Jacqueline Maria Longstaff Interview
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done nearly 400 of them now and if this is new to you, you might want to go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and look under the past interviews menu where you will find all the previous ones organized in various ways. This show is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. And when I say viewers, that implies there’s also an audio podcast in addition to this video you may be watching. So if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there is a PayPal button on every page of the site and there’s also a donate page which offers other options to people who don’t like to use PayPal. So my guest today is Jacqueline Maria Longstaff. Jacqueline is in Denmark and she spends a lot of her time in India going back and forth between Denmark and India and been doing that for years. And I know from having read one of her books and listened to a lot of her recordings and you know audios and videos that she has lived a very interesting life and has really been a spiritual seeker since early childhood. So I think that you’ll find this discussion interesting both in terms of her personal story and in terms of you know the teachings, the knowledge that she has gleaned through all these experiences and offers to others and has been offering for quite some time. So welcome Jacqueline, good to have you on the show.
Jacqueline: Thank you.
Rick: So in your bio that you sent me you mentioned that you began having peak experiences at an early age and that you held your first spiritual service for kids at age seven. So it might be interesting to, you know, start by telling us what one or more of these peak experiences were that you began having at an early age.
Jacqueline: Okay Rick, let me start with the first one because it kind of sets the scene for a theme in my life. When I was five years old I was singing in a concert in a Sunday school and at the same time I’d fallen madly in love as a five-year-old with a little five-year-old boy and his name was Melvin Baker, I still remember that.
Rick: Doesn’t sound like a very Danish name.
Jacqueline: The combination of singing for Jesus who I loved so much and looking at Melvin Baker, it took me beyond what we would call today, it was the beginning of peak experiences and it was really, really amazing and at seven years old I was asked to hold a spiritual service and that seemed extremely natural for me. I still remember standing there, I remember what I was wearing and it just seemed very natural to offer this service for other children. But this about the peak experiences, it was very easy for me to go deeply into the heart and one of my teachings to people has always been, “There is nothing that can arise within you that cannot be put onto the altar in the heart and offered to God”, and I began finding that out at a very early age, but at the same time I had, let’s just say, a karmic trauma in my life and this meant that whenever I did fall in love at five years old or 15 or whatever, there was always a lot of fear and suffering connected with it, and this became a great teaching for me because it was only later I realized that if I could not accept every aspect of myself, also that one that was deeply wounded, I would never be whole.
Rick: Was there fear and suffering because of experience in this life that, you know, when you fell in love things didn’t always go so well and therefore you became a little gun-shy so to speak or it just was even from the start?
Jacqueline: Yeah, I know from different ways, different sources and also my own inner exploration, it was from a previous lifetime, a very, very big shock, and what I kept doing was putting myself into situations where this was triggered without knowing how to deal with it and then beating myself up because I didn’t know what to do with it, and it went on for many, many years.
Rick: Yeah, well it’s interesting because you know sometimes spiritual people, writers, teachers, aspirants, you know, kind of brush off the whole relationship thing as being tangential or irrelevant to awakening because, you know, it’s all maya and it’s not reflective of the ultimate reality and so on, but obviously it’s something that concerns most everyone and most people aren’t monks and they haven’t renounced the world and they have relationships. And so it’s quite an issue usually in spiritual circles of how to balance relationships and deal with the relationships and so on in the context of spiritual unfoldment and development.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I have actually not had much of a split between what is spiritual and what isn’t, apart from this emotional reaction I have, but otherwise I haven’t. And you know I was with Osho just for a couple of years and I actually mentioned this in one of my books about relationship. I once heard Osho say something like, “The master-disciple relationship is the final game. Play it as beautifully as possible.” He didn’t say don’t play it. And this is also how I deal with the subject of relationships. You know, whatever game we’re playing, play it as beautifully as possible.
Rick: Yeah, what’s that book that you wrote, “Going from Relationship to Relationships” or something? What’s that title?
Jacqueline: That’s the subtitle – “Relationship as a Spiritual Pathway, from Relationshit to True Relationship.”
Rick: That’s pretty good. Osho and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were contemporaries and were actually rather critical of one another. But one thing that Maharishi made, one point he made about love was that individual love is concentrated universal love. And you know, you think of someone like Jesus or others who were said to be universally loving and contrast that with the average person who loves some people but not others. Now, you know, spiritual aspirants would probably like to be more like Jesus, have sort of an infinite, wide-open heart that could embrace everyone, but it’s a tricky minefield, you know, I suppose, to go from limited expressions of love to universal love. And one thing that I think people find, and I’ll wrap this up and let you comment, is that as they begin to evolve, the heart begins to open, they do find themselves more loving. That’s probably what you were experiencing in that church when you were loving Jesus and that little boy, and it makes them kind of susceptible, I think, to falling in love or loving people, which is great, but can often get them into trouble. I think that is a syndrome, have you encountered that?
Jacqueline: Yes, of course, in myself and in many other people I have worked with. But for myself, when I look back now, it was a first step, and actually when I was about It was so huge, and I did not project that onto anyone. Instead I became a Catholic, because I just felt there was something in the Catholic Church. I was only Catholic for about three years. Then I started arguing with the priests and the confessionals, but I think there was something, you know, in the Catholic Church, the devotion and lighting candles to the Virgin Mother, the Virgin Mary. I had something to do with this huge heart opening that helped me to be able to make sense of it, because I didn’t know what to do with it, and at that point I wasn’t projecting it onto someone else, and I feel it was a great gift, having those three years or whatever it was, as a Catholic. And then my attention started turning to the teachings of the East, and soon after that no form of religion held anything for me anymore.
Rick: What had you been doing at the age of 18 that triggered that heart opening, or did it just happen out of the blue?
Jacqueline: Well, as you may have read in some of my books, I know a lot about astrology, and at that time the planet Neptune, which is totally, what you call in English, without boundaries and its compassion, unconditional love, it went over Jupiter, which is also very connected with the heart and so on, but this is what happened astrologically, and this just started arising in me, and I started reading about the saints and could sit in the church where the singing was happening, but then in my going to confession and speaking with the priests, I was deeply dissatisfied, so I had to move on. And then I don’t remember even how it happened. I just remember sitting in Uganda with books about Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism, and after that life took me to India. I started practicing yoga and so on and life took me to India.
Rick: Okay, I’m going to probe you a little bit more on the heart opening because it sounds very interesting. So, what did you actually experience?
Jacqueline: I experienced like this warm, it was almost like explosion, and like so much love, you know, what to do with it. So I’d go in the church and light a candle. I would sing and go into ecstasy, but it was so huge, like my whole body was shaking. It was a huge energetic experience, and I just did my best. I was actually studying to become a teacher at that time, so I was trying to do my studies and not very well at all because there was so much else going on, but I happened to get a teaching degree and move on. But when I actually got to Africa, it’s interesting, something else started happening, because like I said to you, I’d never felt a split between the spiritual and non-spiritual, not really, and when I got to Africa, I loved being with the African people, and in the evenings I used to go down through the banana plantations, down to the bar where all the prostitutes and people used to dance to Congolese music. It was the Congolese music that grabbed me, and I could dance for hours and hours and hours, and I was releasing something. Looking back, I can see also the Kundalini was starting to be affected. So, you know, there was always something in my life that helped me to deal with this energetically and then move on, and then I found myself after some years at the ashram in Pune for a couple of years.
Rick: I was going to mention Kundalini because you may not have understood it at the time, but I’m sure you understand now and many people listening do, that at least if we take that particular model of subtle physiology, that a huge heart opening like you experienced was probably an awakening of the heart chakra, and probably due to some rising energy that had come up and enlivened that chakra and so on. And it’s interesting to kind of think of it that way, and it could almost be used as a model for understanding various types or flavors of awakening. I mean, sometimes people have a sort of a mind awakening that can be very vast and clear and all, but rather dry emotionally, and you know, others can have a huge heart awakening like that. There’s all sorts of different permutations and combinations.
Jacqueline: Yes, and when I actually did get to India and I met Osho, I remember a therapist there asking me what enlightenment was, and I found myself saying something to him that just came and he said, “Well, if you already know, why aren’t you doing it?” You know, it was like with that opening so much happened where I suddenly understood things without knowing where the understanding came from, and then something else happened in Pune. I don’t know if you want me to go into that.
Rick: Yeah, go into anything, sure.
Jacqueline: Yeah, because, yes, I feel it’s relevant actually. You know, as I said, I had a great fear when I was in love, of losing the man I was in love with, and you probably know about Pune in the 70s. People were always changing partners.
Rick: Right, it was quite a scene.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and my fear was totally, totally stimulated, and I had a boyfriend at the time who was very unfaithful.
Rick: Was he in Pune also?
Jacqueline: And I guess I needed this.
Rick: He was there in Pune also?
Jacqueline: Yes.
Rick: Aha.
Jacqueline: So, my fear was triggered all the time, and I was always keeping an eye on him. And one night we came out of the ashram and there were all these beautiful women around, and suddenly a woman walked up to me. She lived in the same hotel I lived in, and there had always been an attraction between us, and she put her hand on my shoulder, and I just turned around and I followed her. I even forgot my boyfriend was there and all these beautiful women. And I followed this woman and we walked in silence back to the hotel where we stayed. And when we got there, she went in her room and I went in mine, and I sat down. I just managed to sit down, and suddenly I was sucked out of the top of the head and flying through the cosmos, and this very powerful voice saying, “We have been waiting for you.” And this was the first of the beginning of many contacts. There was no fear, and when I came back in again, I managed to lie on my bed, and I was just awake all night buzzing with energy, but after that it was like everything Osho spoke about, I understood totally, without knowing where that came from. And then I had manifestations in my living room here in Copenhagen some months later, and this went on quite a while, where I felt afterwards like I was being tuned up for the work I was here to do. And I did not try to cultivate this, because I knew according to the teachings, psychic phenomena could be a great distraction, and I really wanted to awaken to my true nature. So I kind of left it alone, but I was later told by somebody in Denmark what had actually happened.
Rick: Yeah, I want to ask you about that in some detail. I just want to comment that I always found it ironic that you know Osho called all these people sannyasins when there was really such a relationship scene going on there. It kind of, in my estimation, sort of cheapened the term sannyasin, and I think maybe other people sort of looked at it that way too. You know, what do you think?
Jacqueline: I understand you, and it certainly could, and it triggered many people, but you know there were also those, myself included, where we did anything we had to do to awaken. It was like I opened myself to any experience that I felt was going to help me to awaken to what I perceived Osho had awakened to, and I know in the therapy groups at that time, many things happened in those therapy groups that wouldn’t be allowed today. I know many people who went to therapy in Pune in the 70s and later on had to go in therapy in their home countries to deal with the traumas they got from their therapy. My experience was that we were willing to do anything to awaken. That was my experience, and I know it was so for many, and when I look back at what Osho did, you know, I felt it was a time of great experimentation. I don’t feel all of it was successful, but there was one thing I felt was a great, great gift, for me, those few years in the Osho Ashram, because the meditative energy was very, very powerful, and also we had to take part in the therapy group. We had to work on ourselves, and for me this combination, being forced to go deeply into your stuff, and then the ability, what you call the offering or the possibility of going deep, deep, deep into meditation, those two things together, because if you only go into the meditation, people can kind of go up here in the upper chakras and think they’re totally Enlightened, and close down for the rest of the stuff. We had to deal with all of it, and at the same time, having a more meditative consciousness meant it was easier not to get stuck in the traumas that came up. Do you know what I mean by that?
Rick: Yeah, so it sounds like there was perhaps less spiritual bypassing than there might have been, and has been, in some other situations.
Jacqueline: Yes, definitely. I felt it was a gift.
Rick: Yeah, I think a lot of spiritual teachers, famous ones, certainly Maharishi was this way, did a lot of experimentation. It’s not like he had it all figured out from the start. It was like he would try something, see the effect, try something else, and you know, and there were, you know, train wrecks and casualties too, as you say, and people who probably never recovered or are still recovering from things that happened.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I actually started off my meditation with TM.
Rick: Oh, did you?
Jacqueline: I did actually do that, and then I went to a very powerful yoga school in Scandinavia, yoga and meditation, but there was a special gift there for me at that time in Pune, but actually, Osho wasn’t really my guru. I went there because I was in love with a man who was an Osho disciple, but when I got there I actually met one of Osho’s older disciples who was really my guru.
Rick: Swami Devadas?
Jacqueline: Yes, from Sweden.
Rick: So, let’s, we’ll talk about him, but let’s take a step back. So, you mentioned you went to your room and you got drawn up out into the cosmos and you know some being said, “We’ve been waiting for you,” or something, and you mentioned in your notes that you experienced 80 powerful connections. I don’t know how you managed to keep count, with interdimensional beings as preparation for your future work.
Jacqueline: 80?
Rick: That’s what it said in your notes, it said 80 powerful connections. I thought, “Wow, is she keeping a checklist?”
Jacqueline: Sorry Rick, that must have been a misprint.
Rick: Oh, okay, maybe it was some little typo in there. So, anyway, you experienced some powerful connections. And let’s talk about that whole thing. I mean, you know, some people consider it woo-woo, but I find it fascinating. I sort of think that there are higher beings in, I don’t know what we want to call it, dimensions or other realms or you know, subtler realms or something, that are concerned with human welfare and evolution and who help us along, and you seem to have had some fairly clear connection with them.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yes. The next very big connection, I had some small connections, nothing like 80. I don’t know where that came from.
Rick: 77, maybe.
Jacqueline: No, but I was in my living room in Copenhagen, after I’d been in Pune, and there was a very high energy there because I was meditating constantly. And one evening I was just sitting there and I felt the energy rising in a way I hadn’t experienced it before, I could hear it, and then the next thing I knew my whole body was totally paralyzed. I couldn’t move a muscle, and then the chakras and you know the meridians, it’s like the chakras were spinning like Catherine wheels, I think you call them.
Rick: Pinwheels.
Jacqueline: And the energy was whooshing up and down the meridians and I was paralyzed, and I could see my dining table and slowly, slowly two beautiful beings manifested, and one was very big, the other was smaller, but it was like they were made of, oh in Danish, edelstedt, precious stones, like colored precious stones.
Rick: Gems, like gems.
Jacqueline: Gems, that’s the word. And I had the feeling like if I could put my hand out, my hand would go right through them. I couldn’t move a muscle, but what really got me was the love energy coming from them. It was so powerful, even though I couldn’t move, I felt no fear, and they were just beaming this love energy at me, and then slowly, slowly, you know time stands still in an experience like this, they dissolved, they demanifested, and slowly, slowly I could move again. And what happened almost every night for a couple of weeks, I was paralyzed again, the spinning started, the energy, you know, activation, but I didn’t see the beings again. It was almost like it wasn’t needed. And about six months later, I went to see a well-known clairvoyant here in Denmark, and I just wanted to ask, “How is it going with my spiritual practice?” Because this was my focus, and he did a very good reading, and as I was about to leave, he said, “Jacqueline, sit down again. I’m being told something’s happened to you and you haven’t understood it properly.” And I explained things had happened, but I didn’t want it to get in the way of my sadhana, my spiritual practice, and he said, “That’s totally fine. Don’t let it get in the way, but you need to know for later. You have been contacted by higher, I don’t know what you call it, like dimensional beings or space intelligence, whatever people call it, and you’ve been contacted for a very special reason, and you just need to know because you’re here to do something when you’re much, much older, you know, far out in your life.” And I will be 70 this year, so I guess in some people’s eyes that would be old, but he said, “You just need to know, and don’t let it interfere with your spiritual practice, but you just need to know about it.” And again, you know, I had this expansion of consciousness, this understanding, and also the energy pouring through me became more and more powerful.
Rick: Yeah, I find it interesting. I mean you know that in the new age world sometimes people get really carried away with channeling and angels and all this stuff, and to the point where I think it really becomes a distraction. But we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I don’t know if you have that phrase in Denmark. I think there’s also something going on here, as your experience attests, you know, and so we shouldn’t just write it off nor be afraid of it, so neither indulge nor be afraid. There does seem to be some intervention or some oversight or blessings or something by higher intelligences, wherever they may come from, that are instrumental in helping to facilitate individual and collective evolution. I just find that interesting and I think it’s just part of the picture, part of the mix that we should understand and take into consideration without getting obsessive about it.
Jacqueline: Yes, yes, definitely. And you know, this with the channeling, because then you see, I didn’t know in the 70s when I was in India, I didn’t even know about the New Age movement. I saw that later on back in Denmark in the 80s.
Rick: I think it wasn’t really going strong in the 70s, I think it picked up steam, you know.
Jacqueline: Yes, yeah, and I saw a lot of teachers who were very big names, and I couldn’t understand why, and I don’t want to go into that, but one thing I used to say to people about channeling was, you know, don’t worry, if it’s your dharma to be a channel, life will show you, right? And have you heard of this pretend Swami, Swami Beyond Ananda?
Rick: Oh yeah, he was at the SAND conference the last couple of years, Science and Non-duality Conference, I met him and all.
Jacqueline: I’d love to meet him.
Rick: Funny guy.
Jacqueline: Yeah, because he said about channeling something like, “Enlightenment is not a bureaucracy, so you don’t have to go through channels,” and I really like that.
Rick: That’s great. Another friend of mine said, “Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re smart,” you know, so don’t necessarily take something that’s being channeled as being some really special thing, who knows. What I gather from a lot of people who channel, some of whom I’ve known personally, is there can be a lot of coloration from the individual personality. In fact, the whole thing might be a fabrication, but even if there’s something genuine to it, it can really get distorted as it goes through the lens of the channeler.
Jacqueline: Yeah, whatever subjects I deal with, you know, if it is something like this or the state of the planet at this moment in time, my teaching really is, you know, it’s a bit like in the Bible, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven,” and what I mean by that is, you know, seek first the inner awakening, wake up to your true nature, and then whatever you’re meant to do in the world, you will do it. And some people won’t do very much, they will just hold a frequency and others will be quite active in the world, you know, we all have different dharmas, we could say.
Rick: Yeah, but in either case we want the horse to be before the cart, we want the awakening to be established. So on that note, you know, you had this big heart awakening when you were 18 and you ended up eventually a few years in Osho’s ashram, stayed there three years. Is there a time in your life, was there a time in your life that you can say, “Okay, this is when the awakening finally happened”?
Jacqueline: There was a couple of things, you know, one of the most profound experiences I had, I was sitting at the Osho ashram in the music group and I just sat down on the floor and there was a little girl, a little bitty girl sitting opposite me and we just looked at each other and that was so profound. It was simply, she was there, I was here, it was all just one, nothing special, it just was as it was. That was huge for me, really huge. And then there was another time where I had Singing Hearts Center in Copenhagen for many years and I wasn’t totally resting, you know, in what I was awakening to. There was still something, but I remember I agreed to invite another teacher to the center I had and I was making arrangements for her to come and share her satsang also, and suddenly it was like my mind went a bit crazy. What are you doing? You’re bringing her here to give her satsang in your center with your people and I’m thinking, “My people? Who do I think I am?” And I just sat down in the middle of the group room and closed my eyes and it was just like a spontaneous inquiry. I went inside and I wanted to find this Jacqueline who was so important and so special that nobody must come along and take anything away from her and I went inside to find this one and the more I looked, the more absurd it was. There wasn’t anybody there. This was a very, very big turning point and then other things happened along the way and I was holding satsang and I’ve been teaching people since the late 70s in one way or another and you know suddenly I realized one day it had all just come together and without really knowing what was the final, I don’t know.
Rick: No, that’s well put and it’s a good point. I think for some people there is a big “Aha!” after which everything has changed and for other people it’s more like it sneaks up like a thief in the night, I think that was Christ’s phrase. And you couldn’t mark it on a calendar, it’s just at a certain point you realize, you know, there’s a continuity here and abiding realization. I don’t know when it started but it just continues on.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that’s how it was for me.
Rick: So what prompted you to finally leave Osho’s ashram?
Jacqueline: Well as I said…
Rick: Devadas.
Jacqueline: Yes, that really I went to Osho ashram because of the man I was in love with, you know, and I received so much there, but I also started to find, and I met Devadas who was my guru, but I also felt the sannyasin world to be very restrictive. You know, there were certain things, like I also wanted to study the esoteric teachings. I spent seven years doing that as well, by letter. with an esoteric school in London. And there were things I wanted to do that didn’t fit in with the rules, and you know, I just had to let that go. So I wrote a fine letter and sent my mala back, you know, the pearls back. I never heard from anyone, but I finished it off in the best way I could. And also, actually, just before that happened, Osho was appearing in my dreams wearing different colored clothes and telling me to leave it behind. But I waited some months before I acted on it, you know, in case it was just a mind, but it wasn’t.
Rick: I think there’s a time for, you know, adhering to the structures and guidelines of a spiritual teaching and organization, and for many people there’s a time when it’s going to be in their best interest to leave that. It’s kind of like, there’s a good time for a chick to be in an incubator, but there’s a certain time when they’ve kind of hatched and the incubator is only going to restrict them and interfere with the other chicks that haven’t yet hatched.
Jacqueline: Yeah, my guru, Devadas, he actually said something to me like that, because I was with him also when I had another big realization, and he said to me, “Now it’s your job to go out and share this with other people.” You know, you can’t be sitting here with me all the time.”
Rick: Is he still alive?
Jacqueline: Yes, he’s very old now and his health isn’t so good, but we connect. He has a lovely partner looking after him.
Rick: So, in 1979 you began guiding others and holding courses, retreats, and satsangs in many countries. Was that after Devadas said that, like, “Maybe it’s time for you to get out and start teaching?”
Jacqueline: It was around that time, yes, it was around that time. And I used different … you see, I also used different tools. In some way I was a teacher, and I used to teach how to work with people in spiritual unfoldment with healing massage. I made my own form of spiritual psychology, but what I realized and other people came to me for was whatever tool I used, it was always about awakening, and it was about the energy transmission, because as I always say, it’s the energy that does the work.
Rick: Transmission from you to them or transmission from … okay. So it’s been your experience and is still perhaps, that you have that gift of transmitting. People sit in your presence and something is enlivened.
Jacqueline: Yes, yeah, that’s a big part of my work with people, and whatever theme I work with, you know, if it’s going from relationship to relationship or if it’s some other theme, whatever I hold I put it in the structure of a meditation retreat, you know, where there’s morning meditation, there’s silent sittings, and then the teachings around the theme that I’m presenting, because I also see the value of people being able to go deeply, deeply into the silence and deep into the center of the heart. For me it was like this deep silence in the center where the true self was most easily able to reveal itself.
Rick: Yeah, here’s a quote from your book, you said, “You cannot change the tendencies you have, negativity for instance, but you can create enough inner space so the negativity can just be there and in that space something happens.” This is called transcendence. And I’ve often used the analogy of like, if you had a glass of water and you wanted to dissolve a handful of mud in it, put the mud in, it just won’t really, it totally muddies up the water, but if you had an ocean, you put a handful of mud in, just there’s the capacity of an ocean to dissolve that mud without itself becoming muddied, although we’re testing that limit these days as a species.
Jacqueline: But that’s a beautiful analogy, yes. And one of the things that was always very easy for me in my spiritual journey and that I was very grateful for, it was very easy for me to open up to spaciousness. It was very, very easy. So I even have meditation retreats that I call just “spaciousness.”
Rick: Did you ever go through a drug phase when you were a teenager or did you manage to bypass that?
Jacqueline: I didn’t go through like a drug addict phase.
Rick: No, but like …
Jacqueline: You don’t mean like heroin?
Rick: No, marijuana, LSD, that kind of thing.
Jacqueline: Yeah. You know, my first wedding cake, I got married once in Uganda and that was made 50% my own marijuana and 50% chocolate.
Rick: Pretty good.
Jacqueline: Yeah, but whenever I did anything …
Rick: That cake got eaten up.
Jacqueline: But whenever I did anything, like I did a little LSD, magic mushrooms, it was always in the spiritual setting. I never just took anything. I would always ask the I Ching, “Is this okay to do today?” and I would have a guide or I would guide somebody else. And I did it in a very pure space, but then I knew the time had come, this was maybe, I don’t know, 1980, to totally leave all of that alone, that I had to realize it myself.
Rick: Yeah, the reason I ask that question is that when you said you’d always had a natural ability to kind of slip into unboundedness, I forget how you phrased it, you know, just vastness or spaciousness, expansion. That was what first gave me a big taste of it, was various psychedelics and so on in my youth. And when I finally decided also, after only about a year of such use, to give it up and learn to meditate, it was like I knew the territory in a sense, and meditation was obviously a much more pure and wholesome way of contacting it, but I just dropped like a stone into that unboundedness or that spaciousness and it was customary, I knew what it was.
Jacqueline: Yes, me too, but even before that, you know, like with the Catholic experience and so on, I would go into these huge spacious spaces, or whatever, and when I did take anything ceremonially for a couple of years, I never once had any negative experience. It was always very beautiful and spacious and coming safely back into the body again, so I was very blessed in that way.
Rick: Aside from drug use, you know, that sort of thing, when you had these spacious experiences, you know, naturally, have you sometimes had a little bit hard time getting your feet back on the ground? I mean, some people can become very spacey when they’re having a lot of those experiences and it takes some doing to integrate them.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I guess I had experiences like that, and people would often call me spacey, but to be honest Rick, I just felt they didn’t understand me, because I know in many people’s eyes I was spacey, but I was grounded in my own way. I remember my second husband and I, we were once sitting with a healer, and the healer said to him, “You are grounded like an elephant. Jacqueline, she’s grounded like a bird, you know, and a bird knows where to land and then fly off again.” And I remember once walking through the town here in Copenhagen where I didn’t really have a sense of a physical body, and I thought, I realized that most people did have a much better sense of a physical body, but it wasn’t an issue, you know, and I can manage pretty well in the physical world and always have been able to, but in some people’s eyes they thought I was very spacey.
Rick: Yeah, well it’s a useful thing to discuss a little bit, and we won’t dwell on it too long, but there are a lot of people who, I mean there are a lot of teachers these days who talk a lot about embodiment and integration, and it seems like as a spiritual culture a lot of people went through a phase of absolute orientation or spacious orientation and then discovered, “Wait a minute, I still have a body and I still have a life and I’ve got to somehow have a job, I have kids, I have to somehow integrate this into the ‘real world.'” Some teachers actually specialize in helping people integrate, so it is a thing, you know, to talk about.
Jacqueline: Yes, and very early on I started having very regular massage. I’ve met some of the most amazing massage therapists in the world, and I actually trained to be a masseur, so I used to train people to use massage as a tool for spiritual unfoldment. So yeah, and I used to dance, even in my programs now, every day we dance, some kind of dancing meditation or, as a friend of mine once said, “All this beautiful energy, you have to have something to put it in.” So, I do my best to keep people grounded and in the body, but also knowing that obviously we’re not this body, we’re not anything that comes and goes, but the body, I just feel it’s good to look after it as well as possible.
Rick: Oh yeah, you know the old saying, “The body is the temple of the soul.”
Jacqueline: Exactly.
Rick: And it’s like a lot of these points you’re making, they should seem obvious, but I always hear examples of people who neglect them. You know, I mean I heard a story from, I believe it was David Godman, who’s done a lot of biographies of Papaji and people like that, I think it was from him, and he was mentioning he met this guy who was in India and he had an infection on his leg and he kept saying, “Oh, it’s only the body, the body’s not real,” and this and that, and he kept refusing medical attention and finally got to the point where he was going to have to have his leg amputated if he didn’t do something, and he finally did. But I mean, I think it’s a valuable understanding to have that the body is the vehicle through which enlightenment is gained. If we don’t have a body then there’s no question of enlightenment, or if we’ve damaged it in some way.
Jacqueline: I remember sitting in one of the therapy groups once in Pune and a young woman talking about something that was going on in the body and the therapist actually said to her, “It’s just the physical body,” and where I felt, “Hmm, that’s not so good.”
Rick: And I think that is also a caution, I think, for you know, there’s a lot of popularity these days about ayahuasca and entheogens and so on. I think people need to approach that cautiously because the body is a very delicate, refined instrument and if you don’t really know what you’re doing, or if the person who’s supervising what you’re doing doesn’t really know, you can screw things up. There’s a young woman in our town here who did that and has never been the same since. It’s been years now and she’s in bad shape. So I don’t know, safety first.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and this to do with the sacred plant medicines. I’d forgotten about this, but quite many years ago I had something wrong with the intestines and a man who was interested also in my cosmic airport vision and so on, he took me with him to Ecuador to try this plant medicine and I did, several times, and it totally, totally healed my physical body and later on, after the first initial sessions, I was also shown that to use something like ayahuasca carefully with people who are working with the death process, it can also be a great tool because, if you could watch your mind on ayahuasca, you can watch it going through the death process. You know I do a lot of work with the death process.
Rick: Yeah, we’ll be talking about that.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and so I actually did invite a very fine shaman, who when I met her I totally trusted her, to do a few ayahuasca sessions only with the people who completed the cosmic airport training with me, after they’d done the session about the death process, and that was very fine for most people also, but it was done in a very sacred space, but I’ve heard also of certain people, you know, going to Africa now and doing the iboga, which is I believe much more powerful than the other plant medicines, and I just think people have to be very careful. You need to know the shaman, and also there’s a lot of black magic going on in Africa. That’s not a judgment, it just is the way it is. So I just feel that people have to be very careful when they open up so powerfully and so subtly as you can do with the plant medicines.
Rick: Yeah, and in Peru it’s become something of a tourist industry and everybody and his brother is getting into it because there’s so much money to be made.
Jacqueline: I’ve seen all of it.
Rick: Yeah, and on the other hand here in the US, Johns Hopkins, a prestigious institute in Baltimore, is doing research with psilocybin on helping drug addicts and so on, and various people are using ayahuasca for that too, because there’s this huge opioid epidemic in the US. So it has its very promising aspects, but to be taken very seriously with a huge note of caution, and I don’t mind us spending a few minutes on this because you know we might say something that would save somebody from a very serious life-damaging event.
Jacqueline: Exactly, and you know one of the things, because I was very cautious about this, but ayahuasca showed me the benefits of using it in connection with the death process, but the people I was working with, I knew them very well, these people on the training groups, and I said to them, “I don’t ever want anybody to get the impression that I’m using drugs or asking you to use drugs as a way to enlightenment.” I said, “We’re using this in a very, very special way,” and I trusted those people who were with me. We did it in three different groups, for the three different Cosmic Airport trainings, and I trusted them, you know, not to just go out saying, “Oh, Jacqueline’s doing ayahuasca and so on,” because it wasn’t like that. But I see the benefits of it, but people have to be very, very careful, and there must be people there, you know, shamans there, and I would say therapists also, who could deal with anything that came up because it can be such a powerful tool.
Rick: Yeah, good, well I think we’ve made that point. I want to go on to talk about your Cosmic Airport thing, but a question just came in from a listener, and it’s about the topic of spaciousness, so let me ask you that before we go on. This is from Dan in London, who asks, “There’s been a lot of discussion of spaciousness, but in my experience, space manifests in consciousness itself, which is beyond. It seems that the consciousness itself is unknowable by the physiology, but only things that arise out of it when one is open, for example, spaciousness, compassion, etc. What do you think about this, because this is something I’m struggling with?”
Jacqueline: Okay, I would say, Dan, anything that we can talk about is arising in consciousness, okay, also spaciousness. As I said, for me it was very useful to be able to open up to these experiences of spaciousness, but it’s very important not to get lost, you know, in emptiness. You can get stuck if you suddenly see something as the goal, or when it’s not, but there are tools along the way. This is what I would say, and I see people also getting lost in “it’s all an illusion.”
Rick: That’s a big one.
Jacqueline: You must know about this. And in a way it is an illusion, because whatever the mind projects on reality, it comes and goes. It’s an illusion, but of course, everything arises in consciousness, but just … and this is why, you know, often people ask me, “Is a teacher or a guru needed?” I would say there’s no rules, but for most people, they do need the support of somebody who’s traveled the pathway and who also understands where you can get stuck.
Rick: What I find useful in this context is the avoidance of absolute judgments and statements, you know, it’s like for instance on the guru thing. Some people say, “You need a guru.” Some people say, “The guru principle is absolute, you don’t need a guru.” Well, you know, it’s much more nuanced than that, it’s much more individual consideration. Or like the thing about illusion, the best response to that I’ve heard is from my friend Timothy Conway, whom I’ve interviewed a couple of times, and he has this sort of three-layer model which, you know, it’s just a model, there could be other models, but he says, “Yeah, there’s a level on which nothing ever happened, you know, everything that appears to have happened is an illusion. There’s a level on which things are happening and everything is perfect just as it is, the Holocaust, anything is all divine play, perfect just as it is. And there’s another level on which, you know, we have problems, we need to deal with them. The Holocaust was terrible, we should never let anything like that happen again. And you don’t just brush things like that off saying it’s all divine or it never happened. So this sort of multi-level paradoxical embrace of the full range of life, I think, is a nice antidote to sort of absolute statements that box you into one particular perspective or another.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and as I often say to people, you know, I think I said it just before too, there are no rules, so I would never say you have to have a guru, you have to meditate, but I know from my experience that most people need a guide along the way for part of the journey, that most people really receive great benefit from meditation. I also always ask people to be aware of the difference between techniques that help to bring you to the meditative state and being in a meditative state, but ultimately there’s no rules. But I think one thing I really enjoy today is there’s so many different types of teachers, and when people are mature enough, they can look at all the different teachers and teachings and know what is needed, what is suitable for them at this point in time. You know, I would never say to anybody, like, “If you go to someone else, don’t come back to me.” I see it as a sign of maturity, you know, when people know where they need to go to get what they need to receive.
Rick: Yeah, there’s that saying, you know, “Dig one deep well rather than ten shallow wells, and then you’ll get water,” but what about using ten tools to dig one deep well? You know, maybe at some point a pitchfork and another point a pickaxe, and you know, different tools as you go down.
Jacqueline: Yeah, great, I like that analogy.
Rick: So, a question came in from Joshua in Portland, Oregon that’s related to something you said earlier. I think you used the phrase, “The energy does all the work,” and he wanted you to elaborate on that a little bit, in awakening, related to awakening.
Jacqueline: Okay. It’s something I started saying years ago, because this was my experience, you know, that there can be fine teachings and fine exercises people can do, but it’s like the energy, a high vibrating energy, really brings everything up to the surface and clears away what needs to be cleared away, and when did I first start realizing this? I guess it was when I went to the Osho Ashram, you know, just sitting in the energy field when Osho was holding his lectures, and maybe thousands of people sitting there, and then also in my own connection with Devadas, because we spent a lot of time together, alone, and we would walk and walk and we would sit and drink tea, and he would make vegetable soup, and he was very good at that. He had no other Sindhis, just vegetable soup.
Rick: That’s an important one. I think Patanjali mentions that as the most significant siddhi.
Jacqueline: Yeah, but then suddenly something would happen and we would both go quiet and we would just sit there. We weren’t looking in each other’s eyes. We would just stop in the moment and we would go quiet, and how shall I explain it? Anything that arose in that space, I knew not to touch it, not to cultivate it, not to try to push it away, not to try to embrace it. It was like this neti-neti, neither this nor that, just leave everything alone, and the energy became so powerful, and I knew it was the energy that was opening me to an understanding of what truth was, that was moving, lifting, opening the patterns, releasing the patterns, whatever, and it just became my reality, I guess, or my knowing how much can be done in a powerful energy field. That’s I guess what I would say, and you also know what it’s like if you’re sitting with a very big group of people who are all meditating together. The energy is enhanced, and it can be much easier for other people to go more deeply into meditation, especially in the beginning, than they could if they were sitting alone. So I work very much with the group energies, creating silent spaces, and just guiding people, don’t touch anything, whatever comes, just let it be.
Rick: One time I was meditating in a group of 8,000, and boy, you couldn’t help but meditate, slip into the transcendent in a group that size was really palpable.
Jacqueline: It’s the same kind of thing that happens at a sacred site. It’s like a vortex, you know. Where I have the ashram in India, by the sacred hill Arunachala, it’s such a powerful energy field, it’s a real gift for people to come on meditation retreat in a place like that because the energy is already doing the work.
Rick: Yeah, energy field, I think that’s the operant phrase, and what it implies or indicates is that we’re not just talking about some physiological energy inside our bodies or something, we’re talking about a ubiquitous field that one can sort of immerse oneself in, kind of soak it up like a sponge or have it enlivened within oneself by virtue of that field. And conversely, there are fields of very negative energy that one could hang out in and that wouldn’t be so helpful.
Jacqueline: Yeah, you know one of the things I often have done with people in the training groups and so on, I might give them a topic for discussion and where people sit in smaller groups, but I always ask them to tune in energetically first in silence, then open their eyes, see who wants to speak, and nobody interrupts or comes with comments or asks questions. They just let the person speak and then the next one will go and then the next one, and this really enhances this field. It’s like the whole field supports people in bringing up what is deepest or most important for them. It kind of bypasses the censorship of the mind.
Rick: A question came in from Matt in Los Angeles, and I was going to save this for the end, but it actually kind of relates to this energy field notion that we’re talking about. He said, “Do you think the earth and humanity are growing towards something, some state of being, or are we just meant to be living our lives the best we can and whatever we’ll be will be? I’m wondering if awakening is for a greater purpose or if it’s just for us to help us live good lives.” And the reason I think that’s relevant to the energy field thing is that many people feel that the ambient energy field of the planet itself is rising, and as they say, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” you know, so maybe you could comment on that.
Jacqueline: Yeah, well as far as humanity is concerned, I definitely see us evolving and seeing us going somewhere, evolving to a higher state of consciousness, and by that I mean also a higher vibration, because what you see happening on the planet today is simply a reflection of the collective consciousness of humanity, and so obviously, when we start lifting the consciousness on this planet, then the reality that we create is going to be of a much higher vibration and is going to be much more supportive of awakening. I have often said, just as a joke, but still, you know, if we lived in a more enlightened society, when a baby is born, it would come out of the womb waving its horoscope, and the whole family group would gather around and look, “What is this child’s potential? What is he or she here to learn and to heal?” and so on, and everybody would do their very best to help the child become all that it could become. And so this is kind of where I see us going, and yeah, I don’t want to maybe say more about it now because then we’re going to go into an area that I don’t know so much about, where I would like to recommend another person could come and speak with you about a form of cosmology that would really answer this question in a very beautiful way. But I see us moving in spirals, you know, not going around in a circle, you know, the end of the Kali Yuga and finally the Sat Yuga and another Kali Yuga. I’ve seen inside that that is not what’s happening. We are moving upwards in spirals.
Rick: Yeah, there’s several things we could elaborate on there, but maybe we’ll keep moving along and the elaboration will happen. Most people listening probably know what yugas are. There’s ages and there’s Kali Yuga said to be 432,000 years long and we’re only 5,000 years into it and it’s the worst one, but Yogananda’s Master, Sri Yukteswar, had a whole different explanation of it, it’s much shorter and we’re actually heading into a more positive yuga already. So, anyway, we can go on and on about that, but it’s a thing for people to look into if they’re interested, just wanted to define the terms there. You know, one thing I’m noticing with this ambient increase in collective consciousness, rising tide lifts all boats, is that some people are just having these sort of spontaneous awakenings and kundalini risings and stuff, who have no interest in such things. Like there was this guy that got in touch and he said, “Hey, I just enjoyed my football, you know, my beer and whatnot, and now I’m having this intense kundalini thing which I can barely function.” So, I’m wondering if that may end up happening on more and more of a mass scale, you know, as we go along.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I would say it definitely is and I just feel it’s wonderful that there are so many different types of teachers and guides today. Guru, if you want to use this expression, which simply means the dispeller of darkness, helping people to see their true nature, but there are so many different types of people on this planet. I often say there has to be something for everyone and there is.
Rick: Yeah, and that’s one of the underlying premises of this show, is that I wouldn’t expect everybody in the world to gravitate toward any one person that I interview. It’s like a smorgasbord. Is that a Swedish thing? That’s a Swedish thing, not a Danish thing.
Jacqueline: We also have that in Denmark.
Rick: Yeah, so something for everybody and not that we should be dilettantes and not take anything seriously and just dabble along, but you know, different strokes for different folks.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yes.
Rick: So, the name of your website is cosmicairport.com and you have this experience through which you evolved this whole notion of a cosmic airport. So I think we should devote some time to discussing that. Let’s do that.
Jacqueline: Well, many, many years ago I woke up one morning and I was just lying in bed with my eyes closed and I saw an airport, right? And when I looked I could see the arrival lounge, transit and the departures. And when I looked more closely I could see there weren’t any airplanes. And in the arrival lounge it was a place where women could come and birth their babies consciously and in a very powerful energy field to help to bring in the soul coming into incarnation as untraumatized as possible. In this lifetime my own birth took three days and three nights, so I know what a birth trauma is and how much it can affect the whole life. Then I saw the departure lounge, again no airplanes, but it was where people were leaving the body, departing, and where people were being assisted in leaving the body in the highest vibration possible for them. Then the transit lounge was for everybody else in transit through life. It was a place of awakening, maybe like an ashram, but the whole point in the transit lounge was there was a huge focus of energy. There was like a temple or something in the middle of it where people sat in powerful, powerful meditation. And then out from that there might be some meditation retreats happening, some healing groups happening, maybe some teachings on relationship or how to bring up children, and then there was also cafes and shops and movie places, but the whole thing was happening in this powerful vibration. And when I looked, the whole airport started pulsating. It was like a Buddha field, a real cosmic energy, and I began calling it the cosmic airport. And I also had a feeling that one day there would be physical cosmic airport, but that it was far out in the future, and this is maybe now, I don’t know, 20 years ago. And originally I thought maybe the ashram in India would be the first cosmic airport, but it’s very difficult doing things in India. Some of my Indian students are making like a training center for my cosmic airport teachings in the Pune area, nothing to do with the ashram, and there’s a big project hopefully on its way in Brazil on some very, very sacred land, and other people have also shown interest in creating smaller cosmic airports in different parts of the world.
Rick: Your last sentence broke up, say that again, your last few words.
Jacqueline: I said that there may also be other parts of the world where there will be cosmic airports. People have also in America, in California, have been interested and other places. So you know, I’m not attached to the vision, but I do see things unfolding.
Rick: Well obviously it’s something that’s going to have to be decentralized because people are getting born and living and dying everywhere, but I imagine these teaching centers could be something where you know people could be trained to have the right perspective on it and then they could fan out and help to provide that everywhere else.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and two of my students are having some of all my teachings on birthing translated into three different Indian languages, because what some of the women go through in India in the birthing situation, let’s just say it’s very terrible for them.
Rick: Yeah, now obviously, at least with birthing and dying, it would necessarily involve some kind of medical knowledge.
Jacqueline: Oh yes.
Rick: And you don’t have, I mean you have training as a masseuse and so on, but wouldn’t you have to have much more sophisticated medical understanding to provide for what you’re talking about?
Jacqueline: Oh, that’s not my job. My job would be more, you know, overseeing the teachings and helping people to hold the energy. We will need doctors and nurses, midwives, these are huge projects.
Rick: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Yeah, it’s not what one person cannot do all of that.
Rick: And irrespective of your efforts, it seems to me that this sort of thing is becoming more popular. I mean people are appreciating natural childbirth and compassionate way of dying, conscious dying and so on. It is kind of getting more lively in the culture.
Jacqueline: Yeah, it is, definitely. I met Ram Dass once at the baggage check in Phoenix and we talked a little bit together because he’s done beautiful work also with death and dying.
Rick: Yeah.
Jacqueline: So, it’s happening all, you know, when these ideas come to us, this inspiration, it doesn’t only come to one person.
Rick: Interesting point, yeah. It’s like a download and various people pick it up. Do you know Dale Borglum?
Jacqueline: No.
Rick: He used to work with Ram Dass and I interviewed him a couple years ago about this topic of sort of conscious dying and so on. And of course, some cultures have it all worked out to a science. I mean, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, they’ve given tremendous attention to this kind of thing.
Jacqueline: Yeah, of course, I’ve studied the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It’s not something I use much in my training groups because the Tibetan Book of the Dead was really written for Buddhist monks who had a certain way of viewing the reality and they had certain very specific tools of working with whatever could arise in the death process. And I found for some people, especially Westerners, that it can be a bit scary if they just start reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead without having that background.
Rick: Yeah, it’s pretty esoteric and subject to interpretation and so on, from what I understand of it.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Rick: But I mean, I guess an underlying point here is that, you’ve alluded to reincarnation a number of times, I mean, just the notion that we don’t die when the body dies, which of course is a perennial wisdom of a number of traditions, very explicit in the Vedic tradition, could be a huge relief for people, don’t you think?
Jacqueline: Yes, yeah, and this is why I like people to go out with the teachings on the level they are on, wherever they can be useful. I’ve often said, you know, if we can clear the fear of death on this planet, we will clear up a big chunk of the astral planes, because I’m finding, as I go to many countries in the world with my work, and I often see people who have meditated for a long time, been on a spiritual pathway and been working with themselves in therapy, where there is still a fear of death. It’s quite deep, and if you go totally deeply into meditation, then I would suggest the fear of death would disappear, because you know you’re not the body, and so on. But yeah, I’m just happy that these teachings are so widely available for people from so many different sources, because there still is a great fear of death.
Rick: Sure. Woody Allen said, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Jacqueline: That’s right.
Rick: Yeah, well it’s funny because, you know, a couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a Buddhist teacher whom I liked a lot, and brilliant guy, done years of meditation under his belt, and we had this whole conversation about reincarnation and whether there’s something retained when the body dies that bears any semblance to you, that could actually take another body and continue making progress. And he just didn’t buy into that whole perspective, and we kind of debated it back and forth. Maybe that’s more of a Buddhist thing, but even, I don’t know, I’m confused about it because the Buddhists talk about reincarnation, but then they say there’s no self whatsoever, so I don’t know what’s supposed to reincarnate if there isn’t.
Jacqueline: Yeah, you see, for most people when they’re incarnated in the physical body there’s a real identification with the role playing through them, right? And the idea that they might not exist anymore might be very scary, but I often say to people, “You know, the way I see reincarnation, it’s not Jacqueline Maria Longstaff coming back as Jacqueline Maria Longstaff to play a Buddhist monk or something.” But when the body drops, we’re all part of the collective energy field, and we talk about the vasanas and the tendencies if you look at Vedanta, but there is something that is non-physical that exists, and I would say going through the death process, it acts like a magnet attracting physical tendencies and emotional, mental tendencies for another incarnation. This is how I see it happening.
Rick: Yeah, somewhere in the Vedic tradition it says that the last thought at the time of death determines the quality or nature of your next life, and that the quality of that last thought is very much determined by everything you’ve done in life. It sort of gets congealed into that final thought or impression that that’s your send-off.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I mean some people, you know, they interpret that as, if you think about your dog, I can hear your dog.
Rick: Yeah, a dog is barking at a squirrel.
Jacqueline: If you think about the dog as you leave the physical body, you’ll come back as the dog or you’ll come back longing for the dog. I don’t see it quite like that. I feel it’s more the vibrational quality of what you leave with. You know, like if you leave with a lot of hatred or a lot of fear, those tendencies will be there, and this is why in the training groups, you know, people meditatively practice, imagine that they’re leaving the physical body and opening up in spaciousness, being able to just let go of any wish for anything, and to be really free. People have to be willing also to let go of the parts of the personality that they really like. It’s not getting rid of the so-called negative stuff. People have to be able to release their attachments to the parts of the personality that they enjoy, if you know what I mean, right? So we prepare in that way in the training groups.
Rick: Okay, so you provide specific instruction or practices to let people…it’s almost like a dress rehearsal for the dying process, right? So you kind of learn to surrender and let go of everything.
Jacqueline: Exactly, and actually one of the greatest tools for that is real meditation. I don’t mean doing a meditative exercise or meditating on colors for the chakras, those are exercises, but really going deeply into meditation where absolutely anything that arises, you just don’t touch it. That is the most profound practice for what you might call an awakened death. I believe that Osho even said something like, “If you’ve had one moment of meditation, you are preparing for your death process,” and he didn’t mean, you know, sitting chanting Om or something, he meant a moment of real meditation.
Rick: Real transcendence.
Jacqueline: Real transcendence, yes.
Rick: Yeah, no, it’s very true because really you kind of go beyond the individuality, you know, which is what’s going to happen when you die, you go beyond the body. I remember when I was a new meditator, I got a really bad flu one time and I felt really sick, but I found that when I meditated it’s kind of like I went beneath the flu, yeah, kind of transcended it and there was no sense of flu and then I’ve come back into the flu when I came out of meditation. It was my first sort of taste of that principle.
Jacqueline: That’s right.
Rick: So, before we drift off to another topic, what more would you like to say about the Cosmic Airport? Is there anything else that you want people to know?
Jacqueline: Maybe not so much about the Cosmic Airport, but that I do meet people in India, at the ashram in India, you know, I was called to India by this mountain Arunachala.
Rick: Yeah, let’s talk about that and how you climbed it on the Millennium and what you have this five-acre ashram there in India. We haven’t… you’ve alluded to it, but let’s talk about that a little bit.
Jacqueline: Okay, well what happened was right at the end of the old Millennium, you know, I thought my days in India were over and suddenly I kept hearing this song about Arunachala and I felt Arunachala calling me in meditation and I had this inner knowing I had to be on top of Arunachala going into the new Millennium and it was very inconvenient for me because I had a lot to do in Denmark, but I managed to get an air ticket and I arrived in Tiruvannamalai, where this mountain Arunachala is, just 48 hours before the sun went down and people told me no way could I be on top of Arunachala all night. And I was sitting in the restaurant.
Rick: Wait a minute, you said 48 hours before the sun went down, I think you mean 48 hours before the New Year.
Jacqueline: Sorry.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a long day.
Jacqueline: Before the sun went down on the new Millennium, on the old one, thank you. And I was sitting in this coffee place and I heard a young couple speaking Danish, so I went over to them and I told them why I had come to India and they were very sweet. They said they felt it was their wake-up call and they promised to get me to the top of Arunachala before the sun went down on the Millennium and we did. We managed to get to the top and as I was going up the mountain I knew that the new Millennium was dawning in New Zealand, so I started chanting the Gayatri Mantra to New Zealanders and so on and I was on the mountain all night just chanting the Gayatri. And then, just to make it a very short story, the next day I slid down the mountain again and went to bed, but then it happened that I went back there and I was told about some land that was free and a foundation got that land for me so I could make the ashram and that was in 2003. The ashram happened and that hasn’t been easy. It’s not easy doing things in India, but many, many people have been to me there, but I’ve let go of the idea of that ashram being a cosmic airport, but I am there a few months every year and it’s a very powerful energy field to be in at Arunachala, but that was how I ended up back in India. Also at the ashram I’ve done a lot of work also with children from the village, kids, and I support children with their school fees and things like this, and I’ve also done a lot of work with the young adults, because some of the young adults who’ve got one foot in the village and like the other foot in the ashrams and so on, it’s very difficult for them, and so I do quite a bit of work with them, you know, teachings and discussions, but also working with them energetically with blessings and so on. So, that’s what I do in India when I’m there.
Rick: Nice. And what happens when you’re not there? The ashram sits there for nine months and things happen in it or what?
Jacqueline: No, it’s open all the year, but you see it gets very, very hot there.
Rick: All right.
Jacqueline: It’s 47 degrees today I think.
Rick: Yeah. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, but I’m sure it’s hot. It’s very hot, yes. But I have young people who look after it and you know they’ve got a life there and a job all year round, and some Indian people come and do yoga retreats there when I’m not there, and something’s happening all most of the year.
Rick: Great. Here’s a nice little thing that this is your, you know how you can put a little phrase in your Skype ID? Mine is “whatever you think it’s more than that,” which is a line from the incredible string band. Yours is, “In times of great change it is the few who will make a difference, but usually they are the ones who are ridiculed, yet both are expressions of the one.” I thought I’d read that out since you chose it as your little Skype message.
Jacqueline: Yes, I did choose that message because you know I know a lot of people, myself included, who have been ridiculed sometimes because of the work we’re doing and the things we speak about, and I have friends also who are what you would call activists, you know, and some of them very high profile. We don’t need to get into that here, but they have really been ridiculed because what they are sharing with people is too much for many people right now to hold in their awareness, but I just wanted to remind people, you know, that it’s all part of the oneness, you know, those who are being ridiculed and those who ridicule. It’s all part of the oneness. This drama we see unfolding at this point in time is actually quite amazing, and you know we’ve talked about many things today, so I’m going to say one thing. Can I be a bit rude?
Rick: Oh sure.
Jacqueline: Funny rude.
Rick: Sure, no problem.
Jacqueline: Because I’ve often said, you know, because we do need people who are willing to look at what’s happening in the world, but without getting lost in it, and I often say what we need on the planet today is systems busters with hearts, light workers with balls.
Rick: That’s good.
Jacqueline: You know, not just light workers who don’t want to touch anything that seems negative, but we need both, and the systems busters with hearts, they won’t forget the oneness. So that’s what I also say.
Rick: Yeah, a few years ago I had an interview with Foster and Kimberly Gamble who made the Thrive movie, and you know at one point we discussed, which I think I’ve heard them mention in subsequent talks that they gave, they even referred to our interview, is that you know back in the late 60s, early 70s, there was a greater polarity between the spiritual types and the activists. You know, the spiritual types would sort of think the activists were superficial and the activists would think the spiritual types were just dreamers sitting on their butts, you know, not accomplishing anything. But these days spiritual types have become much more involved in various types of sacred activism and activists have realized that there needs to be a spiritual depth to their activism or else they’re going to end up perpetuating the same problems they’re fighting against.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I have great respect for Kimberly and Foster Gamble and the Thrive movement. I was speaking last year, at the end of last year, at a conference in Salt Lake City and somebody was there from the Thrive movement.
Rick: Was that the religious, what do you call it, the Congress of World Religions or something that was there? Maybe not.
Jacqueline: It actually wasn’t that one, but it was a different one through the World United and that’s where I really connected with some of these Thrive people and I spend quite a lot of time in Santa Cruz. So people I know very well have also been working with Foster Gamble and Kimberly.
Rick: Nice. You know, and on that note, I don’t know, I just want to throw in that there’s a lot of people who talk about all kinds of conspiracy theories, so-called, and what’s really happening in the world and things like that, and I think that’s just another area where we have to be discriminating, as with, you know, entheogens, as we were discussing earlier. I’ve seen a certain mentality of people who buy into that kind of thing, where they don’t discriminate, they’ve never met a conspiracy theory they don’t like, you know, and no matter how outlandish they say, “Oh yeah, it must be the way it is.” I think you really have to sort of, there is more going on than meets the eye, but on the other hand, not everything that you hear on alternate news outlets and so on is true. You really have to put your own thinking cap on.
Jacqueline: Definitely. You know, one of the things I say to my students is, if you want to know truth, and it can be like the inner truth or the truth of what’s happening in the world, you must have no sacred cows, because if you’ve got a sacred cow to protect, you know, and it can be my guru is better than your guru, you know, all these sacred cows people can have, then you’re not open to truth. And I’ve also seen this with some people working with what we call a conspiracy, I don’t use that term so much, but you know, their sacred cow can be every bit of information that comes up about the conspiracy has to be true, it’s not, it’s really not.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, so John Podesta and Hillary Clinton weren’t really running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C., you know, stuff like that. Oh boy. There’s one thing that came up in a number of your writings where you were speaking about witnessing and it made me want to ask the question about being established in or as the witness versus trying to witness. The way you wrote it made it sound a little bit like witnessing is something we should make an effort to do, whereas I see it and experience it and think of it more as a natural condition that develops and you don’t have to try to do it any more than you try to breathe.
Jacqueline: Okay, I totally agree with you actually, but in the beginning when people are getting into the witnessing, then it’s not that easy, it doesn’t come as naturally. So you know, witnessing, I would say, in the beginning is about being able to just take a little step back and look at the movie that’s playing out through you, look at the role that’s playing through you, and then the witnessing becomes deeper and it becomes more and more natural, but that’s quite a place to get to for somebody where whatever is happening they’re still in touch with the witnessing consciousness, right? There’s a long way to go from the first step to just being in it in a natural way, but that is the goal you could say.
Rick: Yeah, but the goal is not necessarily always the means to the goal and sometimes the two are confused. What I would say is that witnessing is a natural phenomenon when the self has been realized because it’s pure silence, and that silence at a certain stage may contrast with the activity of running through an airport or having a conversation or doing whatever you’re doing, and so there’s a sense that nothing’s happening, I’m not doing anything, I just reside in and as this silence while all this chaos is going on quite independent of me, but that’s something that it’s a kind of a natural condition, whereas there can be a tendency I think to divide the mind and perhaps weaken mind-body coordination if one is making a conscious effort to be detached or to stand back from one’s experience.
Jacqueline: Well, I understand what you’re saying, but what I would say is one has to start somewhere. For some people the idea of not being attached to what is happening or what is playing through you is quite, quite far away from them. Do you remember, have you heard of Roberto Assagioli?
Rick: No. Who?
Jacqueline: He was the man who, I don’t want to say invented, but put together psychosynthesis therapy, and what I liked about this man was anything he worked with, whenever he held a lecture, he would always write on the board, “This is not the truth,” and he meant it’s not the absolute truth, and the way he would introduce witnessing to, I don’t like to say ordinary people, but you know what I mean, people who have no meditative experience.
Rick: People who haven’t really considered that sort of thing.
Jacqueline: Yeah, he would work with people with sub-personalities, different aspects of the personality, and to see them like different instruments in an orchestra, and instead of just being taken over by anger or taken over by this or by that, he would get people to practice being the conductor, you know, like with the baton, “Okay, I’ve heard from you, sit down, now it’s your turn to play,” you know, and this is obviously not the goal of meditation, but it was a way of helping people to accept every aspect of themselves and to see that in some way they have a kind of choice, I’m being careful here, but a kind of choice to observe something and not to let this pattern keep running the show all the time. And then he would take people deeper and deeper until he had them in the witnessing, in witnessing consciousness.
Rick: Yeah, I think there’s definitely something to that. I mean obviously people commit crimes or you know, presidential candidates do stupid things when they have sort of no discrimination, they just act on impulse. And there’s something to culturing the ability to be … you know, I guess one way of putting it is, if you could catch a thought before it really gains momentum, if you could catch it near its source, it’s like being able to get to the source of a river and at that point there’s not much force or momentum, and it’s just a little bit of shift and you can send the river off in a different direction. So it’s like if one can be established there, which I think the Gita calls “resolute intellect,” then you know, with just the slightest intention one can check the tendency to say something inappropriate or do something inappropriate. But if you’re not at that point, if you’re out here someplace, you know, where the thought has already developed fully and has gained its momentum, it can be very hard. It can be like trying to stop a river several hundred thousand miles from its source, you know what I mean?
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but as you were talking, you know, it came to me also the idea of spontaneity, because some people say, “Oh, you know, I love to be spontaneous”, and so on, and I’m all for spontaneity, but you know, the highest form of nirvana in some traditions is called “sahaja,” the sahaja experience.
Rick: Sahaja samadhi, yes.
Jacqueline: Getting to the place where one is totally spontaneous without anybody having any idea about being spontaneous, it’s like spontaneity playing through this vehicle. And very often people who say they’re spontaneous, they just say what they want when they want to, with no awareness of any consequence.
Rick: Yeah, they’re being indiscriminate, they’re being reckless, they’re being, you know, I’m thinking for some reason Carlos Castaneda’s books just came to mind, and you know, Don Juan Matus, who is Castaneda’s teacher in those books, he said, “A warrior has time only for his impeccability,” and he was very much into, I mean, he did all kinds of wonderful spontaneous humorous things, but he was very much into sort of, you know, not acting unconsciously to any degree.
Jacqueline: Yeah, impeccability, I love that, just the feel of that.
Rick: Yeah, and I mean, you know from your own experience, you’ve done a lot of meditating, and you, through that experience of lots of meditating, a deep silence gets established, and it remains without you having to think about it or anything, it’s just there. And you must have the spontaneous experience of witnessing because that deep silence is there regardless of whatever’s happening.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that’s right.
Rick: That’s kind of what I was getting at.
Jacqueline: I see, oh, okay, I see, yes, and I’m seeing today that more and more people who I’ve watched on their pathway, and watched them struggle and so on, that they’re getting to this place of just being able to witness, not getting pulled in. But it’s taken years of practice, and again there’s no rules, but for many of them it has taken a long time to get there, but I’m seeing the response of certain of my students, you know, when something very difficult happens in their life, whereas before there would have been quite a drama out of it, they’re able to step back, and also to acknowledge any feeling that might be there or whatever, but not to take it as the truth of who they are.
Jacqueline: There is, I would say, this huge awakening going on.
Rick: Yeah, that’s exciting. S; And you know all about that.
Rick: For some reason our conversation also reminds me of Kipling’s poem, If, you know, “if you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, then you’ll be a man, my son”, and so on, and the poem goes on. But it suggests a certain maturity, and I think we’re talking about spiritual maturity, which causes you to act in a … I mean, there are all sorts of beautiful things in Taoism too, about those who are in tune with the Tao, you know, acting in a certain way spontaneously, as opposed to being reckless or unconscious or capricious in their activity. There’s a point in your book at which you said, “The shadow is always,” and the book I’m referring to is Kaleidoscope, you’ve written about six books, but this is the one I read, you said, “The shadow is always brought to the surface before transformation can take place,” and I noted that down. I think it has relevance both to us individually and collectively, and I was wondering if you could address that, especially the collective and what’s going on in the world today, and how we might understand what’s going on as shadows being brought to the surface in order for transformation to take place.
Jacqueline: You know, I often say, “Only when you can embrace yourself can you embrace the universe.”
Rick: Say it again because your audio broke up. “Only when you can embrace what?”
Jacqueline: Yourself. “Only when you can embrace yourself can you embrace the universe,” and I just feel this work with the individual shadow is so, so important, but now as we see it, as I see it, we have the collective shadow rising to the surface very, very powerfully. The very first book I wrote was actually called The Last Waltz, and it was about the enlightened consciousness embracing the collective shadow, and what I said is we need people, I would suggest, with as much awareness as possible as we move through these difficult times now, to be able to embrace what is coming up without perpetuating the turmoil and the chaos and so on, that the more of us who can stand centered when things arise, the better it is going to be. And we see the collective shadow now, and astrologically we’ve had almost three years of Pluto squaring Uranus, and Pluto is the death and the rebirth. It’s bringing up the whole hierarchical structure, and Uranus in Aries is wanting to set the people free, but they’re in a square aspect, which means there is a real, real battle going on here, and the more people who can stay centered and not go into judgment, you know, As the collective shadow surfaces. I’ve often said to people, I feel some people are here not to do a great job in the world outwardly, but simply to hold the highest vibration, and that really is my feeling, just enough people holding a high vibration as we go through these difficult times.
Rick: I know that probably neither you nor anyone could say with any certainty, but do you have a sense on, you know, how things are going to unfold over the next decade or two? If you were a betting person, would you place your money on things turning out okay after a certain amount of turmoil, or what’s your sense of how things are going to go?
Jacqueline: Well, what I feel needs to happen is the control system on the planet has to be dismantled. Now, I was in America in November, you know, the night of the election, and my heart was with Bernie Sanders.
Rick: Right, mine too. I met him actually.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and I was sitting watching the TV, and Trump won, and I felt such a joy. It was not personal. It was nothing to do with me. I felt such a joy that this had happened. I was not a lover of Clinton or Trump, you know, but I felt like collectively such a lightness, such a joy, and the next day when I woke up I could just hear Leonard Cohen singing. He was my favorite. You know where he sang, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,” and I could hear that all day. And I said to people, “If Hillary Clinton had got in, there would have been no crack. Now Trump has come in, let’s see how this is going to play itself out, but at least there’s a crack,” you know, because all of this stuff has to be brought to the surface, and I know we don’t go into all the details of this on this program, and I just feel, you know, more people who can be in their hearts and hold a high vibration, we will help to steady the collective energy fields, also the astral fields, as we go through this transition. When it’s going to be over, I don’t know. Some of us are already living kind of in a golden age in a way, you know, it’s to do with your awareness, your level of awareness, and for some people the suffering and the trauma and the drama is very, very real. You know, I could never stand in front of somebody going through some of the things people are going through and say, “Oh, it’s all just an illusion,” because the suffering is real.
Rick: No, it’s unkind.
Jacqueline: And we just do what we can in the moment, you know, I just tell people give the best you can in the moment and don’t be attached to the outcome.
Rick: Yeah, that’s good advice. And I often think about this, I’ve been thinking about this for decades though, I mean you mentioned that the power structures have to be brought down, and you know it’s obvious when you look at the world that there are so many things that are pretty entrenched and powerful, apparently, that really would have no place in an enlightened society as most of us would conceive it, and so you just kind of wonder, you know, the mechanics through which they are going to be brought down, if they are, and what sort of upheaval that might cause as it’s happening.
Jacqueline: And this is why I put so much focus on the heart. I also do heart energy transmissions, you know, to help people come deeper into the heart, because the heart isn’t going to judge, the heart accepts, and it can stand strong in the face of whatever is happening, and it’s probably going to take some time, but there’s also stuff happening that, you know, makes me feel that there could maybe be a very big change coming very soon, but who knows, I could be wrong, but I’m just holding it all as best I can.
Rick: Yep, just enjoy the movie and order some popcorn. Here’s a question that came in from Florence from New York City, she asks, “You mentioned something in passing during this interview, you said something like, ‘People need to discover who they are first, and then a direction in life will emerge.’ I have had many experiences over 20 years, and I’ve experienced higher states of consciousness that sound like a Batgap interview. However, returning to ‘who I am’ has never happened. I’m so frustrated and I can’t seem to find help with this, and it’s not from lack of trying. Can you comment on it? I’m 57, maybe I should just retire from trying and wait for my next life.”
Jacqueline: Beautiful. What I meant when I said that, you know, it was when we were talking about the contacts I had and the phenomena, the stuff that can happen, to always put your awakening first, you know, and then the Dharma will show itself, but in a way they kind of go hand in hand. Now this lady, what is it she’s giving up on? I lost your voice a little bit at one point.
Rick: Oh, hang on, I’ll reread it. I think she feels like she’s been trying for so long and she’s feeling kind of like she’s it is again. I’ll just scan it. She said that she’s had many experiences over the past 20 years and she’s experienced higher states of consciousness, but she feels like she’s never really gotten established in the self or in self-realization and who she is, and she feels frustrated with that. Like, you know, it’s like she’s still looking for something that she hasn’t found. >>Suzanne
Jacqueline: Yeah, okay. The first thing I would like to say in response to this, and this might not be the case with this person, but it is really important not to be attached to any experience one has had, right? And I’m sure this lady probably knows that, but in a way awakening is very, very simple. I mean, you remember when I talked about sitting opposite the little girl years and years and years ago and she was just there and I was just here and that was just it. Maybe if this person could almost stop struggling, I don’t want to say stop the search, but many teachers would say this, but if she could just each day sit in the heart with the breath in the heart and just kind of with a kind of okayness, the role that is playing through her, because the role that’s playing through her might be quite challenging compared to other people, but if people make a problem of the role that’s playing through them, they end up having a struggle. So if she could find a way just to be very okay with the fact that she’s done a lot of searching, she maybe still seems to get caught up in the movie, but if she could just find a way of coming into her center and just watching all of this, just watching the idea that she’s disappointed or frustrated, it’s actually just the mind putting a label on the role that is playing through her. And if she could just try to let go of the judgment of the mind and just be with what is, with a very big okayness, that’s what I would suggest. I’m not sitting with her, person to person, but I often see people struggling because they kind of have an idea in the mind of where they’re meant to be going and what it should look like.
Rick: Yeah, I think it’s a good point. And very often, I mean I remember reading this book called Collision with the Infinite by Suzanne Siegel, and she had been a meditation teacher, she’d been on a lot of long courses and everything, meditation courses, and then she kind of drifted away from it and was living a normal life in Paris and she was pregnant and she was just coming from a swim at the pool and getting on a bus and all of a sudden she had this huge awakening. And even though this was probably exactly what she had learned about and read about and thought about and heard about during her years of meditation, the reality of the experience bore no resemblance to the understanding she had formed about it. So when she had that shift, she was terrified, you know, she thought, “Oh my God, what’s this, there’s a total loss of any sense of self,” and she spent about 10 years struggling and being in fear because she just didn’t have the understanding that this was actually, you know, she should have had the understanding, but you know, you can have a concept of what awakening might be and enlightenment might be and so on, and it can be a far cry from the actual experience when it dawns.
Jacqueline: Yes, I remember this woman, I remember reading about her years ago, and because all the concepts, all the ideas, they simply can get in the way. You know, my guru, Devadas, he used to say to me, “Enlightenment is an insult to the intellect.” The intellect can have all these high ideas of what enlightenment is, and that’s not what it is, you know. So yeah, and I just hope this person who wrote in, you know, that she can maybe just find the time just to be with what is and just look at any expectation and not make a story of it.
Rick: Yeah, another thing I heard in your answer previously a minute ago is that, you know, sometimes enlightenment is referred to as the natural state, you know, and if it’s a natural state, then as the Gita says, what can restraint accomplish? I mean, why would we be struggling and straining and efforting and so on to be in something that’s natural? Maybe it’s more a matter of relaxing into it than trying to beat down the gates, you know.
Jacqueline: It is, but also this is a tricky one, you know, because I also see it’s part of the journey, somebody’s sincerely on this journey to awakening. For many people they have a goal, and this is what the journey looks like, you know, struggling with this and trying this teacher and trying that. This is why the heart is important, because the heart doesn’t judge, right? This is what the road looks like. For somebody on a journey, they will go through all of these different kinds of experiences and you know, learning that you should let go, wanting to be enlightened and trying that, and it doesn’t work. A good sense of humor is also important, you know, not to take oneself too seriously in all the struggles and so on, and also sharing with other travelers on the way.
Rick: But you know, in reference to Florence’s question, you know, Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find,” so I think that if the intention is there, you shouldn’t give up, just keep culturing, favoring that intention, doing what you can, don’t beat yourself up over it, you know, if it doesn’t seem to be happening or whatever, just you know, go easy on yourself, but keep that intention lively. There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and you don’t want to sort of just give up and become cynical. S; Exactly, and it’s true what you say, “Seek and you will find,” and as I said, a natural part of the seeking is to sometimes get very frustrated or want to grab onto something, it’s all part of the journey, but if the seeking wasn’t really there, there wouldn’t be the impulse. The impulse wouldn’t have matured enough for somebody to want to go beyond the personality and the role they play.
Rick: Yeah, as a matter of fact, Patanjali and some other teachers say that the intensity of the seeking is actually proportional to the speed with which realization takes place.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I was desperate, desperate to wake up, and it was this burning desire that people talk about, and that keeps you going, you know, through the tough times, but then there comes a point where maybe a more relaxed way of being would be more conducive.
Rick: Yeah, I’m reminded of Adyashanti’s story, you probably know Adyashanti, he was like a really intense seeker and going on all these retreats and just really, you know, struggling and straining and you know, practically to the point of desperation and craziness, and finally at a certain point he just had this, “Oh, I give up,” and when he had that sort of sudden relaxation, he had an awakening, profound awakening.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah, and the pathway looks different for different people, you know, but again, the love in the heart helps to stop the judgment of what your movie looks like, and so people are not so tough on themselves.
Rick: Yeah, well I’m glad you keep coming back to that, and that’s actually where we started out, you know, today is talking about the heart and love in the heart and so on. Is there anything one can do to culture that? I mean, you know, for instance, Seva, some say that doing spiritual service of some kind, even like taking care of homeless dogs or anything that you feel moved to do, definitely has a culturing effect on the heart which smooths the path.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I would say two things here, and one is it can be very useful, this is what I use with a lot of my students, that they do, part of the meditation is simply breathing in and out of the heart. I know you can’t breathe in and out of the heart, but as if you are, it just takes people deeper into that space, and then find out what makes your heart sing. This is why I have singing heart ashram, it’s not because I’m a singer, but you know, find out what makes your heart sing and cultivate it, right, and it can be different things for different people. So these two things…
Rick: I think that’s what Joseph Campbell meant when he said…
Jacqueline: Sorry.
Rick: I think that’s what Joseph Campbell had in mind when he said, “Follow your bliss.”
Jacqueline: Yes, yes.
Rick: I’m sorry, I interrupted you. So you’re saying what makes your heart healthy.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and you know, many, many years ago, the center I had in Copenhagen, I suddenly gave it a new name. I was dancing ecstatically one night, and the name Singing Heart came through it, and now I have the Singing Heart Ashram in Tiruvannamalai, India, but it came from a quote I’d heard. You know, you’ve heard it, I’m sure. Don’t ask what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes your heart sing and go out and do it. What the world needs is people with hearts that sing.
Rick: That’s nice.
Jacqueline: So whatever keeps your heart singing, cultivate it, and then maybe try to make the deep energetic connection with the meditation on the heart.
Rick: Great, and of course Buddhists have this metta meditation that helps them to culture loving-kindness and so on. Many people say that really works for them.
Jacqueline: Of course, and for many people some kind of service is a great opening into the heart, other people not so much.
Rick: Yeah, I don’t know if you can hear the snoring sound, but Irene wanted me to announce that it’s not her, it’s our dog who’s right down here and he’s fast asleep and snoring.
Jacqueline: I thought you were going to say Irene fell asleep.
Rick: Yeah, well, you know. It could easily be her, she said, but it’s our dog down here on the floor who tends to snore. Well, I don’t necessarily want to end on that particular note, but maybe it’s not a bad one to end on. Is there anything that you’d like to say in conclusion to kind of wrap it all up and leave people with a final thought?
Jacqueline: Oh, trust your heart, trust yourself, trust the role that’s playing through you. You know, it all is as it is, and whenever you need help, seek it, you know, from the people around you or a group you feel attracted to or whoever you feel can help you, your next step of the pathway, but trust.
Rick: Yeah, I think a part of that is don’t compare yourself to others.
Jacqueline: Oh, it’s so important, and the heart doesn’t compare.
Rick: Yeah, it’s like, you know, we appreciate others’ good fortune and so on and so forth, and have compassion on those whose fortune isn’t so good, but you know, there can be this tendency of envying this or that person who seems to be more spiritually enlightened and has had this and that awakening or this and that experience, and that sort of thinking goes nowhere.
Jacqueline: And this is what the mind does, the mind compares, but the heart doesn’t. The heart just embraces all of it.
Rick: Good, well that’s a good ending point, the heart embraces all of it. So thanks Jacqueline, it’s gotten darker as you’ve been talking and so your face has gotten darker and darker, but…
Jacqueline: Oh, well it’s evening now in Copenhagen, it’s 20 past 8 in the evening.
Rick: So I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, as I thought I would, and as always I’ll be linking to your website, I say as always, whenever I interview somebody I link to their website and put links to their books, and I’ve already put that page together, so those who watch this interview who would like to get in touch with Jacqueline, who may want to go to India and do a retreat at the ashram or whatever. Do you also offer things just sort of online for people who aren’t into traveling?
Jacqueline: Yes, sometimes I do Skype.
Rick: Yeah, Skype things, individually or collectively or both?
Jacqueline: Well, mostly I’ve done individually, but I’m starting to do now also with small groups, especially Indian groups, because I’m not there many months of the year, but both are possible.
Rick: Okay, so there’ll be information about that on your website I’m sure?
Jacqueline: Maybe not, but people can send an email.
Rick: Okay, good. Well, thanks. So let me just make a couple of concluding remarks. In general, you’ve been listening or watching, listening to or watching an interview with Jacqueline Maria Longstaff on this show, Buddha at the Gas Pump. This is an ongoing thing, just about every week we do one. And if you’d like to be notified of new ones when they’re released, you can sign up at batgap.com to receive an email about once a week. And as I mentioned in the beginning, we appreciate the support of those who feel moved to support it, there’s a PayPal button there. And also check out this menu, which is ‘at a glance’, because that kind of summarizes every significant thing on the website, and you can just go through those things and do whatever appeals to you. Let’s see, next week I’m going to be interviewing David Loy. I’ve already begun listening to his talks. I interviewed him once before, about four or five years ago, and he’s a Buddhist Zen teacher who’s very into sacred activism and environmental concerns and so on. The week after that it will be Shivarudra Balayogi, and on and on. So stay tuned, thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next time. And thank you Jacqueline. Jacqueline, I keep saying it wrong. Nice, enjoyed talking with you. Good night.
Jacqueline: Good night.