Gabor Harsanyi Interview

Summary

Gabor Harsanyi describes how fear, hardship, ambition, and spiritual seeking shaped his lifelong search for freedom. The discussion examines whether past detours are wasted, how awakening relates to ordinary life, and why genuine realization is simpler than mystical appearances suggest.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Do all people have an innate longing for freedom?
• Can difficult or misguided spiritual experiences still contribute to awakening?
• How can spirituality become more ordinary, accessible, and grounded in daily life?
• What distinguishes genuine awakening from ideas about being loving, forgiving, or enlightened?

Key takeaways

• A difficult life can make the longing for inner freedom more visible.
• Material success may provide comfort without resolving a deeper sense that something is wrong.
• Past spiritual detours need not be regretted, even if they are not necessary for everyone.
• Awakening should come off its pedestal and be available to ordinary people.
• Before awakening, mystical ideas can become obstacles to simple direct experience.
• Awakened being may appear loving or forgiving without being defined by those concepts.

Transcript

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, 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. 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. 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.

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 insights, as many of the people I interview have had, 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. My childhood was quite rough, in the sense that the whole environment I grew up in was like postwar Europe: Russian occupation, the 1956 revolution in Hungary, and so on. My father was part of the Hungarian revolution, so he was taken in and out of jail quite frequently. I grew up in this consistent, ongoing emotional upheaval and fear of evil.

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 expressed myself then.

Rick: Yeah, but I sometimes think about that—about how crazy the world is. 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. At that time, what I meant by freedom was, “Not the kind of world I was living in. Whatever it is, it’s not this.”

I remember digging a hole under the fence in our backyard and escaping when I was about three years old. I hitchhiked on a horse and buggy. There were still some horse and buggies 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. So it indicated a very early desire for what I called “freedom” at the time.

That love of freedom was part of my life, basically all of my life. My love of freedom expressed itself in different ways. Of course, first it expressed itself as, “I want something, anything but this.” Then it expressed itself as escaping from where I was, which happened in 1967. I escaped from Yugoslavia to Italy—Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy. I spent six months in a refugee camp. I was a refugee for six months, and I was able to immigrate to Canada. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life.

Very early on, I noticed that I have this amazing desire for freedom.

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? Most people don’t really know what freedom would mean, but they all have this yearning for it.

Freedom Revealed by Hardship

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. When it’s not so bad, it’s not obvious. When life is kind of okay, it’s not obvious what you’re looking for, and it’s not so obvious that there is outer freedom, inner freedom, or whatever.

Gabor: 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. When it’s not so bad, it’s not obvious. When life is kind of okay, it’s not obvious what you’re looking for, and it’s not so obvious that there is outer freedom, inner freedom, or whatever.

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. They’re just happy to be there, and they don’t worry about liberation or anything. It’s just so nice. That saying is meant to, 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 you’re not looking for anything.

Rick: Right. So there’s some divine mercy in our suffering.

Gabor: I guess, yes.

From refugee to financial success

Rick: Okay, so you made it to Canada, and obviously there are more details in that story, but maybe we don’t need to go into them all. I mean, I just mentioned, from reading and hearing you speak, that it wasn’t a cakewalk going from Hungary and getting to Italy. You almost got shot crossing some of the borders, and you slept in a phone booth for a few days in Italy, being fed sandwiches by prostitutes. Then you eventually realized you could trust the police, and you went to them. 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 caught you 60 kilometers from the border, they would ship you back. It was all not true, of course, but there was fear and more fear, and it was difficult to trust.

I remember when the police were driving me to the refugee camp. It was in a jeep full of refugees, and what was interesting was that the road to the refugee camp was going toward Yugoslavia. You just took a turn, and it was going toward Yugoslavia, and I thought, “Oh my God, they’re driving me back.”

I was just about to jump off the back of the jeep when they turned in the other direction. “Oh, whew. Well, okay.” So it was this amazing survival kind of fear, this 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 compare my situation to these people’s, although I had a rough time, my situation was much easier. I mean, you are 18, and you’re young and full of testosterone, and I didn’t have to worry about a 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. Being responsible for somebody like that would be really tough. I was okay no matter what. Whether I ate or didn’t eat, that was okay. Mine was not nearly as tough as what some of these people have experienced.

Rick: How did you manage to accumulate enough money to make it to Canada when you were in a refugee camp?

Gabor: By that time, my mother was in Canada. She escaped from Hungary in 1956. Although I didn’t remember her very much, I got in touch with her, and she paid for my airline ticket.

Rick: Okay.

Gabor: If she hadn’t been 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, and your eyes. You had to be in perfect health to be accepted. You felt like a horse 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. You became quite successful.

Gabor: Yes. 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, and stronger.

Coming from a dictatorship, of course, that makes sense. It was basically protection-based and survival-based. Of course, I didn’t know at the time what it was. The feeling of succeeding financially and being able to buy what I wanted was really enjoyable. To some extent, it provided the kind of freedom that I thought freedom meant earlier.

Rick: Yeah, and we should mention that you studied electrical engineering or some kind of engineering, but then that bored you, so you got into real estate and actually became a multimillionaire 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. When I started the business, people—my accountants and others—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.

It reminded me of that bumblebee that doesn’t know it can fly. I was just going for it, going for it, going for it. Not knowing a lot was very helpful, because every day was a fresh day. My mind did not remind me that it was 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. Of course, what happened is that when I got educated about business, it was like, “Wow, okay.” The past came into play, and I wasn’t able to just be that day and make that day’s decision. So it got a bit more difficult, but it was still okay. The desire to succeed was so overwhelming that it took care of the pressures of the mind.

When success stopped being enough

Rick: You also mentioned that you became kind of a party animal, right? You were playing around a lot, drinking, and so on. 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 was to throw big parties. The more people reflected back to me how successful I was, the better. I had thousands of friends, huge parties, musical groups playing, and so on. It was really enjoyable, but it wasn’t that enjoyable. Of course, when I lost everything, which was quite a bit later, 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. I had land that needed to be serviced. The service cost remained the same, but the land price had crashed. So there you go, like a negative value. I basically lost most of it.

Rick: Yeah, and by this time you were married and had a couple of kids?

A Successful Life Masking Inner Distress

Gabor: I was married. I had three children. From the outside perspective, I lived a very ideal life. Three kids, a 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.

Seven years with Ramtha

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: JZ Knight, right?

Gabor: JZ Knight, yes. 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 had to do. That was my next step. It was the same kind of desire as when I was just prior to escaping. Something like the universe was 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, “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, absolutely true. Of course, the harder and more challenging it was, the better. Some of the exercises were really brutal but wonderful. For example, 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 JZ Knight do that herself or just send everybody else out?

Gabor: Just send everybody else.

Rick: 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 whom this woman, JZ Knight, was claiming to channel. I remember somebody sent me some writings at one point from 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, with 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. What’s interesting is that when JZ Knight is being interviewed or speaks, the impression is entirely different from when Ramtha speaks through her.

Rick: Right.

Gabor: Sometimes Ramtha was able to speak on a subject for six or 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. So the school at the time was very suitable for me. I really learned a lot.

🕊️ Were spiritual detours wasted time?

Rick: 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. 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 experience 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 can look back and think, “Yeah, despite that, I gained something from it,” or not.

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 Nirit 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.

So looking up English words and going into intellectuality is not the way 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. 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 whether it’s 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: 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 would do now, it’s what I chose”? 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 her, and they sent me a YouTube video. 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.”

Bringing Spirituality Off Its Pedestal

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 is, “Oh, okay, it’s a mysterious thing.” Or, “It’s over there. It’s that person. He or she is different.” 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. Anything that emphasizes the mystical is not really advisable at this point.

Spirituality or awakening has to come off the pedestal. It’s for everyone.

Rick: I heartily agree. Which is not to say there haven’t been some wonderful mystics in the world, like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa, 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 it shouldn’t.

Gabor: Exactly. I feel that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 5 years ago, things were different. I think this process has sped up so much that sometimes I feel that it’s different every day, sometimes different every hour. 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, embrace it, love it, and study it. Not as an arms-length thing: “I’m here and that’s there.”

Rick: Also, the very word mystical implies something esoteric, something that everybody can’t experience, that only certain special people can experience. 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: Absolutely. If somebody is sharing spiritual stuff with me 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.

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. 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 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 mystical. It’s not. We don’t lose the adventure of mysticism, but if it happens prior to awakening, it becomes an obstacle.

Leaving Ramtha and building in Mexico

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 it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and by “rich man” he meant a complicated person who’s got all sorts of attachments, conditions, and issues—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.

Gabor: Yes, exactly. Let’s say there is this fence, and we’re looking through from one end to another. From one side of the fence, from 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.

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 his being. There is only one kind of personality, and that beingness could look like forgiving, accepting, and loving.

Rick: Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. So let’s say an awakened person. Are you saying that they will tend to be loving, forgiving, and so forth? 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?

Gabor: In oneness, there are 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: The person thinks I’m accepting or forgiving. Not really, because on 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: 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. 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: 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. Our mind works strictly on our senses, which is, of course, based on the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s like 0.1% of reality. It’s just a tiny thing.

Sometimes I say, and it usually creates a laugh, that we have to abide in nonsense. Everything that’s sensible has to be disregarded.

Rick: 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. There’s sort of a self-sufficiency characteristic of it.

Gabor: Exactly. 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: Let’s take an analogy. A tree has all these branches and leaves and fruits and all that stuff. 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 way of presenting it, yes.

Rick: Well, let’s get back to your story. 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. What prompted you to leave?

Gabor: Well, I felt like I had to move on.

Rick: And 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 wasn’t much left from the money, just a little bit. But they were somewhat provided for, not nearly as well as before. And my ex-wife, who is basically an angel, kept my children positive toward me.

Rick: That’s nice.

Gabor: Which is very nice and very unique. It was a big personal growth experience for her as well. But, of course, that’s not why I did it. That period was the toughest.

Rick: Well, it took courage, I guess. 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 gray age. Anybody who gets to be 39 or 40 years old has this tendency of living in…

Rick: Midlife crisis or whatever.

Gabor: Midlife crisis, buying a Porsche, putting on a tattoo.

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 things.

Rick: So you left Ramtha. You felt that it was time to leave.

Gabor: Yeah. No special reason. All of a sudden, I felt that the only reason I was going to the gatherings was because my friends were going. I had wonderful friends who would say, “Oh, come on, come on, it’s great.” So I went. It lost its meaningfulness for me. I might have picked up a lot of extra intellectual knowledge and things like that, but 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. I think Ramtha was desperate to get some message through, and he couldn’t. So he figured, “Okay, I’m going to put the minds of these people at ease.” He tried to bring in this thing that every time you came to a lecture, you should 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. He had amazing toasts at the beginning of lectures. He could do it for like 10 minutes. And then, if he drank half a bottle, like a big glass, then we had to do the same.

Rick: And so, when you say he drank it, it was actually JZ Knight drinking it?

Gabor: JZ Knight drinking it, and she was really, apparently, really pissed off at him 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: I think the meaning, the intention, was good. And, of course, the human follow-up is always different.

Rick: So you ended up leaving there and starting to build a condo in Mexico. Was there anything important in between?

Gabor: While I was with Ramtha, I did every kind of spiritual or awakening or alternative seminar that you can think of. Anybody who was offering anything, I was interested in it: a person with a channeler, Drunvalo Melchizedek’s courses, or absolutely anyone.

I was fortunate enough to acquire some public shares, which I was able to sell. A friend of mine opened up a public company. He didn’t have any money, and he borrowed my credit card. I lent him my credit card, and in exchange he gave me 5% of the shares. So I started to have some money again.

Rick: Too bad it wasn’t Google or something.

Gabor: Exactly. Whatever money I had, I invested in a piece of land in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and started to build a condominium building through subcontractors. I’ve done many stupid things in my life, but that was really up there.

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, and it was 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.

✨ Depression and the search for awakening

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 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: There was no 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 on other planets, but there was no, at least I don’t remember, any emphasis placed on awakening.

There was one exercise that was extremely good. It was called the Christ walk. The whole essence of it was that you just walked with your hand down, and every time your thoughts stopped, you could take a step. So, if the thoughts didn’t bother you, you could keep walking. If the thoughts came in, you stopped. That was the closest we got, from my perspective, to awakening.

Learning from the jungle

Rick: 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. It was actually a business trip, and a friend of mine who lives there invited me. He and the family had a small motel near the jungle, and they happened to know the shaman. I very much wanted to experience how they lived, and 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 that I totally, 100% realized something: all my knowledge, all my prior knowledge that I had in my head, in any way, shape, or form, and my experiences had somehow nothing to do with awakening.

Those people woke up in the morning and were just sitting there. Now I’m explaining it 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.

These people who don’t know much in comparison are where you wanted to be.

Rick: So they were content to just sit in the presence of something and not… just rest there?

Gabor: Yeah, they were in being. They didn’t even know what that meant.

Rick: It was their natural state.

Gabor: In a natural state. And for me, it was something that I would acquire in the future. Sometimes in the future, I would somehow get there if I knew enough or if I practiced 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, they had no computers, no nothing. The closest they got to civilization was some plastic bags, and the roof was partially covered with plastic and stuff like that. They had no involvement in this civilized society, or what I call “syphillization.”

Rick: In case people didn’t catch the pronunciation of that, it’s a takeoff on the word syphilis, right?

Gabor: Yeah, exactly. It’s “syphillization” instead of civilization. The 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 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, it was very tough because I wasn’t used to the environment. I was scratching my skin—bugs, humidity, stuff like that. I took some ayahuasca with them.

Rick: You mentioned you were doing it twice a week for a few weeks or something?

Gabor: Yeah, twice a week for three weeks. It was really helpful. And then after that I calmed down and I thought, “Okay, maybe it’s the ayahuasca that will do this.” But it’s not true. It’s just that I was in such a nice, relaxed state. I could actually be with them.

The ayahuasca experience

Rick: Now, you hear about ayahuasca, people taking it, and you see these pictures by Alex Grey or whoever. Some different artists are able to draw these amazing things depicting what it’s like on ayahuasca. 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 the shaman gave me something, I didn’t know what it was.

Rick: Did you vomit and all that?

Gabor: It looked like espresso coffee, but it was very bitter. 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 had, it would have been easier. I wished I could vomit, but I couldn’t.

The first 20 minutes were really horrible. It was like nausea. And then I went through a layer—what I call a layer. I closed my eyes and thought, “I’m going to die.” And all I saw were triangles, snakes, crocodiles in between each other, stuff like that.

Not knowing what was going on, I didn’t know what I was doing. All I could say was, “Love, love, love.” I couldn’t remember anything else. I figured, okay, I’m going to do some kind of mantra to hopefully survive this. And then, after about 40 minutes or so, it shifted. Then came the pleasant part of the experience.

It was very interesting because it was 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 it was teaching me things, not in words.

I remember some of them. Of course, I did it six times altogether. Some of the experiences were interesting. I remember they were showing me water levels, like an ocean level. They kind of took me under the water, and above the water, and under the water, and above the water. At that time, I interpreted that as, “Don’t worry; life and death are the same thing,” kind of metaphorically.

And so the ayahuasca taught me. I’m really grateful for the experience.

The breakthrough on the beach

Rick: 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—an ayahuasca template. It was recorded as a wonderful experience, something that I could tell my friends that I did. I survived being with the Indians. So again, it became sort of a male-ego thing.

The depression was still very much relevant in my life. At the peak of my depression, I was riding my bicycle and thinking, “Okay, I should maybe be 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. That wasn’t a new idea to you, was it—to look inside?

Gabor: No, it wasn’t a new idea. I had heard it a thousand times.

Rick: But you never really did it?

Gabor: I never really did it. I knew about it, I talked about it, and I could explain it. I could explain the physiology of it, I could explain aspects of it, and 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 really beaten down by the depression to be able to really look and feel in a simplified fashion that is not only simple but very modest, very humble. Real humble, I mean really 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’re not very pretty-looking dogs. And so I looked around, and 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 had happened. Looking inside is not the same as “talking about looking inside,” like I had done before.

Looking inside is not the same as talking about looking inside.

Rick: There’s something about your story and also Nurit’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.

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.

It seems like both of you, in your own ways, had this really persistent desire that lasted a long, long time. It motivated you to do different things, but it wasn’t so much the things as the deep desire that eventually brought you to some breakthrough, some resolution.

Gabor: Yes, exactly.

Rick: And like you said, life’s circumstances kind of beat you down and made you humble. There are 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.

Difficulties as Access Points to Spirituality

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.” So it was always a separate event for me, not knowing that difficulties are actually easier access points.

Gabor: 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.” So it was always a separate event for me, not knowing that difficulties are actually easier access points.

We can access presence at any time, from anywhere, in any position, but difficulties are actually easier access points than nondifficulties. If someone is having a difficult time, the difficulty doesn’t need to be fixed first. The difficulty, of course, will get fixed, but it could be used to actually access simplicity. 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. Wealthy people could buy a state of consciousness if they could, but 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. First we seek this, and everything else shall be added, and it’s absolutely true in my experience. Difficulties are helpful to access presence.

Interrupting the mind

Rick: 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 to be able to access presence and not have to wait for some kind of disaster.

That state is a non-state, of course. It’s accessible anytime, from anywhere. And so it’s totally possible to recreate the physiological effect of a disaster without actually having the disaster.

Rick: 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: We’re not recreating the disaster. Let’s say I have a disaster—which I have plenty of, and so do other people—a shock. 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. The top of his car came off totally. Like a can opener, it opened up. He almost died, and he said, “Wow!” All of a sudden, nirvana. It was like, “Wow!”

So the shock made his mind stop, and now you’re in this presence. We don’t want to wait for a car accident or anything like that. The physiological effect in the body that stops the mind—we can interrupt it.

So what I teach is interruption techniques. We don’t meditate. The meditation state—not a state, of course—will be coming. But the first thing is interruption. 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. There’s a little bit of laughter involved. It looks like this.

Rick: Aha, the way dolphins squeal.

Gabor: Yes, it involves exhaling, laughing, and inner focus. It involves quite a few things at the same time, but it works.

What that does—the dolphin and many other similar interruption tactics—is give 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-minute, it has a similar effect to some kind of 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 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 can be learned. Five years ago, it was more difficult.

Rick: I suppose 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 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 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 about having profound spiritual experiences when they’re in outer space because it’s such a break from ordinary reality.

Gabor: 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. It’s a very good one because 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. It sounds very good.

Rick: I should patent it.

Gabor: Spiritual patents.

When an experience disappears

Rick: Here’s a question that came in from someone named Flory from Germantown. 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.

The so-called secret is simply knowing that this experience today is wonderful. And then, all of a sudden, tomorrow or the next week, it’s not so wonderful. What 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, “Okay, now there is a template.” And my mind is playing. 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.

Changing the Mind’s Password

So knowing this is crucial because I call this changing the password on the mind. If I use the swimming pool technique and all of a sudden I can’t get back there, then I’ll use the dolphin or some other interruption. My mind gets confused and it can’t connect it to the previous experience.

So knowing this is crucial because I call this changing the password on the mind. If I use the swimming pool technique and all of a sudden I can’t get back there, then I’ll use the dolphin or some other interruption. My mind gets confused and it can’t connect it to the previous experience.

Whatever technology people use—let’s call it technology, the thing people use—let’s say 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. “Okay, nothing is happening. I’m not going to do it. No feedback, nothing is happening.”

Well, there cannot be any feedback from a nonsensory reality to a sensory reality. There is no feedback mechanism because my senses cannot sense the nonsensory.

Whatever technique I’m using, and I’m humble enough to get back there, the assumption is that nothing is happening. It’s not true. Hundreds of angels might be working on you to open the door, yet the senses are saying nothing is happening.

It depends on the situation of this person. It has to be custom-made, but usually the password has to change. The entry technology has to shift so the mind switches off. So it will let you be present again.

Rick: You don’t want those Russian hackers getting in there. So you’ve got to change that password.

She brings up a good point, which is—and a lot of people talk about this—there’s a sort of “I got it, I lost it” syndrome. Some people advocate practices to stabilize and cultivate 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.” When I read that, I thought, “I don’t agree; it’s not my experience.” And I don’t know if Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, or Ramana would agree either.

Eating is something that you do in time. It has a beginning and an end, but it sustains you twenty-four seven. So meditation, even though it’s something you can’t do all the time, you do it temporarily and it has an effect. That effect has a lasting influence, especially if you do it on a regular basis. It shifts you; it changes your whole physiology over time.

Gabor: That is one of the very sensitive areas. 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: 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. There are a million meditation techniques. 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 are you 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. Meditation creates a good feeling in the mind, a very, very good spiritual experience, but it is my experience that it’s still mind-based. Simply because it’s got a continuation. I have a continuing meditation technique, and tomorrow I am also going to do the same.

So my mind now has a template that says, “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.

In my experience and with my students’ experience, it’s usually—not always, but usually—a hindrance. Techniques of interrupting the mind and techniques of staying there while you are living your life: that’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, generally speaking, it’s a hindrance.

Rick: You have to go with what you know and what your experience has taught you. In my experience—full disclosure here, I’ve been doing it a couple of hours a day for forty-nine years—I found it to be very helpful.

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, and it loses its color a little bit less. You keep doing that, and eventually it’s the same color whether it’s in the dye or the sun.

Gabor: There are tremendous benefits to meditation. Like I said, it’s the most sensitive subject when it comes to that.

Rick: And there are so many different kinds of meditation. It’s 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 are all kinds of different liquids.

Gabor: Exactly. Knowing that there is no common vocabulary is the prerequisite for spiritual teachers and people who even talk to me. Knowing that most likely there is a misunderstanding.

✨ Awakening and the end of depression

Rick: We kind of left you on the beach there, looking at the dog, and that was a breakthrough for you. 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: That was, if there is such a thing, the breakthrough, in a sense that I got it. 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 that resembles depression, but if I go underneath that feeling and over and above it, and do some… like going interwoven with the feeling, the suffering totally stops, even though there is a sensation.

Rick: Even now?

Gabor: No. At that time, it tried. I had to integrate very quickly because I was building a condominium in the meantime.

Rick: 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? Hundreds of millions—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. It’s really bad. 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: 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 it’s getting more and more complex.

We think that the only tools we have available are the tools that relate to our senses and whatever templates we have in our mind. So we have this contrast reality, as I call it. With the contrast reality, we can go on and on and work harder and harder, but it’s going to get more and more difficult.

So the universe is bringing in more and more problems. One of those is definitely depression. We are consistently forced—there’s a universal attempt—to look inside.

People have all kinds of problems: financial problems, depression, health, relationship problems. We can temporarily solve them with medications or whatever therapy we might have. But there is only one permanent solution: 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. 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 nonsensical world also. So I think that the universe, God, whatever we think, is pushing us to wake up big time. The universal push is called problems.

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 and the humbleness to actually repeat some exercises, I find it easier and easier and easier. We’re really being pushed.

With respect to depression, it’s a big push. If someone is listening who has depression, it’s not a problem to take medication. It’s okay to take it, but you can still do whatever exercises you can. You can still look inside. You can still look underneath this. Eventually, you’ll be able to stop the medication.

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.

Difficulties are actually easier access points than nondifficulties.

A collective movement inward

Rick: What you’re saying, essentially, is that the reason things are getting more complicated and difficult and fast-paced is that nature, or God, or the universe is trying to wake people up.

Some people get depressed because they feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket. There are just so many problems, any one of which could wipe us out, and yet we have all of them and nobody has any solutions to them. It just seems impossible. It’s like, “Ahh!”

So what you’re saying, I think, is 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. In spite of all my difficulties, it took me quite a few years to actually look inside.

Somehow, we’re being beaten down to be humble enough, to surrender enough, to have that simplicity in our hearts. The good news is that it’s getting easier and easier. The universe is breaking down our door now. It’s like, “Hey dude, open the door, or I’m coming through anyway.”

Rick: So what you’re saying is that, in your experience teaching and interacting with people, they’re having breakthroughs more easily. There is kind of a mass looking-inside taking place. I see it as I do these interviews. There really does seem to be some kind of spiritual epidemic taking place. Despite all the difficulties, which are very serious, there is some kind of mass awakening.

You’re not going to see it on the six 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.

Really, in the universe there is only in and out. There is no up and down, really. The reason we are saying that is because there is only in and out.

We always look out. What about looking in? Or, if you want to take it a step further, there is only convergence and divergence. When we look inside, we converge with the universal way: unconditional love, unity, consciousness. We can converge and we can diverge.

So language—in a way, duality language—is responsible for our looking in the wrong direction, because as the language goes, so does our attention.

Yes, there is more and more grace every hour now, and more and more we are forced to look inside. When we do, it’s easier and easier, and it really works.

Rick: 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.” It uses the analogy of a tortoise bringing its limbs in, to converge.

Gabor: A tortoise is a very good example. It goes out, goes back into its house, and it lives 200 years, so it’s not bad.

Being guided by universal intelligence

Rick: 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: My book will be coming out in a month or so, called Functional Silence.

Rick: There was a nice little thing I quoted. 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: It’s a very practical way to look at it. 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: 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.

If the ego and the mind are running the show, it’s like, “What should I do?” There are so many variables. “Where do I go?” It’s really hard to figure things out in life because there are so many unforeseen possibilities and so many complexities.

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 it.

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. Things kind of work out.

Gabor: Very good expression. Brahman is the charioteer.

Then there’s a problem. The first thing we habitually do is try to fix it. “Yes, we have to fix it.” At the same time, we can first remember just to be. Just breathe and be. Just go in and be while you’re fixing the problem.

Every time there’s a fixing needed, just before the fixing, if you need to make a phone call, just be and then make the phone call and fix the problem. We’re not saying, “Don’t fix the problem,” at all. But in conjunction with that, don’t forget to just be.

It’s amazing how much it helps. Even a deep breath. If you learn to look inside, the amount of help available is amazing. Not in the way we think it is. We’re not going to get help in the way we think we should get help—usually in a much better, unforeseen way.

There are 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: Eventually “being” becomes second nature. It’s not like you have to do anything or remind yourself. It’s like riding a bicycle. At first you have to think, “Okay, I’ve got to balance here.” But after a while, it’s automatic.

Gabor: Yes, it becomes the default. 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. No one can do that for us.

No matter how educated I became in spirituality, nothing happens unless we actually turn inside.

It’s not complex. It’s everybody’s personal birthright, and it’s much closer than we think.

Rick: Here’s another quote from your book that somehow reminds me of what you just said. 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.”

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, an instrument through which being is cognized and lived.

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 from people who haven’t been. There’s a whole different style of brain functioning.

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.

We’re just beginning at this, so eventually we’ll be able to, I believe, switch and go to many different places. But by looking in, we’re actually activating and getting in touch with the universal intelligence. So why not use it?

Coming from that perspective—that I’m looking and getting in touch with the body’s intelligence—all of a sudden you feel this peace. That is the platform.

The body is now in touch with 99% of reality, and my senses could be in touch with 0.1%. Both are needed, very much so. So the body is definitely underestimated in spirituality.

Rick: 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: The closest nature to me is my own body. 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: 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 are radio signals going through us all the time, but unless you have the right instrument, you can’t detect them.

Gabor: 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, 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.

Who is looking within?

Rick: 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. Most of the time, it’s very difficult to answer because the answer is at a different level from where the question comes in, even though the question is extremely intelligent. 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, all of a sudden something clicks, where the inside becomes the outside. Again, there is no looker or looking. The question actually disappears when we humbly put attention inside the body.

The mind can go on forever asking very good questions. The best thing to do with those questions is just to be with them. 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: Would it be accurate to say, in your understanding, that the kind of duality, or the trinity of looker, looking, and looked-at, all kind of dissolve or merge into a unity?

Gabor: Yes, absolutely. 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. From a simple triangle, we go to a tetrahedron, which has four apexes. The tetrahedron is the first geometrical form that has inside and outside. And now it has space. It’s a very good metaphor to use. Buckminster Fuller wrote a lot about those kinds of things.

Rick: 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.

Closing thoughts

Rick: 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: You really addressed a lot of different things. All I can say is, I’d like to say that 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. We’re going to be learning about and addressing many of these practical applications. Very useful. 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. 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—when 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. 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. 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: 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: This book is about her whole path, which is very interesting, and also a little bit about you. The last chapter is about meeting you and your teachings. 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: It’s great. And just in closing, 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. 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: 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: Well, great. Thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. 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: 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. 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. They’re almost always—unless it’s a live interview—live-streamed on YouTube. So you can watch live and 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.