultimately it is surrender as well.
It's God's grace at the right time.
We're not alone.
No, we're not alone.
And I'm not just talking about space aliens.
Me too.
That's another figure I wrote down which I sort of got excited about.
>> Barbara says 18,000 worlds of human life.
>> Throughout the universe or something?
>> Universe, yeah.
>> I wouldn't be surprised if there are even more than that, trillions.
He was amazing.
People might not remember this about him, but he didn't speak for
most of his life.
And all these voluminous writings were just done by a little sign board where
he'd point to different letters, right, and someone would write it down.
That alone is amazing.
I mean, imagine writing even a sentence and
keeping the whole structure of the sentence in mind as you point the letters on a signboard,
what to say of an entire large book and having it be a coherent unfolding of thought, that
is kind of remarkable.
Yeah, it was remarkable.
Baba kept 44 years of silence and he said, and it's not a direct quote, but I'll sort
of say what I can about what I remember.
He said, "I've had enough of words, you know, like I've given words in every avataric advent.
It's now time to live them."
And so he kept his silence and that was part of his universal work for humanity.
How developed is this Mayor Farm Healing and Awakening Center?
I mean, are you up and running?
People can come there and, or is it still a work in progress?
It's always a work in progress,
but we have a main room where we have retreats.
We're on 17 acres and it's magnificently
surrounded by mountains.
I have a healing room here where I do the body work.
We have dining over here.
We all work in here and I set up two big bell tents
to do extra work in.
We have retreats, Rick, which is fantastic.
You know, at five o'clock in the morning,
we start with the universal prayer
and we meditate for an hour till six,
and then at six, we're down at the river,
getting into the river in the dark
and the sun comes up while we're in the river.
So we do a lot of work in nature,
out of our comfort zone a little bit.
We do TRE, we do community shamanic healing ceremonies,
We do readings from the masters.
So obviously I'm Meher Baba-centric, but we include other masters as well in their readings.
We have great retreats here.
We have really wonderful retreats.
Mostly people come from nearby in Australia?
Have you had people come from overseas yet?
No, I've only had Australians so far.
Okay.
Maybe after this interview you'll have some Yankees and Brits and whatnot.
They could combine it with a little tour of Australia or something if they want to do
that.
We're looking to develop accommodation.
There's only two bedrooms here.
John and I move into a tent when people come and the rest of the people camp at the moment.
And we would love to build accommodation.
It's a little bit rustic, but it sounds like a beautiful experience.
Yeah, something about the immensity of the night sky.
So even if you're camping, you're nicking out for a wee, and you're seeing the stars, and
you're being part of nature, and it's very opening.
Nature is another magnificent teacher.
We do partake of a lot of the natural world here to sort of help surface that natural
part of ourselves.
That's nice, yeah.
I love camping.
I've done many months of it, if you add it all up.
Irene and I used to go out west every summer for a month and just go to Colorado or Wyoming
or Utah or one of these places and just camp and day hike every day for a month.
It really resets the nervous system being out in nature like that.
Absolutely, Rick.
It can take a bit of time for people to settle, you know, from their busy lives, but yeah,
everything slows down.
It does.
I remember coming back from one of those one-month camping trips and I was in line at a local
restaurant and someone standing next to me that I don't think I really even knew said,
said, "Wow, you look like you've been doing something beautiful."
You know?
Ha ha ha.
Karen: Yeah.
Oh, great.
It does.
Like, we reflect ourselves in nature, the beauty of nature, the beauty of ourself, and
there's no distance.
We submerge into it.
We become one with it, and how incredible is that?
What an incredible supportive thing nature is for our systems.
Jay: It really is.
Well, is there anything that you'd like to cover that we haven't thought about or talked
about?
I do just want to share one thing about my healing work
and working on Mayor Farm.
Out of the training, Rick, that I did,
we had to do a breathwork journey.
I've never done one before,
and I did do a breathwork journey.
In the journey, I journeyed up through the galaxies
and found myself in the void.
So I was in the black void.
It was very comfortable.
It was beautiful.
It was sort of like vacuum sealed and quiet.
And I was in there and in this vision,
in came two of Meher Baba's perfect masters,
Babaja, Hazarat Babaja, a female perfect master,
and Upasini Maharaj.
They were carrying a lit diamond between them
and they handed the diamond to me.
I don't know what it signifies really,
but it was very beautiful.
And they said to me, they were quite curt,
enough of this traveling to the galaxies.
(laughing)
I didn't choose to do the breath work,
it was very enjoyable,
but they were like, enough of this,
you've done enough of this,
other sphere stuff, get down there
and get on with the work with the humans,
with the people.
And I thought, okay.
I'm really quite obedient to intuition,
so I am getting on with it.
And in Barbara's bedroom,
where I spent quite a bit of my time
at his abode in Queensland,
I got ring Irene and Rick and speak to Rick.
- Oh, okay.
- So I got onto you and that was so funny
because you scheduled me for the 11th of the 11th.
So I thought, oh, how lovely, that's the awakening number.
And again, it was sort of like this speeding up in my life.
Like I'm 61, I think.
you know, there's only this much left,
so I can work on the bodies.
So come on, people, come on, come down.
It's like I've got a bit of time
to help people work through their trauma.
So that's sort of exciting.
And I also got told in Barbara's bedroom
to buy these magnificent drawings behind me.
I've got six and I'm going to buy more
for the retreat center.
And they're by an artist called Diana LaPage.
And she actually lives on Avatar's Abode,
and she was married to Bill LePage,
who was one of the Australian close disciples
who helped set up that place.
And she's painted and drawn Baba for most of her life.
And I didn't have the money, of course,
but Baba said, "Get those drawings.
Get them sent."
And I'm obedient, yes, okay. (laughs)
So it seems like there's a hastening here.
Well, 61 isn't that old.
That's about how old I was when I started Batgap.
I think I had just turned 60 or something.
And that was 15 years ago.
So you've got some life left in you.
Got some work in me yet.
So it's sort of exciting.
We've had it on a level, but Diana's drawing's coming and it was like, get on to Irene and
Rick.
had a cancellation too and so it's hard to get people at the last minute but then we thought,
"Oh, Tri, great. She'll be flexible so we can put her in."
- That was the rest of the story. I forgot that bit, Rick. Thank you. It's like Bob,
"No, forget the 11th. It's too far away. Now, next week."
- Maybe he made this other person cancel.
- Probably. It's like, "No, too long. Next week. Okay, let's go." So that was good.
- That's a teaching in itself. I mean, I don't read too much into it,
but I strongly have the feeling that everything is divinely orchestrated, and so I'm a little
bit observant as to how things unfold, and if things happen a certain way, then I read some
significance into it. Like, "Okay, this is the way it's unfolding, and so I should go with this."
It's kind of like life is this divine play in which there's a divine script, and yet I also
have a little bit of improvisational latitude within the script to play my role as best I see
fit as the things unfold. Yeah, it does become an unfolding like I feel like you
just follow the synchronicities. A bit like going back to the athletes in flow.
Life is in flow and so you think on the 11th, how lovely that's nice and
it's like no it's next week. It's cool I mean you meet some person and it turns
out that that person just just who you needed to meet in order to learn
something or do something or whatever I mean this kind of stuff happens all the
time.
Absolutely, absolutely, and it's having that, if you can relax yourself down enough to read
it to come, the person that made the question, you know, I hope some, a little bit of flow
and ease comes their way too, the person that asked the question before.
The guy from South Africa, Ahmad.
Getting to a bit of the synchronicity, if you just relax a little.
Yeah, I remember what Jesus said there, he said, "Seek and ye shall find, knock and the
door shall be opened."
Yeah, and so it's that fine line between putting in and relaxing.
Yeah, for the guy in South Africa, there's a teacher named Brad Loughlin that I interviewed
maybe a year ago, and he has a kind of a retreat center out in the bush with wild zebras walking
around and stuff like that.
So you might want to get in touch with him.
You'll find him on Bat Cap.
All right, G, well, thanks so much.
I've really enjoyed connecting with you again.
I feel like we've somehow been in touch frequently all these years, even though I don't know
if we have been, but it kind of seems like we have been, doesn't it?
>> We've penned a few notes, yeah.
>> It's like you're one of these soul sisters that I've gotten to know through Batgap and
it's a joy to know.
>> Yeah, you too, Rick, and Irene too, yeah.
Lots of love to you both.
>> Alrighty, well, thank you for doing this, and thanks to those who've been listening or
watching.
My next guest is a young fellow.
We've got a couple of really young guys lined up.
Usually I'm interviewing older people and my audience is largely older.
If I look at the YouTube analytics, it's like most people are in their 50s or 60s or something
like that, but it would be good to relate to a younger crowd too.
A couple of people were brought to our attention who just seem like really gifted young people
with a great deal of spiritual maturity already, and they're probably going to have quite an
impact in life.
So there's an upcoming interviews page on batgap.com where you can check out what's been
scheduled and you'll see who I'm referring to.
And also on BatGap if you go there you can sign up to be notified by email every time
there's a new interview and I hope that if you haven't already done so you'll subscribe
on YouTube.
It helps the more people subscribe the more YouTube's algorithm works to make the interviews
visible to other people.
All right, Sri, thank you very much.
Great work, Rick and Irene, thank you.
We'll be in touch for the next 15 years, or more.
[Laughter]
[Music]