Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Bill Bauman, PhD. He doesn’t usually add that on the end, but it’s there. And Bill is a delightful fellow whom I’ve gotten the opportunity to know over the past week, listening to his recordings and reading his book, Soul Vision, which I’m really enjoying. It’s a very nice book with a lot of, in addition to its main content, There’re all these great quotes in the margins that you want to read as you go through it. So, we’ll be talking about some of the points in this book and about Bill’s whole story and everything. But first of all, welcome Bill. Thank you for coming and doing this.
Bill: Rick, it’s a total pleasure, total joy. I’m delighted to be here with you, and to be having the privilege of talking to all these precious people who are watching and listening.
Rick: Good. You may experience what we call the “bat gap bump,” which is, I do an interview with somebody and all of a sudden, their phone rings and they get a lot of inquiries and all that stuff.
Bill: That’s sort of like the Stephen Colbert bump, I guess, if anybody knows what that is.
Rick: I don’t know what that is, but there’s a great quote from him, which is, “The truth has a liberal bias.” I love that one.
Bill: I’ve never heard that. That’s a wonderful quote.
Rick: To all my conservative friends, give that one a dig. Here’s a little bio of Bill that’s on the back of his book cover. Bill Bauman, PhD, is a modern mystic and spiritual teacher. As co-founder with his wife Donna of the Center for Soulful Living, he leads seminars, retreats, mentoring groups, and other spiritual experiences, to help participants become soulfully centered and infinitely attuned. Bill is a master of interdimensional living, a gifted healer, a powerful motivator, and an inspirational speaker. He currently lives peacefully and expansively amid the beautiful red rocks of the American Southwest, more specifically Las Vegas, in a high-rise condo. But there’s red rocks out there if you look.
Bill: They are there.
Rick: So Bill, what I like to do in these interviews, and what people have requested that I do actually, is to kind of cover two main bases. One is just the person’s life story, their spiritual odyssey, all they’ve been through, which leading up to and then subsequent to, in many cases, usually some watershed moment of awakening. And also, sometimes in the context of that, people usually, if they’re a teacher of some kind, they usually have a teaching, things they like to routinely say to people. So, let’s cover all those bases, and I’ll interject questions as we go along.
Bill: Okay, sounds perfect, Rick.
Rick: Good. So, shall we start with the life story?
Bill: That sounds good. I’m never great at listening to myself talking about myself, but hey, I’m willing to give it a big shot here.
Rick: Okay, and I’ll goad you every now and then with a question.
Bill: Okay, that sounds great. Do you want me to talk about my life more in terms of awakening?
Rick: Yeah, sure, not necessarily how I was a Boy Scout, and then I did this, but in terms of what you consider germane to your whole spiritual path.
Bill: Yes, okay, that’s great. Actually, the pain of that is, I never was a Boy Scout, I always wanted to be a Boy Scout, so let me cry and sob right here about that. But other than that, just briefly, I started out as a Catholic priest, not when I was born, but actually in my mid-twenties. And through all that training, the main thing that happened to me was I fell into my heart. Everything became about love, which I felt was the center of Christian teaching. But beyond that, I began to see it as the center of human living. And so, everything to me was about heart, it was about love. I began to see and feel and experience and relate to all of life and people, in terms of our interconnectedness, our interwovenness, the way we support each other, care about each other, even if we’re yelling at each other. That there’s some underlying thread of a way we’re trying to support each other and come together, unify in some way. So that was really there, so I was a Catholic priest for a very brief amount of time.
Rick: I had heard you say that at one point you heard the Moses voice saying, “Bill, I want you to be my priest.”
Bill: Yeah, those Moses voices you don’t ignore without great pain, actually. So, it was actually at a very young age I heard that voice inside, and it was a loud, booming, internal voice. It spoke with great authority. So, I did follow that, not that I ever really personally wanted to, but it’s one of those things, when the voice calls you, you do it. Yeah, and so there really was that Moses voice that really is one never ignores, and so, I absolutely followed it, even though there wasn’t a lot in me that said I really wanted to be a Catholic priest. But anyway, I became the priest, and to me the big part of that was about love. It was like my initiation into 2000 years, not of establishment, not of organization, not of all the political history, but of just the pure essence of it, which is love. So, when I got to the point where it was just time to leave that, I took love with me. Love somehow got ingrained as a solid core center of my being, if you will. So, I entered the field of psychology, got my doctorate, and through all the years of psychological practice – and I specialized a lot in deep, deep psychotherapy, just driven to go to the depths of human living – love was always there, and it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. I loved my psychological time with people because it was a very loving way of massaging their depths and helping them grow in lots of ways. Then after a lot of years of that, the next big thing that happened, is I got cut off at the pass, and that next big Moses voice came. I learned to not really appreciate Moses a lot; it was an interesting thing. And it basically said, “Okay, you’re done with psychology.” That’s after my identity was pretty well wrapped up, and my fulfillment wrapped up in psychology, and it’s time for spirituality. And so, within just a couple of years, all these gifts – healing gifts, visionary gifts, energy gifts, etc. – just dumped into me, which was a major learning curve. But the learning curve was that it was also a sense of identity. That was the curve, it was like, “Oh, spiritual being. Ooh, big-time spiritual being.”
Rick: You know, we use the word “Moses voice” somewhat, jokingly, and we think of that, of course, as the big, booming, Charlton Heston thing. But was it really that overt or gross, or was it more a still, silent whisper, just this sort of gentle impulse that you had learned to recognize, and that moved you in a slightly different direction?
Bill: No, I wish it had been that still, small voice within me. No, it was quite booming. And whenever it spoke to me – now I’ve had those others as well, in fact I’ve had a lot more of those – but the major turning points of my life seem to have been driven by a force, shall we say, much, much bigger than this cute little adorable presence that’s visible right here. So, what was fascinating about all that is, I’d always had this mystical side to me, but it was in the background, and so my identity was very human. And so, all of a sudden, my regular human identity started slipping to the back burner, and then gradually off the stove, as quite quickly my whole sense of self became more expansive. So, from there, I just quickly, with some odd set of circumstances, became a religious science minister for a while, still doing a lot of spiritually oriented sessions, healing sessions on the side, and did that for a few years. But then became …
Rick: Let’s zoom in on what you just said a little bit more, before we go on. There’s that popular saying, it’s in your book actually, that we think of ourselves as human beings having a spiritual experience, but we’re really spiritual beings having a human experience. And of course, most people in the world would identify with the first part of that sentence, where they, “I’m Joe Smith, and this is my job, and this is my wife, and these are my kids, and oh, every now and then I pick up a spiritual book and have a glimpse.” But when you really talk about your identity shifting, can you elaborate a bit on the actual experiential process of going through that, and what it was like coming out on the other side of it?
Bill: I could try. Actually, the process, ironically, was torture. I went through about three years, and it was a self-created torture. We’re always better at torturing ourselves than anybody else is, at least for me. I mastered that quite well. But the torture for me was, I really liked being a human being. I really wanted to be a regular loving human being. That was an identity that I felt was a perfect niche. I liked all the regular human perks and fulfillments that came from that. I’m married to this exquisite, exquisite woman, who was a nun when I was a priest, and as we left, we exited together.
Rick: I did the same thing, incidentally. I was on the Purusha program in the TM movement, which is the monastic thing, and my wife was on Mother Divine, which is the ladies’ equivalent. And we plotted for several months and then just left at the same time.
Bill: It’s really … So, we have a lot in common, actually. I looked at you first, and I thought, “You know, we’re twins separated at birth, and now this confirms it. It’s right there.” So, for me, it was … well, let me go back to that. So, I’ve been married for 44 years to this beautiful, beautiful woman, and we had just – and we still have, in fact we have more than ever – but had this wonderful relationship, and we had this one child whom we were raising at the time. Everything human was like, from a law of attraction point of view, it was about as good as it gets. And especially after I left being a priest, I felt pretty allergic to anything specifically spiritual. So, I threw out as much as I could, threw out the baby with the bathwater. So, what I did is I fought this internally. Everything in me kept saying, “No, no, no,” while this bigger force just kept dumping more gifts, bringing me more there. And so, I was living this dual life, which is, the real thing that was happening was I was literally quickly becoming this spiritual being without a human base. And so, I was drastically trying to hold onto that. We could call it as the death of the ego was happening, I kept pumping air into the ego.
Rick: Is that what you mean by “without a human base”? You mean death of the ego? Because you had a life, you were a psychiatrist or psychologist, and you had a wife and a kid, and a car, and a house, and all that jazz. But somehow or other, that was all crumpled. Well, you weren’t losing those things.
Bill: No, I wasn’t losing any of it, but I was losing an identity in it, the way I identified with it. I was losing a whole sense of self-concept. I was losing a whole sense of how I was related to the world. So, a lot of external things didn’t change, except my psychological practice did. Very quickly, within about a year, I shut it down, we moved to a whole new city, and instead of doing a psychological practice, I did a sort of blended psychological-spiritual, what they call transpersonal psychology practice. Then did the religious science minister thing about half-time in this city. So back to your question, the learning curve, or the growing curve, was horrendous, and it truly was, for those few years, it was a painful death of the ego, until in steps. But at one point, after a few years, somehow everything just came clear to me, like the great “Aha,” which was, “Oh, you know what? I’m down on my knees, face facts, Bill, this is the way it is.”
Rick: So, what was the nature of that pain? Why was it painful? And can you give us a specific example of something that was painful?
Bill: Okay, we’ll let me say something general first. I think after, with that whole Catholic priest experience, which was the best of times, worst of times. The best of times was all the love and the relationship with and helping people, in a great servant mode. I just loved that. The tough part was the organizational part of it was very heavy for me, very restrictive, very punitive, if you will, because I was always getting in trouble by the things I was saying and doing. And so, I think I felt subconsciously betrayed by God. Like, “yeah, you call me with the Moses voice, I say yes, and then it’s just all pain”. So, then I think I just said, “Okay, good, God’s up on the shelf, I’m free to be me.” And so, what this represented to me, and this was the painful part, is, “Ooh, I’m not in charge. I’m not in control here. I thought this was my life. Ooh, it’s not my life.” And so, what I noticed from that point on is any number of things happened over the years, that if I – little Billy, Bill Bauman- if I wanted something, it didn’t happen. If I didn’t want it, it happened. And of course, in hindsight, the great gift of that is, “Oh, oh, it’s not about … I don’t live here, in a way that lets this be fulfilling in the regular human way. I live …” You can’t see my arms here, but I live in this bigger spiritual space, and everything about me is guided, moved, directed, supported from a much, much bigger field, if you will.
Rick: Yeah, so little Bill didn’t know what was good for him. He kept wanting things that weren’t ultimately what he was supposed to have. And so, you were like swimming against the current?
Bill: Yeah, I was a two-year-old stomping my feet, and convinced that if I kept stomping hard enough, it would surely work.
Rick: And so it sounds like you finally got that pounded out of you after about three years.
Bill: That’s the perfect verb. Yes, exactly! Pounded and beat out of me. And it was, it was that moment when, “Oh, I get it.” Like in The Wizard of Oz, “Surrender, Dorothy, written in the sky.” Yeah, well, scratch Dorothy, put Bill. So, I really got it, like, “Oh!” Then I just launched into it, I let go. I let go of the whole human thing. And I launched into the spiritual, and I just opened myself with a strong abandon, actually. I realized, I really got at some deep level how critically central being spiritual is in my life. And I think just as a little mentoring, kind of an expression to anybody who’s watching and listening, I think one of the values of rebellion, one of the values of resistance, is that once we get to the end of it, no matter how painful it is, and really get the picture, then we’ve really got it. Whereas if we’re just kind of conformingly going along, the whole of us doesn’t necessarily show up. So that was the value in that resistance to me, either that or I’m making up a nice story about what a great value it was. So, then all of a sudden, oneness came in. And I got almost obsessed with oneness. “What is oneness?” So, I read books on it, and I never had a mentor, a spiritual mentor. I never was allowed a spiritual guru, teacher, system, if you will. It was all internal.
Rick: I was going to ask, because you never had a mentor, and I also kind of got the impression that you actually weren’t doing spiritual practices, you were just sort of being driven along by this force, irrespective of what you did. And that kind of fascinates me, because I’ve always been a practice kind of guy, and it always interests me when I see people who are just given a shove, and it keeps on shoving, almost against their will.
Bill: Yes, I actually tried to do a detour a couple of times and get a spiritual teacher. It was not sweet. Again, it’s that same thing where you go outside of how life is moving you, and you try to do it a different way, and it doesn’t work. Well, it was a fascinating thing. In fact, I had a lot of friends along the way who belonged to different spiritual movements, organizations, followed different teachers, gurus, etc. And for a little while I was kind of jealous of them, because it’s like, “Oh, they have these nice, neat systems – philosophical systems, spiritual systems, practice systems.” And I used to think, “Well, that’s …” Plus, they had a nice sense of belonging, belonging to that community, that mindset, that spiritual system. And yet what I noticed is over the years, as I – and I don’t say this judgmentally at all – but as I kept growing, I watched many of them, sort of stay right at the same place they were, just kind of still that same sense of belonging, which was just fine and right and probably perfect. But for me, I think maybe the reason I wasn’t allowed to fit in somewhere is because it was just important for me to keep growing and keep growing and keep growing. And that became my path, was just to blossom like a flower into one level of experience and be there for a while, and then just keep moving to the next.
Rick: It’s a very astute observation, actually. I’ve seen that with spiritual groups where people get kind of calcified in a particular niche. And then sometimes you’ll see that they leave the group, and very shortly thereafter there’s some big awakening. Or maybe they have the big awakening and then they leave the group, but it’s almost like it’s time for the chick to leave the incubator. And staying in the incubator any longer is not helpful for the chick, nor his fellow chicks. It’s good to get out of there.
Bill: Yeah, no, that’s really well said, I think. And I think just in fairness too, there are some people who, just in terms of their spiritual path or their spiritual calling, that niche is a perfect niche for them, maybe for the rest of their life. And for others like me, who are just called to keep moving, it’s not.
Rick: I would go so far as to say, even if they are fundamentalists, or something, that’s fine, that’s where they’re at. That’s what they need, that’s right for them at that time.
Bill: Exactly, yeah, that fits perfectly. So, if I go back to oneness, I hung out, I even started doing workshops on oneness, and I noticed duality shrinking into oneness in an off-and-on way. And then one time I had this remarkable, unexpected experience. It wasn’t the Moses voice, but it was even stronger than that, where I was right at the end of giving a weekend spiritual growth workshop, and with about an hour or so to go, all of a sudden, I’m up on the stage, and I don’t know, 50, 60 people out there in the group, and I just got really weak, and I just kind of collapsed onto the floor, and I became momentarily, which lasted about 3 hours, paralyzed, like just nothing would move. And I witnessed …
Rick: People called an ambulance or anything?
Bill: No, no, I don’t even know if they thought about that.
Rick: It was just Bill behaving normally.
Bill: Yes, exactly, yeah, by that time, Bill’s doing something else. So, what I noticed is something about me, something left. It just, like it got sucked out. And later, and of course my mind was not able to really think, I could just witness a little bit. And later I recognized that, oh, that’s the last part of the human me, the last part of the dualistic me, if you will. And then, after some unknown amount of time, I don’t know whether it was 10 seconds, And again, later in hindsight, I discovered it was a, call it a unified consciousness, a unity consciousness in a TM focus, or just my unified self. And that changed me forever, so I went from love, being very loving as a central identity, to being a, I’ll just call it a unified being, being part of the unified field of life. And so, everything that I saw from that point on was seen through a unified perception, and specifically, what that means is – and this is a terrible thing, terrible thing. I couldn’t judge anything anymore. It was awful. It was like, “Oh, one it just was, but oh, gee, look at that, it’s just beautiful how it is.” And so, there was no judgment, there was no growling inside, there was none of the feeling sorry for self – the things that an ego would do, if you will.
Rick: There was still, I imagine, preferences and discrimination and all, but just not the ego-laden judgment. Like if you went into a restaurant, you would say, “Well, I’d rather have the enchilada than the quesadilla,” or something. So, there were still choices, right?
Bill: Yeah, there were choices about those practical things, but more and more, the choices about other things, like whether I want life to go this way for me, or that way, they just, not even gradually, pretty quickly, they all kind of went into, “Oh, I’m just one with whatever it is.” So, part of it, for me to say it another way, was I was just kind of floating along, not in a passive way at all but floating along with – let me just call it the movement of life. So, I became one with life and life’s movements and life’s flow and life’s design, and I stopped thinking in terms of an individual design.
Rick: Did you ever find yourself saying, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me?” Or were you completely okay with whatever happened?
Bill: Well, by golly, that’s a great question. I had a grand initiation that led me to not do that again, “Let this cup pass from me.” Not long after that whole initiation process on the stage of becoming one, I discovered that there was this enormous, enormous pain. It’s like a psychic pain, a scream in my gut that just wouldn’t quit. And the long story short, is that was the primal scream of humanity’s pain. So, I was one with humanity, and the setup was – not by my design, my personal design – the setup was, “Okay, Bill, you’re one with all life. You’re one with infinity, one with the universe, one with the Divine. Let’s be one with humanity, and specifically, let’s be one down at that existential, unconscious, primal level. Let’s be one with where it really hurts, for the collective human being.” And so, for a number of years, I went through that scream. And at first, I went through the first several months basically, “Let this cup pass from me,” basically saying, because by that time I’d been a healer for quite a while, and in my great little toolbox of healing tools, up to then, I could heal about anything. So, I was trying to heal this, and it wouldn’t budge. So, then prayer, “Let this pass from me,” wouldn’t budge. And I started to realize, and after, I’ll say several months, I’m guessing, it became really clear to me again. I’m slow, but I do catch on. It became clear to me, “Oh, this is not about healing. This is not about getting rid of. This is about oneness.” So, if I’m really here to be one, I’m here to be one with everything, including the dark side, the downside, the pain side. And so, in all those years, what I did is I just loved it, and I became one with it. I just sort of sank into it, sank into it. And in that, not only did I let go of “Let this pass from me” as a style, but I, if I may use the verb, I mastered, or there was mastered in me, this capacity to just be one with anything, no matter what. So even from a healing point of view, later or through and after that, it’s like if someone presents anything to me – a cancer, an insanity, the terrible level of whatever – I just become totally one with it. Go ahead.
Rick: Yeah, I want to interject two points there. Maybe I’ll interject on the first point, and then you can comment, and then I’ll come back on the second point. The first one is, it’s interesting because what you seem to spontaneously experience, this complete surrender, going with the flow, letting things unfold as they are, that’s often offered as a prescription to people. But in your case, it just became a description of what happened to you, pretty much unwillingly, I mean, automatically. But you read all these teachers who tell people to do that, and I’m not sure if that works so well sometimes. So, any comments on that before I go on to the next point?
Bill: No, having watched myself tell people that a lot, I get it doesn’t… sometimes it takes, but most of the time it’s like, “Yeah, sounds right. Yeah, I should do that. That’s right, I’ll try to do that.”
Rick: Yeah, it’s like some great tennis player saying, “Here’s how I do it.” You go like this, you go like that, and then somebody like me watching and listening, and it’s like, “I understand what you’re talking about, but I can’t do it.”
Bill: That’s right, yeah, and you try it a little bit, and maybe you make a 1% leap into that. No, that’s really true. And that’s where I’ve come to think, Rick, a fair amount, that a lot is about our timing. It’s like when it’s time, it’s time, and when it’s not, it’s not. And then a lot also is about – and this is the other big thing I’ve discovered over the years – a lot is about my, or one’s, willingness to just let go.
Rick: Or ability to just let go.
Bill: Or ability,
Rick: yeah. Because some people say, “Hey, I want to let go, but it’s not happening.”
Bill: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And for me, again, as you said, it was like there was this big force, or presence, or whatever, that we could call divine, that was in charge of the whole thing. And so, it really, for me, I got those lessons, like surrender, I got them in the process of a ritual that was done to and through me, as opposed to my saying, “Okay, now I’m ready for this.” And everybody’s got their different style, of course.
Rick: when I hear stories like this, I get the impression that perhaps the person had really built up a head of steam in previous lives, or something. And when they come into this life, it’s like they don’t have to do anything. There’s a momentum, and it’s just going to carry them along, like it or not.
Bill: Yeah. Let me add to that from another angle. I have no proof for what I’m about to say, but I have for so long, had the sense, and it’s a deep, solid sense, that whether, for example, what you said about past lives is true for me or not, I don’t know. But the deep sense I’ve had is that I am an example or a model of somebody who is just plain Bill, just ordinary. That’s why my name is perfect, just plain Bill. And I’m just an ordinary, regular human being, to whom and through whom, and in whom all these things happened, and then happened again, and bigger and bigger and bigger. I think to either exemplify or model or demonstrate how grace – let me just use that word – how grace can transform even the simplest, little, ordinary character, into a budding flower that somehow is allowed to find the richness of the human experience, in a way that’s got all the spiritual juice and love to it, and just can live in all dimensions at the same time. So, it’s like going from zero to a hundred, if you will.
Rick: Yeah, well it kind of fits in with the theme of this show, the subtitle being “Conversations with Ordinary Spiritually Awakened People,” and there’s an historical precedent for it. Christ recruited a bunch of fishermen to be his disciples, and Shankara’s main disciple was just this little guy that would be washing the clothes and stuff while the other disciples were sitting around having these philosophical discourses, and he was considered to be too simple-minded to engage in those. But then through his devotion and whatever, he had this profound awakening and became the principal teacher in Shankara’s lineage. Just awoke to the full potential just through his simplicity. His name was Trotakacharya. Alright, so now how about this point about the pain? It seems like there’s no end to it, and somehow you seem to have resolved that, but certainly, one man can’t dissolve the pain of the world in his heart, because there’s no end to how much needs to be dissolved.
Bill: Yeah, well from a linear point of view, that’s right, there’s no end to it. It’s a bottomless pit, if you will. From a grace point of view, there absolutely can be either an end to it, or an entry into a whole different kind of relationship with it, and that’s what happened to me. So, I hung out with this pain for actually nine years. It was an interesting kind of thing, and it just screamed and screamed. It was the most painful kind of thing. Sometimes I would just double over in the – not the physical pain, but the psychic pain of it all. I’m just saying that so everybody will feel sorry for me. I thrive on pity.
Rick: We’ll put your address in at the end so they can send flowers.
Bill: Perfect, thank you, thank you. That’s a good idea, why didn’t I think of that? So, what happened after nine years, and I felt it starting to move almost a year before the end, is apparently I had just become one with it, become one with it, and let myself move into that place where there was just no distinction. It was like that was pain and it just was, and just in oneness. The magic of oneness, I think, is that all of a sudden, the pain stops being in a dualistic relationship with me, and we enter into a unified relationship. So, from that point on, and that’s been a lot of years now, I’m guessing 17, 18, 20 years, whatever. From that point on, I’ve never felt that kind of pain before, but I’m in an intimate relationship with the pain of humanity in a way that doesn’t scream dualistically, but in a way that so appreciates the love, so appreciates the unity, that it literally becomes a partner for me in healing others, and just in my relationship to the planet and to the human race in general. So that, for example, when I watch wars and I watch rapes and I watch injustices, let’s say, the terrible pain that we have in humanness, I don’t go to, “Oh, what a terrible pain,” because that’s more of a dualistic kind of thing. I just go to this embrace of oneness, and then just in that embrace I just watch blessings ooze into the situation. And it’s very sweet. So being in oneness, for me, and for many other people I’ve helped be there, but for me, it’s just this most sweet, godlike loving of this human race. And one of the side effects is I just have stopped thinking there’s anything wrong. And so even when I look at something that’s stereotypically dualistically, we would say, “Oh, that’s wrong.” But instead of that, again, I just let myself merge with it, and within my consciousness or the consciousness that’s here, it has its own transformation, and I’m sure that generalizes in some way. So, it’s just a sweet, sweet kind of a thing.
Rick: So what was your reaction, for instance, on 9/11?
Bill: Well, it was a fascinating reaction, fascinating, because at that point I was in my next step, which was my essence or beingness or divinity step, which is, “Oh, everything just is.” So, I watched 9/11 happen, and I watched the reaction of course of 99.9% of people to it, which was a very gut-level, primal, fight-or-flight, fear-based, security-oriented, survival-directed kind of response. And I kept looking in myself for response, like, “What is this?” And none of that was there. Actually, ironically, no judgment of anybody was there. I felt the same thing as if I just went to all the victims. I went to all the perpetrators in the exact same way, and I just let my beingness wrap around them, and I just felt for them. I felt deep compassion, I felt deep love, I felt deep honoring, and I feel like that’s my calling to life. Maybe one of the gifts I give to our humanness is, no matter what the stereotypic judgment might be about anybody, I just let myself totally unite with who they are, how they are, what they are, and let the magic of that do whatever it does. So, my response was a non-judgmental, love-based, deeply inner-peace-based connection, and then from there, what that allowed, is it allowed me pretty instantaneously a vision, because there wasn’t anything to stop me from a clear vision. And the vision was, “Oh, I think we have just witnessed a major initiation, a global initiation into the beginnings of a new humanity.” And of course, out of that has come the whole 2012 myth-based kind of a thing, the moving from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age, just all the labels we want to put to that, and everything that’s come from that, where we’re still going through this major turning point, if you will, into this remarkable new time. And so, if there was, and if anybody’s got judgment about 9/11/2001, I apologize for this remark, but it felt to me like that was in some way a real gift, because it invited us all to get out of our comfort zone and show up in a different way.
Rick: That was sort of my reaction too. I mean, when I saw that happen, I thought, “Whoa, it’s happening! Things are really changing here!” But this pain thing I can relate to too and find it very interesting. I find myself contemplating situations where people are subjected to extreme suffering, and like torture, and things like that. And wondering, kind of just … Firstly, coming at it from a number of angles, wondering how I would hold up under such a thing, whether any degree of awakening I’ve achieved would actually be sustained. And also, why such things happen, where would a person have to be at to inflict that on somebody else? And then kind of taking it out to the God level of, “Oh, okay, well it’s all God, and He’s the torturer, He’s the torturee, and somehow this is entertaining on a cosmic level.” It’s just part of the whole grand Lila, you know?
Bill: Yes, yes.
Rick: But for some reason I find myself processing this stuff. I’ll be out cutting the grass, going through this scenario, and feeling like I’m working through something.
Bill: Yes, trying to help the mind catch up to the bigger picture of the whole thing.
Rick: For what it’s worth. Apropos of this point about pain, it seems like we all develop a kind of a shell, like a clam or a snail, and the shell, it both isolates us, but it protects us. So, it’s kind of necessary. And it almost seems like awakening into oneness is a process of dissolving the shell, and becoming more vulnerable, but somehow not having that be lethal. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit?
Bill: Wow, I loved your words. I could just sit with those words. I think you said it beautifully. No, it’s really true. Somebody just this morning in this morning’s mail, I got this book as a gift from somebody in the mail called “Undefended Love,” and so, I’ve not had a chance to look at it. But I love the title. It’s like, there’s some books I haven’t read, but the title grabs me, you know? And so “Undefended Love” I think is what you’re talking about. The beauty of oneness, and if I may say it, saying yes to oneness, and just letting go into being one, is bit by bit, usually, we let go of that shell, that defense, that self-protection. We let go of the ways we try to keep ourselves from being hurt, or keep ourselves from being in pain, from the seeming terribleness or danger of life or of other people. And for me at least, as we do that, we just keep letting go, letting go. What I found for me is the power of love, the power of oneness, the power of a willingness to dance more intimately with all facets of life, not just human beings, but the stuff of life itself, the power of that, is amazing in just somehow softening the blows, and somehow establishing the power of spirit, or the power of soul, or the power of the Divine, or the power of one’s God-self, and any other label we want to put, inside the human self, inside the human core. And somehow then my human and my Divine, if I can say it that way, are so merged that it, that, I become a much more powerful presence. Not power in the usual stereotypical dualistic sense of the term, where it’s about win-lose, but power in terms of win-win, and power in terms of, “Wow, I can really be here, and I can really be the fullness of who I am called to be here in any given moment.” And it’s okay, because the power takes over. So, to say that another way, I feel like what we do is we move from self-protection, that’s the shell you talked about, to openness, whereas the doors open, as the gates open, a deeper, fuller power comes to do a much better job than the self-protection did, in terms of allowing us to be present in a way that ultimately can be just about downright 100% non-vulnerable. And it’s a powerful thing.
Rick: As you were saying that the image came to mind of the Akido masters, who rather than taking a sort of obstinate, oppositional approach to an attacker, would just somehow do this little thing, and the attacker’s force would be used against them, and they’d just be blown off, and the master would just hardly have done anything.
Bill: Exactly, yes. That’s a power, exactly.
Rick: So do you feel though that at a certain stage of a person’s development, it’s necessary and appropriate for them to have a shell and to be protective? Perhaps they don’t have the inner wherewithal, the inner strength, or the attunement to this cosmic intelligence to operate as you’re describing, and that shell can’t be shed instantly. It has to be a process that might take years.
Bill: I love your point, Rick. I so agree with that. I’ve spent so many decades now, because I’m so old, I’ve spent so many decades really helping people at various, various places of call it development, and I think especially when we’ve experienced some kind of trauma, especially if it’s early in life, there’s a part of us that just freezes, and it’s gut level, and it’s way, way, way down deep, even at unconscious levels. We just freeze, we partially paralyze, the rest of us keeps going on and growing. Something in there says, “I’m too scared,” and it’s often a really painful, kind of thing. So, for people like that, they deeply, subconsciously are convinced that they have to protect that, and if they don’t protect that, they’re going to die. And so, for them, self-protection is not only important, it’s pretty imperative. And so, I notice for myself, I will never invite someone to take away a self-protection unless or until I really see that there’s something else, some deeper spiritual power, for example, or some deeper psychological power that can take the place of that pain. And then that pain usually needs to be nurtured in a certain way, and then once it is, as you say, over time, then it can heal, it can be done. And then I watch people just take enormously quick strides in their growth, in their expansion, in everything that they came here to be. But you’re right, that’s a very sensitive point, not just for healers, if you will, of various ilks, but for the person himself/herself in relation to that. And if I had a – what a cute word – paradigm for that, it would be that I think the first thing, is to just go and connect with it, just be with it. Because most of us, we run from it, we block it, we deny it, we ignore it, we numb it, with all sorts of things. But just to go to it and show up to it. And then second, love it, as opposed to reject it, “I want it gone.” Just love it, love it, love it. And when we do that, it starts talking to us in different ways. It starts inviting us in in different ways. There’s a relationship. And then from there, the magic can start happening. But it’s a very fragile, sensitive kind of a thing, and it’s just really precious. I know for me, when I’m feeling called to really be present to someone in that circumstance, what a joy it is for me just to go and be passionately, quietly in love with that pain. And the power of love in healing even the most violent, vehement, tragic, explosive kind of pain or suffering that’s there just enormous. To me, it’s a delight to watch love do what all of our theories about love say it will do. And to me, I can almost intertwine the words “love” and “oneness.”
Rick: I was in an encounter group back in about 1969, when such things were in vogue, and I saw this process where people’s defenses would be hammered down and shattered, but without there being given any kind of counter-balancing strength or inner resources to be defenseless, and it would really be shattering for people, a very crude and inappropriate way of helping.
Bill: Exactly, yeah. You and I are twins, I had those experiences too.
Rick: One thing you mentioned in the recordings I was listening to, and maybe this dovetails with the processing pain phase you went through, but you said several years of deconstructing beliefs and concepts. I found that kind of interesting.
Bill: Well, thank you, I forgot to mention that. This was back probably in the mid-1980s. It was another Moses voice; it was really cute. And the Moses voice said, “Bill” – I don’t know why it wouldn’t call me Moses all these times, but it’s always “Bill” – “Bill, it’s time to unlearn everything you’ve ever learned.” And I thought, “Well, that’s fascinating,” because by that time I had degrees up the wazoo. I wasn’t overly attached to everything I knew, but I think I was attached to it. And so, I ignored it. It came back, I ignored it again. And after the fourth or fifth time I decided, you know, resistance is futile. And it felt right, all of a sudden it felt right. So, I decided I was going to just – every judgment I had, every thought I had, every theory I had, every interpretation, every value, every principle, all those words. Every assumption I had, every idea I had, I was just going to take it and just put it on some invisible table next to me, just to empty out my mind, to unlearn everything I ever learned. Well, I had no clue when I started that, what kind of a project I took on. This took me about three years, and I did it. It was a practice. It was a practice that felt sacred, felt important, like I had to do this. And it was amazing. I had no idea how many thousands of layers of thoughts we have, and it felt like there was a bottomless pit, and there wasn’t. But I noticed after a few months, I had just gotten rid of enough, that I started to feel unexpectedly scared. I thought, “Whoa, what’s that?” And I realized, “Oh, my whole sense of safety and security in relation to the world,” not the whole sense, but was in some way related to, “Oh, I can think it away. I can categorize it. I can have a theory about it. I know something about it.” So that, I noticed, was a shield I had protecting me from life. So, I went through the few months of fear, a little bit of terror, and after a while, somehow, I started feeling okay. It’s like, “Oh, okay, I got through that. I’ve lived. It’s okay. I’m still shedding all those.” And so, I went on. And after about two years, I noticed myself starting to think, “Well, gee, I can tell the barrel is getting emptier. I wonder what it will be like.” And right at that point, I started to experience people, not so much in terms of thoughts, interpretations, theories, ideologies, principles, but more in terms of their energies, their emotions, their feelings. I did that with nature. It was like I was all of a sudden, a tree hugger. It was awful. No, just their feeling, feeling, that’s it. So, feeling nature, feeling people, feeling their hearts, feeling their pain, feeling their beauty. The air I breathed, it was like, “Oh, I can feel that prana, that chi,” like I’ve never felt it before. So, when I was less in the mind, and … No, let me change that. When I was less in the constructs of the mind, I started noticing – this was the strangest thing, the strangest discovery for me – “Oh, my mind and my thoughts have feelings.” Most of us, we think of the mind like a computer. It’s the logical Mr. Spock quality of us, if you will. Oh, that was good. And yet for me, I discovered, “Oh, my mind is as feeling and sensitive a part of me as anything else.” So, after three years, boom, I hit bottom. It was like, “Oh!” All of a sudden, I looked, and in relation to everything, there was no more thought about it, and everything just was. It was really strange. Now, that can be humanly embarrassing, and it was from time to time. Like somebody is talking to you, and all of a sudden you know the conversation is there, and they’re looking at you, because it’s your turn to say something. And there was nothing to say, because “Oh, wow, it just is. Internally it’s wonderful.” So, there were a few, or several, embarrassing moments on the outside. But what it did for me, oh my gosh, what it did for me is – and this was the point right at the end – boom, it was emptied out. My mind almost instantly looked for its new job definition. And what it did, all on its own, it just hooked into my heart. It bonded and merged and unified with my heart. And then I watched, over the next few weeks, my mind, again, all on its own, decided, “Okay, my new job is to take the wisdom of the heart, the truth of the soul, and figure out,” which is what a mind is good at, “figure out how to manifest that, how to express that, how to put that into gear, how to put that into a three-dimensional world.” And my mind was so happy. I never thought about a happy mind, but all of a sudden, my mind was feeling fulfilled, like, “Ah, I’m unified, I found my dharma, I found my niche, and it’s been living happily ever after since then.” It was amazing, just amazing. So again, if I …
Rick: Let’s unpack this a little bit. So, it sounds like another one of these things that you just hung on for dear life, and this thing happened to you, you weren’t the prime motivator of it. But it does sound a little bit more practice-like than some of the things you went through. It’s like you went through layer after layer after layer. And were things just kind of bubbling up, and you find yourself making a judgment about something, and then you think, “Wait a minute, is that really true?” It’s almost a Byron Katie kind of process, “Do I absolutely know that’s true?” Was there sort of a little habit that developed in which you learned to play devil’s advocate with yourself on all of your concepts and judgments?
Bill: Yeah, there was a distinct habit, but I wasn’t bright enough to take it the Byron Katie direction. The habit was, “Oh, there’s a thought, or there’s a judgment, or there’s a theory, or there’s a belief.” And I just took it, and I wouldn’t even look at it and ask the question. Because for me at least, in that practice, if I asked the question, I was engaging the mind again. If I would say, “Is that true?” I was using the mind to solve the mind. And that just wasn’t the calling. I have great respect for Katie’s work, etc. But for me, it wasn’t that. That would have, for me, defeated the purpose. So, for me it was, “Oh, there’s a thought. Put it to the side.” Just like in TM, as you’re doing the meditation, “Oh, there’s a thought.” I just kind of gently let it go and move from there. But it was a practice. And I noticed over the years, if there’s one thing consistent in what my path has been – and it’s only my path – the thing that’s been consistent is saying “Yes.” It’s like, “Oh, boom! This is what’s important to show up to – yes.” And as you know from a couple of things I’ve described; I came to saying “yes” the hard way. I was a big “no” guy for quite a while. The power of “no,” as we say. Except somebody put a “w” at the end of that, and I don’t know what that was about.
Rick: That was the key, he got rich doing that.
Bill: That’s right, yeah. See, I stopped at “no,” and I didn’t get rich for that. I should have learned something. Anyway, so for me it was very much about, “Oh, say yes to it, go with it, even if I don’t understand it.” It’s a whole mind thing. It just felt like, “Yes, it’s really important for me to do this.” And so, I did add, personally, an element of “yes,” and an element of discipline.
Rick: Let’s take a couple of specific examples. So, let’s say we believe in God, we have a particular political orientation; we might have a philosophical attitude Toward whether reincarnation exists, and there are all kinds of assumptions. We assume things about everybody we run into. Someone speaks a certain way, we assume they are that kind of person, which might be pretty far off the mark in terms of what they actually are. So, in terms of all these assumptions and beliefs and all, how did you go about deconstructing them? Let’s say the God thing. You were a priest; you must have grown up believing in God. Did at any point you re-examine that whole thing and kind of shed a certain adamant certainty about it, or what?
Bill: Well, actually for that particular question, probably the first ten years after I left the priesthood and left the Catholic Church, in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I was rather an avowed agnostic and probably pretty close to an atheist. So, I had kind of done that one before. But all of them, all of those questions, and I love your examples, and for me, add to those, because I was doing a lot of psychotherapy, and just helping people a lot, where people would say things, and of course in that role, I noticed that my typical response was, “Oh, that means this. Oh, that symbolizes that. Oh, that …” And so, I would explain it to myself in different ways. So anytime I noticed in any way, which was five times a minute, like, “Oh, there is an interpretation, there is an assumption,” whatever. Again, simple thing, I just kind of, without using my hands, just set it aside and went back to focusing on whatever it was. “Oops, there is another thought.” Set it aside, go back to whatever was in the moment. “Oops, there is an assumption.” Set it aside. It was very, very simple. Ironically, it didn’t get boring. You would think, “Doing that …”
Rick: Sounds interesting. Can this be prescribed? Can you sort of say, “Hey everybody, here is how you do it”?
Bill: Actually it really can be. I don’t usually advocate that to people because, again, like the other things we talked about, there are very few people who feel called to that. Or if they do, they don’t like the idea of it. Plus, it seems to them like a lot of work. But for those that I’ve talked about it, and they’ve said, “Oh, that feels like a calling,” and I’ve supported them and helped them in doing that, it’s made a huge difference. It’s made more than a huge difference. It’s like dissolved so much of what we would spiritually tend to call ego or small-s self. And it just kind of opens them to … it like opens doors to infinity, just because that one little way that we use the mind is out of the way. And I’ve watched, for example, some people from various spiritual traditions who tend to find me, so I can help them with their awakening, or their enlightenment, or their realization. I’ve watched a number of them do this, just as a practice. And again, it’s not one I’d ever impose on anybody, but I’ve watched them do this, and they just soared from an enlightenment, realization, awakening point of view. It just was maybe one of the things that was tough. And I find that, and again, I just say this just as an observation, that in so many spiritual traditions, Eastern and Western, there’s so much that’s about the philosophy of it. There’s so much that’s about the belief of it. I remember my training in Catholic theology, it was so much about the dogma of it, if you will. And that never spoke to me for some reason, like the love part of it did. But to the degree – I’m going to make a generalization – to the degree that we wed or marry the philosophical dogma teaching aspects of it to the spirit of it, there’s a good chance that those teachings will subtly help in certain ways, like, “Oh wow, look at that!” But really limit us in other ways, simply because we wind up holding on to those kinds of things.
Rick: Oh yeah, it’s like two hungry guys standing outside a restaurant looking at the menu, “I believe that the chicken is going to be better,” or “I believe that the fish is going to be better,” and they can stand there and starve to death arguing about beliefs, as opposed to going in, and actually, having the experience.
Bill: I like that! Can I use that? That’s a good analogy.
Rick: And so, it’s interesting, you said that when you had somehow worked through this whole process, you actually did get to the bottom of it. You have a good way of getting to the bottom of things. You seem to have the pain of humanity, and then all of your assumptions, you’re kind of like, “There is a light at the end of the tunnel!”
Bill: If I stick with it long enough, somehow it resolves itself. And that to me is the beauty of spirituality. Ultimate spirituality, if that’s even a term, is much more about letting go into the mystery, the grace, the love, the divinity, the magic of what it is, and just by totally letting go into it as almost the only tool or practice, somehow, and it may take time, somehow the magic happens. Again, for all that pain, that was a nine-year cycle. That was not an overnight deal, but there’s so much magic in life.
Rick: So, the magic that happened when you got to the end of this questioning assumptions phase was, you said, the mind kind of took a back seat and you became centered in your feelings, and the mind became more of a tool to manifest the feeling level into practical reality.
Bill: Yes, and my mind felt like it was an intimate part of it. It was a team player, and my mind felt like it was as spiritual, or is as spiritual, as is my heart, as is my soul, and was just delighted to have a whole new way of being in relation to everything.
Rick: Yeah, some people in spiritual circles talk about getting rid of some of these things, you get rid of your ego, you get rid of your mind and all, and I always have thought of them as just tools that have kind of taken too predominant a role, and it’s not that you get rid of them, but everything gets more proportionally balanced, so, things take their rightful place and serve their rightful function.
Bill: Yes, absolutely, beautifully said.
Rick: And so when you entered into this phase of feeling things more intimately, more subtly, the trees, the people you encountered, I presume you mean ordinary circumstances, like you’re in the supermarket and you tune into the checkout girl, and there’s a subtle affinity or feeling there that you wouldn’t have had in the past. So maybe you could describe your life a little bit at that phase, what it was like to be Bill operating in that condition. And I’m sure you’re still operating that way, but it was new to you at that point.
Bill: It was new, and it was basically a whole new relationship to life. The nature of the planet started feeling different to me, not as a philosophical concept right off the bat, though the mind catches up and organizes it after, but more as, “Oh, it went from …” Now if you knew my childhood, I was born ultra-sensitive, I felt everything, the world felt like a terribly hostile, dangerous place to me. The earlier part of my life was not very sweet that way, so, I’m using that as a contrast. After this I started noticing the sweetness of creation, the sweetness of human beings, even if somebody was yelling at me. I noticed while I was dealing with whatever the person was yelling at me about, I noticed the sweetness of the person, and all of a sudden it was like, “Oh, this person and I are loving each other, he’s serving me, I’m serving him in some way,” whatever that is, but not making it a mind thing, but just feeling the heart connection. And so, everything, no matter what, as I said before, if I look at wars, for about 10 years through the 90s, my precious life-mate and I, Donna, started and ran what we called World Peace Institute, a non-profit organization in Washington DC. As you can see, we were terribly successful. There is now a world full of peace, simply because of us.
Rick: Yeah, you guys rock!
Bill: Thank you, no, no, don’t thank us.
Rick: What did you actually do to facilitate, not to get you off the track, but what did you do to actually help facilitate world peace when you ran that thing?
Bill: Well, we’ll see if the word “help” fits, but actually, first of all, we built it on what we called, for a more mentally oriented Washington DC community, a consciousness of oneness. So, it was not so much about conflict negotiation, if you will, which is sort of a prevailing model of how you bring about peace. It was more about helping people and systems learn how to walk a mile in the shoes of the other person, step into another opening, open their hearts, creating circumstances and rituals and programs, through which people met each other in deeply more heart-centered ways, human ways, got to know each other, not just around the conflict areas. But then we never tried to put oneness into a set of principles, if you will. Somehow it just didn’t work for us, but experientially, just to invite people to the experience. So, we did that all the way from the global, to the societal, to the racial, to the community, to relationships, intimate personal relationships, marriages, if you will, people living together. The people in relation to themselves, the theme is, “Oh, if I can become one with another person, even though I may hate that person, or if I in relation to myself can become one with my body, even if I hate a facet of my body.” It’s the same principle. If I can become one, then the magic of oneness starts to enter in and calls us in a bigger way. I noticed that almost all those conflict negotiation treaties that they would come up with, that they would sign, they usually lasted a few years, and then what they did is they died. They didn’t get followed through with. And so, I was looking for something that would touch us and bond us at a deeper level. So that’s a lot of what we did. And of course, my big joke about that is, once we created world peace, we shut it down.
Rick: Yeah, right. Was this back in the 70s, 80s, something like that?
Bill: No, this was through the 90s actually, from about 1990 to 1999, something like that.
Rick: So, we were talking about … the reason I brought this up, and the reason you brought it up, was that we were talking about that even though people may appear antagonistic to one another, on a subtler level there is some kind of heart connection going on. Would you say that that’s the case in every situation? Is there a heart connection going on between Assad and the people that are trying to get him from power, and he’s bombing the heck out of them? There’s some kind of love thing going on, on some deep level?
Bill: Actually, ironically, through the eyes of oneness, that’s really true. I’ll share with you an example I share with different groups from time to time. Back when I was a psychologist and I used to try to do relationship counseling, marriage therapy, I would watch people at a conscious, left-brain, verbal level, yelling and screaming at each other, a couple, two people. “If you would only change, then I’d be happy, and you son of a whatever, blah, blah, blah.” And then I would watch, because I could see energies back in those days too, I would watch their hearts, and I watched this love communication going on, from heart to heart. And if I would tune into the heart communication, the heart communication would be saying something like, “Look, I’m really sorry I’m beating up on you out here. It’s the only way, at a conscious level, I know how to do this, but I really love you. Thank you for walking through this with me.” When I first started noticing that, again, I’m a discoverer.
Rick: You thought, “Am I hallucinating?”
Bill: Exactly. And then I would watch the solar plexus communication, which is more about energy and need. And then I would watch the soul connection, if you will, and I would watch the bondedness. So, I noticed we’re always relating on all these levels, and there literally is, even though it looks like if I’m bombing you, if I’m killing you, if I’m doing something horrible to you, ironically, and at the deepest level of soul, there is this deep bondedness, this huge love that, while not visible out here because we can only see that, that captures our attention, is so genuine, so real. So, for me, what I tend to do is I tend to just join that, just go there. However, I show up at the other levels, I just become one with how they’re one, and then take my cues from that oneness. Because as we all know, there’s huge wisdom at that soul level, huge wisdom in the ways we are one, that can make such a huge, huge, huge difference.
Rick: So are there any exceptions to this, or can you say categorically that the Nazis and the Jews, the slave masters and the traitors and the slaves, any horrific situation we want to look at, on a deep level there was some kind of, from a much broader perspective, a much subtler perspective, there was some sort of mutually beneficial love kind of thing going on there.
Bill: In my experience, there’s no exception to this. And I don’t want to call myself a great master of this necessarily, but there’s so many ways in which, even when I’m talking to people, I’m so present to pretty much everything that goes on in the human dynamic, if you will. I feel myself totally one with the human family, in the ups and the downs, in the joys and the sufferings, and so I keep an eye on what goes on around the world. So just as I look at it, there are no exceptions to that. We are deeply in love with one another, even though we’ve lost conscious touch with that. We’ve not lost touch unconsciously, or subconsciously, or super-consciously. It’s only at the conscious level that we forget, and where we struggle, and it’s all about fight or flight, and self-survival, survival of the fittest, etc. So, to me, because that conscious is one part of a much bigger system, to me what’s a cool definition of spirituality is that I just become one with and show up to everything, every part of me – my conscious, my subconscious, my unconscious, my energy, my primal self, my spiritual self, my mystical self, my divine self, and we’re all of that. And so, if – this is my philosophical chewing about it – If, as the Eastern spiritualities say, creation is really about the divine or God/Goddess, creating a playground so that the divine can experience all that the divine is in myriad ways, then what a cool way to be human, to simply experience everything that humanness is – the upside, the downside, the light, the dark. And for me, as I’ve done all of that, again, just because it’s been done to me, it just starts being shown to me over and over and over again, “Wow, this is all divine.” So, anything dark, it’s amazing. I’ll say that one other way. Again, I mentioned I did a lot of depth psychotherapy, and even spiritually, whether it’s in the context of healing or just supporting someone’s growth, I’m always really, really present to every facet of a person, including that dark side, including – or that seeming dark side – and including any pain. And what I’ve just discovered, because it’s been shown to me over and over, that no matter how excruciatingly awful something feels, if we go there, spend enough time with it, massage it in enough different ways, love it, care for it, at some point we go deeper into it and deeper into it, down into the core of it, down into the soul of the symptom, if you will, and “Ah, ah, we find God. We find the divine. We find love. We find perfection. We find beauty.” And then I watch it kind of crack open, just like a shell of a nut just cracks open, and all that love or divinity just comes out. And that’s what the healing is about, I think, is finding the divine within the seeming problem.
Rick: Some of these esoteric philosophers, or guys like Michael Newton, who wrote this book about hypnotically regressing people to the period between lives, and exploring what went on there, they talk about how we pretty much sign up for whatever we end up doing here, even things that we wouldn’t consciously, from this perspective, want to take on. But there’s a bigger reason for taking them on, to work out karma, or to learn lessons, or whatever. And so, it helps to take that perspective, because otherwise we talk about the Nazis loving the Jews and vice versa, it can be very offensive to some people.
Bill: Yeah, that’s right. If we do that just at that left brain level, it can be totally offensive, as well as perplexing, for sure.
Rick: Yeah, and there was something else I was going to say, but I forget what it was. But it doesn’t matter.
Bill: Well, I could jump in here if you want.
Rick: Yeah, go ahead, sure.
Bill: Since this is all about me, how often do you get the chance of making something all about you? It’s too cool.
Rick: It’s a joke it goes like, “All right, me, me, me, enough about me. What do you think about me?”
Bill: I love that. So, one thing I feel moved to say, just because of those of you who are watching, and listening, it might be helpful. So, I went through everything I’ve described, and then a couple more expressions of that, where I just was really one with the infinite. And then one with all the many dimensions of life, like in string theory, they talk about all the dimensions that are there. So, I’ve become an intimate resident in all of those places. And again, it was like the Moses voice once again said, “Okay, wonderful, Bill. Now it’s time to take all of that, all of that transcendent life, and bring it totally, totally into humanness, into your humanness, into the humanness.” And the instant picture I had with that was, “Oh, so often, especially in Eastern approaches to awakening, enlightenment, it’s really very much about transcending. It’s very much about not totally leaving the human behind, but leaving the human behind.” So, human doesn’t get a lot of great press. It’s really much more about being in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the light, in the oneness, if you will. So, all of a sudden it was time to do the seeming reverse of that. So that felt right to me, in a way I couldn’t explain. I watched over the next years, I just watched all of that come into and play out in my humanness. And to make the long story short, I noticed that everything that’s out there spiritually, in the infinity of life, is in here. It’s reflected in every chakra, it’s reflected in every cell and atom, it’s reflected in every physiological system; it’s reflected in every energy. My whole aura is filled with infinity, and even in my brain and mind, there’s a whole, what do I want to call that, dimension of life that’s being played out. And so, every human being is, in a way that’s accessible internally in the human, every human being is all of the Divine, and all that emanates from the Divine. And so, I witnessed that, watched that again, said yes, showed up to it, and was in quite a bit of awe about, “Oh, it’s all here.” So, a lot of what I try to do these days is I try to help people who maybe don’t necessarily feel called to a traditional enlightenment path, awakening path, to find the equivalent thereof within themselves. And there’s a way in which, when it’s all about me, it can be all about life as well. I tend to use the human as a laboratory setting for discovering how amazing life is just in this being called self, and then in that experience, this being becomes every being and becomes all of life. A slightly different approach, but it’s magical to … What’s the American Express commercial, “Don’t leave home without it?” So, to not even have to leave home and find, not American Express necessarily, but find Divinity and Infinity just in this space. So, to me, coming from that, one of the side effects is, “Wow, every human being is an exact replica in a completely unique sense,” each person being unique, “exact replica of the Divine and all that is there.” It’s just the most exquisite kind of thing, and so that’s a lot of what I hang out with people.
Rick: Man is made in the image of God.
Bill: That’s exactly it.
Rick: Great stuff. There’s this whole thing going on in the TM movement, and I can’t really do justice to it, but whole books are being written about it, analyzing just what you said in great detail, how the whole cosmos is within the physiology and the Veda is within the physiology, and there’s actually these amazing correspondences between the number of Suktas or verses in Rigveda, and the number of nodes on the central nervous system, and this part of the brain, and this part of the Vedic literature, and so on. As I said, I really have a very layman’s understanding of it, but the attempt is to show that there’s a correspondence between the structure of human physiology and the governing principles of the universe, which the Vedas are purported to represent. Such fascinating stuff that people might want to look into if it strikes a chord with them. So, and hearkening back to the pain issue, I just wanted to wrap up one point about that. I’m sure that you wouldn’t have your appendix out without anesthesia, although I did interview a guy who actually has root canals and stuff without anesthesia, and he says that he just gets into this detached state and there’s no suffering, so, he doesn’t bother with the anesthesia. Personally, I wouldn’t make that choice. But I suppose, would you agree that, at least for most of us, there’s a valid reason for blotting out pain under certain circumstances?
Bill: For numbness, absolutely. What is ironic in my psychological days, for several years I specialized in hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and I literally witnessed a lot of people going through surgeries without anesthesia.
Rick: Under hypnosis,
Bill: yes, exactly. No, not without hypnosis, but … The hypnosis was the modality, if you will. So, it is absolutely possible. I don’t feel called to it. I could do it, you could do it, we could all do it, if I think, A) we felt called to it, and B) we responded to that call by saying, “Yeah, I’m willing to specialize in finding that,” whether it’s a hypnotic state, or an out-of-body experience, or whatever altered state it may be. But for me, it’s not a calling, so if I go through surgery, I’m delighted to be drugged.
Rick: Yeah, they didn’t knock me out.
Bill: Yeah. But I respect those people who do what you describe.
Rick: Yeah, more power to them. Now that brings up an interesting point. In some spiritual traditions, and actually the guy I interviewed last week, affirmed this in his own experience, you don’t lose pure awareness if it’s really established. Even if you’re under anesthesia, even if you’re snoring like a sailor in the middle of the night, pure awareness is shining inwardly. Is that your experience?
Bill: It is my experience. In fact, it’s very, very strongly my experience. For me, I guess the word “established” is like, boom, it’s there, it’s got roots, it is, it’s an intimate part of me, it’s the central part of whatever me is here. And so, it’s here to stay. But what I notice with a number of people who are there, in the beginning stages of that, they still have that old mentality of, “Oh, I could lose it.” And it’s just like if we’re afraid of something, sure enough that’s what’s going to show up. So, “Oh, I could lose it. I want to make sure I don’t lose it.” Like how many people have, all of you have heard, like I’ve heard from people, “I want to make sure it’s permanent.” And just whatever unsureness is in that, will tend to create the illusion of “it’s gone.” It will create a space where, “Oh, it’s not there.”
Rick: It’s like the doubt sort of undermines it.
Bill: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so, it’s often a calling at those points to help that person just not question whether it’s there, but kind of go to where the doubt is, and help that out a little bit. Okay. Again, in the TM movement, which was my background, Maharishi kind of outlined these stages of development. He talked about establishing pure awareness and then he talked about having perception refined, so that you’re beginning to see the celestial light value of everything. And then he talked about the unity phase. And you’ve described all these things, both in this interview and in your writings and other lectures and stuff that I heard. Is there any of that sort of … I think his outline was necessarily like a road map, didn’t correspond precisely to the actual territory it represents, but it was a rough idea of how things may unfold. It was quite a while ago that you had that unity experience, and then you went where you lay down on the stage, and then you went through some other processes after that. Do you still feel like you’re going through processes of further unfoldment, and refinement and deepening and so on? And what might those be?
Bill: The cool thing, Rick, is you ask really good questions. How do you do that?
Rick: They just come to mind.
Bill: First of all, there’s a real distinction that, at least for me, I think is important and may be helpful. I think in this sort of awakening deal, one gets to a certain point where we move from linear and quantitative, to qualitative and experiential. So, I don’t feel like I’m expanding anymore. Expanding implies linear movement from point A to point B to point C. I don’t feel like I’m growing anymore in the traditional sense of getting from here to there. I feel like I’m – what a cute term – like I’m in the ballpark, if you will, of being, and we could use all those other words for it too. And then from there, moving from quantity to quality, from there it’s like – and you used this word – it’s like, ah, it’s just experiencing the different flavors of that more fully. It’s being in that more deeply. There is a fine-tuning, but it doesn’t have the feel of growth in the way we talk about growth. It has much more of the feeling of, “Oh, I’m here, and I’m …” And then here’s the point for me. There’s a whole way in which while – if you listen to my words in this chat we’re having – my words are very much dualistically and individually oriented, because that’s our language. I talk about “I” and “me.” But truly out there – and I say this with respect to anybody’s sense of individuality – I don’t feel like I exist as a person. And so, while I can use the language, in truth I feel like I am life. And I think at the point at which we start really becoming one with all of life, all of creation, etc., we start just being that. And then at a certain point or series of points, it becomes just the movement of life, and we stop thinking in terms of self. And what happens instead is, life just subsumes us into its own beauty, its own journey, its own expansiveness. And whatever seemingly individualized consciousness there is in that, it’s just in awe at the bigger and bigger dimensionality, the deeper and purer truth, just the exquisite divine nature of everything. And so, it’s more like I feel like I’ve just gotten subsumed into celebration. The word for me – and it could be different for other people – as I pull that back into an individualized consciousness or awareness, it’s like, “Wow!” And then second, it’s about, “Ooh, celebrate!” If there’s a calling in it, it’s like to be in awe, if you will, of every aspect of creation, even stuff that looks awful on the human realm or on the human planet. And just be like – have this individuality – be like the Divine, which is, “Oh, I just love it no matter what. I have no judgment, no condemnation of it. All I have is this grace-filled desire to just keep being drastically in love with everything.” And that’s kind of the summary from this part of the ranch, if you will.
Rick: Cool. Well, speaking of ranch, I was going to use a metaphor to summarize what you just summarized, which was, you’ve captured the fort which commands the territory, so now the territory belongs to you, and you’re at leisure, at liberty, to explore around. The territory isn’t going to get any bigger, you own the territory, but there’s so much to be explored within the territory and to become more familiar with, so, you’re able to play about and do that. And to shift the metaphor slightly, you’re able to be an instrument – to totally abandon that metaphor – you’re able to be an instrument to infuse the Divine into the world, to serve the world in whatever way you are equipped to do.
Bill: Yes, beautifully said, gorgeous summary, I love it.
Rick: Bill and I had more we wanted to say, but he has to go, and we’ve just had some computer problems for the past 10 minutes, otherwise, we would have continued this discussion. But we’ll have another visit sometime and cover more material. But for the time being, I want to thank Bill for this interview, I think it’s been a lot of fun. And those of you who have been listening or watching will be able to get in touch with Bill, I’ll link to his website from mine, www.batgap.com, and if you go there, you will see all the other interviews I’ve been doing and will do. You can sign up for an email newsletter to be notified of them. You’ll also see a little discussion group that springs up around each interview, and you will see a link to an audio podcast, you can subscribe to this on iTunes as a podcast if you like. Also, if you’re listening to this on YouTube, you can just subscribe to the channel and YouTube will notify you every time there’s a new video. So, thanks Bill, it’s been a joy. Thanks for bearing with all these technical glitches we’ve been dealing with.
Bill: Oh, that’s no problem at all, Rick. I want to thank you, and I want to thank everybody who now and forever is watching this and viewing this. It’s a joy. I really like you, which is strange because you can tell I don’t like hardly anybody. But no, it’s a pleasure. I love the service you do to life and to those who are on this path. It’s an exquisite one, so on behalf of all of us, thank you. And just a message to everybody who’s listening, viewing, watching, experiencing this. Thank you. It’s been a joy sharing my heart with you, my soul with you, my love with you. I just kind of wrap myself around you and just support you for the rest of your life, and do that with the gentlest, most exquisite Divine love possible. It’s been a total privilege to spend this time with you, so thank you.
Rick: Thank you, Bill. Stay in touch.
Bill: I will. Thank you, Rick. Bye, everybody.
Rick: Bye-bye.