¶ Introduction to Dan Kelso
I was managing a department, I had to have meetings, I had to give talks, I had to do presentations. And I remember at Apple, in the middle of a training exercise for a bunch of managers, and then just going, who's standing up here talking, you know, really looking in, and then just like I was another person, I was just floating awareness in the room. There's Dan, waving his arms, and pointing at the board, and going on, and I have nothing to do with it. It's just running on its own.
experiencing that sense of space was just very profound and never left welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump my name is Rick Archer Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people I've done seven hundred and thirty something of them now and uh... If you are not familiar with this and you'd like to check out the archive, go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and you'll see them categorized in various ways.
This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. That's really our only means of support, so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the site and a page about alternatives to PayPal.
Also, it helps in terms of viewership if you like or and subscribe and so on when you're watching a YouTube video It helps with Google's algorithm in terms of making the thing accessible to more people So my guest today is Dan Kelso Dan worked at a number of companies as a human factors engineer If he wants he can explain to us what human factors is but it's not too relevant to our interview Dan's first love was always spiritual exploration in 2011 after a number of years of trial and error
refining the process of self-inquiry
¶ What is Deep Self Investigation (DSI)?
into deep self-investigation There came an undeniable recognition that he was not a separate self simply no one at all There was only this the selfless this Aware existence this became his permanent condition Soon after from a certain perspective Dan left a successful corporate position and his old life Following an intuitive impulse to be in a more free natural and creative circumstance He now lives with his wife Victoria in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina
Loving nature exploring various forms of artistic expression and guiding others to awakening. I read Dan's book Deep self-investigation a modern guide to awakening and a lot of our conversation will be based upon that So Dan welcome Thanks, sir. Inviting me. You're welcome somebody from Scotland David Hill sent in a question, which is a good opening question, which is how did you discover deep self-investigation? while having no free will he asks and
And that's another question we might get into, whether we do have free will. There's a lot of these paradoxical questions that I think we're going to tussle with today. >>Joseph: Well, I think that's actually a deeper question. Deep self-investigation, it's really just modified, maybe in some ways updated for Western thought,
version of self-inquiry, which is an ancient practice. I think most people know it in the non-dual or Advaita lineage in India and in the East, but it's, you see it cropping up in philosophy and even in some ways I would say neuroscience. You're seeing that like Sam Harris, I think. - I was just thinking of him. - That connection, yeah. And so deep self-investigation of DSI is really just
¶ The Scientific Approach: Direct Experience Over Intellect
the way I made that more palatable in my own experience trying to investigate this sense of self that seems so persistent. What is the problem with having a sense of self, if there is a problem? And maybe you should also define what do we mean by sense of self? Because I think it has many flavors or many points on a spectrum of what it could be. Well, yeah, so initially I think the sense of self as, let's say, relatively speaking, as somebody's reflecting on it. It's more how
they think of themselves. So, who they are as a person, are they a man or a woman, their job, the things they like, their hobbies. It starts on that level. And then as you investigate that, you go, "Well, I'm a postman, but I'm not really a postman. I just do postal service." So that's not exactly who I am. So I think as you as you begin to look at it and question it, you gradually and naturally, I think, drop through sort of the
universal layers of that, the superficial layer of labels. And then there's, well, I'm a body or I'm a body mind. And then as you look at that, it's the same thing. If I lose a part of my body, do I go with it? Am I now in two locations at once? It just progresses through that. And then you end up with very subtle elements of yourself. It's like, well, I'm not exactly the body and I'm not exactly the mind, but I seem to be in there somewhere.
And so we begin to explore this subtle sense of who we are. I don't know if you want me to answer the first question, like, what's the problem? Well, let me bounce back something to you now and then we can keep going. Are you familiar with the Advaita Vedanta breakdown of the personality structure. There's a bunch of layers that they outline. Yeah. In traditional Advaita. Yeah, yeah. So you have the Anamaya Kosha, which is the physical body. I think you're more familiar with it than I am.
So, yeah, I'm going to rattle it off for a second. So you have the Anamaya Kosha, which is the physical body. And "ana" means food. It's made of food. And then you have the Pranamaya Kosha, which is breath. And then you have the Manamaya Kosha, which is mind. And then the Vijnanamaya Kosha, which is intellect. And then the Anandamaya Kosha, which is said to be the bliss sheath. All these are said to be sheaths, like Russian dolls. And then beyond
all that, you have the Atman, which is not really individual anymore. So there's all
¶ The Paradox of "Who" is Doing the Inquiry?
these individual structures serving as a kind of instrument through which the Atman is reflected, resulting in the ability to live life. I think one of the things I was intentional about doing with this is keeping it on the direct experiential level, staying with my direct experience, like what did I see in my
present experience, and exploring from there. So, while I did touch on literature and scripture around it, and those do sound familiar, I generally tend to, you know, I usually don't describe it in those terms, and I, although it fits with what I was just talking about, so I see why you brought that up. - That's why I brought it up, yeah. >> Yeah. >> But I think I tend to shy away from it to say with, "Well, what can I prove directly?
What do I know in my direct experience?" You end up describing it in different ways based on that versus maybe what literature might say in terms of the sheaths and so on. >> Yeah. >> Does that make sense? >> No, it does, and I think that's great. It's a scientific approach, which I really believe in. I believe spirituality should be pursued scientifically, in other words, empirically, based upon what
you can actually experience, not sort of going off in intellectual flights of fancy. But sometimes these intellectual structures are useful, and these cultures have been studying this stuff for thousands of years. And like you say, you know, the Inuit have like 30 names for snow because they're so familiar with snow. And so these guys, you know, they have all these different names for consciousness and all these subtle nuances that Western psychology hasn't even considered yet.
One of the things I think too that's important with this is that, you know, we're steering away from the intellect, so toward more what I would call perception or bare noticing versus conceptualizing.
Basically steering clear of that because there's so much of a, there's such a strong habit to go to the mind for answers and go to representations and even if you speak with most people, they they don't really know the difference between what they think about what's going on and what they're directly experiencing is going on and there tends to be a heavy overlay. So I think over the years just became very shy about venturing into that.
¶ Are Humans Different from Nature?
Still noting it if I would read something I would think, "Okay, this sounds relevant, but then now I got it. Now I'm going to move on and let me verify it." And I like that you said it's scientific. It's very much follows, I think, the scientific method. Observe, report, keeping it accurate means really not assuming anything. So I think that in that sense it very much follows a scientific spirituality approach.
To someone who is just thinking about this stuff, I might say, "Okay, now think about lunch. All right, you still hungry? Yeah? - Okay, think some more, but I'm still hungry. All right, let's eat, you know, have the actual experience. - Yeah, just keep thinking till you're full. - Right. So this is an important point. There's knowledge and experience. And I think they complement and supplement and reinforce each other.
There can be a mutual confirmation value, but neither alone is generally adequate. Would you agree with that? - I think what we're leaving out is the interference factor. which is so if we think of attention as having a limited scope of what can be attended to then focusing attention on thought is in a sense it's displacing time that could be focused on investigating exploring in like i said this more perceptual kind of way on the level of
direct noticing. So, I think that's where I see it becoming problematic. Like, I don't believe in getting rid of the mind, trying to destroy thoughts, even trying to decrease thoughts, but I also recognize that there is a factor of interference going on in that thoughts tend to
occupy attention. So, in that way, I would say, yeah, I would approach it, particularly when it comes to something like self-investigation, because we're dealing with, particularly as it gets deeper, we're dealing with levels of the sense of being of individual self that is very subtle and it doesn't really require thought. It really requires just careful looking and almost like a photographic plate, you know, when they take these photographs of astronomical, you know, like
a nebula. Well, they let the plate sit there and just absorb photons for extended periods of time.
¶ The Sense of Self as a Fiction
It can go on for hours and it gets more detailed that way. And I think that's the way attention works. It's like a photographic plate. You just put it there, you aim it at this and you begin this cumulative absorption of the detail of what's there. Because that whole point is to see what's there clearly and recognize it. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Do you find that the mind settles down more and more while you do that? Yeah. Or it doesn't remain agitated and fluttery so much?
It tends to. It tends to have that side effect. It's almost like you're depriving thought of energy and so it will naturally kind of go into a… and you could say this is very much contemplative or meditative. I like contemplative because it feels more like the reflection that goes on with this. Which does have a nice calming effect not just on thought in the mind but the body and so physiologically.
Yeah it reminds me of the first couple of verses of the Yoga Sutras. One of them said the first or maybe it's the second verse says yoga which means union or you you know, merging with the self, capital S. Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind, the vrittis, or the excitations of the mind settle down. And then the next verse says, "And then the seer rests in the self." And the analogy is often used to, like,
agitated water trying to reflect sunlight. It doesn't get a very clear reflection, but if the pond is just like mirror smooth, then the reflection of the sunlight can be brilliant. Right, right. Yeah. Great example.
Okay. And I wonder how this, I mean, I've been practicing meditation since the 60s and the way I've practiced it, it fits the description I just gave where the mind settles down more and more and as it does so, you know, there's just an awareness expands, there's less and less constriction and at times, you know, unboundedness and real clarity. But there's no intellectual process involved.
What you're describing sounds to me a little bit more volitional or a little bit more, you know, systematic in terms of one being engaged in some kind of inner inquiry. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. I mean, I would say, and this almost gets back to that original question by Scott, I think. Yes. Like, how can you do it? How do you do this if there's no... I think it was Dave, but he was from Scotland. >> Yeah. >> Okay. There we go.
Got from Scotland. So, the thing is, at the beginning, if there is no self, the way we think of ourselves, the way we conceive of ourselves, if there's not a separate self, then how is this all happening? How does personal, what looks like personal intention, action take place. So we begin to, what we begin to see is that, and within, and in this process of self-investigation, you start seeing, seeing not this, not this, not this, right? The netty-netty
process. And eventually there's nothing left. There's just, and yet action takes place, thought takes place, everything about the character, what I call the character, continues to operate, but there's not really somebody doing it. So who's doing it? Well, here's the question. Well, yeah, so that's a little different question, but that whole idea that somebody or something needs to do it is part of that's built into the way of thinking of
separate selves. Somebody's got to do it for it to happen. But we would never say that about the weather. Well, who's generated the clouds? Unless you
¶ Association vs. Identification with the Body
went into more of a religious description of, "Well, God's doing it," or something like that. >> Rick: Or you could get into laws of nature and temperature and pressure differentials and the rotation of the Earth and all kinds of factors. Natural phenomenon are doing it. >> Well, we'd say it's happening and there's an interplay and there's a network of interrelated connections to it, but we don't have to insert anything personal into it. We don't even have to
conceive of a giant entity called God. We can just say, and I think a lot of this is, And this is the tricky part, because it seems almost like a little bit of New Age spirituality, but we can... It's funny, sometimes I lost my train of thought there. I was going to make a subtle... - You want me to say something and get you going? - Yeah, go ahead. - Well, I was thinking about the weather, your analogy. And I mean, human beings are different than the weather.
A cloud doesn't say, "I think I'll go over and marry that cloud," or "I think I'd like this for lunch," or "I'm going to become a meteorologist," or something. Those are just natural phenomena. Human beings, however, they appear to have volition, and they appear to make decisions, and to take initiative, and to be attracted to things, or repelled by things.
There's all kinds of stuff that human beings do, and even squirrels for that matter, that clouds and rain and stuff like that don't appear to do. Well it's again I would say that's what thinking tends to tell us. That's what condition thought, that's the conventional view is. Well we're different from nature in that way.
¶ Detachment During Intense Experiences
But I would say, so from my experience, there's no difference at all. So for example I would say, well which one of these bodies is mine? Am I inhabiting this body and not inhabiting that one? So the sense of these two bodies, the Rick on that and the Dan on this end, the direct experience of that is they're both objects in awareness. And so everything that happens in, you know, that looks like Dan doing something that's
different from clouds moving through the sky. It only seems that way if you think about it. If there's attention on thought about it that says, "Well, this is how I'm going to interpret this. This is different. This is within the human experience. This is outside the human experience." But so part of what happens with this is you begin to see that that's actually an arbitrary framework to put on things and not necessary. I think that's the thing is, is it really necessary?
But that can seem that that can be a big step if it's like no, but it just seems so personal and that seems so impersonal. So I get I get the I get the maybe the confusion about that or might disagree with that. But yeah, my comeback to that would be that there there is an impersonal dimension and there's a personal dimension, and we don't have to reside exclusively in one or the other, and I'm not even sure if we can.
Now, most people are unaware of the impersonal dimension, with awareness, as you call it, and some people identify more with the awareness dimension to the point of dismissing the reality of the personal dimension. But let me take an analogy. So let's say a wave considers itself totally autonomous and separate from all the other waves and everything, and then at some point it realizes, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm actually the ocean.
I'm just a wave on the ocean, and all these other waves are made of the same stuff as I
¶ The Paradox of Being the Doer and Not the Doer
am." So that gives me a much vaster picture on what my existence actually is, but still, I'm a I'm maybe I'm primarily the ocean, but in a manifest sense, I'm a wave and you know, I'm the same stuff as that wave over there, but I'm also different. And it's a kind of a both-hand way of looking at it. So what you're saying, sorry I pulled my headset off for a second there, I missed the very beginning, but you're saying you see two different dimensions here.
One's the personal dimension and then there's an impersonal dimension. Is that how it started out? started out. Uh-huh, and I'll throw another Vedanta term at you. They use the term Vyavaharika, which means transactional reality. So there's a reality that is, you know, our day-to-day practical experience, and then there's the underlying reality that it's all Brahman, and the two coexist. They don't, they're actually not
in conflict. You don't step in front of buses thinking, "Oh, it's all Brahman. It's not going to matter. It does matter on the transactional level, even though ultimately you and the bus are all Brahman, but then the blood and gore is
going to be all Brahman if you do that. Which could happen. So what happens if we just say, "Do we need a sense of self for all that to take place?" I would say no, no, a sense of self, a sense of individual being is not necessary for all that to be true and as it is. That actions take place, that individuals step out of the way of buses. So part of this, and I actually got this from the conversation I heard you having with somebody about is the self annihilated that we talked about earlier.
Right. Susanna Marie, she and I had a conversation that's on her YouTube channel. that the sense of self, when it is seen for what it is, the sense of individuation, the sense of being identical to the body-mind, is it we realize is it's not, it's a fiction. It's simply not real. as a direct experience, it not only is it not findable and identifiable and provable and verifiable, It's as a thought, it seems real.
it's not necessary for things to continue to happen. So I would say that it all looks impersonal is fun, it's a funny word because it makes it sound like it's dry and kind of dead like space or something, but it's not like that at all. I mean there's something amazing going on here
¶ The "I Got It, I Lost It" Phase
really, truly, every moment. And it doesn't, this sense of self just is an obscuration to that going on. And it's so unnecessary. And so, yeah, go ahead. - No, you go ahead. I don't want to interrupt. Keep going as long as you are on the roll. - I'm on the roll, yeah. So, I think part of this is, you know, what we're doing, we're looking and
going, "Well, is it really necessary? Do I really believe that? Is that my actual... and ultimately, is that my actual experience?" These things that you talk about as human plans, do you actually have a direct experience of you, of a you, a real self planning, strategizing, managing and creating these events. And I would say that sense of you is a projection into that.
It's what I call in the book, I talk about the "I cluster." At the center of that cluster is basically this sense, this "I thought," and around it is the body, circumstances, a story, a narrative, that all kind of makes up the cluster, right? Feelings, etc. But if as we go through that we go, well am I identical to this feeling or to this thought? If you were identical to your thoughts, then how could you continue to be them if they keep changing? And completely, some of them are
completely gone. Did you feel like you vanished with them, for example? So that would be a way of directly verifying, "Well, am I my thoughts?" Same with like the body. If parts of the body were gone or set aside, would you feel like you went with them? Did you split up? So very quickly we get a clear sense that we're not identical to
these things. So then what's left of this "I" sense? So I think that's the thing that drove this from the beginning was was a curiosity and an interest, you know, early on in the 20s, my 20s. And, and also an intuitive sense that there's something fishy about this sense of identity. There's just something fishy about it. And I would call that just an intuition, that somehow I felt, I got to check this out. I got to find out what this is about.
Yeah. Um, I would say that the, of course, you're not your thoughts and you're not your body. And
¶ The Impact of Awakening on Daily Life and Relationships
know, there is something which is aware of your thoughts and your body and your feelings and all that stuff and so it would make more sense to suggest that you are that which is aware of the things rather than the things themselves and that awareness obviously persists, it abides, it doesn't come and go. Whereas like you know the old movie screen analogy, the screen always stays, the
movies keep playing. Right, which I just want to mention is very different from any conventional idea of a sense of self. Conventional meaning common, normal, everyday. Common or even conventional within the spiritual circles, in spiritual circles. The way you just described, you know, what we seem more to be as awareness, I think it's a very good description and I think it's very uncommon.
already disregarded thought and feeling and the body, so like all the major players are out of the picture there. But I interrupted, so... No, it's okay. No, it's not... I mean, if anybody's read any Vedanta books or anything, it's not that uncommon. This kind of idea has been around for thousands of years and is certainly in vogue these days for those who study these things.
But maybe we could call the things we're describing, thought and body and emotions and everything else, or even the sense of self, there's a word for that in Sanskrit, it's called ahamkara, which means "eye maker." And it's considered in these traditions that it's not something that is utterly eradicated, but that the identification with it falls away, not the function itself.
And some would argue that a functional eye sense remains necessary for basic human functioning, like knowing foot from floor and finger from knife when you're cutting vegetables and things like that. But there will still be opinions and tastes, which might even get amplified with awakening. So I'm sorry to be throwing so many little Vedic phrases at you, but another one is, another Another one is, "Brahman is the charioteer."
What that one is meant to mean is that, you know, Hertz has not put you in the driver's seat, if you remember those old commercials. You're in the back seat, you're the passenger, Brahman is driving the car. So the cosmic intelligence, the wholeness or whatever, that is the – you were talking earlier about free will and the doer, that's the real doer.
But we're still in the car, you know, there's still some kind of ahamkara, some eye-maker, I some self-sense that is different for you than for me. I mean, if you have appendicitis attack all of a sudden, you're gonna be experiencing a lot of pain. I'm not, 'cause I'm in a different location with a different individual expression, even though fundamentally we're the same cosmic intelligence, same awareness. What do you think about that?
- Yeah, so, well, there's a couple of things there I could go up, but let me go after this one because it relates back to the conversation that you and Susanna were having is the sense of being identical to is what we're looking at with identity. That's the sense of self is a sense of being identical to. So I could describe my experience in terms of what you were describing the scriptures there, well something remains of the self.
It's called Leysia Vidya in Vedanta, which means faint remains of ignorance. But I wouldn't say that it's a faint... there's something about this, and it's a reason why it's called awakening, right? Awakening out of any sense of identification with any kind of self, any kind of separate
¶ Distinguishing Detachment from Psychological Dissociation
And it just ends. So as as Susan was telling you, it's just it's just not there. There's no sense of confusion about that anymore. It's just over. It's as in a sense. It's as much a surprise to you, you know in quotes as as to anybody. It's like wow, it's like that. Oh, oh, but there's no sense of it's such a distinct. It's such a distinct vacancy. I like that word vacancy.
Where I, you know, for such a long time, even after getting past all this superficial and even deeper sense of self around the body and the mind, and location, the end of even any subtle sense of being, residing in, I would say the only thing that's left is there is an interesting, as aware, I say as awareness, at some point you realize what I am is this, a live being, a live existence, a live presence, aware presence,
that's all talking about the same thing. As that, there's a sense of association with, and this isn't the best word, but it's the best one I can come up with, with this body. Okay, association, that's not a bad word. So I like that because it's fairly neutral, it doesn't personalize it in any way because it does not feel personalized. And yet, it's almost like, it's a little like watching a ship, like a small sailboat.
It starts on the beach and then gradually it's drifting out to sea, but for a long time it's within view and it gets a little special attention, but you can feel it just at some point you can see the progression in that it just becomes less and less important. And that's a good description of the whole process. It's like what's all this emphasis put on Dan's life and his interests and his opinions?
And so you see all that following away in the process as you're investigating the eye, you don't go directly at, "Well, I don't want to have all these opinions anymore. I want to stop stating opinions." You start disidentifying with it. It's like, "That's not even my idea. Why do I give a shit about that?" So there's a gradual process like that going on about very specific elements of the personal experience, but also the whole of the body-mind, the whole of the sense of self in general.
There's a, you know, what we're calling "waking up" or "awakening" is this increasing lack of a sense of identicalness to this, to the point where it feels much more like an object in awareness and yet, like I said, there's an interesting association with this particular body-mind. It's not steady, it's not constant either. So many times it's completely, there's no interest in this at all, it's just a bird, there's a bird on a tree and that, so it seems
to have something to do with attention and maybe the habit of attention. Anyway, go ahead, I think you were going to say something. Well, yeah, it also seems to me to have to do with the circumstances, Like, there might be circumstances in which there is no need for there to be a close association with what the body is doing. Other times, you know, you're driving in heavy traffic or, I don't know, you're about to injure yourself or something or other, the association kind of
zooms in, like a camera lens. It can kind of zoom in when necessary and zoom out when not necessary. And, um…
¶ Awakening's Influence on the Body-Mind
>>Jeffrey: I would say that happens independently, though, of the sense of identification. So I don't think that those two necessarily are the same thing. Yes, and my experience is that even if I'm having some very intense experience, like I brought this up several times, this happened to me a few years ago where I tripped over something on the pickleball court and I landed on my face and my, you know, bleeding and everything.
In the instant of that happening, there was this clear awareness that was untouched by it. And the intensity of the experience threw that into contrast more than just everyday circumstances. - Right, right. - Yeah, and I wouldn't have had time to think about that if I wanted to. I was busy falling on my face, but it was-- - Or trying to detach from the pain. - No, no effort, no. It was just there, that's the way it is.
And what would you attribute that to? Half a century of meditation and spiritual practice and stuff? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which is growing incrementally, you know? Yeah. But I would say that naturally involves self-investigation. Yeah. Perhaps in a different mode or method or form than exactly what you're doing, but you know, I've derived tremendous progress and benefit from what I've been doing. And I'm always open to new things, you know, I'm just curious about it all.
So I would say though in that moment, there was a disidentification with detachment, not feeling identical to the body and the pain in the body at that moment. Right, which had already been there before I fell on my face, but which was more obvious as I was hitting the pavement. >>Right. For some reason, the contrast, like you said, intensity of the experience can accentuate that sense of not identical to.
>>For some reason, I get that when I'm running through a busy airport or something, too, just the chaos in contrast with the silence, you know? >>Right. But at the same time, so I think this is a good segue into exploring, well, what's the problem with identification? Is there was a sense of awareness that which saw Rick sitting there with his bloody nose and in pain, and all of a sudden there's awareness of that condition, right? So, the identification tends to obscure that.
And that's how I would describe, that's one of the nice side effects or even the point of this is that all this attention to me, me, me-ing all the time, is it really necessary? Is it helping? Does it make anything clearer? It actually seems to act as a obscuring. And I'm not saying that ultimately that in the cosmic, you know, view of things that
¶ Is the Sense of Self a Prerequisite for Awakening?
I like the idea that there's nothing wrong with identification, that it's serving some purpose and that it truly is just as miraculous as anything else occurring. So I'm not saying it's a terrible thing. I don't tear into the ego and say we've got to destroy it or even the sense of self. It's a matter of just, it's time to wake up. It's time to see things more clearly. Let's look and see. Let's look and see. It's this thing that's always at the middle, right? Me, the sense of me. Is it really?
See, is it the most significant thing? It's in the most significant seat in the house. Is it the most significant thing going on here? Yeah, there's a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which says that someone who claims authorship of action is actually taking something that doesn't belong to him and he's a thief. calls him a thief for doing that. >>JONATHAN Yeah, I like it. >>MIKE But there are these paradoxical verses though.
I mean, there are a bunch of verses like that where it says, "You are not the doer. Action is done by what they call the gunas of nature," you know, some forces of nature and so on, and the wives or the enlightened have this sense that, "I do not act at all." But then it'll get to another verse which says, "You have control over action alone, never over its fruits," you know? "Don't attach yourself to inaction. Engage in action," and yada yada. So it attributes authorship to action.
So it gets us back to the point of paradox. I still think that both of these things can be simultaneously true without conflicting with each other. >>Jeffrey Heister Yeah, it's like, how do we reconcile the contradiction or the paradox? Some of this I think is, and I see this in teaching and working with people, I'll say one thing and then somebody would say, "Yeah, but you told her to do this." And I'll say, "Well,
that was within the context of what we were talking about in there." And language is a burden, you know, at times, because it's got its limitations. And so if I'm saying, "Yeah, you know, you can't take any action because there's no you to take it." And then here it's like, "You need to get busy and work harder." You know, it's like, "Well, which is it?" You know, is there a me that needs to work harder or is there no me and no one to take action? And it's like,
well, they're both true. >> Both true. I'm reminded of Sly and the Family Stone, different strokes for different folks. >> There you go. >> Sly Stone just died recently. >> Oh, he did. >> Yeah. So yeah, paradox. Nisargadatta Maharaj said that the ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity. I think, and that's actually, I was thinking about that, that it's a natural part of the progression of this is you start going, "Oh, oh."
You somehow, I think it's a matter of increasing perspective, almost like literally you're getting height on the issue. And you can say, "Well, from up here, I can see how these pieces, you know, look in disparity and yet they fit together." So I think that's, I think there's some truth to that. Yeah, and speaking of progression, maybe you could take us through a little bit of progression. So when did this, how many years ago did this begin to dawn on you?
And initially was there a "I got it, I lost it" phase that went on for some while, and then eventually it became more abiding. And then third part of the question is, you know, now, month to month, year to year,
¶ Life Changes and the Pace of Integration
Do you feel that a certain deepening or maturation or refinement or some such thing is still continuing? >> Jeff: Yeah, I knew this was going to happen. You'll ask a complex question with multiple things, and I'm like, "Okay, what was the first one?" >> Rick: Okay, I'll go back.
So, the first part, you know, how many years ago did this first happen, and was there an initial phase where it was just a glimpse here and a glimpse there, but most of the it was not there, and then it got more and more frequent, and then eventually just seemed to be there all the time.
Yeah. Yeah, so initially, so there was this initial thing of just exploring a lot of spirituality and different forms of Christianity, because that's what I was raised with, and then just coming into Ram Dass and those guys, and then going, finding self-inquiry and going, "There's something about self-inquiry and Ramana Maharshi and those kind of sages that started really resonating, you know, and then being drawn into that.
And then spending years, and honestly this is why I wrote the book eventually and developed this approach, was I couldn't make sense out of it. Ramana Maharshi was the best version of what was coming out of the teachings that were written around what he said. That was the best I could find and it just didn't really help me a lot in what to do. So a lot of fumbling around with it, just trying to look, not knowing how to look, and then finally
getting that, "Oh, you look like this. This is how you do investigation." You know, attention goes here, it focuses on this, you stay with direct experience, and then down the road, I mean years along the road of working with that, having flashes that would just seem to come not exactly from my moment to moment, like I would say, "Okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this,
I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to have an awakening kind of experience. I'm going to have a selfless experience," or that sense of awareness is just pregnant in the moment, you know, just ball of awareness is almost obliterating any sense of self. Those were happening and then it would be getting it, losing it, and then being frustrated and going, "I got to get back to that because that is like my reason for living. I mean, it's what I want more than anything. I don't know why,
but I gotta." It just seems like the most profound experience of truth that I could think of. And And then just working and struggling and taking wrong turns and then focusing and refining the self-inquiry down and not even knowing if that's working, wanting to quit and just say this is all, maybe I'm making this all up.
¶ Don't Dig a Bunch of Shallow Holes
But I could never forget, I think I mentioned in the book there was one experience happened probably in my mid-twenties, just real clear. It wasn't from self-inquiry exactly. It was I was reading Alan Watts and I was kind of reading it in parallel to some Buddhist texts around no self, anatta, and going, "What are these guys talking about?" I mean, they really seem to be talking about that there isn't an actual self.
And then just having this flash all of a sudden, just doing this simple thing of just looking in going, "Am I actually in here?" and not thinking my way to it, but just looking. Looking right where I should have been the most and realizing, number one, I'd never looked there. Never looked. I just assumed I was there. And when I looked, I didn't find anything. I didn't confirm my presence, my existence. And then the profundity of that just had that kind of, it was like an awakening experience.
And then of course, that seemed to fade and then it was hard to even remember what it was like and then just trying to get back there. So yeah, I think, did I answer your question? No, you were part there, most of it, or at least the first part. I mean, the thing you were looking for was the thing that was looking. So no wonder you didn't find anything. Yeah. Yeah. But in that moment, I was... Like a dog chasing its tail or something. I think in that moment, the snake eats its tail.
You know, it's just like, this is it. Even that statement, this is it, this is it. I mean, there's so many levels to the truth of that. - Yeah. - But what I did notice was it didn't need a me. And the sense of me at that moment, that flash, that one flash at that moment, that clear moment, was enough to just annihilate all kinds of thinking around my necessity, the necessity of my sense of self. I just knew it's not necessary to this, that whatever we are is something far beyond that.
And so it was almost just the most natural thing from there to have a certain level of just rejection of that, if that makes sense. - Yeah, so what effect did all this have on your life? I mean, you're still alive, so it's still having an effect, but at least in those initial stages,
¶ Q&A: Knowing Physical Pain Without Being In It
did you find that it was enhancing your relationships, your abilities at work or whatever, or was it distracting you from them? Was it kind of deadening your emotions or enriching them? And what kind of impact did it have? - Yeah, so yeah, more psychologically, personality, You know, so I had more than a fair share of negative conditioning, dysfunctionality, anxiety, things like that.
So, interestingly, I was interested in psychology, so I was working on trying to work my way through that, doing some therapy, but at the same time I was working on self-investigation. What I found was that the self-investigation was just like really cleaning through stuff without even having to pick through it. And whereas the psychological work, I think gradually there was a shifting away from that. But in general, I would say very much a process of, although relationships ended, they ended
messily sometimes. You know, no jobs, you know, there was issue with career issues and going to school and failing at things. There's plenty of that. But in general, I'd say very positive, very things getting cleaner and lighter and clearer. And yet, I even now, so you, you know, you know, I'm married and I've been in a relationship for 20 years.
and we have a daughter, and those relationships go through cycles of challenge. You know, we, so every year we have sort of a State of the Union address, you know, where we address where are we in the relationship, what's going on with this. And this sounds a little cold, and it's not meant that way, because it's very intimate, but it's like, does this need to continue? Does it feel
right for this to continue. So there's never there's never a resting and I would say that's a big part of sort of what we call post-awakening right is that hey things go on but there's a an awareness of those and in a in a sense in a very impersonal way and yet significant attention is given to it. And on this level of considering, does this serve, does this seem to serve everyone? Does it serve a sort of a higher purpose of things? Is it growing? Is it,
¶ Q&A: Does Formal Practice Continue After Awakening?
is there more clarity? Or is it drifting into what a lot of relationships do, which is distance and apathy and things like that. So I'm covering a lot of ground here. In other words, you don't let your relationship just sort of stagnate or fall into a habitual rut. There's this kind of periodic reassessment with a sort of a somewhat detached perspective an evaluation to, you know, maybe course correct a little bit or, you know, decide if it should
continue going in the direction it is. I think that's what you said. Relatively speaking, it's like that. It's like I'm attending to the... I'm giving a mature attention to, you know, I'm being mature about it, I'm being, you know, honest about it. What's the state of the relationship? In the bigger sense, that's relatively speaking, the bigger sense, I let Dan take care of it. I mean, honestly, there's a sense of, look, he's pretty good about that. He'll take care of it.
He does the checking in, he deals with the grocery clerks and does all that stuff. So there's a real ease of, I actually had a friend who was a psychologist say, you know, this sounds like a dissociative state that you're talking about. And I just said, Well, maybe, yeah, maybe in a sense it does, but what's it like to be associated? You know, what's the other end of that? So it's a very easy, it's detached and not in the sense of not being enmeshed in the issues and the struggle and a lot of
thought about it. Like these things I'm talking about with the relationship, there's not a lot of thought going on with it. It seems very natural and very intuitive. Hey, what's the state of this relationship? How's it going? Are we happy? Is there increasing intel? And sometimes that ends up, and often you're talking to my wife about this, it's a challenge because I'll say, I feel like it could be, it seems like it could be more effective. What do you think? Do you want to take part in that?
But there's always it's always very open-ended like if you don't want to be a part of that anymore. That's understandable Start speaking with her, you know, right but but I can't do anything else I'm, not really capable of just going. Yeah. Well, let's just coast and we'll watch tv together in the evenings and you know, whatever just We'll keep each other company until we're too old And then it's like who are you after
Have I met you? Well, it's funny that your name is Dan, because I have this old friend named Dan, and we used to be part of this satsang group that met every week, and he used to talk about Big Dan and Little Dan. You know, there was Little Dan, and then there was Big Dan, and
kind of, you know, what you're talking about was just that. And I would distinguish between what you just described, and disassociation as a psychologically undesirable trait or state, as being that type of disassociation in psychology is a fragmentation of the individuality.
>> Jeff: Right. Due to trauma and trying to get away from... >>Rick Right, and there's no universal self or pure consciousness in the picture, it's just the individual personality is fragmented, whereas what you're talking about is the distinction between kind of big self and little self, capital S and small s self, you know, pure awareness and individuality. Am I right? >>Douglas Right, right. And it's all about being identical to or not.
So seeing, you know, not being identical to the character, right? Or any "I sense" which is not really something that arises anymore, but if there was one, that would be seen in its objective nature as also not self, not what I am, not what I am. So there's that sense of detachment, and yet it's never, it's not un-intimate, right?
¶ Tapping into Other Dimensions of Existence
It's actually very intimate, but there's no sense of, like you can't, there's no way to put yourself in there at a certain point. And no need to, there's no need to insert. It would feel like a completely pretended, pretentious action to insert myself, whatever I am, which is part of the mystery, right? You can call it awareness, you can call it consciousness, but to insert that into... It's everywhere. It's all around. The body is arising in it as it.
So it's like the way you were talking about Brahman. But there's no... It would feel completely false to then say, "And somehow Brahman is more important inside the body, inside a character, than outside." No. I mean... No, yeah. You would never... I mean, if Brahman is the totality, then it's all pervading. It isn't more Brahman if it's poured into a body mind. Right. It's just as much Brahman in a pile of dog poop as it is in a body mind. I mean, it's all pervading.
But you could say that the conventional view of things is that Brahman inside the body is much more that me as Brahman in the body, this sense of me, is more important than all other Brahman. I mean that's kind of, that's a way of looking at how the sense of individual importance manifests in, we'll say, the unawake. Yeah, well in the unawake they're not thinking in terms of Brahman, they're just thinking in terms of their individuality.
I'm just using that term because we can talk about that there's something that's the fundamental ground of being. One way I look at it is that the universe, who was it? Brian Swim, whom I interviewed a few years ago, he said, "You take hydrogen and leave it alone for 13.8 billion years, and you end up with rose bushes, giraffes, and Mozart."
So there's something marvelous about the self-organizing nature of the universe, and some would say it's not just hydrogen somehow, you know, organizing itself into all these things, there's an underlying intelligence that, you know, contains within it laws of nature that orchestrate the whole evolution of the universe into greater and greater complexity, and the more complex the form, the more fully the form can embody that intelligence which gave rise to it. So,
a human being can embody it much more fully than an ant, and so on. And so, there is something, in a way… >>Jeffrey: As far as we know. >>Rick: Yeah. So, there is something kind of special about, you know, a more complex form. It's taken a lot more evolution for it to have come into being. And yet, I've met a few dogs that are a lot more embodying of that than people. Yes, I could agree.
So it's interesting that just having a higher brain functions and so on doesn't guarantee that there's the same level of recognition of the… Yeah, there's a bumper sticker that's something like, "May I be the kind of human that my dog thinks I am?" Something like that. Oh, there you go. And there was a Zen koan, "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" Yeah. And I would say yes, but does the dog know it's Buddha nature, or is it able to sort of fully realize and express its
Buddha nature as fully as some higher life form? That's a whole, maybe that's just a tangent. But that's an interesting, it kind of goes off on an interesting, touches on something interesting. What happens to the body-mind with awakening? And even approximating these levels of clarity? Well, there's clearly an
¶ Q&A: Handling Family Triggers and Maintaining Realization
influential effect. So, we see that of the body-mind, yeah, the character. So, you see somebody, you know, you can pick any of the great sages and just say, as just from a human being level, you could tell there was something going on there. There was a certain equanimity, a certain peacefulness, a certain clarity, wisdom, things like that. - Bliss, happiness. - Happiness, yes. So, there's an influence there.
- Yeah. - But then what happens is a student comes along and says, "Oh, that's That's the teacher. It's all contained within the character. So they start treating the character like it's special. And most teachers worth their salt would come along and go, "You're missing the point." But you don't hear much talk about this. The influence of awakening is it transcends, awakening transcends the body-mind and yet there is an influence. body and mind begins to reflect that condition.
Yeah, that's a great point, and it's an important one. And also, I'm reading a biography of Gopi Krishna now, whom I don't know if you've heard of him, but he was… I haven't. All I had known about him was… See the one that had all the gals around him? No, no, no, no, no. That was Krishna himself, and the Gopis. Oh, okay. This is an Indian guy who lived in the 20th century, whose name happened to be Gopi Krishna.
But he had this, he was a brilliant man, he had this profound Kundalini awakening, and he went through hell and heaven. And the hell part was that his body was so profoundly impacted by the awakening that was taking place that he had to be extremely careful of what he ate and what he did and how he acted. I mean, the slightest deviation from honesty and truth and all really would impact him.
the heaven part, the interesting part was, well, that was a good part, too, although difficult, but he also began to, like, compose verse, first in his native language, which I think was Urdu, and then in German, and languages he had never spoken, and he found himself composing these verses. So… - He had never studied, right? - And never had studied or learned or knew how to speak or anything else. This stuff started
coming out of him. So just the impact of that on the body-mind, it reminded me of that, you know, just what you're saying there. Now there's an interesting thing, go ahead, you might want to respond to that before I say anything more. No, no, go ahead. Okay, so what you've described about your experience so far reminds me of a whole
kind of topography of higher states of consciousness that I once studied deeply. And one stage of it is where, as you're describing, there's this detachment between self and non-self, or self meaning, you know, the pure awareness, or non-self meaning everything else, including the world. And then over time, the gulf between them begins to narrow. And it does so because of the impact of that realization on the body-mind, in which it
refines it, it purifies it. And as it does so, the heart begins to grow more, appreciation of everything begins to grow more. >> Jeff: Heart meaning not the physical heart,
¶ Q&A: Is the Sense of "Me" Always in the Middle?
but… >> Rick: No, the emotional… >>Rick: Ability to love. >>Ben: To love, yes. And also even the senses begin to get more refined and to appreciate the creation and its finer values. And so the kind of gulf between the pure awareness and the world begins to narrow and the appreciation begins to grow, and it blossoms into something which in this topography was called God consciousness.
And then that takes a further step in which the self, which we realize ourselves to be in that initial stage of realization, is seen to be the essential constituent of the creation itself. So there's really no distinction between that and this, and that would be unity. that there's a sort of a unification of an initial gulf or detachment that took place.
Right. Yeah, so, I mean, my take on that is that, and this touches on something that I think happens with awakening in parallel to that, a sensitivity, I would say, to, and I'm just going to do my best to kind of describe it, but it's almost like there are other dimensions literally in the sense of more than three or four dimensions. There's other dimensions of existence that you begin to access as a natural part of this process.
And so like that sense of on one level I'd say and I've talked to people about this. It's like I love nature. That's why I live where I live. We live in the mountains. We have 20 acres. It's you can walk around on it and it's beautiful. it's like having your own park. And it just, aside from the fact that it was kind of mystical the way it all came about, but there's such a sense of connection to life in the forest.
But to say, I feel connected to the tree is to miss the other dimensions where there's much more activity going on with that. So it started as a felt sense of union with that there's something about the tree, and I'm looking at a tree out the window right now, something about that tree that's completely in common with this the sense of being. That's one. But it's not the tree, it's not the physical form of the tree. But I can sense, I sense the reality of that.
It's like the essential nature of the tree.
Yeah, so the tree and the body-mind, this is one way that the body-mind becomes very transparent to those other dimensions of existence. And that I would say after what I'm calling awakening, which is just the end of this sense of identification, it just goes on. I mean, this process continues on, it does not end there. So, it's a little misnomer to call it "awakening"
¶ Guided Self-Inquiry with Rick
as if it's an end, or "enlightenment" for that matter, because it just continues enlightening. Yeah. So, but I just kind of wanted to convey that and see if that made sense, this sense of this other dimension to experience, and like the sense that the physical is very transparent to that, just increasingly so. Oh, I love it. I love what you're saying. I totally agree. The subtitle of this show used to be "Interviews with Spiritually Awakened People."
I was wondering why you changed it to… Yeah, we changed it to "Spiritually Awakening" because "awakened" is too static, you know? And then we also changed it to "conversations" instead of interviews because I talk too much. (laughter) But, you know, St. Teresa of Avila said, "It appears that God himself is on the journey." So, my sense of things is that there's no end to any, for anybody, and who knows where it all leads. And yet, there are discrete, there are discrete transitions.
Yes. Like the transition, I think, the one that seems seems the one of the most significant of at least as far as so far is away from that sense of identification. Not being identical to any longer. It's just such an opening and clarifying and it's completely in line with this thing we're talking about in terms of the sensing and experiencing and exploring and curiously involved with other dimensions of existence. The deeper dimensions of
things. So, that seems to be a big turning point, getting this sense of self. It's like, "Look, let's just get it out of the way so we have a better view." I mean, that's one way of looking at it. It's just about wildest attention to that. There's so much more. - Yeah, I think when that reminds me of an important point, I think that Ramana and many other skillful teachers were good at tailoring their teaching to the person they were addressing.
And it would, again, be different strokes for different folks. There's a saying in India that when the mango tree is ripe, the branches bend down so people can easily pick the mangoes. So the teacher kind of meets the student at the level which is appropriate for that student. And that would be different things for different students.
But sometimes in this day and age, you know, and it used to be that certain teachings were kind of secret and they wouldn't just be, you know, broadcast to everybody, that you'd have to go through certain stages of readiness before...
Rituals and...
Yeah, certain maturation before you receive a certain teaching. These days everything is out on the internet. And I think it's a bit of a problem because some people for whom this no-self teaching who might not yet be at a stage where that is what they need to hear, try to apply that, and they can get into trouble. There's this lady I interviewed named Jessica Nathanson, who kind of specializes in helping rehabilitate people who've gone heavy into neo-Advaita, and they've become nihilistic.
Destabilized. Yeah, they've gotten destabilized, they've lost interest in their families, they can't hold down a job, They're having suicidal ideation and in some cases actual suicide. So I think it's very important to ready the ground before administering certain teachings to certain people. Yeah, I agree. I actually don't work with that many people, for one thing. I don't do... I've come up through the Advaita community with Adyashanti and a lot of the popular teachers
where they have large rooms with lots of people and everything. I don't have any interest in that at all. I think it's too, number one, it's too hard to really see where people are at. I like to work very personally, keep it small. And to your point, are you, I've turned away more people and I do this gently but it's so it sounds a little harsh but I've told more people that's
like look this is not for you. I would just say look you don't want I don't think you want this and I'll we'll talk about it I mean I'll talk to anybody but basically you really need to be ready to dive into this and you got to have a in one way very psychologically stable. any of that stuff is going to get stirred up and it'll preoccupy your attention anyway.
And so every once in a while, when I first started out, I've been doing this for like 12 years now, so after watching this process with a few hundred people, many of the people that I worked with at the beginning, I catch the signs of that early on and just say, "You know, I'll tell it, go check that out. You should go check that. You want to, you know, I don't answer questions about should I go to graduate school and things like that. It's like, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I
¶ Detachment vs. Inappropriate Behavior
can point at the sense of self and help you investigate that. But I think it's, I think that the risks there of, and I've had a couple of people that were actually just, they weren't students at the time they were just friends who were really curious. One was, well I thought she was pretty stable, seemed pretty solid and comfortable and confident and masters, she had masters in social work or whatever and she's like, "So what is this self-inquiry thing you're doing, you know,
tell me about it?" And we, I said, "Let's do it together." And we started to explore it and she got so uncomfortable with that vacancy that's just touching on it. She said, "That's, this is just too weird. I never want to do that again. So, you know, I just think you, you know, it's exactly what you're saying. You got to be ready for it. You got to be right. And there's indicators of that. And sometimes
you just have to experiment with it a little and go, yeah, it doesn't feel good. Doesn't feel right. Because it was, this was a very fairly comfortable process all the way through. Certainly struggles at times, but not terrifying or dark night of the soul. There was nothing like that. So, at least I know that can be the progression. And it still allows for the fact that it could get very, it could be a dark night of the soul kind of thing. But there's usually indicators of,
like, I'll get a sense of, is this a good, should this person go on or not? You know, Do they need to back off and do a little psychotherapy and get stabilized again, or are they in a place where this is ready to fall off? And so I think reading that is kind of the responsibility part of it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, definitely. There's problems with the big mass approach, you know, where everybody's taught the same thing.
and I would never do this with more than 15 people. Yeah. And that's about what I'm handling right now. So I think it's very, I think as soon as you get, it's also short changing people because you can't really be there. It's a very intimate, you know, connection that you're making with somebody in some ways, much more intimate than making friends with people. And they're letting you into some very vulnerable places. And so you've got to be present in a sense for that.
So what, you say you've dealt with what, 100, 200 students over the years? Probably, yeah, a few hundred. Yeah. And in general, if you could generalize, what's been your experience with them all? Has there, I mean, obviously you have to generalize, but...
¶ The Importance of Spiritual Integrity and Confronting Unethical Teachers
Yeah, the whole range. has it tended to enhance their lives in addition to having…you see, one of my concerns coming into this was the notion that this could actually…well, you said in the beginning that this is not an intellectual path to realization where you're sort of denying the reality of the relative
world and hammering that thought into your head. That approach can be appropriate for recluses or people who are inclined to be recluses, but if a householder does that, it can make them disinterested in the life that they're living and the responsibilities that they have. So, I think... Some of that is going to happen anyway. I mean, there will be changes. It happened in my case. You know, I mean, I had a career and it was going, it was the pinnacle of my profession.
And I mean, working at Apple and doing this work that I had studied and was interested in. And then just it was right around this period just, you know, around post awakening and then I just lost interest in it. And I had to deal with, you know, I talked to my wife and tell her, "Look, I'm thinking of going in a whole different direction here. So the income level is going to go way down." And just seeing if she's on board with that. But I didn't really have a choice. I mean,
and it was very... What's that? How old were you at that time? - Let's see, that was about 10 years ago, 58. - You were 58, okay. - Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so, but then, it felt very natural for those things to drop away. And I think that's one of the indicators of this. It's fine if life changes are taking place, but they don't happen fast. It's not immediate, it's not overnight. So that's a bit of a red flag.
If somebody, people come back from retreats all the time and this is their experience and they're like, I'm breaking up with my husband or my wife, I'm gonna change my profession. It's like, whoa, just slow down a little bit, you know, just give it a couple of days or something before you start changing everything. But they will change and it's radical.
I mean, we moved out, I lived in California and around cities and working in big corporations and now my life now is completely different from that. And all that felt very natural and in a natural progression, but it didn't happen rapidly. Yeah, I mean, I would probably have wanted to make the same move you did. And, you know, getting out of the Bay Area or wherever you were and into the woods of
North Carolina sounds great. Now, on the other hand, somebody else, you know, might want to stay there and, you know, could still progress spiritually under a high-pressure situation. You know, in India, they traditionally, they had these different stages of life. There's the Brahmachari stage, your student, and then there's the householder married stage, and then up to, you know, mid-50s or something, and then you shift into a bit more reclusive stage, just
like you've done, and then possibly at the very end, you go into a sannyasi stage. So, it's natural. Yeah, I can see that as certainly, while I think this transcends any kind of physical chronological stage thing, it does seem to reflect that, that at certain stages. But I would say it was the depth and clarity and impact of the awakening process that initiated the change, not that it was necessarily a time in life.
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. But also I wanted to add to that just that I think it can be, I think this is, it feels like a loving existence. So it can be gentle. It doesn't have to be, I think if it's a lot of trauma is being triggered, that's an indicator of something. It's like,
ease up, eat some ice cream, watch a movie, you know. Yeah, chill. Coast for a while, you know, You'll still be attending, you know, pay attention, you'll keep paying attention and investigating, you'll be curious, your curiosity is not going anywhere, but it's okay to back off. I mean, I certainly did it many times, and like I said, even going, you know, I quit. It's not, I don't think this is ever going to work.
I mean, who am I to think that I can, you know, achieve what these great saints have achieved and all that kind of stuff. So just wanting to dump it and then backing away and just playing the game for a while and then going, "I gotta get back to it. I gotta keep going." Yeah, that's an important point you're making. And the people you talked about who would go on a retreat and then come home and, you know, throw away all their possessions and put on a loincloth or something.
You know, it's just like, "Hey, dude, this is a marathon, not a sprint." You can apply yourself with a great deal of ardor and diligence, but at the same time, you're not going to become the Buddha this weekend or something. It takes time to mature into this, really. >>Right. And I think that's part of what comes with the process, is there is a certain degree wisdom and like, "Pace yourself. Take it easy." There's nothing terrible about any of this.
It's not an awful thing that you're... I wasn't running away from something, right? I wasn't running away from corporate work or anything. It was actually good to be in the midst of that craziness and the demanding nature of it. It was good. It fueled this inner process.
¶ The Intuitive Knowing of Right and Wrong
Yeah, that can be what a person needs at a certain point, the intense activity to sort of stabilize and integrate. In fact, I knew this guy who was over in Switzerland on the international staff of the TM movement, and he was really spacey, you know, he was just kind of like too much meditation and everything. Maharishi said, "Go back home and get a job loading trucks." Yeah. Yeah. Did he do it? I think so, yeah. I just know that a bunch of... Go ahead, I'm sorry.
I was just remembering a teacher, I didn't get a lot from him, but Daufrey John, he used to be called Daufrey. Oh, brother, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had a lot of talk about a wacky spiritual guy. But one of the things when I was studying some of his teachings at the time and living up in Oregon, and I was working part-time jobs, I was like, "I don't want to be a part of the corporate world."
And then he just, and it wasn't just that he had said this or wrote it, it was that it resonated, it just clicked. And he said, "You got to be willing to go out and get a job full time and just make money, just make some money." And I thought, I didn't even think about that. You know, I mean, I've been just so resistant to it. I didn't think it would, might be a part of the spiritual process.
And it began a whole opening into, you know, facing fears and challenges that I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't done that. And then ultimately there was an abandonment of all that, but at the right time. It felt right to leave all that behind. And that made it so much easier. It was just such an easy transition. All these people that retire out of corporate world and they just go nuts. They're like, "I don't know what to do with myself." And I know exactly what to do with myself.
I'm going to paint, I'm going to sculpt, I'm going to move to a really cool place because I don't have to be here to work anymore. Yeah, which you could do because you had some money, because you've been working. Right, exactly. I just noticed that a bunch of questions came in, so this might be a little bit disjointed as we jump around, but let's see what we've got here. There was another question from that guy in Scotland, whose name was David Hill. Not Scott.
No, not Scott. Dave from Scotland. Can you know physical pain without being in physical pain? I think I know what he means. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of what we've been talking about is this sense of it's a healthy natural detachment from not the pain. See, we're not being the pain. We're being the one who, I would say, we're the one who's experiencing the pain. So seeing through the sense of the pained one releases. It doesn't mean the pain goes away though, it still registers.
So I'd say that's what we're really talking about. Does that make sense? Yeah, I sometimes wonder about that, like, you know, I could handle my pickleball accident, no big deal, but if I were crucified or something horrible like that, I mean, could I, you know, would I just totally lose it and be overshadowed or, I don't know. Well, you know, since you speak so about during the COVID thing, so my body really got hit hard with that and I ended up in the hospital.
And so, and it affected my breathing, it was hard to breathe, I needed oxygen and there was a point where, so you sit, there you are, you know, looking at the body, sitting in the bed in the hospital, doctors are coming in, everybody's looking real serious. And they're saying we might have to innovate. Debate.
Yeah, yeah, because it was beginning really hard to breathe but the whole time there was just a sense of It sounds too good to be true But it was and I was this in a sense surprised as is the next person was like, oh, maybe this is it Death, you know, so there was a sense of the discomfort. I mean not being able to breathe is pretty uncomfortable You're not crucified, but it's it's up there in the top ten
You know being feeling like you're you just can't get a breath. You're drowning, you know and Just feeling the body getting really weak. I mean losing like 30 pounds within a week and really
¶ The Degeneration of the Dao
And and just a sense that this is the end. This could be the end of the body It wants to maybe it wants to go, you know and being almost joyful about that So but certainly detached certainly a sense of I could not get into that pain So just to address Dave's David's
Point there was no getting into it. There was no becoming identical to the one suffering it So there was a sense of freedom around it that freedom that it's always there So so at least that was a taste of that Sure, you know discomfort real high discomfort level and to Potentially being death and then there was no remorsefulness. It was kind of like what's next It was it was like that. Yeah, Woody Allen said I don't mind dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens happens, right?
Yeah Yeah, talking about falling they go I don't mind falling I just it's the abrupt stop at the yeah, it's the landing Here's a question from somebody named Marie in the u.s Dan, do you still engage in formal practice or contemplation of some sort, or did any need or impulse to do this drop away with the final non-dual insight?
¶ Conclusion
What do you recommend to your students in this regard? In regards to, at some point... Formal practice of some sort. Yeah. Well, so there's one point around, do you keep doing a lot of practices? practices and so when I talk to students I say, I don't encourage you to spread yourself around so much pick something that you really feel is meaningful significant that has a big impact.
It seems like your path and I would say as soon as you can commit to that, you know, don't dig a bunch of shallow holes. So she's not asking this. I don't think exactly but so I would say at some point.
So whatever it was 12 years ago or something like that, you of the way after awakening that was the other self-inquiry there was a little bit of looking looking around so looking continued there's still like is it here is it is anything here nope okay keep but keep looking because the looking had gone on so long but then eventually that's just the end of self-inquiry practice there's no sense of self to inquire into anymore there's just such a sense of clarity and in the end of that
that nothing to do but the new practice so the sense of awareness or presence awareing around but that continued it was just wasn't channeled towards self investigation it was now it was kind of like explore what's the nature of so sometimes I'll say this to a student I'll go so you're starting to come into you have a sense of awareness. Explore this awareness. There's a sense of self that's there. Explore that. The sense of self disappears and the awareness becomes very pronounced.
Check out this pronounced sense of awareness experience. So, you're already prepping for that in what they're doing. And then as you go through these stages and like I said, awakening out away from the end of the sense of identification or sense of self is a major turning point. But yet the process continues. So it's almost like, and this sounds a little trite, but life becomes a meditation. There's just a natural reflection, I would say a contemplation.
It's more just an ongoing contemplative process, just reflecting on, "Wow, what's the nature of these other dimensions of experience? What's that? It's all about the direct experience. So in that sense, you could call that a practice. But it's not, like I said, it becomes more, and I think that's a good way to look at this is, you know, let self-inquiry, self-investigation, deep self-investigation is your calling, you know, then dive in and let it show you, in a sense,
let what you see show you the way to go. You know, let it become the way you live your life, not something that you do at special times during the day. You know, I don't agree with that idea that you just isolate certain portions of your life and say, "I do really intense meditation here, but then I don't. The rest of the time I'm just, you know, living my life and doing whatever. I'd say let it infiltrate the rest of your life. It's what you do.
Yeah. Also, I meditate a couple hours a day if you add it all up. And it has its place. I don't meditate all day. I don't eat all day. I don't take a shower all day. I don't sleep all day. The day is apportioned into these various things, and like you said earlier, this awakening has an influence on the neurophysiology, on the mind-body system.
So certainly meditation itself has a neurophysiological effect, but that kind of carries over into the day, and I think that the whole process is a continual refinement of the neurophysiology, an evolution of it over time. I would guess too on a deep level that your meditation never ends. True. On some level you're always, whatever it is, that it's always there. Yes. That it's infiltrated the rest. You can't turn it off completely.
You can't say, "Now I'm not doing that and I'm doing this other thing." No. Yeah. >>Jeffrey Yeah, you could say that what you initially started meditating to reach ends up being there all the time, but it's still nice to meditate because it gives the mind-body a chance to just settle down into a state of deep quiescence and rest. I'm told the Buddha meditated all his life, you know. So, but you know, that's an individual consideration, not something I'm saying everybody should do.
kind of became my life's habit and it's saved me from being a high school dropout drug fiend to live a constructive life. Well, and I think though those, like I would say, sometimes at night, just to talk in regular terms, at night, the mind's very active. And so, the pasana comes back. Yeah. You know, watching the breath. It's a very natural, it went on for years,
hadn't, you know, no formal practice for years and yet it's right there. And it's a very, and I think this is what I read about the Buddha around that, it's like to go into certain meditative conditions at certain times, it's just, it's enjoyable to do and it's very… It's good for you. It has a really great effect. Yeah, like getting a good night's sleep. It's just a different state
that has a different effect, but it's comparable. So in that sense, I think… - What you were saying a few minutes ago, I wanted to just come back to, you were saying how somehow your orientation has shifted to exploring what this is, you know, the subtler levels of- - The dimensions of- - Dimensions and stuff.
And it reminds me of that topology I outlined earlier, which is that, you know, the teacher who I learned that from used to say that, you know, until you know who or what you are, you can't really know what all this is. I mean, who knows it, you know? has to be that foundation for any significant appreciation of the world to develop. But once that foundation is established, then you can really begin to enhance your appreciation of
creation, including all of its subtle values, subtle realms, subtle dimensions. And it sounds like that's kind of what's happening to you. Yeah. Well, I would say that there's a big overlap, though in that. So even when there's you know a lot of struggle that seems to be going on or
a sense of identity that still persists, you're getting flashes of things. You're getting flashes of like I can remember you know 15, 18 years ago sitting and just doing formal self-inquiry and then later, after the fact, it just sort of came to me that this thing that feels much more fleshed out now, a sense of dimension around. At the time I thought, "Am I imagining that I'm psychic and I'm doing…?" What is it they did with the government, did those projects with projecting the…
>> RICK: Oh, yeah. Remote viewing. >> TOM: Remote viewing, yeah. So, I thought… >> RICK: MK Ultra or something like that. Right, right. So I said, "Oh, is this kind of a remote viewing thing? It's like I can see the back of the leaves, the side that's not facing me in the house." And that was the beginning,
though, of feeling this other dimension of things. And it's the same with people. Like, without realizing it, there was, for quite a while, people would say, "Wow, you're pretty perceptive." You know, they'd say something like that to describe it. But it was just like I was picking up on things without making it sound too new agey, woo woo stuff. But it's kind of like at some point you just have to go, "There's something to this."
There's a sense here, I'm like, "I'm just going to open, let it be." Even though the mind is saying, "Oh, that's bullshit." You know, or you're just imagining things. And I think that's part of what develops with this is a sense of openness to this other dimension of life. And I would say now it's hard to imagine life without this constant sense of that. It just gives such a depth to every… Remember that movie Contact? >>Rick: Oh, I love that. The Jodie Foster, right?
>>John: Yeah. So you remember when they're looking at the… they're working with it. get that first they get the audio signal and they record it and they go oh there's more here and then they go oh yeah there's a there's a video you know depth that's attached to it so then they look at that and it's another dimension it's a great dimensional model for this so then you see that that audio level and then or the video level right and it's on the same signal but it's piggybacking
on it. And then they continue to study it and then they find an engineering thing that's built into the pixels of the video image. And then they can't figure out how to put the pages together. You remember that? I don't remember. It's like 30 years since I saw that movie. I loved it because of this metaphor. And then finally, they get some really smart guys on it and they realize they have to find a primer. How do we read the language that's on this
engineering thing? And then they, so they have all these images and they've tried all these configurations and they can't figure out how they fit together. And then somebody says they're in three dimensions. So they bend it and they put it in a three-dimensional matrix and then they go, there it is. At every corner is the primer or the thing that tells you how to interpret the language. And so, that's kind of the way this is. Life is like that. I mean, this is existence. It has these dimensions.
And gradually, I think the awakening process, most of it is about discovering that dimension of existence, these other dimensions. It's not this getting beyond the sense of self. It's a big step, but it's just the beginning.
>>JONATHAN I love that, yeah, I love what you're saying. In fact, if I had to define the term enlightenment, which I don't like to use, I don't like to use that term, but if I had to define it, it would be the sort of development of the capacity to incorporate within your experience the full range of life's dimensions from the most manifest to the unmanifest, and there's a great range in between those two extremes. >>MIKE Yeah, yeah, that's great.
>>JONATHAN Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you only know that, the funny thing is you cannot get your brain around that. Like what would that be like? You can experience it directly. I mean that's what it's all about. And when you experience it directly, I like to talk about this because I don't have a better way of referring to it, but we start to rely on intuitive knowing instead of intellect. And you realize that that gives you, that's the right tool.
That gives you this dimension of experience and it's almost like you see, feel, perceive, feel the truth of something. And then you just become, I would say with awakening, you just become very comfortable with that dimension always being present and accessing it, like I said, through this, like It's almost like you develop a new sense, these new senses, sensory apparatus. Very true. Yeah, you're right up my alley. Have you heard of the Telepathy Tapes podcast?
It's this really cool podcast, which actually at one point was the most popular podcast in the world, surpassing Joe Rogan. Really? Yeah. In fact, he had her on his show, the lady who put this thing together. But it's, and I've had the scientist who was involved in it on my show a couple of times, Diane Hennessey Powell.
But what it's about is these autistic kids who are nonverbal, they can't really speak, they have to use a letter board or an iPad or something to communicate, but they are extraordinarily telepathic. Like they can sit... >>Rick: I think I heard about that. >>Brett: Yeah, they can sit with their mother, and let's say their mother has a shuffled deck of cards and they can't see what she's looking at, and they'll get like 98% accuracy, you know,
telling you what card she's looking at as she goes through them. And in addition to that, these kids can't really carry on a conversation. No, not invert, no, they can't really speak most of them. So they're open to this subtle dimension and these certain subtle capabilities, even though they're
kind of not able to function in the ordinary gross dimension so well. But in addition to this, they have this thing called The Hill, where they meet at night, and they're from all over the world, and they meet with each other and talk with each other and communicate and share ideas and stuff. >>JF: Is this on a computer or this is a--? >>BF: No, it's like some kind of a Akashic internet or something, you know? >>JF: Oh, okay.
>>BF: Where they're just tuning in to some collective field. And it's a fascinating podcast, which is why it became so popular and it's extremely well produced. But these kids feel like, you know, there is this sort of spiritual unfolding taking place in the world and they're playing a part in helping to catalyze it. Wow, yeah, that's interesting. Do you mind sending me the, do you have a link or
something you can send me later? Yeah, I will send it to you and anybody listening, if you just search for the telepathy tapes, it'll come right up. I love that idea that they actually can go to this dimensional space where they meet. And somehow they're able to communicate that back. >>Rick: Yeah, and it's not just their say-so. I mean, you know, they'll tell their mother, "I experienced this on the hill," and she'll check with the mother of some kid in New Zealand or
something. "Yeah, my son said the same thing to me." >>John: Right. Oh, interesting. Yeah. >>Rick: Yeah. Pretty neat. Okay, let's get back to some more of these questions people have sent in. This one is from, oh, another Scott, Kenny Hogan in Scotland. "I spent a few days with family and my mind was fully occupied with thoughts relating to the ongoing activities. When I returned home,
I really had to ground my awareness and return to my realized self. Would you say this is the correct way to go about life from day to day, where I allow myself to be pulled out of my effortless state of mind to ensure I maintain a stable family life?" Well, yeah, there's a couple things there. So, do you have to do that to maintain, do you have to get pulled into things to maintain a good family life? I would say no. I would say no,
there's another, there's an alternative to that. And I think that, I would say that as this, as this progresses, at least my experience with it was, I became much more functional with family. It was you could do it with your eyes closed kind of thing rather than feeling so drawn into the drama and all that kind of stuff But
Well, I don't know what he means by realized self like come back. I come back and I go to my realized self So I'm well my sense of this question is You know how it there's sort of a tenderness or delicacy to realization initially where you kind of lose it if you get into an excited situation. But eventually you maintain it even in excited situations or stimulating situations and it gets more stabilized, it gets more integrated.
And eventually I think for most people you kind of lose interest in getting into, you don't go to discos at 2 in the morning and stuff, you just don't need that kind of stimulation, that's not where you get your ya-ya's. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, it becomes really obvious that a lot of temporal, you know, a lot of, you know, sensory distraction and overload is not all that pleasant.
So I think now, and I would say that's actually it's a little bit of a side point from what this gentleman's talking about. But I noticed that a lot of that falls away. It's like, yeah, parties. I don't care. I don't care. you know, after going to a couple of parties and just, you know, wanting the conversation to move toward something of substance and not seeing it happen and feeling like, what is all this talk about? You know,
it's all me, me, me stuff, you know? Um, it just became uninteresting to be, to be part of that. So a lot of that kind of falls away anyway, I think also affects family. Um, but again, I would want to know, well, I was going to talk to this gentleman, I'd say, and he can send me an email if he wants. But what is going back to the realized self? What's going on there? What are you doing when you come back? Because ultimately, whatever your practice is, what we were talking about earlier,
it's like, let it infiltrate the rest of your life. You're sitting there talking to your mother, and she's triggering all this stuff. For example, sit there and look in and go, who's feeling Feeling tension, who's feeling that? I am, I am. What is that? Is that me? Am I really there? What's going on? I mean, that's that investigative. And then maybe having a little bit of a breakthrough, like all of a sudden there's mom jabbering on and there's a sense of detachment and going, "Oh, okay.
Now this is interesting." So I think that bringing that in there and ultimately the realized self, it's not like Like you get in touch with the realized self and then it's gone and we really have to eventually see through this coming and going of being, of true or whatever we call it, the realized self. So it's never gone. It's always here. It's accessible everywhere. Let's check that out. Let's find out.
It reminds me of something Ram Dass said, "If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your parents." Yeah. And maybe that week will tell you, I'm enlightened. You know? Yeah. Hey, it doesn't it doesn't matter anymore. But yeah, that's the, I think family turns out
that that's one of those big trigger areas. And most people say, well I can do my practice but when I go there, and I did this at work too for a while, there was a sense of like, I mean, I was managing a department, I had to have meetings, I had to give talks, I had to do presentations, I had to... and I remember at Apple in the middle of a of a training exercise for a bunch of managers and then just going,
who's standing up here talking, you know, really looking in and then just like I was another person, I was just floating awareness in the room and then and just seeing and this is very impacting, There's Dan waving his arms and pointing at the board and going on and I have nothing to do with it. It's just running on its own. So that sense of experiencing that sense of space was just very profound. It never left, but it definitely muted down, but it was always as part of this cumulative
impact of having flashes of insight. So, yeah. >>Cumulative, that's a good word. It tends to be cumulative for most people and, you know, and eventually accumulates to the point where it seldom, if ever, seems to go away. >>Right. >>But it takes time and integration. Pardon? >>I think that's easy to miss, that every time you expose yourself, that's why I say, sometimes I just make a joke and go, "You've got to do 30,000 self-investigation actions. Do 30,000
of them." I don't know what the number is, but there is a cumulative effect to that. Each time there's… even if we don't come right to selfless awareness in the process, that little incremental
Insight is it stays with you. It's it's it's accumulating somewhere and It's adding to this That's why these big the big breakthroughs where there's this complete sense of clarity around something that was confusing for a long time They just seem to emerge in the moment, but they it wasn't what you were doing in that moment that brought it about so What you've been doing all these years, whatever you've been doing all these years. Yeah Yeah. Did you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers?
That sounds familiar, but I can't remember what it was about. Yeah. He talked about 10,000 hours, and he used the Beatles, Bill Gates, and a couple other people as examples of people who had put in 10,000 hours of practice or training in whatever they were doing, and then they became as great as they became because of that. Yeah, right. Yeah. I think I've heard that concept before of right with athletes. There's a lot of athletes. It's like look
It's all that work that you're doing it is if it's affecting something. Mm-hmm. Yeah Okay, let's see This is from Martin Klein in Germany I doubt that the sense of me is usually in the middle of people's awareness Quite the opposite. I would claim that the majority of people are not aware of themselves most of the time other than a diffuse Sensation but not really conscious in the sense. What do I sense in this moment? What do I feel in this moment?
What do I think in this moment? What do you think of this? Yeah, well, I would say that diffuse sense of I Think what I would say is that most people hang out in the in-between zone They're not all the way in to the sense of their attention isn't all the way in and it's not It's not all the way out. There's sort of a vague sense of self like that, but that is the sense of self It's that diffused sense Kind of meet the cloud of meanness
That we're talking about that is the eye sense. So I would say well, that's exactly what we're talking about And that is something I would probably disagree with them and say you are aware of that all the time and it just feels like the wallpaper, you know, it's in the background. But you can look at language, look at reference points and everything. Everything is back to you. It's about you, how's this person, you know, do I want to meet them, what can they do for me, what might come
of this meeting, this situation, is it going to benefit me? So, you can just look at how the mind and how you think about things moment to moment, day to day, and see how much of it is referencing that vague sense of self. >> Okay. >> And it has to-- >> I'm sorry. >> I'm sorry. No, you go. >> Well, it has to be vague too, because it's not-- >> Right, it's subtle. >> It's not real. >> Right.
>> It's got to be, it's mirage-like, because you go to a center of a mirage and you don't find water, you know? So, and yet that's what makes it work. And I'd say that's the divine beauty of it is, man, is it persistent or what? Without having any real substance to it. So. >> I wonder if the sort of absolutely persistent nature of consciousness itself kind of bleeds into or lends a sense of persistency to the "I" sense, the ahamkara in Sanskrit.
Yeah, absolutely. I would say that... So I made a joke about this. I say, "Look, the thing that gives credibility to the 'I' sense cluster, whatever that has to be, a sense of the body, a sense of, you know, location, things like that, the thing that that gives credibility to it, that gets it into the party, is the presence of awareness. It's always there. And the mind loops it in.
And so, it's kind of like, so I talk about it as three strangers and one familiar person to the party that they're going to. They go there and they see these strangers show up in the porch. The person that gets them in the door is the one they know, right? what lends credibility to this sense of self. So I think the presence of awareness is, and it's funny because this between your the beginning of looking at the sense of self to the very end,
awareness is always there. It's always there to give weight and credibility to the sense of self. It's always present. We just start to realize it's not the things that cluster around it. It's not with the mind clusters together to say, "Well, this is you." So, even this person talking, that was talking about Klein, I think, that was talking about this vague kind of fuzzy sense of
self. The thing that's most impacting and significant about that is awareness. But somehow the mind just has this ability to join them together and say, "Yeah, there you are." Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Yeah. And at a certain stage, they get unjoined. And then at another stage, everything gets merged again. I mean, we go through these phases,
building upon each phase. Ken Wilber talks about states and stages. States are like, you know, a state you can get into if you take LSD, or if you meditate for three hours, or this or that. And stages are more like stable platforms that get established eventually, and then build upon one another. So did you want to take us through some process? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, tell us what to do. Yeah, okay, I'll talk to us. Take my glasses off.
So, let's see, what's a good place to go into? So normally the person comes and they say, "Yeah, this is what I'm trying to do. So why don't you tell me what you'd like to take a look at, and give me sort of a walk-in, because you know, you understand a lot about self-inquiry, self-investigation already. Why don't you take me in, like, how do you look at, if you're, if you were going to question, well, who am I? Yeah, just maybe talk me through the beginning.
I don't know if I'm a good subject, because I don't do that. Yeah, I just kind of, Okay. You know, I have had my own process which has yielded good results, but I've never used this sort of self-inquiry method really. So I have an idea. Okay, I'll just dive in. So what makes you feel like you're, what is the most, what gives the strongest sense that you are located there in that chair? I'm only, let me put it this way, I've said this before, but if I had to describe my
experience, I'm everywhere, I'm nowhere, and I'm right here in the chair. And both, all three of those flavors, they're not like distinct, discrete, concrete things, they're more just like flavors that sort of like, if I reflect on my experience, all those components or qualities are there. And the fact that I'm in the chair here and haven't got stood up for two hours, you know, I feel like stretching, go and get some exercise, but you know, that's certainly not the totality
of my experience. So in what way are you everywhere? Just, and based on your, so we'll say this, based on your direct experience, your direct perception, not so much what you think. Right. No, it's a sense. How were you everywhere? Yeah. Sense of vastness, a sense of non-locality, you know, non-confinement, you know, just like no boundaries. Okay. So in that sense, you're not in the body. No, the body's in me.
The body's in you, exactly. So then, in what sense are you then the body? Do you need to change does that need to change in any way? No. Is there something about this experience or that thought says that says well you got to be this too. Don't feel like it needs to change I feel like all is well and wisely put and the body is the instrument through which this is lived. Okay so this body here now is the instrument through which what is lived?
this experience of, you know, life with all its dimensions, including the vastness and the silence and the activity and everything, the whole kit and caboodle. Right. So in that sense though, you in some way need to inhabit the body. I'd say that the body is necessary as a as a vehicle for reality to be a living experience, or you could even put it in terms of God, for God to have a living experience of his or her, its unmanifest nature.
>> Right, so now that's an interesting idea, and it may be true, but if you're going to just describe your direct experience now, You don't really necessarily experience that, right? Perceive it directly, without thought, without thought. - No, that's more intellectual. The other stuff I just said earlier is more experiential, but that little bit is kind of a philosophical consideration. - So you said at the beginning, though, in some way you're in and as of the body in other ways.
But again, if we don't think about it, if we just look for the evidence of that, right? What about direct experience verifies that or does it? Um, well, it's not like it's not like I am in and as the body, um, although the individual I sense occupies this body, um and Both seems to animate it and doesn't you know, it seems to be on automatic but on the other hand
You know, there seems to be some volition. We never got into the subject of free will in this conversation but there seems to be some impetus or incentive that some individual faculty initiates. And I'm not just philosophizing here, I'm kind of introspecting on the way I function. >> Yeah. So, yeah, we can stay with, we'll stay with more the perception of these things rather than a description or interpretation.
Okay. So, do you actually have a… let me just ask, I mean it sounds like I'm going to be repeating myself, but do you actually have a sense of being in the body as well as this other thing that's going on? But do you feel like you're in the body? Do you have a location? Or do you… it's more like the body's in you, right? Yeah, the latter. Maybe a little bit of both, you know, I mean there is certainly… my senses are in the
body. I see out of my eyes, hear out of my ears, you know, around or in my immediate environment, but I'm not constrained by the limits of the body. >> Right. So let's take this, my senses. We know there's senses. There's a direct experience of sensory operation going on. But what makes a mine? Try to just go into the mine part, the owner. Can you find that the way you find the sense? Is that findable? Well, it's like... Without thinking about it. Okay.
I guess maybe mine isn't the best word, but they are part of the functioning of this body. Like, right now, I can't look out your window and see your tree outside, and you can't see, you know, what's sitting on my desk here. We each function, our bodies function with certain limited range of capacity, and, you know, that's not who ultimately we are, but that's the limit that the instrument through which we live life has. >> Jeff: Well, I'm probably intellectualizing too much still.
>> Steven: Yeah, so that's conceptual. >> Jeff: It is. So it's tricky because we're so, we spend nine days. I'm not used to doing this with you, so maybe if I sat with you regularly I would not get into this kind of mind game. So one of the things I do with this is I try to reverse this habit that we have of relying like 95% on thought to tell us what's going on and 5% on other faculties.
And I'm saying, just like we're talking about these other dimensions of existence, there is a dimension of direct perceiving, I'll just use the word perceiving, or being aware of noticing, that has a great dimension to it to know, to understand. And so, I say, let's rely on that, we'll call it perception, just staying with perception, staying with aware of,
noticing, and maybe five percent thought, so very little thought. So, we're going to rely… So, So there's a great, a really cool teacher guy I really love, Sailor Bob Adamson. Oh yeah, I know. He's Australian. Sure. He was always saying this. He'd go, "Where's the problem if you don't think about it? What's happening if you don't think about it? Who are you if you don't think about it?" And it was a great tool to just kind of immediately go, "Okay, so I'm not thinking about it.
What do I know?" So it would really bring me back to this place of just perceiving. So just staying with this moment. So let's try this. I get that this is new to you, so I mean, we're doing fine here. And most of the stuff we do, we don't have to think about. If I'm riding my bicycle, I don't have to think, "Oop, rock, go around this rock, don't hit that tree." You know, it's like, everything's automatic.
- Yeah, well, and there's many more things about that, many more things where that's true too, that we don't need to think about it. It's this incessant thing that's going on. So right now though, just using your hand, point to the center of yourself right now. This is the center of the feeling of personal presence. (laughing) Okay. So does it not have a center? Is that the feeling? Is that the perception? So you don't really have a center. No. Individuality?
No, that's not true. Or no, you don't have a center. No. Well, the real you... I know it sounds like I'm intellectualizing, but this is experience. Yeah, try not to. The real you doesn't have a center. It's... I'm talking about just the sense of you now, you know. We're not thinking about the real us or the ultimate us or that kind of thing, the center of. If I said just say me and point to me, where would you point? Here? Here? No, I couldn't point anywhere really.
Right. So it doesn't feel like there's… See, here's the thing, Rick. You're already seeing a lot of what I would point you to. You're not in the body. You don't have a low… you don't have a sense of location. You said at the beginning, the body is in you. That's not just relatively true, that's absolutely true. Whatever you are, you can feel it right now. The body is in it. The body, mind. If we go into the dimension of mind, which is another dimension other than physical,
even that, emotional, it just rests in awareness. I mean, that is your direct experience. >> Yeah. I have a friend named Harry Alta who's been on the show three times. He said like if he's walking down the street, the whole environment is moving through him. It's not like he's going down the street. It's like cars, street, buildings, everything's moving through him. >> Right, right. Well, Douglas Harding, he's a teacher in England. He's a really sweet guy.
And you described this headless process. >> Headless way, yeah. It was to get you in touch with the presence of awareness and how there's this other dimension of experience. And he would say the same thing, you know, notice that as you're moving down the road, the road moves through you as you're driving along, even the hands. And actually, I remember an acid LSD experience that was like that. And it was just so distinct that the hands were steering the
wheel to the car and that I was not. There's a complete sense of separation. It's the first big flash of that sense of, but now that's what goes on all the time. So I think the thing is you're seeing, the things you're seeing, we're just putting it in a new context. We're saying, well, you're not identified in the body anymore. That's not, there aren't internal to the body indicators. Most people, if you ask them, "Point to yourself," they immediately go, "Me." Right?
"Me. I'm talking about me." Or if they've done a little bit of investigation, they go,
"Me." They say, "It's up here. It's more back there." But once you get past those, then it's like, "Well, where are you?" So the thing is, if you really reflect on what you're seeing already, the fact that that you you're already feeling that your awareness the awareness that holds the body and the room and everything in the field of experience it holds that you're already you're already feeling the truth of that so what we would do so what i would do if we were going to keep working on this
is go well let's see in what way what ways there's a little stickiness around that. In what way does it feel like, "Yeah, but I gotta ground myself to go into this experience." That's an example of, "I gotta get closer to a sense of identity." Or, if there isn't anything like that going on, it'd be like, "Well, let's explore the
nature of this awareness." I mean, just leave Rick to do his thing. He's got it all taken care of, But in a very real way you can begin to sense what Rick does has nothing to do with you. It's not your concern. It doesn't need to be monitored. Awareness doesn't need to monitor Rick, make sure he's doing it right. So it's a real trusting and surrendering to just the truth of the way things are. Like Dan, what Dan does is not my business, including this conversation.
what I am is at best just witnessing that, and Dan seems to be doing just okay at taking care of things. So there's a real sense, felt sense of detachment, it's not the best word, but from, "Hey, that's cool, that's good." It's very comfortable. >>Rick Yeah, I want to throw in a little proviso here though. This quote from Padmasambhava that I often utter, which is that, he said, "Although my awareness is as vast as the sky, my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour."
And Carlos Castaneda's teacher said something similar. He said, "A warrior has time only for his impeccability." You find these characters who are claiming self-realization behaving horribly. I mean, Adi Da is a case in point, you mentioned him. So a lot of times this kind of perspective, and they may have genuine realizations, but there's a lot of cleaning up yet to do. Ken Wilber's talked about waking up, cleaning up, and growing up.
So I just want to emphasize that this stuff we're talking about should never be used as an alibi for inappropriate behavior, saying things like, and I'm quoting someone who actually said this, you know, who was sleeping with all the women who would come to his meetings, You know, I'm not doing it, God is doing it, I'm just a witness, you know, and I'm not involved, that kind of stuff. That's just BS.
>> Jeff: Right. Well, and I think that's the thing, is there's, there has to be a deep honesty about this. Not because honesty is a good morality principle, but because it's so integral to awakening. It's about the truth. It's about the truth. So I think both of the things, both ends of this can be, can fit together. It's another one of those things that seems paradoxical.
Yeah, but if you're detached, then maybe you're just going to have sex with other students and take out your frustrations on them and things like that. But I did not find that that was the case. I'm not accusing you of it. No, no, I know, I know. What I found was that there, I'm so I'm agreeing with you, I think there's a real awareness, so maybe getting back to Patanjali, is it who? Patanjali? Oh, Padmasambhava.
Yeah, that there's an awareness down to this granular level of sight, any kind of, you know, tendency towards manipulation or, you know, taking advantage or any of that. Like, I have a clear sense, for example, of students and it's not a boundary there, but there's just certain things,
it's a discovery that's not necessary to go certain places. Because it's inevitable with this, anytime you're in a position of authority or a position that people will be drawn to you and and they will project things and they're… but I think that's part of the clarity and maybe wisdom that comes with this. It's like… and I'm speaking from a place of… from a personal perspective, having made a lot of personal mistakes in life, you know. There were some affairs in there,
things like that, big mistakes made and learned from, right? All adding to a sense of, you know, increased awareness of what are the effects of these things. So, I think in a way psychologically, there's a certain mastering of the psychological level of life that comes along with, but also a detachment that comes and they go hand in hand. The sense of detachment does not create a sense
of like, well, whatever, like you're talking about this one teacher. Yeah, all those affairs, they weren't me, they were somebody else. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just saying that one should never use one's sense of detachment as an alibi for inappropriate behavior. Each, you know, each level of life has its own rules to abide by, you could say, or laws of nature, whatever. And, you know, it's like... >> Well, can we know, can we know what, do you think you can be awake and know what's inappropriate?
I think you can. I think you can even on a level that's deeper and more dimensionally available than the normal person who has a strong code of ethics and moral standard. >> Yeah. I mean, or you could be awake to some degree, there are always degrees of it, and use your awakeness as justification for inappropriate behavior as Adi Da did very much, you know, sleeping with everybody's wives and taking drugs and all this stuff, you know, and claiming that
he was in some kind of crazy wisdom phase. Pete: Oh, I know, yeah. I mean, I was in the community for about a year way, way back when and so I, that was actually the reason why I left, was a sense of like, you know, they were making these stories about mystical experiences and it turned out he was smoking a cigarette and he accidentally burned somebody with some of the ash or something during a sex act. And I'm going, "Just tell us that! Don't make up some
mystical story." Yeah. So, it just really said a lot about, not just about him, but also about the way the community rationalized what was going on. Pete: Yeah. I helped to establish an organization that I'm still involved with called the Association for Spiritual Integrity. Pete Yeah. Pete Because I've encountered so many of these instances, and I think it's a real shame.
It can really shatter the faith of a, you know, sincere young aspirant when they encounter things like this, throw them off the track, you know, for a lifetime. So it's important, I think, that spiritual teachers walk their talk or, well, that's not a good line because their talk might justify this, but you know, just have their act together on all levels and be exemplars. This Gopi Krishna guy that I referred to as a case in point, he worked in this government office and everybody was corrupt.
They were all taking bribes in India and the contractors were, you know, trying to outbid each other with the bribes and then the contractors would make their money by using shoddy materials, you know, so they'd get more profit, which was endangering people's lives. Gopi Krishna would not stand for it one iota, even though his family was rather poor and he could have used the money, he just wouldn't play that game.
And I found it interesting because here was an example of a guy whose behavior really aligned with his spiritual development in the kind of way I would respect and admire. What was his focus in terms of a spiritual approach? >> RICK: Well, he started from a young age, he started having profound experiences.
The next thing I'm going to interview will be all about this, but he started having profound experiences and then he went through various stages where he was meditating a lot and going into deep states of samadhi, and then kundalini awoke one day like a rushing waterfall up his spine, and he started having all these sublime states of awareness and beautiful stuff. And I haven't finished the book, but meanwhile, he was living an ordinary life
in Kashmir and working in a government office as a mid-level clerk. And it was an interesting story. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, well, and so I would think, just to loop back in, is it seems that this should be a natural part of true spiritual awakening. That it should naturally be integrated. You mean like… This recognition of, just recognizing basic things of right and wrong. A lot of this comes
down to levels of manipulation of those around you. That manipulation should start feeling very inappropriate. It should. And it amazes me how… community should always, I think there should always be an encouragement, just like any dysfunctional situation in families, simply, you know, kids and they should be able to call the parents out on stuff. I mean, I totally believe in there are no authorities here that aren't beyond
reproach. So that has to be a part of it, no matter what the system is. And I'd say the same thing about this. I remember Andrew Cohen went through, that one teacher went through a lot of stuff not too long ago. And it really took, and the same thing with Daufrey John, it took people calling him out to get him somewhat in line, somewhat in line, but he knew he couldn't. So, and I think in a way that we have to keep that responsibility. It's like, look, if you think there's something unethical
or inappropriate going on, confront the teacher. They should not be beyond being confronted about it. Yeah. Just today I sent somebody a quote from the Dalai Lama, which I'll read. He said, "A teacher who behaves unethically or asks students to do so can be judged as lacking in ultimate insight," His Holiness said. "As far as my own understanding goes, the two claims that you are not subject to precepts and you are free, these are the result of incorrect understanding.
No behavior is free from consequences. For this reason, true wisdom always includes compassion, the understanding that all things and beings are interconnected with and vulnerable to each other. Even though one's realization may be higher than the high being, as His Holiness said, one's behavior should conform to the human way of life. When teachers break the precepts, behaving in ways that are clearly damaging to themselves and others, students must face the situation,
even though this can be challenging. Criticize openly. That is the only way. If there is incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, teachers should be confronted with it. They should be allowed to admit their wrongs, make amends, and undergo a rehabilitation process. If a teacher won't respond, students should publish the situation in a newspaper, not omitting the teacher's name. The fact that the teacher may have done so many other good things should not
keep us silent. Yeah. See, on the other hand, I would say that naturally as a part of the awakening process, you will leave behind certain social orders of things, some rules of conduct that are rightfully left behind. So, there's many things that are part of cultural, you know, this is what a good person is, this is how a good person acts. Be nice, be kind, you know, But I think that a lot of that will be left behind in the process.
But I think this is part of the sophistication of awakening, and when it's effective, is that there's sort of knowing when to revolt, you know, when to say, "I don't need to adhere to that any longer." And there's a time to say, "I'm accountable for my actions in this." And I think you should know you should have a good sense of the difference. So I think and it can be confusing to somebody looking at it from the outside and go,
yeah, but he's not really, you know, he's not acting like a regular person anymore. He's not obeying the laws of that. I would say a good example of that is my marriage situation. I don't care about the contract. I don't care about what culture says about a marriage. What I care about is our living relationship together. Is it growing? Is it positive? Is it healthy?
I interpret that based on this situation. This is always tricky, but it's not important that I stay married or not for the wrong reasons. It's not important. I mean, that's not what I intend to. It's like, "Oh, I got to stay married because we've been married and we have a contract." At the same time, there's a freedom to just focus on what's meaningful in that. It's a relatively mutual situation, so the other person has say in that.
If they don't want to be a part of that, they want a traditional marriage, that's their right and there's no criticism of that, but that may not be something that I'm capable of doing anymore. So, I don't know if this is making sense, but I'm trying to see how both of them... >>Rick: Kind of is. I mean, yeah.
The thought that comes to mind is that there have been a lot of things that have been cultural norms that have been horrible, like slavery, or putting indigenous people, children in these schools and taking them away from their parents at the age of five. I just heard about this on the radio this morning, and, you know, whipping them if they spoke their native language, and then the priests and nuns are sexually abusing them, all kinds of things that
have been sort of like accepted by society that are terrible. So who would want to go away? We should rebellion those things. But then I think what it really boils down to is the golden rule, you know, do unto others as you would have others do unto you, just don't harm people. And, you know, that would probably be the greatest compass to follow.
Well, and I would say, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of sensing these other dimensions of things, there is a dimension of experience where right behavior is perfectly evident, aside from any thought I have about it. Spontaneously. It's like, yes, you can feel the rightness of it. And that's not just fluffy thinking.
That is a deeper sense of right and wrong. And I think that's many of these rules that have kind of been handed down and just memorized and embodied without really reflecting on the deeper meaning of it, I think have lost that. And so, that's part of this rejection. It's like, look, I don't care what people say, I don't care what they say is right. What I care about is what I feel, what I have a direct experience of, what I intuitively know to be right and wrong.
And it's never really led me astray. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And what always puzzles me, and we won't drag this out too long, but it's kind of interesting. But what always puzzles me is these guys who are really impressive in many ways, you know, they really they glow in the dark, They've got so much, you know presence shock shock charisma and all who are behaving Reprehensibly in many ways and my best understanding of it at this time. Is that there's such a thing as a
Partial awakening certainly in Kundalini terms. It's called Deflected rising where Kundalini rises to a great extent and but gets off on the wrong track Right and it can endow you with charisma and eloquence and you know cities even, and yet you are not enlightened and a lot of the lower chakras haven't really been cleaned up properly. And when they start acting up, all hell breaks loose. >> Jeff: Right, right. Yeah, and I agree. And that's part of, I think I tried to allude to
that at the beginning. There was a lot of, there was certainly a lot of attention to that early on in the spiritual process of just, of really looking at, not just looking at conditioning and reactiveness and fears and things like that, but also really reflecting on, well, what's truly right? How do I know? Because it's changing. Like you said, slavery at one point, everybody, what, you don't have a slave? You know, what's wrong with you? - Washington, Jefferson, all these guys
owned slaves. - So, clearly, yeah, even with, you know, fairly intelligent, wise men and women, there was an acceptance of a condition that just seems so obviously not acceptable. So in a way, I think what we're talking about is something that transcends history and culture and society, and just considering the possibility that there's another way of knowing right and wrong and
truth and falseness and so on. Yeah Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching and also some other scriptures say that if a society is really in tune with the Tao, you know, really enlightened, then you hardly need any government, you hardly need any laws, just people all behave spontaneously. But when the Tao degenerates or is, you know, crumbles down to a low level, then you need all these laws and rules because people aren't just going to behave spontaneously rightly.
Yeah, I like that. That actually is a good description. Well, we've done a bit of a marathon here. We should probably wrap it up, but it's fun talking to you. Yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Thanks so much for inviting me on the show. So I'll have a link to your website on your BatGap page, and people can get in touch with you through that. If you want, I can even put your email on there, but you might get swamped.
So maybe you'd prefer that they go through the contact form on your website? Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Do you work with people remotely or do they have to come to North Carolina? No, I do. I'm working with a few people. It's something about being in person. It is nice. So it's much more effective. So I encourage people. Usually if I'm working with them remotely, they've got to really want to do the work.
And also, I like to see them every once in a while, so we figure out a way to have them come out. So we've got a few people doing that. And also I'll have a link to your book on your BatCat page, so people can check that out. Appreciate it. Alright, well thanks so much, Dan. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, I enjoyed spending time with you. Yeah, same here. If I ever get down in North Carolina, I'll hop in. Yeah, I'd love to see you. And Irene.
And Irene. - And Irene, well, thank you to those who've been listening or watching. And the next interview, as I mentioned, will be with this fellow who was a close student of Gopi Krishna for quite a few years. His name is Michael Bradford. Then we have an upcoming interviews page on BatGap if you wanna see what else is scheduled. So, see you next time. (upbeat music)