Burt Harding Interview

Summary:

• Introduction to Burt Harding: Founder of the Awareness Foundation in Vancouver.
• Life-Changing Book: Discusses a book that significantly impacted his life.
• Finding His Place: Talks about holding classes and discovering Super Sentience.
• Integration of Spiritual Teachings: Emphasizes the simplicity and experience of being present.
• Self-Realization: Shares the critical moment of self-realization and the excitement of sharing knowledge.
• A Course in Miracles: Mentions the influence of “A Course in Miracles” and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
• Advaita and Emotions: Explores the feeling side of Advaita and the power of emotions.
• Workshops and Guidance: Highlights the importance of guidance in working with emotions and the power of direct experience.
• Unity with Ultimate Reality: Discusses the eternal nature of seeking and being, and the beauty of being and becoming.

Full transcript:

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Burt Harding. Bert lives in Vancouver and he was recommended to me by several listeners. This often happens these days where people recommend that I interview somebody and there’s no paucity of people to interview who have had a spiritual awakening. My main problem is prioritizing them so I keep sending them back, “Okay, which one should I do first?” You were fairly highly prioritized, so here we are. So Burt, maybe you could start by giving us a quick little sketch about yourself and then we can maybe delve into your spiritual odyssey whatever it has been.

Burt: Yeah, my background has been physical. I was a physiotherapist in Toronto. I wasn’t happy at the time because too many demands were placed upon me. It was an exclusive club and the membership had to be renewed all the time, so I became a salesman rather than a physiotherapist. So one morning I’m going to work on a Saturday, I had a vision, believe it or not, and I saw this incredible radiant face of an elderly gentleman and it didn’t last more than maybe half a minute, but the wonderful thing was that it stayed with me for a long time. After a few months I began to think it was a hallucination. Then six months down the road I was walking in Yorkville, Toronto. I entered the bookstore and I saw this picture of this man that appeared to me on the cover of a book and it was called Ramana Maharshi and his teachings. When I saw the book I fell in love. I just fell in love. I read the book, it was $1.95, it was a hundred-page booklet. I read it all night and I didn’t sleep. The next morning I went to work and I quit my job. I retired to a basement apartment. I had earned enough, invested enough to be able to live modestly, and I didn’t want to do anything, just meditate, chant his name, and that’s all I did for about nine months. I was extremely happy and at peace. Something happened that moved me when I saw his picture, that this was real. You know it wasn’t a hallucination. It’s hard to describe. It was an amazing thing. Anyway, I began to sit in meditation for too long, quietly living inside. I needed to start exercising. I started doing yoga then. A YMCA scout, I guess you would call him, he saw me and he asked me if I would give yoga classes. Within a short period of time I was giving 13 classes a week. Then CBC had a program called Food for Thought and they liked what I was doing. So they interviewed me on CBC Food for Thought and there were no computers at the time, no email, so many phone calls were coming in and many letters coming in. They interviewed me again for half an hour and after that CFTO approached me and we did a TV series and I wrote a book called Be Aware Be Free and that started the ball rolling. After my TV series I came to Vancouver because I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the West Coast and I fell in love with Vancouver. I just, you know, as soon as I arrived here I thought, oh, this is my place. I started holding classes here. I started first at CBC, which is, not CBC, sorry, UBC, the University of British Columbia and at my place. So that was how it went.

Rick: So when you had this experience of Ramana when you were walking down the street in Toronto and you saw this man’s face in your mind’s eye, had you had any sort of spiritual background up to that point or were you just a regular Joe, a physical therapist and all of a sudden you saw this face?

Burt: I was always interested in asking questions. When I was a teenager I used to suffer tremendously from loneliness. I used to have these incredible feelings of loneliness, but it was later after getting to know Ramana Maharshi and his teachings that what I was experiencing, it wasn’t really loneliness, it was the expansion of my vastness, but I separated from it and so I felt like an individual separate from the whole and so it felt like loneliness and it was through that that I began to understand very deeply what I was asking all the time. I had these questions. I was interested in psychology, but it never occurred to me the depth by which came to me after this teaching of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. However I must state this, that although I became a teacher and I wrote this book and I appeared on TV, it wasn’t until I arrived in Vancouver and I had a relationship in the year 2000 that it became so difficult, this relationship, that I felt like catch 22, you know, damned if I do, damned if I don’t. And I realized at that moment that all I knew was what I read and what I heard and I realized how ignorant I was and strange as it may seem, it was that very awareness of my own unknowing at the moment that opened me up to the fact that I am a human being, a being playing the human role of Burt. And this became my basic teaching. I called it super sentience. Super sentience means you are an aware being and to be aware that you’re aware, I call it super sentience.

Rick: So are you saying that you became aware of how ignorant you were? Was it sort of like there had been sort of a spiritual unfoldment on one level, but that as a human being on that level you felt inadequate or ignorant? In other words, somehow the connection between your vast inner self level and your more concrete human level wasn’t tight, it wasn’t a good connection, there was something missing.

Burt: Yeah, what was missing was the fact that everything that I knew, even though it was very moving, it touched me and it changed my life with Bhagavan’s appearance, yet it was still intellectual. It was still what I had from…

Rick: It hadn’t really integrated on the gut level, it was more up in the head.

Burt: Yes, absolutely. I wasn’t living from it until the year 2000.

Rick: Okay, so you’re saying that in the year 2000 it somehow shifted from just being an intellectual, conceptual thing into more of an experiential thing.

Burt: Right, exactly, yes.

Rick: okay, and was it this difficult relationship that was the catalyst for that shift or was there something more to it?

Burt: Yes, I would say that because I had it always easy, whether it was a relationship or anything. I had a very comfortable life after my vision of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. I became my own boss, even when I appeared on TV or wrote a book, I was very comfortable doing my own thing. But then I began to feel that I’m a teacher now and I’m awake. But the thing is that what I realized here is that, how shall I put it, all I knew is what I’ve read, what I’ve heard, what other people told me, the teachings of others, but again, use the word integration like you did, I didn’t integrate it in my life so that I live from it.

Rick: Yeah, so you were just kind of parroting other people’s words in a way.

Burt: Yes, yes, yes. I didn’t know at the time, I thought I knew, but it didn’t really settle that I was living it.

Rick: I wonder that sometimes about a lot of teachers. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and not be a doubting Thomas, but I wonder sometimes whether they have just gotten themselves so absorbed in intellectual concepts that they have mistaken those for the experience to which those concepts point and that they’re not really living it in a nitty-gritty way. And I’m really not qualified to judge but I always have that little suspicion, you know.

Burt: Yes, yeah, I didn’t realize it until then too that even some people have written books, spiritual books, who themselves were not really living what they had written about. And this is not their fault, it’s just that it does happen that way. We begin to think we really know until we are faced with what is it that we really know, because really there’s nothing to know, you are, you just are. You are a presence, you are awareness, you are here now forever, you know, and it’s not something to learn but it’s something to unlearn. It’s more of a cleansing really from the conditioning rather than learning something new, because when we sit very still, when we look at who we are, it is so obvious. Here I am looking at you and we are conversing. And I don’t know, where are you from, Idaho?

Rick: I’m in Iowa.

Burt: Iowa, Iowa, okay, that’s several hundred miles from here.

Rick: Quite a few, a couple of thousand miles from there actually. I’m like four or five hours west of Chicago.

Burt: Yeah, you see, and here we are talking together, here now, this very moment, transcending time and space. You see?

Rick: Yeah.

Burt: I mean, this is the miracle itself that there’s only now, there’s only this moment, this presence. And so this is what settled with me that everything I’ve read wasn’t quite the impact of what I felt in that year 2000 when I realized that I didn’t know anything, here I am stuck, I can’t even solve this little problem. And I opened myself up, I surrendered, and I said, “Okay, Bhagavan, guide me, I’m helpless.” It’s amazing that little surrender somehow took over and showed me how simple it really is. You’re always here, you’re always now, there’s nothing else, and it’s eternal. You were never born, you’ll never die, you’re just here, always. And to look at that and to … it is not that difficult to actually realize it.

Rick: And so what you’re saying is that now that’s experiential, you’re not just articulating a concept anymore, you’re saying that is your 24/7 experience.

Burt: This is it. This is it.

Rick: And was that realization abrupt or sudden, when you had that realization that you had just been in your head, or did it take some working out over a period of years to really …

Burt: No, it didn’t take time to work out. I never had anything like that before, because I’m rather an intellectual person as a rule, at least prior to that anyway. What happened is I was extremely frustrated, exasperated, I didn’t know what to do. And so I went to the washroom and there was this incredible fear that I really don’t know anything. I was pretending all the time, here I was, I appeared on television, I wrote a book, people think I am so smart, and I really am not. And it was a shock, it was a real ego crusher, but it was so essential and I’m so grateful to it.

Rick: Oh yeah.

Burt: Because I realized I didn’t know anything, there’s nothing to know. And then in its place came this feeling where I was in the washroom at the time and everything seemed to disappear. And I was there and all there is, is now. This is it. I saw my face in the mirror in the bathroom and it appeared strange. And here I am, I’m going through this, appearing as this body now and I’m playing this role, but I am a being.

Rick: So you went through years of feeling that you knew something, being on television and all that, and then you had this critical moment where you felt like you didn’t know anything and then you had this experiential shift. Now do you feel like you know something or are you living in a state of …

Burt: Right now all I can say is that there’s nothing to know. When everybody is awake it’s just that they don’t know it. So whoever I talk to I see them as, well, they’re really part of me, we’re all here, we’re all together. There’s nothing to know.

Rick: So in other words, there are 7 billion people in this world, all of whom are on some level awake, but the trick is to have that become a conscious living reality.

Burt: That’s right, to become a conscious reality. I love the way you think.

Rick: Oh, thank you. Well, I didn’t coin all these phrases, but I too have read books and listened to teachers and so on. Do you feel like there has been a maturation of your experience over the past decade since you had this shift?

Burt: Yes, yes, it’s all the time, all the time. This is the beautiful thing. This is what I get excited about, and this is why I do so many videos, I put so many videos on YouTube. Yeah, it’s exciting. I answer all between 40 to 70 email questions a day worldwide, free, I don’t charge, I don’t even ask for a donation. I’m very excited, I want everybody to share this incredible feeling. I got up in the morning and I called it the I Am, you know, I Am. And I said, “I Am, you do everything through me, because there isn’t me and I Am, but I’m talking to it because I just want to make sure that I don’t identify with the body.” And so I got up and I said, “Well, you do everything through me from now on.” So yeah, I keep affirming this, I feel very alive, I feel really good, yeah, and it’s maturing all the time.

Rick: Maybe you could elaborate a little bit on the nature of the maturation. If you trace the course of the last 10 years since the shift took place, or since it became more experiential, how has it matured from year to year?

Burt: Yeah, I wish I could put it in words. It’s a fine feeling, like I’m happier, I’m not conscious of my age like I was before, I feel freer and I’ve become more of a hermit. I don’t care about publicity or advertising myself. I feel a great love. I’m walking down the street and I’m in love with everybody. Lately I’ve developed a few cataracts in my eyes and I’m not seeing too well, so I take the bus instead of driving the car. I still have the car, it’s short, it’s in the street, but I take the bus and I get up on the bus and I see the driver smiling at me as I get up and I’m in love with him and I sit down and I’m in love with everybody. I guess this is the maturation period, we’re not separate at all. And I see you this morning and as soon as I saw you it’s as if I’ve known you all my life, you’re my friend. This is the maturation, it’s very hard to put in words.

Rick: No, I think you’re putting it nicely. And perhaps if we could choose a single word for all of this, we might use the word “appreciation.” It’s as though you’re saying that appreciation has been growing.

Burt: Yeah, appreciation, yeah, yeah.

Rick: And this actually follows the course of development that I’ve read and heard from other teachers, which is that there’s a sort of a self-realization or a dawning of awareness and then the heart begins to grow more.

Burt: Yeah, it’s an expansion of the heart, it’s just you want to reach out. And if you see people who are sad, unhappy in their life and they’re making their negative emotions very real, your heart goes out and it says, “Hey man, look at the miracle called you.” You know, it’s “Look at what is right now and the whole thing is a miracle.”

Rick: I understand that you had some involvement with a Course in Miracles for a number of years. Is that significant to the story?

Burt: It is significant. You see, not so long ago, just a few years ago, I went to Banging Books, I don’t know whether you’re aware of it but it’s well-known in Vancouver, and I saw this book by Gary Renard and it was called The Disappearance of the Universe, in which two people appeared to him. And have you read the book?

Rick: No.

Burt: Are you aware of it?

Rick: No, I think I heard you mention it in one of your YouTube talks but that’s all I know.

Burt: Yeah. And a lot of people look down upon this story that he felt made up, but as soon as I read the book I knew that this was real.

Rick: What was the story?

Burt: His story? yes, yes. He did a marvelous job about explaining the Course in Miracles. I have great respect for A Course in Miracles and as I read it again after my experience in 2000, I saw how incredibly beautiful it really is.

Rick: Was he the guy who developed The Course in Miracles or something?

Burt: No, no. The Course in Miracles actually happened in 1965. It was channeled by an elderly Jewish woman who was more or less an agnostic actually and she was having trouble. She was a social psychologist at Columbia University and they were having a tough time in the psychology department. Nobody got along with anybody and finally she said to her boss, “Look, we’re not getting along here, there’s got to be a better way.” And after she did that they all agreed that yes, they’ve got to find a better way. She began to hear a voice and this voice wouldn’t let go. She was afraid to talk about it because she felt that people would see her as schizophrenic. But she wouldn’t rest until she gave in to this voice. And the moment she started writing down what came through her, the voice said, “This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required course.” And she went on from then. Anyway, it went on for about seven years I believe. I might be missing some of the details here. And it was published in 1975 I believe, something like that. I’m not quite sure about the dates. And it became an underground bestseller really. It’s quite a book. I have great love and respect for it. I haven’t read it for quite a while now.

Rick: It’s interesting how that happens with people. Certain people are sort of tapped on the shoulder as it were and given a whole package of knowledge to bring into the world. In a way it almost happened to you that way. You were walking down the street minding your own business and all of a sudden you saw this face of a man. Where did that come from? It makes you wonder, was it really Ramana Maharshi from the other side or something coming to you?

Burt: That’s right.

Rick: It makes you curious about the mechanics of these things.

Burt: Yeah, what I came to understand, and then again I attribute this to the knowledge that I gained and insight that came from the Course in Miracles too, is that what appeared to me wasn’t actually Ramana Maharshi himself, it was the Holy Spirit appearing as Ramana Maharshi. I know this sounds a little bit …

Rick: No, that’s cool. It was sort of giving you a little clue, like, “Okay, look for this guy.”

Burt: Yeah, this Oneness, call it the Holy Spirit, call it the I Am, appearing as the face of Ramana Maharshi because I needed it at that time. Whatever happens to us doesn’t happen by chance, there are no accidents.

Rick: What I find fascinating about that is that it implies that the Absolute or the underlying intelligence, the underlying reality of the universe is not a flat, impersonal presence, it’s intelligent presence.

Burt: It’s an infinite intelligence and it’s very caring and loving. See this is one thing I didn’t know, because when I started reading books like on Advaita prior to my realization, it felt very impersonal.

Rick: Yeah, dry.

Burt: Very dry, yeah, and these people who said that they know all about Advaita and they were very intellectual, and they spoke so well intellectually, yet I found no peace in their eyes, I found no real clarity, you know, joy in their heart. And what I’ve experienced – love – and what I experienced in the year 2000, it wasn’t knowledge per se, like words, it was a feeling, it was an aliveness. How grateful I am to be born a human being, to be who I am, and it’s a glory, it’s wonderful, yeah.

Rick: And if you actually look into the writings of the fathers of Advaita, you know, Ramana, Nisargadatta, Shankara going back a couple thousand years, those gentlemen spoke a lot about God and devotion and so on, it wasn’t just a dry presentation. They also had the feeling side very much developed.

Burt: Very much, very much. All you have to do is look into the eyes of Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi and you see such joy, such bliss, such beauty.

Rick: Absolutely, yeah, just overflowing.

Burt: Yeah, I often have tears in my eyes when I just look at his picture, you know, because again I feel like almost what he’s feeling, just like there is that connection.

Rick: Yeah, and so the implication there, not only the implication but their actual explicit teaching had a lot to do with developing compassion and other laudable human qualities. It wasn’t just the sort of impersonal absolute reality; it was become all you can be as a human being as well.

Burt: Right, because it’s oneness, you see, the personal and impersonal, they’re both really one, you know, and it’s the same with the body. We are not the body, the body is an appearance, but still, we need to respect it, to love it, this is why Dushyakung do it, because it’s all part of that oneness. You cannot separate the human from the being. It is true that the human is an appearance of being, because being is all there is, but yet through the human we have certain feelings of separation and unconscious guilt that will drive us towards finding out who we are, because all we’re looking for is for ourselves. You know I used to, I do hypnotherapy, I call it super sentience, and what I found out through my own experience of the year 2000 is that negative people, people who are depressed, people who suffer emotional pain, are heavily hungering for the being that they are, but they don’t know it, because they blame the outside and they think it’s happening to them, but actually, it is their own inner being hungering for that being that they really are. You know, it is oneness reaching out for itself.

Rick: And wouldn’t you say not just negative people but everyone? It’s true to say that all 7 billion of us are on a spiritual quest, which most of us don’t recognize it as such, but that’s what it is.

Burt: Yeah, we’re all on a spiritual quest, yes, absolutely. It’s all there is really, and you asked me about how did it mature, well it matured because I realized there’s nothing else. I used to think, when I studied psychology, I was interested in that, then I saw Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi and I became very interested in meditation and I wanted to retire to a basement apartment, all I wanted to do was meditation and the world, everything else, was just nothing, unimportant. But after this you begin to realize that everything is important. That doesn’t mean it is as real as this, but this is not separate from anything else. Everything is this, appearing as the negative person, appearing as the man who’s ignorant.

Rick: It reminds me of Shankara’s three rules, what was it? The world is an illusion, Brahman alone is real, the world is Brahman. So like you just said, everything is this, meaning that Brahman reality, appearing as bird, appearing as the lamp, appearing as the dog, appearing as…

Burt: Yeah, everything is this, and there is no really good or bad, right or wrong, should or shouldn’t, there is just this, this presence all the time.

Rick: Yeah, but could you not also say in the same breath that what you just said is totally true, but on the other hand there is good and bad, there is right and wrong, there is hot and cold, fast and slow, it’s like there’s this paradox, you know, and you can’t just hide half of it under the rug, you have to take it all into one big package.

Burt: That’s right, that’s right, beautiful. You’re putting it just great, yes, that’s it. Nothing is separate, everything is just part of the play, you know. I think they call it lila, don’t they?

Rick: And sometimes people try to do that, they try to shut out one whole half of the equation and just say, “Okay, this alone is real, forget about all that other stuff, don’t look at the man behind the curtain,” or else they say, maybe they’re totally on the relative side and say there is no absolute, but you know, both.

Burt: Yeah, both, and both are one, playing both parts. Yeah, that’s the beautiful thing, you enjoy it all, you know, it’s all part of the play and it’s wonderful because it’s all coming from one primal force, love, you know, that’s all we are really working, always recognizing. So I go back to what you asked me, how did it mature? Yeah I would say that the maturing is greater love capacity and there’s no limit to it.

Rick: Yeah, I mean a year from now, if you were to somehow suddenly be able to jump from what you’re experiencing right now to what you’re going to be experiencing a year from now, you’d probably notice a contrast, it’s like, “Whoa, okay, this is even better.”

Burt: Yes, it keeps getting better.

Rick: Yeah, like the Beatles said. There’s a song, you know. So you kind of alluded a little bit ago to emotions and all, and just this morning before our interview I was reading a piece that you wrote about emotions and being able to unravel the negative ones, to release their grip as a tool for awakening. Perhaps you could talk about the concepts that you presented in that paper.

Burt: Sure, yeah. See the wonderful thing about emotions, and we do need emotions because the very motion of energy is a seeking, a seeking for who we are. But because we don’t know who we are, we suffer from what is called unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt does not mean we’ve done something wrong, it’s a feeling like, “I’m not good enough, there is something wrong with me, I am missing something.” And all these feelings are coming from the fact that we are ignoring the being that we are, focusing only on the periphery, on the shallow end, which is called the human. You see? And we need to integrate both. So now many people say, the important thing here of course when you have these strong negative emotions is to be able to look at the emotion as it is and not get caught in its story. So I always say that do not get attached to the feeling longer than three minutes, because if you do, that’s called indulgence. Some people say, “Well I’m staying with the feeling of anger,” but it doesn’t seem to go away, it gets worse. Yes, because you’re indulging in it, but if you look at anger as a sensation in the body without its story, then you find that all it is is you resisting something you don’t want.

Rick: Now that instruction might be easier said than done in more extreme cases. I mean, there was just a shooting in Arizona for instance and a little nine-year-old girl got shot. I mean could you tell her mother to not hang on to the feelings of grief for more than three minutes? You know? I mean it’s going to take a while to work that one out.

Burt: Absolutely.

Rick: She’ll be feeling something all of her life probably.

Burt: Right, right, right. So what we can do in a case like that with a mother whose son has been shot or similar is we let her talk about it, express her emotions, get them all out, you see, because once you start to express an emotion then it does not get embedded in your unconscious, it doesn’t stay settled there, it doesn’t grow, you know, because sometimes we hold on to pain and we want to hold on to pain because we want to pay the culprit, we want to keep hating the person that caused this, but what we are doing without realizing it is that we are punishing ourselves. So the first stage in a very serious case like that, like the death of a loved one, my goodness, I mean that’s a big one, all we can do at the moment is simply to get it out of our system, to grieve, to allow ourselves to grieve, to allow ourselves to feel the pain. And then eventually start slowly releasing it.

Rick: So I guess what you’re saying is there’s an appropriate degree to which all these things should be felt and then there’s an inappropriate thing where people sort of indulge in it or hang on to it long after it has served its purpose.

Burt: That’s right, that’s right, yeah.

Rick: And that keeps them bound.

Burt: It keeps them bound, yeah, and the reason it keeps them bound is because they want to keep holding on to it, it becomes a way of life. See some people have said to me, I feel so much anger, I worry, this, this, this, and that happens. And then I say to them, okay, now suppose I’ll say to you in another minute or so, I’m going to take all your worries away, all your problems away, everything, I’m going to take everything away. And then they look at me puzzled and they say, do I really want everything wiped out? You see, because we think this is our identity, this is who we are, we can’t imagine when you’ve been worrying for many, many years, let’s say, it’s become a habit, we can’t imagine what it’s like to be without that. And then we say, well, what’s left? There’s nothing left. But it is that very nothing which is the joy, you see, it is that very nothingness, not even an identity with it that comes the opening of the heart. That is a big one for most people. And that’s when the human being integrates, because it’s okay to be the way you are, just the way you are. There are no rules, there’s only one law, that’s called love, you know, you can do away with everything else. So when we learn to have compassion for ourselves and become totally empty, then what’s left is that love.

Rick: So what practical steps can a person take to learn that?

Burt: It depends upon the level of understanding that they have, how ready they are to face the pain that’s been haunting them. And so slowly, like when people come to see me one-on-one, and I do also Skype sessions, then we do several ones, and I find immediately whether they are ready to handle it or not. I can see by the way they express, you know, I can see it through their eyes, through their voice, how much attached they are. If they are very attached, then I give them techniques, different techniques to do. But ultimately it all comes down to one thing, the strength, the courage to release.

Rick: Yeah, I heard that Ramana Maharshi used to do different approaches like that for different people. To some he would just give a sort of a Mahavakya, you know, that thou art, to others he would prescribe self-inquiry, to others he would prescribe meditation, to others he would prescribe selfless service, and it sort of depended upon where the person was at.

Burt: Exactly, right, right. That’s why they say there are three kinds of yoga – bhakti, jnana and karma.

Rick: Karma, yoga of action. So then as a teacher you attempt to evaluate where a person is at.

Burt: And I give them things to do and in the same way with the emails, when people ask me questions, it’s amazing how much through an email I can tell more or less where the person is at, according to what they ask. And then I answer it accordingly. All people are beautiful, everybody wants God, wants the being that they are, the I am, because God is love really, God is not an entity up there, it is who you are. But for them to understand that it takes a while, so if I feel that through their question they’re not going to understand that, then I talk more personally to them and move a little deeper and deeper.

Rick: Yeah, so you obviously would be an advocate of the progressive path, that people are at different stages of development or awakening and different practices or knowledge is appropriate for different stages.

Burt: Yeah, the truth is however that there are no stages and there are no levels, it’s all here, it is now. But to get that impact, to really understand that it means that you have not conditioned yourself so much that you cannot see at all. Because some people, if you say to them, “Your true nature is pure awareness,” they have no idea what you’re talking about. So again, we can say, “Well, they’re not ready to receive that ultimate truth,” but then again the moment they realize the ultimate, whatever that means, they get to the point where they say, “Yeah, I am, I just am, so simple, I am always here, no matter what.”

Rick: It’s like we were saying earlier… I’m sorry, go ahead.

Burt: Yeah, to come to that of saying I am, all that there is is I am, it takes a few, “stages” of understanding.

Rick: It’s like we were saying earlier, it’s true that there are no stages, it’s also true that there are stages, and these two things kind of fit together. Or there’s a Zen saying that enlightenment may be instantaneous or spontaneous. Enlightenment may be an accident, but spiritual practice makes you accident-prone. So do you hold satsangs there with little groups or do you maybe just do it online?

Burt: I haven’t lately. I’m starting some workshops in February, full day workshops geared towards direct experience of one’s true nature. I find that a lot of people are waking up lately, they’re hungering for knowledge and we are moving very, very fast in this age, especially after 10, 12 for example, it’s going to become even more sensitive, more geared towards expansion of awareness. So people are more open without realizing it, they are, it’s just that this soul, call it soul, is hungering for this knowing.

Rick: That was going to be my next question, among the people that you interact with, have you been seeing the kind of awakenings that you yourself had 10 years ago, or are people sort of popping?

Burt: Yes yes, the people have changed tremendously. And I would say that 80% of the people that I get, they know what I’m talking about, more or less, at least intellectually they understand it, yeah. So I can move a little faster, yeah. Whereas 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it wasn’t the same.

Rick: And among those 80% that get what you’re talking about, are you seeing a pretty good percentage of those having an experiential shift, it’s not just that they intellectually get it, but their experience is kind of fundamentally and permanently shifting?

Burt: How permanently shifted they are, I have to be with them all the time to really know that, but I would say that, yeah, I have quite a few, I would say, that have reached a point where they’re living from what they have realized, yeah. To what extent I really cannot say.

Rick: Yeah, well like we were saying, there’s going to be a maturation, so whatever extent it is, it will be more and more and more.

Burt: Yes, yes. >>

Rick: So a little bit more about this recent piece you wrote about emotions, is this something that somebody could just do on their own or do they need to kind of interact with you? And maybe you could say a little bit more about what exactly it is one does.

Burt: Yeah, most people need guidance, that doesn’t mean that they need a teacher because they are their own teacher, but some people are so conditioned through the identification with who they think they are, that they give in immediately the moment an emotion takes over. So sometimes if they have a person with them who has realized the true nature, the presence enough of the teacher would be more of a catalyst to the realization of themselves. So this is where a workshop would be good because by being in that atmosphere, their chances of having a direct experience are greater than if they were to do it by themselves. It takes a certain maturation to really work on yourself by yourself. Something in you has to develop, it’s called devotion to truth, and that devotion to truth takes quite a while to come to fruition.

Rick: And the traditional scriptures actually place great value on satsang, or on being in the company of the enlightened or seekers of truth and all that. They regard that as a powerful technique in and of itself.

Burt: Yes, yes.

Rick: I mean it’s kind of like if you had a little piece of wood or something just sitting by itself and you tried to get it burning, it might be hard, but if you throw it in a fire with a whole lot of other pieces of wood that are burning, the whole thing goes.

Burt: That’s a good example.

Rick: Even damp wood will get burning if it’s thrown in the fire.

Burt: Right, right. Yeah, that’s the point of a workshop. It’s not so much giving words, giving examples, because people have read a lot, there are so many books, everybody has some knowledge of truth, at least intellectually. But a workshop on direct experience, straight direct experience, would be very, very good.

Rick: So if somebody comes to one of your workshops, they don’t just sit and listen to you talk, there’s some experiential component to it, is that correct?

Burt: Yeah, yeah, I will interact with the questions more. For example, if somebody asks me, “Can I feel God?” And I don’t say, “Well, this is what you do,” I’ll say, “What do you mean by God?” You see? So by hitting it directly, you ask the person direct questions, you open up their own way of asking, because we’re never really saying what we’re feeling. One time I asked a person, I said to them, “How do you know that awareness is all there is?” And I said, “Do you know that you exist?” And he said, “Yes, of course.” I said, “Well, how do you know?” He said, “Because I’m aware that I exist.” I said, “That’s it.” So awareness is self-recognizing. So this is how a person has a direct experience by actually hitting upon the fact that they know that they know, but they don’t know that they know. So you make them know that they know by, again, making them recognize how simple it is when you look at itself. Ramana Maharshi used to call it inquiry, self-inquiry.

Rick: So you’re kind of helping them notice something that’s been there all along but they have just overlooked it.

Burt: That’s right, and they overlooked it, yeah.

Rick: Like looking for your glasses when they’re sitting on your head or something.

Burt: Right, yeah.

Rick: I’m sorry, you were about to say?

Burt: No, no, I guess that’s …

Rick: Something about direct experience I think you were just going to say.

Burt: Yeah, yeah, direct experience is making the person know exactly what they’re really asking, what they’re really wanting. Because all the time we’re all seeking the same thing, but people think they are seeking something different. For example, I gave a talk lately at the Rhodes College of Counselors and I asked them one question and I said, “What is it you want more than anything?” No, no, sorry, no, the question was, “What is the most important thing there is?” And some say power or fame or love or God or their religion or whatever, but the point is what is, for example, you chose happiness, what is happiness without being aware that you’re happy? You see what I mean? So in other words, without awareness nothing can exist without awareness, that’s what I’m trying to say.

Rick: Yeah, it’s sort of like, you could use the analogy of electricity, I mean you might have the world’s best television but it’s not going to run for you unless you can plug it in. So it’s sort of like, awareness is kind of the juice that powers all experiences.

Burt: Yes, awareness is the very presence you are, it is this truth itself, it is the unborn in you or the deathless in you.

Rick: Now some would argue that awareness is just a function of the brain and that when the brain dies, no more awareness, no more consciousness.

Burt: What gave birth to the brain?

Rick: Yeah, I mean that’s what I would ask, but to play devil’s advocate I suppose some would say well, obviously there’s DNA and there’s genetic reasons why life grows and awareness doesn’t have anything to do with it. The brain creates awareness, not the other way around.

Burt: Uh-huh, yeah. Well this is the intellectual mind, but you see we’ll always go back to awareness because awareness is that primal energy, even scientists for example have discovered energy is indestructible, it simply changes form. So all the form that we see, whether it’s a brain or whatever, has come from this changeless energy, and this changeless energy, what is it? It’s infinite intelligence, isn’t it? And what is infinite intelligence? Awareness of itself.

Rick: That’s my perspective on it. I have a good friend who listens to some of these interviews, and he espouses the perspective that I was just voicing, a materialistic perspective, but I sometimes try to put myself in his shoes and ask questions he would ask too. But even from a perspective of science, if you break everything down, molecular, atomic, subatomic, you very quickly come to a point where it’s just mostly empty space with a few virtual fluctuations taking place, there’s no material substance.

Burt: That’s right, no material substance at all. So what is it? That non-material that creates the material out of itself, you see? And it has to be intelligent, because life is intelligent, and that is awareness.

Rick: It amazes me that a doctor or a scientist or an astronomer or someone who spends their life looking at things under a microscope could ever be an atheist, because you look at the incredible intelligence that’s involved in even operating a single cell and it’s just awe-inspiring.

Burt: It’s awe-inspiring, absolutely, absolutely. This is what I mean, people say, “Well, what do you mean by awakening?” This is what awakening is, it’s exactly what you described. It’s when you see the miracle, it’s awe-inspiring, a single cell, yeah, oh my God, you know, look at life, you just have to have a look and you see the wonder right there. And the average person becomes so dead to it. So when I say dead it means asleep to the very wonder that they are. They have stopped looking, they have stopped asking, they have stopped inquiring. And so what is necessary is that all knowledge is within, all real knowledge, heartfelt knowledge is all within the person. So all a teacher does is not teach but actually help the person to know how much they really know if they are open-hearted enough to look, to see. Just like you were saying.

Rick: We were talking earlier about how this ultimate reality is not just sort of a flat, dry presence merely, but it’s intelligence. And so the implication is that obviously awakening to that level of life, one realizes one’s essential identity with or unity with that level of intelligence which is governing the universe. In other words, one is with God, I and my Father are one. So imagine the richness of that experience. It’s not just sort of, okay, I’m a colorless blob of being, it’s more like I am that fount of creativity which gives rise to everything, which governs the cells, the galaxies and all. And obviously I’m not speaking here of I as an individual because I couldn’t create a housefly but I as that intelligence which expresses itself as me, as you, as this, as everything.

Burt: Beautiful. Yes, that was beautifully put. Yeah, exactly.

Rick: So what haven’t we covered? I mean this is very sweet and you’ve kind of given us a little biographical sketch of how things have developed for you. Is there something important I’m leaving out?

Burt: No, we covered the major theme, the presence, that there’s only one presence appearing as you and me and everyone else and it is all we’re striving for, it is all we ever want, it is all we ever seek and it is all we are and it’s eternal. And I guess that kind of sums it up.

Rick: And it’s all this is as well.

Burt: This is, yes, that includes everything. Nothing is left out, nothing.

Rick: That to me is what non-duality really means, it’s not just that there’s sort of a non-dual unified state at some deep level, it’s more like this is the non-dual, all this is that.

Burt: All this is, when I look into my cat’s eyes I see God. Some people might think I’m exaggerating, no, I feel it, I feel it. I talk to my cat and I hold him and he’s incredibly loving, purring, and so affectionate and yes, I see God.

Rick: And I can’t honestly say that I always see that at all, there’s a deep intuitive sense of it and understanding of it but I feel that there’s a great degree of maturation again, there’s that word, which will take place for me over time. For instance, if I were suddenly to somehow step into the perspective that Ramana Maharshi had of life, I’m sure I would notice a vast contrast between what I’m experiencing and what he was experiencing. So I just want to suggest that these people who say, “Oh, I went to this weekend seminar, I am awakened, I got it, non-dual, everything’s an illusion,” we’re all just in kindergarten.

Burt: Yes, yes, yes, we’re growing all the time. There’s never a time when we can say, “I’ve arrived.” So if somebody asks me, “Are you awake, are you enlightened?” All I can say is, I laugh, because we are, we just are. No one is enlightened.

Rick: Or you could say, “To a degree, but there’s more, you know, whatever.”

Burt: Yeah, much more, just expanding all the time. That’s beautiful, there is no ego in it at all, it’s just this oneness, this love.

Rick: And some people, if they hear you talk that way, they’ll say, “Oh, you haven’t given up the search, you should give up the search and then you’ll really be there.” Have you heard that way of speaking?

Burt: No, they haven’t said that to me, but there is no search anymore because it’s here. I see it everywhere, if I grab my cat and I look into his eyes, I am there. I look at anybody in the street, I’m there. So it’s not a matter of reading or studying about it or seeking, there’s nowhere to go, there’s nothing to grasp, it’s here. It’s love, it’s just presence, it’s just breath, it’s just breathing, it’s looking, touching, feeling, knowing, it’s all of these.

Rick: Yeah, it’s very beautiful. And yet, paradoxically, you were saying that certainly there is more growth yet to undergo. So I’m just bringing out the point that acknowledging the fact that there could be more growth doesn’t mean that you’re some kind of desperate seeker who’s overlooking the beauty of now, the two go hand in hand.

Burt: That’s right, that’s right. Being and the becoming are one. The two opposites are one, this is the movement of life.

Rick: Well, you’re a beautiful man, you have this sort of loving beauty in your eyes. in fact, you look a lot like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi did when he got old and lost his hair, he had a facial structure similar to yours and that knowingness in his eyes. He was my teacher for many years. So I really appreciate having had this opportunity to speak with you.

Burt: Oh, you’re very beautiful, Rick. Thank you, thank you. It was a joy being with you.

Rick: It takes one to know one, as they say. So let me just conclude by saying that you have been listening to an interview with Burt Harding. My name is Rick Archer and this is a show which is called Buddha at the Gas Pump, the implication of that term being that in ordinary, everyday circumstances you may meet some enlightened people in this day and age, they’re everywhere. We do one once a week, they’re available on YouTube as a podcast, on Facebook, and the home page for it all is batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, they’re all archived there and you can find links to higher resolutions of the videos on YouTube and Facebook and so on. My next interview will actually be tomorrow night, although you won’t see this in one day after you see this one because it takes a while to produce them, but it’s going to be with Genpo Roshi, who is a Zen teacher. So thank you again, Burt, and thank you to all my listeners, and we will see you next time.