Gary Crowley interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Gary Crowley. Gary was referred to me by his publisher, just as Chuck Hillig was, same publisher, Connie Shaw, Sentient Publications, because he has a book. He’s written a couple of books. This one’s called Past the Jelly, Tales of Ordinary Enlightenment. And I must say, Gary, I really enjoyed this book. I read it a month or two ago when you first sent it to me and I laughed, you know, on many pages I was laughing out loud. And I started reading it again yesterday just to refresh my memory of what you said and I started laughing again. I’ve just gotten to the point where your brother was picking you up at the car repair shop and that guy was chasing him around trying to beat him up. It was very funny.

Gary: People doing what they do, yes.

Rick: Yeah. So, but you can recapitulate what’s in the book during this interview because I forget the details and most of our listeners won’t have read it. And you’ve written another book, have you?

Gary: Yes, I wrote a book called From Here to Here, Turning Toward Enlightenment.

Rick: Good, so we’ll talk about that one too. And whatever else you want to talk about. And one thing that struck me as I read the book, aside from the fact that you’re a very funny guy and a good writer, was I thought, well, was he really this precocious and articulate as a 12-year-old or is he kind of transposing his current level of maturity as a 30-something back to when he was 12? Because when I was 12, I wasn’t anywhere near that articulate as some of the things you were saying to your father or your teachers or people like that. What’s the story on that?

Gary: I think what I tried to convey was a level of curiosity of a child without necessarily the depth of understanding that you would have as an adult. And I am writing as an adult, but in a certain way, the questions and precocious things I bring up in the book, they’re meant to be asked more from a child’s simple understanding, while at the same time pointing out that, well, in some ways it kind of is that simple. But definitely I’m not meaning to imply that I had the perspective then that I have now.

Rick: I think Christ said something like, “Except you be as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” or something like that.

Gary: But there’s definitely an innocence, objective observation. The title of the book is “Pass the Jelly” and that comes from after watching my dad read the newspaper at my kitchen breakfast table for 12 years, where he’s constantly surprised at all the same stuff happening in the world. I’m kind of like, “So this is the same stuff happening all the time. Why are you so surprised?” The politics, it’s a repeat of that. Yes, the Palestinians and the Israelis aren’t getting along, surprise, surprise. There’s all of these things. I think as a child, what’s so surprising is more like, “It was the intention.” But again, it’s a simple truth that translates to even your adult perspective on things.

Rick: Yes, people do what they do. It’s very Byron Katie-ish.

Gary: Yes, yes. My previous book, “From Here to Here,” talks in a very precise and concise manner, basically shows people how their brain works and why we have this illusion that we’re consciously controlling and willing how we are all the time. But really, if you step back and look a little, and even with a little kind of layman-friendly science, you can see that mostly we’re handed the decisions that we become conscious of. That’s why we’re kind of basically the same person we were the day before. We’re not getting up and trying to recreate ourselves every morning. It’s mostly these patterns that kind of repeat themselves.

Rick: Yes, a couple of Paul Simon songs come to mind, “Still Crazy After All These Years” and that line from “The Boxer,” “After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.”

Gary: I love that line. I heard that after I’d heard the song before, but I heard that line after I’d written both these books recently. I was kind of like, “Oh, I like that line.” A lot of people, when they read “From Here to Here Especially,” because Kafka said that a book should be an ice axe that breaks the frozen illusions within us. From Here to Here is definitely intended to be an ice axe, about breaking through your illusions of all this conscious will and conscious control that we assume we have. A lot of people will ask me after they read “From Here to Here Especially,” “So what? People can’t change?” I say throughout the book numerous times, people can change with new conditioning, but it has to be of the right type, at the right time, and of the right intensity. If we could all just will our changes that we want, the world would be a very different place. We’d be one-time learners and we’d all be walking around being exactly the ways we’ve consciously chosen to be. From Here to Here and Pass the Jelly, in a very funny way, are meant to allow people to have a lot more compassion for themselves and other people as they move through the world. Obviously, if they could work their way out of that, they probably would have by now, because everyone can see it’s not working.

Rick: I’ll have to read “From Here to Here” too. I think I must have told you not to send me too many books because I don’t want to take advantage of people and have them send me books I don’t have a chance to read, but I enjoyed this one so much that if you feel like sending the other one, I’ll read that too. I told that to Chuck Hillig also, I said, “Don’t send me a whole lot of books because it takes me months to get through a book sometimes, because I’m busy and I do a lot of stuff electronically instead of by reading.” But I think he did send me one of his books, which I enjoyed very much too. I guess you know Chuck, I think he recommends your book on the back here.

Gary: He put a very nice blurb on the back of my book, which I appreciate.

Rick: What you just said gives me a little bit better understanding of what you actually were saying in this book, because people do change, but you don’t go from zero to sixty in one second. Change is more incremental. Actually it was Chuck, he took the old nursery rhyme, “Row, row, row your boat,” and did a very nice rendition of it, in which you’re flowing down the stream, you can’t help but go with the flow, the river is carrying you along, but there is a little bit of volition, it’s row, row, row. So you’re taking some action and you’re basically going where the river wants you to go, because you really don’t have any choice, but you can wiggle your boat around this way and that, maybe keep it from running into some branches, you have some control.

Gary: Right, and my point, I guess in both my books, is that it’s also important to note that you don’t consciously control your desire arising to do certain things. So if you are fortunate enough for the desire to arise within you to change in ways that make your life better, then fantastic, but some people take more, unfortunately, pain and suffering or more experience, if nothing else, to get to that place where they finally go, “Oh, this isn’t working, I’m going to seek change.” And then, since you don’t consciously will the desire to change nor the actual change itself, I like and I didn’t know about Chuck’s “Row, row, row your boat,” but I like boats too, so I often liken change to going fishing, where once you decide you’re going to pursue change, it’s a lot like having to cast out that line and some baits don’t work, so you try that for a while and then you switch it up and maybe you go to a different spot and then finally, if you’re fortunate, you get the change you want. But if we could, again, if we could just consciously will it, the world would be a very different place and so again, I have a lot of compassion for people who are mostly doing the best they can.

Rick: Yeah, well there’s an old saying, which is, “That to which you give your attention grows stronger in your life.” So you’re not going to become a different person overnight, but the more you give your attention to something, the more you’re going to enliven that impression or that tendency. If I drink a pint of whiskey every day, I’m going to become an alcoholic, but I don’t have that inclination to begin with.

Gary: But again, not just to point out other little nuances, but there’s also people who suddenly do make drastic changes. In Chuck’s example, you run into a sandbar in your boat and then suddenly things have changed. I knew a guy, I almost put him in my book, Nasty Jelly. Growing up, he was an old World War II Navy vet, very, very prideful man, but he smokes three packs of cigarettes a day for 35, 40 years and he had tried to quit a few times, I think, and hadn’t succeeded. Then one day on April Fool’s Day, one of his friends asked him for a cigarette and he said, “Oh, I don’t have any. I quit smoking.” And his friend laughed in his face and told him he could never quit smoking. And he looked back at his friend and he said, “I just did.” And he never smoked again and it wasn’t even difficult because his pride ranked so much higher than smoking that it was almost effortless. So anyway, when you’re blessed with those moments, that’s nice too.

Rick: And also, not only in terms of behavioral things, but in terms of the spiritual dimension, so to speak, sometimes people have these radical, sudden awakenings out of the blue. Like speaking of Byron Katie, as we did a few minutes ago, she had one, sitting there in a halfway house, cockroach crawls across her foot and all of a sudden, kaboom! Or Eckhart Tolle, same thing. He was on the verge of suicide, he said, “I can’t live with myself anymore,” and then he says to himself, “Oh, wait a minute, who is this self with whom I can’t live? Are there two of me?” And he goes to bed and wakes up awake. So it happens.

Gary: Yeah, and I do think, without giving away certain parts of my book, I do think there are situations where sometimes when they’re dramatic enough, that’s what it takes to get that insight. And then it’s great…

Rick: Yeah, you can give them away, people will buy it anyway.

Gary: Well, that’s the last chapter, I don’t want to get that.

Rick: Actually, speaking of the last chapter, again, I have to re-read the book, but somehow when I got to the end of the book, in fact there was a whole thing at the end of the book about your friends chiding you because you wouldn’t wear your bicycle helmet or something like that.

Gary: That’s throughout the whole book.

Rick: Oh, throughout the whole book. In fact, I hadn’t heard from you for a while and I was wondering, “Are we going to do this interview or not?” And I sent you an email, I didn’t hear it, and I thought, “Oh my God, maybe he took a bike ride without his helmet, he’s not around anymore or something.”

Gary: But we all grew up not wearing our helmets.

Rick: It’s true, I did crazy stuff.

Gary: And like I say in the book, I spent most of my youth trying to injure myself on my bicycle with no helmet.

Rick: Yeah, just to go off ramps and stuff like that.

Gary: Poorly constructed ramps at that. And we’d jump over our friends because Evel Knievel was the hero of the day and somehow we all survived, but that’s not what we do anymore. Now everybody puts on a helmet, except for me.

Rick: And statistically we’re probably better off wearing them. Fewer people get killed in today’s cars than in the old Corvairs.

Gary: And today people are on their cell phones. A woman almost ran me over while she was texting the other day, driving, so people weren’t texting.

Rick: Oprah’s on a big campaign against that.

Gary: Oh yes, and she was swerving pretty well down the road.

Rick: They say it’s worse than being drunk. But in any case, without giving away the suspenseful end of your book, I was just reading your website here and you were saying that you had gone… So let’s get into this a little bit. You were attracted to Eastern philosophy and spiritual writings at a young age. Kind of recap that. What did you get into and what did you pursue and so on? And to make a long story short, you finally gave it all up, but let’s talk about it before we get to the point where you gave it all up.

Gary: Well, the Hindu-Buddhisty kind of stuff appealed to me and the Taoist stuff especially, the Tao Te Ching, depending on the translations you read. I’d bounce around to “I love Rumi, I love Hafiz” and any mystic out there was appealing to me. I studied with guys like Jack Schwartz, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, out in Oregon. I don’t think Jack is actually with us anymore.

Rick: There was a James Schwartz that I interviewed not so long ago.

Gary: No, different.

Rick: Jack Schwartz, okay.

Gary: Yeah, and Jack was in a Nazi concentration camp for four years. He was an incredible guy, but kind of a Deepak Chopra way back in the 60s. So I was very attracted to that, did my meditating, did all sorts of different things. I tended to do things pretty intensely and when I would not seem to get much traction from them after a while, I’d go try other things. Then after 20 years or so of doing this, I finally just said, “Okay, well, if efforting at all this stuff was the way to get somewhere, it probably would have worked by now.” So I basically just let go and just went out with my life and went surfing a lot or whatever I was doing and fixing people’s bodies that I do during the day. Then just because I wanted to, I went back to my bookshelf and I started reading Wei Wu Wei, who is far and away my favorite author. He has eight books and I would just read them every morning for an hour, hour and a half or two. Then I would finish the last book, I just would start the first one again. I would just read them. Then at some point after about a year or more of doing this, probably about a year of doing it, so I’m two years of not caring and I’m just reading Wei Wu Wei because I enjoy it. I feel like for some reason, even though he’s very enigmatic for a lot of people, I just feel like he’s sitting across from the table talking to me. He has a book called All Else is Bondage and there’s a footnote in that book that I probably read 30 times. But on this one day I read this footnote that said, “Free, we are not the number one, the first of all our objects, but zero, their universal and absolute subject.” There was a palpable shift in me when I did that and I went, “Oh, well that’s easy.” Literally it’s one of those moments where before and after, it’s kind of a defining thing in life and since literally then, things have been substantially different in the way I look at things.

Rick: I have a couple of comments on that, for what they’re worth. One is, it’s hard to assign cause and effect with this stuff. It very well may be that those 20 years of practice and meditation and stuff that you did were very effective. Things might not have turned out the same if you hadn’t done it, it’s all very speculative. It’s also may very well be that giving it all up was very effective and that sort of relaxing of the whole thing was just as important as doing the stuff.

Gary: I think they all were, all those steps were, I completely agree. I liken it over the years to people sometimes who say, “It’s like you want steam, you have to put a lot of energy into boiling the water,” and then the steam happens.

Rick: It doesn’t happen until the water reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit and there’s nothing much happening to that point and then all of a sudden there’s a phase transition and boom, you have boiling water and steam.

Gary: Yeah, there it is. I think I totally agree with you, I think it is. Without those 20 years, I wouldn’t have been able to understand that quote at the level that I did.

Rick: Yeah, it’s good to hear you say that because there are some teachers who meditate for 20 or 30 years and do practices and whatnot, then they get awakened and then they tell all their followers, “You don’t need to do all that stuff, you just get awakened,” and it seems a little disingenuous or something to me.

Gary: I agree, I agree.

Rick: So read that quote again, or say that quote again because I didn’t quite get it. Let’s go through it a little bit more slowly.

Gary: Okay, it says, “Free, we are not the number one.”

Rick: What does that mean?

Gary: Well, you need the next part.

Rick: Okay, good.

Gary: “The first of all are objects.” So freedom is not in identifying as this separate being, one. So free, we are not the number one, the first of all are objects, but zero, they’re universal and absolute subject. So basically what you are, and this is what I point to From Here to Here more directly, is you are the pure subjectivity of awareness meeting phenomenality and making you ultimately the experiencing of each moment. And ultimately, at least in my books and things, that is what I point to, that you are the experiencing of living. You are not the false self thinking you are this separate entity outside of the chain of cause and effect that everything else in the universe is bound within, then you somehow have this separate will and volition that nothing else does. You are completely bound, which is why I agree with what you said about, had I not done all those other things, this quote wouldn’t have had the effect it did. Because it’s all this unwinding chain of cause and effect and what you are, and again, the way I describe it is, you are the experiencing of living within that unwinding chain of cause and effect. And while we certainly can’t predict what’s going to happen down the road or even in the next minute, it is the unwinding chain of cause and effect. And we are a causative element in that. I can pick up, I literally just changed the world.

Rick: Picking up a pen.

Gary: Picking up a pen. So we are causative links in the chain and we do have the ability to have causes one way or the other, affecting other people and everything else in our lives, but I am not playing in the NBA right now because I am not 6’10” and dunking basketballs. That’s not what I’m doing.

Rick: And so since this shift, and even right now, when you refer to “I” and not in the NBA, or “I just picked up this pen,” do you have a dual sense of that? Sure, I am the “I” who is picking up this book, and at the very same time, just as much so, if not more so, there is an aspect of who you are which does not pick up books or play basketball or anything else. There is some kind of other dimension to what you are, which is silence. There is a level at which nothing is happening or has ever happened.

Gary: It’s interesting because I get a lot of emails asking similar questions and it’s interesting having these conversations, right? Because “I” means 12 different things. Conventionally speaking, when I’m having a conversation, “I” means this physical body picked that up, but experientially, and I actually think this is true for most people almost regardless of their spirituality, most of the time, they are the experiencing of living. They are not thinking, “I am picking up this pen.” They are experiencing life and they’re not really that self-identified until usually something negative happens or something. They’re just going through life being the experiencing of living. So I think most of the time, certainly more so because of the path I went down, but in general, yes, I’m more the experiencing of living and now because I do think, speaking of spiritual teachers saying, kind of going through all this work and then saying, “Oh, well, you don’t have to do anything. Just be here now,” or whatever. What I sometimes want to express to people is that it’s actually something you do most of the time. I actually forget where I was going with the teacher thought.

Rick: I guess what I’m trying to get at is how you’re – I don’t want to use the term “self-concept” because “concept” is the wrong word, but how you’re self-perception or what you take yourself to be versus what you took yourself to be before this shift.

Gary: Right, so I drifted off from your question. So when people ask me that, a lot of them want to know if it’s peaceful, is it quiet, is it nothingness? My response is, “No, it’s kind of the opposite. It’s more alive and more full and more vibrant because I’m embracing the whole of duality.” This is what I was going to say a minute ago. What I do think is a bit of a maybe well-intentioned con by a lot of spiritual teachers is a lot of them promise that if you do whatever they’re telling you to do, that you will get to experience one side of duality, that you’ll get one side. You get all the good stuff and you don’t have any of those negative – and honestly, from my perception, that’s not really valid. I think that the actuality of things is when you embrace it all and there’s not resistance to the negative or resistance to the positive, you get a fuller, more flowing experiencing of living. At least in my experiencing of things, that’s a more valid description of things. One of my favorite cartoons that I can never find that I saw 25 years ago somewhere – I was in Santa Fe and I saw this cartoon. It was this giant vat of soup, big, giant vat of soup. Standing with his back to the soup is a Buddhist because all desire causes suffering. You don’t even want to acknowledge that the soup of life is going on behind you. Then there’s a Taoist who is observing the soup. He’s watching the ebb and flow of life and he’s not suffering but he’s just observing it. Then there’s the Tantrika who is in the soup with the ladle, pouring the soup down his throat. Even though Tantra in the West has been bastardized, it just means sex, I think ultimately being the Tantrika, the mystic who embraces it all is ultimately – because we’re here experiencing life and when you can embrace it all, then I think that’s as the experiencing of living, then that naturally occurs as a separate entity with an illusionary free will and volition outside of the chain of cause and effect, then in my experience you suffer. Those are the things I try to differentiate between.

Rick: Was there a caption on that cartoon or you just kind of figured out who the people were?

Gary: I don’t quite remember. I think it might have been on – it was probably on some men’s room wall somewhere.

Rick: Right, right, exactly. Well it’s interesting because it’s ironic in a way because almost any teacher you can name who came from the East to the West ends up getting embroiled in some sort of scandal, which usually involves indulging in things that they ostensibly had given up.

Gary: All those young sannyasins around, I guess it’s tempting.

Rick: Yeah, or sannyasinis or whatever. So what you’re saying is just wholeheartedly live life and that’s why we’re here anyway and that’s what we signed up for, so just do it.

Gary: And in the attempt to avoid pain and suffering to some extent, I think you miss out on a lot of fullness of living instead of going, “Yeah.” In my From Here to Here book, one of my favorite stories of all time I put in this book, basically is there’s a master who is teaching to his students all the time that life as they perceive it is an illusion. He goes on, he’s always teaching them, they’re always trying to get what he’s saying and one day while he’s lecturing a messenger comes and informs the master that the master’s son has just died and the master begins to cry. One of the students raises his hand and he says, “But master, you’ve been lecturing to us for years that life as we perceive it is an illusion and here you are crying.” And he says, “Yes, and there’s no greater illusion than having your son die.”

Rick: Huh, interesting, yeah.

Gary: So he’s still feeling life, he’s still alive, he hasn’t numbed himself to the point where he’s just a zombie walking down the street, he’s fully present.

Rick: Yeah. There’s a story about Shankara which I’ve told too many times in these interviews but I’ll tell it one more time, which is that he was going to visit some king and the king wanted to test him. You know who Shankara is, right? And the king wanted to test him so he released some wild elephant as Shankara was coming up the road and the elephant was coming towards Shankara and Shankara climbed up a tree to escape the elephant and the king said, “Aha, big phony, if the world is an illusion why did you climb the tree?” Shankara said, “The illusory elephant chased the illusory me up the illusory tree.”

Gary: Yeah, and the point in my book, or From Here to Here more precisely, is that in my perception it’s not that the world is an illusion, it’s that the way we perceive it is an illusion. I mean it’s as real as actually anything we know, it’s more real than anything we actually know. It’s our experiencing of living, but the way we perceive it, again with an illusion of this free will and volition that actually is not the case, to me that is the illusion. That we have all this control that we don’t actually have and that is why we tend to suffer because we assume we should have more control than is actually possible or we assume others should when it’s not really an option. And so we’re perceiving this world in a sense, maybe the way Byron Katie says it, where we walk around with all these shoulds that have nothing to this, just the actuality of what is.

Rick: Yeah, and not only volition but even just perception. If I look at this book I’m seeing paper and I’m seeing colors and I’m seeing this and that, but if we go down to the molecular level it’s something entirely different. We go down to the atomic level it’s entirely different than that, and we go to the subatomic level and so on, it’s mostly empty space with occasionally a little virtual particle coming into existence and going out again. So there’s all these levels of reality and we’re kind of tuned into a particular section of the spectrum.

Gary: Right, and we are very much tuned in and I would say bound within mostly the Newtonian world, and as I joke with, because there’s a lot of new age spiritual people who in my perception like to bastardize quantum physics. And oh well, we’re all just quantum particles and I’m like, okay, well when that car’s bumper is coming towards your kneecaps you may both be quantum particles, but in this Newtonian world they’re pretty densely packed and you better get out of the way. Because that’s all well and good, but this is the experiencing we’re having at this level.

Rick: I once heard a physicist say that there’s actually mathematically a finite possibility that you could pass right through the car when that happens, but it’s such a small possibility that you better not practice.

Gary: Yeah, no, and that’s my kind of joke, well, go forth and prove your point.

Rick: Yeah, I mean there’s also a finite possibility that all the air molecules in this room could rush up into the corner and congregate there, but in the real world this stuff very seldom, if ever, happens, you can’t rely on it.

Gary: Yeah, in some alternate universe maybe that happens, but not this one lately anyway.

Rick: Which may, I mean if cities are a valid phenomenon, and there are all sorts of historical records of people having performed them, not too many contemporary ones, but anecdotal historical ones, maybe those guys who performed them had gotten to a level at which they actually had some mastery over these more quantum mechanical levels.

Gary: Well, and I will very respectfully say that, again, I actually think pointing or emphasizing such stories takes away from the actual miracle that is constantly happening each moment, which is you and I, never mind Skype, but just the fact that you’re walking around experiencing living, that’s the miracle. And personally, and people may not like this, but personally I don’t believe human beings get to transcend the laws of physics, and I think there’s lots of stories about people doing things, and that’s all well and good, but I think usually they’re stories. But I actually think it’s a detriment sometimes to emphasize those things because it’s pointing in the opposite direction of where the miracle is constantly happening.

Rick: Yeah, no, it’s a good point. My bias is that actually such things have happened, but who knows? I’m not sure about anything.

Gary: Yeah, no, and I get that, and I’m like you, I don’t know.

Rick: And it’s not like they’re violating the laws of physics, just as an airplane doesn’t violate the laws of physics, it just sort of uses different laws or somehow masters some of the laws or some such thing.

Gary: And I totally agree. I’m all for people doing things we can’t explain, because there’s plenty of things we can’t explain, but if you say you can levitate and then they put you on a scale in a lab and say go ahead and you can’t do it, then I don’t think you’re levitating.

Rick: Yeah, no, absolutely. Even if you could, as you say, there’s something much more significant going on.

Gary: Which is you wake up every morning and you’re having a life.

Rick: And even for the person who supposedly can levitate, if there is such a person, there’s something much more sumptuous, much more significant than that, that they’re living, I would say.

Gary: Yeah, I would say that the fact that they’re, you know…

Rick: I mean, Michael Jordan could levitate more or less.

Gary: Yeah, and he doesn’t actually jump higher, he just comes down slower than other people.

Rick: He sure does look like it. I was thinking about Michael Jordan a few minutes ago, because you were talking about somehow living so fully and functioning so spontaneously that you weren’t even aware of it. Athletes like that would get into a zone state where they’re just kind of like, in a way they’re not doing anything. They have a sense, they report having a sense that they’re really just completely on autopilot and it’s all just, they’re not interfering, they’re not controlling, it’s just happening so spontaneously, but they’re doing this miraculous stuff on the basketball court or whatever.

Gary: Yeah, I remember him saying, seeing one interview with him where he talked about how the basketball hoop is like three times as big and you’re just throwing this, it’s so easy, and then the next game you don’t have that, but it’s nice when those games come along.

Rick: Now if he came down and broke an ankle all of a sudden, then zoom! The awareness kind of zooms right into the individual and there’s some suffering and whatnot.

Gary: Or at least pain, and probably some suffering because you’re Michael Jordan and that’s your whole identity.

Rick: But what I find is that actually when there is some kind of crisis like that, if I’m exhausted and running through an airport or if I injure myself somehow, that’s there, but it almost brings into greater contrast the presence that is there and that sort of buffers it. You dwell in that presence and fine, my ankle is killing me, but the presence is so predominant that on some level it doesn’t really matter. I can handle it.

Gary: Right, and I agree because I think at some level you are not the suffering, you are not the lone entity in pain, you are more than that.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s kind of what I was getting at before when I tried to get you to say, “Well, what is your actual self-perception now? What is it like to be Gary?” There’s some dimension or something that is not perturbed by pain or by fatigue or by other things that happen and it’s just uninfluenced by those things.

Gary: Right, and I think that is that pure subjectivity of awareness that I sometimes talk about, but without phenomenality, without meeting the world, there is no experiencing. So what I think makes my, even From Here to Here, a little different is a lot of people in my perception stop at that place identifying as awareness and then they’re observing the world.

Rick: Yeah.

Gary: And personally, I think, which is a funny word, I think the step after that is to realize that what you are is, you’re not one with everything. What you are is you are one with the everythingness of your experiencing in this continual this here now. So you’re the everythingness of your experiencing. And that’s a big, full, vibrant, alive thing to be, continually.

Rick: I was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for many years and he used to like to talk about 200% of life and he would say 100% inner spiritual, 100% outer material. And people would always think, “Okay, great, that means I can get enlightened and I can get rich.” But I think what he really meant, ultimately, in a more profound sense, was what you’re getting at here, which is that life is a much bigger wholeness than just some inner subjective silence. And if that’s all you glom onto, then you’re shortchanging yourself, you’re cutting out half the whole thing.

Gary: Oh, yeah, you’re missing all the juice. And again, as the everythingness of experiencing this here now, this personal everythingness, because I don’t know you’re experiencing, but with that as what you are, probably more than who you are, the pain moves through pretty quickly and the pleasure is fuller, even though it moves along as well. But you literally are just the experiencing of living. And I actually don’t think that, and this is again where I’m kind of particular with my words, I try to be very precise, especially From Here to Here with how I use my words, but to me it’s not desiring that causes suffering, it is the attachment to desiring. Because as human beings, we desire and we strive. You don’t go from living in caves to landing on the moon by not being a species that strives. And even if you’re reaching for the salt shaker to season your food, that’s a desire. So in my perception, it’s the attachment to your desire that is what ends up causing suffering. Because if there’s no salt, okay, then you get out. If you’re attached to needing salt, then you’re going to suffer over that attachment.

Rick: Yeah, but obviously you’re saying that you’re never going to be free of desires if you’re alive, you’re going to have desires.

Gary: You’re going to want to eat, but it’s the attachment to those desires.

Rick: And some people of course manage to live a lifestyle in which they minimize their desires, but as has often been said, you can be much more attached to a minimal set of desires sitting in a monastery than some guy who’s living the life out in the world but is not attached to it.

Gary: Yeah, I know, and I desire to write these books, so I sat down and I wrote them. And that’s just what I was doing, and if for some reason it didn’t work out, I would have found other things to do.

Rick: You can almost think of desire as the evolutionary impulse, channeling itself through your particular physiology, your particular mind-body system.

Gary: Right, and what I talk about again in both my books is basically what people are is the experiencing of their neurology and their conditioning up to that point in life meeting the present moment, and you are that experiencing. And then if you have certain experiences that you would like to change, maybe you strive to change them, and some other ones you may not. That’s the mystery of the human condition, is you never quite know when you’re going to seek change or when it’s going to happen, and that’s kind of where the fun is. That’s where a lot of the fun is.

Rick: Yeah, absolutely, and it’s interesting to consider what is it that causes us to seek change or to strive to do this or whatever. Again that phrase, the evolutionary impulse, I sort of get the feeling like there’s this universal force that gave rise to the universe, and we are an expression of that force and that force is expressing itself through us. We are that intelligence which gave rise to this whole thing, being reflected in or channeled through an individual expression. We’re kind of like a sense organ of the infinite. Every desire, great and small, is the impulse, the same impulse which gave rise to the universe, searching for the soul, or writing a book, or building a Saturn rocket and going to the moon.

Gary: Yeah, and all these filters are all unique and you and I can be in the same room looking at the exact same object and we’re going to be having different experiences. I’m going to be reminded of the vase my mother had at home and you’re going to be thinking of what flowers to buy to put in the vase for your wife or whatever and that’s the beauty of it all.

Rick: Or we’re watching Rush Limbaugh on TV and I’m tearing my hair out and you’re saying, “Go Rush.” Probably not actually.

Gary: No, I don’t watch Rush Limbaugh on TV. But even politics, it’s fascinating because we’ll take a select sample but you have a group of good, well-meaning people on both sides of an issue who see it completely differently.

Rick: Oh absolutely, it’s so amusing. I have a little political mailing list and whenever there’s some political article or something that really gets my goat, I’ll send it out. I have one guy on the list who is very conservative and another guy who is very liberal and they’ll both come back at me, sometimes in the same fetching of the email, one saying that Barack Obama is this liberal Marxist communist dude and the other guy saying that Barack Obama is just another George Bush, he’s way too conservative, way far to the right. And both guys are reacting to the very same thing.

Gary: It’s amazing, isn’t it? That is the human condition.

Rick: It’s interesting to remind oneself of that because I vote a certain way, I have my political opinions and so on, but if you can keep this principle that we’re discussing in mind, you can’t get too steamed about anything. You have to realize that there are so many perspectives and no relative perspective can be absolutely right. There’s always going to be paradox.

Gary: Right, and George Bush and Barack Obama are both meeting each moment with their genetics and their life conditioning up to that point in time and literally their pre-conscious mechanisms in their brain are filtering all that information and to try to make it consistent with what they’ve experienced in the past and go through all this stuff and they literally get handed a perception that they make a decision about, but you literally get handed your perceptions. You’re not in control of how you perceive a situation and when you can at least, I think, I try to, especially to my rabid political friends, when you try to point out that that is going on for both sides, both politicians, they’re just doing what they do.

Rick: And in the case of guys like that, they’ve put themselves in a position or gotten themselves in a position where the whole destiny of the nation is being filtered through their nervous system and the decisions they make are influencing 7 billion people. So boy, talk about being driven by forces larger than your individual perspective.

Gary: Right, right, but even that, it’s how this neurology that has experienced life up to that point in time reacts. To me it’s a little freeing. I was an economics major in college so I have definite opinions on economics, but I’m like, “Well, they’re doing what they do, I guess.” My phone is not ringing, they’re not asking for my opinions.

Rick: Maybe you should take over for Geithner or something.

Gary: We’ll leave all that alone for now.

Rick: So why did you entitle your book “From Here to Here,” what’s the significance of that title? Basically the whole book is, the way to awakening is primarily through seeing through what is not, and by seeing through the illusion of what is not, what you perceive to be real, that is really an illusion. If you can see through that, then you are left as the experiencing of this here now, which is what you have always already been.

Rick: Are you talking about a neti-neti sort of thing?

Gary: Yes, basically. But when you can see through humanity’s primary illusion, which is the illusion of conscious will, you are left as the experiencing of living. Again, the reason it’s “From Here to Here” is because it’s what you’ve already been doing. You just need to see through the illusion that isn’t what you’ve been doing. The illusion, and it’s a very enticing one, it’s a very appealing one, and it’s humanity’s most prized possession, which is why no one wants to give it up. But when you can see through that illusion, the more you can basically have more compassion for yourself and more compassion for others as you move through the world. And it’s always already the case, whether you see it or not. I sometimes joke with people who email me that when you can open your eyes wide enough to see that everyone in the world is already enlightened, then you get to include yourself in that category.

Rick: Just as you were talking, I looked up a T.S. Eliot quote on the internet, it’s from Bernt Norton, he said, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Gary: Yep, I agree. And that’s basically what “From Here to Here” is. It’s like, look, this is the actuality of what is going on and here’s your illusion of what’s going on and if you can see through that, suddenly you are left as the experiencing of the everythingness of this moment, which is non-dual because it’s the whole thing. It’s not just one side of duality. I’m not promising you that if you meditate this many hours for this many years, then you’ll only get the dessert. You won’t get to eat your vegetables, which may or may not be appealing to some people.

Rick: I’ve told this joke so many times in these interviews but it’s been a few months since I told it. Who was the guy, I’ll remember his name in a minute, but he said he broke up with his girlfriend because he wasn’t really into meditation and she wasn’t really into being alive. Very funny guy, forget his name. In any case, what you’re saying is, obviously, grab all the gusto you can get, the whole enchilada is there to enjoy.

Gary: But also embracing the actuality of the human condition is what sets you free. This is where I sometimes also joke that if you think it’s complicated, you’re looking in the wrong direction. It’s actually very simple and this is why I don’t, especially From Here to Here, I will occasionally get people emailing me saying, “Why didn’t you talk about quantum physics and why didn’t you go into that?” I’m like, “Well, because honestly, abstraction most of the time is just a distraction and you want to abstract yourself into these wonderfully fuzzy ways of thinking, but the actuality, the simpleness of the actuality of what’s going on is what will set you free.” It’s fun to float out there and talk about how we’re all quantum particles and everything, but if you just understand the basics of how your brain works and step back and look at life from really a common sense perspective of, “Well, God, I’ve wanted to change that about myself for 25 years and it still seems to be, so maybe I don’t consciously will how I am all the time.” One of my jokes, which I do like to use on people, I think it was in a chapter they could edit it out of, “Pasta Jelly,” but what’s always funny to me is sometimes when something minor is bothering someone and they’re all a little torqued about whatever’s going on and they think that some other person should just change, because it’s not that difficult, they should just be able to change, and I’m like, “Well, if change is so easy, why don’t you just change so that doesn’t bother you?”

Rick: Yeah, good point.

Gary: If it’s that simple and then suddenly it’s like, “Well, well…”

Rick: Obviously, although it may be impossible, it’s a lot easier to change yourself than it is to change something at a distance.

Gary: Which brings me actually to an important point about From Here to Here, is another kind of main point of the book, which I think a lot of spiritual seekers may benefit from, is that the way to change your experiencing of living, in my perception, is to change your perception and then your experiencing changes. A lot of people want to change their experiencing to then have a different perception. The whole point of the book is to very simply and methodically walk you to a place where you’re standing, literally facing the opposite direction of where most spiritual books point you and going, “Oh, so I do not have all this conscious control over my experiencing of living, maybe I am just left as the experiencing of living,” and then you’re free as that.

Rick: So you kind of walk people through an intellectual process or a way of looking at their experience differently than they may have been, and you get reports from people who have read the book that in fact this has succeeded for them, that they’ve really shifted?

Gary: Oh yeah, honestly I get emails from people going, “This is the greatest book I’ve ever read,” which is wonderful. But I purposely – it’s From Here to Here – but this book, this was a 300 page book at one point, because I honestly felt that everyone dances around this issue and no one just concisely and precisely lays out the actuality of the human condition in a way that can set people free. I have some optical illusion things in here to explain how your brain works and all these simple things, but it’s basically very simple science and common sense of having people look at the actuality of what it is to be a human being. I warn people in Chapter 1 that this is about giving up the most prized of all human possessions, and I say once the roots of an illusion are exposed, it changes things.

Rick: I don’t doubt that this can have a major impact on people, this kind of thing. Because teachers we mentioned in this discussion, such as Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, they’re not really doing practices. Byron Katie has her little process that she puts people through, but they’re basically getting people to look at things differently, just shifting their perspective a little bit and sometimes that has a radical effect.

Gary: Yes, and From Here to Here was definitely meant to be an ice axe to break the frozen illusion within the reader. Then Past the Jelly is meant to be a very humorous version of a similar thing, but people laughing along the way, because I also think humor is a very valuable tool that is often missed in spiritual seeking. I get so serious, I’m like, “You’re just reinforcing your false self.”

Rick: Which one did you write first, Past the Jelly?

Gary: I wrote From Here to Here first.

Rick: Oh, okay. Then you thought, “I better lighten up,” so then you wrote this.

Gary: I genuinely write when I have something that I think can add value. I don’t in no way meant to disrespect other authors, but I write when I think I have a unique angle on things that can help people. I don’t have to say what everyone else is saying.

Rick: If your books really took off and you started getting invited to speak at big conferences and get paid a lot of money for it and so on and so forth, would you just as soon do that as do the body work and stuff you do?

Gary: I have a practice that is filled with what I joke with my girlfriend. I get all the incurables. I get all the people who bend to everybody else. I do find it for a certain type of chronic structural pain where something is not ripped off the bone or the bone isn’t broken, the work I do is actually often very, very effective for people. I do find it rewarding and I would probably, at least I’m under the illusion that I would continue to do some of that because I literally get people in my practice every week who have been in horrible pain for 10, 20 years and no one can help them. Sometimes I’m not performing any miracles, but my perspective on the body and the way I do things a lot of times can set them free and it’s a wonderful thing.

Rick: So if you won the lottery you’d probably still keep doing it if people came to you?

Gary: I’d probably still drive the same car I drive. People ask, “Would you buy it?” I’m like, “I don’t know, I kind of like my car, I don’t have to go buy a Ferrari.”

Rick: You’d probably kill yourself if you did that. So what would you say to somebody who is really beleaguered by life? They’ve lost their job, their house is getting foreclosed, their wife has breast cancer, their kids are rebelling, everything is falling apart and they’re really overwhelmed. They’re feeling totally burned out. Or maybe an Iraq war veteran who comes home and has post-traumatic stress disorder and is suicidal. People who are really beset by life’s troubles. Do you feel like, in your experience, have you been able to help people like that or is your thing more suited for people who are ripe to awaken and they’ve already gotten rid of the heavy load?

Gary: It’s a little of both. I don’t know about all the stuff you piled on some of these poor people, but for a lot of people, both books are very freeing. Because again, I do think when you embrace the actuality of the human condition and you stop punishing yourself and other people for not having more conscious control over who and how they are, that frees up a lot of energy to deal with your life. Then, knowing that you can still change, especially if you’re a guy with PTSD, there are things like emotional freedom techniques, just to pick something out of a hat that I know is very, very effective, that is profoundly simple and profoundly effective.

Rick: Is that the thing with the tapping that people do?

Gary: It’s the tapping. Basically, what it does is it dilutes the response that your brain has developed to certain situations and it’s profoundly effective. Understanding that people can change and, to quote Winston Churchill, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” I encourage them to keep casting the lines out. Honestly, be brutally honest with yourself whether something is working or not. Whether it’s a spiritual practice or when I’m trying to fix somebody’s body. It’s funny, I get people in, they bend everybody and no one can fix their back. They’ve done everything. A lot of times, they’ll go, “Well, I did such and such a therapy that I’ve maybe never even heard of,” and they’ll go, “What do you think of that?” I’m like, “Well, did it work?” A lot of times, they will think for a moment and they’ll go, “Well, it was very subtle.” I’ll go, “Well, that’s fine. Did it work? Did your pain go away?” It’s great if it’s subtle as long as it worked. Then they go, “Well, not really,” or maybe, “Yes, it did,” but it’s like, “Well, it either helped with your pain or it didn’t.” Whether you’re going through hell and you’re keeping going and you’re casting out lines, trying to help yourself, if that lure and that location on the lake isn’t working, paddle somewhere else and cast out a different bait. That’s a good attitude. Obviously, you’re not saying, “Just read this book.” You’re treating people all day. You don’t just hand them a book when they come in the door. You’re working on their bodies and stuff. This is why I come to my thing a lot of times about the Newtonian world because I get a lot of healer types who, with the very, very best of intentions, people come to them and they’ll go, “Oh, well, you get a session with me and you’ll get better gas mileage in your car,” and they mean well. I try to be brutally honest. I’m like, “Look, I had a woman today who came to me and she had a neck that has been bugging her for years. I pulled all my rabbits out of my hat over the last few weeks and I would work on her and she’d be good for half a day. That night she’d wake up, she’d have pain again.” I said, “I think you have a bone spur in your neck. You need an X-ray because what I’m doing isn’t working.” She went. She texted me today. She said, “I have a bone spur.” You were right. What do you think I should do? I said, “I think you should have a surgeon take his little micro tools and file that down and you’ll be so happy because your neck will not hurt anymore.”

Rick: You didn’t tell her the bone spur was an illusion or anything?

Gary: If she meditates enough, it’ll go away.

Rick: Right, or drinks green tea or whatever.

Gary: If it works, I’d be fine. You go, they take those little micro tools, you’re in and out the same day and the next morning your neck doesn’t hurt.

Rick: That’s cool. If you didn’t live in San Diego, I might have you take a look at mine actually because I sit here and I look out the window at the birds and stuff but I don’t look this way so much and so my neck gets a little weird from always looking to one side.

Gary: I will tell you, since we’re doing everything here, if you reach around to whatever side hurts, if you reach around and touch this side of your shoulder blade, that muscle is probably tight.

Rick: Even if it’s up in the neck mainly that I seem to have a bone?

Gary: See, here’s the secret with bodies. Most of the, 95% of the time when it comes to chronic structural pain or inability to function where it hurts is not why it hurts. Usually if you think of your body and all the muscles in your body like the rigging on a big old sailboat, when the bigger, stronger pieces of rigging get tight, they twerk everything else and it’s the little pieces that snap. So most of the time, most necks I fix, I fix by freeing all this stuff in their shoulder girdle including their pec minor and all this other stuff because these things are twerking your shoulder blade. Your neck muscles attach to the top of your shoulder blade so your neck muscles get pulled on. Your neck hurts and can’t function but it’s all the big bullies down here that are tight that are causing your pain. So if you came to me, I would free, if you have a decent body, I can try to find a body worker for you there, but if you have somebody, since this is on tape, if you have somebody free your teres major and minor, your subscapularis, your infraspinatus, your pec major and minor, your subclavius and your supraspinatus, your neck will stop hurting 98.32% of the time.

Rick: Cool. I don’t consider it off the topic that we discussed that because what it illustrates is that you’re an all possibilities kind of guy and I like that. I like the fact that you don’t compartmentalize life and devalue any aspect of it. I think that’s real healthy and it’s a very spiritual teaching really, which you’ve said explicitly in this interview but it bears emphasizing because there are a lot of things out there which do that. And there are a lot of teachers or practices which actually say you should only do this, you’re off the program if you’re looking into this, that or the other thing, just stick with us, we’ve got the whole package. But they don’t have the whole package. So if people find something beneficial here or there, great, add it to the soup.

Gary: And even people who love my books or From Here to Here, they love it, they’re like, “What do I do now?” And I’m like, “Well, I mean this was honestly for me, that’s everything.” But if you still go find things that resonate with you, I don’t know. I love Wei Wu Wei, Wei Wu Wei is torture for most people. He’s an Irish aristocrat who was trained at Oxford and Cambridge, he was fluent in Greek and Latin. When he didn’t have the right word for something he would just make up his own word from the Latin and Greek roots. And most people are like, “I love him.”

Rick: Well even that little quote you read from him, I had to have you interpret for me. I didn’t understand what he was saying.

Gary: And there’s other things that people love that they completely resonate with that don’t do it for me and I don’t need it to do it for me. If it works for you then all the better. But I do want to say just on the body work thing, what was an interesting transition for me was I got into body work and I originally trained as a rolfer at the Rolf Institute and because rolfing has a big reputation for being able to change someone’s body and you change their consciousness. And while I do not think that’s untrue, along the way I reached a point where I felt like actually getting people out of pain allows them to not have their physical body be a distraction for them and they can then get on with their spiritual or consciousness pursuits. I’m not so sure it’s the vehicle but boy, it sure can be a distraction. And if I can get that out of the way and people can go forth and have their less painful experiencing of living then I’m happy to do so.

Rick: Yeah, I’m kind of reminded of Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs. You don’t go to Sudan and start teaching some lofty Vedanta, you give them some food and help them farm and get clean water and all that stuff.

Gary: Right, and here’s the three stretches you need to do so that your neck doesn’t hurt all day, every day. And then you can get on with your life.

Rick: Cool. So aside from writing books, do you ever give satsangs or go speak at conferences?

Gary: Not so much. My publisher was wondering if I wanted to go to the non-duality conference in San Rafael this year. She was like, “Well, it’s a bunch of non-dual authors and people giving lectures to each other.” I was like, “Well, I don’t really need to.”

Rick: I imagine they’re going to have an audience of people too, aside from just the authors.

Gary: I just thought it was kind of funny. At the moment, I’m not opposed to it. I’m actually very comfortable talking with people but I don’t seek it out.

Rick: I bet you could put together an interesting lecture because you could blend a lot of humor with a lot of wisdom and it would be quite entertaining.

Gary: Yeah, no, it’s not off the table. Sometimes I do think I genuinely have to feel like I’m giving people some value. I know a lot of people will say, “Well, just being there is enough.” But I’m more of, I don’t know, I’m from New England. I’m like, “Well, am I going to be giving them some good stuff? If they’re going to be coming here and sitting here, I’ve got to give them some good material to grind on as they’re driving home at least.”

Rick: Yeah, I’m from New England too. I grew up in Connecticut.

Gary: Okay, and what part?

Rick: Fairfield.

Gary: Okay, okay.

Rick: Yeah, I actually lived in Providence for a while, so same part of the country.

Gary: Yeah, it leads to a lot of fun stories for that New England upbringing.

Rick: So when was this shift that took place when you were reading “Wei Wu Wei” and it was a couple of years ago or something?

Gary: No, I’m getting to be an old man. I think it was five or six years ago.

Rick: Oh man, you’re ancient.

Gary: I think November 17th or 18th, one of those years. I was about 38, I kind of threw everything away. I think I was 40, I think it was November 17th. I remember looking at the calendar going, “It was either the 17th or the 18th.”

Rick: So you’re 45 or 6 now?

Gary: Yes, 45.

Rick: You’re in pretty good shape. You look young. I figured you were in your early 30s or something like that.

Gary: No, I don’t drink a lot, I don’t do a lot of drugs.

Rick: Take care of yourself, right?

Gary: I have a pretty physical job.

Rick: Keeps you healthy. Now in the five or six years since this awakening took place, or this shift or whatever you want to call it, have you experienced a continued deepening or clarification or refinement or some kind of progress in whatever way you’d want to define it?

Gary: Less slipping off center, for lack of a better word. I was a martial arts forever. A little less, like there’s my old sensei up in Northern California used to say, and not to label myself a master because I actually think everybody’s already doing this, I’m just trying to show them what already is. But he says, “It’s not that the master doesn’t get off center, it’s just that he gets off center and regains his center so quickly that nobody notices.” I will be the first to say that my girlfriend does notice because I do get off center. To me it is…

Rick: If you’re so enlightened, why didn’t you do that?

Gary: Right, exactly. For me it’s more that you’re just a little more, stuff happens and you have like when you were saying you’re at the airport, you haven’t eaten, you haven’t slept well in three nights, you’re a little less, sometimes it’s a little, you’re not in that space of I am the everything that’s quite as readily. For me it is the ebb and flow.

Rick: So you could say it’s getting more stabilized, more integrated or something.

Gary: Yeah, more stabilized but I also think, and again, I’m perfectly willing to say that, and this is just where my experiencing is right now, maybe it will change, but I’m not sure it ever changes. I do think you’re like the master crying when his son dies. I’m like, “Well, yeah, if you’re open to the experiencing of everythingness, you’re going to cry and you’re going to have days where it’s not the wonderfulness of experiencing living that a lot of people promise as the perpetual e-ticket.” Because I bought a lot of those tickets, so that’s my joke. It’s like, “Well, I bought a lot of those tickets, so I have the right to say that I think at this point.”

Rick: There’s a saying in the Indian literature where they’re talking about impressions and how they impact different nervous systems. One nervous system would be like stone and you make an impression, it etches in and it just doesn’t go away. You come back ten years later, you still see the impression. Another would be more like sand, you make the impression, it might be there until the tide comes in and then it’s washed. Another would be more like water, it’s almost instantaneous. Another like air, you don’t even hardly see any impression made. So this thing you said about the master, sure, maybe he gets perturbed but he comes back more quickly. So he’s more like the line in air, or the line in water.

Gary: That’s very nice, I like that, I hadn’t heard that before.

Rick: And I think probably studies could be done, and have been done perhaps, on some kinds of meditation techniques or whatever, which explain that in some physiological detail, what’s actually going on in your nervous system or in your brain or anything, which allows you to experience deeply but not be permanently etched by it.

Gary: And a lot of it is just a little gland called your amygdala. That is what gives you your immediate pre-conscious impression emotionally of a situation. And this is like a lot of PTSD guys, their amygdala is just a hair trigger, anything goes wrong and it’s firing the fight or flight response. And what a lot of meditation does is they allow that to relax a bit. I do think not having, and From Here to Here I do talk about how when you’re in utero, your body is being built to cope with the environment you’re going to enter into. And if your mother is really, really stressed, or a meth addict or something else, you will often develop a very, very sensitive amygdala. You come into this world with basically a hyperactive, hypervigilant way of going through the world and that person would take the Woody Allen movie character, that’s going to take a lot, lot, lot more work to get that to mellow out than the person that comes in with a pretty balanced amygdala, whose mom listened to classical music and wasn’t stressed and was living in the countryside. It’s a different thing. Your genetics, you could inherit an amygdala through your gene pool that’s either very mellow and easy going or very hypervigilant.

Rick: There’s something in the Bible which is something like the sins of the fathers are inherited by them.

Gary: Seven generations.

Rick: I really think there’s something to that. In fact, I live in a community where maybe 10,000, 11,000 people live here and about And there are all these kids that have been born to parents who have been meditating for decades. Some of these kids are pretty remarkable, really special. And then they’re having kids now, another generation coming along. So there’s these really special souls with nervous systems which I would envy if I were an envious person compared to what I went through when I was a kid.

Gary: It’s a very interesting thing when you realize how the mom is, it affects how that – and I know people understand that, but to really understand literally the way your brain is being put together while the stress hormones or lack of stress hormones are pumping through her blood affects the way you come out.

Rick: Yeah, very much so. Well, that would be kind of a weird note to end on. I always say this towards the end of an interview, is there anything that you like to talk about or say to people that I haven’t thought to ask a question to elicit from you?

Gary: I would request or suggest that people not underestimate the power of levity and a sense of humor in their spiritual practice. Because I do think a lot of times that is a big master key that is missing. Because the overly stern – the earnest spiritual seeker is wonderful. The stern and overly serious spiritual seeker, I think they’re just chasing their own tail and it’s until they lighten up, because that to me is just a sign that they’re over-identified with their false self.

Rick: Yeah, and actually you can read stuff. There’s Swami Beyondananda, you remember that guy? And your book I think is very funny and there are sources of actual – I mean you can always just watch a good Jim Carrey movie, but there are also plenty of sources of actual spiritual literature that are inherently funny.

Gary: Yeah, and my stuff is different than Swami Beyondananda, but it does. If you’re laughing a bit at the human condition, whether it’s Groucho Marx or my book, Pass the Jelly, I think you tend to be a little bit healthier and maybe deepen your spirituality a little bit because you’ve embraced the actuality of what is a bit.

Rick: So let’s see if we can end by trading spiritual jokes. Okay, I’ve got one for you. So this guy goes to hell and the devil is showing him around and it’s hell, it’s a pretty bad scene, but then he sees this really gorgeous woman sitting on the lap of this 94 year old geezer and he says to the devil, “Hey, that doesn’t look like hell to me,” and the devil says, “It is for her.” It’s all relative, very nice.

Gary: Well let’s see, a joke, you’re putting me under joke pressure right on the spot. So I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you a true story, not even a joke. So do you know Esalen Institute?

Rick: Sure.

Gary: Okay, well a friend of a friend up at Esalen, again I’m getting old, so 25, She was getting up at 4 a.m. and putting in her hour or two and then she was getting in another couple hours in the evening or in the afternoon when she had a chance and she’d been at it for 10, 12 years and she just couldn’t break through to that next level. So she heard that up at Tassajara, the Buddhist monastery up in the mountains in the middle of California, that there was a monk who just gave the perfect mantras that could break you through when you were in a stuck place. So she gets in her little Volkswagen bug and she grinds her way up the mountain and she gets to Tassajara and she goes and she knocks on the monk’s door and he has her come in and he sits down and he talks to her and she tells him how she’s really been serious and she’s been dedicated and she’s been going and she just really needs this seed to break him through and he’s like, “Okay, okay, I have your mantra, but here’s how it’s going to go. Outside my house to the left there’s a little meditation hut and I’m going to give you your mantra and then immediately I want you to get up and I want you to go sit in that hut until you either get the essence of the mantra or for 24 hours of straight meditation. If 24 hours pass and you don’t get it, you come talk to me.” So here’s how the mantra goes. You have to say the first part very strong. He says, “Sennnnn.” She goes, “Sennnnn.” He goes, “Okay, good, good, good.” He says, “The next part is very soft.” He says, “Saaaaa.” She goes, “Saaaaa.” He goes, “Very good.” He goes, “The next part again strong but deep.” He goes, “Yuuuuummmmm.” She goes, “Yuuuuummmmm.” Then he says again, “This is the last part, very soft. Aaaaaa.” So she does it. So she goes out. So she goes out and she sits in lotus position in the meditation shack for 14 hours until she goes, “Sennnn. Saaaa. Yuuuuummm. Sennnn. Saaaa. Yuuuuummm. Sense of humor. Sense of humor. She gets in her car. She drives back to Essendon. She doesn’t meditate for 15 years. So angry. She needed a sense of humor and she still didn’t get it.

Rick: So this is a true story?

Gary: Supposedly.

Rick: That’s great.

Gary: I like to think it’s true.

Rick: Good one.

Gary: It’s my joke.

Rick: Well, thanks.

Gary: Well, this has been great.

Rick: Yeah. So let me tell you what’s going to happen with this. Within 24 hours or so I’ll probably have the audio of this on my website, which is www.batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, which stands for Buddha at the Gas Pump. And then maybe within a week or so later we’ll have the video up. And then the video will be there and it will also be on YouTube. And if you have a Facebook page I’ll also upload it to Facebook and tag you in it so if people actually go to your Facebook page and look under videos they’ll see this there.

Gary: Okay, I do have a fan page.

Rick: And then since it will be on YouTube you can take it and embed it and put it on your website and stuff.

Gary: Very nice.

Rick: And it’s also a podcast that people can listen to on their iPods and so on. So it’s kind of multi-purposed.

Gary: Okay, fantastic. But there on the website www.batgap.com you can send me a little bio that you’d like me to put there and links to where to get your books and stuff like that.

Gary: Okay, and it’s mostly Amazon’s the easiest.

Rick: Yeah, okay, we can just link to the Amazon pages for those books.

Gary: They can order it into any bookstore but Amazon’s the easiest.

Rick: Yeah, they’re the ones who are putting all the bookstores out of order.

Gary: Shall I mail you?

Rick: Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll read it. I’m inspired now to read it.

Gary: Good, good. I think you can.

Rick: Because it’s so thin.

Gary: Yeah, no, and people, the nice thing about both my books, I’m always complimented, people tell me they read it more than once. But From Here to Here especially, one added benefit that I didn’t quite realize was that because it’s 100 pages with pictures, people will read it more than multiple times. And I think if it was thicker they wouldn’t. I’m in the middle of a book called Halfway Up the Mountain by Mariana Caplan. The subtitle is The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. I’m loving the book but it’s almost 600 pages and it takes me months to go through a book that long.

Gary: It’s a mountain, yeah. Well thank you, this has been fantastic.

Rick: So thank you very much. So just to conclude, my name is Rick Archer. I’ve been speaking with Gary Crowley and if you would like to ask Gary questions, his website is garycrowley.com, right? And there will also be a place on Buddha at the Gas Pump where if you pose questions, and want to have a little discussion about things, I’ll tell Gary that they’re there and he can come in and answer them and so on. And that’s the deal. So thanks a lot and we’ll see you next week with whomever I’m going to be interviewing then. So thanks.