Summary:
- Bill’s near-death experience: Bill recounts how he had a near-death experience when he was 20 years old, after falling over a dam while rafting. He describes how he left his body and felt a blissful and vast state of being that transcended the phenomenal world. He says he was told to go back to his body because he had too much to do. He says this experience changed his life and removed his fear of death and his desire for high-risk activities.
- Bill’s artistic and spiritual journey: Bill talks about how he became an artist after his near-death experience and how he used various tools and mediums to see more deeply into the nature of reality. He says he was always drawn to the desert as a place of silence and beauty. He also shares how he learned meditation and how it helped him access the transcendent state that he had experienced when he drowned.
- Bill’s Sri Yantra project: Bill explains how he and his friends created a giant Sri Yantra, a geometrical representation of the Divine Mother, in the Oregon desert. He says he was inspired by his research on the Sri Yantra and his experience of the fire, which he describes as a vision of the Divine Mother. He says he followed the traditional rules of making the Sri Yantra and that he had to let go of his normal expectations of seeing it. He says he eventually saw it with his heart and that it was a profound lesson in seeing and consciousness.
Full Transcript:
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. I’m Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We’ve done nearly 700 of them now. If this is new to you and you would like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P and look under the past interviews’ menu. This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website. I say listeners and viewers because it’s also an audio podcast, if you’d like to subscribe to that. There’s a link for that on the website. And I’ve said this in quite a few interviews as well, so I might as well say it again. We have this project underway where we’re having all the transcripts of all the interviews proofread. So, if you’d like to do some proofreading, get in touch, I’ll give you instructions. My guest today is an old friend of mine named Bill Witherspoon. Bill and I go back over 50 years, we were both in Estes Park, Colorado in the fall of 1970, being trained as teachers of Transcendental Meditation. We both worked in that organization for a number of years, and in more recent years, we’ve both been involved with Amma, amma.org, a spiritual teacher from India. Bill is a lifelong visual artist, serial entrepreneur, and lover of sky. In his six decades of living on and off in the high steppe desert in southeastern Oregon, he has painted watercolor skies, practiced ancient art as spiritual discipline, and weathered that pristine geological expanse. As an artist, over the last four decades, Bill has mounted over 40 one-man exhibitions of paintings, prints, and sculptures, in addition to desert public art projects. He’s also the founder and creative director of the Sky Factory, which is here in Fairfield, Iowa: a fine arts, digital technology, and cognitive science studio that designs and manufactures the world’s only research-verified virtual skylights, luminous sky ceilings, and luminous virtual windows. In other words, you could be lying in a dentist’s chair looking up the ceiling and it looks like you’re looking out a skylight at clouds going by, things like that. There’s a whole science behind that which maybe we’ll get into. He just is publishing his first book entitled “Enter Space Stories from the High Desert” which I just read, and which is full of beautiful photographs. It’s kind of a coffee table book in that it has all these beautiful photographs, and later on, in this interview at a certain point we will play a slideshow while we continue speaking, of some of those photographs. Anyway, this book lays witness to a life surrounded by that rare, unsummoned vastness, one that those of us steeped in the ceaseless churn of urban life can now imagine living through the faithful record of the artist’s experience. In other words, Bill lived in the desert for a long time and wrote the book there. Also, some of you may remember back in around 1990, I think, there was a big news story about this giant yantra, this geometrical design having mysteriously appeared in the Oregon desert, and people were speculating that it was created by aliens. Turns out Bill and a bunch of his friends created it, and in fact, when he confessed to having created it, some of the people who thought it was aliens thought he was with the CIA or something, and it was just trying to throw them off the track. It was really aliens, but it was Bill. There’s a whole documentary about that which I have linked to on his BatGap page, which I would recommend watching. It’s quite an amazing thing these guys did out there. Anyway, welcome Bill, good to have you.
Bill: Thank you Rick. Nice to see you.
Rick: We see and hear each other quite often because often I’m out riding my bike on the trail and I run into Bill and his dog walking along and we stop and have a chat. So, Bill’s book consists of a number of stories and maybe he’ll launch into telling one or two of these stories during this interview and I hope he does. But his whole life has been quite adventurous. In fact, I remember hearing things about Bill before I even knew him that well personally, that were kind of mind-boggling, sort of death-defying things that he had done. And yet he’s a mild-mannered artist. He doesn’t seem like the death-defying type. And much decades of his life have been lived in deep, deep silence, living in the desert in solitude. So, he embodies within himself an interesting contrast, I guess, between dynamism and silence. Do you think that’s fair to say, Bill?
Bill: Yeah, I don’t know if I embody it, but definitely I have periods of deep silence out in the desert, and it’s about as remote a place in the lower 48, as can be found. And then I’m back here in town, and working in a company with a lot of of people and trying to get stuff done and, usually somewhat overwhelmed by all the demands and requirements of that. So, it does flip back and forth. And I guess I’ve been doing it. This is one of the things about writing a book like this that’s Actually, it was started with stories back in the started writing in the 80s. And I just Kept adding things to it not really expecting to publish it. Then I got the idea. Maybe you never know, and so I kind of kept on with it and but you get to see a pattern and you’re right. The pattern is, has been one of Proof, get out in the desert, where I feel at home in a way that I don’t feel, it’s a kind of being at home that I don’t feel anywhere else. And then back at the Sky Factory, for example, working and trying to build that business and organize and do everything that has to be done. And I’m pretty much at home there too.
Rick: So you’re at home wherever you are.
Bill: I was sort of, yeah.
Rick: The first story in your book was that you were going off on this 100-mile river rafting adventure with two other friends and in these makeshift ramshackle rafts and you had kind of a near-death experience or out-of-body experience. Why don’t you tell that story?
Bill: Yeah, that story, well, there were three of us. We had come down into part of Idaho to get on to the south fork of the Owyhee River, which then went across Idaho and then into Oregon. And we didn’t know anything about the river. Nobody that we could find had ever run it before, and ramshackle is exactly the right word for what we had built out of old World War II rafts and pieces of wood and, stuff like that. But, in our favor, we’d run the Rogue River in western Oregon with that kind of equipment, and we’d flip dozens of times, and we’d wear life jackets and so forth and It was fine. It worked, we did it and that’s what we expected, and we thought we’d just be in new territory And it’d really be exciting and we were early 20s. So that says a lot Unfortunately, no fortunately, definitely fortunately Big fortune, great thing. I was the first one in heading down river and everything looked great down there and I’m actually going backwards, because I’m rowing and I’m going backwards, and I’d look around everything looked fine and then I started to hear some noise and then – What the heck. Where’s that coming from, that sound? That’s not roar sound. I that, where is that? And I was looking up in the sky and then I looked around and then I saw mist Coming up out of what appeared to be the flat river and in fact There was what’s called a step down. Up above is an agricultural area upstream is agriculture. And so there was a man-made dam there that we didn’t know about, and that dam was even and went right across And all the water went right over and then it dropped. I don’t know 10 feet or something like that. And by the time I realized what was going, I was in the middle, there was no way to do anything. I just stood up, waved everybody, “Get over, get over, get over!” yelled, turned around, and then just it all plunged over the top. And I was taken down, and then I was pinned by the force of the water to the bottom. And I thought, “Oh, You’re gonna drown and so I didn’t really resist it. There was no, I was never afraid, there were no time to be afraid. No nothing. I inhaled water and took it into my lungs and then I left my body and leaving the body. I didn’t even really know I left the body. The body was just not an issue anymore. It was gone behind it was- And I became so big that there was no I, no I don’t leave the body or be in the body It just became wonderful, Blissful, Huge, indescribable, Absolutely indescribable and the only well, I’ll tell you that funny part later. And then that persisted for some period of time, I have no idea, and then loud and clear in the head now and in the mind, which then became the head, and then became the body, you have to go back into the body. And I didn’t want to, at all. I thought this is this is where I want to be. This is it. No, why? No, and then there’s too much to be done. You have to do too much. You can’t stay, you got to go back. So, the next thing I knew bizarrely enough the boat is flipped over. It has a smooth bottom, rubber bottom Which is on the upper surface and how I got, and there’s nothing to hold on to, but the next thing I knew I’m on top of that and starting to throw up and cough up and actually, throw up water out of my lungs and stomach and everything else. And then I’m in my body and then I start figuring what the hell, like that. And then I look over and I see my two buddies on the shore. And I was very grateful and that was quite a ways away. And they then started throwing a rope out. And after two or three, and oh, meantime, the water is hold, the force of the water is creating an eddy that is holding the boat in place right at the edge of the falls. It’s not going downstream, not going anywhere. So, I’m stuck there, right? So finally, I got a hold of a parachute cord, very thin thing, and I could just, and it wasn’t a loop or anything, I just got a hold of it. And I just– –
Rick: That they had thrown you.
Bill: They threw it and I finally got it. Then they pulled and I hooked my feet on the boat so, I didn’t get dumped in the water. I did not want to get dumped in the water again. Now I’m really in the body thing and the body is talking, right? And they pulled and then it got out of that. And then it swung down like a pendulum and swung down because of the current and came up on a big pointed rock that was sticking up and wrapped. And I got, I didn’t let go, and I got out and climbed up onto that rock. And as I climbed up, the boat was wiped off and went on down, never to be seen again. So now I’m sitting on this rock, and it’s all about how to get to the shore, get to the bank. And these guys, I don’t remember if we could hear each other because of the roar of the water or whatever, but I knew I finally had to make the decision to jump back into that stuff, which was kind of like symbolic of getting back into life almost in a way. I had to jump in, and I was not happy to jump back in, but I did jump in, and then I got swung down by the current because they held, pulled, and then got to a place where my feet could touch bottom and I clambered in. They came out and pulled and helped me in and laid me down on the shore on the bank and I kind of coughed for quite a bit and got a lot of water out of my system and then shivered and then, they had to pry my hands. That’s how good the body is. They had to pry my fingers open. The water was cold, but they had to pry my fingers open to get that rope out. And the body doesn’t sing when it needs to right?
Rick: Yeah
Bill: So that was, and then we went home We didn’t get I mean everything was lost.
Rick: You only had two rafts too.
Bill: Yeah, so we got back in the this little Renalt off bean with no backseat and drove back to Portland and and that was that and that was the experience. You said that I you had heard stories me doing things that were risky, high risk. And that’s probably true, but this took all need or desire for high risk out of me. I used to go on glaciers. I used to spelunk a lot. I loved spelunking and things and I used to climb and rock climb, and after that, those were excuses for two things: one, they were excuses to be out in nature, which ever since I’ve been a child, that was the only time I experienced any kind of freedom and the other thing it was, was an excuse to probably push the boundary a little bit and find out where it goes, there had to be some of that. When you’re in your 20s, you do that sort of stuff. So that was all taken care of. So now I started walking around mountains, and I started to go more into the desert and flat , and sold a motorcycle, stopped all the crazy climbing and all the rest of that stuff. And that’s not to say that that kind of climbing needs to be dangerous or anything else. It’s just how I responded to it. It did change my life. It really, it was a big one. And I remember, I’ll tell you another story where this came back to me big time. And that was when I was forming a company in California in the early 80s called Westbridge Research Group and it was a biorational company. Phil Town and I were partners, and we had several thousand acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley and we were growing permanent crops, grapes and peaches and plums and nuts and all that. And we got really feeling terrible about all the chemicals we were pouring on the land. And so, we decided there’s got to be a better way. And we did some research and found out that it’s possible to, this was before organic was what it was, what it became, has become. It was right at that same early stage. So, we said, well, let’s sell this stuff off, And let’s form a company, do research and get some good bio-re, good bio-supportive input for agriculture, so we did that, that was part of the thing that we did and that really led down to a different road. Well, building that company, had high risk. We had to we raise, I think, 30 million or something to get it started And there was a point where we had a bridge loan. Bridge loan is a short-term loan backed by every asset you’ve got; meaning your car, your house, your antiques, whatever you’ve got, and it has to be paid off right down here right, in a couple of months and that was to cover us while we raised more money. Well those are crazy -bridge loans, and they were crazy then. We kept going, but at a certain point, the risk was huge. I think by that point I had two children and every asset, everything was on the line and the date was coming and I locked myself in a room the size of a closet. It was actually a kind of a closet ,utility closet at the place we were renting, with a phone and just called and called and called trying to find investors and deal with the thing. And during that period of time, I constantly remembered the experience of Drowning- not the drowning part because that wasn’t much, but the other part, the vastness. That is the worst case. That’s the worst-case Bill. So, what are you sweating about? Work your butt off You don’t have to, just put it in, do it. But what’s the fear? Where where’s the issue? Where’s the problem? Just get it done for Pete’s sake. And that really, that really lifted me up. I’ve got to say. it made a big difference. Now this was that and that was 82, that was 20 years later.
Rick: Did you pay off the bridge loan?
Bill: Yeah, we paid off the bridge loan. The company went ahead, it got, and it was sold at the beginning of the pandemic here and did well for all the investors and all those folks, and it has products which are all certified by, well a whole range of products that are certified by OMRI, which means they can be used as inputs in organic agriculture.
Rick: Cool.
Bill: So,
Rick: it got done. Yeah, so this almost drowning near-death experience, really kick-started your spiritual quest as I understand it.
Bill: I could say that. I think that’s true, but I could go back to talking with my mother, who was at a very strong spiritual orientation, in the kitchen when I was mid-teenage, struggling in high school, which was a horrible mess, And talking to her about things – there was even, I remember some discussions about what is meditation? She didn’t know, but talking about would it be possible to live a life that is really what is prescribed, for example, in the new testament, and really do it. There are things in there that are pretty demanding About- “it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to get in Heaven” and stuff like that. All those things, and I really wondered, But, this did Kickstart because it gave that experience and but one funny thing that came, was after I learned meditation, was when I was studying art in Europe, I just had great experiences. Even a person who taught me just said “Wait a minute. Wait a minute” Now, you’re sure? Well, I think I it was wonderful. l I loved it. And I came home- meaning back to Portland area and I had close friends and a lot of people and I tried to get them, I’m big on sharing, okay, which you’d say I tried to get them to learn meditation and what I would say is It’s just like dying, You gotta do it. It’s so far out. It’s like dying. And everybody would look at me and say “Thank you”, and that never convinced one person. It was later that was later than, I learned a little more subtlety, but I would say to this day that that the transcendent that one can experience in meditation and that that field of pure being that one can experience in kind of a what do they call it a near-death experience? They’re the same, that’s my experience.
Rick: Yeah, I’ve interviewed a lot of near-death experience people and they all, almost all of them say, “Well, yeah, they told me I had to come back.” Presumably they don’t say that to everybody, but those are not the ones you get to talk to because they actually died. But they also say, “I am not afraid of death. That was really something. And when my time comes, I’m all for it. It’ll be fine.
Bill: Yep, exactly. And so, what is there to be afraid of? I often think that I have a missing gene, Because, but I’ll get glued when in extreme heights, looking or something.
Rick: You told me you do that. You told me a few weeks ago that on your 70th birthday, you and a friend climbed up this radio tower here in Fairfield that was super high. We could see it from where we were standing, and you didn’t have any ropes or anything else. You were just climbing up the ladder and that would spook me.
Bill: Yeah, I got him to give it to me as a birthday gift because he’d done that. He did that professionally. Yeah, I wanted to do it.
Rick: I also heard a story ,where, when you were at a course that we were on at Humboldt in California, you and Charlie, our friend Charlie Donahue, and maybe somebody else, got in this little boat and went out of the bay or something, out into the ocean a little bit, and the waves started coming and the boat was in danger of capsizing, and it was really cold water, and the others were all freaked out, and you were kind of like nonchalant about it. And you remember that? And you all got in it. And Charlie was a little a little upset that you were so blasé about the circumstances
Bill: It wasn’t that I was deliberately
Rick: No, you weren’t suicidal, but you were just ,
Bill: no, it just doesn’t, So what? And that’s kind of the result of that. It’s a sort of a so what. It’s actually, it’s not even a so What. It’s a be patient bill because you’ll get there again. Yeah, it is an experience of The beloved. It’s beyond the beloved. The beloved has to be short of that, because that is pure, it is absolute. There’s no one to love. There’s no love coming back, but that’s what the gift of the, that’s the gift,
Rick: Yeah. An impression I’ve gotten from near-death experience people is that they were given that experience by some higher intelligence, because it would implant in them a determination or a sense of mission or something. They had some kind of mission to fulfill, and that was the impetus. They could never forget it afterwards, and it set them on a course in which they influenced a great many people for the better, but wouldn’t have been motivated to do that, had they not had that experience.
Bill: Looking back, that’s not impossible. In this case, I take on, it didn’t, what to say how to say it. Maybe out of that came a desire first, to understand what my dharma is, and then an ease in finding it, perhaps, that I didn’t have before, and for sure a willingness to go with it when I knew it, if you will. So, it did result in a kind of a focus, a narrowing. But the funny thing is the narrowing was all for expansion. It’s just deeper. That’s the secret. We can either float on the surface and have all kinds of infinite possibilities on the surface value of life, material life and so forth, right? Or we can go for the infinite, if you will, which means we have to go deeper and deeper and that leaves these things behind and goes to their root. That’s my experience anyway, because that’s where the goods are. That’s where the beauty is. That’s really, I wasn’t an artist at the time I had that experience , the near-death experience. I wasn’t an artist. I’d never thought about art. That came afterwards, bing, like that. That’s right, about two to three years after.
Rick: Yeah, and playing off what you just said, I would also say that going deep doesn’t mean relinquishing experiences on the surface value of life. In fact, it enriches them. You can use the analogy of if you’re going to build a really tall building, you have to dig a really deep foundation. The taller the building, the deeper the foundation.
Bill: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. So, people who have dedicated their lives to plumbing the depths of human existence or of existence itself don’t lead drab lives. Their lives have become all the more fascinating.
Bill: Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right. That’s true. And really, it’s the metaphor of going deep. Well, as an artist, as a person who pursued the visual arts, okay, seeing is kind of the first priority, in a way. That’s a priority, or has always been for me. That means, what I thought that meant is something visual. You learn how to see. We are, we’re born, we grow, this happens and we’re seeing the world around us, but we want to see more deeply. That’s what I thought. And so, I thought, okay, well, then that means you’re an artist. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s an artist or not. I don’t really know. But seeing more deeply, I felt for many years, I thought that meant something that had to do with the optic nerves and the nervous system and the brain and the interpretation. It had to do with all of, those mechanisms. It’s not that and yet that’s the tool. But the real- what I’ve learned from the desert, well from the desert ,from the other things, tools I’ve been using, but I could say that iin the desert that this ripened. But it’s not limited to the desert and the desert is only my tool. It’s not, other people have other tools that work and do the same thing Okay, so ,what it seems, is that you look, and you look, and you look and, you’re all you’re never quite seeing what you know is possible. You know there’s more, And that’s true in the desert. It’s true of looking in nature. It’s true of looking into nature in the forests, around the mountaintops and it’s true- you must experience something of this when you go deep into people.
Rick: Yeah
Bill: and so, what are you after? You’re after their essential nature, or even be a deeper than that. Not just the essence of their personality but deeper than their personality, right?
Rick: Yes,
Bill: and let that what that is come out So, that isn’t done. What drives that, I gotta believe for you and for me. it’s the heart, that’s right. That’s what’s happened. So, I now see with the heart and in fact in the book I’ve got the manuscript here,
Rick: the Walmart chapter the Walmart.
Bill: Yeah. Well, Exactly, but and that starts
Rick: that’s a beautiful story
Bill: from, St. Augustine where he says “Our whole business in life then, is to heal this eye of the heart.” E-y-e “To heal this eye of the heart, whereby God may be seen”
Rick: Very nice.
Bill: Whoa So, that’s pretty cool. That’s the journey and, how you G,et there is this way, or this way, or this way. There are eight at the present time because that’s the number, approximate number of the human population on planet earth. That’s how many paths there are. There’s things that many people can use, things that few people can use. There’s things that only one and then there’s all the combinations and permutations that-, and then there’s the time factor and there’s the past and the environmental influence, all of that, so there’s all these different ways we go.
Rick: But there is a common denominator I would, say perhaps a number of them, but the one I’m thinking of is just that there’s this evolutionary force that seems to pervade the universe and govern its development and we are imbued with that, everything is imbued with that, a mouse is, but that drives us along.
Bill: Yeah, I mean a boulder.
Rick: , anything, everything.
Bill: Everything. You’re absolutely right. So, the process of seeing, which has been paramount and changed over since the early 60s when I first started going to the desert. But it’s always stayed. It’s just that it keeps you focused on that. Stay attentive, stay present, stay disciplined. And I’ve used- how many different tools have I used to try and enhance that? I’ve used network. Recently, I’m using a digital, large format digital or medium , digital camera, you know, which does all kinds of things. And I’ve used paint and pigments and I’ve used printing and I’ve used making these big land art things and sculptures and small things and it’s all and writing. It’s always to see more deeply. These stories I started writing these just to see, To understand You said that maybe I would tell what -I got a one pager Shall I read it?
Rick: Yeah, sure
Bill: I don’t know if it’s relevant at the moment, but I’ll tell you the background after I read it. It’s called the fire. “It must have been smoldering for a long time. Why it broke into flames when it did is uncertain, though certainly she was the cause. Why, though? She had been patient so long, maybe too long. Perhaps she saw an opening, an opportunity. I had been calling her for some time. I’m sure she had answered, but I didn’t hear. It started in the center, in the heart of things, in the deepest part, where I didn’t know how to look. By the time the first flames appeared, there was no stopping. It spread like an echo. As the interior burned, everything started to come down. Many of my comfortable habits were destroyed. I thought that a shell would remain, that something would last and contain me, but the fire continued to smolder. Finally, the shell burned out as well. Now, everything is much better. Before I would hear her only faintly, if at all. With all of my little spaces and so many places to be, I was always in the wrong one, or too busy, or I’m embarrassed to say, unwilling to hear what she said. But now, with everything gone, her voice is everywhere, soft and quiet.” Now, I have to I have a big caveat on that story. I’ll tell you where that came from but I want to Say that when I read that story now -this was written in Bill, That’s very misleading to put it in print because it says everything Now everything it says but now with everything gone Her voice is everywhere soft and quiet And yes, that was true But did it persist is that the case today?” No So, this says something about the nature of this kind of experience and the nature of these stories And that’s Blue. I don’t know if you can hear the barking.
Rick: not really picking, your mic isn’t picking it up.
Bill: Okay, good. Blue! Hang on. Hush. But in the prologue of the book, I tried to deal with this, with a kind of a metaphor. And I’m just going to read a paragraph here. “ Like everyone who lives in this remote high desert, I always travel with a handyman. It’s in the back of the pickup with chains and earth anchors collecting dust.” The truth is, I haven’t used that handyman in eight years.
Rick: Okay. Is it kind of a tool, like a jack or some kind of a thing?
Bill: ‘The handyman is a heavy chunk of steel, a kind of high leverage, multipurpose jack. It can be used to change a flat, stretch fence wire, or pull your truck out of the mud and snow. That’s why I have it. Every stroke of its long handle either lifts or pulls two inches. Then when the handle returns to its starting position, the two-inch gain snaps back to a solid one inch. It takes time. If you want two inches or even a few feet or more, inevitably, you have to cooperate. You have to let go and return the handle to its starting point. Then again, repeat. And so, being happy with each new inch of progress, you patiently let the inches add up.” Okay, this is a jack, you get it. Enter space is similar. It deals with unexpected, fleeting experiences, some glaring, some quiet, each in its own way a peak, with implications that open unknown possibilities. But by letting go of these peaks and their imagined significance, one can incorporate their actual lessons and thereby arrive at a new normal. Like the ratcheting handyman, it seems that’s how we’re designed, how we learn and grow. While there’s always the possibility of grace, possibility, there are otherwise no silver bullets. Learning and growth requires perseverance and patience. and again, lots of little steps and bowing downs, ultimately bringing us to a life in beauty”.
Rick: Yeah.
Bill: So that’s this story, that is there to put that story in perspective and basically everything in the book in perspective.
Rick: Yeah, I think it’s a very important teaching. In our McDonald’s culture people really want everything now, including enlightenment, once they realize that’s a thing. And, there are people who just feel like, “Okay, well, this weekend psilocybin trip is probably going to do it for me. I hope it will, and then I’ll be permanently established in some better state.” And, there’s something in the Yoga Sutras about the importance of sustained practice over a long period of time. And there’s our old friend, the cloth and dye analogy, which the Jack analogy reminds me of, where you dip the cloth in the color dye and then you bleach it in the sun. It appears to be backtracking because it’s losing its color, but that’s actually how the color gets integrated and stabilized, and you repeat the process enough times and it’ll stay fully colored even when it’s in the sun.
Bill: Yep.
Rick: Yep. ,Yeah.
Bill: Yeah. That’s the, in a way, all these stories in the book are stories about seeing more deeply and for me, I understand about seeing more deeply to recognize it and then to move on.
Rick: Yeah.
Bill: To leave it behind. One of the things I learned from the big Sri Yantra project out in the desert,
Rick: Right.
Bill: And that was like drowning, that was a life changer. Where that one came from, who the heck knows? People think that, “oh, you’re an artist, so that’s,” I can tell you honestly how that came about. The fire, the story I just read, came first. And what happened was a friend asked if I would make them a Sri Yantra, because I was working with geometries, looking through gold leaf geometries into sky. I’ve made many paintings.
Rick: I’ve seen some of those, yeah, they’re beautiful.
Bill: So, they said, “Well, do you know the Sri Yantra?” And I kind of knew it. “Well, would you make me one?” I thought, “Well, I don’t know, let me do some research.” So, I did, I spent two months anyway doing research on that. And I got deep into it. And I found one, at one point where I was at the peak of all the research, I was really soaking, it was all soaked in. I was in meditation. And that is the experience of the fire. And what is the Sri Yantra? The Sri Yantra is a yantra. What a yantra? An instance. Not an example, really, not a symbol, certainly not a symbol, but an instance of a law or complex of laws of nature. Or in some other language, an instance of a deity, is all trying to say the same thing here, right? So, and in this case, the deity is the Divine Mother. The Sri Yantra is said to be the sort of top of the line,
Rick: So, it’s a geometrical representation of a deep impulse of intelligence that’s fundamental to the universe. Is that a fair way of putting it?
Bill: That is a good way of saying it. That’s very nice. In fact, it is said that all of the fundamental laws that give rise to every aspect of creation are present there.
Rick: Present in the yantra?
Bill: In the yantra, yes.
Rick: Okay, symbolically or representationally or something.
Bill: And it’s through resonance that a yantra can enliven the environment, the consciousness of the doer, the maker, etc.
Rick: And as I understand it, some people use these as meditation tools where they’ll just gaze at it or something and it’ll have an effect on their consciousness.
Bill: That and making it.
Rick: Making them, right.
Bill: Actually, making it. And when we decided to make it, I was very concerned because I did all this research and I read a lot of Sri Vidya and a lot of this stuff. So, I was very concerned to do it right. And there are very specific ways to make it, and you don’t depart from those ways. If you depart, you have a serious problem because you may misalign, if you will, the laws of nature or the rules that give rise. So, you have to be very careful and in fact, over and over and over again if you read about the Sri Yantra and making it, which as the artist I was concerned about making it, not just looking at it, you’re told that if you don’t do it properly then you will have created a very damaging influence in the environment and for yourself. So, and I took that very seriously. I just bought it 100%. and it made sense to me. And I had this experience that is described in this little, short story of the fire, and that was the peak of the research period, where I finally realized, yes, make, do, no problem, here she is. And that I had been looking for her with a capital H for quite some time, that’s another matter. And, and I got some goods, put it that way. So, I was ready to do it. But I had all these cautions, I knew the rules and so forth. So, then I got to thinking, “Gee, I wonder what would happen if a person could live in the Bindu.” The Bindu is the center point, which has all of this in seed form. So, it’s like, if you think of the absolute, where the nothing is manifest, and then you think of creation where it begins to manifest and comes forth, right there at that boundary, that gap between the two, that’s where the bindu resides. It’s my understanding. So, I thought, “Whoa, that would be a great place to be physically. Could you do it? What would happen?” And then I thought, “Well, okay, if you wanted a bindu big enough to live in, how big would it have to be. I thought, “Oh, well, maybe nine feet. I could live in nine feet for a month or something, no problem.” And then I thought, “Okay, nine feet. All right, well, let’s work it out.” And I worked it out, and it turned out that it had to be about a quarter of a mile across and 13 miles of lines and so on and so forth. And then I thought, “Well, where can I do it? Oh, I know where I can do that, Mickey Basin, which is this real remote place, nobody ever goes, it’s considered to be totally useless because it’s playa. So, I thought, “All right!” And I called some friends here and said, “Hey, you want to work on a project? Here’s the idea.” And yes, and I took my son and that was what happened, that’s how it came together. But I’m not drifting from seeing. The point about seeing is, now I want to tell you the point about seeing.
Rick: And I want to remind people at this point that there’s a whole documentary about you’re doing this, and with all the guys doing it, and how they carved the lines in the desert, and all. It’s really a cool documentary, so I’m going to put that link again on your page on BatGap.
Bill: Okay, so, one of the things that happened, an artist, and I might not be an artist but I act like one sometimes and so I want to see what I’m making. That’s a natural thing. You want to see what you’re making, and you turn something upside down you Rotate you do stand back you get way back and look at it and that’s what artists do. Okay, get a different perspective Well, guess what, if you’re on a flat quarter mile, it’s huge, the ply is huge, but you’ve got a little segment of it, quarter mile by quarter mile and a quarter mile by the way, from one corner to the other, we couldn’t yell at each other. And hear each other even in the silence out there- just absorbed, so that’s how big it is. And I was trying to think- and we’re making all these lines, right? Complex, incredibly complex lines, and we’re using the old-fashioned ways of doing it. No transits, no nothing, nothing like that. And we want it to be accurate, because remember, the instructions are you do it this, step one, two, three, and you must do it perfectly. Now, there was a Scottish mathematician who presented a paper and that was published, and I found at University of Chicago when I was doing research that focused on the Sri Yantra and what he maintained, which is correct mathematics, totally correct, is that it is an irrational figure like pi or some certain other things. In other words, it cannot be, to make it simple, it cannot be made perfectly. It will not fit. Everything will not come together perfectly. It cannot be done. Now, you go on the internet nowadays and people are using calculus and computers to do iterative things again and again, and narrow, narrow, get the error down to almost nothing and something that is invisible. But in the old days, and using the tools that were available and not computers, it can’t be made perfectly, yet you must make it perfectly or you’re in deep trouble., So now that’s an interesting challenge. That’s like somebody’s putting some squeeze on you, Right? So here we are out in the desert with that plus We can’t see- if you took a gymnasium, flat gymnasium with a basketball court and you lay down at one end of the basketball court and you got your chin on the ground and your eyes would be this far off the floor and you looked out, and you imagine trying to see the basketball lines that’s the kind of perspective that a five-foot person would have on a quarter mile on all of these lines. So, we couldn’t see it. We had to know we could do everything we could to get it right But we could not see it and we couldn’t fly it. We did in the end fly it,but we had to see it. I’m speaking now personally. I had to see it. I needed to see it. I wanted to see it and I was almost, you could say frustrated in a certain way, that I didn’t see it and I couldn’t let go of the demand and the requirement to see it and yet I couldn’t see it and then finally, like in the case of a Zen koan where the mind just gives up, I gave up trying to see it and then it was there. Perfect, absolutely perfect. Now that and I say there,
Rick: In the mind’s eye?
Bill: yeah, where? No, It wasn’t even in the mind’s eye. I don’t have much of a mind’s eye actually and you think artists have, I don’t seem to. It was here. Anyway, in your heart. I owned it, put it that way. I got it. I Grokked it. You remember that word from Heinlein?
Rick: Sure.
Bill: Yeah stranger in a strange land. Yeah. so, I got it and Bingo done, and then, when quite some time after that I did get to fly it, and photograph I,t and so on and so forth. And that was fun. But this was the lesson in seeing because it was a totally new kind of seeing. It was a seeing you had to let go of the normal expectations and everything and it was through frustration, but the seeing was huge. It was like a step, in consciousness and in how things work and becoming familiar. And it’s not different than the story about the Walmart at the end of the of the book, it’s not different really. So, all I’m what I’m trying to say is that one good way for me now, looking at the last 60 years, since I was 20, the last 60 years is, what has happened to seeing? It’s been a tool, I’ve been using it, I’ve been struggling with it and whatever, and it’s kind of, it’s not, we’re not done. I’m not done. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I know I’m not done.
Rick: There is no done.
Bill: This is a wonderful tool. It’s a wonderful tool.
Rick: I often quote St. Teresa of Avila. She said, “It appears that the Lord himself is on the journey.” (laughing) So, did you end up living in the Bindu for a while? –
Bill: I did.
Rick: And what did you experience there?
Bill: That is one of the more difficult questions I’ve tried hard to answer it. I guess a lot of the time I lived in there, I slept in there, I meditated a lot in there, I ate in there,. I was in there. And for one thing, it is now and was immediately after very difficult to remember, in the sense That, what was experienced is not accessible to memory. Memory is about relative changing things, events, occurrences, material things, all feelings, emotions, all that. And we have memories, we store them, and so all that information gets stored and we can access it. What I can honestly say is I remember that I did it. But I’m not surprised now that I don’t remember the essence of the experience any more than I remember the essence of the experience of drowning.
Rick: Because it’s too transcendental.
Bill: It’s just beyond.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. There’s nothing to grab onto.
Bill: No, there’s nothing. The intellect can’t get a hold of it. Nothing can get a hold of it. And yet, of course, it’s so attractive. And if there was anything you wanted to see, it would be that, wouldn’t it? What is it? It’s love with a capital L. It’s, absolute. It’s compassion with a capital C. It’s bliss with a capital B. It’s being, it’s, da-da-da-da-da. All these words we use which are just pointers, and language just won’t take us there. I keep working. I keep painting, I keep drawing, I keep making things, now photographs and so so forth, or writing, or whatever. I keep doing those things. Do I hope that at some point it’ll work? I don’t think I do. I don’t think I’m that foolish anymore. I think I know full well that it’s never going to work. But doing it keeps my attention in the right place. It’s a matter of discipline.
Rick: Yeah, by work, if you mean you’re going to end up at some terminus point where you can sort of kick up your heels and, rest on your laurels or something. I don’t think there is such a place. I think that it’s not the way the universe works.
Bill: I think you’re right. Yeah. Does this thing about seeing make sense to you? and I’m just curious, Rick, you have 700, how many people?
Rick: Almost 700.
Bill: Why 700. And why do you do that? Why do you do that? Are you trying to…
Rick: Why do I do that? Sometimes people say that. They say, “Wow, you’ve been doing so much all these years.” And I think, “Have I been been doing anything? it’s just sort of, it happens.
Bill: Yeah, it happens, that’s the process, but there must be some, it’s got to be…
Rick: It’s just a natural inclination.
Bill: revealing.
Rick: Have you ever read Suzanne Siegel’s book, Collision with the Infinite?
Bill: No.
Rick: Beautiful book. Anyway, her mantra was, “Do the next obvious thing.” And she was operating in a very interesting state of, cosmic consciousness or something, but that became the way she lived life, without a whole lot of foresight or planning or anything, But it was always obvious what the next thing should be, and she just kept following those impulses.
Bill: Yeah, yeah,
Rick: So, these interviews are kind of like smorgasbords, you can’t eat everything, but you sample a little of this and a little of that. And so, we definitely want to get into your more of your desert phase, even though the whole yantra thing was a desert thing, but there’s been the years, if not decades, of desert solitude, and some beautiful photographs to accompany them as well as your paintings. I think today we’re going to see some of those photographs, but not any of your paintings, perhaps. But we had this thought that we could play a 20-minute slideshow of some of these photos you’ve taken out there while we continue to talk about things. So, do you think this would be a good time to do that?
Bill: That’s fine, sure. Let me say a little bit about what’s in that slideshow. I think there’s according to what I tend to think of as events. And what is an event? An event may be the sun rising and illuminating a certain cloud in a certain way, or the sun setting in a certain way, or the moon rising, or this or that, or a storm dropping a load of snow. Those are events, photographic events. So, there are events, and each event is separated about two seconds of black in the slideshow and there may be three images to an event or five or eleven or whatever. And generally, the events are shot from one place, maybe I changed focal length or something or even lenses time maybe five seconds between them or maybe it’s ten minutes or whatever, something like that. And there’s a few that are taken across the horizon, maybe they get as much as 90, 100 degrees, 120 degrees of view, ding, ding, ding, ding, over just five, ten seconds, something like that. So those are what are there, and they just fade from one to the next and then another group, And the groups are organized. They occur from the end of December of ’22 to May of ’23, They’re recent. Long, hard winter, coldest winter that many people remember in the area. Minus 10-degree type stuff, a bunch of that. And then they start on this slideshow pre-dawn, dawn or sunrise, morning, afternoon, evening, sunset, and post-sunset. So, it’s also the cycle of a day, but they’re taken from many different days. So, that’s the organizing principle behind them.
Rick: so we’ll play that now and those on the live stream won’t see it, but the permanent recording will have that in there and we’ll just keep talking while that plays.
Bill: Yeah, good.
Rick: Alright, so you lived up there, you’ve lived up there a lot, and not just in the nice weather, you just mentioned 10 below zero, you were living in some kind of a funky old converted school bus or something.
Bill: I had a funky converted school bus when in the end of the 60s, before that, I lived in deserted ranch houses, that had been deserted for many, many years and maybe had a few windows out, which was convenient, so, I’ve sort of scaled up. I had two school buses converted to students, and they worked well because they’re very high off the ground. I could get them anywhere, they have the low gears; I could get them wherever I needed. And then I got it designed actually a little trailer that um with a lot of glass and just 90 square feet and a worktable and a wood stove over here and a bed here and done. And that connects onto a four-wheel drive rig and I can take that anywhere, almost anywhere, and certainly where I need to go.
Rick: Nice. And so, I don’t know if this is your usual routine, but there were periods of time out there, you write in the book where you were waking up at four in the morning, meditating till noon. So, you’re doing like eight hours of meditation, and then you’d spend, you’d obviously eat and stuff, and then you’d spend the whole afternoon until dark painting, and then go to bed around when the sun set or when it got dark. And that was your routine. One thing I was wondering, you and I have both done formal courses where you do a lot of meditating, and you can tend to get a little loopy, a little crazy when you’re doing that much meditation, especially if you’re in isolation, you have no kind of stimulation or integration. Did that tendency afflict you at all, or did you remain kind of clear and coherent?
Bill: I never felt loopy. Now other people might disagree. They might say, “Hey man, what? You’re not loopy?” No, but I never felt out of control. I never felt like I wasn’t doing the right thing. I never lost…
Rick: got real spacey or anything like that?
Bill: I don’t think so. Spacey is spacey. I don’t know.
Rick: spacey, huh?
Bill: I guess maybe I’m always spacey. No, But it just worked for me.
Rick: Yeah, that’s cool. No, it’s just not a major point. I’m just curious because I’ve done some long things like that, and I get a little nutty. Maybe it’s just, just the way I’m wired and need a bit more integration and, stuff.
Bill: Well, I would purify like crazy.
Rick: Meaning what?
Bill: I would know that. I would know that. Oh, I would have… Emotions and… I would have strong emotions, I would have physical things, all kinds of pure… Especially way back when.
Rick: Yeah.
BILL: Not so much now, but I would do that. But I knew what that was.
Rick: Right.
Bill: So, it didn’t bother me.
Rick: Yeah. There was one cool story in your book where you’ve been living in this ramshackle, abandoned farm or ranch house, and you’ve been there quite a while, and all of a sudden one day you discovered a book sitting on a dresser or something, in an obvious place where you probably were in that room a hundred times, but you’d never seen the book, and there it was. And it was this green book, and you pick it up and open it to a chapter, and I’ll let you tell the story.
Bill: Well, I opened it to a chapter and I just stood there and read the whole chapter because the chapter was about human beings relating to and living with, in harmony with, rattlesnakes. Okay, now I have a long history with rattlesnakes. When I was 10 years old, my parents, the dog, and my sister all went out to Arizona from upstate New York in a 1948 Studebaker and went to a dude ranch and on the dude ranch, we were riding on horseback all of us with some other dudes at the time and we were down off the horses and somebody saw a rattlesnake. One of the dudes saw a rattlesnake and called everybody’s attention. I went over and saw the rouse and it was just as far from here to there. Not far away, and I was looking at it and this fellow, this man picked up a rock about this big lifted it up above his head and slammed it down on the rattlesnake and at 10 years old, that was the most violent, the most violent, destructive thing I had ever experienced. It completely blew me away. I have never forgotten, even now I can feel the emotion and it made an enormous impact. It seemed so wrong, such a violation I Yelled, I cried, I said “why? it’s not doing anything to anyone”, and on and on. Okay, fast forward Something, early one two Probably, Vietnam is going on, and I’m dealing with the draft board and I think I’m a conscientious objector, and I don’t want to go. I’ll act as a medic. Okay, fine, but I’m not gonna fight and I’m not gonna destroy life. In in the summers, I work on lookout towers which was so far out. I would get paid to be there looking all day, all night, all the time looking out into the distance. Talk about inner space. It was so great I loved that, anyway. So I’m in that place where I have to write a paper stating my beliefs that goes to the government and they critique it and then there’s a hearing and all that stuff. So, I’m writing that paper in that summer and I think you’ve got it. You’ve got it. Are you sure you know? I’m trying to make sure I’m being honest and it’s not just chicken shit or this or that, so I’m out walking on a road and a rattlesnake comes across the road And I see the rattlesnake and what do you do when you work for the forest service and you see a rattlesnake if you’re anybody? You kill it? So, I picked up a rock and I killed it! (Blank Audio) (eyes tearing) And I knew… [BLANK_AUDIO] (emotional) I just knew I couldn’t do it, do that. I couldn’t go to Vietnam; I couldn’t do that. And I felt terrible, as you can tell, I still do. It was a great mistake. And it was one of those mistakes. I thought I had to prove what I knew, and I didn’t have to so, Short of that end of that story was, they had the hearing, they wrote me back a paper, which was a report on the hearing, and they said- they quoted me and said things. I didn’t even have the vocabulary. I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about They just made something up. And I sent him all my papers back. I said “You people are not being honest. And I never said this. I’m not going to deal with you ever again. I never heard from him again. That was it. So that was that story. And then there were other stories. Phil and I, I still love, you can see I, then one time Phil and I had first light expeditions. I don’t know if you remember that.
Rick: I remember that name.
Bill: That was a one-off thing. Yeah, it was a cool deal. We took people on horseback to places they could not go to. We got permission from the Native American, from the Navajo tribe, took them into Canyon to shake up. On one occasion, I don’t know how many, maybe 10, 12 people max, we’re all down and there’s a rattlesnake, small one, rattlesnake. And everybody is in a circle around this rattlesnake. And this rattlesnake coils, and I said to people, “Don’t mind it, it’s alright, just have positive thoughts, just be cool.” And the rattlesnake came right over to me, curled around my foot, and just then, just wait, that was it.
Rick: Took a nap.
Bill: Belts, yeah, took a nap. That was after the event in the story. That was after. But the event I told you about on the lookout tower, that was before the event in the story. So, in the story, I picked this up. You can imagine I just stood there, transfixed, read this whole chapter, and I knew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it talked about the Hopi, it talked about handling, it talked about everything.
Rick: Right.
Bill: I put the book down. and I went to get my make my lunch and in the process I had to go get some water. I had to go out the back door, out the stoop which was this wide of stoop board and a six-inch drop onto the ground. I’m barefoot I walked out and as I walked off, I’m moving fast with a bucket for water. I stepped on something and instantly I knew. And I turned around and it was a big rattler. I mean a big one!
Rick: With your foot just on and off it and you’re …
Bill: I don’t know I’m moving. Yeah, I just put weight on it. I turn around I saw it. It was white. It was that old It was practically white, and I said “boy, I hope I didn’t hurt you, your ribs and it coiled up slowly. No buzzing and just looked at me. I looked at it, and I just said, “Okay, you’re here. I didn’t know you were here. I’ve got to go get my water. You’re welcome.” Now I know why there’s no mice around here and no pack rats. And that was it. And then, within the next few days, 11 rattlesnakes showed up. They had been living all in the rocks, the rock foundation of this old building, around the well, there was a rock water tower and all sorts of things. And we just got on fine thereafter.
Rick: So, the word got around, “Hey, this guy’s okay, he’s not going to kill us.”
Bill: Yeah, and I would go out every now and then. Normally, I would paint from up in the second floor. There was a window gone, No frame no nothing and a porch underneath it So, I would sit there or have my big board’s up there and I looked east. It was just what I wanted. I could see the sky, the clouds, everything and I would paint there all the time. Every now and then I’d set up a table out in the field so I could see straight up and then I would paint, and I move around, and this one and When I’d do that, I’d hear a loose rattle. Just a loose rattle And I’d look at, oh, yeah. Okay, cool go and it would go. And then I would just go back to work. It just wanted to make sure I knew not to step on it, I think. And it would just go and so we just lived with each other, then quite happily. And then that book and of course this event occurred within 20 minutes of my finishing that chapter, I thought boy, that’s funny what kind of book is this anyway? And I looked. I looked at the book and it’s green and it had just like the book off some old bookshelf, or something or used book story. I opened it. I can’t remember the title, but I looked in and the little page there was a publisher and I think it was strange. I wonder what else is in that book. So, I go and get it and – I sit down on the there was an old couch in there, a leftover from the 1910s or something. I sit down and I open up the book and I start reading another chapter. And that chapter describes pranayama as you and I understand it. And it gave instructions for breathing and it said why to do it and what the benefit would be for meditation and mind, you I’m meditating eight hours a day. I don’t do any Hatha yoga, I don’t do any pranayama, nothing, just sit. So, I started doing that. Bingo! Meditation is clear and everything is good. And I think, man, what about that book? What kind of book would have that all about rattlesnakes and then this thing about meditation in it? Well, I gotta look again and I looked for the book. I never found the book. I never saw it.
Rick: Nobody, You’re in the middle of nowhere. Nobody’s around.
Bill: Nobody came. Nobody, Nothing. Nope.
Rick: That’s great.
Bill: No way. Yeah, so whatever it is, that was 1967 or something. I don’t know. Maybe, I don’t know, somewhere back there.
Rick: How old did you learn to meditate? Yeah Somebody just came back off of a course in India,
Rick: right. Anyway, I w, it was I just, I never knew, but now I know. I hear so many stories from so many people of similar occurrences. And the fact that, the fact that there was a physical material book is what makes this so weird for me as a materialist. And I have a good bit of scientific training, , in me too, with me. So, it’s that. If I had had that input come abstractly, into my mind, like a thought or a dream or a series, I wouldn’t be that surprised, would I? No, I wouldn’t. But it was that it was a book! It was material! And then it disappeared. That is hard. But now I’m not surprised. I truthfully, I think that there have been a lot of things that I now kind of attribute to my good fortune of being taken care of.
Rick: Yeah, I feel that way too. Yeah, there’s those cartoons of somebody goes through life with this cloud right over his head be raining on him, but it’s not raining on everybody else. So, there’s songs like, “Born Under a Bad Sign,” “If It Wasn’t for Bad Luck I Wouldn’t Have No Luck at All,” and, and then there’s, positive songs and positive, the opposites of those kinds of images, and I feel like I’ve lived in both. I had the rain cloud thing during some of my younger years, and then things, the cloud turned, cleared up. And now it’s almost like, it’s a constant reminder of the presence of God or Mother Divine or Divine Intelligence or something, but, and there’s some more stories like this in your book too, but, there’s just, I don’t see it as miraculous, but it’s because miraculous implies that it’s unusual or there’s no explanation for it or anything else, but I see it as almost routine and matter of fact, yet profound, that there’s just so many beautiful, I don’t want to use the word coincidence either, because that also seems random.
Bill: No, that’s mathematics.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s not coincidence. It’s just like, it’s the divine in plain sight.
Bill: Serendipity or something, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, serendipity, synchronicity. It’s the divine manifest and playing an obvious role in the orchestration of our lives. And it’s beautiful, very profound. And it just gets better and better.
Bill: And it gets better and better. Exactly. As we grow, as we become more open, as we’re more able to receive that, there’s more available. comes more. The limitations are ours.
Rick: Right. And I think that’s by extension by extrapolation. That’s probably how Jesus could walk on water or manifest loaves and fishes. If he actually did those things, it can reach a point at which it becomes that, manifest.
Bill: Yeah. definitely.
Rick: A question came in from somebody here, let me just read it. “You have had many amazing life experiences that took imagination, creativity, courage, and thinking outside the box, but you’ve also spent a great deal of time going deep within consciousness. How have those influenced each other?”
Bill: If I understand the question properly… I guess,
Rick: yeah, go ahead, you take a crack at it and I’ll…
Bill: I’ll take a Crack. Yeah Ever since I’ve been a little kid, I’ve been a little bit out of the box. I didn’t fit anywhere. As a little kid I did fit in nature and God bless my mother and father, they bought 20 acres of quote useless land that had a swamp, a little wood, a field and a creek and all we did was go out there on Saturdays or Sundays and have canned spaghetti and let Billy wander around, and that was life for me. That was where I lived life. So, there was some of that but it’s really only after I learned tools for accessing the deeper levels of consciousness, that the creativity and the imagination and all, and the out-of-the-boxness became Possible, in a systematic way. There was a time I remember in the mid-80s, I think, when I said,” you know what, you’ve got to stop living by your intellect Bill and go back and start making art”. I had done Westridge research group- what I was talking about earlier. “You’ve got to go back and do art because that will force you to live by intuition,” like the woman you were referring to who was taking the next opportunity and instead of rationally thinking and planning and so forth. And that was only possible and became more and more possible because of deep meditation and other spiritual practices. That’s where my discipline has always been, those have been disciplined. I lead it. I don’t miss, I just, I do it and then all this other stuff it comes and goes and I go after it with all four feet, but no,
Rick: I haven’t missed either. I haven’t missed a meditation since I learned. But the word discipline for many people conjures up unpleasantness. And I’ve spoken to many people for whom meditation is a chore and it’s painful and i, it takes great self discipline or control to sit there for the allotted time. And I think you and I are both fortunate to have learned a practice that is actually enjoyable, that you can look forward to, and that even if you’re tired or stressed out by the day’s activity, it doesn’t add a new stressful experience to your day. It actually provides a refreshment and respite from what you’ve been going through. So, I just want to put that out there, that meditation isn’t necessary. Many people I speak to say, “Oh, I tried it. I can’t do it, my mind wanders, and I don’t enjoy it. But don’t define all kinds of meditation with the very same word. Because just like the word liquid, there’s a lot of different liquids that are represented by that word. And some of them will kill you, some of them will nourish you.
Bill: Yeah, you go to a library and you pick up a book and you open it up and you think, “Oh my God, this is terrible.”
Rick: Yeah.
Bill: Yeah, you throw it down. Does that mean you don’t go to the library ever again? No, you go to learn. I don’t know about you, but I tried one, two, three, four different kinds of meditation before I really found one that would work, which was TM. And I did Zen meditation, and I did, various things. And it’s not that they’re not good forms of meditation even.
Rick: Yeah, I know people who’ve awakened through doing those kinds of Practices, like Adyashanti or Bob Harwood or various others.
Bill: Yeah, it’s just that what fits, that’s why I insist there’s 8.05 trillion paths.
Rick: Billion.
Bill: Billion yeah.
Rick: , well, if you count the whole galaxy.
Bill: Forget the trillion, yeah. I don’t know what a trillion is. I know a billion is the number of seconds in 35 years. That’s pretty hard for me right there. That’s a billion.
Rick: Yeah, I would say to somebody, it’s not like we’re beating the TM drum here, but find something that works for you. And there is something, you’ll find it.
Bill: Exactly.
Rick: If you seek and ye shall find, knock on the door, she’ll be opened.
Bill: Yep, exactly. And don’t be deterred. But then when you do find something, understand, like all aspects of life, everything goes up and down. Sure. everything goes up and down. And meditation is no exception, because it is influenced by the condition of the physiology at that time, the condition of the environment, and the impact the environment is having and the food that we’ve been eating and so on or whatever else we’ve taken into the system, whether it’s what we’re seeing or what we’re eating or whatever.
Rick: Yeah, and like you said, there were periods when you were doing a lot of meditation and all kinds of strong emotions would bubble up and one might conclude, “Oh, I must be doing it wrong. I don’t like this. I don’t want to be experiencing this.” But that’s actually part of the deal. If you’re going to go deep like that, then there’s going to be some release of…
Bill: House cleaning.
Rick: Yeah, deep-seated samskaras, impressions, impurities, whatever, and you’ve got to weather those.
Bill: Absolutely.
Rick: Yeah, But the nice thing about it, I use this analogy sometimes, is that if you drop a handful of mud into a glass of water, it totally muddies up the water. But if you drop a handful of mud into a swimming pool, or for that matter, an ocean, it just dissolves and it doesn’t. So, what we’re talking about here is a state in which you can become unbounded and vast and then in that unboundedness something can dissolve which would be very traumatic if your awareness was boxed in but in that expanded state it’s just taken care of efficiently.
Bill: Yeah, that’s a very nice way of saying that. That is a good, that leads to a good understanding of meditation techniques that are effective because while they do bring about purification which results in, could be discomfort, maybe not, could be pleasure, either way, but it does so in the context of an expanded consciousness or an expanded foundation and therefore we aren’t really shaken around too badly.
Rick: Right. And in a way that’s a built-in safety factor because you in general you don’t encounter the heavy stuff until you have the capacity to deal with it.
Bill: True. Yep. Yep.
Rick: You’ve been teaching some meditation, Amma’s type of meditation in prisons or something, haven’t you?
Bill: Yeah, I did out in Oregon. Actually, I went there in the town, where I would go to get my groceries, which was there, it had a safe way in it It had a safe way and two gas, three gas stations, a general dollar and a prison. And couple thousand people.
Rick: Wow.
Bill: So I started teaching in the prison, and taught there for quite a number of years, up until the pandemic, and then they didn’t want to have people coming in because of obvious reasons. So, It was great fun. I gotta say, I got a lot of satisfaction, personal satisfaction, out of delivering that, a technique of meditation to people that worked for them. –
Rick: that’s great. Did it pretty much work for most of those guys?
Bill: It did.
Rick: Yeah, that’s great.
Bill: It worked very well, yeah. –
Rick: Yeah, that’s a whole subject in itself, is the prison system and rehabilitation and all. Per capita, we have far more people in prison in the US, then any other country does. And I’ve interviewed, a guy who was on death row for quite a while and eventually got forgiven or released. And it was horrific. He was just rotting in a cell with no fresh air, no adequate exercise, anything else. And I just feel like there are a lot, go ahead, you’re gonna say.
Bill: No, you’re right. I’m just wanting to agree with you. I got a taste of it as well. This was not maximum security.
Rick: Right.
Bill: But still.
Rick: I’ve done obviously a lot of meditating. I’ve also done a fair amount of camping. Not solitary like you, but Irene and I have, during the 90s especially, we went camping just about every year for a month or more in the summer. And there is something about getting out in nature that settles your mind down. And just, I remember coming back after one of those camping trips and I was standing in line at a restaurant here in Fairfield and someone looked at me and said, “You look like you’ve been doing something in a beautiful place.” Just, I don’t know, something in my face, just kind of, maybe I had a suntan, I don’t know, but it does transform your state of mind when you’re out in nature like that for a while. And that plus all the meditation you did when you’re out there in the desert, I imagine you must have gotten into states of deep silence that were quite remarkable, where even the slightest impulse of the thought must have been an obvious, to you. Your mind didn’t have 10 radio stations playing in at the same time.
Bill: Yeah. That happens, but that comes and goes. But everything settles down. Everything, And I lose track of the days when I’m out there. I don’t know what day it is. Oftentimes. I’ve tried to keep track and I and I often just lose track. But I always know when it’s Sunday. And the reason I know when it’s Sunday, Is because the background vibe becomes a little less. The background vibe, and the background vibe there, is nothing compared to what it is when I go to like Reno or Seattle or someplace, travel as that. then it’s a whole different matter but even out there, you spend a bunch of time maybe it takes two three weeks for me to settle down that way. And then you just kind of, you feel, you do get it.
Rick: Yeah. So, you’re saying that, even though you’re miles from anybody, but, however many miles away, there are people going to church, or taking the day off, just having a more relaxed day, and you can feel it out there.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Rick: Interesting. Yeah.
Bill: Yeah. Hey, we’re in it together. There are eight
Rick: 805 billion five billion
Bill: Of us and there is no place on planet earth that is free from the human influence. Meaning on the subtle level, no place no place. More some places, less other places. Yeah, and for me personally, going out where it’s absolute minimum is a great way, is a tool. But for somebody else, going to New York is the right place to go, because they’re not concerned with, concerned isn’t the right word, their path or their tool is not to go deep into nature as we normally define nature. It might be to go deep into human nature. So where do you want to be? Where everyone is, you know? Where do I want to be? Well, we could say everyone isn’t, but it’s not where everyone -I’m not a hermit. It’s something else is. And what is the something else? I’m not that sure. Is it the mountain out there, round mountain? Is it the light, the way the light changes? Is it the fact, is it the distance that goes 100 miles in every single direction? Is it the darkness where there is no light at night? No light, no human light?
Rick: Must be beautiful stars.
Bill: Yeah, oh yeah. Milky way comes up over, goes like that. And what is it, and the silence, when the wind stops, wind makes noise in your ears, but there’s nothing else. There’re no trees, there’s no leaves rattling. And when the wind just settles down, and then the best silence of all is when it snows, big flames just settle down. Those snowflakes absorb every possible sound and that’s when you hear your heart, you hear your blood, you hear everything, you hear all your internal things and then you get past that too. But that’s the, that’s I guess my favorite silence of all, is when that happens.
Rick: That’s nice. You mentioned your son, and you have four kids, I believe?
Bill: Yes, two boys, two girls.
Rick: Were you going out to the desert for months on end while you were married and the kids? How did that work out?
Bill: How did it work out? You’d have to ask them. I think that I don’t know whether it was selfish or whether it was on my part to do that, whether it was not selfish because it was something that I had to do, in order to grow and be ultimately a proper father and human being. It was not, that’s not a trivial question and I don’t know that I have a complete answer and I don’t know that I can have the answer. I think they have to give an answer too. And I think each one of them would answer that differently. But like the oldest boy, he used to go out some of the times with me. And as you saw in the video, he was there for the Sri Yantra. And that had a good impression, a strong impression, because he’s taken his son who’s 10 now, to the desert in Saudi Arabia, to Bhutan, to Mongolia, all over the place, because he’s stationed over in, now in Tokyo, from Singapore to Tokyo. Well, Tori was out there and worked on a project. She and I worked on a project together, which was a really sweet project. And she’s in one of those stories which is called “Goodbye,” when we went looking for wild horses.
Rick: Oh, that’s a beautiful story.
Bill: Yeah. And she and I, I was right then, that was 2012 or 13, 13 I think, and I was trying to learn the Lalita Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Divine Mother. I’d known it and I’d written it and I’d listened to it, but I was trying to learn it well enough that I could do it every day. And I was listening to it and looking at it in English and, really trying to get it. And I have a very difficult tongue. I’m not wired for language, so I was struggling. So, I thought, well, maybe we could do something that would help. Ori and I went in the truck way over to a place that I knew about where there were these nodules of obsidian. Here’s a piece of obsidian, black volcanic glass. And these came in a form like an avocado. They look like avocados. And they were cracked. And we would get these. And then I had a bunch of diamond scribes. They’re little diamonds on the end of a stick, and we could scribe letters. So, I wrote all thousand names on these things, on these rocks. One per rock, or sometimes two on a rock like that, on broken surfaces. They weren’t polished, they were cracked. And Torrey did the same thing with a Sanskrit, So, we got two complete sets of the thousand names and then we went to a place that had attracted me earlier and it’s in one of the stories called “the church”. I don’t know if you read that one
Rick: I read them all.
Bill: Oh okay that’s the one where I found this place where ,and it just blew me away.
Rick: Oh, it’s like a circle of something.
Bill: Yeah. And I actually moved so I could be next to that all the time. And I’ve been to that for now for five, six years, right nearby. And so, we took all this and then we went around the perimeter and we buried each of these stones in order, starting with one pointing to the east directly and spaced it so so, they all came this way, and then the Sanskrit ones came all this way, and then we did the underate names of Amma, and we put those on the outside all the way around. And we buried them so that just the surface, the avocado, which looks like just a black rough surface, was just coming up out of the earth, and then the written was pointing down. And was it because that’s how these things- what did that come from? I needed to learn the Lolita Sahasranama, so how does somebody like me do that? Well, you gotta do it kinetically, you gotta read every afternoon. I would read it in English. I would listen to it on Sanskrit. Try and do, but that ended up with what somebody might say it was an art project, is it art? Yeah Probably not really. I mean it isn’t art. It’s not done for that, so
Rick: But that’s gonna stump some archaeologists a thousand years from now.
Bill: Yeah
Rick: Whoa, this primitive culture had this sophisticated. How did Sanskrit get here?
Bill: Yeah Yeah
Rick: Interesting. Yeah. So, we have a bit more time. Is there another story you’d like to tell? I don’t know if you can just do it off the top of your head. You can even read another one from the book. That one about the wild horses was beautiful. Or perhaps you’d like to- there’s some kind of area of philosophical or spiritual discussion that we want to get into in our remaining time.
Bill: Well, I don’t know.
Rick: You’re good.
Bill: I’m yeah, I could tell you some stories I could do that, I could also ,
Rick: You think you’ll go out there again?
Bill: Oh, of course.
Rick: Yeah. You’re 80,81, something like that?
Bill: 81. I was going to be almost 82. I got a better truck now.
Rick: That’s a better truck? I’ve seen that truck.
Bill: Oh no, no. That was my better truck, but that hit 200,000 miles. And I’m hauling the trailer back home. So, I have a new truck.
Rick: Oh, a new truck. Okay. Because the one I’ve seen in recent weeks had a cracked windshield.
Bill: Oh, yeah., that’s the one and I use that right now, because, Blue, my dog, just sheds hair everywhere I’ll wait until I leave, So I have a good truck and I know I’ll be able to get out there and there’s been some more erosion, It’s a mixed blessing. The last time I went in, I hadn’t been there for two years, and there’d been horrible thunderstorms and washing. And there’s certain places that were just turned into ravines, where there was a trap where you would drive, and I virtually almost tipped over the trailer, trying to get in. If I had gone first in the truck, fortunately, I didn’t, I never would have tried it, but once I got going, I couldn’t turn around. There was no choice except to go forward and I did get there and then while I was there, I worked on the road bringing rock and moving things and developed a way to get through without tipping things too much. Got it out just fine. So hopefully it’ll be easy to get back in.
Rick: yeah, they just had a whole bunch more rain I don’t know if the rain that just hit Burning Man has gone up to Oregon, but
Bill: I might have, because I keep watching and I see that there’ve been some thunderstorms, but that’s part of the deal.
Rick: Well, you’ve been living an interesting life and we all have we have, haven’t we?
Bill: Yeah, we have. That’s one of the things that I’m really coming to appreciate, is everybody, so many of the people I know and have known for a long time and I feel a kinship with- It’s like we’re all doing the same thing, In a very different way And that’s the one way, and I see young people coming along, you know that really are after the same. So, it’s the one thing that I see in the, and I don’t see it in the media so much, but that I see in the world of Kali Yuga, that is encouraging.
Rick: Well, I know some young people who feel like, and they’re not so young anymore, they’re getting into their late 30s, who feel that they just haven’t quite found their niche, they’re, “ am I supposed to do with my life? “Even though they might be very talented in certain ways, they still feel like they’re looking for something. What would you say to advise young people who, feel like they don’t want to be doing what they’re doing all their life and they haven’t quite hit their stride yet? How do they find it?
Bill: That’s a good question. Well, I think, first of all, that that’s not an unnatural situation. I don’t know, I’m not sure I’ve hit my stride. I’m not sure, I know I haven’t grown up yet, properly. So, there’s a lot yet to be done. But what I would say is, look deeper. And then don’t be afraid to act. Because what is there to lose? What can you lose? What can we lose? Don’t be afraid to ask. Go deeper. Go deeper in your feeling. Go deeper in the outer world. Go deeper. Just because whatever. It is very, very difficult to find one’s path, one’s dharma. And one has multiple dharmas, cosmic, down to familial, all different levels. And it’s very difficult, and in this age it’s more difficult than it has ever been before. So we are, all of us, up against a challenge. But the only way, and you were alluding to it earlier, the only way, or no, the question, the person who asked the question, well, you’ve got all this stuff going on, but what’s that got to do with deeper experiences of consciousness? And the answer is only deeper experiences of consciousness will support all that, and will support the path. If you want to be on the path, then there’s one way to get on the path and that is to go deeper into the self. Because the self is the path. So, know the self. Know thyself, It doesn’t mean know your ego. It means, forget your ego. It’s like forgetting everything is one way to remember God. And so, I would say that it’s the same old story.
Rick: Yeah, and I think it’s good to remember that, well, to put it in more poetic language, what you actually just said was, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven,” or kingdom of God, “and all else shall be added unto thee.” Einstein was working at a boring job in a Swiss patent office when he first put together his first theory of relativity, which completely transformed scientific understanding of how the world works. So sometimes we have to go through rather mundane periods, at least on the surface, but there was something obviously deep there going on with Einstein to enable him to come up with that. So even under boring or superficially mundane circumstances, one can be deep, one can be having deep experience, deep thinking, etc.
Bill: Yes, Elliot was a bank clerk.
Rick: There you go.
Bill: And in 2001, I had been working with Genetic ID as a CEO for four or five years.
Rick: I forgot that you did that. Yeah
Bill: Get it going and then I decided well, okay got to do something and I really wanted to go back to the desert, wanted to go back and play the artist’s game, but I couldn’t. I had too much responsibility. Wouldn’t have been proper. So, I had to build a company, I had to start a new company and that was the sky factory And I said to myself, “okay, man, you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do business You’ve done enough of that. Okay fine, and you want to be enough, but look, let’s be real here. So Why don’t you try and build a beautiful Corporation?” And when I had that thought I burst out laughing because if ever there was an oxymoron, that’s it Right? A beautiful corporation is a complete contradiction in terms, in my mind and was at that time. But I thought all right go and do it, try that and from that moment on, I started getting thoughts About how to build a company that did not come from my past experience and and I’ve learned more about that and that you need something and it’s on some on track, the information will come. And all kinds of stuff came up. This came up and that came up. This idea, this plan, we pick this from here, go there, this and that and so forth. And it all worked out extremely well and the company became, it had a somewhere along the line, Inc. did an article as one of the 10 best places to work for employees.
Rick: in the whole country?
Bill: Yeah, and So, instead of working with paint on paper, it was a blank name for a Company- concept for a company- and working with people and working with money and those were the things that got moved around and something came out of it.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a cool quote I just looked it up from W.H. Murray, who I believe was a mountain climber. Sometimes this is attributed to Goethe, but this guy actually said it, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans, that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events, issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
Bill: Good. Absolutely great. You asked the question, “What would you advise to somebody?” That’s a great quote. Give them that quote. That’s true. Amen, brethren and sister-en, and I believe that because that’s been my experience. Yeah
Rick: mine too.
Bill: That’s a beautiful quote, it’s a good one.
Rick: Yeah. All right Bill. Well, this has been fun.
Bill: Yes.
Rick: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Then you’re an easy guy to interview because You’re eloquent. You have a creative mind. You’re not at a loss for words. And you’ve had so many interesting experiences, that you have a vast reservoir to draw from.
Bill: Thank you. Thank you, and I really appreciate you taking the time to dig a little bit.
Rick: Oh, I think you just unplugged your mic there for a second. I heard dig a little bit and then it went silent, but now it’s silent again. Make sure that you get it working and then you can finish that thought. I hear you. Now, what were you saying?
Bill: I said I want to thank you for digging in and doing your research, and then just for what you’ve developed as a person which is someone who knows how to Just gently Open up and let what’s in there come out in a nice way. That is a skill, Rick, it’s a beautiful skill. And I’m honored to have been subjected to that and not only that, it’s useful for me because I believe in the importance of self of introspection of constant, not as a neurotic thing, but just to know, and this is very helpful.
Rick: Good, well thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. And I hope others who have been listening have found it helpful. Okay, so I think we’ll wrap it up. And I will have a link on your page to a little website that’s all about your book. And I imagine there will be information there on how to get the book. It’s not inexpensive because it’s like, , $95 or something, right? Because it’s this big, beautiful, full-color coffee table style. You want to hold up and show it
Bill: I don’t have it.
Rick: Oh, I thought you were leafing through it there a second ago.
Bill: Oh, no, that was just a manuscript. It’s a big element and it’s all handwork because the five volumes, there are five volumes in this handmade custom design box which opens up. There’s all these volumes and the volumes are all accordion.
Rick: Oh I see, so you can get these panorama shots.
Bill: Yeah, exactly and it’s done on very high quality paper, so it’s nice in your hand and you can read it sequentially. You read all down one accordion and it flips over and then you read back, and there are five of those and to make that it turned out was a lot of handwork. So, it’s not something, so that’s the reason why it was very costly to do. But we designed it that way and then we didn’t want to back off and the publisher agreed, so it is a unique kind of a thing. I don’t think anybody else is doing it. It came from a visit to the Asian Museum in San Francisco several years ago, where they had a display of the Ramayana. And that was presented in an accordion manner, episode by episode, painted on palm leaves that were hinged. And the whole thing folded up and opened up like that. And I saw that, and I thought, “Oh gosh, that is really super.” so.
Rick: Nice. Well, make a nice Christmas gift for people or something.
Bill: Yeah. Yeah.
Rick: Good. Well, thanks Bill. So, I’ll see you on the trail with your beautiful dog.
Bill: Yes.
Rick: All right. And keep on trucking.
Bill: I will. Thank you. Again, thank you so much for spending the time with me.
Rick: Oh, thank you. And thanks to those who have been listening or watching, and we’ll see you for the next one.