David Buckland Transcript - Buddha at the Gas Pump

Summary

David Buckland describes his decades-long path through Transcendental Meditation, witnessing, deep sleep awareness, and subtle spiritual experiences. The discussion explores the difference between spiritual experiences and liberation, the unfolding of consciousness, and how to discern meaningful insight from distracting phenomena.

Questions This Interview Explores

What is witnessing, and how does it differ from ordinary observation?
Can awareness continue through dreaming and deep sleep?
What is the difference between spiritual realization and liberation?
How can seekers distinguish genuine spiritual insight from misleading subtle experiences?

Key takeaways

Witnessing is a shift from identifying as the person to resting as awareness itself.
Awareness can remain continuous through waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
A stable witness does not necessarily mean the ego has been liberated.
Spiritual experiences may unfold gradually and require time for the mind to understand them.
Subtle beings and visions should be judged by their feeling and value, not their appearance.
Listening from inner quiet can reveal more than listening only through the thinking mind.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is my good friend, David Buckland. And I say he’s my good friend not because we’ve grown up together or spent hours and hours and hours together, but I feel an affinity with David. We’ve sort of grown close through electronic media over the last couple of years, sending back and forth tons of emails.

David has helped me tremendously with the BATGAP website. He’s very good with technical things, but he also has a great deal of spiritual wisdom and experience. He has a blog called Davidya.ca, which is sort of a play on words. His name is David, and vidya means knowledge in Sanskrit, so it’s some knowledge from David, although he doesn’t claim to have originated it, for the most part.

David: A friend of mine gave it to me as a nickname, and I found out the meaning later.

Rick: And David is one of these people who has been fairly reluctant to do an interview, which is always a good sign that he’d be a great guest on the show, because he doesn’t claim himself to be a spiritual teacher or anything and has wanted to keep a fairly low profile. But finally, he decided to do an interview. The context of this is that I’m up in British Columbia. We’re now at a retreat place where David and I are going to be doing a retreat with Lorn and Lucia Hoff. We’re looking out over a kiwi orchard, and maybe I’ll get some footage of the place. It’s very beautiful. It’s a kiwi lodge near Ladysmith, British Columbia.

David: On Vancouver Island.

Rick: On Vancouver Island. And I always like to do interviews in person if possible, although over Skype is fine. But somehow there’s just an even deeper mind meld when you can actually sit with a person and have a conversation as opposed to doing it over Skype. At least that’s what I find. So I’m really pleased to be here, and I think you’re going to enjoy this interview. David has a lot of wisdom to share.

Listening from silence

People usually like to get a sense of who the guest is, what their background is, and, in a sense, what qualifications they have for being on the show, simply because anybody can spout philosophy. Anybody can read a bunch of Advaita books, for instance, and learn how to talk non-dual.

David: Dualistically.

Rick: Dualistically. But as I’ve quoted many, many times on the show, there’s a Tibetan proverb which says, Don’t mistake understanding for realization, and it goes on to say, Don’t mistake realization for liberation. And so perhaps if we were to just sketch out the course of your path, your spiritual path, over the last decades, it would give people a sense of who you are in that respect and what qualifications you have for talking about what we’re going to be talking about.

David: Okay. First, though, I would like to invite listeners to consider that they have a choice here. You can, of course, listen with the mind and hear a person tell a story, or you can settle into a quieter space and listen from the quietness to the quietness that’s there, the silence that’s speaking and the silence that’s listening. There’s much more magic in that part of it.

Listen from the quietness to the quietness that’s there.

Of course, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. Enjoy the interview. But there is that option you have for how you listen. It makes a difference.

Okay. Well, I guess the spiritual part of my story starts in my late teens. I got an interest in consciousness and brain stuff, and I was reading up about that. I started running into references to meditation and didn’t know anything about it. Then I saw a poster for TM, Transcendental Meditation, and I went out to a lecture. I thought it was interesting. I didn’t really relate to it too much, but the science—they had a booklet on some of the scientific research—and I found it compelling, so I thought I’d give it a try.

And, wow, yeah, my first meditation—boom!—into this really peaceful space, kind of a foggy but light space. I was really impressed. So I pretty quickly became a keener and started going to—

Rick: A keener?

David: A keener, yeah.

Rick: What’s that? Someone who’s keen?

David: Yeah, someone who’s—

Rick: Gung-ho?

David: Gung-ho, yeah.

Rick: Okay.

David: And took some weekend retreats and courses and went to a bunch of lectures and all that kind of stuff. I guess about nine months after I started, I was in northeast France on a six-month retreat to go deeper and learn to teach the meditation, TM.

Rick: Courchevel?

David: Vittel.

Rick: Vittel.

David: Yeah, a little after your time on your TTC. By that time, things had shifted a little bit. It was mostly videotapes from the earlier courses, a couple of years earlier, like you were on. So the first three months, I did a lot of purification.

Rick: What was that like, the purification?

David: Well, I was an anxious kid, and so there was lots of anxiety pouring out, a lot of restlessness. There was a fair bit of memorization in that part of the program, and so it was kind of like trying to memorize while you’re—

Rick: Purging.

David: Yes, purging. It’s like, Blech! It was fine, though. And at a certain point, I started having little brief, clear bits where the witness kicked in.

✨ The witness and pure awareness

The witness is kind of—it’s like an observer mode. You shift into this observing, whereas usual perception is that you’re a person here experiencing the world. But in witnessing, you kind of take a step back and you are awareness, observing the person and observing the world.

Rick: Yeah, and let’s just dwell on that for a second, because it’s not like you’re a person observing a person observing the world. It’s not like astral projection, where you’re separating one aspect of individuality from the rest of it and standing apart. Elaborate on what the witness is.

David: You’re shifting into consciousness itself, observing the person experiencing. You’re shifting into your deeper nature that’s underneath the mind and emotions and all those layers of experience.

Rick: And your deeper nature is not merely individual.

David: Right. It’s a more universal—

Rick: It’s everyone’s deeper nature.

David: Yeah, the shared, same consciousness.

Rick:Light that is one, though the lamps be many.

David: Yes. And so here and there, I kind of came in and out a few times.

Rick: In and out of witnessing.

David: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: So, in other words, it would persist for days sometimes?

David: At that point, no, it was mostly for hours.

Rick: Glimpses.

David: Yeah, little glimpses here and there, but it was a precursor. Then, in the second half, we went a little deeper, and at a certain point, we did what was called “rounding,” essentially cycles of yoga (asanas), pranayama, and meditation.

Rick: Yeah, and if anybody remembers the song “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles, there’s a refrain that goes, Look around, round, round. They’re referring to rounding, actually, on the course they did with Maharishi in India.

David: So I was on the floor, face down, doing yoga, and all of a sudden there was this brilliant blast of white light. It blew out all perception, just for a moment, and then perception started to come back again. For a moment, I could see through the floor and the wall of the room below, out onto the grounds. It was kind of like, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s some bit of flash.” I didn’t think too much of it, and I continued on and went to my meditation.

But then it became apparent after that that the witness stayed, and it never did stop after that. It became a constant background continuity, underlying all experience.

Rick: What happened when you slept at night?

David: Well, that was kind of interesting, actually. Basically, that witness stays through waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. At first, I’m dreaming, and I start manipulating the dreams and that kind of stuff.

Rick: Lucid dreaming?

David: Yeah, kind of like lucid dreaming. Then, going into deep sleep, watching the body fall asleep and become this immovable lump, and just basically being hypervigilant for a few days, over-observing and all that. Then I realized that if I was observing the mind sleeping, the mind was actually still awake.

Rick: Which is the question I was about to ask. You said that.

David: Yeah, because the senses were still active.

Rick: There’s some individuation still there.

David: Yeah. So I realized it was unnecessary and just kind of relaxed into it. Then there was just awareness. The body would go to sleep and the mind would go to sleep, and there was just this continuity of awareness.

The body would go to sleep and the mind would go to sleep, and there was just this continuity of awareness.

Rick: So, during that continuity of awareness, was it like, “I am aware of my…”? Was there awareness of the body, or was it complete—no sense of the body whatsoever, just awareness in and of itself, by itself, pure awareness?

David: Yes, it was awareness just by itself, kind of behind.

Rick: Not perceiving anything, because there’s nothing to perceive at that point, because the senses are shut down.

David: Right, yeah. So it was just observing. Well, “observing” isn’t even the right word there.

Rick: It’s too active a verb.

David: Yeah, it’s just kind of like presence, and that sense of continuity. That was the thing I really noticed: there was a continuity.

Rick: And let me ask you this. If it’s just presence, and there’s no sensory activity going on, no cognition, no cognitive functions going on, how do you even know that that presence is there?

David: Well, things will come up. A bit of a dream will happen, or some noise in the room will raise you up out of sleep a little bit, and then there’s a little bit more going on, and then it settles back down again. There’s just that sense of continuity, that sense of never—because there was a distinct shift. Before, there was a certain style of experience, and then this is a completely different style of experiencing. That distinctive difference never shifted back.

Rick: So is it kind of like there’s a bubbling up of some activity, some dream or something, and as it bubbles, there’s a realization of, “Oh, this presence which is here now in the midst of this little dream has been here previous to this, has been here all along, but now there’s some cognitive function that’s just gotten enlivened, and I recognize the presence has been here all along”? Is there anything of that flavor?

David: Yeah, kind of like that, but it’s not really thinking about that.

Rick: Well, that’s a big, long elaboration.

David: It just sort of is.

Rick: Just a recognition.

David: Yeah, just a sense of “isness” or “being” there that’s always there. Before that, though—and it’s interesting—the process becomes much clearer. You can actually observe the body waking up, the mind coming online, and the ego waking up. So the sense of “me” shows up again, which is gone during deep sleep. It’s kind of interesting in a certain kind of way. In deep sleep, we’re basically egoless, and that happens to us every day, but the actual process of waking up is a whole different, much harder thing to do consciously.

Rick: I think Shankara said something about how, during deep sleep, we sort of reside in the transcendent, but the vast majority of people aren’t aware of it, whereas the enlightened maintain that awareness during deep sleep. Didn’t he say that that’s one of the reasons why sleep is so rejuvenating—that we’re actually sort of resting in our true nature, albeit in an unconscious way for most people?

David: Yeah, and it’s also useful to make a note here. In the TM teaching Maharishi taught, witnessing full-time, particularly witnessing deep sleep, was the key marker for Cosmic Consciousness, or what is more commonly called Self-Realization. However, in my case, and I know several others, I didn’t actually… there wasn’t a liberation. There wasn’t that actual shift. It was like, close but no cigar. It’s kind of that the witness came online, but the ego remained identified. It took me a little time to get clear about that, because I didn’t have a context for it.

But yeah, that was the context. And it turns out that there are some people who have that kind of shift, and some teachers, or even teachings, speak of a pre-awakening stage that happens for some, where the witness comes online, but it doesn’t go all the way.

Kundalini, cognition, and cosmic knowledge

The mechanics are interesting. The Kundalini Vidya tradition talks about the energetic mechanics that are supporting that, and basically when the Kundalini Shakti rises up the spine and gets above the throat, that’s when the witness comes online. But at that point, the Kundalini is still unstable, so it comes and goes.

But if the Kundalini rises high enough to reach what’s called Makara, which is just above the third eye, which was the white-flash experience I had—not everybody has that with Makara, but it’s one of the symptoms—then Kundalini becomes stable and doesn’t go back down again, so the witness becomes full-time, ongoing.

Rick: And that’s more or less what happened to you.

David: Yeah, and just note, though, that’s not causal. It’s not that because I reached Makara, then the witness stayed online. It’s more like the energetics that support that continue, so the physiology can support it.

But I didn’t discover that understanding until much, much later. And then the whole thing made a lot more sense. Now, there’s a very small distance between Makara and the crown and awakening, but for some people, the process pauses there for the physiology to clean out more and that kind of stuff before it moves on.

Rick: Did that happen to you?

David: Yeah, so that’s basically what happened to me.

Rick: For decades, right?

David: Yeah, and several people I know, same thing. But also, at that point I was in my very early 20s and a late bloomer, so my physiology hadn’t finished growing and establishing, so it was a good thing in some ways to pause. But at the time, it wasn’t well understood what was taking place.

So then, about ten days later, I had my first, what I would describe as, a cognition. Now, a cognition is a kind of experience where you get a total experience, like, say, an object. Okay, I don’t have one. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. But say my finger.

Rick: Want an object? Here’s an object.

David: Okay, here’s an object. Okay, so I’m experiencing this object here, and I see this side of the object, and I might know something about how these are made or whatever like that, some details. But when you cognize an object, it’s like total knowledge of the object. You can see it from all sides simultaneously. It’s an entire history, its origins, the whole thing all happens together.

Rick: Really? So, in the case of this, you’d somehow see the metal being mined and smelted?

David: Yeah, okay, but in this case, it’s like I’m using a physical object, and cognitions usually aren’t physical objects, but more subtle stuff. And so, in this case, it’s Hiranya Garbha, the Sanskrit name for the golden egg. Basically, it’s the universe in seed form.

So essentially, what happened is there’s this big experience, and then it takes a long period of time. Well, it depends on the size of the cognition, but it takes a long period of time for that to be unpacked so that the mind can digest it, experience the different aspects and the understanding, and so on like that.

Rick: So did this cognition come in a flash? Did it last an hour?

David: Well, it’s like a door opened, and then there it was, and it’s been there ever since.

Rick: I see, so it’s been there ever since. So it’s there, but it took a long time to unpack and understand.

David: For the mind to unpack it, yeah, so the consciousness could experience it.

Rick: And why is that significant, this Hiranya Garbha thing?

David: Well, it’s basically understanding of the universe, where it comes from, how it functions, and the layers of its expression.

Rick: Okay, so an obvious question here would be, where does it come from? What are the layers?

David: Well, that’s a whole interview in itself.

Rick: We’ll leave it in here.

David: Yeah, so it’s a long process.

Rick: Well, I’ve got 14.7 billion years.

David: Yeah, creation is a very big space, and there are layers to the process from which it unfolds. We’re kind of getting ahead of ourselves here. So this was basically starting at where the universe begins. That kind of started to unfold during teacher training, and there were various other kinds of experiences, different kinds of things. We’re talking about the mid-’70s, though, so it’s a while back.

Now, one of the things for me has been interesting, though…

Rick: And you wouldn’t say, I suppose, that this Hiranya Garbha experience is any kind of a must-have experience in the course of one’s awakening. It’s just something you happen to have.

David: Yeah, something happened to happen here. There’s a process unfolding. I don’t know, for me, it’s kind of like I feel like I’m being trained. It’s like there’s this process taking place where it’s…

Rick: Something that God wanted in your particular toolkit.

David: Yeah, yeah. At first, I didn’t know why I knew this stuff. I’m not even awake. What’s all this stuff about? What’s this for? But of course, that was kind of meaningless. It was in the larger picture.

And so over the next… well, actually, at the end of the course—see, by that point on the courses, Maharishi would only come at the very end to make teachers. So, very briefly, he had a couple of meetings with us. He was really pleased with our progress, and three of us got a chance to speak with him at the end. I was lucky enough to have…

Rick: Privately or on the mic?

David: On the mic, yeah. And so I talked about the breakdown of the things that unfolded. He verified the experiences and said there’d be a lot more, which has worked out to be an understatement.

But anyway, I came back home to Canada and putzed around, attempting to try and teach meditation. But the process continued to unfold. One of the major themes for the next couple of years was unpacking that first cognition, but also unrolling the layers.

Forms of God and nested creation

And for me, it’s been interesting too, because when there’s been a major… like, it’s time to go another step deeper, one of the… I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term “Panchadevata,” the five forms of God.

So basically, one of the forms of God would show up and point out—just do a little pointing for the attention—and then I would say, “Oh, there’s that,” and then the next layer would unfold.

Rick: So give us an example of a form of God that would show up. I mean, what are you talking about? Krishna or something?

David: Well, actually, yes, in that case. But I mean, in the Vedic context, they talk about five specific gods, but those are basically just personifications of principles, you could say—fundamental principles. And so how they show up for any given individual will vary.

Rick: So if you’re growing up in a Native American context or something and never heard of the Vedas, and you were having this kind of unfoldment, maybe some Native American personification of the same principle would show up.

David: Exactly, exactly, yeah. So for me, the first one was Krishna, and so I was in this, what I now see as, a nested space with the golden egg, the universe unfolding.

Rick: Eyes closed, meditative kind of condition, right?

David: No, I can think about it any time. It’s always there. And it’s kind of like a part of the experience. It’s like, you know, I can… I don’t know, anyways. But anyways, Krishna shows up, and for me there was kind of an odd dynamic at first, because there was kind of…

Well, you know, there’s this thing about the personal God, and I had this concept about the personal God, and here’s this form of God showing up, and is this supposed to be my personal God? What is this? But of course, there was no kind of sense of devotion or anything there, and actually I was kind of like, “Oh, what’s this?”

Rick: Just to probe a little bit, when you say Krishna showed up, were you seeing the guy with the flute and the earrings and the whole…

David: Yeah, I called him a dancer at first.

Rick: Motilal Banarsidass poster?

David: Kind of like that, yeah. I mean, there are little variations in the personification.

Rick: And it’s 3D, and he’s kind of as real as you and I.

David: Oh yeah, yeah. And he’s dancing, and there’s the flute thing.

Rick: Interacting with you in some way.

David: And there isn’t really a conversation going on. There’s kind of like a… you know, but kind of making himself obvious.

Rick: Yeah.

David: But for me, there was… yeah, a little part I skipped over in there. I started becoming aware of what people would call “astral stuff,” subtle entities, after teacher training, when I came back to Canada.

At first, it was kind of entertaining, but I realized pretty quickly that they were basically looking for attention. If I asked questions, they were always happy to give me answers, but pretty quickly it became apparent they were just basically telling me stuff to keep my attention, and they didn’t really have any knowledge to offer or whatever. And I realized it was kind of a mistake. So I put that aside and gave it no attention.

Rick: Are they like lost souls, or humans who have sort of gotten into some limbo state, or what are they?

David: Oh, this is a little fuller than that, but not much. It’s kind of varied. There are people between lifetimes, and it depends on where they are in their process as to whether they’re able to take a supporting role, or whether they’re kind of just…

Rick: Like pests?

David: Yeah, yeah, kind of rabble is one of the terms I use sometimes. Whether it’s just kind of like looking for something to do, or whatever.

Rick: Well, there are people like that who are actually people, too.

David: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So having this being show up, it’s kind of like, “Ah, what’s this? Another weird thing?”

Rick: I see, so you were thinking maybe initially Krishna was another one of these…

David: Yeah, somebody making up some appearance. Because on some levels, they’re basically made of mind stuff, right? So they can appear however… that’s the part of the personalization thing I was talking about. They can appear however they wish to, and also your own expectations will tend to influence that.

Angels are a good example. I mean, you see depictions of angels, and they’re almost always kind of like flowing robes, big wings, and stuff like that. But if you think about it, why would a subtle being need wings? Physical wings, or whatever.

Rick: Is there any air there that you need to…

David: Yeah, exactly. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing it that way. It’s just useful to be aware that that dynamic is going on, so you’re not confused by the appearance. It’s what’s behind that that’s more important. The feeling value, that’s where you want to look, because it’s the feeling value that will tell you whether something is divine or less worth your attention. So, how they feel.

And so, with Krishna, it was kind of like this: “What is this?” But after a short time, it became, “Okay, what’s this? Find out what this is about.” And he kind of made these gestures. Then I noticed there was a feature in the sky, so to speak. “Sky” is kind of a funny word for it, but there was this feature I hadn’t noticed before. When I put my attention on that, it kind of… the consciousness went through that, into this next level.

And so I stepped out of the universe space into the larger creation space, which holds many universes. And by that I don’t mean parallel or other-dimensional universes. They’re quite distinct universes.

Rick: All more or less in the same dimension, just like bubbles in ginger ale?

David: Well, dimension is the wrong word. Dimension is a direction in space. It’s not… People use that word really poorly a lot. But yeah, in that, it’s more that space is nested. So there are infinities within infinities, and you can kind of step back through them.

There are infinities within infinities, and you can kind of step back through them.

Rick: So it’s not like you’re saying that in the vastness of all existence or all space, there’s a universe here, and a universe here, and a universe here, like separate little… just the way galaxies are like that?

David: No, it’s like each universe has its own space. But that space is within a still larger space.

Rick: A larger space.

David: But it’s not really a space in the sense that we would say space. It’s a space in consciousness.

Rick: So, just in the sense that galaxies each have their own space, and altogether they’re within a larger space. Yes?

David: Kind of, except it’s a distinct space.

Rick: Distinct space, okay.

David: Yeah. If you’re within the universe space, you’re not in… Well, you’re still nested, but it’s a distinct space. You wouldn’t necessarily be aware that there was something more.

Rick: You wouldn’t see the other universe over there someplace.

David: No, exactly, yeah. It’s not in the same space. It has its own space.

Rick: All right. And this is a whole topic of discussion.

David: Yeah, yeah, I can go on. Any of these things could go on for hours, but I just want to put the thing in some context here.

Rick: Right.

David: So that kind of unfolded in several layers over time. And the same thing kind of happened where another form of God showed up and pointed to look a certain way. Then there was kind of just the attention, and what was behind that would become apparent. So, over the next couple of years, I kind of worked up to the top part of creation.

Rick: What does that mean?

David: Well, to the mind of God, I guess—basically, the origins of creation itself, this creation. And then it kind of stalled out there.

Well, actually, at a certain point, I became aware that there were other creations as well that are very, very different from ours. Oh, that’s actually a point to make, too. The other universes are also distinct. They have their own laws of nature.

Rick: Different from ours?

David: Yeah.

Rick: So they might not have gravity. They might have something else?

David: Well, no, it’s not that different, but there are sort of similar principles that are functioning. The combinations are slightly different, so the expression is different.

Rick: So, for the skeptics in the audience, how do we know that you just don’t have a vivid imagination and you’re dreaming up all this stuff?

David: Well, I couldn’t imagine half of it, I can tell you.

Past lives and the unfolding of a life

So, things went along, and I’m not sure anything else is of any significance along in there. But eventually, I became more involved in normal living, and got a job, and got married, and had a couple of children—boys, who are now young adults. I’m very proud of them.

Rick: And all this stuff was kind of going on in the background, what you’re doing, all that?

David: Yeah, yeah. It was kind of just developing along—not as dramatically, not as major changes, but just kind of progressing along.

Then I ended up in this situation where I was working for the police, basically. I was finding myself working for the police. I’m a kind of inner-directed, philosophical kind of guy. A police department is not where I expect to find myself.

Rick: Were you a cop, or were you doing some computer work?

David: It was kind of a combination. I was a sworn officer, but I was developing evidence-control systems and managing the evidence. I was also a quartermaster, issuing the sidearms and uniforms and all that stuff, and doing various kinds of roles like that.

It was kind of a fish-out-of-water experience. So there was this question in my mind: What’s going on here?

And what happened over time is that I started to have these brief little flashes, sort of experiences—things that would come up, sort of like memories, but weren’t familiar. Then, over time, they kind of opened up, and I started to become aware that I was remembering prior lifetimes.

One of the things that was interesting was that the easiest way to remember an older memory like that is through strong memories, which basically usually means challenging in some way—difficult memories. And so that can be the doorway in. It’s not an easy process, because you have to be comfortable enough to be willing to see that, whatever.

Rick: So, for instance, if you had been in Auschwitz or something, you have a strong memory, and you have to be comfortable enough to be able to relive that to some extent.

David: Yeah, and sort of, I guess, have the platform to be willing to know how to purify that, to have the tools to be able to clear that. Otherwise, you’re just basically bringing that old trauma back into your life now.

Rick: Retraumatizing yourself.

David: Yeah, so you don’t really want to go there. But anyway, for me, it was over a period of time—a couple of years. It gradually unfolded, and it became clear that the circumstances of why I was working for the police, and indeed why this marriage and so on, a lot of details about my life, were a direct spin-off of my previous one.

Rick: Which had been?

David: Well, in that case, I was born into a military family in India, and there was an arranged marriage. But the woman that I was supposed to marry was in love with somebody else.

I had already had a prior lifetime in an ashram, and the military was not comfortable. So I made the decision to withdraw into an ashram again and not to pursue the family dharma or whatever, or marry this woman, so she could marry this other guy instead. That decision was very, very difficult for me. It left a residual.

And so what happened in this lifetime was that I unfolded the other decision. I did marry her. I did have that paramilitary career. Then, when that was resolved, that whole thing wound down, and it was on to another chapter. So I was kind of a little chapter in there.

And that’s kind of gradually unfolded over time, more and more in different ways. I don’t put a lot of attention on it. It’s the past. But in the context, it puts the life in a larger context, so it’s interesting from that point of view. So it’s not a big thing to emphasize or anything, but it’s context.

Oh, and there is that question again about imagination and all that. But what happened for me at a certain point was that, just gradually over time, there would be little details that would come up. Like, three lifetimes ago, I wrote a book, and I looked it up, and there’s a real book.

Rick: You should claim royalties.

David: I don’t think it’s selling anymore. It’s an old, rare book now.

Rick: What was it about?

David: Philosophy.

Rick: Cool. As an Indian or a Westerner?

David: No, a Westerner—a British person. And I spent a lot of time going back and forth to Paris and studying with the philosophers there, too.

Rick: In that lifetime?

David: Yeah, in that lifetime.

Rick: Interesting. Anybody we would have heard of?

David: I don’t remember enough. I haven’t explored it enough. But I know the general context of it, and I learned a few things from that, too. So it’s interesting. But it’s not something I think about much now.

It’s interesting, actually. Now, over time, there’s been this whole series of different ways of experiencing time.

Rick: So you weren’t seeking out memories of past lives or anything? These were just kind of coming to you.

David: Yeah, but there was that element of me trying to understand my current life.

Rick: Curiosity.

David: Like, what’s going on with this current life? Why am I in this situation? And that kind of helped me be willing to look and to encourage that to come out.

So, I mean, it’s certainly not a necessary thing on the path. Some people never go into that. Some people are very awake and never bother going there. It’s the past. Who needs it?

Rick: The lesser-developed states.

David: But if you have richer karma, then sometimes it can be interesting to explore.

So gradually, more and more, my life was more householder-focused: supporting the family and home renovations, and all the usual kinds of busyness with a young family. I went through a career change, and that’s when I shifted more into technology.

So, fast-forward a bunch of years, and then my marriage broke up at the time. I left my old business, which I had helped found. So a bunch of outer things shifted. I started reconnecting with some old friends.

And it ended up that people would just show up. I went to a… This whole spiritual thing became more lively again. So the cycle came around again.

I reconnected with some old friends, went to a few satsangs, remet some other ones, and so on. Then, along in that process, I started hearing about Lorn and Lucia. They were just teaching locally in Alberta at that time, in the Canadian prairies.

Then, at a certain point in ’07, they started making their satsangs available by Skype. So I started listening, and then we started doing this Skype daisy-chain thing to connect people all over the place.

It was really fragile. It could crash, and we’d have to reconnect everybody all the time. It would be noisy, and half the time you couldn’t hear him. But, as he said, it didn’t matter.

David: But after a couple of calls there, I was just sitting, listening, like I talked about at the very beginning, about just listening from silence. And he used the word “surrender” for the first time that I noticed. And I just heard the word differently. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but just kind of like something clicked, something let go. And it’s kind of like I fell down this transparent tube or funnel and clicked. And something very distinctively clicked, shifted, popped, whatever you want to call it.

Something clicked, something let go.

Rick: This is just over Skype?

David: Yeah, just sitting, listening. And so I wasn’t sure what this was, but it was interesting because for a couple of days, I couldn’t figure out how to meditate. Because the person that meditated was not there anymore. It’s like, “Where is this person?” And it’s like, “Way, way off, like miles away.” It was just really weird. And it’s like, “How do I meditate?”

Rick: From a distance, the house is seen reverberating in that light.

David: Yeah. But it kind of integrated better after a short time, and then I was able to kind of exist with the person better. And I guess it was about—this was on a Wednesday night—and on a Friday morning I woke up and I just knew. It was just clear what this was.

Rick: What was it?

David: Well, that I had shifted, that there had been that shift from… So the consciousness that had been awake there as the witness all these decades woke up to itself, and that’s the key change. It’s not just it waking up, but it has to wake up to itself in there, and then consciousness is awake to itself through this apparent form. So the shift finally took place.

The consciousness that had been awake there as the witness all these decades woke up to itself.

And then things moved quickly again through that cycle. I went on my first retreat with Lorn and Lucia that summer. Lorn verified everything, and it was just really a rich period, a lot of bliss.

And what’s interesting, too, about the bliss is it’s not like your idea, “Okay, you’re going to be kind of happy at some point in there,” or whatever. But when the bliss kicks in, it can come on really strong sometimes. Sometimes it just opens, and sometimes it’s just like, “Bam!” But it’s not once. There are layers of it. It gets bigger. There’s a section in the Upanishads where it talks about 100 times the bliss of whatever is this, and 100 times the bliss of that. And it’s kind of like you step up through that over time. And it’s like this blasting bliss.

Tom Traynor talked about it, for example, in his BATGAP interview. Actually, it is funny, too, because a couple of people have commented to me that you’d better hope it doesn’t happen in public, because you’re just kind of rendered this bawling and laughing out loud, because the happiness is just so intense. And one time for me, I was driving down the road in my truck, and all of a sudden, just, “Blam!” And I was bawling and laughing out loud, and the sun comes out, blaring down on my truck. Blaring? That’s not the right word, but just shining down on my truck. And I have the radio going, and Green Day’s “I’m so effing happy I could cry” comes on the radio. But fortunately, my body is kind of continuing to drive the truck properly. So it’s kind of like there’s this graded process of the bliss kicking up in there.

Rick: Why do you feel that that happens after a shift like that?

David: Well, it’s not the shift itself. For me, one of the things I talk about is this distinction between the process of Atman and consciousness, and the process of sattva, purity or clarity. They’re kind of like these two parallel processes, the Shiva and the Shakti side, the male and female parts of the equation. It’s together that you get the fullness.

Non-dual circles tend to really emphasize the Shiva side, the consciousness side. And some of the energy healers and ascension teachings and stuff emphasize the sattva side. But what you really want is both together.

And the bliss—we have what they call in the Vedas “koshas,” which basically means sheaths. So our bodies are composed of a series of layers. And we have our physical, the food body, literally, and then the prana body, the energy body behind that, and then the mental body behind that, and then the intellect body, which is where we also experience fine feelings and intuition and such like that. And then behind that is the bliss body. And so it’s basically there all the time.

It’s just that the noise and unsettledness and fog and whatever in the mind and emotions is kind of like clouds, fog, dust. Maharishi used the example of the elephants stirring up the dust.

Rick: Russian dolls are a good metaphor for this, and the doll within the doll within the doll.

David: The physical body is the little one in the middle.

Rick: Ah, interesting.

David: Yeah, so basically, once there’s enough clarity, then the bliss will come online. And like I mentioned, as there’s more and more clarity, it steps up.

Rick: Yeah, and when you’re experiencing surges of it, like you described, probably it just means that certain channels are clearing. And each time a channel of some sort clears, then there’s a new surge.

David: Well, a new opening. Yeah, I’m not sure I would make it quite that simplistic, but when another layer of fog is clear, then it can come up another level.

Rick: And there might be some physiological correlate to that.

David: Yeah, and the other part of it that’s really interesting is how quickly we get used to it. It’s like this blasting thing, and in a couple of hours it’s normal. So this whole new level of happiness—and it’s normal. But it can still take time to integrate. I remember one time in the next year after that, they sent me home from work because I was sick.

Rick: Not because you were laughing uncontrollably.

David: No, not because of that. I was quite physically sick and I didn’t realize it. And I was kind of like, I got home and I’m sitting down and I’m like, “Am I sick?” And it’s like I realized, you know, my nose is pouring and it’s like, yeah, I have a nasty earache and the whole thing. I hadn’t even really noticed. It was just kind of like this background.

Rick: Because you’re feeling so darn blissful.

David: Yeah, so of course things integrated better after that. It took a little time, but it was a little more integrated. So yeah, I can pay attention to what the body is doing and if it needs some attention.

Rick: They say Ramana Maharshi, when he had cancer and he was screaming in pain and people said, “Oh, Ramana, we’re so sorry you’re suffering like that.” And he’s like, “Are you kidding? I’m not suffering. I’m in a blissful state. You’re not seeing but a bit of what my reality is here.”

David: Yeah, that’s just the surface part of it. Yeah, and that’s a useful point, too. Just because suffering ends doesn’t mean pain ends, and it doesn’t mean that emotions end. I mean, I certainly find emotions now far bigger and richer than they used to be. Much fuller, the whole spectrum.

Rick: Less constricted.

David: Yeah.

Rick: They have a larger context in which to play.

David: Yeah, and for the most part they come up… Yeah, we’re south of the airport.

Rick: They’re not bombing us, though.

David: Yeah. So they come up, they’re experienced, and then they subside, they resolve.

There’s no resistance to the experience normally. Not perfect or anything, but… But that kind of leads me into the sort of second… About two months after the shift, then the GC phase, the God Consciousness. And that’s part of actually the sattva side of the equation.

✨ God Consciousness and Unity

Rick: Interesting. So just to interject. So you went through all this stuff that you’ve described, and there were these cognitions of Krishna and the mind of God and all that stuff. And that was all prior to actual Self-Realization, which is sometimes referred to as Cosmic Consciousness, which is just basically the full awakening of consciousness to itself in the context of living a life—waking, dreaming, sleeping. And so all that was leading up to that Cosmic Consciousness stage, which is actually quite intermediary in the scheme of things, as you’re going to continue to describe.

David: It’s a key shift, though. It’s a very key shift. It’s the foundation of everything that happens afterwards. And it’s something that’s felt throughout creation. And it’s this key… Yeah, it’s a very key shift, that Self-Realization. It’s very important.

Rick: Fundamental, foundational.

David: Yes, fundamental. But yes, it’s chicken feed. It’s like every time you have a major shift, it’s like everything before it was kindergarten. You’re back in kindergarten, and everything before it was pre-kindergarten. It’s a complete… You kind of start over in certain ways.

Rick: Take care.

David: Yeah, yeah. So God Consciousness, in the TM context, is taught as there’s Cosmic Consciousness and God Consciousness, then Unity. But if there isn’t a lot of the sattva development, then GC can be very…

Rick: Sattva meaning purity.

David: Purity, yeah. There can be very little… Yeah, there can be very little awareness of that. And in fact, some traditions even poo-poo it and talk about it as delusional or a mistake. But if the Self-Realization is there, then actually you have the platform where that can unfold. And what I described before is sometimes thought of as subtle perception and GC types. But in this context, it was experiences. It wasn’t the value of the consciousness itself, of the state itself.

Rick: Because with God Consciousness, what happens?

David: There’s this process I talked about before about the Kundalini rising to the crown and awakening. Then there’s a descent. Shakti has risen, joined Shiva, then the two descend together. And when they get to the heart is the GC phase. And if there is enough clarity, then there’s this incredible blossoming at the heart. There’s just like love just blasting out.

It was kind of funny. At the time, I was single and there was no object. I’m not particularly devotional, so I don’t have a…

Rick: A Devata?

David: An ishta devata. And there wasn’t a…

Rick: You didn’t have a partner.

David: And my guru relationship wasn’t devotional like that. But for me, it was what they called the Upaguru, which is basically the mate. That’s the sort of form that’s more comfortable to me, but there wasn’t a mate. And so essentially, one of my friends, whom I highly respected, became an object for a short while.

Rick: Man, woman?

David: Woman, yeah. As an object for the love to flow through.

Rick: Did you have an actual relationship with her, or was it more like just an idolization or a deep appreciation?

David: Yeah, a deep appreciation. And so we went through this curious thing as friends.

Rick: What did she make of it?

David: I don’t know. I won’t speak for her. But it was…

Rick: So you’re saying it wasn’t even romantic. It was more like just this pure devotional kind of thing.

David: Yeah, I needed a vehicle for the love to go through.

Rick: I totally understand.

David: It was just kind of everywhere, and I needed somewhere for it to go. And so it just happened to be we were spending some time together. Because what we were finding—there’s a thing I call resonance. It’s essentially darshan, but there are individuals that you resonate with more than others. And as the awakening gets higher and higher, then more and more people will resonate with you. But with the basic awakening, there’s a slightly smaller range.

Anyways, we were quite resonant, so spending time together was like amplifying the silence, just by having tea together or whatever. And so we were spending a little extra time together right at that point, and it just happened to be that… So it was an interesting episode. So there was this huge flowing of love and a much deeper sense. Because before that, there was perception of the Divine, but not the Divine itself—the real Divine. Now there was the love and the oomph.

Rick: So you mentioned—you termed it “God-Consciousness.” It’s best not to rub the wire because it picks the sound up. You termed it “God-Consciousness,” so I guess the question, to paraphrase Tina Turner, was, “What’s God got to do with it?” Because you found a friend, a human friend, that you were channeling your devotion to. But why would we attach the word “God” to this state?

David: Well, that’s the expression, because what I’m expressing is the Divine. It’s not that she was—well, she was kind of my God, whatever, in a sense, in a broad kind of sense.

Goddess, yeah. In a sense of that process.

Rick: Would it be fair to say that you were appreciating her as an expression of God, so you were feeling devotion to God in the form of this woman?

David: Yeah, like namaste, but it’s also that love that’s bursting forth is the flow of the Divine itself. It’s that expression of the Divine. And so it has that flavor of—you might not like the God word, whatever like that.

Rick: I love the God word. I’m just trying to understand how you’re using it.

David: Yeah, but it’s just that when it’s an actual expression. Like before I mentioned, I met Krishna, and he’s doing his thing, but it was kind of like, “Who is this guy? What’s this about?” There wasn’t a God-devotional relationship going on there. So it was a very different thing.

So the recognition that there was the Divine, but it was on the level of experience, not on the level of a much deeper value of the Divine—understanding how the Divine moves and flows through everything and so on. So a much deeper value of what had been there before unfolded.

And then there was another shift that happened about two months after that. It kind of came in stages. It was an interesting coincidence. A friend of mine was watching a DVD of Adyashanti and Loch Kelly talking called The Journey After Awakening. And it’s basically on this phase between initial awakening and Unity. They said, “They’re describing your experience. You should come over here.” And so I watched it, and there was this one other thing to happen. They called it the barbecue.

Rick: Loch called it that?

David: Loch called it that in the discussion. And basically what happens is the descent reaches the gut. And a very, very long time ago, in the cycles of time, consciousness—without getting into this big whole description here—basically consciousness goes through these rising and falling cycles through time. So there’s higher consciousness, people are more awake.

Rick: You mean like yugas or something?

David: Yes, exactly. So there’s higher consciousness, people are more awake, happier times, and then we go into darker times, and then we cycle back up again. It’s just like the seasons. And during the last descent, there was a place where there was a somewhat precipitous drop, and people lost their connection with the Divine fairly suddenly. And so it created this kind of grip, grasping. And what we grasped at was the individuality, what was still there, the sense that I am here. And so it’s this core grip in the gut that is the core identity.

Adyashanti actually talks about this too—head, heart, gut. He describes it in some of his material. And so that’s not conscious until that point, usually, and so it became conscious. It released quite quickly, fortunately. And it was interesting for me. I might not have even noticed it, except for the fact that I knew about this, the barbecue step. But it was kind of like this anomalous experience where there’s this really strong—not exactly fear, but a kind of thing—right out of nowhere, and it processed away.

And then what I realized was there was no longer a David there anymore. And for a couple of weeks in there, I took to dropping personal pronouns altogether.

Rick: It’s very annoying to talk with.

David: Yeah, exactly, one of those annoying phases. So I referred to the body-mind as the unit. It was kind of an odd stage, but it was fairly short.

And then I went on another retreat with Lorn and Lucia, and then one evening I was lying in bed. It was dark in the room, with very little light leaking in. I could still see there was a room there. But at that point I realized it was all gone.

Rick: All the David-ness?

David: Well, not just the David-ness, but everything. All that history of cognitions and experiences and the awakening, and all that stuff was gone. Just emptied out. And so I’m kind of looking around this dark room, and it’s like, “The room’s still here.” Like all creation, the whole thing is gone, right? But it’s like, “The room’s still here. What’s with this?”

So basically what happened was all the previous stuff collapsed, the shift took place, and then I was able to bring it back again into that new context.

All that history of cognitions and experiences and the awakening, and all that stuff was gone. Just emptied out.

So there are kind of those three stages of Self-Realization, Unity, and Brahman. We’ll get to that in a bit.

And then there’s the progression of refinement, the sattva, the clarity taking place with the heart and the refinement and so on, parallel to that. Whereas this first stage, as I mentioned, they begin with the realization. There’s a shift in being, and then everything kind of develops from that.

With the other ones, it’s a progression to a climax. And every time we have a shift in our stage of consciousness, it puts all that refinement, the sattva stuff, in a new context.

So before there was God-Consciousness, and now what takes place after that is bringing that stuff back into Unity, and so you get Refined Unity.

So at first, though, there was just this shift, and there was no longer a division between inside and outside. It was just like a continuum. And I contained everything. I was the container of the world, and the world was no longer separate.

Now this changes the witness dynamic, though. It’s no longer that you’re a detached witness, because the world is you also. And so the observing is still taking place, but it’s no longer separate from the contents. Essentially, the observer and observed collapse together, leaving only observing—the process of experience, the devata value, the divine value. So that kind of process took place.

And Unity is kind of different, too, in that it has a series of stages, because you’re basically unifying through experiencing. What you experience, you become. And so you go through this process of experiencing, bringing back the refined perception stuff in this new context, and just old memories, and what’s out here, and all this stuff. And as it’s experienced, it’s integrated into this one wholeness, progressively, and it goes progressively deeper over time.

And this isn’t like a concept of oneness, or a feeling of oneness, or anything like that. This is on the level of consciousness itself.

So, for example, on the level of the senses, if I touch you, I feel you with my hand, but I also am you experiencing being touched, simultaneously. They’re both happening at the same time.

Rick: But you don’t feel the sensation on my shoulder the way I feel the sensation on my shoulder.

David: Yes.

Rick: You do?

David: Yes, not now, but at the time.

Rick: When you touched me?

David: No, but I mean when I was in that stage.

Rick: You’re no longer in that stage.

David: Yeah, and now I don’t pay attention to that stuff, because it’s too much information. But I’m just saying, because it’s happening on the level of consciousness, it’s inclusive of everything. And so it’s inclusive of all your levels of experience.

You put your attention on a tree or a dog, and you experience what that being is experiencing. But you experience it from where you are, not from where they are, because it’s your consciousness that’s doing the experiencing. So this isn’t astral traveling or empath stuff.

Rick: So if there’s suffering, do you experience suffering?

David: Yes, but it’s not your suffering you’re experiencing.

Rick: Like, you wouldn’t want to get a job at Red Lobster throwing lobsters into the boiling water or something, because you’d be experiencing what the lobsters are experiencing?

David: Yeah, but that’s empathic stuff, and that’s if you’re engaging that. Because there is always the choice, like with the refined perception. You can look at the tree, or you can look at the tree and see the energy flowing and the dynamics going on with the tree, or in Unity experience what it is to be a tree. That’s how you’re using your attention.

But if you’re being a householder, living in the world, doing things, there’s a tree. It’s fine. You don’t need to look at every single tree and see what it’s doing.

Rick: Too much information, I think.

David: Yeah, exactly. You still have a life to live here in your physical body, and your physical life, and responsibilities, and all that.

Rick: But not having all those cognitions of every tree and so on doesn’t deprive you of the essential value that has somehow dawned in your experience.

David: Right, right. Yeah, and you can filter the information too. So you can experience that they are suffering, but not experience their suffering, or not make it your suffering.

Because there’s that distinction, again, between suffering and pain. I mean, you cut yourself, there’s pain, but how you respond to that makes a difference to whether you’re suffering with it. You make a drama about, “Oh, this never should have happened. I shouldn’t have done that. That was really stupid of me.” You get into a big drama about it. Or you just experience the pain itself.

And one of the things that’s interesting about pain—and that’s physical, not emotional pain, not both—is that when you acknowledge it, it will back way off. It’s when you resist pain. It’s trying to get the signal to you that something’s wrong.

Rick: One thing I wonder about when I hear that is that it seems like it depends upon the degree of pain. Like, to be crucified, for instance, and not suffer during the process would, it seems to me, require a very profoundly established state of enlightenment. Certainly, the pain’s going to be there, whereas to stub your toe and not suffer would require a much lesser degree of enlightenment.

David: Yeah, yeah. Or attachment, really. And that’s actually the important distinction in there, because that’s more related to the sattva side again. Because people can wake up and still be very attached to certain kinds of things.

Now, there is this kind of process. I kind of jokingly referred to it as the three amigos before—am-egos. Because with awakening, there’s the loss of the concept of a me, an end of the sense of a me that’s an individual separate from other things like that.

And then with the heart, there’s a loss of the emotional drivers of that. So after the GC phase, it actually gets much easier to wind down some of the old concepts and mind things and stuff like that.

And then with Unity, it’s a loss of that core “I” sense, which is the origin of that in the first place. So once Unity is established, then that’s very clear.

So someone who’s somewhere in the middle there is quite likely going to still be having some dynamics. They blew the middle out, but there are still old habits of being a certain way about stuff, or resisting certain kinds of experiences, or whatever. Some of that old dynamic is still there, able to revive bits and pieces, until that settles out.

Unpacking, sometimes it’s called, or whatever. So the shift itself is key, but there’s a process that happens after that where it has to be unloaded.

From Unity to Brahman

David: I mean, Adyashanti talks about having a honeymoon after the shift, followed by the mind trying to come back and reassert itself, as being quite common. And the thing about the West, too, is we have a real mind-dominated culture, so that’s more likely to happen. There tends to be a little less of that sattva side, clarity side of the equation, the heart side—more mind, less heart kind of thing—in the West. I mean, there’s certainly all kinds of variations in that, but yeah, some of that stuff is more prominent in the West.

Rick: Okay.

David: So, yeah, the Unity process unfolded over a number of years. I’m losing track of all the details now, but it was a gradual, progressive, bigger-and-bigger kind of completeness, until it reached a point where consciousness became aware of itself at a really global level.

So there’s consciousness aware of itself, Atman, self-aware Atman, aware of itself both globally and at every point within itself. And essentially, you and I are different points within itself, points of observation within that one wholeness, non-separate, like little waves on the ocean. I have a little graphic of that on my blog. And in this global awareness.

And once consciousness reached that point where it knows itself fully, there’s an interesting thing that can take place. It has always been consciousness aware of itself. But when it knows itself fully, it can stop looking in and look beyond itself. Which is kind of interesting, because when you talk to somebody who’s, even in Unity, it’s kind of like, “What are you talking about?” Because consciousness is infinite, it’s eternal, its existence is timeless.

Rick: So how can it be beyond it?

David: Yeah, how can there be an origin?

Rick: Beyond it implies there’s something outside of it.

David: Yeah, yeah. And what happens is it turns and it sees the origins of itself.

Rick: Consciousness has origins?

David: Yeah, so consciousness has a beginning in Brahman, in a sense. The dynamics get quite different then.

Rick: Not in some timeline sort of sense, way back then, but in a primordial now.

David: So essentially, there are these two qualities, you could almost say: there’s this alertness and this liveliness. And the liveliness stirs alertness, and it becomes conscious. And then consciousness—the liveliness stirs consciousness to flow, and it flows and curves back on itself and then becomes self-aware. And when it becomes self-aware, it becomes aware of its own existence. And existence becomes consciousness.

Rick: Existence becomes consciousness; intelligence assumes the role of creative intelligence.

David: So that’s the dynamic in consciousness, but there’s that piece before it. So there’s that dynamic: consciousness becomes aware, and it has its origins. And then it depends—there are the kind of two things that happen in there. This is when the other side of the equation, the sattva side, comes in. It reaches a point where you have this choice of uniting with God—sort of the ultimate stage of Unity is uniting with the Divine—or retaining that lesha avidya, the remains of ignorance, to keep a slight difference, a distance, so that you can still be devoted to God. And so there’s that choice that takes place, where you can unite or whatever.

Most people I know who have made this step have done the uniting thing. And so you become one with God, and then you go beyond. As a result of that, you step beyond Atman; you transcend Atman into Brahman. And they call that the Great Awakening in the Vedic literature. It’s a very big change.

Again, the entire enlightenment that had been there before is gone. From the examples I know, it looks like there’s typically a two-stage process. Firstly—unless it’s extremely clear—there’s this stepping out of Unity into Brahman. So what you’re conscious of is what you’re leaving behind, what you lose, basically. And that can be challenging for some people. It can certainly be a surprise, unexpected, because it’s complete, it’s thorough. All those layers of Unity and all that intimacy and the relationship with the Divine and all that stuff—gone.

Rick: Now you’ve thrown the word “Brahman” in here a few times. I think you’ve kind of defined it, but you better define it a little bit more, because people aren’t necessarily going to be…

David: Okay, well, if you’re familiar with some of those things, like the Mahavakyas from the Upanishads—”I am That, Thou art That, all this is That, That alone is”—I mean, that’s more a reference to the Unity process. But essentially, “That” is Brahman. And defining Brahman is an interesting one, because it’s not consciousness, but it’s not non-consciousness. It’s not existence, it’s not non-existence, because those are actually dualities. And it’s not obvious, even in Unity, that the fact that you exist and you’re conscious is a duality. But it actually is a very subtle duality. And Brahman is beyond that, too.

And the Brahma Sutra calls it the “aggregate.” It’s like this coming together into this totality, this wholeness that’s greater than all of it. And it’s interesting, because up until then, there’s been this whole perspective of this unfolding Divine, and the structure of creation, and all that going on. And now it’s gone. There’s nothing. And not a nothing in terms of emptiness, but a nothing in terms of nada—that never happened. Creation never happens, never will happen, that kind of stuff.

And here I had been this guy championing the understanding that creation is an illusion, or the world is maya, an illusion, or something like that, is not a complete understanding. And actually, that’s a worthwhile point to make.

This is from

Shankara: maya does not actually mean illusion. It comes from the root “to build.” It’s a reference to creation. As Shankara points out, when tamas guna , inertia, is dominant in the physiology, in our experience, we experience the world as real, solid. When that is transformed through rajas , or fire, transformation, we come to see maya as illusory, the world as illusion. And then when sattva becomes dominant, the transformation starts to complete, then we see lila , the divine play. The world becomes seen as a play of the Divine. And so, in other words, the world as illusion is a stage of sattva development. It’s not a marker for the stage of consciousness.

Rick: A stage towards sattva development.

David: Yeah, and so some people will go into Self-Realization with lots of sattva already, so they won’t have a world-as-illusion stage, because they did that already, beforehand, or whatever. However, that showed up for them. So it’s part of that sattva process. But even, you know, at the bottom of my website is a little saying from the

Isha Upanishad: “The face of truth is hidden by a covering of gold.”

And of course, from Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “Be without the three gunas.” So even sattva itself, you want to go beyond. That becomes the platform for a lot of development.

Rick: So sattva is the covering of gold, sattva or purity.

David: Yeah.

Rick: Which itself has an obscuring value to some extent, although nothing much by comparison with tamas.

David: Yeah, exactly. So it’s still a quality of expression. It’s not the source itself. So, yeah.

So, for me, there’s that first stage into Brahman, where you’re more aware of what you’ve lost. And then there’s this second stage where you start to become aware of what Brahman itself is. But it’s like the Tao that can be described as not the Tao, kind of thing. It’s really challenging to describe in any way, because you can say, “Well, it’s not consciousness, but it’s not non-consciousness.” You can do all these things where it’s not this, it’s not that. And you get those phrases.

Rick: “The world is an illusion. Brahman alone is real. The world is Brahman.”

David: Yeah, exactly. And those are all three true simultaneously. And it’s this complete merger of paradoxes into true non-duality. Because a lot of people talk about Self-Realization as being non-duality, and they use those kind of terms. But if there’s a separate illusory world, that’s not—even if the world’s an illusion, that’s duality. That’s dvaita.

Rick: You’ve got some non-duality over here, but there’s all this other stuff.

David: Exactly. So that’s not non-duality. Non-duality unfolds with Unity. That comes a little later. Anyway, so it’s this process.

Creation, dharma, and intelligent order

Rick: One is a thought that’s been kind of percolating as you’ve been speaking, and that is, who set this whole game up? I mean, they’re…

David: But they didn’t.

Rick: They didn’t, but let’s say, from the perspective that they did.

David: Oh, from Unity.

Rick: From the perspective that there is a creation, and it has all these laws that govern it, who set that whole thing in motion? Or can the question be answered?

David: Well, you could say the Divine, God, however you want to say it.

Rick: Why? Then the next question is, why?

David: Well, if you look at silence with nothing in it, what’s the point?

Rick: It’s boring.

David: Yeah, but there’s nothing you can learn from that, right? You can’t learn about the Self unless you experience yourself. And so if you express all these qualities of intelligence within it, then there’s that opportunity for consciousness to discover itself in all these little details. So consciousness, I mentioned earlier, how consciousness is aware of itself globally, but then it goes into each point, to become aware of a different perspective.

You’re experiencing me from a certain perspective, and I’m experiencing you from a certain perspective, and there are various flavors and qualities that are distinct between the two of us. And, yeah, so…

Rick: So the whole creation is a way for God to know Himself as a living reality, as opposed to a flat, unmanifest nothingness.

David: Yeah, but it’s not even like there’s a need for God to know itself that way. But there’s this quality of… because God already knows everything, it’s already all there. So there’s this quality of consciousness that arises from the Divine, then the consciousness wants to know itself.

And then there’s a whole series of tiers to the process, and so each layer wants to unfold the next layer. Then there’s this going out into the creation, and then getting lost in it, and then finding your way back again. It’s kind of that whole story, the various…

Rick: And as you know, some people regard creation as meaningless, mechanistic, cold, random, accidental—all kinds of words like that. You and I, I don’t think, see it that way, nor would most of the people watching this. It seems to be pregnant with purpose of some sort, evolutionary purpose.

David: Oh yeah, and there’s life everywhere. That’s been apparent to me for a very long time. I mean, you’re never alone.

Rick: Everywhere would even mean places that would be considered entirely inhospitable to life, such as the center of the sun. I mean, that is life as much as our liver.

David: Right, but there’s life that exists not just in a physical sense, but on those levels of energy and mind, that kind of stuff. There are beings that exist and express through whatever they have available, and they’re having their own process of experiencing and doing whatever—following their own dharma or whatever purpose they have.

Rick: And also, wherever you look, there’s intelligence in abundance. I mean, go out somewhere in intergalactic space and look at a cubic centimeter of what apparently is nothing, and there are laws of nature functioning there which evidence incredible intelligence.

David: Well, just consider ourselves. I mean, we exist as these complex life forms on a planet, and you think about just the odds of that from the known physical laws. Entropy is a very powerful force. How did life—how did the planet—manage to even be formed in the first place, so that it didn’t just fall apart and disintegrate?

We can talk about gravity and various things that happen, but then it stabilizes. How would life, an intelligent life form on that, arise from a random mechanical system?

Rick: Sure. I forget who it was—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin or somebody—who said, “The universe isn’t winding down, it’s winding up.” You know, there’s this continual emergence of orderliness out of…

David: It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, yeah, there is this “woo-woo,” where you’re going to talk about creationism or whatever. What is the term they use for the…?

Rick: Intelligent design or something?

David: Yeah, intelligent design, yeah.

Rick: Well, there’s an obvious power balancing entropy. I mean, otherwise everything would have just ground to dust by now.

David: Exactly. That force of order has to be stronger than entropy for this system to continue. And actually, that’s what dharma means. It’s that which sustains—the purpose or sense of… It’s often translated as “purpose,” but in a deeper sense, dharma is that which keeps things going so that it can unfold.

Rick: Yeah. Okay.

✨ Stages, maps, and the path of awakening

And it’s really useful to understand those distinctions, because when you’re reading Shankara or a Sufi poem or whatever like that, if you understand those distinctions, then you can get a sense of where they’re speaking from. Because there’s a lot of confusion now where people are taking Vedanta and applying that to Self-Realization. And Self-Realization is in there, but most of Vedanta is more about Unity into Brahman.

Rick: Beyond Self-Realization.

David: Yeah, and so when they’re talking about oneness and they’re talking about the nature of the world, and there’s a huge distinction between the world as an illusion and the world never happened. I mean, you can use those as similar ways, in a sense, to try and describe something, but in the sense of the reality of it, they’re two completely different realities, very distinct. And in between that is this whole other reality, and neither of them seem to be compatible. But what happens with Brahman is it becomes inclusive of all of it. And then it’s just a matter of, okay, if you put your attention here, then you can talk in a Unity context and describe it in a certain way, whatever like that. But the fundamental reality is extremely abstract and very difficult to describe.

And it’s not something—even somebody in Unity would have trouble understanding Brahman. So yeah, it’s not something, you know, Lorn just says, “Don’t try to figure it out. It’s not something the mind can grasp.”

Rick: One thing I think you’re trying to do, though, and which I’m also hoping to be contributing to, to some degree, is to achieve greater clarity in our culture, in our larger spiritual community, as to what all these terms mean, what awakening means, what enlightenment means, what stages there may be. Because are there really as many realities to the unfoldment of enlightenment as there are people, or is there sort of a roadmap which we all understand approximately and experience to some degree of clarity, but which, if we all had perfect understanding and perfect clarity, we would be unanimous in our understanding and agreement about?

David: Yeah, and that’s one of the things I’m working on. I’ve had the pleasure, particularly from going on Lorn and Lucia retreats, of seeing a lot of people go through these shifts. And so it’s given me a lot of material to understand the variations, but also to understand the underlying process. So what’s the underlying process, and then how are these variations? I found there are five typical ways that people will subjectively experience the initial Self-Realization shift. And of course, there are huge variations in the intensity of purification, or experiences that may or may not come with it, and all these variations that go on.

Their dominant guna at the time, whether it’s Sattva, Rajas, or Tamas, and all these different things will affect the subjective experience. Also, the kind of techniques that they use, because that culture is a certain kind of awareness. And so there’s all this variation, but there’s also this underlying process that’s taking place. And that’s what I was talking about earlier on. There was clarifying about—there’s this witness thing that can happen separately from the awakening, and it can happen together with it.

This is not really that far from Makara to the crown, Bindu. But what’s the underlying process that’s happening behind that? And that distinction about a Self-

Realization: there’s self-awakening, but the actual awakening is when Self wakes up to itself. We become aware that there’s a Self, but we can call that an awakening. The real awakening that we’re looking for is when Self wakes up to itself through this apparent form. That’s the actual Self-Realization shift that’s so important.

The real awakening that we’re looking for is when Self wakes up to itself through this apparent form.

Rick: So the broader question is, do you feel like it’s theoretically possible to… If you tried to use the understanding of the topography of North America that was current when Lewis and Clark first went west to navigate from St. Louis to Portland now, you wouldn’t get very far. You’d end up in some river pretty soon, or something. You’d be trying to follow the Oregon Trail, which no longer actually exists. And so do you feel like we could eventually… But these days, of course, with satellite mapping and GPS and all that stuff, we understand the topography of North America and the whole world very precisely, right down to the square foot, more or less.

Do you feel that, spiritually speaking, we could arrive at a state of understanding as a culture, which would be like our modern understanding of the topography of North America, as compared with our current understanding, which would be more Lewis-and-Clark-like in its accuracy?

David: Yes, very much. There are a couple of things about that. One is that, yes, it’s perfectly easy to define it much more clearly than…

Rick: So over the next couple hundred years or something, we might have evolved that.

David: Yeah, perhaps. That’s one of the things. I’m working on a book I’m hoping to get published in the next little while. And that’s basically what it’s about: what is that process that unfolds? And it’s interesting, too, because there are some teachers who either discourage talking about stages or deny there are stages.

Rick: Well, I think they’re just being simplistic. They’re just thinking, “Okay, it’s all Unity. How can there be stages in Unity?”

David: Yeah, right. There can be some of that kind of thing. One of the problems is that one of the common themes in there is that concepts of a process are a barrier to the process itself. And that’s true. Our concepts about it are a barrier.

Rick: Really? So watching this interview might be an impediment to people?

David: Well, it depends on the approach they’re taking to it. But a concept of no stages is the same barrier as a concept of stages, because what happens when the stages start to unfold? Then it’s like, “Okay, what the heck’s going on? There’s not supposed to be any stages.” I was a little confused early on, because I started witnessing, and that was supposed to mean this other thing, but it didn’t.

Rick: So maybe concepts are okay if you take them lightly?

David: Yeah, you take them lightly. It’s like a map. A map can be very useful when you’re going someplace new, and when you get there, you put it down. But do you deny a person a map because it might, you know, whatever?

Rick: Yeah, or because a map of Montana doesn’t actually resemble the way Montana’s going to look when you get there.

David: Or you use Google Street View, and you discover that it’s a little bit off, and the dentist was actually half a block down. Yeah, it’s not like it’s a perfect answer. And Lorn is saying that our concepts of enlightenment can be one of the last barriers to it, especially with people who’ve been on the path for a long time and have studied this stuff more formally. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware of the process.

And actually, in the Seventh Mandala of the Rig Veda, there’s a place where the sage Vasishtha mentions the importance of desiring Unity once Self-Realization happens. But how are we going to desire Unity if we don’t know it’s there?

Rick: If it doesn’t exist, right?

David: Yeah, exactly. So that’s the thing. You need to understand that there’s a process, and there are distinct stages. How you’re going to experience it will vary. An example I use sometimes is puberty. There’s a standard process that happens for everybody, but different people will experience it very differently. And sometimes it’s the quiet little thing, and sometimes it’s more challenging.

Rick: Yeah, I was just talking to a friend today about how it seems that so many people have a certain sort of awakening and reach a certain stage and feel like they’re done. There’s something so gratifying or self-sufficient about whatever they are experiencing that they feel like, “Well, this is it. There couldn’t be anything more than this.”

David: Yeah, I experienced that myself. It’s like the seeker died, I feel complete, I’m infinite, I’m liberated. It’s like, what more could there be? Like everything.

Rick: Right. So it’s good to know that, to keep on going.

David: There’s more. So that’s a phase, yeah. It’s like a phase.

Rick: I think what people kind of react to is that, to forever follow the dangling carrot, that can be a…

David: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: You can sort of deny yourself the appreciation of the degree to which you’ve actually already arrived.

David: Yeah, and earlier I talked about these stages of bliss, too, and lots of people go through a fairly long, protracted process after a shift where there isn’t bliss. It’s just this unpacking, clearing-house process that goes on for a while.

And sometimes people look at enlightenment as some kind of escape from their life. But it’s the opposite, actually. It moves you much more fully into your life. Because you can’t wake up unless you’re willing to be here and be present to it, and be willing to face what’s here.

Enlightenment is not an escape from your life. It moves you much more fully into your life.

Rick: Yeah.

David: Otherwise it just doesn’t work. I remember I decided to write a post one time, I think, like “108…” No, no. Anyways, “The Myths of Enlightenment.” There’s a whole long… I can’t remember the whole long list of…

Rick: About what it is.

David: About what it’s not.

Rick: What it’s not.

David: You know, it’s not this, it’s not this. Well, one good example is that I want to wake up, but you will never wake up. No, the person doesn’t wake up. The ego doesn’t wake up. The person wakes up from the ego. It’s the Self that wakes up, and wakes up from the ego.

And yet, for many, many years of my life, I was wanting to become enlightened.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. Damn it, huh? Gonna bust a gut trying.

David: Yeah, and darn if it turned out that was a mistake. I’m never gonna get enlightened.

Living the process in ordinary life

Rick: You mentioned Lorn a lot of times, Lorn and Lucia, and you and I are here to do a retreat with them. How many retreats have you done with them? Maybe a dozen, 20?

David: Yeah, I don’t know.

Rick: Over the years?

David: Over… yeah, I don’t know.

Rick: Quite a few.

David: Yeah, a dozen or so. I don’t know, I’ve lost track.

Rick: And so, you know, as much as you’ve progressed, which seems to be to a very significant degree, you still find value in coming back to these retreats.

David: Oh yeah.

Rick: Is it because you just want to get a nice, deep rest, or do you feel like there’s yet more to appreciate or unfold?

David: Well, there’s definitely more to unfold.

Rick: And these retreats are conducive to that.

David: I’m not finished.

Rick: Yeah.

David: Because one of the things is, with the Brahman…

Rick: Has anyone ever finished?

David: Well, in this time, not really. There isn’t enough time to finish. Because once you have the Brahman shift, you’re done with stages of development in consciousness. There is no longer…

Rick: And then what?

David: But the refinement side, that essentially could go on for hundreds of years.

Rick: Yeah.

David: So it’s essentially an indefinite process.

Rick: So consciousness itself doesn’t develop anymore, but the apparatus through which consciousness lives…

David: Yeah.

Rick: …can be more and more refined.

David: More integration, more embodied, more refined.

Rick: More subtle perception.

David: The whole process.

Rick: Yeah.

David: I mean, it’s amazing, this… Some of this stuff I’ve had no idea. I mean, you’ve heard of the “absolute body”?

Rick: Yes.

David: The term. So it’s like, for me, this body is not an individual body anymore. It’s an absolute body. And there’s this process that’s taken place, guided by the forms of God, where certain things have… Gifts have been given. I don’t know if you want to call it that. Things have been arranged, organized.

And then certain laws of nature have woken up. There’s a cognitive process there, where the law of nature has woken up. And then it’s blended with other existing awake laws and created this new synergy. And that now is part of the process of me living this life.

Where, I mean, I walk around and I’m doing things, and I’m still living a householder’s life and all that kind of thing. But behind that is a whole other process taking place. That’s completely unrelated to this apparent form and activity. But there’s this process of processing creation going on all the time now, in the background.

Rick: So, earlier you were talking about the five koshas and it’s like subtle bodies.

David: Well, there’s seven, actually.

Rick: Seven koshas and so on. And I’m just using that as an analogy now. So when you mention “absolute body,” I mean, this body is aging and will probably die in 20, 30, 40 years, or whatever.

David: The surface value of it is subject to karma and that whole thing.

Rick: But you’re saying there’s an absolute body, which…

David: Just behind the cosmic, yeah.

Rick: Is that, in a sense, more your real body? I mean, I hate to use the word “identify,” but do you identify with that body more than this one?

David: No, it’s just like, it’s there, this is here, there’s the other kosha layers right here, there’s this mind and intellect that are very active and blah, blah.

Rick: So what will happen when this body drops off?

David: Then I take a step back.

Rick: And is there still a vehicle of some sort?

David: Yeah.

Rick: Even though you would… I hate to say, “I am enlightened,” but even though you are a liberated being, let’s say, there’s still a vehicle once this body drops off?

David: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: And what is the nature and purpose of that vehicle?

David: One of the interesting things about this, like I mentioned about time a little bit before, is that time is like a dimension in the sense of space. It’s forward and backward. And I know something of the future as well. Not sort of like what’s going to happen tomorrow, that kind of thing, but more like the broader future.

Rick: Not like where the stock market is going to be in a week or something?

David: Yeah, yeah, no, it’s not that kind of detail. But because my consciousness, or whatever you want to call it, the thing is higher than now, it’s distorted.

Rick: Say that again?

David: Well, the consciousness is continuing to evolve, so at that point in the future, it’s distorted. So it’s hard to…

Rick: It’s hard to grok what…

David: Exactly.

Rick: Because you’re not in that state of consciousness yet.

David: Yeah, exactly.

So there’s this reality taking place, and it’s like… And so I have this sense of it. And for me, now I understand why this unfolding is taking place. It’s not actually even for this lifetime; it’s for later on. And it’s kind of like a training ground where I can clean up the karma and have these shifts so that it’s established and I can carry that forward. So yeah, it’s funny, you know.

Most of the time, most of my friends, I don’t talk like this. Most people I know, we talk about the movies or good restaurants or whatever. And it’s just, you know, I have a normal life. Even with people who are quite close to me, often I don’t get into a lot of this stuff because it’s just so abstract.

Rick: Well, you know me, this is all I’m interested in. I also like movies and restaurants.

David: Yeah, it’s pretty wild in some ways. I mean, it’s just kind of this process that’s been unfolding, and over time I’m less and less in the process. It’s just taking place. And so there’s just this unfolding: “Oh, what surprise will come up today? What will happen now? What will unfold now?”

And it’s interesting, too, because when I describe that shift with the new law of nature coming online, this isn’t a local thing. It’s happening cosmically, right? And so this is taking place, this is shifting the creation as a whole. It’s taking place on that level.

So there’s this person having this experience here and this apparent absolute body moving through itself and shifting itself. But it’s taking place on a cosmic level, so it’s doing that on all the levels that are expressed from that.

Rick: I don’t totally understand that, but I don’t know if I want to.

David: It’s hard to describe, but it’s interesting because it’s taking place. Because for me, it’s like a marker for what’s taking place in the evolution of group consciousness. And that’s a useful thing to make a note of, by the way.

Rick: Well, maybe you’re kind of an outlier, and there are other people who are going through similar shifts and all are sort of being in some sort of training or preparatory phase for what is to come.

David: Yeah, and that’s happening. And I’ve become more conscious of that over time.

Rick: So you’re not one of these people who wants to just sort of be out of here and get off the wheel and never exist in any way, shape, or form again. You sense, I think, that there’s a role yet to play and that you’re willing to play it and happy to play it.

David: Yeah, it’s interesting, actually. There’s a Jyotishi—it’s a Vedic astrology thing where you talk about your stuff. In there, they can talk about your expected time of death. And it’s interesting: they told me that I’ll have a choice when my karma is done, to be done with it or to continue on. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Rick: Not to continue on in this body, but—

David: No, to continue on in this body.

Rick: You think?

David: Who knows? I’ll see what happens.

Rick: Like you could live to be 300 if you wanted to or something?

David: I don’t know. Beyond reckoning is what they said. But I don’t know what that means. It’s just one of those sort of things.

Rick: Who told you this?

David: Two Jyotishis, actually, told me this at different times.

✨ A wider awakening

Yeah, but we’re in a time when things are changing a lot. And one of the things that’s really important to understand with this, too, is that it’s an inside-out process. So it’s taking place in consciousness and moving forward gradually. The last place you see it is on the surface.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

David: And so for a lot of people, it looks like things are going south really badly in a lot of ways. And certainly there is a call—some things are being pushed to the surface to be seen and taken care of. But it’s actually a sign of purification, of cleaning out, not of end times.

Rick: Right. Yeah. In fact, I was just talking to Canela last night [her second BATGAP interview], and we were talking about how these things keep happening, like the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and that becomes a whole consciousness-raising thing about Black Lives Matter. Or something happens with gay rights or something, and that shifts the culture. The culture seems to be shifting with greater and greater rapidity, and these different events that come up seem to be catalysts for that.

David: Yeah.

Rick: And the way that all relates to this conversation, I believe, is that there is a huge spiritual awakening taking place in the world.

David: Yes.

Rick: And it’s not just a matter of cultural changes or attitudes about Black people or gay people or whatever. There is something much more fundamental than that taking place.

David: Oh, yeah, and it’s so astounding. I spent all this time on a spiritual path. For a long time, I could count on one hand the number of people I had met who were awake in any kind of way, and so often the stories about somebody being awake turned out to be, well, they had some good experiences—

Rick: Yeah.

David: For a little while. But now it’s just a whole different thing. I mean, you’ve got your show with all these people who have come on it, at various stages of development, and dozens of people I know. And these retreats, too. When I first started coming on the retreats, there were a few people who had shifted, and now the majority have usually shifted in some way, and there are people at all different stages now. So it’s this great diversity. Even just sitting and having a meal on the retreat is like—the presence is really nice.

Rick: Yeah. So I don’t know yet whether I’m going to interview Lorn and Lucia [he didn’t]. Lorn doesn’t want a big, huge wave of publicity and interest, but just the fact that I’m doing this interview, and that I’ll be interviewing Claire Blanchflower after this, means he’s going to get some publicity whether he likes it or not.

And so people are going to be interested: “Who is this Lorn guy?” and “Where are these retreats?” and “How do I get into them?” I guess the one question is, you and I have a TM background, and probably a lot of people on these retreats do, but a lot of people who are listening to this interview are not going to have had one. So how relevant would all this be to them?

David: Oh, yeah. When Lorn first started out, TM terminology was what he was familiar with, but he’s become much more generic over time, moving away from that a lot. Certainly, a lot of the people who know him and are friends of friends and made these connections have TM backgrounds on the retreats, but by no means everybody—not at all. There’s quite a diversity, and there are people you’ll find from—

Rick: Claire doesn’t have a TM background, does she?

David: No. Actually, she learned TM after her later shift. So some people are waking up and then learning TM, or not.

Rick: Do you see that in terms of the track record of people awakening? Do the TM people have some kind of advantage, or really not?

David: Well, people who have been meditating for a long time have pros and cons, because they’ve got a lot more clarity usually, so the shift is clearer, but they also can have stronger concepts and are more aware of everything going on. So the ego is trying to manage things.

Rick: Trying to fit everything, shoehorn everything into the structure that they’ve carefully built.

David: Right. But one of the things about the ego is that when you start seeing the path, the ego doesn’t want you to see through the ego, because once you see past it, once you see through it, it’s toast.

Rick: Its game is over.

David: Yeah, so there’s kind of this dance that can happen, and one of the ways it does that is with concepts. It kind of dances this stuff up and does this “la la la la la” thing whenever some insight comes through, and then it’s like “blah blah” and goes on. So, yeah, it’s a little dance that happens sometimes in that approach, and that clarity can be very helpful, especially after the shift, because then you can move through it quickly, but it can be a little bit more challenging to make the shift itself.

And there’s that kind of clarity, too. So that’s where this is really helpful, because when you’re in a group like this, being with the awake, the awakeness is more lively. It’s easier for that awakeness to happen in a lively place.

Rick: I hope I do get to interview Lorn, because I think it would be interesting, especially if we do it at the end of this weekend, after I’ve gone through the whole experience. Because when you say “people who have shifted,” I don’t even know if I count myself among them. I’ve certainly undergone huge transformations over the decades, and if I were to describe my experience to you, there’s a lot of stuff that I think you’d find interesting and significant, but I’m just not sure what is meant anymore by a shift. If someone asked me if I’m awake, my answer would probably be, “I’m more awake than I used to be, and probably less awake than I will be.”

David: I call that an oozer—people who ooze through this process.

Rick: There’s been no grand, irreversible watershed moment, which maybe you described as the Makara thing. But I don’t feel like I’m falling back anymore.

David: My shift was quite distinct, as well. It’s one of the five ways that it happens, as I mentioned, and one of them is this gradual process. Eventually, somewhere down the road, you realize, “Oh, I’m not falling back. It’s here all the time. There’s this continuity, awareness. I just am, and I’m not being caught by stuff so much anymore.” And it’s just kind of a more gradual process.

Rick: All that describes my experience, and yet I don’t think I have lucid dreaming, at least not consistently. As far as I know, I’m not witnessing 24/7.

David: But if you go on long courses where you go deep and get more rested, you’re much more likely to get the clarity on a long course.

Rick: Anyway, on the other hand, I don’t really care, because I’m enjoying the whole unfoldment, and I don’t have any burning desperation to be at point X by such-and-such a time or anything. I’m happy to let it unfold as it unfolds.

David: Yeah, that’s a good approach to take. And we all have our own different processes and stuff. Look at what you’re doing, really overtly, in the world, and bringing this out to so many people—

Rick: Yeah, perhaps a fair dose of ignorance is useful in this capacity, to be able to ask the right questions or something.

David: Yeah, yeah. It’s one of the things about— I remember there was one point, going along, when I could not remember what it was like to have an ego. It was just like—it was gone. So there was no reference point for that, in the sense of being identified with it, I mean.

Actually, that’s something I should clarify, too, because it’s not that we—I experienced a sense of ego death in this process, but it’s not actually the ego itself that dies. It’s the identification with the ego that ends, that breaks up. There’s still a person here who has preferences and habits and tastes, or whatever like that. But that’s not the center anymore. It’s just like your little thumb or something. That baby finger.

It’s not the ego itself that dies. It’s the identification with the ego that ends.

Rick: All righty. Well, a lot of times when I interview somebody, they are a teacher, they’re doing satsangs, they’re doing Skype consultations, they’ve written a book, and you only kind of touch on one of those points, which is that you’re writing a book, and it will be available sooner or later, eventually.

David: In that writing process.

Rick: So, do you have any inclination whatsoever to interact with people in Skype consultations, for some compensation or whatever?

David: I don’t know. I’ve never considered it. I don’t—yeah.

Rick: Not really your thing?

David: Yeah. I’m a writer, so I have my blog and I write there, and I’m compiling the core stuff for the stages process, to understand the different stages and the underlying process and the variations. That’s kind of what I’m working on.

Rick: Can people submit questions through your blog if they’d like you to write about something, for instance? If they have a question, then you can— I noticed a lot of times in our interactions, between you and me and some other friends, that’s been grist for the mill, in a sense, and given you something interesting to write about on your blog.

David: Exactly. And just responding to a few discussion groups—I chat in them sometimes—and sometimes something comes out that’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Because one of the things for me is that I actually learn through the writing process. It’s like writing through me. So I kind of write something, and then it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” Like that cognitions thing I wrote recently, the three stages of cognition. I didn’t know that. It just kind of came out. And I realized, “Oh, yeah, that was at that stage, and that was at that stage.”

Rick: I should mention, actually, that Buddha at the Gas Pump has a Yahoo group associated with it, and you can find a link to that on the BATGAP site. It’s kind of obscure. You have to scroll down. It’s in the right-hand column someplace. But David is very active in that Yahoo group, and just recently the whole group seems to have become a bit more active. So if people would like to engage in conversations with you, that might be one place where they could do so.

David: Yeah, and I have a contact form on the—

Rick: On your Davidya?

David: Not a comment form. What do you call it? A contact form on the Davidya.ca website. So people can email me. It depends on what it’s about. I mean, I have expertise in this process, but not in other areas so much.

Rick: Yeah. Okay. So you don’t see yourself in any kind of a teaching role at this stage in your life or anything like that?

David: For me, it’s like I’m living the life, and what am I being called to do? I’m being called to write, so I’m writing, and seeing where life goes.

Rick: Yeah.

David: And it goes in interesting directions. I’m making choices and decisions like any householder, but at the same time, there’s this deeper flow that’s coming through my life that is taking it in directions that are not planned or whatever. It’s just surprising. I now live on the island, and various things have shifted that I didn’t anticipate.

Rick: You’ll be speaking at the SAND conference. David and I are both going to be sharing the same time block at the Science and Nonduality conference in late October. First I’ll speak, and then I’ll introduce David, and then he’ll speak. We each have about 40 minutes or so.

David: I’ll be speaking on the stages. It’s an important message, I think, in that environment, just to get that process. So when you’re looking at these old texts or where a teacher is speaking, where they’re speaking from, like that.

Rick: Yeah. Good. All right, well, anything you want to add in conclusion at this stage? Obviously, there’s always more to say, and you write all kinds of things, and people can subscribe to that. But have we covered everything that you consider to be important in this context?

David: No.

Rick: No?

David: We could go on for hours.

Rick: Yeah, we could. There’s so much to it.

David: It’s a big arena.

Rick: Yeah, it’s funny. I did an interview one time about a year ago with someone, and her basic point was, “I don’t exist. I’m not a person.” And whatever I asked, that would be the basic answer. It was the shortest interview I ever did. After a little while, I thought, “Well, I guess there’s nothing more to talk about here.”

But what I appreciate about your orientation, which some people from that perspective might consider much too complicated and nuanced and detailed—what is all that stuff? I just don’t want to not exist, and I’m not a person.

David: Yeah, a lot simpler.

Rick: It is, but I don’t think it’s the end of the line either, for her or anyone. I just think that the course of evolution is vast and multifarious, and I really appreciate the degree to which you have come to experience and understand it. It’s fulfilling for me to talk with someone who has that orientation. Not that I myself have traversed it to that extent, certainly not, but I know that the territory exists, and so it’s interesting to talk to someone who has explored that territory in greater detail than I have.

And I think it helps the spiritual culture, as I was saying earlier, in understanding that simplicity is good, but being simplistic is not. And if we’re really interested in understanding reality, then we should be willing to accept that—what is it Jesus said, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions”—that reality is far more multifarious and mysterious and detailed and vast than our little concepts might have done justice to.

Simplicity is good, but being simplistic is not.

David: Yeah, it’s an astonishingly large place, and I’m sure there are aspects I’ve never run into, or whatever. Every so often I read somebody else talking about something, and it’s like a whole other side of it that I’d never noticed.

Rick: Yeah, so it’s great fun to… What could be more interesting? What way to spend one’s life could be more fascinating?

David: It’s certainly been an adventure.

Rick: Great. Well, let me wrap it up then, because we could go on and on, but I think I’m going to do another interview in a few minutes if Claire has arrived. So the sun’s coming out. I might have to wear the sunglasses for the next one. But as you know, you’ve been listening to an interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump with David Buckland, and there have been many of these interviews so far, 300 and something, and there will hopefully be many, many more.

So if you’d like to check out ones done previously, go to batgap.com, explore the Past Interviews menus, some of which David was very instrumental in developing for me. There’s a whole categorical index that he created for the site. And check out other aspects of the site; it’s all pretty self-explanatory.

I never fail to mention the donate button because my engagement in this, as extensive as it is, wouldn’t be possible without the support of appreciative viewers. If you’d like to… I’ve had people notify me in the last few weeks saying, “What happened to you? You haven’t been posting any interviews lately.” There’s a thing where you can sign up to be notified by email each time there’s a new interview. Some lady said, “I come to the site every day and there’s no new interview.” You don’t have to do that. You sign up for the thing to be notified when there’s a new interview, and you’ll get an email when it’s posted. So that menu is there.

There’s an audio podcast, because many people don’t like to sit in front of their computers any more than they already do, so you can just listen to this in audio. There’s a subscribe page for that that lets you sign up on iTunes or Android and different devices. And there’s some other stuff. Check out the menus.

In fact, there are things that David helped me develop. He even helped put up a page where we have a Batgap theme song ringtone for your phone and a screensaver and all kinds of stuff. Maybe I’ll have you working on the T-shirt next.

David: If I can get one.

Rick: So thanks for listening or watching. It’s really been a joy talking with you, David. And we’ll do more. And to those watching, we’ll see you in the next one.

Summary

Questions This Interview Explores

Key takeaways

Transcript

Listening from silence

✨ The witness and pure awareness

Kundalini, cognition, and cosmic knowledge

Forms of God and nested creation

Past lives and the unfolding of a life

✨ God Consciousness and Unity

From Unity to Brahman

Creation, dharma, and intelligent order

✨ Stages, maps, and the path of awakening

Living the process in ordinary life

✨ A wider awakening

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