Neil Schuitevoerder Interview

Summary:

Full transcript:

Neil: From an ego level, I’m moving the hand. From a soul level, I’m telling the ego to move the hand. From a cosmic level, the hand’s moving itself. From a divine level, it’s coming out of nothing and going back into nothing.

Rick: I mean, could you even say there’s a level on which there is no hand? I mean, there’s nothing, right? Yet there appears to be a hand.

Neil: In that level, it’s all empty.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: So, I experienced the body as being empty, thoughts as being empty, and there’s nobody home.

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Before we start today’s interview, I just want to mention that a number of people have reported that they either had some kind of malware warning when they tried to visit our website, or their IP address was blocked, or something like that. We’re trying to debug that kind of problems. The site has been thoroughly checked for malware and doesn’t have any. But if you’re listening to this, I’d appreciate it if you just try to visit batgap.com. And if you get any kind of error like that, just send me a screenshot of it to rick@batgap.com, And we will figure out the problem. And if you’re getting an IP number error, like the firewall is blocking your IP number, go to Google and type in, what’s my IP, and send me that number. And I’ll make sure that that number is whitelisted. OK. We don’t usually say that stuff at the beginning of interviews, but I wonder how many people might not have been able to access the website and aren’t telling us. My guest today is Neil. Here we go. How do you pronounce your last name?

Neil: Schuitevoerder.

Rick: Say it again.

Neil: Schuitevoerder.

Rick: Schuitevoerder. Very good. Neil’s an old friend. I’ve known him for maybe 20 years. He used to be a participant in a weekly satsang or meeting that we would have here in Fairfield, Iowa for years before I started BatGap, and it was in that meeting that the idea to do BatGap arose. And actually, I invited Neil to be interviewed as one of my very first people, but he was working as a clinical psychologist, and I think he didn’t want to come out of the closet about his spiritual experiences at that point. But now he’s retired, and he’s been doing spiritual practices for 50 years. And as he said in the bio he sent me, he’s no longer interested in his ego’s story. So, here’s the story of his soul’s evolution. I’ll just read this to get us started and then we’ll elaborate during this interview. He had early introduction in how to use a pendulum, which led to the opening of his intuitive knowing, which has continued to expand into higher stages. His intense meditation practices in his 20s led to illness, and he was guided to return to a householder life as a husband and father, and the illness went away. He continued practices in mystical Judaism, then turned to Vedanta, Kundalini, and other Hindu practices. With a Kundalini Master and with the Diamond Approach, A.H. Almas’s teaching technique of inquiry, he opened the higher chakras and began to experience states of unity and non-duality, first with a near object, such as a tree, and then with a far object, such as the galaxy. Slowly, the dualities of self/other, near/far, past/future dissolved, and his knowing expanded to include the distant past, his past lives, his rebirth in this lifetime, and his ability to travel in subtle bodies to the subtle planes, including conversing with the deceased. His mind emptied out, then his body became empty, containing the whole galaxy, a non-dual body, then his astral body emptied out, and he no longer traveled but was united with the subtle mental and causal planes all within him. The state of bliss is always accessible. The local identity of Neil remains when he functions in the world as he lives in dual and non-dual levels of awareness simultaneously. If you enjoy this interview, Neil and his wife Connie Zweig, who’s been a guest on BatGap, have a podcast with about 30-something episodes now, which will be an elaboration of everything that we talk about today, and we’ll have a link to his podcast on his BatGap page. Okay, so I was thinking, Neil, as I read your bio and as I listened to every episode of your podcast in the last week or so, that people have a certain understanding of what awakening is. Okay, you realize your true nature, or maybe you experience oneness or non-duality. But, like the infomercial says, “But wait, there’s more!” And, hearing what I just read, a lot of people are thinking, “Whoa, that’s not what I conceive of as awakening. It seems like so much more.” And some people would actually be critical of that stuff. You hear people say, “Oh, you don’t want to experience all those things because they’re just mind stuff, they’re distractions, they are maya, and you just want to stay with the essence, you don’t want to be visiting other realms and things like that. So, what would you say to that as an introduction to get you started?

Neil: I guess I’d like to share my first awakening.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: Which was in my last lifetime. I was a Brahmin priest in a Shiva temple in India, married, a couple of kids. And I woke up in that lifetime and went to Brahmaloka.

Rick: When you died.

Neil: When I died. And I loved it there. It was pure bliss, ecstatic. One continuous stream, but I found that I got eventually bored because you become accustomed to bliss. And there was nowhere to go except back into your body. So, I took the long journey back into body with the intention of expanding my consciousness and waking up to more of myself.

Rick: And okay, so I’ll play a skeptic or devil’s advocate a little bit, but don’t take it the wrong way because I give you the benefit of the doubt. Even though I give everybody the benefit of the doubt, but I also take everybody with a grain of salt and proportions vary, but in your case, there’s not much salt. I know you pretty well. I’ve heard a lot from you and discussed things with you over the years. So, first of all then, my question is, how clearly did you remember this life? And many of the things you’re going to tell us today, for instance, you say you could move outside the galaxy and experience it from a distant, external vantage point. Now people might say, “Well, I can imagine that. I can picture a galaxy in my mind’s eye.” Maybe he just has good visualizing capabilities and he has a vivid imagination. So, what can you say to give us some something, not evidence because how could you, but to distinguish what you’re saying from having a vivid imagination?

Neil: Well, how would I describe this? I am one with the galaxy. There’s a oneness, both looking at it and perceiving from it and being joined with it. So, the experience happened to me, how would I describe it? Out of emptiness. So, I found myself empty of all thoughts, empty of all forms, in a state of non-duality.

Rick: When was this?

Neil: This was about five years ago.

Rick: Oh, okay. You had had previous awakenings, but you’re saying at a particular stage you found yourself having that.

Neil: I found my body was empty and my emotions were still, and my mind was empty and my ego was empty and that led me to move the emptiness to a more expanded state where I found that I was able to perceive anywhere, anyplace.

Rick: And you had some of that even before, because I remember one time in our satsang, you were in Los Angeles and you and Connie were on a speakerphone, and our friend George Foster held out a few fingers and said, “How many fingers am I holding out?” And you said, “Three.” And he was. And then he closed them up, he clenched his fists and he said, “How many am I holding out now?” And you said, “It’s closed.” So, you already had some of this.

Neil: You have a good memory.

Rick: It was kind of a vivid experience.

Neil: Yeah, so this is a capacity to move consciousness to any place in time-space, because I’m out of time-space, as well as in time-space. It’s not testable, I am aware of that. It’s a direct experience.

Rick: Oh, it could be testable. I could do the finger trick with you right now if you want to be put on the spot.

Neil: No, I think I trust you.

Rick: Okay. So, what are the mechanics of that? Because, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have had near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, and for instance, there was a woman who was in a car accident and she was having surgery, she was under anesthesia and she perceived her uncle or somebody buying a particular kind of candy bar in the vending machine in the waiting room of the hospital. It puzzled her because she knew that he didn’t like candy bars, but afterwards she said, “Hey, you bought a Snickers bar.” And he said, “Wow, how did you know that?” So, she was perceiving that, even though she was under anesthesia. What are the mechanics of that and of your own experience when you say you could experience something that’s 100,000 light years from our local planet.

Neil: Right. So, this began when I was sick and I went to see Dr. Niet, who was an awake healer, and used the pendulum to look and see what was in my body and what was in my mind. And I began to explore that and using a pendulum to what I thought was opening myself up to intuition, the psychic ability emerged of moving my consciousness to a place where I could explore and experience different things. So, as a psychologist, I would use a pendulum before my clients arrived and diagnose them and find out what the best method of treatment was. And they came into the room and it was true. So, I could verify my psychic ability to the truth of reality on a mental, physical level. But then with time, Harry, whom I think you’ve interviewed, pushed me to accept the fact that it was not a psychic ability. It was actually the source of all knowledge.

Rick: You’re talking about Harry Alto?

Neil: Yeah, the source of all knowledge, and that I was the knower, knowing, and that knowing is universal. And so, he pushed me into accepting that.

Rick: Okay. “Pushed you” meaning you guys discussed it and you began to see what he was saying, what he was getting at?

Neil: It was kind of like the Wednesday night group was confronting the question, are you awake?

Rick: Right.

Neil: And at the time, I didn’t believe I was awake, but the confrontation was about accepting it. And then accepting the fact that omniscience was part of being awake.

Rick: Okay. Yeah, I once heard a spiritual teacher say that human nervous systems are not capable of omniscience. You have to have a celestial nervous system for that. But perhaps, and this kind of gets at the question I just asked. Is there some level of our human, of our makeup as a human being, which is the celestial level? And is it through that that we could, let’s say, see the galaxy from an external vantage point?

Neil: Well, at some point one joins all reality, or I did, or I am. And that also allows me to separate myself from it and experience it as an object, and at the same time be one with it, and that is the source of the knowing. So, from the emptiness outside of time-space, I can observe a manifestation of the thought of reality in the mind of this creator, but it’s not manifest yet. And then there’s the manifestation of the cosmos. And I can watch the process and I’m aware of that.

Rick: The process of what?

Neil: Manifestation of the cosmos.

Rick: The cosmos, right. Okay, well, let me just push on this just a little bit more. So, right now, you are able to see your computer monitor and I’m able to see mine, and we understand the mechanics of that. The eyes are here and the monitor is there and there is some kind of consciousness that enables the whole thing to happen. So, but with my friend under surgery, seeing her uncle buy a candy bar, or in your case, being able to actually observe the galaxy from an external perspective, what are the eyes that could see that? Because the actual physical eyes aren’t going outside the galaxy.

Neil: Physical eyes see the screen, but behind the screen is a wall. And I’m able to see inside the wall, the studs and beams and then there is a part of me that is outside of the wall, and I can see the harbor. And I can see people in the city and I can see people across the other side of the planet. So, these, …

Rick: If you put your attention there. You’re not just seeing this stuff all the time, are you?

Neil: No, no, it’s all about attention. And the same thing extended to the galaxy. And the same thing with different planes of where people go when they pass on.

Rick: And is that because the subtle body or some level of the subtle body is omnipresent or is everywhere and therefore, that is the mechanism through which we have these perceptions?

Neil: Well, there’s both. There are physical eyes, astral eyes, mental eyes, buddhic eyes, atmic eyes, celestial eyes, and there are divine eyes. So, all these different levels have awakened in me, and I’m able to perceive from the different bodies, different levels of awareness. In essence though, they all come back down to the one. There is only one real essence. These eyes are not true eyes, these are just empty eyes.

Rick: Yeah, the grossest form of the faculty of vision you could say, huh?

Neil: Right.

Rick: Right. Yeah, I mean there have been cases of blind people who could actually ride a bicycle through an obstacle course or something, around traffic cones, or else people who are completely blindfolded, with something wrapped around them so there is no way physically they can see, but there are people who have had that kind of ability. So, there must be, and of course we’ve talked about the out-of-body experience people, but there must be some subtler aspect to the sense of vision and some mechanics for that which perhaps we all possess, and you just happen to have it opened up.

Neil: Well, there is a saying that God sees everything, God is on a mission.

Rick: Right.

Neil: And consciousness moves to that level as you build it and grow it.

Rick: Yeah. So, do you think that this is, I wouldn’t say common, but do you think that even in the traditional literature you get little snippets of stuff like this from Autobiography of a Yogi and so on? But generally, as I said in my introduction, when people describe the enlightened state, they don’t describe all these abilities. Do you think that they are just being cagey about it, not mentioning them? Or do you think it is an individual consideration where some people develop this and other people could be at a very high level of consciousness but not have this particular kind of development?

Neil: My wife was asking me about this today, so I can answer the question. One of my spiritual guides had an understanding of the energy systems of the body and the etheric body, and he actually moved my consciousness. He said I had a kundalini rising, a certain rising of consciousness that enabled me to have siddhis before I was awake. And once I was awake, those siddhis expanded even more.

Rick: I see. So that was Swamiji, Joan Harrigan’s teacher.

Neil: Yes, that’s correct.

Rick: Okay, so the point made there is that one can develop siddhis without being awake, or vice versa I suppose, one can be awake without having developed siddhis.

Neil: Right, and one can use siddhis to wake yourself up as well.

Rick: So, siddhis are not an impediment or a distraction, or they could be perhaps, but they could also be an asset or an aid to awakening.

Neil: Right. Well, siddhis traditionally have been discouraged, because they can become very compelling and just build up more ego.

Rick: Right.

Neil: But that doesn’t mean that’s the only way they can be utilized. They can be utilized to wake up as well.

Rick: Yeah, which presumably is what Patanjali was getting at when he devoted an entire chapter of a four-chapter book to talking about siddhis.

Neil: Yeah, right.

Rick: That’s what I always assumed, like why would he spend so much of his book talking about them if they were just something you should avoid?

Neil: Right. They certainly have helped me.

Rick: Yeah. Have they ever been a temptation or a distraction or an impediment?

Neil: No, because I always come back to the oneness and the unity and the emptiness.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: You know, true nature of being.

Rick: Yeah, and if you had to define awakening in a sentence, how would you define it?

Neil: Freedom.

Rick: Freedom.

Neil: I am not attached to any form. I’m not attached to this body, I’m not attached to the mind, I’m not attached to my feelings, I’m not attached to my ego, I’m not attached to the galaxy, I’m not attached to divine perception. That is freedom.

Rick: Interesting. Usually, the word “attachment” implies that a grasping or a clinging, like I’m attached to food, eating a certain kind of food or smoking cigarettes or to a certain person or to a certain experience. And people are deeply attached if they are addicted to drugs, let’s say. But what you are saying is, you are using attachment in the context of freedom, in the sense of actually being independent of all those things, like you can function independently of your body, go anywhere.

Neil: Yes, the body can be transparent and not hold my attention. I can see through it like I can see through the wall. I can see through the planet, I can be outside the planet looking at it.

Neil: Yeah, what do you think would happen if you took this ability to Las Vegas?

Neil: That’s cute, yeah. I’d probably fall right back into ignorance.

Rick: Yeah, you can see right through the dealer’s head, cards, and stuff like that.

Neil: Yeah, I think there are dangers in using your siddhis. But I think the whole goal of being a human being is to be a full human being. To be moral, to be financially independent, to be relationally sound. So, I think you don’t come here to wake up, you come here to be a full human being.

Rick: Yeah, that’s good. In fact, if I have to define the word awake, awakening or enlightenment, which I tend to avoid because they have a static, superlative connotation, I would say what you just said, which is a holistic development in which, you don’t just have consciousness developed and other things are rather primitive. All the stuff has, all the various lines of development, to use Ken Wilber’s phrase, have risen to a very high level. Would you agree with that definition?

Neil: Especially the moral aspect needs a lot of attention. Moral development, financial independence so you don’t succumb to using money for possession.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: So relational health, so that you’re not bothered by emotional troubles and relational problems.

Rick: Yeah. Now obviously people can be quite moral and financially successful and have good relationships and all that without even having an inkling of what awakening in the spiritual sense may be and vice versa. People claim to be awakened and yet they are immoral or financially, sexually creating havoc.

Neil: You know that.

Rick: Yeah, unfortunately there are too many examples of that. So, there doesn’t seem to be a tight correlation.

Neil: Right, so my experience is that ego development is important, moral development before you wake up. Because waking up, actually, and I remember talking about this in the past, sorry, waking up doesn’t mean that you’re a moral person. In fact, waking up has nothing to do with morality. So, my experience is that moral development needs to happen before you wake up, or at the beginning of it.

Rick: Yeah, I have this guy that I like to take his classes, Swami Sarvapriyananda. I’ve interviewed him and I take weekly classes with him online, but he often says that. He says, “Moral development should be the first stage, it should be the foundation, and then you build the whole thing on top of that, because if you don’t, you end up getting into trouble.

Neil: Oh, that works. I would agree with that.

Rick: Yeah. And I don’t know, maybe you have some comments on this, but in the Vedic literature, and probably literature of other traditions, there are stories about people who had reached a very high level of development, but then were egotistical or morally compromised or something, and they end up kind of crashing and burning and having to rebuild the whole, retracing their steps later on.

Neil: Right, yeah. So, my last lifetime, which I mentioned earlier, I skipped a whole bunch of levels, which I I think is kind of traditional in some spiritual paths. Move quickly from ego, its sense of separate identity, to waking up. And so, skipping the sort of psychological development of being moral, being caring for others, being one with the planet, being a good human being. So, I had to come back and do that.

Rick: So, you said a few minutes ago that you defined awakening as freedom. And so, if we stick with that definition, what you are saying is one can have attained freedom and yet perhaps not have all one’s chakras fully opened or certain aspects of one’s personality fully developed, one can behave harmfully, one can be attracted to indulging in harmful substances, even. There have been people who claim to be awakened who do that, like Adi Da, and yet one has attained freedom. Do you agree with that or would you want to modify your definition of awakening?

Neil: Well, freedom for me means first not to be attached to any form. Not to be attached to the physical body, not to be attached to the ego, not to be attached to enlightenment, not to be attached. But to be able to move your consciousness to different places. So, freedom is not about stuckness, moral stuckness or spiritual stuckness. It’s about the capacity to be not bound, be unbounded by whatever form you take.

Rick: Okay, we will probably keep touching on this point. So, freedom, you said, the ability to move your consciousness to different places. Now consciousness in its essential nature doesn’t go to different places, right? It is all-pervading, omnipresent, so there is no “you” that moves it to different places. It is everywhere. And that is the essential nature of freedom, isn’t it? The unbounded nature of our most fundamental identity.

Neil: Right. So, yeah, so then I woke up from being psychic to being the knower, to being everywhere, being unbounded.

Rick: Right. And that was in this lifetime, you’re saying, five years ago or something?

Neil: Right.

Rick: Okay. Now I have heard you say many times in your podcasts that we all continue to be works in progress, as if there is no end point at which you can say, “Okay, I’m totally done. I can’t grow anymore, can’t learn anymore, can’t evolve anymore.” So, you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Neil: Yes, I don’t believe there is any end in terms of spiritual development. I haven’t found that so far. In fact, it’s sort of speeded up a lot lately. So, it is remarkable how it’s grown and developed and I can’t find any end to it.

Rick: So, what is your next horizon? Give us a summary of where you’re at now, in terms of the chakras, for instance, are all your chakras awake and purified? Or any other way you care to define the development you have undergone so far? And then, what is the next horizon? What would be the next stage?

Neil: My edge right now is expanding consciousness to the astral plane, to being the astral plane, mental plane, buddhic plane, atmic plane, and celestial plane. So, I’m actually finding my consciousness to be one with the creator’s construction of these planes.

Rick: So, in other words, you have been able for some time to dip into these planes and poke around and explore and experience. But what you’re saying is, you are growing in your capacity to just be multidimensional and to function on multiple planes simultaneously. Is that correct?

Neil: Yes, I could go and see people who passed on. Be with them and talk to them and have them communicate with me on different levels and planes, including some celestial beings. So, I’ve been able to do that for a long time. But you know, this feels like my whole sense of self is one with all that now. It’s coming out of me and I’m one with it.

Rick: With a subtle plane.

Neil: With a subtle plane. I’m identifying with the creator who created this plane.

Rick: Created which plane?

Neil: Astral, mental, buddhic

Rick: All the planes?

Neil: All the planes. One at a time.

Rick: Yeah. So, in other words, if you have captured that fort, the fort of the creator, then you are free to play about in the territory of this plane, that plane, the other plane.

Neil: Right, but once one identifies oneself as being one with the great creation of the plane, one can move into the specifics of the plane.

Rick: Yeah. Do you spend much of your day doing this? Like, exploring and having adventures in these subtle realms?

Neil: Probably about an hour a day of meditation practice.

Rick: So mostly this happens when you are in a meditative state.

Neil: Mostly it happens when I actually apply myself to it.

Rick: Okay. And so, give us some examples of particular things that you have experienced, let’s say in recent days, weeks, months, or whatever comes to mind as you explore these planes.

Neil: Well, my mother passed away about a year and a half ago. And she wasn’t a good mother when I was young, much like yours.

Rick: Well, my mother tried. She had a lot on her shoulders. But anyway,

Neil: Yeah, mine too. She did. She did her best.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: But I found after she passed, she went beyond the astral, mental planes. She went to the Buddhic plane, which is the heart chakra plane, which is a reasonably high level for who she was, from my understanding. And in the last years of her life, she was 95 when she died, she was very loving and very calm. So, I went to go visit her recently.

Rick: On the Buddhic plane?

Neil: On the Buddhic plane.

Rick: Right. And what was that like? How vivid was that experience? As compared with if she lived in Santa Monica and you went to visit her there?

Neil: Well, in the physical body, staying in the physical body, it was vague. But I found my physical body emptying out, becoming transparent, and I astral projected to that plane. And that was much clearer. I could smell, I could taste, I could feel, not just the visual aspects of the world.

Rick: You know a guy named Jürgen Ziewe?

Neil: No, never heard of him.

Rick: He is a guy whom I’ve interviewed and he has been astral traveling like this for decades, and he’s also a very gifted artist. I’ll turn you on to some of his stuff after the interview, but he can create these images, and now, using AI it’s gotten even better. He’s able to create these amazingly clear depictions of what these different planes are like. And some of them quite hellish and others you know really sublime and heavenly.

Neil: Right, yeah, my early days I remember reading a lot about Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists who spent a lot of time on those planes.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Leadbeater.

Rick: Yeah, Leadbeater, yeah.

Neil: Yeah.

Rick: In what way do you feel, I mean, maybe we need to define spiritual evolution, but well, we’re doing that as we go along. You said that for you at this point, your leading edge, your horizon, is the greater facility or familiarity with these other planes and learning how to function in them or experiencing them while yet living in a human body. Is that a good summary?

Neil: Not bad, yeah. I would say it’s watching the unfoldment of them as the creation happens and returns to its source as well.

Rick: Do you feel that that is not only interesting for you, but that you are serving as some kind of an instrument for the integration of those higher planes with the earth plane, not only in your experience, but for all of us?

Neil: No, I don’t see myself as anything special.

Rick: No, I’m not saying that, but, like, let’s consider somebody who we, everybody, thinks was special, like Jesus, for instance. I mean, he obviously had access to higher planes, and yet here he was on the earth calling himself the Son of Man, and he had quite an impact because he, just his embodiment of higher consciousness and the ripple effect that he had on humanity. So, I wonder, and he also said that everyone could achieve the state that he had. So, he might have just been an outlier at that point, but maybe it’s going to become more common for people to have this interdimensional way of functioning, and it will help to infuse humanity with more of the qualities of these higher realms.

Neil: I’d like to think that. I don’t see myself as a teacher or a practitioner or somebody making money from this, purely contribution.

Rick: Oh yeah, no I’m not suggesting that, people wouldn’t need to be teachers to have this effect, they could just have it by walking down the street and going grocery shopping, but being kind of in the world but not of it.

Neil: I hope that’s true.

Rick: So, you mentioned a few minutes ago that your mother achieved the Buddhic plane which was correlated with the heart chakra. Are the different planes that you’re mentioning correlated with different chakras in the human anatomy?

Neil: Well, the chakras are symbolic. So, they appear on an etheric level. So, each body has chakras.

Rick: Each body, what kind of body? You mean Astral body, mental body, and each body has chakras?

Neil:  It’s the connection between one body and the next body. It’s the best way to talk about a certain plane or a certain consciousness in terms of a chakra, but it’s not actually the true way of looking at it, it’s symbolic.

Rick: So, if, let’s say the astral body has chakras and the gross body has chakras, although the chakras aren’t gross, they’re subtle. How many layers of the subtle body do you recognize? There are different taxonomies and different traditions that recognize different stages, but in your own experience, how many Russian dolls are there, within the human makeup in terms of subtle bodies?

Neil: Well, there is the physical, the etheric, the astral, mental, buddhic, atmic, celestial, there’s the divine plane.

Rick: And everybody has these, even though they are not aware of most of them.

Neil: Right, so you take them on as you incarnate into a body. So, you start off with subtle bodies until you build grosser forms.

Rick: Mm-hmm

Neil: As you get them, you get back into the physical body. I remember doing this when I came back into this lifetime.

Rick: What happened exactly?

Neil: Well, I was, in Brahmaloka and I knew that I was bored.

Rick: Which is like a high heavenly realm, Brahmaloka.

Neil: Brahmaloka is heaven as you know, as the Hindus would call it. Which is bliss, constant bliss. And I remember becoming bored with it and starting to move my consciousness into looking around, finding some source or something that would move me out of this place. And I noticed my mother’s energy, which was anxious and driven.

Neil: It was my mother’s energy that would take me out of Brahmaloka into rebirth. So being driven, I took on all the bodies one at a time. Divine body, all the way down into the physical body.

Rick: You mean as you incarnated?

Neil: As I incarnated.

Rick: Okay, so when you were in Brahmaloka, what body were you occupying then?

Neil: Divine body.

Rick: Which is celestial body or something else?

Neil: Yeah, it’s a celestial body.

Rick: So, the highest, subtlest body.

Neil: Okay.

Rick: Okay. And so then in the process of incarnating, using the Russian dolls analogy, you added one doll after another until you were ready to be born as a baby.

Neil: You got it.

Rick: Okay. Good. And is this the process everybody goes through? Or maybe not, because everybody doesn’t start out in Brahmaloka.

Neil: Yeah, it depends where you start out. So, for example, if you manage to reach the the mental level, then that’s where you’re stuck until you go to sleep. And forces of karma help you to incarnate. And you attach to an astral body, then etheric body in a physical body.

Rick: I’ve heard you talk about taking reincarnation for granted, in fact we’re talking that way now, as the way life works, and there’s this teaching in some religions that once you achieve a certain level of enlightenment or awakening, you don’t reincarnate anymore, you’re out of here. And yet you said you had attained a pretty significant level of awakening in your previous life as a Brahmin priest and you went to Brahmaloka for a while, but then you reincarnated again, which would imply that you needed to undergo some kind of development that you weren’t going to get in Brahmaloka, so you needed to incarnate again, even though you had been awake in, whatever that word means, in your previous life. And I’ve heard you say that you will have future lives after this one, despite whatever level of freedom or awakening you have achieved now.

Neil: I think that’s an illusion.

Rick: Well, I heard you say that though, that in my next life there will be something else, blah blah.

Neil: It’s an illusion that you get to a level where you don’t have to take on any body or any form.

Rick: Oh, I see what you mean.

Neil: I think that is an illusion. I think you get to a state where having a body becomes important.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Or having a rainbow body becomes important.

Rick: So, in other words, it’s just wishful thinking in some traditions that you are going to be able to check out and not deal with having to be a corporeal being anymore.

Neil: Yeah, it is kind of like saying, “End your suffering. If you wake up, you will not have any more suffering.”

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: These are promises that are given to people to motivate them.

Rick: Do you think that there is a certain stage at which you would not reincarnate in the earth plane anymore? You might just go through multiple lives in higher planes because the earth plane no longer has anything to offer you?

Neil: Yeah, for example, the Swamiji that we spoke about earlier. So, I connected with him. He is actually embodied on the astral plane. It’s a body that is on a planet that is an astral planet. So, you take on different forms depending on what your evolution is supposed to be. And they are forms that are outside of human development.

Rick: Beyond human development.

Neil: It is possible to take on a body that allows you to expand consciousness to much higher levels than you could.

Rick: Well, there is that comment I made earlier about a celestial body having certain capabilities that a gross flesh and blood body will never have. And another thing, I heard Maharishi Mahesh Yogi say this one time, he was talking about immortality and he said, “Well, after all, if we want to attain immortality, there must be much better bodies than these in which to do it.”

Neil: I think that is true.

Rick: Yeah. Well, this stuff might seem kind of esoteric to people, but I find it fascinating because I just think the universe is a kind of multi-dimensional Disneyland of all kinds of possibilities that most of us don’t even imagine. And although you can get lost in imagining all these things and dwelling on all these things and that would be taking it too far in that direction, on the other hand, just denying them or showing no interest in them whatsoever might be taking it too far in the other direction. And if you can achieve a balanced relationship to all these possibilities, it seems to me it would be a more interesting way to live life, especially – I’ll just wrap up this statement or question in the sense that I think that learning how the universe works and what all exists, to me, interests me in addition to just the notion of liberation or oneness or freedom or realization. It is as if it’s icing on the cake. It’s like, “Okay, got that. Now, how can I use this to be an even more capable instrument of the divine and become more functional and knowledgeable of God’s creation?”

Neil: Sounds wonderful. That’s right.

Rick: Okay, I had to get that off my chest. And the reason I’m dwelling on that is just, again, as I said in the beginning, some people, to my mind, they tend to dumb it down a little bit. Like, “All right, you don’t exist, and the world is an illusion, and you’re done.” You know? “And just accept that, those principles, and you don’t have to strive anymore. Give up the search, you’re done.”

Neil: I think that is just the beginning.

Rick: Yeah, me too.

Neil: Yeah. So, I think there are whole worlds of possibilities, infinite possibilities. You know, this doesn’t stop with waking up.

Rick: Right. It’s as if there is always a next horizon, and what we are exploring here is what those next horizons might be. And I guess they might be different for different people. We all serve different functions. But that is not to denigrate any one person’s journey. Okay, a question came in. I might as well just ask this even though it’s a little bit out of sync with what we’re talking about, but just for fun. This is from someone named Elizabeth Marie in the US. “I hope you don’t consider this question too flippant, as I’m quite serious about it. With your capacity to transcend space-time and proceed from this non-local place, can you please let us know whether the US is going to survive as a democracy over the next four years or be transformed into something entirely different?” And I appreciate her question because I wonder the same thing.

Neil: Great question, it has to do with the planet and our relationship within the societies we live in. Can I do that? Um, I don’t like to predict the future.

Rick: Yeah

Neil: I think, it’s one thing to go into the past. It’s another thing to actually predict the future. I don’t like to do that. But I think, my wife often says to me, you seem less concerned about global warming and the political situation than I am. I think that is true because I don’t believe that that is really managed by the powers that be on this planet. It is really run by the devas and the gods and the celestial beings.

Rick: And the asuras who oppose them.

Neil: They are having a war zone.

Rick: Yeah, exactly.

Neil: And this is just a form that they take.

Rick: I’ve said the very same thing to people in recent conversations, that we are just looking at the surface symptoms or manifestation of a much, a kind of a cosmic battle going on, with, as you said, Devas and Asuras and all kinds of impulses of intelligence. And it is all playing out on the surface of politics and economies and environment and stuff.

Neil: Right, so, identification is a problem. So, this hand that moves across the screen here in front of you, if my ego is attached to it, I move this hand. But if I’m looking at it from a deeper perspective, the hand moves itself.

Rick: Right.

Neil: So just like this mouth is speaking and the voice is sounding, coming out of it, I’m not doing it. There’s not an ego doing it, it is happening. So, it is manifesting something from a subtle plane, from emptiness, from pure consciousness. It is occurring. So, the same thing with democracy. Who is to say if democracy is the best method for survival on the planet? One can be attached to it, but it doesn’t mean that that is the way it is supposed to be.

Rick: I was thinking about Lao Tzu the other day, who wrote the Tao Te Ching, and he basically says that government governs best which governs least. But he says that, in order for a government to do that, the people have to be in tune with natural law. They have to be in tune with the Tao. And if they really are as a society, then there will not need to be very much government at all, and everything will get along just fine. But if people are way out of tune with it, then you need more laws and rules and structures to keep everybody from killing each other, ripping each other off too much. Okay, the thing about moving your hand.

Neil: Or the hand moving itself.

Rick: Or the hand moving itself. Can both be true?

Neil: Yeah, definitely.

Rick: I’m moving the hand, but the Divine is moving the hand.

Neil: Yeah.

Rick: Each on its own level.

Neil: From an ego level, I’m moving the hand. From a soul level, I’m telling the ego to move the hand. From a cosmic level, the hand’s moving itself. From a divine level, it’s coming out of nothing and going back into nothing.

Rick: I mean, could you even say there is a level on which there is no hand? I mean, there is nothing, right? It just appears to be a hand.

Neil: Yeah, on that level, it’s all empty.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: So, yeah, so I experienced the body as being empty, thoughts as being empty, there’s nobody home. You know, the ego is empty, the soul, even the soul is empty, and so, the Buddhists would like this philosophy.

Rick: Is it also full? Could you flip it and say it’s all fullness?

Neil: Absolutely, that’s the way that I originally connected with it, as being full of oneness.

Rick: I have this ongoing friendly debate with a friend named Susana Marie. She’s been on Batgap, and we recently taped a video about this. She says that she doesn’t have a sense of personal self, and I say, you must have a sense of personal self, but it’s just taking a back seat. The impersonal or the cosmic self must be in the driver’s seat and predominant, but if you’re functioning as a human being, there’s still got to be some sense of personal self. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know if you put your hand on a stove and it burned, or if I call your name and you turn your head. Do you agree with that? What’s your experience?

Neil: Yeah, I agree with that. I think the notion of having an ego is important if you’re living in the world. If you’re living in a cave, you don’t need an ego.

Rick: Even there you might, so this cave is dripping or I’m hungry or something.

Neil: Yeah, it’s kind of less important.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Survival is less important, so you could be like Ramana Maharshi and just meditate the whole day. So, survival becomes less important. But if one is operating in the world, one needs an ego. So, you can transcend it. It can be transparent. It can be illusory, but it’s there.

Rick: Yeah, that’s my understanding. I mean, as I said in the beginning, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but we have a body, and maybe it ultimately isn’t real. We have a mind, it ultimately isn’t real. And we have a sense of self, even though ultimately, it’s not an ultimate reality, but it’s a transactional reality. Vyavaharika they call it in Vedanta. I’ve heard you say you don’t have thoughts, words just come out. And in the Vedic cosmology, there are these four levels of speech. Vaikhari, Madhyama, Pashanti and Para. And Vaikhari is like what I’m doing now, speech you can hear. Madhyama is sort of thoughts in your head. Pashanti is not thoughts in your head, but subtle impulses that don’t have any verbal quality to them, but are seed impulses which could translate into the higher levels or into actual speech. And then Para is just sort of the silent, unmanifest, nothing going on level. If I’ve got those right, I might have screwed some of those Sanskrit names up. But when you say you don’t have any thoughts and yet you’re talking to me, or you decide to go to the refrigerator and get a sandwich or something. I’m sure you’re not thinking, “I am going to the refrigerator to get a sandwich.” It’s more like there’s an impulse of some kind that takes you to the refrigerator. I mean, couldn’t that be a very, very subtle level of thought, just not the customary verbal type of thought that many people think?

Neil: Right. It’s not that I had no thoughts. I have no thoughts in this moment.

Rick: Oh, okay. Okay.

Neil: You know, I can think about things.

Rick: Yeah, shall I go on vacation or shall we…

Neil: I can…

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: I can, or I wouldn’t be able to manage my life in this world.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: Those four levels of speech, let’s say, I can identify first as the verbal, the second as thought forms, and a way to communicate with people on the astral and the mental level, to have a thought form. Thinking as a precursor to the verbal. Subtle impulses for the Buddhic level and above that, emptiness being a part of consciousness too.

Rick: Yeah, so I think what I hear you saying is that you have thoughts, you just don’t have superfluous unnecessary thoughts. You know like me, I’ll hear a song, like the other day I heard “Cashmere” by Led Zeppelin, and I’m walking around the house thinking “duh duh duh, duh duh duh, duh duh duh, duh duh duh.” “Cashmere” is going through my mind. I think “shut up, why do I have to be thinking this stupid song?” Whereas I think what you’re saying is your mind is just, it doesn’t think, there’s not a lot of extra static going on.

Neil: Yeah, there’s much less thoughts. Most thoughts in my experience are about supporting the ego, supporting identity as a separate person. So, when that becomes more transparent, one has less thoughts. It’s either functional or operational or it’s less important to have thoughts that support the ego.

Rick: Yeah, because there’s no ego to support really, or a very more tenuous one.

Neil: More transparent.

Rick: More transparent, right. I imagine that would give you more energy, you know, because it consumes energy to have thoughts if they are useless. Then you’re burning up perfectly good glucose for nothing. So, I’m going to read some notes here. I’ve got some titles of all of your podcast episodes. People can, as I said earlier, can send in questions if they’d like to ask anything of Neil. I heard you say in one episode that you didn’t feel it was productive, maybe for most people, to continue with the same spiritual practice for more than a few years or something like that. Is that what you meant to say?

Neil: Yes, that sounds right.

Rick: So, you yourself have switched spiritual practices every few years?

Neil: Many times.

Rick: I stayed with it because I enjoy it and it seems to work and I’m not closed to doing other things. But would you say that I am kind of holding myself back by taking that approach?

Neil: In general, staying with the same practice, even though it doesn’t take you further is kind of a waste of time.

Rick: Oh, I would agree. But what if you feel that you are progressing?

Neil: Well then stay with it.

Rick: Yeah

Neil: Stay with it. It’s working for you. If you’re progressing, you’re unfolding. That’s good.

Rick: Yeah, and of course you never know what might happen if you did try something else, it, you might progress faster or in a different way.

Neil: Well, I have no problem using two techniques from different practices. It’s like I said, you can do the emptiness with the Buddhist practice and the Hindu practice, the Vedic practice.

Rick: Yeah, you know, there’s an old saying about not digging 10 different wells, just dig one deep hole to get a well that will actually hit water. But one way of using that metaphor is to say, “Well, how about using ten different tools to dig one deep well?”

Neil: Yeah. That makes sense to me.

Rick: Yeah. Okay. What do you do now as a practice? You mentioned you kind of meditate and explore.

Neil: I do that every day, usually in the afternoon. I do inquiry practice about five times a week.

Rick: And how does that work? What do you do?

Neil: I’m on the telephone with somebody. I speak spontaneously, exploring consciousness.

Rick: Like a fellow spiritual brother kind of a thing?

Neil: We speak one at a time, exploring being fully present and deeply listening. I follow my attention from the body to expanded consciousness and explore whatever comes into the mind.

Rick: Sounds like a psychologist speaking there.

Neil: That’s true. It starts off with the body, physical awareness, then sort of goes to the emotional, mental and sometimes goes very quickly through those two and such. It’s about exploring those levels.

Rick: And this person is kind of a facilitator?

Neil: Right.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: This is A.H. Almas’s protocol.

Rick: Oh, okay, right. He’s been on Batgap a couple of times, three I think. Now, I’m just kind of skipping around to different subjects, but if you want to elaborate or follow up any more on any one thing, don’t let me move on. But I heard some interesting stuff that you were saying about soul groups. And for one thing, I heard you say that the Earth is humanity’s second planet, which if I heard that correctly, I think you were saying that the soul group of humanity used to live on a different planet and maybe that one blew up or something and now we are on this one. Is that what you said?

Neil: That’s correct.

Rick: And so, what happened to that other one?

Neil: We left it intact, which I don’t know if we’ll do to this planet.

Rick: Why did we leave it if it was livable or wasn’t it?

Neil: Because the human soul is a unified being. It’s part of creation and goes through evolutionary processes. So, we were finished with that evolutionary process and we came to this planet.

Rick: In spaceships or by reincarnating?

Neil: No, I think it’s on a celestial level. So, it goes through the process of moving consciousness. Imagine this planet is exploding. What’s left of human consciousness is the divine consciousness. One consciousness that is humanity. Maybe some people have individual consciousnesses that are awake. But that’s within the human consciousness.

Rick: Well, if I understand what you’re saying, so let’s say a giant asteroid came and crashed into this planet and it became unlivable, and we all died. I presume we would just go to several different planets according to our tendencies. But let’s say we all went to the same different planet, these bodies would be dead and we’d have to start all over in a new place. I imagine we’d have to start out as very preliminary life forms because it’s not like highly evolved human organisms are all of a sudden going to get born. From whom would they be born?

Neil: Yeah, I would imagine that’s true. Imagine if an asteroid hit us, this planet, and we went to the next one, I think there are five more after this.

Rick: Really? Are you saying there will be five more planets for humans to inhabit after this one?

Neil: Yeah, my sense of knowing tells me that.

Rick: Wow, that’s interesting. Yeah, I mean anything could happen to this planet. In fact, there’s something in 19… in 2032, there’s an asteroid that has a 2% chance of hitting the Earth.

Neil: Wow.

Rick: I don’t know if it would wipe us out, but it wouldn’t be a nice day for whoever it hit. I mean, if it landed in the Pacific Ocean, we’d probably have a mile-high tsunami come across California.

Neil: You’re in the right place.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: It’s the center of the country.

Rick: Right. Yeah, they haven’t finished building the ocean here. But now some people say that all kinds of highly evolved beings are being born here now, in larger numbers perhaps, maybe they’ve always been. But you hear about what indigo children, or now there is this phenomenon with the telepathy tapes, and all these autistic kids are coming in with telepathic abilities. And they say that they are kind of a harbinger of a major change that humanity is going to undergo, which would get back to Elizabeth Marie’s question. Maybe you don’t want to predict what’s going to happen with the U.S. government, but what do you feel about humanity? And you say you don’t like to predict the future, but do you sense, as many do, that humanity is in the midst of some kind of profound shift, and how do you see that playing out if you do?

Neil: That has been going on every century, that somebody says there is a profound shift happening, through right now. So, you know, …

Rick: But maybe there finally will be one. And it has been, I mean, if you look at the 1800s compared to now, it’s pretty major shift, but…

Neil: Pretty major shift. That’s true. Do I believe in people coming here to speed up the evolution of the planet? Yes. There are spiritual beings at the center of the planet and those at the fringes of the planet, sending energy to the planet and to humanity in general. So that does exist and that is continuing to exist. Do I believe that the ascendent masters or celestial beings are making this planet work? I think they are sort of watching it, seeing what happens.

Rick: Yeah, with bated breath. Yeah, I mean you were saying earlier that a lot of stuff that happens here is just the surface manifestation of much deeper forces playing tug of war. I believe a lot of stuff too and intuitively it feels right, but I don’t claim to have any kind of cosmic insight about it. And maybe it’s just stuff I read in books that resonates with me. So, when I’m asking you these questions and you say you actually travel in these realms, can you substantiate these kinds of beliefs with some kind of insight that you’ve gained from your ability to do so?

Neil: They are available to me, I don’t necessarily always go there. I believe in living in the now.

Rick: That’s a good idea, probably.

Neil: So, allowing things to unfold. That seems to be the fastest way this evolution happens through the storm.

Rick: Okay, good answer. So, you don’t spend a lot of time speculating about what’s going to happen to the world?

Neil: No, it is the same thing as speculating about what happens when you die.

Rick: Yeah, it’s going to happen. Your clothes won’t fit anymore. Yeah. And of course there were people who specialized in that kind of thing, like Nostradamus perhaps, or others who prognosticated and you know, sometimes correctly. In fact, most ancient cultures have prophecies about what they expect to happen in the coming, over the next centuries or millennia. A lot of that stuff has come true.

Neil: I used to do astrological charts for my patients before they came.

Rick: Oh, okay.

Neil: To try to figure out what was going on in their systems.

Rick: Okay. So, soul groups. We alluded to humanity as a soul group, but there are obviously subdivisions, right? They’re maybe national groups, ethnic groups could be considered soul groups, family groups.

Neil: The soul groups within humanity that have particular purposes in being here. So maybe to serve, to cultivate wisdom, to develop loving kindness, to learn healing. Some people are aware of their soul groups, some people are not aware of them. Some people just know that they’re influenced by them. Some people know that they have a particular personality or characteristic.

Rick: Are there soul groups whose mission it is to wreak havoc?

Neil: Oh yeah, I think it goes both ways.

Rick: Yeah. The sharks and the jets. So… Yeah, I mean, obviously there have been groups of people who have caused a lot of trouble. The Nazis. And various other groups.

Neil: Yeah, I mean, there are evil spirits with supernatural strength, called Rakshasas in India. Some are even awake.

Neil: That doesn’t mean that the forces of creation, forces of destruction don’t coexist. They do coexist.

Rick: Right. Yeah, Ravana in the Ramayana was said to be a highly evolved being who was on the verge of enlightenment, but he was an asura, a dark entity. He was a negative dude and causing a lot of trouble. And then, when Rama finally killed him, then he got liberated, right there.

Neil: That’s a great story.

Rick: Yeah, it’s puzzling though, because this gets us back to the morality thing. I have this kind of quaint notion that higher evolution correlates with a kind of saintliness. You become a good person, you become kind, compassionate, you don’t harm people, you radiate a positive influence and yet, you hear instances like that, of some being who is very highly evolved and who is playing a destructive role, even hurting and harming lots of people. And I guess maybe, I don’t know, what do you want to say about that?

Neil: Waking up does not destroy immoral behavior, quite the opposite. Waking up is a separate line of development. And can it develop after waking up? There’s got to be some seeds there, but keep growing up after waking up because I don’t believe that morality is a function of consciousness.

Rick: More a function of personality development or something.

Neil: I think it operates at certain stages. Learning to be a good human being is best to do before you wake up.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve heard others say that, too. Was it you whom I heard say that attaining higher levels of consciousness magnifies both the positive and negative qualities of your personality, or did I hear that somewhere else?

Neil: That’s totally true. That is something I learned in Judaism.

Rick: Okay, yeah, you mentioned Judaism.

Neil: Judaism teaches that there is something that sits on your shoulder, metaphorically speaking, which is the good inclination to do good, and the opposite shoulder, the evil inclination to do harm. These are part of our existence as a human being and they grow with greater consciousness.

Rick: So, the more you evolve, the stronger both of these little beings become.

Neil: Correct. So, you can do incredible harm as an enlightened being if the evil inclination grows.

Rick: That is very interesting. Do you think that incredible harm, if you could zoom out far enough, would be in the interest of evolution of the universe? In fact, would you say that everything that happens, if you could zoom out far enough, is part of the evolutionary trajectory of the universe?

Neil: There are astrophysicists who have predicted that the next galaxy close to the Earth will collide with the Milky Way galaxy.

Rick: Andromeda, it’s coming.

Neil: So, I can imagine the immense catastrophic destruction.

Rick: Actually, there won’t be. The stars are so far apart that there will be very few collisions. There will just be a big mushing together, and it will all get misshapen for a while, and it will eventually turn into another spiral galaxy, once all the gravitational forces have worked themselves out.

Neil: You know better than I do.

Rick: Yeah, I study this stuff a little bit.

Neil: It could be that big. We’re living in a small body, in a small planet, in a small part of the galaxy, as part of the universe that is immense. So, to believe that we have this specialness is an illusion.

Rick: Yeah, I would agree with that. You think that the reason that what we were just talking about, the good angel and the bad angel on our shoulders is a possible explanation for why so many gurus who appear to have pretty significant gifts, highly evolved, radiate Shakti, eloquent and charismatic and so on, end up turning out to be sexual predators or scoundrels in some way? Is that because the bad angel has gotten strong along with the good angel, and he kind of wins the day for this particular person?

Neil: This touches on moral development again. And the idea that these traditions, these Eastern traditions and Western traditions, have not trained morality in certain groups.

Rick: Right, they just grew up in an ashram doing spiritual practice and didn’t really have a lot of temptations for one thing.

Neil: Yeah, and I heard of a Buddhist monk recently talking about how in Tibet sexual activity with a young boy is very common.

Rick: I’ve heard that too.

Rick: In Thailand also.

Neil: Ao the morality has got to be part of the teaching.

Rick: But what you are saying is that if it isn’t, perhaps there is a danger, there is even a greater danger as you evolve.

Neil: I would say don’t wake up if you’re cruel…

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Because you can become pretty nasty.

Rick: It has taken me a while to kind of accept that, but I have been pondering it for years, because there are so many examples that force you to ponder it. And it has been hard for me to give up my notion of highly evolved people just being more saintly and spontaneously losing their negative tendencies.

Neil: It happens when you reach the celestial chakra, the sixth chakra. If you have a positive personality and a positive soul, and you have integrated it well, then transcending it to waking up, it becomes a force for good. But that requires an integration.

Rick: Yeah. This is from Mark in the UK. From your work as a therapist, was it your experience that mental emotional problems are always rooted in some subtle body disharmony, or are there certain problems that are wholly physical such as brain chemistry imbalances?

Neil: Yes, certain problems are totally physical, and certain problems are based on the astral, mental body, emotional thinking processes. And there are some that come from past lifetimes. Some of them are imposed by rotten childhoods.

Rick: So, when you were a therapist, working in Los Angeles, and you could tell that your client who was coming in with his problem sprang from bad past lifetimes or something wrong with his astral body, how did you prescribe any kind of treatment without seeming like a nutcase?

Neil: Right, so you have got to work silently. One of my lifetimes was as an energy healer in China. So, I would work with moving energy through the different channels silently without talking to the person. And I would do that kind of work with clients while I’m doing therapy.

Rick: So, he might be lying on the couch or if you had your patients lie on a couch and telling you, spilling his guts, telling you his life story. Meanwhile, you’re messing around with his subtle body and so on.

Neil: Oh, true, yeah.

Rick: That’s good. Okay, they got a lot for their money’s worth that they didn’t know they were getting.

Neil: Good comment.

Rick: How would you define the soul? You said the soul is always there, it is never not there, even between lifetimes. It is always becoming, evolving, it is distinct from the being or unchanging nature of pure awareness. So, we have unchanging pure awareness, universal consciousness. We all share that, it is our common ground, but then we have individual souls. What is that, individual soul? What is it made of? And I think I’ve heard you say it is immortal or eternal. It is never going to cease to exist.

Neil: No, it will last forever.

Rick: You and I, this universe will collapse and there will be some other universe eventually. Our souls will still be kicking around.

Neil: Hopefully.

Rick: Yeah, so what is it?

Neil: The soul is individual, it is also collective. Not just individual, it’s collective too. It is evolving and growing and unfolding, lifetime after lifetime. And it is sort of on a guided path to being more complete.

Rick: More complete, okay.

Neil: More complete, more full. Is it going to end? I don’t believe it ever ends. But what is its nature? It is formed between absolute consciousness and physical consciousness. It’s mediating the two. It sort of arrives with my… I should talk for myself because talking about things theoretically is not going to be helpful. Talking about myself, I remember coming into this body as a soul. So that was shortly before birth. It is after conception but before birth. And arriving in this world as a soul, and the soul has been with me through the entire lifetime. I remember coming into this body as a soul and then going through the different stages of psychological development and physical development while the soul was guiding the process and it is still doing it. Who am I? I’m free. The soul is transparent to me.

Rick: So, you are deeper than the soul, more fundamental than the soul?

Neil: Pure consciousness, our divinity is more fundamental. It is infinite.

Rick: Infinite meaning unending, is that what you mean?

Neil: Unending.

Rick: Right, okay. When you think about the reincarnation process, I mean, for instance, people like Meher Baba had this whole explanation in his book, God Speaks, about how everything evolves up through, to higher and higher forms, like rocks and then little amoebas and bugs and plants and some lower life forms and more evolved life forms. But the problem is, the math doesn’t work out if each of those has a soul that eventually evolves up to becoming a human being. Because, for example, in a spoonful of earth, you have probably millions of little microbes, and yet in our yard we have trillions of them, I imagine, but there are only two human beings on the property. So, do all these little individual souls that these microbes and things have, if they have them, conglomerate as more complex evolved beings come into form? Or maybe like a jellyfish is actually many, many different cells or a human being is many, many different, trillions of different cells were?

Neil: I got you. Yeah, how would I describe my experience of this? Once upon a time elephants roamed this planet. Now there are very few left. Where have they gone? Have they gone into human vehicles? No, they have gone to another planetary system.

Rick: Oh, okay. So, they are not ready to become humans. They have to be elephants, but there aren’t enough elephant bodies. So, they had to go to some other planetary system.

Neil: There are some other systems that may be more advanced than human beings. It doesn’t mean that they can end up as human beings. Whereas most cats and dogs pass on, and if they are individuated enough, if they have character and personality, they might incarnate in a human form, perhaps.

Rick: Or they might come back as a cat or a dog.

Neil: Yes. I’m not sure about this conglomerate idea, I’ve never experienced that.

Rick: Yeah, okay. But actually, what your statement raises is another question, which is how much interchange do you feel there is between different other planets, different other realms? I mean, is the Earth just one of a thousand different potential stopping places that people happen to incarnate on or not, depending on the appropriateness of the available bodies?

Neil: Well, I can talk about this from the level of knowing.

Rick: Okay that’s what we like.

Neil: So, knowing tells me that 70 percent of the humans on this planet are part of human consciousness.

Rick: Seventy percent?

Neil: Thirty percent are from other systems.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: So, some of them are bringing us down. Some of us are raising us up. But you know, that is the balance of humanity.

Rick: So, when you say other systems, does that mean that they just incarnated here for the first time? Or have they been from, let’s say, the Pleiades or whatever, and they have gone through numerous human lifetimes as Pleiadians in human bodies?

Neil: Yes, some have been here for a couple of lifetimes, some are just the first lifetime.

Rick: Okay.

Neil: Some are going to move on quickly and some are going to stick around here. As one of my dear friends said that, this planet has the best food in the galaxy.

Rick: Sounds like the Hitchhiker’s Guide, you know, Douglas Adams, the restaurant at the end of the universe. Well, that is hard to believe, considering the food that we have here, but good to know. I can read you some titles of some of the episodes of your podcast, and let me do that for a few minutes. I’ll just read you titles, and you tell me if you’d like to delve into the subject matter of those, okay? So, we’ve already covered a bunch. There was a three-part series, Living as an Individual, Living as a Soul, and Living as Spirit. Do you remember what you talked about in those and do you want to say anything more about that or have we covered it?

Neil: I think I can talk about it. So, evolution, there are chakras, symbolically speaking, below the muladhara, the chakra, at the base of the spine. Those chakras are for the evolution of minerals, plants and animal life. And then human development begins with the muladhara chakra, moves all the way up to the Ajna, the sixth chakra.

Rick: So, let me interrupt. So, a tree, for instance, would have a certain set of chakras that are more basic or fundamental than the seven chakras humans have. It wouldn’t be any overlap. We don’t have tree chakras and trees don’t have human chakras. Is that correct?

Neil: Trees have chakras below the human.

Rick: Below the human, okay.

Neil: Except for individual trees that are ancient, very old and highly developed.

Rick: Highly evolved, yeah.

Neil: Yes, so I find myself talking to the trees, so to speak, as the song goes. And the trees are talking to me. There is life in the tree and personality in the tree, but only very large ancient trees. Beyond the human form is the divine levels of consciousness which begins with waking up and moves through higher and higher planes.

Rick: Are you saying that there is a whole other set of chakras above the human set?

Neil: Seven, seven of them, yeah.

Rick: Seven higher ones?

Neil: Yes, starting with this chakra.

Rick: Right. And so, a celestial being would have those chakras, which a human would not?

Neil: Unless they were aware.

Rick: Unless they were aware. Okay. So, remaining in a human body, if you get highly evolved enough, do you begin to wake up in those higher, post-human or above the human chakras?

Neil: Certainly, yeah. So, consciousness does not stop with waking up, it just begins there.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: In divine consciousness. This is the realm of divinity. Divinity’s consciousness.

Rick: It kind of reminds me of my friend David Buckland who talks about these levels of realization of Brahman, Parabrahman, and then pure divinity. And I never know quite what he’s talking about, but it sounds nice.

Neil: Yeah, it kind of fits there. This is a symbolic way of understanding it, you know? Not to get stuck in the chakra as a body, as a vehicle. It’s just an image of what is there.

Rick: Yeah, I get the impression that it is a kind of an energy center or a kind of a locus of intelligence. Like for instance, the heart chakra, I mean, you might have a kind of a dead heart chakra, not much going on there, and at a certain point it opens up and you start experiencing a lot of love and bliss and compassion and things like that, right? And there is actually something going on there in the subtle body, some kind of purification, or enlivenment.

Neil: Right, so the etheric body is communicating with the astral body.

Rick: Mm-hmm.

Neil: And up until the buddhic body, which operates through these systems and empties through the heart.

Rick: Well, that is something you could probably elaborate on for half an hour, but actually I should remind people that a lot of this stuff is covered in greater detail in your podcast series, so if people are finding this interesting. You can consider this interview to be kind of a teaser for the podcast series, because you have a lot more time to elaborate. It must be fifteen hours-worth of recordings there now in your podcast. Okay, so I’m just moving along here. So, some more podcast titles. Into the Astral Plane sounds like Flash Gordon. We’ve discussed that a bit. People travel in the astral plane after dropping their bodies. Several friends who recently died and their experiences of travelling through the bardos or planes. Want to say anything about that? Common misunderstandings about the astral planes, also?

Neil: The misunderstanding is that the lower form of the astral plane is where less evolution happens, the higher form of the astral plane is, you know, is fairly clear and clean. I think I’ve mentioned my physical body becoming transparent and astral projecting. So that was very clear. So, Into the Astral Plane, for me was that was the experience of astral projecting. But I’m aware of the astral plane without astral projecting, since I’m there now.

Rick: Yes, and so what do you perceive when you are aware of it here now? What do you see? What do you see in there? Other beings?

Neil: Yeah, lots of beings telling me what to say and tell you.

Rick: Telling me, too?

Neil: Yeah, telling me to tell you.

Rick: Oh, I see, so in other words they are taking an interest in our conversation. There are certain things they want communicated.

Neil: Correct. Like you know, tell me about my mother, how she’s doing. Tell me about my cousin, to let me know that I’m okay. There is a lot going on.

Rick: Yeah, so when you went there and visited your mother after she died, was it just you and your mother, or was there a bunch of other people around and “hey, we got an earthling here! Let’s get him to…” you know?

Neil: No, it was just me and my mother. I just kept it focused.

Rick: okay

Neil: Yeah, I block out other beings.

Rick: Are those beings, like, restless and needy, like they want something from you or they are kind of attracted to somebody who can be aware of their presence?

Neil: Kind of like they heard lower astral plane and came to bug me.

Rick: Yeah, do you have a way of filtering that out so it doesn’t, so it’s not hassling you?

Neil: Yes, I just put attention elsewhere.

Rick: Yeah, okay, similarly, if you go and astral travel and you are visiting some astral plane, and you don’t want to mess around with the people who just sort of want something from you, but you might have a mission. You’re like, you would like to commune with some higher beings, who you could learn something from.

Neil: Like Swamiji

Rick: Yeah, like him. Okay, let’s use him as an example. So how many times have you visited him?

Neil: Twenty.

Rick: Plenty, did you say?

Neil: Twenty.

Rick: Oh, twenty. And how long do you stay there? And what do you talk about?

Neil: Usually, it’s for guidance or communing or sharing. You know, he is highly evolved, except on the astral plane. That is where he was incarnated, because he needs evolution there.

Rick: Ha. So, in other words, by the standards of the astral plane, he is not as highly evolved as he was by Earth standards. Is that what you’re saying?

Neil: No, that is because he was arrogant and condescending and sexist.

Rick: On the Earth plane?

Neil: And enlightened and a great giver of Shakti and beauty. But, when he left the physical body, he left that shadow stuff behind.

Rick: Ah, so he wasn’t sexist or…

Neil: No.

Rick: condescending anymore.

Neil: But now he is working on developing that part of himself that is conscious of morality, healing and giving.

Rick: So that presumably if he came back, he would be a more well-rounded human being without those negative qualities?

Neil: Correct, although one would imagine him not necessarily choosing to come back to this planet.

Rick: Huh, okay. You think he’s beyond needing to?

Neil: Yeah, it’s a choice.

Rick: Is it always or are we compelled to come back if this is where we need to be?

Neil: Whether you’re compelled, if you haven’t finished the journey, you don’t have a choice.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: The lords of karma have created the structure so that the human soul will incarnate, will fall asleep and then be incarnated.

Rick: Right. Involuntarily, if this is what they need to have.

Neil: Yeah, but if you achieve a certain level, then you have a choice.

Rick: Okay. So, what do you think about some of these so-called “ascended masters” like Jesus? Or some people say they see Ramana Maharshi comes to them, or Yogananda interacted with Sri Yukteswar after his guru, Sri Yukteswar died. You mentioned that the soul never dies. Do you think that that is what happens to some of these highly evolved beings? They just end up being ascended masters and work from that level, never having to come back to the earth plane, they just can kind of intervene from on high, so to speak?

Neil: Big question, because my awareness is that sooner or later one is incarnated somewhere in the galaxy, or in the galaxies.

Rick: Somewhere, yeah. Meaning by incarnate you mean in a more concrete form.

Neil: Yeah.

Rick: Because you are incarnate if you are just in the astral level, you are still incarnate in an astral body.

Neil: Right, or a mental body or a buddhic body. There are beings whose consciousness just incarnates to the mental body and then they go back up. They don’t have more than that aspect to the development.

Rick: I see.

Neil: But they can usually reach much higher than human evolution.

Rick: And I suppose it is not only a matter of what they need, it is a matter of how they can be useful.

Neil: Always.

Rick: You know, where they may be needed.

Neil: Well, we are all being used.

Rick: Right.

Neil: We are all a function of consciousness operating.

Rick: Incidentally, your wife Connie wrote a book called Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, and there is an episode that you do in the podcast. We have kind of talked about that, about shadow material stored in the subtle body and so on, about how a person could be highly evolved and yet still have a lot of darkness in their personality.

Neil: Each one of the chakras is supposed to contain shadow material.

Rick: Huh, which can and should be purged or cleansed?

Neil: As long as you have lived in that body for a while and you have got in that part of your character, you have a connection with it. You have resolved some of the issues. You a re skipping it like most, a lot of people move straight from an individual to the seventh chakra to the awakening. Then you have all these complexes and issues in the chakras that are above you.

Rick: Yeah, spiritual bypassing it’s sometimes called.

Neil: Spiritual bypass. Yeah.

Rick: Yeah, too cosmic to be absolved of or to be beyond the possibility of making mistakes.

Neil: Yeah, beyond the evil inclination.

Rick: And it is interesting in that quote, because barley flour would be a very fine thing. So, in a way he is saying you have to get more precise. You know, the more vast your awareness becomes, the more fine-tuned you need to be.

Neil: Very few religious traditions emphasize that.

Rick: Very few.

Neil: Judaism is one that I found emphasizes that.

Rick: That is good.

Neil: The higher you get, the Tzaddik, who is the enlightened being, is supposed to be very careful about anything that they do.

Rick: Razor’s edge.

Neil: Razor’s edge.

Rick: Yeah, and the reason I bring that point up is that I try to live by it myself to the best I can. And I just feel it’s an important point for people to understand, because everyone who is listened to the show is a spiritual aspirant of some kind. And it is good to drill that thought into our heads to save ourselves a lot of grief. That is also why I helped to establish that organization, which Connie is a member of, the Association for Spiritual Integrity. It needs to be more commonly understood, I think, in contemporary spirituality for things to go more smoothly and successfully for everybody.  I don’t think we have totally covered this. Debunking the myths of enlightenment. We have covered some of it, but what do you see as some common myths or understandings about enlightenment which you feel are erroneous?

Neil: If you are in cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness, some higher level of consciousness, you will automatically do right action.

Rick: Right.

Neil: That is a myth. It is one of the most serious myths out there. You know, that needs to be debunked.

Rick: Yeah. So, let’s say you are in one of those states of consciousness. What is the motivator or impetus of your action?

Neil: It is naturally spontaneous.

Rick: But what is prompting it? What is triggering it, your actions?

Neil: Pure awareness is triggering your actions, but as I said, Rakshasas can be enlightened as well. So, one always needs to filter it through moral development, which is a whole separate line of development.

Rick: Yeah. So, it is not just that cosmic intelligence and its infinite goodness is using you as an instrument for its divine purposes, you could be in a fairly high state of consciousness and yet have all kinds of twisted wiring that is causing you to misbehave, and that is garbling perhaps the impulses of cosmic intelligence.

Neil: Belonging in a community of spiritual equals is good, because then you have people who can check up and tell you that is wrong behavior.

Rick: Yeah. It can be handy to be married, too, by the same token. You got a mirror there that’s going to…

Neil: Yeah, marriage is probably the one of the most complex spiritually development tool that you can have.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Very powerful.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, I was like some kind of a monk for about 15 years before I got married and hanging around a bunch of other guys who were living that life. And you could get pretty weird without anybody calling you on your stuff, you know? You could get deep into your idiosyncrasies and your obsessions and so on. And I have seen it even in other traditions. One time I visited a Catholic monastery that the TM movement was considering buying, and there were some monks there who just seemed like total oddballs. They just didn’t have any kind of balancing influence or something on their lives.

Neil: Yeah, so the path of the householder is probably one of the best paths for this reason. You want to have children, have them. They can really force evolution. And have a good calling or purpose to help humanity.

Rick: We kind of glossed over it, but that sort of saved your life when you were a lot younger, and you were just like a meditation fanatic and you were wasting away and getting very weak and sick and uh…

Neil: Yeah, I was meditating five or six hours a day and I was getting sicker and sicker, to the point that I went to see the spiritual master. He told me, I want you to have sex with as many women as you like. I said, I’m not interested. I can get you an enormous amount of power. I said, no, I’m not interested. How about money? I said, no, I’m not interested. He said, you’re going to die in four months.

Rick: Interesting.

Neil: What I need to do is not die in four months. He said, go find a partner, have sex. Follow your career, get married.

Rick: Yeah, get grounded

Neil: Get grounded. I did for 20 years

Rick: Any other myths of enlightenment that you want to cover? We can move on if not.

Neil: Yeah, let’s move on.

Rick: Some people say that an enlightened person feels pain, but doesn’t suffer. In other words, I guess they’re detached. So, some say that Jesus didn’t suffer. His body felt pain, but he was in the realm of bliss. So, he didn’t suffer. Do you distinguish between pain and suffering?

Neil: I do. I remember sitting in the satsang group with you and having a migraine. And concentrating my attention on being, getting awake, with the migrane.

Rick: I hope I didn’t give you that migraine.

Neil: No, it took me about an hour and a half. But I woke up and the migraine was gone.

Rick: Really? You had an awakening there in the satsang group and the migraine was gone?

Neil: The migraine was gone. So, you know, I notice if I have a headache, if I put attention on the cosmos or the galaxy, it’s gone. I bring my attention to the body, to the headaches there. So, suffering is optional. Pain is not optional, the body is going to experience it.

Rick: So, let’s say you had a bad car accident or you suffered third-degree burns for some reason or something like that, and so, there was a lot of pain in your body that you weren’t going to be able to skip out on, how would you deal with that?

Neil: Well probably be present with it, as much as possible. Some form of good drugs like morphine.

Rick: yeah right!

Neil: So, take me out of the body awareness. I would probably be meditating a lot and moving my attention to subtle bodies. But you know there’s that distinction between sitting with a headache and or a terrible pain, being present with it – but not suffering.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: In the moment, because you’re expanded enough that your consciousness is not bound by a specific point or pain. In fact, pain can actually help you to wake up, as it did for me in the Satsang.

Rick: Yeah, there is a story about Sri Ramakrishna where he was dying of cancer or something and one of his disciples came to him and he said to him, “Sir, everyone says you are suffering so much, but I see you, you were in bliss.” And Sri Ramakrishna said, “Aha! The rascal has found me out.”

Neil: That’s great.

Rick: Yeah. A nice section about service as a path, if you want to say anything about that.

Neil: Yeah, I can talk about psychologists or being a psychotherapist and how it helped me to evolve because it had a lot to do with being highly centered. So, it took my attention away from my ego and my self-preoccupation and focused the whole day on other people. It has a lot of rules, ethical rules that are not optional, They are compulsory.

Rick: Yeah, you lose your license or even go to jail if you break them.

Neil: Correct. So, you learn to be compassionate and ethical in your behavior. And it’s really wonderful to have a career or a vocation that helps you to be conscious of loving kindness and empathy and honesty. One thing, you can’t charge too much money, because that would be abusive to the other person. And this doesn’t matter, there are many careers and many vocations that offer this path of opening the heart, throat, and the brow chakras.

Rick: And of course, you know, I mean, you could be a Walmart greeter or something and brighten people’s day. You know, that could be a service role.

Neil: Right, that opens the heart, opens a new connection.

Rick: Yeah.

Neil: Even love animals.

Rick: Yeah. There’s this guy named Eli Recht whom I interviewed a couple of months ago, and he’s a psychotherapist down in San Diego. And he charges a reasonable fee for his psychotherapy sessions, and that’s how he supports himself. But he also does spiritual work and counseling with people all over the world, especially since his Batgap interview. And you know, I think he comes on a sort of a voluntary donation basis. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to give, but he gives all the money to an animal shelter. He’s like given them $3,000 since his Batgap interview. And he just says it’s wonderful.

Neil: You do good work, Rick.

Rick: Yeah. It’s a nice balance. And of course, there are so many different ways in which we can be of service. But it is a standard spiritual path, seva. And it is highly advocated by many spiritual teachers as a way of making us less egotistical and more heart oriented and more compassionate and so on. It can be a powerful practice.

Neil: Yes, it is good to be in service to all beings.

Rick: Okay, here is somebody named Josh Davis from LA. I don’t know if he means Louisiana or Los Angeles. The question is, what is the relationship between consciousness and the body/heart? In other words, the physical body and the emotional nature. My experience with consciousness has been mostly or only in the upper space of my head, whereas my body/heart may feel afflicted. Does the body/heart – he’s using a slash there, body slash heart – have consciousness? Does the body/heart have consciousness?

Neil: Right. My experience is that the body is as important as the subtle realms or as consciousness. In fact, the body is consciousness. So, my body is not local. It’s not just local. It’s here in this room. It’s with you, Rick, in your living room. It’s on the other side of the planet. It’s on the other side of the galaxy. So, you need to develop being grounded in the body, because it is what opens up all of these amazing experiences. It is not essential for being awake or being enlightened, but it is essential for higher levels. Or after that.

Rick: So, just to make sure that is clear, I just want you to elaborate a little bit more. So, what you are saying is: it is essential that you be grounded in the physical body as you develop these subtler awarenesses or openness to subtler bodies. Is that what you said or did I miss it?

Neil: Yeah, no, it’s more complex than that.

Rick: Yeah, I didn’t quite get it.

Neil: The physical body is pure consciousness. It’s…

Rick: In the sense that everything is, right? The bed is pure consciousness.

Neil: Everything is pure consciousness.

Rick: Right.

Neil: So being aware of the physical body as pure consciousness means that you are not bound to the locality. Your physical body can be in another galaxy.

Rick: Your subtle body? I mean, the other galaxy is, let’s say, stars and planets and all that other stuff, which are essentially pure consciousness. But just as your physical body is pure consciousness, but that’s like saying, okay, a grapefruit in your refrigerator is pure consciousness, but so the grapefruit is also in another galaxy because it is pure consciousness, and that doesn’t make sense.

Neil: No, pure consciousness in the body is also personal. I have a master in another galaxy that I can be with. He has been my guide for the last seven lifetimes and he is not in this galaxy, but I can go visit him. So, is that physical? In part it feels physical, it is not this body. This body is in the room here now while I’m with him in another galaxy.

Rick: So, you have heard the term complementarity in physics, where a particle or a photon can change its polarity on one side of the galaxy and its counterpart, that it has split off from or something, instantly changes on the other side of the galaxy, and they have proven this. So, there is some level at which it is not constrained by the speed of light, and everything is kind of correlated on that level. So, when you talk this way, it sounds to me like you are talking about that kind of thing. Because otherwise it would be absurd to say that your flesh and blood physical body, which is here and will eventually die, is two million light years away in some other subtle level that is somehow functioning there.

Neil: Almas talks about the vajra body.

Rick: Right.

Neil: Which is the…

Rick: Diamond body.

Neil: It is a diamond body. It’s physical, but it is immortal.

Rick: Yeah, but it must be subtle. It is not like liver and spleen and lungs and intestines.

Neil: I had this idea that maybe in the next lifetime or when I evolve enough, that I will be able to manifest my perception in this physical world even though I don’t have a physical body. Not my action, my perception.

Rick: In this physical world, the one you are in now?

Neil: Yeah.

Rick: Well sure you will. I mean if you die, like your mother did, there are a lot of people who live on some other level who can tune into what we are doing here. Is that what you mean?

Neil: Right. That is what I mean.

Rick: Yeah. That seems fairly common, from what you hear anyway, that they are watching over us and messing with us sometimes. We have been jumping around a little bit from topic to topic, not necessarily a perfectly logical sequence, but who cares? It’s been a nice sampling, I think, of different insights that I got from listening to your podcast series and that I have been thinking about myself for a long time and it’s fun to hash them out with you.

Neil: Thank you.

Rick: Yeah. And so, as I said in the beginning, I’ll put links to your podcast series on, I already have created a page for your interview on Batgap and it will link to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and there are other places you can get it. And if people enjoyed this interview, I encourage you to listen to that podcast if you are in the habit of listening to podcasts.

Neil: Thank you, Rick.

Rick: So, thank you and Connie both. And she does an excellent job, by the way, in your podcast. I think she asks great questions and very intelligent comments and so on. So, it’s really, it’s been a lot of fun to listen to.

Neil: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Rick: Alrighty. So, hope to see you again in person one of these days if I ever get out to Los Angeles if you’re still there.

Neil: Yeah, come and visit.

Rick: I will.

Neil: All right. Take care.

Rick: I’ll bring the dogs. All right. Thanks, Neil. Thanks everybody who has been listening or watching and the next one will be with Diane Hennessey Powell. I interviewed her a couple weeks ago, but we ended up not using that one. So, we are going to redo it next week. And she is the chief scientist on the Telepathy Tapes podcast, and which is currently one of the most popular podcasts in the world for obvious reasons. If you listen to it, you’ll see why. So, we’re going to talk about the whole science behind the Telepathy Tapes next time. All right, thanks everybody.