Harri Aalto Interview

Questions this interview answers

• What is self-realization and how does it differ from ordinary awareness?
• Can pure consciousness be experienced continuously, even during sleep?
• How do the layers or levels of consciousness relate to the experience of oneness?
• Is it possible to recognize unbounded awareness as a natural state rather than a special achievement?

Key takeaways

• Self-realization is a natural, continuous perception rather than a special achievement.
• Pure consciousness can remain present through waking, dreaming, and sleep.
• Experiences of consciousness may fluctuate, but an unchanging ground state underlies them.
• Awareness includes both quiet silence and dynamic liveliness within itself.
• The experience of oneness is defined by the interplay of various layers of consciousness.
• Understanding and self-awareness are integral to the process of awakening.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Harri Aalto. Harri and I are old friends, we’ve known each other for 15 or 20 years. I used to work for his company doing website development and while I was actually on the clock, he and I would sit around and have long philosophical discussions.

Then for years we attended a weekly Satsang – spiritual discussion group – here in town, which was not based on one teacher, but everyone sort of participated in an equal manner. I’ve always been very impressed with Harri’s level of experience and clarity of expression, and since I started this show about four years ago I’ve wanted to have him on as a guest, but he’s a very private person and he hasn’t wanted to be on as a guest. And so every month or two I’ll run into him at the grocery store and twist his arm a little bit and he said, “No, don’t want to do it.”

So finally a couple of months ago I ran into him at the grocery store and twisted his arm as usual, and after I got home I sent him an email entitled something like, ‘Reasons why I keep bugging you.’ And for some reason, I guess it was persuasive.

Harri: No, my arm was just getting very sore over the years.

Rick: And so finally Harri consented to do an interview! He hasn’t written a book, he’s not a public Satsang teacher or anything like that, which I think many listeners will find refreshing. I’m not qualified to judge anybody’s level of consciousness or subjective experience or anything like that, but in my estimation, having interviewed …

Harri: Take this with a grain of salt.

Rick: Having interviewed a couple hundred people, I would say that Harri is more clear and articulate than any of them. And I don’t mean any offense to any of the wonderful people I have interviewed, many of whom have become dear friends. But I’ll leave you to judge that for yourselves as we get into the interview, you can see what you think.

✨ Early Experiences of Self-Realization

So I think I would like to start by just letting you get to know Harri a little bit by bringing up some various recollections I have of conversations that we’ve had over the years, either in his office or going on a skiing trip or whatever, together, and then let him fill in the gaps and say anything else that comes to mind as we go along.

So one of the earliest things I remember, in terms of the chronology of your life, is that you mentioned to me that at a very early age – the age of 4 or something like that – you recall being self-realized. Of course that was with a 4-year-old’s understanding, but with your adult understanding now, looking back, you feel that that was the nature of your experience – self-realized as it is commonly defined in terms that people would understand. Is that true?

Harri: Yes, and well first I’d like to thank you for having me on your show. I’ve been watching your interviews over the years and I must say, I find them intriguing because so many different kinds of people.

And yes, I suppose if I look back on my life starting at an early age, as I grew up from 3, 4, 5 years old, I had some kind of awareness. It was around me, it was in me, it was everywhere, and frankly, that hasn’t changed; that’s still there. It’s the same consciousness but what’s changed is the – and I know that this might come as a shock but – the details of that wholeness has changed; the understanding and the knowledge of that experience has changed. And of course that’s made it expand, made the experience of realization, if we call it that, it’s made it a more fulfilling experience.

Rick: And we’re going to get into a lot of those details. Most people if you would say to them, “Are you aware?” they would say, “Of course I’m aware. I’m talking to you; how could I not be aware?” But most people when they’re growing up, or throughout their entire lives in most cases, feel that if you ask them who or what they are, they will say, “Well, I’m Rick Archer.” “Yeah, that’s your name, but who are you really?”

“Well, you know, I live in Fairfield, Iowa and I have this job, and I have this wife, and I have dogs, and I like to do this, and I like to do that,” and it’s all descriptive of relative aspects of their lives. So when we say ‘self-realized,’ we usually mean the realization of something which is beyond individual characterizations or descriptions.

Harri: The interesting thing about this term ‘self-realization’ is it’s [become] a goal, you know, everybody is like, “I’m going to get realized, I’m going to go somewhere, I’m going to have an experience and it’s going to be called ‘self-realization,” and most self-realized people don’t talk about self-realization because that term ceases to have any meaning once you have the experience; it’s gone.

Self-realization is so natural, so normal that it’s kind of like, I’m looking at the scene around this room and I don’t have to tell you, “That’s a couch, that’s a wall;” it’s just there! It’s a perception, self-realization is a perception that ultimately grows to include even the senses.

Rick: So you never really went through a phase of life as most spiritual seekers did?

Harri: No, I did – many phases, hundreds of phases. And the wonder of that is that I’ve had all kinds of – let’s call them ‘flashy’ experiences over the years – hundreds, maybe thousands of them. And let’s say there’s a peak here and there’s a trough here, and I was just a normal human being, normal kid, normal teenager [through] all the ups and downs. But let’s say the flashy experiences are going like this, going like this, they come, and they go, and they go high and they go low.

And over the years I began to realize that there’s a common denominator to all these experiences that doesn’t change. And what has happened particularly in the last few decades, the highs and the lows remained high and remained low but they kind of went into one river of experience, one wholeness of experience. Is that self-realization? It’s certainly something.

The Nature of Unboundedness

Rick: Well did you ever go through a phase where you had this yearning, craving, feeling like the thing called ‘enlightenment’ in you, that you didn’t have it and you wanted to get it, and all that stuff?

Harri: That reminds me of an experience, I was on a retreat, a long meditation group, many people, but we’d be in our rooms doing this. And we’d have group meetings where we would discuss experiences and everybody talked about “unboundedness” and “pure consciousness” and you know, “I was having all kinds of flashy stuff – celestial this or that,” all kinds of stuff, and I thought, “What are they talking about?”

You know, I’m not intellectual by nature. I know it might sound like I am but I’m not; I have to have an experience before I can describe it. And I was walking outside from the retreat one day, just quietly walking, and suddenly something disappeared – in my consciousness. Suddenly I felt horrible, suddenly I felt terrible, everything contracted. That so called ‘abstract unboundedness’ disappeared! I didn’t know it was there; it disappeared and what was left was this horror of smallness, I can’t even describe it. I said, “Oh my God, I’ve had this unboundedness my whole life, where is it? Is it gone?” But gradually it came back, it came back, it came back.

Rick: Over what, 15 minutes?

Harri: Ten minutes … in 15 minutes it came back and I said, “Okay, that’s what I want, all the time.” Now all this other stuff, which is wonderful and gives definition to consciousness, it comes and goes, but that ground state, that silence – I’ll define silence later – but that ground state of silence was always there, and that moment when it was gone I realized, “Of course, I’ve always had that.”

Rick: So basically – I’m just going to restate it – you are saying you had that unboundedness all your life, you didn’t recognize it –like Joni Mitchell says, “We don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.” So for 15 minutes it was gone and then it came back.

Harri: It’s an oversimplification but yes, that’s exactly right. It’s kind of like an old analogy – I’m sure you’ve used this – it’s like this room. The room is empty space but there’s stuff in that empty space – oxygen and all the stuff you need to stay alive … sun’s coming through the window. You need all these things but it’s in this empty space; you don’t see it! And this empty space is defined by these walls, the empty space has no meaning without the walls.

When I talk about the details of pure consciousness, that’s what I mean, I mean that which gives validity to pure consciousness, like that.

🧒 Childhood Experiences and Supernormal Abilities

Rick: Okay, we’ll get more into that. Let’s go back to your childhood. So one thing we’ve established then, just to summarize so far, is that pretty much throughout your entire life, you have been in a state which many people consider themselves to be aspiring to – it’s a state of self-realization or whatever we want to call it – and that was made more clear to you by having lost it for a little bit, during your twenties I suppose, and then regained it 15 minutes later. We should all be so lucky!

Another thing in your childhood that I heard is that you had almost supernormal physical abilities for a little while, and you’re not a big guy but I remember you telling me that …

Harri: I knew you’d bring this up.

Rick: It’s just for kicks, you know, whatever, for what it’s worth. But like, you could jump higher than other kids and you also mentioned having this explosive energy that you could barely contain, you’d have to run around the block just to burn some of it off. And when kids realized that you had a little bit of unusual capabilities, they would want to challenge them on the playground and tackle you or whatever, and you were able to flip all these bigger kids just with some kind of energy trick, or something like that. What was that all about?

Harri: Yeah, when consciousness is super clear, it affects the body as well, it’s not limited to the mind, it’s not limited to the so-called ‘consciousness;’ consciousness is the body. And I guess if I look at that period which lasted maybe ten years, from maybe eight to early adolescence, my body always felt like it was floating, it was light, it was totally still. People talk about the runner’s high; it was like a permanent runner’s high for a decade, but because you’re running, the physiology is involved, that would be the best way to describe it.

And yes, I felt like I could do anything physically, but I was a totally rambunctious, even a dumb little kid running around like a crazy. I was enormously energetic; I was so energetic my parents wouldn’t want to take me to other peoples’ houses who had kids because I’d just be too wild. But I didn’t view it that way, I just viewed it as this was a normal state that kids go through. I had a thought, but it’ll come back to me later.

✨ Witnessing Sleep and Continuity of Awareness

Rick: Okay, so another thing I remember is in these interviews a lot of times I’ve brought up the concept of ‘witnessing sleep,’ and that’s sometimes misunderstood as some kind of insomnia or something. But really what it is is that pure consciousness, which is a continuum which doesn’t come and go, is so awake to itself that whether we’re in the waking state, the dream state, or the sleep state, pure consciousness is awake to itself.

Most people conk out when they sleep, entirely, but you told me that around the age of 10, 11, 12, that experience became so vivid that it was as if when you went to sleep at night you were waking up, and when you woke up in the morning you were going to sleep. [You] want to elaborate on that one a little bit?

Harri: Well this term, ‘witnessing,’ is generally in self-realization circles. If it’s permanent and they’re 24-hours a day, it’s called self-realization, but remember that the witness state, this unbounded, there are no parameters to it, so it’s subtle, it’s delicate, it’s even hard to recognize. If it’s clear it’s not hard to recognize, but for most people it’s a universal phenomenon. It’s there, so why don’t you recognize it? This is often a question I have when I talk to people, I say, “Well you know, it’s there, it’s everywhere, pure consciousness is everywhere.” But consciousness needs to have enough liveliness to be awake to itself, it can’t just be pure silence; that’s not an experience, so there’s some realization or self-awareness to the experience.

And if it stays when you go to sleep, you can have many kinds of witnessing – it can be silent, it can be active, you can witness dreams, witness the body. And yes, I went through a phase that lasted many years where the nights would feel like that, and I’d close my eyes and open my eyes – that was the night. And other kinds of experiences there would be, yes, I would feel [as if] I was waking up when I fell asleep. Because the body was inactive, the pure consciousness was clear. And then when I’d wake up the opposite of that would happen. But over the years, that witness or that consciousness – it’s still there, it’s never gone anywhere. It can’t “go” anywhere, there’s nowhere for it to go.

Understanding is integral to the experience of awakening, to self-realizing. Understanding is half the show, at least half the show – and I mean understanding on the quietest level – it’s self-understanding, self-awareness. It’s called ‘self-awareness,’ self-awareness is self-knowledge. There’s a knowingness to pure consciousness, a knowingness to pure consciousness that knows itself as being awake.

And at first that’s so abstract for most people, including for me … it’s the, “What is this? What is this self-knowingness?”

So it’s kind of abstract, but this self knows itself, nothing else knows itself. And over time that self-awareness as if, in my case, woke up even more, and more and more. And every time there was more self-awareness, the self-awareness as if contained more – more substance, more structure, more light, more … you could even say more celestial.

The quietest level of the mind became the most active level of the mind, but in a very quiet kind of a way. You see, there is structure to consciousness, and you begin to see that, or at least I did. And I think most people see something, but they just refuse to acknowledge it, that’s my opinion.

Rick: You mean during sleep or all the time?

Harri: All the time.

Rick: Yeah, well the thing about the sleep is could be seen as a kind of acid test because a person …

Harri: You can’t make it up.

Rick: You can’t fake it. And if you’re just totally blotto during sleep, then you can assume that consciousness hasn’t woken up to maybe a significant degree as it would when awareness becomes a 24/7 continuum.

Harri: That’s right and that’s certainly in the early days of self-realization – a pure consciousness at night is an acid test. Later on the acid test is having that awareness when you’re running around like a chicken, or you’re at work, or you’re doing whatever you’re doing but it’s still there.

Rick: Is it more likely that running around like a chicken will overshadow pure consciousness or that the inertia of sleep will overshadow it? Which is the more overshadowing?

Harri: Both.

Rick: Both? Equal, more or less?

Harri: Equal I’d say, equal. And as a matter of fact, later on in the game, running around is wonderful because you see it in relation to the bliss, and you see it in relation to pure consciousness itself. And you begin to understand the relationship between consciousness and the body and the mind and the senses, and even the environment, and even the universe, ultimately!

Rick: So just to belabor this point a slight bit more, you could say, I suppose, that you haven’t lost consciousness in 60 years – 50 years or something.

Harri: I suppose, yeah, you could say that.

Rick: Yeah, there’s been this continuum of awareness regardless of waking, dreaming, sleeping.

Harri: Certainly seems that way, yeah.

✨ Consciousness, Layers, and Oneness

Rick: Have you ever had surgery during that period?

Harri: That’s interesting you know, I had an experience where I was in a hospital, doing something with my tonsils – the doctors [didn’t find] anything, they removed them fortunately. But I was in the hospital, they left me there overnight and I was kind of scared you know, my parents left, and I was in this huge hospital in this room and it was dark. And there was this person down the hall that was yelling, “I need water, I need water,” making all kinds of noise. And it would go on for hours and nobody had come. And I finally yelled, “Come and give that person some water!” And a nurse came and said, “Would you please stop yelling?” to me.

Rick: Oh, were you the guy yelling?

Harri: Yes, to me, I was the guy yelling. And that’s kind of what the witness feels like – the kid isn’t doing anything or there’s no activity taking place in relation to the pure consciousness. So an early stage of self-realization is that you aren’t involved, there’s no involvement at all.

Rick: So you were on some kind of drugs for your tonsillectomy?

Harri: Probably.

Rick: Anesthesia or something?

Harri: But that kind of stage where you didn’t appear to be active in anything that the body was doing went on for a long time.

Rick: That’s interesting. Well the reason that I asked about the anesthesia was that my friend, Francis Bennett, who I’ve interviewed a few times, has this experience of witnessing 24-7, throughout the night and so on. But he had some surgery on his foot, and he said it was so unusual, because under anesthesia he actually lost consciousness. And although it’s only been a few years since he has been having that witnessing experience, it was kind of a shock to him … and then it came back after he came out of the anesthesia.

Harri: Yeah, I wasn’t aware of that. But that’s just summarized in a nutshell how I experience consciousness and daily life.

Rick: Sure, we’re not jumping ahead of our story; this all fits right in, eh?

Harri: I hope so.

Rick: Because these historical things are interesting too.

Harri: Okay, if you want to continue.

Rick: No, no, you do your thing, we’ll loop back.

Harri: So my experience is that over the years I have this, and everybody has – and some people are aware, and some people aren’t – there’s this consciousness, or pure consciousness, that has liveliness to it. Some people call it silence, some people call it the absolute, some people even call it God, in some religions.

And this self-awareness or self-knowingness has a quiet aspect to it, and when I look into that quiet aspect, I see something there. And even at an early age I saw liveliness, there was some kind of a wave function to it – self-knowingness and that self-knowingness had some kind of a wave function or some kind of function to it, some liveliness to it. Somebody was having the experience, I didn’t know who [was] for many, many years, who was having the experience? Why that experience taking place? But it was there.

So over the years that self-awareness or that liveliness became clearer and clearer. It’s kind of like seeing the details of this room, this empty space, suddenly you see the wall, you see this, and you see this. Normally you don’t see it, right? You look at that picture or that window, your mind tells you, “That’s a window,” you don’t have to think about it, your mind … you just figure it out; you know it, it’s a window. Consciousness is like that. You begin to see structure, and it’s just like a perception, it can be described after you’ve seen it … “It looks like this,” “There’s a string going here…”

You know, I was reminded of Dr. Hagelin’s Superstring theory, where he talks about all these strings and light and waves – so the structure of consciousness looks like that to me. Now, not going into details there that you have this more silent level, and then you have this more structure level. And there’s a form-level to that too and I’m not going to get into it very much at this point, but consciousness is a continuum. And the subtle levels of consciousness – all the religions talk about these subtle levels, whether the heavens of consciousness or in Vedic terms, the Devata consciousness, or in Christian terms it’s the angels. That level of consciousness also exists, it’s not not existent.

And there’s a relationship between pure consciousness, the structure of consciousness, the Divine levels of consciousness, and the physiology. Somebody is have an experience, there’s a body having that experience and that body is looking outside and looking inside. My experience is that ‘outside’ isn’t an outside at all; it’s the other way around. Everything is inside, the outside is inside.

And over time that outside to inside experience became bigger and bigger, and contained more and more. As funny as it sounds, on an abstract level, even the universe is contained within that consciousness.

As funny as it sounds, on an abstract level, even the universe is contained within that consciousness.

✨ Layers of Consciousness and Unity

Rick: That doesn’t sound funny at all. I think most people listening to this will say, “Sure, if consciousness is infinite and unbounded, then obviously it contains the universe.” And other people have reported the experience that the whole universe seems to be ‘contained within me,’ everything is contained within me – ‘me’ in the bigger sense of cosmic consciousness or unbounded awareness.

Harri: Okay, just one point I’d like to reemphasize is that to me the whole thing is one big oneness, one big continuum. All these layers define the pure consciousness that exists as the jewel in that experience, and knowledge of all those different layers and knowledge on the quietest level is embedded in the experience, on all levels. Including moving through space and thinking and all those, they’re all related to that knower, and that knower is a person, is an individual.

Rick: Yeah, well we can talk more about that, but first of all layers. I sometimes get flack for using the word ‘layers’ so much, because intellectually if you think of oneness, it’s oneness, how can it have layers, you know, if it’s all the same stuff? I mean you could think of an ocean and deeper levels of the ocean but it’s really water, and where do you distinguish between this water and this water; it’s all just the same stuff?

Harri: Well is the universe one universe? It’s one universe, but it’s got all these planets and organisms and constellations floating around. So it’s one universe with galaxies, with all these levels. How else would you put it?

Rick: Yeah, I don’t have a problem with it. And physicists for instance talk about levels all the time – there’s the unmanifest level of the unified field, and there are the four forces, and it gets more and more diverse as it manifests.

Harri: Okay, the way that it’s come to me over the years is that the oneness is defined by the layers; you don’t have the oneness without the experiencers having the experience of oneness, and that experience of oneness is defined by all the different phenomenon and make that oneness whole.

In other words, a real crude analogy would be let’s say, you have your eyes that look outside, and then as you get that inner eye, let’s say there’s a million eyes and they’re all looking at something. What are they looking at? They’re looking at wholeness. Same with ears, you hear these sounds, and there’s a million sounds and all of those sounds are defining and telling you oneness exists, this unity exists.

In order to have a unity experience you have to have this part, this part, this part, to say this is unified with this, this is unified with that – that’s unity. Unity isn’t just abstract nothingness; unity is all the parts saying, “We are unified with you, I am unified with you,” they’re all shaking hands and saying hi to each other, they’re saying, “I am part and parcel of the oneness.”

And when I talk about layers, this layer is related to this layer, is related to this layer, and that communication between these layers – the celestial and the so-called gross-relative layers and the subtle – all of those layers as if communicating together, are expressing or knowing that they are part of a togetherness, a continuity of oneness. You don’t have oneness … you don’t have this room without the walls; you only have this emptiness without the walls.

✨ The Rheostat Analogy: Turning Up Awareness

Rick: Yeah, so would that be a good analogy that you don’t have the house without the wall and the pillar and the floor and the ceiling, and all the parts that make the house, otherwise you have nothing?

Harri: You have nothing.

Rick: It sort of structures the totality of the house.

Harri: If you take the house away the space remains …

Rick: But you can’t call it a house.

Harri: But you can’t call it a house, that’s it.

Rick: So what you’re saying is that all the parts that apparently make up creation enable oneness to be a living cognition, a living experience, and without parts it would be a moot point, there would be no nothing.

Harri: Think of a dark room, turn the rheostat way down and you can’t see anything; you’re still in the room. You know you’re in a room because it’s cold outside and so forth. So you’re in this room, it’s dark, start turning up the rheostat a little bit and suddenly you see – you see out the window a tiny bit, you see the pictures, you see the TV, whatever you see – and you keep turning it up. The process towards, for realization is like that. It’s a rheostat and you see more and more of what constitutes the knower of the – I hate using the word ‘silence’ because it is always misconstrued, in my mind.

I do sense and know there’s a silence in my consciousness, but the ultimate value of silence, which is emptiness, isn’t even an experience; there’s somebody having the experience of silence, that somebody or that knowingness within the silence is something, and you turn up the rheostat, you see the structure of silence and you see the subtle levels of silence. And ultimately you even see your daily life and the universe as part and parcel of that consciousness that is being had by somebody. Turn it up.

The process towards realization is like that. It’s a rheostat and you see more and more of what constitutes the knower.

Individuality and Nonduality

Rick: Now some spiritual teachers or people seem to emphasize that there is no individual. You ask them who they are and they’ll say, “Well it’s just this presence,” or “This is happening,” or “Just this arising,” and they even try to change the vocabulary to point to that; they won’t say “I did this,” they’ll say, “Well, here it appears that,” or “It seems that…” but they’ll leave the first person pronoun out of their language. I was reminded of that when you said that there’s an individual experiencing things. So how do you reconcile that?

Harri: I reconcile that by saying both are true, and if you’re just running around the so-called gross-relative, then you have half show, if you’re running around in and convince yourself there’s nothing but silence, there’s no I, there’s nothing, then you have got a glorious experience of nothingness! It’s okay.

But I say that the glory of the experience seen more fully, that glorious quality of this knowingness – let’s say it’s the first dawn of the knowingness of what actually consciousness is, and ultimately the running around in the relative and the so-called changing universe, the subtle levels of consciousness and this silence level of consciousness, they are all one continuum. They maintain their integrity, in my experience, forever. On their own level, on their relationship to the subtler levels – I know I’ll get into trouble over this but in my experience, everything is eternal, everything.

✨ Endless Evolution and the Roadmap of Consciousness

Rick: Two thoughts come to mind, and I’ll utter them both in one sentence, but one is that: you’re never finished; there’s no end to the unfoldment. And I’ve interviewed a number of people who have disagreed with me on that.

Harri: And what do they say?

Rick: Well I’ll say, “Well where do you see it going from here? What’s the next horizon? How does it seem to be unfolding for you now?” And they’ll scratch their heads and say, “Well I’m done, there is no more. What could it be?”

Harri: Well certainly that hasn’t been my experience, and I’ve gone through very dramatic – let’s call them ‘awakening experiences’ – and the next day I’d have another one, and the next day after that I’d have another one. I could never put my finger on so-called ‘states of consciousness;’ you just went into that, you just went into that, you just went into that. It’s one river of experience that’s unfolding itself to itself, and it’s not distracting, it’s not boring, it’s fulfilling, it’s exciting. And when I listen to the people describe their states of awareness or I read about it – there’s a thousand books … I’ve stopped reading, there’s so many of them.

All these states of awareness people describe, and they say, “It stops here,” well, I almost hate to say it, but I’ve had that state and it didn’t stay there, and I’ve had that state and it didn’t stay there. On a bigger level, evolution continues after the mind realizes itself, and not only does it continue, it accelerates, or it should accelerate, and it goes on and on and on and on and on. But I will say, there are definite states of consciousness, definite milestones that say, “Okay, now the mind is awake” – this 24 hours knowing that you’re always awake is number one.

It’s one river of experience that’s unfolding itself to itself, and it’s not distracting, it’s not boring, it’s fulfilling, it’s exciting.

🎵 Bliss, Love, and the Heart

Rick: Alright, here’s one I don’t think we’ve covered: “What is the relation of bliss or love to pure awareness?

Harri: Okay, so I have an experience that I’d like to relate there. I must be the densest human being on the face of the Earth because here it is, I’ve had all this bliss most of my life – of happiness, intense happiness, you know, I’ve told you about these experiences as a kid, I had to go run around the block to get rid [of it], tone it down and all this.

And here I am again on one of these retreats years ago, and people were talking about bliss…”I’m in this room having all this stuff,” you know, “God this,” and “Universe that,” and “I’m describing them and it’s permanent and it’s never stopping,” and they’re talking about bliss. And [I’m like], “What the heck is bliss? I don’t know what bliss is.”

And I’m sitting in my room and I’m intensely happy and tears running down my face, my hair must have been – when I had more hair – standing up on my head, intense bliss. And it suddenly dawned on me: is this what they’re talking about? I’ve had for years and years, all my life. But I’m making this point because all these things like knowledge-bliss, even as unboundedly dramatic they might be, you may not even know what they are! And if they’re just quiet, you might probably just ignore them and say they’re not even there.

Even in my case, I’d go to the group and I’d describe and they’d all look at me as if I’m a dumb-dumb. And I would say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” “Yes! Yes,” they’d say. You know what I’m saying though? It’s funny.

To me an awakened state is an ongoing awakening, ongoing awakening. So you can’t get very egotistical about it or very bloated up about it if it is the real experience, because all it does is it shines the light on a huge area that you can’t see, it shines the light.

Celestial Levels and Divine Purpose

Rick: Well, related to bliss, here is a question, you wanted me to ask you this. Do you experience heaven?

Harri: Oh God, I thought we covered that one!

Rick: Have we?

Harri: Sort of, I’ll talk more about it if you’ll help me.

Rick: If you feel there is anything else you want to say right now, but otherwise we’ll talk more about … heaven can wait, you know?

Harri: Well I can make one point and that point is that, here again, way in the past I would have always thought heaven and God, you know, sitting up there somewhere. Well it’s not like that; we co-habit the same space, we co-habit the same space,

Rick: Just different dimensions of the same thing.

Harri: And I’ll talk about those levels more like family in our next sessions, more like what those levels really are – they’re more like family.

✨ The Role of the Body in Awakening

Rick: How is the human body important in the spiritual path?

Harri: Well you know the same objection people might have, or listeners might have to the body, is [the same objection] they have to the individual. The individual has a body and the body is an individual. And the body is infinitely more complex and important to the process of awakening than is generally thought, that’s my opinion.

Rick: It’s a vehicle, isn’t it?

Harri: It’s far more than a vehicle; it’s the actual experiencer on the subtle level. If I were to describe how the body is involved in the Divine levels, in the subtle fabric of creation and actually sits as the diamond in the ocean of unboundedness, if I would describe that process to you then the body would be central to that experience.

Rick: Do you want to describe that to me, or do you want to save that for another time?

Harri: We’re saving a lot here, aren’t we?

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Harri: We can go a little more into it. This is my experience, and this started in the last ten years, so we’re getting closer and closer to the present day. For years I looked for an ‘I,’ starting 20, 30 years ago, you know, “What is this ‘I’?” I had these glorious experiences, I had this absolute knowingness that would well up all the time, “Where’s the individual in this? Is he gone forever now? Is it gone, disappeared?”

And then gradually, over the last 15, 20 years, my senses became active in the process of these subtler levels. I could literally see the absolute – I mean hear it, see it. When my senses became active in that experience, the body became active in that experience, locations of the body became active in that experience, and I know that’s maybe hard to swallow, but that’s how I experience it.

Rick: I’m not sure people will understand what you mean by it, actually?

Harri: They won’t.

Rick: Not the “can’t swallow it,” but what does he mean by that?

Harri: Well let’s stay with the senses for a moment. The senses are grounded in the physiology. There are eyeballs, ears, nose, mouth, they have locations in the body. And there are the senses that are functioning multi-directionally – inside, outside, nothing in-between, are all one continuum. Seeing the self, seeing the knower, every sense is a channel of knowledge, is a channel of knowingness, is a channel of objective reality, subjective reality and absolute reality. And when the senses are functioning like that, these senses, as if, locate themselves in a body, in a physiology.

So yes, now having said that there is a subtle physiology, there’s a Divine physiology, there’s an absolute physiology, and we can cover those things, but they’re bodies, they’re individuals, they’re individual bodies.

Rick: Are they like Russian dolls, where they’re not really separate individual bodies, but they are, you know, subtler bodies contained within?

Harri: They’re exactly the same shape as this body.

Rick: So what were they again, Celestial and absolute?

Harri: In just normal spiritual circles there is astral and causal, and yes, I would add the absolute body as well. So yeah, those bodies have longer life, longer life, and then the absolute life.

Rick: Interesting. Okay, well that’s another thing to unpack.

Harri: We’ve got a lot of unpacking to do.

Certainty and Ongoing Discovery

Rick: Yeah. Some people are fond of the notion of uncertainty, in the sense that you can never drop anchor at any point in your understanding or experience. I know we’ve talked about how understanding and experience can continually unfold, do you feel like you’re certain of anything, or is it sort of like [you are] in a field of all possibilities, in which you never want to collapse it down to “I am sure about X Y Z”?

Harri: No, no, quite the opposite. I’m 100% absolutely, totally, positive of everything I say! 100%, not even one iota of doubt

Rick: I’d hate to be your wife!

Harri: Well on the knowledge level, the experience level, daily life is another matter.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, you mean all this knowledge stuff?

Harri: Yes.

Rick: And yet, a lot of the things you say, if I speak to you five years from now you might think, “Well, you know, I said that then but now I’m going to say…”

Harri: I don’t care, I had the same sense five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago; just a restatus clear, I had the same knowledge, but it wasn’t as detailed.

Rick: So you haven’t radically revised anything? And you know, you and I have had conversations ten years ago, you haven’t sort of said, “Forget that, I was wrong,” it’s more like you just getting into the finer details of things, which you were also totally confident about then?

Harri: I’ve never been wrong since birth, about knowledge.

Rick: Knowledge stuff?

Harri: Knowledge stuff.

Rick: That’s going to raise a few hackles.

Harri: Well let the hackles arise, my own are rising too. I’m getting ready for the hackles …hecklers!

Rick: Yeah, I mean you don’t come across as a dogmatic person, you’re not a fundamentalist.

Harri: No, I’m not. I want to be open.

Rick: You’re just saying that there’s kind of an inner certainty to these kind of things.

Harri: Yes.

Rick: You’re not speculative.

Harri: It’s not speculation.

Rick: And as you said earlier, if it’s not your experience, you don’t say it, and if you’re saying it, it’s your experience, or you wouldn’t be saying it.

Harri: [Then it would be] observation.

Closing and Next Steps

Rick: Okay, good enough. I think we’re going to wrap this one up. There are so many more things we can talk about, but we planted dozens of seeds throughout this conversation that we can water and sprout in future conversations.

Harri: Well you know, I was a little bit nervous about this and I’m very pleased.

Rick: Yeah, well it took me 4 years to talk you into doing it.

Harri: Well 4 years is short for me, you know? But I’m pleased you’ve had me on here and I’m looking forward to another session. And I am happy to if people ask me serious questions about what I’m talking about, I’m no good at …

Rick: “Should I marry Sally-Jane,” or that kind of thing.

Harri: No, nor can I deal with issues, I’m no good [with issues].

Rick: Like psychological issues.

Harri: Yeah, I’ve got no ability there. But the only ability I have is that I can observe what I experience, and I can speak it, that’s all.

Rick: Well I’ll tell you what, Harri hasn’t had a website, hasn’t written a book and all that, but as we speak, a website is being developed and it should be up by the time this interview is published, which is just a few days from now. And I think it’s going to be www.harriaalto.com, and that’s spelled H-A-R-R-I A-A-L-T-O .com. So it will be very rudimentary to begin with, but people can go there and there will be some kind of a contact thing.

Harri: And I’ll post some experiences there, for the time being.

Rick: Yeah and post stuff from time to time, yeah. If you contact him, if you email him, and I imagine a couple of thousand people will as a result of this interview.

Harri: I hope not!

Rick: He’s probably not going to respond to 95% of them, I would guess, because you’re just not going to have the time to do all those emails. You will probably read them, or somebody will.

Harri: I’ll read them, yes, I’ll read them.

Rick: Yeah, and if you can you’ll respond to some of them.

Harri: Yes, absolutely.

Rick: And also I think emails like that will provide us with …

Harri: Content for future interviews.

Rick: Yes, and we’ll note down points and organize them into a nice structure.

Harri: And I want all the Advaitists to attack me – no problem.

Rick: You want them to?

Harri: Yeah, I do.

Rick: Let ‘em have it.

Harri: Both barrels!

Rick: All you Advaitists. So as far as Harri doing anything in person, we’re talking about having … Francis Bennett is planning on coming to Fairfield in late May, I think around the weekend of the 28th, if that’s a weekend, and Kristin Kirk, whom I interviewed about a month ago, is probably going to come also. And we’ll see exactly what the two of them are going to do, whether together, and we might bring Harri into the mix too, in some way.

It’s all yet to be worked out, but at least Francis is going to give a weekend retreat, and whether Kristin gives the whole weekend with him or just does some healings here and comes in to one meeting or what, we don’t know, but Harri will also come into at least one meeting. And we’ll have a conversation with the three of them and we’ll put it on www.batgap.com, but if you would like to come to Fairfield and have a visit, the retreat is very reasonably priced.

And you will find details on Francis’s website, which you can find a link to from my website, on the Francis Bennett page, and maybe I’ll also put it on Harri’s page, if he’s going to speak there. What’s left of Harri’s arm ligaments, I’m twisting further still to get him to come to the Science & Nonduality Conference in late October, out in California, so he may show up there and we might even get him up on a stage, we’ll see.

Harri: I don’t know about that, but I am very pleased to be here and thank you for inviting me, that’s great.

Rick: Yeah, I’m really glad that we’ve finally been able to do this, and I think people are really going to enjoy it.

Harri: I hope so.

Rick: And we’ll be doing more. Just to make a few more general, totally general comments about this interview series. It is a series and there have been 225 of them, or something, now. You can find them all on www.batgap.com B-A-T-G-A-P, they are archived both alphabetically and chronologically.

There are a number of other things you will find there: there’s a place to sign up to be notified by email of new interviews, there’s a discussion group that crops up around each interview, there’s a link to an iTunes audio podcast, so you can just listen to these in audio if you like, on your iPod or i-thing. And there’s a ‘Donate’ button, and BATGAP is a 501C-3, which means it’s a non-profit in the United States.

And as donations become sufficient, I will gradually move into doing this fulltime, hopefully. If I were doing it fulltime, I’d be doing more than one interview a week. I’ve got 11 hundred people on the waiting list; I’ll be well into my 90s by the time I get to them all if I do them one a week! And more suggestions come in every day, so I would like to make it a daily show if I could, at least four or five days a week, or something, but obviously I would have to drop my ordinary day-job to do that. So if you feel inclined to make a donation, or if you are in a business or affiliated with a business or own a business that needs a tax write-off, it’s a 501C-3, keep it in mind.

So thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next week with Robert Svoboda. We will see Harri again in a couple of months.

Harri: Thank you, great, It’s terrific.

Rick: Okay, thanks.

Harri: Thanks.

Rick: Good.

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