This is a rough draft generated by Otter.ai. If you would like to proofread it please contact me.
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people. I’ve done many hundreds of them now. And if this is new to you, and you’d like to watch previous ones, please go to the upcoming interviews page. Excuse me, no, go to the past interviews page on batgap.com. And there you’ll see all the previous ones archived in various ways. The upcoming interviews page has a form at the bottom of it through which you can submit questions for the guest if you happen to be watching live. So any of you watching today, if you wish to ask an a question, go to that page. And you’ll see that form at the bottom of it, I guess, is Anne Baring. She’s a Jungian analyst and author and co author of seven books. The ground of all her work is a deep interest in history and the spiritual mythological shamanic and artistic traditions of very of different cultures. Her website is devoted to the affirmation of a new vision of reality, and the challenges facing us at this critical time of choice. And I’ve had a wonderful time getting to know and over the past week through her book and her recordings, and now I have the joy of talking to her for a couple of hours. So I’m really looking forward to that. So welcome, Anne, thank you for doing this.
Anne Baring: Well, thank you for inviting me. It’s a great honor, and privilege. Thank you.
Rick Archer: Thank you. So the first thing I noted down in my notes was that you had some profound experience when you were about 11 years old. And that kind of got you going on this whole? The course of the rest of your life really, what was that experience?
Anne Baring: Well, that experience was completely unexpected, I left my body not knowing anything about that kind of thing at that time. And I felt myself being pushed down. First of all, through the bed, and then out through a narrow channel, like a birth canal really, off into God knows where and there was a great roaring and rushing in my ears, I was I was really terrified. And then all of a sudden, like coming out of a cannon, I was expelled or just expelled into this vast blackness. And I heard a voice saying I am. And there would have been more, but I was too frightened. And I went back through the terminal. And that was the end of the experience and woke up in my bed. But at the time, my mother was receiving channeled messages. And from then on, I was really introduced into this way of communicating with another dimension of reality. And it explained that I had a message which explained that early experience, which said that I’ve been a medium in other lives, and that I could do this more frequently as I grew up. In fact, I’ve never done it again. But I certainly become more mediumistic and all the work that I’m doing, something is coming through when I’m writing and everything. So that was how it began.
Rick Archer: I often get the sense, maybe it just jives with my own philosophical orientation. But I often get the sense that people who have profound experiences when they’re kids are just picking up where they left off in a previous life.
Anne Baring: I think that’s probably true, although I hadn’t ever thought of it that way. But evidently, that’s what happened with me that time. Yeah. And from then on, I really devoted myself to this spiritual path. And trying to understand why I was incarnated on this planet, and what I had to do. And gradually it unfolded all through my life what I had to do, yeah,
Rick Archer: as I understand it, you had the opportunity to go to Asia when you were quite young, and you went to Tiruvannamalai, where Ramana Maharshi had lived and not to where he had died, actually, and a number of other places. Is it worth recounting some of the experiences and impressions that you got from that trip?
Anne Baring: Well, I think India was the revelation because coming from very cold and war, post war Europe, to go to this country of extraordinary beauty and color, where the people were so beautiful, and where there was such a richness of tradition of going back to the Vedas and beyond, with a wonderful temples, wonderful manuscripts, and I was 25 at the time, and I really absorbed Hold everything like a sponge. And I went to a Janta, for instance, which was absolutely amazing place, saw the fresco of the Buddha there and became interested in Buddhism, very interested in Buddhism, and in Hinduism, and that really started my interest in studies in religion, which went on to Darwinism as well, because I traveled right the way through Asia, except to China, which was out of bounds at that time,
Rick Archer: this would have been about 1956. Exactly, yes. Yeah, you were born in 31. Okay, now, I think that the channeled messages your mother received were significant. I read the account of that. And I think people would be interested in hearing a little bit about that, and it will probably, it’s sort of, it will touch upon a number of things we’re going to be talking about during this conversation.
Anne Baring: Well, what they really were about those messages they were, they came to my mother and a friend of hers, who did the writing was a form of writing communication. And they said that the earth is in a state of great potential danger. And that there could be what they called a cataclysm to wipe out life on the planet. If we didn’t change course, if humanity didn’t stop the process of killing each other, they were very strong about that. They said that killing is absolutely wrong, which is what we’ve always been told that they’re stressed that and so they told my mother to prepare, but my mother at that time was about, I suppose, 4045, or something like that. And she was in a social background where she could possibly not possibly share this with anybody. So she had to keep all this to herself and shared it with me and this friend. But she was not able to do more. She was a poet, herself and an artist. So she put it into her poetry and her writing her artistic expression. But she wasn’t able to warn people in the way that the messages said that she and her friend should do. She just had to really keep it to herself. But I absorbed all this. And because things have moved on. Since that time since 1945, they warned the splitting of the atom, that was one of the things they warned, they said, with a splitting of the atom, you’ll have the split psyche, and you’ll have more and more bloodshed as a result of that splitting. So this made me interested in the whole scientific side of things. They also said that I was to study the history of early Christianity, and the Reformation, which I did in my studies and everything and afterwards. So that gave me a sort of program that I was to follow. And I absorbed that and studied really. And then I went to Oxford and studied history, and traveled to India and the Far East. So I was absorbing all in my 20s a huge amount of information based on these messages. And based on the feeling that something had to be done to change the course that the world was on. And how was I at the age of 25, to do it. So I’ve had to wait to be 85. Before I could really say something that could have some impact,
Rick Archer: having an impact longer than that, from what I gather. In fact, when you say that your mother couldn’t really do anything about it, given her social context, it seems to me that you are the means through which that message was conveyed. And I don’t know who this who these they were that was that were, you know, conveying the message. But it’s, I think they probably understood the dynamics of that. And that, you know, you were to be the messenger for the information. At least that’s the way it turned out.
Anne Baring: Yeah, that’s the way it turned out. Certainly one of the most people giving the messages was St. Francis. And he became very, I traveled to Italy, and I became very close to his teaching, which was very similar to the teaching of early Christianity. And he that was what he was trying to do. He was trying to bring back the teaching of early Christianity to the church at that time, in the 13th century, 12th and 13th century. So all these things sort of fitted together. And I took him as my mentor really, and there were other ones from from other beings as well. But those are prefer not to talk about.
Rick Archer: Well, that’s okay. But I think the principle that there are beings that are on some, in some dimension that’s on some level, who are overseeing or intervening in human affairs is interesting. And it’s something that somebody that a lot of people don’t believe even even some spiritual people, they think it’s kind of Hocus Pocus, but um, it resonates with my way of understanding and, and you know, many people that seem sincere, have had experiences like your mother did. And I find it kind of reassuring in a way that there’s some wiser entity Is that our have our best interests in mind are to doing what they can to keep us from killing ourselves?
Anne Baring: Well, they can only do so much. And we have to do the rest, right. But I agree. And I think it’s such a shame that people don’t know about the existence of these other dimensions, because they’ve cut off a whole aspect of their life, or they’re being really as humans. And we’re not just confined to this planet, we have much more expanded consciousness, if you like, if we’d open to it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I once convened a panel of people who all had this kind of experience, you know, subtle beings and so on. And it’s on BatGap. It’s a whole thing about refined perception. And, you know, the metaphor I made when I introduced that panel was that, you know, if, if space aliens landed on the White House lawn, or maybe at number 10 Downing Street, it would be this huge news event. I mean, everybody would just go nuts. But, in fact, there are, you know, throngs of beings that aren’t necessarily from another planet, but are subtle and beyond our ordinary perception. And they’re all around us. And, and that’s been going on for all time. So that would be a huge news event if people actually understood the significance of it. But obviously, it’s the kind of thing that you can’t see unless you have the eyes to see it. And so it sort of goes beneath everyone’s radar.
Anne Baring: Well, apparently, according to Steven Greer, who has done a great deal of research on extraterrestrials, these people want to come, they want to land on the White House.
Rick Archer: They just don’t want to get blasted to Smith.
Anne Baring: As long as we all the way we are right. It got to wait until we change. Yeah. And then they might sit foot here. But it’s good to know that they’re around and I feel them random. They’re in this room. Now. I can feel them around me. They’re interested in our conversation. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I believe that. And yeah, I have friends who do see them. And they say that in a typical gathering, you’ll see little clusters of them all over the place, sort of attending to people in some way that even my friend who sees them doesn’t quite understand. But it seems like you know, the universe is teeming with life that is that the vast majority of people don’t even know exists.
Anne Baring: And that’s right, we only see 4% of the universe. So what’s happening in the other 96%? And what a dark matter? Yeah, maybe the in dark matter, or these beings who knows. We haven’t yet got the instruments that we need.
Rick Archer: Arrange a scribbled out a little note here said breaking news subtle beings get 1000s of Facebook likes. I said it would be a huge news event. Tell Mark Zuckerberg
Anne Baring: they thought that crop circles might do that. But they people poo pooed them and said that they were just made by men, which some of them were but the majority could not possibly have been made by human beings. And, and I know a great deal about that. And that could have been a changing point, if we just taken it on board.
Rick Archer: I know I heard you talking about one just yesterday that appeared overnight in some field within a matter of hours. And it was this huge, intricate thing you know that a bunch of drunks from the local pub could not possibly have gotten out in the middle of the night. But that’s the way that stuff is usually dismissed.
Anne Baring: Yeah, but there’s so much that denied. Now, this is what irritates me so much about scientific rationalism or reductionism, because it’s eliminated a huge amount of what would be available to us if we could open our mind to it, and listen and pay attention. And to categorically split that off as rubbish or nonsense, is, I think, indefensible. That’s the word indefensible. Or just what the church did before it, really it shut off a whole realm of experience that could be accessible to us. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And that points to an interesting question, which is, why are people so reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of something beyond their own experience? Why why do they somehow feel a sense of security in their little paradigm and are so resistant to having it, you know, evolve into a newer paradigm?
Anne Baring: Well, I think this is the defense system of the ego, which is very understandable. But the unknown always has been very frightening to the majority of human beings. And even when you have people come into analysis, that terrified at the idea of the unconscious, because they don’t know what it is. And it’s very gradually when you introduce them to the idea that there’s more to their consciousness and they realize that they open up to it, but at first there can be denial very often in clients. So this is, I think, a human characteristic and it’s a defense mechanism of the ego. And if the ego is quiet strong as it is in the scientific community, but it’s has has had to be to be developed, then there’s a risk that it will shut out something which is illogical or irrational. But Einstein said the paranormal of today is the normal of tomorrow. And I think that’s something quite useful to remember. Also, there’s another thing which is most interesting. And that is that we can be programmed to get stuck in the left hemisphere of the brain. And to shut off the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is one that gives all possibilities, greater scope, the imagination, whereas the left hemisphere, which is very necessary, but it thinks in a linear way, so it thinks ABC and that’s the end, so to speak. But it doesn’t allow for parallel lines or sort of alternative routes as it were, whereas the right hemisphere entertains a variety of alternatives if you like. So there’s a danger in everything once people get set in a way of thinking, they may shut off and stick get stuck in the left hemispheric thinking. This is something that I man called Ian McGilchrist has written a wonderful book called The master and his emissary Do you know it? No. Well, I think you’d be fascinated by it, because he’s a psychiatrist, but also knows a great deal about literature and history. And he shows how the Western psyche has been funneled into this left hemispheric way of thinking, and how it’s, it’s stuck, really, and doesn’t know how to get out of it. And the problem is, how are we going to get out of it? How are we going to open up to this wider consciousness with all that it could give us and all the nourishment and revelation that it could give us. And this is how revelation used to come into the culture through individuals. But we have very little revelation nowadays, except for the marvelous Hubble telescope images, which absolutely dazzling I saw that you had that on your background of your talk, you had marvelous cosmic image there. Anyway, um, I could go on about the right and left hemisphere of it. But it’s also what Jung was talking about in his concept of individuation. It was how to bring people beyond the point where they were, where they were stuck, so to speak, how to open to them a wider horizon and a wider understanding of their own psyche. Yeah.
Rick Archer: A couple of thoughts here. Okay. I think I’ll ask you this one first. You’re you’re very familiar with various myths and legends and stories told throughout history. But just taking the Lord of the Rings, as an example, you know, Frodo, everyone can try to convince him and I think he also wanted to just stay in the Shire where it was nice and safe and warm. And why go off on this crazy adventure, it didn’t appear to appeal to his left hemisphere, it made no sense whatsoever. But there was a sort of calling, like, got to do this thing. And, you know, going through huge trouble and travail and danger and fear and an unknown, you know, whatnot, in order to fulfill this mission. So I think there are probably 1000s of stories like this in various myths and legends, which are all probably metaphorical about just what you’re talking about the sort of the, you know, the inner quest, and how it might seem like we’re safe and cozy in our, in our little conscious mind, which may represent 5% of the full potential range of experience, but how, in fact, we’re not. And we really have to, to attain true security, we have to sort of explore the whole range.
Anne Baring: Well, that was really what that marvelous man Campbell, Joseph Campbell’s, the hero’s journey, right? That was the theme of all his work really was the you have to embark on the journey. If you don’t embark on the journey, you just don’t go where you’re supposed to go. And I suppose it within my own life, embarking on the journey on the quest, the similar to the Grail quest of the Middle Ages, you have to step out of your box and take a risk. And with me, it happened through exploring the Far East and being given that fantastic opportunity. I had of collecting photographs from all the museums of Asia. But if I hadn’t been given that, by some miracle, I probably would have been stuck in my little box.
Rick Archer: On a similar note, the idea that science sort of thinks that it has it all wrapped up and you know that we really understand how the universe works and it’s random and there’s no intelligence and there’s no soul and consciousness is is an epiphenomenon of brain functioning and when the brain dies, consciousness dies and that whole paradigm, the whole materialistic paradigm, I think we’re going to talk about that quite a bit today. We can’t even start talking about it now. And it segues from what we’ve just been saying. But it obviously is a paradigm that hasn’t really worked out so well, for our culture and for our world and the continuation of our species and all species. And so it’s either change it or cease to exist. I think you could you wanted to start elaborating on that.
Anne Baring: Yes, well, I think that I think two things have given us a very wrong idea of ourselves. One is the myth of the fall, and the sinfulness and guilt of humanity. That’s one thing we can go back to that later. But the other thing, imagine what it does, I think Rick tarnis brings this up in his marvelous book, Cosmos and psyche. He said, What does it do to the human psyche to be told that they’re living in a meaningless universe, where their lives have no meaning with there’s nothing beyond this life, where the brain is the beginning and end of consciousness? What does that do to the psyche, it really shuts down the soul. And this is what’s happened in the whole culture, our soul has been shut down, doors been shot, key locked and thrown away. And this, to me is an outrageous infringement of the human being, and as a human potential, and it makes me very, very angry that this should have got such a grip on the culture. And it’s also driven by the idea that of the survival of the fittest, which was a misinterpretation of Darwin’s great work. But this has got a grip on the psyche now, because if you take away the universe, the meaning of the universe, and your life has no meaning, then you’re going to just focus on what can what you can grab in the way of goods and things and possessions and, and you’re going to struggle to be better and richer or more famous, or anything better than somebody else. Because this is this will become your paradigm that you’ll have to succeed where other people fail. And that will be you will survive, and the others may not. But it leads to an absolute ruthlessness, which I’m sure you’re aware of, in the way we treat each other in the way we treat animals and the way we treat the resources of the planet. Without thinking what we’re doing. This again, makes me angry because the indigenous people have been warning us for years and years that we have to change course. But this paradigm of materialism, actually the word material comes from Marta, the mother. So it’s really, we’re possessed by what we’ve rejected, which is the feminine principle and the mother. And we’re driven by that principle to try and get more and more goods, more and more things more and more experience more and more communication with each other, which may take us away from the value of our own lives. The internet is marvelous. The fact I’m speaking to you is extraordinary. But it can take over people’s lives until there’s nothing else.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a saying, he who dies with the most toys wins. And I remember in during the Reagan administration, Ronald Reagan, Secretary of the Interior, who was in charge of the national parks, and you know, other such resources, wanted to start mining in them and you know, just extracting all the resources that could be found. And his argument was that, well, Jesus is coming back soon, and the world is gonna end anyway. So let’s just kind of like, get everything we can out of this world, because it’s going to end. So I mean, you say you are angry, but who are you angry at? And who is to blame for the dominance of this mindset? Is it Christianity? Is it certain people who corrupted you know, what became Christianity or what?
Anne Baring: I think the mistake was in Christianity and its whole teaching, to begin with, because we’ve had 2000 years of nearly 2000 years of Christianity before we had the scientific paradigm we’ve got now and what it did, it kept people in an infantile state really, because it said that humanity has been redeemed by the sacrifice of the Son of God. And that will guarantee our entry into heaven. If you’re Christian, that is not speaking of the whole of humanity if you’re Christian, but it really didn’t leave the responsibility to man and woman to actually do the redeeming themselves. And also it failed to teach people this is what I’m speaking about a lot at the moment. It failed to teach people that they carry the divine essence within them that they are part of the Divine. They’re not separate from God at all. And they gave the idea that there was a huge gulf between God they’re up there in heaven and humanity down here in a sinful state. That was a disastrous teaching because it gave a great feeling of guilt and sin. And when you have guilt and sin, the first thing you’re trying to do is get rid of it by blaming somebody else. And, and so we’ve had in Christian culture, we’ve had this, even now we’re setting out to punish Assad in Syria, which is coming deeply, deeply from the programming we’ve had that we have to punish wrong. And it’s our job to do so. Whereas sometimes it’s better to leave things to God and not try and sort it out ourselves.
Rick Archer: You know, last night, US, UK and France, bombed Syria in retaliation for Assad’s gas attack on his own people. If you were Prime Minister of the UK, what would you have done?
Anne Baring: I would have waited a bit, I think I wouldn’t have rushed to bomb for one thing, because you’re killing more people. You’re really compounding the, you’re compounding the wrong that’s already done by doing another wrong. And the Dalai Lama. Remember when the invasion of Iraq happened, he said, there will be very bad karma. And what you’re doing in bombing Syria now is you’re creating more bad karma. You’re not going to create good karma. You can’t wipe out what as I did, by creating more deaths on the ground, more terror for people, that we have to get into a different way of thinking God knows how I don’t know how, thank goodness, I’m not Prime Minister, because I wouldn’t know what to do. But I can see the dilemma and that they’re following the old paradigm of guilt, blame punishment. And really, that’s dangerous because it can lead to more, more punishment, it can lead to escalation in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and Iran being brought in Russia already there. Turkey already there. It’s too much of a mess to create more of a mess, if you see what I mean. Yeah. Well, I do see, I understand why they’ve done this. And I understand Trump calling us an animal. These are natural human reactions, and we’re not going to comprehend them. But I would like to invite the His Holiness, the Dalai Lama to comment on this situation, because only somebody with that perspective, could really give us the wisdom and the advice that we need.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, another example is World War Two, just to play devil’s advocate. And you know, I guess it was never Neville Chamberlain, who wanted to sort of give Hitler time and maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. And you know, Churchill said, No, this is serious, they’re going to take us over, we have to, you know, fight fire with fire. And I think even Gandhi was saying that, you know, a more sort of non violent response should be followed. And yet in a situation like that, it’s like, takes a thorn to remove a thorn. It almost seems I mean, in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna was saying, you can’t just sit down in the chariot. You have to fight these guys. And sometimes that’s necessary.
Anne Baring: Yeah. Well, at that particular time, 1939 it was a threat to the whole of Europe. And it wasn’t just it was an attack, a real deadly attack on invading first of all Poland, and then Belgium. And so it got was got closer and closer, we have to act. And yeah, and in that situation, but this situation, we are not being attacked. I see. There is a difference.
Rick Archer: Okay, good. So let’s move off for that topic. I felt like in reading your books and listening to your things that for the first time, I’ve actually gained a rudimentary ability to articulate what the divine feminine is. So I really appreciate that. I don’t know if I could have answered it, if somebody had asked me a week ago, but let me take a crack at it and see if have you elaborate from here. But it’s this whole thing you said a minute ago of, you know, the sort of a masculine solar culture would be one in which God is seen as transcendent or separate from creation, and that creation is dead and inert and not imbued with the divine, whereas the feminine or lunar perspective, would be that, you know, God is imminent or inherent in every particle of creation, and really, there is nothing but God, you could almost say, in interacting with him or herself, in this whole play on display of, of divine intelligence. So does that do justice to it? And please, elaborate?
Anne Baring: Yes, no, it does. You’ve got it very well, what what happened was in the lunar copters, around the Neolithic time time of the Neolithic, which was between about sort of 8004 1000 BCE or a little bit later. What happened was that the Great Mother was viewed as the origin or womb of the whole of life. So everything came out of the womb of A great mother. So there was no separation between the creator and the created. They were all one, so to speak, all of creation were her children. And she was present within the whole of of what she had created. And that comes through in Kabbalah, too, in the Shekinah. The Shekinah emanates from the Divine and then dwells within the creation, as the divine within creation. And this is missing from the three patriarchal religions. You don’t get the sacredness of the earth and the sacredness of the whole of life. And unfortunately, the three religions, they tried to eradicate all aspects of what was called animism. That is to say that the rocks and the trees and the flowers and the earth were alive. And they communicated with people, people, probably an experienced visionary experience, they heard the rock speaking to them or the water speaking to them. But all that was wiped out. And with that eradication, you got the eradication of the sacredness of the life around us under the life that we were involved in, in our everyday lives. And it was only really retained by the peasant communicate Jews all over the world who kept the old rituals going in spite of persecution, in spite of being told they had to move to Christianity. So and that’s where the indigenous people come in, because they kept alive the idea that the earth was our mother. And that goes right back to the lunar cultures where the earth and the cosmos were our mother, both of them, it wasn’t the cosmos being separate. But Earth and cosmos were one unit as it were. So this has been lost. And I think this is a great tragedy. And this is what I’m trying to bring back in my writing the feminine principle as a totally different perspective on life, in which we are seen to live within a sacred order. And we treat the earth as a sacred order. And we don’t extract all the resources we can for our own new use. But remember that we’re part of a whole. And I think that marvelous Indian saying, Chief Seattle, the, you know, the waters, and the trees are my brothers. I put that into a book of sayings for my grandson, because it’s something that’s completely missing in our education. And if children understood, when they like to go out into nature, that they were really entering into participation with their brothers and sisters, they would get quite a different view of what their lives were about and what their relationship with nature was. So I think that my study of the Kabbalah has taught me that the divinity is present within this world. And my study of the ancient cultures taught me the same thing. And so that’s what I’ve tried to bring back in my dream of the cosmos. And even in the the myth of the Goddess, which I worked on with my friend, Jules cash, but we could see this great loss when you had the patriarchal God the Father coming in, you lost the whole thing of God, the mother.
Rick Archer: When you say the patriarchal religions, you’re referring to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Yeah. And, of course, the other two major religions are Hinduism and Buddhism. And presumably, they were explicitly they refer to the Divine permeating all creation, especially Hinduism. And, you know, the creation is wholly and conscious, really. But But then, if you look at the West, and how is it has progressed, technologically, in many ways, which are benign and beneficial diseases eliminated, you know, various agriculture, people’s lives made easier in so many different ways, in addition to many harmful things, you know, that we can elaborate on? Yeah, in the east, there wasn’t much technological progress progress. So do you think that and whatever progress we’re making now is a reflection of what has been learned in the east for the most part in the west or the West? Yeah. So do you think that somehow, the loss of the feminine the lunar age was necessary in order for material progress to be made at the pace and to the degree it’s been made? Or do you think that somehow, I mean, it’s hard to say in retrospect, what could have been what what happened is probably what was supposed to have happened, but theoretically, somehow couldn’t have been that we could have retained the the feminine orientation and yet made all this technological process or was it necessary to lose it and then come back Do it having made that progress?
Anne Baring: Well, that’s a very big question. I’m not sure that I can answer it because I don’t really know the answer. Because we’ve gone the way we have. We’ve had, in fact, we’ve had 4000 years of war, and building of empires. And that started in roughly the time of Sargon of Akkad. I can’t remember the exact date, but I think it was 2003 BCE. So 4000 years of warfare, empire building an art of warfare can technology. So the development of technology from the Bronze Age on was to do with weapons really, and then weapons develop more and more, and we develop guns, and then we developed rifles, and then we develop nuclear weapons. And that whole trajectory has been unconscious. We haven’t been aware that this is a constant buildup of more and more weaponry, so to speak. At the same time, we’ve had spin offs from that we’ve had wonderful things like electricity and heat and many helpful things. But I think I think things could have been done in a much more gentle way, not so violently, not so quickly. The Industrial Revolution was very rapid, and it caused terrible, terrible hardship. And if people had thought more, they could have cushioned the blow, if you like, of this change of technology so that the board didn’t suffer so much things like that, you know, there was more compassion for the poor. It’s all gone tremendously quickly. And it’s almost as if now we’re accelerating more and more towards what end? I don’t know. But technology is taking us in directions. We may not. If we thought about it, want to go. But we’re taken ineluctably towards whatever end technology is envisaging. It’s out of our control almost. And I think that’s a big danger. So looking back at where we might have gone, we could have done it more slowly. We could have done things which helped us but not connected with war, necessarily. And the Chinese developed, many things really to do with. I can’t remember what what were they invented paper? I think, yeah,
Rick Archer: and gunpowder?
Anne Baring: Yeah, there you are. I don’t think the two were connected. But it these are very big questions. And was it for instance, did the development of the what we call our conscious mind, separating from the unconscious separating from this more instinctual rapport that we had with the environment? Was that a necessary break? Or could it have been done more gently? If we hadn’t had such a warlike culture? Could the conscious mind have developed all the skills it has now? Without getting shut off from the unconscious getting shut off from the soul? That’s a very big question.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And it’s also interesting to note that According to some accounts, ancient India had very advanced technology and flying machines and, you know, advanced surgeries and all kinds of things, and also advanced weaponry, and there’s some, some suggestion that they, you know, destroyed their culture through that. So who knows? But, you know, certainly I think you and I both agree that a technologically advanced society and a spiritually advanced society are not mutually exclusive. And that, in fact, you I mean, spiritual advancement can probably do okay without the technology. But technology obviously can’t do well without the spiritual advancement. And so whatever might have been, however, we might have gotten to the point where we are now we obviously need to interject a major dose of, of spirituality, in order to balance things out.
Anne Baring: I think we do. And this is what my work is all about is how to inject what I call the new story so that we leave the old story, which is all about power and conquest. And we move into a new story, which is about relationship, and above all relationship with a planet and also restoring our ancient relationship with the cosmos, which now we’re thinking about traveling to Mars, but there’s no sense of relationship with the cosmos, no sense of real respect for it, as a living entity, a conscious living conscious entity, if we could change our understanding to see it in that way, we would be able to recover the ancient respect like say, of Egypt or Peru or Central America that the great civilizations or China, who, an India as well, who really had this link with the cosmos through astronomy, because there were always great astrologers and astronomers, and they always watched the situation of where the earth was in alignment with the cosmos and where it was deviating from alignment. So at the moment, we’ve deviated way off course from relationship with the cosmos, and we need to get back on course. And very quickly, because we’re in very great danger of destroying ourselves and wiping ourselves out like Atlantis apparently did, yeah, through it through its technology. And the Great Flood was what ended Atlantis. And we could talk about that if you wanted, but they, they’d gone too far in the quest for power. And the whole thing was wiped out within 24 hours, that was the end of it. And then luckily, some people escaped when they were warned beforehand, like Noah and his ark, and they got away, and were able to establish civilization in places like Egypt and Peru. Once again, there’s a great deal coming out now, because apparently, there is no evidence that the earth was hit by the fragments of a disintegrating comet around 12,800 years ago. And a followed by a, really a dark age, when there was a bitter cold and nothing could grow. So many, many people died or millions must have died in that cold. And then we started again from around 10,000 and began building up to where we are now. But that thing could happen again, you know, that’s not not beyond the bounds of possibility. And there is a warning at a place called Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. Where I can’t remember his name now, but he wrote a wonderful book called magicians of the gods, explaining all this Vandana can possibly No, not No, no, no, no much more recent, should know him, I’ve got him under the table. My memory is not all that good at my age. Anyway, this is things we need to be aware of this when we’re not in immortal and invincible in that sense, our technology is not making us invincible. And luckily, we have NASA keeping an eye out for things that might asteroids and things that might hit the planet. But there isn’t much we could really do if one big one came out,
Rick Archer: I don’t think we’re quite ready to do that. They’re talking about investing money in, you know, acquiring the ability to knock one of these things off course, if it looks like it’s gonna hit the Earth, but we’re not there yet. And besides which, I mean, aside from comets, if we set off even a fraction of the nuclear weapons that we have stockpiled, we’d have a nuclear winter, which would do just what that Thomas, you mentioned, did, it would cast the most of the Earth into extremely cold temperatures, aside from all the radioactivity and other destruction, and totally disrupt everything, including agriculture for a long, long time.
Anne Baring: Yeah, exactly. I’ve written all that in a review, I wrote a book on nuclear weapons. Absolutely evil. Yeah. And people are not aware of the fact that generals are not aware of the people who have all these wretched weapons are not aware of what they could cause in the way of a Wipeout. Really, billions of people would be killed, first of all through the actual bombs, and secondly, through the nuclear winter, winter, and there will be nothing we could do. That would be it. So this is possibly the catastrophe that those messages were speaking about. I don’t know which catastrophe but they were warning us anyway, that we must change course, that the question is, which I’m able to ask you, how do we change course? How do we actually get out of this way of behaving that we’re in?
Rick Archer: Well, I don’t know if I can answer that. But before I take a crack at it, I just want to give you a metaphor that I heard one time, which is that, you know, the nuclear arms race is like, you know, two boys standing together in a pool of gasoline. And one of the boys thinks that he has the advantage because he’s holding more matches than the other boy.
Anne Baring: That’s just about it. And it is, it is a childish thing. It’s a defense mechanism from a very early stage in which one is playing with toys almost when not realizing the enormity of what one could do with these terrible weapons. We’re not really being fully conscious. There are a lot of people who are conscious.
Rick Archer: Well, we’ll come back to the question of what we can do about it. But one thing I just want to comment on, based on what you just said, is the strange human tendency to think that things are just going to kind of continue on the way they have been, and to disregard the potential consequences of things that if you’re a little bit more aware of a little bit more aware, you would see clearly as ominous and coming coming our way very quickly. It’s like I don’t know Nero fiddling as Rome burns or something. There’s this is checked out quality that the vast majority of people have?
Anne Baring: Well, that can be a defense mechanism. I remember somebody in the 80s, a woman was threatened with a bomb or something. And all she could do was make the beds. She couldn’t focus on the danger at all. All he could do was continue with her routine daily things because it’s all I could deal with. Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s what’s happening with the world today with the constant preoccupation with entertainment constant entertainment. Constant, thinks about money, you know, games on television, how you making money, etc. preoccupation with food, which actually, I think is a wonderful thing. But there again, is people looking for nourishment. And they’re looking for it from the programs on people cooking and everything, which are marvelous,
Rick Archer: whatever it is a lot of those. Yeah,
Anne Baring: we watched one last night called Master Chef, which was wonderful. But I think it’s a kind of denial, and it’s a kind of shutting down of the senses, that one can’t cope with it. We just can’t envisage what might happen. So therefore, we go on with it everyday, daily routine, you know, doing the things that we do.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I hope I really doesn’t mind me saying this. But one time, I had a friend and we were talking about these dire possibilities, you know, and, and Irene said, Well, I really hope the world does, then we just got new furniture. That’s it? Well, here’s a question that came in from Maria in Colorado, which I think kind of helps us with what we’re talking about now. And we’ll we’ll I’ll ask this, and then we’ll continue on. She has, it seems like the Dalai Lama’s main piece of advice would be to find happiness within that is not in any way dependent upon external worldly circumstances. Would you agree with this? Do we need to fix the world before we can enjoy the peace and joy of spiritual awakening?
Anne Baring: No, I think it’s very important to enjoy the peace of spiritual awakening. But he also said, all we need is kindness. We don’t need religions. We don’t need theories. We don’t need great ideas. But we do need kindness. So I think he would say how are we going to? He says, We’re social animals that Allah Lama? How are we going to express that capacity for kindness or the capacity for love? In ways that we’re not doing at the moment? How can we extend the parameters of where we can extend our kindness to, so I don’t think it all depends on because if you change your inner life, you automatically change what you’re doing in your outer life, the two go together, you can’t just stay within and think that’s all you have to do. You will need to find expression for who you are and what you are in the world. And that will be in your relationships. And instead of beating up your wife or husband, you might suddenly find that you’re able to talk to them. So that will be you know, that will be a change. So I I don’t agree that it’s enough to sit on a mountain and contemplate, you really have to go into the world because we are part of the world. And we’re part of this great network of relationships, not only with the world, but with the cosmos as well. Yeah, I wish the Dalai Lama would speak out more in situations like rain at the moment and give us a bit of advice. But he wouldn’t just leave it to other people to do all the work, he would say you need to get in there yourself. Definitely.
Rick Archer: Yeah, Maria’s question reminded me of that passage in the Bible where Jesus says, Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all else should be added unto thee. You know, it’s like, and which is also reminiscent of something that’s in the Gita, which is, you know, first the Lord Krishna says, Be without the three gunas or transcend the world. But then he says, three verses later, he says, established in being established in yoga, perform action, get out there in the world, and do something having established yourself in that inner state.
Anne Baring: I think the whole point of all religious teaching is to transform our consciousness so that we’re capable of acting more compassionately in the world. I would say all the religions, that’s the basic teaching, and Jesus, Jesus said, If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will heal, you will remember exactly what he said. But that’s a very important thing in the Gospel of Thomas. And I think that it’s something that we should think about and remember, so what is it that we have to bring forth? And I think what we have to bring forth is our latent divinity. We have to become aware of what precious what Jesus called the Pearl of Great Price that we carry within us. And this has not been taught by Christianity. It’s not taught that the pearl of great price is within us and that we have to find it. And that the whole work of being on this planet is actually to go in search of that pearl of great price within us. And then, having discovered it and having connected with the Divinity, we can then live the divinity in a much more effective way. At the moment, we have a great capacity for love. All people have that capacity, I can see you have a dog in the background, we’ve just lost a beloved cat, which live 20 years is a terrible blow. So that capacity for love is comes to us from the universe from the cosmos. And they’re loving us also comes because they’re devoted companions, as you know, yeah. And to lose one of them is a terrible loss. So to find that divinity within us, takes maybe a lifetime. I mean, this is the whole work of of being human being on this planet, being in relationships with our partners, and our children, our animals, and becoming more capable of expressing compassion. But we’re also capable of great evil. And this has not been taught religious, this divinity can express itself in negative destructive ways, as in our nuclear weapons, in the creation of our nuclear weapons, that is evil. We call it good because it is protecting and defending us. So we think, but if you think of the whole of creation as one unit, to create something that is going to destroy an element of that unit is wrong. And that this is something that simply has not been discussed in our culture at all. It’s just accepted that we need these weapons for our own defense. And that’s the end of it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that quote, you just said, from the Bible, or from Gospel of Thomas, about how did that go again, tell me one more time.
Anne Baring: If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will heal you or I can’t remember that word. And then if you do not bring forth, what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a verse in The Gita, which is very reminiscent of that where Lord Krishna says something about the value of of knowing the self. But then he says, though, those who did not know it, it behaves with enmity like a foe. And I was thinking about that as you’re speaking. And I think maybe part I can think of two ways where we might say it behaves with empathy, like a full one is that you know, that is the source of all creativity. And but if we don’t really, if we’re not really consciously attuned to it, then our creativity gets channeled through an imperfect vessel, and ends up being distorted in certain ways, and resulting in all the horrible things that we’ve done with in the world. And another is that, if we are out of alignment with that, then it smacks us around until we get back into alignment. So it might seem to be like the mother who scrubs behind the child’s ears might seem like a foe to the child. But the mother is really sort of saying like, you need this, it’s for your best interest, even though it’s unpleasant. Anyway, comments on those points?
Anne Baring: Well, I think that I’ve got a bit lost in it. Sorry. I don’t know that. I don’t think we’re a self correcting species. Because if we were we would have corrected ourselves long ago. And we’ve been going on the same trajectory now, as I say, for 4000 years and more acutely, in the last, say, 100 years, in the technological sense, and in the weaponry, weaponry sense. So unless we get some shock, maybe like mother trying to clean behind our ears, we’re not going to change course, we’re not going to wake up, we’re not going to say yes, what you’re doing is good for me, I got to get clean and you know, wake up sort of thing. So, but there’s enough suffering in the world if we just look at it to wake us up. I mean, look at what’s happening in Syria, look at the horror of the people what they’re going through, and the children and what sort of future will they grow up in his traumatized psyche? As a as a psychotherapist, I am appalled by the trauma inflicted on children, because that trauma will be reenacted, if it isn’t healed. And I think I’d like to get into this a bit more, because I think that because humanity has been wounded for so many centuries, and has had to deal with constant loss and loss of sons, loss of fathers lost of parents. This has created a real field of trauma, if you like, and like PTSD. We’re really in a state of PTSD as a species I think, and how to heal that it’s really a wound that needs healing, going back centuries of false teaching false behavior, and false values. and which have recreated the trauma all the time, as we’ve tried to readjust to what we’re told we have to do, or what we have to believe, or going into whatever wars we have to go into, you know, the First World War was totally unnecessary. And it was surely the the pride of the German leader that led us into it. You know, that sort of pigheadedness at that time. So, humanity’s had to follow these leaders, because it had no choice. Occasionally, there was a revolution while like with the French Revolution. And then you had the terrible American Civil War. But always one has been drawn into these things, really, almost without being aware of what we’re being drawn into. And then we’re re traumatize. And then we recover. Like we recovered from the Second World War, which took many decades. And then we had the whole thing of the Soviet Union and the control of its its satellites. And then you had the coming down of the Berlin Wall, and then we’re new, again, a new period. And now we’re faced with a situation in the Middle East. So we’ve never had a chance for a real rest. If you know what I mean, to recover from all these traumas. And although people survived the Second World War, there are people who are speaking about it now. They’ve managed to, to carry their wounds really, and not speak about them very often. Until now, you know, they’re making 40 or 50 years later, they may be talking about them. So I do look upon the human condition as a deeply fraught with trauma, and how to recognize the trauma of wrong beliefs that had been inflicted on on humanity, and wrong patterns of behavior that had been forced upon them, having not much choice, by their leaders. So there’s something that I’m cogitating, now as I’m watching, listening to Trump every day with his tweets and whatever, we’ve got the leaders we have a we supposedly have democracy, but is it democracy? Is it truly the will of the people? Are we having government by the people for the people? I don’t think so. But how do we get it?
Rick Archer: Well, there are several things, several things in what you said. I know, in my own experience, you know, I had a fairly traumatic childhood, you know, pretty good by some standards, but alcoholic father who had PS PTSD from World War Two, a mother who was in and out of mental hospitals tempted to commit suicide a number of times, and I was dropped, I dropped out of high school, I got arrested a couple of times. And then I learned to meditate. And it had this huge, dramatic influence on me, it turned me around very quickly. And you said earlier, can we really do it? Well, no, I don’t think I really did it, I took recourse to something which was bigger or deeper than the little me that I had known myself to be. And that kind of saved me. And, you know, if we could do that on a mass scale, then, you know, maybe society will be transformed as much as I was by taking recourse to something deeper?
Anne Baring: Well, I think that Maharishi is said that, that that was the way to go. But the more people who meditated the more society would be changed. And he actually did an experiment to prove that. And I think that’s very true. And I think actually, your country, America is more advanced in when when something like the shift network, for instance, does a no mass amount of work with changing people’s consciousness and meditative awareness and techniques, Deepak Chopra, who introduced that talk, he has done a huge amount. And, of course, in the east, they have the meditation technique. But it doesn’t work. I mean, look at Burma and the persecution of the Rohingya there. Yeah, it doesn’t always work. You think that in a country, which is based on Buddhism, that that couldn’t happen, but it has happened. So it doesn’t solve everything, but I think it can help a lot. And
Rick Archer: it’s a question of what people are actually practicing and how effective it is, how effective it is, whether they’re just paying lip service to Buddhism or whether they’re really practicing it in a way that the Buddha would, you know, acknowledges genuine knowledge was
Anne Baring: genuine. Yes, absolutely. So I think that was one way that could help certainly, but I think also the education of children could help and what in the sense that I explained making them more aware of their environment, and more aware of the fact that the relationship with the earth and not dominating the to get away of the whole idea of dominance. That’s one of the most important things and move into the idea of a relationship which needs, that’s the feminine principle is relationship. And dominance has been too much, which is not true masculine principle. But it’s what’s been taken over and presented as such, if you like that we have to, we’ve heard so often with the phrase, we have to dominate nature. And this is totally, totally wrong. But it’s got imprinted in people’s mind that that’s what we do. And look at the tar sands in Alaska. And that isn’t a terrible example, Canada, of domination. So you have to go from from here?
Rick Archer: Well, you here’s something you say in chapter 17 of your book, The prevailing myth of our civilization is waning dying and disappearing into the underworld of collective unconsciousness, then you quote Thomas Berry as having said, we’re in between stories, the old story, the account of how the world came to be, and how we fit into it is no longer effective. Yet, we have not learned the new story. But I think, for what it’s worth, the new story is sort of percolating up from from a deeper level, as evidenced by what I’m doing, for instance, is interviewing all these hundreds and hundreds of people who are having spiritual awakenings and the shift network, which you just mentioned, and, and many other things, there’s this sort of mass awakening, which is, for the most part under the popular radar, but which is very real, and very potent, being such a fundamental thing, fundamental things tend to be more potent than superficial things. And, you know, by potent, I mean, sort of, has leveraged, influential, and which, you know, I think might be just the response we need to the dilemma we find ourselves in and perhaps Perhaps the only response that could really, ultimately sort out the maddening complexity of all the world’s problems.
Anne Baring: Well, I think that’s true. And I think what’s happening is what I call the awakening of the, of the soul of humanity, that definitely is happening, and it’s happening more in your country, perhaps than anywhere else. So I followed a great deal of wealth. For 3040 years I’ve followed what’s I’m half American anyway. So I’m following what goes on in America with with great interest. My mother was American. So I do agree with that. And I think the new story, I call it, the new story is coming up, following what Thomas Berry said. And also following what Joseph Campbell said, he said, What is the new myth to be? And then he answered it, and he said, The myth of the united humanity really, in relationship with it with the Earth and the cosmos. So I think it is happening, and that’s very positive. And I think Ken Wilber, who’s one of the most brilliant people in your country, he said that we only need 10% of the population of the world to create this shift. And I think we’ve got probably five to 6% already. Yeah. And growing all the time, because it’s growing among the young people now who realize that they haven’t got much of a future unless they have something to say, with climate change, and what’s happening there. So I do think it’s accelerating that and it’s growing all the time, like, Lebanon in the bread in a way it’s making the whole loaf rise. Yeah,
Rick Archer: I’ll be interviewing Ken Wilber in a couple of weeks. Yeah, and again, it’s something that’s kind of, it’s not being imposed from without, it’s bubbling up from within,
Anne Baring: from within and without, and also from the bottom. It’s coming up from the people, not from government being imposed from the top. It’s definitely growing. And when you look, when I look back at her, there used to be something a book called the fabric of the future, which was published in goodness knows when in the 80s, I think, which was a compilation of all the women of that time, like Joan, Boris cinco, and Jean Houston, and lots of other ones, Marianne Williamson, they were all writing 3040 years ago, and one has seen the influence spread out in America anyway, in what’s been called the cultural creatives, I think, a very strong impulse led by mainly women, but also men like Deepak Chopra, and Ken Wilber. So I think it’s very, very important what’s happening in America. And I think that there’s been a great contribution from it. And I don’t know how many people listen into the shift network, but I think it’s 50,000 or so. Which is a good proportion. And then they spread it and it spreads out all over the world now with this internet business. So I do see hope. But I also see a very, very dangerous knife edge that we’re on at the moment, which could go either way.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And perhaps both. I mean, there could end up being there. Obviously, a lot of structures and institutions and whatnot that really wouldn’t have much of a place in a more enlightened society. And if we’re going to make a transition to set To world, then somehow, those things are going to have to be dismantled in the process. So that could be rather traumatic and tumultuous for the people who are invested in them literally and figuratively. And so it might seem like all hope is lost to those people. And yet, if you’re kind of aware of what lies beyond all that tumult, then you might feel very optimistic even in the midst of it.
Anne Baring: Well, I think businesses, again, are beginning to think in different ways. They’re beginning to think more environmentally conscious for one thing, but then you have huge corporations like Monsanto that wants to control all the seeds in the world that she agreed. But they’re being taken on by organizations. Have you heard of someone called
Rick Archer: others? Oh, yeah. I think they’re on the mailing list.
Anne Baring: Yeah, well, they are taking on people like Monsanto. And they’ve got, I think, 42 million supporters now, which is huge. And growing all the time. So the voice of the people is being heard in those sorts of organizations, and they are taking on the huge corporations and things like, well, like Monsanto, but also the the palm oil plantations in Indonesia. And the cattle ranching in the Amazon, they’re taking on all of those. And very, very important, because if we lose the Amazon, we lose climate, the nasty sort of over the climate of the planet. Yeah, yeah. And the same with Indonesia, with burning down the forest is creates dreadful pollution. And people, and Australia’s had terrible fires and terrible drought. So they’re looking more carefully at what they’re doing to. So there’s the pressure coming from the climate change side, as well as from the people who are trying to raise people’s consciousness. So there are a lot of elements that we’re we’re working for change. And very rapidly when I look back at sort of 3040 years, what was happening then, and what’s happening now, the change is extraordinary. Yeah, really, really extraordinary.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, the danger is accelerating faster than was predicted, even in terms of climate change, you know, the, the prognostications have, are coming through much faster than than they thought. But on the other hand, the positive stuff is accelerating quickly, as you say, compared to 3040 years ago. So it’s a sort of neck and neck race.
Anne Baring: Like that. There’s a there was a wonderful German poet called hurlan. And he said, We’re dangerous there rises, the saving one also. So I think there’s a greater the danger, the greater the impulse to change and rescuing the planet from our predatory impulses.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Just another quote from the Gita. Krishna says when when Dharma is in decay, and a Dharma flourishes, I take birth age after age, which is not to say that some blue guy is going to be born, but rather rather than the sort of the Divine sort of rises to meet the challenge of the decay of dharma.
Anne Baring: I think so. And this is where the cosmos comes in. Because all the time we’re influenced by the cosmos. And it may be that the actual rays that we’re being saturated with may be changing and maybe affecting our consciousness. That’s a whole nother whole side of science, which could be very interesting.
Rick Archer: That is very interesting. I have a friend named Robert Cox who wrote this book called The pillar of celestial fire and the last science of the ancient seers. And he contends that, you know, on the cycle of 26,000 years in line with the precession of the equinoxes, the earth periodically gets bathed with this sort of cosmic rays or whatever it’s subtle energy from from the center of the galaxy, or something that results in really dramatic and profound shifts.
Anne Baring: While this is supposed to be happening, I’ve got sources, which tells me that that this is happening, and that people are feeling it and in intense mood swings that they’re having or feeling tired, or feeling all sorts of different things that they didn’t used to feel, so to speak. There’s a kind of acceleration of energy, which people are feeling and particularly sensitive people. So I think that that that is happening, and that is something that’s completely out of our hands, we just simply have to understand that it’s taking place and sort of go with it and ask to ask to help it and how can we assist with this process? There’s this you know, Nassim Haramein. And his resonance Academy. Yes, because they’re doing extremely interesting work there. And I did their science course with them about three years ago, and learned a great deal on it. But they’ve been exploring the ancient civilizations and they took a trip to Egypt last summer. And it’s quite obvious that the pyramids were Built by a much earlier civilization than we have any idea of that it wasn’t built by slaves going up with on rollers with those huge stones, there’s no way that they could have built that in less than 1000 years or something. So they brought the statistics, the engineering statistics, which prove that this had to be built in a much earlier time. And the same with the great things in South America in Peru, and the civil Incan civilization there, that’s been discovered. And they’ve just discovered the huge extent, for instance, of the Mayan civilization far greater than we had any idea of through aerial photography and laser photography. So watch the documentary on that. Yeah. Wasn’t that really fascinating? Yeah. Yeah. So many things are being sort of coming up now in a different way. And that’s very positive. And I think that NASAMS outfit there is is very contributing to this change as well, because he’s teaching 1000s of people all over the world.
Rick Archer: Yeah, something you just said reminded me of something of a quote I lifted from your book you said, you do not know how precious are in the eyes of the sun, S O n, the souls he can use to orchestrate the symphony of the universe. Alright, that
Anne Baring: that was Jesus speaking in the messages.
Rick Archer: Okay, the message is your mother received or Yeah, okay, great. All right, let me throw in a question here that came from Elizabeth in California, she asks, My sense of the Divine, whether I call it God, or dow or Buddha nature, or Brahman, or whatever, is that it is non phenomenal, wholly without phenomenal characteristics. So when I, when I read the phrase, God, the mother, or God the Father, I don’t really know how to understand this, can you explain how our ultimate reality the core of our being can be considered masculine or feminine?
Anne Baring: I think it has to be considered both. neither one nor the other. But I like to call it the ground of being rather than anything else, the divine ground of being and David at that, but one being human, one often likes to put gender on to things and because we’ve had the male gender for so long, women in particular feel the need for the feminine gender. And I’ve gone along with that in my writing, because I think it’s one way of understanding life in a different way, through the experience of women and through the experience of the feminine. But to go back to the ground of being I think it’s you can see, it’s the ultimate ground of reality, but reality is also manifested. If you like to say the Divine Grant wants to express itself doesn’t want to stay within it’s, as it were, its creative source, it wants to expand. And so it’s expanded in the form of our universe, and many other universes, probably, that we don’t know about. And it’s present within it’s not separate from this universe, that it’s created or manifested in, it’s within every single atom of what we are and what life is. And this, again, is something that has been lost in the in certainly in the Christian teaching, it hasn’t been taught that God is present in every single particle of life, every single atom, and that the whole thing is one interconnected. beingness if you like, whether it’s the manifest part that we’re in now, or the unmanifest dimensions, which we know nothing about, or the divine ground, or the root of it all, it’s all one, unit, one, unitary beingness. And I want to get on to something too, because I want to talk about the fact that I think that we are, as part of this divinity, we think our lives end with the death of the physical body.
Rick Archer: Oh, before we get into that, can I just interject a quick thing? Yeah. Okay. Just in relation to Elizabeth’s question. In the, in the Vedic tradition, they have both what they say the personal and impersonal aspects of God, near guna and saga and with and without qualities. So it’s not alien to the traditions that Elizabeth mentions that, you know, God could be thought of as mother or father or having all these personal characteristics. And very same time being quality lists, and you know, on Yes, totally unmanifest it’s both and it’s not either-or.
Anne Baring: Yeah, exactly.
Rick Archer: Okay.
Anne Baring: Yes, exactly.
Rick Archer: Oh, let’s do one more thing before we get into the eternity of the soul. Okay. Which is directly related to what you were just talking about, which is that, I think, and I mentioned this in that talk you watched that science has actually done us a wonderful favor in pointing out in ways that we couldn’t have conceived of a few 100 years ago, how? How God is actually hiding in plain sight how anything we look at is this marvel of intelligence on display that is so obviously not random or arbitrary or accidental or merely material. So I don’t know a lot of scientists don’t realize this. And that puzzles me, I don’t see how a surgeon or a scientist or anybody who looks closely at nature could fail, but into could fail to marvel at the miracle of what he’s seeing. But if you think of it that way, science has actually brought us full circle to recognizing that the Divine is present in every iota of creation, every particle of creation. So do you have any thoughts on that?
Anne Baring: Well, I would agree with you. And that’s, that’s what’s so exciting, really about what I call the new science. It’s not the materialist science, which says that everything ends with the death of the physical brain. But it’s this discovery of the quantum vacuum, or the quantum plenum that’s changed everything, and changed the way science scientists think about matter. Which isn’t solid, like we think it is at all it’s vibrating. Energy, the whole thing is no, in our rooms that we’re sitting in, is really just vibrating energy. And it manifests in a way that is solid because of the way we see it. But this is a new, relatively new discovery. And I think that it is changing the view of scientists definitely. And I think that’s but this isn’t getting through to the general public yet at all. This, this idea of the extraordinary the miracle of everything, really, the deeper you go into matter, the more amazing discoveries are being made, and going down to the smallest tiniest particles of proton, whatever.
Rick Archer: I think unlike the wealth that’s given to the wealthy or the wealthy, I think it’ll trickle down. I think I think it is trickling down, it’s trickling into the contrary to the popular mentality and psychology here. People are sort of fascinated with Nassim Haramein. And who’s that guy with the Tao of physics? And there’s a lot of books like that in the popular culture that are acquainting people with the notion, you know, people like you know, Elizabeth Suk, tourists and many others are popularizing the idea that,
Anne Baring: that’s right. Yes. And but is it getting through to the children? Is it being taught in the schools?
Rick Archer: Well, I think it’s just a matter of time, I know that there are many schools in which meditation is being taught, I’m going to be interviewing someone named Kimberly Morgan, in a month or so who has set up a very successful practice of meditation in the Portland, Oregon schools. And I have a good friend who’s in the David Lynch Foundation, which is doing similar thing around around the country around the world. So it’s getting there. It’s just, you know, perhaps just a little bit of a tip of the iceberg compared to what we need to have happen. But I think that momentum is moving in that direction.
Anne Baring: Yeah, because I think children would be able to grasp that. So I wouldn’t want them to be taught that we’re living in a meaningless universe. But that taught the absolute amazing miracle of what we are. And that’s another reason that we shouldn’t be destroying the body, the body, we shouldn’t be inventing these weapons which can destroy the body, which is such an extraordinary miracle. Yeah, when you look into the the atomic structure and the cellular structure in the trillions of atoms that we have, all over the place in our mind is connected to body, all of that could be taught to children, and I think they would be very interested. And it’s wrong to destroy all that, that miracle. And to wipe it out, as if it was just nothing really.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s something about well, you have a whole chapter in your book about pouring new wine into old wineskins, or new wineskins, and how the body is like the vehicle through which spirituality can be realized and lived, and how it really needs to be cultured in that respect to be able to do that as fully as possible. Maybe I’m adding words to what you said. But
Anne Baring: no, I’m saying that the body is what Jesus said is the temple of the soul. And the soul needs a body to live on this planet in this dimension. Yeah. And the body has been created for that purpose that the soul can manifest if you like, in this dimension. And so it’s it’s infinitely precious.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And the body needs a habitable planet in which to live. So I mean, there’s a lot riding on, you know, whether we pull this off or not, in in terms of the very purpose of of creation, which I see is as the evolution of consciousness through more and more sophisticated vehicles.
Anne Baring: Yeah, and I think what’s happening is the universe is becoming conscious through our consciousness on this planet. Yeah, I’ve said that in the beginning of my book. And this is something so exciting, really, but we aren’t at the end yet. We’re just at the beginning. You know, we’re just at the beginning of the universe, waking up in us and teaching us what it is, through science. Science is the most fantastic vehicle, if it realized the responsibility that it has for presenting the universe to itself as it were, it might be more humble, perhaps.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And you mentioned a number of people, you know, the seam and Deepak and, and others and so I think even in the scientific community, I go to the science and non duality conference in California every fall and, and they’re, you know, a lot of spiritual teachers, and a lot of scientists all get together and have a chat. And it’s inspiring to see how many scientists are, have broken out of the old materialistic paradigm and are seeing their brotherhood or sisterhood with the spiritual traditions of the world and the the sort of mutual enrichment that takes place when such people interact?
Anne Baring: Well, it’s wonderful. And I think that’s, again, where your country is, is that far in advance of other countries is really leading there? And with the Noetic Sciences? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And also, who’s thinking of fits, fits
Rick Archer: right up? Here’s the total physics guy for Chuck.
Anne Baring: Well, his his book started everything off. Really, the Tao of physics was a wonderful. I couldn’t read his systems theory book, it was too complicated for me. I read so much in order to do this book that I’m practically read out now I don’t read much.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, it’s a marvelous book. Okay. So a little while ago, I interrupted you, and you were starting to get into talking about the soul and what it really is, and so on. So let’s get into that.
Anne Baring: Get into that. Yeah. Well, in my book, I really described the fact that we’re in this great sea of being an icy this sea of being as the new specific sense, I’m writing about as feminine. So we’re in the soul, this is the cosmic soul. But at the same time, we have an individual, personal kind of soul, which is what survives the death of the body. And then in that, so body, we go into other dimensions of the Universe, of which the millions probably we don’t have any idea, but there’s certainly more than one or two. So we have two concepts of so one is the cosmic round. And the other is the individual essence of ourselves. And within that, so we also carry the spirit, the pearl of great price, which is the as it were the the ground or the creator of the whole thing. So that’s, that’s my approach, really, to the soul. And it’s not something wishy washy at all. It’s something absolutely numinous and real, and we can’t see it. But we are in it all the time, both the personal soul and the cosmic. So it’s something that we’re in a lot of people have dreams of being by the sea, or swimming in pools or things like that. And that is, when they have those sorts of dreams that they need to remember that they’re in the sea of the soul, or sitting by the side of the Sea of the soul, on the shore that were on the sandy shore, looking out over the sea. So in the
Rick Archer: end, sometimes they have dreams of being under the sea and being able to breathe and just swimming along and I have no trouble breathing. And
Anne Baring: then I’ve had those two. Well, that’s your swimming in the sea of the soul. Yeah. Which is amazing. So next time you do it, perhaps you’ll know that you’re doing it. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, this is enjoyable. As I recall. It’s not like, I’m not afraid or anything.
Anne Baring: No, it’s just like swimming. Yeah. And but and you’re breathing perfectly. All right. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you’re talking your book about how depressing it must be. And I say must be because it hasn’t been my perspective ever. To think that you are only this body and that, you know, you will cease to exist when this body dies. I mean, it must kind of keep a person in perpetual insecurity and fear to see life that way.
Anne Baring: Yes, well, I’m glad you brought that up. Because I think that fear of death is the great neurosis of our species. And I think that fear has been going on for 1000s of years in different traditions, but other religious traditions have made it not the end, so to speak, they’ve known that the soul goes on. But I think that in our present secular culture, it’s extremely frightening to live knowing that death is the end and that you won’t see your children if they say they’ve died or committed suicide or something. You won’t see them again and you won’t see your parents again. It really invalidates the whole human condition. It makes a nonsense of it. Why should we go through all this? Exploration, suffering, growth struggle? If everything comes to an end when the brain dies, it’s ludicrous. And it’s so short. And I think this creates a great deal of anger. Because Why does nobody tell us why we’re here? Why does nobody tell us that we go on to other dimensions and things. Even Christianity had the Day of Judgment, but it didn’t speak about these other dimensions. It hasn’t taught people where they go when they die, even though there’s masses of evidence to show that there’s life after death. Now, beyond death, a lot of my work is about this. In fact, there’s a new book coming out with my publisher called the presence of the light, which is all about the life beyond death. He wrote another one. I haven’t written it myself. I’ve written one chapter in the introduction. It’s written by a woman who wrote it in 1970, something, and it’s out of print. And we’ve now we were able to reprint it, but I felt that she wants that book reprinted. So I said to my publisher, why don’t we do it, and we found a copy. And we’re doing it. Because any way that one can bring back to this culture, what it’s lost, and what it really didn’t have enough of, because there’s always been fear of death, fear of hellfire. And notice, the pope just recently said, there’s no hell. Well, I don’t know what how he knows all of a sudden, why there’s no health, having been preaching this for centuries. But
Rick Archer: he’s infallible. So it must be right. must be right. Well,
Anne Baring: I like him very much anyway, I think he’s a wonderful, He’s great. He’s great. But, you know, people, this, this wall that’s been put up a sort of firewall between this world, and what exists beyond us, needs to be dismantled and as quickly as possible, so that people are not frightened of dying anymore. And also not frightened of having the parents or children die, and not being able to see them again, which is the most terrible thought, terrible thought. So I think that’s very important to break down this firewall, and open the gates as it were, to the existence of this other dimension. And also to be in touch with people on the other side. I know clients of mine who have lost their husband, they’ve absolutely had extraordinary experiences of a husband, being there, right with them, and sending them messages and cetera, et cetera. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that we are not finite beings, we’re immortal beings. And this is something else that people say, well, that the personal soul doesn’t go on. It’s just part of the collective so. But I don’t believe that, because I believe that all the huge effort that goes into the human condition can’t just end with a bang and a whimper. It’s not right. It’s not just, and I’m quite sure that we, if God says it has to be that way we can change God’s mind by our human exasperation, that all our efforts should just melt into nothingness. So I do believe in a personal that sole surviving, at the same time, I believe in in the collective sense as well, that we’re part of something greater. And I do think that we go on after we’ve died, finding new levels of spiritual experience, as it were, as we progressed in the other realms. It’s not something we don’t just give up and sit there, twiddling our thumbs. We actually work on the other side, we can find creative work that interests us, poets, artists, scientists, astronomers, they can all go on with their work.
Rick Archer: And yeah, or they can come back here and go on with it.
Anne Baring: Or they can come back here and bring things back if they want to. But I don’t know if people would want to come back very much. I’m not too keen. My husband says he’s not coming back. He’s had enough.
Rick Archer: My attitude is I’ll go wherever I’m needed. But um, I mean, it again comes back to that idea of it being a meaningless mechanistic universe or random universe or whatever, if that’s one’s perspective, then I guess it kind of makes sense that when we when the body dies, that’s it. But if you see the universe as having a purpose and having meaning and having as its ultimate purpose, the greater and greater embodiment of the Divine as a living reality, then then you know, each life can be seen as like a grade in school, you pass the first grade, you go to the second grade, and you continue on accumulating knowledge as you progress through your education. So that kind of gives you a much broader long term perspective on life.
Anne Baring: Yeah, and it gives you much more scope you’re gonna have a much wider canvas on which on which to work and live you can work to become different people if you want to, and your you will progress according to your longing really, according to your longing to become more tune to the Divine ground. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yogananda said that, that Christianity used to have reincarnation as part of its teaching, but that it was edited out at the Council of Nicaea. Because it was felt that it granted man too much sort of liberty or leeway, you know that he didn’t really have to clean up his act in this life, because there was always going to be another one. And, but obviously, that was a great disservice if that’s what actually happened.
Anne Baring: The Council of Nicaea was hugely transformative for Christianity, because it was at that time that the Holy Spirit, which was always feminine, was changed into the masculine gender that happened at that council. And so for me, it was a big sort of landmark. And so the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit was lost forever, which is very much in the Bible, if you read the book of Proverbs, or if you read the Apocrypha, and the work of Ben Sirach, all the wisdom of Solomon, is a feminine voice speaking as divine wisdom and as the Holy Spirit. And I’ve traced this through because in the Katha heresy in the south of France, their church was called the Church of the Holy Spirit. And the Grail was a synonym for that church. So the whole quest for the Holy Grail in the Middle Ages was really a quest for this Holy Spirit, which was the feminine aspect and the missing feminine aspect of deity, which I think absolutely fascinating, oh, no great deal about that, because I’m very interested in that. And that probably came through Mary Magdalene, traveling to France, as she did in 63. AD, she traveled to France bringing with her obviously the teaching that she imbibed with, from Jesus and his group. And she brought it to the south of France. And from there, it probably got passed down from generation to generation in secret groups, until the time of the Catholic Church when it could come up into the open. And then what did the Catholic church do it, it wiped out the whole culture, and killed, I think, a million people, or had had a million people killed. So there again, the the little shoots of the little green shoots of change. It was a wonderful church, and very much to do with the early teaching of Jesus, and caring for the poor, and teaching the poor, the trades that would help them to earn their living, or that sort of thing. So it was a disaster. And it was a catastrophe for the whole of Europe. And after that the great legends died, it was flourished for about 150 years, and then they died out.
Rick Archer: Do you see a lot of ancient as we’ve been talking about the renewal or renaissance of spirituality in the world? Do you see that in terms of Legends, also, that these ancient legends, which had been stomped out, are coming alive again?
Anne Baring: Well, certainly the Grail has come back. I’ve been lecturing on it myself about a year ago, I’ve got two or three, three or four talks on it. And other people have been having experiences of Mary Magdalene. And a friend of mine personally had a wonderful vision of the Grail, as she was traveling from France to from Italy, to France, last year, of a great vessel in the sky, which was pouring out this, this blessing, this water of blessing. Wonderful vision. So people are having these experiences. And she’s been following everything to do with Mary Magdalene in the south of France. There again, it’s coming up there in that area down near the Pyrenees, very strongly.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we were talking about things kind of percolating up from from the subtle to the gross. And it’s interesting how people all over the world are having the kinds of experiences you had when you were 11. They’re having visions and awakenings, and realizations and all kinds of things. In many cases, people who had no conscious interest in spirituality or anything else, they tie in their shoes one morning, and all of a sudden poof, this some great big
Anne Baring: lucky then, also they’ve been all the near death experiences, change many people’s consciousness that there again, something exists beyond death. That’s big. It’s big, and it and people, many books have been written about it now. So this is all fascinating. This is all part of the cultural transformation that is happening. You don’t hear about it in the media, you hear nothing except the usual stuff in the media, but But all this is going on underneath. And it’s a pity. We haven’t got a television channel which could present all this material for people to learn from and really get cottoned on encourage and support.
Rick Archer: That’s, you know, we have YouTube. It’s like, you know, these days, communications have been democratized in the sense that, you know, I mean, I couldn’t have owned a television station, but I can do this.
Anne Baring: Yes, that’s absolutely true. I’d forgotten about YouTube. I bow to YouTube, because I think it’s quite wonderful
Rick Archer: and open Winfrey has her thing you know, Super Soul Sunday she calls it where she interviews spiritual people and she’s had Eckhart Tolle on many times. And, you know, so this this stuff in the mass media, but it’s just still a fraction of the garbage that gets Yeah,
Anne Baring: it doesn’t reach us. It doesn’t reach us here in England, unfortunately, unless we’re tuned into something like the shift or something else, we don’t get it. And that’s a great pity. So we’re sort of start or we got our food programs, which is wonderful.
Rick Archer: Yeah, this is the great British baking contest. That’s a coffee a couple of good questions have come in. Let me ask you them. This is from Jeff Poole, in Canada, he asks, would or could you equate in some way Jung’s individuation process with an with ongoing awakening, Jung introduced spirituality into Western psychology. But due to the scientific worldview of his time, he could not openly say this, therefore, he used the term intuitive function in his four functions. Would you agree that intuitive function is actually a spiritual function?
Anne Baring: It could be but I wouldn’t say exclusively, it is certainly a function that gets activated when one is on this path, definitely. And one receives guidance from it. But it may be to start with it may just be noticing connections between things or something that doesn’t really have anything specifically to do with spirituality. But as you work on it, as you become more aware of synchronicities, and things like that, then you become more conscious, and then it can grow definitely into spiritual help or spiritual assistance. But equally feeling is very important, the heart is absolutely vital in this work, and to move from the head to the heart, is one of the main things of individuation as well. And equally, you need sensation, you need the ability to put this into manifestation, the power to express the power to write the power to do. So that’s important as well. And the last one is intellect which I had to develop because it was perhaps a function that I had, but I didn’t know I had. So in order to be able to write all my books, I’ve had to develop intellect, I had to go to university and learn how to write essays and things. All that was training of the intellect, but but to have the hole for balance, that’s really the aim of individuation, not one or the other, not specifically cultivating one, one needs all. And I think looking at my own life, I’ve seen the process of individuation take place in the way my life has unfolded. By having the idea of the quest and the journey and looking for the pearl of great price as it were, or looking in what the messages said the dream of the water. And that’s what they called it, I had no idea what the water was. But now I know the water is the soul. And that has taken me 50 years to assimilate all this information and then put it out into the world. And I’ve needed all the functions working together. But feeling is is undeveloped in our culture. And that’s the really the feminine, instinctive, heart based function, which really, we need to develop as much as we can. Because we’re in focusing so much on the intellect and the development of the mind. We’ve left out the development and education of feeling. So Young’s work is tremendously valuable, in that sense. Getting the role for balance.
Rick Archer: Yeah, in these interviews, the theme often comes up that I bring it up. And certain people I interview well to do that spirituality really worth the term involves a holistic development of all the different facets, you know, mind, heart, intellect, and, you know, senses and as well as spirit or consciousness that you can’t really develop any of them in isolation and call it a right full spiritual realization.
Anne Baring: I would agree with that. Definitely. And there’s also the instinctive side of the horror that that needs to be carried in as well. Yeah, so it’s a complex business. individuation
Rick Archer: Adyashanti speaks of kind of a sequential development of awakening from Head to Heart to the horror to our gut. And which I think kind of is what he experienced. There was a sequential unfoldment. And a lot of other people seem to say that too, although I don’t know if it necessarily always needs to be in that order. But maybe it tends to be,
Anne Baring: well, people who have a sudden awakening, it may be in any of those centers. It doesn’t know. Yeah, so I think one can’t make a hard and fast rule. Right. Was there another question you said there? There
Rick Archer: is actually there’s Maria again from Colorado. She asked an earlier question. She She says, I remember when I first read Clarissa Pinkola Estes is, yeah, women who run with the wolves, and feeling very inspired to awaken and body the so called Wild Woman archetype. Can you speak a bit about what it means to connect with and be empowered by an archetype and how one goes about it. And I’m assuming that men as well as women can inhabit can inhabit feminine archetypes.
Anne Baring: They can, but it’s really a huge, a huge subject. Because what Clarissa Pinkola Estes was talking about was really getting in touch with the instinct probably with a higher center, it was allowing feelings, very deep, instinctive feelings to come out and be lived, which we’re not allowed in the culture because they were not considered acceptable, or correct, or ladylike or whatever. But there’s a danger, always of going over the top, and being possessed by an archetype, rather than in relationship with an archetype. So there’s a very careful differentiation between being possessed, and being in touch or wanting to express an archetype. And one has to bear that in mind. If you have too much of the wild woman, you probably go psychotic. You, it’s a question of balance. And balance can only come with time and practice of whatever discipline you’re practicing, or whatever you’re doing in your life. Perhaps if you’re an artist in your artistic work, it may come through handling matter. And you may be expressing the wild feminine in what you’re creating in the material sense. Or you may be expressing it in your singing, if you’re a singer or a dancer, it will probably involve some movement of the body because the body has been so neglected in our education. We don’t have nearly enough singing and dancing and work with our hands in our education. So letting out the wild woman would be to do with expressing sensory enjoyment, sensory ecstasy, in some way or another. But keeping it balanced and keeping it manifesting manifested in a form that is manageable, that doesn’t take you over and make you go bananas, so to speak.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I think balance is important. There are so many people who end up going a little nuts on a spiritual path, you know, they become obsessive or, you know, end up in hospital sometimes because they’ve pushed too hard in a certain direction without maintaining or developing adequate balance.
Anne Baring: I think what the the metaphor that Jesus used about, be like a flower really opening to the divine. You don’t force it and you don’t ever persecute the body in order to be spiritual. That was the mistake that Christianity made terrible persecution of the body.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Which doesn’t make sense if the body is the temple of the soul. Why would you? Exactly why would you take a sledgehammer to the temple?
Anne Baring: Yeah, so all these things that caveats, with with every kind of path, but the main thing is to avoid excess.
Rick Archer: Yeah. A lot of things you keep things you say, keep your mind in the gear, there’s a whole section in there too, about avoiding excess, maintaining balance, not sleeping too much or too little, or eating too much or too little. You know, just living and Buddha talked about the Middle Way, you know, just
Anne Baring: the way Yeah, yeah. And the greatest teachers have always talked about being gentle really like that like the Dalai Lama. gentleness, kindness, patience. Listen, listening, above all listening to other people listening to your own soul, listening to your heart. And going slowly, you don’t have to do everything in one life. That’s
Rick Archer: true. Yeah, I mean, there’s an interesting thing where you know, you can pursue spirituality with vehement intensity to use Patanjali is term but you can do that at the same time with with balance and with a with an appreciation of nature’s sense of timing not your own, you know, not forcing anything not not forcing it Yeah, and yet being sort of, you know, focused like a laser beam if you wish, your higher purpose, but sort of realizing that you have control over action alone, never over it’s fruits.
Anne Baring: You know, that’s right. Often I get depressions and depressions are part of the spiritual path because the moment I when I get a depression afterwards it I get it. New idea, or something happens or I get an email or something that comes in. So it’s almost always a doorway to a new phase. And if one looks at it as that, that then one isn’t frightened of it, or one doesn’t try and repress it and say, I don’t want to have this depression, I don’t like it sort of thing. It’s better to just go into it and welcome it, and say, Well, what are you teaching me? I’d it obviously, I have to learn from something from this. Maybe it’s that I need to slow down. Or maybe I have missed something that I need to see. Maybe I need time to listen to music. Maybe I need time to go out and smell flowers or something. It’s not. Again, you have to flow with it not get stuck in things. But realize that it’s a phase everything is a process, leading to another process. It’s not fixed entities and it fixed sort of what’s the word gates at each stage? It’s a process.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I mean, all the scriptures talk about the, the the joy, the Ananda that lies within, you know? And one would think, well, if that is the case, how could there be depression, or sadness or anything if we have this ocean of happiness deep within us. But I think what you’re implying is that well, there can be blockages or impediments to that. And perhaps when you feel the depression, you’re on the verge of blockage is being brought to your attention so it can be cleared, and your attention helps clear it and then once cleared, the inner joy can well up in a way that it hadn’t been able to before.
Anne Baring: Yeah, there’s a wonderful teacher called Simone, right, who of course, as I’ve done, and she has a wonderful image of a kinked hose. And you have to you have to unclick the hose and order the water of the Spirit kind of flow through it. Right. I think that’s such a wonderful metaphor. Yeah. She wrote a book called first offense, all about intuition.
Rick Archer: Nice. Well, your book is wonderful. It’s like 600 pages or something. And it’s only one of your seven books that you wrote or CO wrote. And we, you know, we haven’t really done justice to the whole book. In this conversation. We’ve touched upon a lot of the themes of it. Before we wrap up, is there anything that you feel is important that you put in the book or even didn’t put in the book that you want to make sure we cover before we close?
Anne Baring: I think I would like to talk about alchemy, please. Yes, because alchemy is very, very important for understanding the whole process of what we’re going through. Alchemy has four stages, it has the new grader, which is the dark stage, then it has the albedo, which is the whitening or clarifying stage, then it has the, what’s called the sutra, notice, which can be a stage before the end stage can be a stage of bitterness or depression. And then finally, the rubedo, which is the illumination, which is the awakening, the illumination, the realization of who you are, and what you are. And certainly one scene humanity with the new grader, we have two things far, far is associated with the new grader, the burning out of the impurities, the burning out of the dross. So I think we’ve seen this and all the fires we’ve been through, like the burning of the Twin Towers and the burning of Baghdad and the burning of the ovens in Auschwitz. We’ve been through the fire bombing. Yeah, exactly. what’s called the castle now to the burning. And then we’re moving now I think into what might be called the albedo, which is the reckoning the realization, the awakening, the purifying the clarifying of the vision. Through seeing more clearly and through a lot of tears, weeping and regretting what’s been done. I think that many people are regretting what we’ve done to the planet, and wishing that we could not have done what we’ve done. So that’s phase really of a cleansing of the past patterns, getting rid of them. And then there will be probably the bitterness, the awareness of what we’ve done. And I can’t speak at the rubedo because it hasn’t happened for humanity, but it’s happening to a few people who are having these awakening experiences. And it’s happening to the people who have contacted the Divine Grant within them. They know who they are, and they know what the universe is, as this divine entity really, that we’re in. And the outcome is discovered all this in the 16th and 17th centuries, they had to keep a deeply hidden for fear of the Inquisition. But they discovered really who they were and they discovered that they were immortal and that they went on and that they were in touch with other teachers at the same time. So I think I’ve got a whole chapter on alchemy in my book, which I liked very much and I would recommend it to people. And I think that I’ve covered the fact that we are part of what we’ve been worshipping for 1000s The views were part of the divinity of the whole universe. So there’s no God out there separate, we are part of that divinity. And we need to know ourselves as that and take heart from it and not reject. But let go of all these old teachings, which told us that we were sinful under the myth of the four, that you’ve talked that Apple and ever since things have been bad, need to let go of all that, because that myth, I think I’ve looked at talk a few minutes if we’ve got time about that myth, because it’s that myth that caused the oppression of women.
Rick Archer: Before we move on to that, on the point of alchemy, in all my life, I’ve heard about alchemists, and they always sounded like these kooky guys who thought they could turn lead into gold, you know, and the whole thing is portrayed as sort of a, you know, I don’t know, quixotic quest, you know, that would never succeeded. But I suspect now listening to you that that whole lead into gold thing was a metaphor for something much more profound.
Anne Baring: Well, it was really a metaphor for Jung’s individuation process as a matter of spiritual growth, that you changed the lead of your consciousness into the gold of the awakened consciousness. And it’s such a lovely metaphor, really, that you take what you are, and you can become something more complete more whole, you can become the divine being that you really are.
Rick Archer: So the lead into gold thing was not anything that anybody literally ever really tell.
Anne Baring: someday, someday, and some succeeded, there was a man called God when Paris who did make the gold and he actually he endowed all the hospitals in Paris with enormous sums of money. And with they’re still going, some of them they must
Rick Archer: have died with his secret because nobody’s doing that today. Yeah, I
Anne Baring: think he probably did. He worked with his wife. His wife’s name was called her a, I think, I can’t remember his name, but it’ll come back to the minute we finish this talk, it will come back to me.
Rick Archer: Okay. All right, good. So now let’s talk about the topic you wanted to raise.
Anne Baring: Yeah, I wanted to talk about women and the effect that the myth of the fall of man had on women, and the role of Eve, and people may not know, but Eve was blamed for bringing sin, sin, suffering and evil into the world. So there’s one woman right at the beginning of history, so to speak, who brought in suffering and evil into the world. And because of that, all women were associated with Eve, unconsciously to this day. And this is where men suspicion of women comes from, and the fact that they make fun of their emotions, and that they can never be really competent or intelligent, like men, it all comes straight from that myth. And it’s deep in the unconscious of the Christian psyche. And I don’t like it really being read out in church anymore, because I think it’s so terrible. And so negative in its view, because every woman listening to it thinks, oh, Lord, that’s me that, you know, I’m going to be blamed for whatever I do. It’ll be that myth at the beginning. And men think, well, it’s woman who has been responsible for all the trouble in the world. So I better watch out my dad to watch my step, and I better keep her under control. And this was throughout Christian history, woman was kept under control. And in the witch hunts, obviously, she was so burnt at the stake, because if you dare to speak out of tune if she dared to practice as a herbalist or be different in any way, and really the old role a woman was priestess, woman, as teacher, woman, as healer was eradicated by Christianity, woman was not allowed to speak for 1000s, good 1500 years. So I really think that that was a very disastrous myth. And I would like to have it made conscious, so that we can exercise its influence so that every time a man makes fun of Hillary Clinton and says, Well, whatever they do, say, and that’s very nasty things that you can say, well, that’s coming from this old mythology, which you’re still stuck in to insult a woman in that way. Yeah, so And also, I think it’s terribly important women’s rise now to discover their own abilities and their intellect, their abilities in all sorts of professions that they had no access to 2030 years ago, in my lifetime, I was one of the you know, not many women went to university in 1950, whatever, it was, quite a few, but not very many. And now, all women can aspire to go if they want to go, and the infinite number of professions open to women which weren’t open. In my day, I had the choice of being a secretary, a nanny or something like that, or a wife. Those are the three alternatives or a nurse. And that was it. And that was really why I took off to go to the Far East because I didn’t want to do any of that. I think and that was after I’d had a university education and people in those days, women were called Blue Stockings. And we’re sort of laughed at as being silly and not to be taken seriously. So there’s been huge progress. There’s further to go. But there has been huge progress.
Rick Archer: So do you think that progress is symptomatic of the resurgence? Or the renewal of of the divine feminine? And the rebalancing of yes,
Anne Baring: yeah, I do. Yes. Because there are a lot of women working in the field of bringing back the goddess bringing back the mythology, not my first book was about that. And I think that’s had a big influence, because it’s given women a sense of being of some value in a patriarchal civilization where everything is ruled by men with a male god. Where’s the feminine, you know, in the Yin Yang situation, where is the Yin, we’ve got too much Yang, not enough Yin. So I think that women are really developing the yen, and developing the ability to speak and in public and things like that. We’ve got women now in the UN and in the Monetary Fund, and all sorts of things. So that’s good.
Rick Archer: If we have yet to have a woman as president, but you’ve had several couple of these two prime ministers that I know of,
Anne Baring: yes, we have, but that one of the problems is that women need to retain their own sense of their heart values. Because when they’re educated as men in a male culture, it’s very easy for them to copy the male model. Right, yeah, of having to achieve all the time, you know, and they neglect the relationship side. So it’s very, very difficult for a woman to balance a career and bringing up children and keeping the husband in a good relationship with him. And that’s why so many relationships break down because there isn’t energy to deal with all of those things at one time, and people get exhausted, women get exhausted and men get exhausted, and children don’t have nearly enough attention paid to them. Not nearly enough. So that’s a whole other kettle of fish, which there isn’t really a time to go into I’m sure.
Rick Archer: So, you know, you mentioned the myth of Eve in the Garden of Eden. Now, you know, Buddhism and Christian Hinduism, I don’t think have a myth like that, but they are also rather patriarchal. So how do you explain that?
Anne Baring: Well, I think it’s just the way things are. It’s the natural order of patriarchy. It’s that been like that for 1000s of years, although India has masses of goddesses as well as gods, but it’s still ruled by a very patriarchal mindset. And women have a terrible time getting education, not being raped. That’s there’s a terrible case going on at the moment where rape is really endemic in India, there’s no respect, no respect for women every 20 minutes. Yeah, I mean, what sort of culture is that? And why is nothing being done about it? Yeah, it’s really outrageous. And the same in any other country where women are treated like that, where they’re not listened to. And even in Muslim countries, if a woman has been raped in war, she’s ostracized. And that, too, is outrageous, because she should be nurtured and cut, you know, welcome back and soothed from that trauma, instead of being rejected, but she has a double trauma. So there’s plenty to be done. And in Buddhism, I don’t know so much about in the sense of patriarchy, because the emphasis has been more on method methodology rather than a structure of society.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s been definitely some misogyny I mean, I remember reading, I recently interviewed a female Lama, I’m going to be interviewing another one soon. But I remember reading a story about how, in monasteries, the, the newest and, you know, most novice, male monk, was still considered superior to the most experienced and mature female monk. And, you know, so there’s this, the curtain stacked against the women. Yeah,
Anne Baring: I’ve heard that from from a woman, Buddhist monk as well, she had to leave the monastery because of that, she has now set up her own teaching center in California. But it’s there, it’s just, it’s in the sort of bones of the male to really think that he is superior, it’s very difficult to to re educate him as it were without offending him, but does teach him that that, that the other gender is complimentary to him. It’s not a threat to him. It’s not a rival, but it’s complimentary. So women have to avoid the position of trying to be rival of man, and realize that they offer complementary values, if you like or the values of relationship, whereas men offer the values of protection their whole role in such it right from the beginning has been to protect. Whereas women have been more concerned with nurturing and caring for life and carrying life being the carriers of life. Those are different roles, and therefore they have different results or different effects on the psyche over 1000s of years. But it doesn’t mean to say that one is superior or inferior to the other. And that really needs to be eradicated altogether as an either.
Rick Archer: I mean, it’s like saying your left hand is inferior to your right hand or something that both are necessary.
Anne Baring: Yeah. And it may be again, something to do with the left and right hemispheres of the brain. If if you’re more in the right, you’re perhaps more more inclusive, and less rigidly controlling than if you’re in the left. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I mean, balance would be great. But have there actually been cultures which have been imbalanced in the other direction with the female, the feminine being predominant?
Anne Baring: I think there was, you know, Maria had been Kimbo test. You know who I mean by her? No, you don’t know her? What’s her name? But Marie Marie ha. MARIJ. A Kim butas?
Rick Archer: Oh, I I think I wrote her down because I read you referred to her in your book. And she sounded very interesting. I sounds like somebody who would be good to interview.
Anne Baring: No, does she died?
Rick Archer: Oh, she died.
Anne Baring: She’s dead, but she
Rick Archer: I’ll need a medium to do that.
Anne Baring: Yeah, she she wrote a huge amount of work on what she called the civilization of Old Europe. This is something you should know about actually, and everybody listening you should know about. And it existed between 7000 BC, or B, before Christ or whatever, until about 3500 BC. So you had nearly three and a half 1000 years of this culture in Europe, which produced the most marvelous artifacts. And she found she was an archaeologist from Lithuania. And she went all over Europe, mainly in Romania, and Greece, and Bulgaria. And she found all these little figurines of Goddess figures. And she brought this to the attention of the archaeologists. And she said that it was this culture that was then destroyed by people coming down between the Caspian and the Black Seas, from the Russian steppes. And they brought down a whole different mythology and a whole different way of living. And they were warriors and they became with horses as well. And they really destroyed this older culture. And what Meridian boathouse was ridiculed by the archaeologists until very recently, when they’ve done genetic testing, which proves that there’s a different genetic inheritance in this area of Europe, between the tribes that came down from the Caspian and the Russian steppes, and the original inhabitants of Europe. So they, they really apologized, although it’s too late, but they were awful to her, they really drove her to her death, I think, because they ridiculed her exactly as we’ve been talking as male ridiculing the woman. And she wrote a marvelous book called The civilization of the Goddess, great big fat book like that. But she wrote other ones as well. And one called the language of the Goddess, another big book like that, and another one called goddesses and gods of Old Europe. And in that she gave all the evidence of this civilization and how it was probably more predominantly feminine, but also very balanced. The men were not diminished in any way. It was a joint sort of creation of a wonderful culture, and with wonderful artifacts. And as I say, there was no dominance of one gender over the other was probably a happy marriage between the two. And then that was wiped out by the patriarchal tribes that came down and destroyed all that civilization, they spread into India. And that was the origin of the the Aryan civilization that spread into India. And they drove up the Dravidians, the older culture down into the south, where they still are. So they were really warriors and destroyers, they were not creators of culture, certainly to begin with. And people don’t know that the existence of that civilization. So 7000 BCE until 3500 BCE, long time
Rick Archer: it is it’s interesting to ponder these vast spans of time and, you know, to consider one’s own life and how short it is by comparison with these, you know, time periods and all the dramas that people must go to go through and all these lives. I mean, I even I’d love to do a thing where I just sit and I stare at a photo of a galaxy. And I just think about the number of inhabited planets there must be in that galaxy, and how many and all the dramas that are taking place in all those inhabited planets. And then you think of the 100 billion or 2 trillion, whatever it is galaxies that are actually out there in the universe. It’s an interesting kind of contemplation, perspective, yeah. And perspective on your own life. It kind of puts it in perspective because you Usually we just go about our lives and they seem so real and predominant and important and everything, but it’s useful to kind of step back and look at it that way sometimes.
Anne Baring: And also, I look back on the 1000s of lives, we’ve probably had already on this planet existence, the beginning, in the Atlantean, civilization and the Lemuria. And one before that, probably. So we’ve been around a long time. And I think at this stage, we’re really learning what we’ve, what we’ve, where we were, and where we’ve come from. And it’s very exciting scientifically, but also in the ways in which we’ve been talking of awakening to this new story, and awakening to who we are as divine beings and as part of the divinity that we’ve been worshipping for so long. And also that we’re embraced by the love that we haven’t talked about that, but we were embraced in the love of this divine ground. And that’s where our capacity to love comes from. And we need to cultivate that in the sense of the Dalai Lama refers to and develop that capacity for love and relationship. Not good. Not good. So hypnotized by the by the intellect and the brain, your conscious mind.
Rick Archer: On on that note, somebody sent in a question that I was waiting until we reached the opportune moment. But Mark Peters from Santa Clara, California asked, Do you think random and not so random acts of kindness could precipitate a sea change with regard to our relationships with one another and with the planet at large?
Anne Baring: When you mean random, what does he mean by right?
Rick Archer: Well, there’s that saying, practice random acts of kindness. It’s on bumper stickers over here.
Anne Baring: Well, I think just, I’m going to refer to our cat, her recently deceased cat, because there was such a love between the cat and my husband and myself. We really lived to make that cat happy. And it lived to make us happy. It was most extraordinary, the love that came from that cat. And she could go from one to the other so that neither was left out. And you’re like, that was her random act of kindness. Yeah, and if one can practice, I mean, one can help someone in the street help with the shopping. There are 1000s of different ways that one can help. And I think that he’s very, I would say yes, absolutely. To that question. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And these things percolate, I mean, they, they, they spread like ripples, you know, and, and if everyone’s doing it, then everyone’s reciprocally, you know, supporting and enriching one another.
Anne Baring: Absolutely. And interconnecting through these acts of kindness, really, so that they become like a network in themselves.
Rick Archer: Yeah, which I think brings us back to a key point that we’ve made all along, which is that you have to discover within yourself the capacity to do that, you know, if you’re, if you’re depleted, if you’re feeling empty, then perhaps it would be difficult to practice acts of kindness, although perhaps just practicing imeem, if you don’t feel like it will stir up some, something deeper within you. But it’s important to find ways of, you know, tapping that inner reservoir of love to use your word or intelligence or creativity or consciousness or whatever you want to call it. And then you know, your cup will runneth over, you’ll naturally sort of move through life, expressing those qualities that you’ve found within yourself.
Anne Baring: Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that the more you understand who you are, the more you understand how much you have to give. In the beginning, you may not feel you have nothing and you’re just a boring little person, or you may be a depressed person. Or you may feel you’re completely poverty struck, and there’s nothing you can do about your life. But if you realize you have that divinity within you, then you realize there’s nothing that you cannot do if you really want to do it. I always remember the man who wrote Conversations with God, I can’t remember his name. But, Neale Donald Walsch, Donald Walsch, yeah, well, when he before he wrote those books, he was a complete down and out, he’s lost his wife. He’s lost his money, he lost everything. And he was lying facedown in a telephone kiosk, on top of a sheet of paper in the last act of despair, and he read in the piece of paper, there was a job. And he got up and went for the job and never looked back. And out of that realization that something could happen. The universe would help him came all those books. I love that story. Because it’s so yeah,
Rick Archer: I met him once.
Anne Baring: Yeah, put another one that’s teaching another another teacher
Rick Archer: another one. Yeah. Yeah, it’s like we’re all we’re all lottery winners who don’t realize the one and we’ve left the ticket in a sock drawer.
Anne Baring: That’s fine. That’s a very good metaphor.
Rick Archer: We’re also infinitely wealthy in the spiritual sense if we can just sort of find that sock drawer and cash it in. Yeah. Great. Well, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you and having this conversation. And I hope those, quite a few people have been listening and some people send in some great questions. So appreciate that. And so thank you so much for doing this.
Anne Baring: Well, thank you, because it’s an enormous pleasure to speak to somebody like yourself, who actually understands what I’m writing, and can bring it into a context. So you know, it’s lovely. Yeah, it’s very exciting for me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, well, it’s funny, because you kept sending me a little, you know, read this chapter, read this chapter. And it gives, I know, you don’t have time to read the whole thing. And I said, I got the impression that maybe you thought this was a chore for me to read this, but not in the least. I mean, it’s an absolute joy. And I wish I had been able to read every single word and it’s just, there’s only so much time in the week. But it’s a really delightful book. And I encourage others to check it out. It’s called the dream of the cosmos. And I’ll have a link to it on ends page on that gap.com and a link to links to her other books as well. So and, and a link to her website. And there’s some really good reading material on our website. Also. Do you do anything that? I mean, do we do do any webinars? Or do you do any public speaking still, or anything that people could somehow connect with if they want to get more involved with you?
Anne Baring: I can’t go to places anymore. I’m too old now. So I can’t go and give talks in different places. But I do give. I’ve done some videos, which are on YouTube. Recently, there are two videos, one is on nuclear weapons, and one is on healing our, our damaged world or healing our suffering world or something like that. And I’m going to put another longer one on shortly. And I can always be contacted, like you have done you know, I can always speak to people on Skype or whatever. But I don’t do any formal teaching. I’m too busy writing on doing things.
Rick Archer: Well, it’s great. It’s a life well lived.
Anne Baring: One of all my teaching, all my teaching is in my bedroom of the cosmos. That’s all that people really need, plus my website, and they could learn a lot from that. Yeah, if they’re looking for teaching.
Rick Archer: Good. All right. Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed meeting you. Thank you for spending this time with you. It’s been very enriching and informative for me,
Anne Baring: Lovely for me. Thank you.
Rick Archer: Thanks. So let me just make a quick concluding remark. And then we’ll close I’ve been speaking with and bearing and as I said a minute ago, I’ll be linking to her website and her books and everything. And this interview, obviously, is part of an ongoing series. So if for some reason this is the first one you’ve seen, feel free to go to batgap.com Bat gap, and you will see hundreds of others. And you can also subscribe if you wish to the audio podcast. And then if you have, you know, Stitcher, iTunes or one of those things, every time a new one is published, it’ll automatically download into your iTunes and then you synchronize it with your little iPod or whatever you have. And you can listen to it while commuting or whatever. So we’ll see if the next one next one is a woman named Marjorie Woollacott. And we’ll get into the details of what she’s about when I actually do the interview. See you that. Thanks, Anne.
Anne Baring: Thank you. Bye
Rick Archer: bye.
