This rough draft generated by Otter.ai contains errors. If you would like to correct them, or join our team of volunteer proofreaders, please contact me.
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. This is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening or awake people. For more information are to help support our efforts go to batgap.com. My guest today is Hamid Ali, or ah, almost his pen name. I’ve had him on the show before. And I really enjoy talking to Hamid, I really enjoyed our last conversation which I just listened to again the other day. And Hamid has written a new book called runaway realization, which we’ll be talking about today. And as some of you know, this is the first time we’ve experimented with doing a live stream of the interview. So there’s about 35 people on line right now watching and listening to this. And you’ll be able to send in questions on the upcoming interviews page of batgap.com. There’s a forum into which you can put your questions. And then I have a fellow monitoring those who will send me some of them later in the in the interview. So, Hamid, well, welcome. First of all, thanks for doing this.
A.H. Almaas: Good to talk to you again.
Rick Archer: Great to talk to you again. One of the reasons I enjoyed talking to you, among many is that, in a way, you and I have a similar attitude or perspective on things, which is that realization never ends, Discovery never ends awaken awakenings, degrees of Enlightenment never never end. And that’s sort of implicit in the title of your book, runaway realization. Yeah. So I think, you know, perhaps you and I will cover some of the same points in this interview, as we did in the last one, because you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And we’re too old dogs who enjoy, you know, saying the same things over and over again, to a certain extent. But maybe we’ll start by having you tell us if you can, what is new in this book, than in your previous books? Or perhaps even might be something new since we last spoke? And then I have a lot of notes and questions and all that I’ll be asking you.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, this book is actually a departure from the series of books I’ve had published before a series of books that I have published before. Basically, they go through the teachings, they teach, and as various segments, various stages, various kinds of realization goes in a kind of progression to a deeper, deeper and subtler, more complete way. This book sort of takes, doesn’t continue the same direction. But so turn takes like a right angle, and exit that way of looking at things and look at them, from what I call a non hierarchical perspective, not seeing things as something deeper than other or something more advanced than others, it’s a shift of point of view. And rather than thinking about it, in this book, what I thought is important to write about, which is rarely, I think, discussed in spiritual book is, what is the relationship of practice and actual awakening? What does what, what makes awakening happen? What does awakening or realization get into definition of those? What are what’s the dynamic I call the dynamic of realization in the book. So I does discuss I lead up to an assault on the book, I discuss various thing about what make in the motivation for practice, the goal of practice, all these things that people think about in terms of taking us on a spiritual path, or a particular practice, and look at them from first from the ordinary perspective that most people do. And then from the pack, from the perspective, realization sell from oil, what does that look like? And then until I get to the place where I can discuss what I call the dynamic of realization, which is, what are the forces there? How do things happen? Do we really achieve realization by our own effort and study altogether? Or is it some other force some spiritual forces that are responsible for our personal lives? issue between the two, that’s really the core of the new message in the book is time to communicate that and discuss some detail and illuminated so, so that way everybody, whatever practice the they are engaging, they can look at their practice in a deeper and more meaningful way and to see what’s and nothing can help people their practice a great deal of attitude, orientation, dedication. And from that, of course, then I go on, as we understand the dynamic of realization. What is the view that arises about reality and awakening? And what is it? What is what does it mean experience or the realization and that’s when we talk about the endlessness of it. That’s, you know, I basically bring in that position that many people teaching take that they have a goal, what they call the ultimate, and discuss how, even though there are people who believe there are different ways of talking about the same thing I go on to say, that’s not really exactly so there are people talking really about really different coverage vs. Each one of them in terms of different kinds of emphasis, at least. And then I don’t critique those ways of experiencing reality as ultimate, I agree with them, actually. And so I’ve taken the view, the view is not that this ultimate is more ultimate than that, it’s more like each one of them is really ultimate, because, you know, reality manifests itself in different ways. And each one of them can be experienced as ultimate. That’s brings in the question of what I call runaway realization, that realization way, continuous revealing, not meaning progressively getting deeper or more free, but different kinds of, you know, freedom, different kinds of awakening. Because reality has many ways it shows itself.
Rick Archer: There are about 20 questions I could ask you based on what you just said, but um, maybe a real fundamental simple one we should start with is what is realization we’re throwing around the term? And you just said there could be many flavors of it and so on. But if if we had to boil it down to one essential definition, how would you define it?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so for me, realization means being, what we truly are, being the truth, the fundamental nature or the spiritual nature, whatever, where we being it and a non dual way, living it. So realization, I differentiate a little bit from Awakening, wakening meaning you wake up, you realize, oh, things are different. I am not what I thought I was realization mean, you really identify what it is that you are, and not only identify it and discern that clearly. But you’re certain that that’s who you are, and you’re really living it. Living adapt.
Rick Archer: So most people, if you ask them what they are, they’ll say, Well, I’m Joe, you know, and I live in California, and I have this job, and I have this family, and I have this body, and I’m so old, and they describe all these relative things about themselves. But how would you, you know, but if Joe were realized being how would you expect Joe to answer that question, instead of the kinds of things I just said,
A.H. Almaas: it does depend on which path they are following. See, that’s that’s one polar thing I mentioned in the book, they happen to be following the Sufi path, they will say, I realize I am a pure soul that is in union with the Divine that there is no separation between me and the divine. If you follow the Vedantists path, then say I realized that I am pure consciousness and everything is consciousness. If you’re a Buddhist, you say, I realize that there is no self image, it’s really emptiness, the emptiness of everything is what reality is. So you can even say what I am doesn’t actually make sense in Buddhism. So there are many depending. So I’m saying all of these are valid. And each one of them is true realization is freedom.
Rick Archer: So would you say that those three descriptions and other ones that we might give are essentially synonymous This are identical to one another, they’re just put in different terminology according to the tradition, because ultimately if realization is being who you really are, you know is who a Buddhist really is different than who Sufi really is, or who a Hindu really is, essentially, we are all the same, the same ultimate reality, right? Although we might describe it differently.
A.H. Almaas: No, I’m saying something different, okay? Which is that in some very mysterious way, we are the same. The way we experience it is different, not the way we describe it. Our experience was actually different. The experience of emptiness is different from the experience of pure consciousness. You see, when you experience emptiness, feel that everything doesn’t really exist. It’s all sort of, including ones nature, if I was an agent itself is non existence itself. The non existence of everything is one’s nature. That’s not what you know, Vedanta talks about or the dawn talks about satchidananda, that we are pure. Being in pure consciousness and bliss. There are really, there are commonalities experience of emptiness has also blessed. But that doesn’t say it’s pure Being This being is really, still conceptual. You see, so I think of them are, are all experiences of realization of awakening, but they’re really different ways of experiencing it. And that is one of the main points in the book I’m trying to make, that the different traditions are not just traveling different roads, to the same thing. They’re not all climbing the same mountain to the top of the mountain. It’s more like when they, when they climb the mountain, they get to the top of the mountain, they see different vistas. There are similarities, a lot of similarities and the stuff that comes over all of them comes out with with love and compassion, and humility, and all of that. But what they experienced to be the essence of reality, not as subtle, and people could say philosophical differences, but they are really important distinctions. Which is the reason why in history, there are debates like, you know, between the Vedanta or the Hindu and the Buddha, there have been debates about who’s right, they didn’t have the debate, because they have different ways of seeing if they’re really experienced differently.
Rick Archer: Well, that implies to meet to my mind that they are still like the blind men and the elephant kind of experience experiencing different aspects of the same thing. But according to their vantage point, having a different experience. It’s like, you know, five people looking at the same tree, but they have different degrees of colorblindness or something. And so they’re not all having the same experience, even though the tree is what it is in of itself. And actually, just to throw on one more thing I’ve heard it said that according to one’s makeup, that the this concurs with what you’re saying that the reality will be experienced differently by different people. So in in Ayurvedic terms, for instance, if you had a more Kapha constitution or more vata constitution, you know, one person might experience more vastness and one more bliss, and when different so called qualities of the absolute are experienced in different proportions, according to one’s nervous system, according to one’s physiological makeup, and even the Vedic rishis, you know, each had a different kind of slice of the Vedic wisdom that they were capable of cognizing and that other species were not capable of cognizing. So they’re all kind of picking out a certain nugget of fundamental reality and giving expression to that.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. And that’s true. That’s part of what I’m saying. But I’m also saying, that is the nature of things. There’s nothing wrong with that there is no limitation in the person. It’s just reality just manifest differently in different situations and different people. And also, it is not possible to know all the phases of reality. No, no one human being can encompass all of it, because it’s infinite. And there are ways of experiencing the nature of reality that nobody has experienced yet. And yet to be experienced. So that’s what I’m saying runaway realization we discover Continuous discovery hardly means discovering things already been discovered before. But also may include discovering things that haven’t been discovered before. Because the potential because it’s not like, at some point we will know the final nature of reality in a complete way and answer the question, if you could just stay there. There isn’t the true nature of reality, which are the call the true nature of consciousness or awareness or whatever is always appearing in one way or another. And you can’t say what is the word can’t appear itself without a face? And the answer is no. When it appears that the face is unrecognizable?
Rick Archer: Would you say that God or reality, whatever term you want to use, actually needs the human being in order to know itself, that we’re like instruments through which reality can know itself and that’s why we exist.
A.H. Almaas: That’s another part of the book that I also try to make explicit, which some teaching, you know, talk about some teaching, don’t discuss, which is that, yeah, the Sufis was one Sufi saying ethnography, one knowing their cheerful Al Akbar, the great grand sheep, who said, God needs the soul as much as the soul needs God. And the idea of God, the soul needs gods to be to exist. But God needs us all for God to know what it is. So the soul is like, an organ of perception, or a lens, for all reality, for it, to have experience to know itself. And both are real, the two sides of the same thing, and we can go into the subtlety of that, you see, and I don’t adhere to the people don’t believe the people who say, the soul or the individual being is an illusion, or a construct, I think the construct is taking the individual being reifying it and giving it a particular form and a historical pattern and all that saying, that will be what’s called the self, but that is not what is the individual being an individual being is of the very nature of reality, it is like reality itself, the pure consciousness or pure through nature, expressing itself as an individual being, like being becomes a human being, but without losing the fact that it is pure being.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there are certain you know, Vedantic sayings, such as one of those, the the snake in the string analogy from Shankara. And then there’s that verse from the Gita, which says, The Unreal has no being the real never ceases to be. And often those are taken to do what you just said, to dismiss any relative phenomena as illusory. But you’re saying that in some meaningful way, relative phenomena aren’t can’t be entirely dismissed as illusory or they have their own intrinsic reality?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, while we were talking about the individual, soul or the individual consciousness, not just all phenomena, right, as a slightly related, but not exactly the same topic. So I’m saying that the individual experience not only is needed, there isn’t experience without it. How can to nature have any experience of itself or anything else without it, right? I mean, if you have to have anybody has to claim that they have to resort to something like the Bible says, so we can who cannot be experienced by President right? Pairs is not needed. They say God can know. God knows himself independent human being. Christian theology says that, maybe maybe not we don’t know. But we know from our experience, that there’s always the experience of awakening, there is always a human being involved.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, there’s a saying in the Vedas someplace that there’s no Brahman without a Knower. In other words, that that Brahman, the the living, living and the experience of totality, isn’t going to happen unless there’s a knower to know it and, and that nowhere that implies some individual structure. Yeah.
A.H. Almaas: I will say, No Brahman needs the individual for The Brahman to know itself Brahmanism nowhere, but knows the through a vehicle through through a manifestation which, by individualizing itself in time and space to have a context and to have experience, and that way it can realize what it is.
Rick Archer: Which, which kind of gives you a nice theory for why we even have a universe in the first place. It’s like, you know, this whole show is, I mean, maybe it seems kind of anthropomorphic, or whoever egocentric or something but this the whole manifestation of the universe seems to have, well, you’re in your let’s get to the to your thing here you talk about the Enlightenment drive. And I get the sense that in the Enlightenment drive is not just essential to it’s not just a kind of an individual drive within us as individuals, but it’s, it’s intrinsic to the entire universe. There’s this sort of force of evolution, which we might call the Enlightenment drive that’s just been orchestrating and evolving everything to the point where human beings can have conversations about reality like this. Based on living experience,
A.H. Almaas: I have the same view that the lighter the drive is behind the evolutionary drive forces and how life evolves. And to live is able to experience thing and wonder about it and understand how come it is clearancing things? And so yeah, but like the mid drive, appears, specifically human beings, at some point as the drive or the need and the longing to know reality to know God to know themselves. Yeah, but it’s always operative in that direction, until we recognize it consciously.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Would you even say perhaps that all desire is for the Enlightenment drive is fundamental to all desire, desire for a new car desire for a new partner or something, but one is just kind of seeking a little bit in the wrong direction, and one reaches a certain stage at which one recognizes, oh, you know, that which I’ve been looking for all over the place, that’s that Enlightenment is the thing, the thing I want to really find in order to fulfill that, that quest.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, it’s actually part of my teaching, which is not in the book, which is what is the relationship, the vitamins drive, to what I call the instinctual drives, drive for survival, drive for company drive for sexual pleasure, the main drives in human life, which all desire come from. And of course, those drive emergent life earlier, you know, like animals and until human primates, they begin to have this social drive until we become human, and we and we have all the three drives together. And then there are married Enlightenment drive, and the Lightman drive, can show itself to be underlying all those drives. And part of the work of really, of any path is how to harmonize those drives. Those basic animal instinctual drive, when the Enlightenment arrive, by showing that they are really fundamentally expressions of it. They’re sort of primitive initial expression, well to make life happen to make life survive, to make life you know, sexual drive, you know, without sexual drive, there won’t be people after a while. So nobody will, a survival drive, we don’t survive, nobody will have a chance to find that. So all that are serving the survival, Enlightenment drive, but the usuals, that ego cell takes them for ultimate thing before their satisfaction is the purpose of life. And that’s when people get into trouble because they think that’s final, I’ve just need to satisfy, I just need to survive, or I just need to have sexual strategy, or just I need to have the right company. If you just stay with that you stay what’s called a conventional life. And those drive don’t evolve, don’t develop. But when somebody who has their license and drive awakened as part of awaken Enlightenment, drive, become conscious, it becomes a drive in our life. And then of course, it comes into clash and QAnon conflict with those original instinctual drivers all their desires, until we understand them harm and harm right by right by recognizing at some point that they really were initial expression of that enlivenment drive. Then they become harmonized. So the drive for for instance, for company associate drive, becomes we recognize ultimately the drive for intimacy and intimacy is one way of experiencing go to nature. And the drive for sexuality is ultimately the drive for union union was the beloved, the ultimate and survival drive is recognizing that it doesn’t make sense not to survive, because we are something that doesn’t die. So if you really understand the survival drive, we realize at some point, you want to survive, because at a deep level, you know, you, you, you are indestructible.
Rick Archer: That’s very interesting. So it’s like you’re saying you can see kind of faint shadows of the qualities of true nature, in the more sort of superficial drives that drive all beings even not only people I mean, squirrels and cows and everything else, that there are all kinds of reflecting qualities as it were, of, of true nature. And, but, you know, when the Enlightenment drive really wakes up in a human being, then those qualities are kind of recognized directly. And, you know, rather than pursuing shadow as one pursues the thing in its Yeah,
A.H. Almaas: that way. Yeah. Because what’s called the work of actualization, which is not just awakening, but actually mean to live that awakening, which means to bring those forces, which are deep in the human psyche, to bring them in alignment with the awakened condition. So to serve it become like energies for practice, instead of opposing or distracting forces.
Rick Archer: There’s a lot of talk about that sort of thing these days, in contemporary spiritual circles, there’s a lot of people talking about embodiment, and some people even specializing in helping people in body, their relation, their realization, and so on. It’s like we people went through a phase where there was this, a lot of people were having non dual realization, but they’re running around saying there is no person and kind of negating their, their humanity. And then these days, there seems to be growing popularity to integrate, as you’ve just been saying, our humanity with our sort of non dual or deeper nature.
A.H. Almaas: I’m glad that that’s happening. Because, you know, that’s been my perspective all along. That our humanity is the way our realization expresses itself, and then how else but no, no, when you we are in your honor, the non dual condition, you don’t find the person around. So it’s easy to dismiss the human beings so well, I’m just the Brahmin.
Rick Archer: I’m laughing Yeah. And you
A.H. Almaas: as true, you are the Brahmin fondamente. But the problem all those expenses are thrown individual, because you still have to go to the bathroom.
Rick Archer: And I just laugh because I was listening to something recently by Jeff Foster, you may know Jeff Foster, and he was talking about an incident where his brother told him to wash the dishes. And he went into this non dual rap of Oh, you’re so ignorant, you don’t understand that I am not a person, you know, and, and there are no dishes. And he, of course, was laughing at himself for having spoken that way. But some people seem to go through that kind of face.
A.H. Almaas: Well, so how do you do the dishes when Brando dishes? Or become a Zen car?
Rick Archer: I guess he just chop wood carry water, you know, you just do the dishes,
A.H. Almaas: doing the dishes, although, you know, not mental. That’s something that’s changing. You know, maybe reality is more fundamental than that, but still, one has to carry. Carry on with I mean, that is insane. For instance, I see the distinction, for instance, between Zen and Buddhism, for instance,
Rick Archer: and what your audio is breaking up
A.H. Almaas: larger Buddhism, but they’re both expression Mahayana Buddhism, they really talk about capitalization. If you study virtually, Buddhism, they’re all talking about experience the pure awareness, which is the fundamental, both the Dharmakaya Dharmakaya are the fundamental nature of thing, which is pure, empty, vast awareness. That is the nature of everything. That is the emphasis and that’s what they try to actualize. In Tibetan Buddhism and then the although they know about that that’s not for them was the poor it was for the for them as well. circulation that and everyday life. So for them, as you said, carrying good, you know, carrying water chopping wood, is the expression of that vastness in everyday life. So that’s for them. So the conjunction between the particular the formless is for them what is needed to be learned. So it’s a different kind of emphasis. So as a result brings different realization, different ways of talking about it. And I find both to be instructive and useful. And the different again, from a Sufi or Christian or Kabbalah our niche one sort of got a correct piece of the pie, let’s say,
Rick Archer: it seems to me that if you’re gonna deny the reality of dishes and use that as a, as an excuse for not washing them, the in the same breath, you’re gonna have to deny the reality of food and let yourself starve to death, you know, because the dishes are no less real or more real than the food.
A.H. Almaas: I agree. I mean, nobody knows that I mean, the goddess how realize they are I mean, I know, in India, sometimes there are gurus who don’t do anything or their students take care of them all the time. Right? Right. But they still have to eat, they still have to go to the bathroom, change their clothes, and all of that, they just don’t have the skills to take care of life, because they haven’t actualized that, but they haven’t practiced it. They’re just sitting in Samadhi. And that’s what they know. But even if somebody’s sitting, some audio still have to go to the bathroom. Regardless of whether the bathroom is real or not.
Rick Archer: Let me come back to my notes here a little bit and start with and talk about something that we started with in this interview, you’re talking about the paradox of practice that realization. And I’ll elaborate a bit on what you said earlier, that realization often happens without being connected with practices. Sometimes it’s spontaneous, people haven’t had any interest in any kind of spiritual thing. And they have some profound realization. And other times, well, who was it, I forget the guy’s name some Zen guy. I’ve been told his name, but he was famous for saying. Enlightenment may be an accident, but spiritual practice makes you accident prone. And so there’s this interplay or this question of individual intention, and will versus God’s Grace, God helps those who help themselves is a famous phrase, right? And Patanjali says that realization comes most quickly to those who have vehement intensity in their in their desire for it. So there are all these kinds of points on different sides of the argument.
A.H. Almaas: Right? Yeah. So that brings us to discussing what I call the dynamic of realization, what is the dynamic what happens? So as we see, you can practice you can meditate, you can do prayers or centering prayers, or chanting or visualization, whatever kind of practice. And if you just do that, by itself, much of the time, nothing happens, it can happen, you know, might not happen. But sometimes does happen. Some things open up. And the interesting thing, besides the fact that sometimes things happen, regardless whether you practice or not. And sometimes when you when the practice work, and you see things happening, in my experience, I realized that even when things happen after practice, there’s something else that made the experience happen. It wasn’t just the practice, like some other force, that we could call it grace. Without it the practice with it wouldn’t wouldn’t work. And because I see, I have seen it many times. And that’s why I formulated that part of teaching is that when the experience happens, I realized something was going on for some time leading to this that I didn’t know about. That wasn’t my own doing. That got me into this experience, some other force was already in charge. And, you know, I give different examples, and the book was recognizing that even our own efforts are nothing but the grace itself appearing ourself as our effort. I like that point. You see? Yeah, because remember The individual is an expression of the ultimate, they’re not separate, right? So whatever the individual does is the true nature itself, functioning or manifest because it’s Enlightenment drive is manifesting, but appearing now as as our well or our dedication, and we can all that well, or you can all that dedication and owning it, it actually becomes one of the obstacles. You know, as many teachers have to give up, you don’t own and it’s not yours. I mean, you realize it’s not yours things open up.
Rick Archer: Interesting. A question came in, let me read a question. What what in your experience is the greatest obscuration to self realization? Someone said, this seems silly for me to ask at the moment. Is there a paradox here and the Personal Will and this is related to what we’re saying? Is there a paradox here and the Personal Will versus the will of the one? As I am seeing more and more the arrogance of believing that of myself, I can do anything, then the question is, who is it that creates the obscuration? And who? Or what is removing it? Is it time to just ride the wave and watch how life unfolds itself here on its way to realizing itself? Or is there paradoxically an independent will that either works for or against the will of life? Good question. Go ahead. Now,
A.H. Almaas: there are many questions in that question. Yeah. And, obviously, the main obstacle, all teachings agree, and that is the belief in and identifying with the separate self, to believe I am a separate, independent self, that have my own well, and my own choices. That is the main obstacle. And it has many aspects and expression of desire or attachment, but all amounts to believing that you are a unit in time and space, with your own volition, and that you are going to maybe get enlightened or not or accomplish one thing. That’s the freedom from that is really the main thing in any kind of awakening. And the question is, it’s an interesting thing, who, where does the ignorance or where does the delusion come from? Right. So that’s why I think that some non dual teachers for instance, they have non dual experience, but think they realistically by saying, you know, reality is pure consciousness. And if you do not realize you are deluded, you have an illusion that you are a separate individual. Well, if you say there’s only consciousness, there’s nothing but how can there be somebody there who’s deluded? I can’t be anything. And the reality, it has nothing but reality itself, that is deluded in that location. reality itself is still hasn’t developed and that location, to for its illumination to shine bright, to reveal itself. So reality and all over the universe is not is evolving. That’s when you bring in the question evolving, things are evolving. Now, we live in different degrees, awareness and luminosity. And part of the stage of development is experiencing reality in a way we call deluded. And I also have a view of what we whether ego experiences delusion or not, because many teaching thing is deluded. The fact of it think of it this way, Eric, how many people are deluded the world
Rick Archer: almost all by yourself by that by
A.H. Almaas: accord? Non non dual truths or fundamental reality, whatever we call it, they’re all expression of the same reality. How can they all be wrong? Why why so many of them wrong? So that’s why I tend to think about it. That the ego way of experiencing thing as so separateness and duality and all of that, as not as much is not exactly itself. The load is just one of the ways that reality appears. Believing that is the true way, and that’s the only way is it alerting but it is one of the ways we It appears is dualistic.
Rick Archer: About if we look at it this way, that, as we were saying earlier, if if the universe arose, in order to eventually produce beings who could become living embodiment of reality, and you know, breathing, thinking, talking, loving, speaking, eating, right embodiments of reality, then those beings didn’t evolve overnight, either physically or as souls. And so there is going to have to be a developmental process, and you’re not going to have enlightened amoebas whizzing around, you have to have more complex life forms before you can actually have anything that we would meaningfully call Enlightenment. And so it’s necessary, just in a developmental sense for there to be various degrees and stages of ignorance. If we can trust ignorance with Enlightenment, in which one is deluded, or seeing only dimly was that verse in the Bible through a glass darkly, you know, and that, you know, one isn’t going to go from Neanderthal man to the Buddha in one snap, it’s going to have to be a developmental process, and you get closer and closer to the point at which you enlightened the Enlightenment drive becomes conscious.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so I agree with you, that sounds like a good way of looking at things. But that think of it as a way of looking at things. I’m not saying that’s not the only way I’m saying one way of explaining it’s good way of explaining it, it’s useful, that is what I call the progressive or the hierarchical way of looking at thing like things are evolving and developing until reality, sort of into life can become sentient, and look at itself and recognize what the hell is happening. So, that is one way and this is one of the major way most teaching actually do it. However, if you look at it from the perspective of reality itself, reality itself is not sitting there judging, this is primitive, this is advanced, is is just manifesting itself. One way, this way, and now is an amoeba, now is a human deluded human being now was an allied him, it’s always the same reality manifesting itself that way, and itself doesn’t say one is more developed than the other. It’s just different ways of, you know, manifesting itself. That is another way of seeing it. Yeah, that way.
Rick Archer: And I don’t think that the way you just said in the way I just said are actually contradictory. They’re both, they’re both true.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, they’re both I’m just saying the different ways each one of them has its usefulness. Yeah. And the way I’m mentioning it, that that reacted reality is always reality. Right?
Rick Archer: How can it be other
A.H. Almaas: and to and to call it deluded is a form of a certain perspective, or certain other experience, but when it is happening, it is what has happened. And I’m saying this because this is actually what happens when regularization becomes established. And certainty is there and comfort and one so establish a realization you don’t care on what state you’re in. And then what happened is that whatever it is, it is whatever is happening, you see, you don’t need to be seeing neon light for you to be enlightened. You know, so have your cup of tea is the same thing as being the vastness of the problem. You don’t The mind doesn’t compare the two
Rick Archer: Yeah, and there are two it’s not an either or situation you can be the vastness of Brahman while enjoying your cup of tea right?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, okay both all to one than the other and it doesn’t matter so, so the progressive way the evolution is a very useful way in fact it helps one understand thing and putting a certain order it makes sense though our human mind but if you think of reality is not just human. If you if you take the human way of looking at it and just leave it to reality it’s just keep transforming from one way or another.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I suppose another way.
A.H. Almaas: Are all of them are in all of them are reality.
Rick Archer: Another way of putting it might be that reality isn’t becoming more real reality. Reality itself isn’t progressing and becoming realer and realer. It you know, it’s just it is what it is. But, but we as The appreciators of reality as livers livers of reality, can continually enhance our capacity to do that,
A.H. Almaas: yeah. And we can say like certain ways of reality, Minnesota itself has suffering more than other ways. Some of the ways that people cannot call the conventional delude way, is really reality matching itself by manifesting itself in a way that has a lot of suffering other ways it manifests itself, it has more or less,
Rick Archer: which is a very good point, because some people take the point you just made Oh, everything is real justice it is, and use that as a an alibi for not having any spiritual aspirations whatsoever. Why should I bother everything is real justice as it is, but as far as you are concerned, as a living being, there are qualitative differences. And, you know, you could, it could be a lot more enjoyable if you were living a life without suffering.
A.H. Almaas: I mean, that’s what I said, what I just said, the view, the non hierarchical view, which is whatever, any moment whatever it is, is the reality that one can be in that place, after going through the whole path. You can’t, you cannot do it at the beginning. When you’re still just in one condition, you’re not free to go to the other conditions. Right. So the other thing that when you say everything’s, there is a freedom, anything can happen. One day is Brahman, next day is Shiva, the next day, the divine the next day shunyata. All this happened, while if you haven’t done the practices, you’re only staying this individual who’s striving to be successful in life. That’s it, they’re limited. So while while they all sound the same, one has less one limitation, and the other one doesn’t have the limitations
Rick Archer: of Yeah. And here’s a little quote from your book that relates just to what you said, what you said, we have to experience and understand and embody all kinds of spiritual dimensions and all kinds of Enlightenment, in order to be free and to accept our everyday ordinariness, without it having to be anything else.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. And that, and that’s really the freedom. But we can’t do that until we know lots of things we know I have to see spiritual lights, consciousness, awareness, emptiness, all of those have to be realized. And you have to limit them, you know, they have an effect by studying some of the traditions. You know, I noticed that rarely mentioned in the texts you do, but it’s usually towards the end or something, you mentioned them, that the Masters actually that’s how they left they don’t care what state that is not that they’re always in place, or even being blessed or not, is not relevant, at some point. And that is the kind of freedom you see. It’s the freedom, like Enlightenment drive has fulfilled this function. So live to live or being is free to unfold and whichever way to spot otherwise, the relevant revelation of our potential, become loosened becomes free to to actualize itself. While in the limited way, the first way of experiencing things that people come from, we can say, well, I don’t need to do anything. No, the fact is that you just haven’t actualized yet. We can’t actualize in that condition. Many, much of you so much of the potential is not yet actualized. The other way, although sounds the same, it’s ordinarily, but the butter potential hat is free to actualize itself.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a couple of points that relate to that. Well, here’s here’s the point from your book is you said, realization is not the end of practice, practice is the ceaseless orientation toward reality. And when I read that, you know, I was sort of thinking about the type of master that you were just describing who, in a way is resting on his laurels, there’s there’s been such a profound degree of realization, that kind of effort and diligence and striving and so on, that are often associated with the word practice, are not relevant to his experience. He’s just, you know, living that reality and is a state of freedom regardless of what happens. But you say that, you know, practice never ends. And so if practice never ends, this practice, kind of change its quality, where it becomes so automatic, that it’s completely spontaneous. And one doesn’t feel that one is doing anything in particular, but there’s just a deeply ingrained habit kind of like the way when you learn to ride a bicycle and it just becomes second nature after a while and you don’t think about balancing
A.H. Almaas: sort of like that. It’s more like practice become The expression of realisation instead of the other way around realization because the ground from where practice comes. So practicing, it becomes orientation about life, interest in the truth, and being authentic, authentic and openness and all of that. Not forgetting that recognizing and becoming spontaneous natural, naturally that way. And also, not only that, the great masters, they continue to meditate to their usual discipline practices, they don’t don’t stop.
Rick Archer: Is that just as is that just a certain example? Or is that to actually, you know, gain some benefit themselves, or both,
A.H. Almaas: because that is how their realization wants to express itself to continue to because, and also nobody finishes the actualization. actualization is an endless process of being more and more of what you are even the greatest master over enlightened and be themselves haven’t seen everything about reality. Can’t see everything so continue to practice means you couldn’t keep seeing more of reality, not because you need to, but he loved.
Rick Archer: It’s the Enlightenment, right?
A.H. Almaas: That’s yeah, that’s life moving you on your life? Yeah, that’s becomes your life, greater more discoveries, different kinds of ways, that creativity and singing thing and expressing yourself and all that.
Rick Archer: I think we have to keep coming back to the idea to the reminding ourselves that we’re not just talking about individuals realizing something we’re talking about total, you know, true reality or two are being realizing itself through its expressions. You know, be so why would it want to stop? Or why would why would it want to say okay, that’s enough, I’ve realized enough, you know, through this expression that there couldn’t possibly be any more as long as the expression is living and breathing, there could be the possibility of some further refinement
A.H. Almaas: or further refinement, not just surviving new discoveries, new discoveries, yeah, because the fundamental truth is so, mysterious and determinate it can appear in so many ways. And each one of them is Greater Illumination, there are different kinds of eliminations but that way a tournament is different angles, different things and it shows different possibility different capacity like you know, you could be a layer realized master, but not know how to talk to students intelligently for instance,
Rick Archer: there have been some very happy men I mean, obviously even among the contemporary spiritual teachers, we see quite a wide range of capabilities in terms of clarity of expression. Yeah,
A.H. Almaas: and so that control practice will hone those skills that’s part of it. Yeah. Because your skills need time to develop
Rick Archer: my dog is down here seeing a squirrel and making little noises Okay, here’s something I like slight slight change of change of topic from what we were just discussing. You said discernment, discrimination, understanding, love intelligence have to mature because practice uses these faculties. Kind of like that. I’d like you to elaborate on that a little bit.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so for practice to really happen to mature as you said, practice involves being able to focus to concentrate without distraction, being able to discern what arises, and, and clarity meaning that we see what we see without the prejudices of our previous beliefs and ideas. And these don’t only just become liberated. First they become liberated from the influences of the past. And then there is a process of maturation because we talking about capacities, faculties. So these faculties don’t just open up all at once. It’s just like exercising a muscle, it gets better and better and better. So, these are faculties, that the more they are developed, not only the the help of practice, group Practice is realizing all of those lies a concentration, discernment, clarity, and steadiness and all that. But also, they’re instrumental in our expressing our realization, our life, expressing what we are, you know, in our work and our relationship, movement and our interactions and what we put out to the world, we can express it more effectively, more efficiently. Or more heartfully more intelligently. So all those, and this is a process of development that all teachers are in process to develop, as you notice, teachers mature, they don’t stay the same. That’s true. Yeah, they get better. And some of them, some of them don’t continue saying the same thing. And I’ve got some mature and develop, you could see there’s more mature ation, there’s more simplicity, or more directness, or more precision, all kinds of ways it’s gonna develop or more heartfulness, or more practicality and all of that all of those ways that that word, because these are the development, the individual consciousness itself and the human being, because being itself or through nature itself doesn’t develop, it has different ways of being, but the instrument develops in mind develop,
Rick Archer: it almost seems as a correlation between the teachers who continue to say the same things and those who, in their philosophy, say that this realization is all there is, once one has had a kind of fundamental non dual realization, what more could there be? And it seems that if one gets locked into that concept, it tends to result in stagnation in terms of their expression, not evolving significantly over time, whereas those who, who say, Well, this is a great milestone, but I’m But there seem to be more, there seems to be more they continue to evolve, and their expressions
A.H. Almaas: continue to be more intense what I can be, and more in time, how I can express it, how I can live it. In both sides of it,
Rick Archer: would you say that, what you were just saying about developing faculties being useful in terms of living and expressing reality? Would that include even conventional education, you know, I mean, getting a really good education, in thing that physics or literature or whatever you’re attracted to, yeah,
A.H. Almaas: that includes that. And that way, hooking into what people know, or what people are learning the present time and using that language, as bridges. So sometimes I use the language of science, sometimes I use the language of philosophy, different kinds of ways that how people connect. Because, you know, spiritual realization is a very subtle thing. It’s sort of seeing the invisible. And, fifth, just keep telling the person, you know, you’re the self, you just need to know that you are the Self, you know, doesn’t do much for most people. For most people, you know, I’m having trouble with my wife, because I want to deal with that, I can’t get my mind off that. So you have to help them how to get their mind off that problem, before they can listen to appreciate saying you are the Self. And that’s a skill. You see, not everybody has?
Rick Archer: How does that compare with you know, Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else shall be added unto thee. In other words, that tapping into the deeper reality will help to sort out all your relative problems
A.H. Almaas: than other ways through some people have the realization phase that brings in the what are the stages, this realization is actualization, some teaching, say, first there is realization and then actualization happened after that. Some people say first, actually in the sense of mature and then the fruit of that there is a realization. And my path is more like they go hand. They’re intertwined. Yeah, the more realization the more actualization. There you go. So, yeah, there are different ways of the path, do it. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I think the intertwine thing actually makes more practical sense, because it’s very unlikely that you’re going to have, you know, completely realization to the extent that realization can be had, and then once that’s finished, you’re going to start integrating it. It would seem to me that you know, each You take a step of realization, a step of integration and step of realization and step of integration, and it just kind of keeps developing that way.
A.H. Almaas: That’s how it happens to most people. But it does happen sometimes that people have big realization, and takes them a long time to integrate it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, sometimes they can’t function for a couple
A.H. Almaas: of function for a while. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, do you probably hear the story of my her Baba, for instance? Right. Now,
Rick Archer: what was the story week?
A.H. Almaas: He couldn’t function? He was sort of unconscious or, and he needed help from other master of how to function in the world.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of stories like that actually. Arma the so called hugging saint, she went through a phase where she, she would just fall down in Samadhi, and be lying on the ground, you know, and just be unable to speak or do anything. And, you know, it took a while to develop the
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so that’s happened. We don’t want to discount that. Even though the intertwined one seemed to happen most
Rick Archer: commonly, yeah. Yeah. Here’s another little tidbit from your book, we practice without a particular goal. Because having a goal implies we know what is supposed to happen next.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. So you can second guess, God.
Rick Archer: But then again, people read all these books, and they get all these ideas, which become goals, and the oh, well, this, this experience is possible in this state is possible, and so on. So you can’t help but have kind of have those things in the back of your mind as possibilities.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s part of the danger of writing about these things and talking about them. But I’m referring actually more about many teaching who have a particular goal, they said, our goal is shining into our goal is Brahman, our goal is union with God. And the person is feeling they have, that’s where they need to go. So you’re putting gifts in your mind. And I’m saying, if you do it that way, that becomes a barrier after a while. Yeah. So yeah, that becomes an obstacle, and not only becomes an obstacle, because you’re already you’re trying to make things happen, where trying to make things happen, is standing in God’s way, in some sense, and they’re all trying to twist God’s arms. And because also you don’t know, what’s the next thing to happen. So how can you try to force it to happen that way when the next moment is unknowable? Not only that, but having a goal implies the belief that reality is going to be that way. Yeah, finally, and that will be the end, when my view is that know, all the goals are true as manifestations of reality. And it for you might be different one, not the one you have in mind.
Rick Archer: Perhaps we could use science as a nice metaphor here, where a scientist, if he pursues his goal, his research with very specific discovery in mind that he knows he has to make? Yeah, who knows? I mean, chances are, he’ll just waste his time. You know, like, even even like an archaeologist who goes out and think I am going to find this particular kind of dinosaur by digging, digging around in the dirt. Rather, he would have the attitude of yeah, there’s probably dinosaurs in this area. I’ll dig around and see what comes up. And I don’t have any idea what it might be.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, I know. There are many stories how things have been discovered in science by some kind of accident or mistake.
Rick Archer: Yeah, some of penicillin was discovered that way, it was just total accident.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, it’s, it’s like, again, about the practice and grace you need to do the work. However, as a sample, you need to sort of be free from that goal of doing the practice for grace to have a chance to break through
Rick Archer: Hmm. Well actually brought up penicillin brings up an interesting example because as I recall, the guy who discovered penicillin, this mold kept growing in his petri dishes and it was ruining his experiments and he kept thinking how am I gonna deal with this mold and then he kind of just he realized eventually that oh, this is mold has very interesting properties. So there could be things coming up in our experience as a spiritual practitioner, which we might consider obstacles but which might actually be very useful areas for exploration.
A.H. Almaas: Oh, yeah, that’s having domain myself for my first discovery of presence with I go presence which is an important part of my teaching. And the beginning I didn’t know what was arising in me in some kind of way. So what’s this thing happening in my body is like I thought it was tension or pressure or something and I was trying to solve get rid of it. I was getting headaches and all that I thought it was problem. It Took me a while to recognize now, when I didn’t try to get rid of it, then try to make it go away or change it, it showed itself as this luminous, calm presence.
Rick Archer: Interesting to say, that kind of gets us to a point of trust, which this takes us back to something we were talking about earlier about grace, where if you if you have a trust in a kind of a higher intelligence, if you want to call it that, which has our best interest in mind, and which is helping to guide our process, then you can perhaps be more accepting of things which come up and recognize and you know, see the potential value in them rather than seeing them as obstacles.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, like a you see them as has a potential value, or as everything is a conduit, can be seen as a conduit to like a wormhole to another way of experiencing.
Rick Archer: Nice. Okay, here’s another tidbit from your book, the view of totality can hold both dual and non dual perspective simultaneously by being outside both of them, or I put in my own parentheses, or by containing both of them. It holds it holds all views known and unknown. When we fully understand this view, we don’t need to stick to any particular view, yet we can take a particular view without having to adhere to it as final.
A.H. Almaas: So that’s more letting, be being operates in spontaneously, without us making the choice of how it should operate. You see, and, and part of the freedom of being what I call dynamism or being the fact that being your true nature, is even saying beating and trying to, people can take it as a fixed way that being means you’re being your existence, I’m using being in a more general way just to refer to whatever this nameless thing is that the freedom of being to reveal itself and our personal experience, a lot of it has to do with our view of reality. Because there is the conventional view of reality, everybody believes and there is a non dual view of reality, everything non dual, everything is expression of the same consciousness. And I’m saying these are actually views. And if you’re really confident, you have true trust, and being and as goodness, you don’t need to hold the view. You can, you don’t need to adhere to it, as this is the view of what is real. And I have to serve, believe it. You take it as that’s what’s useful now. And reality might change tomorrow the next month, and reveal a different view and operate through a different view.
Rick Archer: So you’re saying that you’re going to have views, but you’re just not going to be rigid about them?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, the idea that views are useful, because you operate in the world from always a certain perspective of certain view. So views, part of reality, each state has its view. You see, each day that you stand for a while that has few way of looking at things. But the idea is not to be rigid, but to be fluid, to allow our mind be not needing to fix not to need to believe in something. So not believing something as has to be that way. I don’t mean that not believing that it can happen that way. But maybe it can happen that way. But it doesn’t have to happen that way. Yeah, I’ve heard that freedom a few. There’s a freedom of fluidity of experience.
Rick Archer: I’ve heard that as a as a definition of humility, actually the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way. And you can apply it not only to happenings, but to beliefs and views, you know, not insisting that my particular perspective is the right one and everybody else is wrong or inferior.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, it’s not. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, that’s what happens. Actually, unfortunately, many of the spiritual teaching in the great tradition, they believe they got it. And the other traditions, sort of partial or maybe a little approximation, they’ll they even say it the great, even the great masters. And I think taking the view, taking one view and saying that’s it is the beginning of fundamentalism. That’s how fundamentalism begins, even though it’s an enlightened place. If you say it has to be that way, then you’re excluding others. Other ways of being, and by excluding them, you’re becoming, you’re turning to become fundamentalists, because you’re have to stick to that particular way.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think this is actually a very deep point. And it’s germane to a lot of the stuff you discuss in your book. Because if, you know, if we think of ourselves as sort of individual lenses through which we have a vision of reality, a taste of reality, and there could be many other tastes, you know, then obviously, each lens is going to have its own perspective. But if we, if we take a God’s eye view of things, then at least conceptually, we can understand that a God’s eye view is going to contain every perspective that might possibly exist, and harmonize them all, you know, contain them all comfortably without any conflict or difficulty.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, and it is part of a certain kind of realization that makes that more possible. And that’s why I bring in the book view of totality, which means the view that allowed a new view all views and open to them, but I bring in what I call total being was not just being a total being, and I bring in that I use that language, because for two reasons, that are really important for us to go over. One reason is that when people talk about being or consciousness, they think of everything now, then they think of the novel as this moment, everything expands now, everything, right, I am the totality of this being right, I am everything, and then thinking of the now and that, although to the usual classical mystical experience of the oneness of being or non duality of consciousness, it is still excludes other times exclude the experiences other times, total being is recognizing that the Unity not just in space, but also in time.
Rick Archer: Well, I think that those who emphasize on the now would argue that there are no other times, you know, there never is a future, then there never is a past, you can’t step one second into the future, one second into the past, the future and past and time itself are kind of concepts and that all there is is the eternal now. How would you respond to that?
A.H. Almaas: That is the non dual view. Right? And I haven’t, I understand that why one I experienced it. But I also know another way. Another way that other traditions have talked about, I don’t know, if you read the Dogon Zenji, know, Zen master, the founder of Soto Zen. He has a teaching because Uji, which means being done. He says there’s only the moment. But the moment is all being right. All right. But being is all time. So this moment is old times. So for him being and time out, he makes being time. So tea time is not. So people think of being as extending the space, he thinks being expended as date and time. So he doesn’t eliminate time, it is always now. But this now contains all in all the novels of five or other moments. Because think of it if you are in the presence of the now right now. Right? Yesterday, you were also on the now is that now different from this now? Same now. It’s the same now. That mean, this now contains yesterday’s moment. Yeah. So this moment contains yesterday’s moment. If you look at the last way, you begin to have an experience that I’m not only all things in the world, and all thing at all times. Yeah. So you can so that the Ananda will become what I call total being which mean being that doesn’t only contains everything in the moment that contains everything at all moments, at all moments for all experiencing experiencing individuals. Most parts it’s a different kind of unity. It’s a it’s a it’s a more expanded unity. That doesn’t say it’s true. There is no other moment. In fact, dog himself says this moment is cut off from others. It doesn’t have a past it doesn’t have future. But the way he says that is not because there are no other moments. All other moments are included in this moment. Yeah, they’re not negated. They are negated as a sequence. My most popular, as are all now,
Rick Archer: the most popular interview was with a woman named Anita Moorjani, who had this really profound near death experience. And she said that what she cognize, when she had this near death experience is that, you know, all of our past lives and all are not something that happened in the past, we’re actually living them simultaneously in the now and that somehow, as individuals, we just create this filter, which gives us a sense of linearity with time, but that actually time is not so linear.
A.H. Almaas: That’s one consequence of understanding time. So this really is thought to being a brings time back into the timelessness and has timeless times together, where timelessness includes don’t exclude each other. So when you have both time and timelessness, then being is truly free of time. Just because if if being is only timeless, it is dependent on the negation of time, however, of being doesn’t negate time, neither affirm it, there is time and timelessness and being contains both. So one can be timeless, or can be in time, or can be timeless. I’m aware of time pass passing. At the same time, it doesn’t pass on me. It passes an old phenomenon over and I was changing. But being itself, time doesn’t pass because time is within it. Yeah. Let’s see. So those fields now, in fact, for me, I don’t feel now anymore. That used to feel now I just don’t feel time to say now I’m only also relating it to time, when you free if time is no, now, there isn’t even a sense of this moment. Things are much more fluid than that. I’m aware of time I’m aware of clock time I can. I can look at my watch. And I can know time is coming close to finish talking about something all this awareness that, but my sense of myself, I’m independent of time, independent of time, but I can also experience myself the way I was 10 years ago. So when you say your time is still now,
Rick Archer: when you say you’re independent of time, you don’t just mean that, you know, you there’s a kind of a timeless awareness that persists. Well, temporal events roll along. You’re also saying that if like you just said, you can experience yourself the way you were 10 years ago, or maybe 20 3040 years ago, that you’re saying that somehow those times are contained and within your perspective within your awareness?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. Yes, I am saying that. But I’m also saying, don’t experience myself as timeless awareness. I experienced myself where the idea of time and timelessness don’t apply, then, because I’m free for the concept of time. If you’re free of the concept of time, you don’t talk about timelessness, you’re still using the word time because of time. So through through freedom from the concept, the whole notion of time, is I can be timeless, I can’t be in time can have both together, or the usual thing which either of those, I mean, they I can think about them, they happen I can experience them, or they have to do with me.
Rick Archer: It’s time, nothing but a concept. You know, Einstein talked about space time, and you’re a physicist and this you understand this better than I do. But it sounds like he was talking about space and time as being kind of the fabric of, of the, of creation. And it seems to my mind to have given it some kind of fundamental reality, as opposed to just the human concept.
A.H. Almaas: Okay, I suppose that’s a good question. And Rick, but times based again, it brings back Kant, Immanuel Kant. And he talks about the categories of experience, and he has, and he said, There are categories of thought and there are a priority category was always there. And one of them time and space, he thought they’re always there, you can’t have experience without them. So he thought they are made by God. That’s what he what knew that actually believe time and space made by God. So the way I think of time and space, they are concepts, but they are concepts in the mind of being outcomes that are created by human beings. Although human being I can use them, utilize them and sort of ratify them and make them more concrete more linear. But the fact is that manifestation appears as extended in space. And it seems to change. And we recognize that we recognize the fundamental concept or take a basic concept that are inherent in being, you know, there’s not that human creation. That’s conceptual in the sense, you can go beyond them.
Rick Archer: That brings up a whole kettle of fish, which might be interesting to get into about, you know, because you do talk there’s a whole chapter in your book about nonconceptual. ality and all and maybe we want to touch upon that. But let me throw in a few questions here. Some, some nice questions came in from from viewers watching the live stream. Here’s what he said, I’ve been engaging with a varied spiritual practice for the last 15 years, including the diamond approach, and have in the last few years, seen the fallacy of practicing in an ego driven way, picking up more experiences, efforting, and so called progressing. However, I now feel in a bit of a no man’s land, no impetus to practice and nowhere to go. How does one practice without practicing?
A.H. Almaas: Well, first of all, it’s important to really follow a path make a path be more central. So okay to practice many paths, as long as one of them is the central one. You need to go deep into it for it to really bear its fruit. Right? So and practice without practicing, is that’s what they’re called motiveless practice, multiple practice, practice all those motivators. However, human being, as we practice, we don’t know that first motivations that we heard about it, we hit it could be enlightened, you see people and you admire them and you want to, you know, attain their kind of freedom or they kind of luminosity. So you have a motivation of practice, because you want to accomplish that. And then the motivation can become more closer to you, you might feel the Enlightenment drive itself as a drive to practice, which at some point can become a longing to be reality, or to be one with reality, or some point can become as loud, really loving to find out what is the tool that becomes a motivation. And this motivation gets subtler and subtler until you are the true nature itself. From the perspective through nature itself, as it continues to practice. It has no motive. It is its expression. It is not Pangot. Because of this or that it’s it’s a spontaneous intelligence appears as practicing. And turns out, we’re always from the beginning, doing it that way. However, being in this vast compassion appeared in us as interest as love as long as being all that, that is already the Enlightened drive, when the lightener drive is just a drive. It’s not a model. But people, so practice that practice me learning to be free from the motivation, but continue to practice.
Rick Archer: That might sound kind of contradictory to people, but I understand what you’re saying. And perhaps we could put a finer point on it by saying that when one is very much ego centric in one’s perspective, then one usurps or attributes to oneself, the motivation, which is really much deeper than the individual drives, it’s, it’s the Enlightenment drive, as you say, which is a universal force. And we misappropriate it and say, Oh, this is my drive. But then as we mature, it seems that this sense of my drive is dropping off. And one might, one might wonder, Am I losing my motivation? Or am I becoming disinterested in this stuff? Whereas in fact, it’s just more of a relaxing into allowing the reality of what’s been happening all along, which is that the the kind of universal Enlightenment drive has been has been running the show.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good way of saying, and one of the transition points there is coming to a place where feel there’s no interest. There is a sense of neutrality, not interested in anything. But if you’ve done if you arrived at that place by practicing diligently for a long time, that is a real place. It’s a transition to freedom. It feels like no interest. But what what it turns out to be is that you don’t need anything Do you feel you don’t need and so it appears at the beginning as a disinterest and not knowing what to do. Yeah, while after I was like, you know, I’m practicing, not because I need something I’m practicing, because that’s how I’m expressing myself.
Rick Archer: Yeah, and I imagine you’re, you’re really expressing your own your own experience here. Whereas that there must have been times in your earlier years where there was this very sort of driven, desperate sense of seeking, and I need this and I’m suffering, and I want to get out of suffering, and yada, yada. But you know, these days, you I mean, you live and breathe this stuff all the time. But it’s more like just a sort of an adventure and exploration without the sort of desperate individual cravings attached.
A.H. Almaas: You’re right, there was a time it is, you know, intense desire and intense focus, desperation, some time and frustration and disappointment and all that and, and that part of the path, one has to go through that, you see. And then at some point, when we are more the condition of realization, it’s like, it’s easy. And it’s not just easy, it’s the spontaneous thing that you have. And also practice has two kinds, is a form of practice, which is you do you use your product, which is a chanting or sitting meditation, or it is a visualization or prayer, where you do it regularly, as you’ve always done it before. Some enlightened master even do it more afterward. And there is the practice of just the way we live our life. The way we live our love life, we are expressing our realization, and by expressing it faithfully is practice. So practices all the time that not just this form, practice, and the Inforum project, which just whatever happens, the way we are thinking, the way we are responding, the way we are interacting is really a practice because you’re even that you’re expressing yourself. You’re honing your skills. As you’re living your life. You’re honing your skill, and you’re allowing you through nature to come out. And more fully, but in new or novel ways that are necessary for the new situations. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Good. Well, I hope we’ve satisfied that question. Let me ask another one that came in. Could you say something more about how all times this is what you’re talking about earlier about how all times are here and now I can relate to nonlocality in terms of in with in regards to space, but time? How can that actually be? What is it like to experientially realize timelessness?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, you know, nonlocality is something they even have in physics, they call it entanglement, about about how two particles fall away. They know about each other, although there is no time has passed for them to communicate. So they called entangled. So this, they are like, they’re operating as if they are in the same place.
Rick Archer: Right? But they’re, like years apart.
A.H. Almaas: Right? Like, and they’re finding out now. Now they’re wormholes connecting. wormholes and times. That’s what they’re finding. But what’s the wormhole? More whole time space. I mean, there’s no time and space and the wormhole. Since there’s normal between them, they’re sort of right on top of each other, although it appears in time as if they are very far apart. But then the wormhole, they’re right there next to each other. So that’s why they could, so that’s called nonlocal. But they’re finding out the point I’m bringing here, they’re finding out and physic. There’s nonlocality in time, not just in space, like something happened in the past can be entangled or something in the present something that President had been tangled or can they put something in the future, meaning that the time between the distance of time is also eliminated. There’s wormholes between them interest so this is wormhole and time. And Einstein actually did wormhole. Einstein’s wormhole, autumn time, space time, not just in space. Right? Not is really similar to the Ka’bah realization I’m talking about of Tata being where you’re experiencing. First, there’s a movement of from time to now to now notice. And then there is a move from known as the timelessness and there’s a movement of timelessness to no time and that in no time you realize Old Timers hear no time, because I am outside of time. I hold all the time. So it’s it’s a subjective feeling, and which can can manifest. So it’s subjective in the sense. This is the feeling. I don’t. And it is. That’s the part of parts about this, I forgot to say again, which is the role, the individual, we talked about how the individual expresses the formulas. And this condition, the individual, not only expresses the formless and the fastest, it contains the vastness, the particle individually, you as a part of the individual actually contained the whole universe. From that, you have that realization, you realize, you’re not only expressing the whole universe, the whole universe is in you without you get bigger.
Rick Archer: Yeah, actually, I have a note here that I was gonna ask you about from your book, he said, each part contains the whole the individual is the whole universe and contains all space and time exactly what you’ve been saying. And maybe we can just probe into that just a little bit. Because, I mean, being you could say Bing is not compartmentalised. If, if my fist is essentially being, then, you know, is it just a tiny bit of Bing, or if Bing is infinite, and all pervading? Then, you know, what is within the totality of being has to also be within the being in which that’s occupied by my fist? Does that make sense?
A.H. Almaas: And that is actually seen by many people. One of them is William Blake, when he says, the whole universe and flower.
Rick Archer: Yeah, the eternity in an hour infinity and the Wildflower and eternity and hours and yeah,
A.H. Almaas: yeah. And the universe, and Graham sat, right. And he,
Rick Archer: it’s literal, it’s not just
A.H. Almaas: poetic, metaphorical. The whole universe expresses itself as the Grim side, the grain of sand, it is a kind of realization, it is getting into conscious and through nature, and seeing so it’s deeper properties. It’s deeper properties is like it is inherently a wormhole to everything is a time space, space, time wormhole is connecting all all objects to the same. It’s like each object, because it’s open to everything else, its openness, includes is free of the concept of time and space. So everything sort of collapses into it. And some sense you could say, without its collapse, it is still vast, but within the particular, it’s a kind of realization. And it is sort of counterintuitive. It’s difficult to sort of leave that because it’s easier to to think of the being as extended and vast. And it is external advice. But this kind of realization. The infinite and the finite, are within each other. But we’re finite, contains the infinite, which is counterintuitive. But that’s what happens in this realization.
Rick Archer: I find it more intuitive to attend
A.H. Almaas: the infinite space but the infinite of time to
Rick Archer: Yeah, I definitely I find it more intuitive than counterintuitive. It really makes sense. And it’s like maybe the phrase infinite correlation would be handy here where every point of creation is directly correlated with every other point of creation, because every point of creation contains the whole creation, and that that could explain nano nonlocality. I mean, how does this you know particle over here communicate with this particle on the other side of the galaxy? Well, they’re directly connected and directly correlated, not not separated by 100,000 light years.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so that the spiritual correlated nonlocality. You could say that. I was actually talking to some scientists few days ago and conference and I was telling them, they want me to talk about consciousness, so non conscious, that consciousness has quantum features and the sense it is characterized by total nonlocality in time space. Like everything in time space. interpenetrate poetry is the classical you by some Chinese philosophies a few 100 years ago, they call it interpenetration interpenetrate each other, not an expression of the same thing. They really are the same thing. Plotinus you know, the father knew platers and the Greek Plotinus said, each soul Soul is indivisible. You don’t your soul is not separate from the your soul has all the other souls in it. He said the star has all the stars in it. Interesting. It’s an any ads you can read and then yet he says in the planet has the whole universe when people know that, you know oftentimes actually said that
Rick Archer: it’s very cool. Yeah. And there are all sorts of I mean, this isn’t just abstract philosophy I think that there are I don’t know if I could articulate them all. But I think that there are real practical implications of this for our lives as you know, awakened or awakening beings that somehow comes right down to something that is significant in our in our daily living experience.
A.H. Almaas: And for learning, it’s really, really handy for rain if you really establish or have an access to this place of nonlocality. When when you realize you have access, because all times and you have access, you can learn from others. Yeah, directly. Like people tell me. Did you study Shankara? I do. I did. But when I study Shankara, I actually get into the mind Shanker. I go to the time Shankara was experiencing himself and experiencing him the way he experienced himself at that time. And that is not possible of we don’t have this nonlocality, right, you see, so I’m not just remembering, I’m actually stepping into the shoes of somebody, you could do it by stepping in the shoes of somebody else right now, in fact, is very useful for for leadership, you can you can know what the other person where they are coming from what they’re feeling, by feeling them from inside.
Rick Archer: That’s very cool. I actually have a friend who, for whom this is not only a knowing thing, but a visual thing. If he, if he if he goes into a deep state and thinks or tunes into Abraham Lincoln, he sees Abraham Lincoln wandering around in the Oval Office and or, you know, or sees Jesus Christ, you know, preaching or something. And this might seem far fetched, but it’s a very vivid thing. It’s not just a vivid imagination, he feels like he’s really kind of crossing across time and tuning into an actual cognition of that of that individual.
A.H. Almaas: So he has a he has access. Yeah, you see. So as part of all potential for us, as a people as a human being, we are the whole universe, or in all its times. So it’s a question of developing the x axis is not easy. There needs to be a maturation and development in many capacities and openness and being free from all the beliefs and ideas and the limits that we put on ourselves for what is reality. And so the potential the potential, that’s why I’m saying, expressing realization practice continues, because we never finished with this potentiality. So nobody has held still has developed the capacity to locate themselves physically at anytime they want to be right. But this is it is potential. See, we could do it with our minds with our Akash. And some people learn by locality or something like that. You heard about that. Some people Sure.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Like Don Juan and Castaneda books.
A.H. Almaas: It does happen. Yeah. But it is really a potential.
Rick Archer: There’s a comedian named Steven Wright. And he said, I said, I went into a restaurant and said, breakfast served any time he said, Okay, I’ll have french toast during the Renaissance. Yeah.
A.H. Almaas: Why not? Yeah.
Rick Archer: So here’s another question for you that came in? What is driving reality to manifest in all these different ways? Short, simple question.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so that’s a question that many people ask, why is it that way? Especially people ask the question that way, when they are frustrated in their practice. Why is it like this? Why do I have to do this? That’s one reason why this God designed the world this way. Right. And, as usually my answer, while different tradition gives you the different stories, right? Why had it that way? The way I see it, first of all, I don’t know if I have an answer for it. You know, I don’t know if I find the answer. I probably have different answers a different time. But the way I see it now, is that that is the nature of reality to be that way. The nature of reality is not It is a mystery, but it is a creative mystery. It is always creating actualizing is potentialities. It is infinite potential, that is inherently inherently manifesting these potentials in various ways, that is just the nature of our reality.
Rick Archer: I feel like we are individual expressions of that same tendency, don’t you find that you just have this sort of tendency to want to express potentials and to be creative? And, you know, and everybody does, yeah, it’s like, we’re just kind of like little facets of a much larger jewel of, you know, God, God, or Universal Intelligence. And we’re just reflecting that same tendency that we see in nature itself, which is just endless, explosive, diverse creativity.
A.H. Almaas: So that’s one way I see it, that each one of us is a facet, or expression or a lunch, and where it’s natural for us to express our potential and fact, goofy and happy when we can’t do us if we had limitations that we don’t like, and because partly because it is a facet, but remember that said, the facet contains the whole, we are the total reality, whose nature is creative, and is always manifesting and illuminating is manifestation. And it is, you know, life becomes interesting when we’re like that we’re both individual who were also beyond the individual at the same time, we can be the whole it could be the non dual, and expressing ourselves through this individual in the in the in that personal life. Or we could recognize as the individual I am the whole actually, I am all of it anyway, as an individual, right? So of course, I have the property the whole because I added the whole. Yeah,
Rick Archer: that’s cool. There’s some, towards the end of your book, last few chapters, I found something very interesting that you were doing, which was you’re making these fine distinctions between subtle levels of reality. For instance, you said, pure presence and no free in your own experience, pure presence and knowingness, transitioned into pure awareness, which transitioned into the absolute. And then little bit later on, you said, the absolute is subtler than pure, primordial awareness, because there is no perception or capacity for self reflection. It is still possible to discern these dimensions, because discerning intelligence of reality is present in all its dimensions. What I find interesting about all this is these fine gradations, between pure presence knowing this and the absolute and pure consciousness, and to me, that’s not clear. In my experience, to me, it’s like one whole realm of life, but I couldn’t possibly discern between the fine layers of it.
A.H. Almaas: Well, it’s actually happening in our ordinary experience anyway. And you’re seeing the basis of what’s happening in our experience all the way. Let me just put it that way for you, right. You’re perceiving things, right? Yeah. And you’re perceiving and you’re sort of recognizing what you’re perceiving. And the recognition, and the perception seems to happen simultaneously.
Rick Archer: Right,
A.H. Almaas: right. And I’m saying, is that really the perception precede recognition?
Rick Archer: Yeah.
A.H. Almaas: And there can’t be perception without recognition.
Rick Archer: Sure, like you mean, for instance, just to understand what you’re saying. So sounds like you’re talking about sort of cognitive science kind of stuff, where a baby might perceive something but not recognize what it is? Because he doesn’t have the knowledge or the interpretive abilities?
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. Doesn’t know what it is, because its mind hasn’t developed, cognitive capacity hasn’t developed. However, in exploring our way of experiencing in all the faculties used and experiencing, I see that there is first the perception and the perception brings about knowing, which then bring about naming and labeling. Right. So you can actually recognize without, without you can know without naming in that sense. You could feel love and you’re loving them and you don’t mean nothing in the mind. Your mind is love you Although you’re acting in a loving way,
Rick Archer: but how does all this relate to what I was asking about pure consciousness and the absolute and so on, because it sounds like there, you’re you’re making fine distinctions between very subtle levels of reality. I think if you’re conscious, I’m thinking of some kind of fundamental ground state of, of, you know, very close to, if not identical with sort of ultimate absolute reality of being,
A.H. Almaas: okay, not this fundamental ground state. Aware of itself or not,
Rick Archer: if I were to feel not necessarily qualified to answer that, but I would say, it becomes aware of itself, because its nature is consciousness. And well, let’s put it this way. pure existence, might not be aware of itself, but it be but it has within itself, the seed of of self recognition, or consciousness, and so it becomes aware of itself. And then in becoming aware of itself, a kind of a dichotomy is set up no or known process of knowing and a whole, the whole sort of diversification ensues.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, so I Yeah, so Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. But I’m saying it in a little in a different more detailed way. Yeah, for instance, so, the consciousness or whatever, recall the absolute whatever it is, first it is, and then it can perceive that it is. And then it can know that it is perceived, not seeing something and knowing it are two different steps. Okay? You see, so I’m saying, that is aware that consciousness, the ground, can be non conceptual, it has no concepts. And it because has no concept, there’s perception without recognition. Similar to the way the baby is, sees many things, but they don’t, it doesn’t know what they are, we are innocent, again, that’s the place of pure innocence, and condition of realization, when you are, you’re aware. But you don’t even know you are, but you are spontaneously resolved. But then it can come cognition, which is another dimension, where you, you, you know, that you are, and you know, what you are, you know, you are consciousness, before that, you You are the consciousness and perceive it, but you don’t know that you are being consciousness. That’s, you know, if you stay at that level, and not get the recognition. That’s what Gurdjieff called the stupid sate in the sense that we talk about saintly, but you don’t know why awakening includes knowing there’s not just awareness of the of the ground, but recognizing it, recognizing it, recognizing not only what it is like, that is what you are all that includes knowing that knowing is another faculty or another domain, I see it as another dimension of being arising out of the, of the pure awareness First, there’s just pure awareness, non conceptual, and our hours of that arise another dimension that brings in knowingness. Yeah, so, perception and knowing are two levels of consciousness. So, that make a distinction like that, and further distinction than those but these are the main two,
Rick Archer: yeah, I find it a useful exercise to try to understand these distinctions, that sort of cultures subtler thinking, you know. And it seems to me you can take it in two directions, I mean, you could think of the inner journey as you proceed more, more and more deeply within and everything kind of folds in upon itself and you arrive at levels of being which are pre conceptual, and, you know, pre manifest. And you could also take it the other way, in even in a universal sense in terms of the manifestation of creation, where, you know, pure existence becomes conscious. And then consciousness becomes intelligent and begins to assume a creative role, the whole thing emerges in that direction.
A.H. Almaas: That’s another dimension which is right regarding that, this consciousness that is awareness and knowing also has the capacity to create Yeah, to manifest out of its relevance is potential to become different forms and phenomena.
Rick Archer: And it It seemed that itself knowing is the thing that’s stirs the ocean of being in order to stimulate creation. It’s sort of creates an impetus for creation with the when the self knowing occurs.
A.H. Almaas: And the knowing, you know, I it’s very important, you know, and Vedanta for they know, they make the knowing the most important thing, like there’s only knowing some of them say, only, you just know and you know that, you know, everything is knowledge. Right. And you could see that I mean, it’s, I remember Rupert Spira trying to convince you that he’s telling you everything is not literally just throw, logically speaking, all you have is your knowing, and the moment what’s happening, right. However that knowing first requires a perception and the perception, it is possible to have that perception free from from the knowing. You see that I don’t know whether the Vedanta goal is to do with nonconceptual probably is over the bill I talked about, I don’t know but they usually always talk about the knowingness they equate and, and satchidananda not so. Yeah, so Jnana. CIT, which is consciousness, they always think of it as knowing and I see like that no one can be differentiated, different level, there is the consciousness that just just awareness, perception. And there is the knowingness of that. And the knowing is not mental knowingness is an immediate knowingness that Koshas itself knows it is consciousness, and knows it’s being. You see. And the interesting thing about the knowingness is, as we said, we talked about the baby perceives, but it doesn’t know. Right? In fact, it is a baby something similar to a stupid saint, say, Not completely, because they still have their, you know, temper tantrum and all that. But they can perceive purely, without without the mind without the believes that the habits and all they’re just the doors of perception are just there. But the cognitive capacity is not developed. It has a rudimentary, and as we know, through development psychology, that the cognition developed takes time to develop. And I see that as an, that development of cognition gets us to become an ego self. Because we part of the nodes on the cognition, and this is that I’m not your. And so they’ve developed what’s called dualistic knowing. But I see it as a stage as necessary for the development of cognition, for knowing, so that when realization appears, again, the capacity of known is developed. And now we can know. So the baby who was stupid said, now becomes an adult, who is an awakened saint, you know, what your meaning is, even though you were at before, but you didn’t recognize it. Now you recognize it?
Rick Archer: I think it’s an important point, because some people say, Oh, babies are enlightened, and then they lose it, you know, but maybe that’s true in the sense that there’s a sort of a pure innocence and innocence. It’s also characteristic of Enlightenment. But obviously, as you’ve just said, one has to go through all sorts of developmental stages, Before Enlightenment in any real meaningful sense can be come a living reality,
A.H. Almaas: if you don’t recognize it. It’s not Enlightenment. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: And if you can’t function in the world, well yet maintaining that pure awareness, then it’s not going to do much good. Yeah, so knowing,
A.H. Almaas: add something to just be it being an awareness of being and that is knowing. And one the knowing is habits of being that opens the heart, and then adds a whole dimension of love. Where the whole consciousness is pervaded by sweetness by lovingness, by goodness by joy. And that’s the Ananda satchidananda we recognize it’s the knowing, and the loving this are two sides. In fact, one of the thing you know about being is it’s goodness, it feels freeing, Feels good, feels good. Because bless, but basically, it feels good. It doesn’t feel bad to say, but you have to know you have to have knowing for your heart for to know your heart.
Rick Archer: So nice point Shankar has said that the intellect imagines duality for the sake of devotion. And I don’t know whether imagine duality is imagined or real? We’ve discussed that earlier. But definitely, if there is duality, and if there is a sort of a relative creation, then there can be love and devotion and all those lovely qualities, which you wouldn’t find in complete homogenous, oneness.
A.H. Almaas: I think his expression actually comes probably from experience. Yeah, in the sense that process of creation from being a similar to our imagination, like we imagine thing and they seem real and imagined it just like in our dreams. So reality, you could say is created by imagining, but imagining its way of creation. Yeah. God imagining is the creation of the world. We’ll say it’s not an individual who’s imagining
Rick Archer: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was once asked, you know, what is the purpose of creation, and He said, It’s the purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness. And I think he went on to elaborate that, you know, just flat wholeness or being without any manifestation is okay. But, but there’s a joy and an expansion of happiness in the sort of the manifestation, the diversification, the, the living, of being, as opposed to just the sort of flat being by itself not being lived by anyone.
A.H. Almaas: So we could we can surmise that, we could give a manifestation of purpose. But also, if you stay in the non conceptual thinking of a purpose, right? isn’t just what it is? Just what it is, it does what it does. say those words does. And if you start knowing, then you can see meaning to what you know, and then you give derive purpose from it, which is, at different stages, you have different you think of different purposes, it’s all useful for the
Rick Archer: well, we’ve nearly reached the two hour point. Is there anything you want to mention, in closing that we haven’t brought up yet? We’ve covered a lot of ground, but is there anything you feel is important in your book, or anything else that is on your mind that you’d like to throw out there
A.H. Almaas: have something in my heart? As we talk, I notice. There’s more more sweetness, and more and more connection with you? And also with the audience? I don’t see they feel like a role model, right, rising, you know, flower opening. Like as we talk about reality, reality is happy.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I have the same experience. It’s funny, because you said that at the end of the last interview, too, and and I listened to it just the other day, and it’s really true. I mean, it stirs up the bliss to have a conversation like this. Yeah,
A.H. Almaas: there’s, there’s there’s happiness, lovingness appreciation. And there is you know, different ways of connecting and being that we’re, we are expression of the same reality. But we are also not only experience that we are of the same reality. Yeah. Like that. Like I feel. You are there I am here. However, there is here, right? You’re not over there. You see, you’re actually right here. I feel you’re right here and I feed myself over there.
Rick Archer: There’s a wormhole between us. Yeah. There’s
A.H. Almaas: the first hour the love. hearts open. And that opens up the wormhole.
Rick Archer: Yeah. It’s beautiful. Good. Well, we’ll see each other in person at the non duality conference in science non duality in October. You’ll be going there I imagine.
A.H. Almaas: Possibly. I don’t know yet. But we’re still talking. We’re still talking?
Rick Archer: Hope you come.
A.H. Almaas: Maurizio and Zaya, possibly be interesting.
Rick Archer: Good.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. Well, good. Good talking to you, Rick, as usual.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
A.H. Almaas: I like that you try to get into the details of thing into the night just do things in general.
Rick Archer: Well, that’s where the that’s where the juice is, you know,
A.H. Almaas: do I like the fact that you’re having people ask questions.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I like that, too. I think that went pretty well. So as far as I know, we’ll continue to do that. As long as it goes well, and people enjoy. It seems like, I don’t know how many questions were sent in. I asked the fellow who’s monitoring the questions to just send me you know, a few of them because if 50 came in, I couldn’t ask them. So he’s been screening and picking out what he felt were the best ones and they were good ones that people send in so we’ll keep doing that.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah. And maybe in the future, if we do another interview, you can do it about another book or Yeah, sure. Like Do you remember the book? The Power of divine arrows?
Rick Archer: I remember the book. I haven’t read it. But I remember that’s one of the ones. That’s the
A.H. Almaas: book that Karen and I wrote together. And might be interesting. Yeah. interview about that, because it brings the tantra was beautiful Tantra, and how life and I, we discussed how Tantra is a way of living life. It’s not just what people think of it. In the limited sphere. Yeah. And it might be an interesting thing, because if we do that interview, we’ll do it with both of us.
Rick Archer: Yeah, maybe we could even do
A.H. Almaas: the relational aspect. And
Rick Archer: Maybe we could even do something like that out at SAND. Karen, I mean, Maurizio and Zaya were talking about having it a little bit more formalized where various people are, you know, interviewed by me and Zayaand somebody else. Part of the program,
A.H. Almaas: you’re good interviewers. I’m glad they’re gonna ask you to do that.
Rick Archer: Yeah. All right. Well, let me make some quick, general concluding remarks. We’ve been speaking with Hamid Ali, who goes by the pen name, A.H. Almaas, and this is my second interview with him. If you enjoyed it, you might also want to check out the first one, we’ve been talking mostly about his book, runaway realization, which I enjoyed a lot. And he’s written quite a few books, you’ll see this book a number of his books listed on his page on batgap.com, and links to the Amazon pages where you can get them and also a bit about Hamid and link to his website and see all that on batgap.com. You can if you go there, you can also subscribe to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. There is a donate button which we depend upon people clicking in order to support this whole thing. There is an audio podcast of the program and you’ll see a button that you can click to sign up for various ways with that audio podcast and a bunch of other things if you explore the menus, so thanks for listening or watching and we will see you next week. Next week. I’ll be speaking with a guy named Vasant Swaha. He’ll be Skyping with me from Brazil, I believe. Yeah, Brazil. Okay, thanks Hameed.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, thanks Rick
Rick Archer: See you again.
A.H. Almaas: Yeah, right.
