Ishvara interview

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Ishvara. Is that the right pronunciation?

Ishvara: Ishvara?

Rick: Ishvara. In Sanskrit they always have this thing between V’s and W’s, somewhere in the middle. So actually I’m his guest. I’m at his place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And the way that happened is kind of interesting. I got an email from somebody in Portugal who, yeah, someone named Christina or Christiana or something like that. And she emailed me and said, “Oh, I really loved your interview with David Spiro. And would you also please interview Ishvara because he has been very influential in my life. And I’d love it if you could talk to him.” I said, “Okay, I’ll check it out.” So I looked up his website and it turned out he’s in Albuquerque. And it also turned out that I was going to Albuquerque. And then I looked more closely on MapQuest and discovered that his place is walking distance from where I was going, my sister-in-law’s house. And so I walked up here this morning. So I guess if this were car talk I’d be saying that we’re broadcasting from the small world department of Buddha at the Gas Pump this morning. Do things always work so nicely in your life? I mean, coincidentally, things just kind of mesh and work out?

Ishvara: Yeah, that seems to be the way it is. Even going to Germany worked out that way. It was just kind of this synchronistic kind of thing happened. Somebody saw me in a magazine and they got interested and they came to our place when we were in Santa Fe. And that’s how they met me and wound up going to Germany several times.

Rick: Well, hopefully this will open you up to a whole new batch of people.

Ishvara: Yeah, I’m kind of the best-kept secret in the world, I think.

Rick: So let me give you a little sense of how I’ve been doing these shows and what my motivation is in doing them. I think that will springboard us into the conversation. So I myself have been meditating a long time, about 42 years, so I’m naturally interested in this sort of thing. And I’ve also always enjoyed just talking to people, and almost in casual conversation I tend to interview people because I never run out of questions. And so one day I was in my garage working out on my Bowflex machine and I thought, “I’ll do an interview show and interview people who have had a spiritual awakening.” So I went through various stages of trying to figure out how best to set that up, and local radio station, local public access TV station, shifting over to Skype. But the thing has been evolving over the last year. And my motivation in doing it is, I suppose, many-fold. Firstly, I just simply enjoy it, and I felt people would find it useful. And the fundamental theme is ordinary people who have had a spiritual awakening. You don’t have to be special or anything like that. And of course, in some sense everybody is ordinary, and in another sense everybody is special. And so I started out with just people in my hometown, which is a town in which several thousand people meditate, and there are plenty of people to interview. And then I began branching out. And there are several benefits, I think, that people derive from this. Firstly, they see that awakening shows up in many different ways. It doesn’t necessarily fit into a particular niche in a rigid way. And secondly, they may recognize something in their own experience that they didn’t even realize they had because it’s become so natural and second nature to them. But they hear somebody else say it, and they think, “Yeah, I’ve got that. Wow, you know. I must have already developed something that I thought I was still seeking, but I’ve already attained it.” And a variety of other things like that. People react to it in different ways. And they listen to this as a podcast while driving to work, or maybe sitting in front of the computer, or whatnot. So in any case, that’s just a nutshell view of how I got this started and why I’m doing it. So, with regard to your situation, I noticed on your website I read your little biography. And I kind of like the way you started out with pictures of your childhood, and kind of moved through your life in different stages. And perhaps we might do that with the interview itself, if you could give us a sense of the road you’ve taken and what significant milestones there were on it, when you first got bitten by the spiritual bug, and any kind of unfoldments that went along. And I’ll kind of intersperse with questions as we go along.

Ishvara: Well, I guess it really started when I was born. I began to question things at a very early age because of some of the experiences that I was having. And things just didn’t seem to fit. And of course, I was just thinking earlier, what would I say about that? And I realized that I’d been my mother’s son for probably 40 years. But it was thinking about this, and some of the early experiences that I remember, seven or eight years old, when we moved to the farm with my grandparents. And I was having already experiences of things that didn’t fit into their Christianity.

Rick: Like what?

Ishvara: Well, I would have dreams that would come true. And one particular experience that’s always stood out in my memory was that one morning, my grandfather came to get me and said, “You know, the cows got out last night. We had some young heifers, they had them pinned up in a special area.” And I saw they’re up in so-and-so hayfield. And he looked at me kind of strangely. He says, “How do you know?” Of course, he was kind of–

Rick: I figured you let him out.

Ishvara: something was weird anyway. And in my dream, it was raining. And I remember in my dream, I had looked down, and water was kind of splashing off my legs. And I was walking through the grass, and water was splashing. And there was an alfalfa field that I thought, “Well, you know, they can’t stay in that alfalfa field because it was blooming. And of course, cattle shouldn’t eat blooming alfalfa because they’ll blow up and kill them.” So I drove them through the alfalfa field, and there was this culvert, which is a wet weather ditch. And I drove them through there, and I drove them up to this hayfield, which we had just harvested.

Rick: Oh, in your dream, you’re talking about.

Ishvara: In my dream. And there was nothing much up there for them to eat, but I drove them up there. And I said, “Now, you stay up here.” And so, you know, I knew exactly where they were. And my grandfather, he’s just having a fit. He said, “We’re walking, and we have our rain gear on. I have my boots on.” And I looked down. When we’re walking up there in real life, and the water’s splashing off of my boots. And that was the only thing different from the dream. I had my boots on. And it was drizzling rain, and he’s just having a fit. He said, “Oh, they’re dead up there in the alfalfa field.” Because he could see where they were walking, you know. And he said, “Oh, they’re all bloated up there.” And I just, you know, I knew where they were. And I was, I think I was about seven or eight years old at that point. And, you know, we walked up there, and you could see where they walked through the alfalfa field. And, you know, they were up in that hay field, just kind of munching around on little, tiny bits of grass, and, you know, just content up there. And they just had stayed up there. And he just kind of scratched his head, and he kind of looked at me. Of course, you know, at that time, with the Christianity and everything, that was the devil’s work. So I, you know, I learned very early in life to be still. And so I sort of shut down at that point and became very introverted. And I kind of kept to myself. And I found out that I shouldn’t talk about the things I knew, because I was very lucid, and I knew what was on people’s minds. And it created a very confused childhood for me. I was very introverted and very nervous. And, of course, my grandfather was hell-fire, brimstone all the time. It was the end of the world all the time. And, you know, I was kind of a nervous wreck most of the time.

Rick: It’s funny that that should be thought of as the devil’s work, because the Bible and Christian literature is full of stories of people who had that kind of thing.

Ishvara: See, I didn’t have access to all of that, but, you know, I never felt like it was the devil’s work. And I just, you know, I was always very much in touch with God. And I just, you know, I just knew something that people weren’t talking about. And I could see through people’s fears. And I knew when people weren’t telling the truth, but I knew not to question them on it. But I chose at one point, somewhere in my life, around 10, I decided just to listen to what people said and not go with what I knew, because it just got me in trouble. So I just started listening to what people said, and said, “Okay.” So I kind of shut that aspect off for many years.

Rick: So did you actually lose that sort of insight ability, or did you just kind of ignore it?

Ishvara: I just began to ignore it. Yeah, it kind of shut down. And it took several years. And then a friend of mine one time said, he asked me, he said, “You know that. Why aren’t you using it?” And I just said, “No, I don’t know. I just kind of was not safe with it.” So he kind of made an agreement that he would always tell me the truth. And so I just started opening up again, and that started that all up, and that was many years later.

Rick: Like in your teens or twenties?

Ishvara: Oh, it was, you know, I was, what, that was 40-something. It took many years. Of course, all this was still, I was still having my dreams, I was still knowing things all along, even earlier in my twenties, 25, after I left the farm and stuff, I would have my lucid dreams. And they were still going on, but I just didn’t do a lot with them. And I remained pretty much an introvert and kind of stayed to myself. And left the church when I was 18. I was still involved in church work and stuff up to 18 years old, and planned to be a minister, but there again, things happened that just, it was like, “That’s not for me.” And just kind of strange things, just like wrong papers came to me to fill out when I was starting to go to Bible college. It was just like, the cosmos was saying, “No, that’s not it.”

Rick: Did you find yourself during this time attracted to reading spiritual books and stuff like that?

Ishvara: I hated reading in school. And when I got out of school, I started going to the library, and I had a wonderful librarian that started getting books from the state library for me. I got interested in psychic things, because I was having these experiences, and I found out the church didn’t have the corner on these things.

Rick: This was all in Missouri.

Ishvara: In Missouri, yeah. And I started just, I was taking home stacks of books and reading about things. And I said, “Wow, there’s a lot of sense here.” And I got really interested, and I started seeing these different connections with stuff. And that sort of, the whole thing started opening up after 18.

Rick: So you were reading Edgar Cayce and Christian mystics.

Ishvara: Oh, Edgar Cayce was, I just, I would sleep on books. I would just, “Well, come on, I want to do this. I want to be able to know this.” But Edgar Cayce was a very interesting person, and he was one of the interesting ones that I read very early. Jess Stern, “Youth, Yoga, and Reincarnation” was a really interesting book.

Rick: I read that book when I was a new meditator. I was about 18 years old.

Ishvara: Yeah, that’s one of the first ones I read.

Rick: Yeah, I remember he was dissolving clouds or something.

Ishvara: Yeah, and then I joined the Rosicrucians when I was 18 years old, and that was a big, big step forward because they have an uncanny clarity about things, which really kept me from getting marred down in a lot of nonsense and psychic foo-foo. So, and there’s a lot out there, a lot of foo-foo nonsense, spiritual superstitious nonsense. So that kept me very clear, and so that was a very, very fine path.

Rick: At some point, did you start to gravitate toward Eastern books like Yogananda?

Ishvara: Yeah, I got interested, of course, with the bookstore we had. I had access to all kinds of information, and it was all interesting, but none of it was it.

Rick: Were you doing practices or just reading?

Ishvara: Well, I never was marred by a teacher.

Rick: They don’t all mar you.

Ishvara: Well, what I read and what I understood from everything, it was all partial. There wasn’t nothing complete. Everybody, of course, has their opinion in there, and there’s something this way, and I was enough that that wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. That wasn’t complete. I would look at stuff and see a flaw, and see something was missing, and that wasn’t good enough.

Rick: But you would get something out of it.

Ishvara: Something. Oh, yeah, I’ve taken from different philosophies, even Christianity. I’ve taken from everything that I could find something that would benefit us now, because I’m important, it’s important now. We’re living now, we’re not living in the past, and we’re not living in the future, we’re living now. It has to work now. I don’t care if it’s going to work a hundred years from now, it has to work now.

Rick: One of my little guidelines for living is, “Take what you need and leave the rest.” And there’s something to be extracted from almost any experience.

Ishvara: Everything will work if one totally devotes himself and applies it to the present. But most people are looking for escape, and that’s not it. You can’t escape your life, you have to live your life.

Rick: Yeah, and speaking of marred by teachers, I’ve even seen examples where people follow a teacher whom I would consider to be extremely flawed, but based on their fervency and dedication, they really get a lot of progress.

Ishvara: Oh, you can follow a toad and get a lot of progress.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. There are stories in the Vedas of people just worshipping a rock or a statue or something, and having these tremendous breakthroughs.

Ishvara: Enlightenment doesn’t come from the outside. I think that’s where people make the mistake, they think they’re going to get something.

Rick: Objective.

Ishvara: That’s the real story behind everything.

Rick: All right, so here you were, going along, sleeping on books, and reading everything under the sun, and approaching your forties. So what’s the next significant milestone?

Ishvara: Well, after reading, after looking, after looking at these sayings, I got to this point where the same crap was going on in my life, the emotional stuff from childhood, and just the disappointments with people. Just the lying that was going on, and because of my acute intuitiveness with things, I could see through stuff so quickly. And so, of course, when you see through stuff, you get disappointed very quickly, because you read something and you see what’s left out. You just see the partial truths of stuff. I mean, even the scriptures, there’s partial truths.

Rick: And heavily edited.

Ishvara: Yeah, heavily edited, misleading.

Rick: Political situations.

Ishvara: Yeah, “I want you to believe this.” So I was really dissatisfied, and I had a whole huge bookstore of all kinds.

Rick: Oh, that’s right, you worked in a bookstore, didn’t you?

Ishvara: I had a bookstore.

Rick: I saw that on your website.

Ishvara: Yeah, I owned a bookstore.

Rick: You owned a bookstore.

Ishvara: And so I was gradually sorting through the bookstore, throwing out the books that I just felt were not useful to anybody. And I was gradually getting down to where there weren’t very many books that I could wholeheartedly recommend to people. And it just got to where I don’t feel good even having a bookstore, because it’s just misrepresenting it.

Rick: Did you meet any kindred souls during this whole period, other people who saw life as you did and you could really relate to? Or did everybody seem–?

Ishvara: Not too many. Most people were looking for escape. And I met Leela.

Rick: Leela was your friend and assistant and partner.

Ishvara: Yeah, I met a few people that just– there’s a handful of people in my life that have been there all along and very supportive and very encouraging. But there was this point where I just–this emotional turmoil just kept coming up and coming up, and I kept looking at this stuff, and I finally got to this place where I said, “You know, this is just all crap. It’s just–none of it is working. None of it is–everything has some hook, some place of escape. Something is about getting out, and that’s not it.” And so I got to this breaking point, and I just–I spent one night just practically screaming all night into my pillow, just alone, isolated, just totally just crushed, and said, “I want out. I can’t take this anymore. This is not working. These people are liars. It may be work for them, but then I look at their lives, and their lives is a shamble. I mean, they’re good at hiding. I mean, these so-called masters, you look at their personal lives, and they’re a wreck. They’re alcoholics. They’re sex addicts. They’re all these different things, and that’s not a life.”

Rick: Advocating abstinence, meanwhile.

Ishvara: Right, yes. So it’s like I just saw this hypocrisy with everything, and I just–that’s not it. I broke. I just was broke. I was doing services. I was holding services. I was teaching meditation. I was doing all the work. That morning after that, I just spent the whole night just screaming, practically hoarse. It was a Saturday night. Sunday morning I did a service, and I talked to myself in the service, and it was just absolute love, and just talking to myself, and this beloved talk, and just, “You are loved.” And I was so overwhelmed with divine love, and just felt that comfort and just absolute love and not alone. And I felt really good, and I felt so supported in that love, and just cosmic, just a cosmic kind of thing. And then maybe a week or two weeks later, Leela was gone at the time, and she came back in her RV, and she saw that I was just terribly distraught and just upset, and I just was going through this turmoil, and she just said, “Well, what’s wrong?” And I just broke down again. And she just sat with me, and she just was sort of saying, “It’s all right, and it’s all right, and it’s all right.” I’m listening to her, and my life is flying before– they talk about a dying person’s life passing before their eyes. My life was flying before my eyes. And I hear her saying, “It’s all right,” and my brain is saying, my intellect’s saying, “It’s not all right, it’s not all right.” And there was a moment everything stopped. There was a moment of silence, and it was all right. And she was looking at me, and she said, “What happened?”

Rick: So when you say everything stopped, you mean all this turmoil that you just saw?

Ishvara: Everything just stopped. There was a moment the brain stopped. It tried to argue. It’s like my intellect tried to argue, but it couldn’t. Everything stopped, and she was looking at me, and I saw her face kind of surprised. And I said, “What’s wrong?” She says, “You just changed.” And she says, “You kind of lit up.” So I kind of looked in the mirror, and I was glowing. And I knew it was all right. Everything was all right. My intellect could not engage. The brain could not bring anything up from the past. And I moved into this state of complete grace. It was just all right. And I could not say what had happened. But the intellect just could not engage anything. It just surrendered. It just said, “Okay, it doesn’t matter.” And at that point, nothing mattered anymore about the past. And I didn’t know what it was. Of course, the intellect begins to try to figure out. People come in and say, “What happened to you?” Because my language pattern shifted.

Rick: Speaking differently? Yeah, I got an accent to my voice. And of course, people thought I’m a walk-in. People thought I had a stroke. Because I couldn’t talk normal.

Rick: Is this your voice that you’re now referring to?

Ishvara: This is pretty much my normal voice now. But when I get excited…

Rick: This has an accent compared to what it used to be?

Ishvara: Maybe some. I don’t know. Not anymore. I think I’m pretty normalized.

Rick: Oh, it’s accented at first, and then it sort of shifts.

Ishvara: Yeah, I’ve kind of got it normalized. But when I get excited, sometimes it gets back in there. And when I’m doing services, sometimes it’ll get in there when I get speeded up quite a bit.

Rick: What kind of an accent?

Ishvara: It’s, I don’t know, kind of Scottish. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a mix of things. And it changes, too. It depends on what level I get at.

Rick: Maybe there’ll be some of that on your website.

Ishvara: Yeah, there’s some on the videos. There is some. If they listen to some of the older tapes, it’s on there. And people used to, you know, of course that would validate being a walk-in or something. But it was interesting for me because I had the bookstore, and people would wonder. See, I’m very lucid, and they come in, and I hear what they’re thinking. They’re saying, “Oh, poor guy. He’s had a stroke. He can’t talk right anymore.” And other people thought, “Well, he’s a walk-in.” And one of my friends said, “Oh, he’s died, and somebody else has taken over.”

Rick: Really? So you’d actually pick up all the stuff?

Ishvara: Oh, yeah. I would very much know what people were thinking. And somebody called Leela, and said, “Oh, I heard that he died, and somebody else has taken over.” And all this in our town, in our religious community, and some of our devils in there.

Rick: I have a friend who did have a stroke, and his personality changed quite a bit afterwards. And I’m always teasing his wife that he’s probably a walk-in.

Ishvara: Yeah, yeah. So we had all that going around. But it took, you know, I don’t know, a year or more or so for everything to, you know. And I realized after the fact that the pattern shifts in my voice sort of helped me know that everything was different, and not to go back into my foolishness, and just to be very mindful. That helped me to remain very present.

Rick: Was there a tendency to backslide, or was it pretty much a clean break?

Ishvara: No, it wasn’t a tendency to backslide. It was a clean break. But it sort of helped me to say, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Rick: Right. We’re not even in Missouri. We’re not even in Missouri anymore. It was like, “Hey, you know, this is all different.” And my feeling, knowing at that point, was that I could not rely on what I knew from the past, as far as philosophy, or beliefs, or concepts. Everything I had to speak from direct experience. That was one of the commandments. That was something that I knew at that point, that everything I did from that point had to be from direct experience. I couldn’t talk philosophy, or belief, or religion, or anything. I had to speak to my work was to be direct experience. It was to be directly what I experienced firsthand.

Rick: Yeah, I really relate to that.

Ishvara: So I didn’t have any experience. It was like everything I knew was what I learned from books, and da-da-da-da. So everything was a direct experience. So I didn’t have any, so I had to start experiencing.

Rick: So you couldn’t talk much?

Ishvara: I couldn’t talk much, and people were shocked.

Rick: Because they’re used to you talking.

Ishvara: Yeah, I could tell them. They’d ask me something, “Well, this book says this and that.” And so I wasn’t talking very much either. “What’s wrong with you? You always have an answer for me.” I said, “Well, I’m under this mandate. I’m not supposed to talk unless it’s my experience.” So of course, immediately I started having these really intense experiences with life, and I could really lucidly, very seeing things happening and understanding, and my understanding increased so much.

Rick: It’s funny, I went through, I wouldn’t say similar, but kind of, you remind me of a change that I underwent in the sense that I taught transcendental meditation for 25 years, but I was always parroting. I was just sort of, “Here’s what I was taught to say, now I’m saying it.” I’m talking about states of consciousness that I haven’t experienced myself. I have an intuitive feel for them, but it’s not my experience. And I reached a certain point at which I felt, “I can’t do that anymore.” And I still don’t feel qualified to teach, but I’m good at asking questions, because I don’t have to know anything to ask questions. But there’s this desire to be authentic and not to pose as something one is not. And I imagine that’s kind of what you were …

Ishvara: Yeah, that was the whole thing, was to authenticate the space. And my feeling, knowing at the point, was that life and the cosmos were saying, “We’re here now, and this is the work that we’re doing, and this has to be authentic.” And it’s not about anything else, it’s about being this. And it’s a physical experience. It’s to be a body. And it’s to demonstrate that this is possible. And it’s an awakening of the flesh in the world. And it’s not a spiritual thing, it’s a very physical thing. It’s bringing the whole thing online. And it’s very powerful. And my knowing at the point was it was going to change everything in myself and everything around me. And it was my job to prepare people for that change. And it was hard for people, because it scared some people away, and other people just couldn’t drive them away with a stick. Those that saw, felt, and connected, and others just, “Ah, that’s too much.”

Rick: So after you had this shift, were you still attracted to reading books? And if so, did you see them with a whole new perspective, and no longer have that pinch that you felt that there was always something missing? Or did you just give up reading books because you were just completely focused on your own experience at that point?

Ishvara: I haven’t found very many books that are very interesting to me. Because I’ll read a book and it’s like, it’s not complete.

Rick: You kind of alluded to some people finding you more interesting or attractive or something after this shift, and others getting a little spooked and distancing themselves. This implies, I guess, that you had a little satsang or something, a little study group that you were leading? Okay, and so then when you underwent this shift, there was a separation of wheat from chaff that took place. Actually, any comments on that? Because I have another question.

Ishvara: Well, yeah, what was funny, as this awakening was kind of a drawn-out process, and when I first started doing some of this, when I first started getting acquainted with my true self, my cosmic self, I recognized Ishvara, and it seemed like something was exterior to myself, and so I would be speaking from that space, and of course people saw that as channeling. And we had, in our little store on Sunday morning, I’d have 50, 60 people coming, and they were all excited about it, and you just had lots of people, “Hi!” And then when I said, “This is me,” people couldn’t accept that. They wanted some outside entity. They couldn’t accept a person being here in the flesh. And so a lot of them split. We lost a lot of people at that point.

Rick: That’s interesting. That’s funny. And when you refer to Ishvara, is that a name that you use to refer to the cosmic self or to the higher self?

Ishvara: Well, no. As I said, I was my mother’s son until I was, what, 40 years old or something, and then I became the cosmic son. And the cosmic son’s name is Ishvara. And so I realized it’s taken a long time to understand why I couldn’t be known early on, because the whole body had to be prepared. I had to have a lot of physical experience, and the body had to mature enough to be able to handle the influx of this energy that’s happening even now. I mean, the body is still in this state of evolving. I mean, a lot of stuff is changing still. And so that’s why I said I was my mother’s son up to 40 or so years old.

Rick: In the sense that everyone is their mother’s son.

Ishvara: And then after the awakening, these things began to change. And so it was just transformation. So at that time, as this began to change, I became aware of my true self. And of course I had to play with that for a while, because I wasn’t willing to accept, “Oh, that’s something else.” I was like, “No, I don’t want anything to do with that. That’s too weird.” But over a period of time, it’s like finally the feeling, knowing, and my inner awareness was, “Come on, quit fooling around with this. Just own it. It’s who you are. You’re either going to keep being this and keep this held at bay, and you’re going to keep having this, or you’re going to hold it off. You can, but to move forward, you’re going to have to own this.”

Rick: Now by definition, it almost seems that a spiritual awakening, in the sense that we are using the term, is a shifting of identity. And so many people who have such an awakening say, “Well, for so many years I thought of myself as this flesh-bound, I identify with my body. Now I realize I am not that, I am something much vaster.” And so is that basically what you’re referring to? I mean, you choose to use the word “ishvara.” In principle, could everyone call it “ishvara” if they wanted to, and that’s just a word that you find to be descriptive or representative of it?

Ishvara: I think that the thing that I am teaching, the thing that I’m bringing to people, is that we’re dual. And we could not be alive without this duality. And each cell is dual, and we have a cosmic aspect to our cell. We have the imbalance in the frequency to create life. It’s an imbalance. There’s a slower and a higher. The slower is like a negative. It’s not a negative is bad, it’s a negative and positive. Positive is a slightly higher speed, higher frequency, and the negative is a lower frequency. And these two combine to create existence. And so everything is vibration. And so we’re always in this kind of imbalance, and what happens as one awakens, the balance shifts. And so one, instead of being all flesh, one becomes more cosmic, and that’s a slow process.

Rick: Kind of like a seesaw.

Ishvara: A seesaw, yeah. And so most people are kind of teeter-tottering, and you have moments of elusiveness, you have moments of inspiration.

Rick: So the seesaw is like this, and I’m Joe truck driver.

Ishvara: And see, what happens is that the flesh gets all the representatives. I mean, the flesh has the conditional reality, it’s consensus reality. The flesh gets from day one, it’s the programming, it’s all the perks, it’s all the help, and the cosmic self is put in the background, and as a child that’s your imagination, that doesn’t exist. And so everything is happening according to the world, according to the material man, and the cosmic person, the cosmic being is put in the background, and so it’s kind of held out there. And so naturally, a lot of people make this really separation between the two, and so that’s always out there someplace.

Rick: Yeah, well I mean, it’s a very dense world we live in, you know.

Ishvara: It’s no wonder.

Rick: Yeah, the conditioning is very strong, and stuff is coming at us, and I think most people don’t even realize there’s a cosmic self. You start talking about it, and they say, “What are you talking about?” But obviously, these days at least, it seems to be getting more and more…

Ishvara: Well, people refer to it as a soul or spirit, or a master within. There’s any number of things that’s referred to, but I’m always trying to give it some fresh look, because there’s so many hooks to all these different words. And so I thought, well, the cosmic self is a kind of unknown word, maybe, that maybe people can say, “Well, what do you mean by that?” You get a person to start asking a question, then maybe there’s an openness there. So my cosmic self is called Ishvara. That’s the name of that. And I realized that name, Ishvara, is all that man can know of God, and to me, that’s all that I can know of God. And God, to me, is just a word that may offend some people, but I realize that God has many faces and many interpretations, and so I’m not settling on any one thing. And Source, what is Source? Source is everything. If it’s any one place, it has to be everywhere. And so we can argue today’s world’s end on that. And so people can believe what they want to believe, but I recommend that people find something, hook themselves to something that’s totally unlimited. Because if you believe in something that’s limited, then you’re as limited as that. And so if you can find something that takes the ceiling off, then you can go as far as you can imagine, as far as you can go.

Rick: Yeah. You’re old enough to remember the incredible string band, perhaps, but two lines from their songs come to mind. One is, “Whatever you think, it’s more than that.” And another one is, “Light that is one, though the lamps be many.” And when you say, “My higher self is Ishvara,” I mean, would you acknowledge that I or anyone could say the same thing if they chose to use that term to refer to it? And would you also say that you and I and Leela and everyone have this, on that level, you know, on this level we’re waves, on that level we’re all one ocean, and it’s the same cosmic self. It’s not like there’s a bunch of separate cosmic selves for each individual.

Ishvara: No, the cosmos, the cosmic, the universe, the absolute, has divided itself into unique expressions. So each one of us is a unique expression of that, an individual, but not separate.

Rick: Right, no two waves on the ocean are the same, but it’s all the same ocean.

Ishvara: Yeah, it all comes from the source, and the source splits itself into all this diverse manifestation. Or appears to. Yeah, and so it’s all connected, and so it all comes from source, and each unique expression has certain unique purposes to it.

Rick: And role to play.

Ishvara: Role to play and gifts to give. And so people that get attached to a personality or a certain expression get trapped, and so there’s a certain unlimited way of being with that where we don’t have this attachment. And there’s a freedom that follows from a non-attachment.

Rick: I liked what you said about a certain imbalance is necessary for creation to even arise. I mean, it’s as if to say, back to the ocean metaphor, there has to be some kind of wind or something to stir up some waves, otherwise it’s just all flatness. And so there has to be some perturbation or some disturbance in the force, so to speak, for creation to arise. And as you say, that’s not bad, it’s not wrong, it’s just the way it works.

Ishvara: The very nature of vibration is there has to be something, you know, something has to be a little off. The vibration is …

Rick: In Sanskrit there’s this term “leisham vidya,” which means “faint remains of ignorance,” and that’s not meant to be a bad thing, it just means that in order for life to be a living reality, to distinguish between the wall and the door, between your fork and your mouth, there has to be an appreciation of differences. And some people don’t like that term because they feel like it demeans the glory of creation.

Ishvara: Well, it’s to celebrate diversity. I mean, the whole thing is that the cosmos has created itself in all these different aspects to have this experience. And if it all was the same, blah! What’s the point? And the people that try to annihilate the duality don’t know what they’re talking about.

Rick: You mean sort of the Neo-Advaita people who say, “It’s all an illusion”?

Ishvara: “It’s all an illusion,” and what’s the point? I’ve had many arguments with friends that are very stuck on the non-duality and annihilation, and I say, “Fine, go ahead, go blah. What are you going to do then?”

Rick: I mean, if you think of it from God’s perspective, so to speak, there’s this explosion of creativity that’s happening constantly throughout this whole universe. Whether you look in a microscope or a telescope or whatever, there’s this amazing, brilliant, infinitely intelligent play going on. And to me, that is so beautiful and so profound, and it seems like a disservice to try to just dismiss it as an illusion.

Ishvara: Yeah, the very act of creating is a duality. I mean, the whole thing is based on a slight imbalance, and the cells are based on a slight imbalance, and we always strive towards some kind of harmony, but that’s our act. And so we’re always doing that, and we fantasize about, “Oh, we’re going to bring the world to some kind of harmony,” but it’s not going to happen. But the whole thing is, we learn how to compromise, we learn how to work with each other and embrace the diversity of life and celebrate it.

Rick: And I would say that you can sort of think of the wholeness or the cosmic value as being like a solvent or a lubricant or something. The differences are still going to be there, but everything sort of works so much more harmoniously if there’s a sufficient infusion of that or balance with that. It’s like you can have your Republicans and your Democrats and all your differences, but if there’s enough wholeness, it kind of embraces all those diversities so they don’t clash with each other.

Ishvara: It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle, everything fits together if you allow.

Rick: I don’t mean to sound like some kind of Sanskrit scholar, because I’m not, but as I understand it, the term “Brahman” in Sanskrit is thought of as … there’s a saying that “Brahman is the eater of everything,” and I think what that is meant to say is that it sort of engulfs and contains all the differences. It doesn’t eliminate the differences, but it’s more than the sum of the parts and is able to sort of contain them. And in so doing, you often find people, and I’m sure you would say this yourself, who have kind of awoken to that level of life, who are real comfortable with paradox and ambiguity. They can sort of be presented with very diverse viewpoints and say, “Yeah, I can see where that fits into the bigger picture, and sure, this thing over here, which is completely at odds with that thing, I can also see how that thing fits into the bigger picture.” Do you want to elaborate on that a bit?

Ishvara: No, no, no. The art of living is about allowing that ability to see how things fit. If one can’t achieve that level, you’re kind of doomed, because you’re always going to run into someone or something that doesn’t fit. And the diversity of life, just seeing these differences and seeing how each unique aspect belongs, and when you go through life thinking, “This doesn’t belong,” then you’re going to be in trouble.

Rick: And getting back to your grandfather, I mean, I think there’s an innate human desire to rise to an absolute perspective, because that is sort of in it, or hardwired to need that, but failing to do so, people have a tendency to take a relative perspective and make it absolute. And then when they do that, obviously it clashes with everything else, because it’s not absolute. And so they see themselves as at odds with everything, like this kid who sees the cows in his dreams and is like, “Devil!” It’s interesting that when you first had this awakening, your little group got spooked, or some of them anyway, because they were comfortable with the thought that maybe you were channeling some entity, some individual being, but some of them weren’t comfortable with the idea that you were just speaking from cosmic awareness, or wholeness.

Ishvara: Yeah, people have had trouble with the authority that I’ve demonstrated, because I do have this knowledge that I just know, and it’s just there. And so I speak with authority, and so I’m often criticized for that authority.

Rick: Christ had the same problem, people say, “Who is this guy that says all this stuff?”

Ishvara: I’ve had it a lot! And even people that it resonates with, they still have a problem with it. Even though they know in their heart it’s true, they still go, “Well, you can’t say that. How do you know?” What do you do when you have access to something and you know it, and it proves to be true, but yet people still have a problem because you said it? It seems that some people feel like they need to put me in my place, because I don’t have some lineage, because I don’t have some special teacher, because I don’t have some college degree, because I just… You’re not trained, you’re not a psychologist, how do you know? You can’t do this, you can’t say this.

Rick: Well, you don’t strike me as dogmatic. I mean, you’re not saying, “This is the truth,” and, “If you don’t agree with this, you’re going to hell,” or something like that.

Ishvara: I just put stuff out there and people can take it or leave it.

Rick: Yeah, which sounds like a pretty easy-going way to be. I mean, you’re not demanding, you’re not threatening people.

Ishvara: I’m often criticized because I’m not stern enough.

Rick: And you’re not threatening people with dire consequences, if they don’t believe what you say or anything. Give me an example of something you might say with authority that people might take exception to.

Ishvara: Right now, I can’t think of anything.

Rick: But like, you’ll be giving a talk, for instance, and you’ll be speaking as if you really know this stuff, which you do, and people are thinking, “How does he know this stuff?” or, “Is he just quoting books but appropriating the knowledge to himself?” Is that the kind of …?

Ishvara: Well, let’s see. I don’t know.

Rick: I don’t mean to put you on the spot.

Ishvara: No, I can’t really think of anything.

Rick: But I think I understand the principle.

Ishvara: It hasn’t happened for quite a while, because most people I have around me now have been with me for quite a while now, so they’re used to me.

Rick: Well, it’s funny, you know, I think it was Christ who said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own home.” And there’s that saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” If a person seems like an average Joe in most respects, and yet speaks with some kind of profundity, people think, “Well, wait a minute, how could this guy, he’s like me, how could he be speaking this way?”

Ishvara: And a lot of that is, I am very normal, and I live a very normal life. And people sort of expect … I know one woman one time criticized me. She says, “Well, I have bib overalls on, and I’ve been out in the garden,” and she says, “Well, you can’t be enlightened.”

Rick: That’s great. Well, you know, that’s actually why I came up with this title, “Buddha at the Gas Pump,” I mean, the implication being that you might run into somebody at the gas station pumping gas who’s in the same state of awareness that Buddha was in. They don’t have to look special or talk special.

Ishvara: I mean, that’s something to get people over. I mean, it’s not a look. It’s the way one lives their life.

Rick: And it’s not a way of speaking or a way of dressing, or it doesn’t matter how long your hair is or whether you have hair.

Ishvara: And I used to wear robes, and some of our old videotapes that are on television still, I wear robes, and people go, “Well, you’re special because you wear robes.” No, I wore robes because that was the only thing I was comfortable in, because the energy in my body at the time was still adjusting, and normal clothes that would adjust, I just felt rigid and confined. And Leela noticed it when she said, “You’re just not comfortable in clothes.” And so a friend of mine made some robes, and, “Oh, it’s so good, so comfortable.” And so I started wearing robes, and I’d wear them everywhere, and people went, “Oh, look at this guy in a robe. Who’s he?” And I just got over it. Of course, I could hear them. I got over it, and I could just go out wearing my robes anywhere, and it didn’t bother me. I was just kind of okay.

Rick: I did that in India for a while, wearing dhotis and whatnot, but of course in India, but then I was a West Indian.

Ishvara: In India, it would be okay. But then I got to where I could finally wear more normal clothes now, and I actually wear regular jeans or shirts and stuff now, too. So I’ve got to where the clothing doesn’t matter. My body’s adjusting again. It’s constantly going through changes. So I’m wearing just regular dress pants and dress shirts now, too.

Rick: Sure, you can put on a tuxedo and go someplace.

Ishvara: Yeah, it doesn’t bother me like it did before. So it’s still changing. But it was funny, people would criticize me for that, “Well, you’re just trying to be special because you’re wearing a robe.” I said, “No, I wear a robe because that’s the only thing I’m really comfortable with.”

Rick: And other people criticized you because you didn’t look special enough wearing bib overalls.

Ishvara: Yeah, right. So there’s always something outside that people would find to criticize you about. So I said, “Well, just do extreme to give them something really to holler about.”

Rick: I think this illustrates a point, which is that people do tend to objectify the idea of enlightenment and to assume that it is characterized by certain trappings, a certain way of speaking, dressing, whatever, eating, shaving your head, not shaving, gorging your hair.

Ishvara: I shave my head because I don’t have any hair up there. I said when I was 17 or 18 years old, my grandfather was bald on my mother’s side, or my father’s side. He was bald when he was 27 years old, and I remember a picture of him up in the mountains. He had snow on his head. And then I said, “If I ever get bald, I’m going to shave my head.” So I started losing my hair when I was 17 or 18 years old. You can see in my school pictures, my hairline is going to do-do-do-do like that. So I shaved my head when I was probably 25. It was just getting really thin and hard to do anything with. So finally I shaved it off. People said, “Why do you shave your head for?” I said, “Because I don’t have any hair.” It’s just a job to try to do anything with it. It looks ridiculous trying to comb it back and trying to get it up there, so I just gave up with it.

Rick: Let’s talk a little bit about this transformation of the body, with this kind of cosmic awareness or cosmic energy, and what it puts the body through. I’ve read various things where some people really go through hell, because there’s so much voltage and the body is just really freaking out, trying to adapt to it. And some people, it’s a more gentle process and it’s more slow. The person I interviewed previously, to this interview, is named Sarojini. She was a normal housewife, didn’t have any concept of spiritual things, and all of a sudden one day she felt this energy in her head and her kundalini started awakening. She didn’t know what kundalini was and she started searching on the internet. She thought she had a disease and she was just going through all this incredibly intense stuff. And over the course of ten months she went through this transformation, and after ten months she had this sort of quick awakening to the higher self, which she hasn’t lost since. But it was, for her, a very compacted period of time. So how has it been for you and how is it continuing to be? Let’s talk about the extent to which the physiology might ultimately be refined.

Ishvara: Well, I was doing pretty good for quite a while after the awakening, and then I got some rheumatoid arthritis stuff going on. And the professionals said that they would try to keep me comfortable as I progressed towards a wheelchair. It was that bad. And I just wouldn’t accept that. I just kept knowing this was some kind of weird transformation going on. I kept feeling like the body was in some kind of rebuilding process.

Rick: Were they trying to give you drugs?

Ishvara: Oh yeah, they had me on different drugs and things, and nothing was really working. I was doing a lot of herbal things too. My doctor said, “Well, it’s not going to hurt you, but it’s not going to help you either.” He got really interested in my practice because I was doing my meditations and things. And he could see that I learned how to control it with my mind. So I could make it back off when it would start up. So that was when we were in Oregon still. I noticed when we came to Santa Fe, I came to Santa Fe to do a talk, and I felt a lot better here. I told Leela, “Maybe Santa Fe is the place to be.” Shortly after that, we moved here because I just felt better. But it was already starting to clear up before we left. That was Oregon. But that was one thing. Then a couple years ago, I started losing a lot of weight and something else was going on. They found out that I was gluten intolerant. So I went through this. I’ve been going through a lot in the last couple years, a lot of physical transformation, which was like another boot up for the system.

Rick: Another boot up?

Ishvara: Yeah, another…

Rick: Like a rebooting?

Ishvara: Yeah, rebooting system. So that was quite intense. Last winter was very difficult for me. It’s just a shifting, changing of the energy again. So things have stabilized pretty good now, but my diet has really changed. I’ve lost a lot of weight.

Rick: Well, you look like a good weight.

Ishvara: Yeah, it’s okay. I’m allergic and diabetic and different things. The system has just demanded…

Rick: You’re diabetic?

Ishvara: Yeah, it’s just all at once, this is what you’re doing. So okay, that’s good. I’m just totally intolerant to sugar. A little tiny taste of sugar gives me a headache. The body system is so in tune, the moment I taste something that’s not right, the body reacts to it. So I’ve got this really fine-tuned system now that lets me know right away what it doesn’t want. So I listen. I’ve learned to listen very closely, and so it’s getting well balanced. But I’ve seen, the reason of that is my energy is so highly refined now that it doesn’t want any kind of blockage or anything that’s polluted or anything like that in there. So it’s just… I don’t quite understand all of it yet. It’s still in this process.

Rick: Some people might argue that you’d be going through health things regardless of any sort of spiritual awakening, because everybody does.

Ishvara: See, I’ve always been very, very super healthy, and then all at once… I was 190 pounds, doing very well, working every day on our place, doing gardening, eating very well, everything up to a point, and all at once I couldn’t eat. I started losing weight, and I went from 195 down to 130. I couldn’t eat. Period. And then I had an allergic reaction to penicillin, and in the meantime I was gluten intolerant.

Rick: Are you a vegetarian?

Ishvara: No, I wasn’t a vegetarian.

Rick: Oh, you’re not?

Ishvara: No.

Rick: Doesn’t matter.

Ishvara: Yeah, no. And so all of these things just kind of happened overnight almost. I mean, it wasn’t a gradual thing. It was just like all at once this turned. So it wasn’t something like, say, my age. It just… and then, you know, it was just… we could say, well, it was building up, but it was like usually when those things build up, it’s kind of a gradual breaking down. This kind of like…

Rick: It’s abrupt.

Ishvara: It’s like one night you wake up, or one morning you wake up, and hey, all these things at once.

Rick: Yeah, I mean, I’m anticipating what skeptics might say. Some might say that this is just part of being a human being and growing older. But I have seen many instances where, with the dawning of some cosmic awareness or something, the body starts to freak out because it needs to fall into line with that higher energy. It’s like, what was it, Christ said something about putting new wine into old wineskins or something. The body needs to undergo a transformation in order to come into line with…

Ishvara: Yeah, I saw it as a purification. I just saw it as something that the body needed to do, and it just used… it’s opportunistic. It just used that as… I just saw it as, I feel great now, and I’m 65 years old, and it’s just, you know, I just… and I can work, I work just as hard as I ever did now. And I mean, I get out here and I dig holes. I dug that waterfall out there, dug a big huge hole through almost solid rock. And I just work just as hard as I ever have, actually harder in some ways. And so it certainly hasn’t weakened me.

Rick: No, I shouldn’t think it would.

Ishvara: So it’s…

Rick: But all these things, you know, the body and the mind or the soul or whatever, they’re all interconnected. And you know, if you pull one leg of a table, all the other legs are going to come along. And you know, some people, they do it the other way around. They might do all kinds of physical purification in the hopes of elevating their consciousness. Sometimes that works to some extent, you know, but in other cases it’s like “zoom,” the awareness dawns and the body starts to have to come in line.

Ishvara: Well, I started looking at, okay, I have these things going on with the body now, what am I missing? Is there something I need to look at with the body to help it? And so I started going back into some of my older teachings to look to see, you know, like… And also, it’s like the thyroid was off. And the thyroid with some of the spiritual stuff is important. And something that the doctor happened to miss when he was doing the test was my thyroid, the iodine, was really low. And he didn’t know it, you know, and said, “Oh, we didn’t run that test.” And they ran that test and the iodine was really off. And started taking that and I started feeling really better right away. So there was just some imbalances there.

Rick: Well, this is a useful point too, because some people might think, “Oh, I feel like crap, but it must be some kind of spiritual transformation taking place, so I’ll just keep feeling like crap.” But a lot of times you need to go to the doctor and…

Ishvara: I say, “Go to the doctor first, get a health checkup, find out if there’s anything physical first.” You can’t blame it on spiritual stuff. I never did blame it on spiritual stuff, because I went to the doctor when I lost weight. They couldn’t find out what was going on with me. I had to help them find out what it was. But, you know, they didn’t know about some of these things. They just didn’t like gluten intolerance at the time. This was several years back and they didn’t just know about this. And later on they started finding out. We had to do our own research. And so after that, now they’re getting a lot of information about these things. But, you know, it’s one test he missed and so… And then they go, “Oh, well, we didn’t do that test. We better do that.” And so I did that test. “Oh, wow, you’re down here. You better do this.” So after I do that, because the last winter I was freezing to death. I couldn’t get warm. I just could not get warm. And of course, you know, the mind thinks, “Oh, something spiritual is terrible is happening to me.” But I tell people, my students, I say, “Look, make sure first that there’s not something physical going on.” That’s the easiest thing to do, because spiritual stuff, that’s hard. Trying to figure out spiritually, you can meditate and meditate and meditate. But then the intellect gets in there and says, “Oh, well, you must be this. You must be that.” Because you’ve got all this consensus reality, spiritual mumbo-jumbo out there that says, “Oh, well, you know, this is that other thing, and you don’t know.”

Rick: Now your website is called enlifement.org. And it’s a very beautiful website, by the way. Real nice graphics and everything. Why did you choose that term “enlifement”? What do you mean by it? And I suppose it represents what you teach.

Ishvara: Enlifement, all of my teaching is about life, living life now. And so all the group got together and we talked about what could we, because our other one is alaya.org. And we’re talking about, “Well, what would really get us, what’s it saying about what we want to present?” And my teaching is about living life.

Rick: As opposed to some airy-fairy future?

Ishvara: Yeah, it’s now, now! And so, living life now, enlifement, in life now. And so we found the word that wasn’t being used, and we did all our research. And it’s really hard getting a word that’s not in use, the domain name and everything. Did all the work to get that, and so, yeah, enlifement. And so that kind of fits the teaching, and it’s enlifement.

Rick: And so if a student comes to you, what do you actually teach them? What do they go home with to practice or whatever?

Ishvara: Well, I don’t have a structured teaching, and so my work is tailored to the person.

Rick: Individually?

Ishvara: Individually, yeah. And I work with them individually, and I point them to their Self.

Rick: In what way? How do you do that?

Ishvara: Well, it’s like, “What do you need? What do you expect? And what are you doing for yourself?”

Rick: Let’s say they come and they say, “Well, you know, I really want to know what you know. I want to have that cosmic self dawn in my awareness. I want to be enlightened. Of course I need all kinds of relative things, but this is my highest priority. How do I get that?” What do you say to them?

Ishvara: Well, I would first ask them what they’ve done.

Rick: So far?

Ishvara: So far. “What have you done for yourself so far? And what are you trying to get away from?”

Rick: Do you usually find that, that people are trying to get away from something?

Ishvara: A lot of times they are.

Rick: You mean like, just boring job, bad relationship, that kind of stuff?

Ishvara: Yeah, a lot of times people come to spiritual journey.

Rick: Because they are suffering.

Ishvara: Because they are suffering, yeah. And trying to escape something.

Rick: Of course, there is no harm in trying to come out of suffering, it’s natural.

Ishvara: Oh, no, no, no, no, it’s natural. But yeah, that’s what drives people, because usually when a person is not suffering, they are not too much interested in spiritual things.

Rick: Good point. It’s said in some circles that the angels have a real hard time getting enlightened because they don’t even want to close their eyes.

Ishvara: Oh, yeah, yeah, right. So that’s usually the nature of it. You find out what a person is suffering and if it’s something psychological, you maybe lead them to a psychologist. Or if they have drug addictions, you lead them to some place that can help them with addictions. I don’t spend my time with addictions because there are too many good things out there to help a person with addictions.

Rick: Yeah, it’s not your specialty.

Ishvara: And you point them to their self.

Rick: And do many of your students practice some kind of meditation or something on a daily basis?

Ishvara: Some of them do and some of them don’t. I don’t teach a particular meditation, it’s very unique to a person. And so I help a person if they want to meditate, I work with them finding something that works for them.

Rick: And have a lot of your students been with you for a long time?

Ishvara: Yeah.

Rick: And what kind of progress do they seem to be making?

Ishvara: Well, they’re just being life.

Rick: I mean, if they’re sticking around, they must be getting something out of it.

Ishvara: Yeah, yeah. I don’t create expectations in people, so it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being.

Rick: But there must be another dimension to it, in a sense. I mean, sure I can understand living life more fully and living in the moment and not yearning for the past or hoping for the future, just sort of being fully in the present. Is that one way of… do you help your students begin to shift into that orientation, for instance?

Ishvara: A lot of the work that I’m doing is talking about the new consciousness and the new human that we’re becoming, which is this cosmic self.

Rick: But people are going to think, “Wow, that sounds great, I want to do it. How can I become the new human?”

Ishvara: Well, it’s of course accepting the old human first, getting to be okay with that. And the foundation, of course, for one’s life is being okay with what is.

Rick: That’s a good point.

Ishvara: And unless you’re okay with what is, you’re not going anywhere, because otherwise you’re escaping. And so the first step, of course, is being okay with what is, and that’s usually the hard one for people, because they have a lot of judgment. And that seems to be the hardest step, the longest step for people. But once you’re okay with what is, then you’re ready to take on something.

Rick: So let’s say that among your students, a certain percentage have reached the stage at which they’re okay with what is, then what? I mean, then what is the progress for them, or how do you facilitate their further advancement?

Ishvara: Well, the next steps are pretty individual. It’s like realizing that life is what you make it. Who do you want to be, and how do you see yourself in this world? And I don’t create expectations in people, so it’s pretty much up to the individual. How do you want to live your life? And I don’t teach people to become enlightened, because to me that’s nothing. That’s just another game that people play. And so it’s about embracing your true self, finding your true self, and letting the body go through this transformation.

Rick: Wouldn’t you say that’s what enlightenment is, though? I mean, the word has so much baggage that it’s hesitant to use it.

Ishvara: Well, yes, I don’t talk about it.

Rick: Whatever that word ideally is supposed to represent, perhaps it was meant to represent just exactly what you’re saying, you know? Finding your true self and having your whole relative life, including your body, come into alignment with that.

Ishvara: See, that’s the thing where living life in a way of being in harmony and balance, day by day, being present with what is, to me, is it. And what happens each moment is it.

Rick: Right, yeah. So I was listening to someone the other day and someone had asked him, “How do I know what the will of God is? I want to do the will of God.” And his answer, Adyashanti actually, I was listening to, and his answer was, “Well, look at what’s happening right now. It’s the will of God.” So, you know, be in tune with that.

Ishvara: Because most people have this kind of idea that, “Well, this isn’t it, it’s supposed to be something else.” And so trying to keep people in this state of awareness, of contentment with what’s in front of us, being this, because there’s so much discontent arises from thinking this isn’t it. And there’s something better, there’s something more, and that more, that better doesn’t come from somewhere else. It comes from being present here. And each moment one has this access to feeling-knowing, and if you’re really present and allowing, you have this intuitive kind of knowing that’s happening and you get inspired, “Oh, I’m going to do this now.”

Rick: Which is good that you said that, because a person might, hearing the first part of what you said, they might think, “Oh, well I just get totally content with what is, and then I just sit there and stagnate, and I don’t try to improve things.” I mean, when you moved into this house, you probably saw a backyard that was pretty sparse, and sure, you were content and resting in the moment, but you thought, “Whoa, I’m going to plant flowers here, I’m going to dig a fountain there, and make all these improvements to make this a more beautiful space.” So motivation and incentive are not incompatible with contentment.

Ishvara: No, it’s always action. I’m not a sitter, I don’t teach sitting. It’s always keep moving, keep being, and keep doing, and creating.

Rick: It’s one of those paradoxes, and I think it bears reiterating, because some people look at somebody like Eckhart Tolle or something and they’ll think, “Well, he just seems to sit there like a blob and talk.” I don’t want to be, if being in the now means just sort of being passive and not having motivation and inspiration and initiative, then I don’t want it. And I think what you’re saying is that it doesn’t mean that, that the two, even though they might seem paradoxical, they fit together very nicely.

Ishvara: Yeah, one is to be active and creative. I mean, we are movers, we’re not sitters. Silence is not silent. Silence is the act of having the intellect not going crazy. And we’re creative, and the cosmos is creative. The universe is always this dance, and to think that we’re supposed to be still and silent is really an oxymoron. Our body is never still. The cells are always very busy, and if our body is still for one moment, we die. And so the whole universe is this dance and this movement, and that’s what we are. And so when people think about life, they need to think about the dance, the movement, and the action, and the creativity that we’re capable of. And every moment is a new possibility for something. And so to inspire people to be creative, and to use their ability to create and to do that, and to be participating, it doesn’t matter what you participate in, just so that it’s something that comes from you, something that you can get yourself into, that you feel enthusiastic about, that you feel real about. Not just to do something to do something. That’s false.

Rick: Right. Something which you feel called to do. And wouldn’t you say that someone who is doing that, who is enthusiastically pursuing their calling, at the same time, they can be perfectly silent. That silence is like the foundation, and then on that foundation, you can rise high in whatever way you want to do. There’s this whole point of misappropriating levels, assuming that the silent level has to be applied to the active level, and it’s not the way it works. So if someone wants to, do you have any kind of long distance way of teaching people, or do they have to be in Albuquerque?

Ishvara: No, we Skype with people, we have people in Germany.

Rick: Oh, that’s right, you have a group in Germany. And theoretically you could have a group in Australia, or whatever.

Ishvara: Oh yeah, wherever people are.

Rick: I’m sure you don’t relish the idea of flying to Australia.

Ishvara: No, and we’re working on doing the video. We’re setting up to do that and have that broadcast.

Rick: Kind of a live streaming thing?

Ishvara: Live streaming thing, yeah. We’re working on that.

Rick: And people will be able to call in questions or something?

Ishvara: Yeah, we’re working on doing that.

Rick: So enlifement.org is where people should go to find out more, is that right? I’ll have a link in your picture and a little description and all that, so people can just go there. Is there anything you feel like, I haven’t thought to ask that we really should, ought to have covered that’s important to you, either in your own experience or things you like to tell people or anything else that we really haven’t touched upon that we ought to have done?

Ishvara: I can’t think of anything other than it’s my love for people that keeps me doing what I’m doing.

Rick: Yeah, that sounds good.

Ishvara: It really is. I have great compassion and understanding. I’ve been through it. I’ve just been about everywhere a person could be, and so it’s given me great compassion for where people are. So I have this understanding.

Rick: One thing that’s interesting that I forgot to mention is that in some cases people seem to be, they’re kind of in a mess and they’re struggling and striving and trying to get out of their mess and doing spiritual practices and meditating and what not, hoping to someday, it’s almost like they’re exerting effort, hoping to come out of this dilemma. And in other cases, people, and this I’d say is more in your case, it’s sort of like some big cosmic hook came and grabbed them around the neck and said, “Here we go, hang on, this is what you’re going to do.” And they found themselves inexorably propelled along a trajectory toward awakening, and kicking and screaming in some cases. It’s funny the way it works that way. Some people aren’t the least bit interested. You were, at the age of seven you were having these visions and prognostications. Some people it’s like, farthest thing from their mind, and all of a sudden something just grabs them and they find themselves holding on for dear life and going through this awakening process.

Ishvara: That’s funny how it works. I was always very spiritual in certain ways, and called towards the ministry and just very disappointed when that fell through, and just like, “Well, what was that all about?” And then to come back to this in this way, I guess something was still going on, and it’s just different than I imagined.

Rick: Some people say that we kind of prearrange before we’re even born that we’re going to serve a certain role, and that we eventually hopefully find that role and start to fulfill it. Well, you’re fulfilling yours it seems.

Ishvara: I think so. I haven’t got fired yet.

Rick: Well, good, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me over. I’ve enjoyed this talk.

Ishvara: Thanks for doing this, and it was nice meeting you.

Rick: Yeah, good meeting you.

Ishvara: Thank you.

Rick: So thanks to all who have been listening or watching. I’m not sure in which order this is going to be aired, but while I’m here in New Mexico, I’m also going to be interviewing Leslie Temple Thurston, if everything comes together for that. And either this one or that one will be aired first according to the production complexities. But those are the next couple of interviews, and after that, back to Skype. So thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time.