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[Music]

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Rick Archer, BATGAP Interview #1

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Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.

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My name is Rick Archer.

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Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening

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people.

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We've done nearly 700 of them now and if this happens to be new to you, you haven't

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seen any previous ones and you'd like to see more, go to www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P,

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and look under the past interviews menu where you'll find them organized in several different

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ways.

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And some guy emailed me this week and said, "Wow, I just discovered this great feature

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where you can type in any word or phrase and find exactly which interviews that was discussed

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in and you should tell people."

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So I'm telling people now.

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Under the past interviews menu, the first item under there is a feature like that where you

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can type in any word or phrase and you'll instantly see a list of all the interviews

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in which that word or phrase was mentioned.

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And then by clicking on the listings below, it'll take you right to that spot in the interview

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and you can listen to it.

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There's instructions there in more detail.

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Okay, so also I want to mention a couple more things.

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One is we have a little project going where we're transcribing and proofreading the transcripts

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of all of these interviews.

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And so we have a nice team of volunteers helping to proofread.

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If you'd like to join that, get in touch.

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And finally, this program is made possible

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through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers.

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So if you appreciate it and would like to help support it,

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there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website

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and a page explaining alternatives to PayPal.

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My guest today is Carter Phipps.

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Carter is the author of "Evolutionaries,"

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which was published in 2012,

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and co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller

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"Conscious Leadership,"

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with John Mackey and Steve McIntosh.

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I've interviewed Steve.

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He is co-founder of the Institute for Cultural Evolution,

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which addresses political polarization

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through focusing on the cultural roots

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of America's challenges.

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He hosts the Thinking Ahead podcast

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and is a former award-winning journalist

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and executive editor of What Is Enlightenment magazine.

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And I will be linking to his website on his Backgap page.

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That's carterphipps.com.

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I used to subscribe to What Is Enlightenment magazine.

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Today we're actually going to be talking a lot about what is enlightenment, and if we

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have time we'll also talk about his book Evolutionaries, which I read or listened to the audio version

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of in the last couple weeks and enjoyed tremendously.

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As I listened to it I wished I'd had a photographic memory because there was so much good stuff

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in there, so many interesting thoughts.

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I mean you could make an interview out of every chapter.

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This is a sampling, obviously we're not going to go on for days talking about all this.

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We'll give you a taste for a couple of hours of what Carter has to say.

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The thing that got me going on the idea of interviewing Carter was that he and I and

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many others were speakers at a conference at Harvard Divinity School in April.

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I was with the Association for Spiritual Integrity, we gave a presentation, and Carter gave a

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presentation himself entitled "Mysticism and its Discontents. Does Spiritual Illumination

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Create Its Own Intrinsic Blindness?" The presentation interested me because if you've

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been watching BatGap interviews, you've often heard me lament about the situation of spiritual

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teachers who are very inspiring in many ways, but then misbehave, in many cases more egregiously

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than the ordinary person would. And it's confusing because traditionally we expect spiritual enlightenment

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to confer some sort of saintliness upon a person and have them be exemplars of ideal

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behavior and very often the opposite seems to be true. So, it's something I've been

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pondering for a long time now and reading Carter's article and this upcoming conversation

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we're going to have, I think, will help us gain greater clarity on that conundrum.

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So Carter, where would you like to start?

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Give us a nutshell version of the premise of your paper, and then we can pretty much

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follow the logic of the paper as you laid it out, because it was very systematic.

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But let's get us started.

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Yeah, thanks for all that.

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That's a big question.

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I wrote it this year, but I've really been thinking about it for at least 10-12 years.

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I thought about it. I think the, honestly, the very last retreat I did with my own teacher,

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my own community, and that, you didn't speak about that, but that community eventually fell apart.

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The very last retreat, I think some of these ideas really crystallized for me. And that was almost,

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that was more than 10 years ago. Do you mind saying who your teacher was? Yeah,

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sure. My teacher was, since I was really in my early twenties, I was in the Andrew Coen's

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community. And that community was also the, What is Enlightenment, the magazine you spoke about,

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was a project of many of us in that community and that became, you know, it was much more than

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a vehicle for his teachings or that community's teachings or anything like that,

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but it came out of that community. It was a great magazine. I liked it.

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Yeah, yeah, it was fantastic. It was a wonderful, you know, that was its own

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wonderful, beautiful journey that we went through creating that together and many of us who worked

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on it. It was a beautiful, really enjoyed that process. And I think we were able to explore so

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many nooks and crannies of the spiritual life. And it gave me, I think, a unique perspective,

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because not only was I sort of practicing it very intensively in my own sort of spiritual

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context or on communal context, but then we were interviewing people in every tradition.

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We were interviewing contemporary teachers, Western and Eastern. We were talking about it,

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discussing it. You know, the whole inquiry was I felt like I learned so much about just the history

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of teachers and teachings and in all kinds of East meets West contexts.

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And so that combined with my own experience in my own community with my own teacher all

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mixed together.

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And I just thought a lot about that question.

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And I think it's almost even more profound than that because the magazine itself was started

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from my own teacher's inquiry into what had happened with the teachers of the 70s and 80s.

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many gurus of the 70s, 80s, whether we're talking about Trungpa or your own experience, I don't

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know your experience with Maharishi and Dauphrey John and Rajneesh, all these different, you

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know, Krishnamurti, there was these significant teachers, many of them who had gone through

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these massive problems, ethical, complete messes, the communities had imploded, just

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all kinds of stuff, Muktananda, all these teachers. And then in the wake of that was

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our community sort of formed in the late 80s and early 90s, and I think the teacher was

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very concerned about ethics and how we go about this living a spiritual life.

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And yet, even despite that concern, that investigation, we were so, he himself fell prey to a lot of

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messed up things that ultimately led to the implosion of our community over time.

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So it made me think very deeply about those questions.

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And I think the traditional way we see it is like someone has, well, people see in all

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kinds of ways, but someone has a spiritual awakening and then they are corrupt.

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And you know, and they were good, but then they become corrupt, power corrupts.

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And while that's true, I felt like there, what I witnessed in my own experience and

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in looking at the history of the last century, you know, at least century of sort of new

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religious movements and new spiritual movements, it made me want to delve into the subtleties

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of the way in which our experience of enlightenment itself and of non-duality and of deep mysticism

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can illuminate, but it also can blind, right? It can also blind. And I think unless we start

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to appreciate that, we are going to fall into lots of problems as we pursue these practices,

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as we pursue teachers, as we pursue communities. And so I'm sort of really trying to kind of

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help all of us to be much more awake and not put these things on pedestals that ultimately

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will lead to massive crashes.

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So people tend to like either are overly fawning, you know, just when they get into these mystical

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experiences that these people know more than I do, this is incredible, this is all good,

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or they can become cynical on the other side of it.

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I'm trying to kind of walk a middle line here.

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we engage these practices and even maybe these modalities of teachers and students while

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being a lot more awake to the subtleties of the problems. And not just the students, but

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the teachers too. And I think a lot of the problems are bound up in ideas we have about

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enlightenment itself. Maybe that we need to really deeply question. So all of these things.

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So I try to congeal or concentrate all of that into about 6,000 words, this paper. It

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probably should be a book. It probably should be much more. But at least I got some of the

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basic ideas down. Yeah, so when you start out the paper you outline initially

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three possibilities with these teachers. One is that they had a genuine spiritual

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attainment or realization but then fell prey to corruption or human weakness. The

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second is that they were self-deluded and couldn't possibly have attained a

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genuine awakening. And the third is that they were just outright frauds and took

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advantage of people. And I suppose all three of those are possibilities or some

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mixture of the three. But then a fourth which you lay out is that the blind spots that lead

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to abuse in some cases are in fact dangers inherent in the awakened state, that they

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may be an intrinsic feature of certain types of awakening. And that'll surprise people

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because awakening by definition sounds like it should be an illumination which would shed

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light on blind spots and help to eliminate them. But if we try to look for examples of

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that being the case, or examples of it not being the case, it's a very questionable theory.

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Yes, exactly. That's like the start of the papers, like maybe that's not true. Maybe

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this idea that, and I'm not the first to point out that certain types of spiritual awakening

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doesn't necessarily, you can have a profound awakening, mystical awakenings, and of course

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it affects us, it changes us, it can be transformative, but it doesn't mean it transforms us to a

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degree that it changes all of our psychological structures. It can illuminate a lot, but even

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that illumination can blind us as it changes the nature of our attention, as it changes the nature

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of our psyche, as it reveals certain truths and powerful experiences. It can also blind us to other

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things. It can make us more focused on these things at the expense of these things. And if we just

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accept that this is the way, the truth, and the light, and we think this is just revealing nothing,

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this is nothing good, we will be blind to the ways in which this might delude us.

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And of course, some of those won't show up very strongly initially, but over time,

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they can be very profound and have huge effects. So, what I say is like, I was trying to understand

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the complications and confusions that lie within the realizations we seek, that can come out of

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of the realizations we see, not just the corruption we bring on our own.

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I suppose one initial consideration is, like the Power to Live Your Magazine, what is enlightenment?

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Some people seem to view enlightenment as like pregnancy, either you're pregnant or

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you're not. Either you're enlightened or you're not. There aren't degrees of enlightenment.

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Once you've got it, you've got it. There was one guy I interviewed, I remember, towards

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the end of the interview I said, "So, you know, what seems to be on the horizon for you?

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you see as the direction of the trajectory that you seem to be on.

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He kind of looked at me with this puzzled look and basically said, "I'm done.

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What more could there be?"

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And I was kind of forehead smacking myself.

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The fact that someone could relate to enlightenment as if it's the end of their personal evolution

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and almost the end of like human striving and human development.

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To me, it's like we've taken a wrong turn somewhere in the way we understand the nature of mystical

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realization as some sort of pinnacle of human evolution.

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I think we really have to question that, because that in and of itself, and it's very deep

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in there for a lot of people, leads to all kinds of messes and problems and ways that

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someone would say, "Ah, I'm done.

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I don't have to grow anymore.

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I'm done."

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And I think that the subtleties of why we've drawn those conclusions need to be unpacked.

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So let's try to define enlightenment. Why don't you give me your definition,

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I'll give you mine, and we'll compare notes.

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I don't have a definition. I spent 20 years doing a magazine. Someone could read those.

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I mean, at least I spent like 15 years doing a magazine.

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I'll give you mine.

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Someone could read all those. It's way too complex and I don't have a particular definition.

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Well, in my case, I hesitate to use the word because it has this superlative static connotation

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that you've reached the mountaintop and you're perfect and all that. And I don't know if that's

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even possible. One of my favorite quotes is from St. Teresa of Abala. She said that it appears

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that God himself is on the journey. And so if she's right, then certainly we are on the journey.

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I wrote a lot about enlightenment in the evolutionaries. A lot of what I wrote there,

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I still adhere to, but I completely agree with you. Seeing it, and one of the things I've seen it as

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an end state. It's a dangerous and tricky to draw either about oneself or the nature of that

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realization itself. And it's delicate because the nature of non-duality, the nature of that,

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what we call some traditionally kind of enlightenment, it has a, what I call in the

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the paper, a fragrance of finality. There's a completion in it that makes it seem like

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an end in a way, but that doesn't mean it's your end state. As I say, don't turn the ground

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of being, this beautiful sense of beingness and completeness and fullness or emptiness

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if it can be experienced. Don't turn the ground of being into the goal of becoming for you

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or for me or for us.

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And it can be beautiful and wondrous and we can appreciate what it is without turning

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around and imagining that that represents some pinnacle of human evolution.

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I think that's the really tricky danger that people get into.

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And people fall for it, and I think it fucks up people's lives when they fall for it.

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Yeah. If I were to use the word, I would probably include Ken Wilber's lines of development

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model.

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Wilber is very good at beginning the process, I think, of beginning to untangle some of

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this.

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Again, I hesitate to use the word, but in my understanding, or if someone deserves the

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word enlightenment, they are very highly developed along all possible lines of development. Not

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just the consciousness line, but the ethics line, and the compassion line, the heart,

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the refinement of senses. All the better angels of our nature have blossomed fully in such

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a person. But again, that's very rare. And I think what is often mistaken for enlightenment

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is just the awakening to pure being, or the ground of being as you called it. And it can

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be so intoxicating. And so, again, a more fruitful, I think more realistic way to think

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about some of these things is, is it's like, you know, when someone's a math

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prodigy or something, we don't necessarily think, well, they're also

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going to be incredibly well developed emotionally. I'm sure that goes together.

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No, it probably doesn't. You know, sometimes if you're overdeveloped in

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one side of your intelligence or humanity, that's a beautiful thing.

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You may be a genius in a certain area, but it may come at the expense of

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something else probably likely does come at the expense of some other part of the

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self and that's not a bad thing. We all represent these amalgamations and

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sometimes if we have certain strengths in certain areas it goes together with

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weaknesses and others but it's only when we think, "No, if I'm strong in this area

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I must be strong everywhere. I must be, you know, I must have, I must not have

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those weaknesses." That gets us in all kinds of trouble. Spiritual realization

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in various forms, it can be the same way. People who have unusual capacities to

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have powerful permanent or semi-permanent state experiences that maybe go together

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with confusions or deficiencies and other areas of the self. Yeah, people did this

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with Einstein. They wanted him to become president of Israel and they were asking

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him all kinds of questions about areas that had nothing to do with physics

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because they assumed he was just this uber genius who would be great at

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everything. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't mean he might not have wisdom. He might

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have beautiful wisdom, but it doesn't mean we should put him on some kind of

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universal pinnacle of evolution.

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But when it comes to enlightenment though,

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I was in the TM movement as you know,

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and one of Maharishi's teachings was that

00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:45.400
if you water the root, the whole tree will flourish.

00:17:45.400 --> 00:17:47.400
And so basically just develop consciousness

00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:50.500
and then all other aspects of life will be enhanced.

00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:51.000
Yes.

00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:52.800
And it really didn't pan out that way.

00:17:52.800 --> 00:17:55.100
Maybe it did to some extent, yes,

00:17:55.100 --> 00:17:58.500
but not to the extent he emphasized.

00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:02.400
It became clear that one really needed to pay attention

00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:07.520
to all these different aspects of life and try to behave ethically and try to take care of your

00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:13.120
health both mental and physical and all that kind of stuff. There were people cheating in business

00:18:13.120 --> 00:18:18.320
and ending up in jail who were big supporters of the TM movement and enthusiastic meditators.

00:18:18.320 --> 00:18:24.400
It's like tapping into pure consciousness. It's not some magic button that brings perfection

00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:29.920
to everything else. It is not indeed. Look, I think there's an embedded truth in what you're

00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:35.920
saying. There is something so fundamental about awakening to consciousness without an object,

00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:39.680
you know, the consciousness as the ground of being. There's something very fundamental to

00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:43.920
non-duality experienced in a very deep way. It can be transformative and I say in the paper,

00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:48.720
it can provide a sort of an evolutionary wind in your sails and that's a beautiful thing.

00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:52.480
There's nothing wrong with that, that's beautiful. It's just when we start thinking that that's what

00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:57.360
we need, that that's all we need, you know, we just focus on that, that the more powerful that

00:18:57.360 --> 00:19:02.560
is, the less we need to worry about other stuff. And then you get into some dangerous things.

00:19:02.560 --> 00:19:09.920
If people have psychological make-ups where they just want to avoid parts of themselves,

00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:14.480
that becomes a very easy way to do it. You dive as deeply as you can into that and you

00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:18.400
can avoid the rest of yourself. Of course, that will come out and that will be a mess.

00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:22.960
So there's an embedded truth in that, but it's a dangerous truth if you see it without

00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:23.960
in moderation.

00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:26.320
Petey There's a historical mystique about it.

00:19:26.320 --> 00:19:32.920
For instance, Valmiki, who wrote the Romana, was a highway robber and murderer, and he encountered

00:19:32.920 --> 00:19:37.720
these sages and got inspired and sat and went into Samadhi for seven years or something

00:19:37.720 --> 00:19:38.720
when he came out.

00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:39.720
He was a saint.

00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:44.560
Or Saul on the road to Damascus, he got zapped spiritually somehow and became the Apostle

00:19:44.560 --> 00:19:45.560
Paul.

00:19:45.560 --> 00:19:46.560
So, the people have undergone…

00:19:46.560 --> 00:19:50.920
St. Francis of Assisi was kind of a creep, actually, and then he underwent a big transformation

00:19:50.920 --> 00:19:51.920
and became a saint.

00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:57.200
So, there's these instances where we see people's personalities apparently transformed in every

00:19:57.200 --> 00:20:02.160
respect as a result of spiritual awakening. So, that's part of the storyline about what

00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:04.080
enlightenment is or should be or could be.

00:20:04.080 --> 00:20:06.560
Pete That's a beautiful thing. We can accept

00:20:06.560 --> 00:20:11.120
that and acknowledge that and just that thought, the deep and rich and complex history of mystical

00:20:11.120 --> 00:20:15.760
thought and all those ways, it's tremendously transformative and can be. And we can accept

00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:23.520
that and honor that beauty without drawing these conclusions about the self and about perfection,

00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:28.560
about the top of the mountain, and about finality, and about the end state of evolution,

00:20:28.560 --> 00:20:33.520
all these kinds of things which then we really are getting into trouble. But we can accept all that

00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:38.800
rich and varied beautiful history of mysticism and its transformative power. That's a great thing. So,

00:20:38.800 --> 00:20:40.560
yeah, that is true. That's all true.

00:20:40.560 --> 00:20:45.560
But then there are so many contemporary examples of that not being true.

00:20:45.560 --> 00:20:50.560
Of people who have, you know, shocked it up the wazoo and they glow in the dark,

00:20:50.560 --> 00:20:56.560
but they are sexually abusing women or drinking or whatever they're doing, alcoholics.

00:20:56.560 --> 00:21:00.560
And there's a lot of examples in the past too. I don't think it's just contemporary.

00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:03.560
I think there's probably, you know, we don't remember probably many of them,

00:21:03.560 --> 00:21:05.560
but I think there's a long history of that.

00:21:05.560 --> 00:21:08.560
But the tricky thing is I think our current thing would say, like,

00:21:08.560 --> 00:21:13.360
You could make an argument that the last 50 years of East meets West mysticism in the West

00:21:13.360 --> 00:21:17.840
would not only tell you that some people who have deep realizations can be

00:21:17.840 --> 00:21:22.160
ethically challenged in all kinds of ways, it would almost tell you something more.

00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:25.560
It would tend to imply that people who have some of the most powerful

00:21:25.560 --> 00:21:29.960
capacities for mysticism and mystical states and be able to share those in some ways

00:21:29.960 --> 00:21:33.760
seem to be more ethically challenged than the average person.

00:21:33.760 --> 00:21:36.160
They seem to fall more prey to it.

00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:39.760
And I think we have to be honest about that and say, "What does that mean?"

00:21:39.760 --> 00:21:44.240
As I say in the paper, you would think we just had an unlucky run, you know, of unstable

00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:47.120
narcissists that suddenly became spiritual teachers.

00:21:47.120 --> 00:21:51.360
It was an accident, you know, I'm sure the next 50 years will produce all the pure-hearted.

00:21:51.360 --> 00:21:53.520
No, I don't think that's true.

00:21:53.520 --> 00:21:59.360
I think we have to be honest that there may be aspects of the psyche that are not necessarily

00:21:59.360 --> 00:22:06.880
healthy or integrated that can result in very powerful mystical awakenings and that may

00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:08.640
be a feature not a bug.

00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:09.640
Yeah.

00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:13.640
We can appreciate those people and say wow that's a beautiful thing without then saying

00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:17.520
oh they must know everything about everything because that ain't true.

00:22:17.520 --> 00:22:18.800
In fact it could be the opposite.

00:22:18.800 --> 00:22:21.960
They could know a lot less about certain things.

00:22:21.960 --> 00:22:27.440
I remember in the later days of my own teacher when he would teach retreats sometimes he would

00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:31.520
get very deep into the ground of being and into kind of non-duality, into a

00:22:31.520 --> 00:22:36.000
mystical states and he could transmit those. It was very powerful sometimes at

00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:41.000
teaching those states of consciousness. But I used to feel sometimes, especially

00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:44.640
in later days, because I think I was more awake to this, the more he would get into

00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:54.600
that experience, the less he was able to speak in really intelligently about life.

00:22:54.600 --> 00:23:02.600
The truths that seem real in that state would obscure his ability sometimes to speak intelligently

00:23:02.600 --> 00:23:07.000
because enlightenment is the main thing. Those states of consciousness are beautiful and they

00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:12.600
have their own power. It's like their own power and they're what's important and isn't just

00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:17.880
experiencing that reveal the truth about everything else we need and like you said,

00:23:17.880 --> 00:23:23.080
we just water that and everything else, the tree flowers, but I used to watch him. Sometimes when

00:23:23.080 --> 00:23:30.360
he would get asked questions about other stuff, I feel like it was when he was more embedded and

00:23:30.360 --> 00:23:38.600
focused on those states that he was less able to speak cogently, intelligently about issues in the

00:23:38.600 --> 00:23:42.920
world. We were working on the magazine together or something, he might be able to speak, but when he

00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:47.960
wasn't as much in that kind of state, you know, so I just think it's interesting. So we have to ask

00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:53.080
these questions, we have to think critically, we can't abandon our criticism as we enter the

00:23:53.080 --> 00:23:56.840
realms of mystical awakening, you know, we really need not to.

00:23:56.840 --> 00:24:01.160
That reminds me of a friend of mine who's a professional guitar player and he said one time

00:24:01.160 --> 00:24:07.480
he took a lot of psilocybin and he sat for hours and hours doing this guitar riff that he thought

00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:12.280
was totally brilliant and then finally next day when he listened to the tape it was just totally

00:24:12.280 --> 00:24:16.760
crap and he was just doing this stupid thing over and over again.

00:24:16.760 --> 00:24:18.920
And we know that the opposite can happen too, right?

00:24:18.920 --> 00:24:22.420
You might have just something brilliant come out and that's beautiful, or it might not

00:24:22.420 --> 00:24:23.960
be that at all.

00:24:23.960 --> 00:24:29.140
My teacher in this case, his brilliance about what enlightenment in its pure form might

00:24:29.140 --> 00:24:34.680
be, might increase in those retreat environments, even as his ability to speak intelligently

00:24:34.680 --> 00:24:37.720
and cogently about other aspects of life might decrease, you know?

00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:40.840
So again, these are trade-offs in the human character.

00:24:40.840 --> 00:24:43.480
And as I say, there are always trade-offs.

00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:46.840
When we're dealing with a finite world of human evolution,

00:24:46.840 --> 00:24:50.000
human psychology, there are always trade-offs

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:53.080
in a finite world, even when we are talking

00:24:53.080 --> 00:24:55.060
about gateways to the infinite.

00:24:55.060 --> 00:24:57.080
The infinite is not this world, right?

00:24:57.080 --> 00:24:58.380
The infinite is that world.

00:24:58.380 --> 00:25:00.360
And it's what a wonderful thing that we might be able

00:25:00.360 --> 00:25:02.720
to become transparent or see infinity,

00:25:02.720 --> 00:25:04.720
that the worlds might cross.

00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:07.080
That's a beautiful thing, but let's not pretend

00:25:07.080 --> 00:25:12.280
this world is infinite, that this world is perfect, or that this world that the end state of becoming

00:25:12.280 --> 00:25:17.160
can be reached in any kind of human form. Let's not pretend those things. This is when we pretend

00:25:17.160 --> 00:25:21.960
those things that we get into trouble. Yeah, which reminds me of something I always come

00:25:21.960 --> 00:25:25.960
out with when I try to define enlightenment and that is that life is multi-dimensional.

00:25:25.960 --> 00:25:31.000
There is a dimension which is perfect and in which in fact nothing has ever happened, you know,

00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:37.080
It's pure, unmanifest being. And there is perhaps a level at which everything is also perfect in

00:25:37.080 --> 00:25:43.640
the sense that it's all divine. Everything is just well and wisely put and God is orchestrating it.

00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:49.720
And then there's another level which Vedanta refers to as Vyavaharika, which is the transactional

00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:55.480
everyday reality in which things are obviously not perfect and we have wars and hunger and diseases

00:25:55.480 --> 00:26:01.560
and all the problems. And my understanding is that as a human being evolves, they don't just burrow

00:26:01.560 --> 00:26:07.480
down into the transcendent and hide out there, but they become multi-dimensional. They're able to

00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:12.520
incorporate within the spectrum of their experience that full range that I just described,

00:26:12.520 --> 00:26:17.640
and function on all levels simultaneously. Or as the case may be, there's a level which is

00:26:17.640 --> 00:26:22.440
non-functional, so that might be there, the pure silence in which one feels I'm not doing anything,

00:26:22.440 --> 00:26:27.720
but then more manifest levels in which one is very much engaged in a practical, sensible,

00:26:27.720 --> 00:26:34.840
realistic way with the "real world." Yeah, exactly. I talked about my teacher in that case,

00:26:34.840 --> 00:26:40.840
but I've had the experience of going deeply into meditation and you get into it more deeply and

00:26:40.840 --> 00:26:46.120
it's like it becomes all you need, you know? And you just feel the world fall away and the

00:26:46.120 --> 00:26:51.120
importance and conundrums of your life falls away and you just see, "Oh, this is

00:26:51.120 --> 00:26:55.280
all I need. This is full. This is beautiful." And that's a beautiful state

00:26:55.280 --> 00:26:59.920
to be able to get in. The fact that the world, the manifest world, could kind of

00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:04.600
slowly shimmer and fall away from that state that you're cultivating, you know,

00:27:04.600 --> 00:27:08.040
and as you go deeper and deeper into meditation. And that's a beautiful thing.

00:27:08.040 --> 00:27:12.720
That doesn't mean the world's not important. No. That doesn't mean that

00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:18.240
all that is unreal, that doesn't mean that this is all I need. And I just think it's

00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:24.320
easy to draw conclusions. We can enjoy those beautiful and transformative experiences without

00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:29.920
drawing a lot of conclusions about our experience or what we should be doing that aren't true.

00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:35.040
Yeah. And I speak from experience in saying that you can get into a deep state like that

00:27:35.040 --> 00:27:40.480
and wallow in it and enjoy it and all, but actually be quite dysfunctional in the world.

00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:42.480
I mean, you wouldn't even want to try to drive a car.

00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:43.480
No, no, exactly.

00:27:43.480 --> 00:27:46.480
It's like doing a psychedelic check for a car.

00:27:46.480 --> 00:27:48.480
It's a very disassociated state.

00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:52.480
And that doesn't mean it's beautiful and transformative and powerful and even very real.

00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:57.480
But it doesn't mean it's going to tell us about other dimensions of life that are also important.

00:27:57.480 --> 00:28:00.480
Right. And I think the key here is integration.

00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:04.480
We can dip into deep states, temporarily deep samadhis,

00:28:04.480 --> 00:28:10.780
Samadhis, but if enlightenment means anything, it's a state in which that depth has been

00:28:10.780 --> 00:28:16.660
integrated with practical life, such that you actually should become more capable, more

00:28:16.660 --> 00:28:17.660
skillful.

00:28:17.660 --> 00:28:22.200
I mean, there's a verse in the Gita which says, "Yoga is skill in action.

00:28:22.200 --> 00:28:24.300
It's not a withdrawal or an escape."

00:28:24.300 --> 00:28:29.260
So if managed properly, if one becomes fully integrated, one can have one's cake and eat

00:28:29.260 --> 00:28:30.380
it too.

00:28:30.380 --> 00:28:35.180
deep in the transcendent and fully engaged in activity in a more effective way than if

00:28:35.180 --> 00:28:37.380
one didn't have that transcendent dimension.

00:28:37.380 --> 00:28:42.220
Yes, I generally agree, although I think there's a myth in there though that we want to be

00:28:42.220 --> 00:28:43.220
careful.

00:28:43.220 --> 00:28:46.180
Again, it's like life is complex.

00:28:46.180 --> 00:28:48.020
There's a lot of ways of focus.

00:28:48.020 --> 00:28:52.340
There's a lot of trade-offs we make as we focus on this part of life or this part of

00:28:52.340 --> 00:28:53.340
life.

00:28:53.340 --> 00:28:57.940
And I think sometimes people get the idea that this experience I had in meditation that

00:28:57.940 --> 00:29:04.980
now the goal is to bring that into the rest of my life somehow. Like I should be in this

00:29:04.980 --> 00:29:12.980
beautific or buddhistic state as I go through life and they almost like judge themselves against that

00:29:12.980 --> 00:29:18.420
state. And I just think that gets into very tricky territory because it doesn't mean like you said,

00:29:18.420 --> 00:29:23.060
we can integrate some of the insights and beauty of that state. It can be transformative on its own

00:29:23.060 --> 00:29:28.300
terms, but if we're trying to hold on to something and if our integration isn't like with our

00:29:28.300 --> 00:29:33.340
hands free, if it's trying to fit all these worlds together that are actually in polarities

00:29:33.340 --> 00:29:37.380
with each other, that gets challenging. I think sometimes people forget the goal is

00:29:37.380 --> 00:29:38.380
to be...

00:29:38.380 --> 00:29:39.380
I totally agree.

00:29:39.380 --> 00:29:40.380
...that can be dangerous.

00:29:40.380 --> 00:29:43.860
I agree. It's not something you hold on to. If it's really integrated, you don't think

00:29:43.860 --> 00:29:46.940
about it. It's like you take a shower in the morning, you're clean throughout the day without

00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:52.860
remembering the shower. So whatever benefits accrue from this deep immersion should be

00:29:52.860 --> 00:29:58.540
spontaneously if they're there at all, but they're not enhanced by some conscious attempt

00:29:58.540 --> 00:30:01.340
to retain them as you go through your day.

00:30:01.340 --> 00:30:04.500
Or to judge yourself against that state just because you're not.

00:30:04.500 --> 00:30:08.420
And look, if you're a Thich Nhat Hanh or a saint in that coma, maybe that's your path

00:30:08.420 --> 00:30:09.780
and that's fine.

00:30:09.780 --> 00:30:13.820
But for many of us, we're going to be engaged in the world in all kinds of ways that retaining

00:30:13.820 --> 00:30:19.140
some beatific state is not, not only is it not possible, it shouldn't be the way we think

00:30:19.140 --> 00:30:21.940
about the goal of our own practice.

00:30:21.940 --> 00:30:24.800
We could take an example of getting a good night's sleep.

00:30:24.800 --> 00:30:27.700
You just feel better throughout the day because you've had one.

00:30:27.700 --> 00:30:30.860
And the same would be true of deep immersion in being.

00:30:30.860 --> 00:30:33.900
Let's say you do it with meditation or something.

00:30:33.900 --> 00:30:37.860
Throughout the day, you don't have to think about the fact that you had that experience

00:30:37.860 --> 00:30:44.320
in the morning or whatever, but the experience permeates or enhances your functionality.

00:30:44.320 --> 00:30:48.740
The mind-body system has been a little bit more fine-tuned by virtue of it.

00:30:48.740 --> 00:30:49.740
You agree?

00:30:49.740 --> 00:30:50.740
I agree.

00:30:50.740 --> 00:30:51.740
Good.

00:30:51.740 --> 00:30:56.220
kind of touched on this, but we can touch on it a bit more. Is mystical attainment seen as an end

00:30:56.220 --> 00:31:02.620
state? Is there such a thing as an end state? I write about this in evolutionaries, you know,

00:31:02.620 --> 00:31:07.100
a lot of traditional teachings, there's this extraordinary in human history, the discovery

00:31:07.100 --> 00:31:12.780
of this transcendence, of transcendent realm, of transcendent consciousness, that plays a huge role,

00:31:12.780 --> 00:31:17.580
I would argue, in the Axial Age of that era of human history in which all the religions formed.

00:31:18.220 --> 00:31:24.540
that discovery of transcendence is this powerful, beautiful thing. But in so many of those traditional

00:31:24.540 --> 00:31:31.340
religious contexts, that becomes what is real, and the world becomes sort of unreal. Whether it's,

00:31:31.340 --> 00:31:36.140
you know, heaven is real, and this is sort of unreal, or this is Maya, or every tradition has

00:31:36.140 --> 00:31:41.260
their own version of that's real, and this is unreal, you know. And there's some mitigating

00:31:41.260 --> 00:31:46.860
traditions in there, but I would say that, count me on someone who believes that that may be real,

00:31:46.860 --> 00:31:53.820
but this is also real. This is an illusion. This matters. And there's different ways in which the

00:31:53.820 --> 00:31:59.500
Aurobindo, the great Indian saint, has some beautiful ways of talking about the dangers,

00:31:59.500 --> 00:32:06.140
he calls it the refusal of the ascetic. When you imagine in the overwhelming power of the

00:32:06.140 --> 00:32:11.340
mystical realization that this world is not real. So, there's all kinds of ways in which

00:32:11.340 --> 00:32:17.100
mystical realization is so powerful, it can be deluding. And I would argue that's one of the

00:32:17.100 --> 00:32:23.020
ways it can be deluding. It's like the embedded truth that you can experience can blind you to

00:32:23.020 --> 00:32:29.580
another truth that's not part of that experience. The delusion is embedded in the truth itself.

00:32:29.580 --> 00:32:35.900
And so I think one of the delusions that can be embedded in deep mystical experience is that sense

00:32:35.900 --> 00:32:40.940
that part of the beauty of it is the sense of finality. As I talked about that completion,

00:32:40.940 --> 00:32:46.540
that fullness, a nothing missingness. But that nothing missingness is about consciousness,

00:32:46.540 --> 00:32:56.460
not about Carter. It's not about Rick. But it can be easily flip over into I'm something is finished

00:32:56.460 --> 00:33:02.140
about me. And I think there's been a whole mythology of what enlightenment is, the top

00:33:02.140 --> 00:33:07.500
of the mountain, the pinnacle of evolution, whatever it is in the East meets West, progressive

00:33:07.500 --> 00:33:15.020
spiritual world, this mythos that I very much came of age with. And I think that I began to realize

00:33:15.020 --> 00:33:20.220
at a certain point that mythos about enlightenment being that this is a school and that's how you

00:33:20.220 --> 00:33:26.380
graduate, you know, all these various things. I'm not saying there's no truths embedded in there.

00:33:26.380 --> 00:33:31.980
I'm just saying that there's some fundamental mythos that that's the goal of human becoming,

00:33:31.980 --> 00:33:37.260
is to merge with that. And when you do that, that's it. There's something complete about

00:33:37.260 --> 00:33:44.780
that. When we start thinking about that attainment and realization as an end state of our personal

00:33:44.780 --> 00:33:53.300
becoming or our collective becoming, instead of this ground, not goal. Ground is beautiful

00:33:53.300 --> 00:34:01.020
and powerful. It can help us with our own evolution and human evolution. Ground is beautiful,

00:34:01.020 --> 00:34:06.860
But to turn it into a goal is a very dangerous thing to do in this world, in this time, in

00:34:06.860 --> 00:34:11.340
this evolutionary context of this manifest universe.

00:34:11.340 --> 00:34:12.660
That's a very dangerous thing to do.

00:34:12.660 --> 00:34:20.260
I think, but it's very, very, very, and can I say very tempting for people to do that.

00:34:20.260 --> 00:34:25.300
Well, you know, there's a small fraction of people, I think, who are probably maybe naturally

00:34:25.300 --> 00:34:26.780
cut out to be recluses.

00:34:26.780 --> 00:34:28.460
It's very small.

00:34:28.460 --> 00:34:35.700
But there are kind of a disproportionate number of scriptures which have a recluse emphasis,

00:34:35.700 --> 00:34:40.760
such as the Ashtavakra Gita, the Mandukya Upanishad, and various other texts which do

00:34:40.760 --> 00:34:47.560
keep denigrating the world as illusion and involvement in it as some kind of a fool's

00:34:47.560 --> 00:34:49.100
errand.

00:34:49.100 --> 00:34:54.140
And I think that if people who are not naturally cut out to be recluses dwell on those kinds

00:34:54.140 --> 00:35:01.460
of teachings excessively, it can really skew their psychology and cause a rather disinterested

00:35:01.460 --> 00:35:07.540
nihilistic mindset to develop. I think the neo-Advaita world is guilty of that to a great

00:35:07.540 --> 00:35:08.540
extent.

00:35:08.540 --> 00:35:11.280
Yeah, they're guilty of several of these elements.

00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:16.620
In my own case, when I was in my early 20s, Maharishi began advocating living a monastic

00:35:16.620 --> 00:35:21.220
lifestyle if you were really gung-ho. He was going to set up this group of monks that would

00:35:21.220 --> 00:35:25.380
spend a lot of time with around him and be celibate and all that. And so, I was really

00:35:25.380 --> 00:35:31.300
gung-ho, natural-born fanatic. So, I signed up for that and did that for 15 years or so.

00:35:31.300 --> 00:35:38.660
And so, one tended to psych oneself into this attitude that the world sucks and I don't

00:35:38.660 --> 00:35:42.740
want to be involved in it and it's not real and all this stuff. And it was just sort of

00:35:42.740 --> 00:35:44.820
a self-brainwashing process.

00:35:44.820 --> 00:35:50.600
Yeah. It's brainwashing that is, I would say, is supported by a deep and rich history of

00:35:50.600 --> 00:35:53.720
religious thought, but there's a lot of support out there if you want to find

00:35:53.720 --> 00:35:57.700
people who are going to help you do that. Look, if someone needs to be a

00:35:57.700 --> 00:36:00.860
monk, that's great. That can be a beautiful path in and of itself. That's

00:36:00.860 --> 00:36:04.640
fine. I've got nothing wrong with that, but like you're saying, sometimes we have

00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:08.040
to recognize that can come along with a whole set of presumptions about the self

00:36:08.040 --> 00:36:12.000
and the world that I think we probably want to be very careful before we just

00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.880
embrace without careful consideration. I don't think it's most people's dharma.

00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:18.880
That's true, I think.

00:36:18.880 --> 00:36:22.880
And, you know, better is death in one's own dharma than the dharma of another, as they say.

00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:26.880
I shaved my head at 22 and became celibate for a while, too.

00:36:26.880 --> 00:36:29.880
I didn't call myself a monk necessarily, but my mother did.

00:36:29.880 --> 00:36:31.880
So maybe that qualifies.

00:36:31.880 --> 00:36:34.880
I know the renunciate path. I understand what that is like.

00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:38.880
And I didn't do it in a permanent way, but I did it for a period of time.

00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:40.880
And, yeah, so.

00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:44.880
Okay, so mystical enlightenment is an end state.

00:36:44.880 --> 00:36:52.480
And then of course there are examples of the Buddha and people like that who we have always revered as somebody who finally reached the goal

00:36:52.480 --> 00:36:55.280
Wouldn't that be nice? I?

00:36:55.280 --> 00:36:57.080
Mean who knows what was going on with the Buddha?

00:36:57.080 --> 00:36:58.880
I mean we could talk about that for a long time

00:36:58.880 --> 00:37:00.880
But I mean he was obviously a beautiful extraordinary

00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:06.720
Religious teacher and had this incredible effect on the history and so we can acknowledge all that without

00:37:06.720 --> 00:37:12.060
Being careful about the conclusions we draw 2,500 years later about what was his personal state?

00:37:12.200 --> 00:37:18.920
Yeah, you know if you live in a culture where a bad cavity in your tooth could end up killing you and there are all kinds

00:37:18.920 --> 00:37:24.040
Of other difficulties it might be really alluring to get off the wheel and never be reincarnated again

00:37:24.040 --> 00:37:28.540
I mean if you live 2,500 years ago. I'm sure that could be very appealing to in its own way

00:37:28.540 --> 00:37:36.240
Yeah, if you're Christian in Roman times, and you know you're watching all your people. I'm sure martyrdom. Yeah, you know these are

00:37:36.840 --> 00:37:38.840
History's complex and there are these…

00:37:38.840 --> 00:37:43.240
Yeah, you want to go to heaven for all eternity and just get out of this difficult world.

00:37:43.240 --> 00:37:47.880
So, I think the tendency to view enlightenment as an end state might, to a certain extent,

00:37:47.880 --> 00:37:53.480
be based upon how content one is, you know? If your life is difficult and you're suffering,

00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:58.280
you want to break out of this and be free of that. And I used to feel that way very strongly,

00:37:58.280 --> 00:38:03.320
and over the years, contentment grew to the point where that was no longer an issue. It's like,

00:38:03.320 --> 00:38:08.120
I'm happy just living out whatever my destiny is, no matter how many lifetimes it involves

00:38:08.120 --> 00:38:13.320
or anything else, because it's all sort of in service of the divine. This desire to sort of

00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:19.240
reach some terminus point and be finished, just dissolved. Yeah, that's an interesting question

00:38:19.240 --> 00:38:23.640
of itself, right? Like in the mythology of enlightenment, you know, you have to want to

00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:27.480
be enlightened so bad. I remember my teacher was very focused on that in his own life. He's an

00:38:27.480 --> 00:38:32.120
example that, you know, the intention to be free, to be enlightened, you know, you have to want it,

00:38:32.120 --> 00:38:36.680
you know, in the traditions, right? More than a drowning man dying of thirst, or sorry,

00:38:36.680 --> 00:38:42.360
water, right? Yeah, sorry, drowning man, you know, desert dying from thirst,

00:38:42.360 --> 00:38:46.520
the drowning man dying for air, whatever it is, you know, there's all these kind of

00:38:46.520 --> 00:38:51.560
those traditions. And that's, but then you think, okay, interesting, what kind of psychology

00:38:51.560 --> 00:38:56.680
wants to get out of their own psychological state so bad. Now, in the tradition, you have,

00:38:56.680 --> 00:39:01.480
you say, well, it's the kind of psychology that has such a burning to be awakened,

00:39:01.480 --> 00:39:06.600
that that's part of their karma and that's just that's because they're so developed over lifetimes

00:39:06.600 --> 00:39:11.080
of whatever, who knows. There's whole mythologies about that. But there's also types of psychology

00:39:11.080 --> 00:39:15.320
that there's a reason they want to get into a different state of being because they're not

00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:21.400
very unhappy with their own psychological state. And that also can play a massive role, I would

00:39:21.400 --> 00:39:28.040
suggest, and the impact and the nature of our seeking path. And we have to be aware of that.

00:39:28.760 --> 00:39:33.640
we can't just pretend that our deep understanding of modern psychology and the complexities of

00:39:33.640 --> 00:39:38.120
modern psychology is not relevant here. And I would agree with that, but I would also say that

00:39:38.120 --> 00:39:43.640
there could be cases where a person is psychologically healthy but just has a vehement

00:39:43.640 --> 00:39:49.320
desire for enlightenment. Definitely. There are all kinds of reasons for people to be seeking and

00:39:49.320 --> 00:39:54.200
they're complex and confusing and they can be based on this or that and so I'm not in any way

00:39:54.200 --> 00:40:01.440
by pointing out that it may not always be this entirely pure experience of intention for

00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:07.200
the sake of merging with God, I don't mean to say that it can be healthy at times, it

00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:12.560
can be all kinds of things. I'm just saying we have to kind of look with open eyes at

00:40:12.560 --> 00:40:17.640
some of the mythos of enlightenment that we've been given and say, okay, there's obviously

00:40:17.640 --> 00:40:25.400
some deep, relevant truths embedded in there, but it may not be as simple as the picture

00:40:25.400 --> 00:40:26.400
that we imagined.

00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:27.400
Yeah.

00:40:27.400 --> 00:40:28.400
Okay, good.

00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:34.720
So, your next major point is, how does mystical awakening blind as well as illuminate?

00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:36.200
And you give four examples.

00:40:36.200 --> 00:40:39.000
So, let's get into those four examples.

00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:43.440
First, if we start with the presumption that we have a limited awareness or capacity for

00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:47.840
attention in our individual psyches, then we might think of spiritual illumination as a

00:40:47.840 --> 00:40:52.720
light or spotlight that brings the background of an always already present consciousness

00:40:52.720 --> 00:40:54.800
into the foreground.

00:40:54.800 --> 00:40:59.160
Questions about life and the world that cry out for complex ethical considerations might

00:40:59.160 --> 00:41:04.120
seem unimportant, irrelevant, already resolved when seen through the eyes of the fullness

00:41:04.120 --> 00:41:06.420
of the core of self.

00:41:06.420 --> 00:41:10.680
So in other words, someone might brush off and say, "Oh, the world is an illusion."

00:41:10.680 --> 00:41:16.720
I was actually at a sand conference and some guy got up, David Loy, you probably know David,

00:41:16.720 --> 00:41:21.480
got up on the mic and challenged a well-known spiritual teacher about climate change and

00:41:21.480 --> 00:41:23.680
the fate of the ecology.

00:41:23.680 --> 00:41:25.280
And the guy just brushed him off.

00:41:25.280 --> 00:41:29.320
He said, "The world is like a speck of dust, doesn't matter what happens to it."

00:41:29.320 --> 00:41:31.960
So there's a perfect example of that.

00:41:31.960 --> 00:41:33.360
What a wonderful...

00:41:33.360 --> 00:41:37.080
I'm tempted to just point out the absurdity that someone could...

00:41:37.080 --> 00:41:40.720
Is this a beautiful thing that someone could experience this and come to that conclusion?

00:41:40.720 --> 00:41:42.840
We have to be honest about that.

00:41:42.840 --> 00:41:46.720
That conclusion, it's not a bug of mystical awakening, it can be a feature of it, unless

00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:48.480
we're very awake.

00:41:48.480 --> 00:41:52.680
And it seems like some of the great spiritual luminaries that we respect from throughout

00:41:52.680 --> 00:41:57.820
history were very concerned about people's material, physical welfare as well as their

00:41:57.820 --> 00:41:58.820
spiritual welfare.

00:41:58.820 --> 00:42:02.840
So they would try to feed people and house people and clothe people and just take care

00:42:02.840 --> 00:42:08.160
them on material levels as well as their spiritual needs.

00:42:08.160 --> 00:42:15.000
I think, you know, in a more traditional culture, what you do is you have the realization and

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:20.280
then the action in the world is to sort of mitigate suffering.

00:42:20.280 --> 00:42:22.720
That's a beautiful mix, that's fine.

00:42:22.720 --> 00:42:27.640
But I think we have to realize that in, at least in the way I understand human culture

00:42:27.640 --> 00:42:32.160
and the nature of cultural evolution, which is its own massive thing, mitigating suffering

00:42:32.160 --> 00:42:37.760
is not our only accountability to human culture and to the world. Helping this all move forward,

00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:44.400
helping the culture evolve. I see that as a huge part of what we're also potentially here to do.

00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:48.240
Not just mitigating suffering so we can all go be in heaven together, you know,

00:42:48.240 --> 00:42:52.800
or whatever that looks like. Mitigating suffering is its own beautiful thing,

00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:53.920
but I don't think it's enough.

00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:59.360
- One thing I like about you, and if one looks at your website, you have all these essays on

00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:05.840
contemporary issues, like even in the intro I read, you're focusing on political polarization

00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:12.240
and things like that, and you have essays on climate change and other issues. So, personally,

00:43:12.240 --> 00:43:18.800
I respect a person's spirituality more if it makes them more engaged in such things rather

00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:24.640
than less engaged, more passionate about solving relative problems. Not that we all need to become

00:43:24.640 --> 00:43:29.200
specialists in all the technologies that would be involved in solving all the world's problems,

00:43:29.200 --> 00:43:36.880
but at least we can be supportive of those efforts and see them as important rather than brushing them off as some kind of maya.

00:43:36.880 --> 00:43:43.960
Yeah, that has been an important part of my own journey, I think, is realizing that culture and consciousness,

00:43:43.960 --> 00:43:51.680
and that's all, are connected, you know. And the evolution of consciousness is not just the realization of consciousness without an object,

00:43:51.680 --> 00:43:58.000
or pure consciousness, the way that you said. It's the evolution of consciousness and culture connected together

00:43:58.600 --> 00:44:03.660
That part of the way we evolve culture and the external parts of cultures

00:44:03.660 --> 00:44:08.620
We involve the interior the internal parts of culture and part of the internal parts of culture is in it

00:44:08.620 --> 00:44:13.640
Is it the internal parts of us and the cultural structures we share together and the agreement?

00:44:13.640 --> 00:44:19.540
Spaces that we share together and so you start to realize that my own efforts to evolve myself

00:44:19.540 --> 00:44:24.200
Not just to experience transcendence as we've been talking about but to evolve in all kinds of ways

00:44:24.200 --> 00:44:26.980
psychologically intellectually cognitively

00:44:27.240 --> 00:44:31.880
emotionally and the ways in which we share those evolutionary spaces with others is

00:44:31.880 --> 00:44:37.600
Connected to the evolution of this whole thing, you know in terms of the evolution of culture as a whole

00:44:37.600 --> 00:44:44.720
And so you start to link up those and it becomes much more than just doing good works or something like that

00:44:44.720 --> 00:44:48.000
You know just mitigating suffering which are beautiful

00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:51.800
But it becomes a part of this larger enterprise that we're all

00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:57.000
Participating in and sharing and that's the evolutionary point that I really try to get out in evolutionaries. Yeah

00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:02.800
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean a healthy, green, thriving forest is comprised of healthy, green,

00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:08.960
thriving individual trees. And if each individual tree is sick and stunted and has pine bark

00:45:08.960 --> 00:45:12.680
beetles or whatever they're called, all that kind of stuff, then the whole forest is not

00:45:12.680 --> 00:45:17.120
going to look very good. So I mean, that's a good analogy, but I think for society, its

00:45:17.120 --> 00:45:24.400
overall quality is dependent upon the quality of all eight billion of our lives, all of their

00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:25.400
aspects.

00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:31.120
I probably should confess that in 2013 when the community I was part of ended and in 2011

00:45:31.120 --> 00:45:34.320
I think the magazine I was part of ended.

00:45:34.320 --> 00:45:38.560
Because of the difficulty of that era in my life, I didn't really want to write at that

00:45:38.560 --> 00:45:39.560
time about spirituality.

00:45:39.560 --> 00:45:44.080
You know, I'd written a lot about spirituality, I'd written a lot and I'd been so immersed

00:45:44.080 --> 00:45:47.880
in those worlds for a long time that I wanted to write about other things.

00:45:47.880 --> 00:45:52.120
And so some of that was just because I wanted to write about other things and I was, I got

00:45:52.120 --> 00:45:57.560
really interested in culture and I'm fascinated by cultural evolution in all kinds of ways.

00:45:57.560 --> 00:46:02.200
So I wanted to write about all those. It's only this year that really I came back to

00:46:02.200 --> 00:46:07.560
write and also I wanted to give myself time to let the dust settle of the intensity of

00:46:07.560 --> 00:46:11.960
those last periods and in my own, you know, everything that happened in that last era

00:46:11.960 --> 00:46:16.320
of our community. And I didn't really want to write about spirituality for a while. So

00:46:16.320 --> 00:46:21.600
this is my first effort to come back and start to re-engage some of those. Some of the things

00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:25.520
that I thought back then, but I didn't really want to put down for a while.

00:46:25.520 --> 00:46:26.520
Okay.

00:46:26.520 --> 00:46:31.040
Then your next point under the major topic of how does mystical awakening blind as well

00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:36.740
as illuminate is we may be much less inclined to look at ourselves and our own conclusions

00:46:36.740 --> 00:46:38.780
with the critical eye of an outsider.

00:46:38.780 --> 00:46:44.560
In other words, this awakening may liberate us from unhealthy self-doubt, even while diminishing

00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:47.920
our ability for healthy self-criticism.

00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:51.940
I think that's a good one, and I can think of so many examples of that where they buy

00:46:51.940 --> 00:46:58.840
into their own myth that's built up about them in terms of their perfection, their infallibility,

00:46:58.840 --> 00:47:03.980
and their students try to get in tune with their thinking, but don't dare give them critical

00:47:03.980 --> 00:47:09.060
feedback, and they don't want critical feedback, and students are shown the door if they offer

00:47:09.060 --> 00:47:15.820
critical feedback, and so it becomes this sort of unhealthy dynamic in which, you know,

00:47:15.820 --> 00:47:18.420
The emperor has no clothes, but no one dares to say it.

00:47:18.420 --> 00:47:19.420
Yeah, exactly.

00:47:19.420 --> 00:47:23.320
And there can be, you know, very gross versions of that, but there can be subtle versions

00:47:23.320 --> 00:47:26.740
of that too, which can still have profound effects.

00:47:26.740 --> 00:47:33.260
Again, it's like this awakening may liberate us from unhealthy self-doubt.

00:47:33.260 --> 00:47:36.540
That gives you confidence and kind of an inner strength.

00:47:36.540 --> 00:47:38.820
You're not walking around thinking, "Oh, I'm so I'm worthless."

00:47:38.820 --> 00:47:43.740
We all can have a neurotic self-doubt and self-criticism and our super ego can be very

00:47:43.740 --> 00:47:49.820
strong in ways that don't allow us to be liberated, kind of express our natural gifts and talents.

00:47:49.820 --> 00:47:53.420
And one of the things about certain types of awakening is they can liberate that and you can

00:47:53.420 --> 00:47:57.980
find confidence in that. And the confidence that flows from awakening can be very beautiful and

00:47:57.980 --> 00:48:02.620
powerful and attractive. We all want that kind of confidence. We all want the confidence that's

00:48:02.620 --> 00:48:09.180
free of self-concern. But free of self-concern has its own challenges. That has its own problems

00:48:09.180 --> 00:48:14.060
because you don't want to compro... it can be very easy in several ways. You don't want to compromise

00:48:14.060 --> 00:48:22.300
that confidence in order to question oneself in the ways maybe you need to in order to be the

00:48:22.300 --> 00:48:25.980
healthy integrated psyche that we all need to be. We all have to question ourselves and that can be

00:48:25.980 --> 00:48:30.380
very uncomfortable and it can prick at the confidence bubble and none of us want the

00:48:30.380 --> 00:48:35.980
confidence bubble pricked. Least of all someone who's has it very strongly, who's had a very

00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:40.900
powerful awakening, that can be a big part of it. It can diminish our ability for healthy

00:48:40.900 --> 00:48:46.420
self-criticism and that's a real thing. I saw that with my own teacher, no doubt, but

00:48:46.420 --> 00:48:49.780
you can see it with a lot of other teachers as well. It wasn't just him. I think it's

00:48:49.780 --> 00:48:50.780
very common.

00:48:50.780 --> 00:48:55.920
A related facet of this is that one of the characteristics of enlightenment is sometimes

00:48:55.920 --> 00:49:01.380
said to be spontaneous right action, where whatever you're doing is completely in line

00:49:01.380 --> 00:49:06.500
with cosmic intelligence or divine intelligence, whatever you want to call it. And I've seen

00:49:06.500 --> 00:49:11.620
examples of people who buy into that with regard to their own behavior and who, for instance, are

00:49:11.620 --> 00:49:17.380
seducing a series of women in their sangha. And when it finally comes to light, they say, "Well,

00:49:17.380 --> 00:49:21.540
I wasn't doing it. God was doing it." You know, I'm just in tune with the divine, you know,

00:49:21.540 --> 00:49:26.020
I'm not responsible. It sounds absurd, but this is literally the alibi somebody gave.

00:49:26.020 --> 00:49:30.020
It sounds absurd, but how do people come to that conclusion?

00:49:30.020 --> 00:49:36.020
Well, I think we can see that the experience that something else is acting through you

00:49:36.020 --> 00:49:43.020
can be very compelling to people who have deep mystical states or the capacity to access those states.

00:49:43.020 --> 00:49:48.020
That experience that my motive is pure can be very compelling

00:49:48.020 --> 00:49:53.020
and combined with the lack of self-doubt and confidence,

00:49:53.020 --> 00:49:55.020
That can be a very compelling experience.

00:49:55.020 --> 00:49:59.020
We had a little back and forth in the email about this, but the history of religious thought, you know, is like

00:49:59.020 --> 00:50:02.020
pure motive is a very dangerous concept.

00:50:02.020 --> 00:50:04.020
And when people experience themselves having pure motive...

00:50:04.020 --> 00:50:05.020
Define pure motive.

00:50:05.020 --> 00:50:09.020
Well, like the experience that I'm doing this only for the best reasons,

00:50:09.020 --> 00:50:12.020
I'm doing this for completely altruistic reasons,

00:50:12.020 --> 00:50:15.020
I'm doing this because spirit is working through me,

00:50:15.020 --> 00:50:21.020
I'm doing this because I'm just acting on my intuition which comes from a higher source,

00:50:21.020 --> 00:50:24.620
All of that, now all of those can be in any given moment.

00:50:24.620 --> 00:50:29.420
Maybe if something is acting through us in some beautiful way, maybe we are in touch with something else.

00:50:29.420 --> 00:50:35.020
But to assume that that means that we are just this empty vessel,

00:50:35.020 --> 00:50:38.620
that therefore whatever that motive happens to be must be good,

00:50:38.620 --> 00:50:43.420
is a very tricky, dangerous concept in something that is a lot of religious history.

00:50:43.420 --> 00:50:47.420
You know, like, as I often say, the history of religious thought is also cultural,

00:50:47.420 --> 00:50:51.340
thinking of a history, culture, evolution, it's not why bad people do bad things.

00:50:51.340 --> 00:50:56.780
It's why people who think they're doing the good things do bad things. That's the challenge.

00:50:56.780 --> 00:51:00.860
And that goes way back in history. There was times, of course, when we thought burning someone at the

00:51:00.860 --> 00:51:05.740
stake, they came up with the reasons why that was good in service of God. We look at that as an

00:51:05.740 --> 00:51:13.100
absurdity today. But I think the way sometimes people relate to their own intuitions, and again,

00:51:13.100 --> 00:51:18.940
can be beautiful expressions of being in touch with something beyond us. But in what you're talking

00:51:18.940 --> 00:51:25.180
about, it doesn't excuse anything. The experience of pure motive can be very deluding. And if you

00:51:25.180 --> 00:51:32.220
have a teacher or a realizer who is convinced that whatever their own instincts are, is an

00:51:32.220 --> 00:51:38.620
expression of pure motive, that's not a good recipe for human behavior. And if he is surrounded by

00:51:38.620 --> 00:51:44.300
students who have bought into that idea and who condone anything he does because they figure

00:51:44.300 --> 00:51:49.180
he's cosmic and it might seem crazy to me, but what do I know? I'm ignorant and so I'm

00:51:49.180 --> 00:51:53.340
just going to go along with it. That's a recipe for disaster. This would be a good time to

00:51:53.340 --> 00:51:59.740
throw in one of my favorite quotes from Padmasambhava. He said, "Although my awareness is as vast

00:51:59.740 --> 00:52:05.740
as the sky, my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of barley flour." And my video

00:52:05.740 --> 00:52:10.260
editor, Angel, said I should elaborate on that quote because she says, I think she thinks

00:52:10.260 --> 00:52:14.300
a lot of people misunderstand it, but basically he's saying, "Okay, I'm really cosmic, but

00:52:14.300 --> 00:52:21.060
I have to be very careful about my behavior every moment. I have to be on my toes, self-scrutinizing,

00:52:21.060 --> 00:52:26.660
not taking anything for granted, just being precise or impeccable as Don Juan Matus would

00:52:26.660 --> 00:52:27.660
say."

00:52:27.660 --> 00:52:33.220
Yeah. I think that we all have strengths and weaknesses in our character. And sometimes

00:52:33.220 --> 00:52:38.820
Certain types of awakening can illuminate those strengths in a beautiful way, but they won't

00:52:38.820 --> 00:52:43.940
necessarily get rid of the weaknesses. And again, all of this is to say that's not a problem.

00:52:43.940 --> 00:52:49.140
It's a problem if we think it will. That's when it becomes a big problem. And of course,

00:52:49.140 --> 00:52:55.780
if people are going out and doing horrible, gross, ethical, sleeping with a lot of women,

00:52:55.780 --> 00:53:02.340
gross, ethical behavior, we can say, "Okay, that's wrong." But I wanted to also point out

00:53:02.340 --> 00:53:07.980
Now, these mistakes can occur in a lot of subtle ways as well, and they can subtly cause all

00:53:07.980 --> 00:53:08.980
kinds of problems.

00:53:08.980 --> 00:53:14.220
But they aren't maybe just gross ethical abuses, but they can cause massive problems nonetheless

00:53:14.220 --> 00:53:16.140
just in the subtleties of these issues.

00:53:16.140 --> 00:53:20.140
>> Ryan: I think actually the more you advance spiritually, the subtler it gets, and the

00:53:20.140 --> 00:53:23.820
more fine-tuned you have to be in discerning those subtleties.

00:53:23.820 --> 00:53:29.860
>> Tim: Yeah, I think I say here, I say, you know, being somewhat undistracted by one's

00:53:29.860 --> 00:53:37.460
own problems and neurosis, and aware of consciousness as a foundation of being is a powerful, wonderful

00:53:37.460 --> 00:53:43.540
quality. But even a hint of that quality can be like a moth to a flame for anyone with

00:53:43.540 --> 00:53:49.660
significant narcissistic tendencies or anyone troubled by neurotically low self-esteem.

00:53:49.660 --> 00:53:55.300
The freedom to not worry about oneself, to be released to a large degree from self-doubt,

00:53:55.300 --> 00:54:00.260
To be unburdened, at least partially, from the inner critic of the super-ego, and to

00:54:00.260 --> 00:54:08.020
have others affirm you as such, can prove a difficult prize to handle with care for those

00:54:08.020 --> 00:54:14.820
who deeply crave the freedom of self-confidence, either because they have too much of it, or

00:54:14.820 --> 00:54:17.220
because they deeply lack it.

00:54:17.220 --> 00:54:19.340
So for either of those, that can be a problem.

00:54:19.340 --> 00:54:21.780
So that was kind of my point in that there.

00:54:21.780 --> 00:54:26.020
I forget who said it, but some well-known person in the spiritual community, maybe it was in

00:54:26.020 --> 00:54:31.780
the context of something in the Association for Spiritual Integrity, suggested that a

00:54:31.780 --> 00:54:38.020
disproportionately large percentage of spiritual teachers have narcissistic tendencies.

00:54:38.020 --> 00:54:42.780
Somehow people with that sort of syndrome are attracted to the profession.

00:54:42.780 --> 00:54:46.260
Yeah, that's interesting in and of itself.

00:54:46.260 --> 00:54:48.700
We should ask why that seems to be true.

00:54:48.700 --> 00:54:53.420
Well, you know, such people like sitting in front of audiences and being showered with

00:54:53.420 --> 00:54:55.020
praise and adulation.

00:54:55.020 --> 00:54:58.460
Yeah, it's a danger of the position, I guess.

00:54:58.460 --> 00:55:03.380
And even if you have a seed quality of such tendencies, it can sprout, it can be nourished

00:55:03.380 --> 00:55:05.340
when you step into a teaching role.

00:55:05.340 --> 00:55:09.380
Yeah, you know, I saw it in some of my own fellow students.

00:55:09.380 --> 00:55:13.540
Again, these get into some subtleties there, sometimes are hard to explain.

00:55:13.540 --> 00:55:18.860
But sometimes the students who would look best initially were ones who had the ability to

00:55:18.860 --> 00:55:23.720
be undivided in life, to have a certain kind of confidence.

00:55:23.720 --> 00:55:25.500
It can be a very attractive thing.

00:55:25.500 --> 00:55:28.300
You know, narcissists can sometimes do that, right?

00:55:28.300 --> 00:55:30.300
That's why the charisma of the narcissist, right?

00:55:30.300 --> 00:55:33.660
It's the confidence in that, the undividedness.

00:55:33.660 --> 00:55:37.100
That is a very attractive, can be attractive quality.

00:55:37.100 --> 00:55:41.700
And I think that you add mystical awakening to that, and that's a tricky, potentially

00:55:41.700 --> 00:55:48.300
toxic brew. There's a spectrum of people who have various forms of self-doubt and various

00:55:48.300 --> 00:55:53.760
forms of neurosis and I think that basic point is tricky. And I think sometimes, especially

00:55:53.760 --> 00:55:59.620
when we are less mature and we have a less, maybe mature understanding of life and people

00:55:59.620 --> 00:56:04.260
as we get older, I think we are a little more attracted to that, at least I was, a little

00:56:04.260 --> 00:56:08.420
more attracted to that, that kind of confidence instead of the kind of confidence that comes

00:56:08.420 --> 00:56:14.580
from wisdom and deeper integration and a more complex understanding of the self and life

00:56:14.580 --> 00:56:19.020
experience. There's a different kind of confidence that comes from all that. It's not as thin

00:56:19.020 --> 00:56:23.780
and as brittle and ultimately I think it's a better kind of confidence, but nevertheless

00:56:23.780 --> 00:56:25.580
that is very attractive to people.

00:56:25.580 --> 00:56:30.180
Well, you can think of religious fundamentalists or political fundamentalists or whoever who

00:56:30.180 --> 00:56:34.300
are just adamant about their opinions. They're very confident. They speak for it. There's

00:56:34.300 --> 00:56:38.980
There's no nuance, no self-reflection, no wiggle room, no compromise.

00:56:38.980 --> 00:56:41.340
It's just like, you know, my way or the highway.

00:56:41.340 --> 00:56:46.100
Yeah, God, these are tricky questions, you know, because sometimes people like that might

00:56:46.100 --> 00:56:50.020
be more prone to types of spiritual experience.

00:56:50.020 --> 00:56:54.140
Question came in from my friend Linda Weber, who may be your friend also because she lives

00:56:54.140 --> 00:56:55.140
in Boulder.

00:56:55.140 --> 00:57:01.220
She says, "It seems like, quote, what it means, end quote, is that absolutely no one can get

00:57:01.220 --> 00:57:03.180
away from being a human being.

00:57:03.180 --> 00:57:06.900
We must never separate spirituality from the rest of life on earth.

00:57:06.900 --> 00:57:07.900
Do you agree?

00:57:07.900 --> 00:57:08.900
Do I agree?

00:57:08.900 --> 00:57:09.900
Yes, I agree.

00:57:09.900 --> 00:57:10.900
I absolutely agree.

00:57:10.900 --> 00:57:11.900
Yeah, I absolutely agree.

00:57:11.900 --> 00:57:14.580
As long as we're here, this is what we're dealing with.

00:57:14.580 --> 00:57:19.220
And that fully includes that some people, there are mystics in India, they've gone into

00:57:19.220 --> 00:57:22.780
that world and they're going to sit by on a mountaintop or in a cave or whatever.

00:57:22.780 --> 00:57:27.700
Ramana Maharshi sat in a cave for 15 years, whatever, and he went deep into that experience.

00:57:27.700 --> 00:57:33.140
I'm not saying that doesn't have its own magnificence and beauty, but that's very rare.

00:57:33.140 --> 00:57:35.540
that's the path for someone, you know.

00:57:35.540 --> 00:57:37.980
And we're part of this culture and part of this world.

00:57:37.980 --> 00:57:39.260
Everyone's listening to this.

00:57:39.260 --> 00:57:40.100
Yeah.

00:57:40.100 --> 00:57:42.500
We're always part of the world, whatever we're doing.

00:57:42.500 --> 00:57:43.620
You know, we're part of this culture.

00:57:43.620 --> 00:57:46.780
We're part of this larger evolutionary process

00:57:46.780 --> 00:57:50.200
and trying to draw a harsh line

00:57:50.200 --> 00:57:54.460
between the spiritual and the manifest world.

00:57:54.460 --> 00:57:55.300
Yeah, anyway.

00:57:55.300 --> 00:57:59.300
- The next point under how does mystical awakening blind

00:57:59.300 --> 00:58:00.700
as well as illuminate is something

00:58:00.700 --> 00:58:01.740
I think we've already covered.

00:58:01.740 --> 00:58:04.740
Maybe we don't want to talk more about it, but it's a domain creep.

00:58:04.740 --> 00:58:08.740
Assuming that someone is an expert in things that they're not expert in,

00:58:08.740 --> 00:58:13.740
simply because they have this spiritual realization and a certain aura about them.

00:58:13.740 --> 00:58:18.740
Yeah, this is a little more obvious thing. I think people do this in all areas.

00:58:18.740 --> 00:58:22.740
Sometimes when people become a super expert in any one area,

00:58:22.740 --> 00:58:26.740
they suddenly feel a lot more confidence about everything else, and that's not always bad.

00:58:26.740 --> 00:58:30.740
A lot of our public intellectuals are public intellectuals because,

00:58:30.740 --> 00:58:33.940
Because, like you said, with Einstein, they had a breakthrough in one area, and then we

00:58:33.940 --> 00:58:35.780
asked them about everything else.

00:58:35.780 --> 00:58:39.780
And you know, maybe there is wisdom there, but it doesn't mean they know about everything

00:58:39.780 --> 00:58:41.340
else.

00:58:41.340 --> 00:58:45.380
This is like doubly or triply or ten times true in the spiritual world, because it's

00:58:45.380 --> 00:58:47.140
so foundational.

00:58:47.140 --> 00:58:51.620
Like understanding that that experience of being is so foundational to being human, that

00:58:51.620 --> 00:58:56.740
then the temptation, I think we really know a lot about all the other areas of life, because

00:58:56.740 --> 00:59:04.860
we can see clearly now, the clouds have gone and it's incredibly tempting. And you see

00:59:04.860 --> 00:59:09.460
spiritual teachers sometimes all the time just opining on all this stuff. You're just

00:59:09.460 --> 00:59:13.020
like, "Are you kidding me?" I mean, it's like, it just seems to go with the territory.

00:59:13.020 --> 00:59:16.700
Of course, we all opine a bunch of stuff all the time, but I guarantee you, they feel a

00:59:16.700 --> 00:59:21.780
lot more confident about it. Suddenly, like, they have a special knowledge. And you just

00:59:21.780 --> 00:59:25.860
see this all the freaking time and it's just like it's a funny thing but it

00:59:25.860 --> 00:59:31.660
speaks to the deluding nature of what are even authentic realizations. It's

00:59:31.660 --> 00:59:36.300
something to be aware of. As I say here, whatever the confidence that is derived

00:59:36.300 --> 00:59:40.620
from mystical attainment, it's like it can't be contained, it overflows its

00:59:40.620 --> 00:59:44.480
boundaries, you know, it can't be contained and again that's the

00:59:44.480 --> 00:59:47.380
experience. I think we can judge that that's the reality of the experience

00:59:47.380 --> 00:59:51.420
because everyone seems to do it but we can all have a little bit of awareness

00:59:51.420 --> 00:59:55.420
of that, even maybe, and if we can all start to culturally have a slightly different relationship

00:59:55.420 --> 00:59:59.300
to all that, maybe even those people who have those experiences will have a different relationship

00:59:59.300 --> 01:00:00.300
to it, you know.

01:00:00.300 --> 01:00:01.660
Pete I'll tell you a funny story.

01:00:01.660 --> 01:00:07.500
In the summer of '76, I was in New Jersey, because there was a court case there where

01:00:07.500 --> 01:00:13.460
the TM movement was trying to teach in the schools, and the Christians were opposing

01:00:13.460 --> 01:00:14.900
it, so it had gone to court.

01:00:14.900 --> 01:00:18.860
And so, Maharishi sent a small group of us to live in New Jersey, five of us, and John

01:00:18.860 --> 01:00:23.660
Gray of the Mars-Venus books was one of them, I was another, and we were living in this house.

01:00:23.660 --> 01:00:28.380
So we set up this conference thing, and there was this physicist who was in the TM movement

01:00:28.380 --> 01:00:33.680
named Larry Domash, and he was supposed to speak, but the lawyers who were fighting the

01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:38.300
court case decided that he shouldn't speak because it would entangle the university or

01:00:38.300 --> 01:00:40.140
something if he got up and spoke.

01:00:40.140 --> 01:00:45.620
So Johnny Gray gets up and gives this talk about physics for, it must have gone on for

01:00:45.620 --> 01:00:51.980
45 minutes or an hour and it was complete gobbledygook. I was just sitting there like I was the emcee

01:00:51.980 --> 01:00:55.500
of the thing and I should have just gotten one of those hooks and pulled him, but it

01:00:55.500 --> 01:00:59.100
was very embarrassing and he was going on and on full of confidence. He was a very confident

01:00:59.100 --> 01:01:03.740
guy and he had deep experiences and all. Sorry, Johnny, you're probably not listening to this,

01:01:03.740 --> 01:01:08.260
but that was an example of that kind of thing. He just felt like he could do it.

01:01:08.260 --> 01:01:12.580
Yeah, and I say that like I sometimes I feel like I'm trying to take people's candy away,

01:01:12.580 --> 01:01:18.760
But it doesn't mean that spiritual illumination or experiences or awakenings can liberate

01:01:18.760 --> 01:01:24.780
us in the sense that it can't liberate our ability to maybe have insights into our lives

01:01:24.780 --> 01:01:27.700
or other people's lives or culture.

01:01:27.700 --> 01:01:29.500
It's not that it can't do that.

01:01:29.500 --> 01:01:32.820
It's just that so often people can't leave it at that.

01:01:32.820 --> 01:01:38.060
You know, they just have to opine on everything under the sun, like with incredible confidence.

01:01:38.060 --> 01:01:44.980
I think the history of mystics statements about the world and the nature of it may be true

01:01:44.980 --> 01:01:47.100
if you're meditating in a cave.

01:01:47.100 --> 01:01:50.860
You know, I remember reading about Eckhart Tolle, when the power of now came out, I remember

01:01:50.860 --> 01:01:54.500
reading, you know, of course, the power now is a beautiful expression of a certain type

01:01:54.500 --> 01:01:58.460
of mysticism and there's an authenticity to his awakening.

01:01:58.460 --> 01:02:02.660
But it doesn't mean he knows about evolution, you know, it doesn't mean he's thought deeply

01:02:02.660 --> 01:02:06.060
about the nature of life in so many other ways.

01:02:06.060 --> 01:02:09.580
I remember reading some of the statements he made. It was just like, "Oh my God." You know, it's like...

01:02:09.580 --> 01:02:10.580
Anyway, so...

01:02:10.580 --> 01:02:11.580
Well, you wouldn't want him to perform...

01:02:11.580 --> 01:02:14.500
It doesn't mean he's not authentic. It doesn't mean he doesn't have things to offer.

01:02:14.500 --> 01:02:18.300
But you wouldn't want him to perform brain surgery on you or land a jumbo jet that you

01:02:18.300 --> 01:02:19.500
happen to be a passenger in.

01:02:19.500 --> 01:02:20.500
Indeed.

01:02:20.500 --> 01:02:25.820
So, here's another point. We need to stop treating mystical truths, even the most beautiful

01:02:25.820 --> 01:02:32.020
and sublime, as beyond the scope of well-intentioned and respectful analysis. It does not deny or

01:02:32.020 --> 01:02:36.980
or denude their glory to look at their revealed wisdom with a careful, critical eye.

01:02:36.980 --> 01:02:37.980
I like that one.

01:02:37.980 --> 01:02:38.980
Oh man.

01:02:38.980 --> 01:02:42.180
Sometimes I write better than I speak, so I'll leave it at that.

01:02:42.180 --> 01:02:48.860
Well, the reason I like it is that I feel that there's some mutual benefit to be had

01:02:48.860 --> 01:02:52.980
between an interface between science and spirituality.

01:02:52.980 --> 01:02:58.180
Spirituality could use more of the empirical, rigorous thinking of science, and science

01:02:58.180 --> 01:03:02.980
could use more of the depth of spirituality and stop being so materialistic in its orientation.

01:03:02.980 --> 01:03:08.740
One of the reasons I wanted to write about this subject is because I kind of had a unique

01:03:08.740 --> 01:03:14.580
catbird seat in my role as the editor of that magazine because we were trying to analyze all

01:03:14.580 --> 01:03:18.740
these questions and we were trying to have, you know, we didn't always succeed, but we were trying

01:03:18.740 --> 01:03:24.500
to have like look at all these things with a critical eye. But many people who look at spiritual

01:03:25.060 --> 01:03:29.540
realizations or mystical realizations with a critical eye or doing it from outside.

01:03:29.540 --> 01:03:32.900
So it's like you have these outside people who are critical and have certain views of it,

01:03:32.900 --> 01:03:37.060
or you have people who are inside the church, and they're more just accepting of it all.

01:03:37.060 --> 01:03:43.860
We were inside the church, but then trying to look at it critically as well. So looking at

01:03:43.860 --> 01:03:48.100
it critically but sympathetically, and I think trying to find that balance is something we need

01:03:48.100 --> 01:03:54.500
to do a lot more. Look at all the elements inside our own church with a critical eye and not just

01:03:54.500 --> 01:04:00.860
defended against the outside critics. We tried to do that in the magazine, and that's what

01:04:00.860 --> 01:04:06.620
I want to do here. And I think until we can do that, we're not going to have the cultural

01:04:06.620 --> 01:04:12.820
impact on spiritual seeking that will help mitigate a lot of the various disasters that

01:04:12.820 --> 01:04:13.820
have happened.

01:04:13.820 --> 01:04:15.980
Pete And that ties in with science too, because

01:04:15.980 --> 01:04:20.460
true scientists welcome criticism. I mean, the whole point of publishing a paper is for

01:04:20.460 --> 01:04:25.380
your peers to try to pick it apart and see if they can do so. And you tell them exactly

01:04:25.380 --> 01:04:29.020
how you conducted the experiment and, you know, they can use the same equipment if they want

01:04:29.020 --> 01:04:36.100
to and either confirm or refute your hypothesis. And that's how knowledge progresses.

01:04:36.100 --> 01:04:39.340
This is something that wasn't as true in the traditional world, I think, but in the modern

01:04:39.340 --> 01:04:45.060
world, religion, but in the modern world, that's a gift of modernity. That kind of open-ended

01:04:45.060 --> 01:04:50.700
criticism, self-criticism. That's a gift of modernity. It doesn't denude the beauty

01:04:50.700 --> 01:04:53.980
of those things to be able to be critical. And that's a gift of the modern world

01:04:53.980 --> 01:04:57.700
and we should take that forward. One interesting thing is back in Shankara's

01:04:57.700 --> 01:05:03.020
day, public debates were very much a part of the scene. People with different

01:05:03.020 --> 01:05:06.380
philosophical viewpoints would get up on a stage and debate one another and it

01:05:06.380 --> 01:05:10.700
would be like a sporting event. And very often the tradition was that whoever won

01:05:10.700 --> 01:05:15.700
the debate, however that was judged, the other guy would become his disciple.

01:05:15.700 --> 01:05:19.280
I remember that. I know. I've been told those stories too. I always wondered if that really

01:05:19.280 --> 01:05:24.340
happened quite like that. I mean, I know that's the myth. But there was a tradition of debate.

01:05:24.340 --> 01:05:28.580
In some of those high traditions in the Indian subcontinent, there were obviously periods

01:05:28.580 --> 01:05:33.180
of cultural fluorescence that gave rise to some beautiful things like that.

01:05:33.180 --> 01:05:36.880
I think I was saying to you before we started recording that I wish we could do that more

01:05:36.880 --> 01:05:42.360
in our society, not only in spirituality perhaps, but with issues like climate change and gun

01:05:42.360 --> 01:05:44.400
control and abortion and all these things.

01:05:44.400 --> 01:05:49.760
Let the opposing parties, rather than just shouting from their respective siloed positions,

01:05:49.760 --> 01:05:54.680
get up on a stage with proper moderation and the opportunity to speak at length to present

01:05:54.680 --> 01:05:59.160
their issue, and then put it on CNN and Fox News and all the others, and let the public

01:05:59.160 --> 01:06:00.640
watch it and hear both sides.

01:06:00.640 --> 01:06:02.040
I think that would be really healthy.

01:06:02.040 --> 01:06:03.040
Dave Good.

01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:08.660
Okay, finally, a fourth way in which mystical awakening can both illuminate and blind has

01:06:08.660 --> 01:06:12.640
to do with the quality of presence we often associate with realizers.

01:06:12.640 --> 01:06:17.880
I think that's kind of a big one because there are some awakened people who walk into a room

01:06:17.880 --> 01:06:22.040
and it hits you like a blast furnace, you feel it.

01:06:22.040 --> 01:06:25.560
And you think, "Whoa, I've never met a person who could have that kind of influence, you

01:06:25.560 --> 01:06:27.580
know, just walking into a room."

01:06:27.580 --> 01:06:32.160
And then one thing leads to the next, and anything that they say must be true because obviously

01:06:32.160 --> 01:06:38.720
they're awesome. Yeah, and again here I was trying to make the point that this sweetness and innocence

01:06:38.720 --> 01:06:45.040
and loving presence can be a powerful and delightful quality that may naturally arise as we inhabit the

01:06:45.040 --> 01:06:50.960
less distracted inner universe and as consciousness becomes more transparent the depths of being

01:06:50.960 --> 01:06:57.040
become more transparent to the self. That's a beautiful quality but that can have its own

01:06:57.040 --> 01:07:03.600
downside. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying we should be awake to the problems that that

01:07:03.600 --> 01:07:10.160
can lead to. And I saw this in people, I saw this in my own teacher, it can lead us to become more

01:07:10.160 --> 01:07:18.640
convinced by the truth of what arises in our experience. It's a subtle point, but even as we

01:07:18.640 --> 01:07:24.000
become less caught up in the passing of thoughts and feelings in our mind's eye and in our inner

01:07:24.000 --> 01:07:29.280
world and we become even more present in the now. Everyone wants to be in the present moment,

01:07:29.280 --> 01:07:35.600
right? Well, that has its own challenges. You become more present. You also can be more convinced

01:07:35.600 --> 01:07:41.760
of the, if you have an insight, well, the reality of that insight. It didn't arise from my thinking

01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:48.640
mind, you know, it arose from the, it's, it's authenticity, the intuition, the ability to focus

01:07:48.640 --> 01:07:57.480
on your immediate little universe can be enhanced in ways that allow you to become more convinced

01:07:57.480 --> 01:08:03.080
of the reality of what arises in it and of your convictions and conclusions.

01:08:03.080 --> 01:08:06.080
Even as we become less attached to the passing of thoughts and feelings in our minds and

01:08:06.080 --> 01:08:12.740
eyes, we may become more attached to the perceived relevance of the insights that flow from our

01:08:12.740 --> 01:08:14.120
inner intuitions.

01:08:14.120 --> 01:08:16.120
Again, that isn't always a bad thing.

01:08:16.120 --> 01:08:17.120
It can be a really good thing.

01:08:17.120 --> 01:08:22.920
It can be beautiful, but it can definitely be deluding and lead us astray and make us

01:08:22.920 --> 01:08:29.200
much more confident in the quality and truth of those inner intuitions than we really have

01:08:29.200 --> 01:08:31.000
any right being.

01:08:31.000 --> 01:08:35.240
Ken Wilberg talks about this, the myth of the given, the idea that what is given to

01:08:35.240 --> 01:08:37.960
our inner experience is real.

01:08:37.960 --> 01:08:42.720
And that can be a very powerful, I think that can be enhanced by spiritual awakening, not

01:08:42.720 --> 01:08:43.720
diminished.

01:08:43.720 --> 01:08:46.280
Yeah, just to dwell on that a little bit more.

01:08:46.280 --> 01:08:50.200
So there have been teachers obviously like Muktananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself

01:08:50.200 --> 01:08:53.320
and others who really have some Shakti power.

01:08:53.320 --> 01:08:57.360
You get in their immediate presence and your whole consciousness shifts.

01:08:57.360 --> 01:09:01.760
That can be a real eye-opener for people who've never experienced anything like that, that

01:09:01.760 --> 01:09:04.480
someone could have such a remarkable influence.

01:09:04.480 --> 01:09:10.800
And it tends to make you attribute all kinds of other credibility to that person.

01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:16.880
who radiates that kind of influence must be so wise in every other respect and worthy

01:09:16.880 --> 01:09:21.120
of listening to or obeying and serving and so on.

01:09:21.120 --> 01:09:22.120
Yeah.

01:09:22.120 --> 01:09:23.120
It's intoxicating.

01:09:23.120 --> 01:09:25.200
You don't want to be in the presence of such a person.

01:09:25.200 --> 01:09:29.480
I've seen people practically kill themselves driving like madmen trying to get close to

01:09:29.480 --> 01:09:31.720
Marci's car and things like that.

01:09:31.720 --> 01:09:34.380
Yeah, it can be very intoxicating, very beautiful.

01:09:34.380 --> 01:09:35.840
That can be a beautiful experience.

01:09:35.840 --> 01:09:38.480
And again, not a bad, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

01:09:38.480 --> 01:09:43.240
You know, my own teacher at times could have this kind of vulnerability that could be very

01:09:43.240 --> 01:09:47.080
intoxicating and beautiful, you know, could be very powerful.

01:09:47.080 --> 01:09:53.120
And you know, that vulnerability is something that you often don't see in people and it

01:09:53.120 --> 01:09:55.160
can also be an expression of it.

01:09:55.160 --> 01:10:02.920
But then I also saw at times, like, I saw how he could become very convinced of things

01:10:02.920 --> 01:10:10.360
were in his immediate presence and he would then start to discount other forms of knowledge

01:10:10.360 --> 01:10:13.200
that were really important to the situation.

01:10:13.200 --> 01:10:18.960
And in discounting those other forms of knowledge, he made some big mistakes about people, about

01:10:18.960 --> 01:10:23.560
how he responded to things, because of a certain type of vulnerability.

01:10:23.560 --> 01:10:28.720
It's for a good reason, but those are some big mistakes because he was convinced of something

01:10:28.720 --> 01:10:32.080
because it was very real to him in that moment.

01:10:32.080 --> 01:10:38.160
And then I saw his ability to not be accountable to a previous experience, because you know

01:10:38.160 --> 01:10:40.240
that's in the past.

01:10:40.240 --> 01:10:42.720
What was real now is what was important.

01:10:42.720 --> 01:10:46.960
And it made him less able, and not just with him, I saw this with other people, less able

01:10:46.960 --> 01:10:48.480
to be accountable.

01:10:48.480 --> 01:10:53.960
Not more able to be accountable and responsible to all of the choices he'd made, but less

01:10:53.960 --> 01:10:56.360
able to be accountable to the choices he made.

01:10:56.360 --> 01:10:58.840
And you see this with other teachers too.

01:10:58.840 --> 01:11:02.680
you know, in my trying to understand enlightenment reading about other teachers and other people's

01:11:02.680 --> 01:11:04.500
experience, you can see this as well.

01:11:04.500 --> 01:11:09.800
So these are delicate and complex questions, you know, again, we're talking about deep

01:11:09.800 --> 01:11:15.040
polarities and trade-offs in the human psyche that are often in the service of some beautiful

01:11:15.040 --> 01:11:17.760
things and we should acknowledge that and appreciate that.

01:11:17.760 --> 01:11:23.160
But don't pretend that it doesn't come with real world consequences and trade-offs.

01:11:23.160 --> 01:11:26.960
And the more we can all be aware of that, the better we will do if we just pretend,

01:11:26.960 --> 01:11:30.880
Well, he must know because look at the vulnerability, look at that presence.

01:11:30.880 --> 01:11:32.440
Therefore that must be true.

01:11:32.440 --> 01:11:35.120
Well, maybe not.

01:11:35.120 --> 01:11:36.800
This next one is really juicy.

01:11:36.800 --> 01:11:40.480
Does enlightenment select for psychological instability?

01:11:40.480 --> 01:11:46.960
Sometimes I've wondered, does spiritual pursuit make you crazy or are crazy people attracted

01:11:46.960 --> 01:11:49.240
to spiritual pursuits?

01:11:49.240 --> 01:11:50.240
Maybe both.

01:11:50.240 --> 01:11:51.240
Yeah, maybe both.

01:11:51.240 --> 01:11:55.280
I think we have to be a little bit aware of that.

01:11:55.280 --> 01:11:59.360
You start out by mentioning that trauma and some forms of abuse, including sexual abuse,

01:11:59.360 --> 01:12:05.000
can be a catalyst or set the stage for a personality or psyche to have a propensity for spiritual,

01:12:05.000 --> 01:12:07.260
mystical, and paranormal experiences.

01:12:07.260 --> 01:12:11.640
The same is true with near-death experiences and psychedelics and a number of things that

01:12:11.640 --> 01:12:17.680
sort of disrupt our normal state of functioning in a rather abrupt way.

01:12:17.680 --> 01:12:20.200
My cat has been sleeping here next to me for a while and just...

01:12:20.200 --> 01:12:21.200
Oh, your famous cat.

01:12:21.200 --> 01:12:23.400
I heard about your cat in your book.

01:12:23.400 --> 01:12:24.400
That's another cat, actually.

01:12:24.400 --> 01:12:26.320
That cat died a couple of years ago.

01:12:26.320 --> 01:12:27.680
Oh yeah, that was a long time ago.

01:12:27.680 --> 01:12:30.160
That was a cat I had for 17 years, very close to that cat.

01:12:30.160 --> 01:12:34.000
That cat was my companion through a lot of my spiritual life.

01:12:34.000 --> 01:12:37.920
And I sort of honor-- that cat was a wonderful companion.

01:12:37.920 --> 01:12:40.200
Yeah, so this is tricky.

01:12:40.200 --> 01:12:43.480
And all these are tricky and subtle, and this even more so.

01:12:43.480 --> 01:12:46.640
And I want to acknowledge that these are complex issues.

01:12:46.640 --> 01:12:50.520
I don't want to pin anyone in any particular situation.

01:12:50.520 --> 01:12:52.840
But I think we have to answer the question.

01:12:52.840 --> 01:12:57.240
As some people have pointed out, and I know this at a certain point in my spiritual life,

01:12:57.240 --> 01:13:03.320
that some people who are most prone to... people made the connection, I think, between

01:13:03.320 --> 01:13:08.920
certain types of trauma, maybe, as a child, or certain types of tendencies toward paranormal

01:13:08.920 --> 01:13:15.360
experiences, borderline issues, or you're able to slip into other states of consciousness.

01:13:15.360 --> 01:13:17.960
I talk about, we can imagine how it might work.

01:13:17.960 --> 01:13:24.860
It seems that when normal ego or self-structures become dislodged or some type of trauma forces

01:13:24.860 --> 01:13:31.000
the self to protect itself by retreating into other parts of the internal universe, the

01:13:31.000 --> 01:13:33.480
doorway might open to another reality.

01:13:33.480 --> 01:13:37.720
It's like, "Oh, I'm not so focused on the manifest world, the physical universe.

01:13:37.720 --> 01:13:40.320
I'm going to retreat into this other dimension a little bit."

01:13:40.320 --> 01:13:43.980
And that might open the doorway, and so we might be more familiar with other dimensions

01:13:43.980 --> 01:13:46.100
or other things that are happening.

01:13:46.100 --> 01:13:51.040
And so that might open us up to paranormal experiences or certain types of that.

01:13:51.040 --> 01:13:53.140
I think that can happen.

01:13:53.140 --> 01:13:56.720
Some people survive a lightning strike, wake up to find a paranormal doorway open.

01:13:56.720 --> 01:14:01.280
Some have near death experiences and find they're more prone to spiritual states or paranormal

01:14:01.280 --> 01:14:02.540
experiences.

01:14:02.540 --> 01:14:07.100
So I think the same kind of thing can work in spiritual states of consciousness.

01:14:07.100 --> 01:14:11.520
And I saw this with different be like, sometimes people who are maybe had a little less of

01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:18.600
an integrated sense of self could have very profound spiritual experiences as if their

01:14:18.600 --> 01:14:22.320
self-structure was a little more loose, you know, they could have lots of experiences,

01:14:22.320 --> 01:14:27.560
a little more maybe a stable integrated self-structure, but they could flip over into lots of different

01:14:27.560 --> 01:14:28.560
experiences.

01:14:28.560 --> 01:14:33.120
They could also flip into very profound states of consciousness and they might be more prone,

01:14:33.120 --> 01:14:35.480
more vulnerable to those states of consciousness.

01:14:35.480 --> 01:14:36.800
And there's nothing wrong with that.

01:14:36.800 --> 01:14:38.440
That can be a wonderful thing.

01:14:38.440 --> 01:14:42.840
I'm not in any way saying that that is a bad thing. It could be a beautiful thing.

01:14:42.840 --> 01:14:50.200
But I think we have to realize that there might be types of psychological traces in the character

01:14:50.200 --> 01:14:55.160
that make us more prone to mystical experiences and make us more prone to those experiences

01:14:55.160 --> 01:15:00.040
becoming semi-permanent or permanent. And I think this is a whole area to be investigated and we

01:15:00.040 --> 01:15:05.800
should be curious about. So again, that's not to impugn anyone who has those experiences,

01:15:05.800 --> 01:15:12.760
because that can be a wonderful thing. It's just, there's this mythos that the person most prone to

01:15:12.760 --> 01:15:17.400
enlightenment experiences is the most highly evolved person and they're right on the edge

01:15:17.400 --> 01:15:21.400
there and they're just going to flip over into that enlightenment experiences because their karma

01:15:21.400 --> 01:15:25.880
has taken them to this point. Well, no, that may not be true at all. And I think we need to

01:15:25.880 --> 01:15:30.760
reevaluate all this a little bit. And I just think it could be the opposite of that. And the sense

01:15:30.760 --> 01:15:35.480
that people who have a lot of trauma also might be very prone. And again, I'm not saying that's a

01:15:35.480 --> 01:15:40.280
bad thing. I'm just saying it can be a good thing. We have to look at all this honestly

01:15:40.280 --> 01:15:46.200
and look at our own self-structures and other people's self-structures. And when we see someone

01:15:46.200 --> 01:15:52.760
who's in an altered state of consciousness or seems to have some access to some deeper realization,

01:15:52.760 --> 01:15:59.720
they may have a beautiful gift to share, but that gift may not have to do with a healthy,

01:15:59.720 --> 01:16:05.080
integrated sense of self. So I just think these are complex questions and we need to ask them,

01:16:05.080 --> 01:16:09.400
but we need not be overly simplistic about these kind of mythologies that we've been raised with.

01:16:09.400 --> 01:16:13.560
I forget who said it, maybe many people have said it, but I've heard it said that you have

01:16:13.560 --> 01:16:18.840
to develop a healthy ego before you can transcend your ego. So that was Jack Engler, right?

01:16:18.840 --> 01:16:23.160
Might have been, I don't know. I think he's wrong. Maybe that's ideal,

01:16:23.160 --> 01:16:25.720
but I think the opposite happens for a lot of people.

01:16:25.720 --> 01:16:33.320
right. But if we employ the principle of safety first, I think it's good advice because there

01:16:33.320 --> 01:16:39.640
have been so many train wrecks among spiritual practitioners. I participated in long courses,

01:16:39.640 --> 01:16:44.280
you know, three months, six months of long meditation and, you know, there were a lot

01:16:44.280 --> 01:16:49.880
of freakouts. There were some suicides. It was quite a scene at times. And I myself,

01:16:49.880 --> 01:16:56.360
I became very kooky and weird and disintegrated and idiosyncratic and obsessive and all kinds

01:16:56.360 --> 01:16:57.360
of stuff.

01:16:57.360 --> 01:17:02.360
And it took a long period of time afterwards to stabilize and integrate what had been experienced.

01:17:02.360 --> 01:17:04.400
I did a lot of long retreats.

01:17:04.400 --> 01:17:06.200
You know, I have this unique ability.

01:17:06.200 --> 01:17:07.200
We all did.

01:17:07.200 --> 01:17:12.560
Watching hundreds of people do deep spiritual retreats and work and watch their experiences

01:17:12.560 --> 01:17:16.720
and watch their personalities, how long those experiences lasted, how they lasted, how they

01:17:16.720 --> 01:17:21.000
integrated them, what types of self tended to have what types of experience. I mean,

01:17:21.000 --> 01:17:25.940
I got a chance to just have this incredible laboratory and watch all this happen as well

01:17:25.940 --> 01:17:30.120
as my relationship with my own teacher. So I think these are all really interesting and

01:17:30.120 --> 01:17:36.480
open questions. The simplistic narrative of some linear path up to the top of the mountain

01:17:36.480 --> 01:17:42.560
is sort of absurd. In a sophisticated, psychological, informed world, we have to ask all these questions

01:17:42.560 --> 01:17:46.200
about the nature of realization and the nature of what it means.

01:17:46.200 --> 01:17:52.920
And I use an example, I use Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie are two examples of teachers,

01:17:52.920 --> 01:17:55.440
obviously people have gotten a lot of value out of their teaching.

01:17:55.440 --> 01:17:59.120
I'm not saying there's not real value in the way they teach or something, right?

01:17:59.120 --> 01:18:01.320
You know, I haven't read in a while their stories.

01:18:01.320 --> 01:18:04.280
They both had some kind of breakdown before they had a breakdown.

01:18:04.280 --> 01:18:05.280
They both had a breakdown.

01:18:05.280 --> 01:18:06.280
Yeah.

01:18:06.280 --> 01:18:11.200
Byron Katie was in some kind of halfway house or something and Eckhart Tolle was contemplating

01:18:11.200 --> 01:18:12.200
suicide.

01:18:12.200 --> 01:18:16.440
suicidal ideation was part of the vehicle for their awakening.

01:18:16.440 --> 01:18:19.720
Again, that doesn't mean their awakening doesn't have value.

01:18:19.720 --> 01:18:25.800
It just means that the self-structure that had that awakening might not be the

01:18:25.800 --> 01:18:30.680
self-structure we want to aspire to either. Maybe it was right for them. I'm

01:18:30.680 --> 01:18:33.640
glad that that happened to them. I'm glad that they're able to turn

01:18:33.640 --> 01:18:37.000
those issues that they have into something that is valuable.

01:18:37.000 --> 01:18:41.480
But it doesn't mean they represent the pinnacle of human evolution of the self.

01:18:41.480 --> 01:18:42.680
I mean, come on, you know.

01:18:42.680 --> 01:18:48.920
No, I don't think it means that people have to be on the verge of psychological breakdown

01:18:48.920 --> 01:18:51.800
in order to be eligible for a spiritual breakthrough.

01:18:51.800 --> 01:18:58.120
As a matter of fact, I think it can be gone about in such a way that, well, responsible

01:18:58.120 --> 01:19:03.400
spiritual teachers these days, and also responsible psychedelic therapists, screen people pretty

01:19:03.400 --> 01:19:05.800
carefully before letting them get involved.

01:19:05.800 --> 01:19:10.360
Because if they're unstable to begin with, the last thing they need is one meditation

01:19:10.360 --> 01:19:16.360
retreat or, you know, psychedelics or something. It can really put them over the edge. And I think

01:19:16.360 --> 01:19:22.120
one way of looking at it is, you know, we all have our conditioning, and many people are just

01:19:22.120 --> 01:19:27.000
deeply conditioned. You know, the impressions are very deeply ingrained, and they're pretty well

01:19:27.000 --> 01:19:32.280
locked into their personality, and they don't even contemplate spirituality. But if we're going

01:19:32.280 --> 01:19:38.200
to transition from that condition to an enlightened state, there's a whole lot of internal

01:19:38.200 --> 01:19:43.560
reconfiguration that's going to have to take place. A whole lot of purification and elimination

01:19:43.560 --> 01:19:49.520
of some scars and modification of the nervous system and whatever may be going on with the

01:19:49.520 --> 01:19:55.560
chakras and all that stuff, a whole makeover has to take place. And that can be very disruptive

01:19:55.560 --> 01:20:00.920
when you're going through the process of it. So, I think the key thing is to find ways,

01:20:00.920 --> 01:20:05.860
maybe different teachers have found them to different degrees of success, of facilitating

01:20:05.860 --> 01:20:12.620
all that transformation without causing damage or without causing psychological instability

01:20:12.620 --> 01:20:13.620
or breakdown.

01:20:13.620 --> 01:20:16.180
There is going to be some instability, I think.

01:20:16.180 --> 01:20:21.220
On a long course, you're kind of like jello that hasn't molded and you could mold into

01:20:21.220 --> 01:20:24.040
the wrong shape if you're not careful.

01:20:24.040 --> 01:20:29.420
But we're talking about a radical transformation of our mind-body system and of our nervous

01:20:29.420 --> 01:20:37.300
system of our subtle body and that can easily tip over into psychological instability and

01:20:37.300 --> 01:20:39.380
it has to be handled very carefully.

01:20:39.380 --> 01:20:45.900
All development and evolution involves, I think, some level of instability with what came before.

01:20:45.900 --> 01:20:50.640
So that is its own challenge, you know, independent of what I, sort of, the point I was trying.

01:20:50.640 --> 01:20:51.640
That's its own challenge.

01:20:51.640 --> 01:20:54.220
I think that's true individually and culturally, too.

01:20:54.220 --> 01:20:58.620
One of the great challenges of cultural evolution is, right, is like we want to imagine utopias

01:20:58.620 --> 01:21:03.820
and how we should be, should or should be. The challenge is not challenges to evolve culturally

01:21:03.820 --> 01:21:08.540
in ways that make things better without making them worse at the same time. Because there's,

01:21:08.540 --> 01:21:12.380
you know, the history of like trying to make things better has a lot of making things a lot

01:21:12.380 --> 01:21:17.100
worse at the same time, you know, sometimes much more worse than you made them better, you know.

01:21:17.100 --> 01:21:20.940
And yet we still have to try to move things forward. And in terms of the evolution of the

01:21:20.940 --> 01:21:26.860
self, I think it's the same thing. Inevitably, we try to reach for when you try to reach beyond,

01:21:26.860 --> 01:21:31.500
you're introducing instability to the system. And inevitably that has its own challenges,

01:21:31.500 --> 01:21:34.300
and we have to be kind of be ready for those and understand those.

01:21:34.300 --> 01:21:39.340
That's a good point. In fact, the cultural thing is a nice analogy, if not an actual

01:21:39.340 --> 01:21:45.340
example of the point I was trying to make, which is that, let's say we can envision a much more

01:21:45.340 --> 01:21:50.780
ideal society than the one we live in, in which we don't have all this environmental degradation,

01:21:50.780 --> 01:21:56.940
and agriculture is done in a holistic and organic and wholesome way, and medical systems are

01:21:56.940 --> 01:21:59.380
much more enlightened, and all sorts of things.

01:21:59.380 --> 01:22:04.660
But as it is now, we have deeply entrenched, multi-billion dollar industries representing

01:22:04.660 --> 01:22:09.660
all these areas who are not going to just turn on a dime.

01:22:09.660 --> 01:22:11.780
So how do we get from here to there?

01:22:11.780 --> 01:22:15.300
Let's say that it's inevitable we're going to get there.

01:22:15.300 --> 01:22:21.020
Do those industries have to collapse and does it have to be economic upheaval and unemployment

01:22:21.020 --> 01:22:23.100
and a depression and all that?

01:22:23.100 --> 01:22:28.980
Or is there a way of going from here to there in a much more willing and conscious way in

01:22:28.980 --> 01:22:31.260
which things can evolve?

01:22:31.260 --> 01:22:34.580
But you see what people tend to do is they tend to resist.

01:22:34.580 --> 01:22:38.700
The fossil fuel industries have known for decades that their product was going to create

01:22:38.700 --> 01:22:42.580
the kind of disaster we're now beginning to experience, but they were looking at the next

01:22:42.580 --> 01:22:47.380
quarterly bottom line and didn't want to change. I'm getting off on a bit of a rant here.

01:22:47.380 --> 01:22:52.500
I think when we talk about cultural evolution, one of the things I talk about in evolutionaries

01:22:52.500 --> 01:22:59.140
is that it's easy to imagine perfect worlds and then we try to enact them. And unless we

01:22:59.140 --> 01:23:04.580
understand where we came from, unless we understand more about how we where we've come from, it's easy

01:23:04.580 --> 01:23:08.900
for those imagined perfect worlds to cause all kinds of problems in the getting from here to

01:23:08.900 --> 01:23:14.300
there. And utopias don't have a very good history in terms of enacting cultural evolution. Quite

01:23:14.300 --> 01:23:20.740
the opposite, they can fuck it up. As I often say, we need more evolution, less revolution.

01:23:20.740 --> 01:23:25.460
Often the revolution is, sometimes people reach for revolution when they've lost faith

01:23:25.460 --> 01:23:30.780
in the evolutionary process, that we can move things forward. We can't just make the world

01:23:30.780 --> 01:23:36.300
anew, you know, we have to work with what we've got. Without being trapped or stuck

01:23:36.300 --> 01:23:41.820
in history, we have to work with what we've got to continue to evolve, but we can't just

01:23:41.820 --> 01:23:46.620
remake the world anew. And I think that's true of individual evolution, that's true

01:23:46.620 --> 01:23:50.940
of cultural evolution. And there's this idea I love in cultural evolution called the adjacent

01:23:50.940 --> 01:23:55.660
possible, which is it comes from an evolutionary theorist named Stuart Kauffman, which means

01:23:55.660 --> 01:24:03.260
that what is possible in our evolutionary moment that's adjacent to the space we're

01:24:03.260 --> 01:24:10.300
in right now, like as an individual or as a collective, as a culture, what's in our adjacent

01:24:10.300 --> 01:24:11.300
possible.

01:24:11.300 --> 01:24:15.300
You know, as I often say, for me to go bench press 500 pounds is not in my adjacent possible.

01:24:15.300 --> 01:24:18.420
You know, it's not adjacent to where I am right now.

01:24:18.420 --> 01:24:21.820
Maybe in the future I could do that, way in the future.

01:24:21.820 --> 01:24:26.720
But there are certain types of evolution or change that are in my adjacent possible.

01:24:26.720 --> 01:24:32.820
So understanding the difference between the adjacent possible and some imagined future

01:24:32.820 --> 01:24:37.300
is critical to successful development, both individually and culturally.

01:24:37.300 --> 01:24:40.780
So that's an important thing when we really want to care.

01:24:40.780 --> 01:24:45.140
We really care about evolution and not just imagining some future that we may or may not

01:24:45.140 --> 01:24:48.100
be able to achieve and may cause a disaster in the meantime.

01:24:48.100 --> 01:24:53.020
Yeah, I interviewed Rhonda Byrne who did The Secret, and at one point towards the beginning

01:24:53.020 --> 01:24:57.180
of the interview I said, "So you mean if I want to play basketball as well as LeBron James,

01:24:57.180 --> 01:25:03.500
despite the fact that I'm in my 70s and I'm only 5'10", if I want it bad enough, could I have it?

01:25:03.500 --> 01:25:07.820
And she was kind of like going into her thing, you know, "Yeah, yeah, if you want it bad enough."

01:25:07.820 --> 01:25:11.020
I didn't say it, but I was going to say, "Well, that's what gives the secret a bad name."

01:25:11.020 --> 01:25:20.620
Anyway, there's a question from Irene, a statement, "Perhaps it is more the surrender

01:25:20.620 --> 01:25:25.580
than the imbalance that brings about the awakening. The extreme hardships bring one to a state of

01:25:25.580 --> 01:25:31.500
complete surrender which often precludes profound awakenings, precedes perhaps profound awakenings.

01:25:31.500 --> 01:25:36.140
That surrender can happen from things other than hardships and bring about the same results,

01:25:36.140 --> 01:25:42.460
such as a fervent yearning for God or years of meditation or service to others, etc. But I guess

01:25:42.460 --> 01:25:48.860
what she's saying is whatever can bring about the appropriate degree of surrender could be a trigger

01:25:48.860 --> 01:25:54.860
I think that's what Byron Cavier Eckhart Tolle would say in that situation.

01:25:54.860 --> 01:25:59.860
And I think it's true in some sense, but it doesn't change my point.

01:25:59.860 --> 01:26:05.860
Okay. I have this friend named Rob McCutcheon who I sent you an email about the other day.

01:26:05.860 --> 01:26:12.860
And he read your paper and he was a professor at a university in the Pacific Northwest.

01:26:12.860 --> 01:26:20.100
He was at one time, Marshan Heshiogi's personal secretary back in the early 70s and got rather

01:26:20.100 --> 01:26:21.100
disillusioned.

01:26:21.100 --> 01:26:26.580
He still maintains a belief that enlightenment could actually resolve all problems of the

01:26:26.580 --> 01:26:31.980
ego and make us better at dealing with life's vicissitudes.

01:26:31.980 --> 01:26:35.740
So he disagreed with some of the premises of your paper, and maybe I could go through

01:26:35.740 --> 01:26:37.100
them and you could comment a little bit.

01:26:37.100 --> 01:26:39.700
I think he disagreed with the entire premise of my paper.

01:26:39.700 --> 01:26:41.420
Yeah, pretty much.

01:26:41.420 --> 01:26:47.180
idealistically if we could see examples of enlightenment that in our current time which

01:26:47.180 --> 01:26:53.020
live up to the historical hype we could agree with all these things but the proof of the

01:26:53.020 --> 01:26:54.620
pudding is in the eating.

01:26:54.620 --> 01:26:59.420
We need to realize that in a psychologically sophisticated world in which we understand

01:26:59.420 --> 01:27:04.380
the nature of the personality much better, in a world in which we understand the nature

01:27:04.380 --> 01:27:09.700
of the cultural evolution, the cultural forces that are impacting our self-structure, evolutionary

01:27:09.700 --> 01:27:14.660
psychology. There's so many elements of knowledge that we understand now. We need to appreciate

01:27:14.660 --> 01:27:19.380
that the idea of some perfect enlightenment as the pinnacle of human evolution and the top of

01:27:19.380 --> 01:27:26.820
the mountain is absurd prima facie. It's just absurd. It doesn't mean there's not tremendous

01:27:26.820 --> 01:27:34.660
beauty and power and awesome realizations that can be transformative and can put the wind in

01:27:34.660 --> 01:27:39.540
the sails of our personal and collective evolution. It's beautiful, but the idea of the kind of

01:27:39.540 --> 01:27:45.940
perfect enlightened figure who only acts out of spirit or something. That's a kind of a myth

01:27:45.940 --> 01:27:52.020
that we need to put aside so we can deal with the beauty of awakening on its own terms and

01:27:52.020 --> 01:27:58.500
all the benefits of it and all the power of it. Yeah, my next guest on Bat Gap is a guy named Bob

01:27:58.500 --> 01:28:03.780
Harwood and I just finished listening to his book. He went through years and years and years of really

01:28:03.780 --> 01:28:10.340
intense seeking and long Zen retreats and things like that. And he eventually, like 25 years ago

01:28:10.340 --> 01:28:18.100
or so, had a profound spiritual breakthrough that has abided ever since and feels like his life is

01:28:18.100 --> 01:28:25.540
just an effortless flow and he has no problems. But that is not to say that he doesn't have many

01:28:25.540 --> 01:28:30.660
human emotions and, you know, might get angry or this or that or the other thing. I think it's

01:28:30.660 --> 01:28:36.660
just a matter of understanding what is meant by this idea of perfection. Jesus said, "Be ye therefore

01:28:36.660 --> 01:28:43.300
perfect." If God is running the universe, then the universe is perfect, but still, asteroids crash into

01:28:43.300 --> 01:28:49.860
inhabited planets and stars blow up and all kinds of violent stuff happens, which in the big picture,

01:28:49.860 --> 01:28:56.100
I guess, is perfect. But it doesn't seem perfect to those who are suffering the consequences.

01:28:56.100 --> 01:29:01.460
Yeah, I mean, I guess if we define perfection in some totally zoomed out way, we could say

01:29:01.460 --> 01:29:06.300
it's all perfection, you know, and that's, that's okay, we can do, we can say that.

01:29:06.300 --> 01:29:10.980
But as long as we zoom back in a little bit, and we're talking about the actual development

01:29:10.980 --> 01:29:17.340
of the human character and soul and culture over millennia, and the nature of personality

01:29:17.340 --> 01:29:24.280
and self structures and psychological structures, perfections, it's kind of a silly concept.

01:29:24.280 --> 01:29:28.560
It doesn't mean that people can have beautiful awakenings like your friends and express those

01:29:28.560 --> 01:29:30.380
in beautiful ways.

01:29:30.380 --> 01:29:34.220
That doesn't mean they can be a beautiful expression of a human being.

01:29:34.220 --> 01:29:35.220
And that's awesome.

01:29:35.220 --> 01:29:36.220
That's fine.

01:29:36.220 --> 01:29:37.220
I don't have any disagreement with that.

01:29:37.220 --> 01:29:41.980
But I think if we start assuming, wow, even everything fundamentally I do is an expression

01:29:41.980 --> 01:29:44.620
of spirit and I'm just an empty vessel.

01:29:44.620 --> 01:29:46.960
None of us are empty vessels.

01:29:46.960 --> 01:29:48.560
We all bring stuff to the party.

01:29:48.560 --> 01:29:50.100
That's a beautiful thing.

01:29:50.100 --> 01:29:55.460
But if we think we're just empty vessels, and this is not being refracted through the

01:29:55.460 --> 01:30:02.420
strengths and weaknesses and inevitable imperfections of our human character, then we're deluded.

01:30:02.420 --> 01:30:06.980
It doesn't mean that we're not expressing spirit in some beautiful way, and maybe a

01:30:06.980 --> 01:30:07.980
profound way.

01:30:07.980 --> 01:30:08.980
Yeah.

01:30:08.980 --> 01:30:14.300
I also want to mention an essay that a friend of mine named Jerry Freeman wrote, which I

01:30:14.300 --> 01:30:17.940
sent to you, called "Why There Are No Perfect Teachers."

01:30:17.940 --> 01:30:22.900
He made some interesting points, but you know, a lot of times people say that they've totally

01:30:22.900 --> 01:30:25.460
lost all sense of a personal self.

01:30:25.460 --> 01:30:29.860
We were talking about this earlier and that everything they do is just sort of on automatic.

01:30:29.860 --> 01:30:35.020
Jerry contends, and actually has some scriptural references to back it up, that no matter how

01:30:35.020 --> 01:30:39.780
enlightened a person may be, there must remain a kernel of individuality.

01:30:39.780 --> 01:30:44.500
That as long as you have a human body, there must remain some sense of the little me.

01:30:44.500 --> 01:30:49.740
It might be more abstract and not be experienced as the center of one's being, but it has to

01:30:49.740 --> 01:30:53.460
be there if you want to actually function as a human being.

01:30:53.460 --> 01:30:55.460
At least that's the way it seems to me.

01:30:55.460 --> 01:30:56.900
Do you agree with that?

01:30:56.900 --> 01:31:02.380
Yeah, if we want to do anything in the world, you need a self and a personality and a self-structure

01:31:02.380 --> 01:31:06.540
and you need this whole body-mind thing.

01:31:06.540 --> 01:31:11.500
People might be able to get into states where they're so focused on some transcendent sense

01:31:11.500 --> 01:31:19.580
of self that it seems to overwhelm them and it seems to be all that is, I am that.

01:31:19.580 --> 01:31:24.040
And maybe, maybe for Ramana Maharshi, you're just living in a cave for 15 years, maybe

01:31:24.040 --> 01:31:29.380
that sense of the personal world and the personal self-structure becomes so small relative to

01:31:29.380 --> 01:31:30.380
that.

01:31:30.380 --> 01:31:34.980
But anytime we get up and do anything and talk and think and any, it's refracted through

01:31:34.980 --> 01:31:37.300
this self-structure, inevitably.

01:31:37.300 --> 01:31:42.820
So, understanding the nature of that kind of self-structure and the way it might refract

01:31:42.820 --> 01:31:48.660
something like that is rather important, much more important than pretending it's irrelevant.

01:31:48.660 --> 01:31:55.220
Yeah, and with Ramana, when he was dying of cancer, for instance, pain was being experienced

01:31:55.220 --> 01:31:56.220
in that body.

01:31:56.220 --> 01:31:57.220
In some sense.

01:31:57.220 --> 01:32:00.940
I mean, Ramana had all kinds, I mean, he had all kinds of ideas about culture, and were

01:32:00.940 --> 01:32:01.940
they accurate?

01:32:01.940 --> 01:32:05.820
Well, from his point of view, he expressed a certain point of view with great integrity

01:32:05.820 --> 01:32:06.820
and beauty, right?

01:32:06.820 --> 01:32:09.720
Does that mean that's the point of view we all should embrace? No.

01:32:09.720 --> 01:32:11.720
Do I agree with him on all that? No.

01:32:11.720 --> 01:32:15.320
He thought his cow was enlightened, right? I mean, that was kind of part of his thing.

01:32:15.320 --> 01:32:17.520
Okay, whatever, maybe.

01:32:17.520 --> 01:32:24.220
It doesn't diminish the majesty of these realizers to be critical or to say that doesn't make any sense.

01:32:24.220 --> 01:32:28.120
Or to say that they didn't know everything about everything.

01:32:28.120 --> 01:32:32.720
It seems funny to even say that, but people actually think stuff like that.

01:32:32.720 --> 01:32:37.720
My spiritual hero is Sri Aurobindo, who lived at the same time as Ramana Maharishi and had

01:32:37.720 --> 01:32:41.480
a whole different vision of what the spiritual life was than Ramana.

01:32:41.480 --> 01:32:42.800
But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate Ramana.

01:32:42.800 --> 01:32:44.040
I wrote about Ramana in my book.

01:32:44.040 --> 01:32:48.420
He's a beautiful expression of mysticism and enlightenment, not one that's available to

01:32:48.420 --> 01:32:51.960
most people and not one that most people are going to pursue.

01:32:51.960 --> 01:32:58.000
But we can honor that without putting him on almost an absurd pedestal.

01:32:58.000 --> 01:32:59.560
We can put him on a beautiful pedestal.

01:32:59.560 --> 01:33:05.560
We don't have to pretend that therefore every word that drops out of his lips is some magical

01:33:05.560 --> 01:33:12.200
incantation of truth about the nature of reality in all its forms for all time.

01:33:12.200 --> 01:33:18.460
There's a term in Vedanta called Leysa Vidya, which means faint remains of ignorance.

01:33:18.460 --> 01:33:23.460
And it's said that you actually need that in order to attain Brahman.

01:33:23.460 --> 01:33:28.840
And here's a quote, "What Leysa Vidya does is create a separation in the state of unity,

01:33:28.840 --> 01:33:33.720
And it is this separation that is responsible for the emergence of Brahman, Brahman being

01:33:33.720 --> 01:33:36.900
the whole, which is more than the collection of parts.

01:33:36.900 --> 01:33:42.280
So unless unity is in parts, that wholeness of Brahman will not be created.

01:33:42.280 --> 01:33:46.740
There's a verse from the Brahma Sutras which goes, "But only those former karmas whose

01:33:46.740 --> 01:33:50.440
effects have not yet begun are destroyed by knowledge."

01:33:50.440 --> 01:33:55.980
And what that means is that those actions whose effects have begun and whose results

01:33:55.980 --> 01:34:01.220
have been half enjoyed are not destroyed by the knowledge of enlightenment.

01:34:01.220 --> 01:34:07.700
And those are the very karmas to which there is due the present state of existence in which

01:34:07.700 --> 01:34:10.140
the knowledge of Brahman arises.

01:34:10.140 --> 01:34:12.220
That's a direct quote from Shankara.

01:34:12.220 --> 01:34:18.180
So in other words, these people are saying that we actually need imperfections in order

01:34:18.180 --> 01:34:25.620
to attain and live a high state of realization, which might be called Brahman consciousness,

01:34:25.620 --> 01:34:29.440
And that actually we're going to retain some of those imperfections as long as we have

01:34:29.440 --> 01:34:31.060
a body.

01:34:31.060 --> 01:34:38.260
And that will be reflected in certain behaviors which may not seem ideal, even though we are

01:34:38.260 --> 01:34:40.040
presumably enlightened.

01:34:40.040 --> 01:34:45.340
I think in a very traditional mystical context, of which Sankara was, I think that's probably

01:34:45.340 --> 01:34:52.180
a way of trying to capture some of these truths in maybe that limited frame.

01:34:52.180 --> 01:34:55.980
I think we can do better today because we have a lot more understanding.

01:34:55.980 --> 01:34:59.740
It doesn't mean there's not profound truth there, but I think we can fill in some of those

01:34:59.740 --> 01:35:00.740
elements.

01:35:00.740 --> 01:35:05.580
At least we can add to that knowledge because of our understanding of psychology, because

01:35:05.580 --> 01:35:09.060
of our understanding of culture in ways that maybe they didn't have access to.

01:35:09.060 --> 01:35:13.060
It doesn't mean there aren't some profound truths there, but I just think we can add to

01:35:13.060 --> 01:35:14.060
those.

01:35:14.060 --> 01:35:15.060
Yeah, always.

01:35:15.060 --> 01:35:21.180
I don't think there ever will come a time at which we cannot add to what we know or experience.

01:35:21.180 --> 01:35:24.300
What's the cat's name?

01:35:24.300 --> 01:35:25.300
This is Piper.

01:35:25.300 --> 01:35:29.500
I have some old videos in which cats are walking in front of me.

01:35:29.500 --> 01:35:31.060
Aww, I love cats.

01:35:31.060 --> 01:35:32.060
Me too.

01:35:32.060 --> 01:35:36.980
So, let's make some grand, sweeping, overarching concluding points.

01:35:36.980 --> 01:35:40.660
I've written a lot of different things over the years and I just think I wanted to make

01:35:40.660 --> 01:35:43.420
this statement and maybe I'll expand on this paper.

01:35:43.420 --> 01:35:50.100
This paper probably needs a lot more expansion, ultimately, but I wanted to get down some thoughts.

01:35:50.100 --> 01:35:55.260
I got the opportunity to be very close to my own teacher and watch him over 20 years, but

01:35:55.260 --> 01:36:02.060
to look at the history of mysticism and to interview and engage with communities and

01:36:02.060 --> 01:36:07.340
mystical teachers and mystics in every tradition and over a period of a long period of time,

01:36:07.340 --> 01:36:12.460
it was just a very unusual opportunity to be inside something I loved.

01:36:12.460 --> 01:36:18.220
That point in my life, I was so committed to that world to try to understand it.

01:36:18.220 --> 01:36:25.500
I think to be able to then step back and ask hard questions about some of the myths that

01:36:25.500 --> 01:36:30.620
I grew up with in these worlds, and that a lot of people still hold on to, that don't

01:36:30.620 --> 01:36:37.660
really make sense, and that have caused a lot of human suffering, because teachers and

01:36:37.660 --> 01:36:43.640
students held to them, and they don't really withstand a lot of careful scrutiny.

01:36:43.640 --> 01:36:48.840
And we can do that from a position of cynicism, or of like, "This is all not as important

01:36:48.840 --> 01:36:50.820
as I once thought it was."

01:36:50.820 --> 01:36:56.840
Or we can do that from a position of appreciation and love for a lot of these types of practices

01:36:56.840 --> 01:37:03.480
and types of seeking and types of communal engagements that can be very profound, but

01:37:03.480 --> 01:37:09.320
they need a serious dose of questioning a lot of conclusions.

01:37:09.320 --> 01:37:12.040
You know, when I was 22, maybe I would just say, "No, I'm going to do this.

01:37:12.040 --> 01:37:15.240
I'm going to learn the hard way everything. Of course, a lot of people are going to do that.

01:37:15.240 --> 01:37:23.400
That's fine. But I do think the myths that surround the modern postmodern idea of enlightenment and

01:37:23.400 --> 01:37:31.960
mysticism are pernicious and strong and need to be questioned as maybe some embedded truths,

01:37:31.960 --> 01:37:38.680
but also very partial truths and maybe important truths, but not complete and whole and entire

01:37:38.680 --> 01:37:44.200
truths. That was the purpose of the paper, to kind of push that forward, open up that question,

01:37:44.200 --> 01:37:49.640
and to get inside these. We need to pursue this. I hope maybe at some point I'll write about it more,

01:37:49.640 --> 01:37:56.920
but I saw how relatively subtle distinctions and problems and confusions caused a lot of

01:37:56.920 --> 01:38:03.240
human suffering. It's more than just so-and-so was a bad person and did bad things. These are

01:38:03.240 --> 01:38:09.320
good people who tried hard to do the right thing and did really messed up things because of these

01:38:09.320 --> 01:38:15.080
confusions. So that's what we gotta pursue. That's really good. I just want to say from my

01:38:15.080 --> 01:38:21.400
own experience, most of the people listening to this show, I would say, are spiritual seekers or

01:38:21.400 --> 01:38:25.400
aspirants. They're interested in the topic, obviously, or they wouldn't be listening.

01:38:25.400 --> 01:38:31.400
And I interact with a lot of people. I see examples of people being blindly enamored

01:38:32.040 --> 01:38:38.600
of and obedient to spiritual teachers, and then eventually getting disillusioned and becoming

01:38:38.600 --> 01:38:43.560
cynical and losing interest in the spiritual endeavor altogether. And in my own case,

01:38:43.560 --> 01:38:48.280
I have been through both those phases, but these days I'm as gung-ho as I ever was about

01:38:48.280 --> 01:38:54.440
spirituality, which is very gung-ho. I mean, it's my primary focus in life, and I would say that

01:38:54.440 --> 01:39:01.000
it's genuine, it's worth pursuing, and keep on truckin'. And at the same time, all the stuff you

01:39:01.000 --> 01:39:07.680
said about using your intellect, being discriminating, questioning, and don't take things on faith.

01:39:07.680 --> 01:39:12.040
Anything that's worth its merit should be testable and questionable, and any teacher

01:39:12.040 --> 01:39:18.360
who's worth his salt should be open to testing and questioning, and happy to answer skeptical

01:39:18.360 --> 01:39:25.200
questions and open to constructive criticism and so on. So we can be mature about all this

01:39:25.200 --> 01:39:30.400
stuff and not be bug-eyed cult zombies who just go along with the group think.

01:39:30.400 --> 01:39:38.760
authentic, beautiful, genuine realizations can contain within them don't remove the

01:39:38.760 --> 01:39:44.600
possibility of mistakes and problematic views. Sometimes people say, "I know it's authentic,

01:39:44.600 --> 01:39:50.400
therefore then I can kind of release my certain types of maybe critical awareness." No, it can

01:39:50.400 --> 01:39:55.720
be beautifully authentic, but that doesn't mean that we all don't have to be awake still and very

01:39:55.720 --> 01:40:01.320
aware of what's happening and the nature of human personality. I'm not saying it's all a zero sum,

01:40:01.320 --> 01:40:08.600
but great strengths in any area often come with significant weaknesses and that tendency of the

01:40:08.600 --> 01:40:14.680
human personality doesn't end at this doorway of mysticism, quite the opposite. It can be also true

01:40:14.680 --> 01:40:21.320
there. Yeah, so in a very real sense the spiritual path is a razor's edge and you have to tread it

01:40:21.320 --> 01:40:29.040
very carefully and continually scrutinize yourself, your teacher, the teachings, and not to be

01:40:29.040 --> 01:40:31.160
shooting down everything. I mean a lot of it can...

01:40:31.160 --> 01:40:32.720
Yeah, always suspicious or anything.

01:40:32.720 --> 01:40:40.200
Yeah, no, not like that. Again, any teacher or teaching that is genuine is open to scrutiny.

01:40:40.200 --> 01:40:44.280
And a good teacher, I think, will welcome scrutiny. And a good teaching can stand up

01:40:44.280 --> 01:40:45.280
to scrutiny.

01:40:45.280 --> 01:40:49.400
Well, I hope that's true. I mean, I think there's a lot of authentic teachers that aren't

01:40:49.400 --> 01:40:51.400
probably as open to scrutiny as they should be.

01:40:51.400 --> 01:40:52.400
Right.

01:40:52.400 --> 01:40:53.400
That's the challenge.

01:40:53.400 --> 01:40:55.120
You know, I think that can be true.

01:40:55.120 --> 01:40:57.440
You know, that, so, you know.

01:40:57.440 --> 01:40:58.440
Yeah.

01:40:58.440 --> 01:41:00.640
Not that you want to sit in the audience and badger the teacher constantly.

01:41:00.640 --> 01:41:05.520
This is not about being overly critical or cynical or suspicious or anything like that.

01:41:05.520 --> 01:41:07.000
We're trying to walk that line.

01:41:07.000 --> 01:41:08.000
Right.

01:41:08.000 --> 01:41:12.200
But if something unhealthy starts to crop up, you see the teacher selling dirt from the

01:41:12.200 --> 01:41:17.520
ground that he walked on or something like that, or having his feet kissed or something.

01:41:17.520 --> 01:41:22.020
There's a lot of ways that I suppose that these kinds of things can manifest in gross ways

01:41:22.020 --> 01:41:24.300
that we all probably should be awake to.

01:41:24.300 --> 01:41:26.460
Some of us gave our teachers way too much latitude.

01:41:26.460 --> 01:41:29.760
Myself, I fully confess that I did.

01:41:29.760 --> 01:41:30.760
And it's incremental.

01:41:30.760 --> 01:41:32.640
It creeps up on you.

01:41:32.640 --> 01:41:34.960
It's the old frog in the heating water thing.

01:41:34.960 --> 01:41:38.000
And that's why you need scrutiny at every step of the way.

01:41:38.000 --> 01:41:41.780
Because if you sit there and keep excusing it, then you end up excusing more and more

01:41:41.780 --> 01:41:44.860
egregious violations.

01:41:44.860 --> 01:41:46.560
And things can be subtle.

01:41:46.560 --> 01:41:53.200
those subtle problems and mistakes can be profound. The best way to inoculate ourselves against maybe

01:41:53.200 --> 01:41:59.440
some of the more grosser abuses of this kind of thing is for the whole culture around these kinds

01:41:59.440 --> 01:42:06.160
of pursuits to evolve, the whole conversation to evolve. And I feel like the more that can happen,

01:42:06.160 --> 01:42:12.480
the better off we'll all be. And ultimately, you know, that's kind of what I was trying to help

01:42:12.480 --> 01:42:18.960
maybe, inject another element into this whole conversation that we're having and that you're

01:42:18.960 --> 01:42:25.200
pursuing in this podcast. You know, there's always dangers when we get involved in extreme pursuits.

01:42:25.200 --> 01:42:29.600
That's just part of it. But that goes with it. But I think the best way to maybe mitigate

01:42:29.600 --> 01:42:33.760
against some of those dangers is to uplevel the whole culture around it.

01:42:33.760 --> 01:42:37.440
Yeah. I'm not trying to have the last word here, but I just keep having ideas.

01:42:38.160 --> 01:42:44.160
when you mention culture, it brings me back to why I think spirituality is important in the larger

01:42:44.160 --> 01:42:50.880
sense. It's not just for personal edification, it's critical for the evolution of society and

01:42:50.880 --> 01:42:56.240
for the survival of the human race. I think we really need a dose of the best of what spirituality

01:42:56.240 --> 01:43:03.360
has to offer in order to continue as a species. Yeah, I think that there are gifts in these

01:43:03.360 --> 01:43:07.200
dimensions, you know, again, we've been mostly talking about like the idea of

01:43:07.200 --> 01:43:11.040
enlightenment and mysticism and non-duality and there are so many

01:43:11.040 --> 01:43:15.000
expressions of spirituality and the religious impulse that go well beyond

01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:19.040
that, that aren't just that, and so I don't mean to limit it to that, but there

01:43:19.040 --> 01:43:23.800
are tremendous gifts to be had in these pursuits and I think those gifts will be

01:43:23.800 --> 01:43:29.120
much more significant and useful if they come with less of the mistakes and

01:43:29.120 --> 01:43:33.880
burdens and disasters that they have come with in some form.

01:43:33.880 --> 01:43:38.800
And the way to do that is not to reject them altogether or to pretend that that's not true.

01:43:38.800 --> 01:43:44.600
It's to face into that and continue to evolve how we think about these areas of life and

01:43:44.600 --> 01:43:47.400
how we relate to them so that we'll all be better.

01:43:47.400 --> 01:43:50.360
It's a little bit like, you know, I've got an interest in psychedelics recently.

01:43:50.360 --> 01:43:55.320
You see, you know, the conversation around psychedelics that continues to, I think, evolve.

01:43:55.320 --> 01:43:56.960
It's very different than it was in 1965.

01:43:56.960 --> 01:44:01.460
And I think that probably helps all kinds of people have better experiences.

01:44:01.460 --> 01:44:04.460
It doesn't inoculate any chain, you know, it's still challenging.

01:44:04.460 --> 01:44:05.460
It can be dangerous.

01:44:05.460 --> 01:44:07.120
It can be all kinds of things.

01:44:07.120 --> 01:44:12.080
But as the conversations evolved, that's probably helped evolve people's experience of engaging

01:44:12.080 --> 01:44:13.080
in those modalities.

01:44:13.080 --> 01:44:14.400
And the same in this area.

01:44:14.400 --> 01:44:16.400
I think ideally it would.

01:44:16.400 --> 01:44:17.400
Yeah.

01:44:17.400 --> 01:44:21.960
As George Harrison saying, with every mistake, we must surely be learning.

01:44:21.960 --> 01:44:26.960
I think that he expressed in that that beauty of hope, fear that it might not be true.

01:44:26.960 --> 01:44:27.960
Surely, let's hope.

01:44:27.960 --> 01:44:29.560
We all must hope for that.

01:44:29.560 --> 01:44:30.560
Well, thanks Carter.

01:44:30.560 --> 01:44:34.360
I really enjoyed not only this conversation, but the last couple of weeks of reading your

01:44:34.360 --> 01:44:37.040
book and thinking about the things you have to say.

01:44:37.040 --> 01:44:39.960
It's been a lot of fun.

01:44:39.960 --> 01:44:43.400
If people have enjoyed this interview, what do you have to offer?

01:44:43.400 --> 01:44:45.080
Anything in a public sense?

01:44:45.080 --> 01:44:48.880
Do you do retreats or webinars or you have a podcast?

01:44:48.880 --> 01:44:53.080
I don't really do a lot of teaching, but if I do at some point in the future, I have a

01:44:53.080 --> 01:44:56.360
mailing list at CarterPhipps.com and I do writings.

01:44:56.360 --> 01:44:58.880
I have a think tank that I'm part of.

01:44:58.880 --> 01:45:01.840
I'm probably going to do more of my own writing going forward.

01:45:01.840 --> 01:45:06.520
And who knows, maybe I'll do some kind of group things or teaching things or maybe I

01:45:06.520 --> 01:45:08.600
will at some point, but I don't really do much of that.

01:45:08.600 --> 01:45:09.960
I don't do any of that now really.

01:45:09.960 --> 01:45:11.360
But you can always get my list.

01:45:11.360 --> 01:45:15.260
I have a podcast, you know, you can see whatever the latest I'm doing.

01:45:15.260 --> 01:45:17.040
If you get on that list, you'll find out about it.

01:45:17.040 --> 01:45:20.720
Well, we'll just all wait for the emergence of Sri Sri Carter Phipps and on the G.

01:45:20.720 --> 01:45:22.000
Yes, exactly.

01:45:22.000 --> 01:45:23.440
[Laughter]

01:45:23.440 --> 01:45:25.120
Coming on clouds of glory.

01:45:25.120 --> 01:45:29.520
Trailing clouds of glory. Do we come from God who is our home, right? Isn't that Wordsworth?

01:45:29.520 --> 01:45:32.960
Oh, yeah, there you go. I knew that clouds of glory was in there somewhere.

01:45:32.960 --> 01:45:34.400
Yeah, that's Wordsworth. Good.

01:45:34.400 --> 01:45:40.000
So, thanks a lot. And thanks to those who've been listening or watching. And as I mentioned,

01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:45.840
my next guest is a fellow named Bob Harwood, who wrote a book called Pouring Concrete,

01:45:45.840 --> 01:45:50.400
because that's what he has done for a living. He's a construction contractor who at the same time

01:45:50.400 --> 01:45:56.320
was an avid spiritual seeker and it paid off for him. I don't know if he's retired,

01:45:56.320 --> 01:46:00.160
he may still be pouring concrete. No, he's 80 years old, I think he stopped pouring it.

01:46:00.160 --> 01:46:04.240
But it's a great story and it was a really down-to-earth book. I didn't space out in

01:46:04.240 --> 01:46:10.400
the slightest while listening to it because he has very interesting examples. So, those of you who

01:46:10.400 --> 01:46:16.000
are relatively new to BatGap. If you want to visit the website, there's a lot there. You can just

01:46:16.000 --> 01:46:20.880
explore the menus and you'll see what's there, but there's an audio podcast you can sign up for and

01:46:20.880 --> 01:46:28.240
various ways of accessing past interviews. There's a quotes collection, there's transcripts of most of

01:46:28.240 --> 01:46:33.920
the interviews, all kinds of things. So just check it out and appreciate your participation.

01:46:33.920 --> 01:46:38.480
Thanks Carter. Thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to really deeply explore

01:46:38.480 --> 01:46:42.480
subject matter. I appreciate that. A lot of fun. Talk to you later.

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