Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer and my guest this week is Janet Sussman. And we’re recording in the home of some friends here in Fairfield, Iowa. So we have a small audience, including a dog who will probably sleep through the whole thing. And Janet, I don’t think you know much about this show, and I don’t know much about you, so let me just introduce what the show is about and then we’ll start to get into your story, which I am told is very fascinating. About a year ago I had the idea to do a show in which I interviewed people who had had a spiritual awakening. And I’ve done about 46 of them now. And everybody’s story is different, although there are often fundamental similarities, you know, from one person to the next. And it’s fascinating to sort of see how consciousness awakens or how awakenings occur in a variety of people. And the value of this, I think, is that it shows people who watch it that it doesn’t necessarily all have to fit into one particular mold. There are many ways in which awakening can occur, so that if they had been sort of stuck on a particular concept of what it’s going to be and feeling that they were a million miles away from it because that concept didn’t seem to jive with their experience, you know, hearing the story of a variety of people might just make them realize that there’s something in their experience right now which is actually what they’ve been looking for, which might enable them to awaken to that. And in fact there actually have been some awakenings as a result of this show, people watching it and sort of, you know, having it trigger something and facilitating a shift. And here in Fairfield, Iowa, of course, we live in a town where several thousand people have been meditating for decades. And, you know, I think a lot of awakenings are occurring here, but there are also people, whom I was alluding to a minute ago, who feel that, who’ve glorified the idea of enlightenment to such an extent that they feel that they’re just, that it’s almost unreachable, that they’ve given up on any hope of it in this lifetime. I’ve actually talked to people who say that. It’s like, “Oh well, you know, it’s not going to happen for me because I can’t actually be like so-and-so who is my ideal of what enlightenment is, and therefore I think I’ll just settle for, you know, meditating and playing golf, and, you know, that’ll get me through this lifetime and someday I’ll reach it.” And I don’t think that that’s necessarily a fate a person has to accept. So, in any case, these shows have been sort of like little mini-autobiographies of a yogi, you know, mini-sketches of a person’s life, of people’s lives, and how their spiritual development has unfolded over the course of their lives. And sometimes we start with, by going directly into the moment a person awoke, if they feel like that’s the most significant thing, and if they feel that there was a sort of a watershed moment, you know, a night and day difference, but for many people that is not the case, and it makes more sense to kind of trace a chronological development, even from early childhood, you know, things they’ve experienced, the significant stages that they’ve gone through as they go along. So, how would you like to do it?
Janet: I think, knowing my situation, I would say the best thing to do is to go back to the beginning, really the beginning of very early childhood, and kind of move along a little bit in time. My memories of being really one or two years old is that they seem very uncanny to me now, looking back at them, because I realize that most one or two year old people couldn’t be thinking like this. So there had to be something going on in my nervous system right at the get-go. And it’s funny, because I’m in a group in Charlotte that I’m facilitating, and one of the women that actually is being a buddy in the group had this cognition about me, and she said, “I saw you in a crib looking out the window.” And it was just kind of uncanny for me, because that crib looking out the window was a whole world for me for the first couple of years of my life.
Rick: And you remember that, being in the crib?
Janet: Absolutely, and that’s why I thought it was so interesting, that that’s what she picked up on immediately. And what was interesting about it is because my adult self was obviously on board, because there was a young person in–this was in New York City, and I lived in a garden apartment complex in Queens, and there was a young boy that I became friendly with. Now remember, I was very, very young, I’m talking about. But I seemed to have a complete comprehension of his whole situation, that his family had come from Germany, it was after the Holocaust, he had cerebral palsy.
Rick: You mean at the age of one or two you had this comprehension?
Janet: Yes, yes.
Rick: And you remember having had the comprehension?
Janet: Yes, yes, that’s what I’m telling you, that I remember this whole thing. And that a lot of the thinking that I have now, because my whole life is about looking into other people and helping them and understanding where they’re coming from, that that comprehension or that understanding was completely available that young.
Rick: Yeah Because I remember my mom picking me up from the crib, and I remember feeling like I wanted to talk to her about all this, but I didn’t even have the language yet.
Rick: You didn’t have the talk?
Janet: I didn’t have the language yet. I learned to talk very early, but I didn’t have enough of the complex language to describe to her the cognition that I was having about this boy named Harvey. So that’s how far back this goes.
Rick: How old was Harvey?
Janet: Thirteen.
Rick: And you were two, or one or two. And was Harvey actually telling you anything about himself, or you were just picking up on it?
Janet: No, I think these were all impressions that I had about his mother, and very similar to things that happen to me now. Very, very similar.
Rick: You just kind of cognize all this information about him.
Janet: Yeah, it just would come to me, and I would have that compassionate witness of feeling towards that. So it was very, very early. However, it’s been a pretty lonely journey in that regard.
Rick: Right So I think what’s happened more for me are incremental psychological adjustments to the situation, and, of course, changes in consciousness. I think it’s an ongoing situation forever. I don’t believe that there’s any end road.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a recurring theme in these discussions, because some people do feel like, “Well, you’ve reached a certain point, and you’re done.” And I just haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.
Janet: Well, I’m sure there’s all different types of situations that come up for people, and some people that I’ve talked to feel very content and complete, and there’s really not any striving there. I’m probably the complete flip-opposite.
Rick: You’re always striving.
Janet: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m on overdrive most of the time. But I don’t know why that’s true. It’s just the truth.
Rick: It’s your makeup.
Janet: It’s my makeup.
Rick: And not to digress, but I would suggest that even the people who say, “I’m content and complete,” they could have light years of progress yet to make. They’re just sort of taking a breather. Or probably they’re progressing, but it’s just not a priority for them to sort of push it. But given the scope of human potential or divine potential, I would be reluctant to say that anybody’s finished, that I’ve encountered.
Janet: Yeah, I would agree with you about that, 100%. I mean, that’s my perception, too. And I think part of it is because I have kind of a large view of what a completion would look like, and it’s pretty big.
Rick: We’ll talk about that.
Janet: I’m not there yet.
Rick: Well, let’s go back to when you were two, because I don’t want to jump ahead too far.
Janet: Well, so now we move up the timeline. I’m about 7, 8, 9 years old. And see, for me, I think there’s a combination of things to consider. One is just being what we would consider now to be a gifted kid. And gifted children were not very well understood in the ’50s and ’60s. And unless it really popped out in a more classical way, it was hard for people to tell what those gifts were. And my particular gifts were more interperceptual gifts.
Rick: Right, they weren’t so academic.
Janet: Well, I mean, I had very, very good grades. But my gifts were more of a, if you will, intuitive and psychic nature.
Rick: Right.
Janet: And creative nature. But when I was a very young child, I was already writing very sophisticated poetry. I remember sending one of my poems out to the woman who wrote “The Wrinkle in Time.”
Rick: I remember. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah.
Janet: And getting very good feedback on it. It was in the sixth grade.
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: But beyond that, I had that seriousness of purpose that was always there. In Yiddish, my mother calls it an “alta cup,” which basically means an old head. And my mom was fond to say that I was never a child. I mean, I was a child, but I wasn’t a child as she understood other children to be.
Rick: I mean, did you play with dolls and go out and play hopscotch and just do–
Janet: I was very, very self-aware right from the get-go and very driven right from the get-go.
Rick: So you didn’t do so many of those normal little kid things?
Janet: No. And if I did do them, they always had some kind of inner meaning for me. I mean, I was developing other languages, and I was doing all sorts of unusual stuff when I was a kid.
Rick: Did you have many friends that you could hang out with, or were you sort of a loner because you couldn’t relate to anybody or they couldn’t relate to you?
Janet: Well, you know, luckily God organized for me to have a little girl that lived right next door to me, who eventually moved to Canada, who was my buddy growing up. And I had a couple of buddies, and she was one of them. And she ended up being a yoga teacher and living in Canada, and you get the picture, and left home at like 17 and didn’t go to the prom. So I did have a buddy, and my relationship with this young girl, Marcia, is almost exactly like my relationship with Doug, who’s sitting right in front of me. We had a very creative rapport, and she did a lot of listening to me, pouring my little heart out about all my languages that I was hearing in my awareness, and codes that I was developing, and all sorts of creative, unusual things that were going on with me, from my early childhood and right through until I left that town when I was 14. This was a long run at this point. So I was always an unusual kid. And the big turning point for me was around 9 years old.
Rick: Okay. Before we get to that, would it be worth elaborating a bit on these languages and codes, or are you about to say that anyway? Are you talking about actual languages that are spoken in the world, or just languages that are completely unknown to others and that were just…
Janet: Right.
Rick: Formulated in your own…
Janet: Well, there were a lot of things going on for me. I mean, I was studying music, and I did a lot of piano playing growing up. And I was in a little group with other young girls, and we would perform in pretty serious performance situations. So I had a lot of pressure on me to do that. But yeah, I was perceiving and experiencing–that’s the only way I can put it–code. Kind of like now we would think of this programming code. I had all these little symbols and icons and words, and I was trying to understand them.
Rick: Did they mean something to you?
Janet: Well, part of what was happening is that around 9, 10, 11 years old, I would wake up in the middle of the night–and of course this was before personal computers– but I’d actually see computer screens in front of me that would appear, and actually read these things at night and study.
Rick: Right. So they were like televisions, which we had in those days.
Janet: Right, exactly. But there would be two or three of them in front of me, and I would just stay up at night and watch them. And they had language, and basically I was studying at night, which is what I do now.
Rick: So you wouldn’t be dreaming these things. You would be actually in the waking state.
Janet: No, they actually appeared as holograms in my room.
Rick: Maybe sitting up in bed, and you’re seeing these screens.
Janet: But it was clear as day. You could see them. And in childhood I had a lot of this kind of hologrammatic experience where things would actually appear in the room. They weren’t internal. They were externalized. Which, from the time I was four, this was going on.
Rick: Would beings appear, or more like inanimate things?
Janet: No, beings appear, too. Yep. I had a whole thing going.
Rick: A gang of friends.
Janet: Yep, I had a whole thing going. But I was studying, you know, right away, by nine or ten years old. And a lot of the things that I write about now started right then.
Rick: Can you elaborate on what kind of things you would see on these screens?
Janet: Yeah, it was really about physics, science, what we would think of as physics and science.
Rick: I mean, you’d see equations and things like that. And they would make sense to you.
Janet: Well, somehow my higher self, I guess, was understanding some of these things, because that’s what I’m doing now. But it’s taken 40 years to get there. But at the time, part of the problem was that I was having all these experiences, and there was zero anybody to talk to about it, of course.
Rick: I don’t think you were nuts if you tried.
Janet: Well, I did try, because it’s my nature to try to share about stuff. So I definitely tried. I tried to elicit help from teachers, parents, you know. But in the end, I mean, I had one very traumatic experience with a babysitter. I tried to talk to her about something that was happening, and she locked me in my room and basically punished me.
Rick: She thought you were lying or…
Janet: Yeah, whatever. I don’t know. Because some little elf being was in my room, and I wanted to tell her about it. So essentially, it was challenging. It was challenging. So I got more and more internalized and less and less able to share. That’s kind of what happened. So that was my childhood, in a nutshell.
Rick: So you said around the age of nine, something significant happened.
Janet: Yes, I had a teacher. It’s funny, because somebody just pushed– somebody placed this picture on Facebook just two weeks ago of my fourth-grade teacher and our fourth-grade class. And that was the turning point for me, because this teacher named Mr. Rebell really got me just right at the get-go. I don’t know how, but he did. And he kept saying to me, “Of course, it’s hard when you’re nine.” He says, “Oh, you’re going to have a lot of friends in college when you’re nine.” And that was like four lifetimes for me. “But you’re going to have to wait until then,” because he realized that people had a very difficult time understanding me, because I was unusual.
Rick: But you would sit and tell him stuff about–
Janet: Oh, yeah, I told him a lot of stuff. I didn’t tell him about some of the things I’m telling you, though. But I was writing and doing a lot of creative writing, and some of that was very sophisticated for a child, very sophisticated. And when I look back at it now, I can hardly believe that I wrote those things.
Rick: Did you actually save some of that stuff?
Janet: You know, I wish that I had, but my mom, God bless her, threw out everything.
Rick: Cleaned it out.
Janet: Yeah. But in sixth grade, I spent the entire year– I wrote a book in sixth grade that my mom had to type, of course, because I didn’t even know how to type, on Japan. It was like a hundred-page manuscript.
Rick: You just got all interested in Japan.
Janet: Right. I started researching, and I had all these things out from the Atomic Energy Commission on Japan, and I was very, very concerned about the atomic situation.
Rick: Right.
Janet: And then I went back in history, and I had cut out all these pictures of different areas of Japan. I mean, it was a treatise, really, you know, that my mom had to type up.
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: So, you know, my parents really tried to handle me, and my mom’s still trying to handle me to this moment.
Rick: Oh, she’s still alive. Good.
Janet: Yeah, she is. That’s why I’m–
Rick: What was your dad’s profession?
Janet: My dad was a traffic manager for United Merchants and Manufacturers in New York City.
Rick: Okay.
Janet: And he passed on quite early in 1980.
Rick: Right. All right, so I don’t think we quite finished what we were about to say or were saying about the breakthrough when you were nine, did we?
Janet: Well, I think what the breakthrough was is that that was an awakening for me, that in a sense, this teacher was like–
Rick: Oh, the teacher.
Janet: The teacher was like a guru, really. He was. And everything about him was like that. He was an extremely wise person. He was able to take me and this kid named Robert Zarin in that class, who was really functionally retarded, and work with both of us beautifully. You see what I mean?
Rick: Interesting guy.
Janet: And really keep–help this boy have his dignity.
Rick: Right.
Janet: You see what I’m saying? So he was an incredible teacher, and I ended up being very successful in that school system and very well-known. I was just very, very fortunate to have him as a teacher.
Rick: That’s great. And so he really sort of validated and gave you confidence for what you were going through.
Janet: Yes. Yeah, he really, really understood me, which is quite remarkable.
Rick: I had a teacher like that when I was in high school, whom I later learned had gone on to become a professional psychic. But I was just this crazy mixed-up kid, you know, on the verge of getting into drugs and everything. But she just had this really nice blend of sensitivity and good humor and didn’t take me too seriously. And, you know, she used to just call me “Archer.” And a teacher can make a big difference in a person’s life, you know.
Janet: Absolutely, and I’ve had some really good teachers. I’ve been very fortunate that way.
Rick: So we’re moving on into your teenage years.
Janet: Yeah, your teenage years. Well, I didn’t have a very typical teenage years because, first of all, I was doing music so seriously. And then my parents did not have very much money, so there was always the struggle financially. And when I was in, I think, a freshman year of high school, my parents wanted me to stop taking music lessons because it cost so much. And because I didn’t want to stop taking music lessons, I devised a scheme where I was going to memorize this Chopin Scherzo and present it in this auditorium to all these people to prove to them that I would be able to be worthy of being able to keep my music lessons. And I was the only–I think most of the people were upper classmen compared to me. And I got a standing ovation. There were about 600 people in the auditorium. It was bumper to bumper. So you memorized it and you did a good job. Yes, it was like 23 pages of music to memorize. And I did a lot of it on my own because I wasn’t getting quite the training that I needed to do it. You see what I mean? And then, after that, they were still balking about letting me have my music lessons, which was kind of a typical dynamic in my mother’s world. But I think part of it was that my parents, I think, were always worried about me. They were worried about what I was going to do with my life, you see, because they kind of got that it was not going to be easy for me to fit into any one particular thing. And they were afraid that I had gotten lost in this music world, and what would I be doing?
Rick: I can’t help but laugh because when I was that age, my mother used to set a kitchen timer to half an hour and said, “Sit and practice the piano for half an hour.” And I’d hate every second of it. And finally, I would throw my music on the floor and run out of the house. What a contrast.
Janet: And my parents were going, “Would you get out and play and act like a kid?” That’s what my parents were doing. And I was that way, and I’m exactly the same way now. I have exactly the same dynamic with my mother. It’s the same thing. She says, “Are you having a good time in Fairfield? Are you playing? Are you getting any playing done at all?” So it’s the same thing. What can I say?
Rick: I would trade places with you. I would much rather that I had been the serious, focused student type.
Janet: Well, it has its drawbacks. It really has its drawbacks. Because when I look back on the whole thing now, I feel like it was absolutely an adaptation psychologically because I really didn’t understand how to cope with what was going on in consciousness. And I did not have the support that I needed.
Rick: That’s interesting. So something really profound was going on in consciousness, and you were sort of pouring yourself into music as a way of coping or dealing with that.
Janet: Music and creative writing, both.
Rick: So what would you say was going on with consciousness that was hard to cope with?
Janet: That I was just receiving a tremendous amount of cognitional information that was way, way beyond my years.
Rick: Mostly at night?
Janet: In school, too. I remember an example of this. I think I was in eighth grade. My dad decided that I should read “Catcher in the Rye.” Well, you know, in whatever year this was, ’50s or ’60s, eighth graders weren’t reading this book. So I came in, and not only did I read the book, but I wrote this stream-of-consciousness prose poem about the book, which had to do with awakening, essentially, which is what really the book’s about, and sexual awakening on top of that. Now I’m like 13 years old, you see. So I get up in front of the class, and I read this thing. And the teacher, she was just nonplussed. First of all, she didn’t believe I had written it. She thought an adult had written it, but it wasn’t true. And then she got that I really did write it, but then the kids gave me such a hard time. And so I ended up getting bullied about this little book report for months. I went to see some kid, and she said, “My parents said that you had plagiarized that. There’s no way someone your age could have written this.” You see what I’m saying? So I had a lot of–
Rick: That’s what Mozart was doing at the age of five.
Janet: It was not easy. But the experiences that I had writing these kinds of things or learning these kinds of things, I was just receiving an opening into a very deep inner wisdom level just very, very early in childhood. I remember I was seven when my grandmother died, and I remember being in my little bedroom in this house, having all these realizations about my grandmother’s life and her having cancer and her relationship with my grandfather. See, to me that was all very normal because that’s how I was functioning. But when I look back on it, I can see why nobody thought it was normal because what seven-year-olds are thinking this way? You know what I mean? So I can see why the adults were having a challenge with me. But from my side, I was just being myself, and I couldn’t really be anything else.
Rick: It’s interesting that some people have this orientation, as you’ve been describing, where they’re downloading information or they’re being given information by guides or they’re being shown screens, as you were describing. The interview I did, the one before the previous one, was with this woman down in New Mexico who had that kind of experience all of her life, and her guides are telling her this and her guides are telling her that. And a lot of people can’t relate to that sort of thing. I can’t in terms of my own experience. And a lot of people in the enlightenment field these days, the Neo-Advaita crowd and all, would abhor that sort of talk because it, to them, would seem to be wallowing in the maya of this illusory world and taking it far too seriously. But I think there’s something fascinating about it. Maybe you could talk a little bit, either now or as we go along, about the dynamics of what’s actually going on. Who is it that’s feeding information and why? Is it all just within your own consciousness that things are being conjured up and a sort of self-teaching process? Or are there higher beings or wiser souls who try to guide our destiny and who find willing and able participants whom they can teach and who can then turn around and perform a function in the world by virtue of the fact that they have a concrete physical body in there, a human being here on earth, which these more ascended souls might not be able to perform? So perhaps we could reflect on that, but I don’t want to derail your story either. But maybe in the course of this discussion we can cover those points.
Janet: Sure.
Rick: Well, would you like to comment on that now or would you like to continue on with the…
Janet: Well, my personal feeling is that it’s really not a good idea to try to judge anybody else’s experience.
Rick: Good point.
Janet: I think that being a spiritual counselor for 30 years, I’ve heard every possible experience, really. And they’re all good. They’re all part of the human condition. And truthfully, I don’t think anybody has the answers to all the questions. And really, you listen to people’s experience and that’s what their experience is. That’s it. End of story. How can you really say whether it was the right experience or the wrong experience? It was their experience. So that’s that. End of story. However, if you want my opinion about all these kinds of things, my personal feeling about myself is that I think I have a very active imagination, obviously. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think I’m just a very creative person. It just came with my packaging. I think that we don’t understand the brain very well. I think it’s a very profound area of endeavor. I think that our capacities to realize and understand and express intelligence are infinite. And I think that probably all of us have counterparts to ourselves on other dimensions. I think that only a very small portion of us is ever incarnated here. So the whole notion of enlightenment as a completion, that’s where perhaps the fallacy begins. Because you can’t be complete. Because you’re not even connected to all the parts of you here. So what could be completed if you’re not even connected to the parts? I really don’t even understand incarnation yet. And quite frankly, I think most of the religions are very limiting in their expression of the truth. All of them. That’s just my opinion. I think that it’s… But I will say this, I think Hinduism comes pretty close because there’s so many different facets of Hinduism. And within the context of that, there are a lot of explanations and understandings about people that I think are very, very valuable. And that’s probably why I’ve been attracted to a community and people that are in that mode. Not probably, no doubt. I’m very much in favor of the understanding of intelligence becoming more intelligent, like what Maharishi says. And I think the models that the brain comes up with about being able to interpret reality are just that. They’re models that the brain comes up with, including models that have to do with information gathering, like we’re talking about. So I think that… Personally, I definitely believe that there are other intelligences on other dimensions. I was just talking to somebody in another interview a few days ago, and I know for a fact that that is the case. I can’t say that more emphatically than that. And that all of us are in contact with those intelligences all the time, but we just usually are not self-aware about that. That’s all. And the reason is because there is a purpose for being self-enclosed. Kind of think of it like being in a house. Why do you live in a house? Why don’t you live outside?
Rick: Protection from the elements.
Janet: Exactly. You’re protected. You’re sheltered. And you have a circumspect environment in which you can be seated. And that gives you a world in which you can focus. And that’s what a dimension is. It’s a world in which you can focus. So we need that in order to feel alive and real and here. But on the other hand, a whole big chunk of us is not here, and perhaps never ever gets here, because it can’t. It’s too big. It wouldn’t fit in the box. It’s kind of like you move into a house and you have all these other possessions. You just can’t move them into the house because there’s no room. Personally, I think we narrow down and come into an incarnational cycle for reasons that we can’t fully fathom probably until we leave, and maybe not even then. And that there’s just an awful lot to reality that we don’t understand. And the notion of the downloading idea, well, look at computers. They’re downloading all the time, too. So, of course, they’re imitating our own brain and central nervous system. And what we understand about the downloading process is that information will sit someplace perhaps not accessible, and then when you need it, it will download. It will come in. You will push the button and there it will be. Why can’t you put all that information in your consciousness all at once in waking state in a conscious way? Because it would be very overwhelming. But what happens gradually is that as higher states stabilize, more and more of that aspect of cognitional information can come into waking state and can be accessed, kind of like files in a computer. So you can move to this file, you can move to that file, and it literally feels like something is moving in you like a camera that’s focusing on particular areas of information and understanding. And I think this is an aspect of the brain and central nervous system, and it is part of consciousness. And does everybody have that experience? No. I’m sure everybody that you interview doesn’t have that experience, but that’s my experience, and it has been since childhood. And mostly for me, my path has been to integrate the information, to try to make sense of it, to articulate it, to give it a voice, to be able to make it user-friendly and useful. And it’s been a journey of cognizing techniques and processes that would also share that information with other people and help them awaken and open up. And it’s just a continual process in that direction.
Rick: So at one point you said, “Well, I have a very vivid imagination and I’m very creative.” And some people might say, “Well, yeah, she has vivid imagination. She imagined TV screens in her bedroom, and she’s kind of cooked up this whole cosmology of how the universe works and all that.” I don’t share that skepticism personally, but I have a good friend who watches these interviews, and I often try to play devil’s advocate by putting myself in his… from his perspective just to make things more concrete. But the… what was I going to say? Well, a minute ago you were saying how, you know, that what we actually are kind of cognizant of in terms of who we are, what we are, what we know, is just a small subset of a much bigger picture of what we really are. Were you saying that in the sense that as an individual we’re just a sort of a specific reflection of a universal awareness that we’re all reflectors of? You’re a reflector, I’m a reflector, Kat’s a reflector. Or were you saying it more in terms of each of us as an entity has a much larger reality?
Janet: Oh yeah, each of us as an entity has a much larger reality, and we’re all part of a deeply woven, interconnected, collective consciousness. It’s both, it’s not neither or.
Rick: Okay.
Janet: And I think that… see, personally I just feel that people’s experience, like I said, is their own experience. If you don’t have this experience, of course it’s going to seem very odd to you or unusual or, you know. And my experience of life is that the only way that I ever get people to understand the experience is that I have to illustrate or demonstrate that process to people. So that’s why I’ve spent my whole life doing that. And so when I, you know, when people say, “Well, where does this come from?” or “How does it happen?” Well, it’s just very simple. If you have a conversation with somebody and you’re sitting right in front of them and you’re reading the blueprint of their whole energy field and you can tell them just about anything that they might want to know about themselves and all the people that they know, and you’ve been able to do that since you were a kid and you’ve been developing it for 30 years, well, that’s just your reality.
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: Okay, so maybe it’s not…
Rick: And it’s really convincing for them, I’m not going to…
Janet: Well, that’s the whole point.
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: I mean, the classic example is I was at this healing center in Boston that a friend of mine brought to and she wanted me to be part of the staff. She had this idea that I should come on staff. So the guy–and it was an alternative healing center–he sat me down in this room and he just looked at me and he says, “I don’t believe in people like you. I think you’re all quacks and I don’t want to have anything to do with this kind of thing.”
Rick: Right.
Janet: “You’re all acupuncturists and we have people here that are legitimate, real people. I don’t want you.” Okay. So my friend says to him, she says, “Okay,” she says, and he says, “I bet you can’t say one thing to me that would convince me otherwise.” So my friend said, “Look, all of you leave the room and let Jan sit with this gentleman for a few minutes.” So everybody left the room in this meeting and I sat down with this guy in about 8 seconds.
Rick: It blew his mind.
Janet: Right. I just said something to him that was very, very private that no one could possibly know and he just said, “Oh my God.” It was an awakening for me. It really was. He was just like right there. He was like that. And I heard about this for years afterwards through different people about it, but he wouldn’t let me work at the center. [Laughter]
Rick: That’s funny.
Janet: And so that kind of gives you an illustration of the way my life has gone. And so I always have skeptical people around. I always have people who are saying, “Oh, it couldn’t possibly be true,” or, “You couldn’t possibly do that,” or, “It couldn’t happen to me,” or, “It won’t happen to me.” It’s kind of like when I was a little kid, I had this record, and the record had these lines on it. It was a little, small little child’s record, and it was “Carrots Grow from Carrot Seeds,” and there was this little lyric in it that says, “Nah, nah, they won’t come up. Nah, nah, they won’t come up.” Well, that’s the theme of my entire life. It could have been my mantra, you know what I mean? Because that’s what people have always been telling me. However, when these things happen and people actually observe the process, you see what I mean? And they see, “Oh yeah, that really does happen for her,” or, “This really is real,” or, “She can really do this.” I had a job at MIT Library, and I was supposed to be writing these little anthology, little descriptions of different passages and so forth. I just was able to do it very, very quickly because this was kind of my thing. I could just pick up the book, feel into the book. I didn’t even really have to read the book, and I’d write the thing. I thought you do about 120 or so of these things. The head librarian just let me go and said, “Look, just write them. Great. This is what we need done. You can do them. This is before computers, too. Just write them out.” So that’s what I did. That’s how I got through school. You see what I mean? At first, there was always that skepticism, “That’s not really going to happen. She can’t really do that.” But did that skeptical aspect internalize and cause a lot of disturbance psychologically? You bet. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s still working itself out. It was very traumatic.
Rick: Interesting. So a lot of people gave you a hard time.
Janet: Yeah, it’s very traumatic because we all, as human beings, want to feel accepted and loved. That feeling of having to prove yourself all the time, which I have had constantly since I was little, is very wearing.
Rick: It wears on you.
Janet: It’s wearing you for a whole lifetime.
Rick: That’s been the fate of anybody who goes public with some kind of special ability or state of consciousness or whatever. They get crucified, they get stoned, they get ridiculed because they’re just so far outside the paradigm that they threaten the paradigm.
Janet: I understand that, obviously. But having said that, I did have the courage. I’ve been doing very unusual work full-time for 30 years and supporting myself doing it, which is not easy.
Rick: Great. But it’s nice, though. It beats working in an office.
Janet: It does. It does beat working in an office. I gave up the office in about 1979 or so, and I haven’t really looked back. However, what we’re discussing, punching up against that skepticism wall, but it’s not only that. It’s much deeper than that. It’s not just about the skepticism. It’s about what’s really interesting to me and important is trying to really access these very deep understandings about the nature of reality, about different levels of different types of information, and being able to trust those levels of information and understanding and wisdom within oneself. That’s what’s most important. That is a psychological process that we really, in my opinion, don’t fully understand yet and has a lot of parameters to it that need to be addressed. That’s really the key issue. Essentially, to me, consciousness has to be talking to itself. Do you see what I mean?
Rick: Yes.
Janet: Consciousness is conscious, and therefore it has to be talking to itself. Yes, of course, consciousness is picking forms or modalities to talk to itself through, which is everything that you’re looking at in this room right now. Therefore, any type of creativity or anything like that, science, mathematics, whatever it might be, is basically just consciousness talking to itself. But we’re also learning how to talk back. That’s the whole point. We’re trying to communicate with consciousness, which is a hugely vast thing and which actually wants to talk to you. This is what has led me into doing the time and space work that I do, because it’s time talking to you, it’s space talking to you. It’s the mechanics of these things itself talking to us. That’s how we learn to experience them and to work through them and to understand what they are. They have a voice. They have a mechanism of communication. That mechanism is what is fascinating to me. Therefore, I do feel that there’s a huge amount of understanding about consciousness, enlightenment, and awakening that we simply do not have. Quite frankly, I’m very impatient when people make it very simplistic, because I feel that it’s quite complex. It’s not simple. You know how everybody in the spiritual world says, “Oh, it’s so simple. It’s so simple.” It’s not simple. It’s credibly complicated. Yes, it’s simple in the sense that you’re here, you’re alive, you’re present, you’re aware, you’re up, you’re here. In terms of really understanding the mechanisms of consciousness, most people don’t even know how a doorbell works. Never mind how consciousness works. You see what I’m saying? Why would they know how consciousness works? Immediately, when I hear that kind of emphatic understanding, I’m like, “Okay, great. Have that.” But not for me. Thank you very much.
Rick: I tend to react the same way. There’s always a paradox in things where, in one sense, as you said, it is very simple. You hear somebody like Eckhart Tolle talking, and he’s very good at articulating simple presence and being. “The simplest form of awareness,” as Maharishi used to put it. But on the other hand, there’s a great depth and richness that could be explored and elaborated, and that one could learn not only to experience but to express. There’s no end to that development. In terms of that, the best of us is still a neophyte trying to learn how to do that. Because there’s so much yet to be developed, I would say.
Janet: In my opinion, every sentient being in the whole multiverse is on the same path. All of us are trying to come to deeper levels of understanding. Whether it’s a little bug or some extraterrestrial being, we’re all coming into the same kind of understanding. But the oversimplification of it in the spiritual community, I actually think it’s impairing development. I think it actually impedes development, because what happens is that people have a justification to stand still. That’s not such a good thing. Even if you just take one aspect, like compassion, which is a big one, and you really enter into that and go deep into the whole experience of compassion, it’s a huge, vast compassion-witnessing process of feeling and feeling more and feeling more and feeling more. If you just take that one aspect, it’s infinite. So how could it possibly be done? I’m done. I’m done. There’s nothing more to do.
Rick: If you take compassion and compare it to piano playing, you can become a Mozart of compassion. But how many people do that? How close are people who say, “I’m done,” to actually reaching that level of mastery?
Janet: That’s what I’m trying to say. I think there are different types of mastery. There’s this issue of creativity, which is a kind of mastery. And creativity goes over a vast terrain of the sciences. A lot of creative people avert the sciences. They don’t want to deal with their left brain. “Thank you very much. I’ll stay in my right brain.” But ultimately, what I feel enlightenment is, is a vast, complex integration of right and left brain, so that we’re, as Anfand or Anfan would say, “feeling mathematically.” We actually have developed a feeling level of mathematics, which is what I do believe advanced beings have attained. So there’s so much there. Not to mention all of the human attributes of wisdom and compassion and the ability to truly walk in the moccasins of another person. So there’s so much there to go towards. Well, it’s not boring.
Rick: No. I really like that. I’m glad you’re emphasizing this. It’s a perennial point in these interviews. It keeps coming up. I keep harping on it in my own simple way, about teachers who say, “Well, it’s really very simple. There is no person. There’s nobody home. Once you realize that and accept it and know that there’s no doer and the world is an illusion, you’re done.” All these frilly notions of reincarnation and God and all this other stuff, it’s a lot of bunk that people just use to entertain themselves or make themselves feel good. There are very popular teachers who actually speak that way.
Janet: Oh, yeah. I’ve met them. I’m quite familiar with all that. I think that’s bunk.
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: I really do. I think it’s total bunk.
Rick: Harking back to what you said a few minutes ago, fine, that’s their experience.
Janet: I don’t even know if it’s their experience.
Rick: Maybe not.
Janet: I wouldn’t even say that. It’s a religious experience. I’ve been a 35-year Buddhist meditator. I’ve been around the Buddhist tradition for a long time. It is part, in a sense, of the Buddhist experience, that simplicity. It is a religious notion. That’s beautiful. It is a religious notion. I have nothing against religion, but I do feel what I said, that religious notions can impair progress rather than help it. Even if they’re most beautiful religious notions. There is a great beauty. There is a simplicity that exists in consciousness. That simplicity is absolutely what people are saying, from my own experience. It is a hyper-presence. It is a sense of everything folding into the present and being awake in that presence and never sleeping out of it, which is exactly what my experience is, because it is that way, sleeping, literally. So, I get that. But, so what?
Rick: Yeah.
Janet: So what? Okay, you have that.
Rick: It’s a good foundation.
Janet: Yeah, it’s a good foundation, exactly. It’s like scales on a piano. Okay, you got that.
Rick: You got your scales.
Janet: Right, but you know, what is that? You know what I mean? That is the beginning. Okay, and why is it hard to experience that awakeness and that presence? It’s because the present itself is being pulled from the past and the future. Okay, and these are not only states of being, but they’re scientific states. They’re cosmological and physics states. And this is my thing, okay? And so, that’s why it’s so hard to stay in the present, because you have a pull from the future and a pull from the past, and these two forces are constantly pulling on the present, like taffy.
Rick: Why are they doing that?
Janet: Because it’s their nature to do that, because the present is being fed by the future.
Rick: Uh-huh.
Janet: And the past is being fed by the future, and it’s a synchronistic internal motion that’s not only internal in consciousness, but in the cosmos. So that’s why it’s hard to “stay in the present.” So how do you stabilize the present? We actually don’t really stabilize the present. I think that’s an illusion in itself. I don’t believe that any of these people that say they stabilize the present have really stabilized the present, because the present isn’t stable.
Rick: Well, a lot of them say there is no past or future.
Janet: Yeah, I know.
Rick: Those are just notions, you know.
Janet: I know what they’re saying.
Rick: And, you know, like Eckhart Tolle, for instance, said, “The Romans didn’t live 2,000 years ago. The Romans lived in the now.”
Janet: Right.
Rick: “And it’s always the now.”
Janet: Right.
Rick: “So how can you be out of the now?”
Janet: Yeah, I get that. It’s a notion, and there’s a certain level of truth to it, because everything is folding back into the present. So therefore, the present is very effulgent, it’s very full of consciousness, okay? But the problem with that is that it leaves no room for consciousness exploration, and it will completely limit our capacity to deal with extra-dimensional life, which is where we are right now. And we have to come into a reckoning about that. And if we hold on to those New Agey notions that these gentlemen and women are describing, it is going to completely limit our ability to communicate with anybody else except other people that have those notions. And I can tell you from my personal experience that advanced beings think it’s completely ridiculous. Okay? Because I will put it to you just like that. It is ridiculous. Okay? They themselves–and you need really advanced beings. There is definitely a feeling of this presence, though. Don’t kid yourself. I mean, it’s huge. In fact, you know, people that have been around Maharishi or great beings– you know, I’ve had the pleasure of being around Amma and Karunamayi and Shreema and all these people– yes, there is a presence. Don’t kid yourself. It’s big, and it’s powerful, and it’s like a black hole. It will suck you right in. So you’re like, “Hrrr!” You know what I mean? And you feel like you can hardly breathe in that presence. Well, multiply that about 50,000, and now you’re going to get true inter-dimensional beings that are the kinds of beings that we do need to interact with if we’re going to have a planet in the next 10 or 15 years. And we’ve been interacting with them, in my opinion, for centuries, but that disclosure period is about to happen. And when we do meet these people, it’s going to become very self-evident that our notion of enlightenment is a very earthbound notion, and it’s cultural and religious, and it has nothing to do with what’s really going on in the multiverse. So I do have very strong feelings about this, obviously, because it’s been my experience since childhood. And yes, you do feel that presence. And yes, you do have a recognition that you are self and not self. So is there a self? Is there a no-self? You know, you could talk about it until the cows come home, but ultimately there is an individuated consciousness and a non-individuated consciousness, and you’re functioning simultaneously in a mechanism that we don’t fully understand. It’s beautiful. That’s a really good experience. It’s just that what I’m saying is that having, on other planes, constantly, every night of the week, meeting very advanced folks, I can just tell you that what they’re about is constantly absorbing more and more information. Information about you, being able to go into incredible depths of contact with other sentient beings that’s almost hard for us to even comprehend because it’s so complete and deep, to being able to cognize and understand the whole levels of reality that really we’re just beginning to explore. And therefore, that to me is a kind of enlightenment. And not kind of, it is enlightenment. In other words, what is enlightenment? It’s light coming into the nervous system and operating at a different vibratory frequency. And so, they’re constantly in a state of search. So the whole notion, “Oh, the search is over. There’s no more searching. Good luck. Good luck. I mean, come on. Get real. I mean, okay, so we’ll plant you outside the universe for a little while and let you sit there and tell me that there’s nothing to search. And let’s see how you get back in.”
Rick: I’m just letting you roll with this because this is interesting. I’m not interrupting too much. Now, when you say you’re in… Well, you said a little while ago that these advanced beings feel that this sort of simplification or dumbing down of enlightenment is very limiting and unfortunate in a sense. You know, on the other hand, perhaps it has its way of contributing something of value. I mean, it’s more valuable than Rush Limbaugh. Oh, absolutely. It’s a stage for people.
Janet: Well, what I feel is that people want happiness. And when you reach a certain place where you have a realization that there isn’t really a need to suffer anymore because the notion of suffering or the experience of suffering is limiting you to such an extent that it’s prohibiting your happiness, this is a beautiful realization. And there’s nothing wrong with it. So why wouldn’t that be an elevated truth? You see what I mean? I personally have not met any folks that I believe are truly in higher states that don’t emanate a certain type of happiness, but they don’t emanate complacency. And there’s a very big difference.
Rick: There’s a drive
Janet: You bet. I mean, really advanced beings. I mean, people like… Look at Shreema, you know, she’s out there just chanting and carrying on. She doesn’t need to be doing this stuff anymore. Why would she have to chant the whole Chandi every day? And if you know what the Chandi is, it’s a manuscript that has to do with the goddess in Sanskrit. Now, why would these beings perform pujas every day? Just in the Hindu tradition and in any of these religious traditions, why would the people in my tradition, the rabbis, sit around and do prakas all day and do all these things? Why would people pray? Why would people search? Because they’re trying to hold up a vibratory frequency. And as you mature vibrationally, you are given more responsibility to uphold the vibratory frequency. And that’s essentially what evolution is.
Rick: It’s like a bigger role.
Janet: You’re given a different tonality to uphold. And within the context of that, there is a profound desire to give back, to serve, to offer oneself. And if that sense has not come up for the person yet, because they’re so content and complacent, and they don’t feel like they need to help anybody, in my opinion, they’re not very complete.
Rick: When I was about 12, 13 years old, one day my friend and I decided that we were going to walk to the next town to see the monkeys in the pet store. So we started walking, and little did we know, it was 14 miles to the next town. And it was like early springtime, it was slush on the roads, we had these boots on. And we walked and we walked and we walked. And we kept saying to ourselves, “It’s just over the next horizon.” And we’d get to the next horizon, and it wouldn’t be there yet. So we’d say, “OK, it’s just over the next horizon.” And we actually managed to walk 14 miles, or maybe it was 7 miles, maybe it was a 14-round trip. And we managed to finally get to the pet store. And it turned out it was a Sunday and it was closed. But the point I wanted to make is, the next horizon. And, you know, it’s like… people can have this sense of, “I’m content, I’m done, I’m resting in the self, there’s really nothing more, anything else is just sort of superfluous.” But I don’t think they’re going to be allowed to rest in that state perpetually because the force of evolution is such that, you know, eventually people are going to be propelled on. It’s not the final resting place, if there is such a thing. There are more horizons to reach. And maybe they deserve a breather for a little while. But, you know, there’s going to be more.
Janet: I just think a particular type of Shakti just hasn’t awakened in that person yet. I mean, there are different kinds of Shakti, different kinds of spiritual energy. But that propelling, driving aspect of spiritual energy that moves and pushes, it’s what gives birth, literally. That labor, that force, is simply not very strong in that particular person. And there are all different kinds of Shaktis and all different kinds of ways that the divine emanation works. And so, that’s okay, you know, that’s alright. But what I have trouble with is that that is going to be judged by the people. See, immediately when you hear that judgment from someone and they’re saying, “Well, that’s all there is, so if you’re experiencing anything else other than this, you know, it’s phenomenological.”
Rick: Right, yes.
Janet: “And you’ve got a problem. Go back to go, don’t collect $200.”
Rick: Yes.
Janet: You know? First of all, I think a lot of those people, in my experience, the people that have very strong Kundalini awakening, okay, which has been my experience, where the Kundalini woke up in my twenties and created all sorts of stuff going on in my physiology to this day. It’s very hard to have that kind of truly complacent notion of enlightenment when you have this force running.
Rick: Like a volcano.
Janet: Yes, you have this force running in you 24/7. And it’s like, “Ha!” You know what I mean? And you’re like, “Whoa!” And this is like going on all the time, and your breathing is changing, your body is changing, you’re going through all these machinations, and different kinds of cities are awakening. It’s very hard to say, “Oh, yes, everything is so beautiful and complacent.”
Rick: Right.
Janet: You know what I mean? So it’s a different kind of Shakti. There are Shaktis that involve that kind of very mellow, deep complacency, but that other kind of Shakti doesn’t engender that. So I think that’s a big piece of what we’re talking about. And that’s why I guess I’ve been– because that has been my experience, who knows why– I’ve been more drawn to teachers that can work with and deal with the Kundalini Shakti in a particular way. And I do think that what we’re talking about is just that. That’s it. That’s the difference. But the big problem that we have now on planet Earth is that all of us really need to get along with one another. And all the judgments, even in the spiritual community, really need to go. And as we know, the gurus don’t even get along with one another. I mean, they’re fighting, you know, one is throwing the book down on the floor, “I don’t like that one, don’t go visit that one, because you’re my disciple and you can’t,” you know, whatever, and “don’t do their sadhana,” and “don’t do this,” and “don’t breathe that way,” and whatever. All that stuff needs to go. Because if it doesn’t go, we aren’t going to have a civilization of an elevated nature here. And I feel we’re at a very big ticking point with that. We’re either going to have that elevated, fairly utopian civilization, or we’re going to go to a whole different possible future which doesn’t look that great.
Rick: So you think, you’re not so necessarily optimistic it could go either way, you think?
Janet: I think it could go either way, but I think it’s going to require that everyone that has a rigidity of thinking and thinks they have all the answers, whether they’re spiritual, religious, creative, scientific, political, you know, join the Tea Party. Because essentially, all those belief structures are going to need to melt away. You know, what good is it to have an experience internally of a unified state where you really, literally do experience self and other as a completeness of experience, okay? It is a real experience. It’s my own experience. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t have biases or prejudices that come up on the level of the mind that need constant tending. It’s like having a beautiful English garden, you still have to weed it. And so you’re going to be weeding it until you leave here and afterwards.
Rick: That’s a very good point. I mean, you referred to Maharishi and some of these great teachers, and having known him and a couple of others fairly closely, there can, in spite of, or along with, you know, very profound, powerful, expanded consciousness and a great deal of Shakti and Darshan and so on and so forth, there can also be, you know, fairly deeply, from my perspective, fairly deeply entrenched cultural biases and personal proclivities and so on, which can actually cause difficulties for the person.
Janet: Absolutely.
Rick: And I don’t know… And in fact it’s hard to name a guru, a famous spiritual teacher, who hasn’t tripped up in some way as a result of these personal tendencies. And I don’t know why that is. It almost seems as though there’s a tendency to feel so enlightened or self-sufficient or content that one ceases to scrutinize oneself very carefully. I’m just speculating here.
Janet: We’re all a product of our cultural imprinting, and you cannot help that. I mean, I’m Jewish. Both my sides of my family are Jewish. You know, I’m 58 years old. It’s so obvious to me how Jewish I am. You know what I mean? I don’t even try to escape it anymore. I used to, you know, but I don’t anymore. I kind of know that’s who I am.
Rick: You are who you are.
Janet: I am who I am, right. So my thinking is Jewish. My understanding of things is very Jewish, okay? I get that. It’s so obvious to me. However, what is necessary now is to view that with some objectivity and to recognize that one does have cultural, tribal, religious, social, nationalistic belief structures that are deeply embedded in us. But part of the awakening process is to be able to view them like the pattern on this rug, and they’re just patterns. And what happens is, with more higher consciousness and more expanded awareness, you’re able to dive into a pattern, understand the fabric of it, and ideally move away from it. And so, these are the teachers. This, I believe, is what the phase transition is now. So it doesn’t mean that the teachers that are in the other paradigm are less than, either, because they think of the pioneering efforts that all of them have had to make to bring the planet to where it is now. You know, if there was no people like this, then there would be no higher consciousness that we’d be even discussing and having this interview about. And I admire, personally, all of these people. But in terms of the new model of where I feel things are going, people are going to need to have to step out of their little box, whatever it may be, and realize that there’s a whole big world, like I said, of understanding and knowledge out there that is so vast, so infinite, and completely out of the context of any one particular religion or social convention. And I do think that it will probably be facilitated by meeting beings that are not from this planet, because it’s going to be self-evident when you meet a couple of them, and they’re really that elevated, you’re going to realize that they can’t possibly have the same notions that you have, because they didn’t come from the same religion. And so they’re obviously not going to be worshipping Maimonides or Muhammad. And if they do know about these beings, which they absolutely will know, and you know why? Because all they have to do is sit with you for 32 seconds, and just being your energy field, and everything that you are and feel and think is just like a dinner plate in front of them. And that’s why they will know. So they don’t need to watch television. You see what I mean? It’s going to be right there in front of them, on a compassionate and benevolent level, and we’re talking about beings that are compassionate and benevolent, which is not all of them by any means. So that intelligence, that interdimensional intelligence, that prescience of knowing, is what we need. Because if we don’t arrive there very soon, we’re not going to be able to have the respect for Mother Earth, the ecology, the situation. What good is it to have a few people bumbling around talking about enlightenment, when the planet is poisoning itself?
Rick: So how do we achieve that? I mean, it helps for you to just say it, for people to ponder this notion, and it helps perhaps to recognize that we do have personal individual characteristics, regardless of our state of consciousness. And I think it also helps to recognize that the personal individual characteristics of a saint or a great guru are not necessarily earmarks of enlightenment. They’re his personal characteristics, because that happens too sometimes. People feel like a certain way of walking, a certain way of talking, a certain accent, certain political or other beliefs are characteristic of enlightenment. They’re not. They’re characteristic of that guy’s personal makeup, and enlightenment is far beyond that kind of stuff.
Janet: But finally, a characteristic of the person’s personal makeup is characteristic of their tribe. And that’s what we’re talking about tonight, really. Because you know how everybody in the TM movement walks around with gestures and expressions from Maharishi that are so indigenous of their tribe, whereas when I’m around the Buddhist group, they have their own particular characteristics, and we’ll go on and on, and the Siddha Yoga people, and the Krishna people, and whoever.
Rick: And none of those things are characteristic of enlightenment per se.
Janet: They’re characteristics of the tribe, and they’re indigenous to the tribe. But to really grasp what it would be like to step out of your tribe completely, but it’s more than that. What we’re really talking about, in my opinion, what enlightenment really involves, is stepping out of time. Now, what does that mean? It means that we have codes that bind us to a dimension. Like this, you know, we’re in this room. Really enlightened beings live outside of that framework completely. They’re not in a linear time mechanism. And they literally have stepped out of time. So they’re able to walk into your dimension, just like you’d walk into Walmart, and then they can walk right out of your dimension, because they’re not bound by time. And so enlightenment really has to do with the mastery of time and space, from an internal perspective, and also from an external perspective. And that expansion comes from actually living in the fabric of the mechanics of time and space, and studying it from the inside out as a research project. And that is what real enlightenment looks like. So then you really do have mastery of time and space, and you can move and go where you need to go. And on top of that, your capacity to reach into the fabric of sentience itself, and other beings that are sentient, becomes infinite. So that in that state, you could be completely content to have one being sitting in front of you for the rest of eternity, because there would be so much to learn and enjoy from that being. And the enjoyment and the pleasure of the learning is profoundly strong.
Rick: Could you be completely content in solitary confinement, just exploring your own being, exploring whatever subtle knowledge there might be?
Janet: Yes, but you don’t hear from most sentient beings, by any means, and the folks that I talk to anyway, that that’s the game that they want to play.
Rick: Right.
Janet: It’s a completely different game than that. Yes, could there be that contentment? Sure. Because all of us that have some higher consciousness know how lovely it is to kind of bathe in that, like a beautiful pool of silence or reality or knowing, and there’s a lot of pleasure in that. But like I said, when that Divine Presence awakens, there is a questing to it, and there’s also a probing and a drivenness to serve, to serve, to give back. You can’t help it. It’s just inherent in the game. And even the people that are talking about complacency are still serving, because you’re talking about their state.
Rick: Yeah, they’re giving satsangs, making CDs.
Janet: Right, exactly. So they’re serving in some way.
Rick: It’s ironic. They’re sitting up there saying, “You don’t need a teacher. Teachers are all punk.”
Janet: They’re being a teacher. Right, and they’re serving and sharing. And what are they sharing? They’re sharing happiness, and they’re sharing a sense of satisfaction, and a sense of being able to be stable for no reason, even if trauma is at your door. And that’s a beautiful teaching, and it is real. But it can get plasticized to the point where it’s inflexible, and then it doesn’t allow for passion, and it doesn’t allow for intensity, and it doesn’t allow, perhaps, for growth. And growth really is infinite. It’s like Jack and the Beanstalk. I mean, it’s a good myth. There’s always another cloud. There’s always another place to go, because it is a big multiverse out there, and there’s so much to learn and understand and to know. And so by destroying that capacity, you’re limiting human evolution rather than opening out to it. And I do feel that that’s a mistake. And, you know, there’s a lot of evolved humans out there, never mind other species, but there’s a lot of evolved humans out there. When you meet evolved humans, they’re very beautiful. And why are they beautiful? Because they’re radiating that inner light, and they’re radiating a sense of patience. That’s one of the things. You know, patience is a very high attribute, and you realize you’re in patience when you’re around really patient people. And so patience in higher dimensions is a very high attribute, because you’re able to be deeply patient. It’s like a parent with a child that you deeply love. You’re very patient with your children. You’re very patient with your disciples. You’re very patient with… So if you’re coming into this dimension, you’re very patient with the intelligences here, because you understand that it’s just seeking to be more intelligent.
Rick: Let me ask you, you’ve alluded a number of times to higher beings coming here, and it sounded like at one point you were talking about extraterrestrials coming here and so on.
Janet: Yes
Rick: What is the… And you’ve said that even since your infancy, practically, you were sort of in touch with these higher beings. Can you elaborate a little bit more on, you know, specifically what that experience has been like for you, both with regard to sort of interdimensional beings and/or extraterrestrials, and, you know, how they fit into the picture, what role you see them as playing in the world today, in the transition that we’re attempting to undergo, and so on?
Janet: Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers to that.
Rick: No, I’m not expecting all of them.
Janet: But my perception is that human beings have had contact with other-dimensional life going right back into the cave period. I mean, they’re cave drawings of flying saucers and beings with different types of heads. So, obviously, this contact’s been going on for a long time. And so we’re at a tipping point now with it. The reason is because, what I was saying, that the problems that we’ve engendered here are so deeply intractable. And we’re kind of running around in circles. You know, we make a tiny bit of progress, then we’re slammed back into something else, you know. One minute we’re going to buy a hybrid car, the next minute we’re buying the gas-guzzling car, the next minute, you know, we’re going to get rid of our paper towels, and the next minute we’re back to the paper towels. So, we’re kind of running around in a loop. And the question is, how are we going to get out of the loop? We’re like in a maze that we can’t get out of. So, I do feel that we’re going to need help. And just like we get help from saints and beings on this dimension, that, in my opinion, are inter-dimensional anyway,
Rick: when they really are saints.
Janet: Yes, absolutely. You know, being like Maharishi, it was deeply inter-dimensional. Yes, we’re going to need assistance. There’s no shame in that. And we’ve been getting assistance for a long time anyway. A lot of the technologies that we have, we’ve been assisted to have them. But I think now, there really is going to be a need for human beings to recognize their interwovenness with beings from other places.
Rick: But what has been your experience with these beings?
Janet: It’s kind of too big to discuss in an interview, but basically I’ve met lots and lots of folks from different dimensions, and I’ve been traveling around with them since I was a little kid.
Rick: In consciousness?
Janet: Yes.
Rick: I mean, ever in concrete form, like they come into your bedroom and they’re sitting in a chair talking to you?
Janet: Yes, I’ve had that experience too. Not so much that, mostly internal, kind of night school experiences, training, training, training about a lot of different kinds of things. And a lot of the training is on the level of compassion, like I was saying to you, compassion is a big university. You could have a whole university devoted to compassion. And then there’s a lot of training about the sciences and the workings of science and everything from the biological level in the body to all different other types of sciences, and then training in the arts and understanding the mechanics of how the arts function and aesthetics, and you could go on.
Rick: So do you feel that there’s a whole sort of committee, so to speak, or assortment of higher beings who kind of scan the earth, as it were, and find as many receptive people as possible, and then train them as much as possible in order to infuse their knowledge or higher knowledge into humanity? I mean, and this is kind of a critical aspect of our survival and our progress?
Janet: Yeah, I think that’s true, but I think it’s more than that. I think that all of us that have some higher consciousness or we’re led to spiritual practice or we’re led to higher levels of political service or we’re led to serving humanity in some way, that we are deeply rooted in other star systems, other dimensions, and we are simultaneously living in them while we’re living here. And that it’s not a “they.” It’s like the idea of consciousness anyway. You know, is there another person out there? Well, yeah, there is another person out there, but it’s a “both.” In other words, all of these beings that are really in higher states are living in what we would think of as unity consciousness to start with. Okay? To start with. So, when they see you, they really do see themselves. You see what I mean? Even if they looked completely different than you. Because sentience itself is an interdimensional notion. So, that experience of sentience is very, very powerful and shared.
Rick: And by sentience you mean?
Janet: It’s an experience of a field of intelligence, a palpable field of intelligent light, intelligent essence. And that is the beauty of what God has given us to share with other sentient beings, whether it’s a dog, a cat, a mouse, a grasshopper, or some other being from another place that you really can’t imagine its net essence. Plus, every one of us has a subtle body, a light body, and basically this thing is, you know, I mean, it’s very little on the shelf. It’s here for a few years. When you’re around a dead person, you see a dead body. It’s very dead. But the light force is what we all are. And all sentient beings have that light force. Every one of them. So, we all share that. That’s why you can commune in unity with another entity. Because we share the same birth, the same light force, the same essence that’s flowing with and through us. And we are immersed in that. And when you wake up to that, it just becomes self-evident to you. And the only reason it’s not self-evident is because it’s natural to individuate. And that’s the other thing. There’s nothing wrong with individuation. And higher beings are very highly individuated. They have very specific service that they’re rendering, specific medicine, like Native American people would say. And that medicine has become highly cultivated in them. So when you’re around them, it awakens that level of medicine in you. And it’s just a natural darshan that flows out of that being.
Rick: They also tend to have very vibrant, lively, distinctive personalities. You know, it’s not that the sort of abstract, universal, unmanifest… It’s not that the personality takes on the qualities of abstract, universal, and manifest. Quite the contrary. It’s like a tree which is in a very fertile ground is going to flourish and be much more vibrant and green and full of fruit than a tree which is in dry ground. And it seems that people who are very deeply established in the Self or in pure awareness just have these real zinging personalities, much more interesting, charming…
Janet: They could, and they could be very shy and timid. We don’t really know.
Rick: Maybe the ones that are famous and well-known.
Janet: Yeah, because they have that charismatic quality, which is what’s made them famous. But I think that that very deep, silent, eternal, internal essence that you feel in people in higher states is extraordinarily universal. And that’s what’s very interesting. Because when you do meet beings from other dimensions, they emanate exactly the same thing. On the other hand, the intelligence field of these beings is extraordinarily highly developed. And so the rate of what we think of as thought… See, once you free thought, emancipate thought, from the usual style of thinking, that kind of limited, left-brainy, analytical stuff, and you free thought up from that and dip it into the transcendent at a deep level, it goes fast. It is very, very quick. It is so quick, it’s just unbelievable how quick it is. It’s kind of like getting into a very fancy race car and driving it down the road in that way when you’re used to living in a horse and buggy. And it’s very fast, it cognizes vast amounts of information very quickly, and it’s able to permeate anything. Physical objects, it can cognize the internal mechanics of that camera just as easily as it can internally understand you. So it doesn’t need an instruction manual. It’s coming from within itself, the intelligence. And that’s what grows. Just like I said, it’s the intelligence becoming intelligent. And that capacity to see into things, and not only to see into things without feeling, but to see into things with feeling. See, this is the thing, that feeling is a huge, vast, colorful vocabulary, which any artist, writer, poet, or anyone would tell you. And higher intelligence can feel into anything, including inanimate objects. Everything has a feeling. Remember those stories in World War II of Native American people being able to fix all the machines because they were talking to them? And people would say, “Oh, that’s impossible.” But they were doing it. They were doing it. That feeling of being able to feel into both animate and inanimate objects, this is what that type of intelligence is able to discern. And within the context of that is kind of an inner, depth, silent chasm that is the foundation underneath the intelligence. And that’s what this community has been plumbing for such a long time. However, we don’t want to miss the boat on this, because the beginning is the silence and the intelligence and the transcendence and the depth and the profoundness of the lovely people here really emanate that. But it’s the beginning of something. It’s the background in the painting. There’s still a huge painting out there. And the reason I’m kind of on a soapbox about this is because I do see that in it, coming back here just for a week, the huge potential of the people that we know. All of our friends, our 30, 40 year meditator friends. However, I also see that complacency that I’m telling you about, where there’s a kind of giving up, and also not a recognition of what actually has been received or achieved or known, which is what your mission is and what you’ve really been doing very beautifully. And that is so important, because if you don’t see yourself clearly, you can’t see anybody else, and you can’t feel or love anybody else. And that’s the other thing, is that love is a very huge, vast, amazing vocabulary. And this planet has a huge amount of it, and it’s a very big asset that we have. But we also have the flip. We have hatred that goes with the love, because they’re polarities of each other. And as much as we have that incredible love, we also have incredible hatred, too. So it’s not a neutral ground.
Rick: You’ll notice that I kind of drifted away from the agenda of trying to get you to go through a timeline of your life, because you started talking about things, and I thought, “Well, this is her life, this knowledge.” And maybe it’s not so significant that we go through a chronology of events.
Janet: For me, I’ve had a few really pivotal events, and some of them have not been pleasant events. Very traumatic events, honestly. But I’ve kind of discussed them. I know what they are. You can go back and look at them.
Rick: If you feel it.
Janet: But that’s not really the main point.
Rick: That’s not really the main point that we need to stick to.
Janet: I don’t know how relevant that is for me, because I think for me, mostly my journey, or what I really need to do, is to become competent as a human being. And to feel safe, protected, loved, cherished, and understand my own value without having to defend against some kind of internalized oppression. And I think that’s kind of what my real journey is all about.
Rick: Internalized oppression, or oppression from others?
Janet: Well, it’s internalized from others.
Rick: If you internalize it, yeah.
Janet: Yes, yes. And learning how to stay on the self, and be a compassionate witness to all of that, is very much part of my journey, because I’m so darn sensitive to all that. And that sensitivity limits my happiness and my stability. And I know that that’s what I’ve got to continue to work on. Do I see big changes in that? Yes. Is it a lot better? Yes. But then, you know, something will happen, and I realize, “Whoa, it’s not as better as I thought.”
Rick: I had the opportunity to meet President Obama last spring, face to face, and shake his hand. This is Iowa, so we meet the politicians pretty easily, and it was like the third time I’d seen him. But to me, he’s a very bright light, and a very bright being. But what I said to him, I said, “We love you.” I said, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” And he said, “There’s a lot of them out there, they just keep on gobbling.” I was kind of reminded of that when you said, you know, the impact that skeptics or hard knots of ignorance have on your own life, and the need to sort of stand strong and not let that get you down.
Janet: Yeah, and he’s a really good example of that, because he was able to stand up for himself, and in a huge field, talk about skepticism, really hatred, and maintain that presence that we’re discussing. And I think that’s a very beautiful thing. And you know what? Because he has truly African roots, and because when you meet, you restate the African beings, African people.
Rick: Like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu.
Janet: Right, and see, in my little journey of life, not only do I go around visiting other, you know, sort of exotic places off planet, but I do a lot of visiting on planet, you know? So I do go to other countries and visit villages, and meet very beautiful beings here. And African people are very amazing, and very untapped resource on our earth, and very devalued, very devalued.
Rick: Very oppressed.
Janet: Very oppressed. However, when you meet African people, there’s a tremendous happiness that exudes from most of these people.
Rick: Sweetness.
Janet: That is just overwhelming. And you really begin to understand that you can have happiness for no reason. But not only that, but the true magical consciousness that exists in indigenous societies, there’s still a lot of it there. And it’s been very diminished by, you know, western culture, which is just starting to awaken to the, you know, the goodness of all that and the power of all that. So, you know, that’s another reason to have a good awakening, is that you get to travel, you get a ticket, you know? You can buy, you have an internal visa, and assuming you have permission, you can enter into the consciousness of anything. And this is the great gift of cognition, is that you can enter into the consciousness of anything. A star, a planet, a person, a bee, a bug, a rodent, a something, you know, beings from other places. You can enter into the consciousness of anything because your consciousness becomes completely permeable, and you’re not able even to hold up those boundaries anymore. And so when the boundaries come down, you have this tremendous permeability that you have to manage, ideally, by integrating that, you know, psychologically and energetically. But it is a tremendous gift to be able to fathom like that, and to let yourself be fathomed. That’s the other thing. To let yourself be fathomed by a dog, a cat, a cow, a horse, a being, whatever, to let yourself be fathomed by that and be permeated by that. I mean, that’s what you learn making love with another human being, and that’s essentially what the whole deal is about, is love. And letting love cut you open and bleed you, so that you can feel at the depth, if that’s possible, that God needs us to be able to have.
Rick: On that note, you know, you’ve talked about what you do professionally, you know, meeting with people, and you told that story about the guy in Cambridge, in that healing center in Boston. You know, you’ve been sitting with me now for an hour and a half, a foot away. What would, you know, do me? I mean, if you feel like it, what would you say, you know, looking into me, that I would feel comfortable having going on YouTube? And I’m not saying this out of any sort of skepticism, I’m saying it as a way of illustrating what you’ve been talking about.
Janet: Well, you have a very beautiful heart, for starters, and you really deeply care. And that’s a very rare thing, because it’s hard to care. It’s hard to maintain caring and not have it be hurt by all the slings and arrows that come in a lifetime. So, you know, you’ve done enough work, spiritually, emotionally, that your caring is very profound. And you have very high levels of integrity in your energy field. The markings of integrity are very high, which means that you have a very good BS barometer. You really, really want and appreciate authenticity in other people. And it’s a quest for you to really keep plumbing the depths of authenticity, to learn and to understand what’s true and what’s real, and to discern that. And I think that you have a lot of industriousness in you. You’re not a lazy person. I knew you were going to say–
Rick: Depends on whether I’m doing something I enjoy or not.
Janet: I was about to tell you this, okay? I knew you were going to shake your head when I said that, but I’m purposely telling you this, that there’s all different kinds of industriousness. And it’s really important for you to do the things that you love and to be dedicated to that, because time is short, and none of us are going to live forever. And really focusing on the things that mean a lot to you is not only going to bring happiness to you, but it’s going to bring happiness and insight to a tremendous amount of other people. And so staying in your Dharma right now, I think, is really crucial for you personally. And honestly, the other thing I feel is that try to go out and travel internationally. Look for opportunities that can take you outside of the United States and have you meet other people who are interested in expanding the capacities of the media to assert consciousness-based understanding and recognition. There’s a lot of other folks out there on that quest. It’s really important for you to meet them and not become too insular. And I think that if you do that, then the next 10 or 15 years of your life can be very, very, very rich for you. And my personal feeling is that you’re someone who can live a long time. So you have plenty of time. How old are you?
Rick: Sixty-one.
Janet: Yeah, you have a long time yet to be here. If you’re focused with your Dharma, you should be able to be here at least another 30 years.
Rick: Right.
Janet: So my sense about that is that’s a grace. Not everybody has that capacity for whatever reasons that we don’t understand. It’s really important for you to feel that that whole period is going to be meaningful. Those are a few things I would say to you.
Rick: That’s an important issue. I spent 25 years in the TM movement and did a lot of international traveling and stuff. But I think it left me with huge gaps in my understanding and experience of practical life and responsibility and stuff like that. So then I got married and I’ve been in a phase of earning a living and paying off a mortgage and stuff like that, which had been totally neglected during my TM years. Now I’m sort of feeling like, well, perhaps this show will evolve into a new phase for me because it’s something I enjoy so much and I’m good at. It doesn’t pay the bills, but perhaps a transition will be possible and opportunities will arise where I could segue into something along these lines.
Janet: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think you’re really good at it. First of all, I think that we’re in a big phase transition with technology, which I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. So there will be opportunities in that direction. I was just talking to someone in this community just a few days ago about the development of hologrammatic technology and the ability to really have someone materialize in your room, literally through technology. I think that the technologies themselves are going to be able to bring people experiences of higher states. That’s why “Avatar” was such a great success, because it actually brought an experience of higher states to people in the movie field. So first of all, I think that… Are you writing?
Rick: Not so much. I’m a fairly good writer, but a slow writer. I can spend an hour on a paragraph just tweaking it and getting it right. I’m better on my toes speaking.
Janet: So that’s what you need to do.
Rick: Yeah, and I like asking questions. Because I went through a phase for many years of talking about stuff which I wasn’t fully living, and just kind of parroting other people’s words. So it’s very important for me to not do that, and to be genuine and authentic. Since I don’t feel like I know a whole lot, I feel good drawing other people’s knowledge out of them, and being able to share that with a larger audience, at this stage anyway.
Janet: That’s beautiful. However, you do know a lot.
Rick: I get my two cents in every time you say that.
Janet: No, no, no, no, no, no. You do know a lot. And I think that sometimes we don’t know what we know until we have to share it with others. And I think it’s important for you to know what you know, for your own development, which is what you’re asking me. And I think if it’s going to come through verbal output, it can be transcribed, other people can listen to it. But I think coming to terms with what you feel about consciousness, and what you know, and what you experience, is really important for you. Because otherwise, you mentioned the word “authenticity” too, you’re not going to feel completely authentic as a human being, unless that comes forward for you. And just from an energetic level, it’s because your throat chakra is very turned on right now. There’s a lot of movement in the chakra, which is indicating to me, the way I interpret that, is that it’s very important for you to articulate your own heart, your own voice, your own understanding. And that’s going to be crucial for your evolution. So then, when you come into these interviews, there will be a different quality to it. Because you’ll be relaxed in that, knowing a little bit more. And that will also bring out a whole other kind of knowing in the other person. It will relax them. You know what I mean? It will cause them to… it’s like a sigh will come from some deep part of them, because they will experience who you are, and they’ll feel you know that. You see what I mean? And that knowing, that Rishi value, that knower, will also pop out from the other person, so it will enrich it. It’s like I’ve had a couple of instances of being able to talk to people that I believe are very, very advanced, on this plane now we’re talking about. And that’s always what you feel, that relaxed knowing in them, that’s very stretched open and very deep, causes you to feel very relaxed and very comfortable with yourself. And that’s the potentiality that you have here, is to engender that in other people. And also consider children.
Rick: In what respect?
Janet: Remember Art Linkletter?
Rick: Sure. Kids say the darndest things.
Janet: I’d love for you to do a show like this with psychic kids, and let them say the darndest things.
Rick: That’s an interesting idea. I’ll have to find some.
Janet: Well, I can give you some pointers.
Rick: Okay, yeah. That would be fun. That would be really fun.
Janet: Because I think you’re really good with kids, and I think you could help them feel relaxed and play with them. A lot of things could come out from that, that are very crucial for right now.
Rick: That’s a good idea. I’ll pursue that.
Janet: That got a twinkle in your eye.
Rick: Yeah, I like that idea a lot. I hadn’t even thought of it.
Janet: Beautiful.
Rick: So, do you feel like there’s anything that you really would like to say that we haven’t touched upon, or that I haven’t thought to ask you about? I don’t think we’ve talked enough about love, but it’s probably a whole other interview.
Rick: Next time you come back to Curriculum.
Janet: Because to me, that really is the essence of what higher consciousness is all about. The realization piece, and the understanding of the non-separatist self, and the non-dual self, and all of the things that these shows tend to talk about are really good. But love is where it’s at. Because it’s diving into the flavors and fabric and essence of the heart, and being able to experience the heart, and deeper and deeper plateaus of love and awakeness in the heart. I think is really what consciousness wants to do once it grows up. It has to come into that unity, it’s true, first. In a sense, it’s a somewhat mental process. But then it has to drop into the heart. And that burning away of all the seeds of discord, hatred, bias, and those kinds of enemies, as Karunamayi would call it, is an infinite process. And it leads to deeper and deeper self-reflection on the nature of love, and the intensity of expressing and caring for oneself as well as others. And I think that is a very beautiful topic to consider.
Rick: Yeah. It actually was the way Maharishi outlined the stages of progress. He used to talk about the necessity to first establish self-realization. And then once that had been established, then the capacity to really appreciate would begin to grow much more. Once you knew who you were, you could begin to know what everything else was, and that capacity would grow. And then the heart would really begin to develop on that foundation, and love would really become a significant stage of one’s growth, unfolding love. So that’s kind of just the way he referred to it, really, that sequence of getting deeply established in pure awareness. And then, he didn’t quite use that term, but then having love be the priority and have that blossom.
Janet: I don’t think it can work in the reverse. I think that you can be challenged in life on the level of love, and it opens you into pure awareness. So it can go either way. You need people who have had tremendous challenges in their life, and it has opened them into extremely deep capacities to accept and to be awake and to love. And so, that’s why I said, I don’t think you can have rules when it comes to consciousness, because it’s a kind of non-structured situation. But I do think that the whole study of love and understanding what that really means is really important.
Rick: And how would a person pursue that? If they took your words to heart, what would they do? What should they do?
Janet: Well, through a lot of processes that awaken the subtle bodies.
Rick: Techniques, I’m sure.
Janet: Yes, and that awaken the capacity of the heart to explore the depth and the dimensionality of the energy system and of the heart itself. And it’s a big world in there, and it’s a yoga in itself. It’s an opening into the wholeness of the fabric of the heart, and different types of breath that emanate from the heart. And love is very interconnected with those very subtle levels of breath that exist in the heart. You’re literally breathing love. You’re literally opening into a fabric of caring. And not only caring for, but being cared for. And that’s one of the things that I think is so hard for human beings. It’s much easier for us to care for than to allow us to be cared for. You see what I mean? And to give yourself permission to open into another person’s caring and another person’s recognition of you. The receiving part is probably the hardest enlightenment step, in my opinion. Really being able to receive at the depth that’s possible.
Rick: Is that because it necessitates vulnerability?
Janet: Yes. And it necessitates profound vulnerability. And that vulnerability comes from not having the walls that we’re talking about in the mind.
Rick: Right. What you were mentioning earlier.
Janet: Right. When the walls come down, there’s a naked vulnerability that’s quite scary. And it can shake you right to your core. And it does shake you right to your core. You’re like, “Holy, you know what? Here I am, totally exposed to everything.” But then, from that place, you start building a different type of protection that is a deeply vulnerable but protected space. A sheltered protection. A refuge, like the Buddhist people say. You find refuge in the home of the heart. And that is, in my world, it is the quest. It is the quest. That is the quest. And it’s an endless thing.
Rick: It’s interesting. In a previous interview, I was talking with somebody about certainty and uncertainty. And we were talking about how people try to achieve security through certainty, being adamantly sure of themselves on particular points. But it’s really a very vulnerable position, a very uncertain position, because you genuinely can’t have that sort of certainty. It’s easily cracked. And it’s easily refuted or contradicted by a million other perspectives. And on this point of love, I see a similar state where we attempt to achieve a sort of security by having those walls around us. But, in a sense, it leaves us more vulnerable. It leaves us less secure, because those walls can always be under assault. They can always be threatened with crumbling or with cracking. And if they can somehow be let down, and one can reside in that state of vulnerability, then everything can pass through you, so to speak. There are no walls to break anymore.
Janet: Well, I think that’s what we’re really talking about. And that transparency of being opens more and more deeply, so that things really do pass through you. And as they pass through, you feel them. But on the other hand, because you are more stabilized in what we would think of as the self, you’re experiencing the things passing through you and the self simultaneously. And the beauty is that the deeper those things pass through you, the more the self feels strong. It’s a funny dichotomy.
Rick: It’s paradoxical, yeah.
Janet: And you start to realize that if the walls come down, you’re not only going to be safe, but you’re going to have a tremendous amount of pleasure in just living. Just living. Nothing exotic, no fancy stuff. This is where the simplicity comes in. Because just living, the pleasure of being permeated and allowing yourself to permeate another person and having the permission for that creates a tremendous amount of pleasure in the body, in the psyche, in the heart. And it’s very rich. It’s very, very rich. And if people could really have that experience and be able to feel that, it would be very life-altering for people. And finding ways and technologies that really would give people the experience that I’m trying to describe, that permeability and vulnerability in the shelter of the self, would be a huge service. And I do think that the media, the different new media, has a lot of potential to offer that to people, to illustrate that to people in a variety of ways. And it would be very changing for people because that fearful, contracted stuff that all of us have in our heart, it falls away when the heart finally gets to a certain degree of permeability. In my work, we call it “cuts and sweeps.” The heart gets cut open. It literally is cut open. Back to front, side to side.
Rick: Maybe not literally.
Janet: Literally, in a subtle level. You don’t have to go take a knife or skewer anybody. But those cuts open up different planes or fields of the heart chakra. And that’s where multidimensional consciousness actually is engendered. It’s not up here. It’s in here. And it’s a felt sense of sentience from the level of the heart. And Buddhist people call it “heart-mind,” which I love a lot. It’s the continuity of cognition and heart.
Rick: You’ve alluded to your work, and I know you have all sorts of teachings and courses, and you do consultations and everything. I feel like we couldn’t really do justice to that right now. We could probably take another hour talking about it, but we probably shouldn’t go that long. But I think perhaps the simplest thing would be to– when I put up this interview on the website, there’ll be a short bio of you and then website links and things like that so people can contact you and really learn in detail about what you have to offer and teach.
Janet: Yeah, that’d be beautiful. Thank you.
Rick: That’s probably the best way of going about it. And this is your teaching of some kind, and helping people in certain ways is really your full-time dedication, your full-time profession. So, I mean, there are courses people can take, individual consultations, things like that, right?
Janet: Yeah.
Rick: And not only–they don’t have to come someplace to do it. It can be done by phone or by internet or by whatever.
Janet: Sure, sure. Yeah, all the time.
Rick: And do you also have gatherings in certain locations, a course or retreat or whatever?
Janet: Yes, yes. And part of my work, too, is really music.
Rick: With piano?
Janet: Yeah, I’m a musician. So before me in this interview, I think I should sing.
Rick: Oh, great. Yeah. I’m ready. Okay. [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing] [Vocalizing]
Rick: That was interesting. That was great. I love that. Completely unexpected. And it sort of reminded me a little bit of some of those Tibetan things with the different tones going on and everything. That was great. Do you have actually a CD or anything where you do a lot of that that people could listen to?
Janet: Some. I have a CD, but it doesn’t have as much of this kind of singing on it. But this is what I really do with people.
Rick: Wow.
Janet: Because it opens the chakra system.
Rick: That’s fabulous. Obviously, I’ve never heard anything like it. It was something that’s completely original with you, right?
Janet: It’s something I’ve developed over a whole lifetime.
Rick: Yeah. Wow. Very interesting. Well, I think it would sort of diminish the whole experience to talk to you much more after that. So, I’d like to thank you very much for this opportunity. It took us a bit to get this scheduled because you’re so busy and I have my work schedule and everything. But I’m really glad we were able to make it happen. And we can get together again periodically when you come into town and see how things are progressing for both of us.
Janet: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Rick: Thank you. So, I’ve been speaking with Janet Sussman. My name is Rick Archer and you’ve been watching a little interview series which I call Buddha at the Gas Pump. There are a number of ways of watching and listening to this. Podcast, YouTube, Facebook. But the one place you can come to kind of branch out to all those things is batgap.com which is an acronym for Buddha at the Gas Pump. That’s B-A-T-G-A-P dot com. And you’ll see all the interviews I’ve done so far archived there and all the ones I will continue to do. You can get on a mailing list to be notified. You can sign up for an RSS feed because it’s actually a blog. So, there’s all kinds. And I keep sort of coming up with new ways of unfolding it and propagating it as time goes on. I also regularly receive emails from people suggesting that I interview this, that or the other person. So, if you have someone in mind or you are someone who you would like me to interview, I do a lot of interviews over the internet via Skype. We can do that. So, thank you for listening or watching and we will see you next week.
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