Ralph White

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ralph White, a co founder of the New York Open Center, America's leading urban institution of holistic learning and where his current role as creative director. He currently hosts a program on the w b AI FM radio in New York City, where he has interviewed many of the major figures in the holistic world and numerous

scholars in the fields of multicultural mysticism and ecology. Ralph has recognized and honored as a guiding force of the annual Gathering of Holistic Centers, which draws leaders from many of the major holistic institutions throughout the world to discuss trends, developments, challenges, and successes in the worldwide consciousness movement. His latest book is The Jeweled Highway, on the Quest for a life of Meaning. Here's the interview. Hi, Ralph, welcome to the show. Well,

thank you all right, I'm glad to be here. I am excited to get you on and talk about your latest book called The Jeweled Highway, and it's really a recollection of your spiritual journey kind of up to date. So we'll jump into that in more detail in a minute. But let's start where we normally start, which is with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside

of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. First of all, it it tells us sudden true that we do have a shadow as well as a light side within ourselves. I think that's important for us all to recognize. Um. And secondly, should I say um? You know I was thinking about this parable. I was thinking of a great song by Don Henley about anger and jealousy. If you keep carrying on that anger, it will eat you up inside. I think we've got to get down to the heart of the matter. But my will gets weak and my thoughts

seem to scatter. But I think it's about forgiveness, even if you don't love me anymore, to go to the end of that stanza in the song, but there's a lot of truth in that. I think that even when we've been through very difficult in disturbing and maybe unjustified experiences.

It is a question of how we give greater attention to the better angels of our nature, and we do seek to focus on love, compassion, forgiveness, while not pretending that we are devoid of shadows that were As called Young taught us many decades ago, we all have a shadow on that dark side is going to be there, and it's going to come out even more if we

try to repress it. We need to acknowledge that. But I think yes, we have to give our primary focus to the things of beauty that exist within our psyche. So whether that is love of nature, love of others, but in general, compassion, wisdom, everything that's great spiritual traditions

have taught us. You spent your early years in Wales on the coast, beautiful natural scenery, and you you grew up there until your teenage years, where you moved to Northerton, England, into a town that felt really claustrophobic and limited and dirty. And one of the things that lifted you out of that at the time, one of the things that helped you get a sense that there was a bigger world

out there was music. Yeah, absolutely, well, this was the sixties, you know, in the early mid sixties in the north of England, in a town called Huddersfield, about eighty miles

down the road from Liverpool. So of course the saving grace and we were a place of exquisite beauty like the Irish Sea coast of Wales to one of those grimy northern industrial towns, which is where the Industrial Revolution began, or one of the places where it began, that was covered in soot grime, the world's oldest and most some

of the most disturbed working class. Um. The great consolation was the music because of course when I was fourteen thirteen, fourteen years old, the Beatles came barreling out of Liverpool and then you had the Mersey beat. You had all that great rock and roll. That was the saving grace. When people asked me what got me through my teenagers, I always say it was rock and roll and beer. There wasn't a lot else up there in that in that rather, it seemed to me god forsaken part of

the world. But the music was sensational. Yeah, the vitality, the exuberance, uh, just the dynamism of it all. Yeah, it was the silver lining to spending one's teenages and then auth of England in the only mid sixties. Yeah, and you know, I think that music, any kind of music, rock, music, whatever, and we've explored this on the show before, is really a form of spirituality in its own right, and that I think a lot of what I get out of a spiritual life I also can get out of music.

I was trying to convince somebody earlier that watching live killers videos on YouTube was in my meditation for the day, which I don't think I quite sold anybody on. But there's a similar comfort and consolation there. And it it seems how often you quote music in your book and different things, that it's still a deep part of your life. Yeah, you know. I mean I didn't really plan to include

all those lyrics in the book. I just found it as I was recalling different parts of my life, all the music of the time came barreling forth, and I do you know, those lyrics suggest edit in a psyche is unlike trying to memorize poetry. All those lyrics from pop and rock and blues song that's my my personal orientation.

They're just in there, and their music has been there at some of the most significant transitional points in my life, and especially should we say, in the late sixties early seventies, when there was a massive explosion of psychedelic music, and many of the great musicians are called, starting with Beatles, began to sing about spiritual experience and mystical experience, which

is phenomenal. I mean, what what other art form has gone from singing I love you and yes it's true and you know I do, and that kind of thing to actually singing about profound mystical experience. So I think that was a massive transition. But I agree with you. I think even music that is not overthly um spiritual, it's in the actual sound itself. I was just reading that in Shakespeare his in his plays, he always uses music, or not always, but he often uses music as the

symbol of harmony. And it was certainly enormously nourishing and vitalizing to my soul growing up. Um, not to mention fun, vital, sexy and wild, all of the above. So yeah, I think music is profound. It's it's the very least. It's it's therapeutic, and it's uplifting and it's vitalizing. Certainly, rock and rolls exactly now your career has largely been focused on building uh spiritual retreat centers for lack of a

lack of a better word. You originally were very involved in OMEGA when that started up, and then the last period of your career was in building the Open Center in New York City and you were really trying to understand what it takes, you know, how could you bring these spiritual ideas right into the heart of the big city. And I'm really curious what have you learned from that that people can take away for how they keep a spiritual focus in their life day to day, whether it

be suburban or urban areas where they're living. But how do we take this out of the occasional retreat center and back into our lives more consistently, Because I think that's what a lot of people listening to the show

are are looking for input on. Yeah, that's a good question, because I'm actually speaking at the first Queen's Book Festival this coming Sunday, and they're asking more or less the same question, you know, which actually never been asked before me, which is, how do you retain your centeredness so you're calm or do you remain in your heart while you're in a place as demanding and as frenzied as New York City, And well, what have I learned from doing

the Open Center? I mean, the first thing I should say is that when we started the New York Open Center, which is New York's and has been New York's leading central holistic learning for the last thirty two with thirty three years, you know, the conventional wisdom was that that kind of stuff would never work in New York, that maybe California, you know, maybe Hawaii, possibly Colorado, but that

the New York was the real world. So it's certainly shown me that notions that there are parts of the planet that are too difficult to crime ridden, um, too caught up in the mayhem of life, that those places are unreceptive to a deeper spirituality and a more holistic worldview, that's certainly not true. New York is is filled with people who creative, interesting, deep and are connected to profound

spiritual questions and are interested in spiritual practices um. And you know, of course all multiple different forms of therapy, etcetera. So I think that's worth bearing in mind, first of all, that we're not alone in this, even if we feel that there's a tiny mine alority, even I can say that with the whatever it is. Something like three hundred thousand people have come to the Open Center over the last three decades. Um there's a whole community of people

out there and people. I think the more people can meet with people of like mind, I've always felt that's one of the significant roles of these holistic learning centers like Omega, like the Open Center, like Findhorn up there in the north of Scotland where I was for three years in the seventies. They all serve the purpose, or one of the purposes they serve, is to bring together people of like mind where you can meet immediately and have that sense that these are people on my wavelength.

These are people who speak my language. Even if you're the only person in your family and your workplace who has these more spiritual and holistic interests and values. So I would say that you know, and I mean what else you know? For me, I've got I'm a nature lever. That's why it was difficult for me to move to the industrial north of England when I was young, and it's difficult for me to live in New York. So

for me, I have to have that contact with nature. Um. So I'm fortunate to live in somewhere with a balcony with the sky, with a little park outside the balcony. So to me, it's it's I have to have a spiritual practice. I noticed in my my meditative practice each morning, my attempt to attune to nature. Um, my cultivate. I think I think we all need to cultivate community. You know. That's one of the first lessons of positive psychology is

that happiness is not so much an individual thing. It grows out of the network of friends, family, colleagues that we have. So I think having a supportive community around you is just as important as having a practice that can give you some kind of perspective on your day to day life. So those are the thoughts that occurred to me. Excellent. Yeah, I think that that idea of

community keeps coming up. You know. I think that most at least what I had, you know, the spirituality that I had imbued over a bunch of years, really focused on that inward journey. Um. But that community was such a key part of It's so funny that I didn't recognize it because I would say, you know, probably the first ten years of me being more for like, you know, the word spiritual, we could debate what that really means,

but more focused on interior life. Came right in the midst of a great community, which was a twelve step community, and I didn't even recognize it was so baked into it. I don't think I recognized how important it was until later when I sort of stepped back from it and went, oh, yeah, so that was there the whole time. Well, I think you know a lot of people, when we step onto this path of the individualtion as young called it, or planning out who we are connecting to our deeper spiritual selves,

it has to be an individual journey, you know. It's in a sense we're separating ourselves from the conditioning we might have received from family, or from school, or from society around us in general. So for me, certainly it was when I was in my adventures in my younger days, checking to Machu Picchu and this kind of thing. Um, it was a very individualized, isolated path and it needed to be. I think I needed to find my own self.

But then once you come to some sense of who you might be, and as I say in my book, that you know, the insight that came to me when I was living in Colombia and Bogata was I'm here on this d to the greatest service I can give the world in the greatest way I can actually find fulfillment myself is to just being myself and acting out of authenticity. I think. But I think once you've come to an awareness like that, then why yeah, why not

build community? I mean, I think all the cultures that show the highest levels of happiness and well being have have a strong measure of community in them. So yes, I I feel myself extremely grateful to have a very strong worldwide community of friends. So I think, you know, whether it's just the regular person getting down going down the bar to his pals that we might sink a few beers with, or whether it's something more family or in it, or whether it's a more directly spiritual community

like a zen community. I think they're always of sharing warmth and nourishing each other and of experiencing joyant this world. You the early days of the Omega Center, you programmed what they did with their programs. Were you started the Open Center. Um, you know, there's a lot of ambition in that and one of the things I'm always interested about with people I have on the show is how they balance ambition and striving and sort of the idea

that comes through some spiritual practice about improving ourselves. So how do you balance that aspect of ourselves with also being able to be present to the moment, to be grateful for what we have. This seems to be a paradox there that's sitting kind of right in the middle of that life is you know, there's this desire to move forward, and yet part of the path is also just being happy where you are. Yeah, well that's true,

isn't it. We do live with that kind of paradox that we want to just be in the present with our open hearts and to have that mystical sense at the universe is unfolding as it should, you know, is that that perspective of unity. On the other hand, when we come into more the binary and dualistic world of good and evil, we can see that change needs to

take place in our culture. And so yeah, when I came to New York thirty three years ago, it was with a very specific intention, which was to create and build from scratch this place, the Open Center, and mean it seemed like a somewhat quixotic idea, but it was also clear that, you know, arguably the world's most influential city really needed a major focal point for this new, more holistic and ecological worldview. So it wasn't for me so much of a parsonal ambition. It was more sense, Look,

this is a job to be done. So I mean I poured myself into it heart and soul, and you know, I guess it was a pretty NonStop exercise for those first five years, in service or in commitment, or in some kind of dedication. But at the same time, you know, New York is fun city. I mean I was young, I was in my early mid thirties. I want to have fun. I've always been a strong advocate and enjoyer of fun. So um, I mean, if you're going to

be in a retreat somewhere, that's another story. You know, if you're going to choose to live in a contemplative life and a retreat setting, I certainly honor that. But in my particular destiny to come to New York and create the Open Center involved imbibing of the joys of living in the city. And so whether that's culture, the arts, music, romance, whatever it might have been, I sought to drink that

to the full. I mean, I didn't know when I began that I would be in New York as long as I have been at that point in my life. I've never lived anywhere since childhood for longer than three or four years. So I wanted to drink it to the drags and taste it to the fall and get that big time New York experience. So it's the balance, isn't it. I don't there's any easy answers. We seek to be contemplative and serene and calm and centered on

loving in our day to day lives. At the same time, we want to jump into life and grab the bull by the horns. Um. And when you inevitably do that, you know you get out there a bit, You take a few risks, you step into some worlds that you're not familiar with. It's going to get a little rambunctious. It may be difficult, but I don't regret pouring myself into life because it's too precious to allow it to pass by without seeking to have the most passionate experience

of each passing moment that you possibly can. This is a question you asked yourself in your youth. How could any honest and perceptive person accept the existence of some kind of higher presence when the whole twentieth century had been a massive accumulation of evidence that life was meaningless, filled with gratuitous horror and random death. And I'm curious how you did over time? You know, how you reconcile that today, what your view is, How you how you

tied all these things together for yourself? Well, you know, I think I grew up with some notion of God that came from the Church of England, And you know, it was some notion of some guy with a long white beard sitting on a throne saying, after death you've been good or bad, you're gonna sit on a cloud and play a heart for eternity, which always struck me as a horrible thought, or you're gonna, you know, have

a more hellish post life existence. And as a result, if you have that kind of conception of divinity, um, you're going to ask yourself, how could I remember writing an essay on this in the philosophy course course when I was at university. How could a how can the existence of evil in this world be reconciled with with the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent God. And it really can't be in a lot of ways that if you going to take that old style view of the divine.

I mean, now, yes, I grew up. My grandfather was in the trenches of the Psalm was Mustard Gas there, although he survived, like my father was in the thick of the Second World warm all the way from Normandy to the Nazi surrender. So and I just grew up with a strong awareness of the horrors of the wars, with the Holocaust, with Stalin's crimes, etcetera. And I yeah, I asked myself, how could there possibly be some deeper, more spiritual reality? And as a as a teenager, there

just wasn't much evidence for that. So I was a kind of angry teenage existentialist, I would say. So, I really I didn't grow up with a lot of faith. Should we say that there is a deeper order to the universe? I really have to set off on that journey, that quest, that quest for meaning. Could we actually be living in a meaningful world? And that took me from through many things, you know, it took me through those to cultural explorations in the early seventies in California and

in South America. Um, you know, I think those those years for me were crucial. Between twenty one or twenty two and twenties six, say, between graduate school and finned Horn, that's where I really explored and journeyed into other worlds, had many different explorations of consciousness in nature and spiritual

practices in other ways. And um, I actually had the experience. Well, first of all, there's a sense of humility, you know when you spent all those nights under those vast style skies, whether it's in the Andes at twelve thousand feet or whether it's in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, do you have that sense of the tininess of the human experience that here we are. We think we have

figured out the nature of the world. That scientific materialism, should we say, is is the most astute handle on reality. And then you gaze at those night skies for weeks or months on end, and you think we're just as speck in this vast universe where some of those tiniest little lights, perceptible lights are not just stars or suns or even galaxies, they're galaxies of galaxies. You know, this

is an infinitely huge universe I have had. I had certain spiritual experiences that showed me that, as Dante would have said, that love is the very motor energy of the cars mass. So I, through my own personal spiritual search, my travels, my journeys inwardly and outwardly, I personally had to come to a living spiritual experience, an experience of noses, should we say, of spiritual knowledge. I'm not somebody oriented towards faith and dogma and that kind of thing that

really didn't speak to me at all. I'm I'm somebody who needed a personal experience of it. And that's what I experienced in those journeys and adventures in my in the first half of my twenties, so that I came to that point where I really saw that, yes, we there is there's a spark of divinity within each of us, just as there is divinity within the cosmos. And that is our challenge is spiritual beings to connect the divine spark within our hearts with the divine element within the cosmos,

the micro consum and the macro consum. So you know, once I came to that that's what gave me an insight that, okay, I've arrived at that inner conviction I was probably before that really clarified itself for me in a firm way, and then the question becomes, well, what do you do about it? So that's what led me to places like Finton, because fint On, the Echo Village alternative community up in the north of Scotland, saw itself

as a center of demonstration. You know, it was intent upon demo straight into the world that it is possible to live in harmony, broadly speaking with each other and with nature, that this is not just some fantasy or some spiritual dream, that there really can be an alternative to this hyper competitive, capitalist, materialist world that we grow

up in. And then the more you know, the more you develop a community of people who shared those values and have come to it independently, not receiving some set

of dogma um, the more it becomes strengthening. And you know, I think of Fenton itself started in nineteen six two three broke people on a windswept trailer park and an obscure part of northern Scotland, and how the founders had the intuitive insight that it would become an internationally recognized center of light, as they called it, and that in turn would become part of a network of light and are a network of conscious centers all over the old

and that has certainly come to pass. I mean, I was amazed to see that both CNN and MSNBC did pieces on Fentol last week, because it has probably the lowest carbon footprint of anywhere on the Earth. But it was amazing to see the mainstream media, fifty odd years after fent Home was founded, actually responding with incredible respect

and appreciation. So I think it's a question of taking that inner journey, engaging in those mystical spiritual practices, being in places of beauty and nature, solitude, mystical inspiration, reading the kind of books that they came to me, and as I as I described in the book, and it was funny the way books would just come to me in my early twenties, after my experiences in the deserts

of New Mexico and Arizona and um. So I think there's reading, there's the study, there's the practice, and then there's the community of people with these shared insights, and I, you know, I think that's the way you do it, or at least you try to do it and face it. Look, you know we who pulls it off moment by moment every day. I'm sure there areesome zen masters who do. But for most of us, you know, we're just trying to make it through the day. Your book was interesting.

It opened a couple of doors for me that I've not had a chance to explore. But you name a man, as you think, you know, potentially the greatest, you know, spiritual teacher that there's been that by and large, nobody really talks about, certainly not in that context, and that's Rudolf Steiner. He's mostly known for the Waldorf style of education, which my son participated in as a as a preschooler. But but you talk about him as way beyond that.

So can you share with me some sort of practical or tangible or thing that we could understand, the thing that you learned from Rudolf Steiner that might act as a teaser for us to explore more. Good question. Well, I I would say about Steina that he's one of the great spiritual figures of the of the West of the twentieth century, probably certainly one of the utmost outstanding um spiritual philosophers. And if you remember that line from

the Bible, by that fruit shill you know them. You look at the incredible fruits that he left behind in terms of he was saying, in terms of World of Education, by dynamic Agriculture, ced the Camphill Villagers and sun A Hue, I think, really, without question, the greatest holistic legacy of the twentieth century. So then you know the heat. But all of that just came out of the last five or six years of his life, I mean, the other

between nineteen o one and nineteen nine. It was all about the deeper esoteric spiritual philosophy, the nature of reality that he personally felt that his most important mission was to return to the world a correct and scrupulous understanding of calmer and reincarnation. And yet, as you're saying, most people don't read Steiner for that today. It's more the practical legacies like World of Education, pydynamic agriculture. But if I were thinking, now, what could I say that would

give people a hint? Well, you know, he wrote, it's hard to pick out one thing because his works he gave over six thousand lectures, and his life compiled into about three and fifty different volumes. It's a it's a treasure trove of esoteric wisdom. It us require. What I would say is when you pick up a book by Steiner and you really have to follow your intuition about

what is the best book to begin with. For me, it was The Tension between East and West, which I read when I was in Hawaii, because I thought that would be a good place to read a book with a title like that. But you know, when you get into these things, you realize what is it. It's just you know, we're living in an infinitely deeper universe than we think we are. But as I say to people when I'm speaking about Steiner, I've I've been into it for thirty years. I feel I have penetrated into it

inches deep, and it is oceans deep. Um. I think we're living in a vast, beautiful, incredibly moving cosmos that we only just glimpse the true dimensions of in moments of spiritual lucidity. And um, I think it's just worth it whether we consider what Rudol Steiner would tell us about what happens each night in dreamless sleep and how that relates to karma. I think the whole picture that Rudol Standard gives us of the journey of the soul

between death and rebirth is extremely beautiful. I've been doing these conferences on the Art of Dying for the last twenty years, and I always try to make sure that some of Steiner's research on the journey of the soul between death and rebirth is represented at those events, because for me, it's the deepest materials spoken on death in the twentieth century. So if you have those kinds of questions,

what could there be a larger mega picture? I mean, I would say Steiner has the biggest mind that I've come across in the twentieth century, and also a very beautiful and pure heart that was never the faintest hint of scandal from the many people who knew him before he died in n So I think, you know, I think what I've learned is the vast and all inspiring um nature and spectrum of the human experience, and how we have an enormous amount to learn and the more

we can stay here. Here's one very practical thing. Rudolf Steiner would say that what we want to cultivate towards life in general or even people that we disagree with is an attitude of reverence and veneration, because if you developed the critical spirited kill, he would say, it kills our capacity to see the spiritual within others. So he recommends as a practice that when we're listening to people,

even if it's somebody we radically disagree with them. In this political season, we have no shortage of that um. Then try to put us into our prejudices aside, you know, the the usual reaction of that stupid so and so, you know, which is what I tend to do. Put our attentions in our heart and try to was the heart as an organ of cognition as a vehicle for knowing, and enter through your heart into the heart of another and try to just live into their reality for a

little while. I know when I first thought I would do this, and I can't do that, you know, I'll just turn into a raving idiot. I'll lose my own my own judgment in these matters. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. I think that's how we expand the

circle of compassion. As Martin Luther King would say that Obama likes to quote that, and I think that's how we do it on an individual basis is to try to put that judgmental, angry, accusatory side of ourselves and try to use the organ the heart as an organ of knowing, of cognition. So yeah, I think that's what i'd say about Rudoslana. I really encourage our listeners to don't be put off by the language. You know, you just have to persevere a bit um. But the spiritual

rewards You're just reading Steiner is a meditation. It's not going to be a quick read. I love to read Steiner after thirty ideas, the sentences are just meditations in themselves that are literally mind expanding. So yeah, he's the great thing. I want to wrote an article about Son called rudolfs Son and Neglected Spiritual Genius, and I think over the course of the coming centuries we will gain a deeper and deeper appreciation for him, just as when

he died in twenty five. There are only two World off schools in the world. Now there's over a thousand, and they're spreading like wildfire and China of all places, literally hundreds of new ones helping each Wow, that's very interesting, Well, Ralph, I think that's a great place for us to go ahead and wrap up. I think that message that you left us there with from Rudolf Steiner is particularly apt in this political season and in this world of ours today.

So thanks so much for coming on. I enjoyed the book, and I'll have links on the show notes to where people can buy the book, where they can find your webs site where they can learn more about the Open Center, and a link to some of Rudolf Steiner's stuff. Also, yes, could I just mentioned one other thing I've done this this twenty one year series of conferences on the Western

esoteric tradition um. It began with one in the alchemical world of Renaissance Bohemia, the period referred to as the Rosicrucian Enlightenment back in and but we're going to do one in a month's time, or so called an Esoteric

Quest for the Mysteries of the North in Iceland. So if anybody, if any of our listeners are interested in that, they might want to check out the website Esoteric quest dot org because it lists all the all the conferences and quests we've done over the last twenty pless years, and I've found those to be great sauces of joy and inspiration. For me, it's one because you're with all the emphasis upon yoga and Buddhism and shamanism, which I support.

It's wonderful. But it's wonderful to remember too that in the Western ess attire tradition we have in a sense of the European indigenous spiritual path, and it's filled with beauty and amazement. Excellent, wonderful. Yes, thanks for mentioning that. I'll put a link to that website also. Okay, well, it's been a pleasure to talk to you, Eric. I wish you all the best with your show, and thank you Ralph, and take care and we'll talk again. I'm sure, alright,

all the very best, Okay bye. You can learn more about Ralph White and have this podcast add one you feed dot net slash Ralph