Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done about 390 of them now, and if this is new to you and you want to see previous ones, go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and check under the past interviews menu, where you’ll find all the previous ones organized in four or five different ways. The show is made possible by the support of appreciative viewers and listeners, and so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, then there’s a donate button on the site. My guest today is Gabor Harsanyi. Gabor is in Budapest, Hungary, which is where he grew up for at least his teenage years, and he has an interesting story. I’m not going to read a long bio of Gabor as I sometimes do, because we’re going to talk about his story and it would be more interesting if he just told it rather than me saying it. And he has told his story before on other interview shows, such as Jerry Katz’s show and Conscious TV with Ian McNay, but in order to make this a complete package, I’ll have him tell it again. And I’m sure we’ll go into some other areas that he hasn’t talked about on other interview shows. Welcome Gabor, thanks for doing this.
Gabor: Thank you.
Rick: We spent about 20 minutes just now trying to work out our audio technicalities, and I think we’ve gotten it sounding pretty good.
Gabor: Yeah.
Rick: So you grew up in Hungary and you were born in 1949, as I was, but Hungary was a little bit more of an intense place than Connecticut in 1949 and the following years. But you had some, like many of the people I interviewed, you had some insights, even as a young child, about life and about the way the world should be compared to the way it was, things like that. So maybe we should start there.
Gabor: Yeah, well, my childhood was quite rough, in a sense that it was, the whole environment I grew up in was like after war, Europe, Russian occupation, 1956 revolution in Hungary, etc. My father was part of the Hungarian revolution, so he was taken in and out of jail, basically, quite frequently. So I grew up in this emotional upheaval, consistent, ongoing fear of evil. And whenever I had peace, I was just walking in a forest or walking on a meadow between flowers and bugs and things like that. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I was wondering, sort of subconsciously, “What’s going on? Is it a madhouse or what?” I mean, those are my words now. That’s not how I express myself.
Rick: Yeah, but I sometimes think about that, about how crazy the world is, and I don’t know how things actually work, esoterically or metaphysically or so on, but you can imagine us being in some sort of idyllic state before we come into this life, and then it’s like, “Holy crap, did I sign up for this?”
Gabor: Very early on I noticed that I have this amazing desire for freedom. And at that time, what I meant by freedom is not the kind of world I was living in. Whatever it is, it’s not this. And so I remember digging a hole under the fence in our backyard and escaping when I was like three years old. And I hitchhiked on a horse and buggy. There was still some horse and buggy at the time.
Rick: So some horse and buggy picked you up?
Gabor: Yeah, I actually just jumped on a horse and buggy, and unbeknownst to the driver, I was hanging on. And so it indicated a very early desire for what I called “freedom” at the time. And that love towards freedom was part of my life, basically all of my life. And that freedom-loving expressed itself in different ways. Of course, first it expressed itself as, “I want something, anything but this.” And then it expressed itself as escaping from where I was, which happened in 1967. I escaped from Yugoslavia to Italy. So Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy. I spent six months in a refugee camp. So I was a refugee for six months, and I was able to immigrate to Canada. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life.
Rick: Knowing what you know now, and looking back on it, and looking at other people’s lives, do you feel like everybody has an innate desire for freedom, and it just expresses itself in different ways? And most people don’t really know what freedom would mean, but they all have this yearning for it.
Gabor: That’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely true. As a matter of fact, I consider myself lucky, because when the situation is so bad, it’s obvious that you want something else, called freedom. And when it’s not so bad, it’s not obvious. I mean, when life is kind of okay, it’s not obvious what you’re looking for, and not so obvious that there is outer freedom, inner freedom, what have you.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a saying in the Vedic tradition that the denizens of heaven don’t really care about enlightenment, because heaven is so nice, you know. They’re just happy to be there, and they don’t worry about liberation or anything. It’s just so nice, and so that saying is meant to sort of, in a way, justify the difficulty of life here on earth. At least it has the advantage of being an incentive to find something more genuine.
Gabor: Yeah, if everything is oneness and love, there’s no distinction, so not looking for anything.
Rick: Right. So there’s some divine mercy in our suffering.
Gabor: I guess, yes.
Rick: Okay, so you made it to Canada, and obviously there’s more details in that story, but maybe we don’t need to go into them all. I mean, I just mentioned in reading and hearing you speak, that it wasn’t a cakewalk going from Hungary and getting to Italy. I mean, you almost got shot crossing some of the borders, and you slept in a phone booth for a few days in Italy, and being fed sandwiches by prostitutes, and then you eventually realized you could trust the police, and you went to them, and they put you in a refugee camp, which wasn’t all that bad, and you were there for six months before making it to Canada, right?
Gabor: Yes, everything that you said basically happened. What’s interesting there is the mindset of a young person who is in fear. It was very hard to trust anyone. The rumor had it in Hungary that if they catch you 60 kilometers from the border, then they ship you back. And it was all not true, of course, but fear and fear and fear, and a difficult time trusting.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: And I remember when the police was driving me to the refugee camp. It was in a jeep full of refugees, and what was interesting is that the road to the refugee camp was going towards Yugoslavia. Just you took a turn, and it was going towards Yugoslavia, and I thought, “Oh my God, you know, they are driving me back.”
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: So I was just about to jump off the back of the jeep, when they turned the other direction, “Oh, whew, well, okay.” So it was this amazing survival kind of fear, the primal fear, that I was experiencing.
Rick: Having gone through that, it must give you a certain perspective on the current refugee crisis in Europe, and even in the US now, with our new president and the sort of policies that he is trying to enact with regard to refugees and people who have come into the US illegally. It must give you some compassion or something for the plight of these people.
Gabor: Yeah, absolutely. If I sort of compare my situation to these people, although I had a rough time, but really my situation was much easier. I mean, you are 18, and you are young, and full of testosterone, and I didn’t have to be worried about the child or anything like that.
Rick: Yeah, and you weren’t crossing the Mediterranean in a rowboat or anything like that.
Gabor: I mean, if I get shot, I get shot, but it’s only me, not my child. So being responsible for somebody like that, that would be really tough.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Gabor: I was okay no matter what, whether I ate or didn’t eat, that was okay. Mine was not nearly as tough as some of these people.
Rick: How did you manage to accumulate enough money to make it to Canada when you were in a refugee camp?
Gabor: Well, by that time my mother was in Canada. She escaped from Hungary in 1956. And although I didn’t remember her very much, but I got in touch with her, and so she paid for my airline ticket.
Rick: Okay.
Gabor: If she wasn’t available, the government would have paid for it.
Rick: To get you out of there?
Gabor: The Canadian government had to accept me as a refugee, and they would have paid for it. They looked at you in every possible way. They looked at your teeth, your hearing, your eyes. You had to be in perfect health to be accepted. You felt like a horse who was being sold at an auction or something.
Rick: Interesting. All right, so you got to Canada and you had this, again, continuing burning desire for freedom, which at that point you interpreted as material success. And you became quite successful.
Gabor: Yes. Yes, I was. Again, the desire for freedom was driving me like crazy. Freedom meant at the time that I had to increase or repair my self-image to such an extent that in comparison to other people, I would appear bigger, smarter, stronger. Coming from a dictatorship, of course, that makes sense. You know, it was basically protection-based, survival-based. And, of course, I didn’t know at the time what it is. And it was very nice. The feeling of succeeding financially and being able to buy what I want was really enjoyable. So to some extent, it provided the kind of freedom that I thought that freedom meant earlier.
Rick: Yeah, and we should mention that you studied electrical engineering or some kind of engineering, but then that bored you and so you got into real estate and you actually became a multi-millionaire by the time you were 30, doing real estate.
Gabor: Yes, absolutely. What was interesting about that is that I didn’t know anything about anything. And so when I started the business, people, my accountants and other people were saying, “Are you crazy? Interest rates are very high now. Inflation is this and this.” I didn’t even know what they were talking about. I didn’t know why I couldn’t succeed. And so it sort of reminded me of that bumblebee that doesn’t know it can fly kind of situation. I was just going for it, going for it, going for it. And not knowing a lot was very helpful because every day is a fresh day. And my mind did not remind me that it’s difficult to succeed.
Rick: Yeah, you didn’t know that it was impossible to do this or that, so you just did it.
Gabor: Just did it. And of course what happened is when I got educated about business, it was like, “Wow, okay.” Now the past came into play and I wasn’t able to just be that day, that decision that day. So it’s got a bit more difficult, but it was still okay. The desire of succeeding was so overwhelming that it took care of the pressures of the mind.
Rick: Yeah, also you mentioned that you became kind of a party animal, right? You’re sort of playing around a lot, drinking, this and that. I would imagine that that kind of behavior would possibly begin to cloud your judgment and diminish your efficiency in action or something, I would think.
Gabor: Yeah, I thought.. I really wasn’t that much of a party animal, but I thought that part of a rich person’s life is to make big parties. So the more people reflect back how successful I am, the better. Of course, that’s what I’m saying now.
Rick: Yeah, you want to give that appearance.
Gabor: Yeah, more people reflecting. I had thousands of friends, etc., huge parties, musical groups playing, etc. It was really enjoyable, but it wasn’t that enjoyable. And of course, when I lost everything, which was quite a bit later, then of course there were hardly any friends left.
Rick: Right. And you lost everything because the real estate market crashed, right?
Gabor: Yeah, it was quite stupid. I had everything in real estate. I could have bought a condo or a yacht or something. And I had absolutely everything in real estate. So I had land that needed to be serviced. And the service cost remained the same, but the land price has crashed. So there you go, like a negative value. So that was it, I basically lost most of it.
Rick: Yeah, and by this time you were married and had a couple of kids?
Gabor: I was married, I had three children. From the outside perspective, I lived a very ideal life. Three kids, beautiful wife, loyal, nice parties, good business. So it looked fabulous, but deep inside me, there was always something wrong that I shared with many people. I had to go home, and most every night I went home late. And I had to drink a couple of bottles of red wine just to relax.
Rick: A couple of bottles? That’s a lot of wine.
Gabor: Yeah, it got me just nicely on the edge. I could fall asleep. I didn’t question it much at the time, but it was evident that something was off.
Rick: So where did you go from there?
Gabor: Well, as life has it, I saw a videotape of Ramtha. A lady in a young channel.
Rick: Jay Z Knight, right?
Gabor: Jay Z Knight, yes. And I saw this video, a friend of mine introduced me to this video, and I was like, “Wow!” I had such a desire to do this. I knew right away that that’s what I have to do. That’s my next step. It was the same kind of desire as when I was just prior to me escaping. Something like the universe is saying, “Okay, this is what you have to do.” It was like nothing could keep me away from those teachings, nothing.
Rick: Yeah, you said in your book, you said, “My male ego loved this teaching because it was non-formal and included borderline brutal and barbaric physical and mental exercises, which really suited my macho and ever-increasing spiritual ego.”
Gabor: Yes, yes, absolutely true. Of course, the harder, the more challenging it was, the better. And some of the exercises were really brutal but wonderful. Like he sent us out to the forest in the rain and we had to sit with no clothes on, just underwear, and warm ourselves, things like that.
Rick: Did Jay-Z Knight do that herself or just send everybody else out?
Gabor: Just send everybody else.
Rick: That makes sense. Incidentally, we should just fill people in a little bit. So this Ramtha guy, in case people don’t know, is supposedly a 40,000-year-old warrior of some sort that this woman was claiming to channel, Jay-Z Knight. I remember somebody sent me some writings at one point of this, somebody who was involved in that thing, and I thought, “Holy mackerel, I mean, this wouldn’t pass a high school composition test. It’s such an inflated, convoluted, wishy-washy, New Age-y kind of way of expressing things, so many unnecessary and extra words to say a simple point.” I thought, “How can anybody be attracted to this?” But I don’t mean to insult you. I mean, obviously, you were attracted to it.
Gabor: I was attracted to it. I stayed for quite a while.
Rick: Yeah, like seven years, right?
Gabor: Seven years I lived in the forest. I was self-sufficient, and I went to all the possible available trainings. And what’s interesting is that when Jay-Z Knight is being interviewed or speaks, the impression is entirely different than when Ramtha speaks. Through her.
Rick: Right.
Gabor: So sometimes Ramtha was able to speak on a subject for like six, seven hours without stopping.
Rick: Interesting, which she wouldn’t be able to, obviously.
Gabor: She wouldn’t, and she was kind of pissed off at Ramtha because he wouldn’t take a break.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: So the school at the time was very suitable for me. I really learned a lot.
Rick: Yeah, now that’s interesting because in your partner’s book, “The Blind Meeting the Blonde on the Road to Freedom,” she went through a whole thing with Swami Muktananda, and she went through a whole thing with this guy named Dr. Mills. And later in the book you kind of comment that, “Well, that was really all a waste of time.” But now you’re saying that your thing wasn’t a waste of time. So maybe we can talk a bit about apparent detours in terms of spiritual groups that we might join and spend years in, and whether even if we end up concluding in the long run that it was crazy and we wouldn’t want to do it anymore, we kind of look back and think, “Yeah, despite that, I gained something from it,” or not. I mean, you kind of indicate in the book that it’s just delusional and we shouldn’t have wasted our time, but so what’s your attitude now about that?
Gabor: Well, it’s totally paradoxical because we had to do what we had to do.
Rick: True.
Gabor: I would not be who I am and Norit would not be who she is without all those experiences. She wouldn’t have been able to write the book, for example, as well as she did, without the input of Dr. Mills.
Rick: Right.
Gabor: So looking up English words and going into intellectuality is not the way to go to wake up, but that’s a whole other thing. Whether or not something is suitable for waking up, that’s a whole different question because we can only wake up now. So I can say that every moment I spent with Ramtha was a waste of time, but waking up is not in time. So was it necessary? Yes. I wouldn’t say it’s a waste of time, but if someone asked me now whether someone should do that or is it absolutely essential, no, it’s not.
Rick: Yeah, if someone said, “Hey, should I go hang out with JZ Knight now?” you’d probably say, “No, there might be something more effective you can do.”
Gabor: Right, exactly.
Rick: But let’s dwell on this for a second more. It’s kind of an interesting point. If we look at the past, would you say that it’s kind of a good perspective to say, “Well, I did the best I could under the circumstances, knowing what I knew, and even though it might not be what I did now, it’s what I chose.” And so in a way you shouldn’t regret the past.
Gabor: Absolutely not. I talked to a lot of people worldwide about this subject and I absolutely would not be able to express myself like this if it wasn’t for all the teachings. I mean, I could just look in the camera and stay silent, but that would not be a very effective interview.
Rick: Yeah, actually I saw somebody on YouTube, somebody recommended that I interview somebody and they sent me a YouTube video and that’s all the woman did was stare at the camera and not say anything. I thought, “Oh, that’s not going to go so well, I think I won’t do that.”
Gabor: It’s not. Also I find that the problem with that is that spirituality stays on a pedestal. I’m just staying silent. And what people think, “Oh, okay, it’s a mysterious thing.” Or, “It’s over there, it’s that person, he or she is different, he or she has different color skin,” or stuff like that. And I think that one of the extremely important things now is that spirituality or awakening has to come off the pedestal. It’s for everyone, it’s for ordinary people, no matter how we look or no matter what we do. And anything that emphasizes mystical or mystical-ness is not really advisable at this point.
Rick: Yeah, I heartily agree. Which is not to say there haven’t been some wonderful mystics in the world, like so many, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa, and many, Ramana Maharshi, and so many different ones. But spirituality doesn’t have to look weird. You could be a perfectly well-integrated person, working in a business or flying a jetliner or something like that, and be living a very spiritual life. It doesn’t make you an oddball, or shouldn’t.
Gabor: Yeah, exactly. I feel that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 5 years ago, things were different. I think this process has speeded up so much that sometimes I feel that it’s different every day, sometimes different hourly. So you feel the same way. So perhaps being mystical was okay 10 years ago. Not really anymore. It’s got to come off the pedestal so we can deal with it, we can engulf it, we can love it, we can study it. Not as an arms-length thing. That I’m here and that’s there.
Rick: Also the very word mystical – Nirit can look into the roots of it for us – but the very word mystical implies something that is esoteric, something that everybody can’t experience, only certain special people can experience it. We can’t understand it scientifically, it’s beyond the realm of comprehension, all sorts of implications like that. And I would say, and probably you would agree, that whatever is possible in the realm of spirituality should be able to be commonly experienced by anyone. Everyone has the capability and it should be able to be understood in some way, even scientifically.
Gabor: Yeah, absolutely. First of all if somebody is sharing me spiritual stuff in a mystical fashion, even if it’s just subconscious, what my subconscious will be thinking is “Oh, okay, he is different”. His name is Ramakrishna Abracadabra and I’m just a simple Hungarian. So that itself has to come up so we can deal with it. And also, the way I say sometimes to people who I talk to is that in order to wake up, we must go through this, let’s call it the eye of the needle or the other end of the razor blade or whatever metaphor we want to use. And really, if I use the eye of the needle, I can only get through the eye of the needle totally nude. Slippery, simple, totally nude. No mystery, no story, no explanation, no special understanding, it just has to be simple. So mystery does not fit in that nude, in that being. However, after going through the eye of the needle, life could be construed as kind of mystical. From the perspective of duality, it looks like mystical. It’s not. So we don’t lose the adventure of mysticism, but if it happens prior to awakening, it becomes an obstacle.
Rick: So do you mean to say that, let’s say, someone has gone through the eye of the needle, and of course you’re using Christ’s metaphor there about the easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and by rich man he meant complicated person who’s got all sorts of attachments and conditions and issues. So would you say that from the perspective of somebody who hasn’t gone through the eye of the needle, when they hear someone who has gone through, describing things, it may still sound mystical to them, but it’s not from the perspective of the person who’s gone through. In other words, it’s really very simple. It’s just that you have to experience it to really understand it, and someone who hasn’t experienced it might have a struggle with that.
Gabor: Yes, yes, exactly. Let’s say there is this fence, and we’re looking through from one end to another, and from one side of the fence, from the normal duality life, we can say that this person on the other side of the fence is enlightened, forgiving, unconditionally loving, accepting, and really none of it is true. It just looks like it. So from this side of the fence, those people look like all these characters. So let’s say a person has a tendency to be angry. I look across the fence, and say, “Oh, that’s great, you’re not angry. You’re so unconditionally loving,” but not really. It’s just being his being. There is only one kind of personality, and that “beingness” could look like forgiving, accepting, loving.
Rick: Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. So we can do away with the fence and needle analogies for a minute, and just say, Okay, let’s say an awakened person. Are you saying that they will tend to be loving, forgiving, etc.? Or are you saying that they won’t necessarily be? They might be getting angry or doing this and that, and it might not fit our expectations of what an awakened person should be like? I’m not sure which one you mean.
Gabor: Yeah, I mean that being in oneness, there is not so many behaviors. If I’m just being in my body and very much in this loving space, I look like I’m in acceptance.
Rick: Okay.
Gabor: So the person thinks I’m accepting or forgiving. Not really, because this side of the fence, those concepts don’t really exist.
Rick: Right, but that tends to be the way you operate if you’re in being, right? You are more accepting and loving. You don’t create all kinds of unnecessary dramas around you.
Gabor: Yeah, probably the easiest way to say that is that this kind of acceptance on this side of the fence is not the opposite of non-acceptance.
Rick: What is it then?
Gabor: It’s not the opposite of not accepting. It’s not the opposite of not forgiving. It’s not the opposite of not loving. So it looks like loving, but it’s not the opposite of not loving.
Rick: And so what is it then, to put it in positive terms?
Gabor: Okay, in positive terms, it’s just a feeling of oneness, unity and loving everyone for who they are. Not really relying so much on the judgment of the senses.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: The senses. Our mind works strictly on our senses, which is of course based on the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s like 0.1% of reality. Yeah, it’s just a tiny… Yeah, so it’s such a tiny thing. So sometimes I say, and it creates usually a laugh, is that we have to abide in nonsense. Everything that’s sensible has to be disregarded.
Rick: Yeah, I think one way of phrasing it might be that it’s a self-referral state. It’s not object referral, it’s not dependent upon perceptions and the opinions of others and so on and so forth. I think there’s even, “Be a lamp unto oneself,” who said that? But there’s sort of a self-sufficiency characteristic of it.
Gabor: Yeah, exactly. It’s just that if there are 50 different good characteristics, then one doesn’t have to improve those 50 different characteristics to get there, because there is only one type of characteristic. Which appears as 50 different things from the other perspective.
Rick: Yeah, I think I know what you’re saying. Let’s take an analogy. A tree, right? A tree has all these branches and leaves and fruits and all that stuff. And you could go about trying to water each leaf and tend to each fruit, and it could be very complicated and time-consuming. But if you could just somehow get down to the root of the tree and water that, then all those other things will flourish spontaneously. It becomes simple. You get to the root of the thing, literally, in this case.
Gabor: Excellent, excellent way of presenting it, yes.
Rick: Good. Well, let’s get back to your story a little bit. I heard that the Ramtha thing eventually kind of degenerated into drunken orgies. I don’t know if you had left by that time, but it got pretty crazy. And maybe it recuperated from that, I don’t know. But what prompted you to leave?
Gabor: Well, I felt like I had to move on.
Rick: Oh, and I should ask, you know, people might be wondering, “Well, what about the wife and three kids when you were hanging out in Seattle in the woods with Ramtha? What happened to them?”
Gabor: Man, that was tough. That’s the hardest years of my life. I know if I go back, I’ll die. My soul will die or something. And I’m not the type of man who leaves family behind, but that was tough. Every moment my mind was saying, “Go back, go back, go back.” Something kept me there. That was really tough.
Rick: Were they somehow provided for?
Gabor: Yes. There was not much left from the money, a little bit. But they were somewhat provided for, not nearly as well as before. And my ex-wife, who is basically an angel, the reason I’m saying it is because she kept my children positive towards me.
Rick: That’s nice.
Gabor: Which is very nice and very unique. It was a big personal growth for her as well. But of course, that’s not why I did it. So, that period was the toughest.
Rick: Yeah. Well, it took courage I guess. I mean, some people would say it was selfish or callous or something, but who can judge?
Gabor: There were many justifications. People said it’s the grey age. Anybody who gets to be 39, 40 years old, they have this tendency of living in …
Rick: Midlife crisis or whatever.
Gabor: Midlife crisis, buying a Porsche, putting a tatoo.
Rick: You already had the Porsche.
Gabor: So, that’s not what happened to me. That was tough. That was tougher than the bugs in the jungle. That was tougher than depression. That was tougher than most.
Rick: Okay, well, thanks for addressing that. So, you left Ramtha. You felt that it was time to leave.
Gabor: Yeah. It was time to leave. No special reason. It was all of a sudden I felt that the only reason I’m going to the gatherings is because my friends are going. I had wonderful friends who would say, “Oh, come on, come on, it’s great.” So, I go. So, nothing.
Rick: Right. They lost its meaningfulness for you.
Gabor: I might have picked up a lot of extra intellectual knowledge and things like that, but then it wasn’t for me.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: Like I said, it was great, but it wasn’t for me. And you mentioned before the drunkenness. And I think Ramtha was desperate in getting some message through. And he couldn’t. So, he figured, “Okay, I’m going to put the mind of these people at ease.” So, he tried to bring in this thing that every time you come to a lecture, bring a couple of bottles of good quality red wine and some cheese.
Rick: Just your kind of group, huh?
Gabor: Oh, yeah. For a guy, oh man, this is cool. And so, he was toasting. He had amazing toasts at the beginning of lectures. He could do it for like 10 minutes. Amazing. And then if he drunk half a bottle, like a big glass, then we had to do the same.
Rick: And so, when you say he drunk it, it was actually Jay-Z Knight drinking it.
Gabor: Jay-Z Knight drinking it, and she was really, apparently, really pissed off at him.
Rick: Huh, wow.
Gabor: Because her body was ruined for a while.
Rick: So, she was that much under his control. She had no choice.
Gabor: She had no choice, no.
Rick: Weird.
Gabor: So, that was about drunkenness. I think the meaning, the intention was good. And of course, the human follow-up is always different. Sometimes, that intention, you know.
Rick: Yeah. So, I don’t know if we’re going to skip anything here, but you ended up leaving there and you ended up starting to build a condo in Mexico. Was there anything important in between?
Gabor: Yeah, well, while I was with Ramtha, I did any kind of spiritual or awakening or any kind of alternative seminar that you can think of.
Rick: That they were offering? That anybody was offering?
Gabor: Anybody was offering. Anybody. Anybody who came, whether a person with a channeler or Drunvalo Melchizedek’s courses or, I mean, absolutely anyone. I was interested in. So, there again, I had my interest up. And it’s like, okay, if I’m studying from Ramtha, what I need to know, why do I have this great interest to keep on searching?
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: Subconsciously. And so, I was fortunate enough to acquire some public shares, which I was able to sell. So, I started to have some money again. A friend of mine opened up a public company. He didn’t have any money and he borrowed my credit card. So, I lent him my credit card and in exchange he gave me 5% of the shares. So, I started to have some money again. I was very lucky, fortunate.
Rick: Too bad it wasn’t Google or something.
Gabor: Yeah. Exactly. So, whatever money I had, I invested into a piece of land in Puerta Vallarta in Mexico and started to build through subcontractors, of course, a condominium building. I’ve done many stupid things in my life, but that was really up there.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: A lot of stress. Construction is difficult in any country, but in a totally different culture, it’s really horrible. But the building got built, it’s beautiful, people got their titles, so it was fine.
Rick: Oh, you actually pulled it off.
Gabor: Yeah, I actually pulled it off. During the building time, there was lots of stress. I took a break. I took the teacher’s training from Bikram.
Rick: Hot yoga thing.
Gabor: A hot yoga thing, which was really helpful, but I went back into the stress and by that time I had serious depression. So, yoga during the building, serious, serious depression.
Rick: Is it possible to say why you had that depression? Or do you think it was just because of the stress and the frustration of not having fulfilled your spiritual aspirations?
Gabor: For me, it was a combination. I can say that at least partially I inherited it from my mom. She had it. It wasn’t diagnosed, but it was evident that she had depression. And second and most importantly, I had an expectation. I had an expectation of financial success and I didn’t get there. I got there, I didn’t. And I had an expectation of spiritual success. I figured, okay, I’ve already succeeded financially, the next thing is the spiritual success. Otherwise known as awakening, enlightenment, whatever, right? So, after all these efforts, I’m still not there.
Rick: Was there much talk of awakening and enlightenment in the Ramtha thing or was it more like personality enhancements and stuff like that without any real clear sense of awakening?
Gabor: That was not any mentioning of awakening. A lot of information, good stuff. The chakras are counter-spinning one another and this color and that thing and how things work in other planets, but there was no, at least I don’t remember, any emphasis placed on awakening.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: There was one exercise that was extremely good. It was called the Christ walk. And the whole essence of it was that you just walk with your hand down and every time your thoughts stop, you could take a step. So, if the thoughts don’t bother you, you can keep walking. If the thoughts come in, you stop. So, that was the closest we got to, from my perspective, to awakening.
Rick: Okay. Alrighty, so you’re dealing with the depression, dealing with the condo building and then you ended up where? Was it Peru or Ecuador?
Gabor: I ended up in Ecuador.
Rick: Ecuador, okay.
Gabor: It was actually a business trip and a friend of mine who lives there, he invited me and the family had like a small motel near the jungle and they happened to know the shaman. And I very much wanted to experience how they live and so the shaman said yes. So, I went and spent three and a half months with them.
Rick: Out in the jungle?
Gabor: Out in the jungle. It was an absolutely fantastic experience from the perspective of, I totally 100% realized something. That all my knowledge, all my prior knowledge that I have in my head, in any way, shape or form and experiences have somehow nothing to do with awakening. Those people woke up in the morning and were just sitting there. And now I’m explaining it of course differently than I would have at the time. They were able to just sit and I was the only one who was expecting something. “When are we going to get somewhere? When am I going to get initiated into some kind of mystical something? When is the shaman going to teach me something?” So, I really realized that, wow, you know a lot but these people who don’t know much in comparison are where you wanted to be. That was huge for me.
Rick: So, they were content to just sit in presence of something and not … and just rest there?
Gabor: Yeah, they were in being. Didn’t even know what that means.
Rick: It was their natural state.
Gabor: In a natural state and for me it was something that I acquired in the future. Sometimes in the future I will somehow get there if I know enough or if I practice enough.
Rick: Do you think that they were that way because of their jungle lifestyle or because of shamanistic training such as ayahuasca or something? Or was it just like everybody was that way in this community?
Gabor: I think partially ayahuasca is helpful for them. I think they were doing it twice a year or something as a ceremony. But also that they had no computers, no nothing. The closest one they got to civilization is some plastic bags and the roof was partially covered with plastic and stuff like that. And they used some plastic bottles here and there that they find. But they had no involvement in this civilized society or what I call “syphillization”.
Rick: Yeah, in case people didn’t catch the pronunciation of that, it’s a take off on the word syphilis, right?
Gabor: Yeah, exactly. It’s a “syphillization” instead of civilization. Lifestyle is what we would call primitive but from the perspective of the mind, as the mind runs and bothers us in this civilization, they didn’t have that. They didn’t have that they could sit and just smile and the smile was genuine. It wasn’t like “Hey, I am this Native American person and I am now smiling”. They didn’t have to have any shamanic training or anything. It was wonderful. Again, very tough because I wasn’t used to the environment. I was scratching, scratching, scratching my skin, bugs, humidity, stuff like that. I took some ayahuasca with them.
Rick: Yeah, you mentioned you were doing it twice a week for a few weeks or something?
Gabor: Yeah, twice a week for three weeks. And it was really helpful. And then after that I calmed down and I thought, “Okay, maybe it’s the ayahuasca who will do this.” But it’s not true. It’s just that I was in such a nice, relaxed state.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: I could actually be with them.
Rick: Now you hear about ayahuasca, people taking it, and you see these pictures by Alex Gray or whoever, some different artists are able to draw these amazing things depicting what it’s like on ayahuasca. I didn’t read any of that or hear any of that in preparing for this interview. In terms of your experience, it sounds like it was a more subtle kind of thing. Maybe you didn’t take such large doses of it or something, but what was your actual subjective experience with it?
Gabor: Actually, it was quite dramatic.
Rick: Was it?
Gabor: Yeah, I didn’t write about it or talk about it too much, but of course I didn’t know what I was taking. So the first time Shaman gave me something, I don’t know what it is.
Rick: Did you vomit and all that?
Gabor: It looked like espresso coffee, but it was very bitter. So the only way I could get it down was this way. And I didn’t vomit. I was tempted to vomit, but my body couldn’t. It was terrible. If I did, it would have been easier. I wish I could vomit, but I couldn’t. And so the first 20 minutes is really horrible. It was my experience. It was like nausea. And then I went through a layer, what I call a layer, I closed my eyes and I thought I’m going to die. And all I saw was triangles, snakes, crocodiles in between each other, stuff like that. And not knowing what’s going on, I didn’t know what I’m doing. All I could say is “love, love, love.” I couldn’t remember anything else. I figured, okay, I’m going to do some kind of mantra to hopefully I survive this. And then after about 40 minutes or so, it shifts. Then comes the pleasant part of the experience. Very interesting because it’s almost like the Ayahuasca wine was teaching me.
Rick: That’s what people say, yeah.
Gabor: Not in words, in feelings. And of course I became very happy. First of all, I didn’t die. Secondly, oh my God, this is amazing. And so teaching stuff, not in words. I remember some of the, of course I did it six times all together. Some of the experiences were interesting. I remember they were showing me water levels, like an ocean level. And they kind of took me under the water, and above the water, and under the water, and above the water. And at that time I interpreted that as “don’t worry life and death, same thing.” Kind of metaphorically. And so the Ayahuasca teaches me I’m really grateful for the experience.
Rick: Yeah. And so after that whole period of several weeks, and in the ensuing weeks and months, did you feel like you had really shifted in some permanent way? Or did you go back to Mexico and get back into the stress and it was like the same old crazy stuff?
Gabor: Unfortunately not. It became a memory. My mind made a template out of it. Ayahyasca template. And so it was recorded as a wonderful experience. Something that I can tell my friends that I did. I survived being with the Indians. So again sort of a male ego thing it became. And the depression was still very much relevant in my life. And of course then came, in the peak of my depression, I was riding my bicycle thinking “okay I should be maybe riding my bicycle under the bus or something.” I made it to the beach and that’s when I finally surrendered. Somehow the thought came to me, “Okay, why don’t you look inside?” Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within, so what if it is really within?”
Rick: You must have kind of done that before with all of your spiritual practice and your ayahuasca and everything else. I mean that wasn’t a new idea to you was it, to look inside?
Gabor: No, it wasn’t a new idea. I heard it a thousand times.
Rick: But you never really did it?
Gabor: I never really did it.
Rick: I see.
Gabor: I knew about it, I talked about it, I could explain it, I could explain the physiology of it, I could explain aspects of it. I could say which particular person talked about it in the past. I could talk about it well but not do it. I needed to be, the difference was I needed to be really beaten down by the depression to be able to really look and feel in a simplified fashion that is not only simple but it’s very modest, very humble. Real humble, I mean real humble. The attitude is, “Okay God, this is my last breath” kind of humble. And then I really looked inside and something clicked. I was like, “Wow!” The waves of the ocean, I was sitting on the beach, changed. My hearing totally changed. There was this dog next to me, you know those beach dogs? They are not very pretty looking dogs. And so I looked around, there was this dog on my left. The dog looked into my eyes and to me that was the most beautiful dog ever. So I knew something simple has happened. And looking inside is not the same as “talking about looking inside” like I did before.
Rick: Yeah. There’s something about your story and also Narita’s story. People haven’t read her book so they may not know her story but she went through decades of really intense desperate seeking. But there’s something about that kind of story which I’ve heard people say that the desire for God is itself the path to God. And that it’s not so much what one does in a superficial sense but it’s just the intensity and sincerity of one’s desire. And it seems like both of you in your own ways had just this really persistent desire that lasted a long, long time. And motivated you to do different things but it wasn’t so much the things as the deep desire that ended up eventually bringing you to some breakthrough, some resolution.
Gabor: Yes, it is. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Rick: And like you said, life’s circumstances kind of beat you down and made you humble. And there’s so many stories like that in various traditions of people just really going through tough times. But the purpose of those tough times as it turns out at the end of the story is to have brought them to a state of humility where they can really be open to realization.
Gabor: Yeah, I realized that when I had tough times and I had plenty just like other people, my priority was to fix the problem. “Okay, let’s fix this problem and then at the end this spiritual thing is the next problem.” “Okay, let me fix this problem and then I will have time for God or whatever.” So it was always a separate event for me. Not knowing that difficulties are actually easier access points. I mean, we can access presence at any time from anywhere, any position, but difficulties are actually easier access points than non-difficulties. And so if someone has a difficult time, the difficulty don’t need to be fixed first. The difficulty, of course, will get fixed, but the difficulty could be used to actually access the simplicity, surrender, surrender enough so that somebody can actually go through the eye of the needle. Because when we have that kind of difficulty we are really naked. No money helps, nothing. I mean, wealthy people could buy the state of consciousness if they could, they can’t.
Rick: Yeah, so it’s a cart before the horse kind of thing. It’s like Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added unto thee.” In that order.
Gabor: Exactly, and it’s so clear now, of course. There’s no misunderstanding about that. First we seek this and everything else shall be added and it’s absolutely true in my experience. Difficulties are helpful to access presence.
Rick: Yeah, is there a shortcut? Is there a way that people can not have to go through as many difficulties and yet access presence?
Gabor: Yes, exactly, and that’s the purpose of my teachings. I hate to call it teachings, but it’s that to be able to access presence and not having to wait for some kind of a disaster. That state is a non-state, of course. It’s accessible anytime from anywhere. And so it’s totally possible to re-create the physiological effect of a disaster without actually having the disaster.
Rick: Yeah, so how do you do that and what would that experience be? Re-creating the physiological effect of a disaster? Even that doesn’t sound very appealing, but what are you saying exactly?
Gabor: So we’re not recreating the disaster. So probably the easiest way to put it is let’s say I have a disaster, which I have plenty and so do other people. A shock, and in a real shock the mind stops. All of a sudden it stops. A friend of mine in Canada was driving his car up north at night and he bumped into this moose on the road and the top of his car came off totally. Like a can opener, it opened up. He almost died and he said that “Wow!” All of a sudden nirvana, it’s like “Wow!” So the shock made his mind stop and now you’re in this presence. So we don’t want to wait for a car accident or anything like that. The physiological effect in the body that’s stopping the mind, we can interrupt. So what I teach is interruption techniques. We don’t meditate. The meditation state, not a state, will be coming. But the first thing is interruption. So we interrupt the mind by using different tactics. Depending on the person, different techniques have to be used. It looks kind of weird. I can show you one.
Rick: Sure. People would like to have an example.
Gabor: I call this the dolphin because it kind of looks like a dolphin. It’s a little bit of laugh involved. It looks like this.
Rick: Aha, the way dolphins squeal.
Gabor: Yes, it involves exhaling, laughing, inner focus. It involves quite a few things at the same time but it works. So what that does, the dolphin and many other similar interruption tactics, is it gives us a break from the mind. The mind will give us a little bit of a break. 20 seconds, half a minute, whatever. During that half a minute, we have actually, it has a similar effect as some kind of a stress. During that time it is easier to look inside. Inner looking tactics still have to be applied. But now it is easier. So we simulate some kind of a tragedy. And then when we have this break, we simply use inner technology. How to access that inner peace instantly. So now people don’t have to wait for a tragedy. It’s available, accessible to anyone and now it could be learned. Five years ago it was more difficult.
Rick: I suppose, I don’t know if you would agree with this, but it seems like all sorts of spiritual techniques are ways of interrupting the ordinary way of functioning. Like breathing exercises or certain types of meditation or certain yoga practices. I mean I have this thing where if I stand at the edge of a swimming pool and hold my nose and bend over and then just let gravity, do this at the deep end, just let gravity pull me in until I do a real slow somersault underwater. For some reason that always just shifts me into complete unbounded awareness. It’s a tremendous bliss. I don’t know what it is. I can’t do it over and over again, but the first time I do it at a swimming pool, I always have that experience.
Gabor: Sounds good to me. I’m going to see.
Rick: Yeah, try it. Just let yourself gradually go and just let yourself do a slow somersault underwater and it’s like you lose all physical … maybe it’s like a sensory deprivation tank or zero gravity in space or something. You met Edgar Mitchell and a lot of the astronauts talk of having profound spiritual experiences when they’re in outer space because it’s such a break from ordinary reality.
Gabor: Yeah, I mean it’s a … first of all you let go, you surrender and you’re surrendering into a different medium. You’re going from the air to the water. So it’s a very good one. It’s a very good one because after all we’re going to a different medium. We’re surrendering and we’re going to a totally different world, a totally different medium, a totally different base. So it’s a very good simulation, what you described. It sounds very good.
Rick: I should patent it.
Gabor: Yeah.
Rick: The Rick technique. It’s only for people who have swimming pools.
Gabor: Spiritual patents.
Rick: Here’s a question that came in from someone named Flory from Germantown. I believe Germantown is in Pennsylvania. She asks, “I tend to access parts of expanded awareness, for example oneness or witnessing, very separate from ego emotions. In some cases I have lived there for years and then lost the experience. Usually I haven’t realized that what I attained was what people are trying to get. Therefore I haven’t protected myself from emotional blows that destroy the experience, which never returns. Do you have any thought about how to keep this from happening?”
Gabor: Yes. It’s one of those things that happens to people, that they are actually there and then they don’t know how to keep it.
Rick: Yeah.
Gabor: The so-called secret is simply knowing that this experience today is wonderful. And then all of a sudden tomorrow, the next week, is not so wonderful. Which changes. What that means is that my mind created a template of meditation or falling into a swimming pool or whatever exercise. Or the dolphin. So my mind says, “OK, now there is a template.” And my mind is playing. So when the mind starts to play long enough, all of a sudden the mind is playing to such an extent that it covers up the experience that you already had. So knowing this is crucial because I call this changing the password on the mind. Meaning that if I use the swimming pool technique and all of a sudden I can’t get back there, then OK, I’m going to use the dolphin or I’m going to use some other interruption of some kind. So my mind gets confused and it can’t connect it to the previous experience. So knowing this, that the mind is playing and I need to change the password, that’s one of those. One part of the answer. The other part of the answer is whatever technology people use, “technology”, it’s not a good word. Let’s call it technology, people use. Let’s say I have the technology, I’m able to just look inside. Just look and feel and look and feel and look and feel. And let’s say nothing happens. “OK, nothing is happening. I’m going to not do it. No feedback, nothing is happening.” Well, there cannot be any feedback from a non-sense reality to a sense reality. There is no feedback mechanism because my senses cannot sense the non-sense. That’s one. Number two, and most importantly, whatever technique I’m using and I’m humble enough to get back there, quote unquote, the assumption is that nothing is happening. So there’s no feedback, nothing is happening, oh nothing is happening, nothing is happening. It’s not true. Because hundreds of angels might be working on you to open the door, yet the senses are saying nothing is happening. So, I mean, it depends on the situation of this person. It has to be custom made, but usually the password has to change. What I mean by password is that the entry technology has to shift so the mind switches off. So it will let you be present again. That’s the short answer to a long question or vice versa.
Rick: Yeah, and you don’t want those Russian hackers getting in there. So you’ve got to change that password. So she brings up a good point, Flory, which is, and a lot of people talk about this, there’s a sort of “I got it, I lost it” syndrome. And some people advocate practices to sort of stabilize and culture a more permanent state, some people don’t. In fact, you seem to offer a number of practices, you just mentioned a couple of them, but then in your book you say “meditation practice is in time, it has a beginning and an end. I can see now so clearly that practicing spiritual practices is a farce” And when I read that I thought, “I don’t agree, it’s not my experience.” And I don’t know if Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, Ramana would agree either. I mean, eating is something that you do in time, it has a beginning and an end, but it sustains you 24/7. So meditation, even though it’s something you can’t do all the time, you do it temporarily and it has an effect. And that effect sort of has a lasting influence, especially if you do it on a regular basis, it shifts, it changes your whole physiology over time.
Gabor: Yeah, and that is one of the very sensitive areas. I mean, luckily Ramana Maharshi also said, “Just be, don’t meditate.”
Rick: He said a lot of things to a lot of different people according to who was coming to him.
Gabor: So it’s not just that it has a beginning and an end, but the problem with the meditation technique is that automatically I have some kind of an expectation.
Rick: Maybe.
Gabor: My experience.
Rick: Okay.
Gabor: I mean, there is a million meditation techniques. And automatically I have some expectation. Usually I do it once or twice a day at a particular time when I have inner focus, visualization, breathing technique, whatever.
Rick: You do it yourself or you are saying hypothetically?
Gabor: I am aware of it and I am using myself as an example. Meditators, including me, who meditated a lot. I meditated a lot. And so meditation creates a good feeling in the mind, a very, very good spiritual experience, but it is my experience that is still mind-based. Simply because it’s got a continuation. I have a continuation meditation technique and tomorrow I am also going to do the same. So my mind now has a template that, okay, here is Gabor the meditator who is now meditating and practicing and in the future is going to feel better. And the present moment cannot be a continuation of the previous moment. It’s now and now. So in my experience and with my students’ experience, it’s usually, not always, but it’s usually a hindrance. Techniques of interrupting the mind and techniques of staying there while you are living your life is what’s the closest or the most efficient technology that I know of. I’m not against anything, of course, nothing, I’m not against anything, especially meditation, but in my experience it’s generally speaking a hindrance.
Rick: Yeah, well you have to go with what you know and what your experience has taught you, that’s for sure. In my experience, I should, full disclosure here, I’ve been doing it a couple of hours a day for 49 years, I found it to be very helpful. And it’s such a normal thing like breathing to me that I don’t have any expectations or anything else. It’s completely natural, effortless, and one goes beyond the mind, so it’s not like just a mental thing where you’re doing something in your mind. The mind settles down, gets interrupted, to use your word, and one transcends it altogether. And that has an effect over time. It’s like in India they used to use this analogy of dyeing a cloth, where you take a white cloth, dip it in colored dye, then bleach it in the sun, and it loses its color in the sun. But then you dip it again and bleach it in the sun, it loses its color a little bit less. And you keep doing that and eventually it’s the same color, whether it’s in the dye or the sun.
Gabor: Yeah, yeah, there’s tremendous benefits to meditation. So, like I said, it’s the most sensitive subject when it comes to that.
Rick: And there are so many different kinds of meditation. So, it’s like different strokes for different folks, and we may not even be speaking the same language if we’re referring to meditation. It’s like the word “liquid”. There’s red wine, there’s ammonia, there’s water, there’s all kinds of different liquids.
Gabor: Exactly, exactly. And knowing this, knowing that there is no common vocabulary, it’s not even available, is the prerequisite for spiritual teachers and people who even talk to me. Knowing that most likely there is a misunderstanding.
Rick: Yeah, you have to understand what you’re actually using when you use words.
Gabor: Exactly, exactly.
Rick: Nurit to the rescue again. (Laughter)
Gabor: He always comes to the rescue, yes. (Laughter)
Rick: Yeah, so we kind of left you on the beach there looking at the dog, and that was a breakthrough for you. How did you … I mean, where did you go from there, and was that such a breakthrough that you never kind of … I mean, did you actually kick the depression at that point, or was that just sort of a glimpse, and it took a while to stabilize and integrate what you had realized?
Gabor: Well, that was, if there is such a thing, that was THE breakthrough, in a sense that I got it.
Rick: Okay.
Gabor: I got it beyond my understanding, beyond my spiritual experiences. I got the simplicity. And the depression instantly stopped. However, it tried to come back. It tried to come back, but I still felt the effect of it, but not the suffering of it. So, there is a sensation which resembles depression, but if I go underneath that feeling, and over and above, and do some … like going interwoven to the feeling, the suffering totally stops, even though there is a sensation. So, it has tried to come back.
Rick: Even now, or …
Gabor: No. So, you’re totally done with it now?
Gabor: At that time, yeah. It tried. And so, I had to integrate very quick, because I was building a condominium in the meantime.
Rick: Yeah. What do you make of the fact that, here in the United States anyway, and maybe other places in the world, depression is kind of an epidemic these days. And, you know, hundreds of millions, or hundreds of … many, many millions of people are being put on various medications. There is an opioid epidemic in the United States, which is probably related to depression. I mean, people … you know, it’s really bad. I mean, what do you think is happening in our culture, and do you see the possibility of a cultural breakthrough that might be similar to the individual breakthrough you had?
Gabor: Excellent problem to bring up, actually. Because I’m sure many people will be watching who has this problem, more or less. First of all, it’s good to acknowledge that life is getting harder. It’s harder to have a better life now than before. And more and more and more complex. And we think that the only tool we have available is the tools that we have available, which is sense-related, what relates to our senses, and whatever templates we have in our mind. So we have this contrast reality, I call it. So with the contrast reality, we can go on and on and on, and work harder and harder and harder, but it’s going to get more and more difficult. So the universe is bringing in more and more problems. And one of those is definitely depression. And so we are consistently forced, there’s a universal attempt to look inside. And people have all kinds of problems, financial problems, depression, health, relationship. And we can temporarily solve it with medications or whatever therapy we might have. But there is only one permanent solution, is to wake up. And that is really permanent. What it gives a person is an entirely different ability that hasn’t been there. Or I could say, it was there when we were kids, but now that ability is activated. Then we can still retain the contrast reality. Like you’re not going to forget how to be an engineer. In addition to that, something wakes up that is able to relate to the non-sensical world also. So I think that the universe, God, whatever we think, we are being pushed to wake up big time. And the universal push is called problems. Now, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that we are being pushed like crazy. The good news is that every hour I feel that it’s easier. If someone has the willingness, the humbleness, actually repeat some exercises, I find it easier and easier and easier. We’re really being pushed. Now with respect to depression, it’s a big push. And if someone is listening who has depression, it’s not a problem to take the medication. It’s okay to take it, but you can still do whatever exercises. You can still look inside. You can still look underneath this. And then eventually you’ll be able to stop the medication. So when the new ability is activated, you can stop the medication. Until then, it’s not a problem. So that’s sort of my opinion.
Rick: Yeah, might be good to dwell on this for just a minute more. So what you’re saying essentially is that the reason things are getting more complicated and difficult and fast-paced and so on is that nature or God or the universe is trying to wake people up. I mean, some people get … part of the reason some people are depressed is that they feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket. There’s just so many problems that any one of which could wipe us out, and yet we have all of them and nobody has any solutions to them. And it just seems like impossible. It’s like, “Ahh!” And so what you’re saying is, I think, that there’s a silver lining to this in that it’s symptomatic or indicative of a shift in world consciousness and an opportunity to awaken which might not be there if things were all just simple and easy.
Gabor: Yes, if life was totally easy we would not be motivated to look inside. I mean, in spite of all my difficulties, it took me quite a few years to actually look inside. So somehow we’re being beaten down to be humble enough, to surrender enough, to have that simplicity in our hearts. And like I said, the good news is it’s getting easier and easier. The universe is like breaking down our door now. It’s like, “Hey dude, open the door or I’m coming through anyway.”
Rick: Yeah, so what you’re saying is in your experience teaching and interacting with people, they’re having breakthroughs more easily. You said that essentially. And so there is kind of a mass looking inside taking place. And I see it as, you know, doing these interviews, it’s like there really does seem to be some kind of, I’ve said this many times, but some sort of spiritual epidemic taking place where despite all the difficulties which are very serious, there is some kind of mass awakening. You’re not going to see it on the 6 o’clock news because it’s subtle, but it’s happening.
Gabor: There’s more grace. Every hour there is more grace. But instead of looking forward in time, we have to look in. And really in the universe there is only in and out. There is no up and down really. That language came from medieval times when the earth was flat. And the reason we are saying that is because there is only in and out. So we always look out, what about looking in? Or if you want to take it a step further, there is only convergence and divergence. And so we can, when we look inside we converge with the universal way, what is unconditional love, unity, consciousness. We can converge and we can diverge. So language in a way, duality language in a way is responsible for us having looking in the wrong direction because as the language goes, so does our attention. So yes, there is more and more grace every hour now. And more and more we are forced to look inside. And when we do it’s easier and easier and it really works.
Rick: Yeah, it’s nice. Your use of the word convergence reminds me of a verse from the Gita which says, “For many branched and endlessly diverse are the intellects of the irresolute, but the resolute intellect is one-pointed.”
Gabor: Great.
Rick: And it uses the analogy of a tortoise sort of bringing its limbs in, you know, to converge.
Gabor: Tortoise is a very good example, yeah. It goes out, goes back into its house, and it lives 200 years, so it’s not bad.
Rick: Yeah. There was an interesting point in your book. I think this was your book or Nurit’s book where she was quoting you.
Gabor: It’s Nurit’s book.
Rick: You also wrote a book that I read part of. I guess you haven’t finished it, but I read some of it.
Gabor: Yeah, my book will be coming out in a month or so called “Functional Silence.”
Rick: Yeah, it’s a good book, I read some of it. And there was a nice little thing I quoted. Again, I’m not sure if that’s from her book or yours, but you said, “What I do and how I act is not driven by my mind or ego, but guided by the universal intelligence that lives in, and as, my new platform.” I like that sentence.
Gabor: Yeah, it’s a very practical way to look at it. Platform, we are now used to platforms because we have computers. So it’s a different platform that’s factory built-in. It’s like buying a supercomputer that has every possible platform. But we’re only using the very modest beginning platform. When computers came out, maybe that was the MS-DOS system or something.
Rick: Yeah, I remember it. It was a nightmare.
Gabor: It’s a very practical way to put it.
Rick: Yeah, and the key point of it, I think, is that … We’ve come to this theme a number of times during this discussion about complexity versus simplicity. But if the ego and the mind are running the show, it’s like, “What should I do?” And there are so many variables, and “Where do I go?” And it’s really hard to figure things out in life because there are so many unforeseen possibilities and so many complexities and so on. But what you’re saying is that from this platform of being guided by universal intelligence, things tend to work out if you just surrender to that and trust in that. There’s a phrase in the Vedas someplace that says, “Brahman is the charioteer.” It’s like you let Brahman or the Absolute drive the chariot, and you learn to trust that, and things kind of work out.
Gabor: Yeah, yeah. Very good expression. Brahman is the charioteer. Yes, then there’s a problem. The first thing we habitually do is tend to fix it. Yes, we have to fix it. At the same time, at the exact same time, we can first remember just to be. Just breathe and be. Just go in and be. And while you’re fixing the problem. And every time there’s a fixing needed, just before the fixing, if you need to make a phone call, just be and then make another phone call and fix the problem. So we’re not saying “don’t fix the problem” at all. But what I’m saying is in conjunction, don’t forget to just be. It’s amazing how much it helps. Even a deep breath. And if you learn to look inside, the amount of help is available is amazing. Not the way we think it is. We’re not going to get help the way we think we should get help. Usually a much better way, an unforeseen way. Amazing. So there’s more and more problems. Just take a deep breath. Pray, if that’s your culture, whatever your culture is. Pray, take a deep breath, meditate, whatever. Just turn inside a little bit and proceed to fix the problem. But prior to that, just try to be.
Rick: I think Einstein said something like, “You can’t fix problems from the level of consciousness at which they were created.”
Gabor: Exactly.
Rick: And also, commenting on your point there, I would say that eventually “being” becomes second nature. It’s not like you have to do anything or remind yourself or anything like that. It’s like riding a bicycle. At first you have to think, “Okay, I’ve got to balance here. Oops, I’ve got to balance.” But after a while, it’s automatic.
Gabor: Yes, it becomes a default.
Rick: Like breathing or something. You don’t have to remember to breathe.
Gabor: All of a sudden you turn on the computer and Microsoft 10 comes up as an operating system. It’s the default. And it’s a lot simpler than we think it is. Actually, “we think it is” is a joke because it’s beyond thinking. So we can’t possibly think how easy it could be. It’s not complex. It’s everybody’s personal birthright. And it’s much closer than we think. It’s not mysterious. It gets easier and easier hourly. But we have to take the direction. We must look in. That no one can do for us. No matter how educated I became in spirituality, nothing happens unless we actually turn inside.
Rick: Yeah, here’s another quote from your book that somehow what you just said reminds me of. You said, “I would not use the phrase, ‘I am not the body.’ I could say, ‘I am not only the body.’ That would be more accurate. The body is of utmost importance because, if used properly, it is a very sensitive door or opening which allows us to find our true essence.” So the reason I thought that was important is that it seems like the body is, as Jesus said, “the temple of the soul.” It’s like a vehicle, it’s an instrument through which being is cognized and lived. And there is some kind of physiological transformation that takes place in order for being to be cognized and lived. Researchers have done all these studies on the brain waves and all sorts of things like that, of people who have been on the spiritual path for a long, long time, and they are actually very different than people who haven’t been. There’s a whole different style of brain functioning. So I just thought I’d throw that point in, since you made that point in your book, or maybe again it was Nurit’s book.
Gabor: The body is very much underestimated in spirituality. It’s a perfect interface between realities. It’s an interface between realities, between dimensions, what have you. And we’re just beginning at this, so eventually we’ll be able to, I believe, switch, go to many different places. But by looking in, we’re actually activating, we’re getting in touch with the universal intelligence. So why not use it? So coming from that perspective that I’m looking and I’m getting in touch with the body’s intelligence, and all of a sudden you feel this peace, that is the platform. And so the body is now in touch with 99% of reality, and my senses could be in touch with the 0.1%. Both are needed, very much so. So the body is definitely underestimated in spirituality.
Rick: Yeah, here’s another quote related to that from the book. It said, “I might say that God or the universe is the supreme intelligence that runs my body. So if I want to get in touch with God, what would be the closest to me that is guaranteed to be part of God? It’s my own body.”
Gabor: Yes, yeah. The closest nature to me is body, my own body. And many wise people refer to what Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within.” Maybe he meant within the body, I mean, it’s fine by me. Whatever.
Rick: Yeah, or if not within the body, then at least the body is needed to locate the kingdom of God. Like you need a radio to pick up radio signals. There’s radio signals going through us all the time, but unless you have the right instrument, you can’t detect them.
Gabor: Yeah, the body is the door, and so we cannot neglect it. First we have to find the door, and then it feels like once this door opens, it feels like inside and outside become the same anyway. There’s no inner and outer once the door opens. So the inner and outer expression is only available prior to entering. After that there is really no inner and outer, so we really get that the body is an interface.
Rick: Yeah, good point, good word. Here’s a question that came in from Mark Peters in Santa Clara, California. He asks, “Who is looking when we look inside? Who is looking? Is it a formulation of mind-looking that ultimately dissolves in the activity of looking?”
Gabor: Good question. Well, most of the time it’s very difficult to answer that because the answer is at a different level than the question comes in, even though the question is an extremely intelligent question. So when I’m focusing within, I’m not considering that I’m looking at all. I’m just focusing within in a very humble fashion. It doesn’t occur to me that I’m going to be the observer or the observed or who is looking or who am I.
Rick: Yeah, it’s very complicated to do all that.
Gabor: I’m humble enough, I have to be humble enough to just look. And then what happens is if I’m humble enough to stay looking without expectation, then all of a sudden something clicks, where the inside becomes the outside. And again, there is no looker or looking. And so the question actually disappears when we actually humbly put attention inside the body. The mind can go on forever asking very good questions. And really, it’s the best thing to do with those questions is just to be with them. And if I’m just focusing within and being with that question, you actually get your own answer in your own culture and in your own way, in your own vocabulary.
Rick: Yeah, would it be accurate to say in your understanding that the kind of duality or the trinity of looker and looking and looked all kind of dissolve or merge into a unity?
Gabor: Yes, yes, absolutely. And if you use geometrical metaphors, if you use the trinity as a starting point, the way we live our life, black, white and gray, whatever, all of a sudden when we activate this ability, it’s basically the tetrahedron. So from a simple triangle we go to a tetrahedron which has four apexes. And the tetrahedron is the first geometrical form that has inside and outside. And now it has space. So it’s a very good metaphor to use. Buckminster Fuller wrote a lot about those kind of things.
Rick: Yeah, I had the honor of seeing him give some lectures on that one time back in about 1971. It was really exciting.
Gabor: Yeah, really cool dude.
Rick: He was, yeah. Okay, so we’ve been talking for almost two hours. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that I have neglected to ask you or that you would like to talk about that you think is important?
Gabor: Well, you really addressed a lot of different things. All I can say is, I’d like to say that I’m going to have, my next seminar is in London, April 28, 29 and 30.
Rick: Of 2017 for those who might be watching this five years from now.
Gabor: Just coming up, that’s the next seminar. And where we’re going to be learning, addressing many of these practical applications. Very useful, so whoever is listening, if you find this attractive, please come. Information is on my website and yours perhaps.
Rick: I’ll be linking to your website with anything you want me to link to. Nurit has sent me some things. So let’s say people are watching this a year from now and obviously they can just go to your website and they’ll find out what you’re doing. Do you do things over Skype or anything, or webinars, so that people don’t have to travel?
Gabor: So far I’ve done mainly groups by invitation and I do a lot of one-on-one personalized training. There is a period in this initiation or integration or whatever we call it, it doesn’t matter what we call it, it’s not accurate. There’s a period where a person needs help. No matter how well we explain or practice, it’s so easy to get stuck. The mind currently is extremely smart. It’s going to use everything against us. Whatever we learn, the mind learns. So for a period of time, professional help is needed. So that’s what I do most of the time worldwide. It’s a great success actually. I’ll be doing a lot of online seminars as well. I haven’t been doing very much of that. My next live seminar is in London, which is going to be very powerful.
Rick: Good. Okay, so obviously people will be able to come to your website and find out all about that, maybe get on a mailing list or different things like that.
Gabor: It would be really wonderful.
Rick: Yeah. Well thanks, I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you. I enjoyed reading Nurit’s book. We keep referring to Nurit, she’s your wife or your partner.
Gabor: Yeah.
Rick: And this book is about her whole path, which is very interesting, and also a little bit about … The last chapter is about meeting you and various … your teachings. And your own book will be coming out pretty soon, and I’ll have a link on your page on batgap.com to that book when it comes out.
Gabor: Yeah. It’s great. And just like … in closing … just … no matter what, it’s simple. Just whatever practice you do, it’s simple. It’s really within. It’s simple and it’s your birthright.
Rick: That’s a good thing to say. And we might even use simplicity as a barometer or a measure of the effectiveness of a practice. If it’s really complicated and difficult and so on, then we might want to be suspicious of it.
Gabor: Exactly. If it’s complicated, I have not seen it working. But it’s simple. We deserve it, we like it, it’s ours. It’s time. And it’s getting easier as life is getting more difficult.
Rick: Yeah. Simplicity. “Except you be as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Remember that one?
Gabor: Yeah. It’s a wonderful statement, yes.
Rick: Yeah. Well, great. Well, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. And I’m sure that many people will get in touch with you as a result of it. And so I wish you well.
Gabor: Likewise. It’s really nice talking to you.
Rick: Yeah. Likewise here. So, thanks to those who have been listening or watching. Next week I’ll be speaking with a fellow named Charles Eisenstein, who talks about sacred economics. And I’ve been listening to some of his recordings and I think that’s going to be a very interesting conversation. And of course there are many more planned. We’ll just continue doing this. There’s an upcoming interviews page on batgap.com where you can see all the ones we have scheduled. And they’re almost always, unless it’s a live interview, they’re always live-streamed on YouTube. So you can watch live and you can submit questions if you want during the interview, as a couple of people have during this one. So again, thanks for listening and watching and we’ll see you for the next one. [Music]