Hans Laurentius Interview

Summary

The discussion explores awakening as a recognition of awareness rather than a personal achievement, and questions whether spiritual practice helps or reinforces the ego. It also examines self-confrontation, spontaneous action, and the uncertain relationship between realization and moral behavior.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Is spiritual awakening something achieved through practice, or can it happen spontaneously?
• How can self-observation help us face fear and stop avoiding difficult emotions?
• Does awakening necessarily make a person more moral, compassionate, or pleasant?
• What is the difference between simple awareness and meditation aimed at spiritual progress?

Key takeaways

• Awakening cannot be reduced to a guaranteed process of progress through time.
• Honest attention to fear and avoidance can change them without trying to fix them.
• Spirituality should expose uncomfortable truths, not merely provide comfort.
• Meditation is most useful as effortless awareness, not ego-driven striving.
• Awakening may bring greater authenticity without imposing a fixed code of behavior.
• Action can arise from the whole situation rather than from a separate personal doer.

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. We’ve done a little over 410 of them now. If you like this one and you haven’t heard the others and would like to, there’s a Past Interviews menu on batgap.com, where you can see all the previous ones organized in various ways.

This whole program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. My wife and I spend most of our time throughout the week working on it in one way or another. So, if you would like to support it, if you appreciate it, there’s a Donate button on every page of the site.

My guest today is Hans Laurentius. Hans is in the Netherlands. First of all, welcome, Hans. Good to have you.

Thanks. I’ll read little bits of your bio, and then I’ll ask questions as I’m reading the bio, because I have questions about some of these things. You were trained in the ’90s as a teacher in spiritual therapy. What is spiritual therapy, and who trained you?

Hans: Okay. Well, I was trained by, among others, Ad Stemerding. Spiritual therapy has to do with chakras and energies and that kind of stuff.

Rick: I see. So, you would work with people and help them clear their chakras or whatever?

Hans: Well, that was the intention. So, for a very brief moment, I thought I would be a spiritual therapist, and then something happened. It didn’t work out that way.

Rick: Yeah, that’s okay. Things never do. You say that the search stopped, among other things, perhaps mainly through the confrontation with Nisargadatta’s I Am That and Ramana Maharshi’s gaze. Is that something that happened?

Hans: Well, we always like to have a cause-and-effect story. So, if we believe in that kind of story, they had something to do with it.

Rick: Okay. So, you basically focused on I Am That and perhaps some Ramana Maharshi books and things like that.

Hans: Mainly, it was the picture of Ramana. I was just staring at him. I opened the book one day. I was reading Nisargadatta, and the book had already been on the shelf for a few years, but I had never read it. Something happened. The photo pushed me, let’s say, and I started looking at the picture.

Rick: I’ve interviewed quite a few people who had strange experiences with Ramana Maharshi. In some cases, before they had ever even heard of him or seen a picture of him, they would see him in a vision or something. Later on, they would see a book on a shelf in a bookstore and think, “That’s the guy.” He’s up to some tricks.

Okay, so then you mentioned the spontaneous recognition of awareness, consciousness as reality. Again, with apologies for the cause-and-effect thing, was there some such recognition as a result of this focus, possibly?

Yeah, maybe. But also, during the training for spiritual therapy, I had a lot of energetic experiences. One of them was something of a turnaround: I wasn’t in the world, but the world was in me. The experience was something like, “I’m walking inside of myself.” I am this body-mind, but also everything else. It just happened. I wasn’t looking for it or anything, but these things occurred.

Hans: Yeah, maybe. But also, during the training for spiritual therapy, I had a lot of energetic experiences. One of them was something of a turnaround: I wasn’t in the world, but the world was in me. The experience was something like, “I’m walking inside of myself.” I am this body-mind, but also everything else. It just happened. I wasn’t looking for it or anything, but these things occurred.

Rick: Did that kind of thing happen to you even when you were young, in childhood, or mainly later as you started?

Hans: No, that was another kind of first time. The first experience I remember was when I was in a fight. Some kids were trying to kick the shit out of me, and then all of a sudden I had the experience, “You can take all you want, but you cannot touch me. You can only get the body, but not me.” That was always there.

Another thing happened when I was running across the street. I think I was 14 or 16; I don’t know exactly. I fell in front of a car and thought, “Well, that’s it.” I only found it interesting. There was no fear or anything, just interest, looking at the grill moving toward me. Afterward, of course, the ego jumped up again. I was scared and shaky and such, but those experiences had nothing to do with anything else until I was in my twenties. Then I recognized, “Oh, something happened there.”

Rick: Yeah. The reason I asked that, and the reason I find it interesting, is that it comes up quite a bit with people who have had some sort of spiritual awakening later on. They often had experiences when they were kids, and then later on those experiences resurface. It’s especially common if somebody has a spiritual awakening without having done a lot of practice. They usually have a proclivity for such things.

Hans: Yeah, yeah.

Rick: Okay.

Hans: Well, interesting. I often talk about this stuff in terms of a virus. Some people have the virus, and others don’t. You cannot meditate yourself into a virus. It will seek you out or not.

You cannot meditate yourself into a virus. It will seek you out or not.

Rick: Yeah, we’ll probably talk more about this. To take the virus metaphor, I think that, for some people, a fair amount of meditation can make you susceptible to the virus and more likely to catch it, maybe. But I get your point. In Zen, there’s a saying that enlightenment may be an accident, but spiritual practice makes you accident-prone.

Hans: Yeah, yeah. There are two sides of that coin, because what I observe is that a lot of people who are engaged in some form of practice use practice as a shield more than as a catalyst.

Rick: Yeah, I think that can be the case. I think it’s hard to make universal rules about anything. There are always exceptions to every generality. But I’ve seen that too. It becomes very habitual and almost rigid.

Hans: Yes, yes. It thereby strengthens the ego, which always believes it can, or has to, move from A to B. In my opinion, there is only A, and we should investigate A, not try to move toward a better future, a better me, or whatever.

A lot of spiritual practice is based on the assumption, “I am here, and I have to be there.” But there is no there.

A lot of spiritual practice is based on the assumption, “I am here, and I have to be there.” But there is no there.

Rick: Yeah, it’s kind of a paradox, which we’ll get into right now. Obviously, feel free to disagree with anything I say.

It’s kind of a paradox. Sure, it’s here, and many people say that when enlightenment dawns, they realize, “This has always been this way. This has always been the nature of things, the case.” Somehow, it just wasn’t recognized before.

On the other hand, you can’t say to a roomful of people, “This is just the way it is,” and expect 100 percent of them to wake up. There has to be some hunger.

For those people, in a sense, even though it’s right here, it is kind of in the future, because perhaps they will wake up eventually, when there’s enough clarity or something.

Hans: Yeah, or they have a car accident or whatever.

Rick: Yeah, you never know.

Hans: Yeah.

Rick: Or somebody tries to beat them up.

Hans: True.

Rick: Okay, so we’ll get back into that some more, I’m sure. After that awakening, the “I am” consciousness was recognized to be the first identification. Is it possible to explain what that was like and how your life was lived after that, as opposed to how it had been before?

Hans: The assumption here is that something changed on the body-mind level or in my life, but I don’t think so much changed, or that it’s even relevant. In the course of time, if we accept time, things changed, but it might also be that I’m 52 now and not 25. There’s a different phase, or life energy, or whatever.

It’s very hard for me to say, “This is because of that, and that is because of this.” I don’t really know.

Rick: Yeah, that’s a fair enough answer. I like that about you, actually. You’ll write an article—I’ve read all the articles written in English on your website—and you’ll state an opinion about something, and then you’ll say, “But I don’t know. I might be wrong.”

Hans: Yeah, sure. It’s a healthy attitude.

Rick: Yeah, that’s an interesting question in and of itself. One of the articles on your website was about morality. That’s one of the ones in which you particularly emphasized that you may or may not know.

Does Awakening Change Compassion and Conduct?

There’s a whole discussion about whether awakening changes behavior, and whether one can be an enlightened scoundrel, so to speak, or whether you or anyone is going to become more compassionate or saintly as a result of the impact of realization. Do you have any opinions about that?

Hans: I think anything goes in this universe. Some people might soften up or become more pleasant; others may not.

No, let’s put it differently. The thing I liked about working with energy, as well as working with Advaita, is that there is no basic rule of behavior. It’s not a code, like most religions or philosophies, saying, “You should act like this or that.” It’s very strange to speak about freedom while also having rules of conduct. I think that is quite insane.

What I do notice is that people will be more real, but not necessarily pleasant. You use the word compassion, of course. For me, compassion is a very strange word, because compassion is only possible when there are two. But the experience is that there are no two. I always say to people, “The ocean”—as a metaphor for reality, or totality—“doesn’t have compassion for its waves. It is the waves.” So, compassion is a very strange concept to me.

Rick: Yeah, it would be strange to say that the ocean has compassion. It would be strange to say that you have compassion for your finger. You wouldn’t be inclined to cut your finger intentionally, right? But you wouldn’t say that you’re compassionate toward it.

Hans: Right, exactly. A lot of these terms, like having faith, surrender, compassion, or acceptance, are only important for somebody who believes he’s a separate entity.

Rick: Yeah. In one of your articles, you speak of something which I would call spontaneous right action. You say, “To me, the right action results from the total energetic constellation of the moment.”

Hans: Yes. It presents itself. It’s not a choice or something.

Rick: Yeah, and it’s not something you could totally figure out intellectually. You can’t know or fathom all the ramifications of every little thing you say or do.

Hans: Yes, exactly. You cannot look into the future. Sometimes people say, because I’m teaching or writing things, “Oh, that’s very good.” But I say, “I don’t know.” I cannot oversee all the implications or all the variables of what will happen when I say something to somebody. There’s no way to know, and I’m fine with that.

Other people, especially when they believe they are separate entities, want to know the effect of their actions. They believe they’re responsible for everything, and then they become trapped.

Rick: Yeah, that’s actually terrifying. “I might do it wrong.”

Hans: Right or wrong doesn’t mean anything to me.

Rick: There’s actually a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which says that karma, or action, is unfathomable to the human intellect. The only way you can be assured of doing the right thing is to be established in what you would call awareness or consciousness, in the pure Self, and then perform action from there. The intelligence of nature will work it out for you.

Hans: Yeah. Basically, it is life happening, not Hans or Rick doing anything. Although we might like to claim it, that’s basically silly. “I am happening. You are happening.” We’re not somebody going somewhere or doing something.

Rick: Yeah. And so the whole thing about behavior and gnarliness and stuff like that. I mean, you were inspired by Nisargadatta, and he was a good example. I mean, he was sort of a rough character in a certain way, although also very sweet and compassionate. He also smoked cigarettes, which I believe you still do.

Hans: Yeah. Because of him, of course. Stopped.

Rick: Yeah, well, we all will, one way or the other. Okay, so, look, coming back to your bio here: since 1998, you’ve led hundreds of songs, retreats, and private sessions. You’ve published eight books, a booklet, and many articles and columns, and you have YouTube sites with videos. One is in English, and you’ve made seven homemade music CDs, because you’re a musician. So, do you still do all that stuff—songs, retreats, private sessions?

Hans: Yeah, that’s what I do.

Rick: You’re pretty well known in Holland.

Hans: Yeah. It’s also a small community interested in this kind of stuff, and I’m one of the guys, right?

Rick: Big fish in a small pond.

Hans: Yeah, something like that.

Confronting the mind

Rick: Okay. And you yourself say that you are sometimes judged as being too confrontational or direct, or, more kindly, as very clear. On the other hand, people credit you for your creativity and patience. Then you say, “Funny, right?” So, what’s an example of how you’re confrontational?

Hans: Yeah, well, usually in interactions, and especially in private interactions, it seems to be my job to point out things people don’t want to hear. Which they already know, because I believe, unless you’re insane, you have a pretty good feeling of who you are and what you’re hiding, or your games. But you usually try to avoid that or get away from it.

Well, I will see it. I can’t help it. And when people walk through my door, I can say what I want to say. So, I wouldn’t do that in the street, but I will point things out and confront people with what they’re hiding or protecting, or point out judgments or whatever. And sometimes they don’t like it.

Rick: But they come to you voluntarily. They can always not…

Hans: Yeah, right. That’s why I have a quote on the website: “Come here at your own risk.” I’m not sitting down there with people to make friends. They come and we talk about truth, freedom, or whatever. Well, okay, let’s play ball then.

Rick: Is this tendency to sort of see the truth in people something you’ve always had? Is that part of your personality, or is that something that seemed to dawn after this awakening, or after practice through working as a spiritual teacher?

Hans: Now both, I think, but mainly because I, at a certain point, started to investigate the workings of my own mind. And when you figure out the basic software of your mind and open your eyes, you see that it’s basically the same thing with anybody who walks on two feet. So, you see the tricks, the belief system, the avoidance strategies, and the cover-ups, because I’ve seen them in me.

Rick: Interesting. And so this investigation of your own mind, I guess, was just sort of an introspective process. Were you able to, as if, you know, be your own psychiatrist, so to speak? Could you see these things and actually resolve them and not do it that way anymore?

Confronting Fear Instead of Escaping Through Addiction

Hans: In the beginning, it wasn’t really a thing about resolving, but understanding just how it works. I had been avoiding it by drinking and smoking pot and going to party after party after party and being with friends all the time. And at a certain moment, I realized that I was just running away because I was afraid and felt pretty much fucked up and a little depressed and stuff.

So, I noticed this running away, avoiding, and deflecting, and I saw that it didn’t work. It gave only temporary relief. So, I was looking at it. And at a certain point, I saw that I had only not tried one thing: doing nothing and just looking.

So, I stopped these run-and-hide games and confronted fears, beliefs, and convictions. I just looked at them: What were they doing? What is happening here? Of course, there was therapy and stuff, and people—my parents—were threatening me with psychiatrists and whatever.

I thought they would try to fix stuff, but I didn’t want to fix it. I wanted to know what it was. I didn’t want to try to change something that I didn’t even understand. So, I wanted to know what’s what. Basically, I started looking, listening, and feeling instead of trying to change myself.

Rick: But doing that, it seems, did change you. You probably—

Hans: Yeah, sure. Yes. Because of looking at it without trying to fix it or avoid it, things changed from within, instead of through some model—“This is bad, and it should be good,” or whatever—or through an ego-centered approach.

Rick: So, just bringing awareness to it, really.

Hans: Yes, exactly. But I didn’t know that then, because I didn’t know these terms. Only when I ran into Krishnamurti and Nisargadatta and stuff did the words come, but this process was already happening.

Rick: Hmm. Interesting. Another example of something you just kind of picked up on without an actual teacher or teaching. Yeah. So, some old memory or other.

A lot of people drink and take drugs and party and do all kinds of other things because they are trying to avoid something that’s uncomfortable. They’re putting their attention in the opposite direction or trying to blur it out with substances. When you decided to really look at this stuff, was it uncomfortable? Did you have to just sort of work your way through the discomfort?

Hans: Yes. I was afraid. But what was very clear was that I was already afraid. So, what’s the difference? I saw that I was afraid to feel my fear or my sadness or whatever. But hey, I was already afraid, and I didn’t like life already. So, I had nothing to lose except fear or delusion. That was okay. And then I thought, or felt, more like something was happening instead of just running away.

Rick: Yeah. Good. Okay, so there are a number of points here that you sent me, almost as part of your bio, just some different points that you feel are important. I thought I might take those and we can discuss them. So, the first one is: “When spirituality is not alarming, it’s not worth mentioning.” What do you mean by alarming? What would be an example of spirituality being alarming?

Hans: Well, when we discover something, usually there’s a shock element to it: “I didn’t know that.” What I see is a lot of people who are busy with spirituality not to be shocked awake into awakening, but to be soothed, like smoking pot, right?

So, spirituality is not about comfort or being nice. It’s about self-confrontation and looking at things as they are. It’s about truth, and truth might hurt or shock you. When you are confronted with your lovelessness, that’s obviously a shock. So, there are always shocking and disturbing elements. And we need this friction, I think, to go deeper.

A lot of the techniques that I saw, and the things that people are doing, I believe are just helping them to remain asleep instead of waking them up. It’s not like a bucket of cold water when you’re lying there—splashing you and snapping you out of it. No, it’s all easy, easy, and do this thing or other, whatever, something to make you feel good.

Rick: What would be some examples of techniques that are just to make you feel good and that don’t really help to wake you up?

Hans: Almost everything, I’m afraid—all the different spiritual practices, and most of what I see.

Rick: For instance, I’ve heard you mention meditation in that context. And yet, the world’s spiritual traditions, and so many respected teachers, have all advocated it as an effective tool. So, are you saying it’s just a pacifier, maybe?

Hans: Yeah, in most cases. I was making a distinction in the satsang last week: there is meditation, and meditating. Meditating is working, trying to go from here to the next station, instead of just being with what is. That is effortless. It’s just being conscious of consciousness now.

But most techniques are verbs, so it’s the ego that likes to work. And it has to take time, and it has the promise of progress. But reality is and has nothing to do with evolution, progress, or development. All these phrases refer to time and effort. Well, the ego loves that.

When they say it takes you forty years or forty lives, if you’re into reincarnation, the ego is happy with it, because it knows that for the next forty years or forty lives, nothing will happen.

Rick: Well, I don’t think it’s that nothing will happen. There’s a sense that there will be a progression, that there will be a continuing…

Hans: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I mean: nothing will happen. It will remain within time and space. It will remain within. So, that’s great. That’s a dream theater, but waking up is about getting out of it.

Rick: So, let’s take an example from Ramana’s life. When he was a young lad, a teenager, I guess he had this profound awakening. He went down to Tiruvannamalai and ended up going up to—well, first he sat in a pit in the basement of the temple and practically died down there. Finally, somebody dragged him out, and he ended up going up to a cave on the mountain and spending, I don’t know, at least a decade sitting in some form of meditation, deep samadhi or something. And presumably, it was necessary for him to do that; he wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Then eventually, he came out and began interacting with people.

I don’t think you would say that was an example of him just numbing himself or pacifying himself.

Hans: No, no. But you assume that he was meditating while doing something with his eyes closed in a cave. He was sitting, but he said it was just being. It was just being. I don’t think he was doing anything. He just sat down.

Rick: Okay.

Hans: So, if this belief is so strong, we have to interpret it. He didn’t talk for years. And somebody said to him, if I’ve read correctly, “Were you taking the vow of silence?” He said, “No. There was nothing to say.” That seems to me to indicate that he wasn’t trying anything. He just was, and we make something of it because we believe in all kinds of spiritual stuff—that he was doing something in order to get something. I don’t think he was.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t think he was either. I mean, not that I knew. But I would presume that he didn’t have some kind of thought like, “I better sit here in this cave for a decade, and then I’ll be ready to do something.” I think he was just drawn within spontaneously and following his natural impulse. Nature was doing it; he wasn’t. He wasn’t monkeying around.

Hans: Yes, no purpose. He just sat, and he wouldn’t have minded if he had died there. Somebody dragged him out and started to feed him. He didn’t ask for food, right?

Rick: People just took it upon themselves to take care of him.

Hans: Yeah. And then they locked him up and all of that. He tried to get away a few times. Well, tough luck.

Rick: Yeah. I actually like your definition of meditation. To be honest, I’ve been meditating for almost fifty years, but the nature of it is kind of like you describe. It’s not an effort to do anything or get any place or anything else. It’s just sort of—there’s a technique, there’s a practice, but it’s really a matter of just being natural, sitting in presence.

Silence Is Already Here Without a Technique

But it’s strange to use a technique for that. I know the silence is already here. If you just give your attention to this silence, you don’t need any technique. It’s already here, and it will fill up your body within seconds, whereas when I’m doing the technique, I’m making it into time. It’s bizarre to me.

Hans: But it’s strange to use a technique for that. I know the silence is already here. If you just give your attention to this silence, you don’t need any technique. It’s already here, and it will fill up your body within seconds, whereas when I’m doing the technique, I’m making it into time. It’s bizarre to me.

Rick: Yeah. I mean, the Buddha—I don’t know what you want to call it—but the Buddha meditated, quote-unquote, all his life after he had his enlightenment, and I’m sure the silence was already there for him all the time. But for some reason, he chose to spend some time with his eyes closed or whatever in meditation, just like we choose to spend time with our eyes closed in sleep. It has some effect to just give, to allow, one’s full attention to be in that, as opposed to, you know—the silence is already here, but I’m busy and active, doing things. It just has its own value. Keep doing it. Don’t worry.

Some people have the same argument. Unless—I don’t know—that could happen. But as long as it seems fruitful, okay. I think we’ve covered that point pretty well. And feel free, anytime, whether I’m going on or not going on, if you have some thought in mind that I’m not asking, just come out with it. Don’t worry about it.

✨ Burnout, fear, and awareness

Okay, this one I take possible exception with: “Burnout is never about work. It’s a spiritual crisis, not feeling and listening, leaves inauthenticity, which at a certain point makes the soul scream for change.” Yeah, but I mean, tell that to an elementary school teacher in the inner city who’s dealing with a very unruly classroom of kids who come from very stressed, broken homes, and so on. There’s a term for it: teacher burnout. So is that a spiritual crisis those people are going through? Or can they really be circumstances, like Syria? The war has been going on there for so many years. People are living in these horrible, bombed-out cities, and they all suffer from PTSD and all kinds of psychological problems just because of the sheer stress of it. Are they not feeling or listening? Are they inauthentic?

Or are there really legitimate situations in which one can get burned out by circumstances?

Hans: It could be, but I would only know if I were to talk to the individual before I could say anything about it. When the teacher, when we started talking about the burnout thing, would come to me, I know for sure that within 10 minutes I could point out a few things, or he would become aware of a few things from before. For instance, in his relationship, it would become clear that he’s in a relationship he doesn’t want to be in, but he just keeps going along with it. Or he had a signal to stop this work, or stop working for so many hours, or whatever, and because of fear he just moved on.

I’m sure of this because I’ve had people here from different walks of life who seemed burned out, and there was always something going on—signals that they had ignored, you know, because of fear or money or whatever. But I cannot answer things in big generalizations about people in Aleppo. I never go there, so I don’t know what is happening. It’s difficult to say.

Rick: That’s a really good point, actually. I mean, I think that there are some generalizations one can make about Aleppo or, you know, that town in Baghdad that just got liberated from ISIS. I forget the name of it; it starts with an M. It had been bombed for years. You know, there is a high incidence of burnout and stress and PTSD in those places.

Hans: Obviously.

Rick: But the point you’re making—I mean, there might be teachers who thrive in an inner-city classroom because it’s their dharma, you know. It’s what they should be doing. They’re good at it, and they love it. Whereas others are just doing it for the salary, and they maybe really should be doing something else.

Hans: Yes, exactly. A lot of people are burned out because they’re not where they ought to be and are doing things that they don’t want to do. Yeah, well, or are in relationships they don’t want to be in, or have trouble in families that they really want to get rid of. But they are scared to say something or, you know, when we believe ourselves to be a separate entity, the trouble comes for free with it.

Rick: Yeah.

Hans: It’s always the case, because this basic misunderstanding is the cause of a lot of trouble, including war.

Rick: Yeah, explain how that is the case. I think I know what you mean, but how would you say it causes war?

Hans: On a simple level, if I don’t believe in separateness, and I really feel that you and I are not two, the thought wouldn’t come up to hurt you or steal something from you. That would be insane, because I wouldn’t be stealing from myself. That’s bizarre.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to bring that point up. Talking about compassion, you know, we were talking about cutting your finger. I mean, Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, the key to that, obviously, is seeing your neighbor as yourself, and then you’re going to love him, right? You would no more attack him than you would attack yourself.

Hans: Well, when this separateness drops away, it is impossible to hate, for instance. It is impossible to say another group of individuals are inferior. It just wouldn’t come up, you know. But from the separate standpoint, these people are bad and we are good, and my God is better than your God. It’s all imagined! But we don’t want to look at that. You know, I believe in Santa Claus and you don’t, so you gotta die. Pfff. It’s tragic and funny at the same time.

When this separateness drops away, it is impossible to hate.

Rick: Yeah, I like that point. I think that there’s a certain—this whole thing about “my way is the best and everybody else is going to hell.” There’s a certain sort of insecurity beneath that, I think. There’s this ego aggrandizement that, you know, of course my thing has got to be the best, and they hang on to that, and everything else threatens it. So there’s an antagonism, for sure.

Okay, good point. I like this next point: “Self-inquiry is for internal use only, not for beating others down or to be used as an excuse for lousy behavior.” Good one.

Hans: Thank you. It’s kind of related to the previous points, you know, with the Advaita Bible, or the holy book, or the Quran. We can use these books for any purpose, any ego purpose. You can always find a quote to excuse yourself, or to diminish somebody, or to make up excuses or motivations for your egocentric activity. So that’s what people do.

It’s not the books themselves; the books don’t matter. But that’s what we do. We will excuse ourselves and do horrible things and then rationalize it. So I think it’s important, when we’re doing this inquiry and are discovering something in myself, like lovelessness or egocentrism, that I shouldn’t immediately run to my wife or whatever and say, “You are egotistical because it’s working this way, and you should look into that.” This happens a lot.

My previous partner—I forced her, I tried to force her, into self-inquiry because it was working for me. But she was learning in a different way. Yeah, it took me a little while to figure it out. My way wasn’t better; it was just different, and it suited me, you know? So…

Rick: Yeah, there’s this phrase, “the Advaita police.” You’ve probably heard that, where people are kind of…? It kind of came out of the whole Papaji crowd, where people were all laying trips on others for not being nondual enough or not using the right terminology. Like, you know, you couldn’t say, “Please pass the salt,” without somebody saying, “Who wants the salt?” That kind of thing?

Hans: Oh, there we go. There we go. Oh my God, it’s even worse than I thought.

Rick: I think maybe that doesn’t happen so much anymore, but a lot of people made jokes about Jeff Foster. He made this real funny video of these cartoon characters having a walk, and one says, “Look at the beautiful tree,” and the other character says, “There is no tree. There is no beauty.” You know? Yeah, this whole thing.

I don’t know if you would have—

Hans:[Coughs loudly.]

Rick: Oh, you’ve got to stop smoking, man. It’s going to kill you…

So, here’s a question that came in. You know, feel free, if you have no experience with this. If you just say, “I don’t know,” we’ll move on. But a fellow named Jared from St. Paul, Minnesota, in the U.S., asks: “Can you describe some experiences with Kundalini, if you have had any? If so, do you have any tips to deal with the side effects?”

🕊️ Kundalini and spiritual effort

Hans: I could describe those experiences, but I’m not really interested in it. And I would really be very careful with all this kind of stuff, usually because of the dangers of it. Usually, it’s an ego that wants something and tries to release all these energies, and all kinds of accidents—energetic accidents—can happen.

Rick: Yeah.

Hans: So I wouldn’t go there. If it has already happened, just try to feel what happens without involvement, without trying to fix anything. The energy system is pure intelligence. It knows what to do and when to do it, and in which succession, and all this energetic stuff. And I’m trained in it for four years. So trust me: all this working with it is ego manipulation of a system we don’t understand. It is clever, so please leave it to its own devices. Things will happen in the right succession at the right time. Relax. Don’t meddle with that.

Rick: Yeah, I think that’s good advice. I mean, particularly, I would warn against doing something like intense pranayama or trying to awaken your Kundalini.

Hans: Yes, yes. You might get that right. You shouldn’t do that. It would be better to investigate: Why do I want this? What do I want from it? What am I trying to get rid of? Or what am I trying to get? Investigating what you want to get or get rid of is far more productive than fucking with your energy system. You don’t know what you’re doing, and the energy guys who try to help you don’t know either.

Rick: Unfortunately, there are some people who actually haven’t done anything—they haven’t been interested in spirituality or done spiritual practices—and yet they have some kind of Kundalini awakening. They don’t even know what it is when it first happens, but it really messes up their lives. Do you have any advice for them?

Hans: The same: try to feel what happens. Just be aware of it, and allow it to restructure itself. Don’t panic. But it all depends on how scared you are, or how mature you are, or whatever, and other things that happen in life.

But don’t try to forcefully fix it, because there’s so much violence in these so-called spiritual techniques—trying to awaken something when it’s not the time yet, or trying to calm my system when it doesn’t want to become calm. You know, it sounds spiritual; it feels like violence to me. I would want to know why it’s not calm or anything.

For instance, you have the thing of grounding and the “need to be grounded.” Then people are doing all kinds of exercises to be grounded, instead of investigating, “Why doesn’t my system want to be here?”

Rick: How would you investigate?

Hans: Just a second. I’m trying to force a system which is afraid to really be here. Now, I’m trying to force it to be here, and we call it spiritual.

Oh my God, I would look into it and try to ask myself honestly, or ask somebody who has a clearer mind, what is going on that I’m afraid to really be here. There’s a cause. If the cause or reason is removed, I will just be here, and I don’t need to ground.

You know, when my heater is leaking, I’m not filling it up with water every day. I will look where the leak is. Yeah? Otherwise, I will have to do grounding exercises until the end of time. Why would I want to do that?

Pushing a ball under the water. Good. I like that one. As soon as I stop my effort, it will jump up again.

Rick: So, it sounds like, as a general principle, you’re not a big fan of effort, any kind of force or unnaturalness. We’ve established that. And I agree with you on that, for what it’s worth.

And you’re also an advocate of bringing awareness or attention to things, rather than deflecting it or avoiding it in any way. And that’s worked for you. It works for your students.

Hans: Yes, and only when they’re “there.” If you can really see for yourself that running away, avoiding, and deflecting are not working, then the maturity will come to stop it.

Only once it is really seen, and not because you “want to.” Because if you only understand this verbally and you want to stop it, you won’t be able to. But if you have really seen it, understood it with a capital U, it will drop away. Because in that moment, it’s really clear to you that it is insane to prolong a strategy that bears no fruit. Only once it is seen.

If you have really seen it, understood it with a capital U, it will drop away.

Rick: To get a concrete example, can you think of an instance with one of your students, if you call them students, who had something of some sort, and they were avoiding or suppressing or doing something like that, and then the problem was persisting? And you helped them see it clearly for the first time, maybe, and resolve it? Can you think of an example of something like that, just to make the whole thing more clear to people?

Hans: Well, a very clear example: a little while back, somebody was doing coke. I suppose she does no more. Okay, I have no moral issue with that. But we talked about what was going on.

She could see at a certain moment that there were certain times that she liked to do that. So, I suggested to her, “Okay, now stop and just look at what is happening. When you feel it, when you feel the urge coming, just say to your ego, ‘You will get it in an hour. But now I’m going to look and feel what is actually happening.’”

She could face a certain unrest or restlessness coming up, and it had to do with some relational stuff. She could look at it, didn’t run away from it, and felt it completely. The urge to use slowly dropped away.

Rick: That’s a good one. Cool. Yeah, that’s cool.

Hans: If you just say, “I shouldn’t use it anymore,” or, “It’s good or bad to use,” whether it’s chocolate, TV, music, or whatever, then you make a conflict out of it.

But you can also postpone it and just look at it, feel it, investigate into it. And maybe you’ll have a surprise insight or something changes. She understood it, really.

Rick: Yeah, I’m not sure, but I think with Alcoholics Anonymous, for instance, they don’t come in there and just say, “All right, I’m never going to do this again my whole life.” It’s more like you live each day at a time, each moment at a time. You don’t worry about tomorrow, but today is the time you have to deal with.

Hans: Yeah, and that’s basically true. People come because they’ve had anxiety attacks or something for a long time. So, they will start telling me, “I am having this for 10 years.” It’s not true. You’re not in a panic attack for 10 years. Something like that doesn’t exist.

You have to deal with a panic attack if it’s there right now. What are you doing with it? Do you place it in time immediately and make a huge problem out of it, or is it just the energy moving at this moment? Can you look at it without judgment, even without the label of fear? Because when we say “fear,” it’s already in the “bad corner.”

The other day, or a few days ago, we had somebody over with fear, and we could look at it together without the mind commenting. He started smiling, because what he was feeling was a very lively, powerful energy moving. He liked it.

But before, it was labeled fear. So, “Yeah, that’s making my life difficult,” and whatever. But when looking at it without all the stories, it was just powerful, lively—it was life force. It’s not a problem.

Rick: That’s good. It kind of reminds me a little bit of Byron Katie: just loving what is and not embellishing it with all kinds of stories and complications.

Hans: Yes. But we probably—I don’t know what the word is in English. Never mind. Okay. We’ll make a problem out of everything.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. People know what you mean by that. There’s a teacher in Australia named Sailor Bob Adams, and I think he has this phrase: “What’s wrong with right now, unless you think about it?”

Hans: Well, there you go.

Rick: Okay. So, let’s see. Oh, that’s interesting. This is the next little point I was going to read here, summarizing what you’ve just been saying: “Reality is never a problem until we start to project our beliefs, fears, expectations, and judgments onto it.” Well, yeah, that’s the point.

Okay, here’s another one: “You are far too much interested in solutions. And in the meantime, it is your mind, what you believe, that is creating the trouble in the first place.”

Hans: Right. That’s another thing when one observes one’s own mind. Mind is a very fun word to me: “to mind.” You know, I have something against something. That’s what it means. So, I think this is funny, whatever.

But what is here is never the issue. Any situation is valueless; there is no value until I start projecting a value into it: “This is good, this is bad. This is beneficial, this is…” You know?

So, it’s basically the past giving commentaries on what is present. And then we run away from the situation to the future, where the solution may be. So, we’re always moving away from the issue at hand.

We don’t look at the issue itself, investigate into what it is. No, we immediately look for a solution. It’s always over there. And that’s why a lot of people don’t learn, but become very good at moving away from what is in terms of solutions, distractions, comfort, or whatever.

And the core problem just remains and keeps making problems. And the essence, of course, is, “I am a separate being.”

Rick: I won’t even comment on that, because that’s good. I’ll just read your next point. You say: “Unresolved issues keep you from being truly present and real. Really, all these points are related. Avoidance is one of the most weakening attributes of identification with the mind.”

Can you ever get to the bottom of it? I mean, is there ever going to be a complete resolution of issues, or is there a never-ending supply of them to look at and resolve?

Hans: Ah, that’s a good question. What I am, how I experienced it, or am experiencing it now, is like this: Sometimes things arise in me, but it’s never perceived as a problem. So, there is no interest in a solution.

Some tendencies of this Hans character remain, and some others might change. There is no self-improvement here. I don’t know if I’m making sense.

Rick: I think you are. I think—I don’t know—it’s another one of those paradoxical, catch-22 kind of things. And maybe it has to be. Maybe it’s important, like—which is the cart and which is the horse?

There was a Zen story about this student who was sitting and meditating and meditating and meditating. The teacher came and picked up a tile, or something—it was a floor tile—and started polishing it, polishing it.

The student obviously thought, “What are you doing that for so long? Trying to make it into a mirror?” The teacher said, “You’ll never make it. The floor tile can’t become a mirror.”

So, there’s something about trying to endlessly improve or fix the relative situation, which is inherently—yeah, it’s relative.

Hans: Yeah, it’s infinite. The relative is infinite by definition. And it’s not like awakening is the product of cleaning up.

There are a lot of schools, obviously, of purification and energetic cleansing and whatever. “If you’re clean enough, you will awaken.” But it isn’t like that.

Which does not mean that at some stages of somebody’s life, some cleaning up could be useful. Of course it could. But it’s not that when I’m 80 percent clean, that thing will click and I will know, “I have never existed.” It’s not like that.

Rick: Yeah. Here’s what you said about that in one of your articles. You mentioned two requirements. For the recognition of true nature, a suitable energy system to let the recognition sink through is valuable.

So, in that sense, we’re saying that there is some value to it. Jesus said, “Don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.” There is some value in having an energy system, a nervous system, that is suitable for the realization.

I mean, if you’re doing cocaine every day or something, you’re probably hampering your chances or your ability to have that realization. You say, “For most people, it’s best to walk both paths: ripening the energy system, which is becoming conscious and cleaning up, and exposing yourself to direct teaching or experience.” So, it’s kind of a both thing?

Hans: Yeah, at least for a while. For a while. What’s the danger for you? The danger, of course, is that the cleansing thing and the maturing thing will cause us to get attached to that and make it an endless project.

Rick: An endless project.

Hans: Yes. Yeah, and, oh well, that’s fun. And if that needs to happen, all right. I won’t complain. But it’s the danger of death.

The danger of only using the other side is that people have a tendency to avoid real issues, because it’s not Advaitic and those haven’t anything to do with it. “Beating my wife doesn’t have anything to do with it.” Well, try that when I’m present.

Rick: Yeah, there’s no wife. And, you know, yes, yes…

Hans: Exactly! Which is a bunch of bollocks, right? Because it is used as an excuse. And as soon as we use a quote which is, in itself, true, but we use it as an excuse, it becomes untrue.

Because it’s never the words, obviously. I’m not saying to myself that there is no separate being. It’s not a belief system or a conviction or a phrase or something. I’m seeing that, and I started talking about it. Much to my surprise, people were interested, and it turned out to be a job. I didn’t know that.

Rick: Yeah. Yeah. So, in other words, you’re not just living for it as an intellectual concept or something. Both in your own experience and as a teacher, you can’t live it on the basis of merely a concept any more than you can nourish yourself by thinking about food.

Hans: Exactly. Yeah. It’s an experiential thing.

Rick: Yes. You say—sorry, no, you continue.

Hans: Well, just as much as somebody right now may believe, of course, “I’m a separate individual,” which is true for most people—it is deep, this conviction. There’s no way around it.

Well, when it flips, the other thing is just as solid. There’s no way to doubt it. It’s crystal clear, and it’s amazing that the others don’t see. But you cannot fake it.

I cannot put together separateness anymore. It will never happen. I will always see the cracks and will start laughing. So…

Rick: Yeah, good point. You make a point here that there are two sides to ripening: before awakening and after. I think we’ve talked quite a bit about the process you went through of looking at stuff rather than avoiding it, and so on. What would be the nature of it after awakening?

✨ Ripening after awakening

Hans: Well, we talked about Nisargadatta and one of his statements in a certain situation where somebody awakened in his presence. He said something like, “Hmm, yeah, it’s a mango, but it still needs to ripen. You cannot eat it yet.”

What you see, and what I’ve also seen happening over the past 20 years when people are waking up, is that it’s all shaky, flimsy, and unstable. They will jump to conclusions, and some old tendencies will have to die out, or—I don’t know how you say that—will have to pan out.

So, I usually say, especially when they have an inclination to start talking to friends or whatever, “Shut up for a year or two or three or whatever. Just let it sink in, and don’t burn all the energy immediately by talking about it,” because that’s what unripe mangoes tend to do.

I can see now in myself, in my own dream life, that in the beginning the energy was moving in all kinds of ways, and it’s much more stable or complete now. That’s all done, like, ten years ago or whatever.

Rick: And you feel like it’s an ongoing process? Like, five years from now you’ll say it’s more stable and complete than it was five years ago? Has that been your experience over the past?

Hans: Yeah. But I must say that the difference does get harder to measure. In the beginning, you get the big chunks, and now, if there’s something happening, it seems more like a sort of fine-tuning.

Rick: Yeah. What’s that?

Hans: It’s all automatic. I’m not doing anything. I’m doing nothing spiritual. I’m totally unspiritual.

Rick: Yeah, by your definition.

Hans: I think in the sense that I’m not using any spiritual products, barely reading spiritual books. I’m not mad at reading spiritual stuff, and I’m not doing shiatsu or whatever. I’m not doing anything in that context.

Rick: Yeah, it’s just an automatic process. In fact, you say in one of your articles, “The ripening after awakening is somewhat different. It’s a mostly spontaneous, continuous dismantling of all kinds of leftovers. But there is little or no resistance to this anymore because the ego has lost its dominance.”

Like, I don’t know if you ever heard of this woman in the United States quite a while back who called herself Peace Pilgrim. Have you ever heard of her?

She just walked around. She was this older woman who walked around the entire country in simple clothing and a pair of tennis shoes, with no money, no nothing, and completely relied upon the providence of nature and strangers and everything to survive.

Anyway, in her little book, which is remarkable, she has this sort of chart of how she views spiritual progress. There’s this kind of slow rise before awakening, when the ego is involved and actually interfering with it. But after awakening, it rises much more dramatically when you get out of the way and let nature run the show. I think that’s kind of what you’re saying, right?

Hans: For a while it will do that, yeah. And then it starts to level again. I would say nothing much has been happening for the past few years.

Rick: Yeah. Now, I wonder—this is a little bit of a hypothetical and provocative question—if it’s leveled for you because, in the context of what you are doing and in the context of your life, there’s really no cause or impetus for it to rise much more.

Theoretically, there are many degrees to which it could rise if that were your destiny, your tendency, or if you had the inclination or desire for it. There’s a lot more possibility, but in the context of your life, you just sort of plateaued and are simply living in it.

Hans: Maybe. I don’t know. But from my perspective, complete is complete. I cannot take anything off or add to it. If anything has to change in my dream life—if life says, “Go that way,” or, “Drop this,” or whatever—okay.

In that sense, things on the surface of my life have changed. My mother got demented. Somebody died, you know, that kind of stuff. But it doesn’t detract anything from this completeness or add to it. That’s more what I mean.

Rick: Yeah, that’s very well put. It’s like in mathematics: if you have infinity, you can add something to it or subtract something from it, but it’s still infinity. It doesn’t change its essential nature.

Hans: Yes. And that’s always present, always here, and always effortless.

Rick: Here’s another point. These are just little things, as I was reading all of your essays, that I thought, “That’s interesting! I’ll talk about that.” So I copied and pasted them into a file.

Here’s another one that jumped out at me. You said, “Fulfillment is the result of not doing, the simple and direct experience of, for lack of better words, an energetic conscious space that is already there—the direct relaxation and being now.”

So, fulfillment: do you consider yourself fulfilled? Do you feel fulfilled?

Hans: Yeah, fulfillment is here. I’m not sure—so, always, yeah. Does that mean that this Hans character is always happy or never grumpy? No, of course not. But that happens in this fulfillment, or completeness, or infinity, like you just said, so there’s no resistance to being grumpy. And there’s no resistance to being happy.

Rick: Do you prefer happiness to grumpiness?

Hans: Whatever happens. And I must say, if grumpiness were to totally go, I might miss it.

Rick: What about your partner? How does your partner like you best, grumpy or happy?

Hans: Hmm. It depends on whether she’s grumpy or happy.

Rick: So, what if you get sick? What if you get pneumonia or bronchitis or something like that? Would you feel, in some sense, less fulfilled?

Hans: No. I have a hernia. It hurts, yeah, but it doesn’t affect my mood, and it certainly doesn’t affect completeness. Completeness is completeness. It has no backbone, so it cannot have a hernia. It’s only the body, yeah? I think when a body gets older, it has these little things.

Rick: Sure, things happen.

Hans: Yeah. Well, I don’t care, basically.

Rick: Here’s another thing for people listening in: remember that you can send in questions if you want. There’s a question forum under “Upcoming Interviews” on BatGap.com, down at the bottom of that page.

Here’s another little statement of yours that jumped out at me: “There’s a big difference between love and need.” I think this is actually kind of a big one, which we could talk about for a few minutes. What do you have to say to elaborate on that?

When you listen to a lot of pop songs—“I love you, and I can’t live without you,” and, “You make me feel complete”—that’s not love. That’s needing something or somebody to feel secure or complete, or someone giving you attention or making you feel good about yourself. That’s need.

Hans: When you listen to a lot of pop songs—“I love you, and I can’t live without you,” and, “You make me feel complete”—that’s not love. That’s needing something or somebody to feel secure or complete, or someone giving you attention or making you feel good about yourself. That’s need.

And when it’s about, “Oh, let’s do this or that, baby, baby,” that’s called being horny. That’s wanting someone, not loving someone. There’s nothing wrong with being horny, but let’s not call it making love. It’s got nothing to do with it.

I cannot “make love.” Love is what you are. Love is, for me, another word for consciousness or beingness, and it doesn’t do exclusivity. “If you love me, you would or wouldn’t do this or that”—that’s emotional blackmail, not love.

Love doesn’t ask questions, set limits, tell you what to do or what not to do, or tell you how to behave. That’s not love. That’s the ego trying to force you or somebody else. So I call that need. It’s a big thing, mistaking love for need.

Love is what you are.

Rick: One way to explain it would be to say that love is characterized by a tendency to give without expectation of return, whereas need is primarily focused on getting something.

Hans: Yeah, that’s true. The ego is always giving or taking, but in love there is no separateness, so there’s nothing to give or take.

It’s like the ocean metaphor again. It doesn’t give its water to the wave. It is the wave. It’s not divided.

Rick: And if a river flows into it, it doesn’t become more ocean. It’s still the ocean.

Hans: Yes. It’s not giving or receiving anything; it’s always complete. And it didn’t make any effort to get the river. It isn’t saying, “I’m going to get you to be with me.”

Rick: It never feels like, “Without this river, I would be lost.”

Hans: God, that would be insane. So, to love, switch away from the “me.” That’s it. That is what truth and freedom do: they’re the absence of the “me.”

Rick: Well, just to take a personal example—it’s hypothetical, but you have a partner, yes? She seems like a very nice person. Presumably, you love her. How would you feel if she decided to leave and fell in love with somebody else? Would there be any sort of lack or attachment, or would the fullness really not be impacted by that?

Hans: It would be weird to say anything about it until it happened.

Rick: Until it happens. So, you don’t know. Has anything like that happened in the past since your awakening?

Hans: Yeah, and then it surprised me.

Rick: In what way?

Hans: Something agitated me for a week or so.

Rick: You thought—

Hans: Oh, no, no, no. Don’t think I had that confusion. I just felt this shard, like a broken piece of glass, in my heart, and I was looking at it, feeling into it. I thought, “Oh, okay.”

The thought was there, but I never made the conclusion that it would not touch me anymore or something like that. There was turmoil, and the immediate tendency was to look at it and be with it. After some days or a week or so—not constantly over a week—it came up and went in. And then it was done.

Rick: Yeah, I suspect you must have processed it a lot faster than many people would because you already have that tendency to look at things and really not avoid them, just go into them.

Hans: Yes, resolve them right away. Some people are looking to avoid things. I would even say that, especially in an earlier period of my inquiry, I tried to make it as hard as possible for me.

So, if I was afraid of something, I would just blow up the story and see what would come. You’re in love with somebody, or you have a wife or husband, and you imagine her or him doing the whole hockey team. See what happens—instead of thinking, “I hope she won’t fall in love with somebody.”

When something happens, just picture it as bad as possible, if you can handle it, and feel through it. Just look at it. Feel it.

Rick: Yeah, that’s an interesting technique.

Hans: But then you’re done pretty quickly, if you can take it. There has to be awareness and space to be able to do that.

Rick: Yes, there’s strength or capacity. It’s not for everyone, right? But essentially, I’ll think about that one. I may use it myself—exaggerate it.

Hans: And if you picture that stuff, anything “bad,” a few times at its worst, and you can really stay with it, just look at it and feel it, all the tension will drop away after a few times. No more fear. Fear is gone. Gone. That’s why I’m more an advocate of self-confrontation than of all this “feel-good stuff.” I feel good when it’s true and when it’s free. That is good! Not to make me feel good. I can have a couple of beers to make me feel good for an hour. I know. And then it doesn’t. It’s not bringing anything…

✨ Awakening and the world

Rick: Here’s a paragraph that’s a little longer. I’m going to read it, and you can talk about it. You say:

The danger in saying, “There is no person” and “Everything is consciousness” is that we leave everything the way it is and unwittingly stay in our comfort zone and continue to take part in an old system that’s essentially anti-living and has devastating effects on our human nature as well as on nature and human relations. Focusing solely on the outer world is tricky as well. Let’s find the middle ground and rediscover acting justly based on consciousness, and experiencing all from great peace, keeping an eye on what’s needed in our environment, acting out of love, ever generous, and realizing we are not separated from Earth, our social environment, or the world.

So, the reason I copied that one is that it’s a point about the implications of spirituality or awakening for the world and worldly problems, such as the environment and all kinds of other social problems in the world.

Sometimes people polarize that and think that the two really have no relationship to one another, and that spiritual people just want to focus on that. Activists think that spirituality is some kind of escape, sitting there with your eyes closed. But I think you’re advocating a more comprehensive, inclusive thing. Would you elaborate on it? I’ve said enough?

Hans: Well, to make it simple, we have two eyes. I would say the true adult human being would use one eye for the world and one eye for infinity.

Maybe we need to wake up twice: to our true nature and to how systems are working in the world. I know that I am also my surroundings. So, if that’s not separate, I will not throw acid in the yard or in the forest, because it’s my own backyard, wherever it is. You know, it’s insane. Not morally bad; it’s just weird.

So, if there was a real change in this, the dropping away of the feeling of separateness, I expect—but maybe I’m wrong—that it would also adjust how we live or how we deal with the environment, with nature, and with other people.

Like I said in the beginning, when I really know—not when I just think it, but when I really know—I am you, I will not attack you or steal your car, because that’s weird. You know, it should have an effect. Not that this is the goal, but it’s a byproduct.

Rick: Yeah, and an important one. I think you’re right. I ride around town on my bicycle a lot. It’s a small town, and I like getting the exercise and seeing things people have thrown on the street—cigarette packs, bottles, and stuff like that.

I usually can’t help but stop and pick them up, put them in my baskets, bring them home, and recycle them, just because I don’t like it. It’s like, that doesn’t belong. And if the environment is me, that doesn’t belong in me. The people who put it there are insensitive to the environment; they’re not seeing it in a unified way.

Hans: Exactly. We walk the dog; we live in the forest, or on the verge of a forest, and we walk the dog every day. We pick up stuff, too. Sometimes we even purposely take it back with us because there are always bottles and cans, or couches and stuff we can’t take with us. Then we call somebody to collect it.

Yeah, that’s weird—littering, from my perspective. But I also understand that these people who do that can’t be blamed for not feeling one with the rest, because that’s not their awareness. You know, so what I said earlier: there is no hate toward this. A little sadness or irritation, though…

Rick: Yeah, I think you have a really good point, though. There are many people who fear for the continuation of the human race because there’s so much damage being done to the environment and so on.

If there is some kind of more widespread spiritual awakening taking place—which seems to me there is—then maybe this is nature’s antidote to what we’ve been doing. Hopefully, it’s going to create a mass psychology that will be much more sensitive to Mother Earth and won’t consider it merely an inexhaustible resource, which it is not.

Hans: I don’t believe that, but…

Rick: You don’t believe that’ll happen? Why not? You’re an example of it in your own life. And what if you…

Hans: No, no, no, no. Why? You talk to these kinds of people—you know, awakened or spiritual people. You don’t talk to the hooligan who likes to smash somebody’s jaw.

Rick: True. I haven’t. No, there’s—

Hans: No, there’s more of them! Ha-ha.

Rick: There is, you know, but there are so many things that have changed in society over the years that you didn’t think were going to happen. I mean, racial segregation—huge strides in racial equality. Most of the cities in the southern United States have Black mayors now, whereas before they wouldn’t even have been allowed to use the same bathroom.

And gay marriage, and all kinds of things that have changed, which people never thought would happen. So…

Hans: Okay, great. Good for you. I’m not pessimistic either.

Rick: No, we should pray for that.

Hans: I wouldn’t…

Rick: I’m just joking.

Hans: I know. And I wouldn’t really mind so much if humanity became extinct. Who cares? The dinosaurs are gone. It’s not about humans, right? Maybe the planet is better off without us. I don’t know.

Rick: There will come a time when that happens. It might be a long way off; it might not.

Hans: It will happen if we believe the universe and time to be real. I’m told the Sun has an expiration date, so…

Rick: It does. In five billion years, it’ll expand and the Earth will melt, so we’ll have a real serious global-warming problem. Ha-ha.

Hans:Ha-ha. And it won’t help to flee to Mars.

Clarity and being

Rick: Now, a couple of questions have come in. Here’s one from Pamela in Madrid. She’s saying that you say in one of your writings, “Becoming aware isn’t necessarily pleasant, but it will always bring clarity,” and she asks: What is clarity? Can you explain the difference?

Hans: The difference between…?

Rick: Between pleasantness, I think, and clarity.

Hans: Well, clarity is clear, and pleasantness is pleasant.

Rick: So, in other words, awakening might bring clarity to some unpleasantness.

Hans: Yes. For instance, like we talked about already, when you’re face-to-face with your own aggression, or with having to be right, it can become clearer to you that you’re doing that, why you’re doing that, and all that it entails. That is unpleasant.

But in this clarity, when you stay with it, it may drop away, and then this clarity may become pleasant. But it called for confrontation.

Sometimes I make this strange equation: You live in a half-dark room all the time, and all of a sudden the light goes on. Then you will see the mess very clearly. So, there’s a lot of clarity, but it’s also a mess. You put a lot of stuff under the carpet and in the corners, and you wouldn’t see that because the room was half-dark.

Now the light has come on. Okay! Then you see how you live and where you live, what you’re doing, what you’re attached to, and what you’re trying to get. It might be a shocker.

Rick: Yeah, but you couldn’t clean up the room until you had the light on.

Hans: Yes, exactly. And it’s got to be a nicer room to live in once you’ve cleaned it up.

Rick: Yes.

Hans: Or maybe the lights go on and you get that you should get out of there. That’s also a possibility. Don’t just make it into a nice room; just go!

Rick: What would that relate to in terms of the metaphor? Leaving the room? I don’t know; it just sounds more like building.

Hans: No, no, not trying to rebuild something. That’s another thing. It’s not like you’re somebody and then you’re awakened to be somebody who’s going for different goals. The becoming falls away. There’s only presence, not the whole thing of becoming something.

So, getting a better room in this metaphor is still becoming, working on something. But when awakening is complete, there is no working on whatever in a psychological or spiritual sense. It might be working in your garden, on your car, or with your synthesizer. But for you, there’s no becoming. There’s no goal. I’m not going anywhere or becoming anything or trying to achieve anything.

Rick: Things are kind of running on automatic, more…

Yes, yes. Ramana Maharshi—we talked about him earlier—had one quote that I love very much: “Your job is to be, not to be this or that.” That sums it up quite nicely.

Hans: Yes, yes. Ramana Maharshi—we talked about him earlier—had one quote that I love very much: “Your job is to be, not to be this or that.” That sums it up quite nicely.

Usually, things—music, for instance—may occur. But it’s not the goal to produce a song or be a musician or whatever. The music came back seven or eight years ago, and CD albums and songs and soundscapes started to emerge. They patched themselves together and became some homemade CDs. Things were written and recorded and were called a book. But I never sat down to write a book.

Rick: You didn’t feel like the doer?

Hans: No.

Rick: Yeah.

Hans: When I’m truthful, I never feel I’m doing anything. And in the instances that I “do” something, it’s off. Because “work,” in my dictionary, means effort; it means forcing.

Rick: Do you ever have a situation—and I don’t know—where you have a difficult decision to make, or it has moral implications or something, and you’re weighing this versus that and you don’t know what to do? Do you ever do that kind of thing, or does the way you function just not work that way anymore?

Hans: Well, when such a thing arises, there’s an automatic stepping out of it. Because when I want to have clarity about what to do, I must not be part of the equation. I don’t know if this makes sense…

Rick: I think it does. So, then what happens? You just wait and see how it’s going to work out, and then eventually the right thing kind of presents itself?

Hans: Yeah, I know that I will know what to do when it’s necessary. And when I don’t know, it’s probably not the moment to know. So, I don’t worry about it. Okay? Good.

But if you get involved, then your fears and desires and whatnot get mixed into the situation. And then clarity is out of the question. So, what works best? And it’s not something that I do, but it just happens. There’s a sort of zooming out. And all interests drop away. And then there’s just this energetic constellation, this situation, and the right thing, or one of the right things, will occur.

And because everything is already complete, it basically doesn’t matter if it goes that way or another. I’m not losing anything or gaining anything. Yeah? So, it basically doesn’t matter. But not in an indifferent, egoic manner. But because there are more right actions possible on any subject. Yeah?

Where did it go? Oh, it thinks this is right and that is wrong. No, the more—when you see it in musical terms, you can do a bass line on a synthesizer or a bass guitar, or Eric, my friend, could do it on his trumpet, or could just hum it. Those are all bass-line possibilities. Sometimes this sounds nice, and another time that sounds nice. The fact that there’s a song coming up in itself is nice, but it’s not important! If it doesn’t get recorded, the stars won’t drop from the sky. You know? We always exaggerate our own importance and what we do. We make it so. It’s not what we’re used to, because consciousness likes to entertain itself. So, there’s just a guy over there, a guy over here, and we’re talking about this “importance stuff” like that.

Rick: There’s a saying I heard once, which is that humility is the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way.

Hans: Yes, yes. Very good, yes. And it’s also very nice when you like something to happen in a certain way, and then it turns out differently and it’s much more beautiful than you could have imagined.

Rick: Very good point. Yeah. You know, you had a limited expectation. Yeah, good point. Okay, here’s another question that came in. This one is from Amanda from Tampa, Florida. She asks, “How can you describe how creativity and the creative process are linked with consciousness?” You’re a creative guy, you’re a musician, so it’s a good one for you. How would you describe that? Have you become more creative, do you think, as a result of awakening?

Hans: Less egoic. So, when I made music when I was in my teens or early twenties, I was much more scared to let somebody hear something that I made, or wanted rewards for it because it was “cool.” That’s not there anymore. So, it has become more free.

But again, I’m not twenty anymore. And I don’t want anything from it. I don’t have to perform or make a living from music. I wouldn’t even want to. I’m not looking for a YouTube hit or whatever. You know, it’s just something I sometimes like to do. (Rick’s dog barks in the background.) Hihi, Doggy.

So, creativity is more often than not ego-based. And that’s a shame, but I understand it. It’s mostly somebody who wants to make something and then show off. My girlfriend calls a lot of music “me-too music”—“I want to be famous too” music. If you catch the drift? That’s not the love for music, but it’s the love for fame, for instance. You know, so there are different levels.

So, the freer it is, the more creative it is, I think. Whether it’s nicer, that’s something else entirely. It’s a matter of taste, maybe, or whatever. But if there’s nothing in the way, it can flow really freely.

The dangerous thing, the other side of it, is that there is no necessity. You know, when I thought I was somebody, I had to make music. Now, I don’t. Because the energy that comes when I hear a melody or a lyric or whatever has to be very strong to make me go to the recorder or the little studio to do it. Because there are no egoic needs to make something.

So, that’s been bad for music last year, because I didn’t do anything. I did buy a nice extra synthesizer, though—a Sequential Prophet 6. But I didn’t record anything, because I don’t feel it now. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s an answer to the question at all.

Rick: I think it’s a good answer. And Susan, Amanda can follow up if she wants to. But, yeah, it occurred to me as you’re speaking that maybe “me-too music” would appeal to “me-too people,” and the kind of music that’s made that way—without ego—would appeal to people who are more without ego. Maybe it’s sort of an affinity thing, you know, like attracts like.

Hans: Maybe. I really don’t know. And when I look at what has been recorded over the past seven years, there is some instrumental electronic stuff that you could call meditative. But that’s also hard rock or folk music or experimental jazzy weird stuff. So, I don’t know if it has anything to do with what I want to say about this awakening thing. It’s not “awakening music” or anything spiritual.

✨ Death, reincarnation, and the separate self

Rick: Sure. I think I know how you’re going to answer this next question. But let’s see. Susan from New York asks, “Would you be able to describe your thoughts about what happens to individual consciousness after death? Does the individual continue?”

Hans: No! Oh… there’s no individual now already. So…

Rick: So, that’s not how I thought you were going to answer it. I thought you were going to say, “I don’t know.” So, okay, by that token, you would think that reincarnation is not the way things work? Something there is…

Hans: Yes. So, what do we call an ego, or mind, or soul, or whatever? It’s always talking about a separate entity. There’s no such thing! That’s the illusion. Yeah, already right now, there is no separate being. So, there is no separate being to go jumping from life to life, or going to Valhalla or Krishna Loka or whatever. There’s no such thing.

What will happen? Death is nothing else than the dropping away of the basic illusion. That’s all.

Rick: And so, either the illusion can drop while you’re still alive, or it can drop when you die, but either way it’s going to drop. Yes?

Hans: Yes. And it drops every night as well. Yeah? When you sleep in the dreamless sleep state, everybody’s perfectly happy. Why? Because everything you love and hate, which you need and die for, the “I” are absent. You need an “I” to love and hate. Well, it all drops away. That’s why everybody is really happy when they’re asleep. And still some people claim to be afraid of death! That’s insane.

Rick: So, what do you make of the evidence for reincarnation? There is substantial evidence in which, you know, some kid starts describing in great detail the fighter plane he flew in World War II and knows the names of his crew and all kinds of stuff. And then his parents do some research and find that there really was such a guy, and he did… I mean, I’ve read a lot of stories like that.

Hans: Yes, there’s a lot of stories about everything. And a nice way to look at it is like recycling. So, there’s an ocean of energy, and somebody dies. The energy contained in this somebody gets freed. And let’s say the green strand of this energy comes somewhere, and a new organism is created. And a big part, a big chunk of this green energy comes into this new guy. And then he remembers, because he believes, like everybody else, that there’s a separate entity. He’s going to say, “I was the fighter pilot.” Like there are ten thousand people who say, “I was Napoleon.” That’s funny. Yeah?

And there was usually another thing that I noticed in this energy work that I did in the ’90s. We also did reincarnation therapy. Almost everybody, including this one, was always a king or queen, a high priest, or something like that. I heard very little about farmers. Yeah? There were a lot more rice farmers and toilet cleaners! But no, we all were magicians and very special people. Oh, man. Come on!

Rick: Yeah. The woman who just asked that question might want to watch my interview from last week with 3M, who goes into great detail about all kinds of memories he has of specific past lives. And they weren’t all kings and princes. He was a prostitute. He was this, you know, all kinds of experiences that he remembers.

Well, I don’t know. It’s not a question I want to argue with you about, because who knows? I mean, I don’t have certainty about how it actually works. I have a sort of belief, but the belief isn’t anything final. It’s just a theory.

But it’s a very different worldview than you have. I have this sort of progressive worldview, where there’s a progressive evolution over vast amounts of time to higher and higher levels of expression. And you just don’t see it that way. And that’s fine. I don’t know if either of us, in the context of this interview, could convince the other.

Hans: But there’s no point, no point. The only thing I could hand to people who believe in whatever—reincarnation or an afterlife or whatever—is this: If you want to learn something about this, investigate, “Why do you need such a story?”

Rick: Well, yeah, they might try to look at it. That’s for sure. There might be needy reasons for such a story.

Hans: Yeah, yeah. And maybe there was no need, but it might be that you confront in yourself who needs to believe whatever.

Rick: Sure. Instead of this being right, there might be some motivation, some dependency or, you know, fear or whatever.

Hans: And it might be interesting, if somebody would like to do that, to see what is the basis of this story or theory that one claims to believe in.

Another thing I’d like to say: I know a lot of people who believe, or say they believe, in reincarnation, an afterlife, sitting with God, or whatever. The funny thing about it is that most of these people don’t live by it. If they would really, really, truly, totally be convinced that was the case, they would live another life. It doesn’t add up.

Rick: They’d live differently than they’re living, you mean?

Hans: Yes. Yes. So, I can see that it’s only on a verbal level that they sell that story to themselves, that they believe in this and that. But it hasn’t touched the ground. It’s not complete.

Rick: How do you expect the person who believed—who truly believed in reincarnation and was honest and not hypocritical about it—to behave or live?

Hans: More completely, more in tune…

Rick: More in tune?

Hans: Less ego-centric. If you really believe that you could go to hell or to heaven, how do you explain being greedy and destroying the environment, which “your Lord” made? Right? You know, it says that the meek shall inherit the earth, or that you should be generous. You should love your neighbor like you love yourself. Well, ha-ha. We’ve seen in history, and even today, a lot of discrimination and warmongering from our Christian or Muslim brothers.

Rick: Yeah. So, people are just saying…

Hans: Yes, yes, exactly. So, I don’t buy it.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. There is reincarnation. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Hans: I understand that they like their own sales pitch, but I’m not buying it.

Rick: Yeah.

Hans: And if you keep repeating that, well, maybe these people get something out of it, obviously. But it’s very flimsy stuff.

Rick: Yeah. Well, I mean, let’s say you go to CERN in Geneva and you say to the physicists working there, “Why do you want to find the Higgs boson? What’s in it for you? What’s the point of it?” And they would say, “We want to understand how the universe works. If we can find this thing, it will help us understand how the universe actually functions or was created.”

So, let’s say that we take reincarnation as a working hypothesis, a theory. It might be of interest to some people, not others, to investigate that theory and find out whether it’s true or not. But if we just say, “No, it doesn’t happen,” then we’re not really being very scientific. We’re just dismissing something without possibly being open to all the exploration and investigation that may already have happened.

Hans: Oh, sure. But I cannot deny what I’ve seen or how I see things. That doesn’t mean that somebody else has to agree with me. I really don’t care. But if confronted with these kinds of questions, I have to say how I see it.

Rick: Yeah, it just jibes with your experience and your understanding, the way you see it.

Hans: So, if it’s clear—and might I say that again—that there is already no separate being, there is obviously nothing that can incarnate or reincarnate. There’s nothing here already!

Rick: Yeah, the answer to that is, I mean, you perceive things as a oneness, but at the same time, you have your body, I have my body, Kasia, your partner, has her body, and so on. On a certain level, there’s apparent separateness. In terms of reincarnation, by the same token, it’s understood that just as we have separate physical, biological bodies, we have separate subtle bodies. Those separate subtle bodies can move on to another physical body when this physical body dies. That would be the mechanics of it.

Ultimately, with a capital U, there’s nothing—there’s no individuality. But we’re not talking about ultimately; we’re talking about a relative phenomenon.

Hans: But also, on a relative level, I think it’s a strange thing because it would suggest that some learning would occur.

Rick: Yeah?

Hans: Well, I don’t see it. I’m reading a history book that was issued last year—The Silk Roads; it doesn’t really matter. But you’ve got a history of four or five thousand years, which is not so long, but still. You always see the basic things: humans are power-hungry and greedy, with very little empathy. Very little change.

Rick: Yeah, the same patterns keep repeating themselves.

Hans: Well, yeah, that’s still here. So…

Rick: But that doesn’t deny the possibility of an individual soul’s learning.

Hans: One of the side theories was, as I learned in the ’90s, that they all believed in the kind of stuff that there was learning—that every life experience meant you were learning more and getting closer to God or whatever. I would say it’s not working.

Rick: Well, you’re saying it’s not working for the species, but for individual souls, perhaps there is some evolutionary direction taking place and progress is being made. But then there are new ones coming along who haven’t learned the same lesson.

So, although the general consensus is that, in many respects, we have learned a lot as a society over the thousands of years, there are all kinds of ways in which we have matured and improved as a society. It’s not considered kosher anymore to burn people at the stake after accusing them of being witches.

Hans: Okay, if you say so. It’s true. It’s true. Anyway, this is one of those issues. Have you heard that there are more slaves now than at any time before?

Rick: I have heard that. No, you’re right. You’re right. You know, there’s an underground system that’s going on.

Hans: Yes. So, we’re just more sophisticated. And we now press a button and 500 people die, whereas we used to go at them with clubs, which looks a little messier. But at least that was face-to-face. It’s more honest.

Rick: But you and I—Hans and Rick—aren’t the guys pushing the button or clubbing people with a club.

Hans: No, we were just talking. Ha-ha.

Rick: Maybe we were 100 lifetimes ago, but we’ve grown out of that tendency.

Hans:Hmm.Giggling.

Rick: Just playing with you.

Hans: Yeah, I know.

Free will and the doer

Rick: It’s one of those questions, like free will, that you can go on and on about. Philosophers have been debating it forever. But anyway, it’s fun.

Hans: Yeah, it’s all very simple. Just one, two. Will is never free. I want my ice cream. What’s free about that? Come on. This they really should teach in fourth grade or something. Free and will exclude each other. There is will, yes, of course. Look around. But it’s not free. I have to be the CEO; otherwise, there’s nothing free about it. It’s all needy and pretty childish.

Rick: Yeah, it’s a matter of degree. I mean, some people are more gripped by impulses and obsessions, and others are not so much. But…

Hans: But they didn’t make that will.

Rick: They didn’t make this.

Hans: In my last book, there’s a chapter called something like “You Didn’t Make You.” You are happening. You know, you didn’t grow your nose. You’re not in control of your thoughts. Neither you nor I can make up now what we will be thinking or feeling 30 seconds from now. True? So, I’m happening. I’m not in control.

Rick: But let’s say, remember you were telling us earlier about how you kind of adopted this process of looking at things rather than avoiding them. In so doing, you worked out a lot of stuff that you hadn’t worked out before. So that seems like it was a conscious, intentional process, and something.

Hans: That’s what “my purpose” was, I’m supposing, but this just happened. It happened spontaneously. I didn’t do it. It did me. It’s the other way around.

This insight came to me, right? I didn’t make it. I didn’t decide to not run away anymore. It became clear that running and hiding was fruitless and perpetuated my misery. I could see that my ego was telling me, “If you deflect and avoid, you will be safe.” And I saw it was a lie. I didn’t become safe; I stayed afraid. It was a lie. And I didn’t decide it was a lie. I saw it. Yeah, it happened.

Rick: I’d think you mean something like: you had no choice, and it was just something that happened to you.

Hans: Yes, and everything is like that. But we always project this ego fellow in who makes decisions and has free will and whatnot. Well, I always say, if you have free will, okay, will yourself awake, then. Choose to be awakened. Prove it. Nobody can do it. So, it’s beside the point and irrelevant.

Rick: In my understanding, we have a little wiggle room. I mean, there’s a certain leeway within which we can sort of guide the boat this way or guide the boat that way, but we can’t just make the boat fly or suddenly turn an ocean liner at a 90-degree angle. There are certain restrictions, but we operate within those boundaries. There’s an intentionality that we can exercise, one way or the other, to shift the tendencies slowly—again, like turning an ocean liner.

Here’s another question that came in. Not that I’m avoiding you responding to that, but that’s another one of those things we could go on all day. Mark Peters from Santa Clara, California, asks: Can you describe the contrast in your relationship to your own thoughts before and after awakening?

Hans: The difference is that I used to check in very seriously and consider the mind. Now, it’s just—there are a lot of birds flying. You know, we live in the forest, but I don’t pluck out all the birds and say they’re mine. So, “My bird, my thoughts,” you see? Nothing is mine, or everything is mine.

My opinion is not better or worse than the next guy’s or girl’s. Thoughts are quite irrelevant.

Rick: That’s good. And I imagine you would say the same of actions, which are more concrete than thoughts. They used to be my actions; now, they’re just more spontaneous. Yeah?

Hans: Yes. So, one of the things that you notice on that level is that it’s very hard to be proud or feel guilty because you need a “me,” a “claimer,” to be responsible for that, right?

Again, the notion is, “I could have chosen differently,” or, “I shouldn’t have done that.” Well, yeah, but you did, because you are like that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But we always create this super-ego that should be perfect.

Some people imagine that awakening means that you become a 2.0 version of yourself, a better me, a better self. But the truth is, the truth is: no self. There’s no better Hans or something. This is a dream character. It’s pretty irrelevant, basically.

The truth is: no self.

Rick: That’s probably a good note to end on. I was thinking of something Ramana Maharshi said about the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism. Somebody told him that when someone takes the bodhisattva vow, they’re going to come back lifetime after lifetime until all beings are awakened. He laughed and said, “That’s like saying, ‘I’m not going to wake up from the dream until everybody else in the dream wakes up.’”

Hans: Yeah. Absolutely. Crazy.

Good. All right. Well, thanks. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Rick: Yeah, me too. I think you’re an interesting guy.

So, let me make a few wrap-up points. I’ve been speaking with Hans Laurentius. In the Netherlands, you can go to his website, and it’s in Dutch, but there’s an English section on there too, which you can find. There are a bunch of articles written in English that you can read.

This interview is one of an ongoing series, so there’ll be another one next week. If you’d like to be notified of future ones, you can either subscribe on YouTube or on batgap.com, where there’s an email subscription option—or both, if you wish.

There’s an audio podcast for this. We’ve been having some technical problems in the last week, and the podcast hasn’t been working properly. People have been emailing me, but we’re working on getting that fixed, along with a lot of other things.

If you just go to batgap.com and explore the menus, you’ll find what’s there to be found. Thanks for listening or watching, and thank you again, Hans.

Hans: Thank you. Yeah.

Rick: And we’ll see you all next week.