This rough draft generated by Otter.ai contains errors. If you would like to correct them, or join our team of volunteer proofreaders, please contact me.
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. And this is a weekly show in which I speak with someone who has undergone a spiritual awakening. And different guests tend to define that differently. But I think that over time providing a very interesting perspective on the varieties of, in which the different ways in which spiritual awakening can show up. My guest this week, is a dear old friend of mine named Eagle, Moria. And eagle and I have known each other for probably over three decades and had all sorts of adventures together. Here in Fairfield, Iowa when we were students at marshy International University, and then on courses and international staff of the TM movement in Switzerland and various other European countries. In India, we were on a big project together in the Philippines, where Igal was head of a comparative religions Development Group, which maybe he’ll talk about more, and I was working with him on that. So we’ve had all kinds of adventures. And in recent years, we both branched off in different directions, but we’ve stayed in touch. And I think I’ll start by having Igal just fill out his own biography a little bit, give us a sense of, you know, what, where he’s from and what his course of life has been. And then we’ll get more deeply into the interview. So take it away.
Igal Moria: Okay, so I was born 56 years ago in Israel in Tel Aviv, and I grew up there. And sometime during my military service at age 19, I came across Transcendental Meditation. And shortly afterwards, I, maybe three weeks afterwards, I heard a audiotape by Maharshi, in which he described caused me consciousness. And I remember that hearing him say those words caused me consciousness. And also it was in the caucus of residence course, we did some more meditation. It was as if my whole life was sorted for me at that point, sorted, sorted, yes, sense that I knew, Okay, I’m going to learn with this man. I’m going to teach the meditation and the gum, I’m going to spend as much time as I can, working with him and learning with him. And he was just basically, it was like, until that moment, I was a confused teenager who basically didn’t know left from right. And at that moment is as if everything got sorted, he got very simple, he was very clear that this is what I have to do. And this is what I was gonna do. And this is exactly what happened. And I spent 25 years from from that year, which is 1973 to 1998. marshy was the hub of my life, I was a teacher, I was made a teacher very soon afterwards, I started working on him. On religion on he recognized very early on my passion for religion and my insight into religious texts and asked me to look into the different religions. And that was until 1998. And to just condense everything very shortly. Around that time, I already started kind of feeling that not that it’s time for something else, but I was already in Israel and even though he at one point invited me back to I kind of felt that it was that chapter with him was over and I thought I’ll continue teaching TM, I was a very successful TM teacher in the 90s. I was sometimes teaching 50 to 60 people a month. And, and I was living comfortably and I felt okay, so that’s how life is going. That’s the shape life is gonna take and I was also becoming very well known in Israel. Have him interviewed on TV, radio, everything was just, you know, a perfect bourgeois picture.
Rick Archer: So when they like you might have been feeling like that chapter was almost over if everything was going so well.
Igal Moria: Now the chapter we’re working with Maharshi closely was over
Rick Archer: and why was that? Was it? Was he less accessible or something?
Igal Moria: No. I don’t know how much it makes sense to go into this in the context of our conversation. But I’ll say in a nutshell, that two and a half years ago, before that, three years before that, he actually asked me to leave the ashram. And I was a I was with him in Florida and Holland. And he asked me to leave, which was a shock for everybody. involved, not really. And the reason he he said that he said, he’ll become too independent for me, because I have become independent, I have started realizing, look, I’m 40, something. The reason I joined Maharshi was in order to be enlightened, I didn’t join him, just to teach TM and to work on religion. And I realized that I was not much closer to Enlightenment, up to 20, some years within. And then I was in the beginning, I knew a lot more about it. I had fantastic experiences with him, I love him dearly. I had full confidence in his Enlightenment, and I love TM. But I was not enlightened. And I was, and to be honest, I didn’t see around me people that I could be inspired by their level of Enlightenment, mildly. And on top of that, I also saw that another thing that started bothering me is, I realized that Neither I, nor many around me, after many, many years of practice, even though the practice has become in some ways more proficient, that we have become more moral people. And I saw this on myself, I didn’t know I have actually, you know, marshes. always emphasize Maharshi is emphasis was always just do the practice. And then you will change morally, there’s even research to show that you become more and more a person just by practicing TM and I, I didn’t feel I was in any way, morally, spiritually different than I was when I came to him. And again, I must say that, at least from my perspective, limited as it was, I could not see that anybody in the circles that I was with, which was those that are closest to him, was in any way an exemplary of Enlightenment, or purity of motives, or anything of that sort. So I became to actually look for my own to try and find my own way of making sense of the whole thing of my life. Without,
Rick Archer: I’m not I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m saying I just want to say that. I’m glad you went into all that because it parallels my experience very much. I want to elaborate on that now, because this is I’m interviewing you, but both of them very, very similar realizations.
Igal Moria: Yeah. And, and he was very confusing, I must tell you, because, as I said, I loved him dearly. I was very attached to him, not attached in touch, also also in a personal way, because he was extremely fatherly to me all of the of the years. I mean, just as an example, when my father died, he invited my mother to come and live with us. I mean, he was like, unbelievably generous, and, and he always discovered, always encouraging and uplifting. So there was a very personal dimension to this. And I didn’t, I could not at that time, conceive of my life away from the ashram, but I felt I have to find a way of making sense of the whole thing on my own. And at one point, definitely I pushed the edge.
Rick Archer: And when I mean things that were overtly
Igal Moria: Yeah, I was doing things which are overtly not I mean, I don’t want to go into the oldest details, but I definitely was not toeing the line. So it wasn’t just
Rick Archer: a subtle, subtle inner independent behavior was getting more independent. Yeah, yeah.
Igal Moria: It was definitely it was it was bothering people around me. He was bothering him and in a sense, and I, I understood him when he said, Look, you get the gut. I understood what he said when he said you become independent from the other student, but he was also it meant a lot, you know, it’s very revealing. So anyway, I left and it was I it was us, probably speaking of experiences, it was probably one of the most traumatic experiences I can think of, you know, and, in fact, I own way to Israel, I stopped for a few weeks with friends in Tuscany, and I went to an osteopath in forensic. And after treating me for about five, seven minutes, he stopped and asked me if anybody had died in my family recently. And I said, No. And then he said, it’s interesting, because you took your body as a trauma of somebody that I find when they’re both father dies. Interesting. Yeah. And it was, it was definitely a devastating, devastating event. And then I went to Israel. And not really knowing anything to do. I’ve been with him since I was a kid. I the only thing I knew how to do was TM. And the only thing I wanted to do was teach TM really, because I love that that was one thing that I deeply love doing poojas teaching getting mantras teaching thing. It was fantastic. And everybody in Israel told me Forget it. I mean, you’ll never be able to make a living out of it. There’s no chance everybody strived failed. And I said, Well, let me give it a try. I said first course was one person second course was two people in 33. People like that kept going. And sure enough, word of mouth got me more and more and more people. And I started actually having big courses in use at the time, were not very many people were having the courses in the world. And I and it was fantastic. It was and all I kept thinking of was, I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back, I want to go back, I have to go back to Maharshi. Yes. In return, life unfolded and things develop. But I in my mind, it was this thing I want to go back. And then one day I asked him, and we there was some contact also he had you know Maharshi it was something so sweet about him. He had these subtle, indirect way of communication with your so Indian and English boys that he would let you know that he’s thinking of you. Like, but it wasn’t over. Well, like for example, he’s really movement asked for a particular master tape so they can edit it for the National Party. So he would tell his video people send it to EGA. Now there was no objective reason in the world why they would send it to me, I wasn’t the national leader. I wasn’t the head of the NLP, the natural law party. But it was a way of kind of saying hi, go, I’m thinking of, you know, things like that. And he sent some, sometimes he would suddenly have somebody call me and ask some question about religion. You know, my research, he was very sweet. He said, hey, you know, we still, everything’s cool. You know, just keep on going and keep on going. And at 1.2 and a half years, I asked, Can I come back? And he said, Yes, you can. And come back to Volusia and that time they
Rick Archer: were in North Carolina and Purusha is a monastic program. Yeah.
Igal Moria: Which I was a part of, I was a part of that program for its very inception from AD one. And he says, go to that group and join them. And I started packing in then I actually asked myself, Where am I going? If I go back, it’s gonna be to the same questions I had. I mean, I loved him, and I missed him. But then I had that was the point where I had to actually admit to myself exactly over and I’m going to stay put. And at one point, I realized there’s nowhere to go back to and I just have to discontinue and I thought okay, so I’m just continuing teaching TM and and it was at that point that actually I realized that chapter is is already closed with all the nostalgia with all the love that I felt for him is was finished because then I knew if I go went back, it was the same dilemmas, same things that didn’t make sense. It was the same and I just felt okay.
Rick Archer: You weren’t gonna see in the North Carolina anyway, just be with a bunch of well,
Igal Moria: so I the thing is, I knew that if you send me to North Carolina, after a while when he needed something on religion, he would call me back. I had the feeling that that wasn’t the that wasn’t the issue. Yeah, that sooner or later, and maybe I was wrong. I didn’t know I have a feeling that he was that way let people be, because it’s also that he invested a lot in training me to be honest. I mean, he really did
Rick Archer: it training you to be honest. Are you just saying to training?
Igal Moria: To be honest, he has to be honest. He’s rested a lot, right?
Rick Archer: Kind of happy going there for that.
Igal Moria: He trained, he invested a lot to train me, you know or not. And I felt that he, he hadn’t yet that for which he prepared me for. He had not yet started utilizing going out there on the whole the whole religion thing. And, but anyway, it was it was it was just a feeling that look, it’s over. And there’s no and that’s it. And I was thinking that this was it. I was going to finally at the age of 45, settled down. And I entered I was in a relationship at the time after so many years of being a monk I was I had a beautiful house, I was teaching team, I was successful. And I said, Okay, fine, you know, we’ll just burn you know, I mean, nature is ways of playing tricks on you. And I had heard about my present feature, Andrew Koan. I had heard about him already, sometime in the early 90s. I, I’ve come across something, some magazine, the magazine issue, and I’ve seen this picture, I’ve heard very good things about him. He’s very serious and all that. But I was really not interested in a member anything of his. And funnily enough, the fact that he was a New York Jew, just put me off. So, you know, what does he know about Enlightenment, you know? And, and, and, funnily enough, I started hearing more and more about him in Israel from all kinds of different directions. It was not from one person here, one person, somebody mentioned him, and here’s somebody mentioned him. And I said, wow, that’s interesting, but I never I was not looking for another teacher, I was really satisfied with being with being a Maharishi students, external student, they mean remotes in here. And then one night, I, you know, Tel Aviv can get very sticky, humid in hot in the summer and the fall. And one one of those going on very, very human nights. I couldn’t fall asleep and some skills in the air and all that I was really annoyed. And I just got up and just barely start surfing the web, endlessly, that any particular thing and I came across somebody else’s site. And they had two articles of Andrew Koan on that site. And it’s interesting, again, I hear the name, why don’t we get the articles. And it was literally out of boredom, and having nothing else to do. And I was floored by what you read. Yeah. I was floored because it was like, as if somebody had put a mirror to my face. And it wasn’t a very pretty picture. He was describing in that article, the whole predicament of the of the boomer generation and their, how they started with a very big passion to gain Enlightenment. And they sold out and they became Bourgeois. They settle down, and all they want is comfort. There were things that he was saying, like, everybody wants to get Enlightenment, but nobody wants to change. Powerful things he was saying about the call for integrity,
Rick Archer: where you kind of wanted to change, but you felt like you hadn’t changed.
Igal Moria: Yeah. And I felt that. I mean, he was saying, the boomers have become cynical about the possibility of change. And I realized this was true about me. Yeah. I was more interested in teaching a lot of people TM that I was interested about getting enlightened at that point. Enlightenment wasn’t even something I was even thinking about. I can give up.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a lot of people in my town here who feel that way. They they think I’ve been doing this for 3040 years. And at the rate, I’m going, it’s not gonna happen. So I’m just gonna, you know, I’ll meditate and we’ll do my job and raise my family and live out the rest of it just isn’t going to happen as the way I thought it was. And that’s exactly the reason I’ve got motivated to do this show because I want to kind of show examples. have people who are in fact, you know, making breakthroughs and, yeah, kind of fulfilling the original promise.
Igal Moria: Right? Well, actually, that’s what happened that night. What happened was he in some way rekindle the spirit. He rekindled in me the spirit with which I came to the spiritual life to begin with. It’s like, I felt I was 19 again. And I, I was totally floored. It was the two things first, I felt that somebody was just gave me a real strong honeycomb. When somebody hits you with a punch, yes, we have a strong punch, punch in the stomach. Oh, but one thing. Yeah. And the other thing was, at the same time, he woke me up, in a sense, he woke me up to what my situation really was. And not my personal situation, but the predicament of my entire generation. And he was challenging to do something about it. And it’s, it was still something about it, that I could tell the authenticity of his voice. It was it was unquestionable for me that he was authentic. But he was not he was really authentic. This guy’s serious, more serious, he was deadly serious, he was more real than real. And I, at that time, I didn’t think I would join him necessarily. But I as I reread and reread those two articles, maybe 30 or 40 times I couldn’t, I couldn’t move from the screen, it was night you sat there and read them that night. I just sent it and I read it. And I read it. And I couldn’t believe I would I was reading and I couldn’t believe what I was reading and I and I was just, I couldn’t have enough of it. And, and at that night, I knew that my I just didn’t know how I didn’t know if I would be associated with him necessarily. But I knew that my life is I knew up until that moment was over. And I’m going to start and you and I didn’t know what it meant. And I also felt that I have to take off the mantle of a teacher, I was becoming a little bit of a spiritual persona. And I, I felt that I had to take the mantle off, folded nicely put in there in the cupboard, and become a student again, and I didn’t know he was be with him. But he was there was a certain sense of that this chapter. It was this chapter was over. In a sense, maybe it was a recognition of something that happened anyway. Yeah. But but he was basically machine. Okay, this is where it’s at. And the next morning, my girlfriend when she woke up, I said, I’m stopping to teach Diem and she almost fainted. So what happened to you? You got sick day, but I said, I’m gonna stop teaching him? Well, as it turned out, I didn’t have the guts to really do it for a few more months. I started backpedaling. You know, there are those moments where a bigger truth gets revealed to you as if the screens of perception get lifted off your eyes and think the screens are blocking, setting, lift off your eyes, and you suddenly see a much bigger truth. And those moments are rare. And this was one of those incredible, miraculous moments and then you have to respond to it. But of course, sure enough, those screens are close again. And now how true will you be to what you’ve seen?
Rick Archer: It takes a while to acclimate. You know, it’s like you come out into bright sunshine, and you have to sort of go fake your eyes for a while until you get used to it.
Igal Moria: Maybe that’s what it was. But anyway, I started kind of backpedaling and said Look here 5045 Things just starts burning themselves out. It says they’ll die everything’s cool. What are you looking for it just finish so many years with a girl and what what are you going to do now stop being a hobo again, you know, what are you gonna do you don’t know how to do anything else. And that was also invested in being the spiritual persona that I became actually to be honest. And
Rick Archer: then other words there’s a lot of gratification and having people look to you as
Igal Moria: Yeah, I have a lot of friends and friends and in that relationship those friends those kind of difference that they were feeling towards me because I use so much now in this kind of like spiritual seeker and whatnot. You know, that whole thing that’s very alluring right now it’s very thing. I mean also speak very sweet relationships. I had a good relationship with my good A friend I was had very good friends things seem kind of normal. So for a few weeks, I kind of like, you know, it’s almost like I knew he was coming to Europe. And I had the whole timetable. And I knew when he was going to be in London, it was going to be in Copenhagen like that. I knew the whole thing. And I, I felt I should go and see him. Then the London journey came, I said, Well, I’ll go to Copenhagen, then the Copenhagen call, I’ll go to Brussels or whatever, I don’t remember where he went. And then suddenly, it was time of the last trick. With the last stop on that trip was he was in Amsterdam. And I, I said to myself, Okay, this is the mode of test. If I’m not gonna go and see him now, it’s gonna be one of those spiritual experiences that happen to you. And you get blown away by it, and then you don’t do anything about it. And he would have been something to tell Oh, I had that thing with Andrew Coyne was oh, yeah, I think that was interesting, I should have gotten seen him. And the whole thing will dissolve in no time and like, will go back to exactly the way it was. Or either really kick ass here and do whatever I can. And, and, and just go. And he was like a drowning man holding on to Lifesaver I said, I have to do this, because this is going to slip away from me. And within three days, I got the whole thing sorted, I cancelled the course. And I just went to Amsterdam and saw him. And two weeks later, I I went to spend time with him in India on a retreat that he was offering and all this, you know, it’s against,
Rick Archer: obviously, the Amsterdam thing was gratifying.
Igal Moria: It was gratifying. And I still was a bit kind of like, I was like something we already given up at something yet didn’t admit that or given up. There was something that was not yet admitting looks over, just just face the music, you know, so. But something did say, wait a minute, you know, get good, you know, check it out, you know. So I wasn’t even going to go to the retreat, and then the retreat came by, and there was this bird’s eye, this feeling of, if I’m not going to be there, the world will collapse, that kind of urgency. You know, marshy used to sometimes ignite that urgency in us as you’re very well removed. And this was completely self generated here. It wasn’t that he was calling me or anything, I suddenly knew that, if I’m not going to be there, the world will collapse. I have to be there as if, as if my life depended on it. And again, in a very short notice, I arranged to go there. And, and I, I went to that retreat. And it was a two week retreat, and three days in that after that retreat. Everything just basically all my resistances collapse. And I knew that my life is it was really over. I was ready to, to accept the reality of what I already recognize that first night. And I came back. And within two weeks, I sold everything in the center I that I had, I sold my stereo, my air conditioning my chairs, I transferred the contract to another TM teacher, everything was just basically within weeks, everything was closed. My life was packed, I kept my suitcases and off, I was with him.
Rick Archer: Did you feel at this stage of the game that you had undergone some kind of shift in consciousness? Or was it more like a shift in motivation? Where you felt like the course of action you had to follow was different but but you know, essentially, you hadn’t yet become any sort of different person inside.
Igal Moria: Look, I don’t I don’t I don’t know what to tell there was a recognition, a deep recognition of a much bigger reality. And there was the guts and the trust to respond to that recognition. That’s a good answer. And the the labor I found that that the guts and the trust I found within me and the passion to respond to that recognition was in itself liberating Yeah. But I still was not, it was still the same goal. It’s just that I was sensing that my life is the tool that one part of my life was really over and I was totally at peace with it. And another exciting, totally unknown, and in some ways very scary part was starting.
Rick Archer: It’s interesting, because a lot of times when people go through big shifts in life, like they lose their job, or they get a divorce, or some big thing happens to them, it’s or they get sick or something, it’s it’s very often something that’s forced upon them by circumstances that are beyond their control. And if those circumstances hadn’t forced them to make a big change, they wouldn’t make it, they wouldn’t have made it. And but in your case, they know the circumstances were good, but you were kind of almost forced from within by kind of an inner compulsion to upset the applecart you know, and change your whole life. And on a couple of major occasions, now that you’ve mentioned three of them, 19, you know, and then and then when you left Maharshi, and then when when you made this shift, it was all coming from within. And you probably also had to a combination of things. Probably also, though, had to overcome a certain amount of social inertia. You know, among all your friends who thought you were going crazy.
Igal Moria: Every step of the way. I mean, it started with my parents when when I you know, I was in medical school when I was 18. Can you imagine how a Jewish mother feels when her son was about to be a doctor? Yeah, he’s medical school, not because he’s a bad student, but he says, Look, this is not for me. Now. It’s like, like, like, like you you have it.
Rick Archer: It was a joke about when a when a Jewish baby,
Igal Moria: Jewish mother, you also have all the kids and she says the doctor is five and the Lord’s three. In my case, it was definitely the case. I mean, I was groomed to be a doctor. So but anyway, so definitely not you’d have to these things. You had to overcome inertia and, and definitely and there was, and but the thing is, you know, there’s a beautiful verse in the heartbeat, the heartbeat is one of the Muslim scriptures. And it’s a scripture that, that unlike the Quran, it’s considered a revelation. That hadith is actually the words of the Prophet Muhammad. So so there’s in one of the Hadith, Hadith, pudsey, they call it the holy, mystical, huggy. There’s God says something like, I don’t remember the exact quote, it’s something like, when my dad will, tea takes one step towards me, I take five towards him. When he takes, when he walks towards me, I ran towards him, when he ran towards me, I embraced him and making my art. So So I think the spiritual path, I’ve seen it again and again and again, that it’s a matter of really, it’s really your point, this thing about inertia, it’s about overcoming inertia. And once you take the steps of overcoming inertia, whatever the cause, all kinds of things come to actually support you.
Rick Archer: Absolutely. I mean, I’ve experienced that many times himself is as if nature says, Hey, wait a minute, we got a live one here. Let’s give him some juice, you know,
Igal Moria: something like that. Yeah. And I remember actually, when I then the day I left the day I sold everything in my center. It was after the retreat, I was already you know, set to go and I sold everything. And I suddenly were was overcome by an incredible anxiety. Like, completely overcome by the irrationality, what I was doing the practicality of it, I was literally shaking with anxiety, what have I done and I went for a walk around the block and I certainly was not sure even for some reason I get this anxiety that maybe Andrew will certainly not call me or not really want me as a student or something I don’t know is it was totally irrational but because I didn’t know him very well and suddenly said, No, I’ve done all that and I don’t even know if he will walk with you knows complete, irrational and I walked around the block and I suddenly realize you know if it even if just happened thus far, even really, if sweat let’s say it came to this point that I just closed everything. And something will happen that I will not, for some reason be able to connect with him as I thought it will do for whatever reason, even then it was worth it I had to recognize that just to have the kind of inertia to make the break to really crush through the wall, which I thought it was not possible and really completely be free from, from that which has become a boundary in a sense, because I was so attached to that identity of the teacher of the law, that in itself, and suddenly those incredible liberation came from that recognition. And, and then I was totally at peace. And of course, all the anxieties proved to be completely ridiculous and unfounded. And as most of our anxieties often are completely self generated. So anyway, that start that was about 11 Some years ago, and then I’ve been associated with Andrew ever since I’ve feel in credible amount of gratitude and to I don’t know, of course, the marshy but to live for having had the incredible opportunity to be with him for so many years. And to have such a personal relationship with Him and to really be groomed and educated and and having interacted was one of the most famous, most significant spiritual figures of 20th century No, but so there’s no this. I mean, I know that some people in order to leave Maharshi they had to develop an incredible sense of peace some people like Maharshi was kind of slamming the door behind them. And I usually look at these kind of people as if they were you know, it’s I look at all these things is victimized, baby battle, victimized baby battle, you know, they just basically, you know, this to me, it’s just gonna completely kind of basically immature and pathetic. So I have only I have only good thoughts and grateful thoughts towards this incredible man. And but it was over, he was really over in the end, I’m involved very deeply in the spiritual work with Andrew, which is completely different. And, and yeah, and that’s in a nutshell. So I think that was a long answer to
Rick Archer: a nice story. So how do you feel that you have changed now in the last 1011 years? What how different are you as a person, both in terms of your inner subjective experience and in terms of how others might perceive you and you know, the way you behave and so on?
Igal Moria: Well, that’s a tough one, because it’s almost a dangerous one to go down because to start, first of all, let me say this, first of all, talking about experience, my internal experience, that’s the one thing that which normally people describe his spiritual experiences and you know, like, for example, in the TM movement, it was the most important cards right? And in many other spiritual organizations, spiritual experience, and the various nuances of spiritual experiences is equated with higher level of consciousness, you have spiritual experiences, you have higher level of consciousness, you have greater purity in your life, etc, etc. Well, I mean, there’s big question marks around that area. And in fact, one of the things that that I love so much about Andrew Coyne is, is that he actually pokes that balloon very strongly in and that immediately spoke to me, right? Because I think we you and I have been on the spiritual path for long enough to know that some people who have the deepest liras most fantastic spiritual experiences can be outrageous narcissist, bastards, immoral bastards and sometimes right out jerks. So ask
Rick Archer: you both about your subjective experience and your behavior how others might perceive you. Not that I did perceive you as with adjectives, as strong as that, but um, you know, I’m wondering how you felt when you continue, you know what I’m saying? Yeah,
Igal Moria: so nice. I just wanted to say that I definitely am not going to I speak too much about my quote unquote experiences because at least in the in the path that I’m on experiences are definitely I mean, their experiences important. Spiritual things are important. They’re important as signposts because because because they’re important because they signal you, Hey, Rick, Hey, Gao, you know, that three dimensional world that you live in? It’s not all that there is. There is a much bigger and more significant there’s there’s a bigger reality there’s a bigger picture and spiritual experiences are signposts that tell you that remind you that’s like, like a poke something poking you and says, Come on. And it also does,
Rick Archer: I just want to interject and say that I’m not so much interested in spiritual experiences plural, or, because, you know, experiences which can come are going to go. Yeah, it’s like, there’s a beautiful story about Papaji I believe it was, he was Andrew Cohen’s teacher, and Ramana Maharshi, when they first met, you may have heard the story and could tell it better than I Papaji apparently had really rich experiences of Krishna, and he would, you know, Krishna would appear to him and he would play with Krishna and, and so on, and so forth. And he got an appointment to see Ramana Maharshi, which was rather difficult thing to do at that point, because he had become very famous, and it was hard to see him and so on. And so, on the day of the appointment, he he wasn’t there yet. And it was time for his appointment, and everyone around was buzzing and saying, you know, where is this guy, you know, how disrespectful What does he think he’s doing? And he ended up, you know, he came late. And, you know, he said, Well, I’m sorry, I’m late. I was playing with Krishna. And Ramana Maharshi said, Is he here now? And that Florida, him that that statement? Because he realized in that in the presence of that great same with that statement that, you know, transitory experiences, however, however flashy? Aren’t they don’t cut it, you know, that’s not. That’s not what about,
Igal Moria: right, the whole thing? You know, one of the things that one of the lines, that that’s one of the one of the things that Andrew keeps repeating, you know, when he speaks about that, from his experience, was that is it spiritual experience, profound as they may be? Do not usually in and of themselves. lastingly enlightened somebody. Right. So it’s interesting, because he himself, his own awakening occurred as a result of a very profound spiritual experience. But and he thought, well, that means that anybody else is that that would be the way to enlighten others. Getting days. Yeah. But suddenly, you realize, wait a minute now people have can have spiritual experiences, and they can maintain the same level of doubt, of self infatuation of materialism that they had before. I think you can. I came up with that necessarily getting into a lot of details like he, I think he can. It’s, I should say that this was really the case with me that having had such a deep recognition of Andrew having had such an, like, the first recruit I took with him was a total inebriate total inebriating experience. I couldn’t stop meditating, people would go for lunch, I would meditate, people go to bed, I would meditate. They’d have to every night that in that retreat at around midnight, they had to lock that room for our education group. So they had to kind of come and whisper in my ear, would you please leave? Because I bet all the video equipment was there and think that you can’t leave it just unguarded. So it was this it was I found a level of trust in the absolute so to speak, that I don’t know. And even with all his years with marshy
Rick Archer: is that he didn’t were so drawn to meditate. It was kind of like you were just experienced or, you know, dwelling in the absolute more profoundly than you had been accustomed to. And so you
Igal Moria: want Yes, there was something he was like. Suddenly, I realized, wow, you know, this is like, this is what liberation is but this is why people went to caves. This is why people left the whole world and just wait to camp anyone know anything about anything for the rest of their lives?
Rick Archer: What do you think it was about the situation that had that effect on you? Was it Andrew was it India? Was it what?
Igal Moria: I think there’s certain things that you have just basically, you know, this you know, this line from the Kool Aid whose door there It, you know,
Rick Archer: pray for perfection day and night. Right? No,
Igal Moria: there’s something else. Anyway, this is one point that intellect there’s a door beyond which the intellect can knowledge. And I think this is one of those things. I have no idea. I mean, I can what it was, I had no idea and I did not. It was totally unexpected. I didn’t expect it to be so powerful. And I. And I think it has a lot to do with incredible trust that I had in him. I mean, I think it did. It sounds like
Rick Archer: you were also right for something. I mean, you just uprooted yourself from a comfortable life made a radical shift. So you were you were ready to, you know,
Igal Moria: to yet I came in everything was, I hadn’t yet uprooted myself. I was still I was still I was still not, you know, in some level, I have solid love still holding on. But I think there was already a trust in Him, I really trusted his integrity. And I really knew that this guy is a very serious teacher, he’s probably the most serious teacher I’ve ever met. He is an eye, eye and everything. He said, You know, he’s gifted with a particular way of making his words, in retreats, he creates a kind of very charged environment that he’s his words get alive, in your experience. He creates a very, very supercharged environment. It’s like, the ego is in abeyance the way he describes the ego is in abeyance? And then if you give yourself to that, you know, then you basically you’re on consciousness response. That’s what happened. And it was it was very powerful. And wait, how did we get here? I don’t remember.
Rick Archer: Actually, a question arose in my mind, which is that if you were to ask Andrew, about the nature of his experience, even in this article that you recommended to me, which I read today, in which I’ll post a link to on the BatGap blog, you know, he does allude to his own experience. Like, yeah, here’s a sentence, I was convinced beyond doubt, by my own experience, that there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. And no one to be or become. That was his experience of awakening. Yeah. And so you know, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, but he would acknowledge that awakening, although it’s not a matter of specific experiences, is an experiential thing. It’s obviously not just sort of a conceptual or philosophical thing. It’s the ground of our experience shifts in a profound way. And ideally, if it’s a true awakening in a permanent way,
Igal Moria: no, I think I, you see, it’s a it’s a very tricky thing is the question of what do you mean by awakening? And what do you mean by enlightened?
Rick Archer: Right? Because talking I’m gonna let the cat out here. I can hear you.
Igal Moria: Yeah, well, because, you see this, the so called classical idea of Enlightenment, Oh, just a minute. Yeah. The so called classical idea of Enlightenment. The idea you know, Enlightenment used to be, and for many people still is a situation in which you have a life transforming experience of the shift of your identity, right? From the separate self, from the separate sense of self, to be absolute, to the absolute non changing eternal dimension of life, so to speak, which is completely impersonal, which completely transcendental where nothing happens, nothing needs to happen, nothing ever happened. And everything else is, oh, it’s just a joke or an illusion. That’s the kind of awakening classically, was considered an awakening. Now we talk about this isn’t the classical and the all Enlightenment look, you have to see also in the talk about the existence of humanity of 50,000 years of speaking humans, 2000 200,000 years of Homo sapiens, and out of which 50,000 years of the speaking version of their own science. It’s not that this particular it’s not that when we got off the trees, the first thing we did was set in local synostosis. Where I right there were other concerns 50,000 years ago when they were about between 1000 or 5000. Hillman stockings around parents, in what now is called Yoga. Their concerns are very much concerns of animals, plus, some rent some beginnings of something which we now would call civilization. So the whole thing about Enlightenment is actually were rather new, the whole thing, of the concept of Enlightenment, even the whole, the whole ability to conceive of something transcendental. Abstract on material is really new. And maybe at least as far as we know, from the records may have started with Abraham or Moses is the first monotheistic thing. Maybe, but,
Rick Archer: and also, we’re speaking in terms of the culture of which we have a record, who knows what might go even farther back that resume Droid or other places or whatever, but, you know, maybe civilization is concerned, true.
Igal Moria: That’s work with what we have in front of us. I mean, all stuff is fairy tales, and fairy dust and caps because everybody’s got their own ferret as they’re willing to die for. And go figure which of those fairy tales and everybody’s totally so it certainly convinced invested in is a true one. You know, if you ask the Dow is they were the first ones 10,000 years ago, if you ask Maharshi it’s, you know, it’s eternal rods, you know, it’s and from what we have from the records we have. Then monotheism started in Egypt. And it wasn’t an abstract motivation. Suddenly, they said, No, there’s no different forces of nature, there’s one force and that force is the sun. That was the first month. And at least from what we can tell now, the first abstract monotheism, transcendental monotheism may have been that the Abrahamic religion and Moses actually brought into a larger populous population. And so that’s very recent. And then the first time that he filed his records for itself right Farrell kind of monetarism that classic equation of the mystics is, the equation is i equals God, the first time you It’s you hire this Express is about 3020 20 100 years ago and you punishments, for instance versus a hombre mashine I am brahman i equals Dama. And yet Jesus saying this I am the Father are one and 2000 years ago and life saying it but 1000 years ago, Vairagya was saying I’m a hawk, I am the truth where the hawk The truth is one night man is over. So it is new, relative. But it’s old, in the sense of it’s already been around for a few 1000 years. And what happened in the history of the development of Andrew’s teaching is at one point he started that’s how he learned also it was this kind of in life and that he learned realize, he says in that article I sent you realize and surrender. That’s what he taught the first said, you realize the absolute you surrender to it, he said, that’s all there is to do, there’s nothing to do you don’t change anything, you just do it realize that absolute and surrender to it. And it’s still there back when even know what you see, I feel when I talk about it now, you know, it’s it’s alive, it’s as if it’s a meditation just to conceptually think of it is a sort of meditation brings you in touch with the absolute dimension of life. But then, he noticed that when people gather around him, and I was not there in their early days, obviously, a 687 88. In those early days, people were around in those days say that he was just ecstatic. Like, you’d go into the room and you just people would have these incredible experiences. And they would just want to leave everything, like going through a cave, they want to leave everything and just join him because he was so powerful. And he and and based on his own experience of awakening as a result of experiences of people having strong experiences, we’re going to have a revolution of enlightened people at no time. And sure enough, he found out that this was not the case. It wasn’t happening. People are you know, have peak experiences and suspend surrender to their ego and no time back into their ego fall back into your ego. And he started working with people and then he suddenly realized he found he saw that when people gather around him, something happened between them even not dependent on him. He realized that when he saw, he says, the way this club is broke for lunch, and then he came back from the break. And so people are engaging with each other. And from the corner of the of his eye, he saw two people talking to each other. And he knew that that which they were sharing between them with eyes open, was more significant than what they were sharing in their meditations or with their spiritual experiences on their own, he recognized there was some that they were sharing Enlightenment between them, there was a new kind of possibility emerged between people. And the moment he realized that he, it was a profound realization, and he that this is really what he should be focusing on is a new form of Enlightenment, where if you go beyond ego, not only with your eyes closed, which is seems to be the easier part. But you go beyond ego while engaging with others.
Rick Archer: Let me interject here. Because, you know, I mean, that there’s that old Vedic saying Samithi, Somani, or something where, you know, in the collection of enlightened there’s marshy used to talk about this sort of whole being more than the sum of its parts and the importance of groups because something much greater gets generated, and people are nice isolation. So it almost seems like these are in fact, rather ancient ideas.
Igal Moria: Okay, here’s the thing, though. I agree with you. And I probably as a freak of religion, of course, or it came with this thing. Oh, well, what’s new about that, you know, there’s this in here, and I can supply a lot of quotes to that. I mean, part of my job with Maharshi was to find quotes, quotes for this exact thing. positions. The thing is, you see my theory about scriptures is this. I think they are revelations, I think, you know, I mean, their revelations came to people, they’re not this kind of, I don’t buy but any scriptures that is this, this has this kind of transcendental, primordial, you know, the producer by the derive, or she used to say about the beta? Maybe it is, maybe it is, I don’t know. I mean, I think they are revelations to come to people there are in there. And relations are always the relations of a much bigger truth and the person had access to himself. And, and it’s genuine, I believe it’s genuine, it’s true, mystical, true, are self revealing, true, and they have a status of, of immutability that transcends the human intellect. And, and it’s, but it’s always in the context of a consciousness of a person. It’s a human. And but anyway, but those revelations that include within them in seed form, also things for future, right. But whether or not that was actually alive in a culture, where that revelation arose is a completely different thing. Because you judge it’s like, like, you judge a tree by its fruit. Right? Yeah. And, and, and yes, Maharshi had a very big thing about groups and I think wasn’t the air and he was Marsh, he was really a seer. And he was he really was a seer. And he really was riding a wave of, of, I believe, based riding wave of collecting consciousness and ahead of its time in many ways, and recognizing the whole idea of collective coming together. What I think marshy missed was already maybe he didn’t miss maybe he just didn’t want to go there. The thing is, I don’t believe just he because his group’s was just come together, meditates. That would be the part of the group. Yeah. But that’s not we talking about who is still meditation. It’s still transcending ego with eyes close, those groups will come together and make meditate he will talk about something else. We talking about transcending ego, the eyes open, while interaction while interacting and that during the interaction, feel field is created, which is the enlightened mind. That is not does not belong to any of the participants. But every one of them is responsible for it demands everything from the individual. It demands the individual to be willing to really renounce their ego in a very profound way, on the spot, all their egoic tendencies, and it’s easy to renounce the ego when you guys are as close, you don’t even do anything, of course, then the ego can be in advance. But it’s when you interact. That’s when the whole that’s when the the real test is, are you willing, able, and able to put I even aware enough about how you act out of ego to the point where you can actually even renounce it?
Rick Archer: So when you got a renounced ego? Are you saying that you lose a sense of personal identity? Or are you saying more that you you rise above the sort of self indulgent, you know, self absorbed, tendency that most people kind of live in on a day to day basis?
Igal Moria: Well, look, I mean, take a group of men getting together on behalf of women category, or mixed group, there’s all kinds of motivation that happened in the group. One wants to lead, one wants to appear cute, what there’s all kinds of masks that we put. And we don’t know how to live without those masks. Sometimes we are so attached to those masks, we’re not even aware of these masks, you can very easily see the mask and other people. But coming together beyond Ego means you come together, and you’re willing to give everything to put those masks behind you. Because why? Why are you willing to do that, not for any religious purpose is not for any. Because I mean, not because of any shirts. Not because you’re gonna gain anything out of it. But because that which is created between you, is the most important thing for you. And you realize it really is a new being, it’s a new being. And that is the edge of consciousness of where it is now. And it is ecstatic. It is rewarding, but that’s not the point. The point is, it is the next stage of human evolution where the coming together is so profound, that it’s a source of greater Enlightenment than you could ever get with your eyes closed.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we have a Satsang group that’s been meeting here for years now seven or eight years, every Wednesday night. In fact, I’ll be going there after this interview. And, you know, when it’s really in its prime, some nights or not, and but when it’s really when it really takes off, there’s a profound atmosphere in the room, and I come away from that, you know, really surcharge that last for days, much more impact on me than any meditation would have. And all we’re doing is sitting there talking to each other in a sort of a free for all kind of way, basically, talking as much as possible, from, you know, in a genuine direct way with we’re not philosophizing, we’re not speculating, or more just sort of stating what’s happening. And, and corresponding, you know, with each other on that level. And
Igal Moria: I think that yeah, I think that’s definitely in that direction. Yeah. However, I would say this, this practice that I’m talking about, of, of, of, of coming together beyond ego and and it’s it. I don’t, I think it’s it’s even stage beyond that, in a sense of that. The players, it’s high stakes game. That it’s high stakes, because you have to give everything to it. And then some you really have to You see because when I say come together beyond ego, you have to first of all be interested enough. bold enough, crazy enough. And you have to have enough heart and guts to face what you really made up for real.
Rick Archer: Well, is there a specific practice that you guys do to bring this about? Or I mean, you don’t just get in the room and chat. I mean, there must be some kind have guided direction that shifts you into this way of this mode of operating?
Igal Moria: Well, it’s our way of living more than anything else. It’s our daily practice all the daily practice that we do our, we have meditation, we have contemplation, we do physical practice, we do various things, you know, to empathy are all in the service of that. And finally,
Rick Archer: actually, that you’re, you’re sitting in a room at founder Cohen’s ashram as we were having this conversation correct.
Igal Moria: So, yes. We don’t call it the natural necessarily, but you could call it that. But yeah, but I am I am there. Yes, no, but I do see one of the one of the, one of the aspects of the teaching of Andrew Coyne is is the five tenets is five tenets, which are five tenants of Enlightenment, and five tenants of occlusion or Enlightenment of distinction. And those five tenants, they’re kind of this fundamental tool of contemplation, and, and action and, and guidance for life that we have a very profound here. The first one is clarity of intention. In other words, what is it that’s most important to you in life, a lot of people don’t ask themselves, those spiritual people who claim that lightning is the most important thing to them, if you look at their agenda, and how they spend their day and how they spend their money, then you will realize that that’s not really what’s going on. So clarity, contention is the first thing you want to eat. In order for you to be free, you have to want it more than anything else. The second one is that the law of relationality, that was recognizing that you that everything that there is some way we in some place, we all know what we’re doing. We’re not victims, it doesn’t matter what happened to us, doesn’t matter if some of us, you know, have been traumatized, and utilized in various ways who hasn’t been. But we are still responsible to take risks, we we are responsible, their responsibility for all of that. And, I mean, we could, we could, we could talk for a few hours just on each tenant, but I’m just giving the the thing that the third tenant is what I was just talking about, face everything and avoid nothing. Face having avoid nothing is that is on one hand, to have the guts in the heart to really know that a lot of our motivations are very dark. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been in spiritual path. It doesn’t matter how deep the spiritual experiences you have. It doesn’t matter. Any of that doesn’t matter. What matters is what is really your motivation. What are you acting out. And then part of the spiritual practice is to really face that because if you don’t face that, you can take responsibility for it. Yeah. It’s only if you if you if you really if you really face what you made up. And when I say Facebook may have its own negative effects. It’s also facing your potential, facing your because facing the fact that you are important, not because you ego is important. But you have the power to make a difference in the world in a very profound way, by virtue of the fact that you have a consciousness it’s aware of itself. So really facing it not as pure, radical, abstract idea, but really facing that whole thing. The fourth tenet is the law of impersonality where where you may recognize that nothing that you could not no aspect of your life. It’s no aspect of your life is unique, private or personal in any way. And that’s a big one. It’s it’s a big one, but it’s a challenging and a very enlightening one,
Rick Archer: but elaborate on that one just a little bit.
Igal Moria: Okay. I’ve mentioned something that you know, we live in an evolutionary context, right. We are part of it, or the process that has been going on for 14 billion years, stars Big Bang, something came out of nothing, 14 billion years ago, and through an incomprehensibly complex process of greater and greater structures of integration in order. You know, from energy to matter. measure to life, life to consciousness, and the consciousness the consciousness is aware of itself. And consciousness being aware of itself that only happened 2000 years ago, the first nervous system has been evolved, that is, so that is being able to be aware of itself. So you can if you look at it from if you look at your own life as part of the process, not as this individual bubble skin encapsulated bubble that occurred when you were born, and will finish when you die. But look at yourself as part of this process of this whole process. Every atom in your body was there in Big Bang, every every party in the body is 14 billion years old. And it kept in this whole process of flux of this river, all those particles forming at one point to capacity for the individuation arose not as the most important thing, but as a tool for the universe to know itself. Yeah. So you are part of that process. So nothing about your life is personal about you. It’s not about you, it’s about the process of us, but the process of evolving in the process of evolving you are the leading edge of that process, you Rick Archer, and I got Maria, we’re the leading edge of that process. It’s not about us at all, and to narcissists in 21st century, postmodern narcissists, such as we are, this is it’s that’s how we are as a culture, right? Much of our spiritual development is been about my experiences and my development in my consciousness and my disinvite that it’s about me and I want to have it just drive and I want to have this just ride out, keep on manipulating everything. So just basically, you know, just like how do you pull this these phones that adjust themselves to your body, right memory foam, he’s the this is close to the justice center. So we won’t live to be like that. It’s just Irfan the justice. It’s not about us, it’s not about us, 14 billion years of this whole boss didn’t occur to me, it’s just you and I can have more gratifying sex life, money, life, food and position and satisfaction. It’s a bunch of much bigger things. So that’s the love of Krishna, he gets you in touch with you start contemplating that has a very profound effect.
Rick Archer: Oh, yeah. No, I totally understand that. You know, when you first stated the point, I wasn’t sure what it referred to, but in elaborating it. This is the point I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, especially since I’ve been listening to hours and hours and hours of interviews of you know, Craig Hamilton, interviewing people like Terry Patton, and Andrew Cohen and all kinds of people, you know, talking all about evolutionary Enlightenment,
Igal Moria: it seems very important contemplation to do Yeah.
Rick Archer: And, and in fact, I mean, even sort of contemplating these notions, does in fact, shift one’s experience, it shifts one’s perspective, you know, as you say, you it tends to shift you out of regarding yourself merely as a you know, flush bound individual, but, you know, you begin to sort of get a clearer sense that you know, you are that evolutionary energy that has given rise to this whole universe, you know, but with eyes and with ears, you know, living through this tool, this instrumentality of of the human body, you are you are that very sort of intelligence, which sparked the Big Bang, you know, now able to talk and that’s fantastic reflect upon itself and so on.
Igal Moria: That’s also because you see, you said eyes for example, you know, look I mean, the way we’re built we build a lot of our the way projects we interact with the world, a lot of it is through eyes, right? Sites, a lot of our brain is involved with the site. Now there’s one organ the AI, through which we interact a lot of our interaction with the world occurs. Now, in the same way, you can say that we human beings, are the AI of the universe, yeah. Because it is through just like through the eye, we human beings are aware of, of, of where we are in space. Because the eye can be sensitive to light. So so it’s through self reflective consciousness that we human beings have. The universe can be aware of itself and in no other way. So So that’s so we are that in that so the law of impersonal is Is it you know, that look, face face? What life’s really all about?
Rick Archer: Yeah, we’re sense organs of the internet of the infinite. Yeah, head of the internet, or censorship of the internet. And, you know, I mean, we’re a colony, really, if you think about it, we’ve, if you start going into the microscopic, we’ve got all these little organs, which you break it down further, there’s always little cells, each of which has its own life. But as a conglomerate, we’re kind of coherent ly functioning unit, but then, you know, take it to a larger scale, and we’re the cells of a larger colony, just perceiving or sensing and living through just, you know, one small expression of that totality of intelligence. That essentially, we are,
Igal Moria: and it has huge implications if you’re really taken into implications, because it means that for you that that is the reason for the spiritual life, because and really, that’s the first tenant the tenant is, where is the first time that I said this, wanting to be free more than everything else called Clarity of intention with this path, it’s all about the motivation of why you want to, because once you understand that you are really the eye through which the eye eye both his E, y, E, and I as capital high of the universe, so to speak, that you’re interiority is the same as the inferiority the inverse, and you’re the leaving at this process. And in order to take this next step of the evolution of consciousness, you will have to actually do it, the motivation for the spiritual life becomes that, and then everything that we talked about dealing with your ego, dealing with all doing the spiritual practice in your life, because if you take it on seriously, and it’s a big deal, and most people look, let’s face it, most people don’t, even people who are in the spiritual path. So it takes a lot. And at one point that becomes your life and say, okay, so it’s for the sake of the evolutionary process, the first tenet is called for the sake of the whole or for the sake of the evolutionary process. And that was that because it’s all about changing motivation. So you have those tenets, and people will come together, if you ask, what is it that brings us how is it that this thing can happen when we come together, the people that come together in those groups, they’re all people that are committed to the five tenets. And and it’s people. This is very serious work. It’s very serious work. This is not 20 minutes, twice a day type of thing. It’s a serious work in concert, it’s all consuming. And it’s it’s a word that basically you trust, that has been incredible for us that that that because everybody comes totally undefended. Suddenly volume vulnerable totally with their ego behind. And everybody means business, and there’s incredible trust between us that you will do everything that you need to do in order to develop, and I will do everything that I need to do in order to develop so that this succeeds, and we can take the next step, and we can keep, keep developing from time to time from meeting to meeting. It’s not just that we come together in a ecstatic communion in a higher way, which is in itself an incredible achievement. But also that we each individually keep developing. And as a whole, therefore, the whole bill gathering keeps developing and we’ve worked in groups that are called holons. It’s a term that we took from Ken Wilber, hold on, hold on is a unit that is composed of individuals, each of which is also all in itself. And and and we have this whole lens of people so these are your peers. And usually it’s people you have same kind of level of experience with and you’re like a you’re like a military unit like a commando unit, you you entrust your your life with each other. If these are this is a very serious word,
Rick Archer: how many people are in a hold on?
Igal Moria: It can be anywhere between four to eight people,
Rick Archer: something like that. I get the sense as you’re saying this, you’re mainly talking about people who live there in this facility where you live, or is it people who also might come in for a course once or twice a year and get a taste of it?
Igal Moria: Well, there’s all there’s all levels,
Rick Archer: there are degrees of involvement.
Igal Moria: There’s degrees of involvement, degree of experience, and there’s you know, under his core students, not that many and and to their people normally, even though I for example, haven’t been for a while living in a center but they normally they live in a center together in some Center. together with other people, their peers, but sometimes they live in a center and like in my home. There’s one in Germany, one in two in England. I’m in Israel normally. And there’s four here. So and so a lot
Rick Archer: of German you get on Skype calls or something or Yeah, yeah, a lot of the calls
Igal Moria: are actually on the phone. And it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, consciousness is no local. Right. And, and, and the, and it works. I mean,
Rick Archer: I work hard at this. Is it? What are you actually doing? Are you having a sort of encounter group, like, kind of, you know, intensive conversation, or you’re publishing a magazine? I mean, what is the nature of the actual work to which you’re applying yourself?
Igal Moria: This particular work that I’m talking about? Working harder this but what I mean by that, is that, look, it’s very serious as what I said, it’s very serious. Just entertaining
Rick Archer: yourself. It’s a
Igal Moria: serious, yeah, it’s the human business, the basic msec come together in business and say, Okay, so. So it means that sort of vulnerability, it means that I want to know, all the things that I need to do in order to develop myself from one meeting to the next. And if I don’t, I’m not fully aware of it, then my brothers will point to me what I should be always
Rick Archer: listening to people.
Igal Moria: I don’t know. I mean, maybe, you know, everybody has their own thing development, maybe somebody’s narcissistic, maybe somebody is stingy. Or maybe somebody is, is not putting everything that he could into their work.
Rick Archer: So for instance, if one of your buddies in the holons set a goal, I think you’re kind of stingy, would you go back to Israel and start handing out money to the beggars? And I mean, what are you going to do to actually affect that change in some areas,
Igal Moria: that will be fair, that will be very easy. If they win, it’s, it’s first of all, you have you know, we talking about, you have to deal with those structures in yourself. That’s that Why are you like that not by in the psychological sense. But to first of all, recognize that this is the case. First of all, face it and really see, oh, this is the case. And once this is the case, then you are free, because that’s why meditation is so important. Annotation allows you to have no relationship to the mind, right? Meditation is, is a situation in which you think you have no relationship to the mind, no relationship, anything. Customization is the ground of being and then and then so you’re not a victim to those impulses. Maybe I’ve lived to that stinginess, let’s say 256 years. But once I realized, Oh, this is how I operate. So then there is all this space as a result of all my meditation, oh, by all the space to leave room, do not act out of it.
Rick Archer: And maybe 10 Sounds like the old TM model where you kind of transcend the problem. And then hopefully, you know, from the transcendent, something good gets infused back in and you know, your water the root and enjoy the fruit.
Igal Moria: No flippin way. No, no, it doesn’t mean it’s not even close. It’s getting, we’re talking, okay? The the value of meditation here is not some mystical transformation at the root level that you don’t see. In this particular teaching. This particular teaching the value of meditation is basically that it allows you to have freedom in relationship to certain impulses in consciousness, in emotion in my mind and consciousness, that otherwise you would not feel free from. So for example, I mean, let me give you an example. I’ll take a very extreme example. Okay, let’s say you’re a bit or and also, let’s say if you’re a virtual thief and look, I actually I shared her house summary with you someday with with a woman who came from a very, very poor family. And at one point, we realized that he was the skinny that we’re using, and that we observed that a lot of kitties disappearing, we actually thought oh, wow, what’s going on? And then we can you know, happen many years ago and, and a few of us we confronted that person and she just she just said, as a matter of fact, yeah, that’s the way I’ve been living all my life and and that’s it just natural. Anyway, so very primitive states of affairs, obviously. And I remember I was totally, totally shocked. Because there was enough clarity that she saw, yes, this is a tendency. But the thing is, if you meditating with the right motivation, let’s say, I take that is an example, if you then need the right motivation, it doesn’t matter how strong the habit is, and how strong the impulses you will have enough freedom in your mind. That one is impatient comes to just see up here that the patient comes, you slow down the video, here is when normally this is what I do. Here, I can create a different momentum.
Rick Archer: So what station is this? I mean, are you saying that if you meditated with the right motivation, if you were this woman, for instance, for example, and that morning, you had meditated with the right motivation, then later in the day, you saw the kitty, because of the influence of the meditation you had done, you would have more detachment from the situation and be able to resist the ingrained tendency to steal.
Igal Moria: Yeah, now because of the meditation you’ve done that morning, but he’s but because of the habit to have some freedom in relationship to the mind that you have cultivated over years of how to practice with the right motivation. Because meditation, you can leave motivation, meditation is very important. It’s very similar to in the Sasken, with the savikalpa, your intention, why it is a unity. If you meditate, sometimes meditation is just you want to sit there for a narcissistic pleasure of just having the place. But if you meditate, if you’re serious, the meditation, there will be bliss. But the meditation is more for for freedom, from mine, freedom from emotions, freedom from the insanity of the power, the total infatuation with the in identification with your mental and emotional impulses, and a person who would do that with the mores to be free. That’s important thing. So in order to free that person, we’d have some kind of more freedom in relationship to the impulses of their mind. And what it will take interest or we will take interest, it will take desire to change, you will take guts, because you have to have guts to go against your habits. And but it would more than anything else, it will take motivation. And if you’re in a committed relationship with other people, than for the sake of that relationship, for the sake of that which not in this personal relationship, but for the sake of that project that you’re in that project is important to you. For the sake of that project, you’d be seeking to know all those dark impulses within yourself so that you can take care of them. So you don’t have to act out. It’s not that you become a saint. It’s not that you become somebody in boom, no thoughts of lust, greed, violence or anger arises. That’s not the idea. That’s not that’s that’s, I don’t know if there is anybody. Even Mother Teresa felt huge about doubts. It’s what it’s what you express and what you renounce that in for what it is that you renounce it. That’s the idea. And in the end, and that’s among the most serious practitioners of this particular life of a solution or enlivenment. It’s basically that’s the most important thing. That’s our profession. Yeah. And then there’s concentric circles of people who are involved with it in various various degrees, and there’s people who just come to retreats once a year, then they love it, and then they they’re not involved with it at all, you know, that’s fine. Well, it’s
Rick Archer: interesting, because I mean, contrasting the what you just described with Transcendental Meditation, in which you think of Mantra, and you’re expressly instructed not to go into it with any sort of goal in mind, or trying to achieve any particular psychological readjustment or any such thing you just proceed with complete innocence. And, and it’s all supposed to happen automatically. The kind of meditation you just described seems very intentional, very purposeful, that you you’re actually kind of seeking out the dark corners and bringing light to them and and kind of not using meditation or not during, during the meditation, the kind of meditation you just referred to.
Igal Moria: Okay, meditation itself, I only talked about the the motive of meditation is to be very clear and the intention is to be very clear the practices Talk is really very, three very simple instructions. Meditation. You can do this now if you want, I might not be so
Rick Archer: interesting to the listeners know, they can do it too. Okay? Go ahead.
Igal Moria: But it has three different instructions. In fact, I sometimes do it over the internet I had I instruct groups, I started, I did a meditation instruction during the internet. And some friends of mine agree all the time. But it really is composed of three very simple instructions. First, and that’s in contradistinction to cm, you don’t move yourself. You sit still, you don’t move.
Rick Archer: So can you so comfortably? Are
Igal Moria: you supposed to sit? Oh, yeah, you sit comfortably. But the idea is it sit reasonably straight comfortably with and. And it means when it stretches, you don’t scratch. I mean, if if the scale was 10, you have the pain of the D of nine, well, move alone. But the idea is you don’t move because I would maybe I would say something before that. But coins, teaching meditation. The purpose of meditation, in his teaching is to have no relationship to to the content of consciousness. No relationship, the conduct consciousness, which means thoughts, emotions, noises, sensations, fears, doubts, desires. You don’t do anything with them. You have no relationship to them. And in order to, and that is meditation, it’s a metaphor for Enlightenment. Because Enlightenment there is. There’s you know, there is movement there is it’s a metaphor for Enlightenment, because it’s a metaphor, it’s freedom, if you don’t want to freedom is, is you’re free from, from all that. You were talking about the old Enlightenment, right? The classical life, and you discover that who you are, is beyond all that,
Rick Archer: that that may still be going on some of it, but you’re that’s not. So to speak. Yeah, you are not.
Igal Moria: Things may come and things may go, but I go on forever, right. And in order to actualize that stay in meditation, there are three instructions. First is you don’t move, you’re still you know. And there’s more to distill. So I mean, we know we can talk about it a little more. But anyway, this is the person structures, it’s more than just not physically moving. The second instruction is your you pet you relaxed. And relaxation doesn’t mean necessarily maybe there’s tension in the muscles here and there, which, which possibly, during the process of meditation will relax some more. But relaxed means you don’t hold on to it. It’s a fundamental position, a relaxed position of because you said it’s not related to the thought even being still is his expression on our relationship to anything, because normally, the way we operate is we have an impulse to move and we just move. But here we say no, no, we have no relationship, which is shut off the mechanism that says I have to move according to the motions of my mind, the mind can say I gotta scratch I want to walk, I want water or whatnot. I want to move ahead. I’m not moving. That’s the first thing and the second thing is relaxed, and I’m not pulling okay. And that’s the second thing is just being very relaxed. Now, we very well know, you know, when you don’t know when you’re relaxed, you want to fall asleep. And the third instruction here is you pay attention. You’re awake, you pay attention. There seems to
Rick Archer: get sleepy in spite of all that
Igal Moria: you don’t speak it honestly, you keep yourself sleeping. That’s again, concrete, essentially ATM, you don’t sleep you stay awake, because when you sleep, you cannot keep no relation to thoughts when you’re asleep.
Rick Archer: And if you’re tired and you find yourself nodding Do you like what do you do?
Igal Moria: You Don’t nod. It’s normally low sometimes of course. You know, the are situations like I haven’t slept for 36 hours. So I
Rick Archer: You mentioned to me recently that you had meditated for 24 hours straight. Were you consistently applying these three principles throughout that? 24 hours?
Igal Moria: Yes, I definitely was.
Rick Archer: Four hours didn’t
Igal Moria: Well, okay. He was I live, it wasn’t sitting still, it wasn’t sitting for 24 hours, he was one day meditation, divided into he was actually that that particular user, it was an international meditation marathon. It was like, a lot of us did it on the world, and we will, he was also fundraising thing, but he was also kind of some, you know, challenge that we took upon ourselves. What we did was we meditate for 45 minutes, and then we break 15 minutes, and then we waited 45 minutes was he want to go after him? You have to eat sometimes, you know, and, and, and so so it was it was not in in that case? 24 hours, I mean that. I know that they are Yogi’s, were they they said that the audio is we’re capable of doing that I don’t know that I am, I haven’t tried. But for 45 minutes, you don’t move. And, and and if you focus the entire 24 hours, you really focus. And we also had some, some some reading, they call it chanting, it’s not really chatting with music, but we just recite current things we have these can. So your whole state of mind is that of meditation is one big meditation of 24 hours because meditation is not only this is a form of meditation. But meditation can also be good as close while you talk. Meditation is not limited to a particular this is see there’s spontaneous meditation. And there is meditation that’s not spontaneous, you have to do something for some effort. And you know that sometimes state of grace you call it sometimes falls on on. And it has nothing to do with no Mantra or technique. It just basically, you’re catapulted into a deeper, saner, freer, more expanded less shackles. More true state of who you are. And then if you don’t do it, then one way of doing it is assuming that position. And so the meditation that I just spoke about his what you need to assume that position. And as I said, it’s a very serious practice where you don’t do it for any experience. But you do it in order to cultivate inculcate is that the word incompetent is good. Okay. Anyway, cultivate the state of freedom, not a state of freedom in relation to the stand position of free, right? In relationship to your insanity. Yeah, the reaction to you inside of you, let’s face it, our minds aren’t saying this is part of this part of it. So, so,
Rick Archer: which kind of sounds to me like, I mean, my, my understanding of witnessing has changed a lot over the years from my original conception of it, when I first heard Maharshi start talking about it, to, you know, my experience and understanding now, but, you know, what you’re talking about fits very well, with my current understanding of what witnessing is, which is that, you know, you have developed through whatever means, a kind of a natural independence from the mind, the senses, all the all the relative stuff, which is unshakable, you know, no matter how tired you are, no matter you know, whether you just burned your hand or, you know, whether someone’s yelling at you, or, you know, you’re experiencing something very pleasurable, there’s a sort of, pervading and ongoing state of freedom state of independence abiding,
Igal Moria: so, so I, I have some caveats here. I don’t know, to what extent I would experience or have kind of an equanimity. Economists say a freedom My hand was burned. I mean, I’m saying it’s not it’s not. The idea is not you become a robot.
Rick Archer: No, no. And then you might be swearing like a sailor with your hand burn, but okay. Okay, mention of independence. So there’s a dimension of freedom. There’s a dimension of which is just not perturbed by the burnt hand.
Igal Moria: Yeah, it’s a I think kind of a freedom from external freedom, a certain dimension of freedom, because, yeah, I must tell you kind of
Rick Archer: an attitude that you try to maintain. I’m saying it’s become so stable. It’s there, whether you think about it or not.
Igal Moria: Yeah, I think yeah, I don’t know. I mean, coming, it’s in that direction, anyway. Yeah. And he’ll want to say a parenthetical, inserted parenthetical comments, that, you know, I, when I joined Andrew, I actually made a conscious effort. Actually, I didn’t make enough of the efforts. In the beginning, I had to have a lot of help from my friends through to realize that I shouldn’t be a good fit for me to just get ready to just drop back the job, anything I knew, I thought I knew about witnessing, but states of consciousness about highly developed from CC to GC to UC and all those terminologies, which anyway, didn’t really correspond to my experience. Exactly. And, and I have to just basically say, Look, I’m just gonna really, you know, I’m gonna jump here and really go for for broke. And, and, and leave behind. So that’s why I was kind of smiling. Because when you’re talking about witnessing, I am not even trying to bridge anything. It’s not that there was it’s harder for any disrespect to my shoes going in or to the it’s just basically I had to change the context. And I had to change everything. And the more I was able to drop that whole thing. The more I was able to be more free religion, the whole thing.
Rick Archer: That’s cool. And yeah, I mean, I haven’t plunged into a whole nother way of life, as you have become kind of independent of the TM movement. But I’ve been rather eclectic, in a sense, in that I listen to a lot of stuff, read a lot of stuff, pick up a lot of stuff here and there. And I tend to find that there are the common, there are many common threads among all these different presentations. You know, I can hear audio Shanti say something that, you know, is very reminiscent reminiscent of something Maharshi said or heard, hear Andrew Koan, say something, or Byron, Katie, or Ganga, G or any of these different people. And, you know, they all have their own spin on it, and their own emphasis and their own approach and their own practices, and so on and so forth. But it’s, and I don’t mean to imply that not that none of them have the complete picture, but it is reminiscent of the blind men and the elephant analogy in which they’re all describing, you know, similar, well, maybe that’s not a good analogy, because the different parts of the elephant are so different than what I mean to say is that a lot of stuff corresponds in, from my perspective,
Igal Moria: there must be at least, must be certain spot and stuff that does correspond. And that’s the teaching, because I will undress teaching by the ground of being Yeah. is not new teaching. The teaching about the teaching, you know, as he says, In that article, you strengthen that article, the old teaching about the old Enlightenment, which he still teaches as part of this teaching, about the freedom, what we just talked about meditation, freedom from, from the content of consciousness is not new. So obviously, there will be parallels there, and maybe even points of similarity or identity with certain agents somewhere. I would dare to make the outrageous statement that nobody else is really teaching evolutionary Enlightenment in the way he does
Rick Archer: that, so I’m registered. And but I might,
Igal Moria: I mean, I’m saying just to protect myself in this age of post modernity, which, which, which nobody should, should, in any way stand out and everything’s equal than anything else. I think he is a path breaker in that unique way of teaching. And not just a unique way of teaching, I think. Yeah, he has a unique teaching any, any, any essay, and he forged the path of illusionary Enlightenment in which, in which Enlightenment, he really finds Enlightenment for the 21st century, which I I’m pretty sure is the only one who has done that. But Enlightenment is no longer just the realization of have the absolute freedom, that Enlightenment is also a that which is, you know that that that is that being is God. Yes. But also becoming is God that that, that it’s one thing, it’s one event, and and all the teaching that I think he is unique in that. And you know, I told you that I sent you the link. It’s very interesting. I told you I sent you the link to this talk that I had with marshy in 1976
Rick Archer: Yeah, in fact, if you like we can put that link on the blog to where we have this other link to this article. But
Igal Moria: you can do anything. I mean, there it’s fine. It’s a very sweet kind of interaction is probably one of the first interaction that it is the first interactions I had with him about religion. It’s the first interaction I had with him outside of the TTC context of the TTC. In which I offered something creative from my side. And he thanked in a sense that introduction seemed my fate. pretentiousness I was I was listening to them. Remember what I told him was that there was, you know, the very, that there was an old Rabbi Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, one of the greatest Hasidic Rabbi’s in the 19th century. And he described the mechanics of creation plus it’s a very non capitalistic thing. It’s not up to him. In some bizarre it says that the light of God was infinite. And therefore, there was no spacing, and you couldn’t create anything. But he wanted to make his king is kingship manifests. And you cannot manifest your kingship in Kingdom s. Without subjects, right. So you have to create the worlds to make his kingship manifest. But he couldn’t create the world because the light, infinite light filled everything. So in order to create the worlds he had to push his life to the side, and the empty space that was created in there, he created the worlds. But then the hard progress, I’ve asked this question, How Is that really possible? How is this possible that there will be a place where he is not right? Because one of the fundamental tenets of the Tsar of the cover lies, lays 1000 women age that are made for there is no space where he is not omnipresent. Right, or what Marsha used to say that unified fields present every call plan creation. So he said, and so this is the paradox, he said, Because he had to push himself to the side, but he was as if he pushed himself. And he says, We cannot understand it at this point. Is that the future generations they will. And I think that we’re under is doing I mean, unless no any of it. It wasn’t even those Jewish he wasn’t even but it’s funny, he grew up in a totally secular Manhattan family. Were were once in a blue, they would go to a possible center and his grandfather’s and he they wouldn’t understand anything, it would look strange, and primitives that so so he knew nothing about nothing, we can do this. But he felt in a sense, what he’s doing is a certain commentary more than a commentary on that, because he’s actually saying, okay, that empty space where he is not, is also where he is. And now that is a space, it’s not theoretical, but it’s the empty space with them. That’s where the world exists. That’s where interactions exists. That’s what the universe exists. So now, let’s make the new Enlightenment. But that is well, not about only about the light, let’s make that also about this in a way that there is there is no inner and outer, it’s one, one. It’s one continuous thing of consciousness on the move. And, and, and the fact that he found also ways of working with people who are very far from it, and I can tell you my experience, you know, I and many of us, we all have to he had to work with us to really, very seriously to do very seriously guide us to be able to do this kind of work, where we can where he now is developing systematizing ways in which he can help larger and larger groups of people actually embrace that kind of a life and that is very unique in that is very serious work. And it’s very integral so to speak in to use the parlance, not there. This hip Term of the day, it’s integral because it includes physical practice includes mental practice contemplation includes human interaction, because meditation who’s taking care of your health and diet and everything, it’s then integral.
Rick Archer: It’s interesting, because before I even had the thought to interview this, you this week, there had been a lot of discussion going on about Andrew Cohen on the Buddha at the Gas Pump chat group, which there is one of and I was noticing that it was going on, but I really don’t have a chance to read all the hundreds of posts that people post there. And so today, I in this morning, I posted something there saying, Hey, I’m going to interview an Andrew Koan guy tonight. And is there anything in particular you’d like me to ask him? And one person said, well ask him how he would respond to the paradox or seeming contradiction between Koan statement, that the world is just fine as it is, and a statement that there is a lot of work to be done and things can get better?
Igal Moria: And the awesome question, this is an awesome question. And actually, actually, I remember one lecture that Andrew gave many years ago, he’s better but these two aspects of they’re both correct. Because it’s sort of easy. From the point of view of being, everything is perfect as it is. From the ground of being everything is perfect as it is. It couldn’t have been any other way. It is what it is. It’s what what it was around us is to say, be here. Now what Eckhart Tolle talks about, he says, The Power of Now is a present moment where everything is perfect.
Rick Archer: And he says, loving what is just basically
Igal Moria: that’s, that’s it, it’s just, it is, and he will only talk about this now, you feel that, that is right, you know, it’s full. But that’s part of the picture. There’s another part of the picture. And that part of the picture is the evolutionary impulse, which brought something out of nothing. And that’s 14 billion years of gushing, rushing, incomprehensible, never resting, ongoing, always changing. pushy, violent, passionate, scream, that’s also part of the whole picture. And so that is, so we talk about being and becoming, and that becoming is actually it’s like a Constant rush and urgency and urgency and extra seats in going going, going going go. That’s also part of it. So it’s both things like how can the question you could say, you know, how can you bridge the paradox between the statement that light is a particle of light is a wave, it’s both. And it’s also true here is Enlightenment is both it’s embracing both. And that’s the beauty of thing and I think that is exactly the uniqueness of this teaching. And that’s really his contribution is that he has brought in not just a theoretical concept, but as is getting his hands dirty, and actually working with his students who Pope and taking a lot of risks also and in trying things and, and getting to the point where he has now a core group of students who are really committed to this kind of work and who are were really making headway with it in a very tangible way. I think that is really easy. It’s just like if you if you think about a for example, what is unique is a marshy if I look at the what is unique, I wish he was a giant of consciousness Maharshi came to a world where consciousness was not even in the vocabulary in the thought in the zeitgeist in our awareness in the Western world. And he managed by hook and by crook, prime with a crowbar, you know, with his charm with whatever way he just pried open those Berlin wall of our materialism resistance and shove it you know, down our resistance throats loving us with all kinds of promises, just the we, you know, a spoonful of sugar and the medicine goes down. Long ago, and he managed to shove it in No, it was St. Andrews contribution is very radical in the sense that he is he is he is putting this whole element of the, of the becoming of Enlightenment in becoming and, and showing ways of working with people so that they can actually transcend the ego, not just with eyes closed, which was actually Marsh’s achievement to actually initiate the world into transcendence so that it’s close, even even materials, Wall Street people, but I’m really saying, Okay, now Now let’s, let’s have the same protection in the way we interact with each other. That’s a bigger, it’s a bigger deal.
Rick Archer: My wife is bringing me my dinner here, which I don’t think I want to try to eat while I’m talking to you. But I will, there’s a lot of things on my mind. And a lot. I think we could go on for another two hours easily with easily. I think it would be a bit much to try to do that right now. But um, let’s, you know, let’s have another session sometime. I sure. Yeah, I mean, this is a good note to end on as any, I think what you just said is very profound and moving. And, and I’d like to have another session. So you know, in a few weeks, a couple months, whatever works out for us both. Let’s do that we well, I’ll post this and people will watch it and maybe start commenting on it. And I’ll kind of note down some thoughts and points and questions. And in fact, if they started asking questions, you might actually like to interact with some of them there, in you know, on the blog, or in the chat group, I’ll bring it to your notice if something comes up that I think you might like to respond to. This has been yet another episode of Buddha at the Gas Pump. The implication of that term being that the sort of states of, you know, Enlightenment, or or whatever you want to call it that were once considered to be fairly rare and unusual are being encountered. And as Igal has been saying, in even more evolved ways, by ordinary people in ordinary circumstances. And we will continue unfolding this, I believe this was the 18th or 19th Such interview, and God willing, there’ll be many more, but thanks for watching. And if you go to batgap.com, you’ll see sort of all sorts of possibilities, you know, things to get into like the podcast and the discussion group and all that stuff. So thank you very much. This has been Rick Archer interviewing ego Harmelin and ego Moria and we’ll see you next time.