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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually Awakening people have done hundreds of them now. And if you’ve watched hundreds, you’ve heard me say this over and over again. But if you if you haven’t, if this is new to you, and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com Bat gap, and check the past interviews menu or you’ll find all the previous ones archived in several different ways. This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. So if you support as you appreciate it, and feel like helping to support it, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site, and also a donate page that explains other ways of supporting it. If you don’t like PayPal. My guest today is a real honor to have her on. It’s Dr. Jean Houston, PhD. First of all, read her little bio and then make a few comments. Jane is a scholar, philosopher, educator and a recognized pioneer of the human potential movement. She’s widely recognized as a visionary leader and multicultural expert. She’s the author of over 30 books, exploring human possibilities and positive action in the world, which is interesting because she says she hates the right. So maybe she’s masochistic, I don’t know. She served as an advisor in human and cultural development for UNICEF, and to national and international heads of state, she actually helped Hillary Clinton write that book, it takes a village to raise a child, Jean has devoted her life to developing processes to activate the latent abilities in individuals, groups, organizations and societies. Over the last 60 years, Dr. Houston has worked in over 100. And I think it’s 109 countries now, right? As an international, yeah, international speaker and teacher. She is the Chancellor of Meridian University and a dedicated champion of the human spirit. So thank you, Jane, and thank you so much for we she’s probably spent a total of about three hours working through technical things to get this to work more. So I really appreciate your patience and perseverance and laboring through that with us. You know, it said in Buddhist and Hindu circles, that we have a huge mountain of karma, and that when we come into this life, we couldn’t possibly take the whole mountain with us, we wouldn’t be able to work that much off. So we just take a little bucket or a suitcase. And that’s what we work off in this life. So I feel like you kind of represent a huge mountain of wisdom and experience. And in the past week, I’ve only been able to take a little bucket from that mountain that I’ve been working through, primarily in the form of listening to a number of your interviews and talks and also reading these two books, which is what my local library happened to have the Wizard of us, which is a sort of a deep analysis of the story of The Wizard of Oz, and mystical dogs, which is a story of all many of the dogs you’ve owned over the years and, and equally deep considerations of the lessons you’ve learned from and with those dorks. But if my suitcase or bucket doesn’t happen to match yours, and if they’re, you know, things that I don’t know about you or don’t think to ask or anything else that come to mind during this interview interview, please feel free to just lead us off in any direction that you’re inspired to do. Yeah, so one interesting thing about you that one learns when you know beginning to become familiar with you is that you have met and befriended an incredible range of people everything from Ronald Reagan, although he wasn’t such a friend because he tried to take your dog away. Trying to buy your beloved Chicky I believe the dog’s name was Eleanor Roosevelt, Edgar Bergen, who was the ventriloquist that had the puppet Charlie McCarthy, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein pyrrhotite Tell her hard to shut down Abraham Maslow Joseph Campbell, Margaret Mead, Hillary Clinton, and I’m sure dozens of others that you could name so wow, you have some interesting karma in terms of, you know, meeting these brilliant influential people and being one yourself I guess, you know, birds of a feather kind of a thing. I suppose one of the earliest, well, maybe you’d like to come in and what I’ve said so far before I launch into something.
Jean Houston: Well is to I’ve been extremely fortunate in having met some of the most interesting people of the last three century seminar. I’ve known plenty of people who were born in the, in the 19th century. In fact, I remember when I was three years old, I attended, probably the last March of the Civil War veterans from both sides. And an old man came up to me, and an old Confederate fellow that was very tall, I was very short. And he leaned down and he took my hand and he said, little lady, you’re shaking the hand that shook the hand of my pappy. And my puppy shook the hand of Jefferson. Wow, yeah. Thomas Thomas Jefferson. So I, you know, some people have a kind of fractal return for certain kinds of events and patterns. And mine has always been that I seem to have been, I’m like the the female Forrest Gump, you know? Yeah, I seem to have been in the right place at the right time. Don’t do any of these people. I mean, I met Dr. To shut down by literally running into them and knocking them down. And he picked me up he said, I’m, I’m planning to run like that for the rest of your life. I said, well, looks that way. He said, Well, Bob, why I could bunk wait. And thereafter for the next three years, off and on we met in Balkan central park together, which got me started in my interest in the whole evolutionary agenda, which is both part in our human given us with all its problems and glory, as well as perhaps it is the fact that we don’t just live in the universe, but the universe lives in us.
Rick Archer: Now, as I was reading and listening to various things about you, one of the first experiences that jumped out in to me at least as being really pivotal in your spiritual awakening was when you you watched the movie Song of Bernadette, with your father, which is a wonderful movie that and you know where I’m going with this. So why don’t you take the story from there?
Jean Houston: Well, my father was an agnostic back Baptist from Texas, married to my mother, who was a Sicilian Catholic. My mother was born in Sicily name was Maria Nunziata Serafina Graziella figurine of a Petra today are married to Jack Houston, Texas, and he had to become Catholic to married my mother. But he just he and priests treated jokes and said a theology and priest finally said, Jackie, just a natural born pagan hair. I’ll give you a learner’s permit so we can get married, okay, but any kid comes along, you got to raise them Kathy. Alright. So when I was five years old, my father was kicked off of the Bob Hope show or in excess of high spirits. This happened quite frequently. And and
Rick Archer: of the alcoholic type, I suppose. You mean?
Jean Houston: No, no, no, no. I mean, just his energy was hilarity and whatnot. Okay. That’s right. So anyway, so he remembered his promise, and we found ourselves living with my mother’s parents in Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn as my grandmother and sent to Catholic school. Well, everything was fine, except my father would gag up my catechism and give me the most interesting questions to ask the poor little nun every morning like, Sister Teresa. I counted my ribs. And I counted Jerry Joey ganja boneless ribs. And I want to know if God made eat out of atoms that Adam’s rib, how come and I will have all the children lift their bundle shirts to prove that we all have the same rubric. Sister Teresa, when Jesus rose was that because God forbid full of helium, Sister Teresa and then the big question, the big one that haunts the mind of every little Catholic child. Did Jesus ever have to go to the bathroom? blew up. And you know, every time I asked a question, which I did every day, she added a million years or so. At the end of the first grade, I had 300 million years in Purgatory. To my credit on the big this big sheet. Jane Houston’s yours in particular. And I went home crying because that believed this stupid stuff. And my father roared with laughter He said, No on kill. I’ll show you what they did to a real saint, throw me on his shoulders and ran past the city and neighbors going purgatory purgatory purgatory purgatory spec. And the challenges to sitting neighbors was Hey, Ben goes crazy Jack What shall you go kill competing? And so we went to see the Song of Bernadette which was so beautiful. If everything was fine, the old lady sitting next to me with her chest, pulling metals would say what a beautiful thing. And then came the Great moment where the Virgin Mary appears in the grotto to Bernadette. Every all of us are in this Rapture of religious devotion. It’s really quite a beautiful scene, when suddenly this horrible meal like wooden left begins to fill the entire theater. And it is coming from my father who’s in complete hysterics. You know, ha, stop that this is the whole point. I know. But you know, who is that that up there? Playing the Virgin Mary, No daddy, who? Linda. I met her last year, at a party in Beverly Hills, Linda Darnell, hot dog, I told her she go far ha. This is Sicilians are making very nasty gestures. Because as a dad to get out of here, go to the bathroom, which he does. And he comes back and it’s still the same polarity. Well, going home, I am full. I am full of purpose. And I have to see the Virgin Mary and I run home that I’ve run up to where we had a guest room, and a closet that was empty because my puppy Chicky had just filled it with her own nine puppies. And I got the puppies out of the way. And I began to I figured they look just like a grotto and I began to pray. Brittany, please show up in the closet for me the way you did, you know, from growing up. And I would count to 10 and I would give up candy I’d give up candy for you know, six months and I counted to higher and higher numbers. And always they were more puppies back in the closet because buffalo chicken kept bringing them back. And finally I said, Virgin Mary, I’ve given up everything. I don’t know what else. Please show up. And I’m gonna counter whatever it was 168 or something, you please show her and I close my eyes and I could almost feel her coming in. I knew she was flying over the Brooklyn Bridge looking for my son. Finally I opened my eyes, no virgin, very tricky, gotten all nine puppies back in the closet. And I gave up. And I got up and I had no thoughts whatsoever. And I went over to the window seat, and looked down and saw my grandfather prosper to the era when the smudge pots under the big tree that he knew of his feet only by rumor. And suddenly, the whole reality opened up, I didn’t see or hear anything different but all of reality was there. And I knew that I am the fig tree in the yard and my grandfather and my idea of the Virgin Mary, and new wheat in Kansas and the little boy outside of Iowa, I think it was as we went by in the train who would wave his hand at me and and, and the the autistic man who sold comic books outside of Bloomingdale’s, all of reality was there, the fish and Sheepshead Bay and old ladies dying and showroom hospital. And it was like a what we now know as a best hologram in which everything was united with everything else in this great fellowship, of great oneness. And then I could hear my father enter downstairs laughing and immediately all of reality began to laugh. And years later, when I could read Vedanta, the original, the great lines, the lethal delone were so the joy that spins the universe. And that is what it was, and so powerful. But so powerful was that experience, that it really sustain me for the rest of my life. I never had an experience like that again. But I saw the unity of all beings. And then of course, in recent years where I spent a lot of time studying quantum physics, which also addresses that fact. And that will be our, if you will, part of that unit fee applied field God stuff, if you will, but is immersed in this biodegradable space time suit everywhere, but that we have access to that kind of totality as I did. I was five, six years. So
Rick Archer: even though you’ve never had another peak experience like that, perhaps I get the impression though, that it altered you in a way that was abiding, you know that it was about you never went back to the way you had been?
Jean Houston: Well, I can’t I mean, the way I had been it’s been a child. Yeah. And something shifted. Something It was as if infinity became quite not long local, but local for me. Yeah. And I was always in that state of what should we say? Radical empathy and radical immanence. That’s saying yeah, I
Rick Archer: always meaning you kept you continue to be that way.
Jean Houston: I think so. Yeah. And even during the nasty parts of the downers of my life, it was always there is an undergirding beingness. Yeah, I’m sure.
Rick Archer: That’s what most people say about spiritual awakenings is that when they happen, they can be quite flashy, or dramatic or interesting or whatever. But after a while, one returns to normalcy. And yet, something has been kind of incorporated or integrated. And so you actually might be living the same state. And yeah, it doesn’t seem unusual. You just take it for granted, because it’s become part and parcel of your ordinary functioning.
Jean Houston: Well, it allowed me to continue to see this and other people. Yeah. And I mean, if I have any gift at all, in that is it to see the God in hiding, to see the present as part of the great unity. And even though they’re behaving terribly, to continue to see them boy, and then, you know, create processes, ideas, interactions that would be able to evoke this essence, is primordial essence that we all contain and to see it. It’s the own unique, remarkable, strange reflection. That is there. In reflection.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there’s a line in the Gita about the sage being able to see the self and all beings and all beings in the self.
Jean Houston: Yes, yes.
Rick Archer: Nice. So going from the sublime to the mundane again, we can keep swinging back and forth. So your father was a writer for The Bob Hope show,
Jean Houston: and burns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly and Oliver
Rick Archer: and Abbott and Costello, I think, didn’t you say he wrote who’s on first?
Jean Houston: All right, this is what he did. He was with Abbott and Costello when they were involved. And that, that that actually began as a bottle piece. And then my father was also working on the movie in which it occurred, which was a 1941, a baseball movie. And, and my father claimed to have written the joke, which I think he did, but when you look at the job itself, it’s Talmudic, it’s a Jewish joke. It really is. So I think it was my father and two Jewish guys. Uh huh. Because I think they claim it was okay. It really was. A lot of the jokes that came out of, you know, Hollywood, especially in those days, you had a, you had a few non Jewish writers, and you had a lot of Jewish writers, because comedy was sort of a Jewish cottage industry, then and even even though, so that’s what I believe,
Rick Archer: is true. For some reason, a lot of comedians seem to be Jewish, it’s like, you know, for a culture that has actually seen more than its share of tragedy, they, they seem to have an edge in terms of comedy, and maybe there’s maybe there’s a connection there.
Jean Houston: Well, when you when you look at the way that you study Torah with a whole group of guys, you take that same group of guys studying Torah, governing and, and trying to work to, to incite the admiration of the rabbi is very similar to what would happen, let’s say in the old RCA building, where you have the same guys 50 years later, trying to get a smile out of Sid Caesar or something like that. So that’s the same parallel. But when you look at rabbinical work with the Torah, in the interaction of the young students, it’s very similar to what happens in the in the comedy.
Rick Archer: Interesting. Don’t forget as we go along, anything that pops into your head, feel free to just take us off on a tangent and we’ll do that. But meanwhile, I’ll just keep leading, leading us through some points that have jumped out at me. When was the I thought it was an interesting story you told about Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy where he was in a hotel room and you kind of came up behind him without his knowing it and overheard him interacting with his his Dama Yeah. Tell us that one.
Jean Houston: Well, yeah, my dad was writing for introverted at that time, and he would take me everywhere. He said, Hey, kid, you want to go talk to Charlie Charlie was the little mannequin puppet. And I’d love to do that because Bergen would then you know, interact with me through the puppet and we would have say funny things to each other. And I love doing that. So, we went up to the hotel room, and he didn’t hear us. But he was talking to Charlie and gibberellins talking to Charlie with great intensity and and fascination, because he was asking Charlie ultimate questions, Charlie, what is the nature of love? What is what is faith? What does it mean to be a full human being? What is what is the difference between mind and reality? Why do I feel separate? And this little donkey? There’s no clock in your jaw, Jules would say well, and the wisdom of millennia would pour out of his little clacking. And we could actually see we were sitting in sort of he was sort of category does and what we could see was burdens mouth more than rock bottom.
Rick Archer: Right and, and yet being a ventriloquist wasn’t
Jean Houston: as and his eyes filled with astonishment. And my father get the agnostic Baptist goodness standard. And he coughed and Berg and turned events. Oh, Jack, did you caught us in? Yeah. What in the world are you doing? When I’m talking to Charlie? He’s the wisest person I know. Yeah. But that’s you. That’s your mind coming out of that. cockamamie dummy’s mouth. I know, I know. But you know, when I ask him these questions, any answers? I haven’t got the faintest idea what he’s going to say. And what he says, astounds me with his brilliance. It’s so much more than I know what it feels I could feel my future. Walking across my mind at that point. Yeah, so much more than what we are, we contain so much more than what we know. And then when you study the nature of the depths of the human psyche, as well as what we now know about the way that we are intertwined with the unity of that means the whole knowingness of the universe, that we have so many levels and layers that are so much more than we know, from our historical existence. That sense put me on the path.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’ll bet you’ve had that experience 1000s of times when you’ve been up speaking in front of groups where something will come out of your mouth, and you’ll think, where did that come from?
Jean Houston: Where did it come from?
Rick Archer: Actually, I think it was in, I don’t remember which of these two books it was in, but I was just reading last night, where you’re talking about an exercise in which one could sort of go into the, you know, the mythical level, perhaps it was, where resides all the sort of wisdom of the ages, and which great inventors and composers and so on, managed have managed to tap into, and, and have actually attributed, you know, many of their works to that one can actually learn culture, the ability to do this.
Jean Houston: I mean, so many say, whence does it come from? It is so much more than I’ve ever studied or known. You know, in the classical mystical experience, there is a stage which is called vertices and visions, mm, where the mystic or the enlightened person or the person who’s in a state of radical creativity, just seems to know begins to experience sometimes even discovers things that are much too early in history to Hildegard of thing is a superb example, you know, that she’s, she’s born in 1098, dies around what 1183 or something like that. But what she music that she composed, in some was several 100 years ahead of where it should be, especially in the polyphony of the music, and ideas that she had for the nature of plants, the nature of psychological states. I mean, it’s really extraordinary, you look under another DaVinci, who pursues states of mind and expression and invention that are hundreds of years ahead of his time. Well, yeah, but we see this all the time. It’s just that those are famous examples. And I part of my work has been to work with people, inventors, or creative people, and to bring them to a state of awareness, in which the thing that they’re looking for is already there, it is, as if, you know, they say on earth as it is in heaven, let us call has expanded our metaphor of heaven and say that that’s actually the the nature of reality itself. I mean, obviously, there are, you know, if you have, we’re now discovering, for example, just in our galaxy alone, how many, multiple millions and billions of planets of which at least 10% of the stars which 10% or more, would have, perhaps, perhaps habitable planets, we’re, you know, in that we are, we are on a medium sized star, and an outer wing of this particular galaxy. I think that’s where they put the skunkworks you put your regular, you put your regular businesses on the highway and then that you know, the lower 40 You have To place your experimental lab and it’s almost like this is a laboratory. This is God’s school, we have enough sufficiency of chaos and consciousness and complexity. to warrant this being a place where we God seeds, you filled with enormous levels of yearning, are reaching for something more, which is what I would call speciation, the emergence of the next stages, but it only seems to occur. If you look at history, it’s always in times of levels of trauma and chaos, that sets the fire that is hot enough in us that we begin to go beyond our local history and our local selves and begin to move into something else. That’s why so many people feel a call, then they don’t know what but really, we’re in calling times. That’s why the hero’s journey, you know, which that Joe Campbell and I did, we did a number of seminars together and said, that this is something that we were always looking at, we did have one big fight, because the call is the first part of the hero’s journey. And he, he didn’t seem to give much credence to a heroines journey. Good old 1920s Irishman. And I would talk about the heroines journey says, Well, you do it then. I’ve done enough on the hero’s journey. And I think what we’re seeing around the world now is a quickening of the understanding of the heroines journey. So that’s why I wrote that book, The Wizard of us because it’s a classical heroines journey, and it differs from the hero’s journey, because what does she do that the hero often does, she stops along the way, and she helps people or beings, you know, she, she takes the Scarecrow down from the is his pole and says, join us join us and helps him discover that boy, not only does he have a brain, he’s got a very great intelligence. And with regard to the, the tin man who is caught in his mechanism and as rested as she, she oils him, and helps him release is true sympathy is the fact that he has, is not a physical heart, he has an enormous emotional genius, and does the same in his own way with with the lion, in lets him find his courage and his fortitude and his strength and his goodness. So that’s very different. That is the heroines journey, as opposed to just the young adolescent male, trying to find himself, you know, fight himself past his obstructions and his flying hormone problems. There, but how many other things
Rick Archer: are about half a dozen points in there that I’d love to expand on with you. But I think maybe I’ll choose the one of I mean, let me put it this way. A lot of people these days, obviously are interested in spirituality and awakening and Enlightenment, whatever we want to call it. And but I think a lot of times it gets sort of dumbed down a little bit. People think of it in terms of, well, you, you kind of realize your essential nature, which is unbounded and pure awareness. And in doing so you you realize that you are not a person that you are just this sort of absolute level, and, and that the world is illusory and not worthy of very serious consideration. And you’re done. And, you know, I think you have a much more nuanced and rich perspective on the whole thing that you know, this pure, absolute or whatever you want to call it, our true nature is not just some plain vanila field, but is a vast repository of all the intelligence, energy and creativity that we see expressing itself in the universe. It with all its diversity and amazing qualities. And that one can sort of be a co participant or CO creator in that creative process by tapping into that. Is that a fair assessment of the way you would see things?
Jean Houston: Yes, and to start at the basic level of that we are not encapsulated bags of skin dragging around a dreary little ego. Yeah, we are we are organism environment. We are symbiotic with the with the whole and it’s not just great spiritual wizards who have said that and you find it in the most ancient of literature’s, but But you certainly find it also in the new physics that seems to give a new level of metaphor and credence to that. I mean, it gives you an example I have never met a stupid child. Yeah, I’ve met incredibly system and reductionist mind and spirit reductionist forms of education And because the child is, is already a beingness of wonders, and how to keep the Wonder factor going. That’s why, you know, when I’ve one of the things that I’ve done with when I was working with UNICEF and even with UNDP, the United
Rick Archer: United Nations,
Jean Houston: you know, forms of development is one, it’s a big developmental part of it, the UNDP. I’ve, I did help try to ship schools around the world, especially, you know, in countries where the British imperialism had in put in British type schools, which were really pretty terrible schools that the burbs themselves had abandoned 100 years before, but realizing putting in schools and where art is central to the curriculum, as a story, where a child dances and sings and emotes and feels information in multiple ways, the whole body, mind the whole mind of the whole child. And then we find the children do not fail. If they’re acting information, if they’re sculpting it, if they are singing it and dancing it. And I’ve done many, many studies on this and you then you find that the teachers get interested too. And the kids start with going to school and loving school because it is school becomes an evolutionary quickening, and not the place where one is contained, and constrained within very limited Western notions of what the mind is, which is not true. You see.
Rick Archer: So I think you wrote a book called The possible human or something like that, right?
Jean Houston: Yeah, there was something like that was called the past.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And early book. So please describe what you think, a human being living his or her full potential would be like, and and then the second question from that would be, you know, what would a world be like that was comprised of such people?
Jean Houston: Well, I think that they would have a natural joyousness. Because first of all, I think that they would have very rich, I think they do. That’s not what I think I think is what they do. They you have, you have access to acute sensory awareness, not just the five senses, but probably the eight or nine other ones beyond that. But you would also have them within yourself, what are called the interior appropriate receptors. So that you would experience inner music, inner touch, enter feeling and reverse, you could drop in an idea, any idea. And the idea would then take on a kind of virtual reality, fullness. I mean, when I had studied 55, of some of the most creative people in North America, and Kosis among the research subject was Bucky Fuller, who’s one less design, I live in New house that you know, Bucky Fuller, Margaret Mead, you know, worked with me, for we’ve worked together for the last six years of her life, she essentially live with us part of the time. Become more dogs yet. Joseph Campbell and many people whose idea whose names you you do not know, but who had pushed the membrane at the possible in terms of their own lives, they were felt in all cases, they were fascinated by their own minds. And they were spelunkers in the caves of their own creativity. And, and they just use much more of themselves. So they were imaginative imagination is very important, because imagination takes us into the realm of the imaginal, the coded potencies, of knowledge of understanding that is there beneath the surface of consciousness. And they’re in they, they use their minds and bodies in very different ways, which I teach people how to do so that you do tap into the light, not just the ground of your being, but into the depths of beingness itself, which lies be your, your everyday, local use, we expand use, you know, and it just occurred to me when I asked Margaret Mead, what would you like on your tombstone? She said something fascinating. She said, she lived long enough to be of some use. And I thought, boy, that’s what I want on my committee. But it was also that she uses in the best possible way so much more of herself, and just didn’t just put it on the shelf like most of us do. And she remained in many ways Child Life. And I found this true with Joe Campbell, you know, maybe not child but certainly adolescence in some ways in his joyousness, and his just bliss, we would walk together in nature, I remember things and he was happy, happy, just celebrating the sheer, vivid gorgeousness of life. So that’s part of it also. So I would say that they have their inner life is as rich as their outer life effect even richer. And thus they have access to levels and depths of consciousness that allow them to Camille, not just with, let’s say, the infinite inside, but to commune with the great archetypical and symbolic structures that themselves are part of this current deadness that we have access to, which we’re referring to as the imaginal realm, not imaginary, but the imaginal realm, and that imaginal realm, and it’s very close to what Plato call the idols, the divine ideas that we have to contend. And that’s also what sustains and feeds their creativity. So if you had to get don’t give up,
Rick Archer: if you had to guess what percentage of the population would you say are actually functioning like that these these days now out of this 8 billion or so people on the planet?
Jean Houston: I have no idea,
Rick Archer: but 1%, half a percent?
Jean Houston: I don’t know. I mean, let’s put it this way. In with all these countries, and different cultures that are visited, in some cases lived with, I find that when they are in different states, whether they are in ritual states or dense states or states of celebration, I would say that it’s a very high percentage. When they go back to Everyday ordinariness, it then shrinks i i. So it’s not what is the percentage, it’s just what is rising and falling. Everybody who is watching this or listening to this knows that they have been in the states where suddenly they are the knower, the knowledge and the knowing they are the denser the dancing and the danced. They are the the joke, the laughter, the Black Plague. So it is it’s just all comes together. And we all have access to that. So I would say sometimes it’s 50% of the day, sometimes it is I can’t put that into depends on where you are or where you agree to be. And, and and the great practice of joy. Joy seems to be keen here is that opening?
Rick Archer: I think Gallup has done polls, which indicate that a quite a significant percentage of the population has had glimpses of the kind of thing you’re talking about. And so the question is how to how to make it more than a glimpse. And, you know, and I guess the question there is, you know, what is it that suppresses or prevents it from being more than a glimpse into, you know, why don’t we function this way all the time? And what can we do on a mass scale, to be able to do that?
Jean Houston: Now we’re cooking with gas. Alright, one of the things that I’m doing as chairman of the palace, you know, they’ll explain what the palaces what the palace is one of the great movie houses of built in 1929, you know, before they stopped doing that, and 3600 seats and a place of a great deal of celebration art, as well as movie. And now we continue to do that. It occupies all of 170/5 Street and Broadway. I’ll be there in the next few days. But we, I I have a kind of meta Sangha you know, Sangha is a meeting of communal minds and in our lives, McTaggart between Elgin, the physicist, you get the idea. Yeah, I’ve interviewed and we meet often, every week, and we discussed the new physics and the emerging spirituality. One of our members is Lynne McTaggart, who wrote the field of bond and now the power of apes, the the intention experiments, what happens when you bring people together and attention and she has gotten phenomenal results, especially with regard to healing. I mean, I belong to a circle here in Ashland, Oregon, where we meet every Monday night. And we help people who have healing issues, you know, and the healing doesn’t have to be just on the body, but often it is it could be in the mind or in their sense of limitation. And we see people open up, open up, open up. I mean, a good friend of mine who was just written with cancer is no longer written with cancer, was preparing his death. He gave everything away, and now I just had dinner with him the other night, and when he was in an extraordinary state of a Booleans, and abundant, healthiness, I mean, we’ve seen this so much. So I said to them, and like I said, the balance also Let us because we then take our discoveries, and we bring it in, presented to very large audiences. I said, Let’s do it with hundreds of 1000s of people. Because Linda and I had also listed her project that I helped bringing Israelis and Palestinians to really reach across to really see each other people love the Arab Emirate to really see and touch each other by zoom in limestone movement done, and, and then to try to raise the level of peacefulness in Jerusalem. And in fact, after that, we did see this but now, I said, Let’s do it as a great, joyous lifting of spirit around the world. And we’ll do it in early 2019, and spring. And we will have this great collective of hundreds of 1000s of people tuning in, and with the intention of lifting the human spirit, lifting the cadence of joy, we’re gonna do that. And we have the technology to do that. And also everybody will be able to see a lot of everybody else, because they will be live streaming, I’m doing a lot of this. Okay, and then have regular follow throughs continued connection, but also in spirit spirited, spirited communion with you. But also knowing that this already brings with it a spiritual momentum, doesn’t it? And then what is the follow through is the follow through some of the things that I do because I’ve created a field called Social artistry, human development, in the light of social change, and the inner development and the psychological development and spiritual development, it seems to be necessary to allow a human being in their lifetime, to achieve a whole new level of understanding, celebrating creating with their humaneness, and then very real things that they can do. Whether it is the sustainable millennium and Millennium Development Goals, but very real things that they can do in their lives to make the difference to be let them become the difference that makes the difference. So this becomes a worldwide form. You know, this is galloping chutzpah at its best.
Rick Archer: Some people are pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the human race. I mean, there’s, there’s a sharp mentalist or ecologist named Guy, McPherson who feels like we’re cooked, you know, we’re done. And maybe we have a decade left before everybody dies. And that was I mean, I don’t get the sense that you are testing this thing. And so but then if you actually look at his his facts, you know, there’s some pretty serious things that could happen. methane release, releasing and all kinds of things. So how do you think it’s going to turn around? If it does? I mean,
Jean Houston: you give us you use the metaphor. Yeah, you said were cooked, right? And at one level, that’s if you look at just the logic of it, you would have to say, as we’re going now, the by the end of the century, there’ll be 150 million humans left, we will look awful. And we’ll be tripping over abandoned electronic appliances. And yes, that that’s a metaphor. And it’s a very, it’s the kind of metaphor that appears that appeals to the very old brain, the old reptilian amphibian, that is trying to keep us safe. But it’s scared all the time. I think, yes, at one level, that would be true. But then I say, but let’s, what else can we cook up? So I’m trying to find ways of cooking up the human potential, the human capacity, the human. The fact is, I don’t think that a 13 point 8 billion year experiment that possibly began with a big bang, has is in at least in our world is ready to just sort of finish with us the experiment of the human being. I don’t think that that’s true. And I don’t think it necessarily has to do with running off to other planets. So that part of it, maybe so? No, I think that we have barely begun to tap into our higher usefulness and our higher use, I just refuse to believe that. That’s what I’m looking for what is the moment that would activate the human spirit to begin to act, not in these crazy giving up ways this is part of the devolution that we’re seeing is is part of our loss of faith in ourselves and no loss of our belief. But because we have no lore of becoming the old stories are over, but they’ve dropped out. Now we either have to have the regeneration of the story, or the whole new story, as not only a your own unique story, but a collective story coming back into God and that’s what I’m looking for. Factors and there are all kinds of factors that are rising up that speak to that. One of the most important I believe, now remember since 1950, I’ve been traveling in white, constantly over the buttons, we’ve seen so many societies seeing their their myths, their stories, the creation myth, we’re in the midst of a new creation. And new creation always is preceded by a dissolution. We’re in the time of big time dissolution. But we’re also in the time of recreation, what do we see this unique, the rise of women, all over the world, to full partnership of men in the whole domain of not just the human image, and but the life agenda itself. With women, the emphasis is on process rather than on product, or making things cohere and develop and grow. That’s one thing. Another is yes, the technology which can be used for absolute ill, or deep witness, and people being able to connect, once you can connect in one way, let’s say technologically, then the connection becomes something more than just the technology or the technique, it becomes it is already a meta level. It is a metaphysical level within ourselves in between us, that is also arising all over the earth, in my walks with Dr. DE Chardon, in the 1950s, you know, his where he was seeing, he was seeing, and we were talking about that I was 14 years old, you know, and he was the origin, the people of your time, will be taking the tiller of the world, but you cannot go directly, you have to touch every culture, every people, and that has become possible. Now, we’re not necessarily using it wisely. But all over the world, people are looking for ways of wisdom, for the great communion, the great connectivity, and not the following one madman or one, you know, leader on a horse, or, you know, but to follow instead, some kind of instinctive, presence, presence in that is happening, I find everywhere. But I do find it quite frankly, around the world, not just because I’m a woman, but among women. It’s because with women, I said, the emphasis on process and continuity, and making things live and grow. And this then you see, is releasing men to be what they can be, instead of falling in the ancient patriarchal traditions, some new traditions new possible, the whole new store is there brimming, and we get pictures of it from all over, and just just see it and the mobile eye, you know, in the time that the days that we’re doing this, now, we’ve just had an extraordinary funeral that I just watched on television with John McCain, who represents both the patriarchy and his moving away from it in his own life in interesting ways. And Aretha Franklin, you know, who could sing? She had a gospel voice. And she would sing the spirit into whatever was the subject that she was singing about. I mean, whether it was on respect, or thinking, or it was, but these are aspects of these, these different sides of this is a rising energy. Don’t you find it in your life?
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’ve always felt that. Well, firstly, personally, I’ve often felt like an instrument of the Divine. And I think you feel that way too, that there’s something larger that sort of governs my life. And, you know, sometimes people say about this show, for instance, oh, it’s such a wonderful thing you’re doing, and I have to do a double take, I think, Am I doing anything? What am I doing? It’s just and I, you know, I just feel like there’s an end if we kind of extrapolate out to the, to the world at large. I don’t, you know, I don’t think that anything ever gets accomplished merely by human effort, because I think that as we were saying earlier, humans derive their inspiration and intelligence and ability from something much deeper, which we all share. And that, that, that something deeper, seems to be kind of rising up now or becoming enlivened, you know, and it’s like, you know, if the ground of a forest becomes much more fertile, somehow, then all the plants just begin to thrive. And I am maybe weeds or noxious things that thrive better and in fertile soil begin to die. So I kind of feel that there is a big shift, as you were saying, just now, and you know, a lot of things are dying, you know, structures and systems and ways of thinking that are no longer really sustainable, and that a lot of other things are emerging and beginning to you know, flourish, and that it’s exciting to watch it happen and it’s not necessarily obvious to most people that it is happening and some people may be feeling Unlike all hell’s breaking loose, and we’re all going to, you know, perish. But if you if you can see the signs, I think that something good is happening.
Jean Houston: Well, this is what I see all over the earth, you know, any any you don’t see the breakdowns. I mean, Mrs. Roosevelt who I didn’t know, in my mid teens, because I was I was president of my high school in New York City, Julia Richmond, and she was gathering me, those of us who were heads of our general organizations to get us interested in the United Nations and international affairs. And she, she use words like ones, you know, she would evoke in us in our, you know, our well earned adolescent skepticism that she would invoke in us the power of the beauty of possibility and being part of the transformations of our time. And one day, she turned to me and she said, vaguely, imitator, she said, My dear, I know the suspect, you’re going to have the most interesting career. But remember, my dear, as a professional woman, you can expect to be dressed, she didn’t use the word trash, that was something like that. I just don’t remember what it was. And then she said, but remember to my dear, a woman is just like a tea bag, you put her in hot water, and she just gets. And I have found that to be true. And this is something else that I find, again, all over the world, the rising energy of Women of Courage, who are getting stronger, they do not make the front page of the newspaper. They people say, Oh, that poor little woman, but that is out there with a lot of brothers. And they are, they’re keeping the race going. They’re keeping the energy, and the new programs wherever I go women, especially women of a certain age, and it’s like postmenopausal zest. They’re out there, and they’re calling in the projects, and they’re bringing things they’re following the sequences of making things happen. And they are really trying to help the mentor also have a new order of a sense of possibilities. And I find this in women scientists, too, you find that the it is the men side is too we’re talking about the decline the end and forget about it. We’re out of here. And it is the women who are writing a very different kind of science. With our warnings. Yes, I mean, they’re they’re not unrealistic. But also this is what we can do. And let us do it. It’s not only what we can do, let’s do it. I know we looked at the writings of somebody like hazel Henderson, do you know who she had? No. Oh, you’re in for a big surprise. Oh, cool. She’s probably one of the greatest creative economists of this time, and put you in touch with her. The way she works with economics to create whole new orders, new ways of being a new new possibilities. And really, as a guide to a new kind of world. She is almost unparalleled. Look at Monica Sharma. You know, Monica Shama? Oh, I’m a dummy, I’m afraid.
Rick Archer: I know about who Vandana Shiva is if you’re gonna mention her.
Jean Houston: And also their good deeds. Monica Shama is probably one of the most brilliant people alive today. She was head of the whole eight setting for the United Nations, and knows how to take a small experimental group and build a scale that then affects hundreds of millions of people as she did with the UN with the AIDS and HIV AIDS crisis, among many other kinds of things that she that she goes back to India and the states and build a very great book on transformational leadership. Monica Sharma. It’s a dense book, but it is filled with brilliant, brilliant ideas. How is the how to make a much better rule that works. And this is what I’m finding. Now. I’m just saying that I am noticing, I can’t help but notice that the men are giving us all of us the signs of it’s the end, it’s the end, it’s closing time is closing down just like I believe it is PSLE what is what is it in Samsung agonist is where he writes it or the bar and they say it’s closing time. But the whole point of closing time it is closing down to the old story, but it’s also opening time for a whole new story. And a lot of creative people, women and some very good men are really coming together and opening opening this new story. And so in our own ways, we are very fortunate to be living in ending times, closing times and opening times. It’s like being at the end. Caught in the abyss caught on the great parenthesis the end of one era. Not quite the beginning of new one, but leaping across enough fingernails holding on, you know, to the, the earth and the rocks of the next or order. But we have to invent it, we need to create the law of becoming what does the possible society look like. And part of my job is to help create the possible human who then has the wherewithal to have to be able to tell the new story, and to have the the passion for the possible the passion of the follow through and do what is absolutely needed to make this happen.
Rick Archer: In just about every talk and interview I’ve heard you give you’ve you’ve said other times thought they were it. They were wrong. This? And I mean, one might argue, okay, yeah, but the Civil War was no picnic or World War One or World War Two, and so on those those might have seemed like it. So I think I can answer this question, but I would rather hear you do it. What is it about our time now? That is it? And what do you mean by kit? I know you’ve kind of just been saying it, but let’s just poke at it a little bit more.
Jean Houston: It’s worldwide. Yeah. Everybody’s involved. Nobody is innocent of our time. That’s, that’s number one. That’s a big thing. It is global. It’s this little planet, this beautiful blue and green, silver planet floating in the womb of the cosmos. And that looks, you know, I helped an astronaut. Remember what he saw when he was it was was Ed Mitchell was out there. And one of the things he said is you go out there and you look at the Earth and and he had the music of Camelot coming on. The you know, the, the optimal society camera. And there she is this beautiful planet. And there was no, there was no division, and there were no wars seen. And it was, it was this great, incredible, beautiful beingness. And when we saw something happen in us when we saw our Earth from outer space, and we realized that we were part of this incredible majesty, beauty, a beauty the beyond almost anything that one could imagine. And that we were then became response, Ebola response able to really make the difference. And so he went up there and astronaut and he came back a second not devoted to interspace and created, you know, the sciences. Yeah. He was a good friend of mine. And I admired him enormously in his courage and his stick to itiveness. But the thing is I, your question really is about being at the end of one time and the beginning of a new time. And everybody I know at some point in their life feels this call. It’s like the Hound of Heaven going. Hills in the morning, God sakes, stupid wake up. I get it every morning. Like my Sicilian grandmother saying, Hey, stop. That kind of thing. Get up and do what you can do and what you have to do. But the thing is that by oneself and just reading the news over and over again, it’s a kind of poisoning. And it again, affects that old, reptilian amphibian brain that is trying to be super protective and feared. And how do we create again, enjoy us interactions and communities. But we do need something that we are thinking forward? How do we think ourselves forward to a world that works, and that’s why I helped him then this whole field called Social artistry, in which you really do the work on yourself. You have to do the work on yourself. You do understand the powers of inner contemplation, the powers of what healing is, we’re built for healing. That’s part of our modus vivendi. We are built for healing. And I don’t mean healing like pre emptive wars, as being a healing force, it has never worked, but healing in which you really see the possibility in the other end of possibilities in the society and not being told how but to really begin, not redemption, but evolution, not salvation, but co creation. The Buddhist talk about interdependent co arising, that as we think of things, those energies are also being thought by the university itself. And once we can bring this together, there are just like the deer for Hilton Garden. And some of the people in the Renaissance there’s been many kinds of renaissances where we suddenly become stocking, living awake, to new ways of being to passionate possibilities in our own field or wherever we are and we do what we can. We do what we can, wherever and however we are In my own life, yes, I work on giant projects, but I also work locally. And just just various things that I can do whether it’s on the world for example, I’m a serious foodie. I mean, there’s I have two very big challenges. One is I can talk to any dog. And the other is, I’m a decent cook. A good cook, because my mother Maria almonds, Jada, Sarah, Graziella would cook Italian food, my father from Texas didn’t understand it. And so in order to keep them together, I became the world’s first fusion. Chicken, Chicken Fried polenta, you know, but, but I’m always looking for ways to cook up new possibilities when I knew Buckminster Fuller, and I came complaining about something because old Jain dark company wide, build a better model. And that’s what is the better models that we can really build wherever we are with whatever whatever we’re doing. Whether it is something very interesting in the co op movement. You know, in groceries, we have one at the Ashland, Oregon we have one of the great, great food cooperatives, whether it’s the co op movement, or whether it is with a friend of mine, who then use some of my work and became mayor of the town. And then she went on and became the president of all the mayors. But finding ways of crossing the Great Divide of otherness, and a time of so much exchange and diversity, which very few of us had been prepared for levels of diversity. Before it was just a few diverse people. Now, it is all of us thrust into this great cocoon of co creation and interdependence that we have never been prepared for. That’s part of our problem. What do we do in education? What do we do in educate America? All kinds of books about this sort of thing? How do we, as I say, across the great divided otherness, starting in schools, so that we can see the essence, the brilliance, the imagination, the dance, the the fold as the big one, the singing the, the different cultural styles of each other, and be stunned and awakened by joy, at this great difference, instead of seeing the other as that which is to be feared. I mean, because that’s what has brought us to a lot of problems. The world has accelerated, the ways of being accelerated so fast, that many people have been, you know, turned on by the ones who are the, the, the soldiers of fear, the, the con men of fear, because it’s exciting. And it appears to our what should we say, our reptile with video of brain but it also appears in appeals to the negative story, which gives us a thrill it’s like watching a horror movie. But now it what is the other movie, what is the other story, we are in a virtual reality in which we are co creators with not just infinity but with each other. But to do that we have into the ability to see the other as containing so much more and thus reflecting this back and forth. That’s the new orders of relationship, the new orders between men and women, everybody’s very confused. Because it is standards in the forms have 1000s of years, suddenly, the page of history, the page of relationship, the page of creativity has been turned. And there isn’t necessarily a manual that tells us how to or where to. And that’s why we tried to return to the old manuals, which have no problems.
Rick Archer: One thing that comes to mind as you’re speaking is that I’m reminded again of your story of praying in front of Chickies closet when you were six, you know that that verse in the Bible, you know, seek and you shall find knock and the door shall be opened. But one thing I’ve observed many, many times is that when people have an earnest, the intention to awaken to realize more to do something, then nature response, you know, they it’s like, it says if the gods say Hey boys, we got a live one here, let’s give them some guidelines. Let’s give them some juice. So I mean, if people are wondering, you know, how can I get as enthusiastic as Jean, how can I be so optimistic? How can I be so productive? I would say, you know, whatever lights your fire, you know, just put your energy in that in that direction, because that to which we give our attention grows stronger in your life. So you know, whatever inspires you, whatever you if you want to meditate if you want to You know, whatever really gets you going, put your attention there. And I, you could probably quote, Gerda said something wonderful about how if you, you know, if you just sort of start in that direction, then all sorts of unexpected and unforeseen influences come to your aid. But you just have to start and just have to persist. And then things tend to keep you build the momentum, and you get the wind of the divine intelligence in your sails, you know, throw in a few metaphors.
Jean Houston: Because a man’s reach man’s reach must exceed his grasp of what’s a metaphor, for. No, I find the wind in the sails we are interdependent is in its in as the Buddhists say interdependent co arising in this as you begin to create this energetic momentum to the doing of something that that, then you are carried, then the universe says, As a hot dog, we got a live one there. Yeah. And you just say that you are in a state of procreation, and the so called miraculous happens, miracles are merely the activation of more patterns of reality than we normally allow ourselves to see. And the miraculous becomes an everyday thing, but right phone call the right person, everything we have to remember is really interconnected. And if we become passionate in one, one or more kinds of things, then that passion creates collegiality, companionship, relationship. And all these things are interconnected. I mean, we are abundant electrons, if you will, very large bonded electrons with each other, just like showing that one bonded electron has is in is in sync with another one. So if it turns right, the other room turns right, turns left, the other turns about the work of John momentarily. The complementarity? Yeah, that’s what the new physics is providing us with wonderful, built not just physical, but psychological and spiritual metaphors. It’s a fractal under physics, there’s a fractal of the wisdom of sages, over millennia. Yeah, all of this has come. So we are a great big unity.
Rick Archer: And one of its metaphors is that of the phase transition where like in a laser, for instance, if you get square root of 1%, of the photons to entrain, then the rest of them sort of join in and you have this coherent beam. So applying that to society, we don’t know how close we may be to actually a rather sudden and dramatic shift once we reach the 100th Monkey level of coherence.
Jean Houston: But when I see around the world, and in so many different groups as well, I mean, is I see people becoming part of the coherent theme. That is very, very different from what you get as the news, you know, on the internet, or on television, or whatever. But it is, people are looking for the negatives and the coherent beam, they’re not looking for the creative forms that are part of our daily life. It’s
Rick Archer: one thing you’ve come back to you several times. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Jean Houston: No, go ahead.
Rick Archer: Oh, I was saying one of the one of the things you’ve come back to several times, is the role of women. I was listening to something just this morning about this group of women in some African country where there had been continuous warfare, and it was ruining the whole economy in society and making it you know, hell for everybody. And women got fed up. And somehow or other the men were in this hotel, conferring with each other about trying to reach some kind of solution, but they’re there for the first time in a long time being fed well, and in a comfortable place, and all they’re really enjoying it. So they were in no rush whatsoever to reach any kind of resolution. And so a whole group of women encircled the hotel and joined arms, and said, We’re not going to let these men leave this place, or even let any food in until they reach some kind of solution. And, you know, men tried to break their little line, they wouldn’t let them through. And so they reached the end of the breaching solution in about 24 hours. So what is it you feel? I mean, I think this probably reflects something deeper in the collective consciousness of humanity, that were men, the Society has been patriarchal for so long, and perhaps we could blame a lot of the life threatening problems that plagued the world on that patriarchal mentality. And maybe something is shifting in the collective consciousness now that is resetting the balance. And, you know, perhaps not to become a matriarchal society, but to be a balanced society. Yeah. So go ahead and allow I read on that if you would.
Jean Houston: Well, what would a balanced society look like? Good question, you know, and that’s something that they’ve been wonderfully inventive novels about that. What was his name, Ernest color back, Ellen back, who wrote a book called Eco topia. This is about 3040 years ago, where you had a balanced society. And it was totally pretty funny because the The women ran the governments and the men were all artists, and musicians and painters. Very creative. So it allowed men are another bench for their for their efforts. But do look at that eco topia probably came out in the 70s, I believe. But I think the important thing is that we are the ones who are inventing the balance. Now, I’ve been seeing little stories popping up. Many, many years. Give me an example in 1991. I was in India, South India, and I was in a village where every Sunday they put up the television set me the old Brahmin lady on the infantry and people came in, they tied up their water buffaloes, and we came in and sat down and watch something that all of India was watching at the time, which were the many episodes of The Ramayana.
Rick Archer: Yeah. My Ramadan cigar, I believe the guy’s name was I watched the whole thing
Jean Houston: you did. So it was very beautiful. It was great. And on Sunday, they would come in they watch this, this great story of the story of Rama and Sita, and how they had lost their kingdom and went to live for what was it for 12 or 14 years in a forest, the idol and then Sita is abducted by Ravana coming in from Sri Lanka, the governor of 10 heads, and, and then the Great War to bring her back, etc. Well, it was so beautiful. It was just gorgeous. The sets the costumes, the singing, the music, the dancing, the glory of the words. And as I was sitting there in a state of Marvels in which we had something like this, the United States lady turned to me. And she said, Oh, I do not like Princess theatre, she is much too passive. That’s too much, Bessie, ready to bet very badly. Even though she just sits there crying and waiting for Rama to come in and rescue words much. It’s a very bad example we add in the air are much stronger than that we have to change the story, as the story is at least three or 4000 years old. That’s right, we’ll be able to change his clothing. It’s a very bad example. We are much stronger than that. And then she was having a conversation with the all these people, mostly farmers sitting sitting on the ground watching this, and they were all laughing. And they were putting in new ideas. You know that my god, this is like watching the rewriting of the Bible, in a small town in Mississippi. And I was just just absolutely shocked. And she looked at me, she said, she said it was him Don’t be don’t be so shocked. You know, this is this is the rise of women. This is the rise of women, you have to realize this is going to happen all over the world. You’ve seen it happen in India happened in India, it happened everybody everywhere. And then it came to the end and there was a commercial. And then what came on but dynasty. Boy was a lie embarrassed. It is the same story. How can you say it’s the bad man? It’s the good man. It’s a bad day because many people do too close blind to their good versus evil. Yes, indeed, it is same story. So here downloaded by the satellite is dynasty following upon this extraordinary ancient story. And it was really also about the need for the rise of women to stop the pattern of the warfare. And what he was saying it is the same story, it is the same. So this is part of the there is a new myth rising. You know we are missing links. We are mythic beings get beneath the surface crust of consciousness is almost anybody anywhere, as I’ve tried to do in many places, and you find that we are filled, almost instinctually it comes in with mother’s milk. We are filled with the great stories. It’s part of a deeper part of the collective psyche of the human race. But we were also seeing what I was witnessing there in India and it was the changing of the story.
Rick Archer: I guess, you know, the me to movement is probably indicative of this changing story that you mentioned. And there are a number of other very helpful signs are hopeful signs that that are kind of arising. On the other hand, you know, things are looking a little dark and the political climate, you know, we’ve withdrawn from the Paris accord, and we’re, you know, undoing a lot of the sort of progressive, environmentally friendly lead types of legislation that the previous administration introduced. So it almost seems like we’re regressing and progressing. At the same time, there’s some kind of tug of war going on here. Which is also a famous story in, in Indian literature of the gods and demons having a tug of war with using a snake as a rope. And I think Mount Meru as the thing that the rope wraps around. And, and by doing that, they turn they produce nectar out of the cosmic ocean or something. So maybe that’s what’s happening with this polarity. I mean, that’s the word you hear on the news all the time, you know, political commentators are saying how polarized we’ve all become. And we seem to be becoming more so. So where do you think that is going to end up?
Jean Houston: Well, I mean, I think the question of the polarity or the divine dialectic that is always between things that then begins to generate in its polarity. A third thing, which is the nature of the dialectic, isn’t it? But there’s there’s polarities in everything. There’s polarities in nature, there’s polarities in biology, as polarities in electricity and look at the polarity, it comes with, with the with with reality itself. The point of the polarity is it causes us to go deeper and to generate the next thing. The third thing, and that’s why I think that as the polarity becomes more intense, as it is doing now, that what is also trying to arise in sometimes in fashionable sometimes in foolish ways, sometimes even in ways that are so far out, we cannot believe that would exist. I mean, for example, what is one of the things that is arising and our time all over the world, the belief in other cultures elsewhere,
Rick Archer: another planet, other galaxies and planets, galaxies, or whatever, Star Trek, Star Wars, all
Jean Houston: that. But when you look at the nature of what is the mythic form of our time, it’s science fiction, major mythic form, so that in, let’s say, in the in the late 19th century, Jules Verne is writing about the ships under the sea, the journey to the center of the earth to go into the moon. Yes, that happens in the 30s, and 40s. It’s about societies in terms in collapse, and brave new world 1984. And that happens in the 1960s Stranger in a Strange Land and many, many remarkable stories of societies that are both breaking down but are also breaking through, which is something that collapses the regression of societies that then begins to create a new societies. The stories of automatons, robots, here come the robots. That’s you know, here they are, but also what is happening in the mythic, the big mythic things of our time is societies that have broken down the the end of Utopia is the opposite of utopias. The dystopia is I suppose, that just a dystopias a lot of love science fiction, the end of the world and the beginning and the beginning of lots of solid runner things like that. Yeah, but also beyond that. The new things that you find nowadays is people often women who are out there and on the frontier creating new worlds also the the going inside to find alternative worlds. So it started this very lands but now it’s more than very Lance, it’s evolved when it’s the strange evolving societies that you’ve been selected Wizard of Oz, which is why it’s so popular enough that you go over the rainbow, we go over the you leave the world as it was into the world that is trying to emerge, and that’s the fairy tale stuff. So going going into that what I’m seeing is the new stories are emerging, but they’re always about the discard not always but the tyrant who comes and even very naughty. Who comes is destructive is narcissistic is the is the breakdown of the best of the older societies. And then it is followed by, not by an any unique individual, but by people coming together and CO creating new orders new societies. That’s, that’s what I’m seeing in terms of following this pattern, this mythic.
Rick Archer: Having said that, do you have a sense of a timeline? Are we talking, you know, election cycles, years, decades, centuries?
Jean Houston: I believe that within the next, say, 80 years to the end of this century, we’re going to see much more totality of breakdown, certainly. And then we’re going to see what is already happening. It’s just happening beneath the surface crust of ordinary political, or social consciousness, the emergence of new ideas, new, new ideas for society, new forms of Bing, I believe that absolutely. From what I’m seeing, literally all over.
Rick Archer: Yeah, unless, you know, and case 80 years sounds discouraging to people because, you know, most of us watching this won’t be alive in 80 years. In fact, nobody will watching this, unless they live a long time. You can have heaven on earth now. I mean, you can sort of, regardless of what the rest of the world is going through, you know, you can develop a state of experience that that pretty much enables you to live in joy and bliss, and wonder and creativity and so on. So, so don’t let the state of the world discourage you. And, you know, who wasn’t said, it’s a lot easier to, you know, put on shoes than it is to pave the earth with leather. So, you know, just put on your own spiritual shoes, so to speak.
Jean Houston: Like to have the rise of, you know, the, the rise of so many, not so much spiritual movements as people seeking the spiritual paths to, to enter to bring eternity into time to bring a larger sensibility of what can be. Yeah, my a lot of my work is, as I said, social artists or human development in the light of social change. I’ve trained many, many people, and they go into societies and societies, and these are people of all races that go into societies that are in difficulty. And they work from inside out, and they bring very real change. This is happening, you don’t get this on the front pages, because it’s hard and deep work. It’s deep work. They’re afraid of the deep work, but the deep work is going on everywhere. Yeah. And that is that’s the untold story. Yep. It’s the because what Sita did in the things is that she in the new story is that she would arrange she wouldn’t she’d stop the war and arrange for a whole new order of society. And that’s what is said, The old lady was saying, Sita is stronger than you think. And that’s part of it. The the children of all the lands must be honored. That’s what we think. I mean, just if one were to just write out every day, the good things that they see happening, and then decide which ones are the ones that speak to them to enter into a new order of action, then we have started having the motherboard, yes, we’re gonna see very hard times we have to educate ourselves for that. And that’s probably incoming, collective community, one kind or another. But I do see personally, that by the end of the century, that or maybe even before we will have a whole new order of global civilization, with high individuation of culture, cultures not becoming less or Americanized or Russian. But because the creative depths,
Rick Archer: that’s a good point, worth touching on for a moment, you know, using that forest metaphor that I used before, you know, in the Amazon, for instance, where the ground is very fertile, and it gets plenty of rain. It’s not that all the plants become the same. There’s huge diversity and variety, you know, because because the ground is so rich and nourishing for the plants. And so this kind of world you’re talking about won’t be kind of all you know, everybody the same and thereby somehow unity is created, there can be very deep and profound unity and harmony, and yet, simultaneously and even greater diversity and flourishing of yourself culture.
Jean Houston: undergoing a sea change to something rich and strange. That this this meeting of hitherto privately divided and distinguished world. We’re at that point of, you know, oh my God, look who’s just come across the border. Oh, oh, Ah Wait a minute, look, look at the richness of that is there look what this culture has can give us that we can give this culture is the Western ego centrism is something that has a great deal to answer for and it is dying by its own weight. And and now witness the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world the best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with passionate intensity. Ruff ruff beast is our come round at last was slouching to Bethlehem to be born. That’s the rough beast, the the emergent new being that is going into a whole new sacred understanding of ourselves and our time we are in secret times, and we are born in this is morning time.
Rick Archer: A couple of brave souls managed to send in a question even though our live stream wasn’t working today. So let me ask you these and then if if you have the time, there’s some other things I’d like to get into, but it’s getting little. Now let’s try. Okay, good. So this one is from a fella named Rahul Kulkarni from Bangalore. And he asks, how can one overcome or work around the cultural conditioning that heavily color one’s perception and thinking and which are continually being reinforced by the limiting beliefs and prejudices of that same culture?
Jean Houston: Well, I think, Rahul, is that his name? Yes. Yes, I think you’ve answered it. You’ve already, you know, you’ve talked about culture, and the culture being inhibited. But at the same time, you’re aware, especially at India, of many, many, many, many other kinds of cultures. And it is it is an not only an honoring of these other cultures, but allowing yourself to learn something of them to learn to eat their foods, which you can certainly do in India, and to dance their dances and to have real conversations. One of the things that I’ve done in India, because I’m an old into your hand, and my way is I, alright, I’ll give you an example. So I was doing something for the Tata company company, which is one of the buildings and things over there, but they’re both within us, but they had the young, they had the young, very high caste young executives, you know, and wonderful, beautiful boys, by the way, I made it. And they said, What have you been doing? And I said, Well, I went to the village over here, and I went into a very simple temple. And I was looking at the statues of the gods. And an old man who had grown up during the British rules for good English said, since you know what those are, there is, there is Vishnu and Vishnu, he is the manager he gets, make sure that the way it works, there is Brahma the Creator, and over here is, you know, is Shiva, Shiva, but it is all goes away in the Great Fire of being it comes back together again, and there is Ganesh who lists away all the obstructions, but after all, it is only what he can nama rupa. It is all name and form ultimately, ultimately, it’s of the one. And I said, and you said you, you guys, you’re talking about these people. Yes, they’re terrible. They’re just a simple, simple business. They don’t know anything. And I said, Well, man, this man has taught me more than I’ve learned from you or we each have anyway, I arranged for them to meet the people of the village and these very rather elegant, elite, rather Upanishad three man height, I guess people and from the village, they almost call them a young boy, eight year old boy, who was a genius on the drum Ka’bah genius. And he, he typed out some of the intricate rhythms. And then I had them talk to each other about the problems they face. One who is currently in the elitist group could not really was having terrible time to Sanskrit and somebody from the village also talking about things that they were trying to understand in the planting season because the weather was changing. But anyway, back and forth, back and forth, until we got into the fact of a kind of collective humanity. And the result was is that they created the situation so that they were only Both for cleaning toilets, but going into training for management, yes. And at the same time, then the little boy teaching giving them tablet lessons. I love this kind of thing. So often, you know that it’s just sort of automatic with me. But when you bring it up again, you crossed the Great Divide of otherness. And you discovered that the other, so called others have talents, that are part of your hidden talents that you don’t even recognize. And suddenly you realize that you can play the tableau, or you realize that you have a sense of the orchestration of management. I mean, again, this is what I mean. But it means putting people into situations where this great appreciation exists. And he was saying things earlier, that essentially, what you’re saying is what you appreciate, is going to appreciate it. Yeah. I just think I try. Yep. So I tried to bring in situations where this kind of cool depreciation can take place.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And there’s an interest, there’s a valuable nugget in what you just said, which is that, I think, in the western society, we have tended to regard traditional cultures as primitive and that they don’t really have anything to offer us. And, you know, they have a very simplistic understanding of the way the world works and all, but and then some people obviously read books like Black Elk Speaks, or they, they go to Peru, and take ayahuasca and, you know, they’re sort of looking into what the, the so called primitive cultures may have to offer. But perhaps it’s much, much more than we realized. And perhaps, there if there were true flourishing of all cultures, ancient and modern, we’d find that, you know, the ancient cultures have as much to offer the, the so called Modern as, as we as the modern cultures, do them.
Jean Houston: But you know, the answer Raghu, it’s a question of getting out of your own limited social sphere. Yeah, not just visiting, but interacting, eating the food. And now, of course, I realized that, no, you have a caste system issue. And that you’re going to have to work with yourself. But if people would just say, every week, I will do something where I will cross that, across the Great Divide of being another between other and look for kind of CO humanity. And generally it is found in the arts, it’s found in arts, it’s found in music, it’s found in the crafts. And above all, it’s really seen the other as the god.
Rick Archer: I love that phrase. You’ve used it a couple of times. And just just on your previous point, before I say that, obviously, the internet is kind of doing that. I mean, it’s yes, it is spreading everything everywhere. You know, it’s a many to many kind of arrangement now, as opposed to one to many, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I’m doing right here years ago, I would have had to own a television station or a network or something to That’s right. Nowadays, anybody can do your own net. Yeah. But anyway, this thing about God and hiding, I liked that phrase, it’ll shift our gears a little bit. And I have another question that came in. And that is that, you know, I often like to think that God is hiding in plain sight. Because if we look closely at anything that, you know, and particularly with the aid of science, which science has enabled us to do in terms of looking more microscopically And fundamentally, and with greater understanding of the way things work, we see like unbelievable on inspiring creativity and intelligence displayed. And when you see that, I wonder how any scientist or cardiac card or heart surgeon or anybody else could be an atheist, because they’re, they’re staring at the marvel of intelligence right in the face, so to speak on a daily basis. And that’s more of a comment than a question, but you kind of like see it that way, too. And, you know, I mean, don’t you feel that the Divine is just sort of shouting at us from every little bug on the sidewalk?
Jean Houston: Yes, I mean, but it’s also to cultivate, again, what one had in one’s childhood, the capacity to be surprised by joy and to always be in a state of astonishment. And perhaps to realize that you’re alright, let me give you an example. Yeah. All right. When I was eight years old, I went to a very great school PS six, where sometimes they would take groups of us to meet the gray elders over time, we met Helen Keller. And I’ll tell that story in a moment. But we also met Albert Einstein. Einstein was in the habit then of meeting with groups of children, because he found that really intriguing. So we went there, and he was very sweet. He seemed a little vague and a lot of hair. As I recall the two different colored socks on the very sweet. And one of our smart aleck kids is a New York kids who said, Mr. Einstein, how can we get to be as smart as you? And he said, read fairy tales didn’t like that answer at all. So another smart aleck kids said, Well, Mr. Einstein, how can we then get to be smarter than you he’s read more fairy tales. And which he then turns out, he meant the imagination. Yeah. And that his strongest quality was not a talent for math, which he really didn’t have, right. But when he had his, it was a huge imaginative capacity, that was his biggest thing for us. He couldn’t slide the light beams, you know, and, and he could experience the things in his whole body mind in such a way that then it could percolate through one of his channels, which was the scientific or the mathematical one. And that, that, that that taught me so much in the power of imagination, bring imagination, as I said, you get them back into the imaginal, the great codes of existence, which I’m happy to rise in the meet your imagination, so that you co create with the universe. So that was one of the then i We also met Helen Keller. And that was so wonderful. Because our teacher, Miss Riley, you know, read to us from Helen Keller his memoir, which was she talked about how for the first what? Well, for six years of existence, she had no concepts. She was the stranger being just grabbing food on the table and not really making the connection between words and concepts and things. And Miss Keller grabbed her by the hand and took her out to the IV covered pump house. And in one hand pump the coke or something and the other wrote on her hand, water, you know, what a wh e wh er in New Zealand writes, I stood still wrapped that word water dropped into my mind, like the sun in the frozen winter world. And I woke up and I learned the name 30 things by the end of the day. Wow. And so with that, we were put on a bus was it was it the Madison Avenue bus? Or was it this was the Fifth Avenue bus. And we went to I think it was 66 or 67th Street. And it was because it was the cosmopolitan club. So to call. And this was mechanical, not handsome on the large woman, but handsome woman, she would have probably been in her late 60s at the time. But she spoke to us in this Illuma response to someone who has never heard speech that we understood. And because she had learned to make sounds, you know, touching the lips. Anyway, it was it was an interesting voice. And it was like the voice of the ocean or the voice of the whales. So that use is quite extraordinary. So you can hear it sometimes the YouTubes and they then as there’s any child like with any with children like to speak to her directly. And my hands shot up and I didn’t know what I was going to say. But I knew I had to talk to her. And she placed her entire hand on my face. And with a center of her hand. This is what I remember. She read my lips. Wow. And fingers. She read my expression, my character whatever. And I blurted out with a child savage honesty. Why are you so happy?
Rick Archer: Chicken understand that just by feeling your face?
Jean Houston: Yeah, she could also just just like though they may have been some of that. Yeah, but why are you so happy? And she loved that she said my child is because I live each day, as if it were my last. And life in all its moments is some form of wonder I think she’s there might have been all the smoke so forth. Where she damageable she was that was not true. She had we will have in the remaining filaments of her senses into a great niche, if you will, in which she caught all of reality. And that gave her her The enormous commitment to service to making a difference to helping disadvantaged people.
Rick Archer: That’s such a cool story. My grandmother knew her to my grandmother went blind and she she did Braille before she went blind and then eventually read Braille because she was blind. But she had some kind of relationship with Helen Keller.
Jean Houston: What do you know, years later, I was not so many years later, after Girl Scout, I was a girl scout for many, many years, one of the best things I ever did in my life. And we worked at the lighthouse for the blind, Brook city. And I read books for the blind, and but I also learned that the Braille and realize it is not just a different kind of way of knowing it. It gives you an openness to an entirely different extended reality. It’s very interesting to lose a sense for a while, and then all the other senses wake up, and then the story is a different.
Rick Archer: Interesting. Here’s another question that came in. This is from Marty in Kansas City. And hopefully this question will be clear, he says, What do you see as the relationship between recognized presence and synchronicity, how to develop them? How do you develop them?
Jean Houston: Well, of course, my old friend Deepak does a lot of that he wrote a very interesting book about it called the spontaneous fulfillment of desire. In fact, he and I are about to have a long talk about that. So synchronicity is merely the statement that everything is interconnected. Among the ancient Celtic peoples, it was called the ways of weird, not weird, as we say, Hey, man, you’re weird. There was nothing like the weird was the way of the enormous connectivity of things both seen and unseen. And the way they would come together, if you put your mind or your awareness to it, you would see the kind of connections. But so that that would have to do with synchronicity. presencing I feel, I feel is where you allow your beingness to be filled with the presencing of the unity of it all. And synchronicity is one example of you’re seeing what it is that is the nature of reality in the first place. And so things that seemingly are disparate begin to come together. And the presencing is the great unity itself. I felt perhaps certain emotional or spiritual way.
Rick Archer: I think Mark, do appreciate that. So, I was wanting to talk with you about Evelyn Underhill, eight organic stages. Do you want to get into that? Or?
Jean Houston: No, I’m fine. But it’s a very long thing. But I mean, I could make a short version of it, perhaps
Rick Archer: 10 Or 20 minutes on it if you feel like you can spend that much time.
Jean Houston: And by the way, what kind of dog do you have?
Rick Archer: We have two of them here. Can we hold up the dogs? Yeah, that’s this one. The new dog. Okay. This is the new guy. We got him. He was found running loose on the streets. And he’s a chiweenie which is a combination. Yeah, part with dachshund and Chihuahua. And his name is Theo, hi Theo. We’re still kind of potty training him a little bit. He’s young.
Irene Archer: Yeah, two years back, but his ears are huge. Yes, he’s big bat ears.
Jean Houston: I can see that bat ears.
Rick Archer: And this one. This is Luna and I know you had a dog named Luna. And she has some kind of a rescue. Rescue. Also, all our dogs have been rescued. She’s some kind of a rat terrier mix or something. Very has a strong hunting instinct and
Irene Archer: really smart.
Rick Archer: Yeah, smart and affectionate. And everybody says how beautiful she is.
Jean Houston: She is very beautiful
Rick Archer: Yeah. This is Luna. Okay, now, now Theo is tangled in my microphone cable. So I mean, there. There we go. Good. So I’m glad you asked that because we wanted to show you our dogs.
Jean Houston: Yeah. Well, Evelyn Underhill, who was a mystic herself. When she was actually fairly young. She wrote a book called mysticism. 1911 was when that book came out. I remember it was perhaps about 10 years before, not even that long, that William James came up with the varieties of religious experience. So there was an enormous amount of interest, especially in mainland America and France, on the nature of the mystical experience. Again, it’s interesting that all this came up just on the as Europe was within a few years, but then the plunge into its worst war. So it’s always the chaos and the cosmos that come together with the rise up at the same time. And she talked about the stages that she had studied not remember that she was a student of Western mysticism, primarily. So she didn’t have a great knowledge of the shamanic things, or even the Eastern forms, because it was around that time that there was the gathering what yet not so much the publication of the the understandings and the scriptures of the of the East, there have been some but not what subsequently happened. Fascinating is about the same time that quantum physics arises at the same time as the harvesting of the wisdom traditions of the world. So both being parallels of each other. Yeah. So Einstein, and Joseph Campbell’s teacher of rising at the same time, okay, now. Her first stage is awakening, you wake up, you know, whether it is well, it’s all one like what happened to me when I was six years old. So because that is part of the natural, instinctive part of being, it’ll all make sense, it is all one great unity. It could be nature mysticism, if you’re sitting at a beach and you see the sparkling of the sea, and suddenly, you are in a droplet, you’re that drop is all drops and all water everywhere. It could be, we could be looking at a person that love and suddenly, it is all love. Love is the nature of everything. However it happens, it brings one to a sense of one’s unity with totality. That is the great waking up. And that is often and she uses the Well, one of the great examples is the cosmic consciousness, the books on cosmic conscious, which also came up a little bit before that time, where the man is riding in a coach, this is the 1880s 1890s and inland and suddenly everything is fine. Everything is the pure light all together. So the you have people writing their own experiences, what were the early that time. And it’s interesting, because it’s also the time that will result in a great deal of war. But it’s also the time of a great deal of transcendent knowledge going parallel, the same time. So so you’d have that and then she follows it with probation or purification. You say, Oh, I’ve had this big experience, but I got all this heavy baggage of my dislike and hating adrenaline. And I’ll look into the really naughty things that I did in my life, in its purging time is it can take the form, as well as Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama did, going through all the worst forms of purgation of sixth century, India, you know, walking in a squat for miles, or eating one little race, a day, a little or a little Judoon. And he said, I got so skinny, I pressed my belly button and felt my backbone and dragging himself to near death until He was lying in the waters to try to pull himself off or his last minutes and thought of life and suddenly said, Why am I doing this, I have just this body to achieve my Enlightenment. Now, I’m gonna sit under this tree, until I find Enlightenment, I think it was more complex than that. And so he comes into that statement of lightning and discovered that his self was also all of the theories, his beingness as part of the great ones. So in then in modern days, we might call it restorative justice, you may have done some really lousy things, and you will have enormous regrets about it, or just keep dwelling on same old, same old, in a state of bloodshed, we call it serial and not any of negative thoughts. You know, I think a serial monotonous life and saying, I will get out of this house. Well, acts of kindness, acts of goodness, restorative justice, and has been one of the great poems. And then of course, the third state is is illumination. Suddenly you are clear and when you clear everything that comes to light, you are illumine you might be illumined creatively you may be illumined. With the understanding Have the inherent beauty and lightness of existence, but you are illumined you become a bearer of light, followed by high creativity rises in visions, with the mystic, you are able to live in that state. With the high creative, you enter into profound knowledge of reality of the way things working, become a high creative, you are in that state of co creation, co creating with creation itself, followed by
Rick Archer: contemplation and introversion,
Jean Houston: introversion, we I’ve got to go deeper, I’ve got to go deeper, I’ve got to be able to get to a place of sustaining this. And so you pursue deeper contemplations entering into even deeper states of being where in a larger measure of the understanding of totality resides. And this can also then become a great movement among peoples and that’s when you form the Sangha is the great community of those who are part of the seeker. But mostly, it is also entering into the depths of one’s own luminosity. And that, of course, is then followed by joy, incredible states of joy, which may be the natural bliss of creation. When I watched my dogs in the morning, lying on their back, all 350 pounds of them, kicking their paws in the air, looking at me laughing, it’s now full time let’s eat joyously. Now let’s go run up the hills go and throw the ball for the stick. Well, isn’t like wonderful, we, you know, but the sheer joyousness of everything, in celebration of everything, followed by the fact that what goes up must come down, and the dark night of the soul, and suddenly, suddenly, ever really kind of negative thought you’ve ever had about yourself and about life rises up, what you thought of as beautiful becomes an empty stage set, cardboard existence. And that’s when you really have to talk to a friend and say, I am in such a weakened state, would you be gone for me for three months? Just tell me what to do. Yes, I will be gone for you for three months. But it is in the inevitable Tharsis tarses Of all the old think, old patterns, even the patterns of the society, you become stupid and stupid, or you think nobody likes you, including your own dogs, because your dogs have another idea. And followed by a quick break in unity of Being finally you break through. And you realize it was all a great oneness all the time. And you try to live the life of a God inspired a unity inspired being where daily life is spiritual process. Daily life is spiritual exercise, daily life is the exaltation of being the one in the many, and the many in the one and neither become a beacon to others. And he Vak a tour of the sacred and others, the one who is the midwife episodes.
Rick Archer: Does a beautiful summary. I sometimes have debates with people about the direct versus progressive approach to spiritual development. And some people think that, you know, all you have to do is kind of realize that you’re, you’re already enlightened and, and that the whole notion of progressiveness or gradual unfoldment is too much, too much of a concession to Maya or something. And, but I think practically speaking, I mean, I can’t think of any examples of anybody who’s just sort of woken up one day and said, That’s it, I’m done, I’m finished and who really is and that, you know, we were naturally all works in progress, as long as we draw breath, yeah, works
Jean Houston: in progress. And the universe is a work in progress literally, sometimes. I mean, in sometimes many spiritual traditions, you bring in with it, the Tibetan word is the atom. The atom is the river to the source. So the hidden might be an archetype. Like the Buddha, or Christ or Mary or a Saraswati, or what might be even legendary figures that have been elevated to the spiritual sourcing status, you know, like, Joan of Arc, whatever. But uh, yet, many people then develop a relationship to an archetype, who may at one time have been an ordinary human being or may have been an angel. However people see Hear what they get and then supposedly has a larger frame of beingness and brings that angelic or that spiritual quality and you are able that you are able to be helped be trained. You know, some of my work I do in terms of spiritual teaching is showing people how to be in touch with essence, or intelligence that can be helpful can be a guide on the sweet path.
Rick Archer: Have you been guided by a particular archetype? yourself?
Jean Houston: Yes.
Rick Archer: And that archetype was Athena, I think I heard you say
Jean Houston: yes, it was the Athena it was there before I was born, I would not have been born if another gender like that when my father wanted me to be a boy that was telling my mother getting rid of the kid, we’re in the middle of a depression. Way to get on the hope, Bob Hope show you can have as many kids as you like, and my mother didn’t know what to do. And then this dream kept coming. Limo that picked her up. This is energy took her to the palace, lovely, tall, lovely woman in long blue kind of gang. Kind of a dance and sandwich. She called her blue. Now Mary must keep the baby I know to tell but my husband’s I don’t know what to do. Well just ignore him. Anyway, until it was too late. And I was came in my mother’s second floor. Very small. And my father was a great father. Like, frankly, after I got born. He thought I was lots of fun. Oh, you said kiddo. You’re more fun than a barrel of monkeys, myself, sort of image. And then I did not know really about this into my father was driving me to insulin to interact with Alan Watts. He said, Well, kiddo, you turned out pretty good. I’m glad we decided to keep you I didn’t know that. And so that was why I asked my mother and she said yes, that story was true. She told me this when she was in her 90th year, pretty close to that, as a mother this palace that went to was it like the dosha palaces and I took you to Italy what was wrong? Nothing like that. What was more like a Greek temple? And this blue Dell, was that her name? No. That was my Petland. Really, Mother, what was it? Well, meaning some goddesses as we’re diving, para Artemis Athena stuff has anything. So it’s been, it’s not like worshipping a theta. When people worship Mary or anything like that. It’s nothing like that. It’s just a sense of kind of energy. Yeah. That is has to do with culture and civilization and thinking at work, which is really a part of my life has been about creativity. And maybe it follows without my even had known about it before, but it follows some of the patterns. But it isn’t like worshiping anything.
Rick Archer: But do you think that these energies, such as the one your mother was inspired by are real entities of some sort? who dwell on some subtle level and who will guide you?
Jean Houston: Well, the King would say that, yes, that is archetypal structures are in as with Joseph Campbell, that they are inherent in the human condition, and are patterned according to the culture. So for example, if we were talking about the Athena type archetype in India, it would be something close to Saraswathi or Bridget, perhaps in the Celtic rooms, you can find variations of it, or a bit or is just part of something part of creative unconscious that pops up and finds itself symbolically, the pattern according to cultural, cultural expectations. The Kuan Yin archetype, which you also find in mother as well as an other kinds of feminine helping presence, so perhaps a member of a much, much, much, much, much, much older civilization somewhere in the universe, that part of their jobs or what they decide to do is to go into some of the more troublesome planets and peoples and, and serve as a bucket to wisdom figure. I don’t know. But they’re there. They’re all over the there’s almost no cultures that I’ve done that.
Rick Archer: For some reasons that appeals to me intuitively or something. I just sort of feel like there are these impulses of intelligence gins that are entities just as much as you and I are that, but that sort of dwell on a different dimension and that kind of intercede or assist in human affairs. And you know, we can kind of connect with or be inspired by or be guided by or so on. I don’t know, just somehow it makes sense.
Jean Houston: But sometimes, they are ones that you do discover in yourself. I mean, Carl Jung discovered that he called Phil Aman, who was a very present guiding spiritual energy for him. Phil Amman, and we don’t find from that, which is the great friend. You could also think of it as the great friend. Well, I
Rick Archer: think if we know ourselves in the deepest sense, then indeed, that which we are does contain all entities all. All intelligence is all. It’s all knowledge, all everything. Anyway, I’ve probably taken enough of your time, there’s been a major undertaking for you for the technical stuff. And yeah, for me, too. It’s been an honor. And I think we’re gonna meet in a month or two out of the sand conference, I believe you’re gonna be there.
Jean Houston: I will be there for at least three days of it. Yes. Great. Well, I’ll see you. There. I’m, and I’m going to be discussing some of these things, but in the light, especially with the new physics, because I’ve been exploring the implications of a new physics score for everyday life in the quantum universe, because it opens up a whole new set of human capacities that most of us have never thought of before.
Rick Archer: No, I hate to say this, but I thought of one more thing that I wanted to ask you I several times I’ve listened to that debate, or if you can call it that, that you had with Deepak and you and also Sam Harris, and I think Daniel Dennett are one of those guys.
Jean Houston: You couldn’t have heard it because they cut out my part. Oh, what’d you say?
Rick Archer: I thought. So it was mainly
Jean Houston: said a few things. But I’ve been most of what I said was cut out, they decided I wasn’t interested in well, and
Rick Archer: I thought it was an interesting debate. But if you were to do that over again, perhaps not with a live audience, but sitting around in the living room with with tea and a symbolized way, because it turned into sort of a zoo. But um, you know, what would you say to these guys? What would you have said in retrospect that you didn’t get to say,
Jean Houston: All right, well, what I would have done in retrospect, is I wouldn’t have gone into argument because there would been been no point to it, they were calcified in their belief system. Yeah, I would have taken them through a series of exercises, in which they would then tap into something that was both universal, and beautiful. I mean, one of them was, was already a meditator, but
Rick Archer: it’s literally practice
Jean Houston: in series practitioner, but without any theological or metaphysical agenda attached to it. But I would probably take him into an experience in which he would feel it very personally. And it would then take on a personal cat, perhaps an archetypical host. But in terms of conversation, no, they were died in will what they were. And this is what they did for a living. They go around and make these kinds of, yeah, but I actually did say things, but it was all cut out. So you didn’t, I was just there for a second.
Rick Archer: They should remember your stage. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, that’s a whole nother can of worms. We don’t have time to open. But it’s the thing that interests me this whole sort of new atheist viewpoint, which represents the sort of materialistic paradigm that’s kind of dominates our culture. And you know, what it might take to have a much more rich, and
Jean Houston: then you would need an all day, or two or three days hanging in there with each other. oppose him or something, but not not for the hour or so. But that it was and they came in. And this was something that Deepak and Sam Harris, they were already a dynamic duo in the argument. So that’s, that’s why it just became back to what the two of them did together. I was sorry that I hit a creek. Yeah, and I didn’t want to do it deeper, please. And it was not. I was not represented there. I think I can see
Rick Archer: Yeah. Okay. Well, we’ll we’ll leave it at that. Out of all the books you’ve written. If people want to sort of get started learning more about Jean Houston, which one should they start with?
Jean Houston: Well, for learning something about me it would be my autobiography, which is called a mythic life, which came out about 20 years ago and does contain pretty much a good perspective of the kind of work that I do. Okay. And then for the working book, the working book is probably the possible human. That’s all to an early book, Good Witch. So those would be the two of them. I think life is also a very funny book. So
Rick Archer: I wish our library had had those two, when I check these out, the librarians at Oh Jean Houston, she, so I’m gonna put these books on hold and read them after you return them. Another question I want to ask you is you’re still you’re still cooking, you know, at the age of 81. You’re traveling, offering webinars and all that kind of stuff. So, so all kinds of things. Yeah. So what can people do if they want to actually get engaged in that way with you do something interactively with you, or some webinar or some?
Jean Houston: Well, what what they can do is go to my website, Jane houston.com, geniessen onwards, COMM And they’ll learn about various things. And they will get regular information about seminars, or webinars or whatever it is that I’m doing. Okay, good. And also, if they’re interested in going having a doctorate taking a doctor with me, and human development and social social change, then they will go to Meridian University, whose meridian.edu So it will be that for the
Rick Archer: regular accredited university that had,
Jean Houston: yes, great. So there’s a doctorate degree in my studies in leadership and social transformation.
Rick Archer: Is it online? Or do they have to physically go there?
Jean Houston: No. What do you have to physically go there for two weeks? Two weeks, isn’t it? And then of course, there, and then it’s also online. Okay. But it’s very interactive. Cool. And so yes, it’s fully completely accredited. And then I have through the organization of evolving wisdom, there are all kinds of courses that I’ve given online, very interesting ones, especially the ones on quantum physics, and also the ways of purpose and awakening. So those are things that you can actually get the whole course of. Great way. There’s lots of things. Yeah. And go to the books. I mean, a lot of them are still there.
Rick Archer: All right. Well, I’ll link to all that your page on batgap.com. So people can just click from there and find those things
Jean Houston: that Yeah.
Rick Archer: Okay, great. Thank you, Jean.
Jean Houston: Thank you very much.
