WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.520 From an ego level, I'm moving the hand. From a soul level, I'm telling the ego to move the hand. 00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:14.880 From a cosmic level, the hand's moving itself. From a divine level, it's coming out of nothing 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:19.360 and going back into nothing. I mean, could you even say there's a level on which there is no hand? 00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:23.120 I mean, there's nothing, right? Yeah. There just appears to be a hand. 00:00:23.680 --> 00:00:25.680 In the level, it's all empty. 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:26.680 Yeah. 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:34.680 So I experienced the body as being empty, thoughts as being empty, and there's nobody in the home. 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:44.680 Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. 00:00:44.680 --> 00:00:46.680 My name is Rick Archer. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:49.680 Before we start today's interview, I just want to mention that a number of people have 00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:55.160 have reported that they either had some kind of malware warning when they tried to visit 00:00:55.160 --> 00:01:00.080 our website or their IP address was blocked or something like that. 00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:02.880 We're trying to debug those kind of problems. 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:06.360 The site has been thoroughly checked for malware and doesn't have any. 00:01:06.360 --> 00:01:11.000 But if you're listening to this, I'd appreciate it if you just try to visit batgap.com. 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:18.240 And if you get any kind of error like that, just send me a screenshot of it to rick@batgap.com 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:21.040 And we will figure out the problem. 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:27.480 If you're getting an IP number error, like this, the firewall is blocking your IP 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:32.960 number, go to Google and type in what's my IP and send me that number. 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:35.040 And I'll make sure that that number is white listed. 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:36.340 Okay. 00:01:36.340 --> 00:01:38.700 My guest today is Neil. 00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:40.160 How do you pronounce your last name? 00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:41.720 Say it again. 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:44.240 Schuitevoerder 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:45.120 Very good. citie0:01:45.120 --> 00:01:46.440 Neil's an old friend. 00:01:46.440 --> 00:01:52.960 I've known him for maybe 20 years. He used to be a participant in a weekly satsang or 00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:58.520 meeting that we would have here in Fairfield, Iowa for years before I started BatGap. And 00:01:58.520 --> 00:02:03.680 it was in that meeting that the idea to do BatGap arose. And actually, I invited Neil 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:10.120 to be interviewed as one of my very first people, but he was working as a clinical psychologist, 00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:14.980 and I think he didn't want to come out of the closet, you know, about his spiritual experiences 00:02:14.980 --> 00:02:21.580 at that point, but now he's retired. He's been doing spiritual practices for 50 years, and 00:02:21.580 --> 00:02:27.140 as he said in the bio he sent me, he's no longer interested in his ego's story. So here's 00:02:27.140 --> 00:02:31.380 the story of his soul's evolution. I'll just read this to get us started and then we'll 00:02:31.380 --> 00:02:35.560 elaborate. He had early introduction in how to use a pendulum, which led to the opening 00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:41.860 of his intuitive knowing, which has continued to expand into higher stages. His intense meditation 00:02:41.860 --> 00:02:47.180 practices in his twenties led to illness and he was guided to return to a householder life 00:02:47.180 --> 00:02:51.260 as a husband and father, which the illness went away. 00:02:51.260 --> 00:02:56.620 He continued practices in mystical Judaism, then turned to Vedanta, Kundalini and other 00:02:56.620 --> 00:02:58.380 Hindu practices. 00:02:58.380 --> 00:03:01.780 With the Kundalini Master and with the Diamond Approach, A.H. 00:03:01.780 --> 00:03:07.060 Almas's teaching, technique of inquiry, he opened the higher chakras and began to experience 00:03:07.060 --> 00:03:09.580 states of unity and non-duality. 00:03:09.580 --> 00:03:14.980 with a near object, such as a tree, and then with a far object, such as the galaxy. 00:03:14.980 --> 00:03:22.040 Slowly, the dualities of self/other, near/far, past/future, dissolved, and his knowing expanded 00:03:22.040 --> 00:03:27.100 to include the distant past, his past lives, his rebirth in this lifetime, and his ability 00:03:27.100 --> 00:03:33.620 to travel in subtle bodies to the subtle planes, including conversing with the deceased. 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:38.620 His mind emptied out, then his body became empty, containing the whole galaxy, a non-dual 00:03:38.620 --> 00:03:43.500 then his astral body emptied out and he no longer traveled but was united with 00:03:43.500 --> 00:03:48.360 the subtle mental and causal planes all within him. The state of bliss is always 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:53.080 accessible. The local identity of Neil remains when he functions in the world 00:03:53.080 --> 00:03:58.180 as he lives in dual and non-dual levels of awareness simultaneously. If you 00:03:58.180 --> 00:04:03.460 enjoy this interview, Neil and his wife Connie Zweig, who's been a guest on BatGap, 00:04:03.460 --> 00:04:09.780 have a podcast with about 30 something episodes now, which will be an elaboration of everything 00:04:09.780 --> 00:04:15.940 that we talk about today. And we'll have a link to his podcast on his BatGap page. 00:04:15.940 --> 00:04:21.700 I was thinking, Neil, as I read your bio and as I listened to every episode of your podcast in 00:04:21.700 --> 00:04:28.660 the last week or so, that people have a certain understanding of what awakening is. Okay, 00:04:28.660 --> 00:04:35.220 you realize your true nature or maybe you experience oneness or non-duality. But like the infomercial 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:40.740 says, "But wait, there's more." You know, hearing what I just read, a lot of people are thinking, 00:04:40.740 --> 00:04:47.460 "Whoa, that's not what I conceive of as awakening. It seems like so much more." And some people would 00:04:47.460 --> 00:04:50.980 actually be critical of that stuff. You hear people say, "Oh, you don't want to experience 00:04:50.980 --> 00:04:56.100 all those things because they're just mind stuff. They're distractions. They are maya. 00:04:56.100 --> 00:05:01.220 and you just want to stay with the essence, you don't want to be visiting other realms and things like that. 00:05:01.220 --> 00:05:04.020 So what would you say to that? 00:05:04.020 --> 00:05:10.740 I guess I’d like to share my first awakening, which was my last lifetime. I was a 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:14.020 brahmin priest in a 00:05:14.020 --> 00:05:17.700 Shiva temple in India, married, a couple of kids. 00:05:17.700 --> 00:05:20.660 I woke up in that lifetime 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:23.300 and 00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:25.220 Went to Brahmaloka. 00:05:25.220 --> 00:05:26.460 - When you died. 00:05:26.460 --> 00:05:28.060 - When I died. 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:28.900 I loved it there. 00:05:28.900 --> 00:05:32.700 It was pure bliss, ecstatic, one continuous stream. 00:05:32.700 --> 00:05:36.860 But I found that I got eventually bored 00:05:36.860 --> 00:05:39.920 because bliss, you become accustomed to it. 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:45.300 And there was no way to go except back into your body. 00:05:45.300 --> 00:05:48.260 So I took the long journey back in body 00:05:48.260 --> 00:05:52.020 with the intention of expanding my consciousness 00:05:52.020 --> 00:05:54.620 and waking up more of myself. 00:05:54.620 --> 00:05:57.820 - Okay, so I'll play kind of a skeptic 00:05:57.820 --> 00:05:59.900 or devil's advocate a little bit. 00:05:59.900 --> 00:06:00.740 Don't take it the wrong way 00:06:00.740 --> 00:06:03.940 because I give you the benefit of the doubt. 00:06:03.940 --> 00:06:05.300 I give everybody the benefit of the doubt, 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:07.300 but I also take everybody with a grain of salt 00:06:07.300 --> 00:06:09.540 and proportions vary, but in your case, 00:06:09.540 --> 00:06:10.780 there's not much salt. 00:06:10.780 --> 00:06:11.900 You know, I know you pretty well. 00:06:11.900 --> 00:06:14.460 I've heard a lot from you 00:06:14.460 --> 00:06:17.020 and discussed things with you over the years. 00:06:17.020 --> 00:06:19.180 First of all, then, my question is, 00:06:19.180 --> 00:06:21.540 how clearly did you remember this life? 00:06:21.540 --> 00:06:23.980 And many of the things you're gonna tell us today, 00:06:23.980 --> 00:06:25.940 for instance, you say you can sort of move outside 00:06:25.940 --> 00:06:29.740 the galaxy and experience it from an external vantage point. 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:32.700 Now, people might say, well, you know, I can imagine that. 00:06:32.700 --> 00:06:35.340 I can picture a galaxy in my mind's eye. 00:06:35.340 --> 00:06:38.180 Maybe he has good visualizing capabilities 00:06:38.180 --> 00:06:40.940 and he has a vivid imagination. 00:06:40.940 --> 00:06:44.140 What can you say to give us some, 00:06:44.140 --> 00:06:46.500 not evidence, I don't wanna say, because how could you, 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:48.660 but to distinguish what you're saying 00:06:48.660 --> 00:06:50.960 from having a vivid imagination? 00:06:50.960 --> 00:07:00.120 Well, how would I describe this? I am one with the galaxy. There's a oneness, both looking 00:07:00.120 --> 00:07:12.360 at it and perceiving from it and being joined. So the experience happened to me out of emptiness. 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:23.000 I found myself empty of all thoughts, empty of all forms, in a state of non-duality. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:24.880 When was this? 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:27.640 This was about five years ago. 00:07:27.640 --> 00:07:28.640 Oh, okay. 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:32.960 But you had had previous awakenings, but you're saying at a particular stage you found yourself 00:07:32.960 --> 00:07:33.960 having that. 00:07:33.960 --> 00:07:34.960 Yeah. 00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:37.560 - Well, I found my body was empty 00:07:37.560 --> 00:07:39.660 and my emotions were still, 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:41.480 and my mind was empty, 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:43.140 and my ego was empty, 00:07:43.140 --> 00:07:47.960 and that led me to move the emptiness 00:07:47.960 --> 00:07:50.060 to a more expanded state, 00:07:50.060 --> 00:07:53.400 where I found that I was able to perceive 00:07:53.400 --> 00:07:55.820 anywhere, any place. 00:07:55.820 --> 00:07:58.160 - And you had some of that even before, 00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:01.020 'cause I remember one time in our satsang, 00:08:01.020 --> 00:08:02.180 you were in Los Angeles, 00:08:02.180 --> 00:08:04.660 and you and Connie were on a speakerphone, 00:08:04.660 --> 00:08:08.700 And our friend George Foster held out a few fingers 00:08:08.700 --> 00:08:10.260 and said, "How many fingers am I holding out?" 00:08:10.260 --> 00:08:11.500 And you said, "Three." 00:08:11.500 --> 00:08:12.340 And he was. 00:08:12.340 --> 00:08:14.800 And then he closed them up, he clenched his fists, 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:17.260 and he said, "How many am I holding out now?" 00:08:17.260 --> 00:08:19.100 And you said, "It's closed." 00:08:19.100 --> 00:08:20.780 So you already had some of this. 00:08:20.780 --> 00:08:22.180 - I have a good memory. 00:08:22.180 --> 00:08:24.820 - It was kind of a vivid experience. 00:08:24.820 --> 00:08:29.600 - Yeah, so the capacity to move consciousness 00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:32.320 to any place in time-space, 00:08:32.320 --> 00:08:37.080 because I'm out of time space as well as in time space. 00:08:37.080 --> 00:08:40.760 It's not testable, but it is a way I am aware of that. 00:08:40.760 --> 00:08:41.760 - Oh, it could be testable. 00:08:41.760 --> 00:08:43.880 I could do the finger trick with you right now 00:08:43.880 --> 00:08:45.660 if you want to be put on the spot. 00:08:45.660 --> 00:08:48.420 - No, I think I trust you. 00:08:48.420 --> 00:08:49.260 - Okay. 00:08:49.260 --> 00:08:53.260 What are the mechanics of that? 00:08:53.260 --> 00:08:55.160 I've interviewed a lot of people who, for instance, 00:08:55.160 --> 00:08:59.280 have had near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. 00:08:59.280 --> 00:09:01.620 There was a woman who was in a car accident 00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:05.780 and she was having surgery and she was under anesthesia 00:09:05.780 --> 00:09:09.040 and she perceived her uncle or somebody buying 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:11.720 a particular kind of candy bar in the vending machine 00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:13.740 in the waiting room of the hospital. 00:09:13.740 --> 00:09:15.580 And it puzzled her because she knew 00:09:15.580 --> 00:09:17.060 that he didn't like candy bars. 00:09:17.060 --> 00:09:19.780 But afterwards she said, "Hey, you bought a Snickers bar." 00:09:19.780 --> 00:09:21.380 And he said, "Wow, how did you know that?" 00:09:21.380 --> 00:09:22.900 So she was perceiving that 00:09:22.900 --> 00:09:25.220 even though she was under anesthesia. 00:09:25.220 --> 00:09:27.920 What are the mechanics of that and of your own experience 00:09:27.920 --> 00:09:30.220 when you say you could experience something 00:09:30.220 --> 00:09:34.700 that's 100,000 light years from our planet. 00:09:34.700 --> 00:09:37.860 - Right, so this began when I was sick 00:09:37.860 --> 00:09:42.860 and I went to see Dr. Neath, who was a weight healer. 00:09:42.860 --> 00:09:49.500 He used the pendulum to look and see what was in the body 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:51.040 and what was in mind. 00:09:51.040 --> 00:09:56.640 And I began to explore that and using a pendulum too. 00:09:57.580 --> 00:10:02.500 What I thought was opening myself up to intuition, 00:10:02.500 --> 00:10:06.980 psychic ability of moving my consciousness 00:10:06.980 --> 00:10:09.140 to a place where I could explore 00:10:09.140 --> 00:10:11.260 and experience different things. 00:10:11.260 --> 00:10:13.260 As a psychologist, I would use a pendulum 00:10:13.260 --> 00:10:17.660 before my clients arrived and diagnose them 00:10:17.660 --> 00:10:21.500 and find out what the best method of treatment was. 00:10:21.500 --> 00:10:26.500 And they came into the room and it was true. 00:10:26.500 --> 00:10:35.620 was true. So I could verify my psychic ability to the truth of reality on a mental, physical 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:43.180 level. But then with time, Harry, who I think you interviewed, pushed me to accept the fact 00:10:43.180 --> 00:10:49.260 that it was not a psychic ability. It was actually the source of all knowledge. 00:10:49.260 --> 00:10:51.140 Harry Aalto you're talking about? 00:10:51.140 --> 00:10:59.140 I saw the whole knowledge and that I was the knower, knowing, and that knowing is universal. 00:10:59.140 --> 00:11:04.180 And so, you know, he pushed me into accepting that. 00:11:04.180 --> 00:11:09.060 Pushed you, meaning you guys discussed it and you began to see what he was saying, what 00:11:09.060 --> 00:11:10.060 he was getting at. 00:11:10.060 --> 00:11:15.380 It was kind of like the Wednesday night group was like, confronting, yeah, are you awake? 00:11:15.380 --> 00:11:21.500 I didn't believe it at the time I was awake, but the confrontation was accepting it, and 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:26.220 then accepting the fact that omniscience was part of being awake. 00:11:26.220 --> 00:11:27.220 Okay. 00:11:27.220 --> 00:11:33.460 Yeah, I once heard a spiritual teacher say that human nervous systems are not capable 00:11:33.460 --> 00:11:34.460 of omniscience. 00:11:34.460 --> 00:11:37.340 You have to have a celestial nervous system for that. 00:11:37.340 --> 00:11:40.060 And this kind of gets at the question I just asked. 00:11:40.060 --> 00:11:45.100 Is there some level of our makeup as a human being which is the celestial level, and is 00:11:45.100 --> 00:11:51.340 Is it through that that we could, let's say, see the galaxy from an external vantage point? 00:11:51.340 --> 00:12:00.660 At some point, one joins all reality, or I did, or I am, and that also allows me to separate 00:12:00.660 --> 00:12:05.900 myself from it and experience it as an object. 00:12:05.900 --> 00:12:13.340 But being one with it and being an observer, and that's the knowing. 00:12:13.340 --> 00:12:22.020 From the emptiness, there is emptiness being out of time-space, there is a manifestation 00:12:22.020 --> 00:12:31.460 of the thought of reality in the mind of this creator, but not manifest. 00:12:31.460 --> 00:12:33.660 And then there's the manifestation of the cosmos. 00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:37.700 So I can watch the process and I'm aware of that. 00:12:37.700 --> 00:12:40.020 The process of what? 00:12:40.020 --> 00:12:41.020 Manifestation of the cosmos. 00:12:41.020 --> 00:12:42.020 The cosmos, right. 00:12:42.020 --> 00:12:46.020 Okay, let me just push on this just a little bit more. 00:12:46.020 --> 00:12:50.860 Right now, you're able to see your computer monitor and I'm able to see mine and we understand 00:12:50.860 --> 00:12:51.860 the mechanics of that. 00:12:51.860 --> 00:12:56.180 The eyes are here and the monitor is there and there's some kind of consciousness that 00:12:56.180 --> 00:12:58.340 enables the whole thing to happen. 00:12:58.340 --> 00:13:04.340 But with my friend under surgery seeing her uncle buy a candy bar, or in your case, being 00:13:04.340 --> 00:13:10.340 able to actually observe the galaxy from an external perspective, what are the eyes that 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:14.580 could see that because the actual physical eyes aren't going outside the galaxy. 00:13:14.580 --> 00:13:22.820 The physical eyes see the screen, but behind the screen is a wall. I'm able to see inside the wall 00:13:22.820 --> 00:13:30.100 the studs and beams and then there's a part of me that's outside of the wall and I can see the 00:13:30.100 --> 00:13:37.700 harbor and I can see people in the city and I can see people across the other side of the planet. 00:13:39.140 --> 00:13:42.820 If you put your attention there, you're not just seeing this stuff all the time, are you? 00:13:42.820 --> 00:13:48.020 No, it's all about attention. And the same thing extended to the galaxy. 00:13:48.020 --> 00:13:53.700 And the same thing with different planes of where people go when they pass on. 00:13:53.700 --> 00:14:01.460 And is that because the subtle body or some level of the subtle body is omnipresent or is 00:14:01.460 --> 00:14:06.420 everywhere and therefore that's the mechanism through which we have these perceptions? 00:14:06.420 --> 00:14:17.420 Well, there's both. There's physical eyes, there's astral eyes, there's mental eyes, there's buddhic eyes, there's atrik eyes, there's celestial eyes, there's divine eyes. 00:14:17.420 --> 00:14:28.420 So all these different levels have wakened up in me and I'm able to perceive from the different bodies, different levels of awareness. 00:14:28.420 --> 00:14:32.020 In essence though, they all come back down to the one. 00:14:32.020 --> 00:14:34.420 There's only one real essence. 00:14:34.420 --> 00:14:37.020 These eyes are not true eyes. 00:14:37.020 --> 00:14:39.020 These are just empty eyes. 00:14:39.020 --> 00:14:43.020 The grossest form of the faculty of vision, you could say. 00:14:43.020 --> 00:14:44.020 Right. 00:14:44.020 --> 00:14:47.020 There have been cases of blind people who could actually 00:14:47.020 --> 00:14:50.020 ride a bicycle through an obstacle course or something, 00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:53.020 around traffic cones, or else people who are 00:14:53.020 --> 00:14:56.020 completely blindfolded with something wrapped around them, 00:14:56.020 --> 00:14:59.900 around there's no way physically they can see but there are people who have had that kind 00:14:59.900 --> 00:15:00.900 of ability. 00:15:00.900 --> 00:15:05.100 And of course we've talked about the out of body experience people but there must be some 00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:11.360 subtler aspect to the sense of vision and some mechanics for that that perhaps we all 00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:14.860 possess and you know you just happen to have it opened up. 00:15:14.860 --> 00:15:20.820 Well you know there's a saying that God sees everything, God is on a mission. 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:25.580 And consciousness moves to that level as you build it and grow it. 00:15:25.580 --> 00:15:31.440 So do you think that this is, I wouldn't say common, but even in the traditional literature 00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:37.340 you get little snippets of stuff like this from like autobiography of a yogi and so on, 00:15:37.340 --> 00:15:42.740 but generally as I said in my introduction, when people describe the enlightened state, 00:15:42.740 --> 00:15:44.800 they don't describe all these abilities. 00:15:44.800 --> 00:15:48.780 Do you think that they're just being cagey about it, not mentioning them? 00:15:48.780 --> 00:15:52.980 Or do you think it's kind of an individual consideration where some people develop this 00:15:52.980 --> 00:15:56.900 and other people could be at a very high level of consciousness but not have this particular 00:15:56.900 --> 00:15:57.900 kind of development. 00:15:57.900 --> 00:16:03.780 My wife is asking me about this today, so I can answer the question. 00:16:03.780 --> 00:16:09.820 One of my spiritual guides, teachers, had an understanding of the energy systems of the 00:16:09.820 --> 00:16:17.020 body and the etheric body and he actually moved my consciousness. 00:16:17.020 --> 00:16:25.340 He said I had a rising, a certain rising of consciousness that enabled me to have siddhis 00:16:25.340 --> 00:16:27.420 four hours away. 00:16:27.420 --> 00:16:31.100 And once I was awake, those siddhis expanded even more. 00:16:31.100 --> 00:16:33.900 So that was Swamiji, John Harrigan's teacher. 00:16:33.900 --> 00:16:34.900 Correct. 00:16:34.900 --> 00:16:35.900 Yeah. 00:16:35.900 --> 00:16:41.900 Okay, so the point made there is that one can develop siddhis without being awake, or 00:16:41.900 --> 00:16:43.260 vice versa, I suppose. 00:16:43.260 --> 00:16:45.500 One could be awake without having developed siddhis. 00:16:45.500 --> 00:16:46.500 Right. 00:16:46.500 --> 00:16:49.500 you can use siddhis to wake yourself up as well. 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:54.500 So siddhis are not an impediment or a distraction, or they could be perhaps, 00:16:54.500 --> 00:16:58.500 but they could also be an asset or an aid to awakening. 00:16:58.500 --> 00:17:02.500 Right. Well, siddhis traditionally have been discouraged 00:17:02.500 --> 00:17:07.500 because they can become very compelling and build up more ego. 00:17:07.500 --> 00:17:11.500 But that doesn't mean that's the only way they can be utilized. 00:17:11.500 --> 00:17:13.500 They can be utilized to wake up as well. 00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:19.500 Which presumably is what Patanjali was getting at when he devoted an entire chapter of a four-chapter book to talking about siddhis. 00:17:19.500 --> 00:17:22.540 Yeah, right. 00:17:22.540 --> 00:17:27.900 That's what I always assumed. Like why would he spend so much of his book talking about them if they were just something you should avoid? 00:17:27.900 --> 00:17:30.620 Right. 00:17:30.620 --> 00:17:32.860 They certainly have helped me. 00:17:32.860 --> 00:17:36.880 Have they ever been a temptation or a distraction or an impediment? 00:17:36.880 --> 00:17:41.260 No, because I always come back to the oneness and the emptiness. 00:17:42.060 --> 00:17:50.780 true nature of being. And if you had to define awakenings in a sentence, how would you define it? 00:17:50.780 --> 00:17:58.460 Freedom. Freedom. I'm not attached to any form. I'm not attached to this body, I'm not attached 00:17:58.460 --> 00:18:06.860 to the mind, I'm not attached to my feelings, I'm not attached to my ego, I'm not attached to 00:18:07.900 --> 00:18:14.940 a galaxy, I'm attached to the divine perception. So not being attached to that is going to not be 00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:22.940 anyway. So once I left the ego attachment, I could lose my consciousness anyway. That's freedom. 00:18:22.940 --> 00:18:30.940 Interesting. Usually the word attachment implies a grasping or a clinging, like I'm attached to 00:18:30.940 --> 00:18:35.820 eating a certain kind of food or smoking cigarettes or to a certain person or to a certain 00:18:35.820 --> 00:18:42.220 experience and people are deeply attached if they're addicted to drugs, let's say. 00:18:42.220 --> 00:18:48.380 But you're using freedom in the sense of actually being independent of all those things, like 00:18:48.380 --> 00:18:52.940 you can function independently of your body, go anywhere. 00:18:52.940 --> 00:18:58.740 Yes, the body can be transparent and not hold my attention. 00:18:58.740 --> 00:19:03.380 I can see through, like I can see through the wall. 00:19:03.380 --> 00:19:06.740 I can see the plans, I can be outside the plans looking at them. 00:19:06.740 --> 00:19:10.900 What do you think would happen if you took this ability to Las Vegas? 00:19:10.900 --> 00:19:14.620 I'd probably fall right back into ignorance. 00:19:14.620 --> 00:19:20.260 Yeah, you can see right through the dealer's head, cards, and stuff like that. 00:19:20.260 --> 00:19:24.580 Yeah, I think there's dangers in using your siddhis. 00:19:24.580 --> 00:19:29.020 I think the goal of being a human being is to be a full human being. 00:19:29.020 --> 00:19:36.820 a moral, to be financially independent, to be relationally sound. So I think you don't 00:19:36.820 --> 00:19:40.500 come here to wake up, you come here to be a full human being. 00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:47.020 Yeah, that's good. If I have to define the word awakening or enlightenment, which I tend 00:19:47.020 --> 00:19:53.100 to avoid because they have a static, superlative connotation, but if I had to, I would say 00:19:53.100 --> 00:19:57.540 what you just said, which is a holistic development in which you don't just have consciousness 00:19:57.540 --> 00:20:03.140 developed and other things are rather primitive, all the various lines of development, to use 00:20:03.140 --> 00:20:08.820 Ken Wilber's phrase, have risen to a very high level. Would you agree with that definition? 00:20:08.820 --> 00:20:14.900 Yes, especially the moral aspect, which I think needs a lot of attention. There's 00:20:14.900 --> 00:20:22.180 moral development, financial, yeah, financial independence, so you don't succumb to using 00:20:22.180 --> 00:20:34.780 So, relational health, so that you're not bothered by emotional troubles and relational 00:20:34.780 --> 00:20:35.780 problems. 00:20:35.780 --> 00:20:42.700 Now, obviously, people can be quite moral and financially successful and have good relationships 00:20:42.700 --> 00:20:47.100 and all that, without even having an inkling of what awakening in the spiritual sense may 00:20:47.100 --> 00:20:49.920 be, and vice versa. 00:20:49.920 --> 00:20:56.320 claim to be awakened and yet they are immoral or financially, sexually, you know, creating 00:20:56.320 --> 00:20:57.320 havoc. 00:20:57.320 --> 00:20:59.680 Unfortunately, too many examples of that. 00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:02.720 So there doesn't seem to be a tight correlation. 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:03.720 Right. 00:21:03.720 --> 00:21:10.160 So my experience is that ego development is important, moral development before you wake 00:21:10.160 --> 00:21:11.160 up. 00:21:11.160 --> 00:21:14.680 And I remember talking about this in the... 00:21:14.680 --> 00:21:15.680 Sorry. 00:21:15.680 --> 00:21:19.040 Waking up doesn't mean that you're a moral person. 00:21:19.040 --> 00:21:22.960 In fact, waking up has nothing to do with morality. 00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:28.600 My experience is that moral development needs to happen before you wake up, or the beginning 00:21:28.600 --> 00:21:29.600 of it. 00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:33.960 Yeah, I have this guy that I like to take his classes, Swami Sarvapiya Nanda, I've interviewed 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:39.640 him and I take weekly classes with him online, but he says moral development should be the 00:21:39.640 --> 00:21:43.320 first stage, it should be the foundation, and then you build the whole thing on top 00:21:43.320 --> 00:21:47.280 of that, because if you don't, you end up getting into trouble. 00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:50.080 I would agree with that. 00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:53.500 Maybe you have some comments on this, but in the Vedic literature, and probably literature 00:21:53.500 --> 00:21:57.960 of other traditions, there are stories about people who had reached a very high level of 00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:03.380 development but then were egotistical or morally compromised or something, and they end up 00:22:03.380 --> 00:22:07.680 crashing and burning and having to retrace their steps later on. 00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:09.120 Right, yeah. 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:16.800 So my last lifetime, which I mentioned earlier, I skipped a whole bunch of levels, which I 00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:21.480 So I think it's kind of conditional in some spiritual paths. 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:30.360 Move quickly from ego, sense of separate identity to waking up. 00:22:30.360 --> 00:22:39.920 So skipping the sort of psychological development of being moral, caring for others, being one 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:45.200 with the planet, being a good human being. 00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:47.520 So I had to come back and do that. 00:22:47.520 --> 00:22:51.160 So you said a few minutes ago that you defined awakening as freedom. 00:22:51.160 --> 00:22:56.640 And so if we stick with that definition, what you're saying is one can have attained freedom 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:02.200 and yet perhaps not have all one's chakras fully developed or certain aspects of one's 00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:03.720 personality. 00:23:03.720 --> 00:23:06.460 One can behave harmfully. 00:23:06.460 --> 00:23:12.440 One can be attracted to indulging in harmful substances even. 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:18.580 There have been people who claim to be awakened who do that, like Adi Da, and yet one has 00:23:18.580 --> 00:23:20.640 attained freedom. 00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:22.440 Do you agree with that? 00:23:22.440 --> 00:23:27.280 Freedom for me is the first thing, not to be attached to any form. 00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:32.120 Not to be attached to the physical body, not to be attached to the ego, not to be attached 00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:35.680 to enlightenment, not to be attached. 00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:40.280 But to be able to move your consciousness to different places. 00:23:40.280 --> 00:23:47.280 Freedom is not about stockness, moral stockness or spiritual stockness. 00:23:47.280 --> 00:23:55.680 It's about the capacity to be not bound, be unbounded by whatever form you take. 00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:59.480 Okay, we'll probably keep touching on this point. 00:23:59.480 --> 00:24:03.240 Freedom you said, the ability to move your consciousness to different places. 00:24:03.240 --> 00:24:07.480 Now consciousness in its essential nature doesn't go to different places. 00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:13.720 all pervading, omnipresent, so there's no you that moves it to different places. It's everywhere. 00:24:13.720 --> 00:24:19.160 And that is the essential nature of freedom, isn't it? The unbounded nature of our most fundamental. 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:27.320 Right. So then I woke up from being psychic to being vanilla, to being everywhere, 00:24:27.320 --> 00:24:32.760 being unbounded. Right. That was in this lifetime. You're saying like five years ago or something. 00:24:33.320 --> 00:24:41.400 Right. Now I've heard you say many times in your podcasts that we all continue to be works in 00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:46.760 progress. There's no end point at which you can say, "Okay, I'm totally done. Can't grow anymore, 00:24:46.760 --> 00:24:51.960 can't learn anymore, can't evolve anymore." I don't believe there's any end in terms of 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:59.000 spiritual development. I haven't found that so far. In fact, it's sort of speeded up a lot lately. 00:25:00.520 --> 00:25:07.160 It's remarkable how it's grown and developed and I can't find any end to it. 00:25:07.160 --> 00:25:10.520 So what is your next horizon? 00:25:10.520 --> 00:25:17.560 My edge right now is expanding consciousness to the astral plane, 00:25:17.560 --> 00:25:23.720 to being the astral plane, mental plane, buddhi plane, arctic plane and celestial plane. 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:32.760 So I'm actually finding my consciousness to be one with the Creator's construction of these planes. 00:25:32.760 --> 00:25:37.480 So in other words, you have been able for some time to dip into these planes and poke around and 00:25:37.480 --> 00:25:44.440 explore and experience, but what you're saying is you're growing in your capacity to just 00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:50.920 be multi-dimensional and to function on multiple planes simultaneously. Is that correct? 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:59.000 Yes, so I could go and see people who passed on with them and talk to them and have them 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:05.080 communicate with me on different levels and planes, including celestial beings. 00:26:05.080 --> 00:26:12.440 So I've been able to do that for a while, a long time. But now this feels like my whole sense of 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:17.880 self is one with the plane. So it's coming out of me and I'm one with it. 00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:20.120 With a subtle plane? 00:26:20.120 --> 00:26:26.120 I'm kind of identifying with the creator who created this plane. 00:26:26.120 --> 00:26:27.120 Created which plane? 00:26:27.120 --> 00:26:28.120 All the planes. 00:26:28.120 --> 00:26:29.120 All the planes. 00:26:29.120 --> 00:26:30.120 One at a time. 00:26:30.120 --> 00:26:38.440 So in other words, if you've captured that fort, the fort of the creator, then you're 00:26:38.440 --> 00:26:43.120 free to play about in the territory of this plane, that plane, the other plane. 00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:44.120 Right. 00:26:44.120 --> 00:26:49.160 One identifies oneself as being one with the creation of the plane. 00:26:49.160 --> 00:26:52.680 One can move in certain specifics of the plane. 00:26:52.680 --> 00:26:54.780 Do you spend much of your day doing this? 00:26:54.780 --> 00:27:00.240 Like exploring and having adventures in these subtle realms? 00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:04.560 Probably about an hour a day of meditation practice. 00:27:04.560 --> 00:27:08.400 So mostly this happens when you're in a meditative state? 00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:11.640 Mostly it happens when I actually apply myself to it. 00:27:11.640 --> 00:27:17.160 Okay, give us some examples of particular things that you have experienced, let's say in recent 00:27:17.160 --> 00:27:22.040 days, weeks, months, or whatever comes to mind as you explore these planes. 00:27:22.040 --> 00:27:28.760 Well, my mother passed away about a year and a half ago. 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:33.320 She wasn't a good mother when I was young, much like yours. 00:27:33.320 --> 00:27:34.840 Well, my mother tried. 00:27:34.840 --> 00:27:37.160 She had a lot on her shoulders, but anyway. 00:27:37.160 --> 00:27:38.400 Yeah, mine too. 00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:40.720 She did her best. 00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:47.320 But I found after she passed, she went beyond the astral mental, she went to the Buddhic 00:27:47.320 --> 00:27:56.720 plane, which is the heart chakra plane, which is a reasonably high level for who she was, 00:27:56.720 --> 00:27:57.720 my understanding. 00:27:57.720 --> 00:28:03.440 And in the last years of her life, she was 95 when she died, last years of her life she 00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:06.760 was very loving and very calm. 00:28:06.760 --> 00:28:10.080 So I went to go visit her recently. 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:11.440 On the Buddhic plane. 00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:13.000 On the Buddhic plane. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:15.000 How vivid was that experience? 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:20.960 Well, staying in a physical body, it was vague. 00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:27.880 But I found my physical body emptying out, becoming transparent, and I astral projected 00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:29.320 to that plane. 00:28:29.320 --> 00:28:30.440 And that was much clearer. 00:28:30.440 --> 00:28:37.840 I could smell, I could taste, I could feel, not just the visual aspects. 00:28:37.840 --> 00:28:39.840 You know a guy named Jürgen Zeewe? 00:28:39.840 --> 00:28:41.840 No, never heard of him. 00:28:41.840 --> 00:28:46.400 He's a guy that I've interviewed and he has been astral traveling like this for decades 00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:49.480 and he's also a very gifted artist. 00:28:49.480 --> 00:28:53.360 I'll turn you on to some of his stuff after the interview, but he is able to create these 00:28:53.360 --> 00:28:55.680 and now using AI it's gotten even better. 00:28:55.680 --> 00:29:01.360 He's able to create these amazingly clear depictions of what these different planes are 00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:02.760 like. 00:29:02.760 --> 00:29:06.920 Some of them quite hellish and others, you know, really sublime and heavenly. 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:14.480 Right, yeah, my early days I remember reading a lot about the Madden, Blupatsky and the 00:29:14.480 --> 00:29:17.840 Ossetists who spent a lot of time on those planes. 00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:20.720 Ledbitter, I've read a lot of... 00:29:20.720 --> 00:29:22.720 Yeah, Ledbitter, yeah. 00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:27.240 Maybe we need to define spiritual evolution, but you said that for you at this point, your 00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:36.000 leading edge, your horizon is the greater facility or familiarity with these other planes 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:42.360 and learning how to function in them or experience in them while yet living in a human body. 00:29:42.360 --> 00:29:43.360 Is that a good summary? 00:29:43.360 --> 00:29:51.760 I would say watching the unfoldment of them as the creation happens and returns to its 00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:54.440 source as well. 00:29:54.440 --> 00:29:59.120 Do you feel that that's not only interesting for you, but that you are serving as some kind 00:29:59.120 --> 00:30:06.340 of an instrument for the integration of those higher planes with the Earth plane, not only 00:30:06.340 --> 00:30:08.440 in your experience, but for all of us? 00:30:08.440 --> 00:30:11.560 No, I don't see myself as anything special. 00:30:11.560 --> 00:30:17.120 No, I'm not saying that, but consider somebody who everybody thinks was special, like Jesus, 00:30:17.120 --> 00:30:21.880 for instance. I mean, he obviously had access to higher planes, and yet here he was on the 00:30:21.880 --> 00:30:27.680 Earth calling himself the Son of Man, and he had quite an impact because his embodiment 00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:31.680 of higher consciousness and the ripple effect that he had on humanity. 00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:37.200 And he also said that everyone could achieve the state that he had, so he might have just 00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:41.520 been an outlier at that point, but maybe it's going to become more common for people to 00:30:41.520 --> 00:30:47.280 have this interdimensional way of functioning, and it will help to infuse humanity with more 00:30:47.280 --> 00:30:49.160 of the qualities of these higher realms. 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:57.320 I like to think that. I don't see myself as a teacher or a practitioner or somebody making 00:30:57.320 --> 00:30:59.760 money from this purely contribution. 00:30:59.760 --> 00:31:05.240 Oh yeah, no I'm not suggesting. People wouldn't need to be teachers to have this effect. They 00:31:05.240 --> 00:31:09.480 could just have it by walking down the street and going grocery shopping, but being in the 00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:10.960 world but not of it. 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:12.800 I hope it's true. 00:31:12.800 --> 00:31:17.280 So you mentioned a few minutes ago that your mother achieved the Buddhic plane, which was 00:31:17.280 --> 00:31:22.640 correlated with the heart chakra. Are the different planes that you're mentioning correlated with 00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:30.000 different chakras in the human anatomy? Well, the chakras are symbolic. So they appear on a 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:35.920 etheric level. Each body has chakras. Every body, I see what you mean. 00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:41.920 Each body has chakras. It's the connection between one body and the next body. 00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:49.840 It's a nice way to talk about a certain plane or a certain consciousness, to talk about in 00:31:49.840 --> 00:31:54.000 terms of a chakra, but it's not actually the true way of looking at it. It's symbolic. 00:31:54.000 --> 00:32:01.600 So, let's say the astral body has chakras and the gross body has chakras, although the chakras 00:32:01.600 --> 00:32:07.120 aren't gross, they're subtle. Well, first of all, let me ask this, how many layers of the subtle 00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:11.840 body do you recognize? There are different taxonomies in different traditions that recognize 00:32:11.840 --> 00:32:16.640 different stages, but in your own experience, how many Russian dolls are there, you know, 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:23.440 within the human makeup? Well, there's the physical, there's the etheric, there's the astral, 00:32:23.440 --> 00:32:28.480 mental, buddhic, atmic, there's the celestial, there's the divine plane. 00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:32.560 And everybody has these, even though they're not aware most of them. 00:32:32.560 --> 00:32:39.760 Right, so you take them on as you incarnate into your body. So you start off, you know, 00:32:39.760 --> 00:32:46.560 with subtle bodies and you build closer and closer forms as you get back into the physical body. 00:32:46.560 --> 00:32:49.920 I remember doing this when I came back into this lifetime. 00:32:49.920 --> 00:32:51.440 What happened exactly? 00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:55.680 I was in Brahma Loka and I knew that I was bored. 00:32:55.680 --> 00:32:59.520 Just like a high heavenly realm, Brahma Loka. 00:32:59.520 --> 00:33:04.960 Brahma Loka is heaven as the Hindus would call it, which is constant bliss. 00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:14.800 And I remember becoming bored with it and starting to move my consciousness into looking around, 00:33:14.800 --> 00:33:21.760 finding some source, something that would move me out of this place. And I noticed my mother's 00:33:21.760 --> 00:33:26.720 energy, which was anxious and driven, which you can probably see now on the screen. I 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:30.800 probably appear anxious and driven. You appear anxious and driven? Do I? 00:33:33.120 --> 00:33:35.680 That was also my age that I'm working on. 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:41.680 It was my mother's energy, because it would take me out of Brahmaloka into growth. 00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:43.680 So being driven. 00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:47.360 So I took on all the bodies one at a time. 00:33:47.360 --> 00:33:52.160 Divine body, all the way down into the physical body. 00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:53.760 You mean as you incarnated? 00:33:53.760 --> 00:33:55.040 As I incarnated. 00:33:55.040 --> 00:33:59.120 Okay, when you were in Brahmaloka, what body were you occupying then? 00:33:59.120 --> 00:34:00.800 Divine body. 00:34:01.360 --> 00:34:06.240 Which is celestial body or something else? Yeah, it's a sinister body. So the highest 00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:08.960 Subtlest body. Okay 00:34:08.960 --> 00:34:12.100 And so then in the process of incarnating 00:34:12.100 --> 00:34:19.600 Again using the russian dolls analogy you added one doll after another until you were ready to be born as a baby 00:34:19.600 --> 00:34:21.360 You got it 00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:27.760 And is this the process pretty much everybody goes through or but maybe not because everybody doesn't start out, you know in brahma loka 00:34:27.760 --> 00:34:30.000 Yeah, it depends where you start out 00:34:30.240 --> 00:34:39.240 For example, if you manage to reach the astral level, which most people get stuck in, or the mental level, 00:34:39.240 --> 00:34:42.240 then that's where you're stuck until you go to sleep. 00:34:42.240 --> 00:34:46.240 And forces of karma help you to incarnate, 00:34:46.240 --> 00:34:53.240 so that you're attached to an astral body, a physical body, and a peri-body. 00:34:53.240 --> 00:34:57.240 You and I both take reincarnation for granted, in fact we're talking that way now, 00:34:57.240 --> 00:35:00.880 way now as the way life works. 00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:06.960 You know, there's this teaching in some religions that once you achieve a certain level of enlightenment 00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:10.000 or awakening, you don't reincarnate anymore. 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:11.000 You're out of here. 00:35:11.000 --> 00:35:16.440 And yet you said you had attained a pretty significant level of awakening in your previous 00:35:16.440 --> 00:35:23.560 life as a Brahman priest, and you went to Brahmaloka for a while, but then you reincarnated 00:35:23.560 --> 00:35:29.100 again, which would imply that not only were you bored with bliss, but that would imply 00:35:29.100 --> 00:35:35.340 that you needed to undergo some kind of development that you weren't going to get in Brahmaloka, 00:35:35.340 --> 00:35:41.540 therefore you needed to incarnate again, even though you had been awake in your previous 00:35:41.540 --> 00:35:47.380 life. I've heard you say that you will have future lives after this one, despite whatever 00:35:47.380 --> 00:35:51.100 level of freedom or awakening you have achieved now. 00:35:51.100 --> 00:35:53.100 I think that's an illusion. 00:35:53.100 --> 00:35:58.780 I heard you say that though, that in my next life there'll be something else, blah blah. 00:35:58.780 --> 00:36:03.900 Yeah, that's the illusion that you get to a level where you don't have to take on any 00:36:03.900 --> 00:36:05.620 body or any form. 00:36:05.620 --> 00:36:06.620 I see what you mean. 00:36:06.620 --> 00:36:13.420 I think that's an illusion, I think you get to a state where having a body becomes important, 00:36:13.420 --> 00:36:18.340 or having a rainbow body becomes important. 00:36:18.340 --> 00:36:21.740 So in other words, it's just a wistful thinking in some traditions that you're just going to 00:36:21.740 --> 00:36:26.460 be able to check out and not deal with having to be a corporeal being anymore. 00:36:26.460 --> 00:36:29.420 Yeah, it's kind of like saying, "End your suffering. 00:36:29.420 --> 00:36:33.340 If you wake up, you won't have any more suffering." 00:36:33.340 --> 00:36:37.740 These are promises that are given to people to motivate them. 00:36:37.740 --> 00:36:43.100 Do you think that there's a certain stage at which you wouldn't reincarnate in the earth 00:36:43.100 --> 00:36:44.100 plane anymore? 00:36:44.100 --> 00:36:48.840 might just go through multiple lives in higher planes because the earth plane no longer has 00:36:48.840 --> 00:36:50.340 anything to offer you? 00:36:50.340 --> 00:36:55.860 Yeah, for example, the Swamiji that we spoke about earlier. 00:36:55.860 --> 00:37:01.940 So I connected with him, he's actually embodied on the astral plane, it's a body that is on 00:37:01.940 --> 00:37:04.100 a planet that's an astral planet. 00:37:04.100 --> 00:37:08.780 So you take on different forms depending on what your evolution is supposed to be. 00:37:08.780 --> 00:37:12.780 And they're all forms that are outside of human development. 00:37:12.780 --> 00:37:19.780 It's possible to take on a body that allows you to expand consciousness to much higher 00:37:19.780 --> 00:37:20.780 levels than you could. 00:37:20.780 --> 00:37:21.780 Yeah. 00:37:21.780 --> 00:37:25.820 Well, there's that comment I made earlier about a celestial body having certain capabilities 00:37:25.820 --> 00:37:30.340 that a gross flesh and blood body will never have. 00:37:30.340 --> 00:37:33.740 Another thing I heard Maharishi Mahesh Yogi say this one time, he was talking about immortality 00:37:33.740 --> 00:37:37.780 and he said, "Well, you know, after all, if we want to attain immortality, there must be 00:37:37.780 --> 00:37:40.900 much better bodies than these in which to do it." 00:37:40.900 --> 00:37:43.180 I think that's true. 00:37:43.180 --> 00:37:48.360 This stuff might seem kind of esoteric to people, but I find it fascinating because I think 00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:54.320 the universe is a multi-dimensional Disneyland of all kinds of possibilities that most of 00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:56.180 us don't even imagine. 00:37:56.180 --> 00:38:01.920 And although you can get kind of lost in imagining all these things and dwelling on all these 00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:06.540 things and that would be taking it too far in that direction, on the other hand, just 00:38:06.540 --> 00:38:12.380 denying them or showing no interest in them whatsoever might be taking it too far in the 00:38:12.380 --> 00:38:19.180 other direction. If you can achieve a balanced relationship to all these possibilities, it 00:38:19.180 --> 00:38:26.220 seems to me it would be a more interesting way to live life. I think that learning how 00:38:26.220 --> 00:38:34.720 the universe works and what all exists interests me in addition to the notion of liberation 00:38:34.720 --> 00:38:37.560 or oneness or freedom or realization. 00:38:37.560 --> 00:38:38.760 It's icing on the cake. 00:38:38.760 --> 00:38:40.240 It's like, okay, got that. 00:38:40.240 --> 00:38:44.720 Now, how can I use this to be an even more capable 00:38:44.720 --> 00:38:48.680 instrument of the divine and become more functional 00:38:48.680 --> 00:38:51.600 and knowledgeable of God's creation? 00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:53.920 - Sounds right. 00:38:53.920 --> 00:38:55.960 - I had to get that off my chest. 00:38:55.960 --> 00:38:58.320 And the reason I'm dwelling on that is just, again, 00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:01.200 as I said in the beginning, some people, to my mind, 00:39:01.200 --> 00:39:02.920 they tend to dumb it down a little bit. 00:39:02.920 --> 00:39:08.400 Like, all right, you don't exist and the world is an illusion and you're done. 00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:12.680 And accept those principles and you don't have to strive anymore. 00:39:12.680 --> 00:39:13.680 Give up the search. 00:39:13.680 --> 00:39:14.680 You're done. 00:39:14.680 --> 00:39:15.680 I think that's just the beginning. 00:39:15.680 --> 00:39:16.680 Yeah, me too. 00:39:16.680 --> 00:39:23.680 So, you know, I think this whole world's possibilities, infinite possibilities. 00:39:23.680 --> 00:39:26.520 This doesn't stop with waking up. 00:39:26.520 --> 00:39:31.440 It's just achieving some level of expanded consciousness. 00:39:31.440 --> 00:39:32.440 Right. 00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:37.640 There's always a next horizon and what we're exploring here is what those next horizons 00:39:37.640 --> 00:39:38.640 might be. 00:39:38.640 --> 00:39:40.140 And I guess they might be different for different people. 00:39:40.140 --> 00:39:45.680 We all serve different functions, but that is not to denigrate any one person's journey. 00:39:45.680 --> 00:39:49.080 Okay, a question came in. 00:39:49.080 --> 00:39:51.860 I might as well just ask this even though it's a little bit out of sync with what we're 00:39:51.860 --> 00:39:54.140 talking about, but just for fun. 00:39:54.140 --> 00:39:56.880 This is from Elizabeth Marie in the US. 00:39:56.880 --> 00:40:02.120 I hope you don't consider this question too flippant as I'm quite serious about it. 00:40:02.120 --> 00:40:07.000 With your capacity to transcend space-time and proceed from this non-local place, can 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:11.440 you please let us know whether the U.S. is going to survive as a democracy over the next 00:40:11.440 --> 00:40:14.760 four years or be transformed into something entirely different? 00:40:14.760 --> 00:40:16.320 I appreciate her question. 00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:17.320 I wonder the same thing. 00:40:17.320 --> 00:40:23.600 The great question, you know, has to do with the planet and our relationship with it and 00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:25.560 the societies that we live in. 00:40:25.560 --> 00:40:27.240 Can I do that? 00:40:27.240 --> 00:40:30.040 I don't like to predict the future. 00:40:30.040 --> 00:40:32.600 It's one thing to go into the past. 00:40:32.600 --> 00:40:35.000 It's another thing to actually predict the future. 00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:37.320 I don't like to do that. 00:40:37.320 --> 00:40:43.480 But my wife often says to me, "You seem less concerned about global warming and the political 00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:45.880 situation than I am." 00:40:45.880 --> 00:40:50.120 I think that's true because I don't believe that that's really managed by the powers that 00:40:50.120 --> 00:40:51.640 be on this planet. 00:40:51.640 --> 00:40:57.240 It's really run by the devas and the gods and the celestial beings. 00:40:57.240 --> 00:41:01.240 And it's the Asuras who oppose them. 00:41:01.240 --> 00:41:03.240 They're having a war zone. 00:41:03.240 --> 00:41:04.240 Yeah, exactly. 00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:06.240 And this is just a form that they take. 00:41:06.240 --> 00:41:09.240 I've said the very same thing to people in recent conversations, 00:41:09.240 --> 00:41:16.240 that we're just looking at the surface symptoms or manifestation of a kind of a cosmic battle going on 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:21.240 with, as you said, Devas and Asuras and all kinds of impulses of intelligence, 00:41:21.240 --> 00:41:28.240 and it's all playing out on the surface of politics and economies and environment and stuff. 00:41:28.240 --> 00:41:32.240 Right, so identification is a problem. 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:36.240 This hand that moves across the screen here, in front of you. 00:41:36.240 --> 00:41:41.240 So, the ego would attach to it and say "I move this hand." 00:41:41.240 --> 00:41:47.240 But if I'm looking at it from a deeper perspective, the hand moves itself. 00:41:47.240 --> 00:41:53.520 So just like this mouth is speaking and voice is sounding, coming out of it, I'm not doing 00:41:53.520 --> 00:41:57.120 it, there's not an ego doing it, it's happening. 00:41:57.120 --> 00:42:05.360 So it's manifesting something from a subtle plane, from emptiness, from pure consciousness. 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:07.520 It's occurring. 00:42:07.520 --> 00:42:09.000 So the same thing with democracy. 00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:16.520 Who's to say if democracy is the best method for survival on another planet? 00:42:16.520 --> 00:42:21.760 One can be attached to it, but does it mean that that's the way it's supposed to be? 00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:26.080 I was thinking about Lao Tzu the other day, who wrote the Tao Te Ching, and he basically 00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:31.600 says that government governs best which governs least, but he says that in order for a government 00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:35.540 to do that, the people have to be in tune with natural law, they have to be in tune 00:42:35.540 --> 00:42:40.920 with the Tao, and if they really are, as a society, then there will not need to be very 00:42:40.920 --> 00:42:43.640 much government at all, and everything will get along just fine. 00:42:43.640 --> 00:42:48.480 But if people are way out of tune with it, then you need more laws and rules and structures 00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:53.200 to keep everybody from killing each other, ripping each other off too much. 00:42:53.200 --> 00:42:55.720 Okay, the thing about moving your hand. 00:42:55.720 --> 00:42:57.000 Or the hand moving itself. 00:42:57.000 --> 00:42:58.360 Or the hand moving itself. 00:42:58.360 --> 00:42:59.360 Can both be true? 00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:03.640 On the one hand, I'm moving the hand, but the divine is moving the hand. 00:43:03.640 --> 00:43:05.360 Each on its own level. 00:43:05.360 --> 00:43:08.520 From an ego level, I'm moving the hand. 00:43:08.520 --> 00:43:13.000 From a solar level, I'm telling the ego to move the hand. 00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:17.000 From a cosmic level, the hand's moving itself. 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:22.440 From a divine level, it's coming out of nothing and going back into nothing. 00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:25.000 Did you even say there's a level on which there is no hand? 00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:26.560 I mean, there's nothing, right? 00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:27.560 Yeah. 00:43:27.560 --> 00:43:28.960 There just appears to be a hand. 00:43:28.960 --> 00:43:32.000 In the level, it's all empty. 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:37.720 So I experienced the body as being empty, thoughts as being empty. 00:43:37.720 --> 00:43:40.120 There's nobody at home. 00:43:40.120 --> 00:43:42.120 You know, the ego is empty. 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:44.320 Even the soul is empty. 00:43:44.320 --> 00:43:47.480 So the Buddhists would like this philosophy. 00:43:47.480 --> 00:43:49.260 Is it also full? 00:43:49.260 --> 00:43:51.440 Could you flip it and say it's all fullness? 00:43:51.440 --> 00:43:52.440 Absolutely. 00:43:52.440 --> 00:43:58.120 You know, that's the way that I originally connected with it, as being full, full of 00:43:58.120 --> 00:43:59.120 oneness. 00:43:59.120 --> 00:44:02.800 I have this ongoing, friendly debate with a friend named Susanna Marie. 00:44:02.800 --> 00:44:06.600 She's been on That Gap, and we recently taped a video about this. 00:44:06.600 --> 00:44:15.600 She says that she doesn't have a sense of personal self, and I say, "You must have a sense of personal self, but it's just taking a back seat. 00:44:15.600 --> 00:44:29.600 The impersonal or the cosmic self must be in the driver's seat and predominant, but if you're functioning as a human being, there's still got to be some sense of personal self, otherwise you wouldn't know if you put your hand on a stove and it burned, or if I call your name and you turn your head." 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:32.600 Do you agree with that? What's your experience? 00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:38.600 I agree with that. I think the notion of having an ego is important if you're living in the 00:44:38.600 --> 00:44:41.840 world. If you're living in a cave, you don't need an ego. 00:44:41.840 --> 00:44:46.080 Even there you might, you know, so this cave is dripping or I'm hungry or you know something. 00:44:46.080 --> 00:44:52.640 Yeah, it's kind of like less important. Survival is less important, you know, so you could be 00:44:52.640 --> 00:44:59.400 a Ramana Maharshi and just meditate the whole day. So survival becomes less important. But 00:44:59.400 --> 00:45:03.040 If one is operating in the world, one needs an ego. 00:45:03.040 --> 00:45:06.280 So you can transcend it, it can be transparent, 00:45:06.280 --> 00:45:11.360 it can be an illusionary, but it's there. 00:45:11.360 --> 00:45:13.480 - Yeah, that's my understanding. 00:45:13.480 --> 00:45:14.880 I mean, as I said in the beginning, 00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:17.560 I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. 00:45:17.560 --> 00:45:20.600 We have a body and maybe it ultimately isn't real. 00:45:20.600 --> 00:45:23.000 We have a mind, it ultimately isn't real. 00:45:23.000 --> 00:45:24.480 And we have a sense of self, 00:45:24.480 --> 00:45:27.160 even though ultimately it's not an ultimate, 00:45:27.160 --> 00:45:32.160 subtle impulses that don't have any verbal quality to them, but are... 00:45:32.160 --> 00:45:36.460 I've heard you say you don't have thoughts, or words just come out. 00:45:36.460 --> 00:45:40.660 In the Vedic cosmology, there's these four levels of speech. 00:45:40.660 --> 00:45:43.660 Vaikari, Madhyama, Pashanti, and Vahk. 00:45:43.660 --> 00:45:48.160 And Vaikari is like what I'm doing now, speech you can hear. 00:45:48.160 --> 00:45:50.660 Madhyama is thoughts in your head. 00:45:50.660 --> 00:45:54.960 Pashanti is not thoughts in your head, but subtle impulses 00:45:54.960 --> 00:46:01.800 that don't have any verbal quality to them, but are seed impulses which could translate 00:46:01.800 --> 00:46:05.160 into the higher levels or into actual speech. 00:46:05.160 --> 00:46:10.480 And then Vahk is just sort of the silent, unmanifest, nothing going on level. 00:46:10.480 --> 00:46:14.000 If I've got those right, I might have screwed some of those Sanskrit names up. 00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:18.140 But when you say you don't have any thoughts and yet you're talking to me, or you decide 00:46:18.140 --> 00:46:22.760 to go to the refrigerator and get a sandwich or something, I'm sure you're not thinking, 00:46:22.760 --> 00:46:25.320 I am going to the refrigerator to get a sandwich. 00:46:25.320 --> 00:46:30.280 It's more like there's an impulse of some kind that takes you to the refrigerator. 00:46:30.280 --> 00:46:33.400 Couldn't that be a very, very subtle level of thought, 00:46:33.400 --> 00:46:36.760 just not the customary verbal type of thought that many people think? 00:46:36.760 --> 00:46:43.160 Right. It's not that I had no thoughts. I have no thoughts in this moment. 00:46:43.160 --> 00:46:44.360 Oh, okay. 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:46.280 You know, I can think about things. 00:46:46.280 --> 00:46:48.760 Yeah. Shall I go on vacation or shall we... 00:46:48.760 --> 00:46:53.640 - I wouldn't be able to manage my life in this world. 00:46:53.640 --> 00:46:54.480 - Okay. 00:46:54.480 --> 00:46:58.800 - Those four levels, I can identify with it. 00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:01.080 I can identify the first as the verbal, 00:47:01.080 --> 00:47:03.120 the second as thought forms, 00:47:03.120 --> 00:47:06.480 and a way to communicate with people 00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:08.280 on the astral and the mental level, 00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:11.640 is to have a thought form, thinking. 00:47:11.640 --> 00:47:15.000 Thinking as a precursor to the verbal. 00:47:16.120 --> 00:47:20.800 subtle impulses for the Buddhic level and above that impulse and 00:47:20.800 --> 00:47:23.580 Emptiness being part of consciousness, too 00:47:23.580 --> 00:47:28.140 So I think what I hear you saying is you have thoughts you just don't have 00:47:28.140 --> 00:47:31.000 superfluous unnecessary thoughts 00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:34.960 You know like me I'll hear a song like the other day 00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:42.480 I heard cashmere by Led Zeppelin and I'm walking around the house thinking did it did it did it did it did it 00:47:43.680 --> 00:47:48.200 Cashmere is going through my mind. I think shut up, you know, why do I have to be thinking this stupid song? 00:47:48.200 --> 00:47:55.220 Whereas I think what you're saying is your mind. There's not a lot of extra static going on. Yeah as much less thoughts 00:47:55.220 --> 00:47:58.040 This is my experience 00:47:58.040 --> 00:48:00.040 Most thoughts are about 00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:01.760 supporting the ego 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:08.680 Putting identity as a separate person. So when that becomes more transparent one has less thoughts 00:48:08.680 --> 00:48:11.960 both say the functional or operational 00:48:12.720 --> 00:48:15.600 It's less important to have thoughts that support the ego. 00:48:15.600 --> 00:48:20.840 Yeah, because there's no ego to support really or a very 00:48:20.840 --> 00:48:24.120 more tenuous one. More transparent. 00:48:24.120 --> 00:48:30.520 I imagine that would give you more energy because it consumes energy to have thoughts and if they're useless 00:48:30.520 --> 00:48:34.380 then you're burning up perfectly good glucose for nothing. 00:48:34.380 --> 00:48:41.360 So I'm gonna read some notes here. I've got some titles of all of your podcast episodes. 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:49.680 I heard you say in one episode that you didn't feel it was productive, maybe for most people, 00:48:49.680 --> 00:48:55.040 to continue with the same spiritual practice for more than a few years or something like that. 00:48:55.040 --> 00:48:56.720 Is that what you meant to say? 00:48:56.720 --> 00:48:58.880 Yes, that sounds right. 00:48:58.880 --> 00:49:03.840 So you yourself have like switched spiritual practices every few years? 00:49:03.840 --> 00:49:06.000 Many times, many times. 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:07.520 How about Connie? 00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:12.960 No, she's stuck with the same thing for the last 50 years. 00:49:12.960 --> 00:49:18.240 Yeah, me too. Because I enjoy it and it seems to work and I'm not close to doing other things. 00:49:18.240 --> 00:49:23.040 Would you say that Connie and I are holding ourselves back by taking that approach? 00:49:23.040 --> 00:49:30.960 I can't say it for you or for Connie, but I'd say in general, staying with the same practice, 00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:35.920 even though it doesn't take you further, it's kind of like, it's a waste of time. 00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:39.920 I would agree, but what if you feel that you are progressing and you... 00:49:39.920 --> 00:49:45.200 Stay with it. It's working for you. If you're progressing, if you're unfolding, that's good. 00:49:45.200 --> 00:49:48.000 And of course, you never know what might happen if you did try something else. 00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:51.040 You might progress faster or in a different way. 00:49:51.040 --> 00:49:57.760 Well, I have no problem using two techniques from different practices. It's like I've spoken 00:49:57.760 --> 00:50:03.600 to the emptiness from the Buddhist practice and the Hindu practice, the Vedic practice. 00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:10.480 Yeah, you know, there's an old saying about not digging 10 different wells, just dig one deep 00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:16.080 hole to get a well that'll actually hit water. But one way of using that metaphor is to say, 00:50:16.080 --> 00:50:19.520 well, how about using 10 different tools to dig one deep well? 00:50:19.520 --> 00:50:22.960 Yeah, that makes sense to me. 00:50:22.960 --> 00:50:30.000 Yeah. What do you do now as a practice? You mentioned you kind of meditate and explore. 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:33.760 I'm in bed every day, usually in the afternoon. 00:50:33.760 --> 00:50:37.840 I do inquiry practice about five times a week. 00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:38.840 And how does that work? 00:50:38.840 --> 00:50:41.280 I'm on the telephone with somebody. 00:50:41.280 --> 00:50:45.560 I speak spontaneously, exploring consciousness. 00:50:45.560 --> 00:50:47.600 Like a fellow spiritual brother? 00:50:47.600 --> 00:50:48.600 Yeah. 00:50:48.600 --> 00:50:49.600 And listen, I have presence. 00:50:49.600 --> 00:50:52.280 I'm being on the other end. 00:50:52.280 --> 00:50:57.040 So it's like a tool to help evoke this process. 00:50:57.040 --> 00:51:01.120 I explore whatever comes into the mind. 00:51:01.120 --> 00:51:03.640 Sounds like a psychologist speaking there. 00:51:03.640 --> 00:51:04.640 That's true. 00:51:04.640 --> 00:51:11.600 It starts off with the body, physical awareness, then sort of goes to the emotional, the mental, 00:51:11.600 --> 00:51:15.140 sometimes goes very quickly through those two and such. 00:51:15.140 --> 00:51:16.840 It's about exploring those levels. 00:51:16.840 --> 00:51:21.880 And this person is a facilitator or a catalyst of some sort that you do this with? 00:51:21.880 --> 00:51:22.880 Right. 00:51:22.880 --> 00:51:25.560 This is an all-masses protocol. 00:51:25.560 --> 00:51:31.880 Okay, right. That's A.H. Almas. He's been on BatGap a couple of times. Three, I think. 00:51:31.880 --> 00:51:38.280 Now, I heard some interesting stuff that you were saying about soul groups. For one thing, 00:51:38.280 --> 00:51:45.240 I heard you say that the Earth is humanity's second planet, which, if I heard that correctly, 00:51:45.240 --> 00:51:51.080 I think you were saying that the soul group of humanity used to live on a different planet, 00:51:51.080 --> 00:51:56.760 and maybe that one blew up or something and now we are on this one. Is that what you said? 00:51:56.760 --> 00:51:57.320 That's correct. 00:51:57.320 --> 00:51:59.560 What happened to that other one? 00:51:59.560 --> 00:52:04.520 We left it intact, which I don't know if we'll do for this family. 00:52:04.520 --> 00:52:08.040 Why did we leave it if it was livable or wasn't? 00:52:08.040 --> 00:52:16.840 Well, because the human soul is a unified business. It's part of creation and goes 00:52:16.840 --> 00:52:22.320 through evolutionary processes. We were finished with that evolutionary process and we came 00:52:22.320 --> 00:52:23.320 to this planet. 00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:26.720 In spaceships or by reincarnating? 00:52:26.720 --> 00:52:32.800 It's on a celestial level. So it goes through the process of moving consciousness. Imagine 00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:39.840 this planet is exploding. What's left of human consciousness is the divine consciousness and 00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:45.120 the human consciousness, one consciousness that is humanity. 00:52:45.120 --> 00:52:50.680 And maybe some people have individual consciousnesses that are awake, but that's within the human 00:52:50.680 --> 00:52:51.680 consciousness. 00:52:51.680 --> 00:52:55.460 Well, if I understand what you're saying, so let's say a giant asteroid came and crashed 00:52:55.460 --> 00:52:58.920 into this planet and it became unlivable and we all died. 00:52:58.920 --> 00:53:03.040 I presume we would go somewhere and maybe we'd go to several different planets according 00:53:03.040 --> 00:53:07.920 to our tendencies, but let's say we all went to the same different planet, we would just 00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:13.960 obviously these bodies would be dead and we'd have to start all over in a new place. I imagine 00:53:13.960 --> 00:53:18.640 we'd have to start out as very preliminary life forms because it's not like highly evolved 00:53:18.640 --> 00:53:22.960 human organisms are all of a sudden getting it born. From whom would they be born? 00:53:22.960 --> 00:53:29.960 Yeah, I would imagine that's true. Imagine if an asteroid hit us, this planet, and we 00:53:29.960 --> 00:53:33.360 went to the next one, I think there's five more after this. 00:53:33.360 --> 00:53:38.360 Really? Are you saying there will be five more planets for humans to inhabit after this one? 00:53:38.360 --> 00:53:41.360 Yeah, that's my sense of knowing. 00:53:41.360 --> 00:53:47.360 Wow, that's interesting. I mean, anything could happen to this planet. In fact, there's something in 2032, 00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:53.360 there's an asteroid that has a 2% chance of hitting the Earth. I don't know if it would wipe us out, 00:53:53.360 --> 00:53:58.360 but it wouldn't be a nice day for whoever it hit. If it landed in the Pacific Ocean, 00:53:58.360 --> 00:54:03.000 Pacific Ocean, we'd probably have a mile-high tsunami come across California. 00:54:03.000 --> 00:54:05.960 You're in the right place. 00:54:05.960 --> 00:54:06.960 Yeah. 00:54:06.960 --> 00:54:07.960 Central to the country. 00:54:07.960 --> 00:54:08.960 Right. 00:54:08.960 --> 00:54:11.800 Yeah, they haven't finished building the ocean here. 00:54:11.800 --> 00:54:17.600 Now, some people say, let's say that all kinds of highly evolved beings are being born 00:54:17.600 --> 00:54:20.360 here now, in larger numbers perhaps. 00:54:20.360 --> 00:54:26.160 Maybe they've always been, but you hear about indigo children or there's this phenomenon 00:54:26.160 --> 00:54:30.280 with the telepathy tapes, if you've heard of that, and all these autistic kids are coming 00:54:30.280 --> 00:54:36.440 in with telepathic abilities. They say that they are kind of a harbinger of a major change 00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:41.360 that humanity is going to undergo. Which would get back to Elizabeth Marie's question, maybe 00:54:41.360 --> 00:54:45.420 you don't want to predict what's going to happen with the US government, but do you 00:54:45.420 --> 00:54:51.000 sense as many do, that humanity is in the midst of some kind of profound shift? And 00:54:51.000 --> 00:54:53.400 how do you see that playing out if you do? 00:54:53.400 --> 00:55:00.320 That's been going on every century that somebody says is a profound shift happening true right now 00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:06.100 But maybe there finally will be one and it has been I mean if you look at the 1800s compared to now 00:55:06.100 --> 00:55:09.240 It's pretty major shift, but a major shift. That's true 00:55:09.240 --> 00:55:15.800 Do I believe in people coming here to speed up the evolution of the planet? Yes 00:55:15.800 --> 00:55:18.240 there are 00:55:18.240 --> 00:55:22.640 Spiritual beings at the center of the planet and those at the fringes of the planet 00:55:22.640 --> 00:55:25.360 sending energy to 00:55:25.360 --> 00:55:28.800 Planet and to human humanity as in general 00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:33.000 So that does exist and that is continuing to exist 00:55:33.000 --> 00:55:35.600 do I believe that the 00:55:35.600 --> 00:55:42.560 Massacre masters or these celestial beings are making this kind of work. I think that's sort of what you get 00:55:42.560 --> 00:55:44.720 Seeing what happens 00:55:44.720 --> 00:55:46.720 with bated breath 00:55:46.720 --> 00:55:54.400 Yeah, I mean, you were saying earlier that a lot of stuff that happens here is just the 00:55:54.400 --> 00:56:00.480 surface manifestation of much deeper forces kind of playing tug of war. 00:56:00.480 --> 00:56:05.480 And when you say, I believe this, I mean, I believe a lot of stuff too, and intuitively 00:56:05.480 --> 00:56:09.420 it feels right, but I don't claim to have any kind of cosmic insight about it. 00:56:09.420 --> 00:56:12.680 And maybe it's just stuff I read in books that resonates with me. 00:56:12.680 --> 00:56:16.740 So when I'm asking you these questions, you say you actually travel in these realms, and 00:56:16.740 --> 00:56:21.400 so I'm saying, can you substantiate these kinds of beliefs with some kind of insight 00:56:21.400 --> 00:56:24.360 that you've gained from your ability to do so? 00:56:24.360 --> 00:56:25.680 They're available to me. 00:56:25.680 --> 00:56:28.180 I don't necessarily always go there. 00:56:28.180 --> 00:56:30.480 I believe in living in the now. 00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:32.280 That's a good idea, probably. 00:56:32.280 --> 00:56:35.760 So allowing things to unfold. 00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:40.560 That seems to be the fastest way this evolution happens through the storm. 00:56:40.560 --> 00:56:41.560 Good answer. 00:56:41.560 --> 00:56:43.000 - You don't spend a lot of time speculating 00:56:43.000 --> 00:56:45.400 about what's gonna happen to the world. 00:56:45.400 --> 00:56:48.560 - No, it's the same thing as speculating 00:56:48.560 --> 00:56:50.480 what happens when you die. 00:56:50.480 --> 00:56:51.880 - It's gonna happen. 00:56:51.880 --> 00:56:53.380 Your clothes won't fit anymore. 00:56:53.380 --> 00:56:56.200 And of course, there were people who specialized 00:56:56.200 --> 00:56:58.520 in that kind of thing, like Nostradamus, perhaps, 00:56:58.520 --> 00:57:02.520 or others who prognosticated, and sometimes correctly. 00:57:02.520 --> 00:57:04.720 In fact, most ancient cultures have prophecies 00:57:04.720 --> 00:57:06.480 about what they expect to happen 00:57:06.480 --> 00:57:09.200 over the next centuries or millennia. 00:57:09.200 --> 00:57:10.960 A lot of that stuff has come true. 00:57:10.960 --> 00:57:16.400 I used to do astrological charts for my patients before they came to try to figure out what 00:57:16.400 --> 00:57:21.680 was going on in their systems, what the prognosis was. 00:57:21.680 --> 00:57:28.120 So soul groups, we alluded to humanity as a soul group, but there are obviously subdivisions. 00:57:28.120 --> 00:57:34.080 There are national, maybe national groups, ethnic groups could be considered soul groups, 00:57:34.080 --> 00:57:35.080 family groups. 00:57:35.080 --> 00:57:41.560 the soul groups within humanity that have particular purposes in being here. 00:57:41.560 --> 00:57:49.720 So maybe share to grow wisdom, to grow loving kindness, grow healing. 00:57:49.720 --> 00:57:54.440 There's soul groups that people belong to as souls. 00:57:54.440 --> 00:58:00.200 Some people are aware of their soul groups, some people are not aware of them. Some people just 00:58:00.200 --> 00:58:06.680 know that they're influenced by them. And people know that they have a particular personality or 00:58:06.680 --> 00:58:13.160 characteristic. Are there soul groups whose mission it is to wreck havoc? Oh yeah, I think it goes both 00:58:13.160 --> 00:58:19.160 ways. The sharks and the jets. Yeah, I mean obviously there have been groups of people 00:58:19.160 --> 00:58:25.240 who've caused a lot of trouble. The Nazis and various other groups. Yeah, I mean there's 00:58:25.240 --> 00:58:27.240 Isn't it Rishas who are awake? 00:58:27.240 --> 00:58:29.240 Rishas is... 00:58:29.240 --> 00:58:31.240 You know what Rishas is? 00:58:31.240 --> 00:58:35.240 Yeah, yeah, some kind of negative or demonic being or force. 00:58:35.240 --> 00:58:37.240 And they're awake. Some of them are awake. 00:58:37.240 --> 00:58:40.240 But it doesn't mean that the forces of creation, 00:58:40.240 --> 00:58:43.240 the forces of destruction don't coexist. 00:58:43.240 --> 00:58:45.240 They do coexist. 00:58:45.240 --> 00:58:48.240 Yeah, Ravana in the Ramayana was said to be a highly evolved being 00:58:48.240 --> 00:58:51.240 who was like on the verge of enlightenment, 00:58:51.240 --> 00:58:54.240 but he was a Nasura. He was a negative dude. 00:58:54.240 --> 00:58:56.280 and causing a lot of trouble. 00:58:56.280 --> 00:58:57.940 And then when Rama finally killed him, 00:58:57.940 --> 00:59:00.100 then he got liberated right there. 00:59:00.100 --> 00:59:01.720 - That's a great story. 00:59:01.720 --> 00:59:02.640 - It's puzzling though, 00:59:02.640 --> 00:59:05.140 because this gets us back to the morality thing. 00:59:05.140 --> 00:59:08.520 I have this kind of quaint notion 00:59:08.520 --> 00:59:12.800 that higher evolution correlates 00:59:12.800 --> 00:59:14.600 with a kind of saintliness, you know? 00:59:14.600 --> 00:59:17.840 You become a good person, you become kind, compassionate, 00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:21.720 you don't harm people, you radiate a positive influence. 00:59:21.720 --> 00:59:29.360 And yet you hear instances like that of some being who is very highly evolved and who is playing a destructive role 00:59:29.360 --> 00:59:32.700 even hurting and harming lots of people 00:59:32.700 --> 00:59:39.080 Waking up does not show a moral behavior. They're quite the opposite 00:59:39.080 --> 00:59:42.720 Waking up is a separate line of development 00:59:42.720 --> 00:59:50.240 Developing morality is is the legal function is based after waking up 00:59:51.040 --> 00:59:55.800 There's got to be some scenes there, but keep growing after waking up. 00:59:55.800 --> 01:00:00.760 I don't believe that morality is a function of consciousness. 01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:03.760 More a function of personality development or something. 01:00:03.760 --> 01:00:06.760 It operates at certain stages. 01:00:06.760 --> 01:00:12.760 Learning to be a good human being is best to do before you wake up. 01:00:12.760 --> 01:00:15.760 Yeah, I've heard others say that too. 01:00:15.760 --> 01:00:20.400 Was it you whom I heard say that attaining higher levels of consciousness 01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:23.480 Magnifies both the positive and negative 01:00:23.480 --> 01:00:26.680 Qualities of your personality or did I hear that somewhere else? 01:00:26.680 --> 01:00:33.880 That's this that's a story true. You know, that's something I learned in Judaism. You mentioned Judaism 01:00:33.880 --> 01:00:38.760 It's a he doesn't believes that there is something that sits on your shoulder 01:00:39.480 --> 01:00:43.440 Orally speaking which is the good inclination to do good 01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:47.240 now this is showing the evil inclination to do harm and 01:00:47.240 --> 01:00:54.000 These are part of your existence of a human being and that grows with greater consciousness 01:00:54.000 --> 01:01:00.180 So the more you know, so the stronger both of these little beings become correct 01:01:00.180 --> 01:01:03.720 There's no end to the process of evil inclination 01:01:03.720 --> 01:01:07.080 It can do incredible harm as a lacking me 01:01:07.880 --> 01:01:15.880 That's very interesting. Do you think that that incredible harm if you could zoom out far enough would be in the interest of 01:01:15.880 --> 01:01:18.440 evolution of the universe 01:01:18.440 --> 01:01:25.460 Would you say that everything that happens if you could zoom out far enough is part of the evolutionary trajectory of the universe? 01:01:25.460 --> 01:01:34.040 Is astrophysicists who have predicted that the next galaxy close to the earth will collide with the 01:01:34.280 --> 01:01:39.400 looking at galaxy. Andromeda, it's coming. It's coming in two billion years or something 01:01:39.400 --> 01:01:45.520 like that. Something like that. So I can imagine the immense catastrophic destruction. Actually 01:01:45.520 --> 01:01:49.280 there won't be. The stars are so far apart that there'll be very few collisions. There'll 01:01:49.280 --> 01:01:53.720 just be a big mushing together and it'll all get misshapen for a while and it'll eventually 01:01:53.720 --> 01:01:58.480 kind of turn into another spiral galaxy once all the gravitational forces have worked themselves 01:01:58.480 --> 01:02:04.320 out. You know better than me. I study this stuff a little bit. Just imagine that, just 01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:10.800 level of instruction that are that significant. Yeah. It could be that significant. We're 01:02:10.800 --> 01:02:16.360 living in a small body, in a small planet, in a small part of the galaxy, as part of the 01:02:16.360 --> 01:02:24.040 universe that's immense. So to believe that we have this sort of specialness is an illusion. 01:02:24.040 --> 01:02:28.840 Yeah, I would agree with that. 01:02:28.840 --> 01:02:33.840 You think that the reason that what we were just talking about, the good angel and the 01:02:33.840 --> 01:02:40.520 bad angel on our shoulders, is a possible explanation for why so many gurus who appear 01:02:40.520 --> 01:02:47.640 to have pretty significant gifts, you know, highly evolved, radiate Shakti, eloquent and 01:02:47.640 --> 01:02:53.360 charismatic and so on, end up turning out to be sexual predators or scoundrels in some 01:02:53.360 --> 01:02:59.520 Is that because the bad angel has gotten strong along with the good angel and he kind of wins 01:02:59.520 --> 01:03:02.880 the day on this particular person? 01:03:02.880 --> 01:03:10.160 This touches on moral development again, and the idea that these traditions, these Eastern 01:03:10.160 --> 01:03:17.320 traditions and Western traditions have not trained morality in certain groups. 01:03:17.320 --> 01:03:21.680 They haven't trained morality as being important. 01:03:21.680 --> 01:03:26.640 Right, they just grew up in an ashram doing spiritual practice or whatever and didn't 01:03:26.640 --> 01:03:29.640 really have a lot of temptations for one thing. 01:03:29.640 --> 01:03:37.040 Yeah, and I heard of a Buddhist monk recently talking about how in Tibet sexual activity 01:03:37.040 --> 01:03:40.240 with a young boy is very common. 01:03:40.240 --> 01:03:41.800 I've heard that too. 01:03:41.800 --> 01:03:42.800 In Thailand also. 01:03:42.800 --> 01:03:43.800 In Thailand also. 01:03:43.800 --> 01:03:49.360 So the morality has got to be part of the teaching, you know, in the beginning. 01:03:49.360 --> 01:03:55.360 But what you're saying is that if it isn't perhaps, there's even a greater danger as you evolve. 01:03:55.360 --> 01:03:58.360 I would say don't wake up if you're evil. 01:03:58.360 --> 01:03:59.360 Yeah. 01:03:59.360 --> 01:04:02.360 Because you can become pretty nasty. 01:04:02.360 --> 01:04:09.360 It's taken me a while to accept that, but I've been pondering it for years because there are so many examples that force you to ponder it. 01:04:09.360 --> 01:04:15.840 And it's been hard for me to give up my notion of highly evolved people just being more saintly 01:04:15.840 --> 01:04:20.920 and spontaneously losing their negative tendencies. 01:04:20.920 --> 01:04:25.440 It happens when you reach the celestial chakra, the sixth chakra. 01:04:25.440 --> 01:04:31.080 If you have a positive personality and a positive soul, and you've integrated it well, then 01:04:31.080 --> 01:04:40.200 transcending it to waking up, it becomes a force for good. But that requires an integration. 01:04:40.200 --> 01:04:46.040 Yeah, this is from Mark in the UK. From your work as a therapist, 01:04:46.040 --> 01:04:51.720 was it your experience that mental emotional problems are always rooted in some subtle 01:04:51.720 --> 01:04:57.640 body disharmony? Or are there certain problems that are wholly physical, such as brain chemistry 01:04:57.640 --> 01:05:04.840 imbalances? Yeah, certain problems are totally physical and certain problems are based on 01:05:04.840 --> 01:05:12.440 the astral mental body, emotional thinking processes and there are some that come from 01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:20.840 past lifetimes, some of them are imposed by rotten childhoods. So when you were a therapist, 01:05:20.840 --> 01:05:26.800 you know, working in Los Angeles and you could tell that your client who was coming in, his 01:05:26.800 --> 01:05:33.720 problem sprang from bad past lifetimes or something wrong with his astral body or things like 01:05:33.720 --> 01:05:37.960 that. How did you prescribe any kind of treatment without seeming like a nutcase? 01:05:37.960 --> 01:05:45.560 Right, so you've got to work silently. So silently is energy. One of my lifetimes was 01:05:45.560 --> 01:05:52.980 as a healer, an energy healer in China. So I would work with moving energy through the 01:05:52.980 --> 01:05:56.860 different channels silently without talking to the person. 01:05:56.860 --> 01:06:02.020 And I would do that kind of work with clients while I'm doing therapy. 01:06:02.020 --> 01:06:05.640 So he might be lying on the couch or if you had your patients lie on the couch and spilling 01:06:05.640 --> 01:06:10.220 his guts telling you his life story, meanwhile you're messing around with his subtle body 01:06:10.220 --> 01:06:11.220 and you know. 01:06:11.220 --> 01:06:13.860 I haven't chewed yet. 01:06:13.860 --> 01:06:14.860 That's good. 01:06:14.860 --> 01:06:18.740 They got their money's worth that they didn't know they were getting. 01:06:18.740 --> 01:06:20.860 Good comment. 01:06:20.860 --> 01:06:23.620 How would you define the soul? 01:06:23.620 --> 01:06:27.060 You said the soul is always there, it is never not there, even between lifetimes. 01:06:27.060 --> 01:06:31.940 It is always becoming, evolving, it is distinct from the being or unchanging nature of pure 01:06:31.940 --> 01:06:32.940 awareness. 01:06:32.940 --> 01:06:36.820 So we have unchanging pure awareness, you know, universal consciousness, we all share 01:06:36.820 --> 01:06:41.140 that as our common ground, but then we have individual souls. 01:06:41.140 --> 01:06:43.340 What is that individual soul? 01:06:43.340 --> 01:06:48.700 I think I've heard you say it is the immortal or eternal, it's never going to cease to exist. 01:06:48.700 --> 01:06:52.300 No, it'll last forever. 01:06:52.300 --> 01:06:55.580 This universe will collapse and there'll be some other universe eventually. 01:06:55.580 --> 01:06:58.060 Our souls will still be kicking around. 01:06:58.060 --> 01:06:59.060 Hopefully. 01:06:59.060 --> 01:07:00.060 Yeah. 01:07:00.060 --> 01:07:02.500 So what is it? 01:07:02.500 --> 01:07:07.500 The soul is, well you've got, it's individual, it's also collective. 01:07:07.500 --> 01:07:10.140 Not just individual, it's collective too. 01:07:10.140 --> 01:07:16.660 It's evolving and growing and unfolding, lifetime after lifetime. 01:07:16.660 --> 01:07:21.620 And it's on a guided path to being more complete. 01:07:21.620 --> 01:07:22.620 More complete, okay. 01:07:22.620 --> 01:07:24.360 More complete, more full. 01:07:24.360 --> 01:07:25.740 So is this going to end? 01:07:25.740 --> 01:07:28.380 I don't believe it ever ends. 01:07:28.380 --> 01:07:30.500 But what is this nature? 01:07:30.500 --> 01:07:36.140 It's formed between absolute consciousness and physical consciousness. 01:07:36.140 --> 01:07:38.940 It's mediating the two. 01:07:38.940 --> 01:07:45.340 It arrives with my, I should talk for myself because talking about things like theoretically 01:07:45.340 --> 01:07:47.380 It's not going to be helpful. 01:07:47.380 --> 01:07:53.980 Talking about myself, I remember coming into this body as a soul, before birth. 01:07:53.980 --> 01:07:58.020 So after conception, but before birth. 01:07:58.020 --> 01:08:02.580 And arriving in this world as a soul, and the soul has been with me through the entire 01:08:02.580 --> 01:08:03.580 lifetime. 01:08:03.580 --> 01:08:10.540 I remember coming into this body as a soul, and then going through the different stages 01:08:10.540 --> 01:08:16.700 of psychological development and personality development and physical development while 01:08:16.700 --> 01:08:21.780 the soul is guiding the process and still doing it. 01:08:21.780 --> 01:08:23.940 Who am I? 01:08:23.940 --> 01:08:27.060 I'm free. 01:08:27.060 --> 01:08:28.940 Soul is transparent to me. 01:08:28.940 --> 01:08:30.620 It's there for a while. 01:08:30.620 --> 01:08:34.340 So you're deeper than the soul, more fundamental than the soul? 01:08:34.340 --> 01:08:39.180 More fundamental than the soul, but individuality is indefinite. 01:08:39.180 --> 01:08:42.140 So it is unity, it's indefinite. 01:08:42.140 --> 01:08:44.860 Indefinite meaning unending. 01:08:44.860 --> 01:08:49.620 When you think about the reincarnation process, for instance, people like Meher Baba had this 01:08:49.620 --> 01:08:56.180 whole explanation in his book God Speaks about how everything evolves up to higher and higher 01:08:56.180 --> 01:09:02.700 forms like rocks and then, you know, little amoebas and bugs and plants and lower life 01:09:02.700 --> 01:09:04.700 forms and more evolved life forms. 01:09:04.700 --> 01:09:08.200 But the problem is the math doesn't work out. 01:09:08.200 --> 01:09:13.600 If each of those has a soul that eventually evolves up to becoming a human being, because 01:09:13.600 --> 01:09:18.880 in a spoonful of earth you have probably millions of little microbes, and yet in our yard we 01:09:18.880 --> 01:09:23.440 have trillions of them I imagine, but there's only two human beings on the property. 01:09:23.440 --> 01:09:28.480 Again, you know, maybe this is just philosophy or maybe you have some kind of cosmic insight 01:09:28.480 --> 01:09:29.480 into it. 01:09:29.480 --> 01:09:31.680 I've raised this point before in interviews. 01:09:31.680 --> 01:09:36.080 Do all these little individual souls that these microbes and things have, if they have 01:09:36.080 --> 01:09:42.260 them conglomerate as more complex evolved beings come into form. 01:09:42.260 --> 01:09:46.480 Like a jellyfish is actually many, many, many different cells, or a human being is many, 01:09:46.480 --> 01:09:49.700 many different trillions of different cells. 01:09:49.700 --> 01:09:51.440 You know what I'm getting at? 01:09:51.440 --> 01:09:52.440 I got you. 01:09:52.440 --> 01:09:53.440 Yeah. 01:09:53.440 --> 01:09:56.960 How would I describe my experience of this? 01:09:56.960 --> 01:10:00.560 Once upon a time, elephants roamed this planet. 01:10:00.560 --> 01:10:01.560 Now there's very few left. 01:10:01.560 --> 01:10:02.560 Where have they gone? 01:10:02.560 --> 01:10:06.560 They haven't gone into human vehicles, no. 01:10:06.560 --> 01:10:08.560 They've gone to another planetary system. 01:10:08.560 --> 01:10:09.560 Oh, okay. 01:10:09.560 --> 01:10:11.560 So, they're not ready to become humans. 01:10:11.560 --> 01:10:14.960 They have to be elephants, but there aren't enough elephant bodies, so they have to go 01:10:14.960 --> 01:10:16.560 to some other planetary system. 01:10:16.560 --> 01:10:20.560 There are some other systems that may be more advanced than human beings. 01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:24.560 It doesn't mean that they can end up as human beings. 01:10:24.560 --> 01:10:31.560 Whereas, most cats and dogs, my experience is, they pass on, and if they're individuated 01:10:31.560 --> 01:10:37.240 than that, if they have character and personality, they might incarnate in a human form, perhaps. 01:10:37.240 --> 01:10:42.840 Or they might come back as a cat or a dog. Might come back as a cat or a dog, probably. 01:10:42.840 --> 01:10:46.680 So I'm not sure about this one garment idea. Nobody experienced that. 01:10:46.680 --> 01:10:53.960 Yeah, okay. But actually, what your statement raises is another question, which is how much 01:10:53.960 --> 01:10:59.240 interchange do you feel there is between different other planets, different other realms, 01:10:59.240 --> 01:11:05.320 and so on and so forth. Is the Earth just one of a thousand different potential stopping places 01:11:05.320 --> 01:11:11.720 that people happen to incarnate on or not, depending on the appropriateness of the 01:11:11.720 --> 01:11:19.000 available bodies? Well, I can talk about this from the level of knowing. Okay, that's what we like. 01:11:19.000 --> 01:11:25.240 So knowing 70% of the humans on this planet are part of humanity's consciousness. 01:11:26.120 --> 01:11:35.720 70%? 30% are from other systems. Okay. So some of them are bringing us down, some of us are raising 01:11:35.720 --> 01:11:43.160 up. That's the sort of balance of humanity. So when you say other systems, does that mean 01:11:43.160 --> 01:11:48.760 that they just incarnated here for the first time or have they been, they came from let's say, 01:11:48.760 --> 01:11:52.840 you know, the Pleiades or whatever and they've gone through numerous human lifetimes 01:11:52.840 --> 01:11:55.640 as Pleiadians in human bodies. 01:11:55.640 --> 01:11:59.400 Yes, some have been here for a couple of lifetimes, some are just the first lifetime. 01:11:59.400 --> 01:12:03.480 Some are going to move on quickly and some are going to stick around. 01:12:03.480 --> 01:12:09.880 One of my dear friends said that this planet has the best food in the galaxy. 01:12:09.880 --> 01:12:15.560 Sounds like the Hitchhiker's Guide, you know, Douglas Adams, the restaurant at the end of the 01:12:15.560 --> 01:12:20.360 universe. Well, that's hard to believe, actually, considering the food that we have here, but 01:12:20.360 --> 01:12:20.920 good to know. 01:12:22.120 --> 01:12:28.200 She's a pretty wise woman. I can read you some titles of some of the episodes of your podcast. 01:12:28.200 --> 01:12:34.520 Let me do that for a few minutes. I'll just read you titles and you tell me if you'd like to delve 01:12:34.520 --> 01:12:41.800 into the subject matter of those. Okay. It was a three-part series living as an individual, 01:12:41.800 --> 01:12:46.520 living as a soul and living as spirit. Do you remember what you talked about in those? And 01:12:46.520 --> 01:12:50.920 do you want to say anything more about that or have we covered it? I think I can talk about it. 01:12:50.920 --> 01:12:57.920 evolution, there are chakras, symbolically speaking, below the Muladhara, the chakra 01:12:57.920 --> 01:13:05.080 at the base of the spine. Those chakras are for the evolution of minerals, plants and 01:13:05.080 --> 01:13:10.800 animal life. And then human development begins with the Muladhara chakra and moves all the 01:13:10.800 --> 01:13:14.040 way up to the Ajna, the sixth chakra. 01:13:14.040 --> 01:13:19.800 So let me interrupt. So a tree, for instance, would have a certain set of chakras that are 01:13:19.800 --> 01:13:26.680 more basic or fundamental than the seven chakras humans have. There wouldn't be any overlap. 01:13:26.680 --> 01:13:30.360 We don't have tree chakras and trees don't have human chakras. Is that correct? 01:13:30.360 --> 01:13:32.920 Trees have chakras below the human. 01:13:32.920 --> 01:13:34.440 Below the human, okay. 01:13:34.440 --> 01:13:39.080 Except for individual trees that are ancient, very old and highly developed. 01:13:39.080 --> 01:13:40.360 Highly evolved, yeah. 01:13:40.360 --> 01:13:44.680 Yes, so I find myself talking to the tree, so to speak, as the song goes. 01:13:44.680 --> 01:13:47.680 And the tree is talking to me. 01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:51.680 There's a life in the tree and personality in the tree. 01:13:51.680 --> 01:13:55.680 But only very large and ancient trees. 01:13:55.680 --> 01:14:00.680 Beyond the human form is the divine levels of consciousness, 01:14:00.680 --> 01:14:05.680 which begins with waking up and moves through higher and higher planes. 01:14:05.680 --> 01:14:10.680 Are you saying that there's a whole other set of chakras above the human set? 01:14:10.680 --> 01:14:12.680 Seven of them, yeah. 01:14:12.680 --> 01:14:13.680 Seven higher ones? 01:14:13.680 --> 01:14:21.500 Yes, starting with this push. There's no sharp receiver until a celestial being or something would have those chakras and 01:14:21.500 --> 01:14:24.240 Which a human would not? 01:14:24.240 --> 01:14:27.940 Unless they were aware unless they were aware. Okay, so 01:14:27.940 --> 01:14:35.120 Remaining in a human body if you get highly evolved enough. Do you begin to wake up in those higher? 01:14:35.120 --> 01:14:38.060 post-human or above the human chakras 01:14:38.060 --> 01:14:40.040 certainly 01:14:40.040 --> 01:14:44.880 Consciousness does not stop with waking up, it just begins there. 01:14:44.880 --> 01:14:47.680 Divine consciousness. 01:14:47.680 --> 01:14:51.400 This is the realm of divinity. 01:14:51.400 --> 01:14:52.400 Divinity is consciousness. 01:14:52.400 --> 01:14:56.960 It kind of reminds me of my friend David Buckland who talks about these levels of realization 01:14:56.960 --> 01:15:01.040 of Brahman, Parabrahman, and then pure divinity. 01:15:01.040 --> 01:15:04.320 And I never know quite what he's talking about, but it sounds nice. 01:15:04.320 --> 01:15:06.520 Yeah, it kind of fits there. 01:15:06.520 --> 01:15:10.360 That's a symbolic way of understanding it. 01:15:10.360 --> 01:15:15.360 Not to get stuck in the chakra as a body, as a vehicle. 01:15:15.360 --> 01:15:19.400 It's just an image of what is there. 01:15:19.400 --> 01:15:24.320 I get the impression that it's a kind of an energy center or a locus of intelligence. 01:15:24.320 --> 01:15:27.080 Like for instance, the heart chakra. 01:15:27.080 --> 01:15:31.240 You might have a kind of a dead heart chakra, not much going on there, and at a certain 01:15:31.240 --> 01:15:34.080 point it opens up and you start experiencing a lot of love. 01:15:34.080 --> 01:15:35.080 It's a heart. 01:15:35.080 --> 01:15:39.080 Well, that's something you could probably elaborate on for half an hour. 01:15:39.080 --> 01:15:42.080 There's actually something going on there in the subtle body, 01:15:42.080 --> 01:15:45.080 some kind of purification or enlivenment. 01:15:45.080 --> 01:15:52.080 Right. So the etheric body is communicating with astral bodies, 01:15:52.080 --> 01:15:55.080 meaning intelligence or growth there, 01:15:55.080 --> 01:15:59.080 and up until the Buddhic body, which operates through these systems 01:15:59.080 --> 01:16:01.080 and empties through the heart. 01:16:01.080 --> 01:16:05.080 Well, that's something you could probably elaborate on for half an hour. 01:16:05.080 --> 01:16:11.080 I should remind people that a lot of this stuff is covered in greater detail in your podcast series. 01:16:11.080 --> 01:16:17.080 So, if people are finding this interesting, you can consider this interview to be kind of a teaser for the podcast series. 01:16:17.080 --> 01:16:21.080 Because you have a lot more time to elaborate. 01:16:21.080 --> 01:16:25.080 Must be 15 hours worth of recordings there now in your podcast. 01:16:25.080 --> 01:16:27.080 Okay. 01:16:27.080 --> 01:16:30.080 Some more podcast titles. 01:16:30.080 --> 01:16:32.080 Into the astral plane 01:16:32.080 --> 01:16:34.320 sounds like Flash Gordon 01:16:34.320 --> 01:16:40.120 We've discussed that a bit people travel in the astral plane after dropping their bodies 01:16:40.120 --> 01:16:45.480 You'd several friends who recently died and their experiences of traveling through the bardos or planes 01:16:45.480 --> 01:16:49.080 common misunderstandings about the astral planes also 01:16:49.080 --> 01:16:56.820 The misunderstanding is then the lower forms natural planets with when you're aware of it here now 01:16:57.160 --> 01:16:59.880 What do you see there? Other beings? 01:16:59.880 --> 01:17:01.320 Yeah, lots of beings. 01:17:01.320 --> 01:17:03.000 Very clear and clean. 01:17:03.000 --> 01:17:09.000 I think I've mentioned my physical body becoming transparent and astral projecting. 01:17:09.000 --> 01:17:10.040 So that was very clear. 01:17:10.040 --> 01:17:16.440 So into the astral plane for me was that that was the experience of astral projecting. 01:17:16.440 --> 01:17:21.240 But I'm aware of the astral plane without astral projecting. 01:17:21.240 --> 01:17:22.120 So it's here now. 01:17:22.120 --> 01:17:25.880 So what do you perceive when you're aware of it here now? 01:17:26.440 --> 01:17:28.840 What do you see there? Other beings? 01:17:28.840 --> 01:17:31.720 Yeah, lots of beings telling me what to say and tell you. 01:17:31.720 --> 01:17:33.800 Telling me to? 01:17:33.800 --> 01:17:35.960 Yeah, telling me to tell you. 01:17:35.960 --> 01:17:40.200 In other words, they're taking an interest in our conversation and there's certain things 01:17:40.200 --> 01:17:41.720 they want communicated. 01:17:41.720 --> 01:17:47.240 Correct. Tell me about my mother, how she's doing. Tell me about my cousin. 01:17:47.240 --> 01:17:51.880 Let them know that I'm okay. There's a lot going on. 01:17:52.680 --> 01:17:57.320 So when you went there and visited your mother after she died, was it just you and your mother? 01:17:57.320 --> 01:18:01.400 Or were there a bunch of other people around and, "Hey, we got an earthling here. Let's get him to..." 01:18:01.400 --> 01:18:04.600 No, it was just me and my mother. I just kept the focus there. 01:18:04.600 --> 01:18:05.240 Okay. 01:18:05.240 --> 01:18:07.240 Generally, I block out other beings. 01:18:07.240 --> 01:18:13.240 Are those beings, like, restless and needy? Like, they want something from you, 01:18:13.240 --> 01:18:16.920 or they're kind of attracted to somebody who can be aware of their presence? 01:18:16.920 --> 01:18:21.160 Kind of like, they heard lower astral planets came to bug me. 01:18:21.960 --> 01:18:25.400 Do you have a way of filtering that out so it's not hassling you? 01:18:25.400 --> 01:18:28.040 Yes, I just put attention elsewhere. 01:18:28.040 --> 01:18:33.000 Similarly, let's say you go on astral travel and you're visiting some astral plane and 01:18:33.000 --> 01:18:36.840 you don't want to mess around with the people who just sort of want something from you, 01:18:36.840 --> 01:18:42.040 but you know, you might have a mission. You'd like to commune with some higher beings who 01:18:42.040 --> 01:18:43.480 you could learn something from. 01:18:43.480 --> 01:18:45.400 Like him, like Swamiji. 01:18:45.400 --> 01:18:50.600 Yeah, like him. Okay, let's use him as an example. How many times have you visited him? 01:18:51.240 --> 01:18:52.240 20. 01:18:52.240 --> 01:18:53.240 20. 01:18:53.240 --> 01:18:56.240 How long do you stay there and what do you talk about? 01:18:56.240 --> 01:19:01.240 Usually it's for guidance or communing or sharing. 01:19:01.240 --> 01:19:06.240 You know, he's highly evolved except on the astral plane. 01:19:06.240 --> 01:19:10.240 That's where he was incarnated because he needs evolution there. 01:19:10.240 --> 01:19:14.240 So in other words, by the standards of the astral plane, he's not as highly evolved as 01:19:14.240 --> 01:19:15.240 he was by Earth standards. 01:19:15.240 --> 01:19:17.240 Is that what you're saying? 01:19:17.240 --> 01:19:25.400 No, that's the plane he was, he was arrogant and condescending and sexist. 01:19:25.400 --> 01:19:26.400 On the earth plane. 01:19:26.400 --> 01:19:27.400 And enlightened. 01:19:27.400 --> 01:19:28.400 Yeah. 01:19:28.400 --> 01:19:33.920 And a very high being and a very great giver of shakti and beauty. 01:19:33.920 --> 01:19:38.640 But when he left the physical body, he left a lot of that behind. 01:19:38.640 --> 01:19:40.760 So he wasn't sexist or condescending anymore? 01:19:40.760 --> 01:19:45.960 No. Condescending anymore. But now he's working on developing that part of himself that is 01:19:45.960 --> 01:19:55.080 astral, conscious of morality, hearing and giving. So that presumably if he came back he would be a 01:19:55.080 --> 01:20:01.000 more well-rounded human being without those negative qualities? Correct. Although one 01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:07.080 would imagine him not necessarily choosing to come back to this planet. You think he's beyond needing 01:20:07.080 --> 01:20:08.080 to. 01:20:08.080 --> 01:20:10.840 Yeah, it's a choice. 01:20:10.840 --> 01:20:14.880 Is it always or are we compelled to come back if this is where we need to be? 01:20:14.880 --> 01:20:19.960 Whether you're compelled, if you don't finish the journey, if you don't have a choice. 01:20:19.960 --> 01:20:20.960 Yeah. 01:20:20.960 --> 01:20:27.560 The Lords of Karma have created the structure so that the human soul will incarnate, will 01:20:27.560 --> 01:20:29.800 fall asleep and then be incarnated. 01:20:29.800 --> 01:20:32.560 Involuntarily, if this is what they need to have. 01:20:32.560 --> 01:20:36.880 Yeah, but if you achieve a certain level, then you have a choice. 01:20:36.880 --> 01:20:41.480 So what do you think about some of these so-called ascended masters like Jesus, or some people 01:20:41.480 --> 01:20:47.800 say they see Ramana Maharshi come to them, or Yogananda interacted with Sri Yukteswar 01:20:47.800 --> 01:20:51.680 after his guru Sri Yukteswar died. 01:20:51.680 --> 01:20:53.920 You know, you mentioned that the soul never dies. 01:20:53.920 --> 01:20:58.160 Do you think that that's what happens to some of these highly evolved beings? 01:20:58.160 --> 01:21:02.980 They just end up being ascended masters and work from that level, never having to come 01:21:02.980 --> 01:21:04.980 back to the earth plane? 01:21:04.980 --> 01:21:08.660 just can kind of intervene from on high so to speak? 01:21:08.660 --> 01:21:16.340 Good question because my awareness is that sooner or later one is incarnate somewhere 01:21:16.340 --> 01:21:17.340 in the galaxy. 01:21:17.340 --> 01:21:20.420 Or in the galaxies. 01:21:20.420 --> 01:21:21.420 Somewhere. 01:21:21.420 --> 01:21:24.860 By incarnate you mean in a more concrete form? 01:21:24.860 --> 01:21:25.860 Yeah. 01:21:25.860 --> 01:21:29.180 Because you are incarnate if you're just in the astral level, you're still incarnate, 01:21:29.180 --> 01:21:31.460 you're just incarnate in an astral body. 01:21:31.460 --> 01:21:35.460 Correct, or a mental body or a buddhic body. 01:21:35.460 --> 01:21:41.460 They are beings whose consciousness just incarnates to the mental body and then they go back up. 01:21:41.460 --> 01:21:45.460 They don't have more than that aspect to the development. 01:21:45.460 --> 01:21:49.460 But they can usually reach much higher than human evolution. 01:21:49.460 --> 01:21:57.460 And I suppose it's not only a matter of what they need, it's a matter of how they can be useful, where they may be needed. 01:21:57.460 --> 01:22:00.060 Well, we're all being used. 01:22:00.060 --> 01:22:03.260 We're all a function of consciousness operating. 01:22:03.260 --> 01:22:07.940 Incidentally, your wife Connie wrote a book called "Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual 01:22:07.940 --> 01:22:11.540 Path" and there's an episode that you guys do about that. 01:22:11.540 --> 01:22:16.380 We've kind of talked about that, about shadow material stored in the subtle body and so 01:22:16.380 --> 01:22:22.140 on, about how a person can be highly evolved and yet still have a lot of darkness in their 01:22:22.140 --> 01:22:23.140 personality. 01:22:23.140 --> 01:22:30.020 Each one of the chakras is supposed to contain shadow material. 01:22:30.020 --> 01:22:32.780 Which can and should be purged or cleansed? 01:22:32.780 --> 01:22:38.020 As long as you've lived in that body for a while and they're part of your character, you've 01:22:38.020 --> 01:22:41.020 got a connection with it. 01:22:41.020 --> 01:22:44.060 You've resolved some of the issues. 01:22:44.060 --> 01:22:49.500 You're skipping it, like a lot of people move straight from an individual to seventh chakra 01:22:49.500 --> 01:22:50.500 to the awakeness. 01:22:50.500 --> 01:22:52.500 Awakeness, and you've got all this 01:22:52.500 --> 01:22:55.540 Complex 01:22:55.540 --> 01:23:00.980 Issues in the chakras that are buggy. Yeah spiritual bypassing is sometimes called 01:23:00.980 --> 01:23:06.540 Special bypass. Yeah to cosmic to be beyond the possibility of making mistakes 01:23:06.540 --> 01:23:13.020 Yeah beyond the evil inclination and it's interesting in that quote because barley flour would be a very fine thing 01:23:13.020 --> 01:23:16.300 So in a way he's saying you have to get more precise 01:23:17.060 --> 01:23:22.140 You know the more vast your awareness becomes the more fine-tuned you need to be 01:23:22.140 --> 01:23:24.300 very few 01:23:24.300 --> 01:23:27.540 Religious traditions emphasize that very few 01:23:27.540 --> 01:23:32.060 In them is one that I found it besides that that's good 01:23:32.060 --> 01:23:36.460 The higher you get the study which is the enlightened being 01:23:36.460 --> 01:23:39.380 is supposed to actually have 01:23:39.380 --> 01:23:41.780 very 01:23:41.780 --> 01:23:46.580 Careful about anything that they did razor's edge razor's edge 01:23:46.580 --> 01:23:53.420 The reason I bring that point up is that I try to live by it myself to the best I can, 01:23:53.420 --> 01:23:56.700 and I just feel like it's an important point for people to understand, because everyone 01:23:56.700 --> 01:24:02.380 who listens to this show is a spiritual aspirant of some kind, and it's good to kind of drill 01:24:02.380 --> 01:24:06.300 that thought into our heads to save ourselves a lot of grief. 01:24:06.300 --> 01:24:12.300 It's also why I helped to establish that organization, which Connie's a member of, the Association 01:24:12.300 --> 01:24:14.140 for Spiritual Integrity. 01:24:14.140 --> 01:24:19.820 It needs to be more commonly understood, I think, in contemporary spirituality for things 01:24:19.820 --> 01:24:23.300 to go more smoothly and successfully for everybody. 01:24:23.300 --> 01:24:24.300 See you on Monday. 01:24:24.300 --> 01:24:28.020 Oh yeah, you're coming on Monday? 01:24:28.020 --> 01:24:31.180 We're having a webinar tomorrow, or Monday. 01:24:31.180 --> 01:24:32.820 Okay, this is a good one. 01:24:32.820 --> 01:24:34.860 I don't think we've totally covered this. 01:24:34.860 --> 01:24:37.380 Debunking the myths of enlightenment. 01:24:37.380 --> 01:24:41.800 We've covered some of it, but what do you see as some common myths or understandings 01:24:41.800 --> 01:24:46.520 about enlightenment which you feel are erroneous. 01:24:46.520 --> 01:24:53.440 In cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness, some higher level of consciousness, 01:24:53.440 --> 01:24:57.280 you automatically do right action. 01:24:57.280 --> 01:25:03.280 It's one of the most serious needs that needs to be debunked. 01:25:03.280 --> 01:25:07.700 So let's say you're in one of those states of consciousness, what is the motivator or 01:25:07.700 --> 01:25:10.280 impetus of your action? 01:25:10.280 --> 01:25:14.400 It's naturally spontaneous. 01:25:14.400 --> 01:25:15.520 What's prompting it? 01:25:15.520 --> 01:25:16.720 What's triggering it? 01:25:16.720 --> 01:25:17.720 Your actions? 01:25:17.720 --> 01:25:23.640 Pure awareness is triggering your actions, but like I said, rakshasas can be enlightened 01:25:23.640 --> 01:25:24.860 as well. 01:25:24.860 --> 01:25:30.400 So one always needs to filter it through moral development, which is a whole separate line 01:25:30.400 --> 01:25:32.400 of development. 01:25:32.400 --> 01:25:37.320 So it's not just that cosmic intelligence and its infinite goodness is using you as an 01:25:37.320 --> 01:25:43.480 instrument for its divine purposes, you could be in a fairly high state of consciousness 01:25:43.480 --> 01:25:50.220 and yet have all kinds of twisted wiring that is causing you to misbehave and that is garbling 01:25:50.220 --> 01:25:54.500 perhaps the impulses of cosmic intelligence. 01:25:54.500 --> 01:26:00.500 Belonging in a community of spiritual equals is good because then you have people who can 01:26:00.500 --> 01:26:02.700 check up and tell you that's wrong behavior. 01:26:02.700 --> 01:26:08.700 Yeah, it can be handy to be married too by the same token. You got a mirror there. 01:26:08.700 --> 01:26:14.620 Yeah, marriage is probably one of the most complex spiritually developing 01:26:14.620 --> 01:26:17.020 tool that you can have. Very powerful. 01:26:17.020 --> 01:26:23.100 Yeah, I mean, I was like some kind of a monk for about 15 years before I got married and 01:26:23.100 --> 01:26:27.500 hanging around a bunch of other guys who were living that life and you could get pretty weird 01:26:27.500 --> 01:26:32.860 without anybody calling you on your stuff. You could get deep into your idiosyncrasies and your 01:26:32.860 --> 01:26:39.500 obsessions and so on. I've seen it even in other traditions. I visited a Catholic monastery one 01:26:39.500 --> 01:26:43.740 time that the TM movement was considering buying and there were some monks there who just seemed 01:26:43.740 --> 01:26:48.540 like total oddballs. They just didn't have any kind of balancing influence on their lives. 01:26:48.540 --> 01:26:55.980 Yeah, so you know the path of the household is probably one of the best paths and 01:26:57.100 --> 01:26:59.900 Get married, you can have children, have them. 01:26:59.900 --> 01:27:03.060 They can blow your heart open. 01:27:03.060 --> 01:27:07.100 Have a calling or purpose to help humanity. 01:27:07.100 --> 01:27:11.060 We kind of glossed over it, but that sort of saved your life when you were a lot younger. 01:27:11.060 --> 01:27:17.820 You know, you were just like a meditation fanatic and you're wasting away and getting very weak and sick. 01:27:17.820 --> 01:27:21.420 Yeah, I was meditating five or six hours a day. 01:27:21.420 --> 01:27:27.020 And I was getting sicker and sicker to the point that I went to see the spiritual master. 01:27:27.020 --> 01:27:31.580 He told me, I can get you to have sex with as many women as you like. 01:27:31.580 --> 01:27:33.660 I said, not interested. 01:27:33.660 --> 01:27:36.340 I can get you an enormous amount of power. 01:27:36.340 --> 01:27:38.540 He said, no, I'm just saying, how about money? 01:27:38.540 --> 01:27:39.500 I said, no, I'm just saying. 01:27:39.500 --> 01:27:42.140 He said, you're going to die in four months. 01:27:42.140 --> 01:27:45.060 What I need to do is not die in four months. 01:27:45.060 --> 01:27:50.860 He said, go find a partner, have sex, follow your career, get married. 01:27:50.860 --> 01:27:53.260 Get grounded. 01:27:53.260 --> 01:27:54.380 Get grounded. 01:27:54.380 --> 01:27:55.460 I did for 20 years. 01:27:56.620 --> 01:28:02.020 Some people say that an enlightened person feels pain but doesn't suffer. 01:28:02.020 --> 01:28:03.940 I guess they're detached. 01:28:03.940 --> 01:28:07.300 I've even heard some say that Jesus didn't suffer. 01:28:07.300 --> 01:28:11.620 His body felt pain, but he was in the realm of bliss, so he didn't suffer. 01:28:11.620 --> 01:28:13.980 Do you distinguish between pain and suffering? 01:28:13.980 --> 01:28:14.980 I do. 01:28:14.980 --> 01:28:21.240 I remember sitting in the Sessom group with you and having a migraine and concentrating 01:28:21.240 --> 01:28:25.420 my attention on getting awake with the migraine. 01:28:25.420 --> 01:28:27.020 I hope I didn't give you that migraine. 01:28:27.020 --> 01:28:30.020 No, it took me about an hour and a half. 01:28:30.020 --> 01:28:33.420 But I woke up and the migraine was gone. 01:28:33.420 --> 01:28:36.420 Really? You had an awakening there in the Satsang group and the migraine was gone? 01:28:36.420 --> 01:28:37.820 And the migraine was gone. 01:28:37.820 --> 01:28:40.520 So, you know, I notice if I have a headache, 01:28:40.520 --> 01:28:43.720 if I put attention on the cosmos or the galaxy, 01:28:43.720 --> 01:28:46.320 then the headache's gone. 01:28:46.320 --> 01:28:50.120 I bring my attention to the body, then the headache's there. 01:28:50.120 --> 01:28:52.120 Suffering is optional. 01:28:52.120 --> 01:28:55.640 Pain is not optional, one is going to experience it. 01:28:55.640 --> 01:29:01.560 So let's say you had a bad car accident or you suffered third degree burns for some reason or something like that. 01:29:01.560 --> 01:29:05.720 And so there was a lot of pain in your body that you weren't going to be able to skip out on. 01:29:05.720 --> 01:29:08.600 How would you deal with that? 01:29:08.600 --> 01:29:13.080 Well, probably be present with it as much as possible. 01:29:13.080 --> 01:29:17.000 Some form of good drugs like morphine. 01:29:17.000 --> 01:29:18.600 You're right. 01:29:18.600 --> 01:29:21.000 So take me out of the body awareness, 01:29:21.000 --> 01:29:21.960 help me with it. 01:29:21.960 --> 01:29:24.720 Probably be meditating a lot 01:29:24.720 --> 01:29:28.160 and moving my attention to subtle bodies. 01:29:28.160 --> 01:29:30.400 But you know, there's that distinction. 01:29:30.400 --> 01:29:34.720 You can sit with a headache or terrible pain, 01:29:34.720 --> 01:29:37.440 be present with it and not suffer. 01:29:37.440 --> 01:29:38.280 - Yeah. 01:29:38.280 --> 01:29:39.280 - In the moment, 01:29:39.280 --> 01:29:41.200 because you're expanded enough 01:29:41.200 --> 01:29:44.080 that your consciousness is not bound 01:29:44.080 --> 01:29:47.520 by a specific point of pain. 01:29:47.520 --> 01:29:51.520 In fact, pain can actually help you to wake up like it did for me in the Satsang. 01:29:51.520 --> 01:29:56.680 Yeah, there's a story about Sri Ramakrishna where he was dying of cancer or something 01:29:56.680 --> 01:30:02.680 and one of his disciples came to him and he said to him, "Sir, you know, everyone says 01:30:02.680 --> 01:30:06.200 you're suffering so much, but I see you, you are in bliss." 01:30:06.200 --> 01:30:07.960 And Sri Ramakrishna said, "Aha! 01:30:07.960 --> 01:30:09.400 The rascal has found me out." 01:30:09.400 --> 01:30:11.400 Oh, that's so cute. 01:30:11.400 --> 01:30:12.400 Yeah. 01:30:12.400 --> 01:30:18.000 Yeah, a nice section about service as a path, if you want to say anything about that. 01:30:18.000 --> 01:30:23.840 Yeah, I can talk about psychologists or being a psychotherapist and how it helped me to 01:30:23.840 --> 01:30:30.320 evolve because it had a lot to do with being hundred centered. So it took my attention away 01:30:30.320 --> 01:30:37.680 from my ego and my self-preoccupation and focused the whole day on other beings, other people. 01:30:38.880 --> 01:30:45.360 It has a lot of rules, ethical rules, that are not optional. They're compulsory. 01:30:45.360 --> 01:30:48.480 Yeah, you lose your license or even go to jail if you break them. 01:30:48.480 --> 01:30:56.080 Correct. So you learn to be compassionate and ethical in your behavior. And it's really 01:30:56.080 --> 01:31:03.840 wonderful to have a career vocation that helps you to be conscious of loving kindness and empathy and 01:31:04.400 --> 01:31:11.680 honesty. You know, you can't charge too much money because that would be abusive to the other person. 01:31:11.680 --> 01:31:17.120 And it just doesn't matter. I mean, there's many careers and many vocations that offer this 01:31:17.120 --> 01:31:23.680 path of opening the heart, throat, and the brush of this. 01:31:23.680 --> 01:31:28.320 There are, and it's fun to be able to do that kind of thing. And of course, 01:31:28.320 --> 01:31:32.400 you could be a Walmart greeter or something and brighten people's day. You know, 01:31:32.400 --> 01:31:39.360 that could be a service role. That builds a heart, a connection. Even if you love animals. 01:31:39.360 --> 01:31:45.120 Yeah, there's this guy named Ellie Recht whom I interviewed a couple of months ago and he's 01:31:45.120 --> 01:31:50.960 a psychotherapist down in San Diego and he charges a reasonable fee for his psychotherapy sessions and 01:31:50.960 --> 01:31:56.080 that's how he supports himself but he also does spiritual work and counseling with people all 01:31:56.080 --> 01:32:01.120 over the world especially since his Bat Cap interview. I think he gotistical and more 01:32:01.120 --> 01:32:04.480 heart-oriented and more compassionate and so on. 01:32:04.480 --> 01:32:06.880 But he gives all the money to an animal shelter. 01:32:06.880 --> 01:32:10.840 He's like giving them $3,000 since his Bat Cap interview. 01:32:10.840 --> 01:32:12.240 It's a wonderful-- - You did a good work, Rick. 01:32:12.240 --> 01:32:14.880 - Yeah, it's a nice balance. 01:32:14.880 --> 01:32:16.880 And of course, there's so many different ways 01:32:16.880 --> 01:32:18.720 in which we can be of service. 01:32:18.720 --> 01:32:21.680 But it is a standard spiritual path, Seva, 01:32:21.680 --> 01:32:25.280 and it's highly advocated by many spiritual teachers 01:32:25.280 --> 01:32:28.200 as a way of making us less egotistical 01:32:28.200 --> 01:32:31.600 and more heart-oriented and more compassionate and so on. 01:32:31.600 --> 01:32:34.240 It's gonna be a powerful practice. 01:32:34.240 --> 01:32:37.120 - Yes, it's good to have it being large. 01:32:37.120 --> 01:32:40.260 - Okay, here's somebody named Josh Davis from LA. 01:32:40.260 --> 01:32:43.240 I don't know if he means Louisiana or Los Angeles. 01:32:43.240 --> 01:32:45.600 The question is, what is the relationship 01:32:45.600 --> 01:32:49.080 between consciousness and the body-heart? 01:32:49.080 --> 01:32:53.100 In other words, the physical body and the emotional nature. 01:32:53.100 --> 01:32:56.560 My experience with consciousness has been mostly or only 01:32:56.560 --> 01:32:58.720 in the upper space of my head, 01:32:58.720 --> 01:33:02.140 whereas my body heart may feel afflicted. 01:33:02.140 --> 01:33:04.520 Does the body heart, he's using a slash there, 01:33:04.520 --> 01:33:07.280 body slash heart, have consciousness? 01:33:07.280 --> 01:33:11.120 - My experience is that the body is as important 01:33:11.120 --> 01:33:14.800 as the subtle realms or as consciousness. 01:33:14.800 --> 01:33:17.540 In fact, the body is consciousness. 01:33:17.540 --> 01:33:21.240 So my body is not local, just local. 01:33:21.240 --> 01:33:22.720 It's here in this room. 01:33:22.720 --> 01:33:25.960 It's with you, Rick, in your living room. 01:33:25.960 --> 01:33:27.400 It's on the other side of the planet, 01:33:27.400 --> 01:33:30.160 it's on the other side of the galaxy. 01:33:30.160 --> 01:33:33.700 You need to develop the being grounded in the body, 01:33:33.700 --> 01:33:40.340 because it's what opens up all of these amazing experiences. 01:33:40.340 --> 01:33:44.640 It's not essential for being awake or being enlightened, 01:33:44.640 --> 01:33:49.640 but it's essential for higher levels, or after that. 01:33:49.640 --> 01:33:52.360 - Just to make sure that's clear, 01:33:52.360 --> 01:33:55.800 it's essential that you be grounded in the physical body 01:33:55.800 --> 01:34:00.120 as you develop these subtler, subtler awarenesses, 01:34:00.120 --> 01:34:01.840 or openness to subtler bodies. 01:34:01.840 --> 01:34:03.640 Is that what you said, or did I miss it? 01:34:03.640 --> 01:34:06.280 - Yeah, no, it's more complex than that. 01:34:06.280 --> 01:34:10.240 The physical body is pure consciousness. 01:34:10.240 --> 01:34:11.760 - In the sense that everything is, right? 01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:13.480 The bed is pure consciousness. 01:34:13.480 --> 01:34:14.720 - Everything is pure consciousness. 01:34:14.720 --> 01:34:17.880 So being aware of the physical body as pure consciousness 01:34:17.880 --> 01:34:21.260 means that you're not bound to locality. 01:34:22.300 --> 01:34:26.780 your physical body can be in another galaxy. 01:34:26.780 --> 01:34:27.740 - Your subtle body? 01:34:27.740 --> 01:34:30.580 I mean, the other galaxy is, let's say stars and planets 01:34:30.580 --> 01:34:31.420 and all that other stuff, 01:34:31.420 --> 01:34:33.740 which are essentially pure consciousness, 01:34:33.740 --> 01:34:36.620 just as your physical body is pure consciousness. 01:34:36.620 --> 01:34:38.380 But that's like saying, okay, 01:34:38.380 --> 01:34:41.500 a grapefruit in your refrigerator is pure consciousness, 01:34:41.500 --> 01:34:44.220 so the grapefruit is also in another galaxy 01:34:44.220 --> 01:34:45.500 because it's pure consciousness, 01:34:45.500 --> 01:34:47.500 and that doesn't make sense. 01:34:47.500 --> 01:34:51.800 - No, so pure consciousness in the body. 01:34:51.800 --> 01:34:53.080 It's also personal. 01:34:53.080 --> 01:34:56.320 I have a master in another galaxy 01:34:56.320 --> 01:34:58.880 that I commune with. 01:34:58.880 --> 01:35:03.320 He's been my guide for the last seven lifetimes. 01:35:03.320 --> 01:35:06.680 And he's not in this galaxy, so I go visit him. 01:35:06.680 --> 01:35:08.400 So is that physical? 01:35:08.400 --> 01:35:10.920 In part, it feels physical. 01:35:10.920 --> 01:35:13.260 It's not this body. 01:35:13.260 --> 01:35:15.400 This body's in the room here now 01:35:15.400 --> 01:35:17.360 while I'm with him in another galaxy. 01:35:17.360 --> 01:35:20.040 - You've heard the term complementarity in physics 01:35:20.040 --> 01:35:25.040 where a particle or a photon can change its polarity 01:35:25.040 --> 01:35:27.720 on one side of the galaxy and its counterpart 01:35:27.720 --> 01:35:29.280 that it's split off from or something 01:35:29.280 --> 01:35:31.360 instantly changes on the other side of the galaxy 01:35:31.360 --> 01:35:32.860 and they've proven this. 01:35:32.860 --> 01:35:35.080 So there's some level which is not constrained 01:35:35.080 --> 01:35:38.560 by the speed of light and everything is correlated 01:35:38.560 --> 01:35:39.400 on that level. 01:35:39.400 --> 01:35:41.360 So when you talk this way, it sounds to me 01:35:41.360 --> 01:35:43.440 like you're talking about that kind of thing 01:35:43.440 --> 01:35:45.040 'cause otherwise it would be absurd to say 01:35:45.040 --> 01:35:47.260 that your flesh and blood physical body, 01:35:47.260 --> 01:35:49.720 which is here and will eventually die, 01:35:49.720 --> 01:35:53.080 is two million light years away and some other, 01:35:53.080 --> 01:35:56.740 it's the subtle level that's somehow functioning there 01:35:56.740 --> 01:35:58.720 that you can actually function through 01:35:58.720 --> 01:36:00.640 given your level of experience. 01:36:00.640 --> 01:36:03.960 - Almas talks about the vajra body, which is the-- 01:36:03.960 --> 01:36:05.200 - Diamond body. 01:36:05.200 --> 01:36:09.120 - It's a diamond body, it's physical, but it's immortal. 01:36:09.120 --> 01:36:13.160 - But it must be subtle, it's not like liver and spleen 01:36:13.160 --> 01:36:15.960 and lungs and intestines. - It's subtle, 01:36:15.960 --> 01:36:20.280 I have this idea that maybe in the next lifetime, 01:36:20.280 --> 01:36:22.480 or when I evolve enough, 01:36:22.480 --> 01:36:26.360 that I'll be able to manifest my perception 01:36:26.360 --> 01:36:27.440 in this physical world, 01:36:27.440 --> 01:36:29.480 even though I don't have a physical body. 01:36:29.480 --> 01:36:32.680 Not my action, my perception. 01:36:32.680 --> 01:36:34.840 - In this physical world, the one you're in now? 01:36:34.840 --> 01:36:35.680 - Yeah. 01:36:35.680 --> 01:36:36.500 - Well, sure you will. 01:36:36.500 --> 01:36:39.460 I mean, if let's say you die, like your mother did, 01:36:39.460 --> 01:36:42.080 there are a lot of people who live on some other level 01:36:42.080 --> 01:36:44.480 who can tune into what we're doing here. 01:36:44.480 --> 01:36:45.520 Is that what you mean? 01:36:45.520 --> 01:36:48.520 Right. That's what I mean. 01:36:48.520 --> 01:36:53.880 That seems fairly common, from what you hear anyway, that they're watching over us, messing 01:36:53.880 --> 01:37:00.320 with us sometimes. We've been jumping around a little bit from topic to topic, not necessarily 01:37:00.320 --> 01:37:06.720 a perfectly logical sequence, but who cares? It's been a nice sampling, I think, of different 01:37:06.720 --> 01:37:11.440 insights that I got from listening to your podcast series and that I've been thinking 01:37:11.440 --> 01:37:16.520 about myself for a long time and it's fun to hash them out with you. 01:37:16.520 --> 01:37:17.520 Thank you. 01:37:17.520 --> 01:37:21.920 As I said in the beginning, I'll put links to your podcast series. 01:37:21.920 --> 01:37:26.980 I already have created a page for your interview on Batgap and it'll link to it on Spotify 01:37:26.980 --> 01:37:31.440 and Apple Podcasts and there's other places you can get it. 01:37:31.440 --> 01:37:36.920 If people enjoyed this interview, I encourage you to listen to that podcast if you're in 01:37:36.920 --> 01:37:38.680 the habit of listening to podcasts. 01:37:38.680 --> 01:37:39.680 Thank you. 01:37:39.680 --> 01:37:42.520 - Yeah, so thank you and Connie both. 01:37:42.520 --> 01:37:44.960 And she does an excellent job, by the way, in your podcast. 01:37:44.960 --> 01:37:46.640 I think she asks great questions 01:37:46.640 --> 01:37:49.680 and very intelligent comments and so on. 01:37:49.680 --> 01:37:52.080 It's been a lot of fun to listen to. 01:37:52.080 --> 01:37:53.900 - Thank you, I appreciate it. 01:37:53.900 --> 01:37:55.640 - So hope to see you again in person one of these days 01:37:55.640 --> 01:37:58.640 if I ever get out to Los Angeles, if you're still there. 01:37:58.640 --> 01:38:00.160 - Yeah, come and visit. 01:38:00.160 --> 01:38:01.280 - I will. 01:38:01.280 --> 01:38:02.120 - All right, take care. 01:38:02.120 --> 01:38:03.800 - Don't crash, I'll bring the dogs. 01:38:03.800 --> 01:38:05.160 All right, thanks, Neil. 01:38:05.160 --> 01:38:07.440 Thanks everybody who's been listening or watching. 01:38:07.440 --> 01:38:11.020 And the next one will be with Diane Hennessey Powell. 01:38:11.020 --> 01:38:12.320 I interviewed her a couple of weeks ago, 01:38:12.320 --> 01:38:13.800 but we ended up not using that one. 01:38:13.800 --> 01:38:15.720 So we're gonna redo it next week. 01:38:15.720 --> 01:38:17.480 And she is the chief scientist 01:38:17.480 --> 01:38:20.240 on the Telepathy Tapes podcast, 01:38:20.240 --> 01:38:23.080 which is currently one of the most popular podcasts 01:38:23.080 --> 01:38:24.840 in the world for obvious reasons. 01:38:24.840 --> 01:38:26.740 If you listen to it, you'll see why. 01:38:26.740 --> 01:38:28.620 So we're gonna talk about the whole science 01:38:28.620 --> 01:38:31.200 behind the Telepathy Tapes next time. 01:38:31.200 --> 01:38:32.040 Thanks everybody. 01:38:32.040 --> 01:38:34.620 (upbeat music) 01:38:34.620 --> 01:38:56.380 Thank you.