Tom Traynor Interview

Summary:

Full interview, edited for readability

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. This is an interview show in which we talk about spiritual awakenings with people who have had them. And by spiritual awakening, we mean a permanent shift in consciousness. I say permanent because many people have spiritual experiences. And they come and they go again. But there are plenty of people in Fairfield, Iowa where this show is produced, and plenty of people elsewhere whom I eventually will interview, who apparently have undergone an awakening that hasn’t left them. So that’s what we’re talking about. Tonight’s guest is Tom Traynor. And Tom has lived here in Fairfield for many years. And I’ve referred to Tom a few times on this show because he and his wife Cindy host a satsang, or spiritual discussion group, which I’ve been attending for many years, and which anyone else is welcome to attend. And in fact, if you’d like to, maybe later in the show, Tom will give out his phone number or email address, and you can contact him. If you live outside of Fairfield, Iowa, we have a professional quality conference phone in the room. And you can dial in and participate that way. So Tom, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming in.

Tom: It’s good to be here, Rick. I’ve kind of been saving Tom because I know where he is, I know how to get him, and I know he can come more or less on a moment’s notice. And I figured one of these days, one of my guests is going to sprain an ankle or something. And in fact, this week, my guest canceled out. He couldn’t do it at the last minute. And so Tom was gracious enough to come in. So thank you very much.

Tom: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Rick: So as we customarily have been doing, why don’t you start by just giving us a little biographical information about yourself, where you come from, what you do for a living or did for a living, anything you think is significant.

Tom: OK. Cindy and myself moved here from Rochester, New York, one of which was after many years of working at Codex, Cindy’s job was going away. And there was nothing to hold us there. The community was wonderful. We’d been visiting here regularly. We showed up. And in fact, it was 10 years ago. Had a good time, enjoyed being here. My background was as a– I spent almost 27 years as a headhunter. And one of the jokes that I make with some of my friends is, I used to be a headhunter, and now I’m a soul hunter. [CHUCKLES]

Rick: And so it was sort of implicit in what you said that the reason you came to Fairfield, Iowa, of all places, from Rochester, New York, is that you were practicing meditation. You were on a spiritual path. And this is sort of a mecca of sorts for that. There are a lot of people here who meditate.

Tom: Yeah, that was it. I have been, as of this week, this weekend, roughly, for me, it’s 37 years of TM. And what was fun is we were visiting here. We would use two of the four weeks of vacation we had, spring and fall, to come and visit the community. And we have a lot of friends who have moved here. And some have moved away. But we loved coming. We loved visiting. And we just liked the idea that if we’re going to move someplace, which it would appear, the way the economy was going, why not Fairfield? Of course, my daughter didn’t think that was such a cool idea. And Cindy’s mom didn’t think it was such a great idea. But this is what we had to do.

Rick: Now, didn’t I give your introductory lecture in TM?

Tom: Yes, you gave an introductory lecture sometime in the fall of 1972. But at that time, I wasn’t quite ready to fulfill all the requirements of practicing TM. I thought it was a great idea. I was in a very stressful job. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up my other addictions for a new one, which was going to benefit me. So it was a little bit before I was ready. But I recognized that when you came and you talked, there was something there for me. And later on, it became quite clear that this is the path for me.

Rick: Had you been reading spiritual books or thinking about spiritual things and so on before that? Or did it just come on a whim?

Tom: No, I had done some reading. I had done some things. I had practiced some meditation that I kind of learned out of a book. And I had a pretty awesome experience with that, which was one of those, wow, this is interesting. And I’d had some feeling throughout my life that there was some clarity. And that clarity allowed me to see part of the me that wasn’t there most of the time. But it was kind of like a wave of clarity would pop up every three, four years. And there’d be a day of just real clear. And then it would get murky again.

Rick: What would you see during those clear days?

Tom: How things were connected and how I was connected and that my life was blessed, even though it wouldn’t appear because I was high stress job, all that stuff. And I was your typical young person, drinking and smoking and doing all the bad things. Four packs of palm oils a day. And alcohol. I didn’t do the kind of drugs that you guys did, because you were younger. But I did some of them. And that’s what had a transition from the traditional vices to trying some of the other vices that the younger people were trying. I consider myself a little older.

Rick: I remember my father coming to me one time and saying, can you give me some of that stuff you guys are taking? I’m not happy. And I really want to be happy. And I was sort of like, I don’t know, Dad. I don’t think this is going to make you happy. And as a matter of fact, he said the same thing to me after I’d been meditating for about, I don’t know, four or five months. He said, you’ve really changed. He said, whatever you’re doing, I want to do it. And he started, actually. Got a lot of benefit out of it.

Tom: I even, one time, I had an employee. And he had only been working for me about three months. And it was my own business. But it was still a high stress business. And some stuff happened. And I had three phone calls going at one time, A, B, and C. And I handled them just in an order that was appropriate. One I was gruff with. One I was smooth with. And one I was like– and afterwards, when I finished all three calls, he took a look at me. And he said, you know, after I watched you, either you’re totally schizophrenic or this meditation stuff is interesting. So he learned. And what was really interesting is he would sometimes slough off. And he told me that his kids would actually– one of them would say, Dad, you didn’t meditate today. I’d be like, oh, yes, I did. And the kid would say, Dad, you’re lying. Because I know you didn’t. Because you’re an idiot. It was good.

Rick: So fall of ’72 or so, you saw that intro. And then you finally–

Tom: January of ’73, second or third week. And I’d totally forgotten the exact day. Who remembers, right?

Rick: And was it the kind of thing where you turned your life around real fast? Or was it sort of like–

Tom: Oh, no, it was incredible. We came home the very first night after. And what had happened is we had wanted to be initiated as a family. And so the teacher was Susan Green, I think.

Rick: Green, right. So she wanted to work us in. So she put us at the end. So we sat around for about three hours. Pretty hungry and tired. So we didn’t learn until near the end. And when she got me in the room, she kept saying, open your eyes. I couldn’t open my eyes. Finally, she just said, open your eyes and look at me. And when I got them open, she said, no, don’t shut them. I was like 45 minutes with my eyes shut. They just couldn’t get me open. I went home. And my usual, I went right to the liquor cabinet. And I opened the door. And I took down– because my usual habit was to have a double bourbon Manhattan every night. And I took it and I set it down. And I looked at it really hard. And I put it away. And I never touched it. Never touched– Interesting. –hard alcohol. I had a little wine, little beers. But that was the end. Those double bourbon Manhattans, which were the only way I got through the day, stopped.

Rick: How about the cigarettes?

Tom: They stopped about 18 months later. Tapered off? Tapered right off. Went on a five-day grounding meditation course down at Livingston Manor. And the rules were you could only smoke in the parking lot. Can’t smoke around everything else. And you have to leave all your smoking materials in your car. So every day at lunchtime, that was the first thing. I don’t even go to have lunch. I go get a smoke. By the third day, I was like, I ticked the stuff up. Whoa. That was it. Done. Never wanted to do it again.

Rick: That’s kind of where the bars are these days. You have to go out in the parking lot.

Tom: Exactly. Exactly.

Rick: Society is evolving. In case anybody wonders whether this show is like an advertisement for Transcendental Meditation, it’s sort of coincidental in a way that all my guests talk about it. Because in this town, most of the people whom I might be interviewing have a history of practicing it. But sooner or later, we’re going to get the ability to use Skype or some such thing to interview people long distance. And undoubtedly, I’ll be interviewing a lot of people who’ve never done TM. They’ve done other things and arrived at spiritual awakenings in their own way. So where should we go from here? So we’ve got you meditating off liquor and tobacco. And you continued along doing your headhunter job and meditating regularly and going to courses and whatnot. And as you sort of follow that timeline, are there any sort of significant events that happened?

Tom: What was really significant was I had not been doing headhunting when I learned TM. And the company I worked for was a total disaster. And they filed bankruptcy within a year. And two years later, I was looking for a job. I had worked for the trustee, which was a judge for a couple of years. And I really was out looking. And I walked into this headhunting agency. And there was this very– I sat waiting to interview with the guy. And the guy who owned it. And my eye kept looking at this empty office. And there was this little voice in the back of my head that said, maybe there’s a job here for you. And I’m thinking, oh, well. I went in and sat down. He interviewed me. And at the end of the interview, he said, would you ever consider working for me in this business? And I didn’t know anything about it. But I wasn’t doing too good in the job market. And started and did fairly well. But I had a dry period. It was commission only. And there came an opportunity to get an advanced TM meditation technique. I didn’t have any money. And it was blah, blah, blah. All the whole story about things. But I really kind of thought this was important. I felt important. So I managed to take an advance on my credit card. I think it was $150. And I went and learned on a weekend. I went in the office Monday. And one of my clients called up and said, you know that guy that you sent the resume over on Thursday? Yes, yes. Well, we liked him so much, we brought him in Friday. We made him an offer on Friday. He accepted this morning. So will you send me an invoice?

Rick: Oh, cool. Now, not having had any money in six months, it wasn’t a lot. But from that point forward, I never missed making money. That was a nice steady income. And then I made the same decision that the cities were available. And I decided it was time.

Rick: Cities, define.

Tom: The cities is an advanced meditation course where a lot more practice, a lot longer time period, and more specific techniques, primarily practicing specific verses out of the Patanjali Sutras. I went down to Livingston Manor, New York, and got that course June of 1980. Every month thereafter, my income tripled and never went below that. It was a significant change. Even though the money was tight and everything, I made the commitment to do something for me. All of a sudden, the whole picture changed. And I began to see there was a connection. I take care of me. The universe takes care of me.

Rick: Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto thee.

Tom: Yes, yes.

Rick: Cool. So now we’re up to about 1980-ish.

Tom: Yes.

Rick: OK. And when did you move to Fairfield?

Tom: I moved in 1999.

Rick: OK, so we have about a 20-year period to cover there still. Any significant milestones during that period? We’re getting up to the point where you underwent a really significant and permanent shift. But I just want to touch upon any significant milestones that made it.

Tom: In 1983, December 28, 1983, when half of my friends from the TM community of Rochester, New York, were here for a very large meditation course. I think they called it the 7,000.

Rick: Oh, in the wintertime?

Tom: Wintertime. December 28, 1983. Even one of my employees was here. And so we’re trying to do double duty. And I got in a car, and I drove down about a mile from home. And a young lady who was hurrying to go skiing lost control and hit my car head on. Had a head-on collision. She was doing about 50. I was doing about 45. And I hadn’t put the seat belt on, because I was just going down the road. Had what is considered to be a traditional near-death experience. The white light, the people, and all that stuff happens. But it wasn’t very long. But when you’re in that kind of a situation, it seems like an infinity. And then one of them whispered in my ear, you can stay as long as you want. Then another one whispers, but what about your son? Now my son, the teenage son, was in the car, trapped. All of a sudden, I’m back in the car. All that nice stuff, all those nice people, and that white light, and all that stuff, gone. And they call it a near-death experience. But from my side and my experience and the feeling level, it’s death. You learn what death is. It’s not so spooky. It’s not anything to worry about. We all have some fears. After that, death was not a fear of mine. And things went on, as my ex-wife would say. She knows what TM is all about. She said, I know what TM’s about. It’s called terminated marriage.

Rick: Sometimes some truth in that.

Tom: Well, we had taken different paths. So all of a sudden, that’s over in ’88. And I had a lot of emotional investment, even though it wasn’t a perfect marriage. And it took me a long time to process that. And in the process, I just lost interest in my business, lost interest in a lot of things, and became much more focused on my spiritual aspect. Because making money had been easy. The rest of it wasn’t so easy.

Rick: Right. You mean relationships.

Tom: Relationships. Things like that. Spirituality, all that stuff. So in the process, I lost what we would call the attachment to making money. And it was pretty easy to do.

Rick: Yeah. I would suggest, perhaps, that losing the attachment to making money doesn’t mean you’re not going to make it. I think a person could theoretically make lots of money and not be attached to it or to making it. But in your particular case, I guess you just needed to shift your focus altogether and focus on something else.

Tom: And what the business I used to do is pretty process-orientated. And basically, it’s based on doing the numbers. And it became, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to do this particular thing. I’m really good at it. I make a lot of money at it. I don’t want to do it. And I weaned myself out of it and kind of hung out for a couple of years. And my current wife supported me and still does, because I’m retired and she works. But we have a good relationship. We found each other. That was another serendipity thing. We met on our TM Cities course. And she became my buddy. Everybody gets assigned a buddy.

Rick: Just randomly?

Tom: Well, what happened was we had two young men, two older men, two married couples. And there was only two oddballs left over, Cindy and I. OK. We became buddies. Kind of a little bit foreshadowing of future events.

Rick: Interesting. So you’re probably getting close to the point in your story where you moved to Fairfield. But I remember you telling some other things that happened back in Rochester that I thought were interesting. And feel free to fill in other significant things if we’re skipping something important. But I remember one time you told this story about how you were at dinner or something in the Rochester TM Center and you could pick up on everybody’s thoughts like a minute before they spoke them or some such thing.

Tom: That was one of those, you sit down to meditate and you’re just sitting there in silence. There was nothing going on but silence. And all of a sudden, the silence just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And all of a sudden, I realized that my eyes are shut. I’m inside looking out. But then the next moment was, well, are my eyes shut or not? So I’m outside looking at myself. I’m outside my body. And those eyes were shut. I can guarantee you that. You’re still sitting there. I’m still sitting, but my focus of attention is now outside the body. Looking at the body, yep, those eyes are shut. You’re doing good, right? And all of a sudden, that went from 360. I could see everything in the room. And at the same time, there was this shower of what I called golden light and diamond light. And there were droplets coming out of somewhere way up high above the top of my head. And they were coming down. And I just watched them. And they were washing through my whole body. And it really was great. There’s a little– curiosity killed the cat. You’ve heard that, right? All of a sudden, there’s this idea, where do these droplets go? And all of a sudden, my attention went on a droplet. And I followed it all the way back to wherever it came from. And the next thing I know, I’m waking up, laying on the floor. With no memory of laying down or anything, I totter my way upstairs at the TM Center. And there’s 30 people in the kitchen, dinner. And people are yacking away. And all of a sudden, there’s this sense that my focus of attention is not inside my body. It’s up in that corner, the farthest corner away from everybody. And the whole experience was like, as Ryogi would say, deja vu all over again. But it was like watching a movie that you’ve seen 1,000 times. You know every word of the script. And then all of a sudden, I’m hearing in my mind people’s thoughts. So Ricky’s thoughts would appear in my mind in Ricky’s tone of voice. And then a minute later, Rick Archer would say the same thoughts. So it was like watching a tape delay of what’s going on. Now, with 30 people, you’d think it would be impossible. I was hearing every voice discreetly twice. Once, when the thoughts began to come into their consciousness, I was picking it up long before they did. And then again as they spoke the thought. And everything was sorted out. Like Mary’s there, and George is there, and Susie’s here, and Billy’s there. All of that conversation was totally discreet. And I’m still up in that corner watching this whole thing. But I wasn’t in the corner. It was like I was more than the room. I was beyond the room. But that was the closest point to have some kind of relevance. But I couldn’t say a word. Now, for me not to talk–

Rick: So you weren’t eating or talking. You were just kind of sitting there.

Tom: No, I started to eat. That was all I could do. Because it was like overloaded data. It was like I’m tapping into an infinite download, but I’ve got a finite body here. This is almost overload. It was close. And talking was totally out of the question, because you’re picking up every thought. And it’s in the voice of the person. And then you hear that person say it. And it took about 30 seconds before me, I got this, what was going on. Because I remembered Ricky having this thought. And then a little minute later, Ricky says the same thing. And it’s like, well, what am I– This took two or three seconds to figure this out that I’m tapped in. There’s something going on that’s bigger than this little me. And from that day forward, things were definitely shifted. But I didn’t know at that moment that I was awake. As significant as that experience was, it still wasn’t understandable that that’s part of an awakening process, because it shifted me a lot. But there was still all of the stuff that goes on in daily life.

Rick: I have two points that come to mind. One is that you would probably agree that most people who have awakenings aren’t going to have that particular experience. That’s just something that you happened to have.

Tom: No. That was over the top.

Rick: Right. And then the second point is that that is probably not the kind of experience you’d want to have perpetually. It was sort of interesting to have, but you wouldn’t want to live your life that way.

Tom: Correct. There was also that understanding. But that didn’t come for maybe seven or eight years, that you wouldn’t be able to live a life if you had that at that ramped up value. And it also became clear at the same time, eight years later, that I have the same ability, but on the real silent level. In other words, when I’m with people, I’m picking up on their feelings. But it’s not happening up here. It’s happening in the totality. And so I’m really sensitive to what’s going on around me with people, and particularly when I’m in a group with people. And I’m trying to make things– just kind of help people express what they want to say. So it’s kind of like real sensitivity. Without hearing– because it was– believe me, a day of that would just– you’d want to– can I sign in for the rubber room, please? Send the guys in white coats. I’m ready.

Rick: So for those seven or eight years that it took you to kind of realize that this is not necessarily going to be characteristic of enlightenment, were you sort of pining for that experience?

Tom: Oh, God, yes. I’ve got to look at that again.

Rick: How did I get that? Where are those golden droplets?

Tom: Right, right, right, right. I mean, here, this is what most people call peak experience. Over the top, I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t ask for it. It shows up. And I don’t understand it. It took a long time to understand what had happened that day.

Rick: So what was it that seven or eight years later kind of caused you to relax and not stop looking for that experience again?

Tom: It was probably only about three years that I stopped looking for it, because I realized that there was no way. I didn’t create this. And kind of one of the things I finally figured out that I was able to express to someone else. They were asking me, like you’re asking me. And I’m telling– I do this. I tell stories all the time. I’m a storyteller. I can’t help not telling stories. So as I’m telling the story, I realized this wasn’t me that did this. It was like being able to tap in to the infinite stuff that’s going on. And it was kind of like a 20 million candle watt strobe light went off. And I just happened to be in the neighborhood. And it got imprinted on this physiology. But I didn’t do this. I was just an innocent bystander.

Rick: True, but I don’t think it would have been– I think it was not coincidental that it happened to you.

Tom: No, it wasn’t coincidental. But it was the understanding. I wasn’t the doer of this thing. I didn’t create it. It was just somebody said, hey, this is your turn at the bat. Right, bam. Whoa. And then there was a lot of understanding that came later. A lot of things happened that helped build. But I still didn’t consider myself awake. Didn’t even think that was what was going on. Because I didn’t have the understanding that what happened that day. Something happened that was really significant. Didn’t get that.

Rick: So a couple of things here. Now, one, you said that after that experience, life was never the same again. And second, you said a lot of things happened later that kind of helped build up to the understanding that you have now. So would it be worthwhile to kind of tell me in what way life was different after that experience and what some of those things were that kind of put the pieces of the puzzle into place for you?

Tom: The first thing that happened was after today, I can basically say I went through what would be called the dark night of the soul, primarily related to the body. And we’ve had some experience and some friends that I’ve talked about that there’s essentially three of those. One of the body, one of the soul, and one of being or conscious.

Rick: Three dark nights?

Tom: Three separate dark nights. But each of them gets easier. So the first one of the body was feeling that I had lost the attachment to the body. Even though the near-death experience had been seven years earlier, all of a sudden it was like, body come, body go. Not a problem. And that was–

Rick: What’s dark about that? That’s nice.

Tom: Well, because everything that you considered near and dear was going. The relationships, it was like this out of sync, being out of sync with everything around you. You don’t fit into the world again. Not only now, I knew about the death of the body. Now I began to realize the death of the soul or the spirit part was that this is insubstantial too. So it was a lot that happened over a period of time. And it was really hard to deal with until I found two of my friends that were there that we began to meet regularly once a week, which was the beginning of the meeting we have here. We were all going through the same thing. We were like, what’s happening? I don’t understand. Today, there’s a lot of good stuff on the net. You can look it up. There wasn’t much. And I didn’t even read about St. John of the Cross until many years later.

Rick: He’s the guy who wrote the book about the dark night of the soul.

Tom: Yeah, he’s the classic. There’s a better one that was written by a person. And it’s on mystic.org. If you google mystic.org and google dark night of the soul, it’s a really, really well done description of process and what’s happening. Because he actually was able to document a lot that I had missed. And when I read it, I go, yeah, that happened. Yeah, that happened. Yeah, that happened. I had forgotten all this stuff.

Rick: He’s a contemporary guy who wrote the book.

Tom: Yeah, he wrote this a couple years ago.

Rick: Yeah. So the first phase of the dark night of the soul that happened after awakening was this sort of progressive detachment from your body and relationships and things of the physical world. And the second phase was what, did you say?

Tom: Kind of this– well, you could define it as the soul part. But that wasn’t so significant. The body part was losing everything you considered near and dear.

Rick: You weren’t literally losing it. I mean, you didn’t lose your body. You didn’t necessarily lose your wealth. But you were losing the sort of grip.

Tom: That gripped essence of how you define your life by how tightly you’ve been riveted. And all of a sudden, this stuff just started to fall apart.

Rick: And you have the feeling like, I could live to be 100. I could die tomorrow. You know, whatever.

Tom: But then the part of you goes, but what about– I still had kids, although they were adults. It was like, well, I worry about my kids. And then I don’t worry about them. Then I do worry about them. Then I don’t. I mean, it was like this on and off. And you’re a bad person because you’re not worrying about your kids. But so you go back and forth with this. All of that demon part of yourself, all of a sudden, you’ve got to deal with it.

Rick: So you used to sort of equate worry and taking things very seriously and, oh, this is a big problem. That is a big problem with being a responsible guy.

Tom: Of course. And now you don’t have that weight on your shoulders. And you’re thinking, am I becoming irresponsible?

Tom: Am I crazy?

Rick: Right.

Tom: Yeah, I am crazy. But the world doesn’t like crazy people.

Rick: Welcome to the monkey house.

Tom: Yeah, welcome. So all that was going on. And that took two, three years. And then the next big thing was to go to the Natural Law Party Convention in Washington, DC, in 1996.

Rick: Define your terms. So Natural Law Party–

Tom: It’s a political party. They was primarily people from the Transcendental Meditation Organization that were trying to muscle their way into the political world and put together a real party with third party candidate. And a bunch of us were really gung ho. We were going to volunteer. We were going to change the world. I mean, it’s like the ’60s in a different form.

Rick: You missed that, so you’re doing–

Tom: Yeah, I missed the ’60s. I didn’t get to do the ’60s. I volunteered to help out. And I was invited to go to the convention in Washington, DC, with some other friends. And they didn’t have anybody from Alabama. So they said, well, we need some Alabama. You’re from Alabama. I don’t know if– yes, you are from Alabama. But that put you in the front row.

Rick: I see, with A. I mean, the very– yeah, A was the first letter. So we’re in the front row. And they’re filming this on C-SPAN. And I just– the funny part of it was we practiced everything we were going to do on Thursday, we did on Wednesday. So we practiced every speech. Everything happened. You went through the whole thing, everything that was going to happen the next day. So we scripted. It was all scripted. So we’re– blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re going through this whole thing. So Thursday shows up. And we show up. And the TV cameras are on. And all of us– speeches are being given. And I don’t even know who was talking. But all of a sudden, it felt like these angels somewhere just ripped my chest open, metaphorically speaking. And they took this little tiny heart that had been pinched and burned and divorced and hurt and spanked when I was a kid. And the kids had been mean to me. And my ex-wife was mean to me. And blah, blah, blah, blah. All that, employee stole from me. All those little hurts, took it right out and threw it on the floor, the angels did, metaphorically speaking. And then they decided to do a dance. And there was two things going on. One, I am crying like a baby. Snot’s running down my nose. Luckily, the TV camera at that time was somewhere else. I didn’t have a handkerchief. The tears are flowing. And Cindy’s trying to help me. And I’m just total– I’m a basket case. The other half of that was this feeling of freedom. All of those hurts, that piece of angst, that anxiety, that total, oh, you know, you’ve just been squeezed. Your heart’s been squeezed one too many times. Disappeared. I finally stopped crying and kind of got myself together. And then I began to laugh. And I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. And I laughed through the next two days.

Rick: Whoever was giving the lecture, like, what is this guy laughing at?

Tom: Right, I’m laughing. At one point, one of the organizers, Bobby–

Rick: Roth.

Tom: Bobby Roth. He’s doing the thing and he stops me and he goes, are we paying you to laugh? And I go, no. He goes, we should be. OK. But the following day when I showed up, or that evening, I finally looked internally. I closed my eyes. I looked internally to where this little tiny heart had been. And whoa, before, during the meeting, it had been empty. There’s nothing there. Just nothing. Silence, nothing.

Rick: You mean after the extraction?

Tom: After the heart was gone, there’s nothing. I mean, no. Nothing. It’s just totally blank. Like, wow, how’d they do that? It’s like racing your hard drive, except they erased your emotional drive. And I looked during the evening, I guess, and I looked in and I see the world. Now, the symbol of the Natural Law Party was a shot from space of planet Earth with the blues and the clouds and the oceans. And I’ve seen something like that, but it was more realistic. It was more like real time. But, oh, who do I know? OK, that’s it. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s cool. And I’m busy. I’ve got these people to talk to. And by the evening, later in the evening, not only was the sun there, but the moon was there. And I wake up the next day, and when I pay attention, during meditation, I look in. Now, I see our solar system is there. OK, that’s cool. By the end of the day, it was the galaxies. And by the end of the next day, all of creation was here. And I could see it, feel it, taste it, touch it. It was all there. And I’m going, whoa, I still didn’t know I was awake. All that’s going on, and you don’t know, because nobody’s there to say, you know, that’s pretty good stuff, right?

Rick: I have a couple questions. One is, do you feel that, literally, angels were involved in so-called extracting your heart and stomping on it? Is that, again, metaphorical? And there was just some kind of process going on that didn’t necessarily involve celestial beings?

Tom: Yes and no. It felt like it was a process, and it could have been the angels. That’s the word that came to me.

Rick: It felt like it.

Tom: It’s like, these folks are going to do you a favor, but it ain’t going to be easy, and it may not be comfortable. And at the time, I had been doing a lot of reading about angels, and there was a lot of– I guess my attention was on them, because they felt– there was something special that came out. I’d read a couple different books about angels and their part in our life and how we interact. It was as good as any other reading. Whatever it did, did it. It was done, over and out, right?

Rick: And my second question is, if you look there now, what do you see?

Tom: All creation.

Rick: Still see it? So it’s like a permanent thing?

Tom: It’s permanent. Yeah, and I know myself to be all of creation. But at that time, I didn’t know that meant being awake.

Rick: We’ll get onto that a little later.

Tom: I keep saying it, because I’m a slow learner.

Rick: Me too. I’ve been at this for 40-something years. OK, so what year was that?

Tom: ’96.

Rick: ’96, all righty. And then I remember you telling a story about you’re standing in the road talking to some guy, and all of a sudden, you realize I’m awake. Is that the appropriate next step to talk about, or is there something significant in between?

Tom: I think so. I had a couple of other things.

Rick: You can talk about them if you want.

Tom: Two weeks after the actual law party thing with this heart business, I’m sitting in a restaurant with my friend Stan, who was one of your guests here. And I’m telling Stan the story of how it went down. And as I start the story, Stan notices that what he thinks is a little black hole. All he knows is this piece of black in front of my mouth. And as I continue telling it, kind of like the way I did, maybe I put in a few more details, this black hole kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until he couldn’t see my head or my shoulders. And then he started noticing that things were falling in, stars and moons and galaxies. And he got really upset. Because in his mind, I believe– I’ve talked to him about it– he thought he was going to be next, right? He wasn’t going to go in that black hole. No way. So he screams, stop, stop, stop. From my side, I had–

Rick: He didn’t know you were doing it.

Tom: No, I have no idea. I’m just sitting here being me, telling this silly story, right? And he got so upset. And I said to him, what’s the matter? He said, I can’t talk about it. Well, don’t talk about that anymore either, OK? We just talked chit chat. And he didn’t tell me until much later that that little black hole never went away for the rest of the evening. We were there a couple hours talking and just being friends. And he was like– he said, I didn’t dare leave. Because he said, I thought maybe it would come after me.

Rick: So what do you think is the significance of that?

Tom: I have no idea.

Rick: Did you and Stan ever arrive at any meaning or interpretation?

Tom: Well, I mean, if you look at some of the Vedic literature, there’s some stories about that happening to certain of the saints and people seeing, I guess, as Krishna opens his mouth–

Rick: And the universe is in there.

Tom: The universe is in the mouth.

Rick: The mother looks in there to get some butter out.

Tom: Right. And there’s the universe, right? And there’s another one about somebody looking in and seeing creation falling in. And as far as I’m concerned, it didn’t make any one bit of difference to me whether I did it or didn’t. It was no– but to him, huge difference.

Rick: Interesting. And of course, it’s an eye of the beholder kind of thing, because the waitress probably didn’t see that.

Tom: No, I’m sure she didn’t.

Rick: Stan saw it.

Tom: I don’t think Cindy did either. But she was– but Cindy’s just connected. She likes– she loves me. And so whatever I say is fine. You know how women are.

Rick: That’s a good thing to say about your wife, whatever you say. It’s fine, you know?

Tom: Well, pretty much.

Rick: OK, so that’s a milestone.

Tom: Yeah, that was a milestone.

Rick: And you mentioned there might be another thing that you want to bring up before we get to the awakening stage?

Tom: I don’t think so. I think about that point, things were pretty well cooking. And we were also meeting weekly. And at that point, there was a group of us, about seven or eight, that met. We would meditate together every Wednesday night, and go to dinner, and go to this one restaurant. And we would be there till 11: 30 or midnight. And they would be closing the restaurant. They’d say, well, you know, we love you guys. You’re best customers, but we’ve got to close up.

Rick: Are we still talking Rochester or Fairfield?

Tom: Rochester.

Rick: OK, Rochester.

Tom: This was Rochester from like ’96 to ’99. And there was a lot then, but it was more– we’d have experiences, and we’d talk about them among each other. And things stopped being big and flashy and became just kind of smooth. There was this smoothness about stuff. So nothing else stuck out in my mind, I think. And we moved here in March 1st of ’99. And nothing much happened, except all of a sudden, I realized Fairfield is the grand central for the spiritual universe. Everybody who’s anybody makes a trek through Fairfield, at least back in that time. Oh, wow, I’m here. I’m meditating with all my friends. But wow, look who’s coming to town. And of course, there’s people like you and some other people. Yeah, you’ve got to go see this guy or this gal or blah, blah, blah, blah. And they’ll get on it. Wow. And I’d laugh, and we’d have a good time.

Rick: So in other words, you’re referring to all these spiritual teachers who’ve been coming through over the years.

Tom: Yes.

Rick: Gangaji and Francis Lucille and Ammachi and Karunamayi and Mother Meera.

Tom: Yeah, all of them.

Rick: All these teachers.

Tom: Yeah, and then all the Gangaji offshoots, which were, I don’t know, half a dozen of those.

Rick: A whole bunch of those guys.

Tom: Yeah, there was a bunch of them. And they were all enjoyable. And there was even a few that were oddballs, like this Billy something or other. She was a character. She was some kind of psychic.

Rick: I vaguely remember that. Yeah, I didn’t go, but I remember hearing about it.

Tom: And I went to see her. She was a trip. And all these people were like, wow. And then one of them made some comment. Somebody was asking about angels. And Billy goes, well, there’s an angel right here among you. And of course, I laughed. And this woman who asked the question turns around and she says, she’s talking about you. I don’t know. Whatever you wanted to be, I’ll be. And that was very helpful. The other thing that was very helpful was F-PAC Channel 9 at that time. And I don’t know if they still do. I believe they do. We’re running tapes of Gangaji every Thursday night, hour long. And there was something about watching how she presented the knowledge of awakening that began to kind of resonate internally. It wasn’t like I was ready to claim it. But it was like, boy, this is really making sense. And she’s got good things to say. And then Andy Reimer showed up. And Andy, I went to do his one day seminar, which I don’t know what he called. Whatever it was. And while I was with Andy, there was this big gap while he was talking. All of a sudden, there was a gap. And then he announced that he’s going to do a long term course, if you want to call it that, where we would meet every three to four months for a weekend. And I just turned to my wife and said, I’m going to go. I hope you want to go with me. But I’m going. Because I knew there was something that was going to happen. And I would say that if there was a precipitating event or someone, it was Andy in two ways. One, his presence. He’s really solid. I mean, he’s really rich. And he has a lot of knowledge. Because he’s been around the block a long time. And he was very helpful.

Rick: It’s interesting to note that in some people’s minds, what you were doing is off the program. Because you’re supposed to stick on the one path you’ve been taught and not deviate. You don’t dig 10 wells that are 10 feet deep. You dig one well that’s 100 feet deep. You hear these analogies. But on the other hand, a number of people I’ve interviewed have had really good results from just following their inclinations, their intuition, and checking this out and checking that out. And it’s really been very productive for them. So ultimately, I think it’s up to the individual how they want to proceed. But it’s interesting to note that you’re another example of somebody who’s checking out various things. And each thing was adding some enrichment to your experience.

Tom: Yeah, I never took anything away. I always added something. And it was like I’d read that book, Suzanne Siegel’s book about Collision with the Infinite. And the one thing– I had to read it eight times. I finally got what she was trying to say. She would say, well, I did the next obvious thing. Well, it took me a long time to figure out that the next obvious thing was only obvious because she was already doing it. And these things would appear. Something would appear in the weekly reader, or there would be a poster. And it would be like, yes. There was no question. I’m going to go. I don’t care if I’m off the program or not off the program. It didn’t matter one twit. I’m going to go see that person because there’s something there for me. And sometimes it was just pay my respects. Sometimes it was just interact, or I’d laugh, or something. There was something there for every person. But Andy came in with a very structured six-weekend course that we did over about two years. So we got to be with him for six weekends, all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And a lot of stuff went down. And a lot of it I already knew. But he put it together in a way that made more sense, a lot more knowledge the way he put it together. And he taught us a little technique that it was not meditation. It was a little bit more paying attention to your breathing. That was phenomenal.

Rick: Throughout the day?

Tom: Just during a separate session. Not to be done in the dome, not to be called a regular meditation, just something private you do for yourself.

Rick: I think there are Buddhist meditations like that. I don’t know much about them, but you’re focusing on your breathing.

Tom: Yeah.

Rick: And so it sounds like things are starting to percolate. You did the Gangaji thing. You did the Andy thing. And the pieces are coming together. But I think we’re sort of leading up to a point here where there was a–

Tom: There was. I’ll back up. The first time I spent with Andy– Andy also would be– he would give you private time where you would actually sit, where he would teach you his meditation technique. But he would meditate with you. And the first time we sat together, the experience was so profound I couldn’t even explain it for a year. It took me one year to be able to tell Andy what happened that day. I couldn’t even– I didn’t have words for it. But essentially, what– later I began to understand that, at least for me, what it looked like was I was looking at what appeared to be a piece of plate glass that was infinitely thick. But it was clear, crystal clear. You could see right through. And what was popping off the surface was what looked like, if you followed it, would be like a trunk– a worm with segments to it. But it started at this plate glass. It went up and did things and made curlicues. And it went back through the plate glass. But when I looked at it, I didn’t say, oh, they’re a bunch of worms there. The words that came later was, those are mantras. They’re vibrational qualities. They’re coming from nothing, manifesting into the relative world. And then the next thought was, well, wait a minute. Where are they coming from? Because they appear to be coming from nothing. So my consciousness was able to go down and look right through that glass. There’s nothing in that glass, but these things are coming out. Then I said, well, how deep does this go? And it went, it’s deep. But I couldn’t even talk about it because I didn’t have words. Visually, it was an overload, another overload that couldn’t be totally defined. A year later, after we’d had the fourth weekend with Andy, I finally– Andy, I’ve got to talk about this. And I really need to clarify it. And how he put it to me, he said, look, from what I’m hearing and what you’re giving to me, he says, you actually got to the level where the relative and the absolute are coming together. You’re on that level. He said, and the reason it took so long– you’re not used to being there. But he says, I can verify for you that that’s the level you function from now, 24/7. Whoa, that seemed like too much, Andy. He goes, no, no, no, you’ll get used to it. Don’t worry about it. I don’t think so. Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it. And it was only two months later. I was standing in the middle of Third Street over here by the Catholic Church. But I’m talking to a friend. And we were talking about Andy. It was like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. The family ought to know if he should take the course. I said, yeah, yeah, it’s great, great, great. All of a sudden, I’m telling a long story, something like the story I probably just told you. I don’t remember what I was telling them. All of a sudden, in the middle of the story, it was clear. You’re awake now. But I never stopped telling the story. I get to the end of the story. When I finished the story about Andy, I said, oh, by the way, while I was telling you the story, thank you very much, I just realized I’m awake. I know who I am. And the guy looks at me, don’t tell me this stuff, right? OK, you don’t have to believe me. It’s fine. I’m happy.

Rick: So that’s interesting, because obviously it wasn’t a flashy thing. You didn’t have to sit down and close your eyes or anything like that. It was undetectable by the guy you were talking to. And when you say, let’s elaborate on the term a little bit, you said, I am awake. I know who I am. So what did you know yourself to be, which you didn’t know before that conversation?

Tom: I guess the easy way would be to say I knew myself to be consciousness, and everything else was just a manifestation of consciousness. And I also knew that I’d always been awake. But all these other things that had happened, I didn’t have the knowledge to understand what that meant. I didn’t know what those things were. But it was totally undeniable. At that moment, I would have– OK, you’re going to stay there. We’re going to– you have to die. OK, I’m done. I know. There’s no way. Can I defend it? Can I define it? Nope, I just know. There’s this knowingness of who I am. And that’s about as good as I gets at that point.

Rick: And so when you say, I know myself to be consciousness, ordinarily, you ask somebody who they are. And they say, well, I’m so and so. They give you their name. And they say, well, tell me more. Well, they give you their job. They give you their family. Where are they to live? They like skiing and all kinds of stuff about themselves.

Tom: All the relative stuff.

Rick: And if you start taking all those things away, well, if you didn’t have your name, or if you didn’t have your wife, or if you couldn’t ski, what is left? And I don’t know. And so what you’re saying is that the sort of essential thing, you finally kind of sifted that out from all the other stuff that we ordinarily assume ourselves to be and realize yourself to be that.

Tom: Yeah, and it was very clear, unmistakable, no doubt. Now, I will say later on, doubt came up. Doubt does live a long life. It has a process that it goes through. But at that moment and for months later, it was absolutely clear to me. This is who I am. It’s always been who I am. I’ve always been awake. And then it was like, oh, those times of clarity that had happened since I was a child, there would be days. It was like, ah, boy, this is so beautiful. Everything’s clear. And then back with the nuns slapping you around and all the usual stuff that happens to kids. But there would be these little– and then I could almost like– it was like kind of watching a wave roll back through my life. And all of a sudden, it was like that day, that day, that day, that day.

Rick: You could recognize what it had been.

Tom: Yeah, all of a sudden, all those days that had been put in a– I don’t know what happened, but there was something different about that day. And it was almost like they all got connected in that moment. It was a real connectivity that happened.

Rick: And so after that moment, as you lived your day-to-day life, going to the store, driving your car, doing whatever you do, what was different about your life than what it had been before that?

Tom: There was a sense of silence and peacefulness and happiness and bliss, kind of all those nice words that don’t really mean a lot, but what they meant. There was a sense of completeness to my life. No matter what you took away from me, what you gave to me, isn’t going to be any more complete than this. This is total feeling of I’m complete. There is nothing more to seek after, nothing more to chase after. If I die now, I’m done. It’s great. There’s no unmet needs. Everything’s taken care of. And then my life felt like it was being taken care of. I was working as a handyman. Here I go. I used to make more money in an hour than I was making in a whole week, but I was happy. I was doing this little thing with my hands and working. Just, it was a good life.

Rick: I was going to say, I forgot what I was going to ask you. Do you feel that– what year was that now?

Tom: I think that would have been ’01.

Rick: ’01, so we’re about nine years after that now. And even though your life felt complete, and nothing really could be added or taken away at that point, I suspect that you feel that there has been plenty of progress since then.

Tom: Yeah, the way I like to describe it– maybe I’ll give it a try. I’ll give it another go, OK? It’s like the feeling and the knowledge that you know the entire container of all knowledge. You know that’s who you are. You just don’t know all the details. But I don’t worry about it, because I tell everybody, I work for the CIA. Whatever I need to know, it comes up. And on a need-to-know basis, it’s fine. And things happen all the time. More people come at me, more things I learn. And the more I interact with other people who know they’re awakened– I know they’re awakened, they know they’re awakened– things happen that just make this just a great trip.

Rick: And awakening is, if I understand it correctly, is not so much about knowing stuff anyway. It’s more about the container that holds that stuff, which you kind of just said.

Tom: It’s a knowingness, as opposed to a– there is a knower. But the feeling is, you all of a sudden know that you’re knowingness itself. And therefore, if there’s anything that you need to know, it’s there, on a need-to-know basis. Whatever you need to know– and you really need. Something in your life says, you need to know this now. Not five minutes from now, now. Oh, OK. Or somebody asks you a question, and you never had ever– oh, OK, that’s there.

Rick: That kind of leads to a question I was going to ask, which is that I think some people mistakenly assume– even some people who think they’re awakened may not be, but also people who aren’t awake and know they’re not– they somehow think of awakening as something that the ego gets, or the ego possesses, or has. I am awake. My individual self is going to contain this thing called enlightenment, or awakening, or something like that. And I have the sense that it’s turned around backwards. And maybe you could elaborate on that.

Tom: Yeah, the little, small self. I mean, the classic definition is, awakening could be classified as when large S self knows large S self. This individual unit is part of one consciousness. There is only one. But each of these small units that walk around seeming to be separate are a sense organ of the infinite. And there’s the knowingness that the sense organ, the sense of the infinite, turns back on itself, says, think about, like a little kid, whoa, what happened? Oh, I’m the one consciousness in this body. And there’s just a sense of– after having been through a lot of other stuff, though, the other stuff had to come first. It was all of a sudden, for me, a lot of stuff had to happen before I was ready to go, yeah, that’s good.

Rick: So as the one consciousness in this body, obviously you identify with this body more than this body, or the producer’s body, or whatever. But like you say, sense organ of the infinite, I think that’s a beautiful phrase. It’s like, I’m the infinite, and then there’s this sense organ, this body, the senses it has, which I, as the infinite, am living through. Would that be an apt description of it?

Tom: Yeah, I take to tell people that what, for me, the sense that happened was that there was this sense of this I that was a pretty small I, but that’s what the attention was on. And there was this slight, subtle shift that all of a sudden, there was a knowingness that I was really that, functioning as an I. So the identification went from small I to that. And it was just like, whoa, this is a much better deal. I mean, no pain, no problems, no– not that life wasn’t the same, but the feeling of problemness went away. Oh, as that functioning as I, I get to interact with people. And some of them are nice, and some of them aren’t, and some of them got problems, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Life goes on. But as that functioning as an I, also, it felt like I was a sense organ of the infinite. Oh, you want me to go here? OK. This body’s supposed to be there. Well, that’s no problem, because the body arrives there. I wasn’t going there, but that’s just as good as where I thought I was going.

Rick: So in other words, you feel like you’re spontaneously guided to go where you’re needed, or there’s some purpose that your individuality may not grasp, even, but that you find yourself fulfilling.

Tom: It’s the next obvious thing. If the universe wants me here, obviously, I got here on my own without planning to go somewhere else. I must be that I’m supposed to be here. So let’s just go find out what the universe has in store. And it’s always fun.

Rick: Yeah. Deepak Chopra is fond of saying that we’re not human beings having spiritual experiences. We’re spiritual beings having a human experience. And I think you could modify that phrase slightly, not merely that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, but that we are being itself, universal consciousness.

Tom: The one being.

Rick: Yeah, the one being, having human experiences, grasshopper experiences, elephant experiences, bird experiences, whatever sense organ of the infinite we happen to be looking through.

Tom: There were a couple of instances where I was out with lectures of different people. And all of a sudden, I found myself looking out through, in effect, I’m with you. I mean, you and I are in this meeting. And all of a sudden, I’m looking through Ricky’s eyes. And well, wait a minute. I’ve never saw me from that viewpoint. And so somebody said, well, what’s it like to be inside Ricky’s head? I’m not inside Ricky’s head. I’m just looking through Ricky’s eyes. And it’s still me, except that, yeah, this body’s out here. Why that experience came up, I don’t know. It happened a couple of times.

Rick: Something happened.

Tom: Well, I must be– I needed to learn something about that, that this consciousness isn’t that discreet, right? How can you be looking through Ricky’s eyes? I don’t know. It happened a couple of times, once with Chopra, even. I got really intensely watching him. He was teaching. And all of a sudden, I’m looking through Chopra’s eyes. And there I am in the second row, like, whoa, that was interesting. Didn’t last long.

Rick: So what has been the kind of– before we got to the awakening experience, 2001 in the middle of Third Street, we were kind of going through this timeline of significant events, significant both inner events and outer events in your life that kind of led up to– even though I don’t think we can honestly say that there was a causal relationship between this, this, this, and awakening. But still, it’s interesting to trace the thing. So if we go from the point at 2001, when you had your awakening, when you knew who you were, how would you– what would you consider significant and worth talking about between then and now, in terms of various stages of development, or what changed in your perception of the world, or anything that you think people would like to hear?

Tom: OK, I want to tell you one that’s really interesting. When I first knew I was awake, it was unmistakable. And within three or four months, all of a sudden, this old monkey mind that’s been around for a long time and has a lot of tricks started introducing doubt. Doubt. How could I be awake? Yeah, how could I be this? I mean, ba, ba, ba, ba, the usual stuff. And you’ve been in Fairfield. You know you’ve heard this routine. And I made the mistake of telling a few people. And boy, that got the old stuff going. Who are you to say you’re awake? Because I know better. You’re just a– I know you’re awake. So this started to build. And anyway, there was two things that happened that were significant. One of them was somebody walked up to me and said, look, they’re going to have a live satsang with Gangaji over at, I think it’s the Peterson’s house. And they’re going to do an ISDN live, four ISDN lines, live telecast. We’re going to– she’s going to be there. What do you think? It’s like, wow. Went over, she was doing this gazing routine. And she got you into a chair. And–

Rick: So she was actually in California at some point.

Tom: Right.

Rick: This was all going through the internet.

Tom: All going through the internet. Well, actually, ISDN lines at that time. They had purchased four to get the capacity. So she had a chair in the middle of the room. You sit on the floor for a good hour. And your butt’s fast asleep. You get in the chair. So I get in that chair. And I’m asleep. My butt’s asleep. So I just wiggle around. She goes, what’s that all about? And I looked at her. And I laughed, which I do a lot anyway. And then she started looking at me. And she says to me, you are the one. And that’s all she said. But we’re staring at her. And at that moment, I was in California looking back at myself in Fairfield through her eyes. And there was some recognition of things that were going on. And it was like, whoa. And then she said, OK, that’s it. You’re done. And that was fine. And then, oh, I don’t know, a month later, seven friends of mine said, you’ve got to go to Chicago and see Shalanda Symok, because she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now, not one, not three, seven. This is a command performance. You better show up. None of them said that. But internally, I know. OK, I’ve got to go show up. I don’t know why, but I’m going to show up. We get in this big hall. And all there is, these little dividers, little wooden folding dividers between you and the next group over. It’s the class of 1952 having their 50th high school reunion, playing Bill Haley and the Comets at the loudest volume you could think of. And there was no way anything was going to happen. So she had us dance and chant. But you couldn’t hear yourself chant. Dancing to Bill Haley? Yeah, we’re dancing to Bill Haley. I mean, what else you’re going to do? So this goes on for about an hour. Finally, they take a break on the other side. So she gets time to do her sermon, which I call– I mean, we would call it a sermon in the Western view. I don’t know what they call it in India. But she’s giving her talk, her rap. And she talks about a minute and a half. And she lays out a Mahavakya, which is a way of helping people wake up.

Rick: I am that, or that, or this is that.

Tom: But she laid it out in a form that was in the message of her sermon. And I laughed, which I do. And most people who know me in town, my laugh is unmistakable. Yeah, you haven’t done it on the show yet. I can’t do it because you haven’t said it yet. She has a laugh that’s sort of like– Ha! Anyway, I’m sitting way off on her right. And she gives me the glare. She’s got those beady eyes looking at me. I’m just like, what do I care? I’m looking back at her. And this goes on for a minute.

Rick: Staring at her for a minute?

Tom: I’m staring at her. She’s staring at me. It’s like, I’m not afraid of you, sweetie. You’re great. I love you. And what you said was fine. So then she turns to the audience. And she says– but it was really for my benefit. She said, “he knows”. She talks another minute and a half. She lays out another Mahavakya of getting people to, OK, you know who you are. And I laughed. And she– this went on for half an hour. Every time she’d lay one of those babies out, I’d laugh. It was a punctuation mark. And she says, every time she did, she’d say, “he knows”. I knew what she was talking about, because I was the same consciousness. And finally, she’d get to the point, and nobody else was laughing. Finally, she says, look, he’s getting it. What’s wrong with you guys? I mean, he’s the only one in here. So when I left that night, I didn’t stay for the weekend. I drove from the Quad Cities to Chicago and back. And one evening, we didn’t leave Chicago until like 1 in the morning, get back to Muscatine or at 4 o’clock in the morning. That sense of doubt was totally destroyed. It could never be there, because there’s an outsider who has just verified for you that you know. They have gone out of their way to tell you “you know”. This has all been orchestrated. You get seven invitations to go hear some woman tell you you know. You better believe you know.

Rick: It’s interesting, because I’ve heard you tell those stories before, but I never kind of heard it in the sequence of still having these doubts and everything. And then you ended up having these interactions with these people, which eliminated the doubts once and for all. So it’s interesting to see it all in that context. And it sort of has a kind of traditional component to it too, because in spiritual traditions, particularly in the Indian spiritual tradition, it’s considered necessary in most cases for the guru to kind of give you the final stamp of approval when you’ve awoken. You may have awoken, but be very doubtful about it or not realize fully that you have. And the guru sort of says certain things, mahavakyas as a matter of fact, to kind of confirm it for you. And once that doubt is removed, that’s it. You’re done.

Tom: I mean, it felt unmistakable and undeniable, but the doubt crept back in. Because I like to say it, you have a lot of virus software that got installed through, in my case, 60 years of life. And that virus software is pretty strong, and it’s got some pretty deep holes, and it’s scattered all over your hard drive. And it’s messy, nasty stuff. And some part would find that little piece of doubt, and oh, but you– but, but, but, but, all the buts, right?

Rick: So after the Chalanda Ma thing, the doubts never came in at all?

Tom: Never came back.

Rick: Interesting. And that was about near that time because I did a gig at the library where I just, I was compelled to get up and just tell the world. And I did a little gig, and that led to– that was filmed and on F-PAC. And maybe 25, 30 people showed up, and I met some more people that are awake. And we had some nice rap. And then Cindy and I started having a meeting at my house, and that was really wonderful because people showed up, and a lot more were awake than knew there were. And we just began to have an interaction.

Rick: This is the one that I have been going to.

Tom: Yeah, the one you’ve been coming to. And the interaction just made it richer. It’s like having a stew. And all of a sudden, somebody comes in and says, well, I’m from New Orleans. I want to put a little of this in. Somebody else comes in from Canada, and they want to put this in. Nothing gets detracted, but it all keeps getting richer and richer and richer and richer.

Rick: Yeah. Well, maybe this would be a good time, actually. We’re not concluding the interview, but maybe this would be a good time to show people how to get in touch with you if they want to come to that meeting, or either in person or on the phone.

Tom: OK. They can call my cell phone, which is 641-919-6917. Repeat. Or send me an email. Traynor, T-R-A-Y-N-O-R @natal.net. I’ll repeat. T-R-A-Y-N-O-R @natal.net.

Rick: Good. And I’ve been going to those meetings myself almost since they started. It’s funny, because for a few months, you and a couple other people were saying, hey, we’ve got to come to these meetings. And I said, yeah, yeah, I’ll get around to it. And finally, I came to one. And I don’t think I’ve missed one ever since, unless I was out of town. And the size of the group has fluctuated from anywhere like six up to 35.

Tom: 50.

Rick: 50 in your living room?

Tom: It’s 50 one time. Living room and kitchen.

Rick: Yeah, they were down the hall and whatnot. These days, it’s more within a reasonable range.

Tom: It’s more intimate. There’s a dozen to 20. Very intimate. Lots of fun. Lots of younger people under 30.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, this last week– was it this week? Or was it two weeks ago? For the first time, we had more people under 30 than over 30. And some really bright kids, whom I’m going to have on the show, actually. The next two interviews that I have scheduled are a 17-year-old girl and a guy in his– I guess he must be early 20s– who you’ll enjoy.

Tom: Yeah, they’re really fun people. And they’re just fun to be around. And it makes whatever you’re doing just richer.

Rick: Yeah. Ammachi, or Amma, as she’s sometimes called, uses the analogy, which she probably didn’t think of. It’s probably an old one, that if there’s a log that’s burning brightly and you put another log next to it, then the second log gets burning more brightly. And the whole reason, I think, that traditionally people have wanted to hang around enlightened people and that the Indian tradition in particular says that the company of the enlightened is extremely valuable for your evolution is that there is this osmosis effect that’s contagious. Your own kind of light gets brighter when you’re near people whose light is shining brightly. And so personally, I find that that gathering is extremely valuable to do on a regular basis.

Tom: One time, one of my friends and I sat down and we started to list some of the people that we actually knew their names and see just, OK, how many people have been through here? And we know that they woke up. And a lot of them just come one, two times. They get what they need and they leave. Some stay longer. Some are long term, in and out. So we got over 150 people. And it was like, that was like two or three years ago. Just like, yeah, that one. Oh, yeah, I remember him. This, remember her. Pretty soon you got this list. But it was just fun because it was kind of like being of service. It’s a way to get a group to really just– one of my friends who shows up, he said it this way. He said, it’s an appointment to notice. And it’s an appointment to pay attention. And he says, because we all get busy. And he said, we don’t always sit down and notice or pay attention to what is really going on. And it’s just, he doesn’t make it regular. But when he does, it’s like, whoa, he’s really happy when he does.

Rick: Oh, and I’ve mentioned it, but I want to reemphasize that there is a professional quality conference phone in the room. And a number of people over the years have called in on that, that we have, what,

Tom: We have 20 openings on the bridge.

Rick: We never even got close to using them all.

Tom: No, but if there was enough demand, the bridge could get bigger. And there’s one couple in particular who lives out in California. And I don’t think they’ve been calling in recently, but for a long time, years, they were calling in regularly. And mostly just listening, but occasionally talking. And they just kind of got so enthralled with the whole thing that they’ve started to fly out here. So like three, four times a year, they fly to Iowa. And they hang around and do stuff here in town and come to one of those meetings. And then they fly back to Malibu.

Tom: Yeah, and as rich and beautiful as Malibu is, the richness of spirit is here. The richness of money and beauty of the world is definitely in Malibu. And to them, this is their ability to rest in activity.

Rick: Yep.

Tom: There was one other thing that was significant for me. And I guess as you were talking, there was this guy who was on the chat group Fairfield Life, a guy called Larry up in Madison, and his log in, I think, was Larry in Madison. And he wrote this beautiful exposition about his own awakening. And it was just well-written, well-crafted, clear, very concise of what had happened to him during one day here when his life changed radically. And it was just great to watch and listen. And it was a long piece, because he also included what happened over the next week or so, and how all of a sudden, a three or four-year or half a dozen-year career in Fairfield, two days later, it’s over. He knows who he is, and his time in Fairfield is done. And I’m reading this, reading this, reading this, and I was like, just a joy to read it. This was probably sometime in ’02. And when I looked up from reading it, and I looked at the wall, I recognized that wall as myself. The primary recognition was self, but it was also the wall. But it was unmistakable, wherever my eyes fell for the next year or so, what became primary was self, masquerading as this wall, or being a wall. I mean, it was being. It was that functioning as a wall, that functioning as a table. But it was clear that this was that, that this was myself functioning as a table. Like, well, that’s cool. Didn’t change my life, and it wasn’t even flashy, which is like, wow, that is. But just one man wrote one email, and he shared with me something that was so precious to him, it became precious to me, and he made a huge difference in my life. And all of a sudden, it’s like, well, what do I do to help others? Because, you know, you’ve got to pay it forward, right?

Rick: Yeah.

Tom: So all of a sudden, okay, then the meeting started, because that was like, okay, this is the next obvious thing to do.

Rick: I’m glad you told that story, because I was going to ask you something about this, and it’s a pattern that I’ve noted in a number of my guests, and also in things that I’ve read, and so on, which is that, you know, initially, it seems, one kind of experiences the self as sort of an inner thing. You know, I am this unbounded awareness, but then there’s my body, and there’s the environment, and all that, which is different than my unbounded awareness. But then it seems to mature into a state in which you realize that that which you have discovered yourself to be, essentially, is also the essence of everything else. And so, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but I’m just kind of reiterating, and you can come back with more, but when you see things, or hear, or whatever, through all of your senses, you actually are sort of appreciating that the essence of everything as yourself.

Tom: Yes.

Rick: The same self inside, same self outside, and so it’s a unity.

Tom: Yeah, from my side, I would like to put it, first, when we first started talking, I said the one thing I knew was that I was, what I had thought of as the I was actually that functioning as an I. Well, the maturity of that appears to be that functioning as you, and that functioning as this. So then you begin to see it’s all that, but the functional is, there’s a functional Rick, there’s a functional table, there’s a functional wall, and there’s a functional Tom, it’s all that doing its function, which is necessary to have a relative life.

Rick: Would it be fair to say that there’s a kind of a non-functional, silent level to it, and then a functional level, and it’s the same thing, but it has these two sort of phases, or does that–

Tom: I don’t notice that other part.

Rick: Which other part?

Tom: I don’t notice a non-functioning. To me, it’s all functioning.

Rick: Even if it’s deep silence, it’s functioning.

Tom: Deep silence is still functioning. It’s not separate, there’s no separateness, and it’s just a little subtler, a lot more subtle, but it’s still that functioning as whatever it’s functioning at in the relative world. It just, for me, it’s much easier to say it that way, ’cause that appears to be my experience, is I just know everything to be that, and then there’s an I functional, there’s a Rick function, there’s a Brian function, there’s a TV function, a camera function, just functions, you know?

Rick: Right, but it’s all the same stuff kind of expressing itself in these different forms.

Tom: Yes.

Rick: Now, when you had the initial awakening experience in the Rochester Center when you’re eating dinner, and when you had the heart stomped on the floor and replaced with a much bigger heart, and these various stages of your life, it seemed to have an impact, and also when you had the now I know who I am experience, each of those things had its value in terms of your subjective experience. It made it a lot nicer, more interesting, more free, but it also seemed to have an influence on your outer life. Your circumstances changed, or the way you interacted with people and your environment changed. So, when you went from this now I know who I am state to I now see everything as myself, or as that functioning as a table, as a camera, whatever, did that have any impact that you’re aware of on the way you behave, or the way you interact, or the way, your relative life?

Tom: In one way, yes, it became absolutely clear that I didn’t have any wants.

Rick: More so than it even had been–

Tom: Right, all of a sudden there’s no wants, and there were needs, but the needs were always being met before I recognized them as needs. So, I kind of would describe it as what we would traditionally call a desire no longer existed. In my life, desires weren’t there anymore. All it was, was there to be the idea pop up. What about this as a project? Okay, so, what do we do to this project? And many times, the project would involve going down, let’s call it, going down the garden path, okay? And then you get a left turn, right turn, and all of a sudden, oh, let’s go right. And then you go a little further, well, let’s take another right. And pretty soon I’m back where I started, but something happened in the process, and oftentimes it did, there was also a feeling from the beginning of the idea that this was a project that I didn’t even need to complete the project to have the fulfillment of the project.

Rick: And you’re talking about an actual project here.

Tom: An actual project.

Rick: Not just some metaphorical–

Tom: No, no, no, this is like, okay, Cindy and I made a decision, we really needed to have a runabout at the river, ’cause the big boat burned too much gas, then the little boat was too small.

Rick: You have a houseboat.

Tom: We have a houseboat.

Rick: Right.

Tom: And the little boat’s too small, ’cause there’s too much traffic, and the big boat burns a lot of gas, so we really need to get a boat. And we did a lot of shopping, and I did a lot of looking, and blah, blah, blah, lots of things happened, and it was a long-term project. It was like, well, this is what would be good, but if I don’t get it, that’s fine, but there was a feeling all along that this is gonna work out somehow. And I know people have given me grief for telling this story, but we didn’t, Cindy’s mother had a boat in the garage. We didn’t wanna ask her for it, ’cause her brother was using it.

Rick: Right.

Tom: And we don’t want any conflict in the family. We’re just, Mom, we’re not gonna even go there. We’re not gonna even ask Mom for the boat. Never said a word that this is the project we’ve been looking at. Cindy gets a Christmas card with the title to the boat in the Christmas card, and Mom didn’t know. We weren’t gonna give her brother a hard time, but Mom hadn’t let us know he was using it without registering it, uninsured, and the plates on the trailer weren’t registered. She got pissed, she got mad at him. She goes, he’s doing a crime, you know, civil.

Rick: Misdemeanor.

Tom: It’s a misdemeanor, but it’s still, and it’s registered in her name.

Rick: Right.

Tom: Now, I could have never anticipated, and we had talked to this, no, we’re not gonna ask Mom for this boat. It would be a nice boat, but we’re not going there.

Rick: Just kinda happened.

Tom: And it happened. So you tell people that, and they go, why didn’t you ask your mom? Are you stupid or something? I just told you why we didn’t ask Mom, right? We didn’t wanna cause hardship in the family. And he definitely was mad. Her brother got mad. You took my boat! Ah sweetheart, You didn’t pay, it hadn’t been registered for eight years, and your mom asked you, it’s only 25 bucks a year. I mean, this is not a big deal.

Rick: No, it’s an interesting example, actually, because, well, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for instance, who’s the founder of Transcendental Meditation, he always used to say that, you know, as you become more evolved, more enlightened, or whatever term we wanna use, it should only be necessary to just have the desire for it to be fulfilled, rather than sort of running all over like a monkey, getting what you want. Just have the desire, and then just kinda go back on the self, and if it’s the right desire, which it will tend to be if you’re in a good place, it’ll just come to you.

Tom: That’s the point, is it didn’t feel like a desire. It felt like somebody popping up, hey, here’s a project, what do you think? Sounds good to me. I mean, that’s kinda how I, now I live my life. Projects come up, and they seem like good ideas, and then sometimes I go off and do them, and they lead me to something I would never have done. So this project actually is an impetus to get to the next project, which I didn’t have a desire for, I didn’t have a need for, I didn’t know about the other project. This project takes you somewhere else, oh, all of a sudden, this project morphs into that project, oh, this is a lot better than what I was thinking about. So it’s kind of, yeah, that’s how life has become.

Rick: So things, in other words, work out kinda better than they would if you had to sit down and plot them. There’s sort of a larger kind of planning mechanism going on here that you don’t even know all the mechanics of, but it’s–

Tom: And you don’t need to know. I mean, essentially, I kid people all the time, I say, you find out you’re working for the CIA. You have a need-to-know basis, they give you projects, you do the project, they give you a paycheck, everything’s fine. Don’t ask too many questions, don’t worry about it. And I know, I’m doing this in a metaphorical way.

Rick: Yeah, I think people understand.

Tom: ‘Cause it feels easy, it feels like, yeah, well, this is what I’m supposed to do today. And I don’t have any idea what I’m gonna do tomorrow. I’ll figure that out tomorrow.

Rick: I think some people might say, all right, well, your life seems to be relatively easy, nothing too serious going on, you can just cruise along and enjoy it and so on, but what if you’re confronted with something really traumatic and since I know you, I happen to know that you had a heart attack a year or two ago, and it would be interesting maybe to hear what someone who is awake, what someone who knows the self, how they experience a heart attack as opposed to how somebody else might experience it.

Tom: Again, when it first started, there’s a part of us that’s always in denial. When it first started, it was like, well, I don’t know what’s going on. I walked up three flights of stairs with two gallons of water, which isn’t a lot of weight, and I had been gaining weight, and there were reasons for that, and I get up there and I’m out of breath and my heart’s pounding, but I don’t connect I’m having a heart attack. So I walk in, I set the water down, and I just said, well, maybe I’ll just lay down, and I laid on the bed one second, it’s like, that’s not a good idea, get up. And then I started to feel nauseous, which is a classic symptom. You’re feeling like you’re, maybe it’s, oh, there’s pressure, I must have gas. Got gas here, right? Go ahead and take a handful of Tums, nothing happens. Walk back in the living room, and maybe I should sit down here and meditate, it’ll all go away. And then, this was on Thursday, and I was supposed to go to my friend’s funeral service. Warren Wexler had died Sunday night. This is Thursday. I had stayed in town. Ordinarily on that evening, I would have been in my car on the way to my boat, a two-hour boat ride, or a two-hour car ride, and I’d have been having this heart attack somewhere on the highway. This not would have been good, right? So, and all of a sudden there was this voice, and I know it sounds terribly crazy, but this voice, it was my own voice saying, so, are you going to be the next Warren Wexler? And all of a sudden it dawned on me, you idiot, you’re having a heart attack. I called my wife on the cell phone, not wanting to drive, not trusting myself. Who knows what’s going to happen? I said, Cindy, I’m having a full-blown heart attack. I need you to drive me to the hospital. And I knew she had the car. She had taken the car.

Rick: Why didn’t you just dial 911?

Tom: I didn’t want to wait. She just dropped everything. She was there in less than 30 seconds, ’cause she was only a block away. She says to me, get on your hat and coat. Well, I translated that into, well, let’s go out front and wait for her. It’ll be quicker. Put my hat and coat on. It was fall, late October. Walking down the stairs saved my life. Because the leg muscles, ’cause I have pretty massive muscles, they’re pressing the blood that’s in the legs back up. At that moment, the pain went from excruciating to, I can live with this. Went over to the hospital, walked in, said to them, I think I’m having a heart attack. I didn’t say I know I’m having a heart attack. That’s not the thing to say. I think I’m having a heart attack. All of a sudden, I got seven people to hear me. The first one was kind of rough. The second one was really rough. It felt like an 800-pound gorilla was on my chest. But, and consciousness and being seemed to disappear only for a short time.

Rick: During the 800-pound gorilla?

Tom: The 800-pound gorilla, maybe a minute. And then all of a sudden, it was like–

Rick: What was there when the consciousness and being–

Tom: Just pain. Total, unmitigated, total pain. There’s no room for anything else. But after it abated just a little bit, they start pumping drugs in you, and they give you lots of stuff. And I already had stuff, and they’re giving me more. All of a sudden, consciousness peeps its head up and goes, see, I didn’t go anywhere. I’m here. And never left. Even, and then I had another attack at midnight, and another one at five in the morning. And that one never stopped. And so I got an ambulance ride to Iowa City, and I got a stent put in at 10.30. The poor man that was supposed to get his got bumped. He got moved to later in the day, ’cause he wasn’t critical. The guy at 10, though, was in worse shape than I was. So he went ahead. I got a stent. That whole thing related back to the car accident. The car accident I had had crushed my chest, and it crushed one of the arteries so badly.

Rick: Scarred.

Tom: Scarred and crushed it. And the artery never responded. And when, it’s like kinking a gas line.

Rick: Didn’t have its elasticity.

Tom: No, it was really crushed badly. They put a stent in. It’s open. I’m doing fine. But throughout that, there was never a doubt, even when that 800-pound gorilla was there, there’s no doubt that everything was just going along the way it needed to go. And I didn’t know that this piece of my heart needed to be fixed. But that’s why I had all my problems with weight. I wasn’t sleeping well. All of the high blood pressure, it was all that little kinked thing. Here I am a year and a half later. My blood pressure is almost down to normal. The weight’s starting to come off. Ended up getting what they call a CPAP machine to help me breathe at night. I’m better than I ever was in terms of feeling well. But there’s a full-blown heart attack. Life goes on. But that feeling that, okay, so what if I die? And the doctor got, you know, I got into a little tussle at the hospital ’cause he told me, I was, you have to take statins. And I’d done some research on them. They, no, I’m not. He said, well, I’m not gonna do the statin. I goes, get me another doctor. He’s the only one there, right? But it was, you know, just getting mouthy with the guy. He’s just like, you’re having a heart attack and you’re in trouble here. You need to do what I tell you. No, I don’t.

Rick: Well, were statins something you would take right then and there or something he wanted you to take?

Tom: Long-term. – Long-term, yeah. I had a promise I was gonna take ’em. I said, I don’t promise you nothing. Do your job. Oh, we had, I mean, he says, how dare you argue with me? So there’s this presence that’s there. You’re in pain, you’re suffering, but you’ve still got this presence to tell this guy, you know, I’m not gonna kiss your butt, buddy. You may be the doctor, but, and I know it sounds silly, but it was just, that’s how it unfolded. It was like, there’s presence of who I am and I’ll listen to what you have to say, but you can’t tell me what to do.

Rick: Right, which to some extent is just a reflection of one guy’s personality compared to another guy’s personality. I mean, you could take 10 people who have had a spiritual awakening, put ’em all in the same circumstances, they all might respond differently.

Tom: They all will respond differently. They have some common occurrences. One thing that I’d like to tell people that I have found to be helpful to a lot of people, there was this interesting book that I read. It was written in the year 2000. It’s available, used. It’s called, the title is very long. It’s called “Perfect Madness,” colon, “The Path from Awakening to Enlightenment.” That has been so helpful to myself and a lot of people. It has so much knowledge about, ’cause people have a feeling that, oh, enlightenment comes first and then everything’s gone.

Rick: And it doesn’t work that way, right?

Tom: You have the awakening and then you have stuff. And this woman went through, in a period of 40 weeks, what you and I have gone through in 40 years. She’s got a very compressed experiences, like you and I’ve had over 40 years, compressed into 40 weeks. It was a 40-week intense journey for her. And that’s what happened. She went from awakening to enlightenment. Well, then it only took her 27 years to write the book. Actually, 37, maybe about 27 years.

Rick: To kind of process it all.

Tom: Process, she had to process what had happened. She had kept a journal and she started to flesh it out. And it still took her, it took her 20 years to start the book and seven more years to publish it. into some kind of, we’re not talking a big book. This is thin, but it’s loaded. And it helps people understand that there’s just this simple awakening where you know something about who you are. And then there’s this path of progress that’s gonna take who knows how long? And then maybe enlightenment’s there, maybe it’s not. Who cares? It’s the process that’s important.

Rick: Adyashanti has written a similar book. He’s a spiritual teacher who is coming to Fairfield in about a year.

Tom: The End of Your World, right?

Rick: Yeah, The End of Your World. And it’s a very interesting book. It’s for people who basically have had a spiritual awakening. And again, by that we don’t just mean some cool experience that came and went. But you know, they basically had a significant and apparently permanent shift. But then, as you say, it’s not all roses and butterflies. At that point, there’s actually quite a few things that you have to process or go through or come to terms with after that initial awakening. And so this book is like a handbook for people in that situation.

Tom: I tell a lot of people, okay, I wanna tell you the good thing about awakening. The good thing is you’re awake. Let me tell you the bad news. You’re in kindergarten. You’ve got a lot to learn. Cause every concept that you’ve had is built out of something that’s no longer true. You’re not who you thought you were. You’re something different. And the awakening gives you the sense of what you are, but now you gotta go figure out. Every concept that you thought was so near and dear to your heart and it meant so much to you has to be examined and see how it relates. And it’s not that you lose it. You just change your relationship to it.

Rick: I think it’s an important distinction because even around Fairfield, where when you mention, or when I mention this show, for instance, and people say, oh yeah, you’re interviewing people who think they’re enlightened.

Tom: Yeah.

Rick: Which is sort of a derogatory way.

Tom: Those fellows.

Rick: Yeah, what do they think, they are perfect or something? And my response is usually that there are many degrees of awakening. There are many stages. There are many processes you have to go through. And I’m not necessarily interviewing people who are at the ultimate pinnacle of human evolution, if there is such a thing. But there happens to be a fairly significant number of people around here who have really crossed some important thresholds. And who are continuing to chart territory that’s becoming more and more common. They’re really, you know what I’m saying.

Tom: And we help each other.

Rick: Yeah.

Tom: That’s part of our mutual task here. Is none of us have the whole picture, but we all have a really nice picture. And when we share it with someone else, we begin to see that this picture, that picture, these other pictures start to give you a deeper understanding and knowledge about what really is there.

Rick: Yeah, which is actually why I was motivated to do this show, you know. Because I sort of felt like, let’s take awakening or enlightenment out of, let’s remove the cloak of specialness from it.

Tom: Yes.

Rick: You know, where you figure it’s not something which I could achieve, because only these really special people who wear white robes or something.

Tom: Ha! Ha!

Rick: Can have, you know. So it’s Buddha at the gas pump. It’s people who have achieved a state of awareness, which traditionally might have been considered extraordinary, but they’re ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things. And they don’t necessarily float two feet off the ground, or you’re not necessarily gonna see a glowing nimbus around them. But, you know, these, but it’s real. These states are, this way of living is gradually, and maybe not so gradually, seeping into the mainstream. You know, it’s becoming relatively commonplace. And who knows, you know, within our lifetime, it may, just like our little meeting has shifted to predominantly all these young people, we might shift into a society in which, you know, this becomes so commonplace that it wouldn’t even make sense to do a TV show about it.

Tom: Right, what’s so special? (laughing)

Tom: Yeah, one of the guys used to say, he says, “Yeah,” he says, “what you find out,” he says, “you wanted to be special, and you found out, “yeah, I’m special, but so is everybody else.” Everybody’s special, we all have it, ’cause our basic nature is, for at least the people I’ve talked to, there’s a recognition, awakening didn’t happen to me. Awakening is my basic nature, and I just finally noticed. And if you look at it, and if you just even consider that, as, well, what if I could just accept that, that I’ve always had this, and it’s there, and someday I’ll just notice it? It totally changes your relationship with this as a topic or a process. Just noticing that, ’cause everybody says the same thing. Everybody I’ve talked to, and you’ve talked to, you’ve been around a lot of ’em, I know, ’cause we hang out together every Wednesday. They all say the same thing. This wasn’t added on, this was here, I just discovered it.

Rick: Yeah, and this word notice is a good one, because there are a lot of people walking around here who have been meditating for 30 or 40 years, but who still sort of have this dangling carrot attitude, like, I’m chasing this thing, and it’s really far away. Maybe I’ve only gotten it 5% or something, and it’s gonna take how many lifetimes for me to achieve it? And as a matter of fact, though, they’re actually staring him in the face. Well, it’s like, think of it this way. Suzanne Siegel, this book you brought up, Collision with the Infinite. She had been meditating for many years, had been a meditation teacher and everything, and then she’d kind of drifted away from it a little bit, and was living a normal life in Paris, got pregnant, was coming from a swimming event at the local pool there, and getting on a bus, and all of a sudden she had this radical awakening, and it freaked her out, because she didn’t know what it was. And yet, she had spent years listening to lectures, and reading books, and studying the whole thing about what she was then finally experiencing, but she didn’t put two and two together. She didn’t kind of connect that understanding she had gained and drifted away from a little bit with this experience, because I think people have a tendency to conceptualize based upon books they read and lectures they listen to, and the reality of the experience doesn’t necessarily match the concept. And this is a little bit of a long-winded explanation, but I think that there are many people walking around who are having that very experience they’re seeking, but because it doesn’t match the concept that they have habituated themselves to over decades, they overlook it.

Tom: Exactly. And so sometimes it takes just the subtlest shift. I’ve seen this happen several times in this Wednesday meeting we go to at your house, where people kind of shift and they say, “So that’s it!” “But I’ve had this all along!”

Tom: And then the next thing is, “I want my money back!” [laughing] Ricky and I know who that is. He was a very close friend of ours, and it was so radical for him to say, “Wow, I really have had this 25 years.” And it was here before. It’s been so intimate, I’ve been overlooking that which I am.

Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of like the old analogy of your glasses are on your head, and where are my glasses? I can’t find my glasses. I’m looking all over the house for my glasses. They’re right there.

Tom: I’ll give you one more thing that happened maybe three years after. After this thing with Larry from Madison, all of a sudden I was looking. The wall started to, it was always myself, but it stopped being so radical. All of a sudden, I just started appreciating everything. The wall, you.

Rick: More so than–

Tom: I mean, total. It was like falling in love with everything that got in my path. Everything, my eyes fell. I was appreciating it. And I don’t use the word love so much. It’s like love, but it’s more than that. It’s like, as a sense organ of the infinite, my job is to appreciate the universe. All of a sudden, it’s ramped. It’s full-blown. And it’s like living life on steroids.

Rick: Spiritual steroids.

Tom: Oh, God, it’s like everything is myself, but it’s I’m appreciating it as myself. Really, really intimate. And it just, and it went on for a long time, and it would somewhat wane if I was alone, but when I’m with people, it ramps city. And then one day, it started to morph, and it changed from appreciation to intimacy. And I use those words very carefully. I don’t use the word love, ’cause love has some connotations, but appreciation is a really simple thing. It’s just like, I appreciate a sunrise. I appreciate you as a friend. I appreciate whatever’s going on. And all of a sudden, I was totally intimate with every person and everything I ran into. And all of a sudden, there was absolutely no separation between anything in the universe. It was all me, but it was really intimate me. So it went from knowing it was me to feeling it was me. So that was another transition. And once you have it on the feeling level, and I already had the knowing level of it, it was like, whoa, this is almost, only use the word almost, more than I can bear, but it was cool.

Rick: You’re speaking of that in the past tense, but is that the way things are now?

Tom: It is now, but it’s not ramped up.

Rick: ‘Cause it’s integrated.

Tom: It’s integrated. That’s what happens. The other part is people are still looking for this flashy super thing that happened 10 years ago, and you’ve moved on. The body acclimates to anything. If you don’t believe so, you go look at prisoner war camps in World War II, what they did to soldiers. I mean, bodies acclimate. And awakening is just another thing you acclimate to. It’s not flashy. It’s just who you are.

Rick: I often think that of myself and of anybody who’s been on a spiritual path for some time, that they feel like normal, living life, but if they were somehow able to go from where they were 40 years ago or 20 years ago to where they are now, it would be radical. It would be this remarkable transformation. But instead, it’s been incremental. Maybe there have been some little flashes here and there, but each time it gets integrated. And so it becomes just a normal, everyday state that you’re living. It’s no big deal. You don’t think about it.

Tom: That’s right. And then you continue. You can continue to not notice for a long time, but just not noticing doesn’t matter. You’re gonna get the experience, whether you notice it or not, but it’s more pleasurable when you notice, because then all of the feelings that there’s something missing go away. And that’s what I see some of the folks here. There’s that deep feeling, I’m missing something. Something’s not right here. And it’s just an understanding that, oh, you’ve already got it. What more could you want?

Rick: Yeah. Great. Well, I think that’s a good place to end.

Tom: Great. Good to see you.

Rick: Yeah, thanks.

Tom: Good to be here and have fun.

Rick: Yeah. Thank you, those of you who have stayed with us throughout this almost two-hour interview. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and we’ve enjoyed it in any case. And however you’re watching this, whether on F-PAC or YouTube or listening to it as a podcast, we hope that you will continue watching. And as soon as the titles roll, you’ll see some links to websites and podcasts and my email address and so on so that you can participate in the show in various ways like that.

Tom: And he’ll give you my email if you email him.

Rick: Yes, if you didn’t catch it early in the interview, you’ll see my email in the titles, and you can email me for Tom’s email, for information about this Wednesday night satsang we’ve been talking about, or even you can email in questions that I will ask future guests. So thanks again, and we’ll see you next time.