Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. If you’d like to check out the archive of over 280 of them and/or support our efforts, there’s a donate button on batgap.com. Please visit that site, batgap.com, and I’ll give you more details later in the show. My guest today is John J. Prendergast, PhD. John is a retired professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and a psychotherapist in private practice. He spent many years studying with the European Advaita master Jean Klein as well as with Adyashanti. He was invited to share the Dharma by Dorothy Hunt in 2012. He is the author of In Touch, How to Tune into the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself, newly available from Sounds True. He is the senior editor of two anthologies of original essays about non-dual wisdom and psychology entitled, “The Sacred Mirror” and “Listening from the Heart of Silence.” He is also the founder and editor of Undivided, the online journal of non-duality and psychology. So welcome John.
John: Well, thank you.
Rick: Welcome. I’ve always enjoyed listening to you at the Science of Non-Duality Conference. You have a sort of a gentleness and clarity about you that I should aspire to. Of course, you weren’t a drummer in a rock band in your teens probably.
John: That’s true.
Rick: Yeah, you’ve cultured gentleness for many decades, maybe born with it. But you and I do have something in common. You learned TM in the early days and you were actually a TM teacher and you spent time in the Alps on long meditation courses, right?
John: Indeed I did.
Rick: Yeah, how long did you stick with that?
John: With TM as a teacher? Actually, it was kind of a short career, probably about a year and a half I would say.
Rick: Okay. And then, as I recall from your bio in your book, you said that you were on some long course in the Alps and you had a vision of Sai Baba that moved you to go to India.
John: Yes.
Rick: Did you actually see Sai Baba there or just go to India?
John: Yeah, well, I saw him in India a couple of years later. I had known of him before and read about his teachings. When I was on this long course in San Maritz, there was a very strong urge to find my teacher and it was very spontaneous. It was not something that I had felt until that point, or shortly before actually going on that long course. But it was a deep yearning in the heart and during the long meditation course, I just found myself spontaneously praying to find my teacher.
Rick: Interesting.
John: And this vision, very compelling vision of Sai Baba, appeared and struck me deeply. And so it felt like there was something to follow there. That was the next step.
Rick: And obviously you felt that Maharishi wasn’t your teacher or you wouldn’t have been praying for one.
John: Well exactly, but I wasn’t clear. It was interesting. One of the reasons I went on the six-month Siddhis course at the time wasn’t so much the interest in the siddhis as it was, “Is Maharishi my teacher or not?” And in a way I wanted him to be. Because I felt real affection for him and real appreciation for TM. But it never happened. The spark never really turned into a flame.
Rick: Yeah, that’s cool. I think for many people, TM was a sort of a transitionary thing and Maharishi was sort of a transitionary guru. You know, and they got a lot out of it and then they went on to other things that they needed to go on to.
John: Exactly, that was my experience. It was a great introductory experience, both to sitting and going on long retreats and also as an introduction to Vedanta.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope that you didn’t receive any of those special oil massages from Sai Baba.
John: I did not.
Rick: Good.
John: Actually, my experiences, you know, he’s a controversial teacher and my experiences with Sai Baba were all benevolent. It’s interesting. I actually, it was a period really of devotion, I would say, and opening my heart. And it was actually quite valuable. But it was also, you know, it wasn’t fully fulfilling either. So that’s when things began to change as well.
Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting. And this kind of ties in with the theme of your book and the theme of your teaching- How we kind of follow subtle impulses from one thing to the next if we’re open to them and we’re guided.
John: Exactly, yeah. I was following something, but each time I would take a step it was a step into the unknown. Like I was very devoted, you know. I was running a TM center. I was the chairman of a large center in California. I was very invested in it. And then it was like, you know, let that go. What’s next? And then there was a movement to go to India and spend time with Sai Baba. And then at a certain point, that no longer was authentic or true for me. And each time, there was a big letting go into the unknown and a following of something very quiet and very deep, which I would call a sense of truth or authenticity for me. Clearly, you know, people have their own paths.
Rick: Yeah, you must know my friend Timothy Conway.
John: Timothy is a good friend of mine, actually.
Rick: Yeah, mine too. I’ve never met him face to face, but we just have this bond, you know.
John: Yeah, we were housemates at the Sai Baba Center in San Francisco. And actually, you know, in my book I mentioned that a friend, I had this dream with Nisargadatta, and who I didn’t know of. But actually I was living with Timothy and he showed me the picture of Nisargadatta and gave me the book.
Rick: Yeah, I have in my notes here, “Dream Awakening.” And I’ve forgotten exactly the details of that. That’s the dream with Nisargadatta?
John: Well, it could be. I mentioned a dream of the awakening of the energy body, and that was different. That was prior to that, about a year before.
Rick: What was that about?
John: Well, I was in India at Sai Baba’s ashram, and kind of in the middle of the night there was just this sense of tremendous energy awakening in the body. And so, I awoke from the dream state. But the body was just like radiant or glowing, and it was just like some deeper energies of the body were starting to wake up. And that was really, you know, from that point I began to feel, you know, sense other people’s energies and feelings in a very increasingly subtle and accurate way as well. So that’s kind of another story. But the story with Nisargadatta was, again, you know, living in the same place and not knowing who he was. Having a dream of this sage when I was … well, the dream was set in Bombay, and the sage was inviting me to come into his little apartment. And he looked into my eyes and there was just this tremendous love and lucidity, and he said, “I know you’re a student of Sai Baba, but you can spend some time with me,” and took me by the arm. And that was my introduction to I Am That, and really to self-inquiry.
Rick: I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have had experiences like that. Pamela Wilson, for instance, with Ramana Maharshi, and a fellow named Nick Gonsitano, and others. Quite often, it’s been Ramana Maharshi, but maybe there have been some others. So what do you think are the mechanics of that? What’s actually going on? Are these guys hanging out on some subtle level and they’re actually sort of intervening in our lives, or is it somehow the divine intelligence just taking a particular form that we can relate to, or maybe those two theories are synonymous?
John: You know, it’s a great question, and I don’t have any clarity about it. It’s really quite mysterious. If I had to choose one, I would choose B, you know, divine intelligence. Because I don’t think necessarily when a teacher who we are unaware of pops up in a dream and affects us deeply, you know, I don’t think necessarily that they’re aware of it. I think it’s more of an archetypal movement. It’s like when there’s a certain readiness on the part of the student, sort of the universe sort of brings what’s necessary, and an outer teacher will appear to help the inner teacher know their true nature. And I think Nisargadatta played that role for me for several years until I met Jean Klein. And in fact, the interesting thing was that Maharaj Nisargadatta died a month after I had that dream, so “go figure.”
Rick: But it kind of makes you wonder about the nature of that divine intelligence governing the universe that could give rise to a dream experience, or even a waking state experience in Pamela Wilson’s case. She had this ardent desire to know truth, and then she kind of went to bed, and the next thing she knew, she woke up and there was an Indian guy sitting on her bed and she threw a pillow at him. But, you know, it makes you wonder about the nature of that divine intelligence that can orchestrate such experiences in us, in the middle of the dream, or whatever, or sometimes the waking state. Some people have been walking down the street and all of a sudden they have this vision of Ramana Maharshi. So you just wonder, I wonder about, how that intelligence operates to give us, to result in such experiences. It’s not obviously some homogenous, plain vanilla field of nothingness. There’s some kind of intentionality or guidance or evolutionary direction in it that gives rise to these things.
John: Yeah, that’s well said.
Rick: Anyway, it continually fascinates me, that kind of thing.
John: It’s fascinating and it’s really beyond the conscious mind’s understanding of it. And it leaves me very humble, because I realize the conscious mind knows so little of what’s going on. And it thinks it knows so much, right? And so there’s just this constant humbling, and for me, just coming back to not knowing and being at ease in the unknown, and trusting that guidance. And of course, that’s what the book is about too.
Rick: Yeah. We’ll talk about not knowing more in the course of this interview. We can even talk about it a little bit now if you want. But sometimes when you hear that phrase someone might assume that it just means a sort of a stupidity, or like, “I don’t know anything,” you know? But really, it can be great wisdom, paradoxically, simultaneous with this sense of not knowing.
John: Right. It’s not stupidity. It’s clarity. It’s openness. It’s an open mind.
Rick: Yeah. That’s an interesting point. Let’s just dwell on it for a second, and we’ll go on to other things. But you know, I mean, there are a lot of people in this world who are just cock-sure of themselves, you know? They feel this about guns, or this about abortion, or this about such and such political party, or candidate, or whatever. They’re just willing to die for these things. We see it on the news every day. People are dying for the things they believe in, or killing others for the things they believe in. And you know, what you’re referring to is a much more humble position, you know?
John: Yeah, this is the arrogance of the mind that thinks it knows, you know, and then will sacrifice life, be very cruel to oneself and others on the behalf … you know, this is the tendency of the mind to be fundamentalist, right? Religious or political or personal, that need to believe, you know, that we’re in charge. It’s a way to try to be in control, is what it is. And so, relinquishing that illusion of some kind of absolute control over our life is one of the hardest things to do as a human being. It’s a constant opening and surrendering as well, and we’re so wired evolutionarily, you know, both the mind and the body, to try to be in control in order to survive. So that false certitude is really, you know, creates a lot of violence.
Rick: Yeah, so you just cited survival, the survival instinct as one of the reasons for that need to be in control. And how about fear also? Perhaps it’s closely related to survival. There’s this sort of fear like, “If I don’t do this, what’s going to happen? If I’m not in control, then what’s going to happen to my life?”
John: Well, that’s what it’s all about, you know, it’s survival fear. It’s very interesting working with people, you know, and anyway, sitting with people and they drop in and really get honest. There’s a terror, you know, of not surviving, and it may be physical terror, the loss of safety of the body but also the terror of losing who we think we are. And they’re distinct, they’re related, but they’re actually distinct, and it’s quite interesting to tease those out.
Rick: You know how when a jet goes through the sound barrier, breaks the sound barrier, there’s this sort of envelope it has to pierce, and there’s a turbulence as it just about goes through. You know, Chuck Yeager, that whole book about him, The Right Stuff. But then once it breaks through, it’s smooth. And it’s going faster than the speed of sound. Because I think that’s kind of a good analogy for this. There’s a sort of a barrier of fear that one has to traverse. And I bet you, there are all sorts of mythic stories about this too, you know. Crossing some barrier of fear and then having crossed it, having taken that blind leap, as you said earlier on in the interview, you know, not knowing what’s on the other side. One finds it’s much nicer than the side in which one was desperately trying to maintain control.
John: Well, this is it. It’s not what the mind thinks. What the mind does is it projects all of its worst fears on this openness, this unknown openness and emptiness. And so, you know, all the nightmares are projected onto it. And that’s the resistance barrier that we create. I mean, even the image of leaping off a cliff, you know.
Rick: Carlos Castaneda.
John: Yeah, right.
Rick: Do you remember that?
John: I do, I do remember that. I read all those books, right? But even that is dramatizing what the letting go is about. And one of the curious things is that people, even though we may break that barrier of resistance sometimes with glimpses, you know, doing meditation or whatever, and then the egoic structure recrystallizes, and we find ourselves back on the other side of it again. Still that fear remains, interestingly. It’s sometimes attenuated but often you have to go through it many times in order for the body-mind, really, to feel at ease with that transition into the unknown, into what feels profoundly ungrounding initially, and then ultimately very grounding.
Rick: Yeah, well, I don’t know what your practices have been like all these years. But I know with TM that was always the experience, was that you sink into an unbounded, you know, transcendental state which is not gripped and controlled or anything. And you actually do so through a process which is totally effortless and without control, but then your ego, your individuality kind of crystallizes again when you come out. And then you remember the old cloth and dye analogy. You alternate that many, many, many, many times and eventually in the dye, in the sun, in the dye, in the sun, the cloth becomes colorfast.
John: Yeah, it’s actually a beautiful metaphor. I’ve come back to that recently, you know, that kind of letting the body-mind be saturated in being and it does take time, that’s true.
Rick: Yeah, so that’s a good thing to note I think. Because a lot of times I think that the whole idea of awakening is oversimplified in the sense, you know, a person says, “I’ve had an awakening.” Or “So-and-so has had an awakening” and one assumes finality, and you know, that you’re done. You’re free and clear. But then, you know, as you’ve been saying here, the ego creeps back in, the individuality asserts itself there, layer after layer after layer of conditioning. And it’s going to take some time to work that out.
John: It does, yeah. I mean, one can have … it’s a very subtle and interesting subject, that of awakening. And you know, I think it’s more of a process than an event. And yet, there are certain markers along the process where there is a fundamental shift that happens as well. So we can have glimpses and falling back, and then a kind of gravitational shift of identity. But nonetheless, in order for it to be thoroughgoing, you know … one way I think about it is, it’s fairly easy to have a mental awakening, where we’re fundamentally disidentified from our thoughts and stories. That’s kind of the easy part. But it’s that movement of awareness saturating all the way down through the body, through the emotional centers, through the instinctual centers. This is where our deepest identifications remain, and that’s why awakening really, I think, is a lifelong process.
Rick: Sounds like Adya’s head-heart-gut structure.
John: You know, I think Adya’s really named it well. You know, the head, the heart, and the hara. And that’s been my experience, that this kind of … Adya doesn’t speak about waking down, it’s a term Sanyal Bhandar uses. But one I find really quite beautiful. There’s a waking up process, you know, out of form and realizing oneself as infinite, open spaciousness, and then a waking down. It’s that same movement, goes from the mind to the heart to the hara as well. And that, for me, I think that takes many years.
Rick: Yeah, and wouldn’t you say, or would you say, that the waking up process, infinite open spaciousness, seldom is going to go to 100%. And then from there, the waking down process is going to proceed?
John: Right. >
Rick: It’s rather, both take place by steps.
John: This is very important.
Rick: Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.
John: Exactly. These are complementary processes, it’s not hierarchical. And as we have more experience with this, this is what we understand. There can be, we can speak of it as a waking, an embodiment. But it’s like a deeper intimacy with our true nature and then the application of that into our daily life and our functionality. And the two support each other. There’s a movement back and forth between being and doing, and in the doing we discover our reactivity and our identifications and fixations. And if we’re really honest and vulnerable and willing to experience those, they open up and we come back to our beingness again. And that becomes a stronger, more rooted experience. So I agree, it’s very much a complementary process. And some people, interestingly, have done a lot of work on themselves, you know, psychologically. I would say, so they’re in touch with their bodies and their feelings and they’re psychologically mature but they haven’t really touched the essence yet. And other people have really gone for the essential, you know, but they’re really not very familiar with their conditioning and their body minds and their awkward in relationship and uncomfortable as human beings. So one way or the other, we’ll have to include both.
Rick: Yeah, and in a way, I almost would consider the latter to be the more dangerous of the two. You know, because you get these people who have a ton of Shakti and great charisma and all, but who are really kind of screw-ups on the level of emotions and behavior and end up using their charisma to take advantage of people. So they end up doing a lot more harm than somebody who’s done a lot of work on themselves and may not have had a non-dual awakening yet.
John: Absolutely.
Rick: My opinion.
John: Yeah, I mean, you know, the field is just full of stories of charismatic, brilliant teachers who are abusive to their students. And the abuse of a teacher to a student is really, I think, the worst kind, because a student really puts their deepest innocence and trust, you know, their essential nature in the hands of a teacher, you know, trusting. And if that trust is betrayed, the wound is terrible, you know, greater than impersonal relationships. So there’s a tremendous responsibility, I think, that comes with being a teacher.
Rick: There is, and I know people who have been kind of bitterly disillusioned about spirituality in general because of some violation by a trusted teacher.
John: Absolutely.
Rick: And it’s insidious because, you know, I mean, these trusted teachers start out well-intentioned and actually end up doing a lot of good in the world, you know.
John: That’s true.
Rick: Yeah, and very often the shenanigans are concealed and people don’t even know that they’re going on.
John: That’s right, they’re in the shadows.
Rick: Yeah, so it’s not like a black and white situation.
John: It’s not. It’s a mixed bag, and you know, the mind always wants to split and say, “All good or all bad.” And part of the maturity is to recognize exactly what you’re saying, Rick, you know, is that it’s a mixed bag. You know, and people can do, teachers can do tremendous good and harm simultaneously because of their own unintegrated nature. Right? We’re multi-dimensional so we can really shine and be transparent on one level and very kind of dense and occluded on another. And both are radiating simultaneously.
Rick: Yeah. I want to continue to dwell on this theme with you for a few minutes. But I just want to interject that those who are listening to the live stream, if you want to submit questions, you go to the “upcoming interviews” page on batgap.com, which I believe is under the future interviews menu. And then you scroll down a bit and you’ll see a form through which you can submit a question. And hopefully that form is going to work. I’ve been making some changes to the website. It would be a shame if it didn’t. Dan, why don’t you do a test question in there and make sure it’s working and send me a message if it isn’t. Okay, so on this theme, I just want to talk a little bit more about this kind of schizophrenia that sometimes occurs between people who are very awakened in their consciousness and yet have these kind of shadow things or blind spots that they haven’t worked out. I had always, back from TM days, the teaching was that, “Well, water the root and enjoy the fruit.” If you take care of consciousness, then that’s just going to percolate or seep into every phase of your life and all those things will take care of themselves. You don’t have to worry about them. But in practice, in reality, I don’t think it has worked out that way. Neither did it work out that way for Maharishi himself nor for all the people. And you don’t need to pick on the TM movement. It hasn’t worked out that way for anybody, in any movement or spiritual path.
John: Yeah, it’s just generally true. And I held that belief as well. And there is some truth to it as well, and there is some falling away of conditioning and egoic patterning. But the fact is it’s insufficient. And it really requires … this is where honesty comes in, it’s where we have to get out of our ideal of how we think we should be or it should work and get real, really look at how we live our lives, really look at our reactivity. Look at our functioning and be very honest with ourselves. And in that honesty, this is where actually I would say the love of truth comes in, not just ultimate truth, but relative truth, looking at our own honesty or dishonesty. And this aspect of authenticity, I think, is really important. And this is very much an inside job. Because no one else…people can support us in that and we can have friends who share that ethic. But really it’s a fundamental responsibility that each of us has to carefully and honestly examine our lives, and to do so with compassion also. Because as human beings, we’re deeply conditioned in ways that we’re not even aware of. So it’s not about being judgmental about it either. So it’s a quality of honesty and vulnerability and I would say affectionate attention to our experience when we approach, and so difficult feelings and core beliefs. You know, it’s like starting to get into the nitty-gritty of our conditioning, but doing so with an open heart and a clear mind, without an agenda to try to change. And the mind is always trying to change and fix. So that’s, in a way, a polarity that we can get stuck in, a sort of endless self-improvement project as well.
Rick: Well, on the other hand though, you say without an agenda to try to change. But if you’ve been a real schmuck in some respect, mistreating partners or cheating people in business deals or something like that, you want to change. Don’t you? I mean that’s what we’re talking about, is not having such flawed behavior patterns.
John: That’s true, but not changing so much for egoic reasons. But more changing because you want to be aligned with what really feels true for you. Right? So it’s not about creating an image for others, not like turning from a bad person into a good person. But it’s more about wholeness, you know, coming into integrity, into alignment with oneself.
Rick: Yeah, so what you’re saying is you’re not trying to change just to sort of make an impression on others or something. You’re trying to change because you’re a sincere seeker of truth and you don’t want to be half-baked. You want the whole enchilada. So that’s going to include both the transcendent and the more embodied things.
John: That’s right, yeah. You want to come into integrity and come out of your own suffering, you know, and in so doing, to be of service to others as well.
Rick: Yeah, I mean I have friends who have been meditating for decades and end up doing some scammy business deal and going to jail for five years. Stuff like that, or really mistreating women or something. So you’ve got to sort of work it all out on all these levels.
John: Right, and that requires really a lot of maturity, and a lot of courage, and a lot of humility as well.
Rick: And to what extent can you do this by yourself, or are we blind to our own…? What’s that poem by Burns or somebody who’s, you know, “To see ourselves as others see us.” To what extent can we do this by our self, or to what extent do we need either professional help? Or at least, well, I mean a marriage is a good way to call you on your shit. You can get very idiosyncratic and self-absorbed if you’re just on your own. But it helps to have relationships.
John: Very much so. This is a critical point, is relationships and the kind of mirroring in our … and this is where honesty is really important. And honesty not just to speak our own unarguable truth, but to hear it and welcome it from others. And so yeah, we have all sorts of blind spots and we can go a long ways on our own or at least a certain distance. But usually we need the help of others at least in terms of honest reflections as well. And that’s where a partner can be helpful or an honest friend, a true friend. Right? And where even a small group of friends or community can really be helpful, the sangha or the satsang.
Rick: Yeah, you’ve been in various sanghas and satsangs. Have you noticed that in some, at least at a certain stage, there seems to be a sort of a self-indulgent quality among the participants or a narcissism or something. It’s like, you know, my spiritual evolution and damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. And people just get very self-absorbed at a certain stage of their spiritual growth.
John: Yeah, this is the danger of spiritual communities too, as they become insular and enclosed and out of touch.
Rick: That’s another thing, our thing is the best thing. Everybody else out there has got it wrong.
John: Well, it’s an interesting thing to go through to be very devoted to a particular teacher or teaching and, you know, have a loyalty to a certain organization and then step out of it and then do it several times.
Rick: It’s actually a very healthy thing to do.
John: It is a healthy thing to do and it’s a bit scary thing to do. But it’s part of the process of maturity. So, we actually, you know, as valuable as a healthy community can be, ultimately, it is our own responsibility.
Rick: We’re not encouraging being a dilettante and bouncing from thing to thing. But that can happen, I mean, people do that. But on the other hand, we’re suggesting that if you’re meant to move through several different things over the course of your spiritual practice, it can be real healthy to step out of one and reevaluate all the assumptions that have become ingrained.
John: Very much so, yeah. I think it’s part of maturity to be able to do that. And yet, you’re right. We don’t want to be dilettantes either, we don’t want to be uncommitted. So it’s a matter of kind of, I think, exploring something deeply and seeing if it really resonates and then sometimes we outgrow it. That was my experience.
Rick: This whole kind of underlying theme is so fascinating, that there’s this sort of paradoxical balancing act that shows up in so many different ways. We’ve alluded to several of these ways now. And another way that comes to mind that I’d like to explore with you is on the one hand, we start out life and go through our teens and everything with a sense that we’re firmly in control. It’s us, you know, me, I’m doing this. And then as spirituality begins to blossom, there’s a sense that there’s a larger intelligence which we were talking about earlier. And kind of that seems to be in control, you know. And I want to surrender to that and let that guide my life. And yet there’s still this me who’s in control. And you kind of go through a period where you’re on the fence. And it reminds me of that Hamlet soliloquy, “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them, to be or not to be.” It’s like, “Can I do this myself? Should I just be a little bit more passive and laid back here and let the universe guide me?”
John: Right, the ego tends to see things paradoxically, you know, and in polarities like “I’m in control or I’m out of control” as well. And you’re right, there’s kind of a … sometimes it feels like we’re letting go of over-responsibility. And then we may drift into a kind of passivity, and then we kind of reorient again to taking a more active and dynamic stance as well. And what I find is, you know, that’s not so much an act of conscious choice. It is a kind of spontaneous balancing that happens, of over-asserting or becoming passive. And I think what’s true though is as we actually start aligning and attuning with our deeper nature, we follow that guidance more clearly as a kind of subtle inclination internally as well.
Rick: Yeah, it’s true. For me, it’s been a process that’s been going on for decades though, of just great … Well, I guess you’re saying it’s an open-ended lifelong process. But you know, the transition from the sort of ego-centered sense that I am the doer to a state in which one is not the doer, kind of a much larger intelligence is the doer. There’s been all sorts of … it’s kind of like riding a bicycle I guess. You have to continue balancing, you never stop balancing and you get better at it. I mean, you see these guys who jump their bicycles off brick walls and stuff.
John: Yeah, it’s a great metaphor. It really resonates for me, the balancing act. And you know, early on we have our training wheels on, right? And those are the rules and conventions of society and family and maybe even our religious traditions. But eventually, we kick those off and we trust our own sense of balance. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to fall sometimes either, but you know, the point is to get up and keep going and reestablish that sense of trust. It’s very true. So it is for me an open-ended process. And I think even as human beings we’re constantly adapting and balancing and learning and refining. And once we stop letting go of this idea of some final, ultimate, accomplished state, we can actually really ground into our daily and ordinary life. It’s very interesting, that exploration.
Rick: I think that’s important because I think since … well, firstly let me ask you this. Do you think there is an ultimate, final, established state?
John: No.
Rick: Okay, good.
John: But what I do think is that we can become increasingly intimate with our true nature and live that more and more in accord. But we’re deeply conditioned and I think we’re going to always be working with our conditioning, regardless of how awake or enlightened we are. So for me it’s a process, it’s kind of a spectrum, I would say. But to posit some ideal or ultimate completion, I think is an invention of the mind.
Rick: Yeah. Well, would you agree to this. That we’re always going to be working on our conditioning and there’s never-ending refinement and so on. But at a certain stage, we become very comfortably settled in something which doesn’t change, which doesn’t seem to need improvement or perfection. It is perfect in and of itself, but it’s our expression or reflection of that which knows no end of refinement.
John: I would agree completely with that. We become intimate and at ease with our being, that which is changeless and timeless. And that’s our beloved friend that’s with us.
Rick: Yeah, so this point you just made, that if we’re expecting some ultimate established state, I think it’s important to emphasize that we may settle into that thing that we just referred to, in kind of a continuum of presence or our true nature, which is a very nice place to be resting in. But if we’re expecting some kind of finality, we could be forever chasing the carrot, you know. Because that’s just not the way life is structured and people can go on and on, having actually awoken to a very profound degree, but not accepting or realizing it because they’ve gotten so much in the habit of chasing the carrot.
John: Yeah, this is the … yeah, kind of staying in the mode of being a seeker. And it’s subtle but a very powerful movement. And for me, I wasn’t even aware that what you’re describing was still going on, after kind of an initial, what I would call, mental awakening. But it was sort of deep in the heart. There was still this kind of seeking for something, you know, kind of a purity of light, and when I finally saw that that seeking was going on. And I had to be very honest with myself. And I saw first that it was happening, and second of all, that it was futile. This is really, this was a big turning point for me, right? There was a big, subtle but palpable letting go of being the seeker, even though I, of course, years and years and years, decades, heard this teaching from various teachers. To discover it firsthand, to see here, this is what this mind is doing, and that it’s absolutely futile, that it will never achieve what it’s looking for. That was really an important turning point, and it led to a deep peace and sense of fullness in the heart as well.
Rick: Yeah, because it essentially is what it’s looking for. You’re looking for your glasses, they’re on your head.
John: This is it. You know, the necklace is always around our neck. And the seeker is what is being sought. This is Maharishi’s teaching and Ramana’s teaching, and it’s paradoxical to the mind. The mind can’t figure this out. But at some point, this insight comes in a very palpable and powerful way. And it’s tremendously liberating, deeply liberating.
Rick: Would you say that even though you would not any longer characterize yourself as a seeker, because the seeking energy has relaxed, that you’re very much still an explorer and an adventurer, you know, a discoverer of new …
John: Very much so. Yeah, that’s a beautiful distinction. Feels like the seeking has fallen away but the sense of exploration has been enhanced. Because there’s an availability, there’s a real openness and availability to be here and to embrace life as it is, rather than chase some ideal, some subtle spiritual ideal.
Rick: Yeah, I concur. I mean, people would look at my life and every night I’m reading spiritual books, every moment in the day I’m listening to some spiritual thing on my iPod, every weekend I’m interviewing some spiritual person and they think, “God, are you obsessed? Could you just relax?” But I feel like I’m just a kid in a candy shop just enjoying this wonderful abundance of riches that are available now. And it’s not like I’m waiting for something to happen before I feel a deep inner contentment. But it’s kind of a play that is just endlessly enjoyable to me.
John: There’s a deep joy, I feel your joy, you know, as you talk about this. It’s just like straight from the heart, isn’t it? This is what you love.
Rick: I love it. Yeah, totally ga-ga over this.
John: You give yourself to it, it’s beautiful.
Rick: Yeah, well, thanks.
John: I love hearing you describe that. You know, and it’s beautiful. I’ve sort of been the reluctant teacher. I’ve never been particularly interested in being a teacher. I’m sort of more comfortable in the student role, I would say. But part of the movement in the last few years to teach, and not in a big way, but just it feels like a spontaneous sharing, and that’s part of the exploration too. It’s interesting. So in what you do, Rick, it’s like you’re really introducing these teachings to a broader listening audience as well. And there’s something beautiful in that sharing, isn’t there?
Rick: Yeah, I love doing it. I love being a … One time, I was on a course and I was made the course leader or something like that over in France. And it went to my head and I started getting all kind of bossy and thought I deserved a better room than other people and stuff. And Maharishi got wind of it and the message came back. He said, “You’re just a connector and a collector.” And in fact, that was perfect. I love connecting people.
John: Yeah, networking.
Rick: It’s my role.
John: Yeah, it’s interesting. We find our dharma. You found your dharma and it’s beautiful.
Rick: Yeah, and I mean I was a teacher for 25 years. But now I don’t feel … I honestly don’t feel qualified. You know, I feel like there are people like Adyashanti and so many others who are light years better ahead of me at doing that. That I found a dharma that I can do in my own simple way that is much more useful than if I were to try to pose as some kind of spiritual teacher.
John: Exactly, and that’s about being authentic, isn’t it? I mean, that’s one reason actually I left TM is that I didn’t feel like I kind of fit the description of the siddha with the corona of light, with the photographs and all that. It’s like that’s not my experience. That felt very inauthentic for me. And like you, it’s like Adya is one of my main teachers and he’s a wonderful teacher. He’s head and shoulders above most as well.
Rick: And you were, as a TM teacher, you were getting up and describing states of consciousness and so on that you yourself hadn’t experienced. So it’s like, how long can you do that?
John: Yeah, and there’s a seeking, there was a seeking in TM that I wasn’t aware of as well. It’s like the character of these higher states. And if you meditate long enough, you’ll achieve them.
Rick: Oh, there is. I mean, in fact, one of the reasons I started this show is that, since I live in Fairfield, Iowa, I was running into people who had had genuine awakenings and they would tell a friend and the friend would say, “Well, can you levitate?” You know, “You just seem like Joe Shmo, like you’ve always seemed, how could you?” And so I decided I wanted to connect people who had, had, to show people that their peers are actually undergoing significant awakenings. And you don’t have to be superman in order to have had a genuine awakening.
John: That’s true. It has nothing to do with extraordinary abilities. It’s actually the opposite. It’s so much a stripping away and a relaxing into something very simple and very open, yet very real and very connected.
Rick: When I read your bio here, you said you were invited to share the Dharma by Dorothy Hunt in 2012. Is that a Buddhist thing where you have to sort of be ordained in a way to go? “Okay, you can go ahead and share the Dharma,” you wouldn’t just do it on your own.
John: Not really, you know, it kind of came as a surprise. You know, I studied with Adya, and Adya is my teacher and Dorothy is a dear friend and colleague of mine. Kind of an elder sister, I think of her. And so it was a bit of a surprise that she asked me. But there was something very touching in that too, that’s mysterious. I can’t even name what that is, but I feel a deep current of wisdom having spent time with Jean Klein and with Adya. It’s like these deep currents kind of just come through this body-mind. And I think it was interesting. Dorothy invited me to teach but actually it was six months before when there was an internal sense of readiness, actually, in which that came. And I’ll share the story, it’s kind of an interesting one. Dorothy and I co-teach retreats, and this was a few years ago, three years ago, around this time in the spring. And we were teaching a retreat not far from here. I’m in California, in Northern California, and hills were green and beautiful. We were at a retreat center above Highway 101. And one morning I went up and sat on the hill and I turned towards the freeway and all the noise and suffering, and my arms just opened spontaneously. I didn’t know what was happening. And I stood up and there was this sense of this full embrace happening, full embrace of the complete experience, human experience, especially the suffering and the most difficult areas of cruelty and fear. And there was something internally that just felt ready and open to embrace that. And when I came down from the meadow, I just felt something had shifted. There was a sense of, “Okay, I feel ready to teach.”
Rick: Sounded like Moses or something.
John: A little bit, down from the mountains. You know, there’s no burning bush and there was no light.
Rick: You didn’t have any tablets.
John: No tablets, no truth to give. But what it was, was a sense of the willingness to fully embrace as it is. And this was very intuitive, and I didn’t do anything after that. And I haven’t done much since then. But it was just some kind of internal readiness that happened.
Rick: Well, you say you haven’t done much. But you’ve been in private practice for years and you’ve had tens of thousands of sessions with people. So you may not have been speaking to big crowds. But if you collect all those people together, that’s a pretty big crowd that you’ve had a very profound impact on.
John: It’s true. I’ve met with many people for many years. And I was an academic teacher at CIS as well. And so I trained students and supervised them and I run inquiry groups. So, yeah, it’s true, there has been a sharing as well.
Rick: Yeah. On that note, let’s talk about empathy. You mentioned that you had, after a certain stage of your awakening, a capacity, a newfound capacity for empathy awoke. And that changed the nature of your professional practice as a therapist. So, let’s talk about that.
John: Well, that goes back to that kind of awakening of the energy body, a dream that happened in 1980 when I was in India. And I came back and I was in my doctoral studies and internships, and I was sitting with people. And really quite to my surprise, I was starting to feel what they were feeling before they were aware of it. I could feel it both as a kind of energetic sensation, often in the energy body, somewhere in the torso, like a contraction in the heart area, for instance, or in the solar plexus or in the throat. And then someone would start talking about grief, or anger. So it was very interesting to feel this quality of attunement happening and the level of my empathy just really opened up at that point. And it continues to open. It seems also to be endless. And I think as my own heart has gone through my own defenses and become more vulnerable and open, my capacity actually to feel suffering has grown. And not only the kind of individual suffering but collective suffering as well. So these teachings that somehow, as you, we could say, awaken or recognize who you really are. That suffering goes away, it’s not my experience. The individual suffering does. But if anything, I feel more acutely sensitive to collective suffering.
Rick: Do you feel, though, that that experience of collective suffering is buffered by that presence you’ve been talking about. So that it’s not like you don’t have any kind of foundation on which to rest, and you’re just getting bombarded with the woes of the world?
John: Well, you know, I think what you say is very true. It would be the reason that we were unable to really open to it is because it is so overwhelming. So there’s a certain capacity of the heart, I think, that is required. And it’s like the heart just … I experience it as almost like the back of the heart opening up, the heart area. And there’s just a sense of this great or cosmic heart that’s actually much more than an individual can bear. So it’s not like I’m bearing it. But there’s something, you know, this great heart is able to bear this collective suffering as well.
Rick: Yeah, I think of it as like you take a glass of water, put even a teaspoon of mud in it, and it gets totally muddy. But if you take an ocean, you can throw whole shovelfuls or truckloads of mud into it, and the ocean…Well, we’re actually trashing the ocean as it is, but the ocean can take a lot more than a glass of water.
John: Yeah, it’s a good metaphor, and it’s apt. I agree.
Rick: Yeah, and so why is this happening to you, do you feel? Do you feel like you’re serving as some kind of washing machine for the collective karma or something?
John: I never thought of it that way. You know, I don’t know. It’s just a spontaneous opening, and it’s not like I’m sitting with this awareness all the time. But what I notice is when I sit with people, and we go deeply, it’s very interesting. It’s like we’ll go into individual suffering that you can trace to particular experiences often in childhood, having to do with bonding or lack of bonding with significant caretakers or maybe some trauma. And it’s very acute. These are difficult places for people to go on their own. And so to be able to sit with someone and really open to that suffering is deeply healing and touching, and allows them to bring in the light of awareness and kindness to these areas that were intolerable. But sometimes people touch a suffering that they say, “I know my own suffering, and this is not my own suffering. This feels much bigger. This feels collective.” And then we sit together with that, you know. So in a way it’s just…it doesn’t come up so much on my own, but more sitting with people as they get in touch with it, and also just reading the news, you know. There’s so many examples of cruelty and suffering as well. It’s just something that’s spontaneously developed over time. And you know, what’s the function of it? Probably something along the lines that you alluded to. You know, there is a kind of transmuting or transformational process that goes on when love meets that which has been unloved or effects of that which has been unloved. And I think everything is waiting to be met by that loving wisdom in order to be liberated.
Rick: Yeah, it would seem that our individual suffering, karma, stress, whatever you want to call it, first priority would have to be to dissolve that, because if we haven’t dissolved it, then we can’t really dissolve anything in a larger context. But the same evolutionary tendency which causes us to want to dissolve that is not going to stop once that’s more or less dissolved.
John: It keeps going. And it’s not … I used to think, well, we have to entirely clear our own suffering before we can really be effective in helping others, and it’s just not like that. You know, and in fact, there are many people who are burdened with their own suffering and yet are open and helpful to others in a really genuine way. So, you know, I think again it’s very complimentary, the process. The clearer we get within ourselves, the more of genuine service we can be to others. But we don’t have to wait for some deep awakening before we can move with love in the world and be of service.
Rick: No, as a matter of fact, it’s like you were saying before about, you know, we don’t have to completely awaken to the utmost degree of clarity possible of the universal self before we can begin to integrate that into our body. Same thing with this.
John: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, we begin to really look at those opportunities, you know, to be available, to extend our hearts, to live with kindness and generosity as well. And those many small acts have an impact
Rick: On ourselves as well. Right? I mean, isn’t that … I mean, Seva is considered to be a spiritual practice.
John: Absolutely, yeah, on ourselves and others.
Rick: Seva just means selfless service, by the way.
John: Yeah, it’s a benefit to the whole, and whether we’re working, you know, with others or so-called others or ourselves. It’s the same principle, isn’t it?
Rick: And so, one more point on empathy. Do you find that it … well, first of all, let me just interject here. My voice is feeding back now for some reason when I speak. Then I hear my voice coming through your speakers a little bit. So maybe if you could just turn your speakers down a little bit or something, it might fix that. And Dan, if you could take note of this edit point. Yeah, I think that helped. Yeah, that’s better. So what was I saying?
John: A final point on empathy?
Rick: Oh, about empathy. I just wanted to say. Do you find that your empathy, that sense of tuning into people, what they’re feeling, moderates itself appropriately so that you’re not walking through the mall and getting bombarded with everybody’s feeling but when you’re sitting with a client then it comes …
John: Exactly.
Rick: Yeah.
John: Yeah, it depends on context, you know, and the openness of the person that I may be with. But it’s also true, the kind of walking down the street and, you know, I was in downtown San Francisco and I can walk by someone on the street who’s suffering and I can feel it, you know. There’s something that just goes through me. I’m touched by it. I’m not overwhelmed by it, I’m not paralyzed by it, but I feel it. So that sensitivity is general as well. But it is modulated, it’s true.
Rick: Well, imagine what the world would be like if everybody were empathic in that way, if everybody had this sort of delicate, gentle sensitivity to what others were experiencing and going through.
John: It would be a very, very different world. We have an empathy deficit. And actually, Barack Obama said that in his first campaign, and I thought, “That’s so true, that’s the greatest deficit really.” So empathy is kind of an evolutionary arc, I think, that’s developing.
Rick: In the culture.
John: But we seem to be moving towards empathy because it supports survival, because we have to live together and we have to understand and sense and be with one another. But it’s a slow evolutionary arc, I would say.
Rick: For the entire 7 or 8 billion of us it is. But maybe each of us can accelerate it and be outliers way ahead of the curve.
John: Exactly, we can. We can be exemplars of that, and spontaneously. That’s the interesting point. It’s like not, to do it in order to so much have the effect but because of our love of truth and our willingness to actually live in deep integrity with our heart. The spontaneous effect of that is of kindness and empathy.
Rick: Yeah, well, all this stuff has its own reward. I mean, it’s not like we’re just developing such qualities because we want to be good guys and have a nice effect on the world. We’re the prime beneficiaries, are we not?
John: We are, yeah. It feels true, you know, in a way it’s not an act of sacrifice. It’s an act of spontaneous upwelling and giving, which in itself is fulfilling. The giving is very fulfilling. We hear that again and again, it’s very true.
Rick: So, tell us a little bit about your time with Jean Klein. He seems to have been a fascinating character and turned out some really stellar students.
John: Well, the first time I met Jean was in the Bay Area in 1983. And a friend of mine had told me that there was a teacher I might enjoy seeing. And so he was in Sausalito. And I walked into a room, it was an L-shaped room so I couldn’t see him. But something really remarkable happened. My mind got quiet. It was just this profound silence and so that really caught my attention. And I sat down and I could … He has a very thick accent.
Rick: French accent?
John: Yeah, he’s Czechoslovakian originally, and was trained in Germany, and fled Berlin in 1936 to go to France. He has quite an interesting background. So he speaks a number of languages and has a heavy accent. I could not understand very much of what he said. And it had a kind of philosophical turn to it. But I immediately sensed I’d met my teacher. It was interesting. There was just a knowing kind of in my core, “This is it. This is who I’ve been looking for.” I get emotional when I talk about this. So I went up after the talk and spoke to his assistant who was his wife. And I said, “How do I become a student?” And we arranged a meeting a week later in Berkeley, and it was just one of those mysterious things. There was just no doubt about it. So I studied with Jean for 15 years and was in part organizing his events in the Bay Area and did a lot of retreats. I would say his teachings really helped clarify the mind. There was just such a crystal clarity in that. And then he had a beautiful presence about him. You know, sit with him and the sense of presence was beautiful. And he was very sensitive, too. So he was very tuned in to his students and could kind of find where there would be blind spots and fixations, and address them, usually very gently, but with great clarity. And so I feel tremendous gratitude for Jean. And it feels like he really helped attention drop into the heart and rest in not knowing. And that was really one of his core teachings- is abide in the heart, not knowing. And I really got that from him. And then we’re available to be taken by grace. So when Jean died, I thought I was done with teachers, and a year later I met Ajay, and I thought, “I’ll be darned. Here’s that same remarkable presence and clarity.” Very different presentation, radically different presentation, young Californian, you know, and very different personality, but really the same teaching. So kind of, Ajay sort of picked up where Jean left off. And for that I’m very grateful as well. Jean was a wonderful teacher.
Rick: Yeah. And how about your time with Ajay? Give us some specifics. That was like around 2000 or so you met Ajay, wasn’t it?
John: Yeah, I met him in ’99 at a talk and I felt that same kind of presence. We had a few brief conversations. In 2001 though, I was invited to attend a small private retreat that he gave in the Sierra Nevada and that was quite profound. I felt … it was interesting. I felt this deep loyalty to Jean, you know. And so I was ambivalent about really opening to Ajay as a teacher. But something shifted. I realized, actually what I realized is Jean had a second teacher as well. And when I realized that, I thought, “Oh this is fine. This is a mental problem I am having. And when that released, there was just this flow or current with Ajay, and a very profound kind of deepening and opening happened being with him. So there was just like a, you know, very strong and immediate connection on that retreat. And then I met with him privately a number of times when he was still doing that and also attended a number of retreats over a five-year period. And then it felt like, quite to my surprise, that’s it, you know. I wasn’t drawn to do any more retreats. It was confusing. But I’ve stayed in touch with Ajay over the years, and you know, he’s very dear to me, a dear friend.
Rick: This thing about you thought you were done, and then you were kind of surprised when Ajay came along, and the loyalty and all that. You know, it’s like the incredible string band saying, “Light that is one, though the lamps be many,” you know?
John: Yes, that’s right.
Rick: And who knows, you know? Maybe another one will come along.
John: Maybe another one will come along, absolutely. It’s good to keep an open mind.
Rick: And so, that actually brings up an interesting point, which is that some people are kind of anti-teacher. They feel like, you know, you can do it yourself. You don’t need a teacher, and that just sets up an unnecessarily authority disparity. And what would you say to those who feel like they can just figure it all out without a teacher?
John: It’s possible. Ramana did.
Rick: True.
John: But it’s exceptional.
Rick: He had a mountain.
John: He had a mountain. It’s a wonderful mountain, by the way. I sat in Ramana’s cave some years ago, and it was extraordinary. So I didn’t understand it until I did that, how the mountain could be his teacher. But I think for most of us, and certainly for myself, teachers are really important because this is such a kind of delicate unfolding. And to be in the presence of a genuine teacher and to help them guide us in our understanding is a tremendous blessing and catalyst.
Rick: Yeah. Well, as Amma puts it, “If a log is burning brightly, and you know, hot burning log, you put another log next to it, even if that log is kind of damp or something, it’s eventually going to dry out and start to burn.” So there is something to be said for proximity with someone who is awake.
John: It’s true. I spent some time with Amma also.
Rick: Oh, nice. Over in India or here?
John: Well, she actually came to my house twice.
Rick: Really? In the early days?
John: Early days, ’87, ’88. She gave darshan at my house. And then I spent some time with her in India also in ’88, January of ’88.
Rick: Very nice. Those were the early days.
John: Yeah, I appreciate Amma very much. The Divine Mother aspect can be very healing for some of us.
Rick: Talk about … go ahead.
John: I agree. You know Eckhart Tolle uses that metaphor as well, in terms of the value of being in the presence of a teacher as well. And there’s something catalytic about that, just resting in that presence. It’s an attunement that happens as well.
Rick: I like that. I think you talked about that in your book, “Attunement versus Transmission.” Did you bring that up in your book?
John: I did, yeah. Basically, transmission is not … nothing is really given.
Rick: I know, it has the sense of something is zapping you, going from A to B.
John: Right, right. And that can happen with Shakti, you know, with charismatic teachers. There can be something given, you get a charge. But the real spiritual transmission happens by resonance, by attunement, and in the way that you just described. It’s inherent. This is all about recognizing the truth that’s inherent in all of us, and outer teachers point to the true inner teacher. That’s the value of an outer teacher. An outer teacher has realized that, realized their own inner teacher, and has some skill in pointing that out in a student. But that’s really the function of a teacher. It’s not to get stuck on the teacher, or worship the teacher, but to benefit from that presence and that pointing. And that happens, you know, there’s different levels. Part of it is intellectual, having clarity of mind, and part of it is just that kind of being in resonance, right? And that which is already inherent and implicit in us becomes explicit.
Rick: Yeah, there’s various points I could use. I could follow up on that with…but I think we’ve covered it pretty well. There’s a…going through your book, I started taking notes, and then I just started yellow- highlighting passages. But a note that I took was, “Discovering inner resonance, recognize inner knowing by listening carefully to your body.” Let’s talk about that a little bit more.
John: Yeah, this is kind of something I think that’s not emphasized so much, is that our body actually has a sense of the truth. When it’s sufficiently cleared of conditioning, we have a natural sensitivity to authenticity and to truth. And so, as we learn to actually listen to our body, we can catch some of those signals. And I’ve noticed, you know, working with people over three decades and tens of thousands of hours, that people notice certain characteristic somatic, subtle somatic markers as they hone in on their truth, whether relative or absolute. And those markers are an open-heartedness, a sense of great spaciousness, a sense of alignment, verticality, and a sense of deep groundedness as well. And so, that can help us. These are our body’s markers, I would say, showing that we’re on the right path to our truth and authenticity. And so, in a way, it’s an expression of our inner teacher, it’s a bodily or somatic expression of that.
Rick: So, I realize there are many ways to do this. But the simple question would be, “Well, how do we hone in like that?” And you know, especially if a person is buffeted by all the stresses and strains of modern life and, you know, long work hours and commutes and kids at home and all kinds of stuff. How do we de-excite the nervous system, so to speak, so as to become more subtly attuned, as you’ve just described?
John: So, it’s always good to take a little quiet time, you know, to take breaks in our busy life. And we can do that sitting in a car and we can do it at home. Closing the door and turning off our phones and taking 15 minutes actually to sit upright, take a few deep breaths, feel our feet on the floor, remind ourselves that we don’t have to do anything or think anything, and let our attention just drop down. Actually, because normally our attention localizes, because we’re busy in thinking, excuse me, you know, more in the forehead. So let attention just drop down, I would say, either to the heart center or to the hara, lower in the belly, and imagine that you’re just breathing there. This is just a gentle way of bringing attention to the torso and not trying to change anything. And there’s just something naturally quieting about that. It’s like the breath, the relaxation response, the parasympathetic nervous system, all this stuff we know, right? There’s just a relaxation that happens. And then we start sensing into the interior of our body. And these areas, you probably can’t see them, but I’m touching my heart and my belly, these are the areas of our greatest sensitivity, I would say. And just by bringing attention there, even for five or ten minutes and just breathing, we’re starting to listen. Right? And it’s like tuning an instrument. Our bodies are like instruments and they’re easily out of tune. And so just by bringing this kind of quality of gentle attention to the interior of our body, we’re starting to tune our instrument, just by listening. And we may notice different things, depending on our conditioning and our state, and we become curious about them. We let ourselves feel our feelings, we let ourselves sense our sensations as well. And so we’re actually opening a channel of communication to the interior of our body. And this is a very kind of lovely way to do it. We can do it other ways as well, through movement, or dance, or time in nature as well. But it’s a shift of attention down and in, primarily, with an understanding that our bodies have this implicit wisdom. And we may encounter psychological conditioning, and if we do, then there are ways to be with that as well.
Rick: Has it been your experience that a lot of people are averse to doing something like that, because the moment they begin to, they begin to experience stuff that is uncomfortable? And that’s why so many people in this world are running around like crazy, trying to distract themselves from having moments like that?
John: Exactly. And we stay very busy in order to avoid doing exactly what I just suggested. And this is where that kind of willingness to be authentic and intimate with our experience is so important.
Rick: So what would you say to someone who took your advice and decided to spend 15 minutes each morning or each day doing what you just described, but the moment they began to do so, things started bubbling up and they felt things they didn’t want to feel? Or even if they weren’t feeling much, their minds were racing with things they had to do and stuff like that. And they felt like, “I can’t do this, you know, it’s a waste of time, I shouldn’t be sitting here.”
John: Well it’s not a waste of time, it’s probably the most valuable use of time as well. And so the mind will rationalize why one wouldn’t do it, and to know that that’s a kind of defense and also a habit. And so just gently bring attention back to the heart or the hara area and continue breathing. Now if there’s uncomfortable feeling, I mean, sometimes there’s no feeling there. That’s fine, you just stay with the breath and sensation. Maybe there’s an uncomfortable feeling. Lean into it. It’s like, be curious about it. What’s in the very core of this? What’s its shape? What’s its texture? So you become curious and affectionate about what your experience is, without trying to change it. That’s a very important point. Because if you’re trying to change it, it will resist. Just as someone’s trying to change you, you’ll resist as well. So you come in with a quality of innocent affectionate attention. And that’s actually what it’s waiting for, like a child waiting to be heard and waiting to be received and understood.
Rick: And wouldn’t it be good to throw the word “effortless” in here, because if you’re trying to change something, then you’re trying to do something. And what you’re advocating is not a doing, it’s more of an undoing, a kind of a relaxing into a more natural state. So you really don’t have to make any sort of effort in what you’re describing.
John: That’s correct, I agree. It’s not effortful, it’s actually very gentle, non-goal oriented. But it’s about being intimate with our experience, and to accept it as it is. The mind has so many agendas about how things should or shouldn’t be.
Rick: Somebody just sent in a question and I want to read it to you. Let me just lean over so I can see it. You mentioned… Hi John. You mentioned that the insight that “the seeker is the sought” and the subsequent letting go of the seeker resulted in a great sense of peace. And yet you also maintain that “there is no ultimate completion.” I understand that anything that the mind may call “ultimate completion” can’t be IT, capital I-T, since IT is not a mental/phenomenal object. But to say that a non-phenomenal ultimate completion is no more than a myth doesn’t feel quite right either. Such a position would seem to imply that the awakening of, for instance, Ramana Maharshi or Shakyamuni Buddha, were only partial. That as great as these teachers were, their insight was still a work in progress. Can you please comment? Thank you.
John: Yeah, it’s a beautiful question. It’s a beautiful question. We kind of talked about that somewhat, didn’t we? Yeah, I think the distinction is there can be completion on the non-phenomenal level, and on the phenomenal level it’s always a work in progress.
Rick: So you would say that Shakyamuni Buddha or Ramana Maharshi or whoever else, Amma, anybody like that, is still a work in progress on the phenomenal level?
John: I would say so, yeah. But I don’t know. How can I know what their experience is? I have to be humble about any conclusions about that.
Rick: Yeah, you can’t be adamant about it. But I’m with you on that. And I don’t consider it blasphemous to say so. That as long as you’re alive, there is always some possibility of refinement of the instrument. You just referred to this as the instrument.
John: Yeah.
Rick: And,of course, we’re not just referring to the flesh and blood body. There’s all the various faculties, sensory and emotional and so on, that we have. Can you imagine there being any superlative ultimate degree to which those can be refined?
John: To me, it’s open-ended.
Rick: Yeah, seems that way to me. But you know, who knows? For sure. So have we covered this point about inner resonance and listening carefully to your body or is there more you’d like to say about that?
John: Well, there’s a lot to say about it, actually. One of the interesting things is when you really lean into your experience and become intimate, particularly with difficult experiences, they can serve as portals, I would say, as doors. We know the teaching of spaciousness as a door and silence as a door, but shadows can also be doors. And very often we discover the polarity of the quality that we’re first encountering. So for instance, let’s say we’re exploring fear. If we really lean into our fear and open to our fear, we will eventually discover fearlessness. If we really open to our grief, for instance, and let ourselves go into the core of it, the heart opens and we feel a capacity for great joy, for instance. So if we open to rage, we’ll find tremendous sense of empowerment, for instance, and peacefulness as well. So there are these essential qualities that are like buried treasure, I would say. And these are an important part of the process of human integration.
Rick: Leonard Cohen said, “There’s a crack, a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.”
John: There you go. That’s a beautiful saying, one of my favorites from Leonard Cohen as well. So we all have these, and they show up in different ways. Some people I notice are more in touch with kind of a groundedness that unfolds, or an open-heartedness, or a sense of verticality and inner alignment. We’re all unique in our expression of that. But these tend to show up, these markers, and they can serve as guideposts in a beautiful way.
Rick: So let’s try to think of a concrete example or two. You say when rage comes up, or anger, or grief, or something like this, you can lean into those and they become a portal or a catalyst for change or for growth. Can you think of a concrete example or two from, for instance, your counseling practice where someone had something like that going on and you helped them do what you just described and it was kind of transformative for them?
John: Well, I have endless examples of that. I’ll mention just one that I mention in my book as well. I was working with a woman. It was one of our first meetings actually. She’d been on retreat with me and wanted to meet individually. She came in and everything in her life was good, you know, in terms of her current experience, her children, her husband, her work, very fulfilling, harmonious, but she carried a deep sadness about her. And I could feel it sitting with her. And she felt ashamed of it and afraid of it. But I invited her to actually let herself lean into it and actually feel it. And she did, you know, and feeling safe enough and trusting enough. She let herself, she burst out in tears, you know. And there was a deep sobbing for about a minute or so. And there was a feeling of shame about being like an out of control little girl- needy, ashamed to have the need, you know, to be loved. And it had to do with her mother, actually. And what was interesting is that as she let herself have the full feeling and let her attention go very deeply in the heart, this beautiful radiance began to come shining out of her. And she knew that she was lovable and loved, despite the fact that her mother was incapable of doing that. So that would be, you know, I run into this kind of example again and again as well. And that was a significant shift for her.
Rick: I feel like in my own experience that things tend to get bottled up without my even knowing it. And that over the years there have been a couple of incidents where I have burst out in tears and just sobbed uncontrollably. One was at my sister’s wedding. People cry at weddings, but I really lost it. And another was, believe it or not, I was watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” and that scene at the end where everybody brings in money and the bell rings and the angel’s got his wings. I just totally lost it, sobbing. People were looking at me like, “What’s with him?” And I almost wish I could do that every day. Because if there’s stuff bottled up, I just want to unbottle it. But it’s corked, you know? And I don’t seem to have …
John: It often takes a catalyst.
Rick: Yeah, and even though I spend hours a day in silence and meditation and so on, maybe I don’t feel like I’m a clear vessel, that there must be stuff that’s there. And I would be happy to purge it, but I don’t see it. I guess it’ll happen when it happens. I don’t seem to have any ability to accelerate that.
John: Right, yeah. You’re not in control of the process. You or someone else may want to see if there are any beliefs about prohibiting the expression of feeling or the sharing of deep feeling. But clearly what you’re describing is an upwelling of love, kind of an opening, cracking open of the heart, you know, at a wedding or this beautiful outpouring of love that’s depicted in the film. Something in the heart is really touched. And if we have no prohibitions about feeling that, then it just upwells as well. And so, in your case, when you notice small upwellings of that, you might favor it. You know, like there’s a sense of love that you feel, or affection or gratitude, or just this deep poignancy that comes when you’re with others, to take the risk actually, to share that, and find out what happens, rather than having to do it alone as well. And so, just telling if you feel love towards someone, sharing that love, right, openly.
Rick: That’s nice, yeah.
John: Share your gratitude that you feel. Let the deep upwelling of the heart come forth.
Rick: Yeah, that’s good. Kind of favor it, if it’s there a little bit. You know, get the watering can and water it.
John: That’s right, yeah, exactly.
Rick: I know I’ve had a number of friends and so on who’ve had profound awakenings after which they couldn’t go to public movie theaters and stuff because they would just make such a scene crying and releasing emotion, and it was a phase. I mean, I don’t think that’s still going on. But there’s a kind of an open, innocent rawness or something that ensued after a profound awakening that nothing could be bottled anymore.
John: Yeah, that’s true. It’s like that governor, that controller really falls away. And so very often some people think, you know, there’s a flattening out of the feelings and one can go through a phase of that, I suppose. But for me it’s an enrichment, actually. And if things have been bottled up, then they come out. But there’ll be a harmonization eventually, or an enrichment of the emotional field, I would say, a broadening and deepening, but eventual diminishment of drama as well.
Rick: Yeah, okay. So let’s say we have about 20-25 minutes left in this interview. I want to make sure that we cover everything that you’d like to cover to give people a sense of everything that you feel is really important. Do you want to use your book for a few minutes as sort of an outline of things we want to cover, even go at chapter titles and see if those become stimuli to bits of discussion?
John: Well, I can certainly speak about the book in a general way.
Rick: Yeah, why don’t you? Sure. And even flip through your table of contents if you want and see if there’s anything you covered in there that you’d really like to bring out in this talk.
John: Okay. The book is about the sense of inner knowing. And it took me a while actually to get clear how to talk about this. I wrote it, several introductory chapters and threw them away over the years. And in a way the theme had to be clear within me that it was really about inner knowing and the bodily sense of that. And this is something that’s not been addressed very much, very often in non-dual teachings and so on. There’s an appeal to inquiry and higher reason. But this is more of an approach of felt sensing. So maybe I should say a little bit about, you know, felt sensing, which is a term that was introduced by Eugene Gendlin, who was a psychologist and philosopher who worked with Carl Rogers in the 1960s. And he discovered that certain rare psychotherapy clients, it didn’t matter who the psychotherapist was or what their theoretical orientation was, they could tune in to what was going on to kind of a sense not fully formed in the conscious mind of what their experience was. And it could be about anything. It could be about their current situation or some problem that was looming. But this is the origin of the word “felt sense,” and it corresponds to what physiologists call interoception, or to interoperceive- to perceive the interior of the body. That’s an objective description. Subjectively, we talk about felt sensing. So it’s a native capacity, but most people aren’t in touch with it, but can be if we start paying attention. So what was interesting to me is this book really came out of my experience with working with people, that they would start lining up and lighting up and grounding and opening up on a subtle somatic level when they got in touch with their truth. And that this was very empowering for them to be able to recognize this in themselves. And so this was the kind of the core of the book is to present this to a wider audience, the fact that there is a wisdom of the body, and that the body is not what we think it is. I mean, nothing is what we think it is. That’s one of your mottos.
Rick: Yeah, well I think it’s more than that.
John: It’s more than that, and less than that. It’s certainly not that. And it’s really true of the body as well. It’s not this kind of solid, dense object. It’s filled with energy and aliveness and space, and it’s a beautiful path to include, along with higher reason, I would say, a complementary path to begin to listen to the body. And I think it’s particularly important because this waking down process to the embodiment of this understanding. To me, this seems like the next phase, I would say, and the emergent phase is really, how does this awake awareness move in ordinary life? How does it transform our individual life and our collective lives? And so, we have to include the body, I think, one way or another, eventually, in the conditioning of the body. So I have a chapter on the science of attunement, the neuroscience of attunement, and this is very interesting. I won’t go into it now, given time constraints. But there are some researchers who are looking into the phenomena of attunement with self and other, and they’re finding all sorts of interesting neurological correlates to that. So we know we’re not in fantasy, you know, about the phenomena of attunement. And we know that the body has this remarkable capacity for sensing. We also know that we’re very conditioned as human beings. And so we have somatic contractions and emotional reactions and core beliefs that create a lot of static in the system. So this is one of the metaphors that I use. That the body is like a musical instrument. That as we reduce the noise in the system, we can hear a signal or a sound. It’s a process of deep listening and of letting go of our core beliefs and entering into intimate experience. And as we do so, in our ordinary life, kind of an inner guidance of the body appears. And it’s pointing us, I think, to our true nature, interestingly. So the recognition of our true nature as open, awake awareness, and to its expression as loving awareness in our relationships and in our lives. So that’s kind of a brief overview, say, of what the book is about.
Rick: Well, you know, the body is a sensing instrument. Isn’t that what you were kind of helping people discover through that advice to take 15 minutes and settle down and tune in?
John: Absolutely. Yeah, so it’s becoming intimate with our experience. A point I haven’t accented very much is the power of beliefs. You know, all the shoulds and shouldn’ts that we have, and stories about ourselves and others. These create significant noise in the system. So to be able to also identify what our core limiting beliefs are and inquire into their truth, I think, is very important as well. Because these somatic contractions and emotional reactions and cognitive beliefs are complex. And you can work from any direction, sensing sensations and feeling feelings, but questioning core beliefs is very important as well.
Rick: So when you say noise in the system. Do you mean actual mental agitation and its physiological counterpart? Like there might be certain blood chemistry and brain waves and stuff that would correlate with that mental agitation?
John: Probably, yeah.
Rick: So how do beliefs do that? How do they create noise?
John: Well, I mean …
Rick: Let’s say I believe in certain rigid fundamentalist religious stuff. Well, I mean, look at the popular religious fundamentalist preachers. They’re up there shouting their heads off on stage, you know. It seems like a kind of a noisy, excited thing and the audience is all whooping and hollering. It doesn’t seem like a real subtle introspective scene.
John: Right, but I’m thinking of more kind of personal fundamentalism. So very often we have a conscious or semi-conscious belief that we’re flawed or not enough, that there’s a sense of lack, that this is our kind of fundamental…this is actually a fundamental egoic view. So you’ll find it pretty universal, one or both of those. I’m not enough, I’m lacking, or what I am is something’s wrong with it, I’m deeply flawed. And there’s a corresponding worldview that goes with that as well. So if I’m flawed or if I’m empty, then the world may expose me. I may feel threatened, or what I’m seeking is out there and I have to fulfill myself by finding it somewhere or in someone. I look to someone else to complete me in some kind of fundamental way. So these are drivers in very deep levels. And if you just have the thought something is deeply flawed, notice what you feel, something’s really missing.
Rick: Some emptiness, some lack of fulfillment or something.
John: Notice what happens in the body, for instance, in the way of feeling. There’s always going to be a contraction that accompanies that belief. And sometimes we’ll have those knots and contractions. We don’t even know what the belief is. But if we open to the contraction and let ourselves feel it, and let ourselves ask, “What’s the belief that goes with it?” They’ll pop up as well. And even to rationalize to ourselves, “I know that’s not true,” is insufficient. It can help a little bit. But often these are formed in childhood, these subconscious beliefs, and they have tremendous power. So there’s a way to inquire by bringing attention to the heart area, isolating very clearly what the belief is. And then just ask, “What is my deepest knowing about this? What’s the truth I really want to know? Am I deficient? Am I deeply flawed?” And then just be quiet, right? And notice what comes. This is a way of contacting our inner knowing, and what will happen is we get in touch with the truth. This will be a release, a relief, an openness. We’ll tap into something that feels essential.
Rick: I imagine if you asked most people to make a list of their top 10 core subconscious beliefs, they wouldn’t be able to because they’re subconscious.
John: Although it’s interesting, you would think so. But they’re not fully subconscious and there’s different ways to identify them. One is just ask yourself, “What do I think is wrong with me?” And make a list and feel the one that has the most juice. So that’s sort of the direct approach. You’ll be surprised. I’ve been. People kind of know what it is. So it’s not fully out of awareness, it’s just kind of in the corner somewhere. We can also encounter our core negative beliefs by noticing what are chronic somatic contractions, like a clenching in the heart or the gut, for instance. And begin to feel into those, for instance, and then do the inquiry. And another way, and a really clear way to do it, is in our projections of our judgments onto others. If there’s something we just cannot stand about other people, guess what? It’s something that we can’t face in ourselves. And there’s a related core belief that goes with that.
Rick: Yeah, I was just talking yesterday with a friend about this other friend. And he and this other guy had been living together in this house in Detroit. And the one guy had this habit of walking around the house with his toothbrush for like 15 minutes, brushing his teeth while he was doing other things. And for some reason, that totally pissed off the guy. He couldn’t stand it, he was like tearing his hair out. What a stupid habit. So taking that as an example of a silly projection that we find critical of another person, how would you use that as a teaching point?
John: Okay, so what is it that’s so annoying about that behavior that one would ask oneself?
Rick: Yeah, why should I care?
John: Yeah, it’s like, “Okay, that really bothers me. What is it about it that really bothers me? Is it that he needs attention, right?” In which case, maybe I need attention, you know. Is it that he’s doing something that’s humiliating and foolish? Oh, I’m afraid of being humiliated and appearing foolish. Like for me, my big projection is I didn’t like people who are angry.
Rick: Yeah, I can see that because you’re a gentle person. And I’m kind of that way too. It’s like, I feel like it’s sort of a problem that’s inexcusable in a way. So how did you come to terms with that?
John: Oh, I realized I had a lot of anger. Not a lot of anger but there was anger in me and in fact, rage. And I became friends with it and then guess what? Other people’s anger just didn’t become a problem.
Rick: So in becoming friends with it, did you go through a phase where you were venting a lot of anger yourself or was it more of a quiet resolution?
John: Yeah, it was a quiet resolution, just a recognition that that’s in me as well.
Rick: Yeah, that’s an interesting point, that’s in you as well. Can we generalize this to say that if we find ourselves critical of anything in anyone, it probably indicates that that thing is in us to some degree?
John: It’s all in us, right. It’s all in us. No matter what we see around us, the worst things, that tendency is in us as well. We may not act on it but we’ll see it in a dream. We may have it briefly in a thought. Those tendencies, all those human tendencies, are in us.
Rick: So let’s say we hate racism or homophobia or something like that. And there’s a gut reaction to those things rather than just a forgiving recognition of it. So you’re talking about, not that we’re going to approve of those tendencies, hate racism or homophobia. But if we’re reacting in a sort of a highly emotionally charged way, you’re saying that that’s indicative of there being seeds of those tendencies within us. Whereas if we have a more equanimeous, sort of a more balanced, forgiving, compassionate way, then maybe that means those seeds don’t exist in us anymore. Is that an example?
John: Yeah. That would be an example. We hate people who are judgmental. We hate people who hate people.
Rick: That’s a good one. So inner knowing, there’s a beautiful line from your book that I like so much I had to write it down. It was, “Inner knowing turns us into a humble servant of something that is unimaginably greater than our separate self.” Love that.
John: Yeah, it is humbling. That’s my experience. And because we realize we’re not, you know, the conscious mind is not running the show. There is a deeper intelligence at work here and we surrender to it. We surrender to it, and there’s a beauty. There’s a loving nature to this which is not only extremely intelligent and clear, but deeply loving as well.
Rick: You also said in your book, “We feel our way through life rather than think our way. Insights arise as needed.” And something about taking the next obvious step becomes …you probably read Suzanne Siegel’s book since you were a Jean Klein disciple and so was she, but …
John: Yeah, we were friends.
Rick: Yeah, one of her key themes was doing the next obvious thing.
John: Absolutely, yeah, it’s a beautiful teaching. So it’s just the next step, that’s enough. Actually, and if we don’t know what the step is, then we wait.
Rick: Another question just came in. Someone said, “Hello John, I can’t stand people being unfair. People can be unfair in all sorts of ways, both subtle and gross. How do I come to terms with this? I think very carefully to be fair as possible in everything I do. Do you have any advice?”
John: Fairness is a concept, right? Fairness is a concept. It would be interesting to let go of that concept of fairness. We do have, as human beings, we have a rough sense of what’s fair, I would say. But this is a very deep kind of argument with reality, I would say, the fairness argument. Life is not fair, right? People are unfair. And it’s very interesting to, how would I be, how would I function, really, without the idea of fairness, would be an inquiry I would recommend, and see what happens with that.
Rick: Well, putting myself in that questioner’s mode of thinking for a moment, I might come back at you and say, “Yeah, but are you condoning unfairness?”
John: Not at all.
Rick: Unfairness is a terrible thing. And don’t we need to take measures to rectify it? If people are mistreating animals or children or doing something, cheating people, don’t we need to sort of take action and correct them?
John: Yeah, I think we can act without being married to the principle of fairness as well.
Rick: Perhaps there’s something about self-righteousness in here, if we’re finding ourselves reacting strongly to injustices that we see in the world.
John: Yeah, there can be a self-righteousness. I’m not hearing that in the questioner’s question. It’s a beautiful question as well, but that could arise. How could they do that? Someone who has a victim identity often feels that life is unfair and wrongs need to be righted as well.
Rick: Yeah. Well, let’s take Gandhi or Martin Luther King as examples. I mean, they dedicated their lives to remedying unfairness. And I’ll let you just take it from here. How did they serve as examples of a kind of an enlightened way of doing this?
John: Well, you know, as we know with Martin Luther King, for him it needed to come from love and that was what was extraordinary. And of course, he was inspired by Gandhi. And Gandhi was inspired by Tolstoy and Tolstoy by the teachings of Jesus. Right? And Jesus by divine nature as well, so by love, you know. We know that when we act from love, it has a very different effect, right, than when we act from some principle of the mind. And it’s much more appropriate, too. So we get out of being a reactivist and really act from love. And I think those are exemplars, both King and Gandhi in the modern era of that. And it takes a lot of maturity, right? And a lot of discipline, loving discipline to do that.
Rick: Yeah, here’s a passage from your book. You said, “As long as we think that getting others to change will make us happy, we will continue to judge and blame them. When we discover that our happiness comes from self-acceptance and self-knowledge, we stop reflexively trying to manipulate others. No one else can make us happy or unhappy.” It’s sort of somewhat related to the point we’re making here.
John: It is. It’s very related, yeah, because we’re looking, we think our unhappiness can be resolved by making others change. And you know, this is particularly true in relationship and the kind of subtle warfare that we engage in with partners and friends and maybe acquaintances as well. With a kind of subliminal belief that if they change, I’ll be happy. And I do work with couples and that gets uncovered very quickly. You know, if my partner would change in this way and that way, then I would be happy. And it’s just not true. Most of the change in couples really comes around acceptance of self and other. And to accept the other requires, really, self-acceptance. So it comes back to that core understanding and discovery of self-love and self-acceptance. And it is. I write this and it’s true for me. It’s just remarkable how our judgment of others falls away as our self-acceptance grows. They’re directly related, absolutely direct relationship to that. People are fine as they are. Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t significant social and environmental issues that need to be addressed. But how we address them, where it comes from, is very important, I think, in order for real transformation to happen.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. Here’s a passage in your book that I particularly liked. I just spent a few minutes flipping through the pages and finding it, because I remember, I thought, “I want to read this passage. It’s so beautiful.” You said, “As our attention deepens into the heart, subtler dimensions unfold. The deepest dimension of the human heart, sometimes called the soul, feels like a sacred temple. It is here we experience the greatest human intimacy, love, compassion, and joy. The human heart opens into a non-localized great heart, capital G-H, that is capable of embracing the suffering of humanity. Discovering and consciously living from both the great heart and the soulful depths of the human heart brings the deepest happiness as human beings.” Nice passage.
John: Well, thank you. Yeah, that’s what I find, I found working with people in my own experience. Sometimes in the non-dual teachings we’ll jump to the cause, kind of the universal awareness. And this deep level of the heart, though, can be skipped over. And to have that quality of intimacy, of deep sharing, of gratitude, and love on a human level is very fulfilling. And it’s an important component in addition to recognizing our deepest nature as awake awareness.
Rick: Well, it kind of gets us back to a theme from the beginning of this discussion, which is that, in a way, awakening to our true nature is the first step. It’s kind of like establishing a foundation upon which all kinds of things can be built. And we have all these faculties, which may not have developed much at all at the point where we become aware of our true nature. The heart may be relatively stunted and the senses relatively crude and the behavior relatively inappropriate or whatever. And so there’s tremendous possibilities for unfoldment and refinement once that sort of foundation has been established.
John: Very true, it is foundational. It’s the most important thing. Right? Understanding the core essence of who we are as this open, awake awareness. And from that freedom so much can unfold, and so much more easily. It can unfold anyway, but it unfolds without the egoic resistance, without the judgment, without the need to change, and in that spontaneity with honesty and vulnerability as well, that unfolding is accelerated, I would say.
Rick: “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added unto thee.”
John: There you go.
Rick: Yeah, these aren’t new teachings really, not in the core. It’s interesting to interpret old verses like that in light of these sorts of ideas though, you know.
John: It is, it is, to apply it. There is something in the application to our experience now that’s very important, the updating of the teaching.
Rick: Okay, well, this is enjoyable. We could probably continue on but let’s think in terms of concluding. And what would you like to say by way of conclusion and kind of an overall summation of what you’ve been talking about, or things you haven’t talked about, or things you’re going to be doing that people can plug into, and so on?
John: That’s a big question.
Rick: Three questions.
John: Three questions, I’ve already forgotten what they are.
Rick: Oh, well just, you know, things you…
John: Let’s see, I’ll riff.
Rick: Yeah, you riff and we’ll see what happens.
John: So, yes, I have a new book out, you know, and it’s available on Sounds True and it can be ordered online.
Rick: It’s called “In Touch.”
John: “In Touch,” and it’s been a joy to write and to share. For me, it’s about the sharing. So I invite listeners to, if you’re interested, read the book and be in touch. And above all, you know, not just in touch with me, but in touch with yourself. This is the great experiment, you know, as I wrote, is to really be intimate with our self as multidimensional beings, with our true nature and its expression as body-mind. It’s as important, you know, to wake up as it is to creatively and joyfully and lovingly express ourselves as human beings. This to me is a balanced approach to life that honors both transcendence and imminence. And it requires devotion and honesty and vulnerability. And it’s to me the most important thing in life. So, and I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.
Rick: Oh, me too.
John: I really love the nuances and subtlety, depth of it as well.
Rick: Well, I knew I would enjoy it. I always enjoy hearing you speak at the Science and Non-Duality Conference, where we’ll both be again this October.
John: That’s right.
Rick: Nice, I put in a little plug for that. And I guess you don’t have too much on YouTube, I’ve noticed. But there are a couple of things one can find.
John: Yeah, a few things.
Rick: Yeah, but anyway, I really appreciate what you’re doing and the contribution you’re making and for what my appreciation is worth. But I think a lot of people, a lot more people will appreciate it as a result of this interview.
John: Well, thank you for having me on.
Rick: Yeah, let me make a few general wrap-up points. So I’ve been speaking with John Prendergast and he’s written a book, as you know. I’ll be linking to his webpage and to his book on Sounds True from his page on www.batgap.com. If you are listening to this interview and you haven’t listened to other of my interviews, you can go to that website, www.batgap.com. And you’ll see them all archived and categorized in about five different ways under the “Past Interviews” menu. You’ll see a place where you can sign up to be notified of new interviews by email about once a week, each time a new one is posted. There’s the “Donate” button, as I mentioned in the beginning, which makes it possible for me to devote as much time as I do to this, which is a lot of time, and my wife as well. She spends as much time at it as I do. Then there is an audio podcast of the show which almost as many people listen to the audio as watch the video. And there’s an obvious place to subscribe to that on various devices and a bunch of other things if you poke around the menus. Incidentally, some people have said, “When you started this show, you were just interviewing relatively unknown people who didn’t have any kind of public role or professional role and who hadn’t written books. And now it’s all about people who are famous or have written books and so on.” Just for kicks, in the next month or so, we’ve scheduled a couple of people who are completely unknown, who are just sort of regular Joes who wrote to us and said that they weren’t even interested in spirituality. One of the guys said, “I didn’t care about this at all, and all of a sudden this huge thing happened to me.” So we thought it might be fun to have a conversation with a couple of people like that. So you’ll see that upcoming. Also I want to mention, if you look at the Future Interviews menu, you’ll see a thing about upcoming interviews. And it shows you at what actual time each interview will be conducted so you can tune into the live streaming if you wish and post questions during the interview. So check all that out, and thanks for listening or watching. Next interview will be with Ellen Emmett, who is Rupert Spira’s wife, although that is not her claim to fame. She’s an eloquent teacher in her own right. And so I look forward to having that conversation. So thanks a lot. Thank you again, John.
John: You’re very welcome.
Rick: And we’ll see you all next week.